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BOSTON UNIVERSITY 

COLLEGE OF LIBERAL ARTS 

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From the etching by Charles F. W. Mielatz 



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AMERICAN LITERATURE 



A STUDY OF THE MEN AND THE BOOKS 

THAT IN THE EARLIER AND LATER TIMES 

REFLECT THE AMERICAN SPIRIT 



BY 



WILLIAM J. LONG, ^^^"^~ 



"As a strong bird on pinions free, 
Joyous, the amplest spaces heavenward cleaving, 
Such be the thought I 'd think of thee, America!" 



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^^^^^^•^*^*'''^^ ^ -i o-n of Women 



BOSTON UNIVclvSITy '^"^' 

COLLEGE OF LloE.%L ARTS 

LIBi^.RY 
GINN AND COMPANY 

BOSTON • NEW YORK • CHICAGO • LONDON 
ATLANTA • DALLAS • COLUMBUS • SAN FRANCISCO 






(A.\^^>^O^i, ^"^trvu.'Y^ 



I 

COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY WILLIAM J. LONG 

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
817.6 






g^ fa e a 1 1) f 11 a- u m jg t e s a 

r.INX AND COMPANY • PRO- 
PRIETORS • BOSTON • U.S.A. 



r/5 



TO 

FRANCES 

MY LITTLE DAUGHTER OF THE 

REVOLUTION 



PREFACE 

The aim of this book is to present an accurate and interesting 
record of American Hterature from the Colonial to the present 
age, and to keep the record in harmony with the history and 
spirit of the American people. 

The author has tried to make the work national in its 
scope and to emphasize the men and the books that reflect the 
national traditions. As literature in general tends to humanize 
and harmonize men by revealing their common characteristics, 
so every national literature unites a people by upholding the 
ideals which the whole nation reveres and follows. Any book 
therefore which tends, as Lowell once said, to make you and 
me strangers to each other or to any part of our common coun- 
try can hardly be considered as a true part of American letters. 
For there are no Mason-and-Dixon lines, no political or geo- 
graphical divisions in the national consciousness. Bradford and 
Byrd, Cooper and Simms, Longfellow and Lanier, Hawthorne 
and Bret Harte are here studied side by side in their respec- 
tive periods, not as representative of North or South or East 
or West, but as so many different reflections of the same life 
and the same spirit. 

Though our Colonial and Revolutionary writers are but little 
known to modern readers, considerable attention has here been 
given them, and for three reasons : because they are well worth 
knowing for their own sakes ; because American literature did 
not begin with Irving or Franklin, as is often assumed ; and 
because our present literature and history have no vital signifi- 
cance if dissociated from the past. For two hundred years our 



vi AMERICAN LITERATURE 

countrymen toiled obscurely and heroically in a great wilderness 
that was then called "the fag ends of the earth." Animated by 
a great love of liberty, and determined to secure it forever to 
their descendants, they sought first to create free states, and 
then to establish a free nation on democratic foundations. No 
greater work was ever undertaken by human hearts and hands ; 
no single achievement of the ancient or the modern world 
was ever characterized by finer wisdom or courage or devotion. 
The men and women who did this work were splendidly loyal 
to high principles; ''they steered by stars the elder shipmen 
knew" ; and so deeply did they implant their moral and politi- 
cal ideals in the American mind that the man or the book that 
now departs from them is known, almost instinctively, to be 
untrue to his own country and people. 

To know these men and women is to have the pride and the 
strength of noble ancestry ; it is to have also a deeper love and 
veneration for America ; and the only way to know them, the 
founders of our nation and pioneers of our precious liberty, is 
through their own writings, which furnish the human and in- 
tensely personal background of their history. This knowledge 
of our country, of the noble lives that were lived here, of the 
brave deeds that were wrought and the high ideals that were fol- 
lowed before our day, — this vital connection with the living and 
triumphant Past which comes from literature is the foundation 
of all true patriotism. 

The general plan of this work is like that which the author 
followed, and which proved effective, in an earlier histoiy of 
English literature. It divides our literary history into a few 
great periods, continuous in their development, yet having each 
its distinct and significant characteristics. Colonial literature, 
for example, is regarded as an expression of the fundamental 
moral and spiritual ideals of America, and Revolutionary litera- 
ture as a reflection of the practical and political genius of the 



PREFACE vii 

nation. The study of each period includes : a historical out- 
line of important events and of significant social and political 
conditions ; a general survey of the literature of the period, its 
dominant tendencies, and its relation to literary movements in 
England and on the Continent ; a detailed treatment of every 
major writer, including a biography, an analysis of his chief 
works, and a critical appreciation of his place and influence in 
our national literature ; a consideration of the minor writers 
and of the notable miscellaneous works of the period ; and at 
the end a general summary, with selections recommended for 
reading, bibliography, texts, suggestive questions, and other 
helps to teachers and students. 

In the matter of proportions, it should be clearly understood 
that the amount of space given to an author is not in itself 
an indication of the relative amount of time which the student 
should give to that author's works. A trustworthy history of 
our literature will not fail to record and to appreciate the im- 
portant work of Freneau, for instance, or of Charles Brockden 
Brown ; but very little time can be given to the reading of such 
authors, for the simple reason that their works are not available. 
In dealing with our early literature, very little of which is now 
accessible, a textbook must in some degree supply the place of 
a library, and the text has here been expanded with a view to 
presenting a faithful record of Mather and Edwards, of Hamil- 
ton and Jefferson, and of many others who in the early days 
exercised a profound influence on American life or letters. It 
is hoped that, by reading and freely discussing the text of the 
Colonial and Revolutionary periods, teachers and students may 
form a clear and just conception of the beginnings of our lit- 
erature before taking up the study of Irving, Bryant, and other 
familiar writers of the nineteenth century. 

Among these later writers also the amount of space which 
each receives is no sure indication of the present value of his 



viii AMERICAN LITERATURE 

work or of the amount of time which one may profitably spend 
in his company. For authors are much hke other folks ; some 
are to be known as familiar friends, and it is enough for certain 
others if we know about them. It is often assumed that, be- 
cause a text devotes five pages to one poet and ten to another, 
the latter must be regarded as more important than the former ; 
but the assumption is without foundation, since there must enter 
into the history of an author many considerations besides the 
literary merit of his work. Poe and Whitman may serve us as 
excellent examples. In comparison with Longfellow, who has 
an unfailing charm for young people, comparatively few works 
of Poe or Whitman will be read ; but that is no reason why 
either poet should be slighted in a just history of our literature. 
One must not forget that Longfellow is our loved household 
poet ; that it is a simple matter to do justice and render gen- 
erous tribute to his work, since his place is secure and his merit 
well recognized. Poe and Whitman, on the other hand, are the 
most debatable figures in our literature, and whatever critical 
estimate one may make of either will almost certainly be chal- 
lenged. It has seemed desirable, therefore, to give such authors 
ample treatment in order that the student may understand not 
only the spirit of their work but something also of the critical 
controversy which has so long raged around them. 

To those who may use this book in the classroom the author 
ventures to state frankly his own conviction that the study of 
literature is not a matter of intellectual achievement, but rather 
of discovery and appreciation and delight, — discovery of the 
abiding interests of humanity, appreciation of the ideals that are 
as old and as new as the sunrise, and delight in truth and beauty 
as seen from another's viewpoint and colored by his genius or 
experience. One might emphasize the fact that literature is not 
history or science or criticism or college English, or anything 
else but its own lovely self. Literature is the winsome reflection 



PREFACE IX 

of life, which is the most interesting thing in the world ; and 
the study of such a subject should never be made a task but a 
joy. It might be advisable, therefore, to forget for the nonce 
our laboratory methods and to begin and end our study of 
American literature with the liberal reading of good books, with 
the joyous appreciation of the prose and poetry that reflect the 
brave American experiment in human living. '' The interests 
that grow out of a meeting like this," said Emerson, ''should 
bind us with new strength to the old, eternal duties." 

WILLIAM J. LONG 
Stamford, Connecticut 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

GENERAL REFERENCES xviii 

CHAPTER I. THE COLONIAL PERIOD . . . . i 

Introduction — the Spirit of our First Writings. Beginnings of 
American Literature. Why the Colonists wrote Few Books. Why 
study Colonial Records ? 

Colonial Annalists and Historians. Bradford. Winthrop. Some Old 
Love Letters. Sewall. Byrd. Various Chronicles of Colonial Days. 
Satire and Criticism. Histories. Indian Narratives. 

Colonial Poetry. The Bay Psabn Book. Characteristics of Early 
Poetry. Anne Bradstreet. Wigglesworth. Godfrey. 

Theological Writers. Cotton Mather. Edwards. 

Summary of Colonial History and Literature. Selections for Reading. 
Bibliography. Questions. Subjects for Essays. 



CHAPTER 11. THE PERIOD OF THE REVOLUTION . %^ 

Historical Outline. Social Development. The Stamp Act and what 
followed. The Revolution. The Constitution. 

Literature of the Revolution. General Tendencies. Revolutionary 
Poetry. Revolutionary Prose. Citizen Literature. 

Transition from Colony to Nation. Benjamin Franklin. 

Orators and Statesmen of the Revolution. Typical Speeches. Otis. 
Patrick Henry. Revolutionary Statesmen. Washington. Permanent 
Political Parties. Hamilton. Jefferson. 

The Poetry of the Revolution. Songs and Ballads. The Hartford 
Wits. Barlow. Dwight. Trumbull. Beginning of Romantic Poetry. 
Freneau. Miscellaneous Verse. 

Various Prose Works. Thomas Paine. John Woolman. Beginning 
of American Fiction. Charles Brockden Brown. 

Summary of the Period. Selections for Reading. Bibliography. 
Questions. Topics for .Research and for Essays. 

xi 



xii AMERICAN LITERATURE 



PAGE 




CHAPTER III. THE FIRST NATIONAL OR CREATIVE 

PERIOD 169 

The Background of History. National Unity. Expansion. Democ- 
racy. Industrial Development. 

Literature of the Period. General Characteristics. Poets and Prose 
Writers. Irving. Bryant. Cooper. Poe. Simms. 

Minor Fiction. Catherine Sedgwick. Susanna Rowson. Melville. 
Dana. Kennedy. 

Minor Poetry. The Knickerbocker School. Willis. Drake. Halleck. 

The Orators. Clay. Calhoun. Everett. Webster. The Historians. 
Miscellaneous Works. Juveniles. 

Summary of the Period. Selections for Reading. Bibliography. 
Questions. Subjects for Research. 

CHAPTER IV. THE SECOND NATIONAL OR CREATIVE 

PERIOD 270 

History of the Period. General Outlines. The Age of Agitation. 
The War. 

Literary and Social Movements. National and Sectional Literature. 
Mental Unrest. Communistic Societies. Brook Farm. Transcendental- 
ism. General Characteristics of the Major Literature. 

The Greater Poets and Essayists. Longfellow. Whittier. Emerson. 
Lowell. Holmes. Lanier. Whitman. 

Minor Poetry. Lyrics of War and Peace. Southern Singers. Timrod. 
Hayne. Ryan. Singers East and West. Taylor. Stoddard. Joaquin 
Miller. Various other Poets. 

Novelists and Story-tellers. Hawthorne. John Esten Cooke. Harriet 
Beecher Stowe. Bret Harte. Typical Story-tellers. 

Miscellaneous Prose Writers. Thoreau. The Historians. Motley. 
Parkman. 

Summary of the Period. Selections for Reading. Bibliography. 
Questions. Topics for Research and for Essays. 

CHAPTER V. SOME TENDENCIES IN OUR RECENT 

LITERATURE 447 

Impossibility of a History of the Present Age. Reminiscent Writ- 
ings. Hale. Curtis. Higginson. Mitchell. Discovery of American 
Literature. 

The Poetry of the Present. The New Folk Songs. Stedman. Aldrich. 
"America Singing." 

Our Recent Fiction. Romance and Realism. Representative Real- 
ists. Howells. Modified Types of Realism and Romance. The Modern 
Novel. Mark Twain. Joel Chandler Harris. Conclusion. 

INDEX , 473 



FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

POE'S COTTAGE AT FORDHAM Frontispiece 

From the etching by Charles F. W. Mielatz 

TITLE-PAGE OF THE "-^ DAY OF DOOM '' 50 

By Michael Wigglesworth, iJiS- CouHesy of the Lenox Library 

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN I06 

From the port7'ait by Duplessis 

THE TORY'S DAY OF JUDGMENT 1 36 

An illustration from John TrumbulP s ^^M^Fingal" New York, ijg^. 
Cou?iesy of the Lenox Library 

THE EDICT OF WILLIAM THE TESTY 1 86 

Knickerbocker'' s ^^ History of New York.'" From the paintitig by 
Boughton ; property of the Metropolitan Museum of Art 

RIP VAN WINKLE I92 

A portrait of Joseph Jeffo'son as Rip Van Winkle, by Mariofi Swinton 

STATUE OF WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT, NEW YORK PUBLIC 

LIBRARY 202 

WASHINGTON IRVING AND HIS LITERARY FRIENDS AT SUNNYSIDE 250 

ABRAHAM LINCOLN 270 

Pen etching by R. M. Chandler. From a photogi'aph made in 1864. 

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW o . . 284 

From an engraving after the portrait by Lawrence 

THE PARISH PRIEST : 292 

Frotn ^'- Evangeline ^^ edition of 1882. Engraved by F. O. C. Darley. 
Courtesy of Houghton Mifflin Company 

RALPH WALDO EMERSON 318 

From, an tmfinished portrait by Fumess. Courtesy of the Pennsyl- 
vania Academy of the Fine Afts, Philadelphia 

THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, WASHINGTON, D.C 448 

xiii 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

The Settlement of Jamestown. From a print in the Congressional Library^ 

Washington 8 

Governor Bradford's House. From a print owned by the Lenox Librajy . 1 1 
A Portion of the Bradford MS. "History of Plimoth Plantation" ... 13 

Old Fort, Plymouth. From an old eftgravi^ig 15 

John Winthrop. From the Van Dyke poi-trait 19 

Samuel Sewall. Fivm an old engraving 27 

William Byrd. From the portrait at ^^ Brandon,'' Virginia 33 

Westover, Virginia — Home of the Byrds 38 

John Eliot. From a port?'ait in the possession of the family of the late 

William Whiting • 43 

Title-page of " The Bay Psabn Book.''' The first English book printed in 

America. Courtesy of the Lenox Library 44 

Illustration from the Doctriita Christiana, printed in Mexico City by Juan 

Pablos in 1 544. The first book printed in America that contained 

cuts to illustrate the text 45 

Title-page of the ^^Nezv England Primer'"' First EjJition, ijsy. Courtesy 

of the Lenox Library 52 

Cotton Mather. From the Peter Pelham portrait. Courtesy of the American 

Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Mass 57 

Harvard College in 1726. From a print by Paul Revere 60 

Title-page of the ^'^Magnalia Christi Americana." Londo?t, iyo2 .... 65 
Jonathan Edwards. From a portrait that was owned by the late Eugene 

Edwards 7^^ 

Benjamin Franklin. From a print by Ritchie, after the drawing by C. H. 

Cochin, ijyj 99 

Title-page from ^^Poor Richard's Almanac." From the third impression 

of 1733 105 

Franklin's Printing Press ... no 

Patrick Henry. From the poi-trait by Thomas Sully 113 

George Washington. From the AthencEzim portrait by Gilbert Stua7-t . . 115 
Alexander Hamilton. From the Trumbitll portrait. Courtesy of the New 

York Public Library 118 

Early View of King's College (Columbia). Fivm an old engravi?tg . . . 119 

XV 



xvi AMERICAN LITERATURE 

PAGE 

Thomas Jefferson. From the painting by Gilbert Stuart^ Walker Art Build- 
ing, Bowdoin College 123 

Street Front of the University of Virginia {18 19-1826), designed by- 
Thomas Jefferson 126 

Monticello, Jefferson's Home 127 

Independence Hall, Philadelphia 131 

Joel Barlow. From the portrait by Robert Fulton 134 

Timothy D wight. From the portrait by Trumbull 135 

Yale College in 1820. From an old engraving 136 

Early View of Princeton College, N.J. After a wood engraving by A. 

Anderson Hall I39 

Philip Freneau. From an engraving by Halpin 142 

First Page of "^^The Crisis,^'' by Tom Paine. Courtesy of the Pennsylvania 

Historical Society, Philadelphia 150 

Charles Brockden Brown. After the miniature by William Dunlap, j8o6. 

Courtesy of the Lenox Library 155 

The Franklin Bicentennial Medal. Designed by Louis and Augustus Saint- 
Gaudens to commemorate the two hundredth anniversary of Franklin'' s 

birth, and presented to the French Government by the United States . . . 168 

Emigration to Western Country, After a drawing by Darley 171 

Early view of Chicago. From an old print 176 

Street Scene in Modern Chicago 177 

Washington Irving 179 

New Amsterdam, 1664. From a copper plate by Augustyn Heermajins . . 185 
Henry Hudson entering New York Bay. After painting by Fhuard 

Moran. Coui-tesy of the Honorable Theodore Sutro 188 

Sunnyside, Irving's Home on the Hudson 193 

William Cullen Bryant. From a photograph by Saivny, Nezv York . . . 196 

James Fenimore Cooper. From the po7'trail by C. L. Elliott 207 

Otsego Lake, Cooperstown, N.Y 217 

Edgar Allan Poe. Fjvm a daguerreotype. Courtesy of B7'own University 

Library 226 

Fitz-Greene Halleck 253 

Daniel Webster. From a painting owned by Mr. George A. Plimpton . . 257 

J.J.Audubon. After the miiiiature by F. Cmikskank 259 

The Front Hall, Longfellow's Home, Cambridge 288 

Kitchen and Hearth in Whittier's House at Haverhill 303 

John Greenleaf Whittier 308 

The Old Manse, Concord 323 

Emerson's Study 325 

James Russell Lowell 338 

Lowell Home, Cambridge 342 

Oliver Wendell Holmes . , „ . . 352 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xvu 



PAGE 



Great Pine on Wendell Farm, Pittsfield 354 

Sidney Lanier 359 

Walt Whitman. After the portrait by J. W. Alexander, in the Metropolitan 

Musetim of Art 3/ 

Bayard Taylor 3^5 

Nathaniel Hawthorne • 39^ 

The Wayside, Concord 395 

The Great Stone Face • • • • 399 

Harriet Beecher Stowe ^lo 

Thoreau's Hut and Furniture on the Shore of Walden Pond 422 

Francis Parkman. From a daguerreotype 43 1 

Eugene Field • • - • 45 

James Whitcomb Riley 452 

Thomas Bailey Aldrich ^54 

Samuel ClemQiiS {M3.rkTvfam). From a photograph taken in 1 8g^ . . . 464 



GENERAL REFERENCES 



The authorities and references named in this book are arranged in two 
main divisions. In this first list are general works in literature and history 
that will be useful throughout the entire course of study. This will be sup- 
plemented at the end of each chapter by a special bibliography of works 
dealing with the period under consideration. There are four of these special 
bibliographies, which include also the most available texts and the best 
selections for reading. 

American Literature. There is no complete or authoritative history of 
the subject. One of the best general surveys is Richardson, American 
Literature, 1 607-1 885, 2 vols., or Students' edition, i vol. (Putnam, 1888). 
This is a critical work and contains no biographical material. Two other 
general histories, each containing a small amount of biography interspersed 
with critical appreciation, are Trent, American Literature, in Literatures of 
the World series (Appleton, 1903), and Wendell, A Literary History of 
America, in the Library of Literary History (Scribner, 1900). There are 
also nearly a score of textbooks dealing with the same subject. Pleasant for 
supplementary reading is Mitchell, American Lands and Letters, 2 vols. 
(Scribner). A brief but excellent outline is given in White, Sketch of the 
Philosophy of American Literature (Ginn and Company). 

Periods and Types of Literature. The only complete and scholarly 
work dealing with any period of our literary history is Tyler, History of 
American [Colonial] Literature, 2 vols., and Literary History of the Revolu- 
tion, 2 vols. (Putnam). 

Critical Appreciations. Brownell, American Prose Masters ; Burton, Lit- 
erary Leaders of America ; Vincent, American Literary Masters ; Vedder, 
American Writers of To-day. . 

Poetry. Stedman, Poets of America ; Onderdonk, History of American 
Verse ; Collins, Poetry and Poets of America ; Otis, American Verse, 
1625-1807. 

Fiction. Erskine, Leading American Novehsts ; Perry, A Study of Prose 
Fiction; Smith, The American Short Story; Canby, The Short Story in 
English; Matthews, The Short Story: Specimens illustrating its Develop- 
ment ; Baldwin, American Short Stories ; Howells, Criticism in Fiction ; 
James, The Art of Fiction ; Loshe, The Early American Novel. 

xviii 



GENERAL REFERENCES xix 

History, Humor, etc. Jameson, History of Historical Writing in America ; 
Payne, Leading American Essayists ; Haweis, American Hmnorists; Payne, 
American Literary Criticism ; Sears, History of Oratory; Fulton and True- 
blood, British and American Eloquence (lives of twenty-two orators, with 
selections); Seilhamer, History of the American Theatre, 1 749-1 797, 3 vols. ; 
Roden, Later American Plays, 1 831-1900 ; Smyth, The Philadelphia Maga- 
zines and their Contributors; Hudson, Journalism in the United States; 
Thomas, History of Printing in America (1810). 

Literary Essays. One of the most significant features of our later liter- 
ature is the number of books of literary essays and reminiscences, such as 
Lowell's My Study Windows, and Among my Books, Howells's Literary 
Friends and Acquaintance, Trowbridge's My Own Story, Woodberry's 
Makers of Literature, Higginson's Cheerful Yesterdays, and many others. 
These will be referred to in the special bibliographies. 

Sectional Works. National Studies in American Letters, edited by Wood- 
berry, is a series of volumes each dealing with a group of authors : Higgin- 
son, Old Cambridge ; Swift, Brook Farm ; Addison, The Clergy in American 
Letters; Nicholson, The Hoosiers; etc. (Macmillan). Baskerville, Southern 
Writers, 2 vols. ; Holliday, History of Southern Literature ; Moses, Litera- 
ture of the South ; Lawton, The New England Poets ; Venable, Beginnings 
of Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley. 

Biography. Several series of extended biographies are available, the most 
complete being the American Men of Letters (Houghton). A few of our 
leading authors are found also in English Men of Letters, in Great Writers 
series, and in the brief Beacon Biographies. The best of these works will 
be referred to in the special bibliographies. Biographical collections are 
Adams, Dictionary of American Authors (Houghton, 1897); Appleton's 
Cyclopedia of American Biography, 6 vols. (Appleton, 1 886-1 889); Alli- 
bone. Dictionary of English Literature and British and American Authors, 
6 vols. (Lippincott, 1858-1891); Mary Howes, American Bookmen (Dodd, 
1898); Fields, Biographical Notes and Personal Sketches (Houghton, 1881); 
Tuckerman, Personal Recollections of Notable People, 2 vols. (Dodd, 1895). 

Bibliography and Chronology. A very useful book of reference is Whit- 
comb, Chronological Outlines of American Literature (Macmillan, 1906). 
Wegelin, Early American Poetry, 2 vols.. Early American Fiction, Early 
American Plays; Foley, American Authors, 1 795-1 895 (privately printed, 
1906). For a list of historical romances see the second volume of Baker, 
History in Fiction, 2 vols. (1907), or Nield, Guide to the Best Historical 
Novels and Tales (1902). The best guide to periodicals is Poole's Index 
to Magazine Literature. 

Books of Selections. General: A single volume covering the entire field 
of American prose and poetry is Readings in American Literature, edited 



XX AMERICAN LITERATURE 

by Miss MacAlarney and Miss Calhoun (announced, 191 3, Ginn and 
Company); Stedman and Hutchinson, Library of American Literature, 
II vols. (Webster, 1888- 1890); Duyckinck, Cyclopedia of American 
Literature, 2 vols, (revised 1875, Scribner); Bronson, American Poems, 
1 625-1 892 (University of Chicago Press, 191 2); Lounsbury, American 
Poems (Yale University Pres^, 191 2); Stedman, An American Anthology, 
1 787-1900 (Houghton, 1900); Carpenter, American Prose (Macmillan, 
1898); Harding, Select Orations Illustrating American Political History, 
1 761-1895 (Macmillan); Johnson, American Orations, 3 vols. (Putnam); 
Kettell, Specimens of American Poetry, 3 vols. (1829); Griswold, Poets 
and Poetry of America (1842), Prose Writers of America (1847), Female 
Poets of America (1848). 

Colonial and Revolutionary : Trent and W^ells, Colonial Prose and Poetry, 
3 vols. (Crowell) ; Cairns, Selections from Early American Writers 
(Macmillan). 

National Period: Page, Chief American Poets (Houghton); Sladen, 
Younger American Poets, 1 830-1 890 (Crowell); Knowles, Golden Treas- 
ury of American Songs and Lyrics (Page); Crandall, Representative 
American Sonnets (Houghton). 

War and Patriotism : Eggleston, American War Ballads and Lyrics, 2 vols. 
(Putnam); Moore, Songs and Ballads of the American Revolution (1856); 
Sargent, Loyahst Poetry of the Revolution (1857); Moore, Songs of the 
Soldiers, 3 vols. (Putnam, 1864); Brown, Bugle Echoes, Northern and 
Southern songs of the Civil War (White, 1886); Matthews, Poems of 
American Patriotism (Scribner) ; Nellie Wallingford, American History by 
American Poets, 2 vols. (Duffield) ; Stevenson, Poems of American History 
(Houghton) ; Scollard, Ballads of American Bravery (Silver). 

Sectional: Trent, Southern Writers: Selections in Prose and Verse 
(Macmillan); Mims and Payne, Southern Prose and Poetry (Scribner); 
Louise Manly, Southern Literature (Johnson). 

Miscellaneous: The Humbler Poets: Newspaper and Periodical Verse, 
first series, 1870-1885, edited by Thompson; second series, 1885-1910, 
edited by Wallace and Rice (McClurg) ; Lomax, Cowboy Songs and 
Other Frontier Ballads (Sturgis) ; Barton, Old Plantation Hymns (Boston, 
1899). 

On the Study of Literature. Woodberry, Appreciation of Literature ; 
Harrison, The Choice of Books ; Stedman, The Nature and Elements of 
Poetry ; Caffin, Appreciation of the Drama ; Perry, Study of Prose Fiction ; 
Gayley and Scott, Introduction to the Methods and Materials of Literary 
Criticism. A useful little book for students and teachers preparing for 
college-entrance English is Trent, Hanson and Brewster, An Introduction 
to the English Classics (191 1, Ginn and Company). 



GENERAL REFERENCES xxi 

Texts and Helps. Before beginning the study of literature the teacher 
or student should write for the latest catalogue of such publications as the 
Standard English Classics (Ginn and Company), Riverside Literature 
Series (Houghton), Maynard's English Classics (Merrill), Pocket Classics 
(Macmillan), Lake Classics (Scott), Everyman's Library (Dutton), etc. 
Almost every educational house now publishes, an inexpensive series of 
texts devoted to the best works of English and American authors. Many 
of them are well edited and arranged with special reference to class use. 
In studying the major writers these handy little volumes will be found 
much more satisfactory than the cumbersome anthologies. (References to 
the various school series will be made in '* Selections for Reading " at the 
end of each chapter. Standard texts of complete works will be listed in the 
special bibliographies.) 

American History. Textbooks : For ready reference the student should 
have at hand a concise, reliable text, such as Montgomery, Student's 
American History ; Muzzey, American History ; Channing, Student's His- 
tory of the United States ; Elson, History of the United States ; etc. For 
more extended reading the following are recommended : 

General: The American Nation, edited by Hart, 27 vols. (Harper), is the 
most complete history of our country. American History Series, 6 vols. : 
Colonial Era, by Fisher ; French War and the Revolution, by Sloane, etc. 
(Scribner). Epochs of American History, 3 vols. : The Colonies, by Thwaite; 
Formation of the Union, by Hart ; Division and Reunion, by Wilson 
(Longmans). Narrative and Critical History of the United States, edited 
by Winsor, 8 vols. (Houghton) ; McMaster, History of the People of the 
United States, 1 784-1 860, 8 vols. (Appleton). An especially valuable 
reference work for the student of our early literature is American History 
told by Contemporaries, edited by Hart ; 4 vols. (Macmillan). 

Social: Low, The American People, a Study in National Psychology, 
2 vols. (Houghton, 1909, 191 1). 

Political: Stanwood, History of the Presidency to 1896, a revised edition 
of the same author's History of Presidential Elections (Houghton); Johnston, 
American Political History, 2 vols. (Putnam); Gordy, History of Political Par- 
ties in the United States, 2 vols. (Holt), covers the period from 1787 to 1828. 

Biography: Lives of important historical characters in the American States- 
men series (Houghton); other biographical series are the Makers of America 
(Dodd), Great Commanders (Appleton), and the so-called True Biographies 
(Lippincott). Individual biographies, collections, and autobiographies will 
be listed in the special bibliography at the end of each chapter. 

Bibliography : Channing, Hart and Turner, Guide to the Study and Read- 
ing of American History (revised 191 2, Ginn and Company); Andrews, 
Gambrill and Tall, Bibliography of History (Longmans). 



X 



AMERICAN LITERATURE 



CHAPTER I 

THE COLONIAL PERIOD (1607-1765) 

I. INTRODUCTION — THE SPIRIT OF OUR FIRST 

LITERATURE 

'* The which I shall endevor to manefest in a plaine stile, with singuler 
regard unto ye simple trueth in all things." 

Bradford, Of Plintoth Pla7itation 

The Coming of the Ships. Long ago, so the legend runs, a 
little ship without a name came sailing into the harbor of our 
The Ship ancestors. The deck was covered with gold and 
of Fancy jewels, with swords and battle-axes and coats of 
mail ; and in the midst of these w^arlike things was a baby 
sleeping. No man ever sailed that ship ; she came of herself, 
bringing the child whose name was Scyld. 

So appeared among men the hero and father of the race of 
heroes. Many years did he rule them, leading them to victory 
in war and to prosperity in peace, but always reminding them 
that he must some day return to the deep whence he came. 
Then Scyld being mortal died, and lo ! the same mysterious ship 
appeared silently in the harbor. With sad hearts they carried 
the hero aboard and laid him by the mast, a ring of weapons 
around him, a hoard of jewels on his breast, and a great golden 
banner streaming to the wind over his head. Then the sails 
filled, the helm answered an unseen hand, and the ship put out 
to sea. 



2 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Such is the old story, found in shining fragments, hke a 
broken mirror, among the earhest records of the EngHsh race. 

Centuries later, and bringing leaders of a mighty nation, 

another little ship came sailing into another harbor. There were 

The Ship children aboard this ship also, and in the wild scene 

of Oak Qf ocean and forest and winter sky they seemed as 

sadly out of place as the little Scyld, asleep among the swords 

and battle-axes. But these little ones were not alone ; mothers 

held them close, and near at hand stood the fathers, — brave, 

resolute men, who loved freedom as their old Saxon ancestors 

loved it, and who were determined to have it at any cost. No 

friendly eyes watched the coming of this little ship ; no friendly 

voices hailed her from the shore. As the record says : 

" They had now no friends* to welcome them, nor inns to entertaine or 
refresh their weatherbeaten bodys, no houses much less townes to repaire 
to, to seeke for succoure. . . . And for the season, it was winter, and they 
that know the winters of that countrie know them to be sharp and violent, 
and subject to cruel and fierce stormes. Besides what could they see but a 
hideous and desolate wilderness, full of wild beasts and wild men ? And 
what multitudes there might be of them they knew not. Neither could they, 
as it were, go up to the top of Pisgah to view from this wilderness a more 
goodly countrie to feed their hopes ; for which way soever they turned their 
eyes (save upward to the heavens) they could have little solace or content in 
respecte of any outward objects. For summer being done, all things stand 
upon them with a weatherbeaten face ; and the whole countrie, full of woods 
and thickets, represented a wild and savage view." » 

Those who have ever sailed into a northern harbor in mid- 
winter will understand the "weatherbeaten face" that looked 
sternly upon the strangers. Yet they went ashore, men, women 
and little children ; and their first act was to kneel and give 
thanks to God, who had brought them over the winter sea to 
offer the freedom of His great wilderness. 

The bitter winter dragged slowly along, and every day death 
came out of the woods and beckoned them to follow, some by 
hunger, some by disease, some by wasting loneliness that knew 
no remedy. Soon half their number were sleeping in " God's 
Acre " under the pines ; but not^ one of the little company 



THE COLONIAL PERIOD 3 

faltered or turned back from the work to which he had set his 
hand. When spring came the '' weatherbeaten face " looked 
more kindly. They planted corn ; laid out a town, with its 
streets, dwellings, church and schoolhouse ; elected their own 
leader, and called a town meeting '' to frame just and equal laws 
for themselves and their descendants." Then the ship sailed 
away, and left them alone to build a nation in the wilderness. 

Such is the story of the second little ship, sailing with the 
Pilgrim Fathers on one of the world's momentous voyages. It 
is recorded with noble simplicity in the earliest authentic history 
of the American people.^ 

Beginnings of American Literature. These two ships, one 
built of seasoned oak, the other of pure fancy, may serve to 
suggest the contrast between our earliest literature and that of 
England, or Greece, or any other nation. These older literatures 
begin, as children's stories do, with the free play of imagination, 
with legends of gods and heroes, of magic and dragons and 
fairy ships. Generations of unlettered men repeat and enlarge 
these stories, until some great poet appears and weaves the 
scattered threads of legend into an epic, like Beozvulf or the 
Odyssey^ which becomes a standard of heroism. So do most 
national literatures begin, and they still appeal powerfully to the 
imagination in two ways : they recall the recent wonder of our 
own childhood, and they suggest the far-off childhood of the 
race of men to which we belong. 

Our American literature has a very different story to tell. Its 
poverty is that it has no past, no golden age of dreams and 
magic. It must begin all over again, like Robinson Crusoe on 
his island, not with fancy but with fact, not as a child but as a 
man full-grown. For our ancestors were writing a new page in 
the world's history. Isolated as they seemed, shut in by sea and 
wilderness and forgotten by the nations, they had the most com- 
pelling of all motives, a call from God ; and deep in their souls 

1 Bradford, Of Plimoth Plantation. The quotation is abridged from chap, ix, and the 
spelHng is slightly modernized. 



4 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

was the unalterable purpose to found a new society based upon 
the Puritan ideals of democracy and righteousness. Hence in 
their literature there are no myths or legends, no heroes or 
dragons or fairy ships, but careful historical records written, as 
Bradford says, '' in a plain style, with singular regard unto the 
simple truth in all things." 

We shall better appreciate the spirit of Colonial literature if 
we compare Bradford's story with that of Captain John Smith, 
Smith and who sojoumed here for a time, but whose work 
Bradford belongs to England rather than to America. Both 
men were born in the most splendid period of English letters ; 
but while Smith writes as an Elizabethan, showing on every 
page the romantic enthusiasm and exaggeration of the age, 
Bradford avoids all ornaments of style and regards exaggeration 
as unworthy of himself or his subject. '' Heaven and earth," 
writes Smith, ** never agreed better to frame a place for a man's 
habitation." And then, as if the work of heaven and earth were 
not enough, he bedecks the same with flowers of his own imagi- 
nation, like a true Elizabethan. Moreover, he has always a double 
motive : to glorify his own adventures, and to induce emigrants 
to settle the colony in which he has an interest ; and knowing 
that greed of gain is a powerful motive, he speaks artfully of the 
pearls found in the mussels, and of the '' rocks interlaced with 
veins of glittering spangles." 

Bradford holds steadily to a single motive ; he is beginning 
a new nation of freemen, and only the truth will serve for a 
foundation. What he writes, therefore, is as rugged as the coast 
where the Mayflower found her anchorage. One might say, in 
explanation, that Smith landed in Virginia in the glory of the 
Southern spring, while Bradford's eyes rested first on the bleak 
New England coast in midwinter ; but the difference between 
the two men is radical and fundamental. Looking upon the 
same object and describing it, one will entertain us, and the 
other tell us the truth. Thus, Bradford makes fishing for cod 
a part of the day's work, done to support the colony ; Smith 



THE COLONIAL PERIOD 5 

revels in the aesthetic pleasure and financial profit of angling, 
and so tickles at once our sporting instinct and our cupidity : 

And is it not pretty sport, to pull up two pence, six pence, twelve pence, 
as fast as you can hale and veare a line ? . . . And what sport doth yeelde 
a more pleasing content, and less hurt or charge, than angling with a hooke, 
and crossing the sweet ayre from ile to ile over the silent streames of a 
calm sea? ^ 

Again, both writers were in frequent contact with the Indians ; 
but Smith alone uses his imagination to embroider the handiwork 
Smith's of God. He pictures the savages as gigantic, impres- 
indians give creatures, '' the calves of their legs being three- 

quarters of a yard aboute." Instead of greasy chiefs, overworked 
squaws, and the general squalor of an Indian camp, he gives us 
emperors, queens, courtiers ; and to show that love is love and 
hearts are hearts the world over, he records the romantic story 
of the ''princess" Pocahontas, ''the numparell of Virginia," 
" the emperour's dearest and well-beloved daughter." ^ 

"At last they brought him [Smith] to Werowocomoco, where was 
Powhattan their Emperour. Here more than two hundred grim Courtiers 
stood wondering at him, as he had beene a monster ; till Powhattan and his 
train had put themselves in their greatest braveries. Before a fire, upon a 
seat like a bedstead, he sat covered with a great robe made of Rawocun 
skins, and all the tayles hanging by. ... At [Smith's] entrance before the 
King, all the people gave a great shout. The Queene of Appamatuck was 
appointed to bring him water to wash his hands, and another brought him 
a bunch of feathers instead of a towel, to dry them. Having feasted him 
after their best barbarous manner, a long consultation was held ; but the 
conclusion was, two great stones were brought before Powhattan. Then as 
many as could laid hands upon him, dragged him to the stones and thereon 
laid his head. And being ready with their clubs to beate out his braines, 
Pocahontas the King's dearest daughter, when no intreaty could prevaile, 
got his head in her armes, and laid her owne upon his to save him from 
death : whereat the Emperour was contented he should live." ^ 

1 From A Description of New England (1616). 

2 Later, Smith forgets his romance and tells us that the " emperor " left his daughter 
a prisoner for six months, because he was unwilling to return a few muskets which he had 
stolen, as the price of her ransom. 

8 From Smith, General History of Virginia (1623). This doubtful story is not men- 
tioned in his earlier record, A Tme Relation (1608). Some historians accept the story 
as true. See Fiske, Old Virginia and Her Neighbors, I, 103-112. 



6 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Bradford's record of the Indians is altogether different. He 
tells us simply of an alarm at dawn, of a large band of savages 
Bradford's ^ho yelled fiendishly while they discharged their 
Indians arrows, but who fled into the woods at the charge 

of a few determined men, — men who had said their prayers and 
who could not be stampeded by any brave yelling. He shows 
us how Samoset came with open palm, in sign of peace ; how 
they fed him and sent him back for the chief of the tribe ; and 
how they made a fair treaty, giving the exact obligations of both 
parties. He takes us through the terrible Pequot uprising, but 
without drum or trumpet or any of the sham heroism which fills 
our minds and newspapers whenever the bugles blow for war. 
He shows the war just as it was, a dirty and unpardonable busi- 
ness, brought on, as usual, by greed and evil passion, and utterly 
lacking in the glory which imaginative historians have woven 
into it. He takes us among the wretched wigwams, where scores 
of savages are dying of smallpox and neglect. In a few tense 
lines he draws an appalling picture of this loathsome disease ; 
and then : 

" The condition of this people was so lamentabl'e, and they fell down so . 
generally of this disease, as they were not able to help one another ; no, not 
to make a fire, nor to fetch a little water to drinke, nor any to bury the 
dead ; but would strive as long as they could, and when they could procure 
no other means to make a fire, they would burn the wooden trayes and 
dishes, and their very bowes and arrowes. And some would crawle out on 
all fours to gett a little water, and sometimes die by the way, and not be 
able to gett in againe. But those of the English house, though at first they 
were afraid of the infection, yet seeing their woeful condition and hearing 
their pitiful cries, had compassion on them, and dayly fetched them wood 
and water, and made them fires ; gott them victuals whilst they lived, and 
buried them when they died. . . . And this mercie which they shewed them 
was kindly taken, and thankfully acknowledged of all the Indians that knew 
or heard of the same." ^ 

Here, in the plain facts, is something better than war or 
romance to stir the heart of a young Galahad. Occasionally the 
record grows grimly humorous, as when some pious people in 

1 From Bradford^ Of Plimoth Plantation, record of year 1635. 



THE COLONIAL PERIOD 7 

England got rid of their '' crackbrained " minister by sending 
him pver to edify the Colonists ; or tense with restrained emotion, 
as in the Pilgrim's departure from home ; or exquisitely tender, 
as in the account of Brewster's noble life and service ; but there 
is no attempt at effect, no conscious appeal to the imagination. 
Our interest is held partly by the plain humanity of the story, 
and partly by the absolute sincerity, which shines steadily, like 
a subdued light, behind every page of Bradford's writing. In 
a plain style, with an eye single to the truth in all things, — 
the spirit of America is reflected in that first paragraph of our 
first national record. 

Why the Colonists wrote Few Books. The writing of any 
people divides itself into two classes, known as primitive or 
Folklore folklore literature and the literature of culture. The 
Literature f^^st consists of the songs and legends — mostly of 
great age, and by unknown authors — associated with the early 
history of the race ; the second of the poems, dramas, essays 
and novels produced by the two forces of nationality and civiliza- 
tion. For the former, popular myths and traditions are essential ; 
but before these can appear, generations of men must live and 
die in a land-; the mighty deeds of the pioneers must be told 
over and over again, growing the while like snowballs rolled by 
children, until by the play of imagination the deed and the doer 
become symbols of an heroic age. Moreover, men learn to love 
their native rivers and hills, not for their natural beauty, but 
largely for their historic and romantic associations, — golden 
memories, which link the past to the present and make us all 
one family, children of the one l®ved mother. So it was in 
Greece and Rome, so in every nation that cherishes an epic 
of its golden age of childhood. But our American ancestors, 
beginning life and literature in a new land, a place not a 
country, without traditions or legendary heroes like Arthur and 
Achilles, could not possibly have produced a folklore. Such 
literature is never '' created " ; it grows from generation to 
generation. 



8 



AMERICAN LITERATURE 



The greater literature of culture was also denied the Colonists. 
To produce such a literature peace, leisure, an ideal rather ,than 
Literature a practical view of life, and a strong, centralized 
of Culture government are all essential. Such blessings were 
far removed from the pioneers. They were compassed by perils 
and hardships ; their hands were busy subduing the wilderness, 
their minds occupied with problems of free government and 
religious toleration. Here, for instance, is a handful of people 
landing in Virginia. They have left behind all that men comi- 

monly hold dear ; they face 
a wilderness full of difficul- 
ties and appalling dangers. 
In a surprisingly short time 
they solve the problem of 
making the wilderness sup- 
port them ; they start a 
profitable commerce with 
Europe ; they lay the foun- 
dations of representative 
government in the pro- 
phetic Assembly which 
gathers in the little church 
at Jamestown. Within four years these amazing men have 
organized a democracy and virtually issued their declaration of 
independence. 

Again, in 1645, only fifteen years after the landing of the 
Puritans, Governor Winthrop declares : '' The great questions 
that have troubled the country are about the authority of the 
magistrates and the liberty of the people." ^ Great questions 
indeed ! The '' authority of the magistrates " had troubled 
England from the time King John met his scowling barons 
at Runnymede until that fateful day when King Charles lost 




THE SETTLEMENT OF JAMESTOWN 



1 Winthrop, Histo)y of Nezv England, f?-om i6jo to ib4g, II, 279 ff. (Savage's edition, 
1853). The whole speech is well worth reading, as it contains the first (American) 
definition of liberty. 



THE COLONIAL PERIOD 9 

his head; and ''the hberty of the people " had been a trouble, 
vague yet terrible, like the first rumble of an earthquake, which 
Europe had for centuries feared either to meet or to avoid. Yet 
these quiet, straight-thinking Puritans grappled the problem in 
their first General Court, and rested not till they had mastered it. 

Here, then, is our first suggestion : the Colonists produced 
few great books because they were too busy with great deeds, 
too intent on solving the great problems of humanity. The man 
who makes history seldom writes it ; the Beowulf who fights a 
dragon bare-handed does not turn gleeman to sing his own 
heroism. And never was history better made, never was more 
heroic work done for man than by these silent Colonists. They 
fashioned no sonnets because they were absorbed in the higher 
art of forming free states. 

Another reason for the scarcity of Colonial literature was the 
lack of nationality. For it is the experience of all nations that 
Lack of letters flourish at a time when, as in the Age of 

Nationality Pericles or Elizabeth, all classes of people are bound 
together by patriotic enthusiasm, and by devotion to one leader 
who typifies the whole nation's welfare and greatness. At such 
a time men's hearts expand with emotion, and the emotion finds 
expression in good books. But the Colonies were not in any 
sense a nation. Each was isolate and self-dependent; separated 
from its neighbors by vast stretches of wilderness ; separated 
also from England, which men still regarded as their country. 
There was little in Colonial life or thought to indicate an inde- 
pendent America, little to suggest a thrilling national anthem, 
and nothing whatever to create a national enthusiasm which 
should be reflected in a national literature. So two hundred 
years passed ; the battles of the Revolution were fought and 
won, and the Constitution adopted, before America announced 
her destiny and became a nation among the nations. And then, 
like a herald proclaiming his mission, the new national spirit 
suddenly announced its quality in the poetry of Bryant and in 
the prose of Irving and Cooper. 



lo AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Why study Colonial Literature ? One who looks merely for 
entertainment will doubtless be disappointed in Colonial litera- 
ture ; but if one is interested in human life, and in records which 
reflect and interpret that life, then he shall find good reading. 
Only yesterday a traveler in Rome rested a moment beneath 
a crumbling archway, amid the ruins of the Colosseum. At his 
feet lay a brick, one of unnumbered thousands, hidden in the 
dust of centuries. A mark, a mere scratch, called attention to 
it ; and then a story was revealed which touched the heart with 
something of the old sorrow and yearning of humanity. While 
the brick was yet soft a sparrow had lit upon it and left the faint 
outlines of his feet, which" soon hardened into imperishable 
records. And then a man, seeing the record, had taken a flint 
and graved in rude letters beneath the sparrow's tracks : Regidus 
the slave wrote this. The sparrow was a passing accident ; but 
the slave with his bit of stone, toiling obscurely amid a multitude 
of his fellows, was one of those very human beings, like our- 
selves, who desired to be known and remembered. ^ And the 
brick was no longer a dull thing of water and clay, but a living 
voice, telling a story of a bird that was alert and inquisitive, and 
of a man who strove for immortality. 

Even so, these neglected records of the Colonists may become 
living voices from the past, and every voice has a stor}^ to tell, 
not of poor slaves but of free, indomitable spirits who conquered 
the wilderness, to whose heroism we ow» the glorious land which 
we now call home and which stirs the heart to noble emotion 
whenever we sing '' My Country." The object of all literature 
is to make us acquainted with humanity ; and we shall never 
know our own forebears until we forget what others have written 
about them, in the histories, and learn from their own pages 
what they thought and felt, what they dreamed and dared, what 
they adored in God and honored in their fellow man. We shall 

1 A primitive belief, which takes us far back in the history of the race, is that a man 
is immortal so long as his name is remembered. Hence the first monuments ; hence per- 
petuating a father's name in that of his son ; hence also the terrible curse, " May his 
nsune perish 1 " 



THE COLONIAL PERIOD 



II 



study Colonial literature with this single object : to know the 
men and women who founded this nation, and who are bound 
to us across the centuries by the ties of a common hope and a 
common fatherland. 



II. COLONIAL ANNALISTS AND HISTORIANS 

William Bradford (i588?-i657) 

At the beginning of American literature stands the chronicle 
history of Governor Bradford. It is a noble record, telling 
the story of the Pilgrim Fathers, and compares in historic 

V2i\ue with the A 7?^/o-Sa.r 071 ,. . _ .„..,, ^ .^. , 

Chro7iicle of King Alfred, .,., ._ ... ■ «L.^'VfJ 1! 4/^ 

which marks the beginning 
of English prose. Its style 
is a revelation of the Pil- 
grim mind, rugged and sin- 
cere, with a glint of humor 
lighting up its sternness ; 
and its subject is as fascinat- 
ing as the story of pioneers 
and nation builders must 
ever be. Both in style and 
in matter, therefore, in its 
reflection of a fine person- 
ality against a background 
of prophetic history, Bradford's manuscript is, to American 
readers at least, one of the most significant to be found in the 
literary records of any nation. 

Biographical Sketch. Never was a better illustration than Bradford 
of Carlyle's theory that history is essentially the story of great men. 
And never did a handful of emigrants go out on a momentous enter- 
prise led by one who better deserved the title of nature's nobleman. 
From Mather's Magnalia we learn that he was born in the Yorkshire 
village of Austerfield probably in 1588, the year of the Spanish 







GOVERNOR BRADFORD'S HOUSE 



12 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Armada ; that he was a remarkably well-read man in five languages,^ 
a student to the end of his days, and many other details. But it is the 
spirit of the man — brave, tender, loyal as a saint to high ideals — that 
impresses us ; and this the reader will find reflected in Bradford's own 
work. Though he lived at a time when all Europe believed in witches 
and devils, we shall find hardly a trace of superstition in this leader of 
the Pilgrims. Though the age was one of general intolerance, and 
though he had himself suffered grievously from religious persecution, 
he was singularly broad-minded and charitable. Whoever came to the 
Colony, whether Jew or Gentile, Catholic or Protestant,^ was kindly 
received, was given land and opportunity to work, and was never 
disturbed because of -his religious belief. This enlightened policy of 
the Pilgrims spread so rapidly among the Colonies that, within thirty 
years, we find Nathaniel Ward in his Simple Cobbler (1647) indulging 
in violent diatribes against the growing spirit of religious toleration. 

So, for thirty-seven years Bradford was the very soul of that heroic 
little Colony which built its ideals so largely into the foundations of 
the American nation ; and it was largely his business sagacity and 
sterling honesty that made of their remarkable venture a more remark- 
able success. He died (1657), as Mather records, ''lamented by all 
the Colonies of New England as a common blessing and father of 
them all." ^ 

Works of Bradford. In literature Bradford is remembered by 
his Of Plinioth Plantation, a vivid, straightforward history of the 
Pilgrims, written by the chief actor in the stirring drama of 
colonization. We advise the reader to begin with the second 

1 One who studies the Pilgrims is impressed by their almost sacred regard for learn- 
ing. They had their own printing press in Holland ; they established schools wherever 
they went ; they insisted on having highly educated teachers and ministers. The May- 
/iojver, though barely furnished with the necessities of life, had an abundance of good 
books. Bradford's librar}' alone contained 300 volumes. If we consider how scarce and 
expensive books were in 1620, this would equal a library of perhaps 30,000 volumes in our 
day. And many another astonishing collection might be found in the log cabins of 
Plymouth. Thus, Brewster had over 400 volumes, including 6 philosophical works, 
14 books of poetry, 60 histories, 230 religious works, and 54 miscellaneous treatises cover- 
ing every branch of knowledge. 

2 While the first Colonists were making a home and a nation here, the Jesuits were 
carrying on their heroic work among the Indians far to the north and west. In the 
Jesuit Relations there is a pleasant account of Father Druillette's journey through the 
American Colonies, and especially of his visit to Governor Bradford. A part of this record 
may be found in Parkman's The Jesuits in North America^ chap, xxii. 

3 Magnalia, Bk. 1 1 , chap. i. 



THE COLONIAL PERIOD 13 

chapter,^ the flight from England, where the narrative glows 
with the suppressed feeling of a brave and modest man, one of 
the few in all literature who make history and also write it. 




'unofh^riMmmni 










A PORTION OF THE BRADFORD MS. 
" History of Plimoth Plantation " 

We follow with sympathetic interest the story of their exile life 
in Holland till we come to the departure, which first made 
them Americans : 

" And the time being come that they must departe, they were accom- 
panied with most of their bretheren out of the city unto a towne sundrie 
miles off called Delfes Haven, where the ship lay ready to receive them. 
So they left that goodly and pleasant city [Leyden] which had been their 
resting place near twelve years ; but they knew that they were pilgrimes, 
and looked not much on those things, but lift up their eyes to the heavens, 
their dearest countrie, and quieted their spirits. . . , The next day, the wind 
being faire, they went aboarde, and their friends with them, where truly 
doleful was the sight of that sad and mournful parting ; to see what sighs 
and sobs and prayers did sound amongst them, what tears did gush from 
every eye . . . that sundrie of the Dutch strangers that stood on the key as 
spectators could not refraine from tears. . . . But the tide, which stays for 
no man, calling them away that were thus loath to departe, their reverend 
pastor falling downe on his knees, and they all with him, with watrie cheeks 
commended them with most fervent prayers to the Lord and his blessing. 
And then, with mutual embraces and many tears, they tooke thd^ leaves 
one of another ; which proved to be the last leave to many of them." 

1 The first is an account of religious dissent in England, and is interesting only to 
church historians. 



14 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Very different from this parting was their approach to the 
new land, with its '' weatherbeaten face," and that terrible attack 
of savages upon Bradford and his first exploring party : 

" So they made them a barricado with logs, stakes and thick pine boughs, 
the height of a man, leaving it open to leeward, partly to shelter them from 
the cold and wind (making their fire in the middle, and lying round about 
it) and partly to defend them from any sudden assaults of the savages, if 
they should surround them. So being very weary, they betooke them to 
rest. . . . Presently, all on the sudain, they heard a great and strange crie, 
and one of their company being abroad came runing in, and cried, Men I 
Indea7is^ I?ideans / and withal, their arrows came flying amongst them. . . . 
The crie of the Indeans was dreadful, especially when they saw [our] men 
run out of the randevoue towards the shalop, to recover their armes, the 
Indians wheeling about upon them. But some, runing out with coats of 
maile on, and cutlasses in their hands, soone got their armes and let flye 
amongst them, and quickly stopped their violence. Yet ther was a lustie 
man, and no less valiante, stood behind a tree within halfe a musket shot, 
and let his arrows flie at them. He stood three shot of a musket, till one, 
taking full aime at him, made the barke or splinters of the tree fly about his 
ears, after which he gave an extraordinary shrike, and away they wente all 
of them. They left some to keep the shalop, and followed them about a 
quarter of a mile, and shouted once or twice, and shot off two or three 
pieces, and so returned. This they did, that they might conceive that they 
were not afraid of them, or any way discouraged. . . . Afterwards they 
gave God solemn thanks and praise for their deliverance, and gathered up 
a bundle of their arrows, and sente them into England afterwards by the 
master of the ship, and called that place the First Encounter." ^ • 

Napoleon had a profound respect for cockcrow courage ; and 
Indians, knowing that men are panicky when suddenly roused 
out of sleep, commonly attack at daybreak. Perhaps we shall 
better understand the Pilgrim brand of courage if we consider 
the very significant line that the attack came '' after prayer, it 
being day dawning." 

As an antidote to those historians who tell us that we have over- 
estimated the Pilgrim Fathers, we suggest the following paragraph 
from the stoty of the first winter, when most of the company were 
sore stricken with disease, and death stalked daily amongst them : 

1 Abridged, and slightly modernized, from chap, x Of Plimoth Plantatioti. A fuller 
account may be found in Moiirfs Relation (see note on p. 18). 



THE COLONIAL PERIOD 



15 







" And in the time of most distress there were but six or seven sound 
persons . . . who spared no pains night nor day, but with abundance of 
toil and hazard of their owne health fetched them woode, made them fires, 
drest them meat, made their beds, washed their loathsome clothes ... in 
a word, did all the homely and necessarie offices for them which dainty and 
quesie stomachs cannot endure to hear named ; and all this willingly and cheer- 
fully without any grudging in the least, shewing herein their true love unto 
their friends and bretheren. A rare example and worthy to be remembered." 

Still more worthy to be remembered is the fact that the Pil- 
grims showed kindness to their enemies also ; that when disease 
reached the brutal sailors 
of the Mayfloiver — who 
remained on board and 
took no part in the terrible 

struggle of the first win- ■ I '^^LJ 

ter — the Pilgrims cared 
for them with the same 
tenderness ; that when the 
Indians were stricken with 
smallpox they ministered 
unto them ; and that when 
a ship in distress put in 
for help they shared their 
food, though they were 
themselves on short rations and threatened with starvation. 

Doubtless, some of our present misconceptions of the Colo- 
nists arise from the fact that " Many wicked and profane persons 
were shipped off to the colonies by relatives who hoped thus 
to be rid of them." ^ And the transportation companies, as in 
our own day, seeing a chance for unholy gain, gathered together 
all sorts of undesirable emigrants and shipped them over : 

" Some begane to make a trade of it, to transport passengers and their 
goods, and hired ships for that end ; and then, to make up their freight and 
advance their profits, cared not who the persons were, so they had money 
to pay them. And by this means this countrie became pestered with many 
unworthy persons, who, being come over, crept into one place or another.' 

1 See Of Plimoth Plantation^ record of year 1642. 




OLD FORT, PLYMOUTH 



1 6 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Indeed, the modern reader, who thinks that our pressing prob- 
lems arose yesterday, finds many surprising pages in Bradford's 
old history. Thus, the doctrine of free trade and *' the open 
door " was not only promulgated but was upheld by arms on 
the Kennebec ; ^ and socialism had an excellent chance to put 
its theories into practice. For three years the Colonists lived 
as a socialistic community, putting the fruits of their common 
toil into a common storehouse ; and each year they battled anew 
with famine. Instead of reproaching them, or using his authority 
as governor, Bradford aroused their ambition : 

" So they begane to thinke how they might obtaine a better crope . . . 
and not thus languish in miserie. At length, after much debate, the governor 
(with the advice of the cheefest among them) gave way that they should set 
corne every man for his own particuler, and in that regard trust to them- 
selves, . . . and so assigned to every family a parcel of land, according to 
the proportion of their number. This had very good success, for it made 
all hands very industrious, so as much more corne was planted, and saved 
the governor a great deal of trouble, and gave far better contente. The 
women now went willingly into the field, and took their little ones with them 
to set corne, which before would alledge weakness and inability ; whom to 
have compelled would have been thought great tyranie and oppression. 

" The experience that was had in this commone course and condition, tried 
sundrie years, and that amongst godly and sober men, may well evince the 
vanitie of that conceit of Plato's (applauded by some of later times) that the 
taking away of propertie and bringing in community into a commone wealth, 
would make them happy and flourishing. For this communitie was found 
to breed much confusion and discontente, and retard much imployment that 
would have been to their benefite and comforte. . . . Let none object, this 
is men's corruption and nothing to the course itself. I answer, seeing all 
men have this corruption in them, God in his wisdome saw another course 
fitter for them. ... 

" By this time harvest was come, and instead of famine, now God gave 
them plentie. And the face of things was changed, to the rejoysing of the 
hearts of many, for which they blessed God. And the effect of their particuler 
planting was well seen ; for all had, one way and another, pretty well to 
bring the year about ; and some of the abler and more industrious sorte had 
to spare and to sell to others. So as any general want or famine hath not 
since been amongst them to this day." ^ 

1 Of Plimoth Platitation, record of the year 1627-1628. 

2 Abridged from record of 1623, pp. 162-164, ^IT- 



THE COLONIAL PERIOD 1/ 

Some of the most luminous pages of Bradford are the bio- 
graphical sketches, wherein his keen but kindly judgment of 
Sketches "^^^ ^^ brightened by the play of a grim humor, 
from Life Here, for instance, is the salt maker from England, 
who ''knew only how to boil water in pans," but who made a 
great mystery and hocus-pocus out of his art, making his helpers 
do many unnecessary things ''until they discovered his sutltie." 
Here are Morton and his revelers at Merrymount, placing all 
the settlements in danger, not simply by their evil living, but 
by breaking the law against selling guns and powder to the 
Indians. In a few terse pages Bradford makes us as w^ell ac- 
quainted with Morton as if we had met him and his Indian squaws 
around the Maypole ; and the last scene, in which Myles Standish 
"brake up the uncleane nest," and the only person injured "was 
so drunk that he ran his owne nose upon the point of a sword 
and lost a little of his hott blood," is worthy of a comedy. 

There are many other little biographies of men and women, 
some bad, some good, and all human ; but we can quote only a 
few sentences from the story of Brewster. Here our historian's 
feelings are deeply stirred by the loss of one with whom he had 
shared joy and grief, labor and rest, for near forty years ; but he 
writes wdth the simplicity and restrained emotion of the old 
Greek dramatists : 

" He was wise and discreete and well-spoken, having a grave and deliber- 
ate utterance ; of a very cheerful spirit, very sociable and pleasante amongst 
his friends ; of an humble and modest mind, undervallewing himself and 
his own abilities and some time overvallewing others ; inoffensive and inno- 
cent in his life and conversation, which gained him the love of those without 
as well as those within. . . . He was tender hearted and compassionate of 
such as were in miserie, especially of such as (Hke himself) had been of good 
estate and ranke and were fallen into wante and poverty, either for goodness 
and religion's sake, or by the injury and oppression of others. He would say, 
of all men these deserved most to be pitied. And none did more offend and 
displease him than such as would hautily carry themselves, being risen from 
nothing, and having little els to commend them but a few fine clothes or a 
little riches more than others." ^ 

1 Of Plimoth Plantation^ record of the year 1643. 



1 8 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

One unacquainted with the source of this exquisite biography 
might easily assume that he was reading a chapter from North's 
PhitarcJi. And the ending, when Brewster '' drew his breath 
long, as a man fallen into a sound sleepe, and so sweetly departed 
this life unto a better," is like a wreath of immortelles which a 
man leaves upon the grave of a dear and honored friend. 

Our First Modern Historian. Before writing his History, 
Bradford had written a journal of important events, from the 
moment when the stirring cry of '' Land Ho ! " rang out from 
the Mayflower to the election of Carv^er as first governor of 
the colony. This journal, long known as Moiirfs Relation} is 
of extraordinary interest ; but we must leave it to consider the 
quality of the single work upon which Bradford's fame as a 
writer must rest. 

We shall appreciate the enduring basis of that fame if we 
remember simply that Of Plimoth Plantation belongs with the 
first works in English to which the name '' history " may prop- 
erly be applied. For there was very little scientific historical 
writing in 1620. If we examine Raleigh's famous History of 
the World, for instance, we find a mere jumble of story, legend 
and superstition, written with a view to entertain us, but without 
any conception of the essential difference between historical fact 
and fiction. In comparison with most other writers in the same 
field, Bradford impresses us as a real historian. He has, first of 
all, a profound reverence for truth, the fundamental quality of 
every great historian, and quotes letters, charters and other orig- 
inal records, that there may be no doubt of the accuracy of his 
narrative. He is scrupulously just, even to the enemies of the 
Colony ; and when judgment must be uttered on men or on 

1 The so-called Mourfs Relaiio7t, consisting of Bradford's journal and some added 
narrative of Winslow, covers practically the first year of the Pilgrims' life in America. It 
was sent to England, as a kind of letter for friends to read ; but the interest of the story led 
to its being published. Some one wrote a preface, signed G. Mourt (or Morton) and the 
book was issued as Monrfs Relatio7i. It was used freely by John Smith in his History 
and part of it, much garbled, is found in Purchase^ His Pilgnynes (1625). Various modem 
editions have appeared, the best by Dexter (1865), and it is reprinted in Young's Chron- 
icles of the Pilgj'ims. Good selections from Bradford and other early annalists may be 
found in Masefield, The Pilgrim Fathers, in Everyman's Library. 



THE COLONIAL PERIOD 



19 



methods, charity is always uppermost. Moreover, if we except the 
dry, original documents which he quotes, he is always readable, 
and his style is remarkable for a noble sincerity and simplicity. 
If we ask, therefore, in the modern German way of criti- 
cism. What did Bradford write that was not as well or better 
written before him ? the answer is simply this : He was the first 
to write the dream 
and the deed, the faith 
and the work of a 
company of men and 
women who founded 
a state and laid the 
deep foundation of a 
mighty nation. The re- 
sult is a priceless book, 
such as any people 
might well be proud 
to count among its 
literary treasures.^ 



John Wixthrop 
(1588-1649) 

Next in importance 
to Bradford's History 
are the grave annals of 
John Winthrop, whom 
Mather calls ''the Nehemiah of American history^ 




JOHN WINTHROP 



He was a 
well-born and well-educated gentleman, the leader of that large 

1 Bradford's manuscript was practically lost for two hundred years. It was evidently 
used by Morton, Prince, and other Colonial historians ; but none of these men recognized 
the enormous value of the work, or even quoted it openly. It found its way to the library 
of the Old South Church in Boston, lay there for a century, and may have been stolen 
by some soldier when the British evacuated the city in 1776. In 1855 it was found unin- 
jured in the Fulham Library of London. In 1897 it was presented to Massachusetts, and 
rests now in the State Library at Boston. The interesting stor}' of the discovery and re- 
turn of this manuscript may be found in the preface to the edition published by the 
Commonwealth in 1S99. The fragmentary Letters^ and various minor works of Bradford, 
may be found in Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society. 



20 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

band of Puritans who came to America in 1630, the governor 
of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and the first ''President of 
the United Colonies of New England." 

We would gladly record here the whole story of Winthrop's life, 
and show from abundant records how kind, how unselfish, how wor- 
Character thy of our profound respect was this old Puritan, the first 
ofWinthrop to hold the prophetic office of President in the Ameri- 
can Colonies ; but we must be content with a mere suggestion. This 
is found in the Model of Christian Charity^ which was written by 
Winthrop and adopted by the Bay Colony : 

" Now the only way to avoid shipwreck and to provide for our posterity, 
is to follow the counsel of Micah : to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk 
humbly with our God. For this end we must be knit together in this work 
as one man. We must entertain for each other a brotherly affection. We 
must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities for the supply of 
others' necessities. We must uphold a familiar commerce together in all 
meekness, gentleness, patience and liberality. We must delight in each 
other; make others' conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, 
labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and 
community in the work, as members of the same body. So shall we keep 
the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace." 

It is from this Models which rises at times to the stateliness and 
melody of a prophetic chant, and from his exquisite letters to his wife, 
rather than by his hurried Journal^ that we are to judge Winthrop both 
as a man and as a writer. 

Winthrop's Journal. Winthrop began his story in 1630, 
before the Puritan fleet had left its last English harbor, and 
continued it until his death at Boston, nineteen years later. 
While on shipboard, having the leisure of a passenger, he gives 
a full account of the voyage ; but on land, with a thousand new 
duties and interests to keep him busy, he must wait till candle- 
light to jot down a few unusual things that appeal to him during 
the day. From numerous blanks and queries left in the manu- 
script, it is evident that Winthrop intended to revise his notes 
and to publish them as a connected histor}^ ; but the leisure never 
came. We read his Journal just as he left it ; and that gives, 
if not a literary, at least a human interest to the story. Here is 



THE COLONIAL PERIOD 2i 

no literary disguise, such as authors generally assume ; his notes 
are a window to his very soul. 

Our first reading of t\\Qjo2C7^7ial leaves an impression of chaos ; 
for Winthrop never tells a connected stoiy, but runs on from 
Dixy Bull the pirate to Mr. Cotton the minister, or to Sagamore 
John the Indian. In one breath he makes us acquainted with the 
depravity of wolves or windmills, in the next with necromancers 
and the powers of darkness. We read on successive pages : 

That Winthrop's son was drowned at sea; that a goat died at Boston 
from eating too much Indian corn ; that wild pigeons ate up the crops, — 
this to remind us that God ordered man to eat bread in the sweat of his 
brow ; that a phantom ship was seen in a storm at New Haven, soon after 
a vessel disappeared with all on board ; that a boy shot his father with a 
pistol, which he did not know was loaded ; that a man put several bags of 
powder to dry before the open fire, and '' some of it went up the chimney " ; 
that a poor demented woman was hung for killing her baby, to save it from 
future punishment ; that the Pequots came to arrange a treaty of peace and 
free trade ; that the ministers were called to advise the magistrates whether 
to receive a governor sent from England ; that the elders met to consider 
whether the devil could indwell in the elect, or some other heresy of Anne 
Hutchinson ; that the people protested to the court against high prices and 
the cost of living ; that the whole town was violently divided over the owner- 
ship of a stray pig, which rooted up no end of trouble ; that the magistrates 
were obliged to discipline certain merchants who had '' cornered " all the 
available wheat and were scandalously putting up prices. . . . 

All these and a thousand other details, trifling or important, 
are faithfully recorded. Some of the items contain the material 
for an excellent history ; others are more suggestive of the 
morning newspaper : 

*' The 1 8th of this. month [Nov., 1643] two lights were seen near Boston, 
as before mentioned, and a week after the like was seen again. A light like 
the moon arose about the N. E. point and met the former at Nottles Island, 
and there they closed in one, and then parted, and closed and parted divers 
times, and so went over the hill in the island and vanished. Sometimes they 
shot out flames and sometimes sparkles. This was about eight o'clock in the 
evening, and was seen by many. About the same time a voice was heard 
upon the water . . . calling out in the most dreadful manner : Boy, boy, 
come away, come away I And it suddenly shifted from one place to another 
a great distance, about twenty times. It was heard by divers godly persons." 



22 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Now Bradford would suspect will-o'-the-wisps and loons here, 
or would '' leave the cause to the naturalists to determine " ; but 
Winthrop, like Cotton Mather, has a slant toward the preter- 
natural. He suggests an explanation of the affair by saying that 
the lights appeared and the voice spake at a place where an evil 
wretch, '' a necromancer," had blown up a ship with all on board. 
The bodies of the crew were found and buried ; but the wretch 
himself remained forever in the keeping of the restless tides. 

Concerning special providences, of which Winthrop is inordi- 
nately fond, a whole chapter might be written : 

How one Gillow, a mischief maker, troubled the cowherd, and by the 
special providence of God two of his own cows got into the corn that same 
night and died from over-eating. How a ship's crew refused to come on 
shore for Sunday service, and their ship blew up the next day. How two 
little girls were plucking wild pigeons under a great heap of logs, and the 
feathers flew into the house until their mother sent them to another place ; 
and immediately the logs fell down and would have crushed them like egg- 
shells had they been there. How a man worked an hour on Sunday to finish 
his job, and his child was drowned that night in a well in the cellar. How 
a man in charge of a saluting cannon boasted, as he rammed home an 
immense charge, that he would " make her speak up," and the gun exploded, 
of course ; but, though many people stood about, only the fool was killed. 
How a woman's heart was set on a fine piece of linen, which she kept in 
a drawer ; and a bit of candlewick fell upon it, unnoticed ; and in the 
morning the linen was wholly burned, like a piece of punk, nothing else 
in the house being injured ; and the woman confessed in meeting that it 
was the judgment of the Lord, since she had been too fond of her fine 
linen. ... 

Here, to change the subject, is a story confirmed by other 
records, which we recommend to the psychologists : 

" At Kennebeck the Indians, wanting food, and there being a store in 
the Plimoth trading house, they conspired to kill the English there for their 
provisions ; and some Indians coming into the house, Mr. Willet, the master, 
being reading in the Bible, his countenance was more solemn than at other 
times, so as he did not look cheerfully upon them, as he was wont to do ; 
whereupon they went out and told their fellows that their purpose was dis- 
covered. They asked them how it could be. The others told them that they 
knew it by Mr. Willet's countenance, and that he had discovered it by a 
book that he was reading. Whereupon they gave over their design." 



THE COLONIAL PERIOD 23 

Those who remember the high regard in which Puritan 
mothers were held will read with surprise this record of a 
woman with literary aspirations : ^ 

" Mr, Hopkins, the governor of Hartford on Connecticut, came to Boston 
and brought his wife with him (a godly young woman, and of special parts) 
who was fallen into a sad infirmity, the loss of her understanding and reason, 
which had been growing upon her divers years by occasion of her giving 
herself wholly to reading and writing, and had written many books. Her 
husband, being very loving and tender of her, was loath to grieve her ; but 
he saw his error when it was too late. For if she had attended to her house- 
hold affairs, and such things as belong to women, and not gone out of her 
way and calling to meddle in such things as are proper for men, whose 
minds are stronger, etc., she had kept her wits, and might have improved 
them usefully and honorably in the place God had set her. He brought her 
to Boston ... to try what means might be had here for her. But no help 
could be had." 

Of Winthrop's '' modest little speech," as he calls it, we can 
give only a few sentences to show its prevailing spirit. But it 
should be read entire by every American, since it is the first 
expression of the fundamental principles of our government : 

"... For' the other point concerning liberty, I observe a great mistake 
in the country about that. There is a twofold liberty, natural, and civil or 
federal. The first is common to man with beasts and other creatures. By 
this, man, as he stands in relation to man simply, hath liberty to do what 
he lists ; it is a liberty to evil as well as to good. This liberty is incompati- 
ble and inconsistent with authority, and cannot endure the least restraint of 
the most just authority. . . . The other kind of liberty I call civil or federal ; 
it may also be termed moral, in reference to the covenant between God and 
man in the moral law, and the politic covenants and constitutions amongst 
men themselves. This liberty is the proper end and object of authority, and 
cannot subsist without it ; and it is a Hberty to that only which is good, just, 
and honest. This liberty you are to stand for, with the hazard, not only of 
your goods, but of your Hves, if need be. . . . Even so, brethren, it will be 
between you and your magistrates. If you stand for your natural corrupt 
liberties, and will do what is good in your own eyes, you will not endure the 
least weight of authority, but will murmur and oppose and be always striving 
to shake off that yoke ; but if you will be satisfied to enjoy civil and lawful 
liberties, such as Christ allows you, then will you quietly and cheerfully 

1 Only five years after this was written (1645) ^^ American book of poems, by Anne 
Bradstreet, was extravagantly praised both in this country and in England (see p. 47)- 



24 



AMERICAN LITERATURE 



submit unto that authority which is set over you, in all the administrations 
of it, for your good. ... So shall your liberties be preserved, in upholding 
the honor and power of authority amongst you." 

Characteristics of Winthrop's Journal. We have given a 
mere suggestion of this curious old book, which contains some 
eight hundred pages of matters as difficult to summarize as are 
the contents of a museum. It is generally known as The History 
of Neiv England} but the title is misleading. Winthrop was 
not a historian ; he was a clerk, a reporter of news for the Bay 
Colony. Though he could write excellently, as his letters indi- 
cate, his style here is generally prosy, showing a sad lack of 
humor and imagination. Yet his work is interesting, often 
intensely interesting ; and \\\s Jonrjial has an added value from 
the fact that Hawthorne, Whittier, Longfellow, and other writers 
have used it as a source book, finding in its pages the material 
for many of their stories and poems. 

Historians also have used it ; and to their profound misunder- 
standing of the work we owe many of our misconceptions of the 
early settlers, whose lives are reflected here, brokenly, imperfectly, 
like shadows in a troubled pool. For, in a word, there is too 
much journalism in this old Joru-nal ; and journalism, by re- 
cording largely the abnormal or unusual, might give some 
future reader an entirely wrong impression of our present life. 
So in reading Winthrop — who has something of the modern 
reporter's instinct for the sensational — it is w^ell to remember 
that, though he is interesting as a newspaper, he is often mis- 
leading, and presents on the whole a very inadequate picture of 
the life and ideals of the Puritan commonwealth .^ 

1 Winthrop's manuscript was neglected for over a century, until 1790, when it was 
first published as The Journal of John Winthrop. Early in the nineteenth century this 
Journal^ with some added Winthrop papers, was i'epublished as The History of New 
England from ibjo to Jb4g, and by a freak of the publishing houses it has been called a 
history ever since. 

2 There is no question here of W^inthrop's sincerity or of his reliability in all strictly 
historical matters. The Join-nal, however, seems to us more the work of a reporter than 
of a historian. In fairness we add that Tyler {History of American Literature^ Vol. I) 
and Jameson {History of Historical Writing in America) give the Jourfial high praise as 
a historical record. 



THE COLONIAL PERIOD 25 

Some Old Love Letters 

As a supplement to the public records of the Colonists, we 
venture to present here a few old letters — dearer, and perhaps 
more significant, because they were never intended for publi- 
cation. Here is life indeed, life that retains its sweetness and 
serenity in the midst of peril and hardship, as a flower retains its 
perfume though beaten by the wind and the rain. A fragrance 
as of lavender greets us as we open them, and their yellow pages 
seem to treasure the sunshine of long ago. Reading them, we 
forget the narrowness and stern isolation of the Puritans ; we 
remember that ideals are eternal ; that the hearts of men have 
not changed since the first settlers landed at Jamestown and 
Plymouth Rock ; and that in their log cabins, as in our modern 
homes and workshops, love, faith and duty were the supreme 
incentives to noble living.^ 

{Nov. 26, 1624) 

My sweet Wife, — I blesse the Lorde for his continued blessings upon 

thee and our familye ; and I thank thee for thy kinde lettres. But I knowe 

not what to saye for myself. I should mende and prove a better husband, 

havinge the helpe and example of so good a wife ; but I growe still worse. 

I was wonte heretofore, when I was longe absent, to make some supplye 

with volumes of lettres ; but now I can scarce afforde thee a few lines. 

Well, there is no helpe but by enlarging thy patience, and strengtheninge 

thy good opinion of him who loves thee as his owne soul and should count 

it his greatest affliction to live without thee. . . . The Lorde blesse and 

keepe thee, and all ours, and sende us a joyful meetinge. So I kisse my 

sweet wife and rest 

Thy faithful husband 

Jo. WiNTHROP 

{1627) 

My most sweet Husband, — How dearely welcome thy kinde letter was 

to me I am not able to expresse. The sweetnesse of it did much refresh 

me. What can be more pleasinge to a wife than to heare of the welfayre of 

her best beloved, and how he is pleased with her poore endeavors. I blush 

1 These letters, with many others, may be found in the Appendix to Winthrop's 
History of New Englmid (edition of 1S53), in Robert C. Winthrop's Life and Leiters of 
John Winthrop (1864-1867), and in Some Old Puntan Love Letters (1894). In our selec- 
tions we have abridged the missives and sHghtly modernized the spelHng, keeping enough 
of the old forms, however, to preserve the flavor of the original. 



26 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

to hear my selfe commended, knowinge my owne wants ; but it is your love 
that conceives the best and makes all thinges seem better than they are. I 
wish that I may be allwayes pleasinge to thee, and that those comforts we 
have in each other may be dayly increased, as far as they be pleasing to 
God. I confess I cannot doe ynough for thee, but thou art pleased to accept 
the will for the deede, and rest contented. 

I have many reasons to make me love thee, whereof I will name two : 
first because thou lovest God, and secondly because that thou lovest me. 
If these two were wan tinge, all the rest would be eclipsed. But I must leave 
this discourse and goe about my household affayers. I am a bad huswife 
to be so long from them; but I must needs borrowe a little time to talke 
with thee, my sweet heart. It will be but two or three weekes before I see 
thee, though they be longe ones. God will bring us together in his good 
time, for which time I shall pray. Farewell my good Husband ; the Lord 
keep thee. 

Your obedient wife 

Margaret Winthrope 



{On Shipboa7'd^ j6jo) 

My faithful and dear Wife, — It pleaseth God that thou shouldst once 
again hear from me before our departure, and I hope this shall come safe 
to thy hands. I know it will be a great refreshing to thee. And blessed be 
his mercy, that I can write thee so good news, that we are all in very good 
health. Our boys are well and cheerful and have no mind of home. They 
lie both with me, and sleep as soundly in a rug as ever they did at Groton. 
We have spent now two Sabbaths on shipboard very comfortably, and are 
daily more encouraged'to look for the Lord's presence to go along with us. 

And now, my sweet soul, I must once again take my last farewell of thee 
in Old England. It goeth very near to my heart to leave thee ; but I know 
to whom I have committed thee, even to him who loves thee much better 
than any husband can, who hath taken account of the hairs of thy head, 
and put all thy tears in his bottle, who can and, if it be for his glory, will 
bring us together again with peace and comfort. Oh, how it refresheth my 
heart to think that I shall yet again see thy sweet face in the land of the 
living, — that lovely countenance that I have so much delighted in and 
beheld with so great content ! I have hitherto been so taken up with busi- 
ness as I could seldom look back to my former happiness ; but now, when 
I shall be at some leisure, I shall not avoid the remembrance of thee, nor 
the grief for thy absence. Thou hast thy share with me; but I hope the 
course we have agreed upon will be some ease to us both. Mondays and 
Fridays, at five of the clock at night, we shall meet in spirit till we meet in 
person. Yet if all these hopes should fail, blessed be our God that we are 
assured we shall meet one day, in a better condition. Let that stay and 



THE COLONIAL PERIOD 



27 



comfort thy heart. Neither can the sea drown thy husband, nor enemies 
destroy, nor any adversity deprive thee of thy husband or children. There- 
fore I will only take thee now and my sweet children in my arms, and kiss 
and embrace you all, and so leave you with my God. Farewell, farewell. 

Thine wheresoever 

Jo. WiNTHROP 



Samuel Sewall (1652-1730) 

Sewall is generally known as one of the judges who pro- 
nounced sentence of death upon the Salem witches in 1692. 
Lest the reader look 
askance at him on this 
account, let us consider 
three things : that belief 
in witches was very gen- 
eral in Sewall 's day ; that 
he felt compelled by his 
oath of office to pro- 
nounce judgment accord- 
ing to law ; and that the 
English law, which pre- 
vailed also in America, 
condemned a witch to 
death.i Moreover, Sew- 
all, unlike others who 
were concerned in that 
frightful tragedy, not 
only saw his error but 
acknowledged it, stand- 
ing up before the whole 
congregation w^hile the 

minister from the pulpit read aloud his confession and repent- 
ance. ''And that was a brave man," as the old Saxons would 
say in all simplicity. 

1 This law was not repealed in England till 1735, some forty years after it became a 
dead letter in America (see p. 62). 




SAMUEL SEWALL 



28 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

In literature Sewall is chiefly famous for his Diary ; but he 
wrote several other things, among them being " The Selling of 
Joseph," which was probably the first antislavery tract published 
in this country. Reading even these minor works, we see clearly 
that the author was a philanthropist, a friend of negroes and 
Indians, a pioneer in the work of establishing women's rights, 
and a just man in all his ways : 

Stately and slow, with thoughtful air, 
His black cap hiding his whitened hair, 
Walks the Judge of the great Assize, 
Samuel Sewall, the good and wise. 
His face with lines of firmness wrought. 
He wears the look of a man unbought, 
Who swears to his hurt and changes not ; 
Yet touched and softened, nevertheless. 
With a grace of Christian gentleness ; 
The face that a child would climb to kiss, 
True and tender and brave and just. 
That man might honor and woman trust.^ 

Sewall' s Diary. This budget of old Colonial news begins 
in 1673, while a young instructor in Harvard is "reading 
Heerboord's Physick to the senior sophisters," and ends in 
1729, while the same man, old and honored, is "making a 
very good match " for his granddaughter. Between these two 
entries are thousands of others, which would seem dreary and 
commonplace did we not remember that they mark, like 
monotonous clock ticks, the slow march of a human life across 
the field of light and into the shadows. 

To summarize such a detailed story of over half a century is 
quite impossible. The book is like an old attic, filled with all 
manner of useless things, forgotten and dust-covered. Here, as 
in Winthrop, the small and the great affairs of life are jumbled 
in hopeless confusion. In one breath we are told that the weather 
is foggy ; in the next that war is declared between France and 
England — one of the fateful French and Indian wars which 

1 From Whittier, " The Prophecy of Samuel Sewall." 



THE COLONIAL PERIOD 



29 



kindled in America the spirit of national unity. Of this, how- 
ever, Sewall says nothing, but flits on to his favorite subject of 
funerals, and ends with a mention of what they did with the 
treasure of Captain Kidd the pirate. Merely as a suggestion of 
his style and varied matter, we copy a few entries that attract 
our attention as do certain faces in a crowd : 

/d/d, Oct. g. Bro. Stephen visits me in the evening and tells me of a 
sad accident at Salem, last Friday, A youth, when fowling, saw one by a 
pond with black hair and was thereat frighted, supposing the person to be 
an Indian, and so shot and killed him : came home flying with the fright 
for fear of more Indians. The next day found to be an Englishman shot 
dead. The actor in prison. 

7^77, July 8. New Meeting House. In sermon time there came in a 
female Quaker, in a canvas frock, her hair disshevelled and loose like a 
periwigg, her face black as ink, led by two other Quakers, and two others 
followed. It occasioned the most amazing uproar that I ever saw.^ 

168^, Nov. 12. Mr. Moody preaches, from Is. 57:1, Mr. Gobbet's 
funeral sermon. After, the minister of this town come to the Court to com- 
plain against a dancing master who seeks to set up here, and hath mixt 
dances, and his time of meeting is Lecture Day [Thursday] and 't is reported 
he should say that by one play he could teach more divinity than Mr. Willard 
or the Old Testament. Mr. Moody said 't was not a time for New England 
to dance. Mr. Mather struck at the root, speaking against mixt dances. 

1686., Feb. 75. Jos. Maylem carries a cock at his back, with a bell in 's 
hand, in the main street. Several follow him blindfolded and, under pretence 
of striking him or 's rooster with great cart whips, strike passengers and 
make great disturbance.^ 

Apr. 22. Two persons, one array'd in white, the other in red, goe 
through the town with naked swords advanced, with a drum attending each 
of them, and a quarter staff, and a great rout following, as is usual. It seems 
't is a challenge to be fought at Capt. Wing's next Thursday. Apr. 28. 
After the stage-fight, in the even, the souldier who wounded his antagonist 
went, accompanyed with a drumm and about seven drawn swords, shouting 
through the streets in a kind of tryumph.^ 

IThis entry, with other passages from Colonial literature, suggest that the Puritans 
were not intolerant of another's faith, but only of disorderly or offensive methods of 
proselyting. 

2 This was probably Shrove Tuesday (called also Pancake Tuesday, and in French 
Mardi Gras)^ the day before the beginning of Lent. It was a merry holiday in England 
at this time. 

3 Evidently this was not a duel but a kind of military roistering. In the record of 
171 7 {Sewall Papers^ III, 208) two officers, because of dueling, were fined, imprisoned, 
and obliged to give bonds to keep the peace. 



30 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

June 6. Ebenezer Holloway, a youth of about eleven or twelve years 
old, going to help J no. Hounsel, another Boston boy, out of the water at 
Roxbury, was drowned together with him. I followed them to the grave ; 
for were brought to town in the night, and both carried to the burying place 
together, and laid near one another. 

i6g2, Apr. ii. Went to Salem, where, in the meeting-house, the persons 
accused of witchcraft were examined. Was a very great assembly. 'T was 
awfull to see how the afflicted persons were agitated. Mr. Noyes pray'd at 
the beginning, and Mr. Higginson concluded. Aug. ig. (Dolefull Witch- 
craft!) This day George Burroughs, John Willard, Jno. Proctor, Martha 
Carrier and George Jacobs were executed at Salem, a very great number of 
spectators being present. Mr. Cotton Mather was there, Mr. Sims, etc. All 
of them said they were innocent, Carrier and all. Mr. Mather says they all 
died by a righteous sentence. Mr. Burroughs by his speech, prayer, protesta- 
tion of his innocence, did much move unthinking persons, which occasions 
their speaking hardly concerning his being executed. 

Nov. 6. Joseph threw a knop of brass and hit his sister Betty on the 
forhead, so as to make it bleed and swell ; upon which, and for his playing 
at prayer time, and eating when return-thanks, I whiped him pretty smartly. 
When I first went in (called by his Grandmother) he sought to shadow and 
hide himself from me behind the head of the cradle ; which gave me the 
sorrowful remembrance of Adam's carriage. 

i6gg, June 21. A pack of cards are found strawed over my foreyard, 
which, 't is supposed, some might throw there to mock me. 

I'J02^ Feb. ig. Mr. I. Mather preached from Rev. 22: 16, — "Night 
and morning star." Mention'd sign in the heaven, and in the evening follow- 
ing I saw a large cometical blaze, something fine and dim, pointing from 
the westward, a little below Orion. ^ 

770^, June JO. After dinner, about 3 p.m. I went to see the execution 
[of pirates]. Many were the people that saw on Broughton's Hill. But 
when I came to see how the river was cover'd with people, I was amazed. 
1 50 boats and canoes, saith Cousin Moody of York. He told [counted] them. 
Mr. Cotton Mather came, with Capt. Quelch and six others for execution, 
from the prison. When the scaffold was hoisted to a due height the seven 
malefactors went up. Mr. Mather prayed for them, standing on the boat. 
When the scaffold was let to sink, there was such a screech of the women 
that my wife heard it, sitting in the entry next the orchard, and was much 
surprised at it ; yet the wind was sou-west. Our house is a full mile from 
the place. 

1 Sewall has other records of comets, one of which (Aug. 17-23, 1682) may be a ref- 
erence to Halley's comet, which recently (1910) caused such extraordinary commo- 
tion. There is nothing to indicate that the Colonists felt any fear or concern before this 
mysterious visitor ; and the ministers generally welcomed every comet and used it to 
emphasize some special point in their sermons. 



THE COLONIAL PERIOD 3 1 

//cd, A'^ov. 10. This morning Tom Child the painter ^ died. 

Tom Child hath often painted Death, 

But never to the life before : 
Doing it now, he 's out of breath ; 

He paints it once and paints no more. 

7775', Apr. ig. The swallows have come ; I saw three together.^ 

///d, Feb. 6. Sloop run away with by a whale, out of a good harbor at 
the Cape. How surprisingly uncertain our enjoyments in this world are ! 

1^20., Ja?t. 2j. This day a negro chimney-sweeper falls down dead into 
the Governour's house. Jury sits on him. 

May 20. In the evening I join the Revd. Mr. William Cooper and 
Mrs. Judith Sewall in marriage. I said to Mr. Stoddard and his wife 
[parents of the bride] " Sir, Madam, the great honour you have conferr'd 
on the bridegroom and the bride by being present at this solemnity does 
very conveniently supersede any further enquiry after your consent. And 
the part I am desired to take in this wedding renders the way of my giving 
my consent very compendious : There 's no manner of room left for that 
previous question, Who giveth this woman to be married to this man.'* 

" Dear child, you give me your hand for one moment, and the bridegroom 
forever. Spouse, you accept and receive this woman now given you, &c." 
Mr. Sewall pray'd before the wedding, and Mr. Coleman after. Sung the 
1 1 5th Psalm from the ninth verse to the end. Then we had our cake and 
sack-posset. 

The three bulky volumes of this old Diary are not books 
which we would recommend to the general reader. They have 
absolutely no literary charm ; they are mostly dull records of 
commonplace events, made gloomy by many funerals but never 
once brightened by the play of imagination or humor. Yet 
somehow we have grown deeply interested in them, following 
their endless windings as one follows a trout stream, with con- 
tinual expectation of catching something in the next pool. Nor 
are we disappointed. Here and there, amidst dreary details, 

1 It is generally supposed that Peter Pelham (d. 1751) was the first American artist. 
He came to this country in 1726, and his portrait of Cotton Mather (1727) is the first 
authentic portrait produced in America. But in this record Sewall evidently refers to a 
painter who preceded Pelham by at least twenty years. 

2 Every year Sewall joyfully records the arrival of these little harbingers. The first 
swallow was eagerly looked for, but not till three or more were seen together was spring 
announced. Hence, probably, the expression, " One swallow does not make a summer." 
Within our own recollection, boys were allowed to go barefoot as soon as they had seen 
three swallows together. 



Z2 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

are fleeting glimpses of the little comedies of long ago, when 
fashions were different but human nature quite the same as in 
our own day. Whether the record gives pleasure or weariness 
to others depends, like fishing, entirely upon the taste of the 
individual. 

Aside from the question of interest, Sewall's Diary has a 
twofold value : it gives realistic pictures of habits, beliefs, politi- 
cal and social customs in one comer of America at an early 
period of our history ; and it is one of the most intimate 
and detailed records of a human life that we possess. It shows 
the author, not as the world knew him, but as he knew him- 
self. Whoever has the patience to read this old record will 
meet a man who reveals himself without vanity or concealment, 
who follows the call of duty as he hears it, and who makes no 
attempt to win even our good opinion. As he says (May 9, 
1690): '' Now the good God, of His infinite grace, help me to 
perform my vows, give me a filial fear of Himself and save me 
from the fear of man." 

William Byrd (1674-1744) 

Pleasantest of our early annalists is William Byrd of Virginia. 
We fancy him sitting in an easy-chair in front of his open fire, 
elaborately dressed, pipe at lips, a glass of negus at his elbow, 
and smiling as he dictates his pleasantries to his secretary.^ 
Meanwhile, in his Boston study, Cotton Mather scratches away 
industriously with his own goose quill, till the cry is forced from 
him, " The ink in my standish is frozen ; my pen suffers a 
congelation." 

Almost on the first page we are struck by this personal con- 
trast between Byrd and the Puritan writers. The latter were 
men profoundly educated along certain lines, and their experi- 
ence of life was deep but narrow. Outside the three immediate 
interests of religion, trade and government, they had little regard 

1 Byrd's manuscripts are in a copyist's handwriting, with numerous notes and correc- 
tions inserted by the author. 



THE COLONIAL PERIOD 



33 



for the ways of the great world, Byrd's education was broad but 
shallow ; and to education he added the unmistakable polish of 
travel and of habitual contact with the best society. In conse- 
quence he has a certain air of cosmopolitanism, suitable to any 
civilized age or nation, and 
far removed from the provin- 
cialism and intense individu- 
alitv of the Puritans. ^ 

Another contrast between 
Byrd and other annalists is 
The Cavalier "^own^i in the csscn- 

in Literature tial motive of his 

books. Most of our Colonial 
authors cared nothing for lit- 
erary effect ; their only object 
was to present the facts and 
to establish the truth. With 
Byrd, however, enters a new 
element into our literature. 
He has that indefinite but 
vitalizing quality which we 
call style ; he seeks to make 

the form of his work attractive, and so becomes definitely artistic. 
Remembering that few will read a book unless it have the virtue 
of being interesting, he inserts a variety of observations and ex- 
periences with the sole idea of entertaining us. So far so good ; 
but unfortunately Byrd has so little of the Puritan regard for 
truth that he is willing to sacrifice it cheerfully for a jest, even 
in his historical narrative.^ He writes very much like certain 




/'' 



WI'LLIAM BYRD 



1 The prevalent idea that the Puritans were confined to New England is erroneous. 
A substantial part of the population of Virginia and Maryland, for instance, was made 
up of Puritans. Prominent among them was Alexander Whittaker, whose Good News 
from Virginia (1613) is as far removed from Byrd, both in style and matter, as are the 
journals of Winthrop and Sewall. 

2 A case in point is his witty but unjust treatment of North Carolina ; another is his 
ridicule of Germans and Huguenots — simple, God-fearing folk, who added a most 
desirable element to the mixed Southern society of the early days. 



34 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Cavaliers of Charles II in England. He is gay, witty, charming ; 
his mockery is invariably good-natured ; his stories, though some- 
times a little scandalous, are told as a gentleman of those days 
would tell them ; but he is superficial, and often gives a wrong 
impression of the people he is describing. In one of his narra- 
tives he remarks, '' Our conversation with the ladies was like 
whip-sillabub, very pretty but had nothing in it." It is hardly 
too much to say that Byrd has written here an excellent criti- 
cism of his own writings. Certainly, after Bradford and Win- 
throp, he furnishes a pleasant, whip-sillabub kind of dessert to a 
somewhat heavy dinner.^ 

Byrd's Journals. Byrd's best-known work, the History of the 
Dividing Li7ie^ is largely the story of a surveying party which 
first penetrated the Disftial Swamp and some two hundred miles 
of unexplored wilderness beyond. It begins, however, with a 
breezy sketch of the history of Virginia and North Carolina ; 
and here we see the gay Cavalier who must have his jest at any 
cost, and who is more concerned to entertain us than to limn a 
true picture of the pioneers. He tells us that Virginia was settled 
''by reprobates of good families," whose character he judges 
from the fact that '' they built a chapel that cost fifty pounds 
and a tavern that cost five hundred." And then, with the irrever- 
ence of Mark Twain, he argues that, for the good of both races, 
the whites should have intermarried with the Indians : '' For 
after all that can be said, a sprightly lover is the most prevailing 
missionary that can be sent among them or any other infidels." 
When he comes to North Carolina his mirth overflows, and he 

1 No satisfactory biography of Byrd has yet appeared. A sketch of his busy, useful 
life is given in the Introduction to The Byrd Mamiscnpts (edition of 1866). The long 
and flattering epitaph on Byrd's tombstone — upon which questionable source his biogra- 
phers largely depend — is quoted in Campbell's History of Virginia. 

2 Byrd was one of three commissioners appointed (1728) by Governor Gooch to fix 
the boundary line between Virginia and North Carolina. His journal of the expedition 
was written soon afterwards. The manuscript volume containing this, and other of Byrd's 
journals, is still preserved in the family mansion '' Brandon," on the James River. The 
works were first published as The IVestover Manuscripts^ in 184 1. In later editions (by 
Wynne, 1866 ; by Basset, 1901) they are called The Byrd Mannscnpts. Byrd's interest- 
ing letters are collected in the Virginia Magazine of Histoiy and Biography (1902). 



THE COLONIAL PERIOD 35 

devotes a large part of his sketch to satirizing the barbarism and 
ignorance of people '' that live in a dirty state of nature and are 
mere Adamites, innocence only excepted." 

After such an introduction, we are skeptical of Byrd's fitness 
as a historian ; but we are delighted with him as a writer and 
camp companion in following the adventures of the surveying 
party. Scattered through the book, like plums in a pudding, are 
interesting bits of natural history, and passing comments, scintil- 
lating and evanescent as the sparks of his camp fire, on the 
appearance of the wild country and the habits of the Indians : 

" 172Q, Oct. II. But bears are fondest of chestnuts, which grow plen- 
tifully towards the mountains, upon very large trees, where the soil happens 
to be rich. We were curious to know how it happened that many of the 
outward branches of those trees came to be brok off in that solitary place, 
and were informed that the bears are so discreet as not to trust their un- 
wieldy bodies on the smaller limbs of the tree, that would not bear their 
weight ; but after venturing as far as is safe, which they can judge to an 
inch, they bite off the end of the branch, which falling down, they are con- 
tent to finish their repast upon the ground. In the same cautious manner 
they secure the acorns that grow on the weaker limbs of the oak. And it 
must be allow'd that, in these instances, a bear carries instinct a great way, 
and acts more reasonably than many of his betters, who indiscreetly venture 
upon frail projects that wont bear them." 

'' //i'P, Oct. ij. In the evening we examin'd our friend Bearskin [the 
Indian hunter] concerning the religion of his country, and he explain'd it 
to us, without any of that reserve to which his nation is subject. 

" He told us he believ'd there was one Supreme God, who had several 
subaltern deities under him. And that this Master-God made the world a 
long time ago. That he told the sun, the moon and stars their business in 
the beginning, which they, with good looking after, have performed faith- 
fully ever since. . . . 

'* He believ'd God had form'd many worlds before he form'd this ; but 
that those worlds either grew old and ruinous, or were destroyed for the 
dishonesty of the inhabitants. 

" That God is very just and very good, ever well pleas'd with those men 
who possess those God-like qualities. That he takes good people into his 
safe protection. . . . But all such as tell lies, and cheat those they have 
dealings with, he never fails to punish with sickness, poverty and hunger ; 
and, after all that, suffers them to be knockt on the head and scalpt by 
those that fight against them. 



36 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

" He believ'd that after death both good and bad people are conducted 
by a strong guard into a great road, in which departed souls travel together 
for some time, till at a certain distance this road forks into two paths, the 
one extremely levil, and the other stony and mountainous. Here the good 
are parted from the bad by a flash of lightning, the first being hurry'd away 
to the right, the other to the left. 

" The right-hand road leads to a charming warm country, where the spring 
is everlasting, and every month is May ; and as the year is always in its 
youth, so are the people ; and particularly the women are bright as stars, 
and never scold. That in this happy climate there are deer, turkeys, elks, 
and buffaloes innumerable, perpetually fat and gentle, while the trees are 
loaded with delicious fruit quite throughout the four seasons. That the soil 
brings forth corn spontaneously, without the curse of labour, and so very 
wholesome that none who have the happiness to eat of it are ever sick, grow 
old, or dy. 

" Near the entrance into this blessed land sits a venerable old man on a 
mat richly woven, who examins strictly all that are brought before him ; 
and if they have behav'd well, the guards are order'd to open the crystal 
gate, and let them enter into the Land of Delights. 

" The left-hand path is very rugged and uneaven, leading to a dark and 
barren country, where it is always winter. The ground is the whole year 
round cover'd with snow, and nothing is to be seen upon the trees but 
icicles. All the people are hungry, yet have not a morsel of any thing to 
eat, except a bitter kind of potato. . . . Here all the women are old and 
ugly, having claws like a panther. . , . They talk much, and exceedingly 
shrill, giving exquisite pain to the drum of the ear, which in that place of 
torment is so tender that every sharp note wounds it to the quick. 

"At the end of this path sits a dreadful old woman on a monstrous toad- 
stool, whose head is cover'd with rattle-snakes instead of tresses, with glar- 
ing white eyes that strike a terror unspeakable into all that behold her. This 
hag pronounces sentence of woe upon all the miserable wretches that hold 
up their hands at her tribunal. After this they are delivered over to huge 
turkey-buzzards, like harpys, that fly away with them to the place above 
mentioned. Here, after they have been tormented a certain number of 
years, according to their several degrees of guilt, they are again driven back 
into this world, to try if they will mend their manners, and merit a place 
the next time in the regions of bliss. 

" This was the substance of Bearskin's religion, and was as much to the 
purpose as cou'd be expected from a mere state of nature, without one glimps 
of revelation or philosophy. It contain'd, however, the three great articles of 
natural' religion: the belief of a god ; the moral distinction betwixt good and 
evil ; and the expectation of rewards and punishments in another world." ^ 

1 From " History of the Dividing Line," Byrd Manuscripts^ I, 106-109. 



THE COLONIAL PERIOD 37 

Two other works of Byrd are worthy of our attention. A 
Journey to ihe Land of Eden ^ is an interesting journal of wilder- 
ness travel and mild adventure, very similar to The Dividing 
Line. A Progress to the ALines^ is extremely valuable for its 
pictures of Southern society, and especially of Colonel Spots- 
wood, that strong fighter for American democracy, who is here 
seen in his home, his sternness all laid aside, as an armor that 
a man uses only when he goes out to battle with the world : 

'' Here I arriv'd about three o'clock, and found only Mrs. Spotswood at 
home, who receiv'd her old acquaintance with many a gracious smile. I 
was carry'd into a room elegantly set off with pier glasses, the largest of 
which came soon after to an odd misfortune. Amongst other favourite 
animals that cheer'd this lady's solitude, a brace of tame deer r^n familiarly 
about the house, and one of them came to stare at me as a stranger. But 
unluckily spying his own figure in the glass, he made a spring over the tea 
table that stood under it, and shatter'd the glass to pieces, and falling back 
upon the tea table, made a terrible fracas among the china. This exploit 
was so sudden, and accompany'd with such a noise, that it surpriz'd me, 
and perfectly frighten'd Mrs. Spotswood. But 'twas worth all the damage 
to shew the moderation and good humor with which she bore this disaster. 
In the evening the noble Colo, came home from his mines, who saluted me 
very civilly ; and Mrs. Spotswood's sister. Miss Theky, who had been to 
meet him en Cavalier, was so kind too as to bid me welcome. We talkt 
over a legend of old storys, supp'd about 9, and then prattl'd with the 
ladys, til 't was time for a travellour to retire. . . . 

" Sept. 22. We had another wet day, to try both Mrs. Fleming's patience 
and my good breeding. The N.E. wind commonly sticks by us 3 or 4 days, 
filling the atmosphere with damps, injurious both to man and beast. . . . 
Since I was like to have thus much leisure, I endeavour'd to find out what 
subject a dull marry'd man cou'd introduce that might best bring the widow 
to the use of her tongue. At length I discover'd she was a notable quack, 
and therefore paid that regard to her knowledge as to put some questions 
to her about the bad distemper that raged then in the country. . . . But for 
fear this conversation might be too grave for a widow, I turn'd the dis- 
course, and began to talk of plays, and finding her taste lay most towards 
comedy, I offer'd my service to read one to her, which she kindly accepted. 

1 There is a double play on words in this title. Byrd's wilderness journey here carried 
him into North Carolina, of which Charles Eden was then governor (1713-1719), and into 
a virgin country which many would consider a natural paradise, 

2 The title refers to the iron mines, which ex-Governor Spotswood was the first te 
develop in this country. 



3S 



AMERICAN LITERATURE 



She produced the 2d part of the Beggars Opera} which had diverted the 
town [London] for 40 nights successively, and gain'd four thousand pounds 
to the author. This w^as not owing altogether to the wit or humour that 
sparkled in it, but to some political reflections, that seem'd to hit the min- 
istry. . . . After having acquainted my company with the history of the 
play, I read 3 acts of it, and left Mrs. Fleming and Mr. Randolph to finish 
it, who read as well as most actors do at a rehearsal. Thus we kill'd the 
time, and triumpht over the bad weather." 

Significance of Byrd's Work. After the sobriety, the didactic 
earnestness of Colonial writers, these cheery irresponsible books 
of Byrd seem to us to possess a threefold value. They interest 
us, first of all, by their style. No matter what he writes about. 




-?■". 



s-^ 



t ^ 









.->^^H5sS' 



WESTOVER, VIRGINIA — HOME OF THE BYRDS 

this author never fails to entertain and surprise us by some un- 
expected playfulness. Thus, he says of his friend, who was 
afflicted with the '' mining malady " which swept over our 
country like a pestilence early in the eighteenth century, '' We 
cheered our hearts with three bottles of pretty good Madeira, 
which made Drury talk very hopefully of his copper mines." 
And of an old Indian he says, ''To comfort his heart I gave 
him a bottle of rum, with which he made himself very happy and 
all the family miserable for the rest of the night." 

1 A popular opera by John Gay, produced in London in 1728. 



THE COLONIAL PERIOD 39 

Again, Byrd is an admirable supplement to the early annalists 
with whom we have grown familiar. The literature of any period 
must reflect the whole life of a people ; and Byrd reveals a side 
of Colonial life, a bright and most attractive side, which is seldom 
chronicled in our histories. And finally, Byrd is neither teacher 
nor reformer, as most other Colonial writers are, but simply an 
observer. Life of every kind seems good to him, as if indeed 
God had just created it. He delights to describe it just as it is, 
and to give happy pictures of settlers and Indians without wishing 
to reform either. His Dividing Line, especially, with its breezy, 
outdoor atmosphere, its lively interest in wild life, its rovings by 
day and its camp fires under the stars by night, marks an excellent 
beginning of that fascinating series of Journals of Exploration, of 
which Parkman's Oregon Trail is perhaps the best-known example. 

Various Chronicles of Colonial Days 

We have given comparatively large space to Bradford, 
Winthrop, Sewall and Byrd for two reasons : because they are 
excellent types of Colonial writers ; and because it is better to 
become well acquainted with one representative author than to 
name the hundred or more who contributed to our early litera- 
ture. ''A good plain dinner," says the Simple Cobbler, ''is 
more wholesome than the taste of many dishes, which take away 
the appetite without satisfying the hunger." As a suggestion for 
further study, we add a list of books which, in our judgment, 
are best worth reading. 

Annals. John Smith and John Josselyn are generally included in 
the history of our literature ; but they were sojourners, not settlers or 
citizens, and have scarcely more claim on our attention than have 
Hakluyt and Purchas, who also wrote fascinating accounts of Amer- 
ican exploration. Smith's best works are A True Relation of Stick 
Occurrences and Accidents of Note as Hath Happened in Virginia 
(1608), A Description of New Efiglafid (16 16), and The General His- 
tory of Virginia, New England and the Summer Isles (1624). Josselyn 
wrote New Efigland^s Rarities Discovered i7i Birds, Beasts, Fishes, 



40 AMERICAN LITEEATURE 

Serpents and Plants of that Country (1672), and A71 Account of Two 
Voyages to New England (^16'] ^). He is bitter against the Puritans, 
and many besides Longfellow ^ have been misled by his ravings ; but 
the chief interest in his book lies in his frequent excursions into natu- 
ral history — a queer, jumbled kind of animal lore, in which facts 
and absurdities are related with the same gravity. 

Alexander Whittaker, called by Cotton Mather '' our incomparable 
Whittaker," and known generally as the " Apostle to Virginia," wrote 
a noble appeal to England in his Good News from Vi?ginia (16 13). 
This book is worth reading if only to show that the Puritans of the 
South were in all essentials exactly like their northern compatriots. 

Edward Winslow was the companion of Bradford on the Mayflower. 
His four7ial, written in connection with Bradford, and long known as 
Mourt^s Relation^ and his Good News from New E7igland (1624) give 
vigorous and interesting accounts of the Pilgrims during the first three 
years of their American history. These books should, if possible, be 
read in connection with Bradford's Of Pliftiouth Plantation. 

William Wood, one of the most interesting of our early writers, 
wrote New E?igla fid's Prospect (^16 2,4)- The book is in two parts, 
one describing the natural features of the country, its woods and 
waters, its plant and animal life ; the other describing the life and 
customs of the various Indian tribes. It is remarkably well written, 
contains many vivid, picturesque descriptions, and its general st)de 
suggests that of the Elizabethan prose writers. 

Edward Johnson came to America with Winthrop and his Puritans, 
in 1630. He was a fine type of the early settler — brave, self-reliant, 
religious ; a little bigoted, to be sure, yet level-headed enough to oppose 
the witchcraft delusion. The title of his poem. The Wofider-workifig 
Providence of Zio?i's Saviour tjt New England (1654), suggests the 
character of its contents. It is a kind of modern Book of Exodus, in 
which the Colonists are pictured as under the direct leadership of the 
Lord of Hosts, fighting the Lord's battles against seen and unseen 
foes. And the work does not suffer in interest from the fact that 
Johnson was himself a vigorous fighter, and that the ax and musket 
were more familiar to his hand than the goose quill. 

The Burwell Pape?'s (c. 1700), by some unknown writer, are 
interesting for their first-hand descriptions of that dramatic episode 
of Virginia's history known as Bacon's Rebellion (1647). Another 

1 Whittier and Longfellow both found material in Josselyn. See for instance Long- 
fellow's "Tragedy of John Endicor;." 



THE COLONIAL PERIOD 41 

noteworthy feature is the style of the unknown writer, which is in 
marked contrast to the vigor and sincerity of early Colonial authors. 
He abounds in mannerisms, and attempts to be witty even in scenes 
which call for reverence and simplicity. This artificial style indicates 
that the French influence, which prevailed in England after the res- 
toration of Charles II, was introduced from England to America at 
the close of the seventeenth century. These Biirwell Papers include 
a dirge on the death of Bacon, which seems to us one of the best bits 
of verse written in the entire Colonial period. 

\ Satire and Criticism. Nathaniel Ward is famous for one sensational 
book. The Simple Cobbler of Agawam (1647). 

The author's purpose is evident in his subtitle, which tells us that 
England and America are a pair of old shoes, sadly in need of repair, 
The Simple and that he proposes to mend them to the best of his 
Cobbler ability. His idea of mending is, evidently, to knock every- 

thing to pieces ; so he proceeds merrily to pound away at the women 
for their style of dress, at religious leaders for their toleration, and at 
everything else which savors of a change from the good old ways of 
the forefathers — all this, remember, only twenty-seven years after 
the landing of the Pilgrims. The work begins vigorously, " Either I 
am in an apoplexy, or that man is in a lethargy who doth not now 
sensibly feel God shaking the heavens over his head and the earth 
under his feet." Nor does the primal vigor wane even for an instant. 
Every blow is that of a hammer ; every criticism has the pungency 
of red pepper. This Simple Cobbler was the most popular of all our 
earliest books ; and it still affords the reader plenty of amusement, 
though of an entirely different kind from what the writer intended. 

George Alsop is remembered for one book, of mingled seriousness 
and drollery, called A Cha?'acter of the Province of Maryland (1666), 
which is worthy to be placed with Ward's Simple Cobbler. It is writ- 
ten partly in racy prose, partly in doggerel verse after the manner 
of Butler's Hudibras, which had just appeared in England and was 
immensely popular. Though probably written with a serious purpose 
of defending Maryland from certain evil reports which had been sent 
abroad, the book is chiefly noticeable for its fun and nonsense. The 
chief criticism against the latter is that the humor is often a litde too 
broad for modern readers. 

History. Three serious histories of New England were attempted 
in early days by Nathaniel Morton, William Plubbard and Thomas 
Prince. Morton's New England^ s Me?norial (^166^) and Hubbard's 



42 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

General History of New England {yiX\\X.^Y\. c. 1680, first published 18 15) 
are both written in a good style, but concern themselves too much 
with commonplace events. Prince is remarkable as the first historian 
in the English language who wrote history on a large scale and on 
a scientific basis, that is, with an eye single to the facts, and with a 
dependence on original sources of information.^ 

This honor is usually given to Gibbon, but the latter's Decline and 
Fall of the Roman Einpire appeared some forty years after Prince had 
published his Chrotiological History of New Eiigland (1736). Omitting 
the huge introduction, which, after the fashion of those days, attempts 
to give a summary of the world's history from Adam to James I, 
Prince's History is an extremely careful and scholarly work, but unfor- 
tunately a little dry. The work is a fragment, only one volume having 
been finished, which carries the history of the Colonies down to 1630. 

Robert Beverly was the first native-bom historian of the Old 
Dominion. His History of Virginia (1705) gives us not only a 
political history of the Colony, but also a first-hand description of the 
people, of the natural features of the country, of its plant and animal 
life and of the ways of the Indians. Beverly was a man of fine char- 
acter, a gentleman by birth and breeding, and all unconsciously he 
reflects much of his own fine qualities in his writings. There is a very 
pleasing manliness and simplicity in his work, which is one of the 
most interesting of Colonial histories. 

Indian Narratives. In almost every book of the Colonial period we 
find references to the Indians, and the large space given to them 
shows how profound was the impression made by these silent rovers 
of the wilderness. Of many books dealing exclusively with the Indians, 
the best were written by Daniel Gookin, the friend and companion of 
John Eliot.^ Gookin was a grand old American patriot, whose life 
reads like a romance. He wrote Historical Collections of the Indians 
of New Efigland (frequently quoted in Thoreau's fournal) and A?i 
Historical Account of the Doi?igs a?id Sufferings of the Christian In- 
dians in New England (written c. 1677, published 1836). Gookin 

1 Prince made a remarkably good collection of original documents. This collection, 
still known as " The Prince Library," is preserved in the Public Library at Boston. 

2 The very mention of the savages always suggests the name of John Eliot, the 
heroic " Apostle to the Indians," who wrote much about them. Unfortunately, a large 
part of his work was lost, and the rest is so scattered that the modem reader has no 
access to it. Eliot is famous in the literature of knowledge for two works, his Indian Gram- 
mar (1666) and his Translation of the Bible into the Indian Tongue (1663). These works 
represent America's first contribution to the original and scholarly books of the world. 
For a suggestion of Eliot's greatness, see pp. 67-68. 



THE COLONIAL PERIOD 



43 



also wrote a history of New England ; but the manuscript war, burned 
before it was published. Our literature suffered a great loss in that 
fire; for Gookin, by his scholarship, his judicial mind and his intense 
II love of truth, was admirably fitted to write our early history. 

Other writers on Indian subjects are John Mason, a soldier and 
Indian fighter, who wrote A Brief History of the Pequot JVar^iGjj) ; 
Mary Rowlandson, who was 
dragged from her burning 
home and carried off captive 
by the Indians, and who re- 
lates her experiences in The 
Sovereignty and Goodness of 
God, a Narrative of the 
Captivity and Restoration of 
Mrs.Rowta?idson(i6S2)\2in6. 
John Williams, who was car- 
ried to Canada by the savages 
when Deerfield was attacked 
and burned, in 1704, and 
who gives a vivid story of 
Indian atrocities in The Re- 
deemed Cap til 'e (1707). 

Many other such books 
were written, but the four 
mentioned enable the reader 
to see the Indian from many 
different points of view. 

Gookin was the friend of the natives, and is the only one of our early 
writers who understands the Indian character. Mason was a fighter, 
and delighted to write of battle, murder and sudden death ; while 
Williams and Mrs. Rowlandson were innocent sufferers at the hands 
of the savages, who treated their captives with alternate ferocity and 
indifference. The stories of the latter writers were immensely popu- 
lar for over a century in America, while the better work of Gookin 
remained unknown. It is due largely to fighting stories like Mason's, 
and to pictures of savage atrocity as drawn in The Redee7ned Captive, 
that hatred of the Indians was deeply ingrained into the popular mind. 
Even at the present day it is difficult to make the average American 
understand that the Indians were often actuated by noble motives and 
possessed some admirable native virtues. 




JOHN ELIOT 



44 



AMERICAN LITERATURE 



III. COLONIAL POETRY 

Our literary historians commonly begin their story of Colonial 
verse with the Bay Psalm Book (1640),^ and after critically 
examining its jolting lines they conclude that our ancestors had 

,_ ^ -^^ __L ^ - .. no soul for poetry. 







W.^ 



THE 

WHOLE 

BOOKEOFPSALMES 

FaithfuUj 
TRANSLATED int« ENGLISH 



-^ Wlicreunto is prefixed a difcourfe de- 



m 



njj^claring notooly the lawfullnes, bucairop3v2i 

^O' the neccflity of the heavenly Ordinance ^fc?| 

^^f -^ of fingiDg scripture P/almcs in \*^X^ { 

>m thcChurchesof Whj 



This is a sad and 
also an erroneous 
beginning ; for the 
simple fact is that the 
Bay Psalm Book was 
never intended as po- 
etry, as the translators 
tell us plainly in their 
preface. The book is 
a mere curiosity, and 
we would ignore it 
here were it not for 
the fact that it has 
been so often quoted 
''as a pitiful indica- 
tion of the literary 
poverty of the days 
and the land in which 
it was popular." ^ 

1 This was the first book 
in English printed in this 
country. It was prepared by 
Richard Mather, John EHot 
and several other learned 
ministers, and published by 
Stephen Daye, who in 1639 
set up the first EngHsh press 
at Cambridge. 

To the Franciscan monk, 
Juan de Zumarra, the first 
" Bishop of Mexico," whose vast diocese included a large section of the present United 
States, belongs the honor of introducing printing to America. The first book printed in 
the New World was probably a translation from Latin into Spanish of The Sptritical 
Ladder^ by St. John Climacus, in 1535. 

2 See, for instance, Richardson, American Literature^ II, 3-4, 6-7. 



\^^ O//. in. 

■*Qj;jJ Let'-ih'etPordofCoddweSflentedufijiH Qffl 
\~\<y' you^inalltvifdomeyteMhingandexhort'. r^[\ 
'(? \ ^.» i»g one another in ^falmes^ Himntt^ and nW^ 
ar^.Cd Q)iritttall^on^s^f»gingtothe Lordwitb o^f^i 

r?iL' JfAtijhMfflictrd,lethimprAy\andif '^^^ 
> l(% any be merry let hint prtiffttimes, 

'»i*^^ Imprinted 





TITLE-PAGE OF THE BAY PSALM BOOK 



THE COLONIAL PERIOD 



45 



To understand this old relic, we must remember that the 
Colonists were a singing people, who used music in all their 



Bay Psalm 
Book 



social gath- 
erings. In 



^ue^amgratca 



their religious services 
they considered the 
wonderful poetry of 
the psalms most suit- 
able for musical ex- 
pression ; and the first 
limitation placed on 
Richard Mather and 
his associates was that 
the Book of Psalms 
must be paraphrased 
in the meter of a few 
familiar tunes. The 
second limitation was 
even stricter. They 
were dealing with what 
they believed to be 
the Word of God, and 
their translation must from doctrina Christiana, printed in 
give faithful account mexico city by juan pablos in i544 

of everv letter and ^^^ ^^^^ book printed in America that contained cuts 
■^ _ _ to illustrate the text 

accent, as a cashier is 

answerable for every penny that passes through his hands. Here 

is an average specimen of the result : 

The earth Jehova's is 

and the fullness of it : 
The habitable world and they 

that thereupon doe sit. 

It needs no greater critic than Touchstone to tell us that this is 
not poetry ; but it can be smoothly sung to some grand old 
short-meter tunes, and it is a marvelously literal rendering of 




plena Dommuetec0f 



46 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

the Hebrew original — which was all that was desired or hoped 
for. We have perhaps forgotten that Bacon, of great literary 
renown, made a wretched failure when he attempted to put the 
psalms into English poetry ; that the Colonists attempted a new 
metrical translation simply because English poets had failed in 
the same task ; and that the makers of the Bay Psalm Book 
produced much better verses in Greek, Latin and English when 
they were free to follow their own invention. 

Characteristics of Colonial Poetry. The first thing to strike 
the sympathetic reader is that these stern, practical settlers had 
a great hunger for poetry, a longing for ideal expression which 
suggests the man who cannot sing but whose feelings are deeply 
stirred when listening to a hymn by many voices. Practically 
all our Colonial writers felt the lyric impulse, and brightened 
their dull pages with poetiy. That their verse is of poor quality 
may possibly arise from the fact that their thought was too 
high, their feeling too deep for poetic expression. God, freedom, 
duty, justice, immortality — these were the ideals of the Colo- 
nists ; and in all history we meet only two poets, Dante and 
Milton, who were fitted to express them. That the Colonists 
realized their limitation is often suggested, and is clearly 
expressed in a pathetic elegy by Urian Oakes, in 1667 : 

Reader, I am no poet ; but I grieve. 
Behold here what that passion can do 
That forced a verse without Appolo's leave, 
And whether the learned Sisters would or no. 

A second characteristic — indicating that most of the settlers 
regarded themselves as Englishmen, and their writing as a part 
of English letters — is that our early poets all copy the pre- 
vailing fashion in England. Mrs. l^radstreet at first imitates 
Donne, Herbert and other '' metaphysical " poets, whose influ- 
ence dominated English literature in 1650. Richard Rich's 
News from Vh'ginia ( 1 6 1 o) is written in a popular English 
ballad style ; Benjamin Thompson's New England's Crisis 
(1675), an epic of Indian warfare, is modeled on the Barons 



THE COLONIAL PERIOD 47 

Wars of Drayton ; and Godfrey, most versatile of our early 
poets, copies in succession Chaucer, Spenser and Shakespeare. 
With the exception of Wigglesworth's Daj of Doom, therefore, 
we shall find little that is original or distinctively American in 
Colonial poetry. 

Less important, but still significant, is the classic tendency 
of our early poetry, suggesting that high regard for scholarship 
which is such a striking feature of the crude American settle- 
ments. The first poems written here (162 1) were some excellent 
metrical translations of the poet Ovid, by George Sandys of 
Virginia. The first verses of our native scholars were in Greek 
or Latin ; and judging their work by the specimens preserved 
in Mather's Magnalia, it was of excellent quality, comparing 
favorably with that of foreign universities of the same period. 
We may deplore this tendency of our first scholars ; but it pro- 
ceeded from a noble ideal of the early church, that literature, 
like religion, is of universal interest and must be preserved in 
a universal language. 

Anne Dudley Bradstreet (161 2-1672) 

In 1650, when the Colonies were still in their infancy, there 
appeared in London an American book of poems with the 
following title : 

'' The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung up in America : or Several Poems, 
Compiled with Great Variety of Wit and learning, full of Delight, Wherein 
Especially is Contained a Complete Discourse and Description of the Four 
Elements, Constitutions and Ages of Man, Seasons of the Year ; Together 
with an Exact Epitome of the Four Monarchies, viz., the Assyrian, Persian, 
Grecian, Roman ; also a Dialogue between Old England and New Concern- 
ing the Late Troubles ; with Divers Other Pleasant and Serious Poems. 
By a Gentlewoman in those parts." ^ 

The Tenth Muse thus blazoned was Mrs. Anne Bradstreet, who 
is remarkable in three ways : as the author of our first book of 

1 This flattering title was not chosen by Mrs. Bradstreet, but by the London publisher, 
who was amazed that such poems could be written in the wilds of America. 



48 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

poems, as the most extravagantly praised writer of Colonial 
times, and as the first literary woman to win a reputation among 
her American and English contemporaries. 

Life. The author was a cultivated Puritan girl, daughter of Thomas 
Dudley, Governor of the Bay Colony. At sixteen she had married 
Simon Bradstreet, joined the company of wealthy Puritans who settled 
Boston, and from the refinement and comfort of her English home 
was suddenly transplanted to a cabin in the wilderness. Instead of 
the quiet English fields, she looked upon a rude clearing where corn 
sprouted amid the smoking stumps. Instead of the peaceful sounds 
that soothe all the senses in an English twilight, she heard the uncanny 
hooting of owls, the wail of the whippoorwill, the terrifying clamor of 
the wolf pack in the darkening woods. No wonder her sensitive nature 
rebelled at the change. Like Spenser in Ireland, she regarded herself 
as an exile, and like him she rose triumphant over her surroundings. 
" After I was convinced it was the way of God, I submitted to it," 
she tells us in one of her prose sketches. 

In 1644 this frail exile held loyally at her husband's side as he 
pushed deeper into the wilderness. In the northern part of Andover, 
near the Merrimac, they made their pitch on a picturesque hillside, 
which is still known as the Bradstreet farm. Here she wrote her poems ; 
but though she was the first American to win a literary reputation, we 
can hardly think of her as a literary woman. She had eight children 
to care for, and her writing was done in brief intervals of rest from 
the day's labor. So we are reminded of another woman who, in the 
same town, amid the same ceaseless household cares, finished Uncle 
Tom's Cabi7i, a book which moved the whole civilized world, some two 
centuries later. 

Our First Book of Poems. It is a curiosity of Mrs. Bradstreet's 
first book that it contains hardly a suggestion of that early 
American life which now seems so romantic. In her pioneer 
experiences there was abundant material for epic and lyric 
poetry ; but she never wrote them. The first touch of her pen 
sent her mind back to England on a holiday, and she simply 
copied what she had read there. So fully is she occupied with 
her English models that she does not see the wonderful nature 
about her, and writes of larks and nightingales instead of our" 



THE COLONIAL PERIOD 49 

familiar thrushes and bobohnks. Even in ''A Love Letter " 
she speaks not by the heart but by the book : 

Phoebus make haste ; the day 's too long ; begone ! 
The silent night 's the fittest time for moan ; 
But stay this once, unto my suit give ear, 
And tell my griefs in either hemisphere. 

Strange Hnes these from a woman who has just milked the cow 
and dropped the oaken door bar to protect the stock from wolves 
and Indians ; but they are found by hundreds in Mrs. Bradstreet's 
poems. Curiously enough, the only reflection of real life in our 
first volume of poetry touches the question of woman's rights. 
After describing the glories of Queen Elizabeth, she takes this 
sly shot at man's superior wisdom : 

Now say, have women worth, or have they none ? 
Or had they some, but with our Queen is 't gone ? 
Nay, masculines, you have thus taxed us long ; 
But she, though dead, will vindicate our wrong. 
Let such as say our sex is void of reason. 
Know 't is a slander now, but once was treason. 

In her later work our poet is plainly an American woman 
rather than an English exile. The Andover farm is now a home. 
Nature, at first wild and stern, grows intimate and kind ; and 
our poet is less dependent on a library for inspiration. Her verse 
in consequence becomes more simple, more true ; and though 
we may not call it excellent, we are interested in it as an early 
attempt to reflect life and human emotion in poetry. In the 
following lines from '' Contemplation " the reader may note three 
significant things : that the thought and feeling are natural ; that 
the flow of the verse suggests the melody of Spenser ; and that 
we look not upon a foreign but upon the dear, familiar landscape 
of our own country : 

I heard the merry grasshopper then sing. 

The black-clad cricket bear a second part. 
They kept one tune, and played on the same string. 

Seeming to glory in their little art. 



50 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Shall creatures abject thus their voices raise, 
And in their kind resound their Maker's praise : 
Whilst I, as mute, can warble forth no higher lays? 

Under the cooling shadow of a stately elm, 

Close sat I by a goodly river's side, 
Where gliding streams the rocks did overwhelm ; 

A lonely place, with pleasures dignified. 
I once that loved the shady woods so well, 
Now thought the rivers did the trees excel. 
And if the sun would ever shine, there would I dwell. 



Michael Wigglesworth (1631-1705) 

The first and probably the greatest '' sensation " in American 
literature appeared, not yesterday in a popular novel, but two 
and a half centuries ago, when Wigglesworth published his 
Daj/ of Doom (1662), a gloomy and terrible picture of the Last 
Judgment. Unlike the modern sensation, it had real power ; it 
first startled attention and then held it firmly, and for nearly a 
century was the most widely read secular book in America. This 
in itself is warrant for us to examine it a little more closely than 
is commonly done. 

Who was Wigglesworth ? The author of the poem, Michael Wiggles- 
worth, was minister of the church in Maiden, Massachusetts. In a 
funeral sermon, Cotton Mather calls him " a feeble little shadow of a 
man " ; but this is one of Mather's queer compliments. It minimizes 
the weak body to magnify the soul, which was mighty, and the imagi- 
nation, which was tremendous. Wigglesworth was a lifelong sufferer 
from disease, and his own pain led him to study medicine, that he 
might relieve the pains of others. For years he was minister and 
physician to the frontier town ; and in the mortal sins and sufferings 
of humanity his imagination saw only a forecast of eternal retribu- 
tion — just as his English contemporary Bunyan brooded over future 
torments amid the flame and smoke of his tinker's forge. Occupied 
with the glory of the Lord, Wigglesworth was blind to the glory 
of his fellow men. For him earth had lost all its beauty when Adam 
wandered out of Paradise ; it was an evil place, to be run through 




;"**^S-i'Sr;- -S-i.. 



is 



The DAY of 



1 







OR, 

A Poetical Defcription of tlie 
Great and Laft 







With a ^ort Difcourf e abou t 

ETERNITY 



By Michael Wiggle fro or th^ A- M. Teach- 
er of the Church at Maldon in N* £. 



■■v^\ 



The Sixth Edition^ Enlarged with 
Scripture and Marginal Notes. 



'/ 



So 



Acfls 17. 31. Becanfc he hj.th unpointed t />^y ^'n th? 
! w/jfc^ /?<? rjiu y/d^;e th: V/orll in. Khhtc'ovfi'fi t bxj 
\ that Man -vhom hi' kith n,'d.iined,-"- , 

.■24.30. c/^.-ii r,^n j7).',:i ,t?pf-.tr- f!^e ^ifr. af ihe'\ 
^o.i 0/" Man in Htfuv;??, cni f^t-R /^<;/i cU f:: Tribes { , 
of the E.irthJ^iju,n, .ml thcy jt:a.U fiC th.- ,'^011 of iVlj,?* j^.f 
<;C'fning In t--\- Clonde of Hf.tvt«> veitb ^Ct^if arfld grc.it. f 

Bofion^ Printed by J. Allen-) 'tor N. Boo^ 
. ! at the Sign of the Bible in Cornhlll J 7^5-^ 

TITLE-PAUE OF THE DAY OF DOOM 
By Michael Wigglesworth, 17 15 



BOSTON UNIVERSITY '■'^ 
ff^^GE OF LI2ERAL ARTS 



^ 



THE COLONIAL PERIOD 5 1 

quickly in order to get to heaven. We may infer his idea of life from 
the curt leave which he took of it : 

Now farewell, world, in which is not my treasure ; 
I have in thee enjoyed but little pleasure. 

In short, Wigglesworth was a man doubly acquainted with suffering. 
He saw no good in this life, no hope save for a chosen few in the 
future ; and he let a powerful but morbid imagination play about one 
of the most powerful and morbid theological systems that have influ- 
enced humanity. Here is the secret of the man and his book. 

The Day of Doom. Wigglesworth's chief work is generally 
regarded as a mere literary curiosity ; but there is, perhaps, a 
deeper meaning to be read in it. Our first criticism is reflected 
in a smile, for this terrible poem, dealing with stupendous themes, 
is set to a measure that suggests jigging or whistling : 

With iron bands they bind their hands, 

and cursed feet together. 
And cast them all, both great and small, 

into that Lake for ever ; 
Where day and night, without respite, 

they wail, and cry, and howl 
For tort'ring pain which they sustain 

in body and in Soul. 

It is obviously impossible to be impressed by anything that runs 
to the tune of '' Yankee Doodle," and our first experience of the 
Day of Doom is like that of our first jack-o'-lantern — a fright- 
ful, demoniac face gleaming out of the darkness, which upon 
brave examination turns out to be a candle in a hollow pumpkin. 
So the poem seems ludicrous to us now ; but two centuries ago 
it was very different, as were comets and other misunderstood 
things. Here was a theme with which all men and children 
were familiar. It had been drilled into them with their first 
reading lessons, in the New Eiiglmid Primer. They had heard 
it expounded in many a dreary sermon. They had brooded and 
trembled over it in the silence of the night. And suddenly, like 
a gorgeous moth out of an old gray cocoon, it appeared in new 
form, vivid, picturesque, and in a lively meter that set itself in 



52 



AMERICAN LITERATURE 



the memory. It was this unusual combination of matter and 
manner, of a mournful theme and a jocund measure, that largely 
accounted for the popularity of the poem. 

Our next impression is that, under the jigging lines and 
merciless theology of the Day of Doom, the soul of a poet is 



■y"" O'^^TU ^^11 ir-i^Oj~in 



V 



JLiif^i^4^ri(4< 



PRIMER: 

Enlarged. 

For the more eafy attainliig^ 
"thetrueReadingol'EiTGLiSM 

To which is added^ 
^The Aflembly of Divines 

^CATECHISM:. 




B STO N! Vx\mt^hySKni€Und,^x 



jr.Grce;7,Sold by the Booicfellers. 1717 ^i^^ 



TITLE-PAGE OF THE NEJV ENGLAND PRIMER 

struggling blindly for expression. We have not quoted the most 
familiar and ferocious stanzas, because our repugnance at the 
ideas expressed prevents a just appreciation of the power of 
their expression ; but one who can lay aside his prejudice finds 
many a fine line to suggest that, had Wigglesworth lived in 



THE COLONIAL PERIOD 53 

a different environment, he might well have created a noble and 
enduring work. For he had the genius of an epic poet. His 
power is evident from the fact that he revived an old theme and 
made it live for a full century. Since the Miracle plays, which in- 
variably ended with Domesday, many poets have written of the 
Last Judgment, and none of them compares in vigor or imagina- 
tive power with this " little feeble shadow of a man " in Maiden. 
Another characteristic of this poem is that it reflects the 
sternly logical trait which once dominated our politics as well 
Essence of ^s our theology, and which is reflected as strongly in 
Calvinism Adams or Calhoun as in Wigglesworth or Edwards. 
All these men disregard emotions, start with an accepted premise, 
and drive straight to a conclusion. In the Day of Doom, God is 
simply a judge who must interpret a law without pity or favor. 
He is not Father, or Creator, but simply Logic. All classes of 
men appear before him, and each makes argument based upon 

the proposition that 

^ ^ In Adam's fall 

We sinned all, 

which was the first sentence of the Primer in which Colonial 
children learned to read. The Judge refutes their claims by 
more logical arguments, and away they go to torment. Here is 
the nub of the whole poem. It confuses the true and the merely 
logical, forgetting that, if there be an error in the premise, every 
logical step leads farther away from the truth. The Day of Doom 
is, therefore, an epitome of the apparent strength and essential 
weakness of that mighty theological system which dominated a 
large part of our country in the early days. It shows the effect 
of such a system on a poet's imagination, just as The Freedom 
of the Will illustrates its influence on the human intellect. 

Thomas Godfrey (i 736-1 763) 

If one's sympathy is touched at the sight of Wigglesworth, 
shackled by a terrible theology, one's whole heart must go 
out to Thomas Godfrey, a poet by instinct, whose youth was 



54 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

compassed with difficulties, and who died, Uke Keats, just as 
his powers reached maturity. He is one of the poets whom we 
measure not by his achievement but by his unfulfilled promise. 

Biographical Outline. Godfrey was the son of a poor Philadelphia 
glazier and mathematician, whom we meet occasionally in Franklin's 
Autobiography. His early education was of the most primitive kind : 
and at thirteen, being left an orphan, he was " bound out " as an 
apprentice to learn the watchmaker's trade. For eight years he en- 
dured and hated this slavery, not because it made him work, but 
because it prevented him from following his poetic genius. At twenty- 
one he enlisted as a soldier in the French and Indian War, and served 
as a lieutenant under Washington. A few years later we find him, 
still wandering and unsatisfied, in North Carolina. Here, in intervals 
of hard labor, he wrote his Prince of Parthia., probably the first dra- 
matic work printed on American soil ; and here he died, with all his 
soul's ambition unfulfilled, in 1763. He had contributed many verses 
to the American Magazine,^ and these were collected and published 
by his friend and fellow poet, Nathaniel Evans. 

Works. The slender volume C3\\Q^dJuve7tille Poems ^ with The 
Piince of Pai'thia, a Tragedy (1765), contains all of Godfrey's 
work. Judged simply as poetry, in comparison with the works 
of English masters, these verses are crude and immature ; but 
the student has other reasons for being interested in them. The 
very titles suggest that a new spirit has entered American litera- 
ture. Here are odes, love songs, pastorals — very different, 
truly, from the gloomy fancies of Wigglesworth. One feels as 
if he had opened by mistake an English book of the early 
Elizabethan period. Here is ''The Court of Fancy," evidently 
borrowed from Chaucer's '' House of Fame " ; but the man who 
suggests Chaucer has at least entered the realm of good poetry. 
And here is "The Wish," which is interesting because Oliver 
Wendell Holmes may have borrowed or parodied it : ^ 

1 The first magazines in this country appeared in Philadelphia. These were the 
General Magazine^ published by Franklin (1741), and the Ame7-ican Magazine, pub- 
lished by John Webbe, a few years later. 

2 Compare Godfrey's whole poem with Holmes, " A Modest Wish." 



THE COLONIAL PERIOD 55 

I only ask a moderate fate, 

And, though not in obscurity, 
I would not, yet, be placed too high ; 

Between the two extremes I 'd be, 
Not meanly low, nor yet too great, 

From both contempt and envy free. 

The Prince of Parthia is Godfrey's last work, and in reading 
it the student will feel most regret at the author's untimely death. 
For, considering all the circumstances, it is a remarkable dra- 
matic poem. The plot is admirably constructed ; the action is 
vigorous ; the characters are well drawn and consistent ; the in- 
terest advances steadily to the climax ; and throughout the drama 
there are many suggestions of genuine poetry. It is written in 
blank verse, *' Marlowe's mighty line," and is thoroughly Eliza- 
bethan in spirit. Note, in the first act, these men who plot treason 
in a setting of storm and darkness : 

Vardanes . Heavens ! what a night is this ! 

Lysias. 'T is filled with terror, 

Some dred event beneath this horror lurks. 
Ordained by fate's irrevocable doom, — 
Perhaps Arsaces' fall ; and angry heaven 
Speaks it in thunder to the trembling world. 

Varda7ies. Terror indeed ! It seems as sickening Nature 
Had given her order up to general ruin : 
The heavens appear as one continued flame ; 
Earth with her terror shakes ; dim night retires. 
And the red lightning gives a dreadful day. 
While in the thunder's voice each sound is lost. 
Fear sinks the panting heart in every bosom ; 
E'en the pale dead, affrighted at the horror. 
As though unsafe, start from their marble jails, 
And howling through the streets are seeking shelter. 

Why rage the elements ? They are not cursed 
Like me ! Evanthe frowns not angry on them ; 
The wind may play upon her beauteous bosom, 
Nor fear her chiding ; light can bless her sense, 
And in the floating mirror she beholds 
Those beauties which can fetter all mankind. 



56 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Lysias. My lord, forget her ; tear her from your breast. 
Who, like the Phoenix, gazes on the sun, 
And strives to soar up to the glorious blaze. 
Should never leave ambition's brightest object. 
To turn and view the beauties of a flower. 

Vardanes. O Lysias, chide no more, for I have done. 
Yes, I '11 forget the proud disdainful beauty ; 
Hence with vain love. Ambition, now, alone 
Shall guide my actions. Since mankind delights 
To give me pain, I '11 study mischief too. 
And shake the earth, e'en like this raging tempest. 

Lysias. Then, haste to raise the tempest. 
My soul disdains this one eternal round, 
Where each succeeding day is like the former. 
Trust me, my noble prince, here is a heart 
Steady and firm to all your purposes ; 
And here 's a hand that knows to execute 
Whate'er designs thy daring breast can form, 
Nor ever shake with fear.-"- 

Significance of Godfrey's Work. The publication of Godfrey's 
poems (1765) at the end of the Colonial period marks an epoch 
in the history of American letters. Our earliest writers were all 
men of affairs ; they used literature as a means to an end — to 
record historic events, to teach moral and religious lessons. 
Godfrey regards literature not as a means but as a most desirable 
end in itself. He seeks beauty alone, and proceeds on the 
assumption of Emerson's '' Rhodora," that ''beauty is its own 
excuse for being." His little book suggests, therefore, that our 
writers had at last freed themselves from the Puritan's chief 
concern in otherworldliness, and it marks the definite beginning 
of artistic literature in America.^ 

1 The bombast of some of these lines suggests the influence of Marlowe ; a few 
others are plainly copied from Shakespeare. 

2 In the broadest sense, our literature includes all the written records of the nation ; 
in the strict sense, only those books which may be considered as works of art properly 
belong to literature. Definition is difficult, but we may fairly sum up the subject by say- 
ing : all art is the expression of life in forms of truth and beauty ; and literature is the 
particular art which expresses life in words that appeal to our own sense of the true and 
the beautiful.. 



THE COLONIAL PERIOD 



57 



IV. THEOLOGICAL WRITERS 

From the many writers who reflect the dominant rehgious 
interest of Colonial life we select only Cotton Mather and 
Jonathan Edwards. These were giants in their own generation, 
and they are still, in widely different ways, the two most remark- 
able men in the whole history of our literature. 






CoTTON Mather (1663-1728) 

Over the door of his study Cotton Mather wrote, ''Be short," 
which is the only unadorned sentence we have found in all his 
writings. This was for 

other people, lest they r.'; . l.-.^ 

should waste his pre- 
cious time and obscure 
another motto which he 
had written on his heart, 
" Be fruitful." And a 
more fruitful man after 
his kind was never seen. 
He published some four 
hundred works, and left 
thousands of pages of 
manuscript, including a 
treatise on medicine and 
a huge commentary on 
the Scriptures, which 
are still waiting for a 
publisher. He was an 
extraordinary genius, 
whom to judge is ex- 
ceeding difficult, partly because his works and ways are often 
contradictor}^, partly because many of his biographers, in their 
eagerness to prove him a saint or a fanatic, have failed to make 
an impartial study of their subject. From desultory reading one 







\ 



^ 



COTTON MATHER 



58 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

is apt to get the impression that Mather was an intolerant 
dogmatist, and a monster in the matter of the Salem witches ; 
so we begin our story by recording two unnoticed details : that he 
went fishing in Spy Pond and fell out of the boat ; and that 
whenever he visited a school he used his great influence to get 
the girls and boys a half holiday. These trifles suggest that 
Mather was at least quite human. Moreover, he wrote the first 
book of American heroes, made the first conscious appeal to 
American patriotism ; and that is no trifle, but a thing to honor 
and to remember. 

Life. Cotton Mather marks at once the splendor and decline of 
the '' Mather Dynasty " ^ in Boston. He was a precocious child, who 
began at five years to display the wonderful memory of a Macaulay 
and the intellectual curiosity of a Gladstone. At twelve he entered 
Harvard, having an amazing acquaintance with Greek and Latin 
authors ; at eighteen he had literally " compassed the whole field of 
human knowledge " ; at twenty he was minister of the Old North 
Church, and towered head and shoulders above all his learned 
contemporaries. 

For the next half century Mather's '' fruitfulness " almost passes 
the bounds of belief. In an average year he would produce a score 
of books and pamphlets ; write and deliver some two hundred ser- 
mons and lectures ; keep up an onormous correspondence with great 
men in foreign countries ; be incessantly active in politics, and attend 
faithfully to the thousand small duties of a large parish. He was a 
leader in all philanthropic work, in temperance reform, in forming the 
earliest Young People's Society of Christian Workers, in ransoming 
prisoners from Canada, in establishing schools for the education of 
negroes, in sending missionaries to the heathen. And with all this, he 
gave many hours each day to private devotion ; he studied and read 

1 Our first Mather, Richard, a learned Puritan from England, became a man of light 
and leading in the Bay Colony. His son, Increase Mather, was for sixty years minister 
of the Old North Church, the largest in the country, at a time when the church was the 
center of Colonial life. He was, moreover, president of Harvard for sixteen years, and 
a trusted agent of the Colonies in England. Our present hero was the son of Increase 
Mather. We shall understand him better if we remember that he and his father opposed 
the growing freedom of the churches and the liberal teaching of the colleges. Because 
of their opposition, Increase was ousted from the presidency of Harvard, and Cotton 
Mather never won it, thus failing in his dearest ambitiou 



THE COLONIAL PERIOD 59 

prodigiously ; he kept innumerable fasts, vigils and thanksgivings. 
One can only wonder how human nerves could stand such a strain 
for fifty years, and repeat with that heroic Jesuit, Bressani, who sur- 
vived all manner of tortures among the Iroquois, '" I could never have 
believed it was so hard to kill a man." 

As we study Mather in the midst of his excellent activities, our 
feelings shift from one extreme to the other ; for we are dealing with 
a man of contradictions, who fasts in secret like an ancient saint, and 
plays to the gallery like a modern politician. His course at the witch- 
craft trials was bitterly scored by his enemies, and critics ever since 
have cried fanaticism, as if it were the only part he played in the 
tragedy. Yet he was probably the only man in the country, or in the 
world, who made a scientific study of the alleged witches, taking some 
of the poor creatures to his own home, watching over them, record- 
ing their symptoms. And by strengthening their weak wills, by keep- 
ing them in a cheerful, hopeful atmosphere, he effectually cured some 
that else had been surely hanged. Moreover, in connection with 
twelve other ministers, he urged the judges to exercise compassion, 
and submitted rules of evidence, which if followed would have saved 
every witch from death. From one point of view he is a mere wonder- 
hunter, as credulous as a Hottentot ; from another he is a scientist, 
upholding some theory far in advance of his age, or laying the founda- 
tions for what is now known as organized charity. So, though he 
loved applause as a miser loves gold, he flung popularity to the dogs 
when he urged inoculation against the regular scourge of smallpox ; 
and this at a time when magistrates, people and almost every doctor 
in the Colonies were crying out against inoculation as the work of 
the devil. 

In his inner life, also, Mather is still a puzzle. He is ascetic, 
spending whole days and nights fasting in his study, '' knocking at 
the door of Heaven." There, he tells us, he is " irradiated with 
celestial and angelic influences, . . . rewarded from Heaven with 
communications that cannot be uttered." Yet he is as fond as 
another man of the good things of life, and commends this saying of 
Alphonsus : ''Among so many things as are by men possessed or 
pursued, all the rest are bubbles beside these : old wood to burn, old 
wine to drink, old friends to converse with, and old books to read." 
Like Macaulay, he loves society, is cheerful and animated in public, 
attracting attention, charming everybody by his brilliant conversation. 
Yet he is a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. The churches 



6o 



AMERICAN LITERATURE 



grow liberal, ignoring all his efforts to bind them ; he fights a losing 
battle alone ; he is thwarted in his dearest ambition, to become presi- 
dent of Harvard ; his third wife is a terrible trial ; his children die 
one by one ; his dearest son Increase, the pride and joy of Cotton 




HiiyiiiiFi-lmiL 






''■W.\ SI Is ti 




i^ SiL U .i! 




HARVARD COLLEGE L\ 1726 



Mather's heart, is a reprobate. And this is the deepest sorrow, save 
one, that a man is ever called upon to bear. A cry as of mortal 
anguish breaks from his lips : 

" Ah, my son Increase ! My son, my son ! My heart is water and my 
eyes are a fountain of tears. . . . Oh, my God, I am oppressed; under- 
take for me." 

Here, one would think, is a winepress that Mather must tread 
alone. Next day he is out with a published sermon, parading in public 
the grief which another man hides deep in his soul, though it burn 
like coals of fire. 

So, wherever we attempt to touch the real Cotton Mather, we are 
met and baffled by a contradiction, a jumble of piety and vanity, of 
wisdom and foolishness. One cannot judge such a man. We record 
simply that his last word was a paradox, like himself ; that on his 
deathbed he cried out, " My last enemy is come ; I would say, my 
best friend.'' A few hours later his contemporaries were saying that 
" the principal ornament of this country and the greatest scholar that 
ever was bred in it " had passed away. 



THE COLONIAL PERIOD 6 1 

Works of Cotton Mather. We merely suggest the variety of 
blather's work when we say that for half a lifetime, of which the 
year 1 700 is a dividing point, he was clerk, bellman and news- 
paper for a Colonial city, giving expression to all its thoughts 
and emotions. No matter what the event, nothing was complete 
till Mather, like an echo, had repeated it. In consequence, his 
pamphlets and sermons furnish a kind of history and detailed 
commentary of his age and neighborhood. One would suppose 
that an earthquake, which shook down houses and tumbled 
people out of their beds, might of itself make a reasonably strong 
impression ; but no, the echo is the main thing. Hardly has the 
last rumble died away before the press begins to labor with 
Mather's Boanerges, an Essay to StrengtJien tJie Impression 
Prodnced by Earthquakes. This attempt to paint the lily, or 
put an extra terror on earth's convulsion, is typical of our author. 
Are witches abroad .? Does a comet flame in the heavens 1 Is 
there rumor of a monstrous snake on Newbury marshes t Hard 
on the heels of the event. 

Cotton Mather came galloping down 

All the way to Newbury town, 

With his eyes agog and his ears set wide, 

And his marvelous inkhorn at his side ; 

Stirring the while in the shallow pool 

Of his brains for the lore he learned at school, 

To garnish the story, with here a streak 

Of Latin, and there another of Greek : 

And the tales he heard and the notes he took, 

Behold ! are they not in his Wonder-Book ? ^ 

We shall not weary the reader with even a list of the books 
that flowed from the pen of this ready writer. One of the most 
practical is Boiiifacins (17 10), sometimes called Essays to Do 
Good^ which influenced the life of Franklin. Other significant 
works are Parentator, a biography of his father, written in 

1 From Whittier, " Double-Headed Snake of Newbury." 

2 The title runs, " Bonifacius, an Essay upon the Good that is to be Devised and 
Designed by Those who Desire to Answer the Great End of Life." 



62 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

pedantic style, but illumined by a lovely filial spirit ; Memorable 
Providejices Relating to IVitcho-aft, which established Mather's 
reputation as an authority in the uncanny subject, and Wojiders 
of the Invisible World, consisting largely of the history of the 
Salem witches. 

That this last work should be often reprinted and become the 
measure of Mather's mind seems to us little less than scandalous. 
For it is one of the least of his productions, and it has 
given readers a sadly distorted idea of Colonial life. Even 
our historians, misled by this work, still refer to witchcraft as a Puri- 
tan delusion which flourished chiefly in New England. As a matter 
of fact, witchcraft flourished for ages before the Puritans were heard 
of ; and our Colonists were the first people in all the world to recog- 
nize the delusion, and to treat it as they treated wolves and rattle- 
snakes. When America was settled, belief in witchcraft was so 
general in Europe that no man dared openly deny it ; witches were 
racked, burned and tortured by thousands ; and the detection of 
witchcraft, with its following " kill or cure," was a regular profession. 
Yet it was denounced and opposed in New England from the begin- 
ning. Like many another noxious germ, witchcraft was brought over 
and widely planted in America, where the dark forests, the scream- 
ing of unknown beasts at night, the hideously painted savages, — 
everything external favored the increase of the superstition. And it 
speaks volumes for the character of our first settlers that this horrible 
fungus, which flourished all over civilized Europe, found root here in 
only one spot, — a soil made ready by numerous descendants of some 
feeble-minded immigrants, who were brought here for the profit of 
the early transportation companies.^ There it grew weakly for a brief 
period, and was then rooted out and destroyed. Here, in a nutshell, 
is the real meaning of the Salem witchcraft.^ 

1 Long after witchcraft was stamped out, W'illiam Douglass, a physician, character- 
ized the Salem district in his day as " a place where hypochondriac, hysteric and other 
maniac disorders prevaile." Douglass was the author of a racy work called A Summary 
Historical and Political, of the . . . B?-itisli Settlements in North Ajnerica (i 747-1 751). 

2 It is significant that American historians make a mighty ado over the nineteen 
witches of Salem, while European nations are silent over the thousands they have slain. 
In the little city of Treves alone, over 7000 witches were put to death ; and the number 
killed in European countries is estimated at 300,000. Moreover the torture, burning 
and unspeakable barbarism of European trials were all sternly suppressed at Salem. 
And though our writers still speak of the " burning of witches," there was never a witch 
burned in New England. 



THE COLONIAL PERIOD 63 

The Magnalia. The reader will do well to skip all minor 
w"orks, except Bonifacuis^ and begin with Magnalia Christi 
Americana, or TJie Ecclesiastical History of Nezv England 
(1702). This is the heroic work over which Mather labors, fasts 
and prays for nine years, like Fra Angelico on his knees paint- 
ing the glorious face of Madonna. It is a strange book. Like 
the Anatomy of Melancholy and Sartor Resartiis, it cannot be 
classified, since there is nothing like it in all literature. 

Book I. Antiquities. It reports the design whereon, the manner where- 
in, and the people whereby the several colonies of New England were 
planted. 

Book II. Ecclesiaruvt Clypei. It contains the lives of the governors 
and magistrates that have been shields unto the churches. 

Book III. Polybii(s. It contains the lives of many divines by whose 
ministry the churches have been illuminated. 

Book IV. Sal Gentium. It contains an account of the New-English 
University [Harvard] and the lives of some eminent persons therein 
educated. 

Book V. SyTiodictim Americantun^ Acts and Monuments. It contains 
the faith and order in the churches. 

Book VI. Thaicmatuj'gus . It contains many illustrious discoveries and 
demonstrations of Divine Providence in remarkable mercies and judgments. 

Book VII. Ecclesiarimt Prcetia, or A Book of the Wars of the Lord. 
It contains the afflictive disturbances which the churches of New England 
have suffered from their various adversaries. 

One who reviews these books — for few ever read the 
Mag7ialia systematically — gets the impression that he is 
wandering through a museum. Here are odds and ends gleaned 
from all the fields of human knowledge ; quotations from a 
thousand works ; allusions to a hundred unknown authors ; 
mottoes, puns, witticisms, biography, poetry, moral lessons 
from Latin, Greek and Hebrew worthies. In a single paragraph, 
relating to some local event, Mather introduces a story from 
Suidas, a quotation from Gregory Nazianzen, and a motto from 
Rabbi Kimchi. In a single book we have taled nearly a thousand 
good mottoes, anecdotes and quotations. While this literary 
shower falls upon us, Mather talks incessantly, like a guide in 



64 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

a picture gallery. He has a marvelously stored memory, an elfish 
imagination, and he loves the queer, the fantastic, the unexpected. 
Every subject he touches is like a famous nursery pie ; no sooner 
does he open it than out come four-and-twenty blackbirds and 
straight begin to sing. 

This is the first impression, from the first book of the 
Magnalia, — the impression of a pedant displaying his extraor- 
Motive of dinary knowledge ; and the majority of historians end 
the Magnalia here, more 's the pity. For this big book, with all its 
hotchpotch, is illumined by a great purpose. The monks of the 
Middle Ages had a motto. Ad majorem glonam dei, which 
explains their own literary work and the loving care with which 
they illumined a missal or a manuscript of the Gospels. Mather, 
who feared and misjudged these monks, worked in the same 
spirit and added a significant word to their noble motto. " For 
the love of my country and the greater glory of God" is written 
across the greater part of the Magnalia} So let us read the 
second book, giving the history of our early magistrates. 

Here one may find that Cotton Mather has the root of the 
matter in him, and anticipates Carlyle in writing history. Accord- 
ing to Carlyle, history is essentially the story of great men who 
have inspired every historical movement. That is Mather's idea 
precisely, and he writes in the same spirit. If we seek for his 
motive in the enormous labor of preparing these biographies, 
we shall find it noble and patriotic. '' Their souls are in Heaven ; 
their names also should be written there," he says of his heroes 
with rare simplicity. And again : 

" I please myself with the hope that there will yet be found among the 
sons of New England those young gentlemen by whom the copies given 
in thi^ history shall be written again, and that saying of old Chaucer be 
remembered: 'To do the gentle deeds, — that makes the gentleman.' " ^ 

1 Critics vary greatly in their estimate of the Magnalia. Thus, Professor Wendell 
{A Literary History of America, p. 48) regards it as "a passfonate controversial tract," 
written to uphold ancient doctrine and to prevent Harvard from becoming liberal. Some 
parts of the Magnalia doubtless support such a theory, but a candid reading of the whole 
work leaves us with a very different impression. 

"^ Mag}talia, I, 108. 



lAagnalia Chrifli Americana : 



OR, THE 



CccleOaairal ^iitoiv 



o F 



NEW-ENGLAND. 



FROM 



Its Firfl: Planting in the Year 1620. unto the Year 
of our LORD, 1598. 



In Seven BOOKS. 



I. Antiquities : In Seven Chapters. With an Appendix. 

II. Containing the Lives of the Governours, and Names of the MagifVrates 
of Ncfp-Er/gland : In Thirteen Chapters. With an Appendix, 

III. The Lives of Sixty Famous Divines, by vvhofe Minidry ^e Churches of 
NevD-En^Iaifd have been Planted and Continued. 

IV. An Account of the Univerfity of Cambridge in New-Englditd; in Two 
Farts. The Firft contains the Laws, the Benefaftors, and Viciffitudes of 
Hdrvard College ; with Rcmarlis upon it. The Second Part contains the Lives 
of fome Eminent Perfons Educated in it. 

V. Afts and Monuments of the Faith and Order in the Churches of Nen-Eng- 
Und, pafled in their Synods, with Hiftorical Remarks upon thofc Venerable 
Aflemblies^ and a great Variety of Church-Cafes occurring, and refolved by 
the Synods of thofc Churches : In Four Parts. 

VI. A Faithful Record of roany lliuftrious. Wonderful Providences, both 
of Mercies and Judgments, on divers Perfons in New-EngUnd : In Eight 
Cha pters. 

VII. The Wars of the Lord. Being an Hiftory of the Manifold AffliSions and 
Difturbances of the Churches in New-EngUnd, from their Various Adverfa- 
ries, and the Wonderful Methods and Mercies of God in their Deliverance : 
In Six Chapters : To which is fubjoined, An Appendix of Remarkable 
Occurrences which New-England had in the Wars with the Indian Salvages, 
from the Year 1688, to the Year 1698. 



By the Reverend and Learned COTTON MATHER, M. A. 
And Paftor of the North Church in Bnjlon, NewEngUnd. 

LONDON: 

Printed for Thomas Parkhurjl, at the Bible and Three 
CroTvnr in Cheap fide. MDCCII. 



TITLE-PAGE OF THE MAG N ALIA 



65 



66 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Such is the real purpose of the Magnalia, to cherish the 
memory of "heroic Americans, and to inspire their descendants 
A Book of to noble living in the service of the Fatherland. 
Patriotism Here in the last word, moreover, is an entirely new 
ideal in our literature. Hitherto America has been only the 
Homeland, and its symbol is the hearth fire, which inspires hope ; 
now it is the Fatherland, and its symbol is the grave, which 
inspires loyalty. The first Colonists regarded England as their 
country. They had no love for America till they laid their heroes 
to rest in its soil ; and even now, when we visit Jamestown or 
Plymouth, it is Burial Hill, not the monument or museum, that 
stirs our deepest emotion. Among primitive people the tomb 
was everywhere the symbol of patriotism, and the deepest humili- 
ation of the Indians, or of any other race with a spark of nobility, 
was to be driven from the graves of their ancestors. Cotton 
Mather was the first to recognize this universal truth, and from 
the graves and the heroism of the fathers to appeal to the loy- 
alty of the sons and daughters. His purpose is written large 
in the second and third books of the Magnalia. They are 
our first books of heroes, our first appeal to American patri- 
otism, and with them every student of our history and litera- 
ture should be familiar. 

After the fourth book Mather turns aside from biography, 
and the design of his history is lost in a maze of insignifi- 
Fantastic cant details. In one book he becomes a theolo- 
Eiements g-^^^ . -^^ another he follows the endless trail of 
the Indian wars ; in a third he is a mere wonder-hunter, re- 
cording miraculous escapes, infamous crimes and the friskiness 
of witches : 

" In the year 1679 the house of William Morse, at Newberry, was in- 
fested with daemons after a most horrid manner, not altogether unlike the 
daemons of Tedworth. Bricks and sticks and stones were often by some 
invisible hand thrown at the house : a cat was thrown at the woman, and a 
long staff danc'd up and down in the chimney ; and when two persons laid 
it on the fire to burn it, 't was as much as they were able with their joint 
strength to hold it there. 



THE COLONIAL PERIOD 67 

" While the man was writing, his inkhorn was by the invisible hand 
snatch'd from him ; and being able no where to find it, he saw it at length 
drop out of the air down by the fire. A shooe was laid upon his shoulder ; 
but when he would have catch'd it, it was rapt from him ; it was then clapt 
upon his head, and there he held it so fast, that the unseen fury pull'd him 
with it backward on the floor. When he was writing another time, a dish 
went and leapt into a pail, and cast water on the man, and on all the con- 
cerns before him. His cap jump'd off his head, and on again ; and the pot 
lid went off the pot into the kettle, then over the fire together. 

'' Once the fist, beating the man, was discernible ; but they could not catch 
hold of it. At length an apparition of a Blackamoor child shew'd itself 
plainly to them. And another time a drumming on the boards was heard, 
which was follow' d with a voice that sang, Revenge I reve?ige / sweet is re- 
venge ! At this the people, being terrify'd, call'd upon God, whereupon 
there follow'd a mournful note, several times uttering these expressions : 
Alas / alas I ive knock 710 more, we knock no more ! and there was an 
end of all." 1 

One who likes such grotesque stuff may find plenty of it in 
Mather ; but to judge the Magnalia by it, as is commonly done, 
is to estimate a medieval cathedral by its imps and gargoyles. 
So let us skip the witches and join the company of heroes : 

Here are Bradford and Winthrop, whose lives are all gentleness and 
service. Here is Phips, the son of a Maine blacksmith, but a prince among 
men, whose life furnishes adventure enough for a dozen Treasure Islands. 
Here is Eliot, that gentle, charitable, heroic soul, of whom it was said, " The 
Colonies could not perish so long as Eliot was alive." He is the scholarly 
minister of the church at Roxbury, but he is first of all a teacher. He 
founds and endows a free school on the principle that '' a country cannot 
fail whose children are educated." As if preaching and teaching were not 
enough, he goes out as a missionary among the Indians ; lives and suffers 
with them, until he recognizes the real man under the grease and war-paint ; 
and the savages love and trust him, as they never trusted a white man 
before or since. He learns their speech, translates the Scriptures into their 
language, gives them their first literature, gathers them into schools and 
churches, and sends the keenest of them to Harvard. He grows too old 
for such active work ; but having, as he says, served the Lord eighty years 
and found him a good Master, he must still do Him service. So he gathers 
some negro slaves together, in the intervals of their labor, and goes once 

1 Much abridged from Thaumat agraphia Pneumatica, Wonders of the Invisible 
World, Magnalia, Bk. VI, chap. vii. By some strange perversity of judgment, Mather 
included this earlier, freakish work in his Magnalia. 



6S AMERICAN LITERATURE 

a week to teach them to read. At last he is too feeble for even this effort ; 
he can no longer walk abroad ; but still he must serve God and man. So 
he sends for a poor blind boy to come to his study, and his last, love-inspired 
service is to lead a child out of darkness into the shining world of literature. 

Aside from the questions of style or literary value, these old 
biographies wonderfully enlarge our horizon, giving us wider 
views of the men who founded our nation. 

Dear to me these far, faint glimpses of the dual life of old, 
Inward, grand with awe and reverence ; outward, mean and 

coarse and cold ; 
Gleams of mystic beauty playing over dull and vulgar clay, 
Golden-threaded fancies weaving in a web of hodden gray. 

Thus, we have been misled to think that Colonial magistrates 
and clergy had too much power, and were meddlesome and 
Our First intolerant. The fact is that their power, which was 
Biographies wholly democratic, lay in their superior education, for 
which they were greatly honored and trusted. As we meet them 
in Mather's pages, we find them gentle, tolerant, kindly, busy 
with serving humanity, leaders in the struggle for free govern- 
ment, but making every sacrifice to avoid religious controversy.^ 
" Oh, mildness and cheerfulness, with reverence, how sweet a 
companion art thou ! " cries John Rogers, whose Fonn for a 
Minister s Life'^ reflects the strong faith in God and loyal service 
to man which characterized the Colonial clergy. 

Again, if we have thought of the Puritans as stern, hard, 
unlovely men, we are surprised to find that they regarded charity 
as the first of all virtues. A hundred examples might be quoted ; 
but we have room for only one, showing a new side to a solemn 
old Puritan governor : 



n 1' 



'T was his custom also to send some of his family upon errands unto the 
houses of the poor, about their meal time, on purpose to spy whether they 
wanted ; and if 't were found that they wanted, he would make that the 

1 Indeed, our chief grievance against Cotton Mather is that he fails to copy his models 
in their admirable tolerance. He is apt to castigate those whose faith diifers from his 
own, and is especially hard on Roger Williams amj^the early Quakers. Yet he is more 
charitable than most English religious writers of the same period. 

2 Magnalia^ Appendix to Bk. Ill, chap. xiv. 



THE COLONIAL PERIOD 69 

opportunity of sending supplies unto them. And there was one passage of 
his charity that was perhaps a Httle unusual : In an hard and long winter, 
when wood was very scarce at Boston, a man gave him private informa- 
tion that a needy person in the neighborhood stole wood sometimes from 
his pile ; whereupon the Governor in a seeming anger did reply, " Does 
he so ? I '11 take a course with him ; go, call that man to me ; I '11 warrant 
you I '11 cure him of stealing." When the man came, the Governor con- 
sidering that, if he had stolen, it was more out of necessity than disposition, 
said unto him, " Friend, it is a severe winter, and I doubt you are but 
meanly provided for wood ; wherefore I would have you supply yourself 
at my wood-pile till this cold season be over." And then he merrily asked 
his friends. Whether he had not effectually cured this man of stealing 
his wood ? " ^ 

The old unchanging comedy or tragedy of human hfe is 
often reflected in Mather's pages. We find the good and the 
bad, the wise and the foolish, the minister who gave his only 
coat to a man poorer than himself, and the charlatan who 
'' bubbled the silly neighbors out of their money." We read of 
John Wilson that '* his low opinion of himself was the top of 
all his other excellencies " ; of Samuel Stone that he defined 
the Colonial church as '' a speaking aristocracy in the midst of 
a silent democracy " ; and of Eliot that he went into a store 
one day, found the merchant busy with a huge pile of account 
books, and noticed over his head a Bible and a few other works 
of devotion : '' Sir," says Eliot, '' here is earth on the table, and 
Heaven all on the shelf." Such records, even in their fantastic 
setting, suggest tw^o things : that the hearts of the old Puritans 
w^ere like our own hearts, and that the author of the Magnalia 
had a very human side to his strange nature. It is the humanity 
of Cotton Mather, rather than his pedantry, that we have tried 
to reflect in this study of his life and writings. 

1 From Nehemias Americanus, Life of John Winthrop, Magnalta, Bk. II, chap. iv. 






70 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Jonathan Edwards (i 703-1 758) 

In the church of the wilderness Edwards wrought, 

Shaping his creed at the forge of thought ; 

And with Thox's own hammer welded and bent 

The iron links of his argument, 

Which strove to grasp in its mighty span 

The purpose of God and the fate of man.^ 

Those who read and understand Edwards point out his 
spiritual resemblance to Dante, greatest of Italian poets ; but 
few find in him any suggestion of America's most famous 
practical philosopher. At first glance no two men could be. 
more unlike than the worldly^vise Franklin and the childlike 
Edwards, who was so absorbed in thought that he could never 
tell whether he was driving his own or his neighbor's cow from 
the common pasture. The resemblance lay in this, as a modern 
critic has suggested, that to each the world was intensely real, 
and each aimed to conquer the world by knowing it. Franklin 
occupied himself with the outer world of sensible things ; while 
Edwards undertook the greater task of exploring the invisible 
world of thought and ideas. 

Life. Edwards was born (1703) in East Windsor, a little Connec- 
ticut settlement, where his scholarly father was pastor of the village 
church. His mother was a woman of noble character and education, 
who reared her children in a waymost favorable to deep thought and 
fine feeling. This little house in the w^oods sheltered a large world ; 
and though the fare was often scant, the real living was of the highest 
order. 

Edwards was certainly an unusual boy. At nine we find him writ- 
ing on " The Substance of the Soul," and at eleven a wonderfully 
interesting paper on the habits of spiders."^ The handwriting of these 
papers is that of a child ; but the deep thought and the clear, logical 
expression suggest a man, and a very unusual man, full-grown. 

1 From Whittier, " The Preacher." The whole passage, which we have not quoted, 
suggests the rare combination of logic and mysticism in Edwards. 

2 These papers may be found in Vol. I of Dwight's edition of Edwards (lo vols., 
1829). A few extracts are given in Tyler, History of American Literature^ II, 179-185. 



THE COLONIAL PERIOD 



71 



As one reads the notebooks of his Yale college period, from his 
twelfth to his sixteenth year, it is hard to believe that they were 
written by a mere boy. Though naturally a philosopher, an explorer 
in the world of thought, he was not the kind to build a castle in the air 
without first putting a foundation under it ; hence his remarkable scien- 
tific investigations, which show plainly that he was far in advance of his 
age. He anticipated Frank- 
lin's dis covery of electricity , 
"showed that some of the 
fixed stars are suns like our 
own, suggested a theory of 
atoms very much like that 
now accepted by chemists, 
and ma de (^priless obser- 
vations and experiments^^ 
"witE a view of preparing 
a reliable textbook on the 
physical sciences. In all his 
works, whether exploring 
the visible or the invisible 
world, Edwards sought two 
things : first, to know the 
fact, and then to find jhg 
la w which expressed itself 
in the fact. And in all her 
history America has never 
produced a man more gov- 
erned by the spirit of truth. 

Toward the end of his 
college course Edwards evidently went through a tremendous spiritual 
struggle, such as awaited Puritan youths in those days before entering 
the visible church. The result is best expressed in his own words, 
which might well be those of St. Francis : 

" After this my sense of divine things gradually increased, and became 
more and more lively, and had more of that inward sweetness. The appear- 
ance of everything was altered ; there seemed to be, as it were, a calm, 
sweet cast or appearance of divine glory in almost every thing. God's 
excellency, his wisdom, his purity and love, seemed to appear in every 
thing ; in the sun and moon and stars ; in the clouds and blue sky ; in the 
grass, flowers, trees ; in the water, and all nature ; which used greatly to 




JONATHAN EDWARDS 



72 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

fix my mind. I often used to sit and view the moon for continuance ; and 
in the day spent much time in viewing the clouds and sky, to behold the 
sweet glory of God in these things ; in the mean time singing forth, with 
a low voice, my contemplations of the Creator and Redeemer." ^ 

After graduation the boy spent four more years at Yale, prepar- 
ing for the ministry and tutoring undergraduates. All the while he 
kept himself in the strictest mental and spiritual discipline, seeking 
knowledge like a Faustus and holiness like a monk ; and at twenty- 
three he was ordained minister to the church at Northampton. The 
discipline of the period was lightened by his love for Sarah Pierpont 
— a curious romance, made up of theology, mysticism and tender 
human emotion : 

" They say there is a young lady [in New Haven] who is beloved of 
that great Being who made and rules the world ; and that there are certain 
seasons in which this great Being, in some way or other invisible, comes to 
her and fills her mind with exceeding sweet delight, and that she hardly 
cares for anything except to meditate on Him. . . . She has a strange 
sweetness in her mind, and singular purity in her affections ; is most just 
and conscientious in all her conduct ; and you could not persuade her to 
do anything wrong or sinful, if you would give her all the world, lest she 
should offend this great Being, She is of wonderful calmness and universal 
benevolence, especially after this great God has manifested Himself to her 
mind. She will sometimes go about from place to place singing sweetly ; 
and seems to be always full of joy and pleasure, and no one knows for 
what. She loves to be alone, walking in the fields and groves, and seems 
to have some one invisible always conversing with her." 

Here is a companion after Edwards's own mystic heart, and with 
his belief in Determinism, she must be reserved for him from the 
foundation of the world. So presently he goes down to New Haven 
and marries her. Never did a stem theological doctrine find more 
lovely illustration. She was a rare woman, helpful and sympathetic, 
with a strong practical sense to balance her mysticism and keep her 
household in order, while her husband explored the deeps of human 
experience. Long afterwards, as he lay dying at Princeton, Edwards's 
last thought was for her, and he sent her this whispered message : 
" Tell her that the union which has so long subsisted between us is 
spiritual, and therefore will continue forever." 

We pass over his long ministry in Northampton, noting only two 
suggestive things. First, his preaching, with its vivid imagery and 

1 From " Nature and Holiness," Miscellaneous Papers, Works, Vol. I. 



THE COLONIAL PERIOD 73 

overwhelming sincerity, made a tremendous impression. As a result, 
the Great Awakening, that soul-searching religious revival which 
swept over the Colonies in 1740, began in Northampton, and was 
only intensified when the English evangelist Whitefield visited this 
country. Second, the literary works of this period, such as his Faith- 
ful Narrative of the Surprising Works of God (1736) and his Treatise 
concerning the Religious Affections (1746), are utterly different from 
those of the marvel-loving Mather. They are profound mental studies, 
strikingly like our modern psychological treatises, only better written 
and more interesting. So far as we know, Edwards was the first to 
attempt to explain certain universal religious experiences by a scien- 
tific study of the mind itself. 

In 1750 Edwards left Northampton^ and went to Stockbridge, as 
missionary to the Indians and pastor to a handful of white people on 
the edge of the wilderness. Here, amid the privations of frontier life, 
he labored heroically seven years, finding leisure meanwhile to write 
the work by which he is now remembered. His Freedom of the Will 
(1754) made a sensation among scholars, and was the first American 
book to influenc e profoundly the thought of the whole world. The 
fame of this book led to his call to be president of Princeton College ; 
but he had hardly begun his work there when he died (1758), one of 
the first martyrs to the cause of inoculation. 

We have given but a small outline of a great life, and those who 
know Edwards will complain that we have done scant justice to his 
Character of greatness and his heroism. But one must learn to know 
Edwards this man, as one knows a friend, slowly, from year to year. 
Even then he often surprises us by a dainty bit of fancy which sug- 
gests a poet's soul, or by a gentle mysticism w^hich tells us that this 
intellectual giant had the heart of a little child. Dealing with such a 
life, we need hardly mention that he was poor, and that he accepted 
poverty cheerfully, well content with the inner wealth that was his. 
Also he suffered and sorrowed much ; but he made no struggle, letting 
the great soul within him manifest its superiority to all outward afflic- 
tion. In an age of intense theological discussion he could not escape 
being drawn into controversy ; but, like Cardinal Newman in simi- 
lar circumstances, he was too great to feel bitterness, and kept that 
serenity of spirit, that " inward sweet delight in God," of which he 

1 The cause of his leaving, which seemed almost a tragedy at the time, was a differ- 
ence with his congregation in the matter of church discipline. Edwards was undoubtedly 
right ; his position is clear^stated in his " Qualifications for Full Communion." 



74 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

had written in earlier years. Touch Edwards where you will, and 
instantly yoif feel the influence of a master mind, illuminated by_a 
Tight which suggests that of the heavenly city. '' Second to no mortal 
man " was the judgment of his contemporaries, when the news of his 
death passed like a cloud shadow over the Colonies. 

The Freedom of the Will. We shall hardly understand even 
the title of Edwards's famous work ^ until we reflect that every 
outward act of a man's life is the result of a previous inner ac^ 
of the will ; and that we are called upon every moment to 
choose one thing, in presence of several others that we might 
select^ Our future seems to be largely in our own hands till we 
ask the question. Is my will entirely free to choose ? thatLis,-do 
I determine my ow^n choice, or is it determined for me before I 
make it .? 

To illustrate the matter simply : if a score of lines are drawn from a 
common center, like the spokes of a wheel, and a man is asked to select 
one line instantly, he will naturally put his finger on one of the lower lines 
to the right, thus indicating right-handedness and the inclination to avoid 
unnecessary effort ; indicating also that our wills are not in a state of perfect 
equilibrium, but are inclined to one thing rather than another. So the 
question arises, Are not all our choices more or less predetermined in a 
similar way, by love of ease or fear of discomfort, by force of habit or 
conscience or inclination, by the influence of others — in short, by a score 
of subtle influences which lead a man to his choice even when he thinks 
himself perfectly free.'* 

Strangely enough, this metaphysical question seemed then of 
very grave import, second only to the question of liberty, which 
The Winthrop had defined as a choice of masters. The 

Question Colonists Were men of strong religious natures, who 
believed profoundly in the future life and gave diligent heed 
to salvation. Now salvation, like liberty, w^as fundamentally a 
matter of choice, a choice of eternal rather than temporary good, 
of a divine rather than a human master. And no man was 
suffered to bide long in America without having the alternative 

1 The exact title is " A Careful and Strict Inquiry into the Modem Prevailing Notions 
of that Freedom of the Will which is supposed to be Essential to Moral Agency, Virtue 
and Vice, Reward and Punishment, Praise and Blame" (1754). 



THE COLONIAL PERIOD 75 

put sternly before him : Choose, man, either God and eternal 
life, or the world and eternal death. But was a man free to 
choose, even when his choice meant life or death ? That was 
the question which troubled not only scholars but plain working 
men and women, who had been trained to think for themselves, 
and who had heard the question of free will discussed from 
every backwoods pulpit. 

We have given a mere outline of the subject, but enough to 
suggest that Edwards faced a problem of universal interest, to 
Edwards's which every great religious and philosophical system 
Answer Qf ^j^g world has attempted to give answer. By early 

training and by long study he was a Calvinist,^ and in his Free- 
dom of the Will he attempted two things : to establish the 
doctrine of Determinism — that man is not free, all his choices 
being part ofajj lf^^"^ pr edetermined by the Supreme Will — and 
to refute every possible argument of the liberal Arminians. 
So thoroughly did he carry out this attempt that all the logicians 
of the next century were unable to find the weak spot in his 
argument, which seemed forged like an anchor chain from end 
to end. We would not attempt here to criticize the logic or the 
doctrine of the Freedom of the Will, which is an epitome of all 
Calvinistic reasoning. Perhaps the chief objection to it, and to 
all similar attempts, is that logic must give way to facts, which 
are more evident than any proof of them can possibly be. It 
would be difficult, for instance, to furnish logical proof of our 
own existence ; it is no less difficult to prove the freedom of the 
will, which is one of the basic facts of morality and of all human 
experience. So, when Edwards demonstrates that our will is not 
free, we instinctively reject his argument ; yet the rejection does 
not change our admiration for the man, for the grasp and power 

1 The Calvinists held, among others, the doctrines of (i) Determinism, that is, that 
man has no freedom of will, but is in bondage to sin since Adam ; and (2) Predestination, 
that is, that some men are foreordained to be saved and some to be lost. Opposed to 
the Calvinists were the Arminians, who held that man has freedom of choice, and that 
all men may be saved, and will be saved, if they accept the means that are freely offered. 
One can hardly read a book of the Colonial period without finding some suggestion of 
these two religious parties. 



76 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

of his intellect, for the sincerity and reverence of his great 
spirit. Few of us may read the Freedom of the Will, but it 
broadens our conception of Colonial life to remember that, while 
Franklin made practical discoveries that startled the world, this 
obscure missionary on the edge of the American wilderness 
produced a work which for solid reasoning power has hardly a 
peer in the English language.^ 

Miscellaneous Works. As there are some fifty different works 
of Edwards, it seems a pity that he should be known in literature 
only by a quotation from his '' Sinners in the Hands of an Angry 
God," 2 or some other soul-racking sermon. Two of the most 
important are T/ie Religious Affections ( 1 746) and the History 
of the Work of Redeinptio7i. Edwards intended to make the 
latter a mighty work, a philosophical study of human life in its 
relation to heaven, earth and hell. In the broad sweep of his 
thought here, he reminds us of Dante and Milton ; but his 
untimely death cut short his cherished plan, and all we have is 
a suggestion of the work in a few extracts published after his 
death by Dr. Erskine, of Edinburgh. 

It is not in these heavy works, however, but rather in the 
short miscellaneous papers that the student will find most enjoy- 
Quaiity of ment. Here we meet the man rather than the theolo- 
Edwards gi^n ; and a very strong, helpful, inspiring man he 
is. The most remarkable thing about him is what has been well 
called his God-consciousness. To him God was the most real, 
the most lovable being in the universe ; and one can hardly be 
with Edwards five minutes without being led reverently into 
the presence of the Eternal. Another interesting quality is 

1 Naturally we do not recommend such a book for general study, for the reason that 
one is certain to find it tough reading. Nevertheless one should know something about 
it, as one knows about the Institutes of Calvin, the Sionma of Thomas Aquinas, the 
Critique of Kant, and other great books that have profoundly influenced the thought of 
the world. 

2 This was the famous sermon preached at Enfield, during the revival known as the 
Great Awakening, in 174 1. In connection with this sermon we emphasize the fact that 
Edwards was not a hater but a lover of mankind ; that his insistence on the awful con- 
sequences of sin was the result of his vivid sense of the greatness and goodness of God, 
and of man's consequent obligation to serve Him. 



THE COLONIAL PERIOD j"] 

his nature-consciousness, his instant response to the changing 
beauty of earth and sky. To him, as to Ruskin, nature was 
another Book of the Lord, a vast open Bible in which to read 
divine messages. A third noteworthy thing is his ideahsm ; and 
here he should be read as a supplement, or rather an antidote, 
to Franklin ; for these two men give us the two sides of the 
native American mind.^ Franklin is the man of sight, shrewd 
and practical, concerned for the tangible outer world ; Edwards 
is the seer, the man of vision, penetrating to the heart of things 
and revealing spirit and ideals as the only enduring realities. And 
the American who follows Franklin in his practical method is 
at heart a believer in the eternal ideals which have been empha- 
sized by Edwards, Bushnell, Channing, Emerson, and indeed 
by all our profound thinkers. 

There are many other significant things to be found in 
Edwards, including his wonderful catholicity ; but these the 
reader must find and appreciate for himself. His style, even in 
his philosophical works, is remarkably clear and transparent, 
reflecting his thought perfectly. It is unconscious also, entirely 
free from the affectation and pedantry of Cotton Mather. Here 
and there are vivid flashes of imagery which reveal a poet's soul, 
and bits of delicate satire and irony which suggest a literary 
power that Edwards was sternly repressing in the interest of 
truth. Altogether, he seems to us, both in style and matter, 
incomparably the greatest of all our early wTiters. 

1 In a remarkable essay on "National Literature" (1830) Channing finds only two 
authors, Edwards and Franklin, worthy to represent the American mind to foreign 
readers. 



78 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Summary of Colonial History. It is impossible to set definite limits or to 
give a satisfactory name to any literary period. We have used the general 
term '' Colonial " ^ to cover the century and a half following the landing of the 
first English settlers at Jamestown in 1607. At some time during this period 
the greater part of the Colonists, who had at first regarded themselves as 
Englishmen living abroad, came to consider and to call themselves Amer- 
icans ; but they still remained loyal to England until the Stamp Act of 1765 
turned them definitely, if unconsciously, into the way of union and nationality. 

No unified history of the period has yet been written. In our historical 
reading the attention is divided among thirteen different organizations, which 
historians now group locally into New England, Middle and South- 
i e bepara e ^^^^ ^^ politically into charter, royal and proprietary colonies, but 
which then had no outward semblance of unity. Each colony was 
separated from its nearest neighbors by vast stretches of forest, through 
which travel was difficult or dangerous or at times impossible. In consequence 
each pursued its own immediate ends, of agriculture or trade or liberty ; each 
cleared the forest before its own door, and then explored the rich unknown 
lands that were calling men everywhere to enlarge their borders. The first 
problem that confronted every settler was to subdue the earth, to win shelter 
and support, to establish the comfort and peace of home in the midst of a 
savage wilderness. That in itself might well employ a man's full energy, but 
the second problem was even harder, namely, to settle the vexed matters of 
political and religious freedom with which the old-world nations had struggled 
for centuries in vain. It was due to their absorption in these two problems, 
one of vital interest to the present, the other of untold consequences to the 
future, that the Colonists produced comparatively few books, and that their 
works were practical and didactic rather than artistic in form and motive. 

Though outwardly separate and independent, the people of all these colo- 
nies show the same spiritual characteristics. They speak the same noble lan- 
guage ; they follow the same high ideals ; they love liberty, and 
^ are determined not only to enjoy it themselves but to secure it 
forever to their children. When occasion arises they unite readily, here to pro- 
tect themselves from a general uprising of the Indians, there to secure a 
greater measure of self-government from England; and as early as 1643 '^^^ 
have " The United Colonies of New England," ^ which endured forty years, 
and was a prophecy of greater things to come. 

This tendency toward unity, though often interrupted by trading disputes, 
increased steadily with the growth of the Colonies. It was strengthened, 
moreover, by the influence of the American colleges, which were founded with 

1 Some writers divide the period into Early and Late Colonial ; others into Colonial 
and Provincial. The latter period begins, chronologically, with the loss of the charter 
under James II, or with the arrival of the royal governor, Andros, in 1686, and ends 
with the Declaration of Independence. 

2 The twelve articles of this confederation should be read entire by those who would 
understand the history of the American Union. See Bradford, Of Plitnoth Plantation^ 
record of the year 1643. 



THE COLONIAL PERIOD 79 

the express purpose of furnishing teachers to all the people. The extraor- 
dinary success of these colleges suggests one of the chief characteristics of 
the first Americans, namely, their high regard for learning and 
^ their selection of educated men to be their leaders and repre- 
sentatives. During the Colonial period seven colleges — Harvard, William 
and Mary, Yale, New Jersey, Kings, Philadelphia, and Rhode Island, all main- 
taining a high standard ^ of learning — were firmly established here, and each 
was largely supported by a handful of settlers engaged in wresting a living 
from the wilderness. Search the history of the world, and you shall find no 
other such inspiring picture, of pioneers demanding a university, of coloniza- 
tion guided by scholarship. In these colleges young men of various colonies 
fraternized for a time, and returned to the distant settlements whence they 
had come, carrying the ideal of a common fellowship and a common destiny. 
And these young men, be it remembered, were trusted leaders in the Revo- 
lutionary struggle that changed certain English colonies into the American 
nation. 

Summary of Colonial Literature. The literature of the Colonial period as 
a whole has two marked characteristics, one historical, the other theological 
or religious. Though the Colonists generally were loyal to England, their old 
annals indicate that their leaders north and south — and especially the Puri- 
tans, who were scattered through the colonies from Maine to Georgia — 
believed profoundly that they were leading a great revolution in the world, 
out of which should arise a new nation of freemen.^ Hence the strong tend- 
ency toward historical writing, which began with the first Colonial records, 
and which has characterized American literature ever since. 

As might be expected in a country which was largely settled by men who 
sought freedom of belief and worship, the theological note is constantly heard 
in our early literature. Indeed, a large part of that literature was made up of 
theological and controversial works which, with few exceptions, were soon 
forgotten. Far more significant than the theological is the sincerely religious 
spirit that shows itself in all our earliest prose and verse. The Colonists 
believed, and reflected their belief on almost every page of their records, that 
in founding a state, as in forming a character, religion and education are the 
two factors of supreme importance. 

In our study we have confined ourselves largely to certain significant types 
of Colonial writers: (i) The annalists and historians, of whom Bradford, 
Winthrop and Byrd are the best examples. Among these we place also Sewall, 
whose diary might well be called a window in old Boston. (2) The poets, with 
their general tendency to copy English models. Chief of these minor singers 

1 The Earl of Chatham, amazed at the style and scholarship of the state papers sent 
from America, paid an eloquent tribute to Colonial culture on the floor of the House of 
Lords in 1775. Few college graduates of the present day could pass the examinations 
in the classics which were then required for entrance. 

2 The writings of Bradford, Winthrop, Morton, Prince, and indeed of nearly all our 
early annalists, make frequent reference to the future nation that " shall reap the liberty 
which these Colonies have planted." 



8o AMERICAN LITERATURE 

are Anne Bradstreet, the first American woman to win general literary recog- 
nition ; Wigglesworth, whose poetic genius was kept chained, like a prisoner 
. in a dungeon, by his terrible theology ; and Godfrey, who at the 

^ . . end of the Colonial period made a crude but unmistakable begin- 

ning of artistic literature. (3) The theological writers, of whom 
Mather and Edwards are the most notable. The former gave us our first book 
of national heroes ; the latter produced a philosophical work which for solid 
reasoning power has never been surpassed in America. 

In addition to these typical writers we have reviewed a number of miscel- 
laneous authors : Whittaker, " the apostle of Virginia " ; Wood, the naturalist ; 
Edward Johnson, maker of our first verse-history, or rhyming chronicle ; Mary 
Rowlandson, and other writers on Indian life and warfare. All these were 
well known to Colonial readers, and we find their works still interesting. 
Among miscellaneous writers the greatest name is that of Eliot, a noble 
character, whose works on the Indian language, including a translation of the 
Bible into the Indian tongue, were America's first contribution to the literature 
of scholarship and original investigation. 

Selections for Reading. Bradford, Of PHmoth Plantation, and Smith, Set- 
tlement of Virginia, in Maynard's Historical Readings (Merrill) ; Chronicles 
of the Pilgrims, in Everyman's Library (Button). A few well-chosen works 
of Bradford, Winthrop, John Smith, Eliot, Morton, Cotton Mather, Anne 
Bradstreet, etc., are published in Old South Leaflets.^ 

Representative selections from all authors named in the text may be found 
in Trent and Wells, Colonial Prose and Poetry ; in Cairns, Early American 
Writers ; in Stedman and Hutchinson, Duyckinck, etc. (see " Collections " 
and " Texts," in General References, at the beginning of this book). 

Bibliography. For extended works on American history and literature, 
covering the whole subject, see General References. The following works 
are useful in a special study of the Colonial period. 

History. Contemporaneous : Original Narratives of Early American History, 
a series of well-edited volumes reproducing the narratives of explorers and 
founders : Narratives of Early Virginia, edited by Tyler ; Bradford's History, 
by Davis; Winthrop's Journal, by Hosmer; early narratives of New Nether- 
lands, Maryland, Carolina, Pennsylvania, etc. (Scribner). Hart, American 
History told by Contemporaries, 4 vols. (Macmillan). 

Modem Works : Fisher, The Colonial Era (contains a chapter on Colonial 
Hterature) ; Osgood, American Colonies in the Seventeenth Century; Doyle, 
English Colonies in America, 3 vols. ; Thwaite, The Colonies, in Epochs of 
American History series ; Fiske, Beginnings of New England, Old Virginia and 
her Neighbors, Dutch and Quaker Colonies ; Lodge, English Colonies in Amer- 
ica ; Arber, Story of the Pilgrim Fathers ; Eggleston, Beginners of a Nation. 

1 The " Leaflets " are of great value to teachers and students of our earliest history 
and literature. They average about sixteen pages each, with excellent notes, and are 
sold at four or five cents per copy, — which barely covers the cost of publication. For a 
list of over two hundred subjects, address Directors, Old South Meeting House, Boston. 



THE COLONIAL PERIOD 8 1 

Supplementary : Alice Morse Earle, Home Life in Colonial Days, Child 
Life in Colonial Days, Colonial Dames and Goodwives, Customs and Fashions, 
etc. (Macmillan) ; Fisher, Men, Women, and Manners of Colonial Times; 
Whittier, Margaret Smith's Journal (fiction) ; Lowell, New England Two 
Centuries Ago ; Emerson, Historical Discourse at Concord. 

Biographical : Lives of Higginson, Hooker, Winthrop, Peter Stuyvesant, 
the Calverts, Cotton Mather, Oglethorpe, in Makers of America (Dodd) ; in 
the same series, Griffis, Sir William Johnson and the Six Nations ; Walker, 
Ten New England Leaders; Bowen, Life of Sir William Phipps (1834); 
Straus, Roger Williams ; Green, Pioneer Mothers of America, 3 vols. (Putnam). 
For other biographies, of Jonathan Edwards, Anne Bradstreet, etc., see below. 

Literature. Tyler, History of American Literature 1 607-1 765, 2 vols., or 
Students' Edition, two volumes in one (Putnam), is the most complete and 
scholarly work on the Colonial period. Other works are Preston, Colonial 
Ballads; Holliday, Wit and Humor of Colonial Days; Jameson, History of 
Historical Writing in America ; Smyth, Philadelphia Magazines and their 
Contributors 1741-1850. 

John Smith. Texts: Works, in Arber's Reprints, English Scholar's Library 
(Birmingham, 1884) ; selected narratives, in Tyler's Early Virginia (Original 
Narratives series) ; Winsor's America, Vol. Ill ; Hart's American History, 
Vol. I (see General References). Selections, in Old South Leaflets, Maynard's 
Historical Readings, etc. 

Biography and Criticism : Life by Simms (1846) ; by C. D. Warner (1881) ; 
Fiske, Old Virginia and her Neighbors ; Poindexter, Capt. John Smith and 
His Critics ; Deane's edition of the True Relation (1866) ; Henry, Proceedings 
of "the Virginia Historical Society (1882) ; Charles Francis Adams, in Chapters 
of Erie and Other Essays. 

Bradford. Texts : Works, in Collections of Massachusetts Historical 
Society ; Of Plimoth Plantation, edited by Davis, in Original Narratives 
series; various other editions, the best by Ford, 2 vols. (1913). Selections, in 
Chronicles of the Pilgrims, etc. (see Selections for Reading, above). 

Biography and Criticism : Cotton Mather's life of Bradford, in Old South 
Leaflets, number 77 ; a good sketch in Leslie Stephen's Dictionary of National 
Biography ; others in Appleton, etc. (see " Biography " in General Refer- 
ences). Walker, Ten New England Leaders; Winsor's America, Vol. Ill, 
chap, viii; Tyler, I, 1 16-126; C. F. Adams, Massachusetts: its Historians and 
its History; Steele, The Chief of the Pilgrims (life of Brewster). For the 
story of the discovery and return of Bradford's manuscript, see Winsor, Gov- 
ernor Bradford's Manuscript; also Introduction to the edition of Bradford's 
History published by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 1899. 

Winthrop. Texts : Journal, called History of New England, edited by 
Savage, 2 vols. (Boston, 1853) ; in Original Narratives, edited by Hosmer 
(Scribner). Some Old Puritan Love Letters, edited by Twitchell (Dodd). 

Biography and Criticism: Life, by R. C. Winthrop, 2 vols. (1864); by 
Twitchell, in Makers of America series; Walker, Ten New England Leaders; 
Adams, Massachusetts. 



82 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Supplementary : Alice M. Earle, Margaret Winthrop ; Anderson, Memora- 
ble Women of Puritan Times (1862) ; Ellis, Puritan Age in Massachusetts. 

Sewall. Texts: Works, in Collections of Massachusetts Historical Society. 

Biography and Criticism : Chamberlain, Samuel Sewall and the World He 
Lived in ; Lodge, A Puritan Pepys, in Studies in History ; Whittier's poem, 
The Prophecy of Samuel Sewall. 

Byrd. Texts: Byrd Manuscripts, edited by Basset (1901). 

Biography and Criticism : Only fragments are available, in Virginia Maga- 
zine of History and Biography, 1902 ; Moses, Literature of the South; Camp- 
bell, History of Virginia; Holliday, Southern Literature, etc. 

Anne Bradstreet. Texts : Works, prose and verse, edited by Ellis (Charles- 
town, 1867) ; Poems, edited by C. E. Norton (privately printed, Boston, 
1897) ; Selected Poems, in Old South Leaflets. 

Biography and Criticism : Helen Campbell, Anne Bradstreet and Her 
Time (Lothrop, 1891). 

Wigglesivorth. Texts: Day of Doom, reprint of sixth edition, with notes, 
memoir, etc., edited by Burr (American News Co., 1867). Minor prose works, 
in Proceedings of Massachusetts Historical Society. 

Biography and Criticism : Dean, Memoir of Wigglesworth (1871). 

Cotton Mather. Texts: Magnalia, last edition 1855. Lives of Bradford, 
Winthrop, etc., in Old South Leaflets. (No worthy book of selections from 
Cotton Mather has ever been made.) 

Biography and Criticism: Life by Wendell (1891) ; by Marvin (1892). 

Supplementary : A Daughter of Cotton Mather, in The Outlook, Oct. 7 
and 14, 1905. 

Jonathan Edwards. Texts: Dwight's edition, 10 vols. (New York, 1830); 
abridged edition, 4 vols. (1852). 

Biography and Criticism: Life, by Allen (1889); Gardiner, Jonathan Ed- 
wards, a Retrospect (1901). Essays : by Leslie Stephen, in Hours in a Library ; 
by Holmes, in Pages from an Old Volume of Life. 

Supplementary: Whittier's poem. The Preacher. 

Historical Fiction. Early Romances of Colonial Times: Mrs. Child, Hobo- 
mok ; Miss Sedgwick, Hope Leslie, Redwood ; Paulding, Dutchman's Fireside, 
Koningsmarke ; Kennedy, Rob of the Bowl; Cooper, Satanstoe, Red Rover, 
Water Witch. 

Later Romances : Hawthorne, Scarlet Letter ; Motley, Merry Mount ; 
Cooke, Virginia Comedians, My Lady Pokahontas ; Eggleston, Pocahontas 
and Powhattan ; Thompson, Green Mountain Boys ; Caruthers, Cavaliers of 
Virginia; Bynner, Begum's Daughter; Goodwin, White Aprons (romance 
of Bacon's Rebellion) ; Barr, Black Shilling (witchcraft) ; Austin, Standish 
of Standish ; Stimson, King Noanett ; Mary Johnston, To Have and to Hold. 

Books for Young People. Colonial History : Catherwood, Heroes of the 
Middle West, a book of early French explorers (Ginn and Company) ; Drake, 
Making of New England, Making of Virginia and the Middle Colonies, Mak- 
ing of the Great West, 3 vols. (Scribner) ; Baldwin, Discovery of the Old 
Northwest, Conquest of the Old Northwest, 2 vols. (American Book Co.) ; 



thp: colonial period 83 

Moore-Tiffany, Pilgrims and Puritans (Ginn and Company) ; Edgar, Struggle 
for a Continent, edited from Parkman's histories (Little, Brown) ; Helen 
Smith, The Colonies; Alma Burton, Story of the Indians of New England 
(Silver, Burdett). 

Colonial Stories : Hawthorne, Grandfather's Chair, Legends of the Province 
House ; Bass, Stories of Pioneer Life (Heath) ; Eggleston, Stories of Great 
Americans for Little Americans, Stories of American Life and Adventure 
(American Book Co.) ; Tappan, Letters from Colonial Children (Houghton). 

Suggestive Questions. The following questions — which are fairly sug- 
gested by the text and by the selections usually read — are not to be consid- 
ered as an examination. They are intended chiefly to stimulate the pupil's 
thinking, to encourage his independent judgment, and occasionally to lead 
him away into a field of pleasant research : 

1. In what significant way does the early literature of America differ from 
that of England or Greece .-* How do you account for the difference ? Why 
should American literature begin with prose, while that of older nations be- 
gins with poetry ? Give two good reasons why the Colonists produced com- 
paratively few books. 

2. The early Colonists regarded England or some other country as their 
fatherland ; what effect did this have upon their writing ? Who was probably 
the first Colonial writer to emphasize America as home and fatherland.'' How 
do patriotism and national enthusiasm aid literature .'' 

3. Colonial writers are often classified as annalists, poets and divines : 
name two or more writers in each class, and give the titles of their chief 
works. Explain the tendency of Colonial authors to write history. Explain 
also their tendency to combine history with theology. 

4. Who were the great writers in England during the early Colonial period, 
and what was the general spirit of their writings ? 

5. At a later period we shall find that our chief writers (Irving, Bryant, 
Cooper, etc.) were strongly influenced by the new romantic movement in 
Europe ; how do you account for the fact that the Colonists were so little 
influenced by the romanticism of the Elizabethans t 

6. Do you consider Captain John Smith an English or an American writer ? 
What Elizabethan characteristics does he display .'' How does his account of 
the new land compare with those of Bradford, Byrd and other Colonial writers .'' 
Some historians regard the Pocahontas incident as an example of Smith's 
romancing ; others as a record of fact ; what is your impression after reading 
the story ? 

7. What differences have you found recorded (in various histories) between 
the settlers of New England and those of the South ? Now read the selections 
given in Cairns, Trent and Wells, etc., and compare the various writers, hav- 
ing in mind their style, their material, and their evident motive in writing. 
Judging by what you have read of Colonial literature, have the differences be- 
tween North and South been exaggerated by historians ? Make a list of 
American characteristics displayed by Northern and Southern writers alike. 



84 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

8. Of Bradford's History the scholarly Senator Hoar said, " I read again 
with renewed enthusiasm and delight the noble and touching story." Speak- 
ing of his search for the original manuscript he said, " It seemed to me then, 
as it now seems to me, the most precious manuscript on earth." Can you ex- 
plain or understand his enthusiasm .'' 

9. What is the historical and what the literary value of Bradford's work ? 
What qualities are revealed and what virtues are emphasized in Of Plitnoth 
Plantation ? What Pilgrim ideals, as reflected in this work, are now national 
and American 1 

10. What is the general character of Winthrop's Journal? Why is it called 
a source-book of American literature ? Read Winthrop's famous " Little 
Speech " (Old South Leaflets, number 66) and give in your own words his 
definition of liberty. What qualities are reflected in his Journal and in his 
letters .'* 

11. Why should Sewall's Diary be called "a window in old Boston"? 
Why is the author called " A Puritan Pepys " ? What is the value of his 
book ? It is said that Sewall may be known better than any other man in 
American history or literature ; what is the basis of such an assertion ? 

12. What new and important element did Byrd add to our early literature ? 
What qualities are reflected in his writings ? Read selections from Byrd and 
from his contemporary Cotton Mather, and write a brief comparison of the 
two men, having in mind their personal qualities, the interest of their subjects, 
their style and their motive in writing. 

13. Explain the prominence given to Indians and to natural history in 
Colonial literature. Vv'^hy is Eliot called " the Apostle to the Indians " ? What 
was his character, and what his contribution to scholarly literature ? 

14. What is the general character of Ward's The Simple Cobbler? From 
the fact that it denounces feminine fashions, religious toleration and other 
" innovations," what do you judge of the author's spirit ? What does it suggest 
of the early settlers ? 

15. What is the general character of the poetry of the Colonial period? 
Who was "The Tenth Muse," and what are her claims to distinction? The 
statement has often been made that The Bay Psalm Book is a measure of the 
poetic taste of the Puritans ; criticize the statement. 

16. What Puritan (or American) characteristics are reflected in the Day 0/ 
Doom ? Give a brief description of the author and his work. The Day of Dooin 
(1662) and Pilgrim's Progress (1678) were both popular with the masses of 
people in their respective countries. What common qualities are reflected in 
these two works, and how do you explain their popularity ? 

17. Give your impression (from selections read) of the Magnalia. In what 
noble way did Cotton Mather appeal to patriotism ? What is meant by '' the 
Mather Dynasty " ? In a recent newspaper editorial Cotton Mather was called 
'* a persecutor and burner of witches " ; criticize the statement. What work 
of Mather is mentioned in Franklin's Autobiography ? 

18. Who was Jonathan Edwards ? What is the character of his chief work ? 
What profound question does that work attempt to answer ? What common 



THE COLONIAL PERIOD 85 

characteristic is reflected by Edwards and Wigglesworth ? Edwards and 
Franklin (see next chapter) are said to represent the two sides of the Ameri- 
can mind ; explain and criticize the statement. 

19. What is the object in studying or reading Colonial literature? How 
does this object compare with that of reading an adventure story or a news- 
paper? • 

20. It is often alleged that our literature as a whole is " provincial " ; what 
does that mean ? After agreeing upon a general definition, debate in class the 
question, Resolved, that American literature is provincial. Support your 
arguments by the book you have read. 

Subjects for Pleasant Essays, (The following subjects are suggested with 
the conviction that when one begins to read widely in Colonial literature, he 
finds it vastly more interesting than it has been represented to be. Original 
material for essays or discussion may be found in the numerous collections 
named in the General References, or it may be had, at an expense of five 
cents, by sending for the appropriate number of Old South Leaflets.) 

An old Colonial library. Permanent American characteristics in Colonial 
literature. Influence on national life of the first American colleges. A boy's 
entrance examinations two hundred years ago. My favorite book (or passage) 
in Colonial literature : what it tells me of my forefathers. Cotton Mather and 
the witchcraft delusion. Good anecdotes from the Magnalia. Mather's Essays 
to Do Good. Nature studies of Jonathan Edwards. Common qualities of early 
Northern and Southern writers. Anne Bradstreet and " votes for women." 
Early Indian narratives. The American hero in Cotton Mather's biographies. 
Natural history in Colonial days. John Smith: historian or romancer? Brad- 
ford's manuscript : how it was lost and found. What I thought of the Puritans 
before and after I read their own works. 



CHAPTER II 

THE PERIOD OF THE REVOLUTION (1765-1800) 

By the rude bridge that arched the flood, 

Their flag to April's breeze unfurled, 
Here once the embattled farmers stood 

And fired the shot heard round the world. 

Emerson, ." Concord Hymn " 

I. HISTORICAL OUTLINES! 

Social Development. Four historic movements, separate yet con- 
tinuous, Hke the four acts of a mighty drama, and all having profound 
influence on our literature, are crowded into the latter half of the eight- 
eenth century in America. The first is social and industrial ; it is con- 
cerned with the rapid increase of trade and wealth as America's natural 
resources are discovered, with the spread of education, and with the 
phenomena of town as contrasted with country life. For America is 
no longer an experiment, a " trade venture " as England first regarded 
her ; she is beyond all expectation a success, and has ambition of be- 
coming a nation. Where once the forest stood, dark and silent, the 
sun now shines on prosperous farms ; the frontier hamlet of log cabins 
is now a bustling town ; and with the town come inevitably the news- 
paper, the high school, the theater, the beginning of music, poetry and 
all the fine arts. Very different this from the Jamestown of John Smith, 
the Boston of John Winthrop ! Here are highways to follow, instead 
of the old buffalo and Indian trails. With prosperity and social pleas- 
ures, men begin to think less of theology and '' other-worldliness," 
which were prominent in the early days, and more of this present life 
and opportunity. Whittier, who has the deepest insight into Colonial 

1 Any adequate history of the Revolution must consider the Loyalist as well as the 
Patriot side. It must also trace causes of separation that were operative long before 
the Stamp Act and other measures of taxation finally roused and united the Colonies in 
opposition to the mother country. In our summary we try simply to see events as the 
writers of '76 saw them, to get the Revolutionary view rather than to paint a picture of 
the Revolution itself. 

86 



PERIOD OF THE REVOLUTION 87 

life, notes the changing standards, in '' The Preacher," as he looks 
upon an old country church and considers the waning glory of Edwards : 

Over the roofs of the pioneers 

Gathers the moss of a hundred years ; 

On man and his works has passed the change 

Which needs must be in a century's range. 

The land lies open and warm in the sun, 

Anvils clamor and mill-wheels run, — 

Flocks on the hillsides, herds on the plain. 

The wilderness gladdened with fruit and grain ! 

But the living faith of the settlers old 

A dead profession their children hold ; 

To the lust of office and greed of trade 

A stepping-stone is the altar made. . . . 

Everywhere is the grasping hand. 

And eager adding of land to land ; 

And earth, which seemed to the fathers meant 

But as a pilgrim's wayside tent, . . . 

Solid and steadfast seems to be. 

And Time has forgotten Eternity ! 

The Stamp Act and what followed. The second great movement, 
leading toward the climax of union and nationality, takes us into the 
midst of tumult and upheaval which followed the Stamp Act of 1765. 
And perhaps the most noteworthy thing in this fateful movement is 
its unexpectedness. Only two years earlier the whole country had re- 
joiced with England over the Treaty of Paris, which meant two mercies 
to the Colonies : that the raids, massacres and general barbarism of 
the French and Indian War were all things of the past ; and that Eng- 
lish rather than French ideals had finally prevailed in America, leaving 
man free here to work out his salvation, not in the shadow of military 
despotism, but in the full sunshine of Anglo-Saxon liberty. To make 
such peace, such opportunity possible, the Colonies had given twenty 
thousand of their young men, and a sum equal to forty millions of our 
present money ; and they were content with their sacrifice. 

Then, at the very season of their rejoicing. King George and his 
ministers resolved, with colossal stupidity, on two measures : that the 
Colonies were to be taxed by the British Parliament to support a 
British army; and that no settlers should be allowed west of the Alle- 
gheny Mountains. That the tax was small was of no consequence ; 
it was the big injustice that struck the loyal Colonists like a blow in 



88 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

the face. And just as the rich Ohio and Mississippi valleys were cleared 
of French troops, our pioneers, pressing eagerly into the spacious coun- 
try, must halt and turn back into a narrow land ; because, forsooth, an 
English king had covenanted with his "royal brother of France" that 
the whole splendid territory should be reserved forever for a handful 
of roving savages. Such things were not to be endured by free men. 
While towns and cities of the Atlantic coast were in an uproar over 
one proclamation, men of the woods and mountains quietly ignored the 
other. So loyalty was changed to distrust, and the Revolution began 
while Americans still treasured the memories of a war in which they had 
fought shoulder to shoulder with Englishmen against a common enemy. 

The first effect of the Stamp Act, and of the uproar which followed 
it, was to unite the Colonies and prepare them for nationality. They 
union of contained at this time only a million and a half of widely 
Colonies scattered people. There was no particular grouping of 

interests ; each colony stood firm by itself, zealously guarding its own 
rights ; and we have little excuse for dividing them into Northern and 
Southern, and so making false distinctions in our national life and 
literature. There were superficial differences among them, to be sure, 
and doubtless certain colonies had more frequent and intimate connec- 
tion with England than they had with each other ; but when the first 
American or Continental Congress meets at Philadelphia, in 1774, our 
attention is focused, not on divisions and differences among the mem- 
bers, but rather on their unity, their concord, their amazing resem- 
blances. Here are fifty-five delegates gathered from the four corners 
of a vast territory. Here are Cavaliers and Puritans, Catholics and 
Protestants, ministers, teachers, merchants, artisans ; and lo ! all these 
men speak the same speech, cherish the same ideals, and are instantly 
ready to elect and follow the same leader. For the words of Otis and 
Samuel Adams have been heard far beyond the borders of Massa- 
chusetts, and Patrick Henry's speech has rung like a bugle call through 
all the American settlements. 

So, though there is as yet no nation on this side of the Atlantic, 
there is a prophecy in the air, and the prophecy is voiced by South 
Carolina when she declares, " The whole country must be animated 
with one great soul, and all Americans must resolve to stand by one 
another even unto death." ^ Of all the spoken or written words of 

1 Almost a century and a half earlier, Bradford, in the little colony of the Pilgrims, 
had voiced the same noble sentiment ; almost a century later, on the terrible field of 
Gettysburg, Lincoln reechoed it. 



PERIOD OF THE REVOLUTION 89 

the eighteenth century, these seem, to a literary man, the most sig- 
nificant. That " one great soul," all aflame with the love of freedom 
and justice, symbolizes the unity of aim and spirit among the Colonies 
immediately preceding the Revolution. 

The Revolution. The third act of this stirring drama is the Revo- 
lutionary War, that epic struggle against odds, which makes the blood 
of an American tingle every time he reads it anew. We are so accus- 
tomed to think of it, and of our independence, as the result of a supreme 
effort of our whole people, that it occasions a shock of surprise to learn 
that the Revolution was fought and won by only a part, — perhaps 
the smaller and, in the matter of this world's goods, probably the poorer 
part of our Colonial ancestors. The heroism of the war consists partly 
in this : that the Continental army had to fight front and guard rear 
at the same time ; that while it faced a superior force of open enemies, 
behind it was a larger body of American Tories, foes of its own house- 
hold, ready at any moment to give secret or open aid to the British. 
So also the prose and poetry that we cherish, as reflecting the spirit 
of '76, is only a portion, the Whig portion,-^ of Revolutionary letters. 
And the wedge which split our life and literature into two sections 
was the famous Declaration of Independence, which is commonly 
considered the symbol of national unity. 

As we have noted, the year 1774, when the first Continental Con- 
gress assembled, found the American colonies singularly united in spirit. 
Declaration ^p to that time, and even later, they were splendidly loyal 
of Independ- to England, and only a few bold, visionary spirits, like 
ence Henry, and Samuel Adams, had dreamed of a separate 

national existence.^ Then, sudden and * startling as a thunderbolt to 
a great part of the country, came the Declaration of Independence ; 
and every man was called upon to make instant decision between the 
new and the old. It was a tense, dramatic moment, like that in which 
Elijah built his altar on Mount Carmel and cried aloud to his people : 
" How long halt ye between two opinions ? " It meant not only the 
separation of nation from nation ; it divided a man from his neigh- 
bors and friends, and sometimes a father from his own sons and 
daughters. Our histories are often eloquent — and well they may 

1 There is a large Tory literature of the Revolution which is now almost forgotten. 

2 At Bunker Hill, Ticonderoga, and Charleston, the Colonists were fighting, not for 
independence, but expressly for their rights as English subjects. Washington writes : 
"When I first took command of the Continental army (July 3, 1775) I abhorred the 
idea of independence." See also Jefferson's letter to John Randolph, August 25, 1775. 



90 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

be — on the subject of Franklin's patriotism ; but they are silent con- 
cerning Franklin's son, who accepted a British office here, probably 
also a British bribe, and was a Tory, a secret enemy of the cause for 
which his father labored. There is a fine stirring story of Edmund 
Randolph, and of many another young Patriot, whose hearts ran ever 
ahead of their Virginia thoroughbreds as they hastened at the first 
call to join the army of Washington ; but we hear little at this time 
of the father, John Randolph, who followed the English governor 
Dinsmore over seas, and remained a Tory exile during the Revolution. 
And these are but types of thousands of such family divisions. 

So, the ringing of the famous Liberty Bell, on July 4, 1776, divided 
the country for the first time into two hostile parties : the Whigs, or 
Whigs and Patriots, who supported the new government ; and the 
Tories Tories, or Loyalists, who remained true to old England, 

as their fathers were before them.^ There was no separation into 
North, Middle, and South ; but every colony, every town and hamlet, 
was a house divided against itself. The Patriots were the younger, 
the more enthusiastic party, and speedily gained control of the state 
governments. For them the bells rang, the cannon roared, the bon- 
fires blazed to heaven ; but we must not assume that this voiced the 
joy of a whole nation. For every man who ran out to join the jubila- 
tion, there was another man who hurried into his house, in grief or 
rage, and slammed the door behind him. Nor are we to conclude, 
from the Revolutionar)^ literature which survives on our bookshelves, 
that th5 young Patriots monopolized the patriotism of the land. The 
Tories were quite as sincere, quite as patriotic, quite as liberty-loving ; 
only they sought liberty, as a'll the Colonists had done for a century 
past, by maintaining their rights as Englishmen. Utterly misjudging 
the new movement, they regarded the Patriots as ungrateful rebels ; 
many of them took up arms to suppress the '' unholy rebellion " ; 
many more gave secret aid to the British. The Patriots, on the other 
hand, sadly misjudged their opponents, calling them traitors to the 
cause of liberty. Thousands of intelligent Loyalists were driven out 
of the country, and their property was seized ; thousands more were 
looked upon with suspicion or hatred. In Loyalist counties, a too- 
zealous Whig was promptly ostracized, or hanged, as the case might be ; 

1 No accurate estimate of the relative strength of these two parties is possible. In 
Georgia the Tories were the larger and more influential class. In New York, Pennsyl- 
vania, and the Carolinas the parties seem to have been equally divided. In Virginia and 
New England the Whigs probably predominated. 



PERIOD OF THE REVOLUTION 



91 



in Patriot districts, a suspected Tory might be ridden out of town on 
a rail, or else given a horrible coat of tar and feathers. Altogether it 
was a hard and bitter separation of old friends and neighbors, so bitter 
that in many places the Revolution seemed more like a barbarous 
civil strife than a united struggle against foreign oppression.^ 

The Constitution. The fourth great movement of this period is 
political, and includes the long struggle to form a national constitu- 
tion. It is the most tense, the most critical, the most fateful move- 
ment in all our history. To understand this, we must remember that 
democracy in America has t\^o essential elements : representation and 
federation. The first v/as inherited from England by the Colonists, 
who from the beginning showed their training and independence by 
electing their own representatives to the House of Burgesses, or 
Assembly, or General Court, as the Colonial legislatures were vari- 
ously called. The second element, of federation, was new in the world. 
The problem of welding a number of free states into a single free 
nation had never been solved, or even attempted ; and America, as 
she set herself to the mighty task, had no precedent to guide her. 
Alone and amid endless difficulties she began her work. Her people 
were hopelessly divided over questions of state and personal rights 
involved in or threatened by federation ; and the effort to form a 
nation came perilously near to disrupting the Colonies just after the 
Revolution had united them. Again there were two parties : the Feder- 
alists, who thought first of the nation and sought as much power as 
possible for the national government ; and the Anti-Federalists, who 
distrusted and feared the monarchial tendency of every centralized 
government since time began, and who were determined to keep the 
governing power as largely as possible in the hands of the individual 
states. The struggle reached a climax in Philadelphia, in 1787, when 
Washington called to order the leaders of the Colonies in thought and 
action, — " an assembly of demigods," Jefferson calls them, — and 
after four months' debate they produced the Constitution of the United 
States, '' the noblest w^ork," according to an English statesman, ^' ever 
struck off at a given time by the mind and purpose of man." ^ 

1 Simms's historical novels, The Partisan^ etc., give vivid pictures of this civil strife in 
the Carolinas. Cooper's The Spy portrays the plots of Whig and Tory in New York. 

2 This fine tribute of Gladstone is often quoted, but the " struck off at a given time " 
is misleading. The Constitution did not come into the world full-grown, like Minerv^a. 
It was the result of two hundred years of experiment here in the matter of government, 
and is partly composed of fragments taken from our old state constitutions. For the 
clear, strong language of the Constitution we are largely indebted to Gouverneur Morris. 



92 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Somewhere in the midst of all this mighty struggle our national 
life began ; but as a nation we have no natal festival, for the simple 
Birth of the reason that none can tell us when America w^as born. 
Nation Some date it at the first Continental Congress ; some at 

the Declaration of Independence ; some at the inauguration of Wash- 
ington, whose noble personality held the discordant states together 
until the new government was established and organized ; and a few 
follow Lowell, who, with fine poetic insight, places the birth of the 
new nation on the day when Washington took command of the army, 
no longer Provincial but Continental, on July 3, 1775 : 

Never to see a nation born 

Hath been given a mortal man, 

Unless to those who, on that summer morn, 

Gazed silent when the great Virginian 

Unsheathed the sword whose fatal flash 

Shot union through the incoherent clash 

Of our loose atoms, crystallizing them 

Around a single will's unpliant stem. 

And making purpose of emotion rash. 

Out of that scabbard sprang, as from its womb, 

Nebulous at first but hardening to a star. 

Through mutual share of sunburst and of gloom, 

The common faith that made us what we are.^ 



II. LITERATURE OF THE REVOLUTION 

General Tendencies. The effects of such mighty historic 
movements are seen instantly in Revolutionar)^ prose and 
poetry ; and we shall better appreciate these if we contrast 
them with the record of the preceding period. A wide reader 
of Colonial literature notes two general characteristics : its 
narrowness and its isolation. Almost every writer dwells apart 
from the world ; his book is as a voice cr)ang in the wilderness ; 
and life seems to him only a pilgrimage, a brief day of prepa- 
ration for eternity. Hence poetry, history and biography are 
all alike theological, that is, they interpret the human in terms 

1 From Lowell, " Under the Old Elm." 



PERIOD OF THE REVOLUTION 93 

of the divine life. In Revolutionary literature there is no isola- 
tion, but rather a splendid sense of comradeship, strong and 
loyal. When the Colonies draw near together, after the Stamp 
Act, they find themselves one in spirit. Otis and Henry voice 
the thought and feeling of a multitude ; Hamilton and Jeffer- 
son appeal not only to the new nation but to the men of every 
land who have pondered the problems of democracy. Even in 
the satires of Freneau, in the ballads of Hopkinson against the 
Tories, and of Odell against the Patriots, there is no sense of 
solitariness ; for each writer is but the voice of a great party 
which cherishes the same ideals and follows the same leader. 

As American literature thus emerges from its isolation, we 
note instantly that it has become more practical, more worldly, 
more intent on solving the problems of the present than of the 
future life. In nearly all books of the period the center of in- 
terest shifts from heaven to earth ; theology gives way to poli- 
tics ; and the spiritual yearnings of an earlier age, which reached 
a climax in Jonathan Edwards, are replaced by the shrewd, prac- 
tical '' philosophy of common sense," with Benjamin Franklin 
as its chief apostle. 

Not only the spirit but the form also of literature is changed 
in the Revolutionary period. The great social movement which 
New Types ^^ have - outlined gave rise to numerous newspapers 
of Literature ^nd magazines,^ with their poems, satires, essays, 
stories, — a bright and varied array compared with the Colonial 
product. More significant of the new social life are the crude 
plays of Royall Tyler and William Dunlap, which were im- 
mensely popular in the new playhouses, and the romances of 
Charles Brockden Brown, which at the close of this period mark 
the beginning of the American novel. 

lAt Boston, in 1690, appeared Public Occurrences, our first newspaper. Its editor 
promised that it should appear " once a month, or oftener if any glut of occurrences 
happen." This poor literary infant gave some political offense, and was promptly sup- 
pressed by the Legislature. The first regular weekly, The Bosto7i News Letter, appeared 
in 1704, almost a century after the first English settlement; and as late as 1750 only a 
few weeklies could be found here. Then, within a few years, scores of newspapers and 
magazines made their appearance (see Thomas, History of Printing in America). 



94 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Just as the new social life brought forth this ephemeral writ- 
ing — a kind of literature of amusement, to be enjoyed to-day 
and forgotten to-morrow — so the various political movements 
had each its distinctive form of literary expression. The years 
following the obnoxious Stamp Act saw the beginning of that 
brilliant oratory which was, and still is, one of the great mold- 
ino: influences in American life and literature. The strife of 
Whigs and Tories is mirrored in a host of ballads, songs and 
satires in verse ; and the struggle between Federalists and Anti- 
Federalists over the Constitution produced, in the writings of 
John Adams, Washington, Madison, Jay, Hamilton, Jefferson, 
and many others, a new form of political writing, the first true 
literature of Democracy, which had influence far beyond the 
borders of the American nation. 

Revolutionary Poetry. One of the first things we note in 
the poetry of the Revolution is that it is often cheapened and 
vulgarized by being devoted to the service of politics, as was 
English literature in the days of Swift and Addison. W^e should 
expect an oration or a political essay of the period to bristle with 
arguments ; but in the realm of poetry we expect better things, 
and are disappointed to find that lyrics and ballads, satires and 
ambitious epics, are all alike intended, not to voice the emotions 
of a nation, but rather to serve as an arsenal in which Patriots or 
Tories shall find weapons to hurl at the heads of their political 
enemies. 

Another marked characteristic of the poetry of the age is its 
imitativeness, its bondage to fashion.^ The thought is sometimes 
Poetic original, and the setting is generally American, but 

Fashions ^}^g g^ylg ^^d phraseology are usually only slavish 

copies of British originals. Thus, one of the most notable 
American poems of the eighteenth century was the Philosophic 

1 Literature, no less than dress, is often ruled by fashion. Many English prose 
writers of Elizabethan times thought that they must write in the wretchedly involved 
style of Lyly's Enphnes. Later, poets must have a "metaphysical " style and write like 
Donne. In Revolutionary times English and American poets imitated Pope's rimed 
couplets, and essayists copied the " elegance " of Addison. 



PERIOD OF THE REVOLUTION 95 

Solitude of William Livingston. The author was a soldier in 
the French and Indian Wars, a member of the Continental 
Congress, a war governor of New Jersey during the Revolu- 
tion, — a rugged, Cromwellian kind of man, to be cherished 
as a friend and feared as an enemy. When he writes prose he 
speaks like a man, often like a soldier ; but when he turns to 
poetry he straightway simpers, and becomes the mere slave of a 
literary fashion : 

Lo ! round the. board a shining train appears 
In rosy beauty, and in prime of years ! 
This hates a flounce, and this a flounce approves, 
This shows the trophies of her former loves ; . . . 
Then parrots, lapdogs, monkeys, squirrels, beaux, 
Fans, ribbons, tuckers, patches, furbelows. 
In quick succession through their fancies run. 
And dance incessant on the flippant tongue. 
And when, fatigued with every other sport, 
The belles prepare to grace the sacred court. 
They marshall all their forces in array, 
To kill with glances, and destroy in play.^ 

A far cry this from the gloom and terror of Wigglesworth's Day 
of Doom, which has, at least, the two virtues of being sincere 
and of reflecting a true side of the Puritan imagination. These 
endless rimed couplets have two chief faults : they are artificial, 
and they give false impression of the mothers of the Revolu- 
tion. One has hardly read a dozen lines before he knows that 
Livingston has merely taken Pope's Rape of the Lock and given 
it an American setting. 

Because of the political turmoil of the age, a large part of 
Revolutionary verse is devoted to satire. Here again our writers 
follow the English poets of the eighteenth century — who were 
sometimes hired by Whigs or Tories to satirize political oppo- 
nents — and their verses copy the style and methods of Dryden, 
Pope and Churchill. It was a beautiful case of '' fighting the 
devil with his own weapons," for every one of these vigorous 

1 From Philosophic SoUtude (1747). The same imitation of Pope is seen in another 
famous poem, Barlow's Hasty Pudding (\'jqj(3). 



96 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

American satirists used his British model as a club wherewith to 
belabor the mother countn^ for her political blunders : 

With press and pen attacked the royal side, 
Did what he could to pull their Lion down, 
Clipped at his beard, and twitched his sacred hide, 
Mimicked his roaring, trod upon his toes, 
Pelted young whelps, and tweaked the old one's nose.^ 

To the student, the most interesting thing in Revolutionary 
poetry is the new and vibrant note of nationality. Songs and 
National ballads appeared in countless numbers ; satires fairly 
Songs peppered the columns of every Patriot newspaper ; 

and all alike voiced the national spirit of the first Continental 
Congress. A score of verses from different sections might easily 
be quoted, but a single illustration must suffice. At the period of 
which we are writing, one of the most popular songs in England 
was David Garrick's sailor chantey, the chorus of which ran : 

Hearts of oak are our ships. 
Gallant tars are our men ; 

We always are ready ; 

Steady, boys, steady ! 

In the Virginia Gazhte of May 2, 1766, when the Colonies 
were all aflame over the Stamp Act, appeared a parody on this 
" English Hearts of Oak." Though the title remained intact, 
the verses warned England that crossing the ocean had not 
changed the Saxon spirit, and that a lion's whelp is a lion, no 
matter where he happens to be born. One of the stanzas ran : 

On our brow while we laurel-crowned liberty wear, 
What Englishmen ought, we Americans dare : 
Though tempest and terrors around us we see, 
Bribes nor fears can prevail over hearts that are free. 
Hearts of oak are we still, 
For we 're sons of those men 
Who always are ready — 
Steady, boys, steady ! — 
To fight for their freedom again and^ again. ^ 

1 From Freneau, " The Country Printer." 

2 Duyckink, Cyclopedia of American Literature. 



PERIOD OF THE REVOLUTION 97 

Ten years later, on the eve of conflict, the song was parodied 
by another Virginian, and now it was called '' American Hearts 
of Oak." The meaning of the changed title is obvious. The 
verses, and indeed all the songs of the period, are echoes of 
Patrick Henry's passionate declaration : '' I am not a Virginian ; 
I am an American." ^ 

Revolutionary Prose. Individuality is perhaps the first qual- 
ity of Revolutionary prose. For the orators and statesmen have 
this advantage over the poets, that a man dares to be him- 
self, instead of a copy of Pope or some other literary fashion. 
When we read such poems as Livingston's Solitude, or Dwight's 
Conquest of Canaan, or Barlow's Colnmbiad, there is nothing 
whatever in the style to suggest that the first was written by a 
doughty Whig champion, the second by a college president, 
and the third by a versatile minister, lawyer, land speculator 
and politician. If by some chance the poems had been found 
among Dwight's manuscripts, the world would never suspect, 
from internal evidence, that the godly Yale president had not 
written all three tiresome effusions. But one who reads Frank- 
lin's Antobiography, or Woolman's _/<??/ r//(^/, or Paine's Common 
Sense, knows instantly what manner of man is speaking ; 
knows also that Franklin could not by any possibility have 
written the spiritual Joiirnal, or Paine the self-satisfied Auto- 
biography. And so with the other prose writers, Lee, Adams, 
Quincy, Mayhew, Jefferson, Hamilton, — the revelation which 
each makes of himself in his style is far more interesting, be- 
cause more human, than the political subject he happens to be 
expounding. 

Almost as notable as this individuality of Revolutionary prose 
writers is another trait, a kind of '' commonwealth quality," 
Citizen arising from community of interests on the one hand. 

Literature ^nd from a man's profound sense of responsibility 
to his fellows on the other. If the lonely Colonial writers im- 
press us as voices crying in the wilderness, the Revolutionary 

iFrom a speech at the opening of the First Continental Congress, 1774. 



98 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

authors seem like men speaking in a great assembly ; and their 
words have power because they voice the thought and aspira- 
tion of a multitude. For a new problem has been suddenly 
thrust upon the Colonies by the Revolution. It is the problem 
of forming one union out of many states, of making one gov- 
ernment out of many factions, of bringing a multitude of all 
sorts and conditions of men into national peace and harmony. 
Hence the orators and prose writers, if they are to help solve 
that mighty problem, must appeal to the love of freedom and 
the sense of justice which lie deep in the hearts of men ; they 
must emphasize ideals which are acknowledged by rich and 
poor, wise and ignorant ; and, like Bradford, they must have 
an eye single to the truth in all things. 

That they felt their responsibility, that they used voice and 
pen nobly in the service of the nation, is evident enough to one 
who reads even a part of the prose literature appearing between 
Henry's impassioned '' Liberty or Death " speech and Wash- 
ington's calm and noble '' Farewell Address " to his people. 
Clearness, force, restraint ; here a touch of humor, when the 
crowd must be coaxed ; there' a sudden exaltation of soul, when 
the old Saxon ideal of liberty is presented, — all the elements 
of a fine prose style are manifest ; but it is not so much the 
form as the substance that appeals to us, and especially the great- 
heartedness of the Revolutionary writers. They gave the world 
the first example of what has been well called '' citizen litera- 
ture," that is, the expression of the ideals of a whole common- 
wealth, and to this day their work remains unrivaled in its own 
political field. 

This Revolutionary prose belongs largely to the " literature 
of knowledge " and is seldom found in literary textbooks ; but 
it is well to remember two things concerning it : that it began 
with our national life ; and that it reflects a strong, original and 
creative impulse of the American mind. It was as if Democ- 
racy, silent for untold ages, had at last found a voice, and the 
voice spoke, not doubtfully, fearfully, but in trumpet tones of 



PERIOD OF THE REVOLUTION 



99 



prophecy. It gave the startled old world something new and 
vital to think about ; and it is quite as remarkable in its way as 
are the forest and sea romances of Cooper, which surprised and 
delighted all Europe a half century later. 



III. TRANSITION FROM COLONY TO NATION 
Benjamin Franklin (1706— 1790) 

It was a custom among certain Indians to place at the gate 
of their village a symbolic staff, carved in the likeness of some 
bird or beast. This was the 
totem pole, and it indicated 
three things : the tribe or clan 
to which the Indians belonged, 
the qualities of strength or cun- 
ning which they admired, and 
the bond of unity and peace 
among those who followed the 
same symbol. Had America 
adopted this custom at the close 
of the Revolution, and set up 
totem poles instead of flag- 
staffs on her village greens, it 
is probable that many of them 
would have been carved in the 
semblance of a human head, 
with fur cap and spectacles, 
which would have suggested 

to every visitor the name, the quality and the influence of 
Benjamin Franklin, the man who symbolized success. 

In many ways this one citizen was typical of the new Ameri- 
can nation. He was a self-made man, who had risen by his 
own effort from poverty to wealth, from obscurity to world-wide 
honor ; he was an epitome of the shrewdness and practical sense 
that win reward in the business of life ; and when he had signed 







BEN7AMIN FRANKLIN 



lOO AMERICAN LITERATURE 

the four notable documents of our early history,^ and represented 
us with marked success in the courts of Europe, he became a 
bond of unity among the people. For a quarter of a century 
his almanac had been their daily counselor ; they read news- 
papers which bore the stamp of his genius ; they comforted 
themselves about his new stove ; they lost fear of the tempest 
under the protection of his lightning rods. In all these ways 
Franklin had entered into the warp and woof of American life. 
At home he was more widely known than any other man save 
Washington ; abroad he was famous for his electrical experi- 
ments, and his maxims were household words in many places 
where the name of the great Virginian had never been heard. 
He seemed, therefore, and to many he still seems, a kind of 
totem or symbol of his age, the most representative American 
of the eighteenth century. 

Life. Franklin's life began (1706) when America consisted of a 
few scattered settlements, in only one of which was a newspaper ; it 
ended (1790) when the same settlements had become a united and 
progressive nation under one great leader. He marks the rapid tran- 
sition from the Colonial to the National period, and when we study 
the spirit of his life we are struck by the contrast between the old 
order and the new. 

Thus, he was a contemporary of Jonathan Edwards ; but while 
Edwards marks the end and glory of one age, Franklin is unmistaka- 
Franklin's ^ly the beginning of another. Contrast these two men in 
Contempo- any way, and they are as different as the Freedom of the 
ranes ^^■^ ^^^ p^^^ Richard^s Almanac, as a Greek temple 

and a modern workshop. He was born and bred in Boston, the 
stronghold of Puritanism, while Cotton Mather was in the autumn 
splendor of his influence ; but there was nothing of the Puritan in 
Franklin, and Mather he regarded with mild curiosity. '' There came 
in my way," he tells us, as if he were meeting a stranger, " a book 
of Dr. Mather's, called Essays to Do Good, which gave me a turn of 
thinking " ; but we note that it was one of the least of Mather's 
works, and that Franklin did not get even the tide right. All the rest 

1 These are the Declaration of Independence, the treaty of alliance with France, the 
treaty of peace with England, and the Constitution of the United States. 



PERIOD OF THE REVOLUTION lOl 

of the Puritan's mighty interests, like outgoing ships, had already 
dropped below the rim of Franklin's horizon. Some five years before 
Mather died Franklin ran away to Philadelphia, and Boston lost in 
the same decade two prominent citizens ; one departing broken-hearted 
because the city had become too liberal, the other shaking the dust 
gladly from his feet because the same city was too strait and narrow 
for his way of thinking. " I had already made myself a little obnox- 
ious to the governing party," he tells us, without a smile at the con- 
ceit of this youth of seventeen, who takes issue with the Governor 
in affairs of statecraft, and with Doctors of Divinity in matters of 
religion and morals. His attitude toward his superiors reminds us 
strongly of the young Omar: 

Myself when young did eagerly frequent 
Doctor and saint, and heard great argument 

About it and about : but evermore 
Came out by the same door wherein I went. 

Our first impression, therefore, is that Franklin and his contempora- 
ries have parted company ; that he seems less a product of New Eng- 
land, with her faith and idealism, than of eighteenth-century Old 
England, with her skeptical philosophy and worldly manner of living. 
From his life story we glean the following facts : that he was poor 
and obscure ; that he had only two years of schooling ; that he liked 
to read, but had very few books.-^ At ten he was working 
in the shop of his father, who made soap and candles; at 
twelve he was apprenticed to his brother, who was a printer, thereby 
spoiling his own plan to run away to sea, and his father's ambition to 
make a minister of him. 

When he entered the printing house, Franklin set his foot promptly 
on the first rung of the ladder of fame and fortune. For a short time 
he was the odd-job boy of the place ; then he determined to improve 
the newspaper by writing essays after the manner of Addison. He 
had studied this master of style in an odd volume of the Spectator^ 
and thought that he '' could improve the matter or the language." 
These essays, on such timely subjects as " Freedom of Thought " 
and '' Hoop Petticoats," he slipped under the door, and listened with 
delight when the printer asked who could have written them. Here, 

1 Franklin's library consisted of Pilgrirn}s Progress^ Plutarch's Lives, Burton's His- 
torical Collection, Defoe's Essay on Projects, a translation of Xenophon's Memorabilia, 
a volume of the Spectator essays, and a few unread volumes on " Polemical Divinity." 



I02 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

at the outset of his career, we find him cultivating the talent to which, 
as he tells us, he owed most of his success, namely, his " little ability 
in writing." He seemed on the point of making a name for himself, 
when he quarreled with his brother, broke his articles, and ran away 
to Philadelphia. There he arrived, after an adventurous journey, with 
one Dutch dollar and a few coppers in his pocket. 

From the Autobiography we form a picture of him as he trudges 
up Market Street. Here he is, the future foremost citizen of Pennsyl- 
vania, the man who shall stand before princes. His clothes are soiled, 
his hair unkempt from sleeping in the fields ; his pockets bulge out 
with his spare shirt and stockings ; he is eating a puffy roll of bread, 
and holding another roll under each arm. No one recognizes the 
future great man. A girl on a stoop turns, glances at him, smiles at 
his awkward appearance ; and this smiling girl is his future wife. 
What a chance for romance, for poetry, for sweet and tender recol- 
lections when they shall look back on the scene together ! But alas ! 
there is no sentiment in Franklin ; to him poetry is a book with seven 
seals ; and never, not even in the memory of a woman's smile, shall ' 
he look in at the golden door of romance. Interested in his new 
surroundings and wholly unconscious of self, he goes on his way, eat- 
ing his roll, his keen eyes taking in the world as his mouth takes in 
the bread. When his hunger and curiosity are satisfied, he follows 
some well-dressed people into the Quaker meetinghouse and takes a 
comfortable nap during divine service. 

Next day he was looking for work, and straightway found it. For 
a year or more he followed his printer's trade, exercising meanwhile 
his remarkable faculty for making influential friends. One of the 
latter. Governor Keith, sent him on a wild-goose chase to London, 
where he made the best of misfortune by learning improved methods 
of printing. Then he returned to Philadelphia, and was clerk in a 
store till fate drove him from the counter to the printing house again. 
This time he stayed to make his fortune. 

The rest of the story is one of unbroken triumph. He succeeded 
rapidly in business, largely by industry and thrift, but occasionally ad- 
vancing his own interests by methods which cannot stand for an instant 
in the white light of honor. At forty he had enough money, knew it, 
and retired from business to devote himself to the public welfare. 

With his genius for practical leadership, he was appointed or elected 
to various offices, and in every case he revolutionized the methods 
of the public service. The modern post office dates from the day he 



PERIOD OF THE REVOLUTION 103 

was appointed postmaster at Philadelphia, and made it for the first time 
a useful and paying institution. He created the modern police force, 
Public to replace the ridiculous old night watch ; he organized the 

Service first fire company, instituted the modern militia, started 

the American Philosophical Society, began a circulating library, founded 
an academy which became the University of Pennsylvania. Also he 
made inventions, like the iron stove, the first advance on the clumsy 
brick oven of the Romans, which added enormously to the comfort 
of the common people. All the while he wrote essays, using litera- 
ture to serve some practical end. The result of his work and writing 
was that he soon became the leading citizen of a great colony. Not 
a project, from cleaning streets to starting a hospital, could succeed 
unless he indorsed it. Though ignorant of military affairs, he fur- 
nished transportation and food for Braddock's army ; and after the 
rout of the British troops (1755) he was sent to build forts on the 
frontier to protect settlers from the fury of the savages. 

While Franklin was debating whether to devote himself to science 
or to writing his cherished Art of Virtue, fate again interfered to push 
him away from the book, which he was hardly fitted to write, into an 
unexplored region where a great revelation was awaiting the time 
when he should apply his common sense to the clouds instead of to 
Braddock's army. Into his discovery, that the blinding flash from the 
thunder cloud and the amusing spark from a cat's back are one and 
the same thing, we cannot enter here ; it is a matter of science rather 
than of literature. We note only that, when the discovery was quietly 
announced, this obscure tradesman was known and honored from one 
end of the civilized world to the other. He was then ready for his 
mission, and Europe was ready to listen to every message he might 
bring from America. 

In 1757 he began his eighteen years' residence in England, going 
abroad as agent of his state. Here again he made influential friends, 
Franklin used the newspapers, till he became almost as well known 
Abroad in London as in Philadelphia. Meanwhile he did splendid 

service for the Colonies, securing the repeal of the Stamp Act, post- 
poning and trying to avert the Revolution. When war seemed inevi- 
table, England apparently offered liberal inducements to hold him to 
the British cause, but he sided squarely with the Patriots, while his own 
son went over to the Tories. There is sterling metal in this American, 
and it rings true when he rejects England's offer, and comes home to 
sign the Declaration of Independence. 



I04 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Franklin was then an old man and longed for peace, but almost 
immediately he was sent to France as ambassador of the Colonies. 
His reception in Paris was perhaps the most remarkable ever accorded 
to a foreigner. Enthusiastic crowds followed him on the streets ; his 
words were on every tongue, his picture in every shop window — 
curious pictures, with lightning flaming around his old fur cap and 
illuminating Turgot's poetic line : Eripuit coelo fulmen sceptrumque 
ty?'an?iis. Taking shrewd advantage of the enthusiasm, he pleaded the 
cause of his country, used the newspapers, made powerful friends ; 
and it is due largely to his personal influence that money and a fleet 
were sent to aid us in the Revolution. 

When the treaty of peace was signed, in 1783, Franklin's great 
work for his country was practically done, and he seems for the first 
time a little weary, a little sad, as he writes home to an old friend : 

" At length we are at peace. God be praised, and long, very long, may 
it continue. All wars are follies, very expensive and mischievous ones. 
When will mankind be convinced of this, and agree to settle their differ- 
ences by arbitration ? Were they to do it even by the cast of a die, it would 
be better than by fighting and destroying each other." 

He had often asked to be recalled, but it was not till 1785 that he 
was allowed to return home in triumph. He had served his state and 
nation for a full half century, and looked for^vard to ease by his own 
fireside and to writing his Art of Virtue ; but hardly had he landed 
before he was elected Governor of Pennsylvania, and again took up 
the burden of public office. He lived long enough to help frame the 
Constitution, and to see his friend Washington made President of the 
new nation. His last years, when he met suffering and death with 
undiminished cheerfulness, seem to us the most heroic of his long 
career. His attitude toward life is summed up in a paragraph of the 
Autobiography^ which tells us that he would be glad of the chance to 
repeat his course from the beginning, " only asking the advantage 
authors have in a second edition, to correct some faults in the first." 
His attitude toward death is summed up in a sentence : 

" Death I shall submit to with the less regret as, having seen during a 
long life a great deal of this world, I feel a growing curiosity to be acquainted 
with some other." 

Works of Franklin. In ten large volumes we have only a part 
of Franklin's writings ; but these are enough. We do not read 



PERIOD OF THE REVOLUTION 



105 



Poor Rkharcl, 17 33. 



A N 



Almanack 



Foi the Year of Chrift 



7 3 3, 



them for the simple reason that they have no beauty, no endur- 
ing interest. For sixty years he had been industrious with his 
pen, using it only as a tool, as a means to some practical and 
immediate end. Like Swift, 
he seldom signed his work, let- 
ing it stand or fall on its own 
merits. He made no effort to 
collect his writings, and the 
most important of them was 
forgotten and thrown into the 
street. In declaring, therefore, 
that the bulk of Franklin's 
work is of small literary value, 
we are merely repeating his 
own shrewd judgment. An 
exception must be made, 
however, of his almanac, his 
AiUobiogi'aphy, and a few of 
his letters and essays. 

Poor Richard's Alnia7iac 
was begun in 1732, the year 
of Washington's 
birth, and for twen- 
ty-five years was 
known throughout the Colo- 
nies. Franklin's work here, 
though not original, 1 was not- 
able in this respect, that it 
produced our first typical 

character, Poor Richard, — who ranks with Leatherstocking and 
Uncle Remus among the enduring creations of American fiction. 

1 Long before 1732 the yearly almanac was a welcome visitor in every Colonial home. 
The best, not excepting Franklin's, was the Astronomical Diary and Almanac of Nathaniel 
Ames, of Dedham, Massachusetts. This appeared in 1724, and for forty years preached 
the gospel of work and cheerfulness. Franklin's general plan suggests that of Ames ; 
his title, " Poor Richard," was taken from an English almanac. 



Poor 

Richard's 

Almanac 



Being the Firft after LEAP YEAR. 

yfnA rt:/rkrs firKX 'hr Crerticn Ycars 

By rlic Account o<"thc Foftcn G'^c»^■l ■j'24i 

By the Latin Church, when G tiif. T tf9jz 

By rlic CoH putation of li' (V 5742 

By the /?om<»« Chronology 5^il2 

By the Jevip R abbies ^494 

IVhereiti ts coutaiveJ 

The Lunations, Ectipfcs. Judgment cf 
'he VVdrlier, "^piinf: Tui <, PlaneH MofiunsiJc 

■ mutual AfpcilN, Sun .imi Nfoon\ Hifing ai.d Set 
ting, Lcn;;th of Days. TinH- of Higli Water, 
Fairs, Courts, and obOrv.ible Days 

Fitted to the Lartrudcof t''orry Degrees, 
'.Titi a Mcridi.m of i'lvffoprs VVtfl fVow Iftir'M, 
hur mny uirbout tcuflhle Enor fervc all the ad- 
jicci-.t i'lr.ccs, even from KccvfourJlind to Scnth- 



By RICHARD S/IUNDERS, Philom. 

PHILADELPHIA: 

Pilntfd and fold l>v B. FlUNKL/N, at thf New 
Printing OfHce near tlic Market 

The Tl)ird ImprclTioa. 



TITLE-PAGE FROM POOR RICHARD'S 
ALMANAC 



lo6 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Another detail is worthy of notice. At that time Pennsylvania's 
only almanac, a poor affair, was published by a quack astrologer 
named Titus Leeds. Franklin, in the guise of Poor Richard, 
informs the public that he would not start a second almanac but 
for this reason : the author of the first is doomed ; the stars 
have been consulted, and by their infallible decree Leeds must 
die on October 1 7, after which his excellent almanac will be no 
more. Evidently Leeds had no sense of humor, for in his next 
almanac he replied hotly, insisting that he was alive, and abusing 
Poor Richard. In the following year Richard sadly informs his 
readers that Leeds must be dead for two reasons : first, the stars 
could not lie, as Leeds had often declared ; and second, if that 
illustrious man were living, he would not use such unchristian 
language, nor publish such a wretched almanac. It was a good- 
natured kind of fooling, which we might better enjoy if we did 
not know that it was copied from Swift's Bickerstaff Alniaiiac. 
But the public knew nothing of Swift ; it applauded Poor 
Richard's stolen wit, and bought his almanacs as fast as he 
could print them. 

Surprised at the success of his venture, Franklin resolved to 
make his almanac useful as well as profitable, and filled it with 
wise saws, anecdotes and moral precepts, till its pages were like 
a boy's pocket : 

" Better slip with foot than tongue. Doors and walls are fools' paper. 
Diligence is the mother of good luck. Honesty is the best policy. Great 
talkers are little doers. God helps them that help themselves. Experience 
keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other. If you would know 
the value of money, go and try to borrow some, for he that goes a-borrowing 
goes a-sorrowing. ..." 

These and hundreds of similar aphorisms, scattered among the 
calendars and weather predictions, indicate the character of 
Franklin's philosophy.^ In thousands of homes his almanac 

1 Franklin's wisdom is part of the so-called gnomic philosophy, and most of his 
maxims may be traced back to the Seven Sages, the gnomic poets of early Greece. 
These were men famous for making proverbs, and their wise saws are still repeated in 
every civilized language. 




BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 
From the portrait by Duplessis 



PERIOD OF THE REVOLUTION 107 

was read over and over again by the winter fire ; his proverbs 
were repeated by fathers to children, until his thought became 
almost a part of the national consciousness. 

Before Franklin went abroad, in 1757, he made a last power- 
ful impression on his countless readers. Reviewing all his 
The Way almanacs, he packed their best wit and wisdom into 
to Wealth ^he form of a speech heard at an auction — a remark- 
able homily oh industry and thrift, seasoned with the salt of 
Poor Richard's maxims. As this famous speech is a short one, 
we forbear quotation, leaving it entire to the reader. It made a 
sensation, next to the Day of Doom probably the greatest in 
our literary history. Under various names, such as '' Father 
Abraham's Speech " and ''The Way to Wealth," it was reprinted 
in every American newspaper. It went abroad on the first ship ; 
was displayed in English stores and factories ; two translations 
of it were made in France, where the clergy used to distribute 
it to their parishioners, and from France it spread through every 
other civilized country. 

The Autobiography was begun in 1771, while Franklin was 
visiting his friend Bishop Shipley, at Twyford, England. He 
The Auto- was then sixty-five years old, and thinking, possibly, 
biography Qf j^^g death and of newspaper obituaries, he wrote 
a letter to his son, at that time Governor of New Jersey. It 
opens as follows : 

" Dear Son : I have ever had pleasure in obtaining any little anec- 
dotes of my ancestors. . . . Imagining it may be equally agreeable to you 
to know the circumstances of my life, ... I sit down to write them for 
you. To which I have besides some other inducements. Having emerged 
from the poverty and obscurity in which I was born and bred to a state 
of affluence and some degree of reputation in the world, and having gone 
so far through life with a considerable share of felicity, the conducing means 
I made use of, which with the blessing of God so well succeeded, my 
posterity may like to know, as they may find some of them suitable to their 
own situations and therefore fit to be imitated. . . . 

"Hereby, too, I shall indulge the inclination, so natural in old men, to be 
talking of themselves and their own past actions. . . . And lastly (I may as 
well confess it, since my denial of it will be believed by nobody) perhaps I 



io8 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

shall a good deal gratify my own vanity. . . . Most people dislike vanity 
in others, whatever share of it they have themselves ; but I give it fair 
quarter wherever I meet with it, being persuaded that it is often productive 
of good to the possessor, and to others that are within his sphere of action ; 
and therefore, in many cases, it would not be altogether absurd if a man 
were to thank God for his vanity among the other comforts of life." 

Here, on the first page, we have the author's three motives in 
writing : he will gratify a Httle natural vanity, record such family 
history as a son would like to remember, share the secret of 
his worldly success and so instruct others in the conduct of 
life. He has no thought of literary fame, and this explains the 
greatest charm of his book, its straightforwardness. 

The son evidently cared little for this letter, which was lost for 
twelve years and rescued on its way to the bonfire. ^ At the urgent 
request of friends Franklin wrote another chapter in Paris, and 
a third in Philadelphia, bringing the record down to 1 7 5 7 ; but 
he cared so little for the story that he never completed it, and died 
without arranging for the publication of any of his writings. 

The literary world has dealt more kindly with the Autobiog- 
raphy, which has been widely read at home and in many foreign 
countries. The secret of its popularity lies partly in the glamor 
which surrounds the author's worldly success, partly in the 
interest which we take in the story of any life, if it be told 
frankly from within. Here is a man who has '' warmed both 
hands before the fire of life." He has risen from obscurity to 
fame ; on his upward way he has met the heroes and shared in 
the fateful incidents of our national history. He tells us just 
how he did it, and somehow gives the impression that others 
may win the same success by the same methods. As the vast 
majority of readers are, like Franklin, born poor and ambitious, 

1 Abel Jones, a Quaker, rescued Franklin's letter, recognized its value, and sent a 
copy to Franklin, urging him to complete the work. The Aidobiography was first pub- 
lished in France, immediately after Franklin's death, in 1790. The first edition in English 
was a retranslation of this garbled French version. Not until 1868 was the work published 
as Franklin wrote it. The long delay is attributed to the carelessness of a grandson, 
Temple Franklin, who had charge of Franklin's manuscripts. It has been suspected, 
however, that this grandson was bribed by some stupid official to suppress all of Franklin's 
papers relating to his dealings with the English government. 



PERIOD OF THE REVOLUTION 109' 

his story made a lasting impression, especially in a country where 
every man may set his own goal and win it by his own effort. 

On these three accounts — the human interest of the work, its 
historical background, and its tonic influence on the reader's 
will power — -Franklin's Autobiography has become a classic in 
our literature. This is the fact, though some of us may doubt 
the value of the work and the judgment of those who praise it 
extravagantly. Regarded as a matter of self -portrayal, simple, 
clear, without affectation or concealment, it is an excellent piece 
of work ; but the spirit of the author is too worldly and mechan- 
ical, too negligent of the higher attributes of humanity to rouse 
our enthusiasm. Many excellent critics commend the work never- 
theless. They would give the A?itobiography to young people 
as a stimulus in the prosaic matter of getting a living, just as 
poetry is given to educate their sense of beauty, and the Iliad 
and Morte d'ArtJmrto develop their heroism and chivalry. 

The remaining works of Franklin cover such a variety of 
subjects that the beginner will do well to read a small book 
Various of selections. Such a collection should include some 
Minor Works of the Silence Dogood and Busybody papers, which 
are brief essays modeled on the Spectator ; a few dialogues, 
after the manner of Xenophon, like *' Franklin and the Gout"; 
and a dozen of the later essays, like ''The Ephemera" and 
" The Whistle." The last are of no consequence ; but they indi- 
cate the curious fact that Franklin, at seventy-five, was writing 
with more vivacity than at any other period of his life. In an 
entirely different vein are the satires, like ''Rules for Reducing 
a Great Empire to a Small One," "An Edict by the King of 
Prussia," and "From the Count de Schaumburgh " — keen, 
penetrating little works, suggesting a favorable comparison with 
Swift, the greatest master of satire that the English race has 
produced. The selections should include also some of Franklin's 
Letters, which are, in our judgment, the best of all his writings. ^ 

1 An excellent book for the beginner is Bigelow's Life of Franklin Written by Himself. 
Here the Autobiography is supplemented by numerous letters. 



no 



AMERICAN L1TP:RATURE 



The Quality of Franklin. The style of Franklin is in marked 
contrast to that of other Colonial and Revolutionary writers. 
Aiming in his first essays at clearness, force and brevity, he 
grows steadily clearer, more forceful, more pithy, until he can 
say more in a sentence than other writers in a paragraph. His 
English is, like that of Swift and Defoe, remarkable for simplic- 
ity, for absence of all rhetorical effort. Best of all, his style is 

pervaded by a kindly hu- 
mor, which is often called 
American, but which, like 
all humor, is an individ- 
ual not a national qual- 
ity. As Tyler points out, 
it answers Thackeray's de- 
scription of real humor as 
being made up of wit and 
love, '' the best humor 
being that which contains 
the most humanity and is 
flavored throughout with 
tenderness and kindness." 
Even in his satires, which 
attack injustice, Franklin's 
humor is always kindly; 
and here he is in contrast 
not only with his master Swift, but also with Freneau, Odell 
and other satirists of the Revolutionary period. 

Omitting Franklin's political and scientific writings, the bulk 
of his work is a kind of homily on the art of living ; and here. 
His we must remember, he marks the transition from the 

Philosophy theological to the worldly period of American life. 
Unlike the Colonial writers, he looked at men steadily from a 
workaday viewpoint, and aimed to make the humdrum life of 
this world more comfortable and contented. To accomplish this 
desirable end, two things seemed to him essential, virtue and 




franklin's printing press 



PERIOD OF THE REVOLUTION iii 

prosperity, and either of these must lead to the other. Thus he 
tells us in one work that '' virtue is the best means of success," 
in another that ''prosperity is the road to virtue." The chief 
fault of such a philosophy, if we may dignify worldly wisdom 
by so noble a name, is that it estimates virtue and human life 
on too low a plane. Virtue is not a means, but an end in itself; 
it is an immortal ideal which lightens the soul of every man 
coming into the world ; it has nothing to do with riches or 
poverty, with present success or failure. As Tennyson writes : 

Glory of warrior, glory of orator, glory of song, 
Paid with a voice flying by to be lost on an endless sea. 
Glory of Virtue, to fight, to struggle, to right the wrong — 
Nay, but she aim'd not at glory, no lover of glory she : 
Give her the glory of going on, and still to be. 

We can honor Franklin heartily for his inventions and scientific 
discoveries, his patriotism and service to his country ; but we 
are considering now his moral philosophy and his literary work. 
The philosophy seems to us an affair of policy, rather than of 
enduring principle. It is shortsighted, being bounded by earth's 
horizon. It lacks the tremendous emphasis of the eternally right. 
In his writings we find abundant sense and humor, but nothing 
of delicacy or culture, of sentiment or chivalry. In a word, he 
lacks idealism — that exquisite sense of unseen reality, of the 
eternal in the temporal, of the divine in the human, which is 
the glory of our life and literature. 

IV. ORATORS AND STATESMEN OF THE REVOLUTION 

In studying that unrivaled group of orators and statesmen who 
made our nation what it is, one is often reminded of the words 
of De Tocqueville, who, viewing them from an impersonal vantage 
ground — as one must ever study a varied group of men or a com- 
plex movement in history — loses sight of the individual and notes 
only the big, significant qualities that characterize them all alike : 

I can conceive nothing more admirable or more powerful than a great 
orator debating great questions of state in a democratic assembly. As no 



112 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

particular class is ever represented there ... it is always to the whole 
nation, and in the name of the whole nation, that the orator speaks. This 
expands his thoughts and heightens his power of language. As precedents 
have there but little weight, the mind must have recourse to general truths 
derived from human nature to resolve the particular question under dis- 
cussion. Hence the political debates of a democratic people, however small 
it may be, have a degree of breadth which frequently renders them attrac- 
tive to mankind. All men are interested by them because they treat of 
Man, who is everywhere the same. 

No better estimate of the Revolutionary fathers has ever been 
made. These men have a national, not a sectional spirit. They 
appeal directly to the ideals of liberty and justice which glorify 
the souls of men wherever man is found. And that, in a word, 
is the secret of their power and influence. 

Typical Revolutionary Speeches. It is difficult to name the 
best speeches of such an age of oratory, when patriotism glowed 
in every pulpit and flamed in every legislative hall 
throughout the Colonies, and with some hesitation 
we have selected two that seem typical of all the rest. The first 
is the speech of James Otis, in the Town House at Boston, in 
1 761. His subject was the Writs of Assistance, which he en- 
larged to the general proposition that ''taxation without repre- 
sentation is tyranny." He began with a legal argument, bu^ 
from the advocate he changed to the prophet — a very Isaiah, 
Adams calls him — and boldly asserted that no law could stand 
which violated the fundamental rights of humanity. Fragmen- 
tary as it is,i this speech, with its logic, its passionate appeal, its 
prophetic warning, is an epitome of the political thought of 
America during those tense years when revolution, a little cloud 
like a man's hand, rose darkly above the horizon. '' On that 
day Independence was born," says John Adams ; and again, 
writing from Philadelphia after signing the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, he calls this speech the beginning of the struggle 
between England and America. 

1 The address was probably never written, for Otis, like Henr)', depended on his 
audience for inspiration. Full notes were taken by John Adams, then a young lawyer, 
and they are found in his collected works. 



PERIOD OF THE REVOLUTION 



113 



The speech of Patrick Henry, in 1775, marks the end and 
cHmax of Revolutionary oratory. Fifteen years have passed 
Patrick since Otis defined the question at issue, stated the 

Henry American argument, and voiced the American spirit. 

During these years the Colonies were buzzing like a beehive 
with legal argument and political oratory ; but every argument 
had failed, every petition had been slighted, every solemn warn- 
ing to England fell on ears as deaf as Pharaoh's to the voice 
of justice. As that fiery 
old patriot Samuel Adams 
declared : 

" We have explored the tem- 
ple of royalty, and found that 
the idol we have bowed down to 
has eyes that see not, ears that 
hear not our prayer, and a heart 
like the nether millstone." 

Down in Virginia the 
House of Burgesses has 
been roughly dissolved by 
the royal governor. As the 
delegates gather again, in 
old St. John's Church, 
there is a feeling in the 
air that further argument 
is idle ; that there is noth- 
ing left for a free man but to submit quietly to injustice or to 
reach for his weapons. At this critical moment Henry rises to 
speak. His first words imply that the day of speech is past ; 
it is the time for action. Then, with the power of a master 
musician, he plays upon the emotions, rouses the fighting blood 
of his hearers, till all doubts are dissolved, prudence swept aside, 
and they grow eager, impatient of delay, like cavalry horses at 
the sound of the bugle. Hear this peroration, and for a moment 
put yourself back among the aroused delegates, for whom 




\ 



PATRICK HENRY 



114 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Henry's prophecy was startlingly verified in the tidings from 
Lexington and Concord : 

" It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, peace, 
peace, but there is no peace. The war is actually begun. The next gale 
that sweeps from the North will bring to our ears the clash of resounding 
arms. Our brethren are already in the field. Why stand we here idle.? 
What is it that gentlemen wish .? What would they have ? Is life so dear, 
or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of ctiains and slavery ? 
Forbid it, Almighty God. I know not what course others may take ; but as 
for me, give me liberty or give me death ! " ^ 

We have read this speech and heard it declaimed many times. 
We know that it is perfervid, illogical ; that our reason ought to 
detect and criticize its weaknesses ; yet we confess that we have 
never read or heard it without a tingling of the nerves, a tighten- 
ing of the muscles for action. There is something irresistible in 
the appeal, which stamps it as a masterpiece of popular oratory. 

The Statesmen. There are at least twelve Revolutionary states- 
men, each one remarkable for some written word that has given 
inspiration to America for a century past, who deserve a place 
in our literature. Even a list of their names suggests how vain 
were the attempt to do them justice in this brief history. Tower- 
ing above the rest is Washington, whom '' Light-Horse Harry " 
Lee described as '' first in war, first in peace, first in the hearts 
of his countrymen." Washington's mother calls him simply "a 
good son " ; all his contemporaries unite in calling him a good 
''father of his country," and these two tributes sum up his 
qualities as a man and as a statesman. 

No other American has been so bepraised ; -hardly another 
seems so vague as Washington, and this because we are con- 
tent to receive our impressions at secondhand, from 
biographers who make of him "a frozen image," 
or else a model of superhuman excellencies. Washington was 
primarily a man, and the only way to know him now is to read 

1 Henry's speeches were never written. He seems to have been like the old Greek 
rhapsodists in being able to give himself wholly to the inspiration of the moment, and 
his words pour from him like water from a living spring. The account of his famous 
speech is found in Wirt's Life of Patrick Heniy (1816). 



PERIOD OF THE REVOLUTlOiN 



115 



his own record. We would .begin with his Journal, especially 
that modest record of his heroic journey through the wilderness 
to the French forts on the upper Ohio, in 1753. Here we meet 
a youth going about a strong man's work with courage and 
profound sagacity, estimating the value of this western wilder- 
ness, showing the judgment of a soldier and a statesman in 
concluding that the distant ,. 

French and Spanish pos- 
sessions are a menace to 
liberty and to the expansion 
of the American people. 
In this youthful record we 
hear, faint but clear, the 
trumpet note of nationality 
that is to ring through all 
his later writings. 

Aside from his personal 
quality, Washington was 
Farewell fitted to be a 
Address national leader 

largely because by travel 
and observation he knew 
his whole country, — the 
common spirit of New 
England, the Old Domin- 
ion and '' the land beyond 
the mountains." And for 

North, South and West he advocated a national university, 
where youths from every section should meet one another and 
learn devotion to a common ideal. His journals, his letters, his 
message to the states after disbanding the Revolutionary army, 
— all these speak first of the man, and then of the patriot 
animated and dominated by the new national spirit. ^ Hardly 




GEORGE WASHINGTON 



1 We would recommend to the student Washington's Journals^ Letters^ his note " To 
the Governors of all the States" (1783) and his " Farewell Address" (1796). 



Ii6 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

is the nation formed, when he sees it doubly divided, first by 
those who side with France or England in their European war, 
and second by the bitter struggle between Federalists and Anti- 
Federalists. Then he writes his '' Farewell Address," still sound- 
ing the same note of nationality, pleading with the American 
people to be a nation after their own fashion, avoiding alike the 
*' entangling alliances" with foreign nations and the dangers of 
partisan strife among themselves : 

"... Citizens by birth, or choice, of a common country, that country 
has a right to concentrate your affections. The name of American, which 
belongs to you in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride 
of patriotism, more than any appellation derived from local discriminations. 
With slight shades of difference, you have the same religion, manners, 
habits and political principles. You have, in a common cause, fought and 
triumphed together; the independence and liberty you possess are the 
work of joint counsels and joint efforts, of common dangers, sufferings 
and successes. . . . 

" Observe good faith and justice toward all nations ; cultivate peace and 
harmony with all. Religion and morality enjoin this conduct ; and can it 
be that good policy does not equally enjoin it? It will be worthy of a free, 
enlightened and, at no distant period, a great nation to give to mankind 
the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an 
exalted justice and benevolence. ..." 

From that pioneer band of statesmen who upheld Washing- 
ton's hands as he formed and presided over a nation, we select 
only two, Hamilton and Jefferson, not because they were the 
best writers, but because they reflect two opposing tendencies, 
which had and still have an important influence on American 
life and letters. We shall never understand these two men, 
who represent permanent types of statesmen, unless we have 
some clear idea of the parties they were leading. 

Permanent Political Parties. When Winthrop made his notable 
speech on Liberty, in 1645, he faced two distinct parties, which are 
best described in his own faithful words : 

" Two of the magistrates and many of the deputies were of the opinion 
that the magistrates exercised too much power, and that the people's liberty 
was thereby in danger ; other of the deputies (being about half) and all the 



PERIOD OF THE REVOLUTION 11/ 

rest of the magistrates were of a different judgment, and that authority 
was overmuch slighted, which, if not timely remedied, would endanger the 
Commonwealth and bring us to a mere democracy." ^ 

Ever since Winthrop's day the same parties have been in opposition 
in America. As no strict definition has ever been made, we endeavor 
simply to point out their chief characteristics. 

The first party, which a theorist might call '^ Maximarchist," aims 
to increase the functions and powers of government. It strives con- 
tinually to regulate by legislation, multiplying the number and the com- 
plexity of laws, bringing under supervision many affairs that formerly 
were left to the w411 of the individual. Also it tends strongly toward 
centralization. As many different state legislatures are bound to run 
counter to one another, this party would leave all important matters 
to the central government, letting it control our business and railroads 
as well as the tariff, our divorces and old-age pensions no less than the 
post offices. It would strengthen the hands of President and Congress, 
till all our affairs are controlled by one strong, paternalistic government. 

The other party, which might be called '^ Minimarchist," regards 
government as, at best, an unfortunate necessity, and would reduce 
lawmaking to its lowest and simplest terms. It holds that we already 
have too many laws, some of which are mere experiments, or else ben- 
efit one class at the expense of another. Its fundamental position 
is that a country is best governed which is least governed ; that men 
should be left free as possible to manage their ow^n affairs, without 
legislative interference. And because government, which is in theory 
a servant, has in past ages inclined to become a master and a tyrant, 
this party opposes all centralizing tendencies. It would leave legisla- 
tion as largely as possible to local governments, which are more easily 
held in check, more sensitive to the will of the people. 

These two parties became national and sharply defined after the 
Revolution, when thirteen independent states sought to unite under 
Federalists ^ common government. At that time America followed 
and Anti- English political methods of the age ; in consequence her 
Federalists various governments inclined to the privileged classes, 
manhood suffrage was almost unknown, and Winthrop's old fear of 
a '' mere democracy " was still widely prevalent.^ Every state that 

1 Winthrop's History of New Erigland (Savage's edition, 1853), II, 277. This speech, 
in ^645, opens one of the most significant chapters in our pohtical history. 

2 The latter statement is amply supported by the comments of the Federalist press 
after Jefferson's election in 1800. 



Ii8 



AMERICAN LITERATURE 



entered the Union had its Federalists and Anti-Federalists, — its Mono- 
crats and Mobocrats, as they called each other, — one party advocating 
a strongly centralized government, the other concerned for state and 
individual rights, seeking to curb the central government and make it 
answerable to the popular will. Hamilton and Jefferson are symboli- 
cal of these two parties, and of the mighty struggle that resulted in 
the compromise Constitution of 1787. The remarkable success of 
that Constitution is due largely to the fact that the same parties are 

still with us, though no longer 
strictly defined, and that the 
Constitution preserves a just 
balance between them.^ 

Alexander Hamilton 
(1757-1804) 

To write an adequate ac- 
count of either Hamilton or 
Jefferson is very difficult, 
for two reasons : First, there 
are no authentic biogra- 
phies, those we have being 
mostly written with an eye to 
party politics rather than to 
truth and humanity, which 
are the only concerns of 
literature. Second, to follow 
these men is to enter a 
mighty political struggle and discuss issues outside our present 
interest. We confine ourselves, therefore, to a brief outline ; and 
this will be more luminous if we keep in mind the governing 
motive in each man's life. Hamilton aimed at a powerfully 
centralized government, which should be largely in the hands of 

« 

1 " Coleridge once said that in philosophy all men must be Aristotelians or Platonists. 
So it may be said that in American politics all men must be disciples either of Jefferson 
or of Hamilton. But these two statesmen represented principles that go beyond the 
limits of American history, principles that have found their application in the history 
of all countries and will continue to do so " (Fiske, Essays Historical and Literary^ 
L \lo\. 




ALEXANDER HAMILTON 



PERIOD OF THE REVOLUTION 



119 



the privileged classes. He distrusted the common people, denied 
their right or ability to govern themselves, and regarded democ- 
racy as the dream of demagogues or visionaries. The keynote 
of Jefferson's life was his patient faith in the whole American 
people. He aimed at a democracy, pure, just, enlightened, and 
opposed all centralizing tendencies in the national government. 
Both men were patriotic ; both rendered vast and disinterested 
service to the American nation ; but they sadly misunderstood 
one another, and this personal misunderstanding spread through 




^-.^6i^'' 






^■^'Hi^'**^. 



EARLY VIEW OF KING'S COLLEGE (COLUMBIA) 

their respective parties and discolored our political literature for 
a generation following the adoption of the Constitution.^ 

Biographical Outline. Hamilton was born on the island of Nevis, 
West Indies, in 1757. At twelve years he was earning his living as a 
clerk ; at fifteen he came alone to this country, entered King's Col- 
lege (Columbia), and presently became a leader of the young Patriots 
in their political debates with the college Tories. Anticipating the 
Revolution, he plunged into military studies, entered the army at 
the head of a well-drilled company, served on Washington's staff, 
and fought bravely to the end of the war. Then he studied law, went 

1 Hamilton was an acknowledged leader of the Federalists. Jefferson's party was 
first called Anti-Federalist, then Democratic-Republican, and finally Democratic. 



I20 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

to Congress, and was a leader of the New York delegates at the 
Constitutional Convention of 1787. 

When our Constitution was finally framed — after endless debates 
between two parties, one of which demanded more and the other less 
power for the central government — Hamilton was deeply disappointed. 
He had fought hard for a different instrument,^ yet with rare self- 
control he accepted a government which seemed to him weak and 
dangerously democratic, supported it loyally, and it was due largely 
to his efforts that the Constitution was ratified by his own state. 

Recognizing Hamilton's service, knowing also his remarkable finan- 
cial ability, Washington called him to be our first Secretary of the 
Treasury. We had then no settled currency, no national revenue, no 
responsibility for large debts incurred during the Revolution. Hamil- 
ton's first duty was to create out of this financial chaos a firm national 
credit, without which the new government must have speedily gone to 
pieces. How he accomplished this herculean task is a matter of 
history.^ Webster summed it up in his oratorical fashion by declaring, 
" He smote the rock of national resources and abundant streams of 
revenue gushed forth ; he touched the dead corpse of public credit 
and it sprang upon its feet." 

Hamilton's leadership slipped away from him during the presidency 
of John Adams, when he became involved in political intrigues, and 
after the rout of the Federalist party by Jefferson, in 1800, he retired to 
private life. Four years later he was shot in a duel by Aaron Burr — 
a terrible and needless sacrifice, for Hamilton disapproved of dueling 
and made no effort to defend himself. 

Works of Hamilton. In the literary battles of the Revolution 
two weapons were employed : the light verse satire, which 
Freneau used with the skill of an Indian shooting his arrows ; 

1 The constitution which Hamilton favored provided for (i) a House of Commons 
with insignificant powers, elected by general suffrage ; (2) a powerful Senate for all im- 
portant legislation, elected from and by property owners, its members holding office for 
life ; and (3) a President with immense powers, holding office for life, and having 
authority to appoint governors for the several states. Even this was not centralized 
enough to suit him, but was " the best I may hope to obtain at present." 

2 The three prominent features of his work were : the assumption of the various 
state debts by the nation, the funding of this national debt by issuing bonds against the 
revenue and the sale of public lands, and the establishment of the United States Bank. 
The mint, tariff, excise tax, management of public lands, and other features of our gov- 
ernment still follow the general direction laid down by Hamilton at a time when he was 
under thirty-five years of age. 



PERIOD OF THE REVOLUTION I2I 

and the heavy prose pamphlet, the war club of the period, of 
which Hamilton was a master. Soon after his arrival in America 
public attention was centered on Seabury's Westchester Farmer 
(i 774-1 775), a series of powerful essays upholding the Tory or 
Loyalist cause, and shattering the arguments of young Patriots 
who were advocating armed resistance to England. A score of 
answers to the Westchester Farmer appeared, but the Loyalist 
position remained unshaken till Hamilton, a mere boy and a 
stranger, published '' A Full Vindication of the Measures of 
Congress" and ''The Farmer Refuted" — papers of such 
remarkable ability that they were generally attributed to Jay or 
Livingston, or some other statesman of wide experience and 
profound learning. With the exception of Paine 's Common 
Sense, all such works were soon forgotten ; but the student who 
would understand the spirit of the age will read the pamphlets 
of Hamilton and Seabury for their steady light, and the satires 
of Freneau and Odell for their sputter and sparkle. 

At the present day Hamilton's literary fame rests largely on 
his essays known as The Federalist} They began to appear in 
The Fed- ^7^7 y when each state was divided on the question 
eraiist q{ ratifying the Constitution, when the whole country 

was agitated over problems of state and national rights involved 
in the new Union. As their name implies, they advocated a 
strong centralized government ; but their chief object was to 
explain and defend the Constitution, as a just compromise be- 
tween the radically different parties, and as a safe solution of 
the difficult problem involved in making one nation out of many 
independent states.^ 

Concerning the matter of these essays we hesitate to offer 
an opinion. They crystallize the results of two centuries of 

1 Several of these essays appeared first in the newspapers, over the name of " Publius " ; 
later they were increased to the number of eighty-five and published in book form. 
Hamilton originated the work, and wrote some fifty of the papers ; but he was ably 
assisted by James Madison and John Jay, who completed the series. 

2 For the other side of the argument, see Richard Henry Lee's Letters of a Federal- 
ist Farmer, and Patrick Henry's speeches in the Virginia Convention. These opposed 
ratifying the Constitution. 



122 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

experiment in the matter of free government, and properly 
belong to political science rather than to literature. Moreover, a 
fair judgment is rendered difficult by the fact that, even at the 
present day, one party regards Hamilton as the fountain of polit- 
ical wisdom, while the other sees chiefly the dangerous tendency 
of his principles and methods. As literature knows no partisan- 
ship and no interests save those of humanity, we forbear discus- 
sion of what is largely a political problem. We simply record two 
facts : that, at a critical moment in our history, The Federalist 
essays exercised a powerful influence in establishing the Consti- 
tution ; and that they have since been widely accepted as expres- 
sive of the fundamental principles of confederation, — principles 
which great legal minds, like Story and Marshall, expanded 
later into our constitutional law. 

The style of these papers would alone make them remarkable. 
They have clearness, force, polish — all the good qualities of 
eighteenth-century prose — and are, both in style and matter, 
probably the highest examples of modern political writing. They 
imply, moreover, a splendid tribute to the intelligence of the 
age which first received and appreciated them. As Fiske says : 

" The American people have never received a higher compUment than 
in having such a book addressed to them. That they deserved it was shown 
by the effect produced, and it is in this democratic appeal to the general 
intelligence that we get the pleasantest impression of Hamilton's power." 

Thomas Jefferson (i 743-1 826) 

Ask the first educated (and unprejudiced) man you meet. 
Who was Thomas Jefferson .? and he will answer, in effect, that 
he was one of our greatest statesmen, the author of the Declara- 
tion of Independence, the third president of the United States, 
our first conspicuous Democrat, and to all ages the apostle of 
democracy in America. All that is true and interesting, but it 
misses Jefferson's most significant trait, — his romantic idealism, 
which allies him with Coleridge, Southey and the band of young 
poets who were joyfully expectant after the first success of the 



PERIOD OF THE REVOLUTION 



123 



French Revolution, as if the trumpet must sound and the mil- 
lennium follow with the next sunrise. We shall appreciate him 
better if we remember that in his youth he was an enthusiastic 
reader of the new romantic literature, and that he accomplished 
his work for democracy and education here while the romanticism 
of Wordsw^orth, Scott and Byron was most influential in Europe. 
Unlike other Revolutionary leaders, Jefferson won recogni- 
tion not by oratory or military success, but by his pen alone. In 

Jefferson's ^ tumultuous time 
Idealism ^g ^vas the One 

man in America, of power- 
ful, sympathetic imagination, 
who could express at any 
moment what the multitudes 
were thinking and feeling. 
That is why the eager young 
Patriots hailed his startling 
SiLmmary Viezv of 1774; 
why the sagacious old leaders 
of the Continental Congress 
turned to him instinctively 
for their Declaration of In- 
dependence. Though occu- 
pied forty years with public 
affairs, his heart was most at 
home in the quiet country, 

cherishing the love of birds, the delights of nature, the simple 
joys of domestic life. All the while, whether in field or forum, 
he was not simply a man of fact, as practical and helpful as 
Franklin, but a man of vision, and of enthusiastic faith in his 
fellow men. He was both a doer of deeds and a dreamer of 
dreams, the quality of the latter showing that he was far ahead 
of his age, and even in advance of our own. 

Now vision and dreams, love of nature and faith in man, were 
the heart and soul of the new romantic movement in literature. 




THOMAS JEFFERSON 



124 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Jefferson belonged to it, was part of it, as truly as he belonged 
to the new political party. But while he dreamed for the future, 
he worked and wrote for the present. He aimed to educate 
men, to lead them up to the point where they must share 
his vision of a free and equal manhood. So his literary work 
is subordinate to his practical purpose. A romanticist who ap- 
plied his high ideals to common men and to the problems of 
humanity ; a builder at once of air castles and foundations ; an 
idealist who was an educational reformer, a constructive statesman 
and the most successful of politicians ; a revolutionary enthusi- 
ast, like Shelley, who instead of a chaotic Pivmetheics Unbotmd 
left us the Democratic Party, the University of Virginia and 
the Declaration of Independence as his enduring monuments, — 
such was the genius we are trying to understand. 

Sketch of Jefferson's Life. At a plantation called Shadwell, on the 
Indian-haunted frontier of Virginia, Jefferson was born in 1743. He 
had an admirable early education, his father teaching him the practical 
affairs of life, his mother, Jane Randolph, leading him to the delights 
of literature. Glimpses of the boy's early life show that he was fond 
of reading, hunting and all outdoor sports ; that he studied hard, 
worked hard, played hard ; was a lover of nature and humanity, and 
practiced the fiddle, as he called it, three hours every day. This ideal 
life, of study and work and play, lasted until he was seventeen. 

From the farm he rode to William and Mary College, where he 
worked faithfully at science and modern literature, as well as at the 
. classics. Then for five years he studied the principles of 

law under a famous teacher. When at twenty-six he first 
appears in public life, as a delegate to the House of Burgesses, we are 
impressed by his splendid development. He is an athlete, a scholar, 
a trained lawyer, a practical farmer, an experimenter in natural science. 
And he knows Virginia society from top to bottom, from the planter's 
mansion to the slave's cabin, from the famous ballroom at Williams- 
burg to the smoky Indian wigwam hidden far away in the forest. 
Knowing men as they are, and dreaming of their future, he is a demo- 
crat, an idealist, a forerunner of the same mighty movement which 
produced romanticism in literature and the American and French 
Revolution in politics. 



PERIOD OF THE REVOLUTION 125 

In reading even an outline of Jefferson's public service the chief 
thing to note is this: that whatever he does or attempts, he always 
Public looks far ahead of his contemporaries, and plants a crop 

Service that will mature after his death. For dreams, especially 

great dreams, take no heed of time ; they partake of eternity. He 
saw that the great need of democracy is intelligence, and straightway 
laid a broad foundation for free popular education. Though a slave- 
owner, he recognized the evil of slavery and set bravely to work, first 
to suppress the slave traffic, then to find a just way of general eman- 
cipation. " I tremble for my country," he said, " when I think of the 
negro and know that God is just " ; and again, with perfect faith in 
humanity, he declares, " Nothing is more certainly written in the book 
of fate than that these people are to be free." With a few enthusiastic 
young Virginians, he formed the historic Committee of Correspond- 
ence, which anticipated the Revolution and united the Colonies in 
preparation for it. As our ambassador to France, where he was con- 
sulted by leaders of the French Revolution, he was more interested 
in the common people than in courts or society ; he grieved over 
their oppression, and renewed his vow to oppose every attempt at 
aristocracy and class privilege in government. So, as Secretary of 
State in Washington's cabinet, he set himself against Hamilton, and 
quietly began to organize a democratic party in opposition to what he 
believed to be the monarchial tendency of the Federalists. He was 
twice elected President ; he came into office as a radical reformer, 
feared and hated by the old party as one who would plunge the 
country into anarchy ; and he led the nation steadily onward in a 
career of unexampled prosperity.^ Then he retired to his Virginia 
home, '' Monticello," where he quietly exercised a profound influence 
over a large party of his countrymen, whose confidence in his judgment 
was increased by the fact that he opposed as dangerous their desire 
to elect him for a third term to the presidency. 

To the end he worked faithfully for his three supreme objects : for 
popular education, for civil and religious liberty, and for a democ- 
Jefferson's racy which should be in truth a government of the whole 
■Aims people. He cherished the ideal that America should fol- 

low her own ways, as a new nation of freemen, avoiding as a plague 
the barbarous strife of the world for riches, and the insane competition 
of European nations for military or commercial supremacy. For he 

1 For an outline history of the period, see introduction to the next chapter. 



126 



AMERICAN LITERATURE 



had the conviction — which Ruskin adopted later — that the wealthiest 
nation is that which has, not the greatest fleets and factories, but the 
largest number of happy and intelligent people. He died, full of years 
and honors, on July 4, 1826. On the same day died John Adams. 
These two old patriots and signers of the Declaration, thinking of 
each other and stretching out their hands to each other across a 
united country, passed away together on the birthday of the nation 
they had helped to establish. And the last words of Adams, "Thomas 
Jefferson still lives," seem to us at once a tribute and a prophecy. 



... :0^'n 




^^,.^^11' 




h 



STREET FRONT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA (1819-1826), 
DESIGNED BY THOMAS JEFFERSON 



Works of Jefferson. The life of this man is so interesting 
that one is bound to be disappointed in his writings. Not that 
they are scant — a small part of them fills ten volumes ^ — but 
because they are so practical and didactic in purpose that they 
obscure Jefferson's romantic idealism, which is, in our judg- 
ment, the most significant thing about him. First in importance 
we would place the Lettejs, which furnish a critical commentary 
on the men and events of a stirring historical period. The chief 

1 Jefferson was an inveterate writer, on a great variety of subjects, but he had no lit- 
erary ambition and pubHshed only a few works which his friends deemed of great public 
importance. After his death a large number of manuscripts were found, some of which 
(like the unfortunate Anas) were of a private nature and were never intended for the 
press. The editors used their own judgment, which was sometimes influenced by politics 
in their selections for publication. 



PERIOD OP^ THE REVOLUTION 



127 



trouble with these letters is their abundance. There are thou- 
sands of them, and until they are all explored and the best col- 
lected into a single volume, we shall hardly appreciate their 
value. Meanwhile, one must read them as one goes through 
a mine, avoiding the rubbish, and stopping only when one 
finds a nugget. Here, for instance, is the letter that Jefferson 
the President wrote to lonely old Samuel Adams, — a gener- 
ous, glowing tribute from one patriot in his hour of triumph 



.\'W-<*'^>- r 











ifi! '!!.♦» »'•<■ 



4« uri- ■ ^ . ^r- ^-^-'-m- 'r-'^—^ 



^■r^TTT, 



m 7|iT.Tf^ 







MONTICELLO, JEFFERSON'S HOME 



to another patriot, poor and neglected, which would make us 
honor the author, even if he had never written anything else. 
Two other works belong to the borderland between literature 
and history. The Aittobiography, with its keen observation, its 
pictures of the men he had known and of the great events in 
which he had taken part, is extremely valuable to the historian, 
and many general readers find it more interesting than Frank- 
lin's better-known story of his life. The Notes 011 Virginia is a 
series of essays written in response to questions of the secretary 
of the French legation, who was collecting information about 
America for his home government. These essays, with their 
descriptions of nature, their pictures of Indian and slave life, 
their discussion of political, religious and economic questions, 



128 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

are invaluable to the student of our early histor}^ They outline 
a picture of the country as it was at the beginning of its national 
career, and, in their aim at least, carry a suggestion of Bryce's 
The Americmi Commonwealth, of a century later.^ 

Of Jefferson's numerous political works we recommend only 
two, his Iiistnictions to the V^irgmia Delegates to the Congress 
The Sum- ^f ^774^ ^^^ ^is first Inaugural Address . The former, 
mary View which was republished as A Summary Viezv of the 
Rights of America, exercised a powerful influence in uniting 
the Colonies for the Revolution. It was reprinted in England, 
and furnished Burke with the chief argument of his speeches 
in favor of America. At that time it was a revolutionary work, 
but the modern reader can hardly appreciate its boldness and 
radicalism. The king is told bluntly that the Colonies are ask- 
ing for rights, not favors; that his duty is ''simply to assist 
in working the great machine of government erected for the 
people's use and subject to their superintendence." England is 
informed that all men must and shall have '' equal and impar- 
tial right" ; that ''the whole art of government consists in being 
honest," and a deal more of what to us seems commonplace but 
what was then heroism in rebellion : 

Thoughts that great hearts once broke for, we 
Breathe cheaply in the common air ; 
The dust we trample heedlessly 
Throbbed once in saints and heroes rare, 
Who perished, opening for their race 
New pathways to the commonplace.^ 



/ 



The Declaration of Independence. Every American should read 
this noble document, not only in its present form, but as it first 
came from Jefferson's soul, glowing with ardor for liberty and 

1 Unfortunately, in order to answer all the questions, Jefferson included a deal of 
dry statistics. Until these are relegated to an appendix, and the whole work judiciously 
edited, the Notes will hardly appeal to the general reader. 

2 From Lowell's " Masaccio." The Summary View of 1774 is sufficient answer to the 
common allegation that Jefferson's work for democracy here was inspired by the French 
Revolution. All the principles for which he worked in later life are clearly expressed in 
his earlier writings. 



PERIOD OF THE REVOLUTION 129 

humanity ; and especially should we read and consider it, not as 
political science, but as literature. For it is the most powerful, 
the most significant piece of literature that ever came from a 
statesman, — a prose chant of freedom that echoed round the 
world ; a passionate cry against injustice, which Burns caught 
up instantly and set to music ; a declaration not of American 
independence but of human brotherhood, which inspired all 
the romantic poets and proved its power by hastening on the 
French Revolution.^ 

We are told by the wise that the Declaration is not original, 
and by the prudent that its political theories are unsound, espe- 
cially its '' self-evident " truth that ''all men are cre- 

Represent- -^ 

ative ated equal." But originality was the last quality that 

Character ^ great man would have desired in that fateful hour 
when the Continental Congress reached its decision. As Jeffer- 
son said long afterwards, he had no wish to be original but to 
be representative. It is true that some of its expressions, like 
''unalienable rights" and "consent of the governed," are taken 
from Locke's Essay on Government ; true that many of its 
statements are found in earlier records of the Virginia Assembly ; 
true that all its principles were familiar as the Commandments, 
having been preached in the churches, argued in the legisla- 
tures, and published in every newspaper. After years of anxiety 
and hesitation, the crisis has at last arrived — "now's the day 
and now 's the hour" — when the Colonies stand face to face with 
the most momentous decision in their history. Before they take 
the step that shall plunge the country into war, the delegates at 
Philadelphia must proclaim their principles, must speak the 
w^ord that shall hearten the timid ones, convince the doubtful, 
and electrify the brave by a call to action. They turn instinc- 
tively to the young Virginian and say : " Write it for us. Tell 
England and the world what we think and feel, what multitudes 

i All this is not figure but fact. American newspapers, diaries, letters and sermons 
of the period bear witness to the electrical effect of Jefferson's masterpiece at home. In 
Buckle's History of Civilization may be found a tribute to its remarkable influence abroad. 



I30 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

of free American men have thought and felt these twenty weary 
years." And he did it. If ever statesman forgot himself and 
gathered the ideals, the arguments, the indignation and defiance 
of a people into a broadside and hurled them with the directness 
of a cannon ball against the enemy, that statesman was Thomas 
Jefferson when he wrote the Declaration of hidependence. Its 
power lies in the fact that it is not new but old, old as man's 
dream of freedom ; that it is not the weak voice of a man, but 
the shout of a nation girding itself for conflict. As old Ezra 
Stiles, president of Yale, declared in 1783, Jefferson ''poured 
the soul of the whole continent" into his Declai^ation. 

Criticisms against it are mostly based upon the assumption 
that it is a state paper. We prefer to think of it as a prose war 
Emotional song. Even mollified as it was by a cautious Con- 
Quaiity gress, it is still vibrant with suppressed emotion. 

That Jefferson began it as a state document is evident from the 
noble, rhythmic prose of its opening sentence ; but as he wrote 
rapidly, forgetting himself to speak for his countr)^, he must 
have remembered the burning of Norfolk, the battle of Bunker 
Hill, and heard as an echo the shout of Washington's victories 
at Boston. Then the war song began to throb like a drum in 
his heart and to vibrate in his fingers. And we imagine — nay 
we need not imagine, since contemporaries bear witness to the 
outburst of enthusiasm which followed — that the Declaration 
stirred these quiet Colonials as Scottish clansmen are stirred by 
" Scots, wha hae," that most magnificent of all battle songs. 
Very appropriately, it was first read aloud in Independence 
Square before an immense throng of people, and the reader 
was Captain John Hopkins, of the new American navy. As he 
rolled it out in his powerful seaman's voice, now with the swing 
of a deep-sea chantey, now with the ringing summons of Clear 
ship for action ! the words thrilled that vast audience like an 
electric shock. They knew, as we can never know, just what 
the Declaration was, — a call to battle for the rights of man. 
And they were ready to answer. 



PERIOD OF THE REVOLUTION 



131 



« 

We shall not, therefore, criticize the Declaration of hidepend- 
ence as a work of political science, or analyze its prose style, or 
otherwise maltreat and misunderstand it. We see its faults, but 
we love it for its virtues; for its elemental and unchanging 




INDEPENDENCE HALL, PHILADELPHIA 

manliness ; for its deep emotion, more convincing than argu- 
ment ; for its moral earnestness ; for its bold, unproved assertion 
of the fundamental rights of humanity : 

" We hold these truths to be self-evident : That all men are created 
equal ; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable 
rights ; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. 
That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving 
their just powers from the consent of the governed ; that, whenever any 
form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the 
people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its 
foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to 
them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness." 



132 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Terrible words to a king and a tyrant ! Brave, faithful, inspir- 
ing words to men who toil and hope and are still oppressed ! 
But are they true ? The answer is found not in political economy 
but in the heart of man, which cherishes ideals as the only 
permanent realities. For a hundred years now that Declaration 
has been read on the nation's birthday, in town halls, in city 
churches, on thousands of village greens ; and wherever it is 
really heard, eyes glisten and hearts are lifted up from the noise 
of the day to its silent, solemn meaning, as one sees above the 
bursting skyrockets the steady light of the eternal stars. For 

Wherever Columbia's stars have shone, since ever their course began, 
The lowly ones of the earth have known they stood for the rights of man. 

During that hundred years our nation has been steadily break- 
ing the shackles of men and bidding the oppressed go free ; and 
still the Declaration goes before us, like the pillar of fire, to 
show the way. In its light all our political problems are seen to 
be one, and that is to realize a democracy which shall be in 
truth a brotherhood of men. The reform of yesterday, the work 
of to-day, the hope of to-morrow, are all builded on the dream of 
'^6, that men shall be equal, free and happy. Our whole history, 
if it have any significance, means simply this : that we remember 
our high calling ; that we obey a mighty impulse ; that we press 
forward to realize the ideal to which our first representatives 
pledged " our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor." 

V. THE POETRY OF THE REVOLUTION 

It is a literary rule that the spirit of any age is measured by 
the poems which it inspired ; but as we study this Homeric 
period of American history we are confronted by the startling 
fact that its heroism has never found adequate expression. It 
appeals to the young American as an age of great ideals and 
noble action, like the age of Elizabeth ; yet no poet caught the 
inspiration and expressed it so as to make us feel the national 
enthusiasm. Much was attempted, in ballads, lyrics, dramas, 



PERIOD OF THE REVOLUTION 133 

even epics ; but little remains save the remembrance of failure. 
We shall confine ourselves, therefore, to an outline of the forms 
which verse assumed, and to the work of one man, Philip 
Freneau, who marks the beginning of a new and important 
movement.^ 

Songs and Ballads. Moore's So figs and Ballads of the 
American RevohUion and Sargent's The Loyalist Poetry of the 
Revolution contain the best of our early ballads ; but one must 
search a dozen collections, and the files of century-old news- 
papers, to appreciate the quantity and variety of this particular 
form of poetry. Every town had then its ballad maker, every 
newspaper its poet's corner, and every important event on land 
or sea was immediately celebrated in song. Merely as a sug- 
gestion, we name '' The Volunteer Boys," " The Old Man's 
Song," "The Battle of Trenton," "The Dance," "A Fable," 
" The Battle of the Kegs," " Bold Hathorne," " King's Moun- 
tain," and "The Present Age," which are types of all the rest. 
As we read them, we hear again the toot of a fife, the rattle of 
a drum, the tread of marching soldiers ; for whatever their liter- 
ary faults, they still preserve something of the warlike spirit 
that inspired them. And there is at least one, " The Ballad of 
Nathan Hale," which we can never forget : 

The breezes went steadily through the tall pines, 
A-saying " Oh hu-ush ! " a-saying " Oh hu-ush ! " 

As stilly stole by a bold legion of horse, 

For Hale in the bush, for Hale in the bush. 

" Keep still," said the thrush, as she nestled her young, 

In a nest by the road, in a nest by the road ; 
" For the tyrants are near, and with them appear 

What bodes us no good, what bodes us no good." 

• •••••••** 

No mother was there, nor a friend who could cheer. 
In that little stone cell, in that little stone cell ; 

But he trusted in love, from his Father above : 

In his heart all was well ; in his heart all was well. 

1 For the general characteristics of Revolutionary poetry, see pp. 94-97. 



134 



AMERICAN LITERATURE 



Partly because of our sympathy for the brave young patriot who 
suffered the meanest of deaths for his country, and partly be- 
cause of the peculiar melody and the fine natural setting, 
*' Nathan Hale " rises above all others of its class into the 
realm of poetry. It is, in our judgment, the best of a thousand 
ballads produced during the Revolutionary period. 

The Hartford Wits. This 
unfortunate pseudonym was 
given to a group of clever 
college men, living in Hart- 
ford, who wrote newspaper 
verses to support the gov- 
ernment or to satirize the 
follies of the age. Their 
chief aim, however, was 
not political but literary, 
and we have not yet done 
justice to their endeavor. 
Barlow, Dwight and Trum- 
bull, the leaders of these 
''wits," are remarkable for 
two things : they were the 
first group of men who 
made a definite attempt to 
create a national poetry in 
America, and they were 
probably the pioneers of our modern English studies.^ There 
were no teachers of modern literature in those days ; Dwight and 
Trumbull, both tutors at Yale, were regarded as innovators when 
they formed classes for the study of English letters. Meanwhile 
Trumbull wrote his "Progress of Dulness " (1772), a famous 

1 Trumbull's English studies had a curious beginning. He was a precocious child, who 
passed his entrance examinations to Yale when he was seven years old. He was not 
allowed to enter till he was thirteen, and by that time he had read so much Greek and 
Latin that there was nothing left to do in college. He was advised to take up mathe- 
matics and astronomy, but turned to the new field of English literature instead. 




JOEL BARLOW 



PERIOD OF THE REVOLUTION 



135 



Barlow 



satire ridiculing, among other things, the college fashion of 
stuffing men's heads with Latin, Greek and Hebrew to the 
exclusion of their own noble literature. 

The attempt at a literature which should be national rather 
than provincial is shown in The^Cohmibiad of Joel Barlow 

(1 754-1 8 1 2). This is an epic of ten books, so long 

and dull that 
few persons ever finish the 
task of reading it. Yet 
the motive is magnificent, 
and there is enough heroic 
material in the poem to 
make us sympathize with 
Hawthorne, who wanted to 
make a melodrama of The 
Cohimbiad and put it on 
the stage to the accom- 
paniment of thunder and 
lightning. The epic is now 
forgotten, and Barlow is 
known as the author of 
"Hasty Pudding" (1796). 
This burlesque poem was 
very popular in its day, 
and is still worth reading. 
But it seems a pity that 
this ambitious man, who 

aimed to create a national literature, should now be remembered 
as the singer of the joys of mush and milk. 

Timothy Dwight (1752-1817) was another poet who attempted 
to express the new national spirit, first by patriotic songs like 

'' Columbia," then by a huge epic called The Conquest 

of Canaan (1785).. The few who have patience to 
read this work will feel here and there the thrill of nationality, 
like the stir of a slumbering giant ; may feel also the spirit of 




TIMOTHY DWIGHT 



136 



AMERICAN LITERATURE 



this noble teacher, the first of our great college presidents, who 
became so much a part of our life that his death '' seemed to 
leave a gap in the solar system." 



-f- 



11 






/-j^'^Sf:. -.^^1' 






,VV 




.'?^f<^/- 



YALE COLLEGE IN 1820 



Trumbull 



John Trumbull (1750-1831) is the most brilliant of this sig- 
nificant group of literary men. His youthful essays, in the 
Connecticut Journal, are in many ways superior to 
Franklin's, and some of his early poems, such as 
the '' Ode to Sleep," are full of promise : 

Come, gentle Sleep, 

Balm of my wounds and softener of my woes, 

And lull my weary heart in sweet repose, 
And bid my saddened soul forget to weep, 

And close the tearful eye ; 
While dewy eve with solemn sweep 

Hath drawn her fleecy mantle o'er the sky, 
And chased afar, adown th' ethereal way, 
The din of bustling care and gaudy eye of day. 

Like Freneau, he has the instinct of a poet ; but when the 
Revolution approaches he throws himself into the strife of the 
hour, using a valiant pen instead of a sword for a weapon. Fare- 
well, greatness ! Trumbull is henceforth a mere satirist, a slave 
to literary fashion, wasting his genius on the three subjects of 
the hour, '' Tea, Toiyism, and Taxes." 




THE TORY'S DAY OF JUDGMENT 
An illustration from John Trumbull's M'Fingall, New York, 1795 



PERIOD OF THE REVOLUTION 137 

Because of this absorption in political satire, Trumbull's ex- 
traordinary promise came to naught ; his good work for modern 
literature is forgotten, and he is remembered only as the author 
of JS'f Fhigal (1 775-1 782). This is a burlesque poem, modeled 
after Hudibras, ridiculing the principles of a Tory squire, and 
describing his punishment by a jeering mob of Whigs. It is 
something to be popular even for a day, and M' Fi7igal was the 
most popular and widely quoted work of the entire Revolutionary 
period. Aside from this, it has three merits : it is a good exam- 
ple of a rough type of American humor ; it is an excellent pic- 
ture of the political hurly-burly of the age ; and it ranks with 
Paine's Common Sense among the literary forces which hastened 
the Declaration of Independence. Merely as a suggestion of 
the style, we add a few doggerel couplets from the third canto : 

Not so our 'Squire submits to rule, 

But stood, heroic as a mule. 

" You '11 find it all in vain," quoth he, 

" To play your rebel tricks on me. 

" All punishments the world can render 

" Serve only to provoke th' offender ; 

" The will gains strength from treatment horrid, 

" As hides grow harder when they 're curried. 

" No man e'er felt the halter draw 

" With good opinion of the law ; 

" Or held, in method orthodox, 

"His love of justice in the stocks ; 

" Or failed to lose by sheriff's shears 

" At once his loyalty and ears." . . . 

Forthwith the crowd proceed to deck 
With halter 'd noose M'Fingal's neck, 
While he, in peril of his soul, 
Stood tied half-hanging to the pole ; 
Then lifting high the ponderous jar, 
Pour'd .o'er his head the smoking tar. . . . 
And now the feather-bag display'd 
Is waved in triumph o'er his head, 
And clouds him o'er with feathers missive 
And down, upon the tar adhesive. 



138 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Philip Frexeau (175 2- 183 2) 

In Freneau we have an example of the fact that the hterary 
world is not divided by national barriers, for he is unmistakably 
a part of that important movement knowm as Romanticism, ^ 
which influenced all Europe toward the close of the eighteenth 
centur}^-. We shall never appreciate Freneau at his best until 
we see him, not as the political satirist of his age, but as a fore- 
runner of Wordsworth and Coleridge, in whom the romantic 
movement in English poetry made a definite and glorious 
beginning. 

Life. Freneau was a man of contrasts. As we follow his career 
— as student, rebel, journalist, trader, poet, privateer; now afloat on 
the spacious deep, now scribbling in the narrow cell of a government 
clerk ; to-day a captain on his own deck, to-morrow a captive in a 
loathsome prison ship — we have occasional memories of Walter 
Raleigh, that restless adventurer on unknown seas, in whom the 
Elizabethan age is personified. 

He was of French-Huguenot descent, and was born in New York 
in 1752. His father was a wine merchant, like the father of Chaucer, 
and growing prosperous the family removed to a farm near Mon- 
mouth (now Freehold) in New Jersey. Here his boyhood was spent ; 
hither he returned to rest after toil, and here he perished in a storm, 
three quarters of a century later. 

1 In English literature the Romantic is generally contrasted with the Classic period. 
Classicism, which prevailed during the eighteenth century, was cold, precise, formal ; it 
followed set rules, and regarded the plays of Shakespeare and the enthusiasm of Eliza- 
bethan writers as " monstrously irregular." It appealed to the head, and glorified the 
intellect to the neglect of the imagination. Its leaders were Dr}'den and Pope, and its 
oracle was Dr. Johnson. Romanticism, which occupied the nineteenth century, gave 
literary expression to the ideals of common men, just as their importance was recognized 
politically by the triumph of democracy in America, France and England. It was warm, 
tender, human ; it followed original genius rather than set rules ; it appealed to the heart 
rather than the head, to the imagination rather than the intellect. Some of its leaders 
were Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Scott and Byron. 

Like most generalizations, the above is open to objections. Thus, the coldness and 
formality of much eighteenth-century literature indicate pseudo-classicism, that is, Clas- 
sicism gone to seed. Goethe made a suggestive generalization when he said, " Everything 
that is good in literature is classical." So also Romanticism is often associated with excess, 
with unbalanced imagination. In reality. Classicism and Romanticism when good approach 
each other and touch ; when bad they fly to opposite extremes, and it is against these 
extremes that most criticisms are leveled. 



PERIOD OF THE REVOLUTION 



139 



When Freneau entered Princeton College, in 1768, he was already 
writing verses in imitation of Milton ; but the turmoil of the age 
A Revolu- speedily drove him from poetry to politics. Among his 
tionary classmates at old Nassau were Madison, who became 

Enthusiast President of the United States ; Aaron Burr, that strange 
genius who did many extraordinary things besides shooting Hamilton ; 
and Hugh Brackenridge, the dramatic poet. In the revolutionary aims 
of these enthusiasts we note a curious parallel to Wordsworth, Cole- 
ridge and Southey, who planned their famous " Pantisocracy on the 
banks of the Susquehanna," which should change the natures of men 
and establish a new order of society. We note also the resemblance 













*^ w 



I 



-X., 






*•'•■-, 



/■■ i. 



■* *■ * '^ "^i ^"f^i^Sr''' ' VaiiM^'^r " ^ ^^ I iff '"^-'••''1' 1 Vifiin iv- r^ •^^i^^'»^i^^*^ '^ i-dfai;:^ 



" ti^- -' 



'•-«. ..,»j.'vi'' 



EARLY VIEW OF PRINCETON COLLEGE, N.J. 



to Jefferson, who had just completed his college course, and who be- 
came closely associated with Burr and Freneau in the public service. 
After graduation Freneau taught school, studied law, and inciden- 
tally lashed the British and Tories in his satiric verse. Next we find 
him in the West Indies, writing poems like '' The Beauties of Santa 
Cruz," and giving little heed to the Revolution for which he had 
clamored. When he returned, in 1778, he was amazed at the havoc 
wrought here by the war. It was a sad, almost a hopeless time ; but 
Freneau poured out a flood of confident satires, jeering at English 
generals, cheering on the fainting Patriots, and exulting over the com- 
ing treaty with France. After an unsuccessful' venture with the United 
States Magazine, he seems to have fitted out a privateer; but the 



I40 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

vessel was captured and Freneau was thrown into a horrible prison 
ship, from which he escaped, after a few months, reduced almost to a 
skeleton. Those who would see the vinegar of his early satire change 
to vitriol may find it in " The British Prison Ship," written after his 
escape, while his anger was hot within him. 

Into the details of his later career we shall not attempt to enter. 
We note only that he was always a radical, attacking Hamilton and 
the Federalists as savagely as ever he assailed the Tories, and that his 
satires and newspaper articles form a red-peppery sauce to our history 
till after the War of 1812. Then all bitterness left him, and he re- 
joiced in a united democracy. Several editions of his poems appeared 
during his lifetime, two of which were published from his own press. 
As we read them now, our chief feeling is one of regret that such a 
man should have wasted his talents. He was capable of real poetry, 
and his quiet verses, scattered among rough satires, are like violets 
in a stony field. 

Works of Freneau. The important works of Freneau fall 
naturally into t\vo classes, — political satires and occasional poems 
of nature and humanity. The spirit of the former may be 
judged from four lines of one of his earliest efforts : 

Rage gives me wings and, fearless, prompts me on 
To conquer brutes the world should blush to own ; 
No peace, no quarter to such imps I lend. 
Death and perdition on each line I send. 

Here we feel not simply the rancor of a Patriot against Hes- 
sians and Tories, but the added hate of one whose ancestors had 
waged war for a hundred years against England. Nor was the 
bitterness all on one side. Opposed to Freneau were the clever 
Tory satirists, chief of whom was Jonathan Odell, who loved 
the cause that Freneau hated, and who flayed the Whigs on 
every occasion. ''The Prison Ship," ''The Midnight Consulta- 
tion," describing an imaginary meeting of British generals after 
Bunker Hill, "America Independent," with its hatred of kings 
and Tories, — these three will give a good idea of Freneau's 
satiric power. We may appreciate them better if we remem- 
ber that satire was a legitimate and powerful weapon in the 



PERIOD OF THE REVOLUTION 14 1 

struggle that made us a nation ; and that Freneau used satire 
simply because it was the form of poetry that most strongly 
appealed to his readers : 

With the Muse of Love in no request, 
I '11 try my fortune with the rest. 
Which of the nine shall I engage 
To suit the humor of the age ? 
On one, alas ! my choice must fall, 
The least engaging of them all. 
Her visage stern, severe her style, 
A clouded brow, a cruel smile, 
A mind on murdered victims placed, — 
She, only she, can please the taste. 

It is a relief to turn from this bitter war of Whig and Tory 
to the poems of nature and humanity, which are as dear to us 
as to those who first read them. Such are '' The Indian Bury- 
ing Ground," suggesting that the savage has lost his fearsome 
aspect of earlier days and become a subject for romantic poetry; 
and "The Wild Honeysuckle," with its Wordsworthian appreci- 
ation of flowers and common things : 

I Fair flower, that dost so comely grow. 

Hid in this silent, dull retreat, 
Untouched thy honied blossoms blow. 
Unseen thy little branches greet : 

No roving foot shall crush thee here, 

No busy hand provoke a tear. 



From morning suns and evening dews 
At first thy little being came ; 
If nothing once, you nothing lose. 
For when you die you are the same ; 

The space between is but an hour, 

The frail duration of a flower. 

Other significant works are '' Fancy and Retirement," '* House of 
Night," " Beauties of Santa Cruz," " Eutaw Springs," " Ruins 
of a Country Inn," " Indian Student," ''Death's Epitaph," '' The 
Parting Glass " and '' To a Honey Bee," — none of them great 



142 



AMERICAN LITERATURE 



poems, but all good, and remarkably original when we consider 
the fact that on both sides of the Atlantic many poets were still 
imitating Pope's heroic couplets. 

Beginning of Romantic Poetry. Freneau's satire is part of 
the general eighteenth-century classicism, which prevailed in 
England as well as America. His occasional poems are remark- 
able for this, that they indicate an independent beginning of 

romantic poetry here, at the 
same time that we began our 
national existence. Just as 
Brockden Brown made an 
original beginning in Amer- 
ican fiction, so Freneau broke 
away from English satirists 
to speak in his own way to 
the hearts of his countrymen. 
And here he is closer than we 
have imagined to the greatest 
of all song writers. Thus, in 
1 786 Burns published his first 
volume, that famous Kilmar- 
nock edition, which marks an 
epoch in the history of Eng- 
lish poetry. In the same year 
Freneau published his Poems ^ 
and many of the latter are in- 
spired by the same spirit that so deeply moved the Scottish 
plowman. Indeed, if we had found '' Fair Flower that dost so 
comely grow " beside that other " Wee modest crimson tippet 
flower," we might easily assume that the same poet had written 
both; or that these lines from Freneau's ''To a Honey Bee" 
had been taken from one of Burns's drinking songs : 

Welcome ! I hail you to my glass : 
All welcome here you find ; 
Here let the cloud of trouble pass, 
Here be all care resigned. 




PHILIP FRENEAU 



PERIOD OF THE REVOLUTION 143 

Again, the year 1798 is famous because Wordsworth and 
Coleridge then produced an inspiring volume, Lyrical Ballads, 
which marks the dawn of the romantic day in English poetry. 
But long before that time Freneau had published '' The House 
of Night" (1779), which is strikingly suggestive of Coleridge. 
And here is another suggestion : 

A hermit's house beside a stream 

With forests planted round, 
Whatever it to you may seem, 
More real happiness I deem 

Than if I were a monarch crowned. 

We can hardly get rid of the impression that these lines were 
taken from Wordsworth ; yet they were written by the boy 
Freneau, about the time that Wordsworth was born, in 1770. 
That the Lyrical Ballads were reprinted here, in 1802, and 
were much better appreciated than in England, may possibly be 
due to the fact that Freneau had prepared the way for romantic 
poetry. Moreover, he had influence abroad, as is shown by the 
fact that Campbell and Scott both ''cribbed " his lines; which is 
an honor they never accorded to the Lyrical Ballads. We would 
not imply that Freneau is the equal of Burns or Coleridge or 
Wordsworth ; we simply note the remarkable fact that the ro- 
mantic movement, the most important since the age of Elizabeth, 
had an independent origin in this country. The spirit of the 
new movement is reflected in a poem of Freneau's boyhood : 

Fancy, thou the Muses' pride, 

In thy painted realms reside 

Endless images of things, 

Fluttering each on golden wings, 

Ideal objects, such a store 

The universe could hold no more : 

Fancy, to thy power I owe 

Half my happiness below ; 

By thee Elysian groves were made, 

Thine were the notes that Orpheus played ; . . , 

Come, O come, perceived by none. 

You and I will walk alone. 



144 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

If one has read L Allegro, there is no mistaking the inspira- 
tion here. It is imitative, to be sure ; but in an age of imitation 
Freneau, hke Godfrey, was remarkable for this, — that he fol- 
lowed an ideal instead of a fashion. The delicate fancy of this 
little poem, its melody, its appeal to the imagination, its con- 
scious following of Milton rather than of Pope, — all this sug- 
gests that the romantic movement in poetry began here, as in 
England, by a deliberate return to the old masters. And Fre- 
neau, the man who led the movement that gave us Bryant and 
Poe, Longfellow and Lanier, is worthy of more appreciation 
than our historians have thus far given him. 

Miscellaneous Verse. With the crude songs and ballads in- 
spired by the war, the attempt of the Hartford Wits to establish 
a national literature, the political satires of Patriots or Loyalists, 
and the romantic verse of Freneau, we have outlined the main 
forms of poetry during the Revolutionary period. In addition, 
one finds considerable '' vagrom " verse, of small intrinsic value, 
but indicating that the Colonial era with its isolation and intensity 
was passing away, and that a new spirit of song was manifest, 
*' like the first chirping of birds after a storm." The nearest 
approach to a definite literary type is found in the '' society 
verse " of James McCloud and St. George Tucker, two gradu- 
ates of William and Mary College, whose verses show the influ- 
ence of the English Cavalier poets. In this significant group 
we include Francis Hopkinson, of Philadelphia, a stanch old 
Whig, who could unbend from his severity to write the rollick- 
ing '' Battle of the Kegs," or dash off Cavalier lyrics like '' My 
Love is Gone to Sea," and the jaunty love song beginning, 

My generous heart disdains 
The slave of love to be. 

Very different these from the slashing satires of Trumbull, and 
from the ponderous epics of D wight and Barlow ! They suggest 
that all types of English poetry had taken root, like wind-blown 
seeds, on this side of the Atlantic ; and that in any study of 



PERIOD OF THE REVOLUTION 145 

early American life or literature we must consider the gayety of 
the Cavalier as well as the seriousness of the Puritan. 

Dramas also were written in this period by John Burk, Ro3/all 
Tyler and William Dunlap ; but, though they were once played 
to crowded houses, they are now forgotten. Much more inter- 
esting are the dramatic poems of Hugh Brackenridge, The Battle 
of Banker s Hill (1776) and The Death of Gen. Montgomery 
(1777). In style both poems show the influence of Shake- 
speare ; but in matter they are wholly American, and reflect 
a magnificent national patriotism. The dramatic satires of 
Mrs. Mercy Warren and the huge chronicle play, The Fall of 
British Tyranny (1776), are also significant, as a reflection of 
the dawning national consciousness. 

Prominent among the minor versifiers who enjoyed a day's 
favor was Phillis Wheatley, the negro slave girl. In 1761 she 
Phiiiis stood, a trembling girl without name or speech, in 

Wheatley ^^ open slave market of Boston. Twelve years later 
she published, in London, a book with the following title : Poe^ns 
on Various Subjects, Religions and Moral, by Phillis Wheatley, 
Negro Servant to Mr. John Wheatley of Boston, in New England, 
lyyj. The book created a mild sensation on both sides of the 
Atlantic, and no wonder ! Even the inspired Psalmist once cried 
out, '' How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land } " 
This stranger among us was violently taken from her savage 
mother in Africa. She remembered the horror in that mother's 
face as her child was snatched away. She could recall the wild, 
free life of the tribe, — chant of victory or wail of defeat, leap- 
ing flames, gloom of forest, cries of wild beasts, singing of birds, 
glory of sunrise, the stately march of the wild elephants over 
the silent places. Here was material such as no other singer in 
all the civilized world could command, and she had the instinct 
of a poet. We open her book eagerly, and we meet '' On the 
death of an Infant " : 

Through airy roads he winged his instant flight 
To purer regions of celestial light. 



146 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

This is not what we expected. We skip the rest, and turn the 
leaves. Here is something promising, '' To Imagination " : 

Imagination ! who can sing thy source, 
Or who describe the swiftness of thy course ? 
Soaring through air to find the bright abode, 
The empyreal palace of the thuncjering god, 
We on thy pinions can surpass the wind, 
And leave the rolling universe behind. 
From star to star the mental optics rove, 
Measure the skies and range the realms above : 
There in one view we grasp the mighty whole, 
Or with new worlds amaze the unbounded soul. 

It is vain to seek further, for the end is disappointment. Here 
is no Zulu, but drawing-room Enghsh ; not the wild, barbaric 
strain of march and camp and singing fire that stirs a man's in- 
stincts, but pious platitudes, colorless imitations of Pope, and 
some murmurs of a terrible theology, harmless now as the rum- 
bling of an extinct volcano. It is too bad. This poor child has 
been made over into a wax puppet ; she sings like a canary in a 
cage, a bird that forgets its native melody and imitates only w^hat 
it hears. We have called attention to her simply because she is 
typical of scores of minor poets of the Revolutionary period who, 
with a glorious opportunity before them, neglected the poetry 
and heroism of daily life in order to follow a literary fashion. 

VI. MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS OF THE REVOLUTION 

A careless glance at Revolutionary literature leaves the impression 
that America was like Bethesda in those days, and that the multitudes 
about its troubled pools had no thought but to be healed of their 
political infirmities. There were many writers, however, who were 
undisturbed by the general excitement, and whose works have en- 
during charm from the fact that they deal with life, which is old as 
the earth, rather than with political problems which arose but yester- 
day. Crevecoeur's Letters from an Afnerican Farme?', for instance, is 
a joyous, a charming bit of hterature, giving idylHc pictures of nature 
and human hfe in the Colonies. Here also is Jonathan Carver's 



PERIOD OF THE REVOLUTION 14/ 

Travels through the Ifiterior Farts of North Afuerica, a brave book, 
as fascinating as Parkman's story of the Jesuit explorers. Among 
the historical writers are Hutchinson, who carries out the work of 
Bradford and Prince ; Ramsay and Belknap,^ who are precursors of 
our modern historians. Among biographies are Wirt's admirable Life 
of Patrick Henr)\ and Marshall's judicious estimate of the father of 
his country. The latter is in marked contrast to Weems's Life of 
Washiiigton (1800), a grossly inaccurate work which was once more 
widely read than any other American biography. P'or naturalists there 
are the works of John Bartram and of Alexander Wilson ; and for those 
interested in what we may call personal literature, there are the letters 
of Abigail Adams, of Eliza Wilkinson, and of Dolly Madison — de- 
lightful letters, reflecting clearly the spirit of the women of the 
Revolution. 

Here is variety enough to tempt one who loves to explore outside 
the beaten trails of literature. We offer these books merely as a sug- 
gestion. Our work here is to consider two unclassified writers, the 
one a stormy product of the age of revolution, the other a gentle soul 
who belongs to no age or nation but to all humanity. 

Thomas Paine (i 737-1809) 

One who knew Paine well refused to write about him, say- 
ing that he was such a mixture of vanity and greatness, of 
frankness and concealment, that it was impossible to tell the 
story of his life.^ That was a century ago, and time in its 
merciful way has softened the man's offenses and magnified his 
service ; but we still have no mind to attempt a biography. We 
note that Paine, who served three countries, was always the 
man without a country, ''a citizen of the world," as he called 
himself ; that he was at home everywhere, and had a home 
nowhere ; that he was always helping others, always in sore 

1 Ramsay's most interesting work is his History of the Revolution in South Carolina. 
His twelve-volume work, Universal History Ame7'ica?tized, is as suggestive as Noah 
Webster's Dictionary, or Brown's novels, of a strong tendency in the new nation to 
look at life and letters from an independent viewpoint. Belknap's AVw Hampshire is 
one of the best of our early histories. 

2 See Joel Barlow's letter to James Cheetham (1809). A part of this letter is quoted 
in Stedman and Hutchinson, Libraiy of American Literature, IV, 56. 



148 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

need of help himself ; forever looking for trouble and, as 
trouble is accommodating, forever finding it. He wrote his most 
inspiring message in the midst of a disastrous rout ; he merrily 
knocked theology to pieces while starving in prison, with the 
guillotine waiting for his head. So he reminds us of the 
stormy petrel, a restless bird that appears with the first white- 
caps of a gale, and that chippers most contentedly in the midst 
of turmoil and danger. 

Paine arrived here in 1774, just as the storm was gathering. 
No one missed him when he left England ; no man welcomed 
him to America ; but with a letter in his pocket from Franklin, 
recommending him as ''an ingenious, worthy young man," he 
went to Philadelphia, found work on the Pennsylvania Gazette^ 
and was presently up to his ears in political agitation. As we 
study him there, with his shady past and resourceful present, 
his journalistic sense and his extraordinary talent for interesting 
the public, we are reminded constantly of Defoe, whom of all 
writers Paine most closely resembles. 

Common Sense. Paine's first work shows that, like other 
writers of the period, he was in favor of union with England ; 
but after the battle of Bunker Hill and the burning of Portland 
and Norfolk, he declared that '' the country^ was set on fire 
around my ears, and it was time to stir." He opened the new 
year (1776) with his Common Sense, the first open assertion of 
American independence, and probably the most powerful 
pamphlet that ever influenced a nation's history. Every para- 
graph of this stirring appeal bristles with epigrams sharp as 
bayonets ; every argument suggests the thud of a ramrod 
driving home a charge, and the ending is like the brattle of a 
trumpet calling to action : 

"O ye that love mankind ! Ye that dare oppose not only ty'ranny but 
the tyrant, stand forth ! Every spot of the old world is overrun with 
oppression. Freedom hath been hunted round the globe. Asia and Africa 
have long expelled her. Europe regards her like a stranger, and England 
hath given her warning to depart. Oh, receive the fugitive, and prepare in 
time an asylum for mankind ! " 



PERIOD OF THE REVOLUTION 149 

Reading it now, in peace and serenity, we are unable to 
appreciate the effect of this pamphlet, which brought men to 
their feet like the waving of a torch over a powder magazine. 
Unnumbered thousands of copies w^ere sold as fast as they 
could be printed ; every Whig newspaper in the Colonies was 
aflame with its spirit. Odell, the Tory satirist, winces as he 

The work like wildfire through the country ran. 

That describes it exactly. Within a few months its words were 
repeated in almost every home wdthin the vast circle of frontier 
cabins, and the unknown author was for a moment the most 
talked of person in the whole country.^ 

It is hardly too much to say that this one pamphlet changed 
the whole character of our Revolution. Though the Colonies 
were in arms at this time, they were fighting not for independ- 
ence but for their rights as English subjects. When Common 
Sense appeared, men faced a new issue, and by hundreds and 
thousands they accepted Paine's fiery assertion that America 
must be free. When the Continental Congress met, some six 
months later, a large Patriot party had arisen, and the Declara- 
tion of Independence was inevitable. The estimate of Paine's 
contemporaries, that Common Sense was worth an army of ten 
thousand men to the Continental cause, hardly exaggerates its 
influence. 

The Crisis. While serving in Washington's army, during the 
terrible retreat across New Jersey, Paine began hastily to write 
The Crisis, and finished this inspiring appeal while his com- 
pany dodged about like hunted foxes, hoping to escape capture 
or annihilation : 

" These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and 
the sunshine patriot will in this crisis shrink from the service of his 

1" Who the author of this production is," Paine writes in answer to a flood of in- 
quiries, " it is wholly unnecessary to the public to know, as the object of the attention is 
the doctrine, not the man." As the author would have been hanged by the first squad of 
British soldiers that laid hands on him, he had reasons other than modesty for remain- 
ing unknown. In America the work was attributed to Samuel Adams ; in England, 
where Common Sense made a sensation, it was credited to Franklin. 



i;o 



AMERICAN LITERATURE 



The American Crisis. 



Number . I. 
By the Author of Common Sense. 

THESE are tlie times that try men's fouls : The 
fumrncr foldicr and the funiliine patriot will, in this 
crifis, flirink from the fcrvice of his country; but 
lie that ftands it Now, dsferves the love and thanks of man 
«rid woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not cafily conciuercd; 
yst.wc have this confolation with lis, that the harder the 
ccnHici, the -more glorious the triumph. W.h.it we obtain 
too cheap, we eftccm too lightly :—'Tis dcarncf? only 
that gives every thing its value. Hjavcn knows ho\y to fet 
a proper price upon its goods ; and it would be ftr.-.nge In- 
deed, if fo ccieftial an article as Freedom fiiould not bs 
highly rated. Brit.->in, with an army to cnforc: Iicr t^-ranny, 
has declared, that flie has a right, {mt only to tax) but " to 
" BIND 1/5 iH ALL CASES wn AiSOEVER,'' and it being 
hound in that inaiMr is not fl.ivery, then is there pot fuch a 
thing as flavery upon earth. Ev>.n the exprefllon is impious, 
for (o unlimited a pourr can hJun : only to (jOD. 

Whether the rndepj-ulnicr if the C.ntlnenI was de- 
clared too fixjn, or dcLytd too long, I will not now enter 
into as an argument ; my own fimplc opinion is, that had 
it been tight months earlier, it would have been much bet- 
ter. We did not make a proper uft of Uft winter, neither 
could we, while we were in a dependent ftate. However, 
the fault, if it were one^ was all our own ; we have none 
to blame b-.:t o'lrfflves *. H;:t no great deal is lofl yet ; all 
that Howe has been doing for thi- mohth paft is rntlxr a 
ravage tlian a conqu'fr, which the fpirituf the Jerfxs a year 
ago would have t|uiekly rcpulfed, and which time and a 
little refolution will foon rv-cover. 

I have a little fuperflition in me as any man living, but 

my 

• " The pwfcnt winter" (meaning t\e lift) " is worth an 
" age, if rightly employed, but if loll, or neglcfted, the whole 
" Coniincnt will partake of the evil; and ihcie is no punilh- 
" ment that man does not deferve, be he who, or what, or 
" where he will, that may be the mum of facrificing a fcafoa 
" fo precious and ufcfiiL" Common ScMSfr 



country ; but he that stands it now deserves the love and thanks of men 
and women. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered ; yet we have this 
consolation, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph." 

So begins T/ie Crisis, and one must perforce read to the 
end. Its cheerfulness even in defeat, its indomitable optimism, 

its faith in God and in the 
American spirit, upUfted the 
nation like the news of vic- 
tory. Washington himself 
was so moved that he ordered 
it to be read before every 
company of his soldiers. Un- 
fitted as he was for military 
service, Paine accepted a 
lucrative civil office ; but he 
never forgot the fighting 
soldiers. Sometimes T/ie 
Crisis appeared after a vic- 
tory, more often after a 
defeat ; and occasionally it 
ridiculed the proclamation of 
some pompous English gen- 
eral in a way that made men 
laugh and cheer in the same 
breath. The first number 
appeared in i yy6, the last in 
1783, and with peace in full 
sight Paine ends his work 
with a prophetic look into 
the future and a plea for a 
union of all the states into an American nation. His plea was 
answered, four years later, by the adoption of the Constitution. 

The rest of Paine's career belongs to European literature. The 
Colonies were grateful, giving him money and an estate at New 
Rochelle ; but he was essentially an agitator, as uneasy in peace as 



FIRST PAGE OF " THE CRISIS, BY 
TOM PAIXE " 



PERIOD OF THE REVOLUTION 151 

a fish out of water, and presently he went abroad to exhibit an iron 
bridge which he had invented. Fox and Burke received him kindly in 
Paine's Last England ; but after the latter's apparent desertion of de- 
Years mocracy in his Reflections on the French Revolution, Paine 
seized his pen, as one would take a musket, and fired his Rights 
of Man (1791) at Burke and the English Constitution. This brave, 
outspoken book produced such a terrible sensation that the alarmed 
government outlawed the author. Before the storm broke over his 
head, Paine flitted away to Paris, where he arrived in the midst of the 
French Revolution. 

We can only outline the rest of the story — his career as French 
citizen and deputy to the National Assembly ; his noble plea for mercy 
for Louis XVI ; his imprisonment and narrow escape from the guillo- 
tine ; his ill-judged and ill-written Age of Reason ; and his sad last 
years, when he was at war with himself, with his friends, and with the 
only country which had appreciated him. From his poverty and ob- 
scurity in Paris he was brought home by Jefferson, who in his hour 
of triumph remembered all the neglected patriots that had served 
America in her hour of need. He died in 1809, and an empty tomb 
and monument at New Rochelle still mark the spot where he once 
was buried. For his body was removed to England, as if to remind us 
that in death as in life he was a man without a country. 

John Woolman (i 720-1 772) 

When Franklin in the flush of worldly success began his 
Autobiography, the raodtst Journal of John Woolma^i was just 
drav^ing to its close. One author begins by telling us that he 
v^rites largely to gratify his vanity ; the other, writing as he had 
lived with no thought of self, shows in his first line the spirit 
of the old monks, who worked or wrote or taught their fellow 
men alone for the glory of God : 

" I have often felt a motion of love to leave some hints in writing of my 
experience of the goodness of God, and now, in the thirty-sixth year of 
my age, I begin this work." 

Both books hold the mirror up to human nature ; both con- 
tribute to the chief end of literature, which is to know men ; 
but while one makes us think of man in his body and estate, the 



152 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

other is the tender, exquisite story of a human soul, '' the sweetest 
and purest autobiography in the language." ^ As the latter is a 
book that few discover or appreciate, we cull a few paragraphs, 
that the reader may decide for himself whether he belongs with 
the simple-minded folk who like TJie Journal of Jo Jui Woolman: 

" My mind, through the power of truth, was in a good degree weaned 
from the desire of outward greatness, and I was learning to be content with 
the real conveniences, that were not costly, so that a way of life free from 
much entanglement appeared best for me, though the income might be 
small. I had several offers of business that appeared profitable ; but I did 
not see my way clear to accept of them, believing they would be attended 
with more outward care and cumber than was required of me to engage in. 
I saw that an humble man, with the blessing of the Lord, might live on a 
little, and that where the heart was set on greatness, success in business 
did not satisfy the craving ; but that commonly, with an increase of wealth, 
the desire of wealth increased. There was a care on my mind so to pass 
my time that nothing might hinder me from the most steady attention to the 
voice of the true Shepherd." 

In a letter to his wife he writes thus of his missionary 
journeys and labors : 

" Of this I may speak a little, for though since I left you I have often 
an engaging love and affection toward thee and my daughter and friends 
about home, and going out at this time is a trial upon me, yet I often re- 
member there are many widows and fatherless, many who have poor tutors, 
many who have evil examples before them, and many whose minds are in 
captivity ; for whose sake my heart is at times moved with compassion, so 
that I feel my mind resigned to leave you for a season and to execute the 
gift which the Lord hath bestowed upon me, which though small compared 
with some, yet in this I rejoice, that I feel love unfeigned toward my 
fellow creatures. . . ." 

While Woolman is at home, tending his little shop and cul- 
tivating his fruit trees, an alarm flames out on the frontier : 
Indians are on the warpath, and brave men are hastening with 
their families to the protection of the towns. At such a time he 
thinks only of the misguided savages, and with a '' tender con- 
cern " he pushes westward through the wilderness to meet them. 

1 This is Channing's estimate, quoted in the Introduction to Whittier's edition of 
Woolman's Journal. 



PERIOD OF THE REVOLUTION 153 

" My companion and I, sitting thus together in a deep inward stillness, 
the poor [Indian] woman came and sat near us; and, a great awfulness 
coming over us, we rejoiced in a sense of God's love manifested to our 
poor souls. After a while we heard a conch shell blow several times, and 
then came John Curtis and another Indian man, who kindly invited us inf6 
a house near the town, where we found about sixty [Indians] sitting inside. 
After sitting with them a short time I stood up, and in some tenderness of 
spirit acquainted them in a few short sentences with the nature of r^y visit, 
and that a concern for their good had made me willing to come thus far to 
see them ; which some of them, understanding, interpreted to the others, 
and there appeared gladness among them. . . ." 

After hearing a soldier's story of war and barbarism his 
heart is moved to compassion, and his re :ord reminds us of 
the treasured old volume of Thomas a Kempis : 

" This relation affected me with sadness, under which I went to bed ; 
and the next morning, soon after I woke, a fresh and living sense of divine 
love overspread my mind, in which I had a renewed prospect of the nature 
of that wisdom from above which leads to a right use of all gifts both spirit- 
ual and temporal, and gives content therein. . . . Attend then, O my soul, 
to this pure wisdom as thy sure conductor through the manifold dangers of 
this world. 

" Doth pride lead to vanity? Doth vanity form imaginary wants? Do* 
these wants prompt men to exert their power in requiring more from others 
than they would be willing to perform themselves were the same required 
of them? Do these proceedings beget hard thoughts? Do hard thoughts 
when ripe become malice ? Does malice when ripe become revengeful, and 
in the end inflict terrible pains on our fellow creatures and spread desola- 
tions in the world ? . . . Remember then, O my soul, the quietude of those 
in whom Christ governs, and in all thy proceedings feel after it. . . ." 

To some readers the above quotations are enough to indicate 
that Woolman has for them no vital interest ; but others will 
The Quality surely ask, Who is this man that writes with such 
of Woolman exquisite simplicity, with the refinement of gentle- 
ness and the purity of the pure in heart ? There is little to say 
in answer : that he was an obscure, self-educated Friend or 
Quaker of Mount Holly, New Jersey ; that his early years were 
spent on the farm, as a clerk, and as a teacher of poor children ; 
that he was a tailor '' by the choice of Providence," and kept a 
little shop ; that his honesty brought many customers, but he 



154 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

avoided as " cumber " all business beyond a simple living for 
his family, having, as he said, seen the happiness of humility 
and formed the earnest desire to enter deeper into it ; that he 
went up and down the land on missionary journeys to rich and 
poor, to slaves and slave owners, preaching mercy and justice as 
the mle of life, and love as the solution of all earthly problems ; 
that 1 e often did heroic things but always concealed his heroism ; 
that in the excitement of the days before the Revolution he 
went on a mission to the Friends in England with the same 
message thc.-t. -be had carried to his countrymen ; and that on 
this last journey of love he died among strangers, who cared 
for him as their own. Having told this, we leave the reader 
with the book, as we would leave him with a child or a friend ; 
such a friend as we have sometime known, who is in the world ' 
but not of it, who is wise from his very artlessness, who lives 
with God and loves his fellow men, and whose counsel has no 
taint of earthliness — in a word, a friend who makes us know 
and trust the saints of all ages. 

VII. THE BEGINNING OF AMERICAN FICTION 

« 

Charles Brockden Brown (i 77 i-i 8 io) 

Brown occupies a curious position in our literature. He seems 
historically important, but personally of small consequence ; he 
marks an important literary epoch, but is unknown to modern 
readers. So he reminds us of the pioneer who blazed a trail 
through the Indian-haunted forest and cleared the space where 
the town hall stands, — a most important work, though we have 
carelessly forgotten who did ^t. This unknown author is re- 
markable for three things : 4ie is the first American who believes 
enou gh in literature to adopt it as a profession ;^ifeJs_the_founder 
^f the A merican novel ^ ^^nd he starts a revolution against the 

1 A few attempts at novel writing were made by other authors of the same period. 
Thus Susanna Rowson's Charlotte Temple (1790) and Tabitha Tenney's Female Quix- 
otism^ Exemplified in the Romantic Opinions and Extravagant Adventures of Dorcasina 
Sheldon (1808) represent two distinct tendencies in our earliest fiction. Mrs. Tenney 



PERIOD OF THE REVOLUTION 



155 



English fiction of his age by declaring his purpose to write of 
American life in his own way. If we begin by comparing 
"down's [f}V/^;/^with The Scarlet Letter, or his Edgar Huntley 
with The Last of the Mohicans, we shall see only our author's 
limitations ; but if we can imagine ourselves back in an age when 
there were no novels here, 
and when England was occu- 
pied with grotesque '' Gothic " 
romances, then the work of 
this poor consumptive will ap- 
pear to us heroic. And if we 
read more carefully, we shall 
discover a fourth remarkable 
fact, —"that Brown's work an- 
ticipates the material or method^ 
of our greatest writers of fic- 
tion : the stirring adventures 
of Cooper, the weird horror 
of Poe, and the psychological 
analysis of Hawthorne. For 
Brown was a pioneer in a new 
realm of literature ; and though 
he failed to win permanent 
success, his failure, like that 

y)f most explorers, may have served effectually to point out the 
pay by which others might reach the goal. 

Life. Some men put themselves so completely into their work that 
the only way to get acquainted with them is to read what they have 
written. With Brown the case is reversed ; he hides behind his books, 
and we must study his life before we can understand his writings. 

wrote to counteract the false sentiment of Mrs. Rowson's Charlotte Temple, very much 
as Fielding, in English literature, had written to burlesque the sentimentality of Rich- 
ardson's Pamela. NoUvithstanding its stilted style and lugubrious matter, Charlotte 
Temple has been read for over a century. The editor of the last edition (1905) found 
that at least one hundred and four editions had already been published. For a study of 
American fiction before the year 1800, see Miss Loshe, The Early American Novel 
(New York, 1907). * 




CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN 



156 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

He was born in Philadelphia, in 1 7 7 1 . Like Woolman, he was of 
Quaker descent and training ; but he soon broke away from the gen- 
tle discipline, being influenced by the writings of Godwin, that same 
English radical who exercised an unfortunate influence over the poet 
Shelley.^ As a child he was precocious, and in his first school made 
havoc of his health by overstudy. Exiled by disease from the sports 
of vigorous boys, he 'had two unfailing resources, — to pore over books 
by the hour, and to ramble alone in the big woods. Here his imagi- 
nation, set loose from his frail body, led him away to glorious adven- 
tures with wild beasts and Indians. But wherever he went, like 
Wigglesworth he dragged the two millstones of disease and morbid- 
ness along with him. 

Schooldays over, and with them the golden age. Brown took up 
the burden of life in a lawyer's office. Presently he wearied of the 
law, as did Irving later, and abandoned it to commit himself definitely 
to literature, beginning with essays and poems for the new magazines. 
Philadelphia now seemed to him strait and narrow — though Franklin 
had found it broad enough when he ran away from Boston — and 
Brown migrated to New York. Here all his important work was 
crowded into a few years, during which he battled daily for health, 
with a heroism that suggests Lanier. He produced his first complete 
novel, JVielafid, in 1798. The next year, while publishing the Monthly 
Magazine, he wrote Ormond and the first part of Arthur Mervyn ; 
and in 1801 appeared three novels, Edgar Huntley, Clara Howard 
and Jane Talbot. It was a large amount of work, and we still feel the 
haste, the fever, the anxiety of it. Whether his genius had burned 
itself out like a candle, or whether he sought to .turn his fame into 
fortune by publishing a successful magazine, we do not know. Sud- 
denly he abandoned romance, went back to Philadelphia to establish 
the Literary Magazine (1803- 1808), and spent his failing energy on 
essays and sketches of no consequence. 

The tragedy of Brown's life is suggested by the fact that he died 
of consumption, in 18 10, before his powers had reached maturity; 
the heroism of it may be inferred from one of his last letters, in which 
he says that a single half-hour of health was aU that he could remember. 

1 It is worthy of note that Brown and Shelley had much in common, and that the 
English poet was a reader and admirer of the American novelist. To the influence of 
Godwin we owe the shallow notions concerning women and divorce to be found in Brown's 
Alciiin (1797). Such notions were quietly ignored here, but they raised a tempest about 
the ears of Shelley in England. • 



PERIOD OF THE REVOLUTION 157 

And he adds, with a touch of infinite pathos, that had his pilgrimage 
been longer he might have lighted at last on hope. 

Works of Brown. Of the six novels mentioned, the beginner 
will do well to choose Edgar Hu7itley, which is, on the whole, 
the best of Brown's works. In the preface, which is well worth 
reading, we find that our first novelist is actuated by two motives. 
The first was to oppose the prevailing '' Gothic " romances, 
with all their ghostly claptrap ; and here, all unconsciously, 
Brown was working with the same intent and purpose as Jane 
Austen.^ His second motive, also original and independent, was 
to make an American book, to lay the scene in his own country, 
and to use the romantic material of Colonial life which had lain 
neglected for two centuries. In the latter motive he anticipated 
Cooper, who, after trying one novel of English society, plainly 
followed Brown's lead in finding his literary material on our 
own frontier. 

The story of Edgar Himtley is a strange combination, — a 
minute analysis of human emotion, set in a rush of stirring 
Edgar incidents and hairbreadth escapes. The one sug- 

Huntiey gests the earlier work of Richardson, who gave us 
the first modern novel ; the other sets our feet in the trail 
which Cooper followed in his Leatherstocking romances. A 
single adventure may serve to show the spirit of the entire 
work. The hero goes to sleep in his bed, and knows that he 
slept as usual, for he remembers every detail : 

" I have said that I slept. My memory assures me of this ; it informs me 
of the previous circumstances of my laying aside my clothes, of placing the 
light upon a chair within reach of my pillow, of throwing myself upon the 
bed and of gazing on the rays of the moon reflected on the wall and almost 
obscured by those of the candle. I remember my occasional relapse into 
fits of incoherent fancies, the harbingers of sleep. I remember, as it were, 
the instant when my thought ceased to flow and my senses were arrested 
by the leaden wand of forgetfulness." 

1 One motive of Miss Austen was to counteract the evil influences of the same 
"Gothic" romances. Her greatest novel, Pride atid Prejudice, was written in 1797 (a 
year before Brown published his first romance, IVie/afid), but it did not find a publisher 
till sixteen years later. 



158 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Here is a mental picture which we instantly recognize as true. 
When the hero wakes from his natural sleep, he is bruised 
and sore, as if beaten with a club ; he is at the bottom of a 
pit in gross darkness. As he feels his way out, in a chaos 
of doubt and fear, he meets a ferocious panther and slays the 
beast. Then, attracted by a dim light, he stumbles upon a band 
of Indians with a captive white girl, sleeping around a fire in a 
gloomy cave. So far this is almost as good as the A^-abian 
Nights^ wherein castles grow like toadstools, and marvels come 
and go like the clouds. We enjoy the adventures, and especially 
the Indians, who are somewhat truer to nature than are Cooper's 
smoky philosophers ; but there is a mystery about this hero, who 
goes to sleep in his bed and wakes up in '' antres vast and desarts 
idle," which is not cleared up till we learn that he is a somnam- 
bulist — a lame and impotent conclusion. 

The same weakness is shown in all of Brown's novels. We 
find darlL_and dkeful.__s_tra^^^ murders, conspiracies^ 

galore ; and at the end some wretchedly inadequate 
motive to account for them all. In Wieland, for ex- 
ample, a man in the midst of ideal happiness is called by a 
supernatural voice to murder his wife and children. Horrors 
upon horrors attend this awful mystery ; and at the end we find 
only the '' squeak and gibber " of a ventriloquist. Yet there is 
a dramatic power and intensity in the stoiy which makes us 
read on : 

" I now come to the mention of a person with whose name the most 
turbulent sensations are connected. It is with a shuddering reluctance that 
I enter on the province of describing him. . . . My blood is congealed and 
my fingers are palsied when I call up his image. Shame upon my cowardly 
and infirm heart ! Hitherto I have proceeded with some degree of composure ; 
but now I must pause. I mean not that dire remembrance shall subdue my 
courage or baffle my design ; but this weakness cannot be immediately con- 
quered. I must desist for a little while." 

After such an introduction we insist on knowing what hap- 
pened. Our interest is aroused, first, by the fact that the hero 
is introduced under startling conditions, and then is allowed to 



PERIOD OF THE REVOLUTION 159 

tell his own story. Just as in Othello we read with a more 
lively interest when the Moor begins to relate his adventures, 
so in all Brown's stories the characters make a direct appeal to 
the reader. Another device, which he uses excellently, is to 
paint a scene so vividly that we expect some adventure to fol- 
low. As the oldest teller of ghost stories put his hearers on 
tiptoe for the specter by describing the dark night, the fear- 
some old house, the moaning wind, so Brown plays upon our 
imagination to make us anticipate the horror before it appears. 
Though he lacks the highest qualities as a writer, it is much to 
say of a first novelist that he knows how to attract attention, 
^nd to paint vivid pictur es of human emotion against a suitable ^ 
natural background. 

General Characteristics. Brown's faults are so obvious that 
w^e may pass over them silently and give attention to certain 
significant qualities that are reflected in all his romances. The 
points to be emphasized are these : that these books, now dead, 
were once very much alive ; that this forgotten prophet was 
once honored in his own country and in England ; and that 
he won success by reflecting in an original way two marked 
7) characteristics of hi^ age. These are summed up in the words 
' '' sensibility " aQ;^>^yster\^," which furnish the key to Brown's 
novels and to practically all the fiction of the age in Europe 
and America. 

Now_'lsen^ibility " is defined as the ability to feel sensations 

and emotions ; in literature it means unusual sensitiveness, deli_: 

cacy of feeling, responsiveness to every emotion of . 
pleasure or pain. At the close of the eighteenth cen- 
tury ''sensibility" was a kind of fetish, just as ''humor" was in 
the days of Ben Jonson. In the romances of this period men 
were not simply glad or sorry ; they had transports of joy, par- 
oxysms of grief ; they danced up and down the gamut of feeling 
as if human nature were a stretched nerve, vibrating to every 
breath of emotion. Coupled with this sensibility was a mawkish 
and garrulous sentimentality, repulsive to us now, but very dear 



i6o AMERICAN LITERATURE 

to an age that considered it proper for a lady to talk like Rich- 
ardson's Pamela, to '' fall senseless on the sofa," or '' sink 
fainting into the arms of an attendant " at every unusual 
announcement.^ 

That Brown was influenced by the prevailing literary fad is 
shown by the interest which his characters take in their sensibil- 
ities. The hero may be rescuing a girl from Indians, or dozing 
in front of his own fire ; but always, everywhere, he is making 
minute analysis of his own feelings. So far Brown follows the 
fashion. His independence is shown by his choice of American 
themes, and by the fact that, in portraying human feeling, he 
is^ more of a psychologist than a sentimentalist, more interested 
in the scientific explanation of an emotion than in the prevailing 
book of etiquette. It was this new variation of an old theme that 
made him popular, and if we read him candidly, we shall find that 
he was probably in advance of most of his English and German 
contemporaries. 2 

The second characteristic of Brown's novels is the sense of 
horror that pervades them ; and here our author reflects, not 
Mystery simply the fashion of his age, but the tendency of 
and Horror humanity in all ages to create for itself imaginary 
fears. Wherever you find him, whether in a primitive cave or 
in a modern office, man is always surrounded by mystery. He 
stands, as the first Colonists stood, fronting an unknown sea 
with an unknown wilderness at his back ; and his imagination 

1 Mackenzie's Man of Feeling (1771) is an epitome of this literary fad. Sheridan 
burlesqued it in the character of Lydia Languish, in The Rivals (1775). At this time 
the "Gothic" romances of Mrs. Radcliffe and the sentimental romances of Frances 
Bumey were immensely popular on both sides of the Atlantic. In this country about 
twenty novels were published before Brown's, and they are all stories of " sensibility " 
and sentimentality. 

2 To be specific : Mrs. Radcliffe's Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) and Goethe's Sorrows 
of Werther (1774) seem to us more mawkish than anything Brown ever wrote; though 
the first was written by the most popular English novelist of that day, and the second 
by the greatest of all German writers. (See, in this connection, Richardson, American 
Literature, ii, 288-289 i ^^^o Goodnight, Schiller in America, a monograph published by 
the University of Wisconsin.) In German romances of the period the keynote is gen- 
erally egoism ; there are the same sentimentality and horror as in Brown's romances, 
and the mystery is psychologically explained. 



PERIOD OF THE REVOLUTION l6l 

always peoples the unknown with fantastic terrors. Dragons and 
doppelgdnger were very real to the Anglo-Saxons ; enchantment' 
and witchcraft to all peoples of the Middle Ages. In Brown'sl 
day English romancers, after a period of general skepticism, 
were filling the unknown with ghosts, supernatural voices, and 
other horrors as artificial as their own periwigs. He had a vivid 
imagination, well suited to creating terror out of mystery ; but 
he had also a practical balance-wheel from his Quaker forbears, 
and he shared the common-sense spirit of his nation. The result 
was that he first created a mysterious horror, and then explained 
it by somnambulism, or ventriloquism, or some other ism dear 
to a people that had just begun to dabble in science — a people 
who demanded a sign, like those of old, but who wanted also 
some kind of explanation. So Brown was hailed abroad as 
the man who had ''Americanized" their ''Gothic" romance, as 
Franklin's lightning rods had "Americanized" their houses.^ 

There are other things worthy of note in Brown's neglected, 
romances : their stilted dialogue, so characteristic of an age 
Our First which insisted that literary persons must speak unnat- 
Noveiist urally ; their^photographic reproduction of the dress 
and manners of the gentlefolk of those days ; their keen obser- 
vations and admirable descriptions of nature ; their_vivid pictures 
of the yellow-fever horror, which compare favorably with Defoe's 
famous description of the plague in London. All these are 
interesting; but we emphasize only the "sensibility" and the 
horror of mystery which give the keynote to all his work. And 
instead of criticizing Brown for his evident faults, we are im- 
pelled to praise him for his unnoticed virtues. It is no small 
triumph for any novelist, while reflecting the literary fashions of 
his age, to go beyond his contemporaries in the direction of truth 
and naturalness. He was, w^e repeat, the founder of the Ameri- 
can novel, and his successors were Cooper and Hawthorne. 

1 The hideous mystery which overshadows Brown's pages has hardly yet vanished 
from our fiction. It reappears in the work of Poe and Hawthorne especially. For a 
study of Brown in comparison with later novelists, see Morse, Centiaj Magazine^ 
XXVI, 289. 



1 62 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Summary of the Revolutionary Period. If we include in our view not 
only the war but also its immediate causes and consequences, the Revolutionary 
period extends from the Stamp Act of 1765 to the close of the century. In 
our analysis of the period, we found four important historical movements. 
The first was social and industrial ; it was concerned with the rapid growth of 
the country, the increase in trade and wealth, and the appearance of many 
towns, each a center of social life. The second was the intense agitation over 
the Stamp Act and other measures of taxation, which aroused and united the 
Colonies in opposition to England. The third was the Revolutionary War, 
which established American independence. During the war there were two 
great parties in violent opposition : the Whigs or Patriots, who demanded 
independence ; and the Tories or Loyalists, who were in favor of continued 
union with England. The fourth movement was the adoption of the Constitu- 
tion, the merging of the Colonies into the United States of America. This 
union was accomplished only after a long struggle between two antagonistic 
parties : the Federalists, who sought a strongly centralized national govern- 
ment ; and the Anti-Federalists, who sought to keep the governing power as 
largely as possible in the hands of the individual states. The Constitution was 
regarded as a balance or fair compromise between these two parties. 

The literature of the period shows the effect of all these historical move- 
ments. The new social life demanded newspapers, magazines, brighter and 
J . more varied types of literature than had prevailed during the 

Colonial period. The turmoil after the Stamp Act led to a rapid 
development of popular oratory ; the strife between Patriots and Tories pro- 
duced numerous ballads and satires ; the struggle over the Constitution devel- 
oped a new type of political writing which has been well called "citizen 
literature." In general, the literature of the Revolution has a practical and 
worldly bent, in contrast to the religious spirit of Colonial writings. 

In our study we noted, first, the general characteristics of Revolutionary 
literature, the contrast between its imitative poetry and its individualistic prose. 
The citizen literature especially reflects a strong, original and creative impulse 
of the American mind. Next we considered the life and works of Benjamin 
Franklin, who marks the transition from the Colonial to the Revolutionary 
age. He was a voluminous writer, but his aim was always practical, or utili- 
tarian, rather than artistic. He is remembered in our literature chiefly by his 
Autobiography. 

Of the Revolutionary orators, James Otis and Patrick Henry were chosen 
as typical of the period. The typical statesman was Washington, the object 
of whose life and work was to establish nationality in America. 
•m -^ Two Other statesmen, Hamilton and Jefferson, were studied at 

length, because they were leaders, and are still the types, of 
the two great parties that are found in every free government. The most 
memorable literary work of Jefferson was the Declaration of Independence, 
which we considered as a piece of literature rather than as a state paper. 
The chief work of Hamilton was a series of political essays included in The 
Federalist. 



PERIOD OF THE REVOLUTION 163 

In studying the poetry of the Revolution we noted, first, the songs, ballads 
and verse satires in which Patriot and Loyalist reflected their political convic- 
tions and animosities ; second, the efforts of the so-called Hartford Wits to 
establish a national rather than a provincial poetry ; and third, the life and 
works of Philip Freneau. The latter's poems fall into two significant classes : 
political songs and satires, reflecting the turmoil of the age ; and occasional 
poems of nature and humanity, which reveal Freneau as an American fore- 
runner of the romantic movement in modern poetry. 

Of the many miscellaneous writers of the Revolution the two most notable 
are Thomas Paine, whose Common Sense and The Crisis are among the most 
powerful pamphlets that ever influenced a nation's history ; and John Wool- 
man, whose yi?«r«^/ has been called ''the sweetest and purest autobiography 
in the language." 

At the end of the Revolutionary period we note the definite appearance of 
the American novel. Some thirty-five works of fiction, mostly of the exagger- 
ated romantic type, were written before iSoo; but their authors 

„ , are now unknown even by name to most readers. The one fiction 
can Novels ..,.,,/ 

writer of the period who deserves recognition is Charles Brockden 

Brown. He was the first professional man of letters in America, and he may 
be regarded as the founder of the American novel. His models were the Ger- 
man and English authors of the so-called Gothic romances, — harrowing stories 
that combined mystery with ghostly horror, sensibility with sentimentality, 
and romance with gross exaggeration. Brown showed considerable originality, 
and gave a distinctly American color to his work by laying the scene of his 
romance in his own country, by using the incidents of Indian and Colonial life 
for his literary material, and by giving a practical or scientific explanation of the 
mysteries and horrors which filled his pages. In his work we find suggestions 
of Poe, Cooper and Hawthorne, the three greatest American writers of fiction. 

Selections for Reading. Franklin's Autobiography, edited for class use by 
Trent and Wells, in Standard English Classics (Ginn and Company); the same 
work in Maynard's English Classics, Holt's English Readings, and other 
series. Poor Richard's Almanac and other Papers (a good selection) in River- 
side Literature series. Washington's Farewell Address, in Standard English 
Classics, etc. ; the same, with Washington's Journal, Circular Letters to the 
Governors, and other selections, in Old South Leaflets. In the same series, 
selections from Hamilton and Jefferson. The Federalist, in Everyman's 
Library. Woolman's Journal, in Macmillan's Pocket series, etc. Crevecoeur's 
Letters from an American Farmer in Everyman's Library. 

There are no convenient editions of Brown, Paine or Freneau. Selections 
from these authors, and from all others mentioned in the text, may be found 
in Trent and Wells, Cairns, Carpenter's American Prose, Bronson's American 
Poems, etc. See " Selections " in the General Bibliography. 

Bibliography Historical textbooks : Montgomery, Muzzey, Channing, etc. 
For extended works in history and literature, see the General Bibliography. 
The following special works are useful in studying the Revolutionary period. 



l64 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

History. Winsor, Reader's Handbook of the American Revolution ; Fiske, 
American Revolution, and Critical Period of American History; Hart, Forma- 
tion of the Union ; Walker, Making of the Nation ; Fisher, Struggle for 
American Independence ; Sloane, French War and the Revolution ; Lossing, 
Field Book of the Revolution. 

Political. Gordy, PoHtical Parties, 1787-1828, 2 vols.; Stanwood, History 
of the Presidency. 

Biographical. Lives of important historical characters, each in one volume 
as a rule, in American Statesmen series ; Parton, Life of Franklin, of Jef- 
ferson, of Burr ; Rives, Life and Times of James Madison, 3 vols. ; Trent, 
Southern Statesmen of the Old Regime (Washington, Jefferson, Randolph) ; 
Sparks, Men who made the Nation ; Parker, Historic Americans ; Green, 
Pioneer Mothers of America, 3 vols. ; C. F. Adams, John Adams's Diary. 

Sicpplementary. Parkman, Half Century of Conflict, Montcalm and Wolfe ; 
Hinsdale, The Old Northwest ; Fiske, American Political Ideas ; Earle, Stage 
Coach and Tavern Days, Diary of Anna Green W^inslow, a Boston School 
Girl of 177 1 ; Crawford, Romantic Days in the Early Republic. 

Literature. Tyler, Literary History of the American Revolution, 2 vols.; 
(Putnam), includes all the writers of the period. Miss Loshe, Early American 
Novel (1907); Magoon, Orators of the American Revolution (1848); Sears, 
American Literature in the Colonial and National Periods (1892). For works 
on individual writers, Franklin, Freneau, etc., see below. 

Collateral Reading. Women of Colonial and Revolutionary Times : Martha 
Washington, by Anne Wharton ; Mercy Warren, by Alice Brown ; Dolly 
Madison, by Maud Goodwin ; Catherine Schuyler, by Mary Humphreys, etc. 
(Scribner) ; Green, Pioneer Mothers of America; Mills, Through the Gates 
of Old Romance (a book of the love stories of Freneau, Benjamin W^est, and 
other notable men of Revolutionary times). 

Frankliii. Texts: Works, edited by A. H. Smyth; by Bigelow (1887). 
Sayings of Poor Richard, edited by Ford (Putnam). Autobiography, etc. (see 
Selections for Reading, above). 

Biography and Criticism : Life (including the Autobiography supplemented 
by many letters), edited by Bigelow, 3 vols. ; Life, by McMaster, in American 
Men of Letters ; by Morse, in American Statesmen ; by Parton, 2 vols. ; Ford, 
The Many-Sided Franklin ; Fisher, The True Benjamin Franklin, in " True " 
Biographies. FrankHn bibliography, by Ford (Brooklyn, 1889). 

Hamilton. Texts: Works, edited by Lodge, 9 vols. (1885). The Federal- 
ist, edited by Dawson ; by Ford ; by Lodge. 

Biography and Criticism : Life, by Morse, 2 vols. ; by Lodge, in American 
Statesmen; Sumner, Alexander Hamilton (a critical study, in Makers of 
America series) ; Culbertson, Alexander Hamilton (Yale University Press, 
1910) ; Basset, The FederaHst System, in the American Nation, edited by 
Hart, Vol. II. 

Jefferson. Texts: Works, 10 vols., edited by Ford (1892-1899). 

Biography and Criticism : Life by Schouler, in Makers of America ; by 
Morse, in American Statesmen ; by Curtis, in " True " Biographies ; by Parton, 



PERIOD OF THE REVOLUTION 165 

by Watson, etc. ; Trent, Southern Statesmen of the Old Regime ; Channing, 
The Jeffersonian System, in Hart's American Nation, Vol. XII. 

The Hartford Wits. Texts : No complete editions are available. Dwight's 
Conquest of Canaan (Hartford, 1875) and Travels in New England and New 
York, 4 vols. (New Haven, 1821); Trumbull's Works, with Memoir, 2 vols. 
(Hartford, 1820) ; Trumbull's M'Fingal, edited by Lossing (1881). 

Biography and Criticism: Tyler, Three Men of Letters (1895) 5 Todd, Life 
and Letters of Joel Barlow (1895) ; Sheldon, Pleiades of Connecticut (Atlan- 
tic Monthly, 1865) ; Trumbull, Origin of M'Fingal (Historical Magazine, 1868). 

Freneaii. Texts : No complete edition of works ; Poems, edited by Pattee, 
3 vols. (Princeton University Library, 1902-1907) ; Poems of 1786, in Library 
of Old Authors; Poems of the Revolution, edited by Duyckinck (1865). 

Biography and Criticism: Life, by Mary Austin (1901) ; Forman, Political 
Activities of Philip Freneau (Johns Hopkins University Studies) ; More, in 
Shelburne Essays, Fifth Series (1908) ; Greenslet, in Atlantic Monthly 
(December, 1904). 

Brown. Texts: Works, 6 vols. (Philadelphia, 1857, revised 1887). 

Biography and Criticism: Life, by Dunlap, 2 vols. (1815) ; by Prescott, in 
Biographical and Critical Miscellanies ; and in Spark's Library of American 
Biography. Miss Loshe, Early American Novel ; Erskine, Leading American 
Novelists ; Morse, in Century Magazine, Vol. XXVI ; Brown's connection 
with Shelley, in Dowden's Life of Shelley. 

Historical Fiction. Older Romances of the Revolution : Catherine Sedgwick, 
The Linwoods ; Lydia Child, The Rebels ; Cooper, The Spy, The Pilot, 
Lionel Lincoln ; Kennedy, Horse-Shoe Robinson ; Paulding, Old Conti- 
nental; Simms, The Scout, The Partisan, Katherine Walton. 

Later Romances : Hawthorne, Septimius Felton ; Cooke, Henry St. John ; 
Winthrop, Edwin Brothertoft; Butterworth, Patriot Schoolmaster; Ford, Janice 
Meredith; Thompson, Alice of Old Vincennes; Frederick, In the Valley; 
Mitchell, Hugh Wynne ; Harrison, Son of the Old Dominion ; Coggeswell, 
The Regicides; Eggleston, A Carolina Cavalier; Churchill, Richard Carvel. ' 

Books for Young People. Revohctionary History: Fiske, Irving's Washing- 
ton and His Country (Ginn and Company) ; Dickson, Hundred Years of 
Warfare, 1680-1789 (Macmillan) ; Fiske, War of Independence (Houghton) ; 
Baldwin, Conquest of the Old Northwest (American Book Co.); Jenks, When 
America Won Liberty (Crowell) ; Hart, Camps and Firesides of the Revolu- 
tion (Macmillan). 

Revolutionary Stories: Hawthorne, Grandfather's Chair; Coffin, Boys of 
'76 ; Helen Cleveland, Stories of the Brave Old Days ; Lillian Price, Lads 
and Lassies of Other Days. 

Suggestive Questions. (Note : Questions in class should be based, first, on 
selections read from the various authors, and second, on parts of the text 
marked for study. It is not expected that the student should be able to answer 
all the general questions below. They are intended, chiefly, to stimulate his 
thinking and to arouse his patriotic interest in American literature and history.) 



1 66 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

1 . The period in which our independence was won is called the Age of Revo- 
lution : what events in European history and literature justify the title ? What 
did America contribute to the age, in matters of government and literature? 

2. Read the historical introduction to the Revolutionary period, and tell in 
your own words what effect each historic movement had upon our literature. 
It is said that, in passing from Colonial to Revolutionary times, our literature 
shifted its center of interest from heaven to earth ; explain, criticize, challenge 
the statement. What common characteristics do you find in Colonial and 
Revolutionary literature ? 

3. What is meant by citizen literature ? Why should it appear during the 
Revolutionary period ? What are its qualities ? What works of the present 
day belong to this class ? How do they compare in spirit and motive with the 
earlier works ? 

4. Explain the prevalence of satire and of ballads in Revolutionary poetry. 
Describe the two main parties during the Revolution, and name some of the 
literary works of each. Why are Patriot ballads in general better known than 
ballads of the Loyalists ? How do you account for the fact that the wretched 
doggerel of "Yankee Doodle" is remembered, while better ballads are for- 
gotten ? 

5. How do you account for the fact that Revolutionary prose is better, 
more original and independent, than Revolutionary verse ? (Note that Frank- 
lin's early prose is imitative.) In what ways does "the American spirit" 
reveal itself in both prose and poetry ? 

6. Quote from any of Washington's later and earlier works to show that he 
was animated by the national rather than by tlie provincial spirit. W^hat is the 
value of his Farewell Address? Why should it be studied as a " classic " ? It 
is said that the Farewell Address was the work of Washington and his friends, 
Hamilton being prominent among the latter : what evidence of composite 
authorship do you find in the work itself ? 

7. What two parties were prominent at the time of the adoption of the 
Constitution? Do you see any connection between these two parties and the 
Whigs and Tories of the Revolution ? or between them and the two main 
political parties of the present day ? Fiske has said that in politics all men are 
followers of either Hamilton or Jefferson ; criticize the statement. 

8. In what ways were Hamilton and Jefferson typical of two great parties? 
Give a brief sketch of Hamilton's life, and of his service to America. What 
literary work made him known before the Revolution ? By what is he now 
remembered ? What is the general character of The Federalist ? 

9. Sketch briefly Jefferson's life and service, and note the contrast with 
Hamilton. What qualities in Jefferson led to his being called at various times 
to speak for a large party or for the nation ? What are his chief literary works ? 
The Declaration of Independence has been called an Anglo-Saxon battle 
song ; why ? What national and race qualities does it reveal ? 

10. Franklin, [a] In what way does Franklin mark the transition from the 
Colonial to the Revolutionary age ? He has been called " the teacher of a new 
order in America " ; give your reasons for upholding or denying the allegation. 



PERIOD OF THE REVOLUTION 167 

(3) What typical character, and of what sort, did FrankHn introduce in his 
almanac ? Show any resemblances between this character and the hero of 
any modern story, such as David Haricm or Ebeit Holden. Make a list of 
Franklin's maxims that are still in daily use. Show the mixture of truth and 
error in these sayings. 

(c) Quote from some of the minor works you have read to illustrate Frank- 
lin's humor. Do you find any definite resemblances between Franklin's humor 
and that of later writers. Holmes, Stockton or Mark Twain for instance ? It is 
customary to speak of " American humor " ; what is meant by this .^ And how 
does American differ from EngHsh or German humor ? 

(<r/) Why should Franklin's Aiitobiog7-aphy be studied as a " classic " ? What 
are its qualities of style ? How do you account for Franklin's careless disre- 
gard of the work, and for the world's keen appreciation of it? As a matter of 
speculation, if such a book had been written by an unknown author, would you 
be interested in it? 

{e) Make a brief comparison between Franklin and Edwards, having in 
mind the careers of the two men, the interest of their works, their style, their 
motive in writing, and the different classes of readers to whom they appealed. 
Explain the statement that these two men represent the two sides of the 
American mind. 

11. Who was John Woolman? An English critic, Charles Lamb, wrote, 
" Get the writings of John Woolman by heart, and love the early Quakers"; 
why should one exhortation suggest the other ? What is the general character 
of Woolman's y(?//r;/^/.? Can you explain why a modern college president 
should place it among the great and ennobling books of the world ? 

12. What influence did Paine exert upon the American Revolution? De- 
scribe briefly Corn?no?i Sense and The Crisis. To what American traits did 
they appeal ? Hundreds of strong political pamphlets appeared before the 
Revolution ; how do you account for the extraordinary success of Common 
Sense ? 

13. Divide Freneau's poems into two main classes, and show that in each 
class Freneau was a reflection of his age. What is the present value of his 
satires ? of his romantic poems ? Who were his English models ? In what 
ways did he show originality and independence ? 

14. Who were the Hartford Wits? What noble motive bound them 
together? What are the chief works of each? How do you account for the 
fact that their minor poems (D wight's hymns and Barlow's " Hasty Pudding" 
for instance) are remembered, while their ambitious works are forgotten ? 
What is the general character of M'Fingal ? Account, on historical grounds, 
for its great popularity. 

1 5. Why is Brown called our first professional man of letters ? In what 
other respects is he notable ? Give three characteristics of his romances, and 
show how they reappear constantly in later American fiction. What general 
literary tendencies of this age are reflected in his works ? How do his ro- 
mances compare with contemporary English and German romances? In 
what way does he show an advance in novel writing ? 



i68 



AMERICAN LITERATURE 



Subjects for Pleasant Essays. Why the Indian became a romantic figure 
in Revolutionary poetry and fiction. The Revolutionary drama. Earliest 
American fiction (not including Brown's works). Common elements in Brown, 
Pee, Hawthorne and Cooper. Original source of Franklin's maxims. The 
almanac in American life and literature. The first American magazines. The 
Loyalist side of the Revolution. APFingal and Hudibras. Franklin and Vol- 
taire. Paine and Defoe. Freneau and the early English romanticists. Prose 
pamphlet and verse satire in the Revolution. European echoes of the Dec- 
laration of Independence. Two life-stories (Franklin's Autobiography and 
Woolman'sy^z/r;z«/). What is American humor.'' 




CHAPTER III 

THE FIRST NATIONAL, OR CREATIVE, PERIOD (1800-1840) 

O you youths, Western youths, 
So impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship, 
Plain I see you, Western youths, see you tramping with the foremost, 

Pioneers ! O pioneers ! 

Have the elder races halted ? 
Do they droop and end their lesson, wearied over there beyond the seas? 
We take up the task eternal, and the burden and the lesson, 

Pioneers ! O pioneers ! 

Whitman, " Pioneers" 

I. THE BACKGROUND OF HISTORY 

Reading for the first time the history of this period is like ventur- 
ing on the open plains in a snowstorm ; one may easily be confused 
by a multitude of rapidly shifting events and lose all sense of direction 
or perspective. Our attention is distracted by wars and rumors of 
wars, here by great prosperity, there by a great panic. We hear 
boasts of patriotism and national unity, followed hard by threats of 
secession. We see in rapid sequence the harmonious election of 
Monroe, the bitter strife which placed John Quincy Adams in the 
White House against the will of the majority of the people, and then 
"Old Hickory" Jackson "riding the whirlwind of democracy." In 
the midst of these crowding events, masses of men in motion sud- 
denly arrest out attention. There on the east they come, thousands 
of eager foreigners from every clime and nation, breaking on our 
shores like a tidal wave that threatens to overwhelm us ; and there 
opposite, as if pushed out by the newcomers, appears another mul- 
titude of men, toiling over mountains or whirling down the swollen 
rivers, all with rifles in hand, eyes alight and faces set resolutely to 
the western wilderness. And what does it all mean ? 

We shall never answer our question till we escape from the chaos 
of events and try simply to ascertain in what important respects the 

169 



I/O AMERICAN LITERATURE 

America of Jackson differs from the America of Washington. Then 
we may see that the period which began with the election of Jefferson 
(1800) and ended with the defeat of his party in 1840,^ instead of 
leading to mob rule and anarchy, as the Federalist party feared, was 
in reality a time of rapid national development, a lusty, expanding 
time, with only such pains as invariably accompany the growth of 
a young giant. It began with a fringe of states along the Atlantic 
coast ; it ended in a mighty empire, spreading over the rich Missis- 
sippi valleys and pushing its borders westward to the Pacific. It 
began with grave doubts at home and open sneers abroad ; it ended 
with invincible faith in democracy, and with our flag respected in 
every port of the seven seas. Bryant, who begins his career early in 
this period with the doubts and fears of '' The Embargo," ends with 
a triumphant "O mother of a mighty race," which voices the faith 
and enthusiasm of the young republic. 

' National Unity. Four great movements are discernible in the rush 
of minor events which fill this period. The first and most important 
is the development of our national unity. The war with the Barbary 
States, which first made our flag respected, and the naval victories of 
181 2 vastly increased our confidence and solidarity as a nation. 
Thereafter we were not a mere confederation of states, as in the 
Revolution, but a united people animated by a national spirit. One 
reason for our earlier lack of unity was that the states were divided 
by vast stretches of forest, through which travel was both difficult and 
dangerous. Now invention set to work to break down the barriers. 
First came the national road, stretching from the Chesapeake to the 
Ohio ; and as we think of the multitudes that passed over it we are 
reminded of Isaiah's magnificent prophecy of a highway in the wilder- 
ness, over which should come a free people, redeemed from all op- 
pression, " with songs, and everlasting joy upon their heads." Next 
appeared Fulton's steamboat (1807), the first of a thousand craft that 
soon went up and down the American rivers, binding the north to the 

1 There are no distinctly marked periods in our history or literature. We recognize, 
however, a difference between the literature of Irving's contemporaries and that which 
follows the lead of Lowell, and a startling contrast between the " era of good feeling " 
and the turmoil which led to the Civil War. We have chosen the date 1840, which marks 
the election of Harrison after a most tumultuous campaign, as the dividing point be- 
tween the two periods. At that time Bryant, Cooper, Irving and Poe were at the height 
of their influence, and the work of Longfellow, Whittier and Hawthorne was just begin- 
ning to be recognized. Some writers end the First National Period with the Civil War; 
others regard the entire nineteenth century as a single literary period. 



THE FIRST NATIONAL PERIOD 



i;i 



south and the east to the west. Then followed the Baltimore and 
Ohio Railway (1828), and within a few years three thousand miles of 
road were spread like a web of steel over the country. 

The effect of this new national unity is shown clearly in Monroe's 
famous "era of good feeling," when the world saw the astonishing 
spectacle of a nation of ten millions of freemen electing their presi- 
dent by a practically unanimous vote. Fifteen years later, in 1835, 
the world was treated to another spectacle, a nation without a debt ; 
for the country had prospered greatly, had paid all its obligations, 




EMIGRATION TO WESTERN COUNTRY 



and, to avoid the danger of an immense surplus, had distributed a 
part of its revenue among the states for internal improvements. 

Expansion. A second notable movement is the rapid growth of 
America in territory and population. The Louisiana Purchase and 
the acquisition of Florida doubled our territory, and the population 
increased from five to seventeen millions in the space of forty years. 
The vast Louisiana territor)^ was cleared of hostile savages and settled 
with almost bewildering rapidity. It was a second era of colonization, 
and it differed in two important respects from the first. The earlier 
colonists were all foreigners, men who knew nothing of America, 
who had to win their slow way by experiment and failure. The later 



172 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

colonists were mostly Americans, men born and bred in the spirit of 
the New World, who carried their ideals of democracy, as they carried 
their long rifles, wherever they went. The first colonists stood in awe 
of the vast, mysterious forests that stood between them and the un- 
known West; they dreaded its hunger, its solitude, its wild beasts 
and savages. The second colonists loved it ; they rejoiced in its free- 
dom, its teeming game, its wide, untrodden spaces ; they saw in im- 
agination a home by every spring where they quenched their thirst, a 
field of wheat or com in every fertile glade, a town and a busy mill 
wherever a waterfall thundered its invitation. So they passed west- 
ward, ever westward, with the keen eye and confident step of men 
who were lords of the wilderness. The splendid states which they 
gave to the nation ^ are the best witnesses of the character and ideals 
of this new generation of colonizers. 

Democracy. A third unmistakable movement is the growth of the 
democratic spirit over the whole country. In the days of Washington 
there had been a decidedly aristocratic tendency among our political 
leaders, — and we may not now question their patriotism or sincerity. 
All governments had always been in the hands of the privileged classes, 
and there was a widespread feeling, even in America, that a govern- 
ment of common people was a mere dream or, at best, a very doubtful 
experiment. Long before the end of this period such doubts and 
fears had been swept aside as by a tempest. The labors and triumph 
of Jefferson ; the common-school education of the masses ; the French 
Revolution, which shook the whole aristocratic world as by an earth- 
quake ; the electric influence of the English Reform Bill and of the 
liberation of all slaves in the English colonies ; the steadily growing 
conviction that the brave American experiment of popular government 
was destined to success, — all these undoubtedly contributed to the 
spread of democracy. First on the list of causes, however, we are 
inclined to place the mighty westward movement and the building of 
new states by common men on the common principles of humanity. 
The wilderness, the farm, the forest, the prairie, — all these were 
levelers of false or artificial distinctions. Here every man had his 
chance and his vote ; every executive was first of all a natural leader, 
chosen for his proved ability and for his sympathy with m.en who do 

1 Three states, Vermont, Kentucky and Tennessee, had joined the original thirteen 
before iSoo. During the next forty years Ohio, Louisiana, Indiana^, Mississippi, Illinois, 
Alabama, Maine, Missouri, Arkansas and Michigan were added, in the order named, to 
the nation. 



THE FIRST NATIONAL PERIOD 173 

the daily work of the world. And when from the very heart of this 
newer America came iVndrew Jackson, a rough, primitive, original 
kind of man, with the petty faults and the big virtues of his kind, 
there was no longer any doubt that this whole country was irretriev- 
ably committed to the plain principles of "democracy.^ 

Industrial Development. The fourth historic movement is the social 
and industrial development of the new land. At the beginning of the 
nineteenth century we were a nation of farmers and small traders, 
having no settled currency, bartering most of our products as in the 
days of the patriarchs. In the few large centers, by courtesy called 
cities, there was a pleasant, neighborly kind of social life ; but just 
outside the town limits stretched an immense country of field and 
forest, A boy could leave the center of Richmond or New York and 
in a few hours' walk find good hunting or fishing, and perchance see 
a bear or hear a wolf howl as he turned homeward in the twilight. 
Within half a lifetime the whole Eastern country had changed its face 
and its ways. Towns sprang up as if by magic ; cities overflowed 
their borders ; hundreds of mills and factories were busy as beehives ; 
money circulated freely, and fleets of our own ships were carrying 
our merchandise on every sea.^ 

We need not go into the subject of manufactures, or attempt to 
express the boundless enthusiasm of the new nation when our natural 
wealth of coal and iron was at last exposed, and our soil began to 
yield its increase of cotton and grain for the nations. We note only 
that with the increase of wealth came the growth of cities and the 
mental stimulus of social intercourse ; that the common-school system 
of the Pilgrims became a national policy ; and that the forty years 
which saw the growth of eight hundred mills saw also the establish- 
ment of unnumbered high schools, and of more than fifty colleges, 
seminaries and higher institutions of learning. 

With the growth of nationality and democracy, the increase of 
wealth and education, and the unexampled development of our indus- 
trial life, we would gladly end our summary of this period ; but another 
factor enters, like the ghost of Banquo, to disturb the feast. The panic 

1 Before Jackson our presidents were all men of superior birth and education ; since 
his day about half of them have sprung from the common people. 

2 We suggest here two interesting topics for the historical student : first, the policy 
of England toward American industries before the Revolution ; second, the effect on 
America of two inventions, — the jenny of Samuel Slater (1790) and the gin of Eli 
Whitney (1793). 



174 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

of 1837, brought on by speculation and by the poor financial policy 
of Jackson's administration, checked for a time our industrial prog- 
The Seeds ress. At the same time the tariff, the slave problem and 
of Division ^\^q unsettled question of state rights began to separate 
a united country into two hostile sections. In the midst of great 
peace came a sudden tremor, faint yet unmistakable as the rumble of 
distant cannon ; and again the storm cloud, this time larger than a 
man's hand and black as the pit, appeared on our national horizon. 

II. LITERATURE OF THE PERIOD 

The half centur)^ which witnessed the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, the French Revolution and the English Reform Bill 
is one of universal interest. It is generally called the age of 
revolution, and is remarkable for two things : for the establish- 
ment of democracy in government, and for the triumph of 
romanticism in literature. Just as our political independence 
was the beginning of a world-wide struggle for human. liberty, 
so our first national literature was part and parcel of the great 
romantic movement which swept over England and the Conti- 
nent. Its general romantic spirit is in marked contrast to the 
historical and theological bent of Colonial writers, who believed 
they were writing a new page in the world's history ; and to the 
political genius of Revolutionary authors, whose chief concern 
was to establish a new nation on democratic foundations. 

General Tendencies. It was Sydney Smith, a famous English 
wit, who voiced a general opinion of our early literature in the 
scornful question, '' Who reads an American book .? " We may 
understand his attitude, which was that of our own critics, if we 
remember that in this, as in every other period, there were two 
literary movements, a major and a minor ; and that it was the 
work of minor writers which first received notice in English 
newspapers and magazines. Here, for instance, is our poetry as 
exemplified in the popular "Annuals" of that day, T/ie Talisman, 
The Tokeji, Fricjidship' s Ojfcring, and many other favorites, — 
dear old collections, full of new-made graves, urns, weeping 



THE FIRST NATIONAL PERIOD 175 

willows, tears and sentimentality.^ Here are the fifty-odd vol- 
umes of Lydia Sigourney and a few romances of Catherine 
Sedgwick, such as Hope Leslie and Redwood, — sentimental 
stories which were republished in England and translated into 
various European languages. The common people on both sides 
of the Atlantic read these stories gladly, but the critics saw in 
them only weak copies of English originals. In this country 
Noah Webster anticipated foreign criticism when he declared 
(1792) that " a hundred volumes of modern novels may be read 
without acquiring a new idea." 

When the work of our major writers appeared, a multitude 
of delighted English readers stood up to answer the irritating 
question. Critics more thoughtful than Smith, know- 
ing that national enthusiasm finds voice in a national 
literature, had expected something pristine and vigorous from 
the new nation,^ and when Cooper's books began to be published 
abroad these critics found what they had expected. Here were 
good stories, a little crude perhaps, but fresh and genuine, — 
stories with the breath of sea and forest in them, and with a 
rush of adventure that reminded Englishmen of Rob Roy and 
the Heart of Midlothian. So, having enjoyed the tales and be- 
ing in a condescending humor, they christened Cooper "the 
American Scott." A little earlier had appeared Irving, with a 
grace and charm that recalled the best productions of their be- 
loved Spectator, and him they called " the American Addison." 
Then followed Br)'ant, with his natural refinement and his deep 
understanding of nature, and he became known to a few as 
"the American Wordsworth." Only Poe escaped, for the simple 
reason that England had no writer with whom to compare him. 

1 In England, as in America, the poetry of the age reveals an abnormal interest in 
funereal subjects. Note the influence of this interest on Brj'ant and Poe, p. 201, and on 
Irving, p. 192. 

2 The state of England's expectancy may be judged from the wonder produced by 
Irving's Sketch Book (1819). ■' It has been a matter of marv^el to my European readers," 
he writes, " that a man from the wilds of America should express himself in tolerable 
English. I was looked upon as something new and strange in literature, a kind of demi- 
savage with a feather in his hand instead of on his head." 



1/6 



AMERICAN LITERATURE 



Though the names thus given to our writers are pleasantly 
suggestive, the fact remains that the first quality of our national 
literature is its originality. Irving's first work, the Knickei'bocker 
Histojy, is a unique book ; there are no other tales like The Spy^ 
The Red Rover and The Last of the Mohicans ; and if there 
be any other poem than '' A Forest Hymn " which reflects the 
instinctive reverence of primitive man in the presence of nature, 
we have never found it. 




-tv '■ 






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til. J,-- ■ i L' 



EARLY VIEW OF CHICAGO 

A second characteristic of our literature in this period is its 
harmony with our natural environment. Nature had been sadly 
Harmony neglected in the greater part of the literature of the 
with Nature eighteenth century ; when it was mentioned, for 
effect, every bird was apt to be a nightingale, every flower a 
primrose, and stock expressions such as '' vernal winds " and 
"sylvan beauties" had been worn threadbare by repetition. Our 
first national writers changed all that, and the change was as 
welcome as rain to the parched grass. Bryant was by far our 
best observer, and his poetry reflects the spirit of nature and of 
the man who stands silent and reverent before her revelation. 
Cooper, though inaccurate in details, reflects something of the 
charm and mystery of the great wilderness, and he is the first 
in modern literature to use the ocean as the scene of romance 
and adventure. Irving has less love of nature than either Bryant 



THE FIRST NATIONAL PERIOD 



177 



or Cooper ; but in much of his work he remembers the influ- 
ence of the hills and the Hudson, and is at his best in " Sleepy 
Hollow" and *' Rip Van Winkle," where he puts himself in 
harmony with the American landscape. 

A third noticeable quality of our first national literature is its 
intense patriotism. This appears in many forms : in the national 

songs of Pinkney, 
Patriotism ^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^ 

and Percival ; in the re- 
strained passion of patriot- 
ism, cold as a star but clear 
and steadfast, which shines in 
Bryant's verse ; in numerous 
popular lyrics, like "Adams 
and Liberty," ''Warren's 
Address," ''The American 
Flag," "The Star-Spangled 
Banner" and " Home, Sweet 
Home"; in dramas like " Eu- 
taw Springs," "Marion," 
"Siege of Boston," "Wash- 
ington at Valley Forge," and 
many others of the same 
kind. In these early melo- 
dramas, which quickened 
American patriotism by re- 
calling the heroic age of the 
Revolution, we have a par- 
allel to the popular chron- 
icle plays which voiced the 

pride and the national enthusiasm of the early Elizabethans. 
Even more significant are the legendary and historical tales 
which appeared in this period. Crude as they are, we are inter- 
ested in them as a reflection of the first national consciousness. 
As a result of the long struggle of the pioneers, of the faith and 




STREET SCENE IN MODERN CHICAGO 



1/8 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

the work of colonizers and state builders, America had become 
a nation ; she felt reverence for the past, confidence in the 
future, the thrill of national unity, — all of which are essential 
to national literature. She had, moreover, a history of two hun- 
dred years, a history of brave men and epic achievement ; and 
our writers, like those of the older nations, could now look back- 
ward to a golden age of heroism. Irving created an old world 
of legend, the first to appear in American letters. Cooper glori- 
fied the old frontiersman and the soldier and sailor of past con- 
flicts. Other writers heard the sitrsiini corda, and a host of 
historical romances reflected the joy of the young nation in its 
old heroes. Kennedy's Horse-Shoe Robinson, Simms's trilogy of 
Revolutionary novels beginning with The Partisan, Paulding's 
The Diitchmaii s Fireside, Lydia Child's Hobomok and The 
Rebels, Bird's Nick of the Woods, — these are but a suggestion 
to the reader who would learn for himself what kind of tales 
delighted American readers of a century ago, when the nation 
was young, when art seemed of less, and enthusiasm of more, 
consequence than they do now. 

We must note also the emphasis laid on moral and religious 
sentiments by practically all the writers of this period, and the 
first appearance of literary criticism, — a very significant detail, 
since criticism cannot begin until critics are assured of a con- 
siderable body of native literature to work upon.^ There are 
doubtless other general characteristics,^ but we emphasize only 
these three : the originality of the new writers, their rare har- 
mony with nature, and their ardent patriotism born of reverence 
and faith, — that reverence for the past and faith in the future 
which ennobles a man's love of his home and country. 

1 American criticism was greatly encouraged by the new literary magazines. The 
North American Review (1815), the New England Magazine (1831), the Knickerbocker 
Magazine (1832) and the Southern Literary Messenger (1834) are a few of the best. 
The critical work of Poe and of the so-called " Knickerbocker School " will be considered 
later. 

2 The general romantic tendency of our first national literature should not be over- 
looked. For this tendency our writers were, indirectly, more influenced by Germany than 
by England. 



THE FIRST NATIONAL PERIOD 



179 



Washington Irving (178 3- 18 59) 

Most readers welcome Irving for his cheerfulness, as they 
welcome the sunshine, without thinking of his quickening influ- 
ence on American life and letters. It is significant that his first 
aim was always to please rather than instruct his readers. Un- 
like the Colonial and Revolutionary authors, who wrote for some 
practical purpose, ^rving regarded literature as a desirable end 
_in itself. He reflected 
life chiefly for the joy of 
it, as a painter reflects a 
face or a landscape, and 
the pleasure which his 
book gave was its suffi- 
cient excuse for being. 
In a word, he regarded 
literature as an art, and 
his success laid a broad 
foundation for all sub- 
sequent ^tistic writing 
in America.^ 

That Irving devel- 
oped the modern short 
story 2 is in itself a not- 
able achievement, but 
this is only one of his 
honors. He was the first 

to reveal America as a land of legend and romance. In his Brace- 
bridge Hall he showed England that the literary possibilities of 
country life had only been touched, not exhausted, by Addison's 
Sir Roger de Coverley. He went to Spain, and there found a 
mine of literary treasures which the Spaniards themselves had 

1 For the earlier work of Godfrey in the same direction, see p. 56, 

2 Some of our present critics make a distinction between the Short-story and the 
story that is merely short. They regard Poe as the inventor of the American Short-story 
(see note on p. 235). 




WASHINGTON IRVING 



l8o AMERICAN LITERATURE 

well-nigh forgotten. He crossed the Mississippi with hardy ex- 
plorers, and again revealed a world of romance where others 
had seen only a wilderness. So, wherever he went, Irving was a 
discoverer, having the seeing eye and the understanding heart. 
Every old castle opened a secret door to his sesajne ; every wild 
prairie offered him the blue flower of sentiment ; every hill and 
mountain told him its unspoken legend. 

And what a surprise, what a delight he was to the readers 
of a century ago ! At that time we had no writer whose genius 
was generally acknowledged. We were self-conscious, eager for 
praise, but England looked askance at our literature, thinking that 
only the strange and uncouth could proceed from this supposed 
wild land of democracy and buffaloes. Then appeared Irving's 
stories, not wild or strange at all, but natural as the landscape, 
familiar as the tales that men had loved in childhood. Their 
matter was fresh and original ; their graceful style was un- 
equaled by any living writer of English. At a time when Scott 
and Byron were literary heroes, this American was immediately 
given an honored place beside them ; and the favors showered 
upon him by English critics produced deep gratification here, as 
if Irving were one of our national institutions. He bridged the 
gap created by the Revolution, united the two great nations in 
spirit, and showed that our American books are forever a part of 
the great body of English letters. Thackeray calls Irving '' the 
first ambassador whom the New World of letters sent to the 
Old," and our own critics are almost unanimous in considering 
him the father of American literature. 

Life. Those who are fond of finding the explanation of books in 
the author's environment will be disappointed in Irving. Though the 
New York in which he was born (1783) was a straggling town of 
quaint houses, orchards and cabbage gardens, he began to write his 
Salmagufidi essays as if he were recording gossip from the clubs and 
coffeehouses of a great city. The country at large was growing and 
exulting ; there were wars, bitter political strifes, discoveries that set 
the world agog ; but Irving's pen reflected nothing of the excitement. 



THE FIRST NATIONAL PERIOD l8l 

He was in England after the Battle of Waterloo, and again during the 
uproar attending the Reform Bill ; he arrived in Spain at a time of 
revolution ; but we look in vain for any suggestion of these stirring 
events in his pages. For Irving dwells in the romantic past, not in 
the present or future. 

His father was a Scotchman of the Covenanter type, his mother 
an Englishwoman, gentle and indulgent to her children. They had 
settled in America long enough before the Revolution to catch the 
spirit of the new land, and had been stanch patriots during the occu- 
pation of New York by the British soldiers. To these parents, who 
still cherished a love for their old home, our author owed that rare 
sympathy which made him understand and revere England, while he 
remained splendidly loyal to his own countr}^ 

Unlike his brothers, who were college trained, Irving had but a 
scant education. This was due partly to delicate health, and partly to 
his dislike of routine work of any kind. He was naturally 
an idler, like his old Mateo of the Alhambi-a, and took 
many holidays that were not on the calendar. He explored the Hud- 
son, shot squirrels in the woods of Harlem, or loafed in the sunshine 
on the Battery watching the ships go out to sea, taking the long thread 
of his dreams with them. At sixteen he was through with school and 
began with a wry face to study law. Also he began to write, and in 
1802 first published, in his brother's newspaper, some light essays in 
imitation of Addison. Then he was seriously threatened with con- 
sumption, and his brothers sent him abroad in the hope that the long 
sea voyage might save his life. 

One must read Irving's letters to appreciate his joy and wonder in 
the Old World. Fate was unusually kind to this lover of the romantic ; 
pjj.g^ for besides giving him a happy time, she arranged that he 

Journey should see Nelson's fleet sweeping the sea to Trafalgar, 

Abroad ^^^ j^^ should be arrested as an English spy at Nice, and 

that his ship should be boarded by pirates in the Mediterranean. 
After eighteen months of travel he returned home in excellent health, 
dabbled in Blackstone again, and was presently admitted to the bar. 
To this period, when his head was busy with law and his heart was 
on a literary vacation, belong his Salmagundi papers, which first gave 
him a local reputation, and which probably led to his appointment as 
one of the attorneys at the famous trial of Aaron Burr, — an event 
which at that time (i 804-1 807) occupied the attention of the entire 
country. 



1 82 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

The date 1809 is noteworthy, for in that year Irving published his 
Knickerbocker History} This book met with instant success at home, 
and its fame spread to England, where Scott was one of its delighted 
readers ; but the surprised young author was still afraid to follow his 
spirit and commit himself wholly to literature, as Brown had done. 
Instead, he went into partnership with his brothers, who were im- 
porters of hardware. The War of 18 12 broke out, but not until the 
burning of Washington was Irving roused. Then he offered his serv^- 
ices to the Governor of New York, and for a time did the inglorious 
work of a military secretary. Under the genial, ease-loving exterior 
there was a heroic strain in Irving, and he was sorely disappointed 
when he was not allowed to accompany his friend, the gallant D ecat ur, 
in the naval expedition against the Algerian pirates. Failing in this 
ambition, he went on a business trip to England, intending to be gone a 
few months. Seventeen years passed before he saw his native land again. 

In England our young author was speedily enmeshed in the affairs 
of the Irving Brothers, whose trade had been almost ruined by the 
Irving in war. The firm failed in 18 18, which is another memora- 
England ^jg (j^te in Irving's life. Up to that time he had perhaps 
taken life too easily, depending on his generous brothers. The common 
calamity roused him, and he turned seriously to literature with the de- 
termination to earn a living by his own effort. Through the influence 
of Walter Scott, "that golden-hearted man," he was offered pleasant 
employment as an editor ; but distrusting his fitness for routine work 
he declined the offer, finished a few essays and sent them to America. 
This was the beginning of the Sketch Book (1820), which definitely 
settled Irving's career as a writer. At this time Brown was dead, Poe 
was at school in Richmond, Bryant was struggling with the law, and 
Cooper had not yet planned The Spy. Irvang was therefore our only 
professional man of letters, and he depended at first as much upon 
English as upon American readers. Bracehridge Hall (182 1) and 
Tales of a Traveller (1824) are two more important results of this 
English period of his life. Then, welcoming the suggestion of Alex- 
ander Everett, our minister to Spain, that he should translate Navar- 
rete's Voyages of Colu?nbus, he hastened to Madrid, where he proved 
himself as much of an explorer in the Old World as was ever De Soto 
in the New. 

1 Those who remember only the hilarity of this work will leam with a shock that it 
was written during the only great sorrow of Ir\'ing's life, a sorrow occasioned by the 
death of Matilda Hoffman, a lovely girl to whom he was engaged. 



THE FIRST NATIONAL PERIOD 183 

The next three years (182 6- 182 9) were the most fruitful of Irv- 
ing's life. He had intended to make a translation, but the mass of 
Spanish unused material in the Spanish archives presently led him 

Discoveries ^o attempt his own story of Columbus. Soon the romantic 
history, the legends and traditions of this old land of cross and cres- 
cent, began to fascinate Irving, as the first book of fairy stories 
fascinates a child. The very names had magic in them. Granada, 
Guadalajara, Andalusia, — who can read them, even now, without 
the desire to mount and away to the land of enchantment } Irving 
spent his mornings in the Jesuit College at St. Isidoro, an exquisite 
old place, refined by years of study and meditation, where every shelf 
of parchment-bound books opened to him a wonderland. It was the 
first scholarly discipline he had ever known, and he responded as a 
plant that is taken out of its earthen pot and set in its native soil 
and air. The Zi/e and Voyages of Columbus (1828), Conquest of Granada 
(1829), Spanish Voyages of Discovery (183 1) and Alhambra (1832) 
were the immediate results of his first visit ; and to his study of Span- 
ish records we owe also the later Mooiish Chronicles^ Legends of the 
Conquest of Spain and Mahomet and his Successors. 

This busy, happy Spanish period was ended by his appointment 
as Secretary of the American Legation in London. He held this posi- 
tion for two years, receiving such attention as England gave to her 
own great writers ; then the call of his country became irresistible, 
and he turned homeward in 1832. His reception here was all that an 
author could desire. He had quietly answered the galling question, 
" Who reads an American book ? " and the whole nation delighted 
to do him honor. 

One who reads Irving's letters of this period finds two significant 
reflections of the author : his modesty, which was proof against the 
^j^j^ perils of success ; and his amazement at the changes which 

Western had taken place here, and w^hich made him feel like Rip 
Explorers y^j^ Winkle after a long sleep. He had left New York 
a country town, over which drowsy Dutch traditions still hovered ; he 
found it a city of two hundred thousand people, stored with wealth, 
buzzing with tremendous energy ; and this local transformation was 
typical of the entire country. He felt the excitement of the mighty 
Western movement, and went to see for himself the wonders of the 
great plains. The Tour of the Prairies (1835), Astoria (1836) and 
Adventures of Captain Bonfieville (1837) are the literary results of 
his journey. In reading them we are again conscious of the manly 



1 84 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

soul that is hidden in this dreamer and story-teller. He is enthusiastic 
over a good horse ; he enters headlong into the excitement of buffalo 
running, forgetting the danger till he is almost thrown under the feet 
of a charging bull ; he loves the vast open spaces, the march with ad- 
venturous men, the bivouac under the stars. Moreover, he is the 
original discoverer of that stirring romance of the West, which has 
inspired so many writers ever since. 

Tired of his wandering, Irving now bought a little Dutch cottage 
at Tarrytown overlooking the Hudson, remodeled it till it was all 
nooks and gables, and called it Sunnyside. He lived there with his 
relatives in great happiness for the remainder of his life, with the ex- 
ception of four years which he spent abroad as our ambassador to 
Spain. He had declined many political offices which were offered him 
by a grateful nation, knowing his unfitness for the work involved ; 
but he accepted this mission, which was urged upon him by Webster 
and President Tyler, modestly thinking that the honor Vv^as offered to 
the profession of letters. He proved, on the whole, a worthy member 
of that splendid group — Franklin, Randolph, Laurens, Jefferson, 
Motley, Everett, Bancroft, Lowell, and other literary men — who have 
at various times represented America at the courts of Europe. 

To the last period of Irving's life, after his return from Spain, be- 
long his Sunnyside sketches known as Wolfert's J^oosf (iS^K,), and the 
His Last three important biographies: Zi/e of Goldsmith (1849), 
Years Mahomet a?id his Successors (1850) and the monumental 

Life of lVashi?igtofi, the last volume of which was published only a 
little while before Irving's death, in 1859. Loved as he was in his 
own home and honored by the nation, his closing years were like an 
October day, mellow, serene and fruitful. In one of his Easy Chair 
papers Curtis describes Irving as men met him tripping along Broad- 
way, affable, happy, courteous, with a suggestion of the " old school " 
in his dress and manners, as if he had " just stepped out of his own 
books." As he had once accepted the mission to Spain, not as a per- 
sonal gift but as a mark of respect to literature, so now he received 
the honors that were showered upon him, as a generous tribute of 
youth to age. He was delighted with the thought that old gentlemen 
were still respected " and were even becoming fashionable." 

Earlier Works of Irving. There are various classifications of 
our author's works, but one who depends upon them is speedily 
brought to confusion. Irving's spirit is constant ; the romantic 



THE FIRST NATIONAL PERIOD 



185 



always appeals to him ; and while one may safely call the Knick- 
erbocker History a work of humor, and the Life of Columbus a 
biography, other productions like the Sketch Book defy classifi- 
cation. Simply for convenience, therefore, we divide his twenty- 
odd volumes into three parts, corresponding to the early, middle 
and later periods of his life. 

The chief works of the early period are the boyish Jona- 
than Oldstyle essays, Sahnagimdi and. the hilarious Knicker- 
bocker History. The general character of the Salmagimdi 



JSiifcKi -.^J*-^ ..^iid^M 




_ Am^Mti^t*^ 






■•*>»«»*-«* tanr- 



NEW AMSTERDAM, 16&i 

papers ^ may be inferred from the name (which is that of an 
appetizing hash, compounded of meat, smoked fish, eggs, 
onions and spices) and from the startling announcement of the 
young authors : 

" Our purpose is simply to instruct the young, reform the old, correct 
the town and castigate the age. This is an arduous task, and therefore we 
undertake it with confidence." 

Of these airy papers, which were begun and ended as a jest, 
we may simply say, '' They had their day and ceased to be." 

1 The correct title was Salmagtmdi, or the WJihn-whams and Opinions of Lanncelot 
Langstaff, Esq., and others. The "others " were Irving's brother William, and James K. 
Paulding. Irving follows the fashion of his age in using assumed names. He appears 
first as Jonathan Oldstyle, then as Launcelot Langstaff, Diedrich Knickerbocker and 
Geoffrey Crayon. 



1 86 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

A few readers, however, are still interested in them ; and such 
readers cite the '' Chronicle of the Renowned and Ancient City 
of Gotham," as an instance of Irving's power to create a lasting 
tradition. 1 

The most notable work of this period was A History of New 
York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the 
. Dutch Dynasty, by Diedrich Knickerbocker (1809), 
bocker which some critics regard as the first literary work of 

istory national importance produced in America. If the 

critics are right, then our national literature began with a joke. 
The alleged historian was a queer Dutch antiquarian, who sud- 
denly disappeared, leaving an unpaid board bill and a package of 
manuscript. After advertising for him in the newspapers, Irv- 
ing professed to publish the manuscript in order to pay the 
board bill. 

Opening the Knickerbocker History, we find that the first 
book is merely a burlesque of a popular history of New York, 
which began, in the historic fashion of those days, with the 
creation of the world. The second book consists largely of mak- 
ing fun of the New Jersey settlers. We advise the reader to 
skip these two books, the humor of which now seems tedious, 
and to read (in an abridged edition) the last three books, which 
chronicle the doughty deeds of three Dutch governors : Wouter 
Van Twiller, William the Testy, and Peter the Headstrong. 
The whole work is a huge farce, and Irving increased the 
ridiculous effect by dedicating it to the Historical Society, 
gravely announcing that its one merit was its scrupulous accu- 
racy. Its boisterous fun is directed against the Dutch colonists, 
with here and there a somewhat malicious fling at the Yankees, 
showing that Irving was influenced by an English fashion and 

1 Occasionally residents of New York still call themselves " Gothamites," but few 
who use the name realize its significance. The modem slang equivalent is " hayseeds." 
The old English town of Gotham was the butt of city jokers in the Middle Ages. Its 
rustic people are ridiculed in an old Miracle play and in the nursery rime beginning, 
" Three wise men of Gotham went to sea in a bowl." So also the name " Knickerbocker," 
which is now proudly applied to hotels, banks, and even " first famihes," refers to a crazy 
old bachelor invented by Irving. 




w 



THE FIRST NATIONAL PERIOD 187 

by a local prejudice.^ The latter leads him into an occasional dis- 
play of bad taste, which is in marked contrast to the refinement 
of his life and of all hig later writings. 

Aside from these blemishes, the book is characterized by 
rollicking good nature, though the fun is often carried to a 
point where, like children's fooling, it becomes tiresome. The 
humor consists largely in relating fact and absurdity, the obvious 
and the impossible, in the same strain of sober gravity. Irving 
holds close enough to historical dates and personages to give 
an impression of reality ; then he leads his characters into the 
most ridiculous and outrageous adventures. It is the grain of 
truth in the bushel of nonsense that gives point to his humor, 
and that makes his Dutch heroes at once farniliar and grotesque, 
like faces seen in a doorknob. 

Middle Period. The works of Irving's middle period may be 
grouped in three divisions, showing the influences of England, 
Spain and America respectively. In the first are the Sketch 
Book (1820), Bracebhdge Hall (1822), Tales of a Traveller 
(1824) and a part of the Crayon Miscellanies (1825). These 
are all of the same sketchy character, revealing the author's 
impressions as traveler, critic, essayist, and story-teller. They 
are all characterized by a mingling of humor and pathos, senti- 
ment and sentimentality. 

The Sketch Book is probably the best known and loved of 
all Irving's works. One might analyze the romantic sentiment 
The Sketch ^nd the Addisonian style of these delicate sketches 
Book Qf English and American life, but the book is one to 

read and enjoy, not to criticize as we criticize the Knickerbocker 
History. Every reader must find his own favorite sketches, and 
we merely indicate our own in naming the following : '' Rip Van 
Winkle " and '' Sleepy Hollow," which have made the Hudson 
more renowned for its legends than for its commerce ; the 

1 It was an English fashion at that time to ridicule the Dutch, — possibly to make 
men forget that the gallant little Dutch squadron had once swept the EngHsh from the 
sea. Irving's prejudice against New England was shared by Cooper and by many other 
New York writers of the period (see p. 216). 



1 88 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Christmas stories, which inspired Dickens and which mark the 
beginning of our modern joyous celebration of the festival ; 
'* Stratford " and "Westminster Abbey," which may be likened to 
a pair of romantic spectacles that every American puts on when he 
visits these literary shrines ; and for variety, the '' Spectre Bride- 
groom " and '' The Angler." One should not attempt this last, 
however, unless he likes fishing and understands Isaac Walton. 



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HENRY HUDSON ENTERING NEW YORK BAY 

Bracebridge Hall, one of the most charming of Irving's 
works, is a series of sketches and stories of English country 
life suggesting Addison's Sir Roger de Coverley. Our own fav- 
orites in Bracebridge Hall are the Introduction, the May-Day 
and Christmas sketches, the stories of '' Dolph Heyliger," ''The 
Stout Gentleman" and ''Annette Delabre." The Tales of a 
Traveller, which Irving thought the best of his works, is on the 
whole inferior to the two we have just mentioned ; but after 
reading " Wolfert Webber " (which may have influenced Poe to 
write "The Gold Bug") and "The Bold Dragoon," which de- 
lighted Scott by its grotesque imagination, we understand Irving's 
place as the first, and still one of the best, of our short-story 
writers. 



THE FIRST NATIONAL PERIOD 1 89 

The remarkable series of books on Spanish themes belong 
also to the middle period. Irving began with the Life of Coliim- 
Spanish bics (1828), a readable book, having the rare combina- 
Themes ^jqj^ Qf historical accuracy and warm human interest. 

It remains, after a hundred years, probably our best biography of 
the great explorer. Columbus naturally suggested his patrons, 
Ferdinand and Isabella, and all the chivalry and romance of 
Spanish history. Here Irving lost himself in a wonderland, and 
even his serious works, such as the Conquest of Granada (1829), 
have an atmosphere of romance rather than of history. ^ The 
best of his Spanish books is The Alhambra (1832), a collection 
of descriptive essays, legends and stories, all clustering about the 
last stronghold of the Moors. When Prescott called this '' the 
beautiful Spanish Sketch Book," he said enough in its favor. 
Indeed, one who reads the Sketch Book and The Alhambra 
meets Irving at the highest point he ever reached as a writer. 

The series of books on American pioneer themes completed 
the work of this fruitful middle period. The Tour of the Prairies 
The Romance (i835) describes Irving's wanderings with a party of 
of the West explorers through the unknown region between the 
Arkansas and the Red rivers. Hitherto he had been absorbed 
in the past, but when he crossed the Mississippi he was instantly 
inspired by the romance of the present. Though apparently a 
lazy observer, he is at times keener or more accurate than 
Cooper, and there is a zest, a hearty joy of wild life, in his pages 
which probably influenced Parkman in his Oregon Trail. Alto- 
gether, this Tour, though generally neglected, will appeal to a 
few readers as one of the most significant of Irving's works. It 
reveals an entirely new side of the author's character and his 
rare power of finding a romantic interest in the silent places, as 
once before, in ''The Voyage," he had found it even on the 
lonely sea. 

1 In all his Spanish themes, Irving is perhaps too much of the romanticist. He looks 
only at the good side of his heroes, and fails to note the barbarities of the Spanish 
conquerors. 



IQO AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Astoria, a jumbled, chaotic account of the fur house at the 
mouth of the Columbia, is plainly hack work and of no conse- 
quence. Much better is the Advejitiires of Captain Bonneville, 
compiled largely from the journal of that daring explorer. Here 
is a helter-skelter story of pack trains, exploration and fighting, 
with side excursions among the ''free trappers" of the Rocky 
Mountains. It has small literary value but plenty of adventure, 
and we have known at least one reader to be wide-awake over its 
camp fires at midnight who might have grown sleepy in Brace- 
bridge Hall. 

Late Period. To the last period of Irving's life belong the 
volume of sketches known as Wolf erf s Roost and the three 
The Life of biographies of Mahomet, Goldsmith and Washington. 
Washington Xhe Life of Goldsmith is a tender, uncritical appre- 
ciation of one of the most lovable geniuses in English literature. 
The Life of Washington was in its day ^ a notable work, in 
that it combined a lover's enthusiasm with a historian's desire 
for fact and truth ; but the theme was too great for Irving's 
failing powers. He was at his best in the sketch ; and the career 
of Washington offered a vast panorama of history, filled with 
complex movements and contending forces, through which one 
great figure moved steadily to its appointed end. Perhaps, from 
this .viewpoint, the life of Washington has not yet been written ; 
the puzzled reader must sometime choose between earlier biog- 
raphers, who emphasize Washington's superhuman virtues, and 
later writers, who seem somewhat too diligent to discover his 
faults. We suggest, therefore, that though Irving was not a 
critical scholar, his abridged Life of Washi?igton, as edited and 
supplemented in a sympathetic way by John Fiske, is still a 
very good book to read. 

1 Irving was often misled by Weems's popular but fictitious biography of Washington, 
and a large mass of material discovered by modem historians was unknown to him. 
Irving had been named after Washington, and in his childhood was presented to the 
great soldier. " I was but five years old," he said long afterwards, " but I feel that touch 
on my head even now." It was probably this cherished memory of childhood which led 
Irving in his old age to write the life of his hero. 



THE FIRST NATIONAL PERIOD 191 

General Characteristics. Irving signed his first essays 
** Jonathan Oldstyle," and the name is pleasantly suggestive 
living's of his literary masters, Addison and Goldsmith, who 
style were going out of fashion when he began to write. 

The most pervasive quality of his style is its charm, an indefinite 
word, which means simply that his manner is attractive, that 
it is a pleasure to read or to listen to him. If we analyze his 
work more minutely, we find that the first definite quality of his 
style is its naturalness. He writes without effort, and finds 
without seeking the most felicitous word and the most expres- 
sive metaphor. The naturalness is increased, moreover, by the 
harmony between tone and theme, and by Irving's rare ability to 
give '' local color " to his narrative. Though he writes of many 
things, of Old- World castles and New- World prairies, of men 
and women, ghosts and goblins, we feel in each of his stories 
the very atmosphere of his scene and the harmony between his 
manner and his subject. 

Next in importance is the clearness, the transparency of Irv- 
ing's style, which is so marked that the poet Campbell declared 
he had " added clarity to the English tongue." By '' transpar- 
ent " we mean that his thought is so well expressed that we 
are never in doubt of his meaning, and that he always keeps 
modestly out of our way, calling attention not to himself but to _ 
what he is saying. Added to these qualities are a certain balance 
and melody of his sentences, and an unmistakable refinement, 
as of culture and wide reading, which commands respect wher- 
ever heard. This last quality seems more remarkable in view of 
the fact that Irving could hardly be called a scholar, or even a 
disciplined reader. It is evidently from within, like a child's 
singing, and we are content to appreciate without trying to 
explain it. 

To Irving's humor, boisterous and crude in the Knickerbocker 
History but becoming more and more delicate in his later works, 
and to the love of romance and sentiment which are reflected 
even in his serious works, we have already called attention. His 



192 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

sentiment is generally wholesome, but, like Brown, he shows the 
influence of literary fashion by occasional lapses into sentimen- 
Humorand tality. Here, for instance, are *' Rural Funerals," 
Sentiment - jhe Widow and Her Son" and "The Broken 
Heart," which Byron and many others found an occasion for 
tears but which will hardly stand our critical analysis. They aim 
rather too obviously to make us cry ; and many readers resent 
such a deliberate attempt at their emotions, knowing that the 
world's grief — which Irving never felt very deeply — is too 
simple and sacred a thing for sentimentality. We are to remem- 
ber, however, that Irving wrote to please, not to refprm ; that 
his readers loved tears, urns and new-made graves in their stories 
and poems ; and that a sentimental interest in sad or funereal 
subjects was a marked characteristic of English and American 
literature for a full century following Gray's Elegy} 

Irving's Message. There are critics who say that Irving has 
no message, but they belong with those w^ho never detect a ser- 
mon unless it begins with a text and ends with a. '' finally." 
There are many kinds of sermons, the best of which are not too 
obvious ; and some messages, like the bluebird's song, might 
suffer harm from too definite expression. It is true that Irving, 
like his historian of Bracebridge Hall, is merely an observer of 
life. He has neither problems nor ambitions ; he enters not 
into the doubts and struggles of humanity ; he never takes 
sides in strife, having, as he says, " a most melancholy good 
opinion of all my fellow creatures." But in a world of reforms 
and reformers, and in a literature that welcomes the " problem " 
novel, it is rather refreshing to find one to whom life seems 
good, and whose work always suggests the legend written on 
the old sundials : horas non mimero nisi serenas, '' I count 
only the sunny hours." 

We can accept, therefore, the dictum of the English critic 
Hazlitt, that Irving is "a filigree man," remembering that the 

1 For the influence of this taste, or fashion, on Brown's novels, see p. 159. For its 
influence on Bryant's poetrj', see p. 201. 




Curtis and Cameron 



RIP VAN WINKLE 
A portrait of Joseph Jefferson as Rip Van Winkle by Marion Swinton 



THE FIRST NATIONAL PERIOD 



193 



old Greek and Etruscan filigrees were of exquisite beauty and 
sometimes inclosed a jewel. We accept also a general judgment 
of our own writers, thatlrvingjs_the companion of an idle hour 
rather _thaa the- friend to whom we turn in adversity. But let us 
not leave him with this negative tribute. He was, first of all, 
remarkable as a discoverer of literary material, and his discoveries 
have been freely used by writers on both sides of the Atlantic. 




^-^ .i-fv |Tr 








-'».- v.— f 



"SUNNYSIDE," IRVING'S HOME ON THE HUDSON 



^Againj_by,iiis delicate sympathy he found his way to the hearts 
of America, England and Spain successively ; and he established 
the famous principle, which De Quincey formulated, that '' not 
to sympathize is not to understand." Finally, by his style, his 
attention to artistic form, his development of the essay and the 
modern short story, he exerted a strong and wholesome influence 
at the beginning of our national literature. Though he died 
half a century ago, he is still to thousands of men and women 
a cheerful comrade, whose message is that we live in a good 
world, and that the best way to show our appreciation is to give 
thanks and enjoy it. As he wrote modestly in '' The Christmas 
Dinner " : 

" If I can by any lucky chance in these days of evil rub out one wrinkle 
from the brow of care, or beguile the heavy heart of one moment of sorrow ; 
if I can now and then penetrate through the gathering film of misanthropy, 
prompt a benevolent view of human nature and make my reader more in 
good humor with his fellow beings and himself, — surely, surely, I shall 
not then have written entirely in vain." 



194 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

William Cullen Bryant (i 794-1 878) 

The groves were God's first temples. Ere man learned 

To hew the shaft and lay the architrave, 

And spread the roof above them — ere he framed 

The lofty vault, to gather and roll back 

The sound of anthems ; in the darkling wood, 

Amid the cool and silence, he knelt down. 

And offered to the Mightiest solemn thanks 

And supplication. For his simple heart 

Might not resist the sacred influences 

Which, from the stilly twilight of the place, 

And from the gray old trunks that high in heaven 

Mingled their mossy boughs, and from the sound 

Of the invisible breath that swayed at once 

All their green tops, stole over him, and bowed 

His spirit with the thought of boundless power 

And inaccessible majesty. Ah, why 

Should we, in the world's riper years, neglect 

God's ancient sanctuaries, and adore 

Only among the crowd, and under roofs 

That our frail hands have raised ? Let me, at least, 

Here, in the shadow of this aged wood. 

Offer one hymn — thrice happy, if it find 

Acceptance in His ear. . . . 

In this introduction to the noble '' Forest Hymn " may be 
found two suggestions of the Hfe and work of one who is often 
called our first national poet. First, he is skillfully using blank 
verse, that wonderful instrument of old Latin and English 
poets ; and second, he appears as the high priest of Nature, 
offering his hymn at her altar, as one might leave a cherished 
possession reverently at the shrine of a saint. 

The latter suggestion is emphasized in the portraits with 
which we are all familiar. Biyant was a young man when he 
wrote his best poetry ; but who can recall any picture of his 
smooth, boyish face, with its fair curls and eyes innocent of 
experience ? Or who that reads in succession " Thanatopsis " 
and '' The Flood of Years " finds anything to indicate that one 
was written by a mere boy and the other by a man of eighty ? 



THE FIRST NATIONAL PERIOD 195 

Bryant seems to have been always old, like our grandfathers. 
That grave, strong, patriarchal face, with its deep-set eyes, 
shaggy eyebrows and snowy drift of hair, is the only one that 
could satisfy us after reading his poetry. 

Life. Bryant was of Pilgrim stock and counted himself among the 
descendants of John and Priscilla Alden, who are immortalized in a 
poem written by another descendant and called '' The Courtship of 
Miles Standish." His father was a countr)^ doctor, a lover of books 
and poetry ; his mother was a Puritan, with all that the name implies 
of devotion to lofty ideals and practical duty : 

A virtuous woman who can find ? 

For her price is far above rubies. 

The heart of her husband trusteth in her. . . . 

She doeth him good and not evil all the days of her life. . . . 

She openeth her mouth with wisdom, 

And in her tongue is the law of kindness. 

She looketh well to the ways of her household, 

And eateth not the bread of idleness. 

Her children rise up and call her blessed. 

That Bryant's mother merited every line of this fine old eulogy is 
shown by her diary and by the testimony of the poet, who attributed 
his ideals and his success largely to his mother's influence. 

He was born (1794) in Cummington, a frontier village in the 
rugged hill country of Massachusetts. There his boyhood was passed, 
A Poet's attending the district school or working on the farm by 
Childhood day, and reading before the open fire at night. A dull, 
secluded, heavy-laden life it may seem to us now, with its days of 
anxiety and pain ; but it was ennobled by the companionship of good 
parents and good books, and dignified by the Puritan spirit, which 
regarded small duties by the light of great principles. Nor must we 
forget the curtain of the day, when the whole family was accustomed 
to kneel together in prayer. As the grandfather offered his petition 
for a blessing on home and friends and nation, the small boy would 
whisper the desire of his own heart that he might some day be his 
country's poet. Later he will leave this lonely farm, will study, travel, 
become a leader of affairs in a great city ; but he will ever do his best 
work in the remembrance of Itis childhood. There is only one way 
to get the spirit of Bryant's poetry, and that is to put yourself in 
sympathy with a Puritan boy looking up at the eternal hills. 



196 



AMERICAN LITERATURE 




He fitted for college in the old-fashioned way, by studying with the 
learned ministers of the neighborhood. For one dollar a week, so 
His the record runs, he obtained his scanty fare of bread-and- 

Education milk and his liberal mental pabulum of Latin, Greek and 
mathematics. He learned quickly, and in his sixteenth year easily 
passed his examination for the sophomore class in Williams College. 
Even at this early age he had won local recognition ; some of his 
boyish verses were printed in the newspapers, and '^ The Embargo," 
^ a bitter satire directed against 

Jefferson's administration, was 
published in Boston and ran 
through a second edition. 

Bryant left Williams after 
two terms, intending to enter 
the junior class at Yale. Alas ! 
his father had no money, and 
the boy went sorrowfully back 
to the farm. It was at this time, 
when he grieved in secret over 
the failure of his college plans, 
that he wrote '^ Thanatopsis," 
\ which takes an added luster 
from the fact that it was writ- 
ten by a youth of seventeen. 
Then followed a long period 
of law studies, and of practice 
as a country lawyer at Great 
Barrington. That he disliked 
this work is evident from his letters and from the closing lines of 
" Green River " ; but there was no chance to earn one's bread by 
poetry in those days, and Bryant held faithfully to the law until 
he had mastered it, still following the Puritan ideal of duty. Mean- 
while his reputation as a poet was established by the publication of 
his early poems in the Nofih America7i Review} In 182 1 appeared 
his first modest little volume called Poems. The date marks the 
definite appearance of national poetry in America. 

1 The originality of these early verses attracted instant attention. Dana, one of the 
editors of the Review^ assured the other editors that they had been imposed upon ; that 
there was " no one on this side of the Atlantic capable of writing such verses." The 
remark is suggestive of the state of poetry in America at that time. 




WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 



THE FIRST NATIONAL PERIOD 197 

Three years later, in 1824, Bryant abandoned the law and followed 
his heart into the world of letters. He moved to New York, which 
was then becoming famous as a literary center, and became an 
editor of the New York Review. Magazines led a will-o'-the-wisp 
kind of life in those days, and after a few sparkles generally went out 
in darkness. The Review failed, and Bryant, the lover of solitude and 
poetry, was glad to find work with the Evening Post, where he was 
plunged into the turmoil of news and politics. In three years, such 
was his ability, he was editor-in-chief of this newspaper, and held the 
position for more than half a century. 

The rest of Bryant's life belongs to journalism rather than to liter- 
ature, and we note only a few significant characteristics. At that time 
.jijjg our newspapers were generally devoted to party politics, 

Journalist but Bryant determined to make his work national and to 
speak the truth fearlessly, without regard to party or prejudice. In 
consequence, many regard him as the first of our great editors and 
the father of modern journalism. Naturally his poetry suffered from 
his absorption in temporary affairs; though he published a slender 
volume of verse every few years, he made little or no improvement 
on his earliest work. His business prospered greatly ; he traveled 
much at home and abroad ; he was a recognized literary leader, and 
was called upon to make an address at many a public function.-^ His 
home life during all these years of prosperity was beautifully serene 
and happy. He kept his scholarly interests to the end, and his last 
important achievement was the translation of the Iliad and the 
Odyssey into blank verse. This translation, a notable work in itself, is 
especially remarkable in view of the fact that it represents six years' 
labor on the part of a man already past his threescore years and ten. 

Looking back on his long, quiet life, the first work of the historian 
is to account, not for his poetry or journalism, but for the place which 
Hjg he holds in our national literature, — a place much higher 

Commanding than the quality of his poetry would seem to warrant. 
Position j^-g position was well indicated by Cooper, who said, 

" The rest of us " — meaning himself, Irving, Poe, and the Knicker- 
bocker School — '' may be mentioned now and then, but Bryant is the 
real American author." In New York especially he towered above 
the minor poets of his age ; and throughout the country he was, until 

1 Some of his speeches, especially his memorial addresses on Cooper, Irving, Halleck 
and Verplanck, are still worth reading. His other prose works, such as Letters of a 
Traveller (1850) and Letters from the East (1869) are quite neglected. 



198 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

the triumph of Longfellow, generally regarded as the first of our 
national singers. The glamour of worldly success was about him, as it 
was about Franklin, and this made men more ready to applaud his 
poetic talent. He had won fame and fortune as the most successful 
journalist of his day ; he was recognized not simply as poet and scholar, 
but as a successful business man, the first citizen of a great city and a 
leader in national affairs. In this last respect he completely overshad- 
owed Irving and Poe, who took little or no interest in public matters. 
Moreover, his life was noble, in all respects worthy of his place and 
art. Whittier and Emerson both paid generous tribute to his greatness 
of soul, and Lincoln, after his memorable visit to New York in 1855, 
declared that " it was worth the journey East to see such a man." 

Sentiment also played a leading part in Bryant's honors. His life 
began in the days of Washington, and he lived to celebrate the one- 
The Pioneer hundredth birthday of the nation in 1876. Men saw in 
Poet him a living bridge which joined the old to the new ; a 

reminder, in the days of Calhoun and Webster, of the old struggle 
between Jefferson and Hamilton ; a literary leader whose work began 
with the attempts of the Hartford Wits to establish a national litera- 
ture, and who lived to give a generous welcome to Longfellow and 
Lanier, who were greater poets than himself. To the solid achieve- 
ment of the present, therefore, was added a romantic glamour from 
the past, and America, as the criticism of the period clearly shows, 
could find nothing too good in the way of praise to offer to her noble 
old pioneer who had outlived his great contemporaries. 

On all these accounts — his talent, his poetry, his worldly success, 
his leadership in public affairs, his sterling character, his association 
with the remote past — Bryant held a prominent position for more 
than fifty years. North and South, East and West, Canada, Cuba 
and Mexico as well as the United States, — all honored him as the 
New World's poet. Later singers undoubtedly produced better work ; 
probably no other ever won quite so commanding a place in American 
letters as Bryant occupied in the middle of the nineteenth century. 

Bryant's Work. As it is easy to misunderstand Bryant or to 
misjudge the value of his verse, we venture at the outset to call 
attention to three general considerations : 

First, though he wrote for seventy-odd years, his collected 
poems, aside from his translation of Homer, fill onlv one volume ; 



THE FIRST NATIONAL PERIOD 199 

and of these poems all that are permanent might easily be 
printed on fifty pages. We have our own opinion that, as 
Brooke said of Coleridge, these few pages should be bound in 
gold ; but if we compare our aged poet with Keats or Shelley, 
who died under thirty, we must admit frankly that both in 
quantity and quality he falls below the standard of the English 
masters. 

Second, in reading Bryant one is conscious after a time of a 
certain monotony, which is due to the fact that our poet holds 
Quality of always to the same level. He never tou ches either the 
his Verse heights or the deeps of human l ife. He produces no 
epic, no comedies or tragedies, no passionate outcry, no glorious 
romance. He has a few simple themes, which he treats with 
such classicsimplicity that we are apt to overlook his restrained 
emotion, just as the careless reader never feels the fire that lurks 
in the calm, Puritan verse of George Herbert. To many readers, 
indeed, who know Bryant only as the author of the melancholy 
'' Thanatopsis," he seems cold and didactic ; but to the few, who 
have stood alone among the hills or under the stars, Bryant is a 
true poet, second only to Wordsworth in his ability to express 
man's thought and feeling in presence of the mighty life of 
nature. 

Third, Bryant's work, aside from its intrinsic merits, is re- 
markable for this, — that it definitely establishes a standard of 
American verse. In his first boyish attempts Bryant was plainly 
a provincial, copying English models as all other American 
poets had done before him ; but when he abandoned these 
models to follow his own spirit he became the founder of a new 
national poetry. Before 1821, the year of his first volume, our 
poets generally thought that they must WTite like Pope, or some 
other English master, to win success ; after that date, encour- 
aged by Bryant's example, they dared to be themselves. His 
place in our poetry, therefore, is comparable to that of Jefferson 
in the history of democracy. Though he established no school 
and had no follower, all our modern poets are his debtors. 



200 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Indeed, in view of his work, his contemporaries were probably 
justified in calhng him '' the father of American poetry." 

Poems on Death. Of the first thirty poems in our edition of 
Bryant, it happens that tweh-e deal with death in some form, 
and twelve with nature, — a chance arrangement, we might 
think, until we examine the book and find that four fifths of the 
poems are devoted to these two subjects. One can explain the 
nature poems on the ground that a man's pen, like his face, 
generally reflects what he loves best ; but the thoughtful reader 
will surely ask, Why should a young poet be interested in death, 
or a young man winning his fame and fortune be forever think- 
ing of the grave ? The answer leads us at once to the secret of 
Bryant's work, and to the general literary influences which sur- 
rounded the beginning of our national poetry. 

We are to remember, flrst of all, that though Bryant became 
a liberal in matters of theolog y, he never outgrew his Puritan 
training. We may remember also that the Puritan 
Puritan's took no shortsighted view of life, as bounded by 
Interest earth's horizon ; he worked in time for eternity, and 
settled the problems of this world by principles that should 
make him feel at home in heaven. The two greatest Puritan 
books are Paradise Lost and Pilgrim s Progress ; and both are 
more deeply concerned with the future than with the present 
life. Our poet, as the result of his early training, shared the 
abiding Puritan interest in the hereafter, and always looked 
upon death, the gateway between two worlds, with supreme 
interest. Moreover, he was a delicate child, and was threatened 
with consumption ; he had seen a beloved sister taken away by 
the same dread disease, — that little sister whom he remem- 
bers with such tenderness in '' The Death of the Flowers." At 
an age when other boys are joyously interested in life as an 
eternal springtime, he often faced the great question of immor- 
tality. Though he grew strong and lived to a hale old age, he 
never quite lost the bearing of one who had seen the majesty 
which death gives to the humblest dwelling, and who had 



THE FIRST NATIONAL PERIOD 201 

accustomed himself to look without fear or trembling into the 
Reaper's face, as one who asks a question. 

So far, Bryant's peculiar interest seems to be personal, but 
we must reckon also with the poetry of his age, with the Gar- 
Poetry of iauds, Tokens and other collections that appeared in 
his Age America and England. All these reflect a deep 
interest in funereal subjects, an interest which chills or repels us 
now, but which then amounted almost to enthusiasm. Probably 
the best-know^n English poem in his day was Gray's Elegy 
Written iit a Country CJmrcJiyard (1750). Amid a thousand 
poems on the grave it retained its popularity for a full century. 
Next to the Elegy, we would place Young's The Complamt, 
or Night Thoughts and Blair's The Grave ; terribly gloomy 
poems they seem to the modern reader, but they were widely 
read and quoted on both sides of the Atlantic during this entire 
period. Bryant's poems on death and the grave are, therefore, 
like those of Poe, largely a reflection of the literary taste or 
fashion which influenced English and American poets from the 
middle of the seventeenth to the middle of the eighteenth cen- 
tury. If we read, for instance, that part of Blair's Grave 

beginning: What is this world ? 

What but a spacious burial field unwalled t 

we shall find an interesting parallel to the following passage 
from '' Thanatopsis " : The hills 

Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun ; the vales 

Stretching in pensive quietness between ; 

The venerable woods ; rivers that move 

In majesty, and the complaining brooks 

That make the meadows green ; and, poured round all, 

Old Ocean's gray and melancholy waste, — 

Are but the solemn decorations all 

Of the great tomb of man.^ 

1 Probably both Bryant and Blair borrowed this conception from Thucydides, who 
declared that the earth is but a sepulcher of famous men. The influence of Homer in 
" Thanatopsis " is shown in such sounding expressions as " the all-beholding sun." In 
the first stanza, in the " communion " with nature, her " healing sympathy," etc. some 
critics detect the influence of Wordsworth. 



202 Q. -^^"^^ AMERICAN LITERATURE 

This " Thanatopsis " (A View of Death) is generally placed 
at the head of Bryant's works, — unfortunately, we think, for 
it is less imaginative than other poems of his on 
'tHe same subject. If we dared criticize this old favor- 
ite, we would confess frankly that the hills and trout streams 
which we have loved since childhood have never once appeared 
to us as decorations on the universal tomb. Such a conception 
of nature seems to us hardly more poetic than that of Alaskan 
Indians, who say that the earth is a huge animal, vegetation is 
its fur, and men and animals are parasites on its back. __Not- 
withstanding the majestic sweep and harmonious verse of 
'' Thanatopsis," we find it very cold comfort. Bryant also found 
it so, as is evident from the two additions which he made to his 
original work : the opening stanza, giving a more cheerful view 
of nature, and the ending with its pleasant hope of dreams. One 
who begins with ''Thanatopsis," therefore, should not end the 
subject with this pagan view of death, but should read also '' The 
Return of Youth," with its golden promise, and especially 
"Tree-Burial," reflecting the sorrow and immortal hope of a 
mother's love. 

Nature Poems. The numerous nature poems of Bryant ally 
him with Thomson, Cowper, Wordsworth and other leaders of 
the romantic movement in English literature. The reader will 
soon understand Bryant's prevailing mood if he begin with '' A 
Forest Hymn" and read in succession the ''Winter Piece" (with 
its suggestion of Wordsworth's " Tintern Abbey"), "A Rain 
Dream," " The Prairies," " The Yellow Violet," " To a Fringed 
Gentian," "Green River," "Autumn Woods," "Summer 
Wind " and " The Night Journey of a River." All these are 
rather somber, and for a pleasant contrast we add "The Glad- 
ness of Nature " and the rollicking " Robert of Lincoln." One 
who has any appreciation of nature will surely find his own mood 
somewhere reflected in these poems, though they are all more in 
sympathy with the stern and majestic than with the gladsome 
aspects of the outdoor world. 




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THE FIRST NATIONAL PERIOD 203 

Miscellaneous Verse. Many readers find more satisfaction in 
the lyrics ^ of Bryant than in his poems of death or nature. 
Prominent among these lyrics are ''The Evening Wind," 
" June," " Death of the Flowers " and " Song of Marion's Men." 
To the student who has read all the above poems, and found 
their range somewhat narrow, we suggest also, by way of variety, 
a few unclassified poems such as ''The Poet," "Antiquity of 
Freedom," " O Mother of a Mighty Race " and " The Planting 
of the Apple Tree." Strangely enough, this stern singer 
attempted two long journeys into Fairyland ; but his mind was 
too Puritanic to find itself at ease in Oberon's country, and we 
are loth to recommend " Sella " and " The Little People of the 
Snow " except to the most inquisitive readers. 

Last but not least on our list comes " To a Waterfowl," the 
most artistic of all Bryant's works. In this little poem one may 
To a fii^d three things : a single strong impression, a 

Waterfowl question such as the human heart instinctively asks, 
and the profound answer, all reflected without an unnecessary 
word, with an attention to form and melody rarely equaled, and 
then only by a master of poetry. That the reader may better 
appreciate this gem we venture to give its history. 

Bryant had just finished his law studies (18 15) and was 
journeying on foot through a sparsely settled country, seeking a 
village without a lawyer wherein he might begin his work among 
men. He was unknown and poor ; his dearest plans had failed ; 
he was doubtful of himself, of his health, of the profession he 
had chosen, of the big world itself, which he faced there alone 
in the sad twilight. Suddenly, across the afterglow of sunset, a 
solitary wild duck passed swdftly and was gone. Many of us 
have noted that sunset flight of the black mallard — the pulsating 

« 

1 Lyric poetry — so called because originally it was intended to be sung to the accom- 
paniment of a lyre — now refers to verse which expresses the poet's own mood or feeling. 
It is contrasted with epic, dramatic, and descriptive poetry-, which are concerned with 
external events or persons. A lyric is a short poem, reflecting some single mood or feel- 
ing of the poet himself. Bryant rarely writes a true lyric, but generally includes more or 
less description of external things, and adds a moral lesson. 



204 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

wings, the arrowy line drawn for an instant against the golden 
splendor, the tiny speck of life swallowed up in the immensity 
of the dusk — and we understand perfectly the question that 
rose unbidden from this man's lonely heart : 

Whither, midst falling dew, 
While glow the heavens with the last steps of day, 
Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue 

Thy solitary way ? 

Line by line he draws the picture, as he sees it there on the 

rugged hillside, till it is all clear and sharp as an etching ; then, 

as an artist gives the ultimate personal touch by signing the 

canvas he has painted, BrysLUt writes himself down in the 

last stanza : 

He who, from zone to zone, 
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight. 
In the long way that I must tread alone, 
Will lead my steps aright. 

Here, in a few exquisite lines, we have not simply the picture of 
a wild duck against the twilight, but an intensely human experi- 
ence ; and the experience ends with a word of faith so simple 
and sincere that, after the lapse of a century, thousands of 
human hearts are still uplifted by it. Matthew Arnold, who 
was a very cold critic, grew almost enthusiastic over '' To a 
Waterfowl " ; and Hartley Coleridge, another English poet and 
critic, praised it extravagantly as ''the best short poem in the 
English language." 

General Characteristics. There are two achievements of 
JBryant which deserve special attention : he is our first poet of 
nature, and the first to embody in his work the national spirit. 
As Emerson said of him, '' He is our native, sincere, original, 
patriotic poet. . . . He is original because he is sincere, — a 
true painter of the face of the countr}' and of the sentiments of 
his own people." This condensed criticism suggests an analysis 
of Bryant as the poet of nature and the nation. 



THE FIRST NATIONAL PERIOD 205 

In addition to the songs of birds there are many harmonies, 
tones and overtones in nature, though few men be silent and 
Nature's attentive enough to hear them. The tinkle of a brook, 
Undertone ^]^g J-^^^]^ Qf g^ torrent or a tempest, the murmur of 
waves, the hum of innumerable insects, the soft breathing of the 
pines, the rustling of the aspens, the faint vibration of certain 
forest trees grown dry and resonant as violins, — all these 
sounds are in the air incessantly, producing a universal melody 

and music, ^ , 

buch as never was by mortal fingers strook. 

Musicians declare that all these musical sounds are pitched upon 
and harmonize with one deep undertone, which is a kind of 
keynote to all nature. Though many of our poets have been 
conscious of this mighty symphony, only two of them, Bryant 
and Lanier, have tried deliberately to reflect it in verse. By the 
music of his lines Lanier tries to suggest, and often does suggest 
to a remarkable degree, the subtle, changing harmonies which his 
sensitive musical soul had detected. Br)^ant hears nothing of the 
joyous melody which fascinated the Southern poet, but only the 
keynote, the deep undertone as of a church organ, which rolls 
through his '' Forest Hymn " like a summons to praise and prayer. 
For Bryant was, we repeat, in a superlative way the high 

priest of Nature. Perhaps if we rairh rm thp Hmirl nf nat ure wp 

shall better express our thought. His religion was not theologi^ 
cal but instinctive . There is something elemental in his verse, 
which reflects the feeling of the primitive man in presence of 
the wilderness or the sounding sea. Unlike Blake, who found 
elves, fairies and blithe spirits revealing themselves in flowers 
and stars, Bryant saw in Nature a manifestation of the one liv- 
ing God. Nature's grandeur, her immensitv. h ^y -^^nblimity 
appealed to him profoundly. In her presence he bowed down 
nis soul as one who worships. The deep organ tone of his blank 
verse is characteristic of his own attitude of devotion. 

Though he wrote mostly of the rugged Northern landscape, 
and though he is called by some critics ''the New England 



2o6 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

poet," a broad nationality which knows no sectionaUsm and no 
prejudice is perhaps the chief quaUty of Bryant's poetry. This 
The National is shown, first, in the perfect naturalness of his 
Spirit impressions, his ''Hymn" sounding equally well in 

the spruce forests of Maine or under the mighty redwoods of 
California ; and second, in a certain moral and didactic tend- 
ency which we call '' Puritanic" and which has influenced the 
national spirit. If we were to sum up the Puritan influence, we 
should say that it reveals itself in four ways : in an insistence 
on facts, in a devotion to high moral and spiritual ideals, in a 
strong sense of responsibility which made the Puritan every- 
where a teacher, and in the fundamental belief in God and man 
which made him a theologian and a democrat. In Bryant's 
verse all these qualities are manifest. He takes no liberties with 
the facts of nature, but is the most accurate and reliable of our 
poets ; he never wavers from a high moral ideal, and he gener- 
ally adds to his poems some lesson of faith or duty, of freedom 
or patriotism. In all this Br^^ant shows himself the true Puritan ; 
and because the Puritan quality has entered deep into American 
life, he is the poet of the whole nation. 

As for Bryant's style, it is as simple and as forceful as the 
man himself. Occasionally, as in ''June," he tries an elaborate 
Bryant's versification, but for the most part he confines 
style himself to the four-line stanza and to blank 'verse. 

Though a classical scholar, he uses Anglo-Saxon W'Ords when- 
ever possible, — strong, homely words, suggestive of dear old 
things like poker and tongs, which our fathers found old and our 
children find delightfully new. Two other qualities of his style 
should be mentioned : its harmony with the subject, and its 
transparency. It reveals not only Br^-ant's thought but the 
nature and quality of his mind, — a little austere, perhaps, but 
fundamentally noble and sincere. As a contemporary wrote of 
him, "It is the glory of this man that his character outshone 
his great talent and his large fame." 



THE FIRST NATIONAL PERIOD 



207 



James Fenimore Cooper (1789-185 i) 

" TheJ;iunter prepared himself for his journey, drawing his belt tighter 
and wasting his moments in the little reluctant movements of a sorrowful 
departure. Once or twice he essayed to speak, but a rising in his throat pre- 
vented it. At length he shouldered his rifle and cried, with a clear hunts- 
man's call that echoed through the woods, ' Here, here, pups ; away dogs, 
away ; ye '11 be footsore afore ye see the ind of the journey.' 

" This was the last that they ever saw of the Leatherstocking. . . . He 
had gone far towards the setting sun, — the foremost in that band of pio- 
neers who are opening the way for the march of the nation across the 

The Pio?ieers, Chapter XL I 

In this farewell of the old woodsman we have several sugges- 
tions of Cooper and of his work for American literature. The 
author is as slow as Leather- 
stocking in making a start ; .^^^ '^m-^^- 
but once aic large, as the 
voyageurs say, he is off on 
a long trail, and over him 
brood the lure and mystery 
of the great wilderness. 

Again, Cooper is athis^ 
best in portraying sirriple 
characters. We have no pa- 
tience with his stilted gentle- 
men, but we feel the touch 
of nature that makes us kin 
with Harvey Birch, Tom 
Cofhn and Natty Bumppo. 
These obscure men, vigor- 
ous and sincere, are his real 
heroes ; in them he reflects 
the spirit of the young 
American nation, and at 

the same time appeals to a universal interest. Though he writes 
in prose, there is an epic strain of poetry and Jieroism in his 




JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 



208 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

best work. His hero battles against odds and embarks on peril- 
ous adventure f he has physical strength and moral fiber ; he is 
loyal to friend, generous to enemy, chivalrous to woman. He is 
not only a brave fighter, like Beowulf ; he is always a knight 
and a gentleman, like Ivanhoe. So the stories which delighted 
America, because they were national, were welcomed abroad 
because they reflected the world's ideals of heroism and chivalry. 
A third suggestion from this scene may explain the keen in- 
terest with which Europe listened to the first American tale- 
The Pioneer bringer, as the old Saxons would call him. We must 
Interest remember that other nations also had their pioneers ; 
that the interest in colonization is as ancient and inclusive as 
the original command to replenish the earth and subdue it. In 
the same adventurous spirit that led the Saxons to England 
and the Norsemen to France, all Europe had sent hither its 
sons and daughters. During two hundred years they had gone 
forth, like birds that flock to unknown lands, and still America 
remained a silent country, as little understood as is Tibet or 
Patagonia. For a nation is never known till it expresses its own 
spirit in literature. ''They had no poet and they died" is written 
on the tombs of all forgotten races. Then appeared The Spy^ 
The Red Rover, The Last of the Mohicans^xe^jQ ^in^ Am erica 
not as a savage wilderness but as a new stage for the old hjeroic 
drama of human life, — a life that Europe understood and hon- 
ored because it was like its own. In all his best work Cooper 
proclaimed this one truth, so easily forgotten in our barbarous 
wars : that men of all nations are fundamentally alike ; that love 
and heroism have no nationality, nor any bounds save those of 
humanity. In his outdoor romances all men felt vigorous again, 
sharing the mighty life of nature ; in the manly soul of his hero 
the reader of Norway or Germany or England recognized with 
joy the spirit of his own ancestors, the pioneers of the world's 
free people. It is this daring pioneer spirit, with its appeal to 
elemental manhood, which may best explain Cooper's success 
at home and abroad. 



THE FIRST NATIONAL PERIOD 209 

Life of Cooper. Our novelist was born (1789) in Burlington, New- 
Jersey, but his life is largely associated with central New York. Here 
his father settled in 1790, building his manor house by Otsego Lake, 
and founding the village which is still called Cooperstown. In this 
frontier settlement with its noble surroundings,^ where all the works 
of man seemed like ugly scars on the face of nature, Cooper passed 
his childhood. Here he met his two romantic heroes, the buckskin- 
clad trapper and the silent-footed Indian, trailing in from the wilder- 
ness to trade furs for powder. A rude backwoods school held him 
for a time ; then he was sent to Albany to study with a minister. At 
thirteen he entered Yale College, where he thought so much of play 
and so little of study that he was presently expelled for some youthful 
frolic.^ 

The practical side of Cooper's education began when he shipped 
aboard a merchantman as a preparation for the American navy, which 
Naval he soon entered as midshipman. Of his short naval serv- 

Training i^e, we know very little. He was sent to help build a war- 
ship on Lake Ontario, where he picked up the knowledge and " local 
color" which appear in The Pathfinder; and he was for a time in 
command of a gunboat on Lake Champlain, where he learned of the 
old Indian war-trail to Canada, which is followed in The Last of the 
Mohica7is. 

At twenty-one. Cooper married and resigned from the navy, just 
before our second war with England. His wife was the daughter of 
His First a Loyalist, and it is due partly to her influence that 
Romances Cooper is so unusually considerate to the Tories in his 
Revolutionary stories. For the next ten years he was a farmer in the 
Hudson valley, and not till he was thirty-one years old did he show 
any indication of his literary power. His first book, Precaution ^ — a 
tedious, artificial romance of English society, of which Cooper knew 
little or nothing — was of no consequence, but the fact of having 
written it proved a tonic to his imagination. Led by his wife, he re- 
solved to write an American story, and discovered that a novelist does 

1 For a description of the place, see The Pioneers^ chap. xxi. In the character of 
Judge Templeton the novelist has portrayed some characteristics of his own father. 

2 In later years Cooper affected to despise college education. In the preface to 
Lionel Lincoln he says scornfully that what little he learned in college had been long 
since forgotten. 

3 This story was not signed, and it was supposed to be the work of an Englishman. 
At this time (1820) a book written by an American had small chance of success either at 
home or abroad. 



2IO AMERICAN LITERATURE 

best when he " paints the scene from his own door." He located his 
story in Westchester County, where he was then living and where a 
thousand memories of the Revolution still lingered, and he chose an 
obscure American spy of that region for his hero. The Waverley novels 
had prepared the public for the historical romance, and when The Spy 
appeared (182 1) it was instantly successful. The next year it was 
published and praised in England, and it was speedily translated into 
several European languages. 

This unexpected success determined Cooper's career as a literary 
man. In his second noteworthy novel. The Pioneers (1823), he aban- 
doned the literary treasures of the Revolution to write the romance 
of the wilderness. Here was something entirely new in fiction ; not 
even Scott had produced anything like it ; and the reading world gave 
it enthusiastic welcome. 

Not content with conquering in two new regions. Cooper opened 
yet another realm to fiction. He had by this time moved to New York 
City, where he founded a famous club, the ''Bread and Cheese Lunch," 
which included the poets Bryant and Halleck, Verplanck the editor 
of Shakespeare, Morse the inventor, and other celebrities of the 
period. One day some members of this club were discussing the un- 
known author of the Waverley novels. The Pirate had just appeared, 
and one critic asserted that Scott could not possibly be the author of 
such a work, which only a sailor could have written. Cooper declared, 
on the contrary, that The Pirate was the work of a landsman ; and to 
convince the critic he resolved to write a sea tale as it should be done. 
The result was The Pilot (1823-182 4), our first modern romance of 
the sea. 

A sad change began in Cooper's life (1826), when he packed his 
penates in a trunk and sailed away to Europe. He was gone seven 
His Life years, at a time when America was changing with bewil- 

Abroad dering rapidity, and the effect was disastrous. Being 

naturally a conservative, he dropped easily into the indolent ways of 
the Old World, grew out of sympathy with the restlessness of his 
native land, and began that long series of criticisms which ended in 
general ill temper and misunderstanding. 

Wherever Cooper went, the fame of his Spy and Piofieers had pre- 
ceded him, and he received the honor which European nations offer 
freely to men of letters. Unfortunately he was drawn into contro- 
versy, at first unwillingly, when he loyally defended Lafayette in a 
political dispute, and then eagerly when he denounced certain false 



THE FIRST NATIONAL PERIOD 21 1 

notions of America that were and still are prevalent in Europe. A 
prejudice has more lives than a cat, and Cooper was soon fighting the 
same old falsehoods that Franklin had slain in vain. His Notions of 
Americans picked up by a Travelling Bachelor (1828) offended Europe 
and America alike, and the author became instantly a storm center of 
newspaper controversy. 

Aside from the controversial works of this period. Cooper wrote 
The Prairie, The Red Rover, The Wept of Wish-to?i- Wish and The 
Water Witch. The first two novels are among his best, and we never 
think of them as belonging to his European period. More significant 
are The Bravo, The Heide7imauer and The Heads7tian, which were 
occasioned by the expulsion of the Bourbons from France and by the 
Polish struggle for independence. 

With his return home, in 1833, began another long period of con- 
troversy, occasioned partly by Cooper's attempts to reform his coun- 
Period of tr^^men ^ and partly by his History of the Navy (1839). 
Controversy xhe latter was a painstaking work, but because it spoke 
the truth frankly it offended partisans on both sides of an acrid dis- 
pute which was then waging over the rival commanders Perry and 
Elliott at the Battle of Lake Erie. We would ignore this controversy 
were it not for the fact that it marks a forward step in the history of 
newspaper criticism. On one side was Cooper, with too little charity 
and humor, perhaps, but sincere and truth-loving ; on the other was 
the public press, with its fickleness and love of sensation. Papers that 
never heard of Cooper, save as a writer of stories, rushed to take 
sides, read a word hastily, found that he had criticized America and 
the Whig party, and straightway began reviling him and all his works. 

Perhaps it would have been better if Cooper had ignored such 
attacks; certainly he injured himself and stopped the sale of his 
books ; but there are authors and authors, and a fighter cannot tarry 
to count his profits when the cry is raised, " The Philistines be upon 
thee 1 " To every attack he responded,^ first by presenting the facts 
and demanding an apology, then by bringing libel suits. Alone he 
fought the entire Whig press of the country. The smaller papers were 
first disposed of, and when the Albafiy founial and the New York 
Tribune were fined and silenced. Cooper's victory was complete. It 
is generally alleged that he aimed to vindicate himself, but that is only 

1 Those who would understand his attempt may read, if they have patience, his 
Letter to his Countrymen (1834), The Monikins (1835) ^"^^ especially Home as Found 
(1857). 



212 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

half the truth. The principle he laid down was that personalities form 
no part of legitimate criticism, and in winning his case he conferred 
unmixed blessing upon others. The more considerate tone of present- 
day criticism is due largely to Cooper's heroic struggle. The press, no 
less than the author or critic, owes a debt of gratitude to the man who 
fought for the sacredness of private character in all public discussion. 
For the rest of his life our author returned to the peace of the old 
home at Cooperstown. The echoes of controversy died away ; a new 
In the generation read the Leatherstocking tales with renewed 

Old Home delight, and Cooper regained something of his lost popu- 
larity. All the while love, like a cheerful fire, brightened his home ; 
his old friends remained loyal ; his own character, always rugged and 
true, grew more gentle and charitable as age brought its sad wisdom. 
But he never became reconciled to the public w^hich had treated him 
so harshly, and one of his last commands was that his letters be kept 
secret and that no one should be authorized to write his biography. 

Classification of Cooper's Works. A man who plans his first 
vacation in the woods generally asks two questions : What must 
I take for necessity, and what useless baggage of civilization 
may I leave behind for convenience ? Facing an outing among 
Cooper's sixty-seven volumes, one may well repeat the same 
questions, since the greater part of his work belongs in the 
literary attic, as any librarian will tell you. 

We first divide the works into two almost equal parts, fiction 
on one side, miscellaneous subjects on the other. Of the latter, 
the History of the Navy (1839) and Lives of Disti7igidsJied 
Naval Officers (1846) are still readable. The rest of his mis- 
cellanies are headed toward oblivion, and may well be left to 
follow their own ways. 

Of the thirty-tw^o books of fiction, we again make equal divi- 
sion and cast the half aside. There remain sixteen romances, 
which fall naturally into groups suggested by the author's first 
three notable w^orks, The Spy, The Pio7ieers and The Pilot. 
The first group consists of historical romances, the second of 
the inimitable Leatherstocking tales, and the third of romances 
of the sea. 



THE FIRST NATIONAL PERIOD 213 

As many of these stories appeared while Scott occupied the 
center of the hterary stage, it was inevitable that the two writers 
Cooper should be compared. Almost from the beginning our 

and Scott novelist was called ''The American Scott," but the 
implied criticism seems to us unwarranted. Cooper was the kind 
of man to follow his own compass and blaze his own trail, and 
in his forest and sea tales especially he was a leader, not a fol- 
lower. In his historical novels he aimed at a romantic and per- 
haps exaggerated portrayal of the heroism of his own country 
in times past ; and in this he was undoubtedly influenced by 
Scott, who had done the same for Scotland and England ; but 
as the latter novelist's range was wider, he described a larger 
number of enduring characters and appealed to a more universal 
interest than was possible to his American contemporary. Ex- 
cept in their aims, therefore, there can hardly be any fair com- 
parison of the two writers. 

In one important respect, which is generally overlooked. 
Cooper seems to have depended on earlier novelists, and his 
work suffers in consequence. We refer to the majority of his 
''females" as he calls them, — weak, garrulous, sentimental 
creatures, unlike any known types of American women, but 
bearing a strong resemblance to the heroines met in nearly all 
romances of "sensibility."^ Perhaps the most noticeable point 
of resemblance between Scott and Cooper is that both alike were 
too much influenced by the prevailing literary fashion of making 
a heroine of fiction as unlike the natural woman as possible. 
Otherwise our novelist was a vigorous and original genius who 
told a tale in his own way, without much regard to any other 
writer. 

The Historical Romances. The publication of The Spy (1821) 
was an important event in our literary history .^ Up to that time 
America had been, in the matter of fiction especially, almost 

1 See our study of Charles Brockden Brown, p. 159. 

2 Critics have called this book " our literary Declaration of Independence." A few 
years later Emerson's '-'- The American Scholar" (1837) was characterized by Holmes as 
"America's intellectual Declaration of Independence." 



214 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

slavishly dependent on England in literary matters. Our authors 
often affected foreign ways and names; our critics echoed the 
opinions they had read in English magazines. The coming of 
The Spy was like the ringing of another Liberty bell. Our own 
critics, roused to independent enthusiasm, called it the founda- 
tion of American romance ; while English reviewers began to 
speak of Cooper, of whom they had never before heard, as ''the 
distinguished American novelist." The Sketch Book had just 
made Irving known in England, but The Spy passed the bounds 
of language as well as of nationality. It repeated its success in 
many of the countries of Europe and South America, and is still 
probably more widely known than any other American work of 
fiction with the exception of Uncle Toms Cabin. 

At first reading The Spy seems hardly worthy of such honor. 
It has glaring faults ; its crude style and stilted dialogue suffer 

by comparison with the work of our later novelists ; 

but the chief thing to remember is this : that our first 
contribution to international fiction stands the hard test of time ; 
that it is still widely known and read, while hundreds of better- 
written novels are forgotten. And this suggests that The Spy 
owes its place to real power, not to chance or the passing humor 
of the age which first welcomed it. 

The reasons for its enduring interest are threefold. It is, first 
of all, a good story of vigorous action and undaunted personal 
courage. With the young, at least, such a story can never grow 
old. It throws the glamour of romance over the men and women 
of the Revolution, standing in this respect almost alone ; ^ and 
it creates one original character, Harvey Birch, whose patriotism 
appeals powerfully to men of every nation. ''When war comes 
men stand by their chief " says the old Saxon proverb. It is 
easy to do that, to serve chief or country knowing that the serv- 
ice will be kno\\Ti and honored ; but here is a patriot who serves 

1 Many other romances of the Revolution have been published from time to time, 
from Simms's The Partisan (1S35) to Mitchell's Hugh Wyrtne^Free Quaker {iS>(^-j) . None 
of these, with the possible exception of Kennedy's Horse-Shoe Robinson^ seems destined 
to a permanent place in literature. 



THE FIRST NATIONAL PERIOD 215 

without hope or possibiHty of reward. In order to help Washing- 
ton he becomes known as a spy for the British army.i He is 
hated by the Patriots ; a price is set upon his head ; several 
times he barely escapes death at the hands of the soldiers whom 
he is secretly serving. His courage is proved to the uttermost 
when he destroys the paper, given him by Washington, which 
would make known his loyalty to the very men who were 
preparing to hang him. The last battle is fought and won; 
America is free ; the nation heaps rewards and honors upon 
its heroes ; but Harvey Birch goes on his lonely way, branded 
and despised as a traitor. And the last scene, where the old 
man haunts the battlefields of a later war, still hiding his mighty 
secret, reminds us again that the real heroes of every conflict 
are mostly unknown : 

The bravely dumb that did their deed, 

And scorned to blot it with a name, 
Men of the plain, heroic breed 

That loved Heaven's silence more than fame.^ 

There is wide difference of opinion concerning the relative 
merits of Cooper's other historical romances, and in selecting a 
few of them we are guided largely by a personal preference. 
First in historical order, though not in interest, comes Mercedes 
of Castile, a story of the discovery of America. This still in- 
terests many readers by its ocean pictures and by its portrayal, 
in a romantic way, of the character of Columbus. 

The Wept of Wish-ton- Wish, a narrative of Colonial life in 
Connecticut, attracts and puzzles us by its musical title. '' Wish- 
, ton- Wish " (an Indian term for the whippoorwill) is 
Wish-ton- the name given to the home of Mark Heathcote, an 
^^ old Quaker whom Cooper calls '* the venerable re- 

ligionist." The '' Wept " (that is, the bewept, the one mourned 
for) refers to a little girl who is stolen by the savages, and who 

1 The Spy reflects the civil discord of Patriots and Tories, which was especially bitter 
in Westchester County, where the scene is laid (see p. 90). 

2 From Lowell, " All Saints." 



2l6 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

returns later as the bride of an Indian chief. This narrative 
shows astonishing creative vigor. It has adventure enough for 
a dozen novels ; it introduces one romantic figure, the old regi- 
cide, hiding in the wilderness from the wrath of King Charles ; 
and it has many dramatic situations, notably that in which a 
mother tries to make herself known to her own child, who has 
forgotten her people and even her native language. With all 
these possibilities the story is ruined by careless observ^ation, 
artificial talk, and especially by the characters, which have 
scarcely more naturalness than the wooden animals of a Noah's 
ark. Nevertheless the book is worth reading, if only to show 
how Cooper could spoil an excellent story by neglecting the 
essential details. 

In Lionel Lincoln our novelist returned to the Revolution, 

and planned a series of romances to be called '' Legends of the 

Thirteen Republics," of which this should serve as 

Legends \ ' 

of the an introduction. He worked hard on this book, 

epu ics reading endless documents in order to make his 
narrative true to the facts ; but unfortunately he did nothing 
to remove his own prejudice against New England, and this 
prejudice is largely responsible for a very dull story. The most 
vivid parts of the book are the descriptions of the battles of 
Lexington and Bunker Hill ; the latter, according to Bancroft, 
being the best account of the fight that has ever been written. 
In a different and better spirit is Satanstoe} a tale of Colonial 
life in New York. The book is marred by Cooper's political 
theories, and again he shows his prejudice by dragging in a 
villain from New England ; but for the most part he sticks to 
his real work, which is to tell a tale. Satanstoe has still power 
to interest many readers, partly by its adventures, partly by its 
vivid pictures of American life in the middle of the eighteenth 
century. 

1 This was one of a series of political novels inspired by the frenzy of reform in 
America (i 840-1846) which culminated in Dorr's Rebellion and the Anti-rent War. 
Other novels of this series are The Chain Bearer and The Redskins. The same Anti- 
rent War which inspired Satanstoe produced also Ruth Hall's Downrenter^s Son. 



THE FIRST NATIONAL PERIOD 



217 



The Leatherstocking Tales. If the beginner must choose 
among these stories, we suggest The Last of the Mohicans, 
which presents Natty Bumppo, a favorite character in American 
fiction, in the most favorable hght. As the five books constitute 
a single drama in five acts, they should all be read, if possible, 
in this natural order, which happens also to be alphabetical : 
The Deerslayer, The Last of the Mohicans, TJie Pathfinder, 
The Pioneers and The Prairie. In our analysis we shall inter- 
rupt this natural order and begin with The Pioneers (1823), 
which was the first to be written. 




¥^^| 







# 






t?^^- 






h 



it- > 



OTSEGO LAKE, COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. 



When Cooper wrote this book he probably had no idea of a 
series of romances ; otherwise he would hardly have painted 
Heroes of such a shabby picture of his heroes. He aimed 
stockiTe^^^" simply to portray the life of a frontier village, with 
Drama its restless characters that hovered like skirmishers 

in advance of American civilization. One of these characters 
was Natty Bumppo, an old woodsman with an inborn love of 
the wild ; another was Chingachgook the Indian, a sad relic of 
the past, despised and neglected in a land that once shivered 
at the sound of his war whoop. Both these characters seemed 
strange yet familiar to American readers ; strange, because they 



2i8 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

had never appeared in romantic literature ; familiar, because 
their doubles were to be seen in almost every village. We have 
met such characters even in our own day. We remember how 
we watched and followed them at a distance ; how we went 
tiptoe through the woods where they set their traps ; how our 
wild instincts were stirred by the report of their old rifles, or 
by the smoke that rose from their camp fires. So we can under- 
stand why the young readers of that age, having detected a 
world of romance and adventure in these two old men, begged 
Cooper to tell them the whole story. Led by this widespread 
interest he rejuvenated Natty and Chingachgook, and made 
them the central figures of the Leatherstocking drama. 

Unlike most of Cooper's works. The Pio7ieers interests us by 
its scenes and characters rather than by its adventure. The 
Xhe story element is comparatively weak, but the back- 

Pioneers wood scenes are strongly realistic and the characters 
are, on the whole, the best that Cooper has drawn. He gathers 
together some thirty people — the squire, the foreigner, "the 
quality," the odds and ends of a frontier village — and, except- 
ing only his inane heroines, they impress us, in contrast with 
the minor characters of his other romances, as being remarkably 
true to life. Cooper is so deficient in humor that his attempts 
at fun generally bore us ; but in Ben Pump we have a rough 
suggestion of Sam Weller, and one scene especially, where Ben 
shares Natty's punishment by placing himself in the ''bilboes," 
is worthy of a place in the Pickivick Papers. 

The Deerslayer (1841) should be read first by those who in- 
tend to enjoy the whole drama of Leatherstocking. The action 
The takes place on the shores and waters of Otsego, at a 

Deerslayer ^jj^g when lake and forest are still Indian country. 
Here we meet Natty and his friend Chingachgook as young men 
on their first warpath. The main figures are well drawn, — even 
the two feminine characters, the beautiful Judith and the simple 
Hetty, are far above Cooper's average, — but the interest of the 
story lies almost entirely in its pioneer scenes and adventures. 



THE FIRST NATIONAL PERIOD 219 

In The Last of the Mohica?ts (1826) we find the same two 
heroes in the vigor of manhood, and our interest in Chingach- 
Last of the gook is heightened by the presence of his son Uncas, 
Mohicans ^-j^g ^^^^ ^f ^he Mohican chiefs. The nobihty of these 
two savages is emphasized by the treachery of their Huron 
enemies, and Cooper evidently intended to present here both 
sides of the Indian character. The scenes of the story follow 
the old Indian war trail to the St. Lawrence, and from begin- 
ning to end we are in the midst of stirring adventure. That 
Cooper knows little of Indians and less of woodcraft, that 
many of his incidents are impossible, — all this seems of small 
consequence. The lure of the trail is upon us ; the excitement 
of moving incidents makes us forget probabilities ; we hurry on 
to the end, and lay down the book with the criticism that it is 
one of the best adventure stories we have ever read. 

Next in the series is The Pathfinder (1840), which takes us 

through the wilderness to the Great Lakes. Cooper considered 

this the best of his novels ; which is only another 
The Prairies ... . . 

indication that authors, like mothers, have incom- 
prehensible favorites among their children. Then comes The 
Pioneers, which we have already examined. At the end of this 
book the old hero turns his face westward, and we follow his 
last trail in The Prairie (1827). Leatherstocking is now a 
mere relic of the past ; his eye is too dim to sight his famous 
rifle ; he no longer follows a savage enemy ; and instead of his 
love of adventure we find the gentleness, the patience, the pro- 
found wisdom of old age. Contrasted with him are the restless 
squatters who disturb his solitude ; and to keep up our interest 
in good Indians we have the young Pawnee chief, a reincarna- 
tion of the vanished Uncas. There is an abundance of action 
and adventure ; over the scene broods the mystery of the illim- 
itable prairies ; and the old woodsman's last days among friendly 
Indians seem a fitting conclusion to the whole Leatherstocking 
drama, — which ends, as it began more than half a century 
earher, on the outer verge of the American frontier. 



220 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

In this romance Cooper treats us to a bit of psychology which 
almost startles us by its truth to life, by its contrast with his 
usual, unsatisfactory method of explaining human action. We 
refer to the rough-handed justice of old Ishmael and the terrible 
punishment of the criminal. That scene in which the old 
squatter returns at night to the place of judgment, his harsh 
nature subdued by the silent majesty of earth and heaven, is 
perhaps the strongest to be found in Cooper's sixty-odd 
volumes. Notwithstanding various inconsistencies in the por- 
trayal, the figure of Ishmael stands out at the end, bold, vigor- 
ous, commanding, like the silhouette of a blasted pine against 
the sunset. 

The Sea Stories. It was a daring venture in the early part of 
the last century, before Cooper and Herman Melville had begun 
to write the romance of the deep, to lay the scene of a story at 
sea. To the readers of that age it seemed incredible that any 
romantic interest could attach to a place that was associated in 
their minds with dangers or dizzy heads, with storm or wreck 
or loneliness unspeakable. In polite literature the ocean, except 
as one watched it safely from the shore, had been represented as 
the lifeless, maddening waste of ''The Ancient Mariner" ; in 
all churches it was coupled in hymns and litanies with perils 
and afflictions from which men prayed to be delivered ; in the 
Apocalypse one who had a vision of a new heaven and a new 
earth had written the significant line, ''And there was no more 
sea." That Cooper should overcome this general apprehension, 
making the ocean a place of romance rather than of fear, was 
in itself no small triumph. That he shared the general doubt 
of the success of his first sea venture appears from the fact 
that he "backed his anchor" by locating the half of his ro- 
mance on solid ground, where his audience felt more at home. 
Fate, however, seems to have played with the author ; the land 
incidents and the heroines which he inserted with the hope of 
interesting his readers only serv^ed to bore them, while his ships 
and seamen roused them to a new enthusiasm. 



THE FIRST NATIONAL PERIOD 221 

This first sea tale, The Pilot (1823), is by many critics re- 
garded as Cooper's best. The scene is laid off the English 

coast, which at a critical period in our Revolution 
The Pilot ' . . 1 1 1 • 

was thrown into a state 01 terror by the daring raids 

of one man in a swift ship, who alternately played with and 
defied the whole British navy. Interest in TJie Pilot is supposed 
to center in the mysterious Mr. Gray, who turns out to be the 
famous John Paul Jones in disguise. We confess, however, to 
finding him a foggy kind of character, utterly unlike our ideal 
of the gallant naval officer who first sent aloft the stars and 
stripes to float over a man-of-war, and who startled old England 
at her very gates as Coriolanus '' fluttered the Volscians." Far 
more interesting are the common sailors, especially Long Tom 
Coffin, a splendid type of the Nantucket seaman, and the most 
original of Cooper's characters. Aside from this vigorous figure, 
our interest is held by a succession of vivid sea pictures, such 
as working the ship offshore against the pressure of a landward 
gale, and the stirring flight of the American frigate. 

The Red Rover is our own favorite among the sea tales. ^ 
Indeed, if we were asked to recommend only one of Cooper's 
The Red books, we should name this in preference even to 
^over ^]^g best of the Leatherstocking romances. The plot 

is an absorbing one, and the action keeps us continually on the 
sea. The hero is an original and refreshing kind of pirate, and 
the minor characters, if not quite natural, are better than we 
commonly find in Cooper's romances. Among them we are 
glad to find one real woman, disguised as a boy but very differ- 
ent from the gay Rosalind, from whom Cooper may have taken 
the suggestion for his character. To many readers, however, 
the greatest charm of The Red Rover is found in its pictures 
of the sea, pictures so vividly, powerfully drawn that they fairly 
take us off-soundings ; we lose grip on solid ground and seem 
to view the scenes from the deck of a reeling ship. 

1 Other notable sea stories are Wing and Wing, The Two Admirals, Afloat and Ashore 
and The Water Witch. 



1 



222 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

General Characteristics. It is hardly too severe a criticism to 
say that, next to the vigor of Cooper's style, its most prominent 
quality is carelessness, ; — a confident, attractive kind of sang- 
froid, like that of the voyageur who steps into any canoe and 
takes up any kind of paddle, trusting his own strength and skill 
rather than his instruments to carry him to the end of his jour- 
H, ney. His matter is chiefly romantic and adventurous. The adven- 
>tures are such as delight healthy and vigorous young people, 
put they seldom appeal to mature readers who have accustomed 
themselves to the best work of English and American novelists. 

Aside from his careless style, his tedious moralizing and his 
insipid *' females,'\our chief criticism of Cooper is leveled at 
Cooper's his inaccuracy, his lack of harmony with his own 
Inaccuracy incidents and characters. We may overlook the fact 
that Leatherstocking talks at one moment like a book of eti- 
quette and then slips into the backwoods dialect ; but we can 
hardly forgive a novelist for making a master of Indian wood- 
craft do impossible feats at one point and flounder at the next 
like a tenderfoot on his first trail. The fact is that Cooper can 
give a splendid impression of sea and forest as a whole, but he 
is slovenly and inaccurate in details ; and to analyze his work is 
to spoil our first good impression. 

In The Last of the Mohicans, for instance, we see Indians 
trailing an enemy through an unbroken forest at midnight. 
Wonderful skill ! But the depths of a primeval forest are black 
as the pit at night ; one can hardly discern a moose there at 
arm's length, much less the print of a moccasin ; and the 
keenest woodsman is at a loss until he learns to look up, not 
down, and shape his course by the black bulk of trees against 
the lighter sky. Again, Chingachgook draws a beaver skin 
over his head, goes into a beaver lodge, and looks out of the 
door while his enemies pass by. Rare cunning ! But the 
beaver's lodge has no door or window ; its only entrance is a 
muddy tunnel under water ; there is no possible way for a man 
to get in without tearing the structure to pieces. In another 



THE FIRST NATIONAL PERIOD 223 

chapter Natty Bumppo, in order to save Uncas from torture, 
disguises himself in the skin of a black bear, waddles into the 
Huron camp, and readily fools the keen-eyed warriors. Marvel- 
ous ! But aside from the difficulty of fitting a man's long legs 
into the short stockings of a bear, we wonder what tailor-bird 
Natty found in the woods to sew him up in the skin, since 
safety pins were surely not among pioneer inventions. 

Enough of Cooper's faults ! They are many and easily seen, 
and the question arises, How does he find so many enthusiastic 
His Power readers .'' The answer is, simply, that his virtues are 
as a Writer great enough to outweigh his faults ; we overlook the 
latter as we forget the peculiarities of a relative who leaves us a 
goodly legacy. With all his shortcomings, he claims a leading 
place among American romancers, and his claim rests upon four 
solid foundations : First, he has a tale to tell, a stirring tale 
which moves the dullest reader out of his lethargy, making him 
long to do brave deeds and play his part manfully in the world. 
Second, he adds the two realms of sea and forest to fiction, and 
x:reates three new types of characters which never lose their 
charm. These are the noble Indian in Chingachgook, the 
woodsman in Natty> Bumppo, and the American sailor in Long 
Tom Coffin. Third, he has a vi vid imagination ; he invents 
new plots and adventures as easily as Longfellow makes rimes ; 
he paints the changing panorama of ocean and forest with a 
power that knows no doubt and feels no weariness. Follow, for 
example, the flight of that ship through five long chapters of 
The Red Rover. From the moment she clears the harbor, a 
stately, beautiful vessel, until she rolls as a helpless tub on the 
billows, while the pirate craft sweeps by like a storm-driven 
cloud, we have a series of descriptions of sea and storm which 
for sustained vigor have hardly a parallel in literature. Reading 
such scenes we appreciate Balzac's criticism : "If Cooper had 
succeeded in the painting of character to the same extent that 
he did in the painting of the phenomena of nature, he would 
have uttered the last word of our art." 



224 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Finally, all these romances have, like those of Scott, a brac- 
ing, healthful atmosphere. , In the sixteen books upon which 
his fame rests. Cooper leaves the '' problem " novel to others ; 
he writes in a hearty, wholesome way for young people who 
have no problems, and for men and women who would fain 
forget them. Here are no false situations, no forbidden topics,, 
no shadows of impurity. When with Cooper, we travel the open 
spaces, warmed with the sunshine, swept clean by the winds of 
God. Here are characters with the tang of brine and wood 
smoke in them ; stories of love, brave fighting and loyal friend- 
ships, which boys and men like to read because they deal in 
honest human nature. Since heroism and human nature are of 
abiding interest. Cooper's romances bid fair to justify Bryant's 
prediction, that they will last as long as the English language. ^ 



Edgar Allan Poe (i 809-1 849) 

Poe is a solitary figure, the Ishmael of letters. He stands 
apart in the peculiar quality of his work and in the tragedy of 
his life. A study of other notable American authors reveals 
four common characteristics : a reflection of the natural and 
social environment in which they lived, an embodiment of the 
national spirit, an emphasis on the moral and spiritual side of 
life, and generally a strength of character which makes us honor 
the man as well as his work. In Poe all these qualities are weak 
or wanting. Though he was a genius, his life saddens or repels 
us. One might rejoice in his suffering had anything been gained 
by it ; but lacking the noble, the vicarious element of human suf- 
fering, it fills us with profound regret. He belongs by ancestry 

1 Some of Cooper's works, notably The Spy and the Leatherstocking tales, are still 
widely read in practically every countr)' of Europe and South America, as well as in his 
own country. As an indication of the widespread interest in his earher romances we 
quote from S. F. B. Morse, the inventor of the telegraph, who writes (1833) as follows : 
" In every city of Europe that I visited the works of Cooper were conspicuously placed 
in the windows of every bookshop. They are published, as soon as he produces them, 
in thirty-four different places in Europe. They have been seen by American travellers in 
the languages of Turkey and Persia, in Egypt, at Jerusalem, at Ispahan." 



THE FIRST NATIONAL PERIOD 225 

and training to the South, but there is no reflection of place 
^ or of the American spirit in his work. He seems to have 
arrived among us not from patriotic ancestors, not from sunny 
Maryland, but as a wanderer from some outlandish region, 
saying as he comes : 

By a route obscure and lonely, 

Haunted by ill angels only, 

Where an Eidolon, named Night, 

On a black throne reigns upright, 

I have reached these lands but newly 

From an ultimate dim Thule — 

From a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime, 

Out of Space, out of Time.^ 

As Poe is the most solitsury, so also is he the most debatable 
figure in American letters. A tempest of criticism has raged 
The Poe around him for half a century, and as the storm is 
Controversy ^q^ yg^ Stilled, we venture to offer certain suggestions 
to the beginner. The first is, that criticism of Poe's character 
is no part of our literary business. Though a dozen biographies 
have appeared, and in hundreds of essays Poe has been bewrit- 
ten and befogged more than any other American author, the 
simple fact is that we do not yet know the details or motives of 
his life. How then should we judge him } In a brief, tragic 
career he accomplished certain works, unique in quality, remark- 
able even in quantity, considering the number of his days. These 
we may criticize freely, as part of our literary inheritance ; but 
we leave judgment of the man to one w^ho knows all the facts 
and the motives from which human actions proceed. 

A second suggestion is that Poe's life might seem more 
heroic if certain facts w^ere simply recorded and understood, 
instead of being hidden by one and emphasized by another 
biographer. It is plain that he was brought up to luxurious liv- 
ing ; that he was aftenvards thrown on the world to battle with 
poverty, and to see the woman he loved suffer from cold and 

iFrom Poe, " Dream Land." The whole poem should be read in this connection. 



226 



AMERICAN LITERATURE 



hunger. By inheritance and early training he had an appetite 
for strong drink, and when the inevitable struggle came his will 
was like a broken reed. He had the sensitiveness of genius, the 
pride of a gentleman ; yet he was compelled to accept charity 

from a world which then 
had no place for a poet, 
unless he became a teacher, 
like Longfellow, or had Bry- 
ant's ability to run a news- 
paper and make shrewd 
investments. That Poe 
created any enduring works 
while he fought a losing 
battle with himself or the 
world or the wolf at his 
door, and wandered like a 
laborer seeking a job from 
city to city, seems to us little 
short of marvelous. It is a 
glorious thing to strive, to 
run, when victory flits just 
ahead in plain sight ; but it 
requires a grimmer courage to struggle on, as Poe did, with no com- 
panion but failure. " So have I wondered at seeing a delicate 
forest bird leagues from the shore, keeping itself on the wing 
above relentless waters into which it was sure to fall at last." ^ 
A third suggestion may occur to one who studies a portrait of 
Poe and compares the two sides of the face : 

God be thanked, the meanest of His creatures 
Boasts two soul sides, — one to face the world with, 
One to show a woman when he loves her ! 

The last two lines, from Browning, fit Poe as if they were 
written for him. He had one unsympathetic side for the world ; 




'.:s 



EDGAR ALLAN POE 



iStedman, Poets of America^ p. 236. 



THE FIRST NATIONAL PERIOD 227 

but he showed another, tender and chivalrous, to the noble 
women who made his home and whose love was of the kind 
Poe's Double that beareth and believeth and hopeth and endureth 
Nature ^\\ things. This double nature is indicated in the 

prose tale '' William Wilson," and is suggested in nearly all of 
Poe's works ; for, like Byron, he had but one subject, all his 
characters being so many different reflections of himself. Note 
this description of the hero, in ''The Fall of the House 
of Usher " : 

" Yet the character of his face had been at all times remarkable. A 
cadaverousness of complexion ; an eye large, liquid, and luminous beyond 
comparison; lips somewhat thin and very pallid, but of a surpassingly 
beautiful curve ; a nose of delicate Hebrew model, but with a breadth of 
nostril unusual in similar formations ; a finely moulded chin, speaking in its 
want of prominence of a want of moral energy ; hair of a more than web-like 
softness and tenuity ; these features, with an inordinate expansion above 
the regions of the temple, made up altogether a countenance not easily to 
be forgotten." 

That is a fair description of the face which Poe saw in a 
looking-glass,^ and it foreshadows tragedy, as certain children's 
faces haunt us by the sad prophecy that is in them. The tragedy 
of his life consists not in poverty or suffering — for many 
great and noble men have endured these and glorified them — 
but in the fact that, having two natures, he allowed the weaker 
to triumph ; that, seeing the celestial vision, he despaired of 
attaining it and fell in the dust of the roadside. The vision and 
the failure are symbolized in the opening and closing stanzas of 
*' Israfel," one of the most suggestive of Poe's lyrics : 

In Heaven a spirit doth dwell 

' Whose heart-strings are a lute ' ; 

None sing so wildly well 

As the angel Israfel, 

And the giddy stars (so legends tell), 

Ceasing their hymns, attend the spell 
Of his voice, all mute. 

INote also Higginson's description, in S/iori Studies of American Authors, -p. 13. 



228 AMERICAN L1TP:RATURE 

If I could dwell 
Where Israfel 

Hath dwelt, and he where I, 
He might not sing so wildly well 

A mortal melody, 
While a bolder note than this might swell 

From my lyre within the sky. 

Life. One who plants a garden must have some preference for 
flowers or fruit and a w^illingness to work out his purpose ; else will the 
weeds, which require no cultivation, crowd in riotously to fill all vacant 
places. Even so, one who rears a child should from the beginning take 
some thought and do some faithful work in the direction of his moral 
education. This homily is founded on the text of Poe's life. Its tragedy 
was set in motion, its catastrophe made inevitable, long before Poe 
was old enough to know anything about such matters. 

His father — a descendant of patriotic ancestors in Maryland — 

had abandoned the study of law to become an actor. He married an 

Eno^lish actress, and while the two were playinsr an en- 
Early Life ^ . ' ,. „, ^.-o 

gagement m Boston their son Edgar was born, m 1809. 

The poor mother, on whose shoulders the burden of family support lay 

heavily, seems to have fought a hard and losing battle. Both parents 

died destitute in Richmond ; their children were adopted by different 

families, and Edgar found a home in the house of John Allan, a tobacco 

merchant. The next scene, foreshadowing the tragedy, shows a bright, 

attractive child standing on a chair, a glass of wine in his hand, offering 

a toast or a pretty speech to a thoughtless dinner company. 

The boy's education began in a private school. He went abroad 
with his foster parents, and for five years was a pupil in the Manor 
House School at Stoke Newington, near London. Then followed 
several years with private tutors in Richmond, and at seventeen he 
entered the University of Virginia. 

A study of Poe during these early years leaves certain impressions, 
which grow upon us as we read his works. At home he was treated 
First Impres- indulgently, and in the Virginia society of those days he 
sions of Poe acquired a polish, a neatness of appearance, a deference 
towards women, in a word, the indelible stamp of a gentleman ; but 
neither at home nor in society did he receive the sympathy which his 
soul craved, and he was always forming romantic attachments to 
women older than himself. Here, for instance, is his boyish love for 
the mother of one of his schoolmates, and his frantic despair at her 



THE FIRST NATIONAL PERIOD 229 

untimely death. She was the first of many Helens to whom he went 
for sympathy, and who reappear vaguely in his tales and poems. 

A second impression is that of Poe's aloofness. In school he made 
many acquaintances but no real friends ; for friendship requires giv- 
ing, the giving of one's self, and Poe was too self-centered to give 
himself unreservedly to anybody. The morbid unreality of his work, 
which critics explain as a manifestation of his strange genius, seems 
to us largely the result of his self-absorption, which kept him from 
knowing his fellow men. Like Manfred, he walked through the world 
without ever seeing humanity : 

From my youth upwards 
My spirit walk'd not with the souls of men, 
Nor looked upon the earth with human eyes ; 
The thirst of their ambition was not mine, 
The aim of their existence was not mine ; 
My joys, my griefs, my passions and my powers 
Made me a stranger ; though I wore the form, 
I had no sympathy with breathing flesh. ^ 

Poe's college life was short and unsatisfactory. He made a brilliant 
record in some studies, but he drank, gambled and ran deep into debt. 
Poe's At the end of the first year Mr. Allan took him from the 

Wanderings university and set him to work in the tobacco business. 
He stayed at his desk only a few months before he broke with his 
foster father and wandered out into the world. 

In Boston he signalized his new freedom by publishing a handful 
of poems ; '^ then, knowing no other way of earning a living, he enlisted 
in the army and served honorably for two years. At the death of 
Mrs. Allan he became reconciled to his foster father, who secured his 
appointment as a cadet to West Point. Here he made an excellent 
beginning, but presently he neglected his duties, was dismissed from 
the Military Academy, and drifted into the world again. Why he left 
an honorable career to starve on hack work has never been explained. 
We have only his own account of the matter, and that is untrustworthy. 

To the next few years belong the popular accounts of his wander- 
ings abroad and of his fighting with the Greeks, like Byron, — a myth 
for which Poe himself is largely responsible.^ The facts are that he went 

1 From Byron, Manfred^ 11,2. 

- Tamerlane and other Poems, by a Bosionian. Boston, 1827. 

3 In his correspondence with Lowell, Poe characterized a biographical notice contain- 
ing this myth and others as " correct in the main." 



230 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

to Baltimore and supported himself by writing for the newspapers, 
but not until he had tried and failed to secure a political appointment. 
His literary career may be dated from 1833, when his " Manuscript 
Found in a Bottle " won him a money prize -^ and the friendship of 
John P. Kennedy, who presently found a place for Poe on the staff 
of the Southern Literary Messenger. 

Poe now settled in Richmond, and a splendid career opened before 
him. While in Baltimore he had lived with his aunt, Mrs. Clemm, and 
her daughter Virginia, of whom he wrote long afterward : 

And this maiden she lived with no other thought 
Than to love and be loved by me. 

This cousin was but a child in her fourteenth year when Poe married 
her, in 1835. Her mother came with her to the new home in Rich- 
Life in mond, and in the lean years that followed, these two 
Richmond women were " as rivers of water in a dry place, as the 
shadow of a great rock in a. weary land." But the sky was blue and 
serene in those first days, the happiest that Poe ever knew. He had 
a home where love was ; his friends appreciated his ability ; the Mes- 
senger published his work and gave prominence to the criticisms that 
soon made him known in the literary world. Everything pointed to 
fame and fortune, when suddenly he left or was dismissed from the 
magazine and became a wanderer once more. 

Again we have conflicting accounts of the calamity. We do not 
know the facts ; we merely infer that a touchy humor, an ambition 
to run a magazine of his own, the curse of drink, ^ — all these entered 
into it. He moved to New York, to Philadelphia, then back to New 
York, repeating in each new abode the old story of failure. He joined 
the staffs of various magazines and newspapers, only to lose or re- 
sign his place just as success hovered over his head. He revised and 
republished his little volume of poems ; he sold and resold his tales 

1 Prizes were offered by the Baltimore Saturday Visitor for the best stor}' and the 
best poem. Poe easily won the first, and would have won the second by his fine poem 
" The Coliseum," had the conditions allowed a writer to win both prizes. Kennedy was 
one of the judges (see p. 248). 

2 Poe was not a habitual drinker. He would go for months, even years, without 
touching liquor. Then he would drink at some convivial gathering ; the drink became a 
spree, and was followed by a long period of suffering. For liquor always poisoned him. 
In the intervals he worked hard, and discharged his duties faithfully. Willis, editor of 
the New York Evening Mirror^ records of Poe (1844) that he was "a quiet, patient, 
industrious, and most gentlemanly person, commanding the utmost respect and good 
feeling by his unfailing deportment and polish." 



THE FIRST NATIONAL PERIOD 231 

and criticisms for a pittance ; when Cooper or Irving made a popular 
" hit " he would try a book in the same vein ; ^ and, like Goldsmith, 
he wrote textbooks on subjects of which he had only a smattering 
of knowledge. We mention these shifts and makeshifts simply to 
suggest that Poe's life was a struggle for daily bread, — a weary, 
anxious, heartbreaking struggle, unrelieved by comforts, made harder 
by lack of plain necessities. When his industry failed of reward 
Mrs. Clemm kept boarders. Only for that noble woman, genius must 
have starved and love gone cold. Meanwhile Virginia, the beautiful 
child wife, grew pale and paler before their troubled eyes. 

We pass rapidly over the remaining years, as one reads a tragedy 
which has reached its climax and hastens on to the catastrophe. In 
1844 he went with Virginia to New York, and his first 
letter to Mrs, Clemm is profoundly suggestive. He speaks 
of the journey ; of leaving " Sis " in the boat, because it was raining 
and her lungs were weak ; of his refusal to hire a cab because the 
driver, seeing his necessity, demanded a dollar for a ten-cent job ; 
of buying an umbrella, and of the boarding house they found in 
Greenwich Street. With the zest of a boy he goes on to describe the 
supper, its '' great dish of elegant ham," its slices of other good things 
" piled up like a mountain." It is said that geniuses are great eaters ; 
but here is a genius who is hungry, who has worked and despaired, 
who eats and is hopeful, and who rejoices because he can jingle a few 
coins in his pocket which may suffice till he find work again. It is all 
simple, natural, human. Unlike his elaborate tales, which fly off into 
the region of shadows, this poor letter ^ touches the heart of humanity. 

A new home was established in a little cottage in Fordham (now 
the Bronx) where Poe worked hard on a proposed history of American 
The Child literature. This curious work, which began with the present, 
Wife was never finished ; a part of it appeared serially in Godefs 

Lady s Book in 1846, and was published later as The Literati (1850). 
It consisted largely of critical or personal estimates of writers who 
were then living ; its chief effect was to make a number of petty 
enemies and raise a storm of hostile criticism that followed Poe to his 
death, and afterwards. Meanwhile Virginia grew very ill. There were 
no comforts in the house ; the desperate condition of the family may be 
judged from the fact that some friend, with more zeal than discretion, 

IThus, Voe's Jonrttal of Julius Rodman appeared (1838) the year after Irving's Ca^ 
tain Bonneville. There are several other instances of his " following the market." 
2 Quoted by Woodberry, Edgar Allan Poe, p, 201. 



232 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

made an appeal in the newspapers for charity. It was but a last drop 
added to a bitter cup, and Poe drank it to the dregs. Two letters of 
this period deserve attention for the light they throw on the author's 
home life. The first is from Poe to his wife : 

" My Dear Heart — My Dear Virginia — Our mother will explain to you 
why I stay away from you this night. I trust the interview I am promised 
will result in some substantial good for me — for your sake and hers. Keep 
up your heart in all hopefulness, and trust yet a little longer. On my last 
great disappointment I should have lost my courage but for you — my little 
darling wife. You are my greatest and only stimulus now, to battle with 
this uncongenial, unsatisfactory and ungrateful life. 

" I shall be with you to-morrow p.m., and be assured until I see you I will 
keep in loving remembrance your last words and your fervent prayer. 

" Sleep well and may God grant you a peaceful summer with your devoted 

" Edgar." 

The second is from a friend who visited the family in the bleak 
winter season : 



«t 



, . There was no clothing on the bed, which was only straw, but a 
snow-white counterpane and sheets. The weather was cold, and the sick 
lady had the dreadful chills that accompany the hectic fever of consumption. 
She lay on the straw bed, wrapped in her husband's greatcoat, with a large 
tortoise-shell cat on her bosom. . . . The coat and the cat were the sufferer's 
only means of warmth, except as her husband held her hands and her 
mother her feet. Mrs. Clemm was passionately fond of her daughter, and 
her distress on account of her illness and poverty and misery was dreadful 



to see." 



Such a picture is fortunately unique in our literary history. When 
a strong man goes down in the waste of the far North, battling alone 
with cold or hunger, the natives speak of it as " cruel hard " ; what it 
was for a poet, in a wealthy city, to watch an idolized woman die with- 
out suitable food or clothing must be left to the imagination. 

Fear no more the heat of the sun 
Nor the furious winter's rages. ^ 

We quote the lines softly to ourselves when the curtain falls on the 
terrible scene, early in 1847. But our eyes still follow that lonely, 
grief-stricken figure which follows on foot to the grave, wrapped in 
the same coat that had kept his Virginia warm when living. 

iFrom the Dirge, in Cymbclitie, IV, 2. 



THE FIRST NATIONAL PERIOD 233 

Into the details of the next few frenzied years we do not care to 

enter. That Poe was ill and suffering is evident enough ; that he was 

also mentally unbalanced has not occurred to some of his 
The Tragedy . . ,^r , • • i • n • 

critics. We hear it m the ravings 01 his speech and letters ; 

we suspect it in " Ulalume " and '' Annie," with their mixture of 

genius and madness, and even in '' Annabel Lee," which voices his 

love and grief for his dead wife, but which runs to a measure that is 

gay rather than sorrowful. 

After two unmanly years, which we would fain forget, Poe became 

engaged to a widow (Mrs. Shelton) of Richmond. Generous friends 

raised a fund to give him a new start, and hopefully, with money in 

his pocket, he began the journey to New York, intending to settle his 

affairs and return quickly to Richmond, to love and a new life. Three 

days later he was found unconscious in Baltimore and died in the 

hospital there without telling what had happened. It was Longfellow 

who suggested that these two lines should be written on his monument : 

And the fever called Living 
Is conquered at last.^ 

Poe^s Critical Work. For a long period after Poe's death our 
critics, in their zeal to judge the man, overlooked the originality 
and power of his writing. At the present time the pendulum 
swings the other way ; the tendency is to forget the v^eakness 
of the man and to overestimate the value of his work. Between 
the first and the latest judgment sixty years have passed. Dur- 
ing practically all that time Poe has challenged attention. Many 
critics have assailed, but none could have safely ignored him. 
He has also, perhaps, to a greater degree than any other Amer- 
ican author, laid his spell upon writers at home and abroad. 
Therefore, though the greater part of his work repels the ordi- 
nary reader, let us go softly about the task of judging it. His 
various productions fall naturally into three classes, — literary 
criticisms, prose tales, and lyrics. By the first he was chiefly 
known while living ; by the last he will probably be longest 
remembered. 

1 From Poe, " For Annie," a half-mad lyric, written after the loss of Virginia. The 
monument was erected in Baltimore, many years after Poe's death. 



234 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

In his critical work, beginning about the year 1835, Poe at- 
tempted to carry out in this country the purpose of Coleridge. ^ 
By that time America's opinion of her own literature was very 
different from what it had been in the days when the editors of 
the North American Review refused to believe (1817) that 
" Thanatopsis " was the work of an American, and when Cooper, 
in order to gain favorable notice of his PrecaiUion (1820), pub- 
lished it as the romance of an alleged English author. Influ- 
enced by the success of Br)''ant, and perhaps excited by the 
honors awarded to Irving and Cooper in Europe, our writers 
went to the opposite extreme in glorifying our literary produc- 
tions. The critical faculty began to be exercised by a few men, 
each in his local *' school " at New York or Charleston, who 
praised each other's work immoderately, with somewhat more 
of patriotic pride or generosity than of discernment. In the 
Sojithern Literary Messejiger, Poe characterized such efforts as 
the work of a mutual admiration society ; he declared his pur- 
pose to criticize '' independently and fearlessly, in accordance 
with established literary standards." So far he did well, and 
he marks the beginning of true criticism in this country. He 
was certainly independent and fearless ; he had also the in- 
sight to recognize such writers as Hawthorne, Tennyson and 
Mrs. Browning before the world was aware of their genius. 
We wish we could add that he was also wise, impersonal and 
just, but such is not the fact. His own conception of poetry^ 
made him narrow-minded, and he let personalities prejudice his 
judgment. This part of his work, therefore, is of little interest 
except to critics, who consider that his theory of composition — 
of the short story especially — is worthy of careful attention. 

1 Wordsworth and Coleridge were among the leaders of the Romantic movement in 
English literature. Bryant, by his nature poetry, carried out the purpose of Wordsworth ; 
while Poe seems to have been more or less a follower of Coleridge. This shows itself in 
his literary criticisms, and especially in his phantasmal themes, which suggest Coleridge's 
Christabel and The Ancient Mariner. 

2 See, for instance, his " Poetic Principle " and the " Rationale of Verse." Poe held 
that a poem should produce a single impression ; that it should deal with beauty alone; 
and that it must be short. 



THE FIRST NATIONAL PERIOD 235 

Poe's Tales. It is said that America's most significant con- 
tribution to general literature is the short story. Whatever honor 
is due us on that account should be offered largely to Irving and 
Poe. If the latter is not the actual discoverer of the modern 
short story, 1 as some critics allege, he at least brought it by his 
own effort to a high state of development. At the present time 
his influence extends to numberless writers, at home and abroad, 
who are making the short story the most popular form of litera- 
ture. This influence is the more remarkable because it is due 
wholly to Poe's method of work, not to any interest attached to 
his subject ; for unlike Irving, whose subjects were mostly at- 
tractive, Poe's matter is generally abnormal and repulsive. We 
shall examine here a few groups of stories that illustrate the 
author's peculiar genius. 

''The Gold Bug" is the most readable of the so-called ana- 
lytical stories, that is, stories which center in a mystery to be 
Analytical solved, and which are supposed to stimulate that 
Tales peculiar form of mental activity suggested by the 

words '' following a clue." In such stories Poe was in his ele- 
ment ; he had a keen, analytical mind that delighted in solving 
puzzles and cryptograms. This appears in " The Gold Bug," 
in which he uses his expert knowledge of cipher writing to find 
a pirate's buried treasure. The theme is old, but Poe shows his 
originality by making our interest center not in the greed of 
finding an immense store of gold and jewels, as a lesser writer 
would surely have done, but in the reading of Captain Kidd's 
cryptic message, which tells where the treasure is hidden. 

Three other notable stories of this mental-puzzle class are 
" The Murders in the Rue Morgue," '' The Mystery of Marie 
Roget " and '' The Purloined Letter." These are remarkable 



1 Certain critics regard the Short-story (written with capital and hyphen) as a distinct, 
modem type of literature, differing in structure and essentials from a short romance or 
a short novel. Its chief characteristics are " ingenuity, originality and compression." 
Most of these critics regard Poe, rather than Irving, as the discoverer of this type. See 
Matthews, T/ie Philosophy of the Short-story (igoi), and Smith, The American Short 
Story (1912). The latter includes a good bibliography of the subject. 



236 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

for two things : they portray the only real character, Dupin, to 
be found in Poe's writings ; and they mark the beginning of 
the flood of modern detective stories. Old Sleuth, Sherlock 
Holmes and all the rest of the tribe are copies of Dupin ; and 
Kipling's '' Bimi " was probably suggested by a grotesque inci- 
dent in Poe's '' Murders in the Rue Morgue." 

In his allegorical tales Poe uses some external object or event 
to symbolize a mental experience and, incidentally perhaps, to 
point a moral lesson. ^ '' The Black Cat " and "The 
Telltale Heart " are good examples of this class. 
They illustrate the author's ability to grip and horrify his read- 
ers ; but they are repulsive stories, though cunningly worked out, 
and their characters are not human beings but rather faces, — wild 
or expressionless faces, upon which insanity has set its awful seal. 

''William Wilson" seems to us the most suggestive and 
wholesome of the allegorical tales. It contains some biographical 
material from Poe's English schooldays, and in this respect, as 
being even remotely connected with his own experience, it is 
unique among his stories. Conscience here assumes the form 
and substance of a man, who appears at every crisis of the hero's 
life and points out to him the ways of good and evil. The tale 
is an allegory of man's double nature ; one who reads it must 
recognize Poe's influence over Stevenson (in Dr. Jekyll and 
Mr. Hyde) and other writers who make use of the dual per- 
sonality as a motive of their stories. 

The pseudoscientific tales, with their smattering of science 
and their extravagant adventure, are a type of romance associ- 
Science and ^ted with the name of Jules Verne, who belongs 
Adventure unquestionably to Poe's school. Two of the best of 
these tales are '* A Descent into the Maelstrom," a wonderful bit 
of imaginative and descriptive writing, and '' The Unparallelled 
Adventure of One Hans Pfaal," describing a trip to the moon. 

1 The moral is evident, but we do not wish to imply that these stories were written 
with a moral purpose. Poe's only aim was to produce a startling " effect." See " The 
Tale Writer and His Art," in The Literati. 



THE FIRST NATIONAL PERIOD 237 

There is a parade here of some superficial scientific knowledge, 
but this is quickly forgotten by one who feels the power of Poe's 
imagination, who hears the appalling roar of waters, or looks down 
with reeling senses from a stupendous height. We can readily 
believe that the hero's hair turned white in the maelstrom ; our 
own hair feels a shade lighter after merely reading about it.^ 

We have examined enough of Poe's stories to appreciate the 
title Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque (1839) which he 
Tales of g^ve to his collection. The climax of his uncanny 
Horror power is reached in his tales of preternatural horrors. 

In some of these he makes use of the fascination of terror, of 
the hypnotic spell which fear casts upon certain minds ; in 
others he appeals to that morbid interest which leads some 
men to read the revolting details of a murder, for instance, or 
to carry away ghastly souvenirs of a holocaust. Perhaps the 
most typical of these gruesome stories are '' The Fall of the 
House of Usher " and '' Ligeia," in which he makes use of a 
favorite theory, or hallucination, that the will survives for a time 
in the body of a person after death. There are two widely dif- 
ferent ways of looking at these and all other stories of the 
same class ; which are, in general, realistic descriptions of 
morbidness or insanity, and of the spectral horrors which are 
ignorantly associated with groans and graveyards at midnight. 
One critic sees in them Poe's wonderful mastery of technic, and 
his artistic handling of two legitimate motives : the fascination 
of fear, and the appeal of the horrible. Another sees, chiefly, 
an indication of Poe's abnormal imagination, of his lack of 
sanity and moral balance ; and to such a critic the '' art " of 
these stories resembles a mere artifice, a stage trick to produce 
an effect. It is obviously impossible to reconcile such views ; 
hence the endless controversy over Poe's works. Considered 

iTo the same pseudoscientific class belong Poe's two attempts at sustained story: 

The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket^ a bloodcurdling sea story ; and The 

Journal of Julius Rodman, a story of Western adventure. In Eureka, a Prose Poem, with 

an amateur's knowledge of astronomy and metaphysics, Poe attempts to explain the 

creation and present state of the universe. 



238 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

not as an ordinary story but as an impression, the '' House of 
Usher " is a remarkable piece of Hterary work ; and even one 
who disUkes the somber impression is forced to admire the 
skillful way in which it is produced. It is one of the best 
examples of the so-called story of atmosphere to be found in 
English or any other language. 

A little more wholesome, but still moving in the realm of 
phantoms, is the '' Manuscript Found in a Bottle." This is a 
powerfully realistic story of a man who found himself aboard a 
specter ship with a silent crew of ghosts — a veritable Flying 
Dutchman of the Antarctic ^ cruising endlessly over seas of 
eternal darkness and desolation. To the same class, but sug- 
gesting the more delicate imagination of some of his poems, be- 
long the strange group of tales concerning disembodied spirits, 
such as ''The Colloquy of Monas and Una," and also the two 
little sketches, ''Shadow" and "Silence," which lay a spell 
upon us but which we do not attempt to classify or to explain. 

Poe attempted many humorous stories such as " The Devil 
in the Belfry," but they do not attract us. Unlike the true 
Misceiiane- humorist, who laughs with men, Poe laughs at them ; 
ous Tales he lacks the deep undercurrent of sympathy and 
human kindness, without which humor is artificial and without 
understanding. Much more interesting than these humorous 
attempts are certain miscellaneous stories: "The Masque of 
the Red Death," a powerful but meaningless story of pesti- 
lence ; "The Pit and the Pendulum," describing the horrors 
of torture during the Inquisition ; " The Cask of Amontillado," 
a study of revenge as practiced by the Italians; and "The 
Assignation," a melodramatic story of love as it might have 
been in Venice. In the last-named story Poe's originality is 
strikingly evident. The theme is an old one, which has been 
used in the same way over and over again by Italian and 
French romancers ; but Poe avoids the usual, vulgar intrigue and 
makes the interest of his story center in the utterly unexpected 
character of the meeting between two lovers. 



THE FIRST NATIONAL PERIOD 239 

The Poetry of Poe. Recently a cultured woman was found read- 
ing Poe's ''Ulalume" and a few other lyrics, which she thought 
very beautiful. '' And what do they mean to you ? " was asked. 
" Nothing, absolutely nothing," she said ; '' I don't understand a 
word of them. I read them just for the mood or the melody." 

This criticism is so nearly perfect that we are tempted to 
leave the subject here ; but we must try to understand, if possi- 
ble, Poe's motive in writing beautiful but apparently meaning- 
less verse. His theory was that poetry must concern itself, not 
with life or truth or nature, but with beauty alone ; that the 
beauty, because it is of a ''supernal" kind, must always be 
associated with melancholy ; that the most beautiful imaginable 
object is a beautiful woman, and the greatest possible sorrow is 
the loss of such a being ; that the true poem, therefore, must 
be a kind of dirge, a lament for the death of beauty in the form 
of woman. Hence Poe's succession of shadowy Helens and 
Lenores ; hence his despair and lamentation at their untimely 
death. To the mature mind this is an abnormal, a diseased 
conception of poetry, but w^e must harbor it for a moment if 
we are to appreciate Poe's verse ; for with a few brilliant ex- 
ceptions, like ''The Coliseum" and "The Bells," he follows 
his theory and has but two subjects: his lost beauty, and his 
own woe. 

With this introduction, we leave the reader with the melodious 
lyrics in which Poe has added variety and color to our poetry. 
For an expression of his prevailing mood, we suggest " To 
Helen," 1 "Ulalume," "The Raven," "To One in Paradise," 
" Lenore," the song " Ligeia" (from At Aaraaf), "A Dream 
within a Dream," " Eulalie," " F'or Annie," "The Sleeper" 
and "Annabel Lee." For variety we add " Israfel," the noble 
" Coliseum," 2 the melodious "Bells," the lurid "City in the 

1 This refers to the first of the " Helen " poems, beginning, " Helen, thy beauty is 
to me." We know not who inspired this exquisite lyric. There is another " To Helen," 
inspired, it is said, by Poe's first sight of Mrs. Whitman. 

2 This poem is more remarkable from the fact that Poe never saw the Coliseum. 
See Byron's description of the same ruins in Childe Harold^ Canto IV, stanza 114. 



240 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Sea," the phantasmal '' Haunted Palace " and the terrible alle- 
gory of '' The Conqueror Worm." 

Here, in a dozen pages, we have the quintessence of Poe's 
genius. Aside from the melody, the first thing to attract us is 
Quality of ^he variety of verse forms. Poe maintained that each 
his Poems poem must have a distinct individuality, which he 
secured by varying the rime, meter and refrain. The second 
noticeable quality is the narrow range and monotony of the sub- 
ject ; for nearly all these poems are but variations of a single 
mood, — a dull, helpless, hopeless mood, suggesting Coleridge's 
''Ode to Dejection." Love, loss, despair; love, loss, despair, 
— the melancholy burden runs through the verse like the drip, 
drip of rain from a roof. Poe makes a lyric out of his despair, 
just as Chopin weaves the monotony of falling raindrops into 
his most perfect '' Prelude " ; but exquisite as they are, lyric 
and prelude are alike unbearable if long continued. The charm 
of these poems, which rank with the greatest of their kind in 
our literature, is that their form is exquisitely finished ; that 
they are a true reflection of the despairing mood which pro- 
duced them ; and that, long after our reading, they haunt us 
like a strain of sad, wild music. Their weakness lies in the 
fact that their impulse came not from healthy life but from 
nerves ; and that, unlike most of the poems which we cherish, 
they have no message or inspiration for humanity. 

General Characteristics. In a book of rhetoric Poe's style 
would probably be termed '' adequate," but the word does not 
Poe's satisfy us. His aim in every work was to make a 

Method single strong impression. In this aim he is like the 

sensational writer of our own day, though his method is entirely 
different. Any shouting will attract attention, but Poe never 
shouts. He first decides what effect or impression he wants to 
create ; then from first word to last he makes every incident, 
every character, every description bear steadily upon that prede- 
termined impression. When the effect is so vivid that even the 
dullest readers must feel it, the tale ends. Herein Poe is utterly 



THE FIRST NATIONAL PERIOD 241 

unlike Hawthorne, who when he began a tale often had no idea 
how it would turn out. If we remember how an artist finishes 
a portrait, with here a touch of light or there a deeper shadow, 
and then think of Poe as painting a mental picture of horror, 
with lurid lights and shadows of gross darkness, we shall have 
a suggestion of his method. His impression is seldom a whole- 
some one ; what he does may not seem worth doing ; but we 
must confess that it is invariably well done. Effectiveness, there- 
fore, is the chief quality of his style ; and it is this effectiveness, 
this almost perfect accomplishment of what he aims to do, that 
leads critics to rate Poe as a master of the short story. 

In vFew of this analysis of Poe's method it seems ridiculous, 
as if one were to bump his head against a moonbeam, to say 
that the chief characteristic of his matter is its un- 
reality ; but such is the fact. There are no such 
things as his cats, ghouls, demons, and mere ghosts of charac- 
ters ; and the only way to account for their effect is to remem- 
ber that unrealities may make a strong impression in a lonely 
old ruin at night, — which is where we commonly imagine our- 
selves to be while reading Poe. He dwells in a land of phan- 
toms that flit about like bats in the darkness ; he is chiefly 
occupied with shadows, not natural shadows, suggestive of sub- 
stance and light, but spectral shadows that do perverse things, ^ 
— as in his famous '' Raven," for instance, where the shadow 
comes down to the floor instead of remaining on the ceiling, 
where it properly belongs : 

And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, sfi7l is sitting 
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door ; 
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming, 
And the lamplight o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor ; 
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor 
Shall be lifted — nevermore ! ^ 

1 Note the shadows in the tale " Ligeia," and in " Shadow, a Parable." 

2 Poe has described the elaborate way in which he prepared " The Raven " (see his 
" Philosophy of Composition "). A controversy arose immediately over the question of 
how much Poe was indebted in this poem to another Southern poet, Dr. Chivers of 



242 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Generalization is always dangerous, and often unjust, but it 
would seem, as Lanier suggested, that Poe's work as a whole 
is lacking in some necessary intellectual quality. Great literature 
owes its power to a combination of ideas and imagination, of 
strong intellect and profound emotion. It has meaning as well 
as form, truth as well as beauty ; and to read it is to have a 
better understanding of life. A candid study of Poe's work 
shows that the greater part of it is simply emotional and, there- 
fore, more or less unbalanced and disordered. 

It is hardly necessary to point out that, since Poe deals with 
unrealities, nature and humanity are not reflected in his w^ork. 
He gives us many descriptions, but the light is ghastly 
and the landscape not of earth. He depicts a hun- 
dred characters, but, with the possible exception of Dupin, there 
is not a man or a woman among them. Perhaps the chief reason 
for his weakness here is that he seeks not truth but an effect ; 
he never stands aside to let nature or man or history speak its 
own message, but uses these as looking-glasses or sounding 
boards to reflect himself or his ow^n voice. Another reason is 
that Poe is so self-centered that he cannot put himself in the 
place of another ; his chief characters are all repetitions of him- 
self or of his shadow. He is like a modern illustrator who draws 
one picture that interests us, and then a hundred more that soon 
grow wearisome, since they are all from the same model, and all 
like the first save for the pose or the clothing. In the story of 
'' The Gold Bug," for instance, there are two chief characters, the 
hero and his negro servant Jupiter. The hero is Poe with his love 
of cryptograms, and Jupiter is as much a Bushman or an Eskimo 
as a Southern negro. So in all his works, Poe's hero is invariably 
himself ; the rest of his characters are shadows or nonentities. 

Georgia. (See Woodberry, '' The Poe-Chivers Papers," in T/ie Cenhiry, Januar>'-Feb- 
ruary, 1903 ; also " Poe and Chivers," in the Virginia edition of Poe's Works, Vol. VII.) 
It was Stedman, we think, who first pointed out that Poe evidently borrowed from 
Mrs. Browning rather than from Chivers. Compare, for instance, the third stanza of 
" The Raven," beginning, " And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple cur- 
tain," with that stanza in " Lady Geraldine's Courtship " beginning, " With a murmurous 
stir uncertain, in the air the purple curtain." 



THE FIRST NATIONAL PERIOD 243 

Our final characterization takes the form of a question, which 
the student must answer for himself. As we have noted, many 
Artist or critics at hom.e and abroad regard Poe as a great lit- 
Craftsman ? erary artist ; others regard him as a cunning worker 
in stage effects ; and these men honestly differ because of their 
different conceptions of art, one being content with ''art for 
art's sake," the other insisting that art must be steadily viewed 
in its relation to humanity. Those who regard art as inspired 
first of all by a vision of truth, and who would define art as 
the expression of life in forms that give pleasure by appeal- 
ing to our sense of the true, the good, and the beautiful, will 
probably hesitate over the greater part of Poe's work. With 
normal life his prose has little or nothing to do ; and his poetry 
was the result of a theory of beauty that hardly included either 
truth or goodness.^ That his work was "'beautifully done," 
meaning that it was adequately or effectively done, cannot be 
questioned. Shall we therefore class it with the great pictures 
and the great poems which, in addition to their excellence of 
form, have the power to inspire humanity by revealing the glory 
of the imperfect and the beauty of the commonplace .? And 
shall we apply the term "art" or "craft" to Poe's expression 
of our human life in literature? 

William Gilmore Simms (i 806-1 870) 

Simms, like Bayard Taylor, is an author who impresses us 
more by the greatness of his aim than by his achievement. The 
bulk of his work is now almost forgotten, but there are three 
things concerning the man that are worthy to be remembered : 
his brave struggle against adversity ; his devotion to the profes- 
sion of letters, at a time when only two other men in America 
were living by their pens ; and the influence of his work in the 
direction of a national rather than a sectional literature. W'e shall 

1 Poe's theory of art should be compared here with that of another Southern poet, 
Lanier (see following chapter). 



244 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

study him here as an American, rather than a Southern, writer 
who deserves an honored place in our literary records. ^ 

Biographical Outline. Simms was born and reared in Charleston, 
South Carolina. He was a poor boy who, unlike Poe or Kennedy, 
knew little of the comfort and social culture which we associate with 
Southern life. His mother died when he was a child ; his father moved 
westward with the pioneers, leaving him in the care of a grandmother, 
who told him stirring tales and sang to him many a ballad of the Revo- 
lution. In this way was his ambition first stirred to write the romance 
of his country. We remember in this connection the childhood of an- 
other romanticist, Walter Scott, whose impulse to literature came from 
listening to his grandmother's tales and ballads of the Scottish border. 

There is another parallel nearer home. Like his Northern contem- 
porary Bryant, the young Simms was well acquainted with hard work ; 
like him he studied law, while cherishing the ambition to become his 
country's poet ; and like him he abandoned the courts (1827) to follow 
his heart into the wide world of letters. For the next forty years he 
was both creator and encourager of literature, doing his best by lec- 
tures and essays to promote the appreciation of good books among 
his countrymen. He was for a long time the central figure in the 
Charleston '' school," a group of literary men which included Timrod 
and Hayne, who later became famous as Southern poets ; and he was 
always in the best sense a citizen, playing his part manfully in the 
affairs of his native state. We cannot enter into the details of his 
career ; but one who reads the story of his life will find it an epitome 
of the history of the Carolinas, from the " great debate " between 
Calhoun and Webster to the close of the Civil War. 

Variety of Simms's Work. The breadth of Simms's literary 
taste stamps him as one of the notable men of our First National 
period. His thirty-odd romances of Colonial and Revolutionary 
days represent only a small part of his accomplishment. By con- 
stant study and travel he made himself an authority on local his- 
tory, and his History of SoiUh Carolina and his South Carolifia 

1 The student may doubt the propriety of placing Simms in a period which ends, 
nominally, in 1840, since a large part of his work was published after that date. The same 
is true of Bryant. As we have noted, literary periods cannot be strictly defined or 
observed. We study Simms here simply because he seems to belong with the earlier 
rather than with the later national writers. Hawthorne, who is often studied in the 
earlier group, will be considered in the next chapter. 



THE FIRST NATIONAL PERIOD 245 

171 the Revohitioii are still standard works. As a biographer, 
Irving is the only man of this period to be compared with him. 
While Irving, with one conspicuous exception, went abroad for 
his heroes, Simms was content to bide at home and, in such 
works as his lives of Marion and Greene, to show the heroism 
that glorified his own people. He was a poet also, with several 
volumes to his credit, and desired to be remembered as a bard 
rather than as a novelist. In addition to all this he wrote plays, 
short stories, literary and political essays ; he edited magazines, 
and was an editor also of some of Shakespeare's dramas. 

One good result of all this work was to broaden and national- 
ize the spirit of our literature. We are to remember that there 
was at this time a New England, a Knickerbocker, and a 
Southern '' school " ; that '* literary centers " were emphasized, 
and that each of a dozen cities considered itself the real hub of 
the American world of letters. Against all this narrowness and 
provincialism Simms's efforts were quietly, steadily directed. His 
border tales cover a dozen states and have a national rather than 
a sectional appeal. His Revolutionary romances are all laid in 
the South ; but in this he rightly followed the example of most 
novelists, who present general truths or ideals under local con- 
ditions, and who do their best work amid scenes and characters 
with which they have been familiar from childhood. He has 
been called " the Cooper of the South " ; but the criticism pro- 
ceeds on the unwarranted assumption that Cooper belongs to 
the North exclusively. It is not the Southerner or the Northerner 
but the American that appeals to us in the heroes of Simms and 
Cooper. Moreover, Simms lived for a time in the North, where 
many of his books were published ; he had readers in every 
state ; he was in friendly correspondence with all the important 
literary men of the nation. He exercised, therefore, a whole- 
some unifying influence on our sadly divided world of letters.^ 

1 During the Civil War, Simms shared the loss and suffering of his native state. 
Some of his late works follow the spirit of the minor writers, who ally literature with 
politics or geography, and so make it sectional. 



246 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

It is a pity, in view of Simms's aim and endeavor, that we 
cannot heartily recommend his books ; but the fact is that he 
Quality of wrote too hurriedly, too carelessly, too sensationally 
simms ^^ times, to produce a work of enduring interest. He 

has many of Cooper's faults, of slipshod style and tedious moral- 
izing; but he has also some of Cooper's virtues: an eye for pic- 
turesque effects, a love of stirring adventure, an ability to find 
sentiment and chivalry under a rough exterior. In addition, he 
can portray the character of a gentleman, which Cooper could 
never do, and some of his heroines are in pleasant contrast to 
Cooper's ''females" ; but he lacks the rugged strength, the epic 
interest of Cooper's best work, and his books have never re- 
ceived or deserved such attention as is given to The Spy, The 
Red Rover and the drama of Leatherstocking. 

The Yemassee (1835), a story of Indian warfare in Colonial 
da3^s, and The Pmiisan (1835), a romance of the Revolution, 
are generally considered the best of Simms's romances. The 
reader will find some highly colored sketches of frontier life in 
his short stories, such as are included in The Wigivarn and the 
Cabin; and in ''The Lost Pleiad" and "The Poet's Vision" 
a suggestion of Simms's talent and of his limitation as a poet. 
The last sonnet is so characteristic of the author, and so good 
in itself, that we quote it entire : 

Upon the Poet's soul they flash forever, 

In evening shades, these glimpses strange and sweet: 

They fill his heart betimes, — they leave him never, 

And haunt his steps with sounds of falling feet ; 

He walks beside a mystery night and day ; 

Still wanders where the sacred spring is hidden ; 

Yet, would he take the seal from the forbidden, 

Then must he work and watch as well as pray. 

How work? How watch? Beside him, in his way, 

Springs without check the flow'r by whose choice spell — 

More potent than " herb moly " — he can tell 

Where the stream rises, and the waters play. 

Ah ! spirits call'd avail not. On his eyes, 

Sealed up with stubborn clay, the darkness lies. 



THE FIRST NATIONAL PERIOD 247 

III. MINOR FICTION OF THE FIRST NATIONAL PERIOD 

With the tales of Irving, Cooper and Poe we have considered 
all the fiction of the period that seems destined to a permanent 
place in our literature. There were many other romancers, how- 
ever, some with ten, others with fifty volumes to their credit. 
A few of their works, such as Miss Sedgwick's Redzvood {1^2^), 
were more widely read in Europe than were the works of Poe 
or Irving ; many others were as dear to our grandmothers as 
are the romances of Crawford or Louisa Alcott to the present 
generation. Among these dust-covered books one may still find 
many suggestive pages. Susanna Rowson's Charlotte Ternple is 
a type of the early novel of '' sensibility," once extremely popu- 
lar but now forgotten.^ Catherine Sedgwick's Redzvood, Hope 
Leslie and The Linzvoods contain excellent pictures of American 
home life, and are notable as the beginning of the novel of 
character and manners, so finely developed in our time by 
Miss Jewett and Miss Wilkins. And here are the stirring Typee^ 
White Jacket^ Moby Dick and other stories of the deep by 
Herman Melville,^ of whom a modern sea novelist, Clark Russell, 
writes enthusiastically : 

" A famous man he was in those far days when every sea was bright 
with the American flag, when the cotton-white canvas shone star-Hke on 
the horizon. . . . Famous he was ; now he is neglected ; yet his name and 
his work will not die. He is a great figure in shadow; but the shadow is 
not that of oblivion." 

Better known than Melville's work is a veritable classic of 
the sea written by R. H. Dana, Jr., and called Tzvo Years before 
the Mast (1840). This book, which deals with the author's ex- 
perience in such a graphic way that it reads like a romance, was 
officially recognized abroad when the admiralty adopted it for use 
in the British navy. At home its great popularity has hardly yet 
waned ; after more than half a century we can still recommend 

1 See p. 159 and p. i6o, note. 

2 Melville grew up in this period and shared its spirit ; but the student will note that 
his books were published after 1840. 



248 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

it as a virile, wholesome story, and as probably the best reflection 
of sailor life in the old days when American ships and seamen 
were known and honored the world over. 

The two chief characteristics of all these story writers — 
Simms, Kennedy, Paulding, Ware, Judd, Dana, Sarah Hale, 
Lydia Child and many others — were their intense 
^°°^ ^ patriotism and their interest in national history which 
led them to seek literary material in the annals of Colonial and 
Revolutionary days. Among a hundred of their books, we would 
especially recommend the Swallow Barn and Horse-Shoe Robin- 
son of John Pendleton Kennedy (i 795-1 870), who is personally 
interesting to us for two reasons : for having befriended Poe 
and given him a start in literature, and for furnishing Thackeray 
with some material for The Virginians} His Swallow Barn 
(1832) is a series of sketches rather than a connected story, de- 
scribing country life in Virginia in the olden time. The idea is 
plainly borrowed from Sir Roger de Coverley, and the style sug- 
gests the influence of Irving, to whom the book is dedicated ; but 
one must not conclude from this that Kennedy's work is merely 
imitative. Swallow Barn is a kindly, human book, reflecting 
the fine personality of the author and the charm of old-fashioned 
plantation life, which was even then passing away. Of all the 
minor works of the period, it seems to us the best worth reading. 

Horse-Shoe Robinson (1835) is a romance dealing with the 
Revolution in South Carolina. It is somewhat crudely and hur- 
riedly written, but its patriotic interest and stirring adventure 
made it instantly popular. It was speedily dramatized, and for 
years held an honored place on the American stage. It should 
be read, if possible, in connection with The Spy of Cooper, as 
these are the only two romances of the Revolution that have 
ever won general recognition. 

1 The friendship of Thackeray and Kennedy began in Paris. When The Virginiatis 
was appearing, in serial form, Kennedy is said to have written the fourth chapter of the 
second book, describing Warrington's escape in the region of the Cumberland. Kennedy 
knew this region well ; but whether he actually wrote the chapter or merely furnished 
the material is undecided. 



THE FIRST NATIONAL PERIOD 249 

IV. MINOR POETRY 

In an old book, The Arte of Ejiglish Poesie, there is an excel- 
lent criticism of Wyatt, Surrey and other '' courtly makers " 
who brought new verse forms to England : 

" They traiveled into Italic, and there tasted the sweete and stately 
measures and stile of Italian poesie. . . . They greatly pollished our rude 
and homely manner of vulgar poesie from that it had bene before, and for 
that cause may be justly sayd the first reformers of our meetre and stile." 

If we substitute England for Italy, and Burns, Byron, Moore 
and Shelley for the Italian poets, this old criticism applies per- 
fectly to the minor American poets of the early nineteenth cen- 
tury. They studied the popular English poets of the age, and 
introduced here brighter and more varied verse forms to reflect 
the spirit of the growing nation. Pinkney, Wilde and Cooke in 
the South ; Allston, Dana, Sprague, Pierpont, Percival, Willis, 
Brainard, Mrs. Sigourney and Maria Brooks in the North, — 
here are a dozen poets, popular and widely read in their own 
day, but now forgotten. In all their works one might perchance 
find a dozen poems that are worth reproducing. Occasionally a 
single lyric, such as Wilde's '' My Life is like the Summer 
Rose," makes us thoughtful; but the grain is too scant, the 
chaff too abundant, to warrant the winnowing. The best that 
can be said of these poets is that they made new verse forms 
familiar to American readers ; the worst, that they lacked 
imagination, and that they regarded their art merely as a. pas- 
time. The fiction writers of the period were moved by a patri- 
otic or historic interest, and a fine national enthusiasm is reflected 
in their pages ; but these poets have no common, ennobling 
characteristic. The only semblance of unity, which was local 
rather than national, is found in two groups of writers known 
as the Knickerbocker and the Charleston '' school." The former 
may properly be considered here ; but the finer work of the 
latter, especially the poetry of Timrod and Hayne, belongs to a 
later period, and will be studied in another chapter. 



2 50 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

The Knickerbocker School.^ This unfortunate term is used 
here to designate a small group of writers who were associated 
with the common idea of making New York a literary center, 
and whose work is now forgotten, largely because of its local 
and temporary character. A book, to have any chance of per- 
manence, must do one of two things : it must emphasize uni- 
versal ideals under peculiar local conditions — as in the stories 
of Cable or Bret Harte, for instance — or else it must proceed 
on the principle that there is no Mason and Dixon's line in 
literature, and appeal to the whole country by reflecting the 
national ideals and enthusiasm. 

With two of these Knickerbockers, Paulding and Willis, we 
may well be content to have a bowing acquaintance. Paulding's 
Salmagujidi essays, written in connection with Irving,^ and his 
numerous stories, plays and sketches, are now wholly neglected. 
A few of his romances, however, notably The Dutchman s Fire- 
side (1831) and Westward Ho ! (1832), still find a few inter- 
ested readers. 

Nathaniel Parker Willis (1806- 1867) came to New York 
from his birthplace in Portland, Maine. He was a versatile 
genius who attempted almost every kind of literary 
work, and did it well enough to win immediate 
praise. It is evident from his numerous works in prose and 
verse that he was a graceful, often an entertaining writer ; but 
he was too eager to please his own age, which, judged by its 
Tokens and Garlands, was abnormally fond of sentimentality. 
Yesterday he was popular throughout the country, and from his 
vantage ground looked with pity upon the struggling Poe ; 

iThe name is often used loosely to designate all New York literary men, — not only 
Irving, Cooper and Bryant, who first made the city a " literary center," but later writers 
such as Bayard Taylor and Stedman. Aside from furnishing the name and a few trivial 
essays, Irving had little to do with the " school " ; Cooper was always a man of the sea 
and of the open country ; Bn,'ant a New England Puritan; Poe a Southerner; Taylor 
from the Middle West, and Stedman from Connecticut. These men were too deeply 
concerned with literature in its human or national aspects to be claimed by any local 
school, and the name, as applied to them, is misleading. 

■■2 See p. 185. 




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THE FIRST NATIONAL PERIOD 25 I 

to-day his works are unknown even by name. A few readers still 
find pleasure in his verses ; others may be attracted by his 
Pencillmgs by the Way, a series of fleeting impressions of 
travel and of the noted men and women whom Willis met in 
Europe. Here, for instance, is his account of an interview with 
Lady Blessington, — a leader of London society, a literary 
woman widely known in her own day, and still remembered for 
her Conversations with Lord Byroji. She had expressed great 
surprise that she and other authors received so many kind let- 
ters from America, where, she supposed, few people had any 
acquaintance with books. The answer of Willis indicates that 
remarkable appreciation of literature which one still finds in 
thousands of American towns and villages : 

" I accounted for it by the perfect seclusion in which great numbers of 
cultivated people live in our country, who, having neither intrigue, nor 
fashion, nor twenty other things to occupy their minds, as in England, de- 
pend entirely upon books, and consider an author who has given them 
pleasure as a friend. ' America,' I said, ' has probably more literary enthu- 
siasts than any country in the world ; and there are thousands of romantic 
minds in the interior of New England who know perfectly every writer this 
side the water, and hold them all in affectionate veneration, scarcely con- 
ceivable by a sophisticated European. If it were not for such readers, liter- 
ature would be the most thankless of vocations. I, for one, would never 
write another line.' " 

In the life of Joseph Rodman Drake (i 795-1 820) there is a 
strange parallelism to that of the poet Keats. They were born 
in the same year, and were of the same delicate, 
beauty-loving temperament. Both were early ac- 
quainted with toil and poverty ; both loved poetry, but studied 
medicine to earn a livelihood ; both had consumption and 
journeyed southward in search of health ; and both died at 
twenty-five, before their powers had reached maturity. To carry 
the comparison further and include their works would be unjust 
to Drake, who cannot possibly be classed with the major poets. 
He is remembered now by two poems : *' The American Flag," 
a patriotic but grandiloquent effusion; and ''The Culprit Fay," 



252 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

a unique poem recounting the adventures of a fairy knight who 
had fallen in love with a mortal maiden. ^ The following selec- 
tion may serve to illustrate Drake's work and to suggest the 
poetic taste of his age, which was satisfied with prettiness rather 
than with beauty : 

The stars are on the moving stream, 

And fling, as its ripples gently flow, 
A burnished length of wavy beam 

In an eel-like, spiral line below ; 
The winds are whist and the owl is still, 

The bat in the shelvy rock is hid, 
And naught is heard on the lonely hill 
But the cricket's chirp, and the answer shrill 

Of the gauze-winged katy-did ; 
And the plaint of the wailing whippoorwill, 

Who moans unseen, and ceaseless sings, 
Ever a note of wail and woe, 

Till morning spreads her rosy wings. 
And earth and sky in her glances glow. 

They come from beds of lichen green. 
They creep from the mullein's velvet screen ; 

Some on the backs of beetles fly 
From the silver tops of moon-touched trees. 

Where they swung in their cobweb hammocks high. 
And rocked about in the evening breeze ; 

Some from the hum-bird's downy nest — 
They had driven him out by elfin power, 

And, pillowed on plumes of his rainbow breast, 
Had slumbered there till the charmed hour; 

Some had lain in the scoop of the rock, 
With glittering ising-stars inlaid ; 

And some had opened the four-o'clock, 
And stolen within its purple shade. 
And now they throng the moonlight glade, 
Above, below, on every side. 
Their little minim forms arrayed 
In the tricksy pomp of fairy pride ! 

1 This delicate bit of fancy was written, it is said, after a conversation with Cooper 
and Halleck, who had declared that our American rivers, unlike those of Europe, were 
not fit subjects for romantic treatment. 



THE FIRST NATIONAL PERIOD 



or-') 
-DO 



HaUeck 



The friendship between Drake and Fitz-Greene Halleck 
(1 790-1 867) of Guilford, Connecticut, might well be the subject 

of a very interesting chapter in American literature. 

We can only note here that a memorial- of their 
friendship, Halleck's '' Green be the turf above thee," is one 
of the best-known poems surviving from this period. The asso- 
ciation of the two men, who were of the type described as " free 
lances," began on the Hudson, in a common love of poetry ; 
and presently both were engaged 
in writing T/ie Croakers, a series 
of bright satires in verse, directed 
at men, manners and customs of 
New York society in the early 
part of the nineteenth century. 
Happy, good-natured satires they 
were, though their delicate point 
is now hardly discoverable unless 
one has an intimate knowledge 
of the period. Halleck's longest 
poem, Fannie (18 19), is of the 
same general character, being 
a gay commentary on the fash- 
ions, books, social and political 
doctrines that interested our 
grandfathers and grandmothers. 

More lasting, and more suggestive of Halleck's power, are 
many of his lyrics, such as '' On the Death of Drake," '' Alnwick 
Castle" and "The Field of the Grounded Arms," which are 
well worth reading. Here also are *' Red Jacket," a shrewd 
criticism of Cooper and his Indians ; '' Burns," a fine apprecia- 
tion of the Scottish poet ; and the immortal '' Marco Bozzaris," 
beloved of every schoolboy. This last is not so much a national 
as a race war-song, suggesting as it does the primeval vigor of 
the old Anglo-Saxon '' Fight at Finnsburgh." It is said that 
King Olaf once called for a song '' with a sword in every line." 




FITZ-GREENE HALLECK 



254 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

The old Viking would have been satisfied had his gleeman 
responded with : 

An hour passed on — the Turk awoke ; 

That bright dream was his last ; 
He woke — to hear his sentries shriek, 
" To arms ! they come ! the Greek ! the Greek ! " 
• He woke — to die midst flame and smoke, 

And shout and groan and sabre-stroke, 

And death-shots falling thick and fast- 
As lightning from the mountain-cloud; 
And heard, with voice as trumpet loud, 

Bozzaris cheer his band : 
" Strike — till the last armed foe expires ; 
, Strike — for your altars and your fires ; 

Strike — for the green graves of your sires ; 

God — and your native land ! " 



V. ORATORS OF THE FIRST NATIONAL PERIOD 

It is commonly assumed that the oratory of this period, as 
exemplified by Calhoun, Webster and several others scarcely 
less famous, is the best that America has produced. Once more, 
as in the Revolution, politics was the dominant issue ; but in- 
stead of the passionate, whole-souled devotion to liberty which 
united the Revolutionary orators, we find now a bitter partisan- 
ship sweeping over the country like a plague, dividing orators 
and people into two hostile camps. Aside from the tariff, which 
is always with us, there were two great questions, slavery and 
state rights, that called for endless debate. Both parties appealed 
to the Constitution, which was studied and expounded as never 
before ; and we have the curious spectacle of orators proclaim- 
ing radically different opinions from the same ground, profess- 
ing to settle a question by appeals to a document which purposely 
left that very question unsettled. This fundamental error, or 
inconsistency, is bound to produce disappointment when we study 
the speakers of this period from the viewpoint not of transient 
politics but of abiding literature. 



THE FIRST NATIONAL PERIOD 255 

Choice is difficult among so many that were excellent, espe- 
cially if we remember that the power of oratory depends largely 
on personality, and that the speaker who rouses one man to 
enthusiasm leaves his neighbor cold and doubtful. We shall 
not go far wrong, however, if we select, as the four representa- 
tive orators of this period. Clay, Calhoun, Everett and Webster. 

Clay. Judged by his success in holding men of different con- 
victions, Henry Clay (1777-1852), the '' silver-tongued orator" 
of Virginia and Kentucky, '' the great compromiser " as he was 
called, seems to have been the most persuasive of our public 
speakers. Apparently his power was based upon a wonderful 
personality, for the speeches that once stirred thousands to 
enthusiasm have now little influence over us. They seem like 
pressed flowers, out of which life has departed. That Clay was 
eloquent we must admit, on the testimony of those who heard 
him ; but that his work is no permanent part of our literature 
will be evident to any candid reader who attempts even a single 
volume of his speeches. 

Calhoun. John C. Calhoun (i 782-1 850) of South Carolina, 
"the philosopher of statesmen," was the most logical and acute 
thinker of this remarkable group. His eloquence, unadorned 
and severe as a Greek statue, was a part of his wonderful 
character. He was the kind of speaker who needed no rhetori- 
cal ornament; the fundamental sincerity of his life gave force 
to every word he uttered. Though a radical, carrying the doc- 
trine of state rights to extremes, there is in his argument, as in 
that of Jonathan Edwards, a logical power from which there 
seems to be no escape. Start with him on the Constitution and 
its early history^, and you are drawn on, bound as a captive, to 
his conclusion. You resist, nevertheless ; you feel, as one must 
feel with Edwards, that the premises are wrong or the logic 
perverted, since the conclusion violates the history and spirit of 
the American nation. His speeches read better than those of 
Clay ; but the modern reader, missing both the personality of the 
orator and the pressure of the great problem which he tried to 



256 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

solve by logic, soon wearies of them. Of more permanent value 
are two works classed with the literature of knowledge, his Dis- 
quisition on Governme7it and his Discourse 07i the Constitution 
a7id Gover7tme7it of the United States. These are two remark- 
able essays on the Jeffersonian doctrine of the rights of the 
minority. 

Everett. Edward Everett of Massachusetts (i 794-1 865), 
*'the scholar in politics," was the most polished and scholarly 
speaker of his day, and probably the best public lecturer that 
America has produced. Though he gave a large part of his life 
to his country, we are less interested in his political career than 
in his lectures on Greek and German culture, which had a deep 
and lasting influence on the intellectual life of our country. 
From the four large volumes of his works we select, as the 
most suggestive oration, that on ''American Literature " (1824). 
If we read this in connection with Channing's fine essay on 
'' National Literature," we shall have an excellent idea of the 
aims and ideals which inspired American writers in the early 
part of the nineteenth century. 

Other famous orations of Everett are ''Washington," ^ " Early 
Days of Franklin," and the "Gettysburg Oration." Though this 
last is polished and ornate enough to deserve all the flattering 
adjectives which critics have applied, it suffers grievously in 
comparison with the speech of Lincoln, plain, simple, heroically 
sincere, which was delivered on the same occasion. 

Webster. Daniel Webster of New Hampshire and Massachu- 
setts (1782-1852), "the godlike Daniel, the orator of the nation," 
as his contemporaries called him, is by many critics considered 
the foremost American orator, and the peer of Burke, Cicero 
and Demosthenes. The latter comparison, which springs from 
our pride in Webster's power and from our gratitude for his 
patriotic service, should be received with caution. Like all heroes, 

1 This was heard by large audiences in every section of the United States. By this 
single oration Everett earned nearly $100,000, which was devoted to the purchase and 
preservation of Washington's home at Mount Vernon. 



THE FIRST NATIONAL PERIOD 



257 



whether of camp or forum, Webster is bound to loom large so 
long as he is near. His relative rank can be more accurately 
judged when he shall be viewed, with Burke and Cicero, in the 
long perspective of the centuries. Meanwhile, we note that a 
part of his work seems to stand the hard test of time ; that a 
few of his orations still impress the reader with something of 
their original force. If we could only add the personal element 

— the magnificent presence which startled Carlyle,^ the sono- 
rous voice, the consciousness of his own diojiity and importance 
-^then the effect of these 
speeches would be over- 
whelming, and we might 
join with his contempo- 
raries in giving Webster a 
place among the world's 
four gteatest orators. 

Looking through the six 
large volumes of Webster's 
speeches, we divide them — 
with some hesitation, for 
many critics disagree with us 

— into two parts. Here on 
the one side is the great 
bulk of his political and le- 
gal speeches. Though many 

claim for them a place in American prose because of their diction 
and imagery, we confess that we have found it hard to become 
interested in them, — perhaps because the high-flown and some- 
what artificial st\'le, which was then considered essential to an 
orator, does not please our changed modern taste. There is 
everywhere a suggestion of power, of a commanding personality, 
in these speeches, which mark the climax of forensic oratory in 
America ; but they should probably be classed not as literature but 




DANIEL WEBSTER 



1 Carlyle's impression of " the American Hercules " is vividly recorded (June 24, 1839) 
in one of his letters to Emerson, 



258 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

rather as examples of a certain kind of rhetoric, '' an extremely 
elaborate rhetoric based partly on the parliamentary traditions 
of eighteenth-century England, and partly, like those traditions 
themselves, on the classical oratory of Rome and Greece." ^ 

To the second class belong Webster's occasional speeches : 
the " Plymouth Oration " (1820) delivered at the two-hundredth 
Typical anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrims ; the first 
Orations - Bunker Hill Address " (1825), at the laying of the 
corner stone of the battle monument; ** Adams and Jefferson " 
(1826), in memory of the two old statesmen who died on July 4 ; 
and the '' Reply to Hayne " (1830). The first three are histor- 
ical addresses, inspired by a great love and veneration for Amer- 
ican patriots ; the fourth, though a political address, rises at 
times far above the turmoil of party politics in which Webster 
was engaged. It first defends Massachusetts with noble sincerity, 
and then pleads for a united country in words which will be 
remembered as long as the nation endures : 

" When my eyes shall be turned to behold for the last time the sun in 
heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments 
of a once glorious Union ; on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent ; on 
a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood ! Let 
their last feeble and lingering glance rather behold the gorgeous ensign of 
the Republic, now known and honored throughout the earth, still full high 
advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original lustre, not a stripe 
erased or polluted, nor a single star obscured, bearing for its motto, no such 
miserable interrogatory as * What is all this worth ? ' nor those other words 
of delusion and folly, * Liberty first and Union afterw^ards,' but everywhere, 
spread all over in characters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds, 
as they float over the sea and over the land and in every wind under the 
whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to every true American heart, — 
' Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable.' " 

Here is rhetoric certainly ; but here also is an emotional appeal 
which stirs all hearts in patriotic devotion to a common country. 
It is idle to prophesy, but something in these four orations 
tells us that future readers will honor them, and that a part of 
Webster's work has won a secure place in American literature. 

1- Wendell, A Literary History of America, p. 253. 



THE FIRST NATIONAL PERIOD 



259 



Historians 



VI. MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS 

The learned writers of this period are numerous and note- 
worthy enough to suggest that America was not, as Dickens and 
other foreign critics alleged, absorbed in politics and 
money-getting, but that, side by side with the litera- 
ture of povver created by Bryant, Poe, Irving and Cooper, was an 
equally remarkable literature of knowledge. As in every period 
of our literature, the historians held a prominent place. Jared 
Sparks (i 789-1 866), by a 
lifetime of historical re- 
search and by his editorship 
of the Library of Ameri- 
ca7i Biography y has left 
all modern historians his 
debtors. Bancroft (1800- 
189 1) after fifty-one years 
of labor produced his no- 
table History of the United • 
States, Prescott (1796- 
1859), working in dark- 
ness, sent out into the light 
his Ferdinand and Isabella 
(1837) and two fascinating 
books, The Conquest of 
Mexico and The Conquest 
of Peru, which seem more 
like romances and adventure stories than like ordinary histories. 

More original and more . remarkable than the historians are 
the great religious leaders, Bushnell and Channing, whose noble, 
inspiring message deeply affected the life of their age, and whose 
influence is still potent throughout the nation. We note also 
Audubon, with his wonderful bird book ; and Schoolcraft, whose 
Myth of Hiaiuatha and Indian Fairy Book were as a literary 
storehouse to Longfellow, and whose Algic Researches, Indian 




J. J. AUDUBON 



26o AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Tribes of the United States and Persoiial Memoirs of Thirty 
Years amorig the India^i Tribes form the basis of all subsequent 
ethnologic studies in America. We have by no means exhausted 
the list ; these few names are given to suggest the broad, in- 
viting fields which lie open to every reader. 

There is another literary movement which appears in this age, 
and which, like the matter of amusement, deserves more thought- 
ful attention than we have thus far given it. We re- 
fer to the ''juvenile" books which appeared suddenly 
and almost as numerously as a swarm of locusts. The Greeks to 
inspire their children gave them Homer. The American Colo- 
nists depended on the Bible and a few noble English classics 
for youthful reading. We have changed all that, we moderns. 
In the nineteenth century we gave our children the hundred 
milk-and-water volumes of Peter Parley (Samuel Goodrich) and 
the '' Rollo and Lucy " books of Jacob Abbott. This unnatural, 
unwholesome stuff grows and multiplies like bacteria ; every 
generation sees a new attack of '' juveniles," milder or more 
malignant than the others ; and the latest outbreak is the flam- 
ing, outrageous supplement to the Sunday newspaper. Our 
whole theory, or craze, of '' books for the young " is based on 
the assumption that a book is like a Christmas toy, to amuse for 
an hour and then be flung aside and forgotten. It ignores these 
simple facts : that a good book is to be cherished next to a good 
friend ; that the best we have is none too good for the youngest 
reader ; and that girls and boys, if their taste be not poisoned, 
will instinctively choose the beautiful or heroic books that inspire 
the race of men from generation to generation. 

Summary of the First National Period (1800-1840). The first half of the 
nineteenth century was, in general, a period of expansion, of extraordinarily 
rapid development of our territory, our resources and our institutions. Irving, 
who returned to America in 1832 after an absence of seventeen years, could 
hardly recognize his native town, and was filled with amazement at the changes 
which were transforming the face of the country. These changes are briefly 
summarized under four heads : ( i ) The intensive growth in nationality resulting 
from the success of the new government under the Constitution, from the War 



THE FIRST NATIONAL PERIOD 261 

of 181 2, and from bringing the states nearer together by means of roads, 
canals and railways. (2) The steadily advancing frontier; the acquisition of 
the vast Louisiana territory ; the large increase of population ; the new era of 
colonization, which made the Great West a part of the new nation. (3) The 
growth of the democratic spirit over the whole country, and the election of 
Andrew Jackson, the first man of the common people who ever held the office 
of President. (4) The industrial development of the East, and the agricultural 
development of the South and West; the appearance of a great merchant 
marine ; the enormous increase in trade and wealth, resulting from new inven- 
tions, from the use of steam, and from uncovering the natural treasures of 
America that were hidden in her soil and forests, her mines and rivers. 

During all these mighty changes the American states were united as they 
had never been before ; yet the feeling of unity was so often disturbed by 
bitter political strife that a recent historian describes the famous ''era of good 
feeling" as a calm between two storms. Towards the end of the period the 
unsettled questions of state rights and slavery were dangerously agitated, and 
the agitation increased in violence after 1840 until it led to civil war. 

The literature of the period is especially worthy of study as a reflection of 

the new national consciousness. In the early part of the nineteenth century 

the indifference of Europe to our literary products was expressed 

ummary -^ ^-^^ scornful question, '' Who reads an American book ? " Our 
Literature 

own critics were scarcely more appreciative, and many of our 

writers, in order to secure favorable attention, affected English ways or signed 

their books by English names. Before the end of this period Cooper's romances 

were published in thirty foreign cities, and were read throughout the civilized 

world ; Irving was placed by English critics in the front rank of living writers ; 

Bryant, Poe, and many lesser poets and story writers had produced works 

which the nation was proud to claim as its own. In a word, America had at 

last developed a national literature, which the Hartford Wits had dreamed of, 

and which Irving and his contemporaries made a reality that was honored at 

home and abroad. 

There are at least four characteristics to be found in our first national liter- 
ature : its individuality, its harmony with nature, its intense patriotism, and its 
emphasis on the moral and religious nature of man. In addition to these gen- 
eral qualities, we noted the beginnings of American literary criticism, of the 
short stor}% of the romance of the sea and wilderness, and of a recognized 
national poetry. 

Of the major writers of the period, we studied the lives and analyzed the 
chief works of Irving, Bryant, Cooper, Poe and Simms. The typical orators 
were Clay, Calhoun, Everett and Webster. The so-called minor poets, such 
as Pinkney, Wilde, Pierpont, Brainard, Percival and Mrs. Brooks, or Maria 
del Occidente as she was called, introduced new and varied verse forms 
to American literature, but their works are nearly all forgotten. The most 
noteworthy of these minor bards were a group still known as the Knicker- 
bocker School, of which Willis, Drake and Halleck were probably the most 
typical. 



262 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Among minor writers of fiction, whose works, in general, were characterized 
by patriotism and by historical interest, we noted especially Catharine Sedg- 
wick, Herman Melville, John Pendleton Kennedy and Richard H. Dana, Jr. 
Among miscellaneous writers the most noted were the historians Bancroft 
and Prescott, and the great religious leaders Channing and Bushnell. 

Selections for Reading. Irving: Sketch Book, edited for class use, in 
Standard English Classics (Ginn and Company) ; the same work appears in 
various other school series (see Texts, in General Bibliography) ; Alhambra, 
in Pocket Classics, etc. ; selections from Bracebridge Hall, in Riverside 
Literature Series. 

Bryant : Well-ohosen selections in Pocket Classics, and in Riverside Liter- 
ature ; in the latter series also parts of Bryant's Iliad. 

Cooper: Last of the Mohicans, in Standard English Classics, etc.; The 
Pilot, in Eclectic English Classics ; The Red Rover and The Spy may be had 
in various inexpensive editions ; the five Leatherstocking tales, in Everyman's 
Library. 

Poe : Select Poems and Tales, in Standard English Classics, in Silver 
Classics, Johnson's English Classics, etc. 

Webster: First Bunker Hill Oration in Standard Enghsh Classics, Riverside 
Literature, etc. Noted speeches of Webster, Clay, Calhoun (one volume) in 
American History in Literature Series (Moffat). 

Selections from all poets mentioned in the text in Bronson, American 
Poems ; in Lounsbury, American Poems, etc. ; selections from prose writers 
in Stedman and Hutchinson, Griswold, etc. (See ''Selections" in General 
Bibliography.) 

For Simms's Revolutionary romances, The Partisan, etc., and for Kennedy's 
Horse-Shoe Robinson the public library must be searched. Selections from 
Simms, Kennedy and other Southern writers in Manly, Southern Literature ; 
Trent, Southern Writers, etc. Simms's The Yemassee in Johnson's English 
Classics. 

Bibliography. Textbooks of history, Montgomery, Muzzey, Channing; of 
literature, Richardson, Wendell, etc. The best works covering the whole 
subject of American history and literature are listed in General References at 
the beginning. The following works apply especially to the First National 
period. 

History. Adams, History of the United States 1801-1817, 9 vols. (Scribner, 
1891); Von Hoist, Constitutional and Political History 1787-1861, 8 vols. 
(Chicago, 1892) ; Schouler, History of the United States under the Constitu- 
tion 1789-1865, 6 vols. (Dodd) ; Hitchcock, The Louisiana Purchase (Ginn 
and Company) ; Sparks, Expansion of the American People ; Lossing, Pic- 
torial Field Book of the War of 1812; Mahan, Sea Power in its Relation to 
the War of 1812; Gordy, Political Parties in the United States; Katherine 
Coman, Industrial History of the United States; Low, The American People j 
Stanwood, History of Presidential Elections. 



1 



THE FIRST NATIONAL PERIOD 263 

Biographical : Lives of Calhoun, Webster, Jackson, etc., in American States- 
men series (Houghton) ; Schouler's Jefferson, in Makers of America; Parton, 
Life of Jackson, of Jefferson, of Burr; Parton, Famous Americans; Trent, 
Southern Statesmen of the Old Regime ; Hunt, American Merchants ; Dolly 
Madison's Memoirs; Lyman Beecher's Autobiography; Horace Greeley's 
Recollections. 

Supplementary : Expedition of Lewis and Clark, and Harmon's Voyages 
and Travels in the Interior of North America, in Original Narratives (Scribner) ; 
Dwight, Travels in New England and New York (New Haven, 182 1) ; Page, 
The Old South ; Lucy Larcom, A New England Girlhood ; Griswold, Court 
of Washington; Benson, Thirty Years' View; Drake, Making of the West; 
McMaster, A Century of Social Betterment (in Atlantic, January, 1897) ; 
Lowell, Cambridge Thirty Years Ago, in Essays; Bushnell, The Age of 
Homespun, in Addresses. 

Literature. There is no work devoted especially to the literature of this 
period. Good chapters may be found in Richardson, Trent, Moses, etc. (see 
General References) ; also in Stedman, Poets of America ; Cairns, Develop- 
ment of American Literature 181 5-1833 with Special References to Periodicals 
(University of Wisconsin, 1898); Loshe, Early American Novel; Link, Pio- 
neers of Southern Literature. For special works on Irving, Poe, etc., see below. 

Irving. Texts : Works, Crayon edition, 27 vols. (Putnam) ; many other 
editions by various pubhshers. Inexpensive editions of Sketch Book, etc., in 
Selections for Reading, above. 

Biography and Criticism : Life and Letters, edited by Pierre M. Irving, 
4 vols., in Crayon edition of Works ; Life, by Warner, in American Men of 
Letters; by Hill, in American Authors; by Boynton (sketch), in Riverside 
Biographies, etc. Warner, The Work of Washington Irving, in Harper's 
Black and White series; Warner, Bryant and Putnam, Studies of Irving; 
Payne, Leading American Essayists; Brownell, American Prose Masters; 
Perry, Prose Fiction ; Canby, The Short Story ; Thackeray, Nil Nisi Bonum, 
in Roundabout Papers; Curtis, in Literary and Social Addresses; Howells, in 
My Literary Passions. 

Bryant. Texts : Poetical Works, 2 vols.. Prose Writings, 2 vols. ; Poems, 
Roslyn edition. Household edition, etc. (Appleton) ; Translation of Homer, 
4 vols., or Student's edition, 2 vols. (Houghton). 

Biography and Criticism : Life, by Godwin, 2 vols. ; by Bigelow, in Ameri- 
can Men of Letters; by Bradley, in EngUsh Men of Letters; by Curtis. 
Wilson, Bryant and his Friends; Bryant's Seventy-fifth Birthday Festival, 
wjth poems, addresses, etc.. Century Association (New York, 1865) ; Alden, 
Studies in Bryant (elementary school text). Essays: Collins, in Poetry and 
Poets of America; Stedman, in Poets of America; Curtis, in Orations and 
Addresses; Whipple, in Literature and Life; Burton, in Literary Leaders; 
Mitchell, in American Lands and Letters ; Whitman, in Specimen Days. 

Cooper. Texts: Works, Household edition, with Introduction by Susan 
Cooper, 32 vols. (Houghton) ; many other editions of works by various 
publishers. 



264 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Biography and Criticism : Life, by Lounsbury, in American Men of Letters ; 
by Clymer (brief), in Beacon Biographies. Brownell, in American Prose Mas- 
ters ; Erskine, in Leading American Novelists ; Bryant's Oration on Cooper, 
in Prose Works ; Parkman's essay (North American Review, Vol. LXXIV) ; 
Susan Cooper, A Glance Backwards (Atlantic, February, 1887); Matthews, in 
Gateways to Literature. 

Poe. Text: Works, Virginia edition, edited by Harrison, 17 vols., includ- 
ing biography and letters (Crowell, 1902) ; Works, Knickerbocker edition, 
edited by Richardson, 10 vols. (Putnam, 1904) ; Works, edited by Stedman 
and Woodberr}^ 10 vols. (Chicago, 1894). Many other editions, all incomplete. 

Biography and Criticism : Excellent biographical sketches and critical 
notes in the above editions of Poe's works. Life and Letters, by Harrison, 
2 vols. ; the same in Vols. I and XVII of the Virginia edition ; Life, by Wood- 
berry, in American Men of Letters ; by Trent, in English Men of Letters ; by 
Griswold (1850), by Gill (1877), by Ingram (1886), etc. Sarah H. Whitman, 
Poe and his Critics ; Stedman, Poets of America ; Burton, Literary Leaders ; 
Brownell, American Prose Masters ; Higginson, Short Studies of American 
Authors. 

Essays : Robertson, in Essays toward a Critical Method ; Matthews, The 
Short Story, in Pen and Ink ; Andrew Lang, in Letters to Dead Authors ; 
Gosse, Has America Produced a Poet ? in Questions at Issue ; Gates, in 
Studies and Appreciations. 

Bibliography : in Stedman and Woodberry edition of Works, Vol. X ; in 
Page, Chief American Poets (selections), pp. 636-638. 

Sinims. Texts : Novels, 10 vols. (Armstrong) ; Poems, 2 vols. (Redfield). 

Biography and Criticism : Life, by Trent, in American Men of Letters. Brief 
studies, in Moses, Literature of the South ; in Baskerville, Southern Writers ; 
in Link, Pioneers of Southern Literature, etc. See also Tuckerman's John 
Pendleton Kennedy (New York, 1871). 

The ShoH Story: Smith, The American Short Story (Ginn and Company, 
191 2) ; Matthews, Philosophy of the Short Story, and The Short Story : Spec- 
imens Illustrating its Development; Dawson, Great English Short- Story 
Writers, 2 vols. ; Canby, The Short Story in English ; Evelyn Albright, The 
Short Story ; Higginson, The Local Short Story (in The Independent, 
March 11, 1892). 

The Knickerbocker School: Hueston, The Knickerbocker Gallery (New 
York, 1855); Poe, The Literati; Wilson, Bryant and his Friends; Stoddard, 
Recollections Personal and Literary. 

Willis: Works, 13 vols. (Scribner, 1849-1859); Works, i vol. (Redfieid, 
1846) ; Life, by Beers, in American Men of Letters. 

Halleck: Poetical Writings (Appleton, 1869); Life and Letters, by Wilson. 

Webster: Works, 6 vols. (Boston, 185 1) ; Great Speeches and Orations, 
edited by Whipple (Boston, 1879). Life> by Curtis, 2 vols.; by Lodge, in 
American Statesmen; by Van Tyne, in American Crisis Biographies. 

Historical Fiction. Older Romances: Brown, Arthur Mervyn; Judd, Mar- 
garet; Kennedy, Swallow Barn; Paulding, Westward Ho! 



THE FIRST NATIONAL PERIOD 265 

Later Romances : Mrs. Stowe, Minister's Wooing; Hale, Man Without a 
Country; Cooke, Leather Stocking and Silk; Eggleston, Roxy, Hoosier 
Schoolmaster; Winthrop, John Brent. 

Books for Young People. Brigham, From Trail to Railway (Ginn and Com- 
pany) ; Bruce, Daniel Boone and the Wilderness Road ; Paxson, The Last 
American Frontier; McMurray, Pioneers of the Mississippi Valley, Pioneers 
of the Rocky Mountains (Macmillan) ; Florence Bass, Stories of Pioneer Life 
(Heath). 

Suggestive Questions. (For the general aim of these questions, see ex- 
planation on page 83. Specific questions on Irving, Cooper, etc., should be 
based on works of these authors that have been read by the students.) 

1. Why is the half century following 1775 often called the Age of Revolu- 
tion 1 What important literary movement accompanied the political revolution 1 
Can you see any relation of cause and effect between the two movements ? 

2. What was the political significance of Jackson's election.^ Explain the 
statement that the aristocratic type of president went out of favor in 1829. 

3. What are the prominent characteristics of our first national literature ? 
Illustrate each by some well-known writers. What is meant by romanticism, 
and in what way is it illustrated in the works of Irving, Cooper and Bryant? 

4. How do you account for the fact that early in this period our writers 
were timidly copying English manners and ways, and a little later were inde- 
pendent and confident } What writers, and what works, first brought foreign 
recognition ? 

5. Our first national writers laid emphasis on beauty for its own sake ; can 
you explain why beauty was neglected by earlier writers, and why it was em- 
phasized by Irving and his contemporaries ? Apply the same question to the 
romantic treatment of nature. 

6. Boston, Philadelphia, Charleston and New York have at different times 
been " literary centers " ; how do you account for the fact that Washington, 
unlike the capitals of other countries, has never won literary recognition ? 
What effect did the opening of the Great West have upon our literature ? 
(Illustrate by works of Irving and Cooper.) What is meant by the romance 
of the West .? Why did the West at first produce no literature ? Compare the 
West in this respect with the early colonies. 

7. Irving, {a) Name three notable achievements of Irving. What new 
types did he add to our literature ? Why is he called " the father of American 
letters," and why " the American Addison " .'' 

{b) Explain Thackeray's statement that Irving was the first ambassador 
from the New World of letters to the Old. Did the title have any connection 
with the fact that Irving was our minister to Spain ? What American literary 
men may be called Irving's successors in this respect.'' 

{c) Give a brief sketch of Irving's life, noting especially his youth, his 
home, his different kinds of work, his honors, and the personal elements that 
are reflected in his writings. In this sketch explain, if you can, why Irving 
and Scott were attracted to each other. 



266 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

(d) Classify Irving's chief works according to type (essays, stories, etc.) ; 
according to theme (EngHsh, Spanish, American) ; according to periods (early, 
middle, later). What qualities of style are shown in all these works .'' Is there 
any significance in the name Jonathan Oldstyle, with which Irving signed some 
of his productions ? 

(e) Describe the general character of the Sketch Book, Alhambra and any 
other works of Irving that you have read. What two classes or types of liter- 
ature are illustrated in each of these works .'' Why is the Alhambra called 
"the beautiful Spanish Sketch Book".'' What is meant by the Knickerbocker 
History ? Illustrate from passages in Irving, Franklin, etc. the difference be- 
tween humor and wit. Compare Irving's earlier and later humor with the 
humor of Mark Twain. 

{/) Give in your own words Irving's message, and tell what influence he 
has exerted on American life and literature. 

8. Bjyant. {a) Explain these three titles given to Bryant: the high priest 
of nature ; the American Wordsworth ; the Puritan poet. Which of these 
titles seems to you best in view of Bryant's work .'' 

{b) Give a brief sketch of Bryant's life, noting especially his youth, his ex- 
perience with law and journalism, the high position which he won, and the 
effect of each on his poetry. In this sketch account for his commanding 
position, and for the fact that his earliest verse was his best. 

{c) Give the chief classes or divisions of his poetry, and account for each 
on personal grounds, and by the literary tastes of his age. How does his view 
of nature compare with that of earlier (Anglo-Saxon) and of later English 
poets, Tennyson for example ? What points of resemblance and of difference 
do you find in Bryant and Wordsworth .'' How do his poems on death compare 
with those of Poe .'' 

{d) What is the meaning of " Thanatopsis," and what is the general char- 
acter of the poem .-* Why did Bryant add introductory and closing lines to the 
original poem ? Note any lines in the poem which reflect Bryant's interest in 
the Greek classics, and other lines which suggest the influence of Wordsworth. 
What other poems of Bryant on the subject of death have you read, and how 
do they compare with " Thanatopsis " "i 

[e) Read '' To a Waterfowl " (we suggest that you learn by heart the stanzas 
that appeal to you) and reproduce in your own words the different pictures 
which it calls up. Why should the last stanza be called Bryant's signature t 
Comment on Hartley Coleridge's criticism that this is the best short poem in 
the English language. 

(/) Read the " Forest Hymn," and using the poem as a basis illustrate 
Bryant's style, his view of nature, his strength, and his limitations as a poet. 
It is said that " Thanatopsis " might have been written anywhere but the 
*' Forest Hymn " could come only from America ; criticize the statement. 
Read " The Poet," and determine whether the poem is merely a flight of fancy, 
or whether it is consistent with Bryant's theory and practice of verse. 

(g) In what respect is Bryant "the New England poet"? How does he 
justify Emerson's criticism that he is the poet of America ? 



THE FIRST NATIONAL PERIOD 267 

9. Cooper, {a) Why was Cooper called the American Scott ? What resem- 
blances and differences do you find in the two writers ? In what ways did 
Cooper display marked originality ? 

{b) Name four elements of Cooper's power as a writer. Explain the in- 
terest aroused by his work in America and in Europe. How do you account for 
the fact that he was, and is, more widely known than any other American author ? 

(4 Give a brief sketch of Cooper's life, noting especially : personal ele- 
ments or incidents that are reflected in his romances ; the occasion and the 
result of his first literary venture ; his success as a novelist ; his journey abroad 
and its consequences. 

{d) Classify his romances in three divisions, and name the important works 
in each. Which of these works seems to you the strongest, the best written, 
the truest to nature ? Illustrate from one work the character of a romance, and 
the difference between a romance and a novel. 

[e] The Spy was our first notable historical romance, and America's first 
contribution to international fiction; give the theme of the story; explain its 
hold on American and foreign readers. What qualities of strength and what 
limitations are suggested by the book t What is meant by Cooper's moralizing 
and what is its effect on the reader ? 

{/) Aside from its intrinsic value, why is The Pilot remarkable ? Who are 
its typical heroes t What two qualities of Cooper give power and interest to 
all his sea stories ? 

{g) Name the five books of the Leatherstocking drama in their natural 
order. In what respect is The Pioneers better than the others } What is the 
chief interest of The Last of the Mohicans ? What are the essential differences 
between the latter story and a dime novel of Indian adventure ? How far does 
Natty Bumppo seem to you a true type of the American woodsman, and 
Chingachgook of the Indian? What are the strong and what are the weak 
elements in the portrayal of these characters ? 

[h] How do you account for the fact that Cooper's ladies and gentlemen 
are invariably weak and tiresome, while his common men are generally strong 
and interesting ? W^hat general literary tendencies and fashions are suggested 
by his feminine characters ? Compare him in this respect with Brown or Scott. 
From the works you have read, make a list of Cooper's characters that you re- 
member vividly. Which of these characters will probably appeal to readers in 
' the future ? 

ID. Poe. {a) In what respect is Poe different from all other prominent Amer- 
ican writers ? What notable contributions did he make to American literature ? 
How do you account for the fact that he has been so long a subject of 
controversy ? 

{b) Give a brief sketch of Poe's life, noting especially his early years, his 
school life, his wanderings. Note the personal qualities that are reflected in 
his work ; and explain, if you can, why his experience as a soldier, as a West 
Point cadet, as a journalist, etc., are never reflected in his writings. 

[c) Group his works in three main divisions, and illustrate each. It is said that, 
whatever his subject, Poe always wrote about himself; criticize the statement 



268 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

(d) Divide his prose tales into three or four classes, and illustrate each. Is 
Poe the inventor or only the first notable manipulator of the short story? What 
is meant by the statement that Poe aimed chiefly at " effect " ? What is meant 
by " Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque " ? What is the general character 
of Poe's stories? 

{e) Which one of Poe's personages deserves to be called a character, and 
how does he reappear in later literature ? In what story does Poe use the 
double personality as a motive ? What later writers make use of the same 
motive ? Describe Poe's characters in general. How do you account for the 
fact that there is very little conversation or dialogue and no natural landscape 
in his stories ? 

(/) What service did Poe render to literary criticism ? Criticize (if you have 
read) his theory of poetry and of composition. How many of the authors whom 
he praised highly in T/ie Literati are now remembered ? 

{g) How do Poe's poems illustrate his own idea of poetry in general? What 
is the chief quality of his poems ? In what especially are they lacking ? Illus- 
trate Poe's use of the refrain, and name any other American poems in which 
refrains are used in the same manner. 

{h) Can you explain on personal or literary grounds the contrast between 
Poe's definite, positive style or method and his vague, shadowy material ? Poe's 
works are, comparatively, little read, yet he is given a very high rank by for- 
eign critics ; explain the discrepancy. 

II. Miscellaneous, {a) What common characteristics have the fiction writers 
of this period? Name any of their works that are still read. If you have read 
any of the books of Melville, Dana, Judd, etc., describe their general qualities. 

{b) Give an outline of Simms's work for American literature. What are his 
chief romances ? How do they compare with those of Cooper ? 

(c) What are the chief works of Kennedy ? Which of them suggests Cooper 
and Simms, and which is influenced by Irving ? Describe Kennedy's relation 
to Poe and to Thackeray. 

{d) What service was rendered by the minor poets of this period? In con- 
trast with the Colonial and Revolutionary period, Richardson calls this period 
" the dawn of imagination " ; explain the title. 

{e) What is meant by the Knickerbocker school ? Who were its writers (ex- 
clusive of Irving, Cooper, Bryant) and for what were they noted ? Do you know 
of any of their works that are still read ? Explain the joyous, buoyant spirit of 
Knickerbocker writings, and show how they were characteristic of the country. 

(/) Who were the chief orators of this period ? In what respect do they 
differ from Revolutionary orators ? What were the questions at issue in most 
of their debates ? What service did Everett render to American culture ? Com- 
pare a speech of Calhoun with a speech of Webster, having in mind the per- 
sonality of the speakers, their different points of view, their methods of appeal. 

(Note : For questions on Webster's First Bunker Hill Address, Washing- 
ton's Farewell Address, etc., the student is referred to Trent's English Classics 
(Ginn and Company), a little book devoted to the works required for college- 
entrance English.) 



f 

THE FIRST NATIONAL PERIOD 269 

Subjects for Research and Essays. Some novels that were popular one 
hundred years ago. Our first historical romances. The American short story. 
Old American chronicle plays. Catherine Sedgwick and the novel of manners. 
Robert Montgomery Bird and the modern dime novel. Poe's amateur detec- 
tive in modern fiction. Willis as a type of popular author. A forgotten poet 
(James Gates Percival). The Charleston and the Knickerbocker schools. In- 
fluence of the Western Expansion on American Hterature (note the influence 
of English exploration and discovery on Elizabethan literature). English names 
for American authors (the American Scott, the American Wordsworth, etc.). 
American literary men who were also foreign consuls, ministers, ambassadors. 
,Rip van Winkle before Irving discovered him. Bryant and modern journalism. 
Influence of journalism on literature (illustrate by American authors). The 
Homer of Bryant and Pope. Cooper's Indians. Leatherstocking as a race 
hero. Cooperstown then and now. The Bread and Cheese Lunch Club. What 
Cooper owed to Charles Brockden Brown. The Southern Literary Messenger, 
The North American Review. The "annual" and the modern magazine. The 
romance of the West: its discovery and exploitation. Juveniles old and new. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE SECOND NATIONAL OR CREATIVE PERIOD (1840-1876)1 

Thou too sail on, O Ship of State ! 

Sail on, O Union, strong and great ! 

Humanity with all its fears. 

With all the hopes of future years, 

Is hanging breathless on thy fate ! 

We know what Master laid thy keel, 

What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel. 

Who made each mast, and sail, and rope. 

What anvils rang, what hammers beat, 

In what a forge and what a heat 

Were shaped the anchors of thy hope ! 

Fear not each sudden sound and shock, 

'T is of the wave and not the rock ; 

'T is but the flapping of the sail. 

And not a rent made by the gale ! 

In spite of rock and tempest's roar, 

In spite of false lights on the shore, 

Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea ! 

Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee! 

Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears, 

Our faith triumphant o'er our fears. 

Are all with thee, — are all with thee ! 

Longfellow, "The Building of the Ship" 

I. HISTORY OF THE PERIOD 

General Outline. As one M^ho intends to travel a densely forested 
region should ascertain, if possible, the general trend of its mountains 
and watercourses, so one who enters upon the study of this tumultuous 

1 For the beginning of this period we have chosen the Harrison-Tyler administration 
(1S41-1845). Then began the violent agitation of the slave question, over the annexation 
of Texas, which roused sectional feeling and brought on the Civil War. The period 
may well end with the administration of Grant (1869-1877). which witnessed the com- 
plete restoration of the Union, the spread of new states from the Atlantic to the Pacific, 
and the significant Centennial Exposition of 1876. By the latter date all the great 
writers of this period had practically finished their work. 

270 




ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



"IT IS RATHER FOR US TO BE HERE DEDICATED TO THE GREAT TASK 
REMAINING BEFORE US— THAT FROM THESE HONORED DEAD WE TAKE 
INCREASED DEV'OTION TO THAT CAUSE FOR WHICH THEY GAVE THE 
LAST FULL MEASURE OF DEVOTION; THAT WE HERE HIGHLY RESOLVE 
THAT THESE DEAD SHALL NOT HAVE DIED IN VAIN; THAT THIS NATION, 
UNDER GOD, SHALL HAVE A NEW BIRTH OF FREEDOM; AND THAT THE 
GOVERNMENT OF THE PEOPLE, BY THE PEOPLE, FOR THE PEOPLE, SHALL 

NOT PERISH FROM THE EARTH" 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 271 

period should keep in mind some guiding outline of its historic events. 
Such an outline would be something like the following : 

1. The rapid westward expansion of the nation; the formation 
of new states and territories ; the enormous increase in material 
prosperity, with its stimulus and its danger. With the admission of 
new states arose the question of the so-called balance of power between 
the South and the North.^ We are concerned here, not with the 
question itself, but rather with its sad, disturbing implication, namely, 
that a great nation with the hope and expectation of mankind in its 
keeping had begun to split into two sections, divergent in their aims 
and antagonistic in their interests. 

2. The sudden acquisition of a vast territory in connection with 
the annexation of Texas, the Oregon Treaty, and the war with Mexico. 
With this new territory plainly appeared two mutually hostile elements. 
The first was the apparent economic necessity of extending the area 

• of slave labor to meet the increased demand for cotton in America 
and in Europe. The second was the growing conviction and determi- 
nation that slavery must not spread to new territory but be confined 
to states where it already existed. 

3. The years of political storm and stress, of struggle and com- 
promise, which followed the attempt to reconcile the above irrecon- 
cilable factors. At the root of every struggle was the agitation of the 
slave question ; at the heart of every compromise was the hope of 
preserving the Union. The various political organizations which 
appeared during this period may be grouped in three main classes: 

a. The extreme proslavery party. This was composed of a rela- 
tively small but influential body of men, who held that slavery was an 
economic necessity ; that it was justified by the laws of property and 
by the Constitution of the United States ; that under slavery the 
negroes were happier and better protected than they could possibly 
be under any other system of labor ; and that the slave system was, 
therefore, not only legally right but morally justifiable. The aim of 
this party was to extend slavery widely in the new territories. 

1 In the early period of our constitutional history, the southern and northern states 
had practically equal representation in both houses of Congress. The North gained 
more rapidly in population and, as the number of representatives increases with the 
number of people, soon had a majority in the lower house. To offset this advantage, 
the South strove to tnaintain in the upper house an equal representation. Hence the 
new states, each of which elected two senators, were for a long time admitted in pairs, 
or alternately, one from the South and another from the North, thus preserving, in the 
Senate at least, the old balance of political power. 



2^2 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

b. The abolitionists and other extreme antislavery men, who re- 
garded the slave system as a moral evil which could no longer be 
tolerated. They took no account of the difficulties and dangers in- 
volved in emancipation ; they had small regard for economics, or 
even for the Constitution when it appeared to stand in their way. 
That the slave must be, and instantly, a free man was their only 
issue. This party was small and persecuted at first, but it made up in 
zeal and determination what it lacked in numbers. 

c. The great body of moderate people, south and north, who re- 
garded slavery as a " domestic institution," subject to state law and 
not to the national government, as Congress had repeatedly declared. 
The general method of this party was to compromise in view of the 
rights of others ; its ideal was to hold all the states together in a 
harmonious development of the whole country ; its immediate aim 
was to take the slave question out of national politics, where it was 
a perpetual source of discord and danger. Despite the earnest, , 
patriotic efforts of this moderate party, the extremists on both sides 
made slavery the dominant national issue. It was violently agitated, 
in season and out of season, until it became, as the aged Jefferson 
had feared, like the wild ringing of a fire bell at night, and men rose 
in alarm to meet the crisis. 

4. Secession ; the terrible last resort to arms ; the destruction of 
slavery ; the reestablishment of the Union on its old, unshaken 
foundations ; the perils and hardships of reconstruction. 

5. The astonishing recovery of the nation after the fearful loss 
and suffering of the war, and the orderly progress of Union and 
Democracy. 

It needs only a glance to suggest that the history included in such 
a rugged outline cannot possibly be compressed into a few pages. 
We shall not, therefore, attempt to review the war, with its long chain 
of causes and consequences. Our interest in national literature leads 
us rather to examine the years of controversy which divided the 
country long before the call to arms had sounded. If we can enter 
for a moment into the excitement of this period, we may understand 
two classes of writing which appear in every time of turmoil : the 
minor literature, voicing the feeling of an hour or a party ; and the 
major literature, which steadily reflects the unchanging ideals of 
the American nation. 

The Age of Agitation. Our pride and faith in a united country 
make it hard for us now to understand the sectional strife and 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 273 

bitterness of the twenty years before 1861. It was a time of political 
upheaval, of violent debate ending in threats or compromises, of 
sudden storm followed by a calm as ominous as that in the center of 
a whirlwind. The Wilmot Proviso, the Fugitive Slave Law, the 
Kansas-Nebraska Bill, the Repeal of the Missouri Compromise, the 
Dred Scott Decision, the Compromise of 1850, the Great Debate — 
we have to search memory or a -textbook now to learn what such 
things mean ; but at that time they kept millions of our countrymen 
in a state of intense excitement. On every one of these burning 
questions men, and women too, had to take a definite stand, and 
instantly defend it ; and every person who wrote or spoke his con- 
viction became a storm-center of controversy. 

Those were tumultuous times in which our greatest writers were 
growing up. Some of our poets, notably Whittier and Lowell, threw 
themselves into the strife of tongues ; and in consequence a portion 
of their work is so partisan in spirit that it cannot be classed with 
national literature. Other young poets of brilliant talents turned from 
poetry to politics, as Trumbull and Freneau had turned aside in '76, 
and never fulfilled their early promise to our literature. 

The two fundamental questions involved in all this strife concerned 
the matters of state rights and slavery. Both questions had been 
Fundamental debated for the greater part of a century without ever 
Questions furnishing an occasion for war ; and they might still have 
found just and peaceable solution had not the country been inflamed 
by other matters : by the passionate, uncompromising methods of the 
abolitionists ; by the zeal, no less passionate, of a few large slave- 
owners who were determined to extend their system in face of the 
growing moral conviction that slavery must be restricted ; by the 
legal or personal encounters that followed the escape of slaves into 
free territory ; and by a general newspaper campaign of misunder- 
standing and recrimination. 

All these irritating matters complicated the main issue between the 
South and the North, and swept the country from calm deliberation 
Political into a heated controversy, which rapidly broke up the 

Factions great moderate party into discordant fragments. In a 
single generation there appeared in the South eight or ten political 
organizations,' most of which were divided into two factions, one ad- 
vocating compromise and the other force in the pursuit of its 
immediate object. Meanwhile in the North there were Old Whigs 
and New Whigs, Republicans and '' Black " Republicans, Democrats 



2/4 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

and Union Democrats, Free-soilers, Libertyites, Know-nothings, 
Abolitionists. And as the last-named reformers met to listen to the 
fiery denunciations of their orators, and to demand the immediate 
freedom of the slaves at any cost, presently a riotous mob would 
burst in upon them to smash the furniture, burn the building, and 
carry off the leader with a warning halter round his neck. With such 
conditions existing in the older, more conservative parts of the country, 
it seems only a natural consequence to find politics taking the form 
of anarchy and mob rule in the frontier settlements of ^^ bleeding " 
Kansas. 

Only as we remember this political babel, with its attendant emo- 
tional disturbance, can we understand the general uproar occasioned 
by the fanatic raid of John Brown, or the mighty wave of indignation 
which followed the melodramatic story of Uncle Tom's Cabin. It was 
as if a patient, suffering from fever, had suddenly developed a new 
symptom which alarmed the watchers beyond all reason, but which 
would hardly have produced a tremor if its psychological causes had 
been understood. 

The general fever of the age, its political tumult, its moral unrest, 
its ceaseless agitation, are all clearly reflected in the minor and 
Minor popular literature of the period — in its editorials, essays. 

Writings tracts, pamphlets and newspaper verses. Generalization 
is difficult, but many of the writers who influenced public opinion 
after 1840 seem to display three characteristics: a zeal for some 
cause or reform ; a sincerity arising from moral conviction ; and, 
generally, a profound misunderstanding of other writers who were 
upholding opposite views with the same sincerity and the same pas- 
sionate intensity. 

Most of the minor works of the period have long since been for- 
gotten ; but one who reads them now begins to understand how 
armed conflict arose, not from inevitable necessity but from misunder- 
standing, between those who were bom under the same flag, who 
worshiped the same God, and who honored the same virtues in 
man or woman. It was an age of agitation ; the countr}^ was swept 
by wave after wave of emotional excitement ; the voice of deliberation 
was lost in the louder cry of passion. The tumult reached its climax 
during the feeble administration of Buchanan, at a time when, if ever 
in its history, the ship of state needed a strong man at the helm ; and 
then America, the peace-loving, was suddenly confronted by a terrible 
war which no sane person had ever desired or expected. 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 275 

That war is still too near, too overwhelming in its impression of 
mingled horror and heroism, for us to treat it altogether dispassion- 
ately. The records of the period are all more or less 
The War 

partisan, reflecting a southern or a northern " view," 

because human judgment is easily affected by sympathy, and because 
our analysis of impersonal cause and effect is inevitably mingled with 
tender and sacred memories of the brave sires who died, of the gentle 
mothers who suffered in silence for the cause they loved. That the 
war revealed the indomitable will and the appalling fighting power of 
aroused America is now a matter of history. That it was all unneces- 
sary may sometime be generally conceded. That it was fought on 
both sides by men who believed in the justice of their aims, who held 
honor dearer than life, and who heard above the shrilling of bugles 
and the roar of cannon the old Puritan battle-cry of "God for the 
right I " can no longer be doubted. 

II. LITERARY AND SOCIAL MOVEMENTS 

National and Sectional Literature. As one reviews the liter- 
ature of this stormy period, two facts stand out prominently : 
first, that the turmoil of reform was reflected in prose and poetry ; 
second, that the enduring literary works were seldom influenced 
by the problems that kept men's minds in continual agitation. 
A third fact, which reflection renders more significant, ,is that 
the great writers of the period traced their ancestry back to the 
founders of America, and that the remembrance of their ances- 
tors, who- had worked and fought together to establish this 
nation, held them steadfast in the national spirit. 

Of the minor writings we may say, in general, that they dealt 
with the surface of things, and that they seem now of little con- 
sequence. The major writings, undisturbed by temporary affairs, 
dealt with the moral and spiritual ideals which America has 
followed from the beginning ; and these writings gain steadily 
in interest as the years go by. So the literature of the period 
may be likened to a great river ; its surface is broken by waves 
or lashed by tempests, but just beneath the turmoil the water 
moves quietly, steadily onward to the sea. 



2/6 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

To illustrate the matter : the antislavery movement, which at 
one time m.onopolized public attention, had its poet in Whittier 
^ _. and its novelist in Mrs. Stowe ; but the present reader 

Partisan _ ' ^ 

Prose and is more interested in works of these writers which 
°^ ^ had nothing to do with slavery or political issues. 

Occasionally Lowell, as in his '' Commemoration Ode," rises 
to national heights and sees the eternal ideal hidden in the 
passing event ; but the bulk of his work inspired by the reform 
movement has lost its power with the present generation. 
Longfellow's verses on slavery are of so little moment that they 
are often omitted from collections of his works. Whittier's are 
vigorous and sincere, but they are partisan and cannot endure. 
He himself lived to regret some of them. In numerous collec- 
tions of the southern poetry of the period one finds here and 
there an exquisite reflection of our common joy or sorrow, and 
these are permanent ; but a large part of the verse is doomed, 
simply because it appeals to a sectional rather than to a general 
interest. Lanier, greatest of southern poets, is a splendid ex- 
ception. Unlike Whittier, who in his early days fought valiantly 
with the pen, Lanier did all his fighting with the sword ; his 
pen was sacred to poetry and to humanity. In consequence he 
never strikes a false or partisan note, and his poetry grows 
steadily more precious to the entire nation. 

• Mental Unrest. Closely associated with the political was a 
profound mental or spiritual agitation, which the historian notes 
with interest because of its influence on all subsequent Ameri- 
can literature. It showed itself, first, in a religious awakening 
under the leadership of Channing and Bushnell. Next it ap- 
peared in philanthropic guise : in the antislavery campaign, 
in the temperance reform, in the universal peace movement 
led by Elihu Burritt, and in the many other plans for the 
regeneration of human society which are suggested by Emer- 
son's '' New England Reformers." Then was the heyday of 
the lyceum and the lecturer ; every cause had its enthusiastic 
following, every town its lecture course ; and in a thousand halls 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 277 

throughout the country audiences gathered eagerly to hear the 
latest poet, prophet, or preacher of new gospels. 

As a result of all this agitation, many believed that the old 
order was about to change ; and in anticipation of the millennium 
there appeared numerous communistic societies, that is, com- 
panies of persons who sought either to reform the world or to 
escape its evils by living and working together in a kind of 
brotherhood. 

The most famous of these phalanxes or phalansteries, as they 

were called, was Brook Farm, which was organized (1841) by 

George Ripley, and which numbered Hawthorne, 

Brook Farm . i t-v • 1 

Curtis and Dana among its hundred and fifty mem- 
bers. Emerson, Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, Channing, Greeley 
and many other notable persons were interested in the com- 
munity, and sent frequent contributions to The Dial, which was 
the famous literary organ of the Brook Farmers. The members 
worked intermittently on their large farm in Roxbury (now a part 
of Boston) and their object was, in their own words, '' to live in 
all the faculties of the soul." More specifically, they aimed to 
live close to nature, to dignify manual labor, to cultivate the 
spiritual side of life, and to help every member to be free, fear- 
less, upright — an individual in the best sense of the word. 
Incidentally they hoped to give practical demonstration of the 
fact that brotherly cooperation is vastly better than our present 
competitive system of industry. Their aim was high, their effort 
sincere ; but alas ! they failed, partly for lack of capital, and 
partly because the support of such a community and the educa- 
tion of its children called for more manual labor than untrained 
muscles could endure. One of the first to be discouraged was 
Hawthorne, who writes in his Notes, after ten hours of unaccus- 
tomed toil, ''It is my opinion that a man's soul may be buried 
in a furrow of the field just as well as under a pile of money." 
A fire which consumed the main buildings in 1846 practically 
ended the community, but not until it had made a deep impres- 
sion on American life and thought. Thousands of visitors came 



2/8 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

every year to visit Brook Farm ; unnumbered references to it 
are found in the annals of the period ; and a considerable body 
of literature has since appeared in memory of the heroic 
experiment.^ 

Besides Brook Farm, more than thirty other communities 
were established, some of which are still in existence.^ In his 
Failure of essay on Thoreau (1865) Lowell ridicules the whole 
Communism movement, and though his criticism is superficial, it 
contains a grain of truth. The aim of all these communities, 
to cooperate and to know the joy and freedom of labor, has 
inspired men for ages, and will continue to inspire them until 
the aim is achieved. But unfortunately the age was too much 
influenced by agitators, and these communities soon attracted 
a host of zealots who made havoc of the enterprise. They had 
plenty of enthusiasm, but they lacked humor, balance, practical 
sense, and their vagaries brought ridicule upon an experiment 
which had originated in a noble ideal. Like the reformers in 
other fields during this period, they insisted upon an immediate 
transformation of human society ; and their effort to hurry the 
world on its slow, upward way reminds us of Dr. Johnson's 
famous parody : 

Who drives fat oxen should himself be fat. 

Transcendentalism. The unrest of the age, its passion for 
reform, its determination to win complete spiritual freedom, are 
all epitomized in the philosophic movement known as trans- 
cendentalism. There is a large literature on the subject, and we 

1 See, for instance, Swift's Brook Farm and Codman's Brook Farm Memories. Haw- 
thorne's Bhthedale Romance was occasioned by his experience as a member of the com- 
munity. He was not sympathetic, however, and his motive in joining was personal rather 
than philanthropic. His book should be read simply as a romance, and not as a portrayal 
of Brook Farm. 

2 See the records of the Oneida and the Amana communities, for instance. The idea 
of such societies dates as far back, at least, as More's Utopia. In the eighteenth century 
there were several socialistic communities in Europe ; and at least one, the Shakers, 
appeared in America before the Revolution. The sudden increase in the number here 
was due largely to the fact that the socialistic philosophy of Fourier was advocated by 
Greeley, Dana and many other Americans of influence. " Fourierism" was the name 
commonly used to designate the movement. 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 279 

cannot here go deeply into it. We shall note only two facts : 
that transcendentalism exercised a strong, elevating influence 
on American life and letters ; and that it was not a New Eng- 
land product, as is commonly alleged, but was simply the west- 
ward extension of a general European movement. 

At the root of transcendentalism, as it appeared here in 1836, 
were three elements : the first, political or democratic ; the 
second, literary or romantic ; and the third, ideal or philosophic. 
The movement began, undoubtedly, at the time when the whole 
civilized world was shaken by the American and French Revo- 
lutions. For a full half century following these historic earth- 
quakes European countries were in a state of political upheaval, 
and the object of every agitation was to secure greater liberty 
for the masses of common men. This democratic movement in 
politics was immediately followed by the romantic awakening 
in literature (which glorified and idealized plain humanity) and 
by a new philosophy of idealism which sought to free man's 
mind from error, as the French Revolution had freed his body 
from tyranny. 1 Goethe reflects the unrest of the whole civilized 
world at the beginning of the nineteenth century in the char- 
acter of Faust, who longs for the '' Beyond," that is, to escape 
from the slavery of the material world and to merge his life in 
the unseen, eternal forces that rule the universe. 

All these mighty, earlier movements entered into what is 
known, inaccurately, as New England transcendentalism. The 
Meanin of ^^^^ word has never been defined, but we shall under- 
Transcen- Stand it readily if we recall the system of thought 
^ which it supplanted. The philosophy of the eight- 
eenth century was, as a rule, skeptical and materialistic ; it was 
concerned with this world chiefly ; it was doubtful of God and 
even of the human soul ; it alleged that all knowledge and all 

1 As a suggestion of the scope of the movement, we note the following : in this 
country, Bushnell and Channing succeeded in emancipating many of our people from 
the terrors of Calvinism ; in France, Fourier advocated a new social order of cooperation, 
which had large influence throughout the world ; in Switzerland, Pestalozzi reformed 
the world's common-school system and laid the foundation for all modern education ; in 
Germany, Kant, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel established the philosophy of idealism. 



28o AMERICAN LITERATURE 

ideas depend solely upon matter and sense, upon what we can 
see and touch. In this it followed out the theory of the English 
philosopher Locke, who taught that the mind is essentially a 
tqbida rasa, a blank sheet, on which knowledge is inscribed 
only by experience. The idealists of the nineteenth century were 
radically opposed to such a view of man and of the universe. 
They taught that the human mind has a knovvledge of its own, 
independent of the senses or of the material world ; that certain 
ideas — of right and wrong, for instance, of good and evil, of 
God, duty, freedom, immortality — are innate in the soul, a part 
of its very being ; and that such ideas transcend or go beyond 
experience. It was because Emerson and his followers exalted 
this innate knowledge, this '' wisdom from within and from 
above," that they were called transcendentalists.^ 

This new philosophy (which was new only in name) took 
root at first in New England ; and from there it spread west- 
, „ ^ ward and southward till it influenced a large part of 

Influence of . 

Transcen- the country, partly by means of literature, partly 
dentahsm through the lyccum, which was then, like the present 
Woman's Club, a center of culture in almost every large town. 
The first transcendental club, or *' Symposium," was formed in 
Boston (1836) and numbered among its members Emerson, 
Thoreau, Hawthorne, Channing, James Freeman Clarke, , 
Margaret Fuller, Jones Very the mystic poet, Orestes Brownson 
the theologian, Bancroft the historian, Theodore Parker the 
radical preacher, Cranch the artist, Ripley the founder of Brook 
Farm, Convers Francis the biographer, — we might continue 
the list indefinitely, if necessary, to show the varied types of 
men and the tremendous intellectual power behind a movement 
which is generally treated with scant courtesy. 

1 See Emerson's " The Transcendentalist," This essay, however, should be read with 
caution, as it is incomplete from the viewpoint of either history or philosophy. Tran- 
scendentalism came to this country by various channels : by the-works of Coleridge and 
Carlyle ; and by numerous translations of European and especially of oriental literature. 
The last named, which were widely read here, emphasized an ideal view of the world. 
They taught that matter has no more reality than has a reflection in a mirror, and their 
teachings were largely accepted by Emerson and the transcendentalists. 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 281 

Like the earlier idealism, of the Puritan, transcendentalism 
aimedTirst to make man upright, and then to make him free in 
mind as well as in body. Whenever it appeared in literature it 



had two subjects, nature and man ; the one being regarded as 
an open book of the Lord ; the other, not as a poor creature of 
the senses, but as an immortal being and child of the Most High. 
These two fundamental conceptions — that the individual soul is 
of supreme importance, and that nature is but the symbol, the 



garment, the changing expression of one changeless spiritual 
force — colored with something of the hues of heaven the whole 
TomantTc movement in American literature. 

So far transcendentalism was excellent, and America gave it 
hearty welcome. Unfortunately it had another and weaker side. 
Its Fantastic ^^^ by this the whole movement is often judged. 
Side Two elements contributed to bring it into disrepute. 

The first, which was inherent in transcendentalism as a system 
of thought, related to the doctrine of innate ideas. Because a 
man may have knowledge which transcends experience, shallow 
minds jumped to the conclusion that experience was unnecessary. 
Because an individual may be in touch with the divine source 
of knowledge, enthusiasts felt free to disregard the saints and 
sages. Because the Present offers its inspiration with its duty, 
even Emerson felt free to ignore the Past, where '' dwells that 
silent majority whose experience guides our action and whose 
wisdom shapes our thought in spite of ourselves." It was inev- 
itable, therefore, that this doctrine, like every other which fails 
to give due weight to the treasured wisdom and experience of 
the race, should tend to extremes and vagaries. 

The second disruptive element was the same spirit of agita- 
tion that troubled our politics. Just as state problems of the hour 
were used by extremists to keep the country in a turmoil, so the 
new philosophy was demoralized by zealots. Every unbalanced 
enthusiast took it up ; visionaries snatched leadership away 
from the wise and prudent, and calling themselves '' Apostles of 
Newness " went forth to preach the gospel of individualism. 



282 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

proclaiming that every man was his own and only source of 
wisdom and authority : 

I am the owner of the sphere, 

Of the seven stars and the solar year, 

Of Caesar's hand and Plato's brain, 

Of Lord Christ's heart and Shakespeare's strain.^ 

Emerson describes one of their conventions as made up of 
*' m^admen, mad women, men with beards, Dunkers, Muggle- 
tonians. Gome-outers, Groaners, Agrarians, Abolitionists . . . 
and philosophers." The classification is vague, but the impres- 
sion is distinct that no order will proceed from such chaos. By 
such men was transcendentalism judged, .though in truth the 
new philosophy was not responsible for them. They were a 
product of the age ; they belonged to the army of reformers 
that then had a mission, as Lowell said, '' to attend to every- 
body else's business," and they seized upon transcendentalism 
as a new means of agitation. 

The folly of such reformers, the impractical character of their 
communistic societies, the eccentricities of Alcott^ and other 
Its Ideal enthusiasts, — all these furnished a tempting mark for 
Truth the fun-makers of the country, who fell upon the 

movement and smothered it in ridicule. It has been a fashion 
ever since to decry it, just as it was the thoughtless fashion long 
after Hiidibras to jeer at Puritanism. The points worthy of re- 
membrance are : that transcendentalism was an earnest reaffirma- 
tion of ideal truth, sublime and authoritative ; that it valued the 
individual soul above all institutions ; that it sought in mature a 
divine presence, and in religion a divine companionship ; that, 
in an age of material interests, it emphasized the life of the 
spirit ; that, when America was given to boasting of its size and 
prosperity, it insisted on culture, reverence, virtue and simplicity, 

1 From Emerson, "The Informing Spirit," an introduction to the essay on History. 

2 The career of Amos Bronson Alcott (1799-1SS8) should be read as a commentary 
on the transcendental mov'^ement. He is now remembered chiefly through his daughter, 
Louisa M. Alcott, whose Little Women and other "juveniles" have been widely read, 
and are still deservedly popular. 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 283 

as more worthy of American manhood. Its influence on all sub- 
sequent thought and literature in this country is beyond measure. 

General Characteristics. We have noted the significant fact 
that, while minor writers of this period were absorbed in ques- 
tions of the hour, the major writers stood apart, like Moses on 
the hill of Rephidim, upholding the ideals which America has 
followed since the days of Pilgrim and Cavalier, and which seem 
to grow younger and ever more lovely with the passing cen- 
turies. Another fact worthy of attention is that our literary 
field was immensely broadened after 1840 by the exploration of 
oriental and European libraries. The old mystic books of India, 
the imaginative splendor of Persian poetry^ the primal vigor of 
Scandinavian epics, the romance and sentiment of German, 
French, Spanish and Italian literatures, — all these, in the form 
of numerous translations, suddenly appeared to our writers, 
enlarging their horizon till it included not- only America but all 
humanity. 

Viewed as a national product, the major literature of the age 
shows four common characteristics : (i) The harmony with 
nature, which appeared in our first national poetry, is here 
deepened and spiritualized. It becomes mystic also, especially 
in the verse of Emerson and Whitman, showing the influence 
of oriental literature. (2) The national spirit and an intense 
loyalty to the nation's flag are everywhere in evidence, strength- 
ened by the war ; and though historians still separate our writers 
into eastern and southern and western '' schools," the simple 
fact is that the only books worth considering are those which 
ignore such divisions and appeal to the whole American people. 
(3) A strong moral tendency, which manifested itself in our 
first Colonial writers, here reaches a climax. Almost every im- 
portant book of this period, whether a novel of Hawthorne or 
an idyl of Longfellow, aimed not simply to give pleasure but to 
bring a message to men ; and the interest of story or poem 
generally centered about a moral problem and its solution. With 
the exception of Whitman, the major poets of this period were, 



284 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

like the Victorian poets in England, essentially teachers of the 
nation, and the moral purity of their lives emphasized their 
doctrine. The moral aim and endeavor of practically all our 
American writers may be epitomized in two lines of Chaucer's 
Country Parson : 

Christes lore and his apostles twelve 

He taughte, but first he folwed it himselve. 

(4) In contrast with preceding periods and with the age in which 
we live, the middle of the nineteenth century belongs emphati- 
cally to the poets ; and this is more remarkable in view of the 
fact that the genius of America had, up to that time, appeared 
practical and prosaic. Longfellow, Emerson, Whittier, Lowell, 
Holmes, Lanier, Whitman, — it needs only a partial list of names 
to suggest how far the poets exceeded the permanent achieve- 
ment of the prose writers. We may begin our special study 
with more interest and gratitude, therefore, if we remember that 
it is our only opportunity in the long history of America to 
consider an age of poetry. 

III. THE GREATER POETS AND ESSAYISTS ^ 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (i 807-1 882) 

There are many reasons for beginning our study of this 
notable literary period with Longfellow, '* our household poet." 
He is, first of all, the poet of the whole people, the most widely 
known and loved of all American authors. While he was still 
living among us our children began to celebrate his birthday, 

1 It is unusually difficult to group or classify the major writers of this period. 
Emerson and Lowell were both poets ; but their present fame seems to rest largely 
on their essays. Longfellow and Lanier had a reputation as prose writers ; and Holmes 
was either a poet who wrote fiction, or an essayist who wrote verse. As a writer's true 
place is not where he wrote but where he is read, we see no reason for grouping writers 
of the nation into " Cambridge " or other " schools." Various other classifications, such 
as " Transcendental " and " Antislavery " writers, are misleading in view of the fact that 
the chief works of such writers (Thoreau and Whittier, for instance) have nothing to do 
with either transcendentalism or slavery. Purely geographical divisions, into New Eng- 
land or western or southern writers, are out of place in a study of national literature. 







HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 
From an engraving after the portrait by Lawrence 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 285 

and the custom spread through the country until there were few 
schools that allowed February 27 to pass without some recogni- 
tion of the poet's life and service. This exquisite tribute, which 
any author might desire, was not offered simply because Long- 
fellow was the children's friend and wrote the pretty sentiment : 

Ye are better than all the ballads 

That ever were sung or said ; 
For ye are living poems, 

And all the rest are dead. 

It rested upon the solid fact that whoever is known and read of 
children has a secure place in the hearts of fathers and mothers 
the world over.^ 

Another reason for our choice of Longfellow to head the list 
of our poets is that he reflects not the surface but the deep 
undercurrent of American life, which is seen at its best in 
peace, and which flows on serenely, cherishing the love of home 
and homely virtues, under all the bubbles and froth of political 
excitement. His first book of poems. Voices of the Night 
(1839), came at the beginning of the turmoil which led to the 
Civil War; his last volume, /;/ tJie Harbor (1882), appeared 
when the wounds of that frightful conflict were almost healed ; 
and between these, two came a score of other books, — cheery, 
patient, hopeful books, all loyal to American traditions. In the 
midst of political strife which divided our people, he sang the 
legends that united them in pride of a common country. In an 
age of intellectual agitation, which bubbled like a pot over 
Fourierism, transcendentalism and various other isms, he began 
to preach his little homilies : '' Resignation," '' Hymn to the 
Night," " A Psalm of Life," " The Ladder of Saint Augustine," 
'* Excelsior," — we know them all by heart because they come 

1 This popular judgment is reflected abroad. Go into a foreign school, wherever 
English is studied, and you are almost certain to hear our household poet quoted. A 
prominent Scottish educator, familiar with schools in England and on the Continent, 
recently declared that Longfellow had led more people to love poetry than any other 
author of the nineteenth century. 



286 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

straight from the heart, reflecting its unchanging faith and 
courage. Wearied by controversy, men hstened with dehght to 
this new preacher of peace and good will, forgetting their super- 
ficial differences, rejoicing together in the knowledge that when- 
ever the heart of America is touched it is always found steadfast 
and true to its old ideals. 

Not content with reminding us of our own legends and be- 
liefs, Longfellow appropriated the literary treasures of Europe ; 
he gathered a poem here, a story there, as one would cull flowers . 
from an old-fashioned garden, and brought them all back to 
America, saying, " Your children are gathered from many lands : 
here are their native songs, their romance, their heroism, for 
these also are your heritage." To this new note, strange yet 
familiar, our people again listened with joy and wonder, as one 
listens to the first mocking bird. After the coldness of Br)'ant, 
the morbidness of Poe, this sweet, sympathetic singer of new- 
world hope and old-world memories went straight to their 
hearts. He sang for them, not as a great artist who prepares a 
concert for the few who can appreciate or pay for it, but as one 
who freely gives what music is in him to make life a little 
brighter and happier. Perhaps he was not a great, not an 
original poet ; but he glorified the commonplace life which 
most men live by showing its essential beauty and truth ; and 
America loved him for it, and gave him a place which no other 
poet has ever occupied. The witness of this is the volume of 
Longfellow's poems which is found not in the bookcase but 
on the table of so many households. 

Life. It was Milton the Puritan poet who wrote, " He that would 
hope to write well . . . ought himself to be a true poem, that is, a 
composition and pattern of the best and most honorable things." Two 
centuries later Longfellow, a descendant of the Puritans, exemplified 
the doctrine finely. We are glad to remember that such a man lived 
and worked among us ; but his life offers a hard task to the biographer, 
who can only state the simple facts, leaving the reader to discern 
the spirit, which is the only thing of consequence. 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 287 

He was born in Falmouth (now Portland), Maine, in 1807. Like 
Bryant, he was descended from John and Priscilla Alden, of May- 
p Y flower renown, and like him he grew up in an atmosphere 
of plain living and high thinking. Bryant's first volume 
of poems appeared (182 1) shortly before Longfellow began to write ; 
and it was due partly to the fame of this little book, partly to senti- 
mental reasons arising from a distant relationship, that Longfellow 
chose Bryant as his first master in poetry/ 

In the public schools and in Bowdoin College, where Hawthorne 
was his classmate, Longfellow began his education. At his graduation, 
Facing the in 1825, the question of what to do for a living was im- 
World mediately forced upon him. Like Bryant, he had written 

youthful verses and had determined to be a poet ; but his father 
pointed out the visionary character of his ambition, saying, "A 
literary calling, to one who has the means of support, must be very 
pleasant ; but there is not enough wealth in this country to offer 
encouragement and patronage to merely literary men." ^ With a 
sorrowful farewell to poetry Longfellow had begun to study law in 
his father's office, when Bowdoin offered to establish for him a pro- 
fessorship in modern languages if he would prepare himself for the 
work. His answer was prompt and joyous ; his destiny as a literary 
man was determined when he sailed (1826) for a long period of 
foreign study and travel. In those days few Americans went abroad ; 
Europe seemed a world of romance, and Longfellow copied Irving in 
observing it through a rose-colored pair of spectacles. The result of 
this romantic pilgrimage appeared in his first book. Outre Mer {y'^t^^^ 
a series of youthful essays modeled after Irving's Sketch Book. 

For the next five years Longfellow taught at Bowdoin, preparing 
his own textbooks, and finding his work so exacting that he had 
small leisure for writing. Then he was offered the professorship of 
" Belles-Lettres " at Harvard, with the suggestion that he enlarge his 
knowledge of German. Another year or more was spent abroad, but 
the whole trip was saddened by the death of his wife in Holland. To 
understand Longfellow at this period one should read Hyperion, a 
romance which reflects his own state of mind as he wandered up and 

1 This is shown clearly in the " Earlier Poems " of Longfellow's Voices of the Night, 
Compare, for instance, Longfellow's " Spirit of Poetr}' " with Entrant's '' Forest Hymn." 

2 This significant comment suggests the low state of literature here in 1825. Even 
in England few authors before this date had been able to earn a living by their pens. 
Most of them depended on private patrons or on a government pension. 



288 



AMERICAN LITERATURE 



down the Rhine, or lingered by the old castle of Heidelberg, steeping 
himself in the sentimentality of German romantic literature. 

On his return, in the autumn of 1836, he began teaching at 
Harvard ; and there for eighteen years he gave himself to his noble 
Life as a profession. He was again happily married (to the heroine 
Teacher of Hyperiofi) ; his home was blessed with children ; and 

his work, though arduous, left him considerable time for writing. 
He lived in an old Tor}^ mansion known as Craigie House, once the 

headquarters of Washington, 
which had come into his pos- 
session after his marriage ; his 
poems made him known to the 
whole country ; he was sur- 
rounded by a rare circle of 
friends who encouraged him 
to his best efforts.-^ The spirit 
of this whole period is ex- 
pressed in the last entry of his 
journal for the year 1845 : 

" Peace to the embers of 
burnt-out things ; fears, anxieties, 
doubts, all gone ! I see them 
now as a thin blue smoke, hang- 
ing in the bright heaven of the 
past year, vanishing away into 
utter nothingness. Not many 
hopes deceived, not many illu- 
sions scattered, not many antici- 
pations disappointed; but love 
THE FRONT HALL, LONGFELLOW's fulfilled, the heart comforted, the 
HOME, CAMBRIDGE soul enriched with affection ! " 







' ■(■!.- 



V//,V|:|, 



Such a life seems to us idyllic, leaving nothing to be desired ; yet 
Longfellow was always haunted by the delusion of leisure. His pro- 
fessorship, which brought him useful work, an honored position, and 



1 The sonnets " Three Friends of Mine " should be read here. An excellent picture 
of life in Cambridge at that time is drawn by Howells in Literary Friends mid Acquamt- 
ance. Longfellow, Hawthorne, Emerson, Thoreau, Lowell, Holmes, Sumner, Felton, 
Agassiz, Norton, Parkman, Prescott, Motley, Higginson, Dana, Channing, — here within 
a circle of a few miles was gathered the most remarkable body of literary men that this 
country has ever known. 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD • 289 

a living, was regarded by him as a burden ; and he resigned it gladly 
(1854) with the thought that now would the expectation of years be 
realized and leisure inspire him to write his masterpiece. The hope 
was vain ; for his best work — with the possible exception of Hiawatha 
(1855), which was written in a joyous vacation spirit — had been done 
while he was a teacher, and not until comparatively late in life did his 
verse show any noticeable gain in quality. In his later work we shall 
often find a more finished expression or a greater depth of feeling, 
but his masterpiece (unless he regarded the Tales of a Wayside Inn in 
that light) was never written. 

For seven happy years Longfellow gave himself up to leisure, his 
poetry meanwhile, though written in the prime of life, showing a 
Leisure and Steady decline in creative vigor. Then a frightful accident 
Tragedy occurred ; his wife's dress caught fire, and she was burned 
to death even while he made frantic efforts to extinguish the flames. 
His ideal happiness, the blessing of years, was suddenly gone, blown 
out like a candle ; but the tragedy which came with anguish in one 
hand carried in the other a boundless sympathy. The world, which 
had known Longfellow only as a poet, now learned to know him as a 
man, — one who shared its grief, who bore affliction in silence, and 
who worked on steadily with the determination of keeping himself 
from unmanly brooding and melancholy.^ People came from far and 
near to speak their appreciation of his life and work ; his house, like 
that of Tennyson, became the object of thousands of pilgrimages 
from all parts of Europe and America. Unlike the English poet, he 
received all visitors kindly, and seemed to rejoice in the thought that 
he had entered so helpfully into the life of men. The most welcome 
guests of all, however, -were the children, who came in ever-increasing 
numbers to make a festival of the poet's birthday. 

The influence of these two types of visitors is reflected in many of 
Longfellow's later poems, v/hich are youthful, almost childlike in spirit, 
but which have a depth and tenderness of sympathy that come only 
from knowing both the joy and the sorrow of humanity. He passed 
away (1882) soon after his seventy-fifth birthday had been celebrated 
by many little friends in his home, and by the schools throughout the 
country, the spirit of the festival being enshrined in Whittier's tribute, 
"The Poet and the Children." The closing stanza of "The Bells of 

1 See the first sonnet on " The Divine Comedy," and " The Cross of Snow." The 
latter poem seemed to Longfellow too sacred for publication. It was found after his 
death among his private papers. 



290 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

San Bias," composed soon after this last birthday, is noteworthy here 
in view of the fact that it was Longfellow's last written word : 

O bells of San Bias, in vain 
Ye call back the Past again ! 

The Past is deaf to your prayer ; 
Out of the shadows of night 
The world rolls into light ; 

It is daybreak everywhere. 

Earlier Works. The first or experimental period ^ of Long- 
fellow's work began with the '' Earlier Poems " of the little vol- 
ume called Voices of the Night {\^^<^), and ended with The Waif, 
A Collection of Poems (1845). During these early years two 
significant traits appear. First, Longfellow gave serious thought 
to his work as an educator, not simply of college boys but of 
the whole American people. To this end he made numerous 
translations of the best poems of other lands, and laboriously 
edited TJie Poets and Poetry of Europe (1845). It is easy for a 
modern scholar to criticize this work as superficial ; the point to 
remember is that, when it appeared, very little was known here 
of foreign languages or letters, and that Longfellow was a 
pioneer in the unexplored field of Italian, French, Spanish, 
German and Scandinavian literatures. 

A second trait of this early period was Longfellow's native 
power to reach the heart or conscience of his countrymen, in such 
Quality of artlcss poems as "The Village Blacksmith," ''The 
Early Poems Qld Clock on the Stairs," "Excelsior," and many 
others, each containing a moral or an allegory. It is the pre- 
rogative of critics to show that these poems are imitative, that 
their imagery is faulty and their moralizing too pronounced. Such 
criticism, though true enough, is unimportant. The significant 

1 We shall classify Longfellow's works according to periods, leaving the student to 
group his favorite poems according to type. We suggest the following, simply as a 
model for such classification : (i) Lyrics, such as " A Psalm of Life," " Resignation," 
etc. ; (2) Ballads and Short Narrative Poems, such as " A Skeleton in Armor " and " Paul 
Revere's Ride " ; (3) Long Narrative Poems, such as Evangeline and Hiawatha, the 
latter being a kind of epic narrative ; (4) Dramatic works, such as The Spanish Student; 
and (5) Translations. 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 291 

things are : that these poems of simple and genuine feehng 
found a welcome in thousands of homes where poetry was 
needed ; that in emphasizing the ethical element Longfellow 
was a true reflection of his age and of the sentiment of people 
trained in the Puritan school ; and that his verse always moved 
in the deep undercurrent of American life. Thus when ''A 
Psalm of Life " appeared anonymously in the Knicke7'bocker 
Magazine (1838) it became almost immediately a national poem ; 
its unknown author was praised from one end of the country to 
the other for expressing the spirit of his age, *' the very heart- 
beat of the American conscience." ^ That was nearly three 
quarters of a century ago, and America still reads many of the 
early poems, and responds as of old to their elemental sincerity. 
Other popular works of Longfellow's early period, his attempts 
at dramatic poetry, at prose sketches and fiction — for he was 
Experimental Constantly experimenting — are now seldom read ; 
Works yet they well repay the examination of one who would 

appreciate the poet's strength and his limitation. The Poems on 
Slavery (1842) were a reflection of Longfellow's view of a matter 
which then kept North and South in a turmoil. Unfortunately 
he dealt with his subject, as he dealt with old German legends, 
in a sentimental way; and at that time the country was in no 
mood for a legendary treatment of slavery. The Spanish Student 
(1843), a long dramatic poem, reads fairly well and furnishes an 
occasional line or little song to remember ; but the work as a 
whole is lacking in action, in character drawing and in dramatic 
interest. Longfellow's first volume, Oictre Mer ( 1 8 3 5 ), is a series 
of sketches of travel, and suffers by comparison with the Sketch 
Book, on which it was evidently modeled. Hyperioji (1839) is 
an inartistic but mildly interesting combination of guidebook 
and sentimental romance, the story serving as a thread on which 

1 Many enthusiastic references to " A Psalm of Life " are found in the magazines and 
newspapers of the period. Whittier wrote, " We know not who the author may be, but 
he or she is no common man or woman. These nine, simple verses are worth more than 
all the dreams of Shelley and Keats and Wordsworth. They are alive and vigorous with 
the spirit of the day in which we live, — the moral steam-enginery of an age of action." 



292 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

to hang various local legends and description of scenery. It was 
once very popular, and is still occasionally read by those who would 
attain a romantic state of mind when traveling on the Rhine. ^ 

Middle Period. All these experimental works may be regarded 
as a prelude to the harmony of Longfellow's middle period, 
which includes the fifteen years from 1845 to i860. During 
this time he wrote some of his best poems of childhood ; in 
The Seaside and tJie Fireside (1849) he strengthened his hold 
upon the heart of the nation ; he made one magnificent appeal 
to American patriotism in '' The Building of the Ship " ; and 
in such poems as '' The Fire of Driftwood " and '' The Light- 
house " he gave us some of our best lyrics of the sea. He wrote 
also Eva7tgeli?ie, The Coin'tship of Miles Standish, Hiawatha, 
and a part of the Tales of a Wayside Imi, — which are all of 
such importance that we must examine them more closely to 
find the secret of their popularity. 

In the opinion of many readers, Longfellow reached the climax 
of his power in Evangeline, A Tale of Acadie (1847).^ When 
the poem first appeared Poe and the critics fell upon 
it savagely, while a multitude of uncritical people 
welcomed it with enthusiasm. After more than half a century 
we still read it with undiminished pleasure, and the reasons for 
our enjoyment are not far to seek. It is, first of all, a charming 
story,^ unlike anything else in our literature ; and its ideals of 
faith, love and heroism are such as must always make a deep 
impression upon all normal hearts. Again, Longfellow told his 

1 Ten years later Longfellow wrote another romance, laying the scene in his own 
country. This was Kavanagh (1849), a "novel of character and manners." It was better 
than Hyperion, and was praised by Emerson and Hawthorne ; but it was soon forgotten. 

2 For the historical matter of the poem, relating to the expulsion of the Acadians, we 
must refer the reader to the American histories. Longfellow owes his story to the gen- 
erosity of Hawthorne, who had intended to use it as the basis of a romance. See Samuel 
Longfellow's Life of Longfellow (II, 70) and Hawthorne's American Note Book 
(I, 203). There is a large literature on the subject; but the student, after reading 
the poem itself, may be satisfied with Porter's Evattgcline : the Place, the Story and the 
Poem (1882). 

8 Some readers may object to the occasional sentimentality of Evangeline. As there 
are several points of resemblance between this work and Goethe's Hermann und Doro- 
thea, it is probable that Longfellow was influenced by the sentimentality of the German 
poet. 




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THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 293 

story in a sympathetic way, and gave added pleasure by using a 
new meter, the dactyhc hexameter. ^ On this score also the critics 
were emphatic, declaring that Longfellow did not and could not 
use classic hexameters; but most readers found these ''brim- 
ming, slow-moving, soul-satisfying lines " very pleasant, and 
well adapted to the kind of tale that the poet was telling. The 
characters of the poem are, on the whole, the best that Long- 
fellow has portrayed. Evangeline, Gabriel, Benedict, stout 
Basil the blacksmith, gentle Father Felician, — here are men 
and women such as we find, not in the street, to be sure, but 
in some old romance, or in the dear memories of childhood. 
Altogether Evajigeline is a delicate and childlike idyl, and 
again the American people showed good literary taste in claim- 
ing it for their own. 

In The Courtship of Miles Staiidish (1858) Longfellow pro- 
duced another American idyl, and repeated, in the fainter tones 
Miles of ^^ echo, his popular success. He repeated also 

standish his hexameters ; but of these we must confess that 
they are far below the standard set in Evangeline, and often go 
halt or lame in measures that are neither prose nor poetry. The 
whole story hangs on two remarks of Colonial characters which 
are fairly well authenticated.^ The first is from the lips of Miles 
Standish, who declares : 

That 's what 1 always say ; if you want a thing to be well done 
You must do it yourself, you must not leave it to others. 

1 By " hexameter " is meant that each line has six feet or measures. A dactyl is a 
measure having one long and two short syllables, the first being accented. The student 
will appreciate the meter by reading the opening passage of Evangeline^ strongly empha- 
sizing the beat or accent, and using this exercise as a preparation for the musical reading 
of Virgil's Aineid. Many critics are doubtful wheiher this meter can be successfully 
used in English. It is seen at its best in the flexible Greek language ; and those who 
object to its present use do so on the ground that it cannot be copied in any language 
having the fixed accents of English. For a discussion of the measure in general, see 
Matthew Arnold's essay " On Translating Homer." For Longfellow's use of the measure, 
see Stedman's Poets of America^ pp. 195-201. 

2 For his scant knowledge of Colonial life Longfellow seems to have depended upon 
Elliott's History of New England. For his local scenes he depended, as in Evangeline^ 
upon his own imagination. Plymouth was at his door, and Acadia at the end of a pleas- 
ant journey ; yet Longfellow did not take the trouble to become acquainted with either 
place before writmg his poems. 



294 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Then he shows his mascuhne consistency by sending another 
(John Alden) on the very important errand of asking the most 
beautiful of Pilgrim maidens to become his wife. The second 
remark comes roguishly from Priscilla herself : 

But as he warmed and glowed, in his simple and eloquent language, " 
Quite forgetful of self, and full of the praise of his rival. 
Archly the maiden smiled, and, with eyes overrunning with laughter, 
Said, in a tremulous voice, " Why don't you speak for yourself, John ? " 

About these two remarks, and the story which they suggest, 
Longfellow gathers a series of pictures of the Pilgrims, all colored 
by his own humor and sympathy. The poem is far from being 
a correct or adequate portrayal of pioneer life ; but it is whole- 
some and interesting, and has probably led more people to 
Plymouth Rock than have all the histories of the period. 

In The Song of Hiazvatha (1855) our poet made an entirely 
new departure, and the joyous spirit of it may be inferred from 
his journal*^ Never was a poet more occupied and 
delighted with his own measures ; never did critics 
pounce more hawklike upon a work to rend it ; and never did 
a whole people more gladly accept and welcome a literary gift 
in the same childlike spirit in which it was offered. As Hiawa- 
tha, with its simple rhythm and endless repetitions, is a poem 
which any child can enjoy and which few men like to analyze, 
we leave it with the reader, repeating only the invitation : 

Ye who love a nation's legends. 
Love the ballads of a people, 
That like voices from afar off 
Call to us to pause and listen, 
Speak in tones so plain and childlike. 
Scarcely Ccfh the ear distinguish 
Whether they are sung or spoken, — 
Listen to this Indian Legend, 
To this Song of Hiawatha ! 

1 " Hiawatha occupies and delights me," he writes enthusiastically. " Have I no 
misgivings about it ? Yes, sometimes. Then the theme seizes me and hurries me away, 
and they vanish." (See the. Journal, October 19, 1854 ; or Samuel Longfellow's Life of 
Longfellow, II, 277.) 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD * 295 

We must note, however, this paradox in passing : that Hia- 
watJia was a strikingly original poem, by an author who showed 
little or no originality in either the form or content of his verse. 
The central figure, Hiawatha, for instance, had been known for 
years as a primitive folk-hero, a kind of Prometheus, Beowulf, 
Faust and Menabozo all in one. He was the teacher and de- 
fender of his people ; he had human and superhuman attributes ; 
he knew medicine, magic, and all the secrets of nature ; and 
he talked with all the birds as with his friends. Around this 
picturesque hero had gathered a host of legends and traditions, 
the material for a splendid epic ; yet all this poetic material lay 
neglected, waiting for some man to open his eyts and see it. 
Longfellow's originality consists, therefore, like that of most 
geniuses, in picking up what others had passed by, — much as 
Malory collected the Morte D'Art/mr, and Sturluson the won- 
derful Scandinavian Edda. The material for HiazvatJia came 
largely from Schoolcraft's records of the Ojibway Indians, and 
the form was copied from the Finnish epic of the Kalcvala} 

As the latter poem suggested the rhythm, and possibly also 
some minor details, of Hiawatha, we submit a selection de- 
scribing the singing of the hero Lemminkainen : a 

Then began the reckless minstrel ' ^ 

To intone his wizard sayings ; 
Sang he alders to the waysides, 
Sang he oaks upon the mountains. 
On the oak trees sang he branches, 
On each branch he sang an acorn, 
On the acorns golden rollers, 
On each roller sang a cuckoo ; 
Then began the cuckoos calling, 
Gold from every throat came streaming ; 
Copper fell from every feather, 

1 The Kalevala — meaning, like the Norse Valhalla "the abode of heroes" — is the 
national epic of Finland, and is among the five or six great epics of the world. It con- 
sists of over twenty thousand verses, in fifty runes or books. It owes its preservation 
and present form largely to the labors of EHas Loennrott (i 802-1 884). The selection 
which we quote for comparison is taken from Crawford's translation. 



29^ AMERICAN LITERATURE 

And each wing emitted silver, 
Filled the isle with precious metals. 

Sang again young Lemminkainen, 
Conjured on, and sang and chanted. 
Sang to precious stones the seasands, 
Sang the stones to pearls resplendent, 
Robed the groves in iridescence, 
Sang the island full of flowers, 
Many colored as the rainbow. 

Sang again the magic minstrel, 
In the court a well he conjured, 
On the well a golden cover, 
On the lid a silver dipper, 
That the boys might drink the water, 
That the maids might lave their eyelids. 
On the plains he conjured lakelets, 
Sang the duck upon the waters, 
Golden-cheeked and silver-headed, 
Sang the feet from shining copper. 
And the island maidens wondered, 
Stood entranced at Ahti's wisdom. 
At the songs of Lemminkainen, 
At the hero's magic power. 

And here, for comparison, is a passage from Hiawatha, which 
portrays Chibiabos the musician : 

From the hollow reeds he fashioned 
Flutes so musical and mellow, 
That the brook, the Sebowisha, 
Ceased to murmur in the woodland, 
That the wood-birds ceased from sinsfina:. 
And the squirrel, Adjidaumo, 
Ceased his chatter in the oak-tree, 
And the rabbit, the Wabasso, 
Sat upright to look and listen. 

Yes. the brook, the Sebowdsha, 
Pausing, said, " O Chibiabos, 
Teach my waves to flow in music. 
Softly as your words in singing ! " . . , 

Yes, the robin, the Opechee, 
Joyous, said, " O Chibiabos, 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 29; 

Teach me tones as sweet and tender, 
Teach me songs as full of sadness ! " . . . 

All the many sounds of nature 
Borrowed sweetness from his singing; 
All the hearts of men were softened 
By the pathos of his music ; 
For he sang of peace and freedom, 
Sang of beauty, love, and longing ; 
Sang of death, and life undying 
In the Islands of the Blessed, 
In the kingdom of Ponemah, 
In the land of the Hereafter. 

Later Period. The third period of Longfellow's work is in- 
cluded between the tragic loss of his wife (1861) and his death 
in 1882. All the work of this period speaks of growth, of 
broadened sympathy, of deeper feeling, of more artistic expres- 
sion. In the earlier work one is sometimes repelled by the 
sentimental imagery (in such poems as *' The Reaper and the 
Flowers," for instance) and is often wearied by the diffuse ex- 
pression, the needless repetition of his narrative poems. In his 
later work, especially in his sonnets, one is rarely disappointed. 
The feeling is deep and true, the expression condensed, the 
imagery appropriate ; and we finish the reading of '' Nature," 
"Milton," "Three Friends," "Divina Commedia "and "Giotto's 
Tower," with the thought that these are among the best 
sonnets in our language. 

Another interesting characteristic of Longfellow's later work 
is that he returns to his early experiments. He writes new 
sonnets, lyrics, ballads, dramas ; he makes a famous translation 
of one of the great books of the world, the Divine Comedy of 
Dante ; when an " occasional " poem is called for, he answers 
with *' The Hanging of the Crane " or " Morituri Salutamus ; ^ 

1 "The Hanging of the Crane" (1867) was written for the poet T. B. Aldrich. It 
celebrates an old Colonial custom, which led neighbors to hang a crane over the fire- 
place of a young married couple who were setting up housekeeping. '' Morituri Saluta- 
mus" (1874), celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of Longfellow's class at Bowdoin, is a 
noble piece of work, on the whole the best occasional poem that Longfellow wrote. 
The theme was suggested by Gerome's painting of gladiators, under which was written, 
" Ave Caesar . . . morituri te salutant." 



298 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

and in the Tales of a Wayside Inn and Christns, A Mystery, 
he attempts two ambitious flights which are plainly beyond his 
powers. By all this varied work he kept his heart young and 
responsive ; up to his last lyric, '' The Bells of San Bias," he 
retained, like Tennyson, the ability to surprise and delight 
his readers. 

In the first of his sonnets on the '' Divina Commedia," 
Longfellow reveals his reason for spending years on the trans- 
The Divine Nation of Dante's work. It was, in a word, to occupy 
Comedy his mind ; to keep him from brooding over the 

tragedy of his wife's death. To say that this translation is an 
accurate and praiseworthy work is to do it scant justice. It was 
Longfellow's custom to invite friends to dinner once a week, 
and in the evening to read his translation line by line, giving 
close heed to the comments of Lowell, Norton, and any other 
scholars who gathered about his table. ^ The finished translation 
represents, therefore, not simply the work of a poet but also, in 
some degree, the judgment of men who had made a life study 
of Dante. To those who can appreciate the beauty of the 
Divine Comedy in the original, Longfellow's work will probably 
be disappointing. It is too literal for poetry, and it lacks the 
satisfying simplicity of Norton's prose translation. It seems to 
us, nevertheless, the best metrical version of Dante which has 
appeared in our language, and students will cherish it as an ex- 
cellent introduction to the mind and work of the Italian master. 

The general plan of the Tales of a Wayside hin (i 863-1 873) 
is a very old one, and the work suffers by comparison with the 
The Way- Cantei^nry Tales of Chaucer, or with The Earthly 
side Inn Paradise of William Morris. Longfellow gathers 
his characters, who are his friends thinly disguised,^ into the 
Red Horse Inn, at Sudbury ; there before the open fire they 

1 A pleasant description of these gatherings is found in Howells's Literary Friends 
and Acquaintance. 

2 The poet of the Wayside Inn was T. \V. Parsons; the student, Henry Wales; the 
theologian, Professor Treadwell ; the musician, Ole Bull ; the Spanish Jew, Israel 
Edrehi; the Sicilian, Professor Monti, — all of whom were well known in Cambridge. 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 299 

tell their favorite stories, and the poet binds the tales together 
with preludes and interludes, in the manner of Chaucer. For 
his material Longfellow goes to many sources, to the Talmud, 
to medieval legends, to modern history ; but in '' The Birds of 
Killingworth " he shows originality by creating a poetic Ameri- 
can legend. The most vigorous of the tales are included in the 
'' Saga of King Olaf," a series of narratives borrowed from the 
Hcimsktingla} reflecting the adventurous spirit of the Vikings. 
Among the best of the twenty-one other tales, which make up 
the three books of the Wayside Iiin^ are '' Paul Revere's Ride," 
"The Bell of Atri," "The Legend Beautiful" and "King 
Robert of Sicily." 

The most ambitious, and perhaps the least successful, of 

Longfellow's works was the dramatic poem Christ?is, A Mystery, 

over which he labored many years, publishing: parts 

Christus , , , . , -^Z . . . „ , f' ^ . 

01 the work at mtervals, and givmg it nnal lorm m 
1872. The aim of this modern attempt at a mystery play w^as, 
in Longfellow's words, "to present the various aspects of 
Christendom in the Apostolic, Middle and Modern ages." The 
book is in three parts : first, " The Divine Tragedy," which is 
Longfellow's metrical version of the Gospel story ; second, 
"The Golden Legend," in which he retells a medieval story 
that he found in Hartmann's Der Arme Heinrich ; and third, 
" New England Tragedies," which are gloomy narratives adapted 
from Winthrop'sy<?;/r;2(2/ and other Colonial records. It is per- 
haps sufficient criticism to say that Longfellow w^as not at his 
best in dramatic poetry, and that " The Golden Legend," which 
has been widely translated into foreign languages, is the only 
part of Christus w^hich repays the reading. 

General Characteristics. We have already called attention to 
some of Longfellow's qualities ; we have noted his elemental 
appeal to the heart and conscience, his understanding of the 

1 The Heimskringla (world's circle) is a history of Norse kings, some mythical, some 
real, written by the Icelander Snorri Sturluson (1178-1241). It is the most important 
prose work in old Norse literature. 



300 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

American home, his service in broadening our Hterary culture. 
We have suggested also his habit of borrowing from other 
writers, — a weakness which will probably exclude him from 
ever being considered among the world's original poets. ^ As 
we review now his entire work, several qualities stand out 
prominently. The first of his literary virtues is that, like Chaucer, 
he knows how to tell a tale in an interesting way ;. and the 
writer who can tell a tale or a ballad as Longfellow told the 
*' Legend Beautiful " or " Paul Revere 's Ride " is forever sure 
of an audience. Most long poems have short lives, as a rule, 
but Hiawatha and Evangeline show no signs of age after half 
a century. That they are still widely and eagerly read is an indi- 
cation of Longfellow's remarkable narrative power. These long 
poems have rendered a triple service : they have given pleasure 
to millions of readers ; they have added to the store of the 
world's good poetry ; and by showing the poetic side of Ameri- 
can history they have opened a mine of literary material, out of 
which future poets will surely bring other and greater treasures. 
The second quality of Longfellow is his remarkable simplicity. 
Deep and true feeling is always simply expressed, and Long- 
fellow is the poet of feeling rather than of thought, 
of sentiment rather than of reason. Unlike his con- 
temporaries Emerson and Lowell, he seldom attempts profound 
or brilliant themes ; if he touches a great subject he does it in 
such a simple manner that a child can usually understand him. 
His sympathy also makes him wise in the ways of the human 
heart ; he understands its joy and sorrow, its elemental faith, 
its love of sentiment, its satisfaction in a tale or poem that ends 
in harmony with the moral nature of man. With the great 
problems or tragedies of humanity Longfellow has little or 

1 Longfellow's imagination was not vigorous ; he depended on books for his inspira- 
tion, and in consequence there is a second-hand quality in many of his works. Thus, 
Hiawatha followed Schoolcraft and the Kalevala too closely ; Evangeline was influenced 
by Goethe's Hermann tind Dorothea ; Tales of a Wayside Inn by the Canterbury Tales ; 
" The Belfry of Bruges " by Tennyson's " Locksley Hall " ; " The Building of the Ship " 
by Schiller's " Song of the Bell " ; The Spanish Student by La Gitanilla of Cervantes, etc. 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 301 

nothing to do ; he keeps close to common experience, and is 
well content with the place he holds as the laureate of the 
home and of all homely virtues. This simplicity, which appeals 
to the masses of men, is the more remarkable in view of his 
scholarly interests and associates, and of his long training as a 
teacher of literature. 

A third quality of Longfellow is suggested by the frequent, 
and sometimes disparaging, criticism that he is '' the poet of 
^. T, . X the commonplace." The title seems to us self-contra- 

The Poet of ^ 

the Common- dictory, for wherever the poet comes the common- 
^^^^^ place vanishes away. It is his glorious function to 

give '' beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment 
of praise for the spirit of heaviness." Most of our poets have 
felt this strongly at times, and are all, in varying degrees, trans- 
formers of the commonplace. Bryant and Emerson ennoble 
it ; Lanier reveals its music, and Whittier its spiritual meaning ; 
Longfellow makes it always radiant and beautiful. From the 
homely material of common life he produced the glamor of 
poetry. Out of a few homespun threads he wove his cloth of 
gold, and used it not for the adornment of princes but for the 
common table, around which the American family gathers when 
the day's work is done. We honor him, therefore, as ''our 
household poet," and of all the gifts which fortune brought 
him we cherish these two : that the children celebrate his birth- 
day ; and that his bust stands, where England honors her great 
dead, in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey. The one 
symbolizes his hold on the human heart, the other his secure 
fame 'among all English-speaking people. 

John Greenleaf Whittier (i 807-1 892) 

If you would appreciate the homelike quality of Whittier's 
life and work, study a single" scene in Snow Bound. The place 
is the solitary old farmhouse ; the time, dusk of a winter even- 
ing. Outside, the night draws its shadowy curtain over a frozen 



\ 



302 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

landscape ; within, safe from storm and cold in the shelter of 
the familiar kitchen, children and parents gather about the 
hearthstone to watch the fire lighted : 

Then, hovering near, 
We watched the first red blaze appear. 
Heard the sharp crackle, caught the gleam 
On whitewashed wall and sagging beam, 
Until the old, rude-furnished room 
Burst, flower-like, into rosy'bloom. 

That ruddy blaze, reflected from contented human faces, is sym- 
bolical of Whittier's poetry. There is always something warm, 
hearty, wholesome about it, which makes us echo Isaiah's rap- 
turous exclamation, " Aha, I am warm, I have seen the fire ! " 

The same scene lets us at once into the deepest yet simplest 
secret of human life. Viewed from without, the Whittier farm- 
house seems a cheerless habitation ; its inmates appear as an 
ordinary New England family of the period, slow of speech, 
reserved in manner, and of an appearance suggesting the stern 
discipline rather than the joy of living. When we study them 
within, however, by the light of the fire and the illumination of 
the poet's lines, we discover presently that these hard-working 
people are of noble breed ; that they are wealthy also, having 
what St. John and St. Paul have named as the greatest of all pos- 
sessions. It is love which holds them together, love which sends 
them out to toil, and " love's contentment more than wealth " 
which transfigures their plain faces in the firelight. And a life 
that is love-governed has already found its Paradise ; it can never 
again seem poor or commonplace. 

Another suggestion from the fire in Snow Bound is th e broad 



humanity of Whittier's work. As all men, being at heart primi- 
tive, love an open fire and drop all false distinctions when they 
gather about it, so do they appreciate the plain manhood and 
womanhood which Whittier's fire reveals. He is called, and 
justly, the most intensely local of our poets. He lived and died(Lx 
in a corner of New England ; it is her people, her virtues and 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 



303 



traditions, her rivers and hills that are pictured in his poetry. 
But he who knows the heart of New England knows also the 
heart of Florida and California ; and it is the fine heart-quality 
of Whittier that makes him universal. 

How different he is from others of that group of writers who 
made his age the most splendid in our literary history ! They 




KITCHEN AND HEARTH IN WHITTIER'S HOUSE AT HAVERHILL 



Compared 
with Other 
Poets 



are men of culture, of travel, of the college and the great world 
of books ; he is always the farmer's boy, the child of the soil, 
sharing the work and the reward of those who suffer 
and endure. He is different also from his people and 
ancestors. Some of them were Puritans ; but he has 
the humor, the broad tolerance which the Puritans lacked. 
Others of his ancestors were Quakers ; but while Quakers are 
proverbially prosperou s^ he m ust toil and save and deny himself. 
They are silent and peaceful ; he appears in a crisis as spokes- 
man for a militant party that set the whole country in a turmoil. 



304 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

While he shows the fine spirit of his contemporaries, the rugged 
nobiUty of his ancestors, Whittier still differs from them all, not 
in kind but in degree ; he has more of our common humanity ; 
he lives nearer to the soil, nearer to the hearts of men. And for 
this reason we are inclined to regard him, as Scotchmen regard 
Burns, as the most typical of our national poets. Others un- 
doubtedly wrote more finished poems, but none more finely 
revealed the rugged spirit of American manhood. 

Life. In an old farmhouse in the Merrimac valley, where every 
east wind brought the sound and smell of the sea, our poet was born 
The Old i^ 1807. Biographers have called attention to the isola- 

Homestead tion of the Whittier farm in East Haverhill, to the hard- 
ship of the poet's early life and the barrenness of his education ; but 
there was one means of culture, one inspiration to poetry, which has 
been overlooked, and this is indicated by the old house itself. It was 
planned by one of Whittier's ancestors in 1688, when only a few set- 
tlers had gained foothold on the Atlantic coast, and when the great 
West was a silent wilderness. It was built, as houses were in those 
days, about a great square fireplace ; and before its open blaze, 
kindled like sacred vestal flames from older fires that were never suf- 
fered to die out, generations of American children had warmed them- 
selves and listened in turn to the story of their country. The struggles 
of the pioneers, the expansion of the Colonies, the French and Indian 
. wars, the coming of Washington, the heroism and sacrifice of the Rev- 
olution, the founding of the American nation, — all these were a part 
of family tradition in the days of few books, when young people 
learned history by their own firesides, in 

Old homesteads sacred to all that can 
Gladden or sadden the heart of man ; 
Over whose thresholds of oak and stone 
Life and Death have come and gone."^ 

In the Vedas, the old sacred books of India, the hearth is the symbol 
not only of family life but of nationality ; and in our own land practi- 
cally all our national heroes learned to love their country before the 
open fires of home. 

1 From " The Prophecy of Samuel Sewall." In this'poem, beginning at line 88, there 
is a fine description of the landscape which Whittier saw as a boy, a hint also of the 
strong love of home and country which inspires all his verse. 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 305 

In such a homestead, ennobled by national tradition, made sacred 
by the mystery of life and death, Whittier passed all his formative 
The Boy years. During the " open " seasons he worked hard on 
Whittier the farm ; in the winter he trudged daily to the crude dis- 
trict school. So far he was like the great majority of American boys 
at that time, and he resembled them also in this, — that he had a boy's 
endless capacity for enjoyment, for getting fun out of work, for find- 
ing a romance on every path, an adventure on every highway. Thus 
his " Barefoot Boy," '' In School Days," '' My Playmate " and a score 
of similar poems reflect the glamor rather than the discomfort of old- 
time school life.^ Writing of his boyhood he says : 

" I found about equal satisfaction in an old rural home, with the shifting 
panorama of the seasons, in reading the few books within my reach, and 
dreaming of something wonderful and grand somewhere in the future. . . . 
I felt secure of my mother's love, and dreamed of losing nothing and gaining 
much." 

Some biographers, viewing the poet's youth, note only its dreariness, 
its monotony, its grinding toil ; but in this picture of a boy ^' secure 
of his mother's love," and " dreaming of something wonderful and 
grand somewhere in the future," we see ourselves as we were in boy- 
hood's golden days, and we understand Whittier's power to touch a 
man's heart by recalling the faith and the romance of his childhood. 

A strong poetic talent which slumbered in Whittier was awakened 
when he first heard '' Bonnie Doon " and '' Highland Mary " sung 
by a wandering Scotchman. Later an itinerant school- 
master — one Joshua Coffin, with the flavor of Nantucket 
in his name and ways — brought a copy of Burns to the house, and 
Whittier read it eagerly. He tells us later : 

" This book was about the first poetry I had ever read — with the excep- 
tion of that of the Bible, of which I had always been a close student — 
and it had a lasting influence upon me. I began to make rhymes myself. 
... I lived a sort of dual life, in a world of fancy as well as in the world 
of plain matter of fact." 

Some of these " rhymes " were sent by Whittier's sister to the 
Newburyport J^ree Press, then edited by William Lloyd Garrison; 

1 Glimpses of the same happy characteristics are found in Whittier's prose works. 
See, for instance, "Yankee Gypsies," "The Fish I Didn't Catch," "My Summer with 
Dr. Singletary," etc. 



3o6 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

and presently this famous agitator rode over to see his new contribu- 
tor. Finding not the mature poet he expected but a shy country lad, 
he stirred Whittier's ambition by praising his verses and urging an 
education. This was the beginning of a friendship that weathered all 
the storms of the abolition movement, in which these two men were 
leaders. From one of the farm hands Whittier learned to make slip- 
pers, and by this homely craft he supported himself for two terms in 
the Haverhill Academy. Then, at twenty-two, he went to Boston and 
found work on a weekly newspaper. His peaceful struggle with nature 
was ended ; his grapple with the big world had begun. 

During the next few years Whittier was plainly tr}dng to find him- 
self. He edited one newspaper after another, but in every case was 
obliged to give up the work because of illness, or because his labor 
was needed on the farm at home. Then he entered politics, won 
immediate favor with leaders and voters, and would probably have 
been elected to Congress had his age permitted. He also wrote much 
poetry ; over a hundred of his effusions, as they were then called, were 
printed in the Haverhill Gazette alone. So he wavered from news- 
paper to farm, from politics to poetry, till the crisis came in 1833, 
when Garrison, who was stirring up a hornets' nest with his Liberator, 
urged Whittier to come out and join the abolitionists. 

At that time Garrison and his followers were a small band of 
zealous reformers, whose radical principles and uncompromising 
The Abolition methods had aroused general fear and hostility. North 
Movement and South, Church, State and College were all against 
them, regarding them as dangerous fanatics ; and for a man to join 
their ranks in those early days was to become an outcast. Whittier 
knew this perfectly, and through anxious days and sleepless nights 
counted the cost of his decision before he made it. Then, in June, 
1833, he published his "Justice and Expediency." One who reads 
it even now finds something moving and heroic in this little pamphlet, 
which placed Whittier definitely with a despised minority. 

The next thirty years carried Whittier through- that terrible period 
of agitation and misunderstanding which culminated in the Civil War. 
The Poet of We have no mind to follow him ; to see him mobbed 
a Party ^nd stoned in cities bearing the lovely names of Concord 

and Philadelphia ; to examine his ringing politicaL verses, which reflect 
a sectional rather than a national interest, _a fighting rather than a 
.Quaker spirit. We note only two things : that his heroic decision 
destroyed both his political and his literary prospects, for no office was 



16^ 
THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 307 

open to him and no magazine would publish his work ; and that his 
devotion to what he believed to be right suggests the sacrifice of 
Milton when he abandoned his poetry to throw himself into the 
struggle for English liberty.^ The magnificent '' Laus Deo" (1865), 
a song of exultation following the Constitutional amendment prohibit- 
ing slavery, is a fitting close to this long period of storm and stress. 

The last period of Whittier's life, from the close of the Civil War 
to his death in 1892, is one of unbroken calm. By his political verse 
he had roused a fighting spirit in the nation ; but when the war came 
it saddened and sobered him. After the storm had passed he turned 
with relief to the quiet homes of the land, and to the eternal verities 
that are often forgotten in the time of turmoil : 

The roll of drums and the bugle's wailing 

Vex the air of our vales no more ; 
The spear is beaten to hooks of pruning, 

The share is the sword the soldier wore ! 

Sing soft, sing low, our lowland river. 

Under thy banks of laurel bloom ; 
Softly and sweet, as the hour beseemeth, 

Sing us the songs of peace and home.^ 

In this new and chastened spirit Whittier wrote his Sfiow Bound 
(1866). This was his first notable success, after nearly fifty years of 
The Poet of writing, and it brought two important results : it placed 
the People Whittier in the front rank of our national poets ; and it 
brought enough financial reward to make an end of the poverty and 
anxiety which had been his portion for so many years. For the rest 
of his days he lived comfortably in a little white house at Amesbury,^ 
presided over by his gentle niece, Elizabeth. Hitherto he had always 
written in a hurry ; now he took leisure to improve and polish his 
verse, and his Tent on the Beach (1867), A??iong the Hills (1869), 
indeed all his works published after his threescore years, are incom- 
parably better than those of his youth and vigorous manhood. In the 
early days he had been the voice of a small party ; now he spoke for 

1 Lowell says of Whittier at this time, " He has Scaevola-like sacrificed on the altar of 
duty that right hand which might have made him acknowledged as the most passionate 
lyrist of his day." Whittier has described himself, and the loss of his cherished dreams, 
in the Prelude to The Tent on the Beach. 

2 From " Revisited," a song to the Merrimac (1865). 

3 The old Whittier farm, celebrated in Snow Botmd, proved too much for the poet's 
strength, and was sold in 1S36. 



3o8 



AMERICAN LITERATURE 



the whole American people, recalling to them with joy their love of 
home, their pride in a united country, their faith in a common Father. 
Criticism is silent before these calm, trustful expressions of an old 
man, whose life had been noble, whose heart was still the heart of a 
little child, and in whose presence men remembered the injunction : 

" Whatsoever things are true, . . . 
whatsoever things are pure, what- 
soever things are lovely . . . think 
on these things." 

Whittier's Poetry. Whittier 
is often called the New Eng- 
land poet, but his work, like its 
symbol the hearthfire, belongs 
to no corner of the earth ex- 
clusively. As Washington is no 
longer ''the Virginian," or 
Lincoln ''the Kentuckian," so 
the poet who in Snozv Bound 
reveals the warm heart of an 
American household, whose 
ballads recall the virtue and 
heroism of American pioneers, 
and whose religious lyrics ex- 
press the faith and hope of 
American manhood, is no 
longer a local but a national possession. Happily " The Bare- 
foot Boy " is not confined to Haverhill, nor is " The Eternal 
Goodness " bounded on the north by Vermont and on the east 
by the Atlantic, as is a certain state described in the geogra- 
phies. It broadens our critical horizon to read " Our Country," 
with its patriotic appeal that knows no sectional limits, or to 
sing the song of " The Kansas Emigrants," 

We cross the prairie as of old 

The Pilgrims crossed the sea. 
To make the West, as they the East, 

The homestead of the free ! 




/" 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 309 

In a word, we shall never understand Whittier till we get rid of 
local pride and prejudice, and regard him steadily as the poet 
of the American people. 

With the exception of certain immature works, such as Mogg 
Megone, in the field of Indian tradition, there is a remarkable 
unity in all of Whittier's poetry. The same spirit illumines it 
throughout, and Holmes was right when he declared that a 
single strain of a poem was enough to indicate whether or not 
Whittier had written it.^ It is largely, therefore, for the sake of 
convenience that his works are grouped in classes called Reform 
Poems, Ballads and Legendary Pieces, and_ Lyrics of Home, 
"Tfature, and Religion. To these we add Snow Bound and The 
^fent on the Beach, which are individual enough to deserve 
separate classification. 

Reform Poems. Of the reform poems, which Whittier 
gathered into a volume called Voices of Freedom (1846), per- 
haps the best that can be said is, ''They had their day and 
ceased to be." They served for a time as battle cries ^ of the 
antislavery party, but that Whittier regretted them became in- 
creasingly evident in his later years. Even while writing them, 
amid the smoke and dust of conflict, he felt the sorrow of 
Milton at using, or misusing, his poetic talent to serve a politi- 
cal party .^ 

There are, however, a few of these reform poems that seem 
to us worthy of remembrance. One is the '' Laus Deo," which 
we have mentioned ; another is '' Ichabod," that terrible rebuke 
administered to Webster after his Seventh of March speech, 
when many believed that he had been false to the people who 
had elected him. No other poem of our literature can approach 

1 See Holmes, " For Whittier's Seventieth Birthday," December 17, 1877. 

2 Though he was a Quaker, and opposed to war, the soldier blood of an unknown an- 
cestor is evident in Whittier. He can hardly touch a subject of contention without show- 
ing the martial spirit, without suggesting in his ringing lines the waving of flags and the 
march of infantry. Note, for instance, " Faneuil Hall," " Song of the Free," " Texas " and 
"The Pine Tree " among the reform poems, and " Barclay of Ury " among the ballads. 

3 This appears in his letters, and an indication of it is found in the Prelude to The 
Tent on the Beach. See the part beginning, " And one there was, a dreamer born." 



3IO AMERICAN LITERATURE 

this in its powerful expression of the mingled scorn and grief 
of a people betrayed by its trusted leaders. In fairness we must 
add that this widely read poem, though of remarkable literary 
merit, was fundamentally unjust ; that Whittier sadly misjudged 
the spirit and purpose of Webster,^ just as Browning in '' The 
Lost Leader " misjudged the character and motive of Words- 
worth. '' Ichabod " is valuable, therefore, only as we disassociate 
it from the man whom it condemns and from the event which 
gave it birth. 

Ballads and Legendary Poems. As a ballad writer Whittier 
has no equal among American poets. One reason for his su- 
premacy in this field is that he evidently had a better knowledge 
of early American life than any other literary man of his age. 
As a child he listened eagerly to the legends and traditions of 
his country ; as a man he read and studied our earliest records, 
and so entered deeply into the spirit of the pioneers. Add to 
his knowledge and sympathy an intense feeling, an ability to 
grasp a dramatic situation, a rare gift of speaking in verse as 
•spontaneously as a bird sings, and you have a list of the qualities • 
that go to make an ideal ballad writer. Not only does Whittier 
tell his story rapidly, dramatically, as a ballad should be told ; he 
adds to the action the very life and feeling of an age long pasfi^ 

All the strange phases of that age are reproduced in Whittier's 
verse : its superstition in '' The Garrison of Cape Ann " and 
" Cobbler Keezar's Vision " ; its view of witchcraft in '' Mabel 
Martin" and "The Witch of Wenham " ; its antipathy to 
Quakers (a tender subject with Whittier) in '' Cassandra South- 
wick " and '' How the Women went from Dover " ; its border 
heroism in ''The Ranger" and ''Mary Garvin." There are 

1 In a later poem, "The Lost Occasion" (1880), Whittier attempted to do tardy 
justice to Webster. By that time he began to realize that Webster was probably right, 
and that his policy of compromise would have led eventually to peaceful emancipation. 
See Carpenter's IV/iii^icr, p. 221. 

2 This refers only to poems of his own people. His narrative poems on Indian sub- 
jects, " Pentucket," " The Funeral Tree," etc., are of inferior quality. In his first attempt 
m this field, the melodramatic " Bridal of Pennacook," Whittier was perhaps too much 
influenced by Scott's border ballads. 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 31 1 

many others, grave or gay, treating of old Colonial life, such as 
"Amy Wentvvorth," "The Witch's Daughter," "Skipper Ire- 
son's Ride," "The Prophecy of Samuel wSewall," " Nauhaught, 
the Deacon," and fine old "Abraham Davenport." These are 
but a suggestion of Whittier's variety, of his mastery of the ballad 
in his own familiar field ; and we must not forget " The Pipes at 
Lucknow," reflecting a dramatic incident in the Sepoy Rebellion, 
or " Barbara Frietchie," the best-known ballad of a mighty conflict. 
Poems of Home, Nature, and Religion. In this large class of 
Whittier's works the first place must be given to certain idyls 
or pastorals, that is, simple descriptive poems treating of coun- 
try scenes and the joys and sorrows of rural people. Here, for 
instance, is the well-known " Maud Muller," rather crudely done, 
to be sure, as if a schoolboy had written it, but very tender, very 
true in its feeling, and with a vague, immeasurable regret 
such as Lowell reflected in the lines : 

Old loves, old aspirations and old dreams, 
More beautiful for being old and gone. 

In the same class, and more beautifully finished, are "The 
Barefoot Boy," " In School Days," " My Playmate," " Telling 
the Bees," and the love lyric, the sweetest that Whittier ever 
wrote, in the second part of "A Sea Dream." Such exquisite 
idyls are not to be analyzed like a botanical specimen ; they are 
to be known and cherished, as we cherish the first violets. 

Though nature is always present and always inspiring in 
Whitti er's verse, he seldom devoted a poem to any natural 
N t • ^M^^^' ^^^ ^^^ explanation is simple. Unlike Bryant, 
Whittier's who loved nature for her own sake, and to whom a 
^^^^ flower or a forest was an ample subject, Whittier re- 

garded nature as a background for the more interesting drama 
of human life. He was a careful and accurate observer ; his 
descriptions of sea and shore, of storm and calm, of singing 
river and silent hills, are unsurpassed in our literature ; but 
these are always as the frame of a picture, emphasizing the 



312 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

central human figure and the play of human emotion. In the 
swinging lines of '' Hampton Beach," for example, we are 
brought face to face with the open sea ; we feel its salt wind in 
our faces, its tumult in our hearts ; but our interest is strongly 
centered in the man whose eyes brighten and whose soul ex- 
pands to the call of the deep : 

Good-by to Pain and Care ! I take 

Mine ease to-day : 
Here where these sunny waters break, 
And ripples this keen breeze, I shake 
All burdens from the heart, all weary thoughts away. 

I draw a freer breath, I seem 

Like all I see — 
Waves in the sun, the white-winged gleam 
Of sea birds in the slanting beam. 
And far-off sails which flit before the south-wind free. 

So when Time's veil shall fall asunder, 

The soul may know 
No fearful change, nor sudden wonder, 
Nor sink the weight of mystery under. 
But with the upward rise, and with the vastness grow. 

So also in the longer nature poems, "Among the Hills," 
'' Summer by the Lakeside," '* Last Walk in Autumn," and in 
such little gems as '' The Trailing Arbutus " and '' A Day," — 
in all these we are interested not so much in nature as in the 
human soul that discerns nature's spiritual meaning or feels her 
benediction. Occasionally, as in ''A Mystery" and "The 
Vanishers," Whittier shows a touch of mysticism, a mingling 
of two worlds, seen and unseen, which brings a new and welcome 
element to our poetry of nature. 

The simple religious faith of Whittier found expression in 
many exquisite lyrics. Unlike the stirring reform poems, which 
Lyrics of roused the enthusiasm of one party and the hostility 
Faith of another, these gentle, trustful hymns win all sorts 

and conditions of men by appealing to their deepest instincts. 
Their spirit is not that of the theologian who reasons, but rather 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 313 

of the child who prays. Among a score of such poems, all ex- 
cellent, it is perhaps advisable to begin with " Questions of 
Life," which reflects many of the problems that a thoughtful 
man finds in his own heart. Then, in '' The Eternal Goodness," 
"A Hymn," "My Psalm," "My Soul and I," "Trust," and 
" Our Master " we may read Whittier's faithful answer to the 
questions of here and hereafter. 

Two of Whittier's longer poems deserve special mention. 
The Tent 07i the Beach (1867) is a collection of stories in verse, 
The Tent on which may have been suggested by Longfellow's 
the Beach Tales of a Wayside hm. The plan of the poem, to 
bring a few congenial people together and let each tell a story, 
is almost as ancient as literature itself. Longfellow borrowed 
the idea from Chaucer, who borrowed it from Boccaccio, who 
borrowed it from the Greeks, who borrowed it from the orien- 
tals, who found it no one knows where. The only way to give 
variety to such a plan is to make new scenes and characters ; 
and Whittier attempts this by setting up a tent by the seashore. 
In this tent three friends, a poet, a traveler, and a publisher,^ 
camp together, and in idle moments the publisher furnishes 
entertainment by reading manuscripts from his portfolio. There 
are eleven stories in the collection, nine of them from American 
sources, and the criticism has been well made that the prevailing 
tone is too heavy and somber, especially for a camping party. 
Two of the most interesting tales are " The Wreck of River- 
mouth " and " Abraham Davenport " ; but some of the best 
lines of the book are found in the Prelude, in the poet's portrait 
of himself, and especially in the descriptive passages which 
reflect the changing lights and shadows of the sea. 

Snow Bound. Whittier's most characteristic poem is S710W 
Botmd: A Wi?tter Idyl (1866). The student should by all 
means read this imperishable work before he reads anything 
about it, and then analyze it if he can. For, after a thousand 
criticisms, there is still something beautiful and intangible in 

1 The publisher is James T. Fields, the traveler Bayard Taylor, and the poet Whittier. 



314 AMERICAN LITER.\TURE 

Whittier's poem which escapes, Hke a memory of childhood, even 
as we try to define it. Hear these two excehent appreciations, 
which do not, however, quite explain our love for Snow Boiuid: 

" Home is narrow as the ancestral walls, but as broad as humanity ; and 
here is a work both local and general, — of the kind which tends to make 
the whole world kin. It is a little sphere seen through the transparent soul 
and style of the simple poet." ^ 

" He, this old man who had been an East Haverhill boy, describes his 
homestead, his well-sweep, his brook, his family circle, his schoolmaster, 
apparently intent on naught but the complete accuracy of his narrative, and 
lo ! such is his art that he has drawn the one perfect, imperishable picture 
of that bright old winter life in that strange clime. Diaries, journals, his- 
tories, biographies and autobiographies, with the same aim in view, are not 
all together so typical as this unique poem of less than a thousand lines." ^ 

Instead of attempting another analysis, therefore, we simply 
note these five points, which have impressed us in reading the 
poem : the fine descriptions of the winter landscape, which serve 
merely as a fram e for a human picture ; the tend erly d rawn por-- 
traits of an American family in their old homesteadTTKe^saS^ 



ness inevitably associated with all memories of the past, as if 

""The golden age were indeed always behind us ; the inspiring 

religious faith of the poet, deep and silent for the most part, 

but occasionally expressing itself in a little sermon, without 

^_^^ich no work of Whittier would be complete ; and the univer- 
sal quality of Snozv Boic7id^ which makes it a reflection of tITe 

""^thought and feeling not only of Whittier but of every man and 
woman who has sat and mused alone before an open fire. 
' The poem which won instant recognition in 1866 still leaves 
its impression of truth and beauty upon countless readers, and 
The Charm of the sccret of its power is revealed when we study 
Snow Bound ^^g origin. For nearly half a century Whittier had 
tried many forms of prose and poetry, but had never won any 
marked success ; he had been known chiefly as '' the trumpeter " 
of a reform. Then, at sixty years of age, when the ballads of 

1 Richardson, American Literature^ II, 183. 

2 Carpenter. Vb/z/j Grecnleaf Wliittier, p. 2:71. 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 315 

olden times had been written, when the poHtical battle had been 
fought and won, Whittier found himself again by the old fire- 
place. He was thinking of life, of its changing and changeless 
elements, and of loved ones — long since gone — who used to 
sit beside him, sharing the light of fire, the divine peace of 
home. And in that hour of tender, sacred memories something 
whispered, '* Look in thy heart and write." Following his inspi- 
ration he wrote Snow Botmd, and this picture of his own home 
was welcomed in thousands of other homes from one end of 
America to the other. The old poet of New England had found 
that all hearts were essentially like his own, sorrowing or rejoic- 
ing in the same things, and that in the human heart alone is 
found the gold of all true literature. 

Prose Works. To most readers Whittier is simply the poet ; 
his prose works are unknown even by name ; , yet his vigorous 
style and his interesting Colonial subjects might have won him 
a place among our writers had he never written a poem. His 
first book, Legends of New Efigland ( 1 8 3 1 ), was in prose. Four- 
teen years later he published The Stranger iii Lowell, a series 
of sketches of life in an American manufacturing town in the 
early days.^ Then followed at short intervals The Snpernat2i7'al- 
isni of New England, Leaves fjvm Margaret SniWt s Jonriial, 
Old Portraits aiid Modern Sketches, and Literary Recreations. 
Though generally neglected, these works contain some of the 
best pictures of early American life to be found in our literature. 
In Margaret Smith's foiirnal, for instance, Whittier creates the 
fictitious character of a visiting English woman, who vividly 
portrays the life and the leaders of the Old Bay Colony in the 
days of Cotton Mather. The portrayal is generally too somber, 
and is at times misleading ; but in criticizing it we must re- 
member that Whittier had a wide knowledge of his subject, 
and that the incidents of this imaginary journal are nearly all 
based upon authentic records. 

1 To tho^e interested in industrial matters The Stranger is well worth reading. It 
should be read in connection with certain chapters of Lucy Larcom's New England 
Girlhood, which describe mill life in the same city (Lowell) during the same period. 



3i6 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

General Criticism. In many ways Whittier seems to us the 
most intensely American of all our poets. He smacks of the 
soil ; he epitomizes the nobility of plain human naturCo 
ity of Though life has outwardly changed since Whittier's 

Whittier ^^y^ many of us still live close to the soil ; we still 
honor common life by giving it opportunity and raising it to our 
highest offices ; and we still earn our bread by rather too much 
work, just as the poet did. We sympathize, therefore, with the 
elemental virtues and ideals that find expression in Whittier's 
poetry. We understand him because he is like ourselves. As an 
extreme instance, take his antislavery verses, — which are mean- 
ingless unless we remember that the country was facing a crisis 
and calling on its sons South and North to show their colors. 
They not only speak of Whittier's loyalty to conviction ; they 
are in many ways splendidly typical of a nation that rouses itself 
to meet a new crisis with every passing generation, and that has 
little respect for the man who dreams or idles or worships mam- 
mon while some great human problem clamors for solution. 
So, though we no longer read the reform poems, we honor the 
American author who loved humanity more than literature and 
who sacrificed his personal ambition upon the altar of duty. 

Again, in his religious poems Whittier is typical of a nation 
that has no state church, and that has grown tolerant in welcom- 
.- ing the children of many different faiths. He sings 

of his Reii- of the common hope that inspires, of the charity 
gious Poems ^^^^ unites them all ; he celebrates the peace of breth- 
ren who dwell together in unity, — a peace that had come after 
a long struggle in which Whittier and his forbears had borne 
manful parts. In many ways he remained as strongly Puritan 
as were any of his ancestors ; he gloried in their sincerity, and 
in two lines he crystallized his opinion of their heroic effort to 
establish the democracy of justice : 

Praise and thanks for an honest man ! 
Glory to God for the Puritan ! ^ 

1 From '* The Prophecy of Samuel Sewall." 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 317 

But some of the elder Whittiers had been Quakers, who had 
labored patiently to establish the democracy of love, to apply to 
problems of church and state the same charity that governs men 
in their family relations ; and from that greater ideal our poet 
never wavered. Here, in the mingling of Puritan and Friend, 
of justice and love, we have a suggestion of the American nation, 
which had passed through a somewhat similar development, — 
from the stern dogma of earlier days to the gentler conception 
of religion as consisting essentially of faith in God manifesting 
itself in all lovely ways of human service. It seems to us, there- 
fore, that Whittier's poems, reflecting the mingled love of God 
and man, are not simply an expression of his own or of the 
Friends' belief ; they are symbols of the broadening faith of the 
whole American people during two centuries of effort to attain 
religious freedom. 

Even in the qualities at which criticism looks askance Whittier 
seems to us to be typically American. His rimes are some- 
times " loose " or faulty, showing the old-country speech of days 
gone by, when human nature was called '' human nater." To 
nearly every poem he adds some moral or spiritual lesson ; and 
though many object to a moral as spoiling the artistic effect of 
a poem, we must note two significant facts. The first is that 
Whittier's moral lessons, in Snow Bound for instance, are so 
beautifully done that they are in themselves artistic : 

Yet Love will dream, and Faith will trust 
(Since He who knows our need is just) 
That somehow, somewhere, meet we must. 
Alas for him who never sees 
The stars shine through his cypress trees I 
Who, hopeless, lays his dead away, 
Nor looks to see the breaking day 
Across the mournful marbles play ! 
Who hath not learned, in hours of faith, 

The truth to flesh and sense unknown, 
That Life is ever lord of Death, 

And Love can never lose its own ! 



3i8 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

The second fact is that Whittier's strongly ethical tendency 
appears in nearly all American poets from the earliest to the 
latest. In this, it may be, the poets are wiser than the critics ; 
for literature is a reflection of life, and the reflection is sadly 
incomplete, a thing of darkness and discord, unless it does 
justice to life's moral and spiritual instincts. 

Finally, there is something broadly characteristic in Whittier's 
easy freedom of writing, and in the unstudied, spontaneous qual- 
ity of his verse. '' I never had any methods : when I felt like 
it, I wrote," he said. Such a free, joyous impulse might well 
have produced a work of art, a thing of pure beauty like a son- 
net of Keats, but for two limitations : the first, that Whittier 
had always in view a definite object, to teach or to help others ; 
the second, that he had not the endless patience of genius to 
work over a poem till its form was so perfect that men must 
love it, as a flower, for its own sake. Therefore Whittier is not 
classed with the great poets or literary artists, since his eye is 
not so much on his work as on humanity. His spirit of service 
is reflected in a little poem of our own day, which is called 
'' The House by the Side of the Road " : 

There are hermit souls that live withdrawn 

In the peace of their self-content ; 
There are souls like stars, that dwell apart 

In a fellowless firmament ; 
There are pioneer souls that blaze their paths 

Where highways never ran — 
But let me live by the side of the road 

And be a friend to man. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson (i 803-1882) 

So nigh is grandeur to our dust, 
So near is God to man, 
When duty whispers low, Thou ?nust^ 
The youth replies, / can. 

After reading the above lines from "Voluntaries," Holmes 
declared that they seemed to have been *' carved on marble for 




RALPH WALDO EMERSON 
From an unfinished portrait by Furness 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 319 

a thousand years." This is perhaps the best short criticism of 
Emerson that has yet been written. It indicates that quaUty of 
universaHty which attends such works as the Republic of Plato, 
the Imitation of Thomas a Kempis, the Hamlet of Shakespeare, 
— works that never grow old, and that belong to humanity 
rather than to any particular age or nation. 

The difficulty of criticizing Emerson is suggested by the con- 
tradictory titles which his admirers have given him. To one he 
is ''the western Buddha"; to another, ''the winged Franklin"; 
to a third, " the Yankee Shelley " ; and to a fourth, " the epit- 
ome of Puritan idealism and independence." After all such 
comparisons, the simple fact is that Emerson is an individual 
and defies classification. He illustrates his own saying that " he 
is great who is what he is from nature, and who never reminds 
us of others." 

On two points, how^ever, all the critics are agreed : that Emer- 
s on was always a mora list, a preacher of ethical ideals ; and 
thaf the nob ih<"Y of V\^ ^^^^ g^^ve force to every word he uttered. 
Lowell wrote two brilliant essays in his praise, and a score of 
otlier leaders, as far apart as Tyndall and Carlyle, bore witness 
to the charm of Emerson's personality.^ Wherever he w^ent, to 
preach of beauty or heroism as reflections of the moral law, an 
audience gathered silently to hear him ; and his presence was 
enough to convert a deal table into a pulpit, or a plain town hall 
into a house of God. When the lecture was changed to an 
essay or a poem, so much of Emerson the preacher went into 
it that it still seems to us a spoken rather than a written word ; 
and behind the word we may feel the character of the man who 
gave it power. In an essay on Milton our poet-preacher says 
that it is the sure sign of a great man " to raise the idea of Man 

1 See Lowell's essay, " Emerson the Lecturer." Tyndall gives Emerson credit for 
shaping his life as a scientist. George Eliot speaks of him as " the first man I have ever 
seen." Carlyle, who had a strong tendency to faultfinding, writes after Emerson's visit, 
" I saw him go up the hill . . . and vanish like an angel." And Mrs. Carlyle records 
of the same visit that " it made one day look like enchantment, and left me weeping 
that it was only one day." Hawthorne's noble story " The Great Stone Face " is said to 
have been inspired by the character of Emerson. 



320 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

in the minds of his contemporaries and of posterity," and to 
communicate to all his hearers '' vibrations of hope, of self- 
reverence, of piety, of delight in beauty." Judged by this 
standard, which estimates a man's greatness by his power to 
inspire others, Emerson has hardly a peer in American litera- 
ture. The ''vibrations" which he set in motion sixty years ago 
are still potent, and we rise from reading his pages with a nobler 
idea of self and of all humanity. He belongs unquestionably in 
that small group of 

Olympian bards who sung 

Divine Ideas below, 
Which always find us young 

And always leave us so. 

Life. At the beginning of a remarkable book stands this sentence : 
" There was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job, and that 
man was perfect and upright, and one that feared God and eschewed 
evil." If we substitute for the distant Uz our familiar Concord, and 
for the Patriarch and his strange comforters a quiet American man 
among his neighbors, we shall have an excellent text for the life story 
of Emerson, The first and last impression which it produces is that 
of absolute integrity.-^ 

He was born (1803) in Boston, and was the last of a long line of 
clergymen who had built their lives into the foundations of the Amer- 
ican nation. They had helped clear the primeval forests, had planted 
towns as well as cornfields, had fought in the Revolution with their 
parishioners, and had been teachers of the first American citizens. 
They were ministers, Puritans, patriots, and their quality is reflected 
in the prose and poetry of the last and greatest of their line. 

Emerson's father, who was pastor of the historic First Church, had 
died young, leaving a widow and six children. They were very poor, 
but they faced poverty with a heroism that is only faintly reflected in 
the poet's account of his own boyhood. In later years he named 
" the four angels " of his home, and they were Toil, Want, Truth and 
Mutual Faith. Under their inspiration four of the boys went to 
college ; as soon as one graduated he taught school, and used the 
greater part of his salary for his next younger brother's education. 

1 This impression is general among biographers and critics. See, for instance, 
Brownell's American Prose Masters^ p. 138. 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 321 

At Harvard Emerson seemed very ordinary as a scholar but unusual 
in other ways. Perhaps his most notable trait was an indifference to 
Fonnative the traditions and societies which then, as now, held sway 
Years in the college world. He tells us that he was " a hopeless 

dunce in mathematics," and we learn from others that he had little 
care for science or philosophy. He was simply a reader of such books 
as he liked ; and every book was as a mine out of which he gathered 
jewels, storing them in his notebook as illustrative material for his 
future lectures. Later he speaks as slightingly as did Cooper of aca- 
demic methods, and declares that the best thing he found in college 
was a solitary chamber. After graduation he taught school for a time ; 
then he read theology in a desultory way with a local minister and 
at the Harvard Divinity School, and at twenty-three he thought 
himself prepared to preach the Gospel. 

The next six years may be regarded as Emerson's period of finding 
himself. He had his love story — a sweet story with a sad ending, 
for his young and beautiful wife died soon after their marriage — 
which is reflected in his poems " To Ellen." He was ordained minister 
of a church in Boston ; he was honored in his large parish ; and every- 
thing pointed to a successful career, when he suddenly resigned his 
position. He was not hostile but simply indifferent to the belief of 
his church, having already set up his own standard of faith. After a 
leisurely journey abroad ^ he settled in Concord, and from this village 
center proceeded to move the world to his way of thinking. 

The essence of his thinking is distilled in the word '' individualism," 
which furnished Emerson with a text for all his preaching. He had 
His Indi- gone to college, but felt no sympathy for either its dis- 
vidualism cipline or its amusement. He entered the Church, but 
was never in harmony with her creeds, her ritual, her sacraments. 
He journeyed through Italy, France and England, but saw little to 
admire in the arts or institutions of those wonderful countries. Mean- 
while, in long lonely walks, he had discovered himself, and he settled 
in Concord with the resolve " never to speak or write a word that is 
not entirely my own." The same resolve, the same disregard of 
tradition and outward authority, was later crystallized in the lines : 

Leave all thy pedant lore apart, 

God hid the whole world in thy heart. 

1 The most notable result of this journey was the friendship formed^ with Carlyle. 
See Norton's Correspondence of Carlyle and Emerson. 



322 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

His first book was Nature^ a strange yet inspiring work, which re- 
garded the visible world as a mere symbol of God, — a symbol to be 
interpreted not by science or theology but by individual men, each in 
his own way and place. In figurative language, nature was to him a 
looking-glass held up to the Lord, and man another looking-glass held 
up to nature. His second work was The A77ierican Scholar^ a college 
address, in which he announced the intellectual independence of 
his country : 

" We will walk on our own feet ; we will work with our own hands ; we 
will speak our own minds. ... A nation of men will for the first time 
exist, because each believes himself inspired by the Divine Soul which also 
inspires all men." 

These two works, the first fruits of Emerson's discovery of himself, 
are the most significant of all his writings. If we read them attentively, 
we shall find in them the germ of all his subsequent teaching. 

For the details of Emerson's life at Concord we must refer readers 
to the abundant literature on the subject,-^ noting here only a few 
Life in significant features. First of all, though Emerson became 

Concord the acknowledged leader of transcendentalism, his sanity 

and humor preserved him from the vagaries of the movement ; and 
though he became famous in the world, he never lost the character of 
the simple citizen, the good neighbor of a country village. The beauty 
he portrayed was such as he could see from his own kitchen door ; the 
heroism and nobility he advocated were such as he discovered in plain 
farmers and townspeople. He found joy in the coming of the seasons ; 
he shared the grief of humanity when he lost the little son whom he 
has immortalized in his " Threnody." He spent a large part of his 
time alone with nature, and his solitary communings furnished him 
with the material of all his poems : 

And when I am stretched beneath die pines, ' 

Where the evening star so holy shines, 

I laugh at the lore and the pride of man, 

At the sophist schools and the learned clan ; 

For what are they all, in their high conceit. 

When man in the bush with God may meet? 

1 In addition to Q.2!oo\.^ Memoir of Emerson (the standard biography), see, for instance, 
E. W. Emerson, Emerson in Concord; Alcott, Concord Days ; Curtis, Homes of American 
Authors ; Steams, Sketches fro7n Concord and Appledore ; Sanborn, Emerson and his 
Friends in Concord; Hawthorne, Mosses from an Old Manse. 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 







23 



From this idyllic retirement Emerson was presently called to address 
a national audience. We have spoken elsewhere of the growth of 
As a lyceums in this age of reform ; and it is enough to add 

Lecturer that, of all the speakers who went up and down the land 
or overseas to England, this apostle of individualism was perhaps the 
most welcome and the most influential. It was not what he said — 
for the half of every address was unintelligible to his audience — but 
something noble and inspi^ng in the man himself that brought people 
to his lectures. As Lowell declared, they did not go to hear what 
Emerson said, but to hear Emerson. Soon a hundred reading desks 




■4 







^■■^ 






THE OLD MANSE, CONCORD 



replaced the pulpit which he had abandoned, and the American people 
made amends for his lost congregation. The independence of his 
thought, the serenity of his spirit spreading through the world with- 
out conscious effort on his part, suggests his own *^ Wood Notes " 



For Nature beats in perfect tune, 

And rounds with rhyme her every rune, 

Whether she work in land or sea, 

Or hide underground her alchemy. 

Thou canst not wave thy staff in air, 

Or dip thy paddle in the lake. 

But it carves the bow of beauty there, 

And the ripples in rhymes the oar forsake. 



324 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Another feature of his Concord life was a kind of grim joke which 
fate played, and which he had the humor to accept gracefully. To 
Among appreciate this we must remember that Emerson was by 

Reformers nature as retiring as a hermit thrush ; that he _was a 
mystic a nd dreamer, not a reformer ; that he had an instinctive aver- 
sion to controversy and disorder of every kind; that though radical^ 
and positive in his thinking,' he could not argue or proselyte, holding 
that truth must take its own quiet way to. the hearts of men. An'd 
prese ntly all the agitators, reformers and unbalanced enthusiasts of 
the c ountry hailed him as comrade or leader. They wrote him endless 
letters ; they waylaid him at his lectures ; they entered his house to 
argue their theories, to expound their grievances, to make him join 
their propaganda. ^^ Devastators of the day " he called them in help- 
less resignation ; but because they had journeyed far to see him, they 
must all be welcomed and heard with patience. For this apostle of 
self, this believer in the divinity of his own nature, cherished for other 
men a respect bordering on reverence, which made those who met 
him think better of themselves forever afterwards. A knock at his 
door might herald a friend or a beggar, a great genius or a great bore ; 
but each was a person, and personality was to Emerson sacred. Of 
the hundreds who sought him out and devastated his day, not one 
ever detected anything in his fine, mobile face but deference and 
perfect courtesy. 

So for thirty years Emerson preached by word and deed the gospel 
of individualism. In 1866, after he had published a dozen small 
volumes of essays and poems, he knew that he had reached the limit 
of his power, and with the same faith that had inspired his youth and 
vigorous manhood he wrote his brave but pathetic " Terminus " : 

It is time to be old. 
To take in sail. 

The rest of his life was like a summer day that grows more serene 
and beautiful as it fades into the twilight. He had almost reached his 
fourscore years when he died, in 1882. Our whole criticism of his 
life and work may be summed up in his own lines from " Threnody " : 

What is excellent. 
As God lives, is permanent ; 
Hearts are dust, hearts' loves remain ; 
Heart's love will meet thee again. 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 



325 



Emerson's Poetry. Whatever the form of his writing, Emer- 
son's thought and expression are essentially poetic ; and in read- 
ing him we appreciate Coleridge's contention that '' poetry is 
not the proper antithesis to prose but to science." He speaks 
in symbols ; he stirs the imagination ; even his prose abounds 
in passages so rhythmic or beautiful that they can hardly be 
distinguished from his familiar runic verse. Indeed, a modem 








EMERSON'S STUDY 



critic has suggested that the chief difference between Emerson's 
poetry and prose is that in the one he talked with himself, and 
in the other he talked with the world. 

The most obviously poetic works of Emerson fall naturally 
into two main classes : nature lyrics, and meditative verse. '' I 
am by nature a poet," he said, '' and therefore must live in the 
country"; and this expression suggests at once his power and 
his limitation. His power is to find beauty, order, symbolism in 
natural objects; his limitation is that he subordinates humanity, 



326 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

that he hardly seems conscious of the fact that, as a subject for 
poetry, human nature is more interesting than a bumblebee or 
a snowstorm. He creates no human characters ; he reflects 
neither smiles nor tears ; he is as impersonal as the face of the 
fields. He is almost alone among poets in never planning a 
drama, an epic, or a long poem of any kind. His range is 
therefore narrow, but within it he is a master. No other 
American poet, not even Br}^ant, has given us nature poems 
containing lines of such elemental power and suggestiveness. 
The spirit of this poetry is reflected in a single short lyric, 
" The Apology," which should be read entire as an introduction 
Nature ^o Emerson's nature verse. His conception of his 

Poems own work is expressed in '' Fragments on the Poet 

and the Poetic Gift," especially in the opening stanza : 

The gods talk in the breath of the woods, 

They talk in the shaken pine, 

And fill the long reach of the old seashore 

With dialogue divine ; 

And the poet who overhears 

Some random word they say 

Is the fated man of men, 

Whom the ages must obey. 

Other notable lyrics of this class are ''The Humble Bee," 
"Rhodora," "Each and All," "Fable," "The Informing 
Spirit," " Waldeinsamkeit," "The Titmouse," "Forbearance," 
"Days," "The Snowstorm," "The Enchanter" and "Wood- 
Notes." The reader may find others more to his liking, but in 
the above he will surely detect Emerson's chief characteristics 
as a nature poet : his recognition of the beauty and harmony 
of the world ; his conception of nature as the garment or sym- 
bol of the invisible Spirit ; and his runic style, crude but force- 
ful, which is admirably suited to his thought and feeling. 

We have spoken of these nature poems as an expression of 
Emerson's communing with himself, and the meaning of the 
criticism may be made clear by considering the history of a 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 327 

single lyric. One day, on the rocks of Cape Ann, Emerson 
listened to old ocean's message, and wrote it down in prose 
just as it came to him.^ When he returned home he read to 
his family ''what the sea said" to him, and with very slight 
changes the prose record fell naturally into blank verse. The 
result was ''Seashore" (1857), which for power and subhmity 
has hardly a peer in all our nature poetry. 

The calm, impersonal quality of these lyrics — a quality 
which suggests Emerson's absorption in nature — is reflected 
also in a few poems that have a more human interest. Perhaps 
the best of these poems is " Threnody," a noble eleg}^, which 
voices the poet's grief over the death of his little boy, and 
which is sometimes compared with Tennyson's " In Memoriam." 
Other typical poems with a strong human interest are " Good 
Bye," "To Ellen," "Give All to Love," and especially the 
Concord and Boston Hymns, which reflect the fine quality of 
Emerson's patriotism. 

In his meditative verse Emerson is no longer simple and 
spontaneous. He is hampered by his philosophy ; he is trying 
Meditative ^0 develop a theory rather than to speak the feeling 
Verse of his own heart. "Astrsea," "Bacchus," "To 

Rhea," — all such poems are attempts to crystallize certain doc- 
trines which Emerson had expounded to better advantage in 
his essays. Here, for instance, is " Uriel," which makes scof- 
fers of us, or else detectives intent on discovering a mystery : 

Line in nature is not found ; 
Unit and universe are round ; 
In vain produced, all rays return ; 
Evil will bless, and ice will burn. 

A solution of the enigma is outlined in the essay on " Circles," 
but not until we study the " Divinity School Address " do we 
learn what Emerson was trying to say : that evil is not real but 
only apparent or illusory ; that it is temporary, not enduring, 

1 Emerson's Journal, July 23, 1857. Or see note to the poem "Seashore" in the 
Centenary edition of Emerson's works. 



328 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

and is part of a general plan that results finally in goodness. 
Further analysis of the meditative verse may show that '' The 
Problem " is simply a condensation of the essay on '' Art " ; 
and that '' Merlin " and '' Saadi " are figurative expressions of 
Emerson's theory of poetry. 

It is difficult to criticize such involved poems, which are often 
more cryptic than Browning at his worst, and which appeal in 
very different ways to different people. One reader finds them 
meaningless ; another discerns in them the thoughts of his own 
soul that he has tried in vain to express. One of the most 
typical is "Brahma," which condenses a well-known "Yoga" 
doctrine adopted by the transcendentalists, but which puzzled 
and mystified the whole country when it appeared in 1857.^ 
Other characteristic poems of this class are "Voluntaries," 
" The Sphinx," and the two series of disjointed meditations 
called " Fragments." 

Many people besides Holmes have poked fun at such poems 
for their vagueness, for their lack of rime and melody, but all 
such criticism is stilled by two suggestions : first, Emerson spoke 
modestly of himself as a forerunner, saying that he was " not a 
poet but a lover of poetry . . . merely serving as a writer in this 
empty America before the arrival of poets " ; and second, every 
one of these poems is worth reading, if only to discover some 
noble line or passage which it surely contains, and which we store 
away in the place where we keep things worthy of remembrance : 

The hand that rounded Peter's dome 
And groined the aisles of Christian Rome 
Wrought in a sad sincerity : 
Himself from God he could not free ; 
He builded better than he knew ; — 
The conscious stone to beauty grew.^ 

1 An interesting reference to this poem and to its mystifying effect on readers is 
given in Scudder's James Rtcssell Lowell. Whitman's chaotic poem " Chanting the 
Square Deific " attempts to express the same doctrine (see p. 379). , 

2 These lines, from " The Problem," are an epitome of the essay on " Art," in which 
Emerson says, " Our arts are happy hits." See also the essay " Michael Angelo " and the 
poem " Each and All." 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 329 

Prose Works. 1 We have already spoken of Nature as the 
most representative of all Emerson's works. It was the first 
notable expression of his thought, his belief, his gospel ; and 
to read it now is to find the seed plot out of which sprang all 
his later volumes in prose and verse. 

Representative Men is a series of seven lectures or essays, 
which we can hardly help comparing with Carlyle's Heroes and 
Hero- Wars hip, since the two books have much in common. 
The first essay is on the Uses of Great Men ; the others treat 
of Plato the Philosopher, Swedenborg the Mystic, Montaigne 
the Skeptic, Shakespeare the Poet, Napoleon the Man of the 
World, and Goethe the Writer. Stimulating as they are, hardly 
one of these essays is an adequate or reliable portrayal of its 
subject ; and all are perhaps more significant as a reflection of 
Emerson himself than of his strangely assorted heroes. If the 
reader must choose among them, let him begin with the essay 
on Plato ; not because it is better than the others, but because 
Emerson was probably more influenced by the Greek philosopher 
than by any other writer. 

Eftglish Traits, a series of personal impressions of the Eng- 
lish people, is in marked contrast with most books of wholesale 
criticism. The impressions are fresh, vivid, original ; the criti- 
cisms, though often too general to be trustworthy, are invariably 
suggestive ; the style is delightfully frank and simple ; and the 
whole is brightened by the play of a very delicate humor. This 
bopk, moreover, is unique among Emerson's works in that it 
has a plan, that is, a beginning, an end, and between these 
extremes some definite unity of structure. It is consistent, 
therefore, with his own theory that a book or any other work 
of art should be '* organized like a flower." By this he meant 
not only that it should have unity and consistency, but also that 
it should be simple and natural, content with its own beauty or 

1 Practically all Emerson's prose is in the form of essays. Some of the titles of his 
books are Nature (1836), two series of Essays (1841, 1844), Representative Men (1850), 
English Traits (1856), Conduct of Life (i860), Society and Solitude (1870). 



330 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

truth, like the exquisite " Rhodora," without attempting either 
to explain itself or to influence the beholder. 

As we have noted, the bulk of Emerson's prose is in the 
form of essays, and these are of such number and variety that 
they should be grouped in four or five classes. In 
the first we place such essays as '' Self- Reliance " 
and ''The American Scholar"; in the second, ''Heroism" 
and " Behavior " ; in the third, " Fortune of the Republic " and 
the "Historical Address" at Concord; in the fourth, "The' 
Over Soul," " Spiritual Laws " and " Compensation." A dozen 
other notable essays might be added, but these nine reflect 
Emerson's conception of man in relation to his own soul, to 
his neighbor, to his country, and to the Spirit of the universe. 

The essay on " Art " is generally recommended, but though 
it contains many excellent passages, some readers find it on the 
Art Love wholc like a misty morning, which obscures details 
Friendship ^nd makes common objects seem larger than they 
are. Moreover, we are hardly inclined to trust the artistic judg- 
ment of one who could refer to the pictures of Europe as " crip- 
ples and monsters," and who saw in sculpture chiefly " the toys 
and trumpery of the theater." Two other essays, "Love" 
and " Friendship," are commonly numbered among Emerson's 
best works ; but after reading them one may question whether 
the author had a true conception of either love or friendship, as 
ordinaiy mortals understand these two dear gifts of God. He 
listens too much to Plato, too little to his own heart ; and the 
substance of his Platonic teaching is that we should cherish 
love, not for individuals, but for beauty and truth ; that we 
should entangle ourselves with persons no longer than is neces- 
sary to learn to live without them. Herein is suggested the 
chief limitation of Emerson in all his work : he deals only with 
the individual soul and with abstract ideas ; he cares little for 
society ; he has small knowledge of man as a social being, who 
does not live or die unto himself but enters into the joy and 
grief, the struggle and the salvation of humanity. 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 331 

Aside from the pithy style, which we shall examine later, 
there are certain remarkable qualities common to all of Emer- 
Quaiity of son's essays, and perhaps the first is their wealth of 
the Essays suggestion. They abound in memorable epigrams, 
in striking figures and symbols, in passages characterized by 
deep thought or rare beauty of expression. Yet to study any 
single essay critically is to discover that, notwithstanding its 
excellent details, the work as a whole is not consistently thought 
out from beginning to end ; that it is evidently written without 
a plan ; that it lacks unity of structure and definiteness of im- 
pression. In other words, it is often difficult to find any vital 
or logical connection between Emerson's thoughts, or to dis- 
cover how they are related to his subject. Sometimes, indeed, 
it might puzzle us to tell what he is talking about so admirably. 
This lack of unity is due partly to his theory that a man should 
take thoughts as they come to him, without regard to whether 
or not they are consistent with other thoughts, and partly to his 
eclectic method of writing.^ 

A second characteristic of the essays is their ceaseless flow 
of apt quotations. '' By necessity, by proclivity and by delight 
we all quote," he says, and illustrates that saying by filling his 
pages with an array so glittering that Holmes compared it with 
the miraculous draft of fishes. The same critic had the curi- 
osity to examine all of Emerson's works, and discovered more 
than three thousand references to over eight hundred individuals.^ 

These excellent quotations, by the way, indicate a certain 
weakness in Emerson's most characteristic doctrine. If we 
understand him aright, he depends absolutely on his own intui- 
tions ; he regards his thoughts and ideas as so many direct in- 
spirations from the Over Soul, which he accepts as true without 



1 Emerson kept many notebooks, carefully indexed, in which he recorded his own 
thoughts and any memorable passages that he found in his reading. When he composed 
a lecture or an essay he would collect from these notebooks everything that seemed re- 
lated to his general subject. These went into his composition apparently without much 
arrangement. When he had enough to fill the required space he stopped. 

2 A summary of these references may be found in Holmes's Emerson^ pp. 381-382. 



332 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

doubt or gainsaying. He deplores, moreover, our common tend- 
ency to question our thoughts, to let our wills interfere with our 
impulses, since thought and impulse are to him as real, as 
dependable, as inexplicable as the phenomena of nature. Yet 
if we read one of his essays carefully, and then search out his 
references, we find that his originality often consists in stating 
in a modern way some bit of wisdom that was thoroughly ques- 
tioned and proved before it was recorded by men of old ; and 
that some of the ideas which he regarded as intuitive were 
plainly borrowed from Epictetus, or from some other writer who 
may or may not be regarded as authoritative.^ 

A third remarkable quality of the essays, which w^e find hard 
to define, is their power to stimulate readers. There is hardly 
a page in Emerson's twelve volumes that does not contain at 
least one morning thought which awakens our dormant minds 
like a bird song, or else a bold, challenging summons to be up 
and doing, Strange to say, though Emerson is one of the most 
radical of thinkers, he seldom rouses, our antagonism. We may 
deny the doctrine, but we do not oppose or fail to respect the 
man, sinc e he invariably appeals to the noblest part of-our-nature. 
We cannot compare him with Bacon or Epictetus, or even with 
his great contemporaries Carlyle, Ruskin and Newman, simply 
because he is himself and unlike any other. It is perhaps enough 
to say that he measures up to the stature of these men, and that 
his best work, like theirs, can never grow old. We read his 
wonderful essays again and again ; each reading reveals a new 
depth of thought, a new beauty of expression, a new power to 
stimulate our thinking ; and we lay them aside with the convic- 
tion that they must be classed with the .great prose works of 
modern literature. 

Emerson's Philosophy. It is hard to systematize the think- 
ing of one who confessed that he had no system, or even to 

1 For example, Epictetus taught that the highest wisdom is to desire nothing except 
freedom and contentment ; that evil is not real but only apparent ; that happiness de- 
pends wholly upon our will to be happy, etc. All this is restated by Emerson. 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 333 

understand a philosopher who ignored the fundamental aim of 
all philosophies ; which is, in a word, to obtain a consistent, uni- 
fying world-view that shall explain man in his relation to the Infi- 
nite, to humanity, and to the world of nature. One must not 
be too confident, therefore, of explaining Emerson ; and a general 
criticism should be prefaced by the statement that any summary 
may unwittingly do injustice to his philosophy by emphasizing one 
doctrine which is plainly at variance with another. For Emerson 
was not a logical thinker, like Edwards, and took no care to 
make his teachings consistent. As he said : 

" I seek no order or harmony or resuk. ... I am not careful how they 
[his present thoughts] compare with other thoughts and other moods. I 
trust them for that." 

So far as Emerson has a definite philosophy, it centers in the 
doctrine of individualis m ; and this doctrine rests upon his theory 
of knowledge. In his view, knowledge is not a matter of effort 
or attainment , but rather of passiv eness^ of open-mindedness 
and receptivity. '' I do not argue, I know," he tells us ; and 
again, '' A thought is as natural, as true as a flower ; it does not 
need argument or explanation." We are reminded here of the 
word of the Lord to Jeremiah, saying, '' I will put my law in 
their inward parts, and write it in their hearts." Emerson does 
not quote this, but his implicit faith in the doctrine appears in 
his frequent declaration that the Over Soul is for every man the 
imme diate so ur ce of all authority and kno wledge ; that it is not 
necessary to go back to the past or to consider the teaching of 
others, since every soul at every moment has free access to the 
original source of all wisdom. "If a single man plant himself 
indomitably upon his instincts and there abide, the huge world 
will come round to him." ^ This is the substance of his "Amer- 
ican Scholar" and of his famous "Divinity School Address," 
which startled men by their fearless renunciation of tradition 
and all outward authority. 

1 In another place he says, " See that you hold fast by the intellect " ; yet his teach- 
ing, as a whole, rests upon instinct or intuition rather than upon reason. 



334 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Of this radical teaching perhaps the first thing to note is that 
it is simply a reflection of his own individualism, of the serene 
Personal way in which he ignored his debt to the past and his 
Element dependence on human institutions. Though he was 
a clergyman, he thought it unnecessary to know church history 
or theology ; though a naturalist, he never studied science in 
any form ; though he wrote of art and literature and philosophy, 
he was always lacking in scholarship, that is, in the mastery or 
exact knowledge of any one subject. Viewed critically, therefore, 
his system appears as a tree without much root. It is the meas- 
ure of one man, not of humanity. 

The next thing to note is that, to one of Emerson's training 
and moral integrity, individualism may be a " safe and sane " 
doctrine ; but we need hardly point out that it has its dangers ; 
that, as a rule of life for all sorts of men, it must lead to all 
manner of vagaries. A fanatic or an anarchist, no less than a 
transcendentalist, may feel quite sure of himself ; and the only 
way to judge the quality of his intuitions is to compare them with 
those of the race past and present. In other words, we must 
know history and tradition, ethics and philosophy, all of which 
Emerson was content to overlook. 

To sum up the matter, Emerson's philosophy rests too much 
on ecstasy and impulse, and too little on reason and will. It 
glorifies the individual but ignores society, that is, man in his 
relation to others, where he is always seen at his best. It is con- 
fident of the present moment without considering the wisdom 
and experience of the past. We are to read it, therefore, as 
Emerson read his favorite books, selecting the choice morsels 
and neglecting the rest as of little consequence. In one matter 
only he is always consistent, and that is the authority and the 
loveliness of the moral law. Upon this subject he is the most 
inspiring and energizing of all our literary masters.^ 

1 This is perhaps the more remarkable in view of the fact that Emerson took the 
moral law for granted because he found it in himself. Apparently he never sought for 
the origin of the law; nor did he think it necessary to give any valid reason for its 
authority. 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 335 

General Characteristics. It is idle to analyze Emerson's style 
if we think of style as meaning order and arrangement ; for his 
method of writing — by stringing together selections from his 
notebooks — made it impossible that his works should have any 
continuity of thought or unity of expression. But if we think of 
style simply as manner, as the reflection of personality, and then 
consider Emerson's most characteristic paragraphs, which sug- 
gest stars, flowers and glimmering crystals, then there is no 
style to compare with his in our literature. As Higginson says, 
our criticism is shamed into silence by finding frequent passages 
" so majestic in thought and rhythm, of a quality so rare and deli- 
cious, as to form a permanent addition to the highest literature 
of the human race." 

The style of these single passages is better appreciated than 
described. The sentences are terse, vital, epigrammatic ; yet they 
are always poetic rather than practical, and always 
hint at much more than they express. Because he 
lives much out of doors and is intimate with earth, air and water, 
Emerson's figures have an elemental quality unlike those of any 
other writer. The dew and fragrance of the morning are in all 
his works. Because he has read widely, he gives an air of cul- 
ture to the most homely matters by associating them with the 
great characters and the great books of the world. He has a 
large vocabulary at perfect command, but his instinct leads him 
to the simplest and most picturesque words. He chooses his 
expressions from the most unexpected places, here from the 
nursery, there from the Apocalypse or from the mystic books 
of the East ; and not even Lowell approaches him in the abil- 
ity to clothe his thought in a new dress, making it appear as 
fresh and original as if it had been spoken in Eden at the 
springtime of the world. 

There is another element in Emerson's style, its eloquence, 
which is generally attributed to his public speaking, but 
which seems to be an expression of his own deepest nature 
or, it may be, of a tendency inherited from his ministerial 



336 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

ancestors.^ Whatever the cause, Emerson is always striving after 
eloquence of expression, not to convince his hearers — such a per- 
sonal motive would never occur to him — but simply 
because it is in his blood, because eloquence seems to 
him, as to the Indian, man's natural expression, his unconscious 
reflection of the harmony of the universe. *' There are days 
which occur in this climate," he begins, and though his subject 
be the old, threadbare matter of the weather, Webster and Clay 
were never more eloquent over mighty problems of state. Again, 
in a lecture on " Behavior," he mentions the human eye ; it has 
nothing to do with his subject, but it inspires him and he cannot 
restrain himself. The passage that follows is of such beauty and 
eloquence that our best poets and orators have hardly rivaled it. 
To Emerson's thoughts, and to his central doctrine of indi- 
vidualism, we have already called sufficient attention. The point 
to emphasize is, not its strangeness or danger, but rather its 
harmony with the spirit of America, which from the beginning 
has had to solve old problems in a new way, and which seems 
at times the most individual of nations. It was this harmony 
with the free spirit of its native land which led Holmes to call 
''The American Scholar" our intellectual declaration of inde- 
pendence. The individualist, as a rule, tends to extremes, to 
the vagaries and inconsistencies of transcendentalism ; but Emer- 
son is a noble exception. He is invariably sane, wholesome, 
self-controlled, and typically American in his entire devotion 
to liberty. At his best he comes as near, perhaps, to represent- 
ing the free modern man, the man who assumes the responsi- 
bility as well as the joy of his freedom, as any other writer at 
home or abroad. 

If we examine Emerson's claim to greatness and permanence, 
it will be found to rest on three solid foundations. First, he 
treats of elemental things, of nature, love, friendship, heroism, 

1 As a young man, Emerson writes in his Journal that he "yearns after the power of 
Cicero." He tells us also that he has inherited from his ancestors " a passionate love for 
the strains of eloquence." 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 337 

self-reliance, in which all men are forever interested. Second, 
he treats these themes in an independent way, speaking straight 
from his own convictions, and always appealing to 
"°^ the nobility of our human nature. Third, his words 

seem as vital now as when they first came from his lips ; his 
readers, his fame and his inspiring influence increase with the 
passing years. Best of all, this fame remains unchanged in 
quality, and behind it stands a man in whom criticism finds 
nothing to pardon or regret. We think of him still as the men 
of Concord and America thought of him long ago : as holding 
aloft a spiritual ideal while they were busy with material things ; 
as proving the value of their individual and immortal souls while 
they w^ere lost in a maze of business, politics and reforms. He 
was to them much as Galileo was to the people of Florence long 
ago ; while they ate and drank, he was thinking for them ; while 
they slept in forgetfulness, he was alone on his hilltop watching 
the eternal stars. In recording his personal impression Lowell 
has unconsciously expressed the feeling of all of Emerson's 
hearers : 

"... Emerson's oration was more disjointed than usual, even with him. 
It began nowhere and ended everywhere; and yet, as always with that 
divine man, it left you feeling that something beautiful had passed that way, 
— something more beautiful than anything else, like the rising and setting 
of stars. Every possible criticism might have been made on it but one, — 
that it was not noble. There was a tone in it that awakened all elevating 
associations. He boggled, he lost his place, he had to put on his glasses ; 
but it was as if a creature from some fairer world had lost his way in our 
fogs and it was our fault, not his. It was chaotic, but it was all such stuff 
as stars are made of ; and you could n't help feeling that, if you waited 
awhile, all that was nebulous would be whirled into planets, and would 
assume the mathematical gravity of system. All through it I felt something 
in me that cried ' Ha, ha, to the sound of the trumpets ! '"^^ 

1 From Norton, Letters of James Russell Lowell, I, 392. (Harpers' edition, 2 vols.) 
See also Lowell's essay on " Emerson the Lecturer." 



338 



AMERICAN LITERATURE 



James Russell Lowell (i 8 19 -i 891) 

There are two authors who have been regarded at home and 
abroad as representative of the best American life and letters. 
The first was Irving, who lived in an old world of romance, and 
who is associated in our thought with the pleasures of literature. 
The second was Lowell, who lived in a new world of practical 
achievement, and who stands for the power of literature to in- 
fluence the thought and life of a 
nation. At home he used prose 
and poetry to help shape the 
destiny of his country ; abroad 
he was the spokesman not only 
of American letters but also of 
American manhood, and of the 
steadfast ideals that guide and 
inspire the American people. 

Life. " All the stars were pro- 
pitious at his birth," writes a friend 
in beginning the story of Lowell's 
life. He was bom (18 19) in the 
old Lowell homestead " Elmwood," 
on the outskirts of the college town 
of Cambridge. On the side of his 
father, who was a minister, he was 
descended from Puritan ancestors 
who had made history in the Old Bay State. On his mother's side he 
traced his descent from some Gaelic forbears (of the Orkney Islands) 
among whom was a certain Sir Patrick Spens, the hero of a famous 
ballad. From his father he seems to have inherited strength and 
sanity of judgment ; from his mother he may have received his lively, 
mercurial fancy; and these contradictory elements appear on almost 
every page of his writings. 

Besides these native traits, two formative influences of his child- 
hood should be noted : the first, that "Elmwood " was set in the midst 
of noble grounds, where nature looked in at every door and window ; 
the second, that the library shelves were filled with the best books, 




JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 339 

chosen and read by scholarly ancestors. Nature and books, the ideal- 
ism of the Puritan and the wit of the Celt, — such are the influences 
and elements that go to make up our Lowell. 

Of his school life perhaps the best summary is his own remark, 

that he read in Harvard everything except the textbooks prescribed 

by the faculty. He was always a great reader, like Mather, 

00 ays ^j^Qj^ l^g resembles in many ways; but Mather was in a 
literary sense omnivorous, reading and mastering every known science, 
while Lowell confined himself la?rgely to what was then called belles- 
lettres, or polite literature. In this he was influenced by the interest 
in literary matters which then dominated our American colleges.-^ A 
study of his early work shows that he took only a superficial interest 
in matters which, to the nation at large, seemed of tremendous import. 
America was then entering the whirlpool of intellectual and political 
agitation to which we have referred ; questions of slavery and states' 
rights, of communism and transcendentalism, kept the country in 
a turmoil ; but Lowell saw in them only an occasion for sport. In his 
class poem he made fun of reformers in general, and even sent a few 
arrows of his wit at Emerson, whom he had met while " rusticated " 
at Concord for disobeying the college regulations. 

After his graduation (1838) Lowell studied law and opened an 
office in Boston ; but he had no clients, and spent his time largely, as 
in college, in reading and writing poetry. We may judge the quality 
of this work by his first volume of verse, A Yearns Life (1841), and 
by numerous love poems contributed to the magazines of the period. 
If we seek the inspiration of these poems, such as " Irene," " My 
Love," and the " Song " beginning, " O moonlight deep and tender," 
we shall find the woman who exercised the deepest influence on 
Lowell's whole career. 

With his marriage to Maria White (1844), a delicate, beautiful 
woman with the faith of a saint and the zeal of a reformer, a marked 
Finding change occurred in Lowell's life.'^ Hitherto he had been 

Himself a mere dilettante ; he had written a few poems and had 

attempted a new magazine. The Pioneer ; he had made a beginning 
of criticism with his Conversatiofis o?i Some of the Old Poets ; and 

1 The first works of Irving, Cooper, Bryant, Longfellow, Poe and Hawthorne created 
unbounded enthusiasm among college students. See Edward Everett Hale's James 
Russell Lowell and His Friends. 

2 We refer here to the definite expression of Lowell's humanitarianism. The change 
had probably begun before 1844. See Greenslet's/aw^j- Russell Lowell^ pp. 32, 44. 



340 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

betimes he scoffed at the various reform movements and poked fun 
at transcendentalism. Gradually, as he came under his wife's influence, 
a definite purpose entered his life, and the most significant mark of it 
is that he joined the abolitionists, — who were then regarded with as 
much disfavor in New England as ever they were in the South. He 
became editor of the Pen7isylvafiia Freeman^ and contributed anti- 
slavery poems and articles to the few magazines that then dared print 
such dangerous matter. He worked hard for his daily bread, and was 
content with the small earnings which, even at that time, would hardly 
support a day laborer. He shared also the grief of humanity. In 
such poems as " The First Snowfall," ^^ She Came and Went," " The 
Changeling," written after the death of his little girl, he touched the 
human heart as he had never done before. 

The climax of this early period of hard, purposeful work came in 
1848, when he published his best volume of Foems, and also The 
Biglow Papers (first series), The Fable for Critics^ and The Vision of 
Sir Launfal. Then, largely in the hope of restoring his wife's health, 
he sold some of his land at " Elmwood " and traveled in Europe for 
a year. For Mrs. Lowell the journey was all in vain ; she failed 
steadily, and died soon after her return home. It was the darkest, 
saddest hour in Lowell's life ; but unless we search his letters we 
shall find hardly a trace of the grief which he bore in manly silence. 
On the morning that Mrs. Lowell died a daughter was born to Long- 
fellow, and the elder poet's sympathy for his friend and neighbor 
found expression in the little poem beginning. 

Two angels, one of Life and one of Death, 
Passed o'er our village as the morning broke.^ 

In the following year (1854) another change began in Lowell's life, 
and the change was made significant by the fact that he turned from 
From Poetry poetry to prose. At the Lowell Institute, in Boston, he 
to Prose gave a course of lectures on the subject, then popular, of 
English poetry, and the quality of his work was so unmistakable 
that he was speedily called to the professorship which Longfellow had 
resigned. With his work at Harvard (which began after a period of 
foreign study) began also his new editorial career. We can hardly 
overestimate his influence on our literature as the first editor (1857- 
1861) of the Atlantic Mo7ithly, in which position he was continually 

1 From "The Two Angels." See Longfellow's letter, April 25, 1S55, quoted in 
Samuel Longfellow's Life of Lo?tgfellow, II, 285. 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 341 

on the watch to discover and encourage new writers of marked ability. 
His most notable works of this period, during which the country was 
in political upheaval, were the literary essays contributed to his maga- 
zine (afterwards collected in Afnong My Books and My Study Win- 
dows), Fireside Travels (1864), the "Commemoration Ode" (1865), 
and tsvo little volumes of poetry, Under the Willows (1869) and Three 
Meffiorial Toems (1876). Much of his political prose produced during 
this period and his second series of Biglow Papers were too much 
influenced by the strife of the hour to be of permanent value ; but in 
his best poetry, and especially in his " Commemoration Ode," he rose 
above all sectional interests to speak nobly for the nation. 

It was happily not a party recognition of his political services but 
rather a national acknowledgment of the honor due to literature which 
Life in ^^^ to the selection of Lowell as our minister to Spain 

England (1877) and to England (1880). Here we note a close 
parallel to the career of Irving; but where Irving was essentially a 
learner, a discoverer of Old-World literary material, Lowell was em- 
phatically a teacher, giving a splendid object lesson of the type of man 
and the type of democracy which the New World had developed. For 
Lowell was American to the root and fiber of his nature ; his patriotism 
was intense, his love of country pure and constant. He was always 
ready, moreover, to give a reason for the faith that was in him ; and 
his reason, backed by his fine literary culture, commanded instant 
respect. It is no small tribute to his personal charm and manliness 
that, though he was called " a typical Yankee," he became one of the 
most popular public men in London. Partly by his speeches, and 
partly by his firm yet courteous attitude in every diplomatic question 
that arose, he made England know and honor the ideals which America 
has cherished from the beginning, and he laid the foundation for a 
friendship based on sympathy between the two nations, which we 
trust will never again be broken. 

The last period of his life began with his return home in 1885 : 

Home am I come : not, as I hoped might be. 

To the old haunts, too full of ghosts for me. 

But to the olden dreams that time endears, 

And to the loved books that younger grow with years ; . . . 

Little I ask of Fate, will she refuse 

Some days of reconcilement with the Muse .? 

I take my reed again and blow it free 

Of dusty silence, murmuring. Sing to me ! 



342 



AMERICAN LITERATURE 



He resumed his professorship at Harvard, not because he ever liked 
it but because he was poor and must still earn his bread. He wrote 
poems, essays, political addresses, all in the old vein, but with some- 
thing added of the wisdom of age and the tenderness that comes with 
a deeper knowledge of life. The end came (189 1), while he still felt 
the joy of work and the sweetness of reward, in the same house in 
which he was bom more than seventy years before. 




LOWELL HOME, CAMBRIDGE 



The Poetry of Lowell. A study of Lowell's works shows 
four chief interests : nature and patriotism, which he reflects in 
poetry ; literature and democracy, which he reserves for prose. ^ 
Of these he always writes brilliantly, suggestively, and at times 
with deep feeling ; but he gives the impression of being gov- 
erned by taste or thought or sentiment rather than by a control- 
ling passion, and of always trying to master his subject instead 
of letting his subject master him completely, as most other 
poets do. If we compare him with Whittier, for instance, we 
note that Whittier's love of nature is as spontaneous as a child's 

1 This generalization, like most others, is imperfect. It fails to include some of 
Lowell's best lyrics and sonnets on other subjects. 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 343 

love for a brook, and that his lyrics are as unstudied as a 
child's singing ; while Lowell has a well-cultivated taste for 
nature, and must bring his library even to the dandelion, saying. 

Thou art my tropics and mine Italy ! 

Again, both men are patriots who reflect their love of country 
in verse. Whittier is mastered by his love ; to him, as to Isaiah, 
the voice says, '' Cry ! " and he must speak what is given him 
to speak ; his patriotism flames and flashes in lyrics that are 
flung off at white heat. Lowell thinks, plans, strives to master 
his subject, and invariably illustrates it from his wide reading. 
And the comparison might be carried further, to show that one 
man was a poet by inner compulsion, the other by careful 
training. 

Among the most noteworthy of Lowell's nature poems are 
''To a Dandelion," "Indian-Summer Reverie," ''The Foun- 
tain," "The Birch Tree," "Phoebe," "To a Pine 
em 'pj.gg^M ^^^ ^YiQ opening stanzas of "Under the 

Willows." With these should be read a few simple lyrics of 
human love and grief, such as "My Love," " The Changeling," 
"She Came and Went," and "The First Snowfall" ; the ex- 
quisite sonnets, " For this true nobleness," " To the Spirit of 
Keats," " My Love I have no fear," " I ask not," and " Great 
Truths" ; and certain miscellaneous poems, such as " An Ember 
Picture," "Fountain of Youth," "An Incident," "Hebe," 
"The Shepherd of King Admetus," "Masaccio," "Aladdin," 
and "In the Twilight." 1 

There are other poems, longer and more ambitious, which 
many critics regard as more typical of Lowell's genius. Here, 
for instance, is " A Legend of Brittany," an early poem which 
Poe called the noblest ever written by an American. It has 

1 We have named the above poems as a guide to the beginner. For students who 
have Lowell's complete poetical works, it is a good plan to read four or five small 
volumes in the order of their production: A Year's Life (1841), Poems, first series of 
Biglow Papers, and Sir Launfal (1848). Then came an interval of twenty years, given 
largely to prose. The chief poetic works of Lowell's later life are Under the Willows 
(1S69), Three Memorial Poems (1876), and Heartsease and Rue (1888). 



344 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

many quotable lines, but as a whole it seems a little labored and 
artificial. Another ambitious poem which has received consider- 
able praise is ''The Cathedral" (1869), but many readers will 
sympathize with Emerson, who refused to criticize it. In a very 
different style and spirit is the poem '' Agassiz," a noble tribute 
to a noble character, which is one of the finest of all Lowell's 
works in verse or prose. 

Lowell's best-known work, The Vision of Sir Lazmfal, now 
stands apart from all the rest, — though it would probably have 
found a place in The Nooning ^ if that lifelong dream 
had ever been realized. Our poet here follows Tenny- 
son into the realm of Arthurian legend, and tells in his own 
way the old, beautiful story of the search for the Holy Grail. The 
result, however, is not very satisfactory. Sir Launfal has been 
widely read, and is still a favorite with many readers, but the 
poem is perhaps more admired for its moral lesson than for its 
artistic excellence. It shows that Lowell, like Matthew Arnold, 
though he knew all about the theory of verse, had not that instinc- 
tive sense of rhythm and melody which marks a great poet. In 
consequence he writes, '' And the wanderer is welcome to the 
hall " and many other jarring lines which pound along, like raw 
recruits, without keeping step to the music. The materials 
which Lowell uses are scarcely more harmonious. The land- 
scape with its flowers and birds is unmistakably American ; but 
the castle, the beggar, the knight and the story itself are all 
foreign to our life. The best parts of the poem are found in 
the preludes, especially the first, with its inspiring ''And what 
is so rare as a day in June } " 

Sir Lannfal is interesting in another way, as an epitome of 
Lowell's tendency to moralize overmuch, — a tendency which 
at that time (1848) was noticeable in all our poets with the ex- 
ception of Poe. That Lowell was conscious of this failing is 

1 Like Longfellow and many other poets, Lowell planned a series of narrative poems 
in the manner of the Canterbury Tales. To these he gave the general title of The 
Noon'mg, but he completed only one narrative, " Fitz Adam's Story." 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 345 

evident from his own description of himself in A Fable for 
Critics. He refers to it often in his letters, and enlightens us 
by saying, '' I shall never be a poet till I get out of the 
pulpit. And New England was all meetinghouse when I was 
growing up." ^ 

Of the patriotic poems, the most vigorous and spontaneous 
is '' The Present Crisis," which was written (1844) in the midst 
Poems of o^ the political uproar occasioned by the annexation 
Patriotism Qf Texas. Never before did Lowell so surely '' strike 
home " to the hearts of his readers. Instantly his poem became 
a battle cry, and for twenty years its ringing lines were applauded 
in hundreds of public assemblies. At the present time we are 
far removed from the bitter political issues that occasioned the 
poem, and we can all cherish the manly American spirit that finds 
expression in such passages as. 

Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide, 
In the strife of Truth and Falsehood, for the good or evil side. 

The ''Commemoration Ode" (1865), written at the close of 
the Civil War as a tribute to the college students who had 
fallen in battle, is by many regarded as the noblest single poem 
occasioned by that mighty conflict. Here is no sectional pride 
or grief, but the very soul of a nation, honoring its noble dead, 
rejoicing in peace, and setting its face toward a glorious future. 
Though a little diffuse and labored, the poem is characterized 
by magnificent passages, such as the tribute to Lincoln, which 
will be read as long as the nation remembers its heroes. The 
Three Memorial Poems is in the same lofty strain, but here 
Lowell's genius fails to keep him on the heights ; he seems to 
be striving after something that he cannot quite reach. The 
same criticism applies to " A Glance behind the Curtain " and 
'' Columbus." They all contain gold, but in scattered nuggets 
rather than in veins ; they are notable for occasional good lines 
or passages rather than for sustained excellence. 

Norton, Letters of Lcrwell^ I, 348. 



346 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Satires in Verse. The literary satire called A Fable for Critics 
and the political satire of The Biglow Papers are by some his- 
torians counted among Lowell's masterpieces. The Fable (i 848) 
is, as Lowell said, a mere^V// d' esprit. It consists of a tedious 
introduction, followed by a rambling commentary on the writers 
of the period, made up largely of quips, puns, jokes, tortured 
rimes and pedantic allusions. Regarded as literature, the 
wretched doggerel of this Fable is unworthy of serious consid- 
eration ; but if one has patience to read it, he may discover an 
occasional bit of criticism (on Cooper, for instance, or Poe, 
or Emerson, or Whittier, or Longfellow) which suggests that 
Lowell had a very shrewd critical sense, and that he anticipated 
_the verdict which Time has since awarded to writers who were 
then as difficult to judge accurately, because of their nearness, 
as are the writers of the present day. 

The Bigloiv Papers (1848, 1866) are two series of political 
tracts called forth by the Mexican War and the War for the 
Biglow Union. They are written in an alleged Yankee 

Papers dialect, of tortured spelling and pronunciation, which 

serves to accentuate the individuality of the principal character, 
Hosea Biglow. This raw son of the soil treats us to an orig- 
inal discussion of the political matters that then disturbed and 
divided the country. In his speech one notes the mixture of 
native shrewdness and good sense, the deep love of the New 
England landscape and of New England traditions, and the 
keen, galling satire which, like satires in general, took no 
account of the ideals or even of the point of view of an oppo- 
nent. The humor of the book is such as critics and literary 
persons appreciate, and these have given it a higher place in our 
literature than its local and temporary character would seem to 
warrant. The tedious prose effusions of Parson Wilbur, which 
make up a large part of The Biglow Papers, are now generally 
neglected. 1 Of the poetical selections there are three or four 

1 The only readable part of this prose padding is an excellent essay on the origin of 
certain provincial words and expressions. 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 347 

which seem worthy of preservation. The first is " What Mr. 

Robinson Thinks," which will be applicable so long as we have 

politicians : 

But John P. 

Robinson he 

Sez this kind o ' thing 's an exploded idee. 

Others are '' Suthin' in the Pastoral Line " and " The Courtin','' 
— two pretty little pastorals in the Yankee dialect which re- 
veal Lowell's appreciation of nature and his insight into rustic 
character. 

Prose Works. The best of Lowell's prose works, which deal 
in general with literature and democracy, are found in his 
Democracy and Other Essays, Fireside Travels, Among My 
Books, My Study U^/idows, and Old EnglisJi Dramatists. A 
large portion of his political writing, though sparkling and sug- 
gestive, is plainly partisan in spirit ; but in the first-named 
volume one may find essays, such as '' Democracy " and *' Our 
Literature," which are of national and permanent interest. 
Among the most notable of the miscellaneous essays are 
''Cambridge Thirty Years Ago," with its fine appreciation of 
the spirit of an old American town, '' My Garden Acquaint- 
ance," ''A Good Word for Winter," and ''On a Certain Conde- 
scension in Foreigners." One who reads the last four works 
will find Lowell at his simplest, and perhaps his best, as a 
prose writer. 

Of the numerous literary essays the reader should become 
acquainted with a chosen few (on Emerson, Chaucer, Walton, 
Literary Dante, and Milton) before considering the divergent 
Essays opinions of literar}' historians. Perhaps the first 

thing to record is, that Lowell's literary essays are, on the 
whole, the most brilliant that America has yet produced. They 
are interpretations of the best books by a man who is himself a 
poet and a scholar ; who remembers that literature is but a re- 
flection of human experience, colored by the author and by the 
age in which he lived ; and who tries to show what life meant 



348 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

to an author who was like ourselves in all essentials, but who 
had the power to express what we can only think or feel. 
Moreover, as we read these essays, we are always in the company 
of Lowell ; we share his literary culture, his love of poetry and 
life, his boyish enthusiasm and manly afterthoughts, his whims 
and prejudices, his wit and laughter; and this in itself is a 
very pleasant experience. 

Our admiration for the personality revealed in such essays is 
generally accompanied by a regretful criticism ; for Lowell's 
literary faults are almost as prominent as his virtues. Though 
his essays are packed with brilliant expressions and literary al- 
lusions, they are without unity or definite design ; they suggest 
a cairn of quartz stones heaped over an author, rather than a 
carefully designed monument. 

Last but not least among Lowell's prose works w^e place his 
Letters, which were collected and edited by his friend Charles 
Eliot Norton. Here are two large volumes of the 
most stimulating letters that have yet appeared from 
the American press. In their countless happy expressions they 
are, as a critic suggests, a storehouse of literary material, espe- 
cially the kind of material known as ''good things." The general 
reader, however, may find them disappointing ; may even detect 
a certain reserve and self-consciousness, as if the author had 
thought of future publication, and could not indulge in that per- 
fect freedom of intimacy which gives the finest flavor to a letter.^ 
Though they cover the whole life of a notable personage, at a 
stirring period of American histor}% they tell us very little about 
Lowell himself, and throw absolutely no light on the literary or 
historical movements of the age. It is a marvel that such a man 
could write so much, and so well, and say so little of consequence. 
On the whole, these letters seem to us like a collection of bright 
beads which make neither a necklace nor a rosary, having no 
thread or chain of connected purpose. 

1 This may be due partly to the editor, who with excellent taste refused to publish 
many of Lowell's intimate letters. 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 349 

General Characteristics. Lowell's style is something to enjoy 
even while we analyze it. Never was a better illustration of the 
aphorism that '' style is the man." In the present case our man 
is witty and grave, serious and comical, manly and boyish, steady 
and flighty, — not in successive poems or essays, but often in 
the same stanza or paragraph. But style means also order, ar- 
rangement, continuity ; and judged by this standard Lowell can 
hardly be said to possess a definite style. He has extraordinary 
facility of expression ; he can indulge in any flight, and find 



felicitous words and figures wherewith to clothe his fancy ; but 
he seldom orders or arranges his thoughts. He lets every by- 
path lead him aside ; he hovers like a butterfly over every flower, 
and is satisfied with the thought, the mood, the expression of 
the moment, without regard to its appropriateness in view of his 
chosen subject. By long study of old authors he has a remark- 
able vocabulary ; he uses more rare words and idiomatic expres- 
sions than any other modern American writer ; yet every word, 
'excepting only the wretched puns, is well chosen and well placed, 
and to read Lowell is to renew our conception of the wonderful 
flexibility of the English language. 

To the matter of Lowell's poetry we have already called suffi- 
cient attention. As we think of his prose we are again reminded 
of Cotton Mather, and of the fact that Lowell is his only 
successor.^ Both are learned and brilliant ; both are of the same 
'' Brahmin caste " of intellectual aristocrats ; both are great 
readers and have remarkable memories ; both fill their pages 
with so many learned allusions that their subjects are often ob- 
scured ; both are a little fantastic at times, being fond of the 
odd, the whimsical, the unexpected. Only, as we have noted, 
Mather reads more widely and has as many storehouses as a 
squirrel, while Lowell has but one. Of history, science, philos- 
ophy, of any art except literature, he has comparatively little 
knowledge. Seldom does he enter the Bible or the religious 

1 Curiously enough, Lowell once spoke of Mather as "book-suffocated," — a criti- 
cism which applies in some degree to himself. 



350 * AMERICAN LITERATURE 

treasury of any people. His culture, being almost wholly literary, 
is deeply interesting to those who can appreciate its flavor, but 
seems restricted and a little '' bookish " to the ordinary reader. 
He sees life as it has been reflected in poetry, rather than in 
history, or art, or religion, or in the daily struggle for daily 
bread. He is in sympathy only with the great masters of litera- 
ture ; he writes for a small and select audience rather than for 
humanity. Here, in a word, is the secret of his strength and of 
his weakness. 

In the foregoing pages a survey of Lowell's career has been 
attempted, but one is sadly conscious of having failed to grasp 
the fine spirit of it all. In this very failure may per- 
haps be found another suggestion of the poet, who 
tells us, in his '' L' Envoi : To the Muse," that his life had been 
spent in following a genius which always eluded him : 

Whither.? Albeit I follow fast, 

In all life's circuit I but find, 
Not where thou art, but where thou wast, 

Sweet beckoner, more fleet than wind ! 
I haunt the pine-dark solitudes, 

With soft brown silence carpeted, 
And plot to snare thee in the woods : 

Peace I o'ertake, but thou art fled ! 

Only to a few intimate friends did Lowell ever reveal himself 
freely. To us he appears, at times, aloof and superior, waiting 
for us to acknowledge his quality ; ^ and again the self -conscious- 
ness which he never quite overcame stands between us to pre- 
vent that personal allegiance which we cannot help giving to 
Lanier or Whittier. He seems to review his career in a single 
poem, '' In the Twilight," which the student should read if he 
reads nothing else of Lowell. As we try to review it from the 
distance at which he keeps his readers, we are conscious of a 
scholarly and cultured gentleman who attained great honor at 

1 See Howells's impression of Lowell, in Literaty Friends and Acquaintance. 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 35 1 

home and abroad, but who examined himself to find that his 
deepest feehng was one of regret that he had never once attained 
his ideal or done his best work. He might have been a great 
poet, or a great critic, or a great teacher ; but he succeeded too 
easily in many fields to win the highest success in one. The 
most significant criticism of his work which we have heard was 
uttered in conversation by his lifelong friend Norton, who said 
in effect, '' Only Lowell's friends could be disappointed in him, 
because they alone knew how great were his unused powers, 
how much better work he was capable of than he ever did." 

Oliver Wendell Holmes (i 809-1 894) 

At the time when Holmes began to write, in 1830, humor was 
not well recognized in American letters. Most of our writers 
were sentimental ; a few were profound ; and the nation at large 
began to be deeply agitated over social reforms and political 
problems. The man who in such a period showed the possi- 
bilities of humor, and whose humor was invariably tempered by 
culture and flavored with kindness, did a service to our literature 
that can hardly be overestimated. 

Life. There is so little of the unusual or dramatic in the life of 
Holmes that the reader will do well to confine himself largely to the 
author's works, in which he has reflected his own spirit more com- 
pletely than any other American writer, not excepting even Franklin. 
The latter name suggests, by contrast, a certain quality of distinction 
that characterizes Holmes and other writers of the " Cambridge 
school." In reading them we have always the impression of good 
family and good breeding. We are, as Howells declares, in excellent 
society, without a taint of bohemianism, when in their company. 

Holmes belongs unmistakably to this class of literary aristocrats. 
On his father's side his ancestors were all Puritans of the '' Brahmin 
The Brahmin caste," as he called them ; on his mother's side he was 
Caste related to the first governors of the Bay State, and to 

Anne Bradstreet, our first Colonial poet. He was bom in Cambridge ; 
he graduated from Andover and from Harvard ; he lived practically 



352 



AMERICAN LITERATURE 



all his life in Boston ; and his interest centers so completely in his 
college and in his city that many critics call him the most provincial 
of modem writers. Yet one who reads his Harvard lyrics finds them 
splendidly suggestive of that loyalty which binds every college man 
to his alma mater ; and his city songs reflect the honest pride of an 
American in his home town, which has the priceless heritage of 
the faith and heroism of its founders. 

After graduation Holmes studied law and medicine, completing the 
latter discipline in Paris. For a short time he was a teacher at Dart- 
mouth ; then for thirty-five years 
he held the chair of anatomy and 
physiology in the Harvard Med- 
ical School. Anatomy is said to 
be the driest, deadest subject in 
the whole range of human knowl- 
edge ; but Holmes was one of 
the brightest, most alert men that 
ever taught any subject in an 
American college. 

His literary career began in a 
striking way just as he reached 
Literary his voting age. In 
Career 1830 an order had 

been given to break up the old 
warship Co?istitution, which had 
played a heroic part in the naval 
war of 18 1 2. Holmes saw a 
newspaper notice of the order, 
and instantly wrote '' Old Iron- 
sides," a poem which after eighty 
years still holds an honored place 
in our school readers. The ringing lines not only saved the glorious 
old ship ; they roused the nation, and gave Holmes a place among 
its poets. For sixty years thereafter he wrote prose and poetry, and 
not once did he lose the firm hold on public attention which he had 
gained by his first effort 

His next notable literary achievement came when he was almost 
fifty years old. Meanwhile he had gained two reputations : as a 
scientist, by original contributions to medical lore, and as the brightest 
wit and talker of the Saturday Club, — a famous Boston society which 




OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 353 

included Longfellow, Agassiz, Hawthorne, Motley, Lowell and many 
others of almost equal mental caliber. When the Atlantic Monthly 
was started (1857), Lowell made it a condition of his taking the 
editorship that Holmes should be the chief contributor. The latter 
responded with The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table^ which gave him 
a third reputation as a delightful prose writer. By that time the fame 
of Holmes as a witty talker had spread far and wide, and multitudes 
were eager to hear him. In The Autocrat their wish was gratified ; 
for these dramatic essays were simply the conversations of a bright 
and learned man transferred to paper. It was this combination, of a 
people eager to listen and a wit who had the rare gift of talking 
naturally in print, that made The Autocrat more successful and far 
more enduring than a popular novel. 

The rest of the story is that of an acknowledged master in his own 
little field. Holmes was now the poet, not of a people like Longfellow, 
The Poet 01" of a party like Whittier, but of a city which he com- 
of a City placently regarded as the hub of the universe. Upon 
every important civic occasion he was called upon for a poem, and 
invariably responded in a way to delight his hearers and to increase 
his local reputation. He continued his work as professor ; he pub- 
lished every few years a slender volume of poems ; he transferred 
more table talk to the Atlantic ; he made excursions into the realms 
of fiction and biographical writing. There is little else to record, ex- 
cept that his life was noble, and that love and sunshine were around 
him to the last. A thousand anecdotes are still told about him in 
Boston, all bearing witness to some fine personal trait of humor or 
kindness or sympathy. 

There is another trait which his readers soon discover, namely, 
that he had always a boy's heart and a boy's delight in living. One 
by one his great contemporaries passed away, — an experience which 
saddens most men, but which gave Holmes a deeper interest in 
heaven while he still cherished the brightness and peace of this pres- 
ent earth. At eighty he published Over the Teacups^ a book of tender « 
reminiscences, in which we detect the first sign that the boy has 
become an old man ; but even here the spirit is still young, and the 
light is that of sunrise rather than of sunset. 

Works of Holmes. One of the best commentaries on the 
poetry of Holmes is found in the title Rhymes for an Hoiir^ 
which he gave to one of his collections. One half of his poetical 



354 



AMERICAN LITERATURE 



work consists of occasional poems, that is, verses written for 
dinners, for class reunions, for welcome or farewell to an 
honored guest, and for various other '' occasions " such as con- 
stantly occur in the life of a city. These all proceed not from in- 
spiration but from good nature ; they are written, as he tells us : 

Not for glory, not for pelf, 
Not, be sure, to please myself, 
Not for any meaner ends, — 
Always " by request of friends." 

The other half of his poetical work consists largely of mere 
jeiLv d' esprit and of poems called, for lack of a better name, 

" society verse." Holmes 
was a master of such 
poetiy, which at best is 
not of a very high order. 
He rejoiced like a child 
in the unmeasured praise 
which it brought him ; but 
he knew well that a poet 
cannot eat his cake and 
have it too, and that im- 
mediate praise rather than 
enduring fame was his lit- 
erary portion. He is seen 
at his best, probably, in the 
class poem.s which he con- 
tributed regularly for forty 
years. The tender, whim- 
sical spirit of all these re- 
unions of men who were rapidly growing old is reflected in a 
single poem to which he gave the significant title of "The Boys." 
At the beginning of his career. Holmes published two or 
three small volumes containing such poems as '' The Height 
of the Ridiculous," " Daily Trials," " The Comet," " The Music 
Grinders " and '" The Last Leaf." These five mav be taken as 




#^J' 



-nii*^-' 



GREAT PINE ON WENDELL FARM, PITTS 

FIELD, OF WHICH DR. HOLMES 

WAS VERY FOND 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 355 

the measure of his talent in humorous verse ; for he never wrote 
anything better. Like Bryant's, his first work was his best ; what 
Typical ^e produced later was an addition but hardly an im- 

Poems provement. Lincoln's favorite, '' The Last Leaf," 

with its blending of humor and pathos, is especially significant. 
The author outlived all his friends and literary contemporaries, 
and at eighty-five he must often have seriously recalled what 
he had written in jest at twenty-three : 

And if I should live to be 
The last leaf upon the tree, 

In the spring, 
Let them smile, as I do now, 
At the old forsaken bough 

Where I cling. 

Occasionally Holmes attempted more ambitious works, such 
as '' Poetry " and ''A Rhymed Lesson," but a very few pages of 
either are enough to indicate that he was incapable of sustained 
poetic effort. Much more interesting are his short serious 
poems, such as '' Nearing the Snow Line," *' Contentment," 
'' Grandmother's Story," '' The Living Temple," '' A Sun-day 
Hymn " and '' The Voiceless." In T/ie Autocrat will be found 
two poems of his later period, which are typical of the author's 
fine sentiment and humor. The first is '' The Chambered Nau- 
tilus," an excellent little allegory, which has won a place in 
American poetry as secure and almost as high as Bryant's '' To 
a Waterfowl." The second is '' The Deacon's Masterpiece," 
which is one of our widely known humorous poems. Readers 
of this *' Masterpiece " should note the satire involved in the 
subtitle, ''A Logical Story." Logic is like a chain in being no 
stronger than its weakest link : if one premise or argument is 
false, the whole conclusion goes to pieces. '' The Deacon's 
Masterpiece " was intended to symbolize logical arguments in 
general and Calvinism in particular, against which Holmes had 
a lifelong prejudice. The '' shay " which went to pieces all at 
once is meant, of course, to satirize the deacon's theology. 



356 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

The AiUocrat of the Breakfast Table, our author's most 
original work, begins with the characteristic expression, '' I was 
2'he going to say, when I was interrupted." The alleged 

Autocrat interruption occurred some twenty-five years earlier, 
when Holmes had contributed two forgotten essays in the same 
vein, and bearing the same title, to the New England Maga- 
zine. With this introduction he proceeds to talk of life in a 
half-whimsical, half-profound way, touching a dozen matters 
lightly but surely in each essay, and passing from one to another 
like a brilliant talker who introduces a new subject before his 
hearers lose interest in the old. In writing these dramatic 
essays, or monologues, Holmes reminds us of the memorable 
advice of Tony Weller, of Pickwick Papers, in regard to letter 
writing ; he knows the art of leaving off just at the point where 
we most wish him to continue. The scene is placed in a Boston 
boarding house ; the characters are the landlady, her son B. F., 
the old gentleman opposite, the young fellow by the name of 
John, the divinity student, the schoolmistress, and a few others, 
— all shadowy creatures, serving merely as a background for 
the Autocrat, who does most of the talking. Running through 
the series is a more or less continued stor}% which probably in- 
terested Holmes more than anybody else, and which undoubtedly 
led him at last to express his views of life in a novel rather 
than in a dramatic essay. 

Three other books, with a slight thread of connection, belong 
in the same series with TJie Autocrat. These are TJie Professor 
at the Bf'eakfast Table (i860). The Poet at the Breakfast 
Table (1872), and Over the Teacnps (1890). Holmes also 
wrote three "works of fiction, Elsie Venner, The Guardian Angel 
and A Mortal Antipathy. These were promptly labeled '' medi- 
cated novels," to the wrath of the author, and the title with its 
implied criticism still clings to them. They are less typical 
of the life which Holmes attempts to describe than of the 
author himself, with his professional theories, his humor and 
sentiment, his whims and prejudices, his scientific interest in 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 357 

heredity. Of the three works The Guardian Angel is perhaps 
the most typical and the most interesting to the general reader. 
The list of prose works includes also two biographies (of Motley 
and of Emerson) and a series of bright sketches called Onr 
Hundred Days in Europe, the last being a charming record of 
Holmes's final journey abroad, which from beginning to end 
was a kind of triumphal procession. 

General Characteristics. We have already spoken of the im- 
portance of Holmes's work as a humorist, at a time when humor 
was hardly considered worthy of our national literature. We 
might suggest also that in Holmes we have, possibly, the true 
type of American humor, — a humor that depends not simply 
upon a droll imagination, but that is always associated with 
knowledge, kindness and human sympathy. We may appreciate 
this better if we contrast the delicate, playful, friendly humor of 
Holmes with the boisterousness of Irving's Knickerbocker His- 
tory, or with the crude and often sensational chapters of Mark 
Twain in Tom Sawyer or in Innoccfits Abroad. Humor is 
always a personal rather than a national quality ; but if there be 
such a thing as American humor, perhaps Holmes, who was 
American to the core and who represents our culture as well as 
our mirth, comes nearer to expressing it than any other writer. 
For humor is only wisdom smiling, and it is incomplete if it 
lack either the smile or the wisdom. 

Aside from the question of humor, the chief characteristic of 
Holmes's work is its intensely personal quality. No matter what 
Personal ^is subject, Holmes talks rather than writes, and 
Quality talks invariably about himself, — about his thought 

and sentiment, his scientific and social theories, his pets and his 
prejudices, his whims, hobbies and convictions. In consequence, 
his collected writings are, with the exception of Sewall's Diary, 
probably the most complete reflection of a human mind in our 
literature. In another writer, like Whitman, this personal 
quality would be termed ''egoism," but the word is altogether 
too harsh to apply to so lovable a character as Holmes. He 



358 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

had a theory that the only knowledge a man can have at first 
hand is of himself ; all other knowledge is a matter of deduction 
or inference. Therefore did he begin with himself, as the one 
known quantity which might help to solve the x -\-y of humanity. 
In his kindness and sympathy for all men (except, perhaps, 
reformers, homeopathists and strict Calvinists) he never doubted 
that they would be as interested as he was in his little self- 
revelations, which he hoped might be as sunbeams shining on 
human joy and sorrow. As he says, after assuring us that he is 
a person of no special gifts : 

" This one thing I know, that I am Hke so many others of my fellow 
creatures that when I smile, I feel as if they must ; when I cry, I think 
their eyes fill ; and it always seems to me that when I am most truly my- 
self, I come closest to them, and am surest of being listened to by the 
brothers and sisters of the larger family into which I was born so long ago." 

Sidney Lanier (1842-1881) 

We measure some poets by their gifts to men, others by our 
sense of loss in their untimely death. Lanier belongs to the 
latter class. We think of his short, heroic life ; we read the 
few poems that he wrote in moments snatched from weariness 
or pain, as a bird sings in the lulls of a tempest ; and deep 
within us is the conviction that, had this man lived, he would 
have put a new song on our lips : 

To those who 've failed, in aspiration vast, . . . 

I 'd rear a laurel-cover'd monument, 

High, high above the rest — To all cut off before their time, 

Possess'd by some strange spirit of fire, 

Quench'd by an early death.^ 

We may estimate Lanier, however, by his deed alone, with- 
out weighing the difficulties he overcame in doing it. He has 
left us as a heritage a few of our most haunting lyrics ; in the 
" Psalm of the West " he gave us a patriotic poem of broader 
sweep and more sustained beauty than anything that even 

J From Whitman, " To Those Who 've Failed," 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 



359 



Lowell attempted ; in '' Sunrise " and " The Marshes of Glynn " 
he produced two wonderful poems that seem to be the working 
out of a musical motif rather than the expression of thought ; 
and in all his work he appears ^ 

as our foremost interpreter of 
the changing melody of nature. ^ 
As the elder Greeks, looking 
at a fountain which leaped from 
shadow into light, asked them- 
selves if the water were not 
thinking and what its thoughts 
might be, so Lanier, hearing the 
river murmuring to its banks, 
the leaves rustling, the marsh 
grass whispering to the wind, 
was wont to ask what they were 
all singing. His verse is but an 
interpretation of their song in 
English words. Because his 
own soul was filled with melody, 
he heard an echo of its music everywhere ; or was he not 
himself rather an echo of the wind and the leaves and the sea 1 
We think of him sometimes as he thought of his own flute : 

I am not overbold : 

I hold 
Full powers from Nature manifold. 
I speak for each no-tongued tree 
That, spring by spring, doth nobler be, 
And dumbly and most wistfully 
His mighty prayerful arms outspreads 
Above men's oft-unheeding heads, 
And his big blessing downward sheds. 
I speak for all-shaped blooms and leaves, 
Lichens on stones and moss on eaves, 
Grasses and grains in ranks and sheaves ; . # . 

• 1 See comparison between Bryant and Lanier, p. 205. 




SIDNEY LANIER 



36o AMERICAN LITERATURE 

All tree-sounds, rustlings of pine-cones, 
Wind-sighings, doves' melodious moans, 
And night's unearthly under-tones ; 
All placid lakes and waveless deeps, 
All cool reposing mountain-steeps, 
Vale-calms and tranquil lotos-sleeps ; — 
Yea, all fair forms, and sounds, and lights, 
And warmths, and mysteries, and mights, 
Of Nature's utmost depths and heights, 
— These doth my timid tongue present, 
Their mouthpiece and leal instrument 
And servant, all love-eloquent.^ 

Life. To record a life of high motive and heroic endeavor, unshaken 
by poverty or pain or death — this is no easy task. Indeed, the biogra- 
pher has not yet appeared to do justice to Lanier, who combined the 
gentleness of a woman with the indomitable courage of a Norse hero. 
He lived like the simplest of men ; but when the last stem call came 
he answered like Gunnar of old, who when bound and cast over a 
precipice flung a laugh to his enemies, a hail to death, swept the 
cords of his harp with his free foot, and went singing " home to his 
ancestors." 

Those old ancestors of Lanier, by the way, are responsible for the 
music that was his lifelong passion. One of them, a Huguenot 
refugee, was musical composer at the court of Elizabeth ; others were 
'directors of painting arid music for King James and King Charles. 
The first American Lanier came to Richmond in 171 6, and from 
there the family migrated to other states. Our poet's father was a 
country lawyer of Georgia, his mother a Virginia woman of Scotch- 
Irish descent. He represents, therefore, the Celtic rather than the 
Saxon element in our life and literature. 

He was bom at Macon, Georgia, in 1842. One marked character- 
istic of his childhood was his delight in music, his ability to learn with- 
Love of out instruction the use of any musical instrument. This 

Music love of music went through life, lightening his college tasks, 

inspiring him and his fellow soldiers to a rarer courage and devotion, 
cheering his desperate struggle for health, till he could speak of it, in 
the way that Coleridge spoke of poetry, as soothing his afflictions, 
multiplying and refining his enjoyments, endearing his solitude, helping 
him to discover the good and the beautiful in all whom he met. 

1 From Lanier, the flute note, in " The Symphony." 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 361 

At fourteen he entered Oglethorpe University at Midway, one of 
the small country colleges which made a brave beginning only to 
perish when the South was devastated by the war. A study of the 
boy here, as he reveals himself in his notebook and letters, shows 
that he combined with a musical and romantic temperament the instinct 
of a scholar, and withal a spiritual ideal so fine that he left upon all 
who met him an impression of almost feminine purity. 

At his graduation Lanier was called to be tutor in his college ; but 
the next year came another call, the clamor of drum and bugle, to 
The Call to which every young southerner responded. The war came, 
Arms and Lanier at nineteen went out to meet it with the first 

volunteers. All was enthusiasm in those early days of fighting; but 
as the war dragged out its horrible length, he saw in it the expression 
of all that is brutal and evil in humanity. He saw plenty of hard 
fighting, and for his courage and ability was thrice offered promotion, 
which he refused because his younger brother was in the ranks be- 
side him. He would fight with the common soldier, he would watch 
over the brother who had been intrusted to his care, leaving the vain 
glory of chevrons or epaulets to others. In this quiet, unselfish hero- 
ism we see a picture of thousands of educated gentlemen who fought 
in the ranks and who made the regiments a wonder to all who beheld 
them, whether in camp or on the battlefield. 

Lanier and his brother were transferred to the signal service, and 
were presently sent out as officers on the blockade runners. On one 
of these dangerous expeditions, Lanier was captured with his ship, 
and was imprisoned at Point Lookout. His flute, the old, loved com- 
panion of march and bivouac, was hidden in his ragged sleeve, and in 
its music prisoner and jailer found themselves brothers at heart, and 
wondered why they had been fighting each other. When the war 
ended and the prison door opened at last, Lanier started on foot for 
his home, five hundred miles away. 

That was a sad home-coming, and it was typical of many others. 
For him there were no cheering crowds, no triumphal marches, no 
The Home- banners streaming in the wind. The banner he had 
coming fought for was furled forever. He returned solitary and 

silent, in the grim heroism of defeat. He was broken in health, weary 
in body and soul from marching without food and sleeping in the 
snow and the rain. Yet almost the first problem that confronted him 
was to earn his bread in a country devastated by the fire and scourge 
of war. As soon as he could stand — for his imprisonment followed 



362 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

by the weary march homeward brought on a fever of exhaustion — 
he went to work, taking the first job that offered. He was clerk in a 
hotel ; he taught school, studied law, and wrote prose and verse which 
he tried, sometimes in vain, to sell. His Tiger Lilies (1867), a crude 
novel of army life and experience, was written in a few weeks. After 
an effort to be interested in the courts while his spirit called him to 
other fields, he abandoned the law and traveled northward, taking his 
beloved flute with him. 

At Baltimore he was engaged to play in the Peabody orchestra, and 
for the first time in his life found himself in a congenial atmosphere 
of books and music. He began to work and study with splendid 
enthusiasm, but with the first effort he knew that he must pay for 
every smallest success with his life blood. He had consumption, and 
the disease had gained a terrible foothold in his army life of exposure 
and hardship. Then, knowing his power and that he had but a few 
years to live, he made a resolve which is best expressed in a para- 
graph from one of his letters : 

"... My dear father, think how, for twenty years, through poverty, 
through pain, through weariness, through sickness, through the uncongenial 
atmosphere of a farcical college and of a bare army and then of an exacting 
business life, through all the discouragement of being wholly unacquainted 
with literary people and literary ways — I say think how, in spite of all 
these depressing circumstances, and of a thousand more which I could 
enumerate, these two figures of music and of poetry have steadily kept in 
my heart so that I could not banish them. Does it not seem to you, as to 
me, that I begin to have the right to enroll myself among the devotees of 
these two sublime arts, after having followed them so long and so humbly, 
and through so much bitterness 1 " 

With his life in Baltimore (1873) began, says a biographer, "as 
brave and sad a struggle as the history of genius records." So far as 
Life in we can separate them, Lanier's heroic struggle had four 

Baltimore objects. The first and most immediate was to earn a liv- 
ing for his wife and children. The second was to write the poetry 
which he felt surging within him, like waves that beat upon the shore 
in ceaseless iteration. He writes to his wife, a noble and most 
helpful woman : 

"... All day my soul hath been cutting swiftly into the great space 
of the subtle, unspeakable deep, driven by wind after wind of heavenly 
melody. The very inner spirit and essence of all wind-songs, bird-songs, . . . , 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 363 

soul-songs and body-songs hath blown upon me in quick gusts like the 
breath of passion, and sailed me into a sea of vast dreams, whereof each 
wave is at once a vision and a melody." 

The third object was to gain the wider knowledge that his soul had 
always craved during a life which he describes as " intellectual drought 
and famine." It is not enough for Lanier to feel deeply and to write 
as he feels, — 

To range, deep-wrapt, along a heavenly height, 

O'erseeing all that man but undersees ; 
To loiter down lone alleys of delight, 

And hear the beating of the hearts of trees, 
And think the thoughts that lilies speak in white 

By greenwood pools and pleasant passages.^ 

Other poets have been content to sing and to let others find, if they 
can, the laws of their singing ; but Lanier has the instincts of a 
scholar. He must first learn, must study his art from the foundation ; 
for he will not be like Poe, whose great fault, he said, was that he 
did not know enough. With books and a university at hand, he 
begins with Anglo-Saxon and makes a thorough study of English 
poetry ; and because he thinks no art is of value unless used to 
ennoble human life, he shares the results of his solitary study by giv- 
ing courses of lectures. Then in the midst of his happy study he is 
sternly interrupted by the first object of his struggle ; he must leave 
his work to write a song, a booklet for a railroad company, a tale for 
Sf. Nicholas, — anything that will bring him a little money to meet 
the first duty of a gentleman, which is honorably to support those 
who love and depend upon him. 

The last object of the struggle was for life itself. Everything else 
he could attain; but here he failed, and failed just when his ability 
The Spirit had secured for him a lectureship with an assured in- 
of Lanier come at Johns Hopkins University. We have no heart to 
enter into this last struggle, to follow him from Baltimore to Florida, 
to Texas, to Pennsylvania, to Carolina, in search of a climate where 
he could breathe deep without pain, and perchance gather a bit of 
strength, only to spend it freely upon his music and poetry. We only 
note, as suggestive of the man's brave, cheery spirit, that the wonder- 
ful poem " Sunrise " was written by a hand that had not strength to 

1 From " To Bayard Taylor." The whole poem is a tribute to one of Lanier's loyal 
and helpful friends. 



364 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

raise a cup of water to the poet's lips ; that the inspiring lectures in 
Johns Hopkins were many of them delivered from an invalid's chair, 
in a voice scarcely above a whisper : 

"... For, indeed we may say that he who has not yet perceived how 
artistic beauty and moral beauty are convergent lines which run back into 
a common ideal origin, and who therefore is not afire with moral beauty 
just as with artistic beauty — that he, in short, who has not come to that 
stage of quiet and eternal frenzy in which the beauty of holiness and the 
holiness of beauty mean one thing, burn as one fire, shine as one light 
within him ; he is not yet the great artist. ... So far from dreading that 
your moral purpose will interfere with your beautiful creation, go forward 
in the clear conviction that unless you are suffused — soul and body, one 
might say — with that moral purpose which finds its largest expression in 
love, that is, the love of all things in their proper relation ; unless you are 
suffused with this love, do not dare to meddle with beauty ; unless you are 
suffused with truth, do not dare to meddle with goodness ; in a word, unless 
you are suffused with truth, wisdom, goodness and love, abandon the hope 
that the ages will accept you as an artist," 

That is a lofty ideal, and our poet, like Chaucer's parson, lived it be- 
fore he preached it. To be noble himself, then to kindle from his 
own fire the love of nobility in other men, was'with Lanier a passion 
deeper even than his love of music and poetry. And he would not be 
conquered. In the face of poverty, pain and death he wrote his 
poetry. He did his work in the spirit of the young Athenian who went 
out to receive a message from an overwhelming army. Said the envoy 
from the hosts of Persia, " Our arrows will darken the sun." Quietly, 
steadily came the answer, " Then we Greeks will fight in the shade." 
Such was Lanier, hiding the bravest of hearts under the gentlest 
exterior. When he died (188 1) in a httle tent in the Carolina hills, he 
had hardly reached the maturity of his power. He had never once 
been permitted to do his best ; but he left one volume whose excel- 
lence will sooner or later place him among our elder poets, and he 
had made upon all who knew him the impression that 

His song was only living aloud, 
His work, a singing with his hand.^ 

Works of Lanier. A single small volume of poems represents 
Lanier's permanent contribution to our national literature. Be- 
fore v^e study this we note certain prose works, which a few 

1 From Lanier, " Life and Song." 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 365 

students may be glad to read. First are the Boys Froissart and 
three other vokimes, the King Art Jutr, Mabinogion and Percy, — 
popular editions of these old favorites, written for younger 
readers who cannot perhaps appreciate the originals. Next in 
importance are The English Novel mid the Principles of its 
Development and TJie Science of English Verse, two critical 
works which are largely composed of Lanier's lectures on 
English literature. The latter book, whether or not we agree 
with its fundamental theory, is our most original work on the 
subject of versification. It proceeds on the assumption that 
poetry is an art which is founded on exact knowledge, and that 
it is possible to formulate laws of poetry as definite as those of 
any other science. 

Of this proposition we can only say that the great poets of 
the world have not so believed or so worked. Their best poems 
seem to be spontaneous, to be the natural expression of a genius 
that does not and cannot work by rule. Only second-rate poets 
found a '' school " ; the greatest have never been able to teach 
or even to explain their art to others. 

Two other theories of this Science of English Verse must be 
noted, since they exercised a dominant influence on Lanier's 
Poetry and work. The first is that poetry and music are closely 
Music related and follow the same general laws. Perhaps 

because of his adherence to this theory, Lanier's verse is, with 
the possible exception of Poe's, the most musical in our litera- 
ture ; it is so pervaded by the spirit of music that it seems at 
times more like a rhapsody or improvisation than a poem. The 
second theory is that poetry appeals chiefly to our emotional 
nature, and that the effect of a poem depends more upon the 
sound than upon the sense. Here Lanier shows himself in some 
degree a follower of Poe, who had advanced and practised the 
same questionable theory. 

Once he had developed his principle, that poetry in its ''tone 
color," its rime, rhythm, alliteration and phrasing, follows the 
rules of musical composition, Lanier held to it steadily. He was 



366 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

severely criticized, of course/ but he was not disturbed. He 
declared with quiet, steadfast sincerity : 

" My experience in the varying judgments given about poetry has all con- 
verged upon one solitary principle, and the experience of the artist in all 
ages is reported by history to be of precisely the same direction. That prin- 
ciple is, that the artist shall put forth, humbly and lovingly, and without 
bitterness against opposition, the very best and highest that is within him, 
utterly regardless of contemporary criticism." 

With this introduction, which attempts to sum up Lanier's 
aim and motive, we leave the reader to his book of poems. Here 
Typical ^^^ lyrics not quite like any others of our acquaint- 

Poems ance : '' Evening Song," '' Stirrup Cup," '' Mocking 

Bird," ''Tampa Robins," ''Song of the Chattahoochee," and 
the two exquisite love songs, "My Springs" and "In Absence." 
Here are " The Revenge of Hamish," a terrible border story, 
vividly and powerfully told, and the exquisite " Ballad of Trees 
and the Master," which expresses many things besides the har- 
mony of a great soul with nature. There are a score more of 
short poems, all w^orthy of remembrance, and those named are 
intended merely as a guide to the beginner. 

The longer poems are of uneven merit. Of the " Psalm of 
the West," a patriotic poem of elevated and sustained beauty, 
the noble opening, the sonnets on Columbus, and the parable 
of the conflict betw^een heart and head should be read by every 
student. " The Symphony " is regarded by some as an expres- 
sion of the relation of poetry to music, and by others as a pro- 
test against the barbarism of trade and the general materialism 
of modern life ; but a few readers may find in it an entirely 
different meaning. The key is discovered in the last four lines : 

And yet shall Love himself be heard. 
Though long deferred, though long deferred. 
O'er the modern waste a dove hath whirred : 
Music is Love in search of a word. 

1 This was especially true when he wrote the Cantata for the Centennial Exposition 
of 1876, — a work which it is idle to criticize unless we consider it as part of the music, 
which was written by Dudley Buck. 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 367 

With this key we may unlock the whole poem, and find that 
Lanier, like Tennyson, is teaching that divine love offers the 
only explanation of life, and that in human love may be found 
the solution of all earthly problems. In this connection the 
student should read also that strange poem '' How Love looked 
for Hell," which teaches the same lesson. The meaning of the 
latter poem is, simply, that Love cannot possibly find hell, be- 
cause where Love is no hell can be. It is like a sunbeam trying 
to find a shadow, and wherever the sunbeam goes the shadows 
flee away. 

Of ''Sunrise" and ''The Marshes of Glynn" we have already 
spoken. They are not popular poems ; they never will be ; but 
to those who have ears to hear they are filled with melody and 
immortal aspiration. They are both characterized by many musi- 
cal lines like the following which rouse the inexpressible emo- 
tions of a man who looks upon marsh and sea lying vast, silent, 
motionless under the setting sun : 

And the sea lends large, as the marsh : lo, out of his plenty the sea 

Pours fast : full soon the time of the flood-tide must be : 

Look how the grace of the sea doth go 

About and about through the intricate channels that flow 

Here and there, 

Everywhere, 
Till his waters have flooded the uttermost creeks and the low-lying lanes, 
And the marsh is meshed with a million veins, 
That like as with rosy and silvery essences flow 

In the rose-and-silver evening glow. 
Farewell, my lord Sun ! 
The creeks overflow : a thousand rivulets run 
'Twixt the roots of the sod ; the blades of the marsh-grass stir ; 
Passeth a hurrying sound of wings that westward whirr ; 
Passeth, and all is still ; ^nd the currents cease to run ; 
And the sea and the marsh are one. 

How still the plains of the waters be ! 
The tide is in his ecstasy. 
The tide is at his highest height : 
And it is night. 



368 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

And now from the Vast of the Lord will the waters of sleep 

Roll in on the souls of men, 

But who will reveal to our waking ken 

The forms that swim and the shapes that creep 

Under the waters of sleep ? 
And I would I could know what swimmeth below when the tide comes in 
On the length and the breadth of the marvellous marshes of Glynn. 

General Characteristics. Aside from noting his choice of 
melodious words and the rare musical quality of all his verse, 
one seldom tries to analyze Lanier's style, simply because one 
knows without trying that it cannot be done. Here, for instance, 
in the first four stanzas of *' The Marshes of Glynn," we have 
a single sentence running through fifty lines. It begins in the 
midst of an emotion ; when it ends there is no pause in our 
thought or imagination. Now the words rush on with the tide ; 
now they halt and quiver, like a sea gull poised over the deep ; 
and again they reveal without defining the feeling that stirs 
deeply in one who looks out upon a tranquil landscape. Lanier 
tries simply to be in harmony with his scene, and to analyze his 
style is to describe the method of a musician who touches the 
chords of an organ and then drifts away on the wave of his own 
emotions. 

The same poem serves to illustrate the quality of Lanier's 
thought which most appeals to us, and that is a certain indefi- 
Musicai niteness. This is not due to any failure on the part 
Quality of the poet to think or to speak clearly ; it is rather 

the recognition of the fact that some things, like the sunset, are 
unbounded, and that certain human emotions have no adequate 
expression. There comes a time when words fail, when we must 
leave poetry and take up music, if we are to express what is in 
us. So in most of Lanier's verse there is a sense of failure, of 
incompleteness. He takes us as far as he can go and says. Your 
own heart must finish the poem. Some have said that Lanier 
failed because he followed rules or a mistaken theory of poetry, 
and at times one might wish that he had never heard of the 
" science " of verse ; for his theory often interfered with his 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 369 

spontaneity, — which is the first grace of a bird song or a poem. 
Then all such criticism is hushed by the reflection that music 
also is incomplete ; that the best music invariably leaves us un- 
satisfied or sad, and that Lanier's art may be more perfect than 
even his admirers have supposed. It is possible that he intended 
his verse to have the haunting, saddening quality of a symphony ; 
that he deliberately left it incomplete in order to make it har- 
monize, not with his own theory, but with the known facts of 
human experience. 

There is another characteristic of Lanier's work which the 
historian who remembers the terrible War of the States is glad 
Universal ^o emphasize, and that is its absolutely impersonal 
standards quality, its devotion to universal standards. One who 
has been reading the passionate appeals and war lyrics of the 
period will turn with relief to this poet, who could fight with the 
bravest when the call came, but who never once lowered his verse 
to personal or sectional ends. For him there was no North or 
South, but only America and humanity. He had been through 
fire and flood ; he had languished in prison and slept among the 
dead upon the battlefield ; he had witnessed the suffering and 
injustice of ''reconstruction"; but in his poetry there is noth- 
ing of the din and conflict of life, nothing of the smoke and 
cinders of civilization. Fighting and party politics are but tran- 
sient, barbarous phases of existence ; love only is eternal and 
worthy of a poet's devotion. 

A single great purpose dominated Lanier, and that was to 
present beauty and truth in such lovely guise that men every- 
where must recognize and revere them. The shock of battle, 
the desperate struggle with poverty and death, the carping of 
ungenerous critics, — none of these bitter experiences ever dis- 
turbed Lanier's faith in God or man, or ever drew his steadfast 
gaze from the universal and eternal elements in human life. 
" The artist's market is the heart of men," he says. So long as 
the heart loves beauty and delights in harmony, this artist will 
be sure of his market. 



370 



AMERICAN LITERATURE 



%\ 






K 



M 



Walt Whitman (i 8 19-1892) 

Out in the field yonder stands a wild apple tree that has 
never known the virtue of a pruning knife. Its trunk is hollow, 
its limbs sprawling, its top a wilderness of dead w^ood and un- 
thrifty ramage ; but there is one great branch, vigorous and full 
of sap, stretching southward to the sun. In springtime the 

branch shows a splendor of pink 
blossoms ; in autumn it bears 
apples of strange shape and 
savor. And this uncultivated 
tree, with its one branch of bloom 
and fruit, may serve as a symbol 
of Whitman's poetry, the bulk of 
which is almost worthless, but a 
small part of which reveals the 
vigor and vitality of genius. 

The majority of readers, see- 
ing only the crudity of Whitman's 
work, reject and ridicule it. 
Meanwhile a small but enthusi- 
astic band of worshipers insist 
that Whitman is America's 
greatest poet, the true bard of 
Democracy, and that he must 
and shall be recognized. So a critical controversy has arisen, 
into which we do not care to enter. We note only that poetry is 
one of the things that cannot be advertised. As the bee needs 
no bell to call him where the clover blooms, so man seems to 
have an instinct for good poetry, as for beauty and truth ; and 
one must trust this quiet instinct, rather than controversial opin- 
ions, in the difficult task of estimating the poet's life and work. 
It should be clearly understood, however, that there are ob- 
jections to Whitman, and that the objection applies occasionally 
to the matter as well as to the form of his verse. Some of his 




WALT WHITMAN 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 371 

effusions indicate a lack of the fine moral sense that distin- 
guishes nearly all American poets, and a few others are un- 
pardonable. A small book of selections from Whitman is 
therefore desirable. Good taste need not and will not read 
what only bad taste could have written or published. 

Life. The life of Whitman is almost exactly contemporaneous with 
that of Lowell He was born (18 19) and spent his early childhood 
on a little farm on Long Island, which he always called by its Indian 
name Paumanok. Presently the family moved to Brooklyn, and the 
boy grew up to love the noise and the crowd of the city streets even 
more than he loved the sea and the open country. 

In the city Whitman received a litde education, of the common- 
school kind ; then he was by turns office boy, printer, teacher of a 
district school, carpenter, idler, reporter, and editor of small news- 
papers. By inclination he was something of a vagabond, not keeping 
any job longer than it pleased him, nor recognizing any social ties 
which interfered with what he considered his personal freedom. He 
made one leisurely journey down the Ohio to New Orleans, returning 
on foot by way of the Great Lakes and Canada, seeing practically the 
whole of our country as it then was, and making comrades of all 
classes of our laboring people. He came back to Brooklyn, worked at 
various jobs, wrote newspaper sketches and poems of a very ordinary 
kind, lived with his mother, and " paid his board when he had the 
money." At thirty-six years of age he published his first small volume, 
Leaves of Grass (1855), making a radical departure from all his 
previous methods of writing ; and from that time on he followed an 
entirely new trail in literature. 

The pleasantest part of the biographer's task, in dealing with a life 
which leaves much to be desired,^ is to record Whitman's hospital 
Hospital service, — a tender, helpful service, without pay and 

Service above reward. His soldier brother was wounded, in 

1862, and Whitman hurried to the front to take care of him. From 
the camp he followed some of the stricken soldiers to Washington, 
and found that city a huge hospital, its surgeons and nurses over- 
worked in caring for fifty thousand sick and wounded, while thousands 

1 Because of the controversy over Whitman, accounts of his life generally take the 
form of attack or defense, and most of them are one-sided and misleading. A mild 
attempt to show Whitman as he was is made in Perry's Walt Whitman (1906). 



3/2 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

more came pouring in, a ghastly flood, after every battle. The pity 
of it all touched Whitman deeply, and securing a small position in a 
government office, he gave all his spare time to the hospitals, making 
himself useful in every possible way to the suffering soldiers. In his 
Drum Taps he had caught the popular view of war, — the brass bands, 
the flags, the thrill of bugles and the long roll of the drums ; but now he 
sees, as he says, '^ the real war, which will never get into books " : 

Aroused and angry, 

I thought to beat the alarum, and urge relentless war ; 

But soon my fingers fail'd me, my face dropp'd, and I resigned myself 

To sit by the wounded and soothe them, or silently watch the dead.^ 

When that generous service was ended. Whitman's health was 
broken ; but he had gained a strength of spirit unknown to him be- 
fore. His later poetry is still crude and often spoiled by egotism, but 
a deeper rhythm, like the beating of a heart, creeps into it ; and the 
coarseness vanishes, together with the animal pleasure of mere 
physical sensations. He has learned that man has a soul also, and at 
times the soul appears to him as of more consequence than the body. 
For some ten years he was a government clerk in Washington, and 
for the remainder of his life he resided in Camden, New Jersey. His 
Leaves of Grass, which he republished ten times with additions and 
corrections, brought him a very small income, and in the later years 
of his life he was largely dependent on friends, who gave freely because 
of his service and his genius. 

These later years, though troubled by pain and poverty, were not 
without their triumph. Though the public would not read his verses, 
Life in ^ f^w good critics acknowledged his power, and his little 

Camden house became the object of pilgrimages from all parts of 

America and England. With all his comradeship and love of crowds, 
Whitman was always secretive about himself, and, as he has the habit 
of posing in his poetry, the biographer is often baffled in his search 
for truth. Toward the end of his life, however, we have the testimony 
of many who visited Whitman, and almost without exception these 
speak of him as one who had learned the discipline of living, who met 
suffering with patient heroism, and who left upon all his friends the 
impression of gentleness and sincerity. 

1 From Dnim Taps. Those who would see the real war, and understand the better 
side of Whitman, should read his prose Specimen Days, and The Wound Dresser. The 
latter is made up of letters to his mother. 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 373 

The Quality of Whitman's Verse. All of Whitman's poems 
are now printed in a single volume, Leaves of Grass, the title of 
which was meant to suggest that the work sprang from the poet 
as naturally as vegetation grows from the bosom of mother earth. 
The title would perhaps have been more descriptive if ''weeds" 
had been added to grass, for a large part of the verse is rank and 
riotous. Witness this selection (which omits numerous chaotic 
lines) from the opening and the close of the "~ Song of Myself." 

I celebrate myself and sing myself, 

And wHat I assume you shall assume, 

For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. 

I loafe and invite my Soul ; 

I lean and loafe at my ease, observing a spear of summer grass, 

A child said, What is the grass ? fetching it to me with full hands ; 

How could I answer the child ? I do not know what it is any more than he. 

I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff 

woven ; 
Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord, 
A scented.gift and remembrancer, designedly dropt. 
Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners, that we may see and 

remark, and say, Whose ? 
Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the vegetation. 
Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic, 

And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones. 
Growing among black folks as among white ; 
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I receive 

them the same. 
And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves. 

Man or woman ! I might tell how I like you, but cannot ; 

And might tell what it is in me, and what it is in you, but cannot. 

I know perfectly well my own egotism ; 

I know my omnivorous lines, and will not write any less ; 

And would fetch you, whoever you are, flush with myself. 

Do I contradict myself ? 

Very well, then, I contradict myself ; 

(I am large — I contain multitudes.) 

The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me — he complains of my gab 

and my loitering. 
I too am not a bit tamed — I too am untranslatable ; 
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world. 



374 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Between these two sections are thirteen hundred other Hnes, 
a few of them strongly poetic, the rest suggesting the word of 
a critic, that the art of writing consists largely in knowing what 
to leave in the inkpot. One moment the author is shouting, 
uttering what he calls '' prophetical screams " ; then he grows 
quiet, and his lines fall into a swinging rhythm as he "contem- 
plates the beauty of earth and sea. He interjects an irrelevant 
story which he has just read in the newspaper. He addresses 
himself, '' What seest thou, Walt Whitman } " and for answer 
makes a catalogue of plants, towfis, occupations, — everything 
that comes into his head. His admirers assure us that all this 
contains the elements of true poetry, and they may be right ; a 
woodpile contains all the elements of a forest, though the two 
things are somewhat different. Whitman insisted on the poetic 
quality of his work, refusing to alter even the crudest lines, and 
defended himself in a striking bit of verse written after a visit 
to a canyon in Colorado, where he wrote in his notebook, " I 
have found the law of my own poems " : 

Spirit that form'd this scene, 

These tumbled rock-piles grim and red, 

These reckless, heaven-ambitious peaks, 

These gorges, turbulent-clear streams, this naked freshness, 

These formless wild arrays, for reasons of their own, . . . 

Was 't charged against my chants they had forgotten art ? 

To fuse within themselves its rules precise and delicatesse ? 

The lyrist's measur'd beat, the wrought-out temple's grace — column and 

polish'd arch forgot .f* 
But thou that revelest here — spirit that form'd this scene, 
They have remember'd thee. 

Forgetting the affectation of that word '' delicatesse," most 
readers will welcome this verse for its own sake ; but few will 
accept the implied argument, that the rugged canyons of the 
Lord and the crude verses of a poet are alike admirable. The 
chief difficulty in the appreciation of Whitman is that few 
readers have the patience to strip off the husk of crudity, exag- 
geration and bad taste which hides the kernel of his poetry. 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 375 

Not until we have a sternly abridged edition of Whitman will 
his undoubted power and originality be generally understood. 

Whitman's Better Poetry. As an introduction to the better 
part of Whitman's work, we quote the opening lines of a char- 
acteristic poem : 

Night on the prairies, 

The supper is over, the fire on the ground burns low, 

The wearied emigrants sleep, wrapt in their blankets ; 

I walk by myself — I stand and look at the stars, which I think now I never 

realized before. 
Now I absorb immortality and peace, 
I admire death and test propositions. 
How plenteous ! how spiritual ! how resume ! 
The same old man and soul — the same old aspirations, and the same content. 

Here is one of the elemental scenes in which Whitman is at his 
best : the dusk-shrouded prairie, the low-burning fire, the 
blanketed forms, stars, silence, immensity of night. The poetry 
of the scene appeals to us strongly till our feelings are jarred by 
the poet himself, by his '' resume " ^ and his absurd testing of 
*' propositions." This obtruding of himself in the vast landscape 
of earth and sky affects us like the clamor of house sparrows in 
the solemn splendor of twilight ; but he cannot help his egoism, 
and we must take him as he is, overlooking his faults in our 
search for his virtues. 

If we read Whitman in this spirit, we shall find certain of 
his works as tonic as a sea wind. Though the best of them are 
crudely formed, though they violate all rules in the matter of 
rime and melody, we have only to read them carefully to dis- 
cover at times a deep rhythm sounding through the verse, as in 
this stirring chant to the ocean : 

With husky-haughty lips, O sea ! 
Where day and night I wend thy surf-beat shore, 
Imaging to my sense thy varied strange suggestions, . . . 
Thy troops of white-maned racers racing to the goal, 

1 Whitman uses many such expressions affectedly, because they sound fine to him, 
without any definite idea of their meaning. 



3/6 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Thy ample, smiling face, dash'd with the sparkling dimples of the sun, 
Thy brooding scowl and murk — thy unloos'd hurricanes, . . . 
Some vast heart, like a planet's, chain'd and chafing in those breakers, 
By lengthen'd swell, and spasm, and panting breath, 
And rhythmic rasping of thy sands and waves. 
And serpent hiss, and savage peals of laughter, 
And undertones of distant lion roar, . . . 
The first and last confession of the globe. 

The beginner, accustomed to regular verse forms, may well 
make the acqaintance of Whitman in '' O Captain, My Captain," 
which is one of his splendid tributes to Lincoln. The swinging 
" Pioneers " may come next ; and then, as the measure of 
Whitman's lyric quaUty, the song of the bird to its mate, in 
'' Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking " : 

Shine ! shine ! shine ! 

Pour down your warmth, great sun ! 

While we bask — we two together. 

Two together ! 

Winds blow south, or winds blow north, 
Day come white, or night come black, 
Home, or rivers and mountains from home, 
Singing all time, minding no time, 
While we two keep together. 

Of the short poems in Whitman's peculiar rhythm, one 
of the most notable is '' Come up from the fields," a finely 
Selected drawn picture of an old father and mother who come 
Poems trembling from their work to hear news of their boy, 

who is far away on the battle line. It is a picture of ten thousand 
fathers and mothers, in as many villages of the North and South, 
and it may appeal to some readers as the most exquisite and 
human of all Whitman's works. In strong contrast with this 
silent sorrow and heroism of mothers and fathers who sacrificed 
their sons in the great conflict is the '' Beat, beat, drums," 
which reflects the stir and clamor of the first call to arms. 
Other significant short works are ''A Clear Midnight," '' Night 
on the Prairies," "On the Beach at Midnight," "The Mystic 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 377 

Trumpeter," "Aboard at a Ship's Helm," "The First Dande- 
lion," "Prayer of Columbus" and "The Ox Tamer." With 
these should be read a few of Whitman's haunting poems on 
the beauty of death, such as " Whispers of Heavenly Death," 
" Darest Thou Now, O Soul," "Assurances," ''Joy, Shipmate, 
Joy ! " "A Noiseless Patient Spider," " Death's Valley," " Pas- 
sage to India " and " Good-bye, My Fancy." 

Of the longer poems, perhaps the finest is " When lilacs last 
in the door-yard bloom'd," a beautiful threnody, in which the 
flower, the star and the hermit thrush serve, like motifs in 
music, to suggest the grief and hope of the nation at the death 
of Lincoln. Especially beautiful is the thrush song, the carol to 
death, " Dark Mother, always gliding near with soft feet " : 

Over the tree-tops I float thee a song, 

Over the rising and sinking waves — over the myriad fields, and the 

prairies wide ; 
Over the dense-pack'd cities all, and the teeming wharves and ways, 
I float this carol with joy, with joy to thee, O Death ! 

Of the many poems of patriotism, we indicate only " Thou 
mother with thy equal brood," which some critics place beside 
the " Commemoration Ode " of Lowell. It began originally in 
a magnificent way, and was for years known by its opening lines : 

As a strong bird on pinions free. 
Joyous, the amplest spaces heavenward cleaving, 
Such be the thought I' d think of thee, America, 
Such be the recitative I' d bring for thee. 

The theme of nearly all Whitman's verse is found in this 
" Inscription " which, after many changes, he placed at the 
beginning of his works : 

One's Self I sing — a simple, separate Person ; 

Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En-masse. 

Of physiology from top to toe I sing, . . . 

Of Life immense in passion, pulse and power. 

Cheerful — for freest action form'd under the laws divine, 

The Modern Man I sing. 



3/8 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

In these two words, '' self " and '' democracy," is found the ex- 
planation of Whitman's work, so far as it has any evident pur- 
pose or consistency. Of democracy, as related to law, government, 
society, he had no conception ; his verse is largely a glorification 
of men's bodies rather than of their minds or institutions. As 
Lanier said. Whitman's democracy was, in effect, *' the worst 
kind of an aristocracy, being an aristocracy of nature's favorites 
in the matter of muscle." This purely physical note is dominant 
in Whitman's chant of democracy ; it is subdued a little in '' As 
a Strong Bird " ; and it sinks to an undertone in the fine poems 
on death, which suggest that man may be essentially an immor- 
tal spirit rather than a body with appetites. 

Whitman's Orientalism. In his glorification of self. Whitman 
seems an offshoot of transcendentalism, though we are still un- 
certain how far he developed his doctrine independently, and 
how far he was influenced by Emerson, Thoreau, Alcott, 
Margaret Fuller, and others who then made a cult of individ- 
ualism. ^ To the indirect influence of Emerson he probably owes 
the characteristic which distinguishes him from all other Ameri- 
can poets, namely, his orientalism, which is so pronounced at 
times that he seems almost like a dervish, chanting of ancient 
fate and pantheism in the midst of modern business and politics. 
Until he was thirty-six years old Whitman wrote only common- 
place things, and there is little in his style to distinguish him 
from any other country editor.^ Then suddenly he published 
Leaves of Grass, a work utterly unlike anything that had ever 
appeared in America ; and the question naturally arises, Where 
did Whitman get this new rhapsodical style and this rather 
startling material 1 

A suggestion, at least, of an answer may be found in these 
considerations : that transcendentalism was most influential here 

1 The Dial, containing the works of all these writers, was published 1 840-1 844. 
Emerson and Thoreau both published their most characteristic works shortly before 
Whitman produced his Leaves of Grass (1855). 

2 Whitman destroyed nearly all his early work, but enough survives to judge it 
accurately. 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 379 

at the time when Whitman wrote his chief work ; that it con- 
tained elements of mysticism and occult philosophy borrowed 
, from oriental poets ; that several English translations 
Transcen- of Sanskrit and Persian poetry appeared before 1855 ; 
dentahsm ^j^^^ Emerson read them and advised others to read 
them, especially the BJiagavadgita ^ ; and that a worn copy of 
the latter poem was found among Whitman's possessions. In 
this remarkable BJiagavadgita the god Krishna appears as the 
light and life of all things ; he is the beginning and the end, 
the cause and the effect, the mystery of birth and of death, and 
much more to the same effect. Many oriental poets have since 
expressed the same doctrine in exquisite verse ; one of them has 
written, '' I was the sin that from Myself rebelled " ; and 
Emerson's '' Brahma " is a new reflection of the old teaching: 

They reckon ill who leave me out; 

When me they fly, I am the wings ; 
I am the doubter and the doubt, 

And I the hymn the Brahmin sings. 

Emerson is here speaking for Brahma, of course ; but Whitman 
misunderstood the doctrine, or else was incredibly egotistic, 
when he applied it not to the gods but to himself : 

. . . From this side Jehovah am I, 

Old Brahma I, and I Saturnius am ; 

No time affects me — I am Time, old modern as any. 

Consolator most mild, the promis'd one advancing, 

With gentle hand extended — the mightier God am I, 

Foretold by prophets and poets, in their most rapt prophecies and poems, 

No time nor change shall ever change me or my words. 

Life of the great round world, the sun and stars, and of man — I, the 

general Soul, 
Hete the square finishing, the solid, I the most solid, 
Breathe my breath also through these songs.^ 

1 The Sanskrit BJiagavadgita or Bhagavat Gita (meaning the song of the Adorable 
One) is a long dramatic poem, written by an unknown author, probably just before the 
Christian era. It contains the mystic teaching of earlier and later Hindu philosophy, 
expressed in noble poetic language. 

2 Abridged from " Chanting the Square Deific." The same doctrine is proclaimed in 
" We Two " and other chants of Whitman. 



38o AMERICAN LITERATURE 

The one thing certain about such verse is that it was not and 
could not be inspired by our modern American Hfe. Whitman 
appears here as the last, the most extreme of the transcenden- 
talists, chanting an oriental philosophy of which he has only a 
superficial understanding. 

Whitman's orientalism is shown in many other ways. His 
'' Song of the Open Road," for instance, instantly suggests that 
Oriental Other road or way which runs through oriental litera- 
Eiements ture, and which is everywhere a symbol of human 
life. We must perforce think, not of the old country turnpike, 
but of that older caravan route when Whitman assures us that 
the universe is but '' a road for traveling souls " : 

Aliens ! we must not stop here ! 

However sweet these laid-up stores — however convenient this dwelling, we 

cannot remain here ; 
However shelter'd this port, ind however calm these waters, we must not 

anchor here ; 
However welcome the hospitality that surrounds us, we are permitted to 

receive it but a little while. 

All this, and more of his '' Open Road," was expressed with 

much finer art by Hafiz, the Persian poet, in the fourteenth 

century : 

'T is strange, at every stage along the road, 
As soon as I have eased me of my load, 
I hear the jangling camel bell's refrain, 
Bidding me bind my burden on again.^ 

/vgain, in Whitman's Calamus, a book of verses celebrating 
manly friendships, his men kiss each other and sentimentalize 
in a way that reflects oriental poetry but that has no sugges- 
tion of American manhood. Some of his lines are vulgar or in 
bad taste, and here he copies the matter of Eastern poets with- 
out their style or unconsciousness. He is a fatalist ; he allies 
himself with both good and evil ; he cries out to earth and 

1 Quoted by Elsa Barker, in "What Whitman Learned from the East" {Canada 
Monthly, October, 191 1). 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 381 

heaven, — all in oriental fashion. Sometimes his verse has the 
warm sensuousness that characterizes the poetry of the East : 

Smile, O voluptuous cool-breath'd earth ! 
Smile, for your lover comes ! 

More often he forgets the true poet's attitude toward nature, a 
reverent attitude born of mystery and beauty, and his lines seem 
like a crude parody of some Eastern singer : 

Earth, you seem to look for something at my hands ; 
Say, old Top-not ! what do you want ? ^ 

So also when Whitman ejaculates, calls himself by name, cele- 
brates himself ; when he becomes, in a word, the dervish 
instead of the democrat, — in all this he has adopted the 
methods common to oriental poets. What in them is entirely 
natural seems in him an artificial posing ; and what we should 
expect in Persia or Arabia seems as out of place in America as 
camels or caravans would be, or the Muezzin's call to prayer. 

In the above explanation of Whitman's method there is merely 
opened, not explored, an interesting field of study. We do not 
mean to imply that he deliberately copied oriental poets ; he was 
too independent, for one thing ; and he had neither the learn- 
ing nor the patience to appreciate their peculiar art. Their 
philosophy seemed in harmony with his exaggerated notion of 
self ; and he claimed the same right as Emerson to express old 
oriental ideas in a new occidental way. A part of his material 
and his general rhapsodical method came undoubtedly from the 
East ; his vigor and originality no less than his oddity and 
extravagance are all his own. 

At Home and Abroad. It appears strange at first that many 
foreign critics should acclaim Whitman, the least typical of 
American writers, as our most representative poet ; but the 
explanation of their choice is simple. To foreigners America 
has always appeared as an extraordinary country. Democracy, 

1 From " Song of Myself," 11. 986-987. 



382 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

freedom, the winning of a wilderness and the appropriation of 
its vast treasures, — - all this, which to us is the most natural thing 
in the world, seems to them marvelous. In consequence of this 
mental attitude, they have expected that the literature which 
reflects our life should be entirely different from their own. To 
meet their expectation an American poem should have in it 
something strange and uncouth, some suggestion at least of a 
buffalo or a cyclone. Franklin and Irving tried in vain to dis- 
abuse them of this notion. Longfellow was and still is widely 
read and appreciated abroad ; but because he had culture and 
literary art, because he was essentially like their own poets, 
foreign critics did not consider him typical of America. Poe 
had appealed to their artistic sense, Cooper to their adventurous 
spirit, but not till Whitman appeared was their prejudice satis- 
fied. His crudity and extravagance corresponded to their peculiar 
ideas of the New World, and because he was strange they called 
him representative. Meanwhile this very quality of strangeness 
must here prevent him from being considered a typical poet, 
though a part of his work, original and vigorous, will surely 
find a permanent place in the literature of the nation. 

The Minor Poets 

The historian must hesitate as he faces the abundant minor 
verse of this golden age of American poetry. Here, for example, 
, are two goodly volumes containing the memorable 
War and lyrics of the great war, such as ''Little Giffen," 
Peace .. j^^ Confederate Flag," "Stonewall Jackson's 

Way," "Sheridan's Ride," " The^ Black Regiment," "All 
Quiet along the Potomac," " The Blue and the Gray," " High 
Tide at Gettysburg," and at least two ringing war songs : 
"Maryland, my Maryland," by James Ryder Randall, and the 
"Battle Hymn of the Republic," by Julia Ward Howe. The 
last-named lyrics, aside from their clear reflection of the martial 
spirit of the age, have an added value, tender and forever sacred. 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 383 

from the fact that they were sung in trench or camp by thou- 
sands of brave men whose Ups were silenced on the next day's 
battle field. In marked contrast with these stirring songs are 
the lyrics of peace, such, for instance, as Stephen Collins Foster's 
" Old Folks at Home " and " My Old Kentucky Home," which 
reflect the simplest and dearest of human emotions. There are 
literally scores of such poems, which have endeared themselves 
to countless Americans, and which suggest that the authors are 
w^orthy of our grateful remembrance. For he who creates even 
one true song or poem has added another Bill of Rights to the 
possessions of humanity. 

Over the minor poets of the age, who produced each his 
book of verse, one must hesitate even longer, for two reasons : 
first, because it is often impossible to draw the line between 
major and minor -writers ; and second, because our literary his- 
tories have recorded more than fifty '' local " poets between 
1840 and 1876, and to treat them adequately and impartially 
would in itself require a volume. In the history of an earlier 
period such poets would have received large space ; but we must 
judge each age in turn by the best that it produced, and in the 
works of our so-called elder poets, from Longfellow to Lanier, 
we have already considered the poetry which seems most typical, 
not of North or South or West, but of the American people. 

Southern Singers. Two of the most brilliant of the Southern 
poets of the period, Henry Timrod (i 829-1 867) and Paul 
Hamilton Hayne (1831-1886), are generally mentioned in the 
same sentence. They were both born in Charleston, and were 
members of the promising literary '' school " which gathered 
around the poet-novelist Simms.^ Both had published poetry 
before 1861, and both gave up their cherished literary dreams 
to ser\^e their state at the first call to arms. Both were broken 
in health and fortune by the war, and thereafter waged a brave, 
lonely struggle against poverty and sickness. Finally, the works 
of each poet may be divided into two main classes : war lyrics, 

1 See p. 244. 



384 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

reflecting the martial and sectional spirit of the moment, and 
a few simple poems that have enduring interest because they 
give beautiful expression to the permanent emotions of our 
human nature. 

Timrod, who published a comparatively small amount of 
work, is perhaps the greater of the two poets. Among his best 
poems are his exquisite '' Hymn : At Magnolia Cemetery," 
"The Lily Confidante," "Spring," "Katie," "Charleston," 
and "The Cotton Boll." 

Of Hayne's war lyrics " The Battle of King's Mountain," 
which deals with a Revolutionary event, is the most widely 
known. Most readers, however, will be more interested in the 
poems which reflect the changing life of nature in the lonely 
pine barrens of the South, where the poet made his brave 
struggle after the war. As a reflection of the spirit of that sad 
struggle, the reader should know the poem called "A Little 
While." Other and better poems of Hayne are "Woodland 
Phases," " Mocking Birds," " The Pine's Mystery," " Vision at 
Twilight," '*Pre-existence," "Above the Storm," and "Love's 
Autumn." The poet's laurel crown belongs unquestionably to 
these two men ; and as one thoughtfully considers their work, 
one wonders, says a scholarly critic,^ why they are not more 
generally known and appreciated. 

Abram J. Ryan (i 839-1 886), who is more tenderly remem- 
bered as Father Ryan, is another gifted singer of war and peace 
Father in the South. There is a quality in his verse — brave, 

^y*" tender, sad, with here and there a touch of profound 

spiritual insight — which makes it different from all other works 
of the period, and which makes us regret that the author did 
not give more time to poetry. He tells us that his productions 
should be called "verses," not "poems," and that they were 
written at random, "off and on, here, there, anywhere, — just 
as the mood came, with little of study and less of art, and always 
in a hurry." At the outbreak of war he enlisted as chaplain in 

1 Trent, American Literature^ pp. 479-480. 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 



385 



the Confederate army, and his lyrics of the conflict, ''The Death- 
less Dead," '' The Sword of Lee," and especially *' The Con- 
quered Banner," are among the finest that were written in the 
period of conflict. After the war he served as parish priest in 
various cities, and devoted his occasional verses to the ritual of 
his church and to the spiritual life. 

In his own words, earthly existence was to Father Ryan ''as 
the shadow of sadness," and only in the eternal life did he ex- 
pect to find the sunshine. Through all his verse one hears the 
subdued note of sorrow, which 
is saved from despair by reli- 
gious faith. For a reflection of 
this poet's quieter mood and 
style, one should read or study 
"Their Story Runneth Thus" 
— a beautiful little romance, in 
which the love, heroism and 
lifelong sorrow of two human 
hearts are all told, with rare art 
and perfect sympathy, in eleven 
short lines. 

Bayard Taylor. James Bay- 
ard Taylor (i 825-1 878), who 
has left us more than thirty 
volumes of prose and verse, 
must be measured, like Simms, 

by the greatness of his literary aims and ideals. He was a critic, 
novelist, dramatist, journalist, translator, and always and every- 
where a troubadour possessed by the Wanderhcst. One day 
might find him at his beautiful home " Cedarcroft " in Pennsyl- 
vania, occupied with vast farming or literary plans ; the next day 
would see his departure for Mexico, for Iceland, for the Orient, 
— wherever the mood or the magazine engagement called him. 
There are twelve volumes of travels, such as Views Afoot (1846), 
in which he has recorded his wanderings and impressions. 




/ 



BAYARD TAYLOR 



386 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

As one thinks of his work '' there comes to mind," says 
Professor Richardson, ''the memory of scattered successes and 
an irregular, conglomerate failure." This failure, if indeed it be 
such, may be laid to the fact that he attempted too much, that 
he explored too many fields to find the best treasures in any 
one. His conception of literature was as noble as any that our 
history has recorded ; like Lanier he regarded poetry, the rhyth- 
mic creation of beauty, as the highest object of human effort ; 
but he was perhaps too determined to win fame, and altogether 
too ready to furnish a story, an essay, a drama, a poem, a sketch 
of travel, or anything else that the omnivorous magazines de- 
manded. Boker, his friend and fellow poet, said of him that 
'' he toiled as few men have ever toiled at any profession, and 
wore himself out and perished prematurely of hard and some- 
times bitter work." That he wrote for the present is perhaps 
the chief reason why the next generation, which had its own 
favorites, neglected his most ambitious works and remembered 
him as a symbol of heroic endeavor rather than of lasting 
achievement. 

Perhaps the most notable thing to be recorded of this poet is 
that he had a remarkable talent, if not genius, for reflecting the 
Taylor's very atmosphere of any place where he happened to 
Poems f^^^ himself on his travels. It is this dash of local 

color and spirit which leads people to cherish, as the best of his 
works, certain unambitious little poems, the '* Song of the Camp," 
"The Fight at Paso del Mar," " Bedouin Song," the song be- 
ginning '' Daughter of Egypt," and a few tales in verse, such 
as '' The Temptation of Hassan Ben Khaled," from his Poems 
of the Orient. The fine human sympathy of Taylor is reflected 
in such poems as '' Euphorion," '' Autumnal Dreams," and in 
''The Quaker Widow," which Stedman calls "that lovely 
ballad, unexcelled in truth and tenderness of feeling." 

The longer poetical works of Taylor are of very uneven 
merit, and their labored passages, which obscure the finer or 
inspired stanzas, furnish some ground for Poe's contention that 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 387 

a true poem must be short. The Poet' s Journal is interesting 
as a revelation of the author's heart and of his happiness at 
'' Cedarcroft " ; his patriotism is reflected in the ''Gettysburg 
Ode " and the '' Centennial Ode " (1876) ; and his conception 
of art is revealed in the poetic autobiography called The Picture 
of St. John. Of this last Lowell said that it was the most finished 
poem in our literature with the exception of TJie Golden Legend. 
Such contemporary criticism is doubtless extravagant and un- 
trustworthy, but many readers consider this reflection of a poet's 
musings amidst the melancholy beauties of Italian scenery to be 
the most significant of all Taylor's works. It is less widely known, 
however, than is Lars: A Pastoral of Norway (1873), an in- 
teresting story in verse, in which the Norwegian fiords and 
mountains form the setting for a tragic romance. It had once 
many readers, but it failed to hold attention like Evangelme, 
on which it was probably modeled. 

. Among Taylor's dramatic works, written in his later years, 
the best are The Masque of the Gods and Pri7ice Detikalion^ 
Dramas and which are hardly fitted for the stage but which com- 
Noveis p^j-g favorably with the '' closet dramas " of Long- 

fellow or Tennyson. Among his best novels, which were once 
popular here and which were translated into several European 
languages, are Haiuiah Thursto7i (1863) and The Story of 
Keftnett (1866). Both these novels deal with village life in 
America. The latter is the better piece of work and 'contains 
the best-drawn of Taylor's characters, but the former has a 
certain literary and historical interest in that it deals with the 
numerous strange reforms which characterized the age of 
transcendentalism. 

More permanent than these novels, and most valuable of all 
Taylor's works to the student of general literature, is the trans- 
lation of Goethe's Faust in the meter of the original. This 
notable work, which followed hard on Bryant's Homer and 
Longfellow's Dante, remains after half a century the standard 
translation of one of the famous books of the world. 



388 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Singers East and West. Two other poets, Boker and Stod- 
dard, were closely associated with Taylor, and all three were by 
their contemporaries ranked with the greater poets of America. 
George H. Boker (i 823-1 890) was chiefly a dramatist, and has 
the distinction, which is shared by very few American authors, 
of having written a play, Fraitcesca da Rhnini, which can be 
acted and which can also be seriously considered as a work of 
literature. He published six volumes of dramas and poems, but 
is now remembered by a few lyrics, such as his '' Lancer's Song," 
"Dragoon's Song," "On Board the Cumberland," "Ballad of 
Sir John Franklin," and especially by his fine " Dirge for a 
Soldier" ("Close his eyes; his work is done!") and his "Dirge 
for a Sailor," beginning 

Slow, slow, toll it low, 

As the sea waves break and flow. 

There is a frequent suggestion of the powerful yet delicate 
touch of Landor in the best work of Richard Henry Stoddard 
(1825-190 3). Like his friend Taylor, he attempted 
too much and wrote at times too hurriedly for the 
present market ; but one who reads his volumes must often 
wonder why he is not better known as a poet of the nation. 
The good taste and the extraordinary knowledge of literature, 
old and new, which appear in his critical work are reflected in- 
directly in his verse ; and with them appear two other factors : 
an imagination as wide ranging as that of any of our elder poets, 
and a certain singing quality which led Stedman to speak of 
his lyrics as "always on the wing and known at first sight, — 
a skylark brood whose notes are rich with feeling." To under- 
stand this singer one should by all means read the entire poem 
called "Hymn to the Beautiful," with its occasional imitation of 
Shelley and Wordsworth : 

Spirit of Beauty ! whatsoe'er thou art, 
I see thy skirt afar, and feel thy power ; 
It is thy presence fills this charmed hour, 
And fills my charmed heart : 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 389 

Nor mine alone, but myriads feel thee now, 
That know not what they feel, nor why they bow. 

Thou canst not be forgot. 
For all men worship thee, and know it not ; 
Nor men alone, but babes with wondrous eyes, 

New-comers from the skies. 
We hold the keys of Heaven within our hands, 
The heirloom of a higher, happier state, 
And lie in infancy at Heaven's gate. 
Transfigured in the light that streams along the lands. 
Around our pillows golden ladders rise, 

And up and down the skies, 

With winged sandals shod. 
The angels come and go, the Messengers of God ! 
Nor, though they fade from us, do they depart — 

It is the fhildly heart : 

We walk as heretofore, 
Adown their shining ranks, but see them nevermore. 
Heaven is not gone, but we are blind with tears. 
Groping our way along the downward slope of years ! 

The student should also make acquaintance with Stoddard's 
'' skylark brood " of lyrics in Songs of Summer (1856) and The 
King's Bell (1862). Of the longer poems a few of the best 
are: ''Hymn to the Sea," ''Abraham Lincoln," "The Fisher 
and Charon," the love story " Leonatus," and the tribute to 
Bryant in the noble blank verse of " The Dead Master." 

Cincinnatus Heine Miller, or, as he preferred to call himself, 
Joaquin Miller (1841-1912), belongs so much to our own day 
Joaquin that he is associated with the " rush to the Klon- 
MiUer dike," whither he followed his unquenchable pioneer 

spirit, his love of daring men and of untouched nature. His 
\Vork, however, seems to belong to an earlier age than this, the 
age of Bret Harte and of the "roaring" mining camps, and 
his fame rests almost wholly on his earliest works : Songs of the 
Sierras (1871), Songs of the Simlands (1873), and TJu Ship in 
the Desert (1875). The imaginative splendor of some of these 
poems, and their mighty background of burning desert or snow- 
clad mountains, made an impression so strong that the author 



390 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

was hailed, in England especially, as one of the most promising 
of American poets. Though Miller never fulfilled that early 
promise, though his later verse still shows careless workmanship 
and too much dependence on the methods of Byron or Swin- 
burne, his So7igs of the Sierras are well worth reading, — for 
their own sake, and as an indication of the changing taste of 
an age which first welcomed the poem or story of strong '* local" 
color and atmosphere. In this connection Miller's poems may 
well be read with the earlier works of Bret Harte and the 
Pike County Ballads of John Hay, which appeared in the 
same decade. 

Other minor poets of the period who are more or less repre- 
sentative are : Jones Very, the mystic singer of transcendental- 
ism ; Henry Howard Brownell, whose War Lyrics a7id Other 
Poems (1866) celebrated the battles, sieges, fortunes and mis- 
fortunes of the great conflict ; Thomas Buchanan Read, painter 
and poet, who wrote poetic sketches of emigrant life in The New 
Pastoral (1855) and a few widely known lyrics, such as '' Drift- 
ing " and '' Sheridan's Ride " ; and Josiah Gilbert Holland, a 
writer of prose and verse, as gifted and versatile as the once 
popular Willis. Holland's Bitter Sweet (1856), a long dramatic 
poem containing idyllic pictures of New England country life, 
was popular for a generation, but it seems now a little common- 
place, and lacking in the artistic quality which makes a poem 
permanent. Some of his prose works, such as Timothy Tit- 
comb's Letters to Yonng People and the romance Sevenoaks, 
are still occasionally read with pleasure, but it is probable that 
Holland will be remembered in the future chiefly by his '' Grada- 
tim," '' Babyhood," and a few other minor works of a moraliz- 
ing and sentimental nature, which find a place in representative 
collections of American poetry.^ 

1 Doubtless some of these poets deserve more generous space than we have given 
them, and there are many more whose names and works are worthy of mention. Our 
object, however, is not an adequate study but rather a suggestion of the abundant minor 
poetry of the period. Certain other poets (Stedman, Aldrich, etc.), whose work began in 
this age, will be considered in the final section. 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 



391 



IV. NOVELISTS AND STORY-TELLERS 
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804- 1864) 

Ah ! who shall lift that wand of magic power 

And the lost clew regain ? 
The unfinished window in Aladdin's tower 

Unfinished must remain.^ 

The above lines, which are often quoted in connection with 
Hawthorne, reflect a general feeling of American readers that 
the Concord novelist has 
no successor. He is a man 
apart, a solitary genius, 
whose methods and materi- 
als are so exclusively his 
own that there is no other 
writer with whom we may 
even compare him. His 
style — a little old-fashioned 
but genuine and artistic, 
like Colonial furniture — is 
always in harmony with his 
sincerity of purpose. He 
does not tell an idle tale, 
but selects some law or im- 
pulse of the human heart 
and traces its course among 
men, showing due regard 
to the truth of his subject 
ai!d to the requirements of his own art. The scene of his 
story is set against a romantic background of history, and his 
characters are largely symbolical, — more like the shadowy crea- 
tures formed by our fancy to people the streets of an ancient 

1 From Longfellow, " To Hawthorne," a poem read at Hawthorne's funeral service 
(May 23, 1864). This stanza seemed especially significant in view of the unfinished 
manuscript which lay upon the coffin. 




NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 



392 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

city than like men and women of the market place. Over them 
broods the melancholy twilight of days that are no more. Vague 
as these characters are, they are governed by the same moral 
law that prevails alike among their ancestors and their descend- 
ants ; and it is this steadfast law rather than the style or matter 
of the tale that rivets our attention. 

Such are the qualities of Hawthorne, revealed in almost every 
chapter of his writing. The charm of reading him is akin to 
that of meeting an old friend who never surprises or disappoints 
us. Because of his high ideals and the artistic quality of his 
work, he has received more praise and less discriminating criti- 
cism than any other American writer. Lowell calls him the 
greatest imaginative genius since Shakespeare, and lesser critics 
have expressed a similar judgment in a different way. Many 
will feel that the praise is too extravagant, but few will question 
Hawthorne's power, or challenge his position as the supreme 
idealist in American fiction. 

Life. Heredity plays a large part in the life and work of Haw- 
thorne. He writes largely of the Puritans, from whom he was de- 
scended and whose moral quality he shares in large measure. He 
was born (1804) in the old seaport of Salem, where the first American 
Hathome (as the name was spelled) had settled soon after his ar- 
rival with Governor Winthrop's colony. Some of his ancestors had 
been active in the witch trials ; one at least had been a gallant soldier, 
whose deeds inspired the Revolutionary ballad of " Bold Hathorne " ; 
the rest had followed the sea. When Hawthorne was but four years 
old his father, a sea captain, died of yellow fever in South America ; 
his mother isolated herself in her own room, where she seldom saw 
her own family, and the boy grew up with a shadow over him that 
was never quite dispelled. At the age of ten he went to live in Ray- 
mond, on the shore of beautiful Sebago Lake in Maine, and until 
he was twenty-one he spent a few weeks or months of each year in 
fishing, hunting and roaming the primeval solitudes. 

For school life, for discipline of any kind except that which was 
self-imposed, Hawthorne had a strong aversion. Studying at odd 
hours and under private tutors he prepared for Bowdoin, where he 
met Longfellow and Pierce (afterwards President of the United States) 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 393 

as his college mates. He graduated in the famous class of 1825, and 
immediately disappeared from public view. He had debated with him- 
self the question of a profession, and the result was announced in a 
characteristic letter to his mother : 

" I do not want to be a doctor and live by men's diseases, nor a minister 
and live by their sins, nor a lawyer and live by their quarrels ; so I don't 
see that there is anything left for me but to be an author." 

Following this indefinite resolve he shut himself up in his own 
room, in a gray old house at Salem, and for twelve years lived in 
Hermit greater seclusion than Thoreau had ever known at Walden. 

Life Though living in the midst of a busy town, it was doubtful, 

he said, if a dozen persons knew of his existence. He brooded or 
wrote all day long ; like his mother and sister he took his meals in 
his own room ; in the evening he went out for a solitary walk on the 
seashore. He writes in his notebook : 

" If ever I should have a biographer, he ought to make great mention 
of this chamber, because so much of my lonely youth was wasted here, and 
here my mind and character were formed ; here I have been glad and hope- 
ful, and here I have been despondent. And here I sat a long, long time, 
waiting patiently for the world to know me, and sometimes wondering why 
it did not know me sooner, or whether it would ever know me at all, — at 
least, till I were in my grave. And sometimes it seemed as if I were already 
in the grave, with only life enough to be chilled and benumbed. But oftener 
I was happy." 

One result of this unnatural seclusion was that it gave him a style 
and a subject. Left so much to himself, brooding in his own room 
or by the lonely sea, he discovered certain laws and impulses of the 
human heart which he determined to use as the motive for his stories. 
And from this one subject, the law of the heart as seen against a 
background of Puritan history, he seldom departed. He acquired also 
the art of writing, burning much of his work and revising the rest, 
tilj he knew how to tell a tale with naturalness and simplicity. It is 
doubtful if any other American writer ever had twelve such years of 
discipline, solitary and self-imposed, in learning how to write. 

He sent some of his stories to the magazines, and made vain efforts 
to find a publisher for the others. His first book, Fanshawe (1828) 
a crude romance of college days, was printed at his own expense, but 
he speedily tried to suppress it by destroying every copy he could find. 
In 1837 appeared Twice-Told Tales ^ which represented the best work 



394 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

of a dozen years, but which no one would publish until Hawthorne's 
friend ^ secretly agreed to assume the expense of a first edition. This 
Literary book found a few readers, and was followed by Grand- 
Work father's Chair and three other volumes of children's 

stories, which brought little reward in either fame or money. While 
Willis and other writers of less ability were very popular, Hawthorne 
remained, as he said, " the obscurest writer in America." Poe writes 
of him in 1846, after he had published eight volumes, '^ It was never 
the fashion, till lately, to speak of him in any summary of our best 
authors." 

Led by the necessity of earning a living, Hawthorne came out of his 
seclusion and found a subordinate place in the Boston customhouse. 
From this poor position he was discharged to make room for some poli- 
tician who claimed the spoils of victory at the next election. Then he 
invested his small savings in Brook Farm,^ hoping thus to secure a 
comfortable home for himself and for the woman whom he intended 
to marry ; but after a year of unwonted toil and transcendental talk, 
he knew that neither the comfort nor the home was possible in such a 
community of reformers. He had lost his savings, but he had gained 
some material for his Blithedale Romance, the only one of his stories 
which seems even remotely connected with his own experience. 

Hawthorne's happy marriage (1842) marks the turning point of 
his life. He went to live in the " Old Manse " at Concord, which had 
Life in been occupied by Emerson, and there, in the first sunshiny 

the World atmosphere he had ever known, he gave himself wholly 
to writing. His Mosses f7'om an Old Manse (1846) was the result of 
four years' work in the midst of happiness so ideal that poverty could 
cast no shadow over it. In sore need of money he again entered the 
public service, as surveyor in the Salem customhouse,^ only to repeat 
his previous experience by losing his place to another spoilsman. This 
discharge hurt and discouraged him, but his wife met him with the 
cheerful remark that now he could write his book. " His book " was 
The Scarlet Letter (1850), the most powerful and original of all his 
works, which gave him an instant reputation as the foremost of 
American novelists. 

1 This good friend was Horatio Bridge. See his Personal Recollections of Nathaniel 
Hawthorne. 

2 For a description of this community, see p. 277. 

3 Hawthorne's work here, and his unkind criticism of the people of Salem, is re- 
flected in the introduction to The Scarlet Letter. 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 



395 



All his happiest works, House of Seven Gables, Wonder Book, Snow 
Image, Blithedale Roma7ice and Tanglewood Tales, followed in the 
next few years ; but again he turned aside from literature to enter 
a most uncertain public service. For the political campaign of 1852 
he had written a life of his friend Franklin Pierce, and when the latter 
was elected president, Hawthorne was given the lucrative post of 
consul at Liverpool. He remained abroad seven years, four of which 
were spent in uncongenial office work, and three on a pleasant vaca- 
tion, in Italy chiefly, where he gathered material for his Marble Faun. 




THE WAYSIDE, CONCORD 



In i860 he returned to "Wayside," the house which he had purchased 
in Concord. There he was busy on a work which he intended to 
be his masterpiece when his strength deserted him. He died while 
on an invalid's journey to the White Mountains in 1864. 

'In addition to these salient facts, there are certain personal quali- 
ties which we must consider if we are to understand Hawthorne's 
Personal work. Prominent among these is his individualism, a 
Quality quality so pronounced that he seems, like Thoreau, to be 

entirely apart from his own age and nation. In his day America was 
buzzing with social theories and experiments ; but after one experience 



396 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

at Brook Farm he would have nothing to do with reforms or re- 
formers. '^ The good of others, like our own happiness," he says 
in a letter, " is not to be attained by direct effort, but incidentally." 
He lived in a time of political agitation, when North and South were 
taking sides for a momentous conflict ; but his letters show that neither 
slavery nor states' rights troubled him ; that until the Civil War came 
he did not realize that he had a country ; that he did not even know 
what patriotism meant until he met an Englishman/ 

His aloofness from his contemporaries is even more remarkable. 
He had no literary friendships, no marked sympathy with the poets 
and prose writers who made his age the most brilliant in American 
history. Unlike Longfellow, Lowell and many others who shared in 
a widespread intellectual movement, Hawthorne had little scholarship, 
and showed no interest in poetry or science, in history or philosophy. 
He went abroad, meeting the men and the institutions of England, 
France and Italy, but his letters and notebooks show not only a lack 
of enthusiasm but a strange lack of receptivity. He was satisfied, ap- 
parently, with the broodings of his own heart, which furnished him 
with the literary material that others seek in knowledge or culture or 
human society. 

A second quality of Hawthorne is his apparent fatalism. In his 
twelve years of solitude he had discovered his subject and formed his 
His style ; thereafter he made no effort to develop his knowl- 

Fatalism edge or his native ability. His first romance. The Scarlet 
Letter^ revealed a wonderful talent with a promise of sevenfold in- 
crease, but he would not cultivate it. Instead he wrote stories for 
children, sought a salary rather than a work at Liverpool ; and his 
later romances, though written in his prime of years, show a loss 
rather than a gain in constructive power. Continually he bewails his 
" lonely broodings," his " cursed habits of solitude " ; but such is his 
nature, and he will not \xy to change it. In a letter to Longfellow 
he says : 

" By some witchcraft I have been carried apart from the main current 
of life. I have secluded myself from society. And yet I never meant any 
such thing." 

In this confessed lack of effort, this drifting on the current of his own 
brooding, is an indication of the fatalism which dulled Hawthorne's 

1 See, especially, his letters quoted in Bridge, Personal Recollections, pp. 155, 169, 
172, etc. 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 397 

life, and which is reflected in the " hereditary curse " or some other 
imaginary doom of many of his stories. 

The last suggestive quality of Hawthorne is the sense of mystery 
that forever surrounds him. Outside his own immediate family no 
one, not even his friends, ever really knew him ; and his expressed 
wish was that his biography should not be written.-^ That he had rare 
sweetness and purity of character is evident, but in a study of his life 
many questions arise which are not answered. For Hawthorne reveals 
little of himself in his writings. Indeed, one of the charms of his 
somber pages is the occasional glimpse which we have of the man 
who stands, quiet, smiling, uncommunicative, within the shadow which 
he has created. 

Short Stories. The works of Hawthorne fall naturally into 
two classes, the first consisting of numerous tales or short stories, 
the second of his four romances.^ Outside this classification are 
Our Old Home (1863), an interesting book of sketches of 
English life in the manner of Emerson's English Traits^ and 
three volumes called Passages compiled by Hawthorne's family 
from his American and European notebooks. 

From the short stories we first set aside four volumes intended 

for children, which have been probably more widely read than 

anythinsf else that Hawthorne produced. The first is 

Juveniles jo i 

Grandfather s Chair, made up of stories from early 

New England history. Because he was dealing chiefly with the 
Puritans, Hawthorne called this book ''an attempt to manufac- 
ture delicate playthings out of granite rocks," but few readers 
will consider the work in this hard way. The second is True 
Stories from History and Biography, in which many young 
readers have had their introduction to Franklin, Newton, Queen 
Qiristina and other heroes and heroines of history. The third 

1 Lowell and other worthy biographers were refused permission to use Hawthorne's 
letters, notebooks, and private papers. The biography prepared by his son, Julian Haw- 
thorne, is rather gossipy and, though well written, too personal to be satisfactory. 

2 We have not included with the latter The Dolliver Romance, The Ancestral Footstep, 
Septimius Felton, and Dr. Grhnshawc^s Secret. These are but four variations of the same 
unfinished romance. They are less interesting to the general reader than to the student 
who would understand Hawthorne's methods of work. 



398 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

and fourth are A Wojider Book and Tanglewood Tales, which 
are modern versions of the classic myths told by Greek mothers 
to the children of long ago. Hawthorne had a great respect for 
young people, and a great faith in their instincts for the best 
in life or literature. Those who would understand his method 
in preparing these juvenile works should read the preface to 
the True Stories. 

The Mosses from an Old Manse., Snow Image, and Twice- 
Told Tales are the best of Hawthorne's volumes of tales for 
Types of grown people. The contents of these volumes may 
stories ^g loosely grouped in three classes : the first made 

up of sketches (or ''pure essays/' as Poe called them), the 
second of allegories, and the third of historical tales of early 
New England. The first chapter of Mosses fi-om a7i Old Manse 
forms an excellent introduction to the sketches, which illustrate 
Hawthorne's habits of observation and of recording his impres- 
sions in his notebook. Other significant sketches are '* A Rill 
from the Town Pump," *' Sights from a Steeple," '* Little 
Annie's Ramble," '' Main Street," '' Graves and Goblins," 
" Buds and Bird Voices " and ''The Intelligence Office." Some 
of these sketches deal with human nature in some extraordinary 
manifestation. Thus, " Ethan Brand," which Hawthorne wrote 
as the last chapter of a romance, and which a modern critic 
considers the most typical of his tales,^ seems to be neither 
romance nor story but a series of sketches, all leading to an 
analysis of a human heart which had hardened under selfish 
impulses till it turned to stone. 

The allegorical tales, which are the most characteristic of 
Hawthorne's works, are seldom allegories in the true sense, yet 
Symbol and they all reveal the author's strong tendency toward 
Allegory symbolism, that is, the use or description of some out- 
ward object (such as the falling rose petal in "The Maypole ") in 
such a way that we shall detect in it some hidden or prophetic 

1 See Richardson, American Literature, II, 346-351. Hawthorne characterized this 
sketch as " a chapter from an abortive romance." 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 



399 



meaning 



His method is to make each tale revolve about one 
significant object, such as a veil, a cross, a footprint, which be- 
comes the type or symbol of some moral quality or defect in 
his characters. Dealing thus with symbols rather than with 
nature, with abstract vices or virtues rather than with men and 
women, there is a general impression of unreality in Hawthorne's 
stories. As he says in his preface to Twice-Told Tales : 

" They have the pale tint of flowers that blossomed in too retired a shade. 
Instead of passion mere is sentiment ; and even in what purports to be 
pictures of actual life, we have alle- 
gory, not always so warmly dressed 
in its habiliments of flesh and blood 

as to be taken into the reader's mind ^j^ '^UBi ''/y 

without a shiver. The book, if you ^^sL^^BtlS-f-^'r- 1 

would see anything m it, requires Mm^y:^j,^aLyj-.i n s 

to be read in the twilight atmosphere 
in which it was written." . . 

One of the finest and most 
wholesome of these tales is 
''The Great Stone Face," 
which was suggested, it is said, 
by the character of Emerson. 
Other notable allegorical tales 
are '' Lady Eleanor's Mantle " 
(in '' Legends of the Province 
House")," The Artist of the 
Beautiful," "The Birthmark," "Young Goodman Brown," 
"The Great Carbuncle," " Feathertop/' "The Celestial Rail- 
road," "The Ambitious Guest," "David Swan" and "Dr. 
Heidegger's Experiment." Scattered among these impressive 
stories we occasionally find one so thinly allegorical that it is 
almost lifeless, and another, such as " The Christmas Banquet," 
so morbid that we are instantly reminded of Poe. Reading them 
we find frequent indications of Hawthorne's boyhood, when 
his three favorite books were Pilgrim s Progress, The Faery 
Quee7ie and The Newgate Calendar. The first two are famous 




THE GREAT STONE FACE 



400 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

allegories ; the last is a record of the most notorious criminals 
of Newgate prison. Allegory and sin, — here in two words we 
have an epitome of the greater part of Hawthorne's work. 

The legendary tales — of which the *' Legends of the Prov- 
ince House," ''The Gray Champion," ''The Gentle Boy," 
Legend and '' Endicott and the Red Cross " and " The Maypole 
Tradition qj^ Merry Mount" may serve as examples — are all 
founded on New England traditions. In such stories Hawthorne 
first gave the American Puritan to literature, and his method 
was at once romantic and psychological. He was romantic in 
that he emphasized the idealism of Puritan life, its great prin- 
ciples applied to small duties, its superb faith glowing amidst 
prosaic details like wild flowers in a burned field. He was psy- 
chological in that he took up the problem of sin and judgment, 
with which the Puritan had struggled mightily, and showed the 
torturing effect of sin in the mind itself rather than in outward 
punishment. At times, in dealing with the Puritans, he seems 
a little harsh or gloomy ; and again his spirit is like that of 
Angelo, who could see in a rough block of marble the outlines 
of a sleeping angel. He has been called the historian of primi- 
tive New England ; but the title is misleading, for his historical 
knowledge was neither ample nor accurate. He was, in a word, 
an artist, not a historian ; he used New England merely as a 
romantic background, as Cooper used the wilderness, and Irving 
the Dutch settlements on the Hudson. 

The Four Romances. Hawthorne's four great romances are 
chiefly studies of sin and its expiation. Most readers make 
acquaintance with the novelist in T/ie Scarlet Letter, but a better 
book to begin with is The House of the Seven Gables (185 1), 
which is less gloomy, has more human and lovable characters, 
and is better constructed with regard to the old unities of time, 
place and action. The theme is the terrible consequences of 
sin to the innocent rather than to the guilty ; when the curtain 
rises on the drama we see gentle characters still bearing the 
heavy burden of offenses committed long years before they were 



N 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 401 

born. '' The sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the chil- 
dren " seems to be Hawthorne's text ; ^ but in his tenderness 
for poor old Hepzibah and for Phoebe Pyncheon, the most 
lovable of all his characters, he puts a little more sunshine 
than usual into his narrative, and contrives an ending more in 
accord with our expectation and our sense of justice. 

TJie BlitJicdale Romance (1852) was undoubtedly suggested 
by Hawthorne's experience at Brook Farm, and is the only one 

of his American romances to have a modern setting. 

Perhaps for this reason the heroine, Zenobia, is much 
less symbolical and more real, or human, than most of the 
author's creations.^ The story centers in the desperate struggle 
of this lonely, passionate woman against fate and environment ; 
and the lesson is, in Hawthorne's words, that the whole universe 
is set ''against the woman who swerves one hair's breadth out 
of the beaten track." Though Blithedale is considered weaker 
than the other romances dealing with the same theme, many 
readers are fascinated by it as an indication of the author's 
power, and of his limitations, when he left the region of symbols 
to deal with plain men and women. Another feature of this 
interesting romance is that the author appears, more or less dis- 
guised, in the character of Coverdale, and that his distrust of all 
reformers is shown in the person of HoUings worth the egotist. 
The Marble Fami (i860) is the most popular of all Haw- 
thorne's works at home and abroad. This may possibly be due 

to the fact that the scene is laid in Rome and that 

Marble Faun i r 11 11 

thousands 01 travelers have used the romance as a 
pleasant supplement to their guide books. Donatello, a happy 
young Italian who looks like the marble faun,^ is the hero of the 

* 1 It is said that Hawthorne had in mind an incident in his own family history. One 
of the witches, condemned by an early Hathorne, left a curse upon his house. This 
alleged incident is suggested in the opening chapter. 

2 Critics have detected in the character of Zenobia some suggestions of Margaret 
Fuller, of Brook Farm and The Dial. In his preface Hawthorne admits that he had 
Brook Farm " in his mind " when he wrote TJie Blithedale Romance^ but denies all inten- 
tion of making his book a study of the place or of its characters. 

3 This refers to a famous antique statue of a satyr, in the Roman capitol. 



402 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

story, which centers in his sudden impulsive sin and the conse- 
quent knowledge of evil that it brought into his joyous nature. 
The story is so unusual, and is such a favorite with readers, that 
to criticize it as a work of art becomes a thankless task. Viewed 
frankly, in comparison with the best work of other novelists, it 
will probably be seen that TJie Marble Fatm is merely fanciful 
rather than imaginative ; that it is marred by moralizing, descrip- 
tions, and guide-book matters ; that its characters are unreal, and 
fade at last like shadows ; and that Hilda, the paragon of 
feminine virtue, is interesting only when she stays in her high 
tower with the doves. Such a criticism is largely personal, and 
therefore of small consequence. The point is that the student 
should look at The Marble Faun with his own eyes rather than 
through the rosy spectacles of enthusiastic admirers. 

The Scarlet Letter (1850) was the first and, in the general 
opinion of critics, the most powerful and original of Hawthorne's 
Scarlet romances.^ The theme is again the wages of sin, and 

Letter |-}^g moral lesson is powerfully impressed by the two 

central characters, Hester and Dimmesdale, one of whom has 
confessed the sin and who grows steadily in strength and purity 
of character, while the other lives as a hypocrite and. is tortured 
daily until the tragic climax. Beside the central characters there 
are two others : little Pearl the elf child, the most airy and 
fanciful of Hawthorne's creations ; and Chillingworth, who has 
been called '' the Mephistopheles of this Puritan Faicsty The 
reader will appreciate this characterization after viewing that 
scene (in the chapter entitled '' The Leech and his Patient ") 
where Chillingworth bends over the sleeping minister, opens 
his gown, discovers the secret letter, and turns away : 

" But with what a wild look of wonder, joy and horror ! With what 
a ghastly rapture, as it were, too mighty to be expressed only by the eye 
and features, and therefore bursting forth through the whole ugliness of 
his figure, and making itself even riotously manifest by the extravagant 

1 The introductory chapter, dealing with the customhouse and harshly criticizing 
certain people of Salem, is unnecessary and out of place. The reader will do well to skip 
this chapter and begin with the story. 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 403 

gestures with which he threw up his arms toward the ceiling, and stamped 
his foot upon the floor ! Had a man seen old Roger Chillingworth at that 
moment of his ecstasy, he would have had no need to ask how Satan 
comports himself when a precious human soul is lost to heaven and won 
into his kingdom. 

" But what distinguished the physician's ecstasy from Satan's was the 
trait of wonder in it ! " 

It is impossible to do justice to the power of this book in 
a short criticism. We note here only the originality of Haw- 
thorne's genius, as shown in his new way of handling an old 
theme. He says, in connection with another story, ** The mere 
facts of guilt are of little value except to the gossip and the tip- 
staff ; but how the wounded and wounding soul bear themselves 
after the crime, that is one of the needful lessons of life." Fol- 
lowing his theory he begins this story at the point where another 
writer w^ould think of ending it ; The Scarlet Letter is, therefore, 
not so much a romance in the ordinary sense as a tragic account 
of what follows the last chapter. 

Though The Scarlet Letter is often ranked as the best work 
of American fiction, it is not so well known to foreign readers 
as are many other of our romances which have less power and 
originality. The theme is of universal interest, and is handled 
in a way that might well appeal to readers of any age or nation ; 
"but unfortunately, like most of Hawthorne's work, the story has 
the defect of unreality. The characters are not quite human ; 
they are not so much men and women as well-constructed figures 
to illustrate a moral law, which Hawthorne sums up at the end : 

" Be true ! Be true ! Be true ! Show freely to the world, if not your 
worst, yet some trait whereby the worst may be inferred ! " 

Some may question the theory that to be true is to show the 
worst side of our natures ; others may wonder what kind of social 
revolution would follow its general adoption ; but the point is 
that great romances are not usually built on theories or laws, 
however excellent, but on men and women, however imperfect. 
Hawthorne's genius has produced in The Scarlet Letter a 



404 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

remarkable book, unlike any other of our acquaintance ; but it 
has not made a universal appeal, for. the reason, probably, that 
its characters lack the final touch of reality and humanity. 

General Characteristics. The manner of Hawthorne, always 
a pleasure to his readers, is one of those subtle things that defy 
description. In an effort to explain his own style he once said, 
'' It is the result of a great deal of practice. It is a desire to tell 
the simple truth as honestly and vividly as one can." ^ Simple 
it always is, and quiet and deliberate, but the quality of vividness 
is hardly noticeable. Hawthorne uses few figures, holds to a 
high but uniform level, never hurries his narrative, and makes 
no attempt at rhetorical effect. At rare intervals he displays a 
touch of humor, but of a somber kind in view of the seriousness 
of his subject. He often reminds us of a man telling a story in 
the twilight, who unconsciously lowers his voice, who avoids 
gestures and all extravagance of speech, in order to be in har- 
mony with the stillness, the solemn splendor, the fading light 
and deepening shadows of the exquisite hour. 

In his matter, as in his manner, our novelist is so individual 
that critics have invented the word '' Hawthornesque " to de- 
scribe him. One very noticeable characteristic is his tendency 
toward allegory and symbolism, to which w^e have already 
referred.^ Another is his fondness for dealing in mysterious 
terrors and omens ; and here he is, like Poe, a successor of 
Charles Brockden Brown. The latter, following the fashion of 
his age, invented some dread psychological mysteries ; Poe had 
a morbid interest in spectral horrors ; Hawthorne brooded over 
the terrors of sin and judgment in the manner of his Puritan 
ancestors. Lowell compares Hawthorne with Shakespeare ; 
Richardson likens him to Dante ; other critics find in him 
some resemblance to Spenser ; but to a few, who know our 

1 Quoted by Richardson, Americati Literature, II, 388. 

2 See p. 398. In the preface to " The Threefold Destiny " the author says : " Rather 
than a story of events claiming to be real, it may be considered as an allegory ... to 
which I have endeavored to give a lifelike warmth." The criticism might well be applied 
to the greater part of Hawthorne's work. 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 405 

Colonial literature, he may seem more akin to Wigglesworth 
than to any other writer. He has the same poetic soul, the 
same theme, the same interest in the doom of sin ; but he is 
more artistic in his method, and he makes man his own judge, 
punishing himself in this life instead of awaiting sentence at 
the final judgment. Wigglesworth and Hawthorne, the Colonial 
poet and the modern novelist, both dwell in the same gloomy 
shadow ; but where one sees only the hopelessness and terror 
of doom, the other discerns the bow in the cloud, and his work 
reflects a promise or a hope of better things to come. 

A third characteristic is the strongly moral quality of Haw- 
thorne and of his works. In this he is in accord with practically 
Moral all his American predecessors, and with the general 

Quality moral earnestness of English literature from Caedmon 

to George Eliot. His constant purpose is to show the austere 
beauty of the moral law, and at times he impresses us as one of 
the few writers who combine successfully a strong moral pur- 
pose with a strong artistic sense. At other times we question 
whether Hawthorne is not more concerned for the moral than 
for the story. Thus, he writes in his notebook concerning the 
search for buried treasure : '' On this theme methinks I could 
frame a tale with a deep moral." Another writer would frame 
the tale to be true to life, and let the moral take care of itself. 
In many of the tales, such as ''The Threefold Destiny," the 
moral is too prominent ; and throughout The Marble Fatm 
the author's moralizing detracts from the artistic effect of his 
work, — which ends in a vague, unsatisfactory way,^ because 
Hawthorne was not certain what course the moral law would 
finallv take with Donatello and Miriam. 

A curious personal quality is indicated by this moralizing, 
namely, Hawthorne's struggle with himself when the Puritan, 
in him rebelled at the story-teller. In his notebook he records : 

" ' What is he ? ' murmurs one gray shadow of my forefathers to the 
other. ' A writer of story-books ! What kind of a business in life — what 
mode of glorifying God, or being serviceable to mankind in his day and 



4o6 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

generation — may that be ? Why, the degenerate fellow might as well have 
been a fiddler ! ' Such are the compliments bandied between my great- 
grandsires and myself, across the gulf of time ! " 

Fanciful as the record is, it suggests Hawthorne's frequent 
attitude toward his own art. In his prefaces he is prone to 
apologize, 1 and he often halts his story to explain his motive, or 
to tell us, for example, that he does not know Miriam's secret 
because he overheard only a few fragments of her conversation. 
In a word, the Puritan in him constantly objects to the romancer, 
as if story-telling were a thing to despise. To please the Puritan 
he emphasizes the moral, and to please his conscience he ex- 
plains to the reader that his attitude is only that of a child who 
says, '' Let 's pretend." 

A fourth characteristic implied in the word '' Hawthornesque " 
is the mental gloom, the clouded or defective vision which re- 
Gioomof suited from dwelling in the shadow, from brooding 
Hawthorne ^qq much over sin, from neglecting the elemental 
soundness and hopefulness of human nature. As Emerson said, 
he ** rode his dark horse of the night " too exclusively. Into 
hearts that feared or wept, into souls that bent and groaned 
under the doom of sin, he had a deep insight ; but of hearts 
that were joyous, of manly souls that marched breast forward, 
'' forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth 
unto those things which are before," he had too little knowledge. 
The chief fault in his romances is the lack of happiness ; and 
as the instinct for happiness is one of man's greatest and most 
significant possessions, we conclude that Hawthorne did not see 
or record the whole of life. He saw the darker side steadily 
enough, but the light and hope in which we mostly live, or 
hope to live, is not reflected in his pages.^ 

Remembering this lack of the happy quality of romance 
which humanity desires, the question will be asked, Why then 

1 See, especially, the preface to Twice-Told Tales. 

2 That Hawthorne felt the need of a brighter view of life is frequently indicated. 
Once he wrote to Elizabeth Peabody : " When I write anything that I know or suspect 
is morbid, I feel as if I had told a lie." 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 40/ 

does Hawthorne retain his place as the foremost of American 
romancers ? The answer is, probably, that he knew one feature of 
the human heart, and dealt with it faithfully. In a paragraph of 
one of his tales he reveals unconsciously the secret of all his work : 

" The heart, the heart, — there was the little yet boundless sphere 
wherein existed the original wrong of which the crime and misery of this 
outward world were merely types. Purify that inward sphere, and the many 
shapes of evil which haunt the outward, and which now seem almost our 
only realities, will turn to shadowy phantoms and vanish of their own accord. 
But if we go no deeper than the intellect, and strive with merely that feeble 
instrument to discern and rectify what is wrong, our whole accomplishment 
will be a dream." ^ 

This was the burden of Hawthorne, inherited from his ances- 
tors, — the struggle of the human heart against inherited or 
acquired evil influences. The nobility of his theme and his 
sincerity in dealing with it will be more evident if we compare 
him with certain modern romancers, who go to the ends of the 
earth, to society or the slums, to the northern forests or the 
southern deserts, for their literary material. Hawthorne proved 
once again that the human heart is the only mine of romance, 
and that he who explores it faithfully will find it rich and 
exhaustless as ever. 

Secondary Writers of Fiction 

In comparison with the poetry of the age the fiction is gen- 
erally of secondary importance. Hawthorne is the only novelist 
of unquestionably first rank ; the work of the others suffers from 
two causes : from the war, which discouraged by its terrible 
reality the production of fiction ; and from the changing taste 
oi the age, which seems to have wearied of the old-fashioned 
romances of Cooper and Simms, and to have welcomed stories 
of another kind — stories of the '' Poker Flat " and '' Innocents 
Abroad " variety — not because they were better, but largely be- 
cause they were different. Up to about the year 1865, one could 

1 " Earth's Holocaust," in Mosses from an Old Manse. 



408 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

easily predict the type of novel that would interest the public : 
it would have a background of Colonial or Revolutionary history, 
a leisurely, rambling style, and an abundance of romantic senti- 
ment. Then appeared the story of local color and atmosphere, 
the mining-camp stories of Bret Harte, the crudely humorous 
works of Mark Twain, and the realistic school of fiction. 

John Esten Cooke. Among those whom we may call the old- 
fashioned romancers John Esten Cooke (i 830-1 886) holds an 
honored place. If it be true, as an enthusiastic critic declares, 
that Cooke ''aimed to do for Virginia what Simms had done 
for South Carolina, Cooper for the Indian and frontier life, 
Irving for the quaint old Knickerbocker times, and Hawthorne 
for the weird Puritan life of New England," ^ then we must 
acknowledge that he succeeded admirably in his own field, and 
that his success, though of a less degree, is of the same kind as 
that of his more famous rivals. The courtly cavalier society of the 
South, the brave pageants, the romance and sentiment that our 
imagination associates with the old regime, — all these are better 
reflected in Cooke's pages than in any other novels of the period. 

TJie Virginia Comedians (1854), a highly colored romance 
of the Old Dominion in the days before the Revolution, is prob- 
Cooke's ably the best of Cooke's works. In the same year in 

Romances which it appeared he published two other romances, 
Leather Stocki?ig and Silk, a story of pioneer life in the valley 
of the Shenandoah, and The Yonth of Jefferson, a story of 
college life in Williamsburg, — romances which, if they revealed 
Simms 's faults of hasty workmanship, have still the power to 
conjure up the romance and heroism of days gone by. These 
three novels, the work of a young man of twenty-three, gave 
splendid promise ; but presently the war came, and Cooke's 
energies were wholly and gallantly devoted to the service of his 
native state. When the war ended he took up his pen again, 
but one who reads his numerous later romances must miss some- 
thing of the joyous vigor of his first work. Among his later 

1 Quoted in Richardson, American Literature, II, 402. 



THE SECOND NATIONx\L PERIOD 409 

stories, dealing mostly with the war, the most notable is Surrey 
of Eagle s Nest (1886), a stirring historical romance introducing 
the events in which he had taken a personal part and the heroes 
with whom he had served in the field. 

Two other works of Cooke, in which he carries out his first 
purpose, are My Lady PokaJiontas and Stories of the Old Do- 
mhiion, — a series of semihistorical and wholly romantic sketches 
of Colonial life in Virginia. In their pictures of early American 
society and manners these sketches compare favorably with 
Kennedy's Szuallow Barn, with Simms's KatJierine Walton, 
and with Cooper's Satanstoe ; but unfortunately Cooke had too 
little skill in constructing a plot or in the portrayal of character. 
His typical romance is a series of historical or social pictures 
bound together by a slender thread of narrative. One must miss 
in his work the absorbing plot and rugged characters which lend 
interest to the best works of Cooper, and which make us over- 
look his weakness of style in the vigor of his story. After read- 
ing TJie Virgmia Comedians and Sicrrey of Eagle' s Nest the 
student may prefer to postpone Cooke's other romances in order 
to make acquaintance with his more serious works. Among the 
latter are the lives of Lee and of '' Stonewall " Jackson, two 
biographies filled with vivid details from the author's personal 
experiences ; and Virginia : A History of the People, an excel- 
lent narrative with an atmosphere of romance, which is one of 
the best thus far contributed to the '' Commonwealths " series 
of American histories. 

Harriet Beecher Stowe. To those who have read Ujicle Tom's 
Cabin and who think of its gifted author, Harriet Beecher Stowe 
(181 1-1896), as a woman of one book, it is surprising to learn 
that she was a diligent writer of fiction for the better part of 
half a century. In the standard edition of her works there are 
sixteen volumes, and among them one finds three or four, now 
almost forgotten, which seem from a literary viewpoint decidedly 
superior to the book that the world has hailed as a masterpiece. 
For instance, Oldtown Folks (1869), a study of Yankee life 



4IO 



AMERICAN LITERATURE 



'^ ■> 



and character at the beginning of the nineteenth century, is cer- 
tainly more artistic, and perhaps (one might say it confidently if 
the facts were not apparently against him) of more, enduring 

interest than is the famous story 
of slavery. Among other nota- 
ble works of Mrs. Stowe we 
should at least mention the 
Ministers Wooing {I'^^c)), Pearl 
of Orrs Island (1862), and 
especially the Fireside Stories 
(1871) as told by the inimitable 
Sam Lawson. 

All these works, though well 
written and displaying some- 
thing akin to the genius of a 
novelist, seem almost insignifi- 
cant in view of the popular 
triumph of Uncle Toms Cabin 
(1852), a triumph which began 
soon after the story appeared in 
an obscure antislavery news- 
paper, and which continued with 
little sign of abatement for more than fifty years. In a keen 
search for the underlying cause of its hold upon the popular 
imagination a modern critic writes : 

" When Uncle Tout's Cabin first appeared it was believed to be a cam- 
paign document which would not survive the circumstances that called it 
forth. A little later its popularity was explained as due to its historical 
importance. The dramatization was taken still less seriously. Professor 
Wendell wrote in his Litera?'y Histo?y of A?nerka : ' To this day drama- 
tized versions of it are said to be popular in this country.' If the current 
story is true, the week in which his book appeared saw the bill-boards near- 
est Harvard College Yard covered with announcements of the despised play. 
A year or two later a traveller whose attention had been quickened by this 
incident saw similar posters opposite the Martyrs' Monument at Oxford, 
and found, on his first stroll in Rome, the familiar faces of Uncle Tom and 
litde Eva looking down at him from a bill-board near the Coliseum. Surely, 




HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 41 1 

the Englishman and Italian who in the twentieth century attend perform- 
ances of " Uncle Tom's Cabin " do not do so on account of any interest in 
American social history. The play is of course the most intense melodrama, 
and the tale on which it is founded is melodramatic. But melodramas ordi- 
narily come and go, and the melodrama that holds its own in divers parts 
of the world for sixty years can hardly be ignored in the literary history of 
the country that produced it." ^ 

In view of all that has been written upon the subject of Uftcle 
Toms Cabin the historian can only advise the student to read 
, the book, and then to explain, if he can, its almost 
Uncle Tom's universal appeal. Regarded as a piece of artistic lit- 
* ^^ erature, it is faulty to a degree. The style is often 

crude, and at times commonplace ; the plot suggests accident 
rather than design ; the pathcs is a little forced ; the dialogue 
and humor are of the conventional kind. It is probable also that 
Mrs. Stowe knew little of siav^ery as it actually existed in the 
South, and that her general picture of the system is sensational 
and misleading ; but all that is now of little consequence. The 
world, which has well-nigh forgotten slavery, still reads the book 
with pleasure, and probably vould so read it if it pictured a suffer- 
ing Turk or Eskimo instead of a negro slave. For it is essentially 
a human book, dealing with elemental human nature. Though 
it began as an antislavery tract, it differed from a thousand 
others of its kind in that it created live characters, that it pos- 
sessed dramatic intensity, moral earaestness, intense emotional- 
ism and, above all, human interest. 

A critical reader, meeting Uncle Toms Cabin for the first 
time and knowing nothing of its history, might confidently say 
thct it was not a great book ; but we are dealing with facts, not 
theories, and among the noteworthy facts concerning the book 
are these : that it stirred a great nation to its depths and hurried 
on a great war ; that it made an imperative moral problem of a 
matter that had long been considered in its political or economic 
aspects ; that it has been translated into some forty languages,. 

1 Professor W iUiam B. Cairns, "^ Uncle Tom's Cabin and its Author," in The Dial, 191 1. 



412 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

and has been read and enjoyed the world over ; that, after 
reading it, many American mothers offered their sons as a sacri- 
fice in the fearful conflict that followed, while other mothers, as 
far off as distant Siam, freed their slaves and began a campaign 
of emancipation. In short, Uncle Tom s Cabin touched the heart 
of the whole world, which has ever since felt more compassion 
for suffering humanity. And a book which after more than half 
a century retains, with all its original faults, its original power 
to touch the human heart is one that the world must reckon 
among its literary treasures. 

Bret Harte. If Cooke be, as is often alleged, the last romancer 
of the old school, Francis Bret Harte (i 839-1902) is undoubt- 
edly the originator of the new.^ When his '* Luck of Roaring 
Camp " and other stories of the California gold fields appeared 
(1868) in The Overland Monthly, he was immediately acclaimed, 
at home and abroad, as the foremost American novelist, as the 
founder of a new school which should reflect American life as 
it is, rather than as it has been represented to be in the pages 
of the old romance. That was long ago, when the East knew 
even less of the real West than it now knows of the real Alaska, 

— which is at present so thoroughly and turgidly misrepresented 
in the pages of alleged realistic novels. People who knew the 
real California immediately protested against Harte's stories as 
sensational, but all such protests were unavailing. California 
was then a new land, an Eldorado, and in such a place, if only 
it be far enough away, all things are possible to the romancer 
and to his delighted readers. Harte's first stories were as new 
as the land, and different from anything that had ever appeared 
in fiction ; they were also vigorous and interesting, and the sur- 
prised young author became the hero of a new type of fiction, 

— the short story of local color and atmosphere, which has 
ever since retained an immense popularity. 

1 The larger part of Harte's work belongs chronologically to the present age. His 
most characteristic work appeared, however, before 1876. Since then his work has been 
of the same kind as his first stories, and generally of inferior quality. 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 413 

Harte's life story affords an interesting commentary upon his 
literary work. As a boy, poor and unknown, he had followed 
Harte's the Argonauts to California, soon after the discovery 

Discovery Qf gQ\(^ [^ '^g^ There he tried all kinds of jobs, as 
express messenger, teacher, prospector, journalist, editor. What- 
ever his work, he was always surrounded by picturesque charac- 
ters, by red-shirted miners, buckskin-clad scouts. Chinamen, 
Mexicans, Indians, nameless outcasts and adventurers, all ex- 
cited by the prospect of sudden wealth, and all struggling like 
ants against a mighty background of canyon and mountain, of 
rushing river and silent forest. Suddenly it occurred to him to 
transfer this picturesque life to literature, and with his first 
attempt fame and fortune came to him as instantly as ever it 
came to a miner who '' struck it rich " in vein or pocket of 
virgin gold. Excited by his great discovery he came East in a 
kind of triumphal procession ; he lectured and wrote of literary 
matters with an amateur's confidence and enthusiasm ; he re- 
jected flattering offers of permanent positions with the maga- 
zines, and finally accepted the political office of American 
consul. Then he hurried abroad, where he was received as a 
literary lion, and where he spent the last fifteen years of his 
life. He wrote meanwhile without ceasing ; but the farther he 
removed from California the dimmer became his impressions, 
and his later work is as an echo, growing fainter and fainter, of 
his first overwhelming success. 

There are thirty volumes of Harte's prose and a single volume 
of his verses. Of the latter, the humor and sentiment of a few 
His Poems pocms, such as '' Plain Language from Truthful 
and stories james " ("The Heathen Chinee"), "Dickens in 
Camp " and " Society upon the Stanislaus " are still deservedly 
popular. Of all his prose works, probably the best are his first 
three stories, "The Luck of Roaring Camp," "The Outcasts 
of Poker Flat," and " Tennessee's Partner." If we add to this 
short list " Miggles " and " How Santa Claus came to Simpson's 
Bar," we shall have the full measure of Harte's talent; for 



414 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

practically all his stories repeat the same scenes, the same char- 
acters, and the same picturesque surroundings. His aim was to 
picture the crude life of the mining camp ; his hero was gener- 
ally a rough character, often an outcast ; his evident motive 
was to prove the '' soul of goodness in things evil," to show that 
virtue is often concealed under the most unpromising exterior, 
and that even the abandoned or vicious character needs only 
the right opportunity to show his manhood. In his mingling of 
pathos, humor and sentimentality, and in his hovering on the 
borderland of the grotesque, Harte has frequent suggestions of 
Dickens, who was probably his literary master ; but his genius 
is, on the whole, strongly original, and even in his most exag- 
gerated characters one recognizes elements that square with 
human nature and with the facts of human experience. 

The fame of Bret Harte has waned almost as rapidly as it 
grew ; but though his work is almost neglected by the present 
His Place generation, he has yet an important place in the his- 
in Fiction ^^^ q£ American fiction. One should note, first, his 
artistic aim : to portray men and the scenes of a primitive coun- 
try as he saw them ; to make his picture (however highly colored 
it might be) impersonal and impartial, letting whatever moral 
might attach to the matter speak for itself. His characters, 
whether good or bad, never pose, and there is a certain epic 
strength even in his sorriest heroes. Again, Harte is one of the 
most notable forerunners of the modern short story. That stor)' 
had been developed by Irving, Poe and Hawthorne ; but Irving's 
story has a more or less legendary element, Poe's are morbidly 
unreal, and Hawthorne's largely symbolical, while Harte's have 
always a touch of present reality. Taken all together, his stories 
are not a profound study of life but rather a series of photographs, 
or flashlights, which might have been taken to illustrate certain 
dramatic situations in human experience. 

Finally, Harte's place in fiction depends largely upon the 
fact that, like Irving, he was a discoverer of literary material 
in unexpected places. He discovered, or rather rediscovered, 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 415 

the humor which seems inseparable from American Ufe when- 
ever two grades of society, the primitive and the cultured, meet 
on the advancing American frontier.^ He rediscovered also, in 
a new field, the fascinating literary material of pioneer life 
which inspired TJie Oregon Trail and the splendid histories of 
Parkman no less than the Leatherstocking stories of Cooper, 
and which makes the romance of the West as interesting as 
was ever the romance of the Scottish border. 

Typical Story-Tellers. During this period there were several 
other writers of popular fiction ; such, for instance, as Theodore 
Winthrop, with \v\% John Brent (1862), "an interesting Western 
romance interwoven with personal experiences of a time when 
the West was still an unknown region ; Edward Eggleston, 
whose Hoosier Schoolmaster, Roxy, and other tales of pioneer 
experiences are of permanent value and interest ; Fitz-James 
O'Brien, whose brilliant short stories are strongly suggestive of 
Poe ; Marion Harland, with her well-written historical tales of 
Southern life ; John T. Trowbridge, the prolific writer of whole- 
some stories for boys;^ and Louisa M. Alcott, whose Little 
Women, Jo's Boys, An Old-Fashioned Girl, and other tales, 
are among the best stories for young people that America has 
yet produced. Nor must w^e forget such popular favorites as 
Edward P. Roe, who produced some sentimental romances before 
1876, and who instantly secured a hold on the reading public 
which is comparable to that of Crawford and other romancers of 
our own day. Some of these writers may possibly deser\^e, or 
attain, a larger fame than certain others to whom we have given 
larger space, but of that only the future can speak. We have 
attempted here, not a survey of all the minor novelists of the 

1 This rough humor appears, not simply in Mark Twain's stories, but in the romances 
of Simms and Cooper, in Longstreet's Georgia Scenes (1836), in Baldwin's Flush Times 
of Alabama (1853), and in practically all stories of life "Beyond the Mississippi." See 
Smith, The American Short Stojy (1912), p. 32. 

2 Trowbridge is generally known by his Ciidjd's Cave, the Jack Hazard series, the 
Start in Life series, etc. An interesting work for the student of literature is My Own 
Story (1903), which contains some valuable material on American life and letters in the 
middle of the past century. 



4i6 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

age, but rather a sketch of certain tendencies and types at a 
time when the popularity of the old-fashioned romance was 
threatened by the first appearance of realism in American fiction. 



V. THE PROSE (NONFICTION) WRITERS 
Henry David Thoreau (i 8 17-1862) 

Thoreau is one of the writers who have been made obscure 
rather than familiar bv what has been written about them. The 
memoirs of Emerson or Channing, for example, lay too much 
emphasis on Thoreau's peculiarities ; Lowell's brilliant essay 
is lacking in sympathy and, consequently, in understanding ; 
and Sanborn's official biography of Thoreau tends to distract 
attention from the man to the village of Concord or to the 
affairs of the transcendentalists. 

All these records seem of small account in comparison with 
the remarkable self-revelation which Thoreau has left us in his 
own writings. Therefore read first Thoreau ; live with him in 
Walden ; go afield with him in the Exatrsions ; leave behind 
you the cumbersome baggage of civilization and view humanity, 
as he viewed it, in its elemental simplicity. Then you may dis- 
cover that TfibreaU was a man, original and sincere, and that 
his life was as one of those hidden, spring-fed '' logans " or rivu- 
lets that never seem to join but rather to retreat to unknown 
distances from the hurrying river of our national existence. In 
such a logan, deep and still, where the trout hide and the deer 
come to drink, the canoe-man floats at ease in quiet water, 
forgetting the rush of the outer current, and repeating softly 

to himself : 

Lean on your oars and rest awhile — 

This is the sweetest part of the stream ; 
Shadowy branches over the aisle 

Lure us to Hnger, list and dream. ^ 

1 Charles H. Crandall, " Lean on your Oars," in Songs from Sky Meadows (1909). 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 41/ 

Thoreau is generally studied as part of the transcendental 
movement and as a follower of Emerson, but one may doubt 
the value of such classification. He had little to do with the 
transcendentalists and held aloof from all the societies which 
tried to reform America in the middle of the past century. 
Though he was influenced in his early years by Emerson, he 
soon abandoned all tutelage to blaze his own trail through life, 
ignoring the standards which contented other men and seeking 
for himself a larger independence or a more ample horizon. 
As Emerson says : 

" He has muscles, and ventures on and performs feats which I am forced 
to decline. ... I find [in Thoreau] the same thoughts, the same spirit that 
is in me, but he takes a step beyond, and illustrates by excellent images that 
which I should have conveyed in sleepy generalizations." 

In comparing him with other individualists of his age, we may 
find that he was always practical where they were busy wdth 
theories, and steadily consistent where they were blown about 
by the winds of every new doctrine. In short, Thoreau's oddity 
has received perhaps too much attention, to the neglect of his 
better qualities, and for this reason the suggestion is made to 
the beginner to make the acquaintance of the man himself rather 
than of his critics or biographers. 

Life. It is a modest task to record the few significant facts of 
Thoreau's simple life. He was bom (18 17) in Concord, Mass., and 
spent practically his entire hfe in the same village. He was educated 
at the local academy and at Harvard, from which he graduated with 
a good reading knowledge of the classics; but even in these early 
years he was strongly disinclined to learn from either books or men, 
4eclaring that they had only scraps of second-hand knowledge to offer 
him. He seemed to be always thirsty for first-hand experiences, and 
during his school days found more satisfaction in roaming over the 
face of the country than in the discipline of the classroom. Later he be- 
came in turn teacher, lecturer, surveyor, carpenter, tutor for Emerson's 
children, and pencil-maker, following in the last-named occupation the 
trade of his father. 



4i8 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Whatever task Thoreau attempted was always well done, but he 
refused to continue in any work after he had mastered the way of it. 
Theory of In this he was consistent with his own theory that a man 
^^^® should not repeat himself ; that repetition was dwarfing 

and unnecessary in a world of infinite possibilities. He w^as deter- 
mined to live simply, to avoid luxury and extravagance, which he 
called " the beginnings of evil " ; and finding that the wages gained 
by six weeks of manual labor w^ould support him for a year, he spent 
the greater part of his time in reading, writing, and in the observation 
of nature. His extraordinary way of living was made easier by the 
fact that his taste was ascetic, and that he had no wife or family de- 
pendent upon him. Though he lived much alone, he was by no means 
a misanthrope ; and he was kept from the " queering " effect of too 
much solitude by having a home, in which he was always the dutiful 
son and brother. Though Thoreau is often represented as morose 
and unsocial, all those who knew him well bear witness to the unvar)'- 
ing sympathy and loyalty of his friendship. 

In 1854 Thoreau made the experiment by which he is now gen- 
erally remembered. He built a little hut in the woods by Walden 
Imprison- Pond and camped there close to nature for more than 
ment two years, doing all his own work and living in the ut- 

most simplicity and cheerfulness. To the same period belongs another 
notable experience, his imprisonment in Concord jail for defying the 
majesty of government in the form of a tax bill. His town tax he 
paid willingly, since it was used to build roads and maintain schools ; 
but the poll tax he rejected on the ground that it supported a govern- 
ment which was then waging an unjust war against Mexico in the in- 
terest of slavery. We cannot here examine the queer quality of such 
patriotism as is involved in Thoreau's remark (which is commended 
by Tolstoy) that " in a government which supports injustice the proper 
place for a just man is in jail." We note only the peculiar point of 
view in Thoreau's account of his imprisonment : 

"... As I stood considering the walls of solid stone, two or three feet 
thick, the door of wood and iron, a foot thick, and the iron grating which 
strained the light, I could not help being struck with the foolishness of 
that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and 
bones, to be locked up. I wondered that it should have concluded at length 
that this was the best use to put me to, and had never thought to avail it- 
self of my services in any way. I saw that if there was a stone wall between 
me and my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to climb or break 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 419 

through before they could get to be as free as I was. I did not for a mo- 
ment feel confined, and the walls seemed a great waste of stone and mor- 
tar. I felt as if I alone of all my townsmen had paid my tax. They plainly 
did not know how to treat me, but behaved like persons who are under- 
bred. In every threat and in every compliment there was a blunder, for 
they thought that my chief desire was to stand on the other side of that 
stone wall. I could not but smile to see how industriously they locked the 
door on my meditations, which followed them out again without let or hin- 
drance, and they were really all that was dangerous. As they could not 
reach me, they had resolved to punish my body ; just as boys, if they can- 
not come at any person at whom they have a grudge, will abuse his dog." 

Evidently there is something of both Cavaher and Puritan in Thoreau. 
He reminds us here not only of Bunyan, writing an immortal work 
in Bedford jail, but of that very different genius, Lovelace, who wrote : 

Stone walls do not a prison make. 

Nor iron bars a cage ; 
Minds innocent and quiet take 

That for a hermitage. 



*&^ 



It was during his hermitage in the woods that Thoreau observed 
nature most closely, and prepared the only two books which were 
pubhshed during his lifetime. He had gone to Walden to face the 
fundamental facts of life ; when he had learned all he could from 
such an experiment, he came cheerfully back to civilization. His con- 
stant exposure to the weather at all seasons developed in him the 
latent seeds of consumption, and he died after a heroic struggle in 
1862, being then only forty-four years old. 

Running through Thoreau's entire life there is a strain of elemen- 
tal wildness, which most biographers note as his most characteristic 
Love of quality. He was of mixed French and New England de- 

the Wild scent, and the same love of the wild which sent so many 
French voyageurs through the unmapped w^astes of the North reas- 
serted itself in this scholarly recluse. As he said himself, there was 
" a yearning towards all wildness " in his nature. It was this wild- 
ness which led him to live alone, to be abroad at all hours making in- 
timate acquaintance with every bird and beast and plant in the woods 
about Walden Pond. For Indians he had always a strange sympathy. 
The very thought of these rovers of the wilderness filled him with 
rapture, or with envy at their superior knowledge ; and it was largely 
his desire to know how primitive men lived that led him three times 



420 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

to the Maine woods. Like most lovers of the wild, Thoreau was on 
an endless quest, searching for what he could not even name. 

Once, deep in the wilderness, we met an old man who had spent his 
life beyond the frontier and who was always " moving on." When he 
left an ideal spot, abandoning his camp and his trap lines, we asked 
him, " Why do you move ? What better thing than you have are 
you looking for ? " And with eyes fixed on the dying embers of his 
last camp fire, the old man answered, " I am looking for the boy I 
lost somewhere, long ago." He was looking for himself, as Thoreau 
always was, and the trails of both men had no ending.^ 

If Thoreau was half Indian, as his biographers declare, the other 
half of his nature points to the ancient Greek. Side by side with his 
Indian or notes on arrowheads or woodchucks are rare passages of 
Greek? literary criticism or appreciation, which speak unmistak- 

ably of the classical scholar. That he loved to roam by night, or spend 
hours with turtles or kittens, is more or less characteristic of all simple 
men of the woods ; but that he also loved Greek is a thing to make 
us wonder, Emerson, who knew Thoreau's ability and deplored his 
lack of ambition, declared that he might be "an engineer for the 
nation instead of captain of a huckleberry party." 

In the same regretful spirit that inspired Emerson's criticism many 
of Thoreau's readers, meeting a penetrating criticism of life or litera- 
ture, have exclaimed, " What a pity that such powers should be wasted, 
that such a life should end in failure ! " ^ Yet it is seldom given a 
man to know, as surely as Thoreau did, his errand in life ; and failure 
and success cannot outwardly be measured. There is a vital quality in 
Thoreau which suggests the grain of wheat, of which it is written, that 
except it die it abideth alone, but if it die it bringeth forth much fruit. 
The works that were ignored in Thoreau's lifetime are now a source 
of inspiration to men and women whose numbers increase steadily, 
while books and authors that were then famous have long since been 
forgotten. For the rest, we record Thoreau's owm view of the matter : 

" If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and 
life emits a fragrance, like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, — is more elas- 
tic, starry and immortal, — that is your success." 

1 Thoreau evidently recognized the sweet hopelessness of his wanderings and made 
a parable of it. See his story of the horse and the turtledove, in Waldeft. 

2 Our most original author was little known to his own generation. His first book, 
A Week on the Concord and Merr'nnac Rivers, could not be sold, and nearly the entire 
edition was stored in the garret. His second book, IVa/den, found only a few readers. 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 421 

Thoreau^s Works. The basis of all Thoreau's published 
works is the Journal which he kept for more than twenty-five 
years, and many readers find this unstudied record more inter- 
esting than any of the books which have been compiled from 
its pages. Thoreau had this Journal before him when he pre- 
pared y^ Week oil the Coiicord and Mefriniac Rivers (1849) ^'^d 
Walden (1854) ; and from its thirty closely written volumes 
Emerson and other editors produced Excursions, The Maiiie 
Woods, Cape Cod, A Yafikee in Canada, Early Spring in Mas- 
sachusetts, Summer, Winter, Anttimn, and Miscellanies. 

To the general reader the most interesting of these works is 

Walden, which records the thought and observation of Thoreau 

duriner the first year of his hermitas^e. Before read- 

Walden o y o 

ing this book it might be well to banish the preva- 
lent opinion that the author hated society, that he withdrew to 
Walden Pond with the idea of escaping humanity and all human 
institutions. He w^as living in an age of political and social agi- 
tation, when a score of zealous societies were bent on reforming 
the world. He maintained that each of these societies, however 
small, contained all the discordant elements of society in gen- 
eral ; that the only way to reform the world was to begin with 
the individual ; and he had enough of the Puritan in him to 
maintain that the first individual to be reformed was Henry 
Thoreau. Aside from his love of the wild, his motive in with- 
drawing from the world may best be stated in his own words : 

" I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only 
the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, 
and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived, I did not wish 
ft) live what was not life, living is so dear ; nor did I wish to practise res- 
ignation unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out 
all the marrow of life ; to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout 
all that was not life ; to cut a broad swath and shave close ; to drive life 
into a corner and reduce it to its lowest terms, and if it proved to be mean, 
why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its mean- 
ness to the world ; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience and be 
able to give a true account of it in my next excursion." 



422 



AMERICAN LITERATURE 



With this explanation of Thoreau's motive, we leave the 
reader with Walden, — which seems to us one of the few books 
in American literature that repay reading over and over again 
with the passing years. It has many faults, but chiefly these 
two : that its lack of sympathy leads to misunderstanding of 
both the joy and the sorrow of society ; and that its criticisms 
are generally destructive rather than helpful. These faults are 
soon forgiven, however, by one who discovers the large virtues 
of Walde7i, — its originality and independence, its forceful 
English, its thought-provoking epigrams, its rare sympathy with 

the innocent life of the 
fields, its illuminating and 
hopeful discovery that '' to 
maintain one's self on this 
earth is not a hardship but 
a pastime, if one will live 
simply and wisely." 

The reader's enjoyment 
of other works of Thoreau 
will depend entirely on his 
own literary taste. There 
are some very suggestive 
essays in the Exairsiojis, 
and a lover of the open 
will delight in Early Spring and the other seasons in their suc- 
cession. For those who woiild know the author more intimately, 
Thoreau's Journal and Letters are recommended ; but those who 
read Letters to Various Persons (1865), a book which seems 
unwisely edited, should read also the Familiar Letters (1894), 
which show a more human and lovable side of the author's nature. 
The Quality of Thoreau. The style of Thoreau is so stimu- 
lating to one reader and so irritating to another that one should 
be waiy of giving it either praise or blame. We can dwell on 
the author's moralizing, his occasional attempts at fine writing, 
his tendency to nurse his whims and to intrude himself in the 




thoreau's hut and furniture on 
• the shore of walden pond 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 423 

landscape ; or we can forget all this in the vigor, the freshness, 
the epigrammatic quality which makes Thoreau the most quotable 
of American writers. On one page he charms us with an ex- 
quisite appreciation of nature ; on the next he takes some com- 
mon work of man, lets his imagination play with it, and makes 
beautiful that which we had always thought commonplace and 
uninteresting. He walks under a telegraph line, and lo ! that 
useful but ugly thing becomes a wind harp, and the humming 
wood is '' preserved in music," like the shell of a violin ; or he 
looks at a bean patch, and that which suggests to the ordinary 
observer a haunting memory of hoe and backache becomes 
instantly a field of poetry. 

Another quality of Thoreau's style is its unexpectedness. 
To go with him is to be surprised at every turn, here by a 
startling paradox, there by a topsy-turvy humor, which generally 
consists of turning some old word of wisdom inside out for 
our inspection. All this, though written with painstaking care, 
seems to be done without effort. Thoreau always puts life be- 
fore literature (which is only life reflected at second hand) and 
maintains that the simpler a man is in his thought the stronger 
will be his unconscious expression : 

" As for style of writing, if one has anything to say, it drops from him 
simply and directly, as a stone falls to the ground. There are no two^ways 
about it, but down it comes, and he may stick in the points and stops wher- 
ever he can get a chance. New ideas come into this world somewhat like 
falling meteors, with a flash and an explosion, and perhaps somebody's 
castle roof perforated. To try to polish the stone in its descent, to give it 
a peculiar turn and make it whistle a tune perchance, would be of no use, 
if it were possible. Your polished stuff turns out not to be meteoric, but of 
this earth." 

The center of Thoreau's teaching (if indeed it have any 
center or circumference) is found in the word '* individualism." 
Individ- *' Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes 
uahsm ^ majority of one already ; he who wants help wants 

everything," — in these and a hundred other terse, self-centered 
expressions we recognize the man who declared that, after 



424 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

keeping his ears open for thirty years, he had yet to hear the 
first word of valuable advice from his elders. So far he is like 
Emerson and others of the transcendental school ; but unlike 
them, he has no theory or system ; he preaches no new gospel ; 
he recognizes no literary or intellectual masters : 

" The wisest man preaches no doctrines ; he has no scheme ; he sees 
no rafter, not even a cobweb against the heavens, — it is clear sky." 

His habit is to look at church and state, at labor and society 
with frank, unbelieving eyes ; to deny their authority or ques- 
tion their usefulness ; to commend occasionally what good he 
finds in them, but more frequently to show how vain are most 
of our social customs in view of the fundamental realities of 
God and the individual soul. Living in an age of political and 
social reforms, he asserts calmly : 

" The fate of the country does not depend on what kind of paper you 
drop into the ballot box once a year, but on what kind of man you drop 
from your chamber into the street every morning." 

If we compare the individualism of Thoreau with that, of 
Emerson, we shall find more of contrast than of resemblance 
Thoreau and in the two men. Thoreau lives the doctrine which 
Emerson Emerson preaches in '' The American Scholar.'" 
His thought is more vigorous, more original, more practical 
than that of ''the sage of Concord," though the latter is incom- 
parably the greater writer. Emerson, as we have noted, is for- 
ever quoting and is largely influenced by ancient writers ; 
Thoreau, though he has a better knowledge of the classics and 
is more widely read in oriental literature than is Emerson, uses 
comparatively few quotations, and we are seldom able to trace 
his ideas to any ancient source. He thinks his own thoughts, 
looks at the world from his own eyes, and wakes every morning 
open-minded for a new experience. 

Again, in their reflections of the outdoor world the difference 
between the two men is striking. Emerson is the poet, the 
rhapsodist of nature ; but he has little definite knowledge of 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 425 

his subject. Thoreau is at times quite as poetical as Emerson, 
but his knowledge of nature is immense and accurate. Indeed, 
it is as a nature writer, who sees clearly and who gives us the 
anima of an animal rather than its skin and bones, that Thoreau 
will be longest remembered.^ He is first a naturalist, who 
becomes poetical in expressing the truth which he discovers 
in nature, while Emerson looks at nature with dreamy eyes be- 
cause he is first a poet. In a word, Thoreau has his feet solidly 
on the earth, while Emerson is gloriously afloat in the ether. 
He has a definite, a practical quality which Emerson lacks ; he 
furnishes a foundation for what in Emerson is ideal or merely 
theoretical. As he says of castles in the air, ''That is where 
they should be ; now put foundations under them." 

That two such radically different men, each positive and 
uncompromising, should have been lifelong friends, without 
a shadow of misunderstanding between them, is one of the 
happy incidents of our literary history. It was Emerson who 
wrote this generous appreciation of Thoreau 's life and work : 

" A truth-speaker he, capable of the most deep and strict conversation ; 
a physician to the wounds of any soul ; a friend, knowing not only the 
secret of friendship, but almost worshipped by those few persons who re- 
sorted to him as their confessor and prophet, and knew the deep value of 
his mind and great heart. His soul was made for the noblest society ; he 
had in a short life exhausted the capabilities of this world ; wherever there 
is knowledge, wherever there is virtue, wherever there is beauty, he will 
find a home." 

The Historians Motley and Parkman 

Closely associated in our minds w-ith Bancroft and Prescott, 
whom we have considered all too briefly in the preceding chap- 
ter, are two other historians who have won a secure place in the 

1 Thoreau says, " I think the most important requisite in describing an animal is to 
be sure that you give its character and spirit, for in that you have, without error, the 
sum and effect of all its parts known and unknown. You must tell what it is to man. 
Surely the most important part of an animal is its anima, its vital spirit, on which is based 
its character and all the particulars by which it most concerns us. Yet most scientific 
books which treat of animals leave this out altogether, and what they describe are, as it 
were, phenomena of dead matter." 



426 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

history of American literature. These are Motley and Parkman, 
whose works are read not simply for instruction but more largely 
for enjoyment, — to share in Motley's vivid pages the epic strug- 
gle of a nation, or to follow with Parkman the trail of Indian 
or voyageur in preparation for that mighty conflict which secured 
an empire to England and the great West to our own country. 
Each writer tells a splendid story and tells it in a splendid way ; 
but Parkman is, to American readers at least, of more personal 
and enduring interest. 

John Lothrop Motley (1814-1877). This historian began his 
literary career with two novels, one of which. Merry Moimt 
(1849), a romance of Colonial life in Massachusetts, showed 
considerable promise. It revealed also that power of realistic 
description and that fondness for historical detail which later 
characterized his masterpiece. In the following year he became 
absorbed in the story of the Dutch struggle for liberty, and 
from that time on he was a devoted man. He did not have to 
select a subject, he tells us ; ^ his subject selected him, forced 
itself upon him in an overwhelming impulse, and banished from 
his mind all inclination to consider any other. Then followed 
his plan, and a preparation such as is rarely given to any but 
the greatest of histories. 

The breadth of Motley's plan is indicated by the fact that 
his field covered a large part of Europe at a time of tremen- 
His Plan and dous political and religious agitation, and by his 
Preparation general title, which was ''The Eighty Years' War 
for Liberty." The work was to begin at a time (1555) when 
Charles V, weary of perpetual wars in a dozen of his realms, 
resigned Spain and the Netherlands to his son Philip ; it was 
to trace the epic struggle of Holland, the history of the United 
Netherlands, and bring something like historic order out of that 
chaos of fighting states and nations known as the Thirty Years' 
War, which ended with the peace of Westphalia in 1648. In 
preparation for this mighty work Motley spent long years in a 

1 See his letter, quoted in Holmes, Memoir of Motley^ pp. 63-65. 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 427 

patient search of European archives, and as his work was largely 
a history of England, Spain and the German states, as well as 
of Holland, he employed expert copyists in all these countries 
for the purpose of obtaining duplicates of all important state 
papers. As a result of all this scholarly preparation there is an im- 
pression of exactness, almost of finality, in a large part of his work. 
Though his record be, as a learned critic says,^ '' as interesting 
as fiction, as eloquent as the best orator}^," it is nevertheless a 
faithful record of men and events, as accurate in the main as the 
industry and scholarship of one man could possibly make it. 

The first fruits of Motley's genius appeared in three stirring 
volumes called The Rise of the Diitch Republic (1856). With 
Motley's the exception of Prescott's fascinating work (which 
Works j^^g hardly the same scholarly rank)^ no such glowing 

historical record had ever graced our American letters, and it 
is doubtful if its superior can be found in any language. After 
an interval of several years appeared four more volumes, TJie 
History of the United Netherlands (i 860-1 868), in which the 
gallant story was continued in a way to delight Motley's readers 
at home and abroad. This part of the work was on a vast scale ; 
for, as the author wrote, he was dealing with a world-wide con- 
flict which followed the death of William the Silent, and in 
which England and the leading continental states w^ere all more 
or less involved. His record is, therefore, as a panorama of 
European history during the glorious Elizabethan age. 

Another period of six years passed, years of enormous labor, 
before Motley's story was continued in the Life and Death of 
John of Barneveld (1874). This work, which, in addition to the 
dramatic career of a famous personage, sketches the underlying 
causes of one of the world's greatest wars, was well character- 
ized by Holmes as the interlude between the second and third 

1 Richardson, American Literature^ I, 506. 

^ In Prescott's wonderful stories of the conquest of Mexico and Peru, and even in his 
history of Philip the Second, one finds a frequent note of romance and of unreality. 
As John Fiske has pointed out, this is due largely to the fact that Prescott was obliged 
to depend on Spanish authorities, who leave much to be desired in the way of accuracy. 



428 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

acts of a stupendous drama. For the author intended to close 
his record with a history of the Thirty Years' War ; but death 
intervened, and the story as planned by Motley's genius must 
forever remain unfinished. 

The Quality of Motley. To many readers, who go to Motley 
as to a historical romance, one of the charms of his work is 
that he throws himself heart and soul into his narrative ; that 
he is not a dispassionate observer of men and events, but one 
whose sympathies are all on the side of the small hero strug- 
gling in the grasp of a despot. One cannot expect in such a 
writer the judicial attitude, the calmness of speech and reason- 
ing which characterize the professional historian, — who must 
not take sides ; who must explain every character, whether hero 
or tyrant, by the inner motive or purpose which actuated him ; 
and who must depict a Philip or a despotic Duke of Alva with 
the same fidelity, the same impersonal judgment, that he uses 
in his picture of an Elizabeth or of a William the Silent. 

Motley was not that kind of writer. He was intensely Amer- 
ican in his love of freedom, in his sympathy for a nation strug- 
gling against odds for its precious liberty ; at times he was 
intensely puritanic, and the American and the Puritan appear 
frequently in his narrative. He is plainly too generous to his 
Netherlanders and too severe with their Spanish oppressors ; the 
bright colors in which he paints the one are in too brilliant contrast 
to the hues of darkness which suffice him for the other. Also 
he seems unable, whether from temperament or from religious 
training, to understand either the Dutch Calvinist or the Spanish 
Catholic. To the facts and the documents he is always faithful ; 
but he uses the facts freely to plead the cause of liberty and to 
establish his main thesis, — which is, that freedom of speech 
and thought and worship is the greatest of national blessings ; 
and that the smallest nation, intent as the Dutch were on this 
one blessing, is invincible against the hosts of the Philistines. 

It is this personal attitude and motive (manly in itself, but 
dangerous in the historian) which sometimes carries Motley 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 429 

beyond strictly historical bounds, especially in his terrible deline- 
ation of religious persecution, and which leaves him open to 
the charge of partisanship. 

Aside from this blemish, or notwithstanding it. Motley's Rise 
of the Dutch Republic and his United Netherlands must be 
„. „ classed with the CTcat historical books of the world. 

His Scenes ^ 

and Char- A host of characters — kings, queens, statesmen, 
acters generals, noblemen, soldiers and sailors, all magnifi- 

cently drawn — throng his pages, and among them moves the 
epic figure of William the Silent, a masterpiece of historical 
delineation. His pictures of court and camp, of secret intrigue 
and desperate action, are even more vivid and thrilling than his 
portrayal of historical personages. The fundamental greed and 
selfishness of war ; its glittering pageants, disguising as with a 
mask its hellish countenance ; its glorification of the few at the 
price of tears and suffering for the many ; its brazen show to 
make savages rejoice, and its horror to make angels weep, — 
every phase of armed conflict, from chivalrous encounter to 
unspeakable barbarity, is here presented with vividness and 
power. And if Motley lingers too long over battles and sieges 
by land or sea, if we lose the thread of connected history in 
gorgeously picturesque details of the voyage of the Spanish 
Armada, of the relentless siege of Haarlem or the heroic de- 
fense of Leyden, one forgives the fault, if fault it be, and 
finishes the reading with a more vivid realization of the fearful 
part which war has played in the sad but stirring drama cf 
humian history. 

Francis Parkman (1823-1893). In his New World theme, 
with its spacious background of the wilderness, and in his 
masterful way of handling it, Parkman will seem to many 
readers the most notable of all our historians. To Prescott and 
Motley, as to Irving, the material of American history was not 
sufficiently remote or picturesque to furnish a subject of univer- 
sal interest ; they found what they sought in the chaotic records 
of that decaying empire which had first explored the western 



430 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

continent. To Parkman's deep and patriotic insight the 
neglected records of his own land furnished a theme of world- 
wide significance ; and never was that insight more clearly 
shown than when, as a college boy, he selected his subject and 
his life's work. His twelve volumes, filled to overflowing with 
action and heroism, constitute but a single chapter in our 
history ; but that chapter is the most dramatic, the most fate- 
ful of all that intervened between the landing of the Pilgrims 
and the Revolution. 

Before Parkman's day the Old French Wars, as they were 
called, were generally regarded as a mere Colonial episode, not 
Parkman's ^s a chapter in universal histor)^ When his first 
Theme historical volume. The Conspiracy of Poiitiac^ was 

published in 1 8 5 i , even our historians failed to see its signif- 
icance. As Fiske says : 

" I had once taken it down from its shelf just to quiet a lazy doubt as to 
whether Pontiac might be the name of a place or a man. Had that con- 
spiracy been an event in Merovingian Gaul or in Borgia's "Italy, I should 
have felt a twinge of conscience at not knowing about it ; but the deeds of 
feathered and painted red men on the Great Lakes and the Alleghanies, 
only a century old, seemed remote and trivial." ^ 

To the general reader, who was soon lost on the endless trails 
of marauding savages, Pontiac's conspiracy differed from a score 
of other desperate intrigues only in this : that its hero, treach- 
erous and terrible as he was, had the redeeming trait of unself- 
ishness ; that he sought no gloiy or power for himself, but only 
to save his race from being crushed between two powerful nations 
that pressed in on either side with the relentlessness of fate. 
That the book failed in epic interest is due largely to the fact 
that the author failed to follow his hero with sympathy, and to 
keep him always in the center of the stage .^ To Parkman, how- 
ever, the Indian was simply a minor character, one who played 

1 Introduction to Parkman's Works, Frontenac Edition, Vol. I, p. xii, 

2 The Consph-acy of Pontiac was written first, probably because the materials for it 
were nearest to Parkman's hand. Its place is at the end of the series, for its action 
follows the fall of Quebec, which closed the long struggle between France and England. 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 



431 



a sinister but subordinate part in a stirring drama ; and not until 
several more volumes had appeared, like successive scenes or 
acts, did his purpose become evident. It was, in a word, to 
interpret destiny by writing the history of the inevitable struggle 
between two types of civilization, as represented by France and 
England, for the possession and use of the North American 
continent. " Here," says 
Parkman, " the forest drama 
was more stirring and the 
forest stage more thronged 
with appropriate actors than 
in any other passage of our 
history." 

The issues of that titanic 
struggle were not of local 
but of universal significance. 
The long wars which ended 
in an English victory on the 
Plains of Abraham made 
possible the free expansion 
of the future American 
nation ; in a larger sense 
they determined the essen- 
tial character of that band of 
colonies which soon circled 
the globe, bringing with 

them not the feudal and military system, benevolent but despotic, 
which had long prevailed in Quebec and Acadia, but the liberty 
and democracy of the Anglo-Saxon. The theme which Parkman 
chose, and which he was the first to appreciate justly, is one 
which concerns not only America but humanity. 

Parkman 's Preparation. His preparation for his task and 
his Spartan heroism in overcoming obstacles challenge our 
admiration. The writer who would reproduce a great histor- 
ical drama must keep in mind three elements : the scene, the 




FRANCIS PARKMAN 



432 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

characters, the action ; and for each of these Parkman had the eye 
and the patience of genius. His scene covers the wilderness, 
stretching in unbroken soUtude from the St. Lawrence to the 
Florida Everglades, and Parkman learned to know and to love 
that wilderness in a way that no other American writer has ever 
rivaled. Hundreds of camps and marches, of raids and battles 
fill his pages ; he visited the place of each in turn, made him- 
self familiar with its striking features, until, beneath the band- 
ages that covered his eyes as he wrote, the wild scene spread 
before him in all its primal loneliness and beauty. 

Across this vast stage moved a strange variety of characters : 
half-naked savages skulking through the woods or shooting 
His Char- down the white rapids in their bark canoes, keen-eyed 
acters Colonial rangers, clumsy soldiers of the Continent, 

silent half-breeds, garrulous voyageurs,. intrepid priests in their 
black cassocks, scarlet-coated English generals, nobles of France 
in the gorgeous raiment of the court of Versailles, — a motley, 
picturesque assembly such as never before was gathered to- 
gether to play its part in a single drama. With every typical 
character Parkman made himself acquainted, at first hand wher- 
ever possible, camping with the rangers and voyageurs, living 
with the monks in an Italian convent, visiting the remnants of 
Indian tribes in the East, and spending one summer in the 
lodges of a wandering band of Sioux among the Black Hills. 

For the action of his drama, for the details of every incident 
that influenced the final outcome, Parkman's preparation was 
Sources of Scholarly to the last degree. He read every history 
his Material Qf ^}^g period ; he made several voyages to France, 
where he ransacked the archives and employed copyists to trans- 
late every contemporary record ; he collected letters, journals, 
Indian treaties and state papers from local sources ; ^ he ex- 
plored the closely written volumes of the Jesuit Reldtiofis, — 
that mine of unused literary material in which these devoted men 

'^ In the library of the Massachusetts Historical Society there are nearly two hundred 
manuscript volumes containing Parkman's copies of original documents. 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 433 

had left the records of their missionary journeys. Some of these 
records are pale, almost illegible : they were written in smoky 
wigwams, or beside winter fires in the forest, with an ink com- 
posed of gunpowder and water ; on some of them are faded 
brown stains, the blood of the martyrs who wrote with hands 
still mangled by savage torture ; nearly all contained some 
simple record of fortitude and sublime courage that makes the 
story of knight or Norseman seem tame by comparison. With 
such records to draw from, it was inevitable that a large part of 
Parkman's work should read like a romance of adventure. 

As a result of his careful preparation, there is an impression 
of absolute reality in all Parkman's work ; of finality also, for 
so thoroughly did he explore his ground that there is very little 
left for later historians to discover. 

The silent heroism of all this preparation is indicated by the 
fact that it was continued for over forty years, and that during a 
The Personal large part of the time Parkman was ill, suffering, and 
Element threatened with blindness. All his documents must 
be read to him ; as he listened he made notes, which were read 
to him in turn, and from which he dictated his absorbing story 
of France and England in the New World, — blazing, as it 
were, a straight road through a veritable wilderness of facts. At 
times, so severe was his illness, he was allowed only five minutes 
for work each day ; but still he worked, and discovered that by 
using one minute and resting the next he could prolong the 
five to ten, and then the ten to twenty. 

During all these weary years Parkman's iron will, which is so 
often unconsciously exhibited in the pages of The Oregon Trail, 
kept not only his work but himself and his quivering nerves 
under perfect control. No wonder his pages glow with sup- 
pressed fire when he writes of Brebeuf, — ^ that Jesuit of adamant 
purpose, whom no perils could daunt, from whose lips no savage 
torture could wring a word of complaint, and whose heart the 
Iroquois ate that they might perchance share his indomitable 
spirit. One feels, in reading the vivid paragraphs which portray 



434 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Brebeuf 's life and death, that Parkman had recognized his equal ; 
that the New England Puritan and the French Jesuit were two 
men whom nature had cast in the same heroic mold. 

Works of Parkman. The scope of Parkman's work will be 
evident from the titles of his volumes, which are given here in 
the order of their historical sequence. The first, called Pioneeis 
of France in the New World, is in two parts, one relating the 
story of the ill-fated Huguenot settlements in Florida, the other 
largely devoted to the adventurous career of Champlain, who 
first opened a ww for all French settlements in the North. 
TJie Jcsiiits in Ahrth America tells, in three stirring volumes, 
the tragic story of French missions and settlements among the 
Indians. These were followed by La Salle a?td the Discovery 
of the Great West, one of the most absorbing volumes of explo- 
ration and adventure that have ever been written. The general 
policy of the French in contrast with the English settlements 
is revealed with keen insight and with a wealth of picturesque 
detail in the next two works of the series : The Old Regime in 
Canada, and Connt Fivntenac or New France imder Louis XLV. 
Then follows A Half Ce7itury of Conflict, telling the story of the 
inevitable struggle between the French and English forces, each 
with its skirmish line of terrible Indian allies. There is almost 
a monotony of adventure in this book, for the Old French Wars 
which it portrays were a succession of barbarous raids, each with 
its accompaniment of perils and escapes, of fire and pillage, of 
battle, murder and sudden death. The series ends with Mont- 
calm and Wolfe, the best planned and the most artistically 
written of Parkman's works, portraying the final struggle for 
the possession of a continent and the triumph of the English 
in the capture of Quebec. 

The Co7ispiracy of Pontiac, a vivid account of the Indian wars 
which followed the destruction of the French power in America, 
must be regarded as an epilogue rather than as a part of the 
drama. The desperate character of Pontiac's uprising, his power 
to inflame the fickle tribes scattered over thousands of square 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 435 

miles of forest, his sudden, appalling appearances, his mysteri- 
ous retreats, the trail of blood and fire which he left behind, — 
Conspiracy ^^^ these made a deep impression on the American 
of Pontiac colonies. Hardly was the savage chieftain dead when 
the melodrama of Poiiteach ^ appeared on the stage to keep alive 
his fearful memory.. Then the Revolution came on, and the 
story was forgotten till Parkman revived it nearly a century 
later and made it immortal. 

Parkman was but twenty-six when he wrote The Conspiracy 
of Pontiac, and the spirit of a youth who loves the free adven- 
turous life of the wilderness appears in every chapter. Though 
the author failed, as we have noted, to follow his hero, and 
though the epic element of the story is lost in a thousand un- 
necessary details of savage border wars, his book is a fascinating 
record of picturesque characters, of stirring adventures, and of 
the changing lights and colors of the wilderness in which the 
scene is almost wholly laid. Another charm of the book is its 
delineation of the Indian character, as seen not from within 
but from without. Says Parkman : 

" The stern, unchanging features of his mind excite our admiration from 
their very immutability ; and we look with deep interest on the fate of this 
irreclaimable son of the wilderness, the child who will not be weaned from 
the breast of his rugged mother. And our interest increases when we dis- 
cern in the unhappy wanderer, mingled among his vices, the germs of 
heroic virtues, — a hand bountiful to bestow, as it is rapacious to seize, and 
even in extremest famine imparting its last morsel to a fellow sufferer; 
a heart which, strong in friendship as in hate, thinks it not too much to lay 
down life for its chosen comrade ; a soul true to its own idea of honor, and 
burning with an unquenchable thirst for greatness and renown." 

This Strange, savage compound of virtue and evil passion had 
welcomed the Europeans not simply as friends but as superior 
beings. When Ribault and his followers first landed on the coast 
of Florida, their reception was such as must have touched any 

1 This play was called Ponteach, or the Savages of Ameiica : a Tragedy. It was 
written, probably, by Robert Rogers, an American officer who had fought in the Indian 
wars, and was published in London in 1766. 



436 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

heart not hardened to insensibiUty. The Indians gathered with- 
out fear or suspicion, and ran into the water to ease the first 
boats ashore. They stood in awed silence as the white men 
knelt and took possession of the Indians' land ; they led the 
strangers to their wigwams, brought them food and gifts, and 
supported them all winter. When RibauLt sailed away, he left 
at the mouth of the River of May a stone column, graved with 
the king's arms, to indicate French possession of the country ; 
when Laudonniere returned to the spot, two years later, he found 
the stone crowned with evergreen, and at its foot were offerings 
of fruit and grain. For the Indians not only regarded the white 
man, but — a marvelous thing in that age of religious contro- 
versy — they had respect also for his religion and for his God. 

Then came the awakening, the fearful change of attitude, 
when the Indian's keen eye detected in his fortune-hunting 
visitor, not the virtue and justice of a celestial being, but greed, 
selfishness, — all the vices of civilization. This change from 
awe to contempt, from generous hospitality to ferocious hatred, 
furnishes a psychological motive for many of the wars which 
are portrayed in The Conspiracy of Po7itiac, and which are 
commonly attributed to Indian treachery. 

Another of Parkman's books, which is outside his great his- 
torical series, is The Calif ornia and Oregon Trail {iS^()). This 
The Oregon IS a vivid account of a journey through the then un- 
Traii known Northwest, which Parkman undertook partly 

to gratify his love of adventure, but largely to obtain a better 
knowledge of pioneer and Indian life in preparation for his 
historical work. It is perhaps the most notable, certainly the 
most entertainingly written, of that long series of journals of 
exploration and adventure that have appeared in American lit- 
erature, and that are read as eagerly as were the records of early 
sea voyages collected by Hakluyt. One reads it now for enter- 
tainment chiefly, as one reads any other record of adventure ; 
but as a historical document its significance can hardly be over- 
estimated. In its realistic pictures of mountain and forest and 



I 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 437 

virgin prairies, of winding pack trains and frontier outposts, of 
motley Indian tribes shifting their picturesque camps to be in 
range of the wandering buffalo herds, — in all this it is a ver- 
itable re-creation of life in the West, as it was before the tide 
of settlers rolled over the Mississippi. That life, the stirring 
adventurous life which we associate with the great West, has 
vanished forever. As Parkman writes regretfully : 

" The wild cavalcade that defiled with me down the gorges of the Black 
Hills, with its paint and war plumes, fluttering trophies and savage em- 
broidery, bows, arrows, lances and shields, will never be seen again." 

It is fortunate, therefore, for the historian as well as for 
the general reader, that a true picture of that vanished life is 
preserved forever in Parkman's pages. 

' The Quality of Parkman. '' My theme fascinated me," says 
Parkman, *'and I was haunted with wilderness images day and 
night." How he visited all the scenes of his drama, and trans- 
ferred them with all their glowing color to his record, has already 
been suggested. His story begins when the first French colo- 
nists, after a lonely voyage across the Atlantic, '' saw the long, 
low line where the wilderness of waves meets the wilderness of 
woods." From that moment on, whether he follows the French- 
men through the almost tropical forests of the South, where 
earth, air and water teem with abundant life, or whether he 
camps with Le Jeune and his Indians in the silent, snow-laden 
forests of the North, his scene is always minutely true to life. 
No other American writer, not even Cooper, has approached 
him in his realistic descriptions of the wilderness. His por- 
trayal of individuals, especially of heroic individuals, is equally 
remarkable. There are literally scores of characters in his 
drama ; each appears, not as a shadow on a screen, as in most 
historical narratives, but as a living man whom we recognize 
and whom we remember. This fine reproduction of scene and 
character, together with Parkman's absolute fidelity to the facts 
as recorded in original sources, gives an impression of intense 



438 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

reality to a narrative which in other hands might appear as a 
work of the romantic imagination. 

In one thing only Parkman seems lacking, namely, in spiritual 
perception. His own nature, reserved and a little skeptical, made 
Portrayal of it difficult for him to appreciate the spiritual ideals 
Character q£ other men. In his experience with Sioux Indians, 
for example, as described in The Oregon Trails his attitude was 
always watchful and suspicious ; and such an observer sees only 
the outer shell of savagery, the custom not the philosophy, the 
religious rite not the belief which lies beneath it. As studies of 
the Indian, therefore, Parkman's works are not to be compared 
with those of later writers, such as Schultz and especially 
Dr. Eastman, who have revealed to us not the body but the 
soul of an Indian. 

The same lack of sympathetic understanding appears also 
in Parkman's narrative of the Jesuit missionaries. Being brave 
himself, he admires and makes us admire the courage and for- 
titude of these men, but the spiritual ideal which animated them 
is not so clearly shown ; their motive never appears large enough 
to explain their colossal undertaking. In a word, Parkman gives 
us a series of photographs of men in action ; he seldom paints 
a portrait that makes us understand either the Indian's shadow 
dance or the Jesuit's self-sacrifice. He tells his story, and 
leaves the reader to draw his own conclusion from a document, 
a treaty, or perchance the fragment of a bloodstained letter : 

" Do not imagine that the rage of the Iroquois and the loss of many 
Christians can bring to naught the mystery of the cross of Christ. We 
shall die ; we shall be captured, burned, butchered ; be it so. Those who 
die in their beds do not always die the best death. I see none of our com- 
pany cast down. On the contrary, they ask leave to go up to the Hurons; and 
some of them protest that the fires of the Iroquois are one of the motives 
for the journey." ^ 

Parkman's style is admirably suited to his subject and to his 
purpose, which was, in his own words, '' to imbue himself with 

1 From Lalemant's Relation; quoted in The Jesuits in North America^ II, 136. 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 439 

the life and spirit of the time," and then, "while scrupulously 
adhering to the truth of facts, to animate them with the life 
Parkman's of the past." Though his notes and introductions 
style reveal a fine critical insight, Parkman's work is 

not a critical or philosophical history, but rather a stirring nar- 
rative of human struggle and achievement. His style is the 
perfection of the narrator's art, — clear, forceful, unconsciuus, 
abounding in life and color, moving slowly or rapidly with the 
action, and so vividly realistic at times that one receives the 
strange impression that Parkman must have been an eye-witness 
of the event which he describes. 

Thanks to this attractive style and to his immense knowledge 
of his subject, Parkman has created a work of literature as well 
as of history. He has, in truth, re-created the life of the past, 
as he aimed to do, and showed that the reality of the past 
may be as absorbing as its romance. He has given us a wonder 
book of American history, and not the least interesting thing 
about his w-onders is that they are all true. 

Summary of the Second National Period. The central historical event of 
the period is the Civil War. This was preceded by an intensely partisan con- 
troversy over the questions of slavery and state rights, and was followed by the 
bitter years of reconstruction. The war, therefore, with its long chain of causes 
and consequences, filled practically the entire period from 1S40 to 1876. The 
country was divided into two antagonistic sections ; parties were numerous and 
constantly changing, and the general spirit of the age was one of political 
excitement and agitation. 

The turmoil of politics was accompanied by a profound mental and spiritual 
agitation which expressed itself in many ways : in moral and social reforms, 
in numerous communistic societies such as Brook Farm, in the eager study of 
foreign literatures, in the establishment of lyceums and lecture courses, and in 
the philosophic movement known as transcendentahsm. 

The literature of the period divides itself naturally into two classes : the 
minor writings, voicing the turmoil of politics or the appeal of temporary 
interests, which are more or less sectional or partisan in character ; and the 
major writings, which reflect the permanent thought and feeling, the ideas, 
emotions, traditions and beliefs of the American people without regard to 
political or geographical divisions. During this entire period the American 
mind was stirred and quickened by the various reform movements, by the 
rapid broadening of our intellectual culture following study of European and 



440 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

oriental literatures, by the pressure of great public questions, and by all the 
heroism and sacrifice of the war which revealed to us the preciousness of 
nationality. Under this mental and spiritual stimulus literature flourished as 
never before, and the major writings of the period are the noblest that our 
country has yet produced. The age is especially distinguished by its poets and 
by the generally fine quality of its poetry. 

In our study we have considered in detail the lives and the works of : 
(i) The greater poets and essayists, Longfellow, ^Yhittier, Emerson, Lowell, 
Holmes, Lanier, and Whitman. To this was added a study of the chief works 
of Timrod, Hayne, Ryan, Taylor, Boker, Stoddard, and a brief survey of the 
minor poetry of the period. (2) The fiction writers, Hawthorne, Cooke, 
Mrs. Stowe, Bret Harte, and a few others less w^idely known who are gener- 
ally classed with the secondary novelists. (3) The individualist Thoreau and 
the historians Motley and Parkman. 

Selections for Reading. Selections from all authors named in the text may 
be found in the numerous collections listed in General References, at the be- 
ginning of this book. The best single volume of selections from our nine elder 
poets is Page, Chief American Poets (1905). All anthologies are unsatisfactory, 
and for a study of our chief writers the inexpensive editions named below are 
desirable. 

Longfello7u : Evangeline, parts of Hiawatha, Tales of a Wayside Inn, and 
selected short poems. These may all be found in the Riverside Literature 
series and in various other texts published for class use. The best of Long- 
fellow's narrative poems are published in a single volume of the Lake English 
Classics. 

Whittier: Snow" Bound, and selected ballads and lyrics, in Maynard's 
Classics, Riverside Literature, and in other series. 

Efuerson : Representative Men, and selected essays, in Pocket Classics, 
Everyman's Library, etc. ; selected poems, in Riverside Literature. 

Lowell : Vision of Sir Launfal, selected poems, and selected essays, all in 
Riverside Literature. 

Holmes : Poems, in Maynard's English Classics, etc. ; The Autocrat, in 
Everyman's Library; selected prose and verse, in Holmes Leaflets, Riverside 
Literature. 

Lanier: Selections from Lanier, Timrod, and Hayne, in one volume of 
Maynard's English Classics ; the same in Pocket Classics. 

WJiitman: Selected poems in Maynard's English Classics. The best book 
for the general reader is Triggs, Selections from the Prose and Poetry of Walt 
Whitman. 

LLaix}thor7ie : House of Seven Gables, and selected short stories, in Every- 
man's Library, Pocket Classics, etc. 

Llarriet Beecher Sto7ve : Uncle Tom's Cabin, in various school series ; selec- 
tions from Oldtown Folks, in Riverside Literature. 

Thoj-eaic : Walden, in Everyman's Library ; selections from prose works, in 
Riverside Literature. Selections should include a few essays from Excursions 
and, if possible, a few passages from Thoreau's Journal. 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 441 

Parkman : Oregon Trail, in Standard English Classics. Other works of 
Parkman are not yet published for class use. A good single volume is Edgar, 
The Struggle for a Continent, edited from Parkman's histories (Little, Brown). 
Bibliography. Textbooks of history, Montgomery, Elson ; of literature, 
Richardson, etc. See General References for works covering the entire sub- 
ject of American history and literature. The following works are recommended 
for a special study of the Second National Period. 

History. Rhodes, History of the United States, 1850-1877, 7 vols.; Schouler, 
History of the United States under the Constitution, 1789-1S65, 6 vols, (new 
edition, 1S99) ; Wilson, Division and Reunion; Schwab, The Confederate 
States of America (financial and industrial history) ; Davis, Rise and Fall of 
the Confederate Government, 2 vols., or Stephens, War between the States ; 
Dodge, A Bird's-Eye View of our Civil War (a brief military history) ; Paxson, 
The Civil War ; Rhodes, Lectures on the American Civil War ; Macy, 
American Political Parties, 1845-1860; Stanwood, History of the Presidency; 
Coman, Industrial History of the United States. A supplementary book for 
younger readers is Hart, Romance of the Civil War (1903). 

Biographical and Autobiographical : Lives of important historical personages 
in the American Statesmen and in the Great Commanders series. R. M. John- 
ston, Leading American Soldiers ; Life of Lincoln, by Morse, by Schurz ; for 
younger readers, Morgan, Abraham Lincoln, the Boy and the Man ; Grant, 
Personal Memoirs ; Gordon, Reminiscences of the Civil War ; Recollections 
of Alexander Stephens; Carl Schurz, Autobiography; Greeley, Recollections; 
Blaine, Twenty Years in Congress ; Hoar, Autobiography ; Booker Washing- 
ton, Up from Slavery. 

Literature. There is unfortunately no work devoted to the literature of this 
great period. Incomplete chapters may be found in Richardson, Wendell, 
Trent, etc. (see General References), and brief treatment of a few leading 
writers in Stedman, Poets of America ; Lawton, New England Poets ; Erskine, 
Leading American Novelists ; Vincent, American Literary Masters ; Brownell, 
American Prose Masters ; Burton, Literary Leaders of America. 

Traiiscendeiitalisni. Frothingham, Transcendentalism in New England ; 
Swift, Brook Farm ; Higginson, Old Cambridge ; Cooke, The Poets of Tran- 
scendentalism (anthology) ; Emerson's Essays, The Transcendentalist, and 
New England Reformers ; Louisa Alcott, Transcendental Wild Oats, in Silver 
Pitchers ; Dowden's essay, in Studies in Literature. See also the biographies 
of Margaret Fuller, by Higginson ; George Ripley, by Frothingham ; Amos 
Bronson Alcott, by Sanborn and Harris. 

Lo7igfellow. Texts: Riverside edition, poetry and prose, 11 vols. ; Poems, 
Handy Volume edition, 5 vols. ; Cambridge edition, i vol., etc. (Houghton). 

Biography : The standard Life of Longfellow, with extracts from his journal 
and correspondence, is by S. Longfellow (3 vols., 1891). Life, by Higginson, 
in American Men of Letters ; by Carpenter, in Beacon Biographies ; by 
Robertson, in Great Writers series ; by Underwood, by Austin, etc. 

Reminiscence and Criticism : Mrs. Fields, Authors and Friends ; Curtis, 
Homes of American Authors ; Higginson, Old Cambridge ; Massachusetts 



442 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Historical Society, Tributes to Longfellow and Emerson ; Stoddard, Homes 
and Haunts of our Elder Poets ; Hovvells, Literary Friends and Acquaintance ; 
Stedman, Poets of America ; Lawton, New England Poets. 

Essays : Curtis, in Literary and Social Essays ; Hale, in Fireside Travels ; 
Whitman, in Specimen Days ; Fiske, Longfellow's Dante, in The Unseen 
World and Other Essays ; Bent, The Wayside Inn ; Porter, Evangeline. On 
Hiawatha, see S. Longfellow's Life of Longfellow, II, 272-311; Schoolcraft, 
The Myth of Hiawatha. 

\VJiittie7'. Texts : Poems, Riverside edition, 4 vols., Prose, 3 vols. ; Standard 
Library edition, complete works including life, 9 vols ; Poems, Cambridge 
edition, i vol., etc. (Houghton). 

Biography : The standard is Pickard's Life and Letters of Whittier, 2 vols. 
Life, by Carpenter, in American Men of Letters ; by Burton, in Beacon Biog- 
raphies ; by Higginson, in English Men of Letters ; by Underwood, etc. 

Reminiscence and Criticism: Mrs. Fields, Whittier; Mrs. Claflin, Personal 
Recollections of Whittier ; Higginson, Contemporaries ; Pickard, Whittier 
Land; Trowbridge, My Own Story; Stearns, Sketches from Concord and 
Appledore ; Stedman, Poets of America ; Lawton, New England Poets ; 
Hawkins, The Mind of Whittier; Mitchell, American Lands and Letters; 
Fowler, Whittier : Prophet, Seer and Man. 

Essays: Wendell, in Stelligeri; Hazeltine, in Chats about Books; Bayard 
Taylor, in Critical Essays ; Whipple, in American Literature ; Woodberry, in 
Makers of Literature. 

Emerson. Texts: Centenary edition, complete works, 12 vols.; Poems, 
I vol., Riverside edition, etc. (Houghton). Various editions of the Essays. 
Correspondence of Carlyle and Emerson, edited by Norton, 2 vols. 

Biography : Cabot's Memoir of Emerson, 2 vols., and E. W. Emerson's 
Emerson in Concord together form a fairly complete record. Life, by Wood- 
berry, by Holmes, by Garnett, by Sanborn, etc. 

Reminiscence and Criticism: Alcott, Emerson, and Concord Days; Conway, 
Emerson at Llome and Abroad ; Mrs. Fields, Authors and Friends ; Sanborn, 
Emerson and his Friends at Concord, and The Personality of Emerson ; 
Stearns, Sketches from Concord and Appledore ; Whipple, Recollections of 
Eminent Men ; Woodbury, Talks with Emerson ; Stedman, Poets of America. 

Essays : Lowell, in Literary Essays ; Hawthorne, in Mosses from an Old 
Manse ; Matthew Arnold, in Discourses in America ; W^hitman, in Specimen 
Days ; Everett, in Essays Theological and Literary ; Beers, in Points at Issue ; 
Chapman, in Emerson and Other Essays; Stearns, in the Real and Ideal in 
Literature. 

Lowell. Texts : Elmwood edition, complete works including letters, and life 
by Scudder, 16 vols.; Riverside edition, 11 vols.; Poems, i vol., Cambridge 
edition, Household edition, etc. (Houghton) ; Letters, edited by Norton, 2 vols. 
(Harper) ; the same, 3 vols., in the Elmwood edition. 

Biography : Scudder's James Russell Lowell, 2 vols., is the standard. Life, 
by Greenslet (a good critical and biographical study) ; by E. E. Hale, Jr., in 
Beacon Biographies ; by Underwood, etc. 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 443 

Reminiscence and Criticism : Hale, James Russell Lowell and his Friends ; 
Howells, Literary Friends and Acquaintance ; Higginson, Old Cambridge, and 
Cheerful Yesterdays ; Underwood, The Poet and the Man : Recollections of 
J. R. L. ; Briggs, Homes of American Authors ; Stedman, Poets of America. 

Essays : Woodberry, in Makers of Literature ; Wendell, in Stelligeri ; 
Curtis, in Orations and Addresses ; Henry James, in Essays in London and 
Elsewhere. 

Holmes. Texts: Complete works, Riversidfe edition, 14 vols.; Standard 
Library edition, 15 vols., including life by Morse; Poems, Cambridge edition, 
I vol., etc. (Houghton). 

Biography and Criticism : Life and Letters, by Morse, 2 vols. ; Life, by 
Crothers. Stedman, Poets of America ; L. Stephen, Studies of a Biographer ; 
Howells, Literary Friends and Acquaintance ; Haweis, American Humorists ; 
Kennedy, Oliver Wendell Holmes ; Ball, Dr. Holmes and his W^orks ; Lang, 
Adventures among my Books ; Noble, Impressions and Memories ; Stearns, 
Cambridge Sketches. 

Lanier. Texts: Poems (edited by Mrs. Lanier), The English Novel, Science 
of English Verse, Music and Poetry, Letters, Select Poems (Scribner). 

Biography and Criticism : Life, by Mims ; by Baskerville, in Southern 
Writers; Memoir, by W. H. Ward, in Poems of Lanier; West, Life and 
Writings of Lanier. Oilman, in South Atlantic Quarterly, 1905; Northrup, in 
Lippincott's Magazine, 1905 ; Ward, in the Century Magazine, 1S8S ; Higgin- 
son, Contemporaries ; Kent, A Study o£ Lanier's Poems, in Publications of 
the Modern Language Association, Vol. VII. 

li'7iit??tan. Texts : Works, Camden edition, 10 vols. (Putnam) ; Triggs, 
Selections from the Prose and Poetry of Walt Whitman. 

Biography and Criticism : Life, by Perry ; by Piatt, in Beacon Biographies 5 
by Carpenter, in English Men of Letters ; by Bucke, etc. In re Walt Whit- 
man (various papers and tributes published by Whitman's literary execu- 
tors, 1893); Stedman, Poets of America; Kennedy, Reminiscences of Walt 
Whitman ; Symonds, Walt Whitman : A Study ; Trowbridge, My Own Story ; 
Stevenson, Familiar Studies of Men and Books ; Swinburne, Studies in Prose 
and Poetry ; Dowden, Studies in Literature ; Gosse, Critical Kit-Kats ; Noel, 
Essays on Poetry and Poets ; Santayana, The Poetry of Barbarism, in Inter- 
pretations of Poetry and Religion. 

Hawthorjie. Texts : Works, Riverside edition, 12 vols. (Houghton) ; numer- 
ous editions of tales and novels, by various publishers. . 1 .r 

Biography and Criticism : Life, by Woodberry, in American Men of Letters ; 
by Annie Fields, in Beacon Biographies; by Henry James, in English Men of 
Letters ; by Conway, in Great Writers. An intimate biography is Julian Haw- 
thorne's Nathaniel Hawthorne and his Wife, 2 vols. Lathrop, A Study of 
Hawthorne ; Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, Memories of Hawthorne ; Bridge, 
Personal Recollections of Hawthorne ; Perry, A Study of Prose Fiction ; Gates, 
Studies and Appreciations ; L. Stephen, Hours in a Library ; Higginson, 
Short Studies of American Authors ; Curtis, Literary and Social Essays ; 
Fields, Yesterdays with Authors ; Hutton, Essays Theological and Literary. 



444 - AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Thoreau. Texts: Works, and Familiar Letters, ii vols., Riverside edition 
(Houghton) ; numerous editions of Walden. 

Biography and Criticism : Life, by Sanborn, in American Men of Letters ; 
by Salt, in Great Writers. Page, Thoreau, his Life and Aims ; Marble, Thoreau, 
his Home, Friends, and Books ; Channing, Thoreau, the Poet-Naturalist ; 
Emerson, in Biographical Sketches ; Stevenson, in Familiar Studies of Men 
and Books ; Lowell, in Among my Books ; Higginson, in Short Studies of 
American Authors. 

Motley and Parkmait : Life of Motley, by Holmes ; Correspondence, edited 
by G. W. Curtis, 2 vols. Life of Parkman, by Farnham, by Fiske, by Sedgwick. 
Jameson, History of Historical Writing in America ; Whipple, Recollections 
of Eminent Men; Fiske, Introduction to Parkman's complete works, Frontenac 
edition (Little, Brown); Fiske, A Century of Science and Other Essays; 
Vedder, American Writers of To-day. 

Suggestive Questions For the aim of the following general questions 
(which are not intended as an examination) see page 83. Specific questions 
on the works of Longfellow and other authors should be based largely on the 
student's own reading. It is hardly necessary to add that the chief object of 
all questioning is to bring out what little the pupil knows rather than to reveal 
the wide extent of his ignorance. 

1. Give a brief outline of historic events from 1S40 to 1876. Why are the 
twenty years before 1S61 called the age of agitation.'' W^hat effect did the 
political agitation have upon our national literature ? 

2. What marked difference has been noted between the major and 
the minor writers of this period .'' Flow do you account for the fact that the 
chief works of the greater writers Jo not reflect the political or social reforms 
that occupied the attention of the country .'' 

3. Describe and illustrate the difference between sectional and national 
literature. Why should one be forgotten and the other remembered .'' 

4. Name some of the common characteristics of the major works of the 
period. How do you account for the strong moral tendency in nearly all 
American writers ? What effect did the study of European and oriental litera- 
ture have upon Longfellow and other poets of the period ? What is meant by 
the transcendental movement ? Who were its leaders and its chief writers ? 
What were some of its effects on American life and literature ? 

5. Longfellow. Why is Longfellow called our household poet.'' What 
poems of his do you like best.'' Give an outline of his life, and name his 
chief works. What is the general plan of Hiawatha, of Evangeline, of Tales 
of a Wayside Inn ? Do you know of any works in other literatures having a 
similar plan } Comment on the statement that Longfellow is the poet of the 
commonplace. 

6. U^ittier. Make a brief comparison between Whittier and Longfellow, 
having in mind the training of the two men, their subjects, and the quality of 
their work. (For purposes of comparison the ballads of each may be taken, 
or Whittier's Tetit on the Beach and Longfellow's Tales of a Wayside Inn.) 



THE SECOND NATIONAL PERIOD 445 

Read Whittier's " Proem " to Voices of Freedom, and tell in your own words his 
theory of poetry. Explain Whittier as a New England and as a national poet. 
What is the marked difference between his earlier and later works .'' between 
his reform poems and his lyrics of home and nature } Give the plan of Snow 
Bound, and your own estimate of the poem. Which of Whittier's ballads or 
short narrative poems do you like best, and why ? 

7. Emerson. What is meant by Emerson's individualism? by his mysticism .-^ 
Illustrate the two qualities from his life and writings. What are the 'two main 
divisions of his poetry.'' Name some of the best poems in each class. Com- 
pare (if you have read the works) Emerson's Representative Men and Carlyle's 
Heroes and Hero Worship. Name some of Emerson's best essays, and explain 
their general style and matter. How do you account for his liberal use of 
quotations .'' Which essay do you like best ? What is meant by the stimulating 
quality of Emerson's works .'' 

8. Lowell. What practical use did Lowell make of his literary art ? Com- 
pare him in this respect with Irving. Name some of his best poems of nature 
and of patriotism. What is the general plan and purpose of the " Commem- 
oration Ode " ? Name Lowell's two chief satires and describe each briefly. 
What are the two chief subjects of his essays ? What are the strong and the 
weak qualities of his literary criticisms ? Give the outline of Sir Lautifal, your 
own criticism of the poem, and compare Lowell's story with that of older 
writers on the same subject. 

9. Holmes. Describe the quality of Holmes's humor. Compare it with the 
humor of Mark Twain. What are the chief works of Holmes in prose and 
verse .'' Give the general plan and character of The Autocrat. Select two 
poems, one humorous and the other serious, that you consider to be the best 
that Holmes wrote (omitting the general favorites, " The Deacon's Master- 
piece " and ''The Chambered Nautilus"). What is meant by the statement 
that the chief characteristic of Holmes's work is its intensely personal quality ? 

10. Lanier. Give the story of Lanier's life, and name his chief works. 
Which of his short poems do you consider best, and why ? In what respect 
did Lanier's theory of poetry differ from that of other American poets .'' 
Account on two grounds for the musical quality of his verse. Select one of 
Lanier's sonnets on Columbus (in the Psalm of the West) and one stanza from 
Lowell's ''Columbus"; compare the work of the two poets. Read "The 
Marshes of Glynn," and explain what Lanier attempted to do in the poem. 
W^hat is meant by the universal quality of Lanier's poems .'' 

11. .Wiitman. How does Whitman's poetry differ from that of other Amer- 
ican poets ? What are his elements of strength and of weakness ? What views 
of nature and of death are reflected in his verse "i Why is he called by some 
the poet of democracy and by others the poet of barbarism } How do you 
account for the fact that he is considered abroad to be one of our most 
representative poets ? 

12. Hawthorne. Why is Hawthorne called the novelist of Puritanism.'' 
Comment on the statement that his works are all based on the Ten Command- 
ments. W^hat marked difference is noted between him and other great writers 



446 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

of the period, Lowell for example ? Name his chief romances and his best col- 
lections of tales. Which do you consider the best in each class ? What is meant 
by Hawthorne's tendency to symbolism and allegory? (Illustrate and explain 
the matter by two or three of his short stories.) What etfect did this tendency 
have on his portrayal of character ? Which of Hawthorne's characters do you 
remember most vividly ? Note some resemblances and differences in the tales 
of Poe and Hawthorne. 

13. Thoreaii. Tell briefly the story of Thoreau's career, and show how it 
differs from that of other American authors. Name his chief works, and 
explain their general character. Give quotations from Thoreau to illustrate his 
individualism and originality. Compare him in this respect with Emerson. 
Thoreau's observations of nature around Concord are sympathetic and unusually 
accurate ; his observations recorded in The Maine Woods are frequently care- 
less and unsympathetic ; how do you account for the difference ? Comment on 
the statement that Walden is one of the few books in American literature that 
repay frequent readings. 

14. Farkman. Describe Parkman's general theme, and explain its impor- 
tance. What preparation did he make for his work ? Name the chief works in 
his great historical series. What is the general character of The Oregon Trail ? 
of The Conspiracy of Pontiac ? What are the notable qualities of Parkman as a 
historian ? Explain the peculiar charm of his work to American readers. 

15. Name some of the secondary writers of the period. Describe any works 
of these authors that you have read. What is the general character of Cooke's 
romances ? What important work did Bret Harte do for American fiction t 

Subjects for Research and Essays. Brook Farm. Communistic societies 
in America (note the Pilgrims' experiment, as recorded in Bradford's Of 
Plimoth Plantation). Transcendentalism at home and abroad. Songs and 
ballads of the Civil War. The moral tendency of American literature. Long- 
fellow and Tennyson. Emerson and Carlyle. Norton and Ruskin. Whittier 
and Burns (use "Snow Bound" and "The Cotter's Saturday Night"). The 
Hiawatha legend. Lowell's Americanism. Lanier's theory and practice of 
poetry. Holmes as a humorist. School life in Whittier's works. A compari- 
son of Timrod and Hayne. Famous collections of stories in prose or verse 
(like Longfellow's" Tales of a Wayside Inn"). The Cambridge group. The Con- 
cord group. The Charleston group. Class poems of Holmes. Nature in the 
poetry of Bryant, Emerson, and Whittier (use " A Winter Piece," " The Snow 
Storm," and the first part of "Snow Bound" for purposes of comparison). 
Hawthorne's use of allegory. Terror and mystery in the stories of Brown, Poe, 
and Hawthorne. Bret Harte and the local short story. Realism and romance 
illustrated from American literature (see the following chapter). Why Uncle 
Tarn's Cabin continues to be popular. The Indian in American literature. The 
romance of the West. Thoreau : Indian or Greek ? The stage and the actors 
in Parkman's drama. A comparison of Hawthorne's Grandfather's Chair and 
Scott's Tales of a Grandfather. Historical writing in America. My favorite 
American poet. My favorite American story-teller. 



CHAPTER V 

SOME TENDENCIES IN OUR RECENT LITERATURE 

Our slender life runs rippling by, and glides 

Into the silent hollow of the past ; 
What is there that abides 

To make the next age better for the last ? 

Lowell, " Commemoration Ode " 

There was once a wise man named Archimedes who said that 
he could move the world if he had a lever long enough and a 
place to stand on. The mention of the latter condition, of that 
unattainable place to stand on, indicates at once his wisdom and 
his human limitations. So the historian might with confidence 
speak of his own age if he could remove himself to the distant 
future and view the present event in its historical perspective, 
that is, in its relation to other events past and to come. 

The same limitation is upon the contem.porary critic or liter- 
ary historian. Since 1876 nearly two hundred good writers and 
perhaps a thousand good volumes have appeared, and they are 
still too near to be viewed in their relation to the literary works 
of the past or to the world of men. These recent books have 
two ultimate judges, time and humanity, and no one has ever 
yet discovered the law by which time reaches its verdict. The 
poet Spenser spoke of his own age as barren, almost hopeless, 
— that same Elizabethan age which now appears as the most 
glorious in English letters. In our own country Poe, who was 
in many ways an excellent critic, wrote his Literati (1850) 
predicting fame for some thirty of his contemporaries. The 
world straightway neglected or forgot them all, and cherished 
the work of three or four whom he omitted from his study. 

One might multiply similar striking examples : of keen critics 
who failed in their judgment of their own age ; of books once 

447 



443 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

famous but now forgotten because they appealed to the mood 
or taste of the hour ; of other books that appeared unheralded 
and unpraised, and that abide because they satisfy the perma- 
nent emotions of humanity. In a word, a trustworthy history 
of present literature is humanly impossible. We shall not 
attempt it, therefore, but simply call attention to a few apparent 
tendencies in our recent prose and poetry. 

Reminiscent Literature. Joining the present to the golden 
age of American letters which has just passed, and belonging 
as much to the one as to the other, is a varied group of writers 
— including Edward Everett Hale, George William Curtis, 
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Donald Grant Mitchellj and 
many others — who have each produced some original work, 
but who are at their best when they write in a reminiscent 
mood of the elder poets and novelists. Edward Everett Hale, 
for example, found time in the midst of his busy, beautiful life 
to write of many subjects. He produced a number of clever 
short stories, such as '' My Double and How He Undid Me " ; 
some widely read religious juveniles, such as In His Name and 
Ten Times One is Ten; and one classic (perhaps we should 
say the classic) of American patriotism. The Man WithoiU a 
Country, which has been called the best sermon on love of one's 
native land that has ever been written. The last-named work 
is undoubtedly permanent. We know not how long the others 
may endure, but we do know that in such works as James 
Russell Lowell and His Friends, For Fifty Years, and A Nezv 
England BoyJiood, this gentle, friendly writer has given added 
dignity and significance to the study of American life and letters. 

It is so with the other writers of this remarkable group. 
Among Higginson's numerous volumes of stories, novels, essays, 
histories, biographies and translations, we are at present most 
inclined to cherish his reminiscent Old Cambiidge , Co7itempo- 
raries, Cheerful Yesterdays, and SJiort Studies of American 
AiLthors. The fanciful novel of Prue and I and the miscella- 
neous works that fill the dozen published volumes of Curtis are 



THE PRESENT AGE 449 

succeeded, and perhaps superseded, by some of the Easy Chair 
papers and other hterary appreciations. The pleasantly senti- 
mental memories of Mitchell's (Ik Marvel's) Dream Life 3x16. The 
Reveries of a Bachelor, which once pleased a large company 
of readers, are followed by the more specific and perhaps more 
enduring reminiscences of his Aniericaft Lands and Letters. 

We have named but a few of the recent writers who are in- 
spired by the literature of the past, but the few are enough to 
, indicate a decided and important tendency. Until 

Discovery of .... 

American recently American critics, like Poe, were forced to 
1 era ure ^^^| ys\\ki the present or to anticipate the future ; 
there was no body of American literature in the past that 
seemed worthy of their study. Since 1876, however, more than 
fifty good volumes of literary reminiscences have appeared. 
They indicate clearly that America has now a golden age of 
letters as well as of history, and that our literature is worthy of 
our grateful consideration. It is precious, not because it com- 
pares with the great literature of other lands, but because it is 
our own, — a true reflection of the American spirit, which at- 
tempted in a new land a nevv' and heroic experiment in human 
living. Such is the good message of our reminiscent writers, 
a message which Stedman set to music after listening to the 
song of one of our native birds : 

And as my home-bred chorister outvied 

The nightingale, old England's lark beside, 

I thought — What need to borrow .^ Lustier clime 

Than ours Earth has not, nor her scroll a time 

Ampler of human glory and desire 

To touch the plume, the brush, the lips, with fire ; 

No sunrise chant on ancient shore and sea. 

Since sang the morning stars, more worth shall be 

Than ours, once uttered from the very heart 

Of the glad race that here shall act its part : 

Blithe prodigal, the rhythm free and strong 

Of thy brave voice forecasts our poet's song ! ^ 

1 From Stedman, " Music at Home." 



450 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Recent Poetry 

Ever since Whitman's day it has been said that American 
verse tends to become reahstic, hke American fiction ; but the 
word ''reahsm," vague and undefined, is not one that should 
be appHed to poetry, which may be described as imagination 
writing to melody. At the bottom of every true poem one finds 
some heartfelt emotion which gives the verse character and 
human meaning ; and if we study this emotional element in 
our recent singers we shall probably note a very significant 
tendency. 

At the beginning of our national literature, that is, in the first 
half of the nineteenth century, the feeling expressed in hun- 
dreds of our poems, as collected in the various '' Annuals " and 
'' Tokens," ran largely to sentimentality. In this our minor 
singers, like our earliest novelists, were influenced by the roman- 
tic writers in Germany and England, who, as we have noted, 
made almost a fetish of '' sensibility." ^ In reaction from this 
sentimentality some of our elder poets, notably Bryant and Emer- 
son, went almost to the opposite extreme. To most readers 
Bryant appears cold and reserved, and Emerson's poetry is an 
expression of his thought rather than of his feeling. Other of 
our elder poets, Longfellow, Lanier, Whittier, and Lowell, are 
characterized by deep feeling, but a large part of their verse 
is a portrayal of the feeling not of present men and women but 
of past times and past heroes.^ Whittier may serve as an ex- 
cellent example. In his So7igs of Labor and in his antislavery 
verses he tried to voice the feeling of the present, but these 
were of little moment in comparison with his Snozv Boiuid or 
with his stirring ballads, in which he reflected the emotion of 
days gone by. 

1 See p. 159. 

2 This is a generalization, and therefore dangerous. There are abundant exceptions, 
but the generahzation expresses at least a tendency of English and American poets in 
the past. Lyrics are of course excepted, because a lyric is the expression of the poet's 
own feeling. 



THE PRESENT AGE 



451 



The Poetry of the Present. In contrast with the work of our 
elder poets a considerable part of our recent verse reflects the 
feeling not of past heroes but of present men and women in 
field and factory, or even in the crowded city streets, where 
poetry seems as remote as a bird song. One recalls here the 
work of Eugene Field (i 850-1 895), of whom one must write 
with love. Nothing could be more prosaic than his work on a 
Chicago newspaper ; nothing more significant than his brave, 
cheery attempt to reduce the 
city noise to harmony, to 
show the poetry that is hid- 
den in work, in dailv com- 
panionship, and especially in 
hearts of parents and chil- 
dren, — our own children, 
who grow wide-eyed over 
his "Wynken, Blynken, and 
Nod," and our own hearts, 
that weep again over his 
" Little Boy Blue." In his 
verse one finds nothing 
distant or foreign; all is 
present, real, familiar as our 
own fun or our own sorrow. 

The same note of present 
emotion, of deep and tender 
feeling among plain men and women, is sounded by many other 
singers. Lucy Larcom (i 826-1 893) finds inspiration for poetry 
not in Arthurian legend or Colonial heroism but in a New 
England factory among the working girls. The feeling of 
her '' Hannah Binding Shoes " is as finely true as any that 
Tennyson ever gave to his princesses, or Longfellow to his 
Evangeline, and it is closer to common life. 

The work of three poets, whom we may group together as 
singers of a new type of American folk songs, is especially 




EUGENE FIELD 



452 



AMERICAN LITERATURE 



significant in this connection. Emma Lazarus (1849-1887), 
a gifted young Jewish girl, has preserved some of the finest 
The New feeling of her race — a race set free satisfied if we 
can say of his work that it is steadily true to fact, to humanity and 
nature as they are, not as we imagine or hope for them to be.^ 

There is another way by which the difference between the 
two classes of writers may be suggested, as in a parable. /The 
ancient story-teller was either a keeper of old legends or else a 
traveler who brought to a humdrum village tales of strange lands 

1 We have tried to suggest the general difference between the romanticist and the 
realist. The generalization is, of course, open to exceptions. Many romancers, Shake- 
speare for example, seem more true to life and nature than are the best realists. Again, 
Dickens was a romancer, Thackeray a realist. Some of Thackeray's characters are those 
of Dickens with the exaggeration rubbed off to make them more true to life. Yet Dickens's 
characters, with all their exaggeration, seem to many readers more vital and human than 
are the similar characters found in Thackeray's pages. It should be noted also that the 
finest romance and the finest realistic novel approach each other. Others fly off to oppo- 
site extremes, and most of our definitions are based upon the extreme type. 



THE PRESENT AGE 459 

and peoples. The wide-ranging spirit of this old story-teller re- 
appears in the modern romancey Your true romancer is as a 
A Parable of traveler who goes out to see the world. He has per- 
Romance haps had enough of the ordinary or commonplace at 
home ; now his eyes are opened wide for the extraordinary. 
Like every traveler, he notes chiefly the picturesque features of 
the new landscape, — features which are hardly noticed by the 
inhabitants, whose eyes are blinded by custom and familiarity. 
Ordinary people are passed over by our traveler; he is looking 
for unusual characters, in whom he may see humanity written 
large or small ; his glance lights with pleasure upon nobles, 
heroes, brigands, mountaineers with strange garments, market 
women with strange songs, boatmen, goatherds, monks, military 
officers in ridiculous little caps, and drivers of ridiculous little 
donkeys. All these are in the world for those who have eyes 
to see. The traveler sees them all ; he takes us into the new 
world and makes us also see them, each with his peculiarity a 
little exaggerated, as they first strike an observer. 

The realist bides at home and studies his own little village 
minutely, psychologically. He does not take us into a new 
world, but points out the quality of those familiar characters 
whose homes may be seen from our back door or from our 
front window./ One novelist tells a story of the beckoning life, 
and measures man by his free spirit ; the other tells of a life 
repressed by custom, and strikes a general average of humanity 
from its ordinary activities. 

To sum up the matter : romance deals largely with the ideal, 
and realism with the actual life of men. Both classes of fiction 
have their place and their great names ; both aim 
and the to limn a true picture of life ; but the realist often 

gives us but a temporary and superficial view, and 
sometimes confuses the real with the apparent, what is with 
what seems to be. It was a great writer and critic who said 
that only the ideal is actual, meaning that the ideals of men 
are immortal and unchanging, while their seeming actual life is 



46o AMERICAN LITERATURE 

forever transient and variable. So the distinction of a modern 
critic, that the reahst is the only ''veritist," the truth seeker, 
can hardly be allowed. The romanticist also seeks truth, and 
seeks it among ideals, which are the only permanent realities. 
It should be noted, also, that realism tends generally to pessi- 
mism, and romance to faith and gladness ; that the great 
writers of the world have nearly all the romantic spirit ; that 
humanity is not and never has been satisfied with the actual, but 
ever hungers for the ideal. The true romance tends in some 
degree to satisfy such hunger, and for this reason, probably, it 
endures better and has more readers than the realistic novel. 

Representative Realists. Among recent novelists a prominent 
place is held by Henry James and by William Dean Howells. 
The former has spent most of his life abroad, and his chief 
novels are as a rule of the so-called international type. His hero 
or heroine (if the name be not too vital for such small characters 
as he gives us) is generally an American, whose crudities or 
peculiarities the novelist analyzes to better advantage against the 
background of a more settled European society. Howells por- 
trays the American in his native environment ; and his pictures, 
faithfully drawn from life, are by some critics classed among 
the most valuable of recent contributions to our literature. 

At present Howells holds an honored and well-deserved 
position as dean of American letters. His first printed book 
appeared in i860, at a time when Longfellow, 
Dean Hawthorne, and their great contemporaries were at 

Howells ^j^g height of their influence ; since then he has 
published some forty volumes : poems, essays, criticisms, 
delightful sketches of travel in Venetian Life and Italimi 
Journeys, valuable reminiscent studies in Literary Friends and 
Acquaintance and My Literary Passions, delicate farces or 
parlor comedies such as The Sleeping Car and The Motise 
Trap, and a score of novels from Their Weddijig Journey 
in 1 87 1 to The Son of Royal La^igbrith in 1905. In short, 
Howells has been a part of our American life for over half a 



THE PRESENT AGE 461 

century, and many phases of that Ufe are reflected in his works 
with the fidehty and conscientiousness of a good workman. 

Though generally engaged, like Aldrich, in what is termed 
''miniature" work, Howells has kept before him a high ideal 
of art, and has been steadily faithful to the best literary traditions. 
For their style alone — a graceful, flexible style that is an incen- 
tive to better writing — all of Howells's works are well worth 
the reading ; and we should know a few of his typical novels, 
such as The Rise of Silas Lapham, A Modern Instance, and 
The Quality of Mercy, in order to appreciate the American 
realistic novel, which differs in many important respects from 
the European product. 

Concerning the value and enduring interest of these novels 
there are many opinions. To the lover of romance they have 
- many faults, chief of which is that they are not '' good 
Howells's stories." They fail to do justice to the heroic side of 
^°^^ life ; their characters, so finely analyzed, are frequently 

tiresome or unlovely ; and with few exceptions their shallow 
feminine characters seem quite as untrue to American woman- 
hood as are the romantically insipid '' females " of Cooper. On 
the other hand, they contain some of the best pictures of 
American society '' in the making" that have ever appeared in 
literature, and their style and delicate humor have a charm 
which allures the reader even when the story lags and the 
characters are most uninteresting. 

For Howells's theory of his art, and for his motive in portray- 
ing the petty details of life, one should read his Criticism in 
Fiction, which does not, however, tell us why the interesting, 
the original, the lovable people one meets in real life are not 
better represented in his realistic pages. An explanation of the 
matter, and an estimate of Howells's place in fiction, are given 
by a contemporary critic : 

" He tells his methods very frankly, and his first literary principle has 
been to look away from great passions, and rather to elevate the common- 
place by minute touches. Not only does he prefer this, but he does not 



462 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

hesitate to tell us sometimes, half jestingly, that it is the only thing to do. 
'As in literature the true artist will shun the use even of real events if they 
are of an improbable character, so the sincere observer of man will not 
desire to look upon his heroic or occasional phases, but will seek him in his 
habitual moods of vacancy and tiresomeness.' ^ He may not mean to lay this 
down as a canon of universal authority, but he accepts it himself ; and he 
accepts with it the risk involved of a too-limited and microscopic range. . . . 
He is really contributing important studies to the future organization of our 
society. How is it to be stratified? How much weight is to be given 
to intellect, to character, to wealth, to antecedents, to inheritance? Not only 
must a republican nation meet and solve these problems, but the solution is 
more assisted by the writers of romances than by the compiler of statistics. 
Fourth of July orators cannot even state the problem : it almost baffles the 
finest touch. As in England you may read everything ever written about 
the Established Church, and yet, after all, if you wish to know what a bishop 
or a curate is, you must go to Trollope's novels, so, to trace American 
' society ' in its formative process, you must go to Howells ; he alone shows 
you the essential forces in action." ^ 

Modified Types of Realism and Romance. There are other 
interesting types and phases of modern reahsm, — the local 
short story, for instance, which has been so rapidly and well 
developed since Bret Harte discovered its possibilities that the 
American short story is now almost a symbol of literary interest 
and good workmanship. Then there are the '' specialized " 
novels, each dealing with a particular type of life, in the moun- 
tains or fields or factories of this varied America, and the '' prop- 
aganda " novels, which aim directly at some needed reform in 
politics or society. The most notable example of the latter type 
is the Ramoiia (1884) of Helen Hunt Jackson, which aimed to 
do for the Indian v/hat Uncle Tom s Cabiji had done for the 
negro, and which, in its combination of realism with romantic 
interest, is one of the most notable of American novels. 

Each of these types has been represented by many good 
writers, and so well have they done their work that fiction 
readers for a generation past have wandered, thirsty and hungry, 
in a desert of realism, have felt the horror of the slums or the 

1 Quoted from Howells, Their Wedding Jouryiey. 

2 Higginson, Short Studies of American Authors^ pp. 34-36. 



THE PRESENT AGE 463 

Stockyards, the loneliness of isolated farms, the grinding curse 
of modern industrialism. From this flat, weary desert we escape 
gladly to the uplands of life, to feel the spell of ancient days in 
the Ben Hitr or The Fair God of Lew Wallace, to share the 
stirring romance of Colonial life in the To Have and to Hold 
of Mary Johnston, or to sweeten our realistic pessimism by the 
breezy, cleansing laughter of Frank Stockton. Or, it may be, 
we pick up the popular, ephemeral novel, expecting nothing, 
and find something hearty, wholesome and typically American 
in the humor and philosophy of an Eben Holden. 

One suggestive tendency should be noted in this connection, 
namely, that our best romancers and realists are wary of extremes. 
The Modern Each corrects his individual theory by looking at life 
Novel from the other's viewpoint, and the result is a story 

which often combines the good elements of romanticism and 
realism. This is especially noticeable in the work of many of 
the '' local " or '' specialized " novelists. In the finely wrought 
sketches of Creole life by George Washington Cable ; in the 
pathos and tragedy of an almost primitive existence amid the 
grandeur of the Great Smoky Mountains as revealed by Mary 
Noailles Murfree (Charles Egbert Craddock) ; in the delicate yet 
powerful novels of the New England coast by Sarah Orne 
Jewett, — in all such works one feels the influence of both 
romance and reality. The same interesting combination appears 
in our writers of fiction who are generally classed as romancers 
pure and simple, in the works of Marion Crawford, Elizabeth 
Stuart Phelps, Margaret Deland, Thomas Nelson Page, and 
many others. The above lists should be increased fivefold if we 
are to include all our novelists of distinction ; we have selected 
a few names simply to illustrate the fact that modern fiction 
avoids the romantic unreality of Poe and Hawthorne without 
going to the extreme of realism. Our typical novelists try faith- 
fully to reflect life as they see it and where they see it, not 
slighting either the soul or the body of humanity ; they remem- 
ber also the first duty of a novelist, which is to tell a story. 



464 



AMERICAN LITERATURE 



Mark Twain. Among recent American writers the most 
picturesque figure is that of Samuel L. Clemens (183 5-19 10), 
who is known wherever English books are read by his pen-name 
of Mark Twain. One of the striking things in his career is that 
it covers the greatest period of American letters and is yet a part 
of our own age. Since his first book appeared, in 1867/ all our 
great poets and some of our greatest prose writers have come 

or gone ; a hundred minor liter- 
ary reputations have waxed and 
waned ; and not once in all that 
time has Mark Twain lost his 
firm hold on his audience, — 
which is now composed of the 
children and grandchildren of 
those who first heard him. His 
leading position seems due, 
therefore, to real power, not to 
chance or to his unfortunate 
reputation as a humorist, which 
led the public to expect a laugh 
even when his purpose was most 
serious. 

The wandering life of Mark 
Twain, which hovered for years 
on the borderland of adventure, 
and which touched many phases 
of American life between the miner's shack and the millionaire's 
drawing-room, can be better read in his own works than in any 
biography. He was educated not in schools but 
on a great river flowing for the most part through 
pioneer territory; and his Life on the Mississippi (1883) is a 
reflection of that education. This book with its vivid pictures 




SAMUEL CLEMENS (MARK TWAIN) 



His Life 



1 The Celebrated Jumping Frog and Other Sketches. This was made up of stories that 
had appeared in various magazines and that had given Mark Twain his first reputation 
as a humorist. 



THE PRESENT AGE 4^5 

of nature and men, and with its comparative freedom from the 
author's worst faults, may possibly prove to be his most enduring 
work. In it he tells us that he met on the Mississippi the dupli- 
cate of every important character in history, biography and 
fiction, and that his experience as pilot of a river steamer com- 
pleted his education. But another chapter was waiting on the 
Western frontier, and Mark Twain's experiences here arc vividly 
portrayed in Roughing It (1872), a book somewhat cruder than 
the other, which reflects largely the sensational elements of 
frontier life. The enlarging of his horizon came with his jour- 
neys in foreign lands, which he recorded in three books. Inno- 
cents Abroad {i^6c)), A Tramp Abroad (1880), and Following 
the Equator (1897). A fourth chapter of his education in- 
cludes his life in the East as a successful literary man, and the 
best reflection of this experience is found in his unfinished 
Aictobiography. 

The reputation of a humorist, which clung to Mark Twain all 
his life, was even more objectionable to him than to his friends. 
His Satire who knew his seriousness of purpose. In his earliest 
and Ridicule sketches, whicli are broadly comic, he displayed that 
'' genius for the incongruous " which is at the root of humor, 
and which some critics consider to be Mark Twain's most 
prominent quality. In his later works humor is an entirely sub- 
ordinate element. Indeed, most of the works that readers wel- 
comed as humorous are not given to humor, but to satire and 
ridicule, which are entirely different matters and pledged to a 
different object. Innoce^its Abroad, for example, which first 
made Mark Twain widely famous as a humorist, is almost wholly 
devoted to ridiculing travelers who see and record the romantic 
side of Old World history and institutions. It is the w^ork of an 
iconoclast, crude, self-confident, without traditions and, therefore, 
without reverence or even respect for the past, who makes a joke 
of what other and wiser men look upon with kindling vision. A 
Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur s Court (1889) is chiefly an 
attack on the past evils of feudalism, a bitter satire on chivalry 



466 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

and knighthood, a parody — always questionable and at times 
unpardonable — on Malory's exquisite Morte d'Art/mr. And 
so with The Man that comipted Hadleybttrg, and many other 
alleged humorous works ; they are not an expression of humor 
in any true sense, but rather of ridicule of human society past or 
present. For ]\Iark Twain was at heart a reformer, vigorous and 
sincere. Next to his love of a practical joke, his most prominent 
characteristic was a hatred of shams, old and new ; but the 
greater part of his literary work is of doubtful value simply 
because he was inclined to ridicule as a sham whatever he did 
not understand. 

There are good critics who believe that Mark Twain's more 
dignified works, such as The Prince and the Panper and Per- 
sonal Recollections of Joan of Arc (which begins strongly as 
a historical novel and develops weakly into a plea for the Maid 
of Orleans), will be longest remembered. At present, however, 
his most widely read works are Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry 
Finn, the former of which is extravagantly lauded as a classic 
of American boyhood, and the latter as an epic, an Odyssey 
even, of the Mississippi River. 

In Tom Sawyer (1876) the author follows Brown and Poe 
in using terror and mystery to give added interest to his story, 
Torn but the terrors — the midnight murder in the grave- 

Sawyer yard, and the renegade with his terrible knife — are 

largely of the dime-novel kind. The hero is essentially a liar, one 
who makes a virtue of falsehood ; and his adventures are of a 
kind to make the thoughtless laugh and the judicious grieve. 
Thus, when one sees the hero (who is supposed to be drowned) 
hide in the church in order to chuckle at his own funeral and 
make a mockery of human grief, one must deplore not only the 
author's taste but his limited conception of the American boy. 
The picture drawn in Tom Sazvyer is one-sided in that it em- 
phasizes the lawless, barbarous side of boy life to the almost 
total neglect of its better qualities, its self-assertion without its 
instinctive respect for authority, its vigor without its natural 



THE PRESENT AGE 467 

refinement. The book is brimful of crude fun and of crude 
human nature, but it may be questioned whether its good quah- 
ties are sufficient to outbalance its dime-novel sensationalism. 

Huckleberry Finn (1885) is a larger and better book than 
the one just considered, and though not free from objectionable 
Huckleberry elements is, on the whole, in better taste. The hero 
Finn is again a liar and a vagabond, and his experiences 

are such that one might regard the book as a humorous version 
of the picaresque novel. With a runaway slave as a companion, 
Huck Finn floats down the mighty Mississippi on a raft, meet- 
ing adventures at every turn ; meeting also ignorant and super- 
stitious natives, gullible fools, dishonest schemes, deadly feuds, 
quacks, charlatans, scoundrels, cheats and impostors of every 
kind. It is a medley, a melodrama of knavery, which ends not 
in a moral climax but in a tedious description of how Tom Saw- 
yer, lately arrived on the scene, insists on rescuing the runaway 
slave (who is already a free man) by the most approved dime- 
novel methods. The portrayal of all these astonishing scenes 
is vivid and intensely dramatic ; one needs hardly to add that 
it is a portrayal, not of the great onward current of American 
life, but only of its flotsam and jetsam. 

With all its faults of mockery and sensationalism Hnckleberry 
Finn is a powerful book, and it may serve well to suggest its 
Quality author's claim to a permanent place in our literature. 

TwaiVs First of all, his characters are vital ; they may be 
Work good or bad, they may even be grotesque, but they 

are real men and women. Not only the heroes, Tom Sawder 
and Huck Finn, but the minor characters, the negro Jim in his 
simple manliness, the Grangerfords with their insane feud, the 
old lady who unmasks a boy disguised in girl's clothes by get- 
ting him to throw a stone at a rat, the varied assortment of gulls 
and impostors, — every one of these characters is so clearly, 
sharply drawn that he stands before us as an individual. The 
action of the story, though always more or less melodramatic, is 
of absorbing interest. The descriptions of nature, of storm and 



468 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

calm, day and night, are extraordinarily vivid. Cooper hardly 
drew more beautiful pictures of the sea than Mark Twain draws 
of the changing lights and shadows of the great river. Finally, 
there is an intensity in his best work, a moral intensity (though 
he stoutly disclaimed a moral purpose) which compels attention. 
For, as we have noted, Mark Twain was at heart a reformer, a 
hater of shams, and in ridiculing some real or fancied wrong 
he manifested the same moral earnestness that characterized 
Mrs. Stowe and other writers of the '' propaganda " novel. 
Perhaps the chief quality of his work is its dramatic vigor ; 
its chief defect is the lack of good taste and refinement. 

Joel Chandler Harris (1848- 1908). Of most of the books 
that go to make up the flood of modern fiction the historian is 
a little doubtful, but there is one which he may confidently crit- 
icize as having already secured for itself an enduring place in 
literature. For it creates a new character, in some respects the 
most natural and lovable character that has ever appeared in 
American fiction, — our old friend. Uncle Remus. One writes 
the name with a smile, in which amusement is mingled with 
tenderness and gratitude. It is like opening a door into a new 
world of folklore ; it recalls the open-eyed wonder with which 
we first heard the stories of Br'er Rabbit's frolicsome adven- 
tures, or the deeper pleasure with which we tell them to our 
own children. 

The author of the book calls himself an uncultivated Georgia 
'' cracker," but the world is glad to acknowledge both the origi- 
nality of his genius and the thoroughness of his preparation for 
his work. Only a genius, a born story-teller, could have created 
Uncle Remus, with his inexhaustible fund of animal lore ; only 
one who had studied the negro faithfully till he knew not only 
his dialect but the subtle working of his primitive mind could 
have given him such natural and admirable expression. Har- 
ris's first collection of stories, U^icle Remus, appeared in 1880, 
and was followed by Nig-hts zvith Uncle Rcvins, Uncle Remus 
and Ills Friends, and Told by Uncle Remits. In these four 



THE PRESENT AGE 4^9 

books, all in the same delightful vein, he has given the old 
plantation negro and his folklore to our literature. 

The plan of the work is simplicity itself. The characters are 
Uncle Remus and the little girl and boy who come to beg for a 
Plan of story, with an occasional glimpse of ''Miss SalHe " 

Uncle Remus qj- some Other minor personage. The hero of most 
of the tales is Br'er Rabbit, not the timid rabbit of the fields 
who furnishes food to hungry prowlers, but a gay, impudent, 
versatile rabbit who talks "big" to Br'er Bear, or "sassy" to 
Br'er Wolf, and who relies upon quick wit or pure mischief to 
get him safely out of his encounters with larger creatures. Note 
this scene in which the hero is at last caught by the fox, who 
proposes to make a terrible end of Br'er Rabbit's fooling. 
Says the fox to his helpless victim : 



?« t 



En dar you is, en dar you '11 stay twel I fixes up a bresh-pile and fires 
her up, kaze I'm gwineter bobbycue you dis day, sho,' sez Brer Fox, sezee. 

" Den Brer Rabbit talk mighty 'umble. 

" ' I don't keer w'at you do wid me, Brer Fox,' sezee, ' so you don't fling 
me in dat brier-patch. Roas' me, Brer Fox,' sezee, ' but don't fling me in 
dat brier-patch,' sezee. 

'^ ' Hit 's so much trouble fer ter kindle a fier,' sez Brer Fox, sezee, ' dat 
I speck I'll hatter hang you,' sezee. 

" ' Hang me des ez high ez you please, Brer Fox,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, 
* but do for de Lord's sake don't fling me in dat brier-patch,' sezee. 

" ' I ain't got no string,' sez Brer Fox, sezee, ' en now I speck I '11 hatter 
drown you,' sezee. 

" ' Drown me des ez deep ez you please. Brer Fox,' sez Brer Rabbit, 
sezee, ' but do don't fling me in dat brier-patch,' sezee. 

" ' Dey ain't no water nigh,' sez Brer Fox, sezee, ' en now I speck I '11 
hatter skin you,' sezee. 

" ' Skin me. Brer Fox,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, ' snatch out my eyeballs, 
t'ar out my years by de roots, en cut off my legs,' sezee, ' but do please. 
Brer Fox, don't fling me in dat brier-patch,' sezee. 

" Co'se Brer Fox wanter hurt Brer Rabbit bad ez he kin, so he cotch 
'im by de behime legs en slung 'im right in de middle er de brier-patch. 
Dar wuz a considerbul flutter whar Brer Rabbit struck de bushes, en Brer 
Fox sorter hang 'roun' fer ter see w'at wuz gwineter happen. Bimeby he 
hear somebody call 'im, en way up de hill he see Brer Rabbit settin' cross- 
legged on a chinkapin log koamin' de pitch outen his har wid a chip. Den 



470 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Brer Fox know dat he bin swop off mighty bad. Brer Rabbit wuz bleedzed 
fer ter fling back some er his sass, en he holler out : 

" ' Bred en bawn in a brier-patch, Brer Fox — bred en bawn in a brier- 
patch ! ' en wid dat he skip out des ez lively ez a cricket in de embers." ^ 

There are scores of such whimsical tales, the most famous 
being '' The Wonderful Tar-Baby Story," which should be read 
entire, for it is too good to spoil by quotation. Some of them 
may have originated with Uncle Remus ; others are hundreds, 
perhaps thousands, of years old, and are told in various forms 
by primitive tribes as far apart as Africa and South America. 
Their chief value, however, is not as a collection of folklore 
stories, great as that value is, but rather as a revelation of the 
American negro. In the gay adventures of Br'er Rabbit, who 
typifies the triumph of weakness or mischief over strength, 
one may see a mental reflection of a race that could laugh and 
be happy- in a condition of helpless slavery. In the person of 
Uncle Remus one sees a real character, vital, human, lovable, 
who has endeared himself to millions of children past and pres- 
ent, and who will sit by the fire on winter nights, a welcome guest, 
and tell stories to children of the future. The creation of that 
one character seems to be one of the most notable achievements 
of American fiction. 

Conclusion. It is often said that the golden age of American 
life and letters is in the past ; that the present material age 
shows no great promise or achievement, and no single writer 
of commanding genius. The same was said when Edwards 
died, in 1758, yet half of a century later America felt the first 
real stir of national enthusiasm which was reflected in a national 
literature. Nearly another half century passed before America 
was again deeply stirred by the transcendental and reform move- 
ments, and contrary to all expectations the awakened national 
spirit expressed itself in a great outburst of poetry. The pres- 
ent is an age of comparative quiet ; its agitations are mostly on 

1 From " How Mr. Rabbit was too Sharp for Mr. Fox." This is really a conclusion 
of " The Wonderful Tar-Baby Story." 



THE PRESENT AGE 4/1 

the surface ; yet one must believe, from all our past history, 
that whenever America is again stirred to the depths, whether it 
be to-day or to-morrow, our larger national life will again express 
itself in a greater literature. It is well to remember also that 
the flowering of literature, like that of any other art, cannot pos- 
sibly be forecast, that it always appears suddenly and with a 
surprise. The beautiful thought of God, which expressed in 
prose or verse is literature, comes to any mind that is open 
enough to receive it. We awaken some morning, and lo ! from 
some unexpected source, from some shepherd on the hills, from 
some boy holding horses at the door of the theater, comes the 
poem, the story, the drama that reflects the fleeting life and 
the deathless yearnings of humanity. So whether one faces 
the present, which cannot yet be judged, or the future, which 
guards its own secret, one may well close his survey of American 
literature with the last sonnet of the aged Longfellow : 

Where are the Poets, unto whom belong 

The Olympian heights ; whose singing shafts were sent 

Straight to the mark, and not from bows half bent, 

But with the utmost tension of the thong .? 
Where are the stately argosies of song, 

Whose rushing keels made music as they went 

Sailing in search of some new continent, 

With all sail set, and steady winds and strong ? 
Perhaps there lives some dreamy boy, untaught 

In schools, some graduate of the field or street, 

Who shall become a master of the art, 
An admiral sailing the high seas of thought, 

Fearless and first, and steering with his fleet 

For lands not yet laid down in any chart. 



INDEX 



Titles of books, poems, stories and essays are all set in italic type. When several 
minor references are given, the use of italic indicates a detailed study of an author's 
life cLnd work. 



Abbott, Jacob, 260 
Abolitionists, the, 272, 306 
Adams, Abigail, 147 
Adams, John, 94, 112, 126 
Adams, Samuel, 89, 113, 127 
Adventures of Captain Bonneville, 

183, 190 
A.^assiz, To, 344 
Agitation, the age of, 272, 281 
Alcott, Amos B., 282 
Alcott, Louisa M., 282, 415 
Alcuiii, 156 

Aldrich, Thomas B., 453 
Alhambra, The, 183, 189 
Alice of Moninouih, 453 
Allegory, of Poe, 236 ; of Hawthorne, 

398 
Almanacs, early, 105 
Alsop, George, 41 
American Scholar, The, 213, 322, 333, 

336 

Ames, Nathaniel, 105 

Among My Books, 341, 347 

Angels, Emerson's four, 320 

Annalists, Colonial, 11, 39 

Afinuals, 174 

Anti-Federalists, the, 91, 94, 117, 119 

Art, different conceptions of, 245; 
Emerson's, 329 ; Lanier's, 364, 366 

A!t, Emerson's essay, 328, 330 

Art of living, explained by Franklin, 
1 10 

Artistic literature, beginning of, 56, 
179 

As a Strong Bird, y]"] 

Astoria, 183, 190 

Audubon, J. J., 259 

Autobiography, Franklin's, 107; Jef- 
ferson's, 127 

Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, The, 

353. 356 



Balance of power, political, 271 

Ballad of Natha7i J I ale, 133 

Ballad of Trees and the Master, 366 

Ballads, of the Revolution, 133; of 
Whittier, 310 

Bancroft, George, 259, 280 

Barlow, Joel, 134, 135 

Bartram, John, 147 

Battle Hymn of the Republic;, 382 

Bay Psalm Book, 7 he, 44 

Beginnings of American literature, 3 

Belknap's History, 147 

Beverly, Robert, 42 

Bhagavadgita, 379 

Bibliographies, general, xviii ; Colo- 
nial, 80 ; Revolutionary, 163; First 
National period, 262 ; Second Na- 
tional period, 441 

Biglo7C) Papers, The, 340, 346 

Biographies, our first, 68 

Birth of the nation, 92 

Bitter S7vcet, 390 

Blithedale Po?nance, The, 394, 401 

Boajierges, 61 

Boker, G. H., 386, 388 

Bold Hat home, 392 

Bojiifacijis, 61 

Books, earliest printed, 44 

Braceb7-idge Hall, 79, 187, 188 

Brackenridge, Hugh, 145 

Bradford, William, 4, 6, //, 22, 88; 
life, 11; works, 12; as a historian, 
18; style, 6, II, 19; library, 12; 
Journal, 18 ; manuscripts, 19 

Bradstreet, Anne, 23, 46, ^7; life. 48 ; 
poems, 49 

Brahma, 328, 379 

" Brahmin caste," 349, 352 

Brebeuf, Parkman's stor}^ of, 433 

Brewster, Elder, 12, 17, 18 

Brick, story of a, 10 



473 



474 



AMERICAN LITERATURE 



Bridge, Horatio, 394 

Brook Farm, 277, 394 

Brown, Charles Brockden, 93, 75^, 

404; life, 155; works, 157; Brown, 

Shelley and Godwin, 156 
Brownell, H. H., 390 
Brownson, Orestes, 280 
Bryant, William Cullen, 170, 175, 177, 

jg4, 287, 389, 450; life, 195; works, 

199; poems on death, 201; nature 

poems, 202 ; characteristics, 204 ; 

compared with Lanier, 205 
Burk, John, 145 
Bunvell Papers, The, ^i 
Busybody Papers, The, 109 
Byrd, William, 32; his Journals, 34; 

significance of his work, 38 

Cable, G. W., 463 

Calhoun, John C, 255 

California and 07'egon Trail, The, 39, 

436, 438 
Calvinism, 53, 75 

Cambridge, literary life in, 2S8, 298 

Captain, My Captain, 376 

Carleton, Will, 455 

Carver, Governor, 18 

Carver, Jonathan, 147 

Cathcdj'al, The, 344 

Cavalier, the, in American literature, 

33' 144' 145 
Cawein, Madison, 455 

Cedarcroft, 385 

Centralizing tendency in government, 
117 

Chambered Nautilus, The, '^^^ 

Channing, W. E., yj, 153, 259, 276, 
280 

Character of the Province of Maryland, 
A, 41 

Chai'lotie Temple, 1 54 

Chingachgook, 217, 223 

Chivers-Poe controversy, the, 241 

Christies, A Alystery, 299 

Ch7'07iological History of New Ejigland, 
42 

Citizen literature, 97 

Clarke, James F., 280 

Classic, and Classicism, 138 

Clay, Henry, 255 

Clemens, S. L. See Mark Twain 

College lyrics of Holmes, 352, 354 

Colleges, first American, 79 

Colonial Period of Literatuic;, intro- 
duction to, I ; spirit of, 4 ; why 



study, 10; typical annalists, 11 ; 
various chronicles, 39 ; satire and 
criticism, 41 ; histories, 42; Indian 
narratives, 42 ; poets and poetry, 
44 ; theological WTiters, 57 ; char- 
acteristics of, 79, 92 ; summiary of 
history, 78 ; summary of literature, 
79 ; selections for reading, and bib- 
liography, 80 

Colonists, the, character of, 8, 62; 
why they wrote few books, 7 ; ideals 
of, 46; earlier and later, 171, 172 

Coliunbiad, The, 135 

Cobunbus, Irving's, 182, 183, 189; 
Lowell's, 347 ; Lanier's, 366 ; Whit- 
man's, 377 

Commemoration Ode, Lowell's, 341, 

345' Zll 
Committee, of Correspondence, the. 

Commonplace, the, in poetry, 301 

Common Sense, 148 

Communistic societies, 277, 278. See 
also p. 16 

Concord, Emerson's life in, 322 

Conquest of Canaan, The, 135 

Conspiracy of Pojitiac, The, 430, 434 

Constitution, the, 91, 118, 121 

Continental Congress, the first, 88 

Cooke, John Esten, 40S, 412 

Cooper, James Fenimore, 91, 99, 175, 
Boy ; life, 200; compared with Scott, 
213; historical romances, 213; 
Leatherstocking tales, 217; sea 
stories, 220; characteristics, 223; 
popularity abroad, 224 

Count Frontenac, 434 

Cou7'tin\ The, 347 

Courtship of Miles Standish, The, 293 

Craigie House, 288 

Crevecoeur, 146 

Crisis, The, Paine's, 149 

Criticism, beginning of, 178, 233, 234 

Croakers, The, 252 

Cross of Snow, The, 2S9 

Culprit Fay, The, i^\2 

Culture, literature of, 7 

Curtis, G. W., 184, 448 

Dana, R. H., Jr., 247 
Day of Doo77t, The, 47, 51, 95 
Daye, Stephen, 44 
Deacon'' s Masterpiece, The, 355 
Death as a subject in early literature, 
192, 200, 201 



INDEX 



475 



Declaration of Independence, Sg 

Declaration of Indepejuieiice, The, 128 

Deerslayer, 77u\ 218 

Democracy, two elements of, 91 ; in 
First National period, 172; Whit- 
man's, 378 

Democracy and Other Essays, 347 

Description of Nezv England, ^, 5, 39 

Detective stories, 235, 236 

Determinism, doctrine of, 75 

Dial, The, 277, 378 

Diary, Sewall's, 28, 31 

Dickinson, Emily, 456 

Divine Cojnedy, The, Longfellow's 
translation, 298 

Dorcasijia Sheldon. See Female 
Quixotism 

Drake, Joseph Rodman, 251 

Druillette, journey of, 12 

Drum Taps, 372 

Dual personality as a motive, 236 

Dunbar, P. L., 452 

Dunlap, William, 93, 145 

Dwight, Timothy, 134, 135 

Easy Chair Papers, 184 

Edgar Huntley, 1 57 

Edwards, Jonathan, 70, 87, 93, 100, 
255> 470; life, 70; character, 73, 
76 ; works, 74, 76 

Eggleston, Edw^ard, 415 

Eliot, John, 42 ; Mather's Life of, 67 

Elmwood, 338 

Elsie Venner, 356 

Emerson, Ralph \Yaldo, 277, 280, 282, 
318, 399, 417, 450 ; life, 320 ; poetr)-, 
325; prose works, 329 ; philosophy, 
332; characteristics, 335; claim to 
greatness, 336 

Enamoin'ed Architect, The, 455 

English jVovel, The, 365 

" Era of good feeling," the, 171 

Essays to Do Good, 61, 100 

Ethan Brand, 398 

Eureka, "zy] 

Evangeline, 292, 300 

Everett, Edward, 256 

Ebcctirsions, 422 

Expansion of the nation, 171 

Fable for Critics, A, 346 

Faithful Narrative, A, 73 

Fall of the Hoicse of Usher, The, 227, 

238 
Fannie, 253 



Fanshn^ve, 393 

Farewell Addi'css, Washington's, 115 

Fanner Refuted, The, 121 

Fashions, literary, 94, 146 

F'ather Abraham^ s Speech, 107 

Fatherland, the, 66 

Faust, Taylor's translation, 387 

Federalist, The, 121 

Federalist party, the, 91, 94, 117, 

119 
Female Quixotism, 154 
Fiction, beginning of, i 54 
Field, Eugene, 451 
First Encounter, the, 14 
Fiske, John, 118, 122 
Folklore literature, 7 
Foreign notions of America, 211, 381, 

382 
Forest Hymn, A, 176, 194 
Foster, S. C, 383 
Fourierism, 278, 279 
France sea da Rimini, 388 * 

Francis, Convers, 280 
Franklin, Benjamin, 70, 73, 93, gg ; 

life, 100; works, 104; humor and 

philosophy, no, in 
Franklin, Temple, 108 
Freedoyn of the IVill, 53, 'j'i^, 74 
Freneau, Philip, 93, 120, ijS ; life, 

138; works, 140; as a romantic 

poet, 142 
Friendship, 330 

P'uller, Margaret, 280, 378, 401 
Full Vindication of Congress, A, 121 

Garrison, W. L., and Whittier, 305, 

306 
General History of N'ew England, 42 
General Histoiy of Virginia, 5, 39 
Gettysburg Oration of Everett and of 

Lincoln, 256 
Godfrey, Thomas, 47, jj; life, 54; 

works, 55, 56 
Gold Bug, The, iSS, 235, 242 
Golden Legend., The, 299, 387 
Goldsmith, Life of, 184, 190 
Good News from N'ew England, 40 
Good N'ew s f 7-0 771 Vi7ginia, 40 
Goodrich, Samuel, 260 
Gookin, Daniel, 42 
Gotham and Gothamites, 186 
Gothic romance, the, 160, 161, i6_7 
G7'andfather's Chair, 394, 397 
Great Awakening, the, 73, 76 
Cuardia7i Angel, The, 356 



476 



AMERICAN LITERATURE 



Hale, E. E., 44S 

Half CenUoy of Conflict, A, 434 
Halleck, Fitz-Greene, 253 
Hamilton, Alexander, 93, 94, 118; 

life, 119; works, 120 
Hampto?i Beach, 313 
Ha7igmg of the Crane, The, 297 
Hannah Thurston, 387 
Harland, Marion, 415 
Harris, Joel C, 468 
Harte, Francis Bret, 408, 412, 462 ; 

his career, 413; place in fiction, 

414 
Hartford Wits, the, 134 
Harvey Birch, 207, 214 
Hasty Pudding, 135 
Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 2S0, 292,^9/; 
' life, 392 ; short stories, 397 ; four 

romances, 400 ; characteristics, 404 ; 

unfinished romance, 397 
Hay, John, 390, 455 
Hayne, Paul H., 383 
Hearthfire, symbol of the, 66, 302, 

304, 308 
Hea7is of Oak, 96 
Heitnskringla, 299 
Helen, To, 239 

Henry, Patrick, 88, 93, 97, iij, 121 
Hexameters, 293 
Hia7vatha, 294 ; compared with the 

Kalevala, 295, 300 
Higginson, T. W., 335, 448, 461 
Historians. See Colonial, Motley, etc. 
Historical Collections of the Indians, 

43 
Historical romances, early, 178 

History of the Dividing Line, A, 34 

History of New Englaftd, Winthrop's, 
24 

History of Virginia, Beverly's, 42 

Holland, J. G., 390 

Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 309, 318, 
3Si; life, 351; poems, 353; prose 
works, 356; humor, 351, 357; char- 
acteristics, 357 

Homestead, the Whittier, 304 

Hoosier Schoolmaster, The, 41 ^ 

Horror, as a motive, in Brown, 160; 
in Poe, 237 ; in Hawthorne, 404; in 
Mark Twain, 466 

Horse-Shoe Robijtson, 248 

House of the Seven Gables, Tht, 400 

Hovey. Richard, 455 

Howe, Julia Ward, 382 

Howells, W. D,, 457, 460 



How Love looked for Hell, 367 

Hubbard, William, 41 

Hiicklebeny Finfi, 466, 467 

Humor, of Franklin, no; of Irving, 
187, 191; of Holmes, 351, 357; of 
Bret Harte, 415; of Mark Twain, 

465 
Hunt, Helen. See Jackson 

Hymn to the Beautiful, 388 

Hyperion, 287, 291 

Ichabod, 309 

Idealism, 280, 28 1, 282, 459. See also 
Jefferson 

Idyls of Whittier, 311 

Iliad, Bryant's translation, 197 

Indians, as portrayed by Smith and 
Bradford, 5, 6 ; attack on the Pil- 
grims, 14; Byrd's account of, 35; 
early narratives of, 42 ; as seen by 
Parkman, 435, 438 

Individualism, of Emerson, 321, 323, 
334,336; of Whitman, 381 ; of Haw- 
thorne, 395; of Thoreau, 417, 418, 
423; cult of, 281, 378 

Innocents Abroad, 465 

In the Harbor, 285 

In the Twilight, 350 

Irving, Washington, 175, lyg, 338, 
357; life, 180; early works, 184; 
middle period (English, Spanish, 
and American themes), 187; late 
period, 490; characteristics, 191; 
message, 192 

Israfel, 227 

Jackson, Helen Hunt, 455, 462 

James, Henry, 457, 460 

Jamestown, landing at, 8 

Jay, John, 121 

Jefferson, Thomas, 93, 94, 122, 151, 
272; idealism of, 123; life, 124; 
works, 126; the Declaration of In- 
dependence, 128 

Jesuits, the, 12, 432 

Jesiiits in N'orth America, The, 12, 434, 

438 
Jewett, Sarah Orne, 463 

John Brent, 415 
Johii of Barneveld, 427 
Johnson, Edward, 40 
Johnston, Mary, 463 
"Jonathan Oldstyle," 185, 191 
Jones, Abel, 108 
Josselyn, John, 39 



INDEX 



477 



fotcmal, Bradford's, i8; -Winthrop's, 

20; Byrd's, 34; Winslow's, 40; 

Washington's, 115; Woolman's, 

151 ; Thoreau''s, 421 

Jou7vial of Julius Rodman, Poe, 231 

/oumal of Alargaret Smith, \Vhittier, 

315 
Journey to the Land of Eiicji, A, yj 

Justice and Expediency, 306 

fuvenile Poems, Godfrey, 54 

Juveniles, 260 

Kalevala, 295 

Kavanagh, 292 

Kennedy, John P., 230, 248 

Knickerbocker HistoTy, 1S2, 186 

Knickerbocker School, the, 250 

Knowledge, Emerson's theory of, 333 

Lanier, Sidney, 205, jjc?, 386; life, 
360 ; prose works, 364 ; his theory 
of verse, 365 ; poems, 366 ; charac- 
teristics, 368 

Larcom, Lucy, 315, 341 

Lars, 387 

La Salle and the Discovery of the Great 
West, 434 

Last Leaf, The, 355 

Last of the Mohicans, The, 209, 219, 222 

Laiis Deo, 307 

Lazarus, Emma, 452 

Leather Stocking and Silk, 408 

Leatherstocking tales, 217 

Leaves of Grass, 371, 372, 373, 378 

Lee, Richard H., 121 

Leeds, Titus, 106 

Legend of Brittany, A, 343 

Legendary and historical tales, early, 
177; of Hawthorne, 400 

L' Envoi : To the Muse, 350 

Letters, of Jefferson, 126; of Revolu- 
tionary women, 147 ; of Lowell, 34S 

Letters f'om an Aynericaii Fartiier, 146 

Letters of a Federalist Farmer, 121 

Liberty, Winthrop's definition of, 23, 
116 

Liberty or Death, speech of Henry, 1 14 

Life and Voyages of Cohunbus, 182, 
183, 189 

Life on the Mississippi, 464 

Lincoln, Abraham, 88, 270 

L ion el L in col 71, 216 

Literal",' Friends and Acquaintance, 
288, '3 50 

Literati, The, 231, 447 



Literature, definition of, 56; of folk 
lore, 7 : of culture, 7, 8. See Colo- 
nial, Revolutionary, etc. 

Livingston, William, 95 

Local color, stories of, 408, 412 

Long Tom Coffin, 207, 221, 223 

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 284, 
392, 396, 47 1 ; life, 286 ; earlier 
works, 290; middle period, 292; 
later works, 297; characteristics, 299 

Love, Emerson's essay, 330 

Love Letters, some old, 25 

Lowell, James Russell, 92, 319, 323, 
337» 33S, 387 ; life, 338 ; poetry, 
342; essays, 347; letters, 348; char- 
acteristics, 349; review of his ca- 
reer, 350 

Loyalist Poetry of the Revolution, 133 

Loyalists, the, 90 

Luck of Roaring Camp, The, 412, 413 

Lyceums, 276, 280, 323 

Lyric poetry, definition of, 203 

McCloud, James, 144 

liPFingal, lyj 

Madison, Dolly, 147 

Madison, James, 121 

Magazines, early, 54, 178 

Magnalia, 63; motive of, 64; fantastic 

elements, 66 ; heroes of, 67 
Mamtscript Found in a Bottle, 238 
Marble Faun, The, 395, 401, 405 
A/a7'co Bozzaris, 253 
Margaret Smith's Journal, 315 
Marjorie Daw, 453 
Mark Twain, 357,408, 41 5,^6^; satire 

and ridicule, 465; works, 466; his 

quality, 467 
Marshes oj Glynn, The, 365, 368 
Maryland, My Maryland, 382 
Mason, John, 43 
Mather, Cotton, 12, 32,57, 100, 339. 

349; life, 58; viorks,, 61 ', Alagnalia, 

63 ; portrayal of life, 69 
Mather Dynasty, the, 58 
"Maximarchist " party, 117 
Maypole at Merrj^mount, 17 
Meditative verse of Emerson, 327 
Melodramas, early, 177 
Melville, Herman, 247 
Memorable Providences, 62 
Mercedes of Castile, 215 
Meny Mount, Motley's, 426 
Miller, Joaquin, 389 
*'Minimarchist " party, 117 



4/8 



AMERICAN LITERATURE 



Mitchell, Donald G., 448, 449 

" Mobocrats," 118 

Model of Christian Charity, A, 20 

" Monocrats," 118 

Mo7itcalm and Wolfe, 437 

Monticello, 125, 127 

Moody, William V., 455 

Moral tendency in American litera- 
ture, 283, 317, 318, 344, 364, 405 

Moritiiri Saluiamzis, 297 

Morris, Gouverneur, 91 

Morton, Nathaniel, 19, 41 

Morton of Merrymount, 17 

Mosses f'om an Old Ma?ise, 394. 398 

Motley, John Lothrop, 426 ; works, 
427 ; quality of, 428 

Mauri's delation, 14, 18 

Murfree, Mary N., 463 

Music and poetry, 365, 368 

My Study Windows, 341 

Mystery in fiction, 159, 160, 235, 237 

Nathan Hale, Ballad of , 133 

National literature, 77 ; contrasted 
with sectional, 275, 276. See also 
Preface 

National Period, First, history, 169; 
literature, 174; major writers, 179; 
minor fiction, 247 ; minor poetry, 
249; orators, 254; historians and 
miscellaneous writers, 259; sum- 
mary, 260 ; selections for reading, 
262 ; bibliography, 263 

National Period, Second, historical 
outline, 270 ; the age of agitation, 
272 ; literary and social movements, 
275; transcendentalism, 278; gen- 
eral characteristics of literature, 
283 ; greater poets and essayists, 
284 ; minor poetry, 382 ; novelists 
and story-tellers, 391 ; minor fiction, 
407 ; prose (nonfiction) writers, 
416; summary, 439; selections for 
reading, 440 ; bibliography, 441 

National Road, the, 170 

National songs of the Revolution, 96 

Nationality, effect on literature, 9 ; in 
Bryant's verse, 206 

Natty Bumppo, 207, 217, 223 

Nature, in poetry of the First National 
period, 176; of Second National 
period, 283 ; in Whittier's verse, 
311; in Emerson's verse, 326 ; har- 
mony of, 205 

Nature, Emerson's essay, 322, 329 



Navy, History of the. Cooper's, 211, 

212 
Nezv England Primer, The, 51, 52 
Neza England Refonners, 276 
Neii) England'' s Crisis, 46 
New England''s Memorial, 42 
New England'' s Prospect, 40 
Ne2v Engla7td''s Rarities Discovered, 39 
Newspapers, early, 93 
Night on the Prairies, 375 
Nooning, The, 344 
Norton, Charles Ehot, 298, 348, 351 
Notes on Virginia, 127 
Amotions of Americans, 211 
Noyes, Nicholas, 62 

Oakes, Urian, 46 

O'Brien, Fitz-James, 415 

Occasional poems, 354 

Odell, Jonathan, 93, 140, 149 

Odyssey, Bryant's translation, 197 

Old English Dramatists, 347 

Old droit sides, 352 

Old Regim.e in Canada, The, 434 

Oldtozufi Eolks, 409 

Opefi Road, Song of the, 3 So 

Oratory, 94; of the Revolution, 11 1 ; 

of First National period, 254 
Oregon Trail, The, 39, 436, 438 
Oriental literature, influence of, 280, 

283, 379 
OrientaUsm of Whitman, 378 
Otis, James, 93, 112 
Our Hundred Days in Eu?'ope, 357 
Our Old Home, 397 
Outcasts of Poker Flat, The, 412, 413 
Outre Mer, 287, 291 
Over the Teac2ips, 353 

Paine, Thomas, 147 ; works, 148; last 

years, 151 
Parentator, 61 
Parker, Theodore, 2S0 
Parkman, Francis, 429 ; his theme, 

430 ; preparation, 431 ; works, 434 ; 

quality of, 437 
Partisan, The, (^i 
Partisan prose and verse, 276 
Pathfinder, The, 209, 219 
Patriot party, the, 90 
Patriotism, Mather's appeal to, 58, 66; 

in First National period, 177; 

Lowell's, 340 
Paulding, James K.. 250 
Pelham, Peter, 31 



INDEX 



479 



Pencillings by the Way, 251 

Peter Parley. See Goodrich 

Philosophic Solitude, 95 

Philosophy, aim of, 333 ; FrankHn's, 
106, no; Emerson's, 332 

Picticre of St. John, The, 387 

Pierpont, Sarah, 72 

Pike Comity Ballads, 390 

Pilgrims, the, departure for America, 
13; arrival of, 2; policy of, 12; 
character of, 12, 14, 15; commu- 
nistic experiment, 16 

Pilot, The, 210, 221 

Pioneer interest in literature, 208 

Pioneers, O Pioneers, Whitman, 169, 

376 
Pioneers, The, Cooper, 207, 209, 218 
Pioneers of Frajice in the iVezo IVorld, 

Parkman, 434 
PI i moth Plantation, Of, 12 
Pocahontas, Smith's story of, 5 
Poe, Edgar Allan, 175, 224, 363, 365, 
394, 404; the Poe controversy, 225; 
double nature of, 227; life, 22S; 
critical work, 234 ; tales, 235; poems, 
239; characteristics, 240 
Poems of the Orient, 3S6 
Poet and the Poetic Gift, The, 326 
Poetry, Poe's theory of, 239 ; the 
antithesis to science, 325 ; Lanier's 
theory of, 365, 369 ; the instinct for, 
370 ; recent, 450. See also Colonial, 
Revolutionary, lyric, romantic, etc. 
Pocfs Joiciiial, The, 387 
Poefs Visio7i, The, 246 
Poets of America, The, 452 
Pokahontas, My Lady, Cooke, 409 
Political parties, permanent, 116 
Pon teach, a Tragedy, 435 
Pontiac, story of, 430, 434 
Poor Picha7'd''s Almanac, 100, 105 
Powhattan, 5 
Prairie, The, 219, 220 
Preacher, The, 87 
Precatction, 209 

Predestination, doctrine of, 75 
Prescott, William H., 259 
Present Age, the. See Recent Litera- 
ture 
Present Crisis, The, 345 
Prince, Thomas, 19, 41, 42 
Prince of Parthia, The, 55 
Progress of Diclness, The, 134 
Progress to the AIi7ies, A, 27 
Prophecy o_f Samuel Sew all. The, 304 



Psalm of Life, A, 291 

Psalm of the West, A, 358, 366 

Pseudoscientific tales, 236 

Purchase, His Pilgri7nes, 18 

Puritans, the, 20, 25, 33, 68, 201, 206, 
303, 316; as portrayed by Haw- 
thorne, 400 

Quotations, Emerson's use o^, 331 

Ra77io7ia, 462 

Ramsay's histories, 147 

Randall, J. R., 382 

Read, T. B., 390 

Realism, 457 

Realist, the, in fiction, 458, 459 

Recent Literature, introduction, 447 ; 
reminiscent writers, 448 ; poetry, 
450; fiction, 456; romance and 
realism, 457 

Redee7ned Captive, The, 43 

Red Rover, The, 221, 223 

Relatio7is, Jesuit, 12, 432 

Religious Affectio7is, 7 he, 73 

Religious poems of Whittier 312, 316 

Reminiscent literature, 448 

Reply to Hay7ie, Webster's, 258 

Represe7itative Men, 329 

Reve7tge of Hamish, The, 366 

Revolution, the American, 89 

Revolutionary Period, the, history, 
86 ; general literary tendencies, 92 ; 
poetry, 94 ; prose, 97 ; transition 
from colony to nation, see Franklin; 
orators and statesmen, in ; poets, 
132; prose writers, 146; beginning 
of American fiction, 154; summary, 
162; selections for reading, 163; 
bibliography, 164 

Rich, Richard, 46 

Rights of Alan, The, 151 

Riley, J. W., 452 

Ripley, George, 277, 2S0 

Rise of the Dutch Repiibiic, The, 427, 
429 

Roe, E. P., 415 

Romance, of the West, 184, 185; of 
the Revolution, 214 

Romance and realism, 457, 459; modi- 
fied types of, 462 

Romantic poetry, beginning of, 142 

Romanticism, 138, 174, 178 

Rowlandson, Mary, 43 

Rowson, Susanna, 154 

Ryan, Abram J., 384 



48o 



AMERICAN LITERATURE 



Saga of King Olaf^ The, 299 

Salmagii7idi, 180, 181, 185, 250 

Salt maker of Plymouth, the, 17 

Sandys, George, 47 

Satan stoe, 216 

Satire, in the Revolution, 95, no, 120, 
140; of Franklin, 109, no 

Saturday Club, the, 352 

Scarlet Letter, The, 394, 396, 402 

Schoolcraft, H. R., 259 

Schools of literature, 234, 245, 249, 
250 

Science of English Verse, The, 2,^^ 

Scyld, story of, i 

Sea stories, of Cooper, 220; of Mel- 
ville, 247 

Seabury. See Westchester Farmer 

Sectional literature, 275, 276 

Sedgwick, Catherine, 175, 247 

Selling of Joseph, The, 28 

Sensibility in fiction, 159 

Sentimentality in early literature, 159, 
174, 192, 213, 450 

Sewall, Samuel, 27 ; his Diary, 28 

Ships, coming of the, i ^ 

Short story, the, 179, 235, 414. See 
also Irving, Poe, Harte, etc. 

Silence Dogood Essays, 109 

Sill, E. R., 455 

Simms, William Gilmore, 91, 24^; 
life, 244 ; works, 245 ; quality of, 
246 

Simple Cobbler, The, 12, 41 

Sketch Book, The, 175, 182, 187 

Slavery, the question of, 27 1, 272, 273 ; 
poems on, 291, 316 

Smith, Captain John, 4, 18, 39 

Snow Bound, 301, 307, 313) 317 

Snoiv Image, The, 398 

Social development in the Revolu- 
tionary period, 86 

Song of Myself , 373, 374 

Songs of the Revolution, 133 

Songs of the Sierras, 389, 390 

Sonnets of Longfellow, 297 

Sovereignity and Goodness of God, The, 

43 
Sparks, Jared, 259 

Spy, The, 91, 210, 213 

Stamp Act, the, 87 

Standish, Myles, 17 

Statesmen of the Revolution, 114 

Stedman, Edmund C, 388, 449, 

452 
Stiles, Ezra, 130 



Stockton, Frank R., 463 
Stoddard, Richard H., 388 
Story of a Bad Boy, The, 453 
Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 409 
Style, of Emerson, 335; of Lowell, 

349 ; of Parkman, 439 
Summaiy View, A, 123, 128 
Sunnyside, 184 
Sunrise, 359, 363, 367 
Surrey of EagW s N'est, 409 
Swallow Ba7~?i, 248 
Symbolism of Hawthorne, 395 
Symphony, The, 359-360, 366 
" Symposium," the, 280 

Tabb, J. B., 455 

Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, 

237 
Tales of a Tj'aveller, 187, 188 

Tales of a Wayside Inti, 298, 313 

Tame7'lafie, 229 

Taylor, Bayard, 363, j5f,- poems, 3S6; 

dramas and novels, 387 
Tenney, Tabitha, 154 
Teni on the Beach, The, 313 
Tenth Muse, the, 47 
Thanatopsis, 196, 201, 202 
Thaxter, Celia, 455 
Thomas, Edith, 455 
Thompson, Benjamin, 46 
Thoreau, Henry D., 2S0, 416; life, 

417; works, 421; quality of, 422; 

individualism, 423 ; compared with 

Emerson, 424 
Thoic Mother with thy Equal Bjvod, 

377 
Three Memorial Poems, 343, 345 

Threnody, 327 

Tiger Lilies, 362 

Timrod, Henr)s 383 

Tom Satvyer, 466 

Tories in the Revolution, 90, 94 

Tour of the Prairies, A, 183, 189 

Transcendentalism, 278, 379 

Travels through A^orth America, 147 

Treaty of Paris, the, 87 

Trowbridge, J. T., 415 

True Relation, A, 5, 39 

Trice Stories, Hawthorne's, 397 

Trumbull, John, 134, 136 

Tucker, St. George, 144 

Tcuice Told Tales, 393, 398, 399 

Two Atigfls, The, 340 

Tico Years befo?-e the Alast, 247 

Tyler, Royall, 93, 145 



INDEX 



481 



Uncas, 219. See also Last of the 

AIohica}is 
UjicU Kenuis, 105, 46S, 470 
Uficle TonCs Cabin, 48, 410 
Under the WHIctvs, 341, 343 
Union of the Colonies, 88. See also 

Constitution 
United Colonies of New England, the, 

20,78 
United A^etherlands, Histoiy of the, 

427, 429 
Unity, national, 170 
Universal standards of poetry, 369 
Uriel, 327 

Very, Jones, 2S0, 390 

Viei.vs Afoot, 385 

Virginia Comedians, The, 408 

Visio7i of Sir Launfal, The, 340, 344 

Voices of Freedom, 309 

Voices of the Night, 285, 290 

Walden, 421 

Wallace, Lew, 463 

Ward, Nathaniel, 12, 41 

Warren, Mercy, 145 

Washington, George, 89, 114 

Washington, Everett's oration on, 

256 
Washington, Life of, by Weems, 149, 

190; by Irving, 184, 190 
Waterfoivl, To a, 203 
Wayside, the, 395 
Wayside Inn. See Tales 
Way to Wealth, The, 107 
Webster, Daniel, 120, 184, 2^6, 309, 

310; typical orations, 258 
Week 071 the Concord, A, 420, 421 
JVept of Wish-ton- Wish, The, 215 
West, romance of the, 184, 185 
Westchester Farmer, The, 121 
Westover Manuscripts, the, 34 
What Mr. Robinsoti Thinks, 347 



Wheatley, Phillis, 145 

When Lilacs last ifi the Door-yard 
Bloom'd, 377 

Whigs in the Revolution, 90, 94 

White, Maria (Mrs. Lowell), 339 

Whitman, Walt, Z^l-,37o; life, 371; 
quality of his verse, 373 ; his better 
poetry, 375; orientalism of, 378; 
at home and abroad, 381 

Whittaker, Alexander, 33, 40 

Whittier, John Greenleaf, 70, 86, 301, 
450; compared with other poets, 
303, 342 ; life, 304 ; poems, 308 ; 
prose works, 315; characteristics, 
316 

Wieland, 156, 158 

Wigglesworth, Michael, jo, 450; his 
Day of Doom, 51; Calvinistic qual- 
ity of, 53 

Wilkinson, Eliza, 147 

William Wilson, 236 

Williams, John, 43 

Willis, N. P., 250 

Wilson, Alexander, 147 

\'\i4DsLQW, Edward, 40 

Winthrop, John, 8, ig; Journal of, 20, 
24; his speech on Liberty, 23, 116, 
117; love letters of, 25; Mather's 
story of, 69 

Winthrop, Margaret, 26 

Winthrop, Theodore, 415 

Witchcraft, the Salem, 30, 62 

Wolfert's Roost, 184, 190 

Wonder Book, A, 398 

Wonders of the Lnvisible World, The, 
62, 67 

JVonder- Working Providence, The, 40 

Wood, William, 40 

Woolman, John, 151; his Journal, 
152, character of, 153 

Work of Redemption, History of the, 76 

Zumarra, Juan de, 44 



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