to the dictates of his taste and fancy.  In the grounds about his house, he caused to be erected between forty and fifty wooden statues of great men and allegorical figures, together with four lions and one lamb.  Among these images were two statues of Dexter himself, one of which held a label with a characteristic inscription.  His house was ornamented with minarets, adorned with golden balls, and surmounted by a large gilt eagle.  He equipped it with costly furniture, with paintings, and a library.  He went so far as to procure the services of a poet laureate, whose business it seems to have been to sing his praises.  Surrounded with splendors like these, the plain title of “Mr.”  Dexter would have been infinitely too mean and common.  He therefore boldly took the step of self-ennobling, and gave himself forth—­as he said, obeying “the voice of the people at large”—­as “Lord Timothy Dexter,” by which appellation he has ever since been known to the American public.

If to be the pioneer in the introduction of Old World titles into republican America can confer a claim to be remembered by posterity, Lord Timothy Dexter has a right to historic immortality.  If the true American spirit shows itself most clearly in boundless self-assertion, Timothy Dexter is the great original American egotist.  If to throw off the shackles of Old World pedantry, and defy the paltry rules and examples of grammarians and rhetoricians, is the special province and the chartered privilege of the American writer, Timothy Dexter is the founder of a new school, which tramples under foot the conventionalities that hampered and subjugated the faculties of the poets, the dramatists, the historians, essayists, story-tellers, orators, of the worn-out races which have preceded the great American people.

The material traces of the first American nobleman’s existence have nearly disappeared.  The house is still standing, but the statues, the minarets, the arches, and the memory of the great Lord Timothy Dexter live chiefly in tradition, and in the work which he bequeathed to posterity, and of which I shall say a few words.  It is unquestionably a thoroughly original production, and I fear that some readers may think I am trifling with them when I am quoting it literally.  I am going to make a strong claim for Lord Timothy as against other candidates for a certain elevated position.

Thomas Jefferson is commonly recognized as the first to proclaim before the world the political independence of America.  It is not so generally agreed upon as to who was the first to announce the literary emancipation of our country.