His collected writings in three volumes were done in the best manner of eighteenth-century England. Five sixths of them are essays, written not in series, but quite of the _Spectator_ type. Three prose satires--"A Pretty Story" (1774), "A Prophecy" (1776), and "The New Roof" (1778)--are as important a trio as any written by one man in the Revolutionary days. The other sixth--his verse--belonged no less to the polite literature of the period. There are Miltonic imitations, songs, sentiments, hymns, a fable, and a piece of advice to a young lady. There are occasional poems, including birthday and wedding greetings, dramatic prologues and epilogues, elegies, and rimed epitaphs. Verses of these kinds, if they were all Hopkinson had written, would indicate a hopeless subservience to prevailing English fashions. But Hopkinson was nobody's vassal. When he wrote My generous heart disdains The slave of love to be, I scorn his servile chains, And boast my liberty, he might as truly have asserted his refusal to submit to any sort of trammels except at his own option. Into a few imitation ballads he poured the new wine of Revolutionary sentiment, one of which, "The Battle of the Kegs," with its mocking jollity, put good cheer in all colonial hearts in the times that tried men's souls. It was his jaunty self-control, the quality of heroism without its pompous mannerisms, that set Hopkinson off in contrast with his fellows. He was almost the least pretentious of them all, yet few were more effective. John Trumbull (1750-1831), most talented of the "Hartford Wits," tried his hand, like Hopkinson, at the conventional poetical subjects, but, unlike him, the bulk of his verse was contained in two long satirical essays: "The Progress of Dulness" (1772 and 1773) and "M'Fingal" (1776 and 1782). Apparently he had no further ambition for himself or other American poets than to bid their lays with lofty Milton vie; Or wake from nature's themes the moral song, And shine with Pope, with Thompson and with Young. This land her Swift and Addison shall view, The former honors equalled by the new; Here shall some Shakspeare charm the rising age, And hold in magic chains the listening stage; A second Watts shall strike the heavenly lyre, And other muses other bards inspire.