FANNY.
Stanza 1.—“Fanny.”—Of this young lady and her worthy father, to whose exemplary and typical career the author was indebted for the theme of his story, we are not permitted to reveal more than that they wish to be known and remembered only in the words from Milton, on the title-page, among—
“Gay creatures of the element,
That in the colors of the rainbow live,
And play in the plighted clouds.”
Stanza 6, etc.—Doctors Mitchill, Hosack, and Francis, then (1819) eminent physicians in New York, highly distinguished, not only in their profession, and as authors of popular works connected with medicine and general knowledge, but as active and useful leaders in the social, literary, and scientific institutions of the city. Doctor Mitchill, moreover, had won the name of a philosopher by his frequent discoveries, more or less important, in geology and other conjectural sciences.
Stanza 8, etc.—James K. Paulding, one of the best and most popular of early American authors. The quotation is from his poem, “The Backwoodsman,” then recently published. He afterward rose, or fell, from literature to politics, and became navy agent at New York, and Secretary of the Navy during President Van Buren’s administration.
Stanza 13.—The “Modern Solomon,” a nom de plume given to Mr. Lang by the pleasantry of the brethren of the press. The front door of his office was surmounted by the figure-head of his assumed prototype, Doctor Franklin, mentioned in stanza 49. The bust and statue therein named as specimens of the fine arts in America at the period were to be seen, the one in plaster at the Academy of Arts (stanza 51), the one in wax at Scudder’s Museum (stanza 68). Poor McDonald Clarke, the mad poet of New York, having been called in Lang’s paper a person with “zig-zag brains,” immediately responded in the following neat epigram:
“I can tell Johnny Lang, in the way of a laugh,
In reply to his rude and unmannerly scrawl,
That in my humble sense it is better by half
To have brains that are zig-zag than to have none at all.”
Stanza 16, etc.—Cadwallader D. Colden, then Mayor of the city, before whose door, in accordance with immemorial usage, two prominent lamps were placed, in token of his magisterial position, to remain during and after his mayoralty. His residence, and the office of Mr. Lang, the editor of the New-York Gazette (see stanzas 11 and 49), were in the neighborhood of Pearl Street and Hanover Square.
