John Trumbull

Poet

• Born: April 24, 1750
• Birthplace: Waterbury, Connecticut
• Died: May 11, 1831
• Place of death: Springwells, Michigan Territory (now Detroit, Michigan)

American poet

A member of the New England literary group known as the Connecticut Wits, Trumbull produced mostly satirical poetry, a body of work that, though heavily indebted to British models, served the cause of patriotism during the period of the American Revolution and became an early template for American literature.

Area of achievement: Literature

Early Life

The son of an influential pastor and trustee of Yale College, John Trumbull displayed his linguistic gifts at a young age. A prodigy, he had already passed the entrance examination to Yale when he was seven years old, though he did not begin studies there until 1763. While still at home he read the works of John Milton by the age of eight, and by age thirteen was well acquainted with the works of Homer, Horace, and Cicero.

As an undergraduate he began to write a number of poems, which show his adept use of the heroic couplet and the heavy influence of Alexander Pope, the great English satirist. Satire, in fact, was to play a major role in Trumbull’s early success only a few years later, when he produced the works for which he is now known. Receiving his bachelor of arts degree in 1767, he stayed on at Yale as a tutor and scholar in residence while he continued to write poems and, more devotedly, a series of essays. “The Meddler” appeared in the Boston Chronicle between September, 1769, and January, 1770. Written in collaboration with Timothy Dwight (1752-1817), a fellow member of the literary group called the Connecticut Wits (which was also known as the Hartford Wits), the essays are derivative and somewhat presumptuous from a nineteen-year-old. Setting himself up as an urbane sophisticate in the manner of the classic English essayists Joseph Addison and Richard Steele—whose essays in the Spectator and the Tatler established a kind of popular domestic literature for the rising middle class—Trumbull pontificated on such topics as contemporary vices, flattery, and the coquette. Writing these essays provided Trumbull with experience and the perspective needed in the development of his major work.

Between 1770 and 1771, Trumbull taught school at Whethersfield, not far from his home in Connecticut. Meanwhile, he was experimenting with various poetic forms, producing a verse translation from the Latin poet Vergil and a section from his graduate commencement speech in which he predicted the rise and eventual superiority of America both in the arts and in world affairs. Like his essays in “The Meddler,” these minor works led to more ambitious and meaningful work by the end of 1771.

Life’s Work

John Trumbull already was adept at a kind of mild satire as evinced in the “Meddler” essays, showing a proficiency in the use of satiric verse while an undergraduate. In 1772, Trumbull turned to a more ambitious project. Wanting to gain a lasting name for himself in the field of literature, he followed in the tradition of Pope and Samuel Butler, the seventeenth century author of the three-part satire Hudibras (1663, 1664, 1678), and began the composition of his satire on modern education: the seventeen-hundred line poem The Progress of Dulness (1772-1773). Commonly regarded as the first of his two major works, The Progress of Dulness is in the vein of classic satire insofar as it attacks a serious problem by holding it up to ridicule. Like Pope and Jonathan Swift, Trumbull sought to use humor as a vehicle to cure, or at least bring to light, a social or ethical failing.

The work’s three parts are written in the jogging iambic tetrameter verse form made famous by Butler’s Hudibras. Part 1 of The Progress of Dulness begins with the adventures of Tom Brainless, a lazy lout who dozes through four years of a useless curriculum and graduates in total ignorance. He goes on to become a teacher and then a clergyman. Part 2 traces the academic career of Dick Hairbrain, a rich man’s son who dandles his way through college, gambling and reveling. He graduates a fop and a gentleman. Harriet Simper’s education, as ridiculed in part three, is not in the classroom but in the art of coquetry and the reading of sentimental novels. Trumbull used the mock-heroic couplet to good effect, even exploring the humorous possibilities of off-rhymes, such as “proof” with “enough,” for example.

For all its effectiveness, however, The Progress of Dulness is hardly on the level of Pope’s The Dunciad (1728-1743) or Butler’s Hudibras, the two works to which it is most obviously indebted. To admit the poem’s derivative style and technique, however, is to undervalue its clever facility and ignore its historic position in early American literature. A skillful work, the satire shows real poetic merit, while at the same time it reveals an early American writer’s reliance on outmoded British models in an attempt to find American subjects and a means for expressing them.

One of the shortcomings of the work was its timing. Political affairs in America had become unstable as the colonies lodged more and more grievances against Britain. Despite the clever, jaunty humor of the satire, a plea for a more practical educational curriculum in college was not a subject pertinent to the state of affairs. Though the piece brought Trumbull some measure of fame and solidified his reputation as one of America’s youngest and wittiest men of letters, the satire had to wait until the end of the century before it was reprinted, becoming a minor classic.

The American Revolution was coming to a head by 1773, and Trumbull went to Boston to study law with John Adams, having passed the bar exam that same year. Soon he became confidential secretary to a group of patriots, and his political activities and patriotic fervor fed his ambition to produce a lasting literary work. By 1775, hostility between Britain and America intensified and Trumbull began his most important piece.

M’Fingal, in its original form, was first published in late 1775. Composed in an attempt to raise the morale of the colonies by mocking the British, it was also Trumbull’s bid for serious literary repute. M’Fingal is the clearest example of its author finally finding his native subject. Canto 1 of the mock epic opens at a town meeting and features a debate between the Whig faction, headed by Honorious, and the Tory camp—those loyal to Britain—in the person of a pompous fool, Squire M’Fingal. The squire is the obvious source of ridicule, from his vainglorious lying to his nonsensical political dictum that kings make their subjects suffer because God has so ordained.

So successful was the epic, largely modeled again on Butler’s Hudibras, that Trumbull added a second and third canto in a revised version of 1782. In this edition, M’Fingal is tarred and feathered before the liberty pole and envisions victory for the Whigs.

Trumbull’s effective literary career waned after 1782. Though he continued to write essays and occasional poetry, the remainder of his long life was occupied in civic and political affairs. He was elected to the state assembly and was appointed judge of the state superior court for eighteen years. The Poetical Works of John Trumbull, LL.D. was published in 1820, eleven years before his death.

Significance

John Trumbull’s two mock epics are still readable for their wit and clever use of the couplet form. They are especially valuable as examples of the early American writer’s artistic dilemma: How to present a valid American experience while being culturally dependent on older European (British) forms of expression. Of minor rank, Trumbull nevertheless showed first-generation American writers how they might deal with a sense of cultural inferiority.

Bibliography

Briggs, Peter M. “English Satire and Connecticut Wit.” American Quarterly 37, no. 1 (Spring, 1985): 37-47. Briggs cites Trumbull’s indebtedness to Alexander Pope’s The Dunciad and to other English satirists as evidence of the lack of an intellectual and social establishment in prerevolutionary America.

Cowie, Alexander. John Trumbull: Connecticut Wit. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1936. The first and still the definitive study of Trumbull, particularly regarding his literary career to 1782.

Dowling, William C. Poetry and Ideology in Revolutionary Connecticut. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1990. Dowling examines both the subject and form of Trumbull’s poetry as partly the result of the political and cultural struggle for independence.

Gimmestad, Victor E. John Trumbull. New York: Twayne, 1974. A brief but detailed study of virtually all of Trumbull’s literary output. Presents sparse biographical details in a straightforward style.

Grasso, Christopher. “Print, Poetry, and Politics: John Trumbull and the Transformation of Public Discourse in Revolutionary America.” Early American Literature 30, no. 1 (1995): 5-31. Despite its somewhat esoteric title, this is an eminently readable source that examines the works of Trumbull during the revolutionary period and the changes in the social, political, and economic relationships between writers and the reading public.

Wells, Colin. “Connecticut Wit and Augustan Theology: John Trumbull, Timothy Dwight, and the New Divinity.” Religion and Literature 34 (Autumn, 2002): 93-119. Wells explores Trumbull’s theologically conservative views, particularly as they infuse aspects of The Progress of Dulness.

Related Articles in Great Events from History: The Eighteenth Century

Great Events from History: The Eighteenth Century, 1701-1800: April 19, 1775: Battle of Lexington and Concord.