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 COBfRIGHT DEPOSrr 
 
Charles Brockden Brown 
 
 A Study of Early American 
 Fiction 
 
 BY 
 
 MARTIN S. VILAS, A. M. 
 
 BURLINGTON, VT. 
 
 FREE PRESS ASSOCIATION, 
 1904. 
 
L, -SS 
 
 FEB 13 1905 
 
 COPY 15. 
 
 Copyrighted by Martin Samuel Vilas. 
 1904. 
 
The interest in Charles Brockden Brown and his 
 works arises largely from his ranking" position among 
 American Prose Writers. Hence, it is not expected 
 that an estimate, somewhat extended and somewhat 
 critical, of his writings is likely to become popular. No 
 other than this, save very brief sketches of Brown and of 
 what he has done, is known tO' the writer. It may be, then, 
 that the student of American hterature will find in this 
 book, written five years ago, something suggestive, per- 
 haps something usually called original. 
 
 MARTIN S. VILAS. 
 
 1904. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Page. 
 
 Condition of Literature when Brown wrote. 9-15 
 
 1. Usual manner of literary development. 9 
 
 2. America different from other nations. 9-12 
 
 (a) Reasons for differences and conditions governing 
 
 here. 9-11 
 
 (b) Situation when government established. 11-12 
 
 3. Literary meagreness in England. 12-13 
 
 4. Condition of English fiction. 13 
 
 5. Condition of American fiction and disadvantages of 
 
 writing. 14-15 
 
 CHAPTER H. 
 
 Charles Brockden Brown. 
 
 Brown's Life and Works. 16-18 
 
 Brown's works romances rather than novels. 18 
 
 CHAPTER in. 
 
 "Wieland." 19-26 
 
 1. Adaptation of manner of conception from, "Caleb 
 
 Williams." 19 
 
 2. Outline of story. 19-21 
 
 3. Examination in detail. 21-26 
 
 (a) Weaknesses in conception of plot. 21-25 
 
 (b) Weakness in development. 25-26 
 
 (c) Strength of whole. 26 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 "Ormond." 27-30 
 
 1. Outline of stoiT. 27-28 
 
 2. Critical examination. 28-30 
 
 (a) Superiority over other tales of Brown. 28-29 
 
 (b) Unnaturalness and inconsistency in development 
 
 of characters. 29-30 
 
 (c) Positive excellencies in details and as a whole. 30 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 'Arthur Mervyn." 31-33 
 
 1. Outline of story. 31-32 
 
 2. Critical study of work. 32-33 
 
 (a) Defective points in expression of leading char- 
 
 acters. 32-33 
 
 (b) Good descriptive art shown hut much verbosity 
 
 and redundancy. 33 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 'Edgar Huntly." 
 
 34-39 
 
 1. Outline of story. 
 
 34-35 
 
 2. Literary analysis of work. 
 
 36-39 
 
 (a) Comparison of somnambulism of story with ven- 
 
 
 triloquism of "Wieland." 
 
 36 
 
 (b) Tendency of characters to long soliloquy. 
 
 37 
 
 (c) Brown did not understand human mind. 
 
 37-38 
 
 (d) Descriptive power. 
 
 38 
 
 (e) Comparison with Cooper. 
 
 38-39 
 
 (f) Meritoriousness of work. 
 
 39 
 
 CHAPTER VH. 
 
 
 'Clara Howard." 
 
 40-43 
 
 1. Outline of story. 
 
 40 
 
 2. Detailed examination. 
 
 40-43 
 
 (a) Defects in method of conducting story. 
 
 40-41 
 
 (b) Defects in plot. 
 
 41 
 
 (c) Sentimentalism. 
 
 41-42 
 
 (d) Characters not true to intended representation. 42-43 
 
 CHAPTER Vni. 
 
 "Jane Talbot." 44-46 
 
 1. Outline of story. 44 
 
 2. Critical examination. 44-46 
 
 (a) Lack of vigor in conduct of story. 44-45 
 
 (b) Sentimentality and general weakness of char- 
 
 acters. 45 
 
 (c) Summary. 45-46 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Influence of European Writers on Brown. 47-50 
 
 1. Scope of Brown's reading. 47 
 
2. Effect of English writers and English philosophy. 48-50 
 
 (a) Godwin. 48-49 
 
 (b) English Philosophy. 49 
 (c) Jane Austen. 49-50 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Influence of Brown on Shelley. 51-52 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Influence of American writers on Brown. 53-54 
 
 1. American Religious Conditions and how they affected 
 
 Brown. 53-54 
 
 2. "Charlotte Temple" and "Female Quixotism." 54 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Analytical study of Brown. 55-61 
 
 1. Use of English. 55-56 
 
 2. Value to himself of his philosophy. 56-57 
 
 3. Intrinsic merits. 57-61 
 
 (a) A philosopher rather than a poet or painter. 57-58 
 
 (b) His idea of nature and his philosophic expres- 
 
 sion of it. Effect pessimistic, not optimistic 58-CO 
 
 (c) But attitude lay in physical weaknesses. 60 
 
 (d) Genuine greatness and absolute worth. 60-61 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 Influence of Brown upon American literature. 62-66 
 
 (a) Conditions unfavorable for retention of Brown. 62 
 
 (b) Suggestion of Cooper, the bold painter. 62 
 
 (c) Inutility in investigation of fancied likeness. 63-64 
 
 (d) Suggestion of Irving, the master of smooth, easy 
 
 English prose. 64 
 (e) Suggestion of Hawthorne, the consummate 
 
 artist. 64-65 
 
 (f) Suggestion of Poe, the untamed morbid genius. 65-66 
 
 (g) Not a great man but fitted to be first novelist; 
 
 so influence great. 66 
 
CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN. 
 
 A Study of Early American Fiction. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 CONDITION OF LITERATURE WHEN BROWN WROTE. 
 
 Literatures like Constitutions are not made; they 
 grow. Like the growth of the coal mine, they form, 
 harden and mature from the timber of other ages, of 
 times well nigh forgotten, and from materials usually 
 overlooked by the ninety and nine. Literature is the 
 clear lake in which may be seen mirrored the vegetation 
 that grows near it, the animal life that appears above and 
 around it and the movements within its horizon. 
 
 That the beginnings of every nation in literature 
 have been in verse, not prose; that the development of 
 her prose has seldom antedated the development of her 
 material resources is something generally recognized as 
 almost a truism in the history of literatures. In the 
 United States we note the rare exception. The rule has 
 been true because with most nations we mark their rise 
 from a condition of barbarism by long, slow stages to 
 civilization and culture. The people in the early periods 
 of progression have not the intellects capable of carrying 
 on the successive steps in argumentative prose but their 
 fancies are pleased by ballads descriptive of the heroism 
 
10 
 
 of themselves and their ancestors. But America received 
 her origin and early development not through an An- 
 chises and an Aeneas carrying their "sacra patriosque 
 penates" to found a new city to rise by the fostering care 
 of Olympus, nor yet, through a Hengist and a Horsa that 
 bore to new shores a barbarous vigor and independence, 
 but she received them at a stage in the world's history 
 when the blackness of ten centuries of gloom had 
 but fairly rolled away, when the civilized world, rejoic- 
 ing anew in its rediscovered strength, was investigating 
 and progressing as never before and had sent some of 
 its best blood across the western seas to colonize and 
 found new nations. The long years of evolution from 
 the uncivilized to the civilized that marked the growth 
 of European nations were absent here. For without the 
 institutions of the Old World, the New yet possessed 
 their training and influence and considered herself as 
 good as her fathers. The United States, though her tui- 
 tion has been derived from all the world, yet is in lan- 
 guage, institutions and laws, the child of England. To 
 her she has ever turned to draw the inspiration that has 
 set her alive to^ the best instincts within herself. 
 
 Moreover, poetry, the language of passion and im- 
 agination, could have, at the beginning not much in 
 common with our fore-fathers unless it be used to illus- 
 trate some teaching of their strict Galvanism or to warn 
 more effectively than could prose the sinner heedless of 
 the coming "Day of Doom." To subdue the forests, 
 to clear the land, till the fields and build homes amid an 
 environment of savage beasts and savage men required 
 a strong arm and a stout heart with but little demand 
 
11 
 
 for the intellectual training that was able to present the 
 best of the new renaissance which was moving Europe 
 from the Mediterranean to the Arctic Ocean. 
 
 When to the stern realities of their natural sur- 
 roundings, were added the yet sterner ones of political 
 oppression from the mother country, we find a condition 
 which exercised the minds of America along lines averse 
 to scholarly ease and enjoyment but which caused the 
 latent culture of their intellects to spring up in vigorous 
 pratorical and argumentative prose, — that form of liter- 
 ature which, first after the distinctively religious, finds 
 place in our literary history. Until the new nation was 
 established on an independent basis there were but few 
 opportunities for the fostering of even that kind of liter- 
 ature best suited to the tastes of Americans, save as the 
 necessities of the times called it into play and gave it 
 tone and finish. Her M'athers and her Edwards had no 
 use for stories to entertain. Their time was occupied 
 with the saving of souls while the spirit wliich Macaulay^ 
 says was employed to suppress l:>ear-baiting — "not be- 
 cause it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave 
 fun to the audience" — was exercised also against fiction. 
 Her men of scholarly tastes, her Otis and her Hamilton, 
 must look to the great interests of the nation regardless 
 of the delights of pure literature. 
 
 After 1789 it took a number of years for the nation 
 to find herself, to realize that she was a nation and that 
 others expected of her in all respects a nation's work. 
 To England we still turned our eyes in all things, and 
 
 I Macaulay's Hist, i, Ch. 2. 
 
12 
 
 as a nation that had gained its independence by force 
 from her and one that was still treated with ill-disguised 
 contempt by Great Britain, the United States felt much 
 emulation to try its pinions on flights attempted with 
 such wonderful success by the long line of English men 
 of letters. In the words of Prof. Beers/ "An effort was 
 made to establish by tour de force, a national literature 
 of a bigness commensurate with the scale of American 
 nature and of the destinies of the new republic." Even 
 the gallant deeds of the revolution remained unsung. 
 To quote from Stedman-, "No poetry was begotten in 
 the rage of that heroic strife; its humor, hatred, hope, 
 suffering, prophecy, were feebly uttered so far as verse 
 were concerned, in the mode and language inherited 
 years before from the coarsest English satirists. Some 
 few original notes were heard among our pipings."^ 
 
 But in prose dressed in the garb of peace when the 
 great need for Henry and Adams had died away, Ameri- 
 ca's record was bare of excellencies and even the mother 
 country had only an inartistic beginning to its credit. 
 The "Ten linked chain" of the artificial school of Pope 
 had for a century and a half bound English verse. It 
 was necessary to go back to Pope and Goldsmith or take 
 up with Darwin and Hayley. The new natural school, 
 at the head of which were Thomson, Gray, Cowper and 
 Burns, had not then gained much influence, while 
 Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey were too ardently 
 democratic to gain at once great strength on this side 
 of the Atlantic. Scott, Byron, Keats, Shelley and 
 
 I. Beers. 2. Stedman. Poets of Am. p. 16. 
 
13 
 
 Tennyson were yet to come. The new life from Carlyle 
 and Macaulay had not at that time been infused into 
 history and essay. The various phases of social life had 
 not been held up to view by Dickens and Thackeray and 
 the Edinburgh Revieu', which afterward exercised so 
 wide an influence through Brougham, Sidney Smith and 
 Jeffrey, was yet to enter upon its career. 
 
 Not till the eighteenth century was well started, 
 had prose fiction been cultivated by English authors. 
 Sidney's Arcadia, Bacon's Atlantis and More's Utopia 
 hardly entitled them to a place in the literature of fic- 
 tion; so that Daniel De Foe is said to be the founder 
 of the English novel. After him, the names of Richard- 
 son, Fielding, Smollett and Sterne appeared with great- 
 est prominence. Near the close of the century the novel 
 as written by Fielding gave way to the romance and 
 Mrs. Ann Radcliffe became the most popular English 
 writer of fiction. Her greatest works, "The Romance 
 of the Forest," and "The Mysteries of Udolpho," at- 
 tracted considerable attention. At about the same time 
 came Horace Walpole's "The Castle of Otranto," Wil- 
 liam Beckford's "Vathek," M. 0. Louis's "The Monk," 
 and "Tales of Terror," Mrs. Shelley's "Frankestein," 
 William Godwin's "Caleb Williams" and Jane Austen's 
 "Pride and Prejudice." But Jane Austen hardly be- 
 longs to the same class with those preceding her in 
 the list. The tone of her writings is more healthful and 
 in style she has more connection to the later school of 
 Scott than to the morbid spirit of these "Pestilent Night- 
 mists." 
 
14 
 
 In the United States it might seem that the scenes 
 of the Colonial and Revolutionary Wars formed the 
 most fitting setting for romance, but the perspective of 
 romance needs to be at some distance from the present 
 to be able to gather to itself the glamour of imaginative 
 glory. I quote from Prescott^ : "Great doubts were long 
 entertained for our capabilities for immediate success in 
 this department. We had none of the buoyant, stirring 
 associatioms of a romantic age; none of the chivalrous 
 pageantry, the feudal and border story or Robin Hood 
 Adventure; none of the dim shadowy superstitions and 
 the traditional legends which had gathered like moss 
 round every stone, hill and valley of the olden country. 
 Everything here wore a spick-and-span new aspect and 
 lay in the broad, garish sunshine of every day life. We 
 had none of the picturesque varieties of situation or cos- 
 tume; everything lay on the same dull, prosaic level, in 
 short, we had none of the most obvious elements of 
 poetry; at least so it appeared to the vulgar eye."^ In 
 the last decade of the eighteenth century Mrs. Rowson 
 sent forth "Charlotte Temple, A Tale of Truth." In 
 the words oi Richardson,^ "Its long drawn melancholy 
 is unrelieved by a touch of art; it is not even amusing 
 in its absurdity." Soon after came "Female Quixotism" 
 by Mrs. Tenney, which is aptly described by the above 
 characterization of "Charlotte Temple." American men 
 of culture felt that they must do something to show 
 their independence of England and their equality of in- 
 
 1. Prescott's Miscellanies, C. B. Brown, p. 51. 
 
 2. Richardson A. Lit., Vol. 11, p. 285. 
 
15 
 
 tellect and training. Dwight and Freneau had exhibited 
 this spirit in the realm' of poetry but in the domain of 
 prose fiction, save for the lachrymose productions of 
 Mrs. Rowson and Mrs. Tenney, nothing deserved the 
 name. Even Hawthorne in his preface to "The Marble 
 Faun" complains of his position in words that more fitly 
 apply to the time of which we speak. "No author with- 
 out a trial, can conceive of the difficulty of writing a 
 romance about a country where there is no shadow, no 
 antiquity, no mystery, no picturesque and gloomy wrong, 
 nor anything but a common-place prosperity in broad 
 and simple daylight as is happily the case with my dear, 
 native land. It will be very long, I trust, before romance 
 writers may find congenial and easily handled themes, 
 either in the annals of our stalwart republic, or in any 
 characteristic and probable events of our individual 
 lives. Romance and poetry, ivy, lichens, and wall- 
 flowers need ruin to make them grow." 
 
16 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN. 
 
 Probably no author could have felt more this dearth 
 of suitable surroundings than Charles Brockden Brown, 
 who stands to American fiction as Daniel De Foe to the 
 English novel. Born in Philadelphia of Quaker ancestry 
 January 17, 1771, his naturally delicate constitution was 
 rendered still more fragile by his retiring, sedentary 
 habits. From early childhood he was an earnest student 
 and an omnivorous reader, possessing one of those minds 
 that by intuition grasp and absorb all things ''bookish" 
 within reach of it. At the age of 16, he had planned 
 three epic poems on the discovery of America and the 
 conquests of Peru and Mexico. Fortunately for him, 
 no vestige of these now remains. Not long after, he be- 
 gan the study of law but soon abandoned that profession, 
 for which he was unfitted, and gave himself entirely to 
 literature or "bookmaking"^ as he called it. 
 
 In 1798 he may be said to have made his permanent 
 home in New York City, after frequent visits and here 
 he published his first romance, "Wieland," four years 
 after the publication of William Godwin's "Caleb Wil- 
 liams." The second novel of Brown, "Ormond," ap- 
 peared in 1799. These twoi works excited much interest 
 on both sides of the Atlantic and considerable favorable 
 comment arose from literary men upon the unusual 
 
 I. Duyckinck's Cyclo. of Am. Lit., Vol. i, p. 612. 
 
17 
 
 powers of conception and execution displayed in them. 
 This was undoubtedly pleasing to Brown, as it would 
 be to anyone, and served to reconcile him more fully to 
 his unique position in the United States. In 1798 the 
 yellow fever visited New York City with a violence 
 similar to that which had marked its appearance in Phil- 
 adelphia live years before. On account of the presence 
 of his friend, Dr. E. H. Smith, a young man of much 
 promise, in the city. Brown refused to leave New York. 
 Soon after the death of Dr. Smith from the disease, 
 Brown was himself taken down with it and nearly died. 
 Upon his recovery he gave forth his third romance, 
 "Arthur Mervyn; or Memoirs of the Year 1793," a story 
 laid near Philadelphia, which gives a supposed account 
 of the yellow fever as it came upon that city. This was 
 succeeded soon after by "Edgar Huntly; or The Adven- 
 tures of a Sleep-walker," a wild imaginative tale. Brown 
 published "Clara Howard" in 1801 and in 1804 appeared 
 "Jane Talbot," first published in England, the last of 
 the six works of fiction that form the basis of Brown's 
 reputation and of what I shall say of his works. 
 
 Only little more need be said of Brown save in di- 
 rect reference to these six. During the year he published 
 "Clara Howard," he returned to' his native city and made 
 his home in the family of his brother. Here in 1803 he 
 undertook the management of "Literary Magazine and 
 American Register." Brown had in 1799 established the 
 "Monthly Magazine and American Review" in New 
 York City, which did not survive the year, but the 
 "Register" maintained a life of considerable vigor for 
 
18 
 
 five years. During' the last years of his Hfe, Brown 
 wrote several poHtical pamphlets, which detracted noth- 
 ing from his reputation and a number of biographical 
 works were added to his name. The health of the author, 
 al^^•ays delicate and infinn, now began to give way en- 
 tirely under what appeared to be consumption ami he 
 died on the J2d of February, 1810, aged 39, leaving a 
 wife and four children. 
 
 In the prose fiction of Brown there is to me much 
 more of the ivmance than of the novel. — though it 
 would seem that in most he intended to make them a 
 recital of the events of real life and not to place in them 
 so much of the lofty and supernatural as to entitle them 
 to the designation of romances; but it was difficult for 
 Brown to write what we to-day consider a novel. His 
 mind was too morbid, too nuich absorbed with that which 
 is bevond it all. 
 
19 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 WIELAND. 
 
 In none of our author's romances is the ruling spirit 
 of his mind shown out with so great distinctness as in 
 his first, "Wieland, or the Transformation," which is 
 commonly said to be similar to Godwin's "Caleb Wil- 
 liams." Indeed, the influence of Godwin is apparently 
 clear, but it seems to me impossible for Brown to write 
 similarly to another. jBoth stories start with an idea 
 which is to be worked out according to the theory of the 
 author and events as we go on shape themselves to a 
 form suitable for this. Godwin wrote his story to show 
 forth the evils of the social system in England, how ut- 
 terly impossible it was for the poor to contend for jus- 
 tice against the rich or noble and to illustrate how the 
 remnants of the spirit of chivalry in England might af- 
 fect a mind morbidly sensitive to the dictates of "honor." 
 In "Wieland" we have the ill effects that might arise 
 from the use of ventriloquism and a demonstration of the 
 advisability of keeping one's mind clear of fanciful theo- 
 ries. In both there is a conception of a grim destiny that 
 pursues and overhangs its object as relentlessly as the 
 night follows the day. The victims of this destiny have 
 forebodings of impending drx>m and are gloomy. They 
 writhe and struggle, but there is no escape. Neverthe- 
 less, the mind of Brockden Brown was peculiar unto 
 himself and that peculiarity leaves its impress on every- 
 thing that he wrote. 
 
20 
 
 The scene of "W'ielaiul" is laid in Pennsylvania 
 among a family named Wieland of German descent, cul- 
 tivated and of excellent standing. The contemplation of 
 religious topics seems inherited. The father has died in 
 a mysterious and terrible manner and the son has de- 
 rived from him a melancholy and superstitious constitu- 
 tion of mind, which his studious habits and uneventful 
 life have developed into an amiable fanaticism. The 
 family live close to the Schuykill ; near by is the sister 
 who tells the story and the most of the time Pleyel. the 
 brother of ^^leland's wife. Strange voices are heard by 
 different members of the family, sometimes commanding 
 them to do certain acts, warning them of danger or tell- 
 ing them of events beyond the reach of human knowl- 
 edge. The "dead vast and middle of the night" is em- 
 ployed for these things, which affect the head of the fam- 
 ily in particular as indications of a supernatural agency. 
 A destiny of horror seems to hang over the family and 
 we read on anticipating some dread event. 
 
 About this time a middle aged man named Carwin 
 of rustic appearance, comes to them somewhat myster- 
 iously. In spite of his apparent rusticity, his knowledge 
 and readiness are unlimited and invariable. There is 
 wonderful music in his voice which affects the sister par- 
 ticularly in a most powerful manner. The attractiveness 
 of his conversation is such that he is admitted to great 
 intimacy at Mettingen, the home of Wieland. The 
 strange voices and warnings of danger increase in fre- 
 quency, the perplexity and apprehension of the family 
 are daily augmented and all seem to wait anxiously for 
 
21 
 
 the denouement. At length on the bidding of a solemn, 
 mysterious voice, Wieland offers up on the alter of a sub- 
 missive piety his wife and young children and attempts 
 the life of his sister who escapes by accident. He is ar- 
 rested, convicted of murder, and confined in a dungeon as 
 a lunatic, but bears it all with the heroic calmness of one 
 confident that he has fulfilled the will of the Almighty. 
 During an escape, he learns that he has been deceived 
 and misguided by the ventriloquism of Carwin, who, 
 prompted by pure malice, has taken pleasure in playing 
 his tricks upon the family. The wretched Wieland, in 
 the frenzy of the discovery, kills himself and the now 
 regretful Carwin disappears from the scene and the story 
 closes with the marriage of the sister and Pleyel, whose 
 bride has recently died. As the moral of the story, so 
 far as the family is concerned, the author, supposedly 
 the sister, states "If Wieland had framed juster notions 
 of moral duty and of the divine attributes, or if I had 
 been gifted with ordinary equanimity or foresight, the 
 double-tongued deceiver would have been baffled and re- 
 pelled."^ 
 
 Griswold in his "Prose Writers of America,"^ takes 
 issue with the author in calling Carwin a "demon," 
 "fiend" and actuated by "diabolical malice," but much 
 allowance must be made for the horror of those repre- 
 sented as present at the time. Certainly, it is difficult 
 to see how one could take a pleasure in doing what the 
 ventriloquist did here without it is a "fiendish" and 
 "devilish" pleasure and actuated by " diabolical malice." 
 
 1. "Wieland," p. 251. 
 
 2. P. 108. 
 
22 
 
 The method of explaining the death of the elder 
 Wieland by spontaneous combustion was one that Brown 
 obtained from the doctors as he indicates in a foot note.^ 
 It was a favorite device of the author to introduce some- 
 thing that had especially attracted his interest into his 
 works, then give a reference to explain it in a foot note, 
 as in this instance and that of ventriloquism.^ 
 
 Griswold^ can see nothing peculiar in people of the 
 education and intellect of this family being thus de- 
 ceived, nor does he think that the explanatio^n given of 
 these mysteries "renders it in any degree uninteresting," 
 but Prof. Beers refers to the ventriloquism of 
 "Wieland" under the statement that "Brown frequently 
 raises a superstructure of mystery on a basis ludicrously 
 weak." Such cases certainly have been known, but the 
 training of the people must have been unusual to admit 
 of it, and I do not agree with Griswold^ that Brown was 
 "a careful anatomist of the mind and familiar with its 
 wonderful phenomena." It is true that he evidently had 
 made a careful study of the mind, but that he ever un- 
 derstood its healthy workings I do not believe. To do 
 this one must himself possess a mind that has for con- 
 siderable periods of time felt the delight of living in that 
 state of semi-unconsciousness to our physical being which 
 we call health. So only will he be able to feel as other 
 
 1. "Wieland," p. 38. 
 
 2. "Wieland," p. 207. 
 
 3. Prose Writers of Am., p. 109. 
 
 4. Am. Lit., p. 82. 
 
 5. Prose Writers of Am., p. 109. 
 
23 
 
 men have felt and usually feel, to come in contact with 
 and measure himself by the common standard. This 
 great pleasure and power we are assured Brown never 
 possessed; accordingly, he was given constantly to in- 
 trospection and self-contemplation. If the chimeras and 
 superstitious vagaries of "Wieland" obtained credence in 
 a family of education and strength of mind to-day, we 
 should consider them fit inmates for an insane asylum; 
 certainly, for a retreat for nervous invalids. No man of 
 good intelligence simply because he hears a mysterious 
 voice destroys his loved ones unless crazy or a religious 
 fanatic. 
 
 As to the lack of strength in the explanation, it does 
 not seem to me to be a source of strength. To make it 
 successful, the primary cause must be assigned to glaring 
 mental weakness; then when we are wrought up by the 
 horrors and pathos of the story, it turns out to be the 
 miserable trick of a miserable adventurer. And the in- 
 voluntary feeling is to wish much that we had been pres- 
 ent to inflict summary punishment on the malicious 
 wretch and tell Wieland, "man of sorrows" though he 
 be, what a miserable, wretched idiot and hideous crim- 
 inal he has been. The transition is too sudden. 
 
 The pathos and horror of the preceding scenes are 
 worthy of a sterner setting. In Wieland's description of 
 the destruction of his wife, so dear to him, there is an 
 intensity of the terrible equal to some of the best 
 passages of the kind in any language known to 
 me. All the ghastliness of Euripides' Medea 
 or of Lady Macbeth walking in her sleep while 
 she rubs her hands and ejaculates "Here's the smell of 
 
24 
 
 blood still ! All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten 
 this little hand ! Oh ! Oh ! Oh !"^ gives not so much hor- 
 ror to the surroundings as does Brown here while there 
 is an added pathetic element that appeals to our tenderest 
 sympathies. 
 
 But, if Brown introduced the mystery at all, he 
 must needs explain it in some such way. Our education 
 is too advanced and our ideas too open to admit of other 
 expedients save those of the juggler. It is this that makes 
 the trick beyond success to the healthy mind under any 
 circumstances. We have no atmosphere of superstition 
 which will allow it. Scott in his treatment of the Scottish 
 Highlands had a location imbued with the superstitious 
 and a people by instinct and training adapted to it. He 
 might introduce a touch of such here and there, yet 
 leave it unexplained. Shakespeare in Macbeth need not, 
 for the same reason, explain the witches or Banquo's 
 ghost; but in America in the nineteenth century nothing 
 approaching it would go unchallenged. 
 
 But in addition to this, when we have finished "Wie- 
 land" there seems something "uncanny" about it and 
 we cannot make ourselves believe that ordinary mortals 
 would so conduct themselves. It is right here that I add 
 emphasis to my criticism that Brown did not understand 
 the human mind. If he understands it. he must be able 
 to show forth its workings as they are so that they seem 
 to us possible. A romance does not necessarily deal en- 
 tirely with the possible, but if, in a romance, a family 
 of our country and of recent time are taken as a basis of 
 
 I. "Macbeth." 
 
25 
 
 the events, they should not act as though they belong 
 more properly to another world than this. 
 
 Again, none of the characters are really strong 
 characters. They are decidedly unpractical and we learn 
 nothing from looking upon them. Great pains are taken 
 to teach a moral, but it is a moral for the most part 
 taught from those that are not "of the earth earthy." It 
 was, indeed, a fault of the time that merely showed, per- 
 haps, that Brown read the literature of the day; never- 
 theless, we are forced to criticise by what seems to be a 
 common-sense standard. Of the practical, »alert man or 
 woman of affairs, there is nowhere a glimpse. The im- 
 puted authoress and heroine lives in a house by herself 
 with a single servant and an endeavor is made to create 
 a model womanly character of a stronger mold than the 
 ordinary, but unexplained apprehensions constantly bring 
 her down into the "Slough of Despond." She hears for 
 the first time the voice of the unknown Carwin and im- 
 mediately is "like Niobe, all tears," and spends the next 
 day in musing and in gazing at her sketches of the sup- 
 posed countryman. We are continually wishing that the 
 characters had something to do, that they had less time 
 for "musing," for "contemplation" of "thoughts omin- 
 ous and dreary." We wish they would do something as 
 we would do, were we in their places, but this they never 
 attempt, even though their lives depend upon it. 
 
 A peculiar and exceedingly weak deviation is made 
 at the close when we are looking with great interest to 
 the climax by side-tracking the reader into the midst of 
 many details in regard to "Louisa Conway, Major 
 
26 
 
 Stuart, and Maxwell," — none of whom really had any- 
 thing to do with the inception and development of the 
 plot and about none of whom do we care anything. It 
 would seem that Brown felt bound to get another moral 
 lesson into the work and so fastens it on at the close, 
 since he could see no place where it was admissible. 
 
 On the other hand, there is much of strength in 
 the romance, much to give with justice a' reputation to 
 the author. We are interested always and sometimes, 
 yes often, in spite of ourselves. We never want to stop 
 until we have seen the end and the ability of a strong 
 and imaginative perception is everywhere visible; in 
 fact, this is the most commendable quality of the whole. 
 Since the defects of the tale are for the most part of the 
 same general nature as the defects of contemporaneous 
 literature, they are far more excusable. The work is 
 one of the best of Brown's and, unquestionably, the best 
 of its kind yet from an American. 
 
27 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 ORMOND. 
 
 Ormond, the second romance of the author, is, in 
 my judgment, his best work. The scene is placed in 
 New York and Philadelphia and included in point of 
 time the yellow fever period of Philadelphia. An artist 
 of considerable skill is obliged to engage in his father's 
 occupation of pharmacy to support his family. A young 
 partner, seemingly indebted to him as much as possible, 
 robs his patron and leaves him to blindness and beg- 
 gary. His daughter, Constantia [Dudley, an only child 
 and the heroine of the whole, bears up most courageous- 
 ly with an "affection that hopes, and endures, and is 
 patient" through trials that would have crushed a St. 
 Simeon Stylites. The deadly work of the yellow fever 
 gives ghastliness to the scenes through which she and 
 her father pass. Just as the life for them seems to be a 
 brighter one in propect, when Constantia discovers and 
 causes to aid her, the villain that had cheated her father 
 and the scourge of yellow fever has passed, Ormond 
 appears upon the scene, somewhat like the dark and mys- 
 terious Carwin, with many things unknown about him, 
 though he strives to appear all frankness. 
 
 His peculiar notions of marriage cause the death 
 of the woman he has seemed to love until he meets Con- 
 stantia. The continued friendship of Constantia for him 
 after his base desertion of this woman, Helena Cleves, 
 
28 
 
 and her consequent suicide, is one of the incongruities 
 of the story. The father of Constantia is murdered by 
 an unknown assassin and Ormond pursues the maiden 
 with dark forebodings as to the future. Her financial 
 condition bettered by the bequests of Helena, she is 
 about to set sail for Europe with her friend, the relator 
 of the trials and virtues of Constantia, when the vio- 
 lence of Ormond brings him to his death by the hand of 
 the maiden but not before he has slain- in a fit of caprice 
 Craig, the despoiler of the fortunes of the family, who is 
 revealed as the assassin of Dudley at the instigation of 
 Ormond. The tale ends with Constantia in quiet happi- 
 ness living like a vestal virgin with her friend in Eu- 
 rope. 
 
 The romance, on the whole, stands considerably 
 above others of Brown, though destitute of the power of 
 "Wieland." The author evidently wishes to exhibit in 
 Constantia a model of womanly virtue, a Lucretia with- 
 out her peculiar misfortunes, one that can rise above 
 disappointments and adversity, the patient Evangeline, 
 but with a wisdom and thrift that could provide means 
 where none existed, retaining all the time an "idyllic 
 grace" and beauty. Brown's vivid impressions of the 
 yellow fever will not allow him to pass over the oppor- 
 tunity to exhibit the horrors of its ravages. He de- 
 lighted to have a touch of mystery in his tales — hence 
 Ormond and his secret closet. Prof. Beers^ suggests 
 that Ormond was an attempted reproduction of Aaron 
 Burr. It is not improbable. The ground of resemblance 
 
 I. American Lit., p. 8i. 
 
29 
 
 is broad. In the portrayal of this character, I detect 
 mOire art than anywhere else in Brown's works. The 
 character seems to be at all times true to the con- 
 ception of him at the outset and he forms the most 
 brilliant production from this point of view in the work, 
 or, indeed, in any work of the author. 
 
 The story is, perhaps, too protracted in the part 
 that deals with the misfortunes of Constantia to be in- 
 teresting. It is, however, difficult to paint such a char- 
 acter as this and reveal by many details the very "Sab-^ 
 baths of her soul" without running extreme danger of 
 wearying the reader and making the whole seem com- 
 mon-place. But Brown has done this part well, yet when 
 in contact with Ormond we are at times fearful that her 
 character will break down. When we would expect her 
 to deny her society to him after she has learned what 
 he really is, she continues the friendship to her own 
 evident misfortune. Notwithstanding, her personality is 
 a good one and her individuality strongly drawn. 
 
 The introduction of the authoress, the friend of 
 Constantia, to such prominence in the last part is a de- 
 cided weakness. There is, moreover, considerable of the 
 namby-pamby in making her leave her bridegroom of 
 a few weeks, the '"'silent partner," in Europe, while she 
 goes on a quest of many months for her lost friend. 
 The searcher has not seen her friend for over three 
 years, but is absorbed entirely in the search^ now driven 
 into the depths of despair by the report of her death, 
 now borne upward into the seventh heaven of happiness 
 by an unexpected discovery of her alive and well, while 
 
30 
 
 the solitary husband "unwept, unhoiiored and unsung," 
 holds liis own as best he can in far away London. This 
 circumstance is an added argument in favor of what 
 has already been said that Brown did not understand 
 the workings of the human mind. 
 
 In opposition, the very positive excellence is pos- 
 sessed by the work, both positive and unusual for the 
 time, of being in nearly all its bearings something entire- 
 ly within the limits of a common-sense form of life. 
 When we are able to feel that men as we find them would 
 have done thus in a similar position, we are pleased and 
 interested. Writers able to create such characters en- 
 dure. In the words of Irving,^ "They have rooted 
 themselves in the unchanging principles of human na- 
 ture." Also, the style of English is less labored and 
 stilted than in "Wieland." As a production from any- 
 one, it was entitled to much commendation. As a pro- 
 duction from an American, it deserved warm praise. 
 
 I. Mutability of Lit. 
 
31 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 ARTHUR MERVYN. 
 
 With the terrors of the plague in Philadelphia in 
 1793 as a surrounding, came forth Brown's next publi- 
 cation, "Arthur Mervyn," the principal actor of which is 
 a country boy of delicate physique and sensitive nature. 
 His father, a farmer with but little education, had mar- 
 ried an ignorant servant girl of his. This drove the 
 young man from home and he came to Philadelphia with 
 almost no money and without friends or acquaintances. 
 He was found one night sick with the prevailing illness 
 near the dwelling of a physician who took him into his 
 home and with his wife nursed him through the dis- 
 ease. On his recovery, he detailed his story to his bene- 
 factor and this recital forms the major part of the tale. 
 On his arrival in the town after passing through several 
 very strange experiences, he is engaged as secretary by 
 Waldeck, an unscrupulous man of the world, the keeper 
 of a fine establishment and by his means the rustic youth 
 soon acquires many of the graces of culture. There is 
 but little actual outline to the plot, bu| whatever interest 
 is awakened, as we read, is centered around the criminal 
 career of Waldeck, the connection of the youthful 
 Mervyn with him and the descriptions of the yellow 
 fever. A wonderful number of characters are brought 
 in and the centrifugal force is in constant danger of 
 overcoming the centripetal. Waldeck finally dies in a 
 
32 
 
 debtor's prison and Mervyn marries Mrs. Fielding, a 
 widow of foreign birth, several years older than himself, 
 who, until the last part of the story, had not appeared. 
 
 The character of Mervyn is hardly a success unless 
 he be denominated "the boy wonder," but, though at 
 times of remarkable discernment of mind, he at others 
 acts w4th strange lack of foresight. Like the principal 
 characters in all Brown's romances, save possibly 
 "Ormond," he is unable to think of more than one thing 
 at a time, as instanced in his conduct in making the 
 journey on horseback with Eliza Hadwin.^ One point 
 or phase of a matter gains his attention and he follows 
 that oblivious of all things else. It is difficult to see 
 hO'W anyone of sound intelligence could act as he did 
 when he detailed his affection for Eliza Hadwin to Mrs. 
 Fielding and at the same time assured her that the .one 
 he marries must be her "exact counterpart;"^ yet he is 
 in blissful ignorance of the trend of his remarks or the 
 cause of the confusion awakened and when later thq 
 kind friend, after much explanation, makes the situa- 
 tion plain to him he nearly faints in surprise and un- 
 expected rapture. 
 
 Waldeck is the best drawn character but weak- 
 nesses in him are apparent. The general cast of his 
 character is that of the specious, ruthless villain and he 
 seems to be plotting rascality constantly, while frequent- 
 ly pretending contrition. Yet the author would several 
 times attempt to make him appear not really a villain 
 
 1. "Arthur Mervyn," Vol. ii, p. 6"]. 
 
 2. Vol. II, p. 177. 
 
33 
 
 but led on by a spirit of evil that frequently possessed 
 him. No one but a deep, determined villain could accom- 
 plish the dark deeds of Waldeck. Compunction and con- 
 trition at the murder of Watson should properly be exul- 
 tation, while such men as he do not leap into a river with 
 a sincere desire to drown themselves. We finally are 
 left in doubt as to whether Colvill and Waldeck are 
 really one or not. The melancholy close ol Waldeck' s 
 career is made a means to illustrate the social evils aris- 
 ing from imprisonment for debt and to show the hor- 
 rors of the prison. The character of Mrs. Fielding, ap- 
 parently intended to be the heroine of the story, is not 
 one that adds strength to the whole. 
 
 The writer expended all the art in the tale on the first 
 volume and the second consists in a mere multiplicity of 
 characters, sudden transitions and attempted dramatic 
 poses. The work will be read, if read at all, principally 
 for its excellent descriptions of the ravages of yellow 
 fever, which we presume to be drawn from the actual 
 experiences of the author. Here there is considerable 
 descriptive art shown and in several places an extremity 
 of the horrible is indicated by giving a few ghastly in- 
 cidentals, as in Chap. IV, Vol. i. Had Brown cut out 
 one-half the story by lopping off details and extraneous 
 characters, the result would have been a positive im- 
 provement. 
 
34 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 EDGAR HUNTlvY. 
 
 "Edgar Himtly or Memoirs of a Sonmamlnilist," 
 followed "Arthur Mervyii." The seat of the story is in 
 Pennsylvania near the forks of the Delaware. A friend 
 of Hnntly, named Waldegrave, suddenly disappeared 
 and no trace of himi is discovered, though the search is 
 made far and wide and the supposition is that he has 
 been murdered. On a return^ home by night, Huntly 
 wanders along an unfrequented path and, by the light 
 of the moon near the residence of a friend, perceives an 
 unknown- man digging in the ground under a tree and 
 making frequent stops when he seems overcome with in- 
 tense grief; soon the man closes the hole and Huntly 
 follows him a long distance through the wood till he dis- 
 appears in a cavern. The digger proves to be a sleep- 
 M-alker, named Clithero, a mysterious foreigner em- 
 ployed in the neighborhood. The suspicion arises that 
 Clithero' is the assassin of Waldegrave and Huntly takes 
 it upon himself to watch and follow him when sleep- 
 walking. In carrying out his self-imposed mission, the 
 young man meets strange adventures in the wild forest. 
 Finally, brooding over the matter, Huntly himself walks 
 in his sleep and on recovering his senses finds himself 
 in a deep cavern miles from home with a panther and a 
 small band of sleeping Indians between himself and the 
 open air. He slays the panther and one of the Indians 
 
35 
 
 and effects his escape, taking with him a prisoner of the 
 Indians, a young girl whom he rescued. In completing 
 their escape, Huntly meets a number of encounters with 
 the Indians and behaves with considerable bravery and 
 resolution. After passing through great hardships and 
 privations, the young man reaches a settlement and dis- 
 covers the instructor of his youth and his dearest friend, 
 an Englishman named Sarsefield. The story of Clithero, 
 previously related to Huntly, showed him to be a young 
 man of a peculiar cast of mind who was overwdielmed 
 w^ith grief at misdemeanors, largely fancied, that he had 
 committed in England. 
 
 The former friends of Clithero, on account of in- 
 juries to whom he was now suffering remorse, now ap- 
 pear and Sarsefield is the husband of his former patron, 
 to whose niece he had been engaged. Clithero now dis- 
 appears and when discovered is really a maniac, re- 
 garded with pity by his friends that had thought him 
 a double villain. Imprisoned as a lunatic, he escapes 
 while on board a vessel and drowns himself rather than 
 be recaptured. The mystery of the disappearance of 
 Waldegrave is cleared by the explanation that he is 
 slain by one of the party of Indians that had been com- 
 mitting depredations in the neighlx)rhood. 
 
 The tale ends with all in contentment, but the des- 
 tiny of Huntly, so far as marriage is concerned, is un- 
 certain; whether he wedded Mary Waldegrave, the sis- 
 ter of the deceased, or Clarice, the former affianced of 
 Clithero, — this last on the common assumption of a 
 reader that such an one as Huntly must necessarily 
 marry one of the characters of the romance. 
 
36 
 
 Prescott^ in his essay on Brown points out that 
 while the somnambtihsm of Hiintly performs the same 
 function as the ventriloquism of "Wieland," it has this 
 merit over the latter in "that it does not necessarily im- 
 pair the effect by perpetually suggesting a solution of 
 mysteries and thus dispelling the illusion on whose ex- 
 istence the effect of the whole story mainly depends." 
 But I think the difference is merely a difference in kind 
 of method employed. Ventriloquism is suggestive of 
 mystery and, if employed for deceit, its probable effects 
 at once suggest themselves. Sleep-walking is not a 
 mystery in its manifestations; hence, no mystery of the 
 kind pictured in "Wieland" can be built upon it. I dis- 
 agree with Prescott in that sleep-walking is manifestly 
 used to explain several of the mysteries of the story, as 
 the connection of Huntly with a band of Indians;^ but, 
 truly, as sleep-walking is thus of a different kind and 
 also is not so prominent in the story, incidental rather 
 than fundamental, it does not in the end detract from the 
 strength of the plot as much, certainly, as does the ven- 
 triloquism of Brown's first romance. This, it seems to 
 me, is the true distinction. 
 
 To bring two sleei>walkers into the story is surely 
 a source of weakness. Apparently, Brown wants to 
 bring Huntly into contact with the Indians without de- 
 lay and the easiest way that occurs tO' him is to cause 
 Huntly to turn somnambulist and reach the desired 
 point unknown to himself. 
 
 1. Miscellanies C. B. Brown, p. 31. 
 
 2. Edgar Huntly, p. 215. 
 
37 
 
 The story is in almost all places weak where the 
 hero moves alone, for there, as in the case of Brown's 
 leading characters, he is prone to "ruminate," to "medi- 
 tate deeply," and to go over by himself step by step 
 by a wonderfully slow process the incidents that have 
 led him to his present position. The ability to grasp 
 the situation and act upon it instantly is wholly wanting. 
 Whenever anything approaching it is attempted the 
 actor invariably makes a mistake, as when Huntly leaps 
 from the precipice to avoid his supposed enemies. When 
 Huntly,^ after several wonderful escapes goes into a 
 strange house and there finds Sarsefield,^ his old friend 
 whom he had not seen for years and who had supposed 
 him dead, the older man, instead of considering it enough 
 that he sees Huntly alive and before him, holds him at 
 arm's length and with eyes fixed oii the floor, goes 
 over in detail in order to make sure of himself the un- 
 accountable escapes through which he knows the young 
 man has passed. Not only can the mind at such a time 
 act no faster than the tongue can speak, but an escape 
 from death is not satisfactory unless it can first be re- 
 solved into a syllogism. 
 
 The happenings that beset Huntly are such that we 
 almost weary because of their seeming impossibility, but 
 we certainly are prepared to accept more from him after 
 being presented with the incomprehensible character of 
 Clithero. No sane man would act the part of this char- 
 acter after he has unwittingly but most opportunely put 
 W^iatte out of reach of inflicting more injury to his long- 
 
 I. P. 191. 2. P. 209. 
 
38 
 
 suffering sister and to mankind in general. Again we 
 have added proof that Brown, the philosophical mind 
 analyst, did not comprehend the operations of the nor- 
 mal mind. 
 
 There is considerable power of description shown 
 in telling of the wild scenery through which Huntly 
 passed and the last half of the tale in particular is vivid 
 and interesting, especially Huntly' s escape from the first 
 panther^ and his encounters with the savages.^ 
 
 Clithero becomes burdensome in the first part, but 
 the author, as though aware of this, suddenly throws 
 the hero into the midst of savages and thereafter there 
 is interest. 
 
 It is the only one of the tales of Brown in which 
 Indians appear and in the strongly drawn though brief 
 illustrations of savage character, we at once think of 
 Cooper, but there is no suggestion of Chingachgook 
 and Uncas. The wildman of the American forest is 
 crafty, cruel and ferocious, though no pains are taken to 
 paint him in vivid colors. 
 
 When we have brought up Cooper, we, immediate- 
 ly, also compare Brown's description of forest scenes 
 and, especially those in which savages take part, with 
 like passages in Cooper. We note the absence of the free 
 and easy swing of the narrative that marks the clear 
 coloring of Cooper. Even in the most interesting and 
 dramatic of the scenes of Brown, there seems always to 
 linger a sternness and tenseness which fail to put us 
 entirely at ease. 
 
 I. P 109. 2. Ps. 155 and 165. 
 
39 
 
 Brown principally lacks movement, the passion for 
 soliloquy in his principal characters being omnipresent. 
 It is an analytical and' so a philosophical trait, but 
 when we are amid scenes where lives hang upon the 
 issue of the moment, the soul demands a painter, a 
 word-poet, not a mind analyst that stops to discover why 
 we have thought and acted so as to draw ourselves into 
 the present crisis. It is, indeed, because in this Cooper 
 has satisfied us that we accord him greatness and to that 
 degree to which we can ascribe this quality to Brown, we 
 admire "Edgar Huntly." But Brown has but little of 
 the genius of the prose-poet, — him that might write a 
 perfect epic though he may not understand metrical 
 verse. He is analytical, not expository. 
 
 Pride in his Americanism led to this — the first ef- 
 fort to lead the events of a work of fiction among sav- 
 ages and forest wilds. Hence, it is both interesting and 
 praise- worthy, though it may lack artistic merit and con- 
 tain many passages that are insipid and overcolored. In 
 his preface the author says, "One merit the writer may 
 at least claim; that of calling forth the passions and en- 
 gaging the sympathy of the reader by means hitherto 
 unemployed by preceding authors. Puerile superstition 
 and exploded manners; Gothic castles and chimeras are 
 the materials usually employed for this end. The inci- 
 dents O'f Indian hostility and the perils of the western 
 wilderness are far more suitable; and, for a native of 
 America to overlook these, would admit of no apology." 
 
40 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 CI.ARA HOWARD. 
 
 "Clara Howard" is a loA^e story, pure and simple — 
 exceedingly simple. The hero, Philip Stanley, is an 
 orphan boy whose parents were poor. During the ab- 
 sence of an elderly benefactor, Howard, an Englishman, 
 in his native country, Stanley becomes acquainted with 
 the Wilmots, brother and sister. The sister, considerably 
 older than Stanley, becomes engaged to him and on the 
 death of her brother feels doubly her dependence upon 
 Stanley, who has never known much of women. Mr. 
 Howard returns accompanied by his wife, recently 
 wedded, and her daughter, Clara Howard, whose father 
 was a cousin of Howard. Stanley is taken into the 
 family practically on the footing of a son. The young 
 people become attached to one another but on his telling 
 Clara of Mary Wilmot, she sends Stanley from her to 
 fulfill his engagement, but Mary Wilmot has disappeared 
 and the story dwells upon the details relating to this and 
 to the restoration of Stanley to the favor of Miss Howard. 
 Miss Wilmot finds consolation in another and all ends 
 in contentment. 
 
 Experience in works of fiction did not add to 
 Brown's ability in writing them, judging from the ex- 
 amples of the six taken for consideration. The story is 
 carried on entirely by correspondence, for the most part 
 between Stanley, Miss Howard and Miss Wilmot. This 
 
41 
 
 is a hazardous method at best as the author must, to 
 make the story plain, cause the participants in the letter 
 writing to say to one another many things already 
 known by them, thus giving a stage effect to everything 
 and causing us to consider that letter writing is the busi- 
 ness of these people, not a means of social intercourse 
 and improvement, or else that we have found people en- 
 deavoring to outdo pne another in a mutual burlesque. 
 In encountering this hazard. Brown has in no degree 
 escaped the danger. 
 
 There is at the bottom almost nothing for a ro- 
 mance or even for a novel. A young man falls in love with 
 a young lady while engaged to another. He neglects to 
 speak of the situation until too late to be of use, but the 
 second lady on learning of his engagement orders him 
 to marry his first love with a dauntless self-sacrifice that 
 reminds one of the parting injunction of the Spartan 
 mother to her son going out to battle, "bring back your 
 shield my son or be brought back upon it." The young 
 man meekly strives to obey but cannot bring matters to 
 a head as the second young lady knows she has lost his 
 affection and she goes off to marry another, as it finally 
 results, to the very great pleasure of the other two prin- 
 cipal characters. We are constantly led to think that 
 had the young people had less time from their business 
 to write letters, there would have been less ground for a 
 story and so they would not have made such fools of 
 themselves. 
 
 Brown here falls into the sickly sentimentalism of 
 the time as represented on this side of the Atlantic most 
 
42 
 
 prominently by Mrs. Tenney and Mrs. Rowson. I 
 quote the opening paragraph, a part of a letter from 
 Stanley to Miss Howard — a quotation typical of the 
 entire story — "Why do I write? For whose use do I 
 pass my time thus? There is no one living who cares 
 a jot for me. There was a time when a throbbing 
 heart, a trembling hand, and eager eyes were always 
 prepared to read and ruminate on the scantiest and poor- 
 est scribble that dropped from my pen; but she has dis- 
 appeared; the veil between us is like death." That the 
 hero of a story could write such idiotic nonsense, and 
 that to the one to whom his affections were given, simply 
 because he could not find another to whom he had been 
 engaged just when he wanted to see her, is enough to 
 condemn the whole work. 
 
 The effort is to make Stanley the worthy, industri- 
 ous, sensible young man striving to rise from poverty and 
 obscurity and to create in Miss Howard a model young 
 woman, but both are persons of moods and tenses, writ- 
 ing the most incoherent, nonsensical stuff to one another, 
 alternately issuing and retracting stern decrees upon 
 each other with all the solemnity of an edict from Rome. 
 The young man has sisters practically dependent upon 
 him>, but he seems forgetful of his obligations. He 
 is honest and upright, but mentions several times^ 
 how the wealth of Miss Howard strikes him most 
 favorably, and this with more than the wonder of pover- 
 ty. The actors suffer anguish of heart, but they never 
 think of doing anything in such a case save to tell of 
 
 I. Ps. 329 and 330. 
 
43 
 
 it in a manner that would drive to desperation the one 
 to whom it is told. Indeed, they seem to write letters 
 largely for the purpose of exciting one another or of 
 exercising their power to use a multitude of words when 
 the)'- have nothing to say. Stanley, after receiving an 
 upbraiding letter from Miss Howard, gets wet and in- 
 curs a fever, which to his love-sick brain means cer- 
 tain death, and he immediately, out of fear that the 
 lady may not hear the details of his intrepidity, dictates 
 a long, carefully-worded letter to her, telling her how 
 he has gained his death saving another from drowning 
 and giving "the prayers of a dying man for thy felic- 
 ity."^ Whereupon, as might be expected, the young 
 lady recants, the perishing hero survives and is restored 
 to his true love accompanied by much letter-writing 
 strongly punctuated with exclamation points. The tale 
 has not much to recommend it except its correct diction. 
 
 I. P. 310. 
 
44 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 JANE TALBOT, 
 
 The last work of fiction of Brown, "Jane Talbot," 
 is the poorest of all. Jane Talbot is the daughter of a 
 country gentleman whose wife has died leaving a son 
 and daughter. The son is a worthless scamp, who ap- 
 parently cares nothing for his sister and contrives to 
 ruin his easy-going father by his wild and riotous ex- 
 travagance. After leaving Philadelphia, the home of 
 the family, he goes to France while the father dies, leav- 
 ing the daughter to the care of Mrs. Fielder, a widow 
 of fortune. Jane is prevailed upon to marry Talbot, 
 a respectable, elderly man, who kindly goes off and dies 
 just when the wife has become more attracted by a 
 younger man, Henry Colden, of unsettled habits, who 
 is exceedingly distasteful to Mrs. Fielder and the threat 
 of disinheritance is held over Mrs. Talbot, if she does 
 not immediately cast o;ff Colden. After attempts at ex- 
 planation and pacification, Colden, who has been ma- 
 ligned to Mrs. Fielder, goes away to a distant part of 
 the earth where he is stranded on a savage coast and 
 returns to America finally after four years' absence, weak 
 from disease, to find that Mrs. Fielder is dead and Mrs, 
 Talbot is still waiting for him, living with his married 
 sister, so that the usual finale results. 
 
 The story, like "Clara Howard," is carried on en- 
 tirely through correspondence and the same criticism 
 
45 
 
 made upon that point in that story appHes here, and 
 again it may be said that there is not much to recom- 
 mend the tale aside from its good EngHsh ; aside also, it 
 might be added, from its lessened use of ponderous 
 phrases as compared with the first four of Brown's ficti- 
 tious works. 
 
 The novel is full of gush and unhealthy sentiment. 
 The hero, Colden, is an irresolute young man who at 
 once "gives up the ship" when ordered to do so by Mrs. 
 Fielder and his demeanor toward her is but little less 
 than abject. Instead of minding his own business and 
 marrying the girl of his choice when both are ready, 
 after the fashion of the ordinary young American, he 
 bends the knee in submission, the world no longer holds 
 for him any attraction, he folds his tent and steals away 
 leaving the almost equally sentimental and insipid young 
 lady to mourn for years his recreancy. It is an illustra- 
 tion of what is true in all Brown's works of fiction that 
 it is indeed unfortunate for a young man if the rom- 
 ancer endeavors to make a hero of him. Golden' is de- 
 ficient in moral courage and in the most important quali- 
 ties that give one success in life. Such an one has no 
 right to talk of those things entirely unfitted for him 
 for never could he provide for a family except through 
 outside assistance. 
 
 The unity of the work is considerably broken in 
 the first part by spending so much time upon Mrs. 
 Talbot's brother. Dowden, in his "Life of Shelley,^ 
 quoted the criticism of Mary Shelley upon Jane Talbot: 
 
 I. Vol. I, p. 473. 
 
46 
 
 "Read Jane Talbot; very stupid book; some letters so- 
 so ; but the old woman in it is so abominable, the young 
 woman so weak and the young man (the only sensible 
 one in the whole) the author of course contrives to 
 bring to idiotcy at the end." This criticism is of course 
 dogmatic and uncompromising, but it contains more 
 truth than fiction. Altogether, it would have been more 
 creditable to Brown had some one else written "Jane 
 Talbot." 
 
47 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 INFLUENCE OF EUROPEAN WRITERS ON BROWN. 
 
 That Brown was affected in his works of fiction by 
 his predecessors and his contempoTaries in the art has 
 been indicated, indeed, it goes without saying. Every- 
 one is the product of his time and his environment. Now 
 and then an intellect stands forth that seemingly has been 
 able so to gather impressions from the "storied urns" 
 of the past and from the realities of the present as to 
 "send messages into Philistia" to appear like the warn- 
 ing voice of a prophet, or in other words of a man in 
 advance of his time. The effect is caused by a higher 
 point of view or by superior comprehension, possibly by 
 both. The question then should not be, — Was Brown 
 affected by other writers in his field? — but, — How was 
 he affected by them? We must take it for granted that 
 Brown, a "literary Doge," had read De Foe, Richard- 
 son, Fielding, Smollett, and Sterne. That he was ac- 
 quainted with the lesser lights that followed admits of 
 no doubt to one who has read his works. Had he not 
 read most of those named at least, we surely could de- 
 tect the fact, though we may not be able to say we see 
 the positive influence of a particular author. The mighty 
 movements following the French Revolution, when the 
 works of Rousseau, of Voltaire, Montesquieu, D'Alem- 
 bert and of Diderot came to invigorate all that read the 
 English language, bore with full weight upon Brown as 
 
48 
 
 is evident from his first romance, "Wieland," and from 
 his political essays. 
 
 It is stated^ that Brown was an ardent admirer of 
 Godwin and of his almost equally famous wife, who was 
 an extremist on the question of women's rights and 
 from her influence seems to have arisen his "Alcuin, a 
 'Dialogue on the Rights of Women." Dowden in his 
 "Life of Shelley"^ speaks of Brown as "Godwin's 
 American disciple in romance." As Godwin and his 
 wife were both ardent students of the French "Encyclo- 
 paedists," we may say further that his literary friends 
 must, in all probability, have lead him to the common 
 fountain head. Both Godwin and Brown wrote much 
 in the ruling spirit. Godwin was influenced by Utopian 
 ideas and he believed, like his son-in-law, Shelley, that 
 society should be overturned; hence his "Caleb Wil- 
 liams," the underlying principle of which is a character 
 worked out by philosophical analysis to develop certain 
 social and political phenomena in their effects upon the 
 mind and upon society. It was using what we would 
 to-day call the scientific method. 
 
 It is evident that Brown adopted this mode of pre- 
 sentation in "Wieland," "Ormond," "Arthur Mervyn," 
 and in "Edgar Huntly." And in all his tales there is 
 one character that stands out before the others with a 
 second of nearly as great consequence. In dealing with 
 these two characters in particular, and in an especial de- 
 gree with the former, Brown makes it his business to^ be 
 
 1. Pancoast Intro, to Am. Lit., p. io8. 
 
 2. Vol. I, p. 472. 
 
49 
 
 careful in his developments of moods, to cause the 
 changes of mind to come by gradations that we may 
 see the effect psychologically and from it draw the les- 
 son. Sometimes he seeks to make the demonstration 
 from other than the |)rincipal characters, as when with 
 much circumlocution, he endeavored to- draw the irrele- 
 vant and useless moral at the end of "Wieland." To 
 point out the moral at the end of any tale is like telling 
 a joke and then naming it, but in this we see some of 
 the effects of his time which seemed to consider that 
 we need not be expected to' retain our common sense in 
 reading or writing a novel or romance. 
 
 But in the first four of the works of fiction of 
 Brown, and in "Wieland" in particular, there is an en- 
 tirely evident atteni])t not merely tt) follow the manner 
 of plot of Godwin, Init to adopt his literary style. He 
 endeavors by a few details, as in the description by Wie- 
 land of his crime, in the yellow fever scenes of Arthur 
 Mervyn and in the escape from the first panther in Edgar 
 Huntly, to impress the outlines upon the mind after the 
 exceedingly simple but intensely sublime action of 
 "Caleb Williams." 
 
 If Bnnvn read French political and social philoso- 
 phy, still more likely is it that he read Locke and Hume 
 and was, we may conclude from his political essays, 
 familiar also with the new science of Adam Smith and 
 with the writings of Burke. 
 
 It is common to connect the name of Jane Austen 
 (1775-1817) with that of Brown as though she in some 
 way influenced him, especially through her best known 
 
50 
 
 work, "Pride and Prejudice," which exercised a very- 
 beneficial effect on the fiction of the time. But this novel 
 was pubhshed in 1813, three years after the death of 
 Brown, and all her works came forth after 18 10. Ac- 
 cordingly, she could not have affected him and I fail tO' 
 find any evidence of an influence from Brown upon her. 
 
51 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 INFLUENCE OE BROWN ON SHELLEY. 
 
 I at this point consider the oft' mentioned influence 
 of Brown upon Shelley. Dowden^ quoted the words of 
 Peacock, that "Brown's four novels, Schiller's Robbers 
 and Goethe's 'Faust,' were of all the works with which 
 he was familiar those which took the deepest root in 
 Shelley's mind and had the strongest influence in the 
 formation of his character." But Shelley was only 
 eighteen when Brown died and his wild, imaginative 
 spirit was easily caught by the ruling sentiment of the 
 fiction of the day which he attempted to represent and 
 portray, but the "Romances of pseudo-passion and 
 pseudo sublime" could not equal the almost blatant pas- 
 sion of "Zastrozzi" and "St. Irvyne the Rosicrusian." 
 The former was written for the most part when Shelley 
 was but seventeen. They are boyish creations and the 
 influence of Brown can be seen only in the familiar pre- 
 dominence of the speculative and abnormal rather than 
 in any one particular point of likeness. I have said 
 Shelley attempted to portray the ruling spirit of romance 
 but he could not do this without striving to outdo it. 
 His nature would not admit of it. The boy gives rein 
 to his imagination. E^ch character is intense. In 
 "Zastrozzi" Matilda, Julia, the "Enchanting and con- 
 
 I. "Life of Shelley," Vol. I, p. 472. t 
 
52 
 
 genial female," Verrezi and the towering and haughty- 
 passioned Zastrozzi are characters that appeal to us be- 
 cause of an indescribable touch everywhere of an artistic 
 fancy. Undoubtedly Brown helped to give form to this 
 fancy, but Shelley, even as a boy, soared above Brown, 
 for his wild, images could brook nothing ever builded 
 by another. That Brown affected permanently the tenor 
 of Shelley's writings I am unable to verify or credit. 
 
53 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 INFlvUENCE OP AMERICAN WRITERS ON BROWN. 
 
 Not SO interesting because not so conclusive is the 
 question of the influence of writers on this side of the 
 Atlantic. In spite of the fact that during a part of his 
 life speculative philosophy overshadowed Brown's relig- 
 ion, he was by nature deeply religious and highly moral. 
 The intense and narrow as well as intensely narrow 
 theological spirit of Puritan New England, the most 
 cultivated part of America, added great stress to the 
 conception that all writing should have a moral bear- 
 ing, that nothing could be unmoral, but if not decidedly 
 moral, everything must be immoral. Hence, the ex- 
 cellence of a tale was in its moral or religious strenu- 
 ousness, and for that matter poetry and prose both were 
 measured by the same cast iron standard. The horrible 
 custom of constant self -inspection that reached its height 
 under Hooker, the Mathers and Edwards had spent it- 
 self before the time of Brown. While the philosophy of 
 Godwin led away from religion. Brown had the true 
 Quaker spirit of his ancestors intensified by some lin- 
 gerings of the creed of the author of the famous 
 "Magnalia Christi Americana." Brown himself prob- 
 ably was unconscious of this last, yet one could not live 
 in the culture of the north and escape it. 
 
 The great Unitarian movement had just started 
 when Brown wrote. William Ellery Channing grad- 
 uated from Harvard the same year "Wieland" appeared, 
 
54 
 
 but James Freeman was re-ordained pastor of King's 
 Chapel in Boston in 1787 with a revised Non-Trinitar- 
 ian hturgy and the prenatal breathings of the work of 
 the Wares, Andrews Norton, Theodore Parker and 
 even of Emerson were in the air. Indeed, Brown was 
 active in anticipating this by his adoption of the phil- 
 osophic principles of Godwin, which were really the 
 ideas of French and German thinkers modified by Eng- 
 lish minds. Moreover, the great transcendental move- 
 ment meant nothing more than this; and Carlyle put 
 into English ritual the creed of the continent which 
 Emerson was to conform to- American freedom and 
 vigor. 
 
 Whether Mrs. Rowson and Mrs. Tenney directly 
 affected him or not may be uncertain, as these ambitious 
 women simply caught the temper of English minor fic- 
 tion in a more gushing style than usual, but it appears 
 to me that Brown seemed to consider that his first four 
 works of fiction were too intensely dramatic and dealt 
 too much with the impossible, so determined to make his 
 others more true to life. In other words, it amounted 
 to his dropping the philosophy of Godwin and coming 
 down to the same basis with "Charlotte Temple" and 
 "Female Quixotism," a basis made more enduring in his 
 case by his stronger hand and deeper common sense. 
 Brown could not drop his philosophy and write good 
 novels, but he might retain it and write good romances 
 for the time. The latter is what he did in his first four 
 works of fiction while his last two are merely novels a 
 few degrees better than the milk and water productions 
 of his two lady contemporaries. 
 
55 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 GENERAL CRITICAI. STUDY OE BROWN. 
 
 Brown's use of English is usually that of a scholar, 
 but is what many would call over-scholarly. With him 
 the study was not to find the simplest word or phrase to 
 express the exact meaning but apparently to select the 
 heaviest and most cumbersome. In "Ormond"^ he says 
 that clothing "stood in need of ablution;" again in the 
 same^ "all hope of happiness in this mutable and sub- 
 lunary scene was fled." In Edgar Huntly^ is stated 
 "my stormy passions had subsided into a calm, por- 
 tentious and awful;" again in the same'* "the channel 
 was encumbered with asperities." His characters never 
 think or meditate, but it is their habit to "ruminate" 
 so much that it becomes a pernicious custom. He in- 
 variably uses "somewhat" for something. One more 
 passage will serve to illustrate fully his old-fashioned 
 preciseness and insipid pedantry, — "Helena Cleves was 
 endowed with every feminine and fascinating quality. 
 Her features were modified by the most transient senti- 
 ments and were the seat of a softness at all times blush- 
 ful and bewitching. All those graces of symmetry, 
 smoothness and luster, which assembled in the imagina- 
 tion of the painter when he calls from the bosom of her 
 natal deep the Paphian divinity blended their perfections 
 in the shade, complexion and hair of this lady."° 
 
 I. P. 58. 2. P. 231. 3. P. 29. 4. P. 185. 
 5. Ormond, p. 116. 
 
56 
 
 Brown had been trained a Quaker, but that in no 
 sense excuses him for his inaccurate uses of "thee," 
 "thou," and "thine." They are introduced along with 
 the newer forms with apparent indiscriminateness. One 
 sentence uses the old, the next the new and soon 
 the old appears again with no apparent object for 
 the variation.^ The kind of diction referred to is ex- 
 cessively common and in the eyes of the critic to-day is 
 far more serious than in the time of the author, serving 
 to render neutral many of the positive excellencies of 
 the work, as they are usually not merely faults of diction 
 but also of style. Undoubtedly, Brown might have im- 
 proved these things with better care. All the most im- 
 portant of his works were written within the space of 
 ten years and his rapidity approached that of Scott for 
 he was a very voluminous writer. 
 
 The close of our author's works is usually weak, 
 giving the appearance that he tired as he went on or 
 left them and became occupied in part by other things. 
 In "Arthur Mervyn" he apparently kept increasing 
 characters towards the close to compensate for actual 
 dramatic action. But Brown is not lacking in invention 
 or originality and we would never think of charging him 
 with plagiarism or with any undue imitation of another 
 author. He is conscientious everywhere and in every- 
 thing. I agree with Prescott^ that were his faults re- 
 moved, he might not have been so' good, — ''Si non erras- 
 set, fecerat ille minus." 
 
 1. "Edgar Huntly," ps. 135-136. 
 
 2. Miscellanies C. B. Brown, p. 53. 
 
57 
 
 At any rate as he lost his Utopian ideas, his at- 
 tachment for the theories oif Godwin, as he came to be 
 an ardent advocate of Christianity and endeavored to 
 drop the extravagance of his first work, we may see in 
 the rehgious experiences of Golden in "Jane Talbot," 
 an effort to typify himself, but in making these changes 
 he lost his power — the ability to describe graphically and 
 to awaken interest in us by the almost indefinable some- 
 thing. As says Pattee,^ "It is hard to' lay down one of 
 his romances unfinished; one reads on and on in a sort 
 of ghastly dream until at length the end of the book 
 completes the hideous nightmare." 
 
 Some men are great in themselves, others great in 
 the eyes of the world through association with great 
 names or because they mark epochs in events. Would 
 Gharles Brockden Brown be considered a writer of much 
 prominence, were he not the first author of prose fiction 
 in America? The day that would cherish writings with 
 the style of Brown has passed. He did not possess 
 the power, take him all in all, to entrench himself in 
 principles of nature and of literature that are unchang- 
 ing. He supplied the demands of the time with consid- 
 erable credit and praise. A scholar with the instincts of 
 a scholar, he did a scholarly work, but he had not 
 enough individuality and keen discernment to discard 
 the objectionable in contemporaneous literature and to 
 write as the young prophet of the new and great 
 America. A philosophic rather than a poetic spirit, he 
 had not enough of the true and exact philosophy to un- 
 
 I. Amer. Lit., p. 105. 
 
58 
 
 derstand that to portray man in a form that will endure 
 he must be portrayed as he is and that nature to be 
 pictured so that the painting will be entitled to hang 
 upon the galleries among the works of great artists must 
 be tinted not in all the hues of the rainbow, unless it 
 has the rainbow's careful blending and that reality must 
 dominate art. 
 
 The spirit of the French renaissance united with 
 the culture of England and with the freedom of the new 
 nation was not sufficient to cause Brown to discard en- 
 tirely the spirit of the old classical school of Pope, 
 while the so-called "nature movement" led on by 
 Thomson in ''The Seasons" had been insufficient to turn 
 his mind tO' nature in her actual form. He could not 
 describe a cavern, a precipice or a deep ravine without 
 letting his imiagina;tion lead him^ into something that is 
 gruesome. Thus nature becomes not an emblem of the 
 bright and beautiful, but the rq)resentation of an infin- 
 ite and awful power which hangs over and around all 
 things. This representation is expressive to us and we 
 should study it by night time when the stars are shinin'g, 
 in the howl of the tempest when the sky is blackened by 
 storm clouds, but we should study it with a nameless, in- 
 definable dread, we should "ruminate ominously" upon 
 it, goi back to our "habitation" oppressed with mel- 
 ancholy and spend the night in a vague unrest with an 
 incomprehensible and indescribable something preying 
 upon our souls, tO' arise in the morning to new "rumina- 
 tions." And man is, though perhaps "The proper study 
 of mankind," yet a part of this terrible and mystic na- 
 
59 
 
 ture, is always incomprehensible and the subject of 
 strange vagaries, whims and contrivances from on high. 
 We study these as phenomena of nature and, particularly, 
 as they relate to us and are "philosophical," but the more 
 we study, the farther removed are we from ourselves, 
 the more unfitted do we become to go on with the dull, 
 prosaic duties that devolve upon us. But we are to 
 "muse perpetually" upon it all, though never are we satis- 
 fied, never brightened, never go back with a glad and 
 cheerful heart to say, — I am of nature and of God. I 
 exist as a part of it and of Him. If he is great and 
 wonderful, aye, awful at times in his manifestations, I 
 rejoice in it, for it exalts me that see in it an expression 
 of myself. The Almighty is great and powerful, so am 
 I in a small degree as a manifestation in one form of 
 Him. Hence, I am glad to be alive, to see these mighty 
 movements all related to me and I to them. I breathe in 
 the air — an extraordinary manifestation of his power — 
 and it becomes a part of my being. I eat and thrive on 
 the infinite resources of a miraculous Providence and I 
 am a miracle. Therefore it is glorious to exist in such 
 greatness and, like Walter Scott, as a boy, to lie upon 
 the ground in a storm m the mountains and clap my 
 hands at each thunder peal. 
 
 But these optimistic feelings were not akin to the 
 soul of Brown. His philosophy was the philosophy of 
 darkness and distortion. He was too sickly and shall 
 I say too scholarly; not that he knew too much, for 
 scholarship and knowledge are not synonymous, but his 
 life was the morbid, introspective life of the study but 
 
60 
 
 little influenced by the greater life outside. He read of 
 nature and of God from books but never fully realized 
 that he thus was getting these subjects only from a 
 meagre secondhand. The full, rich life of manhood, the 
 joy of living never touched him. He realized vaguely 
 that in the American Indian there is a creatioii different 
 from the ordinary and so something that we call "orig- 
 inal" for treatment, but the thought became a fancy be- 
 fore it could be fairly comprehended. It slipped from 
 him ere he could write it down in vivid colors and he 
 remained sombre and desolate trying to write himself 
 into a great writer and philosophize himself into a great 
 philosopher, though he never yet had reached the life 
 he thought to describe save by fleeting moments and he 
 existed ever apart from what was and is in the highest 
 form the true, the beautiful and so the good. 
 
 But the fault lay not, I think, with himself, but 
 that he was by Nature so incomplete a representative of 
 man, — an illustration that he cannot be a grasper of a 
 number of great truths that is not well or vigorous in 
 organization. Brown had not the physical courage nor 
 the moral force to drop his books like Thoreau and lit- 
 erally to "take to the woods" for long months that he 
 might gain vigor and correct conceptions. He was 
 bound to his desk and only broke loose when necessity 
 drove him on brief excursions. Within the limits of 
 his strength, he did a great work. He realized his duty 
 to his country and to civilization to contribute as much 
 as within him lay and he never faltered though beset 
 constantly by weariness and disease. His patience, his 
 
61 
 
 conscientiousness and his unfaltering devotion to the 
 Hght that came to him led him ever on with a resolute 
 heart and, even when disease was constantly preying 
 upon him, his smile of affection always covered the 
 deep-seated anguish. His pure and upright life was re- 
 flected in his writings, and if he could not write brilliant 
 facts so that they would endure, all things of him ex- 
 hibited the greatest of all truths that the highest virtue 
 consists in "the perfection of one's self and the happi- 
 ness of others." 
 
 It was then a courageous thing to be an American 
 writer and especially to attempt to be the first American 
 novelist, but Brown constantly displayed that courage. 
 Had he not deserved to be first, the position would not 
 have been accorded him. If he did not set the pace, he 
 started the movement. It is with very great respect and 
 considerable admiration that I have studied this ''brief 
 but blazing star" that during his short and sickly life 
 worked with such unfailing earnestness along lines that 
 to him seemed best and highest. 
 
62 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 INFIvUENCE 01^ BROWN UPON AMERICAN IvITHRATURE. 
 
 But what has he done for us? That he was the 
 head of an American school of fiction cannot be claimed. 
 He lived in a transitional period in literature between 
 the stilted, artificial style and what we are fond of de- 
 nominating the "natural." Scott came soon after and 
 prose fiction was recreated in him and never has lost his 
 impress. Soon Brown and authors like him ceased to 
 be read. Irving, not a romancer or a novelist, but a great 
 prose writer, followed closely upon Brown. If Brown 
 was the first American novelist, Irving was the first 
 great American prose writer and his style tended to les- 
 sen further the influence of the first American novelist. 
 
 Cooper, the "American Scott," improperly so- 
 called, ere long gave to American literature a right to 
 look with pride upon its producers of prose fiction, and 
 again a deep influence was exerted away from Brown. 
 American novels that appeared soon after Brown were 
 modeled for the most part after Scott and Cooper, as 
 "The Buccaneers" (1827), S. B. Judah; "Rachel Dyer" 
 (1828), John Neal; "The Betrothed of Wyoming" 
 (1831) and "Meredith or the Mystery of the Mes- 
 chanza" (1831). That Brown and others of his style 
 will ever again be popular is exceeding improbable; we 
 may almost say impossible. 
 
63 
 
 Nevertheless, the influence of our author was con- 
 siderable and valuable. Above the elements of weak- 
 ness, we have shown, arose many elements of strength. 
 The power of a great writer he had at times and we 
 catch in "Edgar Huntly" shades of description and 
 passages of strong expression that make us wonder if 
 Cooper, though so different, may not have caught much 
 that led him on from Brockden Brown. It is very prob- 
 able. From the defects of another we see how to correct 
 ourselves, and Cooper as he heard and read comments 
 upon Brown could the better judge how he should act. 
 Cooper, the painter of wild America and wild Ameri- 
 cans is, indeed, different from Brown, the morbid mind 
 analyst. Seemingly, then, only the touchstone of fancy 
 could detect a derivation, but I am not one that think 
 it necessary to be able to put the finger upon a point or 
 principle of resemblance in one writer in order to be 
 qualified to say with moral certainty he obtained assist- 
 ance from another. It is too much to expect. We have 
 in Brown a suggestion of Cooper. It is only a sugges- 
 tion but it is enough. 
 
 For purposes of investigation and criticism, how- 
 ever, it amounts to but little to say that such an one, a 
 writer, was a contemporary of another writer ; therefore, 
 the one influenced the other. We have the right to pre- 
 sume and assume that every man of letters reads the 
 writings of other writers in his field and time and is 
 affected by them, unconsciously perhaps and perhaps 
 imperceptibly, but the influences are there and his debt 
 to them is something; but I do not think that the spirit 
 
64 
 
 of the Sunday School teacher that would read a moral 
 and religious lesson into every word of Scripture should 
 dominate literary criticism. I am at times impatient at 
 the manifest attempt of many commentators to force 
 an issue where there is none and reason out an a priori 
 basis until post hoc propter hoc seems to be the law of 
 critical study. Generally speaking, give a commentator 
 an analogy and he is sure to work out a derivation, but 
 the result is frequently as far-fetched and ludicrously 
 drawn as some of the various theories as to the origin 
 of the English manorial system. 
 
 Irving, who came next after Brown as a prose 
 writer, could take courage as the favorable expressions 
 upon the "New American" came to him, and I think I 
 detect in a few of Irving's works something in style, 
 though so different altogether, that reminds me of 
 Charles Brockden Brown. The debt to Brown was 
 probably considerable of him who wrote to please and 
 in so doing tO' instruct, who believed in not taking life 
 too seriously or intensely, — a diametrical opposite of 
 Brown, 
 
 How far Brown gave suggestions to Hawthorne, it 
 is difficult to say. It is common to reason thus : Brown 
 was a prose writer, morbid and sensitive, and so was 
 Hawthorne, hence the latter probably was something of 
 a disciple of his predecessor. But in the first place 
 Hawthorne never to me seems morbid. He liked espe- 
 cially to work out a peculiar phase in the human heart, 
 as the power of conscience in "The Scarlet Letter," but 
 that does not prove his morbidness. We might as well 
 
65 
 
 call every professor of psychology morbid because his 
 subject is the human soul. Yet there is a very consid- 
 erable likeness in conception and treatment between 
 "The Scarlet Letter" and "Wieland" or between this 
 and Godwin's "Caleb Williams." Hawthorne was not 
 a renowned painter like Cooper whose fame rested in 
 his bold vigorous strokes, yet he was a consummate artist 
 who delighted in delicate touches, in the subtleties of 
 his art; but Brown was nothing of this; still even in 
 "The Marble Faun," I obtain a reminder of Brown. 
 Here as usual we are unable to say one writer took his 
 method of treatment absolutely from another. It might 
 on as good grounds be asserted that Brown derived his 
 manner of treating "Wieland" directly from Horace 
 Walpole's "Castle of Otranto." However, if Haw- 
 thorne was not affected by Brown, he certainly was af- 
 fected by Brown's mode of conception and unfolding of 
 plot. 
 
 Again, we see in Brown a suggestion of Poe, the 
 only distinctively morbid character in American litera- 
 ture, but if we think he suggests Poe, because Poe was 
 morbid, we surely cannot discern much resemblance be- 
 tween the morbidness of "Wieland" and "Arthur 
 "Mervyn" and that of "The Black Cat," and "The Pit 
 and the Pendulum." But there is an actual sentiment 
 in "Scarlet Letter" and "Marble Faun," one that never 
 excites our ridicule whether we agree in it or not, while 
 in the stories of Poe we observe great genius and great 
 art, but the genius and the art of an intensely morbid 
 nature taking the word morbid in its true sense of dis- 
 
66 
 
 eased. I cannot be sure that Brown conferred anything 
 on Poe. 
 
 It has been said, — and rightly I think, — that to 
 study Hterature correctly and determine the value of the 
 work of each author, he should be studied with reference 
 to himself alone first, next with reference to his place 
 in the history of the literature. Then, Charles Brockden 
 Brown, not what is called a great man, yet deserves the 
 place of first American novelist and romancer because 
 he stood forth with enough of ability above the ruling 
 style of such writings to confer to his productions that 
 which we denominate genius, such that he was able to 
 please and instruct his contemporaries, to dignify 
 America by a new' title and to serve in a respectable 
 degree as a reference and an instructor for those that 
 followed him in the hitherto untrodden field of Ameri- 
 can fiction. 
 
 tofc 
 
ERRATA. 
 
 (1) Page 20, instead of Schuykill, read Schuylkill. 
 
 (2) Page 21, instead of alter, read altar. 
 
 (3) Page 22, reference 4 is omitted with quotation from Prof. 
 
 Beers. 
 
 (4) Page 35, in second line of second paragraph, read is instead 
 
 of was. 
 
 (5) Page 65, in the fourth line, read and in place of or. 
 
 (,6) Page 10, in the fourth line of the second paragraph, read 
 Calvinism instead of Galvanism. 
 
 (7) Page 11, in the nineteenth line of the second paragraph, 
 
 read pleasure instead of fun, and spectators instead of 
 audience. 
 
 (8) Page 13, in the fifteenth line of the second paragraph, read 
 
 M. G. Lewis' instead of M. G. Lmiis's, and in the follow- 
 ing line read Frankenstein instead of Frankestein. 
 
 (9) Page 48, in the tenth line of the second paragraph, read led 
 
 instead of lead. 
 
 (10) Page 55, in the ninth and tenth lines of the first paragraph, 
 
 read portentous instead of portentious. 
 
 (11) Page 66, in the ninth line of the second paragraph, read 
 
 writers instead of writings. 
 
FEB 13 19«? 
 
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