law by Congress, modelled on the Connecticut act of 1783. All the literature of that period in America bears the impress of the golden age of Queen Anne, the _Spectator_ and the _Tatler_, Addison and Steele; and _McFingal_ reminds the reader now of _Hudibras_, now of the _Dunciad_. John Trumbull was born in Watertown, Connecticut, then Westbury, April 24, 1750. Both on his father’s side and his mother’s he was of the pure Brahmin stock of New England, and through his mother he was related to Jonathan Edwards, Timothy Dwight, his fellow-poet, and many other writers of a later time. He exhibited marvellous precocity, and, his father being engaged in preparing a youth of seventeen for examination at Yale, the boy of seven was so eager to join in the elder youth’s studies that his father allowed him to go through the same course of Greek, Latin, and Mathematics. Both the lads passed, and were admitted members of the college, but the boy of seven was not allowed to proceed with his college course until he was older. He early began writing essays of a satirical nature, and while a tutor at his Alma Mater he wrote _The Progress of Dulness_, a keen and stinging satire on contemporary life. It also shows, like _McFingal_, the technical precision of the literary artist. The year 1774 Trumbull, spent in the law-office of John Adams, in Boston, then returned to New Haven, and in 1781 took up his residence in Hartford, where he remained until 1825, when he went to Detroit to live with a married daughter, and died there in 1831. In his later life he gave up literature for the law, and was at different times State Attorney for Hartford County, Representative to the State Legislature, Judge of the Superior Court (1801-1819), and Judge of the Supreme Court of Errors (1808-1819).