Page:The Recluse by W Paul Cook.djvu/14

 Directly after being admitted to the bar, Tyler moved to Portland (then Falmouth), Maine, where he practiced law for two years. With the coming of peace, 1781, he returned to Boston, which offered better opportunities for him, making his home at Quincy. After vainly pursuing Shays to Vermont, he had been entrusted with a mission to New York; but, on returning to his law practice, at the end of the rebellion, he kept up a correspondence with personages he had met in Vermont, including Ethan Allen.

At this time (1778) Goldsmith and Carrick having brought about a revival of comedy drama in England, the old Federal Street Theatre in Boston became a centre for wit and fashion. No American play of the kind had as yet been written or staged in the colonies; and Tyler, urged by his friends, resolved to attempt such a play. The result was “The Contrast”, the first American comedy-drama ever produced, which is said to have been conceived and written in three weeks. It was the first literary attempt, in America to set up and portray a distinctly Western or “Yankee” type of civilization or character; and, as such, it marks the first step toward originality in our native literature. It was brought out, in the spring of ’89, at Park Theatre, New York, attaining instant and wide success. It was published in Philadelphia by Thomas Wignell, a comic actor of the time, and was played at many theatres throughout the country.

At this same time, Tyler also wrote another farce entitled “May Day in Town”, which likewise had a large run of popularity. As his biographer says: “He was petted, caressed, feasted and toasted, and no doubt lived too freely.” At any rate, a sudden change came over his spirits at this time, and he seemed unusually depressed. He, for some reason, determined to start life anew; and, in this frame of mind, he made in 1790 a tentative visit to Vermont. The short and stormy career of this little nation-state was now drawing to a promising climax; and it became clearly evident that it would soon be admitted to full sisterhood in the confederation of states. It offered many advantages to settlers—low taxes, cheap lands, freedom of initiative; and at the time in it could be found many congenial and enlightened minds. In the summer of 1791 Tyler, [sic] accordingly settled in Guilford, then the most populous and one of the most flourishing towns of the state. In the center of the town he opened his law office, and soon became one of the most powerful factors in the social, political and intellectual life of the region round-about. He attended courts far and near. In 1794 he married Mary Palmer—a congenial helpmeet—and one who entered sympathetically into his literary activities—during a long and busy career. About this time, too, he met and established a friendship with Joseph Dennie—the beginning of a literary association which was to have a profound effect on the future journalistic and poetical literature of Vermont. Dennie was editor of the Farmer’s Weekly Museum, or New Hampshire and Vermont State Journal, at Walpole, N. H. Tyler became associate editor of the Journal; and, under the joint management it soon established a circulation extending from Maine to Georgia. It became the foremost literary journal of its day, furnishing an outlet not only for Tyler’s essays and sketches, but for the poetic and prose works of his many pupils and associates. Dennie was the foremost essayist of the day in America; and Tyler was the first dramatist, keenest wit, and most pungent paragrapher of the times.

It was at this period that there swept over the north a mania for speculation in Georgia land (very similar to the present-day craze over Florida); and, in ridicule of this furore of speculation, Tyler brought out (1797) his third comedy drama, “The Georgia Spec, or Land in the Moon.” This, like his two previous plays, was repeatedly staged at Boston and New York.

In 1797 he wrote and published at Walpole, N. H., “The Algerine Captive”—a work of real merit, and the first novel ever published by a Vermont author in the course of which he graphically portrays the horrors of the African slave trade. It was re-printed in London, 1802, and in Hartford, 1816. A copy of this book may be seen in the State Library at Montpelier.

But, if Tyler’s prestige and influence on his own and succeeding generations rest primarily on his dramatic comedies, and secondarily upon his journalistic’