A noted jurist of Hartford, famous in his day as a satirical poet. With Barlow and others he published “The Anarchiad,” a series of satirical essays, and he was the author of the “Progress of Dulness;” but “Mac Fingal,” a Hudibrastic poem, the first canto of which appeared in 1775, is his best title to remembrance. It bristles with sharp points of satire, and quite deserved the extensive popularity it for a time enjoyed.

Personal

  Judge Trumbull maintained through life an honourable and upright character. The powers of satire, which formed a striking trait of his character, while they gave a pointedness and piquancy to his common conversation, he endeavored to restrain within the bounds of courteousness and kindness. As a scholar, a wit, and gentleman, he was greatly admired; and he left a name which must always sustain a conspicuous place in the early history of American letters.

  Should John Trumbull cease to be remembered among us for his achievements as a grown-up man, it may be safe to say that he will still deserve some sort of renown for the prodigies he wrought while yet in his babyhood, and immediately after that brilliant epoch in his career. In the records of intellectual precocity, scarcely anything can be cited more remarkable than some of the things that are recorded of this amazing little creature at a period of life when ordinary mortals are sufficiently employed in absorbing and digesting a lacteal diet and in getting forward with their primary set of teeth.

Progress of Dullness, 1772

  The “Progress of Dulness” was published in 1772. It is the most finished of Trumbull’s poems, and was hardly less serviceable to the cause of education than “McFingal” was to that of liberty.

  No wonder that a notable stir was made by these three satires, so fresh and ruddy with the tints of real life, so fearless in their local tone and color, so pungent with contemporary and local criticism, and coming as they did in so rapid succession from the academic solitude of that portentous young tutor. They seemed to announce the arrival of a rather uncomfortable inhabitant,—a satirist from whose glance no folly or obliquity would be likely to hide itself. And even yet, and for us, the whole work has a masterful aspect. Though far less subtle than his later and greater satire, “M’Fingal,” it deals with subjects more universal and more permanent. Moreover, like all of Trumbull’s work, it shows the training of the scholar, the technical precision of the literary artist. Each poem has a unity of its own, and holds up to laughter the despicable or the detestable traits of a single type of character. To all three poems an artistic unity is given, by a correlation, not only of topics, but of incidents, the latter of which just sufficiently entangle their chief personages at the end. Here, also, one finds ample facility and variety of literary allusion, unblinking observation of the follies and vices of society, an eye for every sort of personal foible, a quick sense of the ludicrous, a sure command of the vocabulary of ridicule and invective. Then, too, the genuine power of these satires was shown by evidence that could not be contradicted,—the outcry of punctured vanity with which they were greeted,—an outcry so vociferous, so sibilant, from so many quarters, as to prove how well each arrow had found its mark.

M’Fingal, 1782

  In a poetic manner, a general account of the American contest, with a particular description of the character and manners of the times, interspersed with anecdotes, which no history could probably record or display, and, with as much impartiality as possible, satirize the follies and extravagancies of my countrymen as well as of their enemies.

  A poem which will live as long as “Hudibras.” If I speak freely of this Piece, I can truly say, that altho’ it is not equal to itself throughout (and where is the Poem that is so?) yet there are many parts of it equal to anything in that kind of Poetry that ever was written.

  A Hudibrastic poem of great merit—for doggerel—rich, bold, and happy.

  His “McFingal” owes its decadence, not to a deficiency in genuine wit and humor of the Hudibrastic school, but to the lack of picturesqueness in the story, and of all elements of permanent interest in its heroes.

  There is no contemporaneous record which supplies so vivid a representation of the manners of the age, and the habits and modes of thinking that then prevailed.

  It is everywhere lauded for its thorough American spirit…. This once famous and still remarkable production.

  It may still be read for its scholarship and learning.

  Trumbull’s “M’Fingal” is a work that will not go quite out of repute. It still speaks well for the character, wit, and facility of the staunch and acute author, and shows genuine originality although written after a model. Not even “Hudibras” more aptly seizes upon the ludicrous phases of a turbulent epoch.

  The immense popularity of the poem is unprecedented in American literary history. The first canto rapidly ran through thirty editions. Longfellow’s “Evangeline” attained about the same circulation when the population of the country was thirty millions. “McFingal” was published when our population was only three millions. The poem, indeed, is to be considered as one of the forces of the Revolution, because as a satire on the Tories it penetrated into every farm-house, and sent the rustic volunteers laughing into the ranks of Washington and Greene. The vigor of mind and feeling displayed throughout the poem gives an impetus to its incidents which “Hudibras,” with all its wonderful flashes of wit, comparatively lacks.

  There’s no dreaming in it; there’s no swashy sentiment; it does not stay to moralize; it goes on its rhythmic and satiric beat as steady and sure and effective as a patent threshing-machine. A capital thing it must have been for a town hero, or patriotic spouter, to read aloud in a tavern with the flip-maker keeping beat with his toddy-stick!

  Butler died, poor and neglected, in 1680; Trumbull was prosperously alive one hundred and fifty years later; and yet an intelligent reader might easily mistake many verses of the latter for verses of the former. Trumbull’s are less clever, more decent, and doubtless distinguishable in various more profound ways; but the two poems are so much alike as to indicate in the cleverest American satirist of the closing eighteenth century, a temper essentially like that of the cleverest English satirist of a century before.

General

  “McFingal,” the most popular of the writings of the former of these poets, first appeared in the year 1782. This pleasant satire on the adherents of Britain in those times may be pronounced a tolerably successful imitation of the great work of Butler, though, like every other imitation of that author, it wants that varied and inexhaustible fertility of allusion which made all subjects of thought, the lightest and most abstruse parts of learning—everything in the physical and moral world, in art and nature the playthings of his wit. The work of Trumbull cannot be much praised for the purity of its diction. Yet, perhaps, great scrupulousness in this particular was not consistent with the plan of the author, and, to give the scenes of this poem their full effect, it might have been thought necessary to adopt the familiar dialect of the country and the times. We think his “Progress of Dullness” a more pleasing poem, more finished and more perfect in its kind, and, though written in the same manner, more free from the constraint and servility of imitation. The graver poems of Trumbull contain more vigorous and animated declamation.

  Paid him a thousand dollars, and a hundred copies of the work [“Poetical Works”] for the copyright…. It did not come up to the public expectation, or the patriotic zeal had cooled, and more than half the subscribers declined taking the work…. I quietly pocketed a loss of about a thousand dollars. This was my first serious adventure in patronizing American literature.