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The Evidence That Hugh Brackenridge Wrote “The Cornwalliad”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

J. F. S. Smeall
J. F. S. Smeall*
Affiliation:
University of North Dakota, Grand Forks
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Extract

I propose that Hugh Brackenridge (1750–1816) wrote the anonymous “Cornwalliad” of 720 lines and some prose preliminaries that in 1779 appeared in his United States Magazine. To support this ascription I have a three-part argument: first, that a prose passage, in an unprinted manuscript play by Brackenridge, was put into verse for “The Cornwalliad”; second, that “The Cornwalliad” was edited for The United States Magazine as if it were by the editor and could not have been by anyone but the editor, who was Brackenridge; and third, that a life of its unnamed author sketched in a preliminary “Apology for the Cornwalliad” corresponds with a hitherto little-explored phase of Brackenridge's life. These textual, editorial, and biographical arguments seem to make it certain that Hugh Brackenridge wrote this excellent mock-heroic poem.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 80 , Issue 5 , December 1965, pp. 542 - 548
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1965

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References

1 Hugh Brackenridge's son Henry Marie, in a MS letter, 3 April 1850, that is tipped into a Library of Congress copy of The United Slates Magazine, states: “This Miscellany was conducted by H. H. Brackenridge—who was the author of nearly all the Original Articles.” F. L. Mott, A History of American Magazines 1741–1850 (New York, 1930), p. 45 says: ‘“The Cornwalliad …’ ran through several issues of Brackenridge's United States Magazine in 1779. It was probably by the editor.” Lyon N. Richardson, A History of Early American Magazines 1741–1789 (New York, 1931), pp. 207–208, says: “The poetry of Freneau and ‘The Cornwalliad’ have given The United States Magazine a distinction in the department of verse which no preceding magazine can enjoy. Of ‘The Cornwalliad …‘ little seems to have been recorded, and its author has remained anonymous.”

2 Gazette Publications by H. H. Brackenridge (Carlisle, Pa., 1806), p. 5. My italics.

3 E. g., C. M. Newlin, The Life and Writings of Hugh Henry Brackenridge (Princeton, N.J., 1932), p. 34, n. 1, and p. 35.

4 Gazette Publications, pp. 281, 279. My italics.

5 In Rind's Virginia Gazette, 23 February 1769, a traveller notes that Brackenridge's academy has “two public days annually when the scholars … exhibit specimens of oratory.” Presbyterian schools on the Eastern Shore then followed Princeton's vacation schedule, so their public days just preceding vacations came in May and in late September or early October. Luther Martin's MS autobiography (Hall of Records, Annapolis) relates how he remained in charge of one such school “until about the fourteenth day of October, when by my letter book I find the fall vacation having taken place, I left.”

6 He finds “from the answers to the last commissioners from Britain” that the Congress is serious about Independence. These “answers” had first been published in the Pennsylvania Packet, 4 July 1778.

7 Both the “Apology” and the “History” presuppose the forthcoming publication of the cantos.

8 The United States Magazine, p. 16.

9 Gazette Publications, p. 279.

10 The United States Magazine, p. 16.

11 The Papers of James Madison (Chicago, 1962), i, 132.

12 John Kilbourne, Librarian of the Maryland Historical Society, led me to this MS. For a copy, and courtesies respecting it, including a contemporary key from the Gale family papers to the initials used in it for proper names, I owe thanks to its owner, Mrs. E. Herrman Cohn, and to H. Lawrence Brittingham of the Somerset County Historical Society, Princess Anne, Md. Guy Klett, Research Librarian of the Presbyterian Historical Society, gave me needed information about Jacob Ker.

13 The Papers of James Madison, i, 135.

14 Ibid., i, 139.

15 Peter Force, American Archives … The Fourth Series (Washington, D. C., 1840), iii, col. 109.

16 Ibid., col. 1571.

17 Ibid., cols. 1574–75.

18 Force, Archives, 4th Series, iv, cols. 715–719.

19 Ibid., 4th Series, vi, cols. 809–811.

20 Ibid., cols. 1006–08.

21 Ibid., cols. 821–822.

22 Minutes, The Presbytery of Philadelphia (First), p. 206; in the Presbyterian Historical Society collections.

23 Gazette Publications, pp. 265–267.

24 Issued with his Death of General Montgomery.

25 See his Gazette Publications, p. 125; his Six Discourses Founded on Scripture (Lancaster, Pa., 1778), pp. 16 and 78; and The United States Magazine, pp. 197 and 371.

26 “The Cornwalliad,” The United States Magazine, p. 233.

27 Henry James, Jr, Hawthorne (London, 1879), Ch. ii.

28 I am aware that Kenneth Lynn, Mark Twain and Southwestern Humor (Boston, Toronto, 1959), p. 7, gives American humor a different origin. Referring to William Byrd he says: “When he came to write his History of the Dividing Line, a Virginian at last spoke like an English gentleman. With Byrd's book, the literature of what I should like to call ‘the Southwestern tradition’ begins.” But no part of Byrd's History was in print before 1822, a late date to begin that tradition. Cf. J. B. Hubbell, The South in American Literature (Durham, N.C., 1954), p. 919.

29 Modern Chivalry, Part ii, Vol. i, Book 2, Ch. v (Carlisle, Pa., 1804), appeared in the Louisiana Gazette, 7 November 1806.