In the first twelve pages of Ideological Origins Professor Bailyn displays for his audience the subject matter of his book, polishing it as it were a metallic object, making it shine and glitter as gold as his audience oohs and aahs. For it was in the colonists' pamphlets that,
"the best thought of the day expressed itself;...
that "the solid framework of constitutional thought was developed;"...
The pamphlets were not just learned, philosophical and substantive, they were also artistic.
The literary qualities of the pamphlets are also important...
The best...had a rare combination of spontaneity and solidity, of dash and detail, of casualness and care.
...some...have remarkable force and originality.
...an obscure Salem parson...[wrote] in the most dignified and moving prose, a paean to the promise of American life, and...an original blend of theological and constitutional principles.
Indeed, Bailyn groups that obscure Salem parson and others in the rustic colonies with the age's,
greatest men of letters...Milton,...Locke, Swift, Defoe...
Who has ever heard of Ebenezer Chaplin?
Who indeed. But this Milton of Sutton, Massachusetts wrote a "remarkable" tract, delivered as a sermon, for Ebenezer Chaplin was a divine. The work was titled,
The Civil State Compared to Rivers.
?
In The Civil State Compared to Rivers the reverend Chaplin,
...managed for the better part of twenty-four pages to sustain the single simile announced in the title... (Which prompted the undersigned to remember Dr. Johnson's comment to Boswell upon witnessing a dancing three-legged dog, "It is not that it is done well; it is that it is done at all.")
The rivers simile, Bailyn wrote,
is a noteworthy literary invention [?!] [which] winds steadily through the argument, dramatizing it, coloring it, raising the aesthetic level of the piece far above what could have attained by direct exposition.
The Civil State Compared to Rivers "gleams" in Professor Bailyn's eyes as does "THE LITERATURE OF REVOLUTION" (all caps in original) in the eyes of Professor Bailyn's audience as he polishes and shines the lump of metal announced as metaphor in the opening paragraph of this here pamphlet.
And there were other Miltons, Lockes, Swifts, and Defoes to be found in the colonies, the crafters of similarly artful products, including,
"...half a dozen Biblical imitations...the most ambitious and nearly [note] successful of...which"...[was]...a parody in six parts of an entire book of the Bible...It is so complete in its plot and characterization...& etc. By its extensiveness and detail, by the sheer number of its imaginative touches, it attains a considerable effect."
There were still others.
Dramatic dialogues...[and a] half-dozen...fully evolved plays..."
Professor Bailyn sums up the pamphlets:
And all the detailed linguistic tactics of the classic era of English pamphleteering were present. The pamphlets abound in aphorisms...There are apostrophes, hyperboles, and vivid personifications. There are subtle transitions that seek to surprise and fix attention. Even the most crudely bombastic harangues contain artful literary constructions.
If we see far it is because we stand on the shoulders of giants.
And yet...
"And yet"? What do you mean, "And yet"? We are inhabitants of The Shining City Upon a Hill, we see far; we are descendants of stars fallen from heaven, heirs to a land of acres of diamonds; we are “exceptional".
At the bottom of the twelfth page Professor Bailyn abruptly shifts from good cop to bad cop. He puts the gleaming lump of metal between his teeth and chomps down and then shows us the result: the bite test leaves no mark; it is not soft gold which he has been polishing to deceive us, before our eyes, it is hard brass.
And yet, for all of this--for all of the high self-consciousness of literary expression, the obvious familiarity with cosmopolitan models and the armory of sophisticated belles-letters--the pamphlets of the American Revolution that seek artistic effects are not great documents. *sad face*
Next to the more artful pamphlets of eighteenth-century England they are
PALLID,
IMITATIVE,
AND CRUDE.
But what about Milton, Locke, Smith, Defoe, the Reverend Ebenezer Chaplin?
There is nothing in the American literature that approaches in sheer literary skill...Swift's Modest Proposal and Defoe's Shortest Way with the Dissenters;...
Not even The Civil State Compared to Rivers?
The end effect [of that simile] is almost overcome by insistence; the figure is maintained too long; it becomes obtrusive…
Every work that Professor Bailyn built up in the first twelve pages is systematically torn down in the next four pages:
The Ministerial Catechism lacks…verbal cleverness…
The First Book [bible parody]… “has a synthetic ring…”
Most of the pseudonymous poses, including Hopkins’ cited above, were transparent to begin with, and…unevenly, even sloppily, maintained;
Chandler’s Querist…can become monotonous…wearying…will exhaust the patience of any reader.
And these are among the strongest of the efforts made to attain literary effects. The weakest are, on technical grounds, quite remarkably bad. The poetry—is almost uniformly painful to read. (emphasis added)
The dramatic dialogues…are wooden and lifeless.
...the more imaginative and self-consciously literary of the pamphlets of the Revolution [are] manifestly inferior in quality to the English models...
It is Professor Bailyn's scholarly technique to artfully couple the colonial pamphleteers to the great English polemicists and then to artfully de-couple them:
...the American pamphleteers, though participants in a great tradition, were amateurs next to such...as Swift and Defoe. Nowhere in the...society of colonial America [were] there...a group of penmen professional in the sense that Defoe or...James Ralph were professional...
We are descendants of "participants"? We stand on the shoulders of pygmies? All that glitters is not gold or diamond but brass and cubic zirconia? *frowny face*
...the Revolutionary pamphlets considered simply as literature [exhibit] crudeness.
This is a parlor trick. Professor Bailyn repeats the trick later in A Note on Conspiracy. It is sly good cop, bad cop. Why does Bailyn do this? To obscure the reality of the "crudeness" of our origins, the disturbed, paranoid thought. These are artful dodges of deceiving, flattering comparison, of false equivalence, of scholarly sleight of hand which temporarily gleams the base metal only then to reveal it as brass, not gold, and his audience as fools for falling for it.*demerit Bailyn*
"the best thought of the day expressed itself;...
that "the solid framework of constitutional thought was developed;"...
The pamphlets were not just learned, philosophical and substantive, they were also artistic.
The literary qualities of the pamphlets are also important...
The best...had a rare combination of spontaneity and solidity, of dash and detail, of casualness and care.
...some...have remarkable force and originality.
...an obscure Salem parson...[wrote] in the most dignified and moving prose, a paean to the promise of American life, and...an original blend of theological and constitutional principles.
Indeed, Bailyn groups that obscure Salem parson and others in the rustic colonies with the age's,
greatest men of letters...Milton,...Locke, Swift, Defoe...
Who has ever heard of Ebenezer Chaplin?
Who indeed. But this Milton of Sutton, Massachusetts wrote a "remarkable" tract, delivered as a sermon, for Ebenezer Chaplin was a divine. The work was titled,
The Civil State Compared to Rivers.
?
In The Civil State Compared to Rivers the reverend Chaplin,
...managed for the better part of twenty-four pages to sustain the single simile announced in the title... (Which prompted the undersigned to remember Dr. Johnson's comment to Boswell upon witnessing a dancing three-legged dog, "It is not that it is done well; it is that it is done at all.")
The rivers simile, Bailyn wrote,
is a noteworthy literary invention [?!] [which] winds steadily through the argument, dramatizing it, coloring it, raising the aesthetic level of the piece far above what could have attained by direct exposition.
The Civil State Compared to Rivers "gleams" in Professor Bailyn's eyes as does "THE LITERATURE OF REVOLUTION" (all caps in original) in the eyes of Professor Bailyn's audience as he polishes and shines the lump of metal announced as metaphor in the opening paragraph of this here pamphlet.
And there were other Miltons, Lockes, Swifts, and Defoes to be found in the colonies, the crafters of similarly artful products, including,
"...half a dozen Biblical imitations...the most ambitious and nearly [note] successful of...which"...[was]...a parody in six parts of an entire book of the Bible...It is so complete in its plot and characterization...& etc. By its extensiveness and detail, by the sheer number of its imaginative touches, it attains a considerable effect."
There were still others.
Dramatic dialogues...[and a] half-dozen...fully evolved plays..."
Professor Bailyn sums up the pamphlets:
And all the detailed linguistic tactics of the classic era of English pamphleteering were present. The pamphlets abound in aphorisms...There are apostrophes, hyperboles, and vivid personifications. There are subtle transitions that seek to surprise and fix attention. Even the most crudely bombastic harangues contain artful literary constructions.
If we see far it is because we stand on the shoulders of giants.
And yet...
"And yet"? What do you mean, "And yet"? We are inhabitants of The Shining City Upon a Hill, we see far; we are descendants of stars fallen from heaven, heirs to a land of acres of diamonds; we are “exceptional".
At the bottom of the twelfth page Professor Bailyn abruptly shifts from good cop to bad cop. He puts the gleaming lump of metal between his teeth and chomps down and then shows us the result: the bite test leaves no mark; it is not soft gold which he has been polishing to deceive us, before our eyes, it is hard brass.
And yet, for all of this--for all of the high self-consciousness of literary expression, the obvious familiarity with cosmopolitan models and the armory of sophisticated belles-letters--the pamphlets of the American Revolution that seek artistic effects are not great documents. *sad face*
Next to the more artful pamphlets of eighteenth-century England they are
PALLID,
IMITATIVE,
AND CRUDE.
But what about Milton, Locke, Smith, Defoe, the Reverend Ebenezer Chaplin?
There is nothing in the American literature that approaches in sheer literary skill...Swift's Modest Proposal and Defoe's Shortest Way with the Dissenters;...
Not even The Civil State Compared to Rivers?
The end effect [of that simile] is almost overcome by insistence; the figure is maintained too long; it becomes obtrusive…
Every work that Professor Bailyn built up in the first twelve pages is systematically torn down in the next four pages:
The Ministerial Catechism lacks…verbal cleverness…
The First Book [bible parody]… “has a synthetic ring…”
Most of the pseudonymous poses, including Hopkins’ cited above, were transparent to begin with, and…unevenly, even sloppily, maintained;
Chandler’s Querist…can become monotonous…wearying…will exhaust the patience of any reader.
And these are among the strongest of the efforts made to attain literary effects. The weakest are, on technical grounds, quite remarkably bad. The poetry—is almost uniformly painful to read. (emphasis added)
The dramatic dialogues…are wooden and lifeless.
...the more imaginative and self-consciously literary of the pamphlets of the Revolution [are] manifestly inferior in quality to the English models...
It is Professor Bailyn's scholarly technique to artfully couple the colonial pamphleteers to the great English polemicists and then to artfully de-couple them:
...the American pamphleteers, though participants in a great tradition, were amateurs next to such...as Swift and Defoe. Nowhere in the...society of colonial America [were] there...a group of penmen professional in the sense that Defoe or...James Ralph were professional...
We are descendants of "participants"? We stand on the shoulders of pygmies? All that glitters is not gold or diamond but brass and cubic zirconia? *frowny face*
...the Revolutionary pamphlets considered simply as literature [exhibit] crudeness.
This is a parlor trick. Professor Bailyn repeats the trick later in A Note on Conspiracy. It is sly good cop, bad cop. Why does Bailyn do this? To obscure the reality of the "crudeness" of our origins, the disturbed, paranoid thought. These are artful dodges of deceiving, flattering comparison, of false equivalence, of scholarly sleight of hand which temporarily gleams the base metal only then to reveal it as brass, not gold, and his audience as fools for falling for it.*demerit Bailyn*