_Early Minor Poets._--Of the minor poetry prior to 1815 there is little to be said by way of praise. We see in it how the influence of Akenside and other English didactic writers of a previous age gives ground before the newer spirit of Wordsworth and Coleridge; although the satires of the Revolution had a lineage, in Paine and others, that did not quickly die away; and although several other literary fashions had their intervals of existence, as, for example, the imitation of “Ossian” and the cult of the Della Cruscans. The intellect of Akenside made itself felt in such work as “The Power of Solitude” (1804), by Joseph Story (1779-1845), and the anonymous “Pains of Memory,” published four years later. “Of much higher merit,” thinks Professor Bronson, “are the didactic poems of Robert Treat Paine (1773-1811), a man of versatile and brilliant parts, but dissipated character. His lyrics, orations, and dramatic criticisms all show ability. But his best work is ‘The Ruling Passion,’ a poem delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa at Harvard in 1797.” This is “frankly on the model of Pope, but so witty, vigorous, and pointed that it does honour to its original.” William Cliffton’s “Poems” (1800), and Thomas G. Fessenden’s “Original Poems” (1804), can only be mentioned. A word may be added on the poetesses of the time, several of whom, for example Mrs. Mercy Warren (1728-1814), having made themselves heard during the American struggle for liberty, continued to find an audience in the early years of the Republic. Mrs. Warren’s poems were collected in 1790, Mrs. Susanna H. Rowson’s in 1804. The sentimental Mrs. Sarah W. Morton may also be noted; she flourished somewhat later than the others (1759-1846). She is no longer interesting as the “American Sappho,” nor is it generally recalled that she considered Paine to be the American “Menander.” She was an exponent of the inane “Della Cruscan” style, which had its vogue in England until it was attacked by William Gifford, and in the United States until Gifford’s “Baviad” and “Mæviad” were republished at Philadelphia (1799), seconded by a poetical epistle to their author from the pen of the young Quaker Cliffton. Not less pernicious than the Della Cruscans were the imitators of MacPherson’s “Ossian,” including Joseph B. Ladd (1764-1786), Jonathan M. Sewall (1746-1808), and John Blair Linn (1777-1804). Both schools gave place when the Wordsworthian reaction set in against “poetic diction” and the habit of writing verse about natural objects without having looked at them.