volumes was the _Evening Post_, for the literary judgment of Bryant
and Parke Godwin was excellent. But Bryant had no ambition to be
known as a critic. Apart from his shrewd but not deeply penetrative
discourses upon Irving, Cooper, Verplanck, and Halleck, he wrote
only a half-dozen extensive literary essays, the best known being
his really fine “Poets and Poetry of the English Language,” with its
insistence upon a “luminous style.” Moreover, so straitened were the
paper’s circumstances and so small in consequence was its staff, that
he and Godwin had no time for reading and reviewing. “I see the
outside of almost every book that is published, but I read little
that is new,” runs a letter of Bryant’s to Dana in 1837. Frank avowal
was frequently made that a formal review was not within the _Evening
Post’s_ powers. The notice of Cooper’s “Wyandotte” (1843) opened with
the remark that “we have not had time to read it, but we are informed
by the preface....” Five years later Bryant wrote of J. T. Headley’s
“Cromwell”: “We have not time in the midst of the continual hurry in
which those are involved who write for a daily newspaper, to examine
the work with any minuteness; this will be done doubtless by professed
critics.”
Slight as were the _Post’s_ comments upon most books, a particular
interest attaches to those upon current volumes of poetry, for Bryant
wrote them; his associate, John Bigelow, has expressed surprise that
Parke Godwin, in his biography, did not collect them. In the “Fable
for Critics,” Lowell speaks of Bryant’s “iceolation,” and biographers
of both Longfellow and Poe have accused him of indifference to these
younger poets. There is much evidence, however, as in Bryant’s admiring
letter to Longfellow in 1846, that the charge is unfair; and a study of
the _Evening Post_ files indicates that its editor carefully followed
the work of his juniors in poetry, was glad to bring it to public
notice, and was a good deal more prone to over-praise than to underrate
it. Bryant was the dean among American poets, the first to gain fame,
and regarded by Griswold, Walt Whitman, and many others as the best of
them; as the Bryant Festival in 1864 showed, in which Holmes, Lowell,
Emerson, and Whittier participated, they all looked up to him.
Longfellow was the next eldest of the truly great poets. In the
pages of the _United States Review_ in the twenties some of his
earliest poems are found side by side with Bryant’s. In later life he
acknowledged to Bryant how much he owed the latter: “When I look back
upon my early years, I cannot but smile to see how much in them is
really yours. It was an involuntary imitation, which I most readily
confess.” Bryant was interested in his career long before he had
published a volume of verse, and took care in the _Evening Post_ to
give his first two books, the prose “Outre Mer” (1835) and “Hyperion”
(1839) due praise. Of the former he said that it “is very gracefully
written, the style is delightful, the descriptions are graphic, and the
sketches of character have often an agreeable vein of quiet humor.”
The latter was treated a little less warmly. The romance is “tinged
with peculiarities derived from the author’s fondness for German
literature,” Bryant wrote, and its strain of deeper reflection “now and
then passes into the grand dimness of German speculation.” The story
was slight, and had little attraction for those who wished a narrative
of crowded incident. But the verdict as a whole was favorable: “upon
the slender thread of his narrative the author has hung a tissue of
agreeable sketches of the different parts of Germany, supposed to be
visited by the hero, delineations of character, and reflections upon
morals and literature.”
The _Evening Post’s_ review of Longfellow’s first volume of poems,
“Voices of the Night” (1839; signed J. Q. D.) was short but flattering.
It quoted the purest poetry of the little book:
I heard the trailing garments of the night
Sweep through her marble halls!
and its criticism emphasized the two youthful qualities which should
have been most emphasized, simplicity and freshness. “These voices
of the night breathe a sweet and gentle music, such as befits the
time when the moon is up, and all the air is clear, and soft, and
still. The original poems in the volume are characterized by the
truest simplicity of thought and style; the thin veil of mysticism
which is thrown over some of them adds only grace to the picture,
without tantalizing the eye.” Longfellow’s second volume, the “Poems
on Slavery” (1842), came as a shock to a society as yet not inured
to anti-slavery doctrines. The editors of _Graham’s Magazine_ wrote
the author that the word “slavery” was never allowed to appear in a
Philadelphia magazine, and that the publisher objected to have even the
title of the book mentioned in his pages. Till a later date Harper’s
in New York similarly objected to mention of the slavery question.
But Bryant quoted “The Slave’s Dream” in full, and said of the sheaf:
“They have all the characteristics of Longfellow’s later poems, adding
to the grace and harmony of his earlier, a vein of deeper and stronger
feeling, maturer thought, bolder imagery, and a more suggestive manner.”
Thus the successive issues of Longfellow’s verse were all hailed
with kindly appreciation. When “Ballads and Other Poems” appeared,
Bryant praised (Jan. 10, 1842) the “grace and melody” with which the
author handled hexameters in a translation from Tegner, and the “noble
and affecting simplicity” of the result, while he pronounced the
miscellaneous poems beautiful. “Evangeline,” four years later, inspired
the publication in the _Post_ of an anonymous burlesque imitation,
next the editorial columns, which it is almost certain is Bryant’s. He
wrote such humorous trifles till his latest years, and he accompanied
this with some remarks upon German hexametric verse, with which he
was thoroughly familiar. Dated “in the ante-temperance period of our
history,” it showed old Tom Robinson seated in his elbow chair:
Red was the old man’s nose, with frequent potations of cider,
Made still redder by walking that day in the teeth of the north
wind.
Warmth from the blazing fire had heightened the tinge of its
scarlet;
While at each broad red flash from the hearth it seemed to grow
redder.
“Jemmy, my boy,” he said, and turned to a tow-headed urchin,
“Bring your poor uncle a mug of cider up from the cellar.”
Straightway rose from the chimney nook the obedient Jemmy ...
Took from the cupboard shelves a mug of mighty dimensions,
Opened the cellar door, and down the cellarway vanished.
Soon he came back with the mighty vessel brimming and sparkling,
Full and fresh, the old man took it and raised it with both hands,
Drained the whole at a draught, and handed it, dripping and empty,
Back to the boy, and winking hard with both eyes as he did it,
Stretched out his legs to the fire, while his nose grew redder and
redder.
When “The Seaside and the Fireside” was published in 1850, Bryant gave
especial praise to “The Building of the Ship,” in many ways the best
poem Longfellow ever wrote. An unpoetical subject; but “the author
treats it with as much grace of imagery as if it were a fairy tale, and
finds in it ample matter suggestive of beautiful trains of thought.”
He quoted the fervent closing apostrophe to the nation threatened by
civil war, “Sail on, O Union, strong and great!”; and by accident, in
the adjoining column, part of the _Post’s_ Washington correspondence,
lay a paragraph describing the sensation aroused by the secessionist
manifesto of Clingman, a fire-eating North Carolina Congressman. Of
“Hiawatha” in 1855 Bryant said:
A long poem, founded on the traditions of the American aborigines,
and their modes of life, is a somewhat hazardous experiment.
Longfellow, however, has acquitted himself quite as well as we
had expected. The habits of the Indians are gracefully idealized
in his verses, and we recognize the author of “Evangeline” in
the tenderness of the thoughts, the richness of the imagery, and
the flow of the numbers.... A love story is interwoven with the
poem, and the narrative of Hiawatha’s wooing is beautifully and
fancifully related. The canto of The Ghosts is wrought up with a
fine supernatural effect, and the mysterious departure of Hiawatha,
with which the poem closes, after the appearance of the first
messenger of the Christian gospel among his countrymen, is well
imagined.
Lowell’s first two volumes of poems were moderately commended. “There
are fine veins of thought in Lowell’s verse, with frequently a fresh
and vigorous expression,” Bryant remarked of the second (Feb. 12,
1848). For Emerson there was a more glowing word of praise. He is “a
brilliant writer, both in prose and verse, though perhaps, as a poet,
too reflective, too subjective, the modern metaphysician would call it,
to suit the popular taste,” Bryant commented in the _Post_ of Jan. 4,
1847, when Emerson’s first collection was issued. “His little address
in verse to the humble bee is, however, one of the finest things of
the sort--a better poem, in our estimation, than Anacreon’s famous ode
to the cicada.” Whittier’s verse, he thought in 1843, writing of “Lays
of My Home,” “grows better and better. With no abatement of poetic
enthusiasm, his style becomes more manly, and his vein of thought
richer and deeper.” References to Poe, anterior to the obituary of Oct.
9, 1849, which Bryant did not write, for he was then abroad, and which
called him a “genius” and “an industrious, original, and brilliant
writer,” are few. The _Evening Post_ had remarked in 1845 that he was
at least within a “t” of being a poet, and had followed his lectures
that year at the Society Library. The _Express_ on April 18 stated that
he had discoursed at length upon the poets, and criticized his views.
At this the _Post_ professed amazement, for its reporter had distinctly
heard Poe postpone the lecture; had he delivered it exclusively to the
_Express_?
It is pleasant to record that Nathaniel Hawthorne’s genius was
recognized and forcibly described. Not always promptly, but always
emphatically, the _Evening Post_ recommended “The Scarlet Letter,”
“Twice-Told Tales,” “The House of Seven Gables,” and other books to
its readers. It expressed the hope in 1851 that the success of the
first-named “will awaken him to the consciousness of what he seems to
have been writing in ignorance of, that the public is an important
party, not only to the author’s fame, but to his usefulness.” It
thought that much as he had accomplished, he had not yet done
justice to his powers. Two years later it congratulated him upon the
leisure that his appointment as consul at Liverpool should afford,
and recalling that he was just at the age when Walter Scott first
appeared as a novelist, said that it saw no reason why the latter half
of Hawthorne’s life might not be equally brilliant. Unfortunately,
the romancer had but eleven more years to live. To quote three short
comments upon books by other great prose authors, one of which appeared
in 1842, another in 1849, and the third in 1850, will show the general
character of such notices, and illustrate how little criticism was
given:
THE DEERSLAYER, or THE FIRST WAR PATH, Cooper’s last novel, is
one of his finest productions. In the wild forest where the scene
is laid, and in the wild life of the New York hunters of the last
century and their savage neighbors, his genius finds the aliment
of its finest strength. The work is, as he observes, the first
act in the life of Leatherstocking, though written last, and it
exhibits this singular being, one of the most strongly marked and
most interesting creatures of fiction, in his early youth, fresh
from his education among the Delawares, and now for the first time
employing in war the weapon which had gained him a reputation as
a hunter. The narrative is one of intense interest from beginning
to close, and the characters of the various personages with whom
the hero of the story is associated, are drawn with perhaps more
skill, and a deeper knowledge of human nature, than in most of the
author’s previous novels.
* * * * *
THE CALIFORNIA AND OREGON TRAIL, by Francis Parkman, is a pleasant
book relating adventures and wanderings in the western wilderness,
and describing the life of the western hunters and the Indian
tribes. It will give those who are about to make the journey across
the Rocky Mountains a good idea of the country lying between us and
the regions on the Pacific Coast, and of the savage people who roam
over it.
* * * * *
EMERSON’S REPRESENTATIVE MEN.--We have received from J. Wiley, of
this city, Emerson’s Seven Lectures on Representative Men, just
published by Phillips, Sampson, and Company, of Boston. The work
is strongly marked by the characteristics of the author--brilliant
coruscations of thought, instead of a quiet, steady blaze--an
avoidance of everything like a coherent system of opinions--a large
range of comparison and illustration, with an occasional haziness
of metaphysical conception, in which the reader is apt to lose
his way. These lectures are occupied with the delineation of the
characters of half a dozen of the greatest men that ever lived,
each of whom Mr. Emerson makes the representative and exponent
of a certain class. One of these great men is Plato, on whose
intellectual character the author expatiates like one who is truly
in love with his subject.
It was deemed incumbent upon the _Evening Post_ to print at least this
much concerning every noteworthy American book, but it recognized no
duty as regarded English works. Sometimes a volume, like Carlyle’s
“Chartism,” would receive a column and a half, while sometimes
important productions would get never a word. The _Evening Post’s_
criticism of Dickens’s “American Notes” is given by Parke Godwin
in his life of Bryant--a criticism praising some of the novelist’s
fault-finding and taking exception chiefly to his remarks on American
newspapers. “Martin Chuzzlewit” was reviewed in 1843, and the American
scenes were pronounced a failure for two reasons. “In the first place,
the author knows very little about us, and in the second place, the
desire of being vehemently satirical seems to unfit him for what he
wishes to do, and takes from him his wonted humor and invention.” But
no later work by Dickens, up to the Civil War, seems to have been
noticed.
Yet with all its shortcomings, the _Evening Post_ maintained a literary
tone. In part this arose from the pure English and the allusiveness of
Bryant’s editorial style; in part from the unusual attention paid to
magazines and book news; and in part from the fact that literary people
were attracted to it because Bryant was its editor. When G. P. R. James
and Martin Tupper visited America, they published original verse in
it. Miss Catharine Sedgwick, the novelist, sent it travel sketches in
1841 and later. During the years 1834–41 Cooper published many letters
in the _Evening Post_ upon his various libel suits and other personal
matters, and at one time had Bryant’s journal actively enlisted on
his side. “Cooper, you know,” Bryant explained to Dana in a letter of
Nov. 26, 1838, “has published another novel, entitled “Home as Found,”
rather satirical I believe on American manners. A notice of it appeared
in the _Courier_ newspaper of this city, a very malignant notice
indeed, containing some stories about Cooper’s private conversations.
Cooper arrived in town about the time the article was published, and
answered it by a short letter to the _Evening Post_, in which he gave
notice that he should prosecute the publishers of the paper. It is
a favorite doctrine with him just now that the newspapers tell more
lies than truths, and he has undertaken to reform the practice, so
far as what they say respects him personally.” Webb’s attack was said
to have been occasioned by Cooper’s having cut his acquaintance. The
_Evening Post_ denounced it as proceeding from personal pique, “grossly
malignant,” and “swaggering and silly”; and in the spring of 1841
Cooper sent the _Post_ reams of controversial material.
Walt Whitman earned Bryant’s grateful notice by his journalistic
activities in Brooklyn in behalf of the “Barnburner” Democracy, and
was praised for his tales in the _Democratic Review_, one of which
the _Evening Post_ reprinted (1842). During 1851 he contributed five
articles. The first, called “Something About Art and Brooklyn Artists,”
eulogized the paintings of several obscure men, and the second, “A
Letter From Brooklyn,” told of the changes across the East River--how
Bergen Hill was nearly leveled, a huge tract had been reclaimed from
the sea near the Atlantic Dock, and Fifth Avenue was still unpaved
and neglected. Whitman went down to the eastern end of Long Island
that summer, for, as he wrote the _Post_, “I ... like it far better
than I could ever like Saratoga or Newport.” In two June letters from
Paumanok he described the joy of bathing in the clear, cold water,
derided the stiff ceremoniousness of city boarders, gave some good
advice to boarding-house keepers, and depicted two old natives of
Marion and Rocky Point, “Uncle Dan’l” and “Aunt Rebby.” Upon his return
he sent a rather rhapsodic description of the opera at Castle Garden,
with Bettini singing. It does not appear that Bryant had any personal
interest in Whitman, and it was unfortunate that no effort was made to
extend his brief connection.
Something should be said about the _Evening Post’s_ miscellaneous
columns, a wallet into which was thrown a wide assortment of reprinted
selections. Now it was a chapter of Lord Londonderry’s Travels; now
Ellery Channing’s reminiscences of his father; now an article from
_Fraser’s_ on old French poetry; now a chapter from Cooper’s “Wing and
Wing”; now Tennyson’s “Godiva,” Longfellow’s “Spanish Student,” or
Spence’s anecdotes of Pope. Much might be said also of its reports of
literary lectures, the course by Emerson upon “The Times” in the spring
of 1842 and Holmes’s course upon modern poetry in the fall of 1853
being especially well covered. Emerson was an earnest but not popular
speaker, and the writer for the _Post_, either Bryant or Parke Godwin,
was at first cold to him. But within a few days he was remarking that
the addresses grew upon one’s admiration. “Emerson convinces you that
he is a man accustomed to profound and original thought, and not
disposed, as at the outset you are inclined to suspect, to play with
and baffle the intellects of his readers. He is eminently sincere and
direct, strongly convinced of his own views, and anxious to present
them in an earnest and striking manner.” Parke Godwin himself early in
the fifties became a lyceum star, along with Holmes, Curtis, Greeley,
Horace Mann, Orville Dewey, and others.
As for drama, the most important appearances occurred, and the most
important criticism was written, while Leggett was one of the editors.
Leggett, as Abram C. Dayton tells us in “Last Days of Knickerbocker
Life,” was regarded as the especial champion of Edwin Forrest, who had
made his début in 1826, and who was a warm favorite with the “Bowery
Boys” and all other lovers of florid, stentorian acting. Certainly
Leggett praised him highly and constantly in the _Evening Post_. In
1834 a gold medal was presented Forrest by a committee including Bryant
and Leggett, who recalled in the newspaper how he had come to the city
quite unknown, and had given the first electrifying demonstration of
his powers when he consented, as an act of kindness to a poor actor, to
appear at a benefit as Othello.
When on Sept. 18, 1832, Charles Kemble made his first American
appearance as Hamlet, he was honored with the longest dramatic
criticism in the journal’s history, almost three and a half columns.
His towering, manly form, his Roman face, and his histrionic ability
impressed Leggett, who thought that while he did not have the flashes
of dazzling brilliance that Kean had, his grace, ease, and elegance
almost atoned for the lack, and would have a good effect upon American
acting. Fanny Kemble made her bow the following night, and was at once
hailed as displaying “an intensity and truth never, we believe, yet
exhibited by an actress in America, certainly never by one so young.”
Later, after seeing the two in more performances, Leggett concluded
that they were admirable in comedy, but uneven in tragedy.
Bryant’s interest in the theater was mainly a literary interest, yet
he seems to have been the writer of a series of editorials in 1847,
arguing for an _American_ theater. He spoke of the new Broadway
Theater, and the sailing of the manager to England to engage talent.
Why supply the new stage from abroad? protested the _Evening Post_. “Is
it to be merely a house of call for such foreign artists as may find it
agreeable or profitable to visit us, at such times as they may chance
to select? Or is it to be an American establishment of the highest
class, with a well-selected and thoroughly trained company permanently
employed, varied by star engagements as a brilliant relief to the sober
background, and enlivened, from time to time, by ability from abroad?
Does it, in a word, propose to go on the old beaten track so often
condemned, or to draw a line for a new period ...?” Bryant had no use
for provincialism in any form.
But when the sentiment of Forrest’s supporters for an “American”
theater led them in May, 1849, while their hero was playing at the
Broadway House, to attack the English tragedian Macready at the Astor
Place Opera House in a bloody riot, the _Evening Post_ had to condemn
their conduct. Its liking for Forrest himself was much cooled a year
after, when, following his separation from his wife, he attacked
the author N. P. Willis with a whip on Washington Square. Two days
later Forrest met Bryant and Parke Godwin walking down Broadway, and
furiously demanded who had written the _Evening Post’s_ report of the
assault, in which Forrest was said to have struck Willis from behind.
Godwin, who thoroughly sympathized with Mrs. Forrest in her quarrel
with her husband, replied that he was the author. The actor then turned
upon him ferociously, said that the report was a d----d lie from
beginning to end, that he would hold Godwin responsible for several
things, and that he had told Godwin that he meant to cane Willis. “I
replied,” Godwin later testified, “that these were not just the terms
that he used, and that he told me formerly that he meant to cut his
damned heart out; to which Mr. Forrest muttered something in reply....”
So much for the manners of the fifties.
CHAPTER TEN
JOHN BIGELOW AS AN EDITOR OF THE “EVENING POST”
In the closing days of 1848 John Bigelow, who like Bryant lived
to be called “The First Citizen of the Republic,” became one of
the proprietors and editors of the _Evening Post_. His official
connection with it lasted eleven years, when he graduated from it into
that diplomatic field in which he won his chief fame; but his real
connection might be said to have been lifelong. Bigelow’s protracted
career was one of great variety and interest. He lived in the lifetime
of George III, Napoleon, and every President except Washington, dying
in 1911. His first prominence was given him by the _Evening Post_,
and thereafter he was always a landmark in New York life. John Jay
Chapman wrote in 1910 that he “stands as a monument of old-fashioned
sterling culture and accomplishment--a sort of beacon to the present
age of ignorance and pretence, and to ‘a land where all things are
forgotten.’” His wide culture is attested by the variety of his
books--a biography of Franklin and a work on Gladstone in the Civil
War; a treatise on Molinos the quietist, and another on sleep; a
history of “France and the Confederate Navy” and a biography of Tilden.
It has fallen to few of our ministers to France to be so useful as he.
He was prominent in almost every great civic undertaking in New York
during the last half century of his life. Withal, his fine presence,
simple dignity, and courtesy made him a model American gentleman.