About this time there were symptoms of an æsthetical thaw in Connecticut. There had been no such word as play in the dictionary of the New-Englanders. They worked hard on their stony soil, and read hard in their stony books of doctrine. That stimulant to the mind, outside of daily routine, which the human race must have under all circumstances, (we call it excitement nowadays,) was found by the better sort in theological quarrels, by the baser in New England rum,--the two things most cheering to the spirit of man, if Byron is to be believed. Education meant solid learning,--that is to say, studies bearing upon divinity, law, medicine, or merchandise; and to peruse works of the imagination was considered an idle waste of time,--indeed, as partaking somewhat of the nature of sin. But the growing taste of Connecticut was no longer satisfied with Dr. Watts's moral lyrics, whose jingle is still so instructive and pleasant to extreme youth. Milton and Dryden, Thomson and Pope, were read and admired; "The Spectator" was quoted as the standard of style and of good manners; and daring spirits even ventured upon Richardson's novels and "Tristram Shandy." While in this literary revival all Yale was anxious, young Dwight and Trumbull were indulging in hope. Smitten with the love of verse, Dwight announced his rising genius (these are the words of the "Connecticut Magazine and New Haven Gazette") by versions of two odes of Horace, and by "America," a poem after the manner of Pope's "Windsor Forest." At the age of nineteen he invoked the venerable Muse who has been called in as the "Poet's Lucina," since Homer established her professional reputation, and dashed boldly at the epic,--"the greatest work human nature is capable of." His great work was "The Conquest of Canaan." Trumbull, more modest, wrote "The Progress of Dulness," in three cantos. To these young men of genius came later two other nurslings of the Muses,--David Humphreys from Derby, and Joel Barlow from Reading. They caught the poetical distemper. Barlow, fired by Dwight's example, began "The Vision of Columbus." The four friends, young and hopeful, encouraging and praising each other, gained some local reputation by fugitive pieces in imitation of English models, published "Spectator" essays in the New Haven papers, and forestalled all cavillers by damning the critics after the method used by Dryden and Pope against Settle and Cibber.