SOURCE: "The Wicked Wits," in The Connecticut Wits, The University of Chicago Press, 1943, pp. 169-205.

Howard was an American critic who published widely on American and English literature. His The Connecticut Wits (1943) is considered an authoritative guide to the subject of the Wits, their time period, and their writings. In the following excerpt from that work, Howard explores the early satirical writings of the Wits and concludes that their involvement in bitter public debate in periodicals took them away from more important literary work.

[The] greatest value of the writings by the Connecticut Wits, both in verse and in prose, lies in the illumination they cast upon an age which was to have, socially and aesthetically, an extraordinary influence upon the future. Their story shows how men of different temperaments found sustenance for their dispositions in a limited provincial environment and, broadening their fields of activity with those...