London Poets and the American Revolution by James C. Gaston (review)

Book Reviews107 James C. Gaston. London Poets and the American Resolution. Troy, N.Y.: The Whitston Publishing Co., 1979. 257p. James C. Gaston's London Poets and the American Revolution gathers 125 poems published between 1763 and 1783 in 16 major London periodicals. As a group, the poems present an angle of vision on the American Revolution easily forgotten on this side of the Atlantic, an urban, middle-class British viewpoint. Though the collection includes the expected poems ofBritish outrage at colonial upstarts, satires of sometimes less-than-heroic military figures, and odes to heroes of the moment, it also reflects a surprisingly broad political spectrum. Several poems (some reprinted from the American press, some written by British sympathizers) support the American cause. Others "mourn the loss.../(On either side) and wish to give relief" (p. 173). Still others speak to an essentially pacifist view: "But, when completed all the plan,/And all the people murder'd,/Let Casuists tell us, ifthey can,/Is England's welfare further'd?" (p. 131) That such diverse positions found their way into print despite formidable government restraints on the press suggests the magnitude of England's internal divisions over the issues surrounding the Revolution. The significance of Gaston's collection, however, depends on the representativeness of the poems, and of that we have no measure. Though the introduction contains an interesting analysis ofthe selectioncriteria used by colonial editors, Gaston provides no comparable discussion of his own. He mentions his intent "to represent the literary characteristics of the group and to demonstrate certain important features of the man behind the poems" (p. v), but both criteria raise more questions than they answer. The "literary characteristics of the group" are never specified. In fact, the introductory notes for many of the poems provide only historical context; there is no literary analysis. The longest entry in the general index is for "Battles"; nothing is entered for "Ode" or "Elegy," or for any specifically literary category. Problems with the second intent are of a different sort. Gaston identifies "the man behind the poems" in his manifestations as writer, publisher and reader. Insofar as one can penetrate the anonymity of this "man," Gaston's introduction sketches his character. But despite the two sentences (in a 28-page introduction) acknowledging that "the man behind the poems" was sometimes a woman, the controlling metaphor for the introduction is sexist. Section titles like "Men and Issues" do little to remind readers that revolutions affect women, too. These are superficial criticisms, of course, but they lead to questions of substance when combined with the lack of selection criteria noted above. I wonder, for instance, if the whole run of London periodical verse relating to the Revolution focussed solely on military and political history, ignoring as this collection does the collateral social issues of any military action. Were there no British equivalents for the American broadside by Molly Gutridge detailing the suffering ofsoldiers' families? Were there no British voices speaking of personal loss in the manner of Ann Eliza Bleecker's "Written in the Retreat from Burgoyne"? Did the woman behind the poems have something to say that hasn't found its way into this collection? Other problems are less serious. Though the poems are arranged chronologically, Gaston has grouped them into six sections with political headings such as "Men and Issues," "First Hostilities," "The French Alliance," etc. Occasionally the chronology doesn't fit Gaston's political categories. Poems on the French alliance appear before the section of that title, for example, because they were published before 1778. Two related poems on press warrants are separated by sixty pages because of their chronology. Other poems, whatever the category they 108ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW fall into, seem only tangentially related to the Revolution. London Poets and the American Revolution is handsomely produced, but its main function is to whet our appetites for a collection with clearer editorial guidelines and moreliterary analysis. PATTIE COWELL L. Colorado State University James E. Hirsh. The Structure of Shakespearean Scenes. Yale University Press, 1981. 230p. Scholarship has never totally settled the debate as to whether Shakespeare conceived his plays as five-act structures or merely as sequences ofscenes with their...