: 
 
 OF 
 
 TJNIVEB3ITY 
 
Reproduced by permission of Houghton, Miff I in & Co. 
 Publishers of Emerson s Works. 
 
AMERICAN LITERATURE 
 
 BY 
 
 KATHARINE LEE BATES 
 
 WELLESLEY COLLEGE 
 AUTHOR OF " THE ENGLISH RELIGIOUS DRAMA " 
 
 gork 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD. 
 
 1898 
 All rights reserved 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1897, 
 BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 
 
 J. S. Gushing & Co. - Berwick & Smith 
 Norwood Mass. U.S.A. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 IN this outline of our literary progress it is 
 especially designed to show how essentially Amer 
 ican literature has been an outgrowth of American 
 life. A people originally of English stock and 
 increasingly open to European influences, we have 
 nevertheless a national character, modified by local 
 conditions, and a national point of view. Hence 
 our literature, while in one aspect a branch of 
 the noble parent literature of England, is rightly 
 viewed, also, as the individual expression of an 
 independent nation. Its significance to us, whose 
 history it embodies and interprets, naturally out 
 ranks its absolute value among the older literatures 
 of the world. 
 
 It is obvious that the limits of this survey forbid 
 the mention of every distinguished name. 
 
 Sincere acknowledgments are due to the pub 
 lishers for their patience, to Mr. Herbert Putnam 
 and other officers of the Boston Public Library for 
 
Vi PREFACE 
 
 their courtesy, and to my colleagues, Miss Lydia 
 B. Godfrey, Wellesley librarian, and Professor 
 Katharine Coman, for bibliographical and critical 
 suggestions. The portraits of Emerson, Longfel 
 low, Whittier, Hawthorne, and Thoreau appear 
 by special permission of Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin 
 & Co. That of Irving is reproduced by permission 
 of Messrs. G. P. Putnam s sons. Mr. William 
 Evarts Benjamin, too, has kindly allowed the re 
 production of his plates of Lanier, Parkman, and 
 Cotton Mather, while for the likenesses of Lowell 
 and Mrs. Stowe we are indebted to the friendliness 
 of Mr. Francis V. Balch of Jamaica Plain, Mass., 
 and Mrs. Samuel Scoville of Stamford, Conn. 
 
 K. L, B. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE COLONIAL PERIOD i 
 
 General Divisions of American Literature Virginian 
 Colonization Captain John Smith William Strachey ** 
 Development of Southern Life Dearth of Later Colonial 
 Literature in the South -4- Earlier Colonial Period in New 
 England Early Governors -f- Early Ministers The Tenth 
 Muse ~*- Later Colonial Period in New England Samuel 
 Sewall The Mather Dynasty Jonathan Edwards. 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD 52 
 
 Aspect of the Times Benjamin Franklin Orators 
 Statesmen Poetical Experiments (Epics of Barlow, 
 Dwight, Trumbull, Verses of Phillis Wheatley, Popular 
 Songs and Ballads, Drama, Freneau s Satires and Lyrics) 
 Experiments in Novel Writing (Domestic Novels of Mrs. 
 Foster and Mrs. Rowson, Nightmare Novels of Brown) 
 Woolman s Journal. 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 NATIONAL ERA: GENERAL ASPECTS 95 
 
 From Washington to Jackson (Cultured Presidents, In 
 dustrial Independence) Artistic Promise (Hunger for 
 Beauty, English and German Music, Landscape Painting, 
 Indian Drama, Literature of Sentiment, Knickerbocker 
 School) From Jackson to Lincoln (Log-cabin Presidents, 
 Westward Expansion, Material Development, Immigration, 
 
Vlll CONTENTS 
 
 Slavery Question) Artistic Progress (Literature of New 
 England, Diisseldorf School of Painting, Sculpture, French 
 and Italian Opera, Buckskin Drama, Manners) From 
 Lincoln to McKinley (Political Lead of the Old Northwest, 
 Utilitarian Tendencies, Immigration Question, Labor Ques 
 tion) Present Artistic Conditions (Educational Expan 
 sion, The Press, Musical Culture, Art Culture, Technical 
 Discipline, Diffusion of Literary Ability). 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 NATIONAL ERA: POETRY 137 
 
 Bryant Longfellow Lowell Holmes Whittier 
 Emerson Other New England Poets Poe Other 
 Southern Poets Poetry of the Middle States Western 
 Poets. 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 NATIONAL ERA: PROSE THOUGHT . . . . . 208 
 
 Criticism of Life (Unitarians and Transcendentalists, 
 Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Alcott) Criticism of Society 
 (Holmes) Criticism of Letters (Lowell) History (Ban 
 croft, Prescott, Motley, Parkman) Oratory (Phillips, 
 Clay, Calhoun, Webster, Lincoln) Studies in Nature 
 (Thoreau, Burroughs). 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 NATIONAL ERA: PROSE FICTION 266 
 
 Adventure (Cooper) Humor and Pathos (Irving) 
 Mystery and Terror (Poe) Idealism (Hawthorne) 
 Realism (Howells and James). 
 
 INDEX OF AUTHORS 1-12 
 
PORTRAITS 
 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON .... Frontispiece 
 
 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 6 
 
 COTTON MATHER 4 2 
 
 JONATHAN EDWARDS 45 
 
 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN v 5 8 
 
 ALEXANDER HAMILTON 7 2 
 
 THOMAS JEFFERSON -75 
 
 WASHINGTON IRVING Io6 
 
 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE n8 
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN I22 
 
 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT r 3 8 
 
 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW . . . . 142 
 
 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 1 S9 
 
 EDGAR ALLAN POE J 79 
 
 SIDNEY LANIER l88 
 
 WALT WHITMAN J 99 
 
 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 22 7 
 
 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 2 35 
 
 FRANCIS PARKMAN 2 4 6 
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER 2 53 
 
 HENRY DAVID THOREAU .260 
 
 JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 2 66 
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 2 99 
 
 HENRY JAMES 3 21 
 
AMERICAN LITERATURE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 
 
 From age to age man s still aspiring spirit 
 Finds wider scope and sees with clearer eyes, 
 
 And thou in larger measure dost inherit 
 
 What made thy great forerunners free and wise. 
 
 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL, Ode. 
 
 I. General Divisions of American Literature. Almost 
 three centuries have passed since Englishmen began to 
 plant settlements on the eastern coast of North America. 
 Within the first century and a half, in round numbers, is 
 embraced the Colonial Period of our life and letters. 
 The Revolutionary agitation, conflict, victory, ^and result 
 ing problems shaped, in the main, the literature of the 
 following fifty years. The present century, nearly iden 
 tical with the National Era, is really the first in which 
 American books have won recognition. Yet the earlier 
 centuries should not be ignored. The COLONIAL PERIOD 
 is most easily handled in halves. The first seventy-five 
 years may appropriately be termed the HEROIC AGE ; the 
 second seventy-five years the PROVINCIAL AGE. About 
 
2 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 the first two or three generations of settlers clung the 
 large atmosphere of the Old World. Graduates of 
 Oxford and Cambridge, gallants of royalist houses, gen 
 tlemen and scholars, accustomed to the best in art, in 
 thought, in society, lived in the log cabins of James 
 town and Plymouth Plantation. Between the forest 
 and the ocean, they reared their children and their 
 children s children in a certain breadth of culture. 
 These Pilgrim Fathers and Gentlemen Adventurers 
 were, like ./Eneas, a great part of the wonderful tale 
 they told. Of all the splendid deeds on land and 
 sea done by the countrymen and contemporaries of 
 Shakespeare, not one outshines the painful, perilous 
 colonization of America. Shipwreck, fever, famine, the 
 wilderness, and the savage fought against the enter 
 prise, but the resolute English temper, whether mani 
 fested in the bright courage of the cavalier or the 
 stern persistence of the Puritan, faced disaster down. 
 
 The transition to a narrow outlook on life and a 
 preoccupation with petty concerns was more marked 
 in the North than in the South ; for the wealthy planters 
 of Virginia and her neighboring colonies continued, until 
 the Revolution, to maintain the ancestral connection with 
 Europe, often sending their sons across the Atlantic for 
 education and travel. The southern settlers had brought 
 with them to the New World the feudal tradition. So 
 ciety had taken form in strata, with the great landowners 
 at the top, the well-to-do farmers beneath, then poor 
 whites and overseers, and under all a black mass of 
 
I THE COLONIAL PERIOD 3 
 
 slaves. Notwithstanding the evil features of the system, 
 there was, as always in such societies, the advantage of 
 high development for individuals of the privileged class. 
 At the cost of the toiling and suffering many, a favored 
 few were set free to attain rare personal graces and 
 powers. When the hour of the Revolution struck, and 
 the destinies of a people hung in the balance, it was the 
 South that gave to the crisis the commander-in-chief, 
 the most eloquent orator, the framer of the Declaration 
 of Independence, the " Father of the Constitution," and 
 the first President of the United States. 
 
 The northern colonists, on the other hand, repre 
 sented in general the middle class of English society, the 
 trades-people rather than the gentlefolk. Their memories 
 were not of Tudor mansions embowered in park and 
 beech groves, but of market-place, mill, smithy, and all 
 the busy life of a Lancashire or Yorkshire town. They 
 were dissenters from the Church of England, adherents 
 of Cromwell and Parliament, men determined on 
 democracy. The brave little colleges of Harvard and 
 Yale sufficed them, as a rule, in place of foreign 
 universities. They kept the level. If there were fewer 
 giants in Massachusetts than in Virginia, fewer men pre 
 eminent for manners, wide experience of the world, and 
 that distinction of bearing and character which springs 
 from the habit of lordship, in average intelligence 
 and morality the North far outranked the SoutrT. Yet 
 New England, as the seventeenth century drew to a 
 close, showed in many ways the ill effects of her isola- 
 
4 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 tion from Europe. The Provincial Age had set in. The 
 sense of proportion was lost. Primness, credulity, and 
 pedantry stamped the scattered communities, intellectu 
 ally starved and straitened as they were. Without the 
 sting of peril, the lofty consciousness of a sincerity proved 
 by immense sacrifice, by life risked daily for the sake of 
 truth, without art, without adequate libraries, without 
 that realizing knowledge of the myriad aspects and 
 values of humanity promoted to-day by telegraph, cable, 
 steam, newspapers, magazines, the mind became cramped 
 and the religious vision blurred. The whipping of the 
 Quakers was cruel, but the witchcraft trials were puerile 
 as well. A smug and matter-of-fact quality, too, had 
 crept into that stern piety. Bradford s Journal is 
 touched with poetry and spirituality; not so Sewall s 
 Diary. Yet the essential strain of Puritanism, the firm 
 moral fibre and ideal aspiration of the Pilgrims, subsisted 
 and subsists. 
 
 II. Virginian Colonization. The first names directly 
 connected with the English colonization of America are 
 those of the noble Elizabethans, Sir Humphrey Gilbert and 
 Sir Walter Raleigh. The former, on his return voyage 
 from Newfoundland, in 1583, sank with his ship. Of 
 two successive colonies sent by the latter, at large cost, to 
 Roanoke, one, hard-pressed by hunger and Indian hos 
 tility, was taken off by Sir Francis Drake, and the other 
 mysteriously disappeared. So arduous and so danger 
 ous was the task of the pioneers. But Gilbert s words 
 had struck a keynote to which brave hearts yet re- 
 
I THE COLONIAL PERIOD 5 
 
 sponded : " He is not worthy to live at all that for fear 
 or danger of death shunneth his country s service and 
 his own honor, seeing death is inevitable and the fame of 
 virtue immortal." 
 
 Greed of riches, no less than " a great flame of desire 
 to attempt some notable thing," moved men to under 
 take the Virginian adventure. The time had indeed 
 gone by when eager mariners, pranked out in sky-colored 
 suits, sailed forth gayly as for a festival trip, repeating to 
 one another legends of far Cathay, its dazzling roofs 
 and pavements, mountain of turquoises and lake of 
 pearls. Hope deferred had begun to tell upon the pop 
 ular mind. While the London Company and the Ply 
 mouth Company, licensed by James in 1606, were trying 
 to collect a new crew of colonists by the old lure of 
 shining promises, the London theatres, whose free com 
 ment on current events resembled that of the modern 
 press, made fun of this reputed El Dorado. In a play 
 called Eastward Ho appears the character of Captain 
 Seagull, who, amidst the clinking of the tavern pots, 
 pours into the ears of a brace of bankrupt young gentle 
 men, Spendall and Scapethrift, a glowing account of the 
 Virginian life, telling how the Indians are so in love with 
 the English that " all the treasure they have, they lay at 
 their feet," how in that happy clime even the dripping- 
 pans are wrought of pure gold, " and for rubies and dia 
 monds, they go forth on holidays and gather em by the 
 seashore, to hang on their children s coats and stick in 
 their caps." 
 
6 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 The first permanent colony, settled at Jamestown under 
 the London Company in 1607, numbered scarcely more 
 than one hundred men, mainly fortune-seeking gallants, 
 soldiers, servants, with not a few downright rogues and 
 the merest sprinkling of mechanics. This was poor stuff 
 for pioneering. By the end of three months diseases 
 bred of hunger and hardship had cut the number down 
 to sixty. Shipload by shipload, more adventurers came 
 over. Still immigration could hardly keep pace with 
 destruction. By 1616, the year of Shakespeare s death, 
 some sixteen hundred and fifty colonists had been sent 
 to Virginia, of whom barely three hundred and fifty re 
 mained. A few had been taken home. The most had 
 perished. But the English grip was not to be shaken 
 off. Three years more, and Virginia had her House of 
 Burgesses. Before 1620 began the importation of negroes. 
 Frightful Indian massacres, disastrous though these were, 
 failed to wipe out the palefaces. The English were in 
 America to stay. 
 
 III. Captain John Smith. Snatches of this story of 
 manful strife against sea and wilderness make up our 
 earliest American literature, if so it may be called. For 
 those who love tales of adventure, there is a charm in 
 these plain old narratives written by men newly delivered 
 from the hazards they describe. Foremost among these 
 stout-hearted sailors and Indian fighters is that far-famed 
 soldier of fortune, Captain John Smith. One of the 
 original Jamestown settlers, it was to his wary and in 
 trepid leadership, assumed at the darkest hour, that the 
 
(~Thefe. are the Lined that Jlxw thy Face^bttt thofe, 
 ^That flve.w thy G-fCtce and GloT_y brighter bee 
 f~Ttvy F<zir&- 2)i/cou&ries and Fowle. - Overthrown 
 Of Salvages, mueh- Civillizd by thet. 
 Ltjtjkw thy Spirit: and to it Glory 
 So. tiiou art Brafie without, but (jolde 
 Cjffo.inrafse,ftoojoft smiths ^4cts to & 
 J /i-f thy Fatnc.to nuikt Brafse steele out weare-. 
 
 f~77ih?? as llwutLrt rtrtttCff* 
 
I THE COLONIAL PERIOD / 
 
 colony owed its preservation. Only twenty-seven years 
 of age on his arrival in Virginia, he was already well 
 seasoned to strenuous action and desperate straits. He 
 asked nothing better. " Who would live at home idly 
 (or think in himself any worth to live) only to eat, drink 
 and sleep, and so die? " 
 
 He had already, by his own telling, tried soldiering in 
 the Low Countries, played the hermit in a " pavilion of 
 boughs" by a "fair brook" in his native Lincolnshire, 
 wandered through Normandy and Brittany, and em 
 barked for Italy only to be thrown overboard in a storm 
 as an Englishman and a Protestant, who, like Jonah, 
 brought the foul weather. He had borne a part in field- 
 fights, sea-fights, sieges, and finally, "both lamenting 
 and repenting to have seen so many Christians slaughter 
 one another," had drawn his sword against the Turks. 
 Three of these, he says, he slew in single combat, but 
 for all his feats at arms he found himself, at last, in 
 Tartar captivity, "slave of slaves," with an iron ring 
 about his neck. Goaded by cruelty, he beat out his mas 
 ter s brains with a threshing-flail and fled in the slain 
 bashaw s clothes to the desert, whence he made his es 
 cape into Russia. Returning, by way of Morocco, to 
 England, he arrived in good time to join the Jamestown 
 expedition. On the voyage he fell out with the leaders 
 and came near hanging for it. Of this episode he writes 
 in his cool fashion : " A pair of gallows was made, but 
 Captain Smith, for whom they were intended, could not 
 be persuaded to use them." 
 
8 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 Smith s earliest book, A True Relation of Virginia, 
 was printed in London in 1608, the year of Milton s 
 birth. It is a hurried, semi-official document, giving a 
 sketchy account of the first year of the colony. When 
 we read of the young captain s own busy doings in those 
 critical months, building forts and palisadoes, planting, 
 exploring, fighting, sojourning among the Indians, now as 
 captive, now as guest, trading blue beads for corn and 
 venison, we wonder that he found the moments in which 
 to jot down his news at all. Yet heedless of art, all 
 rough-and-ready as the headlong narrative is, the vigor 
 of the man, and the reality of the situation make it 
 graphic. We see those long stretches of yellow sand, 
 those malarial marshes teeming with wildfowl, the frantic 
 figure of the skin-clad and befeathered conjurer, and the 
 barbaric pomp and state of the great chief Powhatan. 
 
 The mention of Pocahontas in this book is but slight. 
 It is not here, but in a later and fuller work, that Smith 
 tells how the little Indian princess rescued him from 
 death. Under the threshing of recent scholarship, it has 
 looked as if this bit of native idyl might fly off as legend. 
 It is easy to call the fiery captain a liar, now that his 
 sword is rust ; but the charge has yet to be established. 
 In view of the facts that he rendered signal service to 
 America and, like Coriolanus, rewarded his deeds with 
 doing them, scoffs at his expense are peculiarly ungra 
 cious. Bearing in mind his own words : " Seeing honor 
 is our life s ambition ; and our ambition after death to 
 have an honorable memory of our life," critics, in duty 
 
I THE COLONIAL PERIOD 
 
 bound to investigate to the uttermost, would nevertheless 
 do well to be very sure of their grounds before besmirch 
 ing that honor and denying him that memory. 
 
 Smith stayed in Virginia two years and a half. Dur 
 ing the latter part of the time he served the colony as 
 governor. In this capacity he penned a trenchant letter 
 to the London stockholders, accompanied by a " Map of 
 the Bay and the Rivers, with an annexed Relation of the 
 countries and nations that inhabit them." In 1614, after 
 a period of rest in his native land, he made a voyage of 
 exploration to New England, starting out again, this time 
 with a colony, a year later. Storms and pirates brought 
 the enterprise to naught, and for the rest of his life Smith 
 lived quietly at home, writing of what he had seen in his 
 varied career, and still urging American colonization in 
 face of the growing apathy and distaste. For the Eng 
 lish mind was now so hardened against dreams of a Para 
 dise over the sea that the veteran enthusiast, unable to 
 impress his listeners with his hopes and plans for the 
 New World, said he might as well have tried to "cut 
 rocks with oyster shells." 
 
 IV. William Strachey. Smith and others, among 
 them a young nobleman of the storied house of Percy, 
 have left vivid pictures of the suffering behind the palisa- 
 does and the hazards of the wilderness. The dangers 
 and disasters of those early voyages, too, have not lacked 
 chroniclers. One Colonel Norwood recounts, in a fash 
 ion so naive as often to provoke a smile, his luckless trip 
 in "The Virginia Merchant." Aristocrat that he was, 
 
IO AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 the ordinary deprivations of sea-life came hard to him, 
 but when the crew on the crippled vessel were reduced 
 to catching the ship rats, which sold among the famish 
 ing passengers for four or five dollars apiece, the story 
 grows tragic enough. The poor colonel s worst tor 
 ment was thirst, so that when at last he found himself on 
 land again, lying flat, with his open mouth set against a 
 running stream, "this," he says, "I thought the greatest 
 pleasure I ever enjoyed on earth." But the wrath of the 
 Atlantic found a momentary Homer in William Strachey. 
 Certain impassioned paragraphs of his Wrack and Re 
 demption of Sir Thomas Gates have in them the tumult 
 and the grandeur of a stormy sea. The very sentences 
 seem to surge. There is nothing in the first two centu 
 ries of American literature to rank beside portions of this 
 narrative for essential poetic quality. Written in 1610, 
 it may well have given Shakespeare hints for The Tempest. 
 Here the supreme poet may have found, in Strachey s 
 " dreadful storm and hideous " that " did beat all light 
 from heaven," in that reality of "terrible cries," and 
 "prayers ... in the heart and lips," his own "wild 
 waters " and " noontide sun . . . bedimmed," the " cry " 
 that "did knock against" Miranda s " very heart," and 
 the despairing call of the wet mariners : 
 
 " All lost ! to prayers, to prayers ! all lost ! " 
 
 Shakespeare may have caught suggestions, verbal and 
 dramatic, from Strachey s "outcries of officers," "glut of 
 water," " clamors drowned in the winds." The thunder 
 
I THE COLONIAL PERIOD II 
 
 which dismayed the company of " The Sea Venture " 
 echoes in The Tempest as a " deep and dreadful organ 
 pipe." " There was not a moment," says Strachey, " in 
 which the sudden splitting or instant oversetting of the 
 ship was not expected," and Shakespeare s despairing 
 passengers are heard in " confused noise " : 
 
 " We split, we split ! Farewell, my wife and children ! 
 Farewell, brother ! We split, we split, we split ! " 
 
 Strachey tells how the " fright and amazement " of the 
 "superstitious seamen" was intensified by " an appari 
 tion of a little round light, like a faint star, trembling 
 and streaming along with a sparkling blaze, half the 
 height upon the main mast, and shooting sometimes 
 from shroud to shroud." In close resemblance, Pros- 
 pero s " tricksy spirit " makes report : 
 
 " I boarded the king s ship; now on the beak, 
 Now in the waist, the deck, in every cabin, 
 I flam d amazement : sometimes I d divide, 
 And burn in many places; on the topmast, 
 The yards, and bowsprit, would I flame distinctly, 
 Then meet and join." 
 
 In the issue, the distressed adventurers might have 
 said, with Ferdinand, 
 
 "Though the seas threaten, they are merciful." 
 
 Running their battered ship aground, they escaped in 
 boats to the Bermudas, Shakespeare s " still-vexed Ber- 
 moothes." These islands, Strachey relates, were in ill 
 repute, as encompassed by "tempests, thunders, and 
 other fearful objects " and given over " to devils and 
 
12 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 wicked spirits." So Ferdinand, at sight of the enchanted 
 fire, cried : 
 
 " Hell is empty, 
 And all the devils are here; " 
 
 but Ariel proved to be such "a harmless fairy" that it 
 has devolved on Caliban to keep up the bad name of 
 the ocean isles. 
 
 Little is known of Strachey, who was made, on his 
 arrival in Virginia, secretary of the colony and in that 
 capacity wrote a History of Travel into Virginia, a 
 businesslike document crammed with information about 
 the country, its commodities and native inhabitants, 
 especially the mighty Powhatan. Little Pocahontas 
 shocked the London barrister by her childish romping 
 with the Jamestown boys. One of the most interesting 
 features of this book is its account of the " godly hare," 
 to whose bright house in the sun-rising , Indian braves 
 troop joyously after death. Thus early do we come upon 
 a fragment of that strange rabbit-lore which flavors fire 
 side talk to-day in the western tepee of the red man no 
 less than in the cabin of the southern black. 
 
 V. Development of Southern Life. Strachey has 
 drawn a memorable picture of the three-years-old James 
 town as he saw it on arrival, a low half-acre of ground, 
 protected by a fence of planks and posts, and further 
 more, on the hypothenuse side, by the river. At each 
 corner stood a watch-tower furnished with one or two 
 small cannon. Within the palisades lay a lesser triangle 
 made of three rows of cabins. In the middle area were 
 
I THE COLONIAL PERIOD 13 
 
 grouped a market-place, house of storage, guard-house, 
 and a "pretty chapel," with cedar chancel, pews and 
 pulpit, a font and two bells. The little sanctuary was 
 " kept passing sweet and trimmed up with divers flowers." 
 Twice on Sunday and once on Thursday there was a ser 
 mon delivered there, the Governor attending in solemn 
 state with his guard of fifty clad in " fair red cloaks." 
 Every morning at ten and every afternoon at four those 
 sweet-toned English bells rang to prayer. The cabins 
 were roofed with bark, Indian fashion, and their floors 
 were to some extent carpeted with Indian mats. Great 
 fireplaces blazed with the abundant fuel. In this nar 
 row compass the germ colony had stood out those 
 first three desperate years. The huddled settlers had 
 built for security, not comfort. So long as their window- 
 holes were hung with heavy shutters, it did not matter 
 that their shelves were but sparingly furnished with 
 wooden bowls and trenchers. But already the southern 
 stamp was on this fortified hamlet, the stamp of the 
 English Church, with its beautiful rites and ceremonies 
 inherited from the Mother Church of Christendom, and, 
 though less distinctly, the stamp of old English hospital 
 ity. Those primitive chimneys might be rudely fashioned 
 of twigs daubed with clay, but in the intervals of "the 
 starving time " they puffed out the smoke of good fellow 
 ship. The corn might be pounded in a hollow tree- 
 trunk with a rough-hewn log, but the corn-cake was 
 divided. The state that attended the church-going of 
 the Governor, whose green velvet chair and prayer- 
 
14 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 cushion were conspicuous in the chancel, denoted that 
 aristocratic bias which the South has not yet lost. These 
 early settlements, nevertheless, had much sorry material 
 to assimilate. Strachey speaks of the "many unruly 
 gallants, packed hither by their friends to escape ill 
 destinies," but these scape-graces had a noble strain of 
 blood which sometimes stirred them to build up a new 
 manhood in a new country. Others proved lawless, 
 some tasting the sharp edge of military justice, like that 
 ringleader of the third mutiny in the company of the 
 wrecked " Sea Venture," who, condemned to the gallows 
 on the Bermudas, " earnestly desired, being a gentle 
 man, that he might be shot to death, and towards the 
 evening he had his desire, the sun and his life setting 
 together." 
 
 Worse yet, England came to regard Virginia as a con 
 venient dumping-ground for her vagabonds, paupers, 
 even felons. The system of redemptioners came into 
 play. Poor folk, for whom there was no honest bread 
 in England, went out to work in the plantations, binding 
 themselves for fixed terms of service. Convicts were 
 shipped to the colonies and sold into lifelong slavery 
 there. Girls, coaxed or kidnapped, were landed in flocks 
 and put up at auction as wives to the settlers, the price 
 being paid in pounds of tobacco. With the lavish grants 
 of land and the liberality of soil and climate, affluence 
 came to many who had previously known squalor, but 
 fine feathers did not make fine birds. Not Master John 
 Pory alone, watching "our cow-keeper here of James 
 
I THE COLONIAL PERIOD 15 
 
 City " go on Sundays " accoutred all in fresh flaming 
 silk," turned in vexation of spirit to the solitudes of those 
 "crystal waters and odoriferous woods." 
 
 On the whole, the cavalier element, recruited by 
 royalists who, upon the execution of Charles the First, 
 fled England in horror and wrath, held its own, assisted 
 by the natural features of the country. The level reaches 
 of productive earth and the numerous river-ways ren 
 dered it possible for these Virginian gentlemen, as the 
 savages receded and the times became more settled, to 
 withdraw from their displeasing neighbors and dwell 
 in baronial fashion on great tobacco plantations, sur 
 rounded by indentured servants and the gentle negro 
 slaves. These lords of the manor remained true to their 
 tradition of hospitality, even exceeding, in the free- 
 heartedness of pioneer life, the measure of generous 
 entertainment known to their ancestral squires and to 
 the English country-house to-day. Those one-storied, 
 wide-chimneyed, ample Virginian mansions were the 
 centres of a delightful social culture. The amenities 
 and courtesies, undervalued by the New England Puri 
 tans, found their best American fostering here. Because 
 of the remoteness of the plantations, the sacraments, as 
 baptism and marriage, which in England had been cele 
 brated in the church, were transferred to the home. 
 The southern home became a sacred place. But the 
 church suffered. Whitaker, " the Apostle of Virginia," 
 had no successor. He would have been the Eliot of the 
 Chesapeake Indians, but his day of labor was cut short. 
 
1 6 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 It was largely a fox-hunting and horse-racing clergy that 
 the establishment sent over to drink too long at the 
 colonial tables. In a society such as this, education 
 fared ill. Sir William Berkeley, for thirty-six years the 
 royal governor, opposed free schools and printing as 
 furthering independent thought, heresy, and political un 
 rest, a sound despotic position. But, indeed, the 
 manner of settlement on broad estates instead of in com 
 munities made the public schools of New England im 
 practicable for the southern colonies. And the Indians, 
 for their part, by a fierce massacre deferred for seventy 
 years the College of William and Mary originally de 
 signed, like Dartmouth, for their own instruction. 
 
 VI. The Dearth of Later Colonial Literature in the 
 South was an almost inevitable result of the living con 
 ditions. As for books, these terrestrial magnates im 
 ported them from England in their own trading-vessels, 
 tied up, after the voyage, to their own river-wharves, just 
 as they imported, once a year, the fashions and the news. 
 COLONEL BYRD, a distinguished man of affairs and an 
 accomplished gentleman, left some admirable notes of 
 colonial travel, lively, chatty, witty, alert of thought and 
 urbane of temper, but a century passed before they were 
 put into print. There were historians, of a sort, but the 
 most entertaining of these, ROBERT BEVERLY, educated, like 
 Byrd, in Europe, candidly adds, after requesting from his 
 reader the grace of credence, " the next favor I would 
 ask of him should be not to criticise too unmercifully 
 upon my style. I am an Indian and don t pretend to 
 
I THE COLONIAL PERIOD I/ 
 
 be exact in my language." So John Hammond, who 
 championed the cause of immigration in a pamphlet 
 designating Virginia and Maryland under the title of 
 Leah and Rachel, finds his sentences " harsh and dis 
 ordered," and gay George Alsop, who had a laughing 
 word to speak for the younger province, recognizes his 
 budget of drolleries as "wild and confused." In 1693, 
 William and Mary was opened, " a college without a 
 chapel, without a scholarship and without a statute." 
 Even so, it furnished from its faculty a few writers of 
 text-books, theology, and Virginian history, who, at least, 
 held themselves accountable to the rules of syntax. 
 Most memorable of these is that staunch, unwearying 
 Scotchman, JAMES BLAIR, a very missionary of education 
 as of righteousness, he who " could not rest until school 
 teachers were in the land." 
 
 VII. The Earlier Colonial Period in New England 
 witnessed a struggle against even greater physical odds 
 than those encountered by the southern settlers. It 
 was spring when the Jamestown colonists, all men, 
 landed on the Virginian shore. The " Mayflower " 
 brought families, nearly half that initial hundred being 
 women and children. "And for the season," wrote 
 Governor Bradford, "it was winter, and they that 
 know the winters of that country know them to be 
 sharp and violent, and subject to cruel and fierce 
 storms, dangerous to travel to known places, much more 
 to search an unknown coast. Besides, what could they 
 see but a hideous and desolate wilderness, full of wild 
 
1 8 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 beasts and wild men? And what multitudes there might 
 be of them they knew not." 
 
 A pitiful winter it was, for when at last " warm and fair 
 weather appeared, and the birds sang in the trees most 
 pleasantly," half that little company lay buried beneath 
 the Plymouth pines. But the founders of New England, 
 men of ideas and principles, sober-headed, earnest- 
 hearted, seeking homes rather than fortunes, on God s 
 errand, not their own, were proof against defeat. At 
 their first landing on that wild coast, "they fell upon 
 their knees and blessed the God of heaven," and in faith 
 and patience did they persevere. This advance guard 
 of Pilgrims from Leyden came in 1620. At the end of 
 seven years their number had not doubled, but it was then 
 that certain Lincolnshire dissenters " fell into discourse 
 about New England and the planting of the Gospel there." 
 The following year the great Puritan exodus began. 
 
 " Well worthy to be magnified are they 
 Who, with sad hearts, of friends and country took 
 A last farewell, their loved abodes forsook, 
 And hallowed ground in which their Fathers lay; 
 Then to the new-found World explored their way, 
 That so a Church, unforced, uncalled to brook 
 Ritual restraints, within some sheltering nook 
 Her Lord might worship and His word obey 
 In Freedom." 
 
 By 1640, when that tide of immigration was stayed 
 by the brightening outlook at home for the Parliamen 
 tarian party, upwards of twenty thousand Englishmen, 
 mainly of the sturdy middle-class stock and God-fearing 
 
I THE COLONIAL PERIOD 19 
 
 Puritan temper, were settled in New England, their 
 fifty villages dotting the wilderness like candles in the 
 dark. 
 
 Rude enough at first sight were those primitive towns, 
 clusters of log-cabins and frame buildings of the plain 
 est sort gathered about the square, belfry-topped meet 
 ing-house. But the interior of these simple abodes testi 
 fied to decent, provident goodmen and dames, who 
 had shipped, from their well-to-do homes across the sea, 
 store of linens and woollens, oaken chests cunningly 
 " wrought " and panelled, brass candlesticks, claw-footed 
 tables, spinning-wheels, and even, now and then, the new 
 luxury of a chair, massy, polished, richly carven, with 
 queer, triangular seat, solid, self-respecting furniture 
 that outwears the centuries. The Puritan mothers, 
 gowned in stiff, long-waisted bodice with crossed kerchief 
 at throat, and with decorous skirt, kept the floors freshly 
 sanded and the shelf-rows of pewter bright, while the 
 sweet Priscillas, though themselves in " sad-colored " 
 attire, would sometimes venture on gay hangings of 
 chintz or calico to hide the rough walls, which dis 
 played, in lieu of pictures, such ornaments as muskets, 
 pikes, antlers, and the burnished warming-pan. The 
 fare these careful housewives set before the sturdy men 
 in leather jerkins, smallclothes, and steeple-crowned hats 
 was commonly of the simplest, mush and johnny-cake, 
 with perhaps a trencher of wild turkey and a jug of home 
 brewed beer, but the blessings were long in proportion. 
 In the time when 
 
2O AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 " the dainty Indian maize 
 Was eat with clam shells out of wooden trays; 
 
 Twas in those days an honest grace would hold 
 Till an hot pudding grew at heart a-cold." 
 
 Seen from the safe and comfortable distance of two 
 hundred years and more, this life was in rare degree 
 poetical and picturesque. Training day, Election day, 
 Thanksgiving day, gave it animation, no less than the 
 Indian raid or the almost equally exciting scrimmage 
 of town-meeting, that cradle of American liberties. 
 Adventures with bear or panther, terrible or pathetic 
 glimpses of the forest tribes, already sullenly reced 
 ing on their long westward march, pious scandals 
 clustering about some bluff Captain Underhill, in steel 
 cap and leathern breastplate, or some ill-starred Anne 
 Hutchinson, so eloquent as to win over the young gov 
 ernor to her heresy, gave abundant themes for story. 
 One might even meet, by moonlight, on Boston Com 
 mon, the calm, rebuking ghost, in silver-gray raiment, 
 of the Quaker matron, Mary Dyer, hanged there as a 
 troubler of Israel. But no scribe, not a single tutor or 
 homespun-coated student of that " school of prophets," 
 Harvard College, has left record of such encounter. It 
 was the day of axe and musket, not of quill. Yet 
 books were written in New England, and, after 1639, 
 printed there as well. Their authors are chiefly to 
 be found in the ranks of the magistracy and the 
 clergy. 
 
I THE COLONIAL PERIOD 21 
 
 VIII. The Early Governors became, in several cases, 
 the historians of the infant colonies. Upon them lay 
 the supreme responsibility, and by them were written 
 the authoritative accounts, not only for the information 
 of friends beyond the Atlantic, but in obedience to 
 some deep, prophetic sense of the significance that 
 attended these humble and hard beginnings, of a nation. 
 The most venerable figure here is WILLIAM BRADFORD, 
 second governor of Plymouth Colony. Chosen to 
 that office on the death of Governor Carver, when the 
 " Mayflower " had but just sailed away, he was annually 
 reflected for the rest of his life, except for those 
 "five times he by importunity gat off." His History 
 of Plymouth Plantation, extending to 1646, the year 
 when this Moses of the wilderness rested from his 
 labors, "lamented," wrote Cotton Mather, "by all the 
 colonies of New England, as a common blessing and 
 father to them all," was not published in full until 
 more than two centuries had gone by. The manu 
 script was freely drawn upon by later chroniclers, 
 by NATHANIEL MORTON, secretary of Plymouth Colony, 
 who used also the animated journals of GOVERNOR WINS- 
 LOW, by the scrupulous and laborious THOMAS PRINCE, 
 by WILLIAM HUBBARD, one of the nine who formed the 
 first graduating class of Harvard College, and by 
 THOMAS HUTCHINSON, the Tory governor whom Massa 
 chusetts hated ; but the precious pages mysteriously dis 
 appeared at about the time of the Revolution, to turn up, 
 in 1855, ni tne Bishop of London s library. By the 
 
22 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 courtesy of England, the document was restored to 
 America in 1897. 
 
 Bradford s work is more than a chronicle. He pref 
 aces his year-by-year story of Plymouth Plantation 
 with an account of the rise of English dissent and the 
 persecutions by which the Pilgrims were harried out 
 of the land, of their sojourn in Holland, and their 
 momentous resolve to seek a new home for their faith 
 across the " vast and furious ocean." Sweet and noble 
 always, the recital is sometimes shot with gleams of 
 an ideal grace, as in these two sentences describing 
 the farewell. "And the time being come that they 
 must depart, they were accompanied with most of 
 their brethren out of the city, unto a town sundry 
 miles off called Delft-Haven, where the ship lay ready 
 to receive them. So they left that goodly and pleas 
 ant city, which had been their resting-place near twelve 
 years, but they knew they were pilgrims, and looked 
 not much on those things, but lift up their eyes to the 
 heavens, their dearest country, and quieted their spirits." 
 
 The work which inevitably comes into comparison 
 with this, the History of New England, written by the 
 stately JOHN WINTHROP, first governor of the Colony of 
 Massachusetts Bay and often after reflected, had also 
 to wait until the present century for publication in its 
 entirety. This record, historically the more important 
 as dealing with the colony of greater destinies, has less 
 literary value than the other. Begun by Winthrop 
 on shipboard and continued on land amid harassing 
 
I THE COLONIAL PERIOD 23 
 
 cares and urgent duties, it was jotted down in diary 
 form, now somewhat fully, now with the gaps or mere 
 headings of an over-busy man. It possesses dignity, 
 fidelity to fact, and a certain downright, practical force, 
 but it fails to distinguish between great things and 
 small, is blotted by touches of the sombre Puritan 
 superstition, and remains, as a whole, without attrac 
 tion. The most memorable passage is Winthrop s dis 
 course upon liberty, a mighty watchword with men 
 of the Puritan stamp from Milton down. "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 incompatible and 
 inconsistent with 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 liberty 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 
 lives, if need be. ... This liberty is maintained and 
 exercised in a way of subjection to authority." Here 
 we have political wisdom fused by patriotic and per 
 sonal passion for Governor Winthrop spoke these 
 words before the General Court in answer to a charge 
 
24 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 of having exceeded his prerogative into a grave and 
 lofty eloquence. 
 
 IX. The Early Ministers. The Pilgrims were Sepa 
 ratists, who, believing that to every congregation and every 
 believer the divine will is revealed, were opposed to the 
 idea of a national church and to the rule of bishops. The 
 Puritans had not separated themselves from the Church 
 of England, but had vainly tried to secure a simpler 
 ritual and the reform of ecclesiastical abuses. In the 
 New World, these two sects soon merged their differences 
 in a common Congregationalism, whose ministers wielded 
 a power not second even to that of the magistrates. 
 
 He was little short of an autocrat, that New England 
 parson of the Heroic Age, in his black Geneva cloak and 
 close-fitting black velvet cap. The tongue that decried 
 him was in danger of a cleft stick. Criticisms on his 
 sermons were answered with public stripes. Truancy 
 from his preaching led to the stocks or the wooden cage. 
 The franchise was limited to church members, and 
 although divines were not eligible to the magistracy, 
 their political influence was paramount. The Rev. Mr. 
 Ward of Ipswich drew up the Body of Liberties. When 
 perplexing questions arose, the ministers were called in 
 to advise with the General Court. Their words, indeed, 
 were well worthy of respect. It was the Rev. Mr. Hooker 
 of Hartford who said : " The foundation of authority is 
 laid in the free consent of the people." Under this 
 clerical control, the cause of civil freedom was advanced ; 
 not so the cause of religious toleration. The Pilgrims 
 
I THE COLONIAL PERIOD 25 
 
 were disposed toward liberality, but very early in the 
 history of the Puritan colony, a synod of the clergy had 
 discovered among those log-splitting, corn-planting set 
 tlers no fewer than eighty-two erroneous opinions on 
 matters theological. Maryland, not Massachusetts, hon 
 ored the individual conscience. 
 
 The meeting-house was the strong tower of Colonial 
 truth. Built on a hill-top, it had served, at the outset, 
 for fort as well as church. Ammunition was stored in its 
 loft. On its flat roof cannon were posted and sentinels 
 kept watch. The drum-beat assembled an armed con 
 gregation. 
 
 " For once, for fear of Indian beating, 
 Our grandsires bore their guns to meeting, 
 Each man equipped on Sunday morn 
 With psalm-book, shot, and powder-horn, 
 And looked in form, as all must grant, 
 Like the ancient true church militant." 
 
 The Pequot outbreak and King Philip s War proved 
 the need of these precautions, but even where, with lapse 
 of time, such carnal defences became less requisite, the 
 meeting-house remained the garrison of the godly in the 
 spiritual conflict waged by the brave old parsons against 
 the powers of hell, including all heresies and, as pillory, 
 whipping-post, and branding-iron bore witness, too many 
 heretics. 
 
 There were gracious and saintly men in that stern min 
 istry. FRANCIS HIGGINSON of Salem, "the first," wrote 
 Cotton Mather, "in a catalogue of heroes," was a courte- 
 
26 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 ous gentleman no less than a leader of rare promise. 
 JOHN ELIOT of Natick, Apostle to the Indians, has left a 
 fragrant memory. " The holy, heavenly, sweet-affecting and 
 soul-ravishing " THOMAS SHEPARD of Cambridge, whose 
 autobiography is a little volume of enduring interest, 
 preached the wrath of God and the pains of hell in a 
 voice of melting music. The indomitable THOMAS HOOKER 
 of Hartford, " who, when he was doing his Master s work, 
 would put a king into his pocket," intermitted his pulpit 
 thunders with words of purest Christian insight. The 
 very head and front of that theocracy, JOHN COTTON of 
 Boston, was by nature most gentle and benign. The 
 illustrious ROGER WILLIAMS, founder of Providence, who, 
 becoming too lively a thorn in the side of intolerance, 
 was driven by Cotton and his following out of Massa 
 chusetts Colony, appeared to the Pilgrims of Plymouth 
 Plantation " a man lovely in his carriage " and " having 
 many precious parts." But they battled fiercely, these 
 old warriors of the Lord, and the spent artillery of their 
 combats makes a prodigious pile of sermons, tracts, and 
 treatises. Apart from controversial writings, in which 
 those doughty duellists, John Cotton and Roger Wil 
 liams, abounded, and apart from works of strict theology, 
 there remain sermons of religious, political, and bio 
 graphical tenor, catechisms, commentaries, the New 
 England Primer and the Bay Psalm Book. This last 
 was the first volume ever printed in America, and, in 
 point of versification, probably the worst. 
 
 These early New England preachers, men of mark, in 
 
I THE COLONIAL PERIOD 2/ 
 
 many cases thrust out of large parishes in England be 
 cause of non-conformity, here on the edge of the wilder 
 ness redeemed in no small measure what seems a growing 
 bigotry and narrowness of thought by an austerity of self- 
 discipline, devoutness of spirit, and apostolic beauty of 
 bearing more eloquent than all the cannonades of their 
 theology. This pulpit oratory, chief mental stimulus of 
 the times though it was, hardly outranks the work of the 
 Colonial clergy for education. Fosterers of the public 
 school, presidents and protectors of the beloved little 
 college at Cambridge, the Massachusetts ministers as 
 pired to no prouder epitaph than " a good scholar and 
 a great Christian." They were not alone in their enthu 
 siasm for learning. The laity pressed them closely in 
 the race. The classic Cato finds a New England par 
 allel in Governor Bradford, who, after a lifetime of sore 
 labors, sat joyfully down to the writing of Hebrew exer 
 cises : " Though I am grown aged, yet I have had a long 
 ing desire to see, with my own eyes, something of that 
 most ancient language and holy tongue in which the law 
 and oracles of God were writ ; and in which God and 
 angels spoke to the holy patriarchs of old time ; and 
 what names were given to things, from the creation. 
 And though I cannot attain to much herein, yet I am 
 refreshed to have some glimpse hereof (as Moses saw 
 the land of Canaan afar off)." 
 
 But apart from the Sacred Scriptures, literature, in its 
 conscious and aesthetic forms, made no part of Pilgrim 
 or Puritan concern. Two only of the Colonial ministers, 
 
28 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 NATHANIEL WARD of Ipswich, re-named from its Indian 
 title Agawam, and MICHAEL WIGGLESWORTH of Maiden, 
 approached its border-line. The former, in his Simple 
 Cobbler of Agawam, produced a rough anticipation of 
 Carlyle s Sartor Resartus. This pungent satire, pub 
 lished at London in 1647, inveighs, sometimes with a 
 caustic drollery, sometimes with a right manly vehe 
 mence, against the principle of religious toleration, the 
 vanities of womankind, and the state of contemporary 
 English politics. "Poly-piety is the greatest impiety 
 in the world." "I honor the woman that can honor 
 herself with her attire ; a good text always deserves a 
 fair margent," but as for a woman who lives but to ape 
 the newest court fashions, " I look at her as the very 
 gizzard of a trifle, the product of a quarter of a cipher, 
 the epitome of nothing; fcfcter to be kicked if sfte were 
 of a kickable substance than .either, honored or humored;" 
 " A king that lives by law, lives by love ; and he that 
 lives above law, shall live under hatred, do what he can. 
 Slavery and knavery go as seldom asunder as tyranny 
 and cruelty." 
 
 MICHAEL WIGGLESWORTH lived on into the eighteenth 
 century, but his principal poems belong to the earlier 
 Colonial period. He was better than his poetry. " A 
 little feeble shadow of a man," so sickly from his youth 
 up as to be sometimes tortured with a suspicion that he 
 desired health more than holiness, he performed the 
 double labor of preacher and physician. Sensitive of 
 soul, his Calvinistic faith, loyally held, weighed upon 
 
I THE COLONIAL PERIOD 2Q 
 
 him with a great sadness. He dared not let himself be 
 gladsome with his friends, though they affectionately 
 urged that occasional mirth would " recreate one s tired 
 spirits and prolong one s life," for he feared that he 
 might come to forget the end in the means and " take 
 pleasure for itself, without reference to health and so to 
 the glory of God." He entered in his note-book among 
 his resolutions : " Not to rejoice much in any creature. 
 Thou knowest not whether it shall comfort thee or tor 
 ment thee." Even his love of study anguished him. 
 " I cannot prevail against that cursed frame, to think the 
 time long that I spend in reading the Word of God. 
 Outgoings of heart after my studies again get head." A 
 Harvard tutor, he cared for the welfare of his students 
 so ardently as to become alarmed lest his " affection to 
 them should so drink up his very spirit as to steal away 
 his heart from God." A Maiden pastor, the calamities 
 that befell his flock he looked upon as God s " stroke " 
 for his own sins. " God s visiting hand has now plucked 
 away from us four brethren of our church in a few days. 
 The Lord was pleased to set in, and break my heart, 
 and show me that I am the man who sin unto death the 
 precious servants of God, and drive God from the place 
 and society where I live, and I pull down wrath." He 
 greeted the approach of death. 
 
 " Welcome, sweet Rest, by me so long desired, 
 Who have with sins and griefs so long been tired." 
 
 Willingly he took leave of the world. 
 
3O AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 "Now, farewell, world, in which is not my treasure; 
 I have in thee enjoyed but little pleasure." 
 
 His dying thoughts of New England were gloomy, 
 especially in regard to her 
 
 " young brood and rising generation, 
 Wanton and proud, ripe for God s indignation." 
 
 His sinking voice urged on his fellow-soldiers in the 
 Holy War. 
 
 " Farewell, sweet saints of God, Christ s little number; 
 Beware, lest you, through sloth, securely slumber. 
 Stand to your spiritual arms, and keep your watch." 
 
 For his sorrow s sake, let his poems be forgiven him, 
 even his lurid Day of Doom, frightfully expressive as it 
 is of the extremest type of Calvinism. This crudely 
 fashioned ballad, " one more insult to God," was more 
 widely circulated in New England, more largely bought, 
 more closely read, more deeply graven on the popular 
 mind than any poem since. 
 
 X. The Tenth Muse. During the early Colonial 
 period New England enjoyed one purely literary sen 
 sation and only one. The records of Bradford and 
 Winthrop were supplemented by more homely chroni 
 cles, The Wonder- Working Providence of Edward 
 Johnson, founder of Woburn, a Puritan of the Puritans ; 
 accounts of the Pequot War bluntly penned by Major 
 Mason, Captain Underbill, and others; and the Indian 
 treatises of Daniel Gookin, who should be famed with 
 Eliot, Penn, and Roger Williams for justice and mercy 
 
I THE COLONIAL PERIOD 31 
 
 toward the native inhabitants of the land. Descriptions 
 of the New World, begun in the journals of Bradford, 
 Winslow, and Higginson, were continued by Wood s 
 New England s Prospect and Josselyn s New England s 
 Rarities. One Thomas Morton, who established, where 
 Quincy now stands, a settlement known as Mount Wol- 
 laston or Merry Mount, in which the old English revels 
 were maintained with, perhaps, the freer license of a 
 wilder soil, should be added to the list of descriptive 
 writers on the strength of his New English Canaan. 
 In this he took occasion to satirize the Plymouth colo 
 nists, who, scandalized by his Maypole and, it may be, 
 by more flagrant misdemeanors, had bundled him back 
 to England. These works, as well as the theological 
 publications of the time, were written for other than 
 artistic ends. The Day of Doom is more akin to 
 sermon than to poem. But at the very middle of the 
 century, a little volume was published in London with 
 the startling title The Tenth Muse lately sprung up in 
 America. The "gentlewoman in those parts," so an 
 nounced as author on the title-page, was Mistress ANNE 
 BRADSTREET, resident near Andover. 
 
 Of English birth, she was four years younger than 
 Milton. Her father, Thomas Dudley, well-born, well- 
 bred, and wedded to a " gentlewoman of fortune," was 
 an iron Puritan. At sixteen Anne Dudley married 
 Simon Bradstreet, son of a non-conformist minister, and 
 himself Master of Arts of Cambridge University. Two 
 years after the marriage came the emigration to Massa- 
 
32 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 chusetts, where both Dudley and Bradstreet took place 
 among the leaders, each succeeding, in due time, to the 
 dignity of the governor s chair. Mistress Bradstreet, in 
 like degree, held high rank among the Puritan dames, 
 no such " starched pieces of austerity " as they looked to 
 the laughing eyes of London playwrights, but brave and 
 tender women whose praise was in their homes. The 
 love-letters of Mistress Winthrop to her husband are 
 as poetic with their wifely trust and sweetness as the 
 rhymed addresses of Anne Bradstreet to hers. 
 
 But our pioneer blue-stocking, however devotedly she 
 cherished her husband and their " eight birds hatcht in 
 one nest," however diligently she polished her thirteen 
 pewter platters and four large silver spoons, felt obliged 
 to apologize for her intrusion into the realm of letters. 
 
 " I am obnoxious to each carping tongue 
 Who says my hand a needle better fits, 
 A Poet s pen all scorn I should thus wrong, 
 For such despite they cast on Female wits; 
 If what I do prove well, it won t advance, 
 They ll say it s stol n, or else it was by chance." 
 
 Very woman in this, she disarms masculine criticism 
 by a touch of flattering meekness. 
 
 " Let Greeks be Greeks, and women what they are, 
 Men have precedency and still excel, 
 It is but vain unjustly to wage war; 
 Men can do best and women know it well, 
 Preeminence in all and each is yours, 
 Yet grant some small acknowledgment of ours." 
 
 This carried the day. Even the redoubtable Nathan- 
 
I THE COLONIAL PERIOD 33 
 
 iel Ward, while not retracting his opinion as to the 
 " squirrels brains " of women of fashion, penned coup 
 lets in Madam Bradstreet s honor, making Apollo say, in 
 somewhat nasal note : 
 
 " It half revives my chill frost-bitten blood, 
 To see a woman once do aught that s good." 
 
 Other clerical connoisseurs gave freer rein to their 
 pride and delight in New England s prodigy. The Rev. 
 Mr. Norton, for instance, was confident that if Virgil 
 were to 
 
 " hear her lively strain, 
 He would condemn his works to fire again." 
 
 Unhappily, these verses, hailed so jubilantly on our 
 songless coast, are essentially unpoetic. Not merely 
 stiff and dull, not merely cramped with verbal crotchets 
 fashioned after a false model of literary elegance, their 
 fatal error lies in reproducing the author s reading in 
 lieu of her experience. Glorious it would have been 
 to serve as the Miriam of the Puritan exodus, to give 
 lyric voice to the mingled emotions of those mighty 
 years, but this " Grave Matron " chose to transcribe 
 what she deemed useful pages of the ancient histories, 
 anatomies, and what not that she found among her 
 father s fifty books. In laborious measures she sets 
 out the Four Constitutions, Four Ages of Man, Four 
 Seasons of the Year, Four Monarchies, her staid Pegasus 
 seeming to go forever on all fours. An occasional elegy 
 or epitaph is as much of a relief as this antiquated vol- 
 
34 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 ume grants. It has not even the interest of local color. 
 Its birds are nightingales ; its flowers primroses. 
 
 XI. The Later Colonial Period in New England. 
 To an age of scholars turned backwoodsmen succeeded 
 the age of backwoodsmen striving after scholarship. 
 New England, once rude and heroic, had become pro 
 vincial. The inheritors were less than the achievers. 
 The training of Harvard was not the training of Oxford. 
 The Atlantic grew wider and wider. Still the Puritan 
 conscience, the middle-class English thrift, the unweary 
 ing pulpit, and the ubiquitous little school- house were 
 doing their steadfast work. 
 
 Piety was yet the dominant tone. The meeting-house 
 had shed its cannon and assumed a steeple, but its inter 
 nal discipline was hardly relaxed. It remained a bleak 
 and austere place of long prayers and longer sermons, 
 and of most discordant singing with little aid of printed 
 notes and none of instrument. There were no stoves. 
 Sometimes it chanced that midwinter babies were 
 sprinkled with baptismal water for which the ice in 
 the christening bowl had to be broken, the parents 
 allowing themselves a twinge of pride if the tiny Puritan 
 endured this ordeal without a cry. Sometimes the com 
 munion bread "was frozen pretty hard and rattled 
 sadly into the plates." The congregation embraced 
 the whole community, seated by scale of social conse 
 quence. Magistracy, wealth, learning, military service, 
 age, were factors in dignity. This arrangement, with 
 the delicate distinctions involved, must have ruffled 
 
I THE COLONIAL PERIOD 35 
 
 the Sabbath peace of many a gentle saint, on her 
 
 way 
 
 " To the goodly house of worship, where, in order due and fit, 
 As by public vote directed, classed and ranked the people sit; 
 Mistress first and goodwife after, clerkly squire before the clown, 
 From the brave coat lace-embroidered, to the gray frock, shading 
 down." 
 
 Men and women were seated apart, spinsters, ungal- 
 lantly known in Boston as thornbacks, by themselves, 
 negroes by themselves, boys by themselves. These last, 
 massed in the gallery or on the pulpit stairs, gave the 
 tithing-man most trouble, although his knobbed rod of 
 office had occasionally to tap the nodding periwig of 
 some grave elder, or tickle with its pendent foxtail the 
 drooping eyelids of a tired dame. The preachers still 
 maintained intellectual ascendency, but political author 
 ity was slipping from their hands. The franchise had 
 passed beyond the line of church membership. The 
 REV. JOHN WISE of Ipswich, an early example of muscular 
 Christianity, overthrew a covert design of the Boston 
 ministers to call New England back to a government by 
 will of the clergy. But the pen was still their own. It 
 has been estimated that of the five hundred and fifty 
 publications, known to have been produced in America 
 from 1706 to 1718, all but eighty- four were on religious 
 topics, forty-nine of the eighty-four being almanacs. 
 Eminent in the ranks of clerical authorship was REV. 
 MATTHEW BYLES of Boston, a genuine wit and reputed in 
 his day a poet who bade fair 
 
 " to rise and sing and rival Pope." 
 
36 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 No compliment could have pleased the persistent old 
 Tory better, for Pope was the star of his literary idolatry. 
 The Rev. Nicholas Noyes of Salem had a special gift for 
 the fabrication of punning elegies. The Rev. Urian Oakes, 
 minister at Cambridge and president of Harvard College, 
 commanded an eloquent prose and could, on occasion, 
 turn off a respectable copy of verses. School-masters, too, 
 were coming to the fore. Peter Folger of Nantucket, 
 grandfather of Benjamin Franklin, protested in doggerel 
 verse, with admirable good sense and good heart, against 
 the persecuting spirit of the magistracy and "college 
 men." 
 
 " Though you do many prayers make, 
 
 And add fasting thereto, 
 Yet if your hands be full of blood, 
 
 All this will never do." 
 
 Cambridge had a poetic school-master in Benjamin 
 Toinpson, who shook his head over New England s in 
 crease of domestic comforts and fluently bewailed the 
 good old times. But although the coast towns, after 
 King Philip s overthrow, were at leisure to cultivate the 
 arts of peace, the frontier still dwelt under the terror of 
 tomahawk and scalping-knife. Mary Rowlandson, the 
 pastor s wife at Lancaster, which was destroyed by the 
 savages in 1676, underwent, with a wounded child in her 
 arms, an agony of Indian captivity. Ransomed by the 
 good offices of the women of Boston, she wrote the story 
 of her sufferings in a spirited, straight-forward English 
 that makes them vivid yet. John Williams, pastor of the 
 
I THE COLONIAL PERIOD 37 
 
 brave little outpost at Deerfield, has left a touching nar 
 rative of a like experience occurring so late as 1704. 
 The struggle for a foothold, however, was over. The 
 supremacy of the white man was secured. The road 
 to literature lay open, but artistic stimulus and inheri 
 tance were lacking. Europe was no longer a present 
 memory, and Puritanism had yet to make friends with 
 beauty. 
 
 XII. Samuel Sewall. The Puritans had, from the 
 outset, a utilitarian bent. Combined with a peculiar 
 excitability of temperament, which betrayed itself in the 
 witchcraft mania, in religious rhapsodies and trances, in 
 the groanings and outcries that attended the Great Awak 
 ening, was an element of solid earth. The transcendental 
 enthusiasm was conserved by the clergy to flower in 
 Jonathan Edwards and Ralph Waldo Emerson. The 
 shrewd, thrifty, practical quality, the very essence of the 
 average Yankee, was relegated to the laymen. The hard- 
 headed honesty belonging to this latter type is well exem 
 plified where 
 
 " 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 ; " 
 
 but the Yankee humor, with its dry, cool perception of 
 incongruities, its hands-in-the-pockets survey of the drol 
 leries of the universe, is hardly manifest in the make-up 
 of the decorous magistrate. 
 
 He was an amiable and honorable man, whose outer 
 
38 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 and inner life for fifty- six years, laid open upon the pages 
 of his private Diary, bears the light as few men s lives 
 could do, but he had a leaning toward creature comforts 
 and a respect for shillings and pence prophetic of the 
 Yankee constitution. In the beginning the spiritually 
 minded minister of Salem, Francis Higginson, had warned 
 his flock against an undue care for money-getting. " Let 
 it never be forgotten that our New England was origi 
 nally a plantation of religion and not a plantation of trade. 
 And if there be a man among you who counts religion as 
 twelve, and the world as thirteen, let such a one remem 
 ber that he hath neither the spirit of a true New England 
 man, nor yet of a sincere Christian." 
 
 The Puritan laity of the Provincial Age were strict in 
 church attendance and conspicuously upright in con 
 duct, but doubtless there were many, who, like Madam 
 Knight, being well entertained in the present, were poig 
 nantly reminded of the hereafter only on occasions of 
 special stress. This lady, of delightful enterprise and 
 spirit, journeyed on horseback from Boston to New York, 
 via New Haven, in 1704, and wrote a lively narrative of 
 her adventures. It is still an entertaining little chronicle. 
 The discomforts of wood roads and swamps, of rough 
 fords and bridges " very tottering," as well as husk beds 
 and fare contrary to her " notion of cookery," she details 
 with a certain heroic relish. Even so early, the sense 
 of being a Bostonian enabled one to rise superior to all 
 impertinences of man and nature. Nevertheless, there 
 were moments of peril in which this vivacious pilgrim 
 
I THE COLONIAL PERIOD 39 
 
 fell to the reflection, apparently well founded, that her 
 " call was very questionable." 
 
 This lump of earth in Puritan character, this homely 
 common-sense, served as moral ballast. In the dark 
 days of the witchcraft delusion, a plain merchant of 
 Boston, Robert Calef, stood for justice and humanity 
 against the great preachers, Increase and Cotton Mather, 
 whose fanatical zeal was the chief agent in furthering 
 that riot of superstition. The Mathers, blinded to the 
 end by passionate credulity, never saw the blood-stain 
 on their hands, but Judge Sewall sorely repented his 
 share in that bad business and, with characteristic integ 
 rity, made public confession of his fault in the Old South 
 Meeting-house. It was he who published the first anti- 
 slavery tract in America, The Selling of Joseph. 
 
 It is not his tracts that we read to-day, however, but 
 his Diary, which achieves by a succession of simplest 
 touches at once a portrait of the man and a picture of 
 the times. Cozy times they were, for all their Puritan 
 austerities and their public anxieties and losses. Indian 
 alarms, threatened charters, tyrannical governors, still 
 left quiet space for social and domestic cheer. There 
 was abundance of marmalade and blackcherry brandy, 
 feasts as well as fasts, weddings as well as funerals, 
 though perhaps the chastened taste of the day enjoyed 
 the funerals more. Sewall used to find a visit to his 
 family tomb, with its accumulating store of coffins, " an 
 awful yet pleasing treat." Sunday services and Thurs 
 day evening lectures, family prayers and private devo- 
 
4O AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 tions, scripture readings and catechisings, allowed inter 
 vals of time for " a little winter-love in a dark corner." 
 It is diverting enough to play the eaves-dropper while 
 this gallant but prudent grandsire woos the well-to-do old 
 ladies of his not always successful choice with tracts and 
 printed sermons, with " one-half pound of sugar almonds, 
 cost three shillings per pound " and " gingerbread 
 wrapped up in a clean sheet of paper." A share of 
 his goodies sometimes fell to little children, whose lot 
 in that grave community was not without its compensa 
 tions. A four-year-old might get whipped "pretty 
 smartly" for his "playing at prayer time and eating 
 when return thanks," but it was in those Colonial twi 
 lights that over a Boston cradle were first crooned the 
 melodies of a humble poetess better beloved by time 
 than the Tenth Muse or any rhyming theologian of them 
 all, Mother Goose. 
 
 XIII. The Mather Dynasty is a term not inappropri 
 ately applied to the ruling family among the New Eng 
 land clergy. The emigrant, Richard Mather, who arrived 
 in Boston in 1635, was a Lancashire man and an Oxonian. 
 After preaching for fifteen years in England without a 
 surplice, he had been silenced for non-conformity. Arriv 
 ing in Massachusetts, he promptly gathered a church at 
 Dorchester and there "continued, a blessing unto all 
 the churches in this wilderness until his dying day, even 
 for near upon four and thirty years together." 
 
 This stern old patriarch fathers a line of some eighty 
 ministers. Of his four sons, all in the pulpit, Increase, 
 
I THE COLONIAL PERIOD 41 
 
 the youngest, became the most prominent New Englander 
 of his time. Graduated from Harvard at seventeen, he 
 preached at eighteen in his father s church, "when 
 the whole auditory were greatly affected with the light 
 and flame in which the rare youth appeared unto them ; 
 especially was his father so, who could scarce pronounce 
 the blessing." He went at once abroad, where he took 
 his Master s degree at Trinity College, Dublin, preached 
 awhile in Devonshire and elsewhere, but gave way before 
 the Restoration and returned to America. Here he mar 
 ried the daughter of John Cotton, whose surname was 
 given to their first-born son. 
 
 Taking charge of the North Church in Boston, a pas 
 torate in which he remained for sixty years, and presently 
 adding to this burden the Presidency of Harvard, which 
 he retained for sixteen years, Increase Mather held the 
 chief influence in the colony. In him the sway of the 
 old theocracy culminated. He moved, the commanding 
 figure, through the political agitations of the time. The 
 government of the New England settlements had, from 
 the first, unconsciously looked toward independence. 
 The Pilgrims, while yet on the "Mayflower," had by 
 written compact organized themselves into " a civil body 
 politic." The Puritans, soon after landing, subscribed 
 to a solemn agreement. Under the original charter of 
 Massachusetts, the freemen, who were the church mem 
 bers, elected the magistrates. The citizens, trained in 
 the public schools and churches to intelligence and 
 virtue, were educated in democratic methods by the 
 
42 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 town- meeting. But under Charles II., when the colo 
 nists were faint and spent with the fierce struggle of 
 King Philip s War, the charter of Massachusetts, after 
 a long and passionate resistance, was annulled. Old 
 England made a bad matter worse by a tone with 
 which America grew later more familiar, and the blood 
 of New England waxed hot : " And to complete the 
 oppression, when they . . . claimed the privilege of 
 Englishmen, they were scoffingly told, Those things 
 would not follow them to the ends of the earth. Un 
 natural insult ! Must the brave adventurer, who with 
 the hazard of his life and fortune seeks out new climates 
 to enrich his mother country, be denied those common 
 rights, which his countrymen enjoy at home in ease and 
 indolence?" 
 
 Sent to England as agent for the colony, Increase 
 Mather saved what he could for Massachusetts from 
 the wreck of her first liberties. He obtained from 
 William of Orange a new charter, stricter than the old, 
 but more liberal than those granted to most of the royal 
 provinces. The colony of Plymouth was now incor 
 porated with that of Massachusetts, where henceforth 
 the governor and certain other officers were to be ap 
 pointed by the king, while a property qualification for 
 such franchise as remained was substituted for church 
 membership. This provision it was which broke down 
 the old theocracy. Increase Mather was the last of 
 the clerical autocrats. 
 
 For a time, however, his son Cotton appeared no less 
 
Reproduced from the fine steel plate in "The 
 Library of American Literature," by permission 
 of the publisher, William Evarts Benjamin. 
 
I THE COLONIAL PERIOD 43 
 
 a personage. More precocious than his father, more 
 prolific in books and pamphlets, he illustrates never 
 theless the decline of the clergy both in outward power 
 and in actual sanity and breadth of thought. As a 
 mere child, trotting with solemn countenance to Master 
 Cheever s school, he evinced the prig. " I began to 
 pray" his record runs, "even when I began to speak. 
 ... I used secret prayer, not confining myself to forms 
 in it : and yet I composed forms of prayer for my school 
 mates (I suppose when I was about seven or eight years 
 old) and obliged them to pray. ... I rebuked my play 
 mates for their wicked words and ways ; and sometimes 
 I suffered from them the persecution of not only scoffs 
 but blows also, for my rebukes." We do not hear that 
 his loss was keenly regretted when, at the age of twelve, 
 widely read in Greek and Latin authors, he left school 
 for Harvard. He was not nineteen on taking, from his 
 father s hand, his second degree, his thesis being " Puncta 
 Hebraica sunt Originis Divinae." Within six months he 
 was called to the North Church as his father s colleague. 
 He prayed at his own ordination one hour and a quarter 
 and preached for nearly two hours, a sample of his 
 quality which those bygone parishioners endured with 
 out flinching. Both Mathers died in this ministry, the 
 father, fretful with failure, neglect, and infirmity, only five 
 years before the son. Both were marvels of diligence, 
 as became the scions of old Richard Mather, whose 
 set of " Resolutions " included one against " excessive 
 sleeping " and another against " misspending precious 
 
/j/| AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 time." But Increase Mather, although he often passed 
 sixteen hours of the twenty-four in his study and printed 
 during his lifedays nearly one hundred treatises and 
 sermons, went in and out among men and dealt with 
 open-air questions. Cotton was a bookworm, who lived 
 to read, and read to write. His brother Nathaniel, 
 pursuing a like course, died at nineteen. " While he 
 thus devoured books, it came to pass that his books 
 devoured him." Rarely there breaks from Cotton 
 Mather the cry of human nature. " Tis dreadful cold. 
 My inkglass in my standish is froze and split in my very 
 stove. My ink in my pen suffers a congelation." But 
 for all the halting of his icy quill, on he wrote, putting 
 forth from that eerie study, whose air was thick with 
 visions, hard upon four hundred publications. Some 
 were in French, Spanish, Indian, while his English, 
 with its peppering of Hebrew, Latin, and Greek, its 
 twisted phrases, tortured puns, and words of preposterous 
 coinage, is no less a display of erudition. Sixty fasts, 
 twenty-two vigils, and fourteen books made up his sheaf 
 for a single year. Yet his groan was ever : " Alas, of 
 my unfruitfulness ! " 
 
 This judgment was more accurate than the judge him 
 self suspected. That lean, ascetic figure, running under 
 the lash of terrible effort, of unremitting discipline, was 
 off the track of truth. For lack of that preserving salt, 
 his tomes and tracts, like his father s, have practically 
 perished. His learning had become a blur before his 
 brain. His piety had forgotten mercy. The darkest 
 
I THE COLONIAL PERIOD 45 
 
 quality of Puritanism, the belief in a supernatural malice, 
 deeply tinged the minds of both father and son. So 
 sensible a man as Winthrop held that demons haunted 
 the wilderness of the New World. Wigglesworth was 
 confident that the devil had America for his peculiar 
 "den." Increase Mather s most memorable book, Essay 
 for the Recording of Illustrious Providences, hears Satan 
 in the thunder storm. The chief writings of Cotton 
 Mather, dealing as they largely do with the witchcraft 
 murders, whose stain shows red upon his priestly gar 
 ments, have small hold on human reverence. Yet men 
 still turn with pleasure and profit the curious, uncritical 
 pages of his magnum opus, 
 
 "That quaint Magnalia Christi, with all strange and marvellous 
 
 things, 
 Heaped up huge and undigested, like the chaos Ovid sings." 
 
 XIV. Jonathan Edwards has fared better than Cotton 
 Mather at the hands of posterity. Whatever may be 
 thought of his theology, his was a shining spirit. At 
 last, in the musings of a marvellous boy, New England 
 strikes the note of sestheticism. The claims of art had 
 as yet been scarcely recognized. Leaning gravestones 
 and faded samplers tell a dismal tale of Puritan taste. 
 The Magnalia mentions a "limner" who was settled 
 in the colonies by 1667. I n tne ear ty na h of the eigh 
 teenth century, New Jersey had a Scotch portrait-painter, 
 John Watson, who made what was probably the first col 
 lection of pictures in America. His little studio, with 
 the shutters divided into squares, on each of which was 
 
46 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 painted an heroic head, was the gazing-stock of the 
 neighborhood. The first studio in Boston was opened 
 by John Smybert, also a Scotchman. To him we owe 
 a likeness of Jonathan Edwards, while to Pelham, 
 another portrait-painter, who was, too, an engraver and 
 teacher of drawing, we are indebted for that of Cotton 
 Mather. \Domestic architecture, however, was well ad 
 vanced before the close of the Colonial period. Espe 
 cially in the seaboard towns, enriched through the West 
 Indian trade and favorably situated for the obtaining of 
 material, the building of stately homes was much in 
 vogue. Gambrelled and gabled roofs, white-pillared 
 porches, diamond panes, fantastic knockers, sweet, old- 
 fashioned gardens, still distinguish those early dwellings, 
 within which that personal dignity of the Puritans, well 
 becoming the elect of the Almighty, uttered itself in 
 rich and handsome furnishings, mahogany highboys 
 glittering with brass handles, rows of figured china in 
 divers colors, canopy beds with twisted posts, sideboards 
 elaborately carved with vine-leaves and grape-baskets, y 
 In no such elegance as this was the youth of Jonathan 
 Edwards nurtured. The colony of Connecticut, whither 
 Thomas Hooker, finding Massachusetts too small for 
 John Cotton and himself, originally led his flock, had 
 secured her charter-liberties through the polished diplo 
 macy of her governor, John Winthrop the younger. In 
 reality most prosperous of all the colonies, her fashions 
 of life, especially in the smaller towns and villages, were 
 frugal and modest. The East Windsor parsonage, where 
 
I THE COLONIAL PERIOD 47 
 
 Jonathan Edwards was the only boy among eleven chil 
 dren, could hardly have been luxurious, when the meet 
 ing-house was not even furnished with pews. Yale, 
 from which he was graduated with highest honors before 
 reaching the age of seventeen, had not so much as a 
 fixed abode. Born with the eighteenth century, and 
 speaking Latin from its birth, this hopeful young college, 
 thriving in spite of its nomadic life, had early attracted 
 the approval of Cotton Mather, who longed to see 
 established there that inflexible orthodoxy from which, 
 to the intense pain of his father and himself, Harvard 
 was already departing. 
 
 But upon the eyes of the sensitive boy and spiritual 
 student had dawned the vision of nature as the veil of 
 God. This revelation sufficed his youth, making the 
 spoils of wealth superfluous. When in his college note 
 book he defined nothing as " the same that the sleeping 
 rocks do dream of," he held place among the poets. 
 In those early days his soul walked the bright table 
 lands of Plato, of Spinoza, of St. John. He adored the 
 glory of the Eternal, beholding in sun and field and river 
 "emanations or shadows" of the divine Beauty, "the 
 footsteps of His favor." This Spirit of God " overspread 
 and cast abroad upon the whole earth and universe " 
 he recognized as "infinite general love." As with matur 
 ing life he entered more and more into religious con 
 sciousness, as the "sense of divine things kindled a 
 sweet burning" in his heart, his "calm rapture" was 
 augmented. "God s excellency, his wisdom, his purity 
 
48 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 and love, seemed to appear in everything, in the sun, 
 moon, and stars ; in clouds and blue sky ; in the grass, 
 flowers, trees ; in the water and all nature, which used 
 greatly to 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 meantime singing forth, 
 with a low voice, my contemplations of the Creator and 
 Redeemer." 
 
 The wrench by which he brought himself into an ac 
 ceptance of Calvinistic theology seems to have dis 
 torted all his development. "From my childhood up, 
 my mind had been full of objections against the doctrine 
 of God s sovereignty, in choosing whom He would to 
 eternal life, and rejecting whom He pleased, leaving them 
 eternally to perish and be everlastingly tormented in 
 hell. It used to appear like a horrible doctrine to me." 
 But apparently accounting it his duty to believe, he faced 
 that tragic creed without blenching, until to his enthusi 
 astic heart it took on a strange beauty of its own. " The 
 doctrine has very often appeared exceedingly pleasant, 
 bright, and sweet. But my first conviction was not so." 
 
 Installed as pastor over the Northampton church, 
 wedded to a radiant girl with the spirit of a mystic 
 and a devotee, he presents a twofold aspect. A 
 preacher of wrath, terrifying his audiences with sermons 
 unbearably graphic in their effort to impress his deep 
 conviction that the " bulk of mankind do throng " to 
 hell, with Augustine and -Calvin conceiving God as the 
 
I THE COLONIAL PERIOD 49 
 
 one irresistible Will of a helpless universe, he wears 
 nevertheless the halo of a saint. The words " sweetness 
 and light," as frequent with him as with Matthew Arnold, 
 describe him best. Into the dulness and formality of 
 that latter-day Puritanism he shot such electric thrill 
 of emotion as produced an extraordinary series of re 
 vivals, known as the Great Awakening. In general har 
 mony with the work of Whitefield and the Wesleys, this 
 conversion impulse shook all the colonies and spread to 
 Scotland and England. 
 
 But their pillar of flame, a beacon in the land, was too 
 hot for Northampton to bear. All the Colonial ortho 
 doxy believed in original sin, election by free grace, 
 and everlasting punishment. Governor Wolcott of Con 
 necticut was deterred (poetically) from suicide by 
 
 " Hell s flashes folding through eternity." 
 
 But these doctrines, never silent in our honest old 
 pulpits, were preached by Edwards with unexampled 
 and unendurable vividness. Did he never remember, 
 when assuring his shuddering congregation that God 
 held them " over the pit of hell, much as one holds a 
 spider or some loathsome insect over the fire," how in 
 his fresh boyhood he had been "very conversant with 
 spiders," loving to watch the "wondrous way of their 
 working " and finding " everything belonging to this 
 insect admirable"? The church of Northampton, after 
 the excitement of the Great Awakening had ebbed, 
 turned upon their pastor, much as Boston baited the 
 
5O AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 Mathers after the witchcraft madness, and thrust him 
 out, an event then unexampled in the New England 
 ministry. Patiently and humbly he went forty miles to 
 the west, as missionary to the Stockbridge Indians, on the 
 extreme frontier. What the red men learned from the 
 metaphysician it would be interesting to know, but 
 there it was, in such rude and wild surroundings, that 
 this master of subtle logic wrote his famous treatise 
 on the Freedom of the Will, which virtually denies to 
 man the power of choice. At fifty-four, he reluctantly 
 emerged from his Stockbridge retirement, so fruitful in 
 thought and writing, to assume the presidency of Prince 
 ton College, then scarcely more than a decade in age. 
 A few weeks later he died. 
 
 In the school of theology which Edwards founded, 
 his high conception of God s sovereignty has already 
 been brought to co-exist with a happier view of human 
 destinies, but his definition of religion, like his practice, 
 has hardly been bettered : " True religion in a great 
 measure consists in holy affections. A love of divine 
 things for the beauty and sweetness of their moral 
 excellency is the spring of all holy affections." 
 
 Edwards s early meditations set straight toward ideal 
 ism. He spoke a common language with Berkeley, 
 although it is doubtful whether the young Northampton 
 preacher, isolated by poverty and the difficulties of 
 Colonial travel, even once visited the distinguished 
 English philosopher during that mysterious residence 
 of three years at Newport. It is possible, indeed, so 
 
I THE COLONIAL PERIOD 5 1 
 
 thick was the wall of provincialism, that Edwards was 
 ignorant alike of Berkeley s presence in New England 
 and of the existence of Berkeley s views as such. But 
 apart from the special tenets of the schools, in that 
 ascetic, God- enraptured life of Jonathan Edwards the 
 essential ideality of Puritanism is seen at its clearest. 
 Men who, dwelling in hazard on the edge of the prime 
 val forest, could absorb themselves in hot discussions 
 over the validity of infant baptism, were legitimate 
 ancestors not only of Edwards, but of Channing and 
 Emerson. The Transcendentalists, beneath dogma, are 
 at one with the Calvinists. Earth, to the vision of both, 
 is shadow and dream ; spirit alone is reality. 
 
52 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD 
 
 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 ! 
 ******** 
 
 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, 
 
 A nightly shelter to fold away 
 
 When the Lord should call at the break of day, 
 
 Solid and steadfast seems to be, 
 
 And Time has forgotten Eternity ! 
 
 But fresh and green from the rotting roots 
 Of primal forests the young growth shoots; 
 From the death of the old the new proceeds, 
 And the life of truth from the rot of creeds : 
 On the ladder of God, which upward leads, 
 The steps of progress are human needs. 
 
 WHITTIER, The Preacher. 
 
 I. Aspect of the Times. As the theme of our Colo 
 nial literature is theology, so, and in no less degree, the 
 theme of our Revolutionary literature is politics. The 
 
II THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD 53 
 
 attention of the colonists was turned from heaven to 
 earth. The change had been gradual. From the out 
 set there was in New England a democracy of common 
 sense and common virtues disposed, on occasion, to check 
 the theocracy. It was the protest of the plain people that 
 put an end to the flogging of Quakers and hanging of 
 witches. Relinquishing theology more and more to the 
 care of the clergy, the laity of the eighteenth century set 
 actively about the establishing of a sound material basis 
 for the new American civilization. While Cotton Mather 
 was rapt by visions of winged angels in his study, and 
 Jonathan Edwards was enfolded in a " calm, sweet ab 
 straction of soul from all the concerns of the world," 
 sailors of Cape Cod were throwing the harpoon in Arctic 
 seas, and Newport merchants, who would have been none 
 the worse for more religion, were importing molasses and 
 sugar from the West Indies to make the rum exchanged 
 on the coast of Africa for negroes that were sold again 
 in Barbados. 
 
 The colonies, which by the middle of the century 
 numbered thirteen, fell naturally into three groups. The 
 aristocratic Old Dominion, living carelessly off her to 
 bacco crop and cultivating the graces and dignities of 
 life, had the Carolinas, Maryland, and Georgia for neigh 
 bors. Maryland, colonized under Roman Catholic au 
 spices and originally the one province where religious 
 toleration was secured by law, had established the Epis 
 copal Church and disfranchised her Roman Catholics. 
 Her schools were few and poor and her higher life ap- 
 
54 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 parently stagnant. With the English settlers of the Car- 
 olinas had mingled various sturdy Protestant elements, 
 notably Scotch-Irish Presbyterians and French Hugue 
 nots. Into North Carolina, Virginia had shaken off what 
 she could of her vagabonds and ruffians, so that, up to 
 the time of the Revolution, this colony was disorderly, 
 lazy, and ignorant. South Carolina, notwithstanding her 
 bad name for smuggling and piracy, fared better. Her 
 planters, enriched by their rice and indigo, corn and 
 cotton, lived gayly in Charleston, while troops of ne 
 groes, many fresh from the slave-ships, worked out short 
 and sickly lives in the malarial swamps. The youngest 
 of the thirteen colonies, Georgia, settled in 1732 under 
 the leadership of the humane Oglethorpe, was founded 
 for the express purpose of giving another chance in life 
 to the unfortunates of the Old World, especially the 
 poor debtors of the London jails. The Wesleys and 
 Whitefield exhorted there but for a season, the effort to 
 exclude slavery and rum proved Utopian, and the novel 
 mission, which attracted, to balance its weaklings, some 
 excellent constituents in Scots, Germans, and English 
 Quakers, presently slipped off the philanthropic apron- 
 strings and began to make its own mundane way in agri 
 culture, cattle-raising, and commerce. Although brick 
 kilns, ship-yards, iron furnaces, and mills of various sorts 
 might be found, for the seeking, below Mason and Dix- 
 on s line, the South was, broadly speaking, without 
 manufactures. Its wealth lay in its natural products. 
 Similarly, while destitute of literature, it was rich in the 
 
II THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD 55 
 
 raw material of literature, in life. Williamsburg was 
 the focus of a blithe and polished society. There " the 
 violins seemed to be ever playing." There the planter s 
 son, a superlative dandy in powdered peruke and gold- 
 threaded waistcoat, doffed his cocked hat with its flaunt 
 ing feather to the soft-voiced Virginian maidens so 
 languidly that it would have taken a keen eye to detect, 
 beneath furbelows and foppery, the steel temper of the 
 Revolution close at hand. Beside the strenuous studies 
 and varied business activities of the North, the southern 
 oligarchy looked idle and frivolous, yet the fox-hunting, 
 horse-racing, dancing, and duelling went to the making 
 of heroes. 
 
 The Middle Colonies comprised New York, of Dutch 
 tradition, New Jersey, with population variously com 
 pounded of Dutch, Quakers, and Puritans, Pennsylvania, 
 where the welcome of the Friends was broad enough for 
 all peoples and all sects, and Delaware, planted by the 
 Swedes. The main employment of the Middle Colonies 
 was the production of food-stuffs, especially grain. On 
 the large, fertile farms, German and Irish bond-servants, 
 working out their passage dues, indentured convicts from 
 Great Britain, and African slaves toiled together, under 
 the oversight of their rustic masters. The fur-trade with 
 the Indians was extensive. New York and Philadelphia 
 were thriving seaports. Merchants abounded in the 
 towns, and throughout the country districts shop-keepers, 
 peddlers, and mechanics were thickly sprinkled in among 
 the tillers of the soil. Shipbuilding flourished, and the 
 
56 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 iron industry was well under way. Notwithstanding the 
 selfish legislation of the English Parliament, which strove 
 to compel the colonists to bring their raw material to 
 British markets in barter for the products of British fac 
 tories, there existed in the Middle Colonies, as in New 
 England, a few manufactures for domestic use, while the 
 spinning-wheel and loom were busy in a thousand homes. 
 This work-a-day life had not the social charm of the 
 South, nor the intellectual energy of the East, although 
 there was fashion in the towns, and education, especially 
 in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, was not altogether neg 
 lected; but while emphasis was put on the practical and 
 the utilitarian, on bread alone, the polyglot character of 
 the population and the Quaker leaven of tolerance fa 
 vored that development witnessed to-day, when the cos 
 mopolitan city of New York holds rank as the literary no 
 less than the financial metropolis of the United States. 
 
 New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Rhode Island, 
 all offshoots from Massachusetts, bore a close family 
 resemblance to the parent colony. " Little Rhody " 
 was the bad child of the household, restless, greedy, 
 and unruly, but these sorry traits she gradually out 
 grew. From granite hillside and stormy sea the tough 
 Puritans wrested their first prosperity, but soon added 
 to their fisheries and agriculture a very canny trade. 
 This circular commerce gathered up in its coasting 
 craft provisions, furs, and lumber from the neighboring 
 colonies and carried these exports to Great Britain, 
 the West Indies, and such few continental markets as 
 
II THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD 57 
 
 Parliament s jealous Navigation Acts left open. The 
 return cargoes, largely English fabrics and other manu 
 factured wares, were bartered again, at a Yankee profit, 
 in the Colonial ports. If every New England merchant 
 was a money-maker, every farmer was a Jack of all 
 trades, as much at home in cobbling a pair of shoes 
 as in criticising a sermon. Brother Jonathan s " cute- 
 ness " was already in evidence. A cider-press stood 
 handy to his apple-orchard. His live stock knew the 
 smell of his tannery. The shyest mountain-streams, 
 with the wildest Indian names, found themselves turn 
 ing the wheels of his saw-mill and grist-mill. If his 
 sheep sharpened their noses picking out grassblades 
 between the rocks, his homespun suit was none the 
 worse for it. A dozen factories were gathered into 
 his farmhouse kitchen, where thin-lipped women baked 
 and brewed, washed and ironed, canned and pickled, 
 compounded the family physic of "snail-water," with 
 ruby jellies to obliterate its taste, spun, wove, knit, 
 quilted, made candles, soap, sausages, rag- carpets, 
 feather-beds, and were by turns seamstresses, milliners, 
 tailors, with frequent calls away to dairy, poultry-yard, 
 and milking-stool. For the young men and maidens, 
 after the " chores " came husking-bee or spelling-match, 
 and the children trudged barefoot in summer, and 
 coasted in winter to the rough little school-house that 
 was never quite out of reach. 
 
 Such, in birdseye view, were the thirteen Colonial 
 units, which, by the time they achieved independence 
 
58 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 and union, numbered toward three millions of people, 
 perhaps one-fifth speaking languages other than Eng 
 lish, mainly Dutch, French, German, Swedish, and 
 about the same proportion being of negro blood. 
 The blacks, for industrial rather than moral reasons, 
 were chiefly in the section of rice-swamp and cotton- 
 field. In New England and the Middle Colonies the 
 general trend of life was democratic. Labor was held 
 more honorable than idleness. In the South there were 
 sharp distinctions of caste. 
 
 II. Benjamin Franklin is typical of this new American 
 era. Only three years younger than Jonathan Edwards, 
 Boston-born and Boston-bred, the Puritan temper had 
 absolutely no hold upon him. Out of all the priestly 
 writing of the times, he assimilated only Cotton 
 Mather s Essays to do Good, but the suggestion of that 
 one book he took into his very pith. He was the 
 Abou ben Adhem of his times. If service is the 
 test of love, few men have loved their fellows better 
 than did this unsentimental, unspiritual, homely old 
 body, America s patron saint of common-sense. 
 
 Alone among the great Revolutionary leaders, Frank 
 lin was of humble origin. Little he minded that. " A 
 ploughman on his legs is higher than a gentleman on his 
 knees," His mother s father was Peter Folger of Nan- 
 tucket, whose " homespun verse ... in favor of liberty 
 of conscience" the grandson approved as "written with 
 a good deal of decent plainness and manly freedom." 
 This was a handsome concession for Franklin, who 
 

OF THB 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
II THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD 59 
 
 in general considered poetry " the mere waste-paper 
 of mankind." His father was of North-England yeo 
 man stock, of a family where for generations the eldest 
 son had succeeded to the anvil with less interruption 
 and perhaps no less pride than attended the royal 
 succession to the throne. Tudors and Stuarts came 
 and went, while the Franklins hammered on. 
 
 Franklin s father, a soap-boiler and tallow-chandler, 
 who, after the day s work was done, would play psalm 
 tunes on his violin, to the delectation of his seventeen 
 children, wished to devote Benjamin, "as the tithe of 
 his sons," to the ministry. The prudent goodman 
 changed his mind, however, on considering the expense 
 of a college education "and the mean living many so 
 educated were afterwards able to obtain." After a 
 scanty two years of schooling, the boy was taken home 
 to help in moulding candles, an occupation for which, 
 notwithstanding its eminent usefulness, he conceived a 
 strong dislike. Pilgrim s Progress and Plutarch s Lives 
 were his consolation. Observing this bookish tendency, 
 the father, apprehensive lest his discontented little 
 chandler should run away to sea, had him bound, at 
 twelve, apprentice to an elder son James, a printer. 
 In this craft Franklin soon excelled, and his love of 
 reading grew apace. He even tried his hand at ballad- 
 writing, but his father s hint that " verse-makers were 
 generally beggars " promptly put an end to that. On 
 his father s suggestion, the boy undertook learning how 
 to write good prose. An odd volume of the Spectator 
 
6O AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 was his academy. He succeeded so well that his Silence 
 Dogood essays, Addisonian trifles on such varied 
 themes as Widows, Boston at Night, Poetry in New 
 England, Match-Making, slipped anonymously under 
 the printing-house door, were published in his brother s 
 newspaper, the New England Courant. 
 
 The first printing-press of America had been set up 
 at Cambridge under Harvard control, in 1639. During 
 the last quarter of that century, presses appeared, one by 
 one, at Boston, Philadelphia, and New York. In the 
 third decade of the century following, Annapolis, Wil- 
 liamsburg, and Charleston successively went into the 
 printing business, and by 1762, when a press was 
 established at Savannah, the last of the thirteen colonies 
 was ready to print its own books, provided it had any 
 books to print. Boston and Philadelphia, however, by 
 aid of the Franklins, took and kept the lead. 
 
 The seventeenth century had witnessed a solitary at 
 tempt at American journalism. In 1690 there appeared 
 at Boston the first and last and only number of Public 
 Occurrences, six eleven-inch columns, whose projectors 
 designed " that the country shall be furnished once a 
 month (or if any glut of occurrences happen, oftener) with 
 an account of such considerable things as have arrived 
 unto our notice." This ambitious venture was forthwith 
 suppressed by government. The more fortunate News- 
 Letter, a weekly, first issued at Boston in 1704, was 
 supplemented after fifteen years by the Boston Gazette, 
 printed by James Franklin. At the same time, Phila- 
 
 
II THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD 6 1 
 
 delphia started the American Weekly Mercury and, two 
 years later, James Franklin began to publish the New Eng 
 land Courant. There was no American daily until 1771, 
 when, at Philadelphia, the Pennsylvania Packet led the 
 way. By this time New England had about a dozen 
 newspapers, the Middle Colonies an equal number, and 
 the Southern scarcely less. In all this Colonial develop 
 ment of the printing and publishing industry, the influ 
 ence of the Franklins was supreme. 
 
 Benjamin transferred his labors from Boston to Phila 
 delphia because of the bad tempers of James, whose 
 rough words and rougher beatings roused in his junior, 
 long before the Revolution, the spirit of rebellion against 
 arbitrary power. Smarting from brotherly blows, the ap 
 prentice ran away at seventeen to the city of Brotherly 
 Love. As the young Yankee walked coolly down Chest 
 nut Street, with two "great puffy rolls " under his arms, 
 eating a third, Philadelphia little realized that her mighti 
 est citizen, the bread-man of the era, was making his 
 debut. It was characteristic, also, that two of his three 
 rolls the budding philanthropist gave away to a hungry 
 woman and child. 
 
 Ten years sufficed to put him in the full tide of his 
 career. He had pursued his trade for eighteen months 
 in London, where an early bent toward free-thinking was 
 confirmed, had returned to Philadelphia, opened a print 
 ing-house, bought the Pennsylvania Gazette, and become 
 the foremost publisher in the colony. He was now 
 equipped for his peculiar mission of training the Ameri- 
 
62 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 can Character to a mastery of practical life. An apostle 
 of frugality, industry, and temperate living, he occupied 
 two secular pulpits, his newspaper and his almanac. 
 Through the first he did much to shape the popular mind 
 on public questions. From politics, commerce, finance 
 and political economy he took his weekly texts. But his 
 Poor Richard penetrated to thousands of rustic firesides 
 the country over, and was thumbed ragged by households 
 who had, perhaps, no other reading, save the Bible, from 
 one January to the next. 
 
 Almanacs were the main reliance of our pioneer pub 
 lishing houses. In a year when the three Philadelphia 
 presses issued a total of thirteen books, seven were 
 almanacs. It was for 1733 that Franklin prepared the 
 first of his long series, under the name, for a ruse, of a 
 noted almanac-maker in England, Richard Saunders. 
 This little pamphlet contained, in addition to the regu 
 lar calculations and weather predictions, a sly preface, 
 giving a realistic glimpse of Dame Bridget, and such 
 varied spicing as " Verses, Jests and Sayings . . . Bache 
 lor s Folly, Parson s Wine and Baker s Pudding, Short 
 Visits, Kings and Bears, New Fashions, Game for Kisses 
 . . . Signs of a Tempest, Death a Fisherman, Conjugal 
 Debate, Men and Melons, . . . Breakfast in Bed." But 
 the irresistible feature of the new almanac was its pep 
 pering of maxims, original and borrowed. While Poor 
 Richard s prefaces, anecdotes, and even his verses de 
 lighted the public, year by year, for a quarter of a 
 century, his proverbs were driven, like so many quaintly- 
 
II THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD 63 
 
 carven pegs, deep into the American mind. They 
 inculcated prudence, " Little boats should keep near 
 shore," and persistency, " Little strokes fell large 
 oaks." They proclaimed the gospel of hard work, 
 "God helps them that help themselves," "Plough deep 
 while sluggards sleep," " Handle your tools without 
 mittens ; the cat in gloves catches no mice," " Dili 
 gence is the mother of good luck," "Laziness travels 
 so slowly that poverty soon overtakes him." Such sen 
 tentious brevity, such tricks of rhyme, antithesis, and 
 especially of word-picture, using the concrete image 
 for conveying the abstract truth, captured attention and 
 memory through continual surprises. Even the dullest 
 Dutch farmer might have wearied of the two words : 
 " Practise thrift," and so Franklin draped his cardinal 
 doctrine in all manner of droll disguises, " Silks and 
 satins put out the kitchen fire," " A small leak will sink 
 a great ship," " Who dainties love shall beggars prove," 
 " If you would know the value of money, go and try to 
 borrow some, for he that goes a-borrowing goes a-sorrow- 
 ing," "Light purse, heavy heart," "Lying rides upon 
 debt s back," " Tis hard for an empty bag to stand up 
 right." Sometimes, but rarely, he strikes the deeper 
 life-note, "The doors of wisdom are never shut," 
 "When you taste honey, remember gall." Often his 
 words are sharpened by the quiet irony still so innate 
 in Yankee speech, " He that falls in love with himself 
 will know no rivals," "Many foxes grow gray, but few 
 grow good," "There are no ugly loves, nor handsome 
 
64 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 prisons." In general Poor Richard preaches only a 
 worldly-wise philosophy, "Deny self for selfs sake," 
 " Rob not God, nor the poor, lest thou ruin thyself." 
 
 Franklin s almanacs, selling at the rate of ten thousand 
 a year, travelled from colony to colony and across the 
 ocean. It is estimated that Poor Richard, the preface 
 to the 1758 almanac, gathering up the best of the pro 
 verbs in a final discourse, has been printed at least four 
 hundred times. French editions are almost as numer 
 ous as English. The homely counsels of the tallow- 
 chandler s son have been rendered into well-nigh every 
 European language. But " a good example is the best 
 sermon," and Franklin s personality is more instructive 
 even than his aphorisms. 
 
 This personality is revealed with candor and compla 
 cency in his delightful Autobiography, supplemented by 
 his correspondence. His style is clear as crystal, shot 
 with glancing lights of humor, yet preserving throughout 
 the tranquil dignity of a man who, writing about himself, 
 thoroughly respects his subject. He had reason. In 
 him we have our first illustrious example of such a career 
 as it is America s peculiar pride to foster, the rise from 
 poverty, obscurity, and ignorance to a station of highest 
 honor and influence through a man s sheer power of 
 brain, conscience, heart, and will. Thoughtful, upright, 
 kindly, determined from the first, Franklin disciplined 
 himself, educated himself, enriched himself, and made 
 himself the greatest social force of his time. " He that 
 can have patience can have what he will." At forty- two 
 
II THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD 65 
 
 Franklin had amassed an honorable fortune and retired 
 from business to devote himself to politics and scientific 
 investigation. 
 
 The atmosphere of Pennsylvania was favorable to 
 science. The Quaker colony was more liberal than 
 Massachusetts. From the figure of William Penn, stand 
 ing under Treaty Elm, his blue silk sash about his waist 
 and a crescent of wild Indians before him, radiated a 
 tradition of tolerance. Bartram s botanical garden on 
 the Schuylkill was famed in Europe. The medical 
 profession, well advanced in the Middle Colonies, was 
 headed by Dr. Rush of Philadelphia. Rittenhouse was 
 known for his scientific studies as well as for his scientific 
 instruments. But the achievement of Franklin out 
 ranked them all. Up toward the thunder-clouds, awful 
 to Puritan thought, he cast his sacrilegious kite and 
 caught the lightning, which our own day harnesses to 
 street cars and sets to illuminating saloons. 
 
 Franklin s electrical experiments, that made him 
 honored across the sea, a doctor of Oxford and of 
 St. Andrews, a member of the Royal Society of England 
 and of the French Academy, were interspersed with 
 practical inventions. While the people, as the people 
 will, abused and glorified him by fits, Franklin good- 
 humoredly cured their smoky chimneys, brought them 
 home English vegetables and French vines to plant, 
 devised the Franklin stove, for which he would take out 
 no patent, bettered their printing-presses, ship-rigging, 
 carriage wheels, windmills, and roofs. To these last he 
 
66 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 affixed the protection of lightning rods, decried not a 
 little as " an impious attempt to control the artillery of 
 heaven." He lent a hand to all good works from hos 
 pital reform to drilling a Quaker militia. He inaugurated 
 far-reaching intellectual agencies, the public library, 
 the magazine, the postal service. He founded the 
 American Philosophical Society and the University of 
 Pennsylvania. He initiated in Philadelphia so many 
 conveniences of the modern city, pavements, street- 
 crossings, fire-companies, police, that one is not surprised 
 to find it, at the close of the Revolutionary War, the 
 metropolis of the new nation, with thirty-two thousand 
 inhabitants and over four thousand homes. 
 
 Franklin s political career began with the clerkship of 
 the Pennsylvania Assembly, of which he soon became a 
 member. As early as 1754, he proposed a plan for Colo 
 nial union that was displeasing to the colonies as con 
 ceding too much power to the English government, and 
 affronted the English government as allowing too much 
 independence to the colonies. Franklin philosophically 
 consoled himself for his failure by concluding, from the 
 double opposition, that the scheme must have been a 
 good one. Three years later he was sent to England as 
 special commissioner for Pennsylvania, and there, in the 
 main, he stayed until 1775, doing his best to avert the 
 inevitable crisis. His attitude toward the idea of a vio 
 lent separation was conservative, although he bore him 
 self with unflinching yet easy firmness before a suspicious 
 Parliament and a hostile king. His staunch patriotism 
 
II THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD 67 
 
 was worn as quietly as an old coat. He urged conciliatory 
 measures, advising Boston, for example, to pay the East 
 India Company for the salted tea. The author of Poor 
 Richard, indeed, could hardly have been expected to 
 approve such a waste of herb. His own words explain 
 his position : " Long did I endeavor, with unfeigned and 
 unwearied zeal, to preserve from breaking that fine and 
 noble china vase, the British empire ; for I knew that, 
 once broken, the separate parts could not ever retain 
 their share of the strength or value that existed in the 
 whole, and that a perfect re-union could scarce ever be 
 hoped for." 
 
 But when the crash came, Franklin stood shoulder to 
 shoulder with Samuel Adams. For ten years following, 
 the genial philosopher rendered the national cause ines 
 timable services in France, where he was hugely popular, 
 and where his well-seasoned tact and sagacity proved 
 equal to every diplomatic strain. His political promi 
 nence may be gathered from the fact that he was the 
 only American statesman to sign all four of the crucial 
 documents, the Declaration of Independence, the Treaty 
 of Alliance with France, the Treaty of Peace with Great 
 Britain, and the Constitution of the United States. To 
 the end he kept in advance of the times, death finding 
 the old man busy with measures for the abolition of 
 slavery. 
 
 Long residence in England, and especially in France, 
 emphasized a native breadth of mind. " Orthodoxy is 
 my doxy, and heterodoxy is your doxy." But while he 
 
68 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 held with the prevailing philosophy of the eighteenth 
 century, that happiness is the human end and aim, 
 Franklin s Puritan birthmark shows in his view that such 
 "felicity of life" is to be attained through "truth, sin 
 cerity, and integrity in dealings between man and man." 
 Moulded from honest red clay, without wings of passion 
 and poetry, his thoughts rising heavenward only the 
 length of his kite string, Franklin yet repented, in mellow 
 age, all unholy (and expensive) dissipations of his youth, 
 and added a limited measure of faith to his overflowing 
 measure of works : " Here is my creed : I believe in 
 one God, the Creator of the universe ; that He governs 
 it by His providence ; that He ought to be worshipped ; 
 that the most acceptable service we render to Him is 
 doing good to His other children ; that the soul of man 
 is immortal, and will be treated with justice in another 
 life respecting its conduct in this." 
 
 In Jonathan Edwards and Benjamin Franklin, the 
 two world-redeeming forces of spiritual aspiration and 
 practical benevolence come into the sharpest contrast 
 that our literature affords. 
 
 III. The Orators. Although the initial wave of reli 
 gious enthusiasm, which would have founded on the wild 
 shores of America a very kingdom of God, seemed, for 
 the hour, lost in the Revolutionary surge of patriotic 
 passion, it is easy to recognize the same essential impulse 
 in the two. John Wise, the fighting parson of Ipswich, 
 had said in 1710 : "Englishmen hate an arbitrary power 
 (politically considered) as they hate the devil." And 
 
II THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD 69 
 
 when the colonies slowly awoke to the conviction that 
 the home government was dealing with them in selfish 
 and tyrannic wise, the Puritans of New England took 
 the lead in fiery resistance. Up the broad stairways of 
 the grand Colonial mansions, stairways beautiful with 
 carven balusters and grooved or twisted newels, trod 
 the descendants of the log-cabin pioneers, but the frown 
 of the living brows proved their kinship to the stern 
 portraits hung above the landings. The Revolutionary 
 dames, who dressed their hair in thirteen curls, wore 
 calicoes stamped with portraits of Washington and 
 Franklin, and drank no tea, only followed where the 
 heroines of the " Mayflower " and the "Arbella" had led. 
 Fittingly did Ethan Allen demand the surrender of 
 Ticonderoga "In the name of the great Jehovah, and 
 the Continental Congress." " If to appear for my coun 
 try is treason," rang out the words of young JOSIAH 
 QUINCY, " and to arm for her defence is rebellion, like 
 my fathers, I will glory in the name of rebel and traitor, 
 as they did in that of puritan and enthusiast." 
 
 This ardent patriot, a man so sound of judgment and 
 of conscience that, amid all the excitement following the 
 Boston Massacre, he consented, with John Adams, to 
 undertake the defence of the British captain and sol 
 diers accused, died of consumption, on shipboard, just 
 after the " embattled farmers " at Concord bridge 
 
 " fired the shot heard round the world." 
 A more tragic fate than this, or than that of his close 
 
7O AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 friend Warren, who fell at Bunker Hill, overwhelmed an 
 other of the Massachusetts orators, JAMES OTIS. Fifteen 
 years before the Declaration of Independence, his im 
 petuous eloquence protested in the court-room against 
 the revenue search warrants, known as " writs of assist 
 ance," with such effect as to arouse in his hearers a last 
 ing determination to resist laws not of their own making 
 nor for their own benefit. The following year, in As 
 sembly debate on the question of payment exacted by 
 the royal authority, Otis flung forth such fearless words 
 as these : " It would be of little consequence to the 
 people whether they were subject to George or Louis, 
 the king of Great Britain or the French king, if both 
 were arbitrary, as both would be, if both could levy 
 taxes without Parliament." His work was ended in 
 1769, when he fell victim to a cowardly assault made 
 upon him in a coffee-house by a group of his political 
 enemies. From the injured brain the reason slowly 
 ebbed, and it was a merciful lightning-flash that, four 
 teen years later, struck down the long-silenced orator, 
 who had once been likened by John Adams to " a 
 flame of fire." j 
 
 With the fragmentary and uncertain echoes of the 
 speeches of Quincy and Otis have come down snatches 
 of patriotic eloquence from that " chief incendiary," 
 SAMUEL ADAMS, a politician sage and incorruptible, the 
 earliest and most persistent advocate of Independence, 
 the dauntless leader of the Boston democracy, and the 
 only man excepted from the amnesty offered to the 
 
II THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD 7 1 
 
 colonists by England in 1774. But the palm of Revo 
 lutionary oratory falls to the South, to the trumpeter of 
 the rank of great Virginians, PATRICK HENRY. "Is life 
 so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the 
 price of chains 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." 
 
 IV. The Statesmen. "Great men come in clusters," 
 and at the hour of America s need, the historic arena 
 seems thronged with figures of heroic proportions, 
 orators, generals, statesmen, embodying the garnered 
 thought and passion not merely of their own land and 
 era, but of liberty itself. 
 
 " In such men 
 
 Mankind doth live : they are such souls as these 
 That move the world." 
 
 Yet, just as these stately personages of a bygone cen 
 tury have something of a quaint, theatrical look in their 
 gold-laced hats and powdered hair, their suits of sky- 
 color satin and peach-blossom velvet, so their magnifi 
 cent sentences, even the sonorous roll of the opening 
 periods in the Declaration of Independence, seem florid 
 and grandiloquent in comparison with the simpler style 
 in favor now. But criticism is hushed before that ma 
 jestic company marshalled by Washington. 
 
 " Virginia gave us this imperial man 
 Cast in the massive mould 
 Of those high-statured ages old 
 Which into grander forms our mortal metal ran." 
 
72 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 Washington s correspondence and Farewell Address 
 would scarcely, from another, constitute a claim to 
 literary renown. That age of statesmanship, when 
 men s thoughts were centred on questions of govern 
 ment, of the political, financial, commercial policy to 
 be adopted by the new nation, reared for itself but 
 one literary monument of impressive proportions, The 
 Federalist. This is a collection of eighty-five essays, 
 skilful, cogent, convincing, originally printed, usually 
 in the Independent Journal of New York, through the 
 fall and winter of 1787-88, over the common signature 
 of Publius. The writers were ALEXANDER HAMILTON, the 
 most able political thinker of the time, whose financial 
 genius originated our national banking system, JAMES 
 MADISON of Virginia, who drafted the Constitution, and 
 JOHN JAY of New York, first Chief- Justice of the United 
 States. These essays constitute a continuous argument 
 in favor of the proposed Constitution. Two questions 
 were chiefly at issue, that of the relative power to 
 be accorded to the Federal and State governments 
 and that of the degree to which the popular will was 
 to be expressed in the control of national policy. 
 Hamilton, the head of the Federalist party, was of 
 foreign birth, son of a Scotch merchant resident in 
 the West Indies. His marriage into one of the proud 
 est old Dutch families of New York had confirmed an 
 aristocratic bias. He counted the people, in his own 
 phrase, " a great beast." In his view, a strong central 
 authority was essential to the stability of the nation. 
 
II THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD 73 
 
 Under the inefficient Continental Congress and the 
 loose Confederation that succeeded it, the states were 
 virtually independent. The Constitution, with its plan 
 for a Senate representing the State legislatures and a 
 Lower House representing the whole people, proposed 
 a compromise between State Rights and Federal au 
 thority, a compromise which has stood the working 
 test of one hundred years. On the companion ques 
 tion, as to how far the will of the sovereign people 
 should be limited by the Upper House and the Presi 
 dential veto, Hamilton declared for a system of checks 
 and balances. Here, as in the matter of State Rights, 
 he was strenuously opposed by THOMAS JEFFERSON, who 
 came in 1801 to be third President, succeeding that 
 vehement Federalist, ( JOHN ADAMS of Boston. 
 
 Jefferson, like Washington and Madison and the bit- 
 ter-tongued anti-Federalist orator, John Randolph of 
 Roanoke, sprang from the high-spirited aristocracy of 
 Virginia. After two years of William and Mary College, 
 he entered upon the study of the law. North and south, 
 it was an age of lawyers. The makers of the nation had 
 good training for their task. In his twenty-seventh year 
 Jefferson entered the House of Burgesses and was pres 
 ently in the front of the patriotic struggle. The Declara 
 tion of Independence was mainly of his authorship. He 
 was governor of Virginia when it was invaded by the 
 traitor, Benedict Arnold, and, later, by Cornwallis. He 
 succeeded Franklin as minister to France, where he was 
 a sympathetic witness of the first pure aspiration for 
 
74 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 " Liberty, Equality, Fraternity." Returning to America 
 before the ideals of 89 were dimmed in the brutal 
 tyranny of the Reign of Terror, he became the fore 
 most American champion of democracy. Owner of sev 
 eral plantations and many slaves, he had nevertheless 
 expressed, even before his residence in France, his hope 
 for "a total emancipation." In 1776, the eminent Vir 
 ginians in general deprecated slavery, although cotton- 
 growing states and the slave-importing state of Rhode 
 Island were so sensitive to such criticism that Jefferson s 
 fervid paragraph arraigning George III. for promoting 
 " this execrable commerce " had to be stricken out from 
 the Declaration of Independence. 
 
 In Washington s cabinet, where Hamilton sat as Secre 
 tary of the Treasury and Jefferson as Secretary of State, 
 the great Federalist and the great Democrat fought out 
 their controversy as to the legitimate powers of the cen 
 tral government. The struggle did not cease when 
 Jefferson became President, nor even when, in 1804, 
 Hamilton s brilliant career met its untimely end in a 
 duel with Aaron Burr, that shifty politician whose name 
 stands dark against the saintly memory of his grand 
 father, Jonathan Edwards. The Hamiltonian principles 
 essentially prevailed. The loose confederacy of states 
 took form as a representative republic. The doctrine of 
 State Rights has since made its appeal to arms and been 
 finally rejected, but Jefferson s advocacy of the " rights 
 of man," of the ultimate sovereignty of the people, has 
 borne fruit in the steady democratizing of our social and 
 political institutions. 
 
II THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD 75 
 
 Jefferson s Autobiography and his Notes on Virginia 
 suggest that he might have achieved distinction as an 
 author, had the claims of active life been less. His love 
 of letters found expression in his establishment of the 
 University of Virginia, in which he made special pro 
 vision for English studies. He had the literary tempera 
 ment and wielded the most facile pen of any statesman 
 of his generation, although his personal friend and politi 
 cal opponent, John Adams, stood not far behind him in 
 constant ease and occasional power of style. 
 
 V. Poetical Experiments. The Revolutionary period 
 had too much stirring business on hand to cultivate the 
 arts. " Literary accomplishments," wrote young Joel 
 Barlow to his classmate, Noah Webster, "will not be 
 so much noticed till sometime after the settlement of 
 peace, and the people become more refined. More 
 blustering characters must bear sway at present, and the 
 hardy veterans must retire from the field before the 
 philosopher can retire to the closet." 
 
 This JOEL BARLOW was a leader among the " Hartford 
 Wits," an informal club of wide-awake young Federalists, 
 who penned satiric verse on party questions and formed 
 the one literary group of the era. Barlow s career ranges 
 from the Continental army, where he served, while yet 
 a Yale undergraduate, as soldier, and, later, as chap 
 lain, to Napoleon s retreat from Moscow. Involved in 
 this by chance, Barlow perished of exhaustion. Between 
 these violent extremes he had known law, journalism, 
 and the diplomatic service. This last brought about a 
 
76 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 residence of many years in France, and a consequent 
 conversion to democracy. A quieter lot fell to TIMOTHY 
 D WIGHT. He, too, was a Yale man, who forsook his 
 tutor s desk to study law, and dropped his law-books to 
 serve as chaplain in the army. A grandson of Jonathan 
 Edwards, his later life was appropriately divided between 
 a pastorate at Greenfield in Connecticut and the Presi 
 dency of Yale College. D wight had been graduated 
 from Yale at seventeen, an achievement which pales 
 before that of JOHN TRUMBULL, who passed the entrance 
 examinations at seven. After two years of tutoring at 
 Yale, Trumbull studied law with John Adams, and be 
 came, in time, judge of the superior court. These three 
 scholars, ardent patriots all, were ambitious to endow 
 their young Columbia, 
 
 " The queen of the world, and the child of the skies," 
 
 with an equipment of epic poems which should put her 
 at her ease beside Greece and Rome, England and Italy. 
 Barlow, by the poetic building of a quarter-century, 
 reared a huge Columbiad. In this the aged discoverer 
 of the western hemisphere, led from his dungeon by 
 Hesper to a mount of vision, sweeps the continent with 
 his gaze and beholds the changing pageant of American 
 story, from Cortez to Washington, with prophetic 
 glimpses of an all-glorious future. The idea was bor 
 rowed from Milton and the verse from Pope ; the patri 
 otism was original. D wight chose a Biblical subject, 
 The Conquest of Canaan, but even among the wars of 
 
OF THK 
 
 THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD 
 
 Israel he made shift to introduce battles and personages 
 of the Revolution. This was dedicated, as were many 
 of the productions of the day, to Washington, who had 
 already learned to acknowledge such presentation vol 
 umes with the prompt assurance that he expected to 
 enjoy them greatly, when he should find time for their 
 perusal. 
 
 It may be said of these two lengthy and dreary epics, 
 as Dwight sang of his countrymen, 
 
 " Refinement of the heart 
 Illumes the general mass." 
 
 Both are little more than bad copies of stilted eigh 
 teenth-century English models. Dwight frankly de 
 clares, in the preface to a rambling poem of the reflective 
 order, Greenfield Hill, dealing with the scenes about his 
 parish, that he had proposed to imitate in its several 
 books the respective styles of as many selected British 
 bards. We catch a fresher note in Barlow s humorous 
 Hasty-Pudding : 
 
 " I sing the sweets I know, the charms I feel, 
 My morning incense and my evening meal 
 ******** 
 
 Ev n in thy native regions, how I blush 
 
 To hear the Pennsylvanians call thee Mush ! " 
 
 TrumbulPs McFingal, the only one of the three Hart 
 ford epics still enjoyable, is original in substance, though 
 imitative in form. It is, in fact, modelled so closely and 
 so cleverly on Butler s Hudibras that couplets of the one 
 
78 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 might easily be mistaken as belonging to the other. The 
 hero, in the American satire, is not a Puritan bent on the 
 destruction of the English Maypoles, but a Tory, sally 
 ing out with fell intent to cut down those liberty poles 
 which still adorn the village greens of New England. 
 Lively, sensible, and keen, the poem merited its popular 
 ity. More than thirty pirated editions were put upon 
 the market. In The Progress of Dulness Trumbull 
 turned his satire against American education. He 
 essayed the ode so far as to assure his two epic friends 
 that future years would admire 
 
 " Barlow s strong flight, and Dwight s Homeric fire," 
 
 and he wrote elegies largely plagiarized from Gray. 
 
 The Elegy in a Country Churchyard, indeed, fur 
 nished not only verse, tone, and situation, but actual 
 phrases to more than one funereal effusion of the time. 
 Among the poems of that phenomenal negro girl, PHILLIS 
 WHEATLEY, a petted slave in a Boston family, is an elegy 
 on Whitefield, two consecutive stanzas running thus : 
 
 " Cou d Virtue charm the dull cold ear of Death, 
 
 Or pow rs capacious stay the fatal blow, 
 Cou d innate goodness stop the fleeting breath, 
 WHITEFIELD, thou still had bless d a world below. 
 
 Still hadst thou shone, to guide th aspiring mind, 
 
 To bid Religion s streams serenely roll, 
 Her ample heights or latent tracts to find, 
 
 And swell the genial current of the soul." 
 
 That a wild little black, who stood, a frail child of 
 
II THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD 79 
 
 seven, in the Boston slave-market of 1761, clad in a rag 
 of old carpeting, with a dim memory in her frightened 
 heart of a far-away pagan mother pouring out water in 
 worship before the sun at his rising, should have been 
 enabled, by a dozen years of Christian nurture, to pro 
 duce this volume of fluent, pious, decorous verse, pranked 
 out with all the literary elegancies of the day, is still a 
 puzzle and an astonishment. Her mind-stuff must have 
 been at once singularly rich and singularly plastic mal 
 leable gold of the Dark Continent. Her subjection to an 
 alien civilization is pathetic. The rare song-bird of Africa 
 was thoroughly tamed in her Boston cage. Very meekly 
 she writes : " On the Death of a Young Lady of five 
 Years of Age," "Thoughts on the Works of Providence," 
 " To the Rev. Dr. Thomas Amory on reading his Sermons 
 on Daily Devotion, in which that Duty is recommended 
 and assisted." In the lines "To S. M., a young 
 African Painter, on seeing his Works," occurs a passage 
 of touching suggestion : 
 
 " But when these shades of time are chas d away 
 And darkness ends in everlasting day, 
 On what seraphic pinions shall we move 
 And view the landscapes in the realms above ! 
 There shall thy tongue in heav nly murmurs flow, 
 And there my muse with heav nly transport glow." 
 
 Mrs. Mercy Warren of Massachusetts, a dame of for 
 midable dignity, sarcastic on occasion, a sister of James 
 Otis, and the author of the first history of the American 
 Revolution, wrote verse substantially correct, with here 
 
8O AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 and there an alert or graceful turn. As much, and no 
 more, may be said for certain New York celebrities, 
 Mrs. Charlotte Lennox, Mrs. Ann Eliza Bleecker and her 
 daughter, as well as various unidentified Ethelindas, 
 Calistas, and Violas, contributors to the New York Maga 
 zine. The society rhymes and bacchanalian catches of 
 the masculine lyrists are a shade less wearisome, but the 
 popular balladry of the Revolution, rude and often 
 uncouth as it is, possesses a vitality that these more 
 elegant compositions lack. That rollicking piece of 
 doggerel, Yankee Doodle, is still a national song, and 
 well-known yet are a few of the ballads commemorating 
 crises or incidents of the War. The battle of Trenton, 
 Burgoyne s defeat, the sea-fight of "Bold Hathorne," the 
 " Battle of the Kegs," the execution of Nathan Hale, all 
 found homely laureates, while the glee of victory fairly 
 bubbles over in The Dance : 
 
 " Cornwallis led a country dance, 
 The like was never seen, sir, 
 Much retrograde and much advance, 
 And all with General Green, sir." 
 
 Preceding this final scene of the war-drama, the Tories, 
 vociferous at their revels in New York City, had poured 
 musical contempt on the patriots, not sparing even the 
 august commander-in-chief : 
 
 " Twas then he took his gloomy way 
 
 Astride his dapple donkeys, 
 And travelled well, both night and day, 
 Until he reached the Yankees. 
 
II THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD 8 1 
 
 Full many a child went into camp, 
 All dressed in homespun kersey, 
 
 To see the greatest rebel scamp 
 That ever cross d o er Jersey." 
 
 The subject of this saucy lilt was hailed, toward the 
 close of the century, by the versatile Mrs. Rowson, as 
 patron of the American arts, 
 
 " a numerous band 
 Of little beings starting into life," 
 
 and, truly, Washington seems to have done all that one 
 man could. He wrote encouraging letters to the authors 
 who showered him with odes. The note of this Virginian 
 planter to Phillis Wheatley is a model of kindly and re 
 spectful courtesy. He sat for his portrait to Stuart, who in 
 this branch of painting surpassed even Copley, the pride 
 of Boston. Over the drama, the art most obnoxious to 
 both Puritans and Quakers, Washington cast a fold of his 
 prbtecting mantle. The South had little theatrical preju 
 dice to overcome. As early as 1736, The Virginia Gazette 
 announced an amateur performance of The Beaux 1 Stra 
 tagem. The first play given in America by professional 
 actors on a public stage was The Merchant of Venice, 
 presented by an enterprising English troupe at Williams- 
 burg in 1752. The first American playhouse was built at 
 Annapolis, in the same year. The following year a 
 theatre was established in New York, the days of per 
 formance being Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. 
 Six years later a theatre was erected in Philadelphia, 
 
82 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 although the drab-coated Quakers, whose indifference to 
 art had driven Matthew Pratt to occasional sign-painting 
 for his bread and butter, and Benjamin West to perma 
 nent residence in London, where in time he succeeded 
 Sir Joshua Reynolds as President of the Royal Academy, 
 harassed and hindered the stage until nearly the close of 
 the century. It was not till 1794 that, after memorials 
 and counter-memorials, irruptions of sheriffs and ar 
 rests of actors, a theatre was allowed in Boston. Incipi 
 ent circuses, drolls, and puppet-shows all had a share in 
 clearing the way for the stage in New England. New 
 port, as usual, had the fewest scruples, although a 
 manager resorted to the ingenious evasion of announcing 
 there a performance of Othello as " Moral Dialogues, in 
 Five Parts, Depicting the evil effects of jealousy and 
 other bad passions and Proving that happiness can only 
 spring from the pursuit of Virtue." 
 
 American theatres once secured, the advent of an 
 American drama was expected as a matter of course. 
 It is not yet in sight. Not patriotism alone, as America 
 has slowly learned, can call into being Iliads and Antig- 
 ones. To outwit Howe and Cornwallis did not prove 
 synonymous with outwitting Shakespeare and Milton. 
 The first play of known American authorship, The Prince 
 of Parthia, a ranting tragedy by Thomas Godfrey of 
 Philadelphia, was acted in 1767. Our first American 
 comedy, The Contrast, by Royal Tyler, played in New 
 York twenty years later, heralded itself with a flourish of 
 Revolutionary trumpets : 
 
II THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD 83 
 
 " Exult each patriot heart ! this night is shown 
 A piece which we may fairly call our own." 
 
 The privilege is not precious. Dull, trivial, and shape 
 less, the play is noteworthy only as providing a clumsy 
 leader in the long procession of stage- Yankees. Fired 
 by this suggestion, the boards began forthwith to bristle 
 with the Revolutionary officer, the southern planter, the 
 New York fop, the Dutch farmer, and other national 
 types. George Washington, America, and the Goddess 
 of Liberty figured together in a pantomime, with feathered 
 Indians and chorusing sailors for a relish. Plays were 
 written on Bunker Hill, Independence of America, West 
 Point Preserved, all valueless. 
 
 The review of our early poetry would be dishearten 
 ing indeed, were it not for the name of PHILIP FRENEAU. 
 Of Huguenot descent, of New York birth, and Princeton 
 education, he entered into manhood when the Revolu 
 tionary tide was at full height. He was a good hater, 
 and soon became known as a journalistic writer of 
 violent satires in verse against " the ruffian Gage," 
 the " arch-butcher" Cornwallis, " Old Bute and North, 
 twin sons of hell," and George, the " Nero of our times." 
 He detested the Tories, especially the Tory editors, 
 even more than the Britons. The Puritans of New 
 England, too, except for their sea-faring tastes, were 
 little to his liking. 
 
 " These exiles were form d in a whimsical mould, 
 And were aw d by their priests, like the Hebrews of old; 
 
84 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 Disclaim d all pretences to jesting and laughter, 
 And sigh d their lives through, to be happy hereafter. 
 On a crown immaterial their hearts were intent, 
 They look d towards Zion, wherever they went, 
 Did all things in hopes of a future reward, 
 And worry d mankind for the sake of the Lord." 
 
 When Freneau was not editing a paper or scribbling 
 his lampoons, he was at sea. In 1780, the vessel in 
 which he sailed was captured by an English frigate, 
 and he tasted the grim hospitalities of a British prison 
 ship, an adventure described by him in three wrathful 
 cantos. His praises of the patriots, especially Paul 
 Jones and Washington, were at first unstinted, but as 
 suming in 1791 the editorship of the National Gazette, 
 the special organ of the Jeffersonian party, he attacked 
 Washington s administration so sharply that the serenest 
 of Presidents was moved to call him " rascal." 
 
 Captain Freneau s political verse, whether satiric or 
 eulogistic, has vigor and a certain rough originality, 
 but no charm. It is the rare lyric, the sudden grace of 
 phrase or image that the long-baffled seeker for Ameri 
 can poetry hails as birdnotes in March. Here and 
 there, the French blood tells. When this noisy sailor 
 softens his tones to sing how 
 
 " At Eutaw Springs the valiant died," 
 
 Keltic pathos makes itself felt even through the formal 
 ism of the diction. There are touches of " natural 
 magic" in his stanzas to The Wild Honeysuckle and 
 Honey JBee, and the Keltic turn for style, no less than 
 
II THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD 8$ 
 
 the new poetic vision of " the ancients of these lands," 
 imparts a lasting attraction to his revery upon The 
 Indian Burying Ground. 
 
 " By midnight moons, o er moistening dews, 
 
 In habit for the chase arrayed, 
 The hunter still the deer pursues, 
 
 The hunter and the deer a shade ! " 
 
 Campbell paid Freneau the silent compliment of ap 
 propriating this last line for a poem of his own, just 
 as Scott made free in Marmion with a line from Eutaw 
 Springs, petty pilferings in comparison with the thefts 
 committed upon English bards by our Revolutionary 
 versifiers. It is no slight proof of Freneau s elevation 
 above his rhyming contemporaries that, in relation 
 to English poetry, he gave instead of taking. 
 
 VI. Experiments in Novel Writing. It is not easy 
 to regard our early American romances seriously, yet 
 like our Revolutionary oratory, law-studies, and verse- 
 forms, they reflected contemporary England. The 
 novel of domestic life, told by letters and conveying 
 to girlhood the warning that " men betray," was feebly 
 reproduced in America by several women of literary 
 proclivities. A refreshing tartness pervades Mrs. Tabitha 
 Tenney s Female Quixotism exhibited in the Romantic 
 Opinions and Extravagant Adventures of Dorcasina 
 Sheldon. Mrs. Hannah Webster Foster, whose husband 
 was a minister at Brighton, Massachusetts, made in 1797 
 a sentimental sensation with The Coquette, or the History 
 
86 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 of Eliza Wharton : A Novel founded on Fact. The 
 stir caused by the story, which ran through many 
 editions, was largely due to the identity of the villain 
 with Pierrepont Edwards, a son of the revered divine. 
 The opening scenes, laid in New Haven, furnish inter 
 esting glimpses of Revolutionary manners. The style 
 is fairly illustrated by the following passage : " He spoke 
 with emphasis. The tear of sensibility sparkled in his 
 eye. I involuntarily gave him my hand, which he 
 pressed with ardor to his lips. Then rising, he walked 
 to the window to conceal his emotion. I rang the 
 bell and ordered tea, during, and after which we shared 
 that social converse which is the true zest of life and 
 which, I am persuaded, none but virtuous minds can 
 participate. General Richman and lady returned with 
 the shades of the evening." 
 
 A varied career was that of Mrs. Susannah Haswell 
 Rowson. Her father, a British revenue officer, resi 
 dent at Nantucket, was sent out of America as a Tory. 
 The daughter, on whom pressed heavy burdens, not 
 lessened by an unfortunate marriage, took to writing 
 novels after the manner of Richardson and sketches 
 after the manner of Sterne. Returning to the United 
 States in 1793, she went upon the stage, playing in 
 Philadelphia and Boston and penning opera, farce, epi 
 logues, what-not, at demand. After four years of the 
 atrical career, she entered, in the words of an early 
 biographer, " upon one of the most delicate and respon 
 sible, we might add one of the most exalted and worthy 
 
II THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD 87 
 
 undertakings, to which a female can aspire, that of edu 
 cating the young of her own sex." Henceforth she 
 took to writing text-books, a dictionary, geography, 
 " Historical Exercises," and " Biblical Dialogues," to 
 gether with odes "On the Birth of Genius," "To Sensi 
 bility," and eulogies on Washington and John Adams, 
 ambitious, uninspired verses with the eighteenth century 
 ear-mark. Preceptress of the Ladies Academy at New 
 ton, Massachusetts, her instructions were apparently of a 
 tenor that her literary predecessor, Mistress Bradstreet, 
 would have sanctioned. 
 
 " Know you not that woman s proper sphere 
 Is the domestic walk? To interfere 
 With politics, divinity, or law, 
 As much deserved ridicule would draw 
 On woman, as the learned, grave divine, 
 Cooking the soup on which he means to dine, 
 Or formal judge, the winders at his knee, 
 Preparing silk to work embroidery." 
 
 Of Mrs. Rowson s novels, Charlotte Temple, bedewed 
 by " the tears of many thousand readers," is best remem 
 bered and still appears, at intervals, in new editions. 
 This story of a young life cruelly wrecked is not without 
 a moving quality for minds that can divest themselves of 
 the sense of humor. 
 
 Royal Tyler s tale of piracy, the Algerine Captive, 
 smacks of Smollett, but the English influence that told 
 most strongly upon Revolutionary fiction was that of 
 the nightmare school. Aiming at wild, romantic effects, 
 Mrs. Radcliffe, Walpole, Beckford, and others were, 
 
88 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 just before the day of Scott and Miss Austen, scaring 
 their readers with tales of ghastly horror. This phase of 
 the novel was expressed in America, with startling though 
 fitful power, by CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN, our first 
 professional man of letters. 
 
 A Quaker by birth and ancestry and certain subtle 
 currents of thought and feeling, upon Brown s youth 
 had passed the sceptical influences that flowed from 
 France. Thomas Paine, whose ringing words in Com 
 mon Sense and The Crisis were instrumental in rousing 
 and maintaining the Revolutionary ardor, baldly expressed 
 in his Age of Reason the deism of Voltaire. To the grief 
 of the godly, French unbelief spread fast through the 
 land, mingling strangely, in many young minds, with 
 hereditary religion. So Brown, whose ancestors fled 
 from England in the same ship with William Penn, is 
 ever looking for visions and listening for voices, but 
 forces himself to account for the supernatural, whenever 
 it appears in his romances, by explanations grounded, no 
 matter how absurdly, on natural science. Somnambu 
 lism, self- combustion, and ventriloquism are his extreme 
 resorts. Of temporary madness or settled insanity, of 
 dreams and presentiments, he avails himself freely. 
 
 His style is unequal, touched with a lofty melancholy 
 at its best, and at its worst a provincial exaggeration 
 of the sentimentalities and sensational extravagances of 
 Clarissa Harlowe and The Castle of Otranto combined. 
 His chosen model in romance was Godwin s Caleb 
 Williams, after which Brown s Ormond is too closely 
 
II THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD 89 
 
 fashioned. Rarely he achieves a memorable sentence, 
 as this : " Perhaps^ if my pilgrimage had been longer, 
 I might, at some future day, have lighted upon hope." 
 His plots suffer from the fact that, marked for early 
 death by consumption as he was, he wrote with feverish 
 haste, his six romances being produced within three years. 
 Arthur Mervyn is, of all his books, the most wandering 
 and forgetful in narrative, continually throwing out false 
 clews and leaving behind unsolved mysteries, leading 
 with elaborate pains up to situations which amount to 
 nothing. With something of Poe s sombre imagination, 
 Brown lacked Poe s fine economy of literary structure. 
 The strength of Arthur Mervyn is in its episodes, its 
 vivid pictures of Philadelphia ravaged by the yellow fever, 
 its glimpses of the debtors prison, anticipating Little 
 Dorrit. 
 
 As a literary method, Brown affected, in the beginning 
 of his work, the Richardson fashion of compounding a 
 story from the letters of the leading characters ; but his 
 own peculiar variety of this monologue system is recital, 
 one autobiography being set within another, like the 
 Chinese basket-puzzle. The whole book is a confiden 
 tial narration, usually made in unbearable agony by a 
 speaker who hardly expects to live to the end of his 
 disclosure. The characters figuring in the original story 
 are prone to offer circumstantial accounts of their own 
 blood-curdling crimes or heart-crushing misfortunes, in 
 troducing into these histories subordinate personages 
 with the same thirst for self-revelation. Brown delights 
 
9O AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 as fully as Poe in monsters of wickedness and in des 
 perate emotions. " Sullen and atrockms passions " and 
 " features bursting with horror and wonder " meet us 
 every few pages. His heroes are Byronic, possessed of 
 dark fascinations, and subject to paroxysms of remorse. 
 His characteristic heroine is a trifle indistinct. "Per 
 haps the turban that wreathed her head, the brilliant 
 texture and inimitable folds of her drapery, and nymph- 
 like port, more than the essential attributes of her per 
 son, gave splendor to the celestial vision." These 
 curious puppets, with nothing American about them, 
 haunt, as in Edgar Huntly, dim Pennsylvanian solitudes, 
 where even the panther and Indian have an unearthly 
 air. Yet Brown can convert, as in Wieland, the familiar 
 chamber and closet into a scene of supernatural dis 
 may : 
 
 " My teeth chattered, and a wild confusion took the 
 place of my momentary calm. . . . What horrid appari 
 tion was preparing to blast my sight ? Still I listened and 
 gazed. Not long, for the shadow moved ; a foot, un 
 shapely and huge, was thrust forward ; a form advanced 
 from its concealment, and stalked into the room. It 
 was Carwin ! While I had breath, I shrieked. While 
 I had power over my muscles, I motioned with my hand 
 that he should vanish. My exertion could not last long : 
 I sank into a fit." 
 
 VII. John Woolman s Journal affords an exquisite re 
 lief from all these crude, half-ludicrous attempts at litera 
 ture. The purity of the gentle Quaker s soul has, as 
 
II THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD 9 1 
 
 Whittier, his loving editor, says, entered into his lan 
 guage. The words are a transparent medium of spirit. 
 Style and man are equally unconscious of themselves. 
 Without art Woolman has attained, in his best passages, 
 that beauty of simplicity, that absolute candor which is 
 the goal of most studious art. As lucid as Franklin s 
 Autobiography, the Journal shines with a pearly lustre 
 all its own. Charles Lamb cherished the book. " Get 
 the writings of John Woolman by heart," he urged, " and 
 love the early Quakers." 
 
 America has cause to love them. The Friends were 
 rightly named. Their spirit was simpler, sweeter, truer 
 to the divine prompting than the spirit of the Virginia 
 manor-house or the Boston pulpit. Penn s "holy ex 
 periment" was a blessing to the land. In the peaceful 
 forest-city of Philadelphia ripened our purest American 
 democracy, 
 
 "For soul touched soul; the spiritual treasure -trove 
 Made all men equal; none could rise above 
 Nor sink below that level of God s love." 
 
 Woolman s statement of his religious creed and ex 
 perience is given with his wonted simplicity. He had 
 "learned of God" that "all the cravings of sense must 
 be governed by a Divine principle. In times of sorrow 
 and abasement these instructions were sealed upon me, 
 and I felt the power of Christ prevail over selfish de 
 sires." This poor New Jersey tailor, unlearned save in 
 the Scriptures, had a heart overflowing with love. He 
 was a Francis of Assisi in his tenderness for the brute 
 
92 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 creation. In him the antislavery feeling of the Pennsyl 
 vania and New Jersey Friends was at its height, and his 
 earnest, pleading remonstrances, as he journeyed on 
 this mission through Virginia and Carolina, had much 
 to do with winning over the members of the Society in 
 the South. From Christian principle and by Christian 
 methods, the Quakers of America abandoned slave- 
 holding more than a half-century before the Emancipa 
 tion Proclamation was put forth. 
 
 As a system, Quakerism has defects. The arts, for 
 instance, are alien to it. " Their rainbow lights are lost 
 in its soft drab shadow." Its practice was not perfect. 
 Like Puritanism in New England and Presbyterianism 
 in Scotland, a development of worldly shrewdness ran 
 parallel with spirituality. No less than the Yankees, the 
 Quakers had a name for hard bargains. One Ebenezer 
 Cook, perhaps no trusty reporter, tells how in Maryland, 
 early in the eighteenth century, he met a Quaker, 
 
 " A pious conscientious rogue, 
 As e er wore bonnet or a brogue, 
 Who neither swore nor kept his word, 
 But cheated in the fear of God; 
 And when his debts he would not pay, 
 By light within he ran away." 
 
 John Woolman was not of that variety. His Inner Light 
 shone for no selfish profit. In his concern for the 
 negroes, he did not forget the Indians, but made diffi 
 cult and dangerous excursions among them, preaching 
 the Gospel as the Spirit gave him utterance. Mean- 
 
II THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD 93 
 
 while, the labor question, the crucial problem of to-day, 
 had begun, even so early, to press upon his heart. He 
 came to believe that luxurious living on the part of the 
 few involves excessive toil for the many, and that all men 
 should therefore fare simply that none need be heavy- 
 laden, a doctrine savoring more of the Sermon on the 
 Mount than of modern economic theory. When the 
 inward prompting bade him cross the Atlantic, he 
 would not take passage in the ship-cabin, adorned as 
 it was with " sundry sorts of carved work and imagery," 
 a part of that forced tribute of poverty to wealth, but 
 chose to lodge among the sailors, for whose spiritual 
 welfare he soon came to feel " tender desires." Once in 
 the Old World, the rushing, grinding, cruel life of indus 
 trial England, black with her mines, and noisy with her 
 factories, smote him with distress. Hearing that it was 
 not uncommon for horses in the stage-coaches to be 
 driven to death, and that postboys had been frozen in 
 their seats on wintry nights, he went his ways on foot, 
 nor had he " freedom to send letters by these posts in 
 the present way of their riding." Wearied out by the 
 physical exertion of his long travel, and, still more, by 
 his daily anguish of pity, he sickened at York and died. 
 
 Among the best-known Puritan diaries is one by the 
 Indian missionary, David Brainerd, a morbid record 
 of spiritual doubts and fears, faint hopes and strong 
 despairs, the writer sometimes envying "birds and 
 beasts their happiness, because they were not exposed 
 to eternal misery." Dr. Franklin, on the other hand, 
 
94 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 had found this world so agreeable that he would " have 
 no objection to a repetition of the same life from its 
 beginning, only asking the advantages authors have in a 
 second edition to correct some faults of the first." But 
 Woolman wrote his Journal neither in self-accusing con 
 sciousness nor self-complacent retrospect. " I have often 
 felt a motion of love to leave some hints in writing of my 
 experience of the goodness of God." 
 
in NATIONAL ERA: GENERAL ASPECTS 95 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 NATIONAL ERA : GENERAL ASPECTS 
 
 Centre of equal daughters, equal sons, 
 
 All, all alike endear d, grown, ungrown, young or old, 
 
 Strong, ample, fair, enduring, capable, rich, 
 
 Perennial with the Earth, with Freedom, Law and Love, 
 
 A grand, sane, towering, seated Mother, 
 
 Chair d in the adamant of Time. 
 
 WALT WHITMAN, America. 
 
 I. From Washington to Jackson. The first six Pres 
 idents of the United States were men of social stand 
 ing and, Jefferson excepted, of aristocratic sympathies. 
 Washington, John Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, 
 John Quincy Adams, represented the best birth and 
 breeding of Virginia and Massachusetts. Washington s 
 conservative temper, especially as manifested in his proc 
 lamation of neutrality, when in 1793 France, declaring 
 war against England, looked to America for aid, brought 
 upon him a storm of popular abuse. John Adams was 
 accused of monarchical tendencies. Jefferson, though 
 in theory a radical democrat, exerted in the presiden 
 tial office a more arbitrary authority than Washington 
 himself. His Embargo Act, holding American vessels 
 in port, with intent to protect them from seizure by 
 the warring navies of England and Napoleon, exasper- 
 
96 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 ated New England almost to the point of secession. 
 Bryant, at the ripe age of thirteen, voiced the wrath of 
 the Federalist merchants, who saw their ships rotting at 
 the silent wharves : 
 
 " And thou the scorn of every patriot s name, 
 Thy country s ruin and thy council s shame ! 
 
 Go, wretch, resign the Presidential chair." 
 
 The Embargo Act served only to postpone the inevi 
 table and decisive trial of strength with Great Britain, 
 whose aggressions were incessant. "Not content with 
 seizing upon all our property which falls within her ra 
 pacious grasp," cried the fiery young Kentuckian, Henry 
 Clay, before Congress, " the personal rights of our coun 
 trymen rights which must forever be sacred are 
 trampled on and violated through the impressment of 
 our seamen. . . . What are we to gain by war? has 
 been emphatically asked. In reply . . . what are we 
 not to lose by peace ? Commerce, character, a nation s 
 best treasure, honor." 
 
 Under Madison, America fought her " Second War of 
 Independence," the War of 1812. After this, England 
 kept hands off and respected the Stars and Stripes even 
 upon the high seas, accepting the situation as afterwards 
 humorously voiced in the Biglow Papers : 
 
 " We own the Ocean, tu, John : 
 
 You inus n take it hard, 
 Ef we can t think with you, John, 
 It s jest your own back-yard." 
 
ill NATIONAL ERA: GENERAL ASPECTS 97 
 
 The Monroe Doctrine, the assertion that the Amer 
 ican continents were no longer open to colonization from 
 Europe, was a logical consequence of this success. A 
 new, glad sense of nationality prevailed. It was the 
 " Era of Good Feeling." The population had increased 
 to over twelve millions, about one-sixth being negro 
 slaves. The area, vastly widened by the purchase of 
 Louisiana from France and of Florida from Spain, 
 covered some two million square miles. To the original 
 thirteen states had been added eleven more, Vermont, 
 Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, Louisiana, Indiana, Missis 
 sippi, Illinois, Alabama, Maine, Missouri. The robust 
 young country, ever pushing westward, had grown impa 
 tient of dictation from the Atlantic coast. John Quincy 
 Adams closed the line of cultured Presidents. Boston 
 and its environs no longer represented the expanding life 
 of the American people. "So soon," says Woodrow 
 Wilson, "as the Adams fashion of man became more 
 narrow, intense, aciduous, intractable, according to the 
 tendencies of its nature, in the person of John Quincy 
 Adams, it lost the sympathy, lost even the tolerance of 
 the country, and the national choice took its reckless 
 leap from a Puritan President to Andrew Jackson, a man 
 cast in the rough original pattern of American life at the 
 heart of the continent." 
 
 Meanwhile the United States had secured not political 
 freedom alone, but industrial independence of Great Brit 
 ain. The cotton-spinning machinery, invented and ap 
 plied in England during the latter half of the eighteenth 
 
98 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 century, had been jealously guarded, especially from the 
 revolted colonies, but little by little the precious secrets 
 oozed out. Samuel Slater, with a view to bettering his 
 fortunes, came over from an English factory with spindles 
 buzzing in his brain. British law forbade the exporting 
 of machines or models, but it did not occur to the British 
 officials to search a man s memory for smuggled goods. 
 Building the machinery largely with his own hands, this 
 valuable immigrant had by 1 790 a cotton-mill on the Ark- 
 wright system in operation at Pawtucket, Rhode Island. 
 Others promptly followed, in South Carolina, Pennsylva 
 nia, and elsewhere, but chiefly along the many water 
 courses of New England. Eli Whitney s invention of the 
 cotton-gin, in 1 793, gave a strong impetus not only to 
 cotton-growing, with slave labor, in the South, but to the 
 textile industry in the North. The Embargo Act had 
 forced the energy and capital of New England out of 
 commerce into manufacture. Protective tariffs were 
 soon demanded and accorded. By 1831, the third year 
 of Jackson s administration, there were no less than eight 
 hundred cotton factories in the country. 
 
 Steam had but begun to play its mighty part in our 
 material progress. Travel, almost to the close of this 
 period, continued slow, painful, and hazardous. At the 
 opening of the century, rivers were crossed by perilous 
 fords, or in uncertain ferry-boats, or, at the best, on float 
 ing bridges roughly constructed of logs and planks. In 
 Brown s Clara Howard we read : " The wind and rain, 
 how will you endure them in your crazy vehicle, thump- 
 
ill NATIONAL ERA: GENERAL ASPECTS 99 
 
 ing over rocks and sinking into hollows ? . . . And this 
 river, to cross it at any time is full of danger, what 
 must it be at night, and in a storm ? . . . Well know I 
 the dangers and toils of a midnight journey, in a stage 
 coach, in America. The roads are knee-deep in mire, 
 winding through crags and pits, while the wheels groan 
 and totter, and the curtains and roof admit the wet at a 
 thousand seams." 
 
 In 1807, Robert Fulton launched on the Hudson the 
 first steamboat that proved of practical service. In a few 
 years our river-ways were all alive with puffing little craft, 
 often run, notoriously on the Mississippi, with extreme 
 recklessness. It was not until 1819 that the Atlantic was 
 first crossed by a steamship, the Savannah, sailing from 
 New York under a Connecticut captain. In 1830, the 
 Baltimore and Ohio railroad had fifteen miles open for 
 passenger transport. The cars were drawn, at first by 
 horses, but within twelve months a locomotive, built in 
 Pennsylvania, was put upon the track. 
 
 II. Artistic Promise was at last distinguishable. The 
 hunger for beauty, for mirth, for that "whiter bread 
 than is made from wheat," had begun to manifest itself 
 even in crudest surroundings. Snowbound families 
 played checkers with red and yellow grains of corn on 
 pine tables chalked into squares. Dancing-schools 
 were opened in the cities, while singing-schools 
 made centres of aesthetic culture, as well as of social 
 excitement, for the rural districts. Musical taste was 
 gaining ground. The pitch-pipe, the bass-viol, and 
 
TOO AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 finally the organ had won their slow way into the 
 churches, where they cooperated with the choirs, long a 
 scandal to country congregations, in hushing the echoes 
 of the discordant Puritan psalmody. At the opening of 
 the century the " fuguing-pieces " of Billings, the Yankee 
 tanner, and his self-educated school were already fall 
 ing off in popular favor. These riotous, racing tunes, 
 ludicrously unfit for devotional purposes, had at least 
 broken the musical monotony and roused the impulse 
 to criticism and composition. They were certainly 
 stirring. " Now here now there, now here again," 
 exclaims the enthusiastic Billings. " O, ecstatic ! Rush 
 on, you sons of harmony!" Our pioneer composers 
 had written not sacred pieces only, but when the Revo 
 lutionary spirit was abroad, a number of lively marches. 
 Such special battle-strains were hardly needed, for the 
 devout old Continentals dashed upon the Redcoats most 
 irresistibly to the inspiration of fifes that shrilled one of 
 their favorite psalm-tunes : 
 
 " Let tyrants shake their iron rod, 
 
 And slavery clank her galling chains, 
 We ll fear them not, we ll trust in God; 
 New England s God forever reigns." 
 
 The reaction against the fugue finally led, patriotism 
 notwithstanding, to the study of English music, which 
 opened the way to appreciation of the German masters. 
 Dartmouth College established a Handel Society. Boston 
 followed with the famous Handel and Haydn. Concerts 
 
in NATIONAL ERA: GENERAL ASPECTS 101 
 
 and oratorios became, in the East, a feature of city life. 
 Pianos appeared in a few wealthy homes. ^X. 
 
 From England, even while abuse and bullets were in 
 the air, came a continual flow of influences making for 
 the higher civilization. Coleridge, acquainting Boston 
 with German thought, had no small share in promoting 
 the liberal theology led by Channing. Shakespeare, 
 whose works were edited with excellent scholarship and 
 insight by Verplanck of the Knickerbocker group, was 
 expounded by Richard Henry Dana, the forgotten Bos 
 ton poet, in a course of popular lectures. The develop 
 ment of English poetry from Chaucer to the Lake 
 School formed the subject of a series of articles which 
 Dana published in his solemn quarterly, founded in 1815, 
 the North American Review. Wordsworth anointed 
 the eyes of Bryant, Scott fired the invention of Cooper, 
 and at last America had a poet and a novelist beyond 
 dispute. Sydney Smith s question, "Who reads an 
 American book?" which hit us harder than a cannon- 
 ball, was answered by Irving, writing in the style of Addi- 
 son, with the spirit of Goldsmith, books well worth the 
 reading. 
 
 Our painters, studying in London as well as in Rome 
 and Florence, reflected in art, like Bryant and Percival 
 in poetry, the new enthusiasm for nature. In the Colo 
 nial period, when the output of the press was almost 
 exclusively theological and the main concern of life was 
 the soul s salvation, faces were more significant than 
 aught beside. And just as the Colonial artists painted 
 
1-02 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 portraits, even so inevitably did the Revolutionary 
 painters spend their colors on battle-scenes. Colonel 
 Trumbull s Bunker Hill and Surrender of Cornwallis 
 are examples of the new pictures that sprang from the 
 new subjects. Naturally, too, the school of American 
 painting that appeared early in the nineteenth century 
 was a landscape school. Quickened by the fresh joy of 
 nationality and touched by the romantic spirit of the 
 time, men looked with a changed regard upon American 
 nature. Tangled forests and foaming waters that had 
 meant superstitious dread to the forefathers, peril and 
 hardship to the pioneers, suddenly revealed a wealth of 
 beauty to the delighted gaze of the artist. The " Hud 
 son River School," dominated by Cole, whom Turner 
 pronounced "as much of a poet as a painter," was 
 most at home among the Catskills, over which Irving 
 had thrown a bewitchment of Dutch legend. But All- 
 ston, an idealist whose brush inclined not to landscapes 
 alone, but to literary and Scriptural subjects, set up his 
 easel in Boston, where, with his art lectures, his occa 
 sional excursions into the neighboring field of letters, 
 and his European standards of taste, he furthered, 
 with Channing and Dana, the cause of general culture. 
 
 For the first three decades of the century, however, 
 New York took the lead in literature as in painting and 
 drama. An active force in promoting all three was 
 William Dunlap, a useful though careless chronicler 
 of our theatre and arts of design, biographer of Brock- 
 den Brown, and, moreover, a dramatic author and an 
 
Ill NATIONAL ERA: GENERAL ASPECTS 1 03 
 
 artist of whom it was curtly said : " There are two things 
 Dunlap can t do he can t write and he can t paint." 
 Over threescore plays, original, adapted, or translated, 
 attest his devotion to the stage. John Howard Payne, 
 too, wrote voluminously for oblivion. Our first famous 
 actor, Edwin Forrest, who made the reputation of 
 Payne s Brutus, is responsible for the flood of Indian 
 melodramas that set in about 1830. There had been 
 occasional attempts to introduce Pocahontas, King 
 Philip, and other picturesque natives behind the foot 
 lights, these stage Indians belonging, as Mark Twain 
 said of Cooper s tawny braves, to "an extinct tribe 
 which never existed," but Forrest s success in the 
 title-role of Stone s prize drama, Metamora, brought 
 out warwhoop, feathers, and tomahawk in all their 
 glory. Through the first half of the century, too, 
 Revolutionary plays continued in favor. Andre, Eutaw 
 Springs, Lexington, Siege of Boston, Siege of Yorktown, 
 Marion, Washington at Valley Forge, appealed, how 
 ever weakly, to the sense once thrilled in London play 
 houses by the historical dramas of Shakespeare and 
 his fellows. 
 
 The literature of the time was characterized by fresh 
 ness and exuberance of feeling. After the long winter 
 of Puritanism, with its repressions and denials, a spring 
 tide of sentiment had to follow. Not yet deepened to 
 the passion that tore the very heart of the nation in 
 the Civil War, not yet saddened to the guarded, ques 
 tioning temper of to-day, this early enthusiasm was 
 
104 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 amusingly naive. A contemporary historian of litera 
 ture betrays himself to the smile of posterity by his 
 pride in the popular annuals " periodicals of great 
 taste and beauty of execution, under the name of 
 Souvenirs, Tokens, Forgetmenots, Talismans, etc. It is 
 delightful to look over these fashionable publications 
 and find so much fine writing in them. A gem of prose 
 is followed by a floweret of poesy." A modern critic, 
 Gre enough White, who has faithfully turned the pages 
 of these faded gift-books, reports them as " made up 
 of reveries upon Moonlight, Wild Flowers, Tears, The 
 
 ^^ * 
 
 Twilight Hour, Memory, The Fall of the Leaf, sonnets 
 To Hannah More, or On the Death of a Child or To 
 a Beloved Parent on her Recovery from a Dangerous 
 Illness, or On Burning a Packet of Letters ; and tales of 
 wonder or terror, The Mysterious Wedding, The Bandit 
 of the Alps, The Strange Mariner. Children, too, must 
 have their little annual : The Rosette, containing The 
 Neglected Bird, A Dirge for a Young Girl, The Fad 
 ing Leaf , The Swan s Melody; or good Mrs. Sigourney s 
 Olive Leaves, with its Childhood s Piety and The Dying 
 Sunday School Boy" Mrs. Sigourney, rejoicing in the 
 title of " The American Mrs. Hemans," was a prime 
 favorite. Those precocious girls, the Davidson sisters, 
 who died when scarcely out of childhood, leaving vol 
 umes of fluent and monotonous verse, long haunted, 
 as pathetic wraiths, the little American Parnassus. What 
 Irving was pleased to designate as " the classic pen of 
 Miss Sedgwick " vied in favor with Cooper s stronger 
 
Ill NATIONAL ERA: GENERAL ASPECTS IO5 
 
 quill. Her Redwood, remembered for Debby Lennox, 
 its Yankee spinster, was reprinted in England and 
 translated into French. Her Hope Leslie, a story of 
 the early Colonial days, ran through edition after edi 
 tion, and The Linwoods, depicting Revolutionary times, 
 accomplished the feat of wringing copious tears from 
 her publisher, one of the Harper brothers, as he read 
 the proof-sheets. Mrs. Maria Gowen Brooks, dubbed 
 by Southey "Maria del Occidente," was not a senti 
 mentalist of the common order, but an American echo 
 of the new English romanticism. The heroine of 
 Zophiel, her principal poem, is a meek maiden with 
 shoulders of "milky swell," "ivory hands," "silvery 
 feet," and all other oriental charms. She is loved by a 
 fallen spirit, a jealous demon that mysteriously slays every 
 would-be bridegroom who approaches her, until the 
 destined husband puts him forever to flight by a potent 
 talisman, the gift of the benevolent angel, Raphael. 
 
 Women had no monopoly of milk-and-water litera 
 ture. Richard Henry Wilde s My Life is like the Sum 
 mer Rose, Samuel Woodworth s The Old Oaken Bucket, 
 George P. Morris s O Woodman, spare that Tree are 
 songs that were taken at once to the popular heart, 
 together with Francis Scott Key s Star-spangled Banner, 
 which the popular voice has never quite learned to 
 sing. Nathaniel P. Willis, with his smooth and shallow 
 versifications of Scripture, his animated, amiable letters, 
 held a large and edified audience. Willis was one of 
 that group jauntily known as the Knickerbocker School, 
 
IO6 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 a band of young New Yorkers attempting, with the 
 exception of Bryant, nothing very earnest nor very 
 wise, but working on human materials in the artistic 
 spirit for the artistic end of pure delight. The stormy 
 Cooper was with them, but hardly of them. Irving, 
 their illustrious leader, Paulding, the friend of living s 
 youth, and that other pair of young and loving com 
 rades, the poets Halleck and Drake, are, with Willis, 
 the natural representatives of the Knickerbocker temper 
 in our literature, a temper light, sweet, and spontane 
 ous, making up in grace and gayety what it lacks in 
 seriousness and strength. 
 
 III. From Jackson to Lincoln. The election of Jack 
 son inaugurated a new era in American politics. With 
 him the people came to power. Jefferson s theoretical 
 democracy was a very different matter from the practical 
 democracy now introduced. One by one, the Hamilton- 
 ian checks on the popular will gave way. The " plain 
 people " were felt, as never before, in the conduct of the 
 government. The good was mingled with evil. The 
 Spoils System, with its debasing and corrupting influ 
 ences, dates from Jackson. " Swarms of office-hunting 
 locusts," in Greeley s phrase, settled thick about the 
 White House. It was a tempestuous administration, but 
 tough "Old Hickory" carried his points, good and bad, 
 showing himself as stubborn in maintaining the Union as 
 in putting down the National Bank. His views lacked 
 idealism, his methods lacked dignity, but something 
 fresh and sound and vigorous in the pith of the man 
 
By the permission of the publishers, 
 G. P. Putnam s Sons, New York. 
 
Ill NATIONAL ERA: GENERAL ASPECTS 
 
 delighted the people. In this roughly reared soldier of 
 Tennessee, the pioneering, work-a-day millions found 
 themselves represented as they had never been repre 
 sented before. His successor, Van Buren, also a Demo 
 crat, upon whose administration broke the financial panic 
 invoked by Jackson s recklessness, was a New York 
 politician, but the popular choice speedily inclined 
 again to a popular leader. "Tippecanoe and Tyler 
 too " was the rallying-cry of a memorable Whig cam 
 paign, which took the form of a glorification of that rude 
 life of the Northwest from which General Harrison had 
 come. Log-cabins on wheels were drawn in the shout 
 ing processions, coonskins were waved for banners, the 
 drinking of hard cider became a political virtue. Harri 
 son s victory was overwhelming, and his untimely death 
 caused grief and disappointment the country through. 
 The Vice-President, on whom the national burden fell, 
 was a Virginian slave -owner, soon at loggerheads with 
 Harrison s cabinet and with the northern Whigs. The 
 party was so broken up by Tyler s term that the Demo 
 crats returned to power in 1845 with Plk of Tennessee. 
 During his administration occurred our Mexican War, 
 scored by Grant as " one of the most unjust ever waged 
 by a stronger against a weaker nation." General Taylor s 
 good fighting in this bad cause won him the Presidency. 
 Although elected by the Whigs, this Louisiana sugar- 
 planter was called "massa" by a hundred negroes. 
 Vice-President Fillmore, who completed Taylor s term, 
 had been born in a log-cabin on the New York frontier 
 
IO8 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 and had made his own irregular way to the Buffalo bar, 
 but the two Presidents succeeding, Pierce of New Hamp 
 shire and Buchanan of Pennsylvania, both Democrats, 
 could boast the national patent of nobility inherent in 
 the term " college graduate." All these Presidents since 
 Jackson were primarily politicians, nominees of " the 
 machine" and governing in the interest of party; but 
 in Abraham Lincoln, son and grandson of pioneers, 
 bred in the backwoods, great by his " clear-grained 
 human worth," the new America found, at last, a true 
 exponent. 
 
 " Nature, they say, doth dote, 
 And cannot make a man 
 Save on some worn-out plan, 
 Repeating us by rote : 
 
 For him her Old- World moulds aside she threw, 
 And, choosing sweet clay from the breast 
 Of the unexhausted West, 
 With stuff untainted shaped a hero new." 
 
 This westward expansion of the people, this subduing 
 and possessing the vast stretch of savage continent, ap 
 peals to the imagination like a triumphal national march. 
 The colonists clung to the eastern seaboard, but with the 
 achievement of independence began the tramp of the 
 pioneers. In 1785, Freneau had written : 
 
 " To western woods, and lonely plains, 
 
 Palemon from the crowd departs, 
 Where nature s wildest genius reigns, 
 To tame the soil, and plant the arts 
 W T hat wonders there shall freedom show, 
 What mighty States successive grow ! " 
 
Ill NATIONAL ERA: GENERAL ASPECTS IOQ 
 
 This irruption into the wilderness was itself an epic 
 poem. Many a hunter and trapper, many a far-trader 
 and wood-chopper felt, like Daniel Boone, the fascination 
 of the solitude. The western immigrant, says Will Carle- 
 ton, " went to see the world as the Omnipotent made it 
 and the deluge left it ! He went to hear the tramp of 
 the wild congregations the horse and the buffalo 
 shaking the prairie plains." The war-worn Continentals, 
 their blue and buff faded, their arrears unpaid, led the 
 way to " the poor man s country," and, for three brave 
 generations, incessant trains of pack-horses, ox-carts, and 
 canvas-covered emigrant wagons, the "prairie schooners" 
 of that perilous voyage, toiled after, blazing their trail 
 by wrecks and skeletons. Through the Cumberland Gap 
 to Kentucky s "Dark and Bloody Ground," from the 
 Alleghanies to the " Father of Waters," beyond his fer 
 tile basin to the mysterious plains, forward at last, in a 
 fevered rush, across the grand bar of the Rockies to the 
 gold-fields of California, decade after decade the motley 
 multitude surged on. The music of that strange advance 
 was the perpetual ring of the settler s axe, crack of the 
 hunter s rifle, and all too frequent cry of mortal agony, 
 as the maddened Indian tribes, driven back and back, 
 scalped, burned, and tortured all along the frontier. But 
 the steady wave of palefaces, men reared in hardihood, 
 wise in all manner of woodcraft, wary as the redskins 
 themselves, with muscles and wills of iron, could neither 
 be turned nor stayed. Women hoed the corn beside 
 their husbands. Children bore their part in thousands 
 
HO AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 of humble tragedies. The grandfather of Lincoln was 
 shot close by his Kentucky cabin, and only the prompt 
 bullet of an elder son, standing in the doorway, saved 
 Lincoln s father, then a boy of six, from the tomahawk 
 already swung above his head. But camps grew into 
 clearings. Fields of wheat waved among the hewed or 
 blackened stumps of ancient forests. In lieu of those 
 first alert figures, picturesque in coonskin cap, fringed 
 deerskin shirt, leggins and moccasins, the powder-horn 
 over the shoulder and the long knife in the belt, the 
 scene was filled by sturdy shapes of homespun-suited 
 farmers. The big game disappeared with the hunter. 
 The bewildered Indians were penned within government 
 Reservations. Rough-riding cowboys rounded up patri 
 archal herds of cattle. The little log school-house and 
 Presbyterian meeting-house, which had almost kept pace 
 with the blockhouse, stood now upon its ruins. Back 
 woods settlements, where the neighbors had made merry 
 with fiddle and dance at a corn-shucking, a house- 
 raising, or a sugaring off, sprang into populous towns. 
 The winning of the West was accomplished, not without 
 full price of sweat and blood. 
 
 These were bustling times and, after a fashion, highly 
 prosperous. Our material progress was swift as a dream. 
 While the Indians, peering through the foliage on the 
 edge of the Great Lakes, believed the trail of fiery cloud 
 from the white man s big canoe the breath of an impris 
 oned spirit, a web of railroads had made ready a fresh 
 arena for still greater triumphs of steam. The iron re- 
 
Ill NATIONAL ERA: GENERAL ASPECTS III 
 
 sources of the country were now worked in earnest. 
 Canals and bridges witnessed to feats of engineering. 
 The vast Appalachian coal-field was efficiently opened 
 to mining enterprise, oil-wells were bored, copper de 
 posits unearthed, and the precious metals of the Cordil 
 leras sought in a delirium of greed. Morse s telegraph 
 marvellously facilitated business of all sorts. Inventions 
 and discoveries were numerous, especially those tending 
 to the common well-being. The sewing-machine, the 
 mower, and the reaper lightened the tasks of household 
 and of farm; ether was a miracle of mercy to the 
 hospitals. 
 
 Europe sent us her poverty. An ever-thickening host 
 of Scandinavians streamed into the Northwest, taking up 
 the public lands. A sturdy, thrifty, Protestant stock, 
 good farmers and good citizens, they made their wel 
 come. Political revolutions and industrial distress at 
 home secured us equally valuable immigrants from Ger 
 many, England, and other Teutonic countries. For 
 Celts we had the Irish peasantry, fleeing in hundreds of 
 thousands from the Great Famine, and, penniless and 
 exhausted, remaining where they were landed, in the 
 Atlantic states. The cry of gold startled the sleep of 
 Asia, and hordes of Chinese choked the Pacific ports. 
 But although these last comers were ungraciously ac 
 cepted, still there was work for all strong hands, and it 
 was the American pride that no able-bodied, temperate 
 man need go hungry here. 
 
 The all-absorbing race problem of the period had to 
 
112 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 do with the negroes. As the new states came in, the 
 balance of free states and slave states was jealously pre 
 served. By a gradual plan of emancipation, in which 
 Vermont led off as early as 1777, New England and the 
 Middle States were practically clear of the evil thing by 
 Jackson s day. The Ordinance of 1787 had excluded 
 slavery from the Old Northwest, carved in time into the 
 five great states north of the Ohio, but another five, Ken 
 tucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, 
 had been admitted as slave states before 1820, when, 
 amid heated and threatening discussion, the Missouri 
 Compromise was framed by Henry Clay. This Com 
 promise admitted Missouri as a slave state, Maine coming 
 in simultaneously as a free state, but it also established 
 in the national domain a dividing line above which 
 slavery should not go. Henceforth the North, where the 
 Abolition agitation became vehement, and the South, 
 angered by what it considered attacks upon its constitu 
 tional rights, stood as hostile sections, their intensifying 
 antagonism menacing the Union. But the Missouri 
 Compromise had postponed the crisis, and for a genera 
 tion more the balance of political power was maintained. 
 In 1836, Arkansas was admitted as a slave state, matched, 
 the following year, by Michigan as a free state. Florida 
 and Texas entered as slave states in 1845, offset the year 
 after by Iowa and Wisconsin as free states. The applica 
 tion of California, in 1849, precipitated in the Senate a 
 battle of the Titans. Again Henry Clay, an old man 
 now, three times an unsuccessful candidate for the Presi- 
 
Ill NATIONAL ERA: GENERAL ASPECTS 113 
 
 dency, offered compromises. Webster, who, like the 
 great southern Whig, was bent on preserving the Union 
 at all costs, gave his powerful support. Calhoun of South 
 Carolina, lifelong champion of State Rights, came to the 
 Senate, a dying man, to speak upon this bill. It passed, 
 and California came in, according to her own desire, as 
 a free state. Kansas, where the experiment was tried of 
 settling the question by " squatter sovereignty," stormily 
 rejected slavery, and Minnesota and Oregon successively 
 joined the rank of free states. The balance of power 
 was now effectually overthrown. In the course of the 
 Kansas agitation, an antislavery political party was 
 formed, known as Republicans, and on the election of 
 Lincoln, the Republican candidate, South Carolina 
 seceded from the Union. The Gulf States promptly 
 followed, and these seven had organized themselves into 
 a Confederacy before Lincoln s inauguration in March 
 of 1 86 1. Three border states, North Carolina, Ten 
 nessee, and Arkansas, went out when Lincoln called for 
 troops. Even Virginia, although the western part of the 
 Old Dominion broke away as independent, joined the 
 seceders. The storm-cloud had burst at last. 
 
 IV. Artistic Progress. Although in this mid-cen 
 tury period the high-water mark of American literature 
 was reached, the word has been far from proportionate 
 to the deed. The poetry of action has tended to silence 
 speech. What pen could keep pace with that westward 
 onset, with rush of train and flash of telegraph, with our 
 whirl of civil strife? The War, for instance, has not 
 i 
 
114 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 found its Shakespeare nor its Tolstoi. The records it 
 has left in literature are as yet but fragmentary. It 
 threw out a spray of battle-songs, My Maryland ; 
 Marching Along ; Battle-Hymn of the Republic ; Dixie; 
 Wanted A Man; Tramp, Tramp, Tramp; Three 
 Hundred Thousand More ; Marching through Georgia ; 
 The Conquered Banner ; The Battle- Cry of Freedom ; 
 Somebody s Darling; Driving Home the Cows; Ready; 
 How Are You, Sanitary ; Roll- Call; The Blue and the 
 Gray. Whittier, Quaker though he was, Longfellow, 
 Aldrich, even Bryant, paid their passing tribute of verse. 
 Holmes pleaded with the proud Palmetto State on her 
 secession : 
 
 " O Caroline, Caroline, child of the sun, 
 There are battles with fate that can never be won ! 
 The star-flowering banner must never be furled, 
 For its blossoms of light are the hope of the world." 
 
 Bret Harte sounded The Reveille. Stedman poured 
 praise on old John Brown and on gallant Kearney, 
 whose dirge was tenderly voiced by Boker. This poet, 
 too, honored The Black Regiment. Brownell celebrated 
 naval fights on river and bay, Read echoed the hoof- 
 beats of Sheridan s Ride, and Lathrop commemorated 
 Keenan s sacrificial charge 
 
 " That saved the army at Chancellorsville." 
 
 Manassas, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, written clear in 
 blood, were traced again in ink. Winthrop had his 
 elegy, and Lyon. Stonewall Jackson had many. Whit- 
 
Ill NATIONAL ERA: GENERAL ASPECTS 115 
 
 man s one popular lyric is his sob for Lincoln, My 
 Captain. Lowell s two series of Biglow Papers form 
 a unique commentary on the Mexican War and the 
 War of Secession. War stories have abounded, from 
 Miss Alcott s tearful-smiling Hospital Sketches to Crane s 
 chromatic Red Badge of Courage, but for all these, 
 and more, the utterance is so inadequate that our 
 great national conflict still remains, in its tragic scope, 
 " unchronicled, unsung." 
 
 It is obviously vain to look, before the sixties, toward 
 the West for literature. Her brown and stalwart hands 
 were busy with heavier tools than the pen. The Muses 
 might well acquiesce and wait. 
 
 Tis fit the forest fall, 
 The steep be graded, 
 The mountain tunnelled, 
 The sand shaded, 
 The orchard planted, 
 The globe tilled, 
 The prairie granted, 
 The steamer built." 
 
 The West, throbbing with humanity, was hard at work 
 making the new America. Little time was there for 
 reading books, much less for writing them. 
 
 The silence of the South is more puzzling. With a 
 leisure class, many of whose representatives were widely 
 travelled in foreign lands, American gentlemen distin 
 guished for culture of manners, and of a peculiarly lofty 
 and romantic temper, the South might naturally have 
 been expected to take the lead in the national arts. For 
 
Il6 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 her dumb Colonial days, the isolation caused by settling 
 on wide plantations, instead of in communities, has been 
 held accountable. These living conditions, in large de 
 gree, persisted till the Civil War. With few cities, the 
 stimulus that comes from mental contact and friction 
 was wanting. "Tobacco and cotton," says Professor 
 Trent, " have choked the minds as well as the acres of 
 our people." The Revolutionary epoch seemed to in 
 dicate that the best intellect of the South instinctively 
 addressed itself to questions of the public polity, an 
 indication confirmed by the senatorial debates for the 
 generation preceding secession. As the law had been 
 the chosen profession, and statesmanship the chief con 
 cern of Jefferson, Marshall, Randolph, and Henry, so it 
 was with Clay, Calhoun, and Robert Y. Hayne. But the 
 problem is solved only in part. Why was the literature 
 actually produced so ineffective ? Aside from the glancing 
 glory of Poe, the leading names, as Simms and Kennedy 
 and John Esten Cooke, stand for pleasant, old-fashioned, 
 rather dull romances, after (and far after) Walter Scott. 
 If the writing of the men was pale, that of the women, 
 as represented by Mrs. Southworth, Mrs. Hentz, and 
 Miss Evans, was flushed with unreal tints. The lyrists, 
 Wilde, the Pinkneys, Philip Pendleton Cooke, sounded 
 but a faint echo of the old cavalier note. Such literary 
 expression as there was had inevitable grace, but not 
 the convincing force of frankness. In slavery days, the 
 southern writer could not and would not see the life 
 about him as it was. Far less would he or could he 
 
ill NATIONAL ERA: GENERAL ASPECTS 117 
 
 publish what he saw. " The standard of literary work," 
 admits Thomas Nelson Page, " was not a purely literary 
 standard, but one based on public opinion, which, in its 
 turn, was founded on the general consensus that the 
 existing institution was not to be impugned, directly or 
 indirectly, on any ground, or by any means whatsoever." 
 Southern slavery was, on the other hand, a potent 
 cause of the literary activity in the North. Ten years 
 after the Missouri Compromise, William Lloyd Garrison, 
 a Massachusetts printer of whom Lowell wrote, " Pos 
 terity will forget his hard words, and remember his hard 
 work," established the Abolitionist Society. Its organ 
 was Garrison s weekly paper, The Liberator, whose motto 
 ran No Union with Slaveholders, and whose purpose was 
 to maintain the proposition that slaveholding, apart from 
 all political considerations, was morally a crime, and 
 should, as such, be put down with the strong hand. 
 What seemed, not unnaturally, to Calhoun " the blind 
 and criminal zeal of the Abolitionists," was a character 
 istic outbreak of the mighty moral passion of New Eng 
 land. A Knickerbocker literature, essentially artistic and 
 entertaining, was not for her. When her great hour of 
 utterance came, it was the old Puritan flood of ideal 
 ism broken loose again. The liberalization of theology 
 through Channing and Parker, the European influences 
 brought to bear upon American thought and taste by 
 Allston and Dana, Everett and Ticknor, Longfellow and 
 Lowell, resulted in that New England renascence whose 
 supreme achievements were the Transcendental essays 
 
Il8 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 and poems of Emerson, and the mystical romances of 
 Hawthorne. But the core of the movement was ethical, 
 and the most definite object proposed to that eager 
 moral enthusiasm was the blotting out of slavery. To 
 this end Wendell Phillips lectured and Charles Sumner 
 debated, Whittier struck out burning poems, and Harriet 
 Beecher Stowe, in the access of indignation roused by 
 the Fugitive Slave Law, penned the most tremendous 
 of Abolition tracts, Uncle Tom s Cabin. The Atlantic 
 Monthly Magazine, which became the dominant directing 
 force of the new literature, was founded with the quiet 
 intention of opposing to slavery the higher sentiment of 
 the North in ways less direct and offensive than those 
 of The Liberator. 
 
 The intuitional philosophy, from which the Transcen 
 dentalism of New England sprang, was but one of the 
 channels by which German currents had begun to water 
 the soil of the New World. Our mid-century painting 
 abjured the English and Italian schools for that of Diis- 
 seldorf on the Rhine, whither our young artists flocked. 
 Leutze, known throughout the land by his Washington 
 Crossing the Delaware, introduced the Diisseldorf style, 
 though with an added dash of sternness and flavor of 
 sobriety. A new landscape fashion, fathered by Bier- 
 stadt, a native of Diisseldorf, who had travelled in the 
 Rockies, came into vogue. Bold and sometimes grandi 
 ose paintings of mountain chains, sheer ravines, prairie 
 reaches with a solitary figure of pony-riding Indian or 
 bison-tracking hunter, held sway. The new West had 
 
Ill NATIONAL ERA: GENERAL ASPECTS 
 
 captured the artists. Yet Kensett loved best the au 
 tumnal shores of quiet lakes, and Gifford, with his rich 
 sense of atmosphere, often turned from Pacific scenery 
 back to the haunted Hudson. Before the sixties, Ameri 
 can painting was already chastened in tone. " Gracious 
 studies of light," notes Professor Muther, "and intimate 
 views of forest paths, and distant huts and meadowland, 
 took the place of pompous dramatic efforts, wild moun 
 tain landscapes, and glaring fireworks." 
 
 Meanwhile American sculpture had come into being. 
 Greenough and Powers, both born in 1805, the one the 
 son of a wealthy Boston merchant, the other a Vermont 
 farmer s boy, led the way to Italy. Before the middle 
 of the century, Powers had won a European fame by his 
 Greek Slave. But in general the initial group of Ameri 
 can sculptors wrought directly on American subjects, 
 producing busts and statues of the public men of the 
 day, and the heroes of the Revolution. Washington 
 appeared in every guise, seated, on foot, on horseback, 
 and even as an Olympian Zeus. Now and then a perilous 
 instant of pioneer life, as The Rescue, was frozen into 
 marble. An ideal figure of Liberty, by Crawford, the 
 leading sculptor of the Middle States, crowned the dome 
 of the national Capitol, upon whose bronze doors the 
 same artist has recorded the War of Independence. 
 
 Crawford s colossal statue of Beethoven, executed for 
 Boston Music Hall, testifies to the growing appreciation 
 of music. About the middle of the century political 
 exiles from Italy, coming to New York in considerable 
 
I2O AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 numbers, brought with them a musical enthusiasm which 
 did not rest until Italian opera, with adequate orchestra, 
 was given in that city. The German element in New 
 York, too, was felt musically more and more, especially in 
 the Philharmonic Society. Parisian artists gave regular 
 seasons of French opera in New Orleans. Here the opera 
 was often followed by a ball, a great swinging floor being 
 lowered, on which the blithe Creoles would dance till 
 dawn. Boston, as became her Puritan traditions, espe 
 cially cultivated the oratorio. It was Boston, too, that 
 first introduced the study of vocal music into the public 
 schools. The many musical societies naturally led to 
 musical conventions and festivals. Prima donnas from 
 over sea, little companies of foreign singers, and even 
 itinerant orchestras made the tour of the American 
 towns. The visit of Jenny Lind extended over two 
 years. Yet original American music of scope and signifi 
 cance was still to seek, though minor contributions to the 
 world s melody were occasionally made. Payne s simple 
 song of Home, Sweet Home has outlasted all his operas, 
 in one of which it was set. Efforts were put forth to 
 stimulate native production. In 1855, for instance, Ole 
 Bull, as opera-manager of the Academy of Music, offered 
 a prize of one thousand dollars for the best opera by an 
 American composer on an American subject; but the 
 project came to nothing. 
 
 American drama, despite similar attempts on the part 
 of Edwin Forrest to bribe the Muses, still made but a 
 paltry showing. Plays with Indian chiefs for heroes 
 
Ill NATIONAL ERA: GENERAL ASPECTS 121 
 
 gradually shuffled into crude spectacles of frontier ad 
 venture, the dime novel behind the footlights. The new 
 stage-hero was initiated in 1831 by Paulding with his 
 Colonel Nimrod Wildfire, convincing in buckskin attire 
 and ticklish tilt of the rifle. The Forty-niners in due 
 season swaggered across the stage, and the eastern 
 theatres, in general, kept their audiences in mind of 
 that westward-rolling cloud of our hardiest American 
 manhood. 
 
 During the period now under review the art of life came 
 in for literary consideration. American ways then, as since, 
 were variously displeasing to our outspoken guests from 
 abroad. The Pulszkys, coming over with the Kossuths in 
 the middle of the century, found American children pert, 
 our city architecture either monotonous or inharmoniously 
 eclectic, the New York Herald unprincipled, our national 
 integrity better than our national monuments, and spiritu 
 alism in full career. Mrs. Trollope, who visited us some 
 twenty years earlier, seeing mainly Cincinnati, and Cin 
 cinnati in its younger days, complained that there were 
 too many miles of mud at the mouth of the Mississippi, 
 and too much American boasting on its steamboats, that 
 our servants were intolerably democratic, and that the 
 leading men of the West ate with their knives, spat in 
 public places, and sat tipped back in their chairs, " ex 
 quisite posture masters," with their heels above their 
 heads. Harriet Martineau judged us kindly, although 
 she, like Mrs. Kemble, was shocked at slavery, but the 
 disgust of Dickens, the beloved Dickens whom we had 
 
122 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 welcomed with open arms and open purses, cut us to the 
 quick. What was false and foolish in all this criticism 
 could be forgiven. The rub came with what was just 
 and true. Fortunately for America, she had, in these 
 awkward years of her overgrowth, teachers as well as 
 censors. Channing urged continually the beauty of 
 dignity, of quiet simplicity, of repose. Irving was a 
 potent illustration of " gentleness untired " and " noble 
 feeling warm." Our Cambridge poets, the benignant 
 Longfellow, the genial Lowell, the sparkling Holmes, 
 typical American gentlemen of a refinement unfeigned 
 and unashamed, set a fair example. Thoreau, for 
 all his tart emphasis on individuality, loved a high 
 behavior, and Emerson went up and down the rugged 
 land praising on bare Lyceum platforms "the delicacy 
 of beautiful carriage and customs." Charm of manner, 
 he says succinctly, " gives a higher pleasure than statues 
 or pictures ; it is the finest of the fine arts." 
 
 V. From Lincoln to McKinley. At the commence 
 ment of the Civil War, the country held some thirty-one 
 million people. Of these the seceding states counted 
 less than nine million, more than one-third slaves. The 
 Cotton-State Confederacy had hoped for support from 
 all the slave area, which was greater than the free area, 
 from the newly settled Northwest, from the Democratic 
 party in New England and the Middle States, and finally 
 from France and Great Britain. These hopes failing, 
 not the military genius of Lee nor the desperate gallantry 
 of the southern armies could save the cause of secession, 
 
Ill NATIONAL ERA: GENERAL ASPECTS 123 
 
 identified as it was with the cause of slavery. Four 
 years of national agony, a public debt of nearly three 
 thousand million dollars, a depreciated currency, the 
 temporary ruin of southern prosperity, and the sacrifice 
 of nearly a million of our best and bravest lives, crowned 
 by the martyrdom of Lincoln, were the first items in the 
 long bill of costs. Others have since come in, as heavy 
 pension charges, the social demoralization due to army 
 life, the rapid growth of monopolies and a consequent 
 breach between rich and poor ; but Union and Emanci 
 pation could hardly be bought too dear. The national 
 gains, too, were not confined to the triumph of the 
 Federal principle and the abolition of slavery. The New 
 South is already richer, abler, more joyous than the Old. 
 She has developed mechanical industries, opened up 
 her immense coal-fields and iron-beds, more than re 
 covered her productiveness in cotton and become, in 
 manufacture, commerce, and literature, a fresh and 
 vital force. The swiftness with which the wounds of 
 war were healed has strengthened confidence in Ameri 
 can government and American character. The revolted 
 states have long been reinstated. The leaders in 
 rebellion have rendered good service in congresses and 
 cabinets. 
 
 But the work of reconstruction, deprived of Lincoln s 
 generous wisdom and complicated by bitter quarrels be 
 tween Lincoln s successor, Vice-President Johnson of 
 Tennessee, and the suspicious Senate, was of the hardest. 
 With the South struggling against carpet-bag rule, and 
 
124 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 the North absorbed with the new expansion of business, 
 the national leadership has fallen to the " Old North 
 west." The centres of manufacturing and of population 
 are here, although financial control is still with Wall 
 Street. As Lincoln had come from Illinois, so Grant, 
 Hayes, Garfield, and McKinley came from Ohio, 
 and Harrison from Indiana. Cleveland is the excep 
 tion, although his city, Buffalo, is on the northwest 
 border. 
 
 The tendency of this western civilization seems at first 
 sight to set toward materialism. Ohio and Indiana, with 
 their natural gas and petroleum, their iron and coal, 
 Michigan, with her grain and lumber, Wisconsin, with 
 her dairies and breweries, and Illinois, with her strong 
 energies divided among agriculture, manufacture, and 
 commerce, have all made haste to be rich. This utilita 
 rian example has been diligently followed the country 
 over. A population numbering now more than three 
 score millions, dwelling in a national area of three 
 million and a half square miles, has been hitherto more 
 intent on money-getting and money-spending than on 
 the cultivation of the aesthetic and spiritual life. The 
 material development has been on a gigantic scale. 
 The United States of to-day is nine times as large as 
 the United States of 1800. West Virginia, beautiful for 
 scenery, silver Nevada, the wheat-waving states of Ne 
 braska and the Dakotas, Colorado, rich in precious 
 ores, Montana, Washington, and Idaho, with their mines 
 and cattle-ranges, Wyoming, the experimenter in woman 
 
Ill NATIONAL ERA: GENERAL ASPECTS 125 
 
 suffrage, and Utah, cleansed of her Mormon polygamy, 
 have swelled the roll of states to forty-five. The terri 
 tories of Arizona, New Mexico, and Oklahoma, with the 
 half-organized Alaska, reputed a new El Dorado, wait 
 their turn. The West, so recently an Indian hunting- 
 ground, is dotted by cities, where closely packed steel 
 towers shoot up within a few months higher than the 
 old cathedrals to whose rearing went centuries. The 
 splendid insolence of invention taps Niagara and makes 
 a public drudge of electricity. There is no lack of 
 heroic enterprise. The Dark Continent is invaded, 
 the Arctic ice is dared, but even heroism is exploited 
 by the great newspapers and takes on an advertising 
 flavor. 
 
 So prodigious a development is attended with peculiar 
 perils. At the close of the Civil War, Lowell s tribute 
 to the delivered country thrilled every hearer with a 
 nobler national joy : 
 
 " Be proud ! for she is saved, and all have helped to save her ! 
 She that lifts up the manhood of the poor, 
 She of the open soul and open door, 
 With room about her hearth for all mankind ! " 
 
 But at the present time the overwhelming inrush of 
 foreigners presents so grave a problem that our keen- 
 eyed observer, Kipling, pays the American for his hos 
 pitalities but a satiric compliment : 
 
 " His easy unswept hearth he lends 
 From Labrador to Guadeloupe; 
 Till, elbowed out by sloven friends, 
 He camps, at suffrance, on the stoop." 
 
126 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 To look down upon the steerage decks of the Atlantic 
 liners that pass in unending procession through New 
 York harbor beneath Bartholdi s statue of Liberty en 
 lightening the World is to see, through ignorance, squalor, 
 and the Babel of strange tongues, the America of to 
 morrow. Chicago, in Jackson s day a frontier fort and 
 now second only to New York, is the fifth German city 
 of the globe, the third Swedish, and the second Polish. 
 The hungry hordes from Europe and Asia have con 
 tributed, in a sense, to the national wealth. Gangs of 
 unskilled laborers, Irish, Chinese, Italians, Hungarians, 
 have built our railroads, laid our water-pipes and gas- 
 pipes, levelled our highways, opened our mines, and 
 thus made possible the swift material expansion of the 
 last sixty years ; but they have created our city slums, 
 helped debase our city politics, and hurled us prema 
 turely upon the labor question. 
 
 We have tried to believe that we have no labor ques 
 tion. " In a land," says Mr. Howells, "where journeymen 
 carpenters and plumbers strike for four dollars a day, the- 
 sum of hunger and cold is comparatively small, and the 
 wrong from class to class has been almost inappreciable, 
 though all this is changing for the worse." There was 
 no labor agitation of consequence anywhere in the coun 
 try before the Revolution. During the first quarter of 
 the present century a few trades-unions were formed ; 
 but a Frenchman, M. Chevalier, visiting America in 1834, 
 stated, by way of comparison, that while such unions in 
 the Old World threatened war between labor and capital, 
 
- 
 
 Ill NATIONAL ERA: GENERAL ASPECTS I2/ 
 
 "in America, on the contrary, such a coalition means, 
 raise our wages, or we go to the West." The skurry for 
 Oklahoma, in 1889, showed how little desirable land is 
 still open. Instead of a free West for those to whom the 
 East metes out hard measure, there is, from Atlantic to 
 Pacific, the competition with cheap immigrant labor. 
 Capital is in control, monopolies dominate the markets, 
 and we have at last within our borders not merely the 
 army of tramps, the secret session of anarchists, but 
 the honest, able artisan, seemingly without his share in 
 the national heritage of liberty, working hard to find 
 hard work to do, bewildered and embittered by the new 
 industrial dependence that the years have so suddenly 
 brought upon him. Over one-fourth of the mechanics 
 and factory hands of the United States are now organized 
 to fight for comely American existence. Within the last 
 two decades have occurred a succession of ominous 
 strikes. Pittsburg, Homestead, Chicago, are the names 
 of battlefields. 
 
 Against these and other dangers stand arrayed the con 
 science of the country, the alert intelligence, hopeful 
 energy, and earnest patriotism of rich and poor alike. 
 So great and complex a republic, trying for all mankind 
 the mighty experiment of " government of the people, by 
 the people, for the people," must needs make many stum 
 bles by the way ; but it has sinewy strength to rise again. 
 If the western farmers suffer, the best brains in the land 
 fall to ferreting out the economic causes of that suffering. 
 Only with Garfield began that Civil Service Reform which 
 
128 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 already is practically accomplished. America has long 
 realized that she stands pledged before the elder nations 
 of the earth to demonstrate the power of democracy, with 
 its free schools, free ballot, and free religious thought, to 
 elevate mankind. Ever mindful of her workers, she has 
 bent an unprecedented inventive and industrial activity 
 to increasing the sum of human well-being. She cares 
 greatly for education, national honor, and the deeds of 
 Christian mercy. Her capitalists endow universities and 
 public libraries. Political parties blur their lines when 
 the country s integrity is at stake. Her charities reach 
 around the globe. The Puritan leaven is still at work, 
 and still, though in sterner fashion, the words of Emerson 
 hold true : " America means opportunity." 
 
 VI. Present Artistic Conditions. American men of 
 letters are too busy nowadays to achieve the best. The 
 " broad margins " to life that Thoreau loved, few allow 
 themselves. Sucked in ever greater numbers into the 
 vortex of New York, they are spun about, like mere 
 bankers and brokers, in the whirl. Hawthorne mused 
 away his youth, and in the silences there ripened golden 
 fruit. Our literature of to-day is abundant, varied, clever, 
 but if genius is among us, it walks unrecognized. Not 
 withstanding the high-hearted music of Lanier, the deli 
 cate artistry of Aldrich, the fastidious finesse of James, 
 and warmer humanity of Howells, no literary star of the 
 first magnitude has brightened on our firmament since 
 the Civil War. 
 
 Yet our educational apparatus is more elaborate than 
 
Ill NATIONAL ERA: GENERAL ASPECTS I2Q 
 
 ever before. The American university belongs to this 
 third period of the century. Johns Hopkins dates from 
 1876. Columbia and Princeton are almost as new, in 
 their enlarged scope, as Chicago and Leland Stanford. 
 The expansion of intellectual life has at last reached 
 woman. In 1861 Vassar led the way that Smith, Welles- 
 ley, Bryn Mawr, Radcliffe, Mount Holyoke, and others 
 have been swift to follow, while the western universities, 
 on Michigan s frank initiative, have thrown their doors 
 wide open to women, and the eastern are beginning to 
 accord them at least an eavesdropping privilege. 
 
 The pecuniary returns for writing, uncertain still, were 
 never better. The American daily, disreputable as it is 
 beside the best products of the London press, has become 
 a tremendous engine, rich, adventurous, all-consuming. 
 If its probity and dignity equalled its energy, it could 
 hardly be overpraised ; but even with all its imperfections 
 on its head, the newspaper has been for a century our 
 most effective instrument of democratic education. " The 
 Press is the prostituted companion of liberty," said Fisher 
 Ames, the Federalist orator of Massachusetts, " and some 
 how or other, we know not how, its efficient auxiliary. It 
 follows the substance like its shade ; but while a man 
 walks erect, he may observe that his shadow is almost 
 always in the dirt. ... It would be easy to enlarge on 
 its evils. They are in England, they are here, they are 
 everywhere. It is a precious pest and a necessary mis 
 chief, and there would be no liberty without it." It is esti 
 mated that in 1 790 there was one copy of a newspaper 
 
I3O AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 to every individual in the land; in 1890, sixty copies. 
 Over twenty thousand periodicals, dailies, weeklies, 
 and magazines, are to-day printed in the United States, 
 some in enormous editions. The American magazine, 
 now focussed in New York, long had its favorite seat in 
 Philadelphia. Franklin, Brockden Brown, Poe, tended 
 its early growth. Many, indeed, of our literary leaders, 
 notably Lowell, Curtis, Warner, Howells, Aldrich, have sat, 
 at one time or another, in editorial chairs, while in these 
 days of realistic fiction the profession of journalism 
 often promotes young reporters to the grade of litera 
 ture. With the Scribner s, launched by Dr. Holland 
 early in the seventies, the handsome illustrated magazine 
 came into being, while the nineties are witnessing a curi 
 ous outcropping of bibelots. Our magazines, besides 
 employing artists and engravers in large numbers, pro 
 vide a literary market of a higher order than that fur 
 nished by press syndicates and newspapers. They have 
 had much to do with developing the short story, dialect 
 studies, and light verse, but their entertaining, sketchy 
 quality is injurious to the mental digestion. 
 
 Music has become a recognized factor in American 
 life. If we have no Beethoven yet, no Mendelssohn, we 
 are grateful for a Thomas and a Damrosch. It has 
 been a century of musical education rather than crea 
 tion. Conservatories of music have arisen in our chief 
 cities. Foreign artists reap fortunes from their Ameri 
 can trips. Every season German opera draws its 
 thousands, and Italian opera its tens of thousands. 
 
Ill NATIONAL ERA: GENERAL ASPECTS 131 
 
 Lanier has many sympathizers in his saying that music 
 and an open fire are the indispensables of a home. 
 The Germans enthusiastically promote musical culture, 
 especially in Chicago and other cities of the West. 
 But for all this, we are not yet, as a nation, musically 
 sensitive or musically expressive. Our democratic eager 
 ness to become capable of the best, the determination 
 to achieve a sincere and intelligent delight in every 
 form of beauty, is more marked among us than the 
 naturally aesthetic temperament. We are practically 
 without folk-songs. The " merry whistled tunes " of 
 the barefoot boy cheer our village streets, but our 
 college glees are shallow and hard beside the romantic 
 balladry of German students. Something of spirit and 
 of passion, however, still haunts the songs of the Civil 
 War. Our best indigenous melodies, those that be 
 guiled the weariness of rice-swamp, cotton-field, and 
 sugar-plantation, that rose from negro cabin and forest 
 camp-meeting, are already becoming a lost art. The 
 meekness, the yearning, the pathos so weirdly inter- 
 blent with those artless strains are hardly within the 
 compass of the young voices of the colored race. 
 That piteous beauty was inwrought with slavery. The 
 tones of freedom miss the subtler cadences. It is 
 reasonable to expect, however, contributions to music, 
 as well as to oratory and the other arts, from the 
 Afro-Americans in their later development. The Uncle 
 Remus stories have crystallized a part of their uncon 
 scious literature. Paul Lawrence Dunbar has recently 
 
132 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 come before the public as a promising negro poet, but 
 it is too early yet to ask much at their hands. Nor 
 have the Indians spoken through the arts. Altar- 
 mounds and shell-heaps, the musical names of lake 
 and mountain, fragments of folk-lore, tell us far too 
 little of that proud race we have dispossessed. The 
 Leather-Stocking Novels, Hiawatha, and Ramona have 
 tried to be their interpreters, but we look to the grad 
 uates of Hampton and Carlisle for a more authentic 
 voice. 
 
 In the realm of painting, negro scenes have been 
 rendered by a few recent artists, and the Indians have at 
 least one champion of the brush ; but, as a rule, our lead 
 ing painters of to-day concern themselves little with dis 
 tinctively American subjects. Our sculptors, from the 
 nature of the case, are more constant. The point of de 
 parture for the art of this third period of the century 
 may be taken as 1863, when the corner-stone of the New 
 York Academy of Design was laid. There was a passing 
 reflection of English Pre-Raphaelitism, but the chosen 
 school of American painting since the Civil War has 
 been Paris. Even sculpture, within the last quarter- 
 century, has turned from Rome to the new inspiration 
 by the Seine. If Story and Miss Hosmer have been 
 faithful to Italy, St. Gaudens brings the fresh power of 
 France. With a native predilection for natural scenery, 
 American painters fell readily in with the French move 
 ment toward landscape, yet our artists, many of them 
 half Europeans by residence and habit, bind them- 
 
ill NATIONAL ERA: GENERAL ASPECTS 133 
 
 selves to no school, and may be distinguished by no 
 dominant national note. Inness, Vedder, Sargent, 
 stand for widely varying fashions. For the last twenty 
 years, the work of our painters and sculptors has con 
 spicuously illustrated American dexterity no less than 
 American versatility. For the first time in our art his 
 tory, technique has been mastered. In the plastic arts, 
 as in music, the education of the people goes on apace. 
 Under the golden touch of millionnaires and the strong 
 impulsion of public spirit, picture galleries have been 
 established of late years not only in the principal cities, 
 but in quiet towns and on many a college campus. 
 Private collections of high merit are accumulated, 
 masterpieces are loaned for public view, art schools 
 flourish, and the amateur and connoisseur lend a flavor 
 to daily talk. The great Expositions, culminating in the 
 World s Fair at Chicago, have been of incalculable bene 
 fit not only in the direct patronage of American artists, 
 but in radiating aesthetic interest throughout the land. 
 The magazines, with their famous illustrators, the new 
 stained glass that Tiffany and La Farge are putting into 
 our churches, even the fads for wood-carving and photog 
 raphy, have culture-values. 
 
 President Jefferson was once moved to remark that 
 " the genius of architecture seemed to have shed a pecul 
 iar malediction over America." After the happy devel 
 opment of the Colonial dwelling-house, there succeeded 
 a century of irresponsible experiments. Capitols with 
 Roman domes, banks adapted from Doric temples, plain 
 
134 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 commercial blocks and Gothic school-houses, Queen 
 Anne cottages and barrack hotels, make a fantastic med 
 ley. Our pet principle of Independence, as applied to 
 building, leaves much to be desired. From all this 
 chaos there has been evolved no style distinctively 
 American, unless Richardson, who studied in Paris and 
 began his professional activity at the close of the Civil 
 War, may be thought to have given the hint. The hope 
 for architecture, as for all our arts, including literature, 
 lies in the stricter training and wider outlook of our new 
 craftsmen. This period of technical discipline is but the 
 sharpening of the tool for finer and more momentous 
 tasks. The White City flashed a vision that is not 
 forgotten. 
 
 The patriotic temper, just now on the qui vive for the 
 Great American Novel, is experiencing a slight revival 
 of faith in our long- lingering drama. Such actors as 
 Booth, Barrett, Jefferson, have lent new dignity to the 
 stage. Our modern theatres are luxurious, if not fire 
 proof, and certain companies, as Daly s of New York, 
 make a study of artistic settings. The audiences are of 
 better quality than heretofore. But as for the plays 
 themselves, with the Wild West relegated to Buffalo Bill, 
 and with the memories of the war too sore for any large 
 encouragement of Rebellion drama, managers have been 
 compelled to draw from French and English sources. 
 Now and then, however, a native bit of society comedy 
 brightens the boards, and our theatrical critics, from 
 their watch-towers of observation, call lustily that the 
 
Ill NATIONAL ERA: GENERAL ASPECTS 135 
 
 American drama is almost in sight at last. Meanwhile, 
 HowelPs parlor farces are the delight of amateurs. 
 
 No observer of life lives in a golden age. We look 
 back to " the good old times " and forward to the millen 
 nium, but our own era misses majesty. This last third of 
 the century may yet win " a glory from its being far," but 
 it looks to-day like a season of reaction from our crucial 
 strife and of preparation for the deeds to be. If litera 
 ture tends at present to be a craft rather than a calling, 
 if our typical author is 
 
 " ne er at leisure 
 To be himself, he has such tides of business," 
 
 we can at least rejoice in the wide diffusion and good 
 average quality of the writing ability. Academic treatises, 
 especially on social questions, are showered from the 
 press. If the master- songs are missing, tuneful voices 
 answer one another from Appledore to the wheatlands, 
 and on to " white Sierra s verge." With Mary E. Wilkins 
 and Sarah Orne Jewett exploring the nooks and corners 
 of New England, with James Lane Allen interpreting the 
 life of Kentucky, and Thomas Nelson Page that of Vir 
 ginia, with Mary Murfree revealing the secrets of the 
 Tennessee mountains, with Hamlin Garland doing angry 
 honor to the western farmer s toil, with Mary Halleck 
 Foote portraying that wild mining life whose prose epic 
 was begun by Bret Harte in The Luck of Roaring Camp, 
 the length and breadth of the land are finding speech. 
 
 Over a century ago one of our Huguenot immigrants, 
 Crevecceur, wrote hopefully of his adopted country : 
 
136 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 " Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new 
 race of men, whose labors and posterity will one day 
 cause great changes in the world. Americans are the 
 western pilgrims, who are carrying along with them that 
 great mass of arts, sciences, vigor, and industry, which 
 began long since in the East ; they will finish the great 
 circle." A review of the hundred years brings courage 
 for the journey but begun. 
 
IV NATIONAL ERA: POETRY 137 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 NATIONAL ERA: POETRY 
 
 Let the great world bustle on 
 
 With war and trade, with camp and town, 
 
 A thousand men shall dig and eat; 
 
 At forge and furnace thousands sweat; 
 
 And thousands sail the purple sea, 
 
 And give or take the stroke of war, 
 
 Or crowd the market and bazaar; 
 
 Oft shall war end, and peace return, 
 
 And cities rise where cities burn, 
 
 Ere one man my hill shall climb, 
 
 Who can turn the golden rhyme. 
 
 EMERSON, Saadi. 
 
 I. William Cullen Bryant is the patriarch of American 
 poetry. He alone comes over to us from the eighteenth 
 century. Thanatopsis was published two years before 
 Lowell and Whitman were born. This hardly constitutes 
 antiquity, but taken with the living memory and common 
 portrait of Bryant as a bald-crowned, shaggy-browed, 
 rugged old sage, his lower face obscured in a snowy 
 drift of beard, it has impressed him on the popular im 
 agination as a very Father Time. Yet he was only a six- 
 year-old when the century was rounded, " a little chap 
 with flaxen hair and flashing eyes," much in awe of Squire 
 Snell, his Calvinistic grandfather, but more at ease with 
 
138 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 his grandmother, who used to chalk him a delightfully 
 dreadful figure of the devil, " Old Crooktail," on the 
 kitchen floor. Their daughter, Bryant s mother, was a 
 New England housewife of the firm, efficient pattern, 
 very sure as to the dividing line between good and evil, 
 having her own opinion even of her husband s idol, Mr. 
 Pope, but intensely preoccupied with the practical prob 
 lem of making the two ends meet. There was the more 
 need for her energetic industry, her mending and saving, 
 in that her husband, descended, like herself, from the 
 Plymouth Pilgrims, was touched with the dreamer s mal 
 ady. He was of vigorous frame, a physician, as his father 
 and grandfather had been before him, and a man of 
 prominence in local politics, but he was always poor. 
 A new book could make him oblivious both of patient 
 and fee. A versifier himself, he was his son s sympa 
 thetic critic, and hardly less helpfully, his companion in 
 botanizing strolls through the picturesque hill-country 
 enclosing Cummington, then a new settlement in western 
 Massachusetts. The Snell homestead, where Dr. Bryant 
 early brought his family to live, was no bad place for 
 rearing boys. The farm work, when not too hard, was 
 healthy; the homespun clothing comfortable, and the 
 simple diet wholesome, while, in one way or another, 
 the verse-loving father found money for books. After 
 supper and chores, the Bryant boys would fling them 
 selves down on the floor, with brown heads to the 
 crackling fire, and pore over Shakespeare and Spenser, 
 Wordsworth, Cowper, and Scott the winter evenings 
 
IV NATIONAL ERA: POETRY 139 
 
 through, the grim bundle of birchen rods hanging on 
 the wall above. They delighted in Pope s Iliad, secretly 
 whittling out wooden swords for themselves and trim 
 ming up old hats with plumes of tow, helmet fashion, 
 in preparation for heroic combats in the haymow. In 
 the prevailing religious atmosphere, William put up pri 
 vate prayer that he might be a poet. There was talk of 
 college, and he was tutored for a while by the Plainfield 
 minister, who gave him bread and milk board and Greek 
 instruction for a dollar a week. It was a wonderful 
 amount of Greek that Bryant got for his dollar, but after 
 a few months at Williams, his father s poverty put an end 
 to college prospects. In the summer of his disappoint 
 ment, the thoughtful youth, not yet eighteen, wrote 
 Thanatopsis. The poet had reached full stature. Of 
 his remaining sixty-six years, fourteen* went to the study 
 and practice of the law in western Massachusetts, and 
 the rest to editorial work, chiefly on The Evening Post, 
 in New York City years sweetened with home joys, 
 brightened with congenial companionships, enriched with 
 foreign travel, and crowned with abundant honor. He 
 was a good business man, a journalist of honorable 
 record, a speaker much in demand for " memorial trib 
 utes," and a fine example of the old-fashioned citizen, 
 prudent, sagacious, just. A poet to the end, he drew 
 his inspiration still from the fountains of his youth the 
 secrets of the Hampshire hills and the grave, pure temper 
 of his childhood s home. Those noble translations of 
 the Iliad and Odyssey, colossal tasks accomplished after 
 
I4O AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 he had climbed the threescore years and ten, fulfilled his 
 boyish homage. The Flood of Years, written in his eighty- 
 second summer, echoes the very tone of Thanatopsis. 
 
 Bryant s poetry is stately, lofty, clear. A man of prac 
 tised self-control, who from childhood to the day of his 
 death rose early, ate sparingly, exercised regularly, his 
 verse is equally subject to rule. No impetuous measures 
 broke from his pen. Respect for law and order, per 
 sonal reserve, and coldness of temperament are so far 
 from being the traditional make-up of a poet that it is 
 no wonder the critics were puzzled. Blackwood s Maga 
 zine characterized Bryant, when he had reached the age of 
 thirty, as " a sensible young man of a thrifty disposition, 
 who knows how to manage a few plain ideas in a very 
 handsome way." His themes, in truth, were few. He 
 cared for freedom, for the moral aspect of life, and 
 supremely for nature. Son of the Pilgrims though he 
 was, the poet in him was half a pagan, but only half. 
 His stern Anglo-Saxon brooding upon death and the 
 grave is touched, at times, with quiet Christian hope. 
 Something of Roman pride mingles in Thanatopsis with 
 the sombre courage and ethical resolve of Puritanism. 
 Upon the poem is no trace of youthful turbulence or 
 rebellion. It is a clear-sighted recognition of the 
 inevitable end of life, and a solemn acquiescence in the 
 universal destiny. Allied to this haunting sadness for 
 " the fading race of men " is Bryant s special sense of 
 pathos in the passing of the Indians from their ancient 
 hunting-grounds. 
 
IV NATIONAL ERA: POETRY 141 
 
 But as the New England arbutus nestles at the 
 base of granite rocks, so from among the massive, 
 blank- verse reveries comes now and then the fragrance 
 of a dainty lyric. With little fancy and less humor, 
 Bryant could yet be spirited, as in the Song of Marion s 
 Men, playful, as in Robert of Lincoln, and exquisitely 
 tender, as in June. To a Waterfowl is distinguished 
 by a peculiar uplift. The sunset so vividly pict 
 ured, the solitary flight of the bird through " desert 
 and illimitable air," and the tranquil faith of the no 
 less isolated beholder unite in a rarely imaginative 
 appeal. But, in general, Bryant s self-repression and 
 narrow range are to his disadvantage as an artist. Only 
 when he stands in " Nature s loneliness " is he richly 
 poetic. " He is original," says Emerson, " because he 
 is sincere, a true painter of the face of the country 
 and of the sentiment of his own people. It is his proper 
 praise that he first, and he only, made known to man 
 kind our northern landscape, its summer splendor, 
 its autumn russet, its winter lights and glooms." Now 
 at last New England scenery enters literature. Notwith 
 standing a certain monotony in Bryant s nature poems, 
 and a preference for broad effects, his detail is true. 
 From boyhood he had known " the yellow violet s 
 modest bell," "gay circles of anemones," 
 
 " The little wind-flower, whose just opened eye 
 Is blue as the spring heaven it gazes at," 
 
 the gentian, 
 
142 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 "that, in the breeze, 
 Nods lonely, of her beauteous race the last," 
 
 " every moss-cup of the rock," 
 
 " and all the flowers 
 
 That tuft the woodland floor, or overarch 
 The streamlet." 
 
 Before he had studied Greek, he was versed in " the 
 gossip of swallows" and the "mellow descant" of the 
 woodthrush. He sang the circle of the year from the 
 " sparkling frost-work " to the " golden lights," but his 
 autumnal spirit was most at home in the "colored 
 shades" of October or in that enchanted season of 
 Indian summer, 
 
 " When the sound of dropping nuts is heard, though all the trees 
 
 are still, 
 And twinkle in the smoky light the waters of the rill." 
 
 His personal loves and sorrows were blended with the 
 consciousness of out-of-door phenomena. His " fairest 
 of the rural maids " is likened in her several charms to 
 sylvan springs and herbs, to winds and shadows. His 
 sister perished "with the flowers." Human as he was 
 on the side turned toward daily life, in the poet there 
 abode something lonely and majestic, something ele 
 mental. 
 
 II. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, also of " Mayflower " 
 descent, was more gently and more liberally nurtured. 
 His mother, the daughter and sister of Revolutionary 
 heroes, was a delicate, sweet-souled woman, and hi^ 
 father, a leading lawyer of Portland, Maine, was noted 
 
~v 
 
 
 
 AA/ 
 
 Reproduced by permission of Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 
 Publishers of Longfellow s Works. 
 
IV NATIONAL ERA: POETRY 143 
 
 for courtesy as well as public spirit. In the " beautiful 
 town " of the poet s birth, with its " breezy dome of 
 groves" and "sheen of the far-surrounding seas," there 
 passed upon his boyhood the ocean-spell, the " longings 
 wild and vain " stirred by 
 
 " the black wharves and the slips 
 
 And the sea-tides tossing free ; 
 And the Spanish sailors with bearded lips 
 And the beauty and mystery of the ships 
 
 And the magic of the sea." 
 
 At home he read the English classics, although Irving s 
 Sketch-Book was his first literary fascination. Soon the 
 blue-eyed, rosy-cheeked boy, who began, at thirteen, to 
 print his verses, over the signature of Henry, in the poet s 
 corner of the Portland Gazette, had developed into the 
 winsome young collegian, studious, a trifle fastidious, but 
 genial as sunshine. Bowdoin College was his Alma 
 Mater. The class of 1825 numbered some thirty-eight 
 young men, including Pierce, the future President, 
 Abbott, the future historian, and Hawthorne. Long 
 fellow, graduated at eighteen, stood fourth in rank. His 
 Commencement oration, limited to seven minutes, had 
 for subject Our Native Writers. His own turn for 
 literature, attested not only by college exercises, but by 
 a few magazine poems after the model of Bryant, secured 
 him the appointment to a new chair of modern languages 
 at Bowdoin. After a year of rest and reading at home 
 and three years of study abroad, chiefly in the countries 
 of southern Europe, he took up the cares of his profes- 
 
144 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 sion, marrying, shortly after, the daughter of a Portland 
 neighbor. During this peaceful apprenticeship at Bow- 
 doin, the youthful professor, who had ceased to write 
 verses, published his first original volume, Outre-Mer, in 
 plan and style resembling the Sketch-Book, though more 
 blithely boyish in sentiment. After five years of resi 
 dence in Brunswick, Longfellow was invited to succeed 
 Professor Ticknor, at Harvard, as Smith Professor of 
 Modern Languages, and again he sailed for Europe, this 
 time with the intention of studying the northern tongues. 
 At Rotterdam sorrow waited him. There his young wife 
 suffered and died. " He bowed his head, and would fain 
 have been bound up in the same sheaf with the sweet blue 
 flower." In his grief and yearning, German romanticism, 
 with its tenderness, its dreaminess, its fulness of feeling, 
 laid strong hold upon him. Hyperion, a prose transcript 
 of his emotions during that year of lonely wandering, is 
 a clearer, softer echo of Richter. And now the poetic 
 fountains, dumb for nearly a decade, were at last un 
 sealed. Longfellow s thirtieth birthday found him duly 
 installed in Washington s chamber of the Craigie House 
 at Cambridge, writing Voices of the Night. Thenceforth 
 his career was distinctively that of a poet. A rambling 
 romance of New England village life, Kavanagh, was his 
 farewell to prose. He held his Harvard chair for nearly 
 twenty years, retiring before he was fifty. Tragedy 
 touched his later life in the death by fire, before his eyes, 
 of the second Mrs. Longfellow, a Boston lady whom the 
 poet had wooed through his Hyperion. As Bryant after 
 
IV NATIONAL ERA: POETRY 145 
 
 the death of his wife sought relief in Homeric trans 
 lations, so Longfellow strove to forget himself in a 
 metrical rendering, scholarly and sensitive, of Dante s 
 Divina Commedia. He had from his student days a 
 peculiar ease in translation, and, to the end, his succes 
 sive volumes abounded in versions of foreign lyrics, but 
 it was his original poetry that crowned him with honor 
 abroad, and at home with such affection as has blessed 
 few singers of the earth. The Voices of the Night, issued 
 in his thirty-third year, breathed a purity and nobility of 
 spirit that gave it household welcome the country over. 
 A Psalm of Life, The Light of Stars, Footsteps of Angels, 
 clothed with a fresh benignant beauty the human pain 
 and struggle. A second volume, two years later, con 
 firmed his fame. Such ballads as The Skeleton in 
 Armor and The Wreck of the Hesperus did not go beg 
 ging for plaudits. The antislavery poems of the follow 
 ing year, subdued though they seem beside Whittier s 
 passionate protests, have Longfellow s own pleasant, 
 flexible movement and earnest sympathy. The Spanish 
 Student, a well-devised drama, was succeeded by an 
 artistic group of lyrics, including The Belfry of Bruges 
 and The Norman Baron. The foreign flavor of Long 
 fellow s poetry sweetened the American air. This Har 
 vard professor was unconsciously a great forerunner 
 of university extension. He was becoming the poetic 
 schoolmaster of the land, not only winning it to the 
 love of song, but accustoming his Puritan-bred, utilitarian 
 audience to the richer lights in which Europe views the 
 
146 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 human spectacle. In Evangeline, Hiawatha, and The 
 Courtship of Miles Standish Longfellow chose American 
 themes, but he used a classical measure for the pathetic 
 tale of Acadie and the half-humorous Plymouth tradition, 
 while he borrowed the Finnish epic-verse for his wildwood 
 Indian legend. In the Tales of the Wayside Inn he 
 built, as a rule, with foreign timber. Meanwhile his 
 lyrics, garnered in an occasional volume, kept the sweet 
 old charm, a charm compounded of gracious feeling and 
 delicate taste. Songs of family loves and losses, of Cam 
 bridge friendships, of memories of youth alternated with 
 snatches of Saxon and Icelandic story. Rabbinical tale 
 and mediaeval legend mingled with strains of our Civil 
 War. But loyal as the public remained to his lighter 
 verse, the long-planned, threefold tragedy of Christus 
 aroused, apart from The Golden Legend, but little enthu 
 siasm, while his Judas Maccabczus and Masque of Pan 
 dora, diverse experiments in drama, pleased his readers 
 less than the wedding revery entitled The Hanging of the 
 Crane. The fiftieth anniversary of the class of 1825 
 called forth the twilight notes of Morituri Salutamus, 
 but before the darkness fell, there were yet seven years 
 of music. White-haired, tranquil, with a stately gentle 
 ness of mien and an unwearied courtesy in greeting all 
 sorts and conditions of guests, still the poet sent forth from 
 the beautiful study of the Craigie House booklet after 
 booklet. In Keramos the aged pilgrim, resting after 
 many journeys, dreamed again of alien lands and races, 
 lulled in his trance by the drowsy song of the Potter : 
 
IV NATIONAL ERA: POETRY 147 
 
 " Turn, turn, my wheel ! All life is brief; 
 What now is bud will soon be leaf, 
 What now is leaf will soon decay." 
 
 Ultima Thule reflected the chastened glory of old age 
 as truly, as attractively, as Voices of the Night had mir 
 rored the restless heart of youth. Once more from the 
 little volume entitled In the Harbor, printed after the 
 poet s death, the tuneful, familiar notes were floated back, 
 while Michael Angelo gravely closed the dramas. 
 
 "The White Mr. Longfellow," as Bjornson called him, 
 is the surprise of honey in the old lion of Puritanism. 
 "Out of the strong came forth sweetness." A professor 
 in his library, among many books in many tongues, he 
 was, nevertheless, a poet of stories and feelings, so simple 
 that the little children love him. It may be true that his 
 imagination was moderate, his fancy sometimes forced 
 and artificial, his passion decorously pent within the 
 meek New England limits of trust and resignation. Not 
 withstanding his far range of subject, critics have styled 
 him the Poet of the Commonplace. It is no mean title. 
 To lift the commonplace into the bright air of poetry 
 is to confer one of the richest of boons on duR humanity. 
 As Bryant sublimed our thought of nature, so Longfellow 
 hallowed our human life itself. 
 
 III. James Russell Lowell, who succeeded Longfellow 
 in the chair of Modern Languages at Harvard, is often 
 accounted our leading man of letters. His critical 
 essays, his public addresses, his poetical satires, his odes 
 and other lyrics, wide as is the range they cover, do 
 
148 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 not exhaust the list of his services. In proportion as he 
 quickened the national consciousness and purified the 
 national ideal, he furthered American literature by enrich 
 ing American life. Of his direct contribution, only the 
 poetry will be considered in the present chapter. 
 
 He was the scion of a prosperous and scholarly line. 
 A thriving manufacturing town of Massachusetts and a 
 free lectureship of Boston bear the family name in honor 
 of two of the poet s progenitors. But he was proud 
 est of the ancestor who, in 1820, drafted the slavery- 
 abolishing clause in the Constitution of the old Bay State. 
 
 The son of an upright and learned clergyman and of a 
 Scotch-descended, ballad-loving mother, with a library 
 of some four thousand well-selected volumes for his boyish 
 browsing, a graduate of Harvard, a reluctant law-student, 
 and a lawyer whose desk was strewn with verses, he was, 
 in a sense, committed to culture from his cradle. His 
 youth had been blithe with aspirations, chiefly, though not 
 wholly, after poetic fame. " Here I am in my garret," 
 he wrote in later life, from Elmwood. " I slept here 
 when I was a little curly-headed boy, and used to see 
 visions between me and the ceiling, and dream the so 
 often recurring dream of having the earth put into my 
 hand like an orange." 
 
 But when Lowell came to manhood, the air of New 
 England tingled with the antislavery reform, and the 
 young poet, with ready ardor, following the beck of the 
 lady whom he loved, flung himself into the fray, and took 
 the blows of battle. The spear of Poe marked him for a 
 
IV NATIONAL ERA: POETRY 149 
 
 flashing thrust : " Mr. Lowell is one of the most rabid of 
 the Abolition fanatics ; and no Southerner who does not 
 wish to be insulted, and at the same time revolted by a 
 bigotry the most absolutely blind and deaf, should ever 
 touch a volume by this author. His fanaticism about slav 
 ery is a mere local outbreak of the same innate wrong- 
 headedness which, if he owned slaves, would manifest 
 itself in atrocious ill-treatment of them, with murder of 
 any abolitionist who should endeavor to set them free. 
 A fanatic of Mr. L. s species is simply a fanatic for the 
 sake of fanaticism, and must be a fanatic in whatever cir 
 cumstance you place him." 
 
 There was a grain of truth in this. Lowell was poeti 
 cal, but, even more, he was ethical. The fairest vision 
 could not withhold him when there was a call for valor 
 to the fore. At the outset, he cherished brave hopes of 
 uniting the functions of poet and reformer : " My 
 calling is clear to me. I am never lifted up to any peak 
 of vision and moments of almost fearless illumination 
 I have sometimes but that, when I look down in hope 
 to see some valley of the Beautiful Mountains, I behold 
 nothing but blackened ruins ; and the moans of the 
 down-trodden, the world over but chiefly here in our 
 own land come up to my ear, instead of the happy songs 
 of the husbandmen, reaping and binding the sheaves of 
 light ; yet these, too, I hear not seldom. Then I feel 
 how great is the office of poet, could I but even dare to 
 fill it. Then it seems as if my heart would break in 
 pouring out one glorious song that should be the gospel 
 
I5O AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 of Reform, full of consolation and strength to the op 
 pressed, yet falling gently and restoringly as dew on the 
 withered youth-flowers of the oppressor. That way my 
 madness lies, if any." 
 
 At twenty-two, Lowell published a little volume of 
 verses, and at twenty-five, in the year of his marriage, a 
 second. The following year came a voice from the 
 student in Conversations on Some of the Old Poets. 
 Three years later appeared a third volume of verse and, 
 in the same year, The Vision of Sir Launfal, written 
 within the compass of forty-eight happy hours. Still on 
 the hither side of thirty, Lowell discharged that quiver 
 ful of arrows, the Fable for Critics, and during the 
 Mexican War there sprang, one by one, from the indig 
 nant soul of the satirist, the Biglow Papers. Here, at 
 last, he was speaking in full voice as poet-reformer. But 
 the era of prose was at hand. At thirty-two, Lowell 
 first visited Europe and, on returning, delivered a course 
 of lectures on English poetry before the Lowell Institute. 
 At thirty-six, after two years more of European study, he 
 took the Harvard chair which Longfellow had resigned. 
 To the cares of his professorship, he added the editor 
 ship of the Atlantic Monthly and, later, of the North 
 American Review. Culling his best essays from these 
 and other periodicals, he gradually gathered them into 
 volumes, Fireside Travels, Among My Books, and My 
 Study Windows. But poet and reformer were not 
 wholly merged in the professor, the editor, the man of 
 culture. The second series of Biglow Papers, and the 
 
iv NATIONAL ERA: POETRY 151 
 
 Harvard Commemoration Ode glow with patriot passion. 
 At fifty, another volume of collected poems, Under the 
 Willows, was issued, and a year later, The Cathedral. 
 Lowell was abroad for two years in these honored fifties, 
 and at fifty-eight entered into the public service of 
 his country as Minister to Spain. He was transferred 
 in 1880 to England, where he represented his native 
 land with unprecedented geniality and grace. Recalled 
 by Cleveland, Lowell printed four volumes of essays and 
 addresses, and, when hard on seventy, a little book of 
 poems, Heartsease and Rue. The scant verses of the 
 last three years were published together after his death. 
 
 Lowell s earlier poems, fluent and pure-hearted, show 
 no trace of his characteristic humor, nor, indeed, much 
 individuality of any kind. Unconscious echoes of 
 Keats, of Hood, of Shelley, haunt their cadences, and the 
 Tennysonian flavor is unmistakable. Lowell s first ap 
 pearance as a satirist and wit astonished the reviewers, 
 and Poe, with no intention of being amusing, magisteri 
 ally remarked that the author of the Fable for Critics 
 " could not do a better thing than to take the advice of 
 those who mean him well, in spite of his fanaticism, and 
 leave prose, with satiric verse, to those who are better 
 able to manage them, while he contents himself with that 
 class of poetry for which, and for which alone, he seems 
 to have an especial vocation the poetry of sentiment." 
 
 It was something of a shock to Lowell himself to find 
 his Biglow Papers captivating that public which his 
 softer strains had failed to move. And yet here and 
 
152 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 there a lyric had fallen from his pen to which the 
 heart of the people had throbbed response, as My 
 Love, A Requiem, The Changeling, She Came and Went. 
 And now and then he had succeeded in flinging his 
 ethical enthusiasm into forceful song, most notably in 
 The Present Crisis. Sir Launfal found large audience. 
 Lowell made June dearer to New England. He felt 
 divinity in every bud. To him nature was fair not only 
 in itself, but as something " for the gladness of heaven to 
 shine through." The Fable for Critics remains, for all 
 its rattling fun, a marvel of sagacity. While Lowell was 
 a baby at Elmwood, Cooper was putting pen to his first 
 story, Irving had just published the Sketch-Book, Bryant 
 was a grave young lawyer, with Thanatopsis two years 
 old in print, Emerson was a dreamy student at Harvard, 
 Hawthorne, in preparation for Bowdoin, was writing 
 Latin exercises, Whittier was a barefoot boy, feeding his 
 father s kine, Holmes and Longfellow were bright little 
 lads, the well-nurtured sons of cultivated households, and 
 Poe, at school in Great Britain, was a lonely and way 
 ward child. On these immediate contemporaries Lowell, 
 in half-frolicsome, half-earnest mood, passed keen judg 
 ments almost invariably verified by time. He even 
 recognized his own peril, how ill the artist in him was 
 likely to fare at the hands of the moral enthusiast : 
 
 " His lyre has some chords that would ring pretty well, 
 But he d rather by half make a drum of the shell, 
 And rattle away till he s old as Methusalem, 
 At the head of a march to the last new Jerusalem." 
 
iv NATIONAL ERA: POETRY 153 
 
 The first series of The Biglow Papers voiced the pro 
 test of the American conscience against the Mexican 
 War. The war went on, but Lowell had well begun a 
 political satire unsurpassed in the English language for 
 its blending of kindly wit and noble wrath. He had, 
 furthermore, made the Yankee nasals sing, and revealed 
 the sound, straight pith of the gnarly New England 
 character. The second series, called forth by the Civil 
 War, mingled the old humor with a beauty and pathos to 
 which the uncouth dialect seemed no more a hindrance 
 than the Scotch of Burns. The Harvard Commemora 
 tion Ode was the solemn chant of triumph after strife, 
 a chant broken with sobs, but rising to " a peal of exulta 
 tion." In Under the Willows the lifeworn poet, twice 
 made a widower and thrice bereaved of children, strove 
 to sing, as in youth, the jocund joys of June, but the 
 famous lyrics of that volume, The First Snowfall, After 
 the Burial, The Dead House, were costly with heart 
 break. The Cathedral, marred as it is by Lowell s 
 cardinal faults of carelessness, discursiveness, and fre 
 quent lapses in taste, pays the debt of thousands of 
 American pilgrims in magnificent praise of the mediae 
 val minster and in the resultant musings on Him 
 who recognizes worship in " the climbing instinct." 
 This ode makes it evident, however, that the artist had 
 grown presumptuous. He had not schooled his powers. 
 The world of talk and action had been too strong for 
 him. He had refused to give his life for poetry, but the 
 summits of art may be won by nothing less. Hence 
 
154 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 Lowell s achievement in verse, for all its occasional 
 splendor, remains irregular and incomplete. When he 
 ceased to be young, he ceased to be primarily a poet. 
 To the end his heart had " song-birds in it," but their 
 flight was ever rarer and less high. 
 
 IV. Oliver Wendell Holmes stands third in the trio of 
 Cambridge scholar-poets. Longfellow s prose is of slight 
 value, but it is a question whether Lowell s essays are 
 not more precious than his poems. About the relative 
 merit of Holmes s prose and verse there is no question at 
 all. Sorry as we should be to lose the sparkling rhym- 
 ster, it is The Autocrat whom we positively could not 
 spare. The family tree of Holmes boasted the name of 
 Anne Bradstreet, who would doubtless have upset her 
 inkhorn in dismay to foresee the poetic levity of her 
 great-great-great-great-grandson. Holmes s father, a Cam 
 bridge clergyman of antiquarian tastes, came of a sturdy 
 Connecticut stock. The poet s mother, brightest and 
 most sociable of little women, was of Dutch descent. 
 Thus belonging, as his own wit phrased it, to " the Brah 
 min caste of New England " and born, at Cambridge, 
 within sight of the gilded dome of the Boston statehouse, 
 "the Hub of the solar system," the poet was bred as 
 became such privileges of race and residence. He went 
 to the Cambridgeport Academy, with Margaret Fuller 
 and the younger Richard Henry Dana. He frequented 
 the Athenaeum Picture Gallery and looked " through the 
 japanned fishhorns " at the masterpieces of Copley and 
 Stuart, Trumbull and Allston and West. At home he 
 
IV NATIONAL ERA: POETRY 155 
 
 " bumped about among books " in his father s library. 
 Prepared at Phillips Academy, Andover, Holmes entered 
 Harvard at sixteen. He was duly graduated with the 
 "Boys of 29," whose industrious laureate he presently 
 became. To Benjamin Pierce, renowned as mathema 
 tician and astronomer, and James Freeman Clarke, his 
 " dear Saint James," Holmes penned individual tributes, 
 while at one annual class-dinner after another his ready 
 flow of verse revived College memories, proclaimed class 
 glories, tenderly lamented the dead, and merrily hailed 
 the living, as, for example, his reverend fellow-poet, 
 
 " a nice youngster of excellent pith, 
 Fate tried to conceal him by naming him Smith ; 
 But he shouted a song for the brave and the free, 
 Just read on his medal, My country, of thee ! " 
 
 Holmes had tried his hand at verse while still a boy 
 at Phillips. At Harvard he won undergraduate renown 
 by his waggish contributions to The Collegian. He first 
 came fairly before the public with a ringing lyric, Old 
 Ironsides, printed in the Boston Advertiser the year after 
 his graduation. This impetuous song preserved the fa 
 mous frigate " Constitution " for half a century more. 
 The young poet was then flirting with the law, but jilted 
 it for medicine. After several years of study in Boston 
 and Paris, he took his degree from the Harvard Medical 
 School. In this same year, 1836, he published a thin 
 volume of verse, containing, with other lyrics of less note, 
 The September Gale, My Aunt, and The Last Leaf. This 
 third poem is rich in that tenderest pathos where the smile 
 
156 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 and the tear come together, but the most of Holmes s 
 verses were so jocund that he used to claim they hurt 
 his career as a physician. 
 
 " Besides my prospects don t you know that people won t 
 
 employ 
 
 A man that wrongs his manliness by laughing like a boy? 
 And suspect the azure blossom that unfolds upon a shoot, 
 As if wisdom s old potato could not flourish at its root?" 
 
 The dangerously gay young doctor, who had announced 
 that the smallest fevers would be gratefully received, gave 
 up his practice to take the chair of anatomy and physi 
 ology at Dartmouth, but after two years at Hanover, 
 Boston drew him back. He married and made his 
 home in the pleasant Puritan city from which he was 
 to stray no more. In 1848 he joined the faculty of 
 the Harvard Medical School, occupying, he liked to 
 say, not a chair, but a whole settee. That institution 
 has largely increased its corps of instruction since Holmes 
 first brought it his brilliant services, but, as he roguishly 
 remarked, " it is not always the insect with the most legs 
 that goes the fastest." Here for thirty-five years he pur 
 sued his chosen subject with high distinction, while in 
 the lecture-room the sprightly, clever little gentleman 
 was the delight of a generation of trooping classes. Not 
 until he had exceeded by three years the allotted term 
 of human life did he withdraw from the active duties of 
 his professorship. Yet he lived on to the age of eighty- 
 five, lived on after friends and classmates, after Bryant, 
 Longfellow, Emerson, Lowell, Whittier, after his be- 
 
IV NATIONAL ERA: POETRY 157 
 
 loved wife, only daughter, and the younger of his two 
 sons. 
 
 " Lonely, how lonely ! is the snowy peak ! " 
 
 But the last leaf on the tree kept its dancing motion to 
 the end. The affections of the people centred about 
 their kindly mirth-maker all the more closely as the rev 
 erend brotherhood of New England poets grew less and 
 less. He was feasted by his publishers and by the medi 
 cal profession, he was welcomed and honored across the 
 water, his birthdays were greeted with ever warmer con 
 gratulations from far and near, and, when the news of his 
 death went abroad, it was like the tolling of a bell. With 
 him an era of our literature had passed away. 
 
 Until 1857 Holmes had been known as a humorous 
 poet. His prose consisted of medical treatises. He 
 was in demand as a Lyceum lecturer on the modest 
 terms, as stated by himself, of " fifteen dollars and 
 expenses, a room with a fire in it, in a public house, 
 and a mattress to sleep on, not a feather-bed." But 
 with the establishment of the Atlantic Monthly the 
 versatile Doctor blossomed out into a prose classic. 
 The Autocrat at the Breakfast Table, The Professor at 
 the Breakfast Table, The Poet at the Breakfast Table, 
 Over the Tea- Cups, stood for a fresh force in letters. 
 The discussion of these, as of Holmes s novels, Elsie 
 Venner, The Guardian Angel, A Mortal Antipathy, 
 comes later, but it was in those Atlantic serials that 
 some of his best poems first appeared, the delectable 
 
 . - - 
 
158 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 One-Hoss Shay, for example, and that high-thoughted 
 lyric, best beloved by its author, The Chambered Nau 
 tilus. Laughter is so good a gift to mortals that we 
 instinctively associate Holmes with such twinkling ab 
 surdities as The Height of the Ridiculous and The 
 Broomstick Train, but Dorothy Q. } The Voiceless, 
 Union and Liberty, Grandmother s Story of Bunker 
 Hill Battle, show the diversity of his gifts. Yet such 
 golden grains are scattered scantily in much chaff. 
 Nearly half his verses were written for occasions, 
 dinners, fairs, funerals, anything under the sun that 
 meant a concourse of Americans. 
 
 " I m a florist in verse, and what would people say 
 If I came to a banquet without my bouquet?" 
 
 Writing so often with the success of the hour in view 
 emphasized Holmes tendency to be neat, telling, effec 
 tive, at the expense of finer values. He was old fash 
 ioned, too, in his poetic tastes, liking so well the " strong 
 heroic line " of Dryden and Pope that the " staid foot 
 steps" of his "square-toed song" never deigned to 
 learn the lighter measures of modern lyric verse. His 
 poems are, as a whole, autobiographic in flavor, per 
 sonal, almost confidential, recitations still inseparable 
 from the memory of the reciter, from the nimble, 
 fragile little figure, the old face bright under the snowy 
 hair with the unextinguished zest for life, the winning 
 appeal of smile and voice, the frolic and the pathos that 
 radiated from him and swayed great audiences in sym 
 pathetic waves. " A fellow of infinite jest " though he 
 

 Reproduced by permission of Houghton, Mifflin Si Co., 
 Publishers of Whittier s Works. 
 
IV NATIONAL ERA: POETRY 159 
 
 was, it behooved his hearers to have their handkerchiefs 
 out. 
 
 V. John Greenleaf Whittier. In this Quaker laureate 
 of Puritan New England, this man of peace who fanned 
 the flames of war, this singer with the fresh voice of a 
 Burns and the holy heart of a George Herbert, we 
 have to face certain contradictions, not the least of 
 which is that a Quaker should be a poet at all. It is a 
 silent sect. America is fortunate in that two of its de- 
 voutest members here, Woolman and Whittier, have been 
 moved to utterance. Whittier stands apart from the 
 Harvard professors, as he stands apart from the Concord 
 philosophers. His ancestry, his rearing, his tempera 
 ment, are unique in our poetic annals. 
 
 The Whittier immigrant, English born, is said to have 
 been of Huguenot descent. He was something of a giant, 
 as giants go, and, even when Indian troubles were thick 
 est, sufficed for his own defence in the log-cabin on the 
 Merrimac. Of peaceful disposition, he appears to have 
 been well inclined toward George Fox, but not himself a 
 member of the new Society of Friends. Of his ten chil 
 dren, Joseph, the youngest, married a Quaker wife and 
 retained the Haverhill homestead. His descendants ad 
 hered to the Society. Of his nine children, Joseph, 
 again the youngest, married a Sarah Greenleaf, also of 
 Huguenot origin. Of their eleven children, John, the 
 father of our poet, won a bride from an eminent Quaker 
 family of northern New Hampshire, and remained on the 
 ancestral farm. Whittier, then, was born to an inheri- 
 
I6O AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 tance of the purest religious feeling. When his faith in 
 God and his love for man bade him range himself beside 
 the champions of the slave, in that militant line with 
 Garrison and Phillips and Sumner, the Huguenot and 
 Quaker blood in his veins must have throbbed re 
 sponse. 
 
 " Where now with pain thou treadest, trod 
 The whitest of the saints of God ! 
 To show thee where their feet were set, 
 The light which led them shineth yet." 
 
 Bred as he was amid the fair river scenery beloved of 
 his fathers, and on acres which their spades had broken, 
 his youth was passed in a simplicity and stillness like 
 that of the meetings of the Friends. His best school 
 ing was the out-of-door life of a poor farmer s son. No 
 barefoot boy knew more 
 
 " Of the wild bee s morning chase, 
 Of the wild-flower s time and place, 
 Flight of fowl and habitude 
 Of the tenants of the wood." 
 
 Whittier has pictured for us in his exquisite idyl, 
 Snowbound, the sequestered farm-house and quiet family 
 
 circle, 
 
 "The dear home-faces whereupon 
 That fitful firelight paled and shone." 
 
 Even so lonely, so walled in from the wisdom of the 
 world to hearth-side lore of Indians and witches, wood 
 craft and Quaker saints, was that pure boyhood of his. 
 When the harvesting was well over, he would make the 
 
IV NATIONAL ERA: POETRY l6l 
 
 most of the winter term of the district school. For 
 books he had the Bible and a few Journals of exemplary 
 Friends, and at fourteen a precious volume of Burns 
 came into his hands. It fared ill that day with the 
 mowing. A few years later he visited Boston, in home 
 spun coat and broadbrim, and brought back Shakes 
 peare s plays. His own early verses were crude enough, 
 but his mother and sisters cherished the stiff " pieces " 
 on William Penn, Benevolence, and The Exile s Depart 
 ure, metrical exercises which, after the seven cows were 
 milked, the rough-handed lad would laboriously write 
 out on foolscap. His elder sister, 
 
 " Impulsive, earnest, prompt to act 
 And make the generous thought a fact," 
 
 sent the last-mentioned, signed "W.," to young Garri 
 son s new weekly, the Newburyport Free Press. It was 
 a glorious moment when the poet of nineteen, mending 
 a stone wall with his father, looked up as the postman 
 passed on horseback, caught the newspaper tossed over 
 to him, and opened it to see his own verses glittering in 
 print. A second poem was sent and published. The 
 vigorous young editor drove fourteen miles to call upon 
 the shy ploughboy and urge him to obtain an education. 
 Quaker distrust of culture and the habitual lack of money 
 stood in the way, but the women overcame the father s 
 scruples, and Greenleaf, as he was called at home, or 
 Uncle Toby, as his schoolmates nicknamed him, earned, 
 by cobbling and teaching, his fees for two terms at the 
 Haverhill Academy. This was the extent of Whittier s 
 
 M 
 
1 62 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 schooling. He had gained some local repute as a 
 writer, however, and maintained himself for a few years 
 by journalism in Boston, Haverhill, and Hartford. But 
 in 1831, the year in which Whittier issued a little volume 
 of sketches in prose and verse, Garrison established The 
 Liberator, and the passionate young Quaker, sacrificing 
 political ambitions and literary dreams to the rude labor 
 of reform, threw himself heart and soul into the un 
 popular cause of Abolition. 
 
 " Better than self-indulgent years 
 The outflung heart of youth, 
 Than pleasant songs in idle ears 
 The tumult of the truth." 
 
 There was certainly no lack of tumult. Garrison was 
 mobbed in Boston. Whittier was stoned in Concord, 
 New Hampshire, and pelted with rotten eggs in New- 
 buryport. In Philadelphia, where he tried to edit an 
 antislavery paper, Pennsylvania Hall, containing his 
 office, was sacked and burned by rioters. But much 
 as his Haverhill fellow-citizens disliked his views on the 
 negro question, they twice sent him to the Massachusetts 
 Legislature, while, as for his poetic genius, the ardor of 
 
 strife, 
 
 " Making his rustic reed of song 
 A weapon in the war with wrong," 
 
 touched his lips with fire. He served Liberty as truly 
 as did Milton, but at no such heavy cost. Inspired 
 by generous anger, Whittier wrote as he had never 
 written before. The Voices of Freedom sounded in 
 
IV NATIONAL ERA: POETRY 163 
 
 antislavery journals from 1833 to 1848. Many of the 
 stirring lyrics are eloquence rather than poetry, the 
 trumpet-calls of a sentinel 
 
 " Watching on the hills of Faith, 
 Listening what the spirit saith 
 Of the dim-seen light afar, 
 Growing like a nearing star." 
 
 The blood-red cloud through which that star had yet 
 to break confused sadly the ideals of this stormy son of 
 peace. After all, he was of the Friends, and might not 
 resist evil, after the tragic fashion of John Brown, with 
 violence. " It is not a Christian weapon," wrote the puz 
 zled Quaker poet, after gazing on one of the pikes used 
 in that desperate raid. Whittier had scathing rebuke for 
 Webster and ringing praise for Barbara Frietchie, but 
 he would not, though his heart was hot within him, 
 sing the heroism of young Colonel Shaw, whom St. 
 Gaudens has immortalized in bronze, lest his words " give 
 a new impetus to the war." Gail Hamilton stitched 
 her mischievous comment on his attitude into a pair 
 of slippers, which he liked to show, with a humorous 
 look, to his friends. On each slipper was embroidered 
 a bristling American eagle, with blazing eyes, and claws 
 full of thunderbolts, all worked in peaceful drab. 
 
 When the bursting of the war-cloud set Whittier 
 free from polemics, he found himself at leisure to write 
 more fully than before along the pastoral and narrative 
 lines native to his genius. Although he persisted to the 
 end in turning the cold Quaker shoulder to art, avoid- 
 
164 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 ing music and designating statues as "graven images/ 
 he learned to polish and enrich his poetry until in the 
 later work there was little occasion to apologize for 
 "the harshness of an untaught ear." At his best, he 
 is an irresistible balladist, a delightful painter of the 
 rustic scenery and village manners that he knew so 
 well, and our most intimate interpreter of the religious 
 life. The figures of his melodious tales are old-time 
 Quakers persecuted for their witness, a young Puritan 
 mother, a poor Indian deacon, hard-fortuned maidens 
 like the witch s daughter and the Papist drudge, a plain 
 man who did his duty, like Abraham Davenport, or a 
 modest philanthropist, like Dr. Howe, heroes not 
 chosen from the gay ranks of chivalry and lists of 
 fame, but from garret and prison and farm-house. The 
 virtue dearest to Whittier was pity. The deeds he 
 loved best to commemorate were deeds of mercy. 
 In nature, too, he found, not that lonely majesty, that 
 austere grandeur which Bryant knew, but unfailing 
 cheer and comfort. 
 
 " I lean my heart against the day 
 
 To feel its bland caressing; 
 I will not let it pass away 
 
 Before it leaves its blessing." 
 
 Whittier was a true observer, in simple, farm-boy 
 fashion. The day had not come when poets must be 
 scientists, but the day had gone when a Connecticut 
 bard could write of " Philomel high percht upon a 
 thorn." The birds that sing through Whittier s vol- 
 
IV NATIONAL ERA: POETRY 165 
 
 ume are oriole and veery, "the crested bluejay," "the 
 blackbird in the corn," the robins in the orchard, the 
 night-thrush calling to prayer. Well-nigh perfect are 
 his pictures of characteristic New England scenes, 
 the little school-house among the sumach and blackberry 
 vines, the straggling riverside street of the "stranded 
 village," the grass-grown burying-ground within its 
 " winding wall of mossy stone," 
 
 " And the old swallow-haunted barns 
 Brown-gabled, long, and full of seams 
 Through which the moted sunlight streams, 
 And winds blow freshly in, to shake 
 
 The red plumes of the roosted cocks, 
 And the loose haymow s scented locks." 
 
 Yet, in a way, Whittier idealizes nature. "The Van- 
 ishers " are there. The "golden-tissued weather" is 
 hushed with angel presences. " Sunset still is miracle." 
 Everywhere is the hint of divine hope, the trace of 
 divine love. 
 
 Whittier s religion was, indeed, the soul of his genius. 
 His sternest denunciations of wrong sprang from his 
 passion for goodness, and goodness, as the Quaker 
 poet apprehended it, was love. Puritanism, reared on 
 the Hebrew Scriptures, might emphasize the law, but 
 the Inner Light witnessed to the Gospel. 
 
 " Ye see the curse which overbroods 
 
 A world of pain and loss; 
 I hear our Lord s beatitudes 
 And prayer upon the cross." 
 
1 66 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 Pure of bigotry, he praised the life of love, the life of 
 self-denial, wherever he beheld it, whether in a Chan- 
 ning, a Tauler, or a Chalkley Hall. The generosity of 
 Whittier s elegies equals their tenderness. All disciples 
 of Christ were of the poet s church. 
 
 " Our Friend, our Brother, and our Lord, 
 
 What may thy service be? 
 Nor name, nor form, nor ritual word, 
 But simply following thee." 
 
 All problems that disquieted him, the fate of " the 
 innumerable dead," the choice of evil, the loss of the 
 beloved, he referred to the " star-crowned " angel, Hope. 
 Wistfully as he dwelt on the footsteps of the Nazarene, 
 he found Palestine in Massachusetts. 
 
 " The heavens are glassed in Merrimac, 
 What more could Jordan render back? " 
 
 The later years of the poet s life were surrounded by 
 the silence of deafness, but he dwelt simply and happily, 
 among those who loved him, in his pleasant home at 
 Amesbury, still giving forth ballads and nature lyrics, 
 but singing most often and ever more sweetly 
 
 " The patience of immortal love 
 Outwearying mortal sin." 
 
 VI. Ralph Waldo Emerson. So far our New Eng 
 land poets, dear though they are to us, stand by general 
 consent below the second rank of song. Not only has 
 America not known a Homer, a Dante, a Shakespeare, 
 but the choir of contemporary Europe has outvoiced 
 
IV NATIONAL ERA: POETRY l6/ 
 
 her. Bryant is less than Wordsworth, Longfellow does 
 not equal the greatest of his German models, Holmes 
 flashes of fun and feeling, the flame of Lowell, the 
 hearthfire glow of Whittier, pale before the names of 
 Goethe, Hugo, Shelley, Keats, Tennyson, Browning. 
 In Emerson, however, we have, if not an acknow 
 ledged master, yet a poet whose lyricism is so strange 
 and rare as to defy the critics. They can com 
 pare him to nobody, measure him by nothing, and are 
 sometimes driven by sheer perplexity to pronounce him 
 not a poet at all. They accuse him, justly enough, of 
 abstract themes, irregular rhymes and rhythms, bewil 
 dering passages and unearthly ecstasies, a passion too 
 " thin-piercing." Yet many readers find a unique and 
 unwithering charm in his ethereal notes. It seems to 
 such that here, as nowhere else in American poetry, may 
 be felt the thrill of a spiritual secret, a whisper from 
 
 beyond. 
 
 " Sometimes the airy synod bends, 
 And the mighty choir descends, 
 And the brains of men thenceforth, 
 In crowded and in still resorts, 
 Teem with unwonted thoughts. 
 ****** 
 Beauty of a richer vein, 
 Graces of a subtler strain, 
 Unto men these moonmen lend, 
 And our shrinking sky extend." 
 
 The story of Emerson s life is bare of outward 
 romance. He was born in Boston, " within a lutestring 
 of the birthplace of Benjamin Franklin." The first 
 
1 68 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 American Emerson had been a baker, but he fathered 
 a line of preachers. One of these built the famous Old 
 Manse of Concord, where he was living, a fearless young 
 patriot, at the time of the British raid, and whence he 
 went forth, never to return, for service as chaplain in the 
 Revolutionary army. He had literary tastes, which re 
 appeared in his son, the Rev. William Emerson, whom 
 the opening of the century found established as pastor 
 of the First Church in Boston, although his longing was for 
 a church without a creed. " Five rosy boys " adorned 
 the modest parsonage, but the father s premature death 
 brought upon their youth privations and hardships, 
 which, though gallantly borne, were too heavy for con 
 stitutions naturally frail. Edward and Charles, the 
 " strong, star- bright companions " of Ralph Waldo s 
 early years, gave promise hardly less brilliant than his 
 own. It was a wonderful trio. 
 
 " We had eaten fairy fruit, 
 We were quick from head to foot, 
 All the forms we looked on shone 
 As with diamond dews thereon." 
 
 But both Edward and Charles died of consumption be 
 fore reaching the age of thirty, leaving for the survivor 
 a lasting shadow of loss upon the Concord meadows 
 where the lads had kept their "Carnival of Time" 
 together. 
 
 " I touch this flower of silken leaf, 
 
 Which once our childhood knew; 
 Its soft leaves wound me with a grief 
 Whose balsam never grew." 
 
iv NATIONAL ERA: POETRY 169 
 
 Each brother in turn taught school to help the next 
 younger through college. The years at Harvard which 
 William, the eldest and most careworn, thus made possi 
 ble for Waldo were years in which Emerson s indepen 
 dence of thought had already begun to manifest itself. 
 " He seemed," said an observer, " to dwell apart, as if in 
 a tower, from which he looked upon everything from a 
 loophole of his own." Graduated at eighteen, he made 
 trial, for some dozen years, of the trodden ways of the 
 world. He taught a little, preached a little, travelled a 
 little, but the rituals and the rewards of other men were 
 not for him. He withdrew from the ministry and 
 settled at Concord, hoping to make a modest livelihood 
 by writing and lecturing. " Steady, steady," he said. 
 " I am convinced that if a man will be a true scholar, 
 he shall have perfect freedom. . . . Society has no 
 bribe for me ; neither in politics, nor church, nor col 
 lege, nor city. My resources are far from exhausted. 
 If they will not hear me lecture, I shall have leisure for 
 my book, which wants me. Besides, it is a universal 
 maxim, worthy of g all acceptation, that a man may have 
 that allowance which he takes. Take your place and 
 the attitude to which you see your unquestionable right, 
 and all men acquiesce." 
 
 Of Emerson as Transcendental philosopher, proclaim 
 ing on scores of Lyceum platforms and publishing in 
 successive volumes of essays a mystic idealism that 
 made the elders doubt his sanity and the " nigh-starv 
 ing " youth of New England hang with rapturous devo- 
 
I7O AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 tion on his words, a later chapter treats. Emerson the 
 poet had the same message to give, but gave it in music, 
 often a broken music, to be sure, but at its best as 
 sweet and wild as the voices of the woodland which he 
 loved. Weary of the "gray dreams" of books, his 
 library was the sylvan country about Concord. 
 
 " Knowledge this man prizes best 
 Seems fantastic to the rest; 
 Pondering shadows, colors, clouds, 
 Grass-buds and caterpillar shrouds, 
 Boughs on which the wild bees settle, 
 Tints that spot the violet s petal, 
 Why Nature loves the number five, 
 And why the star-form she repeats : 
 Lover of all things alive, 
 Wonderer at all he meets, 
 Wonderer chiefly at himself, 
 Who can tell him what he is? 
 Or how meet in human elf 
 Coming and past eternities?" 
 
 How well Emerson knew the alphabet of Nature, her 
 flowers, trees, and birds, poems such as Each and All, 
 The Rhodora, The Humble-Bee, The Titmouse, The 
 Snow-Storm, April, May-Day, bear witness; but the 
 word which these fair letters fashioned for him was ever 
 God. Over this wildwood rambler 
 
 " soared the eternal sky 
 Full of light and of deity." 
 
 Swiftly appropriating the scientific revelation of the cen 
 tury, he loved to trace in thought all that miraculous way 
 from 
 
IV NATIONAL ERA: POETRY I /I 
 
 " the ancient periods 
 Which the brooding soul surveys, 
 Or ever the wild Time coined itself 
 Into calendar months and days," 
 
 on through the majestic aeons, while 
 
 " the world was built in order 
 And the atoms march in tune." 
 
 Dwelling thus face to face and heart to heart with Nature, 
 Emerson grew in gladness, serenity, and purity more akin 
 to her than to the tragic race of men. 
 
 " Whoso walks in solitude 
 And inhabiteth the wood, 
 Choosing light, wave, rock, and bird, 
 Before the money-loving herd, 
 Into that forester shall pass, 
 From these companions, power and grace. 
 Clean shall he be, without, within, 
 From the old adhering sin." 
 
 Hardship, sorrow, and, at last, mental disease did their 
 best to bend and break him to the mortal mood ; but 
 still he walked erect. He took his poverty blithely, even 
 proudly. 
 
 " God fills the scrip and canister, 
 Sin piles the loaded board." 
 
 The deaths of his brothers, of the bride of his youth, 
 and, above all, of his little Waldo, his " Morning Star," 
 shook but could not shatter Emerson s noble joy in the 
 gift of life. "Thou must mount for love," he had writ 
 ten. So he bore his wounds for healing to that large, 
 pure ether where he breathed most naturally. " In the 
 
1/2 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 actual world the painful kingdom of time and place 
 dwell care and canker and fear. With thought, with the 
 ideal, is immortal hilarity, the rose of joy ; round it all 
 the Muses sing ; but grief cleaves to names and persons, 
 and the partial interests of to-day and yesterday." 
 
 Not even the slow decay of his faculties marred the 
 old man s gentle dignity, and the goal was met as tran 
 quilly as the path had been pursued. 
 
 " When frail Nature can no more, 
 Then the Spirit strikes the hour : 
 My servant Death, with solving rite, 
 Pours finite into infinite." 
 
 " Turn the key and bolt the door, 
 Sweet is death forevermore." 
 
 Perhaps the prime value of Emerson s poetry for young 
 readers is the elevation of spirit it imparts. His concep 
 tion of the poet s art and mission, as set forth in the two 
 parts of Merlin, in Bacchus and Saadi, may baffle unac 
 customed students, who may also fail to apprehend the 
 full thought-burden of The Sphinx, The Problem, Uriel, 
 Woodnotes, Monadnoc, Brahma, the Ode to Beauty, the 
 three-fold poem on Love. The autobiographical lyrics, 
 especially the impassioned beauty of the Threnody and 
 the pathetic sweetness of the Dirge, are more acces 
 sible, but after the nature poems and after such patriotic 
 contributions to public festivals as the Concord Hymn, 
 Emerson is most readily approached through such 
 quatrains, chance lines and fragments as flash out upon 
 
IV NATIONAL ERA: POETRY 
 
 the individual seeker. He longed for a grander gen 
 eration, 
 
 " men of mould, 
 Well embodied, well ensouled," 
 
 yet even as we are Emerson thought nobly of humanity, 
 for he had faith in the divine energy that enters 
 
 " Into all our human plight, 
 The soul s pilgrimage and flight; 
 In city or in solitude, 
 Step by step, lifts bad to good, 
 Without halting, without rest, 
 Lifting Better up to Best." 
 
 VII. Other New England Poets. Although her patri 
 archs of song have fallen, New England is not yet without 
 a minstrel. In THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH she possesses an 
 
 " Enamored architect of airy rhyme." 
 
 A native of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, the delightful 
 " Rivermouth " of Tom Bailey s Bad Boyhood, he became 
 at sixteen clerk in a New York business house. A poet 
 born, he soon broke away from the counting-room to take 
 such successive chances as offered in proof-correction, 
 manuscript-reading, and journalism. Taylor, Stoddard, 
 and Stedman had gathered about them a little circle of 
 enthusiasts, in whose happy atmosphere the lyric genius 
 of Aldrich swiftly came to blossom. These Bohemian 
 years were his poetic springtide, sweet with a delicate 
 and tender music. 
 
 " A man should live in a garret aloof, 
 
 And have few friends, and go poorly clad, 
 
1/4 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 With an old hat stopping the chink in the roof, 
 To keep the Goddess constant and glad. 
 
 Wretched enough was I sometimes, 
 
 Pinched, and harassed with vain desires; 
 
 But thicker than clover sprung the rhymes 
 As I dwelt like a sparrow among the spires." 
 
 Fame was not long in finding him. His youthful Bal 
 lad of Babie Bell made the public cry, which always 
 pleases the public mightily, and in process of time his 
 prose Story of a Bad Boy and Marjorie Daw made the 
 public laugh, which answers quite as well. Lovers of 
 poetry looked askance on his three so-called novels, 
 idyllic tales of New England village life, Prudence Pal 
 frey, The Queen of Sheba, The Stillwater Tragedy, for, 
 pleasant reading though they are, they are not worth 
 their cost in lyrics. Yet Aldrich has at no time aban 
 doned his master-craft of " wondersmith," and volumes 
 daintily entitled Cloth of Gold, flower and Thorn, early 
 placed him in the front rank of living American poets. 
 In 1865 he became a resident of Boston, where for sev 
 eral years he edited Every Saturday, a would-be modern 
 Spectator, that failed for lack of popular support. He 
 afterwards succeeded Howells in the charge of the 
 Atlantic Monthly, retiring after nine years of distin 
 guished service to keep thenceforth an unbroken tryst 
 with the Muses. 
 
 Aldrich s fancy haunts the far East. From youth he 
 has loved to dream of clustered palms, sandalwood and 
 
iv NATIONAL ERA: POETRY 1^5 
 
 citron, rich bazaars, mandolin and dulcimer, gold and 
 porphyry, "dusk Sultanas," and 
 
 " the woes 
 Of women shut in dim seraglios." 
 
 Yet however voluptuous the theme, such is the poet s 
 New England purity that the exquisitely cut and polished 
 verses are 
 
 " Wine-red jewels that seem to hold 
 Fire, but only burn with cold." 
 
 He is almost as mellifluous, almost as light of touch, 
 almost as deft and rare and sparkling, as his chosen 
 leader in lyricism, Robert Herrick, and without Herrick s 
 offences. Both are at their best when at their briefest. 
 Aldrich has essayed, with no slight measure of success, 
 the minor epic and the poetic drama. His themes for 
 the former are drawn from Judaic legend and Eliza 
 bethan romance, for the latter from Spanish story and 
 saint-lore of the mediaeval church. But it is his lyrics, 
 his "cockle shells of rhyme," that bid fair to keep afloat 
 the longest. 
 
 Aldrich is sometimes called artificial, a trifler in verse, 
 a voice without a message. It is true that he has, what 
 our elder New England poets too often lacked, the 
 artistic conscience, suffering not a couplet to escape 
 until it has been filed to the last refinement of phrase 
 and harmony; true that he seems to hold the aesthetic 
 attitude toward life, distilling from pain, loss, death, the 
 ghastly and the horrible a honeydew of beauty ; true that 
 
AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 he seldom thrills us with a high-resounding strain. The 
 man of the world is much in evidence, with his fastidious 
 taste and piquant turns of speech, his after-dinner flavor 
 of wine and wit and surface cynicism. Loitering on the 
 slopes of Parnassus, Aldrich has plucked the spicy laurels 
 of society verse. All this puts him in line with the ma 
 jority of our present painters, sculptors, architects, in 
 whom the rigorous devotion to technique is more ap 
 parent than the control of great conviction or idea. It 
 marks him as the son of our latter-day New England, 
 where Puritanism no longer traces 
 
 " a path 
 
 As bleached as moonlight, with the shadow of leaves 
 Stamped black upon it." 
 
 Born too late for the absolute faith of the forefathers, 
 the raptures of the Transcendentalists, Aldrich has not 
 found a crusade to sing. Yet the heroic note occasion 
 ally leaps forth. Memories of the war, 
 
 "The sorrowful, splendid Past, 
 With its glory and its woe," 
 
 still strike from him the passionate lament, the cry of 
 nobler longing. 
 
 The spiritual element missed in Aldrich forms the 
 central value of the poetry of EDWARD ROWLAND SILL. 
 Though born in Connecticut and a graduate of Yale, 
 his career as professor of English Literature in the Uni 
 versity of California has tended to associate his memory 
 with the Pacific coast. His death was untimely, but 
 
IV NATIONAL ERA: POETRY 
 
 the imprint of that soul " serene and clear " remains 
 upon the two little volumes which hold his collected 
 poems. The high-thoughted Venus of Milo and sweet- 
 hearted Field Notes have many lovers, while The FooPs 
 Prayer is known throughout the land. His lyric titles 
 are in themselves suggestive of the earnest tenor of his 
 verse, Life, Faith, Opportunity, The Invisible, Peace, 
 The Reformer, Service. Columbia, too, has a poetic 
 professor of New England origin in GEORGE E. WOOD- 
 BERRY, whose educational and editorial labors, admi 
 rably performed, leave him too little leisure for his art. 
 His threnody, The North Shore Watch, has elevation 
 and literary quality ; My Country attests an enthusiastic 
 patriotism ; but his songs are lighter- winged than ode or 
 elegy and, like the haunting cadences of his Anecdotes 
 of Siena, predict a popular favor not yet won. THOMAS 
 WILLIAM PARSONS, a Dante student of renown, he whom 
 a younger poet, Richard Hovey, styled our " hermit 
 thrush of singers," has a golden quality of tone, few 
 though his life- notes were. Any poet of English speech 
 might well be glad to have written, 
 
 " There is a city builded by no hand 
 
 And unapproachable by any shore, 
 And unassailable by any band 
 
 Of storming soldiery forevermore." 
 
 Precious, too, is the handful of sonnets bequeathed to 
 those "who live in the spirit" by JONES VERY, the poet 
 of the Transcendentalists. Although in him religious ex 
 hilaration may have passed at times the bounds of sanity, 
 
1/8 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 Emerson honored " our brave saint," and, while louder 
 voices are passing into silence, Very s mystic oracle still 
 holds an "audience fit, though few." Our singer of the 
 sea is CELIA THAXTER. From a lonely lighthouse on the 
 Isles of Shoals she learned, in girlhood, to love foaming 
 breaker and wheeling gull till it grew her vital need 
 
 " To feel the wind, sea-scented, on the cheek, 
 To catch the sound of dusky, flapping sail. " 
 
 Essential charm of womanhood, frank, generous, passion 
 ate, clings to the poems of HELEN HUNT JACKSON. The 
 daughter of an Amherst professor, she poured forth in 
 song the heart-break and the healing of her widowed 
 youth. The new interests of the new life that came to 
 her beneath the majestic beauty of the Rockies are 
 largely expressed in prose, in her burning pleas for the 
 Indian, A Century of Dishonor and Ramona. From 
 another Amherst woman, EMILY DICKINSON, an elfish re 
 cluse in her father s house and garden, have been wafted 
 to the world a few showers of sibylline leaves more curi 
 ous than anything else in our minor poetry. In de 
 mure and dashing strokes her letters vividly paint that 
 typical New England household, the father "pure and 
 terrible," who "never played," the mother who did not 
 " care for thought," but, as life went on, " achieved in 
 sweetness what she lost in strength," the brother and 
 sister, the pets and flowers, and Irish Maggie " warm and 
 wild and mighty." Safely cloistered in this environment, 
 the shy little poet loved no words so well as gallant and 
 
IV NATIONAL ERA: POETRY 1/9 
 
 martial and posed as roguish rebel against the traditional 
 solemnities of Puritanism. 
 
 " A smile suffused Jehovah s face; 
 
 The cherubim withdrew; 
 Grave saints stole out to look at me, 
 And showed their dimples, too. 
 
 " I left the place with all my might, 
 
 My prayer away I threw; 
 i The quiet ages picked it up, 
 
 And Judgment twinkled, too." 
 
 "The air s as free for a fly as for an eagle," and there 
 are still other musicians who have cheered the granite 
 hills. The gracious melodies of Lucy Larcom, the 
 pleasant balladry of Nora Perry, the tender, "hedge 
 row " songs of " Susan Coolidge," sweeten the wayside air. 
 John G. Saxe, whose vogue as a humorist in rhyme once 
 bade fair to rival that of Holmes, has had his day. In 
 place of The Proud Miss MacBride we now laugh over 
 the Leetle Yawcob Strauss of Charles Follen Adams. 
 The invasion from green Erin has brought its minstrels 
 with it. John Boyle O Reilly and James Jeffrey Roche, 
 patriots of two flags, have sent forth resonant strains, and 
 Louise Imogen Guiney, whose father fell in the Union 
 ranks, strikes her Keltic harp-strings with a fearless 
 buoyancy and force. 
 
 VIII. Edgar Allan Poe. Our poetic Pleiades had 
 its fallen star. Far apart from the tranquil cluster of 
 Bryant, Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes, Whittier, Emerson, 
 holding their shining courses in clear heavenly places, 
 
180 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 rose from the depths of shadow what Swinburne has 
 called " the short exquisite music, subtle and simple and 
 sombre and sweet, of Edgar Poe." 
 
 He came of a proud Maryland family. His grand 
 father was a Revolutionary patriot, honored by Lafayette. 
 There was doubtless fiery blood in the old general, who 
 disowned his eldest son for taking to the stage and 
 marrying a player. The rash young Southerner appears 
 to have made an indifferent actor, but his wife sustained 
 for three years an engagement as leading lady in the 
 Federal Street Theatre of Boston. In the Puritan city, 
 destined to be one of his pet aversions, the poet, their 
 second child, was born. Two years later, he was an 
 orphan and already an object of charity. Compassionate 
 families of Richmond, where his poor mother had died, 
 adopted Edgar and his baby sister, his elder brother 
 being sent to the grandfather s home in Baltimore. 
 
 Under the roof of a rich tobacco-merchant, Mr. John 
 Allan, Poe s childhood knew no want, unless it was the 
 all-important want of wise control. His foster-parents 
 were fond of the bright little lad, with his dark curls, 
 sweet voice, and flashing looks. He had his pony and 
 his dogs, his dancing-lessons, and, at dessert, his taste of 
 wine. When the boy was six, the Allans went abroad, 
 and for the next five years Edgar kept the terms in the 
 Manor House School, near London, his sensitive nature 
 retaining an indelible impression of all that made for 
 beauty and mystery in his new surroundings. "My 
 earliest recollections of a school life," he wrote in 
 
IV NATIONAL ERA: POETRY l8l 
 
 William Wilson, " are connected with a large, rambling 
 Elizabethan house, in a misty-looking village of England, 
 where were a vast number of gigantic and gnarled trees, 
 and where all the houses were excessively ancient. In 
 truth, it was a dream-like and spirit-soothing place, that 
 venerable old town. At this moment, in fancy, I feel the 
 refreshing chilliness of its deeply-shadowed avenues, 
 inhale the fragrance of its thousand shrubberies, and thrill 
 anew with undefinable delight at the deep hollow note of 
 the church-bell, breaking, each hour, with sullen and sud 
 den roar, upon the stillness of the dusky atmosphere in 
 which the fretted Gothic steeple lay imbedded, and asleep." 
 On his return to Richmond, Poe had grown to a 
 slight, graceful, active youth, of imperious temper, with 
 a store of dreamy, ideal passion which leapt into a white 
 flame of adoration for the mother of one of his school 
 mates. 
 
 " Lo ! in yon brilliant window niche, 
 
 How statue-like I see thee stand, 
 
 The agate lamp within thy hand ! 
 
 Ah, Psyche, from the regions which 
 
 Are Holy Land ! " 
 
 After a few months of gracious friendship, the lady 
 died, and night after night, in autumn wind and rain, the 
 boy of fifteen paid lingering visits to her grave, perhaps 
 in those strange vigils giving his poetic genius its peculiar 
 bent, for, ever after, the suggestion of a beautiful 
 woman s untimely death thrilled the most impassioned 
 chord of his being. 
 
1 82 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 The story of Poe s manhood is brief and broken. A 
 year at the University of Virginia ended with honors in 
 Latin and French and with gambling debts to the amount 
 of twenty-five hundred dollars. From the counting-room 
 in which Mr. Allan then placed him, Poe broke away 
 and enlisted, under a false name, in the United States 
 regular army. That summer the young private, on duty 
 at Fort Independence in Boston harbor, published anony 
 mously Tamerlane, a booklet of ten poems. These are 
 crude and feverish, with hints in measure and diction of 
 Shelley, Moore, and even Wordsworth, but in their pre 
 vailing tone out-Byroning Byron, praising 
 
 " The heirdom of a kingly mind 
 And a proud spirit, which hath striven 
 Triumphantly with human kind," 
 
 and bewailing the fate of a passionate youth 
 
 " in his own fire 
 Wither d and blasted." 
 
 His army record was creditable, and Mr. Allan, whose 
 wife had meanwhile died, relented so far as to procure 
 for him a cadetship in West Point. Poe was more inter 
 ested in bringing out a revised edition of his poems, add 
 ing Al Aaraaf, a confusion of English echoes in which 
 the Coleridge note is clear, and after a few months at the 
 Military Academy, he grew restive and rebellious. Dis 
 missed in disgrace, penniless, with Mr. Allan s favor lost 
 beyond retrieve, Poe made his home in Baltimore with 
 his father s widowed sister, Mrs. Clemm, marrying her 
 daughter Virginia, a child of thirteen summers. 
 
IV NATIONAL ERA: POETRY 183 
 
 " It was many and many a year ago, 
 
 In a kingdom by the sea, 
 That a maiden there lived whom you may know 
 
 By the name of Annabel Lee ; 
 And this maiden she lived with no other thought 
 
 Than to love and be loved by me." 
 
 He entered now in earnest upon the struggle for a 
 livelihood. The unique excellence of his prose tales, 
 whose consideration belongs to a later chapter, gained 
 him his first foothold. He found in Richmond an edi 
 torial opening, where he evinced high powers, largely 
 thwarted by caprice, self-will, and his fatal inability to 
 resist the wine-cup. He drifted from Richmond to 
 New York, thence to Philadelphia and back again 
 to New York. At thirty-four, he was widely known in 
 America as an unequalled writer of short stories, a 
 keen, sometimes venomous critic, and an editor as ca 
 pable as he was irresponsible. At thirty-five The Raven 
 suddenly brought him into popular cry as a poet. But 
 for all his hard work, illustrious achievement, and estab 
 lished reputation, Poe continued wretchedly poor. The 
 blame must be laid at his own door, although the odds 
 of rearing and temperament were cruelly against him. 
 He had become addicted to the use of opium as well as 
 of liquor, his word could not be trusted, and his moods 
 were often arrogant and bitter. Like the restless spirit 
 of Paradise Lost, he roamed with sinister looks about 
 the literary Eden of Boston and Cambridge, his jealous 
 wrath especially directed against Longfellow, who with 
 characteristic gentleness ascribed the severity of Poe s 
 
1 84 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 criticisms to " the irritation of a sensitive nature chafed 
 by some indefinite sense of wrong." Another of the 
 " Frogpondians," Colonel Higginson, has written of 
 Poe s appearance : " I distinctly recall his face, with its 
 ample forehead, brilliant eyes, and narrowness of nose 
 and chin, an essentially ideal face, not noble, yet any 
 thing but coarse ; with the look of over-sensitiveness 
 which when uncontrolled may prove more debasing than 
 coarseness. It was a face to rivet one s attention in 
 any crowd, yet a face that no one would feel safe in 
 loving." 
 
 Poe seems, nevertheless, to have been tender with his 
 young wife, although he was so little able to provide for 
 her that, in her last illness, an appeal for charity was 
 made in their behalf through the public press. He sur 
 vived her but three years, years of alternating glooms 
 and frenzies, of criss-cross courtships, deeper dissipations, 
 and fitful reforms. He died at forty in a Baltimore 
 hospital from the effects of a debauch. 
 
 Poe s European fame, especially in France and Italy, 
 outstrips that of every other American poet. 
 
 " None sing so wildly well 
 As the angel Israfel." 
 
 His artistic influence, transmitted through his French 
 translator and enthusiastic disciple, Charles Baudelaire, 
 a closely kindred spirit, is potent to-day in France and 
 Belgium over the symbolists, while in England Swin 
 burne is of his following. Yet Poe was the channel, 
 not the fountain, of the new poetic current. It flowed 
 
IV NATIONAL ERA: POETRY 185 
 
 to him through Coleridge from the great romantic re 
 vival of a century ago. From the stress laid by romanti 
 cism on beauty and emotion sprang this new poetry, 
 a passionate lyricism knowing no law but the beautiful. 
 It admits no point of contact with science or with ethics. 
 It merely strives to convey, by musical impression and 
 dim, music-born images, a burden of feeling. Cole 
 ridge s Kubla Khan communicates a dreamy ecstasy, 
 Poe s Ulalume his favorite mood of " remorseful passion 
 for the irrecoverable dead." To inquire what these 
 poems of liquid title-sound may mean is quite beyond 
 the mark. They have little to do with meanings. 
 Poe, who denned poetry as " the rhythmic creation of 
 the beautiful," declared : " Music is the perfection of 
 the soul or the idea of poetry ; the vagueness of exalta 
 tion aroused by a sweet air (which should be indefinite 
 and never too strongly suggestive) is precisely what we 
 should aim at in poetry." In point of fact, however, the 
 clear-cut precision of Poe s own mind made, as a rule, 
 the intellectual bearings of his lyrics plain. 
 
 It should be added, in justice to a forgotten bard of 
 Georgia, that Poe seems to have taken the hint for his 
 characteristic manner, or, at least, borrowed many of his 
 best effects, from Dr. Thomas Holley Chivers, in whose 
 " snatches of sweet unsustained song," Poe confessed to 
 finding " an indefinite charm of sentiment and melody." 
 The themes of death and despair, the sad and resonant 
 refrains, as " nevermore," mellifluous names suggestive 
 of some unearthly grace, as " Israfel " and " Isadore " 
 
1 86 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 this last becoming with Poe " Lenore," subtly inter 
 woven rhythms, sonorous rhymes that beat and beat 
 again upon the ear, the repetitions and parallelisms born 
 of excited feeling, are lyrical devices all to be found in 
 Chivers before they appeared in Poe, but the hand that 
 feebly tuned the strings yielded place to a hand that 
 swept them with the master-touch. 
 
 IX. Other Southern Poets. The poetry of the South, 
 of the 
 
 " land of balm and bloom, 
 Blandest airs and sweet perfume, 
 Where the jasmine s golden stars 
 Glimmer soft through emerald bars, 
 And the fragrant orange flowers 
 Fall to earth in silver showers," 
 
 shows as a whole the tendency, preeminent in Poe, to 
 accentuate the elements of music and emotion. The 
 silvery cadences of Father Ryan, rendering mournful 
 homage to The Conquered Banner, or attuned to Mass 
 and altar bell, are so dulcet as to cloy. The Lost 
 Cause had no lack of laureates, the bugles of the Gray 
 answering note for note the bugles of the Blue. The 
 war-poems of Mrs. Preston, northern-born, the adopted 
 daughter of Virginia, are antiphonal with the war-poems 
 of Mrs. Dorr, southern-born, the adopted daughter of 
 Vermont. But even apart from the passion of strife, 
 the poetic impulse of the South has consistently shown 
 itself lyrical, save in so far as the dramatic sketches and 
 narrative poems of Hayne constitute an exception. 
 The ante-bellum bards, Edward Coate Pinkney of Mary- 
 
IV NATIONAL ERA: POETRY l8/ 
 
 land, Richard Henry Wilde of Georgia, Philip Pendle- 
 ton Cooke of Virginia, belong to the blithe fellowship 
 of troubadours, and the latest voice from the Old 
 Dominion, that crisp-syllabled voice of Father Tabb, is 
 loyal to lyric tradition. 
 
 But so sad have been the fortunes of the South that 
 her poetic genius has found as yet only an imperfect 
 utterance. The storm of the Rebellion, with the winter 
 of want and woe that followed, stifled many a bird- 
 note. It was fitting that a southern-born poet, Christo 
 pher Pearse C ranch, whom Virginia yielded up to 
 Cambridge and to Transcendentalism, should word a 
 lament for Broken Wings. 
 
 " Ah yes, due fame for all who have achieved ; 
 
 And yet a thought for those who died too young 
 Their green fruit dropped their visions half conceived 
 Their lays unsung ! " 
 
 Men whom the battle spared had still to stand "grim 
 encounters with starvation." Upon the three chief poets 
 of the South, since Poe, the sorrows of the ruined Con 
 federacy pressed with crushing force. PAUL HAMIL 
 TON HAYNE, a gentleman of South Carolina, his house 
 burned in the bombardment of Charleston, his library 
 scattered, his store of family silver lost, started life 
 anew, with enfeebled health, in a shanty among the 
 Georgia pines. Overcoming a thousand obstacles, the 
 faithful poet " beat his music out," but apart from 
 the trumpet tone of his war-songs, it was a music in the 
 minor key. Nature, home -loves, and his art consoled him 
 
1 88 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 for many losses. HENRY TIMROD, like Hayne a native of 
 Charleston, was, like Hayne, in his early prime when 
 " the blood-red flower of war " poisoned his hopes. 
 His business and belongings vanished in the burning 
 of Columbia, as Sherman marched to the sea, and 
 the fugitive lyrist, with his wife and sister, knew the 
 extremities of anxiety, toil, and need. His health gave 
 way, and he died at thirty-seven. His thin volume 
 has many lovers ; for if his muse is in less degree than 
 
 Hayne s 
 
 " A serious angel, with entranced eyes 
 
 Looking to far-off and celestial things," 
 
 she has a rosier flush of human beauty. 
 
 SIDNEY LANIER, bravest of the brave trio, had such 
 force of genius and of will as to turn his tragedy into 
 triumph. A Georgian by birth, he was a youth of 
 nineteen, fresh from his college course, when, at the 
 first call, he sprang to arms. Cheering his comrades 
 by his magical flute-playing, he fought gayly on, through 
 the darkening years, until, almost at the end, the 
 fortunes of war flung him into Point Lookout prison. 
 Tabb tasted with him those sorry hospitalities. When 
 Lanier, foot-sore, exhausted, with fatal disease fastened 
 upon his lungs, but with his precious flute tucked up 
 the shabby gray sleeve, came home again, he had 
 more need than ever of his soldier s courage. He 
 taught, served as hotel clerk, and tempted fortune, 
 which resisted the temptation, with a transcript of 
 his young experiences, Tiger Lilies. This boyish 
 
Reproduced from the fine steel plate in "The 
 Library of American Literature," by permission 
 of the publisher, William Evarts Benjamin. 
 
iv NATIONAL ERA: POETRY 189 
 
 romance shows, like Longfellow s Hyperion, the close 
 influence of Richter. Disordered as it appears, it is full 
 of all that went to the poetic making of Lanier, the 
 woods, the war, music, and love. A blissful mar 
 riage and the joy of children helped him endure the 
 law, which he studied and practised with his father, 
 striving for several years to effect some compromise 
 between that and his art. But the certainty, sealed by 
 the ever-recurring cough and hemorrhage, that his 
 time was short, nerved him to the resolve to live, while 
 live he could, in the service of music and of poetry. 
 An engagement as first flute for the Peabody symphony 
 concerts in Baltimore, the editing of old hero-tales, 
 lectures, magazine sketches and poems, kept the pot 
 on the hearth boiling and the fire on the altar burning 
 until, at last, two years before his death, Lanier was 
 called to a lectureship on English literature at Johns 
 Hopkins. His daring studies in the Science of English 
 Verse and the English Novel attest his rare fitness 
 for this prize, hard-won and soon-relinquished. He 
 died of consumption at the age of thirty-nine. 
 
 Lanier s theory of verse is in accord with Poe s. 
 Beauty and music are poetry s all in all. 
 
 " Music is Love in search of a word," 
 
 and lyricism is hardly more articulate. But Lanier 
 longed for the completest intellectual equipment for his 
 work. Poe, he said, " did not know enough." The 
 Baltimore flute-player was a born musician, walking in 
 
AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 an enveloping cloud of harmonies, having only to turn 
 aside from the noises of the world and listen to become 
 aware of an unceasing " holy song." He purposed 
 the creation of great symphonies written in a new 
 musical notation as eagerly as he planned for the crea 
 tion of great poems framed in accordance with new 
 laws of verse. What with his intricate endeavor to 
 bring his two arts into close technical relation, and 
 his thirst to compass all knowledge and acquire all 
 skill, he put away the day of actual performance even 
 farther than the struggle for bread had already thrust 
 it. The most liberal span of life would have been too 
 short for Sidney Lanier, and the life that he wrested 
 from disease and death was but a splendid fragment. 
 Yet his poems as they stand, in their swift surprises 
 of beauty, their secrets of sweet sound, their "Faith 
 that smiles immortally," rank close upon the best 
 achievements of American song. The Hymns of the 
 Marshes, The Symphony, The Revenge of Hamish, The 
 Stirrup- Cup, Resurrection, My Springs, A Ballad of Trees 
 and the Master, are worthy even of their poet s hope. 
 
 X. Poetry of the Middle States. The poetic product 
 of the Middle States is as heterogeneous as their origi 
 nal elements of population. The picturesque figures 
 of FITZ-GREENE HALLECK and JOSEPH RODMAN DRAKE 
 lead the line of Knickerbocker minstrels. The former 
 is remembered for his spirited Marco Bozzaris, the 
 latter for his blithe impromptu of The Culprit Fay, a 
 fanciful attempt to domesticate the fairies in the high- 
 
IV NATIONAL ERA: POETRY IQI 
 
 lands of the Hudson, and his enthusiastic address to 
 The American Flag. But their friendship, which dates 
 from 1813, when Halleck, a New Englander of twenty- 
 three, was seeking his fortune by way of a New York 
 business house, and Drake, five years his junior, a native 
 of the metropolis, had just entered upon the study of 
 the law, was a poem in itself. It began on a September 
 afternoon, when, on a trip down the harbor, Halleck 
 remarked, as they watched the skies clearing after a 
 shower, that it would be heaven to "lounge upon the 
 rainbow and read Tom Campbell," and Drake s impul 
 sive affection leapt forth to greet a kindred spirit. It 
 ended, in its visible aspect, on another September after 
 noon, seven years later, when Halleck, returning from 
 Drake s burial, said : " There will be less sunshine for 
 me hereafter, now that Joe is gone." Less poetry there 
 certainly was. During their seven years of fellowship, 
 they had written together the Croaker Papers, light- 
 hearted skits on local celebrities of the day, and Halleck, 
 stimulated by Drake s more ardent inspiration, had done 
 his best work, slight as that best now seems to be, in 
 satire and lyric. His elegiac tribute to Drake, touching 
 for its manly simplicity and sincerity, reached his own 
 high-water mark of poetry. 
 
 " Green be the turf above thee, 
 
 Friend of my better days ! 
 None knew thee but to love thee, 
 None named thee but to praise." 
 
 Halleck lived on for nearly half a century, a personage 
 
IQ2 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 in New York life, with which he became thoroughly 
 identified. Enjoying a snug business berth in the count 
 ing-room of John Jacob Astor and the highest considera 
 tion among men of letters, he developed into a 
 delightful dinner-guest. His robust, almost military 
 nature, with its spice of irony, may have felt out of 
 sympathy with the austere genius of Bryant, on the one 
 hand, and the sentimentality of Willis, on the other. 
 The poetic influence of Willis was great in the thirties 
 and earlier forties, and the New York Mirror, edited by 
 him in conjunction with Morris, fostered a fashionable 
 taste for the third-rate English poets Moore and Hood, 
 Leigh Hunt and Mrs. Hemans. 
 
 Bryant was too cold and Poe too egotistic for the 
 forming of literary coteries, but in the later forties, a 
 decade before the Atlantic Monthly had begun to bind 
 the Boston writers together, New York, too, could show 
 a group of poets. The nucleus here was another youth 
 ful friendship. BAYARD TAYLOR, a journalist from a 
 Quaker farm in Pennsylvania, and RICHARD HENRY STOD- 
 DARD, son of a Massachusetts sea-captain, and himself a 
 laborer in an iron foundry, dreamed the poet s dream 
 together 
 
 " in midnight streets 
 
 And haunted attics flattered by the chime 
 
 Of silver words." 
 
 Campbell s spell had snapped. Keats and Shelley 
 were the new-arisen stars. Stoddard claimed spiritual 
 kinship with the former, Taylor with the latter, and each 
 
IV NATIONAL ERA: POETRY 1 93 
 
 proceeded to echo the music of his chosen master-singer. 
 Shortly GEORGE HENRY BOKER, the son of an old and 
 wealthy Philadelphia family, was admitted as mate of 
 their " poetic spring." Surely this was a democratic 
 brotherhood, such as the spirit of song and the spirit of 
 liberty best love. The poor artisan looked with generous 
 admiration upon his dashing comrades. " I have seen 
 many poets in my time," he wrote long after, " but none 
 that fulfilled my ideal like the young Taylor and the 
 young Boker, who were handsome, manly fellows, with 
 mobile faces, alert eyes, and crowns of the clustering 
 ringlets that made the head of Byron so beautiful." In 
 the outcome, not one of that happy " trinity," as they 
 were dubbed by a contemporary magazine, has alto 
 gether failed nor altogether succeeded. Taylor, the most 
 ambitious of the three, swung through his showy career 
 with a daring energy that pitched " his tent on many a 
 distant field." In the service of New York newspapers, 
 mainly The Tribune, he became the pilgrim of the globe, 
 tramping through Europe, roughing it in California with 
 the Forty-niners, smoking his Persian pipe in. cross- 
 legged ease on a Damascus roof, sporting with a leopard 
 chained to a fig tree in fiery Ethiopia, riding a royal 
 elephant through Lucknow, looking in on Hong Kong 
 and the Loo-Choo Islands, shivering in Lapland, a 
 
 man 
 
 " Whose Arab face was tanned 
 
 By tropic sun and boreal frost; 
 So travelled there was scarce a land 
 
 Or people left him to exhaust." 
 o 
 
1 94 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 So great was the hold taken by his journeys on the 
 American imagination that fame and fortune flowed to 
 his feet. But the master of " towered Cedar-croft " was 
 still the terrible toiler. In addition to his travels, 
 his studies, his newspaper "copy," and his popular 
 lectures, for which there was a prodigious demand, he 
 published, in his working-tide of some thirty-five years, 
 more than as many volumes. The list includes twelve 
 entertaining books of travel, four indifferent novels of 
 New York and Pennsylvania life, an admirable trans 
 lation of Goethe s Faust, and twelve volumes of origi 
 nal poems. Of all this poetry a few lyrics, as Autum 
 nal Dreams, with its melodious yearning, the Song of 
 the Camp, with its fortunate conclusion, The Quaker 
 Widow, with its picture of quaint simplicity, and the 
 wildfire rush of the Bedouin Song, take strong hold on 
 immortality, but the epics and dramas which were to 
 have been the crowning achievement of his prime came 
 but heavily from the weary, over-worked pen. With all 
 its charm, his Norwegian idyl, Lars, lags far behind its 
 inevitable rival, Evangeline. 
 
 Taylor died at fifty-three, in Germany, at the outset 
 of his public service as United States Minister to the 
 Court of Berlin. The body was brought home for 
 burial, and Boker and Stoddard, meeting then to meet 
 no more, rode together in the long procession that at 
 tended the world-wanderer on his last journey. Boker 
 had given his young manhood to the study of Elizabethan 
 poetry and to the writing of dramas and sonnets, too 
 
IV NATIONAL ERA: POETRY 195 
 
 closely modelled after Shakespeare and his fellows, but 
 so spirited, so pliant, and so strong as to deserve more 
 attention than they have ever received. Some of these 
 dramas, whose themes are Spanish, English, and Italian, 
 were acted in London as well as here, but the stage 
 conditions were disheartening. "Theatricals are in a 
 fine state in this country," the young dramatist said 
 bitterly. " Every inducement is offered to me to burn 
 my plays as fast as I write them." The war turned 
 Boker s talents into a new channel. The important ser 
 vice which he rendered in the organization and conduct 
 of the Union League of Philadelphia was emphasized by 
 his martial lyrics, best represented by the familiar Dirge 
 for a Soldier. When peace was restored, this distin 
 guished and patriotic citizen, who maintained with care 
 his social position in Philadelphia s inmost circle, was 
 naturally singled out for public honors. He was sent as 
 United States Minister to Russia, where he evinced dip 
 lomatic ability of a high order. It is an honorable 
 record, and yet when Barrett, a quarter of a century 
 after Boker s plays had been mangled in our earlier 
 theatres, staged one of them, Francesco, da Rimini, with 
 eminent success, Boker wrote sadly of the difference such 
 recognition might have made in his life-work, had it 
 come when the poetic purpose of his youth was still 
 untamed. 
 
 Stoddard, who survives his youthful comrades, has 
 had no such stirring experiences, yet not the most bril 
 liant career could be more creditable than his. Passing 
 
196 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 by patient steps from the foundry to the custom-house, 
 the dock department, the public library, he arrived at 
 journalism, and has long been installed as literary editor 
 of the New York Mail and Express. Happily married 
 to a lady of kindred gifts, he has unswervingly cultivated 
 the art more precious than riches or applause. Al 
 though the lingering glow of Keats and of Tennyson, 
 whom the young workman loved, may be discerned here 
 and there, as in the graceful minstrelsy of The Kings 
 Sell, and the liquid measures of the Hymn to the Beau 
 tiful, Stoddard s verse has taken on more and more a 
 frank, half-homely quality, suggestive of the plain Ameri 
 can manhood it embodies. How truly this manhood, 
 for all its quiet self-control, thrills with the poet s pas 
 sion, is proved by such a noble lyric as Adsum. Yet 
 the white-haired minstrel, whom New York delights 
 to honor, does not forget, in his " golden flush of sun 
 set," the fearless flame of dawn. In his own far-echoing 
 
 lines, 
 
 " There are gains for all our losses, 
 
 There are balms for all our pain; 
 But when youth, the dream, departs, 
 It takes something from our hearts, 
 And it never comes again." 
 
 The three young poets had drawn others to them. 
 Thomas Buchanan Read, the landscape painter, whose 
 contribution to poetry is not confined to Sheridan s Ride 
 and Drifting, had been born in Taylor s county and cele 
 brated his exploits with brush and pen. Still another 
 
IV NATIONAL ERA: POETRY 1 97 
 
 Pennsylvania!!, Charles Godfrey Leland, a diffusive 
 genius, ranging from metaphysics to music, and from 
 industrial arts to gypsy lore, found a magnet in Boker, 
 for whom he had conceived a boyish admiration when 
 they were both undergraduates at Princeton. It was not 
 until the middle fifties, however, that the first of Leland s 
 humorous ballads in the German- American dialect gained 
 him the sobriquet of "Hans Breitmann." In the fifties, 
 too, Aldrich came into the group, to learn from Taylor 
 the longing for the East, and EDMUND CLARENCE STED- 
 MAN joined that goodly fellowship. His promise was 
 
 bright, but 
 
 " loving Beauty, and, by chance, 
 Too poor to make her all in all," 
 
 on his way to Parnassus he turned aside into Wall Street 
 for a few golden years and, losing his way there, tarried 
 over-long. To be America s most illustrious living critic 
 is worth while only for a man who could be nothing better. 
 Yet the impetuous sweep of his war-songs, his Kearney 
 at Seven Pines, Gettysburg, Wanted A Man, the play 
 ful grace of such a lyric as Toujours Amour or such a 
 strain of native balladry as The Doorstep, the deeper, 
 calmer force of The Undiscovered Country and Liberty 
 Enlightening the World, put us too far in Stedman s debt 
 for complaining. Scribner s Magazine, established in 
 1870, under the charge of Dr. J. G. Holland, whose 
 pleasant stories and rhymed romances were once much 
 in vogue, was seconded a decade later by The Century. 
 These magazines, with the Harper s, have made rallying- 
 
198 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 points for the New York poets, though in no exclusive or 
 inevitable sense. Through their attractive pages many a 
 modest lyrist, as Helen Gray Cone, with her valorous 
 sallies of song, and Sophie Jewett, with her firm and deli 
 cate art, her tenderness and spiritual vision, have been 
 brought before the public. The present editor of The 
 Century, RICHARD WATSON GILDER, a troubadour of purest 
 strain, is to-day the poetic chief of the city. But appar 
 ently no New Yorker can live for poetry alone. Gilder s 
 generous interest in tenement house reform is only one 
 phase of the metropolitan care for public concerns. The 
 great seaport is indomitable with its din of modern life. 
 It crushes Arcady beneath the globe. As Stedman sang 
 for Cuba and Crete, the Stock Exchange and the Gree- 
 ley Monument, so to open one of Gilder s later volumes 
 is to learn what passing player or musician has just stirred 
 the city s pulse, and what loss of bard or warrior this 
 hemisphere or the other is lamenting. Among the poet- 
 deaths this sensitive plate has pictured is that of Emma 
 Lazarus, whose sacred Hebrew fire was quenched too 
 
 soon. 
 
 "The silence where a bird hath ceased to sing" 
 
 is the memorial of H. C. Bunner, the blithe-toned editor 
 of Puck, but the new society verse, whose art he had 
 filched from the English Dobson, may be had in the 
 bazaar of Clinton Scollard, with whom, too, another 
 influence, the unexhausted Orient spell of Taylor, is yet 
 potent. 
 
 It is a far cry from all this sweet, dainty, and somewhat 
 


 
 
IV NATIONAL ERA: POETRY 199 
 
 irresolute music of Manhattan s present-day singers to 
 the "barbaric yawp" of WALT WHITMAN, a looming, 
 rugged figure still on trial before the court of critics. In 
 1855 there broke upon the world a sound that impressed 
 most hearers as a bestial bellow. 
 
 " Of physiology from top to toe I sing," 
 
 chanted this Apollo in shirt sleeves, and forthwith pro 
 ceeded so to do. The American public, so far as it 
 heeded him at all, was affronted, and with right good 
 reason. Hitherto its poets, Harvard professors, Concord 
 sages, graceful Southerners, polished Philadelphians and 
 New Yorkers, had written like the pure-hearted, cultivated 
 gentlemen they were, cherishing those chivalries and holy 
 privacies which are the slowly ripened fruit of civilization. 
 Even Poe, our imp of the perverse, threw only white and 
 tremulous lights about the name of love. An official 
 attempt was made to suppress Leaves of Grass as inde 
 cent, but Walt Whitman was not to be suppressed. 
 
 " Bearded, sunburnt, gray-neck d, forbidding, I have arrived." 
 
 Emerson and Thoreau were the foremost of his wel- 
 comers, rejoicing in the man s freshness and courage, 
 although protesting against the offensive element in his 
 early work, a taint from which the bulk of his poetry 
 is free. It turned out, on inquiry, that this " natural and 
 nonchalant person " was of Long Island birth and farmer 
 ancestry, a man of meagre schooling, who had knocked 
 about the world in a free-and-easy way, roaming through 
 the West and South, lingering in the great cities, trying 
 
2OO AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 his hand at teaching, gardening, printing, journalism, and 
 carpentry, and making up his mind to be a poet. 
 
 " I, now thirty-seven years old, in perfect health, begin, 
 Hoping to cease not till death." 
 
 His hope won fulfilment. Although that rich vitality 
 was so impaired by his arduous service as war-nurse 
 that the last twenty years of his life were those of a para 
 lytic, his tide of song rolled steadily on to the end. It 
 had gained high favor meanwhile with certain poetic 
 connoisseurs in Europe and America, but has still to win, 
 if win it can, the ear of the people, whose peculiar poet 
 Whitman claimed to be. 
 
 The first impression given by his book is that of coarse 
 and monstrous egotism, often grotesque in expression. 
 
 " I dote on myself, there is that lot of me and all so luscious." 
 
 On closer scrutiny, it comes to light that Whitman s 
 blatant "myself" is to be interpreted as "the sign of 
 democracy," that an egotism commensurate with his own 
 is enjoined upon us one and all. 
 
 " I celebrate myself, and sing myself, 
 And what I assume you shall assume, 
 For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you." 
 
 Even so, the beauty of braggadocio, as against the 
 beauty of modesty, is yet to be made apparent. It 
 develops further, that the corrective for this complacent 
 self-love lies in the love of comrades. 
 
 " I will sing the evangel-poem of comrades and of love." 
 
IV NATIONAL ERA: POETRY 2OI 
 
 There is something appropriate in this, in the promise 
 of a mighty song of comradeship to peal forth from the 
 great Babel, where hitherto the flame of poetry had been 
 able to live only as friendship shielded it, as Drake and 
 Halleck, or Taylor, Stoddard, and Boker bent over it 
 together. Walt Whitman s chosen comrades, however, 
 were not fellow-poets, but boat-men, stage-drivers, and 
 artisans. 
 
 " The young mechanic is closest to me he knows me pretty well." 
 
 Yet Whitman sometimes forsook his favorite loafing- 
 places of wharf and ferry to meet the literary Bohemians 
 of New York at Pfaffs beer cellar, where the keen old 
 Halleck is said to have remarked, "Walt ought to 
 write his poems seated on the back of an elephant." 
 
 Whitman s war experiences brought out the best of 
 him. In Drum-Taps there are to be found gleams of 
 pure imagination, throbs of sonorous music, and a tone 
 of noble passion, culminating (" O liquid and free and 
 tender ! ") in the marvellous Lincoln elegy, with its 
 triumphal chant to " sane and sacred death." But 
 this is his climax. He praised, like a lusty vaga 
 bond, the joys of sheer sensation, he felt, and to some 
 degree communicates, the emotions awakened by the 
 infinite picture-book of nature and of human life, but 
 in his own admission, " the physical and the sensuous " 
 had too strong hold upon him to admit of his interpret 
 ing the tragic forces of ethical law, or revealing the face 
 of spiritual beauty. Apart from the war, his attitude 
 
 
2O2 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 toward life is as cheerfully irresponsible as his attitude 
 toward art. His long, unrhymed lines, sometimes loose 
 and awkward, sometimes falling into measures of natural 
 grace and power, suggest the careless postures, now 
 majestic, now a sprawl, of the grand old gypsy himself. 
 But he loved the big show of America, he had faith in 
 the wholesomeness of common life and common folk, he 
 filled his day-dreams with tjie trooping figures of our 
 industrial pageant, he globed in our basal idea of 
 human brotherhood, his lower mood was crossed, more 
 and more, by waves of divine yearning, and he has left a 
 phenomenal record, not only of the aspect of a particular 
 epoch in democratic evolution, but of the impression 
 made by this strange, changeful world, this mortal pano 
 rama, on a mind reckless of traditions and conventions. 
 If, as Longfellow makes an enterprising publisher say in 
 Kavanagh, "we want a national literature altogether 
 shaggy and unshorn, that shall shake the earth like a 
 herd of buffaloes thundering over the prairies," we come 
 near getting it in Walt Whitman. 
 
 XL The Poetry of the West began in the Ohio valley. 
 Two sisters, ALICE and PHCEBE GARY, born near Cincin 
 nati in the early twenties, the elder strong of will and 
 warm of heart, the younger with a shyer and more saucy 
 vein, were reared in a typical little brown house, with 
 cherry-branches brushing the roof and a sweet-briar 
 climbing to the eaves. In girlhood they turned to verse- 
 making, much like the Goodale sisters in the Berkshires 
 a generation later; in womanhood they removed to 
 
IV NATIONAL ERA: POETRY 2O3 
 
 New York, where they won fame and friends in such 
 degree that their Sunday evening receptions became one 
 of the features of the city. Both carolled as simply as 
 the birds that gladdened their sweet-briar, but the verse 
 of the younger has the keener edge. Another poetic 
 partnership is that of MR. and MRS. PIATT, the husband 
 a native of Indiana, the wife of Kentucky. Mrs. Piatt, 
 more artistic than the Gary sisters, has not their secret 
 of touching the popular heart, although her poems for 
 children have the genuine mother-note. John J. Piatt 
 first came before the public with a little volume enti 
 tled Poems of Two Friends. His companion in the 
 venture was Howells, who soon deserted poetry for the 
 more profitable art of fiction. Piatt, on the other hand, 
 developed into a clear-toned singer, proud to commem 
 orate the heroic days of the prairie-land, when the cloud- 
 built cities of the sunset fronted the log-cabin in the 
 
 clearing, with their 
 
 " gorgeous prophecy 
 Lighting the doorway of the pioneer." 
 
 WILL CARLETON, of Michigan birth, also rhymes the strug 
 gles of the first settlers, recognizing with manly tender 
 ness the woman s share of the burden, but his frank, 
 effective verse is chiefly occupied with the plain life of 
 the plain present. His poetic form is a rude sort of 
 dramatic monologue. It is the heart-sore old farmer 
 himself who tells, in his honest fashion, how Betsey and 
 I are out. We listen to the forlorn old mother on her 
 way Over the Hill to the Poor-House. In Carleton s 
 
2O4 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 ballads we find the crude new West of county fair and 
 singing-school. The tragedies are of farm-work, mort 
 gage, and foreclosure. The actors, though they " never 
 swallowed a grammar," are brave, kindly, and pious, 
 with an unfailing sense of fun to help their hard lives 
 through. JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY, born in Indiana and 
 successively a sign-painter, strolling actor, journalist, and 
 public reader, writes in the Hoosier dialect of The Old 
 Swimmin -Hole, How John quit the Farm, and like 
 homely themes. He is a sympathetic singer of child 
 hood, although he falls short here of EUGENE FIELD. 
 This sweet-souled lyrist, a native of St. Louis and in his 
 later life a resident of Chicago, left in the ten volumes 
 of his collected works nothing so dear to West and East 
 as the simple stanzas of Little Boy Blue. EDITH THOMAS 
 of Ohio and MAURICE THOMPSON of Indiana are pre 
 eminently poets of nature. Well versed in books, and 
 often caged in cities, they are nevertheless natural tenants 
 of wood and field. 
 
 " He is a poet strong and true 
 Who loves wild thyme and honey-dew; 
 
 And like a brown bee works and sings 
 With morning freshness on his wings, 
 
 And a golden burden on his thighs, 
 The pollen-dust of centuries ! " 
 
 There is action in Thompson s lyrics. The white heron 
 is brought down by the arrow, the bass is landed at last, 
 we do not forget that this fair-weather loiterer has been 
 a man of war. His most listless postures have sinewy 
 
IV NATIONAL ERA: POETRY 
 
 suggestions. But the poems of Edith Thomas are bathed 
 in dream. She has " slept on the mountain of song." 
 Long-lost Elizabethan cadences are blown over the 
 rippling wheat and poppies into her Arcadian verse, 
 
 for 
 
 " The god of music dwelleth out of doors." 
 
 JOHN HAY of Indiana, our present Ambassador to Eng 
 land, has known more of camps and courts than of 
 sylvan solitudes. Admitted to the Illinois bar, he won 
 Lincoln s friendship, and followed him to the White 
 House in the capacity of private secretary. Hay re 
 linquished this task, after a little, for service in the field, 
 but was presently recalled to the President as aide-de 
 camp. Those years of close intercourse bore fruit, more 
 than twenty years after the assassination, in the great 
 biography of Lincoln issued by the two secretaries, Hay 
 and Nicolay. In the meanwhile, Hay was pursuing a 
 diplomatic career which has left its traces on his poems. 
 Paris he knew, Vienna and Madrid ; but, most of all, the 
 daily companion of Lincoln learned to know manliness. 
 " What we call vulgar society," said Emerson, " is that 
 society whose poetry is not yet written." Of nobler 
 strain, even, than Hay s Triumph of Order, more truly 
 pathetic than A Woman s Love, are his Pike County 
 Ballads, showing us heroes in Banty Tim, Old Ben the 
 stage-driver, and Jim Bludso, the Mississippi engineer, 
 whose "cussedness" saved every life but his own^on 
 board the " Prairie Belle." 
 
2O6 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 " He weren t no saint, but at jedgment 
 
 I d run my chance with Jim, 
 Longside of some pious gentlemen 
 That wouldn t shook hands with him. 
 
 He seen his duty, a dead-sure thing 
 
 And went for it thar and then ; 
 And Christ ain t a-going to be too hard 
 
 On a man that died for men." 
 
 The rougher West depicted in the Pike County Ballads 
 was brought with a rush into our literature by FRANCIS 
 BRET HARTE, to whom it fell to witness and portray the 
 wild life of the California gold-diggers. It was a fever 
 ish, wicked, dauntless moment of time, and Bret Harte, 
 a New York stripling plunging into all adventures that 
 offered, caught it in its splendid lights and sable shadows. 
 He found his fame with the true California suddenness, 
 as if he had picked up a nugget or "struck it rich." 
 His first mining story, The Luck of Roaring Camp, 
 could hardly get into the respectable pages of San 
 Francisco s brand-new magazine, the Overland, of which 
 Bret Harte himself was editor. Printer, proof-reader, 
 and publisher joined in protest. Once in type, it brought 
 the East, in shape of the Atlantic Monthly, to sit at his 
 feet and ask for more. The Outcasts of Poker Flat only 
 whetted the appetite for desperado romance, while The 
 Heathen Chinee and Truthful James convinced England 
 that the long-looked-for American poet had appeared at 
 last. If Bret Harte has not fulfilled expectation, he has 
 at least faithfully rung the changes on his original themes 
 
IV NATIONAL ERA: POETRY 2O? 
 
 and has added to his red-shirt poetry a group of stirring 
 war- songs. 
 
 The experience of JOAQUIN MILLER, a native of Indiana, 
 tallies with that of Bret Harte in the two respects of an 
 adventurous youth in canons and gold-fields, and an 
 exaggerated English estimate of his genius ; but the 
 " Poet of the Sierras " is no realist. Instead of phono- 
 graphing the slang of mining-camps, he gives voice 
 to that spirit of Spanish and Mexican romance which 
 haunts the Sun-lands. Though lauded by London for 
 originality, no American poet of equal rank is so bare 
 faced as he in theft of literary styles. He is a careless 
 craftsman, too, a rough rider both in the headlong 
 gallop of his Byronesque cantos and the swinging and 
 wheeling manoeuvres of his Swinburnian lyrics ; but he 
 has dash and color, abandon to nature and adoration of 
 beauty. 
 
 So from earnest North and wistful South, cities and 
 wheatlands, and, at last, from the rich Pacific slope, a 
 music rises, the prelude of America s new song among 
 the nations : 
 
 "The poets come who cannot fail; 
 Happy are they who sing thy perfect days ! " 
 
2O8 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 NATIONAL ERA: PROSE THOUGHT 
 
 " The true sovereigns of a country are those who determine its 
 mind, its mode of thinking, its tastes, its principles." WILLIAM 
 ELLERY CHANNING, Remarks on National Literature. 
 
 I. Criticism of Life. What is known as NEW ENGLAND 
 TRANSCENDENTALISM represents our first American period 
 of criticism of life. For upwards of two centuries cavalier 
 conventions had held sway in the South ; almost as long 
 the North had been bound by Puritan tradition. The 
 Revolution, our happy heresy in politics, had been fol 
 lowed by signs of social and religious revolt, but public 
 attention was generally absorbed by the new experiment 
 of an American republic, and not until 1830 or there 
 abouts were the times ripe, even in the long-settled East, 
 for a speculative outlook on life. Unitarianism had dis 
 arranged the old formulas of faith. Rev. Jonathan May- 
 hew of Boston, an eloquent patriot who died ten years 
 before the pealing of the Liberty Bell, was the Unitarian 
 pioneer in New England. Some twenty years after his 
 death, King s Chapel put forth a liturgy, drawn up by 
 Rev. James Freeman, from which all Trinitarian expres 
 sions were omitted. The long-muttering storm crashed 
 upon New England early in the present century. The 
 Trinitarians, led by Professor Woods and Professor Stuart 
 
v NATIONAL ERA: PROSE THOUGHT 2O9 
 
 of Andover, and by the redoubtable Lyman Beecher, 
 fought strongly for the faith of the fathers, but the Unita 
 rians, for a generation, steadily gained ground, especially 
 in the neighborhood of Boston and of Harvard College. 
 A reason for this may be found in the human longing for 
 freedom. The old theology, considered here quite apart 
 from the truth of its teachings, had held thought too rigidly 
 within certain prescribed limits. Unitarianism cast aside 
 fear and formalism. It bade men be glad, virtuous, and 
 loving. It stood for frank inquiry, for culture, morality, 
 and for a spirit of human sympathy that led at once to 
 the agitation of social reforms. Its most eminent figure 
 was WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING, as benign, serene, and 
 sensitive a soul as ever led revolt, a poetic dreamer be 
 fore whose eyes had passed the vision of Divine Beauty, 
 and a pulpit orator who spoke " with the animation and 
 elevation of one who hears the great theme." Tran 
 scendentalism quickly caught at his watchwords. "Rise 
 up and be a man," rang the voice of Emerson, " cast off 
 those cumbrous things of old, let conscience be your law 
 giver, reason your oracle, nature your temple, holiness 
 your high priest, and a divine life your offering." But 
 Channing s disciples soon outran the master. Unitari 
 anism, at first so bold a departure, became in turn a 
 centre of conservatism. THEODORE PARKER, that " Orson 
 of divines," led off a radical church of his own. "To 
 this day," writes Colonel Higginson, " I sometimes dream 
 of going to hear him preach, the great, free, eager 
 congregation ; the strong, serious, commanding presence 
 
2IO AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 of the preacher; his reverent and earnest prayer; his 
 comprehensive hour-long sermon full of sense, know 
 ledge, feeling, courage, he being not afraid even of his 
 own learning, absolutely holding his audience in the 
 hollow of his hand." 
 
 With all these heresies in the air, even the strongholds 
 of orthodoxy showed rifts and apertures through which 
 new light from overseas came flooding in. The lofty 
 idealism of Germany, that " transfigured Protestantism of 
 the land of Luther," represented in England by Cole 
 ridge and Wordsworth and, for a time, by Carlyle, found 
 New England ready. All that was needed was an inter 
 preter, and that interpreter appeared in RALPH WALDO 
 EMERSON. 
 
 The "spiritual-looking boy in blue nankeen," who im 
 pressed at least one companion at the Latin School as 
 " angelic " in aspect, was even then a reader of Plato. 
 During his freshman year at Harvard he took delight in 
 the ethereal visions of Spenser s Faery Queene. " What 
 we do not call education," Emerson wrote, " is more 
 gracious than what we do call so," and he slighted his 
 college mathematics for long hours with the poets and 
 for solitary strolls. Yet for several years his outer life, 
 decorous, unobtrusive, shy, gave little hint of the signifi 
 cant processes of thought that were going on within. 
 While he was teaching in the schoolroom " the safe and 
 cold details " of languages and sciences, he was writing 
 out, every night, in his chamber, his " first thoughts on 
 morals and the beautiful laws of compensation and of 
 
V NATIONAL ERA: PROSE THOUGHT 211 
 
 individual genius." As a preacher, he began to win 
 attention, yet the charm of his presence, that rare sweet 
 ness of face and resonance of voice, the illustrations 
 drawn from wood and meadow, and the simplicity and 
 naturalness of his style, interested his audiences more 
 than the philosophical novelties so gently brought to 
 bear upon them. 
 
 Emerson s career as a settled pastor covered little 
 more than three years. Having studied divinity under 
 the Unitarian influences of Harvard, he was naturally a 
 follower of Charming and was ordained, in the spring of 
 1829, as colleague with another of the Unitarian pioneers, 
 the Rev. Henry Ware, over Cotton Mather s own church, 
 the Old North of Boston. The young pastor s growing 
 reluctance to administer the sacrament of the Lord s 
 Supper, which seemed to him the binding of religion to 
 a form, led to his resignation in the fall of 1833. Dur 
 ing this brief pastorate, the wife of his youth, shadowed 
 from the first by consumption, had died. His own health 
 now threatening to give way, Emerson sought relief in a 
 long winter voyage to Sicily, whence he slowly journeyed 
 northward through Italy and westward to Paris and Lon 
 don. But grief for his lost Ellen haunted him in Naples 
 as in Roxbury, and his vivid Americanism, yearning 
 toward the freshness of the future, earth s marvels yet 
 in store, put him curiously out of sympathy with the 
 picturesque ruins of the past, " poor, gray, shabby " 
 places, of which he " soon had enough." Pictures, stat 
 ues, even cathedrals, found him cold to their beauty. 
 
212 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 " How few materials are yet used by our arts ! The 
 mass of creatures and of qualities are still hid and ex 
 pectant." By no means a model tourist, what he liked 
 best on the Continent was Landor, and in the British 
 Isles Carlyle. The happy impression made by his visit 
 to Carlyle was never, in either mind, effaced. The fierce 
 prophet and tranquil poet were friends till death. " That 
 man," said Carlyle, " came to see me, I don t know what 
 brought him, and we kept him one night, and then he 
 left us. I saw him go up the hill ; I didn t go with him 
 to see him descend. I preferred to watch him mount 
 and vanish like an angel." And poor Mrs. Carlyle never 
 forgot " the Visitor, who years ago in the Desert de 
 scended on us, out of the clouds as it were, and made 
 one day there look like enchantment for us, and left me 
 weeping that it was only one day." 
 
 On his homeward voyage, Emerson jotted down in his 
 diary, one Sunday, a few sentences that hold the clew 
 alike to his ineffective past and to his famous future. 
 " Milton describes himself in his letter to Diodati as en 
 amored of moral perfection. He did not love it more 
 than I. That which I cannot yet declare has been my 
 angel from childhood until now. It has separated me 
 from men. It has watered my pillow. It has driven 
 sleep from my bed. It has tortured me for my guilt. 
 It has inspired me with hope. It cannot be defeated 
 by my defeats. It cannot be questioned, though all the 
 martyrs apostatize. It is always the glory that shall be 
 revealed ; it is the l open secret of the universe." 
 
v NATIONAL ERA: PROSE THOUGHT 213 
 
 Glad after his year of absence to see America again, 
 Emerson found himself still willing to preach in Unita 
 rian churches from time to time, as he had opportunity, 
 but more and more he tended to substitute the Lyceum 
 platform, with its wider freedom, for the pulpit. His 
 first lectures touched lightly on natural science, but he 
 soon shifted his ground to biography and literature. 
 He had been at home scarcely a year, when in his re 
 tirement at Concord, whither he presently brought 
 another bride, he registered a vow. "Henceforth I 
 design not to utter any speech, poem, or book that is 
 not entirely and peculiarly my work." From this time 
 on Emerson realized in himself his definition of a 
 great man, " who in the midst of the crowd keeps, 
 with perfect sweetness, the independence of solitude." 
 Among the clamorous reforms and philanthropies of the 
 day, he was often reproached with indifference ; but he 
 was not indifferent. He was faithful to his own. He 
 would sometimes wake in the dark, tormented with the 
 nightmare of slavery, blaming himself for standing aloof 
 from so tremendous a moral issue, but would take com 
 fort in the reminder that it was his individual mission to 
 free "imprisoned thoughts, far back in the brain of 
 man." Addressing a New York audience on The Fugi 
 tive Slave Law, four years after Webster s momentous 
 speech, Emerson said : " I do not often speak to public 
 questions; they are odious and hurtful, and it seems 
 like meddling or leaving your work. I have my own 
 spirits in prison; spirits in deeper prisons, whom no 
 
214 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 man visits if I do not. And then I see what havoc it 
 makes with any good mind, a dissipated philanthropy. 
 The one thing not to be forgiven to intellectual persons 
 is, not to know their own task." On the rare occasions 
 when he overstepped his rule, as in his speech in 
 Concord town hall upon the assault on Charles Sumner, 
 his speech at the Kansas Relief meeting in Cambridge, 
 his John Brown speeches in Boston and Salem, his 
 Washington speech on American Civilization, his joyous 
 greeting of the Emancipation Proclamation, his eulogy 
 of the martyred President, Emerson showed himself 
 every inch a man. The strong indignation and stern 
 control of his address upon the emancipation of the 
 negroes in the British West Indies, for example, are in 
 marked contrast to his general serenity of tone. The 
 strain of American practicality, almost shrewdness, that 
 coexisted with all his mysticism is hinted in various 
 titles applied to Emerson, "a winged Franklin," "a 
 Yankee Shelley," " the Buddha of the West." He had 
 from childhood, however, a certain unhandy quality, 
 together with an unreadiness and awkwardness that put 
 him in eclipse beside his spirited brothers and remained 
 with him into mature life. He often lamented the 
 "frigidity and labor" of his talk with people at large. 
 He was so unskilful with tools that once, as he was 
 plying the spade in gardening, his little Waldo anx 
 iously cried out : " Papa, I am afraid you will dig your 
 leg." In lecturing, according to Lowell, " he boggled, he 
 lost his place, he had to put on his glasses." Emerson s 
 
NATIONAL ERA: PROSE THOUGHT 
 
 own comment on his imperfection ran : " I was created 
 a seeing eye, and not a useful hand," and even as he 
 recognized values in his early poverty, the " straightened 
 lines " on which he "walked up to manhood," so was he 
 "very patient of this folly or shame," these "manifold 
 imbecilities " of his, in the belief that worldly disadvan 
 tages saved his spirit the distraction of worldly success, 
 enabling him to "nourish" his "virtue in a private 
 place." 
 
 " Pale genius roves alone, 
 
 No scout can track his way, 
 None credits him till he have shown 
 His diamonds to the day. 
 
 Not his the feaster s wine, 
 
 Nor land, nor gold, nor power, 
 By want and pain God screeneth him 
 
 Till his elected hour." 
 
 The hour struck in 1836, when Emerson published his 
 little book on Nature. It found few readers, but those 
 readers could not be unaware of the fact that an apostle 
 of idealism had arisen in the land. " Standing," ran 
 the quiet text, " on the bare ground, my head bathed 
 by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, all 
 mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye 
 ball ; I am nothing ; I see all ; the currents of the Uni 
 versal Being circulate through me; I am part and 
 particle of God. The name of the nearest friend 
 sounds then foreign and accidental : to be brothers, to 
 be acquaintances, master or servant, is then a trifle 
 
2l6 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 and a disturbance. I am the lover of uncontained and 
 immortal beauty." 
 
 In this initial volume there was nothing of the novice. 
 The thoughts which he then put into print Emerson had 
 brooded from boyhood. His touch was firm. He had 
 at last begun to speak the " open secret " which had so 
 long possessed his soul, crippling him for the lesser utili 
 ties. In the autumn in which the book was issued, 
 Emerson and Ripley, with two others, invited a few 
 truth-seekers, including Alcott, Margaret Fuller, and 
 Theodore Parker, to meetings designed for the finding 
 out a better way of thought and life. These assemblies 
 continued, at irregular intervals, for seven or eight years. 
 During the latter half of this period, the Transcenden- 
 talists, as they had come to be called, issued a quarterly, 
 The Dial, with George Ripley and Elizabeth Peabody 
 for business managers, while Margaret Fuller and Em 
 erson served successively as editors. Although this 
 little group of enthusiasts embraced a wide variety of 
 opinions, the central Transcendental position seems to 
 have been faith in the intuitions and the consciousness 
 as against authority of church or state or system. The 
 emphasis was on freedom of thought and action, on self- 
 culture and self-reliance, and on the spiritual view of life 
 as against the material. " Nature is too thin a screen," 
 said Emerson, " the glory of the One breaks in every 
 where." "God?" he asked. "It is all God. . . . 
 The world is saturated with deity." 
 
 A little less than a year after the publication of Nature, 
 
v NATIONAL ERA: PROSE THOUGHT 
 
 Emerson was invited to give the annual address before 
 the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard. In this he 
 claimed that the American scholar, looking to nature 
 and to life for education more than to mere books, 
 should be free and brave, not daunted by Europe nor 
 the Past, but planting himself " indomitably on his 
 instincts," and revering his own individuality as "in 
 spired by the Divine Soul which also inspires all men." 
 "This grand oration," says Holmes, "was our intel 
 lectual Declaration of Independence." By this time 
 Emerson had both his following and his tribunal. Many 
 ardent young souls of Cambridge were already with him, 
 and one of these, James Russell Lowell, then an under 
 graduate, treasured that scene in memory " for its pict- 
 uresqueness and its inspiration. What crowded and 
 breathless aisles, what windows clustering with eager 
 heads, what enthusiasm of approval, what grim silence 
 of foregone dissent ! " 
 
 The senior class of the Harvard Divinity School asked 
 Emerson, the following year, to deliver their graduating 
 discourse. His attitude toward historical Christianity, 
 evinced on another occasion by his declaring it "the 
 office of a true teacher to show us that God is, not was : 
 that he speaketh, not spake," now aroused active oppo 
 sition. Men who had hitherto only laughed at what they 
 deemed his amiable lunacies, began to frown. Unitarians 
 joined with Trinitarians in protest. But the new teacher, 
 no less gentle than courageous, held calmly on his way, 
 and pilgrims of every heterodox fashion, from the eater 
 
218 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 gf unleavened bread to the Sun- worshipper wrapped 
 in a sheet, turned their course toward Concord. It 
 was a touch of irony in fate that Emerson, who of all 
 men most disliked crude vehemence and fanaticism, who 
 abhorred an " excess of fellowship," should become the 
 focus of the reformers. New England was seething with 
 social experiments and moral convictions. Whittier 
 wrote poems against the gallows. Alcott s daughters, 
 the " Little Women " of happy memory, never tasted 
 meat till they were women indeed. Negro slavery, 
 corporal punishment, prison discipline, women s rights, 
 total abstinence, foreign missions, dress, money, marriage, 
 education, were all under hot discussion. Community 
 life was variously attempted. Ripley s experiment of 
 Brook Farm, in which Emerson courteously declined to 
 engage, tried to combine the labors of pitchfork, hoe, 
 and milking-pail with aesthetics and metaphysics. Al 
 cott s vegetarian venture of Fruitlands, which, again, did 
 not " commend itself" to Emerson "as the way of great 
 ness," took on the features of asceticism. While each 
 of the Transcendentalists was preaching his own doctrine 
 or riding his own hobby, their leader went on living as 
 sane and modest a life as the " great craving humanity " 
 that knocked at his door from one week s end to another 
 would permit. Withdrawn into his study, he would work 
 at "large leisure in noble mornings, opened by prayer 
 or by readings of Plato, or whatsoever else is dearest to 
 the Morning Muse." His way of using books was like 
 his way of using nature. He attempted little in the line 
 
NATIONAL ERA: PROSE THOUGHT 
 
 of exact and critical knowledge, but he dipped into his 
 favorite volumes, Oriental bards, Greek sages, Christian 
 mystics, for inspiration and suggestion, for seeds of 
 thought. His gleanings from library or woodland stroll 
 took form in aphorisms, often exquisitely chiselled, which 
 he would afterwards sort out, arrange under subjects, and 
 strive to weld together into lectures and essays. He 
 himself sighed over his " paragraphs incompressible, each 
 sentence an infinitely repellent particle." Shaped by 
 such a method, the Emerson essay naturally shows little 
 sequence or development of thought. It does not arch 
 in perfect curve, like a rainbow, but sparkles like a 
 nebula of star-stuff. Yet it matters less that no single 
 essay is a logical unit, for, taken together, all the essays 
 are upon one theme and tend to one result. As Emer 
 son said of Carlyle s letters, they " savour always of 
 eternity." 
 
 " My whole philosophy, which is very real," Emerson 
 wrote, " teaches acquiescence and optimism." He was 
 at peace in the will of God. He had attained the Ori 
 ental passivity. " Fear and hope are alike beneath In 
 tuition; it asks nothing, and is raised above passion." 
 " Grief is abnormal," he said, and sin grew to him less 
 and less a reality. "Nothing shall warp me from the 
 belief that every man is a lover of the truth." Away 
 from home, he sent back his love to the " little saints of 
 the nursery." He did not argue, but spoke with author 
 ity. " I know that the universe can receive no detriment, 
 that there is a remedy for every wrong, and a satisfaction 
 
22O AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 for every soul." "I have heard that death takes us 
 away from ill things, not from good. I have heard that, 
 when we pronounce the name of man, we pronounce the 
 belief of immortality." 
 
 Yet it was not for any philosophy, as such, any scheme 
 of thought or any phraseology of truth, that Emerson 
 contended. Heart and soul he was, as he wrote on that 
 ocean passage, " enamored of moral perfection." He 
 longed with ineffable longing for the day when humanity 
 should be as clear glass for the God-light shining through, 
 " the glory that shall be revealed." His one perennial 
 theme is the spirit of man in relation to ideal beauty, the 
 mortal in the presence of immortality. " Every moment 
 new changes and new showers of deceptions to baffle 
 and distract him. And when, by and by, for an instant, 
 the air clears and the cloud lifts a little, there are the 
 gods still sitting around him on their thrones, they 
 alone with him alone." Whether studying the uses of 
 nature to man, whether insisting on the sacred rights of 
 personality, whether extolling Love or Friendship, Hero 
 ism, Manners or Worship, whether searching into the in 
 dividual secret of Plato, Swedenborg, Montaigne, Shakes 
 peare, Napoleon, Goethe, it is always the Conduct of 
 Life in its fine and noble sense with which Emerson s 
 thought is occupied. 
 
 Wonderful to tell, he did not, in his passion for human 
 perfection, lose patience with the concrete lives about 
 him. His harshest criticisms implied a praise. "Tho- 
 reau," he said, "is with difficulty sweet." The Concord 
 
 
V NATIONAL ERA: PROSE THOUGHT 221 
 
 farmers found this pleasant neighbor of theirs, though a 
 little tongue-tied himself, an admiring listener to their 
 blunt talk over the stone-wall or in town-meeting. " It 
 was good," wrote Hawthorne, "to meet him in the wood- 
 paths, or sometimes in our avenue, with that pure intel 
 lectual gleam diffused about his presence like the garment 
 of a shining one ; and he so quiet, so simple, so without 
 pretension, encountering each man alive as if expecting 
 to receive more than he could impart." With a frank 
 recognition of the intellectual and moral leadership of 
 minorities in the present state of society, Emerson s es 
 sential democracy outwent that of Jefferson and Jackson. 
 " As to what we call the masses, and common men, 
 there are no common men. All men are at last of a size ; 
 and true art is only possible in the conviction that every 
 talent has its apotheosis somewhere. Fair play and an 
 open field and freshest laurels to all who have won them ! 
 But heaven reserves an equal scope for every creature." 
 As he would not take note of ugliness and evil, deeming 
 these but temporary phases of the eternal beauty, the 
 eternal good, so in practice, as in theory, he put smil 
 ingly from him the common talk of people s faults. 
 "We should study rather," spoke this shaper of golden 
 sentences, " to make humanity beautiful to each other." 
 This wisdom of kindness is strikingly exemplified in 
 Emerson s relations with MARGARET FULLER. Her tem 
 perament was stormy, her egotism pronounced, her atti 
 tude often aggressive, and when she determined to make 
 a personal friend of Emerson, all the resources of his 
 
222 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 courtesy were taxed to meet the invasion. But by 
 gracious habit of patience and of high expectation he 
 learned her nobleness and, later, took his place at the 
 head of her illustrious biographers, whose judgment of 
 her has become the judgment of time. It is no part of 
 Lowell s greatness to-day that he showered with sneer 
 ing witticisms the " Miranda " of his Fable for Critics, 
 and Hawthorne s harsh detractions have redounded to 
 his discredit rather than to hers ; but it is permanently 
 to the praise of Emerson, Higginson, and James Freeman 
 Clarke that, beyond plain face and repellent bearing, 
 they discerned what the English poet Landor was to hail 
 as a " glorious soul." The literary women of America, 
 before the day of Margaret Fuller, pursued their quest 
 for truth or beauty with all feminine timidity. The 
 craven air of Hannah Adams, who had toiled over book- 
 making all her apologetic days and, with eyes grown dim, 
 was looking wistfully toward heaven as a place where she 
 might find her " thirst for knowledge fully gratified," is 
 an extreme viewed from which the arrogance of her 
 young contemporary is almost welcome. " Such a pre 
 determination," said Carlyle, "to eat this big Universe 
 as her oyster or her egg, and to be absolute empress of 
 all height and glory in it that her heart could conceive, I 
 have not before seen in any human soul." 
 
 Margaret Fuller s literary significance does not chiefly 
 depend upon the actual writings that her busy hand 
 turned off. As the underpaid, overworked editor of 
 the " aeriform " Dial and, later, as stated contributor of 
 
NATIONAL ERA: PROSE THOUGHT 
 
 critical articles to the New York Tribune, whose famous 
 chief, Horace Greeley, found her " a most fearless and 
 unselfish champion of truth and human good at all haz 
 ards," she accomplished a fair amount of creditable 
 work, suggestive rather than symmetrical, but her inspir 
 ing personality counted for more than her best para 
 graphs. Curious reading now is the record of those 
 Boston "Conversations," where Margaret Fuller dis 
 cussed, in the heart of the Transcendental camp, the 
 spiritual significance of Greek mythology. There were 
 the enthusiast, George Ripley, and his martyr- wi fe ; 
 Hedge, the German scholar; Wheeler, the Greek 
 scholar; Story, the poet-sculptor; Jones Very, the 
 lyric mystic ; the Peabody sisters, the lovely Elizabeth 
 Hoar, James Freeman Clarke, Alcott, and, now and 
 then, Emerson, who remembered these "as a fair, 
 commanding troop, every one of them adorned by some 
 splendor of beauty, of grace, of talent, or of character." 
 With her pen, as with the spoken word, Margaret, as 
 they all called her, was serious, strenuous, but neither 
 soundly learned nor essentially aesthetic. She was not an 
 artist born, and her education, though pursued at high 
 pressure, had been solitary and partial. With all her 
 courage, the years had weighed heavily. " Her face is 
 full of the marks of pain," wrote a girlish worshipper 
 when Margaret was thirty-one. " Young as I am, I feel 
 old when I look at her." Youth and sweetness of life 
 came to that craving nature in far Italy, where, like Mrs. 
 Browning, she made the cause of Italian liberty her own. 
 
224 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 Efficiently and tenderly she nursed the wounded patriots 
 in hospital during the siege of Rome and wrote a history 
 of the short-lived republic. This manuscript was lost in 
 that tragic shipwreck which, in sight of the American 
 coast, overwhelmed her brave young Italian husband, the 
 Marquis Ossoli, their little son, and Margaret herself. 
 Her principal contribution remaining to our literature is 
 an essay on Woman in the Nineteenth Century, claiming 
 for women that larger life which her own career has in no 
 small measure furthered. 
 
 As Emerson represented the ideal hope of Transcen 
 dentalism, and Margaret Fuller embodied its " holy ear 
 nestness," those phases of the movement which have won 
 it the title of " a Puritan carnival " are suggested in the 
 career of AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT. A farmer s boy, he 
 began life as a Yankee peddler, but soon turned to 
 teaching, for which he showed a remarkable aptitude. 
 His original experiments in his Connecticut district 
 school were often in line with the new educational ideas 
 of Europe. Encouraged by his success, Alcott under 
 took to teach in Boston, where he fell under the influence 
 of Channing, Emerson, and Garrison. He became an 
 Abolitionist, a vegetarian, and " a large piece of spiritual 
 New England." Emerson was enthusiastic in Alcott s 
 praise, describing him as " a man who cannot write, but 
 whose conversation is unrivalled in its way ; such insight, 
 such discernment of spirits, such pure intellectual play, 
 such revolutionary impulses of thought." It presently 
 appeared, unluckily for Mrs. Alcott and the little girls, 
 
V NATIONAL ERA: PROSE THOUGHT 225 
 
 that this new Oracle could not earn a living. Heresy, 
 Abolitionism, and debt combined to break up the Boston 
 school. The solemn sage, whose most provoking quality 
 was the serious way in which he took himself, then 
 settled at Concord in a little cottage, well-gardened, where 
 he presented the figure, according to the admiring Dr. 
 Channing, of "Orpheus at the plough," working out 
 among the neighbors as a farm hand while he meditated 
 those nuggets of occult wisdom which made the Orphic 
 Sayings of the Dial. He shared Thoreau s disgust with 
 government, especially in its function of taxation, and 
 Ripley s eager faith in community life. Brook Farm, 
 however, was not to Alcott s mind. Only eight miles 
 from Boston, it served too well as a social magnet, and 
 the graces of life, though practised in shirt-sleeves and 
 aprons, were so obvious there as to give this ascetic sage 
 the impression, which Mrs. Ripley might have corrected, 
 that existence at Brook Farm was " miserable, joyous, 
 and frivolous." The austere Paradise which he himself 
 projected was called Fruitlands. Fourteen sylvan acres, 
 about twenty miles from Concord, served as the site of 
 an experiment that came near the startling end of sheer 
 starvation. Flesh, fish, eggs, milk, butter, cheese, tea, 
 coffee, rice, molasses, and those base vegetables, as pota 
 toes, that ripen under ground were all forbidden. Cloth 
 ing was scanty and, theoretically, white. The use of 
 manure in farming was rejected as an insult to the earth. 
 The rights of canker-worms were held inviolate. Driven 
 by grim hunger back to Concord, Alcott, after a season 
 Q 
 
226 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 of humiliation, took up a Socratic fashion of lecturing, 
 known as "Conversations," by which, with intervals of 
 rustic carpentry, he managed to subsist. Generous 
 friends made up his deficits, and his wife bore the heavy 
 burden that those Transcendental wives carried so 
 smilingly, until her merry-hearted daughter, Louisa, took 
 it from the tired shoulders with a strong hand. 
 
 All that excited laughter and impatience in New 
 England Transcendentalism is hinted in Alcott s course, 
 the erratic orbit of a now faded star, but he may justly 
 claim a place in Emerson s defence of that strange 
 spiritual brotherhood : " And what if they eat clouds 
 and drink wind, they have not been without service to 
 the race of man." This Yankee version of idealism 
 is of immeasurable value as a protest, still great in our 
 traditions, against the sordid, the showy, and the self- 
 indulgent elements at present so prominent in American 
 life. 
 
 The chief practical issue of all this enthusiasm for 
 ideas was the abolition of slavery. New England took 
 the lead in that fiery reform by virtue not only of her 
 Puritanic earnestness, but of her Transcendental courage. 
 She had, with Lincoln, " faith that right makes might." 
 Wendell Phillips rejoiced in the John Brown raid 
 because, as h& said, " twenty- two men have been found 
 ready to die for an idea." But in the actual clash of 
 conflict the sages gave place to the soldiers. Tran 
 scendentalism was seen thenceforth only in its fruits. 
 Theological strife, meanwhile, had quieted. The two 
 
V NATIONAL ERA: PROSE THOUGHT 22/ 
 
 contending pulpits were one in patriotism. The mag 
 netic eloquence of Henry Ward Beecher s appeals in 
 Plymouth Church made for the same end as Edward 
 Everett Hale s thrilling tract The Man without a Coun 
 try. During the latter half of the century, Unitarianism 
 has been less aggressive. Its main work, as affecting 
 American literature, was done when it had opened the 
 door to liberal thought. Now the door stands wide. 
 The higher criticism has lost its terrors, and the theory 
 of evolution, as held in England by Herbert Spencer, 
 has been disseminated throughout the United States 
 by John Fiske s crisp presentation in his Destiny of Man 
 and Idea of God. The enlargement of doctrine has 
 been accompanied by an enrichment of ritual, due 
 mainly to the influence of the Episcopal church, recog 
 nizing as it does the function of beauty in promoting 
 and interpreting the religious aspiration. 
 
 II. Criticism of Society. It is not possible to make 
 any hard and fast distinction between the literature 
 that treats of the inner life and the literature that 
 deals with the expression of such life in social forms. 
 From Transcendentalism sprang Brook Farm. Yet in 
 general the thought of Emerson is focussed on spirit, 
 while the thought of OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES plays 
 over the visible surface of society. Holmes novels, it 
 is true, are directly concerned with presenting, from a 
 physician s point of view, the problem of human account 
 ability. How far, ask these books, is the deed, and 
 the choice which causes the deed, determined by 
 
228 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 subtle powers beyond the personal control? Elsie 
 Venner studies the workings of ante-natal snake-poison 
 in a girl s blood and brain. Whose was the evil impulse ? 
 The Guardian Angel suggests a hovering circle of 
 ancestress shadows, the two faces of a holy martyr and 
 a wild Indian most distinct in that cloudy company, 
 all pressing with contending influences upon one maiden 
 heart. Is the individual only the helpless resultant of 
 heredity? A Mortal Antipathy sets forth the affecting 
 case of a love-smitten recluse who had been so terrified 
 in babyhood by a fall from the arms of a girl that, 
 thenceforward, the mere sight of a young woman literally 
 frightened him almost to death. For once, Holmes 
 took an absurd situation seriously, and the public 
 laughed in the wrong place. These are the under 
 lying themes of his stories, but, in their development, 
 attention is largely diverted from the physiology and 
 psychology involved to frank and lively pictures of 
 New England village life. 
 
 Somewhat the same may be said of the famous table- 
 talk series. The monologues of the Autocrat often 
 recur to the haunting themes of heredity, the will and 
 moral responsibility, but that immortal chat runs mainly 
 on such matters as Republicanism, Mutual Admiration 
 Societies, horse-racing, theatricals, Lyceum audiences, 
 drunkenness, tact, meerschaums, athletics, dandies, and 
 the guillotine. The breakfast-table itself is a little 
 community, where the social obligations and affinities 
 play their daily part. The voluble Autocrat, the old 
 
V NATIONAL ERA: PROSE THOUGHT 22Q 
 
 gentleman who sat opposite, with a sentiment shut 
 inside his silver watch, the divinity student, allowed 
 to " take a certain share in the conversation, so far 
 as assent or pertinent questions" might be involved, 
 that reprehensible young man answering to the name 
 of John, the landlady who stirred the puddings, while 
 her daughter with the long ringlets played the ac 
 cordion, little Benjamin Franklin, the poor relation in 
 black bombazine, and the school- mis tress, sweet as 
 the tea-rose which, in the last chapter, the happy Auto 
 crat makes her wear over the copper breast-pin that 
 was red-armed Biddy s wedding-gift, all these are 
 members of a social whole, though that whole is only 
 a boarding-house. It is for these, in good part, that 
 the book is loved. The personalities lend flavor to the 
 opinions. Pervading all is that rare social genius of 
 the Doctor himself. He could, when he chose, talk 
 quite as well as the Autocrat and radiate as genial and 
 urbane an atmosphere. Lowell felt the unique quality 
 in Holmes and based his own acceptance of the 
 Atlantic editorship on the condition of regular contri 
 butions from the merry little sage of Beacon Hill. 
 
 Close upon " the five-barred gate " though he was, the 
 poet-professor struck out on his new style with all the 
 freshness of a boy. In the first number of the magazine 
 began The Autocrat of the Breakfast- Table. It had come 
 from his mind, said Holmes, " almost with an explosion, 
 like the champagne cork," and it popped at once into 
 high favor with the public. The novelty, the drollery, 
 
230 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 the wit and wisdom of it, took the reading-world by 
 storm. America had a new prose classic. "The Profes 
 sor at the Breakfast-Table," in the author s own account, 
 "followed immediately on the heels of the Autocrat. 
 The Professor was the alter ego of the first personage. 
 In the earlier series he had played a secondary part, and 
 in this second series no great effort was made to create 
 a character wholly unlike the first. The Professor was 
 more outspoken, however, on religious subjects, and 
 brought down a good deal of hard language on himself 
 and the author to whom he owed his existence." Around 
 this second breakfast- table still sat some of the Autocrat s 
 companions, the old gentleman opposite, the divinity 
 student, the landlady and her daughter, Benjamin Frank 
 lin, the Bombazine, and the young man called John, but 
 certain more romantic boarders had been added to the 
 group. The Professor talked less than the Autocrat, and 
 not so well, but he was a better listener and observer. 
 He detected the unsavory traits of the Koh-i-noor with 
 the purple-black moustache, dreaded the Model of all the 
 Virtues, and followed with wide-awake sympathy the love 
 story of Iris and the young Marylander, interwoven as it 
 was with the pitiful end of Little Boston, " the misshapen 
 little creature covered with Nature s insults." The Poet 
 of the Breakfast- Table appeared some fifteen years after 
 its predecessors, being, the author said, " not so much a 
 continuation as a resurrection." The boarding-house, 
 made famous by Autocrat and Professor, had now become 
 select. A bequest from the old gentleman had enabled 
 
v NATIONAL ERA: PROSE THOUGHT 231 
 
 the landlady to wear a smart cap and educate Benjamin 
 Franklin for a physician. The people for whom she 
 poured the coffee were representative of Boston culture. 
 There were the Master of Arts, the Man of Letters, the 
 Scarabee, and the young Astronomer, destined to find his 
 guiding stars, at last, in the eyes of poor little Schehere- 
 zade, who lived by scribbling stories for the Weekly Biicket. 
 The Member of the House, the Capitalist, the Lady, the 
 Register of Deeds, the Salesman, and That Boy, with his 
 inspired pop-gun, lent variety. The talk, no less pungent 
 than before, was richer and more mellow, ranging over 
 literature, science, metaphysics, music, the learned profes 
 sions, authorship, sects, germs, freaks, time, and eternity. 
 The boarding-house was closed forever, the breakfast- 
 table hushed, but once again, when his years numbered 
 eighty-one, the inimitable talker met his friends, this 
 time Over the Tea- Cups. The tone here is personal 
 and reminiscent. Sunset lights fall upon the tea-table, 
 where a poem always waits, tucked into the silver 
 sugar-bowl, but there is no abatement of the old-time 
 mirth and kind sagacity. The thread of story droops 
 more loosely than before, but the various "Tea-cups," 
 the choicest china of Beacon Hill and Cambridge, 
 are individualized, and Number Seven has his conversa 
 tional innings no less than the Dictator. " The cracked 
 tea-cup brings out the ring of the sound ones as nothing 
 else does. Remember also that the soundest tea-cup 
 does not always hold the best tea, nor the cracked tea 
 cup the worst." 
 
232 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 In their own discursive, friendly, but keen and fearless 
 fashion, these four books, which span a generation, try 
 New England on the three charges of deficient breeding, 
 intellectual illiberality, and religious intolerance. Holmes 
 was something of an aristocrat, more of a rationalist, and, 
 most, a humanitarian. In him the Unitarian reaction 
 had been emphasized by scientific training. He was an 
 anti-mystic, standing for the sunny and the sensible. 
 There was more of Franklin in him than of Edwards. 
 He was a Bostonian to the core ; the civilization he 
 depicts is a Yankee civilization, growing in refinement 
 through the four books, and the controversies into 
 which he enters are eminently New England contro 
 versies, already passing into history by the time the last 
 of the table-talk series appeared. 
 
 The achievement of Holmes has not been duplicated. 
 The trenchant writings of Mary Abigail Dodge, better 
 known as Gail Hamilton, and the light-hand essays of 
 Robert Grant should not be forgotten, but now that 
 realistic fiction is the fashion, studies of our present-day 
 society usually take form as novels. A conspicuous 
 instance of this is the recent work of CHARLES DUD 
 LEY WARNER, a natural essayist and most delightful hu 
 morist, who, with the late Mrs. Stowe, " Mark Twain," 
 and the poet, Richard Burton, has continued the liter 
 ary tradition of Hartford. In A Little Journey in the 
 World and The Golden House we have essentially an 
 arraignment of the wealthy class of New York on counts 
 of selfishness, falseness, and materialism. Story-interest 
 
v NATIONAL ERA: PROSE THOUGHT 233 
 
 is subordinate to interest of scene and character. Pict 
 ures of the Exchange, the opera, the millionnaire palace, 
 the midnight Bohemia, the elaborate social functions, 
 stand in shamed contrast beside the tawdry, tragic 
 glimpses of the East Side. The figures of the Wall- 
 Street Napoleon, the gay ladies with their wines and 
 cigarettes and serpentine dances, the gilded spend 
 thrifts making a task of idleness, are confronted by 
 ascetic priest and hard-working doctor of the poor, 
 by honest, thoughtful men and faithful women, and the 
 dim, terrible majority living and dying in the slums. 
 This new criticism of our new phase of democracy, find 
 ing indirect expression in novel and short story, has 
 direct expression, also, and that in overwhelming bulk. 
 The yearly issue of sociological studies, economic dis 
 cussions, labor reports, reform pamphlets, socialist tracts, 
 and the like chokes the press, but all this mass of 
 academic treatise and popular polemics falls outside the 
 pale of literature. The works of Edward Bellamy may 
 be mentioned here, although their guise is that of fic 
 tion. His Looking Backward sells by hundreds of 
 thousands and has been translated into nearly every 
 European tongue. Like its recent successor, Equality, 
 the book forecasts an American Utopia, but fails to 
 point the way. 
 
 III. Criticism of Letters. The critic is the middle 
 man of literature. He mediates between writers and 
 readers, making his own profit out of the transaction. 
 Of his legitimate functions, one is that of the herald. 
 
234 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 He may announce a fresh influence in letters, as when the 
 elder Dana called our belated attention to the Lake School 
 Poets ; but in the earlier half of the century it was oftener 
 the task of the American critic to introduce to his coun 
 trymen the standard literatures of the Old World. At 
 Harvard, Everett stood for Greece, and Ticknor for 
 Spain, as Norton now stands for Italy. A more delicate 
 office entrusted to criticism is the estimate of new values, 
 the judgment of contemporary books, and the ranking of 
 living men. Here the critics are commonly wrong, as 
 time has a cynical way of showing. Poe was irritated 
 beyond measure by the provincial overpraise that char 
 acterized American reviews of American productions, 
 yet with all his natural acumen he could not himself 
 maintain the cosmopolitan tone. Few are the names 
 even recognized to-day out of the list of New York 
 literati he commended. There is, too, a dilettante 
 criticism, which uses a book as a text, or pretext, for an 
 independent essay aiming at pure entertainment. This, 
 a late development in American letters, is well ex 
 emplified by the brilliant brevities of Agnes Repplier. 
 The " short studies " of Hamilton Wright Mabie, our 
 latest evangelist of culture, approximate rather, in spirit, 
 if not in scope, to that larger criticism, interpreta 
 tive and comprehensive, which in our present cen 
 tury began with EDWIN PERCY WHIPPLE, rose to its 
 height in JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL, and is still strongly 
 maintained by EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN. Of these, 
 Lowell alone has claims to rank beside the chief critics 
 
V NATIONAL ERA: PROSE THOUGHT 235 
 
 of contemporary Europe, but Whipple s frank and lucid 
 lectures hold a permanent place in American regard, 
 while editions still multiply of Stedman s Victorian 
 Poets and Poets of America. 
 
 Lowell s most valuable prose is contained in his three 
 main volumes of critical essays, My Study Windows 
 and the first and second series of Among My Books. 
 At twenty-six he had published Conversations on Some 
 of the Old Poets, principally Chaucer, Chapman, and 
 Ford. This little book had in it so much of his charac 
 teristic fervor and keenness that he was tempted, thirty 
 years later, to reprint it, but decided, not unwisely, that 
 it was too immature. Lowell s second rolume of prose, 
 Fireside Studies, was made up, like the three important 
 books which followed it, of magazine articles, but the 
 lighter ones were garnered first. In later life, after his 
 diplomatic career had rendered authorship subordinate 
 to statesmanship, Lowell issued two collections of his 
 public addresses and political essays. These enhanced 
 American pride in our distinguished minister, and re 
 lieved the national alarm lest he might fall a victim to 
 Anglomania or other feudal malady. He urged, how 
 ever, that democracy has not justified itself until it has 
 made itself gracious and winsome, produced the noblest 
 types of manhood, and lifted life above the merely 
 material and commonplace. His experience of Euro 
 pean governments confirmed his loyalty to the Republic. 
 " No other method of conducting the affairs of men," 
 he said, " is so capable of sloughing off its peccant parts 
 
236 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 as ours, because in no other are the forces of life at once 
 so intense and so universally distributed." Throughout 
 his course Lowell set a high example of the Scholar in 
 Politics, maintaining under partisan strain and din a 
 clear intelligence, moral courage, and incisive utterance 
 which went far toward stimulating and directing the 
 patriotic passion of the land. His concluding volumes 
 of prose, small harvests, but ripe and sweet, reverted to 
 literature. 
 
 The range of the literary essays embraced in My Study 
 Windows and Among My Books is wide. The four for 
 eign languages pertaining to Lowell s Harvard chair, 
 French, German, Spanish, Italian, all of which, he gayly 
 asserted, he spoke " like a native (of Cambridge)," might 
 point to these pages for proof that he read them, at 
 least, like a native of Parnassus. Here we have the 
 acute studies of Rousseau and Lessing, and the great 
 essay upon Dante, supplemented, later on, by the Don 
 Quixote address. Few men have written better of 
 Shakespeare ; no man so well of Chaucer. To read 
 Lowell s essays comprehendingly is a literary education 
 in itself. 
 
 His method, although in reality searching, is not logi 
 cally direct, but discursive. Like a boy on his way to 
 school, he is tempted to explore every pasture the path 
 crosses and follow up every stream. Lowell was too 
 wide-awake, too warm-hearted, too vital, to keep strictly 
 within the orderly limits of his theme. His tempera 
 ment was too robust, moreover, for the finest sensitive- 
 
V NATIONAL ERA: PROSE THOUGHT 237 
 
 ness. He did better by Dryden than by Spenser. And 
 his style, by virtue of this same exuberance of life, is so 
 charged with metaphor as to bring down upon it an Eng 
 lish cry of " flashy." For this figurative excess, this flush 
 and fulness more attractive still to many readers than the 
 cold clarity of Arnold s prose, Lowell was doubtless much 
 indebted to his Elizabethan studies. His taste is most 
 open to attack, when he is in mischievous mood. Then 
 no pun is too bad for him to perpetrate. In the Milton 
 essay, for instance, Lowell often foregoes due critical deco 
 rum for sheer fun and frolic. But when his metaphors 
 spring from that swift imaginative sympathy, which con 
 stitutes one of his strongest charms, the fault-finder, how 
 ever well taken his point of literary objection may be, 
 feels himself at a human disadvantage. Speaking, for 
 example, in his Harvard address, of the effect of ancient 
 memories in places " on which Time has laid his hand 
 only in benediction," Lowell, in a passage open to stylis 
 tic and even grammatical reproach, sweetens poetic 
 thought with feeling reverent and tender : " For myself, 
 I never felt the working of this spell so acutely as in 
 those gray seclusions of the college quadrangles and 
 cloisters at Oxford and Cambridge, conscious with ven 
 erable associations, and whose very stones seemed hap 
 pier for being there. The chapel pavement still whispered 
 with the blessed feet of that long procession of saints and 
 sages and scholars and poets, who are all gone into a 
 world of light, but whose memories seem to consecrate 
 the soul from all ignobler companionship." 
 
238 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 The English scholarship represented by Longfellow 
 and Lowell, broad, aesthetic, humanized, is already out of 
 date. The German training has given to American uni 
 versities philologists in place of poets. The new schol 
 arship is superior to the old in linguistic accuracy, in 
 exactitude of detail, but bears fruit in erudite editions 
 of old English texts rather than in fresh creations of 
 literary art. An American veteran here is George P. 
 Marsh, who turned attention to the sources of our 
 speech. The researches of William D. Whitney of Yale 
 have borne upon language at large, but his special ser 
 vices to English grammar and lexicography should not 
 be ignored. Chief editor of the Century Dictionary, to 
 him, too, it fell to revise the work of that dauntless 
 pioneer, Noah Webster, whose spelling-book has sold 
 its sixty millions. A limited amount of historical and 
 aesthetic criticism still comes from college chairs, as 
 Thomas R. Lounsbury s Chaucer, Vida D. Scudder s 
 Modern English Poets, and Moses Coit Tyler s History 
 of American Literature. The monumental work of Pro 
 fessor Child is priceless to the ballad-lover, while students 
 of the American stage depend on Professor Matthews 
 no less than on Laurence Hutton and William Winter. 
 Although our original plays are of little value, no branch 
 of English scholarship has been pursued here with more 
 zeal and ability than the study of Shakespeare. Brown 
 ing has his societies, and Walt Whitman his " fellowship," 
 but Shakespeare has a shining line of American editors 
 and commentators, reaching from Verplanck, a genuine 
 
V NATIONAL ERA: PROSE THOUGHT 239 
 
 Knickerbocker, through Grant White, Hudson, Rolfe, 
 Furness, to the recent work of Barrett Wendell. 
 
 IV. History. There is no branch of American schol 
 arship whose progress reflects the changing conditions 
 apparent in our life and arts more clearly than history. 
 The seventeenth century chroniclers, Captain John Smith 
 in the South, Governors Bradford and Winthrop in New 
 England, did little more than jot down a narrative, 
 founded on their own observation and on hearsay, for 
 the plain purpose of news-telling or record-keeping. In 
 the eighteenth century, Beverly and Stith of Virginia, Cot 
 ton Mather, Prince, and Hutchinson of Massachusetts, in 
 varying degree approached the modern conception of 
 historical method, striving by patient investigation and 
 judicial attitude to sift truth from falsehood, and re 
 create the past. The War of the Revolution and the 
 War of 1812 showed no immediate results in historical 
 writing, although Chief Justice Marshall s Life of Wash 
 ington, our first American biography of scope and dig 
 nity, has historical values. But histories of individual 
 states, as Belknap s New Hampshire, began to appear, 
 and, in one city after another, historical societies were 
 formed for the collection and preservation of local mate 
 rials. The antiquarian was gradually evolved. President 
 Sparks of Harvard, editor of many volumes of Washing- 
 tonian and other Revolutionary correspondence, had led 
 the way in original research, hunting through govern 
 mental archives, at home and abroad, and through stores 
 of family papers. The influence of Washington Irving, 
 
24O AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 in his biographies and historical narratives, which were 
 often, although not always, founded upon first-hand 
 authorities, made for vivacity and grace of historical 
 style. The second division of the century, that middle 
 period in which American literature reached the highest 
 point as yet attained, is the day of our four great histo 
 rians, Bancroft, Prescott, Motley, and Parkman. Men of 
 prodigious toils and, in case of the last three, of rare 
 artistic skill in composition, they produced rich, well- 
 rounded works. Bancroft wrote directly of the United 
 States, but the others chose semi-foreign themes, bearing 
 on their own country, but allowing of picturesque and 
 dramatic treatment. The Civil War brought out a crop 
 of partisan accounts from the leaders in arms or politics, 
 as Wilson and Greeley in the North, Davis and Stephens 
 in the South. The autobiographies of Grant, Sher 
 man, and Sheridan were eagerly received by the public. 
 Lincoln s private secretaries, Hay and Nicolay, united in 
 an elaborate political biography of their chief. Illus 
 trated war papers, descriptions of battles and campaigns, 
 and personal reminiscences of military service, are still 
 a feature of the magazines, especially of the Century. 
 Historical fiction is coming into fashion. But with all 
 this popularization of history, on the one hand, univer 
 sity studies, on the other, have been growing ever more 
 scientific and more highly specialized. The tendency is 
 increasingly toward original research, toward the minute 
 investigation of carefully limited fields, usually far from 
 romantic. The monograph is in the saddle. Sociology 
 
v NATIONAL ERA: PROSE THOUGHT 24! 
 
 and economics, with their stress on institutions, affect 
 the study of history. An extremely modern phenom 
 enon, of a somewhat different order, is in evidence 
 in California, where Hubert H. Bancroft, a successful 
 publisher, has pushed the business method into author 
 ship. At the cost of over half a million dollars and over 
 half a lifetime, with the aid of a large staff of trained 
 assistants, he has collected and sifted invaluable mate 
 rials, which have been but partially used for the thirty- 
 nine volumes of his History of the Pacific States. This 
 signal application of the cooperative system has necessa 
 rily resulted in a mammoth quarry rather than an archi 
 tectural creation. The editorial and original labors of 
 Justin Winsor and the constitutional studies of James 
 Schouler are achievements of note. John Fiske already 
 ranks with the artists in historical narrative. Biography 
 profits by the new critical spirit, while its popular appeal 
 holds it to attractiveness of form. To the Library of 
 American Biography, edited by Jared Sparks, has suc 
 ceeded the American Men of Letters Series, edited by 
 Charles Dudley Warner, and the American Statesmen 
 Series, edited by John T. Morse. 
 
 The heroic quality of scholarship is nobly exemplified 
 by that quartette of historians whose names America 
 holds in peculiar honor. GEORGE BANCROFT, a Massa 
 chusetts man who supplemented his Harvard degree by a 
 doctorate from Gottingen, passed his life largely in the 
 public service, holding the successive appointments of 
 Collector of the Port of Boston, Secretary of the Navy, 
 
242 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 Minister to Great Britain, to Russia, and to Germany ; 
 yet in his patriotic purpose of writing the history of his 
 country he never wavered. Wherever, in American citis 
 or at foreign capitals, his political duties had placed him, 
 he might be found ransacking the dustiest hoards of 
 libraries or, in the pigeon-holed recesses of government 
 buildings, straining his eyesight over yellow files of jeal 
 ously guarded documents. Into his History of the United 
 States, covering the Colonial and Revolutionary periods 
 only, he poured the researches and studies of some sixty 
 arduous years. The first two volumes came out in Jack 
 son s administration, the completed work half a century 
 later. His partiality for Jefferson and democracy called 
 forth a competitive, but inferior, history by Richard Hil- 
 dreth, whose bias was Whig. Bancroft s masterpiece is 
 no easy reading, but its exhaustive method, accurate 
 detail, and massive build give it a well-won preeminence. 
 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT, of Salem birth, entered 
 Harvard a few years in advance of Bancroft. There he 
 met with a grievous mishap. During a moment of stu 
 dent frolic in the dining-hall, Prescott was struck full 
 upon the eyeball by a flying crust of bread. He gradu 
 ally became almost blind, but turned his own dimness 
 into glowing color for the world. A moderate fortune 
 made him master of his time and, after long thought, he 
 decided to take up the work of an historian. Choosing 
 for his subject Spain in her proud hour of American dis 
 covery and dominion, he strove for twenty years against 
 the stupendous difficulties of his task. He could not 
 
v NATIONAL ERA: PROSE THOUGHT 243 
 
 read for himself nor, until he had invented a frame that 
 guided his hand, write for himself. He could not 
 consult Spanish libraries nor search Spanish archives, 
 save as his friends, travelling abroad, were glad to render 
 what uncertain aid they might. But during the second 
 span of twenty years, from 1837 to 1857, he produced a 
 series of brilliant histories, Ferdinand and Isabella, Con 
 quest of Mexico, Conquest of Peru, Reign of Philip II. 
 These books were devoured by the public like romances, 
 which, in fact, they much resemble. Prescott s attention 
 was fastened upon the spectacle of life. He filled his 
 wide canvas with splendid masses of figures, scenes of 
 court and camp and tropical forest, battle-fields and 
 strange barbaric pomp. Yet there was unity to the 
 great design, and beauty of detail. The methods of 
 work enforced by his disability aided rather than hin 
 dered the pictorial conception. His secretaries, blun 
 dering sadly over the Spanish, would read to him day 
 after day and week after week, until his mind was fully 
 stored. Then from the lonely brooding of the blind 
 would leap the vivid chapter. A gentleman to the 
 heart, magnanimities cluster about his memory. It 
 was as natural to help him as it was for him to help. 
 Irving, an earlier worker in the Spanish field, had gath 
 ered in Spain materials for a history of the Mexican con 
 quest, but on hearing that Prescott was planning to write 
 on the same theme, he not only quietly abandoned his 
 own design, but put all his data at the younger man s 
 disposal. How worthy Prescott was of the sacrifice is 
 
244 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 proved by the frank welcome and introduction he in 
 turn accorded to a junior rival, JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY. 
 
 In 1850 the blind historian, in the prime of his life 
 and labors, received a call from a young man then 
 unknown to fame. Motley, born in Dorchester, a 
 suburb of Boston, had supplemented his Harvard course 
 by two years at Berlin and Gottingen. Strikingly hand 
 some, brilliant and ambitious, he made his first bid for 
 distinction with a Byronesque novel in two volumes. 
 This was a flat failure, but he followed it up with the 
 historical romance of Merry Mount. Meanwhile his 
 American passion for freedom, his Puritan enthusiasm 
 for the struggle of Protestantism against Romanism, 
 had turned his thoughts to Holland. " I had not first 
 made up my mind to write a history," he said, " and 
 then cast about to take up a subject. My subject had 
 taken me up, drawn me on, and absorbed me into itself. 
 It was necessary for me, it seemed, to write the book I 
 had been thinking much of, even if it were destined to 
 fall dead from the press, and I had no inclination or 
 interest to write any other." This work which Motley 
 thirsted to undertake would entrench upon the ground 
 of Prescott s Philip //., announced but not as yet begun. 
 On hearing of the announcement, Motley, as soon as he 
 could rally from the keenness of his disappointment, 
 went to Prescott, offering to surrender his own plans, 
 but the veteran smiled on his scruples, gave him the 
 most disinterested encouragement and cheer, offered 
 him the use of his own library and, in the preface to 
 
v NATIONAL ERA: PROSE THOUGHT 245 
 
 Philip II., generously heralded the new historian, calling 
 attention to Motley s forthcoming work, which would, 
 he said, elaborate what was merely an episode of the 
 book in hand. With the eager patience of a born in 
 vestigator, Motley toiled for years in the libraries and 
 state archives of western Europe, his zest in the pursuit 
 of truth transforming drudgery into delight. "What 
 ever may be the result of my labor," he wrote, "nobody 
 can say that I have not worked like a brute beast, but I 
 don t care for the result. The labor is in itself its own 
 reward, and all I want." Motley s design was to write 
 the full drama of that momentous epoch from the ab 
 dication of Charles V. to the Peace of Westphalia, 
 naming his three acts the Rise of the Dutch Republic, 
 History of the United Netherlands, and the Thirty 
 Years War. The first, published in 1856, scored an 
 immediate success, attested by large sales in England 
 and America, universal plaudits, and prompt translation 
 into Dutch, German, French, and Russian. The second 
 division of the great history was interrupted by the agita 
 tions of our Civil War and by public duties. Motley 
 served as Minister to Austria under Lincoln, but was 
 ill-treated by Johnson and resigned. Upon the com 
 pletion of the United Netherlands, he was appointed 
 by Grant Minister to England, only to experience the 
 indignity of a prompt recall. Heartsore over these 
 affronts, he turned to the writing of John of Barnevelt 
 as a preliminary to the last third of his famous work, 
 but the introductory study was hardly published when 
 
246 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 Mrs. Motley died. From this blow he could not rally. 
 The Thirty Years War was never penned. Motley s 
 high rank as an historian is secure. As searching as 
 Bancroft, as graphic as Fresco tt, he outwent them both 
 in comprehension of character, in dramatic quality, and 
 impassioned force. He was too intense a lover of liberty 
 and virtue to be quite impartial. William the Silent was 
 his hero, and Philip II. his villain, but what prejudice 
 he had was always of a noble sort. 
 
 The youngest of these four historians, FRANCIS PARK- 
 MAN, was of the same manly calibre as the others, and 
 has, perhaps, wrought a more enduring fabric. He was 
 a Boston boy, of the best Massachusetts ancestry. Re 
 flecting the changing times, his great-grandfather had 
 stood in the Congregational pulpit, his father in the 
 Unitarian. The intervening grandfather, one of the old 
 Jamaica merchants, had been of secular service in mak 
 ing the family fortune. As a child, Parkman was capti 
 vated by stories of the early New England settlements, 
 with their struggle against the wilderness and the red- 
 man, and he was only a Harvard sophomore when the 
 purpose of writing the history of the French and Indian 
 War took firm possession of his mind. His special 
 preparation was of his own devising. He spent his 
 vacations camping and canoeing, and, in term, gave a 
 goodly share of his time to practising the swift walk of the 
 Indian, to feats of horsemanship and rifle-shooting. An 
 injury suffered in the gymnasium gave excuse for a voyage 
 to Italy, where, at Rome, he sought and secured lodging 
 
Reproduced from the fine steel plate in " The 
 Library of American Literature," by permission 
 of the publisher, William Evarts Benjamin. 
 
v NATIONAL ERA: PROSE THOUGHT 247 
 
 in a monastery, that he might study the priests. Two 
 years after taking his degree, he elected a graduate 
 course among the Black Hills of Dakota. With an 
 equally adventurous cousin, he started from St. Louis 
 on the emigrant trail in the spring of 1846. "My 
 business," said Parkman, " was observation, and I was 
 willing to pay dearly for the opportunity of exercising 
 it," as indeed he did. For a long summer the young 
 men lived in the saddle, rifle in hand, among Indians, 
 half-breeds, and trappers, even taking up their abode, 
 at last, in a village of savage Sioux, with whom they 
 smoked and slept, feasted off dog-meat in the filthy 
 lodges, and rode on buffalo hunts, but, to their youthful 
 chagrin, had no opportunity of following on the war-path. 
 The exposures and hardships of this wild life brought 
 upon Parkman a wasting illness, which sapped his 
 strength until, as he said, he was in a fair way of aton 
 ing for his love of the prairie " by resting there forever." 
 He came home with health permanently impaired, but 
 he had gained what he sought, the study from the 
 living model of those frontier types, brave, squaw, hunter, 
 soldier, fur-trader, whose figures were to animate his 
 Canadian wonder-tale. The account of this trip, as 
 Parkman, whose sight was seriously affected, dictated it 
 from a darkened room to his comrade, made his initial 
 volume, The Oregon Trail. The scope of his concep 
 tion had now so enlarged as to embrace the entire strife 
 between England and France for the possession of North 
 America, and by dint of forty industrious years he trans- 
 
248 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 lated his dream into deed. He did not begin his story 
 at the beginning, but at the end, opening his series of 
 historical narratives with the Conspiracy of Pontiac. 
 After a long interval came Pioneers of France in the 
 New World, relating the first attempts at French colo 
 nization. Then followed in order the Jesuits in North 
 America, describing those heroic missions which dared 
 so much and did so little; the Discovery of the Great 
 West, telling of the romantic exploration of the Missis 
 sippi ; the Old Regime in Canada, occupied with the 
 second half of the seventeenth century ; Count Fronte- 
 nac, treating of the first sharp clash between France and 
 England; Montcalm and Wolfe, depicting the latter 
 scenes of that long contest, and swinging the circle 
 round again to the Conspiracy of Pontiac. A supple 
 mentary issue, A Half- Century of Conflict, filled in the 
 gap between the Frontenac volume and its successor. 
 
 To his youthful studies from nature, Parkman had 
 added the severest and most scrupulous research. His 
 wealth secured him aid of secretaries and copyists, but 
 five times he visited Europe in person to explore the 
 French and English archives, and invalid though he was, 
 he journeyed to every American locality, however diffi 
 cult of access, that he desired to describe. When the 
 doctors, who at the best allowed him but a brief work 
 ing-day, sometimes only three or four isolated half-hours, 
 were compelled by his exhaustion to debar him from his 
 studies altogether, even for months at a time, he went 
 quietly into his garden and tended his roses. For two 
 
v NATIONAL ERA: PROSE THOUGHT 249 
 
 years he held the chair of horticulture at Harvard. But 
 however warily he might bide his time, the first day of 
 strength found him again among his books and manu 
 scripts, with an amanuensis busy by his side. He was 
 constantly on the verge of blindness, but other eyes 
 made good the dimness of his own. The ardent ambi 
 tion of youth and manhood s austere resolve were sacredly 
 fulfilled. His work is already classic, and although Ban 
 croft may be superseded, Prescott supplemented, and 
 even Motley corrected, it does not yet appear that Park- 
 man has left space for a successor. Although his tech 
 nical process was strictly that of the modern historical 
 student, his final conception was eminently imaginative 
 and poetic. A past bright with chivalry, adventure, and 
 wildwood romance lives again in his enchanting pages. 
 Prescott could color the vanished scene, and Motley call 
 up the spirits of the dead, but Parkman s magic wand 
 has restored a whole dominion, with its own life and 
 atmosphere. France and England in North America 
 crowns the historic labors of the era, labors that, for 
 the union of undaunted purpose, scholarly devotion, and 
 artistic vision are equalled in no other department of 
 our American literature. 
 
 V. Oratory. This art, even more than others, mir 
 rors the national life. American eloquence has changed 
 its form with its theme. The ringing appeals of Otis 
 and Henry sufficed for a crisis in which the issue was 
 comparatively clear. " The waves of rebellion," to adapt 
 Hamilton s fine phrase, " sparkled with fire," but when 
 
25O AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 the revolt was once accomplished and perplexing ques 
 tions of the national organization had arisen, the vehe 
 mence of oratory gave way to The Federalist, with its 
 closely knit argumentation. The Civil War was pre 
 ceded by a generation of forensic debate, for the moral 
 aspect of the problems that centred about slavery was 
 not absolutely patent except to the northern Abolition 
 ists. Garrison swept aside all consideration of the rights 
 of slaveholders, and yet under the law of the land they 
 had their rights, which they forfeited only by armed 
 rebellion. Lincoln, who, at an earlier time, would have 
 had the government duly buy the human property it had 
 so long recognized, justified the Emancipation Procla 
 mation as " warranted by the Constitution upon military 
 necessity." The Senate Chamber knew the complexities 
 of the situation better than Faneuil Hall, and where the 
 chief Abolition orator, WENDELL PHILLIPS, felt himself free 
 to inveigh and denounce, Webster and Clay held them 
 selves bound to examine and consider. A martyr is 
 easily an extremist, and the Massachusetts Abolitionists 
 had to undergo social ostracism and worse. Even so 
 gentle a philanthropist as Lydia Maria Child, whose his 
 torical tales and editorship of the Juvenile Miscellany 
 had made her widely popular, found her Appeal in Behalf 
 of that Class of Americans called Africans extremely ex 
 pensive in the diminution of her book sales and maga 
 zine subscriptions, and in the loss of her literary prestige. 
 Phillips, a classmate of Motley at Harvard and no less 
 elegant in tastes and bearing, having seen Garrison 
 
v NATIONAL ERA: PROSE THOUGHT 2$I 
 
 mobbed in 1835, lost little time in becoming his right- 
 hand man. This brilliant recruit was young enough to 
 smart under the swift recoil of those patrician Bostonians 
 among whom he belonged by birth and breeding, but, 
 impetuous, inconsistent, generous-hearted, with a rare 
 native gift of eloquence, he flung himself, heart and soul, 
 into the vulgar cause. Again and again, on the lecture 
 platform, he faced such furious crowds that a body 
 guard of his friends had to escort him home. The better 
 part of his valor was never discretion, but his burning 
 speech did not bring upon him the fate at which Holmes 
 mischievously hinted : 
 
 " Like our Motley s John of Barnveld, you have always been in 
 clined 
 
 To speak well, somewhat frankly, to let us know your 
 mind, 
 
 And the Mynheers would have told you to be cautious what you 
 said, 
 
 Or else that silver tongue of yours might cost your precious head." 
 
 The most notable victim of personal violence was 
 CHARLES SUMNER, who began his lawyer s career in Boston 
 with the brightest prospects, but, after identifying him 
 self with Abolition, never again pocketed so much as a 
 five-dollar fee. The aristocratic doors of Boston, save 
 only Prescott s, and of Cambridge, save only Longfel 
 low s, were shut against him. When he was sent to 
 Congress, he bore himself manfully, speaking with ability 
 and force on the unpopular side, until he suffered a bar 
 barous caning at the hands of a southern opponent, who 
 sprang upon him, as he was writing in his chair, from 
 
252 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 behind. The cruel injuries to head and spine kept 
 Sumner out of the active fight for the next four years, 
 but his sufferings, intensifying the wrath of Massachusetts 
 against slavery and all its brutal ways, fought for him. 
 Passions ran high in the Senate through those 
 Homeric years of the middle century. There, until he 
 fell dying in his seat in 1848, sat John Quincy Adams, 
 " the old man eloquent," whom the southern senators, 
 enraged by the stings of his persistent sarcasms, pre 
 ferred to call "the old man malignant." There sat 
 Jefferson Davis, Thomas Hart Benton, known as " Old 
 Bullion," and the veteran HENRY CLAY, the " Great Paci 
 ficator." Foreseeing the agonies of Civil War, he did 
 his utmost to avert- it. Between the two embittered 
 sections stood^ this familiar, friendly figure, anxious and 
 conciliatory, urging concessions, devising compromises. 
 In oratory he was, as a fellow Congressman has charac 
 terized him, "an impromptu, cut-and-thrust debater," 
 less noted for set speeches than for his alertness in 
 verbal sparring. His eloquence, nervous, thrilling, mag 
 netic, was sure of its immediate effects, but loses lustre 
 in the cold reproduction of print. The leader of the 
 slavery party was JOHN C. CALHOUN, of South Carolina, 
 whose ascetic, saintlike look was in accord with the 
 austere simplicity of his oratorical manner. He was 
 calm, logical, subtle, tenacious, speaking, said a fre 
 quent hearer, " like a college professor demonstrating to 
 his class." Calhoun s great personal influence with the 
 more refined and scholarly element of the South added 
 
v NATIONAL ERA: PROSE THOUGHT 253 
 
 weight to the doctrine of State Rights, of which he 
 was chief advocate and expositor. On the fourth of 
 March, 1850, he was supported from his death-bed 
 into the Senate Chamber to be present at the reading 
 of his speech upon the California Compromise. He 
 had always held with a dogmatic grip to the belief that 
 slavery was "a good, a positive good," and in the closing 
 words of this impressive address he solemnly declared 
 that he had throughout his career striven against the 
 Abolition agitation "with the intention of saving the 
 Union, if it could be done, and, if it cannot, to save 
 the section where it has pleased Providence to cast my 
 lot, and which, I sincerely believe, has justice and the 
 Constitution on its side." 
 
 Three days later, DANIEL WEBSTER rose in the Senate 
 to make that momentous speech which shook the North as 
 with an earthquake, and, so far as the trust and reverence 
 of his constituency were concerned, fulfilled his own fear 
 that it would " ruin " him. He, the pride and bulwark 
 of New England, her 
 
 " stateliest type of man, 
 In port and speech Olympian," 
 
 gave in his great assent to Clay s Compromises, with 
 their odious measure of a Fugitive Slave Law. It was 
 the turning-point in a life which had opened, humbly 
 enough, sixty-eight years before, in a New Hampshire 
 farm-house. Webster has himself told of the depth of his 
 boyish feeling when he first learned that his hard-work- 
 
254 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 ing father had planned to send him to Dartmouth Col 
 lege. " I remember," he wrote, " the very hill we were 
 ascending, through deep snows, in a New England 
 sleigh, when my father made his purpose known to me. 
 I could not speak. How could he, I thought, with so 
 large a family, and in such narrow circumstances, think 
 of incurring so great an expense for me ? A warm glow 
 ran all over me, and I laid my head on my father s 
 shoulder and wept." That was an eventful day for 
 Dartmouth, too, as she realized twenty-one years later, 
 when Webster saved her imperilled charter, winning his 
 case before the Supreme Court of Washington by an 
 impassioned plea which he considered one of the most 
 significant successes of his life. He had entered on 
 legal practice at the New Hampshire bar, a swarthy, 
 "raven-haired fellow, with an eye as black as death s, 
 and as heavy as a lion s." Nine years sufficed to put 
 him at the head of his profession there, and he removed 
 to Boston, where his continued achievements as a lawyer 
 gave him a national renown. His part in the convention 
 for revising the Constitution of Massachusetts approved 
 his statesmanship, and his Plymouth and Bunker Hill 
 orations, with the eulogy upon Adams and Jefferson, 
 wrapped him in a blaze of glory. Webster had been 
 twice sent from New Hampshire to Congress, and again, 
 in 1822, he entered public life, to be for thirty years a 
 central figure there, although, like Henry Clay, he was 
 three times disappointed in the hope of the Presidency. 
 Carlyle once said of him : " He looks like a sort of cathe- 
 
V NATIONAL ERA: PROSE THOUGHT 255 
 
 dral," and, indeed, an almost superstitious veneration 
 came to attach to that erect and portly form crowned by 
 the " amorphous, crag- like face ; the dull black eyes 
 under the precipice of brows, like dull anthracite furnaces 
 needing only to be blown ; the mastiff mouth accurately 
 closed." The unfathomable gaze of those dusky eyes 
 awed the souls of men. For once the Yankee humor 
 and audacity were abashed. Webster s very cravat, blue 
 coat, and buff waistcoat seemed invested with an intel 
 lectual majesty. Even now, it is only needful to read 
 over one of his grand speeches, as the second reply to 
 Hayne, accounted his masterpiece, equally wonderful for 
 its steady tramp of arguments and tremendous floods of 
 feeling, to realize that overwhelming power. Webster s 
 earnestness and force of mind impressed themselves like 
 sheer weight. Much as his regal presence and organ- 
 range of voice enhanced the first effect of his oratory, it 
 remains in print colossal eloquence. It is little wonder 
 that when a champion like this ranged himself on the 
 side of the California Compromises, their measures 
 should become law. Clay s policy had a temporary 
 triumph, but that seventh of March speech shattered the 
 Webster idolatry. In the view of New England, this 
 northern advocate of the slave-power had put law above 
 right, expediency above principle, and ambition above 
 conscience. 
 
 " So fallen ! so lost ! the light withdrawn 
 
 Which once he wore, 
 The glory from his gray hairs gone 
 Forevermore ! " 
 
256 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 Emerson claimed that Webster had always shown 
 himself deficient in moral sensibility. " Hence a 
 sterility of thought, the want of generalization in his 
 speeches, and the curious fact that, with a general 
 ability which impresses all the world, there is not a 
 single general remark, not an observation on life and 
 manners, not an aphorism, that can pass into literature 
 from his writings." The apologists for Webster main 
 tain that he should be written into history a martyr, 
 not a traitor. He was the supreme expounder and 
 upholder of the national Constitution. He counted 
 slavery an evil and was opposed to its extension, but he 
 at no time admitted that slavery as existing in the 
 Southern States could be assailed. He believed that 
 the antislavery tide of feeling, which, on the seventh 
 of March, he vainly strove to stem, endangered the 
 stability of the Union. The burning passion of his 
 life was for the Union, " Liberty and Union, now 
 and forever, one and inseparable." Whether that 
 crucial speech redounds to his shame or honor de 
 pends upon the motives of a deep, inscrutable heart. 
 He himself avowed, at the hour, their patriotic purity : 
 " I have a part to act, not for my own security or safety, 
 for I am looking out for no fragment on which to float 
 away from the wreck, if wreck there must be ; but for 
 the good of the whole and the preservation of all, and 
 there is that which will keep me to my duty during the 
 struggle, whether the sun and the stars shall appear or 
 shall not appear for many days. I speak to-day for the 
 preservation of the Union." 
 
v NATIONAL ERA: PROSE THOUGHT 257 
 
 Outside the Washington storm-centre, the prevail 
 ing oratory was hardly less militant and denunciatory. 
 Plymouth pulpit, where the fearless, warm-hearted HENRY 
 WARD BEECHER kindled great audiences to generous life, 
 was an antislavery platform, though not of the Garrison 
 type. At the bar, RUFUS CHOATE, rapid, vivid, and inci 
 sive, sometimes flashed aside from his argument for the 
 charm of a moment s mirth or beauty, but the gentler 
 graces of eloquence were best represented by EDWARD 
 EVERETT. This most accomplished gentleman, who was 
 successively Harvard tutor, Unitarian pastor, Professor of 
 Greek at Harvard, Congressman, Governor of Massa 
 chusetts, Minister to England, and Secretary of State, 
 illustrated the conservative sentiment of Boston. Aboli 
 tion was too rash and rude for him, but his services 
 to culture were outranked by none. 
 
 Since the outbreak of the Civil War, American 
 oratory has seemed to moderate its tone. The fervid 
 and sonorous periods of Webster now strike a little 
 strangely on the ear. Stern strife and loyal death put 
 the eloquence of mere words to shame. The flawless 
 sublimity of Lincoln s Gettysburg address comes not 
 merely from its concentrated truth, its crystal clarity, 
 its involuntary rhythm of emotion, the moral intensity 
 of every syllable, but from the silence of that sleeping 
 battle-host. The Scriptural cadences of the Second 
 Inaugural are weighted with a nation s agony and 
 upborne upon a nation s faith. 
 
 The poetic plainness of Lincoln suggests a kindred 
 
258 AMERICAN LITERATURE o 
 
 quality of simplicity in the greatest of our recent pulpit 
 orators, PHILLIPS BROOKS, the beloved Bishop of Massa 
 chusetts; but far different from Lincoln s terseness 
 was the rushing impetuosity of that strong pleading 
 which not the walls of Trinity nor of any church or 
 sect could bound. Eloquence becomes rarer as themes 
 grow more intricate. In the complicated problems 
 of finance and economics that have increasingly en 
 gaged public attention since the War, even the fervor 
 of Wendell Phillips but beat the air. The judgment 
 of the specialist carries further in politics to-day than 
 oratorical passion. But although the apparatus of 
 theological scholarship is more elaborate than ever 
 before, Phillips Brooks made an avenue for sacred 
 oratory by appealing purely to the spiritual conscious 
 ness and the primal faiths of man. 
 
 VI. Studies in Nature. From the day of Franklin, 
 natural science has had its American devotees, usually 
 dependent upon academic appointments for a subsist 
 ence. Yale boasts its Sillimans, Amherst its Hitchcocks, 
 Vassar its Maria Mitchell, Harvard its Shaler, Scudder, 
 and Gray. But although there were many isolated 
 workers, a significantly large proportion being of foreign 
 birth, the general public was apathetic. Even the col 
 leges treated the subject cavalierly, as in Columbia s 
 appointing Dr. Mitchell to a roomy chair of chemistry, 
 natural history, and philosophy. In "practical " discov 
 eries or inventions, as ether, the telegraph and telephone, 
 the applications of steam and electricity, America has 
 
NATIONAL ERA: PROSE THOUGHT 259 
 
 shown herself shrewdly interested, but, until the advent 
 of Agassiz, of science for truth s sake the country at 
 large knew little and cared less. How great were the 
 obstacles which this popular indifference put in the way 
 of independent investigators is seen in the case of our 
 two ornithologists, Wilson, a native of Scotland, and 
 Audubon, whose father was a Frenchman. The Scotch 
 naturalist, seeking subscriptions for his American Orni 
 thology, with its nine folio volumes and many colored 
 plates, was frankly told by the governor of New York : 
 " I would not give a hundred dollars for all the birds you 
 intend to describe, even if I had them alive," while a 
 Pennsylvania judge rebuked him for producing a book 
 so costly as to be beyond " the reach of the commonalty 
 and therefore inconsistent with our republican institu 
 tions." Audubon fared rather better, although his Cin 
 cinnati neighbors shook their heads over his woodland 
 wanderings, and in Philadelphia and New York, where 
 he sought patronage for his magnificent work, his recep 
 tion left him "clouded and depressed," feeling himself 
 " strange to all but the birds of America." But Agassiz, 
 arriving in Boston close upon the middle of the century, 
 did for science what Longfellow was doing for poetry, 
 made it the possession of the people. The devout son 
 of a Swiss pastor, opening his summer school at Penikese 
 with prayer, he gained American confidence so fully that 
 the descendants of the Puritans hearkened willingly to 
 his strong saying : " Philosophers and theologians have 
 still to learn that a physical fact is as sacred as a moral 
 
260 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 principle." The great naturalist was a still greater 
 teacher and, in science as in philosophy, teaching has 
 been the first need of our democracy. For a quarter- 
 century Agassiz dwelt among us, and never was man 
 more cordial, dominant, inspiring, irresistible, setting all 
 the world to work, drawing, like a magnet, thousands of 
 dollars out of private pockets and state treasuries, fairly 
 radiating scientific enthusiasm. Another famous Swiss, 
 Guyot, the geologist and geographer, followed him to 
 America and continued his mission. 
 
 Contemporary with the labors of Agassiz were the 
 recreations of our " poet-naturalist." Some thirty years 
 after Bryant had first brought the American aspects of 
 nature into verse, HENRY DAVID THOREAU made them at 
 home in prose. They had not absolutely escaped men 
 tion, even in Colonial times. A few of the pioneers, 
 especially the vigilant Wood and the credulous Josselyn, 
 had essayed nature description, and a French immigrant 
 of the Revolutionary period, Saint John de Crevecceur, 
 recorded in his Letters from an American Farmer sym- 
 pachetic observations of birds and bees and yellow wasps. 
 The charm of these letters, which ought to be reprinted, 
 is akin to the charm that our own day loves in the writ 
 ing of such nature-intimates as William Hamilton Gibson, 
 Wilson Flagg, Frank Bolles, Maurice Thompson, Brad 
 ford Torrey, Olive Thorne Miller. But who of these 
 ever kept as a parlor ornament a nest of buzzing hornets, 
 that reciprocated the courtesy by catching the household 
 flies, even off the children s eyelids? 
 
Reproduced by permission of Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 
 Publishers of Thoreau s Works. 
 
\ o n A 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
v NATIONAL ERA: PROSE THOUGHT 26 1 
 
 Pictures of forest, lake, and ocean form one of the last 
 ing attractions of Cooper s novels, and sketches of New 
 England country scenes, hardly less wild and strange, 
 relieve with touches of quiet beauty the transcendental 
 rhapsodies of Sylvester Judd s Margaret ; but nature is 
 Thoreau s staple. The "hermit of Walden" was not 
 posing. He dwelt among the pines by Walden Pond 
 because he had need of solitude in preparation for his 
 life-task of authorship. " How can we expect a harvest 
 of thought," he asked, " who have not had a seed-time 
 of character?" It is often asserted that Thoreau with 
 drew into his mimic wilderness as a protest against civili 
 zation or from surly motives of misanthropy, but his own 
 words bear no such statements out : " 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, dis 
 cover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what 
 was not life, living is so dear." Born in Concord, and 
 graduated at Harvard, he had taught, acquired pro 
 ficiency in the family trade of pencil-making, and learned 
 surveying, so that the ordinary paths to the ordinary ends 
 were well open before him ; but he counted the life more 
 than meat. That young mind, which Emerson found so 
 " free and erect," needed to get away for a season, even 
 from Emerson himself, to realize its own quality and 
 function. "Know your own bone," he said, "gnaw at 
 it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still. ... In what 
 concerns you much, do not think that you have com- 
 
262 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 pardons : know that you are alone in the world." On a 
 wood-lot belonging to Emerson, close by Walden Pond, 
 the young Transcendentalist, by aid of Alcott s best axe, 
 built himself a hut, which cost him, all told, twenty-eight 
 dollars. He took possession on Independence Day, and 
 lived there two years, after which he returned to the 
 village for the remaining fourteen years of his life. In 
 point of fact, however, he was not a recluse at Walden. 
 He strolled into Concord every other afternoon or so, 
 and kept in his sylvan hermitage open house for all who 
 passed his way. He was sometimes annoyed by the 
 inquisitive, but had an unfeigned welcome for " children 
 come a-berrying, railroad men taking a Sunday morning 
 walk in clean shirts, fishermen and hunters, poets and 
 philosophers ; in short, all honest pilgrims, who came 
 out to the woods for freedom s sake, and really left the 
 village and town behind." Nor did he lack other com 
 panions. Phcebes built in his shed, and robins in the pines 
 that brushed his outer wall, even the shy partridge fearlessly 
 clucked her brood past his window, the mouse that lived 
 under the floor ate from his finger, and a squirrel fell so 
 in love with him that he had to take it in as a permanent 
 boarder. The wood-birds would perch upon his shoul 
 der or upon the spade with which he tilled his precious 
 bean-patch. He could pull a woodchuck from its hole, 
 or lift a fish from the water in his hand. Shortly after 
 forsaking this happy retreat, Thoreau, who had been one 
 of the Dial contributors, published A Week on the Con 
 cord and Merrimac Rivers, the record of a trip that he 
 
V NATIONAL ERA: PROSE THOUGHT 263 
 
 had taken, long before going to Walden, with his brother 
 John in a boat of their own building. This brother had 
 since died, and much fault has been found with poor 
 Thoreau for his sad little attempt to show the world and 
 Emerson what an admirable stoic he was. " I do not 
 wish to see John ever again," he said, but twelve years 
 after his brother s death he turned pale and faint in 
 speaking of it. This initial book, mystical in tone 
 and abrupt in style, did not take with the public. Of 
 the thousand copies, which formed the first edition, 
 scarcely more than two hundred were sold. Seventy- 
 five were given away, and the rest sent back to the 
 author, who tugged them upstairs on his back, and ob 
 served stout-heartedly : " I have now a library of nearly 
 nine hundred volumes, over seven hundred of which I 
 wrote myself." Walden, describing his experiment in 
 simplified life, sold better, but the other volumes, Excur 
 sions, The Maine Woods, Cape Cod, A Yankee in Canada, 
 Early Spring in Massachusetts, Summer, Winter, Autumn, 
 Miscellanies, have been printed since his death, edited 
 by his friends from his journals. These books reveal at, 
 once the versatile Yankee, with his French extraction, 
 proud of his frugality and skill in handicrafts ; the out- 
 of-door naturalist, stealthy of tread and Indian-keen of 
 sense ; and the brooding mystic, to whom this world, 
 with all its multiform detail, is but a spiritual enigma 
 that men are here to read. And when, again, Thoreau 
 writes of mountains "washed in air" or the blue 
 bird carrying " the sky on his back " or the meadow 
 
264 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 " bespattered with melody " of bobolinks, he is no better 
 than a poet. 
 
 Thoreau, "sad as a pine-tree," not only lived with 
 Nature, and kept a day-by-day record of her, but he is 
 strangely akin to her. He shared her wildness and rough 
 ness, her austerity and asperity, the purity and chill of 
 her New England snows that slew him in his prime. 
 What he called "the sours and bitters of Nature" were 
 in his blood. " From the forest and wilderness," he 
 said, "come the tonics and barks which brace mankind." 
 With his deep-set gray eyes under the shaggy brows, his 
 beak-like nose, his wary glance, his swinging gait, his 
 weather-stained garb, he was a man to note, if only for 
 that "ugliness" which Hawthorne liked in Thoreau, as 
 becoming him " much better than beauty." He was a 
 pronounced individualist, refusing to pay taxes to a gov 
 ernment that sustained slavery, eulogizing John Brown, 
 holding aloof from the church. The D.D. s whose opin 
 ion he valued most, he said, were chickadee-dees. " If 
 a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps 
 it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him 
 step to the music which he hears." Like Emerson, like 
 Whitman, Thoreau proclaimed the joy of life. " I love 
 my fate to the core and rind," he cried, and well he 
 might, for obscure and harsh though it seemed to be, it 
 held the ideal prizes : " If the day and night are such 
 that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance 
 like flowers and sweet-scented herbs is more elastic, 
 starry, immortal that is your success." 
 
V NATIONAL ERA: PROSE THOUGHT 265 
 
 Thoreau is still the Only. Not the best of his disci 
 ples, not John Burroughs, can reach his upper notes. 
 But this is an ungracious way of recognizing our debt to 
 "John of Birds," whose cheery essays have illuminated 
 farm-lot and roadside tangle. He holds, too, a clearer 
 mirror up to nature. The one canon of Thoreau s literary 
 art, the end and aim of all that ceaseless note-taking and 
 journal-keeping, was to speak the truth, but he saw natu 
 ral phenomena with eyes that searched beyond, and he 
 reported, after all, less of this world than of the other. 
 Burroughs is a plainer man, who takes warblers and hem 
 locks at their surface value and makes literature out of 
 a cow. 
 
266 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 NATIONAL ERA: PROSE FICTION 
 
 A novel is in its broadest definition a personal impression of life. 
 HENRY JAMES, The Art of Fiction. 
 
 I. Adventure. The regular function of a novel is to 
 tell a story, but there are various kinds of stories and vari 
 ous ways of telling them. The tellers, too, have various 
 objects in view. American fiction of the present century 
 illustrates the most important of these varieties. At 
 the outset stands the strong and clumsy figure of JAMES 
 FENIMORE COOPER, whose novels are bold, stirring narra 
 tives of adventure on sea and land. They differ from 
 the morbid books of Cooper s predecessor, Charles 
 Brockden Brown, as health differs from disease. " When 
 have I known," asked the young consumptive, "that 
 lightness and vivacity of mind which . . . health . . . 
 produces in men? Never . . . longer than half an 
 hour at a time since I was a man." Cooper, on the 
 other hand, was as robust as sun and wind could make 
 him. His boyhood was passed on the borders of the 
 wilderness. His father, Judge Cooper, a man of energy 
 and resource, had secured, soon after the Revolution, a 
 great estate, embracing thousands of acres, on Otsego 
 Lake in New York. His first survey of his " patent," in 
 
VI NATIONAL ERA: PROSE FICTION 267 
 
 1785, is made vivid by Judge Temple of The Pioneers, 
 in a passage that may serve to illustrate Cooper s slow 
 and rich descriptive manner. " I left my party, the 
 morning of my arrival, near the farms of the Cherry 
 Valley, and, following a deer-path, rode to the summit 
 of the mountain that I have since called Mount Vision ; 
 for the sight that there met my eyes seemed to me as the 
 deceptions of a dream. The fire had run over the 
 pinnacle, and, in a great measure, laid open the view. 
 The leaves were fallen, and I mounted a tree, and sat 
 for an hour looking on the silent wilderness. Not an 
 opening was to be seen in the boundless forest, except 
 where the lake lay, like a mirror of glass. The water 
 was covered by myriads of the wild-fowl that migrate 
 with the changes in the season ; and, while in my situ 
 ation on the branch of the beech, I saw a bear, with her 
 cubs, descend to the shore to drink. I had met many 
 deer, gliding through the woods, in my journey ; but not 
 the vestige of a man could I trace during my progress, 
 nor from my elevated observatory. No clearing, no hut, 
 none of the winding roads that are now to be seen, were 
 there ; nothing but mountains rising behind mountains ; 
 and the valley, with its surface of branches, enlivened 
 here and there with the faded foliage of some tree, that 
 parted from its leaves with more than ordinary reluc 
 tance. Even the Susquehanna was then hid, by the 
 height and density of the forest." 
 
 Five years later, Judge Cooper had made in this 
 solitude a habitable spot for his family and brought them 
 
268 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 thither. The future novelist was then a year-old baby, 
 born in Burlington, New Jersey, and for a brief boyhood 
 he was free to revel in the rough, venturesome, out-of- 
 door life of the settlement, drinking deep, meanwhile, 
 of the solemn beauty of the forest. All too soon he was 
 banished from this boy s paradise and sent to Albany, 
 where he fitted for college with a runaway English cleric, 
 whose classics were so good that Cooper entered Yale at 
 thirteen. Here he roamed the countryside instead of 
 studying, and, for some unlucky escapade, was dismissed 
 in his junior year. Judge Cooper, then in Congress, 
 decided to place him in the navy. As the custom was, 
 Cooper learned to be a sailor by shipping before the 
 mast on a merchantman. He sailed from New York to 
 London and Gibraltar and home again, being much 
 favored, for literary purposes, in several Atlantic storms. 
 After this apprenticeship 
 
 " In cradle of the rude, imperious surge," 
 
 he became, at eighteen, a midshipman. There was no 
 war on hand, doubtless to his disappointment, but he 
 added to his knowledge of wild nature by passing a 
 winter on the remote shores of Lake Ontario, where 
 he helped in the building of a naval vessel, and by 
 visiting Niagara Falls. At twenty-one he fell in love, 
 married, and resigned his commission. Absorbed in 
 domestic happiness, rearing his children, and farming 
 it in gentlemanly fashion, he had attained the age of 
 thirty without symptoms of authorship, when one of 
 
VI NATIONAL ERA: PROSE FICTION 269 
 
 those beings usually designated by him as " drooping 
 females " projected him by a quiet remark upon his 
 famous career. To young Mrs. Cooper, unquestionably 
 a " beauteous and breathing model of her sex," he was 
 reading aloud, one day, an English society novel. When 
 he flung it down with the natural remark, " I believe I 
 could write a better story myself," the wife quite as natu 
 rally responded that she would like to see him do it, or 
 words to that effect. Cooper s temper was never of the 
 sort to " take a dare," and at this he promptly penned 
 a two-volume novel entitled Precaution. This is a 
 wearisome story of high life in England. Cooper 
 knew nothing about English society from personal ob 
 servation, but he modelled his writing on his reading. 
 A number of fashionable and generally insipid people 
 wind in and out the devious ways of courtship, but the 
 interest, so far as there is any, centres in the faultless 
 daughter of a baronet, wooed by a disguised earl, the 
 lady falling " senseless on the sofa " at the disclosure 
 of her lover s rank. The title is justified through the 
 exertions of a universal chaperon, who labors "under 
 the disadvantage of a didactic manner " and is inveter- 
 ately warning her charges to hold their hearts in leash 
 and not consent to marry without complete assurance 
 of the moral and religious excellence of their suitors. 
 Absurd enough in itself, Precaution seems especially 
 ill-adapted to an American public, but the poverty of 
 our literature was then such that novel-readers expected 
 English situations and English characters as a matter of 
 
2/O AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 course. Cooper even published his book anonymously 
 that it might be the better received as supposedly of 
 English authorship. 
 
 This first venture was hardly a success, but now that he 
 had tasted ink, Cooper could not cease. Precaution had 
 been published in the autumn of 1820. A year later ap 
 peared The Spy, an American story of Revolutionary 
 date, with the scene laid in Westchester County of New 
 York, where Cooper had made his home. This was hot 
 ground in the war time, British troops and Continentals 
 sweeping back and forth over the blood-stained soil. 
 The main action takes place at the homestead of a dis 
 tressed neutral, whose son wears the King s uniform, and 
 whose two daughters color their politics after their lovers 
 coats, one red, one buff. In this novel the " aged black," 
 on whom Cooper s domestic machinery seems so depend 
 ent, begins his ministrations. In addition to much exciting 
 and chivalric incident, there is the interest of a mystery en 
 folding two prominent characters, of whom one, a solemn 
 stalking personage, is Washington in disguise, and the 
 other is the peddler, Harvey Birch, in Washington s secret 
 service. Such devoted agents had not been wanting to 
 the patriot cause, and from the tradition of one of these 
 Cooper portrayed his Spy. This novel had an unprece 
 dented sale in America, was approved in England, and so 
 rapturously hailed in France that its fame went abroad 
 over all Europe, even Persia having a translation. Cooper 
 now set about story-telling in earnest. Next came The 
 Pioneers, dealing with the scenes of his boyhood. The 
 
vi NATIONAL ERA: PROSE FICTION 2/1 
 
 public expectation had run so high that thirty-five hun 
 dred copies were sold in the first half-day. The book is 
 overladen with description, pictures of the riches of 
 lake and forest in those prodigal times, when bass were 
 netted by the shoal and pigeons shot with cannon for 
 their multitude. Novel-readers, missing their accus 
 tomed diet of dukes and diadems, denounced the book 
 as vulgar, with its commonplace incidents and lowly 
 characters. Incidents and characters came from Cooper s 
 deepest recollections, the sugaring off, the shooting- 
 match for the Christmas turkey, the panther, the forest 
 fire, the border jumble of New Yorkers, Yankees, French 
 men, Germans, Welshmen, negroes, Indians. But the 
 mongrel dialect of these worthies, who talk interminably, 
 is vexatious, and the story, turning on a mysterious youth 
 with a mysterious grievance, drags. There is a seeming 
 anomaly here, for this book, genuine piece of realism 
 though it is, stands also as the forerunner in that unique 
 series of frontier romances known as the Leather-Stocking 
 Tales. Romance has been defined as the union of the 
 strange with the beautiful, but all that forest atmosphere 
 so familiar to Cooper was a surprise to Europe. The 
 effect even of his realism was romantic. In his later 
 Indian stories, however, he garnished these memories of 
 boyhood with imaginary exploits and adventures of the 
 most startling sort. His wild-life characters are at a dis 
 advantage in The Pioneers. Indian John is a drunken 
 old savage, with gleams of nobler memory, and Natty 
 Bumppo, or Leather-Stocking, is a grizzled, homely- spoken 
 
2/2 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 backwoodsman, whose distinguishing traits are a good aim 
 and a good heart, a shrinking from the advancing tide of 
 civilization, and a craving for the further wilderness. 
 
 Cooper had now broken ground successfully in the 
 Revolutionary novel and the romance of pioneer life. 
 His next book conquered for him the third and last of 
 his peculiar domains. The authorship of the Waverley 
 novels was still under discussion, although Scott was gen 
 erally suspected ; but The Pirate, some one claimed in 
 Cooper s presence, could not have been written by a 
 landsman. Cooper maintained, on the contrary, that 
 the story, cleverly done though it was, lacked the true 
 nautical flavor. To show how much more vivid might 
 be a sea-yarn spun by a sailor, he wrote The Pilot. This 
 captured the Edinburgh Review, which, though protesting 
 against the tedious detail, pronounced the book original 
 and a masterpiece. The Pilot is Paul Jones, who, hugging 
 a haughty melancholy, furnishes the indispensable mys 
 tery, but he is far less attractive, with his alternations of 
 " cool asperity " and " convulsive grasp," than the staunch 
 old pea-jacket, Long Tom Coffin. The story " blows 
 fresh," and to read it is almost as good as a voyage. 
 
 Cooper wrote twenty-eight novels more. Four of 
 these, The Deerslayer, The Last of the Mohicans, The 
 Pathfinder, and The Prairie, make up with The Pioneers, 
 whose place, in the order of events, is fourth, the Leather- 
 Stocking group. In the first, Natty Bumppo is a moral 
 izing youth, standing six feet in his moccasins, and 
 cracking miraculous shots. His brother-in-arms, the 
 
VI NATIONAL ERA: PROSE FICTION 2/3 
 
 young Mohican chief, Chingachgook, makes picturesque 
 poses with his arch and tender Wah ! - ta ! - Wah ! 
 The second tale, most rapid and thrilling of all, has for 
 hero the Last of the Mohicans, Uncas, son of Chingach 
 gook. This young brave is a sheer knight-errant, always 
 " flying with instinctive delicacy to the assistance of the 
 females." Honest Bumppo wears, here the sobriquet of 
 Hawk s-eye, and is left, at the close of the book, clasping 
 hands with the bereaved Chingachgook over the grave of 
 Uncas, which they water with "scalding tears." The 
 scene of The Pathfinder is laid on Lake Ontario, and 
 abundant opportunity is given for the display of Cooper s 
 woodcraft and watercraft, although Mark Twain cavils at 
 both. Here Bumppo falls in love, but again the story 
 leaves him with tears " rolling out of the fountains of 
 feeling," as he generously relinquishes the sergeant s 
 daughter to a younger suitor and goes his bachelor way to 
 the faithful Chingachgook. In The Pioneers we witness 
 the heathen death of the old Mohican, degraded by 
 civilization to Indian John, and in The Prairie the 
 Christian death of the trapper himself. This volume is 
 the most poetical of the series, showing Leather-Stock 
 ing, an aged, solitary figure, on the wide plains beyond 
 the Mississippi, ever wandering westward in a vain 
 attempt to escape "the din of the settlements." 
 
 Cooper s other Indian romances resemble these, but 
 flow less freely. The Wept of Wish-ton- Wish depicts a 
 family of Connecticut Puritans, who, besieged in a blaz 
 ing blockhouse by murderous Narragansetts, come out 
 
274 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 of their plight not much the worse. Wyandotte recounts 
 the troubles of an isolated household on the New York 
 frontier, betrayed to the savages by a nasal Yankee. 
 The central Indian of the story stabs the master of 
 the household in revenge for a flogging thirty years 
 old, but, ten years later, converted and penitent, dies on 
 his victim s grave. Oak Openings goes further yet and 
 converts the terrible Scalping Peter, chief of an Indian 
 confederacy, at the martyrdom of a Methodist mission 
 ary, Parson Amen. Indians figure, too, in the trio of 
 political novels, Sa tans toe, Chainbearer, and Redskins, 
 which go to uphold the patroon rights of the great land 
 owners against the anti-rent agitation. The first is the 
 autobiography of Corny Littlepage, who, after divers en 
 tertaining experiences in the old Knickerbocker society 
 of New York and Albany, endured some sharp encoun 
 ters with the Hurons in visiting his wilderness grants. 
 The second, less successful, comes supposedly from the 
 hand of his son, who found the squatters on those estates 
 little disposed to admit his landlordship. In the third, 
 polemical and almost without story, are depicted the 
 perplexities of the latest heir, a gilded and travelled 
 youth, who threatens darkly, if American law will not 
 protect him in the enjoyment of his ancestral wealth, to 
 go and live in Europe. The Indian element is compara 
 tively slight in these anti-rent novels, yet so far as the 
 redmen appear, they suggest those magnanimous quali 
 ties so freely lavished by Cooper upon the forest chivalry 
 of his Leather-Stocking Tales. This roseate view of 
 
VI NATIONAL ERA: PROSE FICTION 2/5 
 
 Indian character has provoked criticism. Uncas has 
 hardly found credence. " Pooh, pooh ! " as one of 
 Cooper s own borderers said, "this is much too senti 
 mental for your Mohawks, and Oneidas, and Ononda- 
 goes, and Tuscaroras." In contrast, Paulding s 
 Koningsmarke , a tale of the Delaware Swedes, paints 
 the Indians as hideous and silly brutes, and Bird s Nick 
 of the Woods takes for hero, not one of the scalping 
 savages, but their relentless murderer, the Jibbenainosay, 
 maddened avenger of his ruined home. The yellow crop 
 of dime novels has followed Bird and Paulding rather 
 than Cooper, but Mrs. Jackson s Ramona presents the 
 nobler view. 
 
 The Pilot led Cooper s line of spirited sea-stories. 
 The ever-popular Red Rover, with its romantic bucca 
 neer, and well-exploded train of surprises; the Water- 
 Witch, with its fantastic smuggler and sea-green sorceress ; 
 Wing-and-Wing, with its gallant French corsair; The 
 Two Admirals, with its splendid sea-fight and that 
 manly friendship which held a tempted spirit true ; 
 Afloat and Ashore, with its unforgettable figures of 
 the wily South American savages; its continuation, 
 Miles Wallingford; Jack Tier, with its queer quintette 
 clinging to the keel of a capsized schooner that settles 
 with every hour down nearer to the impatient sharks; 
 The Crater, with its new Robinson Crusoe and its in 
 secure Utopia founded on a volcano; The Sea-Lions, 
 with its whaling and sealing, pirate gold and Ant 
 arctic ice, all have variety and hazard and genuine 
 
276 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 ocean charm. Mercedes of Castile, too, depicts the 
 eventful cruise of Columbus, and Homeward Bound is 
 the narrative of an Atlantic voyage. Cooper outgoes all 
 American competitors in extravagant fabrications of salt 
 water adventure. Herman Melville s South Sea stories 
 are more direct and convincing, his Typee, especially, 
 having the realistic shudder of an author who barely es 
 caped a dishing up for cannibals, but William Starbuck 
 Mayo makes too extreme a claim upon credulity. Yet 
 there is entertainment to be had out of his sensational 
 and stilted Kaloolah, named from the Congo bride whom 
 that dauntless adventurer, Jonathan Romer of Nantucket, 
 rescued from slave-catchers in darkest Africa, and taught 
 to speak English so fluently that she was soon alluding 
 to the leafy branches overhead as "this umbrageous 
 canopy." 
 
 What Cooper could do was action. Psychology was 
 out of his range. Attempting to follow up the success of 
 The Spy by another Revolutionary novel, he wrote Lionel 
 Lincoln, located at Boston in the glorious days of Lex 
 ington and Bunker Hill, but instead of laying his stress 
 on military manoeuvres and soldierly heroism, Cooper 
 tried, by dint of an idiot, a maniac, and two sin-tortured 
 women, to construct a tragedy of secret guilt. At such 
 Hawthornesque business he showed himself but a bun 
 gler. The poet Dana and the painter Allston could do 
 better, one with the furious passions of Tom Thornton 
 and Paul Felton, and the other with the melodramatic 
 Monaldi. The Revolutionary romances of Cooper 
 
VI NATIONAL ERA: PROSE FICTION 2/7 
 
 stopped abruptly with the unfortunate Lionel Lincoln, 
 but, in the South, Simms and Kennedy and John Esten 
 Cooke took up the theme. The place of Simms, the 
 veteran in southern letters, is at once honorable and 
 pathetic. Striving against wind and tide, he produced 
 as many stories as Cooper, besides a goodly amount of 
 poetry, biography, and miscellany; but the bulk of his 
 writing was too hasty for immortality. His Yemassee, 
 a tale of the great Indian rising in early Carolina, chal 
 lenged Cooper on his own ground, as did Kennedy s 
 Rob of the Bowl, picturing the life of Colonial Maryland, 
 and Cooke s Fairfax, a story of the Virginia border. In 
 this figures Washington, as a lad of sixteen, together with 
 a chivalric young redskin after Cooper s own heart, Light- 
 foot, son of War Eagle. Even better than these are the 
 Revolutionary romances, Simms s Partisan, Scout, Eutaw, 
 and others, Kennedy s Horseshoe Robinson, and Cooke s 
 Virginia Comedians. This last is still an attractive and 
 suggestive novel, for all its old-fashioned English 
 and Byronesque lover, who at any trying moment 
 "with passionate anger . . . grasped his breast, and 
 dug his nails into the flesh, until they were stained with 
 blood." 
 
 Cooper s Dutch-descended young heroes carry them 
 selves more coolly under provocation, and it would have 
 been well for their author, had he emulated them in this 
 respect. He had a stormy temper, from which appar 
 ently his household did not suffer, as his domestic affec 
 tions were of the warmest, but which was continually 
 
2/8 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 bringing him into collision with the public. Naturally a 
 stiff conservative and even, in a bluff, generous fashion, 
 an aristocrat, his ardent patriotism led him, during a 
 long foreign residence, to exalt democracy, for the edifi 
 cation of Europe, in a series of three novels, The Bravo, 
 located in Venice, Heidenmauer, on the Rhine, and The 
 Headsman, among the Alps. These plunged him into 
 newspaper controversy, in which he vaunted the repub 
 lican institutions of his native land, but returning to 
 America, after an absence of seven years, he found his 
 country cruder and more strident than he remembered 
 it and absorbed in business enterprise. This landed 
 proprietor, who had inherited the large Cooperstown es 
 tate, where he henceforth made his home, had little sym 
 pathy with the Wall Street spirit. As he had upbraided 
 Europe for failing to admire America, he now proceeded 
 to scold America about the traits that he disliked. His 
 charges were often true, but his manner of preferring 
 them, blunt at the outset, grew more and more offensive. 
 In addition to outspoken newspaper criticism, he tried 
 to satirize the nation in a semi-allegorical novel, The 
 Manikins, but his hand was too heavy for such cunning 
 work. A quarrel with his neighbors over the right to a 
 tongue of picnic-ground called out a more directly abu 
 sive novel, Home as Found, sequel to Homeward Bound. 
 The national vanity smarted, and the newspapers, by way 
 of argument, called the critic names. He retorted, most 
 unexpectedly, by bringing a succession of libel suits, 
 until he had actually cowed the American press. In 
 
VI NATIONAL ERA: PROSE FICTION 279 
 
 those years, Cooper, in Elizabethan phrase, walked "up 
 and down like a charged musket." Even his sea-stories 
 grew more and more polemical, pirates and ice-floes 
 being kept waiting on the expression of his personal 
 prejudices against Yankee deacons, Albany legislators, 
 editors, and Unitarians. His last novel, The Ways of 
 the Hour, attacks the system of trial by jury. 
 
 Cooper died in 1851, having written in the latter half 
 of his life thirty-two novels, five volumes of naval history 
 and biography, ten volumes of travels and sketches, and 
 a countless number of newspaper columns. Much as his 
 intemperate wrath had impaired his personal popularity 
 and injured the literary quality of his later work, the 
 best of his romances the Leather-Stocking series, 
 The Spy, The Pilot, The Red Rover keep up a 
 steady sale. There are boys yet who turn from the 
 instructive Rollo Books and Bodley Books, and even 
 from the entertaining pages of "Oliver Optic," John 
 T. Trowbridge, and Howard Pyle, to enjoy starving 
 on a raft or burning at a stake with Cooper. His 
 tales yield a pleasure akin to that of physical motion. 
 Like Scott, he may be slow in getting under way, but, 
 once started, there is a forest trail to follow or a windy 
 sea to sail. He loved nature and nature s children, 
 the backwoodsman, the Indian, the tar. His well-bred 
 characters are healthy, comely, and good, but not inter 
 esting. His heroines have been called " sticks of barley 
 candy," and his heroes, true to Yale tradition, are athletic. 
 The reader feels comfortably sure, at the outset of a 
 
280 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 story, that Strength and Sweetness will wed in the last 
 chapter, but not until a profusion of deadly perils shall 
 have been sprung upon them and the most unlikely 
 people discovered to be their blood-relations. The plot 
 may be careless, the mystery stale, the hazards absurdly 
 unnecessary, the escapes incredible, the syntax and 
 diction faulty, but the story carries by its candid appeal 
 to excitement, curiosity, and the joy of out-of-doors. 
 The novels of Cooper s grand-niece, Constance Fenimore 
 Woolson, suggest his vigorous hand, but with added subtlety 
 lose in strength, and with a more delicate art miss the 
 broad and sweeping effects that make for popular fame. 
 
 II. Humor and Pathos. The romance of adventure 
 hurries on from one exciting event to another, but there 
 is a quieter fiction, which loves to dwell, with smiles and 
 tears, on situations of a simple sort. Of this our first 
 American creator is WASHINGTON IRVING, whose literary 
 activity began some thirteen years before Cooper s. 
 
 When the English took New Netherlands, Fort Orange 
 became Albany, and New Amsterdam became New York, 
 but Dutch manners and customs long prevailed in the 
 conquered colony, giving a unique and mellow coloring 
 to the life along the Hudson. In Colonial times, it was 
 a land picturesque with wind-mills and canals, yellow- 
 brick gables, tiled roofs, and oddly-devised weather 
 cocks. Albany was the centre of the fur-trade, but the 
 New York streets, bordered by the well-scoured stoops 
 on which rotund burgomasters smoked the evening pipe, 
 already gave forth the sounds of a keen and varied traffic. 
 
VI NATIONAL ERA: PROSE FICTION 28 1 
 
 Even in 1783, when Irving was born, his native city still 
 kept much of the quaint Dutch aspect. This the lad 
 enjoyed, as he enjoyed everything, although his father, a 
 Scotchman and a Presbyterian deacon, was not disposed 
 to further his talent for amusement. Irving s boyish 
 morals betrayed, indeed, a New York laxity, for the 
 story goes that he would read in school Robinson Crusoe 
 and Sinbad the Sailor instead of his arithmetic and then 
 bargain with some matter-of-fact fellow to do his sums 
 for him in trade for a composition. He was a hardened 
 theatre-goer, too, slipping away after supper without his 
 father s knowledge, running home for family prayers at 
 nine o clock, just at the crisis of the play, bidding 
 a decorous good-night to the household and retiring 
 meekly to his room, only to slip out of his window and 
 down the roof, and dash for the last act. His gentle 
 English mother may have sighed over the unpressed 
 pillow, but he was her youngest and of fragile build. 
 Moreover, how could a boy named after Washington 
 come to any harm? So he appears to have had life 
 much his own merry way, roaming about the Hudson 
 River region and dancing in gay cities, while his elder 
 brothers were at their studies in Columbia College. At 
 sixteen, this ill-schooled stripling entered a law-office, 
 where he spent his time agreeably in reading the Eng 
 lish novelists and poets. Now and then he sent an 
 Addisonian sketch, lightly satiric, over the signature of 
 Jonathan Oldstyle, to the Morning Chronicle, a daily 
 newspaper which his brother Peter had just ventured. 
 
282 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 At twenty-one his health was so delicate that his 
 brothers affectionately insisted on giving him a trip 
 abroad. His blithe disposition made him an excellent 
 traveller, his personal graces admitted him to select 
 salons and balls and dinner-tables, and all his aesthetic 
 tastes and tendencies gathered strength from the Old 
 World atmosphere. After two years of delightful 
 idling, he returned home and was admitted to the bar, 
 but society was more to his mind. This young Prince 
 Charming, with his foreign aroma and leisurely, pleas 
 ure-loving ways, was welcome wherever he went. He 
 amused himself with wine suppers in New York and 
 with belles in Baltimore, and, as a minor diversion, 
 with the Salmagundi papers. His eldest brother, 
 William Irving, and his friend from boyhood, James K. 
 Paulding, joined with him in the publication of this 
 little fortnightly, modelled on the Spectator and under 
 taking to " present a striking picture of the town." 
 Its airy nonchalance was made evident in the open 
 ing sentences of the first number : " As everybody 
 knows, or ought to know, what a Salmagund is, we 
 shall spare ourselves the trouble of an explanation; 
 besides, we despise trouble as we do everything low 
 and mean, and hold the man who would incur it un 
 necessarily as an object worthy our highest pity and 
 contempt. Neither will we puzzle our heads to give an 
 account of ourselves, for two reasons : first, because it 
 is nobody s business ; secondly, because if it were, we 
 do not hold ourselves bound to attend to anybody s 
 
 
VI NATIONAL ERA: PROSE FICTION 283 
 
 business but our own ; and even that we take the lib 
 erty of neglecting, when it suits our inclination." Con 
 sistently with this closing sentiment, the happy-go-lucky 
 young editors, who tickled the public curiosity with 
 their pen-names and sly hints, having issued twenty 
 numbers with much applause and finding themselves 
 on the verge of a financial success, threw Salmagundi 
 over and looked about for a new jest. 
 
 This was speedily forthcoming. Dr. Mitchell of the 
 New York Historical Society had published a somewhat 
 pompous and pedantic Picture of New York. Irving 
 and his brother Peter thought it would be great fun 
 to parody this production, but business called Peter 
 to Europe, so that their plan was carried out by the 
 arch-rogue alone. The book, published when Irving 
 was twenty-six years old, is admirable fooling. It 
 purports to be printed from a blotted manuscript left 
 at a New York inn by an impecunious lodger, a touchy 
 and inquisitive old body answering to the name of 
 Dietrich Knickerbocker. An unsuspicious public sat 
 gravely down to read the " history of New York from 
 the beginning of the world to the end of the Dutch 
 dynasty," but opened eyes wider and wider over the 
 animated accounts of the three Dutch governors of 
 New Amsterdam, Walter the Doubter, " exactly five 
 feet six inches in height and six feet five inches in 
 circumference," whose " habits were as regular as his 
 person," for "he daily took his four stated meals, 
 appropriating exactly an hour to each j he smoked and 
 
284 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 doubted eight hours, and he slept the remaining 
 twelve ; " William the Testy, " a brisk, wiry, waspish 
 little old gentleman," whose " cheeks were scorched 
 into a dusky red, by two fiery little gray eyes," whose 
 nose turned up and the corners of whose mouth turned 
 down " pretty much like the muzzle of an irritable 
 pug-dog ; " and Peter the Headstrong, with his resplen 
 dent wooden leg mounted with silver and his " brim 
 stone-colored breeches . . . glaring in the sunbeams." 
 The Yankees appear to small advantage as a "guess 
 ing, questioning, swapping, pumpkin-eating, molasses- 
 daubing, shingle- splitting, cider-watering, horse-jockeying, 
 notion-peddling crew," who fight under the standard 
 of a dried codfish : but the jocund satire spends itself 
 mainly upon the smoke-enveloped figures of the fat 
 Dutch burghers. The outraged descendants of the 
 " waddling . . . chivalry of the Hudson " did not easily 
 forgive Irving for his caricature, but the book made 
 him famous at home and called attention abroad to 
 " American humor." As a sample of that national ware, 
 the Knickerbocker History of New York is more truly 
 representative than the absurdities of "Sam Slick" and 
 "Major Jack Downing," "Mrs. Partington," "Josh 
 Billings," "Josiah Allen s Wife " and the "funny-man" 
 rank and file. Our western jokes may be big and broad 
 as the prairies, but this " Munchausen vein of exaggera 
 tion run mad " is promptly foiled, so prone are Ameri 
 cans to scoff at their own boasts, by a whimsical twist 
 that brings one up against a blank wall of surprise. 
 
VI NATIONAL ERA: PROSE FICTION 285 
 
 The man who was so strong that his shadow, falling 
 on a . child, killed it, is own cousin to the man who 
 was so tall that he had to climb a ladder to shave him 
 self. The peculiar dryness especially characteristic of 
 Yankee drollery is better illustrated from Franklin s 
 shrewd proverbs than from Irving s spontaneous and 
 sparkling descriptions, but the extravagance, mock 
 gravity, and republican irreverence which belong to 
 American humor are here. Irving pulls as long a 
 face as ever did that dear delight of lecture-halls, 
 "Artemus Ward," whether the make-believe historian is 
 recounting how a sunbeam, falling on the ruby nose of 
 Antony the Trumpeter, as he leaned over the ship s 
 side, " shot straightway down, hissing hot, into the 
 water, and killed a mighty sturgeon that was sporting 
 beside the vessel," or whether he is most sacrilegiously 
 chanting the battle of Fort Christina, from that epic 
 moment when " the immortal deities, who whilom had 
 seen service at the affair of Troy now mounted 
 their feather-bed clouds and sailed over the plain," 
 to the glorious hour when "Victory, in the likeness of 
 a gigantic ox-fly, sat perched upon the cocked hat 
 of the gallant Stuyvesant." The book is not only a 
 literary burlesque, like Robert Grant s Little Tin Gods 
 on Wheels, but it is as complete a hoax as Aldrich s 
 Marjorie Daw. Irving has not, in as high a degree, 
 at least, as the irrepressible " Mark Twain," the genius 
 for the unexpected, he is not so trenchant as Lowell 
 nor so verbally adroit as Holmes, but he is as true a 
 
286 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 humorist as any one of these. That gracious quality 
 in personality, that " mixture of love and wit," that 
 keen perception, so alert in Lincoln even when life 
 was at its saddest, of the essential incongruity in mortal 
 things, is Irving s. In this first book, the spectacle of 
 human blundering was playfully presented and mirth 
 fully surveyed, but clearly there was needed only a 
 little shifting of the scene, a little softening of the 
 tone, to yield, instead of humor, the allied effect of 
 pathos. 
 
 Before the History of New York was quite completed, 
 the death of his betrothed, a gentle girl of seventeen, 
 gave to Irving s mind the pensive cast which was 
 peculiarly acceptable to the frank sensibilities of his 
 day and generation. If he did not cherish his grief, at 
 least it cherished him. His book brought him fame and 
 money, and he lounged away a few years more in 
 America and Europe gracefully enough, but the first 
 boyish brightness had suffered change. " The career of 
 gayety and notoriety," he wrote, "soon palled on me. 
 I seemed to drift about without aim or object, at the 
 mercy of every breeze ; my heart wanted anchorage. I 
 was naturally susceptible, and tried to form other 
 attachments, but my heart would not hold on ; it would 
 continually recur to what it had lost; and whenever 
 there was a pause in the hurry of novelty and excite 
 ment, I would sink into dismal dejection. For years 
 I could not talk on the subject of this hopeless regret ; 
 I could not even mention her name ; but her image was 
 
VI NATIONAL ERA: PROSE FICTION 28/ 
 
 continually before me, and I dreamt of her incessantly." 
 The War of 1812, with its attendant hard times, stirred 
 him to a fitful energy. The Irving property was in the 
 hardware business, and as one mercantile house failed 
 after another, he took up his pen more resolutely and 
 tried to conduct a magazine, but soon revolted from the 
 drudgery of stated tasks. He was in England, a man of 
 thirty-five, when " Irving Brothers," after a long struggle, 
 went down. Anxious as he was to come to the family 
 relief, he had to do it in his own way. He refused an 
 editorial salary of a thousand guineas, from dislike both 
 of politics and routine, and put aside flattering offers 
 from the London Quarterly, because its attitude toward 
 America had been unfriendly. What he could do was 
 to write The Sketch-Book, and it was all-sufficient. " I 
 seek," he had said, "only to blow a flute accompani 
 ment in the national concert," but the clear, sweet notes 
 sounded further than any American strain had as yet 
 gone. The unbounded gratification of his country both 
 touched and flurried the sensitive author. London, too, 
 busy as the English were in reading Scott and Byron, 
 loaded him with praises, which he did not take too 
 seriously. " It has been a matter of marvel," he wrote, 
 " to my European readers, that a man from the wilds 
 of America should express himself in tolerable English. 
 I was looked upon as something new and strange in liter 
 ature ; a kind of demi-savage, with a feather in his hand, 
 instead of on his head." 
 
 Yet nothing could well be more elegant and urbane 
 
288 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 than the varied contents of The Sketch-Book, amiable 
 musings, in pellucid, polished English, on Westminster 
 Abbey, Stratford- on- Avon, Rural Life in England, 
 sprightly accounts of the Christmas festivities in an Eng 
 lish country-house, and miscellaneous sketches and tales 
 often colored by " that kind of melancholy fancying, 
 which has in it something sweeter even than pleasure." 
 Byron shed tears over The Broken Heart, but The Pride 
 of the Village, The Widow and Her Son, Rural Fttn- 
 erals are not less touching, if, indeed, the sensibilities 
 do not spring to their guard against such deliberate and 
 undisguised attack. Pathos is in literature an even 
 more ticklish quality than humor. If much of our old- 
 fashioned fun, including certain passages from the pen of 
 Dietrich Knickerbocker, sounds to-day both coarse and 
 silly, old-fashioned sentiment is likely to set one laugh 
 ing. Irving, however, has the saving grace of pleasant 
 ness. He never forgets to entertain, even in a graveyard. 
 Readers of these Sketch-Book reveries are constantly 
 reminded of the author s own picture of himself reclin 
 ing on a half-sunken tombstone in the shadow of an ivied 
 Gothic church, taking example from the setting sun which 
 "lit up all nature with a melancholy smile." 
 
 "Prue and her sex regard sentiment more than 
 action," once said a dreamy old book-keeper who 
 seldom said amiss, and it would seem to be true that 
 the American women successful in fiction, from the rainy 
 day of The Wide, Wide World, have depended in large 
 degree on the pathetic. Adeline D. T. Whitney and 
 
VI NATIONAL ERA: PROSE FICTION 289 
 
 eminently Louisa Alcott have the secret of laughter as 
 well as of tears, but their abiding charm for girlhood 
 is less in the story told than in the tenderness of the 
 telling. HARRIET BEECHER STOWE and ELIZABETH STUART 
 PHELPS WARD abound in merriment, but the chances 
 are against the reader who attempts to get through 
 Uncle Tom s Cabin or The Madonna of the Tubs with 
 out a " cry." That sprightly chronicler, Kate Douglas 
 Wiggin Riggs, often calls for the whisk of the handker 
 chief. Frances Hodgson Burnett plays on the softer 
 emotions, and Margaret Deland, for all her insistence 
 upon " problems," is not read for theories of theology 
 and sociology, nor for chain of events, but for sympathetic 
 pleasure and sympathetic pain. 
 
 The Sketch-Book contains the two immortal Hudson 
 River legends, Rip Van Winkle and Sleepy Hollow, to 
 gether with a German story. A second volume of deli 
 cate English sketches, entitled Bracebridge Hall, makes 
 space for two love-tales, one of Spain and one of Nor 
 mandy, and for more of the old Dutch traditions. A 
 third volume, Tales of a Traveller, finally abandons 
 essay for narrative. The most of these stories are 
 European, but the best return to the haunted headlands 
 of the Hudson. A sojourn of three years and more in 
 Spain bore fruit not only in the Life of Columbus, 
 Companions of Columbus, Conquest of Granada, and 
 Mahomet, books in which historical material is pre 
 sented with the grace and vivacity of fiction, but in 
 that crowning work, the Alhambra, which glows with 
 u 
 
2QO AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 the rich beauty of Spanish tradition. Of what is techni 
 cally termed " local color " Irving was a master. Brace- 
 bridge Hall reflects the easy, abundant, cultivated life of 
 an English country-seat as perfectly as the Alhambra 
 catches the romantic impression of Spain, or the 
 Hudson River legends hold the drowsy, gossipy, homely 
 atmosphere of the old Dutch villages. 
 
 After an absence of seventeen years, Irving came 
 again to his native land, where he was hailed as the 
 lord of American letters. He made himself a home, 
 well-named Sunnyside, at Tarrytown, on the banks of the 
 Hudson, not far from Sleepy Hollow. The Dutch stone 
 cottage, "modelled after the cocked hat of Peter the 
 Headstrong," with a weather-cock perched on every 
 gable, and a Melrose ivy overrunning the walls, was 
 the shelter of loving nieces and the resort of literary 
 pilgrims. Here he happily spent his remaining life, with 
 the exception of four years passed in Madrid as Minister 
 to Spain. Astonished and delighted by the swift expan 
 sion of America, he journeyed through the newly settled 
 regions, garnering these experiences in A Tour on the 
 Prairies. Astoria and Captain Bonneville, too, deal 
 with the Far West, and an aftermath of sketches, col 
 lected under the name of Wolferfs Roost, treats in 
 several instances of western themes. Lives of Gold 
 smith, with whose gay and gentle spirit Irving had 
 always been in peculiar sympathy, and of Washington, 
 who seventy years before had laid a hand of blessing 
 on his head, worthily rounded out his literary labors. 
 
VI NATIONAL ERA: PROSE FICTION 2QI 
 
 Modest, kindly, and serene, he lived into ripeness of 
 years, becoming, according to the occupant of Harper s 
 Easy Chair, as " quaint a figure " as the old Dietrich 
 himself. "He might have been seen on an autumnal 
 afternoon tripping with an elastic step along Broadway, 
 with low quartered shoes neatly tied, and a Talma 
 cloak, a short garment that hangs from the shoulders 
 like the cape of a coat. There was a chirping, cheery, 
 old-school air in his appearance which was undeniably 
 Dutch, and most harmonious with the associations of 
 his writing. He seemed, indeed, to have stepped out 
 of his own books; and the cordial grace and humor 
 of his address, if he stopped for a passing chat, were 
 delightfully characteristic." 
 
 Until Irving s death, which befell at Sunnyside in 
 1859, there was little abatement in the praise. His 
 sweetness and shyness disarmed criticism. He was, in 
 deed, sometimes charged with lack of moral earnestness. 
 Hazlitt called him " a mere filagree man." England 
 complained, now and then, of his want of originality, in 
 that his sketches, so exquisitely languaged, were like 
 " patterns taken in silk paper " from the English classics. 
 " He brought no new earth, no sprig of laurel gathered 
 in the wilderness, no red bird s wing." Yet, in point of 
 fact, the Hudson River legends, picturing weird lights 
 and shadows on the quiet hills, and on the human life, 
 as quiet, at their feet, were fresh in literature. Nor has 
 Irving s charm yet faded, although the twinkle holds its 
 own better than the tear. He is a delightful quiz, for 
 
2Q2 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 through all the badinage his manner keeps its winning 
 courtesy. His style, with its rare clearness and finish, is 
 so artistic that it seems artless. His is the golden touch 
 by which the simplest things grow precious, like his 
 Dutch tea-table whereon the goodies were "mingled 
 higgledy-piggledy . . . with the motherly tea-pot send 
 ing up its cloud of vapor from the midst." As for story 
 telling, he merely sketches a situation charged with some 
 romantic, humorous, or tender feeling, and then pro 
 ceeds in leisurely fashion to make the most of it. His 
 literary influence in America has been wide and varied, 
 yet few of our authors are essentially akin to him. 
 Paulding, at his best in The Dutchman s Fireside, had 
 Irving s glee without his grace. Donald G. Mitchell, 
 better known as " Ik Marvel," follows Irving, especially 
 in Reveries of a Bachelor and Dream Life, but the un 
 relieved sentiment cloys. More truly of the Irving type, 
 with a Brook Farm fervor added, was the distinguished 
 editor, lecturer, and patriot, GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 That shining soul, "loyal to whatever is generous and 
 humane, full of sweet hope, and faith, and devotion," 
 is radiant still in the jewel lights of Prue and I. 
 
 III. Mystery and Terror. Working from the sketch, 
 Irving achieved the tale. Intent as this narrator was on 
 the mirth and sadness of life, the limits of the short story 
 served him better, for an unbroken emotional impression, 
 than the elaborated novel. Far more is brevity essential 
 to that concentration of attention, that intensity of horror, 
 dread, distress caused by the fictions of EDGAR ALLAN POE. 
 
VI NATIONAL ERA: PROSE FICTION 293 
 
 In his essay on The Poetic Principle Poe declared the 
 phrase " a long poem " to be a contradiction in terms. 
 Lyrist that he was, he maintained that the extent of a 
 poem should be measured by the capability of the reader 
 for a continuous rapture of response. " But all excite 
 ments are, through a psychal necessity, transient. That 
 degree of excitement which would entitle a poem to be 
 so called at all cannot be sustained throughout a com 
 position of any great length. After the lapse of half an 
 hour, at the very utmost, it flags fails a revulsion 
 ensues and then the poem is, in effect, and in fact, 
 no longer such." This principle Poe consistently applied 
 to his own poems and adapted to his tales, which, though 
 longer indeed than his impassioned requiems, can be read 
 at a single sitting, and allow the dominance of a single 
 mood. Indeed, the mind could not long maintain the 
 keenness of curiosity that they arouse, nor the heart 
 endure their rack of fright and anguish. 
 
 Poe s first stroke of visible success was made with the 
 tale A Manuscript found in a Bottle, which took a one- 
 huridred-dollar prize in a newspaper story-competition. 
 Ten years after, he won a second hundred-dollar prize 
 with The Gold-Bug. His stories were printed in maga 
 zines and newspapers, especially in those of which he 
 chanced to be editor. A volume entitled Tales of the 
 Grotesque and Arabesque was brought out by him in 
 1840, and another collection of his stories five years 
 later. A survey of these fictions calls to mind, what the 
 transcendent power of Poe s analytic and supernatural tales 
 
2Q4 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 often causes to be forgotten, the versatility of his narra 
 tive genius. Arthur Gordon Pym opens and proceeds 
 with the realistic detail of a Robinson Crusoe, although 
 no brain but Poe s could have conceived that climax of 
 white horror. His extravaganzas are ingenious, and 
 while the sweetness of humor was not his, such stories 
 as The Thousand-and- Second Tale of Scheherazade have 
 a flavor of pleasantry that is not all sardonic. The bulk 
 of Poe s fictions, however, fall under the two main head 
 ings of mystery and terror. 
 
 Poe s mind was a singular compound of poetry and 
 mathematics. It was as true of him as of his Prince 
 Prospero in The Masque of the Red Death that "his 
 plans were bold and fiery, and his conceptions glowed 
 with barbaric lustre. There are some who would have 
 thought him mad." But side by side with his most 
 delirious emotions and bizarre imaginations went an icy 
 and precise reason. The secret cipher was as much his 
 own as the opium ecstasy. He liked to ferret out a 
 criminal case. The Murders in the Rue Morgue and 
 The Purloined Letter well illustrate that cold, persistent 
 logic of his detective stories. In his Monsieur Dupin 
 we have the original of Sherlock Holmes. Anna Katha 
 rine Green Rohlfs, with her Leavenworth Case, is the 
 foremost representative in America to-day of police-court 
 fiction, but no successor has equalled Poe in dignifying 
 by the severity of the intellectual process the sensational 
 material belonging to this class of tales. A somewhat 
 similar mental value attaches to Poe s stories of pseudo- 
 
VI NATIONAL ERA: PROSE FICTION 2Q5 
 
 science, Adventures of One Hans Pfaall, Descent into a 
 Maelstrom, and their like. His narrative moves with a 
 serious deliberation and attention to detail that almost 
 convinces the reader, especially as, upon the basal im 
 possibility, a score of most accurately calculated proba 
 bilities are constructed. Jules Verne, in France, who 
 has written a continuation of Arthur Gordon Pym, re 
 produces the method, as does our own Frank R. Stock 
 ton, whose preposterous hoaxes are developed with this 
 same patient respect for the minutiae of truth. All this 
 play of thought in Poe connects with his restless craving 
 for superhuman knowledge. He suggested once that the 
 physical universe exists only to allay, while yet it baffles, 
 this inherent longing of humanity. He had heard it 
 "whispered in Aidenn " that "of this infinity of matter, 
 the sole purpose is to afford infinite springs, at which the 
 soul may allay the thirst to know which is forever un 
 quenchable within it since to quench it would be to 
 extinguish the soul s self." 
 
 But Poe s curiosity has upon it something morbid and 
 unholy. It haunts the realms of mesmerism, torture, 
 pestilence, of epilepsy, catalepsy, and all mysterious 
 diseases, it pries into the opium dream, the swoon, 
 hysteria, delirium, insanity, it listens at the gate of the 
 tomb for the awakening agonies of the prematurely 
 buried, or peers in upon the gruesome processes of 
 bodily decay. His heroines of the mellifluous names, 
 Morella, Lygeia, have a strange, unlawful lore, even as 
 they droop, with Madeline, Berenice, Rowena, Eleonora, 
 
296 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 under weird and wasting illnesses. He not only con 
 ceives, as in the case of Roderick Usher, a maddening 
 intensification of sense impressions, but advances the 
 idea, active in modern French Symbolism, of an inter 
 change among the functions of the senses, so that sights, 
 for instance, should affect the brain as sounds. He 
 broods upon the sensations of the dying and the dead, 
 for he confounds the immortal with mortality and has 
 the spirit vaguely conscious, through the ages, of its dark 
 tenement, the grave. He crosses the dim borderland 
 between the natural and supernatural, picturing wild 
 tragedies of metempsychosis or, as in Lygeia, " a hideous 
 drama of revivification," where "each agony wore the 
 aspect of a struggle with some invisible foe." Allied to 
 these elements of terror are all sinister passions, envy, 
 suspicion, hate, revenge. Faces are " cadaverously wan," 
 with "pale lips writhing," with eyes of "mad hilarity" 
 or of a "glassy stare." Nature is spectral with " white 
 trunks of decayed trees " and " yellow ghastly waters," 
 or ominous with "lurid tarn" and "blood-red moon." 
 The horrors come to pass within " gloomy, gray, heredi 
 tary walls," in chambers of " melancholy vaulting," of 
 "gorgeous and fantastic draperies" and "Bedlam pat 
 terns" traced in "carpets of tufted gold," unless, in 
 deed, the desperate scene is laid in the catacombs of the 
 Montresors or the dungeons of the Inquisition. Anxiety 
 and dread are augmented by some external suggestion 
 of mystery. There are shadowy nooks of the hall and 
 sable recesses of the fretted ceiling that the eye vainly 
 
vi NATIONAL ERA: PROSE FICTION 297 
 
 tries to pierce ; the figured tapestries are moved by un 
 canny winds or tremble to the vibration of strange music. 
 Beyond the mystery is always a terror. These piteous 
 characters, phantasms of humanity rather than actual 
 men and women, are at the mercy of demoniac power. 
 There is the sense of pursuit, of a lurking danger, of a 
 watchful malice, of an irresistible doom. 
 
 " Mimes, in the form of God on high, 
 
 Mutter and mumble low, 
 And hither and thither fly; 
 
 Mere puppets they, who come and go 
 At bidding of vast, formless things 
 That shift the scenery to and fro, 
 Flapping from out their condor wings 
 Invisible Woe." 
 
 How much of all this was due to the alcohol and 
 opium in Poe s blood no one would be more curious 
 than himself to learn. It is nevertheless high art. The 
 perfect correspondence between scene and deed, the 
 unity of tone and color preserved throughout, the un 
 swerving sweep to a climax, the significant selection of 
 details, the controlled, distinct, and brilliant style, the 
 Hebrew symmetry of structure, the concrete words sur 
 charged with beauty and emotion, the solemn, thrilling 
 cadences, the harmonious combination of syllables, the 
 symbolism of the imagery, the concentration of the 
 passion, all go to produce an overwhelming literary 
 effect. His imagination was wonderfully fertile in vari 
 eties of illusion and mystification, and in surprises of 
 fantasy, but there is a fine economy in his use of mate- 
 
298 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 rials. Nothing is superfluous. The unsufferable horror 
 proceeds, as in The Tell- Tale Heart, from a single cir 
 cumstance. His problems are deceptively simple. His 
 miracles are almost scientific. Yet while there is no 
 vulgar lavishness of blood and ghosts, of detective ma 
 chinery, of outcry and explanation, the interest through 
 out is held at highest pitch, until the strain threatens 
 exhaustion. The influence of Coleridge, so discernible 
 in Poe s lyrics, is potent upon the tales. Those bitter 
 parables, Scriptural in sublimity of language, Shadow, 
 where the seven feasters at the ebony board quaff the 
 red Chian wine by the pallid light of the seven iron 
 lamps, and Silence, the fable told by the Demon, who 
 laughed and cursed in the cavity of the tomb, are attuned 
 to Coleridge s prose-poem Cain. The Keltic note, rich, 
 aesthetic, emotional, prevails almost to the exclusion of 
 the Anglo-Saxon. There is no moral struggle, and little 
 spiritual sense, but there are grace and passion and 
 " that fitful strain of melancholy which," says Poe, " will 
 ever be found inseparable from the perfection of the 
 beautiful." Poe s nautical adventurer, Pym, declares 
 that when listening as a boy to stories of the sea, ac 
 counts of suffering and despair attracted him more than 
 the brighter side of the picture. " My visions were of 
 shipwreck and famine ; of death or captivity among 
 barbarian hordes, of a lifetime dragged out in sorrow 
 and tears, upon some gray and desolate rock, in an 
 ocean unapproachable and unknown." It is then inap 
 propriate to pity Poe too much. Though his life was 
 
Reproduced by permission of Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 
 Publishers of Hawthorne s Works. 
 
VI NATIONAL ERA: PROSE FICTION 
 
 wild and sad, wildness and sadness were to him fairer 
 than sobriety and joy, and he transformed his sorrows 
 and his frowardness into a literature which, not whole 
 some, not heroic, and not noble, has withal a unique 
 magic. 
 
 IV. Idealism. Poe would have resented the sugges 
 tion that he was, in his own scoffing phrase, " affected 
 with the transcendentals," and yet his genius had much 
 in common with that of the supreme idealist in Ameri 
 can romance, NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. An English critic 
 has suggested that "Poe is a kind of Hawthorne and 
 delirium tremens" which is not fair to either. There 
 was something obstinately earthy in Poe s imagination, 
 something strangely guilty in his consciousness, but he 
 has a realm of music denied to Hawthorne, who, on his 
 side, is not to be defined as a fraction of Poe. They 
 have points of resemblance as artists and as dreamers. 
 Both turned instinctively to the short story, and in those 
 few tales where Poe depicts the workings of conscience, 
 as The Man of the Crowd or William Wilson, their 
 styles approximate. Both were dwellers in the dusk, but 
 the shadow that haunted Poe crept from the charnel- 
 house, while Hawthorne s, sprung from the sinful heart 
 of man, showed still a glint of heaven. 
 
 In view of the character of his work, Hawthorne s 
 heredity is of peculiar interest. In his Grandfather s 
 Chair, a group of Puritan sketches for children which he 
 likened to an attempt " to manufacture delicate play 
 things out of the granite rocks " of New England, Haw- 
 
30O AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 thorne describes the coming to Salem, in 1630, of the 
 good ship "Arbella." On this vessel, which bore John 
 Winthrop, arrived a young Englishman, William Ha- 
 thorne, who developed great vigor as explorer, legislator, 
 fur-trader, Indian-fighter, and Quaker-whipper. In the 
 preface to the Scarlet Letter, musing upon the old, witch- 
 storied Salem, his birthplace and his home, Hawthorne 
 wrote : " I seem to have a stronger claim to a residence 
 here on account of this grave, bearded, sable-cloaked 
 and steeple-crowned progenitor, who came so early, 
 with his Bible and his sword, and trode the unworn 
 street with such a stately port, and made so large a 
 figure, as a man of war and peace. . . . His son, too, 
 inherited the persecuting spirit, and made himself so 
 conspicuous in the martyrdom of the witches, that their 
 blood may fairly be said to have left a stain upon him. 
 . . . Planted deep, in the town s earliest infancy and 
 childhood, by these two earnest and energetic men, the 
 race has ever since subsisted here. . . . From father to 
 son, for above a hundred years, they followed the sea; 
 a gray-bearded shipmaster, in each generation, retiring 
 from the quarter-deck to the homestead, while a boy of 
 fourteen took the hereditary place before the mast, 
 confronting the salt spray and the gale, which had blus 
 tered against his sire and grandsire." Hawthorne s 
 grandfather commanded a privateer in the War of Inde 
 pendence and was the subject of one of our Revolution 
 ary ballads, Bold Hathorne. The father of the romancer 
 was a captain in the merchant marine, dying at a foreign 
 
vi NATIONAL ERA: PROSE FICTION 301 
 
 port of yellow fever. The pensive scion of this hardy 
 line used to smile in fancying how paltry his pursuits 
 must seem to his ghostly ancestors, especially those first 
 two " stern and black-browed Puritans." " 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 service 
 able to mankind in his day and 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 ! And yet, let them scorn me as they will, 
 strong traits of their nature have intertwined themselves 
 with mine." 
 
 Hawthorne s boyhood was shadowed by his mother s 
 widow-grief. He was a child of four summers when 
 the word came of his young father s death, and it was 
 long before the mother s " heart, like a deep lake, had 
 grown calm because its dead had sunk down so far 
 within." Yet despite that atmosphere of sorrow, the boy, 
 with his two affectionate sisters and his indulgent uncles 
 and aunts, seems to have taken life much in boyhood s 
 joyous fashion. He tended his pets and rambled and 
 read. Pilgrim s Progress was a favorite, and the first 
 book he bought with his own money was the Faery 
 Queens. The Newgate Calendar figures on his list, 
 with Shakespeare, Milton, and Rousseau. Among his 
 teachers was Worcester, the lexicographer, but his 
 Salem schooling was delightfully interrupted by seasons 
 
3O2 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 of running wild on his uncle s estate at Raymond, in 
 Maine. Here, with an old fowling-piece over his shoul 
 der, he would plunge into the trackless forest, or " skate 
 until midnight, all alone, upon Sebago Lake, with the 
 deep shadow of the icy hills on either hand." At seven 
 teen he was ready for Bowdoin and started out from 
 Boston in the old-fashioned stage-coach, a slender, 
 bright-eyed lad, with clustering dark hair, to seek that 
 somewhat primitive well of knowledge. He had Long 
 fellow for a classmate and Franklin Pierce for a friend, 
 but seems to have given his confidence most freely to 
 Horatio Bridge, who predicted great things for him. " I 
 know not whence your faith came," wrote Hawthorne to 
 Bridge, in the preface to The Snow Image, " but, while 
 we were lads together at a country college, gathering 
 blueberries in study hours, under those tall academic 
 pines; or watching the great logs, as they tumbled 
 along the current of the Androscoggin ; or shooting 
 pigeons and gray squirrels in the woods ; or bat- fowling 
 in the summer twilight; or catching trouts in the 
 shadowy little stream which, I suppose, is still wander 
 ing river-ward through the forest, though you and I 
 will never cast a line in it again, two idle lads, in 
 short (as we need not fear to acknowledge now) , doing 
 a hundred things that the Faculty never heard of, or 
 else it had been the worse for us, still it was your 
 prognostic of your friend s destiny that he was to be a 
 writer of fiction." The future master of romance mean 
 while ranked low in mathematics and metaphysics, and 
 
vi NATIONAL ERA: PROSE FICTION 303 
 
 the required chapel declamations were as appalling to 
 him as an after-dinner speech in later years. Latin was 
 more to his mind, but he neglected all his academic 
 tasks, even themes, and sowed a few Puritan wild-oats 
 at a secret and perilous card-table. He went through 
 Commencement day without embarrassment of college 
 honors and was not heard from for twelve years after. 
 In 1837, a ver Y slight stir in the literary world signalled 
 the appearance of Twice- Told Tales. 
 
 This quiet volume, which was several years in paying 
 expenses, does not seem at first sight an abundant har 
 vest for the opening decade of manhood, but the little 
 book was wrought of glory-stuff. Hawthorne had resided, 
 for almost this entire time, in Salem. In an upper-story 
 room in his father s house, where his mother and sisters 
 led lives as secluded and individual as his own, he had 
 brooded, written and burned and written again, and 
 bided his hour of fame. " If ever I should have a biog 
 rapher," Hawthorne wrote in his note-book, " he ought 
 to make great mention of this chamber in my memoirs, 
 because so much of my lonely youth was wasted here, 
 and here my mind and character were formed ; and here 
 I have been glad and hopeful, and here I have been 
 despondent. And here I sat a long, long time, waiting 
 patiently for the world to know me, and sometimes won 
 dering 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 
 
304 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 benumbed. But oftener I was happy." And happy he 
 must have been, in the artist s joy of labor, even although 
 for years his dream mocked at his deed. When he had 
 been but a short time out of Bowdoin, he wrote Fanshawe, 
 a college novel, which he published at his own expense 
 and, in swift distaste, withdrew from circulation. The 
 simple plot centres about the president s ward, one of 
 those soft and shining images of girlhood which haunt 
 the reveries of young collegians. All the undergraduates 
 devote the chapel hour to gazing upon this starry vision, 
 but two become her manifest lovers. One of these, the 
 study-wasted Fanshawe, rescues her from the hands of a 
 villain. She would have plighted troth to her deliverer, 
 but he refuses to take advantage of her gratitude, yields 
 her to his rival, a dashing fellow from one of the seaport 
 towns, and returns to his books, which bring him to a 
 speedy grave. The story has impressive passages and 
 is pervaded by a faint Hawthornesque flavor, but the 
 conception is boyish and the handling not yet firm. 
 The atmosphere, too, is ill-defined. The frank actuali 
 ties of student life are hardly reproduced, while the 
 illusion of an ideal world fails to possess the reader. 
 Another prentice volume, which those who had peeped 
 into the scribbled leaves thought more characteristic, 
 Seven Tales of my Native Land, met with such disheart 
 ening treatment from the clan of publishers that the 
 proud young author, with the emotions depicted in 
 The Devil in Manuscript, cast the whole budget into 
 the fire. Our mortal dependence upon bread and butter 
 
vi NATIONAL ERA: PROSE FICTION 305 
 
 led Hawthorne to engage for a brief period in hack 
 work for "Peter Parley," and at rare intervals one of 
 his tales filled some modest corner of a magazine or 
 annual, but, in the main, he lived in his haunted 
 chamber, from twenty-one to thirty-three, "the most 
 obscure man of letters in America." His Bowdoin mates 
 were well-advanced on the trodden ways of the world, 
 variously successful in politics, business, and the profes 
 sions ; Longfellow had taken a Harvard chair j but 
 Hawthorne had nothing to show for his hidden life save 
 the first series of Twice-Told Tales. 
 
 This publication, although warmly hailed by Longfellow 
 in the North American Review, made little impression on 
 the public. It was five years before Hawthorne followed 
 it up by the second series, and three years more before he 
 published Mosses from an old Manse. His later volumes 
 of short stories, though designed for children, are as 
 precious to adults as to any saucy Primrose, exact little 
 Sweet-Fern, Periwinkle, or Squash-Blossom of them all. 
 The Twice-Told Tales consist of pure fantasies, New 
 England legends, and realistic studies. These last, like 
 much of the work preserved in Hawthorne s note-books, 
 testify to that self-imposed discipline of strict observation 
 and accurate expression, which constituted his technical 
 training for the art of literature. In Sunday at Home, 
 for instance, we catch a glimpse of the sequestered stu 
 dent peeping out, pen in hand, around his window- curtain 
 to spy upon the throng of church-goers, and in Snow- 
 Flakes we see him, through the frosted pane, scanning 
 
306 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 the brown surface of the street and the slated roofs of the 
 houses, that he may transfer to his waiting page the pre 
 cise effect upon their coloring of the first stealthy touches 
 of the storm. Yet the slightest of such sketches is saved 
 from mere photography by a delicate suffusion of senti 
 ment, and the simplest sentence bears traces of the 
 chisel. His tales of primitive New England, the May 
 pole of Merry Mount, the Gray Champion, Legends of the 
 Province House, show what a fascination the Puritan era 
 had for his imagination. Those sombre virtues, shed 
 ding about them that supernatural atmosphere he loved, 
 appealed to his patriotic pride, but it was the pictu- 
 resqueness, quite as much as the heroism, of the grim 
 saints who sowed corn and dug graves in the fringe of 
 the " sad forest " that attracted him. The contrast, too, 
 between the divineness of the venture and the prosaic 
 fashion in which it was pursued, between the burning 
 soul of faith and its matter-of-fact, dismal body of Puri 
 tanism, rejoiced him with a pure artistic joy. The Pil 
 grim Fathers would hardly recognize themselves in 
 Hawthorne s painting. His early New England is, in a 
 very different way, as much his own creation as the 
 Dutch dynasty of New Amsterdam is Irving s. Both the 
 majesty and the harshness of that iron age he enveloped 
 in a rich, soft, dreamy shadow. About the plainest and 
 most austere of religions he draped a dusky ermine of 
 romance. Gloom and mysticism inform, too, his tales 
 of fantasy. Allegories of sin, failure, death, the irony 
 of human fate, and the immortality of human folly 
 
vi NATIONAL ERA: PROSE FICTION 307 
 
 may be read in the Minister s Black Veil, the Great 
 Carbtmcle, the Ambitious Guest, David Swan, Dr. 
 Heidegger s Experiment. And here, again, Hawthorne 
 is distilling the very essence of his heredity and envi 
 ronment into art. That crushing sense of human respon 
 sibility, of conscience, sin, and doom, those tremendous 
 Puritan convictions sealed by blood and tears, through 
 some strange witchcraft served this son of Salem as 
 sheer beauty. The measure of Hawthorne s aesthetic 
 appreciation was the measure of his remoteness. 
 
 The atmosphere of the Twice-Told Tales is somewhat 
 thin and gray. "They have," said the author, in the 
 preface to a later edition, " the pale tint of flowers that 
 blossomed in too retired a shade, the coolness of a 
 meditative habit, which diffuses itself through the feeling 
 and observation of every sketch. Instead of passion 
 there is sentiment ; and, even in what purport to be 
 pictures of actual life, we have allegory, not always so 
 warmly dressed in its habiliments of flesh and blood as 
 to be taken into the reader s mind without a shiver." In 
 Mosses from an Old Manse the tragic hue is deepened, 
 although, by a peculiarly Hawthornesque anomaly, these 
 tales were written in the early years of his marriage, when 
 life was at its fairest and its best. The Birth-Mark mocks 
 our longing for perfection, Young Goodman Brown 
 sables all humanity with suspicion of secret sin, Rappa- 
 cinVs Daughter develops that theme, to which Hawthorne 
 again and again recurred, of a malignant poison lurking 
 in most luxuriant beauty. Yet the feast here set before 
 
 ^?> 
 
 HE 
 
308 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 us is not all " fricassee of scorpions " and " apples of 
 Sodom." Upon the revel of fancy often rests a tender 
 light. Sometimes a shadowy smile plays about the lips 
 of the narrator. Hawthorne s ease and force of style 
 are now assured. The sustained grotesquery of Feather- 
 top, the sad humor of The Intelligence Office, that close 
 of " solemn music " in The Procession of Life, could 
 hardly, in their respective veins, be bettered. So the 
 tales in the Snow Image collection, though some of these 
 further illustrate Hawthorne s craving to know the inner 
 most contents of that burden which Christian carried on 
 his back, though they deal with grief and death, the 
 slavery of guilt and the torment of the unpardonable sin, 
 have a frequent strain of lightness and good hope. Very 
 sweetly does The Snow Image itself set forth the ruinous 
 effects of common sense ; very nobly does The Great 
 Stone Face exalt the world s supreme glory of sincere, 
 benignant character. Near the outset of his career 
 Hawthorne had written : " If I pride myself on anything, 
 it is because I have a smile that children love," and the 
 Snow Image stories in large part belong to childhood, 
 together with The Wonder Book and The Tanglewood 
 Tales. In these fresh and dew-bright volumes, Haw 
 thorne, as all the world knows, marvellously succeeded 
 in coaxing the proud beauty of Greek mythology to 
 go playing through the glades of Tanglewood in the 
 simple, rustic garb of a Gothic fairy-tale. By this time 
 the romancer had a home of his own, musical with 
 childish voices. The world owes to the two younger 
 
VI NATIONAL ERA: PROSE FICTION 309 
 
 of Hawthorne s children, Julian Hawthorne, journalist 
 and novelist, and Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, poet in 
 words and deeds, access to letters and memories which 
 reveal a well-nigh perfect marriage. The date of the 
 wedding is 1842, but the betrothal had been of several 
 years standing, and Hawthorne s long habit of solitude 
 was already broken. That patient existence in a locked 
 chamber, with the tray of food placed outside the door, 
 and the day s long brooding and writing relieved only by 
 an evening walk upon the beach, had done its work. He 
 who in boyhood had avowed that he did " not want to 
 be a doctor and live by men s diseases, nor a minister 
 to live by their sins, nor a lawyer and live by their 
 quarrels," had become, as he hoped, an author, to live 
 by men s love of the beautiful. 
 
 But the few carvings which Hawthorne had retained 
 from all the chippings of the studio meant so little in 
 the way of money that he gladly accepted an appoint 
 ment, under Bancroft the historian, in the Boston Cus 
 tom House. It was Van Buren s administration that 
 was thus minded to honor literary Democrats and, as 
 a tribute to romance, set America s most sensitive genius 
 to measuring coal from dawn to sunset. " A very griev 
 ous thraldom " he came to find it, but, at the end of 
 two years, he had saved a thousand dollars, which he 
 promptly sunk in the Brook Farm experiment. Thus 
 casting in his lot with Ripley s enthusiasts, Hawthorne 
 entered upon the April ploughing and planting with a 
 humorous zest, hoping soon to marry and bring his 
 
3IO AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 wife to share that "Age of Reason in a patty-pan," as 
 Curtis called it, but by another springtide the "witty 
 potato patches " and " sparkling cornfields " had lost 
 their charm. He was thirty-eight years old, with little 
 sign of worldly wealth, when he brought the happiest of 
 brides to Concord, where they proceeded to add another 
 lustre to the memories of the Old Manse. "Nobody 
 but we ever knew what it is to be married," wrote the 
 new Adam to the new Eve, and out of the heart of 
 his happiness he looked back upon that dreary chamber 
 in Salem with more than content : " I am disposed to 
 thank God for the gloom and chill of my early life, in 
 the hope that my share of adversity came then, when 
 I bore it alone." But except with his wife he still 
 kept his dark mantle of reserve folded close about 
 him. Curtis, who had a blithe young share in all the 
 phases of Transcendentalism, gives a roguish account 
 of a representative Concord gathering, in Emerson s 
 study, where the philosophers talked Orphic secrets 
 and ate russet apples, while " Hawthorne, a statue of 
 night and silence, sat a little removed, under a portrait 
 of Dante, gazing imperturbably upon the group." 
 
 Plain fare and rickety furniture count for little in Eden, 
 but debts weigh upon an upright soul, and when another 
 Democratic administration came in, Hawthorne went 
 resignedly back to Salem to barter " the delicate harvest 
 of fancy and sensibility" for "a pittance of the public 
 gold." Three years he served in the Custom House, 
 his imagination all the while " a tarnished mirror," and 
 
VI NATIONAL ERA: PROSE FICTION 311 
 
 when the political pendulum swung the Whigs again 
 into office, they did better than they meant in turning 
 Hawthorne out. The discharged Surveyor of Customs 
 wrote The Scarlet Letter, which called forth, from the 
 public hitherto so indifferent to his work, an instanta 
 neous acclaim that was not to die away. At forty-six, 
 after twenty-five years of striving, he had won fame. 
 In this brief romance all his past, the stern heredity 
 and youthful dream, the lonely devotion to his art, and 
 the realization, through love, of the vital forces of life 
 broke into flower, and a wonderful, blood-red flower it 
 was. On turning the leaves of the Note-Books, one is 
 impressed with the stories that Hawthorne never told, 
 stories of a lake all whose drowned should rise together, 
 of a visionary trying to kindle his household hearth with 
 fireflies, of the after life of that young man whom Jesus, 
 looking on, loved. Woods and streets, books and cloud- 
 land, gave him magical hints, of which by far the most, 
 perhaps the best, lie undeveloped. " Life now swells 
 and heaves beneath me like a brim-full ocean," once 
 he wrote, "and the endeavor to comprise any portion 
 of it in words is like trying to dip up the ocean in a 
 goblet." But the symbol of the scarlet letter, one of 
 those cruel ingenuities of Puritan punishment, already 
 touched upon in Endicott and the Red Cross, would not 
 let him go. His imagination naturally crystallized about 
 some emblem, a mirror, a serpent, a butterfly, a ruddy 
 footprint, but here, as seldom before, the symbolism 
 burned with a passion more engrossing than itself. Yet 
 
312 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 Hawthorne takes up his tragedy at the point where 
 many writers would have dropped it. " The mere 
 facts of guilt," he elsewhere wrote, " are of little value 
 except to the gossip and the tipstaff; but how the 
 wounded and the wounding soul bear themselves after 
 the crime, that is one of the needful lessons of life." 
 That most friendly of publishers, James T. Fields, 
 whose name adorns the illustrious roll of Atlantic editors, 
 clamored for a second manuscript and obtained The 
 House of the Seven Gables. This sweeter and less 
 powerful romance, written in the red cottage at Lenox 
 with the buoyancy born of unaccustomed praise, eased 
 the author s mind of the old witch-curse pronounced 
 upon his persecuting ancestor, Justice Hathorne. In 
 the least mystical and hence the least characteristic 
 and precious of his long stories, The Blithedale Ro 
 mance, written at West Newton, he drew upon his memo 
 ries of Brook Farm. Although Poe, who had been 
 among the first to recognize Hawthorne s values, feared 
 he was too much under the influence of the New Eng 
 land enthusiasts and irreverently counselled him to 
 "mend his pen, get a bottle of visible ink, come out 
 from the Old Manse, cut Mr. Alcott," and "hang (if 
 possible) the editor of The Dial," Hawthorne had never 
 been, in fact, the thrall of "Giant Transcendentalism." 
 His tale Earth s Holocaust shows what an alien his 
 dreamy, dusk-winged genius was among the cheerful 
 philosophies and bustling agitations of his day. He 
 was capable of dubbing Alcott the " airy Sage of Apple- 
 
VI NATIONAL ERA: PROSE FICTION 313 
 
 Slump," and his Blithedale Romance gave offence to 
 the Brook Farmers, especially to the friends of Margaret 
 Fuller. 
 
 The election to the Presidency of Hawthorne s college 
 comrade, Franklin Pierce, for whom he had been persuaded 
 to write a campaign biography, brought upon the sensi 
 tive romancer, once again, the blight of public office. 
 In the "stifled chamber" of the American consulate at 
 Liverpool he " spent wearily a considerable portion of 
 more than four good years." He supported his family 
 and paid his debts, but no adequate literary result came 
 from this English residence. Our Old Home, made up 
 from his journals, was, as he said, "not a good or a 
 weighty book," in comparison, let it be added, with 
 what he might have done, as evinced by the fruit of a 
 subsequent year in Italy, The Marble Faun. Yet the 
 French and Italian Note-Books reveal, no less than the 
 English, a frequent mood of repletion and distaste. It 
 was the necessity of his genius, as of Emerson s, to eat 
 and not be eaten, to assimilate what he saw, to reduce 
 objects to impressions and transmute life into literature ; 
 but upon him, as upon Emerson, the foreign demand 
 was too heterogeneous, multitudinous, incessant. He 
 found the British Museum depressing, and was very glad 
 he had " seen the pope, because now he may be crossed 
 out of the list of sights to be seen." As with Emerson, 
 too, his New England love of cleanliness and freshness 
 was continually affronted. This "Artist of the Beau 
 tiful," who in the Salem days had been so cheered by a 
 
314 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP, 
 
 " wandering flock of snowbirds " or the " gush of violets 
 along a woodpath," hated the "dirt and squalor" of Ital 
 ian cities and sickened before the chapel frescoes, " poor, 
 fouled relics, looking as if the Devil had been rubbing 
 and scrubbing them for centuries in spite against the 
 saints." Yet although to his overtaxed spirit the master 
 pieces of mediaeval painting and sculpture were often 
 "heavily burdensome," the Faun of Praxiteles at once 
 entranced his fancy. The story, as he at first conceived 
 it, was to have "all sorts of fun and pathos in it," but 
 when he came to "close grips " with his romance, it took 
 on, amid supreme beauty of detail, the true Hawthorn- 
 esque semblance of tragic mystery. In The Marble Faun 
 his pure and tranquil grace of style is at its best. The 
 economy of incident is not so strict as in the statuesque 
 simplicity of the Scarlet Letter groupings, nor is the 
 dramatic intensity so keen; but there is Hawthorne s 
 own rich, subdued, autumnal coloring, with the first 
 soft shadows deepening into sable. Emerson, whom 
 Hawthorne s Concord journal once noted as coming to 
 call " with a sunbeam in his face," unwittingly returned 
 the compliment by saying that Hawthorne "rides well 
 his horse of the night." Gloom has its own enchant 
 ment, and so has mystery, but the issues of this romance 
 were left in an uncertainty that its readers found hard 
 to bear. Hawthorne would not help them. He was 
 fertile in misleading suggestions and tricksy hypotheses, 
 but perhaps he hardly knew the actual fate of Miriam 
 and Donatello. Such a "cloudy veil" as he found 
 
VI NATIONAL ERA: PROSE FICTION 315 
 
 stretched over "the abyss" of his own nature may have 
 been interposed between himself and the innermost 
 secrets of his characters. Supernatural forces, too, 
 entered in, as in life, amid the personages of his tales 
 and played their inscrutable parts beside them. Among 
 the baffling questions is one suggested by Hawthorne s 
 younger daughter, who, with her husband, George Par 
 sons Lathrop, poet and novelist, has embraced the 
 Roman faith. Mrs. Lathrop claims that The Marble 
 Faun, if closely studied, shows in the treatment of sin 
 and atonement a significant divergence from the Puritan 
 romances. 
 
 Just before the Civil War Hawthorne came home, 
 a woeful time for any patriot, but most for one of divided 
 sympathies. In that strong sketch he was destined 
 never to fill out, Septimius Felton, he dwells upon the 
 wretched sense of being "ajar with the human race" 
 which besets " a man of brooding thought " in any vio 
 lent crisis. He took up his abode at The Wayside, in 
 Concord, and while insidious disease was stealing upon 
 his system, strove to fashion this new " Romance of 
 Immortality." The unfinished manuscript was laid upon 
 his coffin. 
 
 V. Realism. Such sweeping terms as realism, ideal 
 ism, romanticism, cannot be used with mathematical pre 
 cision.,. In general, our four leaders in fiction, Cooper, 
 Irving, Poe, and Hawthorne, writing in the spirit of 
 beauty and for the end of joy, emphasize those elements 
 of life either strange in themselves or strange to their 
 
3l6 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 audiences, and are so far romanticists. In general, too, 
 they are all idealists, although the high, pure essence of 
 spirituality is incarnate in Hawthorne alone. Through the 
 green solitudes of Cooper s forests move Indians nobler 
 than ordinary experience discloses, and the pirates who 
 sail his bounding seas have gifts and graces that the 
 dull world never guessed. In Irving s Dutch villages, 
 nestling along the Hudson, gossip figures quainter than 
 common eye can find, and the fretted arches of the 
 Alhambra sigh with marvellous legends. Poe s imagi 
 nations, clinging to nerve and brain, flash search-lights 
 into the pit of death, while Hawthorne opens, beneath 
 the daily aspect of life, that more awful and mysterious 
 abyss of moral consciousness. 
 
 It is just this daily aspect of life which is prized by 
 the new realism. The minute reproduction of the 
 commonplace is the latest pride of fiction. " As in 
 literature," says Howells, " 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 tiresome 
 ness." This doctrine, at the fore in Russia and France 
 and sufficiently active in England, has dominated Ameri 
 can fiction since the Civil War. Truthful reports of the 
 face of nature and society were nothing new. Cooper 
 pictured the landscapes he had known from childhood, 
 Irving was a guest in Bracebridge Hall, Poe had a scien 
 tific care for detail, and Hawthorne practised himself 
 
VI NATIONAL ERA: PROSE FICTION 317 
 
 from youth till death in closeness of observation and 
 correctness of verbal rendering. But not one of them 
 reproduced for the sake of reproduction. Cooper 
 wanted a setting for his story, and Irving a scene for 
 his sentiment, while Poe and Hawthorne observed a 
 scrupulous veracity in trifles to pave the way for prodi 
 gies. The new realism, on the contrary, is almost a 
 branch of sociological science. It seeks, above all else, 
 to get a photograph of things as they look, on the 
 theory, which is open to question, that things look as 
 they are. 
 
 The realism of personal adventure, which relates un 
 usual experiences with the manner, if not the matter, of 
 fiction, is exemplified in the thrilling chapters of Ken- 
 nan s Siberian Travels, or in that boy-beloved volume, 
 the younger Dana s Two Years before the Mast, or even 
 in Kane s Arctic Explorations, of which Thoreau charac 
 teristically remarked that " most of the phenomena noted 
 might be observed in Concord." But even this form of 
 writing tends to become less and less spontaneous and 
 more and more a matter of business. Where to-day 
 enterprising journalism sends Richard Harding Davis 
 to Cuba to "write up" the insurrection, and Julian 
 Hawthorne to India to " report " the famine, half a 
 century since we had Bayard Taylor s Views Afoot and 
 Parkman s Oregon Trail. An interesting book in this 
 category is Clemens s Life on the Mississippi, which tells 
 incidentally whence he derived his pen-name of " Mark 
 Twain," and helps to a better understanding of so ver- 
 
318 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 satile and unequal an author. As a specimen of the story 
 built on a substructure of travel, Theodore Winthrop s 
 John Brent, with a black horse for hero and a wild gallop 
 over the prairie for chief adventure, is well worth read 
 ing. This gallant scion of the old Winthrop house, who, 
 thirty years before the firing on Sumter, was a toddling 
 " golden-haired boy, with a picture-book under each 
 arm," and who, volunteering at the first call for troops, 
 was one of the first to fall, left several stories behind 
 him, all with something of youthful crudity upon them, 
 and something more of lofty promise. They vary in 
 tone from the out-of-door breeziness vtjohn Brent, " full 
 of gold air," to the Hawthornesque glooms of that power 
 ful study in evil, Cecil Dreeme. But our modern realism 
 lends itself especially to close local portraitures, as in the 
 New England stories most delicately done by SARAH O. 
 JEWETT, most vigorously by MARY E. WILKINS. It is of 
 interest to trace this New England line from HARRIET 
 BEECHER STOWE, with her Old-Town Folks, The Minis 
 ter s Wooing, and other well-remembered novels, to the 
 short, dialect stories of Alice Brown, still at the outset 
 of her career, and note the narrowing and intensifying 
 of the realistic method. The down-East novels of Mrs. 
 Elizabeth Stoddard, poet wife of poet husband, strike, 
 for all their abrupt energy of passion, the unmistakable 
 New England seaport note. Even Mrs. Harriet Prescott 
 Spofford, naturally a dweller "in Titian s garden," she 
 who flushed her Amber Gods with such ardent color, 
 tries to fall in with the prevailing school. ELIZABETH 
 
VI NATIONAL ERA: PROSE FICTION 319 
 
 STUART PHELPS WARD, while she idealizes her characters, 
 paints Fisherman Jack and the " Christman " against the 
 Gloucester background that she knows so well. Edward 
 Everett Hale s famous "Double" was not more like him 
 self than the cheery, busy, Boston details of many of his 
 stories are like the life that beats at his study doors. 
 But he is only a spy in the realist camp and may at 
 any moment betray us to a brick moon or a conversa 
 tional umbrella. 
 
 " The fierce confederate storm 
 Of sorrow barricadoed evermore 
 Within the walls of cities " 
 
 engages many pens. Chicago has found an observant 
 painter in Henry Fuller, who, like Boyesen, was swept 
 by the tide of realism from his morning course. A San 
 Francisco journalist, Chester Bailey Fernald, explores 
 the queer corners of Chinatown. "The enormous hive 
 called Manhattan Island " gives scope for the varying 
 talents of Howells, James, Crawford, Warner, Brander 
 Matthews, Edgar Fawcett, William Henry Bishop. H. C. 
 Bunner, Thomas A. Janvier, and even Hopkinson Smith, 
 who has turned from the picturesque old Colonel Carter 
 of Cartersville to that dauntless stevedore of Staten 
 Island, Tom Grogan. The graphic contrasts of New York 
 life recall a cry from the luxurious days of England under 
 the Stuarts : " Alas, how bitterly the spirit of poverty 
 spouts itself against my weal and felicity ! but I feel it 
 not. I cherish and make much of myself, flow forth in 
 ease and delicacy, while that murmurs and starves." At 
 
32O AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 least our modern fiction does not blink the facts. Julian 
 Ralph searches out the secrets of the Big Barracks, and 
 Richard Harding Davis, whose mother, Rebecca Hard 
 ing Davis, had turned by native impulse to the " Story of 
 To-day," reports Gallagher as well as Van Bibber. The 
 strike finds its way into literature, together with "that 
 bitter blossom of civilization," the tramp. Aldrich s 
 Stillwater Tragedy, " Octave Thanet s " Stories of a West 
 ern Town, Mrs. Mary Hallock Foote s Cceur d Alene are 
 examples of the fiction that concerns itself with labor 
 questions. Philanthropies are canvassed no less than 
 felonies. In that keen and earnest little volume, Mar 
 garet Sherwood s An Experiment in Altruism, even the 
 College Settlement passes under survey. 
 
 There are still a few writers who look wistfully toward 
 romance. Thomas Nelson Page throws " a light of other 
 days " over his blithe and tender tales of the Old Domin 
 ion ; James Lane Allen, interpreter of the Blue Grass 
 region, shapes his poetic temper but slowly to the current 
 mode ; and the Creoles would have us believe that 
 George Washington Cable portrays them more from imag 
 ination than experience. Historical fiction tempts the 
 author aside from the burden and heat of his own day. 
 Colonial and Revolutionary stories are much in vogue. 
 Mrs. Mary Hartwell Catherwood and Gilbert Parker go 
 gleaning after Parkman. It is on European ground that 
 our romancers often score their triumphs, as the Baroness 
 Blanche Willis Howard Teufel in Guenn, and Arthur Sher- 
 burne Hardy in Passe Rose. This feat has been multi- 
 
. 
 
 Reproduced by permission of Messrs. 
 Elliott & Fry, Photographers. 
 
vi NATIONAL ERA: PROSE FICTION 32! 
 
 plied by one of America s most popular novelists, FRANCIS 
 MARION CRAWFORD, son of Crawford the sculptor. " No 
 year without its book" would seem to be his literary 
 motto, save that his annual output more frequently 
 doubles that number, but these volumes which defile in 
 such swift and varied procession before the public, 
 romances of India, Arabia, Constantinople, Italy, and 
 stories of modern New York, are alike in the feature of 
 lively interest. Crawford frankly undertakes to be enter 
 taining. To him the " purpose novel " is " an odious 
 thing." He claims that the novel should be an " intel 
 lectual artistic luxury " rather than an " intellectual moral 
 lesson," in short, " a pocket-theatre." He cannot always 
 refrain from doing a little preaching on his own account, 
 especially in the books that deal with American politics 
 and manners, but when he writes of Italy, the glowing land 
 of his nativity, didacticism melts away and leaves pure 
 artist. His greatest achievement yet is the strong series 
 of Saracinesca, Sanf Ilario, Don Orsino, and Corleone. 
 Another American author of foreign residence is 
 HENRY JAMES, who bears the name of a father well 
 reputed for works on philosophy and religion, and has 
 a brother in Harvard s distinguished group of philo 
 sophical professors. Our " international novelist " is 
 little to the general taste. The simple, kindly stories 
 of Rev. E. P. Roe and the Biblical romances of Gen. 
 Lew Wallace count many readers to his one. It has 
 been the fashion to decry James for lack of patriotism ; 
 but while he has no enthusiasm for a mankind in its 
 
322 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 shirtsleeves," he can hardly be said to bear more heavily 
 on one nationality than another. Human nature itself is 
 a little abashed before him. His characters are usually 
 at the disadvantage of being away from their natural 
 environment, if Americans, abroad ; if Europeans, 
 in Massachusetts ; if Londoners, in Paris ; if Italians, in 
 London. Mr. Dosson, lounging helplessly in the court 
 of the Hotel de 1 Univers, as if dangled from the end 
 of " an invisible string," is a very different man from 
 Mr. Dosson in his counting-room at home. The grand 
 indictment which James brings against his countrymen 
 is vulgarity, a vulgarity not ingrain, but born of worldly 
 ignorance and of that cheerful self-confidence imparted 
 by a good conscience. In contrast to the American 
 individualism, the French sense of family is emphasized, 
 and in contrast to social ostentation in America, the 
 quiet dignity of English intercourse. One does not often 
 care greatly for the mere story James has to tell, and 
 that is fortunate, since his stories have a way of ceasing 
 in mid career^ but now and then, as in The Princess Cas- 
 samassima, the situation strongly appeals. The heaving 
 unrest and anarchistic conspiracies of all Europe give 
 substance to this tragedy of the little London book 
 binder, son at once of the oppressed and the oppressor. 
 The interest of James s books mainly lies, however, in 
 the microscopic observation of men and manners, in 
 the labyrinthine discussion of problems of conduct, 
 approached from the side of taste rather than of 
 conscience, and in the beauty of detail) the ele- 
 
VI NATIONAL ERA: PROSE FICTION 325 
 
 nation, but Howells has held for twenty years firmly to 
 his theory, spending upon his Bartley Hubbards and 
 Silas Laphams, his Annie Kilburns and Lemuel Barkers, 
 L the utmost pains of a well-mastered art. The strong 
 n influence of Tolstoi, however, seems to have opened 
 ^Howells s eyes of late to more varied and more tragic 
 v types of modern man. His characteristic kindliness is 
 \ deeply enlisted for the sufferers in life s battle, and a 
 entrain of perplexed sadness pervades his recent work. 
 sli rhose who, seeing enough in their daily routine of stupid 
 ex tnd silly people, like themselves, have turned in weari- 
 f rc iess away from Howells s familiar copies, will find in The 
 ^ajazard of New Fortunes that a change is passing upon 
 for s canvas. Happily, however, the quiet humor, which 
 tioiakes the connubial jarrings of the Marches so agreeable, 
 not forsake him. It would seem, in truth, as if 
 ^> and even women, were more mysterious and more 
 has ; tic beings than Howells has hitherto admitted. Some- 
 " beig heavenly shines through the humdrum. It is per- 
 trast well to have the buttons counted, 
 
 en &Yet may the soul pitch her adventure high, 
 momtWith beauty and with love impassioned, though we die." 
 
 ate. 
 
 but u 
 
 passa^ 
 
 solemi 
 
 suffers 
 
 middle 
 
 curtain 
 
322 AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAP. 
 
 shirtsleeves," he can hardly be said to bear more heavily 
 on one nationality than another. Human nature itself is 
 a little abashed before him. His characters are usually 
 at the disadvantage of being away from their natural* 
 environment, if Americans, abroad ; if Europeans," 
 in Massachusetts ; if Londoners, in Paris ; if Italians, in- 
 London. Mr. Dosson, lounging helplessly in the court* 
 of the Hotel de 1 Univers, as if dangled from the end* 
 of " an invisible string," is a very different man frorr- 
 Mr. Dosson in his counting-room at home. The graml- 
 indictment which James brings against his countryme^ 3 
 is vulgarity, a vulgarity not ingrain, but born of world) et 
 ignorance and of that cheerful self-confidence impart< n g 
 by a good conscience. In contrast to the Americ as 
 individualism, the French sense of family is emphasize 161 " 
 and in contrast to social ostentation in America, l re d 
 quiet dignity of English intercourse. One does not oi 118 a 
 care greatly for the mere story James has to tell, Y f 
 that is fortunate, since his stories have a way of cea? rom 
 in mid career, but now and then, as in The Princess <con- 
 samassima, the situation strongly appeals. The heait> m g 
 unrest and anarchistic conspiracies of all Europe P e " j 
 substance to this tragedy of the little London 1 been 
 binder, son at once of the oppressed and the oppre? rass ~ 
 The interest of James s books mainly lies, howevf /ote d, 
 the microscopic observation of men and manne st die 
 the labyrinthine discussion of problems of cor lo PP er 
 approached from the side of taste rather tl- ar tnat 
 conscience, and in the beauty of detail) the irnagi- 
 
VI NATIONAL ERA: PROSE FICTION 325 
 
 nation, but Howells has held for twenty years firmly to 
 his theory, spending upon his Bartley Hubbards and 
 Silas Laphams, his Annie Kilburns and Lemuel Barkers, 
 the utmost pains of a well-mastered art. The strong 
 influence of Tolstoi, however, seems to have opened 
 Howells s eyes of late to more varied and more tragic 
 types of modern man. His characteristic kindliness is 
 deeply enlisted for the sufferers in life s battle, and a 
 strain of perplexed sadness pervades his recent work. 
 Those who, seeing enough in their daily routine of stupid 
 and silly people, like themselves, have turned in weari 
 ness away from Howells s familiar copies, will find in The 
 Hazard of New Fortunes that a change is passing upon 
 his canvas. Happily, however, the quiet humor, which 
 makes the connubial jarrings of the Marches so agreeable, 
 does not forsake him. It would seem, in truth, as if 
 men, and even women, were more mysterious and more 
 poetic beings than Howells has hitherto admitted. Some 
 thing heavenly shines through the humdrum. It is per 
 haps well to have the buttons counted, 
 
 " Yet may the soul pitch her adventure high, 
 With beauty and with love impassioned, though we die." 
 
INDEX OF AUTHORS 
 
 BORN DIED 
 
 1803. .1879. .Abbott, Jacob (Rollo Books), 279. 
 
 1805. . 1877. .Abbott, Rev. John S. C, 143. 
 
 1842. . . .Adams, Charles Follen, 179. 
 
 1755. .1832. .Adams, Hannah, 222. 
 
 1735. . 1826. .Adams, President John, 69, 70, 73, 75, 76, 87, 95, 254. 
 
 1767. .1848. .Adams, President John Quincy, 95, 97, 252. 
 
 1722. .1803. .Adams, Samuel, 67, 70. 
 
 1822. . 1897. .Adams, William T., " Oliver Optic," 279. 
 
 1799. .1888. .Alcott, Amos Bronson, 216, 218, 223, 224-226, 262, 
 
 312, 313. 
 
 1832. .1888. .Alcott, Louisa May, 115, 226, 289. 
 1836. . . . Aldrich, Thomas Bailey, 114, 128, 130, 173-176, 197, 
 
 285, 320. 
 1849. . . .Allen, James Lane, 135, 320. 
 
 . . Allen, Mrs. Josiah. See Holley, Marietta. 
 1779. .1843. -Allston, Washington, 102, 117, 154, 276. 
 1638. . ? . .Alsop, George, 17. 
 1758. .1808. .Ames, Fisher, 129. 
 1780. . 1851 . . Audubon, John James, 259. 
 1800. . 1891 . .Bancroft, George, 240, 241-242, 246, 249, 309. 
 1832. . . .Bancroft, Hubert Howe, 241. 
 1754. .1812. .Barlow, Joel, 75-76, 78. 
 1813. .1887. .Beecher, Rev. Henry Ward, 227, 257. 
 1775. .1863. .Beecher, Rev. Lyman, 209. 
 1744. . 1798. .Belknap, Rev. Jeremy, 239. 
 1850. . . .Bellamy, Edward, 233. 
 1782. . 1858. .Benton, Thomas Hart, 252. 
 1670?. 1 735 P.Beverly, Robert, 16-17,239. 
 
 . . Billings, Josh. See Shaw, Henry W. 
 
2 AMERICAN LITERATURE 
 
 BORN DIED 
 
 1803. .1854. .Bird, Robert Montgomery, 275. 
 
 1847. -Bishop, William Henry, 319. 
 1656. .1743. .Blair, Rev. James, 17. 
 1752. .1783. .Bleecker, Mrs. Ann Eliza, 80. 
 
 1823. .1890. .Boker, George Henry, 114, 193-195, 201. 
 1856. . 1894. .Bolles, Frank, 260. 
 
 1848. .1895. -Boyesen, Professor Hjalmar Hjorth, 319. 
 
 1590. . 1657. .Bradford, Governor William, 4, 17-18, 21-22, 27, 30, 
 
 3i, 239. 
 
 1612. . 1672. .Bradstreet, Mrs. Anne Dudley, 31-34, 40, 87, 154. 
 1718. .1747. .Brainerd, David, 93-94. 
 1806. .1893. -Bridge, Horatio, 302. 
 1795?. 1845. -Brooks, Mrs. Maria Gowen, 105. 
 1835. . l8 93- -Brooks, Rt. Rev. Phillips, 258. 
 1857. . . .Brown, Alice, 318. 
 
 1771. .1810. .Brown, Charles Brockden, 88-90, 98, 130, 266/ 
 1834. . 1867. .Browne, Charles Farrar, " Artemus Ward," 285. 
 1820. .1872. .Brownell, Henry Howard, 114. 
 1 794.. 1 878. .Bryant, William Cullen, 96, 101, 106, 114, 137-142, 
 
 143, 144, 147, 152, 156, 164, 167, 179, 192, 260. 
 1855. 1896. .Bunner, Henry Cuyler, 198, 319. 
 1849. . -Burnett, Mrs. F. E. H., 289. 
 1837. -Burroughs, John, 265. 
 1859. . . .Burton, Richard, 232. 
 1706. .1788. .Byles, Rev. Mather, 35. 
 1674. .1744. .Byrd, Colonel William, 16. 
 1844. . . .Cable, George Washington, 320. 
 1648?. 1719. .Calef, Robert, 39. 
 
 1782.. 1850. .Calhoun, John C, 113, 116, 117,252-253. 
 1845. . . .Carleton, Will, 109, 203. 
 1820. . 1871 . .Cary, Alice, 202-203. 
 1824. . 1871 . .Cary, Phoebe, 202-203. 
 1847. -Catherwood, Mrs. Mary Hartwell, 320. 
 1780. .1842. .Channing, Rev. William Ellery, 51, 101, 102, 117, 
 
 122, 1 66, 208, 209, 211, 224, 225. 
 1825. . 1896. .Child, Professor Francis James, 238. 
 
INDEX OF AUTHORS 3 
 
 BORN DIED 
 
 1802. . 1880. .Child, Mrs. Lydia Maria, 250. 
 
 1807. .1858. .Olivers, Dr. Thomas Holley, 185-186. 
 1799. .1859. .Choate, Rufus, 257. 
 
 1810. . 1888. .Clarke, Rev. James Freeman, 116, 155, 208, 222, 223. 
 1777. .1852. .Clay, Henry, 96, 112, 113, 250, 252, 253, 254, 255. 
 1835.. ..Clemens, Samuel Langhorne, "Mark Twain," 103, 
 
 232,273,285, 317-318. 
 1859. . . .Cone, Helen Gray, 198. 
 1 6 . . 17 . .Cook, Ebenezer, 92. 
 1830. .1886. .Cooke, John Esten, 116, 277. 
 1816. .1850. .Cooke, Philip Pendleton, 116, 187. 
 
 . .Coolidge, Susan. See Woolsey, Sarah C. 
 1789. . 1851 . .Cooper, James Fenimore, 101, 103, 104, 106, 152, 261, 
 
 266-280, 315, 316, 317. 
 1585. . 1652. .Cotton, Rev. John, 26, 41, 46. 
 
 . .Craddock, Charles Egbert. See Murfree, MaryNoailles. 
 1813. .1892. .Cranch, Christopher Pearse, 187. 
 1870. . . .Crane, Stephen, 115. 
 1854. . . .Crawford, Francis Marion, 319, 321, 324. 
 1731 . .1813. .Crevecoeur, J. Hector St. John de, 136, 260. 
 1824. .1892. .Curtis, George William, 130, 288, 291, 292, 310. 
 1787. .1879. .Dana, Richard Henry, 101, 102, 117, 234, 276. 
 1815.. 1882.. Dana, Richard Henry, Jr., 154, 317. 
 
 1808. .1825. .Davidson, Lucretia Maria, 104. 
 1823. . 1838. .Davidson, Margaret Miller, 104. 
 1808. . 1889. .Davis, Jefferson, 240, 252. 
 
 1831 . . . .Davis, Mrs. Rebecca Harding, 320. 
 
 1864. . . .Davis, Richard Harding, 317, 320. 
 
 1857. . . .Deland, Mrs. Margaret, 289. 
 
 1830. .1886.. Dickinson, Emily, 178-179. 
 
 1830?. 1896. .Dodge, Mary Abigail, " Gail Hamilton," 163, 232. 
 
 1825. . . .Dorr, Mrs. J. C. R., 186. 
 
 . .Downing, Major Jack. See Smith, Seba. 
 1795. .1820. .Drake, Joseph Rodman, 106, 190-191, 2OI. 
 1680. .1739. .Dummer, Rev. Jeremiah, (quoted) 42. 
 1872. . . .Dunbar, Paul Laurence, 132. 
 
 2A 
 
4 AMERICAN LITERATURE 
 
 BORN DIED 
 
 1766. . 1839. .Dunlap, William, 102-103. 
 
 1752. .1817. .Dwight, Rev. Timothy, 76-78. 
 
 1863. . . .Eastman, Mrs. Elaine Goodale, 202. 
 
 1 703.. 1758.. Edwards, Rev. Jonathan, 37, 45-51, 53, 58, 68, 74, 
 
 76, 85, 232. 
 
 1604. . 1690. .Eliot, Rev. John, 15, 26, 30. 
 1 803.. 1 882.. Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 37, 51, 118, 122, 128, 137, 
 
 141, 152, 156, 166-173, 179, 199, 205, 209, 210- 
 
 224, 226, 256, 261, 262, 263, 264, 310, 313, 314. 
 1794. .1865. .Everett, Rev. Edward, 117, 234, 257. 
 1847. .Fawcett, Edgar, 319. 
 1868. . . .Fernald, Chester Bailey, 319. 
 1850. .1895. -Field, Eugene, 204. 
 i8i6..i88i.. Fields, James T., 312. 
 1842. . . .Fiske, Professor John, 227, 241. 
 1805. .1884. .Flagg, Wilson, 260. 
 i6i8?.i690. .Folger, Peter, 36, 58. 
 1847. . -Foote, Mrs. Mary Hallock, 136, 320. 
 1759?. 1840. .Foster, Mrs. Hannah Webster, 85-86. 
 1706. .1790. .Franklin, Dr. Benjamin, 36, 58-68, 69, 91, 94, 130, 
 
 167, 214, 232, 258, 285. 
 1759. .1835. -Freeman, Rev. James, 208. 
 1850. . . .French, Alice, " Octave Thanet," 320. 
 1752. . 1832. .Freneau, Captain Philip, 83-85, 108. 
 1857. . . .Fuller, Henry Blake, 319. 
 1833. . . .Furness, Horace Howard, 239. 
 1860. . . .Garland, Hamlin, 135-136. 
 1805. .1879. .Garrison, William Lloyd, 117, 160, 161, 162,224,250, 
 
 257- 
 
 1850. . 1896. .Gibson, William Hamilton, 260. 
 1844. . . .Gilder, Richard Watson, 198. 
 1736. .1763. .Godfrey, Thomas, 82. 
 1866. . . .Goodale, Dora Read, 202. 
 
 1793. . 1860. .Goodrich, Samuel Griswold, "Peter Parley," 305. 
 1612?. 1687. .Gookin, Daniel, 30. 
 T 6 . . ? . ."Goose, Mother," Elizabeth Vergoose ? 40. 
 
INDEX OF AUTHORS 5 
 
 BORN DIED 
 
 1852 Grant, Judge Robert, 232, 285. 
 
 1822. . . 1885. .Grant, President Ulysses S., 107, 124, 240, 245. 
 1811. . .1872. .Greeley, Horace, 106, 223, 240. 
 1 86 1 . . . . .Guiney, Louise Imogen, 179. 
 
 1822 Hale, Rev. Edward Everett, 227, 319. 
 
 1796. . . 1865. .Haliburton, T. C., "Sam Slick," 284. 
 1790. . .1867. .Halleck, Fitz-Greene, 106, 190-192, 201. 
 1757. .. 1804. .Hamilton, Alexander, 72-74, 106, 249. 
 
 . . Hamilton, Gail. See Dodge, Mary Abigail. 
 ? ...16 . .Hammond, John, 17. 
 1847. -Hardy, Arthur Sherburne, 321. 
 1848. . . . .Harris, Joel Chandler, 132. 
 
 1839 Harte, Francis Bret, 114, 136, 206-207. 
 
 1846. . . . .Hawthorne, Julian, 309, 317. 
 
 1804. . . 1864. .Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 118, 128, 143, 152, 221, 222, 
 
 264, 276, 299-315, 316, 317, 318. 
 1838. . . . .Hay, ColoneT^ohn"|"2O5, 206, 240. 
 1830. . .1886. .Hayne, Paul Hamilton, 186, 187-188. 
 1791. . .1839. .Hayne, Robert Young, 116, 255. 
 1805. . .1890. .Hedge, Rev. Frederic Henry, 223. 
 1736. . .1799. .Henry, Patrick, 3, 71, 116, 247. 
 1800. . . 1856. .Hentz, Mrs. Caroline Lee, 116. 
 1587-8.1630. .Higginson, Rev. Francis, 25-26, 31, 38. 
 
 1 823 Higginson, Colonel Thomas Wentworth, 1 84, 209, 222. 
 
 1807. . . 1865. .Hildreth, Richard, 242. 
 1819... 1881.. Holland, Dr. J. G., 130, 197. 
 
 1844 Holley, Marietta, "Josiah Allen s Wife," 284. 
 
 1763. . .1837. -Holmes, Rev. Abiel, 154. 
 
 1809. . .1894. .Holmes, Dr. Oliver Wendell, 114, 122, 152, 154- 
 
 159, 167, 179, 217,^227-232, 251, 285. 
 1586?. . 1647: .Hooker, Rev. Thomas!^, 26, 46. 
 
 1864 Hovey, Richard, 177. 
 
 1837... ..Howells, William Dean, 126, 129, 130, 135, 174, 
 
 203, 316, 319, 324-325. 
 1621 . . . 1704. .Hubbard, Rev. William, 21. 
 1814. .. 1886. .Hudson, Rev. Henry Norman, 239. 
 
6 AMERICAN LITERATURE 
 
 BORN DIED 
 
 1711. .1780. .Hutchinson, Governor Thomas, 21, 239. 
 
 1843. Hutton, Laurence, 238. 
 
 1783. .1859. .Irving, Washington, 101, 102, 104, 106, 122, 143, 152, 
 
 239, 243, 280-292, 315, 316, 317. 
 1766. . 1821 . .Irving, William, 282. 
 
 1831. .1885. Jackson, Mrs. Helen Hunt, "H. H." 178, 275. 
 1811. .1882. James, Henry, 321. 
 
 1843. . James, Henry, Jr., 128, 266, 319, 321-324. 
 1849. . . Janvier, Thomas A., 319. 
 1745. . 1829. Jay, Judge John, 72. 
 1829. . . Jefferson, Joseph, 134. 
 1 743.. 1 826. Jefferson, President Thomas, 3, 73-75, 95, 96, 106, 
 
 1 1 6, 134, 221, 242, 254. 
 1849. Jewett, Sarah Orne, 135, 318. 
 1861. . . Jewett, Professor Sophie, 198. 
 1599. .1672. Johnson, Captain Edward, 30. 
 
 ? . . 1 6 . Josselyn, John, 31, 260. 
 1813. .1853. Judd, Rev. Sylvester, 261. 
 1820.. 1857. .Kane, Elisha Kent, 317. 
 1845. . . .Kennan, George, 317. 
 1795. . 1870. .Kennedy, John Pendleton, 116, 277. 
 1779. .1843. -Key, Francis Scott, 105. 
 1666. .1727. .Knight, Mrs. Sarah Kemble, 38-39. 
 1842. .1881. .Lanier, Sidney, 128, 188-190. 
 1824. .1893. -Larcom, Lucy, 179. 
 1851 .. . .Lathrop, George Parsons, 114, 315. 
 1851 .. . . Lathrop, Mrs. Rose Hawthorne, 309, 315. 
 1849. i 887. .Lazarus, Emma, 198. 
 1824. . . .Leland, Charles Godfrey, 197. 
 1720. .1804. .Lennox, Mrs. Charlotte, 80. 
 1809. . 1865. .Lincoln, President Abraham, 108, no, 1*13, 115, 122, 
 
 123, 124, 201, 205, 214, 226, 240, 250, 257, 286. 
 1807. .1882. .Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 114, 117, 122, 142- 
 
 147, 150, 152, 154, 156, 167, 179, 183-184, 188, 
 
 238, 259, 302, 305. 
 1838. . . .Lounsbury, Professor Thomas R., 238. 
 
INDEX OF AUTHORS / 
 
 BORN DIED 
 
 1 819.. 1 89 1.. Lowell, James Russell, i, 115, 117, 122, 125, 130, 137, 
 
 147-154, 156, 167, 179, 214, 217, 222, 229, 234- 
 
 238, 285. 
 
 1845 .. . . Mabie, Hamilton Wright, 234. 
 1751 .. 1836. .Madison, President James, 3, 72, 73, 95, 96. 
 1801 . . 1882. .Marsh, George Perkins, 238. 
 1755. .1835. .Marshall, Chief Justice John, 116, 239. 
 1600?. 1672?. Mason, Major John, 30. 
 1 663.. 1 728.. Mather, Rev. Cotton, 21, 25, 39, 42-45, 46, 47, 50, 
 
 53,211,239. 
 
 1639. .1723. .Mather, Rev. Increase, 39, 40-45, 47, 50. 
 1596. . 1669. .Mather, Rev. Richard, 40, 43. 
 1852. . . .Matthews, Professor Brander, 238, 319. 
 1720. .1766. .Mayhew, Rev. Jonathan, 208. 
 1812. .1895. .Mayo, William Starbuck, 276. 
 1819. . 1891 . .Melville, Herman, 276. 
 
 1841. . . .Miller, Cincinnatus Hiner, " Joaquin Miller," 207. 
 1831 .. . .Miller, Mrs. Harriet, " Olive Thome Miller," 260. 
 1822. . . .Mitchell, Donald Grant, " Ik Marvel," 292. 
 1802. .1864. .Morris, George P., 105, 192. 
 1840.. . .Morse, John Torrey, 241. 
 1613. . 1685. .Morton, Nathaniel, 21. 
 15 . . 1 646 P.Morton, Thomas, 31. 
 
 1814. . 1877. .Motley, John Lothrop, 240, 244-246, 249, 250, 251. 
 1850. . . .Murfree, Mary Noailles, "Charles Egbert Craddock," 
 
 135- 
 
 1832. . . .Nicolay, John George, 205, 240. 
 1827. . . .Norton, Professor Charles Eliot, 234. 
 1651 .. 1716. .Norton, Rev. John, 33. 
 
 ? . .16 . .Norwood, Colonel, 9. 
 1647. I 7 I 7- -Noyes, Rev. Nicholas, 36. 
 1631 . . 1 68 1 . .Oakes, Rev. Urian, 36. 
 
 . . Optic, Oliver. See Adams, William T. 
 1844. .1890. .O Reilly, John Boyle, 179. 
 1810.. 1850.. Ossoli, Sarah Margaret Fuller, Marchioness d , 154, 
 
 216, 221-224, 313. 
 
8 AMERICAN LITERATURE 
 
 BORN DIED 
 
 1725. .1783. .Otis, James, 70, 79, 249. 
 
 1853. . . .Page, Thomas Nelson, 117, 135, 320. 
 
 1737. . 1809. .Paine, Thomas, 88. 
 
 1810. . 1860. .Parker, Rev. Theodore, 117, 209-210, 216. 
 
 1823. . 1893. -Parkman, Francis, 240, 246-249, 317. 
 
 . . Parley, Peter. See Goodrich, Samuel Griswold. 
 1819. . 1892. .Parsons, Thomas William, 177. 
 
 . . Partington, Mrs. See Shillaber, Benjamin P. 
 1779. .1860. .Paulding, James Kirke, 106, 275, 282, 292. 
 1791. .1852. .Payne, John Howard, 103, 120. 
 1804. .1894. .Peabody, Elizabeth Palmer, 216, 223. 
 1644. .1718. .Penn, William, 30, 65, 88, 91, 161. 
 J 795- !856. .Percival, James Gates, 101. 
 1586. . 1632. .Percy, George, 9. 
 1841 .. 1896. .Perry, Nora, 179. 
 
 1 754?. 1 784. .Peters, Mrs. Phillis Wheatley, 78-79, 81. 
 1811. .1884. -Phillips, Wendell, 118, 160, 226, 250, 251, 258. 
 1835 - p iatt, John James, 203. 
 1836. . . .Piatt, Mrs. Sarah Morgan, 203. 
 1802. .1828. .Pinkney, Professor Edward Coate, 116, 186. 
 i8o9..i849..Poe, Edgar Allan, 89, 90, 116, 130, 148, 151, 152, 
 179-186, 187, 188, 192, 199, 234, 292-299, 312, 
 315, 316, 317. 
 
 1570?. 1636?. Pory, John, 14-15. 
 1796. .1859. .Prescott, William Hickling, 240, 242-244, 246, 249, 
 
 251. 
 
 1825. .1897. -Preston, Mrs. Margaret, 186. 
 1687. - 1 75$ -Prince, Rev. Thomas, 21, 239. 
 1853 .. . . Pyle, Howard, 279. 
 1 744- -1775- -Quincy, Josiah, 69, 70. 
 1853. . . .Ralph, Julian, 320. 
 J 773- -1833. -Randolph, John, 73, 116. 
 1822. .1872. .Read, Thomas Buchanan, 114, 196. 
 1855 .. Repplier, Agnes, 234. 
 1857. . . . Riggs, Mrs. Kate Douglas Wiggin, 289. 
 1852?. . . Riley, James Whitcomb, 204. 
 
INDEX OF AUTHORS 
 
 BORN DIED 
 
 1802. .1880. .Ripley, George, 216, 218, 223, 225, 309. 
 1847. -Roche, James Jeffrey, 179. 
 1838. . 1888. .Roe, Rev. Edward Payson, 321. 
 1846. . . .Rohlfs, Mrs. Anna Katharine Green, 294. 
 1827. . . . Rolfe, William J., 239. 
 1 6 . . ? . .Rowlandson, Mrs. Mary, 36. 
 1762. . 1824. .Rowson, Mrs. Susanna Haswell, 81, 86-87. 
 1839. . 1886. .Ryan, Rev. Abram Joseph, " Father Ryan," 186. 
 1816.. 1887.. Saxe, John G., 179. 
 1839. . . .Schouler, Professor James, 241. 
 1860.. ..Scollard, Clinton, 198. 
 1838. . . .Scudder, Horace E. (Bodley Books), 279. 
 1861 . . . . Scudder, Professor Vida D., 238. 
 1789. .1867. .Sedgwick, Catharine Maria, 104, 105. 
 1652. . 1730. .Sewall, Judge Samuel, 4, 37-40. 
 1818. . 1885. .Shaw, Henry W., "Josh Billings," 284. 
 1605. . 1649. .Shepard, Rev. Thomas, 26. 
 1831. .1888. .Sheridan, General Philip H., 240. 
 1820. . 1891 . .Sherman, General W. T., 240. 
 1864. . . .Sherwood, Margaret, 320. 
 
 1814. .1890. .Shillaber, Benjamin P., "Mrs. Partington," 284. 
 1791. .1865. .Sigourney, Mrs. Lydia, 104. 
 1841. . 1887. .Sill, Professor Edward Rowland, 176-177. 
 1806. .1870. .Simms, William Gilmore, 116, 277. 
 . . Slick, Sam. See Haliburton, T. C. 
 1838. . . .Smith, Francis Hopkinson, 319. 
 1579. . 1631 . .Smith, Captain John, 6-9, 239. 
 1808. .1895. .Smith, Rev - Samuel F., 155. 
 1792. . 1868. .Smith, Seba, " Major Jack Downing," 284. 
 1818. . . .South worth, Mrs. E. D. E. N., 116. 
 1789. .1866. .Sparks, Rev. Jared, 239, 241. 
 1835. . .Spofford, Mrs. H. E. Prescott, 318-319. 
 1833. . . .Stedman, Edmund Clarence, 114, 173, 197, 198, 234- 
 
 235- 
 
 1812. . 1883. .Stephens, Alexander Hamilton, 240. 
 1689. .1755. .Stith, Rev. William, 239. 
 
10 AMERICAN LITERATURE 
 
 BORN DIED 
 
 1834. . . .Stockton, Frank R., 295. 
 
 1823. . . .Stoddard, Mrs. Elizabeth Drew, 196, 318. 
 
 1825. . . .Stoddard, Richard Henry, 173, 192-196, 201. 
 
 1 80 1 . . 1834. .Stone, John Augustus, 103. 
 
 1819. . 1895. .Story, William Wetmore, 132, 223. 
 
 1811. .1896. .Stowe, Mrs. Harriet Beecher, 118, 232, 289, 318. 
 
 15 . .16 . .Strachey, William, 9-12, 14. 
 
 1780. .1852. .Stuart, Professor Moses, 208. 
 
 1811. .1874. .Sumner, Charles, 118, 169, 251-252. 
 
 1845 .. -Tabb, Rev. John B., " Father Tabb," 187, 188. 
 
 1825. .1878. .Taylor, James Bayard, 173, 192-194, 196, 197, 198, 
 
 201, 317. 
 
 1762. . 1837. .Tenney, Mrs. Tabitha, 85. 
 1847. . . .Teuffel, Blanche Willis Howard, Baroness von, 321. 
 
 . .Thanet, Octave. See French, Alice. 
 1836. . 1894. .Thaxter, Mrs. Celia, 178. 
 1854. . . .Thomas, Edith Matilda, 204-205. 
 1844. . . .Thompson, Maurice, 204, 260. 
 1817. .1862. .Thoreau, Henry David, 122, 128, 199, 220, 225, 260- 
 
 265,317. 
 
 1791. .1871.. Ticknor, Professor George, 117, 234. 
 1829.. 1867.. Timrod, Henry, 188. 
 1642. . 1714. .Tompson, Benjamin, 36. 
 1843. -Torrey, Bradford, 260. 
 1862. . . .Trent, Professor William P., 116. 
 1827. . . .Trowbridge, J. T., 279. 
 1750. . 1831 . .Trumbull, John, 76-78. 
 
 . .Twain, Mark. See Clemens, Samuel Langhorne. 
 1835. -Tyler, Professor Moses Coit, 238. 
 1758. . 1826. .Tyler, Judge Royall, 82, 87. 
 
 . . 1 672?. Underbill, Captain John, 20, 30. 
 1786. .1870. .Verplanck, Gulian C., 101, 238. 
 1813. . 1880. .Very, Jones, 177-178, 223. 
 1827.. . . Wallace, General Lew, 322. 
 
 . . Ward, Artemus. See Browne, Charles Farrar. 
 1844. . . .Ward, Mrs. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, 289, 319. 
 
INDEX OF AUTHORS II 
 
 BORN DIED 
 
 1579?. 1652. .Ward, Rev. Nathaniel, 24, 28, 32-33. 
 1829. . . .Warner, Charles Dudley, 130, 232-233, 241, 319. 
 1728. .1814. .Warren, Mrs. Mercy, 79, 80. 
 
 1732. .1799. .Washington, President George, 3, 69, 71, 72, 73, 76, 
 77, 80, 81, 83, 84, 87, 95, 119, 163, 270, 281, 290, 
 
 324- 
 
 1782. .1852. .Webster, Daniel, 113, 211, 250, 253-256. 
 1758. . 1843. -Webster, Noah, 75, 238. 
 1855. . . .Wendell, Professor Barrett, 239. 
 
 . . Wheatley, Phillis. See Peters, Mrs. 
 1819. . 1886. . Whipple, Edwin Percy, 234-235. 
 1585. .i6i7?.Whitaker, Rev. Alexander, 15. 
 1863. . . .White, Professor Greenough, 104. 
 1 82 1?. 1 885. .White, Richard Grant, 239. 
 
 1819. .1892. .Whitman, Walt, 95, 115, 137, 199-202, 238, 264. 
 1824. . . .Whitney, Mrs. A. D. T., 288. 
 1827. .1894. .Whitney, Professor W T illiam D wight, 238. 
 1807. .1892. .Whittier, John Greenleaf, 52, 91, 114, 118, 145, 152, 
 
 156, 159-166, 167, 179. 
 
 1631. .1705. . Wigglesworth, Rev. Michael, 28-30, 45. 
 1789. .1847. -Wilde, Richard Henry, 105, 116, 187. 
 1862. . . . Wilkins, Mary E., 135, 318. 
 1664. . 1729. .Williams, Rev. John, 36-37. 
 1 600?. 1 683. .Williams, Rev. Roger, 26, 30. 
 1806. .1867. .Willis, Nathaniel P., 105-106, 192. 
 1766. .1813. .Wilson, Alexander, 259. 
 1835. . . .Wilson, Mrs. Augusta Evans, 116. 
 1812 ; 1875. .Wilson, Vice-President Henry, 240. 
 1856. . . .Wilson, Professor Woodrow, 97. 
 1595. . 1655. . Winslow, Governor Edward, 21, 31. 
 1831 . . 1897. . Winsor, Justin, 241. 
 1836. . . .Winter, William, 238. 
 
 1588. .1649. .Winthrop, Governor John, 22-24, 3 45> 2 39- 
 1591?. 1647. .Winthrop, Mrs. Margaret, 32. 
 1828. . 1861 . .Winthrop, Theodore, 318. 
 1652. .1725. .Wise, Rev. John, 35, 68. 
 
12 AMERICAN LITERATURE 
 
 BORN DIED 
 
 1679. . 1767. . Wolcott, Governor Roger, 49. 
 
 1580?. 1639. .Wood, William, 31, 260. 
 
 1855. . . .Woodberry, Professor George E., 177. 
 
 1785. .1842. .Woodworth, Samuel, 105. 
 
 1720. . 1772. . Woolman, John, 90-94, 159. 
 
 183-. . . . Woolsey, Sarah C, " Susan Coolidge," 179. 
 
 1845. I 894- .Woolson, Constance Fenimore, 280. 
 
 1784. .1865. .Worcester, Joseph Emerson, 301. 
 
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