4

THE GREEN BAG

4th Ed. p. 589), that Tyler's reports are not considered good authority, even in his own state, this is hardly a just criticism. The cases reported were jury trials, for the most part, and contained the substance of the law as stated to the jury. While the opinions are necessarily not as complete and thorough as in well considered cases of a later date, they contain much that is valu able, and must at the time have been a great aid to the profession and to the courts as statements of what was then the law of the land. In literature Judge Tyler made quite a little commotion, at a time when American Letters were hardly so far advanced as to justify so dignified a title. He was author of the first American play acted on a regular stage by an established company of comedians, The Contrast, a comedy in five acts, said also to have been the first stage production in which the Yankee dialect and story telling, since popularized by Hackett, Hill and others, were employed. According to Duyckinck (Cyclopaedia of American Literature, Vol. i), it was first staged at the old John Street theatre, New York, under the management of Hallam and Henry, April 16, 1786. Duyckinck drew upon Dunlap's History of the American Stage for his misinformation, for Judge Tyler's son positively asserts that The Con trast was written in the winter of 1788-89, in three weeks' time, and brought out April 16, 1789, at the Park Street theatre, New York, and avers that Duyckinck, Dunlap and their followers are mistaken. It cer tainly could not have been produced in April, 1786, if Duyckinck is correct in his statement that the comedy was written during Tyler's military servce and produced while he was in New York on his mission from the government of Massachusetts, for Shays' rebellion did not' break out until December, 1786, and Tyler went from his Vermont mission to New York in the late winter, or early spring, of 1787. Oilman's Vermont Bibliography lists, but makes no

further mention of, "May Day, or New York in an Uproar, A Comedy, 1787," by Tyler, and it is possible that this play was the prior production; in that case it might have been produced in April, 1786, and at the John Street theatre. At all events, The Contrast is rather of historical than literary importance, if we are to rely on Professor Beers, who, in commenting upon it, after mentioning Godfrey's Prince of Parthia, refers to the one as very high tragedy, and to the other as very low comedy. In 1797 Judge Tyler wrote a comedy in three acts, which was repeatedly and successfully produced in Boston, en titled The Georgia Spec, or The Land in the Moon, which ridiculed speculation in wild Yazoo lands. In the same year appeared, in two volumes, The Algerine Captive, or The Adventures of Doctor Updike Underhill, from the press of David Carlisle, at Walpole, N. H. A second edition was printed at Hartford in 1816. This is said to have been the first American work of fiction reprinted in England, having ap peared in two volumes in London, in 1802. In 1799 he wrote a Fourth of July Ode for the Independence day celebration of that year at Windsor, Vt. Mention is also made by Oilman of The Original of Evil, 1793, but we are left in the dark as to what it might have been. Judge Tyler gained a great reputation by his fugitive contributions of verse and prose to that newspaper and miscellany, one of the best of its kind ever published, The Farmer's Weekly Museum and Lay Preacher's Gazette, printed at Walpole, N. H., by Isaiah Thomas and David Carlisle. He contributed a series of agreeable and humorous articles, purporting to be "From the Shop of Messrs. Colon & Spondee," which were quite varied in their character. French democracy, Delia Criscan literature, Federal politics, and the lighter frivolities of the day being among the subjects that claimed attention. The prose paragraphs show the author's wit and general taste in