authorship redux

Based on the following two sonnets, Royall Tyler is credited as the second American sonneteer. The two sonnets are found in The Spirit of the Farmers' Museum and the Lay Preacher's Gazette, Walpole, N.H., 1801, under the caption "From the Shop of Messrs. Colon & Spondee." Colon & Spondee was evidently the pseudonym used for the prose of Joseph Dennie and the poetry, chiefly satire and parody, of Royall Tyler.

On a Ruined House in a Romantic Country

And this reft house is that the which he built,
Lamented Jack! and here his malt he pil'd,
Cautious in vain! These rats that squeak so wild,
Squeak, not unconscious of their father's guilt.
Did ye not see her gleaming through the glade!
Belike, 't was she, the maiden all forlorn.
What tho' she, the maiden all forlorn.
What tho' she milk no cow with crumpled horn,
Yet, aye, she haunts the dale where erst she stray'd;
And aye, beside her stalks her amorous knight!
Still on his thighs their wonted brogues are worn,
And thro' those brogues, still tatter'd and betorn,
His hindward charms gleam an unearthly white;
As when thro' broken clouds at night's high noon
Peeps in fair fragments forth the full orb'd harvest moon.


Sonnet to an Old Mouser

Child of lubricious art, of sanguine sport!
Of pangful mirth! sweet ermin'd sprite!
Who lov'st, with silent, velvet step, to court
The bashful bosom of the night.
Whose elfin eyes can pierce night's sable gloom,
And witch her fairy prey with guile,
Who sports fell frolic o'er the grisly tomb,
And gracest death with dimpling smile!
Daughter of ireful mirth, sportive in rage,
Whose joy should shine in sculptur'd bas relief
Like Patience, in rapt Shakespeare's deathless page,
Smiling in marble at wan grief.
Oh, come, and teach me all thy barb'rous joy,
To sport with sorrow first, and then destroy.

It seems doubtful that Royall Tyler is really the author of the first of these two sonnets.

Here is Coleridge's accompanying note when he republished his poem "On a Ruined House in a Romantic Country" in his Biographia Literaria:

Under the name of Nehemiah Higginbottom I contributed three sonnets, the first of which had for its object to excite a good-natured laugh at the spirit of doleful egotism and at the recurrence of favourite phrases, with the double defect of being at once trite and licentious. The second was on low creeping language and thoughts under the pretence of simplicity. The third, the phrases of which were borrowed entirely from my own poems, on the indiscriminate use of elaborate and swelling language and imagery. ... So general at the time and so decided was the opinion concerning the characteristic vices of my style that a celebrated physician (now alas ! no more) speaking of me in other respects with his usual kindness to a gentleman who was about to meet me at a dinner-party could not, however, resist giving him a hint not to mention The House that Jack Built in my presence, for that I was as sore as a boil about that sonnet, he not knowing that I was myself the author of it.

Here is Royall Tyler's introduction to his two sonnets published in The Spirit of the Farmers' Museum and the Lay Preacher's Gazette:

The plaintive and affected style of Charlotte Smith is familiar, it is supposed, to most readers. Criticism has frowned upon the verbose grief of a sobbing poetess. . . . We insert the following as a pleasant introduction to an attack soon to be made upon the above sighing sonneteer from the Shop of Colon and Spondee.

They are evidently talking about the same sonnet ("On a Ruined House in a Romantic Country").

If you google "On a Ruined House in a Romantic Country" you will find the poem listed and talked about several places, most often as a Samuel Taylor Coleridge poem but sometimes as a Royall Tyler poem. For instance here and here.