I might have incurred the
imputation of vanity. This, and nothing less, determined me not to give
it place in the public prints."

Another President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, with less
urbanity, but more acumen, said of these verses that they were beneath
criticism.[5]

[5] "It is true that Mr. Jefferson has pronounced the poems of Phillis
Wheatley below the dignity of criticism, and it is seldom safe to differ
in judgment from the author of 'Notes on Virginia,' but her conceptions
are often lofty, and her versification often surprises with unexpected
refinement. Ladd, the Carolina poet, in enumerating the laurels of his
country, dwells with encomium on 'Wheatley's polished verse;' nor is his
praise undeserved, for often it will be found to glide in the stream of
melody. Her lines on imagination have been quoted with rapture by Imlay,
of Kentucky, and Steadman, the Guiana traveller, but I have ever thought
her happiest production the 'Goliah of Gath'" (John Davis, p. 87).

Paine himself printed some virile verses in the magazine, notably the
lines "On the Death of Wolfe" (though not published for the first time),
signed "Atlanticus," "Reflections on the Death of Clive," and "The
Liberty Tree."

Bradford's magazines had failed because of the imperfect communication
between the colonies. Aitken's magazine, throughout its life of
eighteen months, is overshadowed by the war, and the grave news
successively reported from both sides of the ocean.

The next Philadelphia editor was the eccentric social wit, Hugh Henry
Brackenridge, the author of the capital political satire, "Modern
Chivalry" (1792), the first satirical novel written in America. He was a
native of Scotland, born in 1748, but was only five years of age when
his father settled in York County, Pennsylvania. He was graduated from
Princeton College in 1771, in the same class with Philip Freneau, in
conjunction with whom he delivered, at the commencement, a poem in
dialogue upon "The Rising Glory of America," which was published by
Robert Aitken in 1772.

Francis Bailey was the publisher who had the courage to undertake
another monthly magazine in the midst of the war, and with Brackenridge
as editor, which insured some pungent writing, he issued in January,
1779, the first number of "_The United States Magazine_; a Repository of
History, Politics and Literature." "Our attempt," said the editor, "is
to paint the graces on the front of war, and _i