'-^^.^ ov^^^^u^'- ^^<>^ ^^im^^\ ^^j.^ A STUDY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE BY WILLIAM CRANSTON LAWTON PROFESSOR OF THE GREEK LANAUAGE AND LITERATURE AT ADELPHIA COLLEGE PUBLISHED FOR THE BAY VEIW READING CLUB General Office, Boston Boulevard, Detroit, Mich. BY THE GLOBE SCHOOL BOOK COMPANY NEW YORK AND CHICAGO 1907 1 UEKARY of CONGRESS J Two Copies Rocclvad ', CcoYnirht Entry 90, f^ consumption, Washington was evidently the indulged favorite of the famil}^ He perused his Bible and "Pilgrim's Progress" on Sundays, "Arabian Nights," "Gulliver," "Robinson Crusoe," etc., on other days, studied comparatively little, but read voraciously. He was not, like his sturdier elder brothers, sent to Columbia College. Leaving school at sixteen, he later was admitted to the bar, on very meager legal knowledge, but never practiced seriously. He was from childhood a constant rambler, as the first paper of the " Sketch- Book " delightfully tells us. New York already had a theater, to which, even as a boy, he had made stolen visits. There was also a rather gay and fast society to which the handsome youth had full entry. At nineteen he had already written for the Morning Chronicle audacious satirical letters on social fol- lies, drama, etc., quite in the old Spectator style. 80 THE AGE OF DEPENDENCE Allstou 1779-1843. A few years later lie and liis friend Paulding worked the same vein farther in Salmagundi. Such a happy, free, and stimulating youth time was then possible in no other American city. Sent abroad at twenty for his health, he spent in Europe two delightful years. He was admitted freely to the best foreign and American society, apparently on his personal attractions. At Rome Washington the influence of his namesake, Washington Allston, himself romancer and poet as well as artist, came near making Irving a painter. He seemed, even to himself, an idler. In truth, he was acquiring, with the miraculous ease of a true artist-nature, cosmopol- itan culture. Though certainly no ascetic, at home or abroad, he had a much more delicate innate refine- ment than Franklin, and could doubtless assert with Milton, if in a less austere sense, as to the tempta- tions of Italy or Paris, " I change but the sk}^, not my nature, in crossing the sea." At twenty-six, Irving, at first collaborating with his brother Peter, began, in light-hearted fashion, a travesty upon Dr. Mitchell's pedantic " Picture of New York," then just published. Out of this grew, as by accident, his delicious " Knickerbocker His- tory." The creation of old Diedrich himself is a miniature masterpiece. The half-genuine erudition of the first five chapters, from the Creation to Hen- drick Hudson, indeed, grows rather heavy ; but the broad fun of the pretended Dutch annals themselves makes an unforgettable book. The very vogue of " Knickerbocker," as a houseiiold word ever since, is a proof of lasting fame. Irving's work even stimu- lated serious study of the forgotten Dutch period ** Knicker- bocker History," 1809. THE FIRST MASTERS 81 in local history. This was the first American book of any international popularity, as Franklin's "Auto- biography " was kept by his grandson in manuscript until 1817. Even now Irving did not think of letters as a serious profession. He seems, indeed, to have been quite willing to remain dependent upon his elder brothers, in whose mercantile firm he had a nominal position. Just at this time, 1809, he lost his early love, Matilda Hoffman, whom he mourned all his life. In February, 1815, he again went abroad, and remained, for various reasons, seventeen years, a time in which he wrote his most characteristic books. These years include some creditable service as an attache of our foreign embassies. But it is quite needless to defend his lifelong patriotism, or the adequately national quality of his best work. That he felt close kinship and sympathy with the best traditions of England is his greatest good fortune, and ours. His parentage must have made it doubly natural to feel at ease in " Our Old Home." The " Sketch-Book " appeared in numbers, and also " Sketch^ in book form, first in America, then in England to 13^1*^^320 forestall piracy. Lovers of the work will recall the present Preface, added thirty years after, detailing Irving's delightful relations with Walter Scott at this early time. The Irvings had meanwhile failed in business, and from this period the popular author- brother was the chief breadwinner of the harmonious and loving family. This supplied a stimulus, perhaps needed, for a serious career, and even, apparently, gave us the " Sketch-Book." It is needless to analyze a book which is familiar 82 THE AGE OF DEPENDENCE " Brace- bridge Hall," 1822. Irving in Spain, 1826-1829. " Colum- bus," 1828. "Granada, 1829. " Compan- ions of Columbus,' 1831. in every American school. The genial, leisurely style of Irving was formed on the best eighteenth century English prose, from Addison to Goldsmith. It is a style to which the crisper sentence, the swifter thrust, of Macaulay is now generally preferred ; but the expression was perfectly fitted to the man and the material. No writer wins more quickly, or holds longer, our affection and good will. The evident purpose is to please and divert the reader. Pathos is attempted occasionally, with moderate success. Of strenuous ethical effort there is little trace. The " Sketch-Book " is frankly cosmopolitan in its subjects, but Rip Van Winkle and Sleepy Hollow are at least among the best chapters. Dolph Hey- liger, in " Bracebridge Hall," another study of Dutch character and local legend, is a signal success in the same home field ; while " John Bull " reminds us at times of Lowell's boldest Yankee satire. Professor Wendell remarks that Irving set the fashion for that form of short story which is still especially an American art, — or was, at least, down to Mr. Kip- ling's advent. " Bracebridge Hall " and " Tales of a Traveler " are later, not better, runnings of the same wine. Most of the former might have been written by a rural Englishman. living's love of Spain led to his residence there for over three years, to which we owe the lives of Columbus and his companions, " The Alhambra," " Conquest of Granada," and kindred studies. His sympathy with the painter's method is here especially felt. The picturesque impressions, the soft, glowing color, the indefinable aroma of mediaeval Spain, are on almost every page of his "Alhambra." There THE FIRST MASTERS 83 are plenty of more learned and exhaustive historians. " Aiham- He may not always be accurate ; he is always grace- '*' ^^^' ful, vivid, humane, readable. Returning home in 1832, Irving soon settled in his Irving min- beautiful "Sunnyside " at Tarrytown, on the Hudson gp^in^ which he had made doubly famous, and close by his 1842-1846. own Sleepy Hollow. This was home to him for a quarter century. He, in fact, only deserted it once, reluctantly, to become for four years minister to Spain. This proposal was made by Daniel Webster, and even Henry Clay remarked, " TTiis is a nomina- tion everybody will concur in ! " Since then Ban- croft, Hawthorne, Boker, Motley, Lowell, Taylor, Howells, Harte, Hardy, and other literary men have represented us officially abroad. The large "Life of Washington" was the task, "Life of almost too heavy, of Irving's old age. The delight- J^^^.^'^^' ful study of Goldsmith, a most congenial subject, 1855-1859. was throw^n off, with utmost ease, at sixty-six. ^^^^-^ ', Irving was not a great original thinker, reformer, 1849. or masterful spirit in any field. He founded no definite school, though he has had a most helpful and genial influence on all literature since. He saw much beaut}^ and makes us see it, especially in the romantic past. Whether he created, or found ready to his hand, the best legendary lore of the Hudson Valley, is a problem still discussed. His effects always seem to be attained with as little effort as Raphael's, but this, surely, is but evidence of per- fect balance, sanity, instinctive self-knowledge. He was a most tender-hearted, generous, lovable man, a cosmopolitan in manners, tastes, and accomplish- ments, yet withal a loyal, simple-hearted American. 84 THE AGE OF DEPENDENCE " In the Churchyard at Tarry- town," by Longfellow. Finally, lie was a consummate literary artist, since he combined rich creative imagination, restraining taste, — and moral intention. The last is the least obtrusive quality, but present in all his mature works, from the '' Sketch-Book " onward. But for the merciless yet delicious travesty in Ichabod Crane, we might perhaps regret that gentle Irving shared Cooper's fiercer dislike for the obtru- sive, masterful, progressive Yankee, Yet he would hardly have rejected the epitaph written for him by our best beloved down-east poet : — " How sweet a life was his, how sweet a death ! Living, to wing with mirth the weary hours, Dying, to leave a memory like the breath Of summers full of sunshine and of showers." Irving might, indeed, have objected, as Holmes has done, to being thus classified so decidedly by Longfellow as a humorist. He was particularly pleased when a critic discovered a moral lurking about his " Fat Gentleman," — the slightest and most aimless of masterpieces, — and insisted that he always had one in mind. So constant is the Puritan strain of seriousness in all Ano^lo-Saxon art. BIBLIOGRAPHY Irving's works, twenty-three volumes, and " Life and Letters," by his nephew, Pierre, four volumes, are published by the Put- nams. New York. An excellent brief study of him, by a kin- dred spirit, is C. D. Warner's in " American Men of Letters." Of the " Sketch-Book " there are numberless editions, with notes, for schools. For this and nearly every following section Lowell's " Fable for Critics" must be consulted. THE FIRST MASTERS 85 TOPICS FOR CLASSROOM WORK As the first of our popular authors, Irving's career deserves especial attention. From his letters abundant personal details can be drawn. Such interviews as those with Mrs. Siddons, the poet Campbell's wife, Scott, etc., can be effectively rehearsed. The chief source for these also is, of course, Irving's own letters. The best scenes of the *' Knickerbocker " could be connected wdth study of more serious annals of early New York, as, for instance, Brodhead's two volumes, or the more luminous book of John Fiske, on the Dutch and Quaker colonists. Indeed, the lives of Columbus and Washington also should be regu- larly used in the work on American history itself, if only for their graceful style and vivid pictures. Any study of the best American humor must include much of Irving. A local story, like " Dolph Heyliger," may be compared with a rural English and a Spanish tale, as skillful studies in local color. II. Jai^ies Fenimore Cooper Cooper's life was in part almost as stormy as james Walter Savao^e Landor's, yet not as a whole Femmore ^ '^ Cooper, tragical, nor, probably, unhappy. His childhood i789-i85i. was spent on the wild shores of Otsego Lake, New York, where his father had extensive estates upon the very edge of the trackless wilderness. His love of the forest and lakes was lifelong. Coached for college by a rather bigoted English clergyman, he was dismissed from Yale when a junior, for idleness and mischief (1805). After brief training in a merchantman, his father, an ex-congressman, easily obtained him a midshipman's berth (1808). The Aroman- very next year he was one of a small naval party tke ve^a^s^ sent to Oswego, then a village of huts, to build, and launch on Lake Ontario, a brig of sixteen guns. In 1811 he married Susan De Lancey, of a prominent old Huguenot and " Tory " family. This marriage 86 THE AGE OF DEPENDENCE was a most happy one. They had four daughters and one son, who survived them. Mrs. Cooper induced her husband promptly to leave the navy, and, more reluctantly, to settle among her people in Westchester County, New York (1817). These details all have a direct bearing on Cooper's literary career, but at thirty he had never thought of writing. He was a fairly well-read man of wide- ranging experience, intense but narrow social and religious feelings, utterly fearless, patriotic, and affectionate, chiefly absorbed in his family and estate. A poor English society novel suggested to him an "Precau- attempt to surpass it. His effort, "Precaution," tion," 1820. wretchedly printed and given out as an English- man's book, was a bad failure. Indeed, he knew nothing of artificial overcivilized society, and never acquired any skill in such themes. The failure itself aroused him, and the patriotic Revolutionary " Spy," tale, " The Spy," though written with many mis- givings, was a great success. Harvey Birch is still a favorite character all the world over. Thanks in some degree to the gentle treatment of Tory charac- ters, the book made a great and immediate sensation even in England, where Irving helped secure a pub- lisher. Next year it was translated into French, then into many languages. The popularity of Cooper the romancer has never flagged since then. More, probably, than Scott himself, he is the world's favorite as a story-teller. He received large sums for each and all his thirty- odd romances. Sydney Smith's scornful query, "Who reads an American book?" had its prompt and final answer : All the world reads Cooper. 1821. THE FIRST MASTERS 87 His third tale, " The Pioneers," Cooper " wrote to •« Pioneers," please himself." The scenes are on his beloved ^^^^' Otsego. The types of the frontier life are memories from his boyhood. Here already we meet his In- dians, chivalric and stanch in friendship, poetic and flowery in speech, yet savages still to the core. Even the immortal Leatherstocking appears, already an old man. Above all, the love of the wilderness, the rhapsodies over forest scenery and life, recur in nearly every chapter. In 1817 had begun, with a certain suddenness, that great Trek from New England and the whole East, westward beyond the Ohio, — a movement which, reen- forced more and more from beyond the Atlantic, was destined never to cease until the buffalo, the wild Indian, the frontier itself, have all become merely a memory, soon to be a tradition only. The majestic meaning of that migration Cooper fully realized, and uttered in the closing lines of '* The Pioneers." He lived to write better stories than this. " Deer- "Deer- slayer " gives us a far more perfect panorama of Otsego. \^i^' Both that tale and "Pathfinder " offer a much nobler "Path- and completer portraiture of Leatherstocking. " The 1340. ' Prairie " affords an unrivaled picture of the wild social " Prairie," 1827 life among the true pioneers, and of its primeval en- vironment. The popular favorite among all the Leatherstocking Tales, however, is " The Last of " Last of the the Mohicans." f826!'^°''" Nevertheless, Cooper's essential qualities were already clear. The novel of incident with simple characters of humble social rank, in an outdoor setting, was a mighty instrument, fitted to his hand as perhaps to no other. One wide domain he had 88 THE AGE OF DEPENDENCE still to enter, for he knew the sea at least as well as "Pilot," the forest. "The Pilot," suggested by Scott's }f^Q^ "Pirate," — which Cooper thought a good piece of Rover," work by a landsman, — appeared early in 1824, 1828. ,, ^^^^ ^g^^ j^^^gj, „ -^ -^^28. These and other such tales of the wilderness and of the ocean are Cooper's chief gifts to men. They are abiding sources of healthful enjoyment to millions of readers. " History of Later in life he made a most exhaustive and impar- ^^^f,*^ tial history of the American navy, followed by biog- 1839. raphies of our early marine heroes. This is still an jjiggf f*" indispensable and authoritative work. But unhappily 1846. these are not the chief events of Cooper's later years. Success brought large income, as well as fame. During 1822-1826 Cooper lived in New York City, and was the center of the best literary circle then existing in the States, including Bryant, Halleck, etc. The years 1826 to 1833 he and his family spent in Europe. But Cooper had not the genial nature, the cosmopolitan sympathies, the open mind, the artistic restraint, of Irving, or of Longfellow. He was pugnacious, hypercritical, opinionated. He misused most grossly the form of romance, mak- ing it the vehicle for savage attacks on the English people and others, later for even more savage diatribes against his own folk, especially in " Home as Found." " Home as He became personally the best-hated man in both 1838 ' hemispheres : while yet some of his bitterest foes spent sleepless nights devouring his latest romances. He entered on a long series of libel suits against the chief newspapers of his state. These suits he con- ducted chiefly in person, with consummate ability and energy. «nd invariably won. But the force THE FIRST MASTERS 89 and time thus squandered might better have been spent in perfecting his masterpieces. The detailed story of Cooper's later life, as set forth masterfully by Professor Lounsbury, is a most fascinating psychological study. Yet it throws little light on his purely literary career. The charming preface composed by his daughter for " Deerslayer " gives an impression that his delight in such creative work, and his happy family life, were hardly ruffled by the storm of slanderous abuse that beat upon him for twenty years. In the very last year of his life there was a wide- spread reaction, and a general expression of pride in our greatest romancer. Upon his deathbed he, un- fortunately for us, forbade any publication of his letters or biographical materials in the family pos- session. He died, as he had lived since his return to America, in the paternal homestead at Cooperstown on Otsego, since destroyed by fire. Cooper himself was fully aware of his inferiority to Scott as to breadth of range and vigor in character drawing. He has nothing of Hawthorne's marvel- ous genius in the choice and arrangement of words. He is no supreme master of insight into the mysteri- ous depths of the human heart. Nearly all his work bears marks of haste, and slight incongruities, even in the simple plots, are easily found. In general he will never appeal as strongly to the highly cultivated and critical few as do George Eliot, Thackeray, Balzac, and Scott, at their best. Yet our national attitude toward Cooper should always be one of pride and abundant gratitude. Heroic manliness, loyal good fellowship, even be- 90 THE AGE OF DEPENDENCE tween men of diverse races, healthful outdoor life, simplicity of speech and action, generosity toward the weak, devout faith in God, he has depicted, as he exemplified them in his own life. In impressing upon the imagination the large outlines and gran- deur of nature upon our continent, he is perhaps superior to Bryant, to Parkman, or to any other. He and his Leatherstocking will always stand among the most heroic figures in our first century of true literature. Moreover, judged by the extent of his influence as a popular author, he is quite unrivaled among Americans, possibly among all mankind ; that is perhaps of itself a sufficient monument. Over his grave in the Cooperstown cemetery towers, most fitly, an heroic statue of Leatherstocking. While Irving was matured. Cooper seems to have been only distracted, by life abroad. But of each it is true, that he won his first notable success at home, with a native subject, and repeated the same feat often in later life. Both belonged by birth to the middle East. Irving was almost English still, while Cooper, the less mellow nature, came of long Ameri- can descent. Irving was a cosmopolitan artist ; his Spanish works, perhaps his English sketches, are as skillful, though not so novel and original, as his Dutch pictures. Cooper's native Americans, white or red, are always better drawn than his Europeans. These two men and their friends seem to demonstrate that in and about New York the conditions favorable to literary success were first attained. The third member of our first notable group was, like Frank- lin, a Westward pilgrim from true Puritan stock. THE FIRST MASTERS 91 BIBLIOGRAPHY There are numberless editions of the novels. Perhaps " The Mohawk" (Putnaras, New York) in thirty-two volumes is the most available. More popular than any other tale is " Last of the Mohicans " (1826), for which there are annotated school editions galore. See especially Strunk's, Globe School Book Company, 1900. Professor Lounsbury, who wrote on Cooper for the " American Men of Letters," had of course a peculiarly difficult task. Some of Cooper's own prefaces and notes occasionally give helpful light on his life and work. Some personal details may be sought also in Wilson's "Bryant and his Friends." SUGGESTIONS FOR CLASS WORK Special studies of actual American landscape and scenery may be very profitably made in connection with Cooper. The contrast of his accounts with present conditions is often most striking. His delineation of Indians may be compared with Hiawatha, Ramona, with Simms's powerful figures in " The Yemassee," and with the real red man. A special study of Leatherstocking, carried through the five tales where he appears, may be made. Cooper's rougher borderers, women, and sailors, and his own religious ideas, are also stimulating topics. The larger histories of the " French and Indian " War, e.g. Park- man's "Wolfe and Montcalm," should perhaps be combined with the reading of " The Last of the Mohicans." But for boys Cooper will need no bush. III. William Cctllen Bryant Through his mother, Bryant, like Longfellow, was wiiiiam descended from John Alden ; and the Bryants were 2^^®^^. also of Pilgrim stock. The poet was born in Cum- 1794-1878. mington, Massachusetts, the son of a country doctor, of moderate means. The father was a lover of good literature, in sympathy with the boy's taste for versi- f3dng. One of Bryant's earliest favorites was Pope's 92 THE AGE O:^ DEPENDENCE Homer. He was early well grounded in Greek and Latin, but after two years at Williams College (then a small school), he changed over to the study of law (1812). But " Thanatopsis " had even then been "written. Though improved in a later revision, this was an amazing performance for any boy of seven- teen. No wonder that the law soon grew distasteful. The chief marvel is that the genius of Bryant is still best illustrated by these first verses. Even " The Flood of Years," sixty-four years later, is simply a good pendant to " Thanatopsis," which seems the utterance of an octogenarian no less. In 1821, two years after the " Sketch-Book," ap- " Poems," peared Cooper's " Spy " and Bryant's collected poems. 1821. This is the true beginning of our literary annals. The most ambitious and scholarly of the poems, " The Ages," had just been composed for the Harvard Phi Beta Kappa society. His verses brought to the young country lawyer an invitation to New York (1825) as assistant editor of a short-lived magazine. In 1826 he became assistant editor, from 1829 to 1878 was editor-in-chief, of the New York Evening Post, He, with Peter Cooper and Horace Greeley, were for many years, perhaps, the best-known citizens of the swift-growing metropolis. His married life (1821- 1866) was ideally happy. It may at first appear as if Bryant must have been distracted by journalism from a fuller and richer career as a poet. He himself, in the earlier decades, often repined, and struggled to escape. But it is more likely that in both careers he accomplished just what he was best fitted to do. His poetic message is fully and clearly uttered. one mood: reverent THE FIRST MASTERS 93 He is certainly akin to Wordsworth, though far less a mystic even than he. He has no such keen sympa- thy with other souls, and no such dramatic creative- ness, as Coleridge revealed at once by his " Ancient Mariner." Our boyhood's favorite, " The African Chief," has indeed a certain dramatic quality ; but the incident, in every detail, was true, and Bryant only transferred it to smooth verse. He is a moral A poet of and didactic poet, always, speaking in his own calm, deliberate, manly voice ; and his verse is nearly all faith, the expression of a single mood : pensive reverence. " Nature is eternal, man ephemeral ; " that is his first and last word. In " Thanatopsis," hills and vales, woods and rivers, and " Old Ocean's gray and melancholy waste, Are but the solemn decorations all Of the great tomb of man." So, riding on the " Flood of Years," we behold feast- " Flood u ers and toilers, sturdy swain and pallid student, — me^'" " A moment on the mounting billows seen, The flood sweeps over them and they are gone." Bryant, then, by no means fulfilled Emerson's vision of a time when all " that which is now life shall be poetry, and every fair and manly trait shall add a richer strain to the song." To this sturdy Puritanic reformer, politician, orator, editor, most of life expressed itself in plain, often polemic, prose. In weariness, grief, or discouragement, he turns to nature for consolation^ and to his verse, so inspired, other men turn, in just such hours. Clear, pure, and somewhat cold, that utterance flows. He sounds no trumpet call to action, that 94 THE AGE OF DEPENDENCE Our native poets have neglected their Greek masters. could fire the heart of a youth, or a people, like the '' Battle Hymn of the Republic," or Lowell's "Pres- ent Crisis." Even the closing stanzas of his most ambitious poem, " The Ages," leave us simply pen- sive still. In a war lyric, the strongest stanza, his most famous quatrain, is a moral text after all: " Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again." His utterance is always easy, natural, and digni- fied. Often it is sublime. His simple metrical forms are always befitting. His majestic ''blank verse," in particular, is at times almost Miltonic, certainly quite unapproached by our other poets. His large, serene outlines complete the picture he would set before us, and the last stanza often unites and uplifts the whole. " The Evening Wind " and " Crowded Street " are among the simplest examples of this quiet artistic mastery shown in the final touch. Late in life Bryant translated the entire " Iliad " and " Odyssey " into smooth, dignified, rather slow, blank verse. Despite some little embroidery of Homer's plainest passages, this rendering is a very faithful one. It was a large and helpful tribute to classical humanism, the largest yet made by an American. Indeed, our other most prominent authors have had very inadequate familiarity with those Hellenic masterpieces from which Milton, Gray, Landor, Tennyson, Swinburne, and Stephen Phillips have drawn so large a share of inspiration. Bryant's physical vitality was wonderful. He was never ill, and retained perfect command of all his organs and muscles to eighty-four. His death was the result of a fall just after delivering one of his memorable public orations, at the erection of a THE FIRST MASTERS 95 statue to Mazzini, the Italian patriot. It would be difficult to find or to imagine a happier end. In spite of constant generous and quiet charity in his lifetime, Mr. Bryant left a large fortune. The Post^ in particular, after many years of heroic struggle and scanty income, finally became a very valuable property. Besides his poems, Bryant is of some impor- tance here for his memorial addresses, beginning with those upon Cooper and Irving. His own life work, in turn, was nobly summed up in an eloquent oration by George William Curtis. His conscien- tious work on the Post for a half-century has en- tered into the very growth of the nation, but it is the doom of all such writing to perish with the con- tests and problems of the passing day. Mr. Bryant, especially in old age, had a most noble head and face, often reproduced in sculpture, paint- ing, and the lesser arts of design. A striking por- trait statue stands in the park renamed after him by the city of New York. The great city has known no purer, busier, more conscientious life. To give him the foremost, or a foremost, place among our poets seems to one at a distance the wholly uncriti- cal partiality of personal affection. BIBLIOGRAPHY Bryant's life has been written, and his works, both prose and poetry, edited by Parke Godwin. The life, by his friend John Bigelow, in " American Men of Letters," is discursive, but gives some striking glimpses of its rather elusive subject. R. H. Stod- dard, in his prefatory essay to the poems, claims for Bryant the highest position. The latest edition of the Encyclopaedia Bri- tannica does not mention him at all. 96 THE AGE OF DEPENDENCE SUGGESTIONS FOR CLASSROOM WORK Such verse as the '^Inscription" (beginning, "The thick roof"), "A Rain-Dream," "Robert of Lincohi," "Death of the Flowers," " The Prairies," " The Fountain," etc., should be veri- fied in each detail, in the open air. The " Antiquity of Freedom " combines happily his best qualities ; the personifications and the allusion to our liberty cap', which is the mitra of the ancient Phrygian and fez of the modern Asiatic, will bear careful explanation. Bryant's fullest revelation of personal and religious feeling is in " The Cloud on the Way." (See Bigelow's "Life," p. 283.) Is Bryant cold? Is he monotonous? Does he dwell too constantly on death rather than life? What our poets say of each other is of interest. Lowell especially, in the "Fable for Critics," analyzes Bryant; in his letters he expresses regret for his rather audacious tone. On Bryant's seventieth birthday there are notable poems by Holmes, Whittier, Lowell, Taylor, Stoddard, and others. See also Stoddard's and Stedman's poems after the master's death. Bryant himself could not write "occasional" verse. The simple, austere, daily life of the old poet is itself a profit- able study. (See especially Bigelow's "Life," pp. 259-263.) IV. The " Knickerbocker " Group We have now seen three men, of unquestioned importance in literature, rise suddenly into general notice about the year 1820. Of course the}^ were not alone. Most of the lesser writers are already forgotten, with the numberless ambitious but short- lived literary periodicals of their day. But the careers of Irving, Cooper, and Bryant sufficed to prove that a strong man of letters could have a suc- cessful career, and, directly or indirectly, could win through his writings fame, a livelihood, even wealth. Perhaps the most serious loss to our early litera- ture was the premature death of Drake. His " Cul- THE FIRST MASTERS 97 prit Fay" was composed in three days, at the age Joseph of twenty-one, and it still remains the best poem of DrakT*^ purely creative fancy, based on real familiarity with 1795-1820. outdoor sights and sounds, yet produced on Ameri- can soil. It is almost as free from the Puritan temptation to preach in verse as Poe's best lyrics. In both respects it will bear comparison with Low- ell's " Launfal," a didactic story from an alien atmosphere. This pure, happy, enthusiastic poet had, to be sure, lived as many years as Keats : but even the lyric singer may come late to his heri- tage, as Beranger did, or Clough. Fitz- Greene Halleck, on the other hand, lived out Fitz-Greene a long and useful life, fully demonstrating that he ^^igeV belonged, in letters, to the useful but commonplace majority, the men of lovable character, fair taste, and industrious effort. He is uplifted into momen- tary prominence by his devotion to Drake, whom he lamented in a famous bit of tender verse : — " Green be the turf above thee." The modern Greeks appreciate his spirited lyric on Marcos Bozzaris, though they are amused that he employed by mistake the vocative form of the first name, and shifted the accent on the second. Irving's lifelong friend, James K. Paulding, is still James K. remembered for his poem, " The Backwoodsman " i779_i86o'. (1818), his "Dutchman's Fireside" (1831), still valuable for its vivid " local color," or his '' Life of Washington" (1835). His larger energies were devoted to political satire, and to politics. These, with Willis, who will be mentioned later, are the chief minor fiorures in the " Knickerbocker " 98 THE AGE OF DEPENDENCE group. We may perhaps best add here the most isolated and unaccountable figure in American let- ters, since his meteoric career at least belongs to the same section of the country, and essentially to the same generation. BIBLIOGRAPHY See especially, for the periodical literature of this time, the monograph of Dr. W. B. Cairns, " On the Development of American Literature from 1815 to 1833," Wisconsin Univer- sity, 1898. As to Paulding, Drake, and Halleck, the student will find sufficient extracts in the Stedman Library. SUGGESTIONS FOR THE CLASSROOM The " Culprit Fay" should be read and studied, lovingly, for its graceful and local "fauna and flora," as well as for its exuberant fancy. The instructor may of course open also the whole world of Faerie, from Spenser and " Midsummer Mght's Dream " down, or up, to the Keltic sources. (See, e.g., Keight- ley's " Fairy Mythology.") V. Edgar Allan Poe Edgar Allan Less than any other author is Poe, the romancer 1^9-1849 ^^^^ poet, to be interpreted by his surroundings and outward life. Indeed, his creations have as little vital relation with mankind as could well be. In him more than in almost any other man, unless it be Shelley, an alien soul seems to be beating its wings against the barred cage of human incarnation. So we can hardly hope that this author's environment will be of essential aid in the study of his works. There is at least, however, much in the tale of Poe's youth to soften any austere Puritanic judgment upon his grievous failings as a man. He does not seem to THE FIRST MASTERS 99 me ever to have been fully sane. His high-strung nerves, distracting indulgence from earliest child- hood, wild temper, and ecstatic unearthly imagination, probably made it impossible for him to lead what we regard as a normal or rational life. Of partly Keltic stock, Poe was the child of a pair of actors, born in Boston when his mother was an active member of a traveling company. Two years later she died in poverty, and her three infants were scattered among strangers. Poe's father seems to have been already dead from consumption. Edgar's foster father, Mr. Allan, received him at first reluc- tantly, at his wife's entreaty, but brought him up in extravagant luxury. He was educated in England and in Richmond, Virginia, in fashionable private schools. The boy, like the man, was capricious, dictatorial, vain, jealous, selfish by instinct, yet at times generous in fitful fashion. He was a brilliant student, and excelled in running and swimming. A fancied disappointment in love came very early into his boyish experience. Of real friendship he was, perhaps, never capable. When he entered the University of Virginia, in 1826, he was already fond of drinking brandy and of card playing. Ten months later he came home to Richmond with highest honors in languages, — and a burden of twenty-five hundred dollars of gambling debts, which Mr. Allan refused to pay. Poe promptly ran away to Boston, published a very thin volume of aerial juvenile verse, and enlisted as a private in the regular army, swearing that he was already of age. Mrs. Allan died in 1829. Perhaps at her last request, Poe's release was soon after obtained, and 100 THE AGE OF DEPENDENCE John P. Kennedy, 1795-1870. Hawthorne, contrasted with Poe, is sane. July 1, 1830, he entered West Point, again falsifying the record of his age, as he was really too old for the academy. Six months later he obtained his discharge there, by court-martial for flagrant disobedience. Mr. Allan had married again, and from this time utterly cast off his foster son. Poe now attempted to support himself by his pen, first in Baltimore. Only the kindly friendship of J. P. Kennedy, apparently, kept him from absolute starvation. In 1835 he married his cousin, a child of thirteen. The story of his struggles for a living, as editor, author, and hack-writer, in Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York, his quarrels with co- editors, employers, and others, his lapses into drunk- enness and opium-eating, are only too familiar. His child wife clung to him fondly till she died, in utter poverty, in 1847. His own death, two years after- ward, was under peculiarly harrowing and ignomini- ous conditions. Poe's tales and poems hardly touch on these facts, or, indeed, upon ordinary human conditions at all. Whenever we take up any page of his, we instantly step, as it were, into another region than reality, into an air charged with mysterious sounds, and terrors vaguely felt. Even his most detailed descriptions, as of the house of Usher, or of the chamber into which the raven flits, only heighten our sense of utmost remoteness. Hawthorne's realm is still our familiar world, though a soft gray light transforms it, and we walk with him strangely endowed, for the hour, with a supernatural insight into the mind and heart of any brother-mortal whom we meet ; under Poe's guidance, we can never surmise what will THE FIRST MASTERS 101 happen, save that we are not to escape until our nerves are duly unstrung. Poe believed and taught that poetry, or any form of true literature, must make its effective appeal, through the feelings only, to our innate sense of beauty. For those men, the overwhelming majority, who believe that language, however imaginative, must always address itself, rather, through the reason and experience, to our consciousness of moral truth, Poe's finest utterance can be little save sound and fury. Emerson, himself a lifelong rhymer, when Poe's name was mentioned, only recalled him, with an effort, as " the jingle man " ! Yet Poe saw and revealed, as no American had Poekne^r done before him, at least the silvern side of a great i^^uSc!^ artistic truth. Language is, indeed, fully alive only on the living lip : that is, as sound. Verse, espeoially lyric poetry, is the form of utterance nearest to music, with which it was probably twin-born. Both are intended to arouse elemental passionate feeling, rather than calm logical thought. The most popular poem of Poe, possibly the most famous lyric of our whole literature, is " The Raven." Despite his elaborate and mystifying ac- count of its origin, it was probably an inevitable lyric confession. Indeed, one reason for the lasting popularity of this, rather than of any other poem by Poe, is that we do believe we understand it. It is entirely intelligible, if the chamber is the haunted heart, the raven remorse. The bird nearest of kin is the Promethean vulture, but the modern sufferer is self -condemned, and hopes for no rescuing Heracles. And yet, the despair, however real, is here set to 102 THE AGE OF DEPENDENCE music as masterly, as fitting, as elaborate as in any- great sonata. The resources of our speech are ex- hausted in the quest for rhyme, assonance, and alliteration. Even the hissing letter s, that spoils so much of our English melody, is made effective in the " Silken sad uncertain Rustling of each purple curtain." When this poem is first recited to a high-strung, imaginative child of ten, though he be ever so familiar with " Marmion," or " Hiawatha," or even Tennyson's "Bugle Song," he will dance with delight and cry, " Oh ! I didn't know before that words could be used like that ! " He will even feel the grewsome, lonely sadness of the finale, — long years may it be ere he truly understands it ! Every such incident is a signal triumph of fine art. A poet of Far more literally than Br3^ant's is Poe's verse despSr? * limited to a single mood ; for in Poe's art that limit is also the bound of his own nature. He dis- dained, or was unable, to share the joys and sorrows of others, and so missed nearly all that is best in human life. "Ulalume" is in the same general key as " The Raven," with the undertone of despair and horror less perfectly within artistic control. " The Bells " seems to have been begun in a calmer mood as a deliberate piece of art, but the fourth stanza surely came from a tortured and haunted soul. Oc- casionally, not often, Poe uses a touch of realism, not in itself grewsome, but only to heighten by con- trast the sense of horror. So especially, in " The Sleeper," the couplet : — " Against whose portals she hath thrown, In childhood, many an idle stone." THE FIRST MASTERS 103 Even in single lines of Poe there is unearthly beauty and charm. The second stanza of " To Helen" can stand beside Keats's glimpse from his casement forth on perilous seas of fairyland. But if his poetry is to be seriously interpreted to children at all, we must begin with the very last lines in the volume, entitled " Alone," and make clear the utter morbidness and falsity, for any happy normal nature, of the last line. Most of what has been said as to the thin volumes of poems could be repeated of the best among the many tales. The marvelous command of language as an appeal to the nerves, the mysterious music in the phrase, is there also. As Professor Wendell says, Poe's prose must be read aloud, to realize how true each cadence is. And it is into the same dim land of shadows and shadowy horrors that we step. The " House of Usher " stands close by the " Dank tarn of Auber," " In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir," beside which we trembled in " Ulalume." Whether in the maelstrom, the balloon, or the madhouse, our guide is equally reassuring. To be sure, the tales, as compared with the poems, were sometimes composed in relatively calm moods, sometimes too in an effort to hit the known tastes of a coy editor, at other times in mere petty willfulness and mischief. They are, therefore, less simple, intense, or subjective than the poems. In particular, the display of second-hand erudition is a trick which is at times worn threadbare ; for, apart from an om- nivorous reading, and retention, of the poetry of 104 THE AGE OF DEPENDENCE passionate feeling, Poe's range of knowledge is super- ficial, and not remarkably wide. His power of solv- ing " cryptograms " and kindred puzzles does really appear to have been preternaturally keen. Prophetic keenness, as in early appreciation of Tennyson and Mrs. Browning, fierce jealousy, as in his assault on Longfellow for plagiarism from Poe himself, and the excessively narrow limitations of his artistic creed, are all revealed by this strange being in his literary criticism, — which was mostly wasted on contemporaries now utterly forgotten. Instead of any steadfast development, this life is a tale of squandered genius, premature wreck, and utter ignominy at the close. There could hardly be imasrined an environment in whicli the tale would have been a happy one. Indeed, Catullus, Heine, De Musset, Burns, Poe, and their kind, might half tempt us to think that the lyric poets of passion can learn only in bitterest remorse and suffering what they tell in song. Yet the prolonged, honored, spot- less career of a Pindar or a Sophocles, of an Uhland or a Tennyson, is truer to the best possibilities of our common humanity. Even La Fontaine, Beranger, Hugo, with all their Gallic fire and vivacity, lived long and not unhappy lives. A handful of Poe's poems, but little else, seems secure from the tooth of Time. As a master of phras- ing, of rhythm, of the subtle harmonies of sound apart from the problem of their meaning, he owes remark- ably little to any one, even to Coleridge, and has been surpassed perhaps by Swinburne only, of English lyrists. It is doubtful if Byron's personal excesses had any vital influence over Poe, whose physical THE FIRST MASTERS 105 vices, indeed, appear to have been such as injured himself only. His literary work is remarkably clear of anything like coarse vulgarity or foul suggestion. He can hardly be said to have had disciples, unless indeed it be in France, though all artists in verse, and all story-tellers too who practice artful mystifica- tion, must study him as a master. Of technique, of the art of expression, he was a cunning master, like the " faultless painter " Andrea del Sarto ; but like him, also, he had himself little truth to utter, for he had missed the best of life. BIBLIOGRAPHY Poe is fortunate to have found, in the poet and interpretative critic, George E. Woodberry, as sympathetic a biographer and expositor as any healthy human nature with temperate blood is ever likely to prove. Professor Woodberry made thorough preparatory studies for the Life, in " American Men of Letters," and later, with Mr. Stedman, has completed the monumental edition of Poe's works. To his work, rather than to the errors and contradictions of previous authorities, reference must be made. Many willful falsehoods from Poe's own lips misled the earlier biographers, among whom was Mr. Lowell. A generous estimate of Poe by Mr. Mabie, printed a year or two ago in the Atlantic, may be preferred to the present rather hostile study. SUGGESTIONS FOR CLASSROOM WORK More than enough in this direction, perhaps, appears already in the text. " The House of Usher," " The Gold-Bug," " The Murders in the Rue Morgue," " The Black Cat," are among the most widely known of Poe's tales. " Annabel Lee " is possibly the poem least unsuited to childhood. Lowell's verses on Poe in " Fable for Critics " should, of course^ be read. 106 THE AGE OF DEPENDENCE CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES — (1800-1830) 1800-1810 American History- American Literature 1801-1809. Presidency of Jefferson. 1802. Ohio admitted as a state. 1803. Louisiana purchased from France. 1804. Expedition against Tripoli. 1808. Foreign slave trade ceased by constitutional prohibition. 1809-1817. Presidency of Madison. 1801. Brockden Brown's "Edgar Huntley," " Clara Howard," " Jane Talbot." New York Evening Post founded. 1804. Marshall's "Life of Wash- ington." 1805. Abiel Holmes's " American Annals." 1807. Irving and Paulding, Sal- magundi Papers. 1808. Wm. Cullen Bryant (born 1794) published the "Em- bargo," and other poems. 1809. I r V i n g ' s " Knickerbocker History." 1811-1820 1812-1815. Second War with Eng- land. 1814. Capture of Washington by British. 1815. January, Battle of New Orleans. 1812. Joel Barlow died. 1813. Paulding's "John Bull and Brother Jonathan." 1814. Key wrote " Star-Spangled Banner." 1815. Mrs. Sigourney's "Moral Pieces." CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES 107 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES — (1800-1830) 1800-1810 English and Enropean Literature English and Enropean History 1801. Miss Edgeworth's Tales. 1801. Union of Great Britain and Ireland. 1802. Scott's " Minstrelsy of the Border." 1804. Schiller's " Wilhelm Tell." 1804-1815. Empire of Napoleon I. 1805. Scott's " Lay of the T-ast Minstrel." 1805. Battle of Trafalgar. 1806. Dissolution of the Holy Ro- man Empire. 1807. Lamb's "Tales from Shake- speare." Moore's Irish Melodies. 1808. Scott's "Marmion." Goethe's " Faust," Part I. 1808-1814. Peninsular War. 1809. Byron's " English Bards and Scotch Reviewers." Campbell's " Gertrude of Wyoming." 1810. Scott's " Lady of the Lake." 1811-1820 1811. Jane Austen's " Sense and Sensibility." Goethe's " Dichtung und Wahrheit." Shelley's "Necessity of Athe- ism." Niehuhr's ^^ Roman His- tory." 1812. Byron's " Childe Harold." Landor's " Count Julian." Jane Austen's " Pride and Prejudice." 1813. Byron's " Bride of Abydos." Shelley's "Queen Mab." 1814. Byron's " Corsair." Scott's " Waverley." AVordsworth's " Excursion." 1815. Scott's " Guy Mannering." Scott's "Lord of the Isles." 1816. Scott's "Antiquary," 1812. Napoleon invades Russia. 1813. Defeat of French at Leipsic. 1814. Abdication of Napoleon. 1815. Return of Napoleon from Elba. Battle of Waterloo. Napoleon taken to St. Helena. 108 THE AGE OF DEPENDENCE 1811-1820— Con^inwed American History American Literature 1817-1825. Presidency of Monroe. "1817. Bryant's " Thanatopsis " 1817. American Colonization So- printed in the North Ameri- ciety. can Review. Noah Webster's "Diction- ary." Wirt's "Life of Patrick Henry." 1818. Paulding's "Backwoods- man." 1819. Florida purchased from 1819. Irving's " Sketch-Book." Spain. Drake and Halleck published the " Croaker " poems. 1820. Missouri Compromise. 1820. Cooper's "Precaution." 1821-1830 1821. Mexico becomes independent. 1821. Brj^ant's Poems. "Missouri Compromise." Cooper's " Spy." Slavery to be forever pro- R. H. Dana's " Idle Man." hibited north of 3(3° 30' N. 1822. Irving's " BracebridgeHall." 1823. Cooper's " Pilot." 1824. La Fayette revisits America. 1824. Mrs. Child's "Hobomok." 1825-1829. J. Q. Adams's Presi- 1825. Mrs. Child's "Rebels." dency. June 17, Webster's Speech at Bunker Hill. 1826. Death of John Adams and 1826. Cooper's " Last of the Mohi- Thomas Jefferson. cans." 1827. Cooper's "Red Rover and Prairie." Poe's " Tamerlane." R. H. Dana's " Buccaneer." 1827-1838. Audubon's "Birds of America." 1828. Hawthorne's " Fanshawe." Irving's " Columbus." 1829-1837. JackBon's Presidency. 1829. Irving's "Granada." 1830. Cooper's *' Waterwitch." Daniel Webster's Speeches against Hayne. CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES 109 1811-1820- - Continued English and European Literature English and European History 1817. Keats's Poems. Moore's " Lalla Rookh." Mary Shelley's "Franken- stein." 1818. Keats's "Endymion." Scott's "Rob Roy" and '•Heart of Midlothian." llallam's "Middle A^es." 1819. Byron's "Don Juan." 1819. Steamers cross the Atlantic. Shelley's "Cenci." 1820. Keats's "St. Agnes" and 1820. Death of George III. "Hyperion." Scott's "Ivanhoe," "Mon- astery," "Abbot." Shelley's "Prometheus Un- bound." 1821-1830 1821. De Quincey's " Opi urn- Eater." Hazlitt's " Table Talk." Mill's " Political Economy." Scott's "Kenilworth," " Pi- 1822. 1824. 1825. 1826, 182(;>- 1827, rate. Shelley's Goethe's * Lamb's " Roger's " Landor's " Adouais." ' Wilhelm Meister." Elia." Italy." Imaginary Con- 1830. versations MissMitford's"OurVillage." Carlyle's " Schiller." Mrs.Browning's early poems. Disraeli's " Vivian Gray." -1831. Heine's ''Eeisebilder." Bulwer's " Pelham." De Quincey's " Murder as a Fine Art." Hallam's "Constitutional History. Hood's Fairies." A. and C. Tennyson 's of Two Brothers." Heine's "Buck der Lieder." Mrs. Hemans's " Songs of the Affections." Tennyson's " Poems, Chiefly Lyrical." Midsummer Poems 1821. Death of Napoleon. 1822-1829. Greek war for indepen- dence. 1830. Revolution in France. Bour- bons expelled. PART II THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD (1830-1870) INTRODUCTION CULTURE AND SCHOLARSHIP IN THE EAST IN our first group of creative artists, just discussed, the extreme East has been conspicuously absent. Perhaps the mellowing effect of time on the nature of the Puritans was especially slow in their chief strong- hold and oldest American home. The loss of Frank- lin was undoubtedly very serious, and perhaps, humanly speaking, accidental. Bryant in his youth wavered between Boston and New York, and is indeed, despite his faithful half-century at his post in Manhattan, still counted by many, and with much reason, among the New England and Puritan poets. Whenever the proud story of New England is fully told, the lives of all such pilgrim sons must be in- cluded. Every younger state to the Westward has counted them as leaders among its men of action and of thought. Meantime, the strenuous intellectual and moral life on Massachusetts Bay has continued unbroken. Harvard College has always been a center of serious scholarship ; and if adequate breadth in scientific his- torical and linguistic studies has everywhere been but slowly attained, our oldest university has not a record, certainly, of timid conservatism. Indeed a suspicion that Harvard was dangerously " liberal " in its ten- dencies led, with other causes, to the very creation of her oldest rival, Yale, in 1701. Most of the I 113 114 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD Revolutionary statesmen in New England were scholars, who were well read in ancient and modern history, and applied its lessons in the shaping of a new political organism. But before the literary artist could freely breathe, it was doubtless necessary to break sharply with that traditional conception of man's nature and destiny which was indicated by Edwards's declaration that every child " is a viper, yea, far worse than a viper," or which consigns beforehand to eternal torture nine- tenths of the human race, including all infants unbap- tized. Such a doctrine of original sin is probably not held, certainly not confidently taught, in our day, by any enlightened body of religious men. And so we may now fairly regard William Ellery Channing, not as a storm center of sectarian strife, but simply as the most persuasive of many voices in a general and necessary intellectual movement. It was sorely against his own will that he ever became the leader of a sect ; and indeed his own theological creed would now give him a decidedly conservative position, even within that " orthodox " church from which he parted. The strenuous devotion of all energies and powers to what we believe to be duty is the very spirit of Puritanism, and it breathes in Channing, or Emerson, as in Vane or Edwards. The earlier and saner Puri- tanism, moreover, as Professor Jameson well reminds us, condemned nothing merely because it sweetened life. Its best artistic expression, Milton's poetry, opens the gates to the whole world of imagination, and the blitheness of " L' Allegro " and " Comus " offsets the more sober charm of " II Penseroso " or CULTURE AND SCHOLARSHIP 115 "Samson Agonistes." It is no accident, therefore, that a famous essay of Channing is devoted to Milton, and another to the delights of literature in general. Channing, more than any other man of his time, revealed by precept and example the happiness of serene, all-sided self -culture. He demanded absolute fearlessness in study and thought. He emphasized the dignity, the joyousness, of each human life. All real life is, of course, for him, that of the spirit ; for Channing is as strenuous an idealist as Edwards himself. Nor is there anything selfish in his con- ception of duty. Indeed, his is one of the first and clearest voices raised against human slavery. In politics, in social life, Channing was an ardent and fearless reformer. Finally, to him, more than to any other man then living, the young Emerson stands in the position of a disciple. A surprisingly large number of our literary men have been in early life Unitarian clergymen. Perhaps the broad, humane scholarship of Channing has been best carried on in religious lines by James Freeman Clarke (1810-1888), while Frederic Henry Hedge (1805-1890) is now best remembered for his prominence in introducing German literature and philosophy. Our typical " fresh- water " college of to-day, Vv'ith Tiie old- its dozen fairly specialized scholarly instructors and ^^j}^^°^^^ a few thousand books, is modest enough, and yet it usually gives a most misleading and exaggerated idea as to the same institutions a century ago. Edwards hesitated to become president of Princeton, feeling " hardly competent to instruct the senior class in all 116 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD studies." Two professors and two tutors made a tolerable faculty then. Hebrew, Greek and Latin mostly patristic, logic, mathematics, were the staples. Modern languages, science, history, have run the gauntlet into the curriculum since, and English literature is just coming painfully to its proper heritage. But worst of all, every American college in 1800 was but an ill-conducted school, where boys must recite the lessons conned from text-books. The George Harvard library seemed respectable to George Tick- 1791-mi ^^^^ ^^ boyhood, but when he returned from Gottingen he found it was but '' a closetful of books." Of the larger university ether he and Everett brought us the first whiff. Ticknor himself, son of a well-to-do ex-teacher and tradesman of Boston, was admitted to Dartmouth College at ten, after oral tests, at home, in Cicero and New Testament Greek. Graduating at sixteen after but two years' actual residence, with a tincture of Horace and astronomy in his memory, he acquired in the next three years, from an English-born clergy- man of Boston, some real acquaintance with such recondite authors as Homer, Herodotus and Eu- ripides, Livy and Tacitus. Madame de Stael's " Germany " told him of university life there. With much effort he secured a German dictionary from another state, borrowed a German grammar written in French, and discovered in the suburban village of Jamaica Plain an Alsatian who could give him a very faulty pronunciation. Such were the conditions at Harvard and in Boston, a decade after the deaths of Friedrich von Schiller and Christian Gottlob Heyne. Mastery of Hottentot with the clicks, or the native CULTURE AND SCHOLARSHIP 117 speech of Samoa, could be more hopefully sought in Boston now. Ticknor sailed for Europe in April, 1815. Four years later he pfeturned, with the richest intellectual results of study aud travel, and with a private library already large and costly. For many years he strug- gled, in vain, to have Harvard College remodeled on something like its present lines. His friend Edward Everett, alone, the brilliant young Greek professor, shared Ticknor's German scholarship and progressive ideas ; and he, after four years, was sent to Congress. Ticknor only, as the first Smith professor of modern languages (1820-1835), had a real departmental staff of instructors, a native German, an Italian, and a Frenchman. From his own nominal stipend of $1000 he long drew only $600, on account of the extreme poverty of the college. Mr. Ticknor's town house and library was for a half -century, even during his own long visits abroad, the scholarly center of Boston (from which city Har- vard has never been separable), perhaps, also, its strongest social bulwark. Among his friends and correspondents he counted the greatest foreign schol- ars, like Humboldt, and King John of Saxony, the learned student of Dante. Ticknor himself was not a source of direct inspiration as a great teacher, ora- tor, or creative writer, but many such men valued his influence. He was a wide-ranging and accurate stu- dent all his life. His " History of Spanish Literature " (1849) is still the exhaustive and authoritative work on the subject, though anything but a readable or stimulating book for laymen. His " Life of Prescott " gives us a pleasant acquaintance with the biogra- 118 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD pher as well, though both maintain their punctilious dignity and Bostonian manners. That Ticknor's tendencies, save in pure scholar- ship and educational reform, were conservative, aris- tocratic, exclusive, is not strange. He and his class were held closely bound by their material interests and social creed. The fast-growing wealth of Boston was heavily invested in the mills on the Merrimac. The South, rather than the West, then furnislied the chief market. Even men who deplored the existence of slavery — as nearly all men did — might cling to the Union, and to the constitutional recognition of slaveholding, as a bargain fairly entered into and irrevocable. So when the most promising of young Boston aristocrats, like Phillips, became an Abolitionist, or even a Free-Soil revolter from the dominant Whig party, like Sumner, Ticknor's door was slammed in his face, and nearly all " the four hun- dred," of course, imitated the example. When, from the days of Tiberius Gracchus to Henry George, has vested wealth welcomed revolutionary doctrines, or petted their expounders ? Far more bitterly did the older " orthodox " Unitarianism denounce the radi- cal free religionist, Theodore Parker, as " an atheist in the pulpit," a fit ally for incendiary traitors like Garrison. Professor Wendell is quite right in argu- ing that all this was not merely excusable or rational, but really inevitable. Though " Humanity sweeps onward," the cautious conservative has his peculiar virtues and uses. It is important to remember that Emerson and the younger creative writers generally were openly fol- CULTURE AND SCHOLARSHIP 119 lowing, though with feet less heavily shod, in the same paths with Garrison and Parker. Channing himself did not live long enough to grow the hard shell of real conservatism. On the other hand, such men as Felton, the great Greek professor, an old and intimate friend of Sumner, denounced his radical politics, and finally even broke off personal relations, far more hotly than Ticknor. The latter acted from calm, lifelong principle. That his own political social and religious creed was absolutely right, he knew as surely as Winthrop or Mather. In truth, not merely the conservatism of property Conserva- generally, but the very spirit of scholarship itself, is ^^^^^^l jjj often at war with the creative imagination. The scholar lives, by his own choice, in the past ; the poet rather in his ideal, even if unattainable, future. So the scholar craves permanence, while the freer vision of the dreamer bids him hope, if not fight, for radically better conditions of life. These two powers are oftener not united, in large measure, in the same person. Encyclopaedic learn- ing weighs down the winged soul too heavily. Books abused, says Emerson, are among the worst of things. " Meek young men in libraries " forget, he adds, that the}^ to whom they make submission were themselves but bolder and more self-centered youths. William D. Whitney or Justin Winsor could have made a crushing retort, by describing the chronic inaccuracy of dreamers. Certainly Emerson himself was quite unfit for sustained investigation and scholarly accu- racy, though he could admire, in more tolerant moods, even the bookworm. Lowell, it is true, did combine tireless energy as a 120 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD reader, an omnivorous memory, and reflective analyt- ical- criticism, with the poet's imagination. Doubt- less the critic profited by the partnership, but the poet often, even in old age, complains bitterly that ardu.ous study has dried up the creative sources. His poetry might have been largely tlie gainer, if he, like Longfellow, could have quietly sought, and enjoj^ed, whatever sustenance his imagination craved, or even had he been often secluded for years in village or fields, with little comradeship save his own wide- ranging thoughts. But the poet and the scholar, creator and preserver of our literary wealth, have need of each other ; and the truly civilized community itself needs alike the poet and the scholar, the uplift toward better things to strive for, the full consciousness of all the treasured experience and thought garnered from the centuries since Homer or the Vedic hymns. Ticknor first made liberal scholarship possible in an American college. In later life he lent his costly books, with utmost liberality, to every serious stu- dent. He, more than any other man, labored to found the Free Public Library of Boston, the oldest and the best of its kind. To that library he be- queathed his own collection of Spanish books, said to be still the richest in the world, outside of Spain itself. Ticknor's name must be written, perhaps larger than any other, among the creators of a wide and deep literary culture, who are surely, in the long run, among the godfathers of later literature as well. This truth is indeed demonstrable in his case. Em- erson or Thoreau, though each owes much in detail CULTURE AND SCHOLARSHIP 121 to older authors, could indeed be essentially himself in his sylvan home. But Longfellow's world-wide humanism and Prescott's fine literary style were vitally indebted to George Ticknor, and to the new culture which his name best represents. They breathed naturally, all their lives, the air of the "alcoved tomb," as Dr. Holmes calls the library. These two are but the most famous among Ticknor's many friends. BIBLIOGRAPHY Channing's works are published in a single portly volume by the American Unitarian Association in Boston. "Life" by William H. Channing, Boston, 1848. Ticknor's " History of Spanish Literature," three volumes, New York, 1849. "Life, Letters, and Journals," edited by his daughter, two volumes, Boston, 1876. The remark of Professor J. F. Jameson alluded to on p. 114 is in his excellent monograph on " Historical Writing in America." SUGGESTIONS FOR CLASS WORK The best sketches of Ticknor's Boston will be found in Pierce's " Life of Charles Sumner," Vol. II, and, especially. Vol. Ill, ad init. If the attempt is made to interest young students in such a subject, a limited use of names, and a generous use of views, portraits, anecdotes, etc., is desirable. The social dictation, and, if need were, ostracism, exercised by Ticknor, is defended in a characteristic letter of his, in Pierce's " Sumner," Vol. III. The serene self-confidence of its moral judgments makes this epistle a capital index of Puritanic character. CHAPTER I THE CONCORD GROUP I. Emerson RALPH WALDO EMERSON traced his descent through seven generations of Puritan preachers. He had every right to a place, then, in that "Brahmin caste," the intellectual aristocracy of New England as it is characterized by Dr. Holmes. His father preached in the oldest of the Boston churches down to his early death in 1811. He too, like nearly all the educated men of his generation, shared in the liberal tendencies which Channing best represents. There was very little controversial theology in his sermons, and in general he foreshadowed the ten- dencies of his greater son. He edited from 1805 till his death the Literary Anthology^ then the modest organ of literary and liberal Boston ; for the North American Review was not founded until 1815. Those who believe in the decisive power of heredity, or of personal influence either, should read a most striking utterance of ecstatic idealism, written by Mary Moody Emerson, when her famous nephew was four years old. It is quoted by Mr. Emerson in the Atlantic for December, 1883, and certainly could well stand as a page of his own " Nature." Even the rhythmic pulse of his prose is here: "We measure duration by the number of our thoughts, by the 122 Harvard. THE CONCORD GROUP 123 activity of reason, the discovery of truths, the ac- quirement of virtue, the approval of God." Poverty was among Emerson's earliest teachers. His father's death left a delicate widow with five little boys, — Ralph Waldo being the second, — and hardly any income. She moved out of the parson- age, and took boarders. The boy Emerson used to drive their cow to pasture on the Common : a lively glimpse of the changes in that part of Boston. For many years the family were quietly aided by the dead father's friends. Emerson was educated at the Latin School, and Emerson at graduated at Harvard in 1821. He made no great record of scholarship there, and though chosen class poet, it was after seven others had declined the honor. Nor does he express enthusiasm for any of his instructors, as such, though before he graduated Edward Everett was teaching Greek, and George Ticknor, first of the three famous Smith professors, had charge of the modern languages. These men had brought back from Europe something of the true university spirit. The chair of rhetoric and oratory was already filled by Edward Tyrrel Channing, brother of the great preacher, who in his long service (1819-1851) is said to have " taught a whole gen- eration of American authors how to write." His tasks Emerson performed with interest. Doubtless the youthful Emerson was himself the stripling who, as he writes long after, would console his defeats in mathematics "with Chaucer and Montaigne, with Plutarch and Plato, at night." Shakespeare he knew almost by heart. Webster's oratory set his pulses throbbing. German philosophy and literature were 124 THE NEW ENGLAND PEiUOD coming into the reach of eager minds, but did not interest Emerson especially until he met Carlyle. Such natures as his find their own fittest sustenance in spite of all teachers or curricula. Already he was notably quiet, self-contained, dwelling apart. In college Emerson had taken scholarships, and earned money by private pupils. Later he alter- nated with his studies in Divinity some unhappy but successful school-teaching. A keen-eyed boy later recalled him as " a captive philosopher set to tending flocks, resigned but not amused." At this time he was aiding unselfishly in bringing up his brothers. All were of sensitive constitutions. The winter of 1827-1828 Waldo was obliged to spend in St. Augustine. Here as elsewhere he kept jour- nals of his sights, studies, and meditations, not rarely in verse. His correspondence with his Aunt Mary was a part of his education. In 1829 he was ordained as assistant pastor in a Boston church, and married. Early in 1832 he lost his wife, and later in the year retired from the min- istry. His final sermon is the only one that has been published, the other rather mild discourses not being, in his opinion, worth preservation ; and hav- ing been freely utilized, we may add, in his lectures and printed essays. It would not be easy to find a calmer, or a more audacious, utterance than this last sermon. It dis- cusses the rite which all shades of Christians have through the centuries held most sacred : the com- munion. His own belief was, that the command, "This do in remembrance of me," was addressed to the apostles actually present, and to them alone. THE CONCORD GROUP 125 He liad proposed to his people a substitute, which had been unanimously rejected. He could not hon- Emerson estly continue the service. His final words were : gl^g^^ij^g^*" ''That is the end of my opposition, that I am not Christian interested in it. I am content that it stand to the ^^ ' end of the world, if it please men and please Heaven, and I shall rejoice in all the good it produces." For Emerson, that was always the end. When- ever he felt "cabin'd, cribb'd, confined," he opened the door and stepped out. His needs were of the simplest, and he never doubted that they would be supplied. Absolute sincerity and single-hearted quest of truth were the first of needs. Such hon- esty in word and act " He taught, but first he folwed it himselve." At thirty, lie faced without dismay what seemed total failure in tlie only work for Avhich he had felt any calling or capacity. Doubly bereft of pulpit and helpmeet, he must have felt the need of restful change. In 1833-1834 Emerson made a first visit in Europe, chiefly in England, with a short tour through Sicily, Italy, and France. He met the men he had most desired to see, Wordsworth, Landor, De Quincey, Coleridge, and in particular Carlyle. The student should turn at once to the opening chapter of " Eng- lish Traits," which is, be it said, incidentally, quite the easiest of all his books for the exoteric reader. The merciless description of Wordswortli is a reve- lation of critical insight in the younger seer. The friendship with the choleric Carlyle was a ^^^^^^ rather grotesque one, but lasted till death. It Emerson. 126 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD hardly needs Lowell's vigorous words, in " Fable for Critics," to differentiate the two men. Their method and spirit, at least, were as diverse as the wind and the sun of ^sop, inducing the wayfarer to throw off his cloak. Carlyle hated and denounced shams. Emerson loved and serenely sought the beautiful and the true. If the Scotchman had accepted a later invitation to come over and con- duct the Biol — Their long correspondence has been carefully edited by Professor Norton. Emerson preached in Edinburgh, doubtless else- where, during his absence. Until 1838 he even preached regularly in East Lexington to " a very simple people who could understand no one else," but he refused their formal call. He said early, " My pulpit is the Lyceum platform." This " Yankee notion," the New England Lyceum, is now little but a memory of ante-bellum days. The lack of books, magazines, and live newspapers fostered a hunger such as we can no longer realize. Like everything else, the Puritan lecture-course sys- tem was taken very seriously. These winter courses were regarded as an essential part of a liberal educa- tion. The lecturer was preacher, teacher, political and social leader, in one. Emerson, a pioneer in this field, lectured in 1834 on Michael Angelo, Milton, Luther, George Fox, and Burke. The leading Lyceum speakers of the next thirty years were also usually the chief scholars, authors, and orators of the East. Naturally, the platform early became an engine of strenuous " reform " of many sorts, and it is only our word " crank " that is new, not the genus. Just before the war. Abolitionism domi- THE CONCORD GROUP 127 nated the Lyceum. Later, a more sated or less robust generation began to require amusement, and finally the professional fun-maker wrecked the dignity of the institution. Yet every New Englander now past middle age counts even a far-away memory of Emerson the lecturer, and his successors, down to Whipple and Curtis, among the chief sources of lasting inspiration. The same year, 1834, Emerson settled in Concord, sharing the Old Manse with his grandmother's hus- band, the venerable Dr. Ezra Ripley, who was EzraKipiey, perhaps the last immovable pillar of the old Puritan- ism. Emerson's loving sketch of him (^Atlantic, November, 1883) aoes equal honor to both. Concord was Emerson's home until his death. There Hawthorne, Thoreau, the Alcotts, and others lived, and now lie buried ; but as the home of Emerson Concord will be known above all else. No spot could be more satisfying to the pilgrim, whatever his previous fancies about it. Peace seems to linger about its famous homes, and surely about the beauti- ful " God's acre " in Sleepy Hollow. The memories of two centuries are best united, however, where we look across the swift quiet river to see, at the bridge head, the monument of the first fight in the Revolution, inscribed with Emerson's most famous quatrain. The palmers began to come to the sage's door, by the way, abundantly, even in Emerson's own time. Hawthorne sketches this procession of "young vision- Concord the aries and gray-headed theorists " in that wonderful J^gamers piece of idealized realism, the description of Concord and the Manse at the beginning of his "Mosses," 128 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD to which the student should by all means turn at once. The year 1835 was still more decisive in the phi- losopher's outward life. He married Lydia Jackson of Plymouth. They moved into the house in which their children were born, in which both parents died, and which is still the abode of the purest refinement and altruism. The same month he gave the oration at the 200th anniversary of the town's settlement. This address, as published, is a sober, plain statement of facts, with abundant footnotes, such as a local anti- quarian puts together. Emerson could be, and was at will, to the end of his days, a plain, shrewd village neighbor, a regular attendant at town meet- ing, as full of unmystical " common sense " as Frank- lin himself, to whom, indeed, he is likened often by those who knew him best. For April 19 of the next year he rendered a more famous local service. His hymn, sung at the dedication of the monument, made such an impres- sion, that it almost seemed that it was he who had " Fired the shot heard round the world." Here again there was no hint of mysticism. And yet his first book, " Nature," had already been written in the Old Manse. Published anonymously, it was promptly credited to Emerson. It sold, in twelve years, only five hundred copies. The soul of the poet and seer is in the little book. Nearly all his later utterances are there suggested, as when the phrase, " Nothing is quite beautiful alone," fore- shadows one of his most perfect lyric poems, " Each THE CONCORD GROUP 129 and All." The book is a poetic rhapsody, more poet- ical by far as a whole, even though not written in verse, than Wordsworth's "Excursion." "Nature" is, to Emerson, the whole environment of man, and the central thought of this work is the perfect har- mony that should be felt between the human being and that environment. Curiously enough, Emerson does not seem to be aware that the word Nature itself, by its origin and by Lu,3retius's use of it, means properly birth, or origin, so implying in itself development. Yet, long before Darwin, in the next edition of this book after the lirst, there are prefixed the famous verses, fore- shadowing so clearly the chief dogma of modern science : — " A chain of countless rings The next unto the farthest brings ; . . . And striving to be man, the worm Mounts through all the spires of form." The little book puzzled, and in part shocked, most of the few critics wdio then noticed it. It can hardly be defended from the rather vague charge of Panthe- ism. Nature certainly is, to Emerson, not a veil between himself and God, but the manifold expres- sion, or emanation, of divinity itself. The clear final note is optimistic. Man is sufficient to his own salvation. Progress, and nothing else, is necessary to ever fuller human happiness. Evil is but misdirected good. " The advancing spirit . . . shall draw beautiful faces, warm hearts, wise dis- course, and heroic acts, around its way, until evil is no more seen." Even if the reader is able to share in full Emerson's 130 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD complete emancipation from religious tradition and dogma of every sort, he may still find this alluring little book anything but easy reading. Like the forest itself, it often seems to open unending viatas and bypaths, rather than to close in and complete any view. Indeed, the subject itself is as boundless as interstellar space. But every man must at least find much truth, beauty, and inspiration, in golden phrases scattered over every page, while a fitting hour and mood may, at any time, give us the key to the entire rhapsody, so that we can exultantly cry, in Emerson's own words: — '' Beauty into my senses stole : I yielded myself to the perfect whole." The most striking public appearance of Emerson was before the Harvard Phi Beta Kappa society in 1837, when he delivered an oration on " The American Scholar." This bears by general consent the title of our intellectual Declaration of Independence. Lowell, who was present, recalls the scene vividly in his essay on Thoreau. Next year Mr. Emerson aroused much feeling by his radical Divinity School address, in which he emphasized the purely human nature of Christ, and the absurdity of a miracle, if understood as an actual violation of natural law. In the resulting discussion he made this remark, in a letter to his former colleague, the Rev. Dr. V/are : " I do not know what arguments are. I delight in telling what I think; but if you ask me how I dare say so, or why it is so, I am the most helpless of mortal men." This is absolutely true. There are few links of argument in Emerson's works. He has THE CONCORD GROUP 131 tlie spirit of a poet always. What interests him he sees clearly, and describes vividly; that is all. Hence he has founded no school of thought, taught no doctrines ; but more than any other man of the nineteenth century he stimulated and encouraged all Americans to unfettered thought and fearless utterance. Lowell, who least of men would wear any master's yoke, pays most loyal tribute to this benignant influence in "Emerson the Lecturer." Yet Emerson has been regarded, in spite of himself, as the leader, or center, of the Transcendental school. That name was given in derision, doubtless, though it would be hard to say when, or where. Lowell, in the opening pages of his essay on Thoreau, gives a mercilessly witty and satirical description of this famous group. Emerson himself, in his "Historic Notes," makes a very different sketch. They were simply a coterie of the most advanced radicals, in an age of general ferment. The " Club " began in a The Tran- chance gathering of four or five young Unitarian scemiental^ clergymen, and never acquired any organization at i836. all. Goethe, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Channing, Emerson himself, were among the disturbing influences. " I unsettle all things," says Emerson. "No facts are to me sacred; none are profane." Everything was open for freest discussion. Visionary schemes for the complete and immediate regeneration of society were, naturall}^ in the air. The most famous experiment actually made was that in cooperative farming, joint housekeeping, rational education, and mutual improvement, at Brook Farm, in Roxbury, in the years 1840-1847. ^^^^^ There will be more to say of this in connection with 1840-1847. 1841-1844. 132 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD Hawthorne. Emerson's shrewd Yankee sense, and doubtless too, his happy home life in Concord, kept him entirely aloof financially from this project. It ended disastrously at last, partly on account of the loss of the chief building by fire, but without scan- dal of any kind. Many of the younger members always looked back upon it as an ideal form of education. The Dial, During the same years in part (1841-1844), the famous Dial, in some sort the organ of the Tran- scendentalists, was edited by Margaret Fuller, and afterward by Emerson. His prose and poetry are its most valuable contents. This also failed to sup- port itself. A remarkably lucid grouping of its chief contributors and contents is given by Professor Wendell (pp. 302-304). Emerson had lost, in 1834 and 1836, two of his brothers, who shared his genius in large measure. But the heaviest shock his self-centered optimistic faith received was the sudden death, in 1842, of his son and eldest child, Waldo, really a marvelous bo}^, in his sixth year. The poem " Threnody " is a most tender, pathetic, and intimate utterance. We feel the heart-throbs as in no other of his verses. The fact that such an utterance was actually in rhyme strengthens our belief that Emerson was at heart a poet, lacking only, as he says of Plato, the lyric form, if even that. In 1847-1849 he was again in England, and had great success as a lecturer, chiefly with a series of papers afterward published as *' Representative Men." In this book he comes nearest to full sympathy with the author of " Heroes and Hero Worship " ; but while THE CONCORD GROUP 133 Carlyle glories in the force of a great man for it- self, Emerson always seeks the eternal Idea behind all. With the exception of this English visit, Emerson's life glided on uneventfully. He lived simply, earned more than he spent, and was at ease. He lectured every winter, and from time to time put forth a vol- ume of essays, though by no means all his manuscripts have ever been printed. In Concord itself he gave first and last more than a hundred lectures, many of which are still unpublished. His poems accumulated much more slowly, and the two collections make but a single light volume in the final editions of his works. He was not accounted a man of action, especially not a political agitator nor urger of immediate re- forms. Thus he held somewhat aloof from the anti- slavery propaganda, though he expressed sympathy for Sumner when he was assailed, and for John Brown in 1859. He had borne testimony against slavery itself, in remarkably plain and forcible hm- guage, in an address on emancipation in the West Indies as early as 1844. He condemned the Fugi- tive Slave Law. His single sentence in a frustrated speech on Daniel Webster is as fierce as Whittier's "Ichabod": "There is not a drop of blood in this man's veins which does not look downward." In 1855, he made the proposal, in an antislavery speech, that all the slaves be purchased, at an estimated cost of two billion dollars. Most men will now agree that it was a rational and economical plan. In the same year he spoke once for the right of women to vote. " English Traits " was not published until 1856. 134 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD Despite much hearty admiration, the keen, unbarbed arrows of this book struck deep into the nerves of our insular cousins. The passage beginning *' Twenty thousand thieves landed at Hastings" is terrific in its plainness. In this one venture he may be compared with Hawthorne, whose book, " Our Old Home," hit much the same tender spot. Even the Civil War hardly distracted Emerson from his wonted tasks. He welcomed the Emanci- pation Proclamation. Again, when Lincoln died, he spoke wisely and generously of his character, to his Concord neighbors, April 19, 1865. His poem, *' Voluiitaries " (1863), reveals that it is written in war time. Perhaps, as we saw in Bryant's case, that bitter stress gave us the poet's noblest quatrain : — " So nigh is grandeur to our dust, So near is God to man, When Duty whispers low, Thou must, The youth repUes, I can." The verses, "Terminus," in 1867, announce serenely the approach of age. Lowell, years after, feeling himself too growing old, and uttering his loyal gratitude for lifelong inspiration, quoted most grace- fully to Emerson : " I at least gladly " ' Obey the voice at eve obeyed at prime.* " Indeed, such quatrains as that just cited, and the famous one in " Wood Notes," beginning, — " Thou canst not wave thy staff in air," may well make us hesitate to agree with Mr. Lowell, that the master had no ear for rhythm and music in verse, and produced his occasional happy effects almost by chance. THE CONCORD GROUP 135 Emerson's memory and power of utterance faded painlessly away in his latter years. Though present at Longfellow's funeral, where he whispered once to his devoted attendant, "Who is the sleeper?" he awoke as from a trance at nightfall, sadly aware that he had missed the day. Soon after he contracted pneumonia, and only a month later he himself fell on sleep. It has been attempted to make clear the spirit of Emerson's work, even while telling the quiet story of his life. The gentle simplicity of the man, his un- swerving faith in humanity, in Nature, in the unseen Powers that guide the universe, must count for more than any mere piece of literary art he has left beliind him. He certainly created no philosophic system, perhaps taught no absolutely novel truth. He had literally no dramatic power, or large constructive imagination. His utterance is always direct and personal, as it were in his own calm, natural voice. His essays are not only without rigid logical cohesion, they are often mere loose series of more or less kindred thoughts, and at times justify the ex- travagant legends which are current as to their hap- hazard growth. He has no painful or scholastic accuracy. He quotes or refers offhand to authors of all ages, with some of whom he had but nodding acquaintance. Least of all men would he desire his own books to be studied critically and accepted as authoritative. On his artistic side, then, he is lyric only, and even that, almost always, in briefest flights. As his rhythmic prose hardly suffers when quoted in the 136 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD single detached sentence, or by the paragraph at most, so his verse rarely sustains itself masterfully beyond a dozen lines. A few striking exceptions, indeed, to this assertion, like " Each and All" and *' Terminus," have been noted. Emerson's own favorite among his poems was "Days." It chances that we can set beside this the same thought in its earlier prose ex- pression. The two will convince any appreciative reader of his full right to use the poetic forms. " The days are ever divine, as to the first Aryans. They come and go like muffled and veiled figures, sent from a distant friendly party ; but they say nothing, and if we do not use the gifts they bring, they carry them as silently away." — Works and Days. DAYS " Daughters of Time, the hypocritic days. Muffled and dumb, like barefoot dervishes. And marching single in an endless file. Bring diadems and fagots in their hands. To each they offer gifts after his will. Bread, kingdom, stars, and sky that holds them all. I, in my pleached garden, watched the pomp, Forgot my morning wishes, hastily Took a few herbs and apples, and the Day Turned and departed silent. I too late Under the solemn fillet saw the scorn." As Dr. Holmes points out, here and elsewhere Mr. Emerson is far more subjective in verse than in prose. Indeed, he frankly confesses his own feelings and failings in his poetry, while he has a certain aristocratic reticence about himself at all other times. Emerson's verse is usually as cold as Bryant's, and far below his, not to mention Poe's, in metrical and THE CONCORD GROUP 137 structural finish. On the other hand, in actual range of thought, and even of fancy, he is altogether superior to them both. Indeed, a certain demiurgic originality and audacious independence of all tra- ditional models has placed Emerson's poetry, in the judgment of many critics, quite apart from that of all other men. But the true legacy of Ralph Waldo Emerson is in the freer, purer air that all men breathe who have come within his influence. Dean Stanley reported that in America " the genial atmosphere which Emer- son has done so much to promote is shared by all the churches equally." The good dean spoke then for the ''Evangelical" bodies ; but freedom is wider still. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE The works of Emerson are published by Houghton, Mifflin, & Co. The three most important memoirs are the official biography by his literary executor, J. E. Cabot, the volume of reminiscences by his son, Edward Waldo Emerson, and the Life in "American Men of Letters" by Dr. Holmes. Of critical writing on Emerson there is no end. We should begin with Lowell's loyal tribute. Matthew Arnold's paper on Emerson is important, and there is an excellent German study of him by Hermann Grimm. The latest and most iconoclastic essay is by J. J. Chapman. The best technical criticism of his literary style is in Dr. Holmes's book. Mr. Cabot has, in an im- portant appendix, a list of all Emerson's works, with abstracts of those not published. CLASSROOM WORK A number of Emerson's poems are easier reading than any of his prose. Besides those mentioned in the text, most of "The Problem," of "Wood Notes I," and of "Mayday" can be simply enjoyed. Many brief poems, like " Rhodora," " Suum Cuique," "Compensation," "Forbearance," should be learned 138 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD by heart. " Forerunners " should be compared with Whittier's "Vanishers" and Lowell's "Envoi to the Muse." The ap- proach to Emerson's prose is not wholly easy. " Manners " and " Wealth," in " Conduct of Life," are clear enough. Perhaps a fully characteristic paper, like " Compensation," is really better, even for a first plunge. Abundant pictures for an illustrated lecture on Concord are very easily obtainable. II. Henry D. Thoreau There are certain other men and women so associ- ated with Mr. Emerson that they are almost always mentioned as his disciples, though they are rather members, with him, of a local Concord group. Of course every such individual, if worth discussing at all, is interesting chiefly for his originality, not for his loyalty to Emerson. In particular is this true of the comparatively brief, but sturdily contented, life of Thoreau. He was unduly overshadowed in life by his great friend's fame; and Mr. Lowell, in particular, always strong in his dislikes, and always vigorous and convincing in utterance, said some most unfair things about him. Though French on one side and Quaker on the other, Thoreau himself was a stubborn, opinionated, native-born Yankee. A near neighbor of the Em- ersons, he had doubtless driven his mother's cow home by their gate. Though his native Con- cord was then but a village of two thousand souls, — since doubled in number, — it had a good class- ical academy, and the boy was well fitted for Harvard, where he graduated in 1837, having worked his way in part by teaching. That same year Mr. Emerson sought his friendship, being first drawn to the youth because he had heard of a striking THE CONCORD GROUP 139 coincidence between a passage in Thoreau's diary and his own last lecture. For two years, 1841-1843, he lived under Mr. Emerson's roof. He never married. Besides teaching, lecturing, and authorship, Tho- reau worked industriously and skillfully, at times, at the family employment of making lead pencils. How small his own actual needs and outgo were he has told us plainly in his favorite book, "Walden." His famous hut on the shore of the lake was upon Emerson's land. He built it in the spring of 1845 and used it only two years. It was simply an outdoor study, where he lived among woodland sights and sounds, while writing his books. There was no pretense of being a hermit. An unsocial His friends — the poet Channing, Alcott, and others ^^^^^^^^^""^ — visited him there freely, and he walked in to the village almost daily. This particular episode has been absurdly exaggerated in some accounts of Thoreau's life. Nevertheless it is true, that he had a rather un- social nature. He went to "the god of the woods" not merely, like Emerson, to fetch his words to men, but because he decidedly preferred solitude to society, for the most part. Social conventions, artificial needs, were to him a weary waste of precious time. It is also true that he was more deeply influenced by Emerson than by any other one man. But the very precepts of the master united with Thoreau's own instincts to make him the most independent and self- poised of mortals. Emerson had actually written in 1841 advocating a " house of one room " : though his own was ampler. Moreover, while much wider in his range of 140 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD thoughts, or at least of speculations, Emerson was altogether the pupil, not the master, in Thoreau's proper classroom, the woods and lields. " Thoreau,'' as Dr. Holmes finely says, " lent him a new set of organs of sense, of wonderful delicacy. Emerson's long intimacy with him taught him to give an out- line to many natural objects which would have been poetic nebulae to him, but for this companionship." Compare Emerson's own testimony in his brief biography of his friend. " Mayday," again, writ- ten after Thoreau's influence came, has a definite- ness of vision not felt in *' Wood Notes," which was actually written before they met, though nearly all readers feel that the " forest seer, The minstrel of the natural year," must be a portrait of Thoreau. The younger philosopher was also, as Emerson was not, a devoted classical student, especially of Greek drama and lyric . He made translations of two ^schy 1- ean plays, and of passages from Pindar. Many evi- dences of this rare scholarship appear in his works. Thoreau's life at Walden may perhaps most fairly be regarded as a Brook Farm experiment in miniature : a half-successful attempt, or an interesting failure of an attempt, to create a congenial self-supporting "social unit," not unduly isolated from mankind in general, and more than willing to impart to outsiders any fruitful results from the undertaking. Thoreau's ideal community was : himself alone. The attempt had, at any rate, no such semitragical absurdity as Alcott's, from which he and his few disciples were rescued in a starving condition. THE CONCORD GROUP 141 It is curious that Emerson apparently failed to realize, adequately, how exactly in accord with his own teachings all this sturdy contented activity of Thoreau's was. How permanent and precious its fruits were to be he perhaps could not be expected to divine. He is said to have complained that " Henry " had no ambition. His whole life through Thoreau jotted down in his journals — not indeed many visions and aspirations for the Infinite, but — a record of sights and sounds in his own familiar yet undiscovered New England world. He lived on such terms with his neighbors Friend of that he could lift the fish from the lake, the wood- ^^^ *^® f or6St "World chuck from his hole, with his hand, and restore them unterrified to freedom again. When he left the woods and lakes of his own region, it was by choice for the forests of Maine, or the sandy stretches of Cape Cod. Nearly all his published works, and there are now some ten volumes, are but sections of that detailed daily record. Only two books were printed in his lifetime. The first one, in 1849, involved him in serious debt, and nearly the whole edition came back upon his hands some years later. It probably never occurred to him to be thereby dismayed, or diverted from his natural employments. And now, alone of Emerson's personal group, Thoreau is every year becoming more widely known and beloved. He may be said, also, to have a long line of disciples, from John Burroughs down to the youth of to-day, who has learned first from him, as Colonel Higginson says he did, to bring a bird nearer with a spyglass instead of with a gun. He alone has taken an honored place beside, yet apart 142 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD from, Emerson himself, among the authors whom the world cannot now spare, and apparently will not soon suffer to be forgotten. Indeed, if we take but ten books to our summer camp, " Walden " is more secure of a place than Emerson's "Nature" itself. There is furthermore a goodly group of liv- ing writers, still headed by genial and happy John Burroughs, and occupying toward Thoreau the posi- tion of independent but grateful disciples. Even Lowell does homage to his keen and unerring outdoor eyesight. Thoreau the Thoreau wrote his poetry almost wholly before he oS^of-doors ^^^ thirty. It is embedded, usually in the form of School. mere couplets or quatrains, in his voluminous journals, as we may see occasionally in the " Concord and Merrimac." Much of it he later destroyed, on Mr. Emerson's judgment rather than his own. Together with the philosopher's inability to approve or read his neighbor Hawthorne's masterpieces, this casts grave doubts on Emerson's infallibility in literary criticism at short range. A separate volume of fifty short " Poems of Nature " has recently been put together. The title is apt, but still wiser the editors' instinct, not to try to detach the yet briefer bits from their prose environment in his journals. Thoreau simply turns to rhythmical utterance, for the instant, when the tone of his thought requires it. Like Emerson, he is often more confidential and personal in verse. Occasion- ally he is mystical, though usually direct enough. Rhyme he cannot always command easily, though we welcome eagerly such gems as : — THE CONCORD GROUP 143 "I hearing get, who had but ears, And sight, who had but eyes before, I moments live who lived but years, And truth discern, who knew but learning's lore." Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers coyly still. Truth-seekers are we all. Contentment with little, devotion to simple living and high-ranging thought, comradeship with all animate things, deep insight into the eternal processes of nature, together with full enjoyment of philosophy and poetry in books, — so much, at least, this Yankee recluse learned, and teaches to an ever widening circle. BIBLIOGRAPHY The goodly row of Thoreau's books is published by Houghton. A remarkably fine edition of " Cape Cod " contains hundreds of delicately tinted marginal sketches, reproduced from the water- color work of a faithful follower. The separate volume, " Poems of Nature," is hardly indispensable, since his verse is best under- stood as read in situ in his other books. Frank Sanborn calls Channing's "Life of Thoreau" "a mine " of things " relevant and irrelevant " : and his own, in "Men of Letters," could be called "Concord gossip, often mentioning Thoreau." Still, he is always interesting. Emer- son's brief sketch of Thoreau, now included in the latter's col- lected works, Vol. X, sets him unmistakably before us. Lowell's essay is indispensable, but exasperating. See also appreciations by R. L. Stevenson, Burroughs, and Page. SUGGESTIONS FOR CLASS WORK No books can be put more securely into young hands than Thoreau's. Like Bryant, he should be read out of doors. He is intensely local also, and a pilgrimage to Concord, with views of its quieter nooks, will bring him constantly to the lips. Walden Pond, in particular, is forever his. 144 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD III. Margaret Fuller Strangely contrasted with Thoreau's posthumous fame is the fact, that her own tragic death, and the discussion over a character in a romance, now barely keep alive in the popular mind the very name of Margaret Fuller, the imperious friend of Emerson, the editor, perhaps the real founder, of the Dial^ the best-loved and best-hated woman of her day. She was born in Cambridge, of a self-assertive race, her- self the most self-confident and ardently ambitious of women. Her father himself started her in the pre- cocious classical training then common for boys, unheard-of for girls. Latin, begun at six, recited in irregular evening hours, wrecked her bodily vigor for life, as she afterward believed. French, philos- ophy, Greek, Italian, were on her daily programme at midsummer, when she was fifteen. German lit- erature and philosophy came very early and power- fully into her inner life, through her friendship with Dr. Frederick Hedge. Her father removed to Groton in 1833, and died suddenly in 1835. Margaret's struggle to educate the younger chil- dren was now doubly severe. She had to leave home and teach, first in Alcott's famous Boston school, and, after his first mishap, in Providence. Hedge praised her to the Emersons, and in July, 1836, she made her first visit in their Concord home, recorded by Emerson in a famous passage. She was at first " a not unf eared, half- welcome guest." He learned to value highly his ardent and critical friend. A bold and delightful letter to him is quoted by her chiv- alric biographer. Colonel Higginson (pp. 70-71). THE CONCORD GROUP 145 Such a woman must have given almost as richly as she received, even from Emerson. In 1839 the Fuller family, reunited, settled in Jamaica Plain, a rural suburb of Boston. The famous *' Conversations " began that November, and ceased in Conversa- April, 18-11. They were an eminently practical and BosToi"^ useful attempt to stimulate more serious studies and 1839-18M. deeper thought among the most active-minded of Boston women. About thirt}^ usually met, at eleven in the morning, a dozen times in a winter. Mar- garet Fuller usually introduced the topic, stimulated the discussion, but often gave way to those better informed in a special field. As those who attended were, nearly all, in the full current of "Transcen- dental " thought, the inevitable themes were com- parative religion (or " mythology "), conduct of life, ethics, education. Margaret had many of the highest and rarest powers of the teacher. This was one of the most sensible and flexible forms of " Extension " ever devised. The wonder is that the " Conversa- tions " did not then and there demonstrate and sup- ply a permanent need. Margaret's fascinating homeliness had at this time developed to full perfection. She was loved ardently by women, and became the helpful friend of many scholarly and active-minded men. She was generally accepted as at least an equal in the group of most advanced students and freethinkers. If a man, she would doubtless have been, like nearly all the intellectual leaders at that time, — Emerson, Hedge, Ripley, Clarke, Parker, Bartol, Brownson, the Chan- nings, and others, — a Unitarian clergyman, chafing at the collar even of that easy creed, and eager to 146 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD assert the absolute freedom and divinity of her own soul. She and her friend Elizabeth Peabody actually were members, from the beginning, of the famous club nicknamed "Transcendental," which met first at Mr. Emerson's house in the fall of 1836, and monthly or so through several following years. She, even more than Ripley or Emerson, actually ryiai started the Dial, and never received a penny for two .841-1844. years' tireless editorial work. It is to be hoped she can still enjoy, with us. Colonel Higginson's compari- son of reformers with Eskimo dogs, harnessed sepa- rately lest they devour each other. Alcott, adrift in the clouds, Theodore Parker, stamping the earth, and most of her other contributors, alike criticised her driving. Broken down in health, overworked, and desperately poor, she escaped in 1842, and Emer- son reluctantly but serenely drove on to certain sledge-wreck two years later. As the original Pro- spectus of the Dial had declared, the contributors — supporters it never won — had "little in common but the love of individual freedom and the hope of social progress." The progress was chiefly centrif- ugal. That list of contributors brings together, however, for the first time, nearly all the chief names in our literature of the next thirty years. "Woman in Miss Fuller's book, "Woman in the Nineteenth the Nine- Century," was completed in 1844. It is a fearless Ce'ntury," demand for full equality of rights with men. Most 1844. of the conditions she craved have long since been se- cured. A section of this book (quoted by Mr. Sted- man) gives, under the name of her friend "Mi- randa," a thinly veiled chapter of her own early life, and shows belated but cordial gratitude to her father. THE CONCORD GROUP 147 In 1844-1846 Miss Fuller was a regular writer on the New York Tribune^ and at first a member of Mr. Greeley's family. Her interests and writings took a wide range. Here she made the over severe but perfectly sincere criticisms upon Longfellow's and Lowell's early work which, restated in her book, " Papers on Literature and Art " (1846), brought down upon her the ungallant and unfair lash of Lowell's most savage satire, in the "Fable for Critics." The last four years of Margaret's life were spent Life in Italy, in Europe. Her happy marriage to a young Italian count, and their death, with their child Angelo, by drowning, off Fire Island on her return, are well known. Her finished " History of the Roman Republic" (i.e, the short-lived republic of '48-49), perished with her, as we are told. It is not strange that this frank, fearless woman, conscious of intellectual mastery, should have excited hostility, especially among men. That even those who on the whole disliked, or disapproved, this novel type of womanhood, nevertheless felt a certain charm in her at the same time, seems illustrated in Haw- thorne's "American Notebooks," under date of August 22, 1842. BIBLIOGRAPHY The " Works," edited by Margaret's brother, Rev. Arthur B. Fuller, are still in print (Little, Brown, & Co., New York). " Memoir " by Emerson, W. H. Channing, and J. F. Clarke, Boston, 1852. Life by Julia Ward Howe, " Eminent Women " series, 1883. Life by Higginson, " American Men of Letters," 1884. See also in particular Greeley's " Recollections," and Caro- line W. Ball's "Margaret and her Friends : Ten Conversations." 148 THE NEW ENGLA:N^D PERIOD SUGGESTIONS FOR CLASSROOM STUDY Margaret Fuller's life, as the pioneer among our professional women of letters, is of extreme interest as well as highly impor- tant. The friendship of Emerson and so many others, the dis- like shown by Hawthorne and still more by Lowell, make her the more interesting. The life by T. W. Higginson is at least among the best in a valuable but very uneven series, and should be carefully read by every serious student of our literary history. Mr. Greeley's testimony as to her all-sided generous helpfulness in personal relations is especially hearty. Mr. Wendell's cynical treatment of her seems to me the least pleasing page in his book. No teacher will find any lack of interesting material for discussion, and disagreement, as to this life and character. The present author would rather be wrong with Colonel Higgin- son than right with Professor Wendell, the Hawthornes, and Mr. Mozier. ("Nathaniel Hawthorne and his Wife," Vol. I, pp. 259-262.) IV. Other Friends of Emerson There is certainly much temptation to regard Alcott as merely a large, vague, ludicrous caricature, or distorted shadow, of Emerson on his visionary side. His serene helplessness in ordinary human relations helps out this view. A failure as peddler, pedagogue, plowman, poet, he relapsed contentedly into unlimited and unfruitful discussion of the un- knowable. Miss Fuller wrote once that she wished she could conquer her doubts as to his soundness of mind. His " Orphic Sayings " were the heaviest load the Dial carried, but he tranquilly pasted the parodies of them into the bulky volumes of his own " Scriptures." There was a large humorous side to the Tran- scendental movement and its devotees, enjoyed by THE CONCORD GROUP 149 none more keenly than by "our later Franklin,'* Emerson himself. Alcott must often have provoked his silent mirth. Emerson knew, as well as Lowell, how promptly the elder sage betrayed himself when he turned to his pen, but expressed extravagantly his reverence for Alcott's conversational brilliancy. Most men thought it was but the sun admiring the radiance of the moon. Altogether, in spite of Emerson's generous judg- ment of the man, and a long life of tireless and harmless talking and writing, one is inclined to be grateful to Alcott chiefly as the father of his well- beloved daughter Louisa, who with her pen res- Louisa May cued the family from the depths of poverty and i832-i888 dependence. The last survivor of the original Concord group was the poet William Ellery Channing, to be con- wmiam fused neither with his more famous uncle, nor with S^®^^. ' Channing, his cousin William H., also a Unitarian preacher, 2d, who spent his later life chiefly in England. "El- i^i^-igoi. lery " was the favorite companion in Concord of Hawthorne, as readers of the delightful introduction to the " Mosses " will recall. His verse has all the willfulness of genius. One line, " If my bark sinks, 'tis to another sea," was a favorite motto of Transcendental days. He enjoyed the distinction, indeed, of being selected by Poe as the especial butt for his critical ridicule lav- ished on the whole daft guild. Much more beautiful than any of Stedman's citations in " Library " or " Anthology " is the stanza of Channing's quoted by Sanborn (p. 84), in his " Thoreau," beginning. 150 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD " Ye heavy-hearted mariners Who sail this shore, Ye patient, ye who labor. Sitting at the sweeping oar, And see afar the flashing sea gulls play. . . ." Yet he is so uneven, so willful, that Emerson him- self complains sharply of his negligence as to rhythm and form generally. To one other friend of Emerson, though not a mem- George ber of the Concord group, George Ripley, there is a 1802^1880. temptation to allude here, because his strenuous life is a thread which in certain ways best unites many things peculiarly important and now already hard to understand. One of the founders of the famous club, and of the Bial^ he also bore the chief burden and sac- rifice, both of money and time, in the famous Brook Farm experiment. As a reviewer for the Tribune^ and a "reader" of manuscripts for Harper's Maga- zine^ he rendered great though hidden service to letters for many years. In the list of books still alive in 1900, however, he appears only as editor of a cyclopaedia. BIBLIOGRAPHY " Alcott's Life and Philosophy," by F. B. Sanborn and W. T. Harris, two volumes, Roberts, 1893. Higginson's " Contempo- raries," pp. 23-33. " George Ripley," by Frothingham, in " Men of Letters." " Brook Farm," by Lindsay Swift, in " Studies in National Literature Series," Macmillan. " Transcendentalism in New England," O. B. Frothingham, New York, 1875. For Emerson's view of this group, — with himself effaced from its center, — see his "New England Reformers" and *' Transcendentalist." Louisa M. Alcott's " Transcendental Wild Oats " is also an intimate study. CHAPTER II Nathaniel Hawthorne HAWTHORNE also spent happy years in Con- Nathaniel cord, and the Wayside was more permanent J^^\^^^' than any other of his earthly homes. Yet he is hardly more a member of any literary group than Poe. Emerson himself was but his kindly village neighbor, and could not even approve the lonely artist. Yet, in Hawthorne's case, again, we must insist on the clear strain of Puritanism. An intense moral purpose is the very soul of his art. Through scru- tiny of human lives he would fain reach the mystery of life itself, of the divine nature, of sin and its atonement. His idealism is so constant that his creations are in danger, more than all else, of fading into allegorical abstractions. His work im- presses us as austerely truthful in its outlines. As for the color, also, it is indeed, usually, the somber gray of the prosaic earnest New England life. But now, in the fullness of time, there has come a sud- den miracle : the man appears whose touch gives to all things the charm of artistic form, and also the tender, unobtrusive grace of his own nature. So far as he can be understood and accounted for at all, we must seek the key to Hawthorne in the whole story of his race. "New England's poet," 151 152 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD Lowell's description of Haw- thorne in " Agassiz." our keenest critic calls him. As our most charac- teristic and unique gift to the world's wealth, Haw- thorne demands earnest and intimate study. In the preface of his masterpiece, the " Scarlet Let- ter," he himself says of the William Hathorne who came over with Winthrop : "I seem to have a stronger claim to a residence here on account of this grave- bearded, sable-cloaked, and steeple-crowned progeni- tor, — who came so early, with his Bible and his sword, and trod the unworn street with such a stately port. . . . He was a soldier, legislator, judge ; he was a ruler in the church ; he had all the Puritanic traits, both good and evil." That first American Hathorne could hardly have been as stately or as fearless, nor did he ever, inquisitor though he was, look half so deep into the hearts of guilty men, as his descendant. The severity of that ancestor toward the Quakers, the zeal of his son in persecuting the witches, the lonely wanderings of their descendants who were sea captains through intervening generations, all enter into the blood and soul of our first great romancer. There is hardly a glimmer of his usual half -incredulous smile, as he speaks of the ancestral curse, transmitted from the cruel and hated judge, "which the dreary and unprosperous condition of the race, for many a long year back, would argue to exist." A similar evil inheritance, with the curious family pride that goes with it, may be found delicately depicted in the Pyn- cheons of Hawthorne's second great romance. Hawthorne's father, a taciturn sailor, captain of a merchantman, died of yellow fever at Surinam in his son's fourth year. His wife survived him over four NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 153 decades, but never resumed any social relations with humanity, even eating absolutely alone, in her own room. The elder of Hawthorne's two sisters was hardly less a hermit, under the same roof. Much of A lonely his boyhood was spent on an uncle's estate upon the y<^^^^^^°^®' wild shore of Lake Sebago, in Maine. There he wandered widely through the summer forests, and was at home on the lake, fishing, or in winter skating, oftenest alone. A serious lameness, prolonged for years, strengthened the deep tendency to solitude, and made the boy an assiduous reader, " Pilgrim's Progress " being an early favorite. A maternal uncle sent Hawthorne back to private schools in Salem, and supported him at Bowdoin Col- lege, where he graduated in 1825. A single wonder- ful sentence in the dedication of the "Snow Image" to his classmate, Horatio Bridge (1851), reveals, by the lightning flash of genius, the " lads at a country college, gathering blueberries, in study-hours, under those tall academic pines, or watching the great logs as they tumbled along the current of the Androscog- gin, ... or catching trouts in that shadowy little stream which, I suppose, is still wandering river- ward through the forest, though you and I will never cast a line in it again." It seems that Bridge even then prophesied a romancer's career for his friend. Indeed, Haw- thorne's ability as a writer was remarked by his instructors also. But the curriculum was narrow, the methods of teaching uninspiring, the library meager. Perhaps no environment would have made Hawthorne a scholar. His younger class- mate, Longfellow, under the same conditions, was 154 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD a far more devoted student. Hawthorne was stal- wart, ruddy, shy, but social enough within his little circle, a typical college lad outwardly, with an inner life already barred from all profane intrusion. His own heart's desire was for authorship. Indeed, his first group of stories, the " Seven Tales of my Native Land," was already completed in his college days, offered in vain to many publishers, — and finally burned. The extravagant account in " The Devil in Manuscript " has doubtless many truthful details. A boyish romance of college life, " Fan- shawe," was actually published at his own expense, in 1826, but carefully suppressed soon after. Now follows a period of extreme seclusion for a dozen years. Indeed, the young author seemed at times about to pass completely into the strange her- mit life of his mother and sister. He, too, usually left the door of the Salem homestead only after dark, and avoided nearly all social relations. He did make, each year or so, some quiet journey or tour of obser- vation for a few weeks more or less, like the one described in "The Seven Vagabonds." He was in vigorous health, a desultory but wide and critical reader, and his pen was in constant practice. Many stories actually written in these years were not printed until much later. A trifling and irregular return did come to him from annual " Souvenirs," short-lived magazines, and similar sources. His fame grew slowly but securely. The lonely family apparently had suf- ficient means for their modest needs. The published portions of the " American Note- books," unfortunately, do not begin until the summer of 1835, near the end of this important period. How NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 155 much has been suppressed we do not know. These careful records of Hawthorne's observations and thoughts were the fit tasks of his apprenticeship in An author's literature. It is of the utmost importance to notice g^?^®"*^*^^ the practical sense, the keen scrutiny, the realistic description, in these copious notebooks. " Keep the imagination sane," he says in a notable passage. His own creative fancy seems to have been always under his control. In his finished masterpieces the effects which he produces on other minds were always defi- nitely and consciously studied, based, as it were, on a well-reasoned psychological mastery of himself and of his theme. He has the dramatist's — not to say the magician's — consciousness of his audience. But the notebooks are as a rule simply materials for future works of art, and clearly intended for his own eye alone. These occasional " glimpses of life through a peep- hole " perhaps sufficed for the needs of a student whose chief attention was always centered on the innermost mysteries of the human heart itself. Equally close and accurate was his study of inani- mate nature, which is seen, for instance, in his " Main Street," and which gives so great a charm to such master scenes as the " Forest Walk " in his " Scarlet Letter." But no less important, certainly, is the develop- ment of Hawthorne's wonderfully lucid, easy, yet in- imitable style, which is the perfect garment for his thought. It was the result of patient daily practice continued through many years. He tells us that he never attempted anything but the simplest possible expression of his thought : a task quite arduous 156 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD enough, if we remember how subtle, whimsical, pa- thetic, and elusive a Hawthornesque fancy may be. So Hawthorne came to maturity. It is profitable, though rasping, to read the cosmopolitan Henry James's analysis of our extremely provincial condi- tions in those days. That Hawthorne's own artistic genius had often felt cramped and starved, is con- fessed in the preface to the " Marble Faun," and elsewhere. It is not at all certain, however, that more genial conditions would have made him. a greater or more exquisite artist. The beauty and fragrance of the Epigcea repens can be perfected only under the dead leaves and chill snows of our long New England winter. Other suns, other flowers. Irving was ripened. Cooper apparently distracted, by foreign travel, international acquaintance, world-wide fame. Few of Hawthorne's admirers feel that he ever surpassed the "Scarlet Letter." After all, noble human lives, in the environment of nature, are the only adequate or necessary material for the highest art. Mr. James makes a portentous list of things which New England lacked : cathedrals, castles, art galleries, etc. ; but, as Dr. Holmes says : " There was yet enough to kindle the fancy and the imagination. My birth chamber looked out to the West. My sunsets were as beautiful as any poet could ask for." Timely es- From this seclusion of a dozen years Hawthorne cape from ^^^ drawn, at first much against his own will, by the seclusion. ° . '^ Peabody sisters. The elder, Elizabeth, later well known for a long life of active philanthropy, dis- covered, in 1837, that the exquisite tales which had delighted them for seven years, in the New England NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 157 Magazine and elsewhere, were written by a neighbor and playmate of her childhood. When she intro- duced the coy youth to her invalid sister Sophia, the divine spark was at once kindled. Love worked such a miracle as with the Brownings, whom the Hawthornes long afterward knew well in Italy. To make an adequate income, and marry, Hawthorne ventured forth again into active life. There is a very important entry in the " Notebooks " under date of October 4, 1840, a retrospect in the light of his dawning happiness. Though cruelly mutilated by his widow in her editorial effort to efface herself from the page, it is still the utterance of a rescued prisoner, who had struggled vainly to escape unaided. After one or two attempts to make a living as editor and hack writer, Hawthorne accepted a position in the Boston customhouse, 1839-1841. Next followed a year at Brook Farm, where he lost the thousand dollars he had painfully saved. He did not venture to marry until 1842, and had a precarious and scanty income for years thereafter. But full enjoyment of human ties, and of course eventually a happier, completer, and truer vision of life, came to Hawthorne through an ideal marriage. The preface to the " Mosses " should be studied here as a record of this happy time. The general character of the "American Notebooks " Unsatisfao- has been referred to. Hawthorne's habit of journal- '**^^/r^^^i- izing was apparently all but unbroken. The portions the " Note- printed were very severely edited by Mrs. Haw- ^°° * thorne. His son Julian, in his biography, has added a few more extracts. Of Hawthorne's purely per- sonal writing, in particular of his exquisite love let- 158 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD ters, more has already been accorded us than the writer himself would have permitted. But the jour- nals, printed essentially intact, might enable us to con- struct the true artistic life of our greatest romancer. Thus, under October 25, 1836, we find fourteen printed pages, chiefly suggestions or germs for pos- sible tales and sketches. " The Christmas Banquet," "Virtuoso's Collection," " Procession of Life," are here plainly foreshadowed. There must be many earlier data of no less value. At present we are in a hopeless maze. Many of the finished tales lay long years awaiting the chance of publication. Each volume went far back, and culled from forgotten magazines or even unpublished stories. The preface to the " Mosses," in particular, is somewhat misleading, since it leaves the impres- sion that all the sketches are the output of the same period. Such a study as " Young Goodman Brown," which had been already printed in 1835, would have been a strange, I think an impossible, product of Hawthorne's first three or four happy married years. " The New Adam and Eve," on the contrary, seems all aglow with the light of new-found happiness, and could have been written only in the Old Manse itself. Between the boyish " Fanshawe " (1826) and the master's imperious bid for fame in " The Scarlet Letter " (1850), a quarter century, Hawthorne printed, and probably wrote, no tale longer than " The Gentle Boy," which contains about twelve thousand words. Everything he thought worth reprinting is gathered up in " Twice-told Tales," (Vol. I, 183T, Vol. II, 1845), " Mosses from an Old NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 159 Manse" (1846), "Snow Image" (1852). Here are some eighty-two titles, which cover all the important work of his first period. The average length is less than five thousand words. So for the twenty-five years after leaving college Hawthorne only offered the world, annually, three or four very brief " short stories." Many experiments were indeed abandoned, and the results usually destroyed. The fact remains, siowpro- that for more than half his working career this indus- ^J^^^^^^^ss trious laborer could show less in bulk than some thorne. writers, of uniformly good taste and refinement, say . Marion Crawford, might produce in a single year. No wonder the quality and finish is exquisite. If in all those quiet hours of toil Hawthorne has merely ground a perfect lens, through which we may see more clearly and truly certain recesses of the human heart, his craftsmanship has not been wasted. Some titles in each collection are mere studies of real human life or nature, which may well have been trimmed out, with little or no change, from his daily notebooks. Thus " Night Sketches," " Sunday at Home," above all ''The Haunted Mind," are the observations and musings of a hermit. In " Sights from a Steeple," " Footprints on the Seashore," " Old Ticonderoga," the widening path is still a lonely one. In " The Village Uncle," which should be read side by side with Charles Lamb's " Dream-children," the fisher-maiden Susan, though sketched from life, is haz- ily picturesque rather than real. " The Seven Vaga- bonds" are human enough, are indeed mostly real people, who appear as such in the " American Note- books," but the author is there still a mere spectator, roving, as it were, incognito with his ne'er-do-weels. 160 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD A particularly interesting study is '' Main Street," since here we see combined Hawthorne's love of nature, an increasing human element, the picturesque consciousness of the past in local history, a certain defiant tenderness for his birthplace, and last his curi- ously whimsical humor, the edge of it turned, as usual, mostly against his own sober self. Hawthorne's hap- piest local study is " The Town Pump," which he mentions as the " monumental brass " by which he will long be remembered, even in ungrateful and, on the whole, uncongenial Salem. His admiration for a great marvel of nature, his impressions of Emerson, Daniel Webster, and Andrew Jackson, are merged with his moralizing vein in " The Great Stone Face." Even more clearly allegorical and didactic is the use made of a local legend in "The Great Carbuncle." Yet in all these sketches, and others still, Haw- thorne's feet and eyes are firmly fixed on reality, on his native dales and hills. A patriotic instinct, combined with his need of picturesque material, led him to each episode in our rather homespun annals that seemed susceptible of dramatic treatment. Here the " Gray Champion " is a general favorite, though one or two of the " Legends of the Province House " press it closely. " The Gentle Boy," rather too harrowing and bitter, and not strongly dramatic in its finale, is as frank a con- fession of ancestral sin, in the persecution of the Quakers, as Hawthorne could make it. Most power- ful of all in its lurid mystery is that masterpiece of nocturnal description, "My Kinsman, Major Mo- lineux." On a slight historical basis Hawthorne here creates a most realistic yet imaginative and NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 161 unforgettable picture. No attentive reader of this brief sketch can ever again call Hawthorne colorless, vague, or dreamy. He uses oftenest, indeed, the chiaroscuro of softer lights and gentler shadows than these, but always with a skilled and masterful hand* Longfellow manages to utter his admiration for this tale in the prelude of the " Wayside Inn," and Haw- thorne wrote him that it was *' as if I had been gazing up at the moon and detected my own features in its profile." Two of his own tendencies Hawthorne has de- scribed in impatient self-criticism as "curst," or " blasted " : his love of solitude, and his fondness for allegory, the full meaning of w^hich he himself was often unable fully to unriddle after the creative mood was forgotten. The ancestral belief in witch- craft certainly lingered in him only as a possible artistic motive. In his own fearless and confiding nature there was no lurking-place for belief in de- moniacal powers, nor for any real doubt or dread con- cerning the Divine Love. His moral teachings point rather to the eventual redemption of each human soul, through the suffering that sin and remorse must bring. This paragraph is written expressly to in- sist, that Young Goodman Brown, terrific and vivid as his visions are, saw nothing in the forest save the reflection of the evil he bore thither in his own heart. It is but a dramatic allegory, in which the old Puri- tan's belief is set forth and moralized. Yet its dangerously vivid realism made the night forest a place of dread for our own boyhood. There are other grewsome tales in these volumes, notably "The White Old Maid," which childish 162 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD Audacity, and sanity, of the Haw- thornesque imagina- tion. readers should not see. But we must insist always on the great gulf that divides Hawthorne from Poe. The Puritan artist had an imagination at least as audacious and creative, but he never lost the mastery- over his own phantasmata, never used his art for other than moral purposes. He was absolutely sane. There are some sketches wherein the allegorical and didactic purpose is almost too simple and plain. Even a child suspects that " Daffydowndilly " is but a sermon, and prefers " Little Annie's Ramble." " The Threefold Destiny " will have a like flavor for aspir- ing youth. " Ethan Brand," the man whose heart has turned to stone, has a more occult meaning. In this story there is much realistic detail, "lifted" bodily from the "Notebooks." In a number of cases Hawthorne openly attempts to assign speech and dramatic action to abstract ideas. " The Sister Years " is rather a hackneyed motive. "• Fancy's Showbox," " Hollow of Three Hills," " Earth's Holocaust," will never be general favorites. Indeed, these avowed allegories are little to the taste of our age. " A Virtuoso's Collection " should be read carefully, not so much for the impos- sible rarities therein assembled as for the indirect light it throws on Hawthorne's own reading and in- terests generally. " P.'s Correspondence " supple- ments it helpfully. " The Celestial Railroad " is a direct and happy acknowledgment of the author's debt to Bunyan. Lastly we may refer to certain etherealized and peculiarly Hawthornesque studies, in which the secret of life, of sin, of art, of beauty, seems ever on the point of being revealed or attained. Such are the NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 163 " Artist of the Beautiful," " Rappaccini's Daughter," " Lily's Quest," and others. Most dramatic, healthiest, most humorous of these is " Dr. Heidegger's Experi- ment." It is doubly interesting, because in his last years, when habituated to the larger canvas of the romance, Hawthorne made repeated but vain attempts to return to the motive here lightly and happily used : the quest after the elixir of perpetual youth. All such classification as is here attempted must be incomplete. No tale or sketch of Hawthorne is without some unique charm and value. All are at least gracefully worded. In any choice selection of short stories he should still be far more largely rep- resented than any other American. After the four years of happy poverty in the Old Manse, 1842-1846, followed three of drudgery as surveyor in the Salem customhouse. In 1849 the incoming Whigs not only displaced Hawthorne the Democrat, but slandered his official character to excuse the removal. The next year, 1849-1850, was doubtless the darkest winter in his life. Haw- thorne's mother and sisters were now under one roof with his wife and children, and in this year his mother died, after a long and painful illness. Hawthorne Genius tri- himself and all his family were ill. Unable to col- "Sw^rr^'' lect what was due him from editors, he was com- conditions, pelled to accept a generous gift of money collected among his friends. This indeed he always regarded as a loan, and eventually repaid. The libels on his character distressed his friends, apparently, more than himself. Under such conditions the " Scarlet Letter " was written. This triumph of genius over 164 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD " Scarlet Letter," 1850. outward difficulties was perhaps equaled by Mrs. Stowe, a year or so later. The supreme subject, to which every great artist aspires, is the life of man as a whole. As the lyric is but the utterance of a single mood, as the idyl is the picture of one incident or scene, so the short story is as it were a one-act drama ; it can deal effectively only with a single crisis of inner or outward life, not with the larger curve of destiny. The doom of a Macbeth, a Hamlet, a Lear, even the lighter loss and easy recovery of a Rosalind or a Prospero, could not be set before us in one brief scene. So the gradual fall of Tito, the painful uplifting of Romola's nature, require the larger space of the romance. The great- est masterpiece of human imagination, the " Comme- dia " of Dante Alighieri, is also the completest vision of man's education through penitence and purgation. The appearance of the " Scarlet Letter " is probably, then, the largest event thus far in American litera- ture. Here, for the first time, a life, or a group of intertwined lives, is revealed, with entrancing skill, in an environment and with an atmosphere all the artist's own, yet impressing us as ideally true to human nature. Our pity and terror, excited by the sin, the remorse, and the long agony of Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale, leave every reader the sadder, the better, the purer. No wonder that, in after years, many a man, tortured by hidden crime, came to the wise and pitiful romancer as to a priest, able to hear confession, and perhaps to appoint pen- ance, if not to accord absolution. The lonely years of Hawthorne's youth had been well spent, even if this one work had been their only fruit. NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 165 There was much repression still in Hawthorne's art. The whole tale contains hardly seventy thou- sand words. It begins after the guilty lovers are already parted, by remorse and by human law. Only once, seven years later, do they speak freely together without witnesses. In that hour hope and love flash up once more, only to heighten the parting by death that inevitably follows. This is not, indeed, properly a story of passionate love itself, but of atonement for the sin. The weaker nature is tortured to death, the stronger is uplifted, and has yet a long life of self-sacrificing usefulness to live out. Happiness may have come at last, a shy, half-welcome guest, even to her, while Pearl, the innocent result of a misguided yet divinely implanted passion, has no lasting share in her mother's ignominy. Hester dominates the scene as completely and con- stantly as an Antigone or a Medea. Even to the physical vision this seems typified, as she stands lonely upon the scaffold in the first chapter, and again, with her lover, her child, and her husband, at the close of the tale. The statuesque uplifting of the chief sufferer raises the romance high above "Adam Bede," where indeed both the erring lovers seem rather unworthy of our deep and prolonged sjanpathy. The setting of the story is carefully studied, and in some sense historic. That, however, is and should be a minor matter, a mere quest of effective back- ground to set off the human character. Even over this gloomiest of his longer stories the Hawthornesque humor occasionally plays, as when the occurrence of a brief dialogue of Hester with Mistress Hibbins is 166 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD left to the reader's credulity or disbelief. The child, Pearl, is naturally accorded many a lighter touch. As a rule, the stern Puritanic beliefs seem to be accepted unquestioned. We are once even told that Roger Chillingworth was likely to secure for his victim " eternal alienation from the Good and the True." Yet this, like all our author's witch scenes, is merely artistic belief on Hawthorne's part. His own inmost creed of human hope and unforfeited Divine Love glimmers through his darkest canvases. Arthur escapes his tormentor after all. And even to the half-devilish old man, a blacker sinner than the young victims of impulsive passion, "we would fain be merciful." "In the spiritual world" even these bitterest foemen may "have found their earthly stock of hatred and antipathy transmuted into golden love." Hate, then, and sin, says the romancer, should at last become the means of our education and salva- tion ; a heresy so appalling that our Puritan ances- tors doubtless never conceived of it as possible. The " Scarlet Letter," published early in 1850, was at once successful. Hawthorne was now a famous author, his acute financial worries were over. The next few years were the most fruitful by far in his entire life. They were also marked by three migra- tions in the vain quest for a settled home. The " House of Seven Gables" and " Wonder-Book " were written at Lenox, in western Massachusetts, in 1851; the "Blithedale Romance," 1852, in West Newton, near Boston. By June, 1852, the family were again settled in Concord, having bought Alcott's house, the Wayside, two miles from the old manse by the NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 167 river. Here were written the " Tanglewood Tales " and the campaign life of Franklin Pierce, his college classmate and lifelong friend. But the very next year Hawthorne accepted the lucrative consulship at Liverpool, which made a long and all but fatal break in his artistic career. By reading aloud the " Scarlet Letter " Hawthorne had sent his wife to bed with a headache. The sec- ond romance seemed to him a truer and happier utterance of his inner self. There is a milder, more genial tone, his whimsical humor plays over many of its scenes. The little country cousin Phoebe was no doubt a cheering surprise to the author himself. Upon the finale a soft autumnal sunshine seems to rest. Yet the morality of the plot is austere, and the hereditary curse, as well as the loneliness and silence within the Pyncheon house, seem closely akin to the author's own Salem life and that of his for- bears. Young readers need no introduction to the " Won- " Wonder- der-Book," of which " Tanglewood " is but a second . T^L^^gief ^ volume. Each treats six classical myths in the hajD- wood piest fashion. There is no more delightful contribu- 1^3^' tion to classicism in our literature. Of course the Greek tales are freely recast, the creative element is large ; as Hawthorne himself says of his imaginary story-teller Eustace, " he disregarded all classical authorities, whenever the vagrant audacity of his imagination impelled him to do so " ; but we would as soon quarrel with Shelley for making delightful English poetry of the Homeric Hymns. Hawthorne's golden touch was happier than that of Midas. The " Blithedale Romance " is the chief literary 168 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD " Biithedaie memorial of the Brook Farm experiment, often men- ^mance," tioned in these pages. Hawthorne was an original member, invested and left there all he had saved, worked more laboriously in the field and barnyard than almost any of his companions, yet must have seemed to them always a taciturn, critical, and rather quizzical spectator. He can hardly have shared their dream of reforming human society. He did plan to marry and settle among them, but in the spring of 1842, after a year in the community, he rather sud- denly departed. His marriage and settlement in Concord of course kept him in touch with the Transcendentalists, through their chief prophet and others. But more than ten years elapsed before his experience was transmuted into material for romance. Indeed, some such remoteness, in time and space, from his realistic materials and actual experiences, was always a necessity to Hawthorne's art. The characters in " Biithedaie " are in no sense copies from life, least of all portraits of his Roxbury associates. The scenery is realistic. The minor incidents may occasionally be identified in the " Note- books " and other memorials of Brook Farm. The suicide of Zenobia and the recovery of her rigid body from the water are a transcript from actual experi- ence of Hawthorne's at Concord, quoted for us from his journal by his son. (Vol. I, pp. 296-303. It is interesting to remark that Mrs. Hawthorne cut this en- tire incident out of the published "Notebooks," doubt- less because it happened on the night after the happy first anniversary of their marriage.) Such use by the romancer of his own real observations has been noted before in " Ethan Brand " and " Seven Vagabonds." NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 169 These close relations to Hawthorne's own past life perplex the reader of " Blithedale," and on the whole must have hampered the creative artist. The central purpose of the story is not clear, unless, indeed, it be merely to show that any attempt at sudden reform of human society will be wrecked by selfish passions or narrow aims. It is perhaps from this point of view that some of his old associates resented Haw- thorne's romance. The warmest discussion has been upon the identity of Zenobia with Margaret Fuller, who was not, in- deed, a member, but a frequent and friendly visitor in the Roxbury circle. The question is well stated, pro by Henry James, in his " Hawthorne," contra by Colonel Higginson in his life of Margaret. It seems to the present writer at least plain that the life and death of Margaret Fuller must have colored, and probably suggested, the most vivid and realistic character Hawthorne ever created. The perfect balance of qualities which had made purely creative work fully successful seems already to be disturbed in this experiment. With perfect leisure and freedom from all vulgar anxieties, it might have been fully recovered. As a matter of fact, it never was quite regained. The journalizing habit alone, not at all creative activity, continued through the long official residence in England. The book called " Our Old Home " is little but a transcript from such journals. It is not written by the imaginative romancer at all, but by a shrewd, sensible, practical Yankee. Like Emerson's " English Traits," it aroused resentment among our self-satisfied insular cousins. This strong human. 170 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD and as it were earthy, side of our chief magician and artist of the beautiful is seen best of all in a long dispatch to the Secretary of State, Lewis Cass, on the atrocious conditions then existing upon vessels flying the American flag. It is quoted by Julian Hawthorne (" Life," Vol. II, pp. 153-161). Hawthorne was of course greatly broadened and enriched mentally by his two years in Italy (1858- " Marble 1859). The "Marble Faun," his longest romance, 1860^' begun there and completed in England the next year, has still a great circulation. Indeed, it has been copiously illustrated with photographs, and is in use as a sort of supplementary guidebook for central Italy, particularly Florence and Rome. This fashion, which would hardly please Hawthorne's own fastidious taste, is perhaps itself an evidence that the romancer was somewhat overwhelmed and dominated by the wealth of new impressions. There is too much scenery, too much art criticism, overlaying the simple, intense, psychological plot of the tale, just as Romola, Tito, and their nearest associates are some- times lost in the mazes of Florentine politics and social life of four centuries agone. This romance is a franker and more elaborate study of the problem treated in the " Scarlet Letter," whether sin, especially a sin of impulse committed in love's name, may be the chief or even the indis- pensable means of educating an undeveloped soul. But there is much force in the popular complaint that the mysteries elaborately wrought into the plot are never elucidated at all. The reluctant added chapter, wrung from the author for a later edition, only uttered more clearly the truth, that there was NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 171 no solution to give. Surely this is evidence of im- perfect constructive power. The health and spirits of Hawthorne were already insidious undermined by the terrible illness of his daughter ^ainLT^ Una in Rome. His four remaining years were largely end. spent in vain struggles to complete a romance having for its motive eternal youth, or at least the quest for some magical restorative of vigor. The artist's own quest was doubly vain. The exquisite fragments of his various attempts have a pathological interest, quite remote from the value of those earliest sug- gestions out of which perfect tales were developed in his middle period. The man, the philosopher, the moralist, may have grown to the last, as ma}^ be no less true of Tolstoi or Goethe. But certainly that perfect artistic poise which made a great and perfect romance possible was won and lost within a brief tale of months. Two faultless larger romances, the *' Scarlet Letter " and the " House of the Seven Gables," are the highest points in Hawthorne's noble and inspiring career. Such briefer tales as the " Snow Image " and the " Gray Champion " are tasks quite as masterly and exquisite, but of course also far less arduous. We are glad to be assured, from many sources, that Hawthorne's last quarter century, at least, con- tained all the happiness that can well be included in a mortal's lot. His last years were embittered by the Civil War, but by no acute anxiety or agonizing physical pain. His death was absolutely unconscious and without warning. His gifted wife, and the three children, who all shared in some degree the parents' literary powers, survived him. The common voice. life 172 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD and the most discerning critics also, bad long ac- corded him the highest place in our young literature. A happy Surely Solon himself would call this a happy life, and regrets for what might have been are of course as vain, though perhaps as inevitable, as in the case of Keats, or Clough, or Chatterton. If each creative genius is indeed unique, and the unshaped master- piece is our eternal loss, then we must hope that, in a better organized social state, leisure and freedom may in some way be provided for those who have once for all clearly revealed creative power. But if character counts most after all, then no man should escape the turmoil of life. The Salem customhouse seems to have brought, even to Hawthorne the romancer, a richer gift tlian could ever have come to his hermit's cell. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE The authorized publishers of all Hawthorne's works are Houghton, Mifflin, & Co. " A Study of Hawthorne," by G. P. Lathrop, Houghton & Mifflin. " Hawthorne," by Henry James, in " English Men of Letters." " Nathaniel Hawthorne and his Wife," by Julian Hawthorne. " Some Memories of Hawthorne," by Rose Hawthorne Lathrop. See also brief studies by Mr. and Mrs. Fields, Whipple, Hig- ginson, Curtis, Leslie Stephen, etc. SUGGESTIONS FOR CLASSROOM STUDY The extremely full treatment of Hawthorne in the text doubtless covers this ground. In particular, the " American Notebooks" should be carefully compared with the creative works. The "Italian Notebooks" throw similar light on the "Marble Faun." The classical student may profitably study the treatment of the myths in " Tanglewood " and the " Won- der-Book," comparing them, for instance, with Ovid. CHAPTER III THE LITERATURE OF ABOLITION THE very title of this chapter appears to indicate something transitory. And yet strife, reform, strenuous effort, in one form or another, for better conditions of life, seems unending; and any especial struggle may be at least as heroic, perhaps also as largely typical of all human effort, as Avas the rescue of Helen, or the battlefields of knightly Arthur. Such a typical and human struggle is the ideal stuff for literature. To understand fully " Uncle Tom's Cabin," or the " Biglow Papers," we must have a clear vision of the terrible death-wrestle between the two economic and social systems, which fought for the control of a continent as inevitably as red men and white, or later, French men and English, had striven before them. The necessity of this duel was not evident from the beginning. The presence of negro slaves in The sin of America is chargeable at least as much to the North ^^tlonai not as to the South. Slavery gradually disappeared in sectional, the one section, chiefly because it was unprofitable. The makers of the Constitution expected it to vanish altogether; the invention of the cotton gin frustrated that hope. Even more Northern states, as Virginia and Kentucky, now found profit in the wholesale breeding of human live stock, for the cotton fields and rice swamps of the extreme South. As slavery 173 174 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD came to be the underpinning of all business and social life, the presence of free blacks in those states grew more and more unwelcome. Yet even so, the two sections remained long united by the closest political and mercantile ties. The cotton mills lined the New England rivers. The South was the chief market of Eastern manufactures. Age of com- The marvelous and, later, decisive growth of the promises. "V^est was but in its beginnings. Frank denuncia- tion of slavery, on moral or economic grounds, was occasionally heard, but generally deprecated. In particular, the conscience of the Northern churches was quieted by the colonization movement : and this shipping away of half-willing blacks, freeborn or liberated, to Africa, was welcomed and aided in the Southern states, because it drained off their most menacing social element. So slavery gained strength steadily in America, while the rest of the civilized world faced ever more and more the other way. Against all this, one opinionated, pugnacious, heroic man set his face, and insisted on a hearing. " I am in earnest, I will not equivocate, I will not excuse, I will not retreat a single inch, and I will be HEARD," said Garrison, when he founded the Lib- erator in January, 1831. Heard he was, threatened, mobbed, but never silenced. The discussion went on exactly three decades, until lost forever in the din of civil war. That this period of thirty years is a definite his- toric epoch is now easily seen. But the chief of that little band of agitators was long ridiculed, despised, or denounced as a persistent madman or incarnate fiend, a Guy Fawkes- waving a torch while the whole THE LITERATURE OF ABOLITION 175 social structure was mined. Doubtless the two most helpful early converts of Garrison were Wendell Phillips, who brought to the fray the silver clarion of his gracious and resistless eloquence, and John Greenleaf Whittier, the rustic Quaker youth, with his high-pitched, half- discordant pipe of few and simple stops. Later arrived Hosea Biglow and Harriet Beecher Stowe, a mighty reenforcement. Fanaticism, narrowness, all forms of self-confidence and crankiness, came also. Persecution itself has its peculiar charm for such folk. Vested wealth, party organizations, all the churches save the Quakers, were against them. Yet still their numbers grew, and now they are honored as the pioneers of the new era. Three currents — the Transcendental movement, Three cur- making for widest freedom in religious thought, the eager broadening of general culture through lecture courses as well as books, the passion for reform in general gradually concentrating in Abolitionism — are nearly coincident in time, all mainly local in New England, and largely even urged on by the same men. Yet they are not, of course, connected like links in a single chain. Emerson, Ticknor, Gar- rison, seem even now almost divergent forces. I. John Greenleaf Whittier That a devout Quaker, who wore the broad brim, john and used through life the ungrammatical "thee," ^'^®^^?®^^ is the accepted popular poet for the whole land 1807-1892. of the Puritan, is a happ}^ turn of Time's whirli- gig. But the persecuted early disciples of Fox sprang, like their inquisitors, from the sturdiest and rents in one channel. 176 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD best-cultivated English stock. Both could show much heroism in stubborn passive resistance. Whit- tier's stalwart ancestor, indeed, who came over as a youth in 1638, and who hewed in 1688 the beams for the Haverhill homestead, was not himself one of the Friends, though disfranchised many a year for stanch refusal to withdraw his signature on a petition to the legislature, pleading for tolerance and mercy toward them. The same Thomas Whittier treated the Indians so justly and fearlessly, that even when the atrocities of savage warfare filled all the Merri- mac Valley, the dark faces in war paint only leered harmlessly in at his unbolted windows as they passed by day or night. Some later members of the family made their consistent Quakerism doubtful by filling honorably civic and military offices. Our rural lau- reate himself had a lifelong talent and love for poli- tics, and was nowise lacking even in the needful craft. As to his fighting blood, so shrewd and hu- morous an observer as Hawthorne smiled early at "the fiery Quaker youth to whom the Muse has perversely assigned a battle trumpet," and Lowell in the " Fable for Critics " is equally happy. The lonely old farmhouse by the brookside in East Haverhill is now, thanks to " Snow-Bound," the best known in all the land. It is, fortunately, re- stored and secured as a permanent memorial of the poet's early years. " In Schooldays," " My Play- mate," "Barefoot Boy," "To my Old Schoolmas- ter," add fresh strokes to the simple picture of A New that boyhood. Enjoyable also is the quiet humor b^^h^^d ^^ ^ prose essay by Whittier, full of early memories, on "Yankee Gypsies." These earlier wanderers THE LITERATURE OF ABOLITION 177 seem to have been an altogether more gifted, cannier, and less numerous guild than the modern tramps. From the lips unshorn of a pawky auld gaberlunzie in the big family kitchen the boy first heard the notes of " Bonnie Doon," " Highland Mary," and " Auld Lang Syne." Books were as scarce as money at the Essex farmer's ample hearthstone. It was a winter school- master, — not the youth mentioned in " Snow-Bound," but Joshua Coffin, later a comrade in the crusade of johsua Abolition, — who brought to the kitchen fireside, ?7°q?!}'864. read aloud, and lent to the shy eager lad of fourteen, the very book he needed most, the songs of Burns. What it meant to Whittier he has himself best told us. One volume, indeed, Whittier well knew years earlier still, and remained always peculiarly under its influence. Even toward that book the " Inner Light " gave him a sturdy independence of private judgment. As a child at his mother's knees he remarked that King David could not have been a good Quaker. When near eighty, defending him- self, in a letter to John Bright, for having admired " Chinese " Gordon, he compares his martial hero favorably, as a merciful victor, with David and Joshua. His schooling was scanty, heavy tasks on the farm injured his delicate frame for life, and poverty was long his helpful and welcome companion; but he never had any prolonged or discouraging struggle for a hearing as a rhymer. His danger lay quite in the other direction. His facility in verse was excessive, from childhood to old age. His best poems will 178 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD generally bear excision of the weaker stanzas. His keen interest in every question of the hour made his vigorous, easy verses only too popular, for other than poetic qualities. Hundreds of his early poems were printed, often widely copied and read, which he suc- ceeded in suppressing, or at least in keeping out of his collections, in mature years. Whittier was his life long an active-minded man^ a reader of many books, a friend of statesmen and scholars, a student of history and literature. Yet there was a certain narrowness in his habits of thought, a still more marked simplicity, even monot- ony, in his utterance. The great cause to which he consecrated his manhood lifted his character and his art out of the commonplace, which they could hardly otherwise have escaped. It is not at all desirable, even if it were possible, for any one to read all hi& occasional and polemic poetry. Yet there is no author, unless it be Hawthorne, so indispensable to an understanding gf what is most characteristic, and best, in the later Puritanism. It was Garrison, as editor of the Free Press in Newburyport, who first printed Whittier's verses, and, himself a youth but three years older, who had not yet found his life task, encouraged the tall, awk- ward, yet ardently ambitious, lad of nineteen to improve his education and perfect his peculiar talent. Whittier's full adhesion to the cause of Abolition was- given in 1833, and cost him a rather promising polit- ical career, probably an early election to Congress. From various editorial ventures he again and again returned to the farm. He early paid off the inher- ited mortgage, but after his father's death sold the: THE LITERATURE OF ABOLITION 179 sterile acres, in 1836, and after a breakdown of his health in 1840 spent the rest of his days quietly in the village of Amesbury. He was there not a her- mit, surely, as Longfellow hails him, but a contented yet alert recluse, whose pen never wearied. In truth he was more absorbed in the actual battles of his own time than was the poet of "Evangeline." When Daniel Webster, in 1850, made his famous speech of conciliation, or surrender to the slave states, Whittier's barbed lyric, "Ichabod," smote even deeper home than the single fierce sentence of gentle Emer- son. This is doubly interesting, because the venerable oratpr and the fiery poet were kinsmen, both inheriting their cavernous and lustrous dark eyes from that famous old preacher, Stephen Bachiler, who till past Stephen fourscore and ten was long a thorn in the side of i^^.j^ the New England brethren. Moreover, Whittier has come nearer to an apology for this poem than for any other, by setting beside it, out of due order, some verses written long after Webster's death, full of confidence in his patriotism. When the first storm clouds of the coming Civil War were gathering in distant Kansas, his " Song of the Emigrants " was on every wanderer's lip. It is as a Puritan that he speaks for them : — "We cross the prairie, as of old The pilgrims crossed the sea, To make the West, as they the East, The homestead of the free ! " Though horrified, as all should be, by some earlier acts of John Brown, Whittier celebrated in verse the kiss bestowed on the negro infant in the march to 180 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD the gallows. Through the Civil War he chafed more and more against the Quaker tenet of non-resistance. Whittier suffered less than might be supposed for his Abolitionism. The rural portions of New Eng- land were early won to that faith. The turmoil of political strife did perhaps delay the molding of other forms for his simple art. As he says in the " Garrison of Cape Ann " (1857) : — " The great eventful Present hides the Past ; but through the din Of its loud life hints and echoes from the life behind steal in ; And the lore of home and fireside, and the legendary rhyme, Make the task of duty lighter which the true man owes his time." There is no hint of repining here. The Quaker militant has no wish to bury himself among his books, like Longfellow, until " The tumult of a time disconsolate To inarticulate murmurs dies away," nor does he wish to flee from the noise of conflict to the field as Emerson did, or to the forest as Bryant would gladly have done. Whittier, also, was to have abundant time to utter freely all the simple vital thoughts that peaceful days could ripen. Indeed, " Burns," " Maud Muller," ^' The Barefoot Boy," were already sung. Certainly in that very year, 1857, Whittier's life, at fifty, was assured of outward success. The long breach between the Garrisonian irreconcilables and those who, like Whittier, sought to attack slavery by constitutional and political activity, was healed at last. In the same year his collected maturer poems Ireson. THE LITERATURE OF ABOLITION 181 were published, in the beloved bliie-and-gold edition. The foundation of the Atlantic^ also, made him an honored member in a congenial circle, and pro- vided an adequate utterance for the cause nearest to his heart, as well as for the sweeter poetry that now flowed more and more freely. The " Last Walk " in the autumn of that year is perhaps his most perfect sustained lyric. In this same year, also, appeared the local narrative poem over which a little war of words arose and lingers still. To Skipper Ireson, a brave and blame- " Floyd less man, the verses did grievous injustice, as Whittier himself came to believe. Curiously enough, the best rebuttal will be found in a book of the East Indian Kipling: "Captains Courageous." Just as the war closed, Whittier published " Snow- Bound," which is generally felt to be his strongest bid for lasting fame. Certainly it won him a secure corner in the heart and memory of every loyal child of the New England Puritans. A forced and dis- located passage near the close, " Of such as he, Shall Freedom's young apostle be," etc. marks the date of composition, but should have been canceled. The young schoolmaster of whom the poet had been speaking was George Haskell. He had wholly vanished for over forty years from the horizon of Whittier, who indeed did not, until years later, recall his name. Even the fiery lyrics of the ante-bellum days had found readers South as well as North of the great divide. The old age of Whittier, was, as he some- times smilingly hinted, almost too peaceful. ambition. 182 THE ]^EW ENGLAND PERIOD " Methinks the spirit's temper grows Too soft in this still air ! " He could not be induced to attend the Centennial of Washington's inauguration, in 1889, and read his own verses, but the poem of the octogenarian is full of pious confidence and inspiring patriotism. Weakened by age and slow decay, long somewhat cut off from social life by his deafness, conscious that his life work was fully done, Whittier met the approach of death, not merely with resignation and faith, but with an eager sense of relief, in his eighty- fifth year. It is difficult to weigh in Shylock's balance the exact value of such a man's work. The popular Early output of his early years he has himself almost wholly suppressed, and our judgment would un- doubtedly agree in the main with his. There was, however, a poem called " New England," originally composed in 1830, the closing stanza of which was omitted, even two years later in "Moll Pitcher." Yet this stanza is of especial interest, and has all the easy grace of his best later verse. " Land of my fathers ! if my name, Now humble and unwed to fame, Hereafter burn upon the lip As one of those which may not die, Linked in eternal fellowship With visions pure and strong and high, — . . . And over temples worn and gray The starlike crown of glory shine, — Thine be the bard's undying lay, The murmur of his praise be thine ! " This prayer, and vow, was in fair measure ful- filled. Even the bitterest opponents of Whittier THE LITERATURE OF ABOLITION 183 have usually felt the sincere patriotism pulsing beneath his fiercest words. Usually, too, while smiting the sin he has charity for the sinner : the exception as to " Ichabocl," remarked on above, being a notable proof of the rule. His sympathies with the oppressed were world-wide, and sometimes perhaps not fully deserved, as in the case of Toussaint L'Ouverture, who was far more extravagantly eulo- gized by Whittier's kindred spirit, Wendell Phillips. There are three other directions in which the Quaker poet excels, though they are not widely divergent, and even occasionally merge in one. First we may mention his poems of friendship. It Whittier's was with a personal tribute to Garrison that Whit- "®° ^ ^* tier sealed his enlistment in 1833 : — " Champion of those who groan beneath Oppression's iron hand ! " James T. Fields and Bayard Taylor are lovingly James described in " Tent on the Beach " ; Taylor, Charles ^^^-^^^^ Sumner, and Emerson, in "Last Walk in Autumn." I8I6-I88I. Whittier and Dr. Holmes exchanged many tender g^ay^Jd greetings in advanced age. The most direct forms Taylor, of address were sometimes used, as in the case of cj^aries Fremont, to men whom the poet had never met. Sumner, In general, personal feeling, sympathy or antipathy, is very strong and vital with him. Perhaps his closest friendships were with women. His frankest utterance of feeling as to death is Lydia Maria addressed to Mrs. Child. Some merry doggerel ^^y.^,""^^ sent to Lucy Larcom, the cheery and gifted gradu- 1802-1880. ate of a Lowell factory, will reveal a very human ^^^ side of his nature. " How Mary Grew " is a punning i824^i893. 184 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD love-poem to the last survivor of the old Aboli- tionist circle in Philadelphia. An utterance of closer affection will be found in the poem called " Mem- ories," and was perhaps repeated thirty years later in "A Sea Dream." The key to its meaning is fully given, for the first time, in the " Century " for May, 1902. Most of Whittier's long, unwedded life was sweetened by the full sympathy of three noble women, his mother. Aunt Mercy, and sister Eliza- beth. The sister shared the lyric gift, and her poems are included in the collections of her brother's works. Whittier, secondly, is a lover of nature. His loyal admirers will hardly accept the modest dis- claimer in his beautiful " Proem," wherein he says : — " Unskilled the subtle lines to trace, Or softer shades, of Nature's face, I view her common forms with unanointed eyes." The New England hills and dales, the rock-bound coasts and their scanty legends, are inseparably associated with his verse. To them his memory long shall " Cling as clings the tufted moss." Wordsworth's landscape is not ours. Bryant lacks the eager throb of life and love. Emerson is a philosopher, Lowell a bookman, no peasant, at heart, most of the year, though not when the bobolink comes. Whittier's is always our own voice, even to its monotonous tone and rough dialect. Lastly, he interprets as no other of our poets the innermost feelings of religious faith and trust. In all hymn books, of whatever creed, he is represented. THE LITERATURE OF ABOLITION 185 In conscious mental weakness, in physical agony, under the shadow of death and deadly doubt, his words come to the lips as inevitably as David's sweetest psalms. His "Old Burying Ground" is less lonely than Bryant's "Crowded Street." Even Tennyson's " Crossing the Bar," Browning's " Pros- pice," or Stevenson's cheeriest note of them all, the " Requiem," is not more inspiriting, as we face in thought the last great earthly change, than " My Psalm" or "The Eternal Goodness." If Whittier's music, his thought, his fancy, was essentially commonplace, as colder critics insist, so much the more marvelous is its infinite helpfulness to millions of men and women. And after all, what is the commonplace, save the human side of the largest kosmic truths? BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE Whittier's "Works," Riverside Edition, 7 vols., Houghton. " Poems," Cambridge Edition, Houghton. " Life and Letters," by Pickard, 2 vols., Houghton. "Life," by F. H. Underwood, Houghton. SUGGESTIONS FOR CLASSROOM WORK In connection with " Snow-Bound," the essays, " The Fish I didn't catch " and " Yankee Gypsies," should be fully exploited. An early portrait of Whittier appears in the " Fable for Critics." Drake's " New England Legends " will throw a cross-light on many of the poems. The Abolition movement should be frankly discussed in all its bearings. See Professor Wendell's exposition of the conservative view taken, e.g., by Ticknor. A file, or even a single copy, of Garrison's Liberator, with its remarkably prophetic picture and startling headlines, will be found most instructive. " John Brown and the Negro Baby," "Barbara Frietchie," "Floyd Ireson, " supply perennial discus- sion. The personal poems supply much biographical and histor- ical suggestion. 186 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD II. Lydia Maria Child (Francis) Child, 1802-1880 Whittier's friendships, as has been said, were especiall}' with women, who seemed better skilled to slip behind the guard of his shy reserve. Among them there were two, each of whom was in her time, doubtless, more widely read than any other authoress. Each hurled a firebrand into the fiercest social and political discussion our nation has ever known. Mrs. Stowe's name is still a household word. If the Lydia Maria 3'ounger generation are now forgetting Mrs. Child, it is their OAvn grievous loss, as well as ingratitude to one of their earliest literary benefactors. Born in the suburban village of Medford, near Boston, younger sister of the learned and liberal- minded Professor Convers Francis, she shared to the full all the best influences of Channing's and Emer- son's day. Her crude " Hobomok " and " The Reb- els," historical romances, had made her a general favorite at twenty-three. Her " Frugal Housewife " ran through more than thirty editions. Her Juve- nile Miscellany^ begun 1826, was the earliest fore- runner of Our Young Folks and St. Nicholas. In 1828 she married a Boston lawj'er. Both soon became ardent Garrisonians. In 1833, the year the Antislavery Society was born, her " Appeal in Behalf of that Class of Americans called Africans " was printed. It destroyed her career as an author, in the North hardl}^ less than in the South. Her tranquil, happy life became a battle ; for this first antislavery book held long, perhaps still holds, its position as the ablest direct argument ever made Hobomok, 1821. The Rebels 1822. THE LITERATURE OF ABOLITION 187 against slavery in America. For many years almost all doors were shut to her or her books. From 1841 to 1849 the Childs edited the Anti- slavery Standard in New York. In 1852 they settled in Wayland, Massachusetts, and there lived happily twenty-two years, an idyllic life, without a servant. When John Brown lay wounded in prison, Mrs. Child wrote to him, in care of Governor Wise, offering to nurse him. The heated resulting correspondence made a printed pamphlet which had a circulation of three hundred thousand copies. In 1867 she pub- lished " Looking toward Sunset," a choice collec- tion of hopeful verse and prose on old age, from all literature. She had to the last a fearless word and an open purse for every reform : the more unpopular the better. As for the exact literary rank of this heroic woman, the critical scales must be passed to younger and cooler hands. In the homes of a few " original Gar- risonians " her early books were still cherished. We learned to read, that we might not be dependent on our busy elders for daily absorption in her " Flowers for Children." Our own offspring seem to detect a moral and Edgeworthian flavor in the cherished vol- ume, and prefer " Little Women." We first heard the very names of Pericles and Plato in her Greek romance "Philothea." "The Letters from New York " widened the vista of a village street to our boyish eyes. Though not successful in rhythmical utterance, Mrs. Child had much of the poet's nature. Her *' Philothea" is almost a rhapsody. Her firm faith in thought-transference, her half-belief in metempsy- 188 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD chosis, her mystical and ideal tendencies generally, unite with the frugality of the Yankee housewife even more grotesquely, at times, than the similar mixture in Emerson ; and, like him, she is herself the first to laugh. Of all the picturesque figures among Transcendentalists and Abolitionists, there is perhaps not one so utterly lovable. Some of her books may yet regain their influence. Though we build fair monuments to the brave reformers whom our fathers shunned and stoned, yet the sudden neglect that then befell their purely artistic work has too often been allowed to darken into utter forgetfulness. Into Mrs. Child's early novel, "The Rebels," a supposed sermon by Whitefield and an oration by James Otis were inserted. The latter is still a favorite declamation for schoolboys, and is often printed as Otis's own words. To this chapter might have been added the discus- sion of the '^ Biglow Papers," and of many less fa- miliar works down to the time of Mrs. Howe's " Battle Hymn of the Republic." Garrison himself has a memorable record as orator, essayist, and even as an occasional writer of verse. There can be no question, however, what single book will be longest and most widely associated with the destruction of American slavery. BIBLIOGRAPHY Mrs. Child's books are still published by Houghton or by Koberts. More ambitious than any mentioned in the text was the " Progress of Religious Ideas through Successive Ages," 3 vols., New York, 1885. THE LITERATUKE OF ABOLITION 189 " A Romance of the Republic," Boston, 1867, is a picture of slavery by an Abolitionist, but softened by the feelings of a victor in strife. Short biographical sketches by T. W. Higginsou in " Emi- nent Women of the Age," by Susan Coolidge in " Our Famous Women," and by Whittier as introduction to her "Letters," Houghton, 1883. The latter volume contains also her funeral oration by Wendell Phillips. SUGGESTIONS FOR THE CLASSROOM No better center can be chosen for a study of the social and personal aspects of the Abolition movement. Besides the refer- ences given already, Whittier's life and letters, and poems, will supply helpful materials. Lowell is even warmer in his loves than in his hates, and his tribute to " Philothea," in the oft- cited " Fable," might well be learned by heart. III. Harriet Beecher Stowe There is certainly little apparent danger that this Harriet name will be forgotten. Mrs. Stowe was a member f^^^^^^^) of a remarkable family, and necessarily lived from Stowe, infancy in an atmosphere " surcharged with mental and moral enthusiasm." Controversy had no terrors for that dauntless fighting stock. Her father, Dr. Lyman Lyman Beecher, led the Puritanic and Calvinistic fy^y^^^^ reaction in Boston for six years (1826-1832), when nearly every other great preacher or scholar of Bos- ton and Cambridge was a Unitarian. He led aggres- sively and with large success. For twenty years thereafter, as head of Lane Seminary near Cincinnati, he lived on the very frontier of slavery, and the underground railway, as Mrs. Stowe once said, "ran through their house." Married in 1836 to her father's colleague, she saw Binney's press destroyed by a mob from Kentucky that very year. 1811-1896. 190 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD Mrs. Stowe was the poor and overtaxed mother of six children when they settled in Brunswick, Maine, in 1850. This was the year when Webster's Seventh of March Speech inspired Whittier's fearful lyric, " Ichabod," and the enactment of the Fugitive Slave Law seemed a deadly defeat for the antislavery men. In New England, as before in Ohio, she now saw the refugees from bondage, fleeing toward Can- ada as their sole hope. A strange apathy seemed to be settling over the whole Nortli. Mrs. Stowe, with all the pressure of family cares, had still wielded at times a facile though not a force- ful pen. There is a graphic and pathetically amus- ing scene in her kitchen, from the year 1838, in Mrs. Field's " Life of Mrs. Stowe " (pp. 98-101). Under no less distracting conditions, certainly, was her fa- mous book to take shape. It came from the most intense conviction of religious duty. A sister-in- law apparently threw the firebrand by writing : "Now, Hattie, if I could use a pen as you can, I would write something that would make this nation feel what an accursed thing slavery is." Under these conditions, as Mrs. Stowe always afterward believed, she was actually possessed, and The call to inspired, to write a panoramic drama of slavery, over whose unrolling scenes she exercised little if any personal control. All that she had seen and known, not excepting her own peculiarly close and tender home ties, entered into the soul of her work. It is undoubtedly true, that as to moral and religious character Uncle Tom is an ideal combination of all the whitest men she had ever known. Certainly he is not in any sense the natural product of slavery. write. THE LITERATURE OF ABOLITION 191 which might indeed be glad to claim him, as decisive proof of its supreme efficacy in the molding of Christian perfection. But as a romance, the book surely has a right to an idealized, a superhuman hero. The local color is not at all that of an artist who has known and loved all her life Kentucky and Louisiana. She did endeavor to obtain, through Frederick Douglass, accurate details, for instance, of the tasks in the cotton fields. But the fire of her purpose burned too hotly to wait long for such material. Not a word had been written when in an instant, in February, 1851, the death of Uncle Tom flashed like a picture before her mind, as she sat at Com- munion. Written and read aloud that day, it threw her children of ten and twelve into convulsive sobbing. A similar triumph, as was remarked, and at about the same time, Hawthorne won with the " Scarlet Letter." In April the first section was ready, and sent to the National Era at Washington. Announced and planned to reach a dozen chapters and run for three months, it went on for a year. The swift-rising tide of excitement and applause from thousands of readers no doubt uplifted the weary and often desponding writer. To the idealist of any age or creed, all this is perfectly consistent with her later words : " I the author of ' Uncle Tom's Cabin ' ? No, indeed. The Lord himself wrote it, and I was but the humblest of instruments in his hand." Published in book form April 1, 1852, the work had a success absolutely unheard of. In one year. 192 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD in this country alone, over three hundred thousand copies were sold. By midsummer the poor tired housewife, who had worried over a probable deficit of 1300 in the year's income, received a first check of 110,000 for the royalty. Thereafter she was the confidante of statesmen, and the honored guest of princes. It was but her due, and it never for an instant turned her shrewd Yankee brain. The contrast, however, with Mrs. Child's reward is al- most pitiful. In twenty years our world had moved, indeed. The book became at once the center of assault from all the friends of slavery. But it turned the tide of public opinion, roused the sleeping conscience of the churches, and of earnest folk generally, through- out the North and West, — was by no means without influence even in Dixie. When Lincoln first clasped Mrs. Stowe's hand in November, 1862, he said, " And is this the little woman that made this great war ? " No piece of writing done in America, save perhaps the Declaration of Independence or the Federalist^ can be compared, in the weight of its results, with this tale by an unpracticed, apparently unimagina- tive, distracted, and feeble woman. Only an idealist, one is tempted to say, only a Puritan, could have done such a work, in such a spirit. Its popularity has never abated. There is hardly a human speech into which it has not been translated. In many a state of the Union where a slave never breathed, strolling companies are still sent out every winter for the purpose of "Uncle Tomming," and the audiences never fail with their tribute of tears. THE LITERATURE OF ABOLITION 193 Before such a success, literary criticism hardly dares raise its voice even in qualified admiration. All who toil in earnest with the pen must be thrilled with awe that such results have even once sprung from the word fitly spoken. And yet, the book is not, in form, a sermon, a political plea, or a legal document. A goodly supplement of such documents followed the story, indeed, a year or two later, but not one reader of " Uncle Tom " in a thousand has glanced at a word of it. The final question is not whether the tale is a truthful sketch of actual Southern life, but : " Is it art ? " Some day, some far-off, future day, when negro slavery is as remote as the Homeric methods of warfare, " Life Among the Lowly " will live, or be forgotten, purely on its merits as a work of imagination. I believe that Uncle Tom and Eva are as imper- ishable as Hector and Andromache. As long as human error and atonement are intelligible subjects of tragedy, as long as men need to be reminded that the innocent must suffer for the guilty, as long as tyrants torture and helpless creatures cringe, so long this dramatic romance will retain its power. Mrs. Lasting Stowe only knew, from the beginning, that both Eva ^hl^^elt^ and Uncle Tom must die ; she had no idea how they romance, were to perish. Eva dies of no disease, save the pre- cocious realization of misery and wrong, which she cannot set right. In other ways Shelby, Topsy, Sambo, St. Clair, Legree, and the rest, typify the deadly danger of men's souls in the grip of an unrighteous social organism. There was never the slightest intent — save to heighten by contrast the tragic scenes — to set forth the pleasanter sides, or the average reality, 194 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD of Southern life. All materials were chosen and used to produce a tragic effect. This is the essence of the artistic aim, and also of the ethical purpose. Uncle Tom's world, or Lear's, is not the real world ; there is no room for happiness in it. Once started by Mr. Shelby's yielding to the tempter, the whole tragedy becomes inevitable. A happy ending is no more imaginable than for Mac- beth or Othello. What could longer life, fuller knowledge, bring to Eva but utter heartbreak in the fuller consciousness of the universal misery and of her own helplessness ? Set Uncle Tom free, and he merely ceases from that instant to typify a race in bondage. Both must die, that our pity and terror may be fully roused. It is interesting to note that the exaltation of spirit in which this task was done by Mrs. Stowe did not vanish with its detachment from her mind and hand. The rush of events toward the decisive death- struggle of civil war, which she had perceptibly hast- ened, carried her along with it. Once again at least, in her ringing address of 1862 to the women of Eng- land, she spoke singly as with the voice of the whole North. Many men believe that by those brave words she turned the tide, or at least started the current of truer feeling in the mother country, made intervention from Europe impossible, and so perhaps saved the Union from permanent disruption. Some critics consider one or another of the later stories better in literary quality than "Uncle Tom." But no later work of Mrs. Stowe did, or could conceiv- ably, approach in energy or effectiveness this master stroke. "Dred " (1856), or, by its later title, '' Nina THE LITERATURE OF ABOLITION 195 Gordon" (1866), is in some portions a kindlier, perhaps a more realistic picture of actual Southern life ; but for such work we naturally must look to the children of the Southland itself ; indeed we have long" ago turned, with delight, to the loving work of such recent artists as Cable, Harris, and Page. "• The Pearl of Orr's Island " was happily begun, in 1853, under the inspiration of the most beautiful and romantic region on our Eastern coast; but the removal to Andover seems to have broken the charm too soon. The " Oldtown Folks " (1869) are quaint and genuine Yankees, but Miss Wilkins, Miss Fuller, Miss Jewett, Miss Brown, have peopled the world of fiction with a host of others, quite as satisfying. " Agnes of Sorrento " (1863) is a pure but pale reflection of George Sand. Of her American society novels, "The Minister's Wooing" (1859) is called the best. But Mrs. Stowe's fame will live with "Uncle Tom." "One, — but a lion," quoth ^sop's lioness. BIBLIOGRAPHY Houghton is now Mrs. Stowe's f)ublisher, though her more famous books are reprinted widely by others. The '* Life " by C. E. Stowe (her son), 1889, Houghton, had some personal revision by Mrs. Stowe herself. The "Life and Letters" by Mrs. Fields, Houghton, 1897, is the complete and authentic story of her life. In the " Holiday " edition of " Uncle Tom's Cabin " is a catalogue of the editions which have appeared in various languages. SUGGESTIONS FOR CLASSROOiVI WORK Both lives of Mrs. Stowe have abundant materials for fuller treatment. The exact environment in which her sfreat book 196 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD was planned and written will always be of real interest. Her later relations with the leading women and men of England is a less vital but interesting subject. The two controversies, as to the moral guilt of famous men, which embittered her later years, are intentionally omitted here as irrelevant and un- edifying. The account of her last public reception in June, 1882, with the poems read by Whittier, Holmes, and others, is effective (" Life " by C. E. Stowe, pp. 500-505, Mrs. Fields, pp. 380-381). Much fuller accounts can be found in the newspapers of that time. The chief work, however, is the care- ful study of " Uncle Tom's Cabin " itself. It may be helpful to place beside it Mrs. Mary H. Eastman's " Aunt Phillis's Cabin, or Southern Life as it is," written to correct Mrs. Stowe's errors. CHAPTER IV THE CAMBRIDGE POETS I. Longfellow TO every young American, to nearly all men and Henry women of English speech the world around, ^^^^^'^w, the poet of '' Hiawatha " and " Evangeline," of " The I807-I882. ' Village Blacksmith" and "The Children's Hour," has been from their infancy a familiar friend. For at least a half-century his verse has hardly found a rival in the affections of the race. That very fact makes it the more difficult for us to see the greatness of his accomplished task, to trace the entire curve of a wonderfully rich and full career. Outworn and tattered now by endless repetition, long imitated, parodied, and at last, as we may fancy, outgrown by us, these familiar phrases and measures are really intermingled with our speech of daily life, with every memory and association. Their liquid clearness, simplicity, and music could be perfected only through long days of labor, and nights devoid of ease. Yet they were all created by one sensitive, modest, indus- trious man, amid the very distractions that fritter away our barren days, and countless others that sprang out of his fame, his patient courtesy, and the selfishness of his myriad unknown visitors and cor- respondents. Doubtless no life here chronicled has left richer results in human happiness. The ancestors of Longfellow lived long within 197 198 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD five miles of Thomas Whittier's farmhouse, with the Lowells almost as near. Yet it was his great-grand- father, a Harvard graduate, who was called to Port- land, Maine, as a teacher, in 1744. Henry's father was an honored lawyer, like the grandsire, a congressman in the boy's college days, and later president of the Maine Historical Society. Though Portland was a provincial seaboard town, the poet had more early stim- ulus to literary culture than Hawthorne in Salem. Self-exiled early, he loved his birthplace, without a trace of the irritation which the romancer sometimes betrays. "My Lost Youth," and " Clianged," express perfectly the feeling of the man for the happy abode of boyhood. Born in the same year with Whittier, he was at Bowdoin College, from 1821 to 1825, the classmate of Hawthorne. They did not discover any intimate sympathy for one another until much later in life. How Hawthorne spent these years we have seen. The Maine boy was three years younger, far less stalwart, fonder of the study and the library. '' The government of the college," he Avrites his father, " seeing that something must be done to induce the students to exercise, recommended a game of ball now and then. Nothing is now heard of in our leisure hours," he adds rather querulously, " but ball, ball, ball." Modern students may find this glimpse of early athletics hardly credible. But so late as 1858 Dr. Holmes, a most competent observer, said, " Such a set of black-coated, stiff-jointed, soft- muscled, paste-complexioned youth as we can boast never before sprang from Anglo-Saxon lineage." That record is broken indeed. THE CAMBRIDGE POETS 199 Young Longfellow, if not a bit of a prig, was an undoubted " dig," and earned his prompt reward. At eighteen, graduating fourth in rank among thirty-eight, he was promised a chair of modern languages, after a series of years should first be spent in study abroad. He sailed in May, 1826. His rhymes had even then long enjoyed a modest vogue. Seventeen poems had appeared in a single magazine, the Uriited States Literary Gazette of Bos- ton. Nearly all this boyish poetry was later sup- pressed. " The Burial of the Minnisink " has a certain interest, foreshadowing his great success with "Hiawatha." But the careful list of his published poems, in the Cambridge edition, reveals no line of orig-inal verse between 1826 and 1837. This is a notable example of wise reticence. Schiller remarked regretfully, of his immature tragedy, " The Robbers," " I undertook to portray men before I had known them." Longfellow, more promptly mute, devoted himself to prolonged and exhaustive study. The next three years were industriously spent in France, Spain, Italy, and Germany. To his Got- tingen professors he took personal letters from Tick- nor and Bancroft. The most cultivated Americans then living abroad, as the Irvings and Everetts, were his friends, and introduced him into the best Euro- pean society. But Longfellow was always at heart a student, most at home among books, eager to shut out the noises of the world as jangling discords. A passage in " Morituri Salutamus " reveals that this feeling was a lasting one. He had, at this early time, all the young man's delight to be " Abroad in the world, alone and free ; " 200 THE NEW ENGLAND PEKIOD he was by no means blind to the scenery and the art of older lands : but what he has to relate to us about them seems always composed in a quiet library, in the full consciousness of whatever bards have sung, or travelers told, before him. This is doubtless what severer critics mean by call- ing Longfellow "academic." But surely, literary form is an art, which should be learned from its masters. That the true content of literature is the whole of human life, and that it is, therefore, the largest of sciences as well, he fully realized, and has often said. Still, it is true, that a certain bookish- ness never leaves him. We touch on it thus early, because it is a pervasive quality. His memories of travel, finally published as " Outre-Mer " in 1835, illustrate what has just been said : and reveal also the earnest purity and gentleness of a nature that was never embittered by the most grievous sorrows which life could bring. From 1826 to 1835 the years were spent quietly in teaching and writing, at Brunswick. He edited French, Spanish, and Italian books for his college classes, composed a French grammar, and another, in French, for beginners in Italian. His solid philo- logical essays in the North American Review were illustrated by many exquisite verse-translations from the Romance languages. This was a long and laborious apprenticeship. Longfellow's importance as an apostle of broader culture to an essentially pro- vincial folk can hardly be overstated. We must notice especially, however, the effect of this long course of " drawing from the antique," in Long- fellow's own clean-cut, transparent, seemingly effort- THE CAMBRIDGE POETS 201 less style. The *' Skeleton in Armor" (1840) is as simple, perhaps, that is, as clearly phrased, as Whittier's " Barefoot Boy." So, indeed, is the "Saga of King Olaf." But the perfect mastery of forms so elaborate, especially in poetry upon such themes, was attainable only through yearlong scholarly study of other literatures. The one frank utterance of his own literary creed was made in an essay, " Defense of Poetry," in 1832. He openly deplores the morbid influence of Byron, and hails Wordsworth as the noblest singer of the time. He is heart and soul an idealist, but has begun to discover one of the great errors in his own earlier efforts. '' We wish our native poets would give a more national character to their writings. This is peculiarly true in descriptions of natural scenery. . . . Let us have no more skylarks and night- ingales." As he also regrets "the precocity of our writers," the allusion is pretty clearly to his own "Angler's Song" (1826) wherein " Upward speeds the morning lark To its silver cloud." Years later still, however, Margaret Fuller had oc- casion to remind him sharply that we know nothing and care nothing about the recurrence of Pentecost, or whether "Bishops' caps have golden rings." Despite the fragrant forest background throughout " Hiawatha," we do not feel that Longfellow ever acquired any such close familiarity as our other chief poets with outdoor sights and sounds. But if we must choose either alone, surely woods and fields are 202 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD less interesting company than men and women: a truth Bryant, and even Wordsworth, too often forgot. Altogether, this essay clearly foreshadows the eventual return of Longfellow, with earnest moral and ideal aims, to creative poetical work. The critical faculty he never wished to cultivate. He sought out and utilized whatever in other literatures proved helpful to him. What he disapproved he silently avoided. He had married in 1831. In 1835-1836 he again spent eighteen months abroad, in preparation for the Smith professorship at Harvard, vacated at that time by George Ticknor. In November, 1835, his young wife died, in Holland. A brief mention of her occurs in " Footsteps of Angels." Next year he settled in Cambridge, lodging in Craigie House, afterward so closely associated with his fame. As Smith professor he had general oversight over four foreign instructors in languages, his heritage from Ticknor, — a discordant, unruly leash, as he intimates, — but himself only lectured once to thrice weekly. This chair he held until 1854. His first original poem, after a dozen years' silence, was " Flowers," sent with a bouquet to a friend, in October, 1837. The form is laborious, the general effect somewhat cold and scentless. The true and full return of the poetic impulse occurred the next year, when the " Psalm of Life " forced its way to eager and instant, even somewhat crude, utter- ance. It at once aroused wide attention, and came like a bugle-call to many a desponding soul. It is full of energy and hope, yet avowedly didactic, THE CAMBRIDGE POETS 203 moral, Puritanical. Longfellow called many poems of this period psalms, and is himself the " psalmist " meant in the subtitle of this one. He still wrote prose, but it is the prose of a poet. His lectures have not been published, doubtless were not as a rule written out. His chief romance, " Hyperion," printed in 1839, is full of memories from the last lonely year abroad. Mary Ashburton, however, is drawn after the life, from Frances Apple- ton, whom he met in Switzerland, August, 1836, and was destined to marry, in 1843. Ten years later still (1849) the rather slight and pallid novelette " Kavanagh " appeared ; but long before that time Longfellow's life allegiance to poetry was fully assured. Indeed even that little book is full of sympathetic art criticism. The first collected volume of verse, " Voices of the Night," was issued also in 1839. A certain dainty and cloying sweetness, even in the title, recalls still the facile rhymer of college days, and reminds us of Tennyson's early work. It is interesting to note that the full vigor of the new lyric poet is first heard in " Wreck of the Hesperus^'''' December, 1839, and " Skeleton in Armor," 1840, both poems of the sea. The especial force and vividness of Longfellow's work on this theme has been often remarked, notably by so virile a critic as Mr. KijDling, in his sketch, "The Best Story in tlie World." Yet, compared with the Viking rapture of Kipling's own " Last Chantey," or the vagabond's note that floats from his black Bilbao tramp-steamer, — " With her loadline over her hatch, dear lass, And her drunken Dago crew," 204 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD Sea poetry. Reticence of the poet. Longfellow oftener seems but a timid landsman, studying the ocean from his cottage door at Nahant. Indeed, the Hesperus poem was written at the pro- fessorial fireside in Cambridge, and based merely upon a newspaper account. The poet had never even seen the reef of Norman's Woe. The second marriage of Longfellow, in 1843, was the culmination of his prosperity. As a part of her dower his wife brought him the title-deeds of Craigie House, famous already as Washington's old head- quarters. One of his few odes, " To a Child " (1845), unites for us the two chief memories of the mansion. This child must be his eldest son, who was severely wounded eighteen years later, as a soldier in the Civil War. Another son and three daughters were born in Craigie House. In July, 1861, his home happiness was blasted by his wife's tragic death. Always prone to occasional melan- choly, he never recovered from this blow. Yet the vrorld was the gainer for his suffering, as the deeper tenderness in his later work abundantly reveals. His flights of lyrics continued, hardly interrupted for a single year, as long as he lived. They rarely make direct allusion to his closest human ties. His children's mother, like the wife of his youth, appears once only, in the sonnet, " Evening Star." His daughters' names occur in the favorite " Children's Hour." The later sonnet, " A Shadow," has no personal details. Far more intimate utterances, indeed, in poetic form, the poet made, we are told, but not for our ears. In particular, the most pathetic of sonnets, "The Cross of Snow," not written until eighteen THE CAMBRIDGE POETS 205 years after the bereavement, was found in his port- folio subsequent to his death. We may recall that Whittier promptly suppressed his own early prayer for fame. So Longfellow wrote, at thirty-five, " Mezzo Cammin," but never printed it. It is interesting to notice that the sonnet form had become the most natural means for expressing his innermost feelings. No wonder that his more exoteric verses show all but uniformly faultless workmanship. In nearly every English meter his work is an accepted model of form. In the refusal to give the world his fullest utter- ances of personal sentiment, this poet is in striking contrast with his friend Lowell, whose " After the Burial " and " First Snowfall " show an intensity of feeling, a rugged frankness, never approached by the elder singer's more silvery music. As in Hawthorne's case, Longfellow the artist dwelt apart from the man, in a close-bolted chamber, whither the actual events of daily life were rarely brought, save as mere sug- gestions for work of universal human interest. Still, the happiness of Craigie House is breathed into a thousand such verses as " Each man's chimney is his Golden Milestone." " The Two Angels " may have been composed on the very day (October 27, 1853) when his second daugh- ter was born and Lowell's young wife died; but only their own little circle held the key to its allusions. *' Weariness," " Resignation," " The Bridge," " My Books," and other lyrics might bid us further qualify the assertion as to Longfellow's reticence. Yet we feel that each is more a finished piece of art, or an 206 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD utterance of humanity's cry, than an impulsive self- confession. Poems of friendship, so common with Whittier and Holmes, hardly appear at all : the trib- utes to Hawthorne and Taylor dead, and the franker one left at the living Lowell's gate, stand almost alone, until in his later years he misses such links in the old circle as Sumner, Agassiz, and Felton. Hatred or fierce disapproval he never utters, per- haps never felt. " Ichabod," or " John P. Robinson," he could not have written. Political poetry was hardly possible for him. Once, on a sea voyage, he wrote a little sheaf of lyrics against slavery, which were omitted from the next general edition. The sonnet on President Garfield's death is glori- fied by a verse cited from Dante's " Paradiso," " And came through martyrdom unto this peace." This may serve to remind us how scholarly and world-wide in range Longfellow's art was. An Ice- landic Edda, David's bereavement or Bartimeus's faith, Diirer's home and Walter von der Yogelweide's grave, " Old legends of the monkish page, Traditions of the saint and sage," furnish equally fit suggestion for song. We can cite indeed from him the verse, " That is best which lieth nearest ; Shape from that thy work of art ! " but that very poem bears the name of a forgotten Spanish artist. The international and scholarly quality of the lyrist's art is heightened by his many translations. His " Luck of Edenhall," " Wanderer's THE CAMBRIDGE POETS 20T Night Song," "Remorse," seem at least to equal the originals, perfect as they are. Least adequately represented are the great myths of Hellas. This charge indeed lies against our creative national literature as a whole, and is too large a subject to discuss in detail here. Of intimate acquaintance with Homer, the Attic dramatists, Plato, there is hardly a vestige, less than in almost any great British poet of the same century, incom- parably less than in Shelley or Keats, Tennyson and Swinburne. The resolve, in 1839, to "take to the Greek poets again," only led him to reread a few of the clever but uninspired pseudo- Anacreontics in his old college text-book, the "Grseca Majora." Doubt- less the causes of this lack are to be traced back to our classical scholarship and collegiate teaching, in which the true humanities have never had due honor. In " Mezzo Cammin " the poet alludes to his crav- ing, unsated as yet, "to build ''The fever to accom- Some tower of song with lofty parapet." plish some great Though he has not created a great national epic or an work." unquestioned masterpiece of drama, he has made most important advances in both these directions. The congenial subject of "Evangeline "came to him " Evange- as a gift, perhaps a half -reluctant gift, from Haw- ^^°®'" ^^^'^' thorne, who first heard the tradition, but could hardly have used it so happily. Less than fifteen hundred lines in length, and containing no real struggle or pivotal action, this poem is at most an idyl, not even a miniature epic. Its pathos and purity, the natural sentiment, the large scenic back- 208 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD grounds, help to explain the universal love for this poem. But it is also true, that the long, sweeping cadences of our English accentual hexameter, though so generally distasteful to the Greek or Latin scholar, delight the popular ear. The musical effects of Hesiod or Lucretius, not to mention Virgil and Homer, are absolutely unattainable in Englisli. Dactyls indeed, though not easy in our crisp iambic speech, are still possible. But while the vowels are essentially the same, as to number and quality, in ancient or modern hexameters, not even nonsense- verses can be put together, containing less than twice the average number of consonantal sounds found in the liquid speech of Hellas or Rome. That is a condition not to be escaped in any English verse, nor indeed in any Teutonic speech. Our dactyls should be criticised only as compared with other forms of English metrical composition: e.g. with the anapaests of Lochinvar. "Hiawatha" is a true epic, with a hero. His earthly life is more completely delineated, indeed, from its beginning to its end, than Odysseus', or Arthur's. The material was fresh to the poet's first readers, and is of lasting interest, especially to us in America. This poem is the most novel contribution of Longfellow to the world's literature. It does not reveal a wonderfully intimate knowledge of Indian life and character. The original materials, though faithfully collected, were treated with absolute freedom. This is all as it should be. A true poem cannot be utilized as a mine of archgeological lore. The THE CAMBRIDGE POETS 209 " Iliad " resists such attempts, with all but perfect success. Whether Hector's chariot, Arthur's sword, Hiawatha's canoe, ever had an earthly existence is immaterial. They, and their possessors, justify themselves by their perennial charm to each new generation; but that charm is purely human and universal, not dependent on race or local setting. Perhaps, at times, as in the love scenes, Hiawatha shows too much chivalric sentiment and modern refinement. But every artist must describe life from his own experience and environment. Shakespeare's " C3^mbeline " is Elizabethan. Quentin Durward is a young eighteenth-century gentleman, in character and manners : Scott knew no others. So Longfellow had little inner acquaintance with Indian nature. The simple trochaic cradle-swing of this poem was borrowed from a Finnish epic, the "Kalevala." It suits perfectly the rather naive folk and natural scenery of the tale. This verse is by no means so easy to compose as it seems, and has never been used with notable success by a later hand. This is perhaps a pity, since our longer narrative poetry should be fully emancipated from the tyranny of recurrent end- rhyme, which is, in our speech, though not in Italian or mediaeval Latin, a grievous bar to natural utter- ance. Probably very few words were kept out of Hiawatha by the meter. Neither of these poems is truly national. At least, they arouse no patriotic pride. Rather they have a certain elegiac pathos, reminding us how completely both the Indian and the Acadian life perished under our sires' ruthless hands. More directly patriotic is " Miles Standish," which deals with the love affairs 210 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD of Longfellow's own ancestors, John and Priscilla Alden. The hexameter is there handled more lightly, even sportively at times. The general effect is bright and sunny, in itself perhaps a miracle, when worked upon our somber early annals. But here again it would be a grave error either to accept or to criticise the poem merely or chiefly as an his- toric chronicle. We must never wholly forget that the poet's Plymouth is, at his will, an Arcadian port, whose casements open on the seas of Fairyland. L- Longfellow returned to the hexameter once again 1873. ^^ u Elizabeth," a Quaker replica of Priscilla. He is somewhat lax in using very heavy syllables in the unaccented part of his dactyls, which are therefore themselves, at times, " Bent like a laboring oar." The best English examples of the measure are found, rather, in Charles Kingsley's '' Andromeda." Though even less familiar than Tennyson with the actual requirements of the theater, Longfellow made assiduous efforts to construct his greatest works in dramatic form. The "Spanish Student" has the charm of youth and light-hearted love, with pleasant local color. " Pandora," his chief Hellenic venture, does not justify itself, as a whole, by any larger or novel restatement of the Promethean myth, and soon becomes in the reader's memory a loose-strung series of fine lyric passages. "Judas Maccabeeus" is re- membered chiefly for one powerful scene, portraying the triumphant despair of the mother whose seven heroic sons accept martyrdom without blenching. " Michael Angelo," the congenial task of Longfel- THE CAMBRIDGE POETS 211 low's old age, was hardly intended to be completed, much less really put upon the boards. Rather do its soliloquies and dialogues form a commonplace book, in which are set down the ripest thoughts of the scholarly poet upon his own craft and the other fine arts. Indeed, the best of literary and art criti- cism abounds in these calm pages. Many such allu- sions as that to " The fever to accomplish some great work, That will not let us sleep," seem plainly subjective. The largest dramatic work of Longfellow remains to be discussed. In his thirty-fifth summer, just when " Mezzo Cammin " was written, there appears " Mezzo in his notebook the brief outline for " Christus, a ^^'^''''" dramatic poem in three parts." It was a vast under- taking, "the theme of which would be the various aspects of Christendom in the Apostolic, Middle, and Modern Ages." The second section, the "Golden Legend," appeared " Golden earliest in 1851. The central story, of Elsie's ^gfr^^'" sacrifice, is happily characteristic of the mediaeval age, but the prominence of Lucifer is hardly justi- fied, to our incredulous modern minds. Many scenes are but loosely connected even with Prince Henry's long journey to Salerno. Altogether, the work is a wonderfully broad picture of mediaeval life, perhaps the richest fruit of Longfellow's scholarship and poetic imagination combined. In the "New England Tragedies" Mr. Longfellow "New comes into indirect rivalry with his friend Haw- JE^^^^J? „ ^ ^ Tragedies, thorne, whose ancestor, also, is a character in " Giles 1868. 212 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD Corey." The scenes are vivid and painful, wrought far more strenuously than those of " Miles Standish." Of course they do not in any large sense represent the spirit of modern Christianity, but simply reveal the two darkest pages in local Massachusetts annals. Real dramas they are not, for there is no true cul- mination, nor even an heroic struggle. The " Divine Tragedy " handles a subject which most men consider unsuitable for poetic or other freely imaginative treatment. Longfellow here felt much constraint, and often has merely thrown an evangelist's record into rather rough blank verse, with the least possible change of phrase. The inten- tion is undoubtedly reverent, but the whole effect is hardly equal to that of the simple and quaint miracle- play included in the "Golden Legend." As a whole, " Christus " attempts a subject hope- lessly large for artistic and unified presentation. The term " trilogy " perhaps aided to mislead the gentle lyric singer into so vast an effort. But the Pro- methean trilogy of ^schylus must have contained, in all its three plays, — or more truly, acts, — less than five thousand lines, which could all be said or sung within a short half-day. The " Golden Legend " alone contains quite that number of verses. The entire " Christus," with the beautiful interludes, is thrice as long. The capstone of the translator's labors was the great line-for-line version of Dante's entire '' Com- media," with copious notes. These volumes are still the best in English for students who wish to master the ideas of Dante. The eleven-syllable verse of THE CAMBRIDGE POETS 213 the original makes a most natural unit of measure for sentence and thought, which is quite lost in Mr. Norton's faultless prose rendering. Mr. Parsons's incomplete rhymed translation, though masterly, is naturally far less faithful than the others. Much of Mr. Longfellow's work, not precisely translation, is, nevertheless, interpretative of other literatures. We have alluded to the miracle-play in the "Golden Legend," and to the "Saga of Olaf." Neither ans^vers to a single foreign original, but each is a more perfect illustration of an unfamiliar type than any mere version could be. He is doubt- less the most popular interpreter of literature in general that ever lived. Of course, in drawing his plots, suggestions, figures of speech, etc., from all available sources, Longfellow was but following in Shakespeare's own footprints, as he gracefully re- marks in an interlude of the "Wayside Inn." The general frame and plan of the latter book, again, was clearly influenced by the " Canterbury Tales," though the superior genius of Chaucer is frankly confessed in the sonnet, "Woodstock Park." The form of " Building of the Ship " and " Keramos " is taken from Schiller's ''Song of the Bell." In our own literature both types seemed novelties. In these last poems, and still more in " Hanging of the Crane," the easy changes of meter, as the current of the tale quickens or lingers, are remark- able. In general Longfellow's metrical work will reward careful study, and offers examples of nearly every measure possible in English verse. Longfellow's old age was peculiarly beautiful. His gift of perfect expression remained to the last. 214 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD " From my Armchair," written at seventy -two, is perhaps the happiest proof of this. The close of " Morituri Salutamus " is sadder, yet nowise em- bittered. We get at times even an impression of excessive amiability and gentleness in Longfellow. We almost wish for one fiercer strain, to show him a good hater, if only of injustice or cruelty. But his art, at all events, if not his life, was unclouded in its serenity. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE The only complete edition of Longfellow's works is the River- side, Houghton, poetry, 6 vols., prose, 5 vols. For the poems the Cambridge edition, 1 vol., is entirely sufficient. It con- tains a remarkably good brief biography by H. E. Scudder. The life, by Samuel Longfellow, has copious extracts from the jour- nals. The life by Francis H. Underwood is also based on per- sonal knowledge. See also " Henry Wa^^: ' jr J & tion a tradi- and more heroic parts in the national drama than tion only, may ever again be assigned them. Patrick Henry and James Otis, like Pericles and Gorgias, barely 265 266 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD appear in literature, as stately traditional figures, helped out by clever and pious fiction. A speech put by Webster into John Adams's mouth has out- lived in the popular memory every word he actually uttered. Though Adams made a brave and successful legal plea for the soldiers who had but acted in self- defense in the " Boston massacre," it is only the rhetorical apotheosis of Crispus Attucks, and the other lawless "martyrs," by Warren, that is still remembered and recited. A speech, as delivered, even if accurately reported, Webster's is rarely literary in form. Webster's second reply to reply to Havne is widely accepted as the supreme effort of Hayne,1830. -^ ^ . . ;\ \.i. American eloquence. Certain passages are doubt- less still familiar to every schoolboy, and may really have been, as is often asserted, the sheet anchors of Union sentiment ever since. Even the central theme, that no formal action of citizen, state, or section, no power short of popular revolution, can nullify the decrees of our national government, is surely large and far-reaching enough. But the speech itself, though its thirty thousand words would make a moderate volume, was an episode in a senatorial debate on the survey and sale of public lands. On every page are allusions which can be understood only by painful study of politics, persons, temporary conditions, long since forgotten. Hence it is read with interest, or read at all, as a whole, by very few. Nevertheless, there are important contributions to our literature by orators, which can be best under- stood in connection with their professional careers. Professor Richardson names twelve men of national fame for eloquence since the Revolution : Randolph, THE ORATORS 267 Clay, Webster, Calhoun, Choate, Everett, Winthrop, Seward, Garrison, Phillips, Sumner, and Lincoln. Not all these are even familiar names to-day. The thin figure and piercing voice of John Randolph John of Roanoke has vanished the faster from, popular mem- S,7^*^.°o?? ory because, like Calhoun after him, he was the cham- pion of the lost cause. Born a slaveholder, deploring the institution which impoverished his section, he yet felt that of the representatives of the free states " not one possesses the slightest tie of common feeling or of common interest with us." In the national Capi- tol itself he dared to exclaim : " However high we may carry our heads and strut and fret our hour, ' dressed in a little brief authority,' it i§ in the power of the states to extinguish this government at a blow." Calhoun also, his life long, avowed frankly his johnCaid- allegiance to his state, or at most to his section, regarding the union as a mere expedient, to be aban- 1850. doned whenever it ceased to serve the interests of his real country. He is a gallant and loyal figure, as he recedes and fades from our view, like the French aristocrat of the old regime. We can admire his courage, but it is no longer easy even to recall his position. His cold, clear, logical style has its unique merits, though they are hardly oratorical. Like his political doctrines, his forms of utterance deserve careful study, but will never be revived or closely imitated; He is the second, but not a close second, among our political orators of the nineteenth century. Henry Clay, the idol of his section and party for a Henry Clay, half century, had a unique personal charm, which has not lingered in his published words to any adequate well Cal- houn, 1782- 1777-1852. 268 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD Daniel Webster, 1782-1852. Oration at Bunker Hill, June 17, 1825. Plymouth Oration, 1820. extent. Indeed, to our permanent literature he is a far less important contributor than Calhoun. His own nature and the position of his border state made compromise, pacification, mediation, his lifelong role. It is the extremists that are best remembered. There can be no question as to the supreme importance of Webster in our oratory. Born and educated in poverty, he early became the leading lawyer of his native New Hampshire, and then of the Boston bar. His national career, as representa- tive, senator, and Secretary of State, began in 1813 and lasted to the end. Inconsistent and wavering on some questions, Webster always gave his voice and vote to strengthen and preserve the federal Union. There is a splendid and sincere egotism, justified by the Jovelike nature of the man, in such passages as the thrice familiar " When my eyes shall be turned for the last time to behold the sun in heaven." He has given the name of Websterian to his own literary style, so stately in its simplicity, so suited to his clear, earnest, consistent thought, to his massive frame, great, cavernous eyes, and voice of thunder, that neither portentous length of periods nor freest use of polysyllabic words could make it seem other than fit and natural to the orator himself. Especially familiar to sons of New England is his apostrophe to the living veterans of Bunker Hill, actually present fifty years after the battle, at the laying of the corner stone of the monument. For such occasions as this and the speech on the Plym- outh Pilgrims, indeed, the most picturesque rhetoric justifies itself when heard, and also upon the printed page, if only it successfully sets before us the original THE ORATORS 269 scene. And certainly to us, also, those "venerable men" do visibly come down from that memorable day. Indeed, the personality of Webster, perhaps the most imposing man of our race, is so familiar to us through tradition, painting, and sculpture, if not from memory, that we still see and hear him as he points the finger of Fate at the trembling murderer, Trial of the and thunders forth the words : " There is no escape ^gso^^^' from confession, save suicide : and suicide is confes- sion ! " His whole description of that murder is a masterpiece of imaginative word painting, with remi- niscences of Macbeth glimmering here and there. But, after all, it is not as a maker of phrases that Daniel Webster will be longest remembered, but as Hamilton's successor as the defender of the federal Constitution. Even his famous plea before the Su- preme Court for his little Alma Mater, Dartmouth Dartmouth College, created the important precedent that the ^oHegecase central government could enforce the observance by the several states of such implied contracts through charters as it had in this case been proposed to cancel. So when he refused to join the Free-Soil movement and gave in his adhesion to Clay's last compromise with the slave power, he was no doubt chiefly influenced by the longing to preserve the federation of states. If he did foresee the inevitable rupture, and merely desired, as he had said, to look with dying eyes on an unbroken Union, yet it is also true that his action, firmly taken against the known disapproval of New England, did postpone the war for a decade, while the North and West meantime increased decisively in wealth and population. As a great piece of oratory in itself, as the occasion for 270 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD March 7, 1850. Wendell Phillips, 1811-1884. Charles Sumner, 1811-1874. Whittier's " Ichabod," as largely the inciting cause also of Mrs. Stowe's romance, this " Seventh of March Speech " may properly be mentioned here ; but it only emphasizes the conclusion that Webster is a large figure rather in our history than in our literature. Who of us ever read the speech itself? The romance is familiar to all. Wendell Phillips is the ideal and type of the aris- tocratic radical. Closely allied in kinship and in friendship with all the bluest blood and most exclu- sive culture of Boston, he cast in his lot with the little despised and persecuted group about Garrison, not merely without an instant's hesitation, but with eager delight. Mob violence, real peril of an igno- minious death, could alone bring to him the true zest of life. Indeed, unless he could have a violently hostile audience to subdue to silence, and finally to entrance into delighted and even approving atten- tion, the splendid powers of the man were not thor- oughly awakened. A demagogue he could never be, for, to the end of his stormy days, wherever many men agreed with him, he felt oppressed as Daniel Boone by incoming settlers. Perhaps the finest literary effort of his life is his Phi Beta Kappa ora- tion at Harvard, "The Scholar in a Republic." Even there he first antagonized and then conquered his audience, for he arraigned the college-bred man as habitually derelict to the highest ideals of citizenship. He was a happy Rough Rider, and never lost his delight in the strife. Charles Sumner could have been Story's worthy successor on the bench or in the Harvard Law School. He might have been a scholarly and in- THE ORATORS 271 defatigable student, probably a writer, also, of his- tory, like Motley. He was potentially all these things, indeed, before his gift for public speaking, and his moral enthusiasm for the crusade against slavery, drew him reluctantly into national politics. His virulence in debate with Southern opponents was rhetorical, and, as it were, doctrinal, not really personal in feeling. He preached against slave- holders, as intolerantly as Cotton Mather against heretics. A study of his senatorial speeches would make more intelligible what nothing, of course, can justify : the attempt to silence him by the bludgeon. But he was always homesick for Ticknor's library, for Felton's lost friendship, for the social life among cultivated Bostonians, for the old studious quiet of the Law School. Sumner was never successful in his personal relations with men of diverse types and interests. It is as a scholarly essayist that he enters the gate of literature. Perhaps his first public speech, his fearless Fourth of July condemnation of all wars and warriors, called "The True Grandeur of Nations," is also his most lasting utterance. Rufus Choate was famous, like Macaulay, for his Rufus marvelous memory and loquacity. He had a brief ^7^5^59 congressional career, was long a leader of the bar, a sparkling wit, a classical scholar, and an unweary- ing reader. Like Webster, Everett, Winthrop, and the scholarly Bostonians generally, he persistently refused to follow the rest of New England into the antislavery crusade, and, like Webster, died too early to be reunited with his people by the outbreak of civil war. His elaborate style is perhaps a valua- ble curiosity of literature. 272 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD William Henry Seward, 1801-1872. Robert Charles Winthrop, 180£^-1894. Edward Everett, 1794^1865. Seward is remembered as the creator of certain phrases like "the irrepressible conflict," rather than for his memorable utterance of them. Indeed, few would now reckon him among our prominent orators at all. Robert C. Winthrop, the biographer of his more famous ancestor, was throughout his long life a public-spirited citizen, a student especially of New England history, a favorite speaker on memorial occasions. He illustrates the possible usefulness and happiness of an aristocratic nature in a democracy. Far better known nationally is Edward Everett. It is rather amusing to note that he too began his career, at nineteen, as a Unitarian clergyman. We have seen him already as Ticknor's companion soon after in Gottingen, and his Greek colleague at Har- vard. This position also he soon abandoned, to enter politics in 1825. He was later governor of Massachusetts, president of Harvard, Secretary of State. Finally, he was vice-presidential candidate on one of the three tickets opposed to Lincoln in the fall of 1860. But Mr. Everett is known above all as our highest example of physical and mental charm and refine- ment, as a master of dazzling rhetoric, as the most graceful, finished, and artificial of orators. Emerson has left a glowing description of him as a young col- lege professor, when he seemed to the raw, boyish students the embodiment of elegant scholarship. But the characteristic deadly thrust is added, that he was never suspected of originating an idea. Everett's last public appearance is the most strik- ing of all. His oration at Gettysburg, when the THE ORATORS 273 national cemetery was dedicated, occupied several November, hours in delivery, had been most elaborately pre- pared, and seemed to his hearers one of the chief triumphs of his career.* Then Mr. Lincoln spoke for less than five minutes, touching the deeper mean- ing of the occasion with all the simple mastery of an inspired lyric poet. It appears to us now as if then and there had occurred the sudden passing of an oratorical style, the unforeseen close of an epoch in taste : for few of us have ever read or seen Everett's speech ; most of us know Lincoln's by heart, as Mr. Abraham Everett promptly and chivalrously prophesied. Yet ^"^^1865. of course no such instantaneous change was possible. Lincoln had simply struck, with infinitely more skill and mastery, the unique note of the hour and place, setting them in their true relation to the eternal forces of life. The second inaugural is hardly less a masterpiece. But it is undoubtedly a fact, that the influence of political oratory, at least, has waned decisively since the day, not merely of Otis and Warren, but of Webster, Calhoun, and Clay. The causes are in part the rise of the newspaper and the telegraph. The debater in Congress nowadays has already given his manuscript to the Associated Press, and is chiefly concerned that what he might have said shall be duly spread next morning on the breakfast table of his constituents, or even of the country. On questions of general and permanent policy, both daily papers and weekly or monthly magazines keep up unceasing debate. The lack of such agen- cies multiplied the power of the living voice in the Revolutionary epoch. Even in the years of the anti- 274 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD slavery agitation, such a paper as the Liberator^ poems like Whittier's or Hosea Biglow's, a romance like " Uncle Tom's Cabin," were doubtless more in- fluential than any spokeil words. Still, personal magnetism will never lose its charm. In particular, the peculiar conditions under which our presidential candidates are nominated still recall vividly the ear- lier days. No longer ago than 1896 a single burst of rhetoric took a national convention by storm. Every town meeting may have a similar experience. But, as a rule, in our comparatively settled and crowded social life, the motives of self-interest grow more complex, and men refuse to be swept to instant decision and emotional action. Where no serious doubt or deep-seated difference of opinion bars the way, men's feelings can still be inflamed by the de- vices of rhetoric and elocution. The court room, for instance, and the church remain as free fields for per- sonal appeal. Theodore Parker and Henry Ward Beecher are perhaps the most famous masters of pulpit oratory, which usually presupposes devoted and submissive hearers. Yet both were at least as willing to face a hostile audience, and to champion an unfashionable and dangerous cause, as they did, in particular, in the early Abolitionist days. The pervasive, benig- nant influence of Phillips Brooks, not limited to any religious, sectional, or even national line, was in a degree oratorical. His published essays, both purely religious and relatively secular, are exquisitely literary, often highly poetic in quality. They are full of vitality and force, even for those men who cannot supply from memory the monumental pres- THE ORATORS 275 ence, the impetuous rushing tones, of the great preacher. In his optimism, his humanism, his patriotic and philanthropic zeal, Bishop Brooks was a true successor of Channing. Both have relatively humble places in our literature, yet their influence is felt constantly in the air we breathe. That is merely saying that literature, or any fine art, is but a partial expression of life. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE Calhoun's Works, in 6 vols. Life by Von Hoist in American Statesmen Series, Houghton. Life of Clay by Schurz in same series. Daniel Webster's "Works," 6 vols.. Little. "Life," by George Tickuor Curtis, 2 vols., Appleton. "Life," by H. C. Lodge, Houghton. There is an excellent brief account of Web- ster by Carl Schurz in the Warner " Library of the World's Best Literature." " Randolph of Roanoke," a poem by Whittier. " Scholar in a Republic," by Wendell Phillips, Lee. " Speeches, Lectures, and Letters" of Phillips, 2 vols., Lee. "Works "of Charles Sumner, 15 vols., Lee. " Charles Sumner," a memorial oration, by Carl Schurz, Lee. " Orations " of Everett, 4 vols.. Little. "Lincoln," complete vrorks, Nicolay and Hay, 2 vols.. Century. " Speeches," by Chittenden, Dodd. Phillips Brooks's "Essays and Addresses," Dutton. "Sermons," Button. Ran- dolph, Calhoun, and Clay are peculiarly picturesque figures, but hardly in our field. Professor W. P. Trent has a happy subject in his " Southern Statesmen of the Old Regime." SUGGESTIONS FOR CLASSROOM WORK The historical importance of Webster's Dartmouth College speech and reply to Hayne may be most fully understood from Lodge's account. The Bunker Hill and Plymouth orations should be read entire. The scene at Gettysburg is a peculiarly dramatic one. The extraordinary force of Lincoln's oratory should be fully ex- plained, if possible. Every schoolboy should know the speech by heart, and be perfectly familiar with the Second Inaugural oration. 276 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES — (1830-1870) 1831-1840 American History American Literatoie 1833. Nullification in South Caro- lina. 1831. Jan. 1, First number of Gar- rison's Liberator. Poe's Poems. Whittier's " Legends of New England." Paulding's "Dutchman's Fireside." 1832. Irving's *' Alhambra." Paulding's " Westward Ho." 1833. Mrs. Child's "Appeal for Africans." Whittier's "Justice and Ex- pediency." Longfellow's " Outre-Mer." Story's " Commentaries on the Constitution." 1834. Paulding's "Life of Wash- ington." 1835. William Ellery Channing's "Slavery." Drake's " Culprit Fay." Kennedy's "Horseshoe Rob- inson." Simms's "Yemassee," and " Partisan." 1836. Mrs. Child's " Philothea." Emerson's " Nature." Gray's " Botany." First Meetings of Transcen- dental Club. 1837. Emerson's Phi Beta Kappa oration, "The American." Hawthorne's " Twice-told Tales." Prescott's "Ferdinand and Isabella." 1838. Cooper's " Homeward Bound," " Home as Found." Lowell's Class Poem. 1839. W. E. Channing's "Self- Culture." Cooper's "History of the United States Navy." Longfellow's "Hyperion," "Voices of the Night." CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES 277 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES — (1830-1870) 1831-1840 Englisli and European Literature English and European History 1831. Goethe's "Faust pleted. 1832. Death of Goethe. 1833. Carlyle's " Sartor Eesartus." Browning's " Pauline." Newman's "Tracts for the Times." Tennyson's Poems. 1834. Dickens's " Sketches by Boz." 1835. Browning's "Paracelsus." 1836. Dickens's "Pickwick." Marryat's "Midshipman Easy." 1837. Dickens's " Oliver Twist." Carlyle's "French Revolu- tion." Thackeray's " Yellowplush Papers." 1838. Dickens's " Nicholas Nickle- by." 1832. Reform Bill passed by Pai> liament. 1837. Accession of Victoria^ 278 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 1831-1840- — Continued American History American Literature 1840. Cooper's " Pathfinder." R. H. Dana, Jr.'s "Two Years Before the Mast." Lowell's " A Year's Life." 1840-1844. The i»iaZ, edited by Mar- garet Fuller, afterward by Emerson. 1840. Brook Farm Community or- ganized. 1841-1850 1842. Ashburton Treaty, fixing our northern boundary. 1844. First telegraph line, from Washington to Baltimore. 1845. Admission of Texas. 1846. Ether used in Massachusetts Hospital. 1846-1847. War with Mexico. An- nexation of California. Ex- 1841. Emerson's Essays, I. Longfellow's Ballads. (' celsior.") New York Tribune. 1842. Emerson's "Threnody." Longfellow's Poems on Slav- ery. Bryant's " Foiintain." Cooper's " Wing-and- Wing. " 1843. Longfellow's "Spanish Stu- dent." Poems of W. E. Channing, 2d. T. W. Parson's " Dante's In- ferno," Nos. I-X. Prescott's "Mexico." 1844. Mrs. Child's "Flowers for Children." Emerson's Essays, II. Margaret Fuller's "Woman in the Nineteenth Century." 1845. Poe's "Raven." Judd's "Margaret." Lowell's " Conversations on Poets." Simms's Cabin." 1846. Cooper's Officers.'' Bayard Afoot." Longfellow's Bruges." Worcester's "Dictionary." Sumner's Phi Beta Kappa Oration. " Wigwam and "Lives of Naval Taylor's " Views " Bellrey of CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES 279 1831-1840 — Continued English and Enropean Literature English and Enropean History 184C Dickens's "Old Curiosity Shop." Browning's "Sordello." 1840. Penny Postage in Great Britain. 1841-1850 1841. Carlyle's " Hero Worship." Hugh Miller's "Old Red Sandstone." Boucicault's " London As- surance." Punch founded. 1842. Dickens's "American Notes." Macaulay's " Lays." Darwin's "Coral Reefs." George Sa7id's " Consuelo." 1843. Browning's " Blot on the Scutcheon." Carlyle's "Past and Pres- ent." Dickens's " Martin Chuzzle- wit" and "Christmas Carol." Mill's "Logic." 1843-1860. Ruskin's "Modern Painters." 1844. Stanley's "Life of Arnold." Thackeray's "Barry Lyn- don." 1845. Carlyle's " Cromwell." 1846. Grote's " Greece," VoL L 1846. Abolition of the Corn Laws. 280 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 1841-1850 — Continued American History- American Literature 1847. Salt Lake City founded by the Mormons. 1849. Grold discovered in Califor- nia. 1850. Fugitive Slave Law, as part of Clay's last compromise. 1847. Longfellow's " Evangeline." Prescott's "Peru." Melville's " Omoo." 1848. Gayarre's "Romance of the History of Louisiana." Lowell's " Biglow Papers," First Series, "Fable for Critics," and " Sir Launfal." Cary Sisters' Poems. Hildreth's " History," Vol. I. Irving's "Goldsmith." Thoreau's "Concord and Merrimac." Ticknor's "Spanish Litera- ture." Hawthorne's " Scarlet Let- ter." Webster's Seventh of March Speech. Emerson's "Representative Men," Irving's " Mahomet." Longfellow's "Seaside and Fireside." D. G. Mitchell's " Reveries of a Bachelor." Whittier's " Songs of Labor " and " Ichabod." Harper's Magazine founded. Miss Warner's " Wide, Wide World." 1849. 1850. 1851-1860 1851. Hawthorne's "House of Seven Gables," "Wonder- Book," "Snow Image." Longfellow's " Golden Leg- end." D. G. Mitchell's "Dream Life." Parkman's " Pontiac." Schoolcraft's "Indian Tribes." Lossing's " Fieldbook of the Revolution." Curtis 's "Nile Notes." 1851-1852. Mrs. Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin." CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES 281 1841-1850 — Continued Englisli and European Literature English and Eoropean History 1847. Charlotte Broute's " Jane Eyre." Tennyson's "Princess." Thackeray's "Vanity Fair." 1848. Clough's " Bothie." Mill's "Political Economy." Dickens's "David Copper- field." Thackeray's " Pendennis." Raskin's "Seven Lamps of Architecture." Tennyson's "In Memoriam." Mrs. Browning's " Sonnets from the Portuguese." Newman's "Phases of Faith." 1849. 1850. 1848. Revolution at Paris. Ex- pulsion of Louis Philippe. 1851-1860 1851. Mrs. Browning's "CasaGuidi Windows." Kingsley's "Yeast." Ruskin's " Stones of Ven- ice," I. 282 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 1S51-IS60 — Continued American History American Literature 1852. Death of Webster and Clay. 1854. Repeal of the Missouri Com- promise. Slavery question left to inhabitants of each new state. 1854-1859. Civil war in Kansas be- tween proslavery and free settlers. 1852. Blithedale 1856. Assault on Charles Sumner in the Senate chamber. 1857. Dred Scott decision. Business panic. 1859. John Brown seizes Harper's Ferry. Is captured and exe- cuted. Petroleum fovmd in Pennsyl- vania. 1860. November, election of Lin- coln. December 20, secession of South Carolina. Hawthorne's Romance." 1853. Theodore Parker's " Theism, Atheism, and Popular The- ology." Choate's "Eulogy on Web- ster." 1854. Thoreau's " Walden." Bayard Taylor's "Poems of the Orient." Longfellow's "Hiawatha." 1855. J. S. C. Abbott's " History of Napoleon." T. S. Arthur's '* Ten Nights in a Barroom." Frederick Douglass's "My Bondage and My Freedom." Ingraham's "Prince of the House of David." 1855-1858. Prescott's "Life of Philip II." 1855-1859. Irving's " Life of Wash- ington." 1856. Motley 's * ' Dutch Republic . ' ' Boker's "Plays and Poems." Curtis's " Prue and I." Emerson's " English Traits." Mrs. Stowe's "Dred." 1857. F. J. Child's "English and Scottish Ballads," Vol. I. November, first number of Atlantic Monthly. 1858. Longfellow's "Miles Stand- ish." Holland's "Bittersweet." Dr. Holmes's "Autocrat of the Breakfast Table." 1860. Emerson's " Conduct of Life." Hawthorne's "Marble Faun." Motley's " United Nether- lands." CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES 283 1851-1860 — Continued English and European Literature English and European History 1852. 1853. 1854. 1855. Henry Es- ..peg 1856. 1857. 1858. 1859. 1860. Thackeray's mond," Charles Reade's Woffington." Thackeray's "English Hu- morists." Mrs. Gaskell's "Cranford." Thackeray's " Newcomes." Dickens's " Hard Times." Browning's "Men and Women." Dickens's "Little Dorrit." Kingsley's "Westward Ho." Tennyson's " Maud." Spencer's " Psychology." Mil man's " Latin Chris- tianity." Mrs. Browning's "Aurora Leigh." Fronde's " England," Vols. I and II. Mrs. Craik's * ' John Halifax.' ' Hughes's "Tom Brown's Schooldays." Thackeray's "Virginians." Buckle's "History of Civili- zation," Vol. I. Carlyle's "Frederick the Great." George Eliot's "Scenes of Clerical Life." William Morris's "Defense of Guinevere." Tennyson's "Idylls of the King." Dickens's "Tale of Two Cities." George Eliot's "AdamBede." Fitzgerald's " Omar Khay- yam." Meredith's "Richard Fev- erel." Mill, "On Liberty." Darwin's "Origin of Species." George Eliot's "Mill on the Floss." Collins's ' ' Woman in White.' ' Owen Meredith's "Lucile." Reade's "Cloister and Hearth." Tolstoi's "War and Peace." 1852. Napoleon III becomes em- peror. 1853-1856. Crimean War. 1857-1858. Indianmutiny. 284 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 1861-1870 American History American Literature 1861. Secession of eleven states. 1861-1865. Civil War. 1861. Fall of Fort Sumter. Battle of Bull Run. 1862. Farragut at New Orleans. 1863. Emancipation Proclamation. 1863. July 4, Grant at Vicksburg. Battle of Gettysburg. French in Mexico. 1866. Surrender of Lee. Abolition of slavery. Murder of Lincoln. 1867. Maximilian shot in Mexico. 1868. Impeachment of President Johnson fails. 1861. Holmes's " Elsie Venner." Winthrop's " Cecil Dreeme.' 1862. Mrs. Stowe's " Agnes of Sor- rento." Story's " Roba di Roma." Winthrop's "John Brent" and " Canoe and Saddle." 1863. Longfellow's "Wayside Inn." Hawthorne's "Our Old Home." Higginson's " Outdoor Pa- pers." Bayard Taylor's "Hannah Thurston." 1863. Trowbridge's "Cudjo's Cave." Winthrop's " Life in the Open Air." Lincoln's Speech at Gettys- burg, Nov. 19th. 1864. Lowell's " Fireside Travels." Thoreau's "Maine Woods." Boker's War Poems. 1865. Lowell's " Commemoration Ode." Thoreau's "Cape Cod." Parkman's "Pioneers of France." 1866. Whittier's " Snow-Bound." Taylor's " Kennett." Howells's "Venetian Life." 1867. Emerson's " May Day.'' Holmes's " Guardian Angel." Longfellow's " Dante." Parson's " Dante's Inferno." Norton's "Dante's Vita Nuova." Whittier's "Tent on the Beach." Lowell's "Biglow Papers," II. Whitney's " Language." L^a's "Sacerdotal Celibacy." Parkman's "Jesuits in North America." 1868. Longfellow's " New England Tragedies." Hale's "Man without a Country." CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES 285 1861-1870 English and European Literature 1861. Thackeray's " Philip." George Eliot's "Silas Mar- ner." Maine's "Ancient Law." Mill's "Representative Gov- ernment." 1862. Victor Hugo's " Les Mis^ra- bles." 1863. George Eliot's "Romola." ^o^. Kingsley's "Water Babies." 1864. Tennyson's "Enoch Arden." Swinburne's " Atalanta." Dickens's " Mutual Friend." ,oz> Newman's "Apologia." 1865. Carroll's " Alice in Wonder- land." Meredith's "Rhoda Flem- ing." Seeley's "Ecce Homo." Arnold's "Essays in Criti- cism." 1866. George Eliot's " Felix Holt." Bryce's "Holy Roman Em- pire." Swinburne's " Poems and Ballads." Victor Hugo's "Toilers of the Sea." Freeman's "Norman Con- quest." 1867. William Morris's "Jason." 1868. William Morris's "Earthly Paradise." George Eliot's " Spanish Gypsy." Browning's "The Ring and the Book." English and European History 1861. Emancipation of Russian serfs. Victor Emanuel king of Italy. ^ 1866. War between Prussia and Austria. Italians occupy Venice. 286 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 1861-1870 — Continued American History American Literature 1869-1877. Grant president. 1868. Greeley's "Recollections." Miss Alcott's "Little Women." Miss Phelps's " Gates Ajar." 1869. Twain's "Innocents Abroad." Higginson's " Army Life in a Black Regiment." Parkman's "La Salle." 1870. Bret Harte's " Luck of Roar- ing Camp." Lowell's "Cathedral" and " Among my Books." Bryant's " Iliad." Taylor's "Faust," Part I. Warner's "Summer in a Garden." CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES 287 1861-1870 — Continued English and European Literature English and European History 1869. Blackmore's^LornaDoone." Arnold's "Culture and An- archy." 1870. Dante Rossetti's Poems. 1870. Franco-Prussian War. Fall of Napoleon HI. Republic in France. PART III THE NATIONAL EPOCH CHAPTER I GENERAL CONDITIONS WE have seen, that throughout the seventeenth century and most of the eighteenth, our seri- ous culture and literary utterance were to be found, if at all, chiefly in theocratic and democratic New England. The epoch of revolution brought to the front a notable group of statesmen, orators, publicists, mostly bred in the more aristocratic conditions of Virginia. Benjamin Franklin, shrewd and thrifty, practical-minded student of human nature and of science, is the first large and truly national figure in our literature. His flight from Boston is less important than his revolt against the narrowing Puritanism of the Mathers. His time was perhaps an age of action so strenuous and all-absorbing that the imagination could hardly claim its rights. The early decades of the nineteenth century found us still English, indeed still timidly provincial, in all save political relations. Even the creative artists. Brown, Irving, Cooper, began by avowedly copying English models, good or bad. They, and their friends, however, clearly indicate that in and about New York something like genial conditions for litera- ture earliest appeared. But meanwhile the generation of Channing in New England was bursting the outgrown fetters of 291 292 THE NATIONAL EPOCH the spirit. Without losing aught of serious devo- tion or unresting energy, the home-keeping children of the Puritans began to throw much of their force into free thought and its artistic expression. So the group led by Emerson and closed by Lowell were long the masters in American letters. It was a growth from deep and firm local roots, as nearly all the materials of Hawthorne's art, the whole career of Whittier, the Biglow poems, constantly illus- trate. It is the clearest mark of Lowell's great- ness, that he dropped his "pack of 'isms," outgrew his earlier limitations to become the poet, orator, the welcome ambassador plenipotentiary, of our national character, culture, and letters to Spain, to England, to the world. The epoch here indicated as the New England period opens about 1830, and its peculiar energy was merged at last into the far greater upheaval of the Civil War. In those very decades, the largest out- ward activity was the winning of the West ; but even that took largely the form of a struggle between the peculiar institution of the South and the anti- slavery convictions of New England. Not only free Kansas, but the other free states of the Northwest, were its visible result. When the actual appeal to arms came, the overwhelming force of the West over- balanced the gains of slave territory from the Mexi- can War, and decided the issue. Before the strife ended, the center of population, the political power, had shifted far away from both the older sections : from Baltimore toward southern Indiana. Lincoln, indeed, was a providential accident, a compromise candidate, elected against a divided majority. But GENERAL CONDITIONS 298 it is no mere accident, that of all our presidents chosen since, one has come from western New York> the rest from the central West. These last three decades (1870-1900) are doubt- less no less epochal. The political results of the war are assured. There is to be but one Anglo-Saxon nation on this continent. At the very close of the century, the brief struggle with Spain has left us one happy result, in effacing all vestige of hostile feeling between the veterans of the greater fraternal contest. The literature we are striving to create, then, is to be truly national. We are already remote indeed from the closing words of Hosea Biglow's first utterance : — " Ef I'd my way I hed ruther We should go to work an' part . . . Man hed ough' to put asunder Them thet God has noways jined; An' I shouldn't gretly wonder Ef there's thousands o' my mind." If there be any Separatist or strong sectional feeling,, the cleavage is traceable, to-day, rather between West and East. Even our.gravest political and social prob- lems, the struggle between advocates of gold and silver, the tariff questions, the threatening combina- tions of labor and capital, are quite without relation to Mason and Dixon's line. The financial center is still Manhattan, which in- deed in these last years has almost taken the place of London as the heart of the world's wealth, " the power-house of the line." Two other unique con- ditions existing at the mouth of the Hudson must be 294 THE NATIONAL EPOCH Centraliza- tion of the book trade. Commercial spirit in literature. alluded to. It is the chief dumping ground for the unassimilated immigrants from all lands, and the home of nearly all our leading magazines, secular and religious weeklies, of the wealthiest newspapers, and of the book trade proper. Even the New Eng- land Magazine itself has just removed thither from Boston. Our reading public has increased enormously. The demand for light fiction, in particular, seems unlimited, and the supply is no less copious. Great clevernoss is shown in making attractive the many illustrated magazines, while the weekly and daily papers are reaching into the same field. The larger romance in book form also wins readers by the hundred thousand. Each year a popular hit, itself perhaps an accident, brings as its reward, if not wealth, a larger income than Hawthorne or Mrs. Stowe ever attained. Most of this output is not regarded by any critic, nor by the thrifty, keen-witted craftsmen who pro- duce it, as a serious contribution to permanent liter- ature. It is not usually foul or vicious, but neither is it instructive and elevating. It is simply manu- factured to sell. For the less successful, every sort of hack work stands as a besetting temptation. The roaring metropolis, the spirit of commercialism, the craving for sudden fame and for luxurious expenditure, un- doubtedly engulf many, who a half-century ago would have been maturing quietly in villages. Per- haps among them are lost Emersons and Hawthornes. The earlier conditions are swept away forever. The older American forces in our population are scat- Lazarus, 1849-1887. GENERAL CONDITIONS 295 tered, the commingling of new elements hardly begun. We are confronting strange and serious con- ditions. The immigrants, and even their children, contrib- ute relatively little to our best thought and expres- sion. The failure of our German element, in particular, to give itself utterance in the highest forms of art, is emphasized by such brilliant apparent exceptions as Schurz, von Hoist, and Francke, all of whom came to us in mature life and are German still. Emma Lazarus, the loyal Jewish poetess, and the rich Emma Keltic imagination of Miss Guiney, are real though not large exceptions. The career of Boyesen is still Louise more remarkable, since he acquired our language in ^^fey mature life and developed a pure but independent 186I. English style. As he remembered and described his Boyesen, Norwegian boyhood, so Dr. Charles Eastman, an 1848-1895, educated American physician, has recorded his own childhood and youth in a wigwam — for he is a full- blooded Sioux. A far more important record of a larger life is Booker Washington's " Up from Sla- very," which recalls Frederick Douglass's "My Bond- age and My Freedom." These are, however, all really minor figures. Our literature, much more distinctly than our national life, as a whole, is Anglo- Saxon still. Whatever the reasons, most philosophic observers feel that our full national union, and expansion, have as yet by no means brought with them adequate literary expression; that the successful authors of our day are indeed tenfold more numerous, but also individually less important, than those of the pre- vious generation ; and that poetry, in particular, 296 THE NATIONAL EPOCH has lost much of its influence on the national life. This may be an age of normal transition, " The rest of the wind, between the flaws that blow." Possibly this leveling tendency of prosperous de- mocracy is, after all, beneficent. We all read, and nearly all think we can write. The average intelli- gence at least, if not the average taste, is swiftly rising. Our time may be like Franklin's and Wash- ington's, a period of action so compact that the imagination cannot now come to her due. Finally, much that seems now so novel may be but a delu- sion of perspective. Possibly each age repeats, that " there were giants in those days," while we are pygmies in comparison ; that the men before us could lead lives more restful, less complex, and so completer and happier than our own ! At any rate, this final chapter must have the vagueness, doubtless too the distortion, of a photographic fore- ground, — though by no means its disproportionate share of space. Brevity is doubly necessary, because most of the men and women of note in our letters, younger than Lowell, are still living, and happily active in good works. Interna- tional ten- dencies of English literature. It is apparent that our country is destined to be the most populous and powerful in that natural alliance of English-speaking nations which, with minor differences but in the consciousness of close kinship, is coming to dominate the world. It is probable, therefore, that our national literature may yet be more and more closely associated with that of England and of her colonies in a form equally under- GENERAL CONDITIONS 297 stood, and accepted as their own, by the greater part of mankind. Some signs of that far-off day may even be already pointed out. Franklin himself may be regarded as a homely cosmopolitan figure, the first prophet of that thrifty economic spirit which now dictates the combined or divergent action of nations in China, Africa, and in- deed all the world over. From the next generation we might mention Payne, who acted in England and John How- Scotland as much as at home, dyins: at last in Tunis. f5£^*.^^^' . . -> J Q 1792-1852. Of his sixty plays and operas only one strain of plaintive music is remembered, but that, surely, is equally familiar all the world over, wherever the Anglo-Saxon pitches his moving tent. " Home, Sweet Home " was originally a part of the opera "Clari, the Maid of Milan." Artist-authors like Allston have naturally migrated toward Italy. Irving, Story, Taylor, the younger Hawthorne, Julian Leland, might be thought of as more or less cosmo- J^J.^^^^^^ politan, but no one of them is a perfectly satisfactory illustration. Of course we do not refer to the elabo- rate transplanting of himself to a more congenial William social habitat, so successfully accomplished by the ^^^^o^^^ author of " Valentino " and " Sforza," nor to the easy 1848- ' crossing of our invisible northern frontier line by, ^^^^^ for instance, the welcome pilgrim from " The Forge Roberts, in the Forest." The long exile of William J. Still- ^^^ man, artist, essayist, agitator, archseologist, hardly James weakened his sturdy patriotism, but it did at least 1828^901. enable him to take a most independent objective view of his own youth, parents, and early environ- ment generally, in his remarkable autobiography. The memories, the stories, and the allegiance of 298 THE NATIONAL EPOCH Francis Eliza (Hodgson) Burnett, Francis Marion Crawford, 1854- Mrs. Burnett are quite equally divided, and a certain international breadth of view is often felt in her work. Even in the popular favorite of childhood, "Lord Fauntleroy," the charms of life as a demo- crat in a democracy, and as a great lord of the manor, are perhaps fairly balanced. This writer's A.nglo- American quality, however, is chiefly an acci- dent of birth and involuntary migration. The younger Henry James appears to have with- drawn his roots almost wholly from his native soil, without fixing them firmly anywhere else. But his lifelong devotion to psychological analysis seems in danger of making his view of all living men and women more like to pathological microscopy than to any ordinary human sympathy. He is a man of genius, unique in his methods, and must be studied attentively. Much of his work seems to be, even more clearly than Browning's, a step over the border from literature into science. Far more easily enjoyed is the work of Mr. Craw- ford. His aim, indeed, is rarely much higher than a refined and superficial diversion of his reader. In his many romances he has hardly revealed any deep convictions as to character and life. But his subjects, treatment, sympathies, are broadly cosmopolitan. He is least natural, and least happy, in his American stories and characters. Indeed, we may suspect that he is really and fully " at home " only on Italian soil. It would be an interesting query, what spot of earth the phrase actually calls up to him, or even in what language he habitually dreams. In recent years Mr. Crawford has carried the graces of a romancer's style into historical works on Rome and Sicily. His GENERAL CONDITIONS 299 " Via Crucis " is an ideal " historical novel " on a safe yet inspiring theme, the crusades. A still better example lies near our hand, and per- haps not quite out of reach. Mr. Kipling was born of English parents, as were many of our fellow-citi- zens, and much farther away than we, in almost every sense, from London. He has said more savage things about us than even Mr. Lowell. While the latter took the bitter mention of his home-country as " the Land of Broken Promise " out of his Agassiz poem, so the only notable utterance, doubtless, of Kipling's which he ever suppressed was the quatrain of his " Song of the English," intimating that our national bird is but a greedy and unclean vulture. But Mr. Kipling's half-American family are surely Rudyaid of " his own caste, race, and breed," as he puts it in ^o^^ ^^ ' the tale of Trejago's folly. But for the death of one Bombay, American kinsman, or the behavior of another, they ^oicott might still have their permanent home among us. In Baiestier, " Captains Courageous " he has set forth the speech, .< captains the way of life and thought, the living shapes of " mine Coura- own people," the Yankee fisher folk, more vividly, if ^^^^^' not more accurately, than any native poet or spinner of yarns has ever done. His patriotism is almost as much racial as national. He probably neither under- stands nor loves old England as fully as did Mr. Lowell. Wolcott Baiestier, had he lived, would per- haps have hastened and shared the evolution of an international, or even an Americanized, Kipling. Another man of English birth is of late years often mentioned in the same breath with Kipling. Mr. Thompson-Seton has aided materially in widening the range of our sympathies beyond the limits 300 THE NATIONAL EPOCH even of universal humanity. Many centuries before Coleridge's albatross was slain, moralists and poets had preached to us our kinship with all the ruder forms of organic life. The belief in transmigration of souls from tree or beast to man enforces such teach- ings. The werewolf, the satyr, the centaur, the hamadryad, the deliberately invented animal-fable that bears JEsop's name, had repeated the same lesson. Yet these two authors, both still young, are the first, if we except an occasional sketch like Charles Dudley Warner's "Hunting of the Deer," to enlist our sym- pathies fully on the side of the beast. They are quite independent of each other. The love and loyalty of Lobo to Bianca is offered to us as absolute realism, while the tale of Bagheera's and Kaa's friend- ship for Mowgli is frankly poetic and idealized. Of course both writers really ascribe human sentiments to creatures beyond the reach of our full comprehen- sion. Yet the artistic charm, freshness, and value of this new field can hardly be overstated. Such careers as these do not quite belong within the limits of any one national life. They are likely to grow more frequent and typical. Much more clearly cosmopolitan are the great historical essays of Irving, Prescott, Motley, and perhaps even of Parkman. We must, however, return to our better-defined theme. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE " Our Literature," Lowell, prose works, Vol. VI. " Sforza/* by W. W. Astor, Scribner. "Valentino," by W. W. Astor, Scribner. "Forge in the Forest," by Charles G. D. Roberts. William J. Stillman's "Autobiography," 2 vols., Houghton. " Captains Courageous," by Rudyard Kipling, Century. e CHAPTER II LITERATURE OF THE SOUTH THE more inspiring the future of our race and speech, the more imperative becomes our duty to record, to preserve, to understand, whatever is best in our past. This is especially true and pressing as to the old life of the South. While the North and West suffered terrible loss, and were profoundly modified, through the Civil War, the cataclysm was for the South all but destructive. That vanished phase of our civilization was the most picturesque, indeed the most retarded and mediaeval, form of Anglo-Saxon life then existing. The contrasts and interrelations between Black and White were per- haps as effective there as in India, though no Kip- ling, but only a hostile Nemesis in the person of Mrs. Stowe, arose to give them adequate artistic expression. Indeed, the South, before the war, vaguely conscious of hostile criticism from all sides, shrank even from friendly revelation or discussion of its real social con- ditions. Mrs. Eastman's "Aunt Phillis's Cabin, or Mary Southern Life as It Is," was a natural though inef- (He^^er- ' ^ ° son) f ective retort under extreme provocation, but probably Eastman, never had much sale in the Southern states. Even to-day, such an author as Page or Harris reaches, through Yankee publishers, an audience nine-tenths of whom are alien to the writer's own traditions. Hence we were in imminent danger of losing the 301 1818- 302 THE NATIONAL EPOCH Samuel Adams Drake, 183^ Augustus Baldwin Longstreet, 1790-1870. Joseph G. Baldwin, 1811-1864. Theodore O'Hara, 1820-1867. Philip Pendleton Cooke, 1816-1850. Richard Henry Wilde, 1789-1847. Edward Coate Pinkney, 1802-1828. Stephen Collins Foster, 1826-1864. materials for a full understanding of that vanished life. Much that ought even now to be promptly done requires capacity less rare than the poet's or ro- mancer's. Indeed, for the future student, a faithful collection like Drake's " New England Legends and Folklore " may be more useful than the most con- scientious studies of local detail in the form of fiction, like Mrs. Austin's " Standish of Standish." - A few truthful if crude sketches, like Judge Longstreet's " Georgia Scenes " or Baldwin's " Flush Times in Alabama and Mississippi," antedate the war. The purely literary output of the Southern states has not been large, and the qualit}^ even of the best work is rather uneven. Thus O'Hara's ringing stanzas, called "The Bivouac of the Dead," were actually composed over a handful of gallant but unknown Kentuckians, who fell in a cause not now generally defended as worthy, at Buena Vista. Some even of these verses deserve only oblivion. But some, again, have been inscribed on soldiers' monuments the world around, and may well be intoned, as the dirge of martial heroes, till war shall be known no more. In other cases even a single airy rhyme like Cooke's " Florence Vane," or Wilde's " My Life is like a Summer Rose," will hardly survive much longer. Pinkney's name and songs are perhaps somewhat less strange to our ears. Most remark- able is it that Stephen C. Foster, who at nineteen wrote " Old Folks at Home," and later in life com- posed " Suwanee River," " Old Kentucky Home," etc., was born in Pennsylvania and lived in New York City ; where, also, originated, still earlier, the name and refrain of "Dixie." On the other hand it must LITERATURE OF THE SOUTH 303 not be forgotten that we owe our chief national song, "The Star- Spangled Banner," to Francis Key of Francis Maryland. ^°^,^y' The Civil War produced no Southern war chant of such inspiring power as Mrs. Howe's " Battle Hymn of the Republic," while defeat was too crushing, and long too bitter, to make possible any utterance fairly responsive to Francis M. Finch's " Love and tears for the Blue, Tears and love for the Gray.'* On the other hand, no Northern poetry could have the strength of that despairing regret long felt, and uttered, by the vanquished. We may even be glad that Will Thompson fought on the losing side at Will Henry Gettysburg, since he could not else have iS^^^°"' " heard across the tempest loud The death cry of a nation lost ! " (Stedman's " Anthology," pp. 508-509.) Especially identified with the lost cause are the lyrics of Father Ryan, notably " The Sword of Lee " and "The Conquered Banner." We can all repeat now : — "Furl that banner softly, slowly! Treat it gently — it is holy, For it droops above the dead." The best-known group of Southern poets of the war period is centered about a veteran as grizzled, pictur- esque, and fearless as the Mark Twain of to-day. ^ William Gilmore Simms, a large, generous, and lov- William able man, made a lifelong but unsuccessful attempt ^^^^^^g^^ to earn a subsistence from his pen. In his best days 1806-1870. his readers were chiefly in the North. Indeed, 304 THE NATIONAL EPOCH though so heartily devoted to his native Charles- ton, it was on his annual visits in Manhattan that he gained courage and won a market for his work, while his attempts to create Southern peri- odicals were all foredoomed to costly failure. Thus his great Indian romance, " Yemassee," and his Revolu- tionary tale, " The Partisan," were published, both in 1835, each in two volumes, in New York. Even so, the goodly estate of Woodlands, halfway from Charleston to Augusta, where his well-beloved anti- slavery guest, William Cullen Bryant, later saw Simms's negro slaves living in prosperous content, was acquired, still in the same year, not through litera- ture at all, but by marriage. The story how Simms, bereft of income, several children, and wife, during the Civil War, finally saw his home and library of ten thousand books go up in fire during Sherman's march, is really tragic. Disheartened at last, he yet toiled steadily on with pen and voice to the very end. Simms was imperfectly educated, never acquired the habit of revision, and was rarely allowed time to prepare even his materials and plots. His strong, crude, swift style has none of the finer graces neces- sary for poetry. His imagination, however, is at times almost Titanic. The great scenes in " Yemassee," especially, suffice to set him far above any romancer of his type save, perhaps. Cooper. In such passages his Indians appeal to us with resistless power, how- ever unreal they may be. But even in that book there are wearisome and useless characters, weak, dragging scenes, and others full of fruitless horrors. Reticence, artistic restraint, polish, were meaningless Timrod, 1829-1867. LITERATURE OF THE SOUTH 305 words to Simms. Yet his character and work are both important for all thoughtful Americans. In the later fifties a little social and literary club used to meet in Charleston, perhaps chiefly to hear its president, Simms, discourse largely on letters and all other topics. Among the members were Profes- Basil sor Gildersleeve, — then fresh from his German uni- GiWe-^'^ versity, and now our most widely known classical sleeve, i83i- scholar, — Henry Timrod, and Paul Hayne. Each Timrod, of these three lost, like their leader, all save hope, 1792-1838. in the Civil War. Timrod was the son of an intelli- Henry- gent Charleston mechanic, a bookbinder, who had himself a gift for verse, best employed in a ringing protest against Nullification in 1833, a poem which seems surely to be from Whittier's inkstand : — " Sons of the Union, rise ! Stand ye not recreant by." In the son the refinement, the intense idealism, the sensitive taste, of the poet were as pre- dominant as they were wanting in Simms. Escaping from the hated practice of law, he found no professorship like Lowell, but a humble career as a private tutor. It is pleasant to recall that Ticknor and Fields published his few verses in 1860. In 1864 he became the happy editor of a paper in Columbia, a husband, and a father. Next year his son died, Columbia was destroyed by Sherman's arm}^, Timrod was reduced to utter poverty, if not to absolute starvation. The little volume of three to four thousand verses, published with a loving memoir by Hayne, in 1873, includes some of our purest lyric utterances. Among 306 THE NATIONAL EPOCH the longer poems, " The Cotton Boll," with its true local color, is of far more value than the ambitious and early " Vision of Poesy," unless we can read out of the latter the singer's own inner story. But, especially, a fierce word now and then hurled at our- selves, like '' ruffian foe," " the Goth," ^' the Hun," should nowise mar our full admiration for the war poetry of Timrod. He would have been a generous victor, though it seems a bolder prophetic creation of fancy than Macaulay's famous New Zealander, sketch- ing the ruins of St. Paul, when he surely foresees that " the Goth shall cling To his own blasted altar stones, and crave Mercy ; and we shall grant it, and dictate The lenient future of his fate There, where some rotting ships and crumbling quays Shall one day mark the Port which ruled the Western seas." Such feeling is already historic only, but " Spring," and especially "Christmas," with its refrain of " Peace, Peace," makes lasting appeal to all. Hayne cheerfully accepts, for his dead friend, Richard H. Stoddard's judgment that Timrod was the ablest poet the South had produced. Though of the highest social rank, nephew and foster-son of that Robert Y. Hayne who faced Webster in the Senate, he shared his friend's utter poverty when the war ended. His sturdier strength enabled him to turn his back on the scene of havoc and later of negro misgovernment, and make a happy home for many years in a rude cabin among the pine barrens of Georgia. He has left ten times as much verse as Timrod, not all valuable, nor even natural and strong. LITERATURE OF THE SOUTH 307 But in him too there is much real poetry, much true local color. His " Forgotten ! " remembers with noble pride the failure of " Men who strove like gods." We must recognize the same large sincerity with which Lowell exalts Lincoln, in the lines of Hayue on Stonewall Jackson : — " soul 1 that on our time Wrought, in the calm magnificence of power, To ends so noble." Lanier, the most richly gifted man of the group, Sidney was perhaps also one of the costly sacrifices of the {^^YssL war, like Timrod, since he contracted at Petersburg in 1863 the disease against which he fought for eigh- teen years. From childhood he was devoted to music. His two kindred passions were both cruelly starved in the utter poverty that befell the South after the war. The pathetic story of his life cannot be coherently told in brief space. In Baltimore, after long years, he found opportu- nity for thorough study of Anglo-Saxon and English poetry, which he required as part of his large prep- aration. His " Science of English Verse," 1880, includes a most technical and ingenious study of rhythm, tone-color of vowels and consonants, and kindred problems. He believed in a closer union of pure music and poetic utterance than has ever been achieved, perhaps closer than is attainable by the ar- tist, or intelligible to other men. The ridicule that be- fell his "Centennial Cantata," however, was certainly unfair, because the words, though published alone, were a mere libretto, intended to be heard only as 308 THE NATIONAL EPOCH sung to Dudley Buck's music. This opportunity for distinction in 1876 came to Lanier through the gener- ous friendship of Bayard Taylor, and first made him widely known. But he had hardly begun to use in poetry the matured results of his scientific studies, when the struggle to live and breathe at all became hopeless. No life in our annals gives so profound an impression of rare genius never adequately revealed. There is relatively little, even in Lanier's small volume of verse, which can be of general interest. Perhaps such music as that of " Chattahoochee," com- pared with Tennyson's brook, will indicate that Lanier, had he lived, might have rivaled Swinburne in the harmonic and rhythmic effects of verse. " The Marshes of Glynn," we are told, can never be forgotten by a reader who knows also the actual sounds and lights of a Southern swamp. " How Love sought for Hell" is probably the clearest utterance of his lofty ethical convictions. He felt that he had, waiting for utterance, the noble truths which can alone justify the most melodious forms. Of that confidence he has perhaps left us less ade- quate justification in his verses than in prose, which includes some flashing critical analyses of William Morris, Swinburne, Whitman, and others. It is no wonder that the most intensely and purely poetic voice from the Southland, in our own days, should cry to Lanier : — John " Ere Time's horizon-line was set, Banister Somewhere in space our spirits met." Tabb, 1845- Any soul to whom the ecstasy of lyric passion has ever come might well dream that he had met, or hope LITERATURE OF THE SOUTH 309 yet to meet, in "wind-swept space," the dauntless, spotless soul of the soldier, musician, poet, and true lover, Sidney Lanier. A most remarkable change of sectional allegiance is seen in the career of Albert Pike. Born in Bos- Albert Pike, ton and educated at Harvard, he early became, ^^^^^^^i- through explorations, then through final choice, identified with the Southwest. His proslavery and anti- Yankee feelings are expressed in stirring verse and earnest prose. He not only served against Mex- ico in 1847, but later led a troop of Indians under the Confederate flag. His early environment is a curious gloss upon his song : — " For Dixie's land we take our stand, And live or die for Dixie 1 " In his tenderer and more' dreamy moods he is a true poet. Mr. Stedman, who admires him, quotes, in the "Anthology," his "To the Mockingbird." Natu- rally, such a poem suffers by the comparison with the immortal "Nightingale" of Keats. Yet the Occiden- tal bird's note is no mere echo, but a genuine and truly poetic utterance. Except the throbbing, yet finished quatrains and sonnets of Father Tabb, which remind us of Landor's best cameos in verse, there is little in our latest poetry to be assigned to the South. The most popular singer to-day is Frank Stanton. A glance into Sted- Frank man's " Anthology " will discover sweet utterances g?^7 of his in at least three tones : national patriotism in 1857- " One Country," wedded love in " A Little Way " — paui and a "Plantation Ditty." Paul Dunbar, the negro Laurence poet, was born, long after the war, in Ohio. I872- 310 THE NATIONAL EPOCH Richard Malcolm Johnston, 1822-1898. John Esten Cooke, 1830-1886. Joel Chandler Harris, 1848- While New England had to wait two centuries before the grim earlier chapters of her story, par- ticularly the relations of the Puritans with the Indians, the Quakers, and their own brethren ac- cused of witchcraft, could receive artistic treatment, the terrible break in the Southern civilization makes a prompter filial action necessary, as to the remoter or the recent past. Perhaps it was the excellent Yankee school seventy years ago in Powelton, Georgia, that lifted Richard Johnston from the contented ignorance of that plan- tation life which his childhood shared, and which in later years he has so delightfully recalled. Readers of St, Nicholas need no introduction to his Little Ike Templin, while Mr. Billy Downs and his set give delight, and food for serious thought also, to riper students of sociology. Though a professor of belles lettres in Maryland State University by 1851, Colonel Johnston really began his literary career as late as Dr. Holmes. He is perhaps the happiest example of those men, already mature in 1861, who not merely outlived, like Hayne, but outgrew, the immediate in- fluence of the war, and fully accepted their own place in a new order. He was the patriarch amid a goodly group. Few, indeed, of our authors have done more valuable work in our own time than this popular Southern "school." Their artistic realism has com- pletely supplanted the artificial and stilted romance best exemplified in Cooke's "Virginia Comedians." Joel Chandler Harris will be remembered best for his Uncle Remus, who, though a happy invention, is typically real and important. The harmless wit, the roguishness, the deft pathetic touches, the fre- LITERATURE OF THE SOUTH 311 quent gleam of poetic beauty or symbolic meaning, in the tales of Bre'r Rabbit and his friends or foes, are of course largely Mr. Harris's own creation, though the folklore and tradition are genuine at the core, and all the elements blend in the delicious result. All such masterly work has its share in that loyal and effective artistic defense of the old regime which is so happily in progress. Mr. Harris has a much larger career than that of the humorist alone. His work occasionally crosses the field of Mr. Page's books. He has even written a history : " Georgia, from the Invasion of De Soto to Present Times." While Mr. Harris was and is a Georgian, Mr. Page Thomas was born in Virginia. Too young to serve even in paie°^i853. the last exhaustive draught of boys and graybeards in defense of the South, he has shown truthfully in his " Little Confederates " how intense was the feeling of the women, and of the children hardly less. The softening effect of time is felt in most of Mr. Page's work. His most sustained novel, however, "Red Rock," is, even in its subtitle, a serious picture of reconstruction. It shows the stanchest attachment to the section of his birth, and the background, at least, is decidedly gray still, rather than blue. Some of Mr. Page's short stories, as "Two Prisoners," show mastery of artistic and pathetic effects quite apart from his original Southern field. James Lane Allen is a popular member of the same James Laue general group, though Kentucky is a border state, which did not as a whole share in great revolt. His most recent work shows an intrusion of theol- ogy, of psychological problems generally, which may endanger his artistic career. 312 THE NATIONAL EPOCH Ruth McEnery Stuart, 1856- George Washington Cable, 1844- Mary Noailles Murfree (" Charles Egbert Craddock"), 1850- Marion J. (Evans) Wilson, 1835- Margaret (Junkin) Preston, 1825-1897. Mrs. Stuart barely shares the personal memories of the war time, and there are no deep scars from it upon her life or work. Indeed, she might at times seem to count among our purely humorous writers, though the pathos almost always comes in before her merry tale is done, and her sense of form and proportion is true and line. Louisiana and Arkan- sas are her home fields, and her free Keltic imagina- tion illuminates them both. Mr. Cable has reproduced in nearly all his genial books the life and dialect of the Louisiana Creoles. This is a subject apart, though not wholly remote, from the general life in the land of cotton and rice. His accuracy has been rather sharply questioned by some Southern critics, but his art certainly makes effective appeal to our alien ears. Much more austerely aloof from all men stand the mountaineers of Tennessee. Even aided by Miss Murfree's goodly shelf of books, with their sturdy masculine figures, their somewhat monotonous dialect and background, we do not "fully overcome that sense of extreme remoteness, which is, indeed, without doubt, a part of the artist's intention. There is a large creative force, a poetic effect of atmosphere, in these books, which may yet give them a revival of popularity and a permanent value. The list of Southern authors is by no means exhausted. Marion Evans was once a most popular story-writer, and "St. Elmo" is still called for. Mrs. Preston, a refined novelist, would have wished to be counted with the section that gave her birth. F. H. Smith's wide wanderings with palette and pen might relegate him to the cosmopolitans, but his LITERATURE OF THE SOUTH 313 Colonel Carter is as unforgettable as any Southern Francis gentleman of the old school. The latest popular ^^f^^'"'^'' favorite, Miss Johnston, has time before her to write 183&- a whole cycle of romances at her present speed. Her jXi^ton English style is formed on excellent models. Her 1870- taste for horrors is not so pronounced as Simms's. But her imagination is even more riotous, and has little regard as yet for the humble realities of early Virginian life, or for the limits beyond which even a novel of action may not drag the breathless reader, or "the lady's silken gown." It was a masculine poet — Pindar — to whom a preceptress gave the warning, " Sow by the handful, not from the sack." BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE " Life of William Gilmore Simms," by W. P. Trent, Houghton, in " American Men of Letters." Timrod's poems, with memoir, Houghton. Hayne's poems, Lothrop. Lanier's music and poems, letters, " The English Novel," " Science of English Verse," Scribner. Poems of J. B. Tabb, Small. Joel Chandler Harris's books are published by Houghton, Scribner, Century, and Appleton. Thomas Nelson Page's works, Scribner. James Lane Allen's publisher is Macmillan. Ruth McEnery Stuart's stories. Harper, Century, Lippincott. Cable's works, by Scribner. Miss Murfree (" Craddock "), Houghton, Harper, Macmillan. See in general, William M. Baskervill's "Southern Writers," Manly's " Southern Literature," and T. N. Page's " The Old South." I CHAPTER III LATER NEW ENGLAND THE living patriarchs of New England letters, like Dr. Hale and Colonel Higginson, may perhaps be considered as the slow-passing rear guard of the Emersonian phalanx. Mr. Hale's " Man without a Country " was the most popular short story of our war epoch, in fact, one of the most famous and effective American stories ever written. His ac- tivity ever since, as indeed long before, has been primarily that of the preacher and organizer of social reforms. His historical work, though severely criticised for inaccuracy, is always readable, and, like much of his verse and fiction, inspiringly patriotic in tone. His " New England Boyhood " has already an historic, almost an antiquarian, value. Colonel Higginson's life seems yet longer, for its activity began very early. Near kinsman of the Channings, vitally influenced by Margaret Fuller, whom he has loyally repaid, he was just in time to have his boyish verse wisely declined, as he assures us, by the elder Dial. His parsonage in Worcester, Massachusetts, was long a station on the " Underground Railway," i.e. a harboring place for fugitive slaves. He was wounded, and impris- oned, as the leader in an attempt to rescue a recap- tured bondsman from the very stronghold of law and government in his own state. He was deep in John 314 LATER NEW ENGLAND 315 Brown's secrets, and risked his life in an unsuccessful second raid, vainly essayed to rescue some of Brown's comrades from their later death on the gallows. When men with negro blood were permitted to enlist in regiments under white officers, for the Civil War, the " young curate from Worcester " came naturally to the front. His "Army Life in a Black Regiment " is one of the most instructive and humane chapters in the grim tale of war. Since then his career has been essentially in litera- ture, though anything but that of a cloistered scholar. He is a lifelong champion of woman suffrage, a fear- less advocate of pure politics, of the poor man's rights, of the golden rule. His literary touch, especially as an essayist, is peculiarly graceful, sen- sitive and light. His tact almost hides his audacity. Radical in nearly all else, he is one of our few effective advocates and exemplars of classical and humanistic culture. While his enjoyment of fight- ing is as undeniable as Whittier's, his optimism is almost as unfailing as Emerson's. The " Cheerful Yesterdays " of such a man are a happy chapter of our literary chronicles, and emphasize the closest relations of letters and life. In Arlington, a beautiful suburb of Boston, still lives the favorite of our boyhood, J. T. Trowbridge, John author of such popular tales as " Cudjo's Cave " and xXbridge, " Coupon Bonds," written in war time, and of many a I827- good story since. His " Vagabonds," and " Darius Greene," are only the best known of many poems, original in melody and character. Horace An old favorite of children, too, especially for his g^u^^er books of travel, was H. E. Scudder, who has also been I83s-i902. 316 THE NATIONAL EPOCH Charles Eliot Norton, 1827- Francis James Child, 1825-1896. Julia Ward Howe, 1819- Adeline Button Train Whitney, 1824- a most devoted and modest editor of our chief New England authors. His life of Lowell is the latest and largest of many similiar studies. He was the most useful and industrious of bookmen. His death is one of the latest recorded in these pages, and is deeply felt by many younger writers, whose generous mentor he has been so long. The accepted living representative of culture and general scholarship in literature is Professor Norton, the surviving friend of all the three Smith profes- sors, Ticknor, Longfellow, and Lowell, translator of Dante, author of "Church Building in the Middle Ages," highly useful as editor of his friends' letters and speeches, the sympathetic father confessor of countless younger authors or scholars. As professor of the history of art, he has taught above all else the inseparable relation between the fine arts and the moral life of community or individual. It is the lesson which our race most needs. A heavy recent loss from the same circle was the death of the well-beloved Professor Child, editor of the British poets, whose unwearied search saved from oblivion many of the English ballads included in his exhaust- ive and monumental edition. Mrs. Howe is the most venerable and the most illustrious of literary women in Boston. Her long career as philanthropist, reformer, and likewise as poet, are worthy of her " Battle Hymn," the supreme utterance of the war. A venerable survivor, also, is Mrs. Whitney of Milton, another suburb of Boston. Her direct influ- ence with girls is doubtless waning already, like Miss Edgeworth's, Mrs. Sigourney's, or Miss Sedgwick's LATER NEW ENGLAND 317 before her. She is indeed avowedly rather a moralist than an imaginative writer, and each generation usu- ally produces its own preachers and critics of life, as of literature, neglecting even the best of other days. Yet there is much wit, as well as womanly wisdom, in her goodly row of volumes. The widow of J. T. Fields, so long the "Maecenas" James among publishers, has made valuable supplements to I?^^?** his intimate "Yesterdays with Authors," and has I8I6-I88I. written the completed life of Mrs. Stowe. She has ^Adlms) a modest place also among writers of verse. Fields, 1834- These men and women are nearly all past seventy, Mrs. Howe even more than eighty. When we seek for their successors we realize how strong is the outward current. Mr. Aldrich appears already to belong to a former Thomas literary generation, and indeed his pen seems to have ^idrich gathered rust for some years past. The Portsmouth 1837- career of the "Bad Boy" is familiar to all young readers. As editor of the Atlantic his figure became as familiar to Bostonians as Phillips Brooks's gigantic frame, or the gaunt shape of E. E. Hale. Mr. Aldrich recalls a previous incarnation on the banks of old Nile ; and indeed, so far as pure and serious art, with a dash of dreamy idealism still, may drift from the austerer tradition of Puritanism, he has departed. He never preached, in any sense. His workmanship is exquisite, but never painfully so. His lyric verse is tender, yet touched with the light-hearted humor which colors his whole view of life. His best short stories have a large vein of mischief and mystification. His longer novels perhaps lack somewhat the justifi- cation of broad view or large ethical purpose, but all 318 THE NATIONAL EPOCH Barrett WendeU, 1855- Nathaniel Southgate Shaler, 1841- Frank Bolles, 185&-1894. John Burroughs, 1837- " Olive Thorne " Miller, 1831- Bradford Torrey, 1843- William Ellery Channing, 1818-1901. Franklin Benjamin Sanborn, 1831- Julian Hawthorne, 1846- the too little that he writes is enjoyed. His firm, light touch is on whatever he does. It would be far easier to apply the word indolent to him than to Lowell. He would first defiantly question our right to work him against his will, then more soberly assure us that nothing can be done aright save when the spirit moves. But the spirit is Ariel. An essayist and critic like Professor Wendell seems to stand quite alone, even in Cambridge. Pro- fessor Shaler is perhaps as much a man of letters as of science, while his " United States of America " combines the two in useful fashion, connecting ge- ology with the present life of our people. Both Harvard and literature suffered in the premature death of Frank Bolles. Among all the happy disci- ples of Thoreau, interpreters of outdoor life through the microscope and telescope, like John Burroughs, Mrs. Miller, Bradford Torrey, he, the youngest, had the most unique literary or personal quality, perhaps the most poetic nature. He seems still Chocorua's quiet tenant-in-common with squirrels and birds. In Concord the sturdily willful poet, Channing, survived into the twentieth century, and the yet more sturdy old Abolitionist, Frank Sanborn, still gives and takes the heaviest blows with quiet enjoyment. Julian Hawthorne, with much of his father's gloomy imagination, much less than his father's artistic con- trol and reticence, has written vivid but often crude romances, with little ethical significance. He is not at home in Puritanic Concord, certainly, hardly in America at all. There are a number of graceful and thoughtful writers pf prose in the Wellesley faculty: Miss LATER NEW ENGLAND 319 Scudder and Miss Bates, of the English department, vida are perhaps the most widely known. Miss Bates's ?^^J^° volume on American literature is full of just such isei- vivid local color and antiquarian lore as Alice Morse Le^e^^ter Earle's delightful books. Miss Scudder's " Introduc- 1859- tion" is the best-proportioned, most philosophic, and alluring work in brief compass upon English litera- ture known to the present writer. In Boston itself the most familiar younger figure is probably Judge Grant. His " Opinions and Reflec- Robert tions" — of a social leader in the city of culture— ^^a»^' ^^52- suffer a bit from the inevitable comparison with the breakfast-table talk by an older critic of life. His stories have ranged from popular boys' books to the merciless and even cynical if not despairing realism of his "Unleavened Bread," whose heroine is the sever- est criticism of American womanhood known to us. In prose and occasional verse Mr. Grant is witty, keen, reflective, instructive. Boyle O'Reilly is still missed, though he remained John Boyle to the end, like his cousin "Miles," an Irishman, f^^Jj) a Bohemian, a cosmopolitan good fellow. His " Yarn Charles G. of the Amber Whale " he picked up on the New ^2^^\^8 Bedford vessel that saved him from the life of a Fenian convict. Miss Wilkins has lived in Randolph, not many Mary miles away, while Miss Jewett divides her year be- ^^^^^g tween Boston and her home in South Berwick, 1862- Maine. Both are widely known for their exact jg^^^t ^°^ and interesting studies of the humbler phases in New 1849- > England rural life. Miss Wilkins is usually a some- what depressing realist. Miss Jewett's landscape '^as a happier colorinsj ; she is more poetic^ even 320 THE XATIOXAL EPOCH Tomantic, in spirit, and her characters have a richer endowment of Yankee humor. Her range is also somewhat wider, and she has even written one care- ful historical monograph, "The Story of the Nor- mans." Miss Brown is perhaps already to be set in the same group. Historians, like Schouler, Rhodes, John T. Morse, are mentioned elsewhere. Antiquarians, specialists, men eminent in curious research, are not rare in Bos- ton, and are abundant in Cambridge. President Eliot has not only been the reorganizer of the uni- versity, the foremost reformer in American education generally, but has defended his theses with persuasive voice and vigorous pen for thirty years and more. All this, however, is rather scientific scholarship than literature as a fine art. Perhaps the latter no longer has a local habitation an)rwhere. Certainly the Boston or Cambridge of a half-century ago is a memory only. Pilgrimages are made thither, just as to Concord or even to Plymouth, to visit the homes, the haunts, and the graves of the departed. Mrs. Howe's daughter, Mrs. Richards, now living in Gardiner, Maine, has used her inherited gift as a writer of exquisite child stories. " Captain Janu- ary " is a masterpiece. The poetry of the sea and shore by Mrs. Thaxter will always be associated with the Isle of Shoals. Mrs. Spofford, long an Atlan- tic essayist, author of strong and imaginative ro- mances, still lives in Newburyport, Massachusetts. Her recent volume of poems, " In Titian's Garden," reveals, even by its title, her love of rich and roman- tic coloring. Mrs. Ward, an intense religious nature, with an Later xew exglaxd 321 audacious vividness of imagination, is associated Elizabeth with Andover, but now abides with her husband in ^^^^^^ Newton, Massachusetts. In temperament she seems Ward, a survival of the most strenuous Puritanism, though ^ she adds to it a wide culture and much artistic power. Her ''Come Forth," in which Mr. Ward collaborated, makes Lazarus the center of a romantic love story. The danger in such patching of old cloth of gold with new calico is intimated elsewhere in alluding to "Ben Hur." Mrs. Ward's poetry is perhaps the clearest expression of her ardent, confident, half- mystical genius. In Rhode Island was born H. H. Brownell, whose Henry war lyrics are still favorites. " The Bay Fight " and Broken " The River Fight " are chapters from his own expe- 1820-1872. rience. Charles T. Brooks, for nearly forty years a Charles Unitarian preacher in Newport, Rhode Island, was Brooks^ best known for his translations. His version of 1813-1883. " Faust" is overshadowed, perhaps unduly, by Bayard Taylor's skillful rendering. By right of birth, at least, the little state of Roger Williams may lay claim to a much more famous man. G. W. Curtis received at Brook Farm, and later at George Concord, the best part of his boyish education. His curtis"^ " Nile Notes " (1851) and "Howadji in Syria " (1852) I83i-i892. were so fresh and vivid in coloring as to draw some amusing criticism on "moral grounds." Returning from his travels, Curtis plunged into the thick of the antislavery agitation ; but in the last decade before the war that no longer meant isolation. Some- thing of mob violence he was still in time to suffer. His remarkable powers as a public speaker were in constant demand, and he was one of the last and 322 THE NATIONAL EPOCH greatest recruits in the true old guard of " Lyceum lecturers." No voice was so clear and hopeful a trumpet call to our own dreamful youthtime. A place might well be claimed for him, too, among our greatest public orators. In state and national con- ventions his organlike voice was known, and heark- ened unto perforce. Curtis wrote a few pleasant verses, but made no claim to be a poet. He published several society novels, now nearly forgotten, save the tender personal sentiment and faded local color of "Prue and I." From his Easy Chair in Harper^ b Magazine^ for thirty-five years, he preached social and political righteousness, with a genial grace, a sparkle of wit, and a wide-ranging culture, which raise many of these utterances almost to the level of permanent literature. Mr. Curtis did not, to any such extent as Mr. Bryant, repine at destiny for making him after all rather a journalist than an author. His political services, especially as the editor of Harper s Weekly during and after the war, can hardly be over- estimated. Indeed, this life is probably the best example we could cite, for a happy and fruitful effect from that resistless maelstrom current toward Man- hattan already often mentioned. The leading advo- cate of reform in our civil service, a fearless idealist in politics, he was often a target of vulgar ridicule and of fierce criticism. But he is now generally accepted as the all but faultless type of the scholarly, public-spirited, independent author-citizen. Arthur Hardy, a Dartmouth professor of mathe- matics, excited high hopes long ago by his beautiful LATER NEW ENGLAND 323 " Passe Rose," a swift-moving romance of Charle- magne's time. Recently he has published a small volume of intimately personal verse. As minister to Persia, and to Greece, he has now been long absent, and all but silent. The best-known man of letters in New Haven, Mr. Donald Mitchell, has reached his eightieth year. He is still ^ucheii best known for his youthful "Dream Life" and 1822- " Reveries of a Bachelor." His long and cheerful career in literature is pleasantly crowned by his reminiscences of " American Lands and Letters." By his great work on Chaucer, and his excellent life of Cooper, Professor Lounsbury has won a very Thomas high position among scholarly essayists. President ^^gbur^ Hadley, Professor Perrin, and other Yale men, are 1838- able writers and speakers. Yale, however, has never had a chair at all answering to the Smith professor- ship at Harvard. The largest name among her recent dead, William D. Whitney, belongs to scholar- ship rather than to literature. The heaviest loss suffered by Hartford since the departure of Mrs. Stowe is the death of Mr. Warner. Charles In him we find still the serious foundation of the ^^rner Puritan nature ; but of asceticism, bigotry, intoler- 1829-1900. ance, there is no trace. The pure humor, indicative of a serene yet sensitive nature plays lightly over every page he wrote. The story of his happy childhood in the country he has told us in " Being a Boy." He had a varied early manhood, as civil engineer on the Western frontier, practicing law in Chicago, then as editor in Hartford. He made his entry into literature late, .atnd^ as it were, accidentally, being persuaded by popu- 324 THE NATIONAL EPOCH lar applause to make a book out of sketches which he had at first modestly contributed to his paper, the Courant. The control of the newspaper he always retained, and was also an editor of Harper's Maga- 2ine, 1884-1898. He was all his life an eager but critical reader, a frequent traveler, a keen student of men and manners. Mr. Warner put an extremely modest estimate upon his own creative work, and his permanent place in our literature may not be large. His personal influ- ence on all who knew him was truly inspiring. He was the most conscientious of workers. When already an old man, with many divergent interests, he assumed the editorship of the ambitious " Library of the World's Best Literature," in thirty octavo vol- umes. During the rapid completion of this task he discussed carefully the assignment of every name. As the original essays arrived, he gave to each at least one uninterrupted critical reading. Every error or fault of style was noted, and revision insisted upon. To his staff of devoted assistants no large editorial responsibility was ever abandoned. Mr. Warner was by no means a man of the boldest creative imagination. He was not a poet at all. The form of the novel he deliberately adopted, quite late in his career, expressly to criticise most effectively certain dangerous phases of metropolitan life. Ther^ is something of the clever amateur in his rather trans- parent plots, as in Dr. Holmes's ; but his shrewd observation, and his genial philosophy of life, make his three stories valuable, chiefly as realistic studies by a keen yet kindly critic. LATER NEW ENGLAND 325 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE E. E. Hale's fifty books have many publishers. " Man with- out a Country," Little, Caldwell, Estes. Colonel Higginson's works, Houghton. Frank Bolles's works, Houghton. "Un- leavened Bread," by Robert Grant, Scribner. Aldrich's works, Houghton. " Come Forth," by Mr. and Mrs. Ward, Houghton. Curtis's works, Harper. " Passe Rose," by A. S. Hardy, Hough- ton. Warner's essays by Houghton, novels by Harper. See in general, Vedder's " American Writers.'* CHAPTER IV THE WEST THE West is after all but the swift-grown child of the East. There is no sharp line between, such as slavery drew about the South. There were but two notable pauses or eddies of the steady occidental stream : in the Ohio Valley, and at the Pacific coast itself. From either the back current is still strong, as we have remarked : and especially so for the literary artist, as we shall note repeatedly. Early waifs in this Eastward tide were, for instance, Alice Gary and her less fluent, more ardent, gifted sister, Phoebe. Both came from Ohio to New York in 1852. Their city home became the center of a social and literary circle as pure and earnest as their verse. Much of the elder sister's work, in particular, was crude fiction and hasty hack work, already forgotten. Their utterance, more successfully at least than their outward career, threw its gentle force against the drift cityward. Children of the middle West they were still to the last. The critics usually deny them greatness ; but many men and women who dare praise aloud only "the bards sublime," know by heart, and murmur in lonely hours, " An Order for a Picture," and especially " Nearer Home." One brief personal utterance of Sappho, aglow with a flame far less pure, has come to us across the billowy centuries that have closed over THE WEST 327 almost all the epics and tragedies, the stately galleons of antiquity. A much later acquisition of New York from Ohio is Miss Thomas, whose lyric verse, laden with the Edith rich vocabulary of Elizabethan English, full of ex- ^^*j^^* quisite gleams from outdoor life, and of deep spiritual 1854- insight through suffering, is perhaps the most elab- orately artistic utterance we now have. "The In- verted Torch," in particular, contains passages not wholly unworthy of " Lycidas," " In Memoriam," or any great threnody of our language. The purely literary career that is most com- pletely typical of our last four decades is doubtless Mr. Howells's. Born in an Ohio village, bred with wniiam scant formal education, but among abundant Eng- Ho\veUs lish books and intelligent kin, he was typesetter, 1837- reporter, editor at twenty-two, published a book of verse in 1860, wrote a campaign life of Lincoln, and received the consulship at Venice as his reward. His four years in Italy were well employed. His " Modern Italian Poets " is full of excellent criticism and translation ; but it is amusing to see how frankly the young Ohioan alludes to a large element in these poets which he does not understand. It is, in fact, that unbroken relation to the whole historic past, above all to classical antiquity, which is closest in Italy, and is so remote from the consciousness of our own Western type of man. Howells's early leap to the chief editorship of the Atlantic^ in 1872, was a notable and successful invasion of local exclusiveness. But ten years later lie retired, soon came to New York, and has since writ- ten a very long shelf of novels. Howells's enthusi- 328 THE NATIONAL EPOCH asm, idealism, romanticism, never prominent, long ago quite vanished. In fact his literary creed has now hardly room for anything but the faithful tran- scription of life, which seems also to mean for him essentially the daily doings and sayings of average men. Perhaps it is unfair to add the popular judg- ment that he usually creates women shallow and inane below the average of any American community: but at least we must dissent heartily from his conviction, that our women lack the sense of humor. Further- more, even prosaic truth is uttered more and more in the unmistakable tone, if not form, of the preacher. He has almost come at last, like Tolstoi, to a semi- hostile contempt for all merely beautiful art, or for any effort not austerely altruistic and philanthropic. Mr. Howells has, perhaps, deliberately undertaken, like Balzac, to include in a cycle of realistic scenes all the salient types of the social world as he has seen it. His books may therefore be much more valuable and interesting to a future historian than to us, who think we know, all too well, our every- day selves. The crop of Hoosier poets has been larger than in the eastward neighbor-state, and the local quality in their work has been more pervasive and essen- JohnHay, tial. John Hay, indeed, who leaped into public notice with the rather irreverent poetry of " Little Breeches" and "Jim Bludso," is almost lost from sight, for the new generation, in the courtly diplo- matist and statesman, the secretary and biographer of Lincoln, who came from the London embassy to take the highest position in Mr. McKinley's cabinet. 183S- THE WEST 329 But J. J. Piatt, though many years in Washington John James and twelve years consul at Cork, has never ceased to ^^*^*' ^^^^ be a poet of the middle West. His first book of rhymes was a joint venture with Howells in 1860. Many verses by his gifted wife, who is of Kentucky Sarah birth, have also appeared in his volumes year by ^0^^^° year. After sharing with his brother Will the Piatt, 1836- falling fortunes of the South, Maurice Thompson (James) returned to the state of his birth. Much later, in JJ^^'^^^® ' Thompson, 1890, he came to the local staff of the JSFew York Inde- 18M-1901. pendent. Indeed, Thompson was the most versatile and happy of men, at home in the East, West, and South, an authority on classicism or literary criti- cism generally, geology, archery, fishing, woodcraft, on life out of doors or in. Poetry, romance, and scholarship are no less happily united in such tales as "Alice of Old Vincennes." "Lew" Wallace, a gallant Union general, is most Lewis widely known for his "Ben Hur," an extremely J^^T-^^* popular romance, as audacious in its subject, and as reverent in its intention, as Mrs. Ward's "Come Forth." If a creation of art is to produce a strongs simple effect, it cannot safely piece out the most familiar and sacred incidents with modern and pro- fane invented detail. Indeed, no such work can fail to shock or to bewilder many religious minds. Yet others feel that they draw from it clearer compre- hension and more devout belief. Altogether native to Hoosier soil are the subjects, the favorite dialect, and the method generally, of Mr. Riley. He is a real poet, appealing with power James to our deepest elemental feelings. We trust the ^fj^^^i^^ main stream of his verse will run more and more 330 THE J^ATIONAL EPOCH from the wells of English undefiled. '^ Ike Walton's Prayer " is at least equal to a similar masterpiece of Herrick, "Low is my Porch." Edward Dr. Eggleston was born in Indiana, of Virginian isIt-^^^^* stock. His Hoosier schoolboy and schoolmaster, as well as the circuit rider, are drawn essentially from his own life. But the young pioneer had become, before he was forty, an editor at Evanston, Illinois, then at Chicago, later still reached the headship of the New York Independent^ and was a liberal preacher in Brooklyn. Having left the pulpit over twenty years ago. Dr. Eggleston spends at least half his year in fruitful retirement at Owl's Nest, his cottage by Lake George. A successful writer of boys' books, of novels for grown-ups, and of religious works. Dr. Eggleston has long devoted his best energies to American history. His " Beginnings of a Nation " is a first installment, upon a large scale, and wrought with unstinted devotion. His collection of books, old pictures, manuscripts, and relics of every kind for his great task is said to be unrivaled. There are, indeed, few lives that seem more wisely planned, more happily rounding to harvest time. May his days be long, and continuously useful. It is probable that Chicago will hereafter be, in letters as in so much else, the chief bulwark against the centralizing force of New York, perhaps some day her real rival. The beginnings are relatively small, indeed. Meantime, in the columns of a younger Dial a wide circle of respected critics, secured from certain very human temptations by their appended ^signatures, assess contemporary literature with a THE WEST 331 frankness, fairness, and courtesy not elsewhere com- bined. It is a curious accident that Eugene Field, the Eugene most brilliant author yet associated with Chicago, 13^1395 was, in the course of his erratic early life, actually a schoolboy in Amherst, Massachusetts, and a student at Williams College. Eccentric, prodigal, uneven in quality to the last degree, the work of Field, in prose and verse, bears the unmistakable stamp of his unique and powerful genius. Especially, whether in dialect, mock archaic, or straightforward English, Field utters the very heart's secrets of boyhood as not even Riley or Louis Stevenson can do. " Wynken, Blynken, and Nod " became long ago a kindergarten classic. His echoes of Horace are not mere irrev- erent travesties, but seize the very essence of the thought, and render it in the most startlingly up- to-date English, spiced both with current slang and with Field's own invented idioms. He was really a learned man in many lines rarely, if ever, united before. He was not a cynic, though he never lost the opportunity for mockery, banter, and jest. Mr. Field had the mobile face, the rich, sympathetic voice, of a great actor, and as a reader of his own verse was unapproachable. His early death is as irrepa- rable to lovers of our literature as to those who knew and loved him best in the flesh. Such men as Field, Clemens, Riley, are already quite independent of the Puritan tradition. The most promising and versatile romancer of Henry- Chicago is Mr. Fuller. His " Chevalier of Pensieri ^^^1^^ 1857- Vani" excited the enthusiasm of Mr. Lowell and Prof essor Norton, and showed mastery of a style as 332 THE NATIONAL EPOCH "William Vaughan Moody, 1869- delicate, playful, and consciously artistic as Steven- son's "Prince Otto." After one other such inter- national venture Mr. Fuller came back in " The Cliff-dwellers " to the tall blocks of his Western metropolis, and to comparative realism. One of the junior instructors in Chicago Univer- sity, William Moody, though among the youngest of our poets, seems, more than any other who is now active, likely to enforce that direct and fearless ap- peal to the popular conscience with which Whittier and Lowell once made us familiar. Such verses as those " On a Soldier Fallen in the Philippines" set the author in frankest opposition to the overwhelming popular feeling of the hour ; but we have not ceased to share Hosea Biglow's liking for the man "thet ain't afeard ! " Mr. Moody is, however, a true dreamer of the dream, and will not give up to preaching the powers w^hich should be consecrated above all to creative and beautiful art. William Carleton, 1845- "Will" Carleton, born in Michigan, is the chronicler of the rude frontier social life, preacher of the simplest and most obvious moralities, in verse slightly touched with dialect and still more rarely with poetic art. Many years spent in greater New York have left him unchanged. His " Farm Ballads," "Farm Legends," "Rhymes of our Planet," etc., have passed already for the most part to the samfe forgetfulness as Holland's more melodious verses and E. P. Roe's novels. Yet few men or women past forty can read " Betsy and I are Out," and the self-evident sequel, aloud, with unbroken voice. Carleton's verse has touched a million simple hearts. THE WEST 333 and injured none. Poe's weirdest harmonies — but why draw contrasts ? The short stories of " Octave Thanet " depict, Alice better than any others, perhaps, the gradual fusing ^^^^' of alien elements in our new race, the growth in the second generation of a self-respecting Americanism. She knows best the towns and villages of Iowa and the neighboring states. The fierce and all but pes- simistic realism of Hamlin Garland has its truthful Hamlin side, and even its artistic power, also ; but we must ^i*°*^' trust that the future will justify rather the more hopeful pictures of Miss French. Mrs. Catherwood, a skillful writer of romances, Mary has shared in the revival of the historical novel, lay- i^fj*^®^^^, *^ Catherwood ing her scenes on ground made familiar by Parkman. 1847- Her Indian battles are almost as graphic and swift- moving as Cooper's. Mrs. Foote, both as novelist and Mary artist, shows her familiarity with the grand moun- ^oJe^^^giy tain scenery of the Southwest, and with the social or economic problems that face the pioneer settlers. Over thirty years ago Bret Harte's " Luck of (Francis) Roaring Camp," and other sketches of California isl^c^i^o!^' miners, gamblers, stage robbers, of the motley, law- less life generally in the gulches and gold fields, were welcomed with general delight, very like the later reception of Kipling's first stories. While his years have more than doubled, Mr. Harte, through one decade spent in the Eastern states and more than one in England, has worked the same vein. Readers he must still find, in other lands at least ; but his very name is now hardly familiar to our boys' ears. His verse, serious or comic, is still less remem- 884 THE NATIONAL EPOCH bered to-day, and yet " Ah Sin ^* is probably the last example of a poem that set our whole people laugh- ing. It perceptibly affected public opinion on a burning question, that of the Chinese Exclusion Bill. There is no dangerous immorality in Mr. Harte's stories. But they pall upon us at last, because, after the novelty wears off, their melodramatic unreality forces itself even upon the most boyish mind. Cincinnatus It was in London that another poet of California, MUier 1841- " Joaquin " Miller, became famous by the publication of his "Songs of the Sierras." "The American Byron " his English adorers called him, and the par- allel has more excuse than many such. He is yet living in California, has wandered to the Klondike, and is still writing books of verse. He is, despite grievous errors as man and author, a real poet, per- haps the boldest, freest voice of the far West. In a severely winnowed yet copious selection he will live as one of our most original singers. Spiritual mes- sage he has none. Edward Though Sill spent his last years in the University snr^° of California, his exquisite lyric gift was in no 1841-1887. perceptible degree there acquired. His contrasted poetic descriptions of the Medicean and the Melian Venus might have been written by some sculptor- poet like Story, with a sturdy Puritanic morality underlying his worship of beauty. His " Fool's Prayer " and " Opportunity " are classical in their exact versification, a bit mediaeval in color, but, after all, universal, human, masterful. We would gladly know more of this quiet hidden life that has left such pure and sincere lyric expression of itself. THE WEST 335 It was by the Golden Gate, too, that rest came to Helen the fiery heart of Helen Hunt. Born, like that shy ^"^^^^ secluded, yet ardent child of nature and of genius, (Fisk) Emily Dickinson, in the little college town of Am- issil^^gs's herst, Massachusetts, near the home of the sweet- Emily voiced Goodale sisters, she naturally came under is^Tsse!' Emerson's influence. His mystical double mean- Elaine ings, overburdened phrase, and audacious breaks in Eastman, sequence, may all be paralleled in her verse. But '^^^ it was utter domestic bereavement that first made Goodale, her a poet, and brought through her comfort to ^^^ many hearts that ache. Her glimpses of nature remind us of Thoreau's verse and poetic prose. Inflamed by sympathetic study of the Mission In- dians on the west coast, she retold the tale of their wrongs in her "Ramona." This romance has often "Ramona,' been likened to Mrs. Stowe's master stroke. In his- ^^^^' toric importance there is no comparison, but in its glowing, scorching force, and the wild imaginative beauty of descriptive passages, the later book is per- haps superior. The pitiful but essential difference is, that the Indian vanishes before us, we apparently escape the penalty due for the sins of our pioneers, and " Ramona " itself is but an elegy, like " Evange- line " and " Hiawatha," over a broken people. Not so the sturdier black brother ; with him, as Whittier reminded us so early, " Close as sin and suffering joined, We march to Fate abreast." Mrs. Jackson imitated Mrs. Stowe also in publishing the documentary proofs of her case, under the caustic title, "A Century of Dishonor." 336 THE NATIONAL EPOCH Kate Douglas (Smith) (Wiggin) Riggs, 1857- Jack London, 187&- Much else this brilliant woman wrought, always with the touch of the artist, — and with the impa- tience of them that follow the gleam. In verses like *' Spinning " she teaches herself in vain the lesson of resignation. The truer note for her is always the restlessness uttered in the " Wandersongs." Through California, too, passed in early youth Kate Douglas Wiggin, leaving a flash of sunlit color, mocking laughter, smiles, tears, and murmur of bene- dictions behind her. However, this favorite bird of passage not only had her first home nest in staid Pennsylvania, but soon flitted eastward again. It is not necessary to follow Jack London to the Klon- dike, to the blinding snow fields and ice floes of the Arctic, in further quest of local color. The Philip- pines are not yet a literary annex. Rather we may yield to the refluent current, and return toward the heart of the East. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE Howells's novels by Houghton and Harper. Eggleston's "Beginners of a Nation," Appleton. Eugene Field's works, Scribner. Fuller's " Chevalier of Pensieri Vani," Century ; " Cliff- dwellers," Harper. Poems of William V. Moody, Houghton. " Octave Thanet " (Miss French), Houghton, Harper, Scribner, McClurg. Bret Harte's works, Houghton. Sill's poems and prose, Houghton. Helen Hunt, poems, " Ramona," Little. CHAPTER V THE MIDDLE EAST THE impetus given by Franklin to the quiet town of Penn spent itself rather early in the race with other cities. Political power passed south- ward to the newly created capital. Commerce, population, and finally letters have streamed to Manhattan. The venerable figure of Dr. Mitchell, the friend siiasWeir of Dr. Holmes, himself also the wise and learned ^2^^^' physician, philosopher, romancer, poet, is one of the most satisfying in our present horizon. His local attachment is stanch, too, and " Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker," perhaps the best of all our histori- cal romances, successfully revives the half-forgotten glories of Philadelphia as the center of the patriotic struggle for independence. But there is certainly little trace of a local school. Miss Repplier's Agnes thorough bookish culture is half French, half f^^^'®""' British, while the feathered wit of her swift- ranging criticism is perhaps wholly Gallic. Horace Howard Furness, the Shakespearean scholar. Profes- sor John Bach McMaster, the historian of America, and even the unwearied veteran, Henry C. Lea, be- long rather to scholarship than to belles lettres. Though Mrs. D eland has been twenty years a Wade Bostonian, the restful coloring of "Tommy Dove" ^^^^^^^^^ and " Old Chester " tempts us to count her with the 1857- z 337 S3S THE NATIONAL EPOCH Quakers of Penn's lands still. Into the larger effort entitled " John Ward, Preacher," there entered the strain of intense theological struggle, very much as in Mrs. Humphry Ward's books. Any such motive is a danger to a work of art ; yet the high ethical pur- pose is to be eagerly welcomed back into our fiction, which has too largely become the mere spicy diversion of languid hours. George Eliot showed us that artistic form could mold even such grave material into works of permanent value. This artist's one migration was most natural ; but two or three sons of Pennsylvania have wandered widely indeed. Crevecoeur, to be sure, was neither native born, nor a willing exile. But Leland has neither excuse. The merry lilt of " Hans Breit- mann" was in true Pennsylvanian dialect, surely. It gave much pleasure to the last great English laureate, himself a poet in three or four dialects. But since then Hans has hobnobbed with Spanish brigands^ Italian witches, Greek archaeologists, and especially wdth Borrow's old comrades, the gypsies, until he has quite forgotten the sea path homeward. His republic of congenial spirits would have no Anglo-Saxon, dominance, like Kipling's, but a far more motley citizenship than even Crawford's wide artistic sym-^ pathy includes. As every homeward-floating report, that we catch declares, this is a life as happy as it is. long. Lost languages, even, are among the treasure- trove of this inspired excavator and explorer. The secret of human freemasonry is his chief discovery,. Hans is in luck still ! A year later only, Bayard Taylor was born to- honest poverty at Kennett Square, in Chester County y. THE MIDDLE EAST 339 Pennsylvania. Largely self-educated by omnivorous (James) reading, Taylor at nineteen found in New York a Tay?o'r^ market vainly to be sought there now. Horace Gree- 1825-1878. ley engaged beforehand a series of traveler's letters. The two years' journeyings described in "Views "Views Afoot " cost, thanks to abstemious habits and priva- f^^^^*'* tions gladly faced, only five hundred dollars, all earned by the letters to the Tribune and by an occa- sional poem in the forgotten magazines of i^ve-Atlantic days. Taylor's popularity as a lecturer in following years was like that of John L. Stoddard and his stereopticon in our time. His copyrights bought him a share in the Tribune, for which journal he became the first great world-circling reporter, sent to the millen- nial celebration of Iceland, to the gold fields of '49, even to the heart of Africa. Yet he never really lost the home feeling. His beautiful Cedarhurst overlooks many goodly acres that had once been owned, two centuries earlier, by his first American ancestor. "The Story of Ken- "Story of nett " and other romances are loyal to his own soil. ^g^^"'" Later his German wife aided Mr. Taylor to a full entrance into the literature of the Vaterland. His " Faust," in the meters and rhymes of the original, " Faust,'» is doubtless the most perfect piece of uncreative work a poet ever set himself to do. The craving for the poet's crown made Bayard Taylor unsatisfied with all else. Bits of his lyric are living yet, and especially his " Poems of the Orient " breathe full East. His " Centennial Ode " of 1876 was " Masque of worthy of the distinction. But his most ambitious ^^^2. ° ^' attempts — "Lars," " Deukalion," "Masque of the "Lars," Gods " — were quite too remote even for his partial ^^'^^' i40 THE NATIONAL EPOCH " Prince readers. This failure to reach a really national posi- Deakahon,' ^^^^ wounded liis noble x^ride. Perhaps he had been absent too long. Perhaps his time would have come, later yet. Perhaps he gave fully what he was fitted to give. He died suddenly, and, as it seemed, un- timely, very soon after reaching Berlin as American minister. Longfellow wrote for him a dirge begin- ning : — " Dead he lay among his books, The peace of God in all his looks." A singularly detached piece of Taylor's work is the "' Echo *' Echo Club," the cleverest series of harmless parodies Club," 1878. 4. J • A • yet made m America. Thomas The fuller allegiance of Mr. Read to the painter's Read^°^^ art explains his long Italian exile, like Story's. The -1822-1872. familiar experience of twofold homesickness is indi- cated in his " Drifting," while his " Sheridan's Ride " is one of the best war lyrics, and his hero gallops almost as resonantly as the trio in Browning's " Ghent to Aix." Authors are usually busy, struggling folk. Their actual work is best done in solitude. They never need congregate, as lawj^ers must, nor become public characters, like preachers. Not all of them find in their own fellow-craftsmen their best stimulus or comradeship. They dislike to be netted in "schools," like fish. Even in a smaller town, three prominent writers, like Mrs. Stowe, Mr. Warner, and Mark Twain in Hartford, need not influence each other. In the world-city on and about Manhattan people almost as famous as that trio may live for decades, and naver grow aware one of another. They are THE MIDDLE EAST 341 simply men and women, absorbed in observing, study- ing, and recording. Nevertheless, the early friendship of Boker, the George rich Philadelphia banker's son and graduate of Prince- ^^^H ton, Bayard Taylor, coming from his country school, 1823-1890. and Stoddard from his iron foundry, a friendship Henry'^ later shared by Stedman and Aldrich, is as real Stoddard, 1825- a link in our story as Simms's Charleston coterie, or that elder Mutual Admiration Society at the Boston Saturday Club, where Holmes talked, while Emerson and Hawthorne, Agassiz and Lowell, listened. Just such a group could only meet in New York, where Puritanic Bryant, and even the jovial Southron, Gil- more Simms, could be equally at home. Boker's dramas were written early, and in the eager hope of a real theatrical career. The subjects did not hit the rather crudely patriotic taste at home, but were drawn from Spain as in Longfellow's case, from Italy, and England. In the latter land, too, but not at home, his Spanish drama, "Calaynos," was "Caiaynos,' promptly staged, and had a moderate success. It was Jf^^jje many years after, too late to revive Mr. Boker's early Boieyn," enthusiasm, when Lawrence Barrett made " Francesca da Rimini" well known to American audiences. Per- "Collected haps our lack of a vigorous dramatic literature is not fgse^'" mainly chargeable to our poets. Certainly, even -vhen merely read carefully, Boker's " Francesca " seems a remarkably strong play. The versification, and the character drawing, though both lack the dreamy mysterious charm of Stephen Phillips's recent "Francesca," are strong, masculine, and clear. In- deed, Boker's plays are probably the best yet pro- duced among us. 342 THE NATIONAL EPOCH Elizabeth Drew (Barstow) Stoddard, 1823- In general, Boker has hardly come to his due as an author. Some of his war lyrics have always been favorites, notably the "Charge of the Black Regi- ment," and "Dirge for a Soldier." After his dip- lomatic career ended, he spent his last years in the refined and exclusive social life of his birthplace. Richard H. Stoddard, though the son of a Yankee sea captain, seems to belong wholly to the metrop- olis, where he has lived from his tenth year. He is one of our sturdiest men of letters, yet without a trace of the savagery that amused him in Whit- man. Indeed, his standing as a refined and artistic poet is unquestioned, though his own preference for his Oriental vein is not shared by his warmest ad- mirers. Perhaps, rather, Abraham Lincoln is his fittest subject, despite the deadly rivalry of Lowell's " Commemoration Ode." Mr. Stoddard and his friends feel that the lifelong fight against the wolf on the doorstone, the chained servitude to hack work of every kind, has prevented the larger artistic growth he could have attained. But even his frank, kindly reviews of current works, for thirty years, in daily newspapers, have been a real if often thankless service to his craft. More permanent are his careful studies of the older English poets. Best of all is his brave, free, generous life. Mrs. Stoddard is his comrade in all tasks, has herself an independent and vigorous though not a large share in American lyric, and has written three original and powerful novels. It is to such folk, the last who would seek or per- haps even accept it as a favor, that care-free leisure for purely artistic work should come as a right, a pro- fessional distinction fairly won in noble eompetition. THE MIDDLE EAST 843 We are beginning to endow plodding research. The dreamer of dreams is more needed, and as a rule more needy. Stephen Phillips, in his youthful vigor, is a pensioner of the crown. Shall our poets find no Carnegie ? The life of our chief literary historian and sym- Edmund pathetic critic has resembled that of his senior and ^J^^®^*^® ^ ^ Stedman, friend, Stoddard, though both his distractions and 1833- his literary activities appear to have moved through larger curves to more ambitious results. A career in Wall Street would seem a far more dangerous and irrevocable desertion of the Muses than any drudgery of Newspaper Row. Yet when the poet, the other day, formally retired from business life, even one of his brother financiers was inspired to utter the love of them all, in witty and tender verse. Certainly Stedman's popularity among the brethren of the swan-quill is fairly earned. No man, surely, has received with patient courtesy so many eager aspirants. His correspondence is itself a fine art, in its tact and scrupulous care. His quartette of com- prehensive works, the Victorian and American An- thologies, the critical estimates of recent English poetry and of all our American verse, would alone be the monument of a busy life. The young architect of airy rhyme, seeking esoteric suggestion and guidance, will naturally find more in Stedman's interpretative prose than the lay reader can hope to do. As a critic he is extremely gentle. A somewhat severer winnowing of the best in each man's work from the commonplace, a franker tone, when need be, of reproof or even condemna- tion, many of us miss. Thus he grants Whitman 344 THE NATIONAL EPOCH the distinction of a full chapter in the " Poets of America," intimates, of course, his own wide diver- gence from the noisome swamp of " Priapism," yet by no means gives to " Whitmania " the coup de grace which Colonel Higginson, no less tactful and courte- ous, has delivered, with more deadly force than is his wont, in a brief section of his " Contemporaries." Stedman's verse is by some considered to give him the first place among our living poets. Perhaps so. Though not " an empty day," our own is at best but a lyrical intermezzo, beginning when Lowell grew silent, if not longer ago. Mr. Stedman paid his prompt tribute of fearless admiration to Ossawa- tomie Brown in 1859, and later wrote war lyrics, like "Kearney at Seven Pines." Perhaps his " Cavalry Song " is best known, though lovers and country boys have thanked him for " The Doorstep," until he begs beforehand that his " least considered trifle " shall be praised no more. This chain of friendship still adds newer links. Stedman collaborated with Stoddard long ago, and George in 1895 produced with Professor Woodberry the Woodberry "monumental edition of Poe's works. To Longfellow, 1855- the lover of the beautiful, who sought and found little else save beauty, succeeded fitly in the Smith chair, and in the larger seat of public criticism, Mr. Lowell, with his franker dislikes, his severer assess- ment of evil as of good. So Mr. Woodberry, who has seemed most likely to rival the scope of Sted- man's critical work, is far less the " Friend of all the World," whether in personal comradeship or literary toleration. As a poet Mr. Woodberry clings to the North Shore of the Bay State. Indeed, he may THE MIDDLE EAST 345 resent any enrollment in Manhattan at all. As pro- fessor of comparative literature, and as judged from some recent utterances, Mr. Woodberry seems likely to welcome that Hellenic revival which is perhaps the crying need of our literary and general artistic life, and which the rise of athletics may seem to bring already one step nearer. One Columbia colleague, Brander Matthews, is james possibly more widely known than Woodberry, by his ^^^°f^^ criticism of drama, of words and dialect, of manners 1852- and life, by his own work as playwright, and of late by realistic sketches of the many-tinted cosmopolitan life in the great seaport. Other New Yorkers there are that demand a page, at least, where a line is hardly to be spared. Among the dead we must name Winthrop, first of our young athletes, who galloped Theodore across the prairies in real life as in his romance of 1828^186?' " John Brent," and was a costly early loss in the Civil War : H. C. Bunner, easily the first American Henry in the school of Austin Dobson, best-beloved of g^^^^gj. jesters and parodists : Richard Hovey, the elegiac 1855-1896. mourner for T. W. Parsons, himself just dead in jjovey his early prime, whose Arthurian verse rang fear- 1864-1900. less challenge on the laureate's loft}^ shield; and, most picturesque and pathetic among all the city's memories, the great-hearted, childlike editor, Horace Horace Greeley. If his own volume of recollections hardly ^7i-i872 opens the gate of letters to Farmer Greeley, he must still be mentioned, like James T. Fields in the East, as the generous if gruff helper of every struggling scribbler, from the days of the Cary sisters, Margaret Fuller, or Bayard Taylor, to the end. Among the living, typical rather than preeminent figures, are 346 THE NATIONAL EPOCH Richard Watson Gilder, 1844- Hamilton Wright Mabie, 1845- Henry Jackson Van Dyke, 1852- Francis Richard Stockton, 1834-1902. Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835- K. W. Gilder, poet, scientific student of poverty and charity, the successful editor of the Century Magazine^ and H. W. Mabie, genial dispenser with voice and pen of good advice as to our reading and culture. We must trust that he himself finds leisure to peruse Dante and Homer afresh each year in their own speech. His third favorite, Shakespeare, he certainly knows aright. Dr. Van Dyke, though of Dutch ancestry and Scotch creed, is a valued champion of the fullest freedom in thought and utterance, of the happiest outdoor life. Some of the largest figures in the intellectual life of the metropolis, like Curtis and Ho wells, we have already essayed to sketch. Not far away in New Jerse}^ is, or was, the home of Frank Stockton, the most elaborately and solemnly absurd of all our humorists. Everything his charac- ters perpetrate is copiously justified, even urged plausibly upon us as obviously the only thing to do ; and while we are vaguely aware that in our own world these people would all be labeled idiots, under his kind- lier sky they invariably come to fortune, fame, and happy wedlock. His sea tales strike a more novel vein than Cooper's. In one child's story, '' Old Pipes and the Hamadryad," he tosses us, with a gentle grin, an exquisite, genuine mock-Hellenic myth. So it is possible our mirth is bought, in the case of Stockton, at the price of a poet's birthright. But there is one American humorist who towers far above Stockton, toward the height of Rabelais. The judgment of other peoples, so eagerly ac- cepted in all literary questions by our grandfathers, undoubtedly regards " Mark Twain " as the chief figure among our living authors. It is not easy to THE MIDDLE EAST 347 suggest a rival. He is not a poet : but except Mr. Kipling, who is much else, the writers of verse exert little force in the world to-day. Despite some effort of his to escape the name, he is classed as a humorist; but the countrymen of Poor Richard, of Died- rich Knickerbocker, of Hosea Biglow, not to men- tion professional buffoons like " Artemus Ward " and *' Josh Billings," can hardly repudiate such a representative. He is not typical, we may say, he is unique ; but when did originality prove a handicap for fame ? His works may defy classification under the accepted rubrics ; so did '' Don Quixote," " Hu- dibras," "Sartor Resartus." He is unsentimental, iconoclastic, irreverent ; but so is his age. Mr. Kipling in his notes on America has a vivid account of his interview with Twain ; and we suspect he has also more or less consciously sketched him, in a memorable poem, as the typical American. *' Un- kempt " if not " disreputable " Mark might appear ; and "imperturbable" he certainly is. Bret Harte, in letters, is still a Californian only, and twenty years' exile in London would surely leave Whitcomb Riley, like Piatt, a Hoosier no less. Each belongs to his section. Few know, and no one cares, where "Mark Twain," the American, was born. For the resources of his strength he is as little indebted to any one state or region as is the Father of Waters himself, who gave the boy Missourian his rude ap- prenticeship as pilot, and his world-famous pen name : for it is simply the Mississippi boatman's call, when the sounding line indicates just two fathoms. Doubtless the intrusive Yankee at King Arthur's Court horrified Lord Tennyson and his people. As 348 THE NATIONAL EPOCH incongruous he surely is, though by no manner of means so ignoble, as Falstaff's followers in the heroic King Harry's valiant host, or Thersites in the circle of Homeric chiefs. But to set forth that incongruity Mr. Clemens had to see, and depict with absolute vividness, both the oldest and the newest forms of modern life. His boys' story, " The Prince and the Pauper," is as finished a labor of love in its details as "Henry Esmond." His "Joan of Arc" maintains its place against unnumbered rivals. Upon the familiar home ground, the tale grotesquely called " Pudd'nhead Wilson " has a grim tragic power. The homely Western life out of which such giants as Lincoln and Edison are springing has never been so vividly set before us as in some of Twain's autobio- graphical writings. Steadfast pluck and unpretentious honesty, or something still more like heroism, he has shown in recent years, quite as much as Sir Walter Scott, whose assumption of his publisher's debts has always glorified him in our eyes. Even in his most recent public utterances, however he may have been misin- formed as to his statistics, Mark's general position, that Christian missionaries should have no share or part whatever in the looting of China, is surely the only defensible or civilized ground to occupy. One negative trait of Twain must puzzle his Pari- sian readers, as it would have bewildered no less the Athenian lovers of Aristophanic comedy. Whether serious or irresistibly funny, he is never an immoral, degrading, or foul writer. Here indeed he maintains a truly American character. Franklin's pages were purer than his life. Irving never repeated the frolic- THE MIDDLE EAST 349 some coarseness that makes us occasionally skip a sen- tence in the Knickerbocker narrative. If Whitman's verse were as artistic as it is shapeless, as intelligible to the common man as it is unmeaning, yet the violation of good manners, the reckless, exultant nakedness, would still shut his book out of our sit- ting rooms : his admiring British public have read only an expurgated edition. Neither Eugene Field's deadly banter, nor Mr. Dooley's brogue, nor George Ade's flood of slang, could ever carry down with im- punity a broad hint of filth or obscenity. French critics insist that their light fiction and favorite journals give a wholly false impression of the real tone of morality in social life. In our land we blush neither for the reality nor for the picture. There are unclean Americans, in and out of literature. There are even periodicals for the sporting and fast sets. But such scum floats far indeed from the clear, if shallow, stream of current literature in which our real national life is mirrored. We discuss Mark Twain here more at length, because the general acclaim of foreign readers, at least, and even of critics, declares him the typical American author of our day. However difficult to traverse, this statement is certainly unsatisfying to our national pride. It is perhaps explained by a wider truth, that our best vitality does not as yet devote itself to creative literature, nor to any of the fine arts. Our men of action write, as they speak, with vigor, clearness, ease, even occasional grace. The popular leaders, for instance, of the two races, Theodore Roosevelt and Booker Washington, are both authors of creditable books ; but certainly very 350 THE NATIONAL EPOCH few of us would think, or speak, first of that feature in tlieir many-sided, active careers. Our favorite writers of the passing day rarely pre- tend to offer more than light diversion for an idle hour. No American author has approached such an eminence as Dante or Goethe holds, as the largest mind amid a whole people. If Franklin did have a word to which the whole world paused to listen, it was certainly not a spiritual message uttered in the forms of art. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE S. Weir Mitchell's Poems, " Hugh Wynne," Century. Mrs. Deland's works, Houghton. Taylor's poems, Houghton ; " Ken- Tiett," Putnam. Boker's plays and poems, 2 vols., Lippincott. Stoddard's poems, Scribner. Stedman's poems, Houghton. Hovey's poems. Small, Lothrop. Stockton's stories. Century, Scribner, Harper, Houghton. Twain's works. Harper, Ameri- can Publishing Co., etc. The interesting story of Bayard Taylor's life has been re- corded by his widow, with the skillful aid of Horace E. Scudder ; Longfellow, Stoddard, Cranch, Aldrich, gave him poetical tributes, and his portrait is twice sketched by his fellow-Quaker, Whittier, in " Tent on the Beach," and " Last Walk in Autumn." CHAPTER VI CONCLUSION In the last careful revision, Oscar Fay Adams's " Handbook of American Authors " contains over six thousand names, but still makes no claim of com- pleteness. The present volume could mention only a few score. Such a selection is always more or less unfair. In two respects it is especially difficult. There are many books of scholars, scientific or professional men, which are important, sometimes extremely well written, yet lie only in the border land, the disputed marches, of literature. The essays of Professor Patton and others in Economics, the work of Professor Giddings and his peers in the still newer science of Sociology, the physical and ethno- logical volumes of Whitney and Shaler, both entitled " The United States of America," accounts of adven- turous travelers, like Stanley and Kennan, Kane and Peary, constructive work in theology or civics, like Elisha Mulford's "Republic of God," or "The Nation," exemplify the problem. Many a devout churchman would give Horace Bushnell a large place in our annals. Woodrow Wilson's sketch in a dozen pages, " A Calendar of Great Americans," should be pon- dered by every youth : yet he himself would exclude it from "mere literature." Even the sympathetic interpretation of other literatures is not precisely original contribution to our own. In this pleasant 361 352 THE NATIONAL EPOCH borderland Miss Harriet Waters Preston is the largest figure among the living. Her versions of Virgil's Georgics, and from new and old Provengal, are alike masterly. History and oratory have been included here, but the inconsistency is confessed. Published lives of authors are oftener mentioned in our bibli- ography than in the text. A certain universality of interest, a certain charm in form as well as in sub- stance, admits a book into the demesne of belles lettres ; but who shall bar or open the gate ? A more invidious task is the winnowing of lyric poetry. Doubtless every community, if not every family, should have its improvisator, like each dale of Upper Tuscany. Sometimes, even in our unmusi- cal folk, this ideal seems near attainment. But either lyric verse has accomplished its public task, or, what is more likely, other Burnses, Kiplings, Whit- tiers, must arise, to reveal the poetry in the toil, the feelings, the inner and outer experiences of man, which as yet seem — after Whitman no less than before — unromantic, prosaic, vulgar. Meanwhile, hundreds of eagerly launched but unbought volumes illustrate the failure of verse to retain its hold on our generation. Were it not for the recent reverbera- tions of " Lest we forget," we might doubt whether a new '^ Ichabod " or " John P. Robinson," even a " Bat- tle Hymn," or any mere winged word, could nowadays reach a nation's ears. The tyranny of " end rhyme," in a language like ours, has undoubtedly lessened the wealth and vitality of lyric utterance. Here the effort has been to mention the few volumes of verse that are known to have aroused some echoes beyond the circle of personal affection. Some of the author's own CONCLUSION 353 favorites are excluded, in the fear of partiality. Our margins are wide, expressly that the student may make his wiser choice. Epic is perhaps an antiquated form of art, as ora- tory seems just now, as sculpture seemed to many of us just before St. Gaudens, McMonnies, and French suddenly arose. But drama, surely, is indispensable. Yet we are hardly represented in it at all. Boker was quite isolated, and early disheartened. What effect the text alone of the late James A. Heme's moving melodramas might have upon a reader we can hardly guess. His popular rivals also keep the text of their dramas scrupulously out of print ; but there is no great poet, nor any exquisite minor poet, like Stephen Phillips, among them. Longfellow was always a lyrical singer, however extended the forms of his poetry became. So too was Taylor, the most ambitious in form among our less famous artists of verse. The stage waits for the master. From Shakespeare, or even from ^schylus, to Phillips, he has usually had to serve at least part of his apprentice- ship behind the footlights ; but genius may break all rules. The less ambitious forms of sustained verse, idyls like " Evangeline " or " Snow-Bound," narrative poetry like Longfellow's "Miles Standish," or even like Emerson's " Adirondacks," are strangely obso- lescent. Perhaps they, at least, can be revived. The short prose story suits our breathless reading public, and the making of it has been perfected until it now almost seems to be an art, a craft that can be imparted to clever pupils, or even self-taught by any deft handworker who is not destitute of material in 2a 354 THE NATIONAL EPOCH the form of stirring experience or happy imagination. Whether the popular favorite, Richard Harding- Davis, for instance, is still a clever reporter, or al- ready a creator of literature, is a debatable problem. At the same time, some of our truest artists and most earnest thinkers are also adopting the same form. A clever story wins a market and a hearing tenfold more easily and v^^idely than the best essay or poem. This may be in part a passing fashion, just as, from Dryden's time to Goldsmith's, sentiment, narrative,, even satire or political lampooning, was usually cast in rhymed couplets. The larger novel, as a dramatic interpretation of life, has hardly approached again the triumphs of Na- thaniel Hawthorne. Our romance is just now either busy preserving the most truthful local color, or else is breaking over the border line of history, and at- tempting to retell the most brilliant chapters of national experience. As we close these pages young Mr. Churchill's " Crisis " challenges the popular preference for the veteran Dr. Mitchell's "Hugh Wynne." In our material progress we seem to have come in sight, at least, of our destiny. But as for literature, we prefer to believe that we still but grope in the morning twilight. Longfellow's last verse was full of the gentle optimism he had preached so long : — " Out of the shadows of night The world rolls into light ; It is daybreak everywhere." And the wise Autocrat's word has a still clearer and no less hopeful meaning for us in particular : — CONCLUSION 355 « Be patient ! On the breathless page Still pants our hurried past ; Pilgrim and soldier, saint and sage, — The poet comes the last ! " But the historian of literature, as of any fine art, must at least insist that the highest truth, and con- summate beauty, are one and the same ideal: that the life of the nation, as of the individual, can fitly culminate only in the creation of enduring master- pieces, which shall bring inspiration and uplifting to all after time. For such results alone are we grateful to earlier men. By them, and by naught else, can we adequately account for the measureless material advantages poured into our fortunate hands. INDEX OF AUTHORS AND WORKS Abraham Lincoln (Lowell), 235. Adam Bede, 165. Adams, Henry, 262. Adams, John, 55, 59, 74, 76, 266. Adams, Samuel, 56, 74. Ade, George, 349. iEschylus, 353. African Chief, 93. After the Burial, 231. Agassiz, 237. Ages, 92. Agnes of Sorrento, 195. Alcott, A. B., 139, 144, 148, 149. Aleott, Louise M., 149. Aldrich, T. B., 317. Alhambra, 82. Allen, James Lane, 311. Allston, Washington, 80, 2OT. Alone, 103. Alsop, Richard, 66. Ame7'ica, 217. American Annals, 106, 258. American Notebooks, 147, 154, 155, 159, Ainerican Scholar, 130. Army Life in a Black Regiment, 286, Arthur, T. S., 282. Astor, William W., 297. Audubon, J. J., 108. Aunt Phillis's Cabin, 196, 301. Autobiography (Franklin), 83. Autocrat of the Breakfast- Table, 218, 6 Backwoodsman, 97, 108. Baldwin, J. G., 302. Balzac, 328. Bancroft, George, 83, 259-260. Bancroft, H. H., 261. Barlow, Joel, 64-65, 67, 76, 106. Bartram, John, 60, 72. Bates, Katharine L., 319. Battle Hymn of the Republic, 94. Bay Psalm Book, 30, 35, 38. Beecher, Henry Ward, 274. Beecher, Lyman, 189. Being a Boy, 358. Bells, 102. Ben-Hur, 329. Beverley, Robert, 11, 60, 68. "Biglow, Hosea," 21,28. Biglow Papers, 173, 227, 232, 233, 293, 332. Billings, Josh, 242, 347. Birds of America, 108. Black Cat, 105. Blithedale Romance, 166, 167-169. Blue and the Gray, 303. Boker, Geoi;ge H., 83, 341, 342. Bold Hathorne, 63. Bolingbroke, 50. Bolles, Frank, 318. Bowditch, Nathaniel, 76. Boyesen, Hjalmar H., 295. 162. Bracebridge Hall, 82. Bradford, William, 14-16, 17, 36. 315. Bradstreet, Anne, 31-32, 35, 40, 42. Brooks, Charles T., 321. Brooks, Maria G^wen, 241. Brooks, Phillips, 274. Brown, Alice, 320. Brown, Charles Brockden, 65-^, 67, 76, 219. 106. Brownell, H. H., 321. Brownmg, Robert, 298. Brownson, Orestes, 145. Bryant, William Cullen, 90, 91-96, 106, 108, 113. Bunker Hill Speech, 108. Bunner, H. C, 345. Bunyan, John, 21. Burial of the Minnisink, 199. 357 358 INDEX Burnett, Frances E. H., 297-298. Burns, Robert, 104. Burroughs, John, 141, 251, 318, 356. Byrd, William, 12. Byron, 104. Cable, George W., 312. Calhoun, John C, 267. Cambridge Thirty Years Ago, 225, 239. Cape Cod, 284. Captains Courageous, 299. Carleton, William, 332. Cary, Alice, 326. Cary, Phoebe, 326. Castle-builders, 5. Castles in Spain, 255. Cathedral, 236, 237. Catherwood, Mary H,, 333. Catullus, 104. Cecil Dreeme, 284. Chambered Nautilus, 219. Changed, 198. Channing, William Ellery, 114-115, Channmg, William E., 2d, 139, 149, 150, 318. Chanumg, William H., 143. Cheerful Yesterdays, 315. Child, F. J., 316. Child, Lydia Maria, 186-189. Children's Hoicr, 204. Choate, Rufus, 271. Christmas Banquet, 158. Christus, 211, 212. Church, Thomas, 68. Churchill, Winston, 354. Clara Howard, 106. Clarke, J. F., 115, 145. Clay, Henry, 267-268. Clemens, Samuel. See Twain, Mark. Cliff-dwellers, 364. Cloud on the Way, 96. Coleridge, Samuel T., 46, 104. Come Forth, 321. Commemoration Ode, 236, 342. Compensation, 138. Conduct of Life, 138. Conquest of Granada, 82. Contentment, 218. Conversations on Some of the Old Poets 228. Cooke, P. P., 302. Cooper, James Fenimore, 78, 85-91, 96, 108. Cotton, John, 40. Courtin', 233. Courtship of Miles Standish, 209, 210, 214. Craddock, C. E., 312. Cranch, C. P., 244. Crawford, F. Marion, 298, 299. Crevecoeur, Hector Saint-John de, 51. 59-60, 61, 74. Crisis, 354. Croaker Poems, 108. Cross of Snow, 204. Culprit Fay, 97, 98. Curtis, G. W., 95, 321. Daffydowndilly, 162. Daisy Miller, 358. Dana, R. H., 108, 242. Dana, R. H., 2d, 242. Dante, 164. Davis, Richard Harding, 354. Days, 136. Deacon's Masterpiece, 215, 219, 222. Death of the Flowers, 96. Declaration of Independence, 57. Deerslayer, 87. Defense of Poetry, 291. Deland, Margaret W. C, 337. Democracy, 238. De Musset, 104. De Stael, 116. Devil in Manuscript, 154. Dial, 132, 146. Dial (of Chicago), 330-331. Dickinson, Emily, 335. Divine Tragedy, 212. Dixie, 302. Dolph Heyliger, 82, 85. Douglass, Frederick, 282, 295. Drake, J. R., 96. Drake, Samuel Adams, 302. Dred, 194. Dutchman's Fireside, 97. Dwight, John S., 243, 244. Dwight, Timothy, 65, 67, 76. E Each and All, 128, 136. Eastman, Charles, 295. INDEX 359 Eastman, Elaine G., 335. Eastman, Mary A., 301. Easij Chair, 322. Echo Club, 340. Edgar Huntley, 106. Edwards, Jonathan, 48-50, 60, 70, 72, 114, 115. Eggleston, Edward, 330. Eliot, Charles W., 320. Eliot, George, 338. Eliot, John, 40, 42. Elizabeth, 210. Elsie Venner, 219, 220, 224. Emerson, Mary M., 122, 123. Emerson, Ralph Waldo, iv, 22, 49, 115, 120, 122-138, 144, 145, 149, 151, 245, 251. Emerson the Lecturer, 131, 226. Endicott and the Red Cross, 23, English Traits, 125, 133. Envoi to the Muse, 138, 223. Eternal Goodness, 185. Ethan Brand, 162. Evangeline, 207-208. Evans, Marion J., 312. Evening Star, 204. Everett, Edward, 116, 117, 271, 272-273. Fable for Critics, 105, 126, 176, 189, 22^ 224, 230, 237, 240, 242. Fall of the House of Usher, 103, 105. Fanshawe, 108. Federalist, 57. Ferdinand and Isabella, 254. Field, Eugene, 331. Fields, Annie A., 317. Fields, J. T., 317. Finch, Francis M., 303. First Snowfall, 231. Fiske, John, 262, 263. Flood of Years, 92, 93. Flowers, 202. Floioersfor Children, 187. Floyd Ireson's Bide, 181, 185. Fool's Errand, 358. Foote, Mary H., 333. Footsteps of Angels, 202. Forerunners, 138, 223. Foster, Stephen C, 302. Fountain (Bryant) , 96. Francesca da Rimini, 341. Franklin, Benjamin, iv, 50-55, 68, 70, 72 74, 76, 80, 81, 291, 297, 350. French, Alice, 333. Freneau, Philip, 62-63, 67, 74, 76. From my Armchair, 214. Fuller, H. B., 331. Fuller, Margaret. See Ossoli. Garland, Hamlin, 333. Garrison of Cape Ann, 180. Garrison, William Lloyd, 118, 174, 175. Gayarre', C. E. A., 261. Gentle Boy, 23, 158, 160. Gilded Age, 356. Gilder, R.W., 346. Gildersleeve, Basil L., 305. Godwin, 66. Gold Bug, 105. Golden Legend, 211, 212, 213. Golden Milestone, 205. Goodale, Dora R., 335. Good Word for Winter, 235. Grant, Robert, 319. Gray Champion, 23, 160. Great Carbuncle, 160. Great Stone Face, 160. Greeley, Horace, 345. Guardian Angel, 219. Guiney, Louise I., 295. Hale, Edward Everett, 244, 314. Halleck, Fitz-Greene, 97. Hamilton, Alexander, 58. Hanging of the Crane, 213. Hardy, A. S., 83, 322. Harris, Joel Chandler, 310-311. Harte, F. Bret, 83, 333, 334. Hawthorne, Julian, 297, 318. Hawthorne, Nathaniel, iii, iv, 17, 18, 23, 79, 83, 89, 127, 147, 148, 151-172, 354. Hay, John, 328. Hayne, Paul H., 306. Hedge, F. H., 115, 144, 145. Heine, 104. Heyne, 116. Henry, Patrick, 56. 360 INDEX Herodotus, 252, 253. Hiawatha, 201, 208-209. Higginson, Thomas Wentworth, iv, 79, 141, 148, 150, 244, 262, 314-315, 3i4. History of Spanish Literature, 117. History of the American Navy (Cooper), 88. History of the Roman Republic, 147. Hobomok, 108. Holland, J. G., 245. Holmes, Ablel, 106, 258. Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 21, 32, 51, 96, 121, 136, 137, 140, 215-224, 355. Home as Found, 88. Homer, 3, 209. Hoosier Schoolmaster, 356. House of the Seven Gables, 152, 166, 167. Hovey, Richard, 345. Howe, Julia Ward, 316. Howells, William Dean, 83, 327-328. Hugh Wynne, 3.37. Hunt, Helen, 335. Hutchinson, Thomas, 57, 72, 257. Hyperion, 203. I Ichabod, 133, 179, 190, 270. Idle Man, 108. Hiad (Bryant) , 94. Innocents Abroad, 286. Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood, 96. Inverted Torch, 327. Irving, Washington, iv, 78-85, 96. Jackson, Helen Hunt Fiske, 335. James, Henry, 298. Jane Talbot, 106. Jay, John, 58. Jefferson, Thomas, 57, 58, 59. Jewett, Sarah Orne, 319. John Ward, Preacher, 338. Johnston, Mary, 13, 313. Johnston, Richard M., 310. Judas Maccabseus, 210. Judd, Silvester, 242. Juvenile Miscellany, 186. K Eathrina, 246. Kavanagh, 203. Kennedy, John P., 100, 250. Key, Francis (Scott) , 106, 303. Kipling, Rudyard, 3, 52, 181, 203, 299, 347. Knickerbocker History of New York, 80, 106. L Lady or the Tiger ? 360. Landor, Walter S., 231. Lanier, Sidney, 307-309. Last Leaf, 217, 222. Last of the Mohicans, 87. Last Walk in Autumn, 181, 183. Lea, H. C.,257. Leaves from Margaret Smith's Journal, 18. Legends of the Province House, 24. Leland, Charles Godfrey, 338. Liberator, 174, 185. Life of Washington (Irving), 83. Life of Washington (Marshall), 106. Life of Washington (Paulding), 97. Lincoln, Abraham, 58, 273, 275. Little Lord Fauntleroy, 360. Little Women, 286. Living Temple, 219. Lodge, Henry Cabot, 261. Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, iv, 17, 35, 120, 121, 197-214, 354. Longstreet, A. B., 302. Looking toward Sunset, 187. Lounsbury, T. R., 323. Lowell, James Russell (see also Biglow, Hosea), iv, 83, 96, 131, 143, 224-240, 292. Lucy Larcom, 183. M Mabie, Hamilton W., 346. Macaulay, T. B., 82. Madison, James, 58. Main Street, 24, 160. Maine Woods, 284. Manners, 138. Man xoithout a Country, 284, 314. Marble Faun, 179. Marco Bozzaris, 97. Margaret, 242. Margaret Smith's Journal, 18, 24. INDEX 361 Mather, Cotton, 44, 46-48, 60. Mather, Increase, 44, 47, 68. Matthews, J. Brander, 345. Mayday, 140. Maypole of Merry Mount, 23. Melville, Herman, 246. Mezzo Cammin, 205, 207. Michael Angelo, 210, 214. Miller, Cincinnatus H., 334. Milton, John, 27, 46, 80, 114. Minister's Wooing, 195. Mitchell, Donald G., 323. Mitchell, S. Weir, 337. Mockingbird, To the, 309. Moody, William V., 332. Moosehead Journal^ 239. Moral Pieces, 106. Morituri Salutamus, 199, 214. Morton, Thomas, 17, 38. Mosses from an Old Manse, 127, 157, 158. Motley, J. L., 83, 256-257. Murders in the Hue Morgue, 105. Murfree, Mary N., 312. Murray, Lindley, 76. Musa, 223. My Garden Acquaintance, 226, 239. My Kinsman Major Molineux, 160. My Lost Youth, 198. My Psalm, 185. N Nature (Emerson), 128. Naulahka, 364. Nearer Home, 326. New Adam and Eve, 158. New England Girlhood, 362. New England Tragedies, 211. Nina Gordon, 194. Norton, Charles Eliot, iv, 35, 316. Odyssey (Bryant), 94. O'Hara, Theodore, 302. Old Burying Ground, 185. Old Ironsides, 216, 217, 222. Old Swimmin'-hole, 360. Oldtown Folks, 195. Order for a Picture, 326. O'Reilly, John Boyle, 319. Ossoli, Margaret Fuller, 144, 169. Otis, James, 55, 72. Our Old Home, 169. Page, Thomas Nelson, 311. Paine, Thomas, 50, 56, 74, 76. Palfrey, John G., 260. Pandora, 210, 214. Papers on Literature and Art, 147. Parker, Theodore, 118, 145, 274. Parkman, Francis, 90, 263-264. Parsons, T. W., 245. Passe Rose, 322. Pathfinder, 87. Pauldmg, J. K., 97, 106, 108. Payne, John H., 297. Pearl of Orr's Island, 195. Penn, William, 144. Phillips, Stephen, 341, 343, 353. Phillips, Wendell, 118, 270. Philothea, 187. Piatt, J. J., 329. Piatt, Sarah M. B., 329. Pike, Albert, 309. Pilot, 88. Pmdar, 104. Pmkney, E. C, 302. Pioneers, 86. Poc, Edgar Allan, iii, 9&-105, 108, 224. Poet at the Breakfast-Table, 21%, 225. Poor Chiffonier, 248. Pope, 50. Prairie (Cooper), 87. Prairies (Bryant), 96. Precaution, 86. Prescott, W. H., 121, 25^-255.. Prescott, Life of, 117. Present Crisis, 94, 231. Preston, Harriet W., 352. Preston, Margaret J., 312. Prince and Pauper, 360. Professor at the Breakfast-Tadle, 218; Prometheus, 231. Prudence Palfrey, 356. Psalm of Life, 202. R Rain-Dream, 96. Ramona, 335. Randolph, John, 267. 362 INDEX Raven, 101. Read, T. B., 340. Rebels, 108, 186, 188. Red Rover, 88. Repplier, Agnes, 337. Representative Men, 132. Rhodes, J. F., 261. Rhacus, 231. Rhymed Lesson, 216. Richards, Laura E. H., 320. Riggs, Kate D. S. W., 336. Riley, J. W., 329-330. Ripley, Ezra, 127. Ripley, George, 145, 150. Robert of Lincoln, 96. Roberts, C. G. D., 297. Roderick Hudson, 358. Roe, E. P., 246. Romola, 164. Roosevelt, Theodore, 261, 349. Roughing It, 356. Rousseau, 50. Ryan, "Father," 303. S Saga of King Olaf, 213. Salamagundi Papers, 80, 106. Sanborn, F. B., 318. Sandys, George, 9, 38. Sappho, 326. Saxe, John G., 242. Scarlet Letter, 18, 152, 155, 156, 163, 164- 166, 167, 171. Scudder, Horace E., 315. Scudder, Vida D., iii, 19, 319. Sedgwick, Catharine M., 241. Seven Tales of My Native Land, 154. Seven Vagabonds, 154, 159. Sewall, Samuel, 33-34, 35, 42, 44. Shakespeare, 11. Shaler, N. S., 318, 351. Shaw, Henry W., 242. Shore Acres, 364. Sigourney, Mrs. Lydia H., 106, 241. Silas Lapham, 360. Sill, Edward R., 334. Simms, William G., 303-305. Skeleton in Armor, 201, 203. Sketch-Book, 81-82. Sleeper, 102. Smith, F. H., 312-313. Smith, John, 8, 9, 10, 36, 38. Smith, Samuel F., 217. Snow-Bound, 18, 176, 177. Snow Image, 153, 159. Song of the Kansas Emigrants, 179. Sophocles, 104. Spanish Student, 210, 255. Sparks, Jared, 258. Spofford, Harriet P., 320. Spy, 86. Stanton, Frank L., 309. Star-Spangled Banner, 106, 303. Stedman, Edmund Clarence, 343-344. Stillman, William J., 297. Stockton, Frank R., 346. Stoddard, Elizabeth D. B., 342. Stoddard, Richard H., 95, ft6, 342. Story, William W., 247-249. Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 189-196. Strachey, William, 10, 11, 13, 36. Strenuous Life, 368. Stuart, Ruth McE., 312. Sumner, Charles, 118, 270-271. Suthin' in the Pastoral Line, 233. Swinburne, 104. Tabb, John B., 308-309. Tales of a Traveler, 82. Tales of a Wayside Inn, 213. Tamerlane, 108. Tanglewood Tales, 167. Tayior, J. Bayard, 83, 96, 338-340, 353. Tennyson, 104. Terminus, 134, 136. Thanatopsis, 92, 93, 108. Thanet, Octave, 333. Thaxter, Celia, 320. Thomas, Edith M., 327. Thompson, J. Maurice, 329. Thompson, Will H., 303. Thoreau, Henry David, 121, 138-143. Threnody, 131, 231. Thwaites, R. G., 261. Ticknor, George, 116-121. Timrod, Henry, 305-306. Timrod, William H., 305. Titcomb, Timothy, 245. To a Child, 204. To Have and To Hold, 368. INDEX 363 To Helen, 103. Tom Sawyer, 358. Town Pump, 160. Tragic Muse, 362. Trowbridge, J. T., 315. True Relation of Virginia, 8. Trumbull, John, 63-64, 67, 76. Twain, Mark, 78, 346-350. Twice-told Tales, 158. Two Angels, 205. U Uhland, 194. Ulalume, 102. Uncle Tom's Cabin, 173, 190-194, 196. Unleavened Bread, 319. Van Dyke, Henry, 346. Vanishers, 138, 223. Venetian Life, 284. Very, Jones, 243. Via Crucis, 368. Village Uncle, 159. Virtuoso's Collection, 158, 162. Vision of Sir Launfal, 97, 234. Voiceless, 222. Voices of the Night, 203, Voltaire, 50. Voluntaries, 134. W Wake-robin, 356. Walden, 139, 142. Wallace, Lewis, 329. Ward, Artemus, 347. Ward, Elizabeth S. P., 321. Ward, Nathaniel, 27-28, 35, 38, 40. Warner, Charles Dudley, 300, 323-324. Warner, Susan, 249. Warren, Joseph, 74. Washington, Booker T., 295, 349. Washington, George, 58, 72, 76. Waterwitch, 108. Wealth, 138. Webster, Daniel, 76, 108, 179, 190, 266, 267, 268-270, 271. Webster, Noah, 108. Wedding Journey, 356. Week on the Concord and Merrimac, 142. Wendell, Barrett, 82, 148, 318. Whipple, E. P., 246-247. White Old Maid, 160. Whitman, Walter, 249-250, 251, 343, 349, 352. Whitney, Adeline D. T., 316. Wliitney, William D., 323. Whittier, John Greenleaf, 18, 96, 175-185. Wiggin, Kate D. S., 336. Wigglesworth, Michael, 32, 35, 42. Wigwam and Cabin, 278. Wilde, R. H., .302. Wilkms, Mary E., 319. Williams, Roger, 28-30, 35, 40, 42. Wilson, Woodrow, 351. Winslow, Edward, 15, 36. Winsor, Justin, 261. Wmthrop, John, 25-26, 34, 38. Winthrop, Robert C, 26, 271, 272. Winthrop, Theodore, 26, 345. Woman in \^h Century, 146. Wo7ider-Book, 166, 167. Woodberry, George E.,344. Wood Notes, 134, 149. Woolman, John, 59, 61, 72. Wordsworth, 46. Wreck of the Hesperus, 203. Yayikee Gypsies, 176. Year's Life, A, 228. Yemassee, 304. Young Goodman Brown, 1^^, 160. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL INDEX [Note. — This list includes especially histories of literature, biographies of authors, and in general secondary work rather than pure literature. As a rule no allusion is here made to the works of authors who themselves appear in the body of the book. In all such cases the student should refer directly to the brief bibliography which follows each chapter or section.] Adams, Henry, History of the United States (Scril9ner), 67. Adams, O. F., Dictionary of American Authors (Houghton), 6. Alcott, Louisa M., Transcendental Wild Oats, 150. Allen, A. V. G., Life of Jonathan Edwards (Houghton) , 60. Appleton, Cyclopsedia of American Biog- raphy (Appleton), 6. Arber, Complete Works of Captain John Smith, 13. Arnold, Matthew, Discourses in America (Macmillan), 137. Austin, Mary S., Life and Times of Philip Freneau (Wessels), 67. B Baskervill, William M., Southern Writers (Barbee), 313. Bigelow, John, Franklin's Autobiography (Knickerbocker Nuggets), 60; Life of Benjamin Franklin (Lippincott) , 61; W. C. Bryant (Houghton), 95. Bradford, W., History of Plymouth Plan- tation (Maynard), 14, 16. Brodhead, J. R., Neio York (Harper), 85. Burroughs, John, Indoor Studies (Hough- ton), 143; Whitman, A Study (Hough- ton), 251. Cabot, J. E., Memoir of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Houghton), 137. Cairns, W. B., On the Development of American Literature (Wisconsin Uni- versity), 98. Carpenter, George R., American Prose Selections (Macmillan), 67. Channing, William E., 2d, Thoreau the Poet-Naturalist (Roberts) , 143. Channing, William H., Life of William Ellery Channing (American Unitarian Society) , 120. Chapman, J. J., Emerson and Other Essays (Scribner), 137. Curtis, G. W., Literary and Social Essays (Harper) , 172 ; Orations and Addresses (Harper), 214,240. Curtis, G. T., Life of Daniel Webster (Appleton), 275. Dall, Caroline H., Margaret and her Friends (Little) , 147. Dean, J. W., Michael Wigglesworth's Day of Doom, 35. Drake, S. A., New England Legends and Folklore (Little), 185, 302. E Earle, Alice Morse, The Sabbath in Puri- tan New England (Scribner) , 23 ; Home Life in Colonial Days (Macmillan), 23; Child Life in Colonial Days (Mac- millan), 23. Edwards, Jonathan, Complete Works (Bohn),60. 365 366 INDEX Eggleston, Greorge C, American War Ballads and Lyrics, 67. Ellis, George E., Diary of Samuel Sewall, 35. Ellis, J. H., Poems of Anne Bradstreet, 35. Emerson, Edward W., Emerson in Con- cord (Houghton) , 137. Emerson, Ralph Waldo (with Channing, W. H., and Clarke, J. F.), Memoirs of Margaret Fuller, 147. F Farnham, C. H., Life of Francis Park- man, 264. Fields, Annie, Authors and Friends (Houghton), 172; Life and Letters of H. B. Storm (Houghton), 195. Fields, J. T., Yesterdays with Authors (Houghton), 172. Fiske, J., Beginnings of New England (Houghton) , 23. Ford, P. L., Prefaces, Proverbs, and Poems of Franklin (Knickerbocker Nuggets), 60 ; The Many-sided Franklin (Century), 61. Frothingham, O. B., George Ripley (Houghton), 150. Godwin, Parke, Life of William Cullen Bryant (Appleton), 95. Greeley, Horace, Recollections of a Busy Life, 147. Grimm, Hermann, Literature (Cupples), 137. Hakluyt, R., Principal Navigations, Voy- ages, Trajiiques, and Discoveries of the English Nation, 7-8. Hale, Edward Everett, Loioell and his Friends (Houghton) , 214, 240. Hart, A. B., Guide to the Study of Ameri- can History (Macmillan), 264. Hawthorne, Julian, Nathaniel Haiothome and his Wife (Houghton), 148, 172. Higginson, Thomas W., Margaret Fuller Ossoli (Houghton) , 147 ; Contemporaries (Houghton), 150, 251; Old Cambridge (Macmillan) , 214, 240. Holmes, Oliver Wendell, Ralph Waldo Emerson (Houghton), 137. Howe, Julia Ward, Margaret Fuller (Little, Brown) , 147. Ho wells, William D., Literary Friends and Acquaintances (Harper), 214, 224, 240. I Irving, Pierre, Life and Letters of Wash- ington Irving (Putnam), 84. James, Henry, Hawthorne (Harper), 172. Jameson, J. F., History of Historical Writing in America (Houghton), 121, 264. K Kennedy, W.S.,H.W. Longfellow (Loth- rop), 214. L Lathrop, G. P., A Study of Hawthorne (Houghton), 172. Lathrop, Rose H., Memories of Hawthorne (Houghton), 172. Lodge, H. C, Studies in History (Hough- ton), 35; Daniel Webster (Houghton), 275. Longfellow, Samuel, Life of H. W. Long- fellow (Houghton), 214. Lossing, B. J., Trumbull's M'Fingal, 67. Lounsbury, T. R., James Fenimore Cooper (Houghton), 89, 91. M Marshall, John, Life of Washington, 106. Marvin, A. P., Life and Times of Cotton Mather, 60. Mitchell, D. G., American Lands and Letters (Scribner) , 6. Morse, John T., Life and Letters of 0. W. Holmes (Houghton), 224. N Norton, C. E., Letters of J. R. Lowell (Harper), 240. INDEX ^67 Onderdonk, J. L., History of American Verse (McClurg), 5. Page, H. A., Thoreau, his Life and Aims (Houghton) , 137. Page, T. N., The Old South (Scribner), 313. Palfrey, J. G., History of New England (Little) , 23. Pauldiug, J. K., Life of Washiyigton, 97. Payne, E. J., Selections from Hakluyt's Voyages, 13. Pickard, S. T., Life and Letters of J. G. Whittier (Houghton) , 185. Pierce, E. L., Life of Charles Sumner (Little), 121. Pulsifer, D., Simple Cobbler of Agawam, 35. R Richardson, C. F., History of American Literature (Putnam) , 5. Sanbom, F. B., Henry David Thoreau (Houghton), 143; (with Harris, Wm. T.) , Alcott's Life and Philosophy (Rob- erts), 150. Savage, James, Gov. Winthrop's Diary, 34. Schurz, Carl, Henry Clay (Houghton), 275; Charles Sumner (Lee), 275. Scudder, H. E., J. R. Lowell (Houghton), 240. Scudder, V. D., Introduction to English Literature (Globe School Book Co.), 6. Shurtleff, N. B., The Bay Psalm-Book, 35. Stedman, E. C, Poets of America (Hough- ton), 5; (with Hutchinson, E. M.), Li- brary of American Literature (Webster and Co.), 5. Stephen, Leslie, Hours in a Library (Put- nam), 172. Stevenson, R. L., Familiar Studies of Men and Books (Dodd) , 143. Stillman, Wm. J., Autobiography (Hough- ton), 214, 240. Stowe, C. E.,Life of H B. Stowe (Hough- ton), 195. Swinburne, A. C, Studies in Prose and Poetry, 251. Taylor, Marie H. (and Scudder, H. E.), Life and Letters of Bayard Taylor (Houghton) , 350. Ticknor, George, Life of Wm. H. Prescott (Houghton) , 117, 164 ; History of Span- ish Literature (Houghton), 121. Trent, Wm. P., Southern Statesmen of the Old Regime (Crowell) , 275 ; William Gilmore Simms (Houghton) , 313 ; (with Wells, B. W.), Colonial Prose and Poetry (Crowell) , 5. Tyler, M. C., History of American Litera- ture during the Colonial Period (Put- nam) , 5, 14 ; Literai'y History of the American Revolution (Putnam), 5; Three Men of Letters (Putnam), 67. U Underwood, F. H., H. W. Longfellow (Houghton), 214; John G. Whittier (Houghton), 185. Upham, C. E., Salem Witchcraft in Out- line (Eckler), 214. Vedder, Henry C, American Writers of To-day (Silver) , 325, 336. Von Hoist, F., John C. Calhoun (Hough- ton), 275. W Warner, C. D., Washington Irving (Houghton) , 84. Wendell, B., Cotton Mather, the Puritan Priest (Dodd), 60; Literary History of America (Scribner), 5. Whitcomb, S. L., Chronological Outlines of American Literature (Macmillan) , 6. Wilson, J. G., Bryant and his Friends (Fords) , 91. Winthrop, R. C, Life and Letters of John Winthrop (Little) , 34. Wirt, Wm., Life of Patrick Henry (Coates) , 108. Woodberry, George E., Edgar Allan Poe (Houghton) , 105. TOPICS FOR ESSAYS OR LECTURES 1. Our debt to older races and literatures. 2. Epochs and divisions in our history and intellectual life. 3. Life, character, and writings of Captain John Smith. 4. Social conditions in the South, and their effect on literature, illustrated by the life and writings of Strachey, Beverley, Byrd. 5. Pilgrim and Puritan : Bradford and Winthrop. 6. Seventeenth-century authorship, from Roger Williams to Samuel Sewall. 7. Relation of Sewall and Cotton Mather to the witchcraft delusion. 8. The Mather " dynasty." 9. Contrast between the early and the mature writings of Jonathan Edwards. 10. Franklin's influence on the civic life of Philadelphia. 11. General influence of Franklin on our national character. 12. Services of Franklin to the cause of independence. 13. Influence of oratory in the Revolution and at present. 14. Virginian and New England statesmen in the Revolutionary epoch. 15. Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence. 16. Hamilton and the Federalist 17. Washington's state papers and speeches. 18. Revolutionary poetry : Freneau, Barlow, and Trumbull. 19. Merits and faults of Brockden Brown's style. 20. Irving's Hudson River legends. 21. Influence of England on Irving. 22. Spanish influence in our literature. 23. Cooper's Indians, and other sketches of Indian character. 24. Scott's '^ Pirate " and Cooper's " Pilot." 25. Nature as viewed by Wordsworth and by Bryant. 26. Realism and fancy in Drake's " Culprit Fay." 27. Form and content of Poe's verse. 28. Moral purpose and sanity of Poe and Hawthorne. 29. Emerson and Transcendentalism. 369 370 TOPICS 30. The New England Lyceum. 31. Brook Farm. 32. Thoreau's hermitage, and his influence on later writers. 33. Margaret Fuller's demands for women, and the extent to which they are now granted. 34. Influence of Garrison on Whittier's life. 35. Effect of abolition on the careers of Mrs. Child and Mrs. Stowe. 36. Southern indignation over " Uncle Tom's Cabin." 37. Antagonism of scholarship and poetic imagination. 38. Longfellow's sources. 39. Longfellow's and Tennyson's dramatic works. 40. Classicism in our literature. 41. Influence of Lowell's critical work on his poetry. 42. The " medicated " novels of Dr. Holmes. 43. The Yankee dialect. 44. The short story in the hands of Hawthorne and his successors. 45. Hawthorne's treatment of witchcraft. 46. Influence of Italy and art on our poetry. 47. The forms of Whitman's verse. 48. Artistic form and substance in historical composition. 49. Relation of Prescott's and Motley's topics to the general story of our own people. 50. Personal relations of Ticknor, Prescott, Motley, etc. 51. Attempts to supply a single adequate history of the American people. 52. Parkman's life work. 53. Present methods of historical composition. 54. Ephemeral nature of oratory, 55. Political oratory : Clay, Calhoun, and Webster. 56. The elements of Webster's style. 57. The agitators : Garrison, Phillips, Sumner, Beecher, Curtis. 58. Everett and Lincoln at Gettysburg. 59. The South in literature before and during the war. 60. The new school of Southern writers. 61. Alien (i.e. non-English) elements in our literature. 62. Centralizing of literary workers on Manhattan. 63. Growth of the magazines, and literary quality in newspapers. 64. Cosmopolitan tendencies in our literature. 65. Denationalized authors. 66. Decay of poetry. Successors of Longfellow and Lowell. TOPICS 371 67. The Hoosiers. 68. The Far West in literature. 69. Literary theory and practice of Mr. Howells. 70. Famous stories of boyhood : Aldrich, Warner, Twain, etc. 71. Literature and journalism, antagonistic or helpful? (E.g. to Curtis, Stoddard, R. H. Davis.) 72. Novels based on American history. 73. Religious novels (" Ben-Hur," " Come Forth," " Quo Vadis"). 74. " Local color " in fiction. 75. Dialect, fiction, and poetry. 76. American humor, from Franklin to Twain. 77. Frontier between scholarship and literature. 78. Notable translations (Longfellow's " Dante," Taylor's " Faust," Bryant's " Homer," etc.). 79. Relative rank of American literature. 80. 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