Sydney Smith waved American literature contemptuously aside in the _Edinburgh Review_. _The Quarterly_ was brutal in its attacks upon timid transatlantic books. William Godwin reproached American ignorance, and proceeded to locate Philadelphia upon the Chesapeake Bay. No wonder that the _Port Folio_ exclaimed in 1810, "The fastidious arrogance with which the reviewers and magazine makers of Great Britain treat the genius and intellect of this country is equalled by nothing but their profound ignorance of its situation."
The insolence of Great Britain affected American writers in two ways. Some it stung into violent hatred or sullen antagonism, others it coerced into timid imitation and servility. Upon Dennie and his associates it had the latter effect, and the _Port Folio_ vigorously resisted all "Americanisms" in politics and in letters, and sought to conciliate England and to win the coveted stamp of English approbation by unlimited adulation of the favorites of the hour. "To study with a view of becoming an author by profession in America," wrote Dennie, "is a prospect of no less flattering promise than to publish among the Esquimaux an essay on delicacy of taste, or to found an academy of sciences in Lapland."
Upon Brackenridge and Paine the truculent criticisms of England acted as a lively stimulus, and they went profanely to work "to resent the British scoff that when separated from England the colonies would become mere illiterate ourang-outangs."
Thomas Green Fessenden, one of the contributors to the _Farmers' Weekly Museum_, and to Dennie's _Port Folio_, wrote in the preface to his "Original Poems" (Philadelphia, 1806), "Although the war, which terminated in a separation of the two nations, inflicted wounds which, it is to be feared, still rankle, yet the more considerate of both countries have long desired (if I may be allowed a transatlantic simile) that the hatchet of animosity might be buried in the grave of oblivion" (page 6). A little further on he confesses his timidity, when, speaking of the political leaders at home, he says, "I could have enlarged on the demerits of these political impostors, but I feared I might disgust the English reader by such exhibitions of human depravity" (p. 7).