rchies,
viz., the Assyrian, Persian, and Grecian, and the Beginning of the
Roman Commonwealth to the End of their Last King," a work which some
authorities rank as the first American epic (1650). This was soon
(1662) followed by Michael Wigglesworth's "Day of Doom," or "Poetical
Description of the Great and Last Judgement," wherein the author,
giving free play to his imagination, crammed so many horrors that it
afforded ghastly entertainment for hosts of young Puritans while it
passed through its nine successive editions in this country and two in
England. Although devoid of real poetic merit, this work never failed
to give perusers "the creeps," as the following sample will
sufficiently prove:

Then might you hear them rend and tear
The air with their outcries;
The hideous noise of their sad voice
Ascendant to the skies.
They wring their hands, their caitiff hands,
And gnash their teeth for terror;
They cry, they roar, for anguish sore,
And gnaw their tongue for horror.
But get away without delay;
Christ pities not your cry;
Depart to hell, there may you yell
And roar eternally.

The Revolutionary epoch gave birth to sundry epic ballads--such as
Francis Hopkinson's Battle of the Kegs and Major Andre's Cow
Chase--and "to three epics, each of them almost as long as the Iliad,
which no one now reads, and in which one vainly seeks a touch of
nature or a bit of genuine poetry." This enormous mass of verse
includes Trumbull's burlesque epic, McFingal (1782), a work so
popular in its day that collectors possess samples of no less than
thirty pirated editions. Although favorably compared to Butler's
Hudibras, and "one of the Revolutionary forces," this poem--a satire
on the Tories--has left few traces in our language, aside from the
familiar quotation:

A thief ne'er felt the halter draw
With good opinion of the law.

The second epic of this period is Timothy Dwight's "Conquest of
Canaan" in eleven books, and the third Barlow's "Columbiad." The
latter interminable work was based on the poet's pompous Vision of
Columbus, which roused great admiration when it appear (1807). While
professing to relate the memorable voyage of Columbus in a grandly
heroic strain, the Columbiad introduces all manner of mythical and
fantastic personages and events. In spite of its writer's learning and
imagination, this voluminous epic fell quite flat when published, and
there are now ve