Class Jl^_;/J: Book.^^.il^_. COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 9. M^' STUDENT'S HISTORY OF AMEEICAN LITERATURE BY WILLIAM EDWARD SIMONDS PhJ), Professor of English Literature in Knox College, Author of "^ Studenfs History of English Literature " BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 6 ( Roman* 2 Alfo a Dialogue between Old EwgUwi and NeWjConcerning the late troubles. With divers other pleafant and ferious Poems. By a Gentlewoman In thofe parts^ Printed at hondon for Stephen BomeU at the fignc of the Bible in Popes Head-Alley. 16^0. TITLE-PAGE OF ANNE BRADSTREET'S BOOK (Reduced) 38 EARLY COLONIAL LITERATURE of her admirers essayed to express their appreciation in flattering verse. John Rogers, who before his death became presi- dent of Harvard College, paid his tribute to the genius of Anne Bradstreet in quite exalted utterance. One stanza of his composition may be quoted, in testi- mony to the effect produced in contemporary minds of literary taste by this gifted woman's work. " Twice have I drunk the nectar of your lines, Which high sublimed my mean-born fantasy. Flushed with these streams of your Maroniau wines, Above myself rapt to an ecstacy, Methoug-ht I was upon Mount Hybla's top, There where I might those fragrant flowers lop, Whence did sweet odors flow, and honey-spangles drop." ^ Let us now read a few stanzas written by Anne Bradstreet herself, taken from her best known and most attractive poem, Contemplations. It was written late in her life, at her home in Andover, and is properly described as " a genuine expression of poetic feeling iu the presence of nature." " I heard the merry grasshopper then sing. The black-clad cricket bear a second part. They kept one tune, and played on the same string, Seeming to glory in their little art. Shall creatures abject thus their voices raise ? And in their kind resound their maker's praise, Whilst I, as mute, can warble forth no higher lays? "Under the cooling shadow of a stately Elm, Close sate I by a goodly River's side, Where gliding streams the Rocks did overwhelm ; A lonely place with pleasures dignifi'd. I once that lov'd the shady woods so well, Now thought the rivers did the trees excel, And if the sun would ever shine there would I dwell. 1 Quoted by Professor Tyler in his History of American Literature^ vol. ii, ch. xi. MICHAEL WIGGLESWORTH 39 " While musing- thus with contemplation fed, And thousand fancies buzzing in my brain, The sweet tongu'd Philomel percht o'er my head, And chanted forth a most melodious strain, Which rapt me so with wonder and delight, •I judg'd ray hearing better than my sight, And wisht me wings with her awhile to take my flight." A few months before Aijne Bradstreet's death, she composed the following lines, which illustrate the aspi- rations of Puritanism in their noblest form : — " As weary pilgrim now at rest Hugs with delight his silent nest, His wasted limbs now lie full soft, That rairy steps have trodden oft, Pleases himself to think upon His dangers past and travails done ; " A pilgrim I, in earth perplexed, With sins, with cares and sorrows vexed, • By age and pains brought to decay, And my clay house mouldering away, Oh, how I long to be at rest And soar on high among the blest." While Mrs. Bradstreet's verse at its best exhibits the highest poetical accomplishment of seven- Michael teenth-century Puritanism in New England, ^qJ^J"" there was one other Puritan versifier whose I63i-1705. inspiration appealed yet more strongly to contemporary minds. This most popular of early American poets was Rev. Michael Wigglesworth, minister at Maiden, Massa- chusetts, author of a tremendous and dismal epic, sur- charged with the extreme Calvinism of the time. This masterpiece of Puritan theological belief is entitled The Day of Doom ; it was published in 1662, and for a hundred years remained — as Lowell expresses it — "the solace of every fireside " in the northern colonies. This long and desolate composition is an imaginative 40 EARLY COLONIAL LITERATURE account of the Last Judgment. The voice of the trum- TheDayot P^* ^^ heard summoning the living and the Doom. dead before the dreadful bar. " Some hide themselves in Caves and Delves in places underground. Some rashly leap into the Deep, to scape by being drowned : Some to the Rocks (0 senseless blocks!) and woody mountains run That there they might this fearful sight, and dreaded Presence shun." In this jingling ballad measure, so strangely inap- propriate to his solemn theme, the reverend author pur- sues his gloomy way. It is not well to linger over this grotesque presentation of mediaeval art and logic ; yet it is through these crude expressions of the early litera- ture that we are brought in closest touch with some phases of the Puritan mind. First we are given the appeals of the condemned ; the children argue with reference to Adam's fall : — " Not we, but he ate of the Tree, whose fruit was interdicted : Yet on us all of his sad Fall, the punishment 's inflicted. How could we sin that had not been, or how is his sin our Without consent, which to prevent, we never had a power? " The reply is heard that Adam stood not for himself alone, but for all mankind ; that had he done well in- stead of ill, all would have shared in his benefits — nor would they have then protested that they deserved not to share therein, on the ground now urged. The inex- orable Judge does, however, yield a point in mercy to the children and infants: — " Yet to compare your sin with their who lived a longer time, PURITAN TYPES 41 I do confess yours is much less, though every sin 's a crime. " A crime it is, therefore in bliss you may not hope to dwell ; But unto you I shall allow the easiest room in Hell. The glorious King thus answering, they cease and plead no longer : Their consciences must needs confess his reasons are the stronger." Much of Wigglesworth's vision is too lurid to be de- scribed here ; such raw strength as he applied in paint- ing the details of his fiery picture but intensifies the horror of it and increases our wonder that such con- ceptions could have prevailed. It is interesting to remember that at the very time when the Maiden minister was writing his puritan Day of Doom^ John Milton was engaged Types, upon the real epic of Puritan faith, one of the master- pieces of all literature. Paradise Lost was published in 1667. It was but a decade thereafter that John Bunyan completed his beautiful religious allegory, PilgrMs Pi'ogr'ess. But the Puritanism of New England — its narrowness and hardness no doubt intensified by the isolation and, perhaps, the depression incident to life in a comparatively rude and struggling colony — was re- presented by the zealot, Michael Wigglesworth, with his sing-song verse, and the stern ascetic Cotton Mather, with his laborious and often fantastic prose. It was eminently fitting that when Wigglesworth died in 1705, the author of the Magnalia should have preached his funeral sermon. The two stand appropriately together. They taught the same doctrine ; and in their two great representative works they exhibit the literary attainment of Colonial America in the seventeenth century. 42 EARLY COLONIAL LITERATURE The following books will be found especially helpful for Suggestions reference and for supplementary reading: John lor Reading, pigke's Old Virginia and her Neighbours ; Be- ginnings of Neio England ; George P. Fisher's The Colo- nial Era {American History Series) ; R. G. Thwaites's The Colonies {Epochs of American History). The one au- thoritative work on early American literature is Moses Coit Tyler's monumental History of American Literature dur- ing Colonial Times (2 vols.) ; for teachers and advanced students of the subject Prof essor Tyler's books are invaluable. In Stedman and Hutchinson's Library of American Litera- ture are to be found extended selections from the works of all these early writers ; this excellent Library should be in every school, and in constant use for illustration during the course. The series of Old South Leaflets (published by the Old South Historical Society, Boston, Massachusetts) contains re- prints of various papers of interest, notably : A Description of New England, by John Smith (No. 121). Manners and Customs of the Indians (from the New English Canaan) y by Thomas Morton (No. 87). The Lives of Bradford and Winthrop, by Cotton Mather (No. 77). Bradford's Memoir of Brewster (No. 48). Roger Williams' Letters to Winthrop (No. 54). Bradford's History of the Pllmoth Plantation^ with a report of the proceedings incident to the return of the manuscript to Massachusetts, was printed and published by the State at Boston, in 1901. The lives and times of Francis Higginson, Anne Bradstreet, and Cotton Mather have been presented in recent interesting biographies. The Scarlet Letter, by Hawthorne, F. J. Stimson's King Noanett, Mary Johnston's To Have and to Hold, with other standard works of fiction dealing with this colonial period, may be read with great advantage also. CHRONOLOGICAL REVIEW 43 S5 C g bt ■■ss it=. ) S a s g « s ^ o s >:>^ o as S a 2 « .£ ^ w • >-d fed ^§ H m M 3 1 i §5|§ll'l IJ -^ bco J" 1 «> ^ .i ^ "e -S », ^- ^ o ^ ?o c ^ t£ a f^S .13 - ^(il 2 5g Sep tu-soo a V 52 « Er s--.: t^ .^ r' S a ^. a'«8 lull ^"s e2 1:3 Ex ..a •■ "^ «^ -fe mJ a 5 3 2^ Ir-. ►^J Si = .« _ § go- ;^ >>^u « a & 5 to O r' . 93 53 g.S.'H g ?3^i; loS- o 1^ 00 >.rH W «y S-:H?5fz;SSWW(CQ;z;S O CO ?o t itoooof I M eo M I d lo t> c-i ci coo coo CHAPTER II THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY I. The First Half of the Century. II. Benjamin Franklin, 1706-1790. III. The Second Half of the Century. IV. Poetry of the Revolution. V. The Close of the Century. I. THE FIRST HALF OF THE CENTURY; THE PERSONAL TOUCH: SAMUEL SEW ALL, MRS. KNIGHT, EBENEZER COOK, WILLIAM BYRD, JONATHAN EDWARDS. In the study of literature, there is nothing more gratifying than the discovery of an author who has unconsciously put himself visibly into his book. Two or three American writers wrote thus amiably at this period of our colonial history, and their works form an interesting and welcome group. The most prominent of these was Judge Samuel - , Sewall, who arrived in America in 1661 and Samuel ' Sewall, settled at Newbury. He was a conspicuous 1652-1730. j^^^ jj^ ^jj^ Massachusetts colony and became the Chief-justice of Massachusetts. Like his friend, Cotton Mather, he was involved in the witchcraft delu- sion and was one of the judges who condemned the victims to death. His repentance, his dramatic confes- sion of error and his annual fast are familiar tradition.^ It should be remembered, also, that in a little book, The Selling of Joseph (1700), Judge Sewall wrote the first published argument against slavery. From 1673 to 1729, Samuel Sewall kept a diary — and thereby left ^ Read Whittier's poem, The Prophecy of Samuel Sewall. SAMUEL SEWALL 45 for generations of readers to come one of the most frank and unconventional records of the time. The publication of this journal ^ shows that it is worthy of a place with that of Samuel Pepys (pronounced Peps), of London, whose celebrated Diary covers the decade of 1659-69. The social life of colonial New England is most happily illustrated in Sewall's memoranda ; and the stiff state- liness of the stern old Puritan type loses at least its solemnity when we read the Judge's record of his unavailing suit for the hand of Madam Winthrop. [Oct. 6, 1720.] " A Httle after 6 P.M. I went to Madam Winthrop's. She was not within. I gave Sarah Chickering the Maid 2f, Juno, who brought in wood 1? Afterward the Nurse came in, I gave her 18^ having no other small Bill. After a while Dr. Noyes came in with his Mother [Mrs. Winthrop] ; and after his wife came in : They sat talking, I think, till eight a'clock. I said I f ear'd I might be some inter- ruption to their Business ; Dr. Noyes reply'd pleasantly : He f ear'd they might be an Interruption to me, and went away. Madam seemed to harp upon the same string [she had pre- viously declared that she could not break up her present home]. Must take care of her children ; could not leave that House and Neighborhood where she had dwelt so long. I told her she might doe her children as much or more good by bestowing what she laid out in Hous-keeping, upon them. Said her son would be of Age the 7**^ of August. I said it might be inconvenient for her to dwell with her Daughter- in-Law, who must be Mistress of the House. I gave her a piece of Mr. Belcher's Cake and Ginger-Bread wrapped up in a clean sheet of Paper ; told her of her Father's kindness to me when Treasurer, and I Constable. My daughter Judith was gon from me and I was more lonesome — might help to forward one another in our journey to Canaan. — Mr. Eyre came within the door ; I saluted him, ask'd how Mr. Clark did, and he went away. I took leave about 9 a'clock." 1 Collections of the Mass. Historical Society, Boston, 1879. 46 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY The Judge's suit did not prosper. "8f 21 [October 21.] Friday, My Son, the Minister, came to me p. m. by appointment and we pray one for another in the Old Chamber ; more especially respecting my Court- ship. About 6 a-clock I go to Madam Winthrop's. Sarah told me her Mistress was gon out, but did not tell me whither she went. She presently ordered me a Fire ; so I went in, having Dr. Sibb's Bowells with me to read. I read the first two Sermons, still no body came in : at last about 9 a-clock Mr. Jn? Eyre came in ; I took the opportunity to say to him as I had done to Mrs. Noyes before, that I hoped my visit- ing his Mother would not be disagreeable to him ; he an- swered me with much Respect. When twas after 9 a clock He of himself said he would go & call her, she was but at one of his Brothers : A while after I heard Madam Win- throp's voice enquiring something about John. After a good while and Clapping the Garden door twice or thrice, she came in. I mentioned something of the lateness ; she bantered me, and said I was later. She received me Courteously. I asked when our proceedings should be made publick : She said They were like to be no more public than they were already. Offer'd me no Wine that I remember. I rose up at 11 a'clock to come away, saying I would put on my coat, She offer'd not to help me. I pray'd her that Juno might light me home, she open'd the Shutter, and said twas pretty light abroad ; Juno was weary and gon to bed. So I came home by Star- light as well as I could. At my first coming in, I gave Sarah five shillings. I writ Mr. Eyre his name in his book with the date October 21, 1720. It cost me 8f Jehovah jireh." Among the most interesting personal narratives of this period is the Journal of Sarah K. Kembi© Knight^ which contains a lively account of 1666-1727 ^ journey from Boston to New York made by this adventurous lady in 1704. Madam Knight was thirty-eight years of age — a native of Boston. She made the trip on horseback and was five WILLIAM BYRD 47 days on the way between Boston and New Haven ; the distance between New Haven and New York occupied two days. The story is eloquent of the inconvenience and peril to which colonial travelers were subject, but the charm of the narrative is due to the vivacious per- sonality of its author, and to her abounding sense of humor which broadly illuminates the oddities of human nature encountered in the wilderness. To the student, as to the general reader, these bright and lively narratives of actual life are far more attract- ive than essays in more formal history ; in their power to revive the past they are far superior. The South as well as the North is represented thus in this same period. Born on a beautiful estate at Westover, Virginia, William Byrd became one of the most pro- ^^^^ minent and useful of those who served that Byrd, 1674—1744 colony at the beginning of the eighteenth cen- tury. He was also its wittiest writer if not its most accomplished scholar. His education he received in Eng- land — as was customary with the youth of the South — and he was admitted to the English bar. After fur- ther travel in Europe, he returned to Virginia. He filled various official positions and became famed as the master of Westover, where he maintained a princely hospitality. In 1729, his duties assigned him to an expedition which fixed the boundary between Virginia and North Caro- lina ; and a narrative of this expedition Byrd wrote in the form of a journal. It was not until 1841, however, that the Westover manuscripts were published. The History of the Dividing Line^ as its author called it, is a picturesque and racy account of an interesting expe- rience. It was a laborious task — this of running the line of division from a point on the coast six hundred miles westward through a country wild and almost unknown, 48 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY and which traversed the Great Dismal Swamp. In the gayest of spirits, the journal records the daily expe- riences of the expedition, vivaciously describing the locality, with its denizens both wild and tame. An his- torical sketch of Virginia is included in the narrative wherein Byrd humorously sets off the shortcomings of the first colonists — " about a hundred men, most of them reprobates of good families." Another journal en- titled A Progress to the Mines contains the account of a trip taken in 1733. There was no lack of historical writings in the col- onies durinoj this period of their growth. A HistorlOS or o young Virginian, Kobert Beverley, studying in London, was shown the text of a work upon the British Empire in America ; and was so disturbed by its inaccuracies that he himself prepared a History of Virginia which was honest and readable. Beverley's history was published in London in 1705, and again, enlarged and revised, in 1722. Rev. William Stith (1689-1755), president of William and Mary College,^ published in 1747 his first part of The History of the First Discovery and Settlement of Virginia^ bring- ing his narrative down only to 1624. He never car- ried the work further. It is based directly upon " the excellent but confused materials " of Captain John Smith, of whom Stith adds loyally : " I take him to have been a very honest man and a strenuous lover of truth." One other book dealing with a picturesque aspect of ^jjg southern life at this time is worthy of notice ; Sot Weed it was one entitled The Sot Weed Factor; or^ a Voyage to Maryland^ published at Lon- don in 1708. The name of its author, Ebenezer Cook, ^ William and Mary College was established at Williamsburg, Vir- ginia, in 1693. JONATHAN EDWARDS 49 appears on the title-page, but of him we know nothing ; he may have been an American, he may have been merely an English visitor to our shores ; however, his work is a lively contribution to the literature of the period and presents in rough and ready rhyme a coarse but realistic satire of the writer's adventures among the tobacco agents — the "sot- weed factors" of Mary- land. He asserts his purpose to describe "the laws, governments, courts, and constitutions of the country, and also the buildings, feasts, frolics, entertainments, and drunken humors of the inhabitants." His style may be inferred from these opening lines : — " Condemned by fate to wayward curse Of friends unkind and empty purse, — Plagues worse than filled Pandora's box, — 1 took ray leave of Albion's rocks ; With heavy heart concerned, that I Was forced my native soil to fly. And the old world must bid good-bye. Freighted with fools, from Plymouth sound To Maryland our ship was bound." Returning to New England, we find once more the intellectual leader of his age among the min- joj^athan isters. Jonathan Edwards was not only a ffreat Edwards, 1703—58 scholar and one of the most noted theolo- gians of the century in which he lived, but one of the most brilliant logicians that our country has ever pro- duced; and in the literature of philosophical study, he is still a commanding figure. Edwards was born in Connecticut, and was graduated from Yale College^ at seventeen. After a brief connection with that insti- tution as a tutor, he became pastor of the church in 1 Yale College was founded, in 1701, at Saybrook, Connecticxit ; in 171 tz =^^§^71 eoo r;^ rs a. O^ 12 i i-^i^^f^ 2 oS ■^ a 1-2 I'g gl •^ -is, Si s> x^ at O ai ^ o 1^ g. CO 5 3 ^ O != t 11 ^4 ^ :s;^ o e8 C s2 >>'3S o ^ 3 02 0) ,^ _s ^ O cc ills sol ^^ (N 5£o6 o ^2 ^ IN ^ 5?o a 7S a j2-a •^ et^>= ^^ a =0 a s ^ i^ ■§ "S ec ja o p- o o •-■ ,a^ : .§a i. 8 ■fe ^".^fr-^^eo as SS O o-fti «- S r- * •« 220^t^ 5 ^' 00 -- H^ -N . S pqS S ^11 ^ SI 't 5S ^-csj, ' <; -5 <: J= '-' ^ ^ IS; 20 :S I loo S; o-^ 5^2 w-sfl R^^ !cio'§^^ tSS^- :hs; „• C^l ;o hi. \ - rt s o . S 3 -g - £« S «« o TH t- t— oT ijjll llii O O rH go . oo'-stt 2s^ « 2 a^ eg J 'to 2 5 c^ go at ^ ^ 0'C5 : 2 a-g 2 c4 Si .5 "to i I 1.2 CQ Oh 00 ►-^i-J M a g bc ho 6caj « • Sft^- O O O 03 S OJ '-1 O) 03 «l ^ -^ O rH ^ . a J -duo o«-i a a t- 1-» o t« ti • - fl =^^ B .ii t- " f^ X i? a o • I .i: '-' £ < 3 S « 1^ ^ P^Q t- a 1 -< 03 ■ a i i ?3 t : 1 o ® c • I r~: 'x; cc a a • ot) a o 2I S<1 CHAPTER III THE BEGINNING OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY I. The New Literature: The Knickerbocker Group. II. Washington Irving: 1783-1859. III. James Fenimore Cooper: 1789-1851. IV. William Cullen Bryant: 1794-1878. I. THE NEW LITERATURE. — NEW YORK AND THE KNICKERBOCKER GROUP. With the turn of the century, our young republic entered upon an era of expansion and development which can be described only as marvelous. The rapid progress in the settlement of the West, the influx of foreign immigration, the growth of the larger cities, extension of transportation systems by construction of canals and government roads, application of the new inventions employing the power of steam in river navi- gation and on railroads, — these features of American progress during the first fifty years in our first com- pleted century of national existence can be here but thus briefly summarized. It is unnecessary to attempt a full historical outline of that period of growth and change except to note that coincidentally with this ex- pansive period of material prosperity and growth, our national literature entered upon what we may not inaptly term its golden age — the age of its best essayists, nov- elists and poets, our real American men of letters. We have traced the slow steps of literary effort re- corded in the several colonies to the close of their ex- THE KNICKERBOCKER GROUP 95 istence as colonies ; and, immediately after the period of revolution, we liave recognized the new „, ,^ , ,^ ,-,,.1 c .. . . . Birth ol the and fresh impulse or creative imagination in New the little group of simple nature-poems by ^^^®'^*^^®- Philip Freneau, and imaginative power of somewhat differing type in the sombre but not altogether unreal romances of Charles Brockden Brown. But Freneau and Brown are only heralds of coming achievements ; of the appearance of a literature national in scope and of importance sufficient to command recognition by the people of England and the Continent, and possessed of an artistic excellence felt and enjoyed by all. There were evidences of literary activity in Boston, in Philadelphia, and in New York. Little groups of literati^ as they liked to call themselves, mightily inter- ested in the development of a national literature, gave an atmosphere that was helpful to literary effort ; and they themselves accomplished what could be accom- plished by interest, patriotism, and industry when joined with talent, modest if not mediocre. For some reason. New York took precedence over « y k Boston and Philadelphia in these first decades of the nineteenth century and not only sheltered a coterie of enthusiastic, congenial comrades of the pen, whose lively essays in both prose and verse provoked the humor of the town, but pushed into the light of more than local fame the names of Paulding, Halleck, Drake, and Dana ; and before the quarter mark in the century was reached had produced two of the century's greatest writers, Irving and Cooper. These are the Knickerbocker writers, so called in deference to the old Dutch traditions of Manhattan, the spirit of which was directly inherited by most of them, and the influence of which appeared to some extent in their work. In 1825, the poet Bryant came to live in New York, and his THE NEW LITERATURE 97 name is therefore grouped with those aLeady men- tioned, although not a native of the state. He was, however, of their generation and, like Halleck and Dana, an adopted son of New York. The significance of these first decades of the nine- teenth century in their relation to the beginnings of the new literature will appear when we note the dates of the following events. It was in 1807 that the Ir- vings, together with their friend Paulding, published the first of the anonymous Salmagundi papers ; in 1809, appeared the humorous masterpiece, the Knick- erhocher History of New Yorh. In 1817 it was that the editors of the North American Revieio — itself a publication only two years old — printed Bryant's great poem Thanatopsis and his Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood. Irving's Sketch-Book^ appearing in 1819, established that writer's place permanently in the leadership of American letters. In 1821, Cooper published his second novel — and first success — The Spy ; and that same year was further signalized in a literary way by the printing at Boston of Br3^ant's first volume of verse. By 1825, Irving had added Bracehridge Hcdl and Tales of a Traveller to his ear- lier volumes ; Cooper had written The Pioneers and The Pilot. Bryant had published among additional poems The Yelloio Violet^ To a Waterfowl, Green Piver, A Winter Piece, and A Hymn to Death. In comparison with the works of contemporary Brit- ish writers, this brief list of American publications ap- pears modest indeed ; for by 1825 Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey had produced all that was characteristic of their work ; Keats had died in 1821, Shelley in 1822, and Byron in 1824 ; Scott had written the last of the Waverley novels; Tom Moore had reached the height of his popularity ; Charles 98 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Lamb had published the first series of the Essays of Elia ; De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium- Eater had appeared in 1821 ; and Macaulay's first essay, that on Milton^ was printed in 1825. And yet, although meagre when brought thus in comparison with the literature of the mother-land, this beginning of our national literature is after all not so insignificant as it may seem ; it was a beginning, and the question once derisively put in 1820, by Sidney Smith, a witty Englishman — " Who reads an American book ? " — could now be answered, in 1825, affirmatively by many of his countrymen. Before considering in detail the work of the three prominent Americans in this group, let us note briefly some . of the minor authors who are associated with them. James Kirke Paulding was a typical member of the James K Knickerbocker group ; he was of Dutch de- Pauiding, scent and made good use of the Dutch tradi- tions in his most successful work, a novel, published in 1831, entitled The Dutchman's Fireside, A relative by marriage of William Irving, Paulding was early associated with Washington Irving and his brother, William, in the production of the humorous Salmagundi papers which appeared in 1807. Subse- quently Paulding undertook, alone, a new series of the Salmagundi^ which came out in 1819-20. During the period of the War of 1812, he produced two clever satires directed at the British navy — one of these. The Lay of the Scotch Fiddle^ being a parody upon Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel, In 1818, he published The Backicoodsman^ a metrical narrative of frontier life in six books — not a strong performance. Paulding was altogether overshadowed in a literary way by Irving and Cooper, both of whom he attempted to follow. He wrote considerable verse, nothing of which attains to FITZ-GREENE HALLECK 99 excellence, and of his novels three only call for men- tion : Koningsmarhe^ the long Finne^ dealing with the Swedish settlements (1823), The Dutehmaiis Fireside^ a study of old Dutch life along the Hudson (1831), and Westward Ho I a tale of Kentucky (1832). Paulding was also the author of a popular life of Washington, published in 1835. He served as Secretary of the Navy under Van Buren. One of the most energetic members of this New York coterie was Fitz-Greene Halleck, a descend- ^^^ ant of the apostle, John Eliot. Halleck was Haiieck, born in Guilford, Connecticut, and in 1811 ^^°~^^^^- came to New York and was employed in a banking- house as clerk. He later entered the office of John Jacob Astor, who at his death left Halleck an annuity of forty pounds. Halleck was a poet from his youth, and three or four of his compositions are not likely to slip from the memory of American readers so long as there are schoolboys to declaim the stirring lines of his Marco Bozzaris^ or men to quote by the graves of their friends his simple and tender poem, On the Death of Drake. Oi Halleck's poems, three are considered notable: Alnwick Castle (1827), Burns (1827), and Marco Boz- zarls (1825). The strength of the poet is in these com- positions ; but perhaps this is surpassed by the pathos and sincerity of the beautiful elegy on Drake — " Green be the turf above thee, • Friend of ray better days ! None knew thee but to love thee, Nor named thee but to praise." A long poem, Fanny^ in the style of Byron's Beppo^ written in 1819, was popular at the time, but has fallen into oblivion. Halleck retired on his annuity in 1849, returned to his old home in Connecticut and there spent the remainder of his days. Upon the eightieth anniver- 100 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY sary of his birth, a monument erected by his townspeople over his grave v^^as dedicated to his memory — the first honor of the kind bestowed upon an American poet. The association of Halleck and Drake in the most inti- mate of friendships is one of the pleasant in- Drake, cidents of our literary history. Joseph Rodman 1795-1820. j)j,g^]^g ^^g born in New York, became a stu- dent of medicine, wrote but a brief amount of verse, — although that was of a high quality, — and died at twenty-five. " There will be less sunshine for me here- after," said. Halleck, " now that Joe is gone." The two poets joined in contributing to the New York Evening Post a series of anonymous poems, under the general title of The Croakers. These appeared in 1819 ; they were light, satiric, often personal in aim, and capital exami3les of what is frequently called " society verse." They excited a great deal of comment at the time, and are said to have been a subject of conversation in drawing-rooms, book-stores, and coffee-houses on Broadway and throughout the city. One of the best poems in the series was Drake's The American Flag, of which the concluding lines — " Forever float that standard sheet ! Where hreathes the foe but falls hefore us, With Freedom's soil beneath our feet, And Freedom's banner streaming o'er us ? " — were the suggestion of Halleck. Drake's principal composition is a long but graceful poem, full of charm and animated by a most poetical fancy, entitled The Culprit Fay. It was written in 1816, and grew out of a discussion in the group of poets — Cooper being with them at the time — as to the pos- sibility of drawing from American streams poetical inspiration like that found in the historic and legend- haunted rivers of Scotland. Drake affirmed that it RICHARD HENRY DANA 101 could be done; and in three days, it is said, he pro- duced his brilliant poem, the scene of which is laid in the Highlands of the Hudson. Although written pre- vious to the appearance of Irving's Sketch-Booh^ the poem was not published until 1835. Richard flenry Dana was born in Boston, and was one of the associate editors of the North Amer- Richard lean JievieWj when Bryant's early poems were J®"^ accepted for that publication. In 1821, he 1787-1879. began in New York to publish a new magazine, The Idle Man^ in which Bryant's poems continued to appear. When Bryant arrived in New York and took his first editorial position in charge of the New York Review^ in 1825, he included Dana's poem, The Dying Raven^ along with Halleck's Marco Bozzaris^ in the first issue of that magazine. Mr. Dana did not produce many poems. A volume, entitled The Buccaneer^ and Other JPoems, was published in 1827. One lyric. The Little Beach-Bird^ has found a permanent place. It is inter- esting to note that the poet was one of several descend- ants of Anne Bradstreet to attain some distinction in verse. The larger part of his long life was lived in re- tirement, and his influence in the development of our literature was perhaps strongest indirectly in his criti- cism, and in his personal association with his literary friends. His son, Richard Henry Dana, Jr. (1815-82), is even more widely known than his father, as the author of the popular narrative. Two Years before the Mast (1840). Among the minor poets belonging to this period of fresh beginnings, several call for mention ^^^^^ who were not directly in association with Minor the Knickerbocker group. John Pierpont (1785-1866), a native of Connecticut and later a Unita- rian clergyman in Boston, was the author of the spirited 102 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Warre7i's Address^ and of the poem, The Pilgrim Po- thers. His Airs of Palestine^ and Other Poems was published first in 1816. James Gates Percival (1795- 1857), a man of remarkable versatility, also Connecticut born, was a physician, a geologist, and a linguist. He wrote fluently — although little of his work is familiar now. The Coral Grove is one of his brightest composi- tions. His first volume of poems, Prometheus^ appeared in 1820. Lydia Huntley Sigourney (1791-1865), born at Norwich, Connecticut, and for many years head of a famous select school for girls, which she established at Hartford in 1814, was a pioneer in the cause of higher education for women. She was a prolific writer, the author of fifty-three volumes in prose and verse. Her first volume of Moral Pieces appeared in 1815. Emma H. Willard (1787-1870), another Connecticut woman who became famous as an educator, — she con- ducted the Troy Female Seminary 1821 to 1838, — published a volume of poems in 1830, in which was included the well-known song. Pocked in the Cradle of the Deep, (xeorge Morris (1802-64), who was the author of many poems of sentiment popular in his day, is now remembered for only one — Woodman., Spare that Tree. Samuel Woodworth (1785-1842) is like- wise remembered as the author of one song — The Old Oaken Bucket (1826). John Howard Payne (1791-1852), whose name is immortalized because of his Home., Sweet Home^ was an actor and writer of plays. He was born in New York and lived a wander- ing life. His tragedy, Brutus (1818), was his most successful drama. The opera, Claris the Maid of Milan^ in which occurs the famous song, was written in Paris, in 1823, and produced at Covent Garden, London. Payne was United States Consul at Tunis from 1841 until his death. In 1883, his remains were removed to OTHER MINOR POETS 103 Washington, and there interred. Francis Scott Key (1779-1843) wrote The Star- Spancjled Banner in 1814. Key was detained as a prisoner on board a British man-of-war during the bombardment of Fort McHenry ; all night he watched the engagement with keenest anxiety, and in the morning wrote the words of his song. It was printed immediately and to the air of AnacreoJi in Heaven was sung all over the land. nother national anthem, America^ was written, in^- 1832, by Rev. Samuel F. Smith (1808-1905). The" name of Washington Allston (1778-1843) should be included in this group, for the most distinguished of our earlier American painters was also a leader in literary culture and the author of numerous graceful poems. James Abraham Hillhouse (1789-1841), of New Haven, was one of the earliest of Americans to attempt the poetic drama on the lines of Byron and Shelley. His Z^ramas appeared in 1839. Charles Fenno Hoffman (1806-84), founder of the Knicherhocher llagazme in 1833, was the author of light and brilliant verse. His career was closed by insanity in 1849. In/3 ^8 +i ■"- "e i< ^ M s? ■" S •? < (^^^ '■^ . .2 lia is -2 5 :±;'ttd ^'35 f-« 00 O "^3 00 00 Q il I ^'I^S « o r-^ $ s5^ ^1 1^^ :-2 gM '•2.2 . ^ .OS s r?^ s .5 . fl , g JO j< 7* . — GO'S ~ co-H 00 M :g3d .^S ii; 3 S E^ rt , mois s a; soiwp: ^ b'-kS «" a^ 00 S -> "S «^ 2^ :) ~ — ^7". n -ry SuCCeSSlon one of which. The Poets and Poetry of Eii- of the rope, contained numerous translations made by the poet. Then followed, in 1846, the volume enti- tled The Belfry of Bruges and Other Poems ; and in 1847, the first long narrative poem, Evangeline. Kavanagh, a Tale, was completed in 1849, and a fresh 224 THE NEW ENGLAND POETS volume of verse, The Seaside and the Fireside^ ap- peared in 1850. Another dramatic work, The Golden Legend^ was finished in 1851. In 1854, Longfellow be- gan working upon Hiawatha, The work was completed and published in 1855. Of the two narrative poems it is necessary to speak m some detail. The pathetic incident on which the story of Evangeline is based was related first to Hawthorne, as a subject well suited to romance; the novelist, however, made no use of the material thus obtained, but willingly resigned the theme to Long- fellow, who had shown a lively interest in the tale. ^ There was no question of the poet's success. This beautiful idyll of the Acadian exiles, with its plaintive romance of Evangeline's weary, heart-breaking search for the lover so ruthlessly separated from his bride, was immediately accepted as the crown of the poet's work. And it is worthy of note that the poem was finished upon his fortieth birthday. Longfellow had chosen a peculiar metre for Evange- „ ^ line. The use of hexameter verse had not Hozameters. been deemed consistent with the principles of English versification, and had not been employed with marked success. It had, however, been used by the Ger- man poet Goethe with very pleasing effect in his pas- toral poem Hermann und Dorothea ; and Longfellow, who had experimented slightly with the measure, deter- mined to use it here. The poet was invariably happy in his choice of metrical forms ; the reader of his poems •^ When Evangeline appeared, Hawthorne wrote to Longfellow that he had read it " with more pleasure than it would be decorous to ex- press." The poet, replying-, after thanking Hawthorne for a friendly no- tice of the poem in a Salem paper, said : " Still more do I thank you for resigning to me that legend of Acady. This success I owe entirely to you, for being willing to forego the pleasure of writing a prose tale which many people would have taken for poetry, that I might write a poem which many people take for prose." HIAWATHA 225 is inevitably struck with the appropriateixess of the measure to the theme. As Dr. Holmes says in respect to the metre of Evangeline : — *' The hexameter has been often criticised, but I do not be- lieve any other measure could have told that lovely story with such effect, as we feel when carried along the tranquil current of these brimming, slow-moving, soul-satisfying lines. . . . The poet knows better than his critics the length of step which best befits his muse." ^ The second of these great compositions makes use of a distinctively native theme. Longfellow had for some time been attracted to the American Indian as a subject, and finally hit upon a plan for weaving together a number of the Indian traditions in narrative form. The Finnish epic Kalevala suggested an appropriate measure and in other ways served as a model for the poem, which he wrote with intense enjoy- ment. As in the case of Evangeline^ the form selected proved remarkably apt to the treatment of this primi- tive theme. The trochaic tetrameter, — using classic terminology, — and the employment of parallelism and repetition, gave an elemental effect to the narrative that was both appropriate and rhythmically pleasing. Hiawatha is the epic of the red man, and the romantic, the heroic phase of Indian nature has never been better presented. Considerable criticism greeted its appear- ance, and there were many charges of plagiarism; nevertheless, the poem was immensely popular, and is now generally regarded as the poet's most original and most satisfactory achievement. The demands of the class-room had increased with the years and college duties became more and more 1 Introduction to the poem, in the Cambridg-e Edition of Long-fellow's poems. See also the Life of Longfellow, by Samuel Longfellow, vol. ii, p. 72. 226 THE NEW ENGLAND POETS irksome to the poet. " This college work is like a great In Middle hand laid on all the strings of my lyre, ^^^' stopping their vibrations," he writes in his journal in 1850. In 1854, Longfellow resigned the pro- fessorship and gave himself wholly to his vocation as a poet. Following Hiawatha^ his next important work was the delightful Puritan pastoral. The Courtship of Miles Standish — a bit of refreshing human comedy drawn from the sober annals of Plymouth. The poem was published in 1858. Three years later, in 1861, the happiness and serenity of Longfellow's life were sud- denly broken by the shocking accident which caused the death of his wife. Sitting in the library of their home, sealing some packages of their little daughter's curls, Mrs. Longfellow's dress caught fire. She died the following day. The deep grief of his loss the poet bore in silence. After his death, there was found in his port- folio the sonnet entitled The Cross of Snow^ written in 1879, the single utterance of his grief in verse. " There is a mountain in the distant West That, sun-defying-, in its deep ravines Displays a cross of snow upon its side. Such is the cross I wear upon my breast These eighteen years, through all the changing scenes And seasons, changeless since the day she died." To occupy his mind and alleviate his sorrow, the poet began a translation of Dante. Upon this he worked at intervals for several years. The Divine Comedy was completed in 1867 ; it holds a place among the best ver- sions of Dante's work in English. Meanwhile the first part of Tales of a Wayside Inn had appeared in 1863 ; in 1872 and 1873, the remaining parts were published. In the spring of 1868, Mr. Longfellow went again to Europe, accompanied by his children. The poet was everywhere accorded a royal welcome. The Universities THE LATER VOLUMES 227 of Oxford and Cambridge honored him *vith their de- grees, and Queen Victoria received him as her Honors in guest at Windsor. The winter was spent in England. Florence and Rome and (after again visiting England) the party returned home in the fall. Longfellow's most ambitious, but not most successful, dramatic work, Christus: a Mystery (which The Later includes The Divine Tragedy^ The Golden volumes. Legend^ and The New England Tragedies)^ was pub- lished, complete, in 1872 ; The Masque of Pandora and Other Poems^ in 1875 ; Keramos and Other Poems., in 1878 ; Ultima Thide, in 1880, and In the Ilarhor, in 1882. Michael Angelo, a Fragment^ did not appear until 1884. The most notable among these later compositions was the Morituri Salutamus ^ written for the fiftieth anni- versary of the famous class at Bowdoin. Longfellow's last years can hardly be termed declin- ing years. His health continued vigorous, his closing spirit was cheerful, his house remained a cen- ^^y*- tre of sociability. His children married and established their homes around him. Outside the circle of distin- guished men in Cambridge and Boston who cherished his friendship, he might well have called all his country- men his friends, for no American man of letters was ever so widely beloved. His popularity, indeed, had its drawbacks. It was sometimes amusing and often an- noying to the poet, — this insistent pressure of friendly feeling. His time and strength were absorbed by well- meaning but inconsiderate visitors whose only errand was to express their admiration. Requests for auto- graphs were numberless ; in one day Longfellow wrote, sealed, and directed seventy replies. One ingenious lady in Ohio sent him a hundred cards, with the request that he would write his name on each, that she might distribute ^ " We who are about to die salute you." 228 THE NEW ENGLAND POETS them among her guests at a party which she was to give upon the poet's birthday ! No account of Longfellow's personality would be „^ „ . complete without reference to his love for chil- ThePoet , tx. i • ^ • i i • • and the dren. His relation to them was singularly inti- Chiidron. ^^^0 an^j tender. Among his sweetest poems are those which treat of childhood. It was no perfunctory greeting that he uttered : — " Come to me, ye children ! And whisper in my ear What the birds and the winds are singing In your sunny atmosphere. " For what are all our contrivings, And the wisdom of our books, When compared with your caresses, And the gladness of your looks ? *' Ye are better than all the ballads That ever were sung or said ; For ye are living poems. And all the rest are dead." ^ And the children came to him. On his seventy-second birthday they brought him the famous chair made from the wood of the " spreading chestnut tree " which had shaded the doorway of the village smith. They con- tinued to come collectively and individually ; for the warm-hearted poet gave orders that no child who wished to see the chair should be excluded ; and the muddy print of many a little shoe was left on the floor of the hall in Craigie house. Longfellow's seventy-fifth birth- day was celebrated in the public schools throughout the land. His last visitors were four Boston schoolboys who had asked permission to call, whom the poet received -^ « . with accustomed kindliness. That nio^ht he had a sudden attack of illness, and six days later, March 24, 1882, he died. His last poem, 27ie Bells of 1 The Children. LONGFELLOW'S SIMPLICITY 229 San Bias, was written a few days before his death. One finds a touch of prophecy in the closing lines — the last verses that he wrote : — " Out of the shadows of night The world rolls into light ; It is daybreak everywhere." Among the many tributes to the memory of the poet there was none quite so touching, none more apt, than the comment made by Emerson at Longfellow's funeral. He was then within a month of his own departure, his memory was shattered, and he showed all the weakness of his pathetic decline. Gazing intently upon the face of the dead poet, he turned to a friend and said : " That gentleman was a sweet, beautiful soul, but I have en- tirely forgotten his name." ^ Longfellow's name is safe ; and the many thousands who still read and love his poems continue to recognize therein the " sweet, beautiful soul " of the poet. His body lies in Mount Auburn, the resting-place of many famous contemporaries. The qualities which especially mark the poetry of Longfellow are simplicity of style, beautiful ^q^xio imagery, moral earnestness, and narrative ^"**' power. So simple is this poet that many critics pronounce him commonplace. Unquestionably he pos- sessed what may be termed the common mind. He was not a profound thinker, not one of " the bards sublime " ; he spoke out of the common experience of life, and it was this in large degree which gave him the comprehension and affection of the common people.^ 1 Emerson at Home and Abroad, by M. D. Conway. 2 " The poet has nothing to tell, except from what is actually or potentially common to the race." " Courage in frankly trusting the personal as the universal, is what made Longfellow . . . sovereign of 230 THE NEW ENGLAND POETS We must remember, also, that when we dwell upon the commonplaceness or the triteness of Longfellow's sentiment, we are often emphasizing the fact that the verse of our criticism has become worn by our own use. Longfellow shared generously in the gift bestowed Beauty oi ^^ ^^^ poets, the sense of beauty and the power Imagery. of figurative expression. Not at all like the magical art of Poe, Longfellow's art, impassionate, quiet, restrained, often pensive, sometimes melancholy, — never morbid, — is equally distinctive and equally true. He, too, had a rare felicity of phrase which gave artistic setting to his figures. The following passages are characteristic illustrations of his simple but effec- tive imagery : — " From the cool cisterns of the midnight air my spirit drank repose." * *• She struck where the white and fleecy waves Looked soft as carded wool, But the cruel rocks, they goared her side Like the horns of an angry bull." ^ " Silently one by one, in the infinite meadows of heaven. Blossomed the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels." ^ " Life had long been astir in the village, and clamorous labor Knocked with its hundred hands at the golden gates of the morn- ing." * " For age is opportunity no less Than youth itself, though in another dress, And as the evening twilight fades away The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day." * Like Bryant, Longfellow is usually impressed by the The Moral " lesson " in the thing he sees, and often tags Element. his poem with a moral that is obvious enough to be left unformulated. Yet the happy expression of more hearts than any other poet of his generation and more than any other poet who has lived." — W. D. Howells, North American Review^ 1907. 1 Hymn to Night. ^ The Wreck of the Hesperus. * Evangeline. * Evangeline. ^ Morituri Salutamus. LYRIC AND DRAMATIC POEMS 231 these wise observations is far from unattractive to the average American reader ; and through them he won his way to the hearts of many. Of this didactic ten- dency we may take as familiar examples A Psalm of Life and The Rainy Day^ in which the moral lesson is the main purpose of each. In The Village Black- smith we are reminded of Wordsworth's manner : — " Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend, For the lesson thou hast taught ! " It is as a writer of narrative poems that Longfellow attains his chief distinction. No other Amer- gj^^ ^ ican poet compares with him in this field. Narrative. Not only the three long poems which deal with themes of national interest, but also the twenty-two tales of the Wayside Inn series and the numerous ballads like The Skeleton in Armor^ The Wreck of the Hesperus^ King Witlafs Drinking-Hoim, and The Discoverer of the North Cape must be taken in account. Not all are of equal merit ; The Tales of a Wayside Inn ^ attain a varying degree of success, but this body of narrative poems as a whole proves the poet to have been a mas- ter of the story-telling art. As a lyric poet, Longfellow ranks with the best. Many of his poems are songs. We think at ^^^ ^^ once of The Rainy Day, The Bridge, The Dramatic Day is Done, Curfew, Stars of the Summer Night, Resignation, Sandalphon, The Children, The 1 The best of these Tales are included in Part I of the series. Taul Revere's Ride, King Robert of Sicily, and The Saga of King Olaf have always been the most popular. The Wayside Inn was the old Red Horse Inn at Sudbury, Massachusetts. Of the personages who are made to tell the tales, the poet was T. W. Parsons, a minor poet, and translator of Dante ; the Sicilian, Luigi Monti, a friend of Mr. Long- fellow, an instructor at Harvard; the theologian, Professor Daniel Treadwell of Harvard ; the student, Henry Ware Wales ; the Spanish Jew, Israel Edrehi ; and the musician, the famous violinist, Ole Bull. 232 THE NEW ENGLAND POETS Children's Hour^ and many more. With the sonnet, too, Longfellow was eminently successful; those ad- dressed to Chaucer^ Shakespeare^ Milton^ and Keats are among his best. The poetical dramas are inferior as a group to the lyric and narrative poems. In The Spanish Student and The Golden Legend his imagi- nation is freer and stronger than in the other dramas, and the dramatic poem, Michael Angela^ shows the poet's creative power in its highest development. Longfellow's intimate acquaintance with the litera- Transia- tures of Europe and the influence of profes- tions. sional study are shown in the large number of facile translations from Scandinavian, German, French, Italian, and Spanish poets. They are marked by in- sight, sympathy, and felicity of interpretation ; and form no unimportant portion of his work. It is unfair and ill-considered to cite these productions as proof of the poet's lack of originality — as is sometimes done ; the translator of The Castle hy the Sea and The Song of the Silent Land is a poetical benefactor indeed. It is not altogether to his varied and rich accomplish- ment in verse that Longfellow's place in the affection of all Americans is due ; it was the charm of his personality that confirmed it. He ap- peared to be one among his countrymen, not above them. Calm in spirit, gentle in utterance, benignant, modest, the people saw in him the embodiment of the beautiful ideal he taught. They admired him as a poet, they trusted and revered him as a man ; they ac- cepted him as a teacher ; they crowned him poet laure- ate of the home. To English readers, also, he became endeared. In 1884, a bust of Longfellow was placed with appropriate honors in the Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey. It SUGGESTIONS FOR READING 233 was the first time that an American man of letters had been commemorated in this place of high memorial. We have seen that the poetry of Poe found great favor among the Latin peoples of Europe ; Longfellow's poems have enjoyed as wide if not wider popularity abroad. There is an anecdote which gives a remark- able illustration of this fact. It is said that on a French steamer sailing from Constantinople to Marseilles, a Russian, an Englishman, a Scotchman, a Frenchman, a Greek, and an American vied with one another in quotations from our poet.^ In America, certainly, Longfellow is still the poet of the people. It is an in- teresting fact that in the great printing establishment of Longfellow's publishers at Cambridge, there is always some edition of the poet in the press. His poems are printing continuously every working day in the year. Of the prose works of Longfellow, Hyperion will be found most interesting. Selections from the poems should suggestions include representative compositions in the various *or Reading, groups described in the text. The poetry of Longfellow is so familiar that particular directions are unnecessary. Houghton Mifflin Company publish the only complete editions of Long- fellow's Works. The Cambridge Edition of the poems, in one volume, is complete, and its bibliographical notes are admirable. In the Riverside Literature Series, The Court- ship of Miles Standish, Evangeline, Hiawatha, Tales of a Wayside Inn, are printed in separate numbers. The Life of Longfellow (3 vols.), by his brother, Samuel Longfellow, is the standard biography. The Longfellow in the American Men of Letters Series is by T. W. Higgin- son ; that in the G7xat Writers Series is by E. S. Robertson. The best brief biography is that by G. R. Carpenter, in the Beacon Biographies. Mrs. Annie Fields, in Authors and Friends, Edward Everett Hale, in Fireside Travels : Cam- ^ See Hig-ginson's Longfellow {American Men of Letters Series). 234 THE NEW ENGLAND POETS bridge Thirty Years Ago, and W. D. Howells, in My Liter- ary Friends and Acquaintance, have written interesting reminiscences of the poet. Valuable studies of Longfellow- are to be found in Richardson's American Literature (vol. ii),Stedman's Poets of America, Trent's History of Ameri- can Literature, Wendell's Literary History of America, and Vincent's American Literary Masters. An interesting book of reference is The Wayside Inn, its History and Litera- ture, by S. A. Bent. A delightful essay upon Longfellow is found in the Literary and Social Essays, by G. W. Curtis. Most noteworthy among the publications inspired by the one hundredth anniversary of Longfellow's birth are the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, by Charles Eliot Norton (Houghton Mifflin Company), The Centenary of Longfellow {Atlantic Monthly, March, 1907), by Bliss Perry, and the critical article in the North American Review, March, 1907, by W. D. Howells. II. JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER : 1807-18S2. December 17, 1807, — the year in which Longfellow was born, — occurred the birth of John Greenleaf Whit- tier, second in this group of New England poets and one whose memory stands next to that of Longfellow in the affection and reverence of the American people. Unlike Longfellow, Hawthorne, and Emerson, Whittier was neither city-born nor college-bred. In his prepara- tion for life the academic element was entirely lacking. He was a country boy of the genuine New England stock ; for one hundred and sixty years his stalwart an- cestors had cultivated the Whittier farm, and the very house in which he was born had been built by the great- great-grandfather of the poet in 1688. The birthplace of Whittier lies a few miles from the ^jjg busy little city of Haverhill, in the northeast Birthplace, corner of Massachusetts. It was and is a pleasant region, rather lonely, not so ruggedly romantic 236 THE NEW ENGLAND POETS as that in whicli young Bryant learned to commune with nature, yet full of pastoral beauty. "Our old homestead nestled under a long range of hills," says Whittier ; " it was surrounded by woods in all direc- tions save to the southeast, where a break in the leafy wall revealed a vista of low green meadows, picturesque with wooded islands and jutting capes of upland. Through these a small brook, noisy enough as it foamed, rippled and laughed down its rocky falls by our garden side, wound, silently and scarcely visible, to a still larger stream, known as the Country Brook. This brook in its turn, after doing duty at two or three saw and grist mills, the clack of which we could hear in still days across the intervening woodlands, found its way to the great river, and the river took up and bore it down to the great sea." * The " great river " was the Merrimac, down which Thoreau made his interesting expedition. It was not far to the beaches of Salisbury, Rye, and Hampton, where the poet pitched his imaginary tent, with the great stretch of salt marsh to the westward, the limit- less reach of the ocean in the foreground, the high bluff of Great Boar's Head to the north, and to the south the broad mouth of the Merrimac, with the ancient town of Newburyport just beyond. With these localities, Whit- tier has made his readers familiar. If one would catch a glimpse of Whittier's boyhood, The Country ^^ ^^^^ ^^^ '^^ sketched in The Barefoot Boy; Boy. if he would know the spirit of the household, he may find it in Snow-Bound. The farm itself was not a very profitable one ; it was encumbered with debt, and strict economy was the law ; yet it was a comfortable home, and the picture it left in the poet's 1 The Fish I Did nH Catch, Prose Works, vol. i. See also My Summer with Dr. Singletary and Yankee Gypsies in the same volume. THE COUNTRY BOY 237 memory is an inviting one. The " old rude-furnished room " with its " whitewashed wall and sagging beam," its " motley braided mat " upon the floor, and its ample fireplace ruddy with the flame of crackling logs, was a scene of contentment and homely cheer. " Shut in from all the world without, We sat the clean-winged hearth about, Content to let the north-wind roar In baffled rage at pane and door, While the red logs before us beat The frost-line back with tropic heat. " And, for the winter fireside meet, Between the andirons' straddling feet. The mug of cider simmered slow, The apples sputtered in a row, And, close at hand, the basket stood With nuts from brown October's wood. " What matter how the night behaved ? What matter how the north- wind raved ? Blow high, blow low, not all its snow Could quench our hearth-fire's ruddy glow." Here the winter evenings were passed with story-tell- ing, or talk of guest, or poring over one of the scanty volumes — perhaps the almanac, or the poems of the Quaker Ellwood, or the Journal of John Woolman,^ or " The one harmless novel, mostly hid From younger eyes " ^ — a volume of Scott, read privily. But one bright day the district schoolmaster brought a copy of Robert Burns into this country home and read aloud the songs of Scotland's peasant poet. The New England farmer's son, then fourteen, listened with de- light, and felt his own soul kindled with poetic fire. He began to write rhymes of his own, and the verses were passed about and admired. He borrowed all the books ^ See page 71. ^ Snow-Bound. 238 THE NEW ENGLAND POETS that were available, especially poems ; one of his first purchases was a copy of Shakespeare's plays. His par- ents were devout Quakers, and it was natural enough that oftener than any other volume, the Bible was in his hands. Meanwhile the youth was working hard at plow and scythe, steadily employed in the severe manual labor of the farm. District school he attended during the twelve weeks' session every winter. Whittier's father was a subscriber to the Free Press^ a weekly paper which young William Lloyd Garrison was then editing at Newburyport; and to this publication Mary Whittier, a sister two years older than the youthful poet, sent anonymously one of his early compositions. It was printed by the editor; and one day when the eighteen-year-old lad was mending fences the postman tossed him the weekly paper with his verses in the "Poet's Corner." Whittier could hardly believe his eyes. He stood dazed, reading the lines, scarcely comprehending the fact that one of his poems was actually in print. It was not long thereafter that Garrison himself drove over to have a look at his new contributor ; and the lifelong friendship of these two men was begun. The visitor urged Mr. Whittier not to discourage the literary ambitions of his son, and advised that the youth be given an education. While not indifferent to his son's desires, Mr. Whittier was a hard-headed, hard-working practical man, upon whom the necessity of a livelihood pressed heavily. True to the poet's characterization of him in Snow-Bound^ — " A prompt, decisive man, no breath Our father wasted : " — his terse response to this appeal was, " Sir, poetry will not give him bread ! " But Whittier yearned for an education. His health was delicate ; indeed, it had already suffered from the THE JOURNALIST 239 hard labor of the farm, and it was evident that his physique could not endure the heavy demands The of the agricultural life. It was not long after Academy. Garrison's visit, therefore, that young Whittier ob- tained his father's consent to his attendance at the academy in Haverhill, provided that he could earn the means. So the farm-boy learned how to make slippers and labored at the shoemaker's bench. Thus he paid his tuition for a six months' term in the Haverhill school. The next winter he taught in the country dis- trict and earned sufficient funds to secure another term at the academy. This was the extent of Whittier's scholastic training. A college course he was compelled to renounce for lack of funds, and a disinclination to accept assistance unearned. He had read a surprising number of books, — sometimes walking miles to secure a coveted volume, — had written a great deal of verse, and was locally known as a poet. He even planned to publish an edition of his poems, but the project failed. Under the circumstances, Whittier was fortunate in the opportunities which now offered for a ^.j^^ career. In 1829, he became editor of a jour- JournaUst. nal published in Boston called the American Manufac- turer^ which supported the idea of a protective tariff, and also contained literary matter. The position carried no particular distinction with it, and the salary was only nine dollars a week; but it served as a good school for a young writer. Whittier wrote regularly for his paper, both prose and verse, yet had considerable leisure for reading, and making acquaintance with the world. In August, his father's illness called him home, and he was kept busy in the management of the farm until his father's death. Early in 1830, he became editor of the Haverhill Gazette. This engagement con- 240 THE NEW ENGLAND POETS tinued for six months, when he assumed editorial charge of the New England Review^ published in Hartford. That the young Quaker of Haverhill had al- ready made some impression by his personality as well as by his pen is evident from the introduction now given him by George D. Prentice, the retiring editor of the Meview. "I cannot do less than congratulate my readers," said Prentice, " on the prospect of their more familiar acquaint- ance with a gentleman of such powerful energies and such exalted purity and sweetness of character. I have made some enemies among those whose good opinion I value, but no rational man can ever be the enemy of Mr. Whittier." ^ For a year and a half, Whittier retained this posi- tion, developing rapidly in power and in pro- In Hartford, r • i A- u u- ^4. fessional reputation. He gave his support to Henry Clay and upheld the principle of the tariff. "Whittier also enjoyed the society of the literary people more or less noted, who made their home in Hartford. Among the members of this interesting group were the poets James G. Percival and Mrs. Lydia Sigourney, whose writings were at this time widely read and ad- mired. It was in Hartford that Whittier, in 1831, published his first book, Legends of New England^ a volume of rather crude sketches, including some verse ; they had already appeared in the New England Mag- azine. These Legends were not thought by Whittier worthy of permanent place in his Prose Works; and the same judgment was placed by him on most of his early experiments in fictitious narrative. Of his poems written previous to 1833, there are few which have sur- vived. The spirited Song of the Vermonters^ a product of his school-days, The Vaudois Teacher^ and TJie ^ Pickard's Life of Whittier, vol. i. THE CRISIS 241 Star of Bethlehem are selected by Professor Carpenter as the only ones of poetic value. ^ From 1832 to 1836, Whittier was again upon the farm struggling to make a living for his mother, his sister, his aunt who lived with them, and himself. We may recall the situation at this period of the other writers whose lives have been al- ready noted. It was in 1832 that Emerson resigned his pastorate in Boston and retired to Concord ; Poe, re- cently discharged from West Point, was in Baltimore trying to support himself by hack-work for the maga- zines ; Hawthorne was dreaming in the seclusion of his hermit-like existence in Salem; Longfellow was now settled in his professorship at Bowdoin. Bryant, of course, representative of the earlier generation, had emerged from his period of struggle, and had been for three years editor of the Post. For Whittier, now in his twenty-fifth year, the future was full of uncertainty. Politics seemed to offer the only field of promise, but this field he hesitated to enter ; — as he wrote to Mrs. Sigourney, " There is something inconsistent in the char- acter of a poet and a modern politician." ^ A year later he wrote to the same correspondent : — " Of poetry I have nearly taken my leave, and a pen is getting to be something of a stranger to me. I have been com- pelled again to plunge into the political whirlpool, for I have found that my political reputation is more influential than my poetical." ^ But in 1833, Whittier's vocation was made clear. It was the turning-point in his life. The poet found in- spiration in an unexpected theme. ^ See Carpenter's John Greenleaf Whittier, p. 100. 2 Letter, February 2, 1832. ^ January, 1833. Both letters are quoted by Pickard and by Car- penter. 242 THE NEW ENGLAND POETS The anti-slavery movement, which five years earlier ^jjg had enlisted the extreme energies of the rad- Aboutionist. ical and lion-hearted Garrison, had already appealed to the humanitarian spirit of Whittier. He was as strong an idealist as any transcendentalist of Boston or Concord, and could not be otherwise than strongly sympathetic with the ultimate purpose of the movement. At twenty-six, therefore, the poet allied himself for better or for worse with the abolitionists. For twenty-seven years Whittier was one of the fore- most among those identified with this cause. He was a delegate to the first National Anti- Slavery Convention at Philadelphia in 1833, and signed its Declaration. Two years later he was mobbed in Concord, New Hamp- shire, while traveling with an anti-slavery agitator. He was threatened in Boston. In 1838, he took charge of the organ of the Society, the Pennsylvania Freeman^ published in Philadelphia, and again encountered a mob, which sacked and burned his office. Throughout this turbulent experience, his courage and zeal knew no limit. The shy and gentle Quaker had become the fear- less advocate of an unpopular crusade. In 1838, he published at his own expense a pamphlet, Justice and Expediency^ which exerted a wide influence. The verses which he wrote rang like the voice of a trumpet through the land. Randolph of Roanohe^ Massachusetts to Virginia^ To Faneuil Hall^ The Slave- Ships^ The Hunter of Men, Clerical Oppressors, The Pastoral Letter: these poems illustrate various phases of the poet's utterance during these momentous years. When we compare Whittier's Voices of Freedom (1846) with Longfellow's Poems on Slavery (1842), we feel at once the difference in the spirit of the two men in this mat- ter. Longfellow's verses are " literary " ; Whittier's are the vehement utterances of emotion and conviction. POLITICS AND JOURNALISM 243 " They were written," said the poet, " with up expectation that they would survive the occasions which called them forth : they were protests, alarm signals, trumpet-calls to action, words wrung from the writer's heart, forged at white heat, and of course lacking the finish and careful word-selection which reflection and patient brooding over them might have given. Such as they are, they belong to the history of the Anti-Slavery movement, and may serve as way-marks of its progress." ^ It is interesting to see how loyal Whittier remained to the ideals and inspirations of this period, the distinc- tive epoch in his life. " The simple fact is," he wrote to E. L. Godkin, " that I cannot be sufficiently grateful to the Divine Providence that so early called my atten- tion to the great interests of humanity, saving me from the poor ambitions and miserable jealousies of a self- ish pursuit of literary reputation." ^ The poet himself never regretted the fact that this alliance had placed these limitations upon his verse; he rather saw in it the real inspiration of his life, the true birth of poetical power. " My lad, if thee would win success, join thy- self to some unpopular but noble cause," said he in after years to a youth who came to him for counsel. In 1835, Mr. Whittier was elected as representative in the Massachusetts legislature, and at the pontics and close of the term was reelected ; but ill health Jo^u^aWsm. prevented further service. In 1836, the homestead at East Haverhill was sold and the adjoining town of Ames- bury became the poet's residence, his mother and his younger sister, Elizabeth, making his home. For a time he was again associated with one or another local news- paper; and from 1847 to 1860, he was corresponding 1 From the Introduction to Whittier^s Poetical Works, vol. i (Hough- ton Mifflin Company). 2 See John Greenleaf Whittier, by Bliss Perry. 244 THE NEW ENGLAND POETS editor of the New Era^^ published in Washington, the mouthpiece of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. It was in this paper that a number of Whittier's poems were first printed, including IcJiabod (1850), that most effective utterance of scorn and grief, inspired by the Seventh of March speech of Daniel Webster. But meanwhile Whittier's pen had not been employed Literary exclusively on writings for the cause. In 1836, Work. his narrative poem Mogg Megone had been published — afterward a thorn in the poet's flesh, for to his mature taste it did not appear deserving of a perma- nent place in his works. He said that it reminded him of "a big Indian in his war paint, strutting about in Sir Walter Scott's plaid." In 1843, Whittier published Xays of My Home. The Songs of Labor appeared in 1850; The Chapel of the Hermits^ and Other Poems^ in 1853; The Panorama^ and Other Poems, in 1856 ; and Nome Ballads, in 1860. In these collections Whittier was tak- ing his position as distinctively the poet of New England. Here are nature -poems: Hampton Beach, Lakeside, and Sujnmer hy the Lakeside, April, and The Last Walk in Autumn; narrative poems embodying old New England legends : Cassandra Southwick, Skipjjer Lreson's Ride^ and The Garrison of Cape Ann; idylls of the farm : Maud Muller, The Barefoot Boy ; 'dud in deeper vein, the exquisite ballad. Telling the Bees, quaintly remi- niscent of the New England setting, like the rest. Here, too, we find the strongly personal poems. My Psalm, Memories, and My Playmate. While Whittier's prose works have never attracted much attention, we may note the publication during this period of the following volumes: The Stranger in Lowell (1845), a series of sketches written while the writer was editing for a brief 1 Mrs. Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin was published first in the Era in 1851. IN WAR TIME 245 period a newspaper in the city named ; Tlie Supernatu- ralism of New England (1847); Leaves from Mar- garet SmitNs Journal (1849), an attractive study of life in the Massachusetts Bay Province, realistically pre- sented and worthy of a wider reading ; Old Portraits and Modern Sketches (1850), and Literary Recrea- tions and Miscellanies (1854), both volumes made up of essays and studies which had appeared in the Era, During the years of civil war, Whittier published two volumes. In War Time (1864) and Na- in war tional Lyrics (1865), which included the Time, poems inspired by the events of this exciting period. Like the earlier songs born of the movement against slavery, these compositions lack art and finish ; they were written in the ardor of conflict and sent immedi- ately into print without the opportunity to meditate and correct. Waiting and The Watchers are among the best of these war lyrics ; while in Barbara Frietchie the poet produced what is often described as the finest ballad of the struggle, although the story told in the poem is now discredited. Laus Deo^ the most stirring of these lyrics, has an interesting history. It was com- posed while the poet was sitting in the Friends' Meet- ing-House in Amesbury, at the regular Fifth Day meeting, listening to the bells of jubilation which an- nounced the passage of the constitutional amendment abolishing slavery, January 31, 1865. " It is donevj Clang of bell and roar of g-un Send the tidings up and down." "All sat in silence, but on his return to his home, he re- cited a portion of the poem, not yet committed to paper, to his housemates in the garden room. ' It wrote itself, rather sang itself, while the bells rang,' he wrote to Lucy Larcom." ^ 1 The Cambridge Edition of Whittier's Poems. 246 THE NEW ENGLAND POETS In 1866, Whittier published his masterpiece, Snow- gjjQ^_ Bounds a Winter Idyl. This beautiful poem Bound. is a thoroughly realistic picture of the farm in the grasp of a New England winter. The family- circle grouped in homely comfort about the roaring fireplace is that of the poet's own frugal home, but it is typical of rural life in the New England of the six- ties ; and the portraits are representative of the sturdy class to which the poet's family belonged. Snow- Bound takes its legitimate place beside Goldsmith's Deserted Village and Burns's The Cotter'' s Saturday Night. In Whittier's poem, the personal element is strong. The devoted sister, Elizabeth, "our youngest and our dearest," had died in 1864 ; perhaps it was this event which had stirred the poet's memories of childhood — certainly it was the inspiration of the ten- derest passage in the poem. Snow-Bound brought its author his first substantial pecuniary returns. The sales were very large ; from the first edition he received $10,000, and the financial burden of many years was permanently removed. The large success of Snow-Bound was repeated a TheTenton twelvemonth later, when the collection of nar- the Beach, rative poems entitled The Tent on the Beach appeared in the Atlantic Monthly. When the latter poems were published in book form they began to sell at the rate of a thousand copies a day. " This will never do," wrote the poet in humorous self -depreciation to his publisher, James T. Fields ; " the swindle is awful ; Bar- num is a saint to us." The comrades of the Beach were the poet himself, Mr. James T. Fields, and the noted traveler as well as all-around man of letters, Bayard Taylor. The poems thus grouped in the manner of Longfellow's Tales of a Wayside Inn (1863), are sombre in tone, sad stories of ill-fated ships and legends PERSONAL TRAITS 247 of the days of delusion ; no one of them has gained a strong hold on popular favor. The descriptions of the sea, and the familiar portrait of the poet — *' And one there was, a dreamer born, Who, with a mission to fulfil, Had left the Muses' haunts to turn The crank of an opinion-mill " ^ — these are the happiest touches in the work. Successive volumes of his verse continued to appear at frequent intervals during the remainder of Whit- tier's life. He was an old man in his eighty-fifth year, universally venerated, when the final volume was pub- lished. During these latter years the poet lived a retired and peaceful life, impelled thereto by delicate Atsnn- health and the natural shyness of his disposi- ^^''"^ tion. Yet he never lost interest in public affairs or his active sympathy with the ultimate results of that cause which had enlisted his energies in youth. The educa- tion of the freedmen in the South, the assistance of individuals who had made their way to the North, were matters of vital interest to him. He continued to make his home in Amesbury, but visited with friends in Hamp- ton Falls, or with relatives at Oak Knoll in Danvers. There was a quiet corner in the White Mountains where he loved to sojourn for a few weeks in the heat of summer ; and the artistic home of Celia Thaxter at the Isles of Shoals was also a favorite retreat. Whittier was the only one of this group of New Eng- land writers who never went abroad. Indeed, personal after the poet settled in the home at Ames- ^'**^*' bury, he seldom ventured far from his own fireside. The society of his kindred and of a few intimate friends he ^ Head the entire descrijjtion in the first poem of the collection. 248 THE NEW ENGLAND POETS dearly loved ; but he was too diffident to enjoy large companies, and he shrank from all publicity. The farmer of East Haverhill was most at home with com- mon folks, understanding them perfectly and talking with them in a language they could understand. He used the pronoun "thee," the Quaker form of address, and always remained heartily loyal to the simple man- ners of the Friends. The militant spirit of his anti- slavery poems wholly disappeared with the war, and only gentleness, universal good-will, and a beautiful sim- plicity of religious faith characterized his later verse. The popularity of Whittier increased among all classes of readers. His birthday, like that of Longfellow, was observed with noteworthy tributes of esteem. Upon his eightieth anniversary, the Governor of Massachu- setts with other distinguished citizens visited the poet at Oak Knoll to present the congratulations of his na- tive state. Upon one of these anniversary occasions, Whittier was deeply touched by a telegram sent by the Southern Forestry Congress assembled in Florida: — " In remembrance of your birthday, we have planted a live- oak tree to your memory, which, like the leaves of the tree, will be forever green." Together with his gentle dignity of bearing and his modest shyness of manner, Whittier possessed a keen sense of humor and had a homely wit that flashed out in conversation with his friends. Among these there were a number of distinguished women : Mrs. Stowe, Lucy Larcom, Alice and Phoebe Gary, Sarah Orne Jewett, Gelia Thaxter, and Mrs. James T. Fields. With Longfellow, Emerson, and Holmes, Whittier had a pleasant but not an intimate acquaintance. In per- sonal appearance the poet was tall and spare ; his eyes were unusually brilliant, large, and dark; his smile was PLACE IN LITERATURE 249 wonderfully benignant. Although he suffered much from ill health, he was patient, cheerful, and sweet- tempered. His final illness was brief. He died at Hamp- ton, September 7, 1892. Almost his last words were, "Love — love to all the world." The funeral services were held in the little garden of the home at Amesbury, and the poet was buried in the village cemetery in the family lot. In comparison with our other American poets, Whit- tier must be recognized as essentially provin- -y^jiityer's cial. Aside from the fact that a large body of Place in , . , , , . , Literature, his verse, the anti-slavery poems, was neces- sarily of temporary value, we must remember also that the best portion of his work belongs wholly to New England. It is nevertheless true that while this cir- cumstance places a limitation upon its scope, it does not detract from the strength and value of his poetry. While the poet has never received, like Longfellow and Poe, the recognition of other peoples than our own, this restriction of his field, with the fidelity and vividness of his interpretation, is precisely what gives to Whittier his chief distinction here at home. Nor was he in the larger sense a great poet. No one recognized the tech- nical faults of his verse more frankly than Whittier himself. " I should be hung for my bad rhymes anywhere south of Mason and Dixon's line," he wrote to Mr. Fields. That he did not hold a place with the men of profound insight, the " seers," he knew equally well. His own modest estimate of his poetic gifts he has ex- pressed in stanzas of unusual beauty, which to some extent are themselves a contradiction of the statement : " The rigor of a frozen clime, The harshness of an untaught ear, The jarring words of one whose rhyme Beat often Labor's hurried time, Or Duty's rugged march through storm and strife, are here. 250 THE NEW ENGLAND POETS " Of mystic beauty, dreamy grace, No rounded art the lack supplies ; Unskilled the subtle lines to trace, Or softer shades of Nature's face, I view her com.mon forms with unanointed eyes. " Nor mine the seer-like power to show The secrets of the heart and mind ; To drop the plummet-line below Our common world of joy and woe, A more intense despair or brighter hope to find." ^ The fine artistic taste of Longfellow Whittier lacked, as he lacked the culture of broad reading and of travel ; but he possessed the genuine love of nature and human- ity ; he had the virility of a strong character, free from all artificiality, the ardor of the truest patriotism, and, at the outset of his career, the inestimable advantage of consecration to an uplifting cause. The student will read, of course, the more noted of the Suggestions Anti-Slavery Poems, including those mentioned lor Reading, jn the preceding paragraphs. The Shoemakers and The Huskers will serve as good examples of The Songs of Labor. The group of Personal Poems contains Ichahod and The Lost Occasion, the two impressive compositions based upon the career of Daniel Webster, and also noteworthy tributes to his friends and associates, Garrison and Sumner. Here, likewise, are interesting verses inscribed to fellow poets : Bryant, Halleck, Bayard Taylor, Longfellow {The Poet and the Children), Lowell, and Holmes ; most happy of all, the poem entitled Burns. Among the Narrative and Legendary Poems are some of the most familiar of Whittier's compo- sitions : The Vaudois Teacher, Barclay of Ury (one of sev- eral which deal with Quaker themes). The Angels of Buena Vista, Maud Muller, Skipper Ireson's Bide, Telling the Bees, My Playmate, and Among the Hills. The Poems of Nature deserve some study in detail, and should be compared with those of Longfellow and Bryant. Here we find descrip- 1 Proem, prefixed to the edition of 1848. SUGGESTIONS FOR READING 251 tive passages of simple yet compelling beauty. Such is this stanza from Sunset on the Bearcamp : — " Touched by a light that hath no name, A glory never sung, Aloft on sky and mountain wall Are God's great pictures hung. How changed the summits vast and old ! No longer granite-browed, They melt in rosy mist ; the rock Is softer than the cloud ; The valley holds its breath ; no leaf Of all its elms is twirled : The silence of eternity Seems falling on the world." The following afford good illustrations of the poet's de- scriptive power : April, Summer by the Lakeside, The Last Walk in Autumn, The River Path, and The Trailing Ar- butus. It will be quickly noted that Whittier is always the subjective, the reflective poet ; that, like Bryant, he reads a lesson in the scene. Thus, when wandering in the dusk of twi- light along the river path, he comes upon a sudden opening in the hills through whose green gates streams the " long, slant splendor" of the setting sun, bridging "the shaded stream with gold," he thinks of the river of death — " the river dark " ; and prays : — " So let the hills of doubt divide, So bridge with faith the sunless tide ! " * And when, under dead boughs, amid dry leaves and moss, he finds the perfumed arbutus, he says : — *' As, pausing, o'er the lonely flower I bent, I thought of lives thus lowly, clogged and pent, Which yet find room. Through care and cumber, coldness and decay, To lend a sweetness to the ungenial day, And make the sad earth happier for their bloom." ^ Of the Religious Poems, one stands forth preeminent ; no other American poem has ever touched with its message of 1 The Biver Path. 2 Xhe Trailing Arbutus. 252 THE NEW ENGLAND POETS trustfulness the hearts of devout Christians more universally than The Eternal Goodness, — " I know not where His islands lift Their fronded palms in air ; I only know I cannot drift Beyond His love and care." The poem Our Master is also full of the deep religious feel- ing so characteristic of the Quaker poet, and from its stanzas have been arranged five of Whittier's best-known hymns. Special attention should be given to a few of the poems clas- sified as Subjective and Heminiscent. Here we find The Barefoot Boy, In School-Days, and Memories, poems which, besides affording intimate glimpses of the poet's child-life, are to be recognized as among his best compositions. To these must finally be added Snow-Bound, most intimately personal of all his works, and yet artistically his masterpiece. The more this little " classic " is read, the more its reader is impressed with its simple strength and beauty. The apt phrasing, the vivid portraiture, the happy touch of " local coloring," the easy movement of its simple measure, its idyllic atmosphere of domestic affection, of serene and untroubled faith — these are the qualities which give the poem its place with the best in our literature. The Complete Works of Whittier are published in seven . ^ , . volumes by Houghton Mifflin Company, also the Authorities. ^ ... -^ ^,.J^ o ., t^ t ^ Cambridge Jidition or the Jroems, m one volume. Snow-Bound and The Tent on the Beach, together with other poems, are published in two numbers of the River- side Literature Series. The Life and Letters of John G, Whittier (2 vols.), by Samuel T. Pickard, is the standard biography. The best brief biography is the Whittier in the American Men of Letters Series, by G. R. Carpenter. The little book Whittier : Notes of his Life and of his Friend- ships, by Mrs. Annie Fields, is a charming study of the man. Whittier-Land, by S. T, Pickard, is also valuable. In criti- cism, consult Stedman's Poets of America, Vincent's Ameri- can Literary Masters, and the histories of American litera- JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 253 ture by Richardson and Trent. John Greenlcaf Whittier, by Bliss Perry (a brief study of the poet), and Whittier for To-day, by the same writer, in the Atlantic Mo7ithly for De- cember, 1907, are appreciative memorials of the hundredth anniversary of the poet's birth. III. JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL: 1819-1891. James Russell Lowell, the youngest of the New Eng- land group and the most versatile, was born in Cam- bridge, February 22, 1819. His American ancestry dated from colonial times, and, like Emerson's, was throughout representative . . . ° ■•■ Ancestry. of the academic class ; his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather were graduates of Harvard Col- lege. It was Lowell's grandfather who, in 1780, intro- duced into the Bill of Rights of the state the clause abolishing slavery in Massachusetts. An uncle was the founder of the Lowell Institute in Boston. The poet's father was pastor of the West Church in that city. Mrs. Lowell, a woman of intensely imaginative mind, a lover of poetry and music, was of Scotch parent- age, her father having been a native of the Orkney Islands. The home of the Lowells, appropriately known as Elm wood, was situated not far beyond the Craigie house, somewhat off the main avenue of travel, a large mansion, surrounded by trees — a "bowery loneliness" which drew the bluebirds, orioles, and robins; beyond — the meadows, a stretch of marsh, and the Charles River, — " a stripe of nether sky, Now hid by rounded apple-trees between, Whose gaps the misplaced sail sweeps bellying by, Now flickering- golden through a woodland screen." ^ ^ An Indian- Summer Reverie. 254 THE NEW ENGLAND POETS " Ah, this is a pleasant place ; I wonder who lives here, what little boy" — his father said one day to James, as they returned from a drive and passed through the gate of Elmwood. Within the house were books, Rev. Mr. Lowell's well-selected library, among which the boy browsed knowingly. As a child he was read to sleep from Tlie Faerie Queene^ and rehearsed its ad- venturous episodes to his playmates. After the first study days had been passed in attend- ance at a classical school in Cambridge, where OoUoge. , . , Latin and Greek were the principal branches taught, young Lowell entered Harvard College in 1834 — two years before Longfellow took up the duties of his professorship. Here Lowell found further oppor- tunity for wide and varied reading. In his own words, he read " almost everything except the text-books pre- scribed by the Faculty." After several whimsical breaches of academic discipline, Lowell, near the close of the senior year, was " rusticated," being required to make his residence in Concord, there to remain until Commencement Day. His father and mother were at the time absent in Europe. The young man had already been elected class-poet, and during his enforced stay in the pleasant village where Emerson had recently settled, the student-poet worked upon his production. With Emerson, who was then thirty-five, Lowell now made per- sonal acquaintance, walking and talking with him. One of the events of his college course had been the delivery of the famous Phi Beta Kappa address by Emerson at the preceding Commencement in 1837, which had prof oundly impressed the minds of the young men who heard it.^ Still this independent youth, who always persisted in thinking for himself, was at this time by no means a docile disciple. In his class-poem he satirized the transcendent- ^ See page 164. 256 THE NEW ENGLAND POETS alists along with the abolitionists, although before many- months elapsed he allied himself strenuously with both. The poem, which he was unable to present in person on class day, was privately printed and distributed among his friends. ** The year Lowell graduated," says Edward Everett Hale, " we were as sure as we are now that in him was first-rate poetical genius, and that here was to be one of the leaders of the literature of the time."^ In his choice of a profession, Lowell selected the law; The Law ^^^ ^^ 1840 was admitted to the bar. Lowell's ^^- verse received its first potent impulse in his love for Maria White, the sister of one of his classmates, a girl of remarkable beauty and rare mental gifts, herself a poet by nature, and an enthusi- ast in various humanitarian reforms. Their engagement began in 1840. Before the twelvemonth ended, Lowell published his first volume, a collection of poems with the title A Year's Life. During the next three years he wrote busily, finding a ready market for his poems and sketches in leading periodicals like the Boston Miscellany^ the Dial^ the United States Magazine, and Graham's, then edited by Poe. Between Poe and Lowell there was at this time an interesting correspond- ence, Poe referring to Lowell's work in terms most ap- preciative. Meanwhile the young lawyer had not found the legal profession much to his taste ; and after three years' waiting for the " First Client," of whom he wrote humorously, Lowell abandoned law and elected litera- ture. In January, 1843, he started a magazine of his own. The new magazine was an ambitious enterprise. The first number contained contributions by Lowell, Poe, Hawthorne, and Elizabeth Barrett (afterward Mrs. ^ James Russell Lowell and his Friends, p. 40. Dr. Hale graduated in 1839. THE ABOLITIONIST 257 Browning). Had it not been for a serious difficulty with his eyes, which compelled him to go to The Liter- New York for treatment, Lowell's first edito- a^y Life. rial experience might have been longer; as it was, the venture came to an untimely close. With its third issue, the Pioneer expired, and its editor was left eighteen hundred dollars in debt. At the end of the year, Lowell published a volume of Poems which included two or three of marked excellence. The Shepherd of King Adme- tuSy An Incident in a Railway Car^ and Phcecus being among the number. In December, 1844, Lowell was married. For a few months thereafter, he was employed in Philadelphia as an editorial writer on the Pennsyl- vanig;^ Freeman^ the paper edited by Whittier a few years earlier. In the spring of 1845, the Lowells re- turned to%C^mbridge. Passing through New York, Lowell stopped to call upon Poe, but the visit proved one of embarrassment ; he found Poe (as recorded by Mrs. Clemm) " not quite himself." Life at Elmwood was now delightfully idyllic, despite the limitations of a small and somewhat uncertain income. Longfellow, although twelve years the senior, was already a con- genial friend ; and the social circle of the college community was enlarged through the easy nearness of Boston. The poet himself was fairly embarked on his career as a man of letters, and his reputation as a writer was firmly established. At the close of 1844, Lowell published a volume of essays entitled Conversations on Some of the Old Poets, This volume and also the Poems of the previous year were republished in London. The ardor of Lowell in the political movement of these pregnant years must not be overlooked, for TheAboU- it is vitally connected with an important phase ^^o^is*- of his literary work. The interest of his wife in some 268 THE NEW ENGLAND POETS of the reform enterprises so numerous in the early forties had enlisted the interest of the poet in these same re- forms ; but definite inspiration came with the develop- ment of his own democratic instincts and his own humanitarian sympathies. In 1843, he became an abo- litionist, and an ardent supporter of that movement which had won Whittier as its champion ten years be- fore. In 1843, Lowell wrote and published the Stanzas on Freedom and the sonnet Wendell Phillips, The Present Crisis, that superb climax of lyric eloquence, came in 1845; "for twenty years the solemn monitory music of this poem never ceased to reecho in public halls." * Its thrilling lines served as texts for the leading orators of the North. Phillips and Sumner quoted its stanzas in their impassioned addresses. Its resonant call to action was voiced with the prophetic note ^ authority. " New occasions teach new duties ; Time makes ancient good uncouth ; They must upward still, and onward, who would keep abreast of Truth ; Lo, before us gleam her camp-fires ! we ourselves must Pilgrims be, Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly through the desperate win- ter sea, Nor attempt the Future's portal with the Past's blood-rusted key." Henceforth, throughout that epoch of stormy debate, the young Cambridge poet stood side by side with Whittier, one of the two great champions of the cause in verse. In 1846, Lowell's genius was revealed in a new and Satirist and thoroughly original vein. The Boston Cou- Humorist. j,^gy, began the publication of a series of poems in genuine Yankee dialect, purporting to be the work of one Hosea Biglow. These compositions were accompanied by introductory letters, commenting on the work in hand, and by editorial notes signed H. W., ^ James Bussell Lowell, by Ferris Greenslet. SATIRIST AND HUMORIST 269 these initials standing for the Rev. Horner Wilbur, A. M., pastor of the First Church, in Jaalam, and critical sponsor for his young parishioner, Hosea. The Biglow Papers^ as they were called when the series was collected and published in 1848, present in crisp and pungent satire the widely felt opposition of the North to the war with Mexico. Lowell himself was moved by the convic- tion that the real purpose of the war was to expand slave territory, and thus voiced the protest of New England against this design. The work is filled with epigram and sarcasm, which of course were most effective at the time which gave them their application. It is difficult for us now to appreciate how effective these shafts of Lowell's exuberant wit really were ; but they are yet recognized as the keenest examples of political satire in our own literature, and among the best ever writ- ten. In the same year which brought the publication of The Biglow Papers^ 1848, another humorous poem of some length and of equal pungency appeared. This was the Fahle for Critics^ a witty review of contemporary American literature. It was in the strict sense an appre- ciation of the writers of the time, in which compliment is tempered with shrewd hits at their failings ; a piece of good-natured fun which it is impossible to read with- out a sense of the critical insight of its author. For example : — " There comes Emerson first, -whose rich words, every one, Are like gold nails in temples to hang trophies on, Whose prose is grand verse, while his verse, the Lord knows, Is some of it pr — No, 't is not even prose " — and so on with the rest of the choir, including Lowell himself. The Fable was written rapidly and without thought of publication ; as the various parts were com- pleted they were sent to a friend in New York. Eventu- ally they were gathered and printed, as Dr. Holmes 260 THE NEW ENGLAND POETS said, " capped with a percussion preface, and cocked with a title-page as apropos as a wink to a joke." In sharp contrast to the two works just described is The Vision of Sir LaunfaL composed and SlrLaunlal. i v i j • ^i • ^ i_i lo^o pubhshed m this same notable year, 1848. This, the most popular and one of the most brilliant of the poet's compositions, is a bold excursion into the twilight land of Arthurian romance which Tennyson was to make his own.* The exquisite preludes to the two parts of rather slender narrative reveal Lowell's power of lyric description at its best. " And what ia so rare as a day in June ? " introduces the familiar passage which everybody recog- nizes as the supreme tribute of poetry to the season of perfect days, and distinguishes the singer as the poet of the month. Oftener than we are apt to remember, these years of Personal Lowell's early manhood were invaded by Experiences, ^q^yq^. In 1847, the parents lost their little daughter Blanche, scarce a twelvemonth old ; three years later. Rose, their third child, died in infancy. The in- timate expression of the poet's grief is given in the affecting lyrics She Came and Went, The Changeling, and The First Snowfall, In 1850, occurred the death of the poet's mother, from whom he had inherited the mystical tendency so clearly felt in his serious work. Her intensely imaginative mind had become disordered, and for several years she had been an inmate of an asylum. The cloud had rested heavily over the house- hold, but bitterness was still in store. In 1852, while ^ In the preceding' year (1847) Tennyson made a tour of Cornwall, the scene of the Arthurian legends. Six years earlier he had published Sir Galahad, Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere, and Morte d^ Arthur. The other Idylls came in later years. PROFESSOR AND EDITOR 261 enjoying their first trip abroad, the Lowells were again bereaved in the death of Walter, their little son, as they were spending the winter in Rome. Meanwhile Mrs. Lowell's health was declining, and soon after the return home, in 1853, the poet buried the wife of his youth. His weight of sorrow is felt in Palinode^ After the Burial^ and The Dead House. " Something broke my life in two," he said later, " and I cannot piece it to- gether again." In the winter of 1854-1855, Lowell gave a course of lectures on Poetry at the Lowell Institute, 3- t ♦ - course which established the poet's place as Professor, an authority and critic of high rank. At the *"" same time he was appointed to be Longfellow's suc- cessor in the professorship at Harvard. A year was spent in Europe preparatory to entering upon his duties at the college. In 1857, coincidently with the founding of the Atlantic Monthly^ Mr. Lowell became editor-in-chief of that most notable of American maga- zines. This was also the year of his marriage to his second wife, Miss Frances Dunlap, of Portland, Maine. Four years later, Lowell resigned the editorial chair, but in 1864 became an associate editor, with his friend Charles Eliot Norton, of the North American Review, a position which he retained ten years. To these two periodicals, Lowell contributed most of his essays on literary and nature subjects, including those which ap- peared in the volumes Among My Boohs (two series, 1870,and 1876) and Jfy ^^^^2/ Windows (1871). Fire- side Travels, a volume of reminiscent sketches, among which is the delightfully humorous Cambridge Thirty Years Ago, appeared in 1864. During the years of conflict, Lowell was again moved to wield the pen of satire. The second series of the Biglow Papers appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, be- 262 THE NEW ENGLAND POETS ginning in 1862 ; they were published collectively in The Civil 1867. While not so brilliant as the first War. series, there were nevertheless some notable examples of Yankee humor and patriotic feeling in this group. In The CourtiTb and SunthivH in the Pas- toral Line^ the poet exercises the homely dialect upon themes remote from those of war. The farm-boy's de- scription of springtime in New England is worthy to stand with that famous picture of June in The Vision of Sir Launfal. " Fust come the blackbirds clatt'rin' in tall trees, An' settlin' things in windy Congresses, — Then saffern swarms swing ofP from all the willera So plump they look like yaller caterpillars, Then gray hossches'nuts leetle hands unfold Softer 'n a baby's be at three days old: Thet 's robin-redbreast's almanick ; he knows Thet arter this ther 's only blossom-snows ; 'nuff sed, June's bridesman, poet o' the year, Gladness on wings, the bobolink, is here ; Half-hid in tip-top apple-blooms he swings. Or climbs aginst the breeze with quiverin' wings, Or, givin' way to 't in a mock despair, Runs down, a brook o' laughter, thru the air." ^ Fully in accord with the solemn and ominous spirit of the time are The Washers of the Shroud^ written in 1861, On Board the '76, written for the seventieth birthday of the poet Bryant, in 1864, and the Ode He- cited at the Harvard Commemoration, July 21, 1865. This last, one of Lowell's best compositions, was written at white heat in two days' time, after the poet had de- spaired of accomplishing anything worthy of the occa- sion ; then, says he, " something gave me a jog and the whole thing came out of me with a rush." ^ Although not without technical defects, this sonorous Ode, which ^ SuntUrC in the Pastoral Line. ^ Letter to R. W. Gilder. DIPLOMATIC SERVICE 263 glows with the patriotic fire so characteristic of its au- thor, has come to have a recognized place among the choicest compositions of American verse. The tribute to Lincoln in the poem is perhaps the best ever paid to the memory of the martyred President. " Here was a type of the true elder race, And one of Plutarch's men talked with us face to face." Other poems, the accumulated compositions of these years, were included in a new edition of his Yetse on poems, published in 1869. A volume, entitled o*^^' Under the Willows, appeared in the same year and also The Cathedral, the most important of Lowell's subjective poems. When, in 1874, Louis Agassiz, the great scientist and teacher, died, the event drew from Lowell, who was then in Europe, another masterpiece, the poem Agassiz, After the poet's return, two historic anniversaries were the inspiration of two more notable odes : that read at the one hundredth anniversary of the fight at Concord bridge, and Under the Old Elm, on the centenary of Washington's taking command of the American army. An Ode for the Fourth of July, 1876, completed the group published under the title Three Memorial Poems, in 1876. These three compositions con- firm their author's fame as the foremost of our patri- otic poets. Lowell's later compositions were collected in the volume Heartsease and Rue (1888). Like Irving, Mr. Lowell was called upon to serve his country in the responsible and delicate Diplomatic position of a representative at foreign courts. Service. In 1877, he was appointed minister to Spain, under Pre- sident Hayes. He was received in Madrid as a worthy successor of the author of Knickerhocher and of Colum- bus ; but Lowell found no time for literary work while there. The duties of his position, though trying, he dis- 264 THE NEW ENGLAND POETS charged with success, and in 1880 was transferred to the English Court of St. James. Here, in the most im- portant of all our diplomatic offices, Lowell was bril- liantly successful. It is said that he became one of the most popular men in England. The notable writers of the time were all his friends. On all public occasions he was a welcome guest, and an indispensable participant on occasions of any literary significance. He delivered addresses at the unveiling of busts of Fielding and Coleridge, and was, naturally, the principal speaker when the bust of Longfellow was placed in Westminster Abbey. In these occasional speeches, Lowell was inevit- ably happy — never more successful than in his famous address on Democracy^ delivered in 1884, on assuming the presidency of the Birmingham and Midland Insti- tute. This speech, now classic, was a clear and thoughtful exposition of the American idea ; a striking interpreta- tion to an English audience of our political system. If the charm of Lowell's personality won the hearts of Englishmen, the tact and firmness with which he con- ducted the affairs of his office commanded their respect. Lowell never forgot that he was an American, and no one was ever more loyal to the ideals of his country ; nor has any of our official representatives done more to cement the friendship between the two countries. After five years' residence as minister in London, and seven years since his departure for Madrid, Lowell re- turned to America in 1885. He was again alone ; his wife had died in England shortly before his return. The remaining years were tinged with the melancholy The Last that comes with the breaking up of old asso- Activities. ciations and the loss of old friends. His health was not robust, yet he was not inactive. He delivered a number of public addresses, including a course of Lowell Institute lectures in 1887 — again upon his LOWELL'S ART 265 favorite subject, Old English Dramatists. His volume of poems, Heartsease and Rue^ was published in 1888, together with a volume of Political Essays, In 1889, he delivered in New York an address upon Our Lit- erature, and wrote an introduction for a new edition of Izaak Walton's Comj}leat Angler, The summers of 1886, 1887, 1888, and 1889, he passed in England, making his place of sojourn regularly in the ancient town of Whitby, which had been a favorite resort dur- ing his official term. His final task was the revision of his works. The poet's home was again at Elmwood ; and here the shadow fell upon him. He died August 12, 1891. Lowell might, perhaps, have had a higher place among the poets had he been more careful in his art ; his composition is often marred by haste ; he gave little time to revision, and even the more important poems were put forth rapidly. But the poet was a master of language and of rhythm. In the literary training which helps to artistic expression, Lowell had the advantage over his contemporaries except Poe and Longfellow. The quality which in these two poets has appealed so universally to readers abroad as well as at home is apparently lacking in Lowell ; but we feel that there is a masculine strength in his verse which we do not find in Longfellow, and a sincerity of utterance that does not appear in Poe. A survey of Lowell's work in literature reveals the versatility of his genius as well as the gen- General eral excellence of his achievement. Not only s^"^ey. is he the only American writer who has won high dis- tinction in both prose and verse, — except Poe, — but in both verse and prose he has touched so many keys with such precision and such power, that he must be regarded as distinctly the most gifted among American men of 266 THE NEW ENGLAND POETS letters. He is the only notable critic who has appeared on this side the Atlantic; his literary essays may even outlive his verse. Through his well-known essay on Dante^ his name is permanently associated with the critical study of the Italian poet. In the role of Hosea Biglow, Lowell appears as the strong- Suggestions est of American humorists. No. 1 of the Biglow lor Reading. Papers should be read with its epistolary introduc- tion to understand the dramatic machinery of the satire. No. 3 and No. 6 are good examples of Hosea's utterances. Of the second series, The Courtin' and Sunthin^ in the Pas- toral Line should be read not only as illustrating the poet's best achievement in the use of Yankee dialect, but also as remarkable presentations of the sentimental phases of rural New England life. Lowell's wit is exhibited most brilliantly in the Fable for Critics. To appreciate this, and also some- thing of his keen critical insight, read the passages portray- ing Emerson, Bryant, Whittier, Cooper, Poe, Holmes, and Lowell himself. The solemn strength of Lowell's patriotism is felt especially in The Present Crisis and the Commemora- tion Ode. Along with the portraiture of Lincoln in this Ode should be read the fifth, sixth, and seventh strophes of Under the Old Elm, for that other masterly description of Washing- ton. As a nature poet, Lowell may be seen at his best in An Indian-Summer Reverie, To a Dandelion, the preludes in the Vision of Sir Launfal, Under the Willows, and Fictures from Appledore. Lowell was much freer than Longfellow in the lyrical expression of his own joys and griefs. The love- poems of his earliest volume tell the story of his own romance, as Palinode, The Wind-Harp, After the Burial, and The Dead House are the poignant memorials of his great be- reavement. These poems are remarkable for the intensity and frankness of their expression. Wonderfully pathetic are the three poems on the death of the child : The Changeling, She Came and Went, and The First Snowfall. On Board the '76 (in honor of Bryant), To H W. L., To Whittier on his Seventy-fifth Birthday, and To Holmes on his Seventy- OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 267 fifth Birthday are occasional poems which have a strong personal interest. Of the miscellaneous poems, select the sonnet To the Spirit of Keats, The Shepherd of King Admetus, Columbus , The Vision of Sir Launfal, The Sing- ing Leaves, and Turner's Old Temeraire. In Lowell's prose writings the student should read selec- tions, at least, from Cambridge Thirty Years Ago, My Gar- den Acquaintance, and Democracy. Of the literary essays, that upon Chaucer is particularly attractive. The Complete Works of Lowell are published by Houghton Mifflin Company. The Cambridge Edition con- tains the poems in a single volume. The Letters of Lowell, edited by Charles Eliot Norton, should not be over- looked ; they have a distinguished place in our literature. Among biographies, that by Horace E. Scudder is standard. The most recent life of Lowell, especially suggestive in the critical study of his work and place in literature, is that by Ferris Greenslet (1905). James Russell Lowell and his Friends, by Edward Everett Hale, is a volume rich in remi- niscence of the poet and his generation. T. W. Higginson, in Cheerful Yesterdays, W. D. Howells, in Literary Friends and Acquaintance, and J. T. Trowbridge, in My Own Story, have written of Lowell. There are many noteworthy essays on the poet, of which we may mention especially those by Barrett Wendell, G. W. Curtis, Henry James, G. E. Woodberry, and H. W. Mabie. Stedman, Trent, Richardson, and Wendell are authoritative references in criticism. IV. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES: 1809-1894. Although nearly ten years the senior of Lowell, Oliver Wendell Holmes survived his younger contempo- rary three years, and after Whittier's death in 1892 be- came the last member of that distinguished group which gave New England her preeminence in nineteenth-cen- tury literature. A genial humorist in verse and prose, a gracious and happy " poet of occasions," a shrewd observer of the significant commonplaces of experience, 268 THE NEW ENGLAND POETS and a master in the art of easy discourse upon things in general, Dr. Holmes fairly holds his position in Amer- ican letters, an original and conspicuous figure, while, perhaps, less highly gifted than any of these poets with whom he was so intimately associated. Like Emerson and Lowell, Holmes was a typical re- presentative of what he himself termed the and " Brahmin caste " of New England.* His fa- CMidhood. ^ijgj.^ a^ descendant of one of the early settlers of Connecticut, was Rev. Abiel Holmes, for forty years a minister in Cambridge, and an author of some note. The poet's mother, Sarah Wendell Holmes, whom he closely resembled in slightness of figure and vivacity of spirits, was a lineal descendant of Governor Bradstreet and his wife, Anne, best remembered for her poetical gifts and celebrated in her generation as the Tenth Muse.^ His great-grandmother was the Dorothy Quincy whose portrait is so charmingly presented in the poem Dorothy Q. Wendell Phillips was his cousin, ^^^^he poet was born at Cambridge, August 29, 1809, in a picturesque gambrel-roofed house on the edge of the Harvard campus.^ His earliest literary explorations were, like those of Lowell, associated with his father's study, where, as he says, he " bumped about among books," from the time when he was hardly taller than one of his father's folios. When ten years old, Wendell was placed in a school where Richard Henry Dana, Jr., and Mar(?a- Educatlon. „ ,, i .i -r^. ^ ret h uller were also pupils, r ive years later, as it was in the mind of Rev. Abiel Holmes that his son should become a minister, the boy was sent to Andover to take his preparatory course in Phillips Academy, under the sober influences which dominated that ortho- ^ Elsie Venner, chap. i. ^ gee pag^e 35. ^ Described ia The Poet at the Breakfast-Table, first paper. EARLY PRODUCTIONS 269 r dox community.* Holmes remained but a year at the Academy, however, and returned to Cambridge to enter Harvard College in 1825, becoming a member of the famous class of 1829,^ for whose successive anniversa- ries some of his most notable poems were composed. After graduation, Holmes decided upon the legal pro- fession and entered the Harvard Law School, uariy It was at this period that he published his Productions, earliest verse. The first of his poems to attract attention was Old Ironsides (1830). This spirited lyric was in- spired by the announcement that the frigate Constitu- tion, then lying in the navy yard at Charlestown, was to be dismantled and broken up. Hastily writing the ringing lines which so effectively stirred the patriotic feelings of the nation, the young law student sent his verses to the editor of the Boston Advertiser^ from whose columns they were immediately copied far and wide. The astonished Secretary of the Navy recalled his order; the "tattered ensign," figuratively speak- ing, was not torn down.^ A year after Old Ironsides^ Holmes wrote The Last Leaf^ one of his finest poems, which with its exquisite blending of humor and pathos still remains our choicest example of what is technically called " society verse." Nearly all the other poetry of this period is broadly humorous, and includes The Ballad of the Oyster-Man^ The Height of the Ridiculous^ My -4w?z^,and The Comet, In 1831, also, he wrote for the iVei^ 1 Dr. Holmes gives an account of his school-days in the essay Cinders from the Ashes {Pages from an Old Volume of Life). 2 The class of 1829 included an unusual number of men who became prominent in all the professions. Two, whose names are more widely known than those of the others, were James Freeman Clarke, the cele- brated Boston preacher, and Samuel F. Smith, author of America. ^ In 1834, the historic ship was rebuilt and continued in commission until 1881. Since 1897, she has been lying again at her old anchorage at Charlestown, once more rebuilt, and, so far as possible, restored to her original appearance. 270 THE NEW ENGLAND POETS England Magazine two papers entitled The Autocrat of the Br eahfast- Table, forerunners of the admirable series resumed twenty-six years later in the Atlantic Monthly. Thus at twenty-three, OliverWendell Holmes had already entered the fields of literary effort in which he was to win such happy success, and had duly regis- tered his claim. In 1832, Holmes turned from law to medicine, and „ ^, . the next year went abroad to study his pro- Medlclne. . . ^t • -i • t^ «. i fession. He remamed m Ji-urope, for the most part in Paris, between two and three years, but re- ceived his degree from the Harvard Medical School in 1836 ; at the same commencement he read before the Phi Beta Kappa society the poem entitled Poetry, a Metrical Essay. Dr. Holmes began the practice of medicine in Boston, but was called in 1839 to the pro- fessorship of anatomy in Dartmouth College. Resign- ing this position after a year's service, he returned to Boston in 1840, the year of his marriage to Miss Amelia Jackson. In 1847, he was appointed professor of anatomy and physiology at Harvard, a position which he filled actively for thirty-five years — a conscientious and successful instructor, characteristically enlivening his class-room with the brightness of his own high spirits. He wrote frequently upon professional topics and produced some noted medical essays. Two volumes of Poems had appeared previous to Literature 1850, but, with the exception of the composi- Again. tions already mentioned, nothing of especial distinction had been published. In 1857, however, the Atlantic Monthly began its brilliant course, and Dr. Holmes became forthwith a conspicuous figure in the literary life of America. It was, indeed, upon condition that Holmes should be engaged as the " first contrib- utor " that Lowell accepted the editorship of the new THE AUTOCRAT 271 magazine. And accordingly the first number of the Atlantic — a name happily chosen by Dr. Holmes him- self — contained the first installment of that work which is most closely associated with its author's liter- ary fame, — the new Autocrat of the Breakfast- Table, Dr. Holmes was forty-eight years old when the spark- ling pages of the Autocrat began to appear, ^he Auto- Beginning whimsically with the sentence, " I <''*^- was just going to say, when I was interrupted," the speaker resumed the thread of genial comment which had been dropped a quarter of a century before. The scene of colloquy is at the breakfast-table in a typical Boston boarding-house. The " characters " who com- prise the company are lightly sketched : the landlady's sentimental daughter who is wont to receive the state- ments of the speaker with a rising " yes ?" the ingen- ious youth " B. F.," the divinity student, the professor, the " old gentleman who sits opposite," the little school- mistress, and the Autocrat himself — who presides so wisely and talks to such excellent effect. There is, too, a tiny romance, as a relish ; but the charm of the volume is in the conversation, which is simple and familiar, never commonplace. Shrewd observations, witty com- ment, happily turned epigrams, pithy phrases, bits of wisdom, passages of fantastic humor blend inimitably. Sometimes it is an odd comparison that provokes a smile — as when the difficulty of " winding-up " a poem suggests the analogy to a diffident caller who finds it hard to get out of a room after the visit is really over : — " They want to be off, and you want to have them off, but they don't know how to manage it. One would think they had been built in your parlor or study, and were waiting to be launched." Or this : — " Writing or printing is like shooting with a rifle ; you may 272 THE NEW ENGLAND POETS hit your reader's mind, or miss it ; but talking is like playing at a mark with the pipe of an engine ; if it is within reach, and you have time enough, you can't help hitting it." Here, too, Holmes introduced some of his best-known verse. Contentment^ Parson TurelVs Legacy^ and the never-to-be-forgotten narrative of The Deacons Master- piece ; or., The Wonderful One-Hoss Shay^ are among the humorous poems presented in the Autocrat. It is not always understood that this last-mentioned classic is something of an allegory ; the famous vehicle of an- cient pattern which went to pieces all at once, — " First of November, 'Fifty-five " All at once, and nothing- first, — Just as bubbles do when they burst," — really typifies, in the narrator's mind, the old Calvin- istic theology against which he tilts in many a breezy phrase. It was David Holmes, the poet's grandfather, a captain in the French and Indian wars, who built the " One-Hoss Shay." In the pages of this same volume also, we find the poet's choicest lyrics : The Voiceless, The Living Temple., and The Chambered Nautilus. The success of the Autocrat was so great that a new series of essays under the title Tlie Professor at the Breakfast- Table was given to the Atlantic in 1858- 1859, and published in book form in 1860. The Poet at the Breakfast-Table was completed in 1872. A volume of miscellaneous papers, contributions to the magazines, appeared in 1863 with the title Sound- ings from the Atlantic. With other papers it included the interesting narrative My Hunt after " The Cap- tain.,''' the author's account of his experiences during the search for his son who had been seriously wounded in one of the great battles of the war. HOLMES'S NOVELS 273 In 1861, Dr. Holmes made his first experiment in fiction, with a romantic novel, Elsie Venner^ ^^ „ , ' . — — 7" — — p« Tne Novels. which was followed by a second ni similar vein, Th e Guardian An ^el, in 1867. Nearly twenty years afterward, he wrotea third novel, A Mortal Antipathy ^ which was published in 1885. Of these the first two are^ the best. They are cleverly written and abound in the qualities so characteristic of the Autocrat ; but they are the physiological studies of a physician rather than the narratives of an ordinary novelist. Both deal with the subject of prenatal influence and the relation of inher- ited tendencies to the conduct of individuals and their moral responsibility. Dr. Holmes was the author of two notable biographies, a life of the historian Motley (1878), and a delightful memoir of Emerson (1884), whose philosophy had had a commanding influence in the in- tellectual development of Holmes himself. The life of Oliver Wendell Holmes was as placid and unclouded as the current of his own a Pleasant vivacious humor. His pleasant home was for ^^*®- many years in what was then the aristocratic residence district of Boston, on Beacon Street, overlooking the Common and almost in the shadow of the historic State House, which the Autocrat declares to be, in the minds of all true Bostonians, "the hub of the solar system." At the monthly dinners of the Saturday Club Holmes was the liveliest of that brilliant company. Indeed, " The Club " was his especial pride. Sadly he wrote to Lowell, in 1883 : — " I go to the Saturday Club quite regularly, but the com- pany is more of ghosts than of flesh and blood for me. I carry a stranger there now and then, introduce him to the members who happen to be there, and then say : There at that end used to sit Agassiz ; here at this end Longfellow ; 274 THE NEW ENGLAND POETS Emerson used to be there, and Lowell often next him ; on such an occasion Hawthorne was with us, at another time Mot- ley, and Sumner, and smaller constellations, — nebulae if you will, but luminous more or less in the provincial firmament." His poem At the Saturday Club (1884) is a noble tribute to this galaxy of friends. There are few events in the poet's later life that call for record. In 1879, a com- plimentary breakfast in honor of the Autocrat's seven- tieth birthday was given him by the publishers of the Atlantic Monthly, Together with his daughter, he vis- ited Europe in the summer of 1886, — just fifty years after his student days in Paris. The major part of this later visit was in England, where he was heartily wel- comed and royally entertained. Honorary degrees were conferred upon him by the universities of Cambridge, Edinburgh, and Oxford. At Oxford, the ceremonial dignity of the occasion was unexpectedly enlivened by the inquiry of a vociferous undergraduate in the gallery, " Did he come in the One-Hoss Shay ? " at which, says Dr. Holmes, " there was a hearty laugh, joined in as heartily by myself." ^ The volume Our Hundred Days in Europe (1887) contains the interesting record of these experiences, and is as characteristic of the author in its modesty as in its lively humor. The reappearance of the essayist in 1890 with a new Over the volume, appropriately entitled Over the Tea- Teacups. cups, was hailed with delight by the readers who had sat with the Autocrat at breakfast a genera- tion before. The writer was eighty-one years old ; but the old-time shrewdness of expression, the homely di- rectness of speech, and the mirthful spirit, always tem- pered by charity and good wiU, had not been blunted by age. It is the Dictator, now, who presides at the table; there is an appreciative tinkling of the tea- 1 Our Hundred Days in Europe, p. 88. 276 THE NEW ENGLAND POETS spoons, as he discourses after the manner of past days. Who but Oliver Wendell Holmes would have linked the Salem witches to these new-fangled cars, and sent them scudding from end to end of Essex County over the inter-urban tracks ? The Broomstick Train belongs with his best humorous poems. It is inevitable that Dr. Holmes should live in the ^ „ memory of readers as the Autocrat ; yet it was The Poet. -^ . _ ... ,. as a poet that he was ambitious oi recognition. His best humorous narratives. The Deacon'' s Master- piece^ Parson TurelVs Legacy^ How the Old Horse Won the Bet^ and The Broomstick Train^ are classics of their kind. As the poet of occasions — notably in the annual gatherings of his college class — Holmes is without a peer. In The Boys (1859) and Bill and Joe (1868) we have the class poet at his best. His patriotic verse is not to be forgotten. The note struck in the thrill- ing lines of Old Ironsides is heard in the war-time poems, Union and Liberty (1861) and Voyage of the Good Shi]) Union (1862) ; and again in Grandmother's Story of Bunker-Hill Battle (1875). The strong religious feeling of the poet finds expression in a number of hymns which have a cherished place in the hearts of believers. The Hymn of Trusty A Sun-Day Hymn (" Lord of all being! throned afar"), and the Parting Hymn (" Father of Mercies, Heavenly Friend ") are the most familiar. But after all, there are comparatively few of Holmes's serious compositions that reach the high standards of imaginative poetry ; and of these it is The Chambered Nautilus which holds the favored place among the best-known and best-loved American poems. The later volumes of his verse were published as follows: Songs in Many Keys (1861), Humorous Poems (1865), Songs of Many Seasons (1874), The Iron Gate (1880), and'^e/bre the Curfew (1888). THE LAST LEAF 277 " And if I should live to be The last leaf upon the tree In the spring," — Holmes had written at twenty-two or twenty-three. Nei- ther Whittier nor Longfellow had been heard The Last from then. Poe's early poems, and Bryant's, ^®^- of course, were being read. Lowell had not entered college. The author of The Last Leaf saw the flight of all. He paid his tribute of respect to the patriarch of American poets, on Bryant's seventieth birthday (1864), and thirteen years later wrote in happy phrase his greeting For Whittier' s Seventieth Birthday. The Lron Gate marked his own arrival at the milepost of threescore and ten. It was for the Autocrat to pay lov- ing tribute to the memory of Longfellow and of Emer- son in well-known passages oi At the Saturday Club (1884), and then, in 1891, to lament the death of Lowell in the most tender of all these personal poems : — " Thou shouldst have sung the swan-song for the choir That filled our groves with music till the day Lit the last hill-top with its reddening fire, And evening listened for thy lingering lay." In the year following, Whittier died ; and of him the surviving poet sang : — ** Best loved and saintliest of our singing train, Earth's noblest tributes to thy name belong ; A lifelong record closed without a stain, A blameless memory shrined in deathless song." Finally, two years later, October 7, 1894, Holmes, too, passed away — last of the " choir That filled our groves with music," in that long golden age of our national literature. 278 THE NEW ENGLAND POETS It will not be necessary to specify regarding the selection of material for reading in either the verse or prose ® * of Holmes. The Complete Works are published in fourteen volumes by Houghton Mifflin Company. The Cam- bridge Edition of the Poems is in one volume. The Life and Letters of Oliver Wendell Holmes (2 vols.) by John T. Morse, Jr., is the standard biography. Mrs. Annie Fields, in Authors and Friends, T. W. Higginson, in Old Cambridge, and J. T. Trowbridge, in My Own Story (1904), have written of the Autocrat. The usual authorities on American literature may be read in general criticism CHAPTER VI THE GENERAL LITERARY DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES I. The Historians. II. Orators and Statesmen. III. The Writers of Pennsylvania and Neiv York. IV. Novelists and Humorists. V. Poetry South and North. The period in our literary history which produced our most distinguished writers in prose and verse has not yet been fully described. Contemporary with these — the popular classics of our literature — there were many authors of lesser rank whose names belong in the record of our literary development. Some of these may be designated as the minor essayists, novelists, and poets of their generation, while some are our foremost repre- sentatives in other fields of literary effort as yet not touched upon. I. THE HISTORIANS. First in this enumeration are the historical writers — who constitute an important group among the authors of the century. The most brilliant of the number were Prescott, Motley, and Parkman. These three men were thoroughly representative of the traditional New Eng- land aristocracy of culture. They were all residents of Boston and graduates of Harvard College. A peculiar coincidence is found in the fact that both Prescott and Parkman suffered from the affliction of partial blind- ness, and that it was only in spite of extraordinary diffi- 280 GENERAL LITERARY DEVELOPMENT culty, by the exercise of consummate patience, that each was successful in his achievement. William Hickling Prescott was born in Salem ; but his parents removed to Boston when the boy Prescott, was twelve years of age, and placed their son in 1796-1859. fjarvard College as a Sophomore, in 1811. It was in his junior year that the accident occurred which caused his loss of vision. A crust of bread thrown in the dining-hall by a fellow student struck his eyeball, and the sight of the left eye was destroyed. Intervals of complete blindness fell upon him, and the fear of losing his sight altogether never left him. Prescott's literary career was the result of a youthful gjg ambition. " I had early conceived," he says, Ambition. "a passion for historical writing, to which, perhaps, the reading of Gibbon's Autobiography con- tributed not a little. I proposed to make myself an his- torian in the best sense of the word." It was, however, after long deliberation that he settled upon a romantic period in Spanish history as his theme. Happily Pres- cott's means were ample ; the physical difficulties in his situation could hardly have been overcome otherwise. The story of this effort is heroical enough. When oculists assured him that the sight of the re- maining eye would be impaired if not de- stroyed by literary labor, he refused to retreat. Calmly he determined that even should sight fail, while hearing remained his literary ambition should be realized. Dic- tation he found impossible. He invented a mechanical device for guiding his pencil over the paper, and em- ployed readers to copy the manuscript he wished to con- sult. There were long interruptions in the work. We read in his journal entries like these : " The last fort- night I have not read or written, in all, five minutes." " If I could only have some use of my eyes ! " "I use THE HISTORIANS 281 my eyes ten minutes at a time, for an hour a day. So I snail it along." For ten years, Prescott labored over his first volume, The History of Ferdinand and Isabella^ con- ^j^^ scientiously examining all accessible sources. AcMeve- The work, which was published in 1837, met ™®" ' with immediate success in this country and abroad. It was at once translated into five European languages, and its author was welcomed to the fellowship of the distinguished historians in England, Germany, and France. The Conquest of Mexico followed in 1843, The Conquest of Peru in 1847. A history of the reign of Philip II was undertaken, but only three of the six volumes proposed were finished, the third appearing in 1858. Prescott died in January of the following year. Although to a certain extent discredited as authori- tative upon historical fact, these works possess high literary value. They read like romance ; their style is pictorial and vivid. Prescott was the successor of Irving in the romantic field of Spanish history. Irving himself, indeed, had meditated a history of the conquest of Mexico, had collected material therefor in Spain, and was actually engaged upon the work ; but when he learned of Prescott's design, he quietly withdrew from the field and placed his material in the hands of the younger man. A few years later Prescott in turn per- formed a similar act of kindness in resigning to Motley an important part of the field naturally included in any account of the reign of Philip II. Dorchester, now a part of Boston, was the birthplace of John Lothrop Motley. After graduation j -^ ^^^_ from Harvard in 1831, he spent two years ley. 1814- as a student at the universities of Berlin and Gottingen, forming an intimate acquaintance with Bis- 282 GENERAL LITERARY DEVELOPMENT marck, his fellow student, the future chancellor of Ger- many. Motley's literary career began inauspiciously with the publication of an unsuccessful novel, Morton^ s Hope (1839) ; and this was followed ten years later by a colonial romance, Merry Mount (1849). After a brief period of residence in St. Petersburg Historical as a secretary of legation (1841-1842), he re- studies. turned to America and soon became interested in historical themes. A series of articles contributed to the North American Heview attracted general no- tice. In 1850, he became absorbed in his study of the Protestant struggle in Holland against the tyranny of Philip II. Motley had not, like Prescott, determined to be an historian and then searched for a theme. " My subject had taken me up, drawn me on, and absorbed me into itself," he wrote ; " it was necessary for me, it seemed, to write the book I had been thinking much of, even if it were destined to fall dead from the press, and I had no inclination or interest to write any other." * After receiving the hearty approval and encourage- ment of the older historian. Motley set himself at the task. Searching the archives of Europe and counting his The Dutch labor a joy, — so filled with enthusiasm was he Republic. Qygj, jjjg theme, — Motley completed the major portion of his work in 1856. The Rise of the Dutch Repuhlic was received, as Prescott's volumes had been, with universal applause. The History of the United Netherlands was published, the first two volumes in 1860, the last two in 1868. The Life of John of Barne- veld (1874) was preliminary to the final work of the series, a history of the Thirty Years' War ; but this work was never written. ^ Letter to Prescott's brother-in-law, written at Rome, in 1859, on hearing of Prescott's death. THE HISTORIANS 283 Much of Motley's life was spent abroad. Besides his early service as secretary at St. Petersburg, Dipiomatio he held two important appointments. He was Service, minister to Austria during the Civil War period, and was appointed by President Grant minister to England in 1869. His recall, however, — for which no satisfac- tory reason has ever been given, — came in 1870. After the publication of John of Barneveld^ in 1874, a year marked also by domestic sorrow in the loss of his wife, Motley undertook no further literary work. He died in England in 1877, and was buried just outside London. Motley's works are characterized, like those of his predecessor, by the dramatic quality of the narrative and by eloquence of style. His intense sympathy with the oppressed and gallant Hollanders in their struggle for independence, and his hearty admiration for their great hero, William the Silent, permitted him to take no impartial ground. He writes as an acknowledged partisan, and in this respect his historical method is rather the method of the past than of the present. Francis Parkman, the youngest of the group, and thoroughly modern in his method of investi- p parkman, gation and presentation, was of Boston birth. 1823-1893. His father was a clergyman ; his grandfather, a pros- perous merchant, had established the family fortunes upon a basis which gave the family financial inde- pendence. A love of outdoor life was early bred in the boy, whose health was delicate and who was on that account allowed unusual freedom. He lived much in the open air and conducted youthful explorations in the surrounding woods. During his student days at Harvard, Parkman was seized with the desire to write the history of the French and Indian War, and he deter- mined to study the life of the Indian at first hand. 284 GENERAL LITERARY DEVELOPMENT Two years after graduation, he started from St. Louis, in 1846, upon the emigrant trail for the Dakota country. The summer that followed was replete with adventure, and productive of hardship from the effects of which the historian never recovered. But Parkman had lived among trappers and Indians ; he had tra- versed the plains, hunted the buffalo, dwelt for weeks in the lodges of a tribe of Sioux, and gained by rough ex- perience the knowledge that he sought. The narrative of his adventure is told in a fascinating volume, The California and Oregon Trail (1849). The Conspiracy of Pontiac (1851) was the first of Parkman's historical volumes to appear, al- Franceln i i • i m i i . . the New though it describes the culmination rather World. than the opening of the epoch which he chronicles. It was fourteen years before his Pioneers of France in the New World (1865) really began the story of the struggle between France and England for the possession of America. The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century (1867), La Salle ; or the Discovery of the Great West (1869), The Old Regime (1874), Count Frontenac and Neio France under Louis X7F(1877), Montcalm and Wolfe (1884), and a supplementary volume, A Half Century of Conflict (1892), constitute the impressive series of his works. Parkman's style does not fall below that of Prescott in picturesqueness and realism. His accuracy may be safely assumed. Copyists were constantly at work for him over manuscript records of the past, and he him- self visited Europe five times to gather material. The localities he described were usually traversed in person. The difficulties which Parkman overcame in the ac- complishment of his purpose were strikingly similar to those which had confronted the historian of Ferdinand and Isabella. With vision sadly THE HISTORIANS 285 impaired by some obscure trouble of the brain which affected also the action of the heart and tlie control of the limbs, he was terribly handicapped. His working time was frequently reduced to less than half an hour a day and there were long periods of utter helplessness. He was noted for his cheerful, sunny disposition. At his pleasant home on the shore of Jamaica Pond, he found recreation in the culture of roses, a pursuit of which he was extremely fond. He published a Book of Hoses in 1866 ; for two years he held the chair of horti- culture in Harvard. With this record of our more famous literary histo- rians there should be some account of those who have dealt most effectively with the theme of the of our national life. The most notable of these ^**^°°' writers is George Bancroft (1800-1891), another Mas- sachusetts scholar, who after graduation from Harvard studied at Gottingen and there received his doctor's de- gree in 1820. For a time he conducted a private school in Boston. The first volume of his History of the United States was published in 1834, the second in 1837. The author was then drawn into political life and served successively as collector of the port of Boston, Secre- tary of the Navy, minister to England, minister to Prussia, and then to Germany. The volumes of his his- tory appeared at intervals until the tenth, in 1874, brought the narrative down to the close of the Revolu- tion. Two later volumes (1882) were added to include the formation of the Constitution. In 1885, the histo- rian completed a revision of his work, which condensed the narrative within the limits of six volumes. Bancroft's History has always been recognized as a work of value, although it does not hold a place in literature with those of Parkman, Motley, and Prescott. Its author was a stanch Democrat, and this political bias is obvious in 286 GENERAL LITERARY DEVELOPMENT the work. Richard Hildreth (1807-1865), also a citi- zen of Massachusetts, and a Whig, produced a History of the United States (1849-1852) in isix Volumes ; it does not measure up to the standard of Bancroft's work. A scholarly History of New England (1858) by John Gorham Palfrey (1796-1881), and two noteworthy volumes dealing with the history of Louisiana (1851- 1852) by Charles Etienne Gayarr^ (1805-1895) may well be mentioned here, aliliough local rather than national in scope. The youngest, and not the least im- portant among recent historical writers in this field is John Fiske (1842-1901), a brilliant and popular essay- ist upon philosophical and religious themes, whose first historical study. The Critical Period of American His- tory^ appeared in 1888. Jared Sparks (1789-1866) was a pioneer in the field of national biography. Sparks was a Unitarian clergyman, a professor of history at Harvard, and president of that college. He wrote the lives of Washington and Franklin and edited their writ- ings : the Washington^ in 1834-1838, the Franldin^ in 1836-1840. He also edited a great Library of American Biography in twenty-five volumes which was completed in 1848. The student is referred to the William Hickling Prescottj by Rollo Ogden, and the Francis Parkman, by Authorities, ^t t^ o i • i • ^i, ^ • itr ^t ^ Henry D. bedgwick, m the American Men oj Let- ters Series. The Life of Motley, by his close friend, Oliver Wendell Holmes, is the best available biography at present. II. ORATORS AND STATESMEN. Among the men conspicuous in public life, who by reason of their argumentative skill and the power of their eloquence were the nation's leaders during the critical years of the century, the first to be mentioned is 288 GENERAL LITERARY DEVELOPMENT Daniel Webster. No more commanding personality has ever moved amonoj American statesman. His Daniel . r i i- -tur i • t t • Webster, portrait — alter those oi Washington and Lin- 1782-1852. ^^Yyi — jg the most familiar of those in our national gallery. So impressive was he in presence, so leonine in feature, that his personal appearance struck every listener with awe. " That amorphous, crag-like face ; the dull black eyes under the precipice of brows, like dull anthracite furnaces needing only to be blown; the mastiff mouth, accurately closed " — this is the way in which Carlyle described his picture. He was an acute reasoner as well as an eloquent speaker. His famous ar- guments in the Dartmouth College case (1818) and in the White murder case at Salem (1830) are models of logcical structure. His orations at the two hundredth anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrims (1820), at the laying of the corner-stone of Bunker Hill Monu- ment (1825), and at the completion of the monument (1843) are noted examples of his eloquence.^ It was his self-appointed task to guard the integrity of the Con- stitution ; and it was this idea which inspired the best known of all his great addresses, the Heply to Uayne^ delivered in the United States Senate in 1830. It was his devotion to the Union and the preservation of na- tional unity which led to his support of compromise measures when the separation of South and North seemed imminent; and it was this which brought forth the speech on the seventh of March, 1850, — the speech which aroused the indignation of the anti-slavery party in New England and drew from Whittier that scathing utterance of disappointment and grief, the poem Icha- hod. Webster was born at Salisbury, New Hampshire. He studied at Phillips Academy, then recently founded at Exeter, and was graduated from Dartmouth College in 1801. He practiced law in ORATORS AND STATESMEN 289 Portsmouth and served for a term as a r epr esentative of New Hampshire in Congress. In 1816, be removed to Boston, again went to Congress, and then entered the Senate in 1827. He was Secretary of State (1841- 1843), and returned to the Senate in 1845. His home was at Marshfield, Massachusetts, at the time of his death. Representing the South in the arena of political de- bate were John C. Calhoun (1782-1850) and ^^^^^_ Henry Clay (1777-1852) ; while the names sentative of Rufus Choate (1799-1859) and Edward statesmen. Everett (1794-1865) are joined with that of Webster, as representative of the eloquence of New England. Foremost among the orators developed by anti-slavery sentiment in the North were Wendell Phillips (1811- 1884) and Charles Sumner (1813-1887). The eloquent voice of Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887) was raised in the same cause. Nor should the names of Stephen A. Douglas (1813-1861) and Abraham Lincoln (1809- 1865) be omitted from this list. In a dramatic series of public debates conducted in 1858 upon the prairies of Illinois, Lincoln and Douglas contended over the great issue of the time, — the institution of slavery and the momentous national problem to which it had given rise. While nominally a campaign for the Illinois senatorship, this remarkable discussion between the rival candidates — Douglas, the national leader of the Democratic party, and Lincoln, the candidate of the recently organized Republicans — aroused the interest of the entire coun- try. Mr. Douglas was elected to the Senate; but the contest made Lincoln, two years later, the logical can- didate of the Republican party for the presidency of the United States. It is not necessary here to discuss the erenius of Abraham Lincoln. His lowly • • 1 • • •^' J' 4.1 / Lincoln, origin, his primitive surroundings, the scanty education, the unique personality, the lofty spirit in the 290 GENERAL LITERARY DEVELOPMENT awkward, almost grotesque frame, are all parts of a familiar story. He was yet another in the group of so- called self-made men in whom genius has triumphed over circumstances. It should not be forgotten that the opponent of the highly trained, debonair Douglas had had his forensic training dui-ing twenty years of practice before the Illinois bar, and that he was regarded as the best jury lawyer in the state ; nor that the author of the speech at Gettysburg had steeped his mind in youth with the English of Shakespeare and the Bible — almost his only text-books. Academic traditions were unknown to Lincoln. His oratory was simple, keen, direct; his eloquence was unadorned by the arts of rhetoric; but his inaugural addresses and that delivered at the dedi- cation of the Gettysburg memorial betray the highest qualities of head and heart. They are among the choicest of our American classics. III. WRITERS OF NEW YORK AND PENNSYLVANIA. For some time, our attention has been centred for the most part in the work of our New England writers ; but we must not think that the literary activity of this long period was confined to the immediate vicinity of Boston. The cities of Philadelphia and New York had each its coterie of literary workers. In the rapidly growing metropolis, the generation following that of Irving and his associates of the Knickerbocker group was not without its representatives of greater or less distinction, among whom at least two. Bayard Taylor and George William Curtis, deserve especial recogni- tion. Both were men of letters in the broadest sense, versatile in talent and giving expression to that talent in varied literary forms. Taylor was born in a Quaker household upon a Penn- sylvania farm, and as a child was conscious of two NEW YORK AND PENNSYLVANIA 291 ambitions : to travel and to become a poet His liter- ary ambition was gratified prematurely by the publication of a volume of verse, Ximena^ Taylor, — afterward regretted, — in 1844. In the 1825-1878. same year, his twentieth, he sailed for England, having arranged with several editors to print the letters which he purposed to write while on his travels. For nearly two years, he tramped about over Europe enduring much hardship ; his letters were published in 1846, under the title of Views Afoot^ or Europe seen with the Knap- sack and Staff. An editorial connection with the New York Tribune followed ; and in 1849, Taylor was sent to California to report upon the fortunes of the gold- seekers. The next year his letters to the Tribune ap- peared in the volume Eldorado, A trip to the far East in 1851 resulted not only in more correspondence but also in a volume of verse. Poems of the Orient (1854), containing some of his best compositions, including the Bedouin Song. Bayard Taylor's fame as a traveler and an entertaining descriptive writer was extended by successive volumes recounting his experiences in Africa, in Spain, in India, China, and Japan, and in the north- ern countries of Europe. But he was ambitious to fill a higher place in literature. In 1863, he produced his first novel, Hannah Thur- ston., and the next year, his second, John Novels and Godfrey's Fortunes^ which is to some extent Poems, autobiographical. The Story of Kennett (1866), a semi-historical romance, is his most successful work of fiction. A long and elaborate narrative poem. The Picture of St. John (1866), was followed by The Masque of the Gods (1872), and Lars : a Pastoral of Norway (1873). Other volumes of verse were pub- lished in the latter years of his life, including The National Ode, written for the Centennial at Philadel- 292 GENERAL LITERARY DEVELOPMENT phia in 1876 ; but no one of Taylor's original efforts resulted in any enduring success. He wrote tirelessly and unceasingly, yet without that inspiration which gives immortality to the works of genius. His one achievement which will most certainly endure is the translation of Goethe's Faust^ the two parts of which were published in 1870 and 1871. This altogether ad- mirable version of the German poet's masterpiece ranks with Bryant's Homer and Longfellow's Dante^ if it does not surpass them in this delicately difficult field of poetical translation. But a portion of Taylor's literary labor is recorded here ; he was an indefatigable worker, and his health broke down under the steady strain. In 1878, he was appointed minister to Germany ; and it seemed pe- culiarly appropriate that the translator of Germany's great classic should be thus honored. His appointment was universally approved, for the poet was widely re- spected and, in the circle of his literary associates, greatly beloved. He was welcomed at Berlin, as Irving had been at the court of Spain ; but his diplomatic career was pathetically brief. Death came upon him sud- denly while sitting in his library at the German capital in December of the year of his appointment. The boyhood of George William Curtis was spent in G. w. Curtis, Providence, Rhode Island, but his family re- 1824-1892. moved to New York when he was fifteen years old. He was still in his teens when he, with an older brother, entered the Brook Farm community at about the time that Hawthorne joined it. Three or four years of foreign travel, including a visit to Egypt and Syria, resulted in two volumes of description and im- pression : Nile Notes of a Howadjl (1851) and The Howadji in Syria (1852). Lotus Eating (1852) pre- sents another series of travel sketches. In The Potiphar NEW YORK AND PENNSYLVANIA 293 Papers (1853) he satirized some tendencies in New York society. During the decade just preceding the Civil War, Curtis participated not only as a writer but also as a public speaker in the great debate on slavery, and laid the foundation of his later fame as one of the most forceful and graceful of American ora- tors — a reputation maintained to the end of his career. In 1856, Curtis published a charming little work of light and delicate sentiment entitled Prue in Fiction and /, a work which was exceedingly popu- ^* Essay, lar at the time, and which retains its popularity still. Trumps^ an experiment in novel writing, appeared in 1861. The chief claim of Curtis to literary distinction, however, is as an essayist. For nearly fifty years he was associated editorially with Harper s Magazine^ and throughout that period contributed regularly those de- lightful papers — essays in miniature — which we asso- ciate with the department so sympathetically named " the Easy Chair." Something of the Addisonian flavor, with more of the spirit of Charles Lamb, is to be recognized in these vivacious contributions of comment, criticism, and reminiscence. Nevertheless, Curtis was as much a master of a style distinctly his own as was the author of the Autocrat. Three volumes of selections from these papers have been published, some of the essays appearing in an expanded form. Two volumes of Ora- tions and Addresses have also appeared, including the eulogies on Wendell Phillips and James Kussell Lowell. Josiah Gilbert Holland was a Massachusetts physician when he left his professional practice and, like Taylor and Curtis, entered journalism in New Iand,i8i9- York. Over the pen-name Timothy Titcomb, ^^^^' Dr. Holland, while editor of the Springfield (Mass.) Pepuhlican, wrote a series of familiar, essays, letters of 294 GENERAL LITERARY DEVELOPMENT wholesome counsel, which were received with favor in book form under the title Timothy TitcomVs Letters (1858). The publication of two volumes of verse, The Bay Path (1857) and Bitter-Sweet (1858), gave him a place among the "popular poets," which was re- inforced by the appearance of Kathrina^ a sentimental romance in metre, in 1867. Dr. Holland's claims to lit- erary distinction are not especially strong, but his novels, Miss Gilbert's Career (1860), Arthur Bonnicastle (1873), Sevenoahs (1875), and JVicholas Minturn (1877), were widely read. In 1870, he became the editor of the new Scrihner''s Magazine (which in 1881 changed its name to the Century^. Donald Grant Mitchell, a member of this same in- " Ik Mar- teresting group of genial essayists who long ▼el," survived the rest, is the author of two delight- 1822-1908. £^^ books which, like Curtis's Prue and /, still retain a popularity hardly diminished by the lapse of a generation. Reveries of a Bachelor was published in 1850, Dream Life in 1851. The same charm of style and matter pervades My Farm of Edgewood (1863) and Wet Days at Edgewood (1864) ; nor is it lacking in the volumes of literary anecdote, English Lands^ Letters^ and Kings (1889) and American Lands and Letters (1897-1899). Charles Dudley Warner, whose delightful sketch- War- ^°^^' ^y >^^^^6^ ^^ « Garden (1870), ner,'i829- suggests comparison with the "Edgewood" ^®°°' books, was born in Massachusetts. For many years he was a member of the famous literary coterie in Hartford, Connecticut, his professional duties — he was also a journalist — associating him with the New York group. His pleasant volume of Backlog Studies appeared in 1872. In collaboration with Samuel L. Clemens (" Mark Twain "), he wrote The Gilded Age NEW YORK AND PENNSYLVANIA 295 (1873). Two volumes of travel sketches, My Winter on the Nile and In the Levant, were published in 1876. Being a Boy, a picturesque presentation of youth on a New England farm, belongs to the year following. Warner was the author of numerous volumes, includ- ing a Life of Washington Irving (1881) and two realistic novels, effective studies of New York society, A Little Journey in the World (1889) and The Golden House (1894). Richard Henry Stoddard, whose early years were years of poverty, was toiling in an iron foundry when mpjiarfl ^ he began his poetical career in New York. A Stoddard, friendship with Bayard Taylor led to the pub- lication of his first poems and to much literary work. From 1859 to 1870, Mr. Stoddard was employed in the New York custom-house, a position obtained with the friendly assistance of Hawthorne. From that time on, he was engaged in editorial work and held a high place among our minor poets. An autobiographic vol- ume of Recollections (1903) is not the least interest- ing of his prose works. The poet's wife, Elizabeth B. Stoddard (1823-1902), was also a writer of verse and the author of three noteworthy novels, The Morgesons (1862), Two Men (1865), and Temjyle House (1867). A Philadelphia writer, George Henry Boker (1823- 1890), represents substantial attainment in the field of dramatic poetry. His successful tragedy, Francesca da Rimini (1856), is possibly the best of several which embody that romantic theme. Thomas Buchanan Read (1822-1872), like Boker a Pennsylvanian and a friend of Taylor and the Stoddards, was also an artist as well as poet. Of all his verse the battle lyric, Sheridan^ Ride (1865), is the poem inevitably associated with his name. By far the most interesting and important figure 29G GENERAL LITERARY DEVELOPMENT among the New York writers of this generation is that Walt presented in the picturesque personality of Whitman, Walt Whitman. Strictly speaking, he was not so much a membei as one outside the literary circle just described. A man of rich vitality, lustily greeting life in all its phases, emphasizing, per- haps needlessly, the physical side of life. Whitman strode forth on his course, violating the conventionalities at every step. Not only in what he had to say as a poet was Whitman unconventional ; he was unconventional also in the manner of saying. He violated the estab- lished rules of poetical expression as boldly and as con- fidently as he disregarded the ordinary rule of silence concerning the topics which he discussed with such amaz- ing frankness. He was an innovator, a representative of new ideas. In the literary history of our country he stands unique. At once the target of criticism, he per- severed in the delivery of what he certainly believed a " message "; and now, half a century and more since the publication of his earliest volume, he still stands a some- what problematical personality. In the minds of many he appears a man of undoubted genius, Ossianic, ele- mental, impressive ; to some he is the teacher of new- &)und truths, the prophet and the poet of democracy. Walt Whitman was born on a farm on Long Island. His father was a descendant of pioneer New England stock; his mother's ancestry was Dutch. While Whitman was a child, his parents re- moved to Brooklyn, where his father practiced the trade of carpenter and builder. The boy was educated but scantily in the public schools, and entered a printer's office at thirteen. He was not continuously employed ; he found time to roam the moors and beaches of Long Island in close touch with nature and delighting in the sea ; he also found time to read much good literature, NEW YORK AND PENNSYLVANIA 297 the Arabian Nights^ Scott, Shakespeare, Ossian, the hero-poetry of the Germans, and translations of the Greek dramatists and poets. There was a strange fit- ness in it — this abrupt, haphazard introduction to the masterpieces of literature. Dante he read in the shadows of a wood ; Homer he learned by heart in the shelter of great rocks, listening to the roar of the surf. At fifteen, he one day notices a ship under full sail, and has the desire to describe it like a poet. At eighteen, he teaches a country school. At twenty, he starts a weekly paper in his birthplace, then edits in leisurely fashion a daily paper in New York. He writes romances and verse of the conventional sort for a magazine, rides on the Broadway omnibuses and makes stanch friends with the drivers, is welcomed in the pilot-houses of the ferry- boats that ply on East River, frequents the Bowery, and is a conspicuous figure among the Bohemians who gather in Pfaff's restaurant. At twenty-eight, he is ed- itor of the Brooklyn Eagle^ and then suddenly takes to the " open road " to see the country and get near the peo- ple. This "leisurely journey and working expedition," as Whitman termed it, takes him through the Middle States and down the Ohio and Mississippi to New Or- leans, where for a time he works in a newspaper office. Retracing his steps in part, he visits the Great Lakes, sees Niagara, and crosses into Canada, finally returning through Central New York and down the Hudson. In 1855, appeared the first edition of Whitman's poems, entitled Leaves of Grass^ a title which Leaves of was used by the poet with each subsequent ^^^^^s. issue until the eighth edition, in 1892. This first volume was perhaps more widely talked about than widely read. To most of those who did read it, it was both mystify- ing and repellent. Not only did they find here a start- ling freedom of speech which shocked them and an 298 GENERAL LITERARY DEVELOPMENT apparent egotism that amazed, but they found also a form of expression that bade defiance to every principle of constructive art. " I celebrate myself, and sing myself," chanted the poet ; ^ " And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. " I loafe and invite my soul, I lean and loafe at ray ease observing a spear of summer grass. *' A child said What is the grass ? fetching it to me with full hands ; How could I answer the child ? I do not know what it is any more than he. " I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven. " Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord, A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt, Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners, that we may see and remark, and say Whose ? " Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the vegeta- tion. " And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves." This indeed seemed anarchy rather than art, and it is not surprising that a new generation of readers was born before the real significance of this strange verse began to be clear. Yet Emerson recognized the strength of originality in the " message " and wrote Wliitman a friendly and appreciative letter, which, with very poor taste, Walt included in the next edition of his poems. In time it became evident that the Song of Mysdf was to be interpreted as typical and universal rather than egotistic, and that the spirit of Walt Whit- man's poetry was democratic rather than personal. 1 Song of Myself. NEW YORK AND PENNSYLVANIA 299 The peculiar verse-form Whitman persistently main- tained. It represents his revolt from artifi- whitman's ciality. It was premeditated and, indeed, ac- ^®"®' quired with some effort. Of his compositions in this first volume, he said : " I had great trouble in leaving out the stock 'poetical* touches, but succeeded at last."^ Rhyme and metre were abolished — but not melody or rhythm. The device of the " catalogue " became his favorite method of suggestion, often picturesque, often musical, but often, too, unorganized and bewildering. In later years Whitman's poetry became less turgid and, at times, even symmetrical. The objectionable free- doms of the early work disappeared entirely and the poetical quality grew more tangible. The Civil War stirred Whitman mightily. The spirit of his verse during this period attains a dig- The Poet's nity and strength that is notable ; but this is ^" Record, not all. A brother who had enlisted was wounded ; and late in 1862, Walt went to Washington to nurse him. For the next two years the poet gave himself wholly to the hospitals. The service which he then performed, sometimes in the camps, sometimes on the field, can hardly be described. Stalwart, health-breathing, sym- pathetic, he assisted the surgeons, dressed the wounds, spoke tender encouragement to the suffering, scattered his simple little gifts among the sick, took the last message, and held the dying soldier in his arms.^ His own superb health finally broke. In Drum-Taps (1865) are included some of his finest compositions, notably the vivid descriptive poems Cavalry Crossing a Ford,, Bivouac on a Mountain-side^ An Army Corps on the March,, and By the Bivouac s Fitful Flame,, pictures intense in their realism. The death of Lincoln inspired two poems which command universal admiration : When 1 Notes and Fragments. 2 Read The Wound-Dresser. 300 GENERAL LITERARY DEVELOPMENT Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom' d2indi O Captain I My Captain ! This last poem is in rhymed stanzas, and shows AVhitman's poetical power at its best. The sea is the subject of many fine passages in these ^j^g strange compositions. A Paiimanok Picture^ strength oi Patroling Barnegat^ With Husky-Haughty ^' LijJS, O Sea, may be cited as examples, this last especially a marvel of descriptive power. To the poems of this interesting group, many as impressively suggestive could easily be added. The bird-songs in Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking and When Lilacs Last in the Hooryard Bloom'd are remarkable lyrics. To the Man-of' War- Bird is another poem easily to be ap- preciated. A picture dramatic in spirit and singularly vivid, is that descriptive of the old mariner's passing, in Old Salt Kossahone. " Far back, related on my mother's side, Old Salt Kossabone, I '11 tell you how he died ; (Had been a sailor all his life — was nearly 90 — lived with his mar- ried grandchild, Jenny ; House on a hill, with view of bay at hand, and distant cape, and stretch to open sea ;) The last of afternoons, the evening hours, for many a year his regular custom, In his great arm chair by the window seated, (Sometimes, indeed, through half the day,) Watching the coming, going of the vessels, he mutters to himself. — And now the close of all : One struggling outbound brig, one day, baffled for long — cross-tides and much wrong going. At last at nightfall strikes the breeze aright, her whole luck veering. And swiftly bending round the cape, the darkness proudly entering, cleaving, as he watches, * She 'a free — she 's on her destination" — these the last words — when Jenny came, he sat there dead, Dutch Kossabone, Old Salt, related on my mother's side, far back." More and more, as one learns to read Whitman, — and the reading should be aloud, — his strength grows upon the reader. The eccentricity, the uncouth forms, NEW YORK AND PENNSYLVANIA 301 the jargon of names and words, disturb liim less. In some degree he must respond to the pervading spirit of comradeship, of sympathy — boundless, indiscrimi- nate. All mankind is brother and sister ; everything in nature is wholesome and divine. "He says indifferently and alike How are you friend? to the President at his levee, And he says Good-day my brother, to Cudge that lives in the sugar-field, And both understand him and know that his speech is right." ^ This is certainly the spirit of democracy speaking. The question is. Is it poetry ? In 1873, a stroke of paralysis incapacitated the poet, and Whitman, who had held a clerkship in Washington, removed to Camden, New Jersey, where his later life was spent. Here he lived in compar- ative poverty, but with the companionship of a few in- timate friends, and with the knowledge of a growing body of disciples who cared more for their master's teaching than about his style of utterance. Tributes of recognition from Great Britain and the Continent grat- ified him. He began to be regarded by some enthusiasts as an oracle, and the poet seemed not averse to the role. SpeGimen Days and Collect^ autobiographical data in prose, was published in 1882. A new collection of verse, November Boughs^ appeared in 1888. The seventieth birthday of the poet was marked by greetings from all parts of the world. A new edition of Leaves of Grass was issued, together with the new poems collected under the title Sands at Seventy. A final volume, Good-hye my Fancy (1891), contained his last poems. Whitman died March 26, 1892. The influence of Whitman has not yet been notice- able in American verse ; but meanwhile the circle of ap- preciative readers has been constantly increasing, even 1 Song of the Answerer. 302 GENERAL LITERARY DEVELOPMENT outside the so-called Whitman cult. An intelligent read- ing of Whitman is wholesome and invigorating. As to his place among poets, that is a matter yet to be deter- mined. Concerning Walt Whitman and his work there is a super- abundance of material. The best recent biography, with a satisfactory criticism of his verse, is the Life of Walt Whitman, by Bliss Perry. See also Walt Whitman by George R. Carpenter, in the English Men of Letters Series. A good short sketch of the poet is the volume in the Beacon Biographies, by I. H, Piatt. The study of Whitman in Trent's American Literature is impartial and admirable. The volume of Selections from the Prose and Poetry of Walt Whitman, edited by O. L. Triggs, and Se- lected Poems hy Walt Whitman, edited by Arthur Stedman (in Fiction, Fact, and Fancy Series), may prove more profit- able as an introduction to the poet than an edition of his complete works. IV. NOVELISTS AND HUMORISTS. Writers of fiction were numerous during the first half Southern of the century, in the South as well as in the Romancers. North. While Cooper and Poe were the only ones who attained eminence in this field, there was no lack of story-telling, and in several instances a wide local reputation was built upon the success of a single book. The influence of Cooper is strongly felt in the work of three Southern novelists, Kennedy, Bird, and Simms, of whom the last-named deserves a wider fame. John P. Kennedy (1795-1870), a native of Baltimore and a successful lawyer who represented his state in Congress and was also Secretary of the Navy under President Fillmore, is chiefly remembered as the author of Horse-Shoe Robinson (1835), his best work ; a cap- ital romance of the Revolution in the South. The Indian novel,- A^ic^ of the Woods (1837), constitutes the NOVELISTS AND HUMORISTS 303 principal claim of Dr. Robert M. Bird (1803-1854) to recognition in this group. He was, however, the author of several romances dealing with the Spanish Conquest of Mexico, and also of two or three plays, among which The Gladiator holds the principal place. William Gilmore Simms is, next to Poe, the most re- presentative and most talented among the writ- _ „ ers of the South previous to the Civil War. simms, He was born in Charleston, South Carolina. As his family belonged to the poorer class, he received little in the way of formal education, but exhibited unusual energy in literary pursuits. At twenty-three, Simms had already published three volumes of youthful verse. His first novel, Martin Faher (1833), reflects the influence of Charles Brockden Browne ; but (jruy Mivers (1834) was the first of a series of border ro- mances in which the influence of Cooper is plainly seen. In 1835, Simms published The Partisan^ one of his best stories, a vivid and entertaining narrative of the parti- san warfare conducted in the South during the Revolu- tionary struggle. \n Mellichampe (1836), TheKinsmen (1841), and Katharine Walton (1851), he continued the story of the characters thus introduced. His histori- cal tales were as numerous as those of Cooper, and con- tinued to appear down to the period of the Civil War. Although defective in technical construction and by no means comparable to Cooper's best novels, they never- theless constitute a remarkable collection and are not unworthy the attention of the modern reader. A volu- minous writer, Simms was the author of biographies, plays, and poems, in addition to the long list of ro- mances, only the most important of which have been named. A follower of Simms was John Esten Cooke (1830- 1886), whose novels. The Virginia Comedians (1854), 304 GENERAL LITERARY DEVELOPMENT and Fairfax (1868), are representative of this author's work in the same historical field. Rev. William Ware (1797-1852), a Massachusetts Fiction In clergyman, was the author of three sober nar- the North, ratives dealing with the persecution of the. Christians at Rome. To some extent Zenohia (1837), Aurellan (1838), and Julian (1841) still maintain their place among popular religious romances. Rev. Sylvester Judd (1813-1853) is more dimly remem- bered as the author of a transcendental romance, Mar- garet (1845), which was admired by Lowell for its de- scription of humble rural life. The fiction of adventure is represented at its best in the novels of Herman Mel- ville (1819-1891), a native of New York city. His own experiences on land and sea supplied the material of his most successful books, Typee (1846), Omoo (1847), and MohyDick, or the White Whale (1851). Melville was, moreover, master of a brilliant style which gave his writings a distinction still retained. The tales of Catherine M. Sedgwick (1789-1867) employed an his- torical background ; of these Hope Leslie^ or Early Times in Massachusetts (1827), and The Linicoods^ or Sixty Years Since in America (1835), were especially admired. Lydia Maria Child (1802-1880), whose phi- lanthropic spirit brought her prominently into the anti- slavery agitation, began her modest literary career with the publication of two historical novels: Hohomoh (1824), which depicted life in the colony at Salem, and The Rebels (1825), the scene of which is laid in Boston just previous to the Revolution. One of the famous novels of its time — and still reck- Reaiistic oned a classic by lovers of sentimental fic- Fiction. tion — was that tearful work The Wide, Wide World (1850), written by Susan Warner (1819-1885). Qiieechy followed in 1852. The Lamplighter (1854), NOVELISTS AND HUMORISTS 305 by Maria S. Cummins, was another example of the sen- timental novel, which enjoyed widespread popularity. Butwhile these works of fiction had a large contemporary fame, they were altogether eclipsed by the production of another New England woman — the most widely read and best known of all American novels. Uncle Tom^s Cabin^ which was published in 1852. Harriet Beecher, one year older than her famous bro- ther, Henry Ward, was the daughter of Rev. g^^jg^ « Lyman Beecher, who was settled in the little stowe, town of Litchfield, Connecticut, when Harriet ^^^^-lase. was born. She was a precocious child intellectually and emotionally. A part of her early life was spent in Cin- cinnati, whither, in 1832, her father had been called to become the president of a theological seminary. Here Harriet Beecher was married to Dr. Stowe in 1836. During this period of residence in the Ohio city, she visited friends in Kentucky and gained her knowledge of slavery, as she observed the institution there. In 1850, the Stowes removed to Brunswick, Maine, Dr. Stowe having been called to a professorship in Bowdoin Col- lege ; and it was here that she wrote her novel. Uncle Tonics Cabin appeared first as a serial in the National Era^ the anti-slavery organ at Washington, with which Whittier was at one time associated. The history of this book is unique in American literature. It has been translated into more than forty languages. It was dram- atized immediately, and still makes its melodramatic appeal from the stage — to a larger audience than any other single play. Although severely handled by modern critics with reference both to its portrayal of slavery as an institution and to its artistic defects, the strong pa- thos of the novel and its humanitarian spirit appear to insure its literary immortality. It has been well said of Uncle TowiS Cabin that " a book that stirs the world 306 GENERAL LITERARY DEVELOPMENT and is instrumental in bringing on a civil war and free- ing an enslaved race may well elicit the admiration of a more sophisticated generation."^ Mrs. Stowe's next novel, Dred^ a Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp (1856), was also a story about slavery. In 1858, she began in the Atlantic Monthly a realistic story of colo- nial life, The Minister's Wooing. The Pearl of Orrs Island appeared in 1862. The novel, Agnes of Sor- rento, published the same year, was the fruit of a European trip. For many readers, Mrs. Stowe's most attractive work appears in Oldtown Folks (1869), a realistic study of the quaint and wholesome New Eng- land character as she had known it intimately in child- hood as well as in later life. After 1863, the Stowes lived in Hartford. The husband died in 1886 ; Mrs. Stowe survived, an invalid, until 1896. The quality of humor has been already noted in American connection with the work of more than one Humor. American writer. The homely wit of Frank- lin gives a distinct coloring to his pages. Irving, not only in the robust mirthfulness of the Knicherbocker History, but also in the delightful pages of his sev- eral sketch-books, appears as a humorist of genial type. Lowell and Holmes have conspicuous places among the exponents of American humor ; and there are scores of minor writers whose gifts in this field have not been concealed. The political humorist has long been in evidence. The Political " Major Jack Downing " was the character Humorists, assumed in the days of President Jackson by a young journalist of Portland, Maine, a graduate of Bowdoin College, Seba Smith (1792-1868). The war with Mexico later inspired his pen. The Civil War brought out several journalistic humorists, among whom ^ See Trent's American Literature, p. 504. NOVELISTS AND HUMORISTS 307 one, Kobert Henry Newell (1836-1901), of New York, wrote under the name of " Orpheus C. Kerr" ; and an- other, David Ross Locke (1833-1888), an Ohio editor, figured as " Rev. Petroleum V. Nasby." His book Swingin^ round the Cirkle (1866) was immensely pop- ular throughout the North. Representative of a broader field and not connected with politics are the comic characters " Widow pwiosopiiy Bedott," the creation of Mrs. Frances Whitcher "^^ H'™°'- (1812-1852), and the oft-quoted " Mrs. Partington " of Benjamin P. Shillaber (1814-1890), whose Life and Sayings of Mrs, Partington appeared in 1854. Henry W. Shaw (1818-1885), "Josh Billings," and Charles F. Browne (1834-1867), "Artemus Ward," are the real leaders in this group of humorous professionals. Both appeared as entertainers on the public platform, as well as in the columns of the newspapers. In 1866, Browne visited England, where his lecture on The Mormons created as much merriment as it had occasioned in the United States. His complete writings were published in 1875. Shaw's humorous philosophy was embodied chiefly in Josh Billings'* Farmery's Allminax, his absurd system of spelling contributing to the fun. Of those who have written humorously in verse, we may mention John Godfrey Saxe (1816- 1887), whose humor mingling with sentiment is inferior to that of Thomas Hood, which it otherwise resembles, and Charles Godfrey Leland (1824-1903), of Philadelphia, author of the Hans Breitmann Bal- lads^ published complete in 1871. Samuel Langhorne Clemens, born near Hannibal, Missouri, a distinctly western product, has ..jur j. come to hold the foremost place among Amer- Twain," lean humorists, although his distinction as a *'°™^®^^- man of letters is by no means limited to this single field. 308 GENERAL LITERARY DEVELOPMENT His humor is broad and virile, often edged with satire. Keverence for tradition is not one of his traits; the role of the iconoclast is one which he assumes with vigor and with zest. After an apprenticeship in a newspaper office, beginning at twelve years of age, and a brief ca- reer as pilot on the Mississippi packets (it was the call of the leadsman as he reported his soundings which supplied the peculiar pen-name), Mr. Clemens went to Nevada, where for a time he filled the post of territorial secretary. Later, in San Francisco, he again took up newspaper work, and here made his first literary success with the story of The Celebrated Jumping Frog^ which, at the suggestion of Bret Harte, he published in The Californian, a short-lived literary journal, in 1867. His first book, Innocents Abroad (1869), was the humorous record of a trip through Europe ; it brought immediate fame. Roughing It (1872) was based upon early ex- periences in the far West. The Gilded Age (1873), written in collaboration with Charles Dudley Warner, introduced the noteworthy character " Col. Sellers," with his sanguine temperament and his famous declara- tion '* There 's millions in it ! " Tom Sawyer appeared in 1876, — a remarkable study of boy character, and re- miniscent of the author's youth. Another European trip resulted in A Tramp Abroad (1880). Mr. Clemens then entered a province new to him and surprised his readers with The Prince and the Pavper (1882), a charmingly written romance for children. Life on the Mississippi (1883) was followed by another strong story of boy-life amid rude surroundings. Huckleberry Finn (1884). The broad burlesque, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Courts appeared in 1889. A serious novel, Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894), and a his- torical romance seriously conceived, Joanof Arc (1896), have increased the literary reputation of the author. NOVELISTS AND HUMORISTS 309 Numerous short stories, not altogether in the humorous vein, have continued to appear along with occasional volumes of the type represented in the early works. Chapters of a leisurely Autobiography are now appear- ing characteristically enlivened with the old-time humor, mellowed but unimpaired by age. The early work of Francis Bret Harte, in verse at least, was largely humorous. His first success Bret Harte, was as a humorist. Born in Albany, New 1839-1902. York, Harte's school training came to an end with his father's death in 1854, and the fifteen-year-old boy, who had already become a lover of Charles Dickens, and had also published in a New York newspaper some immature verse of his own, went with his mother to the Pacific coast. The first few years of his life in California brought him little except experience and intimate ac- quaintance with the picturesque characters that later figured to such advantage in his poems and tales. He was a school teacher at Sonora, in Calaveras County ; he tried placer mining in the gold-fields ; he was a messen- ger in the employ of the Wells-Fargo Express Company ; finally he became a compositor on a San Francisco paper, and began to write sketches for the Golden Era. In 1861, while holding an appointment as secretary to the superintendent of the San Francisco Mint, Harte be- came the editor of the newly founded Overland Monthly ; and in the second number of that publication appeared his first noteworthy tale. The Luck of Roariiig Camp. Then followed The Outcasts of Poker Flat^ Tennes- see's Partner., and the other narratives which contain his inimitable portraitures of the primitive western civilization. A little later, he wrote the first and best of his dialect poems, Plain Language from Truthful James., or, as it was afterwards entitled, The Heathen Chinee. 310 GENERAL LITERARY DEVELOPMENT In 1870, Bret Harte left California. The popularity of his stories and poems was unbounded, especially throughout the East, and in England. His subsequent career was a disappointment. Such literary work as he undertook was desultory and either an imitation of his earlier efforts, or something inferior. He was given, in 1878, a minor German consulate and two years later was transferred to Glasgow. Of this office he was re- lieved in 1885. He continued to live in England and published numerous volumes which did not increase his fame. He died at the home of friends in Surrey, in 1902. V. POETRY, SOUTH AND NORTH. Among the minor poets whose songs have found recog- Minor nition and whose names deserve some record Verse. j^ t}jg history of our literature, the following at least should be included. William W. Story (1819- 1895), the friend of Hawthorne and Lowell, was born in Salem. He resided for the larger part of his life in Italy, and attained considerable rank as a sculptor. He was a poet of more than ordinary gifts, and an author of several volumes, prose as well as verse, including the well-known Roba di Roma^ or Walks and Talks about Home (1862). Thomas William Parsons (1819-1892), born at Boston, is more widely known as a translator of Dante than as an original poet, although his lines On a Bust of Dante are greatly admired by scholars. Dr. Parsons, who was a dental surgeon, practiced his profession abroad, and it was during his residence in Italy that his interest in the Italian poet was aroused. His translation ranks with the best American render- ings of the Commedia, although it is not complete. His version of the Inferno appeared in 1867; portions of" the Purgatorio and Paradiso were published in 1893. Christopher Pearse Cranch (1813-1892), an artist living POETRY, SOUTH AND NORTH 311 in Cambridge, a member of the transcendental group, published a translation of Virgil's j^ne,id in 1872. The modest verse of Alice and Phcebe Gary (Alice, 1820- 1871 ; Phoebe, 1824-1871), serious in sentiment, often religious, was widely read. The Gary sisters were na- tives of Ohio, but in 1852 removed to New York. Mrs. Julia Ward Howe (1819- ), a well-known lecturer and leader in various reform movements, has written sev- eral volumes of verse, but will be remembered chiefly as the author of a great war-poem. The Battle Hymn of the Reimhlic, Lucy Larcom (1826-1893), whose early songs, written while she was a worker in the mills at Lowell, attracted the notice of Whittier, and Mrs. Gelia Laighton Thaxter (1836-1894), daughter of the light- house-keeper on the Isles of Shoals, were, like Mrs. Howe^ typical New England women who found their inspiration in subjects and activities close at hand. The names of Mrs. Harriet Prescott Spofford (1835- ) and Mrs. Louise Ghandler Moulton (1835-1908) should be included in this list of our minor poets of recognized worth. A larger distinction attends the literary career of Mrs. Helen Fiske Jackson (1831-1885), before her second marriage Helen Hunt, whose signature " H. H." was familiar to the readers of a generation ago. Mrs. Jackson was born at Amherst, Massachusetts. Her poems, issued in 1870, placed her at the head of the women writers of verse in America. The last ten years of Mrs. Jackson's life were spent in Colorado and Gal- ifornia. Her interest in the Indians and her intense sympathy with them in their wrongs led to the publica- tion of her Century of Dishonor (1881), a book which bore fruit in the official appointment of Mrs. Jackson as special examiner to the mission Indians in California ; and eventually in her striking novel, JRamona (1884). A group of rather remarkable short stories by " Saxe 312 GENERAL LITERARY DEVELOPMENT Holm," published in two series (1873, 1878), although unacknowledged, are usually attributed to Helen Hunt Jackson. The poems of Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) are remarkable productions, which have commanded recognition by our highest literary critics. Miss Dickin- son was a townswoman of Helen Fiske, and her life was spent at Amherst largely in seclusion. Only a few inti- mate friends were aware of her poetical gift, and her verses were not published until 1890, four years after her death. John Hay (1838-1905), distinguished as a diplo- matist and statesman, was born in Indiana. He began the practice of law in Illinois in 1861, and became the private secretary of President Lincoln. In collaboration with John G. Nicolay he afterward wrote the authori- tative Ah'aham Lincoln: A History (1886-1890); his literary fame, however, is based upon a slender vol- ume of Pike Connty Ballads (1871), which, strong in local color, portray the rough virtues of the Mississippi Valley in the early days. There is a finer quality of elegance and grace — with less originality — in the later verse of his Castilian Days (1871) and Poems (1890). A strong and successful novel, The Breadwinners (1884), attributed to John Hay, was never publicly acknowledged by him. Edward Rowland Sill (1841- 1887), a native of New England, although compelled by ill health to seek a residence in California, exhibited a notable talent in his poetry which shows rich gifts of spiritual insight and power. John Boyle O'Keilly (1844- 1890), an Irish patriot with a romantic history, a gifted orator and an influential editor in Boston, was a lyric poet of more than ordinary talent. He was the author of many excellent songs and ballads. J. Maurice Thomp- son (1844-1901), well known as a literary critic and as the author of several popular romances, also deserves recognition as a lyric poet. A disciple of Theocritus, POETRY, SOUTH AND NORTH 313 he was an entliusiast for nature, a lover of outdoor life and sports. He revived the interest in archery, and sang of birds and woods. Thompson was born in Indiana, but lived as a boy in Kentucky and Georgia. He served in the Confederate army during the war, and at its close returned to his native state. Since the death of Poe, the South has not been re- presented by any poet of equal rank, yet it poets of the has been by no means without its representa- so^t^- lives in verse, of whom one or two may be said to have at- tained national prominence. William G. Simms (1806- 1870), whose contributions to American fiction have been described, was the author of several volumes of verse which enjoyed local popularity but which does not rise above mediocrity. Albert Pike (1809-1891), born in Boston, a settler in Arkansas, a soldier in the Confederate army, published in 1831 his ambitious Hymns to the Gods. Better known to-day is his charm- ing ode To the Moching-Bird; and best known of all his verse is the stirring war-song Dixie, In this con- nection mention should be made of Theodore O'Hara (1820-1867) of Kentucky, who, in 1847, wrote The Bivouac of the Dead. This martial elegy, upon which the reputation of its author rests, commemorates the death of Kentuckians who fell at the battle of Buena Vista. Another famous song of the South in war- time, Maryland^ my Maryland., was the composition of James Ryder Randall (1839-1908), a native of Bal- timore. Three Southern poets belonging to the gener- ation which followed Poe have risen to more than minor rank. These are Henry Timrod, Paul H. Hayne, and Sidney Lanier. There is a pathetic resemblance in the circumstances and experiences of all. Each suffered personally the distressing effects of the war which in- terrupted the literary achievement and shortened the 314 GENERAL LITERARY DEVELOPMENT life of each. Both Timrod and Lanier died under forty; while Hayne, although surviving to the age of fifty-five, was an invalid for many years before his death. The poet Timrod was born at Charleston, South Henry Tim- Carolina. He studied at the University of rod, 1827- Georgia, and began the reading of law. He had already won recognition as a poet and had formed a lifelong friendship with young Hayne, who was also a native of Charleston. Together the poet-friends entered on their literary career, and under the encourage- ment of William G. Simms they were associated in an editorial venture which proved short-lived. Timrod's poems, which filled but a slender volume, were published at Boston in 1860, his most elaborate composition being A Vision ofPoesie^ the statement of his poetical creed. Then came the war. Timrod's health was too delicate to permit of military service, but he went upon the field as correspondent for a Charleston paper. But this ex- perience proved too strenuous, and in 1864 he became associate-editor of the South Carolinian^ at Columbia, the state capital. When that city was destroyed at the entrance of Sherman's army, his home was burned, and everything that he possessed was lost. His poverty was so great that his family was on the verge of starvation. The last three years of the poet's life were years of acute suffering. A visit to the rustic home of his friend Hayne failed to benefit him ; his health rapidly declined, and he died at thirty-eight. A complete edition of Timrod's poems was edited by his brother poet in 1873. Much of Timrod's verse is nature poetry, serious in spirit like that of Wordsworth, elevated and musical. His best- known poem. The Cotton Boll, is no less notable for its patriotic fervor than for its fine description of the snowy cotton-fields of the South. His highest achievement is POETRY, SOUTH AND NORTH 315 seen in the beautiful ode At Magnolia Cevieteiy (1867), which closes with these lines: — " Stoop, angels, hither from the skies ! There is no holier spot of ground Than where defeated valor lies, By mourning' beauty crowned." Hayne was reared in the cultured and wealthy Charles- ton home of his uncle, Eobert Y. Hayne, Web- „ , „ „ . -1 XT . 1 r^ ^^^^ Hamll- ster s great opponent m the United btates ton Hayne, Senate. Previous to the war, he had filled two ^®30-i886. or three editorial positions, including the editorship of MusselVs Magazine^ the publication promoted by the novelist William Gilmore Simms ; and, since the publi- cation of his early poems in 1855, had been regarded as the representative poet of the South. Hayne served with the rank of colonel in the Confederate army. In the bombardment of Charleston he lost all his possessions, and found himself at the close of the war in the deepest poverty and a confirmed invalid. He then went to the barren pine-lands of Georgia, built for himself and his family a rude cottage on a piece of land known as Copse Hill ; and this was the poet's home until his death. He published a volume, Legends and Lyrics^ in 1872, and The Mountain of the Lovers and Other Poems^ in 1875. A complete edition of his Poems appeared in 1882. Hayne was essentially a poet of romance, and succeeded admirably in his longer narrative poems and his ballads. Yet he, too, wrote, like a true nature-lover, of the pines, and the mockingbirds, and the warmth of the South- land. In spite of loneliness and poverty, his poems con- tain none of the sadness or melancholy so characteristic of Poe ; they were tender and cheerful to the last. More successful than any other Southern poet except Poe in the impression of his genius on readers of verse, Sidney Lanier is gradually coming to be recognized as 316 GENERAL LITERARY DEVELOPMENT entitled to a place with our chief American poets. The story of his life is as pathetic as those Lanier, just rehearsed, for his life, too, was colored by ^^ ~ ' the shadows of ill-health and straitened cir- cumstances which followed in the wake of war. Born in Macon, Georgia, February 3, 1842, Lanier had just completed his college course in Oglethorpe when the war broke. He flung himself into the struggle with the same ardor that sent Timrod and Hayne to the support of the Southern cause. Sidney and his brother Clifford — two slender, gray-eyed youths, inseparable in their service of danger and hardship — extracted all the romance to be derived from their experience. In 1863, they were on scout duty along the James ; Lanier wrote later with enthusiasm of this period in their army life : — " We had a flute and a guitar, good horses, a beautiful country, splendid residences inhabited by friends who loved us, and plenty of hair-breadth escapes from the roving bands of Federals. Cliff and I never cease to talk of the beautiful women, the serenades, the moonlight dashes on the beach of fair Burwell's Bay, and the spirited brushes of our little force with the enemy." In 1864, the brothers were transferred to Wilmington and placed as signal officers upon the blockade-runners Here Sidney Lanier was captured and for five months was confined in the Federal prison at Camp Lookout; it well-nigh became his tomb. With emaciated frame and shattered physique the young soldier finally went home, like so many other youthful veterans, south and north, to fight for life in the coming years. With La- nier, the struggle was for both life and livelihood. He was twenty-three years old, unsettled as to his future, and under the gloom of those "raven days" of the deso- lated and demoralized South. " Our hearths are gone out and our hearts are broken," POETRY, SOUTH AND NORTH 317 he sang plaintively ; yet he turned the plaint into a song of cheer; and he still found the romance. In 1867, he was married to Miss Mary Day, of Macon, and the poems of his wooing-time and of his wedded life are as graceful and tender as the lyrics Lowell sang to Maria White. For five years Lanier tried to follow the law, and then, in 1873, gave himself to art. He went itj^q to Baltimore alone, except for his flute. La- Musician, nier's flute is as famous as Lanier ; it is a part of his per- sonality. Its mellow notes had cheered the soldier and his comrades by camp-fire and in prison; it had been softly played in many a surreptitious serenade. And it was widely known ; for Lanier was a remarkable musi- cian, and was called by many the finest flute-player in America if not in the world. Lanier's musical genius must be taken in account by the student of his verse. So far as he could trace his ancestry, it disclosed this talent as a family possession. In the Kestoration period, there were five Laniers in England who were musicians ; in Charles I's time, Nicholas Lanier, who was painted by Van Dyck, wrote music for the masques of Jonson and the lyrics of Herrick; the father of this Nicholas was a musician in the household of Queen Elizabeth. Thus Sidney Lanier came naturally by his gift. In Bal- timore, his flute secured him a position in the Peabody Orchestra, and furnished the means of living for several years. Theodore Thomas is said to have been on the point of making the artist first flute-player in his or- chestra, when Lanier's health finally failed and he was compelled to give up the struggle. But Sidney Lanier found also in Baltimore the first opportunity to gratify what had been the am- Literature bition of the years since his college course, — ^^ Poetry, the opportunity to study literature and the scientific 318 GENERAL LITERAKY DEVELOPMENT principles of verse. The unfulfilled dream of his youth had been a systematic course in the German universities; this was not to be realized, but in the richly equipped Peabody Library he found his university. Never was there a more assiduous student. Especially did he de- vote himself to the field of Old English poetry. Soon there were invitations to lecture, and in the city he came to have an established reputation as a fascinating lecturer on English literature. In 1875, he first won re- cognition as a poet of more than ordinary power by the publication of Corn^ in Lippincott'' s Magazine; four months later his remarkable poem. The Symphony^ ap- peared in the same magazine. His new friendship with Bayard Taylor produced the invitation to write the words for the Centennial cantata. The first collection of his poems was published in 1877. In rapid succession he wrote three wonderful poems. The Revenge of ITamish^ How Love looked for Hell^ and The Marshes of Glynn. In 1879, the poet was appointed to a lectureship in the Johns Hopkins University. The fruit of this profes- sional connection we have in two volumes, neither of which is characterized by scientific precision or mi- nutely accurate scholarship ; nevertheless The Science of English Verse and The English Novel are recog- nized as valuable contributions to the study of literature. The first of these volumes is an essay on the technical side of versification, embodying Lanier's theory of rhythm and tone color; it was his belief that the laws of verse are identical with those of music. A series of books for boys — The Boys King Arthur^ The Boy's Eroissart, etc. — were the by-products from his studies of the ancient chronicles, put forth to enlarge the scanty income. During the last two years of the poet's life the struggle for poetical achievement grew tragic. In No- POETRY, SOUTH AND NORTH 319 vember, 1880, he wrote his friend, Paul Hamilton Hayne : — '^ For six months past a ghastly fever has taken possession of me each day at about 12 m., and holding my Ambitions head under the surface of indescribable distress luiiumiled. for the next twenty hours, subsiding only enough each morn- ing to let me get on my working harness, but never inter- mitting. ... I have myself been disposed to think it arose purely from the bitterness of having to spend my time in making academic lectures and boys' books — pot-boilers all — when a thousand songs are singing in my heart that will certainly kill me if I do not utter them soon." Three years earlier he had written bravely in The Stirrup-CuiJ : — " Death, thou 'rt a cordial old and rare: Look how compounded, with what care ! Time got his wrinkles reaping- thee Sweet herbs from all antiquity. " David to thy distillag-e went, Keats, and Gotama excellent, Omar Khayydra, and Chaucer bright, And Shakspere for a king-delight. " Then, Time, let not a drop be spilt: Hand me the cup whene'er thou wilt, 'T is thy rich stirrup-cup to me ; I '11 drink it down right smilingly." And now, in his greatest poem, Sunrise^ completed soon after the date of his letter to Hayne, he could write in the same jubilant strain : — " — manifold One, I must pass from thy face, I must pass from the face of the Sun : Old Want is awake and agog, every wrinkle a-frown ; The worker must pass to his work in the terrible town : But I fear not, nay, and I fear not the thing to be done ; I am strong with the strength of my lord the Sun : How dark, how dark soever the race that must needs be run, I am lit with the Sun." 320 GENERAL LITERARY DEVELOPMENT In 1881, Lanier was taken to the pine-lands in the moun- tains of North Carolina; and there in the September following he died. His grave is in Baltimore. A bronze bust of the poet is fittingly placed in one of the halls of the university where, for so brief a term, he taught. In spite of the limitations set by fate upon Lanier's Lanier's poetical work, its high quality is evident. It is Poems. poetry that charms the ear with its rich melo- dies and stirs the spirit by its own spiritual power. A Ballad of Trees and the Master is a familiar example of this quality. How broad might have been the scope of Lanier's eventual achievement can only be inferred from the pathetically small amount actually produced. He had a vivid imagination and a masterly command of expression. His descriptive skill, evidenced in the blithe Song of the Chattahoochee and the Hymns of the Marshes, was very fine. The Revenge of Hamish is an intensely dramatic narrative. A deep moral purpose is easily felt in lyrics like Tampa Rohins, The Stirrup- Cup, and At Sunset, poems which quite escape the didactic tone. But it is in the longer compositions, Corn, The Symphony, Psalm of the West, Sunrise, and The Marshes of Glynn, that the poet's genius is exhib- ited at his highest reach. In Lanier's scanty bequest of verse we recognize the beauty and perfection of consummate art ; but the true source of his distinction lies for most of his readers in the cheery optimism of his message ; in the splendid faith, the hearty sympathy and unconquerable courage of his own brave and loving soul. The strength of his appeal is itself an evidence of the truth expressed by the poet in the second line of The Symphony, — " The Time needs heart — 't is tired of head." In general, read Stedman's Poets of America, and refer to that critic's American Anthology for selections from the POETRY, SOUTH AND NORTH 321 poets cited. Lanier is represented at length in Page's The Chief American Poets. Hayne's Complete Poems, with ii/e, were published in 1882. A Life of Timrod was included in the edition of Timrod's poems edited by Hayne. An admirable Life of Sidney Lanier has been written by Edwin Mims (Houghton MifSin Company). Con- sult also Holliday's History of Southern Literature. Kepresentative of a generation younger than that of ^ our chief American poets, yet closely associ- Aidrich and ated with them in personal companionship and stedman. in the spirit of their work, are the two distinguished writers, Aidrich and Stedman. They form an interesting link between the present and the past. Holding more than a minor rank as poets, both are prominent among American men of letters; both achieved distinction in other fields than that of verse. Thomas Bailey Aidrich was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, November 11,1836. On account of m « . , i/ business connections in the South, the family drich, were for a time accustomed to spend the win- ^®36-i907. ter at New Orleans ; but it is the New Hampshire seaport town which figures as Rivermouth, the home of Tom Bailey, in that most attractive romance of youth. The Story of a Bad Boy (1870). His father's death in 1852 put an end to plans for a college education ; and in his seventeenth year, young Aidrich went to New York and entered the banking house of his uncle. He soon began, however, contributing to the literary journals and made acquaintance with N. P. Willis, Bayard Taylor, Stod- dard, and Stedman — the last named being only three years older than himself. y The publication of his beautiful Ballad of Baby Bell v (1856) first brought popularity, although a volume of ^^ verse. The Bells., had appeared in the previous year, when its author was but nineteen. 322 GENERAL LITERARY DEVELOPMENT After three years of commercial life, Aldrich aban- Editoriai doned the counting-room for the editor's office, ^ork. ., and for the next ten years was associated with one or other of the New York magazines, his principal engagement being upon Willis's Home Journal. In 1865, he removed to Boston and took editorial charge of the publication Every Saturday. In 1881, he suc- ceeded Mr. Ho wells as editor of the Atlantic Monthly^ retaining this position until 1890. Meanwhile Aldrich's poems had been appearing in successive volumes : Cloth of Gold (1874), filled with the rich color of oriental fantasy. Flower and Thorn (1876), Friar Jerome's Beautiful Book (1881). In the long narrative poem Wyndham Towers (1889) the poet's work does not appear to such advantage as in the dainty lyrics of sentiment and ro- mance which were the fruit of earlier years. No Ameri- can poet has written with a more delicate or graceful touch. His technique is faultless in such brilliant pieces as When the Sultan goes to Ispahan^ The Lunch., Noc- turne. Identity^ and Baby Bell., the tender pathos of which still retains its grasp on the emotions of its read- ers. Aldrich was his own severest critic, and his lines were frequently revised. Nothing short of perfection satisfied his keen sense of artistic expression. It is his own ideal that is embodied in this splendid sonnet : — " Enamored architect of airy rhyme, Build as thou wilt ; heed not what each man says. Good souls, but innocent of dreamers' ways, Will come, and marvel why thou wastest time ; Others, beholding how thy turrets climb 'Twixt theirs and heaven, will hate thee all their days ; But most beware of those who come to praise. Wondersmith, O worker in sublime And heaven-sent dreams, let art be all in all ; Build as thou wilt, unspoiled by praise or blame, Build as thou wilt, and as thy light is given : POETRY, SOUTH AND NORTH 323 Then, if at last the airy structure fall, Dissolve, and vanish — take thyself no shame. They fail, and they alone, who have not striven." The Sisters' Tragedy (1891) and Unguarded Gates (1895) were the titles of the volumes which contained his later verse. Like his poems, Aldrich's prose works are charac- terized by the qualities of vivacity, brilliance, prog^ and delicate workmanship. Nothing pleases Works, him better than to surprise his reader by some unex- pected turn. This is the case in his first successful story, — in some respects his best, — Marjorie Daw (1873), and in some of his later tales. The novels Prudence Palfrey (1874) and The Queen of Sheba (1877) were followed, in 1880, by an admirable detective story. The Stillwater Tragedy. It is, however, in the field of the short story that we most clearly recognize Aldrich's power as a writer of fiction, — a field for which his art was exceedingly apt. Mercedes, a drama (1883), and Judith of Bethulia, prepared for the stage in 1905, have not proved dramatically successful. It is upon the best of his short stories and his earlier lyrics, with their exqui- site technique, that Aldrich's literary fame must rest.^ Edmund Clarence Stedman was born at Hartford, Connecticut, October 8, 1833. His mother, « n st d- Elizabeth Dodge Stedman, was a writer of man, verse, published several volumes of poems, and, through a long residence in Italy, was an inti- mate friend of the Brownings. During his undergradu- ate course at Yale, young Stedman received a first prize for a poem on Westminster Abbey. In 1855, he entered the journalistic profession in New York and was one of 1 An adequate and interesting- biography of the poet is Thomas Bailey Aldrich, by Ferris Greenslet (1908). 324 GENERAL LITERARY DEVELOPMENT the many talented men who became at various times proteges of Horace Greeley, upon the staff of the Trib- une. It was at this period that Stedman was thrown into intimate association with Stoddard, Taylor, and Aldrich. The first literary success came with the pub- lication of The Diamond Wedding^ a satirical poem, inspired by a real incident in fashionable New York society. His Poems^ Lyric and Idyllic^ were published in 1860; and in that year the poet went to the front as a war-correspondent for the World, At the close of the war, Stedman became a banker and remained a member of the Stock Exchange Banker- until 1890. While thus engaged in active busi- ^®^" ness, he nevertheless found leisure to practice the art of letters to good purpose. Some of his poems, like Kearney at Seven Pines, How Old Brown took Harper's Perry, Wanted — A Man, and Pan in Wall Street, hold a high place in American literature. Yet Stedman is in no sense a popular poet and not many of his compositions appeal to the public taste. He was not subjective, nor is there much intensity or passion in his verse. His themes were the immediate suggestions of the hour. Stedman ranks as our ablest critic of poetic liter- ature. He lectured upon Poetry at Johns Literary Hopkins University in 1892, and afterward ^ * °" repeated these lectures at other institutions. It was at this time that he formulated his suggestive definition of poetry — as " rhythmical, imaginative lan- guage, expressing the invention, taste, thought, passion, and insight of the human soul." His critical volumes are: The Victorian Poets (1S1E>}, Poets of America (1885), and The Nature and Elements of Poetry (1892). These works are almost indispensable to the literary student. Mr. Stedman published A Victorian POETRY, SOUTH AND NORTH 325 Anthology iu 1895, and An American Anthology in 1900. In collaboration with G. E. Woodberry he edited The Works of Edgar Allan Poe in 1895, and, with Ellen M. Hutchinson, completed the monumental Li- hrary of American Literature (11 volumes), in 1889. At the funeral of his brother-poet, Aldrich, in March, 1907, Stedman was a conspicuous figure, fee- ble and tottering with the weakness of advanc- ing age. Yet death came upon him suddenly as he sat among his books, at work, January 18, 1908, — such a death as he had craved in Mors Benefica^ — " Give me to die unwitting of the day And stricken in Life's brave heat, with senses clear." And thus the last representative of the older generation of American poets had departed. CHAPTER VII RECENT YEARS I. Scholars and Essayists. II. Poets of this Generation. III. Contemporary Fiction. The main facts in the history of our national litera- ture have now been mentioned as fully as the purpose of the present volume will permit. Some account, however, must be taken of contemporary literature ; and although it is unwise to pronounce definite judgment on the work of living writers, it will be desirable to note briefly the more conspicuous literary achievements of the present generation. We will therefore consider the work of our principal essayists, poets, and novelists not hitherto named, in order that we may recognize at least the wide- spread activity at the present time in the field of letters. Most of the writers to be enumerated belong entirely to the period since the Civil War, although in each group some are included who were a part of the older genera- tion. I. SCHOLARS AND ESSAYISTS. In the field of literary criticism the work of Edwin Literary Percy Whipple (1819-1886) was notable. He Critics. ^g^g i^jjQ author of several volumes of scholarly essays including Literature and Life (1849), Litera- ture of the Age of Elizabeth (1869), and American Literature^ and Other Papers (1887). Horace E. Scudder (1838-1902), long associated with the publi- cation of the Atlantic Monthly^ — he succeeded Aldrich SCHOLARS AND ESSAYISTS 327 as its editor in 1890, — was an indefatigable writer, the extent of whose service to American letters is hardly understood, since much of his work was anonymous. Henry N. Hudson (1814-1886), Richard Grant White (1821-1885), William James Rolfe (born 1827) and Horace Howard Furness (born 1833) are to be remem- bered for their services in the criticism and interpreta- tion of Shakespeare's dramas. Their scholarly editions of the plays are among the best that have been pro- duced. The name of William Winter (born in Massa- chusetts, 1836), author of Shakespeare^ s England (1886) and our foremost critic of the stage, may be mentioned in this connection. Edward Everett Hale (1822-1909), the distinguished Boston clergyman and philanthropist, long Reminis- survived the generation which read his earlier cences. works. His literary career was remarkably versatile and productive. A New England Boyhood (1893) and Memories of a Hundred Years (1902) are pleas- ant sketch-books of past experience. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1902) and James Russell Lowell and his Friends (1899) are further contributions to this in- teresting series of reminiscent essays. Dr. Hale's work in fiction will be referred to later.* Thomas Wentworth Higginson (born at Cambridge, 1823) is the author of two volumes of reminiscence. Cheerful Yesterdays (1898) and Contemporaries (1899) which are of especial interest to literary students. He has also written biographies of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (1884), Longfellow (1903), and Whittier (1903). Yesterdays with Authors (1872), a volume written by James T. Fields (1817-1881), should be men- tioned here. Mr. Fields, a partner in the famous pub- lishing house of Ticknor and Fields, has a recognized 1 See page 340. 328 RECENT YEARS standing among the men of letters. He followed Lowell as editor of the Atlantic Monthly^ and was well known in his day as a lecturer and an essayist. John Burroughs (born in New York state, 1837) is, Nature after Thoreau, our foremost writer on nature Books. themes. He is not only a lover of the woods and fields, but he is a conscientious student of plant and animal life. He has no sympathy and scant patience with writers on these subjects whose imagination has inter- fered with their accuracy ; he describes honestly what he observes. Wake-Rohin (1871), Winter Sunshine (1875), Birds and Poets (1877), Locusts and Wild Honey (1879), Fresh Fields (1884), Signs and Sea- sons (1886), Ways of Nature (1905) — these are some of his outdoor books; he has written also Literary Values (1904), a volume of critical essays, two books on Walt Whitman, and Bird and Bough (1906), a volume of poems. Harriet Mann Miller (" Olive Thorne Miller"), born in New York state, 1831, and Bradford Torrey (born in Massachusetts, 1843) have written entertainingly of the ways and habits of birds ; while Ernest Seton Thompson (born in England, 1860) has narrated with a somewhat freer imagination the bio- graphies of various wild animals he has known. In the field of the distinctively literary essay, Lau- Literary rence Hutton (1843-1904), Hamilton Wright Essays. Mabie (born 1845), Henry van Dyke (born 1852), George Edward Woodberry (born 1855), Agnes Eepplier (born 1857), Samuel M. brothers (born 1857), Bliss Perry (born 1860) are perhaps our best-known representatives. There is also an important group of Academic university men who have made noteworthy Group. contributions to literary history and criticism. Chief of these is Moses Coit Tyler (1835-1900), a pro- fessor in Cornell University, author of the monumental POETS OF THIS GENERATION 329 History of American Literature in Colonial Times (1878) and The Literary History of the American Re- volution (1897). Thomas R. Lomisbury (born 1838), of Yale University, author of the volume on Cooper (1882) in the American 3fen of Letters Series^ Charles F. Richardson (born 1851), of Dartmouth, Brander Matthews (born 1852), of Columbia, and Barrett Wendell (born 1855), of Harvard, have all done con- spicuous work in this field. Two distinguished Harvard scholars, Francis J. Child (1825-1896) and Charles Eliot Norton (1827-1908), should be included in this list. Professor Child is our principal authority on the Scotch and English ballads; Professor Norton was the author of a prose translation of Dante, and edited the let- ters of Lowell, of Emerson, of Carlyle, and of Ruskin. II. POETS OF THIS GENERATION. At the head of our contemporary poets stands Richard Watson Gilder (born in New Jersey, 1844). In 1870, he became editor of Sci^ihner'^s Monthly^ and in 1881, of The Century — a position which he still retains. His first volume of verse. The New Day, appeared in 1875. A complete edition of The Poems of Richard Watson Gilder was published in 1908. John James Piatt (born in Indiana, 1835) and his wife, Sarah M. Piatt (born in Kentucky, 1836) are residents of Ohio. Mr. Piatt was associated with Wil- liam Dean Ho wells in the publication of Poems of Two Friends (1860). Numerous volumes of his poems have appeared since, two of them in association with his wife. Mrs. Piatt's Complete Poems (two volumes) were pub- lished in 1894. Joaquin Miller (born in Indiana, 1841), whose name, until the poet changed it, was Cincinnatus Heine Miller, removed with his parents to Oregon in 1855, and there 330 RECENT YEARS began a life replete with picturesque experience. His first volume, Songs of the Sierras, was published in London, in 1871, while the author was visiting England. Miller's lyrical romances have not attained wide popu- larity, but the fine stanzas of his stirring poen\, Colum- bus, may find a place, not undeserved, among the un- forgettable poems of our literature. Joaquin Miller lives in the mountains not far from Oakland, California, amid surroundings similar to those so often reproduced in his verse. John Banister Tabb (born in Virginia, 1845), a Catholic priest, professor of English literature in St. Charles' College, in Maryland, is the author of many excellent lyrics. The lyric quality also distinguishes the work of John Vance Cheney (born in New York, 1848), who was from 1894 to 1908 librarian of the Newberry Library in Chicago. Lloyd Mifflin (born in Pennsyl- vania, 1846) has won distinction especially through his sonnets, a collected edition of which appeared in 1905. Of the women who have contributed largely to our contemporary verse, the following are perhaps the most widely known for the literary quality of their work and for its sympathetic appeal : Julia C. R. Dorr (born in South Carolina, 1825, since 1830 living in Vermont), Annie Fields (born in Boston, 1834), the widow of James T. Fields, Edna Dean Proctor (born in New Hampshire, 1838), Edith M. Thomas (born in Ohio, 1854, since 1888 living in New York), Helen Gray Cone (born in New York, 1859), Louise Imogen Guiney (born in Boston, 1861), and Dora Eead Good- ale (born in Massachusetts, 1866). Will Carleton (born in Michigan, 1845), a journalist now living in Brooklyn, first attracted popular interest by the publication of Farm Ballads in 1878. His poems in dialect, both humorous and pathetic, have extended through a lengthy series of volumes. POETS OF THIS GENERATION 331 Eugene Field (1850-1895), for a number of years a journalist in Chicago, will long be remembered, not only for the whimsical humor of his prose, but for the tender pathos of a few poems of child life, like Little Boy Blue and Wynhen^ Blynken and Nod. Field was a lover of the Latin poet Horace, and the author of some happy versions of his odes. A Little Booh of Western Verse (1890), With Trumpet and Drum (1892), and A Second Book of Verse (1893) contain his familiar poems. Widely known as a writer of poems in the homely dialect of the Indiana farmer, James Whitcomb Riley has attained a popularity second to that of no other liv- ing American poet. Filled with a genial optimism, a universal sympathy, and a kindly sense of humor, Mr. Riley's verse has won the hearts of the people. His na- ture lyrics are vivid with rural charm and the simple joys of country life. He has written many songs for children which have long since become classics among child read- ers. Mr. Riley was born in Greenfield, Indiana, in 1853. In 1873, he began newspaper work in Indianap- olis, where he has since lived, contributing occasional poems in dialect to Indiana papers, using the pen-name "Benj. F. Johnson, of Boone." He soon became known as " the Hoosier Poet." The Old Sicimmin^ Hole and ^Leven More Poems was published in 1883, and numer- ous collections have since followed. Among his best- known poems are : Grig g shy s Station^ Knee-Deep in June., An Old Sweetheart of Mine., Old Aunt Mary^s., Little Orphant Annie., When the Frost is on the Pun- kin. The Old Swimmin* Hole, Tlioughts fer the Dis- couraged Farmer — with its cheery strain, — " Fer the world is full of roses, and the roses full of dew, And the dew is full of heavenly love that drips fer me and you," — and many others; so marked by homely sense and a 332 RECENT YEARS democratic simplicity of style that their humanness has commended them to readers of all ranks. Edwin Markham (born in Oregon, 1852), while a teacher in California, wrote and published a remarkable poem. The Man with the Hoe (1898), which by its rugged strength and elemental feeling achieved an en- during fame. Mr. Markham is the author of a poem on Lincoln {Lincoln^ and Other Poems^ 1901) which deserves the wide recognition it has received; but in no other of his quite numerous compositions has he equaled the success of his first great poem. He has for some years been engaged in editorial work in New York. Henry Cuyler Bunner (1855-1896), formerly editor of the humorous journal Puch^ was a writer of verse in which humor and sentiment were often delicately blended. His Airs from Arcady and Elsewhere ap- peared in 1884. Another writer whose field has been in the poetry of sentiment, and whose popularity seems to be well established, is Ella Wheeler Wilcox (born in Wisconsin, 1855). Poems of Passion (1883) first drew attention to her work. She is actively engaged in jour- nalism. Samuel Minturn Peck (born in Alabama, 1854) and Frank Lebby Stanton (born in South Carolina, 1857) are two popular poets of the South. Mr. Peck's first volume. Cap and Bells^ appeared in 1886. Mr. Stanton, who is on the editorial staff of the Atlanta Constitution^ published Songs of the Soil in 1894. Comes One with a Song (1898) and Songs from Dixie Land (1900) have followed. The poetical work of Frank Dempster Sherman (born in Peekskill, N. Y., 1860) is represented by Madrigals and Catches (1887), Lyrics for a Lute (1890), Lyrics of Joy (1904). A Southern Flight (1906) was pub- lished in association with Clinton Scollard (born in POETS OF THIS GENERATION 333 Clinton, N. Y., 1860), one of the most prolific of our minor poets. Mr. Scollard's earliest publication was Pictures in Song (1884). With Reed and Lyre fol- lowed in 1886, and at least a dozen volumes of his verse have appeared since. From 1888 to 1896, Mr. Scollard was professor of English literature in Hamilton College. Mr. Sherman is a member of the Faculty of Columbia University. Bliss Carman (born in Fredericton, New Brunswick, 1861) has been engaged since 1890 in editorial work in the United States. He has attained a substantial posi- tion among the younger generation of American nature poets. His first collection, Loio Tide on Grand Pre^ appeared in 1893. A Sea Marie (1895) and Ballads of Lost Haven (1897) were followed by Songs from Vaga- hondia (1894), written in collaboration with Kichard Hovey. More Songs from Vagabondia appeared in 1896, and Last Songs from Vagabondia in 1900. A collected edition of Bliss Carman's poems (two volumes) was published in 1905. Richard Hovey (1864-1900), a poet of large promise, was born in Illinois. He, too, was a journalist at the time of his collaboration with Carman in the three volumes mentioned. Besides the poems which celebrate the joys of the open road, — Songs from Vagabondia sluS. Along the Trail (1898), — he composed a series of poetical dramas, Launcelot and Guenevere (1891-1898), and Taliesin: a Masque (1899). William Vaughn Moody (born in Indiana, 1869), a graduate of Harvard and professor|of English in the University of Chicago (1895-1907/, published in the Atlantic Monthly for May, 1900, a very noteworthy poem, An Ode Written in Time of Hesitation, which dealt with the popular feeling aroused by the outbreak of the Spanish -American War. His first collection of 334 RECENT YEARS Poems appeared in 1901, but a lyrical drama, TTie Masque of Judgment^ had been published in 1900. The Fire-Bring er (1904) follows as the second drama in a proposed trilogy. Mr. Moody has since turned to the prose drama, The Great Divide (1907) having met with substantial success. Percy Wallace MacKaye (born in New York, 1875) has won distinction in the dramatic field with two poet- ical plays : Jeanne d'Arc (1906) and Sappho and Phaon (1907), both of which have been produced with success. The Canterhury Pilgrims (1903) and Fenris the Wolf (1905) are earlier works, the former, in 1909, being presented before various university audiences in the open air. Josephine Preston Peabody (born in New York, 1874) was for a time instructor in English literature in Wellesley College (1901-1903). The Wayfarers— A Booh of Verse appeared in 1898. Besides two other volumes of occasional poems, she has published a poet- ical drama of remarkable strength and beauty, Marlowe (1901) ; Pan — A Choric Idyl (for music) appeared in 1904. Her sympathetic poems of childhood also call for recognition. Since 1906, when Miss Peabody became Mrs. L. S. Marks, her home has been in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906), the only re- presentative of the African race to attain rank as an American poet, was a native of Ohio. His verse is often marked by real lyric excellence, his songs in negro dialect attracting wide attention. William Dean Howells, George Edward Woodberry, and Henry van Dyke, although classified as prose writers, have all written occasional verse which merits more than passing recognition. And there are scores of CONTEMPORARY FICTION 335 minor poets whose names might not unworthily find a place in a list more complete than this.^ III. CONTEMPOKARY FICTION. To take adequate account of our contemporary- American fiction would require far more space than is available in this book ; nor has the time yet come to at- tempt an estimate of literary values in this interesting field. Hardly more than a list of the most prominent among our present-day novelists can be included, with a partial classification of their work. Although it is in fiction that American writers are now most prolific and most successful, it is doubtful if many of these works will find a place in the literature which endures, or if any of these popular novelists will be long remembered. Two schools of fiction are represented : the realistic, and the romantic. It is not always easy to discrimi- nate, however, and there are writers who have used the methods of both schools. William Dean Howells, a consistent and uncompro- mising representative of the claims of real- ™ „ ^ ism, is recognized as easily the foremost eiis, bom American novelist in this generation. His ^®^^' father was a country editor ; and it was in a printing- office in his native state of Ohio that Mr. Howells re- ceived his literary training. The publication, with John J. Piatt, of Poems of Two Friends (1860) marked the beginning of his career. A campaign Life of Lincoln in the same year secured his appointment as consul to Venice, a position which he held for four years. Vene- tian Life (1866) and Italian Journeys (1867) were the fruit of foreign residence. In 1866, Mr. Howells was ^ Consult Stedman's An American Anthology, The Younger American Poets, by Jessie B. Rittenhouse, and A Treasury of American Verse, by Walter Learned. 336 RECENT YEARS made assistant editor (under James T. Fields) of the Atlantic Monthly ; and from 1871 to 1881, he was the editor of the magazine. A vivacious novel, Their Wed- ding Journey (1871), added to the reputation already gained by the two Italian books, and this was increased by the stories which followed, A Chance Acquaintance (1873) and A Foregone Conclusion (1874). Mr. Howells is the author of more than thirty volumes, mainly works of fiction. Of these, A Modern Instance (1882), The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885), and A Hazard of New Fortunes (1889) have probably aroused widest interest. Mr. Howells's literary work- manship is deserving of the highest praise. He is minutely conscientious in his studies of character and incident, insisting upon careful observation and an honest report. His theory of literary art is set forth in an interesting essay. Criticism and Fiction (1891). Since 1881, the novelist has been associated editorially with various periodicals, including Har'pers Magazine, While fiction predominates in his published writings, he has written a number of humorous parlor plays, several volumes of essays upon literary themes, and not a small amount of very charming verse. Henry James is a native of New York and is pro- Henry P^^ly denominated an American writer, al- James, though since 1869 he has made his home in England. His novels are usually associated with those of Mr. Howells as exemplifying the best work of the American realists. In Mr. James's narratives we find the extreme application of realistic theory along with an analysis of character and motive wonderfully minute. His novels and short stories are psychological studies for the most part, and have a comparatively small audience among American readers. As the nov- elist was at one time fond of presenting studies of his i CONTEMPORARY FICTION 337 countrymen as they sometimes appear in Europe, in the environment of a superior culture, his work has often aroused protest rather than favor here. Such was the reception given to Daisy Miller (1878). Others of the novels which are eminently characteristic of this author are An International Episode (1879), The Bostonians (1886), The Princess Casamassima, (1886), The Tragic Muse (1890), and What Maisie Knew (1897). It is in the craftsmanship and structure of his narratives that Mr. James commands most gen- eral admiration ; this artistic skill, along with his keen wit and general brilliance of style, may be most ad- vantageously studied in some of the short stories, — which constitute a large portion of his fiction, — as, for example, in Terminations (1896) or The Private Life and Other Stories (1893). Naturally the realistic novelists have, in the selection of material, frequently turned to the study g^^^j^g ^j of characters and manners with which their Local environment has made them well acquainted ; ^'®^" there has therefore developed a large group of story- writers who deal with local types. Following the footsteps of Harriet Beecher Stowe in the delineation of the quiet New England in New life, Sarah Orne Jewett (1849-1909) pub- England, lished the placid but impressive little story. Deep- haven^ in 1877. Miss Jewett's work in this field has been sympathetic as well as accurate, and her novels have appealed strongly to the affections of many readers. Of these, A Country Doctor (1884), A Marsh Island (1885), and The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896) may be mentioned. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward (born at Boston, 1844) became widely known by the publication of two mystical novels. The Gates Ajar (1868) and Men^ Women, and 338 RECENT YEARS Ghosts (1869). The daughter of a noted theologian and reared in the serious atmosphere of Andover, Mrs. Ward has given a distinctively religious coloring to her numerous works, of which The Story of Avis (1877), Beijond the Gates (1883), The Madonna of the Tuhs (1886), Jack the Fisherman (1887), The Gates Between (1887), A Singular Life (1894), and The Supply at St. Agatha's (1896), are important examples. Margaret Wade Deland, born in Pennsyl- vania, 1857, — whose residence, since 1880, has been at Boston, — also touched the field of religious experi- ence in her first novel, John Ward, Treacher, pub- lished in 1888. Philip and his Wife (1894), Sidney (1890), The Common Way (1904), and The Awak- ening of Helena Itichie (1906) are the most notable of her later works. Perhaps the most distinguished suc- cess in realistic fiction is found in the work of Mary E. Wilkins Freeman (born in Massachusetts, 1862). Mrs. Freeman has portrayed with great skill and in- tense feeling the more subdued yet rugged phases of New England life and character. Her short stories are of exceptional strength and exhibit the technical methods of realism in perfection. A Humble Romance (1887), A New England Nun (1891), Jane Field (1892), Pembroke (1894), and Jerome (1897) may be cited as examples. Alice Brown (born in New Hampshire, 1857) has been especially successful in her short stories, such as are gathered -under the titles Meadow-Grass (1895), Tiverton Tales (1899), and The County Road (1906). Closely akin in local color to the work of Mrs. Freeman, these tales admit a little more of the brightness and warmth of the New England sunshine as it creeps among the shadows of humble circumstances. A later novel, The Story of Thyrza (1909), is a work of genuine creative power. i CONTEMPORARY FICTION 339 There are other well-known writers of fiction who belong to New England, — at least by birth, uoj^^nce — whose work does not permit of such defi- and ideai- nite classification as that of the group just considered ; it is not concerned with the local type. Here belongs the name of Jane G. Austin (1831- 1894), whose historical novels, Standish of Stand- ish (1889), Betti/ Alden (1891), etc., deal with Old Colony times. Harriet Prescott Spofford (born in Maine, 1835) is the author of numerous romantic tales beginning with Si?^ Rohans Ghost (1859). Her more recent novels include Priscilla' s Love Story (1898), The Maid He Married (1899), and The Great Procession (1902). Ellen Olney Kirk (born in Connecticut, 1842) published her first novel. Love in Idleness^ in 1877. She has written a score of popular stories, including Through Winding Ways (1880), The Story of Margaret Kent (1886), Sons and Daughters (1887), The Apology of Ayliffe (1904), and Marcia (1907). Blanche Willis Howard (1847-1898), a native of Maine, became the wife of Dr. von Teuffel, of Stuttgart in Wiirtemberg, in 1890. She died at Munich. Her first story, One Sum- mer^ a delicate idyl, appeared in 1875 ; Guenn^ a Breton Bomance^ in 1882. Clara Louise Burnham (born in Massachusetts, 1854) is the daughter of Dr. George F. Root, the composer. She has been the au- thor of numerous works of fiction, beginning with No Gentlemen^ in 1881. Among her later novels, which deal largely with the teachings of Christian Science, the most successful are The Wise Woman (1895), The Bight Princess (1902), and Jewel (1903). Ar- thur Sherburne Hardy (born in Massachusetts, 1847), a graduate of West Point and at one time professor of mathematics in Dartmouth College, has written 340 RECENT YEARS several novels of unusual charm and strength. These are But Yet a Woman (1883), The Wind of Destiny (1886), Passe i?ose (1889), and His Daughter First (1903). Mr. Hardy was editor of The Cosmopolitan Magazine (1893-1895) and has served as diplomatic representative of the United States in the Orient, in Switzerland, and in Spain. Edward Bellamy (1850- 1898) is best known by two popular studies in political economy presented through the medium of romance : Looking Backward (1888) and Equality (1897). Robert Grant (born at Boston, 1852), a jurist, is well known as a writer of stimulating essays and an author of several successful novels. He has found American society a fruitful field for his realistic studies, of which the most prominent are : An Average Man (1883), The Carletons (1891), Unleavened Bread (1900), The Undercurrent (1904) and The Chippendales (1909). Frederic J. Stimson (born in Massachusetts, 1855), like Judge Grant, a representative of the legal profes- sion, wrote his earlier novels under the pen-name " J. S. of Dale." Guerndale (1882), King Noanett (1896), and In Cure of her Soul (1906) are representative works. Edward Everett Hale (1822-1909), an inde- fatigable gleaner in many fields, won merited fame with his story, now classic. The Man without a Country^ which appeared in the Atlantic Monthly in 1863. A long series of tales and narratives — mostly with a purpose — includes the novel Philip Nolaris Friends (1876) and the religious romance. In His Name (1873). John Townsend Trowbridge (born in New York, 1827) has been, since 1848, a resident of Boston or its suburbs. He, too, is a representative of the earlier generation, whose works were popular with old and young. His best-known novels are Neighbor Jackwood (1857) and Cudjo's Cave (1863). The nar- CONTEMPORARY FICTION 341 rative of Jack Hazard and Ms Fortunes (1871) be- gan a series of entertaining stories for boys which long maintained their place in the affections of the New- England youth. Indeed juvenile fiction flourished early in New Eng- land. The famous " Rollo " and " Lucy " juvenile books of Jacob Abbott (1803-1879), which ^^''tio^- began to appear about 1840, are now recalled as quaint examples of the old-fashioned children's books in which instruction was generously mixed with enter- tainment. The "Jack Hazard" books were of a differ- ent type and were the delight of the younger genera- tion that followed; so were the "Elm Island" stories written by Rev. Elijah Kellogg (1813-1901), like Ja- cob Abbott, a native of Maine. Mrs. Adeline D. T. Whitney (1824-1906), author of Faith Gartney's Girlhood (1863), Leslie Goldthwaite^ and We Girls (1870), and Louisa M. Alcott (1832-1888) were the' most popular writers for girls. Silas Weir Mitchell (born at Philadelphia, 1830), a distinguished physician, after several essays New York in fiction became famous as a novelist with andPenn- the publication of Hugh Wpine, in 1897. This was the beginning in the recent revival of interest in the historical novel dealing with the American Re- volution. It has its sequel in The Red City (1908). Francis. R. Stockton (1834-1902), a native of Phila- delphia, best known, perhaps, as the author of The Lady or the Tiger (1884), is unique among American story-writers for the whimsical mingling of the serious and the humorous in fiction. His first notable work was Rudder Grange (1879), which one hardly knows whether to classify as a novel or as romance ; but its very original vein of humor is delicious and runs through all of Stockton's succeeding work. Mrs. Amelia 342 RECENT YEARS Edith Barr (bom in England, 1831), since 1869 a resident of New York state, has been the prolific au- thor of more than thirty works of fiction, including Jan Vedder's Wife (1885), The Black Shilling, The Bow of Orange Rihhon (1886), etc. Hjalmar Hjorth Boye- sen (1848-1895) is another successful American nov- elist, not American born ; he was a native of Norway. After coming to this country, he filled professorships at Cornell and Columbia. Gunnar, a Norse Boniance, his first novel, appeared in 1874. Edgar Fawcett (1847-1904), also a writer of verse, wrote novels de- picting some phases of society in New York. Among these are An Ambitious Woman (1883), Social Sil- houettes (1885), The House at High Bridge (1886). Brander Matthews (born at New Orleans, 1852), since 1892 a professor at Columbia, a well-known essayist and critic, has written realistic studies — both novels and short stories — of New York life ; such are included in the volumes Vignettes of Manhattan (I'^U^, His Father's /^o;^ (1895), and A Confident To-morrow (1899). Harold Frederic (1856-1898), a New York journalist and foreign correspondent at the time of his death, is best remembered by his strong, purposeful novel, The Damnation of Theron Ware (1896). Francis Marion Crawford (1854-1909), most cosmopolitan of American writers, both in residence and in the material utilized in his novels, was also one of the most productive of recent novelists. He was the son of the sculptor, Thomas C. Crawford, and was born in Italy. His education was attained at St. Paul's School, in Concord, New Hampshire, at Trinity Col- lege, Cambridge, at Heidelberg, and Kome. During 1879 and 1880, he engaged in editorial work in India. Although his residence was for the rest of his life in Italy, he remained strongly patriotic in his sentiment CONTEMPORARY FICTION 343 toward the United States, regarding it as his country and asserting himself always an American. His first novel, 3Ir. Isaacs^ appeared in 1882, and was fol- lowed by Dr. Claudius (1883), A Roman Singer (1884), Zoroaster (1885), and A Tale of a Lonely Parish (1886). The variety of sources from which Mr. Crawford drew his material is strikingly suggested in the titles of his representative novels, of which the following may be mentioned : Paul Patoff (1887), Saracinesca (1887), Greifenstein (1889), Khaled (1891), Pietro Ghisleri (1893), Katherine Lauder- dale (1894), In the Palace of the King (1900), A Lady of Rome (1906), Areihusa (1907). He was the author of more than forty books, including impor- tant studies of Italian history and several plays. Of his novels it is conceded that those depicting Italian life and character are the most valuable ; and of these, three, constituting the Saracinesca series, are the best. Mr. Crawford died at his villa in Sorrento, at the age of fifty-five. Kate Douglas Wiggin^ now Mrs. Riggs (born at Philadelphia, 1857), published her first notable story. The Birds' Christmas Carols in 1888, and The Story of Patsy in 1889. Of her subsequent stories Rebecca (1903) has, perhaps, had the largest success. The well-known character Penelope first appeared in Penelope's English Experiences (1893). Of the present-day novelists in the New York group, Mrs. Edith Wharton (born at New York, 1862) holds a place of distinction based erGenera- largely upon her intensely realistic novels, **°^" The House of Mirth (1905) and The Fruit of the Tree (1907). Owen Wister (born at Philadelphia, 1860) is known as the author of The Virginian (1902). Richard Harding Davis (born at Philadelphia, 1864), a journalist by profession and famed as a war cor- 344 RECENT YEARS respondent, is one of the most popular short-story writers of the day ; the creator of " Gallagher " and " Van Bibber," and author of several popular ro- mances, among which are The King's Jackal (1898), Soldiers of Fortune (1899), and The White Mice (1909). Robert W. Chambers (born at Brooklyn, 1865) is another popular writer of romantic tales, of which Lorraine (1896) and The Fighting Chance (1906) are examples. Here, also, should be included two representatives of this younger set, whose work had aroused wide interest when interrupted by their death : Paul Leicester Ford (1865-1902), author of The Honorable Peter Stirling (1894) and Janice Meredith (1899), and Stephen Crane (1871-1900), a young New York journalist, who wrote a remarkable realistic study of battle, The Med Badge of Courage (1896). The Southern States are well represented in the fic- Southem ^^^^ which depicts local types of character, story- and have, besides, produced novelists of note Tellers. , , . i • 'j. whose work is more general m its scope. Similar to the work of some of the New England realists is that of Richard Malcolm Johnston (1822-1898), whose novels and tales por- tray the picturesque manners prevailing in portions of his native state. Old Mark Langston (1883), The Primes and their Neighbors (1891), Peavce Amer- soi-is Will, and Old Times in Middle Georgia (1897) are examples. Joel Chandler Harris (1848- 1908), for twenty-five years editor of the Atlanta Con- stitution^ has worked in the same field. Balaam and Us Master (1891), On the Plantation (1892), Stories of Georgia, TJie Story of Aaron, Tales of the Home Folks, are the titles of other well-known volumes; but it is as "Uncle Remus," teller of tales CONTEMPORARY FICTION 345 concerning Br'er Kabbit and Br'er Fox, that this au- thor is most widely known. Unde Remus — His Songs and his Sayings was published in 1880. Told hy tincle Remus appeared in 1905, and almost the last publication of this writer was a volume entitled Uncle Remus and Brer Rahh'it (1907). Thomas Nelson Page (born in Virginia, 1853) has written stories which have their scene in the Old Dominion. Amono^ them are: In Ole Virginia. Virginia (1887), Two Little Confederates (1888), Melt Lady^ Marse Chan ; a later novel, Red Roch^ appeared in 1898. James Lane Allen (born in Kentucky, 1849) is less of realist than idealist ; the idyllic quality ap- pears predominant in A Kentucky Cardinal (1894) and its sequel, Aftermath (1896). The Choir Invisible (1897) and The Reign of Laio (1900) are historical romances depicting early life in the state. Mr. Allen's style is distinguished by unusual literary charm. More distinctive studies of local types are found in the realistic novels of John Fox, Jr. (born in Kentucky, 1862). A Mountain Burojja (1894), Hell fer Sartain (1896), and The Kentuckians (1897) in- troduced Mr. Fox to readers of fiction. More recently have appeared The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come (1903) and The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1908). Mary Noailles Murfree (born in Tennessee, 1850) for some years successfully concealed her identity under the pen-name " Charles Eg- bert Craddock." In the Tennessee Mountains (1884), The Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountaiii (1885), and Li the Clouds (1886) began a series of strong and interesting tales of the mountain whites — a class which Miss Murfree has continued to depict in her later works. 346 RECENT YEARS The touch of the romanticist is evident in the work of George Washington Cable (born at New Louisiana. Qj^^^^^^g^ ISU), Although Mr. Cable has been a resident of Massachusetts for many years, his stories belong to the southland. Old Creole Days (1879), The Grandlssimes (1880), Madame Bel- pJiine (1881), Dr. Sevier (1885), and Bonaventure (1888) are representative works. Kuth McEnery Stuart (bom in Louisiana, 1856) has depicted with keen sense of humor some phases of Southern life, both white and black. A Golden Wedding and Other Tales appeared in 1893 ; Carlotta's Intended and The Story of Babette (1894) were followed by Sonny (1896), a unique and fascinating character study. The reconstructed negro appears in the later creations of Napoleon Jackson (1902) and George Washington Jones (1903). The River's Children (1904) is a genuine idyl of the Mississippi. Grace Elizabeth King (born at New Orleans, 1852) has written of the Creoles in Monsieur Motte (1888), Tales of Time and Place (1892), and Balcony Stories (1893). Frances Hodgson Burnett (born at Manchester, England, 1849) removed to the United Broader States in 1865, residing for ten years in Scope. Tennessee, and then for a period in Wash- ington, D. C. Mrs. Burnett's first novels. That Bass o' Bowrie's (1877) and Haworth's (1879), portray life among the working people of Lancashire. Her Through One Administration (1883) deals with of- ficial society life in Washington. Bittle Bord Faunt- leroy (1886) was an exceedingly popular juvenile, which was followed by others almost as successful. Mrs. Burnett has lived of late years in England. A Lady of Quality appeared in 1896, The Shuttle^ in 1907. Amelie Eives, Princess Troubetzkoy (born CONTEMPORARY FICTION 347 at Richmond, Virginia, 1863), owes her literary repu- tation largely to her first novel, TJie Quick or the Dead^ published in 1888. A Brother to Dragons ap- peared the same year. Perhaps the best known of our writers from the South is Francis Hopkinson Smith (born at Baltimore, 1838), a versatile master of sev- eral arts including the substantial one of building lighthouses. His first success in fiction was the fine character sketch, Colonel Carter of CartersviUe (1891). Tom Grogan (1896), Caleb West (1898), and The Tides of Barnegat (1906) are all realistic studies of the people whom the author may have known when living the practical business life of a building contractor and mechanical engineer. The Fortunes of Oliver Home (1902) is said to be reminiscent of that period in Mr. Smith's life when he was an art student in New York. His recent stories, The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman (1907) and Peter (1908), indicate a return to the more sentimental manner of his earliest success. Albion W. Tourgee (1838-1905), a native of Ohio and an officer in the Union army throughout the Civil War, lived in North Carolina from 1865 to 1881, and during this period wrote three or four novels dealing with political conditions in the South. Of these, A FooVs Errand (1879) and Bricks Without Sti^aio (1880) aroused widespread interest. Tourgee afterward served as United States Consul at Bordeaux and at Halifax, and was the author of numerous stories and novels. Among the younger writers who are natives of the South, three have especial distinction as sue- ^j^g young- cessf ul novelists in the broader field of fie- ^^ Genera- tion. Mary Johnston (born in Virginia, 1870) southern has written three historical romances dealing writers, with old colony times in Virginia : Pinsoners of Hope 348 RECENT YEARS (1898), To Have and to Hold (1900), and Sir Morti- mer (1904). In Lewis Rand (1908), Miss Johnston presents a picturesque study of political life at the opening of the nineteenth century. The Goddess of Reason (1907) is a notable drama on the theme of the French Revolution. Winston Churchill (born at St. Louis, 1871) has taken a conspicuous place among writers of historical romance with his impressive series dealing with great epochs in American history : Richard Carvel (1899), The Crisis (1901), and The Crossing (1904). To these novels must be added his first story, The Celebrity (1898), and his later work, Coniston (1906). Ellen A. G. Glasgow (born at Richmond, Virginia, 1874) is the author of three realistic novels of un- usual power: The Descendant (1897), The Deliverance (1904), and TJie Wheel of Life (1906). The promise of the West as a field for the writer of The Indiana fiction came with the publication of The Novelists. Hoosier Schoolmaster (1871). This book was a realistic study of character in southern Indiana of the early fifties. Its author, Edward Eggleston (1837-1902), was born in the pioneer days of the state at the little town of Yevay, on the Ohio River. He entered the ministry of the Methodist Church, and became what was then known as a "circuit rider," ministering to a parish which required a four weeks' itinerary, involving both hardship and peril. In six months his health broke down, and he removed to Minnesota. In 1886, he engaged in editorial work at Chicago, and in 1874 became pastor of a church in Brooklyn, New York, to which he gave the name of the Church of Christian Endeavor. The Hoosier Schoolmaster met with wide popularity and was translated into several languages. It was followed by The Mystery of Metropolisville (1873), with its setting CONTEMPORARY FICTION 349 in Minnesota, and The Circuit Rider (1874), the scene of which is laid in Ohio. jRoxy (1878) and The Graysons (1887) are again portrayals of Hoosier types. The state of Indiana has made a remarkable record in the literary history of the middle West. Lew Wallace (1827-1905), the author of Ben Hur^ was a native of the state and made his home at Crawfordsville, the " Hoosier Athens." He served in the Mexican War, and later in the Civil War, receiving the rank of Major-General, for gallantry in the field. His first ro- mance. The Fair God (1873), was an Aztec story, the inspiration of which came from the reading of Pres- cott's histories. Ben Hur^ a Tale of the Christ (1880) was the result of a conscientious study of the founda- tions of the Christian faith. The author^s treatment of his difficult subject is scholarly and reverent. The popularity of the work has fairly rivaled that of Uncle Tom's Cabin. General Wallace was appointed governor of New Mexico in 1878 ; and it was while living at Santa Fe that he wrote the larger part of the romance. A later story. The Prince of India (1893), was an outcome of Wallace's residence at Constanti- nople as minister to Turkey. Maurice Thompson (1844-1901), also a resident of Crawfordsville, has been mentioned already as a writer of verse. ^ He was a novelist as well, the author of sev- eral popular stories, of which A Tallahassee Girl (1882) and Alice of Old Vincennes (1900) are note- worthy. Among more recent writers who have added to the literary reputation of the Hoosier state are : Newton Booth Tarkington (born 1869), author of The Gentleman from Indiana (1899), Monsieur Beaucaire (1900), The Two Vanrevels (1902} , Cherry 1 See page 312. 350 RECENT YEARS (1903), The Conquest of Canaan (1905), etc. Charles Major (born 1856), whose very popular romance, When Knighthood was in Flower^ appeared in 1898; Mere- dith Nicholson (born 1866), author of several romantic narratives ^ of which The House of a Thousand Can- dles (1905) and The Port of Missing Men (1907) are prominent ; and George Barr McCutcheon (born 1866), whose Graustark (1900), Craneycrow (1902), and Beverly of Graustarh (1904) are best known. Here also should be included the name of the versatile hu- morist George Ade (born 1866), whose first literary successes, Artie, Pink 3Iarsh, Doc Home, etc., were produced while Mr. Ade was writing on the staff of a Chicago newspaper (1890-1900). Captain Charles King (born at Albany, New York, The West 1844), now living at Milwaukee, a retired in General, army officer, is the author of a long list of tales, the material of which is mainly drawn from military life. These include TJie Colonel's Daughter (1883), The Deserter (1887), Captain Blake (1892), The General's Double (1897), and many more. Constance Fenimore Woolson (1848-1894), a de- scendant of James Fenimore Cooper, was born in New Hampshire, but her home in later life was at Cleve- land, Ohio. Her summers were usually spent on the shores of Lake Superior, or at Mackinac ; she resided also in Florida. Her principal novels are : Castle No- where (l^lb^.Anne (1882), East Angels (1886), and Jupiter Lights (1889). Mary Hallock Foote (born in New York, 1847) lived for some years in Colorado, California, and Idaho, accompanying her husband, a civil engineer. 1 Mr. Nicholson is also author of The Hoosiers (1900), which g-ives an account in detail of the Indiana writers. It will be found interesting as a source of further information on this section. CONTEMPORARY FICTION 351 Her most successful novels deal realistically with the life of the mining camp and the hills. These are The Led Horse Claim (1883), John Bodewin's Testimony (1886), and Cceur d'Alene (1894). Mary Hartwell Catherwood (1847-1902), a native of Ohio, later a resident of Illinois, was the author of several interesting historical novels for the most part concerned with historic epochs in the region of the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes, and in the valleys of the Mississippi and the Illinois. It was The Romance of Dollard (1889) which began the series of her works — a series which owed its inception to the fasci- nating narratives of Francis Parkman. Old Kashaskia (1893) and The White Islander (1893), The Lady of Fort SL John (1892) and The Little Renault (1897) are vigorous narratives of romantic adventure. Mrs. Catherwood's last work, Lazarre (1901), is based on the tradition which identifies the Dauphin of France, who disappeared mysteriously from Paris at the outbreak of the Revolution, with a lad in America who went by the name of Eleazar Williams and was reputed of royal birth. Alice French, " Octave Thanet " (born in Massa- chusetts, 1850), is a resident of Davenport, Iowa. A part of the year she makes her home in a quiet spot in Arkansas. Both places serve as setting in some of her stories. Miss French is a realist ; the relations between labor and capital have proved interesting and effective material in her hands. Among her works are: Knit- ters in the Sun (1887), Expiation (1890), Otto the Knight (1893), Stories of a Western Town (1893), The Heart of Toil (1898), and The Man of the Hour (1905). Henry Blake Fuller (born at Chicago, 1857) has ably represented the western metropolis in modern fie- 352 RECENT YEARS tion. Beginning his literary career with two fantastic A Chicago romances, The Chevalier of Pensieri- Vani group. (1891) and The Chatelaine of La Trinite^ Mr. Fuller (1892) next appeared as a realistic novelist of keen vision and serious purpose. He portrayed some phases of Chicago society in The Cliff Did ellers (1893), and With the Procession (1895). Mr. Fuller's latest work. The Last Refuge (1901), is in line with his earlier volumes, romantic, whimsical, and strongly symbolistic. Hamlin Garland (born in Wisconsin, 1860), for a time resident in the East, but now identified with Chicago, is a realist in principle, although some of his more recent work is softened by touches of romanticism. Mr. Garland's first publication. Main Travelled Roads {1890), was a volume of short stories realistic and some- what cynical intone. Jason Edwards (1891), A Little Norsh (1891), A Spoil of Office (1892), A Member of the Third House (1892), and Rose of Butcher^ s Coolly (1895) followed in similar vein. The Eagle's Heart (1900), Her Mountain Lover (1901), The Captain of the Gray Horse Troop> (1902), and Hesper (1903) are all stories of the rugged, unconventional life of mountain, mine, and camp, in which romance blends with realism. Will Payne (born in Illinois, 1865), since 1890 a Chicago journalist and for several years editor of The Economist, is the author of numerous short stories and of several novels. Jerry the Dreamer was pub- lished in 1896, The Story of Eva in 1901. Two of Mr. Payne's realistic novels, The Money Captain (1898) and Mr. Salt (1903), are distinctively studies of commercial life and admirable essays in this field. Robert Herrick (born at Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1868), a Harvard man and, since 1893, a member of the Faculty in the University of Chicago, holds a leading CONTEMPORARY FICTION 353 place among western realists. Like Mr. Fuller, he has been impressed by certain phases of American social life and has written somewhat sombre but carefully studied narratives which have their setting in the great city of the middle West. These include The Gospel of Freedom (1898), The Weh of Life (1900), The Common Lot (1904), and Together (1908). One of the youngest and one of the most promising in this group of western realists was Frank Norris (1870-1902). Mr. Norris was born at Chicago, but part of his life was spent on the Pacific coast and another portion of it in New York. He was a journalist and served as war correspondent in South Africa and Cuba. At the time of his death he was a resident in California. Mr. Norris's claim to distinction is found in a projected series of three novels planned to embody his great idea, — what he called the epic of the wheat. T%e Octopus (1901) is the first of the series and deals with the planting and harvesting of the crop ; its scene is laid in southern California. The Pit (1903) pictures the selling of the wheat, and dramatically portrays the life which centres in the Chicago Board of Trade. The last book of the trilogy was to have dealt with the distribution of the wheat in Europe, and would have been entitled TJie Wolf as symbolizing the experiences of famine in Russia. Although uncompleted, the large conception of this young enthusiast is worthy of more than passing note, while his actual achievement is in itself remarkable. 354 CHRONOLOGICAL REVIEW o -^ o o o o o W >■ r:-5 11 "S be., 0^ V ©CO : o 111 ( _: S? "«« 5 3 2 CO . o ^ 3 -« rt> ' |1 .00 "3 ci 3 Si ® Scots: Oi Q .2 S _S ^-00 OO 52 >o;:^ 00 Oh •-5 -^ ^ .-i^ _ 2 sfSj g ' to 28 1^^ s" ^S I i2 2iiisiir^li^iii I to 1-1 Q ^^ 'l^i "So . 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