[46] educated men consisted soon after the war of an essentially conservative class, the Federalists, who had lost all faith in popular government, on the election of Jefferson. In the Massachusetts circle under that name of which George Cabot was the leader, the ablest writer was confessedly Fisher Ames, who wrote the first elaborate and really thoughtful essay on American literature (first published in 1809, after his death), in which he cuts off all hope of any such product, at least until some future age may have destroyed all free institutions, and the return of despotism may bring in literature and art among its ornaments. Like most men in that day, he believed literature the world over to be in a dying condition; and at the time when Wordsworth and Coleridge were just beginning to be read, he wrote as follows--
The time seems to be near, and, perhaps is already arrived, when poetry, at least poetry of transcendent merit, will be considered among the lost arts. It is a long time since England has produced a first-rate poet. If America has not to boast at all what our parent country boasts no longer, it will not be thought a proof of the deficiency of our genius.
