OUR NEGLECTED POETS. No. I. WILLIAM MARTIN JOHNSON. In the State of Massachusetts there are four towns rejoicing in the quaint names of Needham, and Wareham, and Wrentham, and Mendum. Modern refinement may perhaps have seen proper to reform this expressive nomenclature, as there is no knowing what it will stop at;-it is to be hoped not, however. The town of Wrentham, the one with which we have now to do, is in Norfolk county, nearly midway between Boston and Providence; and has long been famous for its manufactures, especially of cotton goods and straw bonnets. About the year 1775, a sea captain by the name of Ebenezer Albee, though in low circumstances, had withdrawn from active life, and settled down at Wrentham. He was a man of great kindness of heart, but blunt in his manners, and boisterous in his temper. He had no children. He was fond of reading, but, unfortunately, with the revolutionary sentiments of the day in politics, he had also imbibed those which, in the general agitation of ideas of the time, were too prevalent in religion. A vagabond pair, concerning whose origin nothing can be learned, were in the habit of prowling Massachusetts and Connecticut on foot, sometimes together, sometimes apart,—but in either case both of them often reeling under the influence of the Bacchus of New England, cyder. They had all the tastes and habits of wandering beggars. They had a child with them,-a squalid, unhealthy, but quick-witted, boy. No one knew whether they had ever been married; but they called themselves Johnson, and said the child was theirs, and that his name was WILLIAM MARTIN JOHNSON. The father never took much notice of the boy. The mother always seemed to have a strong attachment for him. These rovers frequently came to the house of Captain Albee. The good-hearted Captain had ceased to hope for children of his own. Little Johnson's answers and observations delighted him. He proposed to adopt the boy. The father was pleased with the chance of getting rid of a burthen. The mother was reluctant to give up her child. Finally, however, with tears, she consented. For awhile she occasionally visited him; but ere long was seen no more. Thus did the subject of this narrative enter within the pale of civilized and decent life. Albee, by all accounts, among other habits of "a rude and boisterous captain of the sea," was somewhat given to the great vice of our country, intemperance. This may account for outbreaks of unreasonable passion, succeeded by fits of equally unmeasured indulgence, which rendered the situation of his adopted favorite very uneasy, and equally unpropitious to a sound formation of character. Still, the boy was strongly attached to his protector. Albee imparted to him all the instruction he had to communicate, and Johnson repaid his pains with an unusual precocity. He early learned to write his signature at full length, William Martin Johnson Albee. But the affectionate Captain had a sort of primitive puritanical, as well as maritime, respect for the efficacy of the rope's end and the rod, in education; and whenever he had nothing else to do, would belabor his favorite so heartily, that the boy would run away, and remain from home until there should be time for the paroxysm of discipline to give place to one of endearment, and then, like a beaten pet pup, he would creep back again to be caressed. It was not long before the lad began to get ahead of his domestic teacher in accomplishment and to add to his stock of solid and reputable knowledge, from the spelling book and the five first rules of cyphering, certain acquirements of an extremely doubtful virtue, which greatly alarmed the serious good people of Wrentham; for it was discovered that he could draw, and even that he could rhyme; and nobody could divine how these unhallowed arts could have been obtained by a child, in his position, unless through some vestiges of the witchcraft, which might have been still left, by imperfect exorcism, to disturb the but recently achieved repose of New England from the spirits of mischief. To this suspicion, it is likely, we may attribute divers misadventures which materially influenced the future career of young Johnson. When his protector had taught out all he himself knew, he considered the boy entitled to the advantage of such instruction as was to be derived from certain peripatetic pedagogues who used periodically to visit the villages of New England, for the purpose of qualifying young folks for college. Johnson was now about twelve years of age. His progress in Latin was rapid, and he got a smattering of Greek. But his teachers were often of the Dominie Sampson breed, and the boy had a quick sense of the ridiculous, and an unfortunate talent for expressing it, equally with the pen and pencil. His tasks were despatched with a rapidity perfectly inexplicable to the duller scholars and to the obtuse master; and the leisure which remained to him was usually devoted to the gratification of his taste for the roguery of caricature. Though he was so far from ever being found wanting in the fulfilment of his duties, that the rest of the boys could never get at all near him, his instructors thought it peculiarly unfair that his merits should deprive him of the benefits of flagellation; and as he was too perverse to give himself a legiti mate claim to the birch, they would show their high consideration by favoring him with it as a sort of gratuitous perquisite. After any of these frequent scenes, the master would be greeted, either on scraps of paper scattered about the school-room, or in a colossal effigy charcoaled upon the wall, with a view of his own dignified person, set off by such grotesque additions as the artist's invention could supply, and flourishing the awful wand of inspiration over some screaming recipient of virtue and wisdom, most remorselessly administered. This style of retribution was not very likely to better his condition, and he was regarded as utterly irreclaimable. He would continue to escape and to return; but was, nevertheless, every day increasing his stock of knowledge; and at sixteen had added a very considerable progress in Algebra, to his acquirements in the languages. As nearly as we can conjecture, it must have been about the year 1787, that young Johnson found employment with a store-keeper in Boston. His hand-writing was very beautiful, and he was a ready accountant. I am in possession of a sheet (amongst a great variety of interesting papers and relics of poor Johnson, which fell into my hands by a series of strange accidents,) covered with fragments in his autograph of that period; and among them the following broken lines, which I can well imagine were scribbled at the shop counter, in the intervals of the uncongenial task of posting the account book. They may have an interest to the reader, as affording an unconscious glimpse of his mind, and an illustration of the strange, rambling, unbalanced child of genius that he was at the time. They are all evidently the desultory extemporaneous effusion of the varying mood of the hour. So the proud bubble strikes the eye, Pleas'd thus to worth the muse her tribute pays, As northern lights dance o'er the evening sky, Oh, follow then where nonsense leads the way, On some good bit I'd always wish to dine, Madeira, Sherry, or the best of Port With perhaps a good heart, but the worst face in nature. Where towering columns proudly rise, And gilded spires invade the skies, My humble wishes ne'er shall learn to rove, Nor sigh for more than competence and love. People who have no ideas out of the common road, are generally the greatest talkers, because all their thoughts are low enough for common conversation; whereas, those of more elevated understandings have ideas which they cannot easily communicate, except to persons of equal capacity with themselves. The glowing sun, with life-infusing beam, Their nuptials crown. The silver rustling rills, and to the sun Far glittering o'er the meadow's fragrant breast, Hangs graceful, quivering to the breeze The following stanza is given as an imitation, apparently, from the French: While thou art true, my fair, where'er I roam, My heart shall sigh alone for thee; But if another's conquest you become, Thy capture, Delia, sets me free. Of the following two epigrams, the first is from the Greek, upon a statue of Niobe: To stone the Gods have chang'd her, but in vain, The Sculptor's art has made her breathe again. Joe hates a hypocrite. It shows Self-love is not a fault of Joe's. With habits so desultory as those of young Jolmson from the beginning, and with his taste for literature, it was scarcely to have been expected that he would remain, any very long time, the contented drudge of a Boston shop; and he did not. He was every now and then heard of, teaching at some little school, now here, now there, in Connecticut-at intervals returning to his first friends, the Albees, at Wrentham-sometimes in rags, sometimes in comfort and almost elegance; but in either case, always with a welcome. On one occasion, he is recollected to have appeared there in the garb of a sailor-boy, bearing, both in his dress and person, marks of ill usage at sea. The following scrap, scribbled on a fragment of paper, in his early handwriting, seems to refer to this disastrous adventure: God's miracles I'll praise on shore, And there his blessings reap; From the next intelligence we can gather concerning him, he is, in the year 1790, at the head of a little school at Bridgehampton, on Long Island. He must then have been about nineteen. At this time, he had, no one could conjecture by what means, become a very excellent player on the violin, and had attained to remarkable skill in architectural planning and drawing. His musical acquirements were, of course, a great recommendation to the society of the rural belles; and his scraps of verse exhibit more susceptibility than constancy, for he had already begun to adore each and every pretty Nancy, and Phoebe, and Keturah, of each and every village, as a Venus for whom Jupiter would have forsaken all his other infidelities. He remained at Bridgehampton during the winter; when, having gathered together a little money, he seems to have first formed a resolution to undertake the study of medicine. At this time he found his way to the village of East-Hampton, also on Long Island, where he placed himself under the instruction of a very worthy and intelligent physician, by the name of Sage. So much of his time was taken up here between making verses and making love, that his amiable tutor was entirely at a loss to account for the progress he actually gained in his professional studies. By the close of the summer, his small stock of money being exhausted, Dr. Sage procured a school for him, at Smithtown, on another part of the Island, where he passed the following winter, returning with his savings in the spring, to resume his medical course at East-Hampton, which place seemed to have fastened itself more strongly around his heart, than any other, before ar after, to the end of his life. This attachment I can readily account for. I have myself visited East-Hampton; and, as it may assist my readers to enter into the feelings of the young poet who now took up his abode there, I will endeavour to give them such a knowledge of its characteristics, as that passing glance enabled me to obtain. It was settled, history says, at a very early period, from the opposite shores of Connecticut. It is situated on a gently undulating plain, some score of miles from the extreme eastern point of Long Island, and about seven from Sag |