Barlow, JOEL

Barlow, JOEL, an American poet and politician, born in 1754 at Redding in Connecticut. He studied at Dartmouth and Yale Colleges, and was intended for the profession of the law, but served as a military chaplain during the War of Independence. In 1787 he published a poem called The Vision of Columbus, which abounds in beautiful passages, but is overburdened with political and philosophical disquisitions, and disfigured by singularities of expression. Barlow came to England in 1788 as agent for a land company, but finding that he was merely a tool of swindlers, he threw up his post, went to Paris, where he signalised himself by zealous republicanism; published in 1792 in London a poem entitled The Conspiracy of Kings; and endeavoured also to work upon the public mind in England by political pamphlets. In autumn 1792 he was deputed by the London reformers, with whom he was associated, to proceed to Paris, where he received the rights of French citizenship. He was one of the commission sent by France for the organisation of Savoy. He spent some years on the continent of Europe in political, literary, and mercantile pursuits, in which he made a fortune, and served for a short time as American consul at Algiers. He returned to America in 1805, and was appointed ambassador to France in 1811. He died, 22d December 1812, near Cracow, when on his way to a conference with the Emperor Napoleon at Vilna. In his later years he was gathering materials for a history of the United States. His Columbiad (1807), at which he laboured for half a life-time, and the germ of which was contained in his Vision of Columbus, is an historical review of events from the time of Columbus to the French Revolution. Other works are his intemperate Advice to the Privileged Orders (1791-95), and the would-be humorous poem, Hasty Pudding, poor stuff spite of its popularity. See Todd's Life and Letters of Joel Barlow (1886).