mention at this point a few authors who, like Taylor, left records
of their travels and adventures. The earliest of these, an older man
in fact than Taylor, was Elisha Kent Kane (1820-1857), the Arctic
explorer, who related in “The Grinnell Expeditions” (1854-1856), the
story of the two unsuccessful attempts to find Sir John Franklin. Much
nearer to our time were Henry M. Stanley (1841-1890) and George Kennan
(born in 1845). Stanley was born in Wales, it is true, and was knighted
by Queen Victoria in 1890; but his explorations in Africa were made
while he was a citizen of the United States. His best-known work is his
first, “How I Found Livingston” (1872). Kennan experienced adventures
in still another part of the world. Sent to Siberia by the American
Telegraph Association to superintend the construction of lines, he
published, in 1870, “Tent Life in Siberia.” Several years later he
returned to the same country as correspondent of _The Century Magazine_
to investigate social and political conditions there. He published the
results of his observations in “Siberia and the Exile System” (1891).
_Holland_, _Lowell_, _and Others_.--The essay of travel, it will have
to be admitted, has carried us pretty well out of the realm of pure
literature and brought us down to very recent times. If we have seemed
to ignore certain writers, some less and some greater, it was but to
return to them for fuller mention. Josiah Gilbert Holland (1819-1881)
was born in Belchertown, Massachusetts, and while still a young man
became associate editor of _The Springfield Republican_. In 1870 he
assisted in the foundation of _Scribner’s Monthly_ and became its
editor-in-chief. He tried his hand at various forms of literature
and at one time was not far from being the most popular writer in
the United States. To this day there is hardly an American household
unprovided with a copy of one of the early editions of “Timothy
Titcomb’s Letters” (1858), “Gold Foil” (1859), or “Plain Talks on
Familiar Subjects” (1865). James Russell Lowell (1819-1891) contributed
many articles to _The Atlantic_ and _The North American Review_; some
of this work has not yet been collected, but the best of it may be
found scattered through the seven volumes of his complete prose works
(1890-1891). During his lifetime Lowell published several collections
of essays; the most valuable are “Fireside Travels” (1864), “Among
my Books” (1870), and “My Study Windows” (1871). As one looks over
their contents, one is surprised at the versatility of their writer.
The essay of reminiscence, “A Moosehead Journal” or “Cambridge Thirty
Years Ago,” balances the essay of travel, “At Sea” or “A Few Bits of
Roman Mosaic”; the historical essay, “New England Two Centuries Ago,”
is matched by the nature study, “My Garden Acquaintance”; the purely
literary sketch, “Shakespeare Once More,” stands beside the book
review “Witchcraft” or “A Great Public Character”; and the political
speech, “Democracy” or “Tariff Reform,” adds a certain virility to the
notes of a response to the toast “Our Literature” or to the address on
“Books and Reading” delivered at the opening of a free public library.
Lowell is ironical in “On a Certain Condescension in Foreigners,” witty
in “A Good Word for Winter,” genial in “A Library of Old Authors,”
sympathetic in “Emerson the Lecturer,” just in “Thoreau,” firm in
“Reconstruction” and “Abraham Lincoln,” thoughtful in “The Rebellion:
Its Causes and Consequences,” and scholarly in “Chaucer” and “Dante.”
Aristocratic in the best sense of that much abused term, cultured in
manner, robust and vigorous in thought, clean and fresh in mind, Lowell
still stands forth as America’s finest representative man of letters.
The greatness of Lowell has by no means dimmed the renown of certain
of his lesser contemporaries. Edward Everett Hale (born in 1822),
Thomas Wentworth Higginson (born in 1823), and Charles Eliot Norton
(1827-1908) deserve at least passing mention, although the first two
are better known for contributions to magazines than for books, and
the last has gained attention mainly through his biographical work
and his translation of Dante. Owing to the popularity of a story,
“The Man Without a Country,” Dr. Hale has unfortunately become known
as an author of one book, but his “Puritan Politics in England and
New England” (1869) is valuable, and his “Franklin in France” (1887),
written with the assistance of his son, is interesting and trustworthy.
Mr. Higginson has tried his hand at biography, historical memoranda,
criticism, and fiction: probably his best work is found in “Outdoor
Papers” (1863), “Atlantic Essays” (1871), and “The New World and the
New Book” (1891). Of the three authors here mentioned, Dr. Norton
is the most important; he is more than a writer; he is in addition
a scholar. Knowing intimately all of the foremost writers of this
country, he was hardly less well acquainted with the most important
English authors of the middle and later Victorian period. In addition
to his monumental prose translation of Dante’s “New Life” (1858) and
“Divine Comedy” (1892), he has edited such books as “The Early Letters
of Thomas Carlyle” (1886), “The Letters of James Russell Lowell”
(1893), and “The Letters of John Ruskin” (1904). His chief original
works are “Notes of Travel and Study in Italy” (1859) and “Historical
Studies of Church-Building in the Middle Ages” (1880). The scholarship
of Dr. Norton immediately suggests that of other men. George Ticknor
(1791-1887) by the date of his birth seems to belong to a period
slightly earlier than that of Norton; in fact he immediately preceded
Longfellow as professor of belles-lettres at Harvard. His chief work
was “A History of Spanish Literature” (1849). As a valuable piece of
criticism, it has not been superseded, and even in Spain is accepted
as authoritative. Somewhat later than Ticknor in point of time was
Francis James Child (1825-1896). Educated at Harvard College, he
was a professor there for nearly half a century. Devoting himself to
the study of the ballad as a literary form, he published the results
of his work in eight volumes under the title “English and Scottish
Popular Ballads” (1857-1859). Closely connected with these several
authors was James Thomas Fields (1817-1881). Founder of _The Atlantic
Monthly_ and member of a famous publishing house, he was acquainted
more or less intimately with every important American writer of the
last half of the nineteenth century. He was not without literary skill
himself, publishing among other works “Yesterdays with Authors” (1872)
and “Underbrush” (1881). His wife, Annie Adams Fields (born in 1834),
has written a number of books in a similar vein: the most valuable,
perhaps, are “A Shelf of Old Books” and “Authors and Friends,” both
published in 1896.
_Shakespearean Scholars._--Harking back to Norton and Ticknor as
representative American students of foreign literatures, one naturally
takes pleasure in seeing that the field of Shakespearean scholarship
has been by no means neglected in this country. Henry Norman Hudson
(1814-1886) may be said to have been the first American to turn a
furrow; for, after publishing “Lectures on Shakespeare” (1848), he
devoted himself to a critical study of the plays and finally produced
a work still mentioned with respect, “Shakespeare: His Life, Art, and
Characters” (1872). Meanwhile Richard Grant White (1822-1885) had
published “The Authorship of the Three Parts of Henry VI.” (1859)
and “Memoirs of the Life of Shakespeare” (1865). Interested in other
subjects for a time, he wrote “Words and Their Uses” (1870) and
“England Without and Within” (1881); then, returning to his early
interests, he produced “Studies in Shakespeare” (1885). Perhaps Edwin
Percy Whipple (1819-1886) deserves mention at this place, for after
writing “Essays and Reviews” (1849), and “Character and Characteristic
Men” (1866), he published “The Literature of the Age of Elizabeth”
(1869). Nor is it possible to overlook Thomas Raynesford Lounsbury
(born in 1838), who added to his extensive “Studies in Chaucer”
(1892) a trilogy of studies entitled “Shakespeare as a Dramatic
Artist” (1901), “Shakespeare and Voltaire” (1902), and “The Text of
Shakespeare” (1906). But easily the foremost Shakespearean scholar
in America is Horace Howard Furness (born in 1833), whose “Variorum
Shakespeare” as a painstaking and authoritative work stands unsurpassed
in any language. Recently Mr. Furness has associated his son with him
in his investigations, and we may therefore expect with some confidence
that a study of Shakespeare on the largest scale up to this time
attempted may be completed according to the traditions with which it
was begun.
_Literary Historians._--Widely interested as the scholars of this
country have been in the greater writers and the more important
literature of other lands, there has been no dearth of attention to
our own. Moses Coit Tyler (1835-1900), sometime professor of American
history at Cornell University, was the author of two valuable works,
“History of American Literature during the Colonial Times” (1878) and
“Literary History of the American Revolution” (1897). Charles Francis
Richardson (born in 1851), professor of English in Dartmouth College,
has covered the whole range of our literary history down to 1885 in
his “American Literature” (1887); and Barrett Wendell (born in 1855)
of Harvard University, in his “Literary History of America” (1901),
has brought his treatment of the same topic down to the beginning of
the present century. Professor Wendell has written upon other American
topics in “Stelligeri” (1893), and “A Life of Cotton Mather” (1891).
More recently he has published two works, both the result of his
residence abroad as a lecturing professor: the substance of the first,
“The Temper of the Seventeenth Century in English Literature” (1904),
was delivered before Trinity College, Cambridge; that of the second,
“The France of To-Day” (1907) was gathered while he was giving a course
of lectures in Paris.
Members of other American college faculties have given evidence of
minute research and strong inspiration in books not a few. James
Brander Matthews (born in 1852) of Columbia University, and George
Edward Woodberry (born in 1855), for many years connected with the same
university, have both written books that have gained popular approval;
of the former, “French Dramatists of the Nineteenth Century” (1881)
and “The Historical Novel” (1901) certainly deserve mention; of the
latter, “The Life of Poe” (1885) and “The Appreciation of Literature”
(1907). No less significant than these men are Felix Emmanuel Schelling
(born in 1858) of the University of Pennsylvania, whose latest work is
“The Elizabethan Drama” (1908), and Vida Dutton Scudder (born in 1861)
of Wellesley College, who cannot be left unnoticed, so thorough and
satisfactory are her “Life of the Spirit in the Modern English Poets”
(1895) and “Social Ideals in English Letters” (1898). Woodrow Wilson,
president of Princeton University, has spared time from his political
and historical studies to write an interesting volume of essays
called “Mere Literature” (1896); President Wilson’s former colleague,
Bliss Perry (born in 1860), now editor of _The Atlantic Monthly_ and
professor of belles-lettres at Harvard, has published a valuable “Study
of Prose Fiction” (1902), and another Princeton professor, Henry
Jackson Van Dyke (born in 1852), has written an especially useful
study called “The Poetry of Tennyson” (1889), and has also shown
himself a master of the leisurely essay in “Little Rivers” (1895) and
“Fisherman’s Luck” (1899).
_The Nature Writers._--Professor Van Dyke’s “outdoor essays,” as they
are sometimes called, carry us back to the earlier nature writers,
for between him and Thoreau there is no wide hiatus. John Burroughs
(born in 1837) has written a considerable number of books dealing with
his observations out of doors, although he has by no means neglected
the purely literary topic. The mention of his earlier works gives an
adequate index of all his subject-matter. “Wake-Robin” appeared in
1870, “Birds and Poets” in 1875, and “Whitman, a Study” in 1896. To
be closely associated with Mr. Burroughs is Bradford Torrey (born in
1843); his chief works are “Birds in the Bush” (1885), “The Footpath
Way” (1892), and “A World of Green Hills” (1898). Nor can Olive Thorne
Miller (born in 1831) be overlooked: she began to write studies of
birds about 1880, and among other works, all of considerable interest,
she has published “In Nesting Time” (1888), “A Bird-Lover in the West”
(1894), and “Under the Tree-Tops” (1897). The writers just mentioned
are not to be regarded, of course, as scientists or even as scientific
writers in the commonly accepted sense of those terms. They look upon
nature with the loving rather than the analytic eye, and register their
appreciative feelings rather than their minute observations. They have
much in common, therefore, with the purely literary essayists whose
names are not far from legion. Although unable to mention all who have
recently attracted attention, we must not forget William Winter (born
in 1836), whose best prose works date back but a quarter of a century:
he published “Shakespeare’s England” in 1888, “Gray Days and Gold” in
1891, and “The Life and Art of Edwin Booth” in 1894. Neither can we
ignore Hamilton Wright Mabie (born in 1845), literary editor of _The
Outlook_. His books are many and widely popular: probably the series
of three volumes called “My Study Fire” (1890, 1894, and 1899) and
“Shakespeare: Poet, Dramatist, and Man” (1900) are best known. Not less
significant is Paul Elmer More (born in 1864) of the editorial staff
of _The Nation_. In addition to translations from Sanskrit and from
Greek, he has published five books all bearing the title “Shelburne
Essays” (1904-1908).
_Other Essayists._--Finally, so far as essayists are concerned, some
rapid review must be made of the novelists and the later poets who have
not restricted themselves to the fields of their chief labour. This
takes us back as far as Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864), whose “Our
Old Home” (1863) is a collection of valuable essays on various English
topics. The saying “Like father, like son” was exemplified when Julian
Hawthorne (born in 1846) brought out “Saxon Studies” (1876), a book of
like purport with his father’s. The mention of more than one writer in
a family suggests the elder Henry James (1811-1882) and his two sons,
William and Henry. The father is best remembered as a theological and
philosophical writer through his “Moralism and Christianity” (1852)
and “Lectures and Miscellanies” (1852). The elder son, William James
(born in 1842), for many years professor of psychology in Harvard
University, besides being the author of several technical works in the
science to which he is devoted, has written “The Will to Believe, and
Other Essays” (1897), “Is Life Worth Living?” (1898), and “Pragmatism”
(1906). The younger Henry James (born in 1843), in addition to being
a novelist, is also the author of “A Little Tour in France” (1884),
“Partial Portraits” (1888), and “Essays in London and Elsewhere”
(1893). For some reason not strongly apparent, William Dean Howells
(born in 1837) is almost always associated in the minds of readers
with Henry James the novelist. Editor for a time of _The Atlantic
Monthly_, and later connected first with the staff of _Harper’s
Magazine_, and afterwards with that of _The Cosmopolitan_, he has made
many books of essays. The best are “Venetian Life” (1866), “Italian
Journeys” (1867), and “Criticism and Fiction” (1895). Belonging by
birth to a later decade, Francis Marion Crawford (born in 1854) is
near to being America’s most prolific writer. His most important
work, outside the domain of the novel, is a small volume connected in
content with the art which he chiefly affects, “The Novel, What It Is”
(1903). It attracted much attention upon its appearance, and is still
often quoted. Mr. Crawford is also the author of “The Rulers of the
South” (1900) and “Gleanings from Venetian History” (1905). The woman
novelists cannot be ignored as writers of essays, for not only do they
possess powers of penetration and insight, but two of them, at least,
have swayed public opinion to no inappreciable extent. Harriet Beecher
Stowe (1811-1896) in addition to her many books of fiction wrote a very
much discussed study entitled “Lady Byron Vindicated” (1870) and “The
American Woman’s Home” (1869), at one time thought to be the final word
upon domestic questions. A writer of hardly less importance was Helen
Hunt Jackson (1831-1885), still popularly known by her pseudonym of
“H. H.” Her most valuable study was “A Century of Dishonour” (1881), in
which she laid bare the ill-treatment accorded the American Indians;
she succeeded through its pages in doing much to ameliorate their
unfortunate condition. Mrs. Jackson’s “Bits of Travel” (1873) and
“Between Whiles” (1887) are interesting and readable.
The more important later poets who have contributed to essay
literature are led by that erratic but remarkable genius, Walt Whitman
(1819-1892). His collected “Prose Works,” published in the year of
his death, contain much more true common sense than his writings are
popularly assumed to show. The main titles included in the contents
are those of small volumes printed at various intervals: “Specimen
Days” (1882), “November Boughs” (1888), and “Good-Bye, My Fancy”
(1891). Edmund Clarence Stedman (1833-1908) and Thomas Bailey Aldrich
(1836-1907), who in their poetry followed the traditions established
by Longfellow and Lowell, were the authors of not unimportant prose
works. The former wrote three valuable books: “Victorian Poets”
(1875), “Poets of America” (1885), and “The Nature and Elements of
Poetry” (1892); the latter author produced two volumes of travel and
reminiscence: “From Ponkapog to Pesth” (1883) and “An Old Town by the
Sea” (1893). Possibly allied rather with Whitman than with the other
poets just mentioned, Sidney Lanier (1842-1881) may justly stand at
the close of our list of American critical writers. He subjected the
methods of metrical composition to minute scrutiny, and published the
results of his investigations as “The Science of English Verse” (1881).
Turning then to a study of fiction, he wrote an important work entitled
“The English Novel and Its Development” (1885). Since Lanier’s death,
his executors have brought together many of his lectures and papers
under the titles of “Music and Poetry” (1898), and “Shakspere and his
Forerunners” (1902).
=The Humourists.=--It is a far cry from the serious thought of Sidney
Lanier to the ludicrous perversities of Mark Twain; yet between these
two lies an extensive territory freely admitted by foreign critics
to be distinctly and perhaps typically American. The humour of this
country is different from that found anywhere else in the world. At
times, it is true, it exhibits the sparkling characteristics of the
Irishman’s wit, at others the keen shrewdness of the Frenchman’s
_bon-mot_; certainly it is never less sprightly than the work of the
English joker, nor less spontaneous than that of the German jester. In
fact it may savour of any one, or of all the qualities just mentioned,
and even of many others. The truth of the matter is, composite as a
nation, we preserve in our humour the best traits of the elements out
of which we are formed, and pretty generally add to the mixture a
flavour indigenous to the soil upon which we flourish.
_Humour of the Colonial Period._--In the early periods of our history,
conscious humour did not exist. The colonists were too intent upon
subduing the wilderness and safeguarding their religion to spend time
in making fun. Their steeple-crowned hats, their staid garb, and the
severe simplicity of their speech and conduct may seem ridiculous
to us now; but, depend upon it, these were very serious matters to
the Puritans themselves. A sudden outbreak of frivolity, whether it
showed in a departure from the accepted dress or in an unusual use
of language, would have been looked upon as sufficient cause for
an immediate ecclesiastical investigation and solemn condemnation.
Surely a community that in all seriousness could pass a law making
it a finable offence in a man to kiss his wife on Sunday, would have
been horror-stricken at the irreverent flippancy of Eli Perkins and of
George Ade, and would no doubt have called down anathema upon Bill Nye
and possibly even upon Carolyn Wells.
_Humour of the Revolutionary Period._--Nor did circumstances permit
the rise of humour in the Revolutionary period. The great joke of that
time was the struggle between the pigmy and the giant, ending in the
discomfiture of the latter to the tune of
“Yankee Doodle came to town.”
A few grim remarks have come down to us, it must be admitted, remarks
which amuse us now, but which could have been little provocative
of laughter when they were uttered. Certainly we have no record
of hilarious mirth filling the chamber when at the signing of the
Declaration of Independence, Franklin sharply replied to the remark,
“Well, in this matter I suppose we must all hang together,” with the
words, “Yes, or we shall all hang separately!” Life indeed was far too
serious in both the earlier periods of American history and literature
to be made a source of amusement. True, we have not a little work,
satiric in tone, from such writers as the patriot, John Trumbull
(1750-1831), and the Tory, Jonathan Odell (1737-1881), of whom the
first in his “M’Fingal” (1775-1782) imitated Butler’s “Hudibras,”
and the second in his “Word of Congress” (1779) and “The American
Times” (1780) followed models set up by Dryden, Pope, and Churchill.
Joel Barlow (1754-1812), too, deserves passing mention here for his
mock-heroic poem, “The Hasty Pudding” (1793); and Philip Freneau
(1752-1832) must be named on account of several briefer pieces of verse
intended, no doubt, to be funny, but succeeding only in being abusive
and vituperative of British leaders and British methods. On the whole,
the efforts of all these writers, so far as humour is concerned, were
little better than clumsy; and nowadays, if we bother with their works
at all, we laugh at the authors rather than with them.
_The Imitative School._--Conscious or deliberate American humour, then,
can hardly be said to have shown itself before the early years of the
nineteenth century. When it did appear, moreover, it was strongly
imitative of English models and exhibited itself not as the most
striking trait, but as only one of many qualities characterising an
author’s style. Indeed, barring the work of a mere handful of writers,
we find such American humour as is likely to live woven into books
which endure for other reasons than because they awaken laughter. For
the earliest instance of any importance, we may mention Washington
Irving, a writer already discussed as an essayist. He exhibits in
various parts of his work a sparkling effervescence which, if a little
more spontaneous than that found in _The Spectator_, is none the less
strongly suggestive, like his more serious work, of Addison and Steele,
and perhaps also of Goldsmith and Swift.
_The Restrained School._--Less noticeably imitative of foreign work,
the whimsicalities of Oliver Wendell Holmes, of James Russell Lowell,
and of Charles Dudley Warner have been deemed sufficiently important
to make each the subject of a chapter in more than one English work
vainly endeavouring to analyse and classify that subtle something which
makes American humour funny. With apparent gravity Holmes could ask
the startling question, “Why is an onion like a piano?” and in answer
convulse his readers with the atrocious pun, “Because it smell odious!”
His characterisation of an afternoon reception as “Giggle, gabble,
gobble, git,” is worthy of frequent quotation; and one passage in his
“Music Grinders” is of perennial value. Wearied by the discordant tunes
issuing from a hurdy-gurdy, the distracted poet at last exclaims:
“But hark! the air again is still
The music all is ground,
And silence, like a poultice, comes
To heal the blows of sound.”