Was born in Northampton, Massachusetts, in 1752. After graduating at Yale College, he was chosen tutor, which office he held for six years. In 1783 he was ordained over the Congregational church in Greenfield, Connecticut, and in 1795 was chosen president of Yale College, which post he held until his death, which occurred January 11, 1817. Dr. Dwight’s published works are, “The Conquest of Canaan,” a poem; “Greenfield Hill,” a poem; “Travels in New England,” four volumes; “Theology Explained and Defended,” five volumes; and some versions of the Psalms. His “Theology” has passed through numerous editions in England as well as in our own country, and is very highly esteemed.

Personal

  Of this American poet I am sorry to be able to give the British reader no account. I believe his personal history is as little known as his poetry on this side of the Atlantic.

  As a poet President Dwight was little inferior to any of his contemporaries in America; but it was not on his poetry that his claims to the respect of mankind were based. As an instructor probably he was never surpassed in this country, and as a theologian he had no equal among the men of his time. An eloquent preacher, with a handsome person, an expressive countenance, polished and affable manners, brilliant conversational abilities, and vast stores of learning,—it was almost impossible that he should fail of success in any effort, and least of all in the administration of the important office which he so long and so honourably filled. When he died, the country was bereaved of a great and good man.

  Stately and majestic, and every way well proportioned. His features were regular; his eye black and piercing, yet benignant; and his countenance altogether indicative of a high order of mind. His voice was rich and melodious, adapted alike to music and oratory.

  Pleasing as Dr. Dwight is as a poet, and learned and eloquent as he was as a divine, it is as President of Yale College that he was most valued, and honoured, and loved while living, and as such is embalmed in the hearts of the large number of scholars, divines, and statesmen still living, who were instructed by him in their collegiate course. He had the remarkable faculty of winning the affections and commanding the most profound respect of the young men who came under his influence, while he poured forth his instructions in a most impressive eloquence, from a mind stored with the treasures of ancient and modern learning. And knowing, as we do, that for the last twenty years of his life he could scarcely use his eyes at all, our wonder increases that he accomplished so much.

  His influence was extensive and beneficent beyond that of any other man in New England; indeed, his enemies called him “old Pope Dwight.”… Whenever he came to my house, the family thought it a privilege to gather round him to listen to his conversation. We sat round, and he talked. A question now and then would be asked, but nobody ever thought of talking much, only of hearing. He loved to talk, and we loved to listen. Whenever I wanted advice, I went to him as to a father, and told him everything.

  He was himself greater than anything he ever said or did; and for those who came near him, all that he did or said had an added import and fascination as proceeding from one so overpoweringly competent and impressive.

General

  In his fictions he discovers much warmth of conception, and his numbers are very harmonious. His numbers, indeed, imitate pretty closely those of Pope, and therefore cannot fail to be musical; but he is chiefly to be commended for the animation with which he writes, and which rather increases as he proceeds, than suffer any abatement…. The composition, however, is not without a fault; and as we have candidly praised, we will censure with fidelity. By the motto which the author has chosen, we are led to suspect that he is young, and the chief blemish of his poem is one into which hardly anything but youth could have betrayed him. A little mature consideration would have taught him, that a subject nearly four thousand years old could not afford him a very fair opportunity for the celebration of his contemporaries.

  Of Dr. Dwight we would speak with all the respect due to talents, to learning, to piety, and a long life of virtuous usefulness, but we must be excused from feeling any high admiration of his poetry. It seems to us modelled upon a manner altogether too artificial and mechanical. There is something strained, violent, and out of nature in all his attempts. His “Conquest of Canaan” will not secure immortality to its author. In his work he has been considered by some critics as by no means happy in the choice of his fable. However this may be, he has certainly failed to avail himself of the advantages it offered him; his epic wants the creations and colorings of an inventive and poetical fancy—the charm which, in the hands of a genius, communicates an interest to the simplest incidents, and something of the illusion of reality to the most improbable fictions. The versification is remarkable for its unbroken monotony. Yet it contains splendid passages, which, separated from the body of the work, might be admired, but a few pages pall both on the ear and the imagination. It has been urged in its favor that the writer was young. The poetry of his maturer years does not, however, seem to possess greater beauties or fewer faults.

  Corresponding with the laws which the author prescribed to himself, in his “Conquest of Canaan,” he made every thing too common. There is little that is really distinctive, little that is truly oriental about any of his persons or scenes. A certain equable current of unexceptionable, and oftentimes pleasing thoughts and expressions, flows through the poem. It is occasionally animated, and in description, sometimes picturesque and poetical. The versification, though generally monotonous, having too little variety in the pauses, is for the most part uncommonly smooth. In the expression of strong emotion, there is an avoidance of all offensive extravagance, if it do not reach the genuine ardour or pathos of the highest order of poetry. Having said thus much, we fear we have said all that is due to this poetical work; nor do we say this to deduct any thing from the high and well-deserved reputation of President Dwight. It is not the lot of a single man to excel in every thing; and it is often our misfortune to make a false estimate of our own powers, and to stake too much of our intellectual wealth on the race, in which we are unable to reach the goal.

  The work before us [“Travels”] though the humblest in its pretences, is the most important of his writings, and will derive additional value from time, whatever may become of his poetry and of his sermons…. A wish to gratify those who, a hundred years hence, might feel curiosity concerning his native country, made him resolve to prepare a faithful description of its existing state. He made notes, therefore, and collected information on the spot…. The remarks upon natural history are those of an observant and sagacious man who makes no pretentions to science; they are more interesting, therefore, than those of a merely scientific traveller; and, indeed, science is not less indebted to such observers, than history to the faithful chroniclers and humbler annalists of former times.

  No production of the transatlantic press has met with so favourable a reception in this country, and experienced so extensive a circulation, as this work [“Theology Explained”] of President Dwight. Nor is its popularity likely to be ephemeral. It bears the impress of a most powerful mind, and will pass down to posterity, both in the Old and New World, as the work of one of the master-spirits of the Christian Church.

  In Dwight’s early poems we see a heat of honest enthusiasm sufficient to warm the faculties through life. These productions have been hardly dealt with. They are worth something more than to furnish a dull jest at epic failures. The “Conquest of Canaan,” it should be remembered, was the production of a youth hardly out of college, and should be looked at as a series of poetic sketches, not over nice in rhetorical treatment or obedience to the laws of Aristotle. In that view it contains much pleasing writing, but the word epic should never be brought in contact with it…. “Greenfield Hill” is an idyllic poem of rare merit. A little more nicety of execution and a better comprehension of the design at the outset, would doubtless have improved it; but the spirit is there.

  Dr. Dwight was a well-meaning, amiable, indefatigable man, of remarkable talent, but distinctly falling short of genius.

  He wrote “America,” “The Conquest of Canaan” (an epic), “Greenfield Hill,” and “The Triumph of Infidelity.” These poems are not properly subjects of criticism, because they are hopelessly forgotten, and no critical resurrectionist can give them that slight appearance of vitality which would justify an examination of their merits and demerits. Yet they are reasonably good of their kind, and “Greenfield Hill,” especially, contains some descriptions which are almost worthy to be called charming. Dwight, as a Latin scholar, occasionally felt called upon to show his learning in his rhymes. Thus in one of his poems he characterizes one of the most delightful of Roman lyrists as “desipient” Horace. After a diligent exploration of the dictionary the reader finds that desipient comes from a Latin word signifying “to be wise,” and that its English meaning is “trifling, foolish, playful.” It might be supposed that in the whole range of English poetry there was no descriptive epithet so ludicrously pedantic.

  Surely, “The Conquest of Canaan,” with its eleven dreadful books of conventional rhymed pentameters,—all tending more or less to disarrange and confuse the familiar facts of Biblical history, as well as to dilute, to render garrulous, and to cheapen, the noble reticence, the graphic simplicity, of the antique chronicle,—is such an epic as can be grappled with, in these degenerate days, by no man who is not himself as heroic as this verse assumes to be…. A satire in verse, entitled “The Triumph of Infidelity.”… From title-page to colophon, the intended method of the satire is irony,—a method calling, of course, for delicacy of movement, for arch and mocking sprightliness, for grace and levity of stroke, and obviously beyond the quality of one who being, in the first place, always dead-in-earnest, emphatic, and even ponderous, and secondly quite guiltless of humor, was above all things an intellectual gladiator, and could hardly think of any other way of dealing with an antagonist than by the good old-fashioned one of felling him to the floor. Probably there can now be left for us on this planet few spectacles more provocative of the melancholy and pallid form of mirth, than that presented by these laborious efforts of the Reverend Doctor Timothy Dwight to be facetious at the expense of David Hume, or to slay the dreadful Monsieur de Voltaire in a duel of irony…. “Greenfield Hill,”—that one of his larger poems which almost attained to popular favor, and fairly deserved to do so.

  In scholarship and force of character, Dwight has had few superiors since Edwards.

  “The Conquest of Canaan” is an honest, respectable piece of work, but of genius or even of high talent it has not a glimmer. The worst defect of this poem, next to its hopeless mediocrity, is the incongruity between the early, rude times depicted and the conventional eighteenth-century manner throughout.

  Dwight also wrote a poem called “Greenfield Hill,” of which the name is remembered. It is long, tedious, formal, and turgid; but it indicates, like the good President’s travels, that he was touched by a sense of the beauties of nature in his native country.