Early Dearth of Good Writers.—Among the consciously
useful forms of literature there is none in which, by common
consent, American men of letters have so uniformly
distinguished themselves as in history. Bradford and
Winthrop in the seventeenth century are as conspicuous
among their countrymen and as respectable before the
world as Prescott and Parkman in the nineteenth. Prince
and Stith are as minutely conscientious—and almost as
dull—as the most scientific of modern students; and
Hutchinson, when judged by the prevailing standards of
his own times, will be found not less diligent or judicious
than Adams and Rhodes are thought to-day. Indeed,
there is in our literature but one period destitute of historians
of merit, and that period falls in the years immediately
after the Revolution, precisely in the years when
we should most expect historical writing to flourish; for
those last years of the eighteenth century seem, as we
look back upon them, to be full of encouragement for
national pride. In 1781, Lord Cornwallis had surrendered
at Yorktown. In 1783, King George acknowledged the
independence of his rebellious subjects in America. Under
a constitution since renowned, they soon instituted for themselves
a federal government upon a continental scale. The
prediction of Jefferson’s Declaration seemed to be justified.
The United States were ready “to assume among the
powers of the earth that separate and equal station to
which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle
them.”
Popular revolutions such as this have often been followed
by a period of great literary fruitfulness, particularly
in history. So it proved in Holland, in France,
in Italy. But in America nothing of the sort occurred.
The twenty-five years after Yorktown, barren in literature
of every kind, are exceptionally devoid of historical writers
who deal with large subjects in a large way. There were,
of course, narratives of the war by participants and panegyrists.
Such were David Ramsay’s “History of the
American Revolution” (1789), Mrs. Mercy Warren’s “Rise,
Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution”
(1805), and the “History of the American Revolution”
which appeared in 1819 under the name of Paul Allen.
But none of these works shows largeness of view, and
none is distinguished by literary qualities. They serve a
good purpose, however, in reflecting the feeling of the
Revolution. This is particularly true of Mrs. Warren’s
book. She was a sister of James Otis, whose argument
against the writs of assistance in 1761 marks the beginning
of the Revolutionary agitation, and the wife of General
Joseph Warren, who fell on Bunker Hill; and her intimacy
with these and other New England patriots lends a certain
representative value to her forgotten discursiveness. A
similar value attaches also to the more readable, but not
less bitter “Life of James Otis, containing Notices of Contemporary
Characters and Events,” written by William
Tudor; likewise, though in a less degree, to several other
early biographies of Revolutionary worthies, among which
the most weighty is the “Life of George Washington,” in
five volumes (1804–1807), based upon his original papers
and compiled by his fellow-Virginian John Marshall, afterwards
famous as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. For
students of American history, this is a useful book, such
as a man of Marshall’s ability could not fail to produce
when dealing with subjects with which he was thoroughly
familiar and in which he was deeply interested. But it
is hastily written, far too long, and, save for its partisanship,
altogether colourless. Nevertheless, it occupies a relatively
high rank among its coevals, for, taken all in all,
American writers on national history in the years 1780–1820
are few and weak.
Causes of this Inferiority.—In explanation of this circumstance
various conjectures have been advanced. Indubitably,
the proscription of the Loyalists after the war
deprived the thirteen States of wealth and intelligence
which might otherwise have afforded to American literature
an American support. But the effect upon letters of that
social loss is easily exaggerated. The promptness with
which serious English books were reprinted in America,
even in the years when, as Goodrich discovered, it was
“positively injurious to the commercial credit of a bookseller
to undertake American works,” proves sufficiently
that a reading public still remained. Another reason why,
in the earlier years of our national life, there were few
historians, may be found in the exaggerated value which
most Americans then set upon certain abstract and therefore
absolute theories in politics. Among the leaders of
the Anti-Federalist or Democratic party, especially, a sort
of political orthodoxy grew up. Theirs became a party
with a creed, but without a programme. In the Southern
States, they developed, in defence of their principles, an
extensive literature of political and economic theory, far
surpassing in variety of argument, subtlety of reasoning,
and clearness of exposition anything that the North could
show. But throughout it all, they appealed for support
to the unchanging text of written constitutions, or to the
immemorial prescriptions of natural law; upon history they
looked as a tedious tale of ignorance and error. The
Federalists, on the other hand, like the Whigs and the
Republicans who succeeded them, were a party rather of
measures than of principles. For their practical aims, a
knowledge of human experience was serviceable. They
inclined, therefore, to historical studies, and it is in New
England, where their hold had been strongest, that the
most significant of American historians at length appear.
But even the stoutest Federalist among the contemporaries
of Jefferson could discern in the recent experience of the
nation at large little to stimulate patriotic ardour. In the
estimation of men as yet unaccustomed to “think continentally,”
the new government had brought few blessings:
its burdens seemed innumerable. Taxes were high.
Money was bad, and scarce as well. The Revolution had
loosened the bonds of traditional authority, and internal
disorder was rife. The mutual obligations assumed by
England and by the United States at the Peace of 1783
were disregarded on both sides; and a new treaty, whose
stipulations the vast majority of Americans deemed humiliating
to themselves and dishonourable towards their
French allies, served chiefly to prolong internal dissensions
by introducing as an unwelcome issue in American politics
the conflicting sympathies of the Federalists with England
and of the Democrats with France. What wonder, then,
that those who concerned themselves with the history of
America at all turned from the Union to their several States,
each of which, in their view, had been made separately sovereign
by the events of the Revolution. Their temper is well
expressed by the title of David Ramsay’s “History of the
Revolution of South Carolina from a British Province to
an Independent State” (1785). Ramsay’s “South Carolina”
was soon followed by Belknap’s “New Hampshire”
(1784–92), Proud’s “Pennsylvania” (1797), Minot’s “Continuation
of the History [Hutchinson’s] of Massachusetts”
(1798), Burke’s “Virginia” (1804), Williamson’s “North
Carolina” (1812), and Trumbull’s “Connecticut” (1818).
Among these books, Belknap’s justly holds the highest
rank. Its style is vigorous and flexible, and in the opinion
of de Tocqueville, “the reader of Belknap will find more
general ideas and more strength of thought than are to
be met with in other American historians” of the same
period.
Washington Irving.—The life of Washington Irving as
a man of letters is followed elsewhere in this volume; but
no account of American historical writers, however slight,
can omit his name. In the more laborious paths of the
historian’s vocation he seldom walked. Research was foreign
to his temperament, and in his histories references to
authorities are few. He makes no pretence of disclosing
new facts, or even of suggesting new theories concerning
facts already known. But “the picturesque distances of
earth’s space and the romantic remoteness of history”
kindled his imagination, and his travels, which were extended
for an American of his day, produced enduring
results in a series of books dealing with the countries,
and in part with the history of the countries, which he
visited. One reason for his assuming the duties, not over-serious,
of an attaché of the American legation in Madrid
was Minister Everett’s suggestion that he make an English
version of the matter relating to America in Navarrete’s
work on the voyages and discoveries of the Spanish at
the end of the fifteenth century, which had then been recently
published. This project presently expanded into
Irving’s “Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus, to
which are added Those of his Companions” (1828). It was
followed in the next year by “The Conquest of Granada,”
and in 1832 by “Tales of the Alhambra.” Returning to
America, Irving travelled extensively west of the Mississippi,
and presently published his “Astoria” (1836) and
“The Adventures of Captain Bonneville” (1837). Of
these books, which, with an unimportant “Life of Mahomet
and his Successors” (1849) and a five-volume “Life
of Washington” (1855–59), constitute Irving’s historical
writings, the “Columbus” is justly the most esteemed.
It gained for its author the gold medal of the Royal Society
of Literature and the Oxford degree of D.C.L. And
not without reason, for it embodies, in a skilful narrative,
not merely the substance of Navarrete’s documents, which
Irving rendered with fidelity into excellent English, but
also the results of other studies which were, for him, exceptionally
thorough. Modern criticism has been very busy
with the life of Columbus since Irving wrote. The narratives
of Ferdinand Columbus and of Las Casas, upon which
he largely relied, have been somewhat discredited, and
the character of the discoverer himself has not altogether
escaped. Nor can it be denied that Irving’s lively fancy
led him to embellish his account of certain dramatic passages
in the life of Columbus with details which, while not
improbable in themselves, are unsupported by documentary
or other direct evidence. But the attempt of some
subsequent writers, and notably of Irving’s countryman
Winsor, to discredit him on that account has been carried
beyond reason. Irving’s narrative of facts in the “Columbus”
is conscientiously based upon primary sources;
and his judgments, though occasionally over-indulgent of
his hero, are in general sound. Columbus may not have
been in all respects such a man as Irving represents him,
but it is, at least, ennobling for the reader to believe that
he was such a man.
In writing his “Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada from
the MSS. of Fray Antonio Agapida,” Irving recurred to a
device which he had already employed with success. Fray
Antonio is no less mythical than the “small elderly gentleman,
dressed in an old black coat and cocked hat, by the
name of Knickerbocker,” who was supposed to have left
behind him, in his rooms at the Independent Columbian
Hotel, that “very curious kind of a written book in his
own handwriting” which, being presently printed “to pay
off the bill for his board and lodging,” brought to its real
author his first popularity. Nor can the “Granada” lay
much stronger claim to be considered authentic history
than Irving’s burlesque account of New York “from the
beginning of the world to the end of the Dutch dynasty.”
It is not, of course, predominantly humorous; but it is, in
reality, merely a historical romance, adorned with bits
from old chroniclers. In it Irving gave his imagination
loose rein; and for that reason it is the most readable of
his Spanish books.
His writings upon American history are less sympathetic.
The matter of “Captain Bonneville” was fine in its facts,
but it contained too little of the last to stimulate Irving’s romantic
imagination, and it remained cold and almost crude
under his shaping hand. In the founding of the settlement
by which a butcher’s boy from Waldorf hoped to seize
the mighty river of the West, there was also the stuff “of
Romance,” and Irving’s “Astoria, or Anecdotes of Enterprise
beyond the Rocky Mountains,” should transport the
reader to
the continuous woods
Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound
Save his own dashings.
In fact it continually brings his mind back to the ledgers
of a too prosperous counting-house. Into the “Life of
Washington” Irving was never able to put his heart. The
book was the task-work of his declining years. It was
undertaken at the suggestion of enterprising publishers, to
whom he listened the more readily because the number
of those dependent upon him had increased as the income
from his earlier works declined. Its composition
dragged from the outset. When at length the volumes
appeared, they achieved a pronounced succès d’estime; but
the work shows neither the firm grip of its subject nor the
sustained vigour of treatment which might rank it among
great biographies. It is rather a history of the United
States during the latter half of the eighteenth century.
There are entertaining anecdotes in it, vivid descriptions of
battles, and sturdy American feeling. But of Washington
himself there is only a pale shadow.
Irving’s position in American historiography is a peculiar
one. He was not primarily a historian. In a sense he
stands outside the main currents of our historical writing.
Nevertheless, he had a strong influence in determining
their course. His “Knickerbocker History of New York,”
essentially a work of humour, was taken seriously by
various of his fellow-townsmen, who were thus incited,
much to Irving’s amusement, to undertake extensive
studies in local history for the purpose of clearing their
Dutch progenitors from his ridicule. He was the earliest
among American men of letters to choose historical subjects
for the exercise of his craft, and thus became the
founder of the “picturesque school” of American historians,
in which Prescott, Motley, and Parkman are his followers.
And he was the first to feel the fascination which the power
of Spain, in the Old World and in the New, has not ceased
to exercise upon American writers of history ever since.
The New England School.—When the events of 1814,
which promised a prolonged peace to Europe, had put
an end likewise to the second war between Great Britain
and her former colonists, the people of the United States,
freed at last from their long subserviency to the inherited
animosities of Europe, turned with confident elation to
face the future problems of America. For the next half-century,
while the frontier was advancing from the Ohio
to the Mississippi, to the Missouri, to the “Great Stony
Mountains,” and beyond them to the shores of the Pacific,
the Western man was too much engrossed in the bustling
business of making an empire to find time for writing its
annals. It was, therefore, only in New England, in the
section of the country farthest removed from the course
of that breathless rush across the continent, that there
existed the leisure as well as the wealth necessary for the
study of historical books and documents. To wealth and
leisure we must add, moreover,—as important conditions
underlying the historical productiveness of New England—literary
and political traditions, the possession of documents
and other instruments of research, and, finally, the
general intellectual tone of the extreme Eastern States—that
part of the country most strongly affected by the
civilisation of Europe. As Tyler points out, the earliest
development of New England letters had taken place in
those fields of half-literary effort which seek to provide
the instruments or to record the acts of statesmen, in
oratory and in history. And when, at the close of the
Napoleonic wars, the intellectual influence of Europe upon
America began to revive, and those forces which were to
produce upon the Continent the Revolution of 1830 helped,
on this side of the Atlantic, to excite the democratic turmoil
of the Jacksonian era, it is not surprising that the
new literary strivings, which manifested themselves somewhat
widely in fiction and poetry, should take on in New
England the form of historical narrative. The manner of
this new historical movement was, in large measure, determined
by the influence of German scholarship. It was
from Göttingen that George Ticknor, afterward the historian
of Spanish literature, wrote to his father in 1815,
lamenting the “mortifying distance there is between an
European and an American scholar. We do not know,”
said he, “what a Greek scholar is; we do not even know the
process by which a man is to be made one.” And it was
in those bare halls of the old Georgia Augusta, at the feet
of Heeren and Eichhorn and Dissen and Blumenbach,
that other grateful New Englanders—among them George
Bancroft and Edward Everett in Ticknor’s time, and
Longfellow and Motley at a later day—learned something
of the spirit of Continental scholarship. In this spirit the
New England School of historians attempted, on the whole,
to work. They were somewhat swerved, no doubt, by
the esteem in which their countrymen still held the elaborate
formalism of such orators as Webster and Everett, and,
also, more to their advantage, by their own admiration
for the picturesqueness of Irving, whose example encouraged
them to treat by preference of foreign subjects.
Still they stood firmly upon their native soil. Born among
a people whose temperament, though shot through with
a strain of idealism and even dashed at times with a touch
of imagination, was still fundamentally sober, they were predisposed
to honest care in inquiry and, save when the temptations
of rhetoric seduced them, to accuracy of statement.
Thus even those historians of the New England School
who had not enjoyed the advantage of European study
preserved most of the traits of those who had. If Jared
Sparks, a home-bred scholar who successfully conducted
The North American Review in its earlier days (1817–18,
1823–30) and lived to become professor of history (1839–49)
and president (1849–53) of Harvard University, had better
understood the standards of Ranke and the “Monumenta
Germaniæ Historica,” he might, indeed, have allowed himself
less latitude than he actually took in editing the
“Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution”
(1829–30, 12 volumes), the “Works of Benjamin
Franklin” (1836–40, 10 volumes), and especially the “Life
and Writings of George Washington” (1834–37, 12 volumes).
But the extent of his fault was greatly exaggerated
by certain of his critics, and not even the most
rigorous training could have enhanced the diligence with
which he preserved these and other less important sources
of our Revolutionary history. Mention of Sparks naturally
suggests the name of Peter Force (1790–1868), another
diligent compiler of facts. Force’s “American Archives
... a Documentary History” etc. (1837–53, 9 volumes,
left incomplete) was published by Congress.
When we pass to the more illustrious writers of what
has been called the classical period of historical writing in
America, we discover two tolerably distinct tendencies.
The one tendency appears in those men who were led to
write by the spirit of the time and the place, and who wrote
of America out of an ardent interest and a profound belief
in the country and its political and social institutions.
Foremost among these men stands George Bancroft. The
other tendency appears in Prescott, Motley, and Parkman,
who, though trained in the same atmosphere, were first
men of letters and afterward Americans. They sought,
not national and political, but picturesque and dramatic
subjects, and these subjects lay, in large part, outside the
history of their own country.
George Bancroft.—Bancroft spent the greater part of
his long life (1800–91) upon his monumental history of
the United States, a work that has occupied a high position
among historical writings upon America. It was his
ambition, as he announces in the Preface to his first
volume (1834), to write “a history of the United States
from the discovery of the American continent to the present
time.” Although he anticipated years of work in the completion
of the task, he could not have foreseen either that
it was to consume more than half a century of his industrious
life, or that the history itself was to end near the
real beginning of the Republic. Bancroft was a writer
inspired by his theme and exalted by the conception of his
undertaking. Witness the opening sentences:
The United States of America constitute an essential portion of
a great political system, embracing all the civilised nations of the
earth. At a period when the force of moral opinion is rapidly increasing,
they have the precedence in the practice and the defence
of the equal rights of man. The sovereignty of the people is here
a conceded axiom, and the laws, established upon that basis, are
cherished with faithful patriotism. While the nations of Europe
aspire after change, our constitution engages the fond admiration
of the people, by which it has been established....
The rhetorical flavour of the passage is characteristic.
Critics have been inclined to regard the style of the “History”
as extravagant and perfervid. They have, perhaps,
tended to overlook the influence of the sincere enthusiasm
and robust patriotism of the early days of national organisation
and growth. The book was undoubtedly suited to
the spirit and the national ideals of the period. Note the
tenor of contemporary opinion. Bancroft’s friend, Edward
Everett, devoured the first volume as it fell from the
press and hastened to congratulate the author (October 5,
1834): “I think that you have written a work which will
last while the memory of America lasts; and which will
instantly take its place among the classics of our language....
I could almost envy you to have found so noble a
theme, while yet so young.” On the score of method, the
“History” was generously applauded for its “exceedingly
scrupulous care” by A. H. L. Heeren, the German historian
and Bancroft’s earlier teacher at Göttingen. It was inevitable,
however, that the patriotic fervour and sanguine
tone of the book should suggest to wise heads a danger and
a source of weakness. “Let me entreat you,” writes Gov.
John Davis, the author’s brother-in-law, “not to let the
partisan creep into the work. Do not imbue it with any
present feeling or sentiment of the moment which may
give impulse to your mind.... The historian is the
recorder of truth and not of his own abstract opinions.”
In still plainer speech did Thomas Carlyle complain that
Bancroft was too didactic, going “too much into the
origin of things generally known, into the praise of things
only partially praisable, only slightly important.” And at
a later time (1852) Henry Hallam wrote: “I do not go
along with all your strictures on English statesmen and
on England, either in substance, or, still more, in tone....
Faults there were, but I do not think that all were on
one side. At all events, a more moderate tone would
carry more weight. An historian has the high office of
holding the scales.” In the midst of public affairs and
political duties, the great labour of the “History” progressed.
A second volume appeared in 1837, and a third
in 1840. These volumes covered the colonial period down
to 1748. Their conspicuous success contributed to Bancroft’s
appointment, in 1846, as Minister to England; and
there, as subsequently in Germany, his official position,
added to his established reputation, opened to him unusual
stores of historical material. He writes from England to
Prescott, his “brother antiquary”: “I am getting superb
materials, and had as lief a hundred should treat the same
subject as not. If they do it with more heart than I, don’t
you see that as a good citizen of the Republic I must applaud
and rejoice in being outdone?” Under the circumstances,
the democratic humility of the man is perhaps
slightly overdone; although the unusual riches laid under
contribution might well have offered a temptation to pride,
for both public and private collections of great value were
placed absolutely at his disposal. An unrivalled collection
of historical manuscripts (now in the Lenox Library,
New York City) bears testimony to his thoroughness and
his wisdom in the use of extraordinary advantages.
But Bancroft, once established in London, soon found
his literary labours pushed into the background. He confesses
in 1849: “Here in London, to write is impossible....
Mr. Macaulay says, one man can do but one thing
well at a time.... I am of his opinion, now in my approaching
old age.” The eighteen years of private life at
home that followed the ministry to England (1846–49)
were much more productive. Between 1849 and 1867
six more volumes (iv. to ix.) of the “History” were brought
out, a volume of “Literary and Historical Miscellanies”
(1855), and the official eulogy pronounced upon Abraham
Lincoln in the House of Representatives (1866). A passage
from the “Miscellanies” on the conception of history
displays Bancroft’s style in his more oratorical vein:
But history, as she reclines in the lap of eternity, sees the mind of
humanity itself engaged in formative efforts, constructing sciences,
promulgating laws, organising commonwealths, and displaying its
energies in the visible movement of its intelligence. Of all pursuits
that require analysis, history, therefore, stands first. It is equal
to philosophy; for as certainly as the actual bodies forth the ideal,
so certainly does history contain philosophy. It is grander than
the natural sciences; for its study is man, the last work of creation,
and the most perfect in its relations with the Infinite.
It was with gratification that Bancroft accepted in
1867 and held until 1874 the ministerial post at Berlin.
The honour may have come as Bancroft’s reward for writing
President Johnson’s first annual message (1865). At
the close of the ministry appeared the tenth volume of
the History: “The American Revolution. Epoch Fourth
Continued. Peace between America and Great Britain,
1778–82” (1874). This at seventy-four years of age!
It was impossible, of course, that Bancroft should, at
his advanced age, carry his work, as originally planned,
through the nineteenth century. He determined, instead,
to write the history of the organisation of the Federal
Government. In 1882 came, accordingly, his “History
of the Formation of the Constitution of the United States
of America” (2 volumes). Thus, at eighty-two, he had
set forth in twelve generous volumes what may be called
an introduction to the history of the country. It is indeed
more than that, for, as the author himself somewhere
remarks, the history of the United States begins
with the united resistance of the colonies to Great Britain.
As an historical writer, Bancroft belongs to the period
of his first volumes and not to that of his last. His interpretation
of men and events rests upon his political
philosophy, and his political philosophy was a heritage of
the times of Andrew Jackson. To this philosophy he
was faithful. Ranke, the German historian, once said to
him, “Your history is the best book ever written from
the democratic point of view.” Bancroft was aware of
his democratic bias; but he would have denied with vehemence
that this bias infused a subjective taint into his
candour or laid a tinge of partiality upon his judgment.
The “History” has been called an “epic of liberty.” It
is philosophical, at times rhapsodical—not scientific—history.
It treats an heroic theme in an heroic manner.
Recent criticism of his method and political theories
tends to obscure the brilliancy of his services to American
historiography. Over and above the serious spirit in
which he set about his task, the exacting search among
contemporary sources, the unceasing devotion to truth,
and an unsparing and prodigious industry, the broad and
national character of the whole achievement calls for
grateful recognition. Bancroft raised the history of
America above the plane of provincialism and local interests,
and set forth both the total march of internal events
incident to national development and the manifold relations
of the United States to the history of Europe. This
wide perspective of events and causes would hardly have
been possible except for years of residence, both as student
and diplomat, in the capitals of Germany and Great Britain.
In the matter of method also, Bancroft’s services to historical
research must not be overlooked. He presented
to Americans an object-lesson in the collection, criticism,
and use of scattered materials. His distinction, then, as
the founder of a new American school rests upon a double
basis: his wide conception of a national history and his
improved methodology in research. He reaped abundant
success, both in the popular enthusiasm with which his
books were hailed and in the extraordinary personal
honours bestowed upon him until the time of his death.
And it is no disparagement of his services to say that his
great popularity rests rather upon a genius for catching up
and reflecting the youthful spirit of genuine and uncritical
Americanism than upon a capacity for setting down without
passion and for interpreting without prejudice the human
events of an inspiring epoch.
Contemporaries of Bancroft.—The writers of American
history who came nearest to rivalling Bancroft in his own
day were Richard Hildreth (1807–65), a vigorous New
England leader writer and anti-slavery pamphleteer, and
George Tucker (1775–1861), a Southern lawyer, who served
for twenty years as professor of philosophy and political
economy in the University of Virginia. Hildreth’s “History
of the United States” (1849–52, 6 volumes) comes
down to 1821, Tucker’s (1856–58, 4 volumes) to 1841.
Both did careful work, though both have been criticised
for their partisan leanings. Each gives a relatively large
space to the Colonial and Revolutionary history of his
own section. In the constitutional period, Hildreth commonly
accepts the view of events most favourable to the
Federalist party, whereas Tucker inclines to side even
more strongly with the Democrats, of whose leader,
Jefferson, he had published, in 1837, a sympathetic life.
In connection with this branch of the New England School
should be mentioned John Gorham Palfrey’s illustrious
“History of New England” (1858–75, 4 volumes; a supplemental
volume, edited by F. W. Palfrey, 1890). Palfrey
was a graduate of Harvard and for several years
the editor of The North American Review. His work is
commonly regarded as the best of the colonial histories of
New England; it occupies besides a secure place in American
literature.
William Hickling Prescott.—Eminent among the men
of the “classical” period who wrote picturesque and
romantic histories, stands Prescott (1796–1859), author
of “The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella
the Catholic” (1838), “The History of the Conquest of
Mexico with a Preliminary View of the Ancient Mexican
Civilization and the Life of the Conqueror Hernando
Cortés” (1843), “The History of the Conquest of Peru,
with a Preliminary View of the Civilization of the Incas”
(1847), “The History of the Reign of Philip the Second,
King of Spain” (1855–58), and other historical and literary
works. “The Reign of Philip” was not finished, as Prescott
suffered, during its preparation (1858), a shock of
apoplexy, and died the following year. After working
for ten years—so quietly that but few of his friends knew
of the undertaking—upon his “Ferdinand and Isabella,”
Prescott, upon its publication, found himself suddenly
famous. “Love of the author gave the first impulse,”
declared the author’s friend, Gardiner; “the extraordinary
merits of the work did all the rest.” The American demand
for the “History” was unparalleled, and all Europe sent
liberal and judicious praise. Translations were called for
in Russia, France, Spain, Italy, and Germany.
A bodily affliction, the partial loss of sight in early
manhood, has lent a peculiar personal interest to Prescott’s
heroic performances. He has been called, with but little
exaggeration, “the blind historian.” During his junior
year at Harvard, an accident destroyed the sight of one
eye, and not long afterward the uninjured eye became
permanently affected. A career in the practice of law
had to be abandoned. Much of his subsequent life was
spent in the dark. A great part of his historical labours
had to be done with the aid of readers and secretaries.
The task of mastering a language (he began Spanish at
twenty-eight) and of collecting materials from libraries and
archives would have seemed to be impossible. Nevertheless
it was accomplished. The histories bear but little
evidence of the writer’s physical infirmities. They are
renowned for their accuracy and thoroughness. Recent
ethnological discovery and advancement in historical
method have, it is true, necessitated revision in certain
statements of fact (e. g., regarding the social and private
life of the Aztecs); but that is an accident of time. His
thoroughness is attested by Jared Sparks, who knew of
no historian, “in any age or language, whose researches
into the materials with which he was to work have been
so extensive, thorough, and profound as those of Mr.
Prescott.” But the wide popularity of Prescott’s historical
writings rests first upon their literary merits. He wrote
in a clear, graceful, and dignified style upon epochs and
personages that were surrounded by charm and romance.
His power for pictorial representation was great. The
admirable qualities of his books strongly suggest the author
himself. He was cheerful, amiable, spontaneous, warm-hearted,
and much beloved. At forty-five, Sumner said
of him that he possessed the “freedom and warmth and
frolic of a boy.” At the same time, Prescott’s capacity
for self-criticism and for rigorous discipline was unusual.
Without these qualities, he would hardly have succeeded
in the face of painful disabilities. For many years it was
his custom to analyse his powers and weaknesses, and to
formulate exacting rules for his own guidance. At twenty-eight
he wrote in his journal: “To the end of my life I trust
I shall be more avaricious of time and never put up with
a smaller average than seven hours’ intellectual occupation
per diem.” About this time he wrote down a list of “rules
for composition.” Among them are to be found these:
“Rely upon myself for estimation and criticism of my composition;”
“write what I think without affectation upon
subjects I have examined;” “never introduce what is
irrelevant or superfluous or unconnected for the sake of
crowding in more facts.” He was early attracted toward
historical writing, although he devoted much time to biography
and critical reviews. The interest in Spanish history
seems to have come from Ticknor’s lectures on Spanish
literature, which Prescott heard at Harvard. The Ferdinand
and Isabella theme first came to him in 1826.
“The age of Ferdinand,” he remarks at this time, “is most
important as containing the germs of the modern system
of European politics.... It is in every respect an interesting
and momentous period of history; the materials
ample, authentic,—I will chew upon this matter, and
decide this week.” The decision came, however, only after
two years of further consideration. With Irving, Ticknor,
and Motley, Prescott stands as one of the men who gave to
the English-speaking world a clear and brilliant account of
the history and literature of Spain. It is, however, a fact
of still greater moment to American letters that Prescott
should have embodied in permanent form a series of histories
of great men and great events that is the common
possession of the Old World and the New, and that marks
the advancement of American historical writing beyond the
limits of national feeling and national interest.
John Lothrop Motley.—Bancroft, Prescott, Motley
(1814–77), and Parkman were all born and reared in the
vicinity of Boston, and all were graduated from Harvard
University. Motley and Bancroft continued their studies
at Göttingen and Berlin. While in Germany, Motley enjoyed
the friendship of Prince Bismarck, who was his
fellow-student. “We lived,” said Bismarck, “in the closest
intimacy, sharing meals and outdoor exercise.” In 1841
Motley was appointed secretary to the American Legation
at St. Petersburg; but he soon relinquished the post and
returned to America. Ten years later he took up his
residence in Europe, where he remained for half a decade
pursuing historical studies. At the end of this time
(1856) appeared “The Rise of the Dutch Republic: A
History.” In 1860 came the first two volumes of “The
History of the United Netherlands,” and in 1868 the
last two. The continuation of the Dutch history came
out in biographical form (1874) as “The Life and Death
of John of Barneveld, Advocate of Holland; with a View of
the Primary Causes and Movements of the Thirty Years’
War.” Meanwhile, Motley had been appointed to the
American Ministry to Austria (1861) and to England
(1869). Both appointments ended unhappily. An interesting
circumstance connects Motley’s career with
Prescott’s and, indirectly, with Washington Irving’s. With
noble generosity, Irving had abandoned his well-formed
plan of writing a Conquest of Mexico when he learned,
through a common friend, of Prescott’s intentions in the
same field. This act involved real sacrifice. “I had,”
Irving afterward confesses, “no other subject at hand to
supply its place. I was dismounted from my cheval de
bataille, and have never been completely mounted since.”
Prescott was presently to realise the cost of Irving’s surrender.
For Motley, in turn, essayed to enter the field
made illustrious by the author of “Ferdinand and Isabella.”
In ignorance of Prescott’s plans for “The History
of Philip,” Motley began his study of related subjects. The
news then came to him as a blow. “For I had not,”
Motley says, “first made up my mind to write a history,
and then cast about to take up a subject. My subject had
taken me up, drawn me on, and absorbed me into itself.”
Prescott listened to the younger man’s proposal to retire,
“with frank, ready, and liberal sympathy,” and insisted
that Motley should proceed. More than this, he made
handsome allusion, in the Preface to his “Philip,” to the
forthcoming work on the revolt of the Netherlands. Motley
wrote with zeal and enthusiasm. He loved liberty. The
story of a people fighting for freedom fired his imagination.
His ardour led him, naturally, toward the advocacy of
favourite characters and parties; and the greater moderation
of the Dutch historians themselves tends to support
the charge of partiality. But Motley’s partiality was
not mere partisanship. It rested upon a nice discrimination
of the good and the bad, of the noble and the mean.
His Dutch history is classic. It is renowned for its scholarly
qualities and for its vivid colouring. Froude, without
previous knowledge of the writer or of his work, placed
“The Rise of the Dutch Republic” among “the finest
histories in this or in any language.” While, by the more
exacting standards of current schools, it is criticised for
its lack of philosophical insight, it is still justly regarded as
a faithful and striking picture of an heroic people.
Francis Parkman.—The New England School had
told the story of the Spaniard in America and in the
Netherlands. It was further to enrich its native literature
by another brilliant history of the struggle for conquest
of a great nation in foreign lands. Parkman (1823–93)
is the historian of the rise and decline of France’s power
in North America. Like Motley, he was captivated by
an impressive and dramatic cycle of events, and—again
like Motley—he possessed breadth of vision and tenacity
of purpose sufficient to his task. Parkman had a passion
for the wilderness;—a passion which he fed in youth and
early manhood by excursions, large and small, to the
woods, the prairies, and the mountains. In his twenties,
he appears, a picturesque figure in the great West, living
and hunting with Indians, eating pemmican, and playing
host at a feast of dog-meat and tea. In spite of outdoor
life and travel, Parkman was seldom well. A serious
affection of the eyes, and nervous troubles which may
have emanated from it, kept him, from his undergraduate
days, either incapacitated or on the border-line of invalidism.
He was tortured till his death by pain, lameness,
insomnia, and at times almost complete blindness.
His suffering and infirmities recall Prescott. It is not easy
to decide which of the two men struggled more heroically
against overwhelming odds. As early as his sophomore
year at Harvard, Parkman planned to write the history
of the “Old French War” for the conquest of Canada;
“for here, as it seems to me,”—so he writes—“the forest
drama was more stirring and the forest stage more thronged
with appropriate actors than in any other passage of our
history.” “The Oregon Trail”—an account of his adventures
on the great plains and beyond—began to appear
in The Knickerbocker Magazine in 1847, and “The Conspiracy
of Pontiac” came out in 1851. Later, the plan
widened to include the whole course of the conflict in
America between France and England. The result was a
series of books unexcelled in western historiography:
“The Pioneers of France in the New World” (1865), “The
Jesuits in North America” (1867), “La Salle and the Discovery
of the Great West” (1869), “The Old Régime”
(1874), “Count Frontenac and New France under Louis
XIV” (1877), “Montcalm and Wolfe” (1884), and, finally,
“A Half-Century of Conflict” (1892). The series received
the general title, “France and England in North America.”
In his “Montcalm and Wolfe,” Parkman reached the height
of his fame. Wretched health turned the author’s attention
to horticultural diversions. In 1871 he was
appointed professor of horticulture in Harvard University;
in 1866 he published his famous “Book of Roses.” His
intimate knowledge of the scenes and peoples of whom he
wrote and an engaging and finished manner impart to his
historical books an unusual vivacity and charm. His
work, while it is, as he intended, “a history of the American
forest,” is also the history of two powerful and opposing
systems of civilisation—“feudal, militant, and Catholic
France in conflict with democratic, industrial, and Protestant
England.” Less impulsive than Motley and less
serene than Prescott, Parkman possessed at once the ardour
and the restraint necessary to the vivid and impartial
rendering of a glowing theme vastly important in the
history of the New World. Himself cast in an heroic
mould and exhibiting a fine type of the Puritan spirit,
he was at home among chivalrous men and bold and
impressive deeds. Jameson, writing of him shortly before
his work was finished (see “The History of Historical
Writing in America,” 1891), declares him to be, “next
after one or two who survived from the preceding period,
the most conspicuous figure in the American historiography
of the last twenty-five years, the only historian who can
fairly be called classical.”
Recent Historical Writings.—Since the Civil War
America has been prolific in historical records. General
histories and local histories abound; histories of administrations,
of periods, of popular movements, indefatigable
and scholarly researches in politics, war, finance, and social
and economic institutions. The literary value of these
records is not, however, to be inconsiderately judged
from their bulk. Times and standards in American
historiography have changed. Among the multitude of
authors one must not look for many names which may
be written down with those of Prescott, Motley, and Parkman.
Not that the modern period is wanting in good
work or able writers. These are to be found in abundance.
But most of the work belongs to science and not to letters;
and besides, eminence is not fostered by the catholic distribution
of talent and training. Jameson picks up Amiel’s
blunt opinion that “the era of mediocrity in all things is
commencing” and applies it to American historians. At
the same time, this wise critic inclines to the belief that
the vast improvement in technical process and workmanship
realised within the present generation is the natural
means to the development of a more substantial and more
profound school of historians than the West has thus far
created. The term “mediocrity” does not, indeed, do
full justice to the period and the authors in question,
and we must seek other grounds of excuse for the brevity
of our review of them. These grounds are found, first,
in the indirect importance to literature of the great mass
of recent work, and, secondly, in the impossibility of setting
the achievements of contemporary workers in just
perspective.
The writers, great and little, of the periods already surveyed
were, in large measure, self-trained. Until the last
two or three decades, colleges and universities offered
little incentive to methodical work upon historical subjects.
Even Harvard, from whose doors went one after another
the men who were to make the New England School
famous, taught history only incidentally. Now, an academic
school has arisen. Young men and women are
trained in undergraduate and graduate studies by teachers
who are themselves historical writers and investigators.
Students are taught the discriminating use of historical
instruments, and sound methods of reconstruction and
interpretation. The change has been wrought under the
unequal pressure of external influence, emphasis laid upon
scientific method, a quickened consciousness of the importance
and dignity of American history, and, finally,
the example of those graceful and inspiring writers who
gave to Western historiography an honourable place in the
world’s literature. The academic school owes its existence
to no single founder. It is, by its nature, a school
of coöperative endeavour,—coöperation, first, between
teacher and pupil, and coöperation, later, in the conjoint
and organised labour of productive hands and brains.
Among its early advocates and promoters were Charles
Kendall Adams, university professor and president, teacher
and historian, who adapted the German seminary method
to the American university; Henry Adams, professor at
Harvard University and author of a brilliant history
in nine volumes (1889–91) of the country under Jefferson
and Madison (1801–17); Justin Winsor, librarian, bibliographer,
and editor of the useful and scholarly “Narrative
and Critical History of America” (1884–89), and
Herbert Baxter Adams, of Johns Hopkins, historian and
instructor of historical students. The coöperative labours
of the period have borne abundant fruit. Besides Winsor’s
volumes should be mentioned “The American Nation: a
History from Original Sources by Associated Scholars,”
a gigantic work in twenty-seven volumes just finished
(1904–8) under the editorship of Albert Bushnell Hart.
The authorship is divided among a number of competent
historical writers. The collection lays claim to being “the
first comprehensive history of the United States, now completed,
which covers the whole period” from the discovery
of America to the present. Similar undertakings are,
however, in progress, and a number of coöperative works
of smaller scope are already in print. Other notable histories
covering comparatively long periods of time are
Edward Channing’s “A History of the United States,” to
be completed in eight volumes; a series of nine volumes
relating to preconstitutional times written by John Fiske,
after the manner of Parkman, and including “The Critical
Period of American History” (1888), “The Beginnings of
New England” (1889), “The American Revolution” (1891),
“The Discovery of America” (1892), etc.; James Schouler’s
“History of the United States under the Constitution”
(1880–99); “A Popular History of the United States”
(1876–81), by William Cullen Bryant and Sydney H.
Gay; “A History of the People of the United States from
the Revolution to the Civil War” (6 of the 7 volumes published,
1883–1906), by John B. McMaster; “The Constitutional
and Political History of the United States,”
(1877–92), by Hermann E. von Holst, and “A History of
the American People” (1902), by President Woodrow
Wilson of Princeton University. Channing’s attempt to
cover, by the labours of a single competent scholar, the
entire history of the country is comparable to that of
George Bancroft. John Fiske wrote readable and popular
narratives of historical events. He did much, both by
books and lectures, to arouse general interest in matters
of American life past and present. McMaster’s substantial
and illuminating history is social rather than political.
He seeks to portray the whole life of the people. Von
Holst’s aim was, on the other hand, political. The author
was a German-American. He held, among academic posts,
professorships at Freiburg and the University of Chicago.
His critical review, often disparaging to democratic institutions,
may be taken as a counterblast to the ebullient
patriotism of earlier, native writers. As the work of a
foreign observer of American affairs, it suggests the reflections
of de Tocqueville, of James Bryce, and of Goldwin
Smith. President Wilson’s five volumes contain a wise
and judicial commentary, in the form of a long and attractive
essay, on the main course of events since the days of
discovery. For the multitude of American historical
writers who have treated single epochs, space permits
mention of only one or two names. James Ford Rhodes’
“History of the United States from the Compromise of
1850” (7 volumes, 1902–6), the work of “nineteen years’
almost exclusive devotion,” is commonly regarded as the
most thorough and best balanced study of the Civil War,
its causes and its consequences. Henry Adams has,
in his “History of the United States,” etc., investigated
with competence and penetration the administrations of
Jefferson and Madison.
This meagre list of the more important productions
of the academic school clearly reveals the attraction of
the American theme for the present American historian.
Capable and impressive studies of foreign subjects there
have been, it is true;—David Jayne Hill’s “History of
Diplomacy in the International Development of Europe”
and Henry C. Lea’s work on the medieval church are conspicuous
instances;—but the great mass of research and
writing has been gathered at home. Governmental affairs
and political events loom large. Less interest has been taken
in the subtler phases of national character and individual
motive; although Fiske and McMaster and Woodrow Wilson
and certain of the best biographers (whose important service
to literature deserves separate consideration) represent
a current tendency toward reflective and philosophical
writing of a literary quality, which augurs well for the
future of American historiography.
The Beginnings.—American fiction was one of the
latest types of native literature to appear. The hard
conditions of life imposed on the colonists by the necessity
of clearing the forests and keeping the Indians in
check were evidently unfavourable to sustained efforts in
imaginative writing. And there were other reasons for
the late growth of the novel. Except as they had a religious
turn or an evident moral, stories were likely to be
looked upon by the Puritans as a species of useless frivolity,
which could have no part in the saving of souls.3 Again,
in the struggle with the mother country the robust and
scholarly intellects of America had other matters to think
of besides the elements of pure literature. The rights of
man, the basis of resistance to tyranny, the principles of
statecraft, the elements of democracy, were among the
interests that absorbed the Washingtons, the Otises, and
the Hamiltons of the latter part of the eighteenth century.
But perhaps the most important reason for the tardy
appearance of American fiction was the lack of tradition
and legend. Of this Hawthorne complained as late as
1859, in the preface to “The Marble Faun”:
No author, without a trial, can conceive of the difficulty of
writing a romance about a country where there is no shadow, no
antiquity, no mystery, no picturesque and gloomy wrong, nor anything
but a commonplace prosperity, in broad and simple daylight,
as is happily the case with my dear native land. It will be very
long, I trust, before romance-writers may find congenial and easily
handled themes, either in the annals of our stalwart republic, or in
any characteristic and probable events of our individual lives.
Romance and poetry, ivy, lichens, and wall-flowers need ruin to
make them grow.
Thus it was that for a long time Defoe and Fielding, Smollett
and Sterne found no imitators in America. The American
novel-reader, for the most part, was content with British
provender, and satisfied his appetite for the marvellous
with Walpole’s “Castle of Otranto,” Lewis’ “Monk,” and
Mrs. Radcliffe’s “Romance of the Forest” and “The Mysteries
of Udolpho.” Toward the end of the eighteenth century
several writers essayed the novel, but not with lasting
success. In “The Foresters” (published serially in The
Columbian Magazine, and in book form in 1792), Jeremy
Belknap (1774–98) produced an ingenious though trivial
allegorical tale of the colonisation of America and the rebellion
of the colonies. In this, Peter Bullfrog stood for New
York, Ethan Greenwood for Vermont, Walter Pipeweed for
Virginia, Charles Indigo for South Carolina, and so on.
Ann Eliza Bleecker (1752–83) was the author of “The
History of Maria Kittle,” which in the form of a letter sets
forth some harrowing experiences among the savages
during the French and Indian War; and of “The Story of
Henry and Anne,” a tale, “founded on fact,” of the misfortunes
of some German peasants who finally settled in
America; both of these were published posthumously in her
“Works” in 1793. Mrs. Susanna Haswell Rowson’s
“Charlotte Temple” (1790), a story of love, betrayal, and
desertion, despite its absurdly stilted phrases and its long-drawn
melancholy, has ever been popular with a certain
class of readers; the editor of the latest edition (1905),
Mr. Francis W. Halsey, has examined 104 editions, and his
list is incomplete. An avowed antidote to “Charlotte
Temple,” Mrs. Tabitha G. Tenney’s satirical “Female
Quixotism” (1808), suggests to Professor Trent “an expurgated
Smollett”; it is now unknown. Mrs. Hannah
W. Foster, the wife of a clergyman in Massachusetts, wrote
“The Coquette, or The History of Eliza Wharton, a Novel
Founded on Fact” (1797), a story of desertion, showing the
marked influence of Richardson. In the same year, appeared
“The Algerine Captive,” by Royall Tyler, who was
one of the first to turn to American life as a fruitful subject
for fiction. His story is a broadly humorous picaresque
tale, of the Smollett type, which introduces rather too
many wearisome details of customs in Algiers; a fault for
which his generally spirited style and his powerful description
of the horrors of a slave-ship partially atone.
Hugh Henry Brackenridge (1748–1816), the classmate
at Princeton of James Madison and Philip Freneau,
wrote “Modern Chivalry, or The Adventures of Captain
John Farrago and Teague O’Regan, His Servant” (Philadelphia
and Pittsburgh, published in four parts, 1792–7),
a modern “Don Quixote” narrating his experiences in the
Whisky Insurrection of 1794. Though widely read in its
day, especially by artisans and farmers, its literary worth
was not sufficient to preserve it. “The Gamesters,” published
in 1805 by Mrs. Catharine Warren, was likewise
popular in its day; it attempted “to blend instruction
with amusement.”
Charles Brockden Brown.—The history of the novel
in America, therefore, properly begins with Charles
Brockden Brown (1771–1810), who has been called “the
first professional man of letters and important creative
writer of the English-speaking portion of the New World.”
He was born in Philadelphia of a good Quaker family;
just forty years earlier, his uncle, Charles Brockden, had
drawn up the constitution of the old Philadelphia Library
Company. From early childhood, books were familiar to
the youthful Brown, who became an omnivorous reader,
and at Robert Proud’s school undermined his health by
excessive devotion to reading and study, so that he was
always an invalid. He took up the study of law, but soon
abandoned it, despite the protest of his family, for the
career of “book-making.” After some writing of verse
and of essays, he published in 1798 a successful novel,
“Wieland, or The Transformation,” and at once followed
this with five others, “Ormond, or The Secret Witness,”
(1799), “Arthur Mervyn, or Memoirs of the Year 1793”
(1799–1800), in which he gave an account of the ravages
of the yellow fever in Philadelphia, “Edgar Huntly, or
The Adventures of a Sleep-Walker,” “Clara Howard”
(1801), and “Jane Talbot” (published in England in
1804). From 1798 till 1801, Brown lived amid congenial
surroundings in New York; in the former year he nearly
died of yellow fever, to which his friend Dr. Elihu H. Smith
succumbed. Returning to Philadelphia in 1801, he spent
the remainder of his life there; marrying happily in 1804,
editing The Literary Magazine, and writing political
pamphlets and works on geography and Roman history,
until consumption brought his busy and useful life to a
premature end.
Brown’s novels mostly belong with the “tales of terror”
so popular in his day. A radical thinker and analyst, he
rejects supernatural agencies in his explanation of events,
and relies wholly on natural causes; but this does not
diminish the number of marvels in his tales. The plots
of one or two of his stories will give an idea of the character
of all. The scene of “Wieland” is laid on the banks
of the Schuylkill, in Pennsylvania. The Wielands are a
cultivated German family. Wieland’s father has died
mysteriously by what is explained as self- or spontaneous
combustion, and the son has inherited a melancholy and
superstitious mind, which develops into fanaticism. The
family hear strange voices giving commands or warnings
or telling of events beyond the reach of human knowledge.
A mysterious man, Carwin, appears, with such powers of
pleasing that he becomes very intimate with the family.
At length Wieland, at the command of what he takes to
be a heavenly voice, sacrifices to God his wife and children.
Confined in a maniac’s dungeon, he bears his fate with a
sense of moral exaltation. Having escaped, he attempts
to offer up also his sister, the narrator of the story, when
he learns that he has been deceived by the ventriloquism
of Carwin, whom malice has thus led to trick the family.
In a frenzy, Wieland kills himself; Carwin disappears; and
the story ends with the marriage of the sister and Pleyel,
a brother of Wieland’s late wife and now a widower. Less
powerful than “Wieland,” but still superior to Brown’s
other works, is “Ormond.” An artist, Stephen Dudley,
engaging in pharmacy to support his family, is brought to
beggary through the villainy of his partner. His daughter
Constantia bears up bravely through severe trials. Just
when life appears brighter, Ormond comes upon the scene,
a mysteriously powerful man, much like Falkland in
Godwin’s “Caleb Williams,” of great wealth, strong mind,
and base morals; he deserts Helena Cleves, who commits
suicide, and pursues Constantia. Stephen Dudley is
murdered by an unknown hand. Having a legacy from
Helena, Constantia is about to sail for Europe with her
friend (who narrates the story) when Ormond, finding her
invincible, assaults her in a lonely house and meets death
by her hand, after he has himself slain Craig, now revealed
as the assassin of Dudley at Ormond’s instigation. Constantia
afterward lives quietly with her friend in Europe.
Brown’s plots are usually disfigured by irrelevant incidents
and superfluous characters; he frequently changed his
plans and even his heroines, and, writing with great rapidity,
often with a greedy printer at his elbow, he utterly failed
to weld together the elements of his stories and often to
give them proper motivation. His characters are drawn
in bold and clear outlines, but are frequently uninteresting—being
too sentimental or inconsistent, or given to long
and prosy soliloquies. It cannot be affirmed that Brown
understood human nature well. Of style he had none;
his pages are innocent of epigram or humorous turn; he
employs very little dialogue and makes but scanty and
awkward use of dialect. Yet in certain passages, in describing
great crises, he exhibits considerable vividness
and power. Brown’s chief merit consists in the sense of
reality with which he contrives to invest his scenes of gloom
and terror.
The power possessed by this rare genius, says Mr. James H.
Morse,4 of throwing gloomy characteristics into his theme, was
equalled by no other American writer. In the matter of morbid
analysis, Poe, in comparison with Brown, was superficial, Hawthorne
was cheerful, and the modern school of French writers are
feeble. With Poe, we can see that the gloom came by an effort
of a spurred imagination; with Hawthorne, that it was the work
of an artistic sense; but with Brown, it seems to have been constitutional—the
gift at once of temperament and circumstances.
Brown was an admirer of William Godwin and obviously
imitated not only his method of developing characters but
also his style. It may be added that Brown in turn found
many readers in England, where several of his novels were
republished and where, as we have seen, “Jane Talbot”
was first published. Professor Dowden quotes Peacock
as saying that of all the works with which Shelley was
familiar, those which took the deepest root in his mind
were Brown’s four novels, Schiller’s “Robbers,” and
Goethe’s “Faust.” Brown’s influence upon subsequent
American writers, moreover, was not inconsiderable, and
his place in our literature, if not high, is at least honourable.
John Davis, an Englishman about whom little is known,
wrote several novels of American life, most of which were
published here, and became somewhat popular. He lived
in the United States from 1798 till 1802, and travelled over
a large part of the country. His first novel, “The Original
Letters of Ferdinand and Elizabeth” (1798), was a conventional
story of seduction and suicide. It was followed
by “The Farmer of New Jersey” (1800), “The First Settlers
of Virginia” (1805), a pioneer historical novel, crude and
ill managed, “Walter Kennedy, an American Tale”
(London, 1805), and “The Post Captain” (1813). The
most that can be said of these stories is that their author was
shrewd and observant, and had some journalistic skill.
Mrs. Sally Keating Wood (1760–1855), wife of General
Abiel Wood, of Maine, may be mentioned as the author
of “Julia and the Illuminated Baron” (1800), which recalls
the mysterious evil power and atheistic tendencies
attributed to the Bavarian order of the Illuminati, established
in 1775, which, though suppressed in 1780 by the
Elector, was supposed to have secretly persisted and spread
over Europe. Mrs. Wood wrote also “Dorval, or The
Speculator” (1801), “Amelia, or The Influence of Virtue”
(1802), “Ferdinand and Elmira, a Russian Story” (1804),
and “Tales of the Night” (1827), besides several novels
that were never published. Mrs. Wood placed many of
her scenes in Europe.
Isaac Mitchell.—At Poughkeepsie, New York, in 1811,
was published in two volumes “The Asylum, or Alonzo
and Melissa, an American Tale, Founded on Fact.” Of
the author of this Gothic romance, Isaac Mitchell,5 little
is known save that he was successively the editor of The
Farmer’s Journal, The Political Barometer, and The Republican
Crisis, all of Albany, New York, and that after
losing his position through political changes, he moved to
Poughkeepsie. The story was later abridged and compressed
into one volume by Daniel Jackson, Jr. (Mitchell’s
name disappearing from the title-page), and in this form
was long popular throughout America; Mr. Reed thinks
that for nearly a quarter of a century a new edition appeared
practically every year. The narrative is full of
elaborate descriptions of nature.
Washington Irving.—In general Irving will be discussed
rather with the essayists than with the novelists; but
his stories and tales must be considered here. They have
contributed largely if not chiefly to his enduring reputation.
His first book, “Knickerbocker’s History of New York”
(1809), in which he works out a grotesquely humorous
drama of the Dutch fathers wrestling with the weighty
problems of statecraft, is of course in the main fictitious.
No doubt it is at times pretentious or overdone, and the
humour is occasionally a little too broad for the decorum
of to-day; but the irrepressible spirit of comedy, the delightfully
burlesqued descriptions of stolid Dutch character,
the vivid though leisurely narrative, give it a supreme place
in our humorous literature. “Rip Van Winkle” and
“The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” are doubtless the most
read parts of “The Sketch Book” and have long since
become classics; no more faithful narratives of quaint old
Dutch life have ever been written. In them the boisterous
exuberance of the “History” gives way to a more graceful,
refined, and mature style, which invests the homely simplicity
and contentment of colonial Dutch life with a
kind of idyllic charm. Only a little less successful were
Irving’s other stories of early New Amsterdam life—notably
“The Money-Diggers” in “Tales of a Traveller,”
and “Dolph Heyliger” in “Bracebridge Hall.” Inferior
because more conventional and less spontaneous are the
first three parts of the “Tales”; yet even here, in dealing
with the sentimental and the terrible, Irving compares
favourably with other story-tellers of his day. In the
stories scattered through “The Alhambra,” Irving showed
clearly that he had found another source of inspiration
in the romantic legends of Spain and the Moors—legends
full of Oriental mystery and of the splendid glories of
old Spain, so charmingly and truthfully set forth that the
Spaniards themselves spoke of him as “the poet Irving.”
And “poet” he is in the large sense that he has created
imperishable scenes and characters in that realm of romance
in which we delight to wander, far from the prosaic world
and the madding crowd.
James Kirke Paulding.—A contrast with Irving in more
than one respect is afforded by James K. Paulding (1778–1860),
the friend and collaborator of Washington Irving
and the brother-in-law of William Irving. The author
of “The Sketch Book” gave his whole life to the profession
of letters; for Paulding, on the other hand, literary composition
was only an avocation. The genial humour of
Irving, too, differs from the satirical and ironical vein too
often indulged in by his friend. Born in Dutchess County,
New York, Paulding went to New York City while a young
man and became associated with the Irvings in writing
Salmagundi, the success of which gave Paulding confidence
in himself and led him to further literary efforts. “The
Diverting History of John Bull and Brother Jonathan”
(1812), a loosely constructed and amateurish satire in the
style of Arbuthnot, became very popular both in America
and in England. “Koningsmarke, the Long Finne” (1823),
now remembered only for the familiar assertion that “Peter
Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,” was a burlesque
on Cooper’s “Pioneers.” Paulding’s most successful work,
which deserves to live, was “The Dutchman’s Fireside”
(1831), in which are charming descriptions of quaint Dutch
customs and personages, of the picturesque scenery of the
Hudson, and of the vast expanse of wilderness that stretched
to the westward. In general, however, Paulding’s work
was characterised by a too harsh and obstreperous Americanism,
an immoderate and amusing hostility to foreigners,
and a carelessness of workmanship which prevented it
from enduring long.
Samuel Woodworth.—As a curiosity must here be mentioned
the long-forgotten “Champions of Freedom” (1816)
of Samuel Woodworth (1785–1842). It was his one essay
in fiction; a history of the War of 1812 in the style of a
romance. It must be described as a chaotic miscellany,
blending wild romance with commonplace realism, and
conducting the reader from ballroom to battlefield and
back again with the least possible suspicion of method or
motive.
John Neal.—Born in Portland, Maine, and beginning
life as a shop-boy in Boston, John Neal (1793–1876) became
in turn a wholesale dry-goods merchant, a lawyer,
and a voluminous critic, poet, and novelist. He boasted
that in thirty-six years he had written enough altogether
to fill a hundred octavo volumes; yet to-day he is little
more than a name. His first novel, “Keep Cool,” which
he afterward spoke of with justice as a “paltry, contemptible
affair,” appeared in 1817. His best novels are “Seventy-Six”
(1823), a lively story of the Revolution, “Rachel
Dyer” (1828), a story of the Salem Witchcraft, and “The
Down-Easters” (1833), an extravagant tale which deals
with the ways of steamboat passengers, and into which
he manages to introduce plenty of horrors. Neal has
been well styled “the universal Yankee, whittling his way
through creation, with a half-genius for everything, a
robust genius for nothing.” He is said to have been
the originator of the woman’s suffrage movement, the
first person to establish a gymnasium in America, and the
first to encourage Edgar A. Poe.6
James Fenimore Cooper.—The first American to win
universal recognition as a powerful novelist was James
Fenimore Cooper. Born at Burlington, New Jersey, on
September 15, 1789, of English Quaker and Swedish
parentage, he was taken, when a year old, to the Central
New York wilderness, where his father, having become
the owner of large tracts of land, had laid out the village
of Cooperstown. Here, on the shores of the beautiful
Otsego Lake, in a motley frontier settlement, the boy
Cooper passed his earliest years. In due time entering
the family of an Albany clergyman as a private pupil,
Cooper proceeded in 1803 to Yale College, where he became
a member of the class of 1806. An escapade in
his third year led to his dismissal; after which he served
a marine apprenticeship of a year and then entered the
navy, serving as midshipman for nearly four years. In 1811,
he married Susan A. De Lancey, a lady of Huguenot
and Tory family, and a sister of Bishop De Lancey of
Western New York; and at her request resigned his commission,
to become an amateur farmer, successively at
Mamaroneck, on Long Island Sound, at Cooperstown,
and at Scarsdale, Westchester County, all in New York
State. Thus he arrived at the age of thirty without
having even dreamed of a career of authorship. One
day, reading a novel descriptive of English society, he
impatiently threw down the book and exclaimed that he
could write a better story himself. Challenged by his wife
to do so, he wrote and published “Precaution” (1820),
a dull and conventional story of English social life, purporting
to be the work of an Englishman. Although
the novel was not very successful, his friends urged Cooper
to try again, and this time to write of scenes of which he
had some personal knowledge. The publication of “The
Spy, a Tale of the Neutral Ground,” in December, 1821,
marks the beginning of a long series of successes. “The
Spy” met with a large sale both in America and in England.
It was soon translated into most of the cultivated
languages of Europe; and its popularity has never greatly
waned. It is a story of the American Revolution, in
which the patriotic hero, Harvey Birch, signally aids the
American cause and exhibits a rare combination of the
spy and the gentleman.
During the twenty-nine years remaining to Cooper, he
produced thirty-two further volumes, chiefly romances.
Of these, many are now rarely read, but the following
have retained their popularity for successive generations:
“The Spy,” already referred to.
“The Leatherstocking Tales,” comprising (in the chronological
order not of their production, but of the narrative):
“The Deerslayer, or The First War Path,” 1841.
“The Last of the Mohicans, a Narrative of 1757,” 1826.
“The Pathfinder, or The Inland Sea,” 1840.
“The Pioneers,” 1823, and “The Prairie,” 1827; and ten
volumes of the “Sea Tales”:
“The Pilot,” 1823.
“The Red Rover,” 1828.
“The Two Admirals,” 1842.
“Homeward Bound, or The Chase,” 1838.
“The Water-Witch, or The Skimmer of the Seas,” 1830.
“The Wing-and-Wing, or Le Feu-Follet,” 1842.
“Afloat and Ashore,” 1844.
“Miles Wallingford,” 1844, published in England as
“Lucy Hardinge.” A sequel to “Afloat and Ashore.”
“Jack Tier, or The Florida Reefs,” 1848.
“The Sea Lions, or The Lost Sealers,” 1849.
The popularity which Cooper achieved, and which
reached its height with the publication of “The Last of
the Mohicans,” was most remarkable; no other American
has ever enjoyed anything like it. Not only were his
stories read in well-nigh every household, but they were
promptly dramatised, and furnished subjects for numerous
paintings and poetical effusions. In Europe, his fame
fairly rivalled that of Scott. In 1833, Samuel F. B. Morse,
the inventor of the electric telegraph, wrote: “In every
city of Europe that I visited the works of Cooper were
conspicuously placed in the windows of every bookshop.
They are published, as soon as he produces them, in thirty-four
different places in Europe. They have been seen by
American travellers in the languages of Turkey and Persia,
in Constantinople, in Egypt, at Jerusalem, at Ispahan.”
In 1822 Cooper removed with his family to New York,
in order to be near his publisher and to put his daughters
into school. There he founded a club, commonly known
as the Bread and Cheese, to which many of the noted
men of the time belonged. The years 1826–33 he spent
in Europe, being for a part of this time United States
consul at Lyons. On his return, he lived a few winters
in New York; he then took up his permanent residence
at Otsego Hall, Cooperstown, where he died in September,
1851.
In his later years, Cooper presented the singular spectacle
of a popular novelist who was the most cordially hated
man of his time. The fact is significant and helps to account
for the failure of many of Cooper’s later stories.
An ardent lover of his country and its republican institutions,
he boldly rebuked the ignorance and supercilious
condescension of European critics; he wrote “The Bravo”
(1831), “The Heidenmauer” (1832), and “The Headsman”
(1833), for the avowed purpose of assailing monarchical
and praising democratic institutions, and kept this purpose
in mind much too constantly to produce artistic work. On
his return to America, contrasting the restless exertion and
bustle, the material progress which obscured higher ideals
than money-making, with the leisure and dignified culture
of European lands, he did not hesitate to speak plainly of the
defects in the American character. This naturally brought
him much abuse from the press; and an unfortunate dispute
with the citizens of Cooperstown over the ownership
of Three-Mile Point on Otsego Lake, though the right was
wholly on his side, only made him more intensely disliked.
In the early ’40’s, certain issues arose in New York State
between the tenants of the old Patroons who held their
large estates under original grants, and their landlords, the
tenants attempting to secure under State legislation a
title in fee to their rented lands. Cooper, whose family
interests were themselves likely to be affected by these
claims, threw himself with full force and bitterness into
the contest. In addition to a number of magazine articles
and speeches, he devoted three volumes to the presentation
of the claims of the landlords, volumes which are now read
but little, excepting by special students of the subject.
They are entitled respectively:
“Satanstoe, or The Littlepage Manuscripts,” 1845;
“The Chainbearer,” 1846; and
“The Redskins, or Indian and Injin,” 1846.
“The Ways of the Hour” (1850) was also a novel with
a purpose, which overweighted its interest as a story; the
purpose was the reform of court procedure in the State of
New York.
In “Homeward Bound” and its sequel, “Home as
Found” (1838), the latter being one of his worst stories,
Cooper lashed the petty vices of his countrymen and sought
to show them what ought to be. As he might have expected,
he only confirmed the public in its hatred of him,
while he materially impaired his reputation as a story-teller.
Had he been more tactful, philosophical, and far-seeing,
he would have saved himself years of stormy conflict.
In Lakewood Cemetery at Cooperstown, on the hill
overlooking Otsego Lake, is a majestic monument to
Fenimore Cooper, twenty-five feet in height, and surmounted
by a statue of the hunter Leatherstocking and
his dog. As enduring as bronze is this character in our
American fiction; the hero that will live longest of Cooper’s
creations. In him Lowell found “the protagonist of our
New World epic, a figure as poetic as that of Achilles, as
ideally representative as that of Don Quixote, as romantic
in his relation to our homespun and plebeian myths as
Arthur in his to the mailed and plumed cycle of chivalry.”
The series in which he appears, “The Deerslayer,” “The
Pathfinder,” “The Last of the Mohicans,” “The Pioneers,”
and “The Prairie,” the group which Cooper himself
preferred to his other stories, is now (excepting always
“The Spy”) more read than all Cooper’s other works put
together. Drawn at first from life, Natty Bumppo becomes
an idealised character, the perfect type of the bold frontiersman
and scout, who read nature as an open book, and
who was most at home when farthest from the haunts of
the civilised world. Worthy to stand by his side is the
noble Indian Chingachgook, “grave, silent, acute, self-contained,”
as Mr. James H. Morse says of him; “sufficiently
lofty-minded to take in the greatness of the Indian’s
past, and sufficiently farsighted to see the hopelessness of
his future,—with nobility of soul enough to grasp the white
man’s virtues, and with inherited wildness enough to keep
him true to the instincts of his own race.” Famous among
Cooper’s sailor folk is Long Tom Coffin, of “The Pilot”—type
of the rough but honest seaman, superstitious like all
seamen but devoutly religious, faithful to the last and capable
of the most heroic self-sacrifice. Other characters
scarcely less well drawn, if less famous, move through
Cooper’s pages—rough, uncouth waifs and strays of border
life, grizzled old sea-dogs, soldiers’ and sailors’ wives and
sweethearts, such as the wife of Ishmael Bush, Hetty and
Judith Hutter, and Dew-of-June.
That he exhibited marked imperfections in style and
technique no one will deny. He wrote too rapidly to attain
to anything like elegance of style, and he is not infrequently
obscure. He continually repeats words and expressions,
to the great annoyance of the reader. The same carelessness
that characterises his style is occasionally seen in the
construction of his stories. Scenes are repeated. Mistakes
due to forgetfulness occur, as in “Mercedes of Castile,”
where the heroine presents her lover, on his outward voyage,
with a cross of sapphire stones, emblems, she tells him, of
fidelity, which later appear as turquoise stones. Peculiarities
of habit or manner are referred to so continually that
the reader becomes weary and disgusted. Numerous characters
are, it must be admitted, conventional in the extreme.
Cooper failed signally in his fine women. They are not
creatures of flesh and blood; they are purely imaginary
creatures in petticoats, mere simulacra, invariably paragons
of sweetness, discretion, and artlessness, ever saying
and doing the correct thing until the reader longs for a little
less of the angel and a good deal more of Mother Eve.
Finally, his introductions are exceedingly prolix and tedious,
though in this respect he sinned in company with Scott and
many another of the time.
But we must not let this catalogue of Cooper’s defects
obscure his virtues. In spite of occasional carelessness of
construction, all his best stories are highly interesting; he
spins a good yarn. Never straining after effects, never
loading his sentences with ornaments, when once started
he moves straight ahead to his goal; one stirring scene
follows another; there is wonderful fertility of resource,
set forth with the confidence that begets faith. His was
a large genius, which, though unsuccessful at miniature
work, could manage a large canvas marvellously well. It
must not be forgotten that Cooper was a pioneer; that he
was the creator of our American romance of forest and
prairie and sea. His descriptions of nature are done with
the hand of a master. “If Cooper,” remarked Balzac,
“had succeeded in the painting of character to the same
extent that he did in the painting of the phenomena of
nature, he would have uttered the last word of our art.”
Moreover, Cooper’s stories are honest and wholesome like
himself; they breathe the same genuineness, the same
sincerity and hatred of shams and meanness; they uniformly
hold up noble and worthy ideals; their tone is
always as healthful and invigorating as a breath of ozone.
As Professor Trent remarks, he “lifted the story of adventure
into the realms of poetry”; and as the poet of the
primeval American forest he has never been superseded.
Professor Lounsbury, whose Life of Cooper, in the
“American Men of Letters” Series, remains the authoritative
biography, sums up the man and his work as
follows:
America has had among her representatives of the irritable race
of writers many who have shown far more ability to get on pleasantly
with their fellows than Cooper. She has had several gifted
with higher spiritual insight than he, with broader and juster
views of life, with finer ideals of literary art, and, above all, with
far greater delicacy of taste. But she counts on the scanty roll of
her men of letters the name of no one who acted from purer patriotism
or loftier principle. She finds among them all no manlier
nature, and no more heroic soul.
Mr. W. C. Brownell prepared for the Iroquois Edition of
Cooper’s Works a critical introduction which may safely
be accepted as the most just, most delicate, and most
comprehensive analysis of the man and of his work. Mr.
Brownell writes:
There is a quality in Cooper’s romance, however, that gives it
as romance an almost unique distinction. I mean its solid and
substantial alliance with reality. It is thoroughly romantic, and
yet—very likely owing to his imaginative deficiency, if anything
can be so owing—it produces, for romance, an almost unequalled
illusion of life itself.... Cooper’s ... work is in no sense a jardin
des plantes; it is like the woods and sea that mainly form its
subject and substance. Only critical myopia can be blind to the
magnificent forest, with its pioneer clearings, its fringe of “settlements,”
its wood-embosomed lakes, its neighbouring prairie on
the one side, and on the other the distant ocean with the cities of
its farther shore—the splendid panorama of man, of nature, and
of human life unrolled for us by this large intelligence and noble
imagination, this manly and patriotic American representative in
the literary parliament of the world.
The Elder Dana.—Richard Henry Dana (1787–1879),
lawyer, politician, poet, critic, and novelist, was one of the
group of Boston writers that laid the foundations of New
England literature. His tales, “Tom Thornton” and
“Paul Felton,” are romantic stories of villainy and insanity,
and give evidence of the influence of Brockden
Brown. The narrative has at times an impetuous sweep
that hurries the reader along in spite of himself; and the
characterisation is wrought with powerful strokes. A collective
edition of his “Poems and Prose Writings” appeared
in 1833.
Miss Sedgwick and Mrs. Child.—Catherine Maria
Sedgwick (1789–1867) was the daughter of Judge Theodore
Sedgwick and was born at Stockbridge, Massachusetts,
where she was principal of a young ladies’ school for half
a century. Her duties as a teacher did not prevent her
from becoming a voluminous novelist. Her first story was
“A New England Tale” (1822), which at once found
favour. “Redwood” (1824) was translated into three or
four Continental languages; on the title-page of the French
translation, the novel was ascribed to Fenimore Cooper.
Other novels which achieved great popularity for their
faithful portraiture of early and contemporary New England
life were “Hope Leslie, or Early Times in Massachusetts”
(1827), “Clarence, a Tale of Our Own Times” (1830),
“The Linwoods, or Sixty Years Since in America” (1835),
and “Married or Single” (1857). While Miss Sedgwick
never rises to the height of absorbing interest, she is rarely
dull, and some of her women, if we allow for the difference
in time, do not suffer in comparison with those of Mrs.
Stowe and Mrs. Wilkins Freeman. Her descriptions of
simple country life were superior to any that had hitherto
appeared. Mrs. Child, born Lydia Maria Francis (1802–1880),
who likewise spent her life in Massachusetts, began
writing early, producing her first novel, “Hobomok,” in
1824 and her second, “The Rebels,” a year later. The
former deals with Salem life in colonial times; the latter
is a story of the Revolution, describing the sack of Governor
Hutchinson’s house and the Boston massacre. Although
they give true pictures of early Puritan customs, they are
not powerful as fiction. In 1836 she essayed a more
ambitious flight in “Philothea,” a romance of the days of
Pericles, which, in spite of its stilted rhetoric, reveals some
imaginative power and deserves mention as a pioneer attempt
to interpret Greek life to America.
Timothy Flint.—A voluminous writer and in his day
a well-known figure was Timothy Flint (1780–1840), a
native of Reading, Massachusetts, and a graduate of
Harvard in the class of 1800. Becoming a Congregational
minister, in 1815, in search for health, he crossed the
Alleghany Mountains with his family, and after travelling
in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, became a missionary, first
at St. Charles, Missouri, and then in Arkansas. The
success of his “Recollections of the Last Ten Years” (1826)
led him to publish a novel, “Francis Berrian, or The
Mexican Patriot” (1826), dealing with adventures with the
Comanche Indians, and with the Mexican struggle of 1821,
which resulted in the fall of Iturbide. The story was
crude and improbable, but some of its descriptions found
favour. “Arthur Clenning,” his second novel, published in
1828, includes a shipwreck in the Southern Ocean, after
which the hero and heroine arrive in New Holland and
later settle in Illinois. He wrote some other novels, but
none has survived. For a time (1833), Flint edited The
Knickerbocker; and in 1835 he contributed some “Sketches
of the Literature of the United States” to the London
Athenæum.
William Austin (1788–1841) a lawyer of Charlestown,
Massachusetts, deserves to be noticed for the remarkable
story of “Peter Rugg, the Missing Man,” which he wrote
for The New England Galaxy (1827–8; reprinted in “The
Boston Book,” 1841, and in other books and papers).
The theme is the same as that of “The Wandering Jew.”
While “originating in the inventive genius of its author,”
as Joseph Buckingham says of it, it doubtless owed something
also to German romance.
Nathaniel Hawthorne.—The greatest genius among
American writers of romance, by many held to be the
supreme literary artist of America, was Nathaniel Hawthorne.
He was peculiarly a product of New England and
frankly admitted that New England was quite as large a
lump of earth as his heart could take in. His ancestor,
William Hathorne, came to the New World in 1630, in the
ship with John Winthrop and Thomas Dudley, and became
a leader in the colony. Hathorne’s son John was one of
the judges in the witchcraft trials at Salem in 1691. The
grandfather and father of Nathaniel Hawthorne were both
sea-captains. The novelist was born at Salem on July 4,
1804. Four years later, his father, never apparently a
robust man, died at Surinam, and the widowed mother
began to live in a deep seclusion which could not fail to have
its effect upon the quick sensibilities of her son. In 1818,
the family removed to Raymond, on the shore of Sebago
Lake, in Maine, where his grandfather Manning owned large
tracts of land. Hawthorne’s boyhood environment, therefore,
was not widely different from that of Fenimore Cooper.
But he was more of a reader than Cooper. As a boy,
he became familiar with Shakespeare, Milton, Bunyan,
Clarendon, Froissart, Rousseau, and Godwin. Entering
Bowdoin College, he was graduated in 1825 in the class
with Longfellow. While he did not distinguish himself in
his studies, he became a respectable Latin and English
scholar; and he devoted much time to reading in the little
library of the Athenæan Society. At graduation, he ranked
eighteenth in a class of thirty-eight. Meanwhile his family
had returned to Salem, and thither Hawthorne now went,
to begin a period of literary apprenticeship. It was seemingly
a bold undertaking to attempt to live by his pen;
however, he seems to have drifted into the attempt through
aversion to a more active life. In 1828, he published anonymously
a novel called “Fanshawe,” dealing with some of
his college experiences and recalling vaguely the methods of
Scott. Some characters, it must be said, are vigorously
conceived, and here and there the volume gave promise
of the author’s future skill; but there is about the whole
a suggestion of unreality, not to say crudeness. The
book found, as it deserved, an indifferent public, and
Hawthorne subsequently recalled as many copies as he
could procure and burned them. For several years, he
continued to live in seclusion, contributing stories and
sketches to various annuals and periodicals. For the stories
he got $35 each. In March, 1837, having been encouraged
by his friend Horatio Bridge, he published the first volume
to appear with his name, “Twice-Told Tales.” They
were eighteen in number, being only half of the stories he
is known to have printed up to this time. The “Tales”
gave Hawthorne a considerable reputation; Longfellow
praised it in The North American Review, then influential
in literary affairs. Again helped by his friends, in January,
1839, Hawthorne assumed the position of weigher and
gauger in the Boston Custom-House. At first, the novelty
of contact with the practical world interested him; but he
soon found that his work, always monotonous, left him no
time or strength for writing, and he was not sorry to lose
his post when the Whigs came into power in 1841. For a
few months, he tried life at Brook Farm, thinking that in
this new community he should find a suitable way of combining
manual and intellectual labour; but the work was
too hard, and he had too little opportunity for writing.
Accordingly in 1842 he left the Farm, married Miss Sophia
A. Peabody, to whom he had been engaged for four years,
and settled at the Old Manse, an idyllic retreat at Concord,
Massachusetts. Meanwhile, he had published (1841) two
volumes of historical tales for young people, “Grandfather’s
Chair” and “Famous Old People”; and to these he now
added a third series, “The Liberty Tree,” as well as a second
series of “Twice-Told Tales” and a volume of “Biographical
Stories for Children” (1842). Of these, none except the
“Tales” rises much above the level of respectable writing
to sell. In the next four years, Hawthorne wrote for
periodicals some eighteen more tales, which, together with
a number of earlier uncollected stories, he republished in
1846 as “Mosses from an Old Manse.” Hawthorne now
returned to his native Salem as surveyor of customs
(1846–9), and proved an able administrator of the office.
Another period of literary barrenness ensued, but in 1847
he resumed his writing and produced a few tales. The
idea of a longer romance had come to him, and after his
dismissal from office in 1849 he found the leisure necessary
for writing “The Scarlet Letter.” Once more, then,
he exchanged the world of affairs for that realm of the
imagination where he was so much more at home. Working
resolutely amid sickness and poverty, he at length
completed the splendid romance, the publication of which
distinguishes the year 1850 in American letters as Tennyson’s
“In Memoriam” and Wordsworth’s “Prelude” do in
English poetry. Hawthorne had now entered upon a
period of great productivity. In the next two years he
published “The House of the Seven Gables” (1851), “A
Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys” (1851), “The Snow
Image and Other Tales” (1851), “Tanglewood Tales,”
(1852), “The Blithedale Romance” (1852), a tale based on
his Brook Farm life, and a campaign “Life of Franklin
Pierce,” his college friend, now a candidate for the Presidency.
Promptly after his election, President Pierce
made Hawthorne consul at Liverpool, an office which he
held from July, 1853, until September, 1857. Though rich
in experience and in fruitful observation, his life in England
was outwardly quiet and uneventful. The years 1857–9
the Hawthornes spent in Italy, where they mingled somewhat
more with the world than had been their wont. The
fruit of the Italian life was “The Marble Faun” (1860),
written in Italy and at Redcar, on the shore of the North
Sea, and published in England as “Transformation.”
Returning to America in 1860, Hawthorne passed the next
four years at the Wayside, Concord. In 1863 he contributed
“Our Old Home” to The Atlantic Monthly and began “The
Dolliver Romance,” which he was destined not to finish.
He died suddenly on May 18, 1864, at Plymouth, N. H.,
while on a journey to the New Hampshire lakes in search
of health.
His literary remains must be at least mentioned. In
1868 appeared “Passages from American Note-Books”;
in 1870, “Passages from English Note-Books”; and in
1871, “Passages from French and Italian Note-Books.”
These volumes throw much light on Hawthorne’s favourite
haunts and wandering propensities, as well as his eagerness
for minute observation. “Septimius Felton, or, The
Elixir of Life” (1871) was to be a story, placed in Revolutionary
times, of a man who sought earthly immortality.
The theme was a powerful one; but Hawthorne’s strength
was evidently exhausted, and the story must be pronounced
a failure. The last works to appear were “The
Dolliver Romance” (1876) and “Doctor Grimshaw’s
Secret,” which are fragmentary and ineffective studies of
the same theme as “Septimius Felton.” Their failure, in
all probability, was due not only to the waning of Hawthorne’s
powers but also to the difficulties attending the
theme itself.
Hawthorne was one of the shyest of men. Kenyon, in
“The Marble Faun,” says: “Between man and man there
is always an insuperable gulf”; such a gulf at any rate
separated Kenyon’s creator from the rest of mankind.
Always fond of solitude, he lived in a world of his own,
apart from humankind; longing at times for more familiar
converse with men, but never quite successful in establishing
cordial relations (outside of his own family) with any
but a few friends. Possessed of an exquisitely sensitive
nature, he made no effort to conceal the pleasure which
honest praise afforded him; and he was easily rebuffed
by the coolness of his public. Perhaps the bane of his life
was self-distrust. Each of his books when first written
seemed to him well-nigh worthless. James T. Fields has
told of the difficulty with which he extracted from Hawthorne
the first manuscript of “The Scarlet Letter.” “Thus
it is with winged horses,” says Hawthorne in “The Chimæra,”
“and with such wild and solitary creatures. If you
can catch and overcome them, it is the surest way to win
their love.” Such was the devotion with which Hawthorne
repaid those who had “captured” him that their
confident encouragement greatly strengthened and inspired
him. As might be supposed, however, with the world at
large he was lacking in sympathy. His point of view
was fixed; he could not see the world with the eyes of
another. This helps to account for the effect of harshness
and asperity which his chapter on “The Custom House”
in “The Scarlet Letter” had upon the people of Salem whom
he there described; and for the similar effect of the descriptions
of English life in “Our Old Home” upon the English
people in general. As Professor Woodberry remarks, too,
he had “the critical spirit which is a New England trait,
and with this went its natural attendant, the habit of
speaking his mind.” He had, moreover, deeply rooted
prejudices and a natural hatred of shams. He disliked literary
friendships. While in England, for example, he
remained a stranger to the brilliant literary set in London
where he might have been warmly welcomed. He saw
Tennyson once in Manchester, but made no effort to meet
the poet. Another of his aversions concerned the manifestations
of spiritualism—rappings, tipping of tables,
spirit writing, and the like; he was a good hater of shams
in general.
To his family, Hawthorne was always deeply devoted.
When his mother died, although there had always been
“a sort of coldness of intercourse” between them, he
spoke of the time as the darkest hour he had ever lived
through. His wife worshipped him, and the attitude of
his children is sufficiently indicated by the words of his
son Julian: “In my thought of him he has a quality not
to be described; that is associated with the early impressions
which make the name of home beautiful; with a
child’s delight in the glory of nature; with a boy’s aspirations
towards a pure and generous career; with intimate
conceptions of truth, bravery, and simplicity.”
So much for the man; what now, shall be said of the
artist? In the first place, as he was the peculiar product
of New England Puritanism, so his genius was in a sense
confined to setting forth New England and the problems
of New England Calvinism. Even when he lays the scene
of his tale in Rome, there is the same interest in the
working out of the consequences of sin, and part of the
characters are Americans living in the Eternal City.
Hawthorne still stands alone in having given supreme literary
expression to that earnest and virile if narrow and at
times misguided life of early New England; its pathos, its
tragedy, its legacy to modern times. Then it must be
observed that in doing this he places himself in the ranks
of the great masters in deducing from the individual the
general experience; from the particular the universal
moral life. In his earlier years he delighted in allegory,
of which the “Tales” and the “Mosses” are full; and he
was always fond of symbolism. Lady Eleanore’s mantle,
for example, is a symbol of pride; the scarlet letter is a
symbol of sin; no less is Donatello a symbol, a type of
universal innocence tasting of the knowledge of good and
evil—the missing link, as it were, in the evolution of moral
instincts. Hawthorne constantly describes the unseen in
terms of the seen, the spiritual world by means of the
every day, material world.
The “Tales” have been most elaborately characterised
by Professor Woodberry in his admirable biography.7
Many of them are intrinsically slight—descriptions of the
common events of daily life, always somewhat moralised,
and to an increasing extent as the author grew older. In
some the fancy has free rein, as in “The Seven Vagabonds”
and “The Great Stone Face.” In “Tales of the
Province House” and many others Hawthorne skilfully
wove threads of colonial history with the rich woof of his
imagination to produce a splendid romantic pageant.
Sometimes he treats of individuals, as in “David Swan”
and “Rappaccini’s Daughter”; often he studies the group,
or the crowd, as in the “The Celestial Railroad,” “The
Christmas Banquet,” “The Procession of Life.” In all,
he studies the moral life and tries to understand the significance
of some phase of universal human experience.
“The Scarlet Letter” has been called by Mr. James
“the most distinctive piece of prose fiction that was to
spring from American soil.” It is a grim tragedy, in which
the consequences of sin are depicted with a simplicity, a
steady movement, and a relentlessness characteristic of the
tragedies of Euripides. Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale
living agonised lives which moved steadily towards
the day of expiatory shame; Roger Chilingworth, outwardly
the wise, benevolent physician, inwardly the ghastly
demon gloating over his victim—these figures indeed move
us to pity and fear, and give us a new sense of the depth
and mystery of our human life, which no man liveth to
himself alone, but which must be interpreted as the expression
and result of racial upstriving through myriads of
years. “The Scarlet Letter” is indeed, as Mr. W. C. Brownell
says,8 the Puritan “Faust”; and many will doubtless
agree with him in calling it “our one prose masterpiece.”
In “The House of the Seven Gables,” Hawthorne returns
to the present and studies the workings of heredity.
Less gloomy than the earlier story, this one is still sombre
and in part removed from the world of objective reality.
Real enough, to be sure, are the commonplace features
of daily life at the Seven Gables, the pinched features and
heroic heart of Hepzibah, and the homely philosophising
of Uncle Venner; but Jaffrey and Clifford Pyncheon are
at best shadowy and unreal. Holgrave, too, belongs to a
type which, common enough in the days of Brook Farm
Fourierism, has now well-nigh passed away. Phœbe
Pyncheon is one of the most delicate and exquisite of all
Hawthorne’s portraits; as Dr. Holmes wrote to the author,
“the flavour of the sweet-fern and the bayberry are not
truer to the soil than the native sweetness of our little
Phœbe.” It is interesting to note that when the book appeared
Hawthorne wrote to his friend Horatio Bridge:
“The House of the Seven Gables,” in my opinion, is better than
“The Scarlet Letter”; but I should not wonder if I had refined
upon the principal character a little too much for popular appreciation,
nor if the romance of the book should be somewhat at odds
with the humble and familiar scenery in which I invest it. But
I feel that portions of it are as good as anything I can hope to
write.
More able critics than one have pronounced “The
Blithedale Romance” the most perfect of Hawthorne’s
stories. Although he wrote to George William Curtis that
the story had essentially nothing to do with Brook Farm,
it is certain that the community formed more than a background
for the story, and furnished some of its incidents
and the traits of some of the characters. Thus the romance
may be said to approach more closely to real life than
any other of the greater works. The characters are drawn
with great distinctness of outline: Hollingsworth the reformer,
earnest, stern, engrossed in his reform undertaking
to the point of selfishness; Miles Coverdale, the dreamer,
who bears the ear-marks of his artist creator, always a
spectator of, rather than a participant in, the life at
Blithedale; Priscilla, the timid maid who seemed to have
dropped down from the clouds and sought protection in
this retreat; Zenobia with her splendid beauty, her refinement,
her ardour, her despair when disillusionment comes—all
these are highly individualised. It has been complained,
and with justice, that neither Zenobia nor Priscilla is a
typical New England girl; but something may perhaps be
conceded to the romantic atmosphere of the tale; the
author did not promise a transcript from prosaic real life.
The plot halts now and then, and does not move steadily
and convincingly to its climax. The inserted story of “The
Veiled Lady” does not materially further the plot. Yet as
a whole the romance is a searching and remarkable presentment
of Hawthorne’s views of reform. He was never
a reformer; he distrusted the excess of zeal, the narrowness
of vision too often characteristic of the more ardent
reformers of his day; and with great skill he has here set
forth the illusory hopes, the discouragement, the sense of
impotence and defeat that must attend the outcome of
radical schemes for human improvement which are not
grounded on sound and wide knowledge of man’s nature.
Probably the most popular, as it was the most ambitious,
of all the romances, has been “The Marble Faun.”
With consummate skill the author maintains the mystery
necessary for the romantic atmosphere and at the same
time draws in clear outlines the four characters in the
little drama—this miniature world-tragedy, this “story of
the fall of man repeated,” as Miriam says. As Mr. Lathrop
has pointed out, moreover, with the main theme, itself of
abiding interest, is joined a study of the psychology of
Beatrice Cenci’s story; but, without stopping where Shelley
stopped, Hawthorne went on to show how Miriam and
Donatello might “work out their purification.” Thus while
the romance may, as one critic avers, “begin in mystery
and end in mist,” the end is nevertheless full of hope.
Hawthorne has never been, and doubtless never will
be, a popular novelist. His stories are for the few, the
thoughtful readers who are willing to read old favourites
over and over again. But there will always be such persons,
haply in increasing numbers; and for them Hawthorne will
continue to be a unique personality, the “high untrammelled
thinker,” the interpreter of spiritual mysteries.
Charles Sealsfield.—Although not mentioned by most
historians of American literature, the Austrian novelist
Carl Postl (“Charles Sealsfield,” 1793–1864) deserves to
be recalled here from the fact that his works deal chiefly
with American life and in their English form enjoyed considerable
popularity in America. Born in Poppitz, Moravia,
he became at first a priest of the order of the Kreuzherren
von Pöltenberg; but, having broken with Catholic dogma,
he fled from the cloister and arrived in New York in 1823 as
Charles Sealsfield. He remained in America until 1832,
travelling extensively and making close studies of life and
character. His first novel, “Tokeah, or The White Rose;
an Indian Tale” (Philadelphia, 1828), was republished at
Zurich in 1833 as “Der Legitime und die Republikaner”;
while never a popular story in America, it seems, as Professor
Faust has discovered,9 to have furnished Mrs. Jackson
with some hints for her “Ramona” and Charles F. Hoffman
with a motif for his “Vigil of Faith.” After his return
to Europe Sealsfield published, among other things, “Transatlantische
Reiseskizzen” (1833), translated as “Life in the
New World, or Sketches of American Society” (1844),
which originally appeared in The New York Mirror in
1827–8 and which furnished Simms with some scenes for
“Guy Rivers”; “Nathan der Squatter Regulator” (1837),
translated as “Life in Texas” (1845); “Der Virey und die
Aristokraten, oder Mexiko im Jahre 1812” (1834); “Morton,
oder Die grosse Tour” (1835); “Das Cajütenbuch, oder
Nationale Charakteristiken” (1841), translated as “The
Cabin Book” (1844), which furnished Mayne Reid with
the last ten chapters of his “Wild Life” without change;
and “Süden und Norden” (1842–3), translated as “North
and South, or Scenes and Adventures in Mexico” (1844).
In his vigorous delineations of the crude American life of
the twenties and thirties, Sealsfield exhibited great enthusiasm,
a wide range of observation which overlooked nothing
and which measured impartially, and a comprehension of
the true inwardness of our young institutions such as no
native American of his day possessed. If his exaggerating
brush failed of the touch of an artist, he created some characters,
such as Morton and Nathan Strong, who deserve
immortality as typical Americans, and described with
inimitable fidelity “the dauntless squatter and sturdy
pioneer, the Southern planter and patriarchal slave-holder,
the grasping millionaire and his emissaries, the
New York dandy and the society belle, the taciturn
Yankee sea-captain and the hot-blooded Kentuckian, the
utilitarian alcalde and the reformed desperado.”
William Leggett (1802–39), after spending some time
at Georgetown College, accompanied his family in 1819
to make a settlement on the prairies of Illinois. He spent
the years 1822–26 as a midshipman in the navy. His
experiences of pioneer and sea life were graphically portrayed
in “The Rifle,” published in 1828 in The Atlantic
Souvenir, and in “Tales by a Country Schoolmaster” (1835).
For the remainder of his life he was engaged in journalism,
from 1829 till 1836 as one of the editors of The Evening Post.
Southern Novelists.—Thus far we have considered no
native Southern writer of fiction. The novel ripened late
in the South; indeed, only one writer of fiction of the first
rank was produced by the South before the Civil War.
Yet in the varied and picturesque life of the aristocratic
planters, the frontiersmen, the “poor whites,” and the
negroes there were rich materials for the artist and the
story-teller, who in due time began to avail themselves of
their opportunity. “The Valley of the Shenandoah” (1824)
by George Tucker (1775–1861), though reprinted in England
and translated into German, possesses slight worth,
and little more can be said of his “Voyage to the Moon”
(1827), a satirical romance; yet these works gave promise
of better things from the South. William A. Carruthers
(1806–72), a voluminous contributor to magazines, wrote
two novels, “The Cavaliers of Virginia” (1832) and “The
Knights of the Horseshoe” (1845), which, in spite of serious
defects, deal with colonial days in Virginia in a genial,
vigorous, and unhackneyed manner.
“Davy” Crockett (1786–1836), crude, unlettered hunter,
backwoodsman, and Congressman, published, in his
“Autobiography” (1834), a collection of thrilling narratives
of adventure remarkable for directness, vividness,
and virility. The “Georgia Scenes, Characters, and Incidents”
(1835) of Augustus B. Longstreet (1790–1870), who
was for many years a college president, revealed the curious
traits of the poor whites or “Crackers” of Georgia.
“The Partisan Leader” (1836) by Nathaniel Beverley Tucker
(1784–1851) dealt with the encroachments of the Federal
Government upon the rights of the States, and prophesied
with startling and accurate logic the terrible disruption
which occurred a quarter of a century later. If artistically
imperfect, it is a stirring tale, intense in its action, and of
heroic strain. But it can scarcely be said that any of
these works now survive. They are mainly important as
illustrating the evolution of Southern fiction. With Kennedy
and Simms, however, the South takes a high place
in the fiction of America.
John Pendleton Kennedy.—For John Pendleton Kennedy
(1795–1870), literature was never more than a pastime, a
fact much to be regretted. Kennedy belonged to a prominent
and wealthy family. He was born in Baltimore,
was graduated from Baltimore College in 1812, and studied
law. Entering political life, he employed his pen effectively
in the defence of his political principles, but occasionally
amused himself with ventures in lighter forms of literature.
His first work of importance, “Swallow Barn” (1832), was
distinctly declared not to be a novel; and indeed the
action is of slight importance. His main purpose in writing
it was to give, in connection with a slender plot, a
picture of manners and customs in Virginia toward the
end of the eighteenth century. Here is no subtle characterisation;
the persons of the narrative are drawn broadly
and naturally and the story moves easily, if a little slowly,
to its end. The local scenery and institutions are delineated
with the utmost fidelity. Frank Meriwether, the prosperous
country gentleman and magistrate, has been called a
Virginia Sir Roger de Coverley; and there is throughout
observed the same quiet good humour, the same cheerful
atmosphere, the same genial optimism that one finds in
the pages of Addison. “Horse-Shoe Robinson, a Tale of
the Tory Ascendency” (1835), was a story of early Tory
days in South Carolina, and is now generally considered
the best novel written in the South before the Civil War.
The action centres about the battle of King’s Mountain
(1780), which is vividly and accurately described. The
intrepid valour of the backwoods patriot, the bitterness and
horror of civil war, the relieving and characteristic humour
of primitive frontier life, are well portrayed. The blacksmith
Galbraith Robinson is a typical American, worthy
to rank with Cooper’s Leatherstocking, and possibly truer
to nature than Cooper’s more famous creation. In 1838
appeared Kennedy’s third novel, “Rob of the Bowl: a
Legend of St. Inigoes,” a story of Colonial Maryland
and the struggles of the Catholic settlers, with which are
interwoven traditions of the piratical “Brethren of the
Coast.” Nor must we fail to mention the humorous
chronicle entitled “Quodlibet: Containing some Annals
thereof, by Solomon Secondthought, Schoolmaster” (1840),
in which are described the vagaries and absurdities of an
early Presidential election. Had Kennedy made literature
the serious business of life he would have won more lasting
fame. As it is, he deserves to be more widely read
than he is.10
William Gilmore Simms.—One of the most prolific of
American novelists was William Gilmore Simms. Born
in Charleston, South Carolina, April 17, 1806, he was
early left, by the death of his mother and the removal of
his father to Tennessee, to the care of his grandmother,
from whom he learned many a weird tale of peril and
adventure. From the poor schools of his time he gained
little, though he became an omnivorous reader. Apprenticed
to a druggist, at eighteen he turned to the study
of law. A long visit to his father in the South-west gave
him a good opportunity to study the primitive life of the
backwoodsmen, a life which he afterward described inimitably.
At twenty he married and in another year he
was admitted to the bar. Successful from the first, he
resolutely turned, however, from the practice of law to a
literary life. He had become well known as a poet when
his first prose tale, “Martin Faber, the Story of a Criminal,”
appeared in 1833, revealing the influence of William Godwin
and Brockden Brown, but also independent skill in
the construction of an interesting narrative. In “Guy
Rivers” (1834), a description of Georgia in the turbulent
days of the gold fever, Simms began a series of border romances
which, though marred by a slipshod style and by
roughness of construction, are nevertheless in the main
readable on account of the rapidity and energy of the
narrative. In “The Yemassee” (1835), a story of the
strife between South Carolina and the Indians in 1715,
Simms is perhaps at his best, and his stirring narrative
strongly reminds one of, though it does not rival, the work
of Cooper. Then came a trilogy, “The Partisan” (1835),
“Mellichampe: a Legend of the Santee” (1836), and
“Katharine Walton, or The Rebel of Dorchester” (1851),
in which he portrays every phase of social life in Charleston
during the Revolutionary War, and delineates the military
careers of Marion, Pickens, Moultrie, Sumter, and Hayne.
Between 1836 and 1859 he published some twenty-five
other novels and stories, generally in two volumes each,
the best of which are “The Kinsmen” (1841), afterwards
known as “The Scout,” (1854), “The Sword and the Distaff,”
now known as “Woodcraft” (1852), “The Forayers,
or The Raid of the Dog-Days” (1855), its sequel,
“Eutaw” (1856), and “The Cassique of Kiawah” (1859).
He also wrote numerous short stories for various periodicals;
one of these, “Grayling, or Murder Will Out,” published
in The Gift for 1842, was pronounced by Poe the best
ghost story he had ever read. A collection of thirteen of
Simms’ best stories was published in 1845–46 under the
title of “The Wigwam and the Cabin.” Notwithstanding
his immense popularity before the Civil War, Simms is now
well-nigh forgotten. Although a conscientious workman,
he wrote much too rapidly to produce permanent literature,
and his faulty style and his excessive fondness for portraying
in detail scenes of carnage and crime strongly
repel the reader of to-day. After the Civil War, which
Simms did much to bring on and from which he suffered
severe losses, his popularity rapidly waned, and he tried
in vain to make good his losses. He died in his native city
on June 11, 1870, having composed this epitaph for himself:
“Here lies one who, after a reasonably long life,
distinguished chiefly by unceasing labours, has left all his
better works undone.”
His remarkable achievement in the pioneer days of
American letters, on the whole, entitles him to be remembered
with gratitude; and the verdict of Poe, who ranked
Simms, as a novelist, just below Cooper and Brockden
Brown, has not been impugned.11
Edgar Allan Poe.—No American writer is more difficult
to judge than Edgar Allan Poe (1809–49), whether as a
man or as a writer; and perhaps no other writer has received
more attention from critics, not only in America
but also in Europe. Poe was born in Boston of Southern
parents, in the year which saw the birth of Tennyson,
Darwin, Gladstone, and Holmes. His mother, Elizabeth
Arnold Poe, was an actress, who died in 1811 of consumption;
his father, David Poe, Jr., for a time a strolling player,
was a man of little force; tradition represents him as dying
young, a victim of consumption and alcoholism. Adopted
after his mother’s death by John Allan of Richmond,
Virginia, the boy Edgar Poe was wondered at and spoiled
by his foster-parents, who were people of means and
position. When they went abroad in 1815, Poe was entered
at the Manor House School, Stoke Newington, near London;
here he remained five years, imbibing the influences of a
half-rural scene whose ancient buildings and historical
associations have since been swallowed up by the metropolis.
From 1820 to 1825 he was at school in Richmond.
As a child, Poe was beautiful and clever; as a youth he was
superior rather than abnormal. He learned quickly though
not accurately; for the inaccuracy his teachers were in
part to blame. He was lithe, swift of foot, an excellent
swimmer, and, though proud and self-centred, could play
the leader among his fellows. By the time he was ready
for college, he showed the effects of indulgence on the part
of the Allans, being imperious and wilful, unduly sensitive
as to his state of orphanage, and squandering his too abundant
pocket-money. During his brief residence at the
University of Virginia (1826), Poe maintained high scholarship
in Latin and French, but lived the life of his companions,
drinking (though apparently not to excess) and
incurring gambling debts which his guardian repudiated.
Set to work in the counting-room of Mr. Allan, the young
man rebelled and ran away to Boston, probably under an
assumed name, and without capital save a sheaf of immature
poems. He soon enlisted as a private in the army,
made his peace with his guardian, and was sent to West
Point. Here again he proved a clever student; but, purposely
neglecting the routine, in 1831 he was discharged.
Obliged henceforth to depend on his own resources,
Poe now approached almost to the point of starvation,
when by his “Manuscript Found in a Bottle” (1833) he
gained a prize of one hundred dollars offered by the Baltimore
Saturday Visiter, and through John P. Kennedy,
whom Poe called “the first true friend I ever had,” obtained
temporary relief for his wants and help in getting
literary work. He now became a contributor to, and soon
the literary editor of, The Southern Literary Messenger.
His numerous stories and criticisms did much to make the
magazine successful and famous. In 1836 Poe married
his beautiful cousin Virginia Clemm, who lacked three
months of being fourteen years of age; but family ties
could not prevent his morally weak nature from occasional
indulgence in drugs and intoxicants, and his irregularities
in January, 1837, brought about his dismissal from the
editorial chair of the Messenger, for which, however, he
continued to write. For a time the Poes now lived in
New York, practically supported by Mrs. Clemm, who
conducted a boarding-house. Here he completed and
published his longest story, “The Narrative of Arthur
Gordon Pym” (1838), a tale of an Antarctic cruise as far
south as the 84th parallel, based on Benjamin Morell’s
“Narrative of Four Voyages to the South Seas and Pacific”
(1832) with frequent dashes of Coleridge’s “Ancient
Mariner,” but full of such situations of blood-curdling
horror and such highly imaginative landscape-painting as
only the genius of Poe could produce. The years 1838–44
Poe spent in Philadelphia. In 1839 he collected and published
his “Tales of the Grotesque and the Arabesque.”
He wrote constantly for Graham’s Magazine, of which he
was editor from 1840 till 1843; critiques, essays, and
tales flowed from his pen. In imaginative story-telling,
this was the period of his best work. His occasional
lapses into intoxication are partly explained by the fits
of insanity brought on by anxiety over the precarious
condition of his wife, who in 1841 ruptured a blood-vessel
while singing and who hovered between life and death
for six years. The year 1844 found him back in New
York, associated first with N. P. Willis on The Evening
Mirror and later with Charles F. Briggs on The Broadway
Journal. The publication of “The Raven” in the
Mirror (January 29, 1845) and of his “Tales” (1845)
greatly increased his reputation; but with curious and fatal
perversity he proceeded to make enemies by trying to palm
off upon the Boston Lyceum (October 16, 1845) a juvenile
poem, “Al Aaraaf,” as a new work and by sharply castigating
his literary contemporaries in “The Literati of New
York.” The next year he removed his family to Fordham,
a suburb of New York. Here his young wife died
in 1847, of consumption; and he never really recovered
from the shock. He conceived various literary enterprises;
but he had become virtually a physical and moral
wreck, unable to work except at long intervals. Toward
the end of 1848 he proposed marriage to Mrs. Sarah Helen
Whitman, a Providence poet, and was accepted; but the
match was broken off in consequence of Poe’s drinking to
excess. He now determined to go South to lecture and
procure funds with which to publish a magazine to be called
The Stylus. At Philadelphia he had an attack of delirium
tremens. Recovering, he went on to Richmond, where he
spent the summer of 1849. He proposed marriage to an
old flame, Mrs. Sarah Elmira Shelton, then a widow, who
gave him some encouragement. About this time he signed
a pledge to abstain from all intoxicating drinks, and made
a new start in life. A lecture at the Exchange Hotel brought
him some $1500; and with this in his pocket he started for
New York to close up some business and take Mrs. Clemm
back with him; but stopping in Baltimore en route he was
induced to drink some wine, went on a debauch, and a few
days later (October 7th) died in a hospital of brain fever.
There is ground for believing that he had been drugged
by political toughs on election day (October 3d) and carried
to various polls to vote for the Whig candidates.
Such was the pathetic and tragic career of one of the
most brilliant of American literary men. Few lives have
been the subjects of so much controversy. In estimating
his character, justice must be tempered with mercy; and
this is the easier now that it is seen that, during at least
the latter part of his life, his mental condition was abnormal
if not pathological.12 He inherited tendencies
which he was unable to control, and with which his environment
wholly unfitted him to cope. When sober and
sane, he was a quiet, well-bred, and refined gentleman,
who could talk fascinatingly and in whom women found
“a peculiar and irresistible charm”; he was capable, moreover,
of working hard and efficiently. When under the
influence of opium or intoxicating liquors, he was a wholly
different man, with whom, fortunately, we are not here
concerned. With the two exceptions of his wife and
mother-in-law, he formed no close and lasting attachments.
He was always deeply self-centred and found it
impossible to enter sympathetically into the lives, sorrows,
and aspirations of others. Thus his sensitive temperament
more and more withdrew into itself and found its kindred
in the phantasms of his powerful imagination.
Poe’s genius is probably best expressed in his tales.
They are not bulky in extent; in the Putnam edition they
fill five octavo volumes. Many of them are marred by
journalistic looseness and mannerisms—too much use of the
parenthesis, the too constant recurrence of favourite words
and phrases. Occasionally he misses good opportunities
for telling dramatic effects and contrasts; and in general
it may be admitted that the element of human passion,
“save in its minor chords of sorrow and despair,” is
notably absent from his works. A passionate lover himself,
his artistic genius was not concerned with the ordinary
love-story. His lack of a sense of humour, too, has been
remarked. His attempts to be humorous cannot be
pronounced successful. Finally, some of his tales, “Arthur
Gordon Pym” for example, contain matter so repulsive
that the wonder is that any person could endure reading
them, much less writing them.
Yet the fact remains that on a large number of these
tales is the unmistakable stamp of genius. It may be
well to recall the classification of them adopted by Messrs.
Stedman and Woodberry. We have first the “Romances
of Death,” of which the most famous are “The Fall of
the House of Usher,” “Ligeia,” and “Eleonora”; then come
the “Old World Romances,” of which “The Masque of the
Red Death,” “The Cask of Amontillado,” and “The Pit and
the Pendulum” are probably most read. In the second
volume we find three groups, “Tales of Conscience, Natural
Beauty, and Pseudo-Science,” the last including his “MS.
Found in a Bottle” and “Hans Pfaall.” In the third are
“Tales of Ratiocination,” including the famous “Gold-Bug,”
the harrowing “Murders in the Rue Morgue,” and
the perfect detective story “The Purloined Letter”; and
“Tales of Illusion,” including the horrible “Oblong Box.”
Then come the “Extravaganzas and Caprices” and lastly
the two “Tales of Adventure and Exploration,” namely,
“Arthur Gordon Pym” and “Julius Rodman.” It will be
evident that Poe achieved success in two markedly distinct
classes of tales: those in which a purely intellectual puzzle is
worked out, and those in which a definite emotional effect
is produced. The “Tales of Ratiocination” were the forerunners
of a long line of “detective stories”—by Gaboriau,
De Boisgobey, Wilkie Collins, Conan Doyle, and others,—in
none of which does one find a keener analytical mind than
that of Monsieur Dupin. “The Gold-Bug” undoubtedly
suggested to Stevenson some features of “Treasure Island.”
Likewise in such stories as “Hans Pfaall,” Poe was the
pioneer in compounding flights of imagination with bits of
popular science, being followed by Jules Verne and others
of his class. Of the tales charged with emotion, the best
are probably the three “Romances of Death” mentioned
above. In these, it has been said, we see the highest reach
of the romantic element in Poe’s genius. The lady Ligeia
is pure spirit, without human qualities, the maiden of a
dream. The framework of the tale is slight; it is merely
a prose-rhapsody on the theme expressed in the words of
old Glanvill, “Man doth not yield himself to the angels,
nor unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of
his own feeble will.” This theme, the supremacy of mind
over matter, was one over which Poe busied himself much;
but to scientific thought on the subject he contributed
little of value. It has been pointed out, however, that
Poe was the first to write this sort of tale, the “psychical
story,” in which Stevenson and others later outdid him.
He was a subtle psychologist of certain moods and qualities,
and understood the fiercer passions of terror and remorse
as have few other men; of this, “William Wilson” furnishes
abundant proof. But his range is limited, and most
readers, tired, like the Lady of Shalott, of shadows, soon
long to change his world of mystery and madness and death
for the real world of sane and kindly, if commonplace,
men and women.
According to the old maxim, however, we must take
the artist for what he is. Poe chose his material and his
setting as his artistic genius guided him; that he made
skilful use of this material there can be little doubt.
Within his narrow range, he is absolute master. His intensity,
his eloquence, his skill in the choice and repetition
of words force the reader to yield to the spell and
believe for the moment even in the impossible. His limitations
have been well set forth by Professor Woodberry:
Being gifted with the dreaming instinct, the myth-making
faculty, the allegorising power, and with no other poetic element
of high genius, he exercised his art in a region of vague feeling,
symbolic ideas, and fantastic imagery, and wrought his spell
largely through sensuous effects of colour, sound, and gloom, heightened
by lurking but unshaped suggestions of mysterious meanings.
Symbolism is indeed evident throughout his imaginative
works; in “The Black Cat,” for example, remorse is indicated
by the cat’s flaming eye; in “William Wilson,” a
guilty conscience is the man’s double. Of ornamentation
there is plenty; Poe revelled in a wealth of beautiful
images of Oriental and Gothic splendour.
In some of his tales, Poe reveals a certain kinship with
Hawthorne. Both are fond of dwelling in a remote world.
Both depict states of the soul; brief experiences; evanescent
dreams. But Hawthorne’s is always a moral world; Poe’s,
while never immoral, is prevailingly unmoral. In Hawthorne’s
tales we are never long forgetful of the Puritan
heritage of conscience; Poe’s indifference to moral issues
is a not surprising result of his cavalier temperament.
Both writers undoubtedly owe something to the weird
imagination of Ernst Hoffmann (1776–1822); Poe also continues
the literary tradition of Mrs. Radcliffe, “Monk”
Lewis, and the “Tales of Terror.” Comparison with these
writers suggests two other facts: first, that Poe was not a
novelist, but a writer of short stories; he knew little about
ordinary life, and nothing of human character, save through
study of his own; he preferred a small canvas whereon his
picture should be painted with Pre-Raphaelite fidelity and
elaborate pains, and was unable or unwilling to undertake
a work on the scale of what we now call novels;
secondly, that he was always a romancer, with a bias for
medievalism as pronounced as if his characters wore armour
and his pages were full of tournaments and chivalry.
If Poe has often been without honour in his own country
and in England, he has been enthusiastically received on
the Continent. In France he early became known through
the magnificent translation of Charles Baudelaire, and his
influence has never waned.13 In Spain, Italy, and Germany
he continues to be widely read and is generally regarded
as the foremost man of letters hitherto produced by
America. Time, that relentless and perverse critic, has
given him a place of honour among the makers of world-literature,
and his fame is secure.
Some Minor Writers.—At the novel-writing contemporaries
of Kennedy, Simms, and Poe we can take but a
passing glance. James Lawson (1799–1880), a Scotchman
who, graduating from the University of Glasgow, came to
America in 1815 and engaged in the mercantile and insurance
business, is remembered for his “Tales and Sketches
by a Cosmopolite” (1830), mainly relating to Scottish
domestic life and romance. He was a friend of Edwin
Forrest and Gilmore Simms. Richard Penn Smith (1799–1854)
was the author of “The Forsaken” (1831), a
novel of the American Revolution still worth reading.
Henry William Herbert (1807–58), eldest son of the Rev.
William Herbert, dean of Manchester, was graduated from
the University of Cambridge with distinction in 1829 and
in 1830 came to America, engaging in teaching Greek
and writing for magazines. In 1834 he published a historical
novel, “The Brothers, a Tale of the Fronde,” which
he had begun in The American Monthly Magazine; following
it up with “Cromwell” (1837), “Marmaduke
Wyvil” (1843), and “The Roman Traitor” (1848), a
romance founded on the conspiracy of Catiline. He also
wrote many tales and sketches of romantic incidents in
European history. As a writer on sports, under the name
of “Frank Forester,” he became a popular authority, and
may be said to have been the first writer who introduced
field sports into American fiction.
Robert Montgomery Bird (1805–54), a native of Delaware,
began his literary career by writing tragedies; one
of these, “The Gladiator,” was frequently played by
Edwin Forrest. His first two novels, “Calavar” (1834)
and “The Infidel” (1835), were descriptions of life in Mexico
during the Spanish conquest; while “Nick of the Woods,
or The Jibbenainosay” (1837), powerfully portrayed the
thirst for vengeance aroused in American backwoodsmen,
and thus sharply contrasted the real Indians with the
somewhat idealised types in Cooper’s stories. He also
wrote “Sheppard Lee” (1836), “The Hawks of Hawk
Hollow” (1835), and “The Adventures of Robin Day”
(1839), a romantic novel of adventure. Although conscientious,
he was not a skillful writer, and his extravagant
and exciting tales are no longer read. Theodore
Sedgwick Fay (1807–98), a New York lawyer and journalist,
was the author of “Norman Leslie” (1835), a somewhat
tame and highly moralised picture of life in New York
City at the beginning of the century; its poverty of artistic
merit excited the wrath of Poe, who helped to consign it
to a merciful oblivion. Fay also wrote two novels directed
against the practice of duelling: “The Countess Ida” (1840),
the scene of which is laid in Europe, and “Hoboken, a Romance
of New York” (1843), the action of which takes
place in a locality notorious for the duels fought there.
In 1835 appeared “Grace Seymour” by Hannah F. Lee
(1780–1865), a story for the young, and, like the stories
of Fay, with a moral purpose. In “Clinton Bradshaw”
(1835), Frederick William Thomas (1811–66) painted
with moderate success the social life of New York in
the early years of the century. Like Fay, however,
Thomas was too easily led from the path of artistic
virtue by his desire to improve the minds of his readers.
Thomas also wrote “East and West” (1836), in which
he ably described a Mississippi steamboat race, and
“Howard Pinckney” (1840), a novel of contemporary
life in which both plot and character are handled not
without skill.
Daniel Pierce Thompson.—The moral and educational
improvement of the reader is likewise an evident purpose
in the work of Daniel Pierce Thompson (1793–1868), a
Vermont jurist, whose “May Martin, or The Money-Digger”
appeared in 1835. His most famous work, which
is still widely read, was “The Green Mountain Boys, a
Romance of the Revolution” (1840), in which are described
the early methods of fighting the Indians. Other stories of
New England life from his pen were “Locke Amsden, or
The Schoolmaster” (1845), in which he evidently drew
upon his own experience, “Lucy Hosmer” (1848), “The
Rangers, or The Tory’s Daughter” (1851), a story dealing
with the Revolutionary campaigns of 1777 in Vermont,
“Tales of the Green Mountains” (1852), “Gaut Gurley,
or The Trappers of Lake Umbagog” (1857), and “The
Doomed Chief” (1860).
Hall, Hildreth, Hoffman.—While Thompson was delineating
Vermont life, James Hall (1793–1868) wrote of
the then far West. Born in Philadelphia, Hall saw service
in the War of 1812, and in 1820 went to Illinois and engaged
in law and newspaper work. His “Sketches of
History, Life, and Manners in the West” (1835) and several
later volumes of tales are characterised by a natural
and easy style, much skill in narrative, and general fidelity
to detail. The distinction of writing the first of the army
of anti-slavery novels belongs to the historian Richard Hildreth
(1807–65). “Archy Moore” (1837) was republished
in England, being reviewed by The Spectator and other
papers. A rather extravagant narrative, it purports to
be the autobiography of a Virginia slave during the War
of 1812. A second edition with a continuation was published
in 1852 as “The White Slave.” Charles Fenno
Hoffman (1806–84), after studying at Columbia College and
preparing for the bar, practised law for three years in New
York, then abandoned it for journalism and literature.
He was the founder of The Knickerbocker Magazine, associated
later, for many years, with the name of its editor,
Lewis Gaylord Clark, and was connected with various
other periodicals. His two novels, “Greyslaer” (1840),
founded on the celebrated Beauchamp murder case in
Kentucky,—a novel of intense interest which reminds some
readers of Cooper,—and “Vanderlyn” (published serially
in The American Monthly Magazine in 1837), like his other
writings, reflect a generous and refined character. His
promising career was cut short in 1849 by insanity.
William Ware.—In March, 1836, there appeared in
The Knickerbocker Magazine the first of a series of “Letters
from Palmyra,” which aroused much interest. They
purported to be written by a young Roman noble who
visited Palmyra in the reign of Zenobia. They vividly
presented the everyday life of the Roman Empire and at
once gave their author high rank as a classical scholar.
William Ware (1797–1852) graduated from Harvard College
in 1816 and became a Unitarian clergyman; for some
years he edited The Christian Examiner. The “Letters
from Palmyra” were published in book form in 1837;
the book is now called “Zenobia,” from the title of the
English reprint. It was followed in 1838 by a sequel,
“Probus,” in which the last persecution of Roman Christians
is ably and energetically described. The title of this
book was afterward changed to “Aurelian.” His third
novel, “Julian, or Scenes in Judea” (1841), narrated many
episodes in the life of Jesus of Nazareth, the crucifixion
forming a powerful climax to the story.
Mathews and Briggs.—A highly imaginative and somewhat
absurd romance entitled “Behemoth, a Legend of
the Mound-Builders” (1839) was the work of Cornelius
Mathews (1817–89), a New York dramatist and magazine
writer. His “Career of Puffer Hopkins” (1841) set
forth some phases of contemporary political life; it first
appeared serially in Arcturus, which Mathews edited in
1840–42. Another novel of his was “Moneypenny, or The
Heart of the World” (1850), a story of city and country
life. All of Mathews’ stories, however, have a journalistic
flavour. In the same year with Mathews, Charles Frederick
Briggs (1840–77), a New York journalist, entered the ranks
of the novelists with his “Adventures of Harry Franco, a
Tale of the Great Panic” (1839), following it with “The
Haunted Merchant” (1843) and “The Trippings of Tom
Pepper” (1847). All of his novels have a certain value
as humorous pictures of New York City life; through
them runs a vein of amusing satire. Briggs was later the
first editor of Putnam’s Monthly.
Henry W. Longfellow.—It was in 1839 also that Longfellow
published his once popular “Hyperion, a Romance,”
in which, in connection with a pathetic love story, he
mainly sought, in the style of Richter, to convey his romantic
impressions of the life and traditions of the Old
World. The volume is charged, if not surcharged, with
sentiment. Paul Flemming’s enthusiasm for the quaint and
picturesque in European lore and scenery takes us back to
the days when Continental Europe was for Americans a
land of romance, and when visits to the Old World
were still not accomplished without difficulty and had not
lost their novelty. Of a wholly different texture is the
only other prose tale written by Longfellow, “Kavanagh,
a Tale,” which appeared in 1849 and which probably
suffered by coming so near the romantic and fascinating
“Evangeline.” It is a bookish and uneventful story of
New England life; Hawthorne said of it, “Nobody but
yourself would dare to write so quiet a book.” Yet it is
written in a characteristically graceful style, and shows
that the scholar-poet was a good observer of the life around
him, though he could not give that life an air of reality
in his portraiture.
John Lothrop Motley.—The fame of Motley’s historical
work has obscured the reputation of his fiction. “Morton’s
Hope, or The Memoirs of a Provincial” (1839), like “Hyperion,”
recalls the interest in German university life
which was becoming general in America—a life which
Motley vividly describes. From Germany the hero returns
to participate in the American Revolution, in which he
distinguishes himself. In “Merry Mount, a Romance of
the Massachusetts Colony” (1849), Motley utilised the
story of Thomas Morton, the jolly Royalist who with his
followers settled near Boston in 1626 and whose revelry
shocked his staid Puritan neighbours. As a historical picture,
it has high value. Both of these novels, abounding
in carefully wrought descriptions and gleams of genuine
humour, deserved greater success than they had.
Caroline M. Kirkland.—A similar service was done
for life in Michigan by Caroline M. Kirkland (1801–64),
whose humorous and lively descriptions of frontier life,
“A New Home; Who’ll Follow?” (1839), “Forest Life”
(1842), and “Western Clearings” (1846), were in their
day successful and popular. Mrs. Kirkland’s early works
were published over the pen-name of “Mrs. Mary Clavers.”
Her literary career extended over a quarter of a century,
and she was long a popular contributor to magazines and
annuals.
The Forties.—The decade of 1840–50 saw the advent
of no writers of enduring reputation. “Charles Elwood,
or The Infidel Converted” (1840), a kind of philosophical
autobiography by Orestes A. Brownson (1803–76), is really
an essay in the guise of a novel, and can here only be
mentioned. Brownson was successively a Presbyterian, a
Universalist, a Unitarian, and a Roman Catholic; as a
thinker, he might be called a Christian Socialist. Epes
Sargent (1813–80), a student at Harvard College, who
became a journalist and a popular dramatist, was the
author of several juveniles, two of which, “Wealth and
Worth” (1840) and “What’s to be Done?” (1841), had
a large sale; and of two now forgotten novels, “Fleetwood,
or The Stain of Birth” (1845) and “Peculiar, a Tale of
the Great Transition” (1864), a story of changes in the
South in the Civil War. Washington Allston’s “Monaldi”
(1841), an Italian romance with an Othello-like motif,
really belongs to an earlier generation, having been written
as early as 1821, and intended apparently for publication
in Dana’s Idle Man. It is a powerful but harrowing
story in which the progress of jealousy is traced throughout
its course. Maria J. McIntosh (1803–78), losing her
fortune in the panic of 1837, adopted authorship as a
means of support and wrote a number of juveniles, the
first of which was “Blind Alice” (1841), and all of which
were intended to illustrate the moral sentiments. Some
of her stories were reprinted in London; and she continued
to write for more than twenty years. Maria Brooks
(1795–1845), a once highly praised but now forgotten
poet, in 1843 privately printed a prose romance, “Idomen,
or The Vale of Yumuri,” which was really an autobiography,
including much poetical description and reflection.
Sylvester Judd.—The most successful picture of old
New England life ever written, down to the time of its
publication (1845), was “Margaret, a Tale of the Real
and Ideal.” It was this book which Lowell, in his “Fable
for Critics,” spoke of as
the first Yankee book
With the soul of Down East in ’t, and things farther East,
As far as the threshold of morning, at least,
Where awaits the fair dawn of the simple and true,
Of the day that comes slowly to make all things new.
The author, Sylvester Judd (1813–53), was a native of
Massachusetts and a graduate of Yale College, who had
become a Unitarian clergyman and settled in Augusta,
Maine; and his purpose in writing was “to promote the
cause of liberal Christianity.” Had he kept this purpose
more in the background, his place among the greater
novelists would have been sure; for he had observed
closely every phase of Puritan life and possessed rare gifts
of realistic and dramatic story-telling. Not only does he
correctly describe the externals of New England places
and people, down to the niceties of dialect; but he also
interprets with rare and poetic insight the moral and
spiritual conflicts into which his characters are drawn.
Another novel similar to “Margaret,” “Richard Edney
and the Governor’s Family,” appeared in 1850; it deals
with the career of a New England country youth. Like Margaret,
the hero has altogether too many “experiences”—introduced
in order to point the moral. Yet on the whole
the realism of these novels is wholesome and fresh and
true.
Herman Melville.—A follower of Cooper—though at
some distance in point of quality—in writing stories of
the sea, was Herman Melville (1819–91). A native of
New York, he spent the greater part of the years 1837–44
in voyages to the Pacific. Of his observations and exciting
experiences he made good use in a long series of tales,
the first of which, “Typee” (1846), narrated his adventures
in the Marquesas. The general perception of the
growing importance of the Pacific doubtless aided in
securing for Melville’s stories the most favourable reception,
both in America and in England. “Omoo, a Narrative
of Adventures in the South Seas” (1847) continued
the earlier story, with no less vivid pictures of sailor life,
fights with savages, and thrilling escapes. His next story,
“Mardi, and a Voyage Thither” (1849), was an attempt
at a philosophical romance contrasting European civilisation
and Polynesian savagery, and, though it contained
some able descriptions, its vagaries and lack of sobriety
doomed it to failure. “Redburn, His First Voyage”
(1849) tells of a journey to England, and includes some
realistic horrors; it could hardly be popular. “The White
Jacket, or The World in a Man-of-War” (1850) is a photographic
narrative of experiences on board a United
States frigate. Melville’s masterpiece was “Moby Dick,
or The Whale” (1851); though an uneven work of excessive
length, written partly in a strained, Carlylesque
style, it nevertheless fills the reader with the fascination
of the sea. The fierce contest of Captain Ahab with the
great whale, which “becomes a representative of moral
evil in the world,” is not unworthy of the pen of a greater
writer. Melville never afterward came up to the standard of
this work, though he wrote several other stories and novels,
among them “Pierre, or The Ambiguities” (1852), “Israel
Potter” (1855), narrating the adventures of a Revolutionary
soldier, and praised by Hawthorne for its portraits of Paul
Jones and Benjamin Franklin, “The Piazza Tales” (1856),
and “The Confidence Man” (1857).
Mrs. Judson and Others.—Mrs. Emily Chubbuck Judson
(1817–54), third wife of the celebrated Baptist missionary
Dr. Adoniram Judson, and best known by her pen name
of “Fanny Forester,” in her “Alderbrook” (1846), a collection
of village sketches, described girl life in New England,
winning a reputation which lasted for many years.
Peter Hamilton Myers (1812–78), a Brooklyn lawyer, was
for a brief time remembered for his historical romances,
“The First of the Knickerbockers, a Tale of 1673” (1848),
“The Young Patroon, or Christmas in 1690” (1849), “The
King of the Hurons” (1849), and “The Prisoner of the
Border, a Tale of 1838” (1857). Charles Wilkins Webber
(1819–56), the son of a Kentucky physician, inherited
from his mother a fondness for out-of-door life, and spent
some years in Texas. Then he tried in succession medicine,
theology, and authorship. His stories and descriptions
of South-western life and adventure include “Old Hicks
the Guide” (1848), “The Hunter Naturalist” (1851–53),
illustrated by his wife, “Tales of the Southern Border”
(1852), and “Shot in the Eye” (1853), his best story. He
died in the battle of Rivas, in Central America.
Mayo, Kimball, and Wise.—William Starbuck Mayo
(1812–95), a New York physician, travelled in the Barbary
States, and on returning home wrote two popular novels,
“Kaloolah, or Journeyings in the Djebel Kumri” (1849)
and “The Berber, or The Mountaineer of the Atlas” (1850).
The former purports to be the autobiography of Jonathan
Romer, who, after numerous exciting adventures in the
American woods, goes to Africa, has various hair’s-breadth
escapes, fights with slave-traders and natives, and marries
a beautiful dusky princess. In its satirical remarks on
civilised usages it imitates “Gulliver.” “The Berber,” a
story of more regular construction, is still enjoyable. It
recounts events supposed to take place in Africa at the
close of the seventeenth century, and like its predecessor
contains minutely accurate descriptions of tropical scenery
and animal life. Richard B. Kimball’s “St. Leger, or
The Threads of Life” (1849), reprinted from The Knickerbocker,
was a serious attempt to depict a mind in pursuit
of truth in a story in which romantic adventure plays
some part; but the characters are not strongly marked.
Henry Augustus Wise (1819–69), son of a naval officer
and himself a lieutenant in the Navy, saw the humorous
and comic side of the seaman’s life, and chronicled his
impressions in “Los Gringos, or An Inside View of Mexico
and California” (1849), and still more successfully in his
sprightly and sentimental “Tales for the Marines” (1855),
in which all sorts of marvellous and amusing things happen.
The Decade of 1850–60.—It can hardly be said that
the next decade, 1850–60, saw any great improvement in
the quality of our fiction; but there is evident an increasing
preference for realistic studies of home life, and a growing
indifference to the highly wrought and more or less melodramatic
romances which had delighted the readers of an
earlier day. For many reasons, Americans desired to see
themselves in fiction, doing their daily work, struggling
with everyday temptations, yielding or conquering according
to their native strength or weakness. There was a
growing sense of the artistic—and moral or didactic—value
of common life. The reaction against romance was
inevitable, and was no doubt accelerated by the coming
of railroads, telegraphs, Atlantic cables, and the controversy
over slavery.
Ik Marvel.—Significant, then, was the popularity, which
has scarcely waned, of “Ik Marvel’s” two books, “Reveries
of a Bachelor” (1850) and “Dream Life” (1851). The
author, Donald G. Mitchell (born in 1822), was a product
of Connecticut and a graduate of Yale, whose experience
had been enriched by European travel. The pernicious
influence of Carlyle upon Mitchell’s style is too evident;
but the sentiment, or sentimentality, the enthusiasm, the
tender pathos of these slight stories have appealed to
thousands. In his “Dr. Johns” (1866), Mitchell brought
the stern Calvinistic theology of New England into relief
by contrasting it with French frivolity.
Edward Everett Hale.—Edward Everett Hale’s literary
activity has extended over something like sixty years.
Born in Boston in 1822, and graduated from Harvard at
seventeen, he became a journalist, story-teller, minister,
historian, and antiquarian. His “Margaret Percival in
America,” a religious novel, appeared in 1850, and he has
since written others, “If, Yes, and Perhaps” (1868), “Ten
Times One Is Ten” (1870), “In His Name” (1874), a truthful
and glowing narrative of the Waldenses, “Philip Nolan’s
Friends” (1876), the gallant hero of which, the Kentuckian
Philip Nolan, was “the protomartyr to Mexican treachery,”
“The Fortunes of Rachel” (1884), a slight but clever tale,
and “East and West” (1892). But Dr. Hale is best known
in literature by his short stories. “My Double and How
He Undid Me,” published in The Atlantic for September,
1859, was a clever and amusing piece which made a great
hit and immortalised some of the bores of his parish.
“The Man Without a Country” (The Atlantic, December,
1863) brought its author national reputation and has become
a classic. It has been justly pronounced “the best
sermon on patriotism ever written.” Speaking of sermons
recalls the criticism often applied to Dr. Hale’s stories, that
the moral is too obvious; in general, however, the moral
cannot be called obtrusive and hardly interferes with the
general effect of the story.
Alice Cary.—Alice Cary (1822–71), better known as a
poet, wrote pleasantly appreciative sketches of her Ohio
home under the title of “Clovernook, or Recollections of
our Neighbourhood in the West” (1852); a second series of
similar sketches was published in 1853. Her three novels,
“Hagar” (1852), “Married, not Mated” (1856), and “The
Bishop’s Son” (1857), were characterised by power of observation
and by careful literary workmanship.
The Warners.—Susan Warner (1819–1885), whose earlier
work was done under the pen name of “Elizabeth Wetherell,”
became well known through the publication (1850)
of her first book “The Wide, Wide World.” This was a
story of domestic life on the upper Hudson, which showed
an exceptional power of description and of character
study, and which secured very promptly wide acceptance
on both sides of the Atlantic. With the single exception
of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” it proved to be the most popular
novel written up to that date in America, and it had the
compliment of reproduction in a long series of unauthorised
editions in Europe. “The Wide, Wide World” was
followed by a series of stories, of which the most important
were “Queechy” (1852), “The Hills of the Shatemuc”
(1858), “Diana” (1859), “Wych Hazel” (1860), and “The
Gold of Chickaree” (1861). She collaborated with her
sister, Anna Bartlett Warner (born in 1820), in the production
of “Dollars and Cents,” which was issued in 1853, and
in some successful books for the young, “Mr. Rutherford’s
Children,” etc.
Harriet Beecher Stowe.—A diligent and painstaking writer
of fiction for thirty years, Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–96)
is to-day remembered only as the author of a single book,
and that one almost her first. The daughter of Dr. Lyman
Beecher of Connecticut, she was born into a remarkably
gifted family and inherited the best that New England
Puritan culture could give. At twenty-one she was married
to Professor Calvin E. Stowe, then a teacher in the divinity
school in Cincinnati. Here she had an opportunity of
studying the workings of slavery, and as a result entered
heart and soul into the anti-slavery movement. In the
year in which Hawthorne published his “House of the Seven
Gables,” Longfellow “The Golden Legend,” and Melville
“Moby Dick,” she began in The National Era a serial which
aroused wide and bitter discussion. The next year (1852),
“Uncle Tom’s Cabin” appeared in book form. Over three
hundred thousand copies, according to the author, were sold
within a year. The part played by the book in hastening
the “irrepressible conflict” of the Civil War cannot be estimated.
It is not hard to see blemishes in the story: tame
description, careless and loose construction, the tone of
the preacher; but these are rendered insignificant by the
great merits of the book, its frequent touches of humour,
its range and variety of characters, who are not merely
types but are graphically individualised, its broad humanity,
its fierce earnestness, its kindling emotion. These may
not suffice to put the story among the great and enduring
works of literature; but it will be long before America outgrows
her fondness and admiration for it. Mrs. Stowe
followed this book in 1856 with “Dred” (republished in
1866 as “Nina Gordon”), in which she continued to depict
effectively the position of slavery with reference to the
church and the law, and the defeat by mob violence of a
high-minded slave-owner who sought to purify the unholy
system. A more deliberate and carefully planned work
than “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” it has generally been considered
as inferior in power, though Harriet Martineau
thought it superior. Old Tiff is one of the great creations
of negro character. As a picture, in the main true, of
old-fashioned Southern life, it has a lasting charm. In
“The Minister’s Wooing” (1859), Mrs. Stowe turned to
New England life at the beginning of the century, and
dealt with the influence of the older Calvinism upon devout
and sensitive minds. In artistic construction and effect
it has been pronounced superior to all her other works;
some of the characters, for example, Mary Scudder and
Dr. Hopkins, are notably strong and impressive. Yet,
like all her later works, it has been overshadowed by that
one which was struck out in a white heat of passionate
appeal. “The Pearl of Orr’s Island” (1861) is a quiet
story of Puritan life on the Maine coast, insufficiently relieved
by a few thrilling episodes. In “Agnes of Sorrento”
(1862), the result of a visit to Europe, Mrs. Stowe turned
to Italy in the days of Savonarola, but achieved even less
success than George Eliot did in the next year with “Romola.”
In 1863, the Stowes settled permanently at Hartford,
Connecticut; and after the war they acquired a winter
residence in Florida. The best of Mrs. Stowe’s numerous
later books is probably “Oldtown Folks” (1869), dealing
with life in Norfolk County, Massachusetts, about the year
1800, and portraying some very realistic characters. Such
stories as “Pink and White Tyranny” (1871), “My Wife
and I” (1871), and “We and Our Neighbours” (1875), in
which she aimed to reform fashionable society, though
successful in respect to sales, were from an artistic point
of view decided failures. In “Sam Lawson’s Fireside
Stories” (1871) and “Poganuc People” (1878), she returned
to New England Yankees and the life she most successfully
drew. On the whole it must be said that her reputation,
while it lasts, will rest chiefly upon “Uncle Tom” and the
New England stories.
John T. Trowbridge.—One of the most popular of
writers for boys is John Townsend Trowbridge (born in
1827). Educated in the common schools, he learned Latin,
Greek, and French by himself, taught school, worked a
year on an Illinois farm, and then settled down to writing
in New York City. Some of his books are “Father Brighthopes”
(1853), “Burrcliff” (1853), “Martin Merrivale”
(1854), “Neighbour Jackwood” (1857), a famous anti-slavery
novel, perhaps a good second to “Uncle Tom’s
Cabin” in influence and popularity, “Cudjo’s Cave” (1864),
and “Coupon Bonds, and Other Stories” (1871). He has
been a prolific writer of healthful and finished stories for
boys. John Burroughs has well said of him: “He knows
the heart of a boy and the heart of a man, and has laid
them both open in his books.”
John Esten Cooke.—A romancer of the old school was
John Esten Cooke (1830–86), a younger brother of Philip
Pendleton Cooke. A native of Virginia, he found inspiration
in the romantic history of that State, drawing many
of his characters from life. His first important publication
was “Leather Stocking and Silk, or Hunter John Myers
and His Times” (1854); his best story proved to be “The
Virginia Comedians, or Old Days in the Old Dominion”
(1854), which deals with the period just preceding the Revolution,
and which, with its youthful enthusiasm and interesting
descriptions of colonial manners, has been called by
some critics the best novel written in the South down to
the Civil War. After serving in the Confederate army,
Cooke sought to utilise his military experiences in several
dramatic stories; but his reputation had been made, and
his day had gone by.
Maria S. Cummins.—In “The Lamplighter” (1854),
Maria S. Cummins (1827–66) achieved a success comparable
to that of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and “Ben Hur.”
In “Mabel Vaughan” (1857) she produced probably a
better book. Both of her stories, however, while in the
main true delineations of girl and home life, are too evidently
written with a didactic aim, and are at times
laboured and diffuse. Her other stories, “El Fureidis”
(1860), a story of Palestine, and “Haunted Hearts” (1864),
are now entirely forgotten.
Mrs. Ann Sophia Stephens.—Mrs. Ann Sophia Stephens
(1813–86) was in the fifties and sixties an immensely popular
novelist. She was the daughter of John Winterbotham,
an English woollen manufacturer who had come to America,
and was born at Humphreysville, Connecticut. In 1831,
she married Edward Stephens, a publisher, and began in
1835 to edit The Portland Magazine, founded by her husband.
Later, she edited The Ladies’ Companion and
became an associate editor of Graham’s and Peterson’s, to
which she contributed over twenty serials. Her first
elaborate novel, “Fashion and Famine” (1854), had a
very large circulation and was three times translated into
French. A novel of affected intensity, it contained some
excellent delineation of character. Among her other works
were “Zana, or The Heiress of Clare Hall” (1854), republished
as “The Heiress of Greenhurst,” “The Old
Homestead” (1855), “Sibyl Chase” (1862), “The Rejected
Wife” (1863), “Married in Haste” (1870), “The Reigning
Belle” (1872), and “Norton’s Rest” (1877). She was
attentive to details and wrote in a condensed and forcible
style.
Marion Harland.—Marion Harland is the pseudonym
under which Mrs. Mary Virginia Terhune (born in 1831), a
Virginian of New England ancestry, became known for a
number of short stories, novels, and miscellaneous matter.
Her fiction is of the romantic type, full of incident, and
dealing with brave personages. Some of her stories are
“Alone, a Tale of Southern Life and Manners” (1854),
“The Hidden Path” (1855), “Moss-Side” (1857), “Miriam”
(1860), “Nemesis” (1860), “Husks” (1863), “Sunnybank”
(1866), “At Last” (1870), “Judith” (1883), and “A Gallant
Fight” (1888). She has been editorially connected with a
number of juvenile magazines.
Curtis, Willis, Holland.—George William Curtis belongs
in the main, of course, with the essayists, where his
life will be narrated. He was the author of “Prue and
I” (1856), a series of papers written originally for Putnam’s,
and together forming a slight story of charming domestic
life, in which sentiment, fancy, and a broad optimistic
philosophy are pervasive features; and of an unsuccessful
novel, “Trumps” (1861), which he began in 1859 as a
serial in Harper’s Weekly. In view of the broad experience
of its author, his fondness for good novels, his discriminating
taste, his facility in expression, this failure of “Trumps”
was remarkable. The truth is that Curtis had not rightly
estimated his powers. He could not manage an elaborate
plot with skill, and he also made the same mistake that
marred the work of many writers already noticed—he
was too much concerned to point the moral. The general
effect, as Mr. Cary points out,14 is that “Trumps”
becomes “a Sunday-school story, written by a man of rare
gifts, some of which betray the elusive charm of genius,
but still essentially of that class, producing, and apparently
intended to produce, the impression that in the end virtue
triumphs and vice comes to a miserable end.” In the
long run, this is eternally true; but the great artists do
not talk about it very much. A similar failure, though
for different reasons, was the one novel written by the
prolific Nathaniel P. Willis, “Paul Fane, or Parts of a Life
Else Untold” (1857), an early and dull experiment in
the field of international novels. It was a story whose
general distortion of things amounted almost to caricature,
since it was based on superficial rather than deep and
careful observation of character. In the same year Josiah
Gilbert Holland (1819–81) made his début in the field of
fiction with “The Bay Path,” a story of the settlement
of the Connecticut Valley, filled largely with historical
characters, and generally faithful to the manners and
thought of the age portrayed. A more ambitious story,
“Miss Gilbert’s Career” (1860), is a realistic modern novel
in which a characteristic Yankee community is described
with great fidelity. His later novels, “Arthur Bonnicastle”
(1873), “The Story of Sevenoaks” (1875), and “Nicholas
Minturn” (1877), cannot on the whole be said to possess
high literary merit; the author was avowedly a moralist,
and the best that can be said of them is that they did
no harm.
Major John William de Forest.—Major John William de
Forest (born in 1826) began writing fiction with a very
romantic and very poor novel called “Witching Times,”
published serially in Putnam’s, 1856–57, and followed it
with a number of works which made him one of the most
popular novelists of the seventies—“Seacliff” (1859),
“Miss Ravenel’s Conversion” (1867), a book out of his
own experience, and his first in realistic vein, “Overland”
(1871), “Kate Beaumont” (1872), “Honest John Vane”
(1875), “Playing the Mischief” (1875), and many others.
Of “Miss Ravenel’s Conversion” Mr. Howells has said:
“It was one of the best American novels that I had known,
and was of an advanced realism before realism was known
by that name.”
Robert Lowell.—In 1858 appeared “The New Priest of
Conception Bay,” in which the Rev. Robert Traill Spence
Lowell (1816–91), an elder brother of James Russell
Lowell, and an Episcopal clergyman, painted in bright
and cheerful colours the rural life of Newfoundland with
which he became familiar during his sojourn at Bay
Roberts in 1843–47. No truer picture of the simple
fisher folk of Newfoundland was ever produced—even to
a delicate discrimination of dialects. Mr. Lowell’s reputation
was not ill sustained by his later though less known
books, “Antony Brade” (1874) and “A Story or Two
from an Old Dutch Town” (1878), which dealt with the
quaint life in the Dutch villages of eastern New York.
Mrs. Harriet Prescott Spofford.—Mrs. Harriet Prescott
Spofford (born in 1835), a native of Maine who has passed
most of her life in Massachusetts, made her reputation with
a short story of Parisian life, “In a Cellar,” in The Atlantic
in 1859. In “Sir Rohan’s Ghost” (1859), “The Amber
Gods” (in The Atlantic, 1860), which gave her a considerable
reputation, “Azarian,” (1864), and “A Thief in the Night”
(1872), she produced sombre works vividly imaginative
and intense in feeling. She was among the first to work
the mine of ghostly romance. Her stories have never been
very popular; her fondness for the sensuous and the
splendid repels many readers. Yet for sheer and overwhelming
intensity and for complete success in producing
the effect sought, “A Thief in the Night” must be given
a high place as a work of art.
Mrs. Miriam Coles Harris.—Mrs. Miriam Coles Harris
(born in 1834), who has spent most of her life in and near
New York City, wrote a number of stories popular in their
day, some of them being still read. “Rutledge” (1860)
and “The Sutherlands” (1862) were widely circulated.
Her later stories include “A Perfect Adonis” (1875),
“Phœbe” (1884), “Missy” (1885), and “An Utter Failure”
(1890).
Theodore Winthrop.—Theodore Winthrop (1828–61) deserves
more than passing mention, not so much for what he
actually accomplished as for what his brief life gave promise
of doing. Born in New Haven, Connecticut, a descendant
of Governor John Winthrop of Connecticut and at twenty
a graduate of Yale, he travelled much abroad, went to
Panama in the employment of the Pacific Mail Steamship
Company, and afterward sojourned in California and
Oregon, visiting also the island of Vancouver and some
of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s stations. He was admitted
to the bar in 1855, but became more fond of politics
and literature than of law. For several years, he worked on
his novels; but though one was accepted for publication,
none appeared in his lifetime. At the opening of the war
he went to the front with the Seventh New York Regiment,
and fell, bravely fighting, at Great Bethel. His descriptions
of his march to Washington, in The Atlantic Monthly,
had attracted much attention, and after his death his
novels appeared in rapid succession, “Cecil Dreeme” in
1861 and “John Brent” and “Edwin Brothertoft” in
1862. The first is a gruesome tale of life in New York, full
of broad sweep and passion, immature but not devoid of
power. “John Brent,” the best of his stories, is an imaginative
tale into which he wove a record of his Western experiences;
it “had the merit, in its day especially, of
delineating Western scenes and characters with sympathy
and skill, at a time when the West was almost virgin soil
to literature.” “Edwin Brothertoft” is a melodramatic
story of the American Revolution, at times crude in expression,
but strong in plot and in its play of light and
shade. Had Winthrop lived, our literature beyond question
would have been far richer. He comprehended as
did few others the deep throbbing life of America, not
only in its externals but in its less obvious features; and
abating his youthful “breeziness,” he would doubtless
have reproduced some parts of that life on enduring
canvas.
Fitz-James O’Brien.—Another brilliant writer whose
career was cut short by the war was Fitz-James O’Brien
(1828–62), a native of County Limerick, Ireland. He was
educated at the University of Dublin; and after spending
his inheritance of £8,000 in London, he came to America
in 1852 and from that time on devoted himself to literature.
In New York he became a prominent figure among the
Bohemian set and won distinguished social and literary
success. Besides much clever verse, he wrote for the
magazines some marvellously ingenious tales, for example
“The Diamond Lens,” “The Wondersmith,” “The Golden
Ingot,” and “Mother of Pearl.” The reader is occasionally
reminded of Poe and Hawthorne, but is more often led
to wonder why O’Brien has so long lain in neglect; for
some of his stories are powerful in a high degree. Like
Winthrop, O’Brien in 1861 became a soldier in the Seventh
New York Regiment and went to the front. On February
26, 1862 he was severely wounded in a skirmish, and in
April he died. Nearly twenty years later, his friend
William Winter edited “The Poems and Stories of Fitz-James
O’Brien” (1881).
The Civil War.—It is not surprising that the Civil
War partially, at least, dried up the springs of literature
and art in America. It was an epoch of concentration,
of action; men had little time for reading novels or writing
them; the newspaper any day might chronicle as sublimely
heroic or as pathetic events as could be found in fiction.
Comparatively few novels of distinction were written,
therefore, during the war and the two or three years
following it, the Reconstruction period. Some worthy
novels which appeared in those years, for example Mrs.
Stoddard’s “Morgesons,” failed of an appreciative audience.
The close of the war marked the beginning of a new
era in American fiction. As Mr. Morse points out, people
no longer cared for stories about the Indians and about
the Revolution. The Indians had retreated into that world
of romance with which the modern world, ignorant of
“Nick of the Woods,” associates them; the Revolution was
ancient history by the side of the more terrible conflict
just ended, and a quarter of a century must elapse before
the earlier war would make a background for fiction.
Romance, which, as we have seen, had already begun to
lose favour, must now yield to realism; there must be
pictures of life at home, in the market-place, in the fields,
in the teeming cities; there must be greater skill in handling
the narrative so as to make it a transcript from daily
life. The lover of romance will doubtless deplore this
tendency; but it was inevitable, and it has dictated the
path of fiction almost to the present day.
Oliver Wendell Holmes.—The many-sided activity of
Dr. Holmes extended to the writing of three novels—“medicated
novels” they have been called, but the term
does not apply to all equally well. Certainly they all
belong to the large and increasing group of “problem
novels.” The first, “Elsie Venner: a Romance of Destiny”
(1861), published when the author had passed the half-century
mark, made its first appearance as “The Professor’s
Story” in The Atlantic Monthly. The mother of
Elsie Venner, a short time before giving birth to her
child, was fatally bitten by a crotalus or rattlesnake, and
from birth the child is partially endowed with a serpent
nature, which enables her to exercise a peculiar influence
over those with whom she is brought into contact, especially
the sensitive schoolmistress Helen Darley. “The
real aim of the story,” says Dr. Holmes himself, “was to
test the doctrine of ‘original sin’ and human responsibility
for the disordered volition coming under that technical
denomination. Was Elsie Venner, poisoned by the venom
of a crotalus before she was born, morally responsible
for the ‘volitional’ aberrations which, translated into acts,
become what is known as sin, and, it may be, what is
punished as crime? If, on presentation of the evidence,
she becomes by the verdict of the human conscience a
proper object of divine pity and not of divine wrath, as a
subject of moral poisoning, wherein lies the difference
between her position at the bar of judgment, human or
divine, and that of the unfortunate victim who received a
moral poison from a remote ancestor before he drew his
first breath?” It will thus be seen that what the author
intended was nothing less than an onslaught upon one of
the great fundamental dogmas of orthodox theology.
Fifty years ago, this was a bold undertaking indeed. The
intensely tragic motive of the novel is relieved by some
chapters of pure comedy, in which figure the mean, calculating,
money-making Silas Peckham, the vulgar splurging
Sprowles, and a varied group of other minor characters.
“The Guardian Angel” (1867) forms a natural sequel to
“Elsie Venner”; it deals with some of the problems of
heredity, attempting “to show the successive evolution of
some inherited qualities in the character of Myrtle Hazard,”
the heroine. Less tragic than the earlier tale, “The Guardian
Angel” is more pleasant to read, and a more artistic
creation. An interesting plot is skilfully worked out and
the characterisation is subtle and true. In his third novel,
“A Mortal Antipathy” (1885), Dr. Holmes at seventy-six
plainly showed that he had passed his creative period. He
yielded, to a much greater degree than in the other stories,
to the rambling propensity which, charming and natural
enough in “The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table,” seriously
mars the continuity of a novel in which plot-interest is
intended to figure. In this the author deals with the
influence on a man’s after-life of an antipathy (toward
womankind) arising from a severe shock received in early
childhood—an antipathy which is happily removed when
the hero, helpless on a sick-bed in a burning house, is borne
out by a brave and athletic girl. In spite of its “medicated”
character, the story is full of delightful gossip,
amusing descriptions and characterisation, and thoughtful
speculation over miscellaneous matters connected with the
healing art. If, as some contend, Dr. Holmes has in these
books emphasised the moral issue at the expense of artistic
perfection, they still have great value as records of personality.
In Mr. Noble’s words, the author “is a man
whose temperament makes him intensely interested in
human nature, and whose bent of mind gives him a special
interest in any development of human nature which, by
exhibiting exceptional possibilities or limitations, casts
some strange side-light upon its more ordinary and normal
conditions.”
Mrs. Elizabeth Barstow Stoddard.—Mrs. Elizabeth Barstow
Stoddard (1823–1902), wife of the poet Richard Henry
Stoddard, wrote three novels remarkable in their day,
“The Morgesons” (1862), “Two Men” (1865), and “Temple
House” (1867), which found few readers in their time and
are now almost forgotten, but which evinced careful observation
of life and customs, and decided if not eccentric
individuality. Republished in 1888 and again in 1901,
“The Morgesons” was praised by such judicious critics
as Mr. Stedman, Mr. Julian Hawthorne, and Professor
Beers (who declared he had read it four times); but it
again failed of popular favour; it had become old-fashioned.
Edmund Kirke.—Under this pen name, James Roberts
Gilmore (1822–1903) was for many years a well known
writer. In 1857 he retired from business with a competency,
and thereafter devoted himself mainly (except
1873–83) to literature. His earlier novels, “Among the
Pines” (1862), “My Southern Friends” (1862), “Among
the Guerillas” (1863), “Down in Tennessee” (1863),
“Adrift in Dixie” (1863), and “On the Border” (1864),
were concerned with the Southern life with which he became
acquainted in war-time. In later life, he wrote “The
Last of the Thorndikes” (1889) and “A Mountain-White
Heroine” (1889). His earlier stories were popular and
did much to acquaint readers with slavery.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich.—Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1836–1907)
began his career as a novelist in 1862 with the publication
in The Atlantic Monthly (June) of a little romance,
“Père Antoine’s Date Palm,” which secured sympathetic
recognition from Hawthorne. In the same year, he also
published “Out of His Head, a Romance in Prose,” a
collection of six short stories; but these remained his sole
efforts in fiction until 1869, when he published his largely
autobiographical “Story of a Bad Boy.” The hero of this
little idyl of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Tom Bailey,
who is after all “not a very bad boy,” has become a classic
character in the fiction of boyhood. “Marjorie Daw, and
Other Stories” (1873) are ingenious tales, in the first of
which a surprising hoax is managed with consummate
skill. “Prudence Palfrey” (1874) is an old-fashioned novel
of incident in which a well-nigh impossible plot is made
plausible. “The Queen of Sheba” (1877) is perhaps the
most skilfully done of all his stories; the action takes
place in New Hampshire and Switzerland, and the story
is full of humour. “The Stillwater Tragedy” (1880) is a
realistic portrayal of life in a New England manufacturing
village, the motif being the detection of a murderer, and
the sombreness of the situation being relieved by a love
story. “Two Bites at a Cherry, and Other Tales,” subtle,
amusing, ingenious, appeared in 1893. Probably most of
us will agree with Mr. Howells when he says that Aldrich
was a worker in the novel with the instinct of a romancer,
and was at his best in the romantic parts of his stories.
Of his prose works his short stories will probably endure
longest.
Mrs. Adeline D. T. Whitney.—Mrs. Adeline D. T. Whitney
(born in 1824), a native of Boston and sister of the
eccentric George Francis Train, wrote a number of stories
for young people, beginning with “Boys at Chequasset”
(1862) and “Faith Gartney’s Girlhood” (1863) and including
also “The Gayworthys” (1865), which ranks
among the best of New England novels, “A Summer in
Leslie Goldthwaite’s Life” (1866), “Patience Strong’s
Outings” (1868), “Hitherto” (1869), “We Girls” (1870),
“Bonnyborough” (1885), and “Ascutney Street” (1888).
To some critics the didactic tone of her stories has seemed
so prominent as to impair their artistic value; others, like
Mrs. Stowe, defend her from the charge of being “preachy.”
A vein of mysticism runs through her stories. Her style
is effective and her creations are real and lifelike.
Bayard Taylor.—The writing of novels did not play
a great part in the life of Bayard Taylor, who felt himself
to be first of all a poet; but his four novels are not
without interest. Taylor had already tried his hand at
writing stories for The Atlantic Monthly when he began in
1861 the writing of a novel. Before he left America for
Russia he had written seven chapters. He finished the
book in St. Petersburg and published it in 1863 under
the title of “Hannah Thurston, a Story of American Life.”
Although the scene is nominally laid in central New York,
the life is essentially that of Chester County, Pennsylvania.
The plot is similar to that of Tennyson’s “Princess.” It
is, however, of secondary importance; the author’s main
purpose apparently was to satirise the more or less superficial
reforms of the time—abolition, total abstinence,
spiritualism, vegetarianism, and the like. The homely
and commonplace village life of his time Taylor described
vividly and truthfully; but it cannot be said that his
characters, amusing as many of them are, are distinctly individualised.
Even so, the book was received with favour.
It was promptly translated into German, Swedish, and
Russian. Its success encouraged Taylor to further efforts.
“John Godfrey’s Fortunes, Related by Himself” appeared
late in 1864. This is a story of life in Pennsylvania and
in New York City. A good plot is worked out, and some
of the characters are interesting, though for the most part
they are too obviously good or bad. John Godfrey in a
sense was Taylor himself, but the book can hardly be
called an autobiography. In 1866 appeared “The Story
of Kennett,” in some respects the best of Taylor’s novels.
For it he drew largely upon his memories of Chester
County, and most of the characters were drawn from life.
The scene at the funeral of Abiah Barton, where the hero
discovers his worthless and cowardly father, has been
sharply censured; but Taylor contended that, because of
the vein of superstition in Mary Potter, it was the most
justifiable chapter in the book. “Joseph and His Friend:
a Story of Pennsylvania,” the last of Taylor’s novels, appeared
serially in The Atlantic, and was published in
book form in 1870. It is a disagreeable story of duplicity,
in Bismarck’s view of which many have shared, that the
villain gets off too easily. To the above should be added
a volume of shorter stories issued under the title of “Beauty
and the Beast.” In general, Taylor’s novels exhibit skilful
workmanship and sympathetic and often vivid delineations
of character.
Louisa May Alcott.—Louisa May Alcott (1832–88),
daughter of Amos Bronson Alcott, became well known as
a writer of wholesome fiction, especially for young readers.
She began life as a teacher and during the Civil War was
an army nurse. “Moods” (1864), her first novel, was
widely read, and contains passages of strength. “Little
Women” (1868–69), written as a girls’ book, remains her
best. A kind of sequel to it was “Little Men; Life at
Plumfield with Jo’s Boys” (1871), followed in its turn
by “Jo’s Boys and How They Turned Out” (1886).
Other similar stories were “An Old-Fashioned Girl” (1870),
“Work, a Story of Experience” (1873), partly autobiographical,
“Eight Cousins” (1875) and its sequel, “Rose
in Bloom” (1876), and “A Modern Mephistopheles” (1877),
a disagreeable but vigorous and imaginative study of moral
deterioration. Her stories continue to be popular with
the young, though the newer juvenile fiction will in time
supersede them.
Richard Malcolm Johnston.—Richard Malcolm Johnston
(1822–98) was one of the most popular of the Southern
writers of his time. The son of a Georgia planter and
Baptist clergyman, he in time became a Roman Catholic.
Graduating from Mercer University, Georgia, in 1841, he
practised law for some years, in 1857 declining a judgeship
to become professor of belles-lettres in the University of
Georgia. From 1861 till 1882, he was engaged in conducting
a boys’ boarding-school, first at Sparta, Georgia,
then near Baltimore. In 1864 he published, as “Georgia
Sketches,” four stories of life in Georgia. To these, others
were added in 1874 under the title of “Dukesborough
Tales,” his best book. He afterward wrote “Old Mark
Langston” (1884), “Mr. Absalom Billingslea and Other
Georgia Folk” (1888), “Ogeechee Cross-Firings” (1889),
“The Primes and Their Neighbours” (1891), “Mr. Billy
Downs and His Likes” (1892), “Mr. Fortner’s Marital
Claims, and Other Stories” (1892), “Widow Guthrie”
(1893), “Little Ike Templin, and Other Stories” (1894),
“Old Times in Middle Georgia” (1897), and “Pearce Amerson’s
Will” (1898). In all he published more than eighty
stories. He was not a master of plot, and the structure of
his tales is loose and faulty in sequence; but his characters
have the magic touch of reality, and his descriptions of
ante-bellum Georgia days cannot be neglected.
William Mumford Baker.—William Mumford Baker
(1825–83), a Princeton graduate and Presbyterian clergyman,
was once popular but is now little read. From 1850
till 1865 he was minister of a church in Austin, Texas, where
he had many of the experiences utilised in his stories. His
most important fiction was “Inside, a Chronicle of Secession,”
which was written secretly during the war, ran as a
serial in Harper’s Weekly, and appeared in book form in
1866; it gives a vivid picture of Southern life and feeling.
Some of his later books were “Oak Mot” (1868), “The New
Timothy” (1870), “Mose Evans” (1874), “Carter Quarterman”
(1876), “A Year Worth Living” (1878), “Colonel
Dunwoodie” (1878), “His Majesty Myself” (1879), and
“Blessed Saint Certainty” (1881). While not striking
their roots very deeply into life and character, his books
are marked by sincerity and intense earnestness.
S. Weir Mitchell.—Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell (born in
1830) is a distinguished physician of many-sided fame.
A native of Virginia, he studied at the University of
Pennsylvania and the Jefferson Medical College, from
which he was graduated in 1850. He began writing fiction
during the Civil War, and in July, 1866, contributed to
The Atlantic a remarkable story, “The Case of George
Dedlow.” But it was not until about 1880 that he began
to devote himself more seriously to literature. He has
written “Hephzibah Guinness” (1880), three stories of
Quaker life in Philadelphia; “In War Time” (1885);
“Roland Blake” (1886), the earlier part of which deals
with the Civil War; “Far in the Forest” (1889), a story
of character influence, the scene of which takes place in
the forest of Pennsylvania before the Revolutionary War;
“Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker” (1897), a story of Philadelphia
during the War of Independence, which ranks
among the few great American novels; “The Adventures
of François” (1898), a romance of the French Revolution,
the hero being a light-hearted little waif who has some
strange adventures; “The Autobiography of a Quack”
(1900), a study of the mind of a professional medical
knave; “Constance Trescot” (1905), a study of an unusual
character, skilfully handled, the scene being Paris in the
sixties; and “A Diplomatic Adventure” (1906). Dr.
Mitchell’s interest in problems of abnormal psychology has
led him to treat some themes which in the hands of any
but a born story-teller would have resulted in merely sensational
novels. His stories all show keen powers of
analysis and character-drawing and a kindly and wholesome
optimism.
Beecher and Higginson.—Henry Ward Beecher (1813–87),
amid the many activities of a busy clerical and journalistic
life, found time to write one novel, “Norwood, or
Village Life in New England” (1867), in which occur
descriptive and narrative passages rich in insight and
humour. There is only a slight plot; the movement is
leisurely; we are chiefly interested in the characters, who
include the usual personages to be found in a village and
some curious and amusing people as well. The book is
partly autobiographical, with a vein of romance running
through it. Thomas Wentworth Higginson (born in 1823)
is chiefly known as an essayist, but wrote one capital story,
“Malbone, an Oldport Romance” (1869), which deserves
wider reading as a subtle study of temperament; the
scene is obviously Newport, Rhode Island. It “is largely
a transcript from actual life, the chief character being
drawn from the same friend of Higginson, William Hurlbert,
who figures as Densdreth in Winthrop’s ‘Cecil
Dreeme.’”15 In “Madame Delia’s Expectations” (The
Atlantic, January, 1871, reprinted in “Oldport Days,”
1873), Colonel Higginson showed that he could tell a
short story well.
Mark Twain.—The literary productions of Mr. Clemens
will be recorded elsewhere; here a few words may be said
of his place as a writer of fiction. In technique, it cannot
be maintained that he stands high; his narrative wanders
whither it listeth, blameless of compact construction or
climax; his style is not free from faults. Yet in spite of
these defects his name has become “a household word in
all places where the English language is spoken, and in
many where it is not.” He has created two characters—Tom
Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn—who will live long
as humorously conceived but true American boys. Pudd’nhead
Wilson and the Connecticut Yankee may fade into
oblivion, but it seems unlikely that the heroes of Mark
Twain’s most typical books will soon be allowed to withdraw
from our group of favourites. Moreover, Mr. Clemens
has enshrined the Mississippi River of his youth in a
kind of homely, virile prose-poetry; he has recorded, in
narrative which Mr. Thompson rightly calls “firm and
vigorous,” the impression which the great river made upon
his youthful mind. Nowhere else shall we find such
descriptions of Mississippi River life in the fifties. Artistically
defective his work is indeed; but to it cannot be denied
the qualities of eloquence, naturalness, and sincerity. The
work, like the man, is genuine.
Bret Harte.—The stirring, primitive, lawless life of
early California found its painter in Francis Bret Harte,
who early dropped his first name from his literary signature.
He was a native of Albany, New York (1839), his ancestors
being English, German, and Hebrew. His father,
a teacher of Greek, died when the son was but a child.
Receiving only a common-school education, Harte went
with his family in 1854 to California, which for five years
had been the Mecca of the gold-hunter and the gambler.
At first he tried teaching and mining, gaining from either
business little more than experience, of which he was to
make good use in later years. In 1857 he became a
compositor for the San Francisco Golden Era. Some of
his unsigned sketches attracted the notice of the editor,
who ordered him to exchange his composing-stick for a
writer’s desk in the office. He later joined the staff of
The Californian, to which he contributed the clever parodies
on contemporary writers of fiction later published (1867)
as “Condensed Novels.” From 1864 till 1870, he was
secretary of the United States Branch Mint; during this
time he wrote much of his best poetry. When The Overland
Monthly was projected in 1868, no other name than
Harte’s was considered for the editorship. Mr. Noah
Brooks has told how he and Harte agreed to write each
a short story for the first number, and how Harte with
his usual fastidiousness about words was unable to finish
his in time. When it did appear, however, “The Luck of
Roaring Camp” and the story which followed it, “The
Outcasts of Poker Flat,” made Harte famous; the latter
story is generally considered the most perfect of his works.
In 1870, Mr. Harte was appointed professor of recent
literature in the University of California; but in the following
year he resigned this post, settled in New York,
and devoted himself to lecturing and to writing, especially
for The Atlantic Monthly. In 1878, he was appointed
United States consul at Crefeld, Germany; from 1880 till
1885 he held a similar post at Glasgow. From 1885 until
his death, in 1902, Harte lived in London, busily engaged
in literary work. His best-known works are “Mrs. Skagg’s
Husbands” (1872), “Tales of the Argonauts, and Other
Stories” (1875), “Gabriel Conroy,” his only long novel
(1876), “Drift from Two Shores” (1878), “The Twins of
Table Mountain” (1879), “Flip; and Found at Blazing
Star” (1882), “In the Carquinez Woods” (1883), effectively
expressing the wonder and mystery of the forest, “On the
Frontier” (1884), “Maruja” (1885), a melodramatic novel,
“Snow-Bound at Eagle’s” (1886), “A Millionaire of Rough
and Ready” (1887), “The Crusade of the Excelsior” (1887),
“A Phyllis of the Sierras” (1888), “The Argonauts of
North Liberty” (1888), “A Sappho of Green Springs”
(1891), “Colonel Starbottle’s Client and Some Other
People” (1892), “Sally Dows” (1893), “A Protégée of
Jack Hamlin’s” (1894), “The Three Partners” (1897),
“Under the Redwoods” (1901). Throughout his life, it
will be seen, he continued to write of the old California
days, of a régime which has long since passed away, but
which he immortalised.
It was Harte’s rare privilege to be the first to work
in a mine which has yielded rich ores to many since his
day; to write of an elemental, half-savage life in which
convention was all but unknown, and the background of
which was the rugged simplicity and majesty of the
Sierras. “His actual discovery,” says Mr. Logan, “was
Nature in an aspect always grand, sometimes awful, at a
moment when her primeval solitude was invaded by a host
that had cast human relationships behind, and came
surging towards an unknown land, all under the sway of
a devouring passion—the thirst for gold.” He had his
own way (possibly influenced by Dickens) of presenting
these rough scenes. He did not idealise this primitive
life; he did not as a rule weave it into romance (even Mr.
Boyesen cites only “Gabriel Conroy” as a romantic novel);
he did not seek to interpret it or to make it symbolise
religious or moral ideas. To him it was a very real world;
and with true eye and sure touch he sought to portray it
impartially, as it was; the reader might draw his own
moral—if he happened to need one. It is this unerring
instinct of the artist that places Harte in the ranks of the
greater story-tellers.
His powers, however, had their limitations. He found
himself unable to sustain interest in a long story. “Gabriel
Conroy,” though it contains interesting scenes and some
of his best characters, is quite without unity—a bundle of
impressions in which the same characters are presented
hardly twice alike. He has been criticised, too, for endowing
otherwise worthless characters with some marked
virtue; but perhaps it is only fair to say, with Mr. Logan,
that “the virtue is generally a primitive one, and is rarely
either inconsistent or improbable.”
In his later years, Harte did little to increase his reputation.
The same characters, the same types, appear
again and again; but there is no added source of interest,
no maturer observation of men and manners. His reputation
continues to rest on the score of early tales, terse
and full of energy, with which he dazzled and delighted
the reading public of the later sixties and the seventies.
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward.—It is of course a far
cry from Harte to Mrs. Phelps Ward, who came into notice
in the East in the same year in which The Overland was
started. Mrs. Ward was born at Andover, Massachusetts,
and was the daughter of Professor Austin Phelps of Andover
Theological Seminary. In 1888 she was married
to the Rev. Herbert D. Ward. She is the author of a
long list of kindly and readable stories, none of which
quite attains to distinction in point of quality, but several
of which have been popular and influential. Beginning
with “The Gates Ajar” (1868), half novel, half threnody,
she continued with “The Silent Partner” (1870), “The
Story of Avis” (1877), a favourite with many, “An Old
Maid’s Paradise” (1879) and its sequel “Burglars in Paradise”
(1886), “Friends, a Duet” (1881), “Doctor Zay”
(1882), “Beyond the Gates” (1883), which elaborates the
idea of her first story, “A Singular Life” (1894), her best
book, and “The Man in the Case” (1906). Her plots,
sometimes conventional, are never complicated and are
skilfully managed; and her women characters are generally
true to life. Of her men, for example Emanuel
Bayard, so much cannot be said. She collaborated with
her husband in writing two or three novels which were
not very successful.
Constance Fenimore Woolson.—A grandniece of Fenimore
Cooper, Miss Woolson (1848–94) has taken a place
among women novelists scarcely less honourable than
that held by her kinsman among American novelists in
general. Born at Claremont, New Hampshire, she was
educated in Cleveland, Ohio, and at a French school in New
York City. After her father’s death in 1869, she spent her
summers at Cooperstown, New York, or on the Great Lakes,
and her winters in the South. Her first literary effort, “The
Happy Valley” (Harper’s, July, 1870) met with immediate
approval. From then till her death, she contributed
regularly to Harper’s. She published “The Old Stone
House” (1873), “Castle Nowhere; Lake Country Sketches”
(1875), “Rodman the Keeper; Southern Sketches” (1880),
“Anne” (1882), “For the Major” (1883), “East Angels”
(1886), her most elaborate and perhaps her best novel,
dealing with ante-bellum Georgia coast life, “Jupiter
Lights” (1889), and “Horace Chase” (1894), by many
preferred to any of her other works. Possessing decided
gifts as a novelist, she had a high standard of excellence.
Some of her plots are intricate, but all are skilfully worked
out. Charles Dudley Warner spoke of her as one of the
first in America to bring the short story as a social study
to its present degree of excellence. Her best work should
have more than a merely ephemeral life.
Henry James, Jr.—A subject of contention among critics,
having an ardent if not a large following, but standing
for something like caviare to the general public, Henry
James is to-day one of the most striking figures among
American novelists. He was born in New York, April 15,
1843, the son of Henry James the theologian, and a younger
brother of William James the psychologist. His family
was Irish on the father’s side and Scotch on the mother’s.
He has told us of his early years and of how, while the other
boys were at their games, he used to sit on the hearth-rug
studying Punch and learning about the life which John
Leech’s pictures suggested to him. At eleven he was sent
abroad and spent six years in England, France, and Switzerland,
deeply interested in European culture, art, and social
tradition. On his return, his family made their home at
Newport, Rhode Island. In 1862 he entered the Harvard
Law School, but found more pleasure in the lectures of
James Russell Lowell on literature than in the reading of
law. Soon after leaving Cambridge, having succeeded
with some early ventures in The Galaxy and other magazines,
he began to devote himself wholly to literature.
Since 1869 he has lived abroad, chiefly in Paris, London,
and Italy. His life has been a quiet, uneventful study
of men and women, of books, of places.
Mr. James has been a fairly prolific writer, of constantly
increasing subtlety and attention to finish. His first
stories, curiously enough, revealed a romantic, at times
even sensational, bent, which he soon outgrew. His
first novel, “Watch and Ward” (1871), was promising but
not otherwise significant; “Roderick Hudson” (1875) was
quite equal to the best of his later work, combining profound
analysis of character with perhaps more sentiment
than appears in his later works. It is a study of the artistic
temperament in the person of a young American sculptor
who is taken to Italy by a rich virtuoso. The story deals
with two favourite studies of Mr. James: the contrast between
Americans and the older races with which they come
into contact in Europe, and the contrast between the artistic
and the prosaic person. The first of these contrasts forms
the subject of “A Passionate Pilgrim” (1875), including
that exquisite story “The Madonna of the Future,” of
“The American” (1877), and of “Daisy Miller, a Comedy”
(1878), in which a burlesque element is noticeable. From
the year 1875, then, may be said to date the “international
novel” of comparison or contrast, which has become so
immensely popular. In “The Europeans” (1878), the
scene changes to Boston and the author shows how the
life of the Puritans appears to foreign visitors. Other
international studies are found in “An International
Episode” (1879), “The Portrait of a Lady” (1881), one of
his most popular longer novels, and “The Siege of London,
The Pension Beaurepas, and The Point of View” (1883).
In 1880 (dated 1881) appeared “Washington Square,”
a quiet story laid in a formerly aristocratic quarter of New
York; the tale has been called “a miracle in monotone.”
Then came “The Bostonians” (1886), which Professor
Richardson speaks of as typically “long, dull, and inconsequential,
but mildly pleasing the reader, or at times quite
delighting him, by a deliberate style which is enjoyable
for its own sake, by a calm portraiture which represents
the characters with silhouette clearness, and by some very
faithful and delicately humorous pictures of the life and
scenery of Eastern Massachusetts.” “The Princess Casamassima”
(1886) continues the career of an American
adventuress, Christina Light, who has figured in “Roderick
Hudson,” to which it thus forms a kind of sequel. Less
read than some others, it is one of the most remarkable
of Mr. James’ stories. In 1888 appeared “The Aspern
Papers, and Other Stories” and “The Reverberator,” a
comedy of manners recalling “The American,” and dealing
with the incompatibility between the cultivated and the
vulgar relatives of two lovers and with the odious violation
of private life by modern journalism. “The Tragic Muse”
(1890), a study of a psychological problem of art and love,
is complicated and difficult in the extreme; a friend expressed
a sound view of it to Mr. James: “I will say it is
your best novel if you promise never to do it again,”
probably meaning that the extreme limit of elaboration had
been reached. Three collections of stories, “The Lesson
of the Master, and Other Stories” (1892), “The Real Thing,
and Other Tales” (1893), and “Terminations” (1895),
include various comic sketches, with some preciosities, and
a well-told ghost-story, “Sir Edmund Orme,” the motif
of which was later repeated in “The Turn of the Screw”
(1898), a horrible, nerve-racking tale. “The Other
House” (1896) is a highly dramatic, even sensational,
story of passion, culminating, strange to say, in a murder;
yet Rose Armiger is Mr. James’ one supremely passionate
woman. In 1897 were published “The Spoils of Poynton”
and “What Maisie Knew,” the latter a rather unpleasant
story of domestic unhappiness and sordid intrigue; Maisie
being a little girl whose life was spent alternately in the company
of divorced parents, equally guilty, each of whom
had remarried. “In the Cage” (1898) is a tissue of
shrewd guess-work woven by a lively telegraph girl who
becomes interested in the love affair of two others. “The
Two Magics” (1898) includes “The Turn of the Screw”
and “Covering End,” a pleasant comedy about an English
country house. “The Awkward Age” (1899) is a unique
example of subtle, often elusive, analysis of character—of
character which some might say was not worth analysis,
with unimportant incidents and little action. “The Soft
Side” (1900) is a collection of studies of abnormal character
and curious psychical phenomena, in which the
rhythm of the prose is at times remarkable for its suggestiveness.
“The Sacred Fount” (1901) is a fanciful
sketch dealing with the idea of youth as a rejuvenator of
age. “The Wings of the Dove” (1902) has been called
the most remarkable book that Mr. James has written. It
is a long story of the old warfare between the flesh and
the spirit, in which the unseen forces from another world
play an unlooked-for part. Mr. James’ most recent stories
are “The Better Sort” (1903), “The Ambassadors” (1904),
and “The Golden Bowl” (1905).
It is difficult to sum up in a few words the leading traits
of Mr. James. It is easy to speak of him as reeling off
volumes of abstruseness in which the petty ambitions of
worthless Americans are analysed with a minuteness like
that in which the leisurely student of anatomy delights;
but such innocuous “criticism” does not even touch Mr.
James. Undoubtedly it has been increasingly hard of late
years to follow him; his later stories, with their proneness
to excessive psychological delving, have a certain analogy
to Browning’s later poems, which became harder to follow.
But judged by his best works, such as “Roderick Hudson,”
“The Princess Casamassima,” and “The Other
House,” he must be pronounced a great artist, a keen
analyst of the small section of life and the few types of character
which he has chosen to study (and if one does not
care for the types, one may still recognise the art with
which they are presented); and as always a loyal American.
He is not a master of style; yet at his best he embodies
certain qualities of supreme excellence in style—ease, intimacy,
suggestiveness, lucidity, sincerity. He is never a
preacher, nor is he ever the mere idler and dilettante. He
is very much in earnest; and in consequence the moral
effect of his exposition of life is wholesome. “Out of the
corruption,” says Miss Cary,16 “of a society which Mr. James
depicts with unsparing detail and without satire or didactic
comment, rises the flame of purity. Some one among his
characters is sure to stand for invincible goodness.” If
the language of his later books becomes unintelligible, it
will of course be a pity; but it seems quite unlikely that
the great works of his middle period will soon cease to
have a large body of appreciative and delighted readers.
Edward Eggleston.—The Hoosier life of southern Indiana
has been described by Edward Eggleston (1837–1902).
A native of Vevay, Indiana, he received only a
brief school education, but taught himself several languages.
He first became (1857) an itinerant Methodist minister in
southern Indiana and then for nine years was a Bible
Society agent in Minnesota. From 1866 till 1879, he was
engaged partly in journalism and partly in a Brooklyn
pastorate; then he retired to his country place on Lake
George to devote himself entirely to literature.
His first book to win attention was “The Hoosier Schoolmaster”
(1871), which first appeared as a serial in Hearth
and Home. Having read Taine’s “Art in the Netherlands,”
he says, he proceeded to apply Taine’s maxim, that an
artist ought to paint what he has seen. The result was so
faithful a picture that in spite of its faults it has a permanent
value as a record of one phase of early Western life.
Dr. Eggleston also wrote “The End of the World” (1872),
which deals with the Millerites, who in 1842–3 proved by
the Book of Daniel that the end of the world was at hand;
“The Mystery of Metropolisville” (1873); “The Circuit
Rider, a Tale of the Heroic Age” (1874), in which he drew
on his own early experiences; “Roxy” (1878), a story of
picturesque incident and character development laid in the
time of the Tippecanoe campaign of 1840; “The Graysons,
a Story of Illinois” (1888), a realistic picture of pioneer life
in which Abraham Lincoln figures as a character; “The
Faith Doctor” (1891), which deals with Christian Science
and kindred phenomena in New York, and which shows the
influence of Mr. Howells; and “Duffels” (1893), a collection
of stories.
Dr. Eggleston himself spoke of his attitude in literature
as a constant struggle “between the lover of literary art
and the religionist, the reformer, the philanthropist, the
man with a mission.” We are not of course surprised to
find an editor of The Sunday School Teacher making his
moral too prominent. But while this mars much of his
work, his novels may still be said to be fresh and genuine
transcripts of life.
Julian Hawthorne.—Julian Hawthorne (born in 1846)
inherited literary ability from his father, the romancer.
As an infant he was delicate; at seven his health was good,
but having been kept out of school he could neither read nor
write. Entering Harvard in 1863, he became known as
an all-around athlete. After leaving Harvard without
graduating, he lived in Dresden for some years, then returned
to America and became a hydrographic engineer
in New York. In 1871 he began to win attention to his
short stories, and since 1872 has devoted himself to literature
and journalism, living successively in Dresden, London,
and New York. “Bressant,” his first novel, published in
Appleton’s Journal in 1872, is somewhat crude and not
without sensational elements, but holds the interest. Then
came “Idolatry” (1874), which, though rewritten in whole
or in part seven times, is now unknown, “Garth” (1877),
a long story of New Hampshire, the chief part being a
painter’s love-story, “Sebastian Strome” (1880), a study of
the chastening of a selfish character, strongly reminding
us of “Adam Bede,” “Dust” (1883), a story of extreme
self-sacrifice, “Fortune’s Fool” (1884), “Archibald Malmaison”
(1884), a novelette, and “Beatrix Randolph”
(1884). In general his stories are not pleasant reading.
Impossible characters are not infrequent and there is a
tendency toward the choice of morbid subjects. Many
descriptive passages, however, are superbly done, and the
general impression one gets is that of power, but of power
unrestrained, a strong imagination capable of greater things
than Mr. Hawthorne has done. Yet the qualities characteristic
of his best books, like “Archibald Malmaison,”
are such as led the late Richard Henry Stoddard, a man
by no means deficient in judgment, and familiar with the
best in modern literature, to pronounce Mr. Hawthorne
“clearly and easily the first of living romancers.”
In recent years, Mr. Hawthorne has forsaken the paths
of pure literature, with which he seems never to have been
in love,17 for those of journalism.
William Dean Howells.—The apostle of latter-day
realism, and one of the most noted of our writers of fiction,
is Mr. Howells. He has been prominent in literary
circles for more than forty years. The son of a journalist
and printer, Mr. Howells was born at Martin’s Ferry, Belmont
County, Ohio, in 1837. His father had adopted
Swedenborgian tenets and the boy was reared in this faith.
His boyhood life has been admirably described in “A
Boy’s Town.” The family lived successively at several
places in Ohio, and young Howells was in turn compositor,
correspondent, and news editor. In 1859 he began
contributing to The Atlantic Monthly, his first poem,
“Andenken,” appearing anonymously in January, 1860.
Nearly every volume of The Atlantic down to 1900 contains
some of his work. A campaign “Life of Abraham
Lincoln” (1860) netted him $160, and enabled him to
make his first trip East and to meet Emerson, Lowell, and
other New England writers; it also won for him the post
of Consul at Venice, which he held from 1861 till 1865.
The first fruits of his Italian residence were “Venetian
Life” (1866) and “Italian Journeys” (1867), two descriptive
works which revealed a truly poetic temperament and
a refined taste. On his return to America, Mr. Howells
became an editorial writer for the New York Times and
a contributor to The Nation. The next year (1866), removing
to Boston, he became assistant editor of The Atlantic;
in 1871 he became the editor and made the magazine
a stronger force than ever in criticism. On resigning this
post in 1880, he spent a year or two abroad; since 1888 he
has lived in New York, engaged chiefly in literary work.
From 1886 till 1891 he conducted the Editor’s Study in
Harper’s.
While Mr. Howells has been prolific in criticism, description,
narratives of travel, literary and personal reminiscences,
and lighter essays, his most significant work
has been done in his novels. His first appearance as a
writer of fiction was in 1871, with “Their Wedding Journey,”
a slight but delicately humorous tale of a Boston couple,
the Marches, who go to Canada to spend their honeymoon.
“A Chance Acquaintance” (1873) is a subtle study of incompatibility
of temperament. “A Foregone Conclusion”
(1875) transports us to Venice, where we watch the unhappy
love story, dramatically told, of an agnostic priest
and an American girl. “The Lady of the Aroostook”
(1879) is an amusing, healthy story of New England
provincial manners. The theme of “The Undiscovered
Country” (1880) is spiritualism and mesmerism. “A
Fearful Responsibility” (1881) is the story of an American
professor in Venice whose charge, a young girl, is loved
by an Austrian officer. In “Dr. Breen’s Practice” (1881)
we have pictures of summer life in a small seaside village
in Maine and a study of modern Puritanism. With
“A Modern Instance” (1881) may be said to begin the
extremely realistic stories in Mr. Howells’ later manner;
others are: “A Woman’s Reason” (1883), “The Rise of
Silas Lapham” (1885), “Indian Summer” (1886), “The
Minister’s Charge, or The Apprenticeship of Lemuel
Barker” (1887), “April Hopes” (1887), “Annie Kilburn”
(1888), “A Hazard of New Fortunes” (1890), in which
the Marches have characteristic experiences in New York,
“The Quality of Mercy” (1892), a painful but well told
story, “The Coast of Bohemia” (1893), “An Open-Eyed
Conspiracy” (1897), “Ragged Lady” (1899), “The Flight
of Pony Baker” (1902), a captivating boys’ story, belonging
with “A Boy’s Town,” “The Kentons” (1903), and
“The Son of Royal Langbrith” (1905). From these novels,
after the manner of Tolstoi, the romantic and even the
ideal are rigorously excluded; we are treated to exhaustive,
minutely detailed accounts of the daily lives of ordinary,
generally commonplace people. Plot and incident are of
secondary importance, although some chapters fairly bristle
with incident; Mr. Howells holds that any transcript of real
life, even though made at random, if skilfully handled,
is of sufficient interest to form a good story. Naturally
this view of the novel has found many opponents, and
Mr. Howells’ books have been somewhat less popular of
late years than they were in the eighties. After all, the
hunger for the ideal cannot be wholly appeased by disagreeable
actualities; and there are people whom we know
all too well in the flesh to care to see them, in all their
pettiness and meanness and duplicity, in the pages of fiction.
Mr. Howells’ followers, however,—and there are
many of them—contend that nothing is so interesting as
real, actual, present life; that no detail of our daily round
is without its significance; that the slightest act or omission
of an act may affect our destiny. After all, the
realists and the romanticists we have always with us; the
former are just now in the majority; but the reaction is
just as inevitable as the return of the pendulum.
In some of his later stories, as “The Traveller from
Altruria” (1894) and “Through the Eye of the Needle”
(1907), Mr. Howells has shown an increasing interest in
the more serious problems of society—poverty, strikes, the
causes of crime, “the tyranny of individualism,” and the
conditions that hinder the spread of sympathy and human
brotherhood. The effect of this increased ethical and
human interest has probably not been to enhance the artistic
value of his work; and some deplore his lapse from
the high ideal of art for art’s sake. Others see in Mr.
Howells’ recent works a greater attention to substance, a
firmer tissue, a broader humanity. And always, be it
said, in reading Mr. Howells, one is conscious of that fine
and careful workmanship, that care for correct and proper
form, that artistic conscience, without which, whatever his
literary creed, Mr. Howells could never have become the
foremost and representative American novelist of his time.
Frances Hodgson Burnett.—Frances H. Burnett was born
in Manchester, England, in 1849, but came to America with
her parents in 1865 and lived for eight years, until her
marriage, in New Market and Knoxville, Tennessee. Since
then she has lived in Washington and in Kent, England.
She first gained notice with “Surly Tim’s Trouble” (Scribner’s
Monthly, June, 1872), a story of Lancashire, as were
also “That Lass o’ Lowrie’s” (1877), “Dolly” (1877, republished
in 1883 as “Vagabondia”), and “Haworth’s” (1879)
said to be a favourite with its author. With “Louisiana”
(1880) she turned to America for material, describing life
in the mountains of North Carolina. “Through One Administration”
(1883) is a pathetic and powerful story of
social and political life in Washington. “Little Lord
Fauntleroy” (1886), the Anglo-American story of a seven-year-old
hero, has become a children’s classic; similar but
less known are the tales in “Sara Crewe, and Other Stories”
(1888), and “The Captain’s Youngest, Piccino, and Other
Stories” (1894). In “The Pretty Sister of José” (1889),
Mrs. Burnett deals with picturesque and striking Spanish
characters and scenes. “A Lady of Quality” (1896)
and its sequel, “His Grace of Osmonde” (1897), are melodramatic
stories of English aristocrats in the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries. “In Connection with the
De Willoughby Claim” (1899) deals with country life in
Tennessee in the early sixties. Her latest stories are
“The Dawn of a To-Morrow” (1906) and “The Shuttle”
(1907), the latter a fascinating international novel. She
has thoroughly demonstrated her power to delineate character
as moulded by passion.
Philander Deming.—Philander Deming (born in Carlisle,
New York, in 1829), a lawyer by profession, in 1873 began
publishing in The Atlantic Monthly stories and sketches the
scene of which is laid in the Adirondack region of northern
New York. Devoid of sensationalism, these stories portray
simply and effectively the rude but sound life of plain
country folk. Mr. Deming has published in book form
“Adirondack Stories” (1880), “Tompkins and Other Folks”
(1885), and “The Story of a Pathfinder” (1907).
Lew Wallace.—General Lewis Wallace (1827–1905),
an Indiana lawyer and soldier in the Mexican and Civil
Wars, was the author of three novels, “The Fair God”
(1873), “Ben Hur, a Tale of the Christ” (1880), and “The
Prince of India” (1893), which deserve mention chiefly
because of their popularity. The second, especially,
in this respect, ranks close to “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”
Written in a spirit of deep reverence for the traditional
view of Jesus of Nazareth, and making small demands
upon the imagination, it could hardly fail to make a
strong appeal to a large body of readers. As literature,
however, Wallace’s books are of only transient importance.
Charles Dudley Warner.—Charles Dudley Warner (1829–1900)
belongs mainly with the essayists, but wrote a few
novels that deserve to live. With Mark Twain he wrote
“The Gilded Age” (1873). “Their Pilgrimage” (1887) has
a slight plot, but gives minute and accurate descriptions of
Southern watering-places. “A Little Journey in the
World” (1889) and its sequel, “The Golden House” (1895),
are vivid pictures of decadent New York society. “That
Fortune” (1899) is a picture, drawn from expert knowledge,
of the New York financial world.
Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen.—Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
(1848–95) realised the dream of many in successfully
combining the careers of authorship and teaching. Born
at Frederiksvärn, Norway, and educated at Christiania,
he came to America in 1869. He first became editor of a
Scandinavian journal in Chicago. Then he studied philology
at Leipsic for two years (1872–74). From 1874 till
1880 he was professor of German at Cornell University,
and from 1881 till his death he filled a similar chair at
Columbia University. Besides some poetry and essays,
he wrote “Gunnar, a Norse Romance” (1874), his one effort
in romance, “Tales from Two Hemispheres” (1876),
“Falconberg” (1879), “Ilka on the Hilltop” (1881), a
collection of short stories, “Queen Titania” (1881), “A
Daughter of the Philistines” (1883), “Social Strugglers”
(1893), “The Mammon of Unrighteousness” (1891), and
“The Golden Calf” (1892). His later stories were realistic
novels concerned with vital problems, such as the conflict
between wealth and essential culture. Their vogue was not
great, but their workmanship was genuine.
Blanche Willis Howard.—Blanche Willis Howard (1847–98)
was born in Bangor, Maine, was educated in New York,
and in 1878 went to Stuttgart, Germany, to engage in
teaching and writing. In 1890 she was married to Baron
von Teuffel, a physician. She wrote a number of novels,
of which “One Summer” (1875), “Aunt Serena” (1880),
“Guenn” (1882), “Aulnay Tower” (1886), “The Open
Door” (1889), “No Heroes” (1893), a boys’ story, and
“Seven on the Highway” (1897), a collection of short
stories, may be mentioned. In collaboration with William
Sharp she wrote “A Fellowe and His Wife” (1892), in
which a comic atmosphere prevails. Perhaps “Guenn,”
the pathetic story of a Breton maiden’s hopeless love, is
the book by which she will be longest remembered.
Edgar Fawcett.—Edgar Fawcett (1847–1904) was in his
day a prominent and popular poet, dramatist, and novelist.
Born and reared in New York, and at twenty graduated
from Columbia College, he early saw the rich possibilities
of the life around him, and confined himself to the delineation
of New York people. The best of his novels are
“Rutherford” (written in 1876, but not published in book
form till 1884), “A Hopeless Case” (1880), “A Gentleman
of Leisure” (1881), “An Ambitious Woman” (1883),
“The House at High Bridge” (1886), perhaps his best
story, “Fair Fame” (1894), “Outrageous Fortune” (1894),
and “The Ghost of Guy Thyrle” (1897). He was fond
of attacking the petty conventions of social life and his
satire was not ineffective. Partly because of this unpleasant
realism his books have already ceased to be
much read.
Edwin Lassetter Bynner.—Edwin L. Bynner (1842–93),
a New England lawyer and journalist, for a time librarian
of the Boston Law Library, achieved success in the field of
the historical romance. Beginning with “Nimport” (1877),
he produced a large number of novels and short stories, of
which the best are “Penelope’s Suitors” (The Atlantic,
December, 1884), “Agnes Surriage” (1887), “The Begum’s
Daughter” (1889), a story of New Amsterdam in 1689,
and “Zachary Phips” (1892), which introduces the mysterious
Western expedition of Aaron Burr. Accurate on the
historical side, his works are not distinguished artistic
successes; yet they make the past live again.
Sarah Orne Jewett.—Sarah Orne Jewett (born in 1849)
has written some interesting and even powerful stories of
the coast of New England. She was reared at South Berwick,
near the Maine coast. While accompanying her
father, a physician, on his rounds, she heard from him many
local and family histories and traditions. Her first story was
“Deephaven” (1877); and she has since written, among
others, “Country By-Ways” (1881), eight sketches; “The
Mate of the Daylight, and Friends Ashore” (1884), short
stories and sketches; “A Country Doctor” (1884), “A
Marsh Island” (1885), and “A White Heron” (1886), three
stories of rural New England; “Strangers and Wayfarers”
(1890); “A Native of Winby, and Other Tales” (1893);
“The Country of the Pointed Firs” (1896), which contains
her most successful character studies; “The Queen’s Twin,
and Other Stories” (1899); “The Tory Lover” (1901),
a love-story of the Revolution, introducing John Paul
Jones, which cannot be pronounced successful. Miss Jewett
is at her best in her kindly humorous and sympathetic
interpretations of humble but self-respecting New Englanders
of the present day. Her humour is healthy and
contagious and her style is for the most part simple, clear,
and vigorous.
Mrs. Ellen Olney Kirk.—Ellen Olney Kirk (“Henry
Hayes,” born in Connecticut in 1842) has been popular as
a novelist. She received her education at Stratford, Conn.,
and was married to John Foster Kirk, the historian, in 1879.
Her stories include “Love in Idleness” (1877), “A Lesson
in Love” (1883), a study in character, “A Midsummer Madness”
(1885), “The Story of Margaret Kent” (1886),
“Queen Money” (1888), “The Story of Lawrence Garth”
(1894), her best book, in which the difficult character of
an adventuress is well drawn, “The Revolt of a Daughter”
(1898), “Dorothy Deane” (1899), “Our Lady Vanity”
(1901), “The Apology of Ayliffe” (1904), and “Marcia”
(1907). The moral in her stories is generally not obtrusive
and the humour is genial.
Edward Bellamy.—Edward Bellamy (1850–98), a native
of Massachusetts, studied at Union College and in Germany,
and in 1871 was admitted to the bar, but devoted his life
to journalism and literature. After a year in the Sandwich
Islands, in 1878 he published his first novel, “A Nantucket
Idyl,” which was followed by “Dr. Heidenhoff’s Process”
(1880), in its own way a supremely effective romance, and
“Miss Ludington’s Sister, a Romance of Immortality”
(1884), none of them very successful with the public. His
best known work, “Looking Backward, or 2000–1887”
(1888), a Utopian romance, was unexpectedly received as a
gospel of socialism; it was widely read and translated into
many languages. Much inferior artistically was its sequel,
“Equality” (1897). In his best work Bellamy showed a
rare gift of romantic portraiture of average types “in the
village environment by which he interpreted the heart of
the American nation.”
Mrs. Burton N. Harrison.—Mrs. Burton Harrison (born
Constance Cary, at Vaucluse, Virginia, in 1846) has written
interesting and highly realistic novels of New York City
life, full of local colour and effective in background; and
some novels of Virginia life. Mr. Harrison, to whom she
was married in 1867, had been private secretary to President
Jefferson Davis of the Confederacy. The couple soon
removed to New York, which has since been their permanent
home. Mrs. Harrison’s first venture in literature was “A
Little Centennial Lady” (Scribner’s Monthly, July, 1876), a
sprightly historical sketch. Her novels dealing with Northern
society are “Golden Rod” (1878), “Helen Troy”
(1881), “The Anglomaniacs” (1890), “Sweet Bells out of
Tune” (1893), “A Bachelor Maid” (1894), “An Errant
Wooing” (1895), “Good Americans” (1897), “A Triple
Entanglement” (1897), “The Carcelline Emerald” (1899),
and “The Circle of a Century.” Perhaps the chief excellence
of these stories is the dialogue, in the management
of which Mrs. Harrison shows great skill. Although
the attitude of the author is that of a satirist, her laughter
at the foibles of society is not unkindly. Of Virginia she
has written “Crow’s Nest and Bellhaven Tales” (1892)
and “A Son of the Old Dominion” (1897), which deals
with pre-Revolutionary times. “A Daughter of the South”
(1892) is an exquisitely told story of New Orleans Creole
life thrown into the environment of Paris under the Second
Empire.
Charles Egbert Craddock.—Charles Egbert Craddock is
the pen name of Mary Noailles Murfree (born in 1850),
who contributed to The Atlantic for several years before it
was suspected that her stories were written by a woman.
She is the daughter of a once prominent lawyer of Murfreesboro,
Tennessee, who in 1883 removed to St. Louis.
Because of an accident, Miss Murfree was for several years
unable to walk. She was a diligent student and somehow
gained an intimate knowledge of the mountaineers of
Eastern Tennessee, who figure in all of her stories. Her first
story of any importance was “The Dancin’ Party at Harrison’s
Cove” (The Atlantic, May, 1878). It was largely
due to Mr. Aldrich’s urgent representations that her first
collection of stories, “In the Tennessee Mountains,” found
a publisher (1884). Of this a writer in The Nation said,
with justice: “We have not only one mountain valley, but
a whole country of hills—not a man and a woman here and
there, but the people of a whole district—not merely a day of
winter or of summer, but all the year—not lives, but life.”
This is substantially true of all her works, in which she
described prosaic and pathetic mountaineer life, being always
inspired, however, by the solitude and grandeur of the
Great Smoky Mountains. The list of her works is a long
one: “Where the Battle was Fought” (1884); “Down the
Ravine” (1885); “The Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains”
(1885), which recounts the history of “a Bunyan
worsted by his doubts”; “In the Clouds” (1887), a tragic
story likewise dealing with religious experiences; “The
Story of Keedon Bluffs” (1887); “The Despot of Broomsedge
Cove” (1889), the plot of which hinges on a mysterious
murder; “In the Stranger People’s Country”
(1891); “His Vanished Star” (1894); “The Mystery of
Witch-Face Mountain, and Other Stories” (1895); “The
Juggler” (1897); “The Young Mountaineers” (1897), short
stories; “The Champion” (1902); “A Spectre of Power”
(1903), which is laid in the year 1763 and is full of Indian
love; “The Frontiersmen” (1904); and “The Storm
Centre” (1905). Her later work suffers from repetition
of certain mannerisms and from excessive attention to
description; possibly also from too rapid production. On
the whole, however, in her ability to present the pathos
and tragedy of simple lives, Miss Murfree has a place of
honour among present-day writers.
Anna Katharine Green.—Through the publication, in
1878, of “The Leavenworth Case,” a clever detective story,
this author, then a girl of nineteen, was brought into
immediate notice on both sides of the Atlantic. “The
Leavenworth Case” was followed in successive years by
“A Strange Disappearance,” “The Sword of Damocles,”
“Hand and Ring,” “Behind Closed Doors,” “Marked
‘Personal,’” “That Affair Next Door,” “Lost Man’s Lane,”
“One of My Sons,” and other volumes. Some critics have
spoken of Miss Green (who is now Mrs. Charles Rohlfs) as
the “Wilkie Collins of America.” Nearly all of her books
have appeared in transatlantic editions. Mrs. Rohlfs is
also responsible for two volumes of poems, “The Defence
of the Bride” (1882) and “Risifi’s Daughter” (1886).
Frank R. Stockton.—The unique and kindly humour
of Mr. Stockton’s books attracted many readers. He was
born in Philadelphia in 1834 and was the son of William
S. Stockton, an ardent temperance reformer, abolitionist,
and Methodist layman who helped to establish the Methodist
Protestant Church. Educated in the schools of Philadelphia,
young Stockton first tried the study of medicine,
then worked as a wood-engraver for some years, devoting
his leisure time to prose and verse writing. In 1872, he
gave up wood-engraving to join the staff of the Philadelphia
Morning Post, and for the next ten years was
engaged in editorial and journalistic work on Scribner’s
Monthly, St. Nicholas, Hearth and Home, etc. From
1882 until his death in 1902, Mr. Stockton was independently
engaged in literary work, producing a large number
of delightfully humorous stories and novels. The tale
which made him famous was “Rudder Grange” (1879),
which recounts the experiences of a young married couple
who begin housekeeping in a castaway barge with an
absurd handmaid named Pomona. “The Lady or the
Tiger? and Other Stories” appeared in 1884; the title
story is the best known of Stockton’s works. Other
stories are “The Late Mrs. Null” (1886); “The Casting
Away of Mrs. Lecks and Mrs. Aleshine” (1886), a Crusoe-like
narrative, a sequel to which is “The Dusantes” (1888);
“The Hundredth Man” (1887); “The Merry Chanter”
(1890); “The Squirrel Inn” (1891); “Pomona’s Travels”
(1894), which narrates the wedding journey of the amusing
Pomona through England and Scotland; “The Adventures
of Captain Horn” (1895) and its sequel, “Mrs.
Cliff’s Yacht” (1896), which deal with adventures in quest
of the treasure of the Incas of Peru; “A Bicycle of Cathay”
(1900); and “Afield and Afloat” (1901), a collection of short
stories. While his style is remarkably simple and free
from mannerisms, “the art that conceals art, until it
can pass for nature itself,” his method of handling plot
and character is distinctively his own. His reasoning is
always logical, but he contrives that it shall bring about
the most amusing absurdities conceivable. If, as one writer
alleges, “his whimsicality played on the surface of men
and things,” one may reply that that is precisely where it
should play. His stories are none the less wholesome,
even though he rarely or never touches on the pathetic.
He was equally at home with the novel and the short
story; but probably it is by his short stories that he will
be longest known.
George Washington Cable.—George W. Cable (born in
1844) has immortalised the picturesque Creole life of
Louisiana in the nineteenth century. Born in New Orleans
of Virginian and New England stock, he had little school
training and early became a clerk. At nineteen he entered
the Confederate Army, serving till the close of the war.
Then he became in succession a civil engineer and an
accountant, contributing meanwhile to the New Orleans
Picayune. Seven of his stories were collected and published
in 1879 as “Old Creole Days.” “The Grandissimes”
(1880), which remains his best work, is a graphic and
faithful picture of New Orleans life of a century ago, embodying
romance and realism. “Madame Delphine”
(1881) is a touching story of a heroic old quadroon woman.
In “Dr. Sevier” (1884), Cable has studied in romantic
vein an exceptional type of character, though not with
marked success. “Bonaventure, a Prose Pastoral of Arcadian
Louisiana” (1888), a better book, is a chapter of
ethical history. “Strange True Stories of Louisiana” appeared
in 1889. Less interesting as fiction, but valuable
as a social study, is “John March, Southerner” (1894), a
story of Southern Reconstruction. “The Cavalier” (1901)
goes back to the Civil War, but subordinates interest in
the conflict to interest in character; while “Bylow Hill”
(1902) is a tragic story of insane jealousy, the scene
being New England. Since 1885, Mr. Cable has lived at
Northampton, Massachusetts. His later work, like that
of many another, has probably suffered from a natural
tendency to subordinate the artistic to the ethical.
But in the province which he has made his own, the pioneer
remains supreme. “Few recent American novelists,”
Professor Richardson justly remarks, “have shown so
uniform an average of attainment in thought and art,
or have thrown upon the quaintly real such new tints of
ideal light.”
Albion Winegar Tourgee.—Albion W. Tourgee (1838–1905),
an Ohioan, studied (1858–61) at the University of
Rochester, saw service in the Union Army, and afterward
became an editor and lawyer at Greensboro, North Carolina.
Most of his novels deal with phases of the Reconstruction
Period in the South. The best of these were: “A
Fool’s Errand, by One of the Fools” (1879), doubtless his
best known work, “Bricks Without Straw” (1880), and
“The Invisible Empire” (1883). “Figs and Thistles” (1879)
is a realistic story of early Ohio, in which the career of
President Garfield is introduced; “Pactolus Prime” (1890)
is the story of a Washington bootblack who has views on the
negro problem. A man of strong opinions, Judge Tourgee
could not write a novel which did not provoke thought;
and he was by no means devoid of the true story-teller’s
cunning.
The Eighties.—The decade of 1880–90 beheld the growth
of realism to vigorous maturity. Romances not a few
were written, to be sure, such as the “Ramona” (1884)
of Mrs. Helen Fiske Jackson (“H. H.,” 1831–85), in which
a romantic narrative clothes a strong plea for more humane
treatment of the Indians, and the two Italian romances
of William Waldorf Astor (born in 1848), “Valentino”
(1885) and “Sforza, a Story of Milan” (1889). But
these can hardly be called representative stories in a
decade which saw the best work of Howells, James, Craddock,
Fawcett, Bunner, Cable, and many others who wrote
of the life they had seen and were content to employ
present-day settings.
A few writers may here be grouped together for convenience.
To the decade in question belong the best
stories of George Parsons Lathrop (1851–98), the son-in-law
of Hawthorne: “In the Distance” (1882), “An Echo
of Passion” (1882), and “Would You Kill Him?” (1889),
which amounts to a plea against capital punishment; and
most of the fiction of Professor Arlo Bates (born in 1850):
“The Pagans” (1884) and its sequel “The Philistines”
(1889), “A Lad’s Love” (1887), though “The Puritans”
dates from 1898. Fine pictures of Italian life have been
drawn by Julia Constance Fletcher (“George Fleming,”
born in 1853) in “Vestigia” (1882) and “Andromeda”
(1885), the latter a story of high ideals and noble self-sacrifice.
Illinois life in the unattractive baldness of
pioneer days is portrayed by Major Joseph Kirkland
(1830–94) in “Zury, the Meanest Man in Spring County”
(1887) and “The McVeys, an Episode” (1888), in which
Lincoln again figures as in Eggleston’s “Graysons.”
Henry Adams and John Hay.—“Democracy” (1880),
an anonymous novel the authorship of which has hitherto
baffled the critics, and which the present writer can now
announce definitely to have been the work of the historian
Henry Adams, is a keen and incisive study of political
society in Washington, vividly portraying the corruption
which perhaps inevitably attends the growth of the people’s
power, but concerning which the author is all too pessimistic.
The bribery case which aids Mrs. Lee in unmasking
the real character of Silas P. Ratcliffe finds a
parallel in our contemporary history; and several of the
characters are thought to have been drawn from real life.
Happily, whatever may have been the state of affairs in
Washington in 1880, the story would be very far from a
true picture of the Washington of to-day. John Hay
(1838–1905), lawyer, journalist, diplomatist, and statesman,
was the author of a single novel, and his connection
with that has been, up to the appearance of the present
volume, only a conjecture. Prudence, however, obviously,
required that “The Bread-Winners” (1883) should appear
anonymously. As a politician, and as acting editor of
The Tribune, Mr. Hay did not then wish to avow himself
the author of a “frivolous novel”; besides, in the story
he had spoken rather plainly about strikes and labour
troubles. The story itself is well written, natural, and for
the most part true to life. Of the two love scenes, the
proposal of Maud Matchin is more convincing than is
Farnham’s to Alice Belding. The plot is well worked out;
our interest in the story for itself almost never flags.
Joel Chandler Harris.—Joel Chandler Harris (1848–1908)
used to describe himself as a journalist who became a literary
man by accident. Few accidents have been luckier.
He was born at Eatonton, Putnam County, Georgia.
At fourteen he began to set type in a country newspaper
office, contributing surreptitiously to its columns, setting
his articles from the case instead of committing them to
paper. Then he studied law and practised for a time at
Forsyth, Georgia, at the same time doing literary work.
In 1876, he joined the staff of the Atlanta Constitution,
of which he became editor in 1890. To this paper he contributed
the beast stories collected in 1881 under the title
of “Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings,” which have
ever since been immensely popular. Uncle Remus, a
shrewd and witty old negro, has an inexhaustible supply of
stories of Brer Rabbit, Brer Fox, and the other creatures;
these “the little boy” and the rest of us never tire of
hearing. The stories themselves, brought from Africa by
the negroes, are interesting variant forms of the great beast
epic, the classic example of which is “Reynard the Fox.”18
They celebrate the victory of craft over strength, of
brain over brawn. Two other series afterward appeared,
“Nights with Uncle Remus” (1883) and “Uncle Remus
and His Friends” (1892); and now there is an Uncle
Remus’ Magazine. Mr. Harris’ other books have helped to
complete an admirably faithful picture of Middle Georgia
rural life before, during, and after the Civil War. They
include “At Teague Poteet’s” (published in 1883 in The
Century), “Mingo, and Other Sketches in Black and White”
(1884), “Free Joe” (1887), “Balaam and His Master, and
Other Sketches and Stories” (1891), in which melancholy
and pathos predominate, “Aaron in the Wildwoods” (1897),
“Tales of the Home Folks in Peace and War” (1898),
“The Chronicles of Aunt Minervy Ann” (1899), “On the
Wing of Occasions” (1900). With the single exception of
“Gabriel Tolliver” (1902), which was not successful, Mr.
Harris’ constant work in journalism prevented him from
undertaking any long novel of plantation life; shorter
flights were better suited to his ability.
Maurice Thompson.—Maurice Thompson (1844–1901),
of Indiana, wrote several romances. The first three, dealing
with Southern life, “A Tallahassee Girl” (1882), “His
Second Campaign” (1883), and “At Love’s Extremes”
(1885), were not very successful. In “A Banker of Bankersville”
(1886) he succeeded better, giving a true and fresh
picture of life in Indiana. The novel by which he is best
known is “Alice of Old Vincennes” (1901), a stirring tale
of French Indiana and the War of Independence. “Sweetheart
Manette” (1901) gives an agreeable sketch of life
in a Creole town on the Gulf Coast.
Francis Marion Crawford.—“The most versatile and
various of modern novelists,” if Mr. Andrew Lang’s
opinion is to be accepted, is Mr. F. Marion Crawford. Not
only has he been prolific in a high degree, having written
over thirty novels, but his scenes and characters have a
wide range both in time and in place. He was born at
Bagni di Lucca, Italy, in 1854, the son of Thomas Crawford
the sculptor (who was of Scotch-Irish parentage) and
Louisa Ward Crawford, a sister of Mrs. Julia Ward Howe.
Prepared for college at St. Paul’s School, Concord, New
Hampshire, he entered Harvard, but remained there only
a short time. He spent the years 1870–74 mainly at
Trinity College, Cambridge, 1874–76 at Karlsruhe and
Heidelberg, and 1877–78 at the University of Rome, where
he studied Sanskrit. In 1879 he went to India and for
two years was connected with the Allahabad Indian
Herald. Returning to America, he spent two years in
New York and Boston, continuing his Sanskrit and Zend
studies under Professor Lanman of Harvard. No other
American novelist save Mr. James has had so cosmopolitan
a training. Relating a story of a Persian jewel
merchant’s adventure in India to his uncle, Samuel Ward,
he was advised to make a novel of it; the result was the
fascinating “Mr. Isaacs” (1882). Soon afterward Mr.
Crawford returned to Italy, where, near Sorrento, he has
since lived.
Mr. Crawford has a gift of rapid composition, sometimes
completing a novel in less than a month; but his
work as a whole is markedly free from slovenliness or
signs of undue haste. His stories can be only briefly described:
“Dr. Claudius” (1883), a highly romantic old-fashioned
love-story of a learned Heidelberg Ph.D.;
“To Leeward” (1883), a clever story of a wife’s infidelity
and of Roman society; “A Roman Singer” (1884), the
story of an Italian peasant boy who became a great tenor
and married a German countess; “An American Politician”
(1885), which deals, in the style of Henry James, and with
indifferent success, with the corruption in American
politics; “Zoroaster” (1885), a strong romance written also
in French, and brilliantly treating of the court of King
Darius and the prophet Daniel; “A Tale of a Lonely
Parish” (1886), a quiet and charming story of English
rural life; “Paul Patoff” (1887), “a tale and nothing
else,” the scene of which is laid in modern Constantinople;
“Marzio’s Crucifix” (1887, written also in French), which
is exceptional among his works in that it portrays Italian
lower- and middle-class life, and which is considered by
many his best work; “Saracinesca” (1887), “Sant’ Ilario”
(1889), “Don Orsino” (1892), and “Corleone” (1898),
four novels forming a sequence and presenting on a broad
canvas a remarkable picture of Roman society in the last
third of the nineteenth century; “Greifenstein” (1889),
a tragedy of the Black Forest, “a true story,” containing
accurate descriptions of German student life; “A Cigarette-Maker’s
Romance” (1890), a perfectly constructed romantic
and absorbing story of Russian and Polish people living in
Munich; “Khaled, a Romance of Arabia” (1891), of which
a genie is the hero; “The Witch of Prague” (1891), which
deals with hypnotism, a theme difficult to handle in fiction;
“The Three Fates” (1892), a realistic story of New York
society life and the best of Mr. Crawford’s American
studies; “Marion Darche” (1893), another story of New
York and of the devotion of a forger’s wife; “The Children
of the King” (1893), a melodramatic story of Calabrian
peasant life; “Pietro Ghisleri” (1893), in which both
romantic and realistic elements are found and which
pictures the gay society of Rome; “Katharine Lauderdale”
and its sequel “The Ralstons” (1894), chronicles
of a New York family; “Casa Braccio” (1895), a melodrama
of passion; “Taquisara” (1896), an unpleasant story of
the last representative of a great Saracen family and
a princess of Acireale; “Via Crucis” (1899), a historical
romance of the Second Crusade; “In the Palace of the
King” (1900), a tale of passion, the hero of which is Don
John of Austria, and the scene of which is the court of
Philip II. of Spain; “Marietta, a Maid of Venice” (1901),
a fifteenth-century story; “The Heart of Rome” (1903),
the motif of which is modern Rome’s treatment of its artistic
heritage; “Fair Margaret” (1905), published in London
as “Soprano, a Portrait,” recounting the fascinating
career of Margaret Donne, who becomes a successful opera
singer; “Whosoever Shall Offend” (1905), an effective
story of crime; and “A Lady of Rome” (1906), a study of
character moulded by strong religious belief.
Of this remarkable series, the most noteworthy, though
probably not the most popular, are those dealing with
Italian life. Mr. Crawford has been markedly successful
in his portraiture of Italian middle-class life, and only a
little less so in writing of the aristocracy. He excels in
representing agreeable, well-bred men and women; under
his touch they are natural, human, lifelike. He is fertile
in invention and lavish of characters and plot-incident,
using in quite a subordinate connection materials which
other novelists would reserve for the main plots of future
novels. In general, his plots are skilfully constructed;
occasionally, as in “Taquisara” (which is almost two
separate stories), he fails to weld his material insolubly
together. He has a remarkably bold and vigorous imagination,
and does not hesitate to introduce daring conceptions
and incidents; a romantic cast of mind is necessary if one
would fully enjoy him. A Roman Catholic himself, he has
had the amplest opportunity for studying the Catholic
temperament and point of view, which he interprets
admirably; it is natural that he should be weakest in portraying
the characters of unbelievers or heretics. He is
always dispassionate, calm, never losing himself in any
storm of passion. His fiction as a whole is remarkably
even, and it cannot be affirmed that his latest work shows
deterioration. For the skill with which he has utilised
vast stores of learning, for the effective though restrained
use of a virile and picturesque imagination, for “astonishing
literary tact” and breadth of view, Mr. Crawford has
not his equal among living American writers, and his
place is among the writers who only just miss the first
rank.
Frederic Jesup Stimson.—Frederic J. Stimson, a native
of Dedham, Massachusetts (born in 1855), has led a busy
life as lawyer, legal writer, Harvard professor, and novelist.
His earlier novels were published over the pen name of
“J. S. of Dale.” He has written, among others, “Guerndale”
(1882), “The Crime of Henry Vane” (1884), the plot
of which is unconvincing, “First Harvests” (1888), “Mrs.
Knollys and Other Stories” (1894), “Pirate Gold” (1896),
“King Noanett” (1896), carefully worked out, an exciting
story of mystery and adventure, “Jethro Bacon of Sandwich”
(1902), and “In Cure of Her Soul” (1906). Mr.
Stimson has not taken high rank as a novelist, but his stories
are generally interesting and the later ones may be commended
to those who are fond of good romances. “The
Weaker Sex” (The Atlantic, April, 1901) is a powerful short
story.
Henry Cuyler Bunner.—Henry C. Bunner (1855–96), for
many years the editor of Puck, wrote many short stories and
some good novels. He was a native of Oswego, New York,
and received his literary training in the school of journalism,
being connected first with The Sun and then with The
Arcadian, a literary weekly. “A Woman of Honor” (1883)
gave some promise in plot and incident. “Love in Old
Cloathes” (The Century, September, 1883) brought him
a reputation as a clever story-teller. His next novel, “The
Midge,” an ingenious story of the New York French
quarter, appeared in 1886; it was followed by “The Story of
a New York House” (1887), the somewhat melancholy history
of a house, typifying the family which occupies it.
“Natural Selection” appeared serially in Scribner’s (1888).
“Zadoc Pine, and Other Stories” (1891) are tales the
skilful construction of which shows how carefully Bunner
studied Boccaccio; while in “Short Sixes” (1891), his most
popular stories, he avowed his discipleship to Maupassant.
He was more successful in his short stories than in his novels.
Arthur Sherburne Hardy.—Arthur S. Hardy (born in
1847 at Andover, Mass.), in 1902–6 United States Minister
Plenipotentiary at Madrid, has had a varied career. Graduating
at West Point in 1869, he served for a year in the
Third United States Artillery, then became in succession
professor of civil engineering, first at Iowa College, later
at Dartmouth, professor of mathematics at Dartmouth,
editor of The Cosmopolitan, and United States Minister
to Persia, to Greece, Roumania, and Servia, and to Switzerland.
Well known for several mathematical publications,
he is the author of three novels, two of which are distinguished
for happy description, graceful diction, and profound
reflection rather than for individuality of plot or
able development of character. “But Yet a Woman”
(1883) is a story, somewhat deficient in local colour, of
the coming of love to a French maiden destined for the
convent. “The Wind of Destiny” (1886) is a story of a
weak woman and two men which, though it lacks dramatic
interest, offers some compensation in “the peculiarly noble
air which pervades it, the extreme beauty of many of its
passages, the revelation of life flashed occasionally as from
a diamond of light, and perhaps more than all for the very
subtle charm which hangs over the whole movement of
the story.”19 “Passe Rose” (1889) is a charming poetical
romance of Provence in the stirring times of Charles the
Great, and is decidedly Mr. Hardy’s most successful novel.
His latest story is “His Daughter First” (1903). With rare
sympathy, which he makes no attempt to conceal, he has
interpreted several diverse types, and his men and women
are alive.
Mary Hallock Foote.—Born at Milton-on-the-Hudson,
New York, in 1847, Mary Hallock early showed artistic
talent and at sixteen began to study design in Cooper
Institute, New York City. She was married in 1876 to
Arthur D. Foote, a California mining engineer, and travelled
extensively in the Southwest. Her varied experiences
have been utilised with marked literary skill in a series
of stories, the first of which was “The Led Horse Claim”
(1883), in which the story of Romeo and Juliet was repeated
in a California mining camp, though with a happy
ending. “The Chosen Valley” (1892) is a study in contrasts,
recounting an episode in the reclaiming by irrigation
of the waste lands of the West. In 1894 appeared
“Cœur d’Alene,” a love-story with a background in the
labour troubles. She has also written “John Bowdoin’s
Testimony” (1886), “The Last Assembly Ball” (1889),
“In Exile” (1894), and “The Cup of Trembling” (1895).
Her latest stories, “The Desert and the Sown” (1902),
a study of ideal self-sacrifice, and “A Touch of Sun, and
Other Stories” (1903), are hardly up to the level of her
earlier work, which, in its vivid representation of wild Western
life, entitles her to a place with Bret Harte.
Wolcott Balestier.—The promise of the too short life
of Charles Wolcott Balestier (1861–91) deserves record.
He was born at Rochester, New York, studied at Cornell
University and the University of Virginia, and became
first the editor of Tid-Bits and then the junior partner of
Heinemann & Balestier, publishers of The English Library,
an attempt to popularise British and American books on
the Continent. His interest in literature was intense, and
that he would have produced stories worth remembering,
doubtless in the vein of Mr. Howells, whom he greatly
admired, is evidenced by his few published works: “A
Patent Philtre” (1884), “A Fair Device” (1884), “A Victorious
Defeat” (1886), “A Common Story” (1891), “The
Average Woman” (1892), three stories, with a memorial
note by Henry James, and “Benefits Forgot” (1891), first
published serially in The Century. With Mr. Kipling, his
brother-in-law, he collaborated in “The Naulahka” (1892).
Robert Grant.—Born in Boston (1852), Robert Grant
graduated from Harvard in 1873 and became Ph.D. in
1876 and LL.B. in 1879. He has followed law and letters
side by side. In 1893 he was appointed Judge of the
Probate Court and the Court of Insolvency for Suffolk
County, Massachusetts. He has written, among other
things, “The Confessions of a Frivolous Girl” (1880), “An
Average Man” (1884), “The Knave of Hearts” (1886),
“The Reflections of a Married Man” (1892), “The Opinions
of a Philosopher” (1893), “The Bachelor’s Christmas,
and Other Stories” (1895), and “Unleavened Bread”
(1900), his best known and most powerful story. Mr.
Grant is a trenchant satirist of the foibles of certain
aspirants to social prominence. Selma, in “Unleavened
Bread,” is a veritable incarnation of ignoble social
ambition.
Henry Harland.—Henry Harland (1861–1905) was born
in St. Petersburg, Russia, and was educated at the College
of the City of New York, Harvard, Paris, and Rome. In
1886 he removed to London, where he became well known
as the editor of The Yellow Book. His earlier stories, including
“As It Was Written” (1885), a musician’s story,
“Mrs. Peixada” (1886), “The Land of Love” (1887), “My
Uncle Florimond” (1888), and others, were published as
by “Sidney Luska”; they circulated widely but were later
condemned by Harland himself as trashy. He later wrote
“Mea Culpa” (1893), “Comedies and Errors” (1898), “The
Cardinal’s Snuff-Box” (1900), which scored a decided success,
and “My Lady Paramount” (1902). His brilliance
and geniality are reflected in his works, but his vein was
not an extensive one.
Thomas Nelson Page.—One of the leading novelists
of the South to-day is Thomas Nelson Page. Born in 1853
at Oakland, Virginia, he studied (1869–72) at Washington
and Lee University and (1873–74) at the University of
Virginia. After practising law for some years, he turned,
like many other lawyers, to literature. “Marse Chan”
(The Century, April, 1884) met with great favour, and was
followed by other short stories, which were collected in
1887 under the title “In Ole Virginia.” The life in Virginia
before and during the war was further presented in
“Two Little Confederates” (1888), “On New Found River”
(1891), “Elsket, and Other Stories” (1891), “The Burial
of the Guns, and Other Stories” (1894), “Red Rock, a
Chronicle of Reconstruction” (1898), “The Old Gentleman
of the Black Stock” (1900), and “Gordon Keith”
(1903). Mr. Page has a strong affection for the Old South,
and vividly and powerfully delineates the life of the aristocracy
and the negroes. While sympathetic, his descriptions
of the system of slavery are free from bitterness and
are entitled to consideration as truthful and convincing.
Probably he has never surpassed his earlier short stories,
which exhibit most distinctively the charm of his style;
but “Red Rock,” at least, has demonstrated his ability
to write successfully also on a larger scale.
Thomas Allibone Janvier.—Thomas A. Janvier (born in
1849), a native of Philadelphia, became a New York journalist
and then a writer of stories. He has been especially
successful in depicting the Bohemian life of the metropolis.
His “Color Studies: Four Stories” (1885), reprinted from
The Century, narrate the struggles of a painter in New York;
though slight, they are realistic and agreeable. Having
made an exhaustive study of Mexico, he put his knowledge
to good use in “The Aztec Treasure House: a Romance
of Contemporaneous Antiquity” (1890), a successful romantic
novel dealing with a legend of buried treasure and
a story of wholesome flavour and sustained interest. He
has also written “Stories of Old New Spain” (1895) and
several others.
Some New England Women.—Here may be grouped
several gifted daughters of the Puritans, some of whom
deserve more space than can be given them. Mrs. Jane
Goodwin Austin (1831–94) wrote several readable historical
romances of colonial New England. Among her works
are “A Nameless Nobleman” (1881), “Dr. Le Baron and
His Daughters” (1890), sequel to the first, “Standish of
Standish” (1889), and “David Alden’s Daughter and Other
Stories” (1892).
Mrs. Rose Terry Cooke (1827–92), a native of Connecticut,
was known as a poet for many years before she
began to write short stories. She published the following
collections: “Happy Dodd” (1879), “Somebody’s Neighbours”
(1881), “Root-Bound” (1885), “The Sphinx’s Children”
(1886), and “Huckleberries Gathered from New
England Hills” (1891). “The Deacon’s Week” (1884)
may count as her best story. In all her stories the humours
of New England Yankee character are set forth with vigour
and relish. She wrote a single novel, “Steadfast, the Story
of a Saint and a Sinner” (1889), dealing with early New England
church life, and ranking much above the average novel.
Mrs. Annie Trumbull Slosson, likewise of Connecticut,
has shown skill in dialect stories, of which “Fishin’ Jimmy”
(1889), “Seven Dreamers” (1890), “The Heresy of Mehetabel
Clark” (1892), and “Dumb Foxglove, and Other
Stories” (1898) may be mentioned. The grotesque elements
of New England life especially appeal to her.
Mrs. Clara Louise Burnham (born at Newton, Massachusetts,
in 1854) has lived in Chicago since childhood,
but is fond of locating her scenes in New England. She
has written many stories, among them “No Gentleman”
(1881), “A Sane Lunatic” (1882), “Dearly Bought”
(1884), “Next Door” (1886), “Young Maids and Old”
(1888), “Miss Bagg’s Secretary” (1892), “Dr. Latimer”
(1893), “The Wise Woman” (1895), “A West Point Wooing”
(1899), and “The Right Princess” (1902).
Alice Brown (born in New Hampshire in 1857), after
teaching school for several years, devoted herself to literature,
and is now a member of the staff of The Youth’s
Companion. She has written “Fools of Nature” (1887),
“Meadow-Grass” (1895), short tales of New England
village life, “The Day of His Youth” (1897), a story of
disillusionment, “Tiverton Tales” (1899), “King’s End”
(1901), “Margaret Warrener” (1901), “The Mannerings”
(1903), and “High Noon” (1904). Her stories are skilfully
constructed, and she writes with commendable restraint
and dignity.
Mary E. Wilkins Freeman.—The more sombre and less
attractive aspects of New England village and country
life have been presented with great success in the numerous
stories of Mary E. Wilkins (since 1902 Mrs. Charles M.
Freeman). Born at Randolph, Massachusetts, in 1862,
she was educated at Mt. Holyoke Seminary, South Hadley,
Mass. Her stories include “The Adventures of Ann”
(1886), “A Humble Romance” (1887), “A New England
Nun, and Other Stories” (1891), “Jane Field” (1892),
her first novel, “Pembroke” (1894), generally considered
her greatest work, and distinguished for beauty of style
and truthful and delicate character-drawing, “Madelon”
(1896), “Jerome, a Poor Man” (1897), by some ranked
higher than “Pembroke” in that it has a stronger central
interest, “Silence and Other Stories” (1898), which includes
some of her best work, especially “Evelina’s Garden,”
one of her most artistic tales, “The Love of Parson
Lord” (1900), “The Heart’s Highway” (1900), a historical
romance of Virginia in 1682, “The Portion of Labour”
(1901), “Understudies” (1901), “Six Trees” (1903),
“The Wind in the Rose Bush” (1903), “The Givers,”
eight stories (1904), and several magazine stories. Her
place is easily in the first rank of those who have delineated
New England life.
Harold Frederic.—Harold Frederic (1856–98) wrote a number
of realistic stories, chiefly of country life in New York.
A native of Utica, in that State, he began his career as
proof-reader; at twenty-six he was editor of the Albany
Evening Journal, and in 1884 he took charge of the foreign
bureau of the New York Times, with headquarters in London.
“Seth’s Brother’s Wife” (1887), first published serially
in Scribner’s, minutely describes the prosaic round of
farming life and country journalism and elections. “The
Lawton Girl” (1890) gives us the turmoil of a small manufacturing
town. “In the Valley” (1890) is a Mohawk
Dutchman’s story of the Revolutionary struggle. “The
Copperhead, and Other Stories of the North” (1893) and
“Marséna, and Other Stories” (1894) are collections of
Civil War stories, vigorous and daring. His best stories
are “The Damnation of Theron Ware” (1896, published
in England as “Illumination”), an absorbing study of the
intellectual career of an earnest but narrow young Methodist
minister and of the struggle of two religious ideals in
his life, and “The Market-Place” (1899), a thoroughgoing
study of the London Stock Exchange. His untimely death
cut short a career of notable achievement and great promise.
Archibald Clavering Gunter.—Archibald Clavering Gunter
(1847–1907), a native of Liverpool who became a California
mining and civil engineer, chemist, and stock-broker, at
forty began to write novels which violated most of the
literary canons, but which in plot and incident were of
absorbing interest. It was his avowed rule to make something
happen in every five hundred words. This explains
why a million copies of his first novel, “Mr. Barnes of New
York” (1887), have been sold. He wrote thirty-nine novels
in all, the best of which, in addition to his first, are “Mr.
Potter of Texas” (1888), “That Frenchman” (1889),
“Jack Curzon” (1899), and “A Manufacturer’s Daughter”
(1901). He also became well known as a playwright.
Octave Thanet.—Octave Thanet is the well known pen
name of Alice French (born at Andover, Massachusetts, in
1850), who has achieved enviable success in her short stories
of life in Iowa and Arkansas, a field in which she has few
rivals. These stories include “Knitters in the Sun” (1887),
“Expiation” (1890), vigorous, truly coloured, and accurate
in details, “Stories of a Western Town” (1893), Iowa
sketches, “The Missionary Sheriff” (1897), and “The
Heart of Toil” (1898), full of the pathos of an unequal
struggle with economic forces. Miss French writes sympathetically,
with her eyes on the men and women who
furnish her with characters.
Margaret Deland.—One of the most popular of living
novelists, and justly so, is Mrs. Margaret Deland. Born
Margaretta Campbell, in 1857, in Manchester, now a part
of Allegheny, Pennsylvania, then a village “of dignified
houses, pleasant gardens, and meadows sloping to a picturesque
river,” she was left an orphan at three and was
cared for by an aunt. At sixteen, like Mrs. Foote, she
entered a class in drawing and design in Cooper Institute,
New York; she graduated at the head of her class, and
won an appointment as instructor in design in the Girls’
Normal College, a post which she filled till 1880. Then
she was married to Mr. Lorin F. Deland and went to
Boston. Eight years later appeared her first novel, “John
Ward, Preacher.” It is the story of the conflict of rigid
Calvinism and modern liberalism, and it has been compared
with Mrs. Ward’s “Robert Elsmere.” Two love-stories,
one of which recalls Mrs. Gaskell’s “Cranford,”
relieve the tragic gloom of the narrative. Ashurst is an
idealised Manchester. In “Sidney” (1890) the author
studies the question of the value of mortal sexual love;
the problems of faith and doubt also recur. “The Story
of a Child” (1892) delineates an uncontrolled imagination.
“Mr. Tommy Dove, and Other Stories” (1893) is a collection
including typical humour and pathos. “Philip and
His Wife” (1894) has to do with an unhappy marriage.
Her recent stories are “The Wisdom of Fools” (1898),
“Old Chester Tales” (1899), “Dr. Lavendar’s People”
(1904), and “The Awakening of Helena Richie” (1906).
Big-hearted, shrewd Dr. Lavendar, who figures in her last
two stories, is one of the most lovable characters in American
fiction; and her latest books show a distinctly stronger
grasp of life and greater narrative power.
Mrs. Mary Hartwell Catherwood.—Mary Hartwell Catherwood
(1847–1902) made a name for herself with some very
successful historical romances of the French and Indian
Wars and French Canadian and early Illinois life. “The
Romance of Dollard” (1889), “The Lady of Fort St. John”
(1891), “The White Islander” (1893), and “The Chase of
Saint Castin, and Other Stories” (1894) are spirited narratives
of battle and siege, of intrigue and jealousy, in which
bold and noble characters play their parts well, and which
contain vivid descriptions of scenery—in sunshine and
storm. Of the early Middle West she wrote “Old Kaskaskia”
(1893), “The Spirit of an Illinois Town” (1897),
“Little Renault” (1897), “Spanish Peggy” (1899), “The
Queen of the Swamp, and Other Plain Americans” (1899),
and “Lazarre” (1901).
Rowland E. Robinson.—The dialect and manners of
Vermont are reproduced with remarkable fidelity by Rowland
E. Robinson (1833–1900) in “Sam Lovel’s Camps”
(1889), “Danvis Folks” (1894), and “Uncle ’Lisha’s Shop”
(1897). These stories are among our most valuable transcripts
of the life of Northern New England.
Francis Hopkinson Smith.—F. Hopkinson Smith (born
in Baltimore, 1838) had a varied career before he essayed
the novel, at fifty-three. He began life as a clerk in some
iron works; then, becoming an engineer and contractor, he
took to building sea-walls and lighthouses, and afterwards
became well known as an artist. In “Colonel Carter of
Cartersville” (1891) he drew an alluring picture of the old
régime in the South. “A Gentleman Vagabond, and Some
Others” (1895) are varied character stories. “Tom
Grogan” (1896) and “Caleb West, Master Diver” (1898)
draw upon Mr. Smith’s engineering experiences. He
has also written “The Other Fellow” (1899), “The Fortunes
of Oliver Horn” (1902), “The Under Dog” (1903),
“Colonel Carter’s Christmas” (1904), “At Close Range”
(1905), and “The Wood Fire in No. 3” (1905). If some
of his persons are conventional and indistinct, others stand
out as skilfully characterised and permanent figures in his
literary gallery.
James Lane Allen.—James Lane Allen has done for
Kentucky what Mr. Page has done for Old Virginia and
Miss Murfree for the Tennessee mountaineers. A native
of Kentucky (born in 1849), he graduated from Transylvania
University, at Lexington, Kentucky, and taught in
schools and colleges for some years. Since 1884, however,
he has devoted himself to literary work. Besides writing
much for magazines he has published “Flute and Violin,
and Other Kentucky Tales and Romances” (1891), “The
Blue Grass Region, and Other Sketches” (1892), “John
Gray” (1893), rewritten and enlarged into “The Choir
Invisible” (1897), “A Kentucky Cardinal” (1894) and its
sequel “Aftermath” (1895), “Summer in Arcady” (1896),
“The Reign of Law” (1900), published in England as “The
Increasing Purpose,” and “The Mettle of the Pasture”
(1903). A tendency toward didacticism and a lack of
spontaneity mar the latest works of Mr. Allen; he is at his
best in his earlier works, in which he revels in the beauty
of the Blue Grass region and writes in the spirit of a
disciple of Thoreau and Audubon. The romanticist in him
was gradually transformed into the objective realist. Yet
in all his work there are elements of strength and poetic
beauty. By a curious coincidence another Kentucky
James Lane Allen (born in 1848) a graduate of Bethany
College, in which the first Mr. Allen taught, and now a
Chicago lawyer, has also written numerous magazine
sketches and stories.
Hamlin Garland.—The grim, dull life of the hard-worked
farmer in the Middle West has been effectively
recorded by Hamlin Garland. A native of La Crosse,
Wisconsin (born in 1860), Mr. Garland saw at close range
the life he was to describe, in Iowa, Illinois, and Dakota.
His first book was a collection of six realistic stories,
“Main-Travelled Roads” (1891), which gave him a reputation,
and he has continued to write in similar vein,
publishing “Prairie Folks” (1892), “A Little Norsk, or
Ol’ Pap’s Flaxen” (1892), “A Spoil of Office” (1892),
“Rose of Dutcher’s Coolly” (1895), his best novel, “The
Eagle’s Heart” (1900), “Her Mountain Lover” (1901),
and “Money Magic” (1907). Mr. Garland has for the
most part wisely obeyed his own dictum, to write only of
what one knows; and his later work shows a notable increase
in vigour and grasp of the story-teller’s art.
Henry Blake Fuller.—Henry B. Fuller (born in Chicago,
1857) was intended for a mercantile career, but preferred
literature. “The Chevalier of Pensieri-Vani” (1890), first
published anonymously, was praised by Lowell and Norton.
In 1892 appeared “The Chatelaine of La Trinité.”
In “The Cliff-Dwellers” (1893), he turned from the romantic
to a sure realism in a story of Chicago life. “With the
Procession” followed in 1895, being in similar vein. These
stories show skill in individualisation, intense earnestness,
facility, and ability to make an old theme interesting. “His
picture,” says Mr. Whibley, “is never overcharged; his
draughtsmanship is always sincere.”
Stephen Crane and Frank Norris.—Stephen Crane (1870–1900),
born in Newark, New Jersey, and educated at
Lafayette College and Syracuse University, first entered
journalism and won some distinction as a war correspondent
of the New York Journal. His first story, dealing with
slum life, was “Maggie, a Girl of the Streets” (1891),
which, as Mr. Howells thinks, remains his best work.
“The Red Badge of Courage” (1895), a thoroughly realistic
study of the mind of a soldier in action at the battle of
Chancellorsville, was altogether a remarkable achievement;
it took the public by storm and brought the author a
wide reputation, which was not sustained by his later work.
He also wrote “George’s Mother” (1896), another slum
story, “The Little Regiment” (1896), “Active Service”
(1899), “The Monster, and Other Stories” (1899); and two
collections of stories, “Wounds in the Rain” and “Whilomville
Stories” (1900), tales of child life, which were published
posthumously. His impressionism, though at times
too little restrained, was often effective, and his highly
coloured stories have found many admiring readers.
In the death of Frank Norris (1870–1902), another
promising career was cut short. Norris managed to see
a good deal of life. Born in Chicago, he studied art in
Paris (1887–89) and literature at the University of California
and Harvard. Like Crane he became a journalist.
At the time of the Jameson Raid in South Africa he was
the South African correspondent for a San Francisco
paper and in 1898 did similar work in Cuba. He began
publishing fiction as early as 1891 (“Yberville”), but it
was not till 1899 that he became well known for “McTeague.”
His later stories were thoroughly realistic. With
“The Octopus” (1901) he began a trilogy which should
form “an epic of the wheat.” In the first novel is described
the growth of the wheat and the oppressive railroad
monopoly encountered in its transportation. “The Pit”
(1903) deals with the battles of the wheat speculators.
“The Wolf,” unfinished, was to have dealt with the struggle
for bread in a European famine-stricken community.
“The story of the wheat was for him,” as Mr. Howells puts
it, “the allegory of the industrial and financial America
which is the real America.” The largeness of the scope
of his undertaking and the robust courage and confidence
with which he attacked it deserve our admiration. What
he accomplished shows that he would have been equal to
his task.
Mrs. Ruth McEnery Stuart.—Mrs. Stuart has written
highly amusing stories of negro life in the South. Born
in the parish of Avoyelles, Louisiana, she was married in
1879 to Alfred O. Stuart, a cotton planter. Since 1885 she
has lived in New York. Her stories include “The Golden
Wedding, and Other Tales” (1893), “Carlotta’s Intended”
(1894), “The Story of Babette” (1894), “Moriah’s Mourning”
(1898), “Sonny” (1896), “Holly and Pizen” (1899),
“The Woman’s Exchange” (1899), and “River’s Children”
(1905). Writing in a natural and witty style, she has
brought out with great skill the humour and pathos of the
old plantation. She is a favourite contributor to the
magazines.
Paul Leicester Ford.—Paul Leicester Ford (1865–1902),
whose most serious and permanently valuable work was
done in the field of American history, was the author of
some notable works of fiction. “The Honourable Peter
Sterling and What People Thought of Him” (1894) introduces
an ideally noble statesman whose integrity triumphs
over the sordid corruption of politics. Some points in the
book are said to have been suggested by the career of
President Cleveland. “Janice Meredith” (1899) is a sentimental
romance of the Revolutionary War, in which a
fascinating love-story is projected on an accurate historical
background. Of less importance, but still most readable,
are “The Great K. & A. Train Robbery” (1897) and “The
Story of an Untold Love” (1897).
Edward Noyes Westcott.—Edward N. Westcott (1847–98),
a banker of Syracuse, New York, was the author of a
single book, which he was unable to get published in his
lifetime, but which gave him posthumous fame. The hero
of “David Harum” (1898) is a shrewd Central New York
Yankee, a son of the soil who with characteristic energy
rose to be a banker and successful man of affairs, and who
retained all his amusing traits, including a weakness for
trading horses—“an optimist who has wrung from the
harsh conditions of life all that it can yield.” The other
characters are rather wooden, but the delineation of David
Harum is strong, vital, and hence lasting. The plot is
weak, but the story is true to the phases of life it
depicts.
The Younger Generation.—Space forbids more than a
mention of some of the other living writers. Owen Wister
(born in Philadelphia, 1860) has become well known
through “The Dragon of Wantley: His Tail” (1892) and
“The Virginian” (1902), in which latter we have an exciting
story of a Wyoming cowboy. The much-travelled
Richard Harding Davis (also a Philadelphian, born in
1864) has written racy and characteristically humorous
stories of New York club and street life in “Gallegher,
and Other Stories” (1891), “Van Bibber, and Others”
(1892), and “Episodes in Van Bibber’s Life” (1899). Of
his other stories the best known are “The Princess Aline”
(1895), “Soldiers of Fortune” (1897), in which a South
American revolution figures prominently, “In the Fog”
(1901), a clever London tale, “Ranson’s Folly” (1902),
and “The Bar Sinister” (1904). Robert W. Chambers
(born in Brooklyn, 1865) is well known both as an artist
and a romancer, a weaver of strange and exciting plots.
Among his best books are “The Red Republic” (1894),
“A King and a Few Dukes” (1894), “The Haunts of Men”
(1898), stories of American or Canadian life, “The Cambric
Mask” (1899), “A Gay Conspiracy” (1900), which shows
the influence of Anthony Hope’s “Prisoner of Zenda,”
“Cardigan” (1901), and “Iole” (1905). Newton Booth Tarkington
(born in 1869 in Indianapolis, a graduate of Princeton)
won fame in 1899 with “The Gentleman from Indiana”
and has followed this with “Monsieur Beaucaire” (1900),
a romance laid in Bath in the eighteenth century, “The
Two Vanrevels” (1902), “Cherry” (1903), “In the Arena”
(1905), “The Conquest of Canaan” (1905), and “The
Beautiful Lady” (1905). His later work shows a gain in
power. Winston Churchill (born in 1871), a graduate
of the Naval Academy at Annapolis, and now a resident
of New Hampshire, published “The Celebrity” in 1898.
“Richard Carvel” (1899) made him famous; it is a Revolutionary
story of Maryland and London. He has since
written “The Crisis” (1901), a substantial story of the
Civil War, “Mr. Keegan’s Elopement” (1903), “The
Crossing” (1904), and “Coniston” (1906), a New England
story of love and politics. The mountaineer life of Kentucky
furnishes John Fox, Jr., with the materials for his
well told stories, “A Cumberland Vendetta, and Other
Stories” (1896), “The Kentuckians” (1897), “The Little
Shepherd of Kingdom Come” (1903), and “A Knight of
the Cumberland” (1906).
Mrs. Gertrude Franklin Atherton (born in San Francisco,
1857) has made a wide reputation with her stories
of early California life; some critics declare, however, that
they do not accurately represent the California of old
days. The first of them was “The Doomswoman” (1892).
Other novels are “A Whirl Asunder” (1895), “Patience
Sparhawk and Her Times” (1897), “The Californians”
(1898), “American Wives and English Husbands” (1898),
and “The Conqueror” (1902), which is based on the life
of Alexander Hamilton. Mrs. Kate Douglas Wiggin (born
in Philadelphia in 1857 and married to Samuel B. Wiggin
in 1880) has written charming juvenile stories, “The Birds’
Christmas Carol” (1888), “The Story of Patsy” (1889), and
“Timothy’s Quest” (1890), besides some stories of travel,
such as “A Cathedral Courtship” (1893) and “Penelope’s
Progress” (1898). Her husband died in 1889, and in
1895 she was married to George C. Riggs.
Irving Bacheller (born in 1859), a New York journalist,
attracted attention by his stories, “The Master of Silence”
(1890) and “The Still House of O’Darrow” (1894). His
“Eben Holden” (1900), a novel of northern New York,
was very successful. He has since written “Darrel of the
Blessed Isles” (1903) and “Vergilius” (1904). Robert
Herrick (born in 1868), a Harvard graduate and now a
Chicago University professor, has written searching studies
of American society in “The Gospel of Freedom” (1898),
“The Web of Life” (1900), “The Real World” (1901),
and “The Common Lot” (1904). He is something of a
pessimist, but not unwholesome.
Edith Wharton (born in New York in 1862) began her
literary career with short stories of the metropolitan society
with which she had been familiar from birth: “The Greater
Inclination” (1899), eight stories, “A Gift from the Grave”
(1900), and “Crucial Instances” (1901). In “The Valley
of Decision” (1902), “Sanctuary” (1903), and “The
House of Mirth” (1905), she deals with scenes and characters
of deep human interest but not easily managed; and
she acquits herself with credit. Lily Bart is distinctly
individualised and is worthy to be compared with Becky
Sharp and Gwendolen Harleth.
Upton Sinclair (born in Baltimore, 1878), after writing
a number of novels, produced in “Manassas” (1904) a
thrilling romantic novel of the years just preceding the
Civil War. “The Jungle” (1906), though much better
known, is artistically far inferior to it. The creed of
socialism is professed by both Mr. Sinclair and Jack London
(born in San Francisco in 1876). London left the
University of California to go to the Klondike, afterward
went to Japan, and has since tramped through America
and Canada for sociological study. In his best works,
“The Son of the Wolf” (1900), “The Call of the Wild”
(1903), and “The Sea Wolf” (1904), he has chosen to
depict the tragedies of the animal world and the elemental
passions in man.
Three Virginia women novelists have won distinction
in recent years.
Molly Elliot Seawell (born in Gloucester County, Virginia,
in 1860), a resident of Washington, began writing
fiction in 1886. Among her stories are “Throckmorton”
(1890), “Little Jarvis” (1890), a Youth’s Companion prize
story, “Midshipman Paulding” (1891), “The Sprightly
Romance of Marsac” (1896), a lively story that won a
New York Herald prize of $3000, “The Lively Adventures
of Gavin Hamilton” (1899), “The House of Egremont”
(1901), “Children of Destiny” (1903), and “The Great
Scoop” (1905). Her plots are sometimes slight and inconsequential,
and her narrative lacks reserve; but she
shows skill in the management of dialogue, and is a favourite
writer.
Ellen Glasgow (born in Richmond in 1874) has found
many readers with her “Descendant” (1897), “Phases of
an Inferior Planet” (1898), “The Voice of the People”
(1900), “The Battle-Ground” (1902), and “The Deliverance”
(1904). She does not manage to escape from improbabilities,
and some of her plots are desultory; yet on
the whole her work maintains a high average.
Mary Johnston (born at Buchanan, Virginia, in 1870)
has realised the possibilities of early Virginia history in
her successful romances, “Prisoners of Hope” (1898),
published in England as “The Old Dominion,” “To Have
and to Hold” (1900), in England called “By Order of the
Company,” “Audrey” (1902), and “Sir Mortimer” (1904).
She has a sure touch, and her narrative moves rapidly.
But we have already exceeded the limits of our space.
The work of Margaret Sherwood, William A. White, Brand
Whitlock, Will Payne, Meredith Nicholson, George Barr
McCutcheon, Jesse Lynch Williams, David Graham Phillips,
Mary R. Shipman Andrews, James B. Connolly, Nelson
Lloyd, George Cary Eggleston, William N. Harben, Justus
Miles Forman, and many others, excellent as much of it
is, can only be referred to summarily. The great number
of promising writers of to-day is a matter of congratulation.
Retrospect and Conclusion.—We have thus traced the
American novel from its first crude beginnings through a
little more than a century of healthy and constant growth.
It took the American novelist some three or four decades
to learn to stand on his own feet; since he has learned to
walk he has required very little assistance from abroad.
More and more the possibilities of American life have attracted
the writers of prose fiction. In the earlier decades
of the last century, as was the case in Europe, the romance
was the only fiction in demand; and the romance has
ever been the favourite of many readers who maintain that
the chief function of literature is to give reality through
the alembic of the imagination. Perhaps the creed of
romanticism has never been better put than by Mr. Julian
Hawthorne:
The value of fiction lies in the fact that it can give us what actual
existence cannot; that it can resume in a chapter the conclusions
of a lifetime; that it can omit the trivial, the vague, the redundant,
and select the significant, the forcible, and the characteristic; that
it can satisfy expectation, expose error, and vindicate human
nature. Life, as we experience it, is too vast, its relations are too
complicated, its orbit too comprehensive, ever to give us the impression
of individual completeness and justice; but the intuition
of these things, though denied to sense, is granted to faith, and
we are authorised to embody that interior conviction in romance.... And stories of imagination are truer than transcripts of
fact, because they include or postulate these, and give a picture
not only of the earth beneath our feet, but of the sky above us, of
the hope and freshness of the morning, of the mystery and magic
of the night. They draw the complete circle, instead of mistrustfully
confining themselves to the lower arc.20
Notwithstanding the attractiveness of this artistic creed,
the ranks of the out-and-out romancers have gradually
thinned, as we have seen. Professor Boyesen believed that
Bret Harte was the last of these. Slowly the realists, led
by Howells and James, have gained ground, and for the
last twenty years have almost steadily held the field. Of
late, indeed, there have been some signs of a reaction; but
it has as yet taken no very pronounced form.
A necessary concomitant of this tendency toward realism
has been an increase in the number of “novels of the
soil.” Writers have drawn what they knew best: Miss
Woolson, the Lake region; Cable, Creole New Orleans;
Ella Higginson and Emma Wolf, the Pacific coast; Allen,
Kentucky; Miss Murfree, Tennessee; Fawcett and Bunner,
New York; Henry B. Fuller and Miss Wyatt, Chicago;
Miss Jewett and Mrs. Wilkins Freeman, New England.
One reason why the “great American novel” has not yet
been written is the very bigness of the country. No great
personality has yet risen who can combine all the elements
of our vast modern life into one harmonious structure.
Meanwhile we have had most of the various sections of
our country described in fiction by skilful hands. Types
of a life that is passing away have been caught and preserved
in a fiction which, though assuredly not immortal,
is destined, we believe, to a long life.
Our critics have justly complained, however, of the
limited range of our novelists. They are timid. They are
content to paint a small canvas. They do not rise to great
conceptions. They do not probe life to its depths; neither
do they rise to the height of all its grandeur. This is, of
course, only another way of saying that we have no supremely
great novelists. But doubtless the mediocrity of
our fiction is partly due to the disastrous effect of commercialism
and professionalism on the novelist’s trade;
though Mr. Whibley’s account of this (Blackwood’s, March,
1908) is exaggerated. Certainly our writers must be less
eager for immediate and substantial rewards. Poeta nascitur,
non fit; too many “made” writers are pouring out
fiction to-day.
Our fiction possesses one characteristic which has often
been commented upon—a general excellence of moral
atmosphere. There is little American fiction that must
be kept from the curious Young Person. Some critics
allege that the obligation to write what anyone may be
permitted to read has prevented American novelists from
discussing those darker problems of sex-relations which
confront us, and which should find expression in a literature
adequately reflecting our intellectual and moral life;
that missing any rigorous attack on these problems they
find our fiction tame, insipid, wanting in vitality. But
such an opinion carries with it its own condemnation. If
our fiction lacks vitality, it is probably from other causes;
at any rate Americans are generally content to leave matters
of moral pathology to their moral surgeons, whose
diagnoses and discussions are not expected to circulate
promiscuously; and it is not likely that our novelists will
consent to defile their pages for the sake of securing comprehensiveness
in their pictures of life.
The short story has been brought by American writers
to a high degree of perfection. Irving was its American
father; and in the hands of Hawthorne, Poe, Fitz-James
O’Brien, Edward Everett Hale, Miss Woolson, Brander
Matthews, Miss Jewett, Stockton, Page, Mark Twain, Mrs.
Freeman, and many others, it has become a highly flexible
instrument, capable of subtle adaptations. The limitations
of range and environment have made for great delicacy
and precision in the minute portraits and the genres to be
found in large numbers throughout our short stories.
Yet notwithstanding the increase in the number and
the advance in quality of our short stories, the novel continues
as popular as ever. The immense vogue of the
novel in America has been commented upon many times.
The “best sellers” are almost always novels; and so many
novels of more than average excellence are produced
every year that many really superior stories do not get the
immediate hearing, at least, which they deserve. That
this demand for novels will continue unabated for some
time is altogether likely. That another form of literature
will soon take its place is quite improbable.
Apparently we have no great living poets; for various
reasons we have no dramatists of note; of novelists who
are at least possibilities, we have several.
What will be the type of the American novel of the
future? Probably it is rash to make any prediction; but
one may venture to believe that the prevailing attitude of
our future novelists will be that of a sane and optimistic
realism. The morbid books like “The Jungle” do not
wear well; and, while such books may have their use in
promoting needed reforms, they do not constitute additions
to literature and can, therefore, secure no permanent
place. The pleasant paths of romance will always tempt
bold and imaginative writers; but they will be more than
ever restrained by the demand of enlightened readers that
they shall not wander far from the probable, and shall
present, clear and undistorted, the best there is in the
actual present. That there are immense possibilities in
the varied and complex life of to-day, few will doubt; that
the great artists are to appear who will make the most of
these opportunities we may assume with confidence.
English Influence on American Poetry.—If we accept
the popular belief, and identify poets with makers of verse,
it must be allowed that American poetry at its best—in
the nineteenth century—is in a peculiar sense unoriginal
and derivative. To be derivative, to have a traceable
pedigree, may, indeed, be no disadvantage, either for a
national or an individual genius. In their way, all modern
literatures are derivative and unoriginal; not merely influenced
by each other, but ultimately dependent for the
sources of their inspiration upon the basal civilisations of
Palestine and Greece. “We are all Greeks,” said Shelley.
Milton might have said, “We are all Hebrews.” And
our best American poets might have added, “We are all
Englishmen.” Particular scenes on this continent, and the
vast and ever growing extent of our territory, have both
left their impress on our poets during the last five generations;
they have touched the poetry of ten or twelve
decades here and there with the undeniable stamp of
reality, and given it now and then a largeness of range
and freedom of atmosphere very proper to a nation whose
sense of geography has been so elastic. Yet one can
hardly say that our natural scenery has ever been really
incarnate in our literature as a whole, or that a pervasive
national spirit, a spirit at once large and precise, has
entered fundamentally into our verse. What has been
most effectual in our literature has been closely imitative,
has followed at a little distance, yet step for step, the development
of the English literature from which it sprang.
This continuous imitation, now more superficial, now
more indirect and elusive, has been the mainspring of our
poetry even more than our prose, during the century just
gone by.
American poetry, it is true, has probably been more
plastic and mobile in its outer form than American prose,
has been less steadily patterned after those literary standards
in England which were bequeathed by the eighteenth
century. The prose style of Irving betrays its descent
from the essays of Addison; the style of Franklin was
developed through conscious and painstaking emulation
of the same models. Even fairly late in the eighteen
hundreds, when perhaps only a trained ear can detect
the lingering echoes of Pope and his school in our verse,
the “Autocrat” of Wendell Holmes still retains an accent
and a flavour from eighteenth-century, Ciceronian eloquence.
No doubt the age of Pope and Johnson survived
by many vestiges much longer in English prose than in
English verse, for its habits of thought were more or less
suited to argument and exposition in every time. Yet in
the history of American letters it is easier to find parallels
to Wordsworth and Shelley than to duplicate the prose
rhapsodies—characteristic in nineteenth-century Europe—of
De Quincey and Ruskin. To the transition in English
literature that was marked by the appearance of “Lyrical
Ballads” in 1798 our poetry was, in the main, more
quickly responsive than our prose. None the less our
prose, more conservative though it has been, less changeful
in its manner of expression, has struck its roots far
more deeply into our national being; and our verse, like
the other fine arts, is still an exotic.
For our lack of a national art, a national poetry, a
superficial reason is often assigned: in the conditions of a
new country, in the struggle for existence, in the development
of agriculture and commerce, in the assimilation of
foreign races, there has been very little time for the nourishment
of letters, very little of that leisure which the Greeks
called scholé, and which is indispensable for a productive
scholarship and for the flourishing of imagination. Yet
we have had, or have taken, sufficient leisure to write and
publish an immense amount of verse, judged merely by its
bulk. Scarcely an American author can be mentioned
in the nineteenth century that did not try his hand at
metrical composition. The truth is, rather, that we have
seldom approached the art of poetry with enough seriousness;
that, having rebelled against the Puritan’s unkindly
conception of life, we have nevertheless to some extent acquiesced
in his belittling estimate of imaginative art;
that we have failed to recognise in the poet a necessary
servant of the commonwealth, a leader worthy of a high
and severe training. Our versifiers have rushed into print
before they were ripe, and they have praised each other’s
work too easily; while the standards set by the public taste
have been readily met when the rhymers succeeded in
being “patriotic.” Real patriotism demands such an
admission.
Not that our poets have been wholly without a philosophy
of criticism; though it is significant that the most
subtle and sympathetic understanding of the poetic
temperament, of its function as well as its perils, is to be
found, not in the writings of any maker of verses but in
those of a novelist, Hawthorne—for example, in “The
House of Seven Gables” and “The Great Stone Face.”
Yet Bryant read, meditated, and wrote upon the art of
poetry; Poe thought somewhat, if not deeply, upon it;
Lanier made a worthy contribution to the science of
meter; Longfellow was conversant with the literature of
criticism; and Emerson’s stimulating essay on “The Poet,”
while it may not have been the sort of medicine that our
men of letters most needed, has doubtless exerted a wholesome
influence. In Poe’s day, several magazines were
discussing the principles of imaginative composition.
However, an “Art of Poetry” like Timrod’s (published in
The Atlantic Monthly for September, 1905) could lie for
forty years in manuscript, without exciting any strong
suspicion of its value; and in the long run there has been
an amazing disproportion between the slender thread of
fundamental tradition and sound critical theory on the
one hand, and the swollen and rapid stream of naïve,
uncultivated verse, gathering from every quarter, on the
other. Whatever English poets furnished the models, the
imitation was largely on the surface. First Pope and his
successors in England, then Wordsworth and Coleridge,
then Shelley and Keats, and Scott and Bryon, and subsequently
Tennyson,—all had in turn their American
devotees. But there seems to have been relatively little
understanding like that of Bryant and Timrod for the
conscious theory underlying the “experiments” in “Lyrical
Ballads,” or for the ideal demands which Shelley laid
upon poetry and poets; nor did cisatlantic readers of
Lord Byron much concern themselves about that Longinus
whom he studied “o’er a bottle,” or for the structural
frame upon which was reared Tennyson’s “Palace of
Art.”
Characteristics of the Period.—Of course in the following
pages we shall deal as briefly as possible with those
American poets in the last century who are touched to
any great extent by strictures like these; for a history of
literature is bound to treat as far as may be of writers that
have made a wise use of tradition, and whose native insight
has enabled them to train their genius in accordance
with universal canons of art, and with a due appreciation
of masterly technique. Meanwhile we may attempt to
summarise the characteristics of the poetical era under
consideration, and, in particular, of the earlier rather than
the latter half of that era. The nearer we advance toward
our own day, the wiser it is to refrain from general
characterisation.
1. The relation between English literature and American
in the initial twenty or thirty years of the last century
has already been suggested. Aside from that, or very
often through that, the influence of Rousseau was paramount.
The doctrine that upheld the innocence of
“man in a state of nature,” and maintained the equality
of all individuals, and the feeling, half pantheistic, for an
external nature opposed to civilisation, since they entered
into the vital tissue of our national thought,—and though
they are at bottom contrary to science and all demonstrable
experience—are among the very conditions, so to speak,
of much of our poetry. From these sources, for example,
it came about that while in actual practice we despised
and maltreated that “natural man” the cruel Indian, we
idealised him in poetical effusions; just as Fenimore Cooper,
treading in the footsteps of Chateaubriand, idealised him
in prose.
2. Our earlier poets, that is, immediately after the
Revolution, but again, and especially, after the War of
1812 had confirmed our sense of national solidarity, are
much given to the utterance of their patriotism; albeit
only a few out of many more or less pretentious or tasteful
efforts have survived. Key’s “Star-Spangled Banner”
(1814), conceived at the close of the second war, antedates
“The American Flag” (1819) of Drake by but five years;
these two, with Hopkinson’s “Hail Columbia” (1798),
and “America” (1832), the well-known hymn by S. F.
Smith, whatever their relative or absolute merits as literature,
remain our most cherished national poems.
3. However frequent or insistent the note of patriotism,
the general temper of American poets has not been strongly
optimistic. As one glances over a long list of the subjects
chosen for treatment, a leaning toward the more sombre
and melancholy elements and aspects of life becomes
more and more apparent. Nor is this leaning confined
to the multitude. Exceptions like Walt Whitman to the
contrary notwithstanding, it is characteristic, in the main,
of the leaders, whenever they escape from common or
inherited themes, and give rein to their own personalities.
That joy which is the well-spring of Wordsworth’s vitality
is greatly diminished in even his nearest American counterpart,
Bryant; assuredly it is not akin to the subdued sadness
of Longfellow, though this be not strictly “akin to
pain.”
4. On the other hand, the noblest American poetry
has not been tragic. Tragedy and serious epic have been
attempted, but, as in the case of Dwight, Barlow, and so
many others, largely as academic exercitations, savouring
of the desk and the library. With our national life they
have had no essential connection. A central motive in our
history like the death of Lincoln still awaits the imagination
of a master-dramatist.
5. Though few have devoted their entire lives to it,
most of our poets have begun the profession betimes,
conceiving very often in haste, and publishing in their
immaturity. The painful advice of Horace has not been
to our liking. With the examples of Milton, Wordsworth,
and Tennyson continually before us, we have yet failed to
profit by their insistence upon generous preparation,
meticulous technique, and laborious delay in publication.
We have realised the brevity of life more fully than the
length of art.
6. Our respect for the “practical” and for “common
sense” is allied to a fondness shown in our poetry for
common, everyday subjects. Here, of course, we have
succeeded better in the comic than in the serious vein.
To treat of homely topics so as to invest their essential
dignity with the light of imagination—in painting the
world about us, to “add the gleam”—was the task set
for himself by an English mystic. It is a dangerous trade
for men whose talk is of oxen. Homely minds on homely
matters are prone to slip into the trivial or the pathetic.
Even Longfellow cannot be freed from the charge of too
much attention to the obvious commonplace, and, as a
versifier at least, of too much love for the merely sentimental.
For adequate imaginative handling of themes
that are serious, complete, and of sufficient magnitude to
produce the loftier effects of great literary art, we are in
general forced to go to our best prose fiction.
7. So long as Puritan ideals, however modified and
softened, continued to dominate any considerable part of
American education, that is, up to a point somewhere
within the past twenty-five years, our poetry has tended
to be obviously didactic. Not only clerical but secular
poets have seemed to regard themselves as direct teachers
of morality. In satirical writers,—Freneau, Halleck,—or
in literature that by virtue of its kind is pietistic, such
a tendency is altogether normal and effective. But in
supposedly imaginative poems such as “The Vision of Sir
Launfal,” though the basic moral order of the universe
doubtless ought to be inherent, it just as certainly ought
to contrive its own effect, without the adventitious aid of
sermonising. To the present writer, much of the best—not
of course the very best—in American poetry loses in
ethical as well as æsthetic value through the intrusion of
argument and exhortation on the subject of conduct or
belief. The finest work of Holmes, for instance, “The
Chambered Nautilus,” may be thought to lose in this
way. The spirit of the United States is a prosaic spirit,
hence our verse, when it is at all substantial, rarely lacks
some element or other from the style of the forensic orator.
8. On the other hand, since we can make no pretence
to the possession of a tragic drama, and none to a truly
national epic, it may safely be affirmed that our poetry
has risen to its greatest heights in meditative and religious
lyric; in meditative verse on nature, that is, such “nature-poetry”
as assumes the Divine immanence throughout the
world of objective reality—in Bryant’s “Thanatopsis”; and
in the religious lyric, that is, in a few of our hymns.
The Earlier Poets.—We commence this survey of American
poetry at the date to which the sections adapted
from Tyler have conducted the literature as a whole,
namely, the year 1784. The chief poets of the Revolutionary
period, Barlow, Dwight, Trumbull, and Freneau, all
lived well on into the next century, Barlow, in fact, being
the only one of these who did not survive the War of 1812.
In Barlow’s day, heroics were the fashion. His magnum
opus, a rhymed epic on the discovery of America, had
already taken shape in manuscript as early as 1781; in
1787 it appeared as “The Vision of Columbus”; by 1807
it had grown into the ponderous “Columbiad.” It is an
uninspired, pseudo-classical narrative, schematically and
metrically correct, but organically lifeless, full of the
“printer’s devil personification” so characteristic of its time.
With gratuitous industry, as it supplies all the lineage of
personified abstractions like “Discord,” so it begins the
history of America at Creation, fetches the story down
through colonial times to the Revolution, and includes in
its sweep a glance at events yet to come. Similarly in his
mock-heroic, “The Hasty Pudding” (1793), which is
touched with fancy and is in every way more attractive
than his “Columbiad,” Barlow commences with the growth
and harvesting of the maize which is to furnish the flour.
Dwight, who was at first a tutor, but from 1795 until
his death, in 1817, president, of Yale College, in 1785
brought forth a Biblical epic entitled “The Conquest of
Canaan,” in which the narrative of Exodus is diversified
by allusions to heroes in the American War of Independence,
and by a tale of romantic love superadded. Dwight
was a diligent reader of Pope and Goldsmith, but he did
not confine his interest to the eighteenth century; he knew
the enchantment of the poets’ poet, Spenser; and like
Thomson he could at times, as in “Greenfield Hill,” look
with his own eyes at things about him. He was a friend
of Trumbull, Humphreys, and Barlow; on occasion he
penned a bitter invective. But as a writer he will be
remembered for his noble hymn, whose second stanza
commences,
I love Thy Church, O God,
which is the key-note of his life.
Trumbull, though he lived to a great age (1750–1831),
had completed his remarkable mock-heroic, “M’Fingal,”
prior to 1784; hence at this point he interests us chiefly
on account of his friendship with Dwight and Barlow, and
his effect on later satirists.
With Freneau the case is different. Some of his choicest
verse did not appear until 1786, when he published a
collection containing “The House of Night”; and in 1795
he brought together in another collection what he apparently
considered best in his output for twenty-five
years or more preceding. This was very uneven, including
much that might better have been left unprinted, and
other work which stamps Freneau as the one American
of true poetical genius before 1800. He was not unaware of
his powers, and aimed to develop them by frequent perusal
of good models in ancient and modern literature; but he
was not sufficiently self-critical. He prolonged a career of
travel and rapid composition, in both poetry and prose,
beyond the normal span of life, making still another collection
of his works in 1815. His latter years were darkened
by the thought that he was being unwarrantably neglected
for men of lesser talent. A man of great bodily vigour,
he was meditating yet another, a final, edition of his writings,
when he came to his unfortunate end. In 1832 he
lost his way as he was returning home through a snow-storm,
and died from exposure. His once maligned personality
has of late been duly vindicated, and his work has
received generous praise. It is claimed that Scott and
Campbell were content to borrow lines from him. Furthermore,
he has been deemed a co-worker with Coleridge and
Wordsworth in bringing about in literature the so-called
“return to nature.” The parallel might easily be carried
too far. Until literary scholarship has broadened and
deepened its knowledge of the entire period in which
Freneau was active, neither the worth of his poetry nor
the possible extent of his influence can be judicially determined.
There can be no question that such poems as
“The Wild Honeysuckle,” “The Hurricane,” “The Dying
Indian,” and “Eutaw Springs” have more than a transitory
value. However, it is by his satirical verse that Freneau
might seem more likely to persist; for the nature of satire
tolerates in some measure a free and easy style such as he
developed.
Early Minor Poets.—Of the minor poetry prior to 1815
there is little to be said by way of praise. We see in it
how the influence of Akenside and other English didactic
writers of a previous age gives ground before the newer
spirit of Wordsworth and Coleridge; although the satires
of the Revolution had a lineage, in Paine and others, that
did not quickly die away; and although several other
literary fashions had their intervals of existence, as, for
example, the imitation of “Ossian” and the cult of the
Della Cruscans. The intellect of Akenside made itself felt
in such work as “The Power of Solitude” (1804), by Joseph
Story (1779–1845), and the anonymous “Pains of Memory,”
published four years later. “Of much higher merit,”
thinks Professor Bronson, “are the didactic poems of Robert
Treat Paine (1773–1811), a man of versatile and brilliant
parts, but dissipated character. His lyrics, orations, and
dramatic criticisms all show ability. But his best work is
‘The Ruling Passion,’ a poem delivered before the Phi
Beta Kappa at Harvard in 1797.” This is “frankly on the
model of Pope, but so witty, vigorous, and pointed that
it does honour to its original.” William Cliffton’s “Poems”
(1800), and Thomas G. Fessenden’s “Original Poems”
(1804), can only be mentioned.
A word may be added on the poetesses of the time,
several of whom, for example Mrs. Mercy Warren (1728–1814),
having made themselves heard during the American
struggle for liberty, continued to find an audience in
the early years of the Republic. Mrs. Warren’s poems
were collected in 1790, Mrs. Susanna H. Rowson’s in 1804.
The sentimental Mrs. Sarah W. Morton may also be noted;
she flourished somewhat later than the others (1759–1846).
She is no longer interesting as the “American Sappho,”
nor is it generally recalled that she considered Paine to be
the American “Menander.” She was an exponent of the
inane “Della Cruscan” style, which had its vogue in England
until it was attacked by William Gifford, and in the
United States until Gifford’s “Baviad” and “Mæviad”
were republished at Philadelphia (1799), seconded by a
poetical epistle to their author from the pen of the young
Quaker Cliffton.
Not less pernicious than the Della Cruscans were the
imitators of MacPherson’s “Ossian,” including Joseph B.
Ladd (1764–1786), Jonathan M. Sewall (1746–1808), and
John Blair Linn (1777–1804). Both schools gave place
when the Wordsworthian reaction set in against “poetic
diction” and the habit of writing verse about natural objects
without having looked at them.
When party spirit runs high, satire is likely to be thriving.
Political tension during the latter part of Washington’s
presidency and during the administrations of
Adams and Jefferson gave birth to a brood of satiric poems,
many of them unacknowledged by their authors. Anonymous
or otherwise, in most of them the writer’s pen was
wielded as a bludgeon rather than a knife. Freneau himself
was none too delicate in his censure of the government,
although he ill deserved the reputation of a man
lacking in love for his country; but Freneau was merely
the most gifted among a number, more partisan than he,
who, according as they were Federalists or Democrats,
bitterly assailed the measures of the opposing faction.
The “Democratiad” and the “Guillotina” were anonymous
attacks in 1795 and 1796 upon the Democrats.
William Cobbett, the Englishman, and Alexander Hamilton,
whose private life offered an easy target, were pilloried
as representatives of the Federalist party, in Carey’s
“Porcupiniad” (1799) and a collection entitled “Olio”
(1801).
Nor was factional spleen unrelated to a variety of
patriotic sentiment which displayed itself in verse for
holidays and state occasions; but, like all the satires, most
of the post-Revolutionary effusions of patriotism have long
since ceased to excite emotion. As has been noted, Hopkinson’s
“Hail Columbia” (1798) is one of the exceptions.
Colonel David Humphreys (1753–1818), a large part of
whose verse amounted to eulogies on Washington, to the
general public is hardly so much as a memory; and his
intention “to make use of poetry for strengthening patriotism,
promoting virtue, and extending happiness” has
gone the way of many similar purposes of great excellence
unaided by genius.
Washington Allston.—The first poet of distinction who
evidently represents the tradition of Wordsworth was the
artist Washington Allston (1779–1843), a friend of Coleridge,
and declared by him to have a genius for literature and
painting “unsurpassed by any man of his age.” Southey
too was an enthusiastic admirer; and Wordsworth, who
was chary of praise for the age in which he lived, commended
the American painter ungrudgingly. In Allston’s
“Sylphs of the Seasons” (1813) there is evidence of the
exact eye of an artist, and there is much delicacy of sentiment
and gentle play of fancy; but great constructive
and imaginative vigour are not present, and a certain tameness
in the rhymes and obviousness in the succession of
thoughts serve to explain why the poem has not secured
a more lasting recognition. His “America and Great
Britain” was included by Coleridge in “Sibylline Leaves”
(1817), “for its moral no less than its patriotic spirit.”
As an attempt to incorporate in language the conception
of abstract, so to speak, intellectual, beauty, “The Angel
and the Nightingale” reminds one of Shelley.
Before Allston, there had been ballad-writers who dealt
with themes that are now familiar to readers of Wordsworth
and Coleridge. In particular, the motive of the young
and innocent girl who has been betrayed, and through her
betrayal crazed, was a notable favourite. Lucius M. Sargent’s
“Hubert and Ellen” (1812) is described as a poor imitation
of Wordsworth, taking its cue, like Joseph Hutton’s
ballad on Crazy Jane (“Leisure Hours,” 1812) and Henry
C. Knight’s “Poor Margaret Dwy,” from one study or
another of mental derangement in “Lyrical Ballads” or the
“Poems” (by Wordsworth) of 1807. Doubtless a large
number of parallels could be found in American literature
to Wordsworth’s “Ruth,” and to his sympathetic treatment
of other lowly types of humanity. In like manner, just as
the same English poet fraternises with the robin and the
butterfly, and Coleridge hails a young ass as his “brother,”
and as Shelley in 1815 claims kindred with “bright bird, insect,
or gentle beast,” so Knight addresses “The Caterpillar”
(1821) as “cousin reptile.” The Puritans had averred,
Most sins, and all sinners, are equal; Rousseau and the
French Revolutionists went further, declaring, All men are
equal; and now, responsive to the doctrine of Coleridge
and his Pantisocrats, American poets were implying, All
creatures are equal. Thus thrives the principle of democracy
and fraternity. Themistocles is at length no
better than the boorish islander, and the Apostles have
lost their superiority to sparrows. “Cousin reptile,” of
course, is an extreme case.
On its saner side, the new impulse set in motion several
writers of not a little promise. Such was John Neal (1793–1876),
whose poem “The Battle of Niagara” (1818)
reflects Wordsworthianism at second hand through Shelley
and Keats, with a touch of Byronic grandiloquence and
tameness, but with a touch, too, of aboriginal nature,
however crude. The native powers of Neal were later dissipated
in journalism, novel-writing, and the like.
Joseph Rodman Drake.—Of great promise likewise, but
cut short by a premature demise, was the career of Joseph
Rodman Drake (1795–1820). Drake was a precocious
spirit, working swiftly, and valuing his easily produced
and quickly moving verses perhaps a little below their true
worth. A friend of Halleck, and like Halleck under the
sway of the novelist Fenimore Cooper, he reveals also how
familiar he was with the half-luminous, half-misty style of
Coleridge. In Drake’s happiest attempt, “The Culprit
Fay” (1816), he aimed to find an utterance for the poetry
of the great American rivers, hitherto neglected, as he
and his friends decided, in the native literature. The outcome
of a discussion between Drake, Freneau, and Cooper,
this fanciful story is nevertheless replete with the cadences
of Coleridge’s “Christabel” (1816), however difficult it
may be to explain the resemblance. Needless to say,
“The Culprit Fay” could not make a general appeal like
that of “The American Flag,” by the same author—a
rhetorical and manneristic piece that, up to a few years
ago, was on the lips of every American school-boy:
When Freedom from her mountain height
Unfurled her standard to the air,
She tore the azure robe of night,
And set the stars of glory there.
Set them where? In spite of the fact that it is grandiose
and unprecise, “The American Flag” may yet be yielded
an advantage in point of style over Key’s “Star-Spangled
Banner,” with which one naturally compares it.
Fitz-Greene Halleck.—The final quatrain of “The American
Flag” was written by Drake’s associate in the “Croaker
Papers,” Fitz-Greene Halleck (1790–1867). Halleck was
a witty poet, who aimed at no lasting fame, but humorously
chastised the passing follies of New York society,
much as Lord Byron scourged society in London. He
wrote clearly and gracefully, and was greatly overpraised
in his time. His satiric poem “Fanny” (1819) was highly
popular. “Marco Bozzaris,” a lyric recital of the Byronic
type, portrayed with a good deal of life, but with a suspicion
of rant too, a dramatic incident in the struggle of modern
Greece against the Turk. His tribute to Burns (1827) was
warmly approved by the Scottish bard’s sister: “nothing
finer,” she said in 1855, “has been written about Robert.”
“Red Jacket” and the monody on “Drake” also belong to
Halleck’s early period. In fact, his main activity as a poet
was confined to the ten or eleven years commencing with
the death of Drake (1820). As Allston was the first of our
poets to arouse much admiration abroad, so Halleck was
the first to receive notable posthumous honours at home.
In general, he owed a large measure of his inspiration to
Washington Irving.
James Kirke Paulding.—So did James Kirke Paulding
(1779–1860), though his “Lay of the Scotch Fiddle”
(1813) was a parody of Walter Scott’s “Lay of the Last
Minstrel,” and though his title to enduring fame, as he
supposed, was an epic, “The Backwoodsman” (1818),
representing life on the American frontier. Neither the
clever ballad, nor the prosy epic, nor his second instalment
of Salmagundi has outwitted the envy of time. In
its own day Paulding’s effort to repeat the first success of
Irving was eclipsed by “The Croakers” of Halleck and
Drake. His “Peter Piper” still lingers.
John Howard Payne.—A case similar to “Peter Piper”
is that of a song in “Clari” (1823), one of the dramas
by John Howard Payne (1791–1852). Payne, who tried
his hand at various pursuits, was a friend of Irving, and
acquainted with Coleridge and Lamb. At one time he
was United States consul at Tunis. As an actor and a
journalist he knew the temper of his American public;
hence he was able to enjoy a considerable reputation as
playwright. His “Brutus” (1818) was well received; yet
he would be totally forgotten save for a single lyric in
“Clari,” “Home, Sweet Home,” which successive generations
of his countrymen have handed down as an heirloom
of the people.
Woodworth, Morris, Hoffman, Willis, etc.—Two other
writers of the same period, now known chiefly through brief
and homely songs or rhetorical selections, were Samuel
Woodworth (1785–1842), still remembered for “The Old
Oaken Bucket” (1826), and George P. Morris (1802–64),
whose “Woodman, Spare That Tree” and “The Main
Truck” (otherwise called “A Leap for Life”) have re-echoed
from the platform of many a village schoolhouse,
and given many a young rustic his principal conceptions of
impassioned eloquence. The songs of Charles Fenno Hoffman
(1806–84), while by no means so familiar as these, are
not at all inferior. Hoffman was a student at Columbia
College, bred up in the literary traditions of New York City.
So also were James W. Eastburn (1797–1819) and Robert C.
Sands (1799–1832). Under a rather indefensible nomenclature,
all three would be included with Paulding and
Halleck as members of the “Knickerbocker School,” the
bright luminary in which is Irving (“Diedrich Knickerbocker”).
To these we may add McDonald Clarke (1798–1842),
“the mad poet,” irritatingly personal in his
allusions to the belles of the metropolis; Park Benjamin
(1809–64); and N. P. Willis (1806–67), whose reign of
cleverness succeeded that of Halleck. Flippant, careless
how or whom he hit, Willis made an extraordinary name
at home, and was able to create a stir abroad. In America
he published where and what he pleased, for the editors
were glad to pay him well, so eager were people to read
him. But he had the reward of a lightly won popularity:
when the generation for whom he wrote had passed away
he was deservedly neglected. His championship of American
literature against the strictures of Lockhart and
Marryat, and the redeeming candour of his opinions, make
poor amends for his abuse of talents that might have improved,
rather than satisfied, the taste of the garish day.
William Cullen Bryant.—However different in aim and
permanence from the last mentioned adherent of the
“Knickerbocker School,” to the same general category
may be assigned William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878), who
from 1826 until his death was an active force in the literary
life of New York. The author of “Thanatopsis” and
one of the best verse translations of Homer was born in
Cummington, Massachusetts, attended a local school,
was taught Latin and Greek by private tutors, two clergymen
of ability, and studied for part of a year at Williams
College, where the standard of scholarship was then low.
Leaving that institution in 1811, he made ready to enter
the profession of law. During his preparation he had an
interval of experience as adjutant in the State militia.
After that, he practised as a lawyer in his native State, at
Plainfield and Great Barrington, until 1825, when he
yielded to the strong propensity of nature, and took up
literature for the business of life.
As a mere child, Bryant showed an exceptional leaning
toward poetry. He was unweariedly studious, and an
omnivorous reader. He wrote verses before he was nine;
in his youth, so he says, he varied his private devotions
from the ordinary Calvinistic models, by supplicating that
he “might receive the gift of poetic genius and write
verses that might endure.” The gift came to him through
the instrumentality of Wordsworth’s “Lyrical Ballads”
(the American edition of 1802), whose mastery over him
he afterwards acknowledged, and bore witness to in his
practice. At first, however, he was imbued with the tendencies
of his own predecessors in America. A Federalist
in his political sympathies, he opposed the aims of Jefferson’s
administration—although later he grew to be a
staunch supporter of “Jeffersonian Democracy.” Encouraged
by his father, a well-known physician, who himself
indulged in verse, young Cullen, before he was fifteen,
saw in print his political satire “The Embargo” (1808),
a work in the manner of Freneau and Trumbull, in which
Jefferson was invited to resign the presidency. In Wordsworth,
fortunately, Byrant had a model choicer than the
satirists. He became acquainted with “Lyrical Ballads”
in 1810. Sometime in the autumn of 1811, his inward
eye having been taught to see the operation of a benign
and healing spirit in the world of nature, this thoughtful
youth, now about to begin the study of law, and, as it
were, to commence the effort of life, was moved to record
his sentiments on the all-pervading fact of death: the
universal debt is not an evil; to pay it is as natural as to
be born; and to obey the voice of nature, to confide in
her will, is the source of human satisfaction. That is the
burden of “Thanatopsis.”
When “Thanatopsis” was submitted by the poet’s
father to The North American Review (in 1817), people
would hardly believe that such an exalted strain had been
conceived outside of England. “Thanatopsis” and “To
a Waterfowl” (written in 1815) are indeed in many ways
Wordsworthian; the similarity is immediately noticeable.
Yet the similarity is not complete. In the first place,
they are founded, and very definitely founded, upon the
natural scenery of Bryant’s own New England environment;
and they sprang out of a unified individual experience
to which his personal observation contributed as much
as his reading. But, as has been remarked before, the
note of Bryant is a less joyous note than that of his great
English exemplar, not only because of a difference in the
selection of subjects, but through a difference in the treatment
of detail as well. It is not to be expected that in
perfection of technique a boy of seventeen could equal a
poet who at the age of thirty-two (when Wordsworth first
became at all generally known in America) was virtually
master of his craft. Moreover, “Thanatopsis” as we now
have it is actually an immense improvement upon the
version that came out in The North American; yet in finality
of expression it cannot vie with the “Lines” associated with
Tintern Abbey, not to speak of certain portions of “The Prelude”
or “The Excursion” written in the zenith of Wordsworth’s
power. Still, “Thanatopsis” was the first great
American poem; in its ultimate form it bids fair to please
most readers in all ages. The majesty of Thucydides is borrowed
in the conception that the whole earth is the sepulchre
of famous men; there is Homeric splendour of epithet
in such expressions as the “all-beholding sun.” The “healing
sympathy” of nature, of course, is Wordsworthianism
pure and simple; but the poem as a whole is tinged with
a pantheism much more stoical than the pantheism of
Wordsworth, and curiously out of keeping with the touch
of New England moralising toward the end. This touch
is even more pronounced in the verses “To a Waterfowl.”
“To a Waterfowl” was published with several other
poems, including “Thanatopsis,” in 1821. According to
that wayward genius Hartley Coleridge, it is the best
short poem in the English language; a perilously sweeping
judgment, like Shelley’s on “France,” the magnificent
ode by Hartley’s father. At all events, “To a Waterfowl”
is hardly surpassed by any of Bryant’s later work,
and probably unsurpassed by anything of comparable
subject and scope ever written in America.
In 1821, Bryant, then practising law at Great Barrington,
was married to Miss Frances Fairchild. In 1825,
he gave up the law and a secure livelihood, and, removing
to New York, assumed the editorship of The New York
Review. After a brief connection with The United States
Review, he became assistant editor of The Evening Post;
in 1829 he was made editor-in-chief. His lifelong guidance
of this most influential paper is briefly touched upon
elsewhere. It may be readily thought that Bryant’s
prolonged editorial labours interfered with his subsequent
development as a poet. Yet his partial ownership
of The Post finally gave him abundant means for travel
and a widening of his experience in his own and foreign
lands; and his habits of industry, supported by a temperate
bodily régime, enabled him to achieve during his extended
career a noble literary monument outside of journalism.
By 1832 he was ready to publish another edition of
his “Poems,” adding more than eighty pieces that were
new—notably, the “Forest Hymn,” the “Song of Marion’s
Men,” and “The Death of the Flowers.” At intervals of
a few years (1834, 1836, 1842, 1844, etc.) other editions
or volumes followed; giving evidence that his imagination
was not dormant, for they contained in each case material
in part or wholly fresh. Thus the “Poems” of 1854 included
“O Mother of a Mighty Race” and “Robert of
Lincoln,” the latter a favourite with many, though inferior
to Bryant’s general standard. Of the “Thirty Poems”
issued ten years later (1864), twenty-seven were new;
the presence of selections, in English, from Book V of
the Odyssey is worthy of particular remark. They had
already appeared, a few months before, in The Atlantic
Monthly.
The achievement of Bryant’s declining years was his
translation of Homer. He had at various times amused
himself with renderings of one or another passage that
pleased him in foreign tongues. He was an ardent admirer
of the Greek epics. He was dissatisfied with the
versions of Cowper and Pope. It is possible that he was
acquainted with the counsels of Matthew Arnold, called
forth by the Homer of Francis Newman. The favour met
by his attempts with the Odyssey encouraged him to try
his hand at the Iliad. On the death of his wife, in 1866,
he felt the need of some employment to distract his attention,
and resolved to translate the Iliad entire. By
1869 he had finished the first twelve books, at the rate
of from forty to seventy-five lines a day. These twelve
books were published in February, 1870, the remainder
of the Iliad in June. By the first of July he was engaged
upon the Odyssey; on December 7, 1871, he sent his
printers “the twenty-fourth and concluding book of [his]
translation of Homer’s Odyssey, together with the table
of contents for the second volume.” To misunderstand
the repression of feeling in these simple words, with which
the venerable Bryant takes leave of his final work, is to
miss the hidden fire animating his whole existence. In a
great poet there is little waste of energy in the outward
expression. The moment feeling shows itself, it is transmuted
into artistic form. The form is adequate, but it
is something different from the sentiment that gives it
life.
The excellence of Bryant’s blank-verse translation of
Homer is not a theme for long discussion here. He aimed
at simplicity and faithfulness. He rejected several of the
customary ornaments of modern verse, choosing for his
medium that rhythm which is most nearly related to the
cadence of everyday speech. Tested by its effect on the
layman of the present day, his attempt is more successful
than other well-known metrical versions, less than the
cadenced prose of translators, like Myers and Lang, who
have profited by the advice of Arnold with respect to
diction, but in avoiding the trammels of metre have followed
the example set by the scholars of King James
in the Authorised Version of the Scriptures. However,
Bryant’s rendering is too noble a piece of imaginative
scholarship to be passed over.
Bryant spent something like six years upon his Homer.
He survived its completion by six years more, full of
honours, rejoicing in a hale old age, still visited occasionally
by poetical inspiration, still influential in the political
thought of his nation, able at four score and four to make
a public address in honour of the Italian patriot Mazzini.
During this address, “his uncovered head was for a time
exposed to the full glare of the sun. Shortly after, while
entering a house, he fell backwards, striking his head
upon the stone steps; concussion of the brain and paralysis
followed.” He died in New York, June 12, 1878,
and was buried at Roslyn, on Long Island Sound, near
the beautiful country home where for thirty-five years his
literary toils had been “sweetened to his taste.”
Owing to his artistic reserve, Bryant had the reputation
of a temperamental coldness, a reputation that is belied
both by the tenderness of his domestic ties and by his
well chosen and enduring friendships. His patriotism also
was unswerving. If he “let no empty gust of passion
find an utterance in his lay,” nevertheless he knew and
valued
... feelings of calm power and mighty sweep,
Like currents journeying through the boundless deep.
He was a devoted lover of humanity and life; he was a
devoted lover of his art. For him, art and life were one.
It is easy for the uninitiated to credit him with a lack of
warmth. The fully emancipated are aware what union of
fire and self-restraint, of vigour and delicacy, goes to the
rearing of a fabric like the orderly and effective career
of Bryant.
Like most, or all, great poets, Bryant wrote admirable
prose. His essays in criticism have already been alluded
to. As a stylist he was indefatigably painstaking even to
the smallest detail: “He was not a fluent nor a very prolific
writer.... His manuscripts, as well as his proofs,
were commonly so disfigured by corrections as to be read
with difficulty even by those familiar with his script.” His
capacity for intense application was a partial measure of
his success both as poet and as critic. For oratory, his
legal training stood him in good stead, and his later prominence
in New York and in the country as a whole gave
him many an occasion. If Bryant, as Matthew Arnold believed,
was “facile princeps” among American poets, this
eminence arose from no merely capricious outburst of
genius; it was the natural efflux of a noble, well rounded,
and representative human life.
Saxe, Melville, Alice and Phoebe Cary.—After Bryant
it is convenient to speak of a few poets, very different
from him, and for the most part from each other, whose
contemporaneous presence in New York is almost the
only thing that connects them. John G. Saxe (1816–87),
a native of Vermont, in his time was counted a leader
among satirists. He staggers now under the accusation
of extreme superficiality; none the less is he lively and
readable. He consciously imitated Hood; he could scarcely
avoid imitating Wendell Holmes. Of himself he had a
remarkable turn for epigram and for punning in rhyme.
His burlesque adaptations of Ovid are smart and amusing.
On the whole it may be said that Saxe was at his
best in “The Proud Miss MacBride,” where he girds at
an upstart aristocracy:
Of all the notable things on earth,
The queerest one is pride of birth,
Among our “fierce Democracie.”
Herman Melville (1819–91), who wrote a fascinating account
(“Typee,” 1846) of his stay among the aborigines
of the Marquesas, also published “Battle-Pieces” (1866)
and other poems. His verse is less objective and sincere
than his prose. Alice Cary (1820–71) and her sister,
Phoebe (1824–71), were born in Ohio, where they were
locally appreciated. Removing first to Philadelphia, then
to New York, they supported themselves by their pens.
The talents of Alice Cary were manifestly superior; yet
for a time, yielding to her admiration of Poe, she allowed
the element of harmonious sound in her poetry to overbalance
that of meaning. Her hymns, one of which is
almost a classic, are noble in their purity of sentiment.
Dana, Sprague, Hillhouse, etc.—Although his life and
activity were centred elsewhere, Bryant, as we have seen,
was a product of western Massachusetts. From him and
the city of his adoption we naturally turn to a number of
writers whose careers are to be more closely identified
with New England. Many of these, like Richard Henry
Dana senior (1787–1879), of Boston, were poets only
secondarily. Dana was a journalist and politician—an
admirer of Wordsworth and a lecturer on Shakespeare.
An edition of his prose and verse in 1833 contained a
poem, “The Buccaneer,” inspired by Coleridge’s “Rime
of the Ancient Mariner.” His shorter poems are moral—
Oh, listen, man!
A voice within us speaks the startling word,
“Man, thou shalt never die”—
and are mostly tame and artificial. Though inferior in
native talent to his brother-in-law, Washington Allston,
Dana was more widely known as a writer, partly because
of his ability as literary critic. His verse was melancholy
and his meditation not virile. As a poet he won a smaller
audience than did Charles Sprague (1791–1875), also of
Boston; yet it is not now easy to understand why Sprague’s
longest poem, “Curiosity” (1823), should have been
“largely read and quoted in this country, and grossly
plagiarised in England” (Onderdonk). James A. Hillhouse
(1789–1841), who wrote a Biblical drama called “Hadad”
(1824), published “Dramas, Discourses, and Other Pieces”
in 1839. He is interesting as an early exponent of the
dramatic art in America. His style shows a strange
blending of elements from Lord Byron and the Scriptures.
It would probably be fairer to judge him by “Demetria”
than by “Hadad.” A Byronic sentimentalism runs through
the work of James Gates Percival (1795–1856), whose
“Prometheus” (1820) luxuriates in the sorrows of men
and the vanity of human wishes. His poetry often belies
his everyday life, since for all his facile pessimism
he was a man of genuine attainments and solid interest
in science. He could not make his own experience the
fundamental thing in his verse;—unlike his contemporary
John Pierpont (1785–1866), a clergyman of Boston. In
his hymns and patriotic odes, Pierpont was masculine and
sane, a good representative of the New England abolitionist,
as may be gathered from “The Fugitive Slave’s
Apostrophe to the North Star.” “Warren’s Address to
the American Soldiers” is even better known, and still
withholds the name of Pierpont from oblivion. John
G. C. Brainard (1796–1828) died before his poetical gift
could find complete expression. He dealt with the
scenery and legends of Connecticut, but is hardly remembered
outside the histories of American literature.
Mrs. Brooks and Mrs. Sigourney.—The same generation
produced several women of note, whose poetry demands
some attention; in particular, Lydia Huntley
Sigourney (1791–1865), a prolific maker of books, not to
speak of “more than two thousand articles in prose and
verse” which were issued during her long and quiet life
in Hartford. Mrs. Sigourney was no genius, albeit she
passed for “the American Hemans.” She was a person
of great moral worth and the most charitable disposition.
It has been suggested that the beauty of her character
was responsible for her extraordinary vogue. More probably
the attention she gave to the legends of her own
country, the not unwholesome cast of sentimentalism in
her thought, and her readiness to contribute verses for
any occasion, however slight, will in large part account
for the unbounded admiration which she enjoyed. In
1822 appeared her poem, in five cantos, “Traits of the
American Aborigines”; her “Lays of the Heart” were
published in 1848. Besides her innumerable shorter
articles, she is said to have been responsible for something
like fifty volumes. “Maria del Occidente” (Mrs. Maria
Gowen Brooks, 1795–1845) was of a different cast, less
homely in her sentiments, a romantic soul, filled with the
spirit of Southey and Moore, leaning toward the sensuous
and exotic. When she bent her energies to verse, as in
“Judith, Esther, and Other Poems” (1820), and “Zophiel,
or The Bride of Seven” (1833)—a story based on the
Apocryphal Book of Tobit—she showed herself far removed
from Mrs. Sigourney and “The Power of Maternal
Piety” or “The Sunday School.” On the whole, the
taste of “Maria del Occidente,” as Southey called her,
was worse than that of “the American Hemans”; and if
Southey termed Mrs. Brooks “the most impassioned and
most imaginative of all poetesses,” he paid an astounding
tribute to his own acumen as a critic. Emma H. Willard
(1787–1870), like Mrs. Sigourney, was prominent as
an educator, accomplishing more as the head of a female
seminary in Troy, N. Y., than by her writings. She was
the author of “Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep.” In
the next generation were Sarah H. Whitman (1803–78)
and Frances S. Osgood (1811–50), who composed verse
not lacking in merit, but who are recalled rather for their
championship of Edgar Allan Poe. Mrs. Whitman was at
one time betrothed to him.
Minor Poets of New England.—Among the minor
New England poets who came slightly later, was Samuel
Longfellow (1819–92)—younger brother of Henry W. Longfellow—a
hymn-writer of singular purity. Sylvester Judd
(1813–53), a Unitarian minister, wrote an epic entitled
“Philo” (1850). William Wetmore Story (1819–95), who
edited the life and letters of his distinguished father, Chief
Justice Story, forsook the bar at an early age and went to
Italy to engage in sculpture. He was a poet of refinement,
touched with melancholy, intellectual rather than passionate—yet
with a fondness for the intangible—influenced
by Longfellow and Holmes, by Tennyson and Browning.
In verse, his chief works were “Poems” (1847), “Graffiti
d’Italia” (1868), “A Roman Lawyer in Jerusalem” (1870),
“He and She” (1883), and “Poems” (1886). Among his
individual pieces “Cleopatra” seems to be the best known.
Theophilus W. Parsons (1819–92) shows a similar Continental
influence, whose most valuable result was his free
translation of Dante’s “Inferno” (cantos I-X, 1843, completed
in 1867); this was preceded by his fine lines “On a
Bust of Dante” (1841), which are justly admired. Henry
H. Brownell (1820–72) attracted notice by a poem on
Farragut, and through Farragut’s good offices entered the
United States Navy. His “War Lyrics and Other Poems”
(1866) contained a stirring piece, “The River Fight,” on
the exploits of Farragut, somewhat in the style of Tennyson’s
“Charge of the Light Brigade.”
Poetry in the South.—The major poets of New England,
Longfellow, Lowell, Whittier, Emerson, and perhaps one
or two others, constitute the one group in America that
may rightfully be dignified with the name of school.
Before approaching them, however, let us give some consideration
to the poets of the South.
Though the institution of slavery gave the dominant
classes in the Southern States a leisure comparable to that
enjoyed by classic Greece, plantation life was not favourable
to a thorough and imaginative education; nor were
there great civic centres to collect, for mutual inspiration,
such individuals as showed artistic and literary bent.
Furthermore, in modern times most of the poets have
been furnished by a restless and aspiring middle class,
which was virtually lacking in the South. Among the
owners of plantations, personal ambition rarely soared
much higher than local, state, or sectional politics, and
political and occasional oratory, with some noteworthy
exceptions, was flamboyant and insincere. Save for a
few noteworthy exceptions, accordingly, the career of
poet languished, and literature of a high order failed of
appreciation. The leading poets of the South realised
only too well the weight of inertia against which they
strove, in a civilisation where the odds were continually
against their success.
The Forerunners.—Early and minor poets in the South
need not long detain us. William Crafts (1789–1826), of
Charleston, South Carolina, a graduate of Harvard, and
an orator of repute, composed a “Raciad,” or epic on
horse-racing, and “Sullivan’s Island.” His “Miscellaneous
Writings” (1828) were published posthumously. William
J. Grayson (1788–1863), who was more voluminous, attempted
in his poem “The Hireling and the Slave” (1856)
to represent slavery as a preferable state for the negro.
Richard H. Wilde (1789–1847), Edward C. Pinkney (1802–28),
George H. Calvert (1803–89), Philip P. Cooke (1816–50)
and others, show a range of imitation running all the way
from Byron through Scott and Moore to Tennyson. Cooke’s
“Florence Vane” was warmly admired by Poe. Albert Pike
(1809–91), should be remembered as the author of “Dixie,”
which, “set to a popular air which has been traced back to
slavery times in New York State, became, in a multitude of
variations, a Southern Marseillaise” (Onderdonk).
Timrod, Hayne, and Simms.—Of a high order was
the poetry of that champion of the Southern cause Henry
B. Timrod (1829–67). Denied by fortune the sort of
education that he craved, striving throughout much of
his life with poverty and sickness, and finally defeated,
saddened by personal bereavement as well as by the
downfall of the South, Timrod died before he could make
adequate report of his endowments. His volume of
“Poems” (1860), issued at the beginning of the Civil
War, was almost unnoticed; and even yet he has not
obtained the recognition due him. His devotion to the
South was not greater than his reverence for his art.
Few of our poets have so clearly understood themselves
and their craft. Unusual courage breathes in all he
wrote. In the year of his death, a prey to disease and
sorrow, he could say to the Confederate soldiers buried
“At Magnolia Cemetery”:
Sleep sweetly in your humble graves,
Sleep, martyrs of a fallen cause;
Though yet no marble column craves
The pilgrim here to pause.
In seeds of laurel in the earth
The blossom of your fame is blown,
And somewhere, waiting for its birth,
The shaft is in the stone.
Timrod’s works were brought to light again in 1873
by Paul Hamilton Hayne (1830–86), who, prior to the
war, had united with Simms and Timrod to erect, if possible,
the drooping spirit of poetry in the South. Hayne’s
“Poems” (1855) and “Sonnets and Other Poems” (1857)
had a chance to make their way before the outbreak of
hostilities; and he survived the conflict long enough to
publish “Legends and Lyrics” (1872) and “The Mountain
of the Lovers, and Other Poems” (1873). A complete
edition of his poems appeared in 1882. “The Laureate
of the South,” as he was called, was an enthusiast in sub-tropical
life and scenery, a word-painter and word-musician
after the manner of Poe. His music is more obvious than
Timrod’s and not so likely to please a delicate ear; and he
did not have Timrod’s unity and clearness of conception.
Less careful still in his workmanship, and still more
lacking in concentration, was the third of the trio, William
Gilmore Simms (1806–70). Simms was a most abundant
writer, known later for his novels and biographies rather
than his poems. In his earlier poetry he was under the
sway of Byron and Moore. His scanty advantages in the
way of schooling were atoned for in part by voluminous
indiscriminate reading; yet he never overcame certain
defects in thinking to which self-taught men are prone.
His first publication was “Lyrical and Other Poems”
(1827). “Atalantis” (1832), a closet-drama in blank
verse, in its general structure harks back to Shelley’s
“Prometheus Unbound.” His selected works, in nineteen
volumes, were published in 1859. Simms’ commanding
presence, the vigour of his personality, his determination
to conquer all obstacles in his own path, and to vitalise
the literary atmosphere of the South, make him an impressive,
even heroic, figure.
Edgar Allan Poe.—The life of Edgar Allan Poe (1809–49)
is duly recounted in another place, where his prose
fiction is handled at some length. When Poe ran away
from the ledgers in his guardian’s office, he carried with
him in manuscript the first heir of his invention, “Tamerlane
and Other Poems,” for which he found a publisher at
Boston (1827). “Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems”
followed in 1829. In 1831, the year of his discharge
from West Point, appeared the volume of “Poems”
with which Poe thought to win the interest of the cadets.
Thereafter, most of his poetry first saw the light in various
periodicals; for example, “The Raven” (1845) in the
New York Evening Mirror, “The Bells” (1849) in Sartain’s
Magazine, “Annabel Lee” (1849) in The New York Tribune.
In the opinion of the present writer, Poe’s verse is
generally rated above its value, even for those qualities
in which it is supposed particularly to excel. Certain
poetical gifts this author unquestionably had in abundance.
He had the copia verborum which is indispensable
to every literary artist. His sensations were vivid, if not
numerous. He knew how to choose the symbols with
which to attain his ends. If we are to trust the substance
of his remarks in “The Philosophy of Composition,” and
of those which he made regarding “The Raven,” his choice
and manipulation of literary artifice were for the most part
very conscious. He was able through the use of carefully
selected diction and imagery to produce in his reader precisely
the shade of feeling—the glimmer of the supernatural,
the sense of grey and subdued, occasionally the sense of
Weird and poignant, grief—which he desired. He never
forgets the music of his words, and through habit, almost
without trying, he can write continuously in a minor key.
And yet, his music is not inevitable enough, nor does it
undergo enough variation, or variation sufficiently delicate.
It is too forced, too repetitious. His effects all lie within
narrow limits, and he runs his gamut over and over again.
This is altogether aside from his failure to make his music
grow out of that strong underlying poetical good sense
which is to be confidently expected of every great imagination.
People too often forget how far Poe falls short of his
master, Coleridge, in the mere element of harmonious
sound; just as they too often forget how far Coleridge falls
short of his master, Milton, in the union of ethereal as well
as sonorous cadences with a finely modulated or robust
thought and sentiment. Were Poe’s appeals to the external
senses more wonderful than they are, he would still lag
behind those poets—and in the history of literature they
are not after all so few—who can touch every chord,
whether sad or joyous, known to the human ear, and still
maintain that basis of firm reason without which human
communication ceases to be broadly human. The intellect
also has its music, lacking which no poetry has ever long
survived.
Furthermore, all allowance being made for the tragic
outcome of Poe’s career, for the part of his fate which
was not the outgrowth of his own character, or could
not, humanly considered, be attributed at some point in
his development to his own will, his poetry is not uplifting.
True, in his handling of material he is, in the
ordinary acceptation, entirely clean. That is, he is
wholly free from obscenity, as he is free also from that
more perilous seeming cleanness which so often cloaks
real impurity. Nevertheless may he be dangerous food
for those whom he most readily attracts. Poe is essentially
pessimistic, hopeless, toward general human experience.
His favourite topic is death; and his vision does
not pierce beyond the worm and the grave. Nay, like
his predecessors in England and on the Continent, he
luxuriates in the tomb and the charnel. As in his stories,
so in his verse, though less patently, he follows some
of the most pernicious motives in art that the older
civilisation afforded his age. And it is the lethal progeny—Baudelaire
and the rest—of that movement in European
literature typified by Ann Radcliffe and “Monk” Lewis
that has been quickest to take up with Poe and exploit
him abroad. We may seek to explain and exculpate
him; we may sorrow for his blighted life; but the fact
remains that what Poe wrote sprang out of his career,
hence, on the whole, was morbid. The flowers of his
poetry are the flowers of Lethe. The stimulants with
which he catches the reader are violent and exciting.
His ideal of intellectual beauty was detached and unnatural.
It is little wonder, then, that he would not
enter into sympathy with the English poet by whom the
normal Bryant was inspired, and whose works, the most
normalising and healthful influence that American literature
thus far has felt, were purposely reactive against
artificial and abnormal stimulation.
Sidney Lanier.—Among the representatives of the
“New South,” Sidney Lanier (1842–81), musician, poet,
teacher of English, is easily foremost. He was born in
Macon, Georgia, and received his education at Oglethorpe
College, where, on graduating, he became a tutor; he
volunteered in the Confederate Army (1860), toward the
end of the war was captured, and perhaps owed his subsequent
ill-health to his imprisonment of five months at
Point Lookout. When the war was over, he taught again,
in Alabama, read law, supported himself by his music—he
was an adept on the flute—wrote for magazines, and
by private study in Baltimore eventually fitted himself to
take a lectureship in English literature at Johns Hopkins
University. Courageous in his struggle with adverse
circumstances, buoyant and energetic in spite of his
long battle with disease, Lanier greatly resembles Timrod.
Like Timrod, too, dying early, he left but a slender volume
of poetry, uneven in excellence, an earnest of what he
might have accomplished, hardly a standard by which to
appraise him. Lanier’s was a delicate and sensuous rather
than a profound imagination; however, both in his observation
of external nature and in the thoroughness and
extent of his acquaintance with general literature, he was
unusually well prepared for the office of poet. His interest
in science fortified and disciplined his contemplation of
the outer world; his poetical instinct was nurtured through
industrious and select reading; and he brought to bear
upon his own literary craftsmanship, and upon the literary
work of others, the ear of a trained musician. His musical
ear helped him greatly in his studies on metre, where his
contributions to scholarship are distinctly more valuable
than in his lectures on the English novel. Deeply sympathetic
and generous and sane in all relations of life,
Lanier had a subtle understanding for the realm that lies
outside the haunts of men—for the domain of wild fauna
and flora, for the seldom heeded and the escaping phenomena
of the woods and the marsh and the sea. The poor
reception given to his “Tiger Lilies” (1867), a novel based
on experiences in the army, did not dishearten him. In
1875 he definitely announced himself by his poem entitled
“Corn,” published in Lippincott’s Magazine, a vision of
the South restored through agriculture. This brought
him the opportunity of writing the “Centennial Cantata”
for the Philadelphia Exposition, where he expressed the
faith he now had in the future of the reunited nation.
The Cantata finished, he immediately began a much
longer centennial ode, his “Psalm of the West” (1876),
which appeared in Lippincott’s Magazine, and which,
with “Corn” and “The Symphony,” made part of a small
volume published in the autumn of 1876. Lanier’s important
critical works were the product of the years between
1876 and his death. Some three years after he
died, his poems were collected and edited by his wife.
If we had to rely upon one poem to keep alive the fame
of Lanier, thinks his biographer, Mr. Edwin Mims, we
“could single out ‘The Marshes of Glynn’ with assurance
that there is something so individual and original about
it, and that, at the same time, there is such a roll and
range of verse in it, that it will surely live not only in
American poetry but in English.” “He is the poet of
the marshes as surely as Bryant is of the forests.”
Maurice Thompson and Mrs. Preston.—Our notice of
Southern writers may conclude with Maurice Thompson
and Mrs. Margaret Preston. James Maurice Thompson
(1844–1901) is commonly associated with the Middle
West, since he was born and died in Indiana. His early
life, however, was spent in Kentucky and Georgia, he
saw service in the Confederate Army, and much of his
verse and prose carries the stamp of his experiences in
the South and his acquaintance with Southern literature.
He was a lawyer by profession, but by instinct a natural
scientist. In 1885 he was appointed State Geologist of Indiana.
From 1890 on he was connected with the New York
Independent. His style was crisp and neat, sometimes over-elaborate;
but he kept an eye on the thing he was talking
about, so that in general what he has said of nature is very
acceptable. His devotion to the pastimes of fishing and
archery gave him a good deal of literary material. His
extensive and exact knowledge of the ways of birds enters
into many of his poems, as for example “An Early Bluebird.”
The strain of regenerate patriotism in “Lincoln’s
Grave” is the same that we find in Lanier. Mrs. Preston
(1820–97) was the daughter of the Rev. Dr. Junkin, founder
of Lafayette College and afterward president of Washington
and Lee University, in Virginia. Before her marriage, in
1857, she had done some writing. In 1866 she published
“Beechenbrook, a Rhyme of the War”; in 1870, “Old
Songs and New.” Her “Cartoons” (1875) and “Colonial
Ballads” (1887) show her at her best. She has been styled
“the greatest Southern poetess”; there have been few
claimants to dispute the title.
Major Poets of New England.—With this caption we
return to the main stream of American verse, and reach
the men whose lives and works may be said to justify a
connected account of poetry in the United States. We
shall take up Longfellow first. Whatever vicissitudes his
literary standing has suffered, or is likely to suffer, he is
bound for a long time to appear as the central figure
among our poets.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.—The subject of this
sketch was born in Portland, Maine, February 27, 1807.
He came of a gifted stock. His father was a lawyer of
ability, and his mother a woman of artistic temperament
and varied attainments, so that the boy grew up in an
atmosphere of study and refinement. Longfellow was a
wise and gentle child, fond of books, not too sensitive,
always normal and sane. Until 1821 he went to school
in Portland; in 1822 he entered the sophomore class at
Bowdoin College. Here he attained a good rank in
scholarship, and became acquainted, not intimately, with
the future novelist Hawthorne. Upon graduation in 1825,
Longfellow went abroad, in order to fit himself for a professorship
in modern languages which lay open to him
at Bowdoin. He visited France, Germany, England, and
the South of Europe; on his return in 1829 he gave himself
up with ardour and success to the activity of
teaching. In 1831 he was married to Miss Mary S. Potter.
In 1835, having received an invitation to the chair of modern
languages at Harvard, he went abroad again for further
travel and study, this time mainly to Germany and the
North. The death of his young wife, shortly after their
arrival in Holland, filled his cup with bitterness, but did
not swerve him from preparation for the duties of his chair
at Cambridge. Nevertheless, as may be read beneath the
surface of his romance “Hyperion,” his determination that
he must ultimately become a poet, and not end as a teacher
in the classroom, can be traced to this critical epoch in
his life.
Longfellow taught at Harvard from 1836 until 1854,
with but one intermission, in 1842, when on account of
his health he made his third trip to Europe. In 1843
he married Miss Frances E. Appleton, whom he had met
in Switzerland sixteen years before, and whose presence
and influence are likewise traceable in “Hyperion.”
Through the generosity of his father-in-law, he was able
to establish a home in Craigie House, where he had been
a lodger since 1837, a dwelling of Revolutionary fame.
For a while, Longfellow’s study was the room once occupied
by Washington. Here, surrounded by his books
and, as the years went on, by a growing family circle, he
lived in comfort and felicity. His reputation spread, and
the number of his acquaintances increased. Among his
friends he reckoned Sparks and Prescott, the historians;
Ticknor, his predecessor at Harvard, and Lowell, who
afterward succeeded Longfellow; Fields, Emerson, Holmes,
and Hawthorne; Felton, Sumner, Agassiz, and Norton.
He read and wrote variously and extensively; he counted
it a privilege to be interpreting Dante “to young hearts.”
In time, however, his duties as a teacher, above all the
preparation of lectures, gradually wore upon him. He
felt that he could not serve two masters, and he clave to
poetry. At length, in 1854, he resigned his professorship,
to devote himself exclusively to authorship. Seven years
later, under the most distressing circumstances, he lost his
second wife. From this catastrophe, Longfellow, though
he eventually regained his outward cheerfulness, never inwardly
recovered. “He bore his grief with courage and
in silence. Only after months had passed could he speak
of it; and then only in fewest words.” In 1868 he made
his last visit to Europe, where he was met with “a flood
of hospitality.” In London “he breakfasted with Mr. Gladstone,
Sir Henry Holland, the Duke of Argyll; lunched
with Lord John Russell at Richmond, ... received
midnight calls from Bulwer and Aubrey de Vere.... The
Queen received him cordially and without ceremony in
one of the galleries of Windsor Castle.” After a visit of
two days with Tennyson, Longfellow and his party crossed
to the Continent. They spent the summer in Switzerland,
the autumn in France, the winter in Florence and Rome.
When he returned to America, he “found Cambridge in
all its beauty; not a leaf faded.” “How glad,” he wrote,
“I am to be at home. The quiet and rest are welcome
after the surly sea. But there is a tinge of sadness in it,
also.” The last ten years of Longfellow’s life were quiet
and serene, with a tinge of sadness in them, also. Yet
they were filled with literary projects which, for a man
of his age, he carried through with remarkable energy;
and, until toward the end, his correspondence was enormous.
In 1880 his health showed signs of failing. In
1882 he suffered a brief and sharp illness, and on Friday,
March 24, “he sank quietly in death.” “The long, busy,
blameless life was ended.”
At the age of thirteen, Longfellow printed four stanzas,
“The Battle of Lovell’s Pond,” in a corner of The Portland
Gazette. Within the next six years he wrote a considerable
number of poems for The United States Literary
Gazette. By 1833, in addition to text-books for his classes,
he had, in various magazines, published original articles,
stories, and several reviews; among them an important
estimate of poetry, especially the poetry of America, in
a notice of Sidney’s “Defense of Poesy” contributed to
The North American Review; as well as translations from
the Spanish of Manrique and others, with an “Introductory
Essay on the Moral and Devotional Poetry of Spain”
(1833). “Outre-Mer,” first published as a series of
sketches, appeared in book form in 1835, “Hyperion”
in 1839, and “Voices of the Night” in the same year as
“Hyperion.” “Voices of the Night” made Longfellow’s
reputation as a poet; the edition was immediately exhausted.
“Hyperion,” which eventually sold well, though
at present it is not often enough read, was at first unfortunate,
the publisher failing before this book had a
fair start. Of Longfellow’s better known works, published
during the latter half of his lifetime, his “Ballads and
Other Poems” appeared in 1841, “The Spanish Student”
in 1843, “Evangeline” in 1847, “Kavanagh,” another
prose romance, in 1849, “Hiawatha” in 1855, “The
Courtship of Miles Standish” in 1858, “The Golden Legend”
in 1872, and “Aftermath” in 1873. The “Tales of a Wayside
Inn” came out in 1863, 1872, and 1873, the First
Day separately, the Second and the Third Day in company
with other writings.
In consequence, it may be, of a latter-day tendency
to disparage Longfellow’s verse, there has been an effort
of late to rehabilitate his prose; not so much, indeed, for
its own sake, as for its importance in the history of our
literature. “Hyperion,” for example, is not merely what
Longfellow called it, “a sincere book, showing the passage
of a morbid mind into a purer and healthier state”;
that is, it is not merely the veiled autobiography of our
most popular poet. Its final reception and large sale are
a proof that in the forties not a few Americans could be
interested in German student life and in the discussion of
Continental literatures. With this romance, one might
say, began an American literature that, without ceasing to
be native, could claim to be cosmopolitan. Possibly no
single work produced in this country ever effected more
in the dissemination of European culture. Its faults are
on the surface. The style is not seldom forced and florid,
having the colour of Jean Paul rather than Irving; and the
sentiment here and there is gushing. Nevertheless, parts
of “Hyperion” are good prose, the prose of a scholar
who is aware of what he is saying and of a poet who
knows how to avoid scraps of metre when he is not writing
verse. The poet-scholar knows, too, on what sort of
basis the best poetry is founded: “O thou poor authorling!...
to cheer thy solitary labour, remember that
the secret studies of an author are the sunken piers upon
which is to rest the bridge of his fame, spanning the dark
waters of Oblivion. They are out of sight; but without
them no superstructure can stand secure.”
The nature of Longfellow’s secret studies is partly indicated
by the extent of his published translations. Although
one could hardly aver that the poet was anything
like a linguistic investigator in the modern sense, he had
a wide acquaintance with Germanic and Romance literatures;
he spoke several modern tongues with fluency; and
he had a sufficient command of idiom to translate with
seeming ease from Swedish, German, Old English, French,
Spanish, and Italian. His renderings from Tegnér’s
“Frithiof’s Saga” seemed so true to the original that the
Swedish poet urged Longfellow to complete the translation.
The versions of Uhland and others which he made
in Germany during the year 1836 were later on extraordinarily
efficacious in popularising German literature for
America. He may likewise be counted one of the pioneers
among American students of Old English or, as
he called it, “Anglo-Saxon.” As a teacher of modern
languages, he naturally gave heed to Greek and Latin
secondarily, and there came a time when he deplored the
fact that his familiarity with Greek had slipped away.
Yet he loved the classics, his favourite among the Latin
poets being Horace. In Horace, he said, one could find
all that was worth while in the message of Goethe, expressed
just as well, and uttered earlier. Of course the
most considerable piece of scholarship undertaken by
Longfellow was his translation of the “Divine Comedy,”
a task for which his enthusiastic teaching of Dante had
helped to fit him, and one which he had commenced
(1839) years before the death of his second wife; yet one
which he resumed and mainly completed relatively late in
life, and, like Bryant’s Homer, something taken up as the
resource of a soul bitterly bereaved, unable to accomplish
spontaneous creative work. In compassing this task,
Longfellow had the encouragement and the direct assistance
of Norton and Lowell, to whose knowledge and
taste the translation as it now stands is greatly indebted.
Even so, it cannot rank high in artistic workmanship.
First of all, the translator found that, in order to reproduce
the sense with fidelity, he must sacrifice the rhyme,
a dubious concession so long as metrical structure was to
be retained at all. Still, Longfellow’s translation is pure
and lucid English; for the beginner in Dante the critical
apparatus is valuable even now; and the three sonnets
prefixed to the “Inferno,” “Purgatorio,” and “Paradiso”
are in themselves an introduction to Dante of a sort hardly
to be surpassed. The best spirit of America is blended in
them with the best of the Middle Ages.
In considering Longfellow as an original poet, we shall
not go astray if we remember his own conception of originality.
To him the poetic gift meant, not the power of
creating new material—as the vulgar suppose—but insight,
the power of seeing things according to their eternal
values. Doubtless he realised that one needs insight to
discover how far the vulgar supposition is blind. At all
events, we need not look for new ideas or new sentiments
in the poetry of Longfellow, but for an attempt to make
us see things as he sees them, after he has tried to see
them as they are. In his dramas, and in his narratives—these
latter being more important—he frankly took material
furnished by his wide reading, or lying ready to his hand,
and strove to clothe it in a new and more permanent
form. “Evangeline” is an instance of his method. The
story was given him by Hawthorne; in elaborating it,
Longfellow consulted such works on Nova Scotia and the
exile of the Acadians as were accessible to him; he was
true to his sources. Had he known of better authorities,
he would have read them, and his account of the exile
would have been historically more precise. The metre of
“Evangeline,” suggested by that of Goethe’s “Hermann
und Dorothea,” is one of the rare instances where dactylic
hexameter has succeeded in English. One can truthfully
say that whatever Longfellow took he really appropriated,
that is, made his own. It was but seldom that his materials
would not fuse, for he had a thorough command
of technique. In “Hiawatha,” which has been called “the
nearest approach to an American epic,” he employed a
form of verse borrowed from the Finnish “Kalevala,” in
which to embody traditions of the Indians. As Freiligrath
remarked, there is something odd in the notion of Hiawatha,
child of the West Wind, meeting with historical
Christian missionaries. However, Longfellow’s daring
synthesis of heterogeneous elements pleased that great
authority on American antiquities Henry R. Schoolcraft;
after many failures, a native poet had at length arisen to
portray our aborigines, in a long poem, with fidelity and
imagination. Ten thousand copies were sold in this
country within four weeks, and the poem was translated
into six modern languages.
The dramatic works of Longfellow have suffered in
comparison with his narrative poems and lyrics. The
causes of this are partly internal and partly external. In
his “Christus,” which he fancied would endure, he probably
chose a subject of too great magnitude for his powers.
Yet the second part at least, “The Golden Legend,” at
present operates less vitally than it should, largely because
of its sympathy with the ideals of the Middle Ages—with
ideals which we, still living in the Renaissance, are not
ready to comprehend. “‘The Golden Legend,’” said
G. P. R. James, “is like an old ruin with the ivy and the
rich blue mould upon it.” Is it not more like a Gothic
church before mould and ruin have crept in? It is a bit
of wholesome, rejuvenated medievalism, an edifice whose
threshold the intellectual pride of our age feels discomfort
in crossing.
It is by his shorter poems that Longfellow now chiefly
lives. Brief narratives such as “The Skeleton in Armour,”
and “The Wreck of the Schooner Hesperus,” lyrics of
sentiment and pathos—“Psalms of Life”—more rarely
bits of humour like the German mechanic’s song, “I know
a maiden, fair to see,” were soon established in the popular
memory. It would be ungracious to say that the popular
taste has been wrong in preferring what is sentimental
and pathetic in Longfellow. A poet whose love of the
hearth was so strong, and whose personal acquaintance
with domestic happiness and domestic grief was so profound,
did well to pour out his soul in verses which add
sunshine to daylight for the happy, and in which the
deeply afflicted may find pensive solace. Yet the popular
taste has clung to “Tell me not in mournful numbers,”
where the sentiment is not above suspicion, and to “The
Skeleton in Armour,” where character, sentiment, and historical
setting are for the most part incongruous; and it
has almost let the sonnet on Milton fall asleep.
Longfellow was the most popular poet ever brought
forth on this continent. His unparalleled vogue was
destined to undergo a reaction. Among those who want
better bread than is made of wheat, his poetry is not now
counted a stimulating diet. However, when American
scholarship shall succeed in reducing American literature
to a true perspective, he will come to his own again.
His patriotism will be rediscovered; his technical skill
will be carefully appraised; the honours heaped upon him
throughout the civilised world will be recognised as just;
and the character from which flowed a well of undefiled
poetry will stand out as one of the noblest products of
occidental civilisation.
James Russell Lowell.—By general consent, Longfellow
is our American poet, par excellence, Emerson our
philosopher, James Russell Lowell our man of letters.
Others, Lowell among them, have shared more richly than
Longfellow in a distinctively lyrical temperament; others
have thought more consecutively than Emerson. No one,
however, when his initial talents are considered, has produced
so much good poetry as Longfellow; no one in the
realm of philosophic thought has been so patently influential
as Emerson; and no one, not even Irving, has
fared well in so many avenues of literature and popular
scholarship as Lowell. He was poet, critic, professor,
editor, diplomat, patriot, humanist; and withal he was a
man and a friend.
He was born on Washington’s birthday, February 22,
1819, at “Elmwood,” Cambridge, a house still in the
possession of his family. On his father’s side he was of
English blood, being descended from Percival Lowell, who
came from Somersetshire to Massachusetts Colony in 1639;
through his mother he drew his lineage from the folk of
the Orkney Islands. His father was a well educated
clergyman, faithful and affectionate; his mother, whether
really gifted with second sight or not, was of a less usual
type, imaginative, high-strung, with a tendency to mental
derangement. During his infancy her youngest son heard
ballads for lullabies. As a child he was read to sleep
with Spenser’s “Faerie Queene.” When he grew older,
he had the range of his father’s generously stocked library.
At the age of nine, he was devouring Walter Scott, and,
like Scott at the same age, was astonishing his companions
with improvised tales of fear and wonder. His imagination
was not unduly stimulated; he lived a wholesome
outdoor life, and he had a sound schooling in the classics.
When he went to Harvard, in 1834, “he was a shy yet
not very tractable youth, given, like so many boys who are
shy from excess rather than from defect of ability, to occasional
violence and oddity of expression or act.” At
Harvard, he gradually rebelled against the rigour of a fixed
curriculum, but read omnivorously in English literature of
the sixteenth and the nineteenth century, and, following the
English romanticists of a generation previous, paid particular
attention to Spenser and Milton. “Milton,” he observes,
“has excited my ambition to read all the Greek and Latin
classics which he did.” Lowell had gone through a precocious
love affair at the age of ten; while in college he
was again “hopelessly in love.” His efforts in the way
of serious writing were at this time facile and, naturally,
not profound; his humour was naïve, and more engaging.
His gradual neglect of the prescribed routine, in spite of
his father’s attempts to stir up in the young man a respect
for academic honours, at length brought upon Lowell
the open displeasure of the Harvard faculty; so that in
his senior year he was temporarily suspended, and directed
to regain his standing under the private instruction of
the Rev. Barzillai Frost at Concord. Longfellow was one
of his teachers in Cambridge; in his retirement, he met
Emerson and Thoreau. When he left his tutor and returned
to Harvard, Class Day was past; but he brought
back his Class Poem finished, and allowed it to circulate
among his friends. It is interesting as an evidence of
Lowell’s early freedom in using a variety of metres, of his
feeling for nature, of his New England heritage of conservatism,
of his inability as yet to enter into sympathy
with the movement for the abolition of slavery, or with
Emerson and Transcendentalism. It is interesting as a
mixture of the old and the new; its touches of enthusiasm
are in odd contrast with its general manner, which is
strongly reminiscent of post-Revolutionary satire.
His course at Harvard over—for better or worse,—Lowell
consigned himself, with misgivings and vacillation,
to the study of law. An unfortunate love affair, the financial
reverses of his father, uncertainty about his own
livelihood, and his seemingly thwarted longing to become
an author conspired to render him at times almost desperate.
It appears that he even meditated suicide. His
humour saved him. He continued his study of ancient and
modern poets and certain aspects of their art; through
this study, as well as through his mental sufferings, his
knowledge of humanity was broadened and enriched. He
began to understand the position of the Abolitionists.
With his engagement to Miss Maria White, the horizon
finally cleared. He had taken his degree in law. Though
he could not immediately be married, the constant influence
of Miss White, herself a poetess, and his contact
with the circle of young people in which she moved—“the
Band”—were from now on vital elements in his spiritual
development. His head was full of literary plans. He
would write a life of Keats; he would compose a “psycho-historical”
tragedy. He became a contributor of verse to
Graham’s Magazine. In 1840 he brought out the volume
of poetry entitled “A Year’s Life,” labelled by reviewers
as “humanitarian and idealistic”; and in the next year or
so he wrote for other periodicals an assortment of sonnets,
prose sketches, and literary essays on the Elizabethan
dramatists. By the close of 1842, he had resolved to
abandon the law, and associated himself with Robert
Carter in founding a magazine to be known as The Pioneer.
The venture was short-lived, owing to Lowell’s enforced
removal to New York, where he was under the
care of an eye-specialist. The failure of his periodical
involved him in debt; however, he had gained valuable
experience as an editor, and had widened his acquaintance
among men of letters. Settling once more at Cambridge,
he watched over the persons of his mother, whose
mind was now astray, and his eldest sister, who already
began to show signs of a similar malady. The fruit of
two years of poetical activity appeared at the end of 1843
in his first series of “Poems.” He married Miss White
on December 26, 1844. Immediately afterward, he assumed
for a brief space a position in Philadelphia on
The Pennsylvania Freeman, he and his wife eking out a
slender income by writing for The Broadway Journal of
New York. An ardent Abolitionist now, Lowell, on his
return to Cambridge, gave his attention during the next
four years mainly to articles for The National Anti-Slavery
Standard. From this point it is impossible in so short an
account as the present to record many details of his productivity
as a writer. In 1846 appeared the first of the
“Biglow Papers,” published in The Boston Courier; three
more came out the next year. In 1848, besides a large
sheaf of articles, Lowell issued the second series of his
“Poems,” his “Fable for Critics”—in which he handled
contemporary American poets with levity but also with insight—and
“The Vision of Sir Launfal,” significant titles
in any list of his works. His powers were near their height.
His humour was almost as sure as it ever became; his
criticism almost as pregnant, his imagination as vital, his
attitude toward national issues as uncompromising. The
defects in his style and treatment are such as we find
even in his later work. Until 1853 Lowell’s life was in
the main happy, darkened indeed by the death of several
children, and by anxiety over the fading health of his
wife. From the grief and loneliness following her death,
he sought relief in the preparation of a course of lectures
on the English poets, to be delivered before the Lowell
Institute in Boston. Their signal success brought him a
call to the chair left vacant at Harvard by Longfellow.
He gave a year or more to study abroad; returning in
1856, he spent the next sixteen years of his life in the
duties of a college professor. He lectured on poetry and
fine art, and offered courses in German, Spanish, and
Italian literature. He was at his best in teaching Dante,
where he could put in motion his belief “that the study
of imaginative literature tends to sanity of mind”; that it
is “a study of order, proportion, arrangement, of the
highest and purest Reason,” and shows “that chance has
less to do with success than forethought, will, and work.”
Latterly he turned his attention to the literature of Old
French. For a man who has been taxed with hereditary
indolence, his industry was surprising. His connection
with The Atlantic Monthly from its launching, in 1857,
until 1861, and with The North American Review from
1864 until 1872, is mentioned elsewhere. His private
reading was continuous and discursive. With the approach
and outbreak of the Civil War, his heart and
pen were enlisted in the service of the North. He wrote
perhaps the most stirring political articles in American
literature; and his verse ran all the way from a new series
of “Biglow Papers” to the “Commemoration Ode” recited
at the memorial exercises, July 21, 1865, in honour of the
Harvard graduates who had given their lives for their
country. After the war, The North American Review
provided him with an outlet for many of his best known
articles in literary criticism, for example, his essays on
Chaucer, Pope, Spenser, and Dante. “The Cathedral,”
his most notable poem after the “Commemoration Ode,”
appeared in 1870. In 1869, and again in 1870, he delivered
a number of lectures, on the poets, at Cornell University.
In 1872, unable to secure a leave of absence
from Harvard, he resigned his position there, in order to
go abroad. After a stay of two years in Europe, where
he was the recipient of distinguished honours, he resumed
his post at Harvard, retaining it until 1877, when President
Hayes appointed him Minister to Spain (1877–80).
In 1880 Garfield made him Minister to England; here
honours were showered upon him. “The Queen is recorded
to have said that during her long reign no ambassador or
minister had created so much interest and won so much
regard as Mr. Lowell.” Shortly after the death of his
second wife, in 1885, he was supplanted in his diplomatic
post. For a time he lived with his daughter at Southborough,
Massachusetts. Among the later collections of
his poetry was “Heartsease and Rue,” published in 1887.
The last two years of his life were passed at Cambridge,
devoted in part to an edition of his works, in ten volumes.
After a season of weakness and pain, borne with fortitude
and humour, he died, where he first saw the light, at
Elmwood, on August 12, 1891.
It is well-nigh impossible to characterise Lowell briefly.
An attempt to sum up a personality that chose so many
avenues of expression, and that at bottom was not thoroughly
unified, can hardly do justice to the component
parts. The most striking thing about the man was his
fertility, if not in great constructive ideas, at all events in
separate thoughts. What he writes is full of meat. His
redundancy is not in the way of useless verbiage; he
wants to use all the materials that offer. A less obvious
thing in Lowell is what we may term his lack of complete
spiritual organisation. He lived in an age of dissolving
beliefs and intellectual unrest. Though he was not tormented,
as were some others, by fierce internal doubts,
he yet failed ever to be quite clear with himself on fundamental
questions of philosophy and religion. He was never
quite at one with himself. As a writer, his serious and
his humorous moods were continually interrupting each
other. Partly on this account, he did not possess an
assured style. Partly, of course, a kind of indifference,
inherited or developed, was to blame; in his formative
stage, he did not have the patience—as he himself told
Longfellow—to write slowly enough. The result is, our
enjoyment of his poetry comes from separate passages,
not from organically constituted, harmonious wholes. In
the occasional felicitous expression of an individual thought,
few can surpass him:
Coy Hebe flies from those that woo,
And shuns the hands would seize upon her;
Follow thy life, and she will sue
To pour for thee the cup of honour.
As a colourist in words, when he happens not to overdo
the impression, his art often seems masterly. Yet if we
look closely, even in the much lauded “Commemoration
Ode,” his technique is seldom if ever inevitable. His
prose is stylistically more continuous than his verse, owing
to his experience as an editor. He healed others; himself
he could heal at least partially. But even as a prose
writer, in spite of his studies in the history of literature,
he did not reach the point where science and the understanding
are seen to be in harmony with poetry and the
imagination. It appears that he did not succeed in distinguishing
between what was temporary and what was
permanent in science, so that he did not escape the danger
of confusing the errors of scientists with their ideals; and
as he was not in full sympathy, as Dante was, with minute
literary research, so he was not willing to subject himself
to the last, exacting, and detailed labours of the poet or
essayist who determines to write verse or prose that shall
endure. It follows that most of his writing, both poetry
and prose, lacks finality. Thus in his article on Chaucer,
though he met the approval of no less an authority than
Professor Child, he could not ultimately have satisfied that
great scholar and critic, since Lowell did not confine himself
to generalisations based upon exhaustive induction.
He does not clearly discriminate between “I think” and
“I know.”
The fact is that he wrote mainly for his own time,
and was bound to have but a temporary reward. This is
not saying that the reward was not worth while. His interpretations
of Spenser, of Dante, of Milton, of the elder
dramatists, sent to those poets many a reader who would
not otherwise have gone; for America, he opened the road
in the study of Chaucer; and his own “Vision of Sir Launfal”
has unlocked many a hard heart to divine influences.
When he wrote in dialect, as in the “Biglow Papers,” he
was manifestly writing for a time; but in their time the
second series did more to justify the Northern cause than
almost any other publication that could be mentioned,
Whittier’s poems not excepted. It may be thought that
his wonderful command of dialect, contrasted with a less
perfect and less instinctive success in any higher medium,
marks him as above all else a satiric poet. When he was
once sitting for his portrait, he so denominated himself,
speaking generally—“a bored satiric poet.” Yet were we
to name Lowell the greatest of all American satirists, his
urgent poems of patriotism—“The Washers of the Shroud,”
the “Commemoration Ode”—his “Vision of Sir Launfal,”
and “The Cathedral” would immediately proclaim him
something greater than any satiric poet could be. Last of
all, nobler than the sum of his writings was the work which
he effected in bringing together his native land and the
mother country, England, in a bond of sympathy unknown
since their separation.
Ralph Waldo Emerson.—Emerson usually passes for
a philosophical mystic and lay preacher. He deemed
himself more of a poet than anything else, for he always
hoped to attain perfect utterance in rhythmical language.
Yet the fact that he wrote much more prose, however
imaginative, than verse, has relegated the main treatment of
him to another section of this volume. Such an arrangement,
of course, is grounded in uncritical custom, not in reason.
Arbitrarily limiting ourselves here to his compositions
in metre, we find that throughout his life (1803–82), or
throughout the years in which he was productive, Emerson
was responsible for much more poetry, in the narrower
sense, than most of his readers are aware of, and that
his poems are as well worth attention as his essays. In his
verse, which was written for himself, he is, to be sure, less
at home so far as concerns the form, but being less hampered
by any regard for an audience, he is more spontaneous in
his thought. At the same time, his stock of fundamental
ideas and sentiments, however vivid and pure, was pretty
much exhausted in his prose, so that, to a considerable
extent, he repeated himself when he changed his medium of
expression. Moreover, as the hierophant of intellectual
independence, he did not come to a practical realisation of
the way in which the opulence of the greatest poets and
thinkers is related to the wealth and continuity of their
reading. Emerson, indeed, read multifariously if not
thoroughly; and it is true that his essays are liberal in the
use of borrowed matter; the production of an essay on
Montaigne might appear to mean little more than throwing
together an anthology of excerpts, cemented with Emerson’s
own marginal notes. He rarely mastered any single
author entire. His insight went by leaps and bounds, and
he appropriated what he found congenial, not being pliant
enough to enter steadily and long into the thought of another.
His prose in general lacks plan. Some of his
poems, on the contrary, are more unified, having an
organic wholeness which is absent from his longer essays.
In an essay, mere continuity of sentiment and preservation
of individual style do not constitute an adequate link
between the parts. In a lyric poem, such consistency may
suffice. Virtually, all of Emerson’s poetry is lyrical and
meditative. The technique is seldom smooth, not for want
of pains, since it was laboured and continually retouched,
but for want of capacity in the artist. The style is apt
to be brittle, the cadence is not maintained through passages
of any length, and the separate sentences are easily
detached from their context. Even so, they are not always
clear, but may need commentary and parallel from
the “Essays” to explain them. Emerson’s poetry is largely
autobiographical and, in no harsh sense, egoistic, a picture
of the successive and recurrent states of his own soul.
His vision of the universe in each of its parts, his belief
in the immanence of God and the educational potency of
solitude, and his confidence in the ability of Nature to
prepare and suddenly to produce ideal or “representative”
men, are ever near the surface. In his descriptions of the
external world he is faithful to detail; but as he discovers
in each individual thing an intrinsic value transcending
the value of its dependence on the whole, he is likely to
see the parts without being ready to seize the perspective.
Among details his selection, if he makes any, seems altogether
an affair of his mood, not of logic. His power of
choice is nevertheless stronger than Whitman’s. He has
a more than Wordsworthian distaste for analytic science:
But these young scholars, who invade our hills,
Bold as the engineer who fells the wood,
And travelling often in the cut he makes,
Love not the flower they pluck, and know it not,
And all their botany is Latin names.
None the less have science and scientific terms invaded
his poetry; nor is it simply the larger and the elemental
aspects of modern discovery that claim his regard. With
his individualistic turn of mind, he can not choose but
have an eye for the precise and specific:
Ah! well I mind the calendar,
Faithful through a thousand years,
Of the painted race of flowers,
Exact to days, exact to hours.
* * * * *
I know the trusty almanac
Of the punctual coming-back,
On their due days, of the birds.
He understands his own interest in such matters; not
being very objective, he cannot understand the impulse of
the young botanist. Lacking the dramatic and historical
impulse, he wrote no long poems. “May-Day” is his
longest and most sustained, although he never quite succeeded
in ordering its parts. It “was probably written in
snatches in the woods on his afternoon walks, through many
years.” The volume to which it gave its name (1867)
marked a distinct advance in fluency over the collection
of his poems that had appeared twenty years earlier. But
even considering his own final selection (1876) or considering
the now standard text of all his poetry (published in 1904),
we can scarcely affirm that the longing he expressed in
1839 was ever fully satisfied: “I am naturally keenly
susceptible to the pleasures of rhythm, and cannot believe
but one day I shall attain to that splendid dialect, so
ardent is my wish; and these wishes, I suppose, are ever
only the buds of power; but up to this hour I have never
had a true success in such attempts.” It is probable that
in spite of his New England good sense, his inherent
esteem for propriety, his insight into the subtler workings
of nature, he did not have the initial impulse of a Bryant
and a Longfellow toward what he most needed in his
education. Nature works also through the scientist and
the pedagogue. Emerson doubts it:
Can rules or tutors educate
The semigod whom we await?
He must be musical,
Tremulous, impressional,
Alive to gentle influence
Of landscape and of sky,
And tender to the spirit-touch
Of man’s or maiden’s eye;
But, to his native centre fast,
Shall into Future fuse the Past,
And the world’s flowing fates in his own mould recast.
Henry David Thoreau.—Emerson had the originality
that enables a seer to pierce beneath the surface, and to
find a likeness in things where passive minds detect no
brotherhood; he did not have the originality by virtue of
which amply creative minds gather a multitude of elements,
properly subordinated one to another, into new,
harmonious, and embracing wholes. His is a crucial defect
in American poetry, a defect in the constructive imagination.
This defect is intimately associated with an unscholarly
dread of minute research. Emerson’s attitude
of distrust toward science was shared by his friend and
disciple Thoreau (1817–62), in whom the creed of individualism
ran almost to the point of caricature. In his youth
and prime, Thoreau wrote a great deal of verse, only a
little of which has been preserved. The conception of
Prometheus, suffering and isolated friend of humanity,
tenacious in the assertion of his own will, was to Thoreau’s
taste; hence his rough but stirring translation from the
tragedy by Æschylus. He had the Emersonian fondness
for gnomic sentences and verses, such as he found scattered
through the “Odes” of Pindar. His versions of
Pindaric gnomes show that he was not afraid of difficult
Greek; still, he hovered between belief and disbelief in
scholarship. His ear was better than Emerson’s. It is
unfortunate that his unrivalled gift of observation did not
more frequently leave a record of itself in lines like those
“To a Stray Fowl.” His mind was not without the New
England love of the startling and paradoxical. Yet his
search for hidden analogies borders oftener on true imagination
than was the case with Holmes.
Oliver Wendell Holmes.—“The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table”
has already given evidence that it will outlast
“Elsie Venner” and “The Guardian Angel”; yet if the
miscellanies of Dr. Holmes (1809–94) possess more vitality
than his novels, this is in some measure due to the “Autocrat’s”
occasional employment of verse. In the “Breakfast-Table”
series appeared “The Chambered Nautilus” and
“The Wonderful ‘One-Hoss Shay,’” which, with his youthful
“Old Ironsides,” and “The Broomstick Train,” have
retained the firmest hold on the popular memory. Holmes
was pleased to trace his ancestry back to Anne Bradstreet,
the first American poetess. His own poetry commenced
with a schoolboy rendering into heroic couplets from Virgil,
and hardly ended with his tribute to the memory of
Whittier in 1892. In the standard edition of his works
his poems occupy three volumes. Many of them, corresponding
to his turn for the novel, are narrative; for story-telling
he had a knack amounting to a high degree of
talent. His sense of order and proportion is stronger than
that of other members of the New England school, and
he has a command of at least formal structure. One may
not unreasonably attribute this command in part to his
studies in human anatomy. At the same time Holmes is
beset with the temptation to value manner and brilliancy
rather than substance, and he will go out of his way for
a fanciful conceit or a striking expression. In the use of
odds and ends of recondite lore his cleverness is amazing.
He had a tenacious memory and a habit of rapid association,
so that as a punster he is almost without a match.
However, his glance is not deeply penetrating; he sees
fantastic resemblances between things that are really far
removed from one another, not so often the fundamental
similarities in things whether near or apart. One may
in vain search through Holmes for anything so truly poetic
as Thoreau’s comparison of sex in human beings and flowers.
Accordingly, his mind may be classed as fanciful rather than
imaginative. It ought not to be misunderstood, and will
not be unduly detracting from his great excellence, if we
say that the poetry of Holmes does not always evince the
highest moral seriousness—a lack that is not fully supplied
when he attempts moral subjects, as in “The Chambered
Nautilus,” where, though the comparison of the growing
mollusk with the expanding human soul is beautiful,
the preaching is a little trite.
As regards the form of his poetry, Holmes is a survival
of the eighteenth century. In his boyhood, he was
a devoted admirer of Pope, but instead of abandoning the
style of the Augustans, as Bryant and Lowell abandoned
or outgrew it, he chose rather to perfect himself in it;
until, somewhat more plastic than it was in his models,
somewhat modernised and provincial, that style became
his normal accent. Having Holmes’ purpose in view, one
may add that no poet in America has acquired a surer
control over his medium. Within this medium he was
able to unite sparkle, humour, clearness, good sense, and
oratorical emphasis. It is the opinion of several very able
critics that no one in his century can vie with him in the
art of writing verses for an occasion. Here is the source
not only of his strength but also of his weakness. A large
proportion of his verse is of mainly local or temporary
interest. The poems which he offered year by year at
the exercises of the Harvard Commencement will year by
year engender less enthusiasm. A constructive criticism,
however, will lay stress, not on his inheritance of New
England provincialism or his slight tendency to be flippant,
but on his kindliness, his inexhaustible good humour,
his quick and darting intellectual curiosity, and on the
appeal which his sprightly moralising makes to the young.
It is not a little thing to say of a wit and a power of
epigram like his that they were ever genial, and ever on
the side of something better than a merely conventional
morality.
John Greenleaf Whittier.—In so brief a section, it has
seemed impossible to offer more than a few scattered remarks
on the poetry that arose in both the North and the
South in connection with slavery and the Civil War.
Something has been said of Confederate writers, including
Timrod and Lanier; more might be added on the patriotic
verse of Lowell and Longfellow, Emerson and Holmes,
and a throng of lesser men, who sang to the North of
courage and consolation, or attacked those whom they
considered the foes of the Republic at home or abroad.
One poetess, yet living, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe (born in
1819), immortalised herself in 1862 by her “Battle-Hymn
of the Republic,” a piece breathing the very essence of
righteousness and love of country, and having a value out
of all proportion to the rest of her work. Something
similar must be said of Thomas B. Read (1822–72) and
his popular “Sheridan’s Ride” (1865). The true bard of
the battle-field and bivouac, of course, was Walt Whitman,
who, as a nurse in the Union army, had actual experience
of war. If, however, any one person is to be singled out
from his century as the proclaimer of American freedom,
this must be Whittier; and that too, it might almost be
said, in spite of his heredity, his early hopes, and his
natural bent. At least, his Quaker blood and his love
for the peaceful ways of nature would not designate him
for the office of poet militant. Furthermore, if Whittier’s
art and sentiment in the progress of years elicit more and
more admiration from qualified arbiters, such admiration
will be mainly bestowed, not on his war lyrics or his denunciations
of slavery, but on his hymns, his legends of
New England, and his rustic idyls—above all, on “Snow
Bound.”
He was born at Haverhill, Massachusetts, on December
17, 1807, springing from pious English stock, in a
family that belonged to the Society of Friends. A minute
and animated picture of his home and its inmates is given
in “Snow Bound.” Whittier’s opportunities for regular
schooling were slender. Though he did not inherit the
rugged strength of his ancestors, his help was required on
the farm; and his father, without absolutely discouraging
the lad’s effort to win an education, was reluctant to see
him busied with a useless or dangerous plaything such as
their sect generally regarded poetry. The boy attended
district school, read the few books that were in his home,
and even managed to obtain copies of Burns and Shakespeare,
and a novel, perused in secret, of Scott. His
mother was inwardly gratified by the lines which he wrote
under the inspiration of Burns. When his sister clandestinely
forwarded one of his poems to The Free Press
of Newburyport, and thus paved the way for an acquaintance
between Whittier and the editor, William Lloyd Garrison,
the trend of the young man’s life was determined.
Thanks to the influence of Garrison, and by the strictest
husbanding of his own means, Whittier was able to pass,
in all, a year at the new Haverhill Academy. “Thus
ended his school-days,” says his biographer, Pickard; “but
this was only the beginning of his student life. By wide
and well-chosen reading, he was constantly adding to his
stores of information. While revelling in the fields of English
literature, he became familiar through translations
with ancient and current literature of other nations, and
kept abreast of all political and reformatory movements.”
In the development of his thought, he owed most to the
Bible, to the tracts of the Friends, and to the poetry of
Burns. The mainspring of his activity, whether as student,
poet, politician, or anti-slavery agitator, was an intense
desire to be useful to his kind, coupled with a burning
belief in the sacredness of individual liberty. During his
early manhood, he continued to write verse, sending it to
various New England periodicals; and he became editor,
successively of a Boston trade journal, of The Haverhill
Gazette, and of The New England Magazine. Journalism
helped him to enter politics, and in 1832 the Whigs of
his native place seemed ready to elect him to Congress.
After careful deliberation, he renounced his political aspirations,
not without an inward struggle, and decided to
lend his energies to the abolition of negro slavery, to assist
the discredited and obscure band led by Garrison. “My
lad,” so in after years he counselled a youth of fifteen,
“if thou wouldst win success, join thyself to some unpopular
but noble cause.” With all his idealism—let us
rather say, on account of his thoroughgoing idealism—Whittier
was thoroughly practical. He had keen insight
into the characters of men, and knew how to turn their
motives, both good and bad, to account; his political
sagacity, which, with his untiring industry, made him one
of the most capable workers on the side of Abolition, was
largely responsible for the rise of Charles Sumner to a
position of beneficent influence. Ever frail in health, yet
labouring on, and subjected more than once to personal
violence at the hands of opponents, Whittier had the satisfaction
of seeing the movement which he championed
emerge from persecution into triumph. Regarded superficially,
his devotion delayed his own progress as an artist,
and his best poetry came late. In a deeper sense, he
could not have developed into the poet that he became
without living the life that he did.
In a general way his work may be divided into two
parts—that produced during his more active interest
in journalism and politics, and that produced after his
retirement. In 1831 he published his “Legends of New
England in Prose and Verse,” a pamphlet, and in 1832,
another pamphlet, “Moll Pitcher,” neither of them of
much interest save in comparison with his better choice
of subjects and better handling at a later date. A
third pamphlet, “Justice and Expediency” (1833), published
at his own expense and with a full consciousness
of its probable effect, was the document that severed
him from the dominant party and openly leagued him with
the Abolitionists. “Mogg Megone” (1836), his first bound
volume, which he afterward vainly tried to suppress, was
published after he became a secretary of the American
Anti-Slavery Society. The next year (1837), Isaac Knapp,
without consulting Whittier, issued a collection of “Poems
Written during the Progress of the Abolition Movement in
America.” It was followed in 1838 by an authorised
collection. The poet represented Haverhill in the Massachusetts
Legislature in 1835; ill-health prevented his
finishing a second term. In 1837 he went to Philadelphia
to aid “the venerable anti-slavery pioneer Benjamin Lundy,
who was editing The National Enquirer,” afterward called
The Pennsylvania Freeman. In 1840 he retired to Amesbury,
Massachusetts, taking up his abode with his mother
and his sister Elizabeth. He never married. At Amesbury
and at Danvers, in the same county, he spent the
remainder of his life in quiet. The record is one of domestic
peace and literary endeavour, whose first fruits were
“Lays of my Home, and Other Poems” (1843). With
this volume Whittier’s writings began to be remunerative.
Some of the more noteworthy subsequent dates in his life
are as follows: Of his prose works, “The Stranger in
Lowell” appeared in 1845, “Supernaturalism in New England”
in 1847, “Literary Recollections” in 1854. From
the founding of The Atlantic Monthly, in 1857, Whittier
was a most welcome contributor. He also edited John
Woolman’s Journal, and in other ways displayed interest
in the writings of the Friends. “Voices of Freedom”
(1849) was the first comprehensive edition of his poems.
He published “Songs of Labour” in 1850, “A Sabbath
Scene” in 1853, “Home Ballads” in 1860, “National
Lyrics” in 1865. After the war, his most important
publications included “Snow Bound” (1866), “Maud
Muller” (1867), “Ballads of New England” (1869),
“Miriam and Other Poems” (1871), “Mabel Martin”
(1874), “Hazel Blossoms” (1875), “Poems of Nature”
(1885), “St. Gregory’s Quest, and Recent Poems” (1886).
His last collection, “At Sundown” (1890), was dedicated
to E. C. Stedman, and closed with a valediction to Dr.
Holmes. Many of Whittier’s poems were first published
in magazines; “Maud Muller” appeared in The National
Era, in 1854.
Whittier’s personality was one of indescribable attractiveness.
He was gentle, yet full of repressed fire, an
ardent nature that had steadily submitted to the Christian
spirit of self-control. He had the inward beauty that
springs from generous impulses under the habitual guidance
of principle and forethought. Toward his opponents he
showed no rancour; he strove against parties, not individuals;
and he commanded the respect of his adversaries.
If he had a foible, it was his delight in playful teasing.
He never visited a theatre or a circus in his life. He is
described in his early manhood as “tall, slight, and very
erect,” of a distinguished presence, yet bashful—but never
awkward. His eye was brilliant and expressive. In maturity,
his face in repose was almost stern, but a smile
would light up his entire countenance. “His voice in
reading was of a quality entirely different from that in
conversation—much fuller and deeper.” In later years,
“while retaining a lively interest in all literary and political
matters and keeping abreast of current events, he dwelt
most intently ... upon the great spiritual and eternal
realities of God. By the open fire in the evening he would
talk for hours upon sacred themes, ever grateful for the
rich blessings of his life and looking with reverent curiosity
towards the future.... There was not the shadow of
a doubt in his mind concerning the immortality of the soul.”
He died after a stroke of paralysis, on September 7, 1892,
and was buried at Amesbury.
In a recent and praiseworthy volume of “The Chief
American Poets,” Dr. C. H. Page has included a longer
list of selections from Whittier than from Longfellow, although
the contributions representing Whittier occupy less
space. This is significant. Whittier was mainly a writer
of short poems. In the ballad he had a form suited to
the general taste, and to his aim of stinging a sluggish
populace into revolt against slavery. He painted that institution
in its most repellent aspects, seeing nought of
the glamour which Southern writers have shed over plantation
life as it existed before the war. Living in the
North, he saw something of escaping and recaptured negroes.
His glance was very direct; he described matters
simply; he accomplished the task that he set himself.
Among his lyrics of the war, “Barbara Frietchie” is altogether
the best known—not with complete justice to others,
for example “The Watchers.” To his treatment of tales
and legends of colonial New England Whittier brought an
inveterate hatred of persecution and oppression in every
shape. Accordingly, many of his narratives, like “Cassandra
Southwick,” touch on wrongs attempted or inflicted
upon the early Quakers. As an interpreter of colonial
life Whittier comes second only to Hawthorne. As a
herald of the beauty in flower and hill and stream, in
“The Trailing Arbutus,” “Among the Hills,” “The Merrimac,”
he is second to none in America. True, he does
not always refrain from what Ruskin has called the pathetic
fallacy, so that he descries in the face of nature moods
that are really in the heart of man; but he does this more
rarely than his contemporaries. In his revelation of humble
and rustic types, “Maud Muller,” “The Barefoot Boy,”
“The Huskers,” he is almost the equal of Burns or Wordsworth.
He is not their rival in perfection of style. More
frequently than they he suffers from a bad line; and his
rhymes are often defective. Yet one must not conclude
that he was inattentive to technique. On the contrary,
Whittier was a born artist. But the nice discipline of the
ear which so many English poets have owed to the cultivation
of Greek and Latin prosody was not vouchsafed to
him; and for his manner he missed the advantage of
rigorous criticism. The positive excellence of Whittier’s
verse is due to the harmonious blending and interworking
in him of varied powers. His senses were alert and sure,
his humour was fine, his intellect strong, his pathos firm.
He was not afraid of a theme that was tragic. His realism
might be compared to that of Crabbe, but it is more
hopeful. In his religious poems there is a belief more
satisfying than transcendental pantheism; and there is a
quality of personal joy and optimism which, as we have
previously observed, is not typical of American literature.
Best loved and saintliest of our singing train,
Earth’s noblest tributes to thy name belong.
A lifelong record closed without a stain,
A blameless memory shrined in deathless song.
Such was Holmes’ eulogy of Whittier. With it we may
take leave of New England.
Bayard Taylor.—A Quaker poet of a different stamp
was the meteoric Bayard Taylor (1825–78). His boyhood
was distinguished by a passion for roving and for collecting
objects of natural history. His devotion to books and
his distaste for labour on a Pennsylvania farm did not always
please his father, who laughed boisterously, however,
when a phrenologist said of the son: “You will never make
a farmer of him to any great extent: you will never keep
him home; that boy will ramble around the world, and
furthermore, he has all the marks of a poet.” At the age
of nineteen, having just published “Ximena: or The Battle
of Sierra Morena, and Other Poems,” and armed with
some introductions from N. P. Willis, Taylor engaged in
a Byronic pilgrimage on the Continent. A half-year at
Heidelberg rendered him fluent in German. By a circuitous
route through northern Germany and Austria he
proceeded on foot to Italy, and from Italy through France
back to England, supporting himself by correspondence
which he sent to The New York Tribune, The Saturday
Evening Post, and The United States Gazette, and which
on his return to America he collected in “Views Afoot”
(1846). Our account of his life thus far gives a faint
impression of his physical and mental activity. No adequate
narrative may here be essayed of his wandering
and eventful career throughout. “Views Afoot” made his
reputation. By 1848 he had become head of the literary
department of The New York Tribune. In 1849, as correspondent
for The Tribune, he spent five months with
the gold-diggers in California. In 1850 he married Miss
Mary Agnew, who was dying of consumption, and who
survived her wedding but two months. In 1851–53 he
travelled in Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor, Ethiopia, Spain,
India, and China. In 1856 he broke down from overwork
in America—lecturing and writing—and he went to Europe
again. In Germany (1857) he married the daughter
of an eminent astronomer, P. A. Hansen. In 1857–58 he
visited Greece. Two years later, at an expense of $17,000,
he had built a home, near his birthplace, Kennett Square,
Pennsylvania, calling his estate “Cedarcroft.” To settle
down in affluence had been his cherished ambition; but
this dream, and his haste to realise it, embarrassed him
financially, cost him much peace of mind, and eventually
cost him his life. He never succeeded in resting. In
1862–63 he was Secretary of the Legation at St. Petersburg.
During other intervals, he lectured in America.
Among his lectures may be mentioned those delivered at
Cornell University in 1870, 1871, 1875, and 1877. A large
part of his correspondence is at present housed in the
Cornell University Library. His translation of Goethe’s
“Faust,” Part First, appeared in 1870; nearly all of the
first edition was sold in one day. The Second Part came
out in 1871. Excessive labour, an irregular and not abstemious
way of life, and, more especially, financial worry
told upon his constitution. He was destined never to finish
his projected “Life of Goethe.” He had barely entered
upon his duties as Minister to Germany when the collapse
came. His last words were, “I must be away.”
“Taylor,” says Albert H. Smyth, “wrote with such
rapidity that he could complete a duodecimo volume in a
fortnight.... In a night and a day, he read Victor
Hugo’s voluminous ‘La Légende des Siècles,’ and wrote for
The Tribune a review of it which fills eighteen pages of his
‘Essays and Literary Notes,’ and contains five considerable
poems that are translations in the metre of the original.”
His powers of memory are said to have been prodigious.
He could repeat not only from his favourite authors but
from the futile compositions of poetasters whose manuscripts
he had read as an editor and rejected. He was
in the habit of carrying his own poetry in his head until
the process of correction was ended. Accordingly, the
perfection of his “copy,” which was written in the neatest
hand imaginable, has led various critics into the error of
thinking that he did not revise. His poetry was much
more carefully worked out than his prose, upon which he
had no thought of building a reputation. He would spend
hours on the chiselling of a single couplet. His style resounds
with echoes of word and phrase from Byron and
Shelley, indeed from the whole circle of his reading in
both English and German. Nor is it deficient in individuality.
Taylor has a pronounced cadence of his own.
Nevertheless his poetry wants some quality or other that
would make it lasting. Although in 1896 there was a cult
of younger men that studied and imitated him, his immense
vogue as a prose writer had already waned; and his eclipse
as a poet is now almost complete. In the history of American
literature there is nothing stranger than this eclipse.
Taylor’s learning was wide and substantial. He shrank
from no drudgery of preparation. At the age of fifty he
was willing to begin the study of Greek. And it was not
merely that he was in touch with his time on all sides,
and able by brilliant arts to snare the popular fancy.
When he wrote, he knew what he was talking about.
His “Poems of the Orient” (1854), containing the Shelley-like
“Bedouin Song,” show deep sympathy with the customs
and passions of the East. “Ross Browne’s Syrian
dragoman, when he listened to the reading of ‘Hassan to
his Mare,’ ‘sprang up with tears in his eyes, and protested
that the Arabs talked just that way to their horses.’”
Taylor had the suffrages of educated critics too. “The
Picture of St. John” (1866) Longfellow reckoned “a great
poem”; while Lowell said that, except “The Golden
Legend,” no American poem could match it in finish and
sustained power. “The Masque of the Gods” (1872), an
endeavour to combine the ideals of Christianity and Hellenism,
also pleased Longfellow. “Lars, a Pastoral Poem”
(1873), is a curious tale, with some historical basis; the
unwonted background of Norwegian fiords makes part of
the setting for a tragic romance among the Quakers. Of
Taylor’s dramatic poems we shall hazard no discussion;
besides “The Masque of the Gods,” he published “The
Prophet” (1874), whose scene is laid among the Mormons,
and “Prince Deukalion” (1877), a piece of symbolism in
which the author tried to objectify his total conception of
human life both here and hereafter. He felt as sure of
the other world as of this. In such assurance he possessed
the most vitalising belief that can inspire a poetic
soul. Why, then, is his poetry now disregarded? Why
is it that the production for which the present age is most
ready to thank him is his version of Goethe’s “Faust”?
A tentative explanation is this. Taylor’s life was full of
disquiet. He never enjoyed the solitude necessary to the
maturing of poetic sentiment. He was betrayed by temporal
ambition into posting over land and ocean without
rest. He was too determined to achieve fame. There
are times for action, and there are times for a wise
passiveness. They also serve who only stand and
wait.
Walt Whitman.—His belief in immortality, in the absolute
and eternal value of each individual person and
thing, constitutes the main element of permanence in the
writings of Walt (= Walter) Whitman. He too had in his
veins a strain of blood from the Quakers; though he was
born (May 31, 1819) in a family that took little cognisance
of religion. His mother, Louisa Van Velsor, was of
mingled Dutch and Welsh descent, illiterate, but in the
eyes of her second child, the poet, always “perfect.”
When this child was four years old, his father and name-sake,
a good carpenter and of honest Connecticut ancestry,
but a slipshod householder, removed from West Hills,
Huntington Township, Long Island, to the “village,” as it
then was, of Brooklyn; not before the impresses of rural
life had entered unawares into the heart of the child;
and not too late for the life of the future metropolis to
become an imperishable part of his experience. The
poet’s formative years were passed in the midst of the
growing population centred at New York. He attended
the public schools of Brooklyn until he was thirteen, then,
with a scanty knowledge of reading, writing, and arithmetic,
entered a lawyer’s office as errand-boy, his employers
giving him access during free hours “to a big circulating
library.” “Up to that time,” he says, “this was the
signal event of my life.” “For a time I now revel’d in
romance-reading of all kinds; first the ‘Arabian Nights,’
all the volumes, an amazing treat. Then, with sorties in
very many other directions, took in Walter Scott’s novels,
one after another, and his poetry.” From errand-boy he
became typesetter, varying his desultory labours for The
Patriot, and The Star, by excursions on Long Island, by
contributing “sentimental bits” to local newspapers, and
by active participation in several debating societies. At
eighteen he turned country schoolmaster; and shifting
from that, he set up as editor of The Long Islander, hiring
some help, but himself doing most of the work, including
the distribution of his weekly sheet to its patrons. In
1841 he returned to New York, became editor of The
Daily Aurora, wrote for The Tattler, and published stories
in The Democratic Review. In later years it was his “serious
wish to have all these crude and boyish pieces quietly
dropp’d in oblivion.” Meanwhile he attended the theatre,
continued his observation of the crowds at the Brooklyn
ferries and in the streets of New York, and his study of
nature on the shores of Long Island, read newspapers,
“went over thoroughly the Old and New Testaments, and
absorbed ... Shakespeare, Ossian, the best translations
[available] of Homer, Æschylus, Sophocles, the old German
Nibelungen, the ancient Hindoo poems, and one or
two other masterpieces, Dante’s among them.” A brief
connection with The Brooklyn Eagle was terminated by
Whitman’s falling out with the radical faction of the
Democrats; whereupon he seized “a good chance to go
down to New Orleans on the staff of The Crescent, a daily
to be started there.” Accompanied by his younger
brother, “Jeff,” he crossed the Alleghanies, and took
steamer down the Ohio and the Mississippi—“a leisurely
journey and working expedition”; then “after a time
plodded back northward, up the Mississippi, and around
to and by way of the Great Lakes, ... to Niagara Falls
and Lower Canada, finally returning through central New
York and down the Hudson; travelling altogether probably
8000 miles this trip, to and fro.” In the experiences of
his life up to this point lay the materials for his “Leaves
of Grass,” which he published at his own expense in
1855, having done part of the typesetting himself. A
copy sent to Emerson elicited from him a letter in which
the book was characterised as “the most extraordinary
piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed.”
The next year Whitman brought out a second and amplified
edition, printing Emerson’s laudatory letter and his
own answer in the Preface, and on the back the quotation,
“I greet you at the beginning of a great career,” with
Emerson’s name beneath. This act of questionable taste
failed to augment the sale of the volume; nor was the
edition of 1860 more successful. In 1862, Whitman’s
younger brother having been wounded during service in
the Union Army, the poet was brought into contact with
the army hospitals. He continued his ministrations to the
sick and suffering almost uninterruptedly until the hospitals
in Washington were closed. “From cot to cot
they called him, often in tremulous tones or in whispers;
they embraced him, they touched his hand, they gazed
at him. To one he gave a few words of cheer, for another
he wrote a letter home, ... to another, some special
friend, very low, he would give a manly farewell kiss. He
did the things for them which no nurse or doctor could do,
and he seemed to leave a benediction at every cot as he
passed along.” By sheer personal magnetism he saved
many lives. The record of his connection with the war is
to be found in his “Specimen Days,” in the posthumous
collection of letters entitled “The Wound-Dresser” (1898),
in “Drum Taps,” published in 1865, and in the “Sequel to
Drum Taps,” which contained his poems on Lincoln
(among them the threnody, “O Captain! My Captain!”),
published later in the same year. Shortly after the war
was over, Whitman, who had found a place as clerk in the
Department of the Interior, was discharged by Secretary
Harlan, Harlan having discovered the authorship of
“Leaves of Grass,” in his opinion “an indecent book.”
The poet quickly received another position, in the office
of the Attorney-General; and his enthusiastic friend and
champion, W. D. O’Connor, brought out a defence of
Whitman, written in terms of exaggerated praise, under
the famous title of “The Good Grey Poet.” A fourth
edition of “Leaves of Grass,” revised, and supplemented
by “Drum Taps,” was published in 1867; a fifth, including
the “Passage to India,” in 1871. The sixth and
seventh editions appeared in 1876 and 1881–1882; the eighth
(1888–1889) contained in addition “November Boughs,”
and the ninth (1891–1892) “Good-bye my Fancy.” In
1873, Whitman, disabled by a stroke of paralysis, gave up
his position in Washington and removed to Camden, New
Jersey, where he lived with George Whitman until 1879.
By this time he had so far recovered that he could make
a journey to the West, followed by another, the next year,
to Canada. In 1881, the sale of his works allowed him to
settle, at Camden, in a home of his own. Here he lived
in comparative comfort, the object of a good deal of
curiosity, receiving visitors, some of them very distinguished,
and, as his strength allowed, adding to his stock
of verse. In 1888, he had a second stroke of paralysis, but
he lived on, preserving his courage and mental alertness,
until 1892. He died on March 26th of that year. If we
can credit his statement made in 1890, he was probably
survived by four out of six children that were not born in
wedlock.
In many ways, Whitman corresponds to the ideal
presented in the “natural man” of Rousseau; if space
allowed, a profitable comparison might be made between
“the good grey poet” and the French forerunner of
American democracy. At the outset, the excessive sentimentalism
of Rousseau would constitute a patent difference.
But Whitman’s assumption of equality among individuals,
in so far as they are not spoiled by what he deems a false
and artificial education, is nothing new to the reader of
Rousseau; and his preference of the “powerful, uneducated,”
raw material of humanity has its counterpart in
the sympathetic attitude of Rousseau toward the burgher
and peasant classes which formed the part of society that
he really understood. Moreover, both of these authors
demand an individual standard—which is no standard—of
judgment. Both desire to be appreciated, yet refuse
to be appraised according to standards which the cumulative
wisdom of mankind in the past, of the greatest
democracy, has attained to and approved. Both try to
regard organisation and the subordination of one person
or thing to another as unnatural. In the case of Whitman
at least, it is for want of philosophical standards,
and for want of a consistent effort to determine what is
meant by nature and natural, that the so-called literature
of democracy has been so hard to measure.
In the first place, then, if we are to measure Whitman
at all, we must make certain postulates. For example,
we must postulate that restraint in literature, as in life, is
a law of nature. This, Whitman is not disposed to admit.
In private life, it is true, he was more temperate and continent
than certain passages in “Leaves of Grass” led
casual readers to surmise. But he saw fit to beget children,
out of wedlock, without assuming the responsibility
of their nurture and education. Are the duties which
modern society lays upon parents less natural than the
alleged practice of Rousseau, or are they more? Again,
Whitman decides to address the public in the guise of a
poet. Now in practice, be it observed, he is much truer
to the demands of a poetic ear than are many of our conventional
versifiers; and though he has a predilection for
colloquial diction and syntax, he is in his own way not
unscrupulous in the matter of technique. The changes
that he made in successive editions of his main work,
“Leaves of Grass,” are of deep interest to the student of
poetic art. At the same time, he repudiates literary convention,
and recognizes no law as binding upon one who
contracts to write for his fellow men, save the law of his
individual being. There is, however, no law, or science,
or art, of the individual as such. Poetry, according to
the deepest thinkers on this subject, is the rhythmical
utterance of the individual in harmony with universal law;
and criticism has for its province the recognition of that
universal law in the particular poet. In so far, then, as
Whitman’s irregularly trained personality succeeds in expressing
what is true for all men, or for many, or for representative
and typical men, uttering that truth in terms
that are both choice and generally intelligible,—in so far
as he actually conforms to the best conventions—he is a
great poet, perhaps our greatest native poet. He succeeds
often. It is to be noted that he is most successful
when, as in his lament for Lincoln, he adopts a regular
metrical form.
On Whitman’s achievement as spokesman of modern
democracy perhaps too much stress has already been laid.
Following his own lead, his interpreters have been inclined
to associate his idiosyncrasies, his departures from the
normal, his lapses from good taste in referring to the
physiology of sex, too closely with the nature of this
achievement. In dealing with the “poetry of democracy,”
it seems to have escaped observation that an age of popular
freedom and republican ideals may produce a literature
of high refinement and perfect balance between literary
tradition and the impulses of the individual author.
It is well to remember that the masterpieces of art which
ennobled Athens under Pericles were the expression of—for
Greece—an age of democracy; and that the epics of
Milton, however conventional in one sense, were the outpourings
of a nobler champion of liberty than Whitman.
Referring to the practice of studying his illustrious predecessors,
Whitman has said: “Now, if eligible, O that the
great masters might return and study me!” Something
like this is sure to take place. In order to appreciate
him rightly, we must confront him, full of the spirit of
those authors, Sophocles, Dante, Milton, and their peers,
by the standard of whom one is bound to estimate poetry.
If thus confronted, Whitman’s lustre, so bright in the
eyes of his cult, begins to wane; still, the tributes paid
him by W. M. Rossetti, Freiligrath, Dowden, Björnson,
Symonds, may not lightly be set aside. Taken at its
best, his poetry, as Emerson said, “has the best merits,
namely, of fortifying and encouraging.” His prose works
ought not to be dismissed so summarily as must here be
the case; being less subject to suspicious innovation than
his verse, conforming naturally to expected canons, his
prose, in particular his prose criticism, is well worth study.
It is direct. Genius, said Whitman, is almost one hundred
per cent directness.
Bret Harte, Joaquin Miller, Edward Rowland Sill.—We
turn to the poetry of the Far West. Francis Bret
Harte (1839–1902), born at Albany, New York, after a
varied youth in California won a sudden renown through
his “Heathen Chinee” and “Condensed Novels.” His
later success as a prolific writer of short stories tended to
obscure his talent as a humourist in verse; and even in the
present decade, when his death has called fresh attention
to the value of his literary work as a whole, his poetry is
hardly known as it should be. Probably in the course of
years his “East and West Poems” (1871) and “Echoes
of the Foothills” (1874) will entertain more readers than
they now do in comparison with “The Luck of Roaring
Camp.” There is likely to come a time when pioneer life
among the gold-mines will appeal less than it does to
the present generation; whereas the permanent aspects of
external nature, as Harte has caught them in “Crotalus,”
can never cease to interest. The details of his life are
recounted in another part of this volume.
Cincinnatus Hiner Miller (born 1841), another celebrity
of the West, was reared in a log-cabin in Indiana.
After a few years of life on a farm in Oregon, he went
to the gold-fields of California. When he had met almost
every kind of experience imaginable, he studied law, and
practised in Oregon. In 1870 he brought out a small
volume of poems, one of them entitled “Joaquin,” the
name of a Mexican brigand, Joaquin Murietta, in whose
defence he had already written, and henceforth his pen-name.
His volume, “Songs of the Sierras,” for which he
at first vainly tried to find a publisher, produced, when
finally accepted and issued, a sensation that recalled the
days of Byron. His vogue has since declined, though he
is still read, a collective edition of his poems having been
published in 1897.
Much less famous than either Harte or Miller, not
having the virility of the former, yet possessing a finer
sensibility than the latter, was Edward Rowland Sill
(1841–1887), a third poet of the Far West. Sprung from a
family in Connecticut, a teacher in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio,
finally professor of English literature in the University of
California, Sill, in “Hermione, and Other Poems,” “The
Hermitage, and Later Poems” (1867), “The Venus of
Milo, and Other Poems,” published (1888) after his death,
sent forth a rill of poetry, slender but pure. In the opinion
of his friends and many besides, Sill’s death cut short a
poetic career of unusual promise. His poems were collected
in 1902, in a single volume, and again in 1906; in the
latter edition they are arranged chronologically.
Miscellaneous and Later Poets.—Under this heading
must be gathered a handful of writers whom the classification
thus far adopted has not accounted for, some of
whom would not easily admit of classification. However,
it is not the purpose of this Manual to consider in detail
the current writers of verse throughout America, among
whom distinctions of value can rarely be established.
Hans Breitmann.—Charles Godfrey Leland (1824–1903)
might be associated with Bayard Taylor. He is said to
have neglected mathematics at Princeton for Carlyle and
Spinoza; he studied abroad, returned to Philadelphia to
engage in the practice of law, but gave this up for work as
an editor. During the Civil War his pen was active in
defence of the Union. Afterward he became popular
through his “Hans Breitmann Ballads,” in picturesque
dialect displaying the humour of the shrewd jovial German
immigrant before the war. Leland made himself an
authority on gypsy lore, and was busy in several fields as
a translator. During his long residence abroad, he enjoyed
an acquaintance with many distinguished men of letters
in Europe. Besides his ballads in dialect and translations
from J. V. Scheffel, he wrote verse of serious intent;
for example, “The Music Lesson of Confucius, and Other
Poems,” in which, like Taylor, he desired to unite the ideals
of Christianity with those of Hellenism. The deaths of
Leland, Stoddard, Aldrich, and Stedman within the last
five years took almost the last survivors of an elder generation
in American letters.
Richard Henry Stoddard.—In the year of his death,
1903, R. H. Stoddard was called by his friend, E. C. Stedman,
“the most distinguished of living American poets.”
He was born in Hingham, Massachusetts, July 2, 1825.
Educated in the schools of New York City, he supplemented
by private reading his brief opportunities for regular study,
and from worker in a foundry became connected with
Bayard Taylor as a journalist. In 1853, Hawthorne aided
him in securing a position in the New York Custom-House.
From 1860 to 1870 he was literary editor of the New York
World; in 1880 he took a similar post on The Mail and
Express. His first volume of poetry, “Footprints” (1849),
was afterwards suppressed; his second, “Poems” (1852),
secured him an audience. “Songs of Summer” (1857) was
a collection of poems that had been printed in various
magazines. The latter part of his life was marked by great
activity as an editor and biographer, somewhat after the
fashion of Stedman. Most of his poetry subsequent to
the collective edition of 1880 is included in “The Lion’s
Cub, with Other Verse” (1890). He preserved his lyrical
quality to a great age. Like several of our leading poets,
Stoddard reached his highest level in dealing with the
theme of Abraham Lincoln.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich.—With his “Ballad of Babie
Bell” (1855) in the New York Journal of Commerce,
Aldrich (1836–1907) began a career whose high-water
mark was the editorship of The Atlantic Monthly from 1881
to 1890. His initial volume of poetry, published in 1854,
was “The Bells,” which was succeeded in 1858 by “The
Ballad of Babie Bell, and Other Poems.” Of his numerous
later poetical works, “Pampinea, and Other Poems” (1861),
“Cloth of Gold, and Other Poems” (1874), “Flower and
Thorn” (1876), etc., perhaps the tragedy of “Mercedes”
(“Mercedes, and Later Lyrics,” 1884) deserves particular
notice, having been successfully staged, a test which few
dramas by American poets have been able to endure.
Aldrich was a master of his craft. Deep in his reverence
for Tennyson, whom he ranks third in English poetry—after
Shakespeare and Milton,—he sometimes exercises an
almost Tennysonian harmony in the selection of detail;
witness the Oriental luxury and splendour in “When the
Sultan Goes to Ispahan.”
Edmund Clarence Stedman.—Stedman’s services to literature
as a critic and anthologist are doubtless of much
greater importance than his own poetry; but neither the
one nor the other may be disparaged. He was born at
Hartford, Connecticut, in 1833, his mother (by her second
marriage Mrs. J. C. Kinney, the friend of the Brownings)
being a woman of educated taste and herself a poet.
Entering Yale at the age of fifteen, Stedman showed
ability in Greek and in English composition, and shortly
gained a prize by his poem on “Westminster Abbey.”
On account of a boyish prank he was compelled to leave
college before the end of the course. Prior to the Civil
War he was connected with The Norwich Tribune and
Winsted Herald, and for a time with The New York Tribune;
in this he printed his “Tribune Lyrics” (among
them “Osawatomie Brown”). From 1861 to 1863 he
was war correspondent of the New York World; later he
was assistant to Edward Bates, Attorney-General under
Lincoln. His interest in the first Pacific railroad brought
him into relations with Wall Street, where, in 1869, he
became an active member of the New York Stock Exchange.
Here he remained until 1900, an influential
man of affairs, respected by financiers as well as literary
men, amassing and enjoying the means which he desired
for the pursuits of literature. He was a thorough patriot,
an earnest advocate of international copyright, above all
a steady labourer for the education of public taste. His
lectures on “The Nature and Elements of Poetry,” delivered
first at Johns Hopkins University, subsequently at
the University of Pennsylvania, and again at Columbia,
unfolded the dignity of a subject that is often regarded
as a matter of indifference. By his “Victorian Anthology”
(1895) he gave further evidence of the powers of selection
displayed in “A Library of American Literature”
(1888–1889), on which he collaborated with Ellen M. Hutchinson.
His “American Anthology” (1901, etc.), several
times reissued, contains selections from about six hundred
American poets, with brief biographies, and is, to say the
least, an indispensable volume to the general student of
our literature. The present section of this Manual is much
indebted to Stedman’s “Anthology.” One would hardly
make too liberal an assertion in saying of Stedman that he
was the most thoroughly read man of his time in the
poetry of his own nation. It is possible that he was over
generous in his recognition of the work of inferior authors;
but let us not impute this to him as too serious a fault. Of
the fifteen poems of his own to which he allowed admission
in the “American Anthology” (sixteen, counting the “Prelude”
to the volume), the best known are “The Discoverer,”
“Pan in Wall Street,” and “The Hand of Lincoln.” He
died on January 18, 1908.
James Whitcomb Riley.—This artist in the “Hoosier”
dialect of Indiana (born 1853), though still in middle life,
seems to belong with the older rather than the younger
generation of American poets. Unwilling to follow his
father’s profession of attorney, he early betook himself to
a wandering life, gaining experience of the world as a
vendor of patent medicines, sign-painter, actor, and the
like. Settling at Indianapolis, he became known by his
contributions to various newspapers, and when his reputation
was established, won additional success by public
readings from his poetry. His verse is bright and crisp,
and he has pathos, humour, and good powers of description
and narrative. He has an unusually keen understanding
for the experiences of country life, particularly
of youth and boyhood in rural villages and on the farm.
“The Old Swimmin’-Hole, and ’Leven More Poems”
(1883) was his first notable venture. “Afterwhiles” appeared
in 1888. Within ten years or so he then published
“Old-Fashioned Roses” (1888), “Pipes o’ Pan at Zekesbury”
(1889), “Rhymes of Childhood” (1890), “Neighbourly
Poems” (1891), and, among other volumes, “A
Child-World” (1896), and the “Rubaiyat of Doc Sifers”
(1899). As a writer of dialect in verse, he falls not very
far short of Lowell. His allusions to nature, to insect
life for example, are simple and true. If but a bird or
butterfly sit down beside him, he is as happy as if the
same were a maiden-queen.
* * * * *
Space forbids any delay upon George Henry Boker
(1823–1890), diplomat and dramatist, and his metrical
drama, “Francesca da Rimini” (1856); or Francis Miles
Finch (1827–1907), professor in Cornell University, and
his celebrated poem “The Blue and the Gray” (in The
Atlantic Monthly, 1867), a gift of healing from the North
to the South; or John Hay (1838–1905), whose manifold
services to his country were roofed and crowned with an
abiding interest in literature (“Pike County Ballads,”
published in The New York Tribune); or Richard Watson
Gilder (born 1844), editor of The Century Magazine,
social reformer, and author of several volumes of finished
verse; or Stephen Collins Foster (1836–1864), composer,
whose songs, “The Old Folks at Home,” “The Suwanee
River,” “My Old Kentucky Home,” familiar the country
over, are significant of the influence which the negroes
have exerted on the language and art of the whites; or
Will H. Thompson (born 1848), and “The High Tide at
Gettysburg”; or John Townsend Trowbridge (born 1827),
one of the original contributors to The Atlantic Monthly,
author of “The Vagabonds” (1863), and steeped in the
spirit of New England; or John Boyle O’Reilly (1844–1890),
the Fenian, who escaped from imprisonment in Australia,
and became a journalist in Boston (“Songs, Legends, and
Ballads,” “Songs of the Southern Seas,” etc.); or Eugene
Field (1850–1895), witty, eccentric, friend and student of
children; or Richard Hovey (1864–1900), cut off in the
flower of his promise (“Taliesin: a Masque,” 1899); or
Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872–1906), the negro poet,
dead before his time, who wrote good and stirring English
as well as pathetic dialect; or William Vaughn Moody,
professor in the University of Chicago (“The Masque of
Judgment,” 1900); or Bliss Carman (born 1861) and
Clinton Scollard (born 1860). All these and many more
must pass with insufficient notice or none; otherwise the
page would contain only a meaningless enumeration of
names and dates. As was implied at the beginning, very
few American writers who have won distinction in other
ways have refrained from publishing a volume of lyrics
“and other poems.” Also, in spite of the slender encouragement
from publishers to new authors of original
verse, the occasional volume from the hitherto and hereafter
unknown poetaster, who foots the bill for printing,
continues to emerge and sink again at the present day.
The immediate outlook for poetry in the United States
is not bright. It does not appear that with the material
growth of the country we have developed a unified national
spirit capable of expression at the hands of a great poet,
were he to arise. It does not appear that we have among
the younger men a first-class poet capable of expressing the
national soul, were this more unified and precise. Furthermore,
the type of humanistic education which fostered our
elder poets of New England is generally discredited, and
seems to be passing away without leaving any hope of a
popular training in the near future worthy to succeed it.
Simplicity, rigour, precision, and accuracy, all of them
friendly to the poetic spirit, and among its necessary conditions,
have fewer and fewer champions in the schools.
Many subjects are studied, and almost nothing is mastered
and retained. Memory, the mother of the Muses, is not
in esteem. “Literature” is taught—though not learned;
yet the children know no poetry. Worst of all, and a
primary cause of much of the evil, the reading of standard
works within the family is becoming less and less common.
In particular, though there is much talk about the Bible,
the Bible, like the classics, is becoming unfamiliar, to the
great detriment of popular thought and style.
On the other hand, to offset the deficiency of our secondary
schools and the decay of culture in the home, the last
thirty years have witnessed an immense expansion in
advanced scholarship, most notable, perhaps, in the investigation
of the vernacular and related literatures. Graduate
study of English, and of the literatures from which
English literature has sprung, offers a refuge to such persons
as have a serious and abiding interest in belles-lettres;
it is undoubtedly developing the personalities of investigators
to the highest point of efficiency possible under
present conditions, and making ready for another generation,
more fortunate, whose poetry shall find root in the
fields that are to-day so thoroughly cultivated; working
downward, it is already tending to bring about salutary
changes here and there in the procedure of the schools,
and hence eventually to have an influence in the home.
A generation of scholars to clear the way, as in the beginning
of the Renaissance—to produce the literary atmosphere
which now is wanting—may be regarded as a hopeful sign
of a generation of poets to come. Finally, if American
poetry now seems moribund, we must yet remember the
eternal power that the true poet is always in alliance with;
the power that at any time can make the poet say of any
literature: The maid is not dead, but sleepeth.21
English Influences on American Letters.—Springing
from a common stock, the two branches of eighteenth-century
English literature showed many similarities. The
charge of imitation and even of plagiarism has been
brought against the American writers of that period; but
it seems in no way unsafe to point to the single origin as
the probable cause of the same characteristics appearing
in the literature produced here, and that produced in the
mother-country. No one can deny, of course, that not a
few of our authors went to school to Englishmen, but the
assertion that America until recently has produced nothing
but pinchbeck literature is as false as it is absurd. That
like produces like may be a trite saying, but its frequent
repetition does not impair its truth. The English mind,
whether expressing itself at home or in the colonies, naturally
put forth the same kind of shoots: that their development
was not in all respects equally rapid, that in time
they became so much unlike as to appear unrelated, can
be traced, no doubt, to the unsheltered fortune of the
American scion in early days, and to the complete removal
of the slip from the parent stem in after-years.
With this thought in mind, the most thorough-going
American may admit, without apologetic reserve, that the
essayists of eighteenth-century England have counterparts
in Irving and certain of his contemporaries, and that those
of a slightly later date have much in common with Emerson
and Thoreau. Should one feel, however, that excusable
pride is to be taken only in those authors who
exhibit qualities indigenous to America, one may triumphantly
mention Warner, and Lowell, and Margaret Fuller;
for, although these essayists show the racial instinct of
English writers, they are none the less emphatically
American in thought, tone, and expression. In passing,
it is perhaps well to notice that a large number of American
writers have tried their hands at more than one form
of literature. For this reason Irving is discussed as an
essayist, although he might be placed with the humourists,
or perhaps better still, with fiction-writers, since he has
the right to dispute with Poe the claim to be regarded
as the progenitor of the American short story. Again,
Emerson, like George Eliot, felt that his fame would
eventually rest upon his poetry, but his readers almost
always think and speak of him as an essayist. Lowell,
Longfellow, and Whittier, on the other hand, are properly
reviewed at large as poets, despite the fact that their
prose work is not inconsiderable nor unimportant and
must therefore receive some attention in even a rapid
survey of the American essay.
Washington Irving.—Washington Irving (1783–1859),
the first essayist of importance in the National Period of
American Literature, was born in New York City. Unable
on account of ill-health to continue his education, Irving
went abroad in 1804. Returning two years later, he was
admitted to the bar, but he never engaged in the actual
practice of law. In 1815 Irving again went to Europe,
this time upon matters connected with the cutlery business
in which, as silent partner, he was engaged with his brothers.
It was seventeen years before he again set foot upon his
native soil, but when he did come back, he was widely
known, both for his writings and for his diplomatic service
as member of the American legations, first at Madrid
(1826–1829) and later at London (1829–1831). During the
next decade, Irving was in this country, living quietly at
Sunnyside, as he called his home at Tarrytown-on-the-Hudson.
In 1842, accepting an appointment as Minister
to Spain, he went to Europe for a third time and remained
abroad four years. Upon his return home, he
gave himself up entirely to writing, finishing his monumental
work upon Washington but a short time before
his death. He is buried in the Tarrytown Sleepy-Hollow
Cemetery—within sight of the road down which one of
his characters, Ichabod Crane, made his precipitous flight
in mad endeavour to escape the headless horseman.
Irving’s first book, “A History of New York,” published
as from the pen of “Diedrich Knickerbocker,” appeared
in 1809. It attracted immediate attention and established
its author’s reputation as a humourist; but unfortunately
its fun at the expense of the ancestors of certain American
families roused not a little rancour. Irving’s next work,
“The Sketch Book,” was published, first in parts in 1819,
and then in two volumes in the following year. This
book and “Bracebridge Hall, or The Humourists” (1822),
“Tales of a Traveller” (1824), “The Alhambra” (1832),
and “Wolfert’s Roost” (1855), are all miscellaneous collections
of sketches, short stories, and character studies,
of which one volume is not inferior to another. The first
of them received cordial recognition from Scott, who arranged
for its publication in London; and the last had a
wide circulation both in America and in England.
During Irving’s first visit to Spain, he became interested
in certain biographical and historical material there easily
accessible, and put it to use when he was writing “The
Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus” (1828),
“The Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada” (1829), “The
Voyages of the Companions of Columbus” (1831), “The
Alhambra,” already mentioned, and “The Life of Mahomet”
(1849). Upon Irving’s return to America his interest in
the same kind of material continued, and led him to publish
“The Life of Goldsmith” (1849), and “The Life of Washington”
in six volumes (1855–1859). Irving’s other works are
“A Tour on the Prairies” (1835), “Astoria” (1836), and
“The Adventures of Captain Bonneville” (1837).
Irving was the first American writer to gain literary
reputation abroad; nor was the interest which he awakened
there merely that of curiosity wondering what would
come out of a wilderness. It may be that the great bulk
of his work is not widely read at present, but such stories
as “Rip Van Winkle,” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,”
such sketches as “The Stout Gentleman” and
“Moonlight on the Alhambra” are perennial. Irving was
hardly skilful in his use of pathos, degenerating not infrequently
into the sentimental and even into the maudlin;
yet the buoyancy of his fascinating and delicate humour
has seldom been matched by any other American writer.
His graceful, almost faultless style is akin to that of the
writers of The Spectator, although it savours now and then
of Goldsmith, and has, according to Scott, a dash of Swift.
Perhaps Lowell best summed up the matter of Irving and
his style in “A Fable for Critics”:
“To a true poet-heart add the fun of Dick Steele,
Throw in all of Addison, minus the chill,
* * * * *
Sweeten just to your own private liking, then strain,
That only the finest and clearest remain,
* * * * *
And you’ll find a choice nature, not wholly deserving
A name either English or Yankee,—just Irving.”
Bryant and Others.—William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878)
is generally thought of as a poet, but his prose was
not inconsiderable either in amount or in value. During
his long connection with the New York Evening Post, from
1826 until the end of his life, he wrote daily editorials of
high literary quality, contributed to many other journals,
and delivered frequent orations upon various subjects.
A collection of Bryant’s prose works in two volumes was
published in 1894: one who reads them is convinced that
their author was possessed of a clear, smooth style, an
accurate, careful judgment, and good common sense.
Whittier (1807–1892) and Longfellow (1807–1882) may not
improperly be mentioned here, although, like Bryant, they
also are best known as poets. Whittier was closely associated
with William Lloyd Garrison in the Abolition movement
and contributed much to its literature. Controversial
writing, however, seldom lives, and Whittier’s has not
proved an exception to the rule. In addition to one or two
attempts at novel-writing, Whittier published “Supernaturalism
in New England” (1847), “Old Portraits and
Modern Sketches” (1850), and “Literary Recreations”
(1854); but these works are not important in style or in
matter. The demands of metre and rhyme upon Whittier
seem to have prevented the appearance, in his poetry, of
certain crudities which sadly mar his prose. Longfellow’s
prose, on the other hand, is more important. It is marked
by a delicacy and refinement which would go far towards
keeping it well known, if the author’s greater fame as a
poet did not eclipse his renown as a prose writer. In
addition to two romances, he published “Outre Mer” (1825),
a volume in aim and content somewhat like Irving’s
“Sketch Book”; and under the title of “Drift Wood” he
included in the first edition of his “Complete Prose Works”
(1857) a collection of stray essays and book reviews originally
contributed to various periodicals.
Edgar Allan Poe.—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1869), like the
three authors just mentioned, was a poet, yet to his own
time he was perhaps even better known as a short story
writer and essayist. Opinions about the value of his
literary work have been as various as those respecting his
character; but it is safe to claim for him no mean place
among writers of criticism. In this department of literature
he undertook to bring about a reform among American
authors who had passed from timid deference to English
opinion into the stage of noisy and indiscriminate praise
of every piece of writing produced in this country. From
a study of Coleridge, Poe had come to the conclusion that
poetry was a matter of “intellectual happiness”; its soul
was the imagination. A person of metaphysical acumen,
therefore, by noting how poetic moods are excited, could
produce a finer poem than one who, lacking the analytical
faculty, could only feel the emotions he desired to arouse
in his readers. Poe laid great stress, too, on perfection of
form as of the utmost importance in producing an effect;
truth was a secondary matter, except in detail, and as a
means of securing assent to a conclusion which might be
essentially untruthful. The object of poetry, he thought,
is to arouse a subtle, indefinite pleasure; this was imparted
by music; hence the necessity of melody, of the refrain.
As a critic, Poe was often savage in the extreme; but
it must be remembered, as we look back upon him, that
the urbanity of the modern book reviewer was then a
thing unknown. Poe’s literary judgments have in the main
been justified, although some of his unsparing attacks in
“The Literati of New York” arouse resentment even at
this late day, while his equally unrestrained laudation of
certain of his now wholly forgotten contemporaries leads
one near to contemptuous amusement. Poe’s most important
contribution to the theory of writing are two essays
usually reprinted with his poems; of these “The Philosophy
of Composition” first appeared in Graham’s Magazine
for April, 1846, and “The Poetic Principle,” originally
a lecture, was printed in Sartain’s Magazine for October,
1850. Perhaps an essay “On Critics and Criticism”
ought also to be mentioned; it was first published in
Graham’s Magazine for January, 1850.
Ralph Waldo Emerson.—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882),
serious, high-minded, and well balanced, affords a
striking contrast in almost every way to Poe. Born in
Boston, he was graduated from Harvard College at the age
of nineteen. After teaching school for a time, he became
minister of the Old North Church in his native city, but
in 1835 withdrew from his charge because of his aversion to
the rite of the Lord’s Supper. Taking up his residence at
Concord, Massachusetts, he spent the rest of his years in
writing and lecturing. While engaged in the latter work
he went as far west as California and made two visits
abroad. During the first, Emerson met Wordsworth,
Coleridge, Landor, and De Quincey, who received him
graciously, George Eliot, who referred to him as “the first
man she had ever seen,” and Carlyle, who found in the
visitor a hero well worthy of sincere admiration. Dignified
and simple in manner, deep and kindly in thought, he found
contentment in an uneventful career; sympathising strongly
with those who would live the life of the spirit, he supported
in theory the Brook Farm experiment; advocating
anti-slavery ideas, he opened his church to Abolition agitators;
but objecting on principle to war, he proposed to
buy the slaves and educate them morally. He went down
to his grave loved by his neighbours and honoured by many
who knew him only through his works.
Emerson made his earliest appearance as a writer in
a book entitled “Nature” (1836), but he first attracted
real attention by his Phi Beta Kappa oration before
Harvard College in 1837. This address, now published
in his collected works as “The American Scholar,” made
so strong an appeal to his listeners to break away from
the influence of England in matters of authorship that
Holmes with his usual felicity termed it “our literary
Declaration of Independence.” For three or four years,
beginning in 1840, Emerson was editor of The Dial. In
1841 he published his first collection of “Essays”; and
three years later his second. From then on at irregular
intervals other volumes of like content appeared; of these
the most important, in all probability, are “Representative
Men” (1850), “The Conduct of Life” (1860), and “Society
and Solitude” (1870). There is no need of an
enumeration of Emerson’s books, since they are all similar
in form, content, and purpose. While Emerson is in no
true sense a philosopher, he did project a theory of life.
Sincerity he regarded as fundamental, and his belief in
the formative influence of great men was almost identical
with that held by Carlyle. By the possession of “transcendental
reason,” man, according to Emerson, becomes
intuitively aware of the truth. This truth or doctrine has
been reduced by some critic to three propositions: (1) God
is in all things and all things are in God. (2) Each created
existence is essential to every other created existence.
(3) Nothing which has once existed ever ceases to exist.
To the average reader these ideas are bewildering and have
been collectively designated as “a new philosophy maintaining
that nothing is everything in general, and everything
is nothing in particular.” It is related as a fact, that after
an address by Emerson before a college society, the minister
in charge of the meeting devoutly prayed that the hearers
might be preserved from ever again being compelled to
listen to such transcendental nonsense. At the close of
the meeting Emerson imperturbably remarked that the
gentleman seemed a very conscientious, plain-spoken man.
The distance between Emerson’s thought and that of
most men laid him open to the charge of obscurity, an
accusation which is still widely repeated by those who do
not trouble themselves to read or to think. It cannot be
denied that Emerson is often mystical, and that he must
find spiritual insight and almost poetic imagination in
those who would penetrate to the heart of his teachings;
but it is unfair to give the impression that, save to the
initiated, he is nearly always incomprehensible. Page
after page of his writings offers no difficulty whatever to
the most cursory reader, and his work as a whole is within
the ken of any serious and unprejudiced reader. In style
Emerson is sometimes forbidding through a strong tendency
to condensation of expression; but the beauty of his
thought frequently draws to itself a diction and order
which transform his prose into veritable poetry. His
strong, earnest spirituality is never fanatical, his perfect
trust in what he called the Over-Soul is never sentimental,
his full confidence that the world is making for ultimate
good is never unpractical. Looking upon the universe as
“one vast symbol of God,” he escaped pantheism on one
hand and materialism on the other. As a teacher uttering
his uplifting thought through literature, Emerson, it
may be confidently said, stands without a rival among
American writers.
Henry David Thoreau.—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
is by many readers coupled with Emerson. Born in
Concord, Massachusetts, he spent the greater part of his life
in his native town and its vicinity. He was graduated at
Harvard College in 1837, although he refused his diploma
on the ground that it was not worth five dollars. He gave
occasional lectures and wrote many books: of these he
himself published but two, “A Week on the Concord and
Merrimac Rivers” (1849) and “Walden, or Life in the
Woods” (1854). To these have been added from time to
time since Thoreau’s death several volumes entitled “Excursions
in Field and Forest” (1863), “The Maine Woods”
(1864), “Cape Cod” (1865), and “A Yankee in Canada”
(1866). The greater part of his voluminous journal was
published in 1906 and 1907, though extensive selections
had been previously printed in four volumes bearing respectively
the names of the four seasons of the year.
More than any other well-known American author,
Thoreau strove to get at Nature’s inmost heart. Withdrawing
to Walden Pond, he spent the larger part of his
time for two years in reading and meditation; feeling then
that his object had been accomplished, he returned to
town life. For a brief period, Thoreau lived as an inmate
of Emerson’s household and became an unconscious disciple
of the man who entertained him. A transcendentalist
imbued with a strong spirit of otherworldliness, he may
perhaps be best summed up in Emerson’s words. “He was
bred to no profession; he never married; he lived alone; he
never went to church; he never voted; he refused to pay
a tax to the state; he ate no flesh; he drank no wine; he
never knew the use of tobacco; and though a naturalist
he used neither rod nor gun.” Thomas Wentworth Higginson
has pointed out that Thoreau’s fame has survived
two of the greatest dangers that can beset reputation—a
brilliant satirist for critic (Lowell), and an injudicious
friend for biographer (Channing).
Minor Transcendentalists.—Minor transcendentalists, and
connected therefore with Emerson and Thoreau, were Amos
Bronson Alcott (1799–1888), and Sarah Margaret Fuller
(1810–1850). Both, like Emerson, were contributors to The
Dial but unlike him did not hold aloof from the Brook
Farm experiment. Alcott’s chief works were “Tablets”
(1868), “Concord Days” (1872), and “Table Talk” (1877);
Margaret Fuller’s, “A Summer on the Lakes” (1843),
“Woman in the Nineteenth Century” (1844), and “Papers
on Literature and Art” (1846). Other essayists who may
be mentioned as identifying themselves with the Brook
Farm movement or with the Transcendental Club out of
which it grew, were three noted clergymen, William Ellery
Channing (1780–1842), the founder of the club; Theodore
Parker (1810–1860), the pulpit representative of its theories,
and James Freeman Clarke (1810–1888), a frequent contributor
to its organ, The Dial. In later years each of these
men published works which are still occasionally read.
Channing’s numerous writings were brought together in five
volumes in 1841, and, under the title “The Perfect Life,”
a selection from them was made in 1872. He must not
be confused with a younger William Ellery Channing
(1818–1901), his brother’s son, the author of a monograph
on “Thoreau, the Poet Naturalist” (1873) and of “Conversations
from Rome” (1902). Parker’s chief works aside
from his sermons were “Miscellaneous Writings” (1843)
and “Historic Americans” (1870); Clarke’s, “Orthodoxy,
its Truths and Errors” (1866) and “Ten Great Religions”
(1871).
The Transcendental Movement appealed to all sorts
and conditions of men: philosophers exchanged ideas with
journalists, and ministers with writers of fiction. Of the
members who later became known as editors the most
important were George Ripley (1802–1880), Charles Anderson
Dana (1819–1897), and George William Curtis (1824–1892),
all of whom at some time or other were upon the
staff of The New York Tribune. Ripley and Dana were
joint editors of “The American Encyclopedia” (1857–1863);
but they also worked independently, the former putting
together fourteen volumes entitled “Specimens of Foreign
Standard Literature” (1838–1842), the latter making that
still famous collection “The Household Book of Poetry
and Song” (1857). Curtis’ interests were so many and
so various that he has been classified as journalist, orator,
publicist, and author. His most important works were
“Lotus Eating” (1852), “Potiphar Papers” (1853), and
“Essays from the Easy Chair” (1891), the last a collection
of brief papers originally contributed to Harper’s Magazine.
Oliver Wendell Holmes.—Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894)
stands in some contrast to the chief writers of the
Transcendental School. On the whole they were marked
by deliberate seriousness, but he possessed a clear, crisp
spontaneity which often broke forth into sparkling fun.
Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a member of what he
facetiously styled “The Brahmin Caste” of New England,
he counted among his ancestors more than one English
governor of the Colonial period and that famous woman
of her time, Anne Bradstreet, “the Tenth Muse.” After
being graduated from Harvard College in 1829, he studied
law for a year and then turned to medicine. Completing
his education in Paris, Holmes returned to America in
1835 to enter upon the practice of his profession, but in
1839 accepted a professorship of anatomy at Dartmouth
College, in New Hampshire. The following year he entered
upon a similar position in the Harvard Medical School, and
remained there until 1882. In 1886, Holmes visited Europe
and received honorary degrees from Edinburgh, Oxford,
and Cambridge. The eight remaining years of his life he
spent quietly at his home in Boston, graciously receiving
even strangers, who felt that they had not really seen that
city unless they had shaken Dr. Holmes by the hand.
Of Holmes’ prose work his “Breakfast Table” series
best defends his right to claim a permanent place of fame.
“The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table,” after appearing
serially in the first and second volumes of The Atlantic
Monthly (1857–1858), was immediately republished in book
form, and was succeeded by “The Professor at the Breakfast
Table” (1859), “The Poet at the Breakfast Table”
(1872), and “Over the Tea-Cups” (1891). These works,
which have been rather aptly characterised as “a cross
between an essay and a drama,” contain comments on almost
everything in the heavens above, the earth beneath,
and the waters under the earth. The books are at times
delightfully whimsical and scintillatingly witty, at others
deeply serious and minutely analytic, and at still others
tenderly generous and movingly pathetic. Holmes’ other
important works in prose are two volumes of biography,
a “Memoir of John Lothrop Motley” (1879) and a “Life
of Ralph Waldo Emerson” (1884); one book of essays,
“Pages from an Odd Volume of Life” (1883); and one
diary of travel, “Our Hundred Days in Europe” (1887).
Willis, Mitchell, and Warner.—Nathaniel Parker Willis
(1806–1867), Donald Grant Mitchell (born in 1822), and
Charles Dudley Warner (1829–1900) are suggested by the
mention of Holmes, for they, like him, were writers of the
“genial” essay. Willis was born in Portland, Maine, and
was graduated from Yale at the age of twenty-one. Entering
upon a journalistic career in 1828, he spent a considerable
number of years abroad, whence he sent home
for the periodicals of his day frequent accounts of his
foreign travel and experiences. His complete works have
been collected into thirteen volumes, but the best of his
writing may be found in two books published during his
lifetime, “Pencillings by the Way” (1835) and “Letters
from Under a Bridge” (1840). Willis wrote with most
painstaking care. It has been left upon record by James
Parton that Willis “bestowed upon everything he did the
most careful labour, making endless erasures and emendations.
On an average he blotted one line out of every
three that he wrote, and on one page of his editorial
writing there were but three lines left unaltered.” It may
be added, in passing, that Willis’ father in 1827 founded
the well known and widely read Youth’s Companion.
Mitchell, for many years better known as “Ik Marvel,”
was, like Willis, a New Englander by birth and a graduate
of Yale College. He, also, spent a few years abroad,
acting, in fact, as United States Consul at Venice in 1853–1855.
His works were many, but he is best known as the
author of “Reveries of a Bachelor” (1850) and “Dream
Life” (1851). Warner was in many respects the strongest
writer of this group. A New Englander by birth, he was
graduated at Hamilton College, Clinton, New York, then
studied law at the University of Pennsylvania, and finally
began the practice of his profession in Chicago. In 1860
he was called to Hartford, Connecticut, as editor of a daily
paper, and from then on gave himself up to journalism and
other literary interests. His works were many and varied;
the most important are “My Summer in a Garden” (1870),
“Backlog Studies” (1872), “My Winter on the Nile”
(1876), and a “Life of Washington Irving” (1881).
Some Travellers.—Bayard Taylor’s experiences abroad
found their expression in a number of books; but, readable
as they all are, the first, “Views Afoot” (1846), is
the best. It is a work to be compared with Irving’s
“Sketch Book” and Longfellow’s “Outre Mer”; it may
not be far wrong to assign it to a place between the two,
inferior to the first, superior to the second. From Taylor’s
numerous works in other departments of pure literature,
“Studies in German Literature” (1879) and “Essays and
Notes” (1880) may be chosen for mention.
At the risk of departing somewhat from chronological
order, one may mention at this point a few authors who,
like Taylor, left records of their travels and adventures.
The earliest of these, an older man in fact than Taylor,
was Elisha Kent Kane (1820–1857), the Arctic explorer,
who related in “The Grinnell Expeditions” (1854–1856), the
story of the two unsuccessful attempts to find Sir John
Franklin. Much nearer to our time were Henry M. Stanley
(1841–1890) and George Kennan (born in 1845). Stanley
was born in Wales, it is true, and was knighted by Queen
Victoria in 1890; but his explorations in Africa were made
while he was a citizen of the United States. His best-known
work is his first, “How I Found Livingston” (1872).
Kennan experienced adventures in still another part of
the world. Sent to Siberia by the American Telegraph
Association to superintend the construction of lines, he
published, in 1870, “Tent Life in Siberia.” Several years
later he returned to the same country as correspondent
of The Century Magazine to investigate social and political
conditions there. He published the results of his observations
in “Siberia and the Exile System” (1891).
Holland, Lowell, and Others.—The essay of travel, it
will have to be admitted, has carried us pretty well out of
the realm of pure literature and brought us down to very
recent times. If we have seemed to ignore certain writers,
some less and some greater, it was but to return to them
for fuller mention. Josiah Gilbert Holland (1819–1881) was
born in Belchertown, Massachusetts, and while still a young
man became associate editor of The Springfield Republican.
In 1870 he assisted in the foundation of Scribner’s Monthly
and became its editor-in-chief. He tried his hand at various
forms of literature and at one time was not far from
being the most popular writer in the United States. To
this day there is hardly an American household unprovided
with a copy of one of the early editions of “Timothy Titcomb’s
Letters” (1858), “Gold Foil” (1859), or “Plain
Talks on Familiar Subjects” (1865). James Russell Lowell
(1819–1891) contributed many articles to The Atlantic and
The North American Review; some of this work has not
yet been collected, but the best of it may be found scattered
through the seven volumes of his complete prose
works (1890–1891). During his lifetime Lowell published
several collections of essays; the most valuable are “Fireside
Travels” (1864), “Among my Books” (1870), and
“My Study Windows” (1871). As one looks over their
contents, one is surprised at the versatility of their writer.
The essay of reminiscence, “A Moosehead Journal” or
“Cambridge Thirty Years Ago,” balances the essay of
travel, “At Sea” or “A Few Bits of Roman Mosaic”; the
historical essay, “New England Two Centuries Ago,” is
matched by the nature study, “My Garden Acquaintance”;
the purely literary sketch, “Shakespeare Once
More,” stands beside the book review “Witchcraft”
or “A Great Public Character”; and the political speech,
“Democracy” or “Tariff Reform,” adds a certain virility
to the notes of a response to the toast “Our Literature”
or to the address on “Books and Reading” delivered at
the opening of a free public library. Lowell is ironical in
“On a Certain Condescension in Foreigners,” witty in “A
Good Word for Winter,” genial in “A Library of Old
Authors,” sympathetic in “Emerson the Lecturer,” just in
“Thoreau,” firm in “Reconstruction” and “Abraham Lincoln,”
thoughtful in “The Rebellion: Its Causes and Consequences,”
and scholarly in “Chaucer” and “Dante.”
Aristocratic in the best sense of that much abused term,
cultured in manner, robust and vigorous in thought, clean
and fresh in mind, Lowell still stands forth as America’s
finest representative man of letters.
The greatness of Lowell has by no means dimmed
the renown of certain of his lesser contemporaries. Edward
Everett Hale (born in 1822), Thomas Wentworth Higginson
(born in 1823), and Charles Eliot Norton (1827–1908)
deserve at least passing mention, although the first two
are better known for contributions to magazines than for
books, and the last has gained attention mainly through
his biographical work and his translation of Dante. Owing
to the popularity of a story, “The Man Without a Country,”
Dr. Hale has unfortunately become known as an author
of one book, but his “Puritan Politics in England and
New England” (1869) is valuable, and his “Franklin in
France” (1887), written with the assistance of his son, is interesting
and trustworthy. Mr. Higginson has tried his hand
at biography, historical memoranda, criticism, and fiction:
probably his best work is found in “Outdoor Papers”
(1863), “Atlantic Essays” (1871), and “The New World
and the New Book” (1891). Of the three authors here
mentioned, Dr. Norton is the most important; he is more
than a writer; he is in addition a scholar. Knowing intimately
all of the foremost writers of this country, he was
hardly less well acquainted with the most important English
authors of the middle and later Victorian period. In
addition to his monumental prose translation of Dante’s
“New Life” (1858) and “Divine Comedy” (1892), he has
edited such books as “The Early Letters of Thomas Carlyle”
(1886), “The Letters of James Russell Lowell”
(1893), and “The Letters of John Ruskin” (1904). His chief
original works are “Notes of Travel and Study in Italy”
(1859) and “Historical Studies of Church-Building in the
Middle Ages” (1880). The scholarship of Dr. Norton
immediately suggests that of other men. George Ticknor
(1791–1887) by the date of his birth seems to belong to a
period slightly earlier than that of Norton; in fact he
immediately preceded Longfellow as professor of belles-lettres
at Harvard. His chief work was “A History of
Spanish Literature” (1849). As a valuable piece of
criticism, it has not been superseded, and even in Spain is
accepted as authoritative. Somewhat later than Ticknor
in point of time was Francis James Child (1825–1896).
Educated at Harvard College, he was a professor there for
nearly half a century. Devoting himself to the study of
the ballad as a literary form, he published the results of his
work in eight volumes under the title “English and Scottish
Popular Ballads” (1857–1859). Closely connected with
these several authors was James Thomas Fields (1817–1881).
Founder of The Atlantic Monthly and member of a famous
publishing house, he was acquainted more or less intimately
with every important American writer of the last half of
the nineteenth century. He was not without literary skill
himself, publishing among other works “Yesterdays with
Authors” (1872) and “Underbrush” (1881). His wife,
Annie Adams Fields (born in 1834), has written a number
of books in a similar vein: the most valuable, perhaps, are
“A Shelf of Old Books” and “Authors and Friends,”
both published in 1896.
Shakespearean Scholars.—Harking back to Norton and
Ticknor as representative American students of foreign
literatures, one naturally takes pleasure in seeing that the
field of Shakespearean scholarship has been by no means
neglected in this country. Henry Norman Hudson
(1814–1886) may be said to have been the first American
to turn a furrow; for, after publishing “Lectures on Shakespeare”
(1848), he devoted himself to a critical study of
the plays and finally produced a work still mentioned
with respect, “Shakespeare: His Life, Art, and Characters”
(1872). Meanwhile Richard Grant White (1822–1885) had
published “The Authorship of the Three Parts of Henry
VI.” (1859) and “Memoirs of the Life of Shakespeare”
(1865). Interested in other subjects for a time, he wrote
“Words and Their Uses” (1870) and “England Without
and Within” (1881); then, returning to his early interests,
he produced “Studies in Shakespeare” (1885). Perhaps
Edwin Percy Whipple (1819–1886) deserves mention at this
place, for after writing “Essays and Reviews” (1849), and
“Character and Characteristic Men” (1866), he published
“The Literature of the Age of Elizabeth” (1869). Nor is it
possible to overlook Thomas Raynesford Lounsbury (born
in 1838), who added to his extensive “Studies in Chaucer”
(1892) a trilogy of studies entitled “Shakespeare as a
Dramatic Artist” (1901), “Shakespeare and Voltaire”
(1902), and “The Text of Shakespeare” (1906). But
easily the foremost Shakespearean scholar in America is
Horace Howard Furness (born in 1833), whose “Variorum
Shakespeare” as a painstaking and authoritative work
stands unsurpassed in any language. Recently Mr. Furness
has associated his son with him in his investigations, and
we may therefore expect with some confidence that a
study of Shakespeare on the largest scale up to this time
attempted may be completed according to the traditions
with which it was begun.
Literary Historians.—Widely interested as the scholars
of this country have been in the greater writers and the
more important literature of other lands, there has been
no dearth of attention to our own. Moses Coit Tyler
(1835–1900), sometime professor of American history at
Cornell University, was the author of two valuable works,
“History of American Literature during the Colonial
Times” (1878) and “Literary History of the American
Revolution” (1897). Charles Francis Richardson (born
in 1851), professor of English in Dartmouth College, has
covered the whole range of our literary history down to
1885 in his “American Literature” (1887); and Barrett
Wendell (born in 1855) of Harvard University, in his
“Literary History of America” (1901), has brought his
treatment of the same topic down to the beginning of the
present century. Professor Wendell has written upon other
American topics in “Stelligeri” (1893), and “A Life of
Cotton Mather” (1891). More recently he has published
two works, both the result of his residence abroad as a
lecturing professor: the substance of the first, “The Temper
of the Seventeenth Century in English Literature” (1904),
was delivered before Trinity College, Cambridge; that of
the second, “The France of To-Day” (1907) was gathered
while he was giving a course of lectures in Paris.
Members of other American college faculties have
given evidence of minute research and strong inspiration
in books not a few. James Brander Matthews (born in
1852) of Columbia University, and George Edward Woodberry
(born in 1855), for many years connected with the
same university, have both written books that have gained
popular approval; of the former, “French Dramatists of
the Nineteenth Century” (1881) and “The Historical
Novel” (1901) certainly deserve mention; of the latter,
“The Life of Poe” (1885) and “The Appreciation of
Literature” (1907). No less significant than these men
are Felix Emmanuel Schelling (born in 1858) of the University
of Pennsylvania, whose latest work is “The Elizabethan
Drama” (1908), and Vida Dutton Scudder (born in
1861) of Wellesley College, who cannot be left unnoticed, so
thorough and satisfactory are her “Life of the Spirit in
the Modern English Poets” (1895) and “Social Ideals in
English Letters” (1898). Woodrow Wilson, president of
Princeton University, has spared time from his political
and historical studies to write an interesting volume of
essays called “Mere Literature” (1896); President Wilson’s
former colleague, Bliss Perry (born in 1860), now editor
of The Atlantic Monthly and professor of belles-lettres at
Harvard, has published a valuable “Study of Prose Fiction”
(1902), and another Princeton professor, Henry Jackson
Van Dyke (born in 1852), has written an especially useful
study called “The Poetry of Tennyson” (1889), and has also
shown himself a master of the leisurely essay in “Little
Rivers” (1895) and “Fisherman’s Luck” (1899).
The Nature Writers.—Professor Van Dyke’s “outdoor
essays,” as they are sometimes called, carry us back to
the earlier nature writers, for between him and Thoreau
there is no wide hiatus. John Burroughs (born in 1837)
has written a considerable number of books dealing with
his observations out of doors, although he has by no means
neglected the purely literary topic. The mention of his
earlier works gives an adequate index of all his subject-matter.
“Wake-Robin” appeared in 1870, “Birds and
Poets” in 1875, and “Whitman, a Study” in 1896. To
be closely associated with Mr. Burroughs is Bradford Torrey
(born in 1843); his chief works are “Birds in the Bush”
(1885), “The Footpath Way” (1892), and “A World of
Green Hills” (1898). Nor can Olive Thorne Miller (born
in 1831) be overlooked: she began to write studies of
birds about 1880, and among other works, all of considerable
interest, she has published “In Nesting Time” (1888),
“A Bird-Lover in the West” (1894), and “Under the Tree-Tops”
(1897). The writers just mentioned are not to be
regarded, of course, as scientists or even as scientific writers
in the commonly accepted sense of those terms. They
look upon nature with the loving rather than the analytic
eye, and register their appreciative feelings rather than
their minute observations. They have much in common,
therefore, with the purely literary essayists whose names
are not far from legion. Although unable to mention all
who have recently attracted attention, we must not forget
William Winter (born in 1836), whose best prose works date
back but a quarter of a century: he published “Shakespeare’s
England” in 1888, “Gray Days and Gold” in 1891,
and “The Life and Art of Edwin Booth” in 1894. Neither
can we ignore Hamilton Wright Mabie (born in 1845),
literary editor of The Outlook. His books are many and
widely popular: probably the series of three volumes called
“My Study Fire” (1890, 1894, and 1899) and “Shakespeare:
Poet, Dramatist, and Man” (1900) are best known.
Not less significant is Paul Elmer More (born in 1864) of
the editorial staff of The Nation. In addition to translations
from Sanskrit and from Greek, he has published five
books all bearing the title “Shelburne Essays” (1904–1908).
Other Essayists.—Finally, so far as essayists are concerned,
some rapid review must be made of the novelists
and the later poets who have not restricted themselves to
the fields of their chief labour. This takes us back as far
as Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864), whose “Our Old
Home” (1863) is a collection of valuable essays on various
English topics. The saying “Like father, like son” was
exemplified when Julian Hawthorne (born in 1846) brought
out “Saxon Studies” (1876), a book of like purport with
his father’s. The mention of more than one writer in a
family suggests the elder Henry James (1811–1882) and his
two sons, William and Henry. The father is best remembered
as a theological and philosophical writer through
his “Moralism and Christianity” (1852) and “Lectures
and Miscellanies” (1852). The elder son, William James
(born in 1842), for many years professor of psychology in
Harvard University, besides being the author of several
technical works in the science to which he is devoted,
has written “The Will to Believe, and Other Essays”
(1897), “Is Life Worth Living?” (1898), and “Pragmatism”
(1906). The younger Henry James (born in 1843),
in addition to being a novelist, is also the author of “A
Little Tour in France” (1884), “Partial Portraits” (1888),
and “Essays in London and Elsewhere” (1893). For some
reason not strongly apparent, William Dean Howells (born
in 1837) is almost always associated in the minds of
readers with Henry James the novelist. Editor for a time
of The Atlantic Monthly, and later connected first with the
staff of Harper’s Magazine, and afterwards with that of
The Cosmopolitan, he has made many books of essays. The
best are “Venetian Life” (1866), “Italian Journeys” (1867),
and “Criticism and Fiction” (1895). Belonging by birth
to a later decade, Francis Marion Crawford (born in 1854)
is near to being America’s most prolific writer. His most
important work, outside the domain of the novel, is a small
volume connected in content with the art which he chiefly
affects, “The Novel, What It Is” (1903). It attracted
much attention upon its appearance, and is still often
quoted. Mr. Crawford is also the author of “The Rulers of
the South” (1900) and “Gleanings from Venetian History”
(1905). The woman novelists cannot be ignored as writers
of essays, for not only do they possess powers of penetration
and insight, but two of them, at least, have swayed public
opinion to no inappreciable extent. Harriet Beecher Stowe
(1811–1896) in addition to her many books of fiction wrote
a very much discussed study entitled “Lady Byron Vindicated”
(1870) and “The American Woman’s Home”
(1869), at one time thought to be the final word upon
domestic questions. A writer of hardly less importance
was Helen Hunt Jackson (1831–1885), still popularly known
by her pseudonym of “H. H.” Her most valuable study
was “A Century of Dishonour” (1881), in which she laid
bare the ill-treatment accorded the American Indians; she
succeeded through its pages in doing much to ameliorate
their unfortunate condition. Mrs. Jackson’s “Bits of
Travel” (1873) and “Between Whiles” (1887) are interesting
and readable.
The more important later poets who have contributed
to essay literature are led by that erratic but remarkable
genius, Walt Whitman (1819–1892). His collected “Prose
Works,” published in the year of his death, contain much
more true common sense than his writings are popularly
assumed to show. The main titles included in the contents
are those of small volumes printed at various intervals:
“Specimen Days” (1882), “November Boughs”
(1888), and “Good-Bye, My Fancy” (1891). Edmund
Clarence Stedman (1833–1908) and Thomas Bailey Aldrich
(1836–1907), who in their poetry followed the traditions
established by Longfellow and Lowell, were the authors
of not unimportant prose works. The former wrote three
valuable books: “Victorian Poets” (1875), “Poets of
America” (1885), and “The Nature and Elements of
Poetry” (1892); the latter author produced two volumes
of travel and reminiscence: “From Ponkapog to Pesth”
(1883) and “An Old Town by the Sea” (1893). Possibly
allied rather with Whitman than with the other poets just
mentioned, Sidney Lanier (1842–1881) may justly stand at
the close of our list of American critical writers. He
subjected the methods of metrical composition to minute
scrutiny, and published the results of his investigations as
“The Science of English Verse” (1881). Turning then to a
study of fiction, he wrote an important work entitled “The
English Novel and Its Development” (1885). Since Lanier’s
death, his executors have brought together many of his
lectures and papers under the titles of “Music and Poetry”
(1898), and “Shakspere and his Forerunners” (1902).
The Humourists.—It is a far cry from the serious thought
of Sidney Lanier to the ludicrous perversities of Mark
Twain; yet between these two lies an extensive territory
freely admitted by foreign critics to be distinctly and perhaps
typically American. The humour of this country is
different from that found anywhere else in the world. At
times, it is true, it exhibits the sparkling characteristics of
the Irishman’s wit, at others the keen shrewdness of the
Frenchman’s bon-mot; certainly it is never less sprightly
than the work of the English joker, nor less spontaneous
than that of the German jester. In fact it may savour of
any one, or of all the qualities just mentioned, and even
of many others. The truth of the matter is, composite as
a nation, we preserve in our humour the best traits of the
elements out of which we are formed, and pretty generally
add to the mixture a flavour indigenous to the soil
upon which we flourish.
Humour of the Colonial Period.—In the early periods
of our history, conscious humour did not exist. The
colonists were too intent upon subduing the wilderness
and safeguarding their religion to spend time in making
fun. Their steeple-crowned hats, their staid garb, and
the severe simplicity of their speech and conduct may seem
ridiculous to us now; but, depend upon it, these were very
serious matters to the Puritans themselves. A sudden
outbreak of frivolity, whether it showed in a departure
from the accepted dress or in an unusual use of language,
would have been looked upon as sufficient cause for an
immediate ecclesiastical investigation and solemn condemnation.
Surely a community that in all seriousness
could pass a law making it a finable offence in a man to
kiss his wife on Sunday, would have been horror-stricken
at the irreverent flippancy of Eli Perkins and of George
Ade, and would no doubt have called down anathema
upon Bill Nye and possibly even upon Carolyn Wells.
Humour of the Revolutionary Period.—Nor did circumstances
permit the rise of humour in the Revolutionary
period. The great joke of that time was the struggle
between the pigmy and the giant, ending in the discomfiture
of the latter to the tune of
“Yankee Doodle came to town.”
A few grim remarks have come down to us, it must be
admitted, remarks which amuse us now, but which could
have been little provocative of laughter when they were
uttered. Certainly we have no record of hilarious mirth
filling the chamber when at the signing of the Declaration
of Independence, Franklin sharply replied to the remark,
“Well, in this matter I suppose we must all hang together,”
with the words, “Yes, or we shall all hang separately!”
Life indeed was far too serious in both the earlier periods
of American history and literature to be made a source
of amusement. True, we have not a little work, satiric in
tone, from such writers as the patriot, John Trumbull
(1750–1831), and the Tory, Jonathan Odell (1737–1881),
of whom the first in his “M’Fingal” (1775–1782) imitated
Butler’s “Hudibras,” and the second in his “Word of
Congress” (1779) and “The American Times” (1780)
followed models set up by Dryden, Pope, and Churchill.
Joel Barlow (1754–1812), too, deserves passing mention
here for his mock-heroic poem, “The Hasty Pudding”
(1793); and Philip Freneau (1752–1832) must be named
on account of several briefer pieces of verse intended, no
doubt, to be funny, but succeeding only in being abusive
and vituperative of British leaders and British methods.
On the whole, the efforts of all these writers, so far as
humour is concerned, were little better than clumsy; and
nowadays, if we bother with their works at all, we laugh
at the authors rather than with them.
The Imitative School.—Conscious or deliberate American
humour, then, can hardly be said to have shown itself
before the early years of the nineteenth century. When
it did appear, moreover, it was strongly imitative of
English models and exhibited itself not as the most striking
trait, but as only one of many qualities characterising an
author’s style. Indeed, barring the work of a mere handful
of writers, we find such American humour as is likely to
live woven into books which endure for other reasons than
because they awaken laughter. For the earliest instance
of any importance, we may mention Washington Irving,
a writer already discussed as an essayist. He exhibits in
various parts of his work a sparkling effervescence which,
if a little more spontaneous than that found in The Spectator,
is none the less strongly suggestive, like his more
serious work, of Addison and Steele, and perhaps also of
Goldsmith and Swift.
The Restrained School.—Less noticeably imitative of
foreign work, the whimsicalities of Oliver Wendell Holmes,
of James Russell Lowell, and of Charles Dudley Warner
have been deemed sufficiently important to make each the
subject of a chapter in more than one English work vainly
endeavouring to analyse and classify that subtle something
which makes American humour funny. With apparent
gravity Holmes could ask the startling question, “Why is
an onion like a piano?” and in answer convulse his readers
with the atrocious pun, “Because it smell odious!” His
characterisation of an afternoon reception as “Giggle,
gabble, gobble, git,” is worthy of frequent quotation;
and one passage in his “Music Grinders” is of perennial
value. Wearied by the discordant tunes issuing from a
hurdy-gurdy, the distracted poet at last exclaims:
“But hark! the air again is still
The music all is ground,
And silence, like a poultice, comes
To heal the blows of sound.”
The man who has had the experience here set down, appreciates
both the pathos and the humour of a passage
like that. Lowell’s humour is akin to that of Holmes. It
breaks out in nearly every essay that he wrote, and almost
runs riot in some of his poems. Speaking of the destruction
of a certain hill that a city street might be improved, he
remarked in “Cambridge Thirty Years Ago” (1854): “The
landscape was carried away cart-load by cart-load, and,
dumped down on the roads, forms a part of that unfathomable
pudding which has, I fear, drawn many a teamster
and pedestrian to the use of phrases not commonly found
in English dictionaries.” There is much humour in Lowell,
more stirring than this, but the quotation exhibits the
readiness with which he would give an unexpected turn
to a sentence, or throw in an unlooked-for reference or expression,
too delicate to be shocking, too subtle to arouse
loud laughter, but capable none the less of sending a
ripple of amusement over the calmest gravity. For work
professedly humorous throughout, we must turn to “A
Fable for Critics” (1848) or to “The Biglow Papers”
(1848). Both contain much good hard common sense, but
the humour instead of being a mere accident of expression
is the real reason for the existence of the greater part of
each work. More closely allied to Lowell, perhaps, than
to either Irving or Holmes, Warner produced no work
exclusively funny. Still there is hardly a page of “My
Summer in a Garden” (1870) or of “In the Wilderness”
(1878) which does not have at least one laughable sentence.
For this reason Warner defies quotation: his chapters must
be read in their entirety rather than in chance snatches.
The Professional Humourists.—Turning now from those
writers of humour who have been looked upon by some
critics as forming an “imitative school” and by others
as constituting what they have more happily termed a
“restrained school,” we come upon a widely extended
group of writers who profess to have no higher calling
than the awakening of mere laughter. If we call them
collectively the “professional school of American humourists,”
we need not feel ourselves debarred from regarding
them as falling naturally into several classes, to each of
which we may give some special name, such as “the milder
school,” “the women humourists,” “the boisterous group,”
and the like. We must not forget, however, that no hard
and fast dividing lines can be drawn between the different
classes, since the fact that a writer is a woman does not
necessarily prevent her writing boisterous humour, or
that a man who is generally almost clown-like may not
sometimes produce a rare and refined piece of fun. Furthermore,
it happens that the very naturalness with which the
humourists fall into groups and classes prevents their being
discussed in chronological order. The milder fun-makers
have existed side by side with their hilarious brethren
from the beginning, so that one must ignore, except in the
slightest way, the order determined mainly by accidents
of birth, or dates of publication.
The Women Humourists.—Politeness demands that we
speak of the women humourists first: in the fore-front of
these we must place Mrs. Frances Miriam Whitcher (1811–1852).
She made her first appearance as a writer in Neal’s
Saturday Gazette about 1845, and to that paper contributed
a long series of articles purporting to come from the pen of
“the Widow Bedott.” From the first she attracted attention,
and interest in her work has never wholly ceased.
Such was the demand for her writings that after her death
two collections of articles from her pen were made and
published as “The Widow Bedott Papers” (1855), and
“Widow Sprigg, Mary Elmer, and Other Sketches” (1867).
Closely related in form and content to “The Widow
Bedott Papers” was a book published in 1873 with the
title “My Opinions and Betsy Bobbet’s.” Although immediately
popular, it was for many years supposed to be
the work of its professed author, Samanthy Allen; but by
the time “P. A. and P. I. or Samanthy at the Centennial”
appeared, in 1876, the secret had leaked out that
“Josiah Allen’s Wife” was the pseudonym of Marietta
Holley (born in 1844), a native of Adams, New York.
A contributor to Peterson’s Magazine, The Christian
Union, The Independent, and other periodicals, and the
author of numerous books, she has gained considerable
renown. Her earlier works are her best; for as time went
on she diluted her skill in fun-making by permitting her
interest in the temperance question, the woman-suffrage
movement, and negro education to interfere with the
power of her wit. Miss Holley’s work has attracted some
attention abroad, and has been translated into several
foreign languages. Merely pausing to mention Mary
Abigail Dodge (1830–1896), a native of Hamilton, Massachusetts,
who, forming her pseudonym from a part of her
own name and from that of her birthplace, made herself
famous as “Gail Hamilton” in work both grave and gay;
and stopping only to call attention to the fact that Harriet
Beecher Stowe in “Old Town Folks” (1869) gave us an
unusually funny book, we may choose from the host of
women who are moving us to laughter the most industrious
of them all, Carolyn Wells. As a writer of the verse form
called the limerick she has more than once equalled Edward
Lear, and as a parodist she shocks a reader to silence by
her audacity.
The Milder Humourists.—In what may be called the
milder school of American humourists Seba Smith (1792–1868)
was the leader in point of time. Graduated from
Bowdoin College in 1818, Smith began almost immediately
to contribute editorially to the papers of Portland, Maine.
In addition to more serious works, he wrote, under the
pen-name of “Major Jack Downing,” a series of political
articles in New England dialect, thus anticipating Lowell’s
“Biglow Papers” by several years. Smith was the author
of a number of books, the best known of which are probably
“Way Down East” (1853) and “My Thirty Years Out of
the Senate” (1859), the latter a homely and vigorous
parody of Senator T. H. Benton’s “Thirty Years’ View of
the American Government.” Writing not long after Seba
Smith, John Godfrey Saxe (1816–1887) early sprang into
fame. The author of a considerable amount of prose, he
attracted far wider attention by his verse. In the latter
he showed the working of a strong English influence; indeed,
it is not too much to say that had there been no
Thomas Hood, there would have been no Saxe. Born at
Highgate, Vermont, and graduated from Middlebury College
in 1843, he soon became interested in both journalism
and politics; but he is now best remembered by his work
in verse. His “Humorous and Satirical Poems” (1850)
fairly bristle with puns from beginning to end, and the
surprising fact about them is that they are so good and so
well set in their places that rarely does a reader feel inclined
to accuse Saxe of overstraining his powers.
Leland, Field, Riley, and Harris.—Merely mentioning
in passing the name of Saxe’s contemporary, Frederick
Swartwout Cozzens (1818–1869), author of “The Sparrowgrass
Papers” (1856), we call attention to Robert Henry
Newell (1836–1901), whose “Orpheus C. Kerr Papers”
in three volumes (1861–1869) contained presumably funny
comments on the Civil War, and to David Ross Locke
(1833–1888), who, writing under the pseudonym of “Petroleum
Vesuvius Naseby,” wittily supported the administration
of Lincoln, and attacked that of Johnson, in newspaper
articles afterward collected into a book entitled “Divers
Views, Opinions, and Prophecies of Yours Truly” (1865).
These three men, although deserving mention on account
of the position they once held, are now little read, but their
contemporary Charles Godfrey Leland (1824–1903) seems
to have established something like permanent renown for
himself. Graduated from Princeton in 1846, he became
prominent in various fields of journalism and authorship.
His best-known work is “Hans Breitmann’s Ballads,” of
which a collected edition appeared in 1895. These poems
are written in the dialect known as Pennsylvania Dutch,
and relate the exploits of their clownish hero in various
exigencies and circumstances. In this same school of mild
humourists we may class also a number of writers most of
whom are still in the prime of life. From the host we select
three as typical. Eugene Field (1850–1895), whose untimely
death cut short a career of promise already blossoming
into fulfilment, may be mentioned first. In addition
to much serious work, he published “The Tribune Primer”
(1882), a mock imitation of a child’s first reading-book,
and “Culture’s Garden” (1887), a series of clever skits
directed against those who make a pretence of ultra-refinement.
With Field for some reason James Whitcomb
Riley (born in 1853) has always been popularly associated,
possibly because both wrote poems having childhood as
subject-matter. Mr. Riley’s humorous work is scattered
through his several books, of which “Rhymes of Childhood”
(1890) and “Home Folks” (1900) are typical, if not the
best. An author of a series of books which appeal at once
to students of popular tradition and to general readers
whether young or old is found in Joel Chandler Harris
(1848–1908). Publishing a book in 1880 on Afro-American
folk-lore under the title “Uncle Remus, His Songs and His
Sayings,” Mr. Harris found to his surprise that he had
an audience who listened to him with mirth instead of
gravity. It is improbable that more than a mere handful
of his readers suspect for even a moment that the several
stories put into the mouth of Uncle Remus are a real
contribution to anthropological data. In his later years,
Mr. Harris wisely threw all his reports into literary form,
with the result that there was a steady rise in his popularity
as he gave us successively “Nights with Uncle Remus”
(1883), “Mingo, and Other Sketches” (1884), and “Daddy
Jake, the Runaway” (1889).
The Boisterous Humourists.—Turning now to the “boisterous
school” of American humour, we may dwell for a
time upon the chief characteristics exhibited by members
of the group. In the first place, most of them have forgotten
how to spell. There is something ludicrous in the
appearance of the word “through” masquerading in the
garb “thru,” whatever may be the plea of the society of
spelling reformers to the contrary; and certainly no one,
except a school-teacher, can be other than amused to see
such common words as “laugh,” “feel,” “funny,” and the
like making their bows as “laff,” “feal,” and “phuny.”
Laughable as this may be, however, it is not too much to
insist that, if the appeal is only to the eye, if the wit evaporates
when the words are not seen but merely heard, then
the humour is not of very high order. In the second place,
most of the members of the boisterous school, along with
their loss of power as spellers, have also forgotten how to
tell the truth. “This inclination towards outrageous exaggeration,”
said Lowell, “is a prime characteristic of American
humour.” “There is,” he says elsewhere, “something irresistibly
comic in the conception of a negro so black that
charcoal made a white mark on him, or in the idea of a
soil so fertile that a nail planted in it becomes a railroad
spike before morning.” This example of untruthfulness
might also be taken as an illustration of the third trait
of the group now under discussion—that of producing
the most absurd paradoxes and of bringing into juxtaposition
the most diverse uses of the same word. This is
more than mere word-play; it is rather what might be
termed the apotheosis of the pun. It underlies the majority
of jokes that are found in the American newspaper,
and is at once the admiration and the despair of those who
try to analyse or to imitate the subtlety of our humour.
Josh Billings.—With these three characteristics in mind
we may now give some brief attention to the humourists
themselves. Of the “boisterous school” the earliest were
Henry Wheeler Shaw, Benjamin Penhallow Shillaber, and
Charles Farrar Browne. If by chance these names seem
quite unfamiliar, the strangeness will disappear when attention
is called to the fact that the three men respectively
wrote under the noms de plume of “Josh Billings,” “Mrs.
Partington,” and “Artemus Ward.” Shaw (1818–1885)
was born in Lanesborough, Massachusetts, and died in
Monterey, California. To complete his formal education
he entered Hamilton College in Clinton, New York; but
tiring of the life there, he went on to the West and spent a
number of years undergoing the many experiences offered
by frontier life. Returning East in 1858, he became an
auctioneer in Poughkeepsie, New York, where he also
began to contribute to various magazines and newspapers.
He attracted little attention until he invented an amusing
system of phonetic spelling supposed to represent his homely
method of pronunciation. His chief works were his
“Farmer’s Allminax” published annually between 1870
and 1880, “Every Boddy’s Friend” (1876), and “Josh
Billings’ Spice Box” (1881). A quotation or two will
exhibit both the thought and the form which characterise
the contents of his several volumes of writing:
“Fallin’ in luv is like fallin’ in molases—sweet but
drefful dobby.”
“Yu can’t tell what makes a kis taste so good eny more
than you kin a peech. Eny man who kin set down wher
it is cool and tell what a kis tastes like hain’t got eny more
taste in his mouth than a knot-hol hez.”
Mrs. Partington.—Benjamin P. Shillaber (1814–1890)
was influenced by Sheridan even more strongly than was
Saxe by the elder Hood. Mrs. Partington is America’s
Mrs. Malaprop. Her misuse of the English language Shillaber
recorded in three books bearing the several titles,
“Life and Sayings of Mrs. Partington” (1854), “Partingtonian
Patchwork” (1873), and “Ike and his Friend” (1879).
Mrs. Partington’s likeness to her English predecessor, or,
as she would undoubtedly have said, her “predecessoress,”
may be seen in her chance remark: “I am not so young as
I was once, and I don’t believe I shall ever be, if I live to
the age of Samson, which, heaven knows as well as I do,
I don’t want to, for I wouldn’t be a centurion or an octagon
and survive my factories and become idiomatic by any
means. But then there is no knowing how a thing will
turn out till it takes place, and we shall come to an end
some day, though we may never live to see it.”
Artemus Ward.—Charles F. Brown (1834–1867), the
third of the humourists writing about the middle of the
last century, was born in Waterford, Maine, and lived
in various parts of the United States as his newspaper
work called him first to one town and then to another.
He made extensive lecture trips, and finally went in 1866
to England, where he died in March of the following year.
He had the distinction of being the first American contributor
to Punch. He published during his lifetime a number
of books, among which were “Artemus Ward: His Book”
(1865), “Artemus Ward: His Book of Goaks” (1865), and
“Artemus Ward in London” (1867). Undoubtedly his
best single work was a lecture giving an account of his visit
to the Mormons. Learning from Brigham Young that he
was married to eighty wives and sealed to as many more,
Artemus remarked that the prophet was “the most marriedest
man” he ever saw. Ward then went on to say: “In a
privit conversashun with Brigham I learnt the follerin’
fax: It takes him six weeks to kiss his wives. He don’t
do it only onct a year and sez it’s wuss nor cleanin’ house.
He don’t pretend to know his children, there is so many
of ’em, tho they all know him. He sez about every child
he meats call him Par and he takes it for granted it is so.”
Later Writers of Boisterous Humour.—Taking up now
the writers who were born in the decade immediately
preceding the turning point of the nineteenth century,
we may regard as worthy of special mention Charles
Heber Clark, Charles Bertrand Lewis, Robert Jones Burdette,
and Edgar Wilson Nye. Of these, all save one
are still living and still writing. Mr. Clark was born in
Berlin, Maryland, in 1841. For many years he has been
the editor of The Textile Record, published in Philadelphia,
to which he has contributed a number of articles on economic
themes. He is best known, however, by two books of
humour: “Out of the Hurly Burly” and “Elbow Room,”
both written under the nom de plume of “Max Adeler.”
Mr. Lewis (born in 1842) is best known by his pseudonym,
“M. Quad,” a title drawn from the parlance of printers.
Mr. Lewis’ earlier work was much more spontaneous than
that which he is producing now. Connected with The
Detroit Free Press, he contributed to it a steady stream of
character sketches of great variety. Collecting them later,
he published them under various titles. Of these volumes
the best are “Brother Gardener’s Lime-Kiln Club,” “Quad’s
Odds,” and “Mr. and Mrs. Bowser.”
Edgar W. Nye (1850–1896), best known as “Bill Nye,”
was born in Shirley, Maine, and died near Asheville,
North Carolina. Educated in Wisconsin, he first turned
his attention to the study of law. Abandoning that pursuit
after having been admitted to the bar, he dabbled in several
different occupations, and finally became a newspaper
correspondent. For a short time he travelled with James
Whitcomb Riley, the two giving a series of entertainments
which proved widely popular. Nye’s published works
were many, but they have little chance of permanent life.
As good as any are “Bill Nye and the Boomerang” (1881),
“A Comic History of the United States” (1894), and “The
Railroad Guide” (1888), the last written in partnership
with Mr. Riley. Mr. Burdette, the last of the quartette
here mentioned together, was born in Greensboro, Pennsylvania,
in 1844, and received his schooling in Peoria, Illinois.
During the Civil War he was a soldier in the Union Army.
At the close of the struggle, Mr. Burdette returned to
Peoria, where he was connected with first one and then
another of the newspapers published there. Finally, failing
in a paper issued under his own proprietorship, he went to
Burlington, Iowa, and became a member of the staff of
The Hawkeye. While engaged in newspaper work, Mr.
Burdette began to write funny things to amuse his invalid
wife; and these, published later in the columns of
the paper, have made him known throughout the United
States. He was licensed as a Baptist preacher in 1887,
since when he has signed himself Robert Burdette, D., on
the ground that the abbreviation D. is the next thing to
that of D.D. Mr. Burdette’s best humorous work may
be read in “The Rise and Fall of the Moustache and other
Hawkeyetems” (1877) and “Chimes from a Jester’s Bells”
(1897).
Mark Twain.—Of American humourists “Mark Twain,”
known in private life as Samuel Langhorne Clemens, is
readily placed foremost by critics and admirers both at
home and abroad. He has the right to be considered the
Nestor of our writers, for, born in 1835, he began to produce
his earliest work when Irving was in his prime, and has
therefore seen at least one phase of every school in our
literature. His younger years were those of the decline
of the Knickerbocker writers; he saw the rise and fall of
the Concord group, the Cambridge poets, and the New York
writers; and now he is present at the general upward movement
all over the country, including the South and the
West. His relation to our literature is not unlike that of
Fanny Burney to the novel; she was born before Richardson
published “The History of Sir Charles Grandison,” and
did not die until twelve years after the birth of George
Meredith, thus being contemporaneous with the greatest
English novelists from the first to the last. Mr. Clemens
was born in Florida, Missouri, and when scarcely thirteen
years old was apprenticed to a printer. Barring a few
years spent as pilot upon the Mississippi, he has devoted
his life to literary work. His writings include “The Innocents
Abroad” (1869), the humorous record of a
trip in the countries of the Eastern Hemisphere; “The
Gilded Age” (1873), a novel written conjointly with
Charles Dudley Warner; “The Adventures of Tom
Sawyer” (1876), and “The Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn” (1884), both books about boys whose exploits are
interesting to young and old alike; “A Connecticut Yankee
at the Court of King Arthur” (1889), a cruel parody of
Malory’s “Morte d’Arthur”; and “Christian Science,” an
attempt, despite all the fun it makes, to report sincerely
upon a careful investigation of the claims of Mrs. Mary
Baker Eddy and her disciples. It is unfortunate for Mr.
Clemens that he is a humourist, for he has had to suffer
the lot long ago mentioned by Holmes as the fate of the
fun-producer: no one can ever take such a man seriously;
no one can believe that he ever has any other purpose
than to tickle our fancy or awaken our laughter. Yet it
is not impossible that future critics may come to regard
“The Prince and the Pauper” (1882) and “The Personal
Recollections of Joan of Arc” (1896), two serious and
dignified pieces of writing, as Mr. Clemens’s best work.
Within recent years Oxford University has conferred the
degree of D.C.L. upon Mr. Clemens in recognition of his
contributions to literature. This action by a great institution
of learning has filled many minds with surprise,
nor have all of them quite recovered their mental equilibrium
yet. Some, indeed, are still asking the old question,
“Is Saul also among the prophets?” and can hardly
believe their ears when they receive the answer, “Yea,
verily!” Humour at last seems to be coming to its own.
Said Mr. Meredith a few years ago: “Comedy, we have
to admit, was never one of the most honoured of the Muses.
She was in her origin, short of laughter, the loudest expression
of the little civilisation of men.” While it must be
admitted that when he wrote this the greatest English
writer now living had in mind something much more delicate,
much more refined, much more subtle, than anything
yet produced in America, it is not beyond thought that
even he would let us classify the fun-makers of this country
as true humourists. They deal little in satire, little in
irony, but they have much in common with those to whom
Mr. Meredith said: “If you laugh all round a person, tumble
him, roll him about, deal him a smack, and drop a tear on
him, own his likeness to you, and yours to your neighbour,
spare him as little as you shun, pity him as much as you
expose, it is a spirit of Humour that is moving you.”
The Historical Background.—In America, oratory has
been the most fortunate of all the arts. Whether in the
era prior to the Revolution, or in the formative years of
the Republic before 1800, or in the first half and more
of the nineteenth century—in the pulpit as well as at the
bar and in the forum, American orators have drawn their
inspiration directly from the political or religious life of
the nation. From the nature of things, no other art,
neither poetry, nor painting, nor music, could bear so intimate
a relation to the course of our national existence
as the utterance of the public speaker. Every crisis in
our history, the Revolution itself, the War of 1812, the
struggle between North and South, was hastened by the
spoken word. Trained poets have been wanting among us;
trained speakers, in so far as their powers could develop
without a correspondingly high development of poetry
and music, we have always possessed; men skilled in rousing
enthusiasm and reverence throughout congregations of the
pious, men alert to kindle the intelligence of a legislature
or to sway the minds of judge and jury. From the first,
this training was continuous and effective. In the bare
colonial churches thought, word, and action of the pastor
were criticised by an audience that had braved the sea and
the savage for the privilege of listening. From the colonial
courts of justice spread the education which warranted
Burke in saying of a litigious populace: “In no country
perhaps in the world is the law so general a study. The
profession itself is numerous and powerful.... But all
who read, and most do read, endeavour to obtain some
smattering in that science.” With this knowledge of law,
every other colonist was a keen debater for his private
rights and, when the time came, for the rights of his community
or nation. From a population thus educated sprang
the forensic leaders of the Revolution; and to its sources in
eighteenth-century popular education we follow back the
steady stream of American eloquence which in the nineteenth
century runs strong and full in the noblest efforts
of American literature—say Webster’s tribute to Massachusetts
in the reply to Hayne, and Lincoln’s undying
speech at Gettysburg.
So close indeed is the bond between juridic and political
history on the one hand, and the achievement of the great
American orators on the other, that they can be sundered,
as in the following pages, only for purposes of general
reference. Since a political history of the United States
from the year 1783 is not here expected, we must limit
ourselves to brief notice of a few representative men, taken
in something like chronological order, and mainly between
the years 1800 and 1865. With the Civil War, or perhaps
with the second inaugural address of President Lincoln,
ended the golden age of national eloquence.
Precursors of the Nineteenth Century.—The careers
of James Otis (1725–83), Samuel Adams (1722–1803),
Josiah Quincy, Junior (1744–75), and Patrick Henry
(1736–99), fall largely in the period covered by the pages
from Tyler; and the orations and political writings of the
Revolutionary Period itself do not come within the scope
of the present sketch. Of course it is impossible to make
a line of sharp division in the case of public men whom
we instinctively couple with the earliest days of the Republic,
but whose voices were heard to the verge of the
next century, or even beyond. The “Farewell Address”
of Washington to his countrymen in 1796, so long regarded
with veneration, was, in spite of its conservative
form, its Johnsonian balance, a document with matter for
the coming age. However, it is clear that statesmen who
were in their prime at the time of Washington’s death in
1799 more particularly require our attention.
Fisher Ames.—Among these is Fisher Ames (1758–1808).
Admitted to Harvard at the age of twelve, after
graduation he first engaged in teaching, then studied law,
and entering politics, became a force among the Federalists.
Long the victim of ill health, he nevertheless made his
superior mental endowment felt in the counsels of the
nation. His “Tomahawk Speech” (1796), on Jay’s treaty
with Great Britain, contained passages of splendour on the
fear of Indian massacres. For the eloquence of this
speech he has been compared to Wilberforce, Brougham,
Burke, Pitt, and Fox. He could not have resembled them
all. Ames had a fastidious taste, was cautious and dignified
in his utterances, and was not desirous of a cheap
popularity. “To be the favourite of an ignorant multitude,”
he observed, “a man must descend to their level.”
Four years before he died, his health constrained him to
decline the presidency of Harvard.
The Early Nineteenth Century.—The activity of Rufus
King (1755–1827) and others continued somewhat later.
This friend of Alexander Hamilton, and collaborator with
him in the political essays signed “Camillus,” was in 1796
accorded the delicate function of Minister to England.
In 1813 the Legislature of New York elected him to the
United States Senate; here he won laurels for his speech
on the destruction of Washington by the British. He
returned to the Senate in 1820, and he was Minister to
England again under President Adams.
John Marshall.—The name of John Marshall (1755–1835)
we naturally associate with his momentous work of
interpreting the Constitution. The dry light of his intellect
and his lack of passion were more suited to purely
legal exposition than to the eloquence of debate. When
he went to Congress in 1798, the cogency of his argument
was already known. It is sufficiently demonstrated
by his speech in Robbins’ case (1800), a case that involved
the international law governing murder committed
upon the high seas by a citizen of one country sailing on
the ship of another. Marshall’s uninspiring “Life of
Washington” is valuable as a repository of plain fact.
Morris and De Witt.—Gouverneur Morris (1752–1816)
was early famous for his eloquence. His thought was
orderly, his style finished. Successful in the practice of
law, and distinguished for his services during the Revolution,
he became a zealous Federalist, entering the United
States Senate in 1800. Here his most notable effort was
his “Speech on the Judiciary” (1802). Clinton De Witt
(1769–1828), who was Mayor of New York City most of
the time between 1803 and 1815, was also in the Senate
for two years, and opposed the redoubtable Morris on the
question of navigation on the Mississippi. De Witt was
a man of wide interests, being something of a scientist
and historian; his practical sense recognised the value of
inland waterways. He merits more attention than can
here be given him.
Gore, Dexter, and Others.—The same is true of the
following: Christopher Gore (1758–1829), who in 1814
reached the Senate, to remain three years, and who spoke
on “The Prohibition of Certain Imports” (1814) and on
“Direct Taxation” (1815); Samuel Dexter (1761–1816),
Secretary of War and Secretary of the Treasury; James
A. Bayard (1767–1815), lawyer, Senator, Commissioner
at Ghent in 1814; William Branch Giles (1762–1840);
Edward Livingston (1764–1836), jurist, diplomat, Secretary
of State; John Sergeant (1779–1852), candidate for Vice-President
on the Clay ticket of 1832; John J. Crittenden
(1787–1863), lawyer and statesman; James Hillhouse
(1789–1846), orator as well as poet.
William Pinkney.—Among the noteworthy orators
during the first twenty years of the last century was
William Pinkney (1764–1822). The son of a sympathiser
with England, he was himself devoted to the cause of
American freedom. His prominence in the affairs of
Maryland ushered him into national concerns. He took
part in the War of 1812, and was wounded. He was
Attorney-General under Madison, but resigned for the
sake of his private practice. He was made Minister to
Russia in 1816; in 1820 he entered the United States
Senate. A specimen of his eloquence may be seen in
his argument before the Supreme Court (1815) in the
case of the prize ship Nereide. Pinkney was fond of
classical learning, and well versed in current literature.
He prided himself on his accuracy in the use of English.
This made him over-conscious in his style, so that his
thought seems artificial. His death is said to have been
partly caused by his labours in the preparation and delivery
of an argument.
Quincy, Gallatin, and Emmet.—Josiah Quincy (1772–1864),
son of Josiah Quincy of Revolutionary fame, was
president of Harvard from 1829 to 1845. Besides his
“History of Harvard University,” he was the author of
many pamphlets and public addresses. “His career in
Congress was distinguished chiefly for his opposition to
the Embargo, to the War of 1812, and to the admission
of Louisiana.” Albert Gallatin (1761–1849), leaving his
birthplace, at Geneva, Switzerland, came to Boston in
1781, taught French in Harvard, went to Virginia, and
there became the friend of Patrick Henry. He was sent
to Congress in 1795, and thereafter entrusted with special
missions to Holland and England. He was also Minister
to France (1816), and Minister to England (1826). Gallatin’s
intuitions were as quick and sure as his character
was upright and urbane. His information, as in his speech
(1796) on the earlier British treaty, was ample and exact.
Among his innumerable services to the country of his
adoption, not the least were his efforts on behalf of internal
commerce and the improvement in methods of banking.
Thomas Addis Emmet (1764–1827) was also a foreigner—a
native of Cork. He studied medicine in Edinburgh,
but turning to law, was admitted to practice in 1791 and
settled at Dublin. For his share in the Irish insurrectionary
movement he was imprisoned; after his release he emigrated
to New York, where he became an eminent pleader. He
had a “dignified but earnest attitude, forcible and unstudied
gestures,” and a “powerful and expressive voice.”
“No orator knew better how to enlist his hearers on the
side of his client.”
Red Jacket and Tecumseh.—Foreign, likewise, although
bred within our borders, was the eloquence of the Indians,
Red Jacket and Tecumseh. Red Jacket was the
nickname of Sa-go-ye-wat-ha (“He keeps them awake”),
otherwise known as “the last of the Senecas.” He was a
lover of peace, resisting entanglements, counselling the
Indians neither to fight, nor yet to mingle, with the whites,
dissuading them against the adoption of Christianity,
settled in his ancestral reverence for “the Great Spirit.”
His simple and direct language was full of sudden poetic
energy. He died at a great age in 1830. Tecumseh
(1770?-1812), in many things his opposite, was killed at
the Battle of the Thames, where he fought with the English
against the United States. A born leader was Tecumseh,
magnificent in his proportions, noble in his bearing,
fiery and magnetic. Prior to the War of 1812 he tried to
enlist the Indians of the South and West in a general insurrection
against the government. He went from tribe to
tribe, reproaching them with their debasement through
white civilisation, and abusing the Federal authority.
William Wirt.—Of Swiss descent, one of the ablest
men this country developed in his time was William Wirt
(1772–1834). His arraignment of Aaron Burr at the
latter’s trial in 1807 was masterly, and made Wirt’s name
familiar to the public ear. From 1817 to 1828 he was
Attorney-General. In private as in national life his character
was without stain; his correspondence discloses an
honesty and consistency of statement and purpose almost
unequalled. His imaginative “Letters of the British Spy”
(1803) described Virginian society and American eloquence
as they might appear to an unbiassed traveller.
“The Life and Character of Patrick Henry” (1817) was
roundly praised by Jefferson. Of Wirt’s occasional addresses
none was more admired than that delivered in
1830 before the students of Rutgers College.
Judge Story.—The voluminous works of Joseph Story
(1779–1845), including text-books on law, are in part
made up of his discourses. He began life as a poet, but
attained his first eminence as a lawyer. Before his appointment
to the United States Supreme Court, he was
heard on the floor of the House of Representatives. As
professor in the Harvard Law School he proved an acceptable
lecturer.
John Quincy Adams.—The younger Adams (1767–1848),
sixth President of the United States, received from his
father, the second President, specific training for the career
of statesman; even his boyhood was passed in the midst
of political and diplomatic life. He studied at Leyden,
then at Harvard, where, during an interim in his public
activities, he afterward held the chair of rhetoric and belles-lettres.
He saw diplomatic service in Holland, Russia,
England, was in the Senate, and was in the House of Representatives.
He was a foe of slavery, but not a Garrisonian
Abolitionist. In 1836 he urged upon Congress its right
under the Constitution, as he believed, to abolish slavery
by legal enactment. His influence was strong for freedom
of debate. This “old man eloquent” continued speaking
when he was over eighty, and died on the floor of the House
of Representatives. He was a diarist, a poet, a translator.
He was a clear, fluent, not very terse speaker, having the
agglomerative and developing style of the parliamentary
orator. When he desired, he could be ironical.
The High Tide of American Oratory.—The burning
questions of the rights of an individual state as against
its duties to the central government, of the extension of
negro slavery, or its territorial limitation, or its entire
abolition, brought on the crisis of the Civil War, which is
the central fact in American history. Correspondingly,
during the interval between the War of 1812 and the
War of the Rebellion, their eloquence fired by these and
related questions, lie the careers of our greatest orators.
“Old Bullion.”—Thomas Hart Benton (1782–1858) cannot
be reckoned one of these. Indifferent to the spread
of slavery, he was in favour of developing the great Western
territories at any cost. He urged a reduction of the prices
charged by the government in the sale of public lands,
and promoted the interests of a railroad to the Pacific.
As an advocate of specie currency he acquired the sobriquet
of “Old Bullion.” Retiring from the Senate after extended
usefulness there, he published his “Thirty Years’ View,”
a history of the workings of the American Government
from 1820 to 1850, highly commended by Bryant for its
taste and simplicity of style.
Henry Clay.—Slightly the senior of Benton, Henry
Clay (1777–1852) was in public life for an even longer
time. By birth he was a Virginian. In the face of early
hardship he rose to be Senator from Kentucky (1806–1807);
from 1811 until 1852, for forty-one years, he was almost
steadily in the eye of the nation. A leader of the Whig
party, he sided with his great opponent, Calhoun, against
the more timid Madison, in precipitating the second war
with England; and he was prominent in the negotiations
for peace that followed. Clay was four times Speaker of
the House of Representatives, and four times unsuccessful
candidate for President of the United States. The influence
which he had shown over juries in Kentucky he
likewise exercised in the national legislature. In the
management of conflicting interests, and in furthering the
measures of his party, he had a genius for detecting what
was possible or expedient. The Missouri Compromise of
1820, the Tariff Compromise of 1833, and the Slavery
Compromise of 1850 were largely owing to him. He was
a master in effecting legislation. According to Blaine,
“Mr. Webster argued the principle, Mr. Clay embodied it
in a statute.” Among his celebrated speeches were those
on the New Army Bill (1813), on the Seminole War (1819),
and on the Tariff (1824). At his death, a colleague, Joseph
R. Underwood, said in the Senate:
The character of Henry Clay was formed and developed by the
influence of our free institutions. His physical and mental organisation
eminently qualified him to become a great and
impressive orator. His person was tall, slender, and commanding;
his temperament ardent, fearless, and full of hope; his
countenance clear, expressive, and variable—indicating the emotion
which predominated at the moment with exact similitude; his
voice cultivated and modulated in harmony with the sentiment
he desired to express ...; his eye beaming with intelligence, and
flashing with coruscations of genius; his gestures and attitudes
graceful and natural. These personal advantages won the prepossessions
of an audience, even before his intellectual powers
began to move his hearers; and when his strong common sense,
his profound reasoning, his clear conceptions of his subject in
all its bearings, and his striking and beautiful illustrations,
united with such personal qualities, were brought to the discussion
of any question, his audience was enraptured, convinced,
and led by the orator as if enchanted by the lyre of Orpheus.
John Caldwell Calhoun.—The character and intellect
of John Caldwell Calhoun (1782–1850) were admired
even by those who least cared for his opinions. A South
Carolinian of Scotch-Irish extraction, he graduated from
Yale, in 1804, with the highest honours. He towered in
political life from 1808 until he died: as leader of the war
party under Madison; in upholding the doctrine of nullification—that
is, the right of each state to resist a Congressional
enactment which the state might deem injurious;
in the annexation of Texas; and in the defence of slavery.
Calhoun was fearless and precise in the discharge of his
duties as Secretary of War under Monroe, reducing expenses,
and rendering petty defalcation impossible. He
was Vice-President in 1825. His ruling ideas are contained
in his “Disquisition on Government” and “Discourse
on the Government of the United States” (in the
first volume of his works), and in speeches before the
Senate—for example, on Nullification and the Force Bill
(1833) and on the Slavery Question (1850). He was
thus characterised by Webster:
The eloquence of Mr. Calhoun ... was plain, strong, terse, condensed,
concise; sometimes impassioned—still always severe. Rejecting
ornament, not seeking far for illustration, his power consisted
in the plainness of his propositions, in the clearness of his
logic, and in the earnestness and energy of his manner.... His
demeanour as a Senator is known to us all—is appreciated, venerated
by us all.
Hayne and Randolph.—When Calhoun was Vice-President,
his spokesman in the Senate was a fellow Carolinian,
Robert Young Hayne (1791–1840), who was a
soldier in the War of 1812, but who, in his vindication
of state rights, refused the Attorney-Generalship of the
country to be Attorney-General of South Carolina. He
also retired from the Senate to be Governor of his State.
In his unlucky debate with Webster in 1830 he carried
sectional jealousy—of the South against New England—into
the question concerning the sale of public lands in
the West. Graceful in person, of a fine countenance, industrious,
commonly amiable, Hayne “had a copious and
ready elocution, flowing at will in a strong and steady current,
and rich in the material that constitutes argument.”
His prejudices, however, could distract him from the subject
in hand. The bellicose Virginian, John Randolph
of Roanoke (1773–1833), was in Congress at the age of
twenty-six. His bitterness toward England seems excessive.
Eccentric, singular also in appearance, biting and
unexpected in retort, he was a figure of interest when he
came to the Senate in 1825. His duel with Henry Clay
is a matter of unpleasant history. Enthusiastic contemporary
estimates of him by Paulding and others have not
worn well.
Daniel Webster.—The prince of American orators, and
one of the great orators of modern times, was born in
Salisbury, New Hampshire, on January 18, 1782. His
ancestry was Scotch. He had the stinted education of a
village school whose doors were open for a short term in
winter. Yet he could never recollect the time when he
could not read the Bible; and this and the few other
books that he could obtain he perused so often that he
virtually had them by heart. He was fond of committing
passages to memory. But at Exeter, where he prepared
for college, there was one thing which he could not do:
“I could not speak before the school.” The efforts of
his father made it possible for him to attend Dartmouth
College. He read by himself with the avidity of a Lowell—but
he also pursued with good intent the regular course
of studies. Finishing this course in 1801, he studied law,
earned a little money by teaching in Maine, and at length
entered the office of Christopher Gore in Boston—“a tall,
gaunt young man, with rather a thin face, but all the
peculiarities of feature and complexion by which he was
distinguished in later life.” There followed some years
of practice with meagre remuneration, but of unceasing
study. In 1813 he was sent to Congress from New Hampshire.
His speech in that year on the repeal of the Berlin
and Milan Decrees elicited praise from Chief Justice Marshall,
and throughout the country. Webster immediately
advanced to the front rank of debaters. It is baffling even
to suggest the range and importance of his subsequent
labours. When the famous Dartmouth College case,
apparently a forlorn hope, was carried before the United
States Supreme Court in 1818, Webster’s opening argument
as junior counsel brought an unlooked for settlement in
favour of the College; since then the case has furnished a
ruling precedent in interpreting the Constitutional clause
which prohibits state interference with the terms of a past
contract. In 1820 he was engaged on the revision of the
Massachusetts State Constitution. From 1823 to 1827
he was in the House of Representatives; from 1827 to
1841, and again from 1845 to 1850, in the Senate. He was
Secretary of State under Harrison and Tyler, and under
Fillmore. Through supposed concessions to slavery in his
speech of March 7, 1850, on the Constitution and the Union,
he estranged his best friends in the North, and had to endure
the taunt of faithlessness in Whittier’s “Ichabod.” Historians,
however, have justified the loftiness of his statesmanship
even here. He died as Secretary of State under
Fillmore, October 24, 1852.
During his reply to Hayne in 1830, when Webster
uttered his encomium on the State of Massachusetts,
strong men were moved to tears. One cannot read it at
this distance without strange emotion. Passages in the
second address at Bunker Hill, or the argument in Knapp’s
trial—the passage on the conscience of the murderer,
or more especially that at the end on the universal sense
of duty—rise to the point where the ethical and æsthetic
values of eloquence are one and eternal. One might go
on to mention his eulogy on “Adams and Jefferson,” his
“First Settlement of New England”—but we should
hardly finish a mere enumeration of the speeches he delivered
during his forty years of public life.
Consider [said Choate] the work he did in that life of forty years—the
range of subjects investigated and discussed; composing the
whole theory and practice of our organic and administrative politics,
foreign and domestic; the vast body of instructive thought he
produced and put in possession of the country; how much he
achieved in Congress as well as at the bar; to fix the true interpretation,
as well as to impress the transcendent value of the Constitution
itself ...; how much to establish in the general mind the
great doctrine that the government of the United States is a
government proper, established by the people of the States, not
a compact between sovereign communities ...; to place the
executive department of the government on its true basis ...;
to secure to that department its just powers on the one hand, and
on the other hand to vindicate to the legislative department, and
especially to the Senate, all that belonged to them ...; to develop
the vast material resources of the country, and push forward the
planting of the West ...; to protect the vast mechanical and
manufacturing interests ...; how much for the right performance
of the most delicate and difficult of all tasks, the ordering of the
foreign affairs of a nation, free, sensitive, self-conscious ...; how
much to compose with honour a concurrence of difficulties with
the first power of the world.
His style is simple, clear, free from tricks, unstudied
in its details, the easy outflow of a mind nourished on
choice and repeated reading, with the English Bible as
its main source; not avoiding allusion to himself, but
quickly mounting with the subject to universal application;
not deficient in grace, yet on the whole massive, orderly,
and neglectful of lighter emotions. In private life Webster
was genial. He was fond of the open country, delighting
in the rod and gun. “Black Dan” he was familiarly
called, on account of his deep-set, lustrous eyes, over-shadowing
brows, and commanding, swarthy countenance.
The proportions and majesty of his head were in keeping
with the dignity of his figure.
William Lloyd Garrison.—With the main agitator of
the Abolitionist movement there was no thought of compromise.
Orator as well as writer, William Lloyd Garrison
(1805–1879), though the herald of self-restraint, and preaching
the doctrine of non-resistance, carried his principles to
their extreme length. He condemned the churches for
their tolerance of slavery, and disliked the Constitution
for permitting it. He favoured ending the Union, if the
national disease could be removed by amputation. He
could not tolerate gradual treatment or the doubtful
promise of an incomplete cure.
Charles Sumner.—Garrison’s brave, handsome, and gifted
friend, and the friend of Longfellow, Charles Sumner
(1811–1878), was trained in the law under Judge Story. It
was partly through Whittier’s influence that he entered
politics, but when he succeeded Webster in the Senate
his place as a leader was assured. The infamous assault
upon him by Brooks in 1856, during the debate over the
affairs of Kansas, left Sumner incapacitated until 1859.
When “the eloquent vacant chair” was filled again, crowds
gathered whenever announcement was made that Sumner
would speak. His intellect was not equal to that of his
illustrious predecessor; yet his sound judgment and winning
personality, aided by a captivating delivery, put him,
in the Senate, at the head of the new Republican party.
His “Orations” have been published in eight volumes.
Thaddeus Stevens.—While Sumner was in the Senate,
Thaddeus Stevens (1792–1868), a less admirable character,
led the Republicans in the House. He also was a
bitter foe of slavery, and was urgent with Lincoln to
emancipate the negroes. “A clear, logical, and powerful
debater,” he was feared for his mordant invective. Influential
with the rank and file of politicians, he rejoiced
in the borrowed title of the “Great Commoner.”
Wendell Phillips.—Of course the trumpet of the Abolitionists
was the impassioned Wendell Phillips (1811–1884),
ever supporting the hands of Garrison, and similarly
uncompromising. On graduating from Harvard in 1831,
he studied law; but he refused to engage in its practice,
since this would entail his swearing to uphold a national
Constitution which tolerated slavery. He was a master
of sarcasm, irony, and epigram, of choice and varied wit;
serene in the presence of his enemies, capturing and holding
their attention. When the Civil War was over, and
the cause of Abolition won, he turned to the remedy of
other evils, speaking in favour of woman’s rights, and
championing labour reform. In the guise of a general redresser
of wrongs he lost prestige as well as something of
his own sense of dignity.
Rufus Choate.—The most famous of a famous family,
Rufus Choate (1799–1859) was distinguished for his pleading
at the bar, his literary attainments, and, during the time
that he was there (1841–1845), the exercise of his talents
in the Senate. A pupil of no less a lawyer than William
Wirt, Choate, in his unrivalled success with juries, and
his stirring if florid occasional addresses, was indebted
not alone to his natural ardour and personal magnetism,
but also to thorough analysis and unremitting preparation.
His eulogy on Webster at Dartmouth College, July 27,
1853, was the tribute of an eminent graduate of that institution
to the noblest.
Stephen A. Douglas.—Stephen Arnold Douglas (1813–1861)
was born in Brandon, Vermont, studied law in Canandaigua,
New York, continued this study in Ohio, and
proceeded thence to Illinois to teach, and to practise
his calling of lawyer. He was in the United States Senate
from 1847 to 1861, doing his best to avert the Civil War.
In 1858 and 1860 the “Little Giant” boldly appeared
before audiences in the South and denied the right of
any state to secede from the Union. His speech on the
Kansas-Nebraska Bill (1854) shows his attitude of laissez-faire
in the matter of slavery. When he matched his wits
with Lincoln in their joint debate, he unintentionally
hastened his antagonist’s advance toward the Presidency.
William H. Seward.—Cautious, clear, incisive, firm in
his grasp of the laws of political history, William Henry
Seward (1811–1872) foresaw what Douglas could not, that
the struggle with slavery was an irrepressible conflict.
In New York State, of which he became Governor, he
was the untiring enemy of political opportunism in every
shape. An unsuccessful aspirant in 1860 for the Presidency,
he eventually overcame his lack of confidence in
Lincoln, and as Lincoln’s Secretary of State was of inestimable
service in maintaining our relations with
England during the course of the Rebellion. His “Diplomatic
History of the Civil War in America” was published
posthumously.
Salmon P. Chase.—Lincoln’s Secretary of the Treasury,
Salmon Portland Chase (1808–1873), was not a facile speaker,
but, tall and commanding, one of the handsomest men in
the Senate, he was both dignified and impressive. Like
Choate, he graduated from Dartmouth and studied with
William Wirt. As a practising lawyer he engaged (1837)
in the defence of persons on trial for alleged violation of
the Fugitive Slave Act; in the debate upon the Kansas-Nebraska
Bill (1854) he advocated “free soil,” and insisted
upon “the absolute divorce of the General Government”
from all connection with slavery. He was a Senator
both before and after holding the governorship of Ohio,
and again just before Lincoln summoned him into the
Cabinet. In 1864 he was made Chief Justice of the Supreme
Court, a position which he honoured till his death.
Edward Everett.—In the delivery of Edward Everett
(1794–1865) “there was nothing in manner, person, dress,
gesture, tone, accent, or emphasis too minute for his attention.”
From boyhood he had the gift of eloquence,
which he developed by assiduous practice. Taking high
honours at Harvard when but seventeen, he went into the
Unitarian ministry, and began preaching at the Brattle
Street Church in Boston, with immediate success. Invited
to assume a chair at Harvard, he studied abroad in preparation,
and then from 1819 to 1825 taught Greek. He
left his professorship to become a member of the House
of Representatives. Ten years later he was elected Governor
of Massachusetts. In 1841 General Harrison appointed
him Minister to England; on his return he accepted
the presidency of Harvard. He succeeded Webster as
Secretary of State under Fillmore; and in the national
election of 1860, representing the forces that desired a
compromise between North and South, he was candidate
for Vice-President of the United States. During his stay
in the Senate Everett also was heard on the Kansas-Nebraska
Bill. His orations were published in four volumes.
His “Lecture on the Character of Washington” (1856),
frequently repeated, and his “Eulogy on Webster” (1859)
were among his most splendid efforts. He made a remarkable
address at Gettysburg, though it now seems
academic beside that of Lincoln on the same occasion.
Abraham Lincoln.—For a manual of literature the
essential thing in the life of President Lincoln (1809–1865)
is the ennoblement that went on in his eloquence, as his
character developed under the increasing gravity and tension
of his public career, and as his individual spirit became
more and more identified with the agonising soul
of a nation. The simplicity and directness of his mental
operations are apparent in any of his earlier letters and
speeches; they were sufficiently evident to those who heard
his debate with Douglas. But his utterance gained in
dignity and closeness of texture when his native impulses
for good became free from idiosyncrasy, and when his
innate moral rightness grew into a deep and conscious
religion. In all literature there are few things more significant
than the chastening of style that accompanied the
chastening of Lincoln’s personality. There is a noticeable
difference even between the manner of his first and that of
his second inaugural address. In the meantime he had
pronounced his speech at the dedication of the National
Cemetery on the battlefield of Gettysburg, November 19,
1863. There, devoid of all pretence to rhetorical artifice,
yet in the perfection of English style, Lincoln gave to the
world a masterpiece of literature, issuing as it were from
the life-blood of the people; a masterpiece in which art
and life are married, and imaginative and literal truth
are become one flesh. Says Mr. Bryce:
That famous Gettysburg speech is the best example one could
desire of the characteristic quality of Lincoln’s eloquence. It is
a short speech. It is wonderfully terse in expression. It is quiet,
so quiet that at the moment it did not make upon the audience,
an audience wrought up by a long and highly-decorated harangue
from one of the prominent orators of the day, an impression at all
commensurate to that which it began to make as soon as it was read
over America and Europe. There is in it not a touch of what we
call rhetoric, or of any striving after effect. Alike in thought
and in language it is simple, plain, direct. But it states certain
truths and principles in phrases so aptly chosen and so forcible,
that one feels as if those truths could have been conveyed in no
other words, and as if this deliverance of them were made for all
time. Words so simple and so strong could have come only from
one who had meditated so long on the primal facts of American
history and popular government that the truths those facts taught
him had become like the truths of mathematics in their clearness,
their breadth, and their precision.
Miscellaneous and Later Orators.—It is obvious that
the lives of many ante-bellum orators overlapped upon
the era of Reconstruction; and the fifty years of political
activity since the Civil War have brought forth an ever
growing number of men concerned in affairs of state.
However, there are few in this last to compare in eloquence
with those of the preceding half-century. Among
recognised orators a quieter tone on the whole has prevailed;
not altogether that of Lincoln, nor yet that characteristic
of the best speakers in the time of Madison
and the younger Adams; nevertheless marking an improvement
upon the flowery and pedantic effusions of an
intermediate age represented by Choate, Winthrop, and,
to a certain extent, Everett. The passage of laws and
the expediting of other public business have come to depend
more upon influence and effort exerted off the floor
of the House and the Senate, and less upon forensic argument
and persuasion. With the enormous growth of the
population and the corresponding increase in the size
of our legislative bodies, public orators have in most
cases been satisfied, perforce, with a local reputation.
The following are chosen miscellaneously.
John B. Gough (1817–1886) was an English editor, who
fell a victim to alcoholism, and being rescued from his
habit by a friend of temperance, dedicated himself to the
cause of rescuing others. He lectured widely in America,
enthralling large audiences by his descriptions of the ruin
worked by alcoholic beverages, and by his graphic narratives
of lapsing and reformed drunkards.
George William Curtis (1824–1892) was in youth (1842)
attached to the community at Brook Farm. On returning
from studies in Berlin and Italy, he became connected
with the publishers of Putnam’s Magazine. The management
of this periodical failing, Curtis assumed a financial
liability for which he was not legally responsible, and
spent twenty years in lecturing, to pay off the indebtedness.
He was noted as editor of Harper’s Monthly, and
as a writer for Harper’s Weekly and Harper’s Bazar. He
was a virile speaker on civil-service reform and other
subjects involving the national welfare. Wherever he went
he inculcated high political ideals. His “Orations and
Addresses” were edited by Professor Charles Eliot
Norton.
James G. Blaine (1830–1893), a Pennsylvanian, commenced
life as an editor in Maine, became a member of
the State Legislature there, and thence proceeded to
Congress. He made a brilliant record as Speaker of the
House of Representatives (1869–1875). In 1876 he was
appointed United States Senator from Maine. Several
times a Presidential possibility, he was the Republican
nominee in 1884, when he was unexpectedly defeated by
Cleveland. Blaine’s speech on the remonetisation of silver
(1878) has been often cited. He was clear and forcible,
save for a slight lisp, but his character was not such as
to force conviction home.
It is impossible in the space allotted to proceed further
with recent or contemporary orators in political or secular
life. One ought not to neglect such men as Carl Schurz
(1829–1906) or Bourke Cockran (born in 1854), or among
the last few presidents, Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901).
Mr. Harrison, an astute lawyer, could, on short notice,
and seemingly without effort, deliver the choicest of addresses,
well turned, fluent, and of a convenient length.
An account of American political eloquence properly ends
with a reference to the distinguished statesman, now President,
and after Washington and Lincoln the third among
our sons of light, to whom this volume is dedicated. From
the most conspicuous of public orators at the present day,
we return to the early divines and theologians.
American Divines.—In his “Annals of the American
Pulpit”—“from the Early Settlement of this Country to
the Close of the Year 1855”—the Reverend William B.
Sprague (1795–1875) collected the biographies of thirteen
hundred or more divines who had earned as he thought
a lasting memorial.22 “From the commencement of this
work,” he observes, “I have been quite aware that nothing
pertaining to it involves more delicacy than the selection
of its subjects, and that no degree of care and impartiality
can be a full security against mistakes.” Far more difficult
is the matter of selection, when in a sketch of barely a
dozen pages we try to include the names of those who,
during the nineteenth century, have most deeply wrought
upon the private life of our citizens. The separation of
church and state in America renders all the wider the
ordinary cleft between public and private life, and the
multiplicity of religious sects still further tends to keep
the eloquence and motive force of great spiritual leaders
from becoming generally known. Even among those
whose power and fame have overleaped the confines of their
own parish or denomination, our choice is necessarily
limited to a scanty few.
Clergymen as Educators.—The influence of notable
preachers—not to speak of the clergy as a whole—in
American life is incalculable. Outside of the church and
the home, it has been most evident in higher education;
until a short time since, educational leadership was vested,
as it should be, in the ministers of religion. As significant
as the important colleges more or less directly founded
for the training of pastors is the long line of college presidents
taken from the ranks of that profession. At Princeton,
Jonathan Edwards, head of that institution (1758)
during the last month of his life, was succeeded ten years
later by John Witherspoon (1722–1794), a lineal descendant
of John Knox, and a signer of the American Declaration
of Independence. The philosopher, James McCosh (1811–1894),
was eleventh president in the same illustrious succession.
At Yale we have such men as the poet, Timothy
Dwight (1752–1817), and his grandson of the same name
(born in 1828); Jeremiah Day (1773–1867), mathematician
and commentator on Edwards; Theodore Dwight Woolsey
(1801–1889), classical scholar and authority on international
law, under whose presidency was trained a generation of
organisers to guide the affairs of newer universities; and
Noah Porter (1811–1892), whose treatise on “The Human
Intellect” became a general text-book. At Union College
was Eliphalet Nott (1773–1866), who, during an administration
of sixty-two years, manifested consummate wisdom
in the management of students. On the death of
Hamilton at the hands of Aaron Burr, Nott eloquently
attacked the barbarous practice of duelling. In his “Lectures
on Temperance” (1823), he assisted the vigorous
movement of Lyman Beecher and others against “even the
common use of ardent spirits.” At Harvard was the versatile
Edward Everett (1794–1865), to mention none of
his predecessors. At Brown was Francis Wayland (1796–1865),
the metaphysician; at Williams, Mark Hopkins,
in his teaching a veritable Gamaliel. Aside from presidents,
the peaceful army of college instructors chosen from
the ministry is beyond reckoning—men like Frederick
Henry Hedge (1805–1890), a Unitarian, professor of the
German language and literature at Harvard, author of
“Ways of the Spirit, and Other Essays,” “Prose Writers of
Germany,” “Atheism in Philosophy,” etc.; or Edwards
Amasa Park (1808–1900), descended, as his first name
suggests, from a celebrated stock. Park was professor of
philosophy at Amherst College, and afterward professor at
Andover Theological Seminary. He was a hymnologist
as well as a theologian, a biographer, as in his “Life of
Nathanael Emmons,” and a contributor to the Bibliotheca
Sacra. He had an individual, curiously periphrastic, way
of putting things.
Divines as Special Students.—Although the large denominations
of the Methodists and Baptists have not
insisted on the possession of learning by their ministers,
in their own province of scholarship American clergymen,
while rarely independent of foreign, especially German
investigators, have undertaken many researches of much
value. Edward Robinson (1794–1863), a professor at
Andover and then at Union Seminary, made a harmony
of the Gospels in Greek, and another in English, compiled
a lexicon to the New Testament, and wrote on the topography
of the Holy Land. In this he assisted the
sagacious missionary, Eli Smith (1801–1857), whose long residence
in the Orient gave him peculiar advantages as a
Biblical geographer. Similar advantages were enjoyed by
William McClune Thomson (1806–1894), and bore good fruit
in “The Land and the Book” (illustrations of the Bible
from customs and scenery in the East) and “The Land of
Promise, or Travels in Modern Palestine.” Nor should
the translation of the Scriptures into Burmese by that
great apostle, Adoniram Judson (1788–1850), go unmentioned.
At home, George Rapall Noyes (1798–1868),
professor of Hebrew at Harvard Divinity School, translated
the New Testament into English. Leonard Bacon
(1802–1881), pastor of the Centre Church in New Haven,
takes rank with the ecclesiastical historians for his “Genesis
of the New England Churches.” Thomas Jefferson Conant
(1802–1891), of the same generation, a Baptist, was a Hebrew
scholar of repute, in the main devoting himself to studies
on the Old Testament, and editing critical texts of the
Book of Job, of Proverbs, of Genesis, and of the Psalms.
Thomas F. Curtis (1815–1872), President of Lewisburg University,
Pennsylvania, compiled a history of the Baptist
Church, publishing it in the year, 1857, when Sprague
began to issue his monumental “Annals of the American
Pulpit,” already referred to. Still another Baptist, Horatio
Balch Hackett (1808–1875), for thirty-one years professor at
Newton Seminary, and for five at Rochester, made himself
an authority on Christian antiquities. Henry Boynton
Smith (1815–1877) from 1854 to 1874 taught the subject
of systematic theology at Union Seminary; he is important
among the church historians—not so important, of course,
as the indefatigable Philip Schaff (1819–1893). Born in
Switzerland, educated in Germany, and recommended by
the most distinguished German theologians, Schaff in 1844
accepted a call from this country to the Seminary at
Mercersburg, Pennsylvania; here he quickly established
his reputation as an encyclopedist of religious knowledge.
His greatest work was an edition, thoroughly revised, of
Lange’s “Commentary on the Bible.” Professor William
Greenough Thayer Shedd (1820–1894), who taught English
literature in the University of Vermont, from there migrated
to the chair of Biblical literature in Union Seminary
(1863–1890). Besides a “History of Christian Doctrine,”
and other theological works, he published an edition, which
has not yet been improved upon, of the works of Coleridge.
William Henry Green (1825–1900), of the Theological Seminary
at Princeton, an Orientalist, was a frequent writer for
The Princeton Review. Crawford Howell Toy (born in
1836), since 1890 professor of Hebrew and related languages
in the Harvard Divinity School, is the author of
meritorious published researches, including a work on
“The Religion of Israel” (1892) and a commentary on the
Book of Proverbs. If Charles Augustus Briggs (born in
1841) had preserved all the objectivity of a scientific historian,
and not turned controversialist, he probably would
not have been subjected to trial by the Presbyterians
on the charge of heresy. To his studies in Biblical history
and the growth of dogma has often been attached the
badly chosen term, “Higher Criticism,” that misnomer
for the historical interpretation of the Scriptures. A severe
loss to American scholarship has recently come through
the death of Alexander Viets Griswold Allen (1841–1908),
biographer of Jonathan Edwards and Phillips Brooks, and
author of “The Continuity of Christian Thought” (1884)
and “Christian Institutions” (1897). In him the scholar
became the constructive artist.
Writers of Hymns.—Between the publication of “The
Bay Psalm Book” (1640) and the revision of Watts’ version
of the Psalms by Joel Barlow and by the elder Dwight at
the end of the eighteenth century, sacred poetry in America
underwent much refinement. From Dwight and his
generation down, the writers of hymns have been many
and able. Henry Ustick Onderdonk (1789–1858), William
Augustus Muhlenberg (1796–1877), George Washington
Doane (1799–1859), Protestant Episcopal Bishop of New
Jersey at the age of thirty-three, Leonard Bacon (1802–1881),
George W. Bethune (1805–1862), Samuel Francis
Smith (1808–1895), George Duffield (1818–1888), Samuel
Longfellow (1819–1892), above all, Ray Palmer (1808–1887),
are a few of the most eminent.
Miscellaneous Preachers.—Samuel Hopkins.—A disciple
of Jonathan Edwards, the institutor of the Hopkinsian form
of divinity (1721–1803) sought, according to Hildreth, “to
add to the five points of Calvinism the rather heterogeneous
ingredient that holiness consists in pure, disinterested
benevolence, and that all regard for self is necessarily
sinful.” He inculcated the doctrine of the free agency of
sinners. A forerunner of the Garrisons, Whittiers, and
Sumners, he was an early and persistent foe of negro
slavery.
Nathanael Emmons.—A typical predecessor of the nineteenth
century, whose great age brought him far into it,
was Nathanael Emmons (1745–1840), of Connecticut, and of
Wrentham, Massachusetts. He wished to be “a consistent
Calvinist,” yet to harmonise a difficult creed with the
truths of common experience. He was an excellent
reasoner on the evidences of moral government, establishing
unexpected chains of inference, and from gladly accepted
premises leading his hearers to less pleasant but unavoidable
conclusions. “He was skilled,” says Park, “in disentangling
a theory from its adscititious matter, and scanning
it alone.” “He made but few gestures; his voice was not
powerful; but men listened to him with intense curiosity,
and often with awe.” Emmons had his own conception of
eloquence: “I read deep, well-written tragedies for the
sake of real improvement in the art of preaching. They
appeared to me the very best books to teach true eloquence.”
Again: “Style is only the frame to hold our
thoughts. It is like the sash of a window: a heavy sash
will obscure the light.” And once more: “First, have
something to say; second, say it.” His writings—essays,
sermons at ordinations, sermons at installations, funeral
sermons, thanksgiving sermons, “A Sermon on Sacred
Music” (1806)—are numberless.
Henry Ernst Muhlenberg.—Of a different but well-known
type was the son (1753–1815) of the German-American
Henry Melchior Muhlenberg (1742–1787). Henry Ernst
was sent abroad while a boy, studied at Halle, returned,
became a pastor among the Germans of Pennsylvania,
and finally died at Lancaster in that State. He was endowed
with an exceptional physique, walking with ease
from Lancaster to Philadelphia, a distance of sixty miles.
Discursive in his studies—he was an Oriental scholar and
a botanist—he was tolerant in his belief, clinging to the
fundamental truths of Christianity. In his discourses, he
took the familiar attitude of a parent addressing his
children.
Alexander Campbell.—The founder (1788–1866) of the
sect known to the rest of the world as the Campbellites,
a man of prodigious energy, was without question one
of the remarkable spirits of his time. His writings, over
fifty volumes, represent but a moiety of his labours: he
built printing-presses in the interests of his movement for
religious reform; he debated in public with all comers—for
example, in 1829 with the infidel, Robert Owen. Self-possessed
on the platform, he indulged in little action,
and he spared his voice. But his distinct and beautiful
enunciation expected and received attention, his audience
listening, as to a master, in perfect silence.
William Ellery Channing.—Although “he lacks critical
acumen,” “lacks also the sentiment of great originality,”
“lacks that which America has so far lacked—high intellectual
culture, critical knowledge,” “does not know the
general result of what is known to his age,” still Channing
(1780–1842), in the words of Renan, “has been unquestionably
the most complete representative of that exclusively
American experiment—of religion without mystery, of
rationalism without criticism, of intellectual culture without
elevated poetry—which seems to be the ideal to which the
religion of the United States aspires.” An exemplary
student at school and college (Harvard), Channing went
to the South as a private tutor. His path being deflected
into the ministry, he returned to New England, and was
installed (1803) in the Federal Street Church at Boston.
In this church he was active for twenty years, and he was
at least the nominal head of it for forty. His health was
delicate, and his capacity for continued exertion limited.
Channing’s religion might be described as a form of ethics,
allied to the political doctrines of Rousseau, too simple and
theoretical for common life, and in the main salutary so
far as it was a generous reaction against the harsher tenets
of Calvin. The severity of Calvinism, that “vulgar and
frightful theology,” in his eyes inevitably led to gloomy
superstition. “God is good,” he kept repeating, and
human nature in its origin also good. “He ... fell in
with those who consider the human race to be actually
degenerated by the abuse of free will. In Jesus Christ he
recognised a sublime being, who had wrought a crisis in the
condition of humanity, had renewed the moral sense, and
touched with saving power the fountains of good that were
hidden in the depths of the human heart.” Channing
wrote no books; his literary remains consist of essays, sermons,
and addresses. His “Discourse on the Fall of Bonaparte”
(1814), his lecture on “Self-Culture,” and his
“Address on West India Emancipation” (1842) display
various aspects of a beautiful and courageous personality.
Horace Bushnell.—“I have never been a great agitator,
never pulled a wire to get the will of men, never did a
politic thing,” said Bushnell (1802–1876). He graduated at
Yale in 1827; from 1833 until 1859, when he retired on
account of ill-health, he had charge of the North Church
in Hartford, Connecticut. Thereafter he devoted his time
to the preparation of special sermons and addresses and
to researches in American history and the history of his
own State. He took a vital interest in political questions.
Bushnell was a clear and independent thinker, without
bias, not given to controversy, none the less eloquent and
persuasive. His sermons were collected and widely circulated.
The problems of religious experience, of suffering
and evil, and of education he attempted to solve in “Nature
and the Supernatural,” “The Vicarious Sacrifice,” and
“Christian Nurture.” In the last-named work he objected
to the doctrine of natural depravity, contending for
a gradual development in the child of the religious sentiment
and the higher imagination, as against a sudden and
crucial “conversion.” Among Congregationalists the supposed
latitude of his theological opinions involved him in
the charge of a leaning toward Unitarianism.
Theodore Parker.—In his day, Theodore Parker (1810–1860)
was considered the most daring of rationalists, and
so “advanced,” as we now call it, in his beliefs or disbeliefs
as to be outside the pale of Christianity. Present-day
rationalists find him a congenial spirit. He was a man of
undoubted genius, caustic, flashing, vehement, incessant
in labour, dying early from sheer exhaustion. His collected
works in fourteen volumes (edited by Cobbe) reveal
the nature of his industry. He was unweariedly accurate
in detail, being determined to leave no pebble unturned in
his search for truth. His sermon on “The Transient and
the Permanent in Christianity” (1841) and “A Discourse
of Matters Pertaining to Religion” (1842) gave evidence
of his departure from the accepted form of Unitarianism.
In 1845 he openly broke away, regarding the Church as an
unnecessary organisation. In general, his criticism was
destructive, and his attention to detail not balanced by
powers of synthesis. His own convictions like iron and
brooking no denial, he disregarded the tenderest feelings
of other men, and in a mistaken sense of duty would trample
underfoot those things which his neighbour might hold
most sacred. His intellect flourished at the expense of his
imagination, and his want of perspective resolves itself into
a defect of taste, all the more injurious through the violence
of his affections. This man, most cordially hated and
feared by those whom he opposed, most ardently loved by
his friends, would shed tears like a child when he met with
a trivial act of kindness.
The Beechers.—Lyman Beecher (1775–1863) represents
the other extreme, of traditional orthodoxy, and the reaction
against the trend of Unitarianism. He was a stern
and virile personality, rigorous in habit, and in his expectation
of righteousness in others, withal friendly and
benign. His son, Henry Ward Beecher (1813–1887), according
to the testimony of the daughter and sister, Harriet
Beecher Stowe, as a child was deficient in verbal memory—a
thing which he never outgrew,—diffident, sensitive,
thick and indistinct in his speech. In the midst of a
talented family that was much given to theological argument,
his powers were gradually developed. At Laurenceburg,
Ohio, his first charge, he was sexton as well as preacher.
He came before the public through his defence of the negro
in The Cincinnati Journal. At Indianapolis his reputation
grew, for his independent spirit and direct, informal style
proved very attractive; and when he had been called to
Plymouth Church in Brooklyn, the people crowded over
from New York to hear him. Beecher studied every-day
life in the streets and shops of the metropolis; his discourses
on popular topics, good government and the like, unconventionally
treated, gave his audiences what they liked.
His sympathies were non-sectarian, he had his finger on
the pulse of every gathering, his well of common sense
was overflowing, and he was fearless to the point of audacity,
carrying the art of the mimic into the very pulpit.
His preaching, in fact, sometimes bordered upon dangerous
self-assertion. He rose to eminence, as Bacon might say,
by a combination of good with questionable arts. But the
mixture was mainly good. In Beecher’s discussion of
slavery, Calhoun, who was not easily deceived, saw that
the preacher knew how to get to the bottom of his subject.
His good-humour, and pluck, and immense patriotism
before hostile crowds in England (1863) greatly helped
to deter that nation from recognising the Southern Confederacy.
Theorists on Pulpit Eloquence.—Beecher’s “Yale Lectures
on Preaching” disclose how large an element there
was in his oratory of conscious adaptation of means to
ends. They belong to an extensive and interesting branch
of American literature, to which Phillips Brooks, J. A.
Broadus, E. G. Robinson, R. S. Storrs, J. W. Alexander, and
many others have made contributions. James Waddell
Alexander (1804–1859), son of Archibald Alexander of
Princeton Seminary, left his “Thoughts on Preaching” to
be published in 1864. “The Preparation and Delivery of
Sermons,” by John Albert Broadus (1827–1895), President
of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, represents
the theory of a trainer of preachers, himself a winning orator
with a consciously developed instinct: “Everybody who
can speak effectively knows that the power of speaking depends
very largely upon the way it is heard, upon the sympathy
one succeeds in gaining from those he addresses.”
To insure sympathy—his watchword,—Broadus preached
without manuscript. In general, as here, his syntax is not
finely moulded. With these might be mentioned another
clergyman, Chauncey Allen Goodrich (1790–1860), for
forty-three years professor at Yale, whose “Select British
Eloquence” set a standard of illuminating scholarship.
Richard Salter Storrs.—Dr. Storrs (1821–1900), descended
from a line of clergymen, was from 1846 on in
high repute as a preacher in the Church of the Pilgrims,
Brooklyn. He was also in demand as a lecturer, and
contributed freely to the Bibliotheca Sacra and other
periodicals. His “Conditions of Success in Preaching
without Notes” partly tells the secret of his own eminence;
his rich voice, distinct utterance, and stately bearing
further explain it. In youth a student of the law, he
caught something of his eloquence from Rufus Choate.
But the moral elevation of character in Storrs was the
ultimate support of all his art.
T. De Witt Talmage.—In Brooklyn, where he preached
from 1869 to 1894, Thomas De Witt Talmage (1832–1902)
had a “Tabernacle,” as it was called, to which
everyone was welcome, and which commonly was filled
by an audience of four thousand. In 1894 he removed
to New York. For twenty-nine years the sermons of
Talmage were published every week, latterly in countless
journals; they have had an immense circulation, not alone
in his own country, being translated into many foreign,
even Asiatic languages. It is possible that no other
preacher in the world has during life enjoyed so extensive
and regular a following. His physical activity was unbounded;
his utterance clear, though his voice was not
pleasing, and his message simple, violent, and undiscriminatingly
conservative. In espousing what he took to be
orthodox, he was hasty and inaccurate; he was utterly
careless, too, what means he used to work upon his hearers.
To the cultured his writings have little worth. His value
to the state and the great world is not so easily decided.
Phillips Brooks.—Phillips Brooks (1835–1893), after Henry
Ward Beecher the greatest pulpit orator in America since
the Civil War, was a native of Boston, nurtured in the best
traditions of New England. A brilliant and popular undergraduate
at Harvard, he strangely enough failed in his
subsequent brief experience in teaching. He then studied
for the ministry, at the Episcopal Seminary in Alexandria,
Virginia. As a young rector in Philadelphia, he showed
his power and fearlessness in his patriotic sermons during
the Rebellion. “In their relation to the politics of the
land,” he contended, “the great vice of our people ... is
cowardice.” He himself dared openly to lay the crime of
Lincoln’s martyrdom, not alone upon the assassin, but
upon the supporters of slavery in the South. From Philadelphia,
he went to Trinity Church, Boston, in 1869.
Two years prior to his death he was made Bishop of Massachusetts.
“The Yale Lectures on Preaching,” delivered
in 1877, “constitute,” says Allen, his best interpreter, “the
autobiography of Phillips Brooks.... It is a book which
owes nothing to predecessors in the same field.... He
confines himself to preaching as he had experienced its
workings, or studied its method, or observed its power....
The book captivates the reader, simply for this reason alone,—the
transparency of the soul of its writer, between whom
and the reader there intervenes no barrier.” This was the
quality also of his sermons.
He stands in the pulpit [reported an observer] smooth-faced, full-voiced,
as self-reliant a man as ever occupied such a station. He
indulges in few gestures; he has no mannerisms. If, under any
circumstances, he might realise the popular conception of an orator,
he does not betray the possibilities here. He provokes no attention
to predominant spirituality by inferior vitality. There is a splendid
harmony of strength, bodily and mental, which prevents the
measurement of either. It is only when he is out of his desk and
level with his audience that you realise his stature. In the lecture-room
or crowded street, he stands like Saul among the people.
The well-balanced head and strong shoulders draw your eyes at
once. He dresses well, lives well, and holds his own decidedly in
social circles.... His power is not limited to his church
ministrations, nor is he making himself known by some brilliant
special development. It is the whole man—mentally, morally,
and spiritually, leader, helper, friend—which is attaining such
pre-eminence. But when he preaches, you are carried away to
the need of men and of your own shortcomings, and have no present
consciousness of the personality of the speaker. A transparent
medium is the purest. You do not think of Phillips Brooks till
Phillips Brooks gets through with his subject.
Brooks was a wide reader and a careful and original
student of church history and theological discussion; he
was not the profound and searching scholar that Renan
vainly sought in America. He had a roomy mind, a
teeming imagination, and a heart full of generosity, energy,
and optimism. He lived by admiration, hope, and love.
His ideas, which were large and luminous, although they
did not have the final tempering that comes from passage
through the slow fire of a rigorous critical method,
became vital from sharing in his warmth and purity of
sentiment.
In regard to his intellectual habits and methods [remarks Allen]
one thing is clear, that Phillips Brooks worked through the poetic
imagination rather than by the process of dialectics, although he
could show great dialectic subtlety when occasion demanded.
When we conjoin this power of the poetic imagination and his
other gifts, the “unparalleled combination of intensity of feeling
with comprehensiveness of view and balance of judgment,” we
can understand how he could quickly penetrate to the heart of
intellectual systems, how a hint to his mind was like a volume to
others, and he preferred to work out the hint in his own way.
General Remarks.—The beginnings of science in America
date from colonial days and have been touched upon by
Professor Tyler. The interest of Americans in science has
never abated. Readers of standard scientific literature
are numerous. The Scientific American, founded in 1845,
The Popular Science Monthly, founded in 1872, Science,
dating from 1883, and several other journals of science
are read by many non-professional persons. The various
sciences have, in the last quarter-century at least, won a
place of prominence in our college curricula. The number
of disinterested scientific observers and investigators
has always been large. The largest scientific organisation
in the United States, the American Association for the
Advancement of Science, which developed from the old
Association of American Geologists and Naturalists in
1847, now has a membership of over five thousand;
and in addition to this and other general scientific bodies
there is for workers in nearly every individual science a
national organisation, meeting regularly and publishing
the results of investigations. In almost every science
America has produced scholars of note; in some she has
furnished leaders of the world.
This is not, of course, the place, even if the writer
were competent to furnish it, for a narrative of American
scientific achievement. We can only touch upon a few
of the greater names in mental and moral, political and
legal, ethnological and linguistic, and natural and physical
science.
Mental and Moral Science.—It cannot be said that
America has taken a place of pre-eminence in the philosophical
thought of the nineteenth century. English,
French, and German savants still lead in this realm of
thought. Yet American philosophy has made enormous
strides in the last half-century and many of its exponents
have won universal recognition. Porter and McCosh have
expounded the views of the Scottish School; German
thought has been elucidated and criticised by Harris,
Bowne, and Royce; the writings of Draper, Fiske, and
Schurman on the evolutionary theories of Darwin and
Spencer are well known. The psychologists Ladd, Stanley
Hall, Baldwin, Titchener, and James have international
reputations. In the number and equipment of her psychological
laboratories America leads the world. The number
of periodicals devoted to psychology, ethics, and cognate
sciences is considerable. Philosophical studies enjoy great
favour at our universities, both as electives and as required
subjects. Some of the men briefly considered below are
perhaps more famous as teachers than as writers; yet all
have left their mark on the philosophical thought of their
day.
Francis Wayland.—Francis Wayland (1796–1865), a
Baptist clergyman and for twenty-eight years (1827–1855)
president of Brown University, wrote several well-known
works on moral and political science. After graduating
from Union College in 1813, he studied medicine and
began practice at Troy, New York; but from 1816 on
devoted himself to the ministry. His “Elements of Moral
Science” (1835), his greatest work, was long a standard
text-book. “The Elements of Political Economy” appeared
in 1837; “Limitations of Human Reason,” in
1840; “Thoughts on the Present Collegiate System of the
United States,” in 1842; and “Elements of Intellectual
Philosophy,” in 1854. Wayland is most important as a
teacher of morals. For him education and religion went
hand in hand. Although he was not a thinker of the
highest order, his treatises were lucid, exact, and attractive.
He was one of the great educational and religious
leaders of his day.
Mark Hopkins.—Another great educator was Mark
Hopkins (1802–1887), whose birthplace was Stockbridge,
Massachusetts, and who graduated from Williams College
in 1824. Like Wayland, he first practised medicine, then
became a minister and teacher of moral philosophy. He
was professor of moral philosophy at Williams for fifty-seven
years, and president from 1836 till 1872. He
wrote “The Influence of the Gospel in Liberalising the
Mind” (1831), “The Connexion between Taste and Morals”
(1841), “The Evidences of Christianity” (Lowell Institute
lectures, 1844), “Miscellaneous Essays and Reviews”
(1847), “Moral Science” (also Lowell lectures, 1862), “The
Law of Love and Love as a Law” (1869), “An Outline
Study of Man” (1873), “Strength and Beauty” (1874),
and “The Scriptural Idea of Man” (1883). Few men in
America have been more potent as intellectual and moral
forces than was Mark Hopkins. President Garfield used
to say that a student on one end of a log and Mark Hopkins
on the other would make a university anywhere. Great as
an original thinker and expounder, he was greater as a
teacher; “he built himself into the mental fabric of two
generations of men.”
Laurens P. Hickok.—Laurens P. Hickok (1798–1888),
a Congregational clergyman, and professor successively in
Western Reserve College, Auburn Theological Seminary,
and Union College (of which he was virtually president
1860–1868), wrote a number of philosophical and theological
works, among which are “Rational Psychology” (1848),
“Moral Science” (1853), “Mental Science” (1854), “Rational
Cosmology” (1858), “Humanity Immortal” (1872),
“Creator and Creation” (1872), and “The Logic of Reason”
(1875). He also contributed to theological and philosophical
reviews.
Francis Bowen.—A conservative resolutely opposed to
the teachings of Fichte, Kant, and Mill on the one hand
and of Darwin on the other, Francis Bowen (1811–1890) is
remembered as a strong and clear writer and an enthusiastic
teacher. Nine years after his graduation from Harvard
(in 1833), we find him editing Virgil and publishing “Critical
Essays on Speculative Philosophy.” He edited The North
American Review from 1843 till 1854, then became Alford
professor of natural religion, moral philosophy, and civil
polity in Harvard College. Of his voluminous writings
we can mention only a few: “Lectures on the Application
of Metaphysical and Ethical Science to the Evidences of
Religion” (1849), “Lectures on Political Economy” (1850),
“The Principles of Political Economy” (1856), an edition
of “The Metaphysics of Sir William Hamilton” (1862),
“Modern Philosophy from Descartes to Schopenhauer and
Hartmann” (1877), and “A Layman’s Study of the English
Bible” (1885).
Noah Porter.—Professor of moral philosophy and metaphysics
at Yale College for forty-six years, and president
of Yale University for fifteen years, Noah Porter (1811–1892)
made a strong impression in both the philosophical,
and the educational world. He was the son of the Rev.
Noah Porter, for fifty years minister of the Congregational
Church in Farmington, Connecticut, and graduated at
Yale in 1831. He was a minister at New Milford, Connecticut,
and Springfield, Massachusetts, for ten years;
then he assumed his chair at Yale. His chief work, “The
Human Intellect” (1868), ably champions the theistic
view of the universe, and has had wide use as a text-book,
as has also his “Elements of Intellectual Science” (1871).
He wrote also “The Elements of Moral Science” (1885)
and “A Critical Exposition of Kant’s Ethics” (1886);
besides several books on education, of which we may
mention “American Colleges and the American Public”
(1870) and “Books and Reading” (1870). He also edited
the revised editions (1864, 1890) of Webster’s Dictionary.
James McCosh.—The Scottish philosophy was vigorously
championed in America by President James McCosh
(1811–1894). Born in Ayrshire, Scotland, of a sturdy
middle-class family, he was educated at Glasgow and Edinburgh.
His graduation essay on the Stoic philosophy won
him the honorary degree of A.M. Becoming a minister
of the Established Kirk, he seceded with Chalmers and
rendered valuable service to the Free Church. His “Method
of the Divine Government, Physical and Moral” (1850)
laid the foundation of his fame as a philosophical writer,
and doubtless led to his appointment in 1852 to the professorship
of logic and metaphysics in Queen’s College,
Belfast. From Belfast, after an active literary and
educational career, he was called to the presidency of
Princeton College, and thenceforward was a distinguished
figure in the American intellectual world. His numerous
writings after 1868 include “The Scottish Philosophy,
Biographical, Expository, Critical” (1874), “The Emotions”
(1880), “Philosophical Series” (1882–1885, eight
volumes), “Psychology of the Cognitive Powers” (1886),
“Realistic Philosophy Defended” (1887), “The Religious
Aspect of Evolution” (1887), and “First and Fundamental
Truths” (1894). Dr. McCosh was one of the first to point
out the theological bearing of Darwinism and to announce
his acceptance of it when properly understood. “Touching
the thought of his time,” says Professor Sloane, “at
its salient points and with tremendous vitality, he constantly
insisted on the few central truths of his system in
their application to each new question as it arose. Incisive,
intense, and real, or rather concrete in his thinking,
he felt a loyalty to truth which he sought to instil
with all his might into the minds of others.”
William Torrey Harris.—William T. Harris (born in
1835) left Yale in 1857 to become a teacher in St. Louis,
where he was superintendent of schools from 1867 till
1888. From 1889 till 1906 he was United States Commissioner
of Education. Although leading a busy life as
a teacher, he found time for philosophical work. He
founded (1867) and has since edited The Journal of Speculative
Philosophy, the first philosophical periodical in
English. His “Hegel’s Logic” (1890), while highly
technical, is one of the clearest and most scholarly expositions
of Hegelian thought. He has written also “An
Introduction to the Study of Philosophy” (1889), “Psychologic
Foundations of Education” (1898), and many
smaller educational and philosophical studies.
John Fiske.—One of the greatest of modern expositors
of science was John Fiske (1842–1901). He was born at
Middletown, Connecticut, and entered Harvard as a
sophomore in 1860, graduating in 1863. The works of
Spencer and Darwin opened a new world to his vigorous
imagination and he devoted many years to elucidating
and applying their doctrines, in “Myths and Myth Makers”
(1872), “Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy” (1874), “The
Unseen World” (1876), “Darwinism, and Other Essays”
(1879), “Excursions of an Evolutionist” (1883), “The
Destiny of Man Viewed in the Light of His Origin” (1884),
and “The Idea of God as Affected by Modern Knowledge”
(1885). His later years were devoted to studies
in American history, the events of which he interpreted
as the result of evolutionary processes. His work reveals
a uniform optimism.
Some Living Writers.—Among living writers on philosophical
themes space will permit the mention of only
two or three. The son of Henry James, the theologian,
and the brother of Henry James, Jr., the novelist, William
James (born in 1842) was educated privately and at
Harvard, from which he received the degree of M.D. in
1870. Two years later he became an instructor and in
1881 a full professor, the subjects of his later interest
being psychology and philosophy. He has written, among
a large number of books and articles, “Principles of Psychology”
(1890), “The Will to Believe, and Other Essays
in Popular Philosophy” (1897), “Human Immortality”
(the Ingersoll Lecture, 1898), “The Varieties of Religious
Experience” (Gifford Lectures at Edinburgh University,
1902), and “Pragmatism” (1907). Especially noteworthy
is his work in analytical psychology. Always
clear and fresh in style, his writings have exerted a marked
influence on thought both in Europe and in America.
Borden Parker Bowne (born in 1847), who, after graduating
at New York University in 1871, studied at Halle,
Göttingen, and Paris, in 1876 became professor of philosophy
at Boston University. He has written “The Philosophy
of Herbert Spencer” (1874), “Studies in Theism”
(1879), “Metaphysics” (1882), “Introduction to Psychological
Theory” (1886), and “Principles of Ethics” (1892).
Jacob Gould Schurman (born in 1854) has made some
worthy contributions to the literature of ethics; it is a
matter of regret that administrative work has of late kept
him from writing more for the general public. He was
born at Freetown, Prince Edward Island, and studied at
Acadia College. In 1875 he won the Gilchrist Dominion
Scholarship in the University of London, from which he
graduated in 1877. He later studied at Edinburgh,
Heidelberg, Berlin, and Göttingen, and in Italy. From
1886 till 1892 he was professor of philosophy in Cornell
University, of which he became president in 1892. He
has written lucid studies of “Kantian Ethics and the
Ethics of Evolution” (1881), “The Ethical Import of
Darwinism” (1888), “Belief in God” (1890), and “Agnosticism
and Religion” (1896).
Josiah Royce (born in 1855), a Californian who studied
at the University of California, Leipsic, Göttingen, and
Johns Hopkins, has done much to interpret and popularise
the thought of Hegel, and has made valuable original
contributions to contemporary idealistic thought. His
philosophical works include “The Religious Aspect of
Philosophy” (1885), “The Spirit of Modern Philosophy”
(1892), “The Conception of God” (1895), “Studies of
Good and Evil” (1898), “The Conception of Immortality”
(1900, an Ingersoll Lecture), and “The World and the
Individual” (1900–1901). A close thinker, he writes in a
remarkably fresh, vigorous, and informal style.
Political and Legal Science.—In the fields of political,
economic, social, and legal science the most that can be
claimed for American writers is that a fair number of
them have achieved genuine distinction and enjoy international
reputations. America is still too young to be
expected to have produced independent schools of thought
in these lines. What Dr. Sherwood says of the economists
may have a larger application here:
The chief reason for our failure to make large contributions to
economic science [he remarks in his “Tendencies in American
Economic Thought”] is the same reason which explains the meagreness
of our contribution to general science, viz., the all-absorbing
problem of making use of the advantages within our grasp. Within
a century we have been compelled to work out several most difficult
problems: how to unite in a solid empire many vigorous, large,
and discordant nationalities; how to stretch this empire over the
adjacent territories, so as to remove dangerous enemies; how to
get rid of slavery without disrupting the Union; how to make
our general education keep pace with our growth in numbers
and with the advance of science; how, with the rapidly shifting
forms of industrial organisation, to maintain purity of government
and social order; how to govern an empire without an emperor;
how to push forward material civilisation without going backwards
in intellectual and moral civilisation; how to stimulate invention
so as to win wealth for all, with inadequate labour and capital.
These practical problems have kept us from producing
men with wealth and leisure for working out solutions
of the large abstract questions raised in these sciences.
Nor have our writers yet succeeded in handling large
masses of facts with the skill of some foreign writers.
The best comprehensive work on American institutions
remains Bryce’s “American Commonwealth,” the work of
an Englishman. Yet in Marshall, Kent, and Story we have
produced some great jurists; in Wheaton, Lawrence, and
Woolsey some great writers on legal science; in Carey,
Wells, Walker, and George writers of commanding importance
in the sphere of political economy.
John Marshall.—Pre-eminent among the jurists of
America is John Marshall (1755–1835), for thirty-four
years Chief-Justice of the United States Supreme Court.
Marshall served as an officer in the Revolution; in 1780,
being without a command, he attended Chancellor Wyeth’s
lectures on law at William and Mary College. Entering
upon the practice of law, he quickly became known for
his acumen. His accession to the Supreme Court bench
(1801) marks an epoch in our legal and constitutional
history. He had, as it were, to blaze a trail. The Constitution
had been adopted; it had yet to be construed.
A thousand questions arose as to what it meant, what it
included, what it was meant not to include. Marshall’s
decisions, recorded in thirty-two volumes of reports, reveal
the impartial workings of a master legal mind. Such
men do not often appear; it was fortunate that the American
Government in its early years was guided by Marshall’s
constitutional constructions. They virtually form a system
of law, a system which has not since been seriously modified.
“The judge who rears such a monument to his memory,”
says Mr. Magruder, his biographer, “will never be forgotten;
in the united domain of English and American
jurisprudence there are not half a dozen such memorials;
but not the least distinguished is that of Marshall.”
James Kent.—It has been said of Kent’s “Commentaries
upon American Law” (1826–1830) that they had a deeper
and more lasting influence upon the American character
than any other secular book of the nineteenth century.
James Kent (1763–1847) graduated from Yale in 1781 and
then practised law, first at Poughkeepsie, and after 1793
in New York City. In the same year he became professor
of law in Columbia College. The Federalist leaders rapidly
advanced him; he was made Chief-Justice of the New York
Supreme Court in 1804 and Chancellor in 1814. Retiring
in 1823, he resumed his teaching at Columbia, and later
published many of his lectures in the “Commentaries.”
His Chancery decisions, to be found in Caines’ and Johnson’s
reports, were of fundamental importance and form
the basis of American equity jurisprudence.
Joseph Story.—With Chancellor Kent, Joseph Story
(1779–1845) shares the glory of having laid the foundations
of American equity jurisprudence. Story graduated
from Harvard in 1798 and was admitted to the bar in
1801. Becoming a leader of what was later the Democratic
party, in 1808 he entered Congress and in 1811
was appointed an Associate Justice of the United States
Supreme Court. From 1829 on he was also a professor
of law at Harvard. For some time after Marshall’s death
he was acting Chief-Justice. Many of his opinions in
patent and admiralty law are still authoritative. Some of
his writings are “Commentaries on the Constitution of
the United States” (1833), “The Conflict of Laws” (1834),
“Commentaries on Equity Jurisprudence” (1835–1836),
and treatises on agency, partnership, bills, and notes.
Henry Wheaton.—Less known than Story, yet in his
day a prominent figure in the legal world, was Henry
Wheaton (1785–1848), of Providence, Rhode Island, a
graduate of Brown University in the class of 1802. He
was a lawyer, an editor, and a diplomatist (from 1837
till 1846 Minister Plenipotentiary to Prussia). His “Elements
of International Law” (1836, republished in several
editions, and translated into French, Chinese, and Japanese)
remains one of the leading authorities. Another
important work was his “Histoire du progrès des gens en
Europe depuis le paix de Westphalie jusqu’au Congrès
de Vienne” (1841, English translation 1846). He was
widely respected for sound learning and diplomatic ability.
Francis Lieber.—Francis Lieber (1800–1872), a native
of Berlin and a Ph.D. of the University of Jena (1820),
came to America virtually a political exile, and, though
an ardent worshipper of freedom, was at first, as Dr. Harley
remarks, obliged to make his home in the very heart of
the slave power. For twenty-one years he was professor
of history and political economy in South Carolina College,
being “the first great teacher in this country of
history and politics as co-ordinated subjects.” From 1856
till 1860 he held the chair of political economy in Columbia
College; and from 1860 till his death he was professor of
political science in the Columbia Law School. The great
works on which his fame rests are his “Political Ethics”
(1838), “Legal and Political Hermeneutics” (1839), and
“Civil Liberty and Self-Government” (1853). In writing
these books he was a pioneer, and pointed out some important
principles of American liberty. In his later years
he gave much attention to international and military law.
From his proposals originated the Institut de Droit International,
started at Ghent in 1873, “the organ for the legal
consciousness of the civilised world.”
William Beach Lawrence.—Another writer whose name
is linked with Columbia College is William B. Lawrence
(1800–1881). Born in New York City, he graduated from
Columbia in 1818, was admitted to the bar in 1823, and
gave attention chiefly to international law. For a time he
lectured at Columbia on political economy, defending free
trade. Removing to Rhode Island, he served as acting
Governor in 1852. In 1872–1873 he lectured on international
law in the Columbian University at Washington. His
works are marked by breadth of view and soundness of
judgment. They include “The Bank of the United States”
(1831), “Institutions of the United States” (1832), “Discourses
on Political Economy” (1834), “The Law of
Charitable Uses” (1845), “Commentaire sur les éléments
du droit international” (1868–1880), and “The Treaty of
Washington” (1871).
Theodore Dwight Woolsey.—Theodore D. Woolsey (1801–1889)
had a varied preparation for his notable career.
Graduating at Yale in 1820, he studied law in Philadelphia,
theology at Princeton, and Greek at Leipsic, Bonn,
and Berlin. From 1831 till 1846 he was professor of Greek
at Yale. Becoming president of Yale in 1846, he thenceforward
confined his teaching to history, political science,
and international law, and became eminent as a writer
on subjects in these fields. Among his works are “An
Introduction to the Study of International Law” (1860),
“Essays on Divorce and Divorce Legislation” (1869),
“Political Science” (two volumes, 1877), and “Communism
and Socialism, in Their History and Theory”
(1880).
Henry Wager Halleck.—Chiefly known as a soldier,
and as general of the armies of the United States from
July, 1862, till March, 1864, Henry W. Halleck (1815–1872)
was after all more skilled in the science of war than
in its practice in the field. He studied at Union College
and West Point, from which he graduated in 1839. Before
the Lowell Institute in 1845 he lectured on the science of
war; his lectures, published as “Elements of Military Art
and Science,” were much used later as a training manual.
The chief of his other works, “International Law, or Rules
Regulating the Intercourse of States in Peace and War”
(1861), abridged in 1866 for college use, still ranks among
the highest authorities.
Henry Charles Carey.—In his day the foremost champion
of governmental protection to private industry
was Henry C. Carey (1793–1879). The eldest son of Matthew
Carey, the Philadelphia publisher, he devoted his
early years to carrying on the bookselling and publishing
business, retiring in 1835. His essay on “The Rate of
Wages” (1835) was soon expanded into “The Principles
of Political Economy” (1837–1840), which found favour
abroad and was translated into Swedish and Italian. His
other leading works were “The Credit System of France,
Great Britain, and the United States” (1838), “The Past,
the Present, and the Future” (1848), “Letters on the
International Copyright” (1853), “The Principles of Social
Science” (1858), and “The Unity of Law” (1873). Carey
was originally a free-trader, but early became a supporter
of protection on the ground of temporary expediency.
Some of his views have been attacked as unwarranted
and dogmatically expressed; it must be conceded, however,
that he had a strong grasp of facts and that his
works are an invaluable contribution to economic and
social science.
David Ames Wells.—For many years, it is safe to say,
the leading economist in America was David A. Wells
(1828–1898). He was descended from Thomas Welles,
Governor of Connecticut in 1655–1658, was born at Springfield,
Massachusetts, and was graduated from Williams
College in 1847 and from the Lawrence Scientific School
of Harvard in 1852. For some years he taught physics
and chemistry, and was engaged also in writing school
text-books on these subjects. An essay (“Our Burden
and Strength”) on the resources and financial ability of
the United States (1864) brought Wells into prominence,
while it did much to restore confidence in the Federal
Government. President Lincoln summoned Mr. Wells to
Washington, and appointed him chairman of the Revenue
Commission of 1865–1866. As special commissioner of the
revenue (1866–1870) he completed vast reforms in the
complex system of revenue which had grown up during
the war. Thereafter he was largely engaged in writing
and speaking on economic topics. Among his books are
“Robinson Crusoe’s Money,” illustrated by Nast (1876),
“Our Merchant Marine: How It Rose, Increased, Became
Great, Declined, and Decayed” (1882), “Practical
Economics” (1885), “A Study of Mexico” (1887), “The
Relation of the Tariff to Wages” (1888), and “Recent
Economic Changes” (1898).
Francis Amasa Walker.—Born in Boston, Francis
A. Walker (1840–1897) graduated from Amherst at twenty,
then served in the Union Army, becoming a brigadier-general.
In 1869 he was put at the head of the Bureau
of Statistics; he was superintendent of the Ninth and the
Tenth Census, and held other prominent positions, including
(1873–1881) the professorship of political economy and
history at the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale and
(1881–1897) the presidency of the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology. He was a prolific writer; of his economic
works we can mention only “The Indian Question” (1874),
“The Wages Question” (1876), “Money” (1878), “Money
in its Relations to Trade and Industry” (Lowell Institute
lectures, 1879), “Political Economy” (1883), “Land and
its Rent” (1883), and “International Bimetallism” (1896).
Walker’s influence as an economist was felt especially in
connection with the theory of wages. “The central idea
of his theory,” says Dr. Sherwood, “that the amount of
wages under free competition tends to equal the product
due to the labour, has been generally accepted, although
not altogether as the direct result of his writing.”
Henry George.—The theories of Henry George (1839–1896)
have been widely discussed. They were first put
forth in “Our Land and Land Policy” (1871), in which he
held that the burden of taxation should be borne by the
land and not by industry, and that thus opportunities for
progress would be equalised. His most important book
was “Progress and Poverty” (1879), which in a few years
made George virtually the apostle of a new economic and
social creed. Conservative economists have been slow to
accept his single-tax theory; it has, however, called attention
to the enormous waste and wrong that result from
granting public franchises to private corporations without
due compensation. His theory of wages, that they arise
from a value created by the efficiency of the labourer, has
been generally accepted and may be regarded as a real
contribution to economic science.
Some Other Writers.—More than a generation of Williams
College men sat under the teaching of Arthur Latham Perry
(1830–1905), for thirty-eight years professor of history
and political economy. Perry published his “Elements of
Political Economy” in 1865; some twenty editions have
since appeared. His advocacy of free trade in the sixties
cost him many friends. He published also a work on
“International Commerce” (1866) and smaller treatises
on political economy. Elisha Mulford (1833–1885), a graduate
of Yale College and an Episcopal clergyman, was the
author of two highly powerful and stimulating books:
“The Nation” (1870), dealing with the philosophy of the
state, and “The Republic of God” (1880), a religious work
of similar character. William Graham Sumner (born in
1840) became prominent for his advocacy of free trade
and of the gold standard. Graduating at Yale in 1863,
he studied at Göttingen and Oxford, then took orders in
the Episcopal Church. Since 1872 he has been professor
of political and social science at Yale. He has written
“A History of American Currency” (1874), “Lectures on
the History of Protection in the United States” (1875),
“What Social Classes Owe Each Other” (1882), “Collected
Essays in Political and Social Science” (1885), “The Financier
and Finances of the American Revolution” (1892),
and “A History of Banking in the United States” (1896).
Another well known political economist is Richard Theodore
Ely (born in 1854), a graduate of Columbia College
(1876) and of Heidelberg (Ph.D. summa cum laude, 1879),
who, as director of the School of Economics, Political
Science, and History in the University of Wisconsin, has
trained more teachers of economic science than any other
American living and has exerted marked influence on the
thought of his time. He has to his credit a long list of
valuable publications; some of them are “French and
German Socialism in Modern Times” (1883), “The Labour
Movement in America” (1886), “Taxation in American
States and Cities” (1888), “Socialism, an Examination
of Its Nature, Its Strength, and Its Weakness, with Suggestions
for Social Reform” (1894), “The Social Law of
Service” (1896), and “Monopolies and Trusts” (1900).
The tendency of the Government to regulate economic
movements is in harmony with a doctrine of which he
has been a bold champion. Another equally high authority
on trusts and currency problems is Jeremiah Whipple
Jenks (born in 1856), since 1891 professor of political
economy at Cornell University. His “The Trust Problem”
(1900) and “Trusts and Industrial Combinations”
(1900) have circulated widely. President Woodrow Wilson
(born in 1856) of Princeton, discussed elsewhere as a
historian, must also be mentioned here for his standard
work on “The State: Elements of Historical and Practical
Politics” (1889), “An Old Master, and Other Political
Essays” (1893), and “Mere Literature, and Other Essays,”
in which large and sound views of government and its
functions are set forth in a clear and attractive style.
Ethnological and Linguistic Science.—In the broad
field of ethnological research the work of American scholars
has been chiefly devoted to the native and primitive races
of America. This offers, as has been pointed out by Mr.
McGee,23 “the finest field the world affords,” exhibiting
nearly every stage of development and nearly every type
of mankind; and American contributions to ethnology and
anthropology have been correspondingly important. The
names of Gallatin, Schoolcraft, Morgan, Powell, Brinton,
will be at once recalled; probably the last named is our
best known ethnologist. In the science of language our
showing is, in point of numbers, somewhat more creditable.
The lexicographical work of Webster, Worcester, Whitney,
and March, and the grammatical work of Child and Gildersleeve
have been recognised and appreciated the world
over. In these sciences America’s debt to Germany is a
heavy one. Most of our greater teachers of language
received their professional training in Germany; and while
fewer of our students now go to Germany for the doctor’s
degree, the influence of German scholarship is still strongly
felt among us.
Pierre Étienne Duponceau.—Duponceau (1760–1844)
was one of the pioneers of American philology. Born in
France, he came to America in 1777 as secretary to Baron
Steuben, served in the American army as captain till
1781, and afterward practised law in Philadelphia, becoming
well known. He wrote treatises on law: “Exposition sommaire
de la constitution des États-Unis d’Amérique”
(1837); and in linguistics: “English Phonology” (1818),
“Mémoire sur le système grammatical des languages de
quelques nations indiennes de l’Amérique du Nord” (1838),
which was awarded a medal by the French Institute, and
“A Dissertation on the Nature and Character of the Chinese
System of Writing” (1838).
Albert Gallatin.—The long and illustrious political
career of Albert Gallatin (1761–1849) must not detain
us here. Most of his literary and ethnological work was
done in his later years. In 1836 he published his “Synopsis
of the Indian Tribes within the United States, East of the
Rocky Mountains, and in the British and Russian Possessions
in North America.” In 1845 appeared his “Notes
on the Semi-Civilised Nations of Mexico, Yucatan, and
Central America.” He founded the American Ethnological
Society in 1842; and he is rightly known and will be remembered
as the father of American ethnology.
Henry Rowe Schoolcraft.—Among the most prominent
of early American ethnologists was Henry R. Schoolcraft
(1793–1864). His grandfather, James Calcraft, formerly
a British soldier under Marlborough, had kept a large school
in Albany County, New York, and because of this his
name was changed to Schoolcraft. At an early age Henry
Schoolcraft became a student of mineralogy, chemistry,
natural philosophy, and medicine. In connection with his
father’s glass-making enterprises in New Hampshire,
Vermont, and western New York, he was engaged for some
time in building glass-works, and in 1817 began to publish
a work on “Vitreology.” Conceiving a desire to travel
in the Far West, he started in 1818 on a journey down the
Ohio and up the Mississippi. A book resulting from this,
on the mineralogy of the West, made him well known.
Another expedition was described in “Travels in the Central
Portions of the Mississippi Valley” (1825). In 1828
he was the leader in founding the Michigan Historical
Society and in 1832 he helped found the Algic Society,
for the reclamation and study of the Indians. A narrative
of his work and experiences was embodied in “Personal
Memoirs of a Residence of Thirty Years with the Indian
Tribes on the American Frontiers, 1812 to 1842,” a work
full of the flavour of the primitive West. Other works were
“Algic Researches” (1839), a collection of Indian allegories
and legends; “Oneota, or The Characteristics of the
Red Race in America” (1844–1845); “The Red Race of
America” (1847); and “American Indians, their History,
Condition, and Prospects” (1850), an immense work covering
a wide range of subjects. His books did much to promote
knowledge of Indian life and thought.
Charles Pickering.—Another well-known ethnologist,
Charles Pickering (1805–1878), born in Susquehanna
County, Pennsylvania, graduated at Harvard College
in 1823 and took his degree in medicine in 1826. He
accompanied Commodore Wilkes in the Vincennes on
its exploring voyage around the world in 1838–1842
and later visited India and Eastern Africa. His great
work was “The Races of Man and their Geographical
Distribution” (1848); later works of importance were
“The Geographical Distribution of Animals and Man”
(1854) and “The Geographical Distribution of Plants”
(1861).
Lewis Henry Morgan.—Lewis H. Morgan (1818–1881),
born at Aurora on Cayuga Lake, New York, and graduated
from Union College in 1840, became interested in
studying the Indians through having organised a society
called “The Grand Order of the Iroquois,” which he wished
to model after the ancient Iroquois Confederacy. The
first literary fruits of his studies were his “Letters on the
Iroquois” (in The American Review in 1847). Finding
that he must neglect his law practice or abandon his Indian
studies, he determined to publish all his materials
and then cleave to law. In 1851, then, appeared “The
League of the Iroquois,” in which were fully explained
the organisation and government of the celebrated Iroquois
Confederacy, and which formed the first scientific
account of an Indian tribe. A few years later, urged by
Henry, Agassiz, and others, he took up his studies again,
and began an investigation which was extended to embrace
the whole world, and which resulted in his scholarly
“Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human
Family,” published in 1871, as No. 17 of the Smithsonian
“Contributions to Knowledge.” In 1881 he gathered his
materials on tribal organisation into an epoch-making
philosophical treatise on “Ancient Society,” which materially
helped to lay the foundations of our modern science
of governmental institutions.
John Wesley Powell.—Major John W. Powell (1834–1902)
became conspicuous both as a geologist and an
anthropologist. He studied at two or three small Western
colleges, served in the Civil War, and then taught geology
in two Illinois universities. In 1867 he travelled in the
Colorado Rockies and thenceforward for many years was
busied with surveys and explorations of the Far West.
From 1881 till 1894 he was director of the United States
Geological Survey, resigning to become director of the
Bureau of Anthropology. He made many important contributions
to the sciences which interested him, publishing
“Exploration of the Colorado River of the West and Its
Tributaries” (1875), “Report on the Geology of the Uinta
Mountains” (1876), “Report on the Arid Region of the
United States” (1879), “Introduction to the Study of the
Indian Languages” (1880), “Studies in Sociology” (1887),
“Canyons of the Colorado” (1895), and “Physiographic
Processes, Physiographic Features, and Physiographic
Regions of the United States” (1895).
Daniel Garrison Brinton.—Daniel G. Brinton (1837–1899)
of Philadelphia was one of the leading archæologists of
the New World. Graduating at Yale in 1858 and at the
Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia, in 1860, he served
as a surgeon in the war and from 1867 to 1887 was editor
of The Medical and Surgical Reporter. From 1886 until
his death he was professor of American linguistics and
archæology at the University of Pennsylvania. He has
to his credit a long list of important books and papers,
only a few of which can be mentioned here. He began
to publish in 1859 (“The Floridian Peninsula, Its Literary
History, Indian Tribes, and Antiquities”). From boyhood
he took a deep interest in the study of the American
Indians; and in 1868 he published “The Myths of the New
World.” He also wrote, on Indian subjects, “American
Hero Myths” (1882), “The American Race” (1892), and
numerous ethnological and linguistic papers. He also
both edited (for the most part) and published “The Library
of Aboriginal American Literature” in eight volumes (1882–1885).
In the controversies between science and theological
dogma he was a pronounced radical. Along with his
scientific labours Dr. Brinton found time for some studies
in poetry, especially of Browning and Whitman.
Noah Webster.—Among students of linguistic science
the first to be mentioned in point of time, and one of the
first in importance, is Noah Webster (1758–1843), a native
of Hartford, Connecticut, and a graduate of Yale College,
whose “Grammatical Institute of the English Language”
(spelling-book, grammar, and reader) appeared in 1783–1785.
These books had an immense sale. The grammar
showed originality, but was partly superseded by Murray’s.
Webster published also “Dissertations on the English Language”
(1789), a more advanced “Philosophical and Practical
Grammar of the English Language” (1807), and
“Origin, History, and Connection of the Languages of
Western Asia and of Europe” (1807); the last being one of
the first fruits of Sir William Jones’ identification of Sanskrit
in 1786. The great work of Webster’s life, however,
was his “American Dictionary of the English Language,”
first published in 1828. Revised in 1847, 1864, and 1890,
this is now the “International” and enjoys a large sale.
The edition of 1901 contains 2528 pages.
Lindley Murray.—Lindley Murray (1745–1826), a native
of Pennsylvania, made a fortune in trade at the time of the
Revolution, and then settled at Holdgate, near York,
England. Here he wrote his “Grammar of the English
Language” (1795), which by 1816 had swollen to two
volumes. In 1818 he published an “Abridgement,” which
went through some six-score editions. It laid great stress
on syntax, and was a terror to generations of students.
Joseph Emerson Worcester.—For many years the only
rival of Webster’s Dictionary was Worcester’s. Like
Webster, Joseph Emerson Worcester (1784–1865) was a
graduate of Yale College. After teaching for a time at
Salem, Massachusetts, he settled at Cambridge. After
various lexicographical labours, he issued “A Universal
and Critical Dictionary” (1846), containing “in addition
to the words found in Todd’s edition of Johnson’s Dictionary,
nearly 27,000 words for which authorities are given.”
In 1860 this was expanded into the quarto “Dictionary
of the English Language,” which included about 104,000
words. In a memoir of Dr. Worcester, Ezra Abbot said:
The tendency of his mind was practical rather than speculative.
As a lexicographer, he did not undertake to reform long-established
anomalies in the English language: his aim was rather to
preserve it from corruption; and his works have certainly contributed
much to that end. In respect both to orthography and
pronunciation, he took great pains to ascertain the best usage;
and perhaps there is no lexicographer whose judgment respecting
these matters in doubtful cases deserves higher consideration.
Goold Brown.—Most of our grandfathers got their
knowledge of English grammar from the text-books of
Goold Brown (1791–1857). His education was obtained
at the Friends’ School in Providence, Rhode Island, his
birthplace. He became a successful teacher and for
twenty years conducted an academy in New York City.
His “Institutes of English Grammar” appeared in 1823
and with an elementary work had an enormous circulation.
His “Grammar of English Grammars” (1851), which
brought him wide reputation, has been called “the most
exhaustive, most accurate, and most original treatise on
the English language ever written.” This is absurdly
high praise; yet the book is undoubtedly a monument of
industry, and has been for many earnest souls “a court
of last resort on matters grammatical.”
George Perkins Marsh.—In his day a distinguished
diplomatist and man of letters, George P. Marsh (1801–1882)
made substantial contributions to philology. He
graduated at Dartmouth College in 1820 and studied law.
He soon turned to studies in language and in 1838 printed
privately a translation of Rask’s “Icelandic Grammar.”
His “Lectures on the English Language” (1861) were
delivered originally at Columbia; his “Origin and History
of the English Language” (1862) was a course of Lowell
Institute lectures.
Samuel Stehman Haldeman.—Samuel S. Haldeman
(1812–1880) attained a respectable place as a philologist,
but was also known as a naturalist and an archæologist.
He went to Dickinson College two years, but not liking
the course of study, left to study by himself. Shortly
after his marriage in 1835, he settled at Chickies, Pennsylvania,
became a silent partner with two brothers in
the iron business, and spent most of his time in his library,
where, for many years, he worked sixteen hours a day.
His nature-studies resulted in “Fresh-Water Univalve
Mollusca of the United States” (nine parts, 1840–1845);
“Zoölogical Contributions” (1842–1843); “Zoölogy of the
Invertebrate Animals” (1850); and more than seventy
papers. He began early to take interest in the Indian
languages, and published papers on them, as well as on
the languages of Europe and China, and on spelling reform.
These writings are now valuable chiefly as landmarks
in the history of linguistic science; but this does
not impair Haldeman’s contemporary reputation as a
learned and accurate linguist. His last works were a
monograph on “Pennsylvania Dutch” (1872) and “Outlines
of Etymology” (1878).
James Hammond Trumbull.—Well known as a thorough
student of Indian languages was James H. Trumbull
(1821–1897) of Hartford, Connecticut. He studied at Yale
in the class of 1842, but was prevented by ill health from
graduating. On linguistics he wrote “The Composition
of Indian Geographical Names” (1870), “The Best Methods
of Studying the Indian Languages” (1871), “Notes on
Forty Algonkin Versions of the Lord’s Prayer” (1873),
and “Indian Names of Places in and on the Borders of
Connecticut, with Interpretations” (1881). He also edited
Roger Williams’ “Key into the Language of America”
(1866).
Francis James Child.—Francis J. Child (1825–1896),
created a tradition of zeal for broad and sound learning,
the influence of which is still strong. A Boston youth, he
stood at the head of his class at Harvard, that of 1846.
For forty-five years he was a professor in Harvard. In
addition to some excellent editions of texts, he published
an epoch-making monograph, “Observations on the
Language of Chaucer” (1862), “Observations on the
Language of Gower’s Confessio Amantis” (1866), and a
monumental edition of “English and Scottish Popular
Ballads” (1857–1858, revised and enlarged edition in ten
volumes, 1882–1898), which is a model of accurate, comprehensive
work, and which it is safe to say will not soon
be superseded. It is due largely to Child that Harvard
has become one of the leading centres of English study in
America.
Francis Andrew March.—The Nestor of living American
philologists is Professor Francis A. March (born in 1825),
since 1855 a teacher in Lafayette College. He graduated
at Amherst College in 1845. At first he pursued philosophical
studies, but was later drawn to the study of
language. His “Method of Philological Study of the
English Language” appeared in 1865. His “Comparative
Grammar of the Anglo-Saxon Language” (1870) was a
pioneer, and with the “Anglo-Saxon Reader” (1870) did
good service in introducing the subject into American
colleges. For many years Dr. March has been an ardent
apostle of spelling reform.
William Dwight Whitney.—Probably William Dwight
Whitney (1827–1894) is best known as a writer of textbooks
and popular expositor of linguistic problems. Among
scholars, however, his chief monument is his work in
Sanskrit. Born at Northampton, Massachusetts, he was
graduated at eighteen from Williams College. In the
winter of 1848–1849 he began the study of Sanskrit; this
study he continued under Salisbury at Yale, Weber at
Berlin, and Roth at Tübingen. In 1854 he was appointed
professor of Sanskrit and comparative philology at Yale,
and held this chair until his death; being for many years
accounted the leading philologist in America. He was a
most industrious and systematic worker. His bibliography
includes 360 titles. He wrote simple and lucid grammars
of English (1877), French (1886), German (1869), and
Sanskrit (1879); “Language and the Study of Language”
(1867); “Oriental and Linguistic Studies” (1873–1874);
“The Life and Growth of Language” (1875); several
translations, with commentaries, of Sanskrit texts; and
numerous papers and reviews. He was also editor-in-chief
of “The Century Dictionary” (1889–1891) and read every
proof of its 21,138 columns. But his greatest service to
the cause of science was in holding up to his pupils a lofty
ideal and a rigorous scientific method.
Hellenists, Latinists, and linguists of every sort [said Professor
Perrin in a memorial address], and even historical students in
the more restricted sense, all over this country and Europe, are
now labouring, each in his chosen field, with a more equable
spirit, a broader method, and a loftier ideal, because they have
caught them all, directly or indirectly, from the master whose
memory we honour.
Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve.—Valuable work in classical
philology has been done by Basil L. Gildersleeve (born
in 1831). After graduating at Princeton in 1849, he
studied at Berlin, Bonn, and Göttingen, receiving the
degree of Ph.D. from Göttingen in 1853. For twenty
years (1856–1876) he was professor of Greek (for five
years, of Latin also) at the University of Virginia. In
1876 he was called to a similar chair at Johns Hopkins
University, which he has since held. He founded (1880)
and has since edited The American Journal of Philology,
and has published, among other books, “A Latin Grammar”
(1876, twice revised), “Essays and Studies, Educational
and Literary” (1890), “The Syntax of Classical
Greek” (part i., 1900, with Charles W. E. Miller), and
editions of Justin Martyr, Persius, and Pindar.
Natural and Physical Science.—It is in the natural
and physical sciences that our attempt to cover the ground
will at once appear most hopeless. In some of these
sciences, for example astronomy, physics, and geology,
American scholars stand concededly among the foremost
in the world; to practically all of them Americans have
contributed noteworthy studies and discoveries. Lack of
space prevents even the mention, with one or two exceptions,
of living writers.
John James Audubon.—Among the naturalists of
America no name is more illustrious than that of the chief
of our ornithologists, John James Audubon (1780–1851).
His father was a French naval officer who had settled
upon a plantation near New Orleans and married a lady
of Spanish descent. When but a child Audubon used to
draw pictures of birds; of those which were not satisfactory
he made a bonfire at each birthday. When he
was about eighteen, his father settled him on a farm near
Philadelphia; here he gratified the naturalist’s passion to
such an extent that he was good for nothing else. “For
a period of twenty years,” he wrote later, “my life was a
series of vicissitudes. I tried various branches of commerce,
but they all proved unprofitable, doubtless because
my whole mind was ever filled with my passion for rambling
and admiring those objects of Nature from which alone I
received the purest gratification.” He lived with his
family successively in Kentucky, Ohio, Mississippi, and
Louisiana; drawing and studying birds incessantly. Visiting
England in 1826, he arranged for the publication of
“The Birds of America” (1830–1839). It was to be published
in numbers of five folio plates each, the whole to be
in four volumes and to be sold for $1000 a copy. The work
was to cost over $100,000; yet he had not money enough
to pay for the first number. He supported himself by
painting. He was elected (1830) a Fellow of the Royal
Society. Audubon accompanied his “Birds” with “Ornithological
Biographies” (five volumes, 1831–1839), the
literary value of which is important; “it presents,” says
one writer, “in language warm from his having been a part
of the scenes, a virgin past of our country, and its forests
and prairies, which can never be restored or so well described
again.” “The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America,”
with 150 plates, appeared in three volumes in 1845–1848;
in this undertaking he was assisted by his two sons and
the Rev. John Bachman of Charleston, South Carolina.
The last three years of his life were spent in mental darkness.
His claim to honorable rank in American letters cannot
be denied.
Spencer Fullerton Baird.—No American naturalist exerted
a wider and deeper influence than Spencer F. Baird
(1823–1887). A native of Pennsylvania and a graduate
of Dickinson College (1840), he was the friend and in
some work the collaborator of Audubon, Agassiz, and
other zoölogists. Appointed assistant secretary of the
Smithsonian Institution in 1850, he directed much of the
scientific exploration of the West; organised the National
Museum (1857); succeeded Henry in 1878 as secretary
of the Smithsonian and largely developed its work; and
in 1874 became head of the Commission of Fish and Fisheries,
and organised the science and practice of fish culture
in America. He was besides a voluminous writer. His
books and papers down to 1882 include 1063 titles. Of
them we may mention “Catalogue of North American
Reptiles” (1853), “The Birds of America” (with John
Cassin, 1860), “The Mammals of North America” (1859),
and “History of American Birds” (with Thomas M.
Brewer and Robert Ridgway, 1874–1884).
Alpheus Hyatt.—In zoölogy and palæontology one of
the celebrated scholars of his day was Alpheus Hyatt
(1838–1902). Born in Washington, D. C., he received his
education at the Maryland Military Academy, Yale College,
and under Agassiz at the Lawrence Scientific School
of Harvard, from which he was graduated in 1862. After
the Civil War, in which he rose to be a captain, he continued
his studies in natural history and became active
in fostering these studies in general. He helped to found
The American Naturalist in 1868, and was the principal
founder of the American Society of Naturalists, organised
in 1883. In 1881 he became professor of zoölogy and
palæontology in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
and in Boston University. He was equally active in
teaching, in popularising science, and in research. Some
of his books are “Observations on Freshwater Polyzoa”
(1866), “Revision of North American Poriferæ” (1875–1877),
long the only work on North American commercial
sponges, “The Genesis of the Tertiary Species of Planorbis
at Steinheim,” a long and important monograph on the
influence of gravity on certain shells, published by the
Boston Society of Natural History in its “Memoirs” (1880),
“Genera of Fossil Cephalopods” (1883), “The Larval
Theory of the Origin of Cellular Tissue” (1884), giving
his theory of the origin of sex, and “The Genesis of the
Arietidæ” (1889). He also edited a series of “Guides
for Science-Teaching,” of several of which he himself was
also the author. Few Americans indeed have done so
much to make natural science popular as did Hyatt. His
work in research was immensely fruitful. He has been
called the founder of the new school of invertebrate
palæontology, while in systematic zoölogy he made several
discoveries which led to important revisions in biological
classification.
Alpheus Spring Packard.—The son of a Bowdoin College
professor of the same name, Alpheus S. Packard (1839–1905)
naturally entered Bowdoin and there came under
the influence of Dr. Paul Chadbourne, who encouraged
his inclination toward zoölogical study. After graduating
from Bowdoin in 1861 and from the Maine Medical School
in 1864, he worked under Agassiz at Harvard, devoting
himself largely to the study of insects. In 1867 he became
curator of invertebrates and in 1876 director, of the Peabody
Academy of Science in Salem, Massachusetts. In
1878 he was appointed professor of zoölogy and geology
in Brown University, retaining this post till his death. He
was one of the founders and for twenty years editor of
The American Naturalist. Besides hundreds of papers,
he wrote a “Guide to the Study of Insects” (1869); “The
Mammoth Cave and Its Inhabitants,” jointly with F. W.
Putnam (1872); “Life Histories of Animals” (1876),
the first attempt since the Lowell Institute lectures of
Agassiz to attempt a summary of embryological discoveries;
“Insects Injurious to Forest and Shade Trees” (1890),
“A Naturalist on the Labrador Coast” (1891), “A Text-Book
of Entomology” (1898), and “Lamarck, the Founder
of Evolution: His Life and Work” (1901). Apropos of
the last book it will be remembered that Packard, Cope,
and Hyatt were the founders and chief exponents of
the Neo-Lamarckian school of evolution. Packard was
an indefatigable investigator and his contributions to
entomology and zoölogy immensely advanced those
sciences.
Edward Drinker Cope.—Another celebrated naturalist
was Edward D. Cope (1840–1897) of Philadelphia, whose
studies in fossil vertebrates were of epoch-making significance.
He studied at the University of Pennsylvania.
From 1864 till 1867 he was professor of natural sciences
in Haverford College. For twenty-two years thereafter
he was engaged in exploration, research, and editorial
work. In 1889 he became professor of geology and
palæontology in the University of Pennsylvania. Before
he was thirty he had laid his foundations in five chief
lines of research, ichthyology, amphibians, reptiles, mammals,
and evolutionary philosophy. On all of these subjects
he wrote much and wisely. He was the author of
over four hundred volumes, papers, and memoirs, to say
nothing of hundreds of editorial articles in The American
Naturalist, which he edited from 1878 until his death.
On the subject of evolution alone his most important
works are “The Origin of Genera” (1868), “The Origin
of the Fittest” (1886), and “The Primary Factors of
Organic Evolution” (1896). His activity in research may
be judged from the fact that he himself named and described
1115 out of some 3200 known species of North
American fossil vertebrates. Naturally, in attempting so
much, he fell short of perfection in some things.
His life-work, [says Professor Osborn,24] bears the marks of
great genius, of solid and accurate observation, and at times of
inaccuracy due to bad logic or haste and over-pressure of work.
The greater number of his Natural Orders and Natural Laws will
remain as permanent landmarks in our science. As a comparative
anatomist he ranks, both in the range and effectiveness of his
knowledge and his ideas, with Cuvier and Owen.... As a
natural philosopher, while far less logical than Huxley, he was
more creative and constructive, his metaphysics ending in theism
rather than agnosticism.
Elliott Coues.—Distinguished as an ornithologist, Elliott
Coues (1842–1899) became favourably known also for
researches in biology and comparative anatomy. After
taking degrees at the Columbian University in 1861–1863,
he entered the Union Army as assistant surgeon, studying
flora and fauna wherever he went. In 1873–1876 he was
surgeon and naturalist to the United States Northern
Boundary Commission and in 1876–1880 was connected
with the United States Geological and Geographical Survey
of the Territories. He helped found the American Ornithologists’
Union and edited its organ, The Auk. His “Key
to North American Birds” (1872, rewritten 1884 and
1901) is of great significance. He wrote also on “Birds
of the Northwest” (1874), “Birds of the Colorado Valley”
(1878), and with Winfrid A. Stearns, “New England Bird
Life” (1881).
David Starr Jordan.—David Starr Jordan (born in
1851) has in recent years been regarded chiefly as an
educator; he became known through his studies on fishes.
Entering Cornell University in 1868, he was appointed
instructor in botany in 1870 and graduated M.S. in 1872.
After teaching and studying science for some years, he
was made (1879) professor of zoölogy at Indiana University,
of which he became president in 1885. Since 1891 he
has been president of Stanford University. Some of
his books are “A Manual of the Vertebrate Animals of
the Northern United States” (1876), “Science Sketches”
(1887), “Fishes of North and Middle America” (1896–1899),
“Footnotes to Evolution” (1898), and “The Food
and Game Fishes of North America” (1902). He is a
leader both in his chosen scientific field and in educational
thought.
Asa Gray.—The best-known botanist of his epoch was
Asa Gray (1810–1888) a native of Paris, Oneida County,
New York. He graduated in medicine at Fairfield College
in 1831, but soon gave up medicine for botany and in
1842 was elected to the Fisher professorship of natural
history in Harvard University. Any adequate narrative
of Gray’s tremendous activity as a writer and teacher is
out of the question here; we can only say that his widely
known and long standard text-books on botany (beginning
with the “Elements of Botany,” 1836, which grew
into the “Structural and Systematic Botany” of 1879,
and including his “How Plants Grow,” 1858, and “How
Plants Behave,” 1872) represent but a small part of his
literary activity. With Dr. Torrey he began (1838) the
“Flora of North America”; he wrote also valuable botanical
memoirs and many valuable articles for The North
American Review and The American Journal of Science.
Edward Hitchcock.—Edward Hitchcock (1793–1864), a
Congregational clergyman, and for thirty-nine years a
professor of science in Amherst College, was especially
devoted to geological study. A large number of his books
and papers relate to geological subjects, which he helped
to make popular; among these books are “Economical
Geology” (1832), “Geology of Massachusetts” (1841),
“The Religion of Geology and Its Connected Sciences”
(1851), and “Ichnology of New England” (1858). He
was the first president of the Association of American
Geologists, and was president of Amherst College from
1845 till 1854.
Louis Agassiz.—The celebrated naturalist Jean Louis
Rodolphe Agassiz (1807–1873) was of Swiss birth and
did not come to America to live until he was forty-one
years of age, and had already become famous for those
studies of glacial phenomena set forth in “Études sur les
glaciers” (1840) and “Système glaciaire” (with Guyot and
Desor, 1847). For twenty-five years (1848–1873) he was
professor of natural history at Harvard, and in that time,
besides training some of the most eminent of living American
scientists, he did much to arouse popular interest in
science and scientific progress. Of the “Contributions to
the Natural History of the United States” which he
planned to publish in ten volumes, he lived to issue only
four (1857–1862). For Agassiz Nature was “the expression
of the thought of the Creator.” In opposing the Darwinians
as to the origin of species, Agassiz unfortunately took the
wrong side of the question of how the Creator expressed
His thought; but he remains nevertheless distinguished
both as a scientist and as an educator; a singularly great
and gentle nature, strong and true.
Arnold Henry Guyot.—Less distinguished than his
compatriot Agassiz, but of enduring fame, was the geographer
Arnold Guyot (1807–1884). Born near Neuchâtel,
Switzerland, he studied there and in Germany, receiving
the degree of Ph.D. from Berlin in 1835. Like Agassiz
he became known for his glacial discoveries; and like
Agassiz he came to America in the troubled year 1848.
From 1854 until his death he was professor of geology
and physical geography at Princeton. His text-books and
maps revolutionised the teaching and study of geography.
He wrote also many scientific papers and memoirs, among
which may be noted especially those describing his studies
in the Appalachian Mountains. American science owes
much to his unselfish devotion.
James Dwight Dana.—James D. Dana (1813–1895),
born in Utica, New York, was attracted by the fame of
the elder Silliman to Yale College, where he graduated
in 1833. To the Sillimans he became allied by his marriage
with Henrietta F. Silliman in 1844; and like them he
had a long and notable career closely connected with
Yale College, where he became (1835) Silliman professor
of natural history and geology. He wrote many reports
on geological, zoölogical, and mineralogical subjects, besides
“A Manual of Mineralogy” (1851), “A Manual of
Geology” (1862), “On Coral Reefs and Islands” (1853),
“Science and the Bible” (Bibliotheca Sacra, 1856–1857),
and “Corals and Coral Islands” (1872).
Alexander Winchell.—Another noted geologist was
Alexander Winchell (1824–1891). Graduating from Wesleyan
University in 1847, he became a teacher of science in
various schools, and in 1853 professor of physics and
civil engineering in the University of Michigan; being soon
transferred to the chair of geology, zoölogy, and botany.
He afterward taught at Syracuse and Vanderbilt Universities.
From the latter institution in 1878 he was dismissed
because his views on evolution were “contrary to
the plan of redemption.” The next year he was recalled
to Michigan. Besides being a leading spirit in forming
the Geological Society of America, and in establishing
The American Geologist, he was a voluminous writer,
especially of scientific works for popular use, and endeavoured
in these works to show the essential harmony
between science and Christian dogma. Thus he did the
work of a peacemaker in what has long been a heated
conflict.
Nathaniel Bowditch (1773–1838) was a pioneer in the
study of astronomy and mathematics in America. At
first a cooper and then a ship-chandler, he was studious,
and learned Latin in order to read Newton’s “Principia.”
As supercargo on a merchant vessel during several voyages,
he became expert in the theory of navigation and published
in 1802 “The New American Practical Navigator,” which
in a revised form is published by the United States Hydrographic
Office and is the standard compendium for navigators.
In 1829 he translated Laplace’s “Méchanique
céleste,” adding valuable notes.
Benjamin Peirce.—In the annals of mathematics and
astronomy the name of Benjamin Peirce (1809–1880) has
a place of distinction. Born at Salem, Massachusetts, he
became a pupil of Bowditch, and graduated at Harvard
in 1829, in the class with Holmes. He became a tutor
at Harvard in 1831, professor of mathematics and physics
in 1833, and nine years later Perkins professor of mathematics
and astronomy, holding this chair till his death.
From 1867 till 1874, succeeding Dallas Bache, he was
superintendent of the Coast Survey. He wrote an important
series of mathematical text-books; “System of
Analytical Mechanics” (1857); “Linear Associative Algebra”
(communications to the National Academy of
Sciences, collected in 1870); and Lowell Institute lectures
on “Ideality in the Physical Sciences” (1881). He obtained
eminence, it has been said, equally in mathematics, physics,
astronomy, mechanics, and navigation.
The Sillimans.—In the annals of American science
no other name is so long and favourably known as that
of the Sillimans. Benjamin Silliman (1779–1864) was for
fifty years, beginning in 1802, professor of chemistry in
Yale College and founded (1818) The American Journal
of Science and Arts, which he edited for twenty-eight
years. His son, Benjamin, Jr. (1816–1885), taught and
studied chemistry, mineralogy, and geology in Yale, and
was associate editor (1838–1846) of his father’s Journal.
For the rest of his life he was a professor of chemistry,
first in what is now the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale,
then at Louisville University, and later in the Academic
and Medical Departments at Yale. In 1858 he published
“First Principles of Natural Philosophy or Physics”;
and he was the author of many scientific memoirs, addresses,
and reports. He was one of the pioneers in science-teaching
in America, and his influence on scientific education was
deep and abiding.
Joseph Henry.—Joseph Henry (1797–1878) was one of
the most illustrious physicists of his day. Born and
educated at Albany, New York, he began (1827) researches
which resulted in important discoveries in the field of
electro-magnetism, one of which made the telegraph
possible. From 1832 till 1846 he was professor of natural
philosophy in the College of New Jersey (Princeton),
and from 1846 till his death was secretary of the Smithsonian
Institution, which he had helped to organise. He
published “Contributions to Electricity and Magnetism”
(1839) and many papers, especially in the Smithsonian
reports. A brilliant and profound investigator, he did
signally important service in organising great scientific
enterprises. “To Henry,” says Dr. Woodward, “more
than to any other man, must be attributed the rise and
the growth in America of the present public appreciation
of the scientific work carried on by governmental aid.”
Alexander Dallas Bache.—Alexander Dallas Bache (1806–1867),
a great-grandson of Benjamin Franklin, after
graduating in 1825 at West Point, at the head of his class,
at twenty-two resigned a lieutenant’s commission to
become professor of natural philosophy and chemistry at
the University of Pennsylvania. Having made a name
for his researches on steam, magnetism, etc., he was called
in 1843 to be superintendent of the United States Coast
Survey, and performed his duties with marked efficiency.
Gifted with quick apprehension and broad intelligence,
he possessed great powers of leadership. He published
nearly two hundred scientific papers, memoirs, and
reports. “To him,” declared his eulogist Benjamin
Gould, “the scientific progress of the nation was
indebted more than to any other man who had trod
her soil.”
Matthew Fontaine Maury.—Matthew F. Maury (1806–1873)
is well known to students of meteorological science
and also to the educational world. He was a Virginian
of Huguenot extraction, who went to sea at nineteen and
became not only a good sailor but also an authority on
navigation. His “Treatise on Navigation” (1835) was
favourably received abroad and was used as a text-book
in the United States Navy. As “Harry Bluff” he published
in The Southern Literary Messenger, about 1840,
under the title of “Scraps from the Lucky-Bag,” a series
of papers on nautical matters, which brought him fame
and resulted in placing him in charge of the Depot of
Charts and Instruments at Washington, an office which
later became the Naval Observatory and Hydrographical
Department. One of his first tasks was to compile some
charts of winds and currents. These charts proved immensely
valuable by shortening voyages and lowering
the expense of commerce. His “Physical Geography of
the Sea and its Meteorology” (1855) at once took the
highest rank in its field, and the geographical text-books
which he wrote in his later years have done great service
to education and in a revised form still satisfy the needs
of many schools. He was the author also of many pamphlets
and official papers.
Josiah Parsons Cooke.—Josiah Parsons Cooke (1827–1894),
a pioneer in chemical education, was born in Boston
and graduated at Harvard in 1844. In 1851 he became
professor of chemistry and mineralogy at Harvard. He
did much to further the study of chemistry in colleges
and was one of the first to urge the laboratory method of
instruction. He published, among other things, “Chemical
Problems and Reactions” (1853), “Religion and Chemistry”
(1864), “The New Chemistry” (1871), and “The
Credentials of Science the Warrant of Faith” (1888).
John William Draper.—John W. Draper (1811–1882)
is known in the annals of science as a chemist and physiologist;
he won eminence also as a historian. Born at
St. Helens, near Liverpool, the son of a Wesleyan Methodist
minister, he studied chemistry under Turner in London,
and coming to America in 1833, graduated in medicine
from the University of Pennsylvania in 1836. He now
began investigating the chemical action of light, and
published in 1844 a “Treatise on the Forces which Produce
the Organisation of Plants.” His memoir “On the Production
of Light by Heat” (1847), a valuable contribution
to the subject of spectrum analysis, appeared thirteen
years before Kirchoff’s celebrated memoir, which used
to be thought of as marking the beginning of spectrum
analysis. He was also the first to succeed (1839) in taking
portraits of the human face by photography. In 1839
he became professor of chemistry, and in 1850 of physiology
also, in the University of New York. His “Treatise on
Human Physiology, Statical and Dynamical” (1856) at
once took its place as a standard text-book. He wrote
also a “Text-Book on Chemistry” (1846); a “Text-Book
on Natural Philosophy” (1847); “History of the Conflict
between Religion and Science” (1874), an able and comprehensive
treatment of a vast subject; and “Scientific
Memoirs” (1878), a collection of papers on radiant energy.
Two of his sons, Henry and John Christopher, also became
well known physiologists and chemists.
Charles Augustus Young.—Of the more recent astronomers
of America, Charles A. Young (1834–1908) was
one of the foremost. Born in Hanover, New Hampshire,
the son of Professor Ira Young of Dartmouth College, he
graduated from Dartmouth in 1853. From 1856 till 1866
he was professor of mathematics, astronomy, and natural
philosophy in Western Reserve University. In the latter
year he returned to Dartmouth as professor of natural
philosophy and astronomy, remaining there till 1877,
when he became professor of astronomy at Princeton. He
was prominently connected with several important astronomical
expeditions and produced some notable inventions,
among them an automatic spectroscope which has
been widely used by astronomers. He made some significant
observations on the sun, including a verification
by experiment of Doppler’s principle as applied to light,
by which he was able to measure the velocity of the sun’s
rotation. He also discovered the thin solar shell of gaseous
matter called “the reversing layer.” He wrote “The
Sun” in “The International Scientific Series” (1882), “A
General Astronomy” (1889), “Elements of Astronomy”
(1890), and “A Manual of Astronomy” (1902).
Robert Henry Thurston.—Distinguished as an educator,
an inventor, and a writer on engineering subjects was
Robert H. Thurston (1839–1903). He was born in Providence,
Rhode Island, and graduated from Brown University
in 1859. During the Civil War he served as an
engineer in the Federal Navy; in 1865 he was appointed
assistant professor of natural and experimental philosophy
at the United States Naval Academy. In 1871 he became
professor of engineering at the Stevens Institute of Technology,
remaining here until 1885, when he was made
director of Sibley College in Cornell University. His
writings, always clear, exact, and authoritative, have
circulated widely among engineers. They include “A
History of the Growth of the Steam Engine” (1878, revised
in 1901, and translated into French and German),
“Materials of Engineering” (three volumes, 1882–1886),
“Manual of the Steam Engine” (1890–1891), “Manual of
Steam Boilers” (1890), with other valuable works, and
about 250 scientific papers. Thurston served on several
important government engineering commissions. Of him
it has justly been said that “he made engineers better
scientists, promoted engineering education, helped to put
engineering upon a higher professional plane, and constantly
was on the watch to dispel the fogs of prejudice
by help of the truths of science.”
The Youmans Brothers.—The life of Edward Livingston
Youmans (1821–1887) was spent chiefly in popularising
science. Born in Albany County, New York, he inherited
a strong bent toward scientific study. For many years he
wrestled with threatening blindness, and was never well.
His “Class-Book of Chemistry” (1851) was remarkably
successful. “There was,” Mr. Fiske says of it, “a firm
grasp of the philosophical principles underlying chemical
phenomena, and the meaning and functions of the science
were set forth in such a way as to charm the student and
make him wish for more.” He spent many years in delivering
lyceum lectures, for which he was well fitted.
His “Handbook of Household Science” (1857) was a
carefully written treatise on the applications of science
to the problems of food, light, heat, and sanitation. Its
popularity led him to plan a comprehensive “Household
Cyclopædia” which he did not live to finish. Besides
editing “The Correlation and Conservation of Forces”
(1864), a series of expositions by Grove, Helmholtz, Mayer,
Faraday, Liebig, and Carpenter, and “The Culture Demanded
by Modern Life” (1867), a collection of addresses
and arguments in favour of scientific education, Youmans
published several addresses and papers, and did much to
give the views of Darwin and Spencer a favourable reception
in America. He was the originator and general editor
of “The International Scientific Series,” of which fifty-seven
volumes appeared in his lifetime. It was a difficult
but eminently useful task to secure popular scientific books
by masters; and the series of seventy-nine volumes has
done much for education. Youmans was also the founder
of The Popular Science Monthly (begun in 1872) and edited
the first twenty-eight volumes.
While it was his main intent [to quote Mr. Fiske again] to give
in popular form an account of the progress of the several departments
of science, he never lost sight of the aim to show wherein
the scientific method was applicable to the larger questions of
life—of education, social relations, morals, government, and
religion.
William Jay Youmans (1838–1901) first studied chemistry
at Columbia and Yale and privately with his brother
Edward, then took a medical course at New York
University. After practising medicine for some three
years, he became connected with The Popular Science
Monthly, which he edited from 1887 till 1900. He wrote
“Pioneers of Science in America” (1895).
Henry Carrington Bolton.—Henry Carrington Bolton
(1843–1903) did much for the bibliography of chemistry;
his “Select Bibliography of Chemistry, 1492–1892”
(1893–1905) comprises over 12,000 titles in twenty-four
languages. He also wrote many papers on the history
of chemistry. His “Counting-out Rhymes of Children”
(1888) gave him prominence as a folklorist, and he published
also some important papers on various other subjects
in folklore.
Their Importance.—No apology need be offered for
including in this volume a section on the history of American
periodicals. As Professor Smyth has well said, in
speaking of the early magazines of Philadelphia, such a
division “helps to exhibit the process of American literature
as an evolution.” Much of our best literature made its
first appearance in periodicals; and the remuneration received
by authors from this source has great significance
in the economics of literature. Likewise much of our best
and most searching criticism, whether reprinted or not,
appeared originally in newspapers and magazines, which
have thus had a prominent part in the making of American
literature. In 1810 there were only about thirty periodicals
altogether; in 1900 there were 239 classed as general
and literary, some of them having a considerable circulation
on the other side of the Atlantic. In the brief
space allotted to this section it will be impossible to do
more than to mention a few of the most important literary
periodicals; the full extent of the journalistic activity of
the United States may be inferred from the fact that in
1900 over eight billion copies of periodicals were circulated,
having a market value of nearly $225,000,000.
The Eighteenth Century.—The eighteenth century will
not long detain us. Only ten years after Edward Cave
had founded The Gentleman’s Magazine in London (1731),
Andrew Bradford and Benjamin Franklin founded in
Philadelphia the first monthly magazines in America.
Of Bradford’s venture, The American Magazine, edited
by John Webbe, only three numbers appeared; while
Franklin published only six numbers of The General
Magazine. In the course of the century several others
appeared, among them The American Magazine and
Historical Chronicle (Boston, 1743–1746); The Independent
Reflector (New York, 1752–1753), among whose contributors
were Governor William Livingston, John Morin Scott, and
Aaron Burr; The American Magazine (Philadelphia,
1757–1758, revived in 1769), which Professor Tyler calls
“by far the most admirable example of our literary periodicals
in the colonial time,” edited by Rev. William
Smith, first provost of the College of Philadelphia; The
New American Magazine (Woodbridge, New Jersey,
1758–1760), edited by S. Nevil; The Royal American
Magazine (Boston, 1774–1775); The Pennsylvania Magazine
(Philadelphia, 1775–1776), edited by Thomas Paine,
to which articles were sent by Francis Hopkinson, John
Witherspoon, and William Smith; The Columbian Magazine
(Philadelphia, 1786–1790), edited at first by Matthew
Carey and later by Alexander J. Dallas, and changed in
1790 to The Universal Asylum (1790–1792; to this Benjamin
Rush was a faithful contributor); The American
Museum (Philadelphia, 1787–1792, 1798), for which
Carey abandoned The Columbian and which was “the
first really successful literary undertaking of the kind in
America”; The Massachusetts Magazine (Boston, 1789–1796);
The New York Magazine (1790–1797); The Farmers’
Museum (Walpole, New Hampshire, 1793–1799),
of which Joseph Dennie, the editor from 1796 to 1799,
boasted that “it is read by more than two thousand
individuals, and has its patrons in Europe and on the
banks of the Ohio”; and The Monthly Magazine and
American Review (New York, 1799–1800), founded by
Charles Brockden Brown, and carried on in 1801–1802
as The American Review and Literary Journal. But the
reading public of those days was small, and other conditions
were unfavourable to publishers; in consequence, almost
none of these publications lived into the next century.
The Nineteenth Century.—Of the literary magazines
established before 1850, only one or two have survived.
Yet we now begin to see the periodicals exhibiting greater
vitality; and gradually they come to deal more and more
with native literature and to exhibit a greater self-reliance
on the part of American writers. The first half of the
century was the period in which the national spirit took
deep root and made rapid growth; and this national
spirit is fully reflected in the literature of the time.
In 1801 Joseph Dennie and John Dickins began to
publish, in Philadelphia, The Port Folio, which was destined
to live for twenty-six years. Among its contributors
were John Blair Linn, author of “The Powers of Genius,”
“The Death of Washington,” etc.; Robert H. Rose, author
of “Sketches in Verse”; John Sanderson, who wrote a
book of Parisian sketches entitled “The American in
Paris”; Alexander Graydon; Gouverneur Morris; Joseph
Hopkinson, author of “Hail, Columbia,” and of articles
on Shakespeare; and Alexander Wilson, poet and ornithologist,
whose works were edited by Alexander B. Grosart
(Paisley, Scotland, 1876).
From 1803 to 1811, the Anthology Club maintained
in Boston a sprightly magazine called The Anthology
and Boston Review. The best minds of Boston contributed
to it; among them George Ticknor, William Tudor, Joseph
Buckminster, John Quincy Adams, Dr. John Sylvester,
Edward Everett, and John Gardiner. The magazine
never paid expenses; but the contributors cheerfully
paid for their pleasure. The club did much to give Boston
its literary prestige, and was the forerunner of the famous
Boston Athenæum.
The Literary Magazine and American Register (Philadelphia,
1803–1808) was likewise founded by the novelist
Brown, who published therein, among other things, his
“Memoirs of Carwin, the Biloquist.”
Washington Irving began his literary career with the
publication of Salmagundi, which he founded in New York
in 1807, in conjunction with his brother William and James
Kirke Paulding. The little sheet, in yellow covers, was
issued by an eccentric publisher, David Longworth, the
front of whose house was entirely hidden by a colossal
painting of the crowning of Shakespeare. The magazine
was modelled after Addison’s Spectator. Paulding was
Launcelot Langstaff and Irving was Pindar Cockloft, the
poet. “Our intention,” wrote the editors, “is simply to
instruct the young, reform the old, correct the town, and
castigate the age; this is an arduous task, and therefore
we undertake it with confidence.” The work soon became
popular throughout the United States for its clever
reproductions of society foibles. After twenty numbers,
however, it was discontinued, because, as Paulding said,
“the publisher, with that liberality so characteristic of
these modern Mæcenases, declined to concede to us a
share of the profits, which had become considerable.”
Twelve years later, Irving being then in Europe, Paulding
attempted a second series (Philadelphia, May to August,
1820), which, though inferior to the first series, still
contained some interesting pages.
The Select Reviews and Spirit of the Foreign Magazines,
begun by Samuel Ewing in Philadelphia (1809), later
became The Analectic Magazine (1812–1821). In 1813–1814
Irving was its editor and contributed to it some
biographies of heroes of the War of 1812 and some of the
essays afterwards collected in “The Sketch Book.” Other
contributors were Gulian C. Verplanck, James K. Paulding,
Alexander Wilson, and William Darlington. The Analectic
published in July, 1819, the first lithograph made in
America.
The Portico (Baltimore, 1815–1819) numbered among
its contributors John Neal, whose lengthy review of Byron
appeared as a serial. Neal continued to write for The
Portico “until he knocked it on the head, it is thought,
by an article on Free Agency.”
The Idle Man (New York, 1821–1822) was edited by
Richard H. Dana the elder; in it were printed his novels
“Tom Thornton” and “Paul Felton” and some contributions
from Bryant and from Washington Allston.
The New York Mirror, a weekly, was begun in 1823 by
General George P. Morris and Samuel Woodworth, the author
of “The Old Oaken Bucket.” Woodworth soon
gave way to Theodore S. Fay and he in turn (1831) to
Nathaniel P. Willis. Morris and Willis conducted it with
great success until 1842. Fay contributed “The Little
Genius,” satirical letters on New York society, and “The
Minute Book,” letters from Europe. Willis spent some
years abroad as foreign correspondent of the paper (1832–1836),
his letters being eagerly read and widely copied.
Morris and Willis subsequently conducted The New Mirror
(New York, 1843–1844), which in October, 1844, became
a daily, and The Home Journal (New York, from 1846 on),
which as Town and Country still continues.
The Atlantic Magazine (New York, 1824–1825), edited
by Robert C. Sands, was continued till 1826 as The New
York Review and Athenæum Magazine. In its later form
it was edited by Henry J. Anderson and William Cullen
Bryant. In it appeared many of Bryant’s poems and
some of his prose, as well as contributions by Longfellow,
Dana, Willis, Bancroft, and Caleb Cushing. In March,
1826, the Review was merged with The New York Literary
Gazette. In July this was in turn combined with The
United States Literary Gazette, which had been founded
in Boston in 1825 and edited by Theophilus Parsons,
the new title being The United States Review and Literary
Gazette. James G. Carter, and later Charles Folsom, were
the Boston editors, and Bryant was the New York editor.
The periodical did not long survive.
The American Monthly Magazine (New York, 1829–1831)
was established and edited by Nathaniel P. Willis,
who enlisted a number of younger writers, such as Richard
Hildreth, Park Benjamin, Isaac McLellan, Albert Pike
(“Hymns to the Gods”), Rufus Dawes, and Mrs. Sigourney.
In 1831 the Magazine was absorbed by The New
York Mirror, of which Willis now became an associate
editor.
The Illinois Monthly Magazine (Vandalia, Illinois,
1830–1832), edited and mainly written by James Hall,
was the earliest literary publication in the West; it was
superseded by The Western Monthly Magazine (Cincinnati,
1833–1836), edited by Timothy Flint.
One of the most popular of the Philadelphia magazines
was Godey’s Lady’s Book (1830–1877), which as early as
1859 circulated 98,500 copies, and which published compositions
by Paulding, Park Benjamin, Holmes, Irving,
Poe, Bayard Taylor, Longfellow, Harriet Beecher Stowe,
Simms, Willis, Buchanan Read, Thomas Dunn English,
and Lydia H. Sigourney. Poe’s contribution on “The
Literati of New York,” published in its columns in 1846,
created a great sensation at the time. For more than
thirty years Godey’s was edited by Mrs. Sarah J. Hale,
who is also famous as the author of “Mary had a little
lamb,” and through whose exertions our national Thanksgiving
Day was secured.
The New England Magazine, established in Boston
in 1831 by Joseph T. and Edwin Buckingham, published
contributions from Hildreth, Park Benjamin, Whittier,
Holmes (who published here the first two papers, never
by authority reprinted, of his “Autocrat” series), Longfellow,
William and Andrew Peabody, George S. Hillard
(“Literary Portraits” and “Selections from the Papers of
an Idler”), and other eminent writers. In 1835 Park
Benjamin took it to New York and continued it till 1838
as The American Monthly Magazine.
The North American Quarterly Magazine (Philadelphia,
1833–1838) was conducted by Sumner Lincoln Fairfield,
author of “The Cities of the Plain,” and of an unpublished
poem, “The Last Night of Pompeii” (finished in 1830),
from which he alleged that Bulwer, to whom he sent the
manuscript, stole the plot of his “Last Days of Pompeii.”
Much more successful was The Knickerbacker or New-York
Monthly Magazine, founded in the same year and
quietly changed with the seventh number to The Knickerbocker.
The founder was Charles Fenno Hoffman, who
edited three numbers. Some contributors were Harry
Franco, Bryant, Irving (“Crayon Papers”), Longfellow,
Lewis Gaylord Clark (for a time the editor), William L.
Stone, the brothers Duyckinck, Frederick S. Cozzens,
Simms, Park Benjamin, John L. Stephens (letters from
Egypt), and Parkman (“The Oregon Trail”). With
some exceptions it must be said that the contents of The
Knickerbocker were not of very great merit; and in its
later years there were too many stories on the order
of “Carl Almendinger’s Office, or, The Mysteries of Chicago,”
which ran as a serial in 1862. In 1864 the title
was The American Monthly Knickerbocker, and from July
till October, 1865, when publication was suspended, the
title was The Fœderal American.
The Southern Literary Messenger, published monthly
at Richmond, Virginia, between 1834 and 1864, exerted
a marked influence upon the literary taste of the whole
South. In it were first published many of Poe’s stories
and criticisms, and he was the editor of the second volume.
Other contributors were Paulding, Park Benjamin, John
W. Draper, Willis, Henry C. Lea, R. H. Stoddard, Simms,
John B. Dabney, Matthew F. Maury, Philip Pendleton,
and John Esten Cooke, Henry Timrod, Paul H. Hayne,
Aldrich, Moncure D. Conway, Thomas Dunn English,
John P. Kennedy, James Barron Hope (“Henry Ellen”),
and W. Gordon McCabe.
In 1837 William E. Burton, the comedian, established
in Philadelphia The Gentleman’s Magazine to do for his
sex what Godey’s was doing for the ladies. Beginning
with July, 1839, Poe became joint editor. The next
year Burton sold out to George R. Graham, who combined
the magazine with The Casket (begun by Samuel
Coate Atkinson in 1827) to form Graham’s Lady’s and
Gentleman’s Magazine. For years Graham’s was the most
famous and truly national periodical in America. Graham
understood the reading public as did few other men. He
paid contributors liberally for those days, and collected
a brilliant list of writers, including every name well known
in letters at the time except Irving, who confined himself
to The Knickerbocker. To Graham’s Longfellow contributed
his “Spanish Student,” “Childhood,” “The Builders,”
“The Belfry of Bruges,” “The Arsenal at Springfield,”
“Nuremberg,” etc. Poe contributed “The Mask of the
Red Death,” “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” “The
Conqueror Worm,” “Life in Death,” and some minor
pieces. Here were first published also many of Hawthorne’s
“Twice-Told Tales.” Simms, Paulding, Geo.
H. Boker, Henry W. Herbert, Robert T. Conrad, E. P.
Whipple, and John G. Saxe were “principal contributors.”
Lowell and Bayard Taylor were editorial writers. Cooper
received $1800, then a very high price, for “The Islets
of the Gulf, or Rose Budd,” later republished as “Jack
Tier, or The Florida Reefs,” and $1000 for a series of
biographies of distinguished naval commanders. Nathaniel
P. Willis wrote much between 1843 and 1851. In 1852,
Graham boasted that in the decade previous he had paid
American contributors between eighty and ninety thousand
dollars. The circulation of the magazine for a long time
was 40,000 copies. About 1854 Graham sold out. In
competition with Harper’s and Putnam’s, Graham’s soon
declined. In 1859 its name was changed to The American
Monthly, and it quickly disappeared.
In 1839 Willis began, in connection with Dr. T. O.
Porter, to issue a weekly, The Corsair, from the basement
of the Astor House, New York. Willis was the
chief writer, contributing romantic stories, dramatic
criticism, letters from Europe entitled “Jottings Down
in London,” and gossip. While in England he met Thackeray,
whom he induced to contribute eight letters. In
all, fifty-two numbers were printed, the last dated March
7, 1840.
The Transcendental Movement, which will be discussed
elsewhere, found expression in 1840 in a Boston quarterly
called The Dial, which flourished till 1844, and which
was edited successively by George Ripley, Margaret Fuller,
and Emerson. The last contributed more than thirty
prose articles and poems, among them “The Conservative,”
“Chardon Street and Bible Convention,” “The Transcendentalist,”
and in verse “The Problem,” “The Sphinx,”
and “Woodnotes.” Bronson Alcott sent his “Orphic
Sayings,” the mystery of some of which has never been
fathomed. Other writers were Theodore Parker, George
Ripley, Thoreau, James Freeman Clarke, William H. and
William Ellery Channing, Eliot Cabot, John S. Dwight,
Christopher P. Cranch, Mrs. Ellen Hooper, and Charles
A. Dana. “Conceived and carried on in a spirit of boundless
hope and enthusiasm,” the magazine encountered
much ridicule among the Philistines. The Knickerbocker
said of the first number:
It is to be devoted to that refinement upon common-sense
literature, just now so much in vogue at the East; which, like
the memorable science of Sir Piercie Shafton, shall indoctrinate
the dull in intellectuality, the vulgar in nobility, and give that
“unutterable perfection of human utterance”; that eloquence
which no other eloquence is sufficient to praise; that art which,
in fine, when we call it literary Euphuism, we bestow upon it its
richest panegyric.
Yet in spite of such strictures, the contents of The Dial
are now immensely significant of the social agitation then
going on in New England; and much of its matter has
become a part of our permanent literature.
The New World, a large weekly established in New
York by Park Benjamin (1840–1845), reprinted much
from the English magazines, but included also contributions
from Epes and John Osborne Sargent, James Aldrich,
Herbert, Charles Lanman, Edward S. Gould, Charles
Eames (editor for a time), and John Jay. George P.
Putnam, the publisher, was for some years its London
correspondent.
It was in Peterson’s Ladies’ National Magazine (a fashion
journal begun in Philadelphia in 1841) that Frances
Hodgson Burnett published her first story, “Ethel’s Sir
Lancelot” (November, 1868). The magazine, long popular
among readers of light literature, was a few years since
merged with The Argosy.
The Union Magazine (New York, 1847–1848), edited
by Mrs. Caroline M. Kirkland, was bought by John Sartain,
the engraver, and William Sloanaker, who had withdrawn
from the managership of Graham’s, and reappeared in
Philadelphia (1849–1852) as Sartain’s Union Magazine of
Literature and Art, attaining great popularity. It published
works by Longfellow (“The Blind Girl of Castel Cuillé,”
“Resignation”), Boker, Mrs. Sigourney, Lucy Larcom,
Henry T. Tuckerman, Poe (“The Bells”), Park Benjamin,
R. H. Stoddard, and Charles G. Leland.
Harper’s New Monthly Magazine (New York), established
by the Messrs. Harper in June, 1850, has long
enjoyed a deservedly large circulation. For a considerable
time it contained chiefly articles, especially fiction, reprinted
from English periodicals. In later years it has
included much more from American writers, and its contents
have in general been of a high order of merit. Its
records of travel and of scientific progress have been
valuable. For many years the “Easy Chair,” conducted
by George William Curtis, and later by William D. Howells,
has been an interesting feature. In Harper’s first appeared
Howells’ “Annie Kilburn” and “Their Silver
Wedding Journey,” Warner’s “Studies of the Great West”
and “A Little Journey in the World,” Constance F.
Woolson’s “Jupiter Lights,” “East Angels,” and “Anne,”
Poulteney Bigelow’s “White Man’s Africa,” Stockton’s
“Bicycle of Cathay” and “The Great Stone of Sardis,”
John Fox, Jr.’s “Kentuckians,” Stephen Crane’s “Whilomville
Stories,” Mark Twain’s “Personal Recollections of
Joan of Arc,” Woodrow Wilson’s “Colonies and Nation,”
Mary E. Wilkins’ “Portion of Labor,” Mary Johnston’s
“Sir Mortimer,” and Margaret Deland’s “Awakening of
Helena Richie.” The International Magazine, founded
by Rufus W. Griswold in New York in 1850, was two
years later merged with Harper’s.
Putnam’s Monthly Magazine began publication in New
York in 1853. Its earlier editors were Charles F. Briggs
(whose pen name was “Harry Franco”), Parke Godwin,
George W. Curtis, and George P. Putnam. Among the
more important of the early contributions may be mentioned
“Shakespeare’s Scholar” by Richard Grant White,
“Early Years in Europe” by George H. Calvert, “The
Potiphar Papers” and “Prue and I” by George W. Curtis,
a series of political essays by Parke Godwin, “Fireside
Travels” and “A Moosehead Journal” by James Russell
Lowell, the “Sparrowgrass Papers” by Frederick S. Cozzens,
“Cape Cod” by Henry W. Thoreau, “Wensley”
by Edmund Quincy, and “Israel Potter” by Herman
Melville. Putnam’s was one of the first of American
magazines which restricted its pages to original contributions,
and which gave special attention to the encouragement
of the work of American writers. Published till
1857 and from 1868 till 1870, it was revived in 1906 as
Putnam’s Monthly, under the editorial direction of Joseph
B. Gilder and George H. Putnam. Putnam’s is still to
be described as a literary magazine, although space is
given also to illustrated articles on popular topics.
Putnam’s arranges with certain of the English magazines,
such as The Cornhill Magazine and The Fortnightly
Review, to share contributors, English as well as American.
The essays of Mrs. Richmond Ritchie (Thackeray’s
daughter) and of Mr. Arthur C. Benson, for instance,
have, under such an arrangement, been published simultaneously
in The Cornhill and in Putnam’s.
The year 1857 is memorable for the founding of The
Atlantic Monthly by the publishing firm of Phillips &
Sampson of Boston. James Russell Lowell became the
first editor, accepting the post on condition that Dr.
Holmes, who suggested the name, should be engaged as
the first contributor. Among those who wrote for the
first number were Longfellow, Lowell, Emerson, Motley,
Holmes (who began “The Autocrat”), Whittier, Charles
Eliot Norton, J. T. Trowbridge, Harriet Beecher Stowe,
and Parke Godwin. Most of these were already well
known authors. The list of contributors to The Atlantic
during the half-century of its life includes all of the most
illustrious of American writers—not only of New England,
but of all parts of the country. In religious thought its
attitude has been reverent but liberal. The achievements
of science have been set forth by men like Agassiz, Percival
Lowell, Simon Newcomb, John Trowbridge, George F.
Wright, and George H. Darwin. The new political and
economic questions have been discussed by such men
as President Roosevelt, former President Cleveland,
Richard Olney, Woodrow Wilson, Carl Schurz, John W.
Foster, Henry Loomis Nelson, Edward M. Shepard, Benjamin
Kidd, John Jay Chapman, and Thomas Nelson
Page. The fiction of The Atlantic has been produced
mainly by American writers—Hawthorne (“Septimius
Felton”), Henry James, Jr. (“Roderick Hudson,” “The
Portrait of a Lady”), Aldrich (“The Stillwater Tragedy,”
“Prudence Palfrey”), Bret Harte, Howells (“Their Wedding
Journey,” “A Chance Acquaintance,” “The Lady of
the Aroostook”), Mark Twain, Marion Crawford (“A
Roman Singer,” “Paul Patoff,” “Don Orsino”), Stockton
(“The House of Martha”), S. Weir Mitchell (“In War
Time”), Hopkinson Smith (“Caleb West”), Cable (“Bylow
Hill”), Paul Leicester Ford (“The Story of an Untold
Love”), Mary Johnston (“To Have and to Hold,” “Audrey”),
Sarah Orne Jewett (“The Tory Lover”), Margaret
Deland (“Sidney,” “Philip and His Wife”), Kate Douglas
Wiggin (“Penelope’s Progress”), and many others. An
equally brilliant list might be made of the essayists whose
best work has made its initial appearance in the form of
Atlantic articles. The editors have been Lowell (1857–1861),
James T. Fields, of the firm of Ticknor & Fields,
then the publishers (1861–1871), William Dean Howells
(1871–1880), Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1880–1890), Horace
E. Scudder (1890–1897), Walter H. Page (1897–1899),
and Bliss Perry—an illustrious roll. The Atlantic has
never changed its original purpose.
It is still [to quote a recent writer] an American magazine for
American readers.... It holds that the most important
service which an American magazine can perform is the interpretation
of this country to itself, by the promotion of sympathy
between the different sections of our varied population, the frank
examination of our national characteristics, the study of our
perplexing problems, the encouragement of our art and literature,
and the reinforcement of those moral and religious beliefs upon
which depends the success of our experiment in self-government.
These ideals largely explain the success and permanence
of The Atlantic. The Galaxy, founded in New York in
1866, after furnishing for several years an entertaining
literary and scientific miscellany, was in 1878 incorporated
with The Atlantic.
Lippincott’s Magazine, established in Philadelphia in
1868, continues to devote its chief energies to fiction,
though it has also published some notable poetry. Here
appeared Lanier’s “Corn,” Edward Kearsley’s “CampFire
Lyrics,” and some of the verse of Emma Lazarus,
Maurice Thompson, Paul H. Hayne, Celia Thaxter, and
Philip Bourke Marston.
The Overland Monthly (San Francisco, 1868–1875,
1883 to the present time) has faithfully mirrored the
picturesque and stirring life of the Far West. It absorbed
The Californian (1880–1882). The first five volumes were
edited by Bret Harte, and a large number of his stories,
probably forming his best literary work, first appeared in
its columns.
Old and New (Boston, 1870–1875) was conducted by
Edward Everett Hale with the intention of “squeezing
from the Old its lessons for the New” and of combining
amusing with instructive literature after the manner of the
Revue des Deux Mondes.
In 1870, Dr. Josiah G. Holland and Roswell B. Smith
projected Scribner’s Monthly (New York), and for eleven
years Dr. Holland was its editor. In 1881 it was changed
to The Century Magazine and under the editorship of
Richard Watson Gilder has taken high rank as a distinctively
popular magazine. It has given special attention
to popular history, and its literary, historical, and scientific
articles, generally substantial and meritorious, have
appealed to a wide range of readers. Like Harper’s, it
has drawn upon all of the leading writers, for example
Harte (“Gabriel Conroy”), Cable (“The Grandissimes,”
“Dr. Sevier”), Howells (“A Modern Instance,” “A Woman’s
Reason,” “Silas Lapham”), Stockton (“Rudder
Grange,” “The Merry Chanter,” “The Hundredth Man”),
Boyesen (“Falconberg”), John Hay (“The Bread-Winners”),
Henry James, Jr. (“Confidence,” “The Bostonians”),
Eugene Schuyler (“Peter the Great”), Joel
Chandler Harris (“Uncle Remus”), Hamlin Garland
(“Her Mountain Lover”), Mary Hallock Foote (“The
Led-Horse Claim,” “Cœur d’Alene”), Marion Crawford
(“Via Crucis”), Mark Twain (“Pudd’nhead Wilson”),
S. Weir Mitchell (“Characteristics,” “Hugh Wynne”).
Many poems of merit have also been printed in The
Century.
In 1887, Scribner’s Magazine was established by Charles
Scribner’s Sons, and has since taken rank as among
the first of American monthlies. It devotes proportionately
more space to literature than is given by its competitor,
The Century Magazine, and pays less attention
to so-called popular subjects. Like The Century, it contains
illustrations, which are characterised by a high artistic
standard. Scribner’s is under the editorial management
of Mr. Edward L. Burlingame. Like The Century, it is
published in London as well as in New York.
Among the other literary periodicals established
within the last quarter-century are The Bay State Monthly
(Boston, 1884–1885), which became in 1886 The New
England Magazine, and which confines itself chiefly to
the history and literature of New England; The Forum
(New York, since 1886), devoted to the discussion of
present-day questions; The Cosmopolitan (New York, since
1886), a typical popular monthly miscellany; The Arena
(New York, since 1889), which has been a fearless exponent
of advanced liberal thought; Munsey’s Magazine (New
York, since 1891), well illustrated, and claiming a circulation
of over 600,000 copies; McClure’s Magazine,
established by S. S. McClure in New York in 1893, which
by the end of its first year circulated 150,000 copies;
The Bookman (New York), edited since 1895 by Harry
Thurston Peck; and The Reader (Indianapolis, Indiana,
1902), now merged in Putnam’s Monthly.
The Annuals.—In the twenties and thirties of the last
century, too, the annuals were popular in America as in
England. Almost all of the leading authors contributed
to them. Among the best were The Talisman (New York,
1828–1830), written by Bryant, Verplanck, and Sands,
and illustrated by Inman, Samuel F. B. Morse, and others;
and The Token (Boston, 1828–1842), edited by S. G.
Goodrich (“Peter Parley”) and (in 1829) N. P. Willis, in
which appeared contributions by Longfellow, Hawthorne
(some “Twice-Told Tales”), Mrs. Child, Mrs. Sigourney,
and Mrs. Hale. In general, however, the American, like
the British annuals, included a large amount of mediocre
writing.
The Reviews.—The American reviews begin with The
American Review of History and Politics, founded by
Robert Walsh (Philadelphia, 1811–1813). In 1815 The
North American Review and Miscellaneous Journal was
founded in Boston and has consequently had the longest
life of all the periodicals now in existence. Its founder,
William Tudor, was, we have seen, a member of the Anthology
Club, and a writer of fine taste, who later did
good service in a diplomatic career in South America. The
Review was at first published every two months in numbers
of 150 pages each; after the seventh volume it appeared
quarterly in numbers of 250 pages each and at the same
time ceased to publish poetry and general news, thus
conforming more closely to the leading type of contemporary
British reviews. The most voluminous contributors
to the first sixty volumes were Judge Willard Phillips
(editor in 1817), Tudor, Edward and Alexander Everett
(editors in 1819–1822 and 1830–1836 respectively), Jared
Sparks (editor in 1822–1830), Bancroft, Francis Bowen
(editor in 1843–1853), Nathan Hale, George S. Hillard,
John G. Palfrey (editor in 1836–1843), Oliver, William,
and Andrew Peabody, Caleb Cushing, Cornelius C. Felton,
William H. Prescott, and Charles Francis Adams. Much
of Whipple’s criticism originally appeared here. Among
recent editors have been Lowell, Charles Eliot Norton,
Henry Adams, and Henry Cabot Lodge. Bryant’s “Thanatopsis”
first appeared here in September, 1817. The
book reviews, especially between 1850 and 1870, were
probably better than those usually found in any other
American periodical. In recent years the character of
The North American has largely changed. It now offers
monthly a collection of signed articles chiefly on current
political and social problems.
Other early reviews were The Christian Examiner and
Theological Review (Boston, 1824–1869, in 1870 merged
with Old and New), in which appeared some of the most
virile criticism of the time; The American Quarterly Review
(Philadelphia, 1827–1837), another of Walsh’s ventures
and a quarterly of merit; The Southern Review
(Charleston, 1828–1832, revived 1842–1855), started by
William Elliott and Hugh S. Legare; The Western Review
(Cincinnati, 1828–1830), founded by Timothy Flint; The
New York Review (1837–1842), established by Francis
L. Hawks and later edited by Joseph G. Cogswell and
Caleb S. Henry; The Boston Quarterly Review (1838–1842),
edited by Orestes A. Brownson, and merged with The
United States Magazine and Democratic Review (Washington
and New York, 1837–1852), which became The United
States Review (1853–1859); The New Englander (New
Haven, Conn., 1843–1892), for religious, historical, and
literary articles; The American Whig Review (New York,
1845–1852), started by George H. Colton and later edited
by Dr. James D. Whelpley; The Literary World (New
York, 1847–1853), ably edited by Evart A. Duyckinck;
The Massachusetts Quarterly Review (Boston, 1847–1850),
edited by Theodore Parker; The New York Quarterly
Review (1852–1853); and The National Quarterly Review
(New York, 1860–1880).
The Nation was founded as a weekly in New York in
1865 by Edwin Lawrence Godkin, who remained its editor
for a third of a century. Since 1881, when Mr. Godkin
assumed the editorial control of the New York Evening
Post, The Nation has been issued as the weekly edition of
The Evening Post. During the forty-three years of its
existence, The Nation has held a leading position in American
criticism and also as an exponent of American politics
considered from an independent point of view. From
1881 to 1905, The Nation was under the editorial management
of the late Wendell Phillips Garrison. It is now
under the direction of Mr. Hammond Lamont. The
literary department is conducted by Mr. Paul E. More,
who had, before assuming this editorial post, made a name
for himself in literary criticism.
The International Review (New York, 1874–1883) printed
many articles of solid worth. The Dial, semi-monthly,
was established in Chicago in 1880 by Francis F. Browne.
It has made a noteworthy reputation for a high standard
of American criticism, and has retained the services of
some of the ablest of American reviewers. The Critic
was founded, as a weekly literary journal, in New York,
in 1881, by Jeannette L. Gilder and Joseph B. Gilder.
It did good work in literary criticism and in the presentation
of literary news for twenty-five years, when it was
absorbed by Putnam’s Monthly. The Sewanee Review, a
quarterly founded at the University of the South, Sewanee,
Tennessee, in 1892, and The South Atlantic Quarterly,
founded at Durham, North Carolina, in 1902, are publishing
the best literary criticism in the South to-day.
Newspapers.—The plan of this Manual permits but a
brief reference to the more important of the newspapers
which have given attention to the interests of literature.
The New York Evening Post was founded in 1801, and
was for fifty-two years (1828–1880) edited by Bryant.
In 1819, it printed the well-known “Croaker Papers”
by Drake and Halleck. James K. Paulding was an occasional
contributor, and Whitman was one of its
Washington writers during the first year of the Civil War,
1861. Bret Harte was for a time on the editorial staff,
and the list of the literary critics includes the names of
John R. Thompson and John Bigelow. During the years
1881–1902, The Evening Post was under the editorial
control of Edwin L. Godkin, who was an Irishman by
birth, an Englishman by education, and an American
by what may be called natural selection. His editorials
in The Evening Post constitute a most important contribution
to the literature of journalism, or it may be
more precise to say to the journalism of literature. They
were forcible, witty, and incisive, and always represented
the earnest convictions of the writer. The Evening Post,
which still gives a full measure of dignified and effective
consideration to literature, is now under the editorial
direction of Messrs. Rollo Ogden and Oswald G. Villard.
Its literary department is managed by Paul E. More.
The New York Tribune was founded in 1841 by Horace
Greeley, who must also take rank as one of the noteworthy
American editors. For thirty-one years, George Ripley
had the chief responsibility for its literary department,
and among his associates were Bayard Taylor and Margaret
Fuller. A number of the more important reviews,
particularly those having to do with English criticism
and with poetry, were the work of Edmund C. Stedman.
Miss Ellen Hutchinson, later associated with Mr. Stedman
in editing the “Library of American Literature,” was
for many years on the literary staff of The Tribune.
The Sun was founded in 1833, and was for many years
managed by a third great American editor, Charles A.
Dana. The incisive force and stirring wit of Dana’s editorials
have probably never been equalled in American
journalism, unless it were in the columns of Godkin’s
Post. The Sun has always given much attention to literature,
and the weekly contributions of Mr. Mayo W.
Hazeltine have for many years taken first rank among
the critical literary essays of the day.
The Times was founded in 1851 by Henry J. Raymond,
an early associate of Horace Greeley. During the past
twelve years, The Times has given a larger measure of
attention to literature than any other paper in the country.
Its literary department finally became sufficiently important
to call for a separate printing, and it is now issued
as a weekly literary supplement. The present editor of
the supplement, which presents a convenient and comprehensive
summary of the publications of each week,
is Mr. William Bayard Hale. The literary supplement
has secured for its regular contributors a number of the
more capable critics of the day, among whom may be
mentioned Mr. Edward Cary, Miss Elizabeth Luther Cary,
Miss Hildegarde Hawthorne, and Mr. Montgomery Schuyler.
Of the other New York papers, The World was founded
in 1860, and during the years 1862–1876 was associated
with the name of Manton Marble, one of the scholarly
editors of his day. It is now controlled by Mr. Joseph
Pulitzer. The Express, founded in 1836, and for a series
of years the organ of the remarkable brothers James and
Erastus Brooks, was, about 1880, merged with The Mail,
also founded in 1836. The Commercial Advertiser, founded
early in the nineteenth century, became about 1890 The
Commercial Advertiser and the Globe, and later The Globe.
The Herald, founded in 1831 by the elder James Gordon
Bennett, is still under the control of the Bennett family.
It is most valuable to the community in its presentation
of news, but has not been distinctive on its literary side.
The Eagle, published in what is now the Borough of
Brooklyn, was founded about 1850. It has always taken
high rank for independence of political conviction and
also for the excellent literary quality of its editorials and
reviews. It has for many years been under the editorial
direction of St. Clair McKelway.
In New England, The Boston Transcript, founded in
1830, devotes much space to reviews and discussions of
literature and stands high for its catholicity of judgment
and discriminating taste. Among the papers in the smaller
New England cities should be specified The Republican,
of Springfield, Massachusetts, founded in 1824, the ownership
of which has for three generations been in the Bowles
family. It has included among its contributors some of
the ablest writers of New England. The Courant, of
Hartford, Connecticut, had the advantage for many years
of the editorship of Charles Dudley Warner.
In the Middle West, the Chicago Tribune, founded in
1847, is to be recalled for its association with the life-work
of one of America’s ablest journalists, Joseph Medill. In
Cincinnati, The Commercial had the advantage for many
years of the editorial direction of Murat Halsted. In
the Southwest, the Louisville (Kentucky) Journal, founded
in 1830, will always be associated with the name of George
D. Prentice. The Journal was in 1868 merged with The
Courier and, as The Courier-Journal, has since been under
the direction of Mr. Henry Watterson, a survivor of the
type of “strenuous” Southern journalism.
The Washington National Era, published between the
years 1847 and 1860, is to be noted as having presented to
the world “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” In the contest for
abolition which this book did so much to bring to a
triumphant end, The Liberator (1831–1866), carried on
by William Lloyd Garrison, and The National Anti-Slavery
Standard (1840–1872), conducted by Wendell Phillips,
should also be mentioned. These two men differed sharply
from each other from time to time as to the methods to
be pursued, but were at one in their fierce antagonism to
slavery and in their readiness to devote their lives, if need
be, to its extinction.