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BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME 
 FROM THE 
 
 SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND 
 
 THE GIFT OF 
 
 iiettvg m. Sage 
 
 1891 
 
Cornell University Library 
 PS 121.W58 
 
 American literature, and other papers 
 
 3 1924 022 015 253 
 
PS 
 
ii 
 
 ffl^ Cornell University 
 WM Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924022015253 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 RECOLLECTIONS OF EMINENT MEN. 
 
 SUMNER, GEORGE TICKNOR, 
 
 CHOATE, BARRY CORNWALL, 
 
 AGASSIZ, GEORGE ELIOT, 
 
 MOTLEY, MATTHEW ARNOLD, 
 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 I vol. With portrait of Mr. Whipple, and Dr. Eartol's 
 Memorial Address. $1.50; in half calf, $3.00. 
 
 "A positively fascinating piece of reading." — Hartford 
 Coura Ht. 
 
 " The incidents with which he crowds his pages make it flash 
 with brilliancy and at the same lime represent the man." — 
 Jmi'/'tiident. 
 
 ■' A flashing eloquence of style and a delicate discrimination 
 — most engaging and ably written." — jV. K. Telegram. 
 
 " No English critic ever surpassed Mr. Whipple in the pre- 
 cision of his judgments, the entire calmness of his reasoning, 
 the perfection of his pictures, and the luminous clearness of his 
 style. His essays are not an introduction to literature but the 
 very essence of literature itseU." — The Beacon {Bostoji). 
 
 OTHER VOLUMES IN PREPARATION. 
 
 For sale by all booksellers. Sent, post-paid, on re- 
 ceipt of the price, by the publishers^ 
 
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AMERICAN LITERATURE 
 
AMERICAN 
 
 LITERATURE 
 
 ^nti ©tljer f apa;s 
 
 BY 
 
 EDWIN PERCY WHIPPLE 
 
 WITH INTRODUCTORY NOTE 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 TICK NOR AND COMPANY 
 
 1887 
 
Copyrigk, 1887, 
 By Ticknok and Co. 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 
 John Wilson and Son, Cambridge. 
 
NOTE. 
 
 Thanks are due to Messrs. Little, Brown, & Co. 
 for their kind permission to use tlie Essay on "Daniel 
 Webster as a Master of English Style," — originally 
 prepared as an introduction to their collection of 
 Webster's " Great Speeches and Orations," — and to 
 the publishers of " Harper's Monthly " and the " North 
 American Review," for the articles reprinted from 
 those publications. 
 
TO 
 
 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER, 
 
 Eijt People's ^oet, 
 
 THE LOYAL FRIEND, 
 
 WHOSE INNER LIGHT HAS BRIGHTENED MANY LIVES 
 
 AND WHOSE FAITH I.N THE ETERNAL 
 
 ASSURED MANY HEARTS 
 
 OF IMMORTALITY. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Pagb 
 
 INTRODUCTION xiii 
 
 American Literature . 1 
 
 Daniel Webster as a Master of English Style . . 139 
 
 Emerson and Carltle . .... 234 
 
 Emerson as a Poet . . . . . 259 
 
 Character and Genius of Thomas Starr King . . 299 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 I HATE been pained to learn of the decease of my 
 friend of many years, Edwin P. Whipple. Death, 
 however expected, is always something of a surprise, 
 and in his case I was not prepared for it by knowing 
 of any sei'ious failure of his health. With the possible 
 exception of Lowell and Matthew Arnold, he was the 
 ablest critical essayist of his time ; and the place he 
 has left will not be readily filled. 
 
 Scarcely inferior to Macaulay in brilliance of diction 
 and graphic portraiture, he was freer from prejudice 
 and passion, and more loyal to the truth of fact and 
 history. He was athoi'ouglily honest man. He wrote 
 with conscience always at his elbow, and never sacri- 
 ficed his real convictions for the sake of epigram and 
 antithesis. He instinctively took the right side of the 
 questions that came before him for decision, even when 
 by so doing he ranked himself with the unpopular 
 minority. He had the manliest hatred of hypocrisy 
 
xiv INTRODUCTION. 
 
 aud meanness ; but if his language had at times the 
 severity of justice, it was never merciless. He " set 
 down naught in malice." 
 
 Never blind to faults, he had a quick and sympa- 
 thetic eye for any real excellence, or evidence of 
 reserved strength in the author under discussion. He 
 was a modest man, sinking his own personality out of 
 sight, and he always seemed to me more interested 
 in the success of others than in his own. Many of 
 his literary contemporaries have had reason to thank 
 him not only for his cordial recognition and gener- 
 ous praise, but for the firm and yet kindly hand 
 which pointed out deficiencies and errors of taste 
 and judgment. As one of those who have found 
 pleasure and profit in his writings in the past, I 
 would gratefully commend them to the generation 
 which survives him. His " Literature of the Age 
 of Elizabeth " is deservedly popular, but there are 
 none of his Essays which will not repay a careful 
 study. "What works of Mr. Baxter shall I read?" 
 asked Boswell of Dr. Johnson. " Read any of 
 them," was the answer, " for they are all good." 
 
 He will have an honored place in the history of 
 American literature. But I cannot now dwell upon his 
 
INTRODUCTION. xv 
 
 authorship while thinking of him as the beloved mem- 
 ber of a literary circle now, alas ! sadly broken. I re- 
 call the wise, genial companion and faithful friend of 
 nearly half a century, the memory of whose words and 
 acts of kindness moistens my eyes as I write. 
 
 It is the inevitable sorrow of age that one's compan- 
 ions must drop away on the right hand and the left 
 with increasing frequency, until we are compelled to 
 ask with Wordsworth, — 
 
 " Who next Bhall fall aud disappear ? " 
 
 But in the case of him who has just passed from us, 
 we have the satisfaction of knowing that his life-work 
 has been well and faithfully done, and that he leaves 
 behind him only friends. 
 
 JOHN Q. WHITTIEE. 
 
 Danvers, 6th Mo. 18, 1886. 
 
AMERICAN LTTEKATUHE 
 
 AND 
 
 OTHER PAPERS. 
 
 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 
 
 [1776-1876.] 
 I. 
 
 In a retrospect of what has been done in American 
 literature during the past hundred years, it is of the 
 first importance to draw a sharp line of distinction 
 between the mental powers displayed in literature 
 and those which have been exhibited in industrial 
 creation, in statesmansliip, and in the abstract and 
 applied sciences. The literature of America is but an 
 insufficient measure of the realized capacities of the 
 American mind. When Sir William Hamilton de- 
 clared that Aristotle had an imagination as great as 
 that of Homer, he struck at the primary fact that the 
 creative energies of the human mind may be exercised 
 in widely different lines of direction. Imagination is, 
 in the popular mind, obstinately connected with poetry 
 and romance. This prejudice is further deepened by 
 associating imagination with amiable emotions, regard- 
 less of the fact that two of the greatest characters 
 
 1 
 
2 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 
 
 created by the human imagination are two of the vil- 
 est types of intelligent nature, — lago and Mephisto- 
 pheles. When the attempt is made to extend the 
 application of the creative energy of imagination to 
 business and politics, the sentimental outcry against 
 such a profanation of the term becomes almost deaf- 
 ening. Every poetaster is willing to admit that New- 
 ton is one of the few grand scientific discoverers that 
 the world has produced ; but he still thinks that, in 
 virtue of versifying some commonplaces of emotion 
 and thought, he is himself supei'ior to Newton in im- 
 agination. The truth is that, in spite of Newton's 
 incapacity to appreciate works of literature and art, 
 he possessed a creative imagination of the first class, 
 — an imagination which, in boundless fertility, is 
 second only to Shakspeare's. In fact, it is the direc- 
 tion given to the creative faculty, and not to the 
 materials on which it works, that discriminates be- 
 tween Fulton and Bryant, Whitney and Longfellow, 
 Bigelow and Whittier, Goodyear and Lowell. De- 
 scending from the inventors, it would be easy to show 
 that in the conduct of the everj'-day transactions of 
 life, more quickness of imagination, subtilty and 
 breadth of understanding, and energy of will have 
 been displayed by our men of business than by our 
 authors. By the necessities of our position, the ag- 
 gregate mind of the country has been exercised in 
 creating the nation as we now find it. There is, in- 
 deed, something ludicrous, to a large observer of all 
 the phenomena of our national life, in confounding 
 
AMERICAN LITERATURE. 3 
 
 the brain and heart of the United States with the 
 manifestation that either has found in mere literary 
 expression. The nation outvalues all its authors, 
 even in respect to those powers which authors are 
 supposed specially to represent. Nobody can write 
 intelligently of the progress of American literature 
 during the past hundred years without looking at 
 American literature as generally subsidiary to the 
 grand movement of the American mind. 
 
 It is curious, however, that the only apparent con- 
 tradiction to this general principle dates from the 
 beginning of our national life. At the time the 
 American Revolution broive out, the two men who 
 best represented the double aspect of the thought of 
 the colonies were Jonathan Edwards and Benjamin 
 Franklin. Both come within the domain of the his- 
 torian of literature, for both were great forces in our 
 literature, whose influence is yet unspent. Of Jona- 
 than Edwards, the greatest of American theologians 
 and metaphysicians, and a religious genius of the first 
 order, it is impossible to speak without respect, and 
 even reverence. No theologian born in our country 
 has exercised more influence on minds and souls kin- 
 dred to his own. Those who opposed him recognized 
 his pre-eminent powers of intellect. Everybody felt, 
 in assailing such a consummate reasoner, the restrain- 
 ing modesty which a master-spirit always evokes in 
 the minds of his adversaries. His treatise on the 
 "Will has been generally accepted as one of the marvels 
 of intellectual acuteness, exercised on one of the most 
 
4 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 
 
 difficult problems which have ever tested the resources 
 of the human intellect. There have been many an- 
 swers to it, but no answer which is generally consid- 
 ered unanswerable. Such works, indeed, as this of 
 Edwards on the Will are not so much answered or 
 refuted as gradually outgrown. But the treatise has 
 certainly exercised and strengthened all the minds 
 that have resolutely grappled with it, and has aided 
 the development of the logical powers of American 
 orthodox divines in a remarkable degree. Whether 
 a controversialist agrees with its author, or dissents 
 from him, Edwards always quickens the mental activ- 
 ity of everybody who strives to follow the course of 
 his argumentation, or to detect the lurking fallacy 
 which is supposed to be discoverable somewhere in 
 the premises or processes of his logic. Perhaps this 
 fallacy is to be found in the various senses in which 
 Edwards uses the vital word " determination." To 
 most readers who believe the will to be abstractly 
 free, but that the actions of men commonly proceed 
 from the characters they have gradually formed, the 
 most satisfactory explanation of the mystery is that 
 of Jouffroy, who declares that " Liberty is the ideal 
 of the Me." Others may obtain consolation from Gil- 
 fillan's somewhat flippant remark, that everything a 
 man does is not necessary before he does it, but is 
 necessary after he has done it. Essentially the doc- 
 trine of Edwards agrees with that of philosophical 
 necessity, and with that so vehemently urged by 
 many scientists, that the actions of men are as much 
 
AMERICAN LITERATURE. 6 
 
 controlled by law as the movements of the planets. 
 The great difference between Edwards's theory and the 
 others is, that he connects his metaphysics with a 
 theological system, and his treatise remains as a kind 
 of practical argument for the everlasting damnation 
 of those who question the infallibility of its logic. 
 
 Edwards's large and subtle understanding was con- 
 nected with an imagination of intense realizing power, 
 and both were based on a soul of singular purity, open 
 on many sides to communications from the Divine 
 Mind. He had an almost preternatural conception of 
 the " exceeding sinfulness of sin." His imagination 
 was filled with ghastly images of the retribution which 
 awaits on iniquity, and his reasoned sermons on eter- 
 nal torments were but the outbreak of a sensitive feel- 
 ing, a holy passion for goodness, which made him 
 intolerant of any excellence which did not approach 
 his ideal of godliness. But then his spiritual experi- 
 ence, though it inflamed one side of his imagination 
 with vivid pictures of the terrors of hell, on the other 
 side gave the most enrapturing visions of the spiritual 
 joys of heaven. It is unfortunate^ for his fame that 
 his hell has obtained for him more popular recogni- 
 tion than his heaven. Like other poets, such as Dante 
 and Milton, his pictures of the torments of the damned 
 have cast into the shade that celestial light which 
 shines so lovingly over his pictures of the bliss of the 
 redeemed. True religion, he tells us, consists in a 
 great measure in holy affections, — in " a love of di- 
 vine things for the beauty and sweetness of their 
 
6 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 
 
 moral excellency." " Sweetness " is a frequent word 
 all through Edwards's works, when he desires to con- 
 vey his perception of the satisfactions which await on 
 piety in this world, and the ineffable joy of the expe- 
 riences of pious souls in the next ; and this word he 
 thrills with a transcendent depth of suggestive mean- 
 ing which it bears in no dictionary, nor in the vocabu- 
 lary of any other writer of the English language. He 
 was certainly one of the holiest souls that ever ap- 
 peared on the planet. The admiration which has 
 been generally awarded to his power of reasoning 
 should be extended to his power of affirming, that is, 
 when he affirms ideas coming from those moods of 
 blessedness in which his soul seems to be in direct 
 contact with divine things, and vividly beholds what 
 in other discourses his mind reasons up to or about. 
 To reach these divine heights, however, you must, 
 according to Edwards, mount the stairs of dogma 
 built by Augustine and Calvin. 
 
 Jonathan Edwards may be characterized as a man 
 of the next world. Benjamin Franklin was emphati- 
 cally a man of this world. Not that Franklin lacked 
 religion and homely practical piety, but he had none 
 of Edwards's intense depth of religious experience. 
 God was to him a beneficent being, aiding good men 
 in their hard struggles with the facts of life, and not 
 pitiless to those who stumbled in the path of duty, 
 or even to those who widely diverged from it. The 
 heaven of Edwards was as far above his spiritual 
 vision as the hell of Edwards was below his soundings 
 
AMERICAN LITERATURE. 7 
 
 of the profundities of human wickedness ; but there 
 never was a person who so swiftly distinguished an 
 honest man from a rogue, or who was more quick to 
 see that the rogue was at war with the spiritual con- 
 stitution of things. He seems to have learned his 
 morality in a practical way. All his early slips from 
 the straight line of duty were but experiments, from 
 which he drew lessons in moral wisdom. If he hap- 
 pened occasionally to lapse into vice, he made the 
 experience of vice a new fortress to defend his virtue ; 
 and he came out of the temptations of youth and 
 middle age with a character generally recognized as 
 one of singular solidity, serenity, and benignity. His 
 intellect, in the beautiful harmony of its faculties, his 
 conscience, in the instinctive sureness of its percep- 
 tion of the relations of duties, and his heart, in its 
 subordination of malevolent to beneficent emotions, — 
 all showed how diligent he had been in the austere 
 self-culture which eventually raised him to the first 
 rank among the men of his time. Simplicity was the 
 fine result of the complexities which entered into his 
 mind and character. He was a man who never used 
 words except to express positive thoughts or emotions, 
 and was never tempted to misuse them for the pur- 
 poses of declamation. He kept his style always on 
 the level of his character. In announcing his scien- 
 tific discoveries, as in his most private letters, he is 
 ever simple. In breadth of mind he is probably the 
 most eminent man that our country has produced ; 
 for while he was the greatest diplomatist, and one of 
 
8 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 
 
 the greatest statesmen and patriots of the United 
 States, he was also a discoverer in science, a benig- 
 nant philanthropist, and a master in that rare art of 
 so associating words with things that they appeared 
 identical. Edwards represents, humanly speaking, the 
 somewhat doleful doctrine that the best thing a good 
 man can do is to get out, as soon as he decently can, 
 of this world into one which is immeasurably better, 
 by devoting all his energies to the salvation of his 
 own particular soul. Franklin, on the contrary, 
 seems perfectly content with this world, as long as 
 he thinks he can better it. Edwards would doubtless 
 have considered Franklin a child of wrath, but Francis 
 Bacon would have hailed him as one of that band of 
 explorers who, by serving Nature, will in the end 
 master her mysteries, and use their knowledge for 
 the service of man. Indeed, the cheerful, hopeful 
 spirit which runs through Franklin's writings, even 
 when he was tried by obstacles which might have 
 tasked the proverbial patience of Job, is not one of 
 the least of his claims upon the consideration of those 
 who rightfully glory in having such a genius for their 
 countryman. The spirit which breathes through 
 Franklin's life and works is that which has in- 
 spired every pioneer of our "Western wastes, every 
 poor farmer who has tried to make both ends meet 
 by the exercise of rigid economy, every inventor who 
 has attempted to serve men by making machines do 
 half the drudgery of their work, every statesman who 
 has striven to introduce large principles into our some- 
 
AMERICAN LITERATURE. 9 
 
 what confused and contradictory legislation, every 
 American diplomatist who has upheld the character 
 of his country abroad by sagacity in managing men, 
 as well as by integrity in the main purpose of his 
 mission, and every honest man who has desired to 
 diminish the evil there is in the world, and to increase 
 every possible good that is conformable to good sense. 
 Franklin is doubtless our Mr. Worldly Wiseman, but 
 his worldly wisdom ever points to the Christian's 
 prayer that God's will shall be done on earth as it is 
 done in heaven. 
 
 One of the most ludicrous misinterpretations of this 
 large, bounteous, and benignant intelligence is that 
 which confines his influence to the little corner of his 
 mind in which he lodged " Poor Richard." It is com- 
 mon even now to hear complaints from opulent Eng- 
 lish gentlemen that Franklin has done much to make 
 the average American narrow in mind, hard of heart, 
 greedy of small gains, mean in little economies. This 
 is said of a nation the poorer portions of whose popu- 
 lation are needlessly wasteful, and whose riclier por- 
 tions astonish Europe annually by the profusion witli 
 which they scatter dollars to the right and the left. 
 The maxims of poor Richard are generally good, and 
 the more they are circulated, the more practical good 
 they will do ; for our countrymen are remarkable 
 rather for violating than for obeying them. In all 
 these criticisms on Franklin, however, it is strange 
 that few have observed what a delicious specimen of 
 humorous characterization he has introduced into lit- 
 
10 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 
 
 erature in his charming delineation of Poor Richard. 
 The effect is heightened by the groaning, droning way 
 in which the good man delivers his bits of wisdom, as 
 if he desjiairingly felt that the rustics around him 
 would disregard his advice and monitions, and pass 
 through the usual experiences of the passions, insen- 
 sible to the gasping, croaking voice which warned 
 them in advance. 
 
 Franklin is probably the best specimen that history 
 affords of what is called a self-made man. He cer- 
 tainly " never worshipped his maker," according to 
 Mr. Clapp's stinging epigram, but was throughout his 
 life, though always self-respectful, never self-conceited. 
 Perhaps the most notable result of his self-education 
 was the ease with which he accosted all grades and 
 classes of men on a level of equality. The printer's 
 boy became, in his old age, one of the most popular 
 men in the French court, not only among its states- 
 men, but among its frivolous nobles and their wives. 
 He ever estimated men at their true worth or worth- 
 lessness ; but as a diplomatist he was a marvel of 
 sagacity. The same ease of manner which recom- 
 mended him to a Pennsylvania farmer was preserved 
 in a conference with a statesman or a king. He ever 
 kept his end in view in all his complaisances, and that 
 end was always patriotic. When he returned to his 
 country he was among the most earnest to organize 
 the liberty he had done so much to achieve ; and he 
 also showed his hostility to the system of negro slav- 
 ery with which the United States was accursed. At 
 
AMERICAN LITERATURE. 11 
 
 the ripe age of eighty-four he died, leaving behind 
 him a record of extraordinary faithfulness in the per- 
 formance of all the duties of life. His sagacity, when 
 his whole career is surveyed, amounts almost to saint- 
 liness ; for his sagacity was uniformly devoted to the 
 accomplishment of great public ends of policy or 
 beneficence. 
 
 Edwards was born three years before Franklin, and 
 died in 1758, nearly twenty years before the war broke 
 out. Franklin died in 1790. Both being representa- 
 tive men, may properly be taken as points of departure 
 in considering those writers and thinkers who were 
 educated under the influences of the pre-Revolutionary 
 period of our literary history. The writings of Wash- 
 ington, Adams, Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison, Jay, 
 are a recognized portion of our literature, because the 
 hoarded wisdom slowly gathered in by their practical 
 knowledge of life crops out in their most familiar 
 correspondence. A truism announced by such men 
 brightens into a truth, because it has evidently been 
 tested and proved by their experience in conducting 
 affairs. There is an elemental grandeur in Washing- 
 ton's character and career which renders impertinent 
 all mere criticism on his style ; for what he was and 
 what he did are felt to outvalue a hundredfold what 
 he wrote, except we consider his writings as mere 
 records of his sagacity, wisdom, patience, disinterest- 
 edness, intrepidity, and fortitude. John Adams had 
 a large, strong, vehement mind, interested in all ques- 
 tions relating to government. He was a personage 
 
12 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 
 
 of indomitable individuality, large acquirements, quick 
 insight, and resolute civic courage ; but the storm and 
 stress of public affairs gave to much of his thinking 
 a character of intellectual irritation, rather than of 
 sustained intellectual energy. His moral impatience 
 was such that he seems to fret as he thinks. Jeffer- 
 son, of all our early statesmen, was the most efficient 
 master of the pen, and the most " advanced " political 
 thinker. In one sense, as the author of the Declara- 
 tion of Independence, he may be called the greatest, 
 or at least the most generally known, of American 
 authors. But in his private correspondence his liter- 
 ary talent is most displayed, for by his letters he built 
 up a party which ruled the United States for nearly 
 half a century, and wliich was, perhaps, only over- 
 turned because its opponents cited the best portions 
 of Jefferson's writings against conclusions derived 
 from the worst. In executive capacity he was rela- 
 tively weak ; but his mistakes in policy and his feeble- 
 ness in administration, wliich would have ruined an 
 ordinary statesman at the head of so turbulent a com- 
 bination of irascible individuals as the democratic 
 party of the United States, were all condoned by 
 those minor leaders of faction who, yielding to the 
 magic persuasiveness of his pen, assured their follow- 
 ers that the great man could do no wrong. Read in 
 connection with the events of his time, Jefferson's 
 writings must be considered of permanent value and 
 interest. As a political leader he was literally a man 
 of letters ; and his letters are masterpieces, if viewed 
 
AMERICAN LITERATURE. 13 
 
 as illustrations of the arts by which political leader- 
 ship may be attained. In his private correspondence 
 he was a model of urbanity and geniality. The whole 
 impression derived from his works is that he was a 
 better man than his enemies would admit him to be, 
 and not so great a man as his partisans declared him 
 to be. Few public men who have been assailed with 
 equal fury have exhibited a more philosophical temper 
 in noticing assailants. Though occasionally spiteful 
 in his references to rivals, his leading fault, as a polit- 
 ical leader, was not so much in being himself a 
 libeller as in the protection he extended to libellers 
 who lampooned men obnoxious to him. His own 
 mind seems to have been singularly temperate ; but 
 he had a marvellous toleration for the intemperance of 
 the rancorous defamers of Washington, Hamilton, 
 and Adams. The Federalists hated him with such a 
 mortal hatred, and showered on him such an amount 
 of horrible invective, that he may have witnessed with 
 a sarcastic smile the still coarser and fiercer calum- 
 nies which the band of assassins of character in his 
 interest showered on the leading Federalists. Jeffer- 
 son in this contest proved himself capable of malice 
 as well as insincerity ; but in a scrutiny of his Works 
 it will be found that individually he had more amenity 
 of temper than his opponents, for it must be remem- 
 bei'ed that in his political career he was stigmatized 
 not only as the most wicked and foolish of politicians, 
 but as the sultan of a negro harem, and that every 
 circumstance of his private life was malignantly mis- 
 
14 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 
 
 represented. Many eminent New England divines 
 regarded him as an atheist as well as an anarchist, 
 and thundered at him from their pulpits as though he 
 was a new incarnation of the evil principle. Jeffer- 
 son's comparative moderation, in view of the savage 
 fierceness of the attacks on his personal, political, and 
 moral character, must on the whole be commended ; 
 but still his moderation covered a large amount of pri- 
 vate intrigue, and a readiness to use underhand means 
 to compass what he may have deemed beneficent ends. 
 The names of Hamilton, Madison, and Jay are in- 
 separably associated as the authors of the " Federal- 
 ist," the political classic of the United States. Of 
 the essays it contains, Hamilton wrote fifty-one, Mad- 
 ison twenty-nine, and Jay five. It is generally consid- 
 ered that Hamilton's are the best. Indeed, Alexander 
 Hamilton was, next to Franklin, the most consummate 
 statesman among the band of eminent men who had 
 been active in the Revolution, and who afterward 
 labored to convert a loose confederation of States 
 into a national government. His mind was as plastic 
 as it was vigorous and profound. It was the appro- 
 priate intellectual expression of a poised nature whose 
 power was rarely obtrusive, because it was half con- 
 cealed by the harmonious adjustment of its various 
 faculties. It was a mind deep enough to grasp prin- 
 ciples, and broad enough to regard relations, and 
 fertile enough to devise measures. Indeed, the most 
 practical of our early statesmen was also the most 
 inventive. He was as ready with new expedients to 
 
AMERICAN LITERATUllB. 15 
 
 meet unexpected emergencies as he was wise in sub- 
 ordinating all expedients to clearly defined principles. 
 In intellect lie was probably the most creative of our 
 early statesmen, as in sentiment Jefferson was the 
 most widely influential. And Hamilton was so bent 
 on practical ends that he was indifferent to the repu- 
 tation which might have resulted from a parade of 
 originality in the means he devised for their accom- 
 plishment. There never was a statesman less egotis- 
 tic, less desirous of labelling a policy as "my " policy; 
 and one of the sources of his influence was the subtle 
 way in which he insinuated into other minds ideas 
 which they appeared to originate. His moderation, 
 his self-command, the exquisite courtesy of his man- 
 ners, the persuasiveness of his ordinary speech, the 
 fascination of his extraordinary speeches, and the 
 mingled dignity and ease with which he met men of 
 all degrees of intellect and character, resulted in 
 making his political partisans look up to him as 
 almost an object of political adoration. It is difficult 
 to say what this accomplished man might have done 
 as a leader of the Federal opposition to the Demo- 
 cratic administrations of Jefferson and Madison, had 
 he not, in the maturity of his years and in the full ^igor 
 of his faculties, been murdered by Aaron Burr. Noth- 
 ing can better illustrate the folly of the practice of 
 duelling than the fact that, by a weak compliance with 
 its maxims, the most eminent of American statesmen 
 died by the hand of the most infamous of American 
 demagogues. Certainly Hamilton had no need to 
 
16 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 
 
 accept a challenge in order to vindicate his claim to 
 courage. That had been abundantly shown in the 
 field, at the bar, in the cabinet, before the people. 
 There was hardly any form of courage, military, civic, 
 or moral, in which he had not proved that he was 
 insensible to every kind of fear. The most touching 
 expression of it was, perhaps, the confession he pub- 
 licly made that he had been entrapped into a guilty 
 intrigue with a wily woman. Tiie confession was 
 necessary, to vindicate his integrity as a statesman, 
 assailed by rancorous enemies. In reading it one is 
 impressed with the innate dignity of character which 
 such a mortifying disclosure of criminal weakness 
 could not essentially degrade ; and the allusion to his 
 noble wife can hardly even now be read without tears. 
 " This confession," he nobly says, " is not made with- 
 out a blush. I cannot be the apologist of any vice be- 
 cause the ardor of passion may have made it mine. 
 I can never cease to condemn myself for the pang 
 which it may inflict on a bosom eminently entitled to 
 all my gratitude, fidelity, and love ; but that bosom 
 will approve that, even at so great an expense, I should 
 effectually wipe away a more serious stain from a name 
 which it cherishes with no less elevation than tender- 
 ness. The public, too, I trust, will excuse the con- 
 fession. The necessity of it to my defence against a 
 more heinous charge could alone have extorted from 
 me so painful an indecorum." 
 
 John Jay, another of the wise statesmen of the 
 Revolution, who survived to perform services of ines- 
 
AMERICAN LITERATURE. 17 
 
 timable value to the new constitutional government, 
 was a man whose character needs no apologists. 
 Webster finely said that " the spotless ermine of the 
 judicial robe, when it fell on the shoulders of John 
 Jay, touched nothing not as spotless as itself." His 
 integrity ran down into the very roots of his moral 
 being, and honesty was in him a passion as well as a 
 principle. A great publicist as well as an incorrupt- 
 ible patriot, with pronounced opinions which exposed 
 him to all the shafts of faction, his most low-minded 
 and venomous adversaries felt that both his private 
 and public character were unassailable. The cele- 
 brated " treaty " with Great Britain which he nego- 
 tiated as the minister of the United States occasioned 
 an outburst of Democratic wrath such as few Ameri- 
 can diplomatists have ever been called upon to face ; 
 but in all the fury of the opposition to it, few oppo- 
 nents were foolish enough to assail his integrity in 
 assailing his judgment and general views of public 
 policy. 
 
 Judge Story once said that to James Madison and 
 Alexander Hamilton we were mainly indebted for the 
 Constitution of the United States. It is curious that 
 to Madison we are also mainly indebted for those Vir- 
 ginia " Resolutions of '98," which have been used to 
 justify nullification and secession. With all his men- 
 tal ability, Madison had not much original force of 
 nature. He leaned now to Hamilton, now to Jeffer- 
 son, and at last fell permanently under the influence 
 of the genius of the latter. He was lacking in that 
 
 2 
 
18 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 
 
 grand moral and intellectual impulse, underlying mere 
 knowledge and logic, -which distinguishes the man 
 who reasons from the mere reasoner. His character 
 was not on a level with his talents and acquirements ; 
 his much-vaunted moderation came from the absence 
 rather than from the control of passion ; and his un- 
 derstanding, though broad, was somewhat mechanical 
 in its operations, and had no foundation in a corre- 
 sponding breadth of nature. The " Resolutions of '98," 
 which Southern Democrats came gradually to consider 
 as of equal authority with the Constitution, were 
 originally devised for a transient party purpose. The 
 passage of the Alien and Sedition Laws, during the 
 administration of John Adams, provoked Jefferson 
 into writing a new " Declaration of Independence " — 
 in this case directed not against Great Britain, but 
 against the United States. He drew up a series of 
 resolutions, which he sent to one of his subagents, 
 George Nicholas, of Kentucky, to be adopted by the 
 Legislature of that State. They were, with some 
 omissions, passed. These resolutions substantially 
 declared that the Federal Constitution was a compact 
 between sovereign States, and that in case of a sup- 
 posed violation of the compact, each party to it, as in 
 other cases of parties having no common judge, had 
 "an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infrac- 
 tions as of the mode and measure of redress." In a 
 somewhat modified form, but still implicitly contain- 
 ing the poison of nullification, similar resolutions, 
 drafted by Madison, were passed by the Legislature 
 
AMERICAN LITERATURE. 19 
 
 of Virginia. The object evidently was to frighten the 
 general government by a threat of State resistance to 
 its authority, without any settled purpose of nullifica- 
 tion or rebellion. When Jefferson and Madison be- 
 came successively Presidents of the United States, 
 they seemed to have forgotten their " resolutions," 
 except to express their horror when, seventeen years 
 afterward, a few mild Federal gentlemen, meeting at 
 Hartford, appeared to show some vague intention of 
 availing themselves of the precious constitutional doc- 
 trines which Jefferson and Madison had so boldly 
 announced. The " Resolutions of '98" must be con- 
 sidered an important portion of our national literature, 
 for they were exultingly adduced as the logical justifi- 
 cation of the gigantic rebellion of 1861. It is rare, 
 even in the history of political factions, that a string 
 of cunningly written resolves, designed to meet a 
 mere party emergency, should thus cost a nation 
 thousands of millions of treasure and hundreds of 
 thousands of lives. 
 
 When an armed ship has her upper deck cut down, 
 and is thus reduced to an inferior class, it is said that 
 she is " razeed." Fisher Ames may be called, on this 
 principle, a razeed Burke. Of all the Federal writers 
 and speakers of his time, he bears away the palm of 
 eloquence. He has something of Burke's affluence of 
 imagination, something of Burke's power of condens- 
 ing political wisdom into epigrammatic apothegms, 
 and more than Burke's hatred of "French principles;" 
 but he lacks the immense moral force of Burke's 
 
20 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 
 
 individuality, the large scope of his reason, the over- 
 ■vvhelming intensity of his passion. Still, his merits 
 as a writer, when compared with those of most of his 
 contemporaries, are so striking that his countrymen 
 seem unjust in allowing such an author to drop out of 
 the memory of the nation. He was the despairing 
 champion of a dying cause ; he decorated the grave 
 of Federalism with some of the choicest flowers of 
 rhetoric ; but the flowers are now withered, and the 
 tomb itself hardly receives its dae meed of honor. 
 
 The most eminent writers of the period which ex- 
 tends from 1776 to the first decade of the nineteenth 
 century were either statesmen or theologians. Be- 
 tween these the poets, essayists, and romancers occupy 
 a comparatively subordinate place ; for we estimate the 
 value of a literature, not so much by the character of 
 the subjects with which it deals, as by the power of 
 mind it evinces in dealing with them. As it regards 
 our scholars and men of letters of that time, it must 
 be remembered that the colonies were colonies of in- 
 tellectual as well as of political Britain, and that their 
 ideals of intellectual excellence were formed on Eng- 
 lish models. Our poets could only give a local color 
 to a diction which was essentially that of Milton, or 
 Dryden, or Pope, or Goldsmith, or Gray. They im- 
 itated these poets in a vain attempt to attain their 
 elevation, simplicity, or compactness of style ; but in 
 doing this they merely did what contemporary versi- 
 fiers in London or Edinburgh were intent on doing. 
 Their verse has not survived, but it is not more com- 
 
AMERICAN LITERATURE. 21 
 
 pletely forgotten than the verse of Mason, and Hayley, 
 and Henry James Pye. They could write heroic verse 
 as well as most of the English imitators of Pope, and 
 Pindaric odes as well as most of the English imitators 
 of Gray. Indeed, the verses with which our fore- 
 fathers afflicted the world are generally not so bad as 
 the verses of the poet laureates of England, from the 
 period when Dryden was deprived of the laurel to 
 the period when Southey reluctantly accepted it. 
 Timothy Dwight, an eminent patriot and theologian, 
 was early smitten with the ambition to be a poet. He 
 wrote " America," " The Conquest of Canaan " (an 
 epic), " Greenfield Hill," and "The Triumph of In- 
 fidelity." These poems are not properly subjects of 
 criticism, because they are hopelessly forgotten, and 
 no critical resurrectionist can give them that slight 
 appearance of vitality which would justify an examin- 
 ation of their merits and demerits. Yet they are 
 reasonably good of their kind, and " Greenfield Hill," 
 especially, contains some descriptions which are al- 
 most worthy to be called charming. Dwight, as a 
 Latin scholar, occasionally felt called upon to show 
 his learning in his rLymes. Thus in one of his poems 
 he characterizes one of the most delightful of Roman 
 lyrists as " desipient " Horace. After a diligent ex- 
 ploration of the dictionary the reader finds that de- 
 sipient comes from a Latin word signifying " to be 
 wise," and that its English meaning is "trifling, 
 foolish, playful." It might be supposed that in the 
 whole range of English poetry there was no descrip- 
 
22 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 
 
 tive epithet so ludicrously pedantic ; but, fortunately 
 
 for our patriotism, we can convict Dryden of a still 
 
 greater sin against good taste. In Dryden's first ode 
 
 (1687) for Saint Cecilia's Day we find the following 
 
 lines: — 
 
 " Orpheus could lead the savage race, 
 And trees uprooted left their place, 
 Sequacious of the lyre.'' 
 
 It cannot be doubted that Timothy Dwight's " desip- 
 ient " is as poetically justifiable as John Dryden's 
 " sequacious." 
 
 Perhaps the most versatile of our early writers of 
 verse was Philip Freneau (1752-1832), a man of 
 French extraction, possessing the talents of a ready 
 writer, and endowed with that brightness and elasti- 
 city of mind whicli makes even shallowness of thought 
 and emotion pleasing. He composed patriotic songs 
 and ballads, satirized Tories, enjoyed the friendship 
 of Franklin, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, 
 and was in his day quite a literary power. Most of his 
 writings, whether in verse or prose, were " occasional," 
 and they died with the occasions which called them 
 forth. 
 
 Perhaps a higher rank should be assigned to John 
 Trumbull (1750-1831), who at the breaking out of 
 the Revolution wrote the first canto of " McFin^al ," 
 and published the third in 1782. This poem, written 
 in Hudibrastic verse, is so full of original wit and 
 humor that we hardly think of it as an imitation of 
 Butler's immortal doggerel until we are reminded 
 
AMERICAN LITERATURE. 23 
 
 that many of the pithy couplets of " McFingal " are 
 still quoted as felicitous hits of the ingenious mind 
 of the author of " Hudibras." The immense popular- 
 ity of the poem is unprecedented in American literary 
 history. The first canto rapidly ran through thirty 
 editions. Longfellow's " Evangeline " attained about 
 the same circulation when the population of the coun- 
 try was thirty millions. " McFingal " was published 
 when our population was only three millions. The 
 poem, indeed, is to be considered as one of the forces 
 of the Revolution, because as a satire on the Tories 
 it penetrated into every farm-house, and sent the 
 rustic volunteers laughing into the ranks of Washing- 
 ton and Greene. The vigor of mind and feeling dis- 
 played throughout the poem gives an impetus to its 
 incidents which " Hudibras," with all its wonderful 
 flashes of wit, comparatively lacks. 
 
 Francis Hopkinson (1737-91) was another of the 
 writers who served the popular cause by seizing every 
 occasion to make the British pretensions to rule ridic- 
 ulous as well as hateful. His " Battle of the Kegs " 
 probably laughed a thousand men into the Republican 
 ranks. His son, Francis Hopkinson, wrote the most 
 popular of American lyrics, " Hail, Columbia ! " It is 
 curious that this ode has no poetic merit whatever. 
 There is not a line, not an epithet, in the whole com- 
 position which distinguishes it from the baldest prose. 
 
 Robert Treat Paine, Jr., was originally named by 
 his father Thomas ; but being a zealous Federalist, he 
 induced the Legislature of Massachusetts to change 
 
24 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 
 
 his cognomen into Robert Treat, because, detesting 
 the theological iconoclast who was both a Democi-at 
 and an infidel, he desired, he said, to have a Christian 
 name. His song of " Adams and Liberty " is far 
 above Hopkinson's " Hail, Columbia ! " in emphasis of 
 phrase, richness of illustration, and resounding har- 
 mony of versification. Even now it kindles enthu- 
 siasm, like the lyrics of Campbell, though it is, of 
 course, more mechanical in structure and more rhet- 
 orical in tone than the " Battle of the Baltic " and tlie 
 "Mariners of England." At the time, however, it 
 roused a similar enthusiasm. 
 
 But all the poets of the United States were threat- 
 ened with extinction or subordination when Joel Bar- 
 low (1755-1812) appeared. He was, according to all 
 accounts, an estimable man, cursed with the idea not 
 only that he was a poet, but the greatest of American 
 poets ; and in 1808 he published, in a superb quarto 
 volume, " The Columbiad." It was also published in 
 Paris and London. The London " Monthly Magazine " 
 tried to prove not only that it was an epic poem, but 
 that it was surpassed only by the Iliad, the jEneid, 
 and " Paradise Lost." Joel Barlow is fairly entitled 
 to the praise of raising mediocrity to dimensions al- 
 most colossal. Columbia is, tharik Heaven, still alive ; 
 " The Columbiad" is, thank Heaven, hopelessly dead. 
 There are some elderly gentlemen still living who 
 declare that they have read " The Columbiad," and 
 have derived much satisfaction from the perusal of 
 the same ; but their evidence cannot stand the test of 
 
AMERICAN LITERATURE. 25 
 
 cross-examination. They cannot tell what the poem 
 is, what it teaches, and what it means. No critic 
 within the last fifty years has read more than a 
 hundred lines of it, and even this effort of attention 
 has been a deadly fight with those merciful tendencies 
 in the human organization which softly wrap the over- 
 worked mind in the blessedness of sleep. It is the 
 impossibility of reading " The Columbiad " which pre- 
 vents any critical estimate of its numberless demerits. 
 It is to be noted that, admitting all the poetic talent 
 that our versifiers from 1776 to 1810 can claim, they 
 are exceeded in all the requisites of poetry by contem- 
 porary prose writers. Fisher Ames, in a political 
 article contributed to a newspaper, often displayed a 
 richness of imagery, a harmony of diction, and an 
 intensity of sentiment and passion which would have 
 more than supplied our rhymers with materials for a 
 canto. John Jay was not, like Fisher Ames, a man 
 who thought in images, yet in one instance his fervid 
 honesty enabled him to outleap every versifier of his 
 time in the exercise of impassioned imagination. In 
 a letter addressed to the States of the Confederation 
 he showed the horrible injustice wrought by the de- 
 preciated currency of the country. " Humanity," he 
 said, " as well as justice, makes this demand upon 
 you ; the complaints of ruined widows and the cries 
 of fatherless children, whose whole support has been 
 placed in your hands and melted away, have doubtless 
 reached you ; take care that they ascend no higher." 
 And if we consider poetry in its inmost essence, what 
 
26 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 
 
 can exceed in sentiment and imagination the state- 
 ment in prose of the perfections of the maiden whom 
 Jonathan Edwards, the austere theologian, was so for- 
 tunate as to win for his wife ? To be sure, the de- 
 scription runs back to the year 1723, when Edwards 
 was only twenty years old. " They say," he writes, 
 " there is a young lady in New Haven who is beloved 
 of that Great Being who made and rules the world, 
 and that there are certain seasons in which this Great 
 Being, in some way or other invisible, comes to her 
 and fills her mind with exceeding sweet delight, and 
 that she hardly cares for anything except to meditate 
 on Him ; that she expects after a while to be received 
 up where He is, to be raised up out of the world and 
 caught up into heaven, being assured that He loves 
 her too well to let her remain at a distance from Him 
 always. There she is to dwell with Him, and to be 
 ravished with His love and delight forever. There- 
 fore, if you present all the world before her, with the 
 richest of its treasures, she disregards it and cares 
 not for it, and is unmindful of any pain or affliction. 
 She has a strange sweetness in her mind, and singular 
 purity in her affections ; is most just and conscien- 
 tious in all her conduct ; and you could not persuade 
 her to do anything wrong or sinful if you would give 
 her all the world, lest she should offend this Great 
 Being. She is of a wonderful sweetness, calmness, 
 and universal benevolence of mind, especially after 
 this Great God has manifested Himself to her mind. 
 She will sometimes go about from place to place sing- 
 
AMERICAN LITERATURE. 27 
 
 ing sweetly, and seems to be always full of joy and 
 pleasure, and no one knows for what. She loves to be 
 alone, walking in the fields and groves, and seems to 
 have some one invisible always conversing with her." 
 The " sage and serious " Spenser, in all his lovely 
 characterizations of feminine excellence, never suc- 
 ceeded in depicting a soul more exquisitely beautiful 
 than this of Sarah Pierrepont as viewed through the 
 consecrating imagination of Jonathan Edwards. 
 
 The leading writers of fiction during the period 
 immediately succeeding the Revolution were Susanna 
 Rowson, Hugh Henry Brackenridge, and Charles 
 Brockden Brown. Mrs. Rowson's novel of " Char- 
 lotte Temple" attained the unprecedented circulation 
 of twenty-five thousand copies, not so much for its 
 literary merits as on account of its foundation in a 
 mysterious domestic scandal which affected the repu- 
 tation of a number of prominent American families. 
 Brackenridge was a Democrat of a peculiar kind, 
 generally supporting his party, but reserving to him- 
 self the right of criticising and satirizing it. At the 
 time the antislavery section of the Democratic party 
 in the State of New York was called by the nickname 
 of " Barnburners," Mr. J. G. Saxe, the poet, was asked 
 to define his position. " I am," he replied, " a Demo- 
 crat with a proclivity to arson." Brackenridge at 
 an earlier period showed a similar restlessness in his 
 dissent from the policy of a party whose principles he 
 generally advocated. His principal work is " Modern 
 Chivalry; or, the Adventures of Captain Farrago 
 
28 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 
 
 and Teague O'Regan, his Servant." The author had 
 a vague idea of Americanizing Don Quixote and 
 Sancho Panza. The adventures are somewhat coarsely 
 and clumsily portrayed, but it gave Brackenridge an 
 opportunity to satirize the practical workings of De- 
 mocracy, and he did it with pitiless severity. Teague 
 is represented as a creature only a little raised above 
 the condition of a beast, ignorant, credulous, greedy, 
 and brutal, lacking both common sense and moral 
 sense, but still ambitious to attain political office, and 
 willing to put himself forward as a candidate for posts 
 the duties of which he could not by any possibility per- 
 form. The exaggeration is heightened at times into 
 the most farcical caricature ; but the book can be read 
 even now with profit by the champions of civil service 
 reform. There are also in the course of the narrative 
 some deadly shafts launched, in a humorous way, 
 against tlie institution of slavery. Charles Brockden 
 Brown (1771-1810) was our first novelist by profes- 
 sion. At the time he wrote " Arthur Mervyn," 
 " Edgar Huntley," " Clara Howard," and " Wieland " 
 the remuneration of the novelist was so small that he 
 could only make what is called " a living" by sacrifi- 
 cing every grace and felicity of style to the inexorable 
 need of writing rapidly, and therefore inaccurately. 
 Brown, in his depth of insight into the morbid phe- 
 nomena of the human mind, really anticipated Haw- 
 thorne ; but hurried as he was by that most malignant 
 of literary devils, the printer's, he produced no such 
 masterpieces of literary art as " The Scarlet Letter," 
 
AMERICAN LITERATURE. 29 
 
 " The Blithedale Romance," and " The Marble Faun." 
 Brown is one of the most melancholy instances of a 
 genius arrested in its orderly development by the 
 pressure of circumstances. In mere power his for- 
 gotten noTels rank very high among the products of 
 the American imagination. And it should be added 
 that though he is unread, he is by no means unread- 
 able. " Wieland ; or, the Transformation," has 
 much of the thrilling interest which fastens our at- 
 tention as we read Godwin's " Caleb Williams," or 
 Hawthorne's " Scarlet Letter." With all his faults. 
 Brown does not deserve to be the victim of the bitter- 
 est irony of criticism, that, namely, of not being con- 
 sidered worth the trouble of a critical examination. 
 His writings are contemptuously classed among dead 
 books, interesting to the antiquary alone. Still, they 
 have that vitality which comes from the presence of 
 genius, and a little stirring of the ashes under which 
 they are buried would reveal sparks of genuine fire. 
 
 The progress of theology during the thirty years 
 which followed the Revolution is illustrated by the 
 works of many men of mark in their profession, and 
 by two men of original though somewhat crotchety 
 religious genius, Samuel Hopkins and Nathaniel 
 Emmons. It is the rightful boast of Calvinism, that 
 whatever judgment may be passed on the validity of 
 its dogmas, nobody can question its power to give 
 strength to character, to educate men into strict 
 habits of deductive reasoning, and to comfort regen- 
 erated and elected souls with the blissful feeling that 
 
30 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 
 
 they are in direct communication with the Divine 
 Mind. But even before the Revolution broke out 
 there was a widely diffused though somewhat lazy 
 mental insurrection against its doctrines by men who 
 were formally connected with its churches ; and 
 Jonathan Edwards, the greatest successor of Calvin, 
 was dismissed from his pastoral charge in Northamp- 
 ton because he had attempted to refuse Christian 
 fellowship to those members of the church who, 
 though they assented to Calvinistic opinions, had 
 given " no evidence of saving grace " in their hearts. 
 The devil, Edwards said, was very orthodox in faith, 
 and his speculative knowledge in divinity exceeded 
 that of " a hundred saints of ordinary education." 
 It was but natural that the unconverted members of 
 Orthodox churches, who were distinguished more by 
 their social position, wealth, and good moral charac- 
 ter than by their capacity to stand Edwards's test of 
 vital piety, should end in doubting the truth of the 
 doctrines by the relentless application of which they 
 were proscribed as non-Christian. The Revolution 
 brought into the country not merely French soldiers, 
 but the sceptical philosophy of the great French 
 writers of the eighteenth century. The French offi- 
 cers were practically missionaries of unbelief. The 
 light but stinging mockery of Voltaire had educated 
 the intelligent French mind into a shallow contempt 
 for all the mysteries of the Christian religion ; and 
 in fighting for our liberties, these gay, bright French- 
 men fought also against our accredited theological 
 
AMERICAN LITERATURE. 31 
 
 faith. There is something ludicrous in this contact 
 of the French with the Yankee mind. Men like 
 Franklin, Jefferson, John Adams, and others, had 
 already adopted opinions which were opposed to 
 Calvinism, but they had no strong impulse to an- 
 nounce their religious convictions. The general drift 
 of the popular mind set in such an opposite direction, 
 that they hesitated to peril their political aims in a 
 vain attempt to enforce their somewhat languid theo- 
 logical views. Unitarianism, or Liberal Christianity, 
 so called, had not yet arisen ; and the protest against 
 Calvinism first took the form of an open denial of the 
 Christian faith. Thus Ethan Allen published in 
 1784 a work which he called " Reason the Only 
 Oracle of Man." He summoned the fort of Ticonde- 
 roga to surrender in " the name of the Great Jehovah, 
 and of the Continental Congress ; " he afterward 
 demanded that the impregnable fortress of Christian- 
 ity should surrender in the name of Ethan Allen. 
 Christianity declined to obey the summons of this 
 stalwart Vermont soldier — doubtless much to his 
 surprise. 
 
 But the man who was the most influential assailant 
 of the orthodox faith was Thomas Paine. He was 
 the arch infidel, the infidel par Sminence, whom our 
 early and later theologians have united in holding up 
 as a monster of iniquity and unbelief. The truth is 
 that Paine was a dogmatic, well-meaning iconoclast, 
 who attacked religion without having any religious 
 experience or any imaginative perception, of the vital 
 
32 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 
 
 spiritual phenomena on which religious faith is based. 
 Nobody can read his " Age of Reason,"' after having 
 had some preparatory knowledge derived from the 
 study of the history of religions, without wondering 
 at its shallowness. Paine is, in a spiritual applica- 
 tion of the phrase, color-blind. He does not seem to 
 know what religion is. The reputation he enjoyed 
 was due not more to his masterly command of all the 
 avenues to the average popular mind than to the im- 
 portance to which he was lifted by his horrified theo- 
 logical adversaries. His merit as a writer against 
 religion consisted in his hard, almost animal, com- 
 mon-sense, to whose tests he subjected the current 
 theological dogmas. He was a kind of vulgarized 
 Voltaire. His eminent services to the country during 
 the Revolutionary war were generally known — in- 
 deed, were acknowledged by the leading statesmen of 
 the United States. His memorable pamphlet enti- 
 tled " Common-Sense " reached a circulation of a 
 hundred thousand copies. It was followed up by a 
 series of tracts, under the general name of " The 
 Crisis," which were almost as efficient as their prede- 
 cessor in rousing, sustaining, and justifying the pa- 
 triotism of the nation. He was the author of the 
 now familiar maxim that " these are the times that 
 try men's souls." His after-career in England and 
 France resulted in his pamphlet on " The Rights of 
 Man," directed against Burke's assault on the princi- 
 ples and methods of the French Revolutionists of 
 1789. It was unmistakably the ablest answer that 
 
AMERICAN LITERATURE. 33 
 
 any of the democrats of France, England, and the 
 United States had made to Burke's eloquent and 
 philosophic impeachment of the motives and conduct 
 of the actors in that great convulsion. One passage 
 still survives, because it almost rivals Burke himself 
 in the power of making a thought tell on the general 
 mind by aptness of imagery. " Nature," says Paine, 
 " has been kinder to Mr. Burke than he is to her. 
 He is not affected by the realities of distress touching 
 his heart, but by the showy resemblance of it striking 
 his imagination. He pities the plumage, lut forgets 
 the dying bird." A writer'thus known to the Ameri- 
 can people, not only as the champion of their individ- 
 ual rights, but of the rights of all mankind, could not 
 fail to exert much influence when he brought his pe- 
 culiar power of simple, forcible, and sarcastic state- 
 ment to an assault on the religion of the country 
 whose nationality he had done so much to establish. 
 He never touched the inmost sanctuaries of Calvinism, 
 though he seriously damaged some of its outworks ; 
 and the fault of the eminent divines who opposed him 
 was in throwing all their strength in defending what 
 was proved in the end to be indefensible. 
 
 Indeed, it is pitiable to witness the obstructions 
 which strong minds and religious hearts raised against 
 an inevitable tendency of human thought. While in- 
 fidelity was slowly undermining the system of theol- 
 ogy on which they based the sentiment and the 
 substance of religious belief, these theologians ex- 
 erted their powers of reasoning in controversies, 
 
 3 
 
34 AMERICAN LITEE-ATUUE. 
 
 waged against each other, relating to the question 
 whether deductive ai'guments from adroitly detached 
 Scriptural texts could fix the time when original sin 
 made infants liable to eternal damnation. Some 
 argued that the spiritual disease was communicated 
 in the moment of conception ; others, a little more 
 humane, contended that the child must be born be- 
 fore it could righteously be damned ; others insisted 
 that a certain time after birth, left somewhat unde- 
 termined, but generally assigned to the period when 
 (he child attains to moral consciousness, should elapse 
 before it was brought under the penalties of the uni- 
 versal curse. The current theology of his time could 
 not sustain the attacks of such a hard, vulgar rea- 
 soner as Paine, except by withdrawing into its vital 
 and unassailable position, namely, its power of con- 
 verting depraved souls into loving disciples of the 
 Lord. The thinldng of the dominant theologians of 
 that period has -been quietly repudiated by their suc- 
 cessors, and it has failed to establish any place in 
 literature because it was exerted on themes which 
 the human mind and human heart have gradually 
 ignored. Still, the practical effects of the teaching 
 of tlie great body of Orthodox clergymen have been 
 immense. It would be unjust to measure their influ- 
 ence by the success or failure of theories devised by 
 the speculative ingenuity of their representative di- 
 vines. It is impossible to estimate too highly the 
 services of the clergymen of the country in the for- 
 mation of the national character. Their sermons 
 
AMERICAN LITERATURE. 35 
 
 have not passed into literature. A band of " minis- 
 ters," contented with small salaries, on which they 
 almost starved, and with no reputation beyond their 
 little parishes, labored year after year in the obscure 
 work of purifying, elevating, and regenerating the 
 individuals committed to their pastoral charge ; and 
 when they died, in all the grandeur with which piety 
 invests poverty, they were swiftly succeeded by men 
 who valiantly trod the same narrow path, leading to 
 no success recognized on earth as brilliant or self- 
 satisfying. 
 
 The period of our literary history between 1810 
 and 1840 witnessed the rise and growth of a litera- 
 ture which was influenced by the new " revival of 
 letters " in England during the early part of the 
 present century, represented by Wordsworth, Cole- 
 ridge, Southey, Scott, Campbell, Byron, Shelley, 
 Keats, and Moore. Most of these eminent men were 
 not only writers but powers ; they communicated 
 spiritual life to the soul, as well as beautiful images 
 and novel ideas to the mind ; and touching, as they 
 did, the profoundest sources of imagination, reason, 
 and emotion, they quickened latent indi^'idual genius 
 into original activity by the magnetism they exerted 
 on sympathetic souls, and thus stimulated emulation 
 rather than imitation. The wave of Wordsworthian- 
 ism swept gently over New England, and here and 
 there found a mind which was mentally and morally 
 refreshed by drinking deeply of this new water of 
 life. But Pope was still for a long time the pontiff 
 
36 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 
 
 of poetry, recognized by the cultivated men of Boston 
 no less than by the cultivated men of London and 
 Edinburgh. Probably there occurred no greater and 
 more sudden change from the old school to the new 
 than in the case of a precocious lad who bore the 
 name of William CuUen Bryant. At the age of 
 fourteen, in the year 1808, he produced a versified 
 satire on Jefferson's administration called " The 
 Embargo." It was just as good and just as bad as 
 most American imitations of Pope ; but the boy in- 
 dicated a facility in using the accredited verse of the 
 time which excited the wonder and admiration of his 
 elders. Vigor, compactness, ringing emphasis in the 
 constantly recurring rhymes, — all seemed to show 
 that a new Pope had been born in Massachusetts. The 
 genius of the lad, however, was destined to take a 
 different road to fame than that which was marked 
 out by his admirers. He read the lyrical ballads of 
 Wordsworth ; and his friend R. H. Dana informs us 
 that Bryant confessed to him that on reading that 
 volume " a thousand springs seemed to gush up at 
 once into his heart, and the face of Nature of a 
 sudden changed into a strange freshness and life." 
 Accordingly his next poem of any importance was 
 " Thanatopsis." We are told that it was written 
 when he was only eighteen. It was published in the 
 " North American Review " for 1816, when he was 
 twenty-two. The difference of four years makes little 
 difference in the remarkable fact that the poem indi- 
 cates no sign of youth whatever. The perfection of 
 
AMERICAN LITERATUllE. 37 
 
 its rhythm, the majesty and dignity of the tone of 
 matured reflection which breathes through it, the 
 solemnity of its underlying sentiment, and the austere 
 unity of the pervading thought, would deceive almost 
 any critic into affirming it to be the product of an 
 imaginative thinker to whom " years had brought the 
 philosophic mind." Still, it must be remembered that 
 the poets in whom meditation and imagination have 
 been most harmoniously blended have produced some 
 of their best works when they were comparatively 
 young. This is specially the case as regards Words- 
 worth. His poem on revisiting Tintern Abbey, written 
 when he was twenty-eight, introduced an absolutely 
 new element into English poetry, and was specially 
 characterized by that quality of calm, deep, solid re- 
 flection which is commonly considered to be the pecu- 
 liarity of genius when it has attained the maturity 
 which age and experience alone can give. The won- 
 derful " Ode on the Intimations of Immortality from 
 the Recollections of Early Childhood," written about 
 four years later, indicates the highest point which the 
 poetic insight and the philosophic wisdom of Words- 
 worth ever reached ; and it ought, on ordinary prin- 
 ciples of criticism, to have been written thirty years 
 later than the date which marks its birth. Nothing 
 which Wordsworth afterward wrote, though precious 
 in itself, displayed anything equal to these poems in 
 maturity of thought and imagination. It is doubtful 
 if Bryant's " Thanatopsis " has been excelled by the 
 many deep and beautiful poems which he has written 
 
38 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 
 
 since. In his, case, as in that of Wordsworth, we are 
 puzzled by the old head suddenly erected on young 
 shoulders. They leap over the age of passion by a 
 single bound, and become poetic philosophers at an 
 age when other poets are in the sensuous stage of 
 imaginative development. In estimating the claim of 
 Bryant to be ranked as the foremost of American 
 poets, it may be said that he opened a rich and deep, 
 if somewhat narrow, vein, which he has worked with 
 marvellous skill, and that he has obtained more pure 
 gold from his mine than many others who have sunk 
 shafts here and there into more promising deposits 
 of the precious metal. He is, perhaps, unequalled 
 among our American poets in his grasp of the ele- 
 mental life of nature. His descriptions of natural 
 scenery always imply that nature, in every aspect it 
 turns to the poetic eye, is thoroughly alive. Nobody 
 can read his poems called " The Evening Wind," 
 " Green River," " The Death of the Flowers," the 
 invocation " To a Water-Fowl," " An Evening Rev- 
 erie," " To the Fringed Gentian," not to mention 
 others, without feeling that this poet has explored the 
 inmost secrets of nature, and has shown how natural 
 objects can be wedded to the human mind in " love 
 and holy passion." In the abstract imagination which 
 celebrates the fundamental idea and ideal of our 
 American life, what can excel his noble verses on 
 " The Antiquity of Freedom " ? " The Land of 
 Dreams " is perhaps the most exquisite of Bryant's 
 poems, as in it thought, sentiment, and imagination 
 
AMERICAN LITERATURE. 39 
 
 are more completely dissolved in melody than in any 
 other of his poems. In a criticism of the range of 
 Bryant's mind it must be remembered that his poetry 
 is only one expression of it. His life has been gen- 
 erally passed in political struggles which have called 
 forth all his powers of statement and reasoning, based 
 on a patient study of the phenomena presented by 
 our social and political life. As the editor of the 
 New York " Evening Post," he has shown himself an 
 able publicist, an intelligent economist, and a resolute 
 party champion. And at a period of life when most 
 men are justified in resting from their labors, he 
 undertook the gigantic task of translating into blank 
 verse such as few but he can give, the whole of the 
 Iliad and the Odyssey. 
 
 Another eminent writer of the period — and one who 
 also happily survives, at the advanced age of eighty- 
 eight, an object of the deserved respect and admira- 
 tion of his countrymen — was Richard Henry Dana. 
 His articles in the " North American Review," from 
 1817 to 1819, were remarkable compositions for the 
 time. The long paper on the English poets, published 
 in 1819, surveys the whole domain of English poetry 
 from Chaucer to Wordsworth. It exhibits a compre- 
 hensiveness of taste, a depth and delicacy of critical 
 perception, and a grasp of the spiritual elements 
 which enter into the higliest efforts of creative minds, 
 unexampled in any previous American contribution 
 to the philosophy of criticism. His discernment of 
 the relative rank and worth of British poets is 
 
40 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 
 
 specially noticeable. He interpreted before he judged; 
 and in interpreting he showed, in old George Chap- 
 man's phrase, that he possessed the " fit key," that is, 
 the " deep and treasurous heart," 
 
 " With poesy to open poesy." 
 
 Even among the cultivated readers of- the " North 
 American" there were few who could appreciate 
 Dana's profound analysis of the genius of Words- 
 worth and Coleridge. In 1821 he began " The Idle 
 Man," of which six numbers were published. In this 
 appeared his celebrated paper on Edmund Kean, the 
 best piece of theatrical criticism in American litera- 
 ture ; two novels, " Tom Thornton " and " Paul Fel- 
 ton," dealing with the darker passions of our nature 
 in a style so abrupt, a feeling so intense, and a moral 
 purpose so inexorable that they rather terrified than 
 pleased the " idle men " who read novels ; and several 
 of those beautiful meditations on nature and human 
 life, in which the author exhibits himself as 
 
 " A being breathing thoughtful breath, 
 A traveller betwixt life and death." 
 
 " The Idle Man " did not succeed. In 1827 he pub- 
 lished a thin volume entitled " The Buccaneer, and 
 Other Poems." These are sufficient to give him a 
 high rank among America,n poets, though they have 
 obtained but little hold on popular sympathy. " The 
 Buccaneer" is remarkable for its representation, 
 equally clear, of external objects and internal moods 
 
AMERICAN LITERATURE. 41 
 
 of thought and passion. In one sense it is the most 
 " objective " of poems ; in another, the most " subjec- 
 tive." The truth would seem to be that Dana's over- 
 powering conception of the terrible reality of sin — a 
 conception almost as strong as that which was fixed 
 in the imagination of Jonathan Edwards — interferes 
 with the artistic disposition of his imagined scenes 
 and characters, and touches even some of his most 
 enchanting pictures with a certain baleful light. An 
 uneasy spiritual discontent, a moral despondency, is 
 evident in his verse as well as in his prose, and his 
 large powers of reason and imagination seem never to 
 have been harmoniously blended in his artistic crea- 
 tions. Still, he remains one of the prominences of 
 our literature, whether considered as poet, novelist, 
 critic, or general thinker. 
 
 Washington Allston, the greatest of American 
 painters, was also a graceful poet. " His mind," says 
 Mr. Dana, " seems to have in it the glad but gentle 
 brightness of a star, as you look up to it, sending pure 
 influences into your heart, and making it kind and 
 cheerful." As a poet, however, he is now but little 
 known. As a prose writer, his lectures on Art, and 
 especially his romance of " Monaldi," show that he 
 could paint with the pen as well as with the brush. 
 It is difficult to understand why " Monaldi " has not 
 obtained a permanent place in our literature. There 
 is in it one description of a picture representing the 
 visible struggle of a soul in the toils of sin which in 
 intensity of conception and passion exceeds any pic- 
 
42 AMEKICAN LITERATQUE. 
 
 ture he ever painted. The full richness of Allston's 
 mind was probably only revealed to those who for 
 3'ears enjoyed the inestimable privilege of hearing 
 him converse. It is to be regretted that no copious 
 notes were taken of his conversations. Mrs. Jame- 
 son, in her visit to the United States, was so surprised 
 to witness such opulence of thought conveyed in such 
 seemingly careless talk, that she took a few notes of 
 his deep and beautiful sayings. It would have been 
 well if Dana and others who from day to day and year 
 to year saw the clear stream of conversation flow ever 
 on from the same inexhaustible mind, had made the 
 world partakers of the wealth with which they were 
 enriched. Allston, indeed, was one of those men 
 whose works are hardly the measure of their powers 
 — who can talk better than they can write, and con- 
 ceive more vividly than they can execute. 
 
 The " revival " of American literature in New York 
 differed much in character from its revival in New 
 England. In New York it was purely human in tone ; 
 in New England it was a little superhuman in tone. 
 In New England they feared the devil ; in New York 
 they dared the devil ; and the greatest and most orig- 
 inal literary dare-devil in New York was a young 
 gentleman of good family, whose " schooling " ended 
 with his sixteenth year, who had rambled much about 
 the island of Manhattan, who had in his saunterings 
 gleaned and brooded over many Dutch legends of an 
 elder time, who had read much but had studied little, 
 who possessed fine observation, quick intelligence, a 
 
AMERICAN LITERATURE. 43 
 
 geuial disposition, and an indolently original genius, 
 in detecting the ludicrous side of things, and whose 
 name was Washington Irving. After some prelimi- 
 nary essays in humorous literature his genius arrived 
 at the age of mdiscretion, and he produced at the age 
 of twenty-six the most deliciously audacious work of 
 humor in our literature, namely, " The History of 
 New York, by Diedrich Knickerbocker." It is said 
 of some reformers that they have not only opinions, 
 but the courage of their opinions. It may be said of 
 Irving that he not only caricatured, but had the 
 courage of his caricatures. The persons whom he 
 covered with ridicule were the ancestors of the leading 
 families of New York, and these families prided them- 
 selves on their descent. After the publication of such 
 a book he could hardly enter the " best society " of 
 New York, to which he naturally belonged, without 
 running the risk of being insulted, especially by the 
 elderly women of fashion ; but he conquered their 
 prejudices by the same grace and geniality of manner, 
 by the same unmistakable tokens that he was an in- 
 born gentleman, through which lie afterward won his 
 way into the first society of England, France, Ger- 
 many, Italy, and Spain. Still, the promise of Knick- 
 erbocker was not fulfilled. That book, if considered 
 as an imitation at all, was an imitation of Rabelais, or 
 Swift, or of any author in any language who had 
 shown an independence of all convention, who did 
 not hesitate to commit indecorums, and who laughed 
 at all the regalities of the world. The author lived 
 
44 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 
 
 long enough to be called a timid imitator of Addison 
 and Goldsmith. In fact, he imitated nobody. His 
 genius, at first riotous and unrestrained, became 
 tamed and regulated by a larger intercourse with the 
 world, by the saddening experience of life, and by the 
 gradual development of some deep sentiments which 
 held in check the audacities of his wit and humor. 
 But even in the portions of " The Sketch-Book " relat- 
 ing to England it will be seen that his favorite authors 
 belonged rather to the age of Elizabeth than to the 
 age of Anne. In " Bracebridge Hall " there is one 
 chapter called " The Rookery," which in exquisitely 
 poetic humor is hardly equalled by the best produc- 
 tions of the authors he is said to have made his 
 models. That he possessed essential humor and 
 pathos, is proved by the warm admiration he excited 
 in such masters of humor and pathos as Scott and 
 Dickens ; and style is but a secondary consideration 
 when it expresses vital qualities of genius. If he 
 subordinated energy to elegance, he did it, not be- 
 cause he had the ignoble ambition to be ranked as " a 
 fine writer," but because he was free from the ambi- 
 tion, equally ignoble, of simulating a passion which 
 he did not feel. The period which elapsed between 
 the publication of Knickerbocker's history and " The 
 Sketch-Book" was ten years. During this time his 
 mind acquired the habit of tranquilly contemplating 
 the objects which filled his imagination, and what it 
 lost in spontaneous vigor it gained in sureness of in- 
 sight and completeness of representation. " Rip "Van 
 
AMERICAN LITERATUKB. 45 
 
 Winkle " and " The Legend of Sleepy Hollow " have 
 not the humorous inspiration of some passages in 
 Knickerbocker, but perhaps they give more perma- 
 nent delight, for the scenes and characters are so har- 
 monized that they have the effect of a picture, in 
 which all the parts combine to produce one charming 
 whole. Besides, Irving is one of those exceptional 
 authors who are regarded by their readers as personal 
 friends, and the felicity of nature by which he obtained 
 this distinction was expressed in that amenity, that 
 amiability of tone, which some of his austere critics 
 have called elegant feebleness. As a biographer and 
 historian, his " Life of Columbus " and his " Life of 
 "Washington" have indissolubly connected his name 
 with the discoverer of the American continent and 
 the champion of the liberties of his country. In "The 
 Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada " and " The 
 Alhambra " he occupies a unique position among 
 those writers of fiction who have based fiction on a 
 laborious investigation into the facts of history. His 
 reputation is not local, but is recognized by all culti- 
 vated people who speak the English language. If 
 Great Britain established an English intellectual col- 
 ony in the United States, such men as Irving and 
 Cooper may be said to have retorted by establishing 
 an American intellectual colony in England. 
 
 James Fenimore Cooper was substantially a New 
 Yorker, though accidentally born (in 1789) in New 
 Jersey. He entered Tale College in 1802, and three 
 years after left it without graduating, having obtained 
 
46 AMERICAN LITERATUEE. 
 
 a midshipman's warrant in the United States navy. 
 He remained in the naval service for six years. In 
 1811 he married, and in 1821 began a somewhat 
 memorable literary career by the publication of a 
 novel of English life, called " Precaution," which 
 failed to attract much attention. In the same year, 
 liowever, he published another novel, relating to the 
 Revolutionary period of our history, called " The Spy," 
 and rose at once to the position of a power of the first 
 class in our literature. The novels which immediately 
 followed did, on the whole, increase his reputation ; 
 and after the publication of " The Red Rover," in 
 1827, his works were not only eagerly welcomed by 
 his countrymen, but were translated into almost all 
 the languages of Europe. Indeed, it seemed at one 
 time that Cooper's fame was co-extensive with Ameri- 
 can commerce. The novels were intensely American 
 in spirit, and intensely American in scenery and char- 
 acters ; but they were also found to contain in them 
 something which appealed to human nature every- 
 where. Much of their popularity was doubtless due 
 to Cooper's vivid presentation of the wildest aspects 
 of nature in a comparatively new country, and his 
 creation of characters corresponding to their physical 
 environment ; but the essential influence he exerted is 
 to be referred to the pleasure all men experience in 
 the kindling exhibition of man as an active being. 
 No Hamlets or Werthers or Ren^s or Childe Harolds 
 were allowed to tenant his woods or appear on his 
 quarter-decks. Will, and the trained sagacity and 
 
AMERICAN LITERATURE. 47 
 
 experience directing will, were the invigorating ele- 
 ments of character which he selected for romantic 
 treatment. Whether the scene be laid in the primi- 
 tive forest or on the ocean, his men are always strug- 
 gling with each other or with the forces of nature. 
 This primal quality of robust manhood all men 
 understand, and it shines triumphantly through the 
 interposing fogs of French, Gorman, Italian, and Rus- 
 sian translations. A physician of the mind could 
 hardly prescribe a more efficient tonic for weak and 
 sentimental natures than a daily diet made up of the 
 most bracing passages in the novels of Cooper. 
 
 Another characteristic of Cooper, which makes liim 
 universally acceptable, is his closeness to nature. He 
 agrees with Wordsworth in this, that in all his de- 
 scriptions of natural objects he indicates that he and 
 nature are familiar acquaintances, and, as Dana says, 
 have "talked together." He takes nothing at second- 
 hand. If brought before a justice of the peace, he 
 could solemnly swear to the exact truth of his repre- 
 sentations without running any risk of being prose- 
 cuted for perjury. Cooper as well as Wordsworth 
 took nature, as it were, at first-hand, the perceiving 
 mind coming into direct contact with the thing per- 
 ceived ; but Wordsworth primarily contemplated na- 
 ture as the divinely appointed food for the nourishment 
 of the spirit that meditates, while Cooper felt its power 
 as a stimulus to the spirit that acts. No two minds 
 could, in many respects, be more different, yet both 
 agree in the instinctive sagacity which detects the 
 
48 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 
 
 heroic under the guise of the homely. Tlie greatest 
 creation of Cooper is the hunter and trapper, Leather- 
 stocking, who appears in five of his best novels, 
 namely, "The Pioneers," "The Last of the Mohi- 
 cans," " The Prairie," " The Pathfinder," and " The 
 Deerslayer," and who is unmistakably the life of each. 
 The simplicity, sagacity, and intrepidity of this man 
 of the woods, his quaint sylvan piety and humane 
 feeling, the perfect harmony established between his 
 will and reason, his effectiveness equal to all occasions, 
 and his determination to dwell on those vanishing 
 points of civilization which faintly mark the domain 
 of the settler from that of the savage, altogether com- 
 bine to make up a character which is admired equally 
 in log-cabins and palaces. Wordsworth, in one of the 
 most exquisite of his minor poems, — "Three Years 
 She grew in Sun and Shower," — has traced the proc- 
 ess of Nature in making " a lady of her own." Cer- 
 tainly Leatherstocking might be quoted as a successful 
 attempt of the same austere goddess to make, out of 
 ruder materials, a man of " her own." 
 
 Cooper lived to write thirty-four novels, the merits 
 of which are so unequal that at times we arc puzzled 
 to conceive of them as the products of one mind. His 
 failures are not to be referred to that decline of power 
 which accompanies increasing age, for " The Deer- 
 slayer," one of his best novels, was written six years 
 after his worst novel, " The Monikins." He often 
 failed, early as well as late in his career, not because 
 his faculties were impaired, but because they were 
 
AMERICAN LITERATURE. 49 
 
 misdirected. One of the secrets of his fascination 
 was also one of the causes of his frequent dulness. 
 He equalled De Foe in the art of giving reality to ro- 
 mance by the dexterous accumulation and manage- 
 ment of details. In his two great sea novels, " Tlie 
 Pilot " and " The Red Rover," the important events 
 are preceded by a large number of minor incidento, 
 each of which promises to be an event. The rocks 
 which the vessel by cunning seamanship escapes are 
 described as minutely as the rocks on which she is 
 finally wrecked. It is difficult for the reader to con- 
 ceive that he is not reading an account of an actual 
 occurrence. He unconsciously transports himself to 
 the deck of the ship, participates in all the hopes and 
 fears of the crew, thanks God when the keel just 
 grazes a ledge without being seriously injured, and 
 finally goes down into the " hell of waters " in com- 
 pany with his imagined associates. In such scenes 
 the imagination of the reader is so excited that he 
 has no notion whether the writer's style is good or 
 bad. He is made by some magic of words to see, feel, 
 realize, the situation ; the verbal method by which 
 the miracle is wrought he entirely ignores or over- 
 looks. But then the preliminaries to these grand 
 scenes which exhibit intelligent man in a life-and- 
 deatli coiitest with the unintelligent forces of nature 
 — how tiresome they often are ! The early chapters 
 of " The Red Rover," for example, are dull beyond 
 expression. The author's fondness for detail tres- 
 passes on all the reserved fund of human patience. 
 
50 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 
 
 It is only because " expectation sits i' the air " that 
 we tolerate his tediousness. If we desire to witness 
 the conduct of the man-of-war in the tempest and the 
 battle, we must first submit to follow all the cumber- 
 some details by which she is slowly detached from 
 the dock and laboriously piloted into the open sea. 
 There is more " padding " in Cooper's novels than in 
 those of any author who can make any pretensions to 
 rival him. Ilis representative sailors, Long Tom 
 Coffin, Tom Tiller, Nightingale, Bolthrope, Trysail, 
 Bob Yarn, not to mention others, are admirable as 
 characters, but they are allowed to inflict too much of 
 their practical wisdom on the reader. In fact, it is a 
 great misfortune, as it regards the permanent fame 
 of Cooper, that he wrote one-third, at least, of his 
 novels at all, and that he did not condense the other 
 two-thirds into a third of their present length. 
 
 Cooper, on his return from Europe in 1833 or 1834, 
 published a series of novels satirizing wliat he consid- 
 ered the faults and vices of his countrymen. The 
 novels have little literary merit, but they afforded an 
 excellent opportunity to exhibit the independence, in- 
 trepidity, and integrity of the author's character. It 
 is a pity he ever wrote them ; still, they proved that 
 he became a bad novelist in order to perform what he 
 deemed to be the duties of a good citizen. Indeed, as 
 a brave, high-spirited, noble-minded man, somewhat 
 too proud and dogmatic, but thoroughly honest, he 
 was ever on a level with the best characters in his 
 best works. 
 
AMERICAN LITERATURE. 51 
 
 The names of Joseph Rodman Drake and Fitz- 
 Greene Plalleck are connected, not merely by per- 
 sonal friendship, but by partnership in poetry. Both 
 were born in the same year, 1795, but Drake died in 
 1820, while Halleck survived to 1867. Halleck, in 
 strength of constitution as well as in power of mind, 
 was much superior to his fragile companion ; but 
 Drake had a real enthusiasm for poetry, which Hal- 
 leck, though a poet, did not possess. Drake's " Cul- 
 prit Fay " is an original American poem, formed out 
 of materials collected from the scenery and traditions 
 of the classical American river, the Hudson ; but it 
 was too hastily written to do justice to the fancy by 
 which it was conceived. His " Ode on the American 
 Flag " derives its chief strength from the resounding 
 quatrain by which it is closed, and these four lines 
 were contributed by Halleck. Indeed, Drake is, on 
 the whole, less remembered by his own poems than 
 by the beautiful tribute which Halleck made to his 
 memory. They were coadjutors in the composition 
 of the " Croaker Papers," originally contributed to 
 the New York " Evening Post ; " but the superiority 
 of Halleck to his friend is manifest at the first glance. 
 One of the puzzles which arrest the attention of a 
 historian of American literature is to account for the 
 strange indifference of Halleck to exercise often the 
 faculty which on occasions he showed he possessed 
 in superabundance. All the subjects he attempted 
 — the " Croaker Papers," " Fanny," " Burns," 
 "Red Jacket," "Alnwick Castle," "Connecticut," the 
 
52 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 
 
 magnificent heroic ode, " Marco Bozzaris " — show a 
 complete artistic mastery of the resources of poetic 
 expression, whether his theme be gay or grave, or 
 compounded of the two. His extravagant admira- 
 tion of Campbell was founded on Campbell's admi- 
 rable power of compression. Halleck thought that 
 Byron was a mere rhetorician in comparison with his 
 favorite poet. Yet it is evident to a critical reader 
 that a good deal of Campbell's compactness is due to 
 a studied artifice of rhythm and rhyme, while Hal- 
 leck seemingly writes in verse as if he were not 
 trammelled by its laws ; and his rhymes naturally 
 recur without suggesting to the reader that his con- 
 densation of thought and feeling is at all affected by 
 the necessity of rhyming. Prose has rarely been 
 written with more careless ease and more melodious 
 compactness than Halleck has shown in writing verse. 
 The wonder is, that with this conscious command of 
 bending verse into the brief expression of all tlie 
 moods of his mind, he should have written so little. 
 The only explanation is to be found in his scepticism 
 as to the vital reality of those profound states of con- 
 sciousness which inspire poets of less imaginative 
 faculty than he possessed to incessant activity. He 
 was among poets what Thackeray is among novelists. 
 Being the well-paid clerk and man of business of a 
 millionnaire, his grand talent was not stung into exer- 
 tion by necessity. Though he lived to the age of 
 seventy-two, he allowed year after year to pass without 
 any exercise of his genius. " What 's the use ? " — 
 
■ AMERICAN LITERATURE. 53 
 
 that was the deadening maxim which struck his 
 poetic faculties with paralysis. Yet what he has 
 written, though very small in amount, belongs to the 
 most precious treasures of our poetical literature. 
 What he might have written, had he so chosen, would 
 have raised him to a rank among our first men of 
 letters, which he does not at present hold. 
 
 James K. Paulding (1778-1860) completes this 
 peculiar group of New York authors. He was con- 
 nected with Irving in the production of the " Salma- 
 gundi " essays, and was at one time prominent as a 
 satirist, humorist, and novelist. Most of his writings 
 are now forgotten, though they evinced a somewhat 
 strong though coarse vein of humor, which was not 
 without its effect at the period when its local and 
 political allusions and personalities were understood. 
 A scene in one of his novels indicates the kind of 
 comicality in which he excelled. TJie house of an 
 old reprobate situated on the bank of a river is car- 
 ried away by ^, freshet. In the agony of his fear he 
 strives to recall some prayer which lie learned when 
 a child ; but as he rushes distractedly up and down 
 the stairs of his floating mansion he can only re- 
 member the first line of the baby's hymn, "Now I 
 lay me down to sleep," which he incessantly repeats 
 as he runs. 
 
 While these New York essayists, humorists, and 
 novelists were laughing at the New Englander as a 
 Puritan, and satirizing him as a Yankee, there was a 
 peculiar revival of spiritual sentiment in New Eng- 
 
54 AJMERICAN LITERATURE. 
 
 land, which made its mark in general as well as. in 
 theological literature. In the very home of Puritan- 
 ism there was going on a reaction against the funda- 
 mental doctrines of Calvinism and the inexorable 
 faith of the Pilgrim Fathers. This i-eaction began 
 before the Revolutionary war, and continued after it. 
 Jonathan Mayhew, the pastor of the West Church 
 of Boston, was not only a flaming defender of the 
 political rights of the colonies, but his sermons also 
 teemed with theological heresies. He rebelled against 
 King Calvin as well as against King George. Prob- 
 ably Paine's " Age of Reason " had afterward some 
 effect in inducing prominent Boston clergymen, re- 
 puted orthodox, to silently drop from their preaching 
 the leading dogmas of the accredited creed. "With 
 such accomplished ministers as Freeman, Buckmin- 
 ster, Thacher, and their followers, sermonizing be- 
 came more and more a form of moralizing, and the 
 " scheme of salvation " was ignored or overlooked in 
 the emphasis laid on the performance of practical 
 duties. What would now be called rationalism, either 
 expressed or implied, seemed to threaten the old or- 
 thodox faith with destruction by the subtle process 
 of sapping and undermining without directly assail- 
 ing it. The sturdy Calvinists were at first puzzled 
 what to do, as the new heresiarchs did not so niucli 
 offend by what they preached as by what they omitted 
 to preach ; but they at last forced those who were 
 Unitarians in opinion to become Unitarians in pro- 
 fession, and thus what was intended as a peaceful 
 
AMERICAN LITERATURE. 55 
 
 evolution of religious faith was compelled to assume 
 the character of a revolutionary protest against the 
 generally received dogmas of the Christian churches. 
 The two men prominent in this insurrection against 
 ancestral orthodoxy were William Ellery Channing 
 and Andrews Norton. Channing was a pious hu- 
 manitarian ; Norton was an accomplished Biblical 
 scholar. Channing assailed Calvinism because, in 
 his opinion, it falsified all right notions of God ; 
 Norton, because it falsified the true interpretation of 
 the Word of God. Channing's soul was filled w^ith 
 the idea of the dignity of human nature, which, he 
 thought, Calvinism degraded ; Norton's mind re- 
 sented what he considered the illogical combination 
 of Scripture texts to sustain an intolerable theologi- 
 cal theory. Channing delighted to portray the felici- 
 ties of a heavenly frame of mind ; Norton delighted 
 to exhibit the felicities of accurate exegesis. Both 
 were masters of style ; but Channing used his rheto- 
 ric to prove that the doctrines of Calvinism were 
 abhorrent to the God-given moral nature of man ; 
 Norton employed his somewhat dry and bleak but 
 singularly lucid powers of statement, exposition, and 
 logic to show that his opponents were deficient in 
 scholarship and sophistical in argumentation. Chan- 
 ning's literary reputation, which overleaped all the 
 boundaries of his sect, was primarily due to his essay 
 on Milton ; but Norton could not endure the theologi- 
 cal system on which " Paradise Lost " was based, 
 and therefore laughed at the poem. Norton had 
 
66 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 
 
 little of that imaginative sympathy with the mass of 
 mankind for which Channing was pre-eminently dis- 
 tinguished. Anybody who has mingled much with 
 Unitarian divines must have heard their esoteric 
 pleasantry as to \\'hat these two redoubtable cham- 
 pions of the Unitarian faith would say when they 
 were transferred from earth to heaven. Channing, 
 as he looks upon the bright rows of the celestial 
 society, rapturously declares, " This gives me a new 
 idea of the dignity of human nature ; " Norton, with 
 a certain patrician exclusiveness born of scholarly 
 tastes, folds his hands, and quietly says to Saint Peter 
 or Saint Paul, " Rather a miscellaneous assemblage." 
 But on earth they worked together, each after his 
 gifts, to draw out all the resources of sentiment, 
 scholarship, and reasoning possessed by such able 
 opponents as they found in Stuart, Woods, and Park. 
 There can be no doubt that Calvinism, in its modified 
 Hopkinsian form, gained increased power by the 
 wholesome shaking which Unitarianism gave it; for 
 this shaking kindled the zeal, sharpened the intel- 
 lects, stimulated the mental activity of every professor 
 of the evangelical faith. Neither Channing nor Nor- 
 ton, in assailing the statements in which the Calvin- 
 istic creed was mechanically expressed, exhibited an 
 interior view of the creed as it vitally existed in the 
 souls of Calvinists. Channing, however, was still the 
 legitimate spiritual successor of Jonathan Edwards 
 in afhrming, with new emphasis, the fundamental doc- 
 trine of Christianity, that God is in direct communica- 
 
AMERICAN LITERATURE. 57 
 
 tion with the souls of His creatures. The difference 
 is that Edwards holds the doors of communication so 
 nearly closed that only the elect can pass in ; Chan- 
 ning throws them wide open, and invites everjhody 
 to be illumined in thought and vitalized in will by 
 the ever-fresh outpourings of celestial light and 
 warmth. But Channing wrote on human nature as 
 though the world was tenanted by actual or possible 
 Channings, who possessed his exceptional delicacy 
 of spiritual perception and his exceptional exemption 
 from the temptations of practical life. He was, as 
 far as a constant contemplation of the Divine perfec- 
 tions was concerned, a meditative saint; and had he 
 belonged to the Roman Catliolic Church, he probably 
 would, on the ground of his spiritual gifts, have been 
 eventually canonized. Still, the seductive subjectivity 
 of his holy outlook on nature and human life tended 
 to make the individual consciousness of what was 
 just and good the measure of Divine justice and good- 
 ness ; and in some mediocre minds, which his reli- 
 gious genius magnetized, tliis tendency brought forth 
 distressing specimens of spiritual sentimentality and 
 pious pertness. Tlie most cui'ious result, however, 
 of Channing's teacliings was the swift way in which 
 his disciples overleaped the limitations set by their 
 master. In the course of a single generation some of 
 the most vigorous minds among tlie Unitarians, prac- 
 tising the freedom of tliought which he inculcated as 
 a duty, indulged in theological audacities of which he 
 never dreamed. He was the intellectual father of 
 
58 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 
 
 Theodore Parker, and the intellectual grandfather of 
 Octavius B. Prothingham. Parker and Frothingham, 
 both humanitarians, but students also of the advanced 
 school of critical theologians, soon made Channing's 
 heresies tame when compared with the heresies they 
 promulgated. The Free Religionists are the legiti- 
 mate progeny of Channing. 
 
 But, in the interim, the theologian and preacher 
 who came nearest to Channing in the geniality and 
 largeness of his nature, and the persuasiveness with 
 which he enforced what may be called the conserva- 
 tive tenets of Unitarianism, was Orville Dewey, a man 
 whose mind was fertile, whose religious experience 
 was deep, and who brought from the Calvinism in 
 which he had been trained an interior knowledge of 
 the system which he eai-ly rejected. He had a pro- 
 found sense not only of the dignity of human nature, 
 but of the dignity of human life. In idealizing human 
 life he must still be considered as giving some fresh 
 and new interpretations of it, and his discourses form, 
 like Channing's, an addition to American literature, 
 as well as a contribution to the theology of Unitarian- 
 ism. He defended men from the assaults of Calvin- 
 ists, as Channing had defended Man. Carlyle speaks 
 somewhere of " this dog-hole of a world ; " Dewey 
 considered it, with all its errors and horrors, as a 
 good world on the whole, and as worthy of the Divine 
 beneficence. 
 
 The work which may be said to have bridged over 
 the space which separated Channing from Theodore 
 
AMERICAN LITERATURE. 59 
 
 Parker was " Academical Lectures on the Jewish 
 Scriptures and Antiquities," by Dr. John G. Palfrey, 
 Professor of Biblical Literature in the University at 
 Cambridge, published in 18-38, but which had doubtless 
 influenced the students who had listened to them 
 many years before their publication. This book is 
 noticeable for the scholarly method by which most of 
 the miracles recorded in the Old Testament are ex- 
 plained on natural principles, and the calm, almost 
 prim and polite, exclusion of miracle from the Hebrew 
 Scriptures. Accepting miracle when he considered it 
 necessary, Dr. Palfrey broke the spell and charm, at 
 least among Unitarian students of theology, which 
 separated the Hebrew Bible from other great works 
 which expressed the religious mind of the human race ; 
 and his " Academical Lectures " I'cmain as a palpable 
 landmark in the progress of American rationalism. 
 
 But probably the greatest literary result of the 
 Unitarian revolt was the appearance in our literature 
 of such a phenomenon as Ralph Waldo Emerson. He 
 came from a race of clergymen ; doubtless much of 
 his elevation of character and austere sense of the 
 grandeur of the moral sentiment is his by inheritance; 
 but after entering the ministry he soon found that 
 even Unitarianism was a limitation of his intellectual 
 independence to which he could not submit; and, in 
 the homely New England phrase, " he set up on his 
 own account," responsible for nobody, and not respon- 
 sible to anybody. His radicalism penetrated to the 
 very root of dissent, for it was founded on the idea 
 
CO AMERICAN LITERATIIKE. 
 
 that in all organizations, social, political, and religious, 
 there must be an element which checks the free exer- 
 cise of individual tliought ; and the free exercise 
 of his individual thinking he determined should be 
 controlled by nothing instituted and authoritative 
 on the planet. Descartes himself did not begin his 
 philosophizing with a more complete self-emancipation 
 from all the opinions generally accepted by mankind. 
 But Descartes was a reasoner ; Emerson is a seer and 
 a poet ; and he \ras the last man to attempt to over- 
 throw accredited systems in order to substitute for 
 them a dogmatic system of his own. In his view of 
 the duty of " man flunking," this course would have 
 been to violate his fundamental principle, which was 
 that nobody " could lay copyright on the world ; " 
 that no theory could include Nature ; that the greatest 
 thinker and discoverer could only add a few items of 
 information to what the human mind had previously 
 won from " the vast and formless infinite ; " and that 
 the true work of a scholar was not to inclose the field 
 of matter and mind by a system which encircled it, 
 but to extend our knowledge in straight lines, leading 
 from the vanishing points of positive knowledge into 
 the illimitable unknown spaces beyond. Emerson's 
 peculiar sphere was psychology. By a certain felicity 
 of his nature he was a non-combatant ; indifferent to 
 logic, he suppressed all the processes of his thinking, 
 and announced its results in affirmations ; and none 
 of the asperities which commonly afflict the apostles 
 of dissent ever ruffled the serene spirit of this univer- 
 
AMEEICAN LITERATURE. 61 
 
 sal dissenter. He could never be seduced into con- 
 troyersy. He was assailed both as an atheist and as 
 a pantheist ; as a writer so obscure that nobody could 
 understand what he meant, and also as a mere verbal 
 trickster, whose only talent consisted in vivifying 
 commonplaces, or in converting, by inversion, stale 
 truisms into brilliant paradoxes ; and all these vary- 
 ing charges had only the effect of lighting up his face 
 with that queer, quizzical, inscrutable smile, that 
 amused surprise at the misconceptions of the people 
 who attacked him, which is noticeable in all portraits 
 and photographs of his somewhat enigmatical coun- 
 tenance. His method was very simple and very hard. 
 It consisted in growing up to a level with the spiritual 
 objects he perceived, and his elevation of thought was 
 thus the sign and accompaniment of a corresponding 
 elevation of character. In his case, as in the case of 
 Channing, there was an unconscious return to Jona- 
 than Edwards, and to all the great divines whose 
 " souls had sight " of eternal verities. What the or- 
 thodox saints called the Holy Ghost, he, without 
 endowing it with personality, called the Over Soul. 
 He believed with them that in God we live and move 
 and have our being ; that only by communicating with 
 this Being can we have any vital individuality ; and 
 that the record of a communication with Him or It 
 was the most valuable of all contributions to literature, 
 whether theological or human. The noblest passages 
 in his writings are those in which he celebrates this 
 august and gracious communion of the Spirit of God 
 
62 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 
 
 with the soul of man ; and they are the most serious, 
 solemn, and uplifting passages which can perhaps be 
 found in our literature. Here was a man who had 
 earned the right to utter these noble truths hj patient 
 meditation and clear insight. Carlyle exclaimed, in 
 a preface to an English edition of one of Emerson's 
 later volumes : " Here comes our brave Emerson, with 
 news from the empyrean ! " That phrase exactly hits 
 Emerson as a transcendental thinker. His insights 
 were, in some sense, revelations ; he could " gossip on 
 the eternal politics ; " and just at the time Avhen sci- 
 ence, relieved from the pressure of theology, an- 
 nounced materialistic hypotheses with more than the 
 confidence with which the bigots of theological creeds 
 had heretofore announced their dogmas, this serene 
 American thinker had won his way into all the centres 
 of European intelligence, and delivered his quiet pro- 
 test against every hypothesis which put in peril the 
 spiritual interests of humanity. It is curious to wit- 
 ness the process by which this heresiarch has ended 
 in giving his evidence, or rather his experience, that 
 God is not the Unknowable of Herbert Spencer, but 
 that, however infinitely distant He may be from the 
 human understanding, He is still intimately near to 
 the human soul. And Emerson knows by experience 
 what the word soul really means ! 
 
 " Were she a body, how could she remain 
 Within the body which is less than she ? 
 Or how could she the world's great shape contain, 
 And in our narrow breasts contained be t 
 
AMERICAN LITERATURE. 63 
 
 " All bodies are confined within some place, 
 But she all place within herself confines ; 
 All bodies have their measure and their space, 
 But who can draw the soul's dimensive lines ? " 
 
 In an unpublished speech at a celebration of Shak- 
 speare's birthday, he spoke of Shakspeare as proving 
 to us that " the soul of man is deeper, wider, higher 
 than the spaces of astronomy ; " and in another con- 
 nection he says that " a man of thought must feel 
 that thought is the parent of the universe," that " the 
 -world is saturated with deity and with law." 
 
 It is this depth of spiritual experience and subtilty 
 of spiritual insight which distinguish Emerson from 
 all other American authors, and make him an ele- 
 mentary power as well as an elementary thinker. 
 The singular attractiveness, however, of his writings 
 comes from his intense perception of Beauty, both in 
 its abstract quality as the "awful loveliness" which 
 such poets as Shelley celebrated, and in the more con- 
 crete expression by which it fascinates ordinary minds. 
 His imaginative faculty, both in the conception and 
 creation of beauty, is uncorrupted by any morbid sen- 
 timent. His vision reaches to the very sources of 
 beauty, — the beauty that cheers. The great majority 
 even of eminent poets are " saddest when they sing." 
 They contrast life with the beautiful possibilities of 
 life which their imaginations suggest, and though 
 their discontent with the actual may inspire by the 
 energy of its utterance, it tends also to depress by 
 emphasizing the impossibility of realizing the ideals 
 
64 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 
 
 it depicts. But the perception of beauty in nature or 
 in human nature, wliether it be the beauty of a flower 
 or of a soul, makes Emerson joyous and glad ; he 
 exults in celebrating it, and he communicates to his 
 readers his own ecstatic mood. He has been a dili- 
 gent student of many literatures and many religions ; 
 but all his quotations from them show that he rejects 
 everything in his manifold readings which does not 
 tend to cheer, invigorate, and elevate, which is not 
 nutritious food for the healthy human soul. If he is 
 morbid in anything, it is in his comical hatred of all 
 forms of pliysical, mental, and moral disease. He 
 agrees with Dr. Johnson in declaring that "every 
 man is a rascal as soon as he is -sick." " I once 
 asked,'" he says, " a clergyman in a retired town who 
 were his companions — what men of ability he saw. 
 He replied that he spent his time with the sick and 
 the dying. I said he seemed to me to need quite 
 other company, and all the more that he had this ; 
 for if people were sick and dying to any purpose, we 
 should leave all and go to them, but, as far as I had 
 observed, they were as frivolous as the rest, and some- 
 times much more frivolous." Indeed, Emerson, glory- 
 ing in his own grand physical and moral health, and 
 fundamentally brave, is impatient of all the weak- 
 nesses of humanity, especially those of men of genius. 
 He never could be made to recognize the genius of 
 Shelley, except in a few poems, because he was dis- 
 gusted with the wail that persistently runs through 
 Shelley's wonderfully imaginative poetry. In his 
 
AMERICAN LITERATURE. 65 
 
 taste, as in his own practice as a writer, he is a stout 
 believer in the desirableness and efficacy of mental 
 tonics, and a severe critic of the literature of discon- 
 tent and desperation. He looks curiously on while a 
 poet rages against destiny and his own miseries, and 
 puts the ironical query, " Why so hot, my little man?" 
 His ideal of manhood was originally derived from the 
 consciousness of his own somewhat haughty individ- 
 uality, and it has been fed by his study of the poetic 
 and historic records of persons who have dared to 
 do heroic acts and dared to utter heroic thoughts. 
 Beauty is never absent from his celebration of these, 
 but it is a beauty that never enfeebles, but always 
 braces and cheers. 
 
 Take the six or eight volumes in which Emerson's 
 genius and character are embodied, — that is, in 
 which he has converted truth into life, and life into 
 more truth, — and you are dazzled on every page by 
 his superabundance of compactly expressed reflection, 
 and his marvellous command of all the resources of 
 imaginative illustration. Every paragraph is liter- 
 ally " rammed with life." A fortnight's meditation 
 is sometimes condensed in a sentence of a couple of 
 lines. Almost every word bears the mark of delib- 
 erate thought in its selection. The most evanescent 
 and elusive spiritual phenomena, which occasionally 
 flit before the steady gaze of the inner eye of the 
 mind, are fixed in expressions which have the solid- 
 ity of marble. The collection of these separate in- 
 sights into nature and human life he ironically calls 
 
 5 
 
66 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 
 
 an essay ; and much criticism has been wasted in 
 showing that tlie aphoristic and axiomatic sentences 
 are often connected by mere juxtaposition on the 
 page, and not by logical relation with each other, 
 and that at the end we have no perception of a series 
 of thoughts leading up to a clear idea of the general 
 theme. This criticism is just ; but in reading Emer- 
 son we have not to do with such economists of thought 
 as Addison, Johnson, and Goldsmith, — with the 
 writers of the " Spectator," the " Rambler," and the 
 " Citizen of the World." Emerson's so-called essay 
 sparkles with sentences which might be made the 
 texts for numerous ordinary essays ; and his general 
 title, it may be added, is apt to be misleading. He 
 is fragmentary in composition because he is a fanatic 
 for compactness ; and every paragraph, sometimes 
 every sentence, is a record of an insight. Hence 
 comes the impression that his sentences are huddled 
 together rather than artistically disposed. Still, with 
 all tliis lack of logical order, he has the immense 
 advantage of suggesting something new to the dili- 
 gent reader after he has read him for the fiftieth 
 time. 
 
 It is also to be said of Emerson that he is one of 
 the wittiest and most practical as well as one of the 
 profoundest of American writers, that his wit, exer- 
 cised on the ordinary affairs of life, is the very em- 
 bodiment of brilliant good sense, that he sometimes 
 rivals Franklin in humorous insight, and that both 
 his wit and humor obey that law of beauty which 
 
AMERICAN LITERATURE. 67 
 
 governs every other exercise of his peculiar mind. 
 He has many defects and eccentricities exasperating 
 to the critic who demands symmetry in the mental 
 constitution of the author whose peculiar merits he is 
 eager to acknowledge. He occasionally indulges, too, 
 in some strange freaks of intellectual and moral ca- 
 price which his own mature judgment should con- 
 demn, — the same pen by which they were recorded 
 being used to blot them out of existence. They are 
 audacities, but how unlike his grand audacities ! In 
 short, they are somewhat small audacities, unworthy 
 of him and of the subjects with which he deals — 
 escapades of epigram on topics which should have 
 exacted the austerest exercise of his exceptional 
 faculty of spiritual insight. Nothing, however, which 
 can be said against him touches his essential quality 
 of manliness, or lowers him from that rank of thinkers 
 in whom the seer and the poet combine to give the 
 deepest results of meditation in the most exquisite 
 forms of vital beauty. And then how superb and 
 animating is his lofty intellectual courage ! " The 
 soul," he says, " is in her native realm, and it is 
 wider than space, older than time, wide as hope, rich 
 as love. Pusillanimity and fear she refuses with a 
 beautiful scorn. They are not for her who putteth 
 on her coronation robes, and goes through universal 
 love to universal power." 
 
 Emerson, though in some respects connected with 
 the Unitarian movement as having been a minister of 
 the denomination, soon cut himself free from it, and 
 
68 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 
 
 was as independent of that form of Christian faith as 
 he was of other forms. He drew from all quarters, 
 and whatever fed his religious sense of mystery, of 
 might, of beauty, and of Deity was ever welcome to 
 his soul. As he was outside of all religious organi- 
 zations, and never condescended to enter into any 
 argument with his opponents, he was soon allowed 
 silently to drop out of theological controversy. But 
 a fiercer and more combative spirit now appeared to 
 trouble the Unitarian clergyman, — a man who con- 
 sidered himself a Unitarian minister, who had for 
 Calvinism a stronger repulsion than Channing or 
 Norton ever felt, and who attempted to drag on his 
 denomination to conclusions at which most of its 
 members stood aghast. 
 
 This man was Theodore Parker, a born controver- 
 sialist, who had the challenging chip always on his 
 shoulder, which he invited both his Unitarian and his 
 Orthodox brethren to knock off. There never was a 
 man who more gloried in a fight. If any theologians 
 desired to get into a controversy with him as to the 
 validity of their opposing beliefs, he was eager to give 
 them as much of it as they desired. The persecution 
 he most keenly felt was the persecution of inatten- 
 tion and silence. He was the Luther of radical Uni- 
 tarianism. When the Unitarian societies refused 
 fellowship with his society, he organized a church of 
 his own, and made it one of the most powerful in 
 New England. There was nothing but disease which 
 could check, and nothing but death whi<!li could close 
 
AMERICAN LITERATUKB. 69 
 
 his controversial activity. He became the champion 
 of radical as against conservative Unitarianism, and 
 the persistent adversary even of the most moderate 
 Calvinism. Besides his work in these fields of intel- 
 lectual effort, he threw himself literally head-foremost 
 — and his head was large and well-stored — into 
 every unpopular reform which he could aid by his 
 will, his reason, his learning, and his moral power. 
 He was among the leaders in the attempt to apply 
 the rigid maxims of Christianity to practical life ; 
 and many Orthodox clergymen, who combined with 
 him in his assaults on intemperance, slavery, and 
 other hideous evils of our civilization, almost con- 
 doned his theological heresies in their admiration of 
 his fearlessness in practical reforms. He was an 
 enormous reader and diligent student, as well as a 
 resolute man of affairs. He also had great depth and 
 fervency of piety. His favorite hymn was " Nearer, 
 my God, to Thee." While assailing what the great 
 body of New England people believed to be the foun- 
 dations of religion, he startled vigorous orthodox 
 reasoners by his confident teaching that every indi- 
 vidual soul had a consciousness of its immortality 
 independent of revelation, and superior to the results 
 of all the modern physical researches which seemed 
 to place it in doubt. Indeed, his own incessant ac- 
 tivity was an argument for the soul's immortality. 
 In spite of all the outside calls on his energies, he 
 found time to attend strictly to his ministerial duties, 
 to make himself one of the most accomplished theo- 
 
70 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 
 
 logical and general scholars in New England, and to 
 write and translate books which required deep study 
 and patient thought. The physical frame, stout as it 
 was, at last broke down — his mind still busy in 
 meditating new works which were never to be written. 
 Probably no other clergyman of his time, not even 
 Mr. Beecher, drew his society so closely to himself, 
 and became the object of so much warm personal 
 attachment and passionate devotion. Grim as he 
 appeared when, arrayed in his theological armor, he 
 went forth to battle, he was in private intercourse 
 the gentlest, most genial, and most affectionate of 
 men. And it is to be added that few Orthodox clergy- 
 men had a more intense religious faith in the saving 
 power of their doctrines than Theodore Parker had 
 in the x'egenerating efficacy of his rationalistic con- 
 victions. When Luther was dying. Dr. Jonas said to 
 him, " Reverend father, do you die in implicit reli- 
 ance on the faith you have taught ? " And from 
 those lips, just closing in death, came the steady an- 
 swering " Yes." Theodore Parker's answer to such 
 a question, put to him on his death-bed, would have 
 been the same. 
 
AMERICAN LITERATURE. 71 
 
 II. 
 
 Toward the conclusion of the first portion of this 
 paper, the necessity was shown of noticing the New 
 England revolt against Calvinism, in order to account 
 for certain peculiarities which characterize some prom- 
 inent poets and men of letters who testify to its influ- 
 ence. The theological protest against Unitarianism 
 was made by some of the most powerful minds and 
 learned scholars in the country, — by Stuart, Park, 
 Edwards, Barnes, Robinson, Lyman Beecher, the 
 whole family of the Alexanders, of which Addison 
 Alexander was the greatest, not to mention fifty others. 
 The thought of these men still controls the theological 
 opinion of the country, and their works are much 
 more extensively circulated, and exert a greater prac- 
 tical influence, than the writings of such men as 
 Channing, Norton, Dewey, Emerson, and Parker ; but 
 still they have not affected in a like degree the litera- 
 ture which springs from the heart, the imagination, 
 and the spiritual sentiment. Unitarianism, through 
 its lofty views of the dignity of human nature, natur- 
 ally allied itself with the sentiment of philanthropy. 
 While it has not been more practically conspicuous 
 than other denominations for the love of man, as ex- 
 pressed in works to ameliorate his condition, it has 
 succeeded better in domesticating philanthropy in 
 literature, especially in poetry. Witness Bryant, 
 
72 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 
 
 Longfellow, Whittier, Holmes, Lowell, and Mrs. 
 Howe. 
 
 Longfellow is probably the most popular poet of 
 the country. The breadth of his sympathy, the 
 variety of his acquisitions, the plasticity of his im- 
 agination, the sonorousness and weight of his verse, 
 the vividness of his imagery, the equality, the beauty, 
 the beneficence of his disposition, make him univer- 
 sally attractive and universally intelligible. Each of 
 his minor poems is pervaded by one thought, and has 
 that artistic unity which comes from the economic 
 use of rich material. The " Hymn to the Night," " A 
 Psalm of Life," "Footsteps of Angels," " The Skeleton 
 in Armor," "The Wreck of the Hesperus," "The 
 Village Blacksmith," " Excelsior," " The Arsenal at 
 Springfield," " Sea-Weed," " Resignation," and other 
 of his minor poems have found a lodgement in the 
 memory of everybody, and it will be found that their 
 charm consists in their unity as well as in their beauty, 
 that they are as much poems, complete in themselves, 
 as " Evangeline" or "Hiawatha." In "Maidenhood " 
 and " Endymion," especially in the latter, the poet is 
 revealed in all the exquisiteness, the delicacy, the re- 
 finement, of his imaginative faculty ; but they are less 
 popular than the poems previously mentioned, because 
 they embody more subtile moods of the poetic mind. 
 Longfellow's power of picturing to the eye and the 
 soul a scene, a place, an event, a person, is almost un- 
 rivalled. His command of many metres, each adapted 
 to his special subject, shows also how artistically he 
 
AMERICAN LITEEATUEE. 73 
 
 uses sound to re-enforce vision, and satisfy the ear 
 while pleasing the eye. 
 
 " When descends on the Atlantic 
 
 The gigantic 
 Storm-wind of the equinox, 
 Landward in his wrath he scourges 
 
 The toiling surges, 
 Laden with sea-weed from the rocks." 
 
 The ear least skilled to detect the harmonies of verse 
 feels the obvious effect of lines like these. In his 
 long poems, such as " Evangeline," " The Golden 
 Legend," "Hiawatha," "Tlie Courtship of Miles Stan- 
 dish," "The New England Tragedies," Longfellow 
 never repeats himself. He occupies a new domain of 
 poetry with each successive poem, and always gives 
 the public the delightful shock of a new surprise. In 
 his prose works, " Outre-Mer," " Hyperion," and 
 " Kavanagh," he is the same man as in his verse, — 
 ever sweet, tender, thoughtful, weighty, vigorous, im- 
 aginative, and liumane. His great translation of 
 Dante is not the least of his claims to the gratitude 
 of his countrymen, for it is a new illustration of his 
 life-long devotion — rare in an American — to the 
 service of literature, considered as one of the highest 
 exercises of patriotism. 
 
 Longfellow has enjoyed every advantage that cul- 
 ture can give, and his knowledge of many nations and 
 many languages undoubtedly has given breadth to his 
 mind, and opened to him ever new sources of poetic 
 interest ; but John Greenleaf Whittier, who contests 
 
74 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 
 
 with him the palm of popularity as a poet, was one 
 of those God-made men who are in a sense self-made 
 poets. A musing farmer's boy, working in the fields, 
 and ignorant of books, he early felt the poetic instinct 
 moving in his soul, but thought his surroundings were 
 essentially prosaic, and could never be sung. At last 
 one afternoon, while he was gathering in the hay, a 
 pedler dropped a copy of Burns into his hands. In- 
 stantly his eyes were unsealed. There in the neigh- 
 boring field was " Highland Mary ; " " The Cotter's 
 Saturday Night " occurred in his own father's pious 
 New England home ; and the birds which carolled over 
 his head, the flowers which grew under his feet, were 
 as poetic as those to which the Scottish ploughman had 
 given perennial interest. Burns taught him to detect 
 the beautiful in the common; but Burns could not 
 ^o^rupt the singularly pure soul of the lad by his en- 
 ticing suggestions of idealized physical enjoyment and 
 unregulated passion. The boy grew into a man, cul- 
 tivating assiduously his gift of song, though shy of 
 showing it. The antislavery storm swept over the 
 land, awakening consciences as well as stimulating 
 intellects. Whittier had always lived in a region of 
 moral ideas, and this antislavery inspiration inflamed 
 his moral ideas into moral passion and moral wrath. 
 If Garrison may be considered the prophet of anti- 
 slavery, and Phillips its orator, and Mrs. Stowe its 
 novelist, and Sumner its statesman, there can be no 
 doubt that Whittier was its poet. Quaker as he was, 
 his martial lyrics had something of the energy of a 
 
AMERICAN LITERATURE. 75 
 
 primitive bard urging on hosts to battle. Every word 
 was a blow, as uttered by this newly enrolled soldier 
 of the Lord. " The silent, shy, peace-loving man " 
 became a « fiery partisan," and held his intrepid way 
 
 " against the public frown, 
 The ban of Church and State, the tierce mob's hounding down." 
 
 He roused, condensed, and elevated the public senti- 
 ment against slavery. The poetry was as genuine as 
 the wrath was terrific, and many a political time- 
 server, who was proof against Garrison's hottest de- 
 nunciations and Phillips's most stinging invectives, 
 quailed before Whittier's smiting rhymes. Yet he 
 tells us he was essentially a poetic dreamer, unfit " to 
 ride the winged hippogriff Reform." 
 
 " For while he wrought with strenuous will 
 The work his hands had found to do, 
 He heard the fitful music still 
 
 Of winds that out of dream-land blew. 
 
 " The common air was thick with dreams — 
 He told them to the toiling crowd; 
 Such music as the woods and streams 
 Sang in his ear he sang aloud. 
 
 " In still, shut bays, on windy capes. 
 He heard the call of beckoning shapes. 
 And, as the gray old shadows prompted him, 
 To homely moulds of rhyme he shaped their legends grim.'' 
 
 In these lines he refers to two kinds of poetry in which 
 he has obtained almost equal eminence, — his intensely 
 imaginative and meditative poems, and his ringing. 
 
76 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 
 
 legendary ballads, the material of the latter having 
 been gathered, in his wanderings, from the lips of 
 sailors, farmers, and that class of aged women who 
 connect each event they relate with the superstitions 
 originally ingrafted upon it. It is needless to add 
 that during the War of the Rebellion, and the political 
 contests accompanying reconstruction, the voice of 
 Whittier rang through the land to cheer, to animate, 
 to uplift, and also to warn and denounce. Whittier, 
 though creedless, is one of the most religious of our 
 poets. In these days of scepticism as to the possibil- 
 ity of the communication of the Divine Mind with the 
 human, it is consolatory to read his poem on " The 
 Eternal Goodness," especially this stanza : — 
 
 " I know not where His islands lift 
 Their fronded palms in air ; 
 I only know I cannot drift 
 Beyond His love and care.'' 
 
 Oliver Wendell Holmes — wit, satirist, humorist, 
 novelist, scholar, scientist — is, above everything, a 
 poet, for the qualities of the poet pervade all the 
 operations of his variously gifted mind. His sense 
 of the ludicrous is not keener than his sense of the 
 beautiful ; his wit and humor are but the sportive 
 exercise of a fancy and imagination which he has 
 abundantly exercised on serious topics ; and the ex- 
 tensive learning and acute logic of the man of 
 science are none the less solid in substance because 
 in expression they are accompanied by a throng of 
 
AMERICAN LITERATURE. 77 
 
 images and illustrations which endow erudition with 
 life, and give a charm to the most closely linked chain 
 of reasoning. The first thing which strikes a reader 
 of Holmes is the vigor and elasticity of his nature. 
 He is incapable of weakness. He is fresh and manly 
 even when he securely treads the scarcely marked line 
 which separates sentiment from sentimentality. This 
 prevailing vigor proceeds from a strength of individu- 
 ality which is often pushed to dogmatic self-assertion. 
 It is felt as much in his airy, fleering mockeries of 
 folly and pretension, as in his almost Juvenalian in- 
 vectives against baseness and fraud — in the pleasant 
 way in which he stretches a coxcomb on the rack of 
 wit, as in the energy with which he grapples an oppo- 
 nent in the tussle of argumentation. He never seems 
 to imagine that he can be inferior to the thinker whose 
 position he assails, any more than to the noodle whose 
 nonsense he jeers at. In argument he is sometimes 
 the victor, in virtue of scornfully excluding what 
 another reasoner would include, and thus seems to 
 make his own intellect the measure of the whole sub- 
 ject in discussion. When in his Autocrat, or his 
 Professor, or his Poet, at the Breakfast Table, he 
 touches theological themes, he is peculiarly exasperat- 
 ing to theological opponents, not only for the effect- 
 iveness of his direct hits, but for the easy way in 
 which he gayly overlooks considerations which their 
 whole culture has induced them to deem of vital 
 moment. The truth is that Holmes's dogmatism 
 comes rather from the vividness and rapidity of his 
 
78 AMERICAN LITBEATURE. 
 
 perceptions than from the arrogance of his personality. 
 " This," he seems to say, " is not my opinion ; it is a 
 demonstrated law which you wilfully ignore while 
 pretending to be scholars." The indomitable courage 
 of the man carries him through all the exciting con- 
 troversies he scornfully invites. Holmes, for the last 
 forty years, has been expressing this inexhaustible 
 vitality of nature in various ways, and to-day he ap- 
 pears as vigorous as he was in his prime, more vigor- 
 ous than he was in his youth. His early poems 
 sparkled with thought and abounded in energy ; but 
 still they cannot be compared in wit, in humor, in 
 depth of sentiment, in beauty of diction, in thouglitful- 
 ness,in lyrical force, with the poems of the past twenty- 
 five years of his life. It is needless to give even the 
 titles of the many pieces which are fixed in the mem- 
 ory of all cultivated readers among his countrymen. 
 His novels " Elsie Venner " and " The Guardian 
 Angel " rank high among original American contri- 
 butions to the domain of romance. In prose, as in 
 verse, his fecundity and vigor of thought have found 
 adequate expression in a corresponding point and 
 compactness of style. 
 
 James Russell Lowell is now in the prime of his 
 genius and at the height of his reputation. His 
 earlier poems, pervaded by the transcendental tone of 
 thought current in New England at the time they 
 were written, were full of promise, but gave little 
 evidence of the wide variety of power he has since 
 displayed. The spirituality of his thinking has deep- 
 
AMERICAN LITERATURE. 79 
 
 ened with advancing years. Nothing in his first vol- 
 ume, " A Year's Life," suggests the depth of moral 
 beauty he afterward embodied in " The Vision of Sir 
 Launfal," the throng of subtle thoughts and images 
 which almost confuse us by their multiplicity in " The 
 Cathedral," and the grandeur of " The Commemora- 
 tion Ode." "The Biglow Papers" are unique in our 
 literature. Lowell adds to his other merits that of 
 being an accomplished philologist; but granting his 
 scholarship as an investigator of the popular idioms 
 of foreign speech, he must be principally esteemed for 
 his knowledge of the Yankee dialect. Hosea Biglow 
 is almost the only writer who uses the dialect prop- 
 erly, and most other pretenders to a knowledge of it 
 must be considered caricaturists as compared with 
 him ; for Biglow, like Burns, makes the dialect he 
 employs flexible to every mood of thought and pas- 
 sion, from good sense as solid as granite to the most 
 bewitching descriptions of nature and the loftiest 
 affirmations of conscience. As a prose writer Lowell is 
 quite as eminent as he is as a poet. His essays, where 
 Nature is his theme, are brimful of delicious descrip- 
 tions, and his critical papers on Chaucer, Shakspeare, 
 Spenser, Dryden, Pope, and Rousseau, not to mention 
 others, are masterpieces of their kind. His defect, 
 both as poet and prose writer, comes from the too 
 lavish use of his seemingly inexhaustible powers of 
 wit, fancy, and imagination. He is apt to sacrifice 
 unity of general effect by overloading his paragraphs 
 with suggestive meaning. That wise reserve of 
 
80 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 
 
 expression to which Longfellow owes so much of his 
 reputation, that subordination of minor thoughts to 
 the leading thought of the poem or essay, are fre- 
 quently disregarded by Lowell. His mind is too rich 
 to submit even to artistic checks on its fertility. 
 
 Julia Ward Howe, one of the most accomplished 
 women in the United States, a scholar, a reasoner, an 
 excellent prose writer, a poet with the power to up- 
 lift as well as to please, is also generally known as a 
 champion of the right of women to vote. In the 
 facts, arguments, and appeals which she brings to 
 bear on this debated question, and the felicity of the 
 occasional sarcastic strokes with which she smites an 
 opponent who has offended her reason as well as 
 vexed her patience, we find a woman fully equipped 
 to do battle for the cause of woman ; and certainly 
 that man must be exceptionally endowed with brains 
 who can afford to indulge in the luxury of despising 
 her intellect. Her thrilling " Battle Hymn of the 
 Republic " is an artistic variation on the John Brown 
 song. The original is incomparable of its kind. No 
 poet could have written it. Such rudeness and wild- 
 ness are beyond the conception even of Walt Whit- 
 man and the author of " Pestus." One would say 
 that it was written by the common soldiers who sang 
 it as they advanced to battle ; that it was an ele- 
 mental tune, suited to the rugged natures that shouted 
 its refrain as they resolutely faced death, with the 
 confident assurance of immortality. The words are 
 verbal equivalents of rifle-bullets and cannon-balls ; 
 
AMERICAN LITBRATUEIE. 81 
 
 the tune is a noise, like the shriek of the shell as it 
 ascends to the exact point whence it can most surely 
 descend to blast and kill. Mrs. Howe's hymn has 
 not this elemental character, but it is still wonderfully 
 animating and invigorating ; and the constant use of 
 Scripture phrases shows the high level of thought 
 and sentiment to which her soul had mounted, and 
 from which she poured forth her exulting strains. 
 " Our Country," " The Flag," " Our Orders," are also, 
 thoughtful or impassioned outbreaks of the same 
 spiritual feeling which gives vitality to the " Battle 
 Hymn." 
 
 The authors thus grouped together, differing so 
 widely as they do in the individuality impressed on 
 their genius, are still connected by that peculiar im- 
 pulse given to American literature by Channing's 
 revolt against the Calviuistic view of human nature, 
 and by the emphasis they all lay on the ethical senti- 
 ment, not merely in its practical application to tlie 
 concerns of actual life, but as highly ideaUzed in 
 its application to that life which is called divine. 
 The new poetical metaphysics and theology had not 
 touched the mind of Charles Sprague. His poem of 
 " Curiosity," delivered in 1829 before the Phi Beta 
 Society of Harvard College, is so excellent in descrip- 
 tion, in the various pictures it gives of human life, in 
 the pungency of its wit and satire, that it deserves a 
 place among the best productions of the school ol 
 Pope and Goldsmith. His odes are more open to 
 criticism, though they contain many thoughtful,, 
 
 6 
 
82 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 
 
 impassioned, and resounding lines. His " Shakspeare " 
 ode is the best of these ; and he concludes it with a 
 very felicitous image, contrasting the success of the 
 great poet of England in doing that which her states- 
 men and soldiers could not perform : — 
 
 " Our Roman-hearted fathers broke 
 Thy parent empire's galling yoke ; 
 But thon, harmonious monarch of the mind, 
 Around their sons a gentler chain shall hind. 
 Still o'er our land shall Albion's sceptre wave, 
 And what her mighty lion lost her mightier swan shall save.'' 
 
 A more homely illustration of the fact that Shak- 
 speare binds the English race together whithersoever 
 it wanders, is afforded by the remark of a sturdy 
 New England farmer when he heard the rumor that 
 England intended to make the Mason and Slidell 
 affair an occasion for war with the United States, 
 and thus insure success to the Confederates. The 
 farmer paused, reflected, sought out in his mind 
 something which would indicate his complete sever- 
 ance not only from the people of England, but from 
 the English mind, and at last condensed all his wrath 
 in this intense remark, " Well, if that report is true, 
 all I can say is that Lord Lyons is welcome to my 
 copy of Shakspeare." 
 
 Perhaps Sprague's most original poems are those in 
 which he consecrated his domestic affections. Words- 
 worth himself would have hailed these with delight. 
 Anybody who can read with unwet eyes " I See 
 Still," " The Family Meeting," " The Brothers," and 
 
AMERICAN LITERATURE. 83 
 
 " Lines on the Death of M. S. C," is a critic who has 
 as little perception of the language of natural emotion 
 as of the reserves and refinements of poetic art. 
 
 Sprague had the good fortune, as the cashier of a 
 leading Boston bank, to be independent of his poetic 
 gifts, considered as means of subsistence. But 
 Nathaniel Parker Willis was, perhaps, the first of our 
 poets to prove that literature could be relied upon as 
 a good business. He certainly enjoyed all those ad- 
 vantages which accompany competence, and the only 
 bank he could draw upon was his brain. He thor- 
 oughly understood the art of producing what people 
 desired to read, and for which publishers were will- 
 ing to pay. His early Scripture sketches, written 
 when he was a student of Yale, gave him the reputa- 
 tion of a promising genius ; and though the genius did 
 not afterward take the direction to which its first 
 successes pointed, it gained in strength and breadth 
 with the writer's advancing years. In his best poems 
 he displayed energy both of thought and imagination ; 
 but his predominant characteristics were keenness of 
 observation, fertility of fancy, quickness of wit, shrewd- 
 ness of understanding, a fine perception of beauty, a 
 remarkable felicity in the choice of words, and a sub- 
 tle sense of harmony in their arrangement, whether 
 his purpose was to produce melodious verse or musi- 
 cal prose. But he doubtless squandered his powers 
 in the attempt to turn them into commodities. To 
 this he was driven by his necessities, and he always 
 frankly acknowledged that he could have done better 
 
84 AMETIICAN LITERATURE. 
 
 with his brain had he possessed an income corre- 
 sponding to that of other eminent American men of 
 letters, who could select their topics without regard 
 to the immediate market value of what they wrote. 
 He became the favorite poet, satirist, and " organ " of 
 the fashionable world. He wrote editorials, letters, 
 essays, novels, which were full of evidences of his 
 rare talent without doing justice to it. He idealized 
 trivialities ; he gave a kind of reality to the unreal ; 
 and week after week he lifted into importance the 
 unsubstantial matters which for the time occupied 
 the attention of " good society." Some of his phrases, 
 such as " the upper ten thousand," " Fifth-Ave-nudity," 
 are still remembered. The paper which Willis ed- 
 ited, the " Home Journal," exerted a great deal of 
 influence. However slight might be the subjects, 
 there can be no question that the editor worked hard 
 in bringing the resources of his knowledge, observa- 
 tion, wit, and fancy to place them in their most at- 
 tractive lights. The trouble was not in the vigor of 
 the faculties, but in the thinness of much of the mat- 
 ter. As an editor, however, Willis had an opportu- 
 nity to display his grand generosity of heart, and the 
 peculiar power he had of detecting the slightest trace 
 of genius in writers who were the objects of his appre- 
 ciative eulogy. In the whole history of American 
 literature there is no other example of a prominent 
 man of letters who showed, like Willis, such a pas- 
 sionate desire to make liis natural influence effective 
 in dragging into prominence writers who either had 
 
AMERICAN LITERATURE. 85 
 
 no reputation at all, or whose reputation was noto- 
 riously less than his. 
 
 James G. Percival had not Willis's happy disposi- 
 tion and adaptive talent. Though recognized by 
 friends as a poet of the first (American) class, he 
 never succeeded in interesting the great body of his 
 intelligent countrymen in any but a few of his minor 
 poems. He ranks among the great sorrowing class 
 of neglected geniuses. A man of large though some- 
 what undigested erudition, knowing many languages 
 and many sciences, he was seemingly ignorant of the 
 art of marrying his knowledge to his imagination. 
 When he wrote in prose, he was full of matter ; when 
 he wrote in verse, he was full of glow and aspiration 
 and fancy, but wanting in matter. At present, the 
 poet is required to supply nutriment as well as stimu- 
 lant. Tennyson's immense popularity, which makes 
 every new poem from his pen a literary event, is to 
 be referred not merely to his imaginative power, but 
 to his keeping himself on a level with the science and 
 scholarship of his age. " In Memoriam " would not 
 have attracted so much attention had it not been felt 
 that the poet who celebrates a dead friend was at the 
 same time all alive to the importance of problems, 
 now vehemently discussed by theologians and scien- 
 tists, which relate to the question of the reality and 
 immortality of the human soul. Emerson, also, is 
 not more noted for his grand reliance on the soul 
 than for his acquaintance with the scientific facts and 
 theories which appear to deny its existence. 
 
86 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 
 
 Edgar Allan Poe, like Willis and Percival, adopted, 
 or was forced into, literature as a profession. He 
 was a man of rare original capacity, cursed by an 
 incurable perversity of character. It cannot be said 
 he failed of success. The immediate recognition as 
 positive additions to our literature of such poems as 
 " The Eaven," " Annabel Lee," and " The Bells," and 
 of such prose stories as " The Gold Bug," " The Pur- 
 loined Letter," " The Murders of Rue Morgue," and 
 " The Fall of the House of Usher," indicates that the 
 public was not responsible for the misfortunes of his 
 life. He also assumed the position of general censor 
 and supervisor of American letters, and in this he 
 also measurably succeeded ; for his critical power, 
 when not biassed by his caprices, was extraordinarily 
 acute, and during the period of his domination no 
 critic's praise was more coveted than his, and no 
 critic's blame more dreaded. In most of his literary 
 work he displayed that rare combination of reason 
 and imagination to which may be given the name of 
 imaginative analysis. He was so proud of this power 
 that he was never weary of unfolding, even to a 
 chance acquaintance, the genesis of his poems and 
 stories, accounting, on reasonable grounds, for every 
 melodious variation in the verse, every little incident 
 touched upon in the narrative, as steps in a deductive 
 argument from assumed premises. One of two things 
 was necessary to quicken his mind into full activity. 
 The first was animosity against an individual ; the 
 second was some chance suggestion which awakened 
 
AMERICAN LITERATURE. 87 
 
 and tasked all the resources of his intellectual inge- 
 nuity. The wild, weird, unearthly, wncZer-natural, as 
 distinguished from supernatural, element in his most 
 popular poems and stories is always accompanied by 
 an imagination which not only spiritually discerns 
 but relentlessly dissects. The morbid element, di- 
 recting his powers, came from his character ; the 
 perfection of his analysis came from an intellect as 
 fertile as it was calm, and as delicate in selecting 
 every minute thread of thought as in seizing ' every 
 evanescent shade of feeling. 
 
 Bayard Taylor is justly esteemed as one of the 
 most eminent of American men of letters. A grad- 
 uate of no university, he has mastered many lan- 
 guages ; born in a Pennsylvania village, he may be 
 said to have been everywhere and to have seen every- 
 body ; and all that he has achieved is due to his own 
 persistent energy and tranquil self-reliance. Journal- 
 ist, traveller, essayist, critic, novelist, scholar, and 
 poet, he has ever preserved the simplicity of nature 
 which marked his first book of travels, and the sim- 
 plicity of style which the knowledge of many lauds 
 and many tongues has never tempted him to abandon. 
 His books of voyages and travels are charming, but 
 their charm consists in the austere closeness of the 
 words he uses to the facts he records, the scenery he 
 depicts, and the adventures he narrates. The same 
 simplicity of style characterizes his poems, his few 
 novels, and numerous stories. The richness of his 
 vocabulary never impels him to sacrifice truth of rep- 
 
88 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 
 
 resentation to the transient effectiveness which is 
 readily secured by indulgence in declamation. One 
 sometimes wonders that the master of so many lan- 
 guages should be content to express himself with such 
 rigid economy of word and phrase in the one he learned 
 at his mother's knee. Among Taylor's minor poems 
 it is difficult to select those which exhibit his genius at 
 its topmost point. Perhaps " Camadeva " may be in- 
 stanced as best showing his power of blending exqui- 
 site melody with serene, satisfying, uplifting thought. 
 The song which begins with the invocation, " Daughter 
 of Egypt, veil thine eyes ! " is as good as could be se- 
 lected from his many pieces to indicate the energy 
 and healthiness of his lyric impulse. His longer 
 poems would reward a careful criticism. The best of 
 them is " The Masque of the Gods " — a poem com- 
 prehensive in conception, noble in purpose, and ad- 
 mirable in style. Taylor has also done a great work 
 in translating, or rather transfusing, the two parts of 
 Goethe's " Faust " into various English metres cor- 
 responding to the original German verse, literal not 
 only in reproducing ideas, but in reproducing melodies. 
 This long labor could only have been undertaken by 
 an American man of letters whose love of lucre was 
 entirely subordinate to his love of literature. 
 
 Another American writer who has made literature 
 a profession is George William Curtis. Mr. Curtis 
 opened a new vein of satiric fiction in " The Potiphar 
 Papers," " Prue and I," and " Trumps ; " but prob- 
 ably the great extent of his popularity is due to his 
 
AMERICAN LITERATURE. 89 
 
 papers in " Harper's Magazine," under the general title 
 of the Editor's Easy Chair. In these he has developed 
 every faculty of his mind and every felicity of his 
 disposition ; the large variety of the topics he has 
 treated would alone be sufficient to prove the gener- 
 ous breadth of his culture ; but it is in the treatment 
 of his topics that his peculiarly attractive genius is 
 displayed in all its abundant resources of sense, 
 knowledge, wit, fancy, reason, and sentiment. His 
 tone is not only manly, but gentlemanly ; his persua- 
 siveness is an important element of his influence ; 
 and no reformer has equalled him in the art of insin- 
 uating sound principles into prejudiced intellects by 
 putting them in the guise of pleasantries. He can on 
 occasion send forth sentences of ringing invective ; 
 but in the Easy Chair he generally prefers the atti- 
 tude of urbanity which the title of his department 
 suggests. His style, in addition to its other merits, 
 is rhythmical ; so that his thoughts slide, as it were, 
 into the reader's mind in a strain of music. Not the 
 least remarkable of his characteristics is the undi- 
 minished vigor and elasticity of his intelligence, in 
 spite of the incessant draughts he has for years been 
 making upon it. 
 
 In the domain of history and biography American 
 literature, during the past fifty years, can boast of 
 works of standard value. The most indefatigable of 
 all explorers into the unpublished letters and docu- 
 ments illustrating the history of the United States 
 was Jared Sparks. His voluminous editions of " The 
 
90 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 
 
 Life and Writings of Washington and Franklin," Ms 
 " Diplomatic Correspondence of the Revolution," and 
 other books devoted to the task of adding to the 
 authentic materials of American history, are mines 
 of information to the students of history ; but Mr. 
 Sparks, though a clear and forcible writer, had not 
 the gift of attractiveness ; and the results of his in- 
 vestigations have been more popularly presented by 
 Irving in his " Life of Washington," and Parton 
 in his " Life of Franklin," than by his own biogra- 
 phies of those eminent men, based on the results of 
 tireless original research extending through many 
 years. 
 
 In the political history of the country there only 
 remain two "families," in the English sense of the 
 term. These are the Adamses and the Hamiltons. 
 Charles F. Adams, Sr., has published a collection of 
 his grandfather's works, in ten volumes, introduced by 
 a life of John Adams, which is one of the most delight- 
 ful of American biographies, and at the same time a 
 positive addition to the early history of the United 
 States under our first two Presidents. An edition of 
 Hamilton's works has also been published ; and one 
 of Hamilton's sons has written a " History of the Re- 
 public of the United States," " as traced in the writings 
 of Alexander Hamilton and of his contemporaries." 
 It is needless to say that the controversies between the 
 two families have added new matter of great value to 
 the mass of documents which shed light on our early 
 history as a united nation. 
 
AMERICAN LITEEATUKE. 91 
 
 It would be tedious to enumerate other -works, 
 ■which are valuable contributions to our annals ; but 
 in 1834 George Bancroft appeared as the historian 
 of the United States, or rather the historian of the 
 process by which the States became united. He pro- 
 fessed to have seized on the underlying Idea which 
 shaped the destinies of the country ; in later volumes 
 he indicated his initiation in the councils of Provi- 
 dence ; and though his last volume (the tenth), pub- 
 lished in 1874, only brings the history down to the 
 conclusion of the Revolutionary war, his labor of 
 forty years has confirmed him in his historical phi- 
 losophy. Bancroft has been prominent in American 
 politics during, all this period ; he has been succes- 
 sively Collector of the port of Boston, Secretary of 
 the Navy, American Minister in London and Berlin, 
 and has thus enjoyed every possible advantage of cor- 
 recting his declamation by his experience ; but his 
 tendency to rhapsody has not diminished with the 
 increase of his knowledge and his years. He has, to 
 be sure, availed himself of every opportunity to add 
 to the materials which enter into the composition of 
 American history, and has been as indefatigable in 
 research as confident in theorizing. The different 
 volumes of his work are of various literary merit, but 
 they are all stamped by the unmistakable impress of 
 the historian's individuality. There is no dogmatism 
 more exclusive than that of fixed ideas and ideals, 
 and this dogmatism Mr. Bancroft exhibits throughout 
 his history both in its declamatory and speculative 
 
92 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 
 
 form. Indeed, there are chapters in each of his vol- 
 umes which, coasidered apart, might lead one to sup- 
 pose that the work was misnamed, and that it should 
 be entitled, " The ■ Psychological Autobiography of 
 George Bancroft, as Illustrated by Incidents and 
 Characters in the Annals of the United States." 
 Generally, however, his fault is not in suppressing or 
 overlooking facts, but -in disturbing the relations of 
 facts, — substituting their relation to the peculiar in- 
 tellectual and moral organization of the historian to 
 their natural relations with each other. Still, he has 
 written the most popular history of the United States 
 (up to 1782) which has yet appeared, and has made 
 a very large addition to the materials on which it 
 rests. Perhaps he would not have been so tireless in 
 research had he not been so passionately earnest in 
 speculation. 
 
 The necessarily slow progress of Mr. Bancroft's 
 history, and the various protests against his theories 
 and his judgments, impelled Richard Hildreth, — a 
 bold, blunt, hard-headed, and resolute man, caustic 
 in temper, keen in intellect, indefatigable in indus- 
 try, and blessed with an honest horror of shams, — to 
 write a history of the United States in which our fa- 
 thers should be presented exactly as they were, " un- 
 bedaubed with patriotic rouge." The first volume was 
 published in 1849, the sixth in 1852. The whole 
 work included the events between the discovery and 
 colonization of the continent and the year 1821. As a 
 book of reference, this history still remains as the best 
 
AMERICAN LITERATURE. 93 
 
 in our catalogues of works on American history. The 
 style is concise, the facts happily combined, the judg- 
 ments generally good ; and while justice is done to 
 our great men, there is everywhere observable an 
 almost vindictive contempt of persons who have made 
 themselves " great " by the arts of the demagogue. 
 Hildreth studied carefully all the means of informa- 
 tion within his reach ; but his plan did not contem- 
 plate original research on the large scale in which it 
 was prosecuted by Bancroft. 
 
 The " History of New England," by John G. Pal- 
 frey, is distinguished by thoroughness of investigation, 
 fairness of judgment, and clearness and temperance 
 of style. It is one of the ablest contributions as yet 
 made to our colonial history. The various histories 
 of Francis Parkman — " The Conspiracy of Pontiac," 
 " The Pioneers of France in the New "World," " The 
 Jesuits in North America," " The Discovery of the 
 Great West" — exhibit a singular combination of the 
 talents of the historian with those of the novelist. 
 The materials he has laboriously gathered are dis- 
 posed in their just relations by a sound understand- 
 ing, while they are vivified by a realizing mind. The 
 result is a series of narratives in which accuracy in 
 the slightest details is found compatible with the 
 most glowing exercise of historical imagination, and 
 the use of a style singularly rapid, energetic, and 
 picturesque. 
 
 William H. Prescott had one of those happily con- 
 stituted natures in which intellectual conscientiousness 
 
94 AMEUICAN LITERATURE. 
 
 is in perfect harmony with the moral quality which 
 commonly monopolizes the name of conscience. He was 
 as incapable of lies of the brain as of lies of the heart. 
 When he undertook to write histories, he employed 
 an ample fortune to obtain new materials, sifted them 
 with the utmost care, weighed opposing statements 
 in an understanding which was unbiassed by preju- 
 dice, and, suppressing the laborious processes by 
 which he had arrived at definite conclusions, pre- 
 sented the results of his toil in a narrative so easy, 
 limpid, vivid, and picturesque that his delighted 
 readers hardly realized that what was so pleasing and 
 instructive to them could have cost much pain and 
 labor to him. Echoes beyond the Atlantic, coming 
 from England, Prance, Germany, Italy, and Spain, 
 gradually forced the conviction into the ordinary 
 American mind that the historian of Ferdinand and 
 Isabella, of the conquerors of Mexico and Peru, of 
 Philip the Second, had in his quiet Boston home 
 made large additions to the history of Europe in one 
 of its most important epochs. Humboldt was spe- 
 cially emphatic in his praise. Prescott was enrolled 
 among the members of many foreign academies, whose 
 doors were commonly shut to all who could not show 
 that they had made contributions to human knowl- 
 edge as well as to human entertainment. Much of 
 his foreign reputation was doubtless due to his lavish 
 expenditure of money to obtain rare books and copies 
 of rare manuscripts which contained novel and im- 
 portant facts ; but his wide popularity is to be re- 
 
AMEEICAN LITERATURE. 95 
 
 ferred to his possession of the faculty or historical 
 imagination, — that is, his power of realizing and re- 
 producing the events and characters of past ages, and 
 of becoming mentally a contemporary of the persons 
 whose actions he narrated. His partial blindness, 
 which compelled him to listen rather than to read, 
 and to employ a cunningly contrived apparatus in 
 order to write, was in his case an advantage. He 
 had the eyes of friends and faithful secretaries eager 
 to serve him. What passed into his ear became an 
 image in his mind, and his bodily infirmity quickened 
 his mental sight. His judgment and imagination 
 brooded over the throng of details to which he lis- 
 tened ; he formed a mental picture out of the dry 
 facts ; and by assiduous thinking he disposed the 
 facts in their right relations without losing his hold 
 on their vitality as pictures of a past age. People 
 who passed him in his daily afternoon walks around 
 Boston Common knew that his thoughts were busy on 
 Ferdinand, or Cortez, or Pizarro, or Philip, and not 
 on the news of the day ; and his rapid pace and the 
 peculiar swing of his cane as he trudged on indicated 
 that he was looking not on what was imperfectly 
 present to his bodily eye, but on objects to which 
 physical exercise had given new life and signifi- 
 cance as surveyed by the eye of his mind. His 
 intense absorption in the subject-matter of his va- 
 rious histories gave to them a peculiar attractiveness 
 which few novels possess. Anybody who, after read- 
 ing Lew Wallace's recent romance of " The Fair 
 
96 AMERICAN LITERATUEE. 
 
 God," or Dr. Bird's " Calavar," will then turn to 
 Prescott's " History of the Conquest of Mexico," 
 cannot fail to be 'impressed with the historian's supe- 
 riority to the romancer in the mere point of romantic 
 interest. 
 
 Another American historian, John Lothrop Motley, 
 the author of " The Rise of the Dutch Republic," 
 "The History of the United Netherlands," "The 
 History of John of Barneveld," and, it is to be hoped, 
 of the great Thirty Years' "War, has been, like Prescott, 
 untiring in research, has made large additions to the 
 facts of European history, has decisively settled many 
 debatable questions which have tried the sagacity of 
 French and German historians of the sixteenth cen- 
 tury, and has poured forth the results of his re- 
 searches in a series of impassioned narratives, which 
 warm the blood and kindle the imagination as well 
 as inform the understanding. His histories are, in 
 some degree, epics. As he frequently crosses Pres- 
 cott's path in his presentation of the ideas, passions, 
 and persons of the sixteenth century, it is curious to 
 note the serenity of Pi-escott's narrative as contrasted 
 with the swift, chivalric impatience of wrong which 
 animates almost every page of Motley. Both imagi- 
 natively reproduce what they have investigated ; both 
 have the eye to see and the reason to discriminate ; 
 both substantially agree in their judgment as to 
 events and characters ; but Prescott quietly allows 
 his readers, as a jury, to render their verdict on the 
 statement of the facts, while Motley somewhat fiercely 
 
AMERICAN LITERATURE. 97 
 
 pushes forward to anticipate it. Prescott calmly 
 represents ; Motley intensely feels. Prescott is on a 
 watch-tower surveying the battle ; Motley plunges, 
 into the thickest of the fight. In temperament no two 
 historians could be more apart ; in judgment they are 
 identical. As both historians are equally incapable 
 of lying, Motley finds it necessary to overload his 
 narrative with details which justify his vehemence, 
 while Prescott can afford to omit them, on account 
 of his reputation for a benign impartiality between 
 the opposing parties. A Roman Catholic disputant 
 would find it hard to fasten a quarrel on Prescott ; 
 but with Motley he could easily detect an occasion 
 for a duel to the death. It is to be said that Motley's 
 warmth of feeling never betrays him into intentional 
 injustice to any human being ; his histories rest on 
 a basis of facts which no critic has shalcen. And to 
 the merit of being a historian of wide repute it is to 
 be added that he has ever been a stanch friend, in the 
 emergencies of the politics of the country, to every 
 cause based on truth, honor, reason, freedom, and 
 justice. The same high chivalrous tone which rings 
 through his histories has been heard in every crisis 
 of his public career. 
 
 The European histories of Prescott and Motley re- 
 quired an introduction, and this was furnished by 
 John Foster Kirk, in his " History of Charles the 
 Bold." Mr. Kirk was one of the ablest, most scholarly, 
 and most enthusiastic of Prescott's secretaries. He 
 had the sagacity to perceive the importance of the 
 
 7 
 
98 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 
 
 period of which he proposed to write the history, and 
 the perseverance to execute the difficult task. Charles 
 and Louis were Icnown to all people who spoke the 
 English tongue by Scott's famous novel of " Quentin 
 Durward," and his feebler concluding romance of 
 " Anne of Geierstein ; " and Mr. Kirk had a right to 
 suppose that an account of an important era of Euro- 
 pean history would lose none of its attractiveness by 
 being rigidly conformed to historical facts. As to 
 his research, it is sufficient to say that in his investi- 
 gations in the archives of Switzerland alone he was 
 probably the first man to disturb the dust which 
 nearly four centuries had heaped on precious manu- 
 script documents. As a thinker he is always inge- 
 nious, and as generally sound as he is original. In 
 narrative, the richness of his materials, as in the case 
 of Motley, tempts him sometimes into seemingly 
 needless minuteness of detail. 
 
 Among other works which do credit to the histor- 
 ical literature of the country may be named " The 
 Life and Correspondence of Nathaniel Greene," from 
 original materials, by George W. Greene, — a work 
 which, of its kind, is of the first class. The same 
 writer's " Historical View of the American Revolu- 
 tion " is an excellent compend drawn from original 
 sources. The various volumes of Richard Frothing- 
 ham are admirable for accuracy and research. On 
 the general subject of liistory, the elaborate work of 
 Dr. John W. Draper, " The History of the Intellect- 
 ual Development of Europe," is comprehensive in 
 
AMERICAN LITERATURE. 99 
 
 scope, brilliant in style, and bold in speculation. The 
 first volume of " The History of France," by Parke 
 Godwin, is so good that it is to be regretted the 
 author has not continued his task. The various bi- 
 ographies written by James Parton — namely, the 
 lives of Burr, Jackson, Franklin, and Jefferson — 
 have the great merit of being entertaining, while they 
 rest on a solid basis of facts which the writer has 
 diligently explored. His love of paradox, though a 
 fault, certainly gives piquancy to his lucid narrative. 
 He starts commonly with a peculiar theory, and if 
 sometimes unjust, the injustice comes from his sur- 
 veying the subject from an eccentric point of view, 
 and not from any deliberate intention to misstate 
 facts or disturb their relations. " The Life of Josiah 
 Quincy," by his son Edmund Quincy, is an admirably 
 executed portrait of one of the stoutest specimens of 
 political manhood in American history. Like Parton, 
 Quincy interests by reproducing the period of which 
 he writes, and, like him, is a painter of " interiors." 
 " The Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America," 
 by Henry Wilson, is the work of a man who as Sena- 
 tor of the United States was long in the thick of the 
 fight against slavery, who knew by experience the 
 thoughts, passions, and policies of the parties in the 
 contest, and who wrote the history of the contest 
 with simplicity, earnestness, and impartiality. " The 
 Life of Madison," by William C. Rives, is a work of 
 interest and value. Among the antiquarians and 
 anecdotists who have illustrated American history 
 
100 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 
 
 the highest reputation belongs to Benson J. Lossing 
 and the family of the Drakes. 
 
 In military history and biography, the most notable 
 •work the country has produced is " Memoirs of Gen- 
 eral W. T. Slierman, Written by Himself " — or, as 
 it might be called, " My Deeds in My Words." The 
 sharpness, conciseness, and arbitrariness of the auto- 
 biographer's style are characteristic of the man. He 
 is intensely conscious of his superiority. The word 
 of command is heard ringing in every page of his 
 two octavos. No man could, without being laughed at, 
 have written what he has written unless he had done 
 what he has done. Throughout his autobiography 
 he appears self-centred, self-referring, self-absorbed, 
 and, when opposed, prouder than a score of Spanish 
 hidalgos. Like George Eliot's innkeeper, he divides 
 human thought into two parts; namely, "my idee," 
 and "humbug," — there is no middle point ; but then 
 his intelligence is as solid, quick, broad, and full of 
 resource as his will is defiantly self-reliant. Though 
 there is something bare, bleak, harsh, abrupt, in his 
 style, his blunt egotism every now and then runs 
 into a rude humor. He pats on the back men as 
 brave if not as skilful as himself, and looks down 
 upon them witli good-natured toleration as long as 
 they look up to him ; but when they do not, disbelief 
 in Sherman denotes incompetency or malignity in the 
 critic. His enmities are hearted, and sometimes vin- 
 dictive. The grave has closed over a man who in his 
 sphere did at least as much as Sherman to overturn 
 
AMERICAN LITERATURE. 101 
 
 the Rebellion, and yet Sherman spares not Secretary 
 Stanton dead any more than he spared Stanton living. 
 Still, the book is thoroughly a soldier's book, and 
 must take a rank among the most instructive and 
 entertaining military memoirs ever written. 
 
 In that department of history which describes the 
 rise and growth of literatures, the most important 
 work whicli has been produced by an American scholar 
 is " The History of Spanish Literature," by George 
 Ticknor. As far as solid and accurate learning is 
 concerned, it is incomparably the best history of 
 Spanish literature in existence, and is so acknowl- 
 edged in Spain. The author, in his travels in Europe, 
 sought out every book which shed the slightest light 
 on his great subject. The materials of his work are 
 a carefully selected Spanish library, purchased by 
 himself. He deliberately took up the subject as a 
 task which would pleasingly occupy a lifetime. The 
 latest edition, published shortly after his death, showed 
 that the volumes always were on his desk for super- 
 vision, revision, and the introduction of new facts, 
 and that he continued pruning and enlarging his 
 work to the day when the pen dropped from his 
 hand. In research he was as indefatigable as he was 
 conscientious ; and possessing ample leisure and for- 
 tune, he tranquilly exerted the powers of his strong 
 understanding and the refinements of his cultivated 
 taste in forming critical judgments, which, if some- 
 what positive, had the positiveness of knowledge and 
 reflection. Besides, his culture was cosmopolitan ; 
 
102 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 
 
 he had enjoyed as wide opportunities for conversing 
 with men as with books, and there was hardly an 
 illustrious European scholar or man of letters of his 
 time with whom he had not been on terms of inti- 
 macy. But erudition cannot confer insight, nor can 
 genius be communicated by mere companionship with 
 it. Mr. Ticknor's defect was a lack of sympathy and 
 imagination, and to the historian of literature noth- 
 ing can compensate for a deficiency in these. He 
 could not mentally transform himself into a Spaniard , 
 and therefore could not penetrate into the secret of 
 the genius of Spain. He studied its great writers, 
 but he did not look into and behold their souls. 
 There was something cold, hard, resisting, and re- 
 pellent in his mind. His criticism, therefore, exter- 
 nally judicious, had not for its basis mental facts 
 vividly conceived and vitally interpreted. Had Mr. 
 Ticknor possessed the realizing imagination of his 
 friend Prescott, — who was never in Spain, — he would 
 have made what is now a valuable work also a work 
 of fascinating interest and extensive popularity. 
 
 In the department of history may be included works 
 on the origin, progress, organization, comparison, and 
 criticism of the religious ideas of various nations. 
 Three works of this kind have been produced in the 
 United States during the past twenty years, each of 
 which indicates a " liberal " bias. The first is " The 
 History of the Doctrine of a Future Life," by William 
 R. Alger. This is a mine of generalized information, 
 obtained by great labor, and sifted, analyzed, and classi- 
 
AMERICAN LITERATURE. 103 
 
 (led with care and skill. Indeed, it is said that some 
 of the author's acquaintances, knowing the compre- 
 hensiveness of the plan, and seeing year after year 
 pass by without any signs of approaching publication, 
 gently hinted to him that the book, as he was writing 
 it, would only be finished in that state of existence 
 which it took for its theme. The second is " Orien- 
 tal Religions," by Samuel Johnson, the product of 
 a learned, intelligent, and intrepid " Free Religion- 
 ist." The third is " Ten Great Religions," by James 
 Freeman Clarke. The boldness of the tliinking in 
 these works is as noticeable as the abundance of the 
 knowledge. 
 
 The number of American statesmen who since 1810 
 have combined literary with political talent is numer- 
 ous, — so numerous, indeed, that in despair of doing 
 justice to all, we are forced to select three representa- 
 tive men as indicating three separate tendencies in 
 our national life. Tliese are John C. Calhoun, Daniel 
 Webster, and Charles Sumner. Calhoun specially 
 followed the Jefferson who prompted the Resolutions 
 of '98 ; Sumner, the Jefferson who wrote the Declara- 
 tion of Independence ; Webster, the men who drew 
 up and carried into effect the Constitution of the 
 United States. Calhoun was in politics what Calvin 
 was in theology, — a great deductive reasoner from 
 premises assumed. The austerity of his character 
 found a natural outlet in the rigor of his logic. He 
 had the grand audacity of the intellectual athlete, 
 pushed his argumentation to its most extreme results, 
 
104 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 
 
 was willing to peril life and fortune on an inference 
 ten times removed from his original starting-point, 
 and was always a reasoning being in matters where 
 he seemed to be, on practical grounds, an unreason- 
 able one. Despising rhetoric, he became a rhetorician 
 of a high class by pure force of logical statement. 
 Every word he used meant something, and he never 
 indulged in an image or illustration except to con- 
 dense or enforce a thought. In the discussions in 
 the Senate of the United States regarding the very 
 foundations of the government, raised by what is 
 called " Foote's Eesolution," Webster in 1830 made 
 his celebrated speech in reply to Hayne. In all the 
 resources of the orator ^ statement, reasoning, wit, 
 humor, imagination, passion — this speech has, like 
 one of the masterpieces of Burke, acquired reputation 
 as a literary work, as well as by its lucid exposition 
 of constitutional law. Webster was so completely 
 victorious over his antagonist in argument as well as 
 eloquence, that only when the question of nullification 
 came up was his triumph seriously questioned. Cal- 
 houn, who thought that Hayne had not made the most 
 of the argument for State rights, introduced in Jan- 
 uary, 1833, a series of resolutions into the Senate, 
 carefully modelled on the Resolutions of '98, and after- 
 ward based an argument upon them as though they 
 were of a validity equal to that of the Constitution 
 itself. The speech was one of the most remarkable 
 efforts of his ingenious, penetrating, and logical mind, 
 and can now be studied with admiration by everybody 
 
AMERICAN LITERATURE. 105 
 
 Tvho enjoys following the processes of impassioned 
 deductive reasoning on a question affecting the life of 
 individuals and of States. 
 
 Webster's reply, called "The Constitution not a 
 Compact between Sovereign States," was his greatest 
 intellectual effort in the sphere of pure argumentation. 
 Calhoun, a greater reasoner than Jefferson or Madi- 
 son, had deduced from their propositions — originally 
 thrown out to serve as a convenient cover for a some- 
 what factious opposition to the administration of John 
 Adams — a theory of the government of the United 
 States for all time to come. Webster resolutely at- 
 tacked the premises of Calhoun's speech, and paid 
 little attention to his opponent's deductive reasoning 
 from the premises. Calhoun retorted in a speech in 
 which he complained that Webster had not answered 
 his argument. It was not Webster's policy to discredit 
 Madison, and he simply declared that Madison, in his 
 old age, had repudiated such inferences as Calhoun 
 had drawn from the Eesolutions of '98. On constitu- 
 tion,al grounds Webster was as triumphant in his con- 
 test with Calhoun as he had been in his previous 
 contest with Hayne ; but arguments are of small 
 account against interests and passions, and it required 
 the bloodiest and most expensive of civil wars to 
 prove that strictly logical deductions from the Reso- 
 lutions of '98 did not express the meaning of the 
 Constitution of the United States. The victory intel- 
 lectually won was eventually decided by " blood and 
 iron." In addition to Webster's extraordinary power 
 
106 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 
 
 of lucid statement, on which he based the successive 
 steps and wide sweep of his argumentation, he was 
 master of an eloquence unrivalled of its kind, because 
 it represented the kindling into unity of all the facul- 
 ties and emotions of a strong, deep, and broad indi- 
 vidual nature. Generally, understanding was his 
 predominant quality ; in statement and argument he 
 seemed to be specially desirous to unite thought with 
 facts ; he distrusted all rhetoric which disturbed the 
 relations of things ; but in the heat of controversy he 
 occasionally mounted to the real elevation of his char- 
 acter, and threw off flashes and sparks of impassioned 
 imagination which had the electric, the smiting effect 
 of a completely roused nature. It is curious that he 
 never exhibited the higher qualities of imagination in 
 his speeches until the suppressed power flamed unex- 
 pectedly out after all his other faculties had been 
 thoroughly kindled, and then it came with formidable 
 effect. That Webster is one of the most eminent of 
 our prose writers is acknowledged both at the North 
 and the South. He was also a magnificent specimen 
 of physical manhood ; his mere presence in an assem- 
 bly was eloquence ; and when he spoke, voice and 
 gesture added immensely to the effect of his majestic 
 port and bearing. Fox said of Lord Chancellor Thur- 
 low that he must be an impostor, for no man could be 
 as wise as he looked. Webster was wiser in loolc 
 than even Thurlow, but his works show that he was 
 no impostor in the matter of political wisdom, laugh- 
 able as are some of the epithets by which his admirers 
 
AMERICAN LITERATURE. 107 
 
 exaggerated his claims to reverence, as though he had 
 clapped copyright on political thought. In the hea- 
 thenism of partisan feeling, however, few deities of 
 party were more worthy of apotheosis than " the god- 
 lilte Dan ! " 
 
 Up to 1850, when he made his memorable " 7th of 
 Marcii speech " in the Senate, Webster was considered 
 the leading champion of the non-extension of slavery ; 
 but in that speech he waived the application of the 
 principle to the Territories acquired by the Mexican 
 war, though he contended that he still adliered to the 
 principle itself. He lost by this concession his hold 
 on the minds and consciences of the political anti- 
 slavery men, and the position he vacated was event- 
 ually occupied by Charles Sumner, though Sumner 
 liad numerous competitors for that station of glory 
 and difficulty. Webster must have foreseen the in- 
 evitable conflict between the Slave and Free States, 
 but he labored to postpone a catastrophe he was 
 powerless to prevent, thinking that judicious com- 
 promise might soften the shock when the collision of 
 irreconcilable principles and persons could no longer 
 be avoided. Sumner in heart was as earnest an Aboli- 
 tionist as Garrison or Phillips ; his soul was on fire 
 with moral enthusiasm ; but he also had a vigorous 
 understanding, and a memory stored with a vast 
 amount of historical and legal knowledge. He never 
 forgot anything he had read, and he passed not a day 
 without reading. Accordingly, when he entered the 
 Senate of the United States, this philanthropic stu- 
 
108 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 
 
 dent-statesman was as ready in citing the precedents 
 as he was fiery in declaring the principles of freedom. 
 During the years preceding the Civil War the dominant 
 party in the government was beht on establishing a 
 slave-power, which, had it succeeded, would have dis- 
 graced the country forever. Law, logic, philosophy, 
 even theology, were in the South all subordinated to 
 the permanence and extension of negro slavery, and 
 hundreds of sermons south of Mason and Dixon's 
 line inculcated the refreshing doctrine that if Christ 
 came primarily on earth to save sinners, his secon- 
 dary, though not less important, object was to en- 
 slave " niggers." It is easy to say that it requires 
 no parade of authorities to settle the proposition that 
 two and two make four, but ethically and politically 
 this was the proposition that Charles Sumner had to 
 sustain by quotations from Vico and Leibnitz, from 
 Coke, Mansfield, Camden, and Eldon, from Adams, 
 Jefferson, Madison, Marshall, Story, and Webster. 
 Those who were foiled in their purposes by these quo- 
 tations from authorities they could not but respect 
 called him a pedant ; but what really vexed them was 
 that in no case in which this pedant encountered an 
 opponent did he fail to justify his course by the ex- 
 tent of his knowledge, as well as by the keenness of 
 his intellect and the warmth of his sentiments. When 
 the Civil War broke out, he saw that negro slavery 
 was doomed. In his endeavors to hasten emancipa- 
 tion he always contrived to make himself unaccept- 
 able to the more prudent statesmen of his own party, 
 
AMERICAN LITERATURE. 109 
 
 by inaugurating measures which the course of events 
 eventually compelled them to adopt; and after the 
 war he dragged the Eepublican party up to his own 
 policy of reconstruction, being in most cases only 
 some six or twelve months ahead of what sober and 
 judicious Republicans found at length to be the wisest 
 course. Throughout his career Sumner was felt as a 
 force as well as an intelligence, and probably the 
 future historian will rank him high among the select 
 class of American public men who have the right to 
 be called creative statesmen. He always courted 
 obloquy, not only when his party was depressed, but 
 when it was triumphant. " Forward ! " was ever his 
 motto. When his political friends thought they had 
 at last found a resting-place, his voice was heard cry- 
 ing loudly for a new advance. Many of his addresses 
 belong to that class of speeches which are events. 
 His collected works, carefully revised by himself, 
 have now become a portion of American literature. 
 They quicken the conscience of the reader, but they 
 also teach him the lesson that moral sentiment is of 
 comparatively small account unless it hardens into 
 moral character, and is also accompanied by that 
 thirst for knowledge by which intellect is broadened 
 and enriched, and is trained to the task of supporting 
 by facts and arguments what the insight of moral 
 manliness intuitively discerns. Probably no states- 
 man that the country has produced has exceeded 
 Sumner in his passion for rectitude. In every matter 
 that came up for discussion lie vehemently put the 
 
110 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 
 
 question, " Which of the two sides is Right ?" He so 
 persistently capitalized this tremendous monosyllable, 
 and poured into its utterance such an amount of moral 
 fervor or moral wrath, that the modest word, which 
 everybody used without much regard to its meaning, 
 blazed out in his rhetoric, not as a feeble and faded 
 truism, but as a dazzling and smiting truth. 
 
 A word may be said here of two public men, one of 
 whom belongs to literature by cultivation and of set 
 purpose, the other accidentally and in the ordinary 
 discharge of his public duties. Edward Everett was 
 one of the most variously accomplished of the Ameri- 
 can scholars who have been drawn into public life by 
 ambition and patriotism. Though he attained high 
 positions, his nature was too sensitive and fastidious 
 for the rough contentions of party, and he could not 
 steel himself to bear calumny without wincing. He 
 suffered exquisite mortification and pain at unjust 
 attacks on his principles and character, whereas such 
 attacks awakened in Sumner a kind of exultation, as 
 they proved that his own blows were beginning to 
 tell. As an orator, Everett's special gift was persua- 
 sion, not invective. The four volumes of his collected 
 works are, in elegance and energy of style, wealth of 
 information, and fertility of thought, important con- 
 tributions to American literature ; but being mostly 
 in the form of speeches and addresses, they have not 
 produced the impression which less learning, talent, 
 and eloquence, concentrated on a few subjects, would 
 assuredly have made. A very different man was 
 
AMERICAN LITERATURE. Ill 
 
 Abraham Lincoln. He was a great rhetorician with- 
 out Icnowing it. The statesman was doubtless as- 
 tonished that messages and letters, written for purely 
 practical purposes, should be hailed by fastidious 
 critics as remarkable specimens of style. The truth 
 was that Lincoln was deficient in fluency ; he was 
 compelled to wring his expression out of the very 
 substance of his nature and the inmost life of the 
 matter he had in hand ; and tlie result was seen in 
 sinewy sentences, in which thoughts were close to 
 things, and words were close to thoughts. And 
 finally, in November, 1863, his soul devoutly im- 
 pressed with the solemnity and grandeur of his 
 theme, he delivered at Gettysburg an address of about 
 twenty lines, which is considered the top and crown 
 of American eloquence. 
 
 There are certain writers in American literature 
 who charm by their eccentricity as well as by their 
 genius, who are both original and originals. The 
 most eminent, perhaps, of these was Henry D. Tho- 
 reau — a man who may be said to have penetrated 
 nearer to the physical heart of Nature than any other 
 American author. Indeed, he " experienced " nature 
 as others are said to experience religion. Lowell 
 says that in reading him it seems as " if all out-doors 
 had kept a diary, and become its own Montaigne." 
 He was so completely a naturalist that the inhabitants 
 of the woods in which he sojourned forgot their well- 
 founded distrust of man, and voted him the freedom 
 of their city. His descriptions excel even those of 
 
112 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 
 
 Wilson, Audubon, and Wilson Plagg, admirable as 
 these are, for he was in closer relations with the 
 birds than they, and carried no gun in his hand. In 
 respect to human society, he pushed his individu- 
 ality to individualism ; he was never happier than 
 when absent from the abodes of civilization, and the 
 toleration he would not extend to a Webster or a 
 Calhoun he extended freely to a i-obin or 'a wood- 
 chuck. With all this peculiarity, he was a poet, a 
 scholar, a humorist, — also, in his way, a philosopher 
 and philanthropist ; and those who knew him best, 
 and entered most thoroughly into the spirit of his 
 character and writings, are the warmest of all the 
 admirers of his genius. Another Concord hermit is 
 W. E. Channing, who has adopted solitude as a pro- 
 fession, and seclusion from his kind as the condition 
 of independent perception of nature. The thin vol- 
 ume of poems in which he has embodied his insights 
 and experiences contains lines and verses which are 
 remarkable both for their novelty and depth. A 
 serener eccentric, A. Bronson Alcott, is eccentric 
 only in this, — that he thinks the object of life is 
 spiritual meditation ; that all action leads up to this 
 in the end ; and he has spent his life in tranquilly 
 exploring those hidden or elusive facts of the higher 
 consciousness which practical thinkers overlook or 
 ignore. He is a Yankee seer, who has suppressed 
 every tendency in his Yankee nature toward " argu- 
 fying " a point. Very different from all these is 
 Walt Whitman, who originally burst upon the lite- 
 
AMERICAN LITERATUKB. 113 
 
 rary world as " one of the roughs," and whose " bar- 
 baric yawp " was considered by a particular class of 
 English critics as the first original note which had 
 been struck in American poetry, and as good as an 
 Indian \Yar-whoop. Wordsworth speaks of Chatter- 
 ton as " the marvellous boy ; " Walt Whitman, in 
 his first " Leaves of Grass," might have been styled 
 the marvellous " b'hoy." 1 Walt protested against all 
 convention, even all forms of conventional verse ; he 
 seemed to start up from the ground, an earth-born 
 son of the soil, and put to all cultivated people the 
 startling question, " What do you think of Me ? " 
 They generally thought highly of him as an original. 
 Nothing is more acceptable to minds jaded with read- 
 ing works of culture than the sudden appearance of 
 a strong, rough book, expressing the habits, ideas, 
 and ideals of the uncultivated ; but, unfortunately, 
 Whitman declined to listen to the suggestion that his 
 daring disregard of convention should have one ex- 
 ception , and that he must modify his frank expression 
 of the relations of the sexes. The author refused, 
 and the completed edition of the " Leaves of Grass " 
 fell dead from the press. Since that period he has 
 undergone new experiences ; his latest books are not 
 open to objections urged against his earliest; but 
 still the " Leaves of Grass," if thoroughly cleaned, 
 would even now be considered his ablest and most 
 original work. But when the first astonishment sub- 
 sides of such an innovation as Walt Whitman's, the 
 innovator pays the penalty of undue admiration by 
 
11-1 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 
 
 unjust neglect. This is true also of Joaquin Miller, 
 whose first poems seemed to threaten all our estab- 
 lished reputations. Each succeeding volume was 
 more coldlj received ; and though the energy and 
 glow of his verse were the same, the public, in its 
 calmer mood, found that the I'ichness of the matter 
 was not up to the rush of the inspiration. 
 
 This eccentric deviation from accredited models is 
 perhaps best indicated in American humorists, whose 
 characteristic is ludicrous absurdity. George H. Derby 
 (or John Phoenix) was perhaps the first who carried 
 the hyperboles of humor to the height of humoristic 
 extravaganzas. The peculiarity of the whole school 
 is to revel in the most fantastic absurdities of an in- 
 genious fancy. There is a "Western story told of a 
 man who was so strong that his shadow once falling 
 on a child instantly killed it. This is the kind of 
 humor in which Americans excel. Charles F. Brown 
 (Artemas Ward), indulging at his will in the oddest 
 and wildest caricatures, still contrived to make his 
 showman an original character, and to stamp on the 
 popular imagination an image of the man, as well as 
 to tickle the risibilities of the public by his sayings 
 and doings. Perhaps the most delicious among his 
 many delicious absurdities was his grave statement 
 that it had been better than ten dollars in Jeff Davis's 
 pocket " if he 'd never been born." S. L. Clemens 
 (Mark Twain), the most widely popular of this class 
 of humorists, is a man of wide experience, keen intel- 
 lect, and literary culture. The serious portions of 
 
AMERICAN LITERATURE. 115 
 
 his writings indicate that he could win a reputation 
 in literature even if he had not been blessed with a 
 humorous fancy inexhaustible in resource. He strikes 
 his most effective satirical blows by an assumption 
 of helpless innocence and bewildered forlornness of 
 mind. The reader or the audience is in convulsions 
 of laughter, while he preserves an imperturbable se- 
 renity of countenance, as if wondering why his state- 
 ment is not received as an important contribution to 
 human knowledge. Occasionally he indulges in a 
 sly and subtle stroke of humor, worthy of the great 
 masters, and indicating that his extravagancies are 
 not the limit of his humorous faculty. D. R. Locke 
 (Petroleum V. Nasby) is not only a humorist, but he 
 was a great force in carrying the reconstruction meas- 
 ures of the Republican party after the war, by his 
 laughable but coarse, broad, and merciless pictures 
 of the lowest elements in the Western States that 
 had been opposed to the policy of equal justice. 
 Charles G. Leland, an accomplished man of letters, 
 the best translator of the most difficult pieces of 
 Heine, has won a large reputation by his " Hans 
 Breitmann Ballads," Hans being a lyrist who sings 
 seemingly from the accumulated inspiration drawn 
 from tuns of lager beer. B. P. Shillaber, not so prom- 
 inent as others we have named, has given a new life 
 to Mrs. Partington, and has added Ike to the family. 
 While he participates in the extravagance of the 
 popular American humorists, he has a demure hu- 
 mane humor of his own which is quite charming. 
 
116 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 
 
 Among those authors who combine humor with 
 a variety of other gifts, the most conspicuous is 
 F. Bret Harte. His subtilty of ethical insight, his 
 depth of sentiment, his power of solid characteriza- 
 tion, and his pathetic and tragic force are as evident 
 as his broad perception of the ludicrous side of things. 
 In his California stories, as in some of his poems, he 
 detects " the soul of goodness in things evil," and 
 represents the exact circumstances in which ruffians 
 and profligates are compelled to feel that they have 
 human hearts and spiritual natures. He is original 
 not only in the ordinary sense of the word, but in 
 the sense of discovering a new domain of literature, 
 and of colonizing it by the creations of his own brain. 
 Perhaps the immense popularity of some of his hu- 
 morous poems, such as " The Heathen Chinee," has 
 not been favorable to a full recognition of his graver 
 qualities of heart and imagination. 
 
 John Hay is, like Bret Harte, a humorist, and his 
 contributions, in " Pike County Ballads," to what 
 may be called the poetry of ruffianism, if less subtile 
 in sentiment and characterization than those of his 
 model, have a rough raciness and genuine manliness 
 peculiarly his own. His delightful volume called 
 " Castilian Days," displaying all the graces of style 
 of an accomplished man of letters, shows that it was 
 by a strong effort of imagination that he became for 
 a time a mental denizen of Pike County, and made 
 the acquaintance of Jim Bludso and other worthies 
 of that kind. 
 
AMERICAN LITERATURE. 117 
 
 The writings of William D. Howells are master- 
 pieces of literary workmanship, resembling the prod- 
 ucts of those cunning artificers who add one or two 
 thousand per cent to the value of their raw material 
 by their incomparable way of working it up. Wiiat 
 they are as artisans, he is as artist. His faculties 
 and emotions are in exquisite harmony with each 
 other, and unite to produce one effect of beauty and 
 grace in the singular felicity of his style. He has 
 humor in abundance, but it is thoroughly blended with 
 his observation, fancy, imagination, and good sense. 
 He has revived in some degree the lost art of Addi- 
 son, Goldsmith, and Irving. Nobody ever " roared " 
 with laughter in reading anything he ever wrote; 
 but few of our American humorists have excelled him 
 in the power to unseal, as by a magic touch, those 
 secret interior springs of merriment which generally 
 solace the soul without betraying the happiness of the 
 mood they create by any exterior bursts of laughter. 
 His " Venetian Life," " Italian Journeys," " Suburban 
 Sketches," — his novels, entitled " Our Wedding Jour- 
 ney," " A Chance Acquaintance," and " A Foregone 
 Conclusion,"— all indicate the presence of this delic- 
 ious humorous element, penetrating his picturesque 
 descriptions of scenery, as well as his refined percep- 
 tions of character and pleasing narratives of incidents. 
 
 Charles Dudley Warner, like Howells, is an author 
 whose humor is intermixed with his sentiment, under- 
 standing, and fancy. In " My Summer in a Garden," 
 " Back-log Studies," and other volumes, he exhibits a 
 
118 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 
 
 reflective intellect under the guise of a comically se- 
 date humor. Trifles are exalted into importance by 
 the incessant play of his meditative facetiousness. 
 
 Thomas Bailey Aldrich first won his reputation as 
 a poet. In the exquisite ballad of " Babie Bell," and 
 in other poems, he has, as it were, so dissolved thought 
 and feeling in melody that rhyme and rhythm seem 
 to be necessary and not selected forms of expression. 
 As a prose writer he combines pungency with elegance 
 of style, and in his stories has exhibited a sly original 
 vein of humor, which, while it steals out in separate 
 sentences, is most effectively manifested in the ludi- 
 crous shock of surprise which the reader experiences 
 when he comes to the catastrophe of the plot. In 
 this respect " Marjorie Daw " is one of the best prose 
 tales in our literature. 
 
 Among the American novelists who have risen into 
 prominence during the past thirty years, the greatest, 
 though not the most popular, is Nathaniel Hawthorne. 
 His first romance, " The Scarlet Letter," did not ap- 
 pear until the year 1850, but previously he had pub- 
 lished collections of short stories under the titles of 
 " Twice-told Tales " and " Mosses from an Old Manse." 
 These were recognized by judicious readers all over 
 tlie country as masterpieces of literary art, but their 
 circulation was ludicrously disproportioned to their 
 merit. For years one of the greatest modern masters 
 of English prose was valued at his true worth only by 
 those who had found by experience in composition 
 how hard it is to be clear and simple in style, and at 
 
AMERICAN LITERATURE. 119 
 
 the same time to be profound in sentiment, exact in 
 thought, and fertile in imagination. Most of these 
 short stories contain the germs of romances, and a 
 literary economist of his materials, like Scott or 
 Dickens, would have expanded Hawthorne's hints of 
 passion and character into thrilling novels. " The 
 Scarlet Letter," the romance by which Hawthorne 
 first forced himself on the popular mind as a genius 
 of the first class, was but' the expansion of an idea 
 expressed in three sentences, written twenty years 
 before its appearance, in the little sketch of " Endicott 
 and the Cross," which is included in the collection of 
 " Twice-told Tales." But " The Scarlet Letter " ex- 
 hibited in startling distinctness all the resources of 
 his peculiar mind, and even more than Scott's " Bride 
 of Lammermoor" it touches the lowest depths of 
 tragic woe and passion — so deep, indeed, that the 
 representation becomes at times almost ghastly. If 
 Jonathan Edwards, turned romancer, had dramatized 
 his sermon on " Sinners in the Hand of an Angry 
 God," he could not have written a more terrific story 
 of guilt and retribution than " The Scarlet Letter." 
 The pitiless intellectual analysis of the emotions of 
 guilty souls is pushed so far that the reader, after 
 being compelled to sympathize with the Puritanic 
 notion of Law, sighs for some appearance of the con- 
 soling Puritanic doctrine of Grace. Hawthorne, in 
 fact, was a patient observer of the operation of spirit- 
 ual laws, and relentless in recording the results of his 
 observations. Most readers of romances are ravenous 
 
120 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 
 
 for external events; they demand that the heroes 
 and heroines shall be swift in thought, confident in 
 decision, rapid in act. In Hawthorne's novels the 
 events occur in the hearts and minds of his char- 
 acters, and our attention is fastened on the ecstasies 
 or agonies of individual souls rather than on outward 
 acts and incidents ; at least, the latter appear trivial 
 in comparison with the inward mental states they im- 
 perfectly express. Carlyle says that real genius in 
 characterization consists in developing character from 
 " within outward." Hawthorne's mental sight in dis- 
 cerning souls is marvellously penetrating and accurate, 
 but he finds it so difficult to give them an adequate 
 physical embodiment that their very flesh is spiritual- 
 ized, and appears to be brought into the representa- 
 tion only to give a kind of phantasmal form to purely 
 mental conceptions. These souls, while intensely 
 realized as individuals, are, however, mere puppets 
 in the play of the spiritual forces and laws behind 
 them, and while seemingly gifted with will, even to 
 the extent of indulging in all the caprices of wilful- 
 ness, they drift to their doom with the certainty of 
 fate. In this twofold power of insight into souls, and 
 of the spiritual laws which regulate both tlie natural 
 action and morbid aberrations of souls, Hawthorne is 
 so incomparably great tliat in comparison with him 
 all other romancers of the century, whether German, 
 French, English, or American, seem to be superficial. 
 The defect of his method was that he penetrated to 
 such a depth into the human heart, and recorded so 
 
AMERICAN LITERATUEE. 121 
 
 mercilessly its realities and possibilities of sin and 
 selfishness as they appeared to his piercing, passion- 
 less vision of the movements of passion, that he rather 
 frightened than pleased the ordinary novel-reader. 
 The old woman who sagely concluded that she must 
 be side, because in reading the daily newspaper she 
 did not, as was her wont, " enjoy her murders," un- 
 consciously hit on the , distinction which separates 
 artistic representations of human life which include 
 crime and misery from those representations in which 
 the prominence of crime and misery is so marlced as 
 to become unpalatable. Hawthorne did not succeed 
 in making his psychological pictures of sin and woe 
 " enjoyable." The intensity of impassioned imagina- 
 tion which flames through every page of " The Scarlet 
 Letter " was unrelieved by those milder accompani- 
 ments which should have been brought in to soften 
 the effect of a tragedy so awful in itself. Little Pearl, 
 one of the most exquisite creations of imaginative 
 genius, is introduced not to console her parents, but 
 in her wild, innocent wilfulness to symbolize their sin, 
 and add new torments to the slow-consuming agonies 
 of remorse. In "The House of the Seven Gables," 
 " The Blithedale Romance," and " The Marble Faun," 
 Hawthorne deepened the impression made by his pre- 
 vious writings that he did not possess his genius, but 
 was possessed hy it. The most powerful of his crea- 
 tions of character were inspired not by his sympathies, 
 but his antipathies. Personally he was the most 
 gentle and genial and humane of men. He detested 
 
1-2 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 
 
 many of the characters in whose delineation he exerted 
 the full force of his intellect and imagination ; but he 
 was so mentally conscientious that he never exercised 
 the right of the novelist to kill the personages who 
 displeased him at his own will and pleasure. So in- 
 tensely did he realize his characters that to run his 
 pen through them, and thus blot them out of exist- 
 ence, would have seemed to him like the commission 
 of wilful murder. He watched and noted the opera- 
 tion of spiritual laws on the malignant or feeble souls 
 he portrayed, but never interfered personally to divert 
 their fatal course. In thus emphasizing the tragic 
 element in Hawthorne's genius, we may have too 
 much overlooked his deep and delicate humor, his in- 
 genuity of playful fancy, his felicity in making a land- 
 scape visible to the soul as well as the eye by his 
 charming power of description, and the throng of 
 thoughts which accompany every step in thp progress 
 of his narrative. Not the least remarkable character- 
 istic of this remarkable man was the prevailing sim- 
 plicity, clearness, sweetness, purity, and vigor of his 
 style, even when his subjects might have justified him 
 in deviating into some form of Carlylese. 
 
 The most widely circulated novel ever published in 
 this country, or perhaps in any otlier, is " Uncle Tom's 
 Cabin," by Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe. The book 
 has in the United States attained a sale of over three 
 hundred and fifty thousand copies, and after the lapse 
 of twenty-four years the demand for it still continues. 
 It has been translated into almost every known Ian- 
 
AMERICAN LITERATURE. 123 
 
 guage. Inspired by the insurrection of tlie public con- 
 science against the Fugitive Slave Law, its popularity 
 has survived the extinction of slavery itself. Its 
 original publication, in 1852, was an important politi- 
 cal event. It practically overturned the arguments 
 of statesmen and decisions of jurists by an irresistible 
 appeal to the heart and imagination of the American 
 people. It was one of the most powerful agencies in 
 building up the Eepublicau party, in electing Abraham 
 Lincoln to the Presidency, and in raising earnest vol- 
 unteers for the great crusade against slavery. This 
 eifect was produced not by explosions of moral wrath 
 against the iniquity it assailed, but by a vivid dramatic 
 presentation of the facts of the case, in which com- 
 plete justice was done equally to the slave-holder and 
 the slave. And the humor, the pathos, the keen ob- 
 servation, the power of characterization, displayed in 
 the novel, were all penetrated by an imagination quick- 
 ened into activity by a deep and humane religious sen- 
 timent. Next to "Uncle Tom," "The Minister's 
 Wooing " is the best of Mrs. Stowe's novels. Her 
 " Oldtown Folks " and " Sam Lawson's Stories " are 
 full of delightful Yankee humor. 
 
 It is impossible for us to spare the space for even 
 an inadequate notice of all the novelists of the United 
 States. At the time (1827) Miss Catherine M. Sedg- 
 wick published " Hope Leslie " she easily took a 
 prominent position in our literature, in virtue not 
 only of her own merits, but of the comparative ab- 
 sence of competitors. Since then there has appeared 
 
124 AMERICAN LITERATUllB. 
 
 a throng of writers of romantic narratives, and the 
 number is constantly increasing. We are compelled 
 to confine our remarks to a few of the representative 
 novelists. William Ware gained a just reputation bj 
 his "Letters from Palmyra" (1836). The style is 
 elegant, the story attractive, and the pictures of the 
 court of Zenobia are represented through a visionary 
 medium which gives to the representation a certain 
 charming poetic remoteness. Charles Penno Hoff- 
 man, a poet as well as prose writer, whose song of 
 " Sparkling and Bright " lias probably rung over the 
 emptying of a million of champagne bottles, was a 
 man who delighted in " wild scenes in forest and 
 prairie," and whose " Greyslaer " shows the energy 
 of his nature, as well as the brilliancy of his intellect. 
 R. B. Kimball is noted for his business novels, and 
 his heart-breaks come not from failures in love, but 
 from failures in traffic. Donald G. Mitchell, in his 
 " Reveries of a Bachelor," originated a new style, in 
 which a certain delightful daintiness of sentiment 
 was combined with a fertile fancy and touches of 
 humorous good sense. Sylvester Judd, a Unitarian 
 clergyman, went into the great lumber region of Maine, 
 and came out of it to record his observations, experi- 
 ences, and insights in the novel of " Margaret," which 
 Lowell once affirmed to be the most intensely Ameri- 
 can book ever written. Thomas W. Higginson, distin- 
 guished in many departments of literature for the 
 thoroughness of his culture and the classic simplicity 
 and elegance of his style, is the author of a novel called 
 
AMERICAN LITERATURE. 125 
 
 '■ Malbone," quite notable for beauty of description, in- 
 genuity of plot, and subtilty of characterization. Her- 
 man Melville, after astonisliing the public with a rapid 
 succession of original novels, the scene of which was 
 placed in the islands of the Pacific, suddenly dropped 
 his pen, as if in disgust of his vocation. Mrs. Harriet 
 Prescott Spofford is the author of many thrilling 
 stories, written in a style of perhaps exaggerated 
 splendor, but in which prose is flushed with all the 
 hues of poetry. Maria S. Cummins published in 
 1854 a novel called " The Lamplighter," which at- 
 tained an extraordinary popularity, owing to the sim- 
 plicity, tenderness, pathos, and naturalness of the 
 first hundred pages. Seventy thousand copies were 
 sold in a year. Miss E. S. Phelps, in her " Gates 
 Ajar," " Hedged In," and in a variety of minor tales, 
 has exhibited a power of intense pathos which al- 
 most pains the reader it melts. Henry James, Jr. — 
 long may it be before the " Jr." is detached from his 
 name ! — has a deep and delicate perception of the 
 internal states of exceptional individuals, and a quiet 
 mastery of the resources of style, which make his 
 stories studies in psychology as well as models of 
 narrative art. J. W. De Forest, the author of " Kate 
 Beaumont " and other novels, is a thorough realist, 
 whose characterization, animated narrative, well-con- 
 trived plots, and pitiless satire only want the relief of 
 ideal sentiment to make them as pleasing as they are 
 powerful. Edward Everett Hale, the author of " The 
 Man without a Country," " My Double, and How He 
 
126 AMERICAN LITERATDRE. 
 
 Undid Me," and " Sybaris and Other Homes," is fan- 
 tastically ingenious in the plan and forna of his narra- 
 tives, but he uses his ingenuity in the service of good 
 sense and sound feeling, while he inspires it with the 
 impulses of a hopeful, vigorous, and clastic spirit. 
 Miss Louisa M. Alcott, in her " Little Women " and 
 " Little Men," has almost revolutionized juvenile 
 literature by the audacity of her innovations. She 
 thoroughly understands that peculiar element in prac- 
 tical youthful character which makes romps of so 
 many girls and " roughs " of so many boys. Real 
 little women and real little men look into her stories 
 as into mirrors in order to get an accurate reflection 
 of their inward selves. She has also a tart, quaint, 
 racy, witty good sense, which acts on the mind like 
 a tonic. Pier success has been as great as her rejec- 
 tion of conventionality in depicting lads and lasses 
 deserved. Mrs. A. D. T. Wliitney has more senti- 
 ment and a softer manner of representation than 
 Miss Alcott ; but she has originality, though of a 
 different kind ; and her books, like those of Miss 
 Alcott, have penetrated into households in every part 
 of the country, and their characters have been domes- 
 ticated at thousands of firesides. Faith Gartney, ck- 
 pecially, is a real friend and acquaintance to many a 
 girl who has no other. William G. Simms, the most 
 prolific of American historical novelists, and in tire- 
 less intellectual energy worthy of all respect, failed to 
 keep his hold on the popular mind by the- absence 
 in his vividly described scenes of adventure of that 
 
AMERICAN LITERATURE. 127 
 
 peculiar something which gives to such scenes a per- 
 manent charm. Theodore Winthrop, the author of 
 " Cecil Dreeme," " John Brent," and other striicing 
 and admirable tales, rose suddenly into popularity, 
 and as suddenly declined — a conspicuous instance of 
 the instability of the romancer's reputation. J. G. 
 Holland has succeeded in everything he has under- 
 taken, whether as a sort of lay preacher to the young, 
 as an essayist, as a novelist, or as a poet. It is 
 hardly possible to take up any late edition of any one 
 of his numerous volumes without finding " fortieth 
 thousand " or " sixtieth thousand " smiling compla- 
 cently and benignly upon you from the titlepage. 
 Mrs. Mary J. Holmes, the author of " Lena Rivers," 
 Mrs. Terhune (Marian Harland), the author of 
 " Hidden Path," Mrs. Augusta Evans Wilson, the 
 author of " St. Elmo," are novelists very different 
 from Dr. Holland, j-et whose works have obtained a 
 circulation corresponding in extent. We pause here 
 in reading the list, not for want of subjects, but for 
 want of space, and also, it must be confessed, for 
 want of epithets. 
 
 It is a great misfortune that the temptation which 
 besets clever people to write mediocre verses, and 
 afterward to collect them in a volume, is irresistible. 
 Time, and short time at tliat, proves the truth of Mr. 
 Jonathan Oldbuck's remark, that " your fugitive 
 poetry is apt to become stationary with the pub- 
 lisher." Even when a little momentary reputation is 
 acquired, the writers are soon compelled to repeat 
 
128 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 
 
 mournfully the refrain of Pierpont's beautiful and 
 pathetic poem, " Passing away ! passing away ! " It 
 is not one of the least mysteries of this mismanage- 
 ment of talent that the want of public recognition 
 does not appease the desire to attain it. As a general 
 rule, books of verses, even good verses, are the most 
 unsalable of human products. There are numerous 
 cases where genuine poetic faculty and inspiration 
 fail to make the slightest impression on the public 
 imagination. The most remarkable instance of this 
 kind in our literature is found in the case ofi Mrs. 
 Maria Brooks (Maria del Occidente), who printed 
 some forty years ago a poem called " Zophiel ; or, Tlie 
 Bride of Seven," which Southey warmly praised, which 
 was honored with a notice in the " London Quarterly 
 Review," which deserved most of the eulogy it re- 
 ceived, which fell dead from the press, and which not 
 ten living Americans have ever read. Again, some 
 of the most popular and most quoted poems in our 
 literature are purely accidental hits, and their authors 
 are rather nettled than pleased that their other pro- 
 .ductions should be neglected while such prominence 
 is given to one. Thus it might be somewhat danger- 
 ous now to compliment T. W. Parsons for his " Lines 
 on a Bust of Dante," because he has become sick of 
 praise confined to that piece, while the delicate beauty 
 of scores of his other poems and his noble rhymed 
 translation of Dante's " Inferno " find few readers. 
 Miss Lucy Larcom, when she pictured " Hannah 
 Binding Shoes," did not dream that Hannah was to 
 
AMERICAN LITERATURE. 129 
 
 draw away attention from her other heroines, and 
 concentrate it upon herself. Freneau's " Indian Bury- 
 ing-Ground " is the only piece of that poet which sur- 
 vives. " The Gray Forest Eagle " of A. B. Street has 
 screamed away attention from his " rippling of waters 
 and waving of trees " — from his hundreds of pages 
 of descriptive verse which are almost photographs of 
 natural scenery. People quote the " Summer in the 
 Heart " and " A Life on the Ocean Wave " of Epes 
 Sargent, and overlook many better specimens of his 
 melody and his imagination. There are some poems 
 which almost everybody has read, which are com- 
 monly considered the only poems of the writers. 
 Such are " The Star-spangled Banner," by F. S. Key ; 
 " "Woodman, Spare that Tree " (very insipid, by the 
 way), by George P. Morris ; " A Hymn," by Joseph 
 H. Clinch ; " The Baron's Last Banquet " and " Old 
 Grimes is Dead," by A. G. Greene ; " My Life is like 
 the Summer Rose," by R. H. Wilde ; « Sweet Home," 
 by John Howard Payne; "The Christmas Hymn," 
 by E. H. Sears ; " The Old Oaken Bucket," by Samuel 
 Woodworth ; " Milton's Prayer of Patience," by Eliza- 
 beth Lloyd Howell; "The Relief of Lucknow," by 
 Robert Lowell ; " The Old Sergeant," by Forceythe 
 Wilson; "The Vagabonds," by J. T. Trowbridge; 
 and " Gnosis," by C. P. Cranch. There are other 
 pieces, like the " Count Paul," and especially the 
 "Theodora," of Mrs. Drinker (Edith May), which 
 seem to be more deserving of success than some of 
 those which have attained it. But little justice has 
 
 9 
 
130 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 
 
 been done to the poetic and dramatic talent of George 
 H. Boker. " Tlie King's Bell," exquisite for the lim- 
 pid flow of its verse and the sweetly melancholy 
 tone of its thought, together with other poems by 
 Richard Henry Stoddard, have not received their 
 due meed of praise. T. Buchanan Read wrote vol- 
 umes of rich descriptive poetry, but the popularity of 
 " Sheridan's Ride " is not sufficient to attract attention 
 to them. 
 
 In thus commenting on the instability and uncer- 
 tainty of the public taste in respect to poets, we have 
 unconsciously indicated quite an excellent body of 
 American poetry, and we may proceed with the 
 enumeration. 
 
 W. W. Story, famous as a sculptor, is also a poet, 
 who throws into verse the same energy of inspiration 
 which is so obvious in his statues. Mrs. Prances S. 
 Osgood had a singularly musical nature, and her 
 poems sing of themselves. She did not appear to 
 feel the fetters of rhyme ; she danced in them. Her 
 poems, however, have the thinness of substance which 
 often accompanies quickness of sensibility and activ- 
 ity of fancy. As it is, the reader rises from the pe- 
 rusal of her poems with a delicious melody in his 
 ears, a charming feeling in his heart, and with but 
 few thoughts in his head. Mrs. M. J. Preston has a 
 more robust intellect, greater intensity of feeling, and 
 more force of imagination than Mrs. Osgood, though 
 lacking her lovely grace and bewitching melodious- 
 ness ; but Mrs. Osgood could not have written a poem 
 
AMERICAN LITERATURE. 131 
 
 80 deeply pathetic as " Keeping His Word." Henry 
 Timrod and Paul H. Hayne are, with Mrs. Preston, 
 the most distinguished poets of the South. Timrod's 
 ode, sung on the occasion of decorating the graves of 
 the Confederate dead, is, in its simple grandeur, the 
 noblest poem ever written by a Southern poet. Hayne 
 exhibits in all his pieces a rich sensuousness of nature, 
 a seemingly exhaustless fertility of fancy, an uncom- 
 mon felicity of poetic description, and an easy com- 
 mand of the harmonies of verse. John G. Saxe owes 
 his wide acceptance with the public not merely to tlie 
 elasticity of his verse, the sparkle of his wit, and the 
 familiarity of his topics, but to his power of diffusing 
 the spirit of his own good humor. The unctuous 
 satisfaction he feels in putting his mood of merriment 
 into rhyme is communicated to his reader, so tliat, 
 as it were, they laugh joyously together. Edmund 
 Clarence Stedman, in addition to his merits as a 
 critic of poetry, has written poems which stir the 
 blood as well as quicken the imagination. Such, 
 among others, are "John Brown of Osawatomie" and 
 " Kearney at Seven Pines." Perhaps the finest re- 
 cent examples of exquisitely subtile imagination work- 
 ing under the impulse of profound sentiment are to 
 be foimd in the little volume entitled " Poems by 
 H. H." (Mrs. Helen Hunt). 
 
 We have space only to mention the names of 
 Jones "Very, Celia Thaxter, Mrs. Lippincott (Grace 
 Greenwood), H. H. Brownell, Will Carleton (author 
 of "Farm Ballads"), Alice and Phoebe Gary, and 
 
132 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 
 
 Mrs. L. C. Moulton, though each would justify a 
 detailed criticism. 
 
 The limits of this essay do not admit the mention 
 of every author who is worthy of notice. The reader 
 must be referred for details to the various volumes of 
 Dr. R. W. Griswold, to the " Cyclopedia of American 
 Literature," by E. A. and G. L. Duyckinck, to the 
 useful " Manual of American Literature," by Dr. John 
 S. Hart, and the excellent " Hand-Book of American 
 Literature," by F. H. Underwood. Still, before con- 
 cluding, it may be well to mention some names with- 
 out which even so limited a view of American literature 
 as the present would be incomplete. And first, honor 
 is due to Henry T. Tuckerman, who for nearly forty 
 years was the associate of American authors, and who 
 labored year after year to diffuse a taste for literature 
 by his articles in reviews and magazines. He be- 
 longed to the class of appreciative critics, and was 
 never more pleased than when he exercised the re- 
 sources of a cultivated mind to analyze, explain, and 
 celebrate the merits of others. Richard Grant White, 
 a critic of an austerer order, has for some time been 
 engaged literally in a war of words. In the minutice 
 of English philology he has rarely met an antagonist 
 he has not overthrown. In these encounters he has 
 displayed wit, learning, logic, a perfect command of 
 his subject, an imperfect command of his temper. 
 The positiveness of his statements, however, seems 
 always to come from the certainty of his knowledge. 
 In his admirable edition of Shakspeare, and in his 
 
AMERICAN LITERATURE. 133 
 
 " Life and Genius of Shakspeare," he has exhibited 
 his rare critical faculty at its best. Henry N. Hudson, 
 also an editor, biographer, and critic of Shakspeare, 
 has specially shown his masterly power of analysis 
 in commenting on the characters of the dramatist. 
 Henry Giles, in two or three volumes of biography 
 and criticism, has proved that clear perceptions, nice 
 distinctions, and sound sense can be united with a 
 rush of eloquence which seems too rapid for the paus- 
 ing doubt of discriminating judgment. S. A. Alli- 
 bone's " Dictionary of Authors," with its forty-six 
 thousand names, is one of those prodigies of labor 
 which excite not only admiration but astonishment. 
 George P. Marsh, one of the most widely accomplished 
 of American scholars, is principally known as the 
 author of " Lectures on the English Language " and 
 of " The English Language and Early English Litera- 
 ture," both ci-itical works of a high class. The great- 
 est comparative philologist the country has produced, 
 William D. Whitney, has, like Max Miiller,in England, 
 popularized some of the results of his investigations 
 in an admirable volume on " Language, and the Study 
 of Language." 
 
 The theological literature of the United States 
 covers so wide a field that it would be wild to attempt 
 to characterize here even its eminent representatives. 
 We can give only a few names. Henry Ward Beecher, 
 the most widely renowned pulpit and platform orator 
 of the country, is more remarkable for the general 
 largeness and opulence of his nature than for the 
 
184 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 
 
 possession of any exceptional power of mind or extent 
 of acquisition. As a tlieological scliolar, or, indeed, 
 as a trained and accurate writer, nobody would think 
 of comparing him with Francis Wayland, or Leonard 
 Bacon, or Edwards A. Park, or Frederick H. Hedge. 
 In depth of spiritual insight, though not in depth of 
 spiritual emotion, he is inferior to Horace Bushnell, 
 Cyrus A. Bartol, and many other American divines. 
 He feels spiritual facts intensely ; he beholds them 
 with wavering vision. But his distinction is that he 
 is a formidable, almost irresistible, moral force. His 
 influence comes from the conjoint and harmonious 
 action of his whole blood and brain and will and soul, 
 and his magnetism being thus both physical and 
 mental, he communicates his individuality in the act 
 of radiating his thoughts, and thus "Beecherizes" his 
 readers as he " Beecherizes " his audiences. He over- 
 powers where he fails to convince. The reader, but 
 especially the listener, is brought into direct contact 
 or collision not only with a thinker and a stirrer-up 
 of the emotions, but with a strong, resolute, intrepid 
 man. As Emerson would say, he could mob a mob, 
 and compel it to submit. , This continual sense of 
 conscious power impels him into many imprudences 
 and indiscretions, and stamps on what he says, and 
 what he writes, and what he does, a character of 
 haste and extemporaneousness. No man could throw 
 off such an amount of intellectual work as he per- 
 forms, who thought comprehensively or who thought 
 deeply ; for the comprehensive thinker hesitates, the 
 
AMERICAN LITERATURE. 135 
 
 deep thinker doubts ; but hesitation and doubt are 
 foreign to Mr. Beeclier's intellectual constitution, and 
 only intrude into his consciousness in those occasional 
 reactions caused by the moral fatigue resulting now 
 and then from his hurried, headlong intellectual move- 
 ment. Observation, sense, wit, humor, fancy, senti- 
 ment, moral perception, moral might, are all included 
 and fused in the large individuality whose mode of 
 action we have ventured to sketch. Indeed, an im- 
 partial student of character, accustomed to penetrate 
 into the souls of those he desires inwardly to know, 
 to look at things from their point of view, and to in- 
 terpret external evidence by the internal knowledge 
 he has thus obtained, would say that Mr. Beecher was 
 exactly the heedless, indiscreet man of religious genius 
 likely to become the subject of such a scandal as has 
 recently disgusted the country, and yet to be perfectly 
 innocent of the atrocious crimes with which he was 
 charged. 
 
 There are some books which it is difficult to class. 
 Thus, Richard H. Dana, Jr., published some thirty 
 years ago a volume called " Two Years Before the 
 Mast," which became instantly popular, is popular 
 now, and promises to be popular for many years to 
 come. In reading it anybody can see that it is more 
 than an ordinary record of a voyage, for tliere runs 
 through the simple and lucid narrative an element of 
 beauty and power which gives it the artistic charm of 
 romance. Again, " Six Months in Italy," by George 
 S. Hillard, and " Notes of Travel and Study in Italy," 
 
136 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 
 
 by Charles E. Norton, would be superficially classed 
 among books of travel, but they are essentially works 
 of literature, and their chief worth consists in descrip- 
 tions of natural scenery, in pointed reflection, in deli- 
 cate criticism of works of art. The volume entitled 
 " White Hills," by Thomas Starr King, apparently 
 intended merely to describe the mountain region of 
 New Hampshire, is all aglow with a glad inspiration 
 drawn from the ardent soul and teeming mind of the 
 writer. Charles T. Brooks would generally be classed 
 as a translator, but being a poet, he has so translated 
 the novels of Richter that he has domesticated them 
 in our language. Such translations are greater efforts 
 of intelligence and imagination than many original 
 works. Horace Mann's reports as secretary of the 
 Massachusetts Board of Education rank with legisla- 
 tive documents, yet they are really eloquent treatises, 
 full of matter, but of matter burning with passion 
 and blazing with imagery. " Substance and Shadow," 
 by Henry James, miglit be classed either with theo- 
 logical or metaphysical works, were it not that the 
 writer, while treating on the deepest questions which 
 engage the attention of theologians and metaphysi- 
 cians, stretches both theologians and metaphysicians 
 on the rack of his pitiless analysis, and showers upon 
 them all the boundless stores of his ridicule. Miss 
 Mary A. Dodge (Gail Hamilton) might be styled an 
 essayist, but that would be but a vague term to denote 
 a writer who takes up all classes of subjects, is tart, 
 tender, shrewish, pathetic, monitory, objurgatory, tol- 
 
AMERICAN LITERATURE. 137 
 
 erant, prejudiced, didactic, and dramatic by turns, but 
 always writing with so much point, vigor, and fresh- 
 ness that we can only classify her among " readable " 
 authors. Margaret Fuller Ossoli, scholar, critic, 
 teacher, translator, metaphysician, philanthropist, 
 revolutionist, a pythoness in a transcendental coterie, 
 a nurse in a soldiers' hospital, a martyr heroine on 
 board a wrecked ship, — we can only say of her that 
 she was a woman. There is a delightful book entitled 
 " Yesterdays with Authors," by James T. Fields — a 
 combination of gossip, biography, and criticism, but 
 refusing to be ranked with either, and depending for 
 its interest on the life-like pictures it presents of such 
 men as Hawthorne, Dickens, and Thackeray in their 
 hours of familiar talk and correspondence. There is 
 also one work of such pretension that it should not 
 be omitted here, namely, "Outlines of Cosmic Phi- 
 losophy, b&sed on the Doctrine of Evolution," by John 
 Fiske. It is mainly a lucid exposition of the philoso- 
 phy of Herbert Spencer, with the addition of original 
 and critical matter. The breadth and strengtli of un- 
 derstanding, the fulness of information, the command 
 of expression, in this book are worthy of all commen- 
 dation. The curious thing in it is that the author 
 thinks that a new religion is to be established on the co- 
 ordination of the sciences ; and of this religion, whose 
 God is the " Unknowable," he is a pious believer. 
 
 In conclusion, we can only allude to the intellectual 
 force, the various talents and accomplishments, em- 
 ployed in the leading newspapers of the country. Dur- 
 
138 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 
 
 iiig the past thirty years these journals have swarmed 
 with all kinds of anonymous ability. Though the 
 articles appeared to die with the day or week on which 
 they were printed, they really passed, for good or evil, 
 into the general mind as vital influences, shaping pub- 
 lic opinion and forming public taste. It would be 
 difficult, for example, to estimate the beneficent action 
 on our literature of such a critic and scholar as George 
 Ripley, who for many years directed the literary de- 
 partment of a widely circulated newspaper. The 
 range of his learning was equal to every demand upon 
 its resources ; the candor of his judgment answered 
 to the comprehensiveness of his taste ; the catholicity 
 of his literary sympathies led him to encourage every 
 kind of literary talent on its first appearance ; and he 
 was pure from the stain of that meanest form of 
 egotism which grudges the recognition of merit in 
 others, as if such a recognition was a diminution of 
 its own importance. The great development, during 
 a comparatively recent period, of the magazine litera- 
 ture of the country has had an important effect in 
 stimulating and bringing forward new ■writers, some 
 of whom promise to more than fill the places which 
 their elders will soon leave vacant. It would be 
 presumptuous to anticipate the verdict of the next 
 generation as to which of these will fulfil the expec- 
 tations raised by their early efforts. That pleasant 
 duty must be left to the fortunate person who shall 
 note the Centennial Progress of American Literature 
 in 1976. 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER AS A MASTER OP 
 ENGLISH STYLE. 
 
 From my own experience and observation I should 
 say that every boy who is ready enough in spelling, 
 grammar, geography, and arithmetic, is appalled when 
 he is commanded to write what is termed " a compo- 
 sition." When he enters college the same fear fol- 
 lows him ; and the Professor of Rhetoric is a more 
 terrible personage to his imagination than the Profes- 
 sors of Greek, Latin, Mathematics, and Moral and 
 Intellectual Philosophy. Both boys at school and 
 young men in college show no lack of power in speak- 
 ing their native language with a vehemence and flu- 
 ency which almost stuns the ears of their seniors. 
 Why, then, should they find such difficulty in writing 
 it ? When you listen to the animated talk of a bright 
 school-boy or college student, full of a subject which 
 really interests him, you say at once that such com- 
 mand of racy and idiomatic English words must of 
 course be exhibited in his " compositions " or his 
 " themes ; " but when the latter are examined, they 
 are commonly found to be feeble and lifeless, with 
 hardly a thought or a word which bears any stamp of 
 freshness or originality, and which are so inferior to 
 
140 DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 his ordinary conversation that we can hardlj believe 
 they came from the same mind. 
 
 The first quality which strikes an examiner of these 
 exercises in English composition is their falseness. 
 No boy or youtli writes what he personally thinks and 
 feels, but writes what a good boy or youth is expected 
 to think or feel. This hypocrisy vitiates his writing 
 from first to last, and is not absent in his " Class 
 Oration," or in his " Speech at Commencement." I 
 have a vivid memory of the first time the boys of my 
 class, in a public school, were called upon to write 
 " composition." The themes selected were the prom- 
 inent moral virtues or vices. How we poor innocent 
 urchins were tormented by the task imposed upon us ! 
 How we put more ink on our hands and faces than 
 we shed upon the white paper on our desks ! Our 
 conclusions generally agreed with those announced 
 by the greatest moralists of the world. Socrates and 
 Plato, Cicero and Seneca, Cudworth and Butler, could 
 not have been more austerely moral than were we 
 little rogues, as we relieved the immense exertion 
 involved in completing a single short baby-like sen- 
 tence by shying at one companion a rule, or hurl- 
 ing at another a paper pellet intended to light 
 plump on his forehead or nose. Our custom was 
 to begin every composition with the proposition that 
 such or such a virtue " was one of the greatest 
 blessings we enjoy ; " and this triumph of accurate 
 statement was not discovered by our teacher to be 
 purely mechanical, until one juvenile thinker, having 
 
AS A MASTER OP ENGLISH STYLE. 141 
 
 avarice to deal with, declared it to be "one of the 
 greatest evils we enjoy." The whole thing was such 
 a piece of monstrous hypocrisy, that I once timidly 
 suggested to the schoolmaster that it would be well 
 to allow me to select my own subject. The request 
 was granted ; and as narrative is the natural form 
 of composition which a boy adopts when he has his 
 own way, I filled, in less than half the time here- 
 tofore consumed in writing a quarter of a page, 
 four pages of letter-paper with an account of my 
 being in a ship taken by a pirate, of the heroic 
 defiance I launched at the pirate captain, and the 
 sagacity I evinced in escaping the fate of my fellow- 
 passengers, in not being ordered to " walk the plank." 
 The story, though trashy enough, was so much better 
 than any of the moral essays of the other pupils, that 
 the teacher commanded me to read it before the whole 
 school, as an evidence of the rapid strides I had made 
 in the art of " composition." 
 
 This falseness of thought and feeling is but too apt 
 to characterize the writing of the student after he 
 has passed from the common school to the academy 
 or the college. The term " sophomorical " is used to 
 describe speeches which are full of emotion which the 
 speaker does not feel, full of words in four or five syl- 
 lables that mean nothing, and, in respect to imagery 
 and illustrations, blazing with the cheap jewelry of 
 rhetoric, — with those rubies and diamonds that can 
 be purchased for a few pennies an ounce. The danger 
 is that this " sophomorical " style may continue to 
 
142 DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 afflict the student after he has become a clergyman, 
 a lawyer, or a legislator. 
 
 Practical men who may not be " college educated " 
 still have the great virtue of using the few words they 
 employ as identical with facts. When they meet a 
 man who has half the dictionary at his disposal, and 
 yet gives no evidence of apprehending the real import 
 and meaning of one word among the many thousands 
 he glibly pours forth, they naturally distrust him, as 
 a person who does not know the vital connection of 
 all good words with the real things they represent. 
 Indeed, the best rule that a professor of rhetoric could 
 adopt would be to insist that no student under his 
 care should use an unusual word until he had earned 
 the right to use it by making it the verbal sign of 
 some new advance in his tliinking, in his acquire- 
 ments, or in his feelings. Shakspcare, the greatest 
 of English writers, — and perhaps the greatest of all 
 writers, — required fifteen thousand words to embody 
 all that his vast exceptional intelligence acquired, 
 thought, imagined, and discovered ; and he had earned 
 the right to use every one of them. Milton found that 
 eight thousand words could fairly and fully represent 
 all the power, grandeur, and creativeness of his almost 
 seraphic soul, when he attempted to express his whole 
 nature in a literary form. All the words used by 
 Shakspeare and Milton are alive: " cut them and they 
 will Heed." But it is ridiculous for a college student 
 to claim that he lias the mighty resources of the Eng- 
 lish language at his supreme disposal, when he has 
 
AS A MASTER OF ENGLISH STYLE. l43 
 
 not verified, by his own thought, knowledge, and ex- 
 perience, one in a hundred of the words he presump- 
 tuously employs. 
 
 Now, Daniel Webster passed safely through all the 
 stages of the " sophomoric " disease of the mind, as 
 he passed safely through the measles, the chicken-pox, 
 and other eruptive maladies incident to childhood and 
 youth. The process, however, by which he purified 
 his style from this taint, and made his diction at last 
 as robust and as manly, as simple and as majestic, as 
 the nature it expressed, will reward a little study. 
 
 The mature style of Webster is perfect of its kind, 
 being in words the express image of his mind and 
 character, — plain, terse, clear, forcible; and rising 
 from the level of lucid statement and argument into 
 passages of superlative eloquence only when his whole 
 nature is stirred by some grand sentiment of freedom, 
 patriotism, justice, humanity, or religion, which abso- 
 lutely lifts him, by its own inherent force and inspira- 
 tion, to a region above that in which his mind 
 habitually lives and moves. At the same time it will 
 be observed that these thrilling passages, which the 
 boys of two generations have ever been delighted to 
 declaim in their shrillest tones, are strictly illustra- 
 tive of the main purpose of the speech in which they 
 appear. They are not mere purple patches of rhetoric, 
 loosely stitched on the homespun gray of the reason- 
 ing, but they seem to be inwoven with it and to be a 
 vital part of it.' Indeed, we can hardly decide, in 
 reading these magnificent bursts of eloquence in con- 
 
144 DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 nection with what precedes and follows them, whether 
 the effect is due to the logic of the orator becoming 
 suddenly morally impassioned, or to his moral passion 
 becoming suddenly logical.' What gave Webster his 
 immense influence over the opinions of the people of 
 New England was, first, his power of so "putting 
 things" that everybody could understand his state- 
 ments ; secondly, his power of so framing his argu- 
 ments that all the steps, from one point to another, 
 in a" logical series, could be clearly apprehended by 
 every intelligent farmer or mechanic who had a 
 thoughtful interest in the affairs of the country ; and 
 thirdly, his power of inflaming the sentiment of pa- 
 triotism in all honest and well-intentioned men by 
 overwhelming appeals to that sentiment, so that after 
 convincing their understandings, he clinched the 
 matter by sweeping away their wills. '" 
 
 Perhaps to these sources of influence may be added 
 another which many eminent statesmen have lacked. 
 With all his great superiority to average men in force 
 and breadth of mind, he had a genuine respect for the 
 intellect, as well as for the manhood, of average men. 
 He disdained the ignoble office of misleading the 
 voters he aimed to instruct ; . and the farmers and 
 mechanics who read his speeches felt ennobled when 
 they found that the greatest statesman of the country 
 frankly addressed them, as man to man, without 
 pluming himself on his exceptional talents and ac- 
 complishments. Up to the crisis of 1850, he suc- 
 ceeded in domesticating himself at most of the pious, 
 
AS A MASTER OF ENGLISH STYLE. 145 
 
 moral, and intelligent firesides of New England. 
 Through his speeches he seemed to be almost bodily 
 present wherever the family, gathered in the evening 
 around the blazing hearth, discussed the questions of 
 the day. It was not the gr^at Mr. Webster, " the 
 godlike Daniel," who had a seat by the fire. It was 
 a person who talked to them, and argued with them, 
 as though he was " one of the folks," -^ a neighbor 
 dropping in to make an evening call ; there was not 
 the slightest trace of assumption in his manner ; but 
 suddenly, after the discussion had become a little 
 tiresome, certain fiery words would leap from his lips 
 and make the whole household spring to their feet, 
 ready to sacrifice life and property for " the Constitu- 
 tion and the Union."" That Webster was thus a kind 
 of invisible presence in thousands of homes where his 
 face was never seen, shows that his rhetoric had 
 caught an element of power from his early recollec- 
 tions of the independent, hard-headed farmers whom 
 he met when a boy in his father's house.'' The bodies 
 of these men had become tough «ind stpong in their 
 constant struggle to force scanty harvests from an. 
 unfruitful soil, which only persistent toil could com- 
 pel to yield anything ; and their brains, though forci- 
 ble and clear, were still not stored with the important 
 facts and principles which it was his delight to state 
 and expound. In truth, he ran a race with the dema- 
 gogues of his time in an attempt to capture such men 
 as these, thinking them the very backbone of the 
 country. Whether he succeeded or failed, it would 
 
 10 
 
146 DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 be vain to hunt through his Works to find a single 
 epithet in which he mentioned them with contempt. 
 He was as incapable of insulting one member of this 
 landed democracy, — sterile as most of their acres 
 were, — as of insulting the memory of his father, who 
 belonged to this class. 
 
 The late Mr. Peter Harvey used to tell with much 
 zest a story illustrating the hold which these early 
 associations retained on Webster's mind throughout 
 his life. Some months after liis removal from Ports- 
 mouth to Boston, a servant knocked at his chamber 
 door late in an April afternoon in the year 1817, with 
 the announcement that three men' were in the drawing- 
 room who insisted on seeing him. Webster was over- 
 whelmed with fatigue, the result of his Congressional 
 labors and his attendance on courts of law ; and he 
 had determined, after a night's sleep, to steal a vaca- 
 tion in order to recruit his energies by a fortnight's 
 fishing and hunting. He suspected that the persons 
 below were exjDectant clients ; and he resolved, in 
 des(!ending the stairs, not to accept their offer. He 
 found in the parlor three plain, country-bred, honest- 
 looking men, who were believers in the innocence of 
 Levi and Laban Kenniston, accused of robbing a cer- 
 tain Major Goodridge on the highway, and whose 
 trial would take place at Ipswich the next day. They 
 could find, they said, no member of the Essex Bar 
 who would undertake the defence of the Kennistons, 
 and they had come to Boston to engage the services 
 of Mr. Webster. Would he go down to Ipswich and 
 
AS A. MASTER OP ENGLISH STYLE. 147 
 
 defend the accused ? Mr. Webster stated that he , 
 could not and would not go ; he had made arrange- 
 naents for an excursion to the sea-side ; the state of 
 his health absolutely demanded a short withdrawal 
 from all business cares ; and that no fee could tempt 
 him to abandon his purpose. " Well," was the reply 
 of one of the delegation, " it is n't the fee that we 
 think of at all, though we are willing to pay what you 
 may charge ; but it 's justice. Here are two New 
 Hampshire men who are believed in Exeter, New- 
 bury, Newburyport, and Salem to be rascals ; but 
 we in Newmarket believe, in spite of all evidence 
 against them, that they are the victims of some con- 
 spiracy. We think you are the man to unravel it, 
 though it seems a good deal tangled even to us. 
 Still, we suppose that men whom we know to have 
 been honest all their lives can't have become such 
 desperate rogues all of a sudden." "But I cannot 
 take the case," persisted Mr. Webster ; " I am worn 
 to death with over-work ; I have not had any real 
 sleep for forty-eight hours. Besides, I know nothing 
 of the case." " It 's hard, I can see," continued the 
 leader of the delegation ; " but you 're a New Hamp- 
 shire man, and the neighbors thought that you would 
 not allow two innocent New Hampshire men, however 
 humble they may be in their circumstances, to suffer 
 for lack of your skill in exposing the wiles of this 
 scoundrel Goodridge. The neighbors all desire you 
 to take the case." That phrase " the neighbors " 
 settled the question. No resident of a city knows 
 
148 DANIEL WEBSTEE 
 
 what the phrase means. But Webster knew it in all 
 tlie intense significance of its meaning. His imagi- 
 nation flew back to the scattered homesteads of a 
 New England village, where mutual sympathy and 
 assistance are the necessities, as they are the com- 
 monplaces, of village life. The phrase remotely meant 
 to him the combination of neighbors to resist an as- 
 sault of Indian savages, or to send volunteers to the 
 war which wrought the independence of the nation. 
 It specially meant to him the help of neighbor to 
 neighbor, in times of sickness, distress, sorrow, and 
 calamity. In his childhood and boyhood the Chris- 
 tian question, " Who is my neighbor ? " was instantly 
 solved the moment a matron in good health heard 
 that the wife of Farmer A, or Farmer B, was stricken 
 down by fever and needed a friendly nurse to sit by 
 her bedside all night, though she liad herself been 
 toiling hard all day. Everything philanthropists 
 mean when they talk of brotherhood and sisterhood 
 among men and women was condensed in that homely 
 phrase, " the neighbors." " Oh ! " said Webster, rue- 
 fully, " if the neighbors think I may be of service, of 
 course I must go ; " — and, with his three compan- 
 ions, he was soon seated in the stage for Ipswich, 
 where he arrived at about midnight. The court met 
 the next morning ; and his management of the case 
 is still considered one of his masterpieces of legal 
 acumen and eloquence. His cross-examination of 
 Goodridge rivalled, in mental torture, everything 
 martyrologists tell us of the physical agony endured 
 
AS A MASTER OF ENGLISH STYLE. 149 
 
 by the victim of the inquisitor, when roasted before 
 slow fires or stretched upon the rack. Still, it seemed 
 impossible to assign any motive for the self-robbery 
 and the self-maiming of Goodridge, which any judge 
 or jury would accept as reasonable. The real motive 
 has never been discovered. "Webster argued that the 
 motive might have originated in a desire to escape 
 from the payment of his debts, or in a whimsical 
 ambition to have his name sounded all over Maine 
 and Massachusetts as the heroic tradesman who had 
 parted with his money only when overpowered by 
 superior force. It is impossible to say what motives 
 may impel men who are half-crazed by vanity, or 
 half-demonized by malice. Coleridge describes lago's 
 hatred of Othello as the hatred which a base nature 
 instinctively feels for a noble one, and his assignment 
 of motives for his acts as the mere " motive-hunting 
 of a motiveless malignity." 
 
 Whatever may have been Goodridge's motive in his 
 attempt to ruin the innocent men he falsely accused, 
 it is certain that Webster saved these men from the 
 unjust punishment of an imputed crime. Only the 
 skeleton of his argument before the jury has been 
 preserved ; but what we have of it evidently passed 
 under his revision. He knew that the plot of Good- 
 ridge had been so cunningly contrived that every 
 man of the twelve before him, whose verdict was to 
 determine the fate of his clients, was inwardly per- . 
 suaded of their guilt. Some small marked portions 
 of the money which Goodridge swore he had on his 
 
150 DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 person on the night of the pretended robbery were 
 found in their house. Circumstantial evidence brought 
 their guilt with a seemingly irresistible force literally 
 " home " to them. It was the conviction of the 
 leaders of tlie Essex Bar that no respectable lawyer 
 could appear in their defence without becoming in 
 some degree their accomplice. But Webster, after 
 damaging the character of the prosecutor by his stern 
 cross-examination, addressed the jury, not as an ad- 
 vocate bearing down upon them with his arguments 
 and appeals, but rather as a thirteenth juryman, who 
 had cosily introduced himself into their company, and 
 was arguing the case with them after they had retired 
 for consultation among themselves. The simplicity 
 of the language employed is not more notable than 
 the power evinced in seizing the main points on which 
 the question of guilt or innocence turned. At every 
 quiet but deadly stab aimed at the theory of the 
 prosecution, h6 is careful to remark that " it is for 
 the jury to say under their oaths " whether such in- 
 consistencies or improbabilities should have any effect 
 on their minds. Every strong argument closes with 
 the ever-recurring phrase, " It is for the jury to 
 say ; " and at the end the jury, thoroughly convinced, 
 said, " Not guilty." Tlie Kennistons were vindi- 
 cated ; and the public, which had been almost unani- 
 mous in declaring them fit tenants for the State 
 prison, soon blamed the infatuation which had made 
 them the accomplices of a villain in hunting down 
 two unoffending citizens, and of denouncing every 
 
AS A MASTER OF ENGLISH STYLE. 151 
 
 lawyer who should undertake their defence as a legal 
 rogue. 
 
 The detected scoundrel fled from the place where 
 his rascality had been exposed, to seek some otlier 
 locality where the mingled jeers and curses of his 
 dupes would be unheard. Some twenty years after 
 the trial, Mr. Webster, while travelling in Western 
 New York, stopped at an obscure village tavern to 
 get a glass of water. The hand of the man behind 
 the bar, who gave it to him, trembled violently ; and 
 Webster, wondering at the cause, looked the fellow 
 steadily in the eye. He recognized Goodridge, and 
 understood at once that Goodridge had just before 
 recognized him. Not a word passed between the 
 felon and the intrepid advocate who had stripped his 
 villany of all its plausible disguises ; but what im- 
 mense meaning must there have been in the swift 
 interchange of feeling as their eyes met ! Mr. Webster 
 eiltered his carriage and proceeded on his journey ; 
 but Goodridge, — who has since ever heard of him ? 
 
 This story is a slight digression, but it illustrates 
 that hold on reality, that truth to fact, which was one 
 of the sources of the force and simplicity of Mr. 
 Webster's mature style. He, however, only obtained 
 these good qualities of rhetoric by long struggles with 
 constant temptations, in his early life, to use resound- 
 ing expressions and flaring images which he had not 
 earned the right to use. His Fourth of July oration 
 at Hanover, when he was only eighteen, and his col- 
 lege addresses, must have been very bad in their die- 
 
152 DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 tion if we can judge of them by the style of his private 
 correspondence at the time. The verses he incorpo- 
 rates in his letters are deformed by all the faults of 
 false flunking and borrowed expression which charac- 
 terized contemporary American imitators of English 
 imitators of Pope and Gray. Think of the future 
 orator, lawyer, and senator writing, even at the age 
 of twenty, such balderdash as this ! — 
 
 " And Heaven grant me, whatever luck betide, 
 Be fame or fortune given or denied, 
 Some cordial friend to meet my warm desire. 
 Honest as John and good as Nehemiah." 
 
 In reading such couplets we are reminded of the 
 noted local poet of New Hampshire (or was it Maine ?) 
 who wrote " The Shepherd's Songs," and some of 
 whose rustic lines still linger in the memory to be 
 laughed at, such, for instance, as these : — 
 
 Or these ; 
 
 " This child who perished in the fire,- 
 His father's name was Nehemiah." 
 
 " Napoleon, that great exile, 
 Who scoured all Europe like a file." 
 
 And "Webster's prose was then almost as bad as 
 his verse, though it was modelled on wliat was con- 
 sidered fine writing at the opening of the present 
 century. He wi-ites to his dearest student friends in 
 a style which is profoundly insincere, thougli the 
 thouglits are often good, and the fact of his love for 
 his friends cannot be doubted. He had committed to 
 
AS A MASTER OF ENGLISH STYLE. 153 
 
 memory Fisher Ames's noble speech on the British 
 Treaty, and had probably read some of Burke's great 
 pamphlets on the French Revolution. The stripling 
 statesman aimed to talk in their high tone and in 
 their richly ornamented language, before he had 
 earned the right even to mimic their style of expres- 
 sion. There is a certain swell in some of his long 
 sentences, and a kind of good sense in some of his 
 short ones, which suggest that the writer is a youth 
 endowed with elevation as well as strength of nature, 
 and is only making a fool of himself because he 
 thinks he must make a fool of himself in order that 
 he may impress his correspondents with the idea that 
 he is a master of the horrible jargon which all bright 
 young fellows at that time innocently suijposed to 
 constitute eloquence. Thus, in February, 1800, he 
 writes thus to his friend Bingham : " In my melan- 
 choly moments I presage the most dire calamities. 
 I already see in my imagination the time when the 
 banner of civil war shall be unfurled ; when Discord's 
 hydra form shall set up her hideous yell, and from 
 her hundred mouths shall howl destruction through 
 our empire ; and when American blood shall be 
 made to flow in rivers by American swords ! But 
 propitious Heaven prevent such dreadful calamities ! 
 Internally secure, we have nothing to fear. Let 
 Europe pour her embattled millions around us, let her 
 thronged cohorts cover ourl'shores, from St. Lawrence 
 to St. .Marie's, yet United Columbia shall stand un- 
 moved ; the manes of her deceased Washington shall 
 
154 DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 guard the liberties of his country, and direct the 
 sword of freedom in the day of battle." And think 
 of this, not in a Fourth of July oration, but in a 
 private letter to an intimate acquaintance ! The 
 bones of Daniel Webster might be supposed to have 
 moved in their coffin at the thought that this miser- 
 able trash — so regretted and so amply atoned for — 
 should have ever seen the light ; but it is from such 
 youthful follies that we measure the vigor of the man 
 who outgrows them. 
 
 It was fortunate that Webster, after he was ad- 
 mitted to the bar, came into constant collision, in the 
 courts of New Hampshire, with one of the greatest 
 masters of the common law that the country has ever 
 produced, — Jeremiah Mason. It has been said that 
 Mr. Mason educated Webster into a lawyer by oppos- 
 ing him. He did more than this ; he cured Webster 
 of all the florid foolery of his early rhetorical style. 
 Of all men that ever appeared before a jury, Mason 
 was the most pitiless realist, the most terrible enemy 
 of what is — in a slang term as vile almost as itself — 
 called " hifalutin ; " and woe to the opposing laAvyer 
 who indulged in it ! He relentlessly pricked all rhet- 
 orical bubbles, reducing them at once to the small 
 amount of ignominious suds, which the orator's breath 
 had converted into colored globes having some ap- 
 pearance of stability as well as splendor. Six feet 
 and seven inches high, and corpulent in proportion, 
 this inexorable representative of good sense and sound 
 law stood, while he was arguing a case, " quite near 
 
AS A MASTER OF ENGLISH STYLE. 155 
 
 to the jury," says "Webster, — " so near that he might 
 have laid his finger on the foreman's nose ; and then 
 he talked to them in a plain conversational way, in 
 short sentences, and using sjio word that was not 
 level to the comprehension of the least educated man 
 o'n the panel. . This led me," he adds, " to examine 
 my own style, and I set about reforming it altogether." 
 Mr. Mason was what the lawyers call a " cause- 
 getting man," like Sir James Scarlett, Brougham's 
 great opponent at the English bar. It was said of 
 Scarlett that he gained his verdicts because there 
 were twelve Scarletts in the jury-bos ; and Mason so 
 contrived to blend his stronger mind with the minds 
 of the jurymen, that his thoughts appeared to be 
 theirs, expressed in the same simple words and quaint 
 illustrations which they would have used if asked to 
 give their opinions on the case. It is to be added 
 that Mason's almost cynical disregard of ornament in 
 his addresses to the jury gave to an opponent like 
 Webster the advantage of availing himself of those 
 real ornaments of speech which spring directly from 
 a great heart and imagination. Webster, without 
 ever becoming so supremely plain and simple in style 
 as Mason, still strove to emulate, in his legal state- 
 ments and arguments, the homely, robust common- 
 sense of his antagonist ; but wherever the case allowed 
 of it, he brought into the discussion an element of 
 MTicommon sense, the gift of his own genius and 
 individuality, which Mason could liardly compre- 
 hend sufficiently to controvert, but which was surely 
 
156 DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 not without its effect in deciding the verdicts of 
 juries. 
 
 It is probable that Webster was one of the few 
 law3'ers and statesmen that Mason respected. Mason's 
 curt, sharp, " vitriolic " sarcasms on many men who 
 enjoyed a national reputation, and who were popu- 
 larly considered the lights of their time, still remain 
 in the memories of his surviving associates as things 
 which may be quoted in conversation, but which it 
 would be cruel to put into print. Of Webster, how- 
 ever, he never seems to have spoken a contemptuous 
 word. Indeed, Mason, though fourteen years older 
 than Webster, and fighting him at the Portsmouth 
 bar with all the formidable force of his logic and 
 learning, was from the first his cordial friend. That 
 friendship, early established between strong natures 
 so opposite in character, was never disturbed by any 
 collision in the courts. In a letter written, I think, a 
 few weeks after he had made that " Reply to Hayne " 
 which is conceded to be one of the great masterpieces 
 of eloquence in the recorded oratory of the world, 
 Webster wrote jocularly to Mason : " I have been 
 written to, to go to New Hampshire, to try a cause 
 against you next August. ... If it were an easy and 
 plain case on our side, 1 might be willing to go ; but 
 I have some of jour pound iii{/ in my hones ^/ef, and 
 I don't care about any more till that wears out." 
 
 It may be said that Webster's argument in the 
 celebrated Dartmouth College Case, before the 
 Supreme Court of the United States, placed him, at 
 
AS A MASTER OF ENGLISH STYLE. 157 
 
 the age of thirty-six, in the foremost rank of the con- 
 stitutional lawyers of "the country. For the main 
 points of the reasoning, and for the exhaustive cita- 
 tion of authorities by which the reasoning was sus- 
 tained, he was probably indebted to Mason, who had 
 previously argued the case before the Superior Court 
 of Now Hampshire ; but his superiority to Mason was 
 shown in the eloquence, the moral power, he infused 
 into his reasoning, so as to make the dullest citation 
 of legal authority tell on the minds he addressed. 
 
 There is one incident connected with this speech 
 which proves what immense force is given to simple 
 words when a great man — great in his emotional 
 nature as well as great in logical power — is behind 
 the words. " It is, sir, as I have said, a small college. 
 And yet there are those who love it." At this point 
 the orator's lips quivered, his voice choked, his eyes 
 filled with tears, — all the memories of sacrifices en- 
 dured by his father and mother, his brothers and 
 sisters, in order that he might enjoy its rather scanty 
 advantages of a liberal education, and by means of 
 which he was there to plead its cause before the su- 
 preme tribunal of the nation, rushed suddenly upon his 
 mind in an overwhelming flood. The justices of the 
 Supreme Court — great lawyers, tried and- toughened 
 by experience into a certain obdurate sense of justice, 
 and insensible to any common appeal to their hearts 
 — melted into unwonted tenderness, as in broken 
 words the advocate proceeded to state his own indebt- 
 edness to the " small college " whose rights and privi- 
 
158 DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 leges he was there to defend. Chief Justice Marshall's 
 eyes were filled with tears ; and the eyes of the other 
 justices were suffused with a moisture similar to that 
 which afflicted the eyes of the Chief. As the orator 
 gradually recovered his accustomed stern composure 
 of manner, he turned to the counsel on the other side, 
 
 — one of whom, at least, was a graduate of Dartmouth, 
 
 — and in his deepest and most thrilling tones thus 
 concluded his argument : " Sir, I know not how others 
 may feel ; but for myself, when I see my Alma Mater 
 surrounded, like Caesar in the senate-house, by those 
 who are reiterating stab after stab, I would not, for 
 this right hand, have her turn to me and say, Et tu 
 quoque, mi fili ! — And thou too, my son." The effect 
 was overwhelming ; yet by what simple means was it 
 produced, and with what small expenditure of words ! 
 The eloquence was plainly "in the man, in the subject, 
 and in the occasion," but most emphatically was it in 
 the Man. 
 
 Webster's extreme solicitude to make his style 
 thoroughly Wehsterian — a stylo unimitated because 
 it is in itself inimitable — is observable in the care he 
 took in revising all liis speeches and addresses which 
 were published under his own authorit}'. His great 
 Plymouth oration of 1820 did not appear in a pam- 
 phlet form until a year after its delivery. The chief 
 reason of this delay was probably due to his desire of 
 stating the main political idea of the oration — that 
 government is founded on property — so clearly that 
 it could not be misconceived by any honest mind, and 
 
AS A MASTER OF ENGLISH STYLE. 159 
 
 could only be perverted from its plain democratic 
 meaning by the ingenious malignity of such minds as 
 are deliberately dishonest, and consider lying as jus- 
 tifiable when lying will serve a party purpose. It is 
 probable that Webster would have been President of 
 the United States had it not been for one short sen- 
 tence in this oration, — " Government is founded on 
 property." It was of no use for his political friends 
 to prove that he founded on this general proposition 
 the most democratic views as to the distribution 
 of property, and advised the enactment of laws cal- 
 culated to frustrate the accumulation of large for- 
 tunes in a few hands. There were the words, words 
 horrible to the democratic imagination, and Webster 
 was proclaimed an aristocrat, and an enemy to tlie 
 common people. But the delay in the publication of 
 the oration may also be supposed to have been due to 
 his desire to prune all its grand passages of eloquence 
 of every epithet and image which should not be rigor- 
 ously exact as expressions of his genuine sentiments 
 and principles. It is probable that the Plymoutli 
 oration, as we possess it in print, is a better oration, 
 in respect to composition, than that which was heard 
 by the applauding crowd before which it was origin- 
 ally delivered. It is certain that the largeness, the 
 grandeur, the weight of Webster's whole nature, were 
 first made manifest to the intelligent portion of his 
 countrymen by this noble commemorative address. 
 
 Yet it is also certain that he was not himself alto- 
 gether satisfied with this oration ; and his dissatisfac- 
 
160 DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 tion with some succeeding popular speeches, memorable 
 iu the annals of American eloquence, was expressed 
 privately to his friends in the most emphatic terms. 
 On the day he completed his magnificent Bunker Hill 
 oration, delivered on the 17th of June, 1825, he wrote 
 to Mr. George Ticknor: " I did the deed this morning, 
 that is, I finished my speech ; and I am pretty well per- 
 suaded that it will finish me as far as reputation is 
 concerned. There is no more tone in it than in tlie 
 weather in which it has been written ; it is perpetual 
 dissolution and thaw." Every critic will understand 
 the force of that word " tone." He seemed to feel 
 that it had not enough robust manliness, — that the 
 ribs and backbone, the facts, thoughts, and real sub- 
 stance of the address were not sufficiently prominent, 
 owing to the frequency of those outbursts of magnetic 
 eloquence which made the immense audience that 
 listened to it half crazy with the vehemence of their 
 applause. On the morning after he had delivered his 
 eulogy on Adams and Jefferson, he entered his office 
 with his manuscript in his hand, and threw it down 
 on the desk of a young student at law whom he spe- 
 cially esteemed, with the request, " There, Tom, please 
 to take that discourse, and weed out all the Latin 
 words." 
 
 Webster's liking for the Saxon element of our 
 composite language was, however, subordinate to his 
 main purpose of self-expression. Every word was 
 good, whether of Saxon or Latin derivation, which 
 aided him to embody the mood of mind dominant at 
 
AS A MASTER OF ENGLISH STYLE. 161 
 
 the time he was speaking or -writing. No man had 
 less of what has been called " the ceremonial cleanli- 
 ness of academical Pharisees ; " and the purity of 
 expression he aimed at was to put into a form, at 
 once intelligible and tasteful, his exact thoughts and 
 emotions. He tormented reporters, proof-readers, and 
 the printers who had the misfortune to be engaged in 
 putting one of his performances into type, not because 
 this or that Avord was or was not Saxon or Latin, but 
 because it was inadequate to convey perfectly his 
 meaning. Mr. Kemble, a great Anglo-Saxon scholar, 
 once, in a company of educated gentlemen, defied 
 anybody present to mention a single Latin phrase in 
 our language for which he could not furnish a more 
 forcible Saxon equivalent. " The impenetrability of 
 matter " was suggested ; and Kemble, after half a 
 minute's reflection, answered, " The un-thorough- 
 fareableness of stuff." Still, no English writer would 
 think of discarding such an abstract, but convenient 
 and accurate, term as " impenetrability " for the 
 coarsely concrete and terribly ponderous word which 
 declares that there is no possible thoroughfare, no 
 road, by which we can penetrate tliat substance which 
 we call "matter," and which our Saxon forefathers 
 called " stuff." Wherever the Latin element in our 
 language comes in to express ideas and sentiments 
 which were absent from the Anglo-Saxon mind, 
 Webster uses it without stint ; and some of the most 
 resounding passages of his eloquence owe to it their 
 strange power to suggest a certain vastness in his 
 
 11 
 
162 DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 intellect and sensibility, which the quaint, idiomatic, 
 homely prose of his friend Mason would have been 
 utterly incompetent to convey. Still, he preferred a 
 plain, plump, simple verb or noun to any learned 
 phrase, whenever he could employ it without limiting 
 liis opulent nature to a meagre vocabulary, incompe- 
 tent fully to express it. 
 
 Yet he never departed from simplicity ; that is, he 
 rigidly confined himself to the use of such words as 
 he had earned the right to use. Whenever the re- 
 port of one of his extemporaneous speeches came 
 before him for revision, he had an instinctive sagacity 
 in detecting every word that had slipped unguard- 
 edly from his tongue, which he felt, on reflection, 
 did not belong to Mm. Among the reporters of his 
 speeches he had a particular esteem for Henry J. 
 Eaymond, afterwards so well known as the editor of 
 the " New York Times." Mr. Raymond told me 
 that after he had made a report of one of Webster's 
 speeches, and had presented it to him for revision, 
 his conversation with him was always a lesson in 
 rhetoric. " Did I use that phrase ? I hope not. At 
 any rate, substitute for it this more accurate defini- 
 tion." And then again : " That word does not ex- 
 press my meaning. Wait a moment, and I will give 
 you a better one. That sentence is slovenly, — that 
 image is imperfect and confused. I believe, my young 
 friend, that you have a remarkable power of reporting 
 what I say ; but if I said that, and that, and that, it 
 must have been owing to the fact that I caught, in 
 
AS A MASTER OF ENGLISH STYLE. 163 
 
 the hurry of the moment, such expressions as I could 
 command at the moment ; and you see they do not 
 accurately represent the idea that was in my mind." 
 And thus, Mr. Raymond said, the orator's criticism 
 upon his own speech would go on, — correction fol- 
 lowing correction, ^- until the reporter feared he 
 would not have it ready for the morning edition of 
 his journal. 
 
 Webster had so much confidence in Raymond's 
 power of reporting him accurately, that when he 
 intended to make an important speech in the Senate, 
 he would send a note to him, asking him to come to 
 Washington as a personal favor ; for he knew that 
 the accomplished editor had a rare power of appre- 
 hending a long train of reasoning, and of so reporting 
 it that the separate thoughts would not only be 
 exactly stated, but the relations of the thoughts to 
 each other — a much more difficult task — would be 
 preserved throughout, and that the argument would be 
 presented in the symmetrical form in which it existed 
 in the speaker's mind. Then would follow, as of old, 
 the severe scrutiny of the phraseology of the speecli ; 
 and Webster would give, as of old, a new lesson in 
 rhetoric to the accomplished reporter who was so 
 capable of following the processes of his mind. 
 
 The great difficulty with speakers who may be suf- 
 ficiently clear in statement and cogent in argument is 
 that turn in their discourse when their language 
 labors to become figurative. Imagery makes palpa- 
 ble to the bodily eye the abstract thought seen only 
 
164 DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 by the e\'e of the mind ; and all orators aim at giving 
 vividness to their thinking by thus making their 
 thoughts visible. The investigation of the process of 
 imagination by which this end is reached is an inter- 
 esting study. Woe to the speaker who is ambitious 
 to rise into the I'egion of imagination witliout possess- 
 ing the faculty ! Everybody remembers the remark 
 of Sheridan when Tierney, the prosaic Whig leader of 
 the English House of Commons, ventured to bring in, 
 as an illustration of his argument, the fabulous but 
 favorite bird of untrained orators, the phcenix, which 
 is supposed always to spring up alive out of its own 
 ashes. " It was," said Sheridan, " a poulterer's de- 
 scription of a phoenix." That is, Tierney, from de- 
 fect of imagination, could not lift his poetic bird 
 above the rank of a common hen or chicken. 
 
 The test that may be most easily applied to all 
 efforts of the imagination is sincerity ; for, like other 
 qualities of the mind, it acts strictly within the limits 
 of a man's character and experience. The meaning 
 of the word " experience," however, must not be con- 
 fined to what he has personally seen and felt, but is 
 also to be extended to everything he has seen and 
 felt through vital sympathy with facts, scenes, events, 
 and characters, which he has learned by conversation 
 with other men and through books. Webster laid 
 great emphasis on conversation as one of the most 
 important sources of imagery as well as of positive 
 knowledge. " In my education," he once remarked 
 to Charles Sumner, " I have found that conversation 
 
AS A MASTER OF ENGLISH STYLE. 165 
 
 ■with the intelligent men I have had the good fortune 
 to meet has done more for me tlian books ever did ; 
 for I learn more from them in a talk of half an hour 
 than I could possibly learn from their books. Their 
 minds, in conversation, come into intimate contact 
 with my own mind ; and I absorb certain secrets of 
 their power, whatever may be its quality, which I 
 could not have detected in their works. Converse, 
 converse, converse with living men, face to face, and 
 mind to mind, — that is one of the best sources of 
 knowledge." 
 
 But my present object is simply to give what may 
 be called the natural history of metaphor, compari- 
 son, image, trope, and the like, whether imagery be 
 employed by an uneducated husbandman, or by a 
 great orator and writer. Many readers may recollect 
 the anecdote of the New Hampshire farmer, who was 
 once complimented on the extremely handsome ap- 
 pearance of a horse which he was somewhat sullenly 
 urging on to perform its work. " Yaas," was the 
 churlish reply, " the critter looks well enough, but 
 then he is as slow as — as — as — well, as slow as 
 cold molasses." This perfectly answers to Bacon's 
 definition of imagination, as " thought immersed in 
 matter." The comparison is exactly on a level with 
 the experience of the person who used it. He had 
 seen his good wife, on so many bitter winter morn- 
 ings when he was eager for his breakfast, turn the 
 molasses-jug upside down, and had noted so often the 
 reluctance of the congealed sweetness to assume its 
 
166 DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 liquid nature, that the thing had become to him the 
 visible image of the abstract notion of slowness of 
 movement. An imaginative dramatist or novelist, 
 priding himself on the exactness with which he repre- 
 sented character, could not have invented a more ap- 
 propriate comparison to be put into the mouth of an 
 imagined New England farmer. 
 
 The only objection to such rustic poets is that a 
 comparatively few images serve them for a lifetime ; 
 and one tires of such " orighials " after a few days' 
 conversation has shown the extremely limited num- 
 ber of apt illustrations they have added to the homely 
 poetry of agricultural life. The only person belong- 
 ing to this class that I ever met, who possessed an 
 imagination which was continually creative in quaint 
 images, was a farmer by the name of Knowlton, who 
 liad spent fifty years in forcing some few acres of the 
 rocky soil of Cape Ann to produce grass, oats, pota- 
 toes, and, it may be added, those ugly stone walls 
 which carefully distinguish, at the Cape, one patch 
 of miserable sterile land from another. He was 
 equal, in quickness of imaginative illustration, to the 
 whole crowd of clergymen, lawyers, poets, and art- 
 ists, who filled the boarding-houses of Pigeon Cove ; 
 and he was absolutely inexhaustible in fresh and 
 original imagery. On one hot summer day, — the con- 
 tinuation of fourteen hot summer days, — when there 
 was fear all over Cape Ann that the usual scanty 
 crops would be withered up by the intense heat, and 
 the prayer for rain was in almost every farmer's heart, 
 
AS A MASTER OF ENGLISH STYLE. 167 
 
 I met Mr. Knowlton, as he was looking {jhilosophically 
 over one of his own sun-smitten fields of grass. Think- 
 ing that I was in full sympathy with his own feeling 
 at the dolorous prospect before his eyes, I said, in ac- 
 costing him, that it was bad weather for the farmers. 
 He paused for half a minute ; and then his mind 
 flashed back on an incident of his weekly experience, 
 — that of his wife " ironing " the somewhat damp 
 clothes of the Monday's " washing," — and he replied : 
 " I see you 've been talking with our farmers, who 
 are too stupid to know what 's for their good. Ye 
 see the spring here was uncommonly rainy, and the 
 ground became wet and cold ; but now, for the last 
 fortnight, Qod has been putting his flat-iron over it, 
 and 't will all come out right in the end." 
 
 Thus Mr. Knowlton went on, year after year, 
 speaking poetry without knowing it, as Moliere's 
 Monsieur Jourdain found he had been speaking prose 
 all his life without knowing it. But the conception 
 of the sun as God's flat-iron, smoothing out and 
 warming the moist earth, as a housewife smooths 
 and warms the yet damp shirts, stockings, and bed- 
 linen brought into the house from the clothes-lines 
 in the yard, is an astounding illustration of that 
 " familiar grasp of things Divine," which obtains in 
 so many of our rustic households. Dante or Chaucer, 
 two of the greatest poets of the world, would, had 
 they happened to be " uneducated " men, have seized 
 on just such an image to express their idea of the 
 Divine beneficence. 
 
168 DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 This natural, this instinctive operation of the 
 imaginative faculty is often observed in children. 
 Numberless are the stories told by fond mothers of 
 the wonderful things uttered by their babies shortly 
 after they have left their cradles. The most striking 
 peculiarity running through them all is the astonish- 
 ing audacity with which the child treats the most 
 sacred things. He or she seems to have no sense 
 of awe. All children are taught to believe that God 
 resides above them in the sky ; and I shall never 
 forget the shock of surprise I felt at the answer of 
 a boy of five years — whom I found glorying o^'er the 
 treasures of his first paint-box — to my question- 
 " Which color do you like best ? " " Oh," he carelessly 
 replied, "I like best sky-blue, — God's color." And 
 the little rogue went on, daubing the paper before 
 him with a mixture of all colors, utterly unconscious 
 that he had said anything remarkable ; and yet what 
 Mrs. Browning specially distinguishes as the charac- 
 teristic of the first and one of the greatest of English 
 poets, Chaucer, — namely, his " familiar grasp of things 
 Divine," — could not have found a more appropriate 
 illustration than in this chance remark of a mere 
 child, expressing the fearlessness of his faith in the 
 Almighty Father above him. 
 
 Now, in all these instinctive operations of the 
 imagination, whether in the mind of a child or in 
 that of a grown man, it is easy to discern the mark 
 of sincerity. If the child is petted, and urged by his 
 mother to display his brightness before a company 
 
AS A MASTER OP ENGLISH STYLE. 169 
 
 of other motliers and other babies, he is in danger 
 of learning early that trick of falsehood, which clings 
 to him when he goes to school, when he leaves the 
 school for the college, and when he leaves the college 
 for the pursuits of professional life. The farmer or 
 mechanic, not endowed with " college larnin'," is sure 
 to become a bad declaimer, perhaps a demagogue, 
 when he abandons those natural illustrations and 
 ornaments of his speech which spring from his indi- 
 vidual experience, and strives to emulate the gran- 
 diloquence of those ■ graduates of colleges who have 
 the heathen mythology at the ends of their fingers 
 and tongues, and can refer to Jove, Juno, Minerva, 
 Diana, Venus, Vulcan, and Neptune, as though they 
 were resident deities and deesses of the college halls. 
 The trouble with most " uneducated " orators is, that 
 they become enamoured of these shining gods and 
 goddesses after they have lost, through repetition, 
 all of their old power to give point or force to any 
 good sentence of modern oratory. During the times 
 when, to be a speaker at Abolitionist meetings, the 
 speaker ran the risk of being pelted with rotten eggs, 
 I happened to be present, as one of a small antislavery 
 audience, gathered in an equally small hall. Among 
 the speakers was an honest, strong-minded, warm- 
 hearted young mechanic, who, as long as he was true 
 to his theme, spoke earnestly, manfully, and well ; 
 but, alas ! he thought he could not close without 
 calling in some god or goddess to give emphasis — 
 after the method of college students — to his previous 
 
170 DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 statements. He selected, of course, that unfortunate 
 phantom whom he called the Goddess of Liberty. 
 " Here, in Boston," he thundered, " where she was 
 cradled in Faneuil Hall, can it be that Liberty should 
 be trampled under foot, when, after two generations 
 have passed, — yes, sir, have elapsed, — she has grown 
 — yes, sir, I repeat it, has grown — grown up, sir, 
 into a great man ? " The change in sex was, in this 
 case, more violent than usual ; but how many in- 
 stances occur to everybody's recollection, where that 
 poor Goddess has been almost equally outraged, 
 through a puerile ambition on the part of the orator 
 to endow her with an exceptional distinction by 
 senseless rhodomontade, manufactured by the word- 
 machine which he presumes to call his imagination! 
 All imitative imagery is the grave of common-sense. 
 
 Now let us pass to an imagination which is, per- 
 haps, the grandest in American oratory, but which 
 was as perfectly natural as that of the " cold mo- 
 lasses," or " God's flat-iron," of the New England 
 farmer, — as natural, indeed, as the "sky-blue, God's 
 color," of the New England boy. Daniel Webster, 
 standing on the heights of Quebec at an early hour 
 of a summer morning, heard the ordinary morning 
 drum-beat which called the garrison to their duty. 
 Knowing that the British possessions belted the 
 globe, the thought occurred to him that the morning 
 drum would go on beating in some English post to 
 the time when it would sound again in Quebec. 
 Afterwards, in a speech on President Jackson's Pro- 
 
AS A MASTER OF ENGLISH STYLE. ITl 
 
 test, he dwelt on the fact that our Revolutionary 
 forefathers engaged in a war with Great Britain on 
 a strict question of principle, " while actual suffering 
 was still afar off." How could he give most effect 
 to this statement ? It would have been easy for 
 him to have presented statistical tables, showing 
 the wealth, population, and resources of England, 
 followed by an enumeration of her colonies and 
 military stations, all going to prove the enormous 
 strength of the nation against which the United 
 American colonies raised their improvised flag. But 
 the thought which had heretofore occurred to him at 
 Quebec happily recurred to his mind the moment 
 it was needed; and he flashed on the imagination 
 an image of British power which no statistics could 
 have conveyed to the understanding, — "a power," 
 he said, " which has dotted over the surface of the 
 whole globe with her possessions and militai-y posts ; 
 whose morning drum-beat, following the sun, and 
 keeping company with the hours, circles the earth 
 with one continuous and unbroken strain of the mar- 
 tial airs of England." Perhaps a mere rhetorician 
 might consider superfluous the word "whole," as 
 applied to " globe," and " unbroken," as following 
 " continuous ; " yet they really add to the force and 
 majesty of the expression. It is curious that in 
 Great Britain this magnificent impersonation of the 
 power of England is so little known. It is certain 
 that it is unrivalled in British patriotic oratory. Not 
 Chatham, not even Burke, ever approached it in the 
 
172 DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 noblest passages in which they celebrated the great- 
 ness and glory of their country. "Webster, it is 
 to be noted, introduced it in his speech, not for the 
 purpose of exalting England, but of exalting our 
 Revolutionary forefathers, whose victory, after a seven 
 years' war of terrible sevei'ity, waged in vindication 
 of a principle, was made all the more glorious from 
 having been won over an adversary so formidable 
 and so vast. 
 
 It is reported that, at the conclusion of this speech 
 on the President's Protest John Sergeant, of Phila- 
 delphia, came up to the orator, and after cordially 
 shaking hands with him, eagerly asked, " Where, 
 Webster, did you get that idea of the morning drum- 
 beat ? " Like other public men, accustomed to address 
 legislative assemblies, he was naturally desirous of 
 knowing the place — if place there was — where such 
 images and illustrations were to be found. The truth 
 was that, if Webster had ever read Goethe's " Faust," 
 
 — which he of course never had done, — he might 
 have referred his old friend to that passage where 
 Faust, gazing at the setting sun, aches to follow it 
 in its course forever. " See," he exclaims, " how the 
 green-girt cottages shimmer in the setting sun ! He 
 bends and sinks, — the day is outlived. Yonder he 
 hurries off, and quickens other life. Oh, that I have 
 no wing to lift me from the ground, to struggle after 
 
 — forever after — him ! I should see, in everlasting 
 evening beams, the stilly world at my feet, every 
 height on fire, every vale in repose, the silver brook 
 
AS A MASTER OF ENGLISH STYLE. 173 
 
 flowing into golden streams. The rugged mountain, 
 with all its dark defiles, would not then break my 
 godlike course. Already the sea, with its heated 
 bays, opens on my enraptured sight. Yet the god 
 seems at last to sink away. But the new impulse 
 wakes. I hurry on to drink his everlasting light, — 
 the day before me and the night behind, — and under 
 me the waves." In Faust, the wings of the mind 
 follow the setting sun ; in Webster, they follow the 
 rising sun ; but the thought of each circumnavigates 
 the globe, in joyous companionship with the same 
 centre of life, light, and heat, — though the sugges- 
 tion which prompts the sublime idea is widely dif- 
 ferent. The sentiment of Webster, calmly meditating 
 on the heights of Quebec, contrasts strangely with 
 the fiery feeling of Faust, raging against the limita- 
 tions of his mortal existence. A humorist, Charles 
 Dickens, who never read either Goethe or Webster, 
 has oddly seized on the same general idea : " The 
 British Empire," — he says, in one of his novels, — 
 " on which the sun never sets, and where the tax- 
 gatherer never goes to bed." 
 
 This celebrated image of the British " drum-beat " 
 is here cited simply to indicate the natural way in 
 which all the faculties of Webster are brought into 
 harmonious co-operation whenever he seriously dis- 
 cusses any great question. His understanding and 
 imagination, when both are roused into action, always 
 cordially join hands. His statement of facts is so 
 combined with the argument founded on them, that 
 
174 DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 they are interchangeable ; his statement having the 
 force of argument, and his argument having the 
 " substantiality " which properly belongs to statement ; 
 and to these he commonly adds an imaginative illus- 
 tration, which gives increased reality to both state- 
 ment and argument. In rapidlj^ turning over the 
 leaves of the six volumes of his Works, one can easily 
 find numerous instances of this instinctive operation 
 of his mind. In his first Bunker Hill oration he 
 announces that " the principle of free governments 
 adheres to the American soil. It is bedded in it, 
 immovable as its mountains." Again he says : " A 
 call for the representative system, wherever it is not 
 enjoyed, and where there is already intelligence 
 enough to estimate its value, is perseveringly made. 
 Where men may speak out, they demand it ; where 
 the bayonet is at their throats, they pray for it." 
 And yet again : " If the true spark of religious and 
 civil liberty be kindled, it will burn. Human agency 
 cannot extinguish it. Like the cartli's central fire, it 
 may be smothered for a time ; the ocean may over- 
 whelm it; mountains may press it down, — but its 
 inherent and unconquerable force will heave both 
 the ocean and the land, and at some time or other, 
 in some place or other, the volcano will break out, 
 and flame up to heaven." It would be difficult to 
 find in any European literature a similar embodiment 
 of an elemental sentiment of humanity, in an image 
 which is as elemental as the sentiment to which it 
 gives vivid expression. 
 
AS A MASTER OF ENGLISH STYLE. 175 
 
 And then with what majesty, with what energy, 
 and with what simplicity, can he denounce a political 
 transaction which, had it not attracted his ire, would 
 hardly have survived in the memory of his country- 
 men ! Thus, in his Protest against Mr. Benton's Ex- 
 punging Kesolution, speaking for himself and his 
 Senatorial colleague, he says : " We rescue our own 
 names, character, and honor from all participation in 
 this matter ; and whatever the wayward character of 
 the times, the headlong and plunging spirit of party 
 devotion, or the fear or the love of power, may have 
 been able to bring about elsewhere, we desire to thank 
 God that they have not, as yet, overcome the love of 
 liberty, fidelity to true republican principles, and a 
 sacred regard for the Constitution in that State whose 
 soil was drenched to a mire by the first and best blood 
 of the Eevolution." Perhaps the peculiar power of 
 Webster in condemning a measure by a felicitous epi- 
 thet, such as that he employs in describing " the 
 plunging spirit of party devotion " was never more 
 happily exercised. In that word " plunging " he in- 
 tended to condense all his horror and hatred of a 
 transaction which he supposed calculated to throw the 
 true principles of constitutional government into a 
 bottomless abyss of personal government, where right 
 constitutional principles would cease to have exist- 
 ence, as well as cease to have authority. 
 
 There is one passage in his oration at the comple- 
 tion of the Bunker Hill Monument which may be 
 quoted as an illustration of his power of compact 
 
176 DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 statement, and which at the same time may save 
 readers from the trouble of reading many excellent 
 histories of the origin and progress of the Spanish 
 dominion in America, condensing, as it does, all which 
 such histories can tell us in a few smiting sentences. 
 " Spain," he says, " stooped on South America like 
 a vulture on its prey. Everything was force. Terri- 
 tories were acquired by fire and sword. Cities were 
 destroyed by fire and sword. Hundreds of thousands 
 of human beings fell by fire and sword. Even con- 
 version to Christianity was attempted by fire and 
 sword." One is reminded, in this passage, of Macau- 
 lay's method of giving vividness to his confident gen- 
 eralization of facts by emphatic repetitions of the same 
 form of words. The repetition of " fire and sword " 
 in this series of short, sharp sentences ends in forc- 
 ing the reality of what the words mean on the dullest 
 imagination ; and the climax is capped by affirming 
 that " fire and sword " were the means by which the 
 religion of peace was recommended to idolaters, whose 
 heathenism was more benignant, and more intrinsically 
 Christian, than the military Christianity which was 
 forced upon them. 
 
 And then again, how easily Webster's imagination 
 slips in, at the end of a comparatively bald enumera- 
 tion of the benefits of a good government, to vitalize 
 the statements of his understanding ! " Everywhere," 
 he says, " there is order, everywhere there is security. 
 Everywhere the law reaches to the highest, and reaches 
 to the lowest, to protect all in their rights, and to re- 
 
AS A MASTER OF ENGLISH STYLE. 177 
 
 strain all from wrong ; and over all hovers libert}', — 
 that liberty for which our fathers fought and fell on 
 this very spot, with her eye ever watchful, and her 
 eagle wing ever wide outspread." There is something 
 astonishing in the dignity given in the last clause of 
 this sentence to the American eagle, — a bird so de- 
 graded by the rhodomontade of fifth-rate declaimers, 
 that it seemed impossible that the highest genius and 
 patriotism could restore it to its primacy among the 
 inhabitants of the air, and its just eminence as a sym- 
 bol of American liberty. It is also to be noted that 
 Webster here alludes to " the bird of freedom " only 
 as it appears on the American silver dollar that passes 
 daily from hand to hand, where the watchful eye and 
 the outspread wing are so inartistically represented 
 that the critic is puzzled to account for the grandeur 
 of the image which the orator contrived to evolve 
 from the barbaric picture on the ugliest and clumsiest 
 of civilized coins. 
 
 The compactness of Webster's statements occasion- 
 ally reminds us of the epigrammatic point which 
 characterizes so many of the statements of Burke. 
 Thus, in presenting a memorial to Congress, signed 
 by many prominent men of business, against President 
 Jackson's system of finance, he saw at once that the 
 Democrats would denounce it as another manifesto of 
 the "moneyed aristocracy." Accordingly Webster 
 introduced the paper to the attention of the Senate, 
 with the preliminary remark : " The memorialists are 
 not unaware that, if rights are attacked, attempts 
 
 12 
 
1T8 DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 will be made to render odious those whose rights are 
 violated. Power always seeks such subjects on which 
 to try its experiments." It is difficult to resist the 
 impression that Webster must have been indebted to 
 Burke for this maxim. Again we are deluded into the 
 belief that we must be reading Burke, when Webster 
 refers to the minimum principle as the right one to be 
 followed in imposing duties on certain manufactures. 
 " It lays the impost," he says, " exactly where it will 
 do good, and leaves the rest free. It is an intelligent, 
 discerning, discriminating principle; not a blind, 
 headlong, generalizing, uncalculating operation. Sim- 
 plicity, undoubtedly, is a great beauty in acts of legis- 
 lation, as well as in the works of art ; but in both it 
 must be a simplicity resulting from congruity of parts 
 and adaptation to the end designed ; not a rude gen- 
 eralization, which either leaves the particular object 
 unaccomplished, or, in accomplishing it, accomplishes 
 a dozen others also, which were not desired. It is a 
 simplicity wrought out by knowledge and skill ; not 
 the rough product of an undistinguishing, sweeping 
 general principle." 
 
 An ingenuous reader, who has not learned from his 
 historical studies that men generally act, not from 
 arguments addressed to their understandings, but 
 from vehement appeals which rouse their passions to 
 defend their seeming interests, cannot comprehend 
 why Webster's arguments against Nullification and 
 Secession, which were apparently unanswerable, and 
 which were certainly unanswered either by Hayne or 
 
AS A MASTER OF ENGLISH STYLE. 179 
 
 Calhoun, should not have settled the question in de- 
 bate between the North and the South. Such a reader, 
 after patiently following all the turns and twists of 
 the logic, all the processes of the reasoning employed 
 on both sides of the intellectual contest, would natur- 
 ally conclude that the party defeated in the conflict 
 would gracefully acknowledge the fact of its defeat ; 
 and, as human beings, gifted with the faculty of reason, 
 would cheerfully admit the demonstrated results of 
 its exercise. He would find it difficult to comprehend 
 why the men who were overcome in a fair gladiatorial 
 strife in the open arena of debate, with brain pitted 
 against brain, and manhood against manhood, should 
 resort to the rough logic of " blood and iron," when 
 the nobler kind of logic, that which is developed in 
 the struggle of mind with mind, had failed to accom- 
 plish the purposes which their hearts and wills, 
 independent of their understandings, were bent on 
 accomplishing. 
 
 It may be considered certain that so wise a states- 
 man as Webster — a statesman whose foresight was 
 so palpably the consequence of his insight, and whose 
 piercing intellect was so admirably adapted to read 
 events in their principles — never indulged in such 
 illusions as those which cheered so many of his own 
 adherents, when they supposed his triumph in argu- 
 mentation was to settle a matter which was really 
 based on organic differences in the institutions of the 
 two sections of the Union. He knew perfectly well 
 that while the Webster men were glorying in his 
 
180 DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 victory over Calhoun, the Calhoun men were equally 
 jubilant in celebrating Calhoun's victory over him. 
 "Which of them had tlie better in the argument was of 
 little importance in comparison with the terrible fact 
 that the people of the Southern States were widening, 
 year by year, the distance which separated them from 
 the people of the Northern States. We have no 
 means of judging whether Webster clearly foresaw the 
 frightful Civil War between the two sections, which 
 followed so soon after his own death. We only know 
 that to him it was a conflict constantly impending, 
 and which could be averted for the time only by com- 
 promises, concessions, and other temporary expedients. 
 If he allowed his mind to pass from the pressing ques- 
 tions of the hour, and to consider the radical division 
 between the two sections of the country which were 
 only formally united, it would seem that he must have 
 felt, as long as the institution of negro slavery existed, 
 that he was only laboring to postpone a conflict which 
 it was impossible for him to prevent. 
 
 But my present purpose is simply to indicate the 
 felicity of Webster's intrepid assault on the principles 
 which the Southern disunionists put forward in justi- 
 fication of their acts. Mr. Calhoun's favorite idea 
 was this, — that Nullification was a conservative prin- 
 ciple, to be exercised within the Union, and in accord- 
 ance with a just interpretation of the Constitution. 
 " To begin with nullification," Webster retorted, 
 " with the avowed intent, nevertheless, not to proceed 
 to secession, dismemberment, and general revolution. 
 
AS A MASTER. OF ENGLISH STYLE. 181 
 
 is as if one were to take the plunge of Niagara, and 
 cry out that he would stop half-way down. In the 
 one case as in the other, the rash adventurer must go 
 to the bottom of the dark abyss below, were it not 
 that the abyss has no discovered bottom." 
 
 How admirable also is his exposure of the distinc- 
 tion attempted to be drawn between secession, as a 
 State right to be exercised under the provisions of 
 what was called " the Constitutional Compact," and 
 revolution. " Secession," he says, " as a revolutionary 
 right, is intelligible ; as a right to be proclaimed in 
 the midst of civil commotions, and asserted at the 
 head of armies, I can understand it. But as a practi- 
 cal right, existing under the Constitution, and in con- 
 formity with its provisions, it seems to me nothing 
 but a plain absurdity ; for it supposes resistance to 
 government, under the authority of government itself ; 
 it supposes dismemberment, without violating the 
 principles of union ; it supposes opposition to law, 
 without crime ; it supposes the total overthrow of gov- 
 ernment, without revolution." 
 
 After putting some pertinent interrogatories — 
 which are arguments in themselves — relating to the 
 inevitable results of secession, he adds that " every 
 man must see that these are all questions which can 
 arise only after a revolution. They presuppose the 
 breaking up of the government. While the Constitu- 
 tion lasts, they are repressed ; " — and then, with 
 that felicitous use of the imagination as a handmaid 
 of the understanding, which is the peculiar charac- 
 
182 DAKIEL WEBSTER 
 
 teristic of his eloquence, he closes the sentence by say- 
 ing that " they spring up to annoy and startle us only 
 from its grave." A mere reasoner would have stopped 
 at the word " repressed ; " the instantaneous conver- 
 sion of " questions " into spectres, affrighting and 
 annoying us as they spring up from the grave of the 
 Constitution, — which is also by implication imper- 
 sonated, — is the work of Webster's ready imagina- 
 ■tion ; and it thoroughly vitalizes the statements which 
 precede it. 
 
 A great test of the sincerity of a statesman's style 
 is his moderation. Now, if we take the whole body 
 of Mr. Webster's speeches, whether delivered in the 
 Senate or before popular assemblies, during the period 
 of his opposition to President Jackson's administra- 
 tion, we may well be surprised at their moderation 
 of tone and statement. Everybody old enough to 
 recollect the singular virulence of political speech at 
 that period must remember it as disgraceful equally 
 to the national conscience and the national under- 
 standing. The spirit of party, always sufficiently 
 fierce and unreasonable, was then stimulated into a 
 fury resembling madness. Almost every speaker. 
 Democrat or Wliig, was in that state of passion which 
 is represented by the physical sign of " foaming at the 
 mouth." Few mouths then opened that did not im- 
 mediately begin to " foam." So many fortunes were 
 suddenly wrecked by President Jackson's financial 
 policy, and the business of the country was so disas- 
 trously disturbed, that, whether the policy was right 
 
AS A MASTER OF ENGLISH STYLE. 183 
 
 or wrong, those who assailed and those who defended 
 it seemed to be equally devoid of common intellectual 
 honesty. " I do well to be angry " appears to have 
 been the maxim which inspired Democratic and Whig 
 orators alike ; and what reason there was on either 
 side was submerged in the lies and libels, in the cal- 
 umnies and caricatures, in the defamations and exe- 
 crations, which accompanied the citation of facts and 
 the affirmation of principles. Webster, during all 
 this time, was selected as a shining mark at which 
 every puny writer or speaker who opposed him hurled 
 his small or large contribution of verbal rotten eggs ; 
 and yet Webster was almost the only Whig statesman 
 who preserved sanity of understanding during the 
 whole progress of that political riot, in which the 
 passions of men became the masters of their under- 
 standings. Pious Whig fathers, who worshipped the 
 " godlike Daniel," went almost to the extent of teacli- 
 ing their children to curse Jackson in their prayers ; 
 equally pious Democratic fathers brought up their 
 sons and daughters to anathematize the fiend-like 
 Daniel as the enemy of human rights ; and yet iu 
 reading Webster's speeches, covering the whole space 
 between 1832 and 1836, we can hardly find a state- 
 ment which an historian of our day would not admit 
 as a candid generalization of facts, or an ai-gument 
 which would not stand the test of logical examina- 
 tion. Such an historian might entirely disagree with 
 the opinions of Webster ; but he would certainly 
 award to him the praise of bemg an honest reasoner 
 
184 DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 and an honest rhetorician, in a time when reason was 
 used merely as a tool of party passion, and when 
 rhetoric rushed madly into the worst excesses of 
 rhodomontade. 
 
 It is also to be said that Webster rarely indulged 
 in personalities. When we consider how great were 
 his powers of sarcasm and invective, how constant 
 were the provocations to exercise them furnished by 
 his political enemies, and how atrociously and meanly 
 allusions to his private affairs were brought into dis- 
 cussions which should have been confined to refuting 
 his reasoning, his moderation in this matter is to be 
 ranked as a great virtue. He could not take a glass 
 of wine without the trivial fact being announced all 
 over the country as indisputable proof that he was 
 an habitual drunkard, though the most remarkable 
 cliaracteristic of his speeches is their temperance, — 
 their " total abstinence " from all the intoxicating 
 moral and mental " drinks " which confuse the under- 
 standing and mislead the conscience. He could not 
 borrow money on his note of hand, like any other 
 citizen, without the circumstance being trumpeted 
 abroad as incontrovertible evidence that Nick Biddle 
 had paid him that sum to defend his diabolical Bank 
 in the Senate of the United States. The plain fact 
 that his speeches were confined strictly to the exposi- 
 tion and defence of sound opinions on trade and 
 finance, and that it was difficult to answer them, only 
 confirmed his opponents in the conviction that old 
 Nick was at the bottom of it all. His great intellect 
 
AS A MASTER OF ENGLISH STYLE. 185 
 
 was admitted ; but on the high, broad brow, which 
 was its manifestation to the eye, his enemies pasted 
 the words, " To be let," or " For sale." The more 
 impersonal he became in his statements and argu- 
 ments, the more truculently was he assailed by the 
 personalities of the political gossip and scandal- 
 monger. Indeed, from the time he first came to the 
 front as a great lawyer, statesman, and patriot, he 
 was fixed upon by the whole crew of party libellers 
 as a man whose arguments could be answered most 
 efficiently by staining his character. He passed 
 through life with his head enveloped " in a cloud of 
 poisonous flies ; " and the head was the grandest- 
 looking head that had ever been seen on the Ameri- 
 can continent. It was so pre-eminently noble and 
 impressive, and promised so much more than it could 
 possibly perform, that only one felicitous sarcasm of 
 party malice, among many thousands of bad jokes, 
 has escaped oblivion ; and that was stolen from 
 Charles Fox's remark on Lord Chancellor Thurlow, 
 as Fox once viewed him sitting on the wool-sack, 
 frowning on the English House of Lords, which he 
 dominated by the terror of his countenance, and by 
 the fear that he might at any moment burst forth in 
 one of his short, bullying, thundering retorts, should 
 any comparatively weak baron, earl, marquis, or duke 
 dare to oppose him. " Thurlow," said Fox, " must be 
 a.n impostor, for nobody can be as wise as he looks." 
 The American version of this was, " Webster must be 
 a charlatan, for no one can be as great as he looks." 
 
186 DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 But during all the time that his antagonists at- 
 tempted to elude the force of his arguments by hunt- 
 ing up the evidences of his debts, and by trying to 
 show that the most considerate, the most accurate, 
 and the most temperate of his lucid statements were 
 the products of physical stimulants, Webster steadily 
 kept in haughty reserve his power of retaliation. In 
 his speech in reply to Hayne he hinted that if he 
 were imperatively called upon to meet blows witli 
 blows, he might be found fully equal to his antago- 
 nists in that ignoble province of intellectual pugilism ; 
 but that he preferred the more civilized struggle of 
 brain with brain, in a contest which was to decide 
 questions of principle. In the Senate, where he 
 could meet his political opponents face to face, few 
 dared to venture to degrade the subject in debate 
 from the discussion of principles to the miserable 
 subterfuge of imputing bad motives as a sufficient 
 answer to good arguments ; but still many of these 
 dignified gentlemen smiled approval on the efforts of 
 the low-minded, small-minded caucus-speakers of their 
 party, when they declared that Webster's logic was 
 unworthy of consideration, because he was bought by 
 the Bank, or bought by the manufacturers of Massa- 
 chusetts, or bought by some other combination of 
 persons who were supposed to be the deadly enemies 
 of the laboring-men of the country. On some rare 
 occasions Webster's wrath broke out in such smiting 
 words that his adversaries were cowed into silence, 
 and cursed the infatuation which had led them to 
 
AS A MASTER OF ENGLISH STYLE. 187 
 
 overlook the fact that the " logic-machine " had in it 
 invectives more terrible than its reasonings. But 
 generally he refrained from using the giant's power 
 " like a giant ; " and it is almost pathetic to remem- 
 ber that when Mr. Everett undertook to edit, in 1851, 
 the standard edition of his Works, Webster gave direc- 
 tions to expunge all personalities from his speeches, 
 even when those personalities were the just punish- 
 ment of unprovoked attacks on his integrity as a 
 man. Keaders will look in vain, in this edition of his 
 Works, for some of the most pungent passages which 
 originally attracted their attention in the first report 
 of the Defence of the Treaty of Washington. At the 
 time these directions were given, Webster was himself 
 the object of innumerable personalities, which were 
 the natural, the inevitable results of his speech of the 
 7th of March, 1850. 
 
 It seems to be a law that the fame of all public 
 men shall be " half disfame." We are specially 
 warned to beware of the man of whom all men speak 
 well. Burke, complimenting his friend Fox for risk- 
 ing everything, even his " darling popularity," on the 
 success of the East India Bill, nobly says : " He is 
 traduced and abused for his supposed motives. He 
 will remember that obloquy is a necessary ingredient 
 in all true glory ; he will remember that it was not 
 only in the Roman customs, but it is in the nature of 
 human things, that calumny and abuse are essential 
 parts of triumph." 
 
 It may be said, however, that Webster's virtue in 
 
188 DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 this general abstinence from personalities is to be 
 offset by the fact that he could throw into a glance 
 of his eye, a contortion of his face, a tone of his voice, 
 or a simple gesture of his hand, more scorn, con- 
 tempt, and hatred than ordinary debaters' could ex- 
 press by the profuse use of all the scurrilous terms in 
 the English- language. Probably many a sentence, 
 ■which we now read with an even pulse, was, as origi- 
 nally delivered, accompanied by such pointing of the 
 finger, or such flashing of the eye, or such raising of 
 the voice, that the seemingly innocent words were 
 poisoned arrows that festered in the souls of those 
 against whom they were directed, and made deadly 
 enemies of a number of persons whom he seems, in 
 his printed speeches, never to have mentioned with- 
 out the respect due from one senator to another. In 
 his speech in Defence, of the Treaty of Washington, 
 he had to repel Mr. Ingersoll's indecent attack on his 
 integrity ; and his dreadful retort is described by those 
 who heard it as coming within the rules which con- 
 demn cruelty to animals. But the " noble rage " 
 which prompted him to indulge in such unwonted in- 
 vective subsided with tlie occasion that called it forth, 
 and he was careful to have it expunged when the 
 speech was reprinted. An eminent judge of the Su- 
 preme Court of Massachusetts, in commending the 
 general dignity and courtesy which characterized 
 Webster's conduct of a case in a court of law, noted 
 one exception. "When," he said, "the opposite coun- 
 sel had got him into a corner, the way he ' trampled 
 
AS A MASTER OP ENGLISH STYLE. 189 
 
 out ' was something frightful to behold. The Court 
 itself could hardly restrain him in his gigantic efforts 
 to extricate himself from the consequences of a blun- 
 der or an oversight." 
 
 Great writers and orators are commonly economists 
 in the use of words. They compel common words to 
 bear a burden of thought and emotion which mere' 
 rhetoricians, with all the resources of the language at 
 their disposal, would never dream of imposing upon 
 them. But it is also to be observed that some writers 
 have the power of giving a new and special significance 
 to a common word, by impressing on it a wealth of 
 meaning which it cannot claim for itself. Three 
 obvious examples of this peculiar power may be cited. 
 Among poets, Chaucer infused into the simple word 
 " green " a poetic ecstasy which no succeeding Eng- 
 lish poet, not even Wordsworth, has ever rivalled, in 
 describing an English landscape in the month of May. 
 , Jonathan Edwards fixed upon the term " sweetness " 
 as best conveying his loftiest conception of the bliss 
 which the soul of the saint can attain to on earth, or 
 expect to be blessed with in heaven; but not one of 
 his theological successors has ever caught the secret 
 of using " sweetness " in the sense attached to it by 
 him. Dr. Barrow gave to the word " rest," as em- 
 bodying his idea of the spiritual repose of the soul 
 fit for heaven, a significance whicli it bears in 
 the works of no other great English divine. To de- 
 scend a little, Webster was fond of certain words, 
 commonplace enough in themselves, to which he 
 
190 DANIEL WEBSTEli 
 
 insisted on imparting a more than ordinary import. 
 Two of these, which meet us continually in reading 
 his speeches, are "interesting" and " respectable." 
 The first of these appears to him competent to ex- 
 press that rapture of attention called forth by a thing, 
 an event, or a person, which other writers convey by 
 such a term as " absorbing," or its numerous equiv- 
 alents. If we should select one passage from his 
 Works which more than any other indicates his power 
 of seeing and feeling, through a process of purely 
 imaginative vision and sympathy, it is that portion of 
 his Plymouth oration where he places himself and 
 his audience as spectators on the barren shore, when 
 the " Mayflower " came into view. He speaks of " the 
 interesting group upon the deck " of the little vessel. 
 The very word suggests that we are to have a very 
 commonplace account of the landing and the circum- 
 stances which followed it. In an instant, however, 
 we are made to " feel the cold which benumbed, and 
 listen to the winds which pierced " this " interesting " 
 group ; and immediately after, the picture is flashed 
 upon the imagination of " chilled and shivering child- 
 hood, houseless but for a mother's arms, couchless 
 but for a mother's breast," — an image which shows 
 that the orator had not only transformed himself into 
 a spectator of the scene, but had felt his own blood 
 " almost freeze" in intense sympathy with the physi- 
 cal sufferings of the shelterless mothers and children. 
 There is no word which the novelists, satirists, 
 philanthropic reformers, and Bohemians of our day 
 
AS A MASTER OE ENGLISH STYLE. 191 
 
 have done so much to discredit, and make (^<s-respect- 
 able to the heart and the imagination, as the word 
 " respectable." Webster always uses it as a term of 
 eulogy. A respectable man is, to his mind, a person 
 who performs all his duties to his family, his country, 
 and his God; a person who is not only virtuous, but 
 who has a clear perception of the relation which con- 
 nects one virtue with another by " the golden thread " 
 of moderation, and who, whether he be a man of ge- 
 nius, or a business man of average talent, or an intelli- 
 gent mechanic, or a farmer of sound moral and mental 
 character, is to be considered " respectable" because he 
 is one of those citizens whose intelligence and integ- 
 rity constitute the fourtdation on which the Republic 
 rests. As late as 1843, in his noble oration on the 
 completion of the Bunker Hill Monument, he de- 
 clared that if our American institutions had done 
 nothing more than to produce the character of Wash- 
 ington, that alone would entitle them to the respect of 
 mankind. " Washington is all our own ! . . . I would 
 cheerfully put the question to-day to the intelligence 
 of Europe and the world, what character of the cen- 
 tury, upon the whole, stands out in the relief of his- 
 tory most pure, most respectable, most sublime ; and 
 I doubt not, that, by a suffrage approaching to una- 
 nimity, the answer would be Washington ! " It is 
 needless to quote other instances of the peculiar 
 meaning he put into the word " respectable," when 
 we thus find him challenging the Europe of the 
 eighteenth century to name a match for Washington, 
 
192 DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 and placing "most respectable" after "most pure," 
 and immediately preceding " most sublime," in his 
 enumeration of the three qualities in which Washing- 
 ton surpassed all men of his century. 
 
 It has been often remarked that Webster adapted 
 his style, even his habits of mind and modes of rea- 
 soning, to the particular auditors he desired to influ- 
 ence ; but that whether he addressed an unorganized 
 crowd of people, or a jury, or a bench of judges, or 
 the Senate of the United States, he ever proved him- 
 self an orator of the first class. His admirei'S com- 
 monly confine themselves to the admirable sagacity 
 with which lie discriminated between the kind of 
 reasoning proper to be employed when he addressed 
 courts and juries, and the kind of reasoning which is 
 most effective in a legislative assembly. The lawyer 
 and the statesman were in Webster kept distinct, 
 except so far as he was a lawyer who had argued 
 before the Supreme Court questions of constitutional 
 law. An amusing instance of this abnegation of the 
 lawyer, while incidentally bringing in a lawyer's 
 knowledge of judicial decisions, occurs in a little 
 episode in his debate with Mr. Calhoun, in 1849, as 
 to the relation of Congress to the Territories. Mr. 
 Calhoun said that he had been told that the Supreme 
 Court of the United States had decided, in one case, 
 that the Constitution did not extend to the Terri- 
 tories, but that he was " incredulous of the fact." 
 " Oh ! " replied Mr. Webster, " I can remove the gen- 
 tleman's incredulity very easily, for I can assure him 
 
AS A MASTER OF ENGLISH STYLE. 193 
 
 that the same thing has been decided by the United 
 States courts over and over again for the last thirty 
 years." It wjll be observed, however, that Mr. Web- 
 ster, after communicating this important item of in- 
 formation, proceeded to discuss the question as if the 
 Supreme Court had no existence, and bases his argu- 
 ment on the plain terms of the Constitution and the 
 plain facts recorded in the history of the government 
 established by it. 
 
 Macaulay, in his lively way, has shown the difficulty 
 of manufacturing English statesmen out of English 
 lawyers, though as lawyers their rank in the profes- 
 sion may be very high. " Their arguments," he says, 
 " are intellectual prodigies, abounding with the hap- 
 piest analogies and the most refmed distinctions. The 
 principles of their arbitrary science being once admitted, 
 the statute-books and the reports being once assumed 
 as the foundations of reasoning, these men must be 
 allowed to be perfect masters of logic ; but if a ques- 
 tion arises as to the postulates on which their whole 
 system rests, if they are called upon to vindicate the 
 fundamental maxims of tliat system which they have 
 passed their lives in studying, these very men often 
 talk the language of savages or of children. Those 
 who have listened to a man of this class in his own 
 court, and who have witnessed the skill with which 
 he analyzes and digests a vast mass of evidence, or 
 reconciles a crowd of precedents .which at first sight 
 seem contradictory, scarcely know him again when, 
 a few hours later, they hear him speaking on the other 
 
 13 
 
194 DANIEL WEBSTETi, 
 
 side of Westminster Hall in his capacity of legislator. 
 They can scarcely believe that the paltry quirks which 
 are faintly heard through a storm of cpughing, and 
 which do not impose on the plainest country gentle- 
 man, can proceed froiii the same sharp and vigorous 
 intellect which had excited their admiration under the 
 same roof and on the same day." And to this keen 
 distinction between an English lawyer and an English 
 lawyer as a member of the House of Commons, may 
 be added the peculiar kind of sturdy manlhiess which 
 is demanded in any person who aims to take a leading 
 part in Parliamentary debates. Erskine — probably 
 the greatest advocate who ever appeared in the English 
 courts of law — made but a comparatively poor figure 
 in the House of Commons, as a member of the Whig 
 opposition. " The truth is, Erskine," Sheridan once 
 said to him, " you are afraid of Pitt, and that is the 
 flabby part of your character." 
 
 But Macaulay, in another article, makes a point 
 against the leaders of party themselves. His defini- 
 tion of Parliamentary government is "government by 
 speaking ; " and he declares that the most effective 
 speakers are commonly ill-informed, shallow in 
 thought, devoid of large ideas of legislation, hazard- 
 ing the loosest speculations with the utmost intellect- 
 ual impudence, and depending for success on volubility 
 of speech rather than on accuracy of knowledge or 
 penetration of intelligence. " The tendency of insti- 
 tutions like those of England," he adds, " is to en- 
 courage readiness in public men, at the expense both 
 
AS A MASTER OF ENGLISH STYLE. 195 
 
 of fulness and of exactness. The keenest and most 
 vigorous minds of every generation, minds often ad- 
 mirably fitted for the investigation of truth, are habit- 
 ually employed in producing arguments such as no 
 man of sense would ever put into a treatise intended for 
 publication, — arguments which are just good enough 
 to be used once, when aided by fluent delivery and 
 pointed language." And he despairingly closes with 
 the remark that he " would sooner expect a great 
 original work on political science — such a work, 
 for example, as the ' Wealth of Nations' — from an 
 apothecary in a country town, or from a minister in 
 the Hebrides, than from a statesman who, ever since he 
 was one-and-twenty, had been a distinguished debater 
 in the House of Commons." 
 
 Now, it is plain that neither of these contemptuous 
 judgments applies to Webster. He was a great law- 
 yer ; but as a legislator the precedents of the lawyer 
 did not control the action or supersede the principles 
 of the statesman. He was one of the most formidable 
 debaters that ever appeared in a legislative assembly ; 
 and yet those who most resolutely grappled with him 
 in the duel of debate would be the last to impute to 
 him inaccuracy of knowledge or shallowness of 
 thought. He carried into the Senate of the United 
 States a trained mind, disciplined by the sternest' 
 culture of his faculties, disdaining any plaudits which 
 were not the honest reward of robust reasoning on 
 generalized facts, and " gravitating " in the direction 
 of truth, whether he hit or missed it. In his case, at 
 
196 DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 least, there was nothing in his legal experience, or in 
 his legislative experience, which would have unfitted 
 him for producing a work on the science of politics. 
 The best speeches in the House of Commons of Lord 
 Palmerston and Lord John Russell appear very weak 
 indeed, as compared with the " Reply to Hayne," or the 
 speech on " The Constitution not a Compact between 
 Sovereign States," or the speech on the President's 
 Protest. 
 
 In this connection it may be said, when we remem- 
 ber the hot contests between the two men, that there 
 is something plaintive in Calhoun's dying testimony 
 ^to Webster's austere intellectual conscientiousness. 
 Mr. Venables, who attended the South Carolina states- 
 man in his dying hours, wrote to Webster : " When 
 your name was mentioned, he remarked that ' Mr. 
 Webster has as high a standard of truth as any states- 
 man I have met in debate. Convince him, and he 
 cannot reply ; he is silenced ; he cannot look truth in 
 the face and oppose it by argument. I think that it 
 can be readily perceived by his manner when he felt 
 the unanswerable force of a reply.' He often spoke 
 of you in my presence, and always kindly and most 
 respectfully." Now, it must be considered that, in 
 debate, the minds of Webster and Calhoun had come 
 into actual coatact and collision. Each really felt the 
 force of the other. An ordinary duel might be ranked 
 among idle pastimes when compared with the stress 
 and strain and pain of their encounters in the duel of 
 debate. A sword-cut or pistol-bullet, maiming the 
 
AS A MASTER OF ENGLISH STYLE. 197 
 
 body, was as nothing in comparison with the wounds 
 they mutually inflicted on that substance which was 
 immortal in both. It was a duel, or series of duels, 
 in which mind was opposed to mind, and will to will, 
 and where the object appeared to be to inflict moral 
 and mental annihilation on one of the combatants. 
 There never passed a word between them on which 
 the most ingenious Southern jurists, in their interpre- 
 tations of the " code " of honor, could have found 
 matter for a personal quarrel ; and jet these two 
 proud and strong personalities knew that they were 
 engaged in a mortal contest, in which neither gave 
 quarter nor expected quarter. Mr. Calhoun's intel- 
 lectual egotism was as great as his intellectual 
 ability. He always supposed that he was the victor 
 in every close logical wrestle with any mind to 
 which his own was opposed. He never wrestled with 
 a mind, until he met Webster's, which in tenacity, 
 grasp, and power was a match for his own. He, of 
 course, thought his antagonist was beaten by his 
 superior strength and amplitude of argumentation ; 
 but it is still to be noted that he, the most redoubtable 
 opponent that Webster ever encountered, testified, 
 though in equivocal terms, to Webster's intellectual 
 honesty. When he crept, half dead, into the Senate- 
 Chamber to hear Webster's speech of the 7th of 
 March, 1850, he objected emphatically at the end to 
 Webster's declaration that the Union could not be 
 dissolved. After declaring that Calhoun's supposed 
 case of justifiable resistance came within the defini- 
 
198 DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 tion of the ultimate right of revolution, which is 
 lodged in all oppressed communities, Webster added 
 that he did not at that time wish to go into a discus- 
 sion of the nature of the United States government. 
 " The honorable gentleman and myself," he said, 
 " have broken lances sufficiently often before on that 
 subject." "I have no desire to do it now," replied 
 Calhoun ; and Webster blandly retorted, " I presume 
 the gentleman has not, and I have quite as little." 
 One is reminded here of Dr. Johnson's remark, when 
 he was stretched ou a sick-bed, with his gladiatorial 
 powers of argument suspended by physical exhaustion. 
 " If that fellow Burke were now present," the Doctor 
 humorously murmured, " he would certainly kill me." 
 But to what has been said of Webster's eminence as 
 a lawyer and a statesman it is proper to add that he 
 has never been excelled as a writer of State papers 
 among the public men of the United States. Mr. 
 Emerson has a phrase which is exactly applicable to 
 these efforts of Webster's mind. That phrase is " su- 
 perb propriety." Throughout his despatches he always 
 seems to feel that he impersonates his country ; and 
 the gravity and weight of his style are as admirable as 
 its simplicity and majestic case. "Daniel Webster, 
 his mark," is ii^dclibly stamped on them all. When 
 the Treaty of Washington was criticised by the Whigs 
 in the English Parliament, ^lacaulay specially noticed 
 the difference in the style of the two negotiators. 
 Lord Ashburton, he said, had compromised the honor 
 of his country by " the humble, caressing, wheedling 
 
AS A MASTER OP ENGLISH STYLE. 199 
 
 tone" of his letters, — a tone which contrasted strangely 
 with " the firm, resolute, vigilant, and unyielding man- 
 ner " of the American Secretary of State. It is to be 
 noticed that no other opponent of Sir Robert Peel's 
 administration — not even Lord Palmerston and 
 Lord John Russell — struck at the essential weakness 
 of Lord Ashburton's despatches with the force and 
 sagacity which characterized Macaulay's assault on 
 the treaty. Indeed, a rhetorician and critic less skil- 
 ful than Macaulay can easily detect that " America " 
 is represented fully in Webster's despatches, while 
 " Britannia" has a very amiable, but not very forcible, 
 representative in Lord Ashburton. Had Palmerston 
 been the British plenipotentiary, we can easily imagine 
 how different would have been the task imposed on 
 Webster. As the American Secretary was generally in 
 the right in every position he assumed, he would prob- 
 ably have triumphed even over Palmerston ; but the let- 
 ters of the "pluckiest" of English statesmen would, 
 we maybe sure, have never been criticised in the House 
 of Commons as " humble, wheedling, and caressing." 
 In addition, however, to his legal arguments, his 
 senatorial speeches, and his State papers, Webster is 
 to be considered as the greatest orator our country 
 has produced, in his addresses before miscellaneous 
 assemblages of the people. In saying this we do not 
 confine the remark to such noble orations as those 
 on the "First Settlement of New England," "The 
 Bunker Hill Monument," and " Adams and Jeifer- 
 son," but extend it so as to include speeches before 
 
200 DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 great masses of people who could be bardly distin- 
 guished from a mob, and who were under no restraint 
 but that imposed by their own self-respect and their 
 respect for the orator. On these occasions he was 
 uniformly successful. It is impossible to detect, in 
 any reports of these popular addresses, that he ever 
 stooped to employ a style of speech or mode of argu- 
 ment commonly supposed appropriate to a speaker on 
 the " stump ; " and yet he was the greatest " stump " 
 orator that our country has ever seen. He seemed to 
 delight in addressing five or ten or even twenty thou- 
 sand people, in the open air, trusting that the pene- 
 trating tones of his voice would reach even the ears 
 of those who were on the ragged edges of the sway- 
 ing crowd before him ; and he would thus speak to 
 the sovereign people, in their unorganized state as a 
 collection of uneasy and somewhat belligerent individ- 
 uals, with a dignity and majesty similar to the dignity 
 and majesty which characterized his arguments be- 
 fore the Senate of the United States, or before a bench 
 of judges. A large portion of his published Works 
 consists of such speeches, and they ranli only second 
 among the remarkable productions of his mind. 
 
 The question arises. How could he hold the at- 
 tention of such audiences without condescending to 
 flatter their prejudices, or without occasionally acting 
 the part of the sophist and the buffoon ? Much may 
 be said, in accounting for this phenomenon, about his 
 widely extended reputation, his imposing presence, 
 the vulgar curiosity to see a man whom even the 
 
AS A MASTER OP ENGLISH STYLE. 201 
 
 smallest country newspaper thought of sufficient im- 
 portance to defame, his power of giving vitality to 
 simple words which the most ignorant of his auditors 
 could easily imdcrstand, and the instinctive respect 
 which the rudest kind of men feel for a grand speci- 
 men of robust manhood. But the real, the substan- 
 tial source of his power over such audiences proceeded 
 from his respect for them ; and their respect for him 
 was more or less consciously founded on the percep- 
 tion of this fact. 
 
 Indeed, a close scrutiny of his speeches will show 
 how conscientiously he regards the rights of other 
 minds, however inferior they may be to his own ; and 
 this virtue — for it is a virtue — is never more apparent 
 than in his arguments and appeals addressed to popu- 
 lar assemblies. No working-man, whether farmer, 
 tnechanic, factory " hand," or day -laborer, ever deemed 
 himself insulted by a word from the lips of Daniel 
 Webster ; he felt himself rather exalted in his own 
 esteem, for the time, by coming in contact with that 
 beneficent and comprehensive intelligence, which 
 cherished among its favorite ideas a scheme for lift- 
 ing up the American laborer to a height of comfort 
 and respectability which the European laborer could 
 hardly hope to attain. Prominent politicians, men 
 of wealth and influence, statesmen of high social and 
 political rank, may at times have considered Web- 
 ster as arrogant and bad-tempered, and may at 
 times have felt disposed to fasten a quarrel upon 
 him ; even in Massachusetts this disposition broke 
 
202 DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 out ill conventions of the party to which he belonged ; 
 but it would be in vain to find a single laboring-man, 
 whether he met Webster in private, or half pushed 
 and half fought his way into a mass meeting in order 
 to get his ears into communication with the orator's 
 voice, who ever heard a word from him which did not 
 exalt the dignity of labor, or which was not full of 
 sympathy for the laborer's occasional sorrows and 
 privations. Webster seemed to have ever present to 
 his mind the poverty of the humble home of his 
 youth. His father, his brothers, he himself, had all 
 been brought up to consider manual toil a dignified 
 occupation, and as consistent with the exercise of all 
 the virtues which flourish under the domestic roof. 
 More than this, it may be said that, with the excep- 
 tion of a few intimate friends, his sympathies to the 
 last were most warmly with common laborers. In* 
 deed, if we closely study the private correspondence 
 of this statesman, who was necessarily brouglit into 
 relations more or less friendly with the convention- 
 ally great men of the world, European as well as 
 American, wo shall find that, after all, he tool?: more 
 real interest in Scth Peterson and John Taylor and 
 Porter Wright, men connected with him in fishing 
 and farming, than he did in the ambassadors of 
 foreign States whom he met as Senator or as Secre- 
 tary of State, or in all the members of the polite 
 society of Washington, New York, and Boston. He 
 was very near to Nature himself ; and the nearer a 
 man was to Nature, the more he esteemed him. 
 
AS A MASTER OF ENGLISH STYLE. 203 
 
 Thus persons who superintended his farms and cattle, 
 or who pulled an oar in his boat when he ventured 
 out in search of cod and halibut, thought " Squire 
 Webster " a man who realized their ideal and perfec- 
 tion of good-fellowship ; while it may confidently be 
 said that many of his closest friends among men of 
 culture, including lawyers, men of letters, and states- 
 men of the first rank, must have occasionally re- 
 sented the " anfractuosities " of his mood and temper. 
 But Seth Peterson and Porter Wright and John 
 Taylor never complained of these " anfractuosities." 
 Webster, in fact, is one of the few public men of the 
 country in whose championship of the rights and 
 sympathy with the wrongs of labor there is not the 
 slightest trace of the arts of the demagogue ; and in 
 this fact we may find the reason why even the 
 •" roughs," who are present in every mass meeting, 
 always treated him with respect. Perhaps it would 
 not be out of place to remark here, that in his speech 
 of the 7th of March he missed a grand opportunity 
 to vindicate Northern labor, in the reference he made 
 to a foolish tirade of a senator from Louisiana, who 
 " took pains to run a contrast between the slaves of 
 the South and the laboring people of the North, 
 giving the preference, in all points of condition, of 
 comfort, and happiness, to the slaves of the South." 
 Webster made a complete reply to this aspersion on 
 Northern labor ; but as his purpose was to conciliate, 
 he did not blast the libeller by quoting the most emi- 
 nent example that could be named demonstrating the 
 
204 DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 falsehood of the slave-holding senator's assertion. 
 Without deviating from the conciliatory attitude he 
 had assumed, one could easily imagine him as lifting 
 his large frame to its full height, flashing from his 
 rebuking eyes a glance of scorn at the " amiable 
 Senator," and simply saying, " / belong to the class 
 which the Senator from Louisiana stigmatizes as more 
 degraded than the slaves of the South." There was 
 not at the time any senator from the South, except 
 Mr. Calhoun, that the most prejudiced Southern man 
 would have thought of comparing with Webster in 
 respect to intellectual eminence ; and if Webster had 
 then and there placed himself squarely on his position 
 as the son of a Northern laborer, we should have been 
 spared all the rhetoric about Northern " mud-sills," 
 witli which the Senate was afterwards afflicted. 
 Webster was our man of men ; and it would seem 
 that he should have crushed such talk at the outset, 
 by proudly assuming that Northern labor was embod- 
 ied and impersonated in him, — that he had sprung 
 from its ranks, and was proud of his ancestry. 
 
 An ingenious and powerful, but paradoxical thinker 
 once told mo that I was mistaken in calling Jonathan 
 Edwards and Daniel Webster great reasoners. " They 
 were bad reasoners," he added, " but great poets." 
 Without questioning the right of the author of " An 
 Enquiry into the Modern Prevailing Notion of that 
 Freedom of the Will, which is supposed to be Essen- 
 tial to Moral Agency," to he ranked among the most 
 eminent of modern logicians, I could still understand 
 
AS A MASTER OF ENGLISH STYLE. 205 
 
 why he was classed among poets ; for whether Ed- 
 wards paints the torments of hell or the bliss of 
 heaven, his imagination almost rivals that of Dante 
 in intensity of realization. But it was at first puz- 
 zling to comprehend why Webster should be depressed 
 as a reasoner in order to be exalted as a poet. The 
 images and metaphors scattered over his speeches 
 are so evidently brought in to illustrate and enforce 
 his statements and arguments, that, grand as they 
 often are, the imagination displayed in them is still 
 a faculty strictly subsidiary to the reasoning power. 
 It was only after reflecting patiently for some time 
 on the seeming paradox that I caught a glimpse of my 
 friend's meaning ; and it led me at once to consider 
 an entirely novel question, not heretofore mooted 
 by any of Webster's critics, whether friendly or un- 
 friendly, in their endeavors to explain the reason of 
 his influence over the best minds of the generation 
 to which he belonged. In declaring that, as a poet, 
 he far exceeded any capacity he evinced as a reasoner, 
 my paradoxical friend must have meant that Webster 
 had the poet's power of so organizing a speech that 
 it stood out to the eye of the mind as a palpable 
 intellectual product and fact, possessing not merely 
 that vague reality which comes from erecting a plausi- 
 ble mental structure of deductive argumentation, based 
 on strictly limited premises, but a positive reality 
 akin to the products of Nature herself, when she tries 
 her hand in constructing a ledge of rocks or rearing 
 a chain of hills. 
 
206 DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 In illustration, it may be well to cite the example 
 of poets with whom Webster, of course, cannot be 
 compared. Among the great mental facts, palpable 
 to the eyes of all men interested in literature, are 
 such creations as the Iliad, the " Divine Comedy," the 
 great Shakspearian dramas, the " Paradise Lost," and 
 " Faust." The commentaries and criticisms on these 
 are numerous enough to occupy the shelves of a large 
 library ; some of them attempt to show that Homer, 
 Dante, Shakspeare, Milton, and Goethe were all wrong 
 in their methods of creation ; but they still cannot ob- 
 scure, to ordinary vision, the lustre of these luminaries 
 as they placidly shine in the intellectual firmament, 
 which is literally over our heads. They are as palpa- 
 ble to the eye of the mind as Sirius, Arcturus, the 
 Southern Cross, and the planets Venus, Mars, Jupiter, 
 and Saturn are to the bodily sense. M. Taine has 
 recently assailed the " Paradise Lost " with the happi- 
 est of French epigrams ; he tries to prove that, in 
 construction, it is the most ridiculously inartistic mon- 
 strosity that the imaghiation of a great mind ever 
 framed out of chaos ; but after we have thoroughly 
 enjoyed the play of his wit, there the " Paradise Lost" 
 remains, an undisturbed object in the intellectual 
 heavens, disdaining to justify its right to exist on any 
 other grounds than the mere fact of its existence ; 
 and, certainly, not more ridiculous than Saturn him- 
 self, as we look at him through a great equatorial 
 telescope, swinging through space encumbered with 
 his clumsy ring, and his wrangling family of satel- 
 
AS A MASTER OF ENGLISH STYLE. 207 
 
 lites, but still, in spite of peculiarities on which M. 
 Taine might exercise his wit until doomsday, one of 
 the most beautiful and sublime objects which the 
 astronomer can behold in the whole phenomena of 
 the heavens. 
 
 Indeed, in reading criticisms on such durable poetic 
 creations and organizations as we hare named, one 
 is reminded of Sydney Smith's delicious chaffing of 
 his friend Jeffrey, on account of Jeffrey's sensitive- 
 ness of literary taste, and his inward rage that events, 
 men, and books, outside of him, do not correspond 
 to the exacting rules which are the products of his 
 own subjective and somewhat peevish intelligence. 
 " I like," says Sydney, " to tell you these things, 
 because you never do so well as when you are hum- 
 bled and frightened ; and if you could be alarmed into 
 the semblance of modesty, you would charm everybody. 
 But remember my joke against you about the moon : 
 'D — n the solar system ! bad light — planets too dis- 
 tant — pestered with comets — feeble contrivance ; 
 could make a better with great ease.' " 
 
 Now, when a man, in whatever department or direc- 
 tion of thought his activity is engaged, succeeds in 
 organizing, or even welding together, the materials 
 on which he works, so that the product, as a whole, 
 is visible to the mental eye as a new creation or 
 construction, he has an immense advantage over all 
 critics of his performance. Refined reasonings are 
 impotent to overthrow it; epigrams glance off from 
 it as rifle-bullets rebound when aimed at a granite 
 
208 DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 wall; and it stands erect long after the reasonings 
 and the epigrams are forgotten. Even when its sym- 
 metry is destroyed by a long and destructive siege, 
 a pile of stones still remains, as at Fort Sumter, to 
 attest what power of resistance it opposed to all the 
 resources of modern artillery. 
 
 If we look at Webster's greatest speeches, as, for 
 instance, " The Reply to Hayne," " The Constitution 
 not a Compact between Sovereign States," " The 
 President's Protest," and others that might be men- 
 tioned, wo shall find that they partake of the char- 
 acter of organic formations, or at least of skilful 
 engineering or architectural constructions. Even Mr. 
 Calhoun never approached him in this art of giving 
 objective reality to a speech, which, after all, is found, 
 on analysis, to consist only of a happy collocation 
 and combination of words ; but in Webster the words 
 are either all alive with the creative spirit of the poet, 
 or, at the, worst, resemble the blocks of granite or 
 marble which the artisan piles, one on the other, and 
 the result of which, though it may represent a poor 
 style of architecture, is still a rude specimen of a 
 Gothic edifice. The artist and artificer are both 
 observable in Webster's work ; but the reality and 
 solidity of the construction cannot be questioned. 
 At the present time an educated reader would be 
 specially interested in the mental processes by which 
 Webster thus succeeded in giving objective existence 
 and validity to the operations of his mind ; and, 
 whether sympathi-zing with his opinions or not, would 
 
AS A MASTER OE ENGLISH STYLE. 209 
 
 as little think of refusing to read them because of 
 their Whiggism, as he ■\vould think of refusing to 
 read Homer because of his heathenism, or Dante 
 because of his Catholicism, or Milton because of his 
 compound of Arianism and Calvinism, or Goethe 
 because of his Pantheism. The fact which would 
 most interest such a reader would be, that Webster 
 had in some mysterious way translated and trans- 
 formed his abstract propositions into concrete sub- 
 stance and form. The form might offend his reason, 
 his taste, or his conscience ; but he could not avoid 
 admitting that it Jiad a form, while most speeches, 
 even those made by able men, are comparatively 
 formless, however lucid they may be in the array 
 of facts, and plausible in the order and connection 
 of arguments. 
 
 In trying to explain this power, the most obvious 
 comparison which would arise in the mind of an 
 intelligent reader would be, that TTebster, as a rheto- 
 rician, resembled Vauban and Cohorn as military 
 engineers. In the war of debate, he so fortified the 
 propositions he maintained, that they could not be 
 carried by direct assault, but must be patiently be- 
 sieged. The words he employed were simple enough, 
 and fell short of including the vocabulary of even 
 fifth-rate declaimers ; but he had tlie art of so dis- 
 posing them, that to an honest reasoner the position 
 he took appeared to be impregnable. To assail it 
 by the ordinary method of passionate protest and 
 illogical reasoning, was as futile as a dash of light 
 
 14 
 
210 DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 cavalry would have been against the defences of 
 such cities as Namur and Lille. Indeed, in his 
 speech, " The Constitution not a Compact between 
 Sovereign States," he erected a whole Torres Vedras 
 line of fortifications, on which legislative Massenas 
 dashed themselves in vain, and, however strong in 
 numbers in respect to the power of voting him down, 
 recoiled defeated in every attempt to reason him down. 
 In further illustration of this peculiar power of 
 Webster, the speech of the 7th of March, 1850, may 
 be cited; for its delivery is to be ranked with the 
 most important historical events. For some years 
 it was the object of the extremes of panegyric and 
 the extremes of execration. But this effort is really 
 the most loosely constructed of all the great produc- 
 tions of Webster's mind. In force, compactness, and 
 completeness, in closeness of thought to things, in 
 closeness of imagery to the reasoning it illustrates, 
 and in general intellectual fibre, muscle, and bone, 
 it cannot be compared to such an oration as that on 
 the " First Settlement of New England," or such a 
 speech as that which had for its theme " The Con- 
 stitution not a Compact between Sovereign States ; " 
 but, after all deductions have been made, it was still 
 a speech which frowned upon its opponents as a kind 
 of verbal fortress constructed both for the purpose 
 of defence and aggression. Its fame is due, in a 
 great degree, to its resistance to a storm of assaults, 
 such as had rarely before been concentrated on any 
 speech delivered in either branch of the Congress of 
 
AS A MASTER OF ENGLISH STYLE. 211 
 
 the United States. Indeed, a very large portion of 
 the intellect, the moral sentiment, and the moral 
 passion of the free States was directed against it. 
 There was not a weapon in the armory of the dialec- 
 tician or the rhetorician which was not employed 
 with the intent of demolishing it. Contempt of 
 Webster was vehemently taught as the beginning 
 of political wisdom. That a speech thus assailed 
 should survive the attacks made upon it, appeared 
 to be impossible. And yet it did survive, and is alive 
 now, while better speeches — or what the present 
 writer thought at the time to be more convincing 
 speeches — have not retained individual existence, 
 however deeply they may have influenced that public 
 opinion which, in the end, determines political events. 
 " I still live," was Webster's declaration on his death- 
 bed, when the friends gathered around it imagined 
 he had breathed his last ; and the same words might 
 be uttered by the speech of the 7th of March, could 
 it possess the vocal organ which announces personal 
 existence. Between the time when it was originally 
 delivered and the present year there runs a great and 
 broad stream of blood, shed from the veins of North- 
 ern and Southern men alike ; the whole political 
 and moral constitution of the country has practically 
 suffered an abrupt change ; new problems engage 
 the attention of thoughtful statesmen ; much is for- 
 gotten which was once considered of the first im- 
 portance, — but the 7th of March Speech, battered as 
 it is by innumerable attacks, is still remembered at 
 
212 DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 least as one which called forth more power than it 
 embodied in itself. This persistence of life is due 
 to the fact that it was " organized." 
 
 Is this power of organization common among ora- 
 tors ? It seems to me that, on the contrary, it is very 
 rare. In some of Burke's speeches, in which his 
 sensibility and imagination were thoroughly under 
 the control of his judgment, — as, for instance, in his 
 speech on Conciliation with America, that on Eco- 
 nomical Reform, and that to the Electors of Bristol, — 
 we find the orator to be a consummate master of the 
 art of so constructing a speech that it serves the im- 
 mediate object which prompted its delivery, while at 
 the same time it has in it a principle of vitality which 
 makes it survive the occasion that called it forth. 
 But the greatest of Burke's speeches — if we look 
 merely at the richness and variety of mental power 
 and the force and depth of moral passion displayed in 
 it — is his speech on the Nabob of Arcot's Debts. No 
 speech ever delivered before any assembly, legislative, 
 judicial, or popular, can rank with this in respect to 
 the abundance of its facts, reasonings, and imagery, 
 and the ferocity of its moral wratli. It resembles the 
 El Dorado that Voltaire's Candide visited, where the 
 boys played with precious stones of inestimable value, 
 as our boys play with ordinary marbles ; for to the 
 inhabitants of El Dorado diamonds and pearls were 
 as common as pebbles are with us. 
 
 But the defect of this speech, which must still be 
 considered, on the whole, the most inspired product of 
 
AS A MASTER OF ENGLISH STYLE. 213 
 
 Burke's great nature, was this, — that it did not strike 
 its hearers or readers as having reality for its basis 
 or for the superstructure raised upon it. English- 
 men could not believe then, and most of them probably 
 do not believe now, that it had any solid foundation 
 in incontrovertible facts. It did not "fit in" to their 
 ordinary modes of thought ; and it has never been 
 ranked with Burke's " organized " orations ; it has 
 never come home to what Bacon called the " business 
 and bosoms" of his countrymen. They have gener- 
 ally dismissed it from their imaginations as " a phan- 
 tasmagoria and a hideous dream " created by Burke 
 under the impulse of the intense hatred he felt for the 
 administration which succeeded the overthrow of the 
 government which was founded on the coalition of 
 Fox and North. 
 
 Now, in simple truth, the speech is the most mas- 
 terly statement of facts relating to the oppression of 
 millions of the people of India, which was ever forced 
 on the attention of the House of Commons, — a legis- 
 lative assembly which, it may be incidentally remarked, 
 was practically responsible for the just government of 
 the immense Indian empire of Great Britain. It is 
 curious that the main facts on which the argument of 
 Burke rests have been confirmed by James Mill, the 
 coldest-blooded historian that ever narrated the enor- 
 mous crimes which attended the rise and progress of 
 the British power in Hindostan, and a man who also had 
 a strong intellectual antipathy to the mind of Burke. 
 In making the speech, Burke had documentary evi- 
 
214 DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 dence of a large portion of the transactions he de- 
 nounced, and had divined the rest. Mill supports 
 him both as regards the facts of which Burke had 
 positive knowledge, and the facts which he deduc- 
 tively inferred from those he knew. Having thus a 
 strong foundation for his argument, he exerted every 
 faculty of his mind and every impulse of his moral 
 sentiment and moral passion to overwhelm the lead- 
 ing members of the administration of Pitt, by attempt- 
 ing to make them accomplices in crimes which would 
 disgrace even slave-traders on the Guinea coast. The 
 merely intellectual force of his reasoning is crushing ; 
 his analysis seems to be sharpened by his hatred ; and 
 there is no device of contempt, scorn, derision, and 
 direct personal attack which he does not unsparingly^ 
 use. In the midst of all this mental tumult, inesti- 
 mable maxims of moral and political wisdom are shot 
 forth in short sentences, which have so much of the 
 sting and brilliancy of epigram that at first we do 
 not appreciate their depth of thought ; and through 
 all there burns such a pitiless fierceness of moral rep- 
 robation of cruelty, injustice, and wrong that all the 
 accredited courtesies of debate are violated, once, at 
 least, in every five minutes. In any American legis- 
 lative assembly he would have been called to order at 
 least once in five minutes. The images which the 
 orator brings in to give vividness to his argument are 
 sometimes coarse ; but, coarse as they are, they ad- 
 mirably reflect the moral turpitude of the men against 
 whom he inveighs. Among these is the image with 
 
AS A MASTER OP ENGLISH STYLE. 215 
 
 which he covers Dundas, the special friend of Pitt, 
 with a ridicule which promises to be immortal. Dun- 
 das, on the occasion when Fox and Burke called for 
 papers by the aid of which they proposed to demon- 
 strate the iniquity of the scheme by which the ministry 
 pi'oposcd to settle the debts of the Nabob of Arcot, 
 pretended that the production of such papers would 
 be indelicate, — "that this inquiry is of a delicate 
 nature, and that the State will suffer detriment by the 
 exposure of this transaction." As Dundas had pre- 
 viously brought out six volumes of Reports, generally 
 confirming Burke's own views of the corruption and 
 oppression which marked the administration of affairs 
 in India, he laid himself open to Burke's celebrated 
 assault. Dundas and delicacy, he said, were " a rare 
 and singular coalition." And then follows an image 
 of colossal coarseness, such as might be supposed 
 capable of I'ousing thunder-peals of laughter from a 
 company of festive giants, — an image which Lord 
 Brougham declared offended his sensitive taste, — the 
 sensitive taste of one of the most formidable legal and 
 legislative bullies that ever appeared before the juries 
 or Parliament of Great Britain, and who never hesi- 
 tated to use any illustration, however vulgar, which he 
 thought would be effective to degrade his opponents. 
 
 But whatever may be thought of the indelicacy of 
 Burke's image, it was one eminently adapted to pene- 
 trate through the thick hide of the minister of State 
 at whom it was aimed ; and it shamed him as far as a 
 profligate politician like Dundas was capable of feel- 
 
216 DANIEL "WEBSTER 
 
 iiig the sensation of shame. But there are also 
 flashes, or rather flames, of impassioned imagination 
 in the same speech, which rush up from the main 
 body of its statements and arguments, and remind us 
 of nothing so much as of those jets of incandescent 
 gas which, we are told by astronomers, occasionally 
 leap, from the extreme outer covering of the sun, to 
 the height of a hundred or a hundred and sixty thou- 
 sand miles, and testify to the terrible forces raging 
 within it. After reading this speech for the fiftieth 
 time, the critic cannot free himself from the rapture 
 of admiration and amazement which he experienced 
 in his first fresh acquaintance with it. Yet its de- 
 livery in the House of Commons (February 28, 1785) 
 produced an effect so slight that Pitt, after a few 
 minutes' consultation with Grenville, concluded that 
 it was not worth the trouble of being answered ; and 
 the House of Commons, obedient to the Prime Min- 
 ister's direction, negatived, by a large majority, the 
 motion in advocating which Burke poured out the 
 wonderful treasures of his intellect and imagination. 
 To be sure, the House was tired to death with the 
 discussion, was probably very sleepy, and the orator 
 spoke five hours after the members had already 
 sliouted, " Question ! Question ! " 
 
 The truth is, that this speech, unmatched though it 
 is in the literature of eloquence, had not, as has been 
 previously stated, the air of reality. It struck the 
 House as a magnificent Oriental dream, as an Arabian 
 Nights' Entertainment, as a tale told by an inspired 
 
AS A MASTER OF ENGLISH STYLE. 217 
 
 madman, " full of sound and fury, signifying nothing ;" 
 and the evident partisan intention of the orator to 
 blast Pitt's administration, by exhibiting its complicity 
 in one of the most enormous frauds recorded in his- 
 tory, confirmed the dandies, the cockneys, the bankers, 
 and the country gentlemen, who, as members of the 
 House of Commons, stood by Pitt with all the com- 
 bined force of their levity, their venality, and their 
 stupidity, in the propriety of voting Burke down. 
 And even now, when the substantial truth of all the 
 facts he alleged is established on evidence which con- 
 vinces historians, the admiring reader can understand 
 why it failed to convince Burke's contemporaries, and 
 why it still appears to lack the characteristics of a 
 speech thoroughly organized. Indeed, the mind of 
 Burke, when it was delivered, can only be compared 
 to a volcanic mountain in eruption ; — not merely a 
 volcano like that of Vesuvius, visited by scientists 
 and amateurs in crowds, when it deigns to pour forth 
 its flames and lava for the entertainment of the mul- 
 titude ; but a lonely volcano, like that of Etna, rising 
 far above Vesuvius in height, far removed from all 
 the vulgar curiosity of a body of tourists, but rending 
 the earth on which it stands with the mighty earth- 
 quake throes of its fiery centre and heart. The moral 
 passion — perhaps it would be more just to say the 
 moral fury — displayed in the speech is elemental, 
 and can be compared to nothing less intense than the 
 earth's interior fire and heat. 
 
 Now, in Webster's great legislative efforts his mind 
 
218 ' DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 is never exhibited in a state of eruption. In the 
 most excited debates in which he bore a prominent 
 part, nothing strikes us more than the admirable 
 self-possession, than the majestic inward calm, which 
 presides over all the operations of his mind and the 
 impulses of his sensibility ; so that in building up 
 the fabric of his speech he has his reason, imagina- 
 tion, and passion under full control, — using each 
 faculty and feeling as the occasion may demand, but 
 never allowing himself to be used hy it, — and always 
 therefore conveying the impression of power in re- 
 serve, while he may, in fact, be exercising all the 
 power he has to the utmost. In laboriously erecting 
 his edifice of reasoning he also studiously regards 
 the intellects and the passions of ordinary men, 
 strives to bring his mind into cordial relations with 
 theirs, employs every faculty he possesses to give 
 reality, to give even visibility, to his thoughts ; and 
 though he never made a speech which rivals that of 
 Burke on the Nabob of Arcot's Debts, in respect to 
 grasp of understanding, astounding wealth of imagi- 
 nation, and depth of moral passion, he always so con- 
 trived to organize his materials into a complete whole, 
 that the result stood out clearly to the sight of the 
 mind as a structure resting on strong foundations, 
 and reared to due height by the mingled skill of the 
 artisan and the ai-tist. When he does little more, 
 than weld his materials together, he is still an arti- 
 ficer of the old school of giant workmen, tlie school 
 that dates its pedigree from Tubal Cain. 
 
AS A MASTER OP ENGLISH STYLE. 219 
 
 After all this wearisome detail and dilution of the 
 idea attempted to be expressed, it may be that I have 
 failed to convey an adequate impression of what con- 
 stitutes Webster's distinction among orators, so far 
 as orators have left speeches which are considered an 
 invaluable addition to the literature of the language 
 in which they were originally delivered. Everybody 
 understands why any one of the great sei'mons of 
 Jeremy Taylor, or the sermon of Dr. South on " Man 
 created in the Image of God," or the sermon of Dr. 
 Barrow on " Heavenly Rest," differs from the mil- 
 lions on millions of doubtless edifying sermons that 
 have been preached and printed during the last two 
 centuries and a half ; but everybody does not under- 
 stand the distinction between one brilliant oration 
 and another, when both made a great sensation at the 
 time, while only one survived in literature. Probably 
 Charles James Fox was a more effective speaker in 
 the House of Commons than Edmund Burke ; prob- 
 ably Henry Clay was a more effective speaker in 
 Congress than Daniel Webster ; but when the occa- 
 sions on which their speeches were made are found 
 gradually to fade from the memory of men, why is it 
 that the speeches of Fox and Clay have no recognized 
 position in literature, while those of Burke and Web- 
 ster are ranked with literary productions of the first 
 class ? The reason is as really obvious as that which 
 explains the exceptional value of some of the efforts 
 of the great orators of the pulpit. Jeremy Taylor, 
 Dr. South, and Dr. Barrow, different as they were in 
 
220 DANIEL WEBSTEE 
 
 temper and disposition, succeeded in " organizing " 
 some masterpieces in their special department of intel- 
 lectual and moral activity ; and the same is true of 
 Burke and Webster in the departments of legislation 
 and political science. The " occasion " was merely an 
 opportunity for the consolidation into a speech of the 
 rare powers and attainments, the large personality 
 and affluent thought, which were the spiritual pos- 
 sessions of the man who made it, — a speech which 
 represented the whole intellectual manhood of the 
 speaker, — a manhood in which knowledge, reason, 
 imagination, and sensibility were all consolidated 
 under the directing power of will. 
 
 A pertinent example of the difference we have at- 
 tempted to indicate may be easily found in contrast- 
 ing Fox's closing speech on the East India Bill with 
 Burke's on the same subject. For immediate effect 
 on the House of Commons, it ranks with the most 
 masterly of Fox's Parliamentary efforts. The hits 
 on his opponents were all " telling." The ar[/umen- 
 tum ad homiuem, embodied in short, sharp statements, 
 or startling interrogatories, was never employed with 
 more brilliant success. The reasoning was rapid, 
 compact, encumbered by no long enumeration of 
 facts, and, though somewhat unscrupulous here and 
 there, was driven home upon his adversaries with a 
 skill that equalled its audacity. It may be said that 
 there is not a sentence in the whole speech which 
 was not calculated to sting a sleepy audience into 
 attention, or to give delight to a fatigued audience 
 
AS A MASTER 01 ENGLISH STYLE. 221 
 
 which still managed to keep its eyes and minds wide 
 open. Even in respect to the principles of liberty 
 and justice, which were the animating life of the bill, 
 Fox's terse sentences contrast strangely with the 
 somewhat more lumbering and elaborate paragraphs 
 of Burke. " What," he exclaims, putting his argu- 
 ment in his favorite interrogative form, — " what is 
 the most odious species of tyranny ? Precisely that 
 which this bill is meant to annihilate, — that a hand- 
 ful of men, free themselves, should exercise the most 
 base and abominable despotism over millions of their 
 fellow -creatures ; that innocence should be the victim 
 of oppression ; that industry should toil for rapine ; 
 that the harmless laborer should sweat, not for his 
 own benefit, but for the luxury and rapacity of tyran- 
 nic depredation, — in a word, that thirty millions of 
 men, gifted by Providence with the ordinary endow- 
 ments of humanity, should groan under a system of 
 despotism unmatched in all the histories of the world ! 
 What is the end of all government ? Certainly, fhe 
 happiness of the governed. Others may hold differ- 
 ent opinions ; but this is mine, and I proclaim it. 
 What, then, are we to think of a government whose 
 good fortune is supposed to spring from the calami- 
 ties of its subjects, whose aggrandizement grows out 
 of the miseries of mankind ? This is the kind of 
 government exercised under the East Indian Com- 
 pany upon the natives of Hindostan ; and the sub- 
 version of that infamous government is the main 
 object of the bill in question." And afterwards he 
 
222 DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 says, with admirable point and pungency of state- 
 ment : " Every line in both the bills which I have 
 had the honor to introduce presumes the possibility 
 of bad administration ; for every word breathes sus- 
 picion. This bill supposes that men are but men. 
 It confides in no integrity ; it trusts no character ; it 
 inculcates the wisdom of a jealousy of power, and 
 annexes responsibility, not only to every action, but 
 even to the inaction of those who are to dispense it. 
 The necessity of these provisions must be evident, 
 when it is known that the different misfortunes of 
 the company have resulted not more from what their 
 servants did, than from what the masters did not." 
 
 There is a directness in such sentences as these 
 which we do not find in Burke's speech on the East 
 India Bill ; bat Burke's remains as a part of Eng- 
 lish literature, and in form and substance, especially 
 in substance, is so immensely superior to that of Pox, 
 that in quoting sentences from the latter one may 
 almost be supposed to rescue them from that neglect 
 which attends all speeches that do not reach beyond 
 the occasion which calls them forth. In Bacon's 
 phrase, the speech of Fox shows " small matter, and 
 infinite agitation of wit ; " in Burke's, we discern 
 large matter with an abundance of " wit " proper to 
 the discussion of the matter, but nothing which sug- 
 gests the idea of mere " agitation." Pox, in his 
 speeches, subordinated everything to the immediate 
 impression he might make on the House of Commons. 
 He deliberately gave it as his opinion, that a speech 
 
AS A MASTER OP ENGLISH STYLE. 223 
 
 that read well, must be a bad speech ; and, in a 
 literary sense, the House of Commons, which he 
 entered before he was twenty, may be .called both 
 the cradle and the grave of his fame. It has been 
 said that he was a debater whose speeches should be 
 studied by every man who wishes " to learn the 
 science of logical defence ; " that he alone, among 
 English orators, resembles Demosthenes, inasmuch 
 as his reasoning is " penetrated and made red-hot 
 by passion;" and that nothing could excel the effect 
 of his delivery when " he was in the full paroxysm 
 of inspiration, foaming, screaming, choked by the 
 rushing multitude of his words." But not one of 
 his speeches, not even that on the East India Bill, 
 or on the Westminster Scrutiny, or on the Russian 
 Armament, or on Parliamentary Reform, or on Mr. 
 Pitt's Rejection of Bonaparte's Overtures for Peace, 
 has obtained an abiding place in the literature of 
 Great Britain. It would be no disparagement to an 
 educated man, if it were said that he had never read 
 these speeches ; but it would be a serious bar to his 
 claim to be considered an English scholar if he con- 
 fessed to be ignorant of the great speeches of Burke, 
 for such a confession would be like admitting that 
 he had never read the first book of Hooker's " Ec- 
 clesiastical Polity," Bacon's " Essays and Advance- 
 ment of Learning," Milton's " Areopagitica," Butler's 
 " Analogy," and Adam Smith's" Wealth of Nations." 
 /' When we reflect on the enormous number of Ameri- 
 can speeches which, when they were first delivered, 
 
224 DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 were confidently predicted, Lj appreciating friends, 
 to insure to tiae orators a fame which would be im- 
 mortal, one, wonders a little at the quiet persistence 
 of the speeches of Webster in refusing to die with 
 the abrupt suddenness of other orations which at 
 the time of their delivery seemed to have an equal 
 chance of renown. >'The lifeless remains of such un- 
 fortunate failures are now entombed in that dreariest 
 of all mausoleums, the dingy quarto volumes, hateful 
 to all human eyes, which are lettered on the back 
 with the title of " Congressional Debates," — a collec- 
 tion of printed matter which members of Congress 
 are wont to send to a favored few among their con- 
 stituents, and which are immediately consigned to 
 the dust-barrel or sold to pedlers in waste paper, 
 according as the rage of the recipients takes a scorn- 
 ful or an economical direction. " It would seem that 
 the speeches of Webster are saved from this fate, by 
 the fact that in them the mental and moral life of 
 a great man, and of a great master of the English 
 language, are organized in a palpable intellectual 
 form. The reader feels that they have some of the 
 substantial qualities which he recognizes in looking 
 at the gigantic constructions of the master workmen 
 among the crowd of the world's engineers and archi- 
 tects, in looking at the organic products of Nature 
 herself, and in surveying, through the eye of his im- 
 agination, those novel reproductions of Nature which 
 great poets have embodied in works which are in- 
 delibly stamped with the character of deathlessness. '' 
 
AS A MASTER OF ENGLISH STYLE. 225 
 
 But Webster is even more obviously a poet — sub- 
 ordinating " the shows of things to the desires of the 
 mind" — in his magnificent idealization, or idoliza- 
 tion, of the Constitution and the Union. By the 
 magic of his imagination and sensibility he contrived 
 to impress on the minds of a majority of the people 
 of the free States a vague, grand idea that the Con- 
 stitution was a sacred instrument of government, — 
 a holy shrine of fundamental law, which no unhal- 
 lowed hands could touch without profanation, — a 
 digested system of rights and duties, resembling 
 those institutes which were in early times devised 
 by the immortal gods for the guidance of infirm 
 mortal man ; and the mysterious creatures, half 
 divine and half human, who framed this remarkable 
 document, were always reverently referred to as " the 
 Fathers," — as persons who excelled all succeeding 
 generations in sagacity and wisdom ; as inspired 
 prophets, who were specially selected by Divine 
 Providence to frame the political scriptures on which 
 our political faith was to be based, and by which our 
 political reason was to be limited. The splendor of 
 the glamour thus cast over the imaginations and 
 sentiments of the people was all the more effective 
 because it was an effluence from the mind of a states- 
 man who of all other statesmen of the country was 
 deemed the most practical, and the least deluded by any 
 misguiding lights of fancy and abstract speculation. 
 
 There can be little doubt that Webster's impres- 
 sive idealization of the Constitution gave a certain 
 
 15 
 
226 DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 narrowness to American thinking on constitutional 
 government and the science of politics and legisla- 
 tion. Foreigners of the most liberal views could not 
 sometimes restrain an expression of wonder, when 
 they found that our most intelligent men, even our 
 jurists and publicists, hardly condescended to notice 
 the eminent ' European thinkers on the philosophy 
 of government, so absorbed were they in the con- 
 templation of the perfection of their own. When 
 the great Civil War broke out, hundreds of thou- 
 sands of American citizens marched to the battle-field 
 witli the grand passages of Webster glowing in their 
 hearts. They met death cheerfully in the cause of 
 the " Constitution and Union," as by him expounded 
 and idealized ; and if they were so unfortunate as not 
 to be killed, but to be taken captive, they still rotted 
 to death in Southern prisons, sustained by sentences 
 of Webster's speeches which they had declaimed as 
 boys in their country schools. Of all the triumphs 
 of Webster as a leader of public opinion, the most 
 remarkable was his infusing into the minds of the 
 people of the free States the belief that the Constitu- 
 tion as it existed in his time was an organic fact, 
 springing from the intelligence, hearts, and wills of 
 the people of the United States, and not, as it really 
 was, an ingenious mechanical contrivance of wise 
 men, to which the people at the time gave their 
 assent. 
 
 The constitutions of the separate States of the 
 Union were doubtless rooted in the habits, senti- 
 
AS A MASTER OP ENGLISH STYLE. 227 
 
 ments, and ideas of their inhabitants. But the Con- 
 stitution of the United States could not possess this 
 advantage, however felicitously it may have been 
 framed for the purpose of keeping, for a considerable 
 period, peace between the different sections of the 
 country. So long, therefore, as the institution of 
 negro slavery lasted, it could not be called a Con- 
 stitution of States organically " United ; " for it lacked 
 the principle of growth, which characterizes all con- 
 stitutions of government which are really adapted 
 to the progressive needs of a people, if the people 
 have in them any impulse which stimulates them 
 to advance. The unwritten constitution of Great 
 Britain has this advantage, — that a decree of Par- 
 liament can alter the whole representative system, 
 annihilating by a vote of the two houses all laws 
 which the Parliament had enacted in former years. 
 In Great Britain, therefore, a measure which any 
 Imperial Parliament passes becomes at once the su- 
 preme law of the land, though it may nullify a great 
 number of laws which previous Parliaments had 
 passed under different conditions of the sentiment 
 of the nation. Our Constitution, on the other hand, 
 provides for the contingencies of growth in the public 
 sentiment only by amendments to the Constitution. 
 These amendments require more than a majority of 
 all the political forces represented in Congress ; and 
 Mr. Calhoun, foreseeing that a collision must eventu- 
 ally occur between the two sections, carried with him, 
 not only the South, but a considerable minority of 
 
228 DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 the North, in resisting any attempt to limit the ex- 
 tension of slavery. On this point the passions and 
 principles of the people of the slave-holding and the 
 majority of the people of the non-slave-holding States 
 came into violent opposition ; and there was no pos- 
 sibility that any amendment to the Constitution could 
 be ratified, which would represent either the growth 
 of the Southern people in their ever-increasing belief 
 that negro slavery was not only a good in itself, but 
 a good which ought to be extended, or the growth 
 of the Northern people in their ever-increasing hos- 
 tility both to slavery and its extension. Thus two 
 principles, each organic in its nature, and demand- 
 ing indefinite development, came into deadly conflict 
 under the mechanical forms of a Constitution which 
 was not organic. 
 
 A considerable number of Webster's speeches are 
 devoted to denunciations of violations of the Con- 
 stitution perpetrated by his political opponents. 
 These violations, again, would seem to prove that 
 written constitutions follow practically the same law 
 of development which marks the progress of the un- 
 written. By a strained system of Congressional 
 interpretation, the Constitution has been repeatedly 
 compelled to yield to the necessities of the party 
 dominant for the time in the government, and has, 
 if we may believe Webster, been repeatedly changed 
 without being constitutionally " amended." The 
 causes which led to the most terrible civil war re- 
 corded in history were silently working beneath the 
 
AS A MASTER OP ENGLISH STYLE. 229 
 
 forms of the Constitution, — both parties, by the way, 
 appealing to its provisions, — while Webster was 
 idealizing it as the utmost which humanity could 
 come to in tlie way of civil government. In 1848, 
 when nearly all Europe was in insurrection against 
 its rulers, he proudly said that our Constitution 
 promised to be the oldest, as well as the best, in 
 civilized States. Meanwhile the institution of negro 
 slavery was undermining the whole fabric of the 
 Union. The moral division between the South and 
 North was widening into a division between the reli- 
 gion of the two sections. The Southern statesmen, 
 economists, jurists, publicists, and ethical writers had 
 adapted their opinions to the demands which the 
 defenders of the institution of slavery imposed on the 
 action of the human intellect and conscience ; but it 
 was rather startling to discover that the Christian 
 religion, as taught in the Southern States, was a 
 religion which had no vital connection with the 
 Christianity taught in the Northern States. There 
 is nothing more astounding, to a patient explorer of 
 the causes which led to the final explosion, than this 
 opposition of religions. The mere form of the dog- 
 mas common to the religion of both sections might 
 be verbally identical ; but a volume of sermons by a 
 Southern doctor of divinity, so far as he touched on 
 the matter of slavery, was as different from one pub- 
 lished by his Northern brother, in the essential moral 
 and humane elements of Christianity, as though they 
 were divided from each other by a gulf as wide as 
 
230 DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 that which yawns between a Druid priest and a Chris- 
 tian clergyman. 
 
 The politicians of the South — whether they were 
 the mouthpieces of the ideas and passions of their con- 
 stituents, or were, as Webster probably thought, more 
 or less responsible for their foolishness and bitter- 
 ness — were ever eager to precipitate a conflict, which 
 Webster was as eager to prevent, or at least to post- 
 pone.. It was fortunate for the North that the inevi- 
 table conflict did not come in 1850, when the free 
 States were unprepared for it. Ten years of discus- 
 sion and preparation were allowed ; when the war 
 broke out, it found the North in a position to meet 
 and eventually to overcome the enemies of the Union ; 
 and the Constitution, not as it was, but as it is, now 
 represents a form of government which promises to 
 be permanent ; for after passing through its baptism 
 of fire and blood, the Constitution contains nothing 
 which is not in harmony with any State government 
 founded on the principle of equal rights which it 
 guarantees, and is proof against all attacks but those 
 which may proceed from the extremes of human folly 
 and wickedness. But that before the Civil War it 
 was preserved so long under conditions which con- 
 stantly threatened it with destruction, is due in a con- 
 siderable degree to the circumstance that it found in 
 Daniel Webster its poet as well as its " expounder." 
 
 In conclusion, it may be said that the style of 
 Webster is pre-eminently distinguished by manliness. 
 Nothing little, weak, whining, or sentimental can be 
 
AS A MASTER OF ENGLISH STYLE. 231 
 
 detected in any page of the six volumes of Lis Works. 
 A certain strength and grandeur of personality is 
 prominent in all his speeches. When he says " I " 
 or " my," he never appears to indulge in the bravado 
 of self-assertion, because the words are felt to express 
 a positive, stalwart, almost colossal manhood, which 
 had already been implied in the close-knit sentences 
 in which he embodied his statements and arguments. 
 He is a*i eminent instance of the power which charac- 
 ter communicates to style. Though evidently proud, 
 self-respecting, and high-spirited, he is ever above 
 mere vanity and egotism. Whenever he gives em- 
 phasis to the personal pronoun, the reader feels that 
 he had as much earned the right to make his opinion 
 an authority, as he had earned the right to use the 
 words he employs to express his ideas and senti- 
 ments. Thus, in the celebrated Smith Will trial, his 
 antagonist, Mr. Choate, quoted a decision of Lord 
 Chancellor Camden. In his reply Webster argued 
 against its validity as though it were merely a propo- 
 sition laid down by Mr. Choate. " But it is not 
 mine, it is Lord Camden's," was the instant retort. 
 Webster paused for half a minute, and then, with his 
 eye fixed on the presiding judge, he replied : " Lord 
 Camden was a great judge ; he is respected by every 
 American, for he was on our side in the Revolution ; 
 but, may it please your honor, /differ from my Lord 
 Camden." There was hardly a lawyer in the United 
 States who could have made such a statement with- 
 out exposing himself to ridicule ; but it did not seem 
 
232 DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 at all ridiculous when the " I " stood for Daniel 
 Webster. In his early career as a lawyer his mode 
 of reasoning was such as to make him practically a 
 thirteenth juror in the panel ; when his fame was 
 fully established, he contrived in some mysterious 
 way to seat himself by the side of the judges on the 
 bench, and appear to be consulting with them as a 
 jurist, rather than addressing them as an advocate. 
 The personality of the man was always suppressed 
 until there seemed to be need of asserting it; and 
 then it was proudly pushed into prominence, though 
 rarely passing beyond the limits which his acknowl- 
 edged eminence as a statesman and lawyer did not 
 justify. Among those speeches^ in which his indi- 
 viduality becomes somewhat aggressive, and breaks 
 loose from the restraints ordinarily self-imposed on 
 it, may be mentioned his speech on his reception at 
 Boston (1842), his Marshfield Speech (1848), and 
 his speech at his reception at Buffalo (1851). What- 
 ever may be thought of the course of argument pur- 
 sued in these, they are at least thoroughly penetrated 
 with a manly spirit, — a manliness somewhat haughty 
 and defiant, but still consciously strong in its power 
 to return blow for blow, from whatever quarter the 
 assault may come. 
 
 But the real intellectual and moral manliness of 
 Webster underlies all his great orations and speeches, 
 even those ^v^here the animating life which gives 
 them the power to persuade, convince, and uplift the 
 reader's mind, seems to be altogether impersonal ; 
 
AS A MASTER OP ENGLISH STYLE. 233 
 
 and this plain force of manhood, this sturdy grapple 
 ■with every question that comes before his understand- 
 ing for settlement, lead him contemptuously to reject 
 all the meretricious aids and ornaments of mere rhet- 
 oric, and are prominent among the many exceptional 
 qualities of his large nature, which have given him a 
 high position among the prose-writers of his country 
 as a consummate master of English style. 
 
EMERSON AND CARLYLE.i 
 
 Bacon says of private letters, that " such as are 
 written from wise men, are, of all the words of men, 
 in my judgment, the best; for they are more natural 
 than orations, public speeches, and more advised than 
 conferences or present speeches." 
 
 This remark, frequently quoted by Emerson, is 
 evidently true of the letters which passed between him 
 and Carlyle from 1834 to 1872. They are natural, in 
 the sense of expressing the inmost natures of the cor- 
 respondents, and are thus thoroughly sincere. But 
 tlie sincerity of Emerson was that of a sweet, serene, 
 hopeful, tolerant, wholesome, and aspiring nature ; 
 the sincerity of Carlyle was that of a nature harsh, 
 unquiet, despondent, intolerant, despairing, and un- 
 healthy. Both of the correspondents were eminently 
 strong men ; it was impossible that either could be 
 swayed from his predetermined course by fear or flat-, 
 tery, by social ostracism or social favor, by the appre- 
 hension of poverty or the seduction of wealth; but 
 the strength of Emerson was ever calm, while that of 
 
 ^ The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle an(5 Ralph Waldo Emer- 
 son. 1834-1872. Boston : James R. Osgood & Co. 2 vols. 12mo. 
 
EMERSON AND CARLYLE. 235 
 
 Carlyle was oftentimes spasmodic. Emerson, relying 
 on his intuitions, was sublimely indifferent to the re- 
 ceived opinions and accredited reputations which Car- 
 lyle savagely assailed. 
 
 The difference between the two was not merely a dif- 
 ference of character and experience, but a difference in 
 I'espect to physical health. Brought up to receive as 
 absolute truth the austerest doctrines of Scotch Pres- 
 byterianism, professed by a father whom he held to 
 be the best of men, Carlyle was " destined" for the 
 ministry. There can be little doubt that had his 
 reason accepted the dogmas he was to preach, he 
 would have been a preacher greater than Chalmei'S. 
 The trouble was that his culture made him doubt the 
 truth of the dogmas he was expected to expound. In 
 a great many instances the young students of theology 
 glide over what offends them at first sight in the rigid 
 articles of their creed, and become clergymen by rela- 
 tive superficiality of mind and character, without im- 
 agination enough to realize the terrible consequences 
 of the articles to which they subscribe in the laudable 
 desire to " make a living." They wish to be married ; 
 they wish to do good in practising their profession ; 
 and, happy in a wife and family devoted to them, they 
 preach in the morning the doctrine of divine wrath to 
 the children of men, and then in the evening mingle 
 cheerfully with their flock, and are the most genial, 
 entertaining, instructive, helpful, and humane of the 
 company they call together. Their humanity triumphs 
 over their theology ; they insensibly modify the harsh 
 
236 EMERSON AND CARLYLB. 
 
 elements of their theoretical creed when they are in 
 actual contact with the practical needs of their con- 
 gregations ; and no fair-minded person who has a 
 large acquaintance with our towns and villages, could 
 think of the abolition of our Christian churches and 
 pastors without a shudder of apprehension for the 
 prospects of our civilization. Whatever may be the 
 special creeds which the clergymen profess, they reso- 
 lutely stand for absolute principles of ethics in practi- 
 cal life, and for larger ideas in philosophy than obtain 
 in their respective parishes. 
 
 But Carlyle, after endeavoring to realize to his 
 reason, heart, and imagination the dogmas of the 
 religious creed in which he had been brought up, 
 came to the conclusion that he could not accept it, 
 and became a man of letters in despair of submitting 
 his intelligence to the stern doctrines of the Church 
 of Scotland. The struggle in a mind so vigorous and 
 a character so strong as his between what he wished 
 to believe and what he found he could not believe, 
 was accompanied by agonies of spiritual expei'ience 
 similar to that through which Luther and Bunyan 
 passed : but Carlyle came out of his spiritual struggle 
 an incurable dyspeptic, while in the case of Luther 
 and Bunyan we are not informed that the disturb- 
 ances in their souls left any permanent derangements 
 in their digestion. Carlyle became dyspeptic not only 
 in his stomach, but in his brain and heart ; and his 
 whole view of life here and hereafter, of history and 
 of contemporary annals, was discolored and distorted 
 
EMERSON AND CARLYLE. 237 
 
 from the fact that his indigestion extended to the very- 
 centre of his spiritual being. Existence was to him a 
 questionable blessing, for his will, his genius, his con- 
 science, and his poverty exacted from him the duty of 
 constant labor ; and labor brought him, according to 
 his own acco\int, none of the sweet compensations of 
 labor. He had in him a certain barbaric force, — a 
 force compared with which all civilized energy appears 
 comparatively wealj ; but he was an invalid barbarian, 
 on whom the culture of Europe had been lavished, and 
 the sick giant wailed and mourned and growled and 
 sometimes almost blasphemed during the whole period 
 in which he resolutely toiled. He preached the gospel 
 of work, and acted up to its severest requirements ; 
 but the gospel gave no joy to the workman. In his 
 utmost stress of poverty he wrote to Emerson : " Me 
 Mammon will pay or not, as he finds convenient ; buy 
 me he will not." One is reminded of Dr. South's 
 statement that " it is hard to maintain truth, but still 
 harder to be maintained by it." 
 
 Em^son, on the contrary, had no experiences in his 
 early life at all resembling those of Carlyle. He was 
 born in a family where the fear of God was absorbed 
 in the love of God. His soul was infused with cheer 
 from his infancy. He entered and passed through 
 college without a blemish on his name. He became 
 by " natural selection " a Unitarian minister, and did 
 his appointed work to the entire satisfaction of his 
 parish. No clergyman was ever more heartily loved 
 than he by those who hstened to his discourses and 
 
238 EMERSON AND CARLYLE. 
 
 were favored with his Christian companionship. He 
 brought cheer and hope into every household where 
 he appeared. There are many unpublished memorials 
 celebrating the effect which the sweet and unaffected 
 sanctity of his character produced in towns remote 
 from Boston, when he " exchanged " services with his 
 brother clergymen. One letter, written by the most 
 cultivated and self-sacrificing woman then living in 
 Massachusetts, testified that the Unitarian Associa- 
 tion had sent, for one Sunday, to the Northampton 
 Unitarians an angel when the latter only asked for a 
 preacher. But Emerson found in the Unitarian body 
 some rule which he considered to limit his entire in- 
 dependence, and he quietly abandoned his connection 
 with the denomination and retired to his country 
 home to think and to study freely, without any Associ- 
 ation qualified to call him to account for heresy even 
 with respect to the doctrines of Unitarianism. All 
 this was done without any shock either to his soul or 
 to his digestion. He never lost his physical health, 
 and remained to the last perfectly serene in all spirit- 
 ual as well as in all practical matters. No man loved 
 and reverenced God more than he, or feared him less. 
 He is an extraordinary instance of a man of religious 
 genius, passing through religious changes, without 
 being submitted to any stress and storm of religious 
 passion. 
 
 This was the Emerson who at the age of thirty 
 visited for one day Carlyle at his lonely residence of 
 Craigenputtock. He stayed but for a day ; but the im- 
 
EMERSON AND CARLYLE. 239 
 
 pression he made both on Carl3'le and his wife was 
 permanent, and led to a Hfe-long friendship. Years 
 afterward, Mrs. Carlyle wrote that she could never 
 forget the yisitor who had descended " out of the 
 clouds, as it were," into their desert, " and made one 
 day there look like enchantment for us, and left 
 me weeping that it was only one day." Carlyle him- 
 self reckoned only three " happinesses " that had oc- 
 curred to him in the year 1833, — the first two of 
 which were trivial, but the third of memorable im- 
 portance ; for the third happiness was the visit of 
 Emerson, who appeared both to Jane and himself 
 as " one of the most lovable creatures they had ever 
 looked on." 
 
 On Emerson's return to the United States, the cor- 
 respondence between the two began by a letter from 
 Emerson, dated May, 1834, in which he welcomes 
 " Sartor Resartus," glories in the brave stand that 
 the author has made for spiritualism, but is repelled 
 by the oddity of the vehicle chosen to convey " this 
 treasure," and looks forward to the time " when the 
 word will be as simple, and so as resistless, as the 
 thought." Indeed, Emerson was for many years dis- 
 satisfied with the strange liberties which his friend 
 took with the English language. He wrote, in 1835, 
 that he cherished a " salutary horror of the German 
 style of ' Sartor Resartus.' " It was only long after 
 this letter that, in recommending Carlyle's " Crom- 
 well " to a friend, he was met by the ordinary objec- 
 tion to the writer's style. " Read him for his style," 
 
240 EMERSON AND CARLYLB. 
 
 was Emerson's emphatic rejoinder; and indeed, if the 
 excellence of a style be judged according to the feli- 
 city with which it expresses and embodies a peculiar 
 individual nature, the style of Carlyle is unobjection- 
 able. It is only when his imitators write in Carlylese, 
 that we perceive how pernicious that dialect of the 
 English tongue is as a model, and how ridiculous it 
 becomes in other hands than his own. It would be 
 difficult to select a sentence of Emerson in which its 
 peculiarities appear. Yet, while Emerson protests 
 against the " grotesque Teutonic apocalyptic strain " 
 of the book, he admits that it may be inevitable that 
 the strange jargon, as it seems to him, is Carlyle's 
 most natural method of utterance ; " for," he declares, 
 " are not all our little circlets of will as so many little 
 eddies rounded in by the great Circle of Necessity ? 
 and could the Truth-speaker, perhaps now the best 
 thinker of the Saxon race, have written otherwise ? 
 And must we not say that Drunkenness is a virtue 
 rather than that Cato has erred ? " Is it possible to 
 conceive that recognition and reproof could be more 
 genially and gracefully combined ? 
 
 This letter led to a correspondence between the two 
 friends which was continued, with intervals of silence, 
 for forty years. In richness and fulness of matter, 
 there is nothing superior, nothing — one is prompted 
 to say — equal to it in literary annals. The sentences 
 which a reviewer would be inclined to quote are so 
 numerous that, if he indulged his inclination, he 
 would be in danger of infringing the law of copyright. 
 
EMERSON AND CARLILE. 241 
 
 There will, of course, be a wide immediate demand for 
 the book from that large portion of cultivated readers 
 who are stimulated by mere intellectual curiosity ; 
 but the volumes so swarm with strilcing thoughts, 
 and, in old Ben Jonson's vernacular, are so " rammed 
 with life," that we can confidently predict they will be 
 read a century hence with delight. They are specially 
 interesting as recording the intimate communion of 
 two of the most original minds, and two of the most 
 contrasted individualities, which our century has pro- 
 duced. It would seem, at the fii-st glance, that it was 
 impossible for two such men to be bound together 
 in a vital friendship, — a friendship which the lapse 
 of time and frequent disagreement in opinion and 
 action only rendered more close and indissoluble. 
 
 The difference, indeed, between the two men im- 
 presses the reader on almost every page. Emerson 
 was the champion of the Ideal ; Carlyle asserted the 
 absolute dominion of Fact. Emerson declared that 
 Truth is mighty, and will prevail ; Carlyle retorted 
 that Truth is mighty, and has prevailed. Emerson 
 looked serenely at the ugly aspect of contemporary 
 life, because, as an optimist, he was a herald of the 
 Future ; Carlyle, as a pessimist, denounced the Pres- 
 ent, and threw all the energy of his vivid dramatic 
 geniua into vitalizing the Past. Emerson was a 
 prophet ; Carlyle, a resurrectionist. Emerson gloried 
 in what was to be ; Carlyle exulted in what had 
 been. Emerson declared, even when current events 
 
 appeared ugliest to the philanthropist, that " the 
 
 16 
 
242 EMERSON AND CARLYLE. 
 
 highest thought and the deepest love is born with 
 Victory on his head," and must triumph in the end ; 
 Carlyle, gloomily surveying the present, insisted that 
 high thought and deep love must be sought and found 
 in generations long past, which Dr. Dryasdust had so 
 covered up with his mountains of mud, that it was 
 only by immense toil he (Carlyle) had been able to 
 reproduce them as they actually existed. Look up, 
 says Emerson, cheerily ; " hitch your wagon to a 
 star;" Look down, growls Carlyle, "and see that 
 your wagon is an honest one, safe and strong in 
 passing over miry roads, before you have the impu- 
 dence to look up to the smallest star in the rebuking 
 heavens." 
 
 The practical value of Emerson's friendship was 
 proved by his strenuous efforts to disseminate Car- 
 lyle's works in the United States, and by pledging his 
 own credit to pay the expenses of their republication. 
 In this way all the profits of the volumes, less the 
 publisher's commission for selling them, were sent to 
 Carlyle. That magnificent prose epic, " The French 
 Revolution," fell almost dead on the English public ; 
 while in the United States it was so warmly wel- 
 comed, that the author obtained the remuneration for 
 writing it principally from his admirers in this coun- 
 try, inspired by Emerson's enthusiasm for the lone, 
 unappreciated creator of an immortal work. But 
 there is something comical in the business relations 
 between the two friends. Neither understands book- 
 keeping, or has penetrated into the mysteries of an 
 
EMERSON AND CARLYLE. 243 
 
 account current. Emerson is always doubtful as to 
 the question whether he has got his money's worth 
 from the publishers, but still sends scores of pounds 
 sterling to the famishing author; Carlyle gladly 
 pockets the coin, but is more helpless than Emerson 
 himself in understanding whether he has been cheated 
 or not. To Carlyle, all publishers are " hideous ; " 
 but he thinks that Eraser (of " the sand magazine " ) 
 is less hideous than the others, because he has become 
 more accustomed to him. At last, Emerson, by call- 
 ing into the conference one of the ablest of Boston 
 merchants, together with the American representative 
 of Baring Brothers, and the cashier of a Boston bank, 
 finds tiiat the publishers are about right. But it is 
 ludicrous to think of such great experts in accounts 
 brought in to decide upon a matter of a few pounds 
 and shillings. 
 
 Meanwhile, Carlyle had " become a name." A 
 New York bookselling and publishing firm, dissatis- 
 fied with the terms on which they could purchase 
 Carlyle's books, and finding that it would pay to re- 
 print them, began or threatened to issue them in 
 cheaper editions. This they had a perfect legal right 
 to do, whatever may be said of the " courtesy " title, 
 which was afterward, by the leading publishing firms, 
 accorded to the first American reprinter of a foreign 
 author's works. If any English writer had a right to 
 complain of the absence of international copyright, it 
 was Dickens ; for his popularity in this country was 
 so immense that if an American friend had under- 
 
244 EMERSON AND CAELYLE. 
 
 taken to do for him what Emerson did for Carlyle, 
 and his claim had been admitted by the booksellers, 
 the gains of Dickens would have been scores of thou- 
 sands of dollars from the United States alone. Emer- 
 son, however, seems to have considered Carlyle an 
 exception. No decent publisher, though he made but 
 a few hundred dollars by the transaction, should dare 
 to touch his special rights by unauthorized reprints. 
 The result was a number of indignant letters between 
 the friends, in which all the resources of ingenious 
 invective were lavished on the unhappy " pirate." 
 When " Past and Present " was on the eve of publica- 
 tion, Emerson suggested an arrangement with his 
 irascible friend, to have the volume issued simulta- 
 neously in England and in this country. Carlyle 
 replies : " The practical business is : How to cut out 
 that New Yoi-k scoundrel, who fancies that, because 
 there is no gallows, it is permitted to steal ? I have 
 a distinct desire to do that, altogether apart from the 
 money to be gained thereby. A friend's goodness 
 ought not to be frustrated by a scoundrel destitute of 
 gallows." Then follows a letter in which he prophe- 
 sies that " the gibbetless thief in New York will beat 
 us after all ; " and Emerson despairingly answers, 
 "You are no longer secure of any respect to your 
 property in our freebooting America." Now all this 
 " Much Ado About Little " came from the simple 
 fact that one prominent bookseller quarrelled with 
 another on a question of the proper discount to be 
 made from the retail price of one or two books of 
 
EMEUSON AND CARLYLE. 245 
 
 necessarily limited circulation. Emerson made the 
 mistake of insisting that the retail dealer in Carlyle's 
 works should have the most beggarly commission on 
 the volumes he displayed on his counters. He thus 
 checked the sale of the writings he most desired 
 to circulate. Who would venture to order twenty 
 copies of a book, without being pretty sure that he 
 would not lose by the bargain in case he sold only 
 twelve ? 
 
 It is well known that Emerson's appreciation of the 
 fine genius and beautiful character of A. B. Alcott 
 was as true as it was intense. He considered him 
 the most inspired converser in the country ; but he 
 also affirmed that what he wrote and published gave 
 but the slightest indication of his powers, — that 
 with him the tongue was a more potent instrument 
 of expression than the pen. Indeed, Mr. Alcott was 
 a born idealist, unflinchingly applying the principles 
 of his philosophy to the ordinary practical concerns 
 of life. There is a story current of a certain sturdy 
 politician, who remained faithful to his party and sect 
 until his death in extreme old age. It was alleged 
 that in a minute after his birth he exclaimed, " Now 
 I want all you people fooling round here to under- 
 stand that I am born a Jeffirsonian Dimmicrat in 
 politics, and a Univarsalist in religion ; and don't 
 you forgit it." The legend goes on to say that 
 he would not take a sip of mother's milk until the 
 rigid conditions on which he condescended to ac- 
 cept existence were complied with. One can imagine 
 
246 EMERSON AND CARLYLE. 
 
 that the iufant Alcott might have announced as per- 
 emptorily that he was to be brought up as a Pytha- 
 gorean in diet and a Platonist in philosophy. At 
 any rate, he was the sweetest, the most serene, the 
 most humane of human beings ; and even when he 
 carried his ideas to extremes in conduct, all who 
 knew and loved him had the widest toleration for 
 his eccentricities. 
 
 When Mr. Alcott went to Europe, in 1842, Emerson 
 commended him to Carlyle in a characteristic fash- 
 ion : " Let the stranger, when he arrives at your gate, 
 make a new and primary impression. Be sure to for- 
 get what you have heard of him ; and if you have 
 ever read anything to which his name is attached, be 
 sure to forget that. You may love him, or hate him, 
 or apathetically pass by him, as your genius shall 
 dictate ; only I entreat this, that you do not let him 
 go quite out of your reach until you are sure that you 
 have seen him, and know for certain the nature of 
 the man." 
 
 And, in his next letter, he adds : " My friend Alcott 
 must have visited you before this, and you have seen 
 whether any relation could subsist between men so 
 differently excellent." Indeed, that was the exact 
 relation between Carlyle and Emerson. 
 
 Emerson must have feared the impression which 
 the optimistic Alcott would make on the somewhat 
 cynical pessimist, the literary Diogenes of the Des- 
 potism of Letters, as contrasted with the old time 
 " Republic " of the same name. Carlyle tried " to be 
 
EMERSON AND CARLYLE. 247 
 
 good," — the phrase which his wife used when his 
 irritable temper was softened by friendship, or by 
 a dinner which oppressed his stomacli less than 
 usual, — and he wrote back to Emerson that his 
 friend was found to be " a genial, innocent, simple- 
 hearted man, of much natural intelligence and good- 
 ness, with an air of rusticity, veracity, and dignity 
 withal, which in many ways appeals to me. The good 
 Alcott, — with his long, lean face and figure, with his 
 gray, worn temples and mild, radiant eyes, all bent 
 on saving the world by a return to acorns and the 
 Golden Age, — he comes before one like a venerable 
 Don Quixote, whom nobody can even laugh at without 
 loving." Emerson replied : " As you do not seem to 
 have seen in him his pure and noble intellect, I fear 
 that it lies under some new and denser clouds." 
 Alcott was evidently disappointed with his reception. 
 It was rumored, at the time, that he wrote to Emer- 
 son in these words : " I accuse T. Carlyle of inhospital- 
 ity to my thought." At any rate, he must have felt, 
 to employ one of his own phrases, that Carlyle " was 
 not i»?s-pirate, but tfes-perate." He brought back to 
 New England a follower or two, wliom Carlyle styled 
 Alcott's " English Tail ; " and he implored Emer- 
 son to avoid it. " Bottomless imbeciles," he wrote, 
 " ought not to be seen in company with Ralph Waldo 
 Emerson, who has already men listening to him on 
 this side of the water. The ' Tail ' has an individual 
 or two of that genus, and the rest is mainly unde- 
 cided. For example, I know old myself ; and 
 
248 EMERSON AND CAHLYLE. 
 
 can testify, if you will believe me, that few greater 
 blockheads (if ' blockhead may mean exasperated 
 imbecile,' and the ninth part of a thinker) broke the 
 world's bread in his day. Have a care of such ! " It 
 must be admitted that the " Tail " of the returning 
 philosopher did him no honor, and led him into some 
 absurdities ; but such mistakes were merely chance 
 incidents in a life which has been devoted to all noble 
 and honorable ends. Emerson's shrewdness and good 
 sense saved him from any participation in the follies 
 of the " Tail." 
 
 Thomas Carlyle had a wonderful power of sketch- 
 ing, in a few words, physical and mental portraits of 
 the men he met, somewhat resembling the skill of 
 Thomas Nast in the grotesque caricatures he has con- 
 tributed to " Harper's Weekly." The two Thomases 
 had this in common, that every peculiarity of face, 
 feature, shape of the head, color of the hair, move- 
 ment of the body, or any other merely physical char- 
 acteristic, was made significant of mental or moral 
 qualities in the person delineated. Nast contributed, 
 more than anybody else, to the overthrow of " the 
 Tweed Ring" which ruled, robbed, and might have 
 mined New York ; and he did it by his marvellous 
 appeals to the eye of the ordinary honest voter, who 
 was perhaps incompetent to form a rational opinion 
 of rascalities through words addressed to his reason 
 and imagination. "Oh, them picters!" groaned 
 Tweed ; " that was what wrecked us ! " Carlyle's 
 portraits by the pen are similar to those of Nast by 
 
EMERSON AND CARLYLE. 249 
 
 the pencil, inasmuch as they agree in connecting 
 physiology with psychology, and making a man's 
 inward nature correspond to the exaggerated traits 
 of his bodily organization. 
 
 Carlyle could not restrain this tendency of his 
 mind, even in characterizing his friends. Much as he 
 delighted in Emerson's books, he complained that his 
 thoughts, though full of soul, lacked body. His own 
 thinking, even on the highest themes, tended to em- 
 body itself in palpable forms ; and, except in the 
 vague background of his word-pictures, where the 
 Eternal came in, his imagination really " bodied 
 forth " that which his spiritual eye discerned. In 
 the moods in which he appeared as a humorist and 
 satirist, — as distinguished from his loftiest moods in 
 which he appeared as a thinker and seer, — his wit 
 and humor rushed by instinct into forms truly Rabe- 
 laisian. In particular, he cannot lielp letting his 
 mind run riot in picturing individuals. Thus he 
 speaks, in 1837, of his friend. Miss Martincau, as " a 
 genuine little poetess, buckramed, swathed like a 
 mummy into socinian and political-economy formulas ; 
 and yet verily alive in the inside of that I " In a let- 
 ter, dated November, 1838, he invites Emerson to 
 visit England, and after mentioning several men who 
 will welcome him, he adds that " old Rogers, with 
 his pale head, — white, bare, and cold as snow, — 
 will work on you with those large, blue eyes, crueh 
 sorrowful, and that sardonic shelf-chin." He met 
 Webster in England, in 1839, and he writes to his 
 
250 EMERSON AND CARLYLE. 
 
 friend : " Not many days ago^ I saw at breakfast the 
 notablest of all your notabilities, Daniel Webster. 
 He is a magnificent specimen ; you might say to all 
 the world, ' This is your Yankee Englishman ; such 
 limbs we make in Yankeeland.' As a logic-fencer, 
 advocate, or parliamentary Hercules, one would be 
 inclined to back him at first sight against all the ex- 
 tant world. The tanned complexion, that amorphous, 
 crag-like face ; the dull, black eyes, under their preci- 
 pice of brows, like dull anthracite furnaces, needing 
 only to be blown ; the mastiff -mouth, accurately 
 closed, — I have not traced as much of silent Ber- 
 sekir-rage, that I remember of, in any other man." 
 After this comes a portrait of Walter Savage Landor : 
 " A tall, broad, burly man, with gray hair, and large, 
 fierce-rolling eyes ; of the most restless, impetuous 
 vivacity, not to be held in by the most perfect breed- 
 ing, — expressing itself in high-colored superlatives, 
 indeed, in reckless exaggeration, now and then in a 
 short dry laugh, not of sport, but of mockery ; a wild 
 man, whom no extent of culture had been able to 
 tame." Landor was the original of Dickens's Boy- 
 thorn, in " Bleak House ; " but is there not much of 
 Boythorn in Carlyle's own wild diatribes against 
 things and persons ? Milnes, one of the English 
 friends who most appreciated him, he describes as 
 " a pretty, little robin-redbreast of a man." How 
 cruel this is ! Sumner told the present writer that, 
 about the time when Carlyle wrote this to Emerson, 
 he was a guest at one of Rogers's breakfasts, and had 
 
EMERSON AND CARLYLE. 251 
 
 occasion to mention, with great -warmth, the mer- 
 its of Carlyle as a writer and thinker. He found 
 not the slightest response from the many eminent 
 men present; and Mihies, who sat near him, wliis- 
 pered in his ear that he perfectly agreed with him, 
 but that he was the only Englishman present who 
 sympathized with Sumner's admiration of the great 
 man. 
 
 Tennyson was another friend of Carlyle. The lat- 
 ter liked him as a companion, but often lectured and 
 hectored him on the folly of writing in verse. He 
 is described in these volumes (1844) " as one of the 
 finest-looking men in the world. A great shock of 
 rough, dusty-dark hair ; bright, laughing hazel eyes ; 
 massive, aquiline face — most massive, yet most deli- 
 cate ; of sallow-brown complexion, almost Indian-look- 
 ing ; clothes cynically loose, free-and-easy ; smokes 
 infinite tobacco. His voice is musically metallic, fit 
 for loud laughter and piercing wail, and all that may 
 lie between ; speech and speculation free and plen- 
 teous : I do not meet, in these late decades, such com- 
 pany over a pipe." Tennyson, if he chose, could tell 
 strange stories of the many controversies in which 
 the two smokers engaged, which the soothing influ- 
 ence of tobacco could not prevent from occasionally 
 assuming an irritating and almost furious form of 
 disagreement. A friend of both was once present at 
 a conversation between the two, in which Carlyle 
 apologized for the horrible cruelties inflicted by 
 William the Conqueror on his Saxon subjects, as 
 
252 EMERSON AND CARLYLE. 
 
 minutely narrated by Tennyson. The discussion 
 waxed warm between the accuser and the defender 
 of the accused ; Carlyle becoming all the more exas- 
 perating from the pitying way in which he conde- 
 scended to inform Tennyson that he did not know 
 how savage populations should be governed, when 
 their government was intrusted to a firm hand, ut- 
 terly regardless of Exeter Hall philanthropy and the 
 sentimentality of writers of verses. In 1867, Carlyle 
 writes to Emerson that he and a lady friend had read 
 Tennyson's " Idjds of the King" "with profound 
 recognition of the finely elaborated execution, and 
 also of the inward perfection of vacancy, and, to say 
 ti'uth, with considerable impatience at being treated 
 so very like infants, though the lollipops were so 
 superlati^•e. We gladly changed for one of Emer- 
 son's ' English Traits,' and read that, with increasing 
 and ever increasing satisfaction every evening, bless- 
 ing Heaven that there were still books for grown-up 
 people too." There is really something subtle in this 
 criticism, exaggerated as its tone of condemnation is ; 
 and most readers of the " Idyls " must feel its force, 
 however much they may like the poems. Amid all 
 the clash of arms, and the heroic deeds of Tennyson's 
 heroes, they must have a feeling of that "inward 
 vacancy" of the true knightly spirit. It would be 
 difficult to define in what this inward vacancy con- 
 sists ; but it is not felt by the reader of Scott's heroic 
 romances, or of Carlyle's " Heroes and the Heroic in 
 History." 
 
EMERSON AND CARLYLB. 253 
 
 Nothing injured Carlyle more, in the opinion of 
 those Americans who most admired and appreciated 
 his genius, than the position he took in regard to 
 negro slavery. Before our Civil War broke out he 
 had declared his conviction that " Quashee " must be 
 compelled to work even by the stimulus of the lash. 
 He always raved whenever he spoke of the lazy Afri- 
 can ; and he always spelled negro with two g's. He 
 appeared absolutely insane, or inhuman, whenever the 
 " nigger " question came before his judgment for set- 
 tlement. Some thirty years ago, a radical club was 
 established in Boston, composed of members repre- 
 senting every variety of political, religious, and philo- 
 sophical dissent. The walls of the room where the 
 members assembled were lined with photographs of 
 the most prominent foreign and domestic champions 
 of things as they " ought to be." On one evening 
 Emerson made some remarks on a purely intellectual 
 topic, having no possible relation to slavery, except 
 the slavery of even the educated mind of the country 
 to routine, and Carlyle was referred to as one of its 
 most earnest opponents. Then Garrison rose from 
 his seat, glared through his spectacles at the portrait 
 of Carlyle, and said that no club of humane and hope- 
 ful men could look at that face without horror and 
 disgust, and he trusted that the moral sentiment of 
 those present would demand, not that the portrait 
 should be taken down, but that it should be turned to 
 the wall, so that the hateful lineaments of that enemy 
 of freedom might not affront the eyes of any honest 
 
254 EMERSON AND CARLYLE. 
 
 reformer. Of course the advice was not followed ; 
 but it showed the intensity of hatred which the great 
 leader of the Abolitionists felt for the cynical defender 
 of the policy which would scourge the negro to his 
 daily task, if he would not go to it willingly. The 
 truth is that Carlyle was himself whipped on by his 
 sense of duty to undertake work in which he found 
 little enjoyment and much pain ; and he considered 
 that others should be made to do by outward compul- 
 sion what he did, against the grain, by inward 
 strength of will. One of the most striking epistles 
 in this correspondence is the letter to Emerson, in 
 August, 1849, in which he furiously inveighs against 
 the pauperism of Ireland. Nearly one half of the 
 whole population, he says, receives " Poor-Law ra- 
 tions," while the land is uncultivated, and the land- 
 lords are hiding from bailiffs. " Such a state of 
 things was never heard of under this sky before. . . . 
 ' What is to be done ? ' asks every one. . . . ' Black- 
 lead these two million idle beggars,' I sometimes 
 advised, ' and sell them in Brazil as niggers, — per- 
 haps Parliament, on sweet constraint, will allow you 
 to advance them to be niggers ! ' " Of course this 
 burst of wrath, if taken as an expression of opinion, 
 would rather befit the King of Dahomey, after he had 
 imbibed a more than usual amount of " fire-water," 
 than a civilized human being ; but through all this 
 grotesque exaggeration there runs this principle, that 
 all persons who will not work for a living should be 
 either forced to work for it, or should cease to live. 
 
EMERSON AND CARLYLE. 255 
 
 He detested all philanthropy which saved lazy people 
 from the consequences of their laziness. " Let them 
 work or die," seems to have been his austere motto ; 
 " and the sooner they die, the better. Clean the 
 earth of these unclean things who have the impudence 
 to declare their right to ex-ist, while they depend on 
 the charity of real laborers to subsist." 
 
 When he applied this principle, that pauperism was 
 the worst of crimes, to our Civil War, he was met 
 by the obvious objection that about all the work done 
 at the South was done by " niggers ; " that the owners 
 of these " niggers " devoted most of their time to that 
 constitutional palaver which he held in special abhor- 
 rence ; and that, as " captains of industry," they did 
 little or nothing to promote, advance, or increase the 
 remuneration of Labor. A New Englander invented 
 the cotton-gin ; they stole the invention, starved the 
 inventor, and then were careless of almost all other 
 improvements by which one machine does the work of 
 a hundred men. They necessarily made the South 
 poor ; and then went to war because they conceived 
 that the poverty of the South was owing to the en- 
 croachments of the North on their constitutional rights. 
 During the war Carlyle was on the side of the Con- 
 federates ; and the warm feeling with which Emerson 
 regarded his friend palpably cooled. Meanwhile Car- 
 lyle's fiercest libels on the North were not contained in 
 letters to Emerson. Some were published in organs of 
 English opinion ; some were uttered to Americans who 
 called upon him at his Chelsea home ; and there is a 
 
256 EMERSON AND CARLYLE. 
 
 rumor that lie condensed his opinion on the whole mat- 
 ter to the accomplished editor of these volumes in the 
 following words, delivered in his broadest Scotch ac- 
 cent : " And as for your war, it seems to me simply 
 this : that the South said to the nigger, ' God bless 
 
 you and be a slave ;' and the North said, ' G d 
 
 you, and be a freeman ! ' " After the war was closed, 
 Emerson tells him, in 1870, " Every reading person in 
 America holds you in exceptional regard. . . . They 
 have forgotten your scarlet sins before or during the 
 war. I have long ceased to apologize for or explain 
 your savage sayings about America or other republics, 
 or publics, and am willing that anointed men bearing 
 with them authentic charters shall be laws to them- 
 selves, as Plato willed." Indeed, it would seem that 
 the American mind has a very feeble memory : a few 
 years roll on, and benefactors and traducers are alike 
 forgotten ; and the animosities of the past slip out of 
 the public heart and brain, intently engaged as both 
 are in the Present and the Future. 
 
 As almost every letter of this unique correspon- 
 dence suggests topics on which a reviewer is tempted 
 to comment, it is difificult to stay the hand while writ- 
 ing about it. The letters of Cai-lyle represent him 
 both at his best and his worst ; the letters of Emerson 
 throng with thoughts and experiences, and the style is 
 as compact and brilliant as that of his published es- 
 says. These friends write to each other because they 
 have something to say ; and they say it with all the 
 care and labor in composition which they would have 
 
EMERSON AND CAKLYLE. 257 
 
 exerted in works directly -written for the public eye. 
 The perfect sincerity of each is preserved; every re- 
 flection and sentiment is genuine and true to charac- 
 ter; yet the form of expression displays none of the 
 diffuseness and slovenliness common to the familiar 
 correspondence of even eminent men. Perhaps this 
 brief notice of a book which is destined to last for a 
 century or two, at least, cannot be more appropriately 
 brought to an end than by referring to a single inci- 
 dent which brought the hearts of the two strong men 
 into close and pathetic communion. Emerson lost 
 " the hyacinthine boy," the subject of his " Threnody." 
 He had, he writes to Carlyle, other children, " but a 
 promise like that boy's I shall never see. How often 
 I have pleased myself that one day I should send to 
 you this Morning Star of mine, and stay at home so 
 gladly behind such a representative. I dare not fath- 
 om the Invisible and Untold to inquire what relations 
 to my Departed ones I yet sustain. Lydian, the poor 
 Lydian, moans at home by day and night. You, too, 
 will grieve for us, afar." This letter reached Carlyle 
 when he was in Dumfries, called thither by the intelli- 
 gence of the death of his wife's mother. " It is many 
 years," he replies, " since I have stood so in close con- 
 tact face to face with the reality of Earth, with its hag- 
 gard ugliness, ils divine beauty, its depths of Death 
 and of Life. Yesterday, one of the stillest Sundays, 
 I sat long by the side of the swift river Nith ; saun- 
 tered among woods all vocal only with rooks and 
 pairing birds. The hills are often white with snow- 
 
 17 
 
258 EMERSON AND CARLYLE. 
 
 powder; black, brief spring-tempests rush fiercely 
 down from them, and then again the sky looks forth 
 with a pale, pure brightness, — like Eternity from be- 
 hind'Time. The sky, when one thinks of it, is always 
 blue, pure, changeless azure ; rains and tempests are 
 only for the little dwellings where men abide. Let 
 us think of this, too. Think of this, thou sorrowing 
 mother ! Thy boy has escaped many showers." 
 
EMERSON AS A POET. 
 
 The death of the greatest of American men of let- 
 ters — a man who was at once an elemental thinker 
 and an elemental power — immediately drew forth 
 such a series of tributes to his genius and character 
 from such a wide variety of thoughtful minds, that it 
 is difficult at this date to say anything of him which 
 has not been said before. But perhaps in surveying 
 him as a poet, some additional reasons may be 
 given in proof that he was original in the sense in 
 which the word is applied to the recognized masters 
 of song. 
 
 In estimating the relative worth and rank of a poet, 
 we are bound to consider not merely his possession 
 of " the vision and the faculty divine," but the pene- 
 tration and extent of his vision and the originality of 
 his faculty. Did his spiritual insight go deeper than 
 that of other poets of his age and generation ? Did 
 he advance beyond the recognized frontier of the 
 ideal world in his time, and add a new province to it ? 
 
260 EMERSON AS A POET. 
 
 Were his verses imitations or revelations ? Did his 
 poetic faculty work on old materials, adding only an 
 individual flavor to new combinations of the old ; or 
 did he create or spiritually discern new materials for 
 poetic treatment? In the case of Emerson, these 
 questions can be answered only by a survey of what 
 had been done by the great poets of the century, 
 when (to use General Sheridan's significant phrase) 
 he " took the affair in hand." 
 
 Everybody in the least acquainted with the history 
 of the literature of Great Britain knows that during 
 the later years of the last century an insurrection 
 broke out against the tyranny of the school of Dryden 
 and Pope, as exercised by their degenerate successors. 
 This revolt was called " a going back to Nature ; " and 
 Burns and Cowper, each from a widely different point 
 of view, exemplified it in fresh and original poems. 
 One of Burns's songs, or one of Cowper's minute de- 
 scriptions of natural objects, when placed by the side 
 of the conventional verse or rather the rhymed prose 
 of the time, made the latter appear thin in substance, 
 meagre in meaning, and entirely destitute of any 
 poetic quality whatever. There was no possibility of 
 a new Dryden or Pope coming forth to vindicate the 
 worth of the old poetic method; that method was 
 then represented in the vapid translations of Hoole 
 and the plaintive imbecilities of Hayley ; and after 
 Burns had sung and Cowper had described, there 
 could be no revival of the poetry of Nature which did 
 not deny the validity of the conventional canons and 
 
EMERSON AS A POET. 261 
 
 standards of " taste " which such critics as Dr. John- 
 son had announced. Whatever may have been the 
 merits of the wits and poets of the Age of Queen 
 Anne, it must be confessed that the rebellion against 
 their authority ended in producing a new era in Eng- 
 lish poetry, comparable only to that great outburst of 
 poetic inspiration which occurred in what is called the 
 Age of Elizabeth. 
 
 The man who stands in literary history as the head 
 and heart of this revolution was William Wordsworth. 
 He it was who first, among the poets of his day, 
 aimed not only to describe but to interpret Nature. 
 By constant communion with her forms and varying 
 aspects he came at last to see that she was spiritually 
 alive, — that his own soul was not only touched and 
 inspired by intently viewing her external shows and 
 appearances, but that the soul animating Nature was 
 akin to his own ; and that if 
 
 " The discerning intellect of man 
 Were wedded to this goodly universe 
 In love and holy passion," 
 
 the fantastic dreams of the old mythological poets 
 would be more than realized, — would, indeed, be 
 
 " A simple produce of the common day." 
 
 And then, anticipating this marriage of the mind 
 which pervades the universe of matter with the mind 
 of man, he professes to write in advance its mystic 
 epithalamium : — 
 
262 EMERSON AS A POET. 
 
 " I, long before the blissful hour arrives, 
 "Would chant, in lonely peace, the spousal hour 
 Of this great consummation ; and by words 
 Which speak of nothing more than what we are, 
 Would I aroiise the sensual from their sleep 
 Of death, and win the vacant and the vain 
 To noble raptures." 
 
 It is needless to state how long "Wordsworth worked, 
 year after 3'ear, in many forms of poetic expression, 
 to inculcate his poetic creed to an unresponsive and 
 unsympathetic public. The creed itself only became 
 popular when it was taken up by Byron ; and then 
 the splendor and passion of Byron's rhetoric made it 
 accepted, though it did not necessarily make it under- 
 stood. Most of the eminent poets of the century 
 more or less felt the influence of Wordsworth's fun- 
 damental conception of Nature as spiritually alive ; 
 in poem after poem they reproduced it, modified, of 
 course, l)y their own individuality and way of looking 
 at Nature and man. But in no literary history of the 
 nineteenth century has "Wordsworth's priority in the 
 matter been fully recognized. Now, nothing is more 
 capable of demonstration than the fact that in the sum- 
 mer of 1798 Wordsworth visited the ruins of Tintern 
 Abbey, and that in a few days he wrote the poem un- 
 der that name which introduced into English poetry an 
 element it never had before, and has never parted with 
 since. Chronologically, it precedes everything in the 
 same strain written by Byron, Shelley, or any other 
 poet of the time ; and, in addition to this, the circum- 
 stances under which it was written plainly indicate that 
 
EMERSON AS A POET. 2G3 
 
 its thoughts and sentiments had long been familiar to 
 his experience, and had, indeed, been domesticated in 
 his soul before he poured them forth in those memora- 
 ble lines. In his note to the poem he simply says : 
 
 " Tintern Abbey, July, 1798. — No poem of mine was composed 
 under cirouraatauces more pleasant for me to remember than this. 
 I began it upon leaving Tintern, after crossing the Wye, and con- 
 cluded it just as I was entering Bristol in the evening, after a ram- 
 ble of four or five days with my sister. Not a line of it was altered, 
 and not any part of it written down till I reached Bristol." 
 
 Indeed, he only finished it in time to be printed 
 in that volume of " Lyrical Ballads," the conjoint 
 production of Coleridge and himself, which at once 
 marked an era in English literature, and gave the 
 proprietor of the copyright good cause for moaning. 
 Cottle, the publisher, tells us that " the sale was so 
 low, and the severity of most of the reviews so great, 
 that its progress to oblivion seemed to be certain." 
 He printed five hundred copies of a volume that con- 
 tained " The Rime of the Ancient Mariner " and 
 " Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey," — 
 not to mention " We are Seven," and other pieces of 
 Wordsworth now universally popular, — and was glad 
 to get rid of them as best he could. Afterward, in 
 selling out his stock to the Longmans, he found the 
 copyright of the " Lyrical Ballads " was valued at nil; 
 and he had therefore the pleasure of returning it to 
 the authors, as a present which might be good for 
 something to them, though it had proved worse than 
 good for nothing to him. 
 
264 EMERSON AS A POET. 
 
 From this inauspicious beginning the grand poetic 
 revolution of the nineteenth century tottered and 
 stumbled on for a number of years, until Byron popu- 
 larized it. The " Lyrical Ballads " indicated the two 
 extremes of "Wordsworth's genius. In " We are 
 Seven," he showed that a simplicity of style bordering 
 very nearly on the literal sing-song of a nursery 
 rhyme might, if it had genuine feeling back of it, 
 touch and unseal fountains of emotion in the uni- 
 versal human heart ; that a poet can be thoroughly 
 childlike, abounding in the joyous consciousness of 
 life, without degenerating into childishness, which is 
 tlie pathetic siga of the senility of that second child- 
 hood which is the dreadful reverse of the first ; and 
 that the refusal of the guileless child to admit the 
 idea of death into her mind shows that the glad per- 
 ception of the possession of life is a prophecy of its 
 indefinite continuance. It is curious that this little 
 poem — the one by which Wordsworth is universally 
 known, whicli is in all school-books, and which has 
 been committed to memory by thousands ignorant of 
 his other works — would never have been printed had 
 the advice of a near and dear friend of the author 
 been taken. This friend found little fault with other 
 pieces contained in the volume ; but he implored 
 Wordsworth not to make liimself "everlastingly 
 ridiculous" by including "We are Seven" in the 
 collection. Men of original genius, like Wordsworth 
 and Emerson, are easily indifferent to tlie invectives 
 or gibes of their pronounced enemies ; the real dan- 
 
EMERSON AS A POET. 265 
 
 ger comes from professed friends, who beg them, 
 from the best of motives, to distrust their genius 
 whenever its audacities give too violent a shock to 
 accredited notions of " taste." 
 
 If " We are Seven " represents the simplest expres- 
 sion of Wordsworth's genius, the lines on Tintern 
 Abbey represent its loftiest. Artistically the poem is 
 almost perfect. Though written in blank verse, it 
 has such a deep, impassioned undertone of melodv, 
 and its transitions from one mental mood to another 
 are so finely harmonized, that Wordsworth was partly 
 justified in his hope that it might be called an " ode." 
 After describing his youthful delight in the forms and 
 colors of Nature, when they needed no interest " un- 
 borrowed of the eye," but were to him " as an ap- 
 petite" and "haunted him like a passion," he goes 
 on to state the compensations which in after years 
 thought and imagination supplied for the departure 
 of youthful impulse and ecstasy. 
 
 " That time is past, 
 And all its aching joys are now no more, 
 And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this 
 Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur ; other gifts 
 Have followed, — for such loss, I would believe 
 Abundant recompense. For I have learned 
 To look on Nature, not as in the hour 
 Of thoughtless youth ; but hearing oftentimes 
 The still, sad music of humanity, 
 Not harsh nor grating, though of ample power 
 To chasten and subdue. And I have felt 
 A Presence that disturbs me with the joy 
 Of elevated thoughts ; a sense sublime 
 Of something far more deeply interfused, 
 
266 EMEUSON AS A POET. 
 
 Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
 And the round ocean and the living air 
 And the blue sky, and in the mind of man ; 
 A motion and a spirit that impels 
 All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 
 And rolls through all things." 
 
 In this passage we have the spiritual side of Words- 
 worth. He had fairly earned the right to have this 
 interior hfe and meaning of Nature revealed to him, 
 because from his pure youth to his pure manhood he 
 had heen her worsliipper. She yielded to him the 
 secret of some of her spiritual laws, as she yielded 
 to Newton, one after another, her physical laws. In- 
 tense devotion to her was the condition on which she 
 distributed her favors, giving impartially to seer or 
 scientist the wages due to his love and work. The 
 victories of the scientist, however, are palpable ; his 
 discoveries can be demonstrated, so that to refuse 
 belief in them is a confession of ignorance and 
 weakness of understanding. On the contrary, the 
 discoveries of the poet depend for their reception and 
 verification on the mental and moral condition and 
 experience of his readers. He has no mathematical 
 tests by which to convict his unsympathetic critics 
 of stupidity or lack of spiritual perception ; accord- 
 ingly, just in proportion as he departs from mechan- 
 ical rules in announcing the results of his vital 
 inspiration, his very superiority to his critics furnishes 
 the grounds for liis condemnation. 
 
 Wordsworth was, during the largest portion of his 
 life, the victim of hostile criticism. It is commonly 
 
EMERSON AS A POET. 267 
 
 taken foi" granted, even at the present day, that this 
 criticism was provoked and justified by his own faults 
 and absurdities in carrying his revolt against the cur- 
 rent poetic diction of the last century to a ridiculous 
 excess. Jeffrey, it is pei'sistently said, only exposed 
 and held up to scorn the poet's puerilities, common- 
 places, and obvious violations of good taste, — that 
 is, the literary sins which Wordsworth committed 
 through his passion for " the natural " in poetic ex- 
 pression. The fact is, that the " Edinburgh Review," 
 in its lon'g fight with Wordsworth, objected not so 
 much to " the natural " as to the supernatural element 
 in his poems. While happily ridiculing some exam- 
 ples of the bald realism of the poet in describing his 
 rustic heroes and heroines, it admitted that he was a 
 wonderfully accurate observer of external Nature, and 
 that he sympathized deeply with the primal affections 
 of the human heart. Its contempt was specially re- 
 served for the poet's spiritual philosophy of Nature, 
 which it called " stuff ; " year after year it continued 
 to quote those passages in his poems which are now 
 considered to prove his originality and excellence, as 
 evidences of his imbecility of thought. Indeed, Jef- 
 frey was afflicted with a kind of mental color-blind- 
 ness in his criticism of Wordsworth. He denied the 
 existence of what he was disqualified to see ; and his 
 dogmatism of judgment was in exact proportion to 
 his lack of perception. The poet himself once de- 
 clared, with unusual bitterness, that Jeffrey as a 
 lawyer had "taken a perpetual retainer from his 
 
268 EMERSON AS A POET. 
 
 own incapacity to plead against my claims to public 
 approbation." 
 
 Probably the subtilety and depth of Wordsworth's 
 insight into Nature is even now unappreciated by a 
 large class of highly cultivated men of the world. He 
 tells us, in one of his prefaces, that the secret of the 
 loftiest poetry is hidden from confirmed worldlings, 
 though they may themselves be competent to write 
 brilliant and telling verses, and pass in popular esti- 
 mation for poets. 
 
 It might be supposed that a manlike Macaulay, with 
 his enormous range of reading, his intimate acquaint- 
 ance with many literatures, and his intercourse 
 with the most scholarly society in Great Britain, 
 would be able to know, as late as 1850, the real posi- 
 tion which Wordsworth occupied in the history of 
 English poetry ; yet in July of that year he notes in 
 his diary that he has read " The Prelude," and his 
 opinion of it is this : " The story is the old story. 
 There are the old raptures about mountains and cat- 
 aracts ; the old flimsy philosophy about the effect of 
 scenery on the mind ; the old crazy, mystical meta- 
 physics ; the endless wilderness of dull and prosaic 
 twaddle ; and here and there fine descriptions and 
 energetic declarations interspersed." It will be seen 
 that in this judgment Macaulay re-echoes Jeffrey's 
 scorn of what is essential to an intelligent understand- 
 ing of the poet. And to crown all, the person selected 
 to write the biography of Wordsworth, his own nephew, 
 — "Christopher Wordsworth, I).D., Canon of West- 
 
EMERSON AS A POET. 269 
 
 minster," as he calls himself on the titlepage of his 
 two dull octavos, — is very careful to guard his illus- 
 trious uncle from any reputation he might gain as a 
 poet at the expense of casting doubt on his conven- 
 tional orthodoxy of creed. He is as blind as a bat 
 and deaf as an adder to the revelations which Words- 
 worth derived through the sight and hearing of his 
 soul. When the biographer comes to the lines on 
 Tintern Abbey, we naturally expect he will welcome 
 it as the poem which inaugurated a new era in English 
 poetry ; but he does nothing of the kind. On the con- 
 trary, he thinks that " the reflecting reader " may " be 
 of opinion that a worshipper of Nature is in danger of 
 divinizing the creation and of dishonoring the Creator, 
 and that therefore some portions of this poem might 
 be perverted to serve the purposes of a popular and 
 pantheistic philosophy." When "the reflecting reader" 
 conceives of tliis " danger " to the Christian religion, 
 whither is he to fly for consolation ? Why, to the 
 " Evening Voluntaries " of the same poet. In these 
 he will learn that Wordsworth had no idea of " dis- 
 honormg the Creator " in announcing that he might 
 be spiritually discerned in the material universe he 
 had created. 
 
 These examples of the inapprehension and miscon- 
 ception of Wordsworth's genius by persons whose 
 culture and position place them above the ordinary 
 mass of readers, double the difficulty of showing in 
 what respect Emerson advanced beyond Wordsworth, 
 and beyond all of Wordsworth's successors, in the 
 
270 EMERSON AS A POET. 
 
 spiritual interpretation of Nature. It must be taken 
 for granted that Wordsworth's experience was the 
 result and record of genuine insight, and that it 
 cannot be curtly dismissed as " crazy, mystical meta- 
 physics," before Emerson can even obtain a hearing ; 
 for he undoubtedly was more crazy and mystical, 
 than Wordsworth dared to be, while independently 
 following in the path which Wordsworth had marked 
 out. 
 
 It was a happy thought of a Boston newspaper 
 editor to reprint Emerson's poem of " Good-by, proud 
 World ! I 'm going Home," when his death was an- 
 nounced. The verses were wi'itten when the poet was 
 a teacher in a Eoston school, and his " Sj-lvan Home " 
 was a boarding-house in Roxbury, only two or three 
 miles distant, but at that time a rustic paradise of 
 woods, rocks, and hills. In these lines lie made his 
 first poetic declaration of intellectual and moral inde- 
 pendence. Most of the hours of the day he spent in 
 teaching, by the accredited methods, English, Latin, 
 elocution, and rhetoric to youths and maidens, and 
 the duty was evidently a drudgery ; for when in the 
 afternoons he escaped to the country, he found many 
 a secret nook, bearing no print of " vulgar feet and 
 sacred to thought and God," where he might indulge 
 to the utmost his communion with Nature ; and then 
 burst forth his exulting joy in his deliverance from 
 tasks which limited the free expression of his individ- 
 ual genius : — 
 
EMERSON AS A POET. 271 
 
 " Oil, when I am safe in my sylvan home, 
 I tread on the pride of Greece and Rome ; 
 And when I am stretched beneath the pines, 
 Where the evening star so holy shines, 
 I laugh at the lore and pride of man. 
 At the sophist schools and the learned clan ; 
 For what are they all, in their high conceit. 
 When man in the bush with God may meet 1 " 
 
 It is unfortunate that this poem should be generally 
 considered as the product of his maturer years, when 
 he escaped from Boston to his chosen home in Con- 
 cord. The verses are those of a young college gradu- 
 ate, supporting himself by teaching school during the 
 period he is studying to prepare himself for a profes- 
 sion. As the descendant of a long line of " godly 
 ministers," Emerson was naturally drawn to the pul- 
 pit rather than to the dissecting-room or the bar ; 
 and he began his professional career as a Unitarian 
 clergyman. Though in a few years he resigned his 
 ministerial charge, because he differed from his church 
 and congregation in regard to the obligation of the 
 Lord's Supper, there is a singular unanimity of opin- 
 ion as to his excellence as a pastor and preacher ; and 
 this opinion seems to have been based rather on the 
 singular beauty and sweetness of his character than 
 on his doctrines or his eloquence. There was a celes- 
 tial something in him to which his admirers gave 
 the word "angelic." Even his theological opponents 
 among the Unitarians admitted the exceptional purity 
 of his conduct and behavior, while regretting his au- 
 dacities of speculation. They found that nothing they 
 
272 EMERSON AS A POET. 
 
 said could provoke him into controversy ; and as like 
 a sunbeam he had glided into their sect, so like a 
 sunbeam he glided out of it. The moment he felt 
 that his position as a clergyman interfered with his 
 mental liberty, he quietly dropped the " Reverend " 
 before his name, and became plain Mr. Emerson. 
 How deeply he sympathized with his church while he 
 was its pastor is indicated by a hymn written on the 
 occasion of one of its anniversaries. As this is not 
 included in either of the two volumes of his poetical 
 works, it may here be quoted as showing the depth, 
 sweetness, and solemnity of his religious sentiment at 
 very near the time when his connection with the 
 church he served was voluntarily broken off : — 
 
 "We love the venerable house 
 Our fathers built to God ; 
 In heaven are kept their grateful vows, 
 Their dust endears the sod. 
 
 " Here holy thoughts a light have shed 
 From many a radiant face, 
 And prayers of tender hope have spread 
 A perfume through the place. 
 
 " And anxious hearts have pondered here 
 The mystery of life, 
 And prayed the Eternal Spirit clear 
 Their doubts and end their strife. 
 
 " From humble tenements around 
 Came up the pensive train, 
 And in the church a blessing found, 
 Which filled their homes again. 
 
EMERSON AS A POET. 273 
 
 " For faith and peace and mighty love, 
 That from the Godhead flow, 
 Showed them the life of heaven ahove 
 Springs from the life below. 
 
 " They live with God, their homes are dust ; 
 But here their children pray, 
 And in this fleeting lifetime trust 
 To find the narrow way." 
 
 So far as printed memorials can aid us, Emerson's 
 progress in his chosen direction seems not so much a 
 growth as a leap. The publication of the little volume 
 called " Nature " lifted the heretic Unitarian parson 
 into a leader of a new school of thought, and New 
 England transcendentalism dates its existence from 
 that charming and suggestive book. Its circulation 
 was limited ; the author's share of the profits of its 
 sale could hardly have paid his tailor's bill for three 
 months ; but it was studied as a kind of new gospel by 
 a number of enthusiastic young students in our col- 
 leges, and its influence was ludicrously disproportioned 
 to its circulation. At the time of its publication, it 
 was" impossible to meet educated men and women in 
 any social circle in Boston without hearing " Nature " 
 discussed, — the elderly scholars assailing and the 
 younger defending it ; but still some four or five hun- 
 dred copies of the book itself supplied the public de- 
 mand. What is called " the popular mind " was not 
 then, and has not since, been much affected by the 
 volumes in which Emerson condensed his original 
 thinking into the smallest possible compass ; but dilu- 
 
 18 
 
274 EMERSON AS A POET. 
 
 tions of Emerson have made reputations b)' the score. 
 His sentences have furnished texts for sermons ; his 
 paragraphs have been expanded into volumes ; and 
 open minds, representing every variety of creed, have 
 gladly appropriated and worked out, after their own 
 fashion, hints and impulses derived from this creed- 
 less seer and thinker. His comprehensiveness is 
 shown by the fact that those timid readers who have 
 an instinctive repugnance to the general drift of his 
 teaching are still surprised by finding something in him 
 which meets their immediate spiritual need ; and grate- 
 fully taking that, they leave the heretical matter to 
 such spirits as find inspiration and nutriment in it. 
 It may be said that while fragments of Emerson re- 
 appear in almost all phases of modern thinking, he 
 has left behind him no Emersonian. 
 
 In considering Emerson as a poet writing in verse, 
 the objection comes at once that his greatest poetic 
 achievements have been in prose. The question is 
 asked. Can you name one of his essays in which the 
 poetic sentiment and faculty do not predominate ? 
 While his command of verse was limited to a 'few 
 metres, do you not feel that when the fetters of rhyme 
 are removcil from the expression of his thought and 
 feeling, the rhythm of some of his prose sentences is 
 more essentially melodious than the best of his short, 
 flashing, scvcn-svllabled couplets ? Emerson himself, 
 with a secret liking for verse and an aching desire to 
 master its difficulties, once declared to a friend that 
 the question whether his power lay in prose or verse 
 
EMERSON AS A POET. 275 
 
 was referred to Carlylc and John Stuart Mill, and they 
 decided at once for prose. If Tyndall, an ardent 
 admirer of Emerson's poetry, had been selected instead 
 of Mill, probably no decision would have been ren- 
 dered, for the judges would hare disagreed. 
 
 Perhaps it may be asserted that the finest, loftiest, 
 and deepest thoughts of Emerson, being poetic in 
 essence, would naturally have found vent in some of 
 the forms of poetic expression, for they announce 
 spiritual facts and principles, vividly and warmly per- 
 ceived, which are commonly not content with being 
 stated, but carry with them an impulse and demand 
 to be sung or chanted. If his piercing insight had 
 been accompanied by a sensibility corresponding to it, 
 he would have given us more poems and fewer essays ; 
 but there was a certain rii^idity in his nature which 
 could be made to melt and flow only when it was 
 subjected to intense heat. Some persons were in- 
 clined to confound this rigidity with frigidity of char- 
 acter, and called him cold ; but the diJTerence was as 
 great as that between iron and ice. The fire in him, 
 which would instantly have dissipated ice into vapor, 
 made the iron in him run molten and white-hot into 
 the mould of his thought when he was stirred by a 
 great sentiment or an inspiring insight. It is ad- 
 mitted that he is worthy to rank among the great 
 masters of expression ; yet he was the least fluent of 
 educated human beings. In a company of swift 
 talkers he seemed utterly helpless, until he fixed upon 
 the right word or phrase to embody his meaning ; and 
 
276 EMERSON AS A POET. 
 
 then the word or phrase was like a gold coin, fresh 
 and bright from the mint, and recognized as worth 
 ten times as much as the small change of conversa- 
 tion which had been circulating so rapidlj around the 
 table while he was mute or stammering. That won- 
 derful compactness and condensation of statement 
 which surprise and charm the readers of his books 
 were due to the fact that he exerted every faculty of 
 his mind in the act of verbal expression. A prodigal 
 in respect to thoughts, he was still the most austere 
 economist in the use of words. We detect this quality 
 in his poetry as in his prose ; but in his poetry it is 
 found to be compatible with the lyric rush, the im- 
 withholding self-abandonment to the inspiration of 
 the Muse, which commonly characterizes poets who 
 in their enthusiasm have lost their self-possession and 
 self-command. 
 
 In writing of poetry, Emerson admitted that his 
 ideal poet never had an actual existence. The great- 
 est poets of the world only suggested, here and there, 
 the possible "Olympian bard" who would " sing di- 
 vine ideas " on earth without any break in the con- 
 tinuity of his inspiration. His character would ever 
 be on a level witli his loftiest thought and aspiration, 
 and " so to be " Avould be the sole inlet of " so to 
 know." The secret of the universe such a bard would 
 melodiously reveal ; but actual poets had only caught 
 glimpses of it in certain happy moments, when with 
 " a shudder of joy " they discerned the Real shining 
 through the mask of the Apparent. The mask was 
 
EMERSON AS A POET. 277 
 
 visible Nature ; the real was the soul within and 
 behind it. 
 
 In regard to this all-animating soul, the idealism of 
 Emerson varied with his moods. There are numer- 
 ous passages in his works which with a simple 
 change of terms would make his doctrine of the 
 " Over-Soul " agree with the orthodoxy of Jonathan 
 Edwards. Substitute "Holy Spirit" for "Over- 
 Soul" in his affirmation of the communion of the 
 divine with the human mind, and the heretic becomes 
 almost a Calvinist. " When," Emerson says, " this 
 soul breathes through the intellect of man, it is gen- 
 ius ; when it breathes through his will, it is virtue ; 
 when it flows through his affection, it is love." The 
 impotence of man when deprived of this divine in- 
 spiration and support has hardly ever been more 
 strongly stated than in some of Emerson's sentences 
 and couplets. " The blindness of the intellect begins 
 when it would be something of itself. The weakness 
 of the will begins when the individual would be some- 
 thing of himself. All reform aims, in some one par- 
 ticular, to let the soul have its way through us ; in 
 other words, to engage us to obey." It is needless to 
 multiply quotations in which Emerson affirms that 
 what is done by man is as nothing when compared 
 witli what is done through him. 
 
 This seeming conformity to the Westminster Cate- 
 chism is, however, soon found to be only a part of a 
 scheme of thought which includes some heresies. 
 Emerson's leading idea was that the whole universe 
 
278 EMERSON AS A POET. 
 
 of thought and things was a complex manifestation 
 of a Central Unity ; that " the All " was a manifesta- 
 tion of " the One ; " that the universal mind was in 
 the minutest atom of nebulous mist as in the brain 
 of Plato or Newton ; and that man in his highest 
 perceptions of Nature not only communed with the 
 soul animating the visible universe, but saw and felt 
 that his individual soul was identical with it ; for he 
 says : " The world is mind precipitated, and the vola- 
 tile essence is ever escaping again into the state of 
 free thouglit. Hence the virtue and pungency of the 
 influence on the mind of natural objects, whether in- 
 organic or organic. Man imprisoned, man crystal- 
 lized, man vegetative, speaks to man impersonated." 
 In the heat of developing this thought, Emerson 
 seems at times to be a pantheist, representing the 
 universal mind as impersonal, though coming now 
 and then to self-consciousness in certain great indi- 
 viduals elected or selected to be its organs, — these 
 men, however, being but waves in the great sea of 
 existence, elevated above other men for the momient 
 by some wind of inspiration sweeping over its sur- 
 face, but subsiding quickly to the ordinary level of 
 the infinite ocean of being of which they form an 
 inconsiderable portion. They emerge only to be sub- 
 merged. But his opinions on this question vary with 
 the variations in his mental and moral experience of 
 life, and in one essay he seems to deny what he may 
 vehemently affirm in the next. It is hopeless to 
 search his writings for any consistent theory of deism 
 
EMERSON AS A POET. 279 
 
 or pantheism. Still, one thing is certain, that the 
 deity he adores, whether an Infinite Person or an In- 
 finite It, is " immanent " in the universe of matter 
 and mind, and stamps it with the impress of unity. 
 In the little poem called " Blight," he complains that 
 too many modern scientists have lost the sense that 
 Nature is alive with spirit. They look only at the 
 surfaces of things ; and in this respect he contrasts 
 them unfavorably with the old astrologers and al- 
 chemists, who at least preferred things to names : 
 
 " For these were men, 
 Were unitarians of the united world ; 
 And wheresoever their clear eyeheama fell 
 They caught the footsteps of the SAME." 
 
 And in " Xenophanes" he declares: — 
 
 " All things 
 Are of one pattern made ; bird, beast, and flower, 
 Song, picture, form, space, thought, and character 
 Deceive us, seeming to be many things. 
 And are but one. Beheld far off, they part 
 As God and devil ; bring them to the mind, 
 They dull its edge with their monotony. 
 To know one element, explore another, 
 And in the second reappears the first. 
 The spacious panorama of a year 
 But multiplies the image of a day, — 
 A bell of mirrors round a taper's flame ; 
 And universal Nature, through her vast 
 And crowded whole, an infinite paroquet, 
 Repeats one note." 
 
 In " Wood-Notes " we see Emerson in his most 
 rapturous mood. There is inspiration in every line. 
 
280 EMERSON AS A POET. 
 
 In direct contact with Nature he throws off every 
 shackle of conventionality, and sings as though he 
 were the first and only man, — the Adam, born with 
 the birth of created things, and gladly and exultingly 
 witnessing and welcoming the creation whose secret 
 purpose and plan he discerirs. 
 
 " All the forms are fngitiye, 
 But the substances survive. 
 Ever fresh the broad creation, 
 A divine improvisation, 
 From the heart of God proceeds, — 
 A single will, a million deeds. 
 Once slept the world an egg of stone, 
 And pulse and sound imd light was none; 
 And God said ' Throb ! ' and there was motion. 
 And the vast mass became vast ocean. 
 Onward and on, the eternal Pan, 
 Who layeth the world's incessant plan, 
 Halteth never in one shape. 
 But forever doth escape. 
 Like wave or flame, into new forms 
 Of gem and air, of plants and worms. 
 
 The world is the ring of his spells 
 
 And the play of his miracles. 
 
 As he giveth to all to drink. 
 
 Thus and thus they are and think. 
 
 He giveth little or giveth much, 
 
 To make them several or such. 
 
 With one drop sheds form and feature ; 
 
 With the second a special nature ; 
 
 The third adds heat's indulgent spark ; 
 
 The fourth gives light which eats the dark ; 
 
 Into the fifth himself he flings. 
 
 And Conscious Law is Kinx of Kings." 
 
EMERSON AS A POET. 281 
 
 Could a, pantheist have defined the Universal Being 
 as " Conscious Law " ? Has any believer in the per- 
 sonality of God ever hit upon a better definition ? 
 
 Emerson, in an essay on art, declares that the artist 
 must " disindividualize " himself, and become an or- 
 gan through which the universal mind acts. " There 
 is," he says, " but one reason. The mind that made 
 the world is not one mind, but the mind. Every man 
 is an inlet to the same, and to all of the same." The 
 delight we take in a work of art " seems to arise from 
 our recognizing in it the mind that formed Nature 
 again in active operation. ... A masterpiece of art 
 has in the mind a fixed place in the chain of being, as 
 mucli as a plant or a crystal." In " The Problem," 
 the best Itnown of all his poems, tliis thought is devel- 
 oped with wonderful power and beauty. The founders 
 of religions, the great poets and artists, all men who 
 have done things which are universally admitted to 
 be great and admirable, were " disindividualized," — 
 the recipients of an inspiration from the " vast soul 
 that o'er them planned," and in all their works 
 " building better than they knew." It is needless to 
 quote passages from this poem, because so many thou- 
 sands of cultivated people know it by heart. But 
 why is it called " The Problem " ? The answer must 
 be sought in the verses witli which it begins and 
 closes. Like all poets and philosophers who are 
 classed as pantheists, Emerson had a pronounced, 
 almost a hauglity individuality. Throughout his life 
 he guarded this witli a jealous care. He never could 
 
282 EMERSON AS A POET. 
 
 endure the thought of being the organ of any fra- 
 ternity, the disciple of any master, the representative 
 of any organization, the spokesman of any body of 
 reformers, however noble might be their objects. His 
 essays swarm with criticisms on the one-sideness of 
 every philanthropic association of his time ; and it 
 may be said, as an illustration of the general impres- 
 sion regarding the purity, integrity, strength, and 
 sweetness of his character, that he was the only man 
 in Now England who could criticise the " reform- 
 ers " without becoming the object of their invective. 
 It was impossible for Emerson to part with his own 
 individuality, even in celebrating the achievements of 
 the inspired saints, bards, and artists who had seem- 
 ingly parted with theirs. He did not desire to " dis- 
 individualize " himself, while intensely appreciating 
 other individualities. " I like," he says, — 
 
 " I like a church ; I like a cowl ; 
 I love a prophet of the soul ; 
 And on my heart monastic aisl ea 
 Fall like sweet strains or pensive smiles; 
 Yet not for all his faith can see 
 Would I that cowled Churchman be." 
 
 Then burst forth the magnificent lines which seem 
 to destroy the imlividual in the act of exalting him as 
 the selected instrument of a power higher than him- 
 self; and yet the conclusion agrees with the begin- 
 ning. After all, it must still, he thinks, be said that 
 there is something which distinguishes the person 
 who receives the celestial impulse and aid from all 
 other persons : — 
 
EMERSON AS A POET. 283 
 
 " I know what say the fathers wise, — 
 The book itself before me lies : 
 Old Clirysostom, best Augustine, 
 And he who blent both in his line, 
 The younger Oolden Lips or mines, 
 Taylor, the Shakspeare of divines. 
 His words are music to my ear, 
 I see his cowled portrait dear ; 
 And ycit for all his faith could see, 
 I would not the good bishop be." 
 
 All this practically means : " I would not be other- 
 wise than what 1 am, Ralph Waldo Emerson." 
 
 Indeed, however much Emerson may vary in his 
 statements, — at one time placing the emphasis on 
 tlic universal mind, and at another on the individual 
 mind, — the general drift of his writings goes to show 
 tliat the purpose of the spirit which underlies " Na- 
 ture" is to build up intrepid manhood in human 
 nature. In " Monadnoc " the poet professes to be at 
 first disgusted with the clowns and churls who have 
 built their habitations on the slopes of the mountain ; 
 but he finds consolation in the thought that they are 
 the progenitors of a finer race to come : — 
 
 " The World-soul knows his own affair, 
 Forelooking when he would prepare, 
 For the next ages, men of mould 
 Well embodied, well ensouled ; 
 He cools the present's fiery glow, 
 Sets the life-pulse strong but slow : 
 Bitter winds and fasts austere 
 His quarantines and grottos, where 
 He slowly cures decrepit flesh, 
 And brings it infantile and fresh. 
 
284 EMERSON AS A POET. 
 
 These exercises are the toys 
 
 And games to breathe his stalwart boys : 
 
 They bide their time, and well can prove, 
 
 If need were, their line from Jove ; 
 
 Of the same stuff, and so allayed, 
 
 As that whereof the sun is made. 
 
 And of the fibre, quick and strong, 
 
 Whose throbs are love, whose thrills are song." 
 
 But what is the mental mood in which the human 
 mind, lifted above its oi'dinary limitations, sees into 
 the heart of Nature ? Emerson affirms it to be the 
 mood of ecstasy, — a kind of celestial intoxication, 
 which, while it may blind the eye of the soul to the 
 clear perception of things as they appear, sharpens 
 and brightens its perception of things as they really 
 are. In " Bacchus " we have both a statement 
 and example of this inspiration. " Bring me," he 
 exclaims, ■ — 
 
 "Bring me wine, but wine which never grew 
 In the belly of the grape. 
 
 Or grew on vine whose tap-roots, reaching through 
 Under the Andes to the Cape, 
 Suffered no savor of the earth to 'scape. 
 
 We buy ashes for bread ; 
 
 We buy diluted wine ; 
 
 Give me of the true, 
 
 Whose ample leaves and tendrils curled 
 
 Among the silver hills of heaven 
 
 Draw everlasting dew ; 
 
 Wine of wine. 
 
 Blood of the world, 
 
 Form of forms, and mould of statures, 
 
 That I intoxicated, 
 
EMERSON AS A POET. 285 
 
 And by the draught assimilated, 
 
 May float at pleasure through all natures ; 
 
 The bird language rightly spell, 
 
 And that which roses say so well: 
 
 " Wine that is shed 
 Like the torrents of the sun 
 Up the horizon walls, 
 Or like the Atlantic streams which run 
 When the South Sea calls: 
 
 " Water and bread, 
 Food which needs no transmuting, 
 Rainbow-flowering, wisdom-fruiting, 
 Wine which is already man, 
 Food which teach and reason can: 
 
 " Wine which Music is, — 
 Music and wine are one, — 
 That I, drinking this. 
 Shall hear far Chaos talk with me ; 
 Kings unborn shall walk with me ; 
 And the poor grass shall plot and plan 
 What it will do when it is man. 
 Quickened so, will I unlock 
 Every cr3'pt of every rock. 
 
 " I thank the joyful juice 
 For all I know ; 
 Winds of remembering 
 Of the ancient being blow, 
 And seeming-solid walls of use 
 Open and flow. 
 
 " Pour, Bacchus ! the remembering wine ; 
 Retrieve the loss of me and mine ! 
 Vine for vine be antidote. 
 And the grape requite the lote ! 
 Haste to cure the old despair, — 
 
286 EMERSON AS A POET. 
 
 Reason in Nature's lotus drenolied. 
 
 The memory of ages quenched ; 
 
 Give them again to shine ; 
 
 Let wine repair what this undid ; 
 
 And where the infection slid, 
 
 A dazzling memory revive ; 
 
 Refresh the faded tints, 
 
 Recut the aged prints, 
 
 And write my old adventures with the pen 
 
 Which on the first day drew, 
 
 Upon the tablets blue, 
 
 The dancing Pleiads and eternal men." 
 
 In this poem, published long before the " Origin of 
 Species " appeared, we have a theory of development 
 and evolution more far-reaching than Darwin's ; and 
 Emerson anticipates even the doctrine of natural 
 selection in some of his other poems. Thus, for in- 
 stance, in " The "World-Soul," he says that Destiny — 
 
 " The patient Dfemon sits, 
 With roses and a shroud ; 
 He has his way and deals his gifts, — 
 But ours are not allowed. 
 
 He serveth the servant, 
 
 The brave he loves amain ; 
 
 He kills the cripple and the sick, 
 
 And straight begins again. 
 
 For gods delight in gods, 
 
 And thrust the weak aside ; 
 
 To him who scorns their charities, 
 
 Their arms fly open wide." 
 
 And again, in the "Ode to. W. H. Channing," we 
 have this declaration : — 
 
EMERSON AS A POET. 287 
 
 " The over-god 
 Who marries Right to Might, 
 Who peoples, unpeoples, — 
 He who exterminates 
 Races by stronger races, 
 Black by white faces, — 
 Knows how to bring honey 
 Out of the lion ; 
 Grafts gentlest scion 
 On pirate and Turk." 
 
 The general idea of the " survival of the fittest " 
 reappears often in Emerson's writings. To benevo- 
 lent men it seems the scientific form of the theologi- 
 cal doctrine of " election ; " but Emerson considered 
 it in connection with his theory that what we call evil 
 is a roundabout way of producing good. The spiritual 
 laws which regulate the universe cannot be overturned 
 by powerful individuals, for it is notorious that what 
 they desire to do in violation of these outlying laws 
 meets with such resistance that the effect produced is 
 very different from the effect intended. Evil is good 
 in the making, — not a positive substance, but a mere 
 imperfection of good. " The sharpest evils are bent 
 into tliat periodicity which makes the errors of planets 
 and the fevers and distempers of men self-limiting. 
 . . . Good is a good doctor, but Bad is sometimes a 
 better. ... If one shall read the future of the race 
 hinted in the organic effort of Nature to mount and 
 meliorate, and the corresponding impulse to the Better 
 in the human being, we shall dare affirm that there 
 is nothing he will not overcome and convert, until at 
 last culture shall absorb the chaos and gehenna. He 
 
288 EMERSON AS A POET. 
 
 will convert the Furies into Muses, and the hells into 
 benefit." 
 
 It is in view of such sentences as these that we must 
 consider a few of Emerson's poems in which his theory 
 of evil is somewhat too bluntly expressed. Such is 
 " Uriel," which has troubled many of Emerson's admir- 
 ers who were attracted to him because of the emphasis 
 he laid on the moral sentiment. It was the very inten- 
 sity of his conception of the universal dominion of this 
 sentiment which made him deride all efforts to resist it. 
 
 Leaving out of view, however, Emerson's poetic 
 philosophy of Nature and man, and the poems which 
 specially represent it, he is still the author of some 
 Bhort pieces which are at once admirable and popular. 
 Such are "Each and All," "The Rhodora," "The 
 Snow-storm," "The Humble-bee," and "Forerunners," 
 each of which justifies the dictum of their author, 
 that " Beauty is its own excuse for being." In " Fore- 
 runners " the poet tells us of his joyous and resolute 
 pursuit of unattainable beauty. The pursuit of his 
 " happy guides " results in disappointment: — 
 
 " For no speed of mine avails 
 To liunt upon their shining trails ; " 
 
 yet, though never overtaken, he feels they are never far 
 distant: — 
 
 " Their near camp my spirit knows 
 
 By signs gracious as rainbows. 
 
 I thenceforward, and long after, 
 
 Listen for their harp-like laughter, 
 
 And carry in my heart for days 
 
 Peace that hallows rudest ways." 
 
EMERSON AS A POET. 289 
 
 It is a marked distinction of tliis little poem, — 
 one of the most exquisite in the language, — that it 
 testifies to the possibility of finding a certain content 
 in following continually an ideal never reached. Most 
 poets eloquently celebrate their discontent when they 
 learn that the earth they inhabit is different from 
 the heaven they conceive. Byron is specially enraged 
 at what he considers this injustice of Providence. 
 
 Emerson's philosophy in this matter was not due 
 to a dull perception of beauty in any of its forms. 
 No poet was more keenly susceptible to it ; no poet 
 ever shrank from deformity with such an instinctive 
 repulsion ; and moral ugliness specially irritated 
 him, not only because it was wicked, but because it 
 was " disagreeable." Goethe's masterpiece, " Faust," 
 " abounded," he once wrote, " in the disagreeable. 
 The vice is prurient, learned, Parisian. In the pres- 
 ence of Jove, Priapus may be allowed as an offset, but 
 here he is an equal hero. The book is undoubtedly 
 written by a master, and stands unhappily related to 
 the whole modern world; but it is a very disagree- 
 able chapter of literature, and accuses the author as 
 well as the times. Shakspeare could, no doubt, have 
 been disagreeable had he had less genius, and if ugli- 
 ness had attracted him. In short, our English nature 
 and genius have made us the worst critics of Goethe." 
 
 Indeed, Emerson felt in this matter like his own 
 humble-bee, in his avoidance of " aught unsavory or 
 unclean." And his " Ode to Beauty " indicates that 
 the sense of beauty penetrated to the inmost centre 
 
 19 
 
290 EMERSON AS A POET. 
 
 of his being, and was an indissoluble element in his 
 character : — 
 
 " Who gave thee, Beauty, 
 The keys of this breast, — 
 Too credulous lover 
 
 Of blest and unblest, — 
 Say, when in lapsed ages 
 Thee knew I of old 1 
 Or what was the service 
 For which I was sold 1 
 I found me thy thrall 
 By magical drawings, 
 Sweet tyrant of all ! 
 
 Lavish, lavish promiser, 
 Nigh persuading gods to err ! 
 Guest of million painted forms. 
 Which in turn thy glory warms ! 
 The frailest leaf, the mossy bark, 
 The acorn's cup, the rain-drop's arc. 
 The swinging spider's silver line, 
 The ruby of the drop of wine, 
 The shining pebble of the pond. 
 Thou insoribest with a bond. 
 In th)"- momentary play, 
 Would bankrupt nature to repay. 
 
 Thee, gliding through the sea of form. 
 Like the lightning through the storm. 
 Somewhat not to be possessed, 
 Somewhat not to be caressed. 
 No feet so fleet coxild ever find, ' 
 No perfect form could ever bind. 
 
 The leafy dell, the city mart. 
 Equal trophies of thine art ; 
 E'en the flowing azure air 
 Thou hast touched for my despair; 
 
EMERSON AS A POET. 291 
 
 And if I languish into dreams, 
 Again I meet the ardent beams. 
 Queen of things ! I dare not die 
 In Being's deeps past ear and eye ; 
 Lest there I find the same deceiver, 
 And be the sport of Fate forever. 
 Dread Power, but dear ! if God thou be, 
 Unmake me quite, or give thyself to me ! " 
 
 Emerson once, in speaking to a friend, remarked 
 that he could write in prose by spurring his faculties 
 into action ; but he could write in verse only in cer- 
 tain happy moments of inspiration, for which he had 
 to wait. In our limited space it is impossible to 
 do more than to quote a few verses in which this 
 inspiration is recorded. Here are specimens from 
 " Wood-Notes : " — 
 
 " For Nature beats in perfect tune, 
 And rounds with rhyme her every rune. 
 Whether she work in land or sea, 
 Or hide underground her alchemy. 
 Thou canst not wave thy staff in air, 
 Or dip thy paddle in the lake, 
 But it carves the bow of beauty there, 
 And the ripples in rhyme the oar forsake. 
 
 Who liveth by the ragged piue 
 Foundeth a heroic line ; 
 Who liveth in a palace hall 
 Waneth fast and spendeth all. 
 
 The rough and bearded forester 
 Is better than the lord ; 
 God fills the scrip and canister. 
 Sin piles the loaded board. 
 
292 EMERSON AS A POET. 
 
 Go where he will, the wise man is at home, 
 His hearth the earth, — his hall the azure dome. 
 
 He saw beneath dim aisles, in odorous beds. 
 
 The slight Linnsea hang its twin-born heads, 
 
 And blessed the monument of the man of flowers, 
 
 Which breathes his sweet fame through the northern bowers. 
 
 Lover of all things alive, 
 Wonderer at all he meets, 
 Wonderer chiefly at himself, — ■ 
 Who can tell him what he is 1 
 Or how meet in human elf 
 Coming and past eternities ?" 
 
 From his poems under the title of " Initial, Das- 
 monic, and Celestial Love," lines witliout number 
 might be cited in proof that he had studied this 
 passion scientifically. His report on its various mani- 
 festations has the exactness of the scientist combined 
 with the glow of the poet. His Cupid is represented 
 as especially dangerous through his eyes: — 
 
 " In the pit of his eye 's a spark 
 Would bring back day if it were dark. 
 
 He lives in his eyes ; 
 There doth digest, and work and spin, 
 And buy and sell, and lose and win ; 
 He rolls them with delighted motion, 
 Joy-tides swell their mimic ocean. 
 Yet holds he them with, taughtest rein. 
 That they may seize and entertain 
 The glance that to their glance opposes, 
 Like fiery honey sucked from roses. 
 
EMERSON AS A POET. 293 
 
 Deep, deep are loving eyes, 
 Flowed with napiitba fiery sweet ; 
 And the point is paradise 
 Where their glances meet." 
 
 Emerson has two poems," Dirge" and " Threnody," 
 which stand for examples of what may be called intel- 
 lectualized pathos. The grief does not burst forth with 
 passionate directness from the heart, but is passed 
 through the intellect and imagination before it is 
 allowed expression in words. Tennyson's " In Me- 
 moriam " is the most striking illustration in English 
 literature of this process of restraining emotion in 
 order to make its finer effects on character perma- 
 nent. The poet lays particular emphasis on the office 
 of imagination in softening and consecrating the grief 
 which it at the same time makes enduring : — 
 
 " Likewise the imaginative woe, 
 That loved to handle spiritual strife, 
 Diifused the shock through all my life. 
 But in the present broke the blow." 
 
 In Emerson's "Dirge" this spiritualized sadness is 
 exquisitely expressed. His dead brothers are still 
 kept sacredly near to his soul, for they are lodged in 
 the memory of his realizing imagination, and no lapse 
 of years can make the sense of his loss of " the strong, 
 star-bright companions " of his childhood and youth 
 a calamity to fade into forgetfulness. In essential 
 pathos, what can exceed the sorrow expressed in this 
 stanza of the poem : — 
 
294 EMERSON AS A POET. 
 
 " I touch this flower of silken leaf, 
 Which once our childhood knew, 
 Its soft leaves wound me with a grief 
 Whose balsam never grew.'' 
 
 The " Threnody " on the loss of his child — 
 
 " The hyacinthine boy, for whom 
 Morn well might break and April bloom ; 
 The gracious boy, who did adorn 
 The world whereinto he was born " — 
 
 has more of the character of an outburst of the heart 
 under the agonizing feeling of an irreparable calamity, 
 but its pathos is still of the kind which lies " too deep 
 for tears." Indeed, the solid manhood of the father, 
 rooted in ideas, and strong to resist the " blasphemy 
 of grief," was never better exemplified than in this 
 tender and beautiful " Threnody." The father has 
 now followed the child. Is it irreverent to suggest 
 that the anticipation in the line which concludes the 
 poem he has now verified, — 
 
 " Lost in God, in Godhead found," 
 
 There are stanzas in Emerson's poems which read 
 like oracles. Their truth to our moral being is so 
 close that we should hardly be surprised if they were 
 prefaced with a "Thus saith the Lord." And, indeed, 
 Emerson announces them with the confident tone of 
 the seer and the prophet. They rank with the lof- 
 tiest utterances which have ever proceeded from the 
 awakened heart and conscience and intellect of man. 
 
EMERSON AS A POET. 295 
 
 The Concord Fourth of July "Ode" (1857), which 
 opens with the magnificent imagination, — 
 
 " Oh, tenderly the haughty Day 
 Fills his blue urn with fire," 
 
 closes with the inspiring declaration that 
 
 " He that worketh high and wise. 
 Nor pauses in his plan, 
 Will take the sun out of the skies 
 Ere freedom out of man." 
 
 The short poem called " Freedom " ends with these 
 soul-animating lines : — 
 
 " Freedom's secret wilt thou know ? 
 Counsel not with flesh and blood ; 
 Loiter not for cloak or food ; 
 Eight thou feelest, rush to do." 
 
 The " Boston Hymn " (1863), which begins with " the 
 "Word of the Lord," closes with an impressive Terse 
 in which is condensed the whole divine law of retri- 
 bution. What poet before Emerson ever gave eyes to 
 the thunderbolt ? 
 
 " My will fulfilled shall be, 
 For, in daylight as in dark, 
 My thunderbolt has eyes to see 
 His way home to the mark." 
 
 In the " "Voluntaries," which are infused throughout 
 with the heroic feelings roused by the Civil War, 
 there is one quatrain that stands out from the rest 
 with startling distinctness and power : — 
 
296 EMERSON AS A POET. 
 
 " So nigh 13 grandeur to our dust, 
 So near is God to man, 
 When Duty whispers low, Thou must. 
 The youth replies, / can." 
 
 But perhaps the noblest of these affirmations of the 
 absolute obligation of men to follow their consciences, 
 rather than what appears to be their interests, is con- 
 tained in four lines with the heading of " Sacrifice." 
 This quatrain is a poem in itself, — an epic poem : 
 
 " Though love repine, and reason cliafe, 
 There comes a voice without reply, — 
 'Tis man^s perdition to he mfc, 
 When for the truth he ought to die." 
 
 The reason that such grand utterances as these 
 thrill us with unwonted emotion is to be found in our 
 instinctive belief that the poet's character was on a 
 level with his lofty thinking. He affirmed the su- 
 premacy of spiritual laws because he spoke from a 
 height of spiritual experience to which he had mounted 
 by the steps of spiritual growth. In reading him we 
 fuel that we are in communion with an original per- 
 son as well as with an original poet, — one whose 
 character is as brave as it is sweet, as strong as it is 
 beautiful, as firm and resolute in will as it is keen 
 and delicate in insight, — one who has earned the 
 right authoritatively to announce, without argument, 
 great spiritual facts and principles, because his soul 
 has come into direct contact with them. As a poet 
 he often takes strange liberties with the established 
 laws of rhyme and rhythm ; even his images are 
 
EMERSON AS A POET. 297 
 
 occasionally enigmas ; but he still contrives to pour 
 through his verse a flood and rush of inspiration not 
 often perceptible in the axiomatic sentences of his 
 most splendid prose. In his verse he gives free, joy- 
 ous, exulting expression to all the audacities of his 
 thinking and feeling ; and perhaps this inadequate 
 attempt to set forth his merits as a poet may be ap- 
 propriately closed by citing, from the poem which 
 bears the title of " Merlin," his own conception of 
 what a poet should be and should do : — 
 
 " Thy trivial harp "vvill never please 
 
 Or fill my craving ear ; 
 Its chords should ring as blows the breeze, 
 
 Free, peremptory, clear. 
 No jingling serenadcr's art, 
 
 Nor tinlile of piano strings, 
 Can make the wild blood start 
 
 In its mystic springs. 
 The kingly bard 
 
 Must smite the chords rudely and hard, 
 As with hammer or with mace ; 
 That they may render back 
 Artful thunder, which conveys 
 Secrets of the solar track, 
 Sparks of the supersolar blaze. 
 Merlin's blows are strokes of fate. 
 Chiming with the forest tone, 
 When boughs buffet boughs in the wood ; 
 Chiming with the gasp and moan 
 Of the ice-imprisoned flood ; 
 With the pulse of manly hearts. 
 With the voice of orators, 
 With the din of city arts. 
 With the cannonade of wars, 
 With the marches of the brave. 
 And prayers of might from martyr's cave. 
 
298 EMERSON AS A POET. 
 
 " Great is the art, 
 Great be the manners, of the bard. 
 He shall not his brain encumber 
 With the coil of rhythm and number ; 
 But leaving rule and pale forethought, 
 He shall aye climb 
 For his rhyme. 
 
 ' Pass in, pass in,' the angels say, 
 ' In to the upper doors, 
 Nor count compartments of the floors, 
 But mount to Paradise 
 By the stairway of surprise.' " 
 
THE CHARACTER AND GENIUS OF THOMAS 
 STARR KING. 
 
 The success of the two volumes — one of Sermons, 
 the other of Lectures — of Thomas Starr King indi- 
 cates that he still lives, though the brave, bright, 
 cordial, and ardent spirit has gone to another sphere 
 of existence. Wherever he exists, we may be sure 
 that he is at work, though at work under the condi- 
 tions of that celestial activity which is perfectly com- 
 patible with a true Christian's idea of rest and repose, 
 — the rest which is simply a more genial exercise of 
 powers which were resolutely employed on earth in 
 the service of God ; and the repose which he more 
 or less felt, while dwelling here, in the conception of 
 those universal sentiments and ideas which have the 
 magical effect both to inspire and calm. Of few men 
 could it be said with more truth than of him : " His 
 body is at rest, his soul in heaven." 
 
 The press of the country has been singularly unani- 
 mous in recognizing the merits of King as a man and 
 as a preacher. It however seems to me that a suffi- 
 cient stress has not been laid on King's perfect faith 
 that Life — spiritual life — is essentially continuous, 
 and that the tomb is merely the robing-room whence 
 
300 THE CHARACTER AND GENIUS OF 
 
 the individual spirit enters into its new life, under new- 
 conditions. This is the real question of the time, Do 
 we live after we die ? King answers it with an em- 
 phatic and cheerful "Yes," as if there could be no 
 doubt of it. Every sermon in his volume is a confi- 
 dent affirmation of this inherent, though sometimes 
 partially obscured, belief of humanity. He almost 
 takes it for granted in the sermons in which he in- 
 sists on the necessary continuity of life. He leans 
 over the grave in which a husband or a wife, a 
 father or a mother, a son or a daughter, is laid; and 
 he says : " Be of good cheer ! the person you mourn 
 and whom you loved is not in this coffin, but has as- 
 cended. Our earthly sorrow should be mingled with 
 a sacred joy. Individual life is indestructible ; there 
 is no grave for that. Let us cry ' Glory to God ! ' in 
 presence of this seeming eclipse of life, — ■ only an 
 eclipse, not an extinction." 
 
 This feeling of King was both a faith and an expe- 
 rience. Everybody who knew him must have been 
 impressed with the calm way in which he spoke to 
 his friends of this fundamental fact in his conception 
 of life, — namely, its everlastingness. " I am here in 
 Boston to-day ; to-morrow I am in San Francisco. 
 Whether I write to you or not, I am still in spiritual 
 relations with you. It is foolish to suppose that if I 
 happen to die in San Francisco, I shall be less near 
 to my friends than if I wrote to them by every post. 
 What I am in myself is just as real when I am laid 
 in what is called the grave as in my most familiar 
 
THOMAS STARR KING. 301 
 
 intercourse with you. For God's sake, do not be 
 deceived by this fiction of physical death, as if that 
 could separate me from you!" King's reliance on 
 the immortality of the individual mind was stronger 
 than any capitalist can possibly feel in his solidest in- 
 vestments ; and he always spoke of it with the con- 
 fidence that other men speak of their personal estate. 
 His personal estate was invested in Thomas Starr 
 King ; and he fastened upon it as an eternal posses- 
 sion, — as something which was to endure forever. 
 
 It was this faith that gave him such power in meet- 
 ing the ghastliest facts of our earthly life. There 
 was no calamity which he could not confront, both 
 by reason and spiritual insight, with the comforting 
 assurance, " Be of good cheer ! " Life bounded so 
 abundantly, so impetuously, so joyously, in all the 
 veins of his spiritual frame, that he was perhaps not 
 sufSciently respectful to " Death, the Skeleton." The 
 dread phantom excited in him neither horror nor 
 repugnance. He was ready to welcome it, in the 
 natural course of things, as something to be met and 
 overcome ; but he stoutly insisted that it was but a 
 phantom,— an appearance, — with no reality in it as 
 looked at from the point of view of infinite life. 
 There is, he seemed to say, — 
 
 " There is no speculation in those eyes 
 Which thou dost glare with ! " 
 
 Now, I have read a vast quantity of sermons by 
 men of deeply religious minds ; but it is only in the 
 
302 THE CHARACTER AND GENIUS OF 
 
 sermons of men of religious genius that I have no- 
 ticed anything which equalled King's cheerful and 
 cheering trust in the continuousness of life, after 
 death has seemingly extinguished it. His sermons, 
 it seems to me, entitle him to rank with men of re- 
 ligious genius ; for they really assist human beings 
 to meet the most awful of human experiences, by 
 communicating to them the consolation, the hope, the 
 cheer which they need in the hour of their own de- 
 parture, or — what is practically of more importance — 
 in the departure of those they love. There are five 
 or six sermons in the volume, relating to deatli in 
 every form in which it can afflict, affright, or up- 
 lift the soul, Avhich seem to me penetrated with the 
 essential, the inmost spirit of Christianity. On his 
 own death-bed King murmured, " I see a great future 
 before me ! " The spirit that uttered those words is 
 all alive in the sermons, preached when he was in 
 vigorous health, and when " a great future " was be- 
 fore him in doing the work of God on earth. 
 
 The sermons also are distinguished by the admi- 
 rable way in which the precepts which regulate the 
 proper conduct of life are strenuously enforced. Pre- 
 cepts ! — I should rather say Forces. There is not a 
 moral principle stated in the whole volume which is 
 not thoroughly vitalized, which is not made lovable, 
 which is not converted from a mere recommendation 
 to do well into an impulse to do well. The book not 
 only communicates moral knowledge but moral life. 
 It is full, not only of spiritual nourishment and re- 
 
THOMAS STARR KING. 303 
 
 freshment, but of spiritual stimulant and force ; and 
 while it clearly points out the way to salvation, and 
 gives impetus to the pilgrim who has bravely ven- 
 tured on the right path, it invigorates him, as he halts 
 exhausted on his journey, with spiritual food. 
 
 A book with these precious virtues in it would 
 hardly need, it would seem, any abatement in the cor- 
 dial praise it should receive. That abatement, how- 
 ever, has been insinuated by some ministers of the 
 Unitarian denomination, — a denomination to which 
 Mr. King belonged, and for which he labored with a 
 zeal exceeding theirs. He is dead, — dead by over- 
 exertion in the cause of what is called Liberal Chris- 
 tianity, and by unwithholding devotion to the cause 
 of the country in its deadly grapple with a rebellion 
 based, in his own words, " on perjury, treason, and 
 insult to toil;" but his superciliously "liberal" critics 
 are alive, and yawning over what they call Christian 
 commonplaces, and desiring the sting of some un- 
 Christian paradoxes to rouse them from their state of 
 theological boredom, they complacently suggest that 
 though King was a good, bright, generous fellow, full 
 of the love of God and the love of man, and though 
 he sacrificed his life in his self-abandonment to both 
 of these requisites of the Christian martyr, he still is 
 not up to the advanced theological thought of the age. 
 They praise his virtues as a man, while insulting him 
 as a thinker and theologian. 
 
 Now, everybody who knew King is aware how thor- 
 oughly he studied the works of the great German 
 
304 THE CHARACTER AND GENIUS OE 
 
 rationalists, and how thoroughly he placed himself on 
 a level with the most adTanced preachers of the 
 Unitarian faith, in discarding everything he thought 
 false in the accredited opinions of a large majority 
 of the members of the denomination to which he be- 
 longed. But his Intellectual audacity was modified 
 by an admirable moral discretion; and he did not 
 think it a mark of a progressive mind to adopt a 
 sceptical speculation, merely because it shocked a 
 popular belief. He believed in the Unitarian faith, 
 — faith in God, faith in man, faith in the possibility 
 of a communion of the Divine with the human soul ; 
 and while he was well acquainted with the facts and 
 reasonings of the radical Unitarians, while he never 
 hesitated to declare that the accepted interpretation 
 of many texts of Scrijiture falsified their spirit, while 
 he discarded every theory on which the doctrine of a 
 plenary inspiration of the Scriptures was founded, he 
 still was firm in the faith that God was present in our 
 Christian Bible in a sense widely different from that 
 in which He was supposed to have inspired the Vedas 
 and the Koran, — in a sense widely different from the 
 spirit which inspired the " Divine Comedy " of Dante 
 and the " Paradise Lost "of Milton. But his essential 
 difference with the vigorous thinkers and scholars — 
 who, after protesting themselves out of Orthodoxy 
 into Unitarianism, have protested themselves out of 
 Unitarianism into Naturalism — was his denial of the 
 idea that God retreats as science advances, that the 
 limitations of the human mind arc such as to make 
 
THOMAS STARR KING. 305 
 
 the knowledge of the Infinite impossible. From his 
 own spiritual experience, as well as from his study of 
 the phenomena recorded in the lives of religious 
 thinkers, saints, and martyrs, — that is, of men of 
 religious genius, — he believed that God might be 
 intimately near to the human soul, while infinitely 
 distant from the human understanding. Communion 
 with the Divine Mind he considered to be the inmost 
 essence of religion ; and spiritual help from above, 
 derived from this communion, he deemed the solid 
 prop both of religion and morality. He would have 
 cast off the preacher's gown in disgust, and gone into 
 some other profession, had he not been vitally con- 
 vinced of the truth of these two propositions ; and his 
 conviction of their truth naturally allied him to all 
 men of religious perception and I'eligious genius, no 
 matter what might be the church or denomination to 
 which they nominally belonged. He was, in the in- 
 tensest meaning of the phrase, an evangelical " lib- 
 eral" Christian. 
 
 The Unitarian denomination is one for which I 
 have a great respect, not merely because I am proud 
 to belong to it, but because it has produced some ad- 
 mirable specimens of human character. But it neces- 
 sarily subordinates, as a general rule, the emotional 
 to the intellectual elements of religion ; it is the most 
 protestant of all protestants ; it is forced, by its posi- 
 tion among the sects, to deny rather than affirm ; and 
 the consequence is, that some persons of an aggressive 
 temper are attracted to its churches, who, while they 
 
 20 
 
306 THE CHARAOTER AND GENIUS OF 
 
 have no richness of religious experience, glory in a 
 great abinidance of litigious animosity to orthodox 
 opinions. If tliere can be anything more hateful than 
 the stupidest forms of superstitious bigotry, it is the 
 intolerance of the heterodox bigot, who makes intel- 
 lectual assent to certain negations the test of religious 
 character. An illiberal " liberal " Christian is one of 
 the most exasperating of all fanatics ; for his fanati- 
 cism is based on what he calls his reason, and he 
 ignores every fact of deep religious experience. 
 
 It is also to be said against the Unitarians, as a 
 body, that they are commonly scandalously indifferent 
 to the works produced by their most eminent repre- 
 sentatives in the theological world. For example, 
 one of the most profound books that have lately ap- 
 peared from the American press is Dr. Hedge's 
 " Ways of the Spirit ; " and yet in my intercourse 
 with intelligent Unitarian laymen I have hardly found 
 one who has heard that the book has even been pub- 
 lished. Here is a man, generally admitted to be one 
 of the foremost minds in the Unitarian body, — a 
 man who has condensed the results of a long life of 
 study and thought into a series of essays, recom- 
 mended by all the charms of a singularly lucid, 
 pointed, and brilliant style ; and yet opulent and cul- 
 tivated Unitarians can confess without shame that 
 they are ignorant of the existence of his book ! 
 Were he an Episcopalian, or a Presbyterian, or a 
 Baptist, or a learned doctor of divinity of any Ortho- 
 dox persuasion, there would be such a flourish of 
 
THOMAS STARR KING. 307 
 
 trumpets that the din would force all men and women 
 of liis general way of thinking to rush to the book- 
 shops, in order to obtain the precious volume ; but he 
 is a Unitarian ; and Unitarians seem to take it for 
 granted that their great men should produce valuable 
 works, and they trust that these works will have a 
 good effect in liberalizing persons outside of the de- 
 nomination. As for themselves, they are too far 
 advanced to need any instruction. King's volume of 
 sermons has met with a wider recognition ; but still 
 the most cordial notices it has received are, on the 
 whole, from the organs of Orthodoxy ; and certainly 
 its large sale has been rather among the readers of 
 the " Independent," the "Christian Union," " Zion's 
 Herald," and the " Congregationalist " than among 
 the readers of the " Christian Register " and the "Uni- 
 tarian Review." The Unitarians ought to be stung, 
 by the sharpest implements which scorn and sarcasm 
 can afford, into recognizing the fact tliat they have 
 among their number some of the greatest poets, some 
 of the profoundest theologians, some of the deepest 
 thinkers of the country. 
 
 King, I think, is a test case of the comparative in- 
 difference of the polite and polished Unitarian body 
 of Christians to one of their most noted products. 
 When I hear a Unitarian clergyman superciliously 
 remark of his sermons, that " they are good — very 
 good ; but then, you know, we are sixteen years ahead 
 of his teaching ! " I lose all my small stock of pa- 
 tience. The Unitarian denomination, during its exist- 
 
308 THE CHAEACTEE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 ence in this country, has produced many scholars, 
 thinkers, and men of spiritual insight ; hut among all 
 the men distinguished by scholarship, thought, and 
 spiritual discernment it has produced very few men 
 like Thomas Starr King, who, uniting these various 
 qualities, was also a hero and a martyr. He lived the 
 grand principles of humanity and Christianity which 
 he expounded from the pulpit and the platform. 
 Channing was as noble a moralist, and had perhaps 
 a deeper spiritual insight ; but Channing was an in- 
 valid ; and it was often in a sick-chamber, with long 
 pauses between the paragraphs, he wrote down the 
 carefully elaborated thoughts which have moved and 
 elevated the public mind. King was a man who went 
 into the world, faced all the hardships of existence, 
 endured every kind of vexation with a manly fortitude, 
 and was ever ready to peril his life for any cause he 
 espoused. In California, especially, he perfectly un- 
 derstood that his labors for his church and his country 
 must kill him ; that he was overtasking his strength ; 
 that he was letting his blood out drop by drop, as 
 day by day he toiled in obedience to the incessant, 
 the imperative demands of religious and political duty. 
 He never faltered in his labors, though he was aware 
 that he awoke every morning a weaker man phy- 
 sically than he was the day before ; tliat he was 
 dying hour by hour, through that slow suicide of 
 overwork which is the noblest and holiest self-sacri- 
 fice that can be made by the martyrs of religion and 
 freedom. This is the spirit that breathes through his 
 
THOMAS STARR KING. 309 
 
 sermons ; this gives them their peculiar inspiration ; 
 this endows them with the power equally to kindle 
 and console ; this penetrates them with that sacred 
 cheer which sustains all souls struggling with calam- 
 ity, yet victorious over it through trust in God. " But 
 — but — but — he was not as advanced in his think- 
 ing, you know, as we other Unitarian clergymen are!" 
 His lectures are penetrated by the same cordial, 
 humane, and lofty spirit which animates his sermons ; 
 though of course the lectures afford freer play to his 
 wit, to his fancy, — in short, to his various talents 
 and accomplishments. Of all the men I ever knew, 
 lie was the one man who most rapidly assimilated 
 knowledge, who most quickly converted it into faculty, 
 and who most readily used it for the purposes of the 
 reasoner, the moralist, the Christian, and the poet. 
 Give him at night a new worlc on mental or physical 
 science, bristling all over with technical terms and 
 abstruse speculations, and in the morning he would 
 lucidly restate its processes and results, so as not only 
 to. make them intelligible, but attractive to the average 
 mind. The lectures on " Substance and Show," " The 
 Laws of Disorder," " Sight and Insight," and " Exist- 
 ence and Life " are quite remarkable transformations 
 of the dry but important facts and principles of ethics, 
 metapliysics, and, especially, of physical science, into 
 things " rich and strange." These lectures were de- 
 livered to miscellaneous audiences in every part of 
 the country, and were so popular, that to follow King 
 in the order of a Lyceum course was always felt by 
 
310 THE CHARACTER AND GENIUS OF 
 
 other lecturers — no matter how appropriate to the 
 uppermost questions of the day their themes may have 
 been — as a hazardous experiment. Yet King, more 
 than any other lecturer except Mr. Emerson, took for 
 his subjects the great problems of existence, such as 
 had been scientifically treated by Aristotle and Plato, 
 by Descartes and Leibnitz, by Hobbes, Berkeley, 
 Locke, and Hume, by Kant and Fichte, by Mill and 
 Hamilton, by Owen, Agassiz, Tyndall, Huxley, and a 
 host of other scientists belonging to opposing schools 
 of philosophy. The way he devoured their books 
 resembled not so much an intellectual passion as an 
 intellectual greediness. His mind required food as a 
 half-starved man requires bread and meat ; and the 
 more he ate, the hungrier he seemed to grow. But 
 was it possible to popularize the knowledge he thus 
 acquired, and induce others to feel the same unappeas- 
 able sacred hunger for the food of the soul ? Now, 
 the popularizing of any science, ethical, metaphysical, 
 political, or physical, is a difficult task, unless he who 
 attempts it has those qualities and powers which 
 swiftly remove the obstructions which interfere with 
 their reception by the popular mind. There are, for 
 example, two sciences which specially relate to the 
 welfare of men; and they are the most unpopular of 
 all the sciences. Everybody desires to have health 
 and long life; and yet books on physiology — books 
 which unfold the conditions of health and longevity — 
 are little read even by persons who have mastered 
 many languages, or who have resolutely faced the 
 
THOMAS STARR KING. 311 
 
 darkest and most intricate problems of philosophy. 
 Everybody, we may say, desires to acquire wealth ; 
 and yet political economy, the science of the produc- 
 tion of wealth, is so distasteful to most minds, that 
 persons elected to be legislators can make speeches 
 — can even enact laws — which indicate the densest 
 ignorance of the science of wealth, without being 
 ranked — as they should be - — among the degraded 
 and uneducated masses of the people. Therefore the 
 two leading passions of the human mind — the desire to 
 be healthy and to be wealthy — have not power enough 
 to induce even reasonable and educated men to study 
 physiology and political economy. It is for these 
 reasons that I consider King's power of making the 
 demonstrated truths of science so attractive that minds 
 of all degrees of culture gladly received them, as a 
 remarkable gift. He so transmuted, so transfigured 
 the facts and principles of any given sci*«ce by his 
 humor and imagination, that his audiences listened to 
 him with admiring wonder, — a wonder mixed with a 
 kind of personal affection for the genial speaker, from 
 whose lips poured forth sucli a tide of novel ideas, 
 sparkling illustrations, and glowing sentiments. 
 
 The lecture on Socrates, the longest in tlie volume, 
 is perhaps the most notable of all, because it actually 
 introduced the great Greek moralist and philosopher 
 to the ordinary inhabitants of our towns and villages 
 as an admirable person, whose acquaintance was well 
 worth cultivating. Socrates was to King as real a 
 man as any friend he met in the streets ; and he 
 
312 THE CHARACTEE AND GENIDS OP 
 
 made others partake of his joy in knowing such a 
 grand specimen of humanity. Somebody said that 
 Webster owed his impressiveness — perhaps his op- 
 pressiveness — to the fact that "he was Hke other 
 folks, only that there was more of him." King con- 
 trived to convince both the Cape Cod fishermen and 
 the Western Hoosiers, who listened to him, that Soc- 
 rates was in direct relations with them, — was one 
 of " the folks." Hazlitt tells us that rambling one 
 morning with Coleridge by the sea-shore, they met 
 a fisherman, who informed them that the day before 
 a large number of fishermen had risked their own 
 lives in the vain attempt to save a poor boy who was 
 drowned. " I don't know," he said, " why it was 
 they ventured ; but, sir, we have a nature towards 
 one another." King had, in this sense, " a nature " 
 towards all mankind ; and that made him attractive 
 to all classes of men. He domesticated Socrates in 
 Eastern and Western cities and towns, — made him a 
 citizen of each place, — because he had the art to show 
 that Socrates had " a nature " in harmony with the 
 best portion of their natures. 
 
 I have no space left to do any justice to the ex- 
 quisite lecture on " Music ; " or to that on " Hilde- 
 brand," the greatest of the Popes ; or to that on 
 " The Earth and the Mechanic Arts." The reading 
 of the last named is calculated to make every me- 
 chanic feel that his occupation has a dignity higher 
 than that of the mere opulent " man of society," and 
 that the noblest aristocracy is the intelligent and in- 
 
THOMAS STARR KING. 313 
 
 ventive aristocracy of labor. The lecture on " Books 
 and Reading " is the most judicious, the most stimu- 
 lating, the most practical, and the most informing 
 of all the essays on that somewhat worn subject 
 which I have ever read. But perhaps the most 
 kindling of all the lectures in the volume are those 
 which record King's four years' contest with the Se- 
 cessionists of California. The addresses on " Daniel 
 Webster," and " The Privilege and Duties of Patri- 
 otism," as well as certain passages in the college 
 oration on the " Intellectual Duties of Students in 
 their Academic Years," are all ablaze with the spirit 
 which made King such a formidable power in Cali- 
 fornia, when the Unionists were contending with 
 the Secessionists for the possession of the State. 
 These are but two out of scores of patriotic addresses 
 which he delivered in every part of California after 
 the war of the Rebellion broke out. Their effect 
 was great among all classes of the population. They 
 combined compact arguments, shot at the understand- 
 ings of his auditors, with thrilling appeals to tlicir 
 feelings. The miners were particularly delighted 
 with the racy way in which he stated and refuted 
 opposing arguments. On one occasion, a tall miner 
 on the outskirts of the crowd of hearers exclaimed to 
 his companion, who was of a lower stature : " Stand 
 on your toes, Jim, and get a sight of him. Why, the 
 boy is taking every trick ! " Yes, the " boy " was 
 taking every trick ; but his life was lost in this 
 process of coming out triumphant at the close of 
 
314 THE CHARACTER AND GENIUS OF 
 
 every game. Talk of heroes and martyrs on the 
 battle-field ! — God bless them ! — and especially God 
 bless them, when we think that the passage of a few 
 years seems to have obliterated from the popular 
 mind any memory of their services and sacrifices ; 
 but among the heroes and martyrs of the war I must 
 class King, who, without ever confronting any Con- 
 federate with a musket on his shoulder, bravely grap- 
 pled with the intellectual soldiery of disunion, and 
 routed and overwhelmed them in one of their chosen 
 centres of revolt. As a common soldier, a single 
 bullet might have ended his life and his work ; as 
 a soldier of the pulpit and the platform and the 
 " stump," it was his hard duty to die slowly, — re- 
 nouncing all his cherished hopes of establishing a 
 name as a scholar, as a theologian, as a histoi'ian of 
 philosophy, in obedience to the demands of the duty 
 nearest to him as a patriot and a Christian, and feel- 
 ing his physical strength constantly decay with every 
 exercise of it in his desperate contentions with those 
 whom he considered the foes both of God and man. 
 
 A strong desire is expressed that an extended biog- 
 raphy of him should lie written, as a guide and stimu- 
 lus to young men who are entering on the path of 
 professional duty which he trod with such intrepidity 
 and such usefulness. The suggestion is a good one. 
 Still, if after reading King's Sermons and Lectures, 
 anybody thinks the ordinary details of his daily life 
 can add to the grand impressiveness of the soul re- 
 vealed in them, he makes a mistake. The King whom 
 
THOMAS STARR KING. 315 
 
 <all his friends knew, — the brave, tender, and gener- 
 ous heart ; the bright and fertile brain ; the strong, 
 aspiring soul, affirming the reality of life, and denying 
 the reality of death, — this King we have in the two 
 volumes where his mind and personality are embodied. 
 More sei'mons, more lectures, should be published, — 
 the more the better ; but the I'eal King is found in 
 the books where his spirit is enshrined. There is not 
 a noble sentence in the two volumes, now published, 
 which King did not illustrate in his own life. What 
 is the worth of details of housekeeping, and common- 
 place incidents which have no spiritual significance, 
 in comparison with the grand i^oul which shines 
 through all these printed pages ? 
 
 In conclusion, I may say that in dwelling on the 
 memories of King's character and gifts I participate 
 in the feeling of Shelley, in his monody on the death 
 of Keats : — 
 
 " The soul of Adonais, like a star, 
 Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are.'' 
 
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