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[162] 1787), The universal Asylum and Columbian magazine (Philadelphia, 1790), The Omnium gatherum (Boston, 1809) are significant. Salmagundi (New York, 1807) written by Washington Irving, William Irving, and James K. Paulding, was the only notable periodical essay which was published independently. As a rule the many imitators of The spectator contributed their effusions to some newspaper or magazine. No literary periodical established before 1800 deserves individual consideration. The literary magazine and American register (Philadelphia, 1803-1807) was a serious and creditable work, containing reviews and miscellaneous contributions in prose and verse, but it is better remembered because of its editor, Charles Brockden Brown,1 than because of its intrinsic merits. A more important Philadelphia periodical was The Port folio, during the editorship of Joseph Dennie.2 Dennie, who signed himself ‘Oliver Oldschool,’ and accepted complacently the nickname of the ‘American Addison,’ was a conservative in letters, though he welcomed some of the earlier work of the romantic school in England. During his editorship The Port folio was devoted to what at the time was called ‘elegant literature’; and though to a taste less influenced by eighteenth-century standards it seems formal and sentimental, it exerted a strong influence for good during a critical period of American literature. Among the contributors were Charles Brockden Brown and John Quincy Adams. The most important of the Boston magazines before 1815 was The monthly Anthology.3 This was established in 1803 by one Phineas Adams, but after six months it passed into the control of The Anthology Club, founded by the Rev. William Emerson, which conducted it until it was abandoned in 1811. The Anthology Club included at various times from seven to sixteen Boston gentlemen of literary interests, and a few honorary non-resident members. Each member
1 See also Book II, Chap. VI.
2 The Port folio was founded in 1800 as a weekly newspaper. In 1806 it changed its form and took on most of the characteristics of a magazine, though it was still published weekly; in 1809 it became a monthly. Dennie died in 1812. The Port folio continued until 1827. For Dennie, see also Book II, Chap. III.
3 The original title was The monthly Anthology and magazine of polite literature. With the change of proprietorship the sub-title became The Massachusetts magazine, and a little later The Boston review.
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