(This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)
This book was originally published prior to 1923, and represents a reproduction of an important historical work, maintaining the same format as the original work. While some publishers have opted to apply OCR (optical character recognition) technology to the process, we believe this leads to sub-optimal results (frequent typographical errors, strange characters and confusing formatting) and does not adequately preserve the historical character of the original artifact. We believe this work is culturally important in its original archival form. While we strive to adequately clean and digitally enhance the original work, there are occasionally instances where imperfections such as blurred or missing pages, poor pictures or errant marks may have been introduced due to either the quality of the original work or the scanning process itself. Despite these occasional imperfections, we have brought it back into print as part of our ongoing global book preservation commitment, providing customers with access to the best possible historical reprints. We appreciate your understanding of these occasional imperfections, and sincerely hope you enjoy seeing the book in a format as close as possible to that intended by the original publisher.
Robert Treat Paine was an American poet. His national song of "Adams and Liberty" is the most widely known.
Background
Robert Treat Paine was born on December 9, 1773 in Taunton, Massachusetts, United States. He christened Thomas, but legally renamed in 1801 after his eldest brother who died of the yellow fever in 1798. He was the second son of Robert Treat Paine, signer of the Declaration of Independence, and his wife, Sally Cobb, the sister of the Revolutionary General Cobb. The family moved to Boston in the boy's seventh year.
Education
Robert Treat Paine attended the Boston Latin School, where he led his class, and in 1788 he matriculated at Harvard. Here he neglected routine exercises for "natural philosophy and elegant literature". Though Robert Treat Paine wrote Greek fluently and his name was often doubly underscored for excellence in composition, he showed a spirit of independence of authority and was rusticated four months in his senior year for opposing a tutor and airing his wit to President Willard. In June 1792 he presented a valedictory poem, and on Commencement Day, a poem on Liberty.
Career
About 1792 Paine entered the business world as a clerk of James Tisdale, but his contributions to the Massachusetts Magazine and his interest in Sarah Wentworth Morton left little room for business. In the winter of 1792-1793, he fell in with the theatrical folk of Board Alley, and when the company moved into the new Boston Theatre in 1793, verses by Paine that had won the gold medal offered for a prologue raised the curtain on Sheridan, Otway, and Shakespeare. The poet found Eliza Baker, sixteen-year-old English actress, more attractive than ledgers. He turned to theatrical criticism, and left Tisdale and business in 1794.
In October 1794 Paine founded the Federal Orrery, of which his polite circle expected much. But the editor deserted sober Federalist politics for satire of the Jacobin faction. A mob attacked his house. The son of a man he had pilloried ignored his unloaded pistol, and thrashed him. Paine, never robust for such interludes, declared this whipping the turning point of his life. They had long been uncomfortable in his presence.
The poet became Master of Ceremonies at the Theatre, ran into debt, and began to drink to excess. At the Harvard Commencement, 1795, he defied President Willard and read the censored lines on Jacobinism in "The Invention of Letters. " The poem brought him $1, 500. Next year he sold the Orrery, and the next, delivered a Phi Beta Kappa poem, "The Ruling Passion, " which brought him $1, 200. In June 1798 he wrote "Adams and Liberty" for the Massachusetts Charitable Fire Society. When a host refused him a glass of wine till he had added a stanza on Washington, Paine seized a pen and wrote the best stanza of all. The song ran over the country like wildfire. At the break with France in 1798, he delivered an oration praised by Washington and President Adams, and, at Washington's death, he delivered a eulogy.
In 1798 a short-lived reconciliation with his father was effected. Paine was prevailed upon to study and practise law with Theophilus Parsons. Though he quoted Horace in court, attended plays and whist-parties, and made some bets, he paid off debts and became an exemplary Bostonian, being admitted to the bar in 1802. But the next year found him a satellite of the erratic theatrical Venus, Mrs. Jones. Though he planned another paper, a pantomime Bluebeard, and a play, and tried to make a beginning on an edition of his collected works in 1808, the old fluency was gone. His shingle was taken down from the cobwebs over his door in 1809. He drifted from poor lodgings to poorer, and died in the attic of his father's house. The best Bostonians attended his funeral.
(This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)
Connections
Robert Treat Paine was married to Miss Baker in February 1795, and his father closed his door on him. He lost two children within four days in 1804, and was very ill in 1805.