Page:The Recluse by W Paul Cook.djvu/9

 epoch, will produce one kind of culture: the monopolistic and paternalistic commercialism of the present age will produce quite another kind.

It is like going from the roily waters of a mill-pond to the fresh and invigorating current of a mountain brook, to go back from much of the vapid versification of the present generation to the vigorous and lively, the imaginative and naive productions of the early Vermont poets.

Vermont literary activity, including its minstrelsy, begins where, in Literature, the Colonial period left off. Cotton Mather, Jonathan Edwards and the early Puritan theological writers had passed away; Benjamin Franklin’s career was drawing to a close; Paine and Hamilton were in the zenith of their glory, and their literary stars were now on the decline. Trumbull and Brockden Brown, Freneau and Joel Barlow had become the leading literary lights of the day; while Irving, Drake, Cooper and Bryant were not yet full-fledged, their great work almost a generation in the future.

A new republic had sprung up in northern New England; and, with it, a fresh and exuberant culture arose and blossomed luxuriantly—in politics, in statesmanship and jurisprudence, in agricultural and mechanic industry, in education, literature and song. This new culture of the (then) new North—the meeting and mingling of minds from many colonies, in the common purpose of building a new state or commonwealth, was distinguished by the activity of the federated manhood of the territory, under the name of the “Green Mountain Boys”; and thus the amalgamating process began which eventually forged into one white flame of patriotism and common idealism the mentality of those scattered early settlers of our rugged hills and narrow but verdant vales which we now know as Vermont. This earliest epoch of our literary life, so far as it relates to poetry, may be called:

The period includes poetical productions, published and unpublished, from such men—all of them being among the original settlers or pioneers of our state—as Jabez Fitch, Thomas Rowley, Nathaniel Niles, Josias Lyndon Arnold, and, last but not least, Royall Tyler, with his coterie of pupils, whom we may denominate as “The Guilford School.” Thomas Green Fessenden and Selleck Osborn also belong properly within this period.

The life-story of Jabez Fitch is most unusual, interesting and romantic. He was born February 26, 1737, at Norwich, Conn. At the age of nineteen, in 1756, he enlisted in the British army, and served through three campaigns of the French and Indian Wars, one of these being the campaign against the French at Crown Point. Here he first became acquainted with the possibilities of Vermont. He was made a deputy sheriff and Justice of the Peace at New London, Conn.; and became an early advocate of the abolition of slavery. He had married, in 1760, and was the father of five sons and three daughters; but at the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, he enlisted in the American Army and received the commission of Major. In the battle of Long Island he was taken prisoner, August 27, 1776, and was confined, with many others, on board the British prison ships in New York harbor. Here, and during later imprisonment on Long Island, he suffered untold hardships, and contracted a disease which in later life disabled him for a period of twenty years. In due time he was exchanged for other prisoners; and he retired to Connecticut. In 1787 he came to Vermont and surveyed unsettled land in the town of Hyde Park. He came again in 1788 with two of his sons; and in 1791 his wife and daughters also came.

Of particular interest is the fact that Fitch kept a diary—a minute and circumstantial record of his life, his experiences, his observations and his travels, from 1749 till his death in 1812. This diary contains valuable descriptive, biographical and historical data, especially that part of it having to do with his pioneer experiences in Hyde Park; but, unfortunately, when Fitch applied, later in life, for a pension, this invaluable book was given up to the U. S. Pension Department as a voucher, and whether it is in existence today is a matter of uncertainty. Besides this diary he wrote a MSS.MS. [sic] book of