JAMES KIRKE PAULDING,

Maulding

Is descended from one of the early pioneers of the State of New York, who appears in the ancient records of Ulster County, of which he was sheriff in the time of Governor Dongan, sometimes as Hendrick Pauldinck, sometimes as Heinrick Paulden, and at others Henry Pawling, which was probably his English name, being so written in a grant of four thousand acres of land in Dutchess County to his widow Eltje Pawling, by King William the Third. This confusion of names is to be partly traced to the struggle for ascendency between the Dutch and English languages, and partly to the carelessness of the writers, who were not much practised in orthography; so that from these causes it remains doubtful whether Henry Pawling was of English or Dutch extraction.

The

Subsequently to this grant of King William the family removed to Dutchess County, a township of which is still called after their name. grandfather of the subject of this sketch, many years previous to the Revolution, settled in the county of Westchester, on a farm still in possession of his descendants. He always wrote his name Paulding, which has been ever since adopted by that branch of the family, though that of Pawling has been retained by the others. The residence of Paulding's father being "within the lines," that is in the district intervening between the British army at New York and the American forces in the Highlands, and he being a somewhat distinguished Whig of the good old revolutionary stamp, his family was exposed to the insults and depredations of the Jagars, the Tories, and the Cow Boys. He removed his family in consequence to Dutchess County, where he possessed VOL. II.-1

some property. Here Paulding was born, August 22, 1779, at a place called Pleasant Valley. His father who, previous to the commencement of the Revolution, had acquired a competency, took a decided and active part in the preliminary struggles; was a leader of the Whig party in the county of Westchester; a member of the first Committee of Safety, and subsequently Commissary General of the New York Continental quota of troops. When, in consequence of the total extinction of the public credit, and the almost hopeless state of the good cause, it was sometimes impossible to procure the necessary supplies for the American army then occupying the highlands of the Hudson, he made use of his own credit with his neighbors, the farmers, and became responsible for large sums of money. At the conclusion of the war, on presenting his accounts to the Auditor-General, this portion of them was rejected on the ground that he was not authorized to make these pledges in behalf of government. He retired a ruined man, was thrown into a prison, which accidentally taking fire, he walked home and remained unmolested by his creditors. He could never be persuaded to renew his application to government; would never accept any office; and though he lived to a great age made no exertions whatever to retrieve his fortunes. His wife, who was the main stay of the family, and a woman of great energy, industry, and economy, survived him several years and died still more aged.

After the peace the family returned to their former abode in Westchester, where Paulding was educated at the village school, a log-house nearly two miles distant from his residence, in which he received all the learning he ever acquired from the tuition of others, so that he may be fairly considered a self-made man. Here he remained at home until he arrived at manhood, when he came to the city of New York. His first sojourn in the city was with the late Mr. William Irving, who had married his sister, a man of wit and genius,

whose home was the familiar resort of a knot of young men of a similar stamp, who were members of the Calliopean Society, one of the first purely literary institutions established in the city.* He also became intimate at this time with Washington Irving, whose elder brother William married Paulding's sister, and in connexion with whom he made his first literary venture in the publication of the series of periodical essays entitled Salmagundi; or the Whim- Whams and Opinions of Launcelot Langstaff and others, which were issued by David Longworth, a respectable but whimsical bookseller of the times, who, in virtue of having a copy of Boydell's Shakespeare, the plates of which he exhibited in his second story, christened his shop the Shakespeare Gallery; sometimes, too, calling it on the title-pages of his publications the Sentimental Epicure's Ordinary. He was an extensive publisher of plays foreign and native, and became famous for his enterprise of the New York Directory.t

The first number of Salmagundi appeared Saturday, January 24, 1807, in an eighteenmo. of twenty pages. It closed with the issue of number twenty, January 25, 1808. It was the joint work of Paulding and Irving, with the exception of the poetical epistles and three or four of the prose articles, which were from the pen of William Irving. The work was a brilliant success from the start. The humors of the town were hit off with a freshness which is still unexhausted to the readers of an entirely different generation. It disclosed, too, the literary faculties of the writers, both very young men, with a rich promise for the future, in delicate shades of observation, the more pungent traits of satire, and a happy vein of description which grew out of an unaffected love of nature, and was enlivened by studies in the best school of English poetry. When the work was concluded its two chief authors pursued their literary career apart; but it is noticeable as an exhibition of their kindly character, that the early

One of the members of this society was Richard Bingham Davis, who was much admired for his poetical talents. In his appearance and manners he is said to have reminded his assoclates of Oliver Goldsmith. His person was clumsy, his manner awkward, his speech embarrassed, and his simplicity most remarkable in one who had been born and brought up in the midst of a crowd of his fellow creatures. He was born in New York, August 21, 1771, was educated at Columbia College, modestly pursued the business of his father, in carving or sculpture in wood, but was induced in 1796 to undertake the editorial department of the Diary, a daily gazette published in New York, for which he wrote during a year. He was too sensitive, and his literary tastes, which lay in the direction of the belles lettres, were too delicate for this pursuit. He next engaged in mercantile affairs. In 1799 he fell a victim to the yellow fever then prevailing in New York, carrying the seeds of the disease with him to New Brunswick, New Jersey, where he died in his twenty-eighth year. His poems were expressions of personal feeling and sentiment, and have a tinge of melancholy. They were collected by his friends of the Calliopean Society after his death and published by Swords in 1807, with a well written prefatory memoir from the pen of John T. Irving. An Ode to Imagination" shows his earnestness, as a clever "Elegy on an Old Wig found in the street," does his humor. He was also a contributor to the Drone papers in the New York Magazine, where he drew a well written character of himself under the name of Martlet.

"David Longworth, an eccentric bookseller, who had filled a large apartment with the valuable engravings of Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery, magnificently framed, and had nearly obscured the front of his house with a huge sign,--a colossal painting, in chiaro scuro, of the crowning of Shakespeare. Longworth had an extraordinary propensity to publish elegant works, to the great gratification of persons of taste, and the no small diminution of his own slender fortune."-Preface to Salmagandi. Paris edition. 1834.

partnership in Salmagundi has never been dissolved by a division of the joint stock between the owners of the separate articles. The whole is included in the incomplete stereotype edition of Paulding's works. In 1819 a second series of the work was published, which was entirely from his hand. Though not unsuccessful, it was not received by the public as its predecessor. "town" interest had diminished. More than ten years had elapsed; the writer was then engaged in official duties at Washington; his mind had assumed a graver cast, and the second series of Salmagundi is deficient in that buoyant spirit of vivacity which is one of the distinguishing features of the first.

The

About the period of the commencement of the second war with England, his feelings being strongly excited by the position of affairs of the times, he published The Diverting History of John Bull and Brother Jonathan, in the style of Arbuthnot, in which the United States and England are represented as private individuals, father and son engaged in a domestic feud. In this work the policy and conduct of England towards the United States is keenly but good-humoredly satirized, so much so that the whole was republished in numbers in one of the British journals. It passed through several editions, one of which is embellished with several capital illustrations by Jarvis, and was among the most successful of the author's productions. In the volume of Harpers' edition of this tale it is followed by another in the same vein called the History of Uncle Sam and his Boys.

The Diverting History was followed by a poem entitled The Lay of the Scottish Fiddle, a free parody of the Lay of the Last Minstrel, which appeared anonymously, like most of Paulding's earlier writings. This production is principally devoted to satirizing the predatory warfare of the British on Chesapeake Bay, and, what is somewhat remarkable, was published in a very handsome style in London with a preface highly complimentary to the author. The hero is Admiral Cockburn, and the principal incident the burning and sacking the little town of Havre de Grace on the coast of Maryland. It had at that time what might be called the distinction of provoking a fierce review from the London Quarterly. It is clever as a parody, and contains many passages entirely original and of no inconsiderable beauty.

Paulding soon after published a pamphlet in prose, The United States and England, taking up the defence of the country against the attack of the London Quarterly in its famous review of Ingersoll's Inchiquin Letters. The sale of the work was interrupted by the failure of the publisher about the time of its publication. It however attracted the notice of President Madison, and paved the way for the subsequent political career of the author. The design of the work was to expose the unwarrantable course of the Quarterly in drawing general conclusions from solitary examples, and for this purpose the author cites instances from the newspapers of England and other

The Lay of the Scottish Fiddle; a Tale of Havre de Grace. Supposed to be written by Walter Scott, Esq. First American. from the fourth Edinburgh edition. New York: Inskeep and Bradford. 1818. 82mo. pp. 262.