experience. Here he soon had a printing establishment of his own. By
remarkable industry he had at the age of forty-two made sufficient money to
be able to retire from the active administration of this business. He
defined leisure as "time for doing something useful." When he secured this
leisure, he used it principally for the benefit of others. For this reason,
he could write in his _Autobiography_ at the age of seventy-six:--
"... were it offered to my choice, I should have no objection to a
repetition of the same life from its beginning, only asking the
advantages authors have in a second edition, to correct some faults of
the first. So I might, besides correcting the faults, change some
sinister accidents and events of it for others more favorable. But though
this were denied, I should still accept the offer. Since such a
repetition is not to be expected, the next thing like living one's life
over again seems to be a recollection of that life."
The twentieth century shows an awakened sense of civic responsibility, and
yet it would be difficult to name a man who has done more for his
commonwealth than Franklin. He started the first subscription library,
organized the first fire department, improved the postal service, helped to
pave and clean the streets, invented the Franklin stove, for which he
refused to take out a patent, took decided steps toward improving education
and founding the University of Pennsylvania, and helped establish a needed
public hospital. The _Autobiography_ shows his pleasure at being told that
there was no such thing as carrying through a public-spirited project
unless he was concerned in it.
His electrical discoveries, especially his identification of lightning with
electricity, gained him world-wide fame. Harvard and Yale gave him honorary
degrees. England made him a Fellow of the Royal Society and awarded him the
Copley Medal. The foremost scientists in France gave him enthusiastic
praise.
The _Autobiography_, ending with 1757, does not tell how he won his fame as
a statesman. In 1764 he went to England as colonial agent to protest
against the passage of the Stamp Act. All but two and one half of the next
twenty years he spent abroad, in England and France. The report of his
examination in the English House of Commons, relative to the repeal of the
Stamp Act, impressed both Europe and America with his wonderful capacity.
Never before had an American given Europe such an exhibition of knowledge,
powers of argument, and shrewdness, tempered with tact and good humor. In
1773 he increased his reputation as a writer and threw more light on
English colonial affairs by publishing, in London, _Rules for Reducing a
Great Empire to a Small One_, and _An Edict by the King of Prussia_.
In 1776, at the age of seventy, he became commissioner to the court of
France, where he remained until 1785. Every student of American history
knows the part he played there in popularizing the American Revolution,
until France aided us with her money and her navy. It is doubtful if any
man has ever been more popular away from home than Franklin was in France.
The French regarded him as "the personification of the rights of man." They
followed him on the streets, gave him almost frantic applause when he
appeared in public, put his portrait in nearly every house and on almost
every snuff box, and bought a Franklin stove for their houses.
He returned to Philadelphia in 1785, revered by his country. He was the
only man who had signed four of the most famous documents in American
history: the Declaration of Independence, the treaty of alliance with
France, the treaty of peace with England at the close of the Revolution,
and the Constitution of the United States. He had also become, as he
remains to-day, America's most widely read colonial writer. When he died in
1790, the American Congress and the National Assembly of France went into
mourning.
[Illustration: FACSIMILE OF THE TITLE-PAGE TO "POOR RICHARD'S ALMANAC" FOR
1733]
GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS.--As an author, Franklin is best known for his
philosophy of the practical and the useful. Jonathan Edwards turned his
attention to the next world; Franklin, to this world. The gulf is as vast
between these two men as if they had lived on different planets. To the end
of his life, Franklin's energies were bent toward improving the conditions
of this mundane existence. He advises honesty, not because an eternal
spiritual law commands it, but because it is the best policy. He needs to
be supplemented by the great spiritual teachers. He must not be despised
for this reason, for the great spiritual forces fail when they neglect the
material foundations imposed on mortals. Franklin was as necessary as
Jonathan Edwards. Franklin knew the importance of those foundation habits,
without which higher morality is not possible. He impressed on men the
necessity of being regular, temperate, industrious, saving, of curbing
desire, and of avoiding vice. The very foundations of character rest on
regularity, on good habits so inflexibly formed that it is painful to break
them. Franklin's success in laying these foundations was phenomenal. His
_Poor Richard's Almanac_, begun in 1733, was one of his chief agencies in
reaching the common people. They read, reread, and acted on such proverbs
as the following, which he published in this _Almanac_ from year to year:--
[Footnote: The figures in parenthesis indicate the year of publication.]
"He has changed his one ey'd horse for a blind one" (1733).
"Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead" (1735).
"Wealth is not his that has it, but his that enjoys it" (1736).
"Fly pleasures and they'll follow you" (1738).
"Have you somewhat to do to-morrow; do it to-day" (1742).
"Tart words make no friends: a spoonful of honey will catch more flies than
a gallon of vinegar" (1744).
In 1757 Franklin gathered together what seemed to him the most striking of
these proverbs and published them as a preface to the _Almanac_ for 1758.
This preface, the most widely read of all his writings, has since been
known as _The Way to Wealth_. It had been translated into nearly all
European languages before the end of the nineteenth century. It is still
reprinted in whole or part almost every year by savings banks and societies
in France and England, as well as in the United States. "Dost thou love
life?" asks Poor Richard in _The Way to Wealth_. "Then," he continues, "do
not squander time, for that's the stuff life is made of." Franklin modestly
disclaimed much originality in the selection of these proverbs, but it is
true that he made many of them more definite, incisive, and apt to lodge in
the memory. He has influenced, and he still continues to influence, the
industry and thrift of untold numbers. In one of our large cities, a branch
library, frequented by the humble and unlearned, reports that in one year
his _Autobiography_ was called for four hundred times, and a life of him,
containing many of Poor Richard's sayings, was asked for more than one
thousand times.
He is the first American writer to show a keen sense of humor. There may be
traces of humor in _The Simple Cobbler of Agawam_ (p. 41) and in Cotton
Mather (p. 46), but Franklin has a rich vein. He used this with fine effect
when he was colonial agent in England. He determined to make England see
herself from the American point of view, and so he published anonymously in
a newspaper _An Edict of the King of Prussia_. This _Edict_ proclaimed that
it was a matter of common knowledge that Britain had been settled by
Hengist and Horsa and other German colonists, and that, in consequence of
this fact, the King of Prussia had the right to regulate the commerce,
manufactures, taxes, and laws of the English. Franklin gave in this _Edict_
the same reasons and embodied the same restrictions, which seemed so
sensible to George III. and the Tories. Franklin was the guest of an
English Lord, when a man burst into the room with the newspaper containing
the _Edict_, saying, "Here's news for ye! Here's the King of Prussia
claiming a right to this kingdom!"
In writing English prose, Franklin was fortunate in receiving instruction
from Bunyan and Addison. The pleasure of reading Franklin's _Autobiography_
is increased by his simple, easy, natural way of relating events.
Simplicity, practicality, suggestiveness, common sense, were his leading
attributes. His sense of humor kept him from being tiresome and made him
realize that the half may be greater than the whole. The two people most
useful to the age in which they lived were George Washington and Benjamin
Franklin.
JOHN WOOLMAN, 1720-1772
A GREAT ALTRUIST.--This Quaker supplements Franklin in teaching that the
great aim in life should be to grow more capable of seeing those spiritual
realities which were before invisible. Life's most beautiful realities can
never be seen with the physical eye. The _Journal_ of John Woolman will
help one to increase his range of vision for what is best worth seeing. It
will broaden the reader's sympathies and develop a keener sense of
responsibility for lessening the misery of the world and for protecting
even the sparrow from falling. It will cultivate precisely that side of
human nature which stands most in need of development. To emphasize these
points, Charles Lamb said, "Get the writings of John Woolman by heart," and
Whittier wrote of Woolman's _Journal_, which he edited and made easily
accessible, "I have been awed and solemnized by the presence of a serene
and beautiful spirit redeemed of the Lord from all selfishness, and I have
been made thankful for the ability to recognize and the disposition to love
him."
John Woolman was born of Quaker parentage in Northampton, New Jersey. He
never received much education. Early in life he became a shopkeeper's clerk
and then a tailor. This lack of early training and broad experience affects
his writings, which are not remarkable for ease of expression or for
imaginative reach; but their moral beauty and intensity more than
counterbalance such deficiencies.
A part of his time he spent traveling as an itinerant preacher. He tried to
get Quakers to give up their slaves, and he refused to write wills that
bequeathed slaves. He pleaded for compassion for overworked oxen and
horses. He journeyed among the Indians, and endeavored to improve their
condition. It cut him to the quick to see traders try to intoxicate them so
as to get their skins and furs for almost nothing. He took passage for
England in the steerage, and learned the troubles of the sailors. From this
voyage he never returned, but died in York in 1772.
In the year of his death, he made in his _Journal_ the following entry,
which is typical of his gentle, loving spirit:
"So great is the hurry in the spirit of this world, that in aiming to do
business quickly and to gain wealth, the creation at this day doth loudly
groan."
When a former president of Harvard issued a list of books for actual
reading, he put Franklin's _Autobiography_ first and John Woolman's
_Journal_ second. Franklin looked steadily at this world, Woolman at the
next. Each record is supplementary to the other.
EARLY AMERICAN FICTION
THE FIRST ATTEMPTS.--MRS. SARAH MORTON published in Boston in 1789 a novel
entitled _The Power of Sympathy_. This is probably the first American novel
to appear in print. The reason for such a late appearance of native fiction
may be ascribed to the religious character of the early colonists and to
the ascendency of the clergy, who would not have tolerated novel reading by
members of their flocks. Jonathan Edwards complained that some of his
congregation were reading forbidden books, and he gave from the pulpit the
names of the guilty parties. These books were probably English novels. Sir
Leslie Stephen thinks that Richardson's _Pamela_ (1740) may have been one
of the books under the ban. There is little doubt that a Puritan church
member would have been disciplined if he had been known to be a reader of
some of Fielding's works, like _Joseph Andrews_ (1742). The Puritan clergy,
even at a later period, would not sanction the reading of novels unless
they were of the dry, vapid type, like the earliest Sunday school books.
Jonathan Edwards wrote the story of one of his youthful experiences, but it
was "the story of a spiritual experience so little involved with the earth,
that one might fancy it the story of a soul that had missed being born."
Timothy Dwight (p. 92), who became president of Yale in 1795, said that
there is a great gulf fixed between novels and the _Bible_. Even later than
1800 there was a widespread feeling that the reading of novels imperiled
the salvation of the soul. To-day we know that certain novels are as
dangerous to the soul as leprosy to the body, but we have become more
discriminating. We have learned that the right type of fiction, read in
moderation, cultivates the imagination, broadens the sympathetic powers,
and opens up a new, interesting, and easily accessible land of enjoyment.
A quarter of a century before the _Declaration of Independence_, the great
eighteenth-century English writers of fiction had given a new creation to
the literature of England. Samuel Richardson (1689-1761) had published
_Pamela_ in 1740 and _Clarissa Harlowe_ in 1748. Henry Fielding (1707-1754)
had given his immortal _Tom Jones_ to the world in 1749.
Mrs. Morton's _Power of Sympathy_, a novel written with a moral purpose, is
a poorly constructed story of characters whom we fortunately do not meet
outside of books. One of these characters, looking at some flowers
embroidered by the absent object of his affections, says, "It shall yield
more fragrance to my soul than all the bouquets in the universe."
The majority of the early novels, in aiming to teach some lesson, show
the influence of Samuel Richardson, the father of English fiction. This
didactic spirit appears in sober statement of the most self-evident
truths. "Death, my dear Maria, is a serious event," says the heroine of
one of these novels. Another characteristic is tepid or exaggerated
sentimentality. The heroine of _The Power of Sympathy_ dies of a broken
heart "in a lingering graceful manner."
At least twenty-two American novels had been published between 1789 and the
appearance of Charles Brockden Brown's _Wieland_ 1798. Only an antiquary
need linger over these. We must next study the causes that led to a
pronounced change in fiction.
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE CLASSIC AND THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL.--The next step in
fiction will show a breaking away from the classic or didactic school of
Samuel Richardson and a turning toward the new Gothic or romantic school.
To understand these terms, we must know something of the English influences
that led to this change.
For the first two thirds of the eighteenth century, English literature
shows the dominating influence of the classic school. Alexander Pope
(1688-1744) in poetry and Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) in prose were the most
influential of this school. They are called _classicists_ because they
looked to the old classic authors for their guiding rules. Horace, more
than any other classic writer, set the standard for poetry. Pope and his
followers cared more for the excellence of form than for the worth of the
thought. Their keynote was:--
"True Wit is Nature to advantage dress'd,
What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed."
[Footnote: Pope's _Essay on Criticism_, lines 297-8.]
In poetry the favorite form was a couplet, that is, two lines which rhymed
and usually made complete sense. This was not inaptly termed "rocking horse
meter." The prose writers loved the balanced antithetical sentences used by
Dr. Johnson in his comparison of Pope and Dryden:--
"If the flights of Dryden, therefore, are higher, Pope continues longer
on the wing.... Dryden is read with frequent astonishment and Pope with
perpetual delight."
Such overemphasis placed on mere form tended to draw the attention of the
writer away from the matter. The American poetry of this period suffered
more than the prose from this formal influence.
Since the motto of the classicists was polished regularity, they avoided
the romantic, irregular, and improbable, and condemned the _Arabian
Nights_, _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, _The Tempest_, and other "monstrous
irregularities of Shakespeare." This school loved to teach and to point out
shortcomings, hence the terms "didactic" and "satiric" are often applied to
it.
The last part of the eighteenth century showed a revolt against the
classicists. Victory came to the new romantic school, which included
authors like Wordsworth (1770-1850), Coleridge (1772-1834), Shelley
(1792-1822), and Keats (1795-1821). The terms "romantic" and "imaginative"
were at first in great measure synonymous. The romanticists maintained that
a reality of the imagination might be as satisfying and as important as a
reality of the prosaic reason, since the human mind had the power of
imagining as well as of thinking.
The term "Gothic" was first applied to fiction by Horace Walpole
(1717-1797), who gave to his famous romance the title of "_The Castle of
Otranto: A Gothic Romance_" (1764). "Gothic" is here used in the same sense
as "romantic." Gothic architecture seemed highly imaginative and
overwrought in comparison with the severe classic order. In attempting to
avoid the old classic monotony, the Gothic school of fiction was soon noted
for its lavish use of the unusual, the mysterious, and the terrible.
Improbability, or the necessity for calling in the supernatural to untie
some knot, did not seriously disturb this school. The standard definition
of "Gothic" in fiction soon came to include an element of strangeness added
to terror. When the taste for the extreme Gothic declined, there ensued a
period of modified romanticism, which demanded the unusual and occasionally
the impossible. This influence persisted in the fiction of the greatest
writers, until the coming of the realistic school (p. 367). We are now
better prepared to understand the work of Charles Brockden Brown, the first
great American writer of romance, and to pass from him to Cooper,
Hawthorne, and Poe.
CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN, 1771-1810
[Illustration: CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN]
Philadelphia has the honor of being the birthplace of Brown, who was the
first professional man of letters in America. Franklin is a more famous
writer than Brown, but, unlike Brown, he did not make literature the
business of his life. Descended from ancestors who came over on the ship
with William Penn, Brown at the age of ten had read, with Quaker
seriousness, every book that he could find. He did not go to college, but
studied law, which he soon gave up for literature as a profession.
Depression from ill health and the consciousness that he would probably die
young colored all his romances. He has the hero of one of his tales say,
"We are exposed, in common with the rest of mankind, to innumerable
casualties; but, if these be shunned, we are unalterably fated to die of
consumption." In 1810, before he had reached forty, he fell a victim to
that disease. Near the end of his days, he told his wife that he had not
known what health was longer than a half hour at a time.
Brown deserves a place in the history of American literature for his four
romances: _Wieland_, _Ormond_, _Arthur Mervyn_, and _Edgar Huntly_. These
were all published within the space of three years from 1798, the date of
the publication of _Wieland_. These romances show a striking change from
the American fiction which had preceded them. They are no longer didactic
and sentimental, but Gothic or romantic. Working under English influence,
Brown gave to America her first great Gothic romances. The English romance
which influenced him the most was _Caleb Williams_ (1794), the work of
William Godwin (1756-1836), the father-in-law of the poet Shelley.
_Wieland_ is considered the strongest of Brown's Gothic romances, but it
does not use as distinctively American materials as his three other stories
of this type, _Ormond_, _Arthur Mervyn_, or _Memoirs of the Year 1793_, and
_Edgar Huntly_. The results of his own experience with the yellow fever
plague in Philadelphia give an American touch to _Ormond_ and _Arthur
Mervyn_, and at the same time add the Gothic element of weirdness and
horror. _Arthur Mervyn_ is far the better of the two.
_Edgar Huntly, or Memoirs of a Sleep Walker_, shows a Gothic characteristic
in its very title. This book is noteworthy in the evolution of American
fiction, not because of the strange actions of the sleep walker, but for
the reason that Brown here deliberately determines, as he states in his
prefatory note _To the Public_ to give the romance an American flavor, by
using "the incidents of Indian hostility and the perils of the Western
wilderness." If we assume that John Smith's story of Pocahontas is not
fiction, then to Brown belongs the honor of first recognizing in the Indian
a valuable literary asset from the Gothic romancer's point of view. In
Chapter XVI., he reverses Captain Smith's story and has Edgar Huntly rescue
a young girl from torture and kill an Indian. In the next two chapters, the
hero kills four Indians. The English recognized this introduction of a new
element of strangeness added to terror and gave Brown the credit of
developing an "Americanized" Gothic. He disclosed to future writers of
fiction, like James Fenimore Cooper (p. 125), a new mine of American
materials. This romance has a second distinguishing characteristic, for
Brown surpassed contemporary British novelists in taking his readers into
the open air, which forms the stage setting for the adventures of _Edgar
Huntly_. The hero of that story loves to observe the birds, the squirrels,
and the old Indian woman "plucking the weeds from among her corn, bruising
the grain between two stones, and setting her snares for rabbits and
opossums." He takes us where we can feel the exhilaration from "a wild
heath, whistled over by October blasts meagerly adorned with the dry stalks
of scented shrubs and the bald heads of the sapless mullein."
Brown's place in the history of fiction is due to the fact that he
introduced the Gothic romance to American literature. He loved to subject
the weird, the morbid, the terrible, to a psychological analysis. In this
respect he suggests Hawthorne, although there are more points of difference
than of likeness between him and the great New England romancer. In weird
subject matter, but not in artistic ability, he reminds us of Poe. Brown
could devise striking incidents, but he lacked the power to weave them
together in a well-constructed plot. He sometimes forgot that important
incidents needed further elaboration or reference, and he occasionally left
them suspended in mid-air. His lack of humor was too often responsible for
his imposing too much analysis and explanation on his readers. Although he
did not hesitate to use the marvelous in his plots, his realistic mind
frequently impelled him to try to explain the wonderful occurrences. He
thus attempted to bring in ventriloquism to account for the mysterious
voices which drove Wieland to kill his wife and children.
It is, however, not difficult for a modern reader to become so much
interested in the first volume of _Arthur Mervyn_ as to be unwilling to
leave it unfinished. Brown will probably be longest remembered for his
strong pictures of the yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia, his use of
the Indian in romance, and his introduction of the outdoor world of the
wilderness and the forest.
POETRY--THE HARTFORD WITS
The Americans were slow to learn that political independence could be far
more quickly gained than literary independence. A group of poets, sometimes
known as the Hartford Wits, determined to take the kingdom of poetry by
violence. The chief of these were three Yale graduates, Timothy Dwight,
Joel Barlow, and John Trumbull.
TIMOTHY DWIGHT (1752-1817).--Before he became president of Yale, Dwight
determined to immortalize himself by an epic poem. He accordingly wrote the
_Conquest of Canaan_ in 9671 lines, beginning:--
"The Chief, whose arms to Israel's chosen band
Gave the fair empire of the promis'd land,
Ordain'd by Heaven to hold the sacred sway,
Demands my voice, and animates the lay."
[Illustration: TIMOTHY DWIGHT]
This poem is written in the rocking horse couplets of Pope, and it is
well-nigh unreadable to-day. It is doubtful if twenty-five people in our
times have ever read it through. Even where the author essays fine writing,
as in the lines:--
"On spicy shores, where beauteous morning reigns,
Or Evening lingers o'er her favorite plains,"
there is nothing to awaken a single definite image, nothing but glittering
generalities. Dwight's best known poetry is found in his song, _Columbia_,
composed while he was a chaplain in the Revolutionary War:--
"Columbia, Columbia, to glory arise,
The queen of the world, and the child of the skies."
JOEL BARLOW (1755-1812) was, like Dwight, a chaplain in the war, but he
became later a financier and diplomat, as well as a poet. He determined in
_The Vision of Columbus_ (1787), afterwards expanded into the ponderous
_Columbiad_, to surpass Homer and all preceding epics. Barlow's classical
couplets thus present a general in the Revolution, ordering a cannonade:--
"When at his word the carbon cloud shall rise,
And well-aim'd thunders rock the shores and skies."
[Illustration: JOEL BARLOW]
Hawthorne ironically suggested that the _Columbiad_ should be dramatized
and set to the accompaniment of cannon and thunder and lightning. Barlow,
like many others, certainly did not understand that bigness is not
necessarily greatness. He is best known by some lines from his less
ambitious _Hasty Pudding_:--
"E'en in thy native regions, how I blush
To hear the Pennsylvanians call thee _Mush!_"
JOHN TRUMBULL (1750-1831).--The greatest of the Hartford wits was John
Trumbull. His father, a Congregational clergyman living at Waterbury,
Connecticut, prepared boys for college. In 1757 he sent two candidates to
Yale to be examined, one pupil of nineteen, the other of seven. Commenting
on this, the _Connecticut Gazette_ of September 24, 1757, says, "the Son of
Rev'd. Mr. Trumble of Waterbury ... passed a good Examination, altho but
little more than seven years of age; but on account of his Youth his father
does not intend he shall at present continue at College." This boy waited
until he was thirteen to enter Yale, where he graduated in due course.
After teaching for two years in that college, he became a lawyer by
profession. Although he did not die until 1831, the literary work by which
he is known was finished early.
Trumbull occupied the front rank of the satiric writers of that age. Early
in his twenties he satirized in classical couplets the education of the
day, telling how the students:--
"Read ancient authors o'er in vain,
Nor taste one beauty they contain,
And plodding on in one dull tone,
Gain ancient tongues and lose their own."
[Illustration: JOHN TRUMBULL]
His masterpiece was a satire on British sympathizers. He called this poem
_M'Fingal_, after a Scotch Tory. The first part was published in 1775 and
it gave a powerful impetus to the Continental cause. It has been said that
the poem "is to be considered as one of the forces of the Revolution,
because as a satire on the Tories it penetrated into every farmhouse, and
sent the rustic volunteers laughing into the ranks of Washington and
Greene."
One cannot help thinking of Butler's _Hudibras_ (1663), when reading
_M'Fingal_. Of course the satiric aim is different in the two poems. Butler
ridiculed the Puritans and upheld the Royalists, while Trumbull discharged
his venomed shafts at the adherents of the king. In _M'Fingal_, a Tory bent
on destroying a liberty pole drew his sword on a Whig, who had no arms
except a spade. The Whig, however, employed his weapon with such good
effect on the Tory that:--
"His bent knee fail'd, and void of strength,
Stretch'd on the ground his manly length.
Like ancient oak, o'erturn'd, he lay,
Or tower to tempests fall'n a prey,
Or mountain sunk with all his pines,
Or flow'r the plough to dust consigns,
And more things else--but all men know 'em,
If slightly versed in epic poem."
Some of the incisive lines from _M'Fingal_ have been wrongly ascribed to
Butler's _Hudibras_. The following are instances:--
"No man e'er felt the halter draw
With good opinion of the law."
"For any man with half an eye
What stands before him may espy;
But optics sharp it needs, I ween,
To see what is not to be seen."
Trumbull's _M'Fingal_ is a worthy predecessor of Lowell's _Biglow Papers_.
Trumbull wrote his poem as a "weapon of warfare." The first part of
_M'Fingal_ passed through some forty editions, many of them printed without
the author's consent. This fact is said to have led Connecticut to pass a
copyright law in 1783, and to have thus constituted a landmark in American
literary history.
PHILIP FRENEAU, 1752-1832
[Illustration: PHILIP FRENEAU]
New York City was the birthplace of Freneau, the greatest poet born in
America before the Revolutionary War. He graduated at Princeton in 1771,
and became a school teacher, sea captain, poet, and editor.
The Revolution broke out when he was a young man, and he was moved to write
satiric poetry against the British. Tyler says that "a running commentary
on his Revolutionary satires would be an almost complete commentary on the
whole Revolutionary struggle; nearly every important emergency and phase of
which are photographed in his keen, merciless, and often brilliant lines."
In one of these satires Freneau represents Jove investigating the records
of Fate:--
"And first on the top of a column he read--
Of a king with a mighty soft place in his head,
Who should join in his temper the ass and the mule,
The Third of his name and by far the worst fool."
We can imagine the patriotic colonists singing as a refrain:--
"... said Jove with a smile,
Columbia shall never be ruled by an isle,"
or this:--
"The face of the Lion shall then become pale,
He shall yield fifteen teeth and be sheared of his tail,"
but Freneau's satiric verse is not his best, however important it may be to
historians.
His best poems are a few short lyrics, remarkable for their simplicity,
sincerity, and love of nature. His lines:--
"A hermit's house beside a stream
With forests planted round,"
are suggestive of the romantic school of Wordsworth and Coleridge, as is
also _The Wild Honeysuckle_, which begins as follows:--
"Fair flower, that dost so comely grow,
Hid in this silent, dull retreat,
Untouched thy honied blossoms blow,
Unseen thy little branches greet.
"By Nature's self in white arrayed,
She bade thee shun the vulgar eye,
And planted here the guardian shade,
And sent soft waters murmuring by."
Although Freneau's best poems are few and short, no preceding American poet
had equaled them. The following will repay careful reading: _The Wild
Honeysuckle_, _The Indian Burying Ground_, and _To a Honey Bee_.
He died in 1832, and was buried near his home at Mount Pleasant, Monmouth
County, New Jersey.
ENGLISH LITERATURE OF THE PERIOD
The great prose representatives of the first half of the eighteenth
century, Swift, Addison, Steele, and Defoe, had passed away before the
middle of the century. The creators of the novel, Samuel Richardson and
Henry Fielding, had done their best work by 1750.
The prose writers of the last half of the century were OLIVER GOLDSMITH
(1728-1774), who published the _Vicar of Wakefield_ in 1766; EDWARD GIBBON
(1737-1794), who wrote _The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire_; EDMUND BURKE (1729-1797), best known to-day for his _Speech on
Conciliation with America_; and SAMUEL JOHNSON (1709-1784), whose _Lives of
the Poets_ is the best specimen of eighteenth-century classical criticism.
The most noteworthy achievement of the century was the victory of
romanticism (p. 88) over classicism. Pope's polished satiric and didactic
verse, neglecting the primrose by the river's brim, lacking deep feeling,
high ideals, and heaven-climbing imagination, had long been the model that
inspired cold intellectual poetry. In the latter part of the century,
romantic feeling and imagination won their battle and came into their own
heritage in literature. ROBERT BURNS (1759-1796) wrote poetry that touched
the heart. A classicist like Dr. Johnson preferred the town to the most
beautiful country scenes, but WILLIAM COWPER (1731-1800) says:--
"God made the country, and man made the town."
Romantic poetry culminated in the work of WILLIAM WORDSWORTH and SAMUEL
TAYLOR COLERIDGE, whose _Lyrical Ballads_ (1798) included the wonderful
romantic poem of _The Ancient Mariner_, and poems by Wordsworth, which
brought to thousands of human souls a new sense of companionship with
nature, a new feeling
"... that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes,"
and that all nature is anxious to share its joy with man and to introduce
him to a new world. The American poets of this age, save Freneau in a few
short lyrics, felt but little of this great impulse; but in the next period
we shall see that William Cullen Bryant heard the call and sang:--
"Scarce less the cleft-born wild-flower seems to enjoy
Existence than the winged plunderer
That sucks its sweets."
The romantic prose was not of as high an order as the poetry. Writers of
romances like WALPOLE'S _Castle of Otranto_ and GODWIN'S _Caleb Williams_
did not allow their imaginations to be fettered by either the probable or
the possible. In America the romances of Charles Brockden Brown show the
direct influence of this school.
LEADING HISTORICAL FACTS
The French and Indian War accomplished two great results. In the first
place, it made the Anglo-Saxon race dominant in North America. Had the
French won, this book would have been chiefly a history of French
literature. In the second place, the isolated colonies learned to know one
another and their combined strength.
Soon after the conclusion of this war, the English began active
interference with colonial imports and exports, laid taxes on certain
commodities, passed the Stamp Act, and endeavored to make the colonists
feel that they were henceforth to be governed in fact as well as in name by
England. The most independent men that the world has ever produced came to
America to escape tyranny at home. The descendants of these men started the
American Revolution, signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776, and,
led by George Washington (1732-1799), one of the greatest heroes of the
ages, won their independence. They had the assistance of the French, and it
was natural that the treaty of peace with England should be signed at Paris
in 1783.
Then followed a period nearly as trying as that of the Revolution, an era
called by John Fiske "The Critical Period of American History, 1783-1789."
Because of the jealousy of the separate states and the fear that tyranny at
home might threaten liberty, there was no central government vested with
adequate power. Sometimes there was a condition closely bordering on
anarchy. The wisest men feared that the independence so dearly bought would
be lost. Finally, the separate states adopted a Constitution which united
them, and in 1789 they chose Washington as the president of this Union. His
_Farewell Address_, issued to the American people toward the end of his
administration, breathes the prayer "that your union and brotherly
affection may be perpetual; that the free constitution which is the work of
your hands, may be sacredly maintained; that its administration in every
part may be stamped with wisdom and virtue." A leading thought from this
great _Address_ shows that the Virginian agreed with the New Englander in
regard to the chief cornerstone of this Republic:--
"Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity,
Religion and Morality are indispensable supports."
The student of political rather than of literary history is interested in
the administrations of John Adams (1797-1801), Thomas Jefferson
(1801-1809), and James Madison (1809-1817). The acquisition in 1803 of the
vast central territory, known as the Louisiana Purchase, affected the
entire subsequent development of the country and its literature. Thomas
Jefferson still exerts an influence on our literature and institutions; for
he championed the democratic, as opposed to the aristocratic, principle of
government. His belief in the capacity of the common people for progress
and self-government still helps to mold public opinion.
Next in importance to the victorious struggle of the Revolution and the
adoption of the Constitution, is the wonderful pioneer movement toward the
West. Francis A. Walker, in his _Making of the Nation, 1783-1817_, says:--
"During the period of thirty-four years covered by this narrative, a
movement had been in continuous progress for the westward extension of
population, which far transcended the limits of any of the great
migrations of mankind upon the older continents.... From 1790 to 1800,
the mean population of the period being about four and a half millions,
sixty-five thousand square miles were brought within the limits of
settlement; crossed with rude roads and bridges; built up with rude
houses and barns; much of it, also, cleared of primeval forests.
"In the next ten years, the mean population of the decade being about six
and a half millions, the people of the United States extended settlement
over one hundred and two thousand square miles of absolutely new
territory.... No other people could have done this. No: nor the half of
it. Any other of the great migratory races--Tartar, Slav, or
German--would have broken hopelessly down in an effort to compass such a
field in such a term of years."
SUMMARY
The early essays of the period, Paine's _Common Sense_ and the _Crisis_,
Jefferson's _Declaration of Independence_, Hamilton's pamphlets and papers,
all champion human liberty and show the influence of the Revolution. The
orators, James Otis, Patrick Henry, and Samuel Adams, were inspired by the
same cause. The words of Patrick Henry, "Give me liberty or give me death,"
have in them the essence of immortality because they voice the supreme
feeling of one of the critical ages in the world's history.
Benjamin Franklin was the greatest writer of the period. His
_Autobiography_ has a value possessed by no other work of the kind. This
and his _Poor Richard's Almanac_ have taught generations of Americans the
duty of self-culture, self-reliance, thrift, and the value of practical
common sense. He was the first of our writers to show a balanced sense of
humor and to use it as an agent in impressing truth on unwilling listeners.
He is an equally great apostle of the practical and the altruistic,
although he lacked the higher spirituality of the old Puritans and of the
Quaker, John Woolman. This age is marked by a comparative decline in the
influence of the clergy. Not a single clerical name appears on the list of
the most prominent writers.
This period shows the beginning of American fiction, dominated by English
writers, like Samuel Richardson. The early novels, like Mrs. Morton's _The
Power of Sympathy_, were usually prosy, didactic, and as dull as the Sunday
school books of three quarters of a century ago. The victory of the English
school of romanticists influenced Charles Brockden Brown, the first
professional American author, to throw off the yoke of classical
didacticism and regularity and to write a group of Gothic romances, in
which the imagination was given a freer rein than the intellect. While he
freely employed the imported Gothic elements of "strangeness added to
terror," he nevertheless managed to give a distinctively American coloring
to his work by showing the romantic use to which the Indian and the forest
could be put.
Authors struggled intensely to write poetry. "The Hartford Wits," Dwight,
Barlow, and Trumbull, wrote a vast quantity of verse. The most of this is
artificial, and reveals the influence of the classical school of Alexander
Pope. Freneau wrote a few short lyrics which suggest the romantic school of
Wordsworth.
The American literature of this period shows in the main the influence of
the older English classical school. America produced no authors who can
rank with the contemporary school of English writers, such as Burns,
Wordsworth, and Coleridge. Of all the writers of this age, Franklin alone
shows an undiminished popularity with readers of the twentieth century.
Three events in the history of the period are epoch-making in the world's
history; (_a_) the securing of independence through the Revolutionary War,
(_b_) the adoption of a constitution and the formation of a republic, and
(_c_) the magnitude of the work of the pioneer settlers, who advanced
steadily west from the coast, and founded commonwealths beyond the
Alleghanies.
REFERENCES FOR FURTHER STUDY
HISTORICAL
The course of English events (reign of George III.) may be traced in any of
the English histories mentioned on p. 60. For the English literature of the
period; see the author's _History of English Literature_.
Valuable works dealing with special periods of the American history of the
time are:--
Hart's _Formation of the Union_.
Parkman's _Half Century of Conflict_ and _Montcalm and Wolfe_, 2 vols.
(French and Indian War.)
Fiske's _American Revolution_, 2 vols.
Fiske's _Critical Period of American History_.
Walker's _The Making of the Nation_.
Johnston's _History of American Politics_.
Schouler's _History of the United States of America under the
Constitution_, 6 vols.
The works by Hart, Channing, and James and Sanford, referred to on p. 61,
will give the leading events in brief compass. An account of much of the
history of the period is given in the biographies of Washington by Lodge,
of Franklin by Morse, of Hamilton by Lodge, and of Jefferson by Morse.
(_American Statesmen Series_.)
LITERARY
Tyler's _The Literary History of the American Revolution_, 2 vols.
Richardson's _American Literature_, 2 vols.
Wendell's _Literary History of America_.
Trent's _A History of American Literature_.
McMaster's _Benjamin Franklin_.
Ford's _The Many-Sided Franklin_.
Erskine's _Leading American Novelists_, pp. 3-49, on Charles Brockden
Brown.
Loshe's _The Early American Novel_.
SUGGESTED READINGS
The Essayists.--Selections from Thomas Paine's _Common Sense_,--Cairns,
[Footnote: For full titles see p. 62.] 344-347; Carpenter, 66-70; S. & H.,
III., 219-221. From the _Crisis_,--Cairns, 347-352; Carpenter, 70, 71; S. &
H., III., 222-225.
_Jefferson's Declaration of Independence_--which may be found in Carpenter,
79-83; S. & H., III, 286-289; and in almost all the histories of the United
States--should be read several times until the very atmosphere or spirit of
those days comes to the reader.
Selections from Alexander Hamilton, including a paper from the
_Federalist_, may be found in Cairns, 363-369; S. & H., IV., 113-116.
THE ORATORS.--A short selection from Otis is given in this work, p. 72. A
longer selection may be found in Vol. I. of Johnston's _American Orations_,
11-17. For Patrick Henry's most famous speech, see Cairns, 335-338; S. &
H., III., 214-218; Johnston, I., 18-23. The speech of Samuel Adams on
American Independence is given in Johnston, I., 24-38, and in Moore's
_American Eloquence_, Vol. I.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.--Every one should read his _Autobiography_. Selections
may be found in Carpenter, 31-36; Cairns, 322-332; T. & W., III., 192-201;
S. & H., III., 3-13.
Read his _Way to Wealth_ either in the various editions of _Poor Richard's
Almanac_ or in Cairns, 315-319; Carpenter, 36-43; T. & W., III., 202-213;
S. & H., III., 17-21.
JOHN WOOLMAN.--Cairns, 307-313; S. & H., III., 78-80, 82-85.
CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN.--The first volume of _Arthur Mervyn_ with its
account of the yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia is not uninteresting
reading. Chaps. XVI., XVII., and XVIII. of _Edgar Huntly_ show the hero of
that romance rescuing a girl from torture and killing Indians. These and
the following chapters, especially XIX., XX., and XXI, give some vigorous
out-of-door life.
Selections giving incidents of the yellow fever plague may be found in
Cairns, 482-488; Carpenter, 97-100. For Indian adventures or out-of-door
life in Edgar Huntly, see Cairns, 488-493; Carpenter, 89-97; S. & H., IV.,
273-292.
POETRY.--Selections from Dwight, Barlow, and Trumbull may be found in
Cairns, 395-430; S. & H., III., 403-413, 426-429, IV., 47-55. For Freneau's
best lyrics, see Cairns, 440, 441, 447; S. & H., III., 452, 453, 456;
Stedman, An American Anthology, 4, 7, 8.
QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS
PROSE.--After reading some of the papers of Thomas Paine, state why they
were unusually well suited to the occasion. Why is the _Declaration of
Independence_ likened to the old battle songs of the Anglo-Saxon race? What
is remarkable about Jefferson's power of expression? In the orations of
Otis, Patrick Henry, and Samuel Adams, what do you find to account for
their influence? To what must an orator owe his power?
Contrast the writings of Benjamin Franklin with those of Jonathan Edwards
and John Woolman. What are some of the most useful suggestions and records
of experience to be found in Franklin's _Autobiography_? In what ways are
his writings still useful to humanity? Select the best four maxims from
_The Way to Wealth_. What are some of the qualities of Franklin's style?
Compare it with Woolman's style.
Why are Brown's romances called "Gothic"? What was the general type of
American fiction preceding him? Specify three strong or unusual incidents
in the selections read from Brown. What does he introduce to give an
American color to his work?
POETRY.--In the selections read from Dwight, Barlow, and Trumbull, what
general characteristics impress you? Do these poets belong to the classic
or the romantic school? What English influences are manifest? What
qualities in Freneau's lyrics show a distinct advance in American poetry?
CHAPTER III
THE NEW YORK GROUP
A NEW LITERARY CENTER.--We have seen that Massachusetts supplied the
majority of the colonial writers before the French and Indian War. During
the next period, Philadelphia came to the front with Benjamin Franklin and
Charles Brockden Brown. In this third period, New York forged ahead, both
in population and in the number of her literary men. Although in 1810 she
was smaller than Philadelphia, by 1820 she had a population of 123,706,
which was 15,590 more than Philadelphia, and 80,408 more than Boston.
This increase in urban population rapidly multiplied the number of readers
of varied tastes and developed a desire for literary entertainment, as well
as for instruction. Works like those of Irving and Cooper gained wide
circulation only because of the new demands, due to the increasing
population, to the decline in colonial provincialism, and to the growth of
the new national spirit. Probably no one would have been inspired,
twenty-five years earlier, to write a work like Irving's _Knickerbocker's
History of New York_. Even if it had been produced earlier, the country
would not have been ready to receive it. This remarkable book was published
in New York in 1809, and more than a quarter of a century had passed before
Massachusetts could produce anything to equal that work.
In the New York group there were three great writers whom we shall discuss
separately: Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, and William Cullen
Bryant. Before we begin to study them, however, we may glance at two of the
minor writers, who show some of the characteristics of the age.
DRAKE AND HALLECK
[Illustration: JOSEPH RODMAN DRAKE]
Two friends, who in their early youth styled themselves "The Croakers,"
were Joseph Rodman Drake (1795-1820) and Fitz-Greene Halleck (1790-1867),
"the Damon and Pythias of American poets." Drake was born in New York City
in the same year as the English poet, John Keats, in London. Both Drake and
Keats studied medicine, and both died of consumption at the age of
twenty-five. Halleck was born in Guilford, Connecticut, but moved to New
York in early youth, where he became a special accountant for John Jacob
Astor. Although Halleck outlived Drake forty-seven years, trade seems to
have sterilized Halleck's poetic power in his later life.
The early joint productions of Drake and Halleck were poems known as _The
Croakers_, published in 1819, in the New York _Evening Post_. This stanza
from _The Croakers_ will show the character of the verse and its avowed
object:--
"There's fun in everything we meet,
The greatest, worst, and best;
Existence is a merry treat,
And every speech a jest:
Be't ours to watch the crowds that pass
Where Mirth's gay banner waves;
To show fools through a quizzing-glass
And bastinade the knaves."
This was written by Drake, but he and Halleck together "croaked" the
following lines, which show that New York life at the beginning of the
nineteenth century had something of the variety of London in the time of
Queen Anne, at the beginning of the eighteenth century:--
"The horse that twice a week I ride
At Mother Dawson's eats his fill;
My books at Goodrich's abide,
My country seat is Weehawk hill;
My morning lounge is Eastburn's shop,
At Poppleton's I take my lunch,
Niblo prepares my mutton chop,
And Jennings makes my whiskey punch."
[Illustration: FITZ GREENE HALLECK]
Such work indicates not only a diversified circle of readers, who were not
subject to the religious and political stress of earlier days, but it also
shows a desire to be entertained, which would have been promptly
discouraged in Puritan New England. We should not be surprised to find that
the literature of this period was swayed by the new demands, that it was
planned to entertain as well as to instruct, and that all the writers of
this group, with the exception of Bryant, frequently placed the chief
emphasis on the power to entertain.
Fortunately instruction often accompanies entertainment, as the following
lines from _The Croakers_ show:--
"The man who frets at worldly strife
Grows sallow, sour, and thin;
Give us the lad whose happy life
Is one perpetual grin,
He, Midas-like, turns all to gold."
Drake's best poem, which is entirely his own work, is _The Culprit Fay_,
written in 1816 when he was twenty-one years of age. This shows the
influence of the English romantic school, and peoples the Hudson River with
fairies. Before the appearance of this poem, nothing like these lines could
have been found in American verse:--
"The winds are whist, and the owl is still,
The bat in the shelvy rock is hid;
And naught is heard on the lonely hill
But the cricket's chirp and the answer shrill
Of the gauze-winged katydid;
And the plaint of the wailing whip-poor-will,
Who moans unseen, and ceaseless sings,
Ever a note of wail and woe,
Till morning spreads her rosy wings
And earth and sky in her glances glow."
Although _The Culprit Fay_ shows the influence of Coleridge's _Christabel_,
yet this American poem could not have been written by an English poet.
Drake did not sing the praises of the English lark and the nightingale; but
chose instead an American bird, the whippoorwill, and a native insect, the
katydid, and in writing of them showed the enjoyment of a true poet.
Drake's best known poem, _The American Flag_, which was signed "Croaker &
Co.," because Halleck wrote the last four lines, is a good specimen of
rhetorical verse, but lacks the poetic feeling of _The Culprit Fay_.
Fitz-Greene Halleck's best known poem is _Marco Bozzaris_ (1827), an elegy
on the death of a Grecian leader, killed in 1823. America's sympathies went
out to Greece in her struggles for independence against the Turks. In
celebrating the heroic death of Bozzaris, Halleck chose a subject that was
naturally fitted to appeal to all whose liberties were threatened. This
poem has been honored with a place in almost all American anthologies.
Middle-aged people can still remember the frequency with which the poem was
declaimed. At one time these lines were perhaps as often heard as any in
American verse:--
"Strike--till the last armed foe expires;
Strike--for your altars and your fires;
Strike--for the green graves of your sires;
God--and your native land!"
Fifty years ago the readers of this poem would have been surprised to be
told that interest in it would ever wane, but it was fitted to arouse the
enthusiasm, not of all time, but of an age,--an age that knew from
first-hand experience the meaning of a struggle for hearth fires and
freedom. Most critics to-day prefer Halleck's lines _On the Death of Joseph
Rodman Drake_:--
"Green be the turf above thee,
Friend of my better days!
None knew thee but to love thee,
Nor named thee but to praise."
This poem is simpler, less rhetorical, and the vehicle of more genuine
feeling than _Marco Bozzaris_.
The work of Drake and Halleck shows an advance in technique and imaginative
power. Their verse, unlike the satires of Freneau and Trumbull, does not
use the maiming cudgel, nor is it ponderous like Barlow's _Columbiad_ or
Dwight's _Conquest of Canaan_.
WASHINGTON IRVING, 1783-1859
[Illustration: WASHINGTON IRVING]
LIFE.--Irving was born in New York City in 1783, the year in which Benjamin
Franklin signed at Paris the treaty of peace with England after the
Revolutionary War. Irving's father, a Scotchman from the Orkney Islands,
was descended from De Irwyn, armor bearer to Robert Bruce. Irving's mother
was born in England, and the English have thought sufficiently well of her
son to claim that he belonged to England as much as to America. In fact, he
sometimes seemed to them to be more English than American, especially after
he had written something unusually good.
When Irving was a boy, the greater part of what is now New York City was
picturesque country. He mingled with the descendants of the Dutch, passed
daily by their old-style houses, and had excellent opportunities for
hearing the traditions and learning the peculiarities of Manhattan's early
settlers, whom he was afterwards to immortalize in American literature. On
his way to school he looked at the stocks and the whipping post, which had
a salaried official to attend to the duties connected with it. He could
have noticed two prisons, one for criminals and the other for debtors. He
could scarcely have failed to see the gallows, in frequent use for offenses
for which the law to-day prescribes only a short term of imprisonment.
Notwithstanding the twenty-two churches, the pious complained that the town
was so godless as to allow the theaters to be open on Saturday night.
Instead of going to bed after the family prayers, Irving sometimes climbed
through a window, gained the alley, and went to the theater. In school he
devoured as many travels and tales as possible, and he acquired much early
skill in writing compositions for boys in return for their assistance in
solving his arithmetical problems--a task that he detested.
At the age of fifteen he was allowed to take his gun and explore the Sleepy
Hollow region, which became the scene of one of his world-famous stories.
When he was seventeen, he sailed slowly up the Hudson River on his own
voyage of discovery. Hendrick Hudson's exploration of this river gave it
temporarily to the Dutch; but Irving annexed it for all time to the realm
of the romantic imagination. The singers and weavers of legends were more
than a thousand years in giving to the Rhine its high position in that
realm; but Irving in a little more than a decade made the Hudson almost its
peer.
[Illustration: IRVING AT THE AGE OF TWENTY TWO]
In such unique environment, Irving passed his boyhood. Unlike his brothers,
he did not go to Columbia College, but like Charles Brockden Brown studied
law, and like him never seriously practiced the profession. Under the pen
name of "Jonathan Oldstyle," he was writing, at the age of nineteen,
newspaper letters, modeled closely after Addison's _Spectator_. Ill health
drove Irving at twenty-one to take a European trip, which lasted two years.
His next appearance in literature after his return was in connection with
his brother, William Irving, and James K. Paulding. The three started a
semi-monthly periodical called _Salmagundi_, fashioned after Addison's
_Spectator_ and Goldsmith's _Citizen of the World_. The first number was
published January 24, 1807, and the twentieth and last, January 25, 1808.
"In Irving's contributions to it," says his biographer, "may be traced the
germs of nearly everything he did afterwards."
The year 1809 was the most important in Irving's young life. In that year
Matilda Hoffman, to whom he was engaged, died in her eighteenth year.
Although he outlived her fifty years, he remained a bachelor, and he
carried her _Bible_ with him wherever he traveled in Europe or America. In
the same year he finished one of his masterpieces, Diedrich Knickerbocker's
_History of New York_. Even at this time he had not decided to follow
literature as a profession.
In 1815 he went to England to visit his brother, who was in business there.
It was not, however, until the failure of his brother's firm in 1818 that
Irving determined to make literature his life work. While in London he
wrote the _Sketch Book_ (1819), which added to his fame on both sides of
the Atlantic. This visit abroad lasted seventeen years. Before he returned,
in 1832, he had finished the greater part of the literary work of his life.
Besides the _Sketch Book_, he had written _Bracebridge Hall_, _Tales of a
Traveller_, _Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus_, _The Conquest of
Granada_, _The Companions of Columbus_, and _The Alhambra_. He had been
secretary of the American legation at Madrid and at London. He had actually
lived in the Alhambra.
Soon after his return, he purchased a home at Tarrytown (now Irvington) in
the Sleepy Hollow district on the Hudson. He named his new home
"Sunnyside." With the exception of four years (1842-1846), when he served
as minister to Spain, Irving lived here, engaged in literary work, for the
remainder of his life. When he died in 1859, he was buried in the Sleepy
Hollow cemetery, near his home.
Long before his death he was known on both sides of the Atlantic as
America's greatest author. Englishmen who visited this country expressed a
desire to see its two wonders, Niagara Falls and Irving. His English
publishers alone paid him over $60,000 for copyright sales of his books in
England. Before he died, he had earned more than $200,000 with his pen.
Irving's personality won him friends wherever he went. He was genial and
kindly, and his biographer adds that it was never Irving's habit to stroke
the world the wrong way. One of his maxims was, "When I cannot get a dinner
to suit my taste, I endeavor to get a taste to suit my dinner."
[Illustration: SUNNYSIDE, IRVING'S HOME AT TARRYTOWN]
KNICKERBOCKER'S HISTORY OF NEW YORK.--The New York _Evening Post_ for
December 28, 1809, said: "This work was found in the chamber of Mr.
Diedrich Knickerbocker, the old gentleman whose sudden and mysterious
disappearance has been noticed. It is published in order to discharge
certain debts he has left behind." This disguise, however, was too thin to
deceive the public, and the work was soon popularly called Irving's
_Knickerbocker's History of New York_.
Two hundred years before its publication, Hendrick Hudson, an explorer in
the service of Holland, had sailed into New York Bay and discovered
Manhattan Island and the Hudson River for the Dutch. They founded the city
of New Amsterdam and held it until the English captured it in 1664. Irving
wrote the history of this settlement during the Dutch occupation. He was
led to choose this subject, because, as he tells us, few of his fellow
citizens were aware that New York had ever been called New Amsterdam, and
because the subject, "poetic from its very obscurity," was especially
available for an American author, since it gave him a chance to adorn it
with legend and fable. He states that his object was "to embody the
traditions of our city in an amusing form" and to invest it "with those
imaginative and whimsical associations so seldom met with in our country,
but which live like charms and spells about the cities of the old world."
[Illustration: THE OFFICIAL WEIGHT]
[Illustration: A ONE-PIPE JOURNEY]
Irving achieved his object and produced an entertaining compound of
historical fact, romantic sentiment, exaggeration, and humor. He shows us
the contemplative Dutchmen on their first voyage in the _Half Moon_,
sailing into New York Bay, prohibited by Hudson "from wearing more than
five jackets and six pair of breeches." We see the scrupulously "honest"
Dutch traders buying furs from the Indians, using an invariable scale of
avoirdupois weights, a Dutchman's hand in the scale opposite the furs
weighing one pound, his foot two pounds. We watch the puzzled Indians
trying to account for the fact that the largest bundle of furs never
weighed more than two pounds. We attend a council of burghers at
Communipaw, called to devise means to protect their town from an English
expedition. While they are thoughtfully smoking, the English sail by
without seeing the smoke-enveloped town. Irving shows us the Dutchmen
estimating their distances and time by the period consumed in smoking a
pipe,--Hartford, Connecticut, being two hundred pipes distant. He allows us
to watch a housewife emptying her pocket in her search for a wooden ladle
and filling two corn baskets with the contents. He takes us to a tea party
attended by "the higher classes or noblesse, that is to say such as kept
their own cows and drove their own wagons," where we can see the damsels
knitting their own woolen stockings and the vrouws serving big apple pies,
bushels of doughnuts, and pouring tea out of a fat Delft teapot. He draws
this picture of Wouter Van Twiller, Governor of New Amsterdam:--
"The person of this illustrious old gentleman was formed and proportioned
as though it had been moulded by the hands of some cunning Dutch
statuary, as a model of majesty and lordly grandeur. He was exactly five
feet six inches in height, and six feet five inches in circumference. His
head was a perfect sphere....
"His habits were as regular as his person. He daily took his four stated
meals, appropriating exactly an hour to each; he smoked and doubted eight
hours, and he slept the remaining twelve of the four-and-twenty."
[Illustration: WOUTER VAN TWILLER]
THE SKETCH BOOK GROUP.--The only one of his productions to which Irving
gave the name of _The Sketch Book_ was finished in 1820, the year in which
Scott's _Ivanhoe_, Keats's _Eve of St. Agnes_, and Shelley's _Prometheus
Unbound_ appeared. Of the same general order as _The Sketch Book_ are
Irving's _Bracebridge Hall_ (1822) and _Tales of a Traveller_ (1824). These
volumes all contain short stories, essays, or sketches, many of which are
suggestive of Addison's _Spectator_. _The Sketch Book_ is the most famous
of Irving's works of this class. While it contains some excellent essays or
descriptions, such as those entitled _Westminster Abbey_ and
_Stratford-on-Avon_, the book lives to-day because of two short stories,
_Rip Van Winkle_ and _The Legend of Sleepy Hollow_. These were not equaled
by Addison, and they have not been surpassed by any English writers of the
nineteenth century. Both stories take their rise from the "Knickerbocker
Legend," and they are thoroughly American in coloring and flavor, even if
they did happen to be written in England. No story in our literature is
better known than that of Rip Van Winkle watching Hendrick Hudson and his
ghostly crew playing ninepins in the Catskill Mountains and quaffing the
magic liquor which caused him to sleep for twenty years.
[Illustration: ICHABOD CRANE]
For nearly one hundred years Ichabod Crane's courtship of Katrina Van
Tassel, in _The Legend of Sleepy Hollow_, has continued to amuse its
readers. The Indian summer haze is still resting on Sleepy Hollow, our
American Utopia, where we can hear the quail whistling, see the brook
bubbling along among alders and dwarf willows, over which amber clouds
float forever in the sky; where the fragrant buckwheat fields breathe the
odor of the beehive; where the slapjacks are "well buttered and garnished
with honey or treacle, by the delicate little dimpled hand of Katrina Van
Tassel," where a greeting awaits us from the sucking pigs already roasted
and stuffed with pudding; where the very tea tables of the Dutch housewives
welcome us with loads of crisp crumbling crullers, honey cakes, and "the
whole family of cakes," surrounded by pies, preserves, roast chicken, bowls
of cream, all invested with a halo from the spout of the motherly Dutch
teapot.
_The Alhambra_, a book of tales of the old Moorish palace in Granada,
Spain, has been aptly termed "The Spanish Sketch Book." This has preserved
the romance of departed Moorish glory almost as effectively as the
Knickerbocker sketches and stories have invested the early Dutch settlers
of New York with something like Homeric immortality. A traveler in Spain
writes of _The Alhambra_: "Not Ford, nor Murray, nor Hare has been able to
replace it. The tourist reads it within the walls it commemorates as
conscientiously as the devout read Ruskin in Florence." [Footnote:
Introduction to Pennell's illustrated edition of _The Alhambra_.]
In his three works, _The Sketch Book_, _The Tales of a Traveller_, and _The
Alhambra_, Irving proved himself the first American master of the short
tale or sketch, yet he is not the father of the modern short story, which
aims to avoid every sentence unless it directly advances the narrative or
heightens the desired impression. His description and presentation of
incident do not usually tend to one definite goal, after the fashion
theoretically prescribed by the art of the modern short story. The author
of a modern short tale would need to feel the dire necessity of recording
the sage observation of a Dutch housewife, that "ducks and geese are
foolish things, and must be looked after, but girls can take care of
themselves." Irving, however, in _The Legend of Sleepy Hollow_, has
sufficient leisure to make this observation and to stop to listen to "the
pensive whistle of the quail," or to admire "great fields of Indian corn,
with its golden ears peeping from their leafy coverts, and holding out the
promise of cakes and hasty puddings."
Some have even proposed that his stories be called "narrative-essays," but
they show a step beyond Addison in the evolution of the short story because
they contain less essay and more story. It is true that Irving writes three
pages of essay before beginning the real story in _The Legend of Sleepy
Hollow_, but the most of this preliminary matter is very interesting
description. The quiet valley with its small brook, the tapping woodpecker,
the drowsy shade of the trees, the spots haunted by the headless
Hessian,--all fascinate us and provide an atmosphere which the modern
short-story teller too seldom secures. The novice in modern short-story
writing should know at the outset that it takes more genius to succeed with
a story like _The Legend of Sleepy Hollow_ than with a tale where the
writer relies on the more strait-laced narration of events to arouse
interest.
HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY.--Of _The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus_
(1828), Irving said "it cost me more toil and trouble than all my other
productions." While the method of scientific historical study has
completely changed since his time, no dry-as-dust historian has yet equaled
Irving in presenting the human side of Columbus, his ideals, his dreams,
and his mastery of wind and wave and human nature in the greatest voyage of
the ages. Others have written of him as a man who once lived but who died
so very long ago that he now has no more life than the portraits of those
old masters who made all their figures look like paralytics. Irving did not
write this work as if he were imagining a romance. He searched for his
facts in all the musty records which he could find in Spain, but he then
remembered that they dealt with a living, enthusiastic human being,
sometimes weak, and sometimes invested with more than the strength of all
the generations that had died without discovering the New World. It was
this work which, more than any other, brought Irving the degree of D.C.L.
from Oxford University. And yet, when he appeared to take his degree, the
undergraduates of Oxford voiced the judgment of posterity by welcoming him
with shouts of "Diedrich Knickerbocker!" "Ichabod Crane!" "Rip Van Winkle!"
_The Conquest of Granada_ (1829) is a thrilling narrative of the
subjugation by Ferdinand and Isabella of the last kingdom of the Moors in
Spain. In this account, royal leaders, chivalrous knights, single-handed
conflicts, and romantic assaults make warfare seem like a carnival instead
of a tragedy.
The life of _Oliver Goldsmith_ (1849) ranks among the best biographies yet
written by an American, not because of its originality, but for its
exquisitely sympathetic portraiture of an English author with whom Irving
felt close kinship.
His longest work, the _Life of George Washington_ (1855-1859), lacks the
imaginative enthusiasm of youth, but it does justice to "the magnificent
patience, the courage to bear misconstruction, the unfailing patriotism,
the practical sagacity, the level balance of judgment combined with the
wisest toleration, the dignity of mind, and the lofty moral nature," which
made George Washington the one man capable of leading a forlorn army in the
Revolution, of presiding over the destinies of the young Republic, and of
taking a sure place among the few great heroes of all time. This work is
also an almost complete history of the Revolutionary War. It is unfortunate
that the great length of this _Life_ (eight volumes) has resulted in such a
narrowing of its circle of readers.
GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS.--Washington Irving is the earliest American whose
most popular works are read for pure pleasure and not for some historical
or educational significance. His most striking qualities are humor and
restrained sentiment. The work by which he will be longest known is his
creation of the "Knickerbocker Legend" in the _History of New York_ and his
two most famous short stories, _Rip Van Winkle_ and _The Legend of Sleepy
Hollow_. Although he is not the father of the modern short story, which
travels like an airship by the shortest line to its destination, he is yet
one of the great nineteenth-century story tellers. Some of his essays or
papers, like _Westminster Abbey_, _Stratford-on-Avon_, and _Christmas_ do
not suffer by comparison with Addison's writings.
Much of Irving's historical work and many of his essays do not show great
depth or striking originality. He did some hack writing, dealing with our
great West, but the work by which he is best known is so original that no
other American writers can for a moment compare with him in his special
field. He gave us our own Homeric age and peopled it with Knickerbockers,
who are as entertaining as Achilles, Priam, or Circe.
[Illustration: IRVING'S GRAVE IN THE SLEEPY HOLLOW CEMETERY]
His best work is a product of the romantic imagination, but his romanticism
is of a finer type than that of Charles Brockden Brown and the English
Gothic school (p. 88), for Irving's fondness for Addison and Goldsmith, in
conjunction with his own keen sense of humor, taught him restraint,
balance, and the adaptation of means to ends.
Irving has an unusual power of investing his subjects with the proper
atmosphere. In this he resembles the greatest landscape painters. If he
writes of early settlers of New York, we are in a Dutch atmosphere. If he
tells the legends of the Alhambra, the atmosphere is Moorish. If he takes
us to the Hudson or the Catskills or Sleepy Hollow or Granada, he adds to
our artistic enjoyment by enveloping everything in its own peculiar
atmosphere.
His clear, simple, smooth prose conceals its artistic finish so well and
serves as the vehicle for so much humor, that readers often pass a long
time in his company without experiencing fatigue. His style has been
criticized for lack of vigor and for resemblance to Goldsmith's. Irving's
style, however, is his own, and it is the style natural to a man of his
placid, artistic temperament.
America takes special pride in Washington Irving, because he was the first
author to invest her brief history with the enduring fascination of
romance. We shall the better appreciate our debt to him, if we imagine that
some wizard has the power to subtract from our literature the inimitable
Knickerbocker, Rip Van Winkle, Sleepy Hollow, and our national romantic
river, the storied Hudson.
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER, 1789-1851
[Illustration: JAMES FENIMORE COOPER]
YOUTH.--Cooper's place in American literature is chiefly based on his
romantic stories of the pioneer and the Indian. We have seen how Captain
John Smith won the ear of the world by his early story of Indian adventure,
how Charles Brockden Brown in _Edgar Huntly_ deliberately selected the
Indian and the life of the wilderness as good material for an American
writer of romance. Cooper chose these very materials and used them with a
success attained by no other writer. Let us see how his early life fitted
him to write of the Indian, the pioneer, the forest, and the sea.
He was born in Burlington, New Jersey, in 1789, the year made memorable by
the French Revolution. While he was still an infant, the Cooper family
moved to the southeastern shore of Otsego Lake and founded the village of
Cooperstown, at the point where the Susquehanna River furnishes an outlet
for the lake. In this romantic place he passed the most impressionable part
of his boyhood.
At the close of the eighteenth century, Cooperstown was one of the outposts
of civilization. Few clearings had been made in the vast mysterious
forests, which appealed so deeply to the boy's imagination, and which still
sheltered deer, bear, and Indians. The most vivid local story which his
young ears heard was the account of the Cherry Valley massacre, which had
taken place a few miles from Cooperstown only eleven years before he was
born. Cooper himself felt the fascination of the trackless forests before
he communicated it to his readers.
He entered Yale in 1802, but he did not succeed in eradicating his love of
outdoor life and of the unfettered habits of the pioneer, and did not
remain to graduate. The faculty dismissed him in his junior year. It was
unfortunate that he did not study more and submit to the restraints and
discipline of regular college life; for his prose often shows in its
carelessness of construction and lack of restraint his need for that formal
discipline which was for the moment so grievous to him.
After Cooper had left college, his father decided to have him prepare for
the navy. As there was no naval academy, he adopted the usual course of
having the boy serve a year on a merchant vessel. After this
apprenticeship, Cooper entered the navy as a midshipman. From such
experiences he gained sufficient knowledge of the ocean and ships to enable
him to become the author of some of our best tales of the sea. He resigned
from the navy, however, in 1811, when he married.
BECOMES AN AUTHOR.--Cooper had reached the age of thirty without even
attempting to write a book. In 1820 he remarked one day to his wife that he
thought he could write a better novel than the one which he was then
reading to her. She immediately challenged him to try, and he promptly
wrote the novel called _Precaution_. He chose to have this deal with
English life because the critics of his time considered American subjects
commonplace and uninteresting. As he knew nothing of English life at first
hand, he naturally could not make the pages of _Precaution_ vivid with
touches of local color.
This book was soon forgotten, and Cooper might never have written another,
had not some sensible friends insisted that it was his patriotic duty to
make American subjects fashionable. A friend related to him the story of a
spy of Westchester County, New York, who during the Revolution served the
American cause with rare fidelity and sagacity. Cooper was then living in
this very county, and, being attracted by the subject, he soon completed
the first volume of _The Spy_, which was at once printed. As he still
doubted, however, whether his countrymen would read "a book that treated of
their own familiar interests," he delayed writing the second volume for
several months. When he did start to write it, his publisher feared that it
might be too long to pay, so before Cooper had thought out the intervening
chapters, he wrote the last chapter and had it printed and paged to satisfy
the publisher. When _The Spy_ was published in 1821, it immediately sold
well in America, although such was the bondage to English standards of
criticism that many who read the book hesitated to express an opinion until
they had heard the verdict from England. When the English received the
book, however, they fairly devoured it, and it became one of the most
widely read tales of the early nineteenth century. Harvey Birch, the hero
of the story, is one of the great characters of our early fiction.
[Illustration: OTSEGO HALL, COOPERSTOWN]
Cooper now adopted writing as a profession. In less than thirty years, he
wrote more than thirty romances, in most cases of two volumes each. When he
went to Europe in 1826, the year of the publication of _The Last of the
Mohicans_, he found that his work was as well known abroad as at home. Sir
Walter Scott, who met Cooper in Paris, mentions in his diary for November
6, 1826, a reception by a French princess, and adds the note, "Cooper was
there, so the American and Scotch lions took the field together."
LATER YEARS.--After Cooper's return from Europe in 1833, he spent the most
of the remaining seventeen years of his life in writing books at his early
home, known as Otsego Hall, in Cooperstown. Here in the summer of 1837
there occurred an unfortunate incident which embittered the rest of his
life and for a while made him the most unpopular of American authors. Some
of his townspeople cut down one of his valuable trees and otherwise misused
the picnic grounds on a part of his estate fronting the lake. When he
remonstrated, the public denounced him and ordered his books removed from
the local library. He then forbade the further use of his grounds by the
public. Many of the newspapers throughout the state misrepresented his
action, and he foolishly sued them for libel. From that time the press
persecuted him. He sued the Albany _Evening Journal_, edited by Thurlow
Weed, and received four hundred dollars damage. Weed thereupon wrote in the
New York _Tribune_:--
"The value of Mr. Cooper's character has been judicially determined. It
is worth exactly four hundred dollars."
Cooper promptly sued _The Tribune_, and was awarded two hundred dollars. In
the heat of this controversy Thurlow Weed incautiously opened Cooper's _The
Pathfinder_, which had just appeared, and sat up all night to finish the
book. During the progress of these suits, Cooper unfortunately wrote a
novel, _Home as Found_, satirizing, from a somewhat European point of view,
the faults of his countrymen. A friend, trying to dissuade him from
publishing such matter, wrote, "You lose hold on the American public by
rubbing down their shins with brickbats, as you do." Cooper, however,
published the book in 1838, and then there was a general rush to attack
him. A critic of his _History of the Navy of the United States of America_
(1839), a work which is still an authority for the time of which it treats,
abused the book and made reflections on Cooper's veracity. The author
brought suit for libel, and won his case in a famous trial in which he was
his own lawyer. These unfortunate incidents, which would have been avoided
by a man like Benjamin Franklin, diminished the circulation of Cooper's
books in America during the rest of his life.
[Illustration: STATUE OF LEATHERSTOCKING OVERLOOKING OTSEGO LAKE]
Even on his deathbed he thought of the unjust criticism from which he had
suffered, and asked his family not to aid in the preparation of any account
of his life. He died in 1851 at the age of sixty-two, and was buried at
Cooperstown. Lounsbury thus concludes an excellent biography of this great
writer of romance:--
"America has had among her representatives of the irritable race of
writers many who have shown far more ability to get on pleasantly with
their fellows than Cooper.... But she counts on the scanty roll of her
men of letters the name of no one who acted from purer patriotism or
loftier principle. She finds among them all no manlier nature and no more
heroic soul."
GREATEST ROMANCES.--Cooper's greatest achievement is the series known as
_The Leatherstocking Tales_. These all have as their hero Leatherstocking,
a pioneer variously known as Hawkeye, _La Longue Carabine_ (The Long
Rifle), and Natty Bumppo. A statue of this great original creation of
American fiction now overlooks Otsego Lake. Leatherstocking embodies the
fearlessness, the energy, the rugged honesty, of the worthiest of our
pioneers, of those men who opened up our vast inland country and gave it to
us to enjoy. Ulysses is no more typically Grecian than Leatherstocking is
American.
_The Leatherstocking Tales_ are five in number. The order in which they
should be read to follow the hero from youth to old age is as follows:--
[Footnote: The figures in parenthesis refer to the date of publication.]
_The Deerslayer; or The First War Path_ (1841).
_The Last of the Mohicans; a Narrative of 1757_ (1826).
_The Pathfinder; or the Inland Sea_ (1840).
_The Pioneers; or the Sources of the Susquehanna_ (1823).
_The Prairie; a Tale_ (1827)
[Illustration: LEATHERSTOCKING]
This sequence may be easily remembered from the fact that the first chief
words in the titles, "Deerslayer," "Mohicans," "Pathfinder," "Pioneers,"
and "Prairie," are arranged in alphabetical order. These books are the
prose _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ of the eighteenth-century American pioneer.
Instead of relating the fall of Ilium, Cooper tells of the conquest of the
wilderness. The wanderings or Leatherstocking in the forest and the
wilderness are substituted for those of Ulysses on the sea. This story
could not have been related with much of the vividness of an eye-witness of
the events, if it had been postponed beyond Cooper's day. Before that time
had forever passed, he fixed in living romance one remarkable phase of our
country's development. The persons of this romantic drama were the Pioneer
and the Indian; the stage was the trackless forest and the unbroken
wilderness.
[Illustration: COOPER AT THE AGE OF FORTY FIVE]
_The Last of the Mohicans_ has been the favorite of the greatest number of
readers. In this story Chingachgook, the Indian, and Uncas, his son, share
with Hawkeye our warmest admiration. The American boy longs to enter the
fray to aid Uncas. Cooper knew that the Indian had good traits, and he
embodied them in these two red men. Scott took the same liberty of
presenting the finer aspects of chivalry and neglecting its darker side.
Cooper, however, does show an Indian fiend in Magua.
Cooper's work in this series brings us face to face with the activities of
nature and man in God's great out of doors. Cooper makes us realize that
the life of the pioneer was not without its elemental spirit of poetry. We
may feel something of this spirit in the reply of Leatherstocking to the
trembling Cora, when she asked him at midnight what caused a certain
fearful sound:--
"'Lady,' returned the scout, solemnly, 'I have listened to all the sounds
of the woods for thirty years, as a man will listen, whose life and death
depend so often on the quickness of his ears. There is no whine of the
panther, no whistle of the catbird, nor any invention of the devilish
Mingos, that can cheat me. I have heard the forest moan like mortal men
in their affliction; often and again have I listened to the wind playing
its music in the branches of the girdled trees; and I have heard the
lightning cracking in the air, like the snapping of blazing brush, as it
spitted forth sparks and forked flames; but never have I thought that I
heard more than the pleasure of him, who sported with the things of his
hand. But neither the Mohicans, nor I, who am a white man without a
cross, can explain the cry just heard.'"
In addition to the five _Leatherstocking Tales_, three other romances show
special power. They are:--
_The Spy; a Tale of the Neutral Ground_ (1821).
_The Pilot; a Tale of the Sea_ (1824).
_The Red Rover; a Tale_ (1828).
The last two show Cooper's mastery in telling stories of the sea. Tom
Coffin, in _The Pilot_, is a fine creation.
Some of the more than thirty works of fiction that Cooper wrote are almost
unreadable, and some appeal more to special students than to general
readers. _Satanstoe_ (1845), for instance, gives vivid pictures of
mid-eighteenth century colonial life in New York.
The English critic's query, "Who reads an American book?" could have
received the answer in 1820, "The English public is reading Irving." In
1833, Morse, the inventor of the electric telegraph, had another answer
ready--"Europe is reading Cooper." He said that as soon as Cooper's works
were finished they were published in thirty-four different places in
Europe. American literature was commanding attention for its original work.
GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS.--Cooper's best romances are masterpieces of action
and adventure in the forest and on the sea. No other writer has so well
told the story of the pioneer. He is not a successful novelist of the
drawing-room. His women are mediocre and conventional, of the type
described in the old Sunday school books. But when he leaves the haunts of
men and enters the forest, power comes naturally to his pen. His greatest
stage of action is the forest. He loved wild nature and the sea.
He often availed himself of the Gothic license of improbability, his
characters being frequently rescued from well-nigh impossible situations.
His plots were not carefully planned in advance; they often seem to have
been suggested by an inspiration of the moment. He wrote so rapidly that he
was careless about the construction of his sentences, which are sometimes
not even grammatical.
It is easy, however, to exaggerate Cooper's faults, which do not, after
all, seriously interfere with the enjoyment of his works. A teacher, who
was asked to edit critically _The Last of the Mohicans_, said that the
first time he read it, the narrative carried him forward with such a rush,
and bound him with such a spell, that he did not notice a single blemish in
plot or style. A boy reading the same book obeyed the order to retire at
eleven, but having reached the point where Uncas was taken prisoner by the
Hurons, found the suspense too great, and quietly got the book and read the
next four chapters in bed. Cooper has in a pre-eminent degree the first
absolutely necessary qualification of the writer of fiction--the power to
hold the interest. In some respects he resembles Scott, but although the
"Wizard of the North" has a far wider range of excellence, Leatherstocking
surpasses any single one of Scott's creations and remains a great original
character added to the literature of the world. These romances have strong
ethical influence over the young. They are as pure as mountain air, and
they teach a love for manly, noble, and brave deeds. "He fought for a
principle," says Cooper's biographer, "as desperately as other men fight
for life."
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT, 1794-1878
[Illustration: WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT]
LIFE.-The early environment of each of the three great members of the New
York group determined to an unusual degree the special literary work for
which each became famous. Had Irving not been steeped in the legends of the
early Dutch settlers of Manhattan, hunted squirrels in Sleepy Hollow, and
voyaged up the Hudson past the Catskills, he would have had small chance of
becoming famous as the author of the "Knickerbocker Legend." Had Cooper not
spent his boyhood on the frontier, living in close touch with the forest
and the pioneer, we should probably not have had _The Leatherstocking
Tales_. Had it not been for Bryant's early Puritan training and his
association with a peculiar type of nature, he might have ended his days as
a lawyer.
Bryant was born in Cummington, among the hills of western Massachusetts. In
her diary, his mother thus records his birth:--
"Nov. 3, 1794. Stormy, wind N. E. Churned. Seven in the evening a son
born."
His poetry will be better understood, if we emphasize two main facts in his
early development. In the first place, he was descended from John and
Priscilla Alden of Mayflower stock and reared in strict Puritan fashion.
Bryant's religious training determined the general attitude of all his
poetry toward nature. His parents expected their children to know the
_Bible_ in a way that can scarcely be comprehended in the twentieth
century. Before completing his fourth year, his older brother "had read the
_Scriptures_ through from beginning to end." At the age of nine, the future
poet turned the first chapter of _Job_ into classical couplets,
beginning:--
"Job, good and just, in Uz had sojourned long,
He feared his God and shunned the way of wrong.
Three were his daughters and his sons were seven,
And large the wealth bestowed on him by heaven."
Another striking fact is that the prayers which he heard from the Puritan
clergy and from his father and grandfather in family worship gave him a
turn toward noble poetic expression. He said that these prayers were often
"poems from beginning to end," and he cited such expressions from them as,
"Let not our feet stumble on the dark mountains of eternal death." From the
Puritan point of view, the boy made in his own prayers one daring variation
from the petitions based on scriptural sanction. He prayed that he "might
receive the gift of poetic genius, and write verses that might endure." His
early religious training was responsible for investing his poetry with the
dignity, gravity, and simplicity of the Hebraic _Scriptures_.
[Illustration: BRYANT AS A YOUNG MAN]
In the second place, he passed his youth in the fine scenery of western
Massachusetts, which is in considerable measure the counterpart of the Lake
Country which bred Wordsworth. The glory of this region reappears in his
verse; the rock-ribbed hills, the vales stretching in pensive quietness
between them, the venerable woods of ash, beech, birch, hemlock, and maple,
the complaining brooks that make the valleys green, the rare May days:--
"When beechen buds begin to swell,
And woods the blue bird's warble know."
[Footnote: Bryant: _The Yellow Violet_.]
His association with such scenes determined the subject matter of his
poetry, and his Puritan training prescribed the form of treatment.
He had few educational advantages,--a little district schooling, some
private tutoring by a clergyman, seven month's stay in Williams College,
which at the time of his entrance in 1810 had a teaching staff of one
professor and two tutors, besides the president. Bryant left Williams,
intending to enter Yale; but his father, a poor country physician who had
to ride vast distances for small fees, was unable to give him any further
college training.
Bryant, at about the age of eighteen, soon after leaving Williams, wrote
_Thanatopsis_,--with the exception of the opening and the closing parts. He
had already written at the age of thirteen a satiric poem, _The Embargo_,
which had secured wide circulation in New England. Keenly disappointed at
not being able to continue his college education, he regretfully began the
study of law in order to earn his living as soon as possible. He celebrated
his admission to the bar by writing one of his greatest short poems, _To a
Waterfowl_ (1815). When he was a lawyer practicing in Great Barrington,
Massachusetts, he met Miss Fanny Fairchild, to whom he addressed the
poem,--
"O fairest of the rural maids!"
[Illustration: FACSIMILE OF RECORD OF BRYANT'S MARRIAGE]
Religious in all things, he prepared this betrothal prayer, which they
repeated together before they were married in the following year--
"May Almighty God mercifully take care of our happiness here and
hereafter. May we ever continue constant to each other, and mindful of
our mutual promises of attachment and truth. In due time, if it be the
will of Providence, may we become more nearly connected with each other,
and together may we lead a long, happy, and innocent life, without any
diminution of affection till we die."
In 1821, the year in which Cooper published _The Spy_ and Shelley wrote his
_Adonais_ lamenting the death of Keats, Bryant issued the first volume of
his verse, which contained eight poems, _Thanatopsis_, _The Inscription for
Entrance to a Wood_, _To a Waterfowl_, _The Ages_, _The Fragment from
Simonides_, _The Yellow Violet_, _The Song_, and _Green River_. This was an
epoch-making volume for American poetry. Freneau's best lyrics were so few
that they had attracted little attention, but Bryant's 1821 volume of verse
furnished a new standard of excellence, below which poets who aspired to
the first rank could not fall. During the five years after its publication,
the sales of this volume netted him a profit of only $14.92, but a Boston
editor soon offered him two hundred dollars a year for an average of one
hundred lines of verse a month. Bryant accepted the offer, and wrote poetry
in connection with the practice of law.
Unlike Irving and Charles Brockden Brown, Bryant attended to his legal work
doggedly and conscientiously for nine years, but he never liked the law,
and he longed to be a professional author. In 1825 he abandoned the law and
went to New York City. Here he managed to secure a livelihood for awhile on
the editorial force of short-lived periodicals. In 1827, however, he became
assistant editor, and in 1829 editor-in-chief, of _The New York Evening
Post_--a position which he held for nearly fifty years, until his death.
The rest of his life is more political and journalistic than literary. He
made _The Evening Post_ a power in the development of the nation, but his
work as editor interfered with his poetry, although he occasionally wrote
verse to the end of his life.
In middle life he began a series of trips abroad, and wrote many letters
describing his travels. To occupy his attention after his wife died in
1866, he translated Homer's _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_, at the nearly uniform
rate of forty lines a day. This work still remains one of the standard
poetic translations of Homer.
[Illustration: BRYANT'S HOME, ROSLYN, L.I.]
As the years passed, he became New York's representative citizen, noted for
high ideals in journalism and for incorruptible integrity, as well as for
the excellence of his poetry. He died in 1878, at the age of eighty four,
and was buried at Roslyn, Long Island, beside his wife.
POETRY.--_Thanatopsis_, probably written in 1811, was first published in
1817 in _The North American Review_, a Boston periodical. One of the
editors said to an associate, "You have been imposed upon. No one on this
side of the Atlantic is capable of writing such verses." The associate
insisted that Dr. Bryant, the author, had left them at the office, and that
the Doctor was at that moment sitting in the State Senate, representing his
county. The editor at once dashed away to the State House, took a long look
at the Doctor, and reported, "It is a good head, but I do not see
_Thanatopsis_ in it." When the father was aware of the misunderstanding, he
corrected it, but there were for a long time doubts whether a boy could
have written a poem of this rank. In middle age the poet wrote the
following to answer a question in regard to the time of the composition of
_Thanatopsis_:--
"It was written when I was seventeen or eighteen years old--I have not
now at hand the memorandums which would enable me to be precise--and I
believe it was composed in my solitary rambles in the woods. As it was
first committed to paper, it began with the half line--'Yet a few days,
and thee'--and ended with the beginning of another line with the
words--'And make their bed with thee.' The rest of the poem--the
introduction and the close--was added some years afterward, in 1821."
_Thanatopsis_ remains to-day Bryant's most famous production. It is a
stately poem upon death, and seems to come directly from the lips of
Nature:--
"... from all around--
Earth and her waters and the depth of air--
Comes a still voice.--
Yet a few days, and thee
The all-beholding sun shall see no more ..."
No other poem presents "all-including death" on a scale of such vastness.
The majestic solemnity of the poem and the fine quality of its blank verse
may be felt in this selection:--
"... The hills
Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun,--the vales
Stretching in pensive quietness between;
The venerable woods--rivers that move
In majesty, and the complaining brooks
That make the meadows green; and, poured round all,
Old Ocean's gray and melancholy waste,--
Are but the solemn decorations all
Of the great tomb of man."
_Thanatopsis_ shows the old Puritan tendency to brood on death, but the
_Inscription for Entrance to a Wood_, written in 1815 and published in the
same number of _The North American Review_ as his first great poem, takes
us where
"... the thick roof
Of green and stirring branches is alive
And musical with birds."
The gladness of the soft winds, the blue sky, the rivulet, the mossy rocks,
the cleft-born wild-flower, the squirrels, and the insects,--all focus our
attention on the "deep content" to be found in "the haunts of Nature," and
suggest Wordsworth's philosophy of the conscious enjoyment of the flower,
the grass, the mountains, the bird, and the stream, voicing their "thousand
blended notes."
We may say of Bryant what was true of Cooper, that when he enters a forest,
power seems to come unbidden to his pen. Bryant's _Forest Hymn_ (1825)
finds God in those green temples:--
"Thou art in the soft winds
That run along the summit of these trees
In music."
He points out the divinity that shapes our ends in:--
"That delicate forest flower,
With scented breath and look so like a smile."
No Puritan up to this time had represented God in a guise more pleasing
than the smile of a forest flower. This entire _Hymn_ seems like a great
prayer rooted deep in those earlier prayers to which the boy used to
listen.
Although Bryant lived to be eighty-four, he wrote less poetry than Keats,
who died at the age of twenty-five, and about one third as much as Shelley,
who was scarcely thirty when he was drowned. It is not length of days that
makes a poet. Had Bryant died in his thirtieth year, his excellence and
limitations would be fairly well shown in his work finished at that time.
At this age, in addition to the five poems in his 1821 volume (p. 139), he
had written _The Winter Piece_, _A Forest Hymn_, and _The Death of the
Flowers_. These and a number of other poems, written before he had finished
his thirtieth year, would have entitled him to approximately the same rank
that he now holds in the history of American poetry. It is true that if he
had then passed away, we should have missed his exquisite call to _The
Evening Wind_ (1829), and some of his other fine productions, such as _To
the Fringed Gentian_ (1829), _The Prairies_ (1832), _The Battle-Field_
(1837), with its lines which are a keynote to Bryant's thought and
action:--
"Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again,
Th' eternal years of God are hers."
We are thankful for the ideals voiced in _The Poet_ (1863), and we listen
respectfully to _The Flood of Years_ (1876), as the final utterance of a
poet who has had the experience of fourscore years.
GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS.--Bryant is the first great American poet. His
poetry is chiefly reflective and descriptive, and it is remarkable for its
elevation, simplicity, and moral earnestness. He lacks dramatic power and
skill in narration. Calmness and restraint, the lack of emotional
intensity, are also evident in his greatest work. His depths of space are
vast, but windless. In _The Poet_ he says that verse should embody:--
"... feelings of calm power and mighty sweep,
Like currents journeying through the windless deep."
His chosen field is describing and interpreting nature. He has been called
an American Wordsworth. In the following lines Bryant gives poetic
expression to his feeling that a certain maiden's heart and face reflected
the beauty of the natural scenes amid which she was reared:--
"... all the beauty of the place
Is in thy heart and on thy face.
The twilight of the trees and rocks
Is in the light shade of thy locks."
[Footnote: "O Fairest of the Rural Maids." (1820.)]
With these lines compare Wordsworth's _Three Years She Grew in Sun and
Shower_ (1799):--
"... she shall lean her ear
In many a secret place
Where rivulets dance their wayward round,
And beauty born of murmuring sound
Shall pass into her face."
Bryant himself says that under the influence of Wordsworth, nature suddenly
changed "into a strange freshness and life." It is no discredit to him to
have been Wordsworth's pupil or to have failed to equal the magic of
England's greatest poet of nature.
Bryant's range was narrow for a great poet, and his later verse usually
repeated his earlier successes. As a rule, he presented the sky, forest,
flower, stream, animal, and the composite landscape, only as they served to
illumine the eternal verities, and the one verity toward which nature most
frequently pointed was death. His heart, unlike Wordsworth's, did not dance
with the daffodils waving in the breeze, for the mere pleasure of the
dancing.
The blank verse of his _Thanatopsis_ has not been surpassed since Milton.
In everything that he did, Bryant was a careful workman. Painters have
noticed his skill in the use of his poetic canvas and his power to suggest
subjects to them, such as:--
"... croft and garden and orchard,
That bask in the mellow light."
Three vistas from _To a Waterfowl_,--"the plashy brink of weedy lake,"
"marge of river wide," and "the chafed ocean side,"--long ago furnished the
suggestion for three paintings.
Bryant's Puritan ancestry and training laid a heavy hand upon him. Thoughts
of "the last bitter hour" are constantly recurring in his verse. The third
line of even his poem _June_ brings us to the grave. His great poems are
often like a prayer accompanied by the subdued tones of a mighty organ.
Nothing foul or ignoble can be found in his verse. He has the lofty ideals
of the Puritans.
ENGLISH LITERATURE OF THE PERIOD
As we saw in the preceding chapter, WORDSWORTH and COLERIDGE at the close
of the last century began to exert a new influence on literature.
Wordsworth's new philosophy of nature (p. 99) can be traced in the work of
Bryant. The other poets of this age belong to the romantic school. BYRON
(1788-1824), the poet of revolt against the former world, shows the same
influences that manifest themselves in the American and the French
Revolution. He voices the complaints, and, to some extent, the aspirations
of Europe. He shows his influence in Fitz-Greene Halleck's _Marco
Bozzaris_. Shelley, who also belongs to the school of revolt, has a
peculiar position as a poet of ethereal, evanescent, and spirit-like
beauty. He is heard in the voice of the West Wind, the Cloud, the unseen
Skylark, the "Spirit of Night," and "the white radiance of Eternity."
Bryant's call in _The Evening Wind_ (1829) to
"... rouse
The wide old wood from his majestic rest,
Summoning from the innumerable boughs
The strange, deep harmonies that haunt his breast,"
may even have been suggested by Shelley's _Ode to the West Wind_ (1819)
"Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own?
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
Will take from both a deep autumnal tone."
In the early part of this period, Wordsworth and Shelley were both making
these harmonies of nature audible to ears which had hitherto not heard
them. KEATS (1795-1821) is the poet of beauty, and he makes more of an
appeal to the senses than Shelley. The favorite creed of Keats was:--
"A thing of beauty is a joy forever."
His influence will gradually extend to later American verse.
SIR WALTER SCOTT was the great prose writer of the age preceding the
Victorian. The first of his series of _Waverley_ novels was published in
1814, and he continued until his death in 1832 to delight the world with
his genius as a writer of romances. His influence may be traced in Cooper's
work, although the American author occupies an original field. Readers are
still charmed with the exquisite flavor and humor in the essays of CHARLES
LAMB (1775-1834). The essays of DE QUINCEY (1785-1859) are remarkable for
precision, stateliness, and harmony.
LEADING HISTORICAL FACTS, 1809-1849.
During these forty years, the facts most important for the student of
literature are connected with the expansion and social ideals of the
country. Progress was specially manifest in two ways: in "the manufacture
of farms" and in the introduction and use of steam. At the time of the
inauguration of Washington in 1789, the center of population of the entire
country was thirty miles east of Baltimore. The progress of settlements
westward, which had already begun in the last period, became in an
increasing degree one of the remarkable events in the history of the world.
We may observe that the second war with England (1812) resulted in welding
the Union more closely together and in giving it more prestige abroad. We
should next note the unparalleled material development of the country; the
opening of the Erie Canal in 1825, the rapid extension of steamboats on
rivers, the trial of the first steam locomotive in 1828, the increased
westward movement of population, which reached California in 1849, several
hundred years ahead of schedule time, as those thought who prophesied
before the introduction of steam. The story of the material progress of the
country sounds like a new _Arabian Nights' Tale_.
The administration of Andrew Jackson (1829-1837) is really the beginning of
the modern history of the United States. The change during these years was
due more to steam than to any other single cause. At the beginning of his
administration, there were no steam railroads, but fifteen hundred miles
were in operation before the end of his second term. His predecessor in the
presidential chair was John Quincy Adams, a Harvard graduate and an
aristocrat. Jackson was illiterate, a man of the people. There was an
extension of the social democratic feeling.
All classes, the poor as well as the rich, spoke their minds more freely on
every subject. Even Jackson's messages relating to foreign nations were
sometimes not couched in very diplomatic terms. Every one felt that he was
as good as anybody else, and in the new settlements all mingled on terms of
equality. When Cooper came back to the United States in 1833, after an
absence of six years in Europe, he found that he had returned to a new
country, where "everybody was everywhere," and nobody was anywhere, and
where the chase for the dollar seemed to have grown more absorbing than
ever before.
Slavery had become one of the leading questions of the day. To keep the
balance between the North and the South, states were often admitted in
pairs, one free and one slave state. In 1845 there were in the Union
thirteen free and fourteen slave states. The decade between 1840 and 1850
witnessed the war with Mexico and the acquisition from her of our vast
southwestern territory,--Texas, California, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, New
Mexico, and some interior lands to the north of these. The South was
chiefly instrumental in bringing about this extension of our boundaries,
hoping that this additional territory would be open for the employment of
slaves and would tend to make more nearly even the influence of each
section in the national government.
SUMMARY
With the publication of Irving's _Knickerbocker's History of New York_ in
1809, the literary center of the United States shifted to New York, then
the second city in the country. Drake and Halleck, two minor poets, calling
themselves "The Croakers," issued a series of poems with the principal
object of entertaining readers. Drake wrote a fine romantic poem called
_The Culprit Fay_. Halleck's best works are the poems on the death of Drake
and _Marco Bozzaris_.
Washington Irving's chief fame is based on his original creation of the
"Knickerbocker Legend" in his _History of New York_, _Rip Van Winkle_, and
_The Legend of Sleepy Hollow_. He is an unusually successful writer of
short stories, of essays like those in Addison's _Spectator_, and of
popular history and biography. He is the first American writer whose works
are still read for pure pleasure. Humor and restrained sentiment are two of
his pronounced qualities. While the subject matter of his best work is
romantic, in his treatment of that matter he shows the restraint of the
classical school. His style is simple and easy-flowing but not remarkable
for vigor.
James Fenimore Cooper's _Leatherstocking Tales_ recreate in a romantic way
the life of the pioneer in the forest and the wilderness. The Indian
figures more largely in these Tales than in those of any preceding writer.
Leatherstocking deserves a place in the world's temple of fame as a great
original character in fiction. Cooper is also our greatest writer of
stories of the sea. _The Pilot_ and _The Red Rover_ still fascinate readers
with the magic of the ocean. The scenes of all of his best stories are laid
out of doors. His style is often careless, and he sometimes does not take
the trouble to correct positive errors, but his power of arousing interest
is so great that these are seldom noticed. His romances are pure, and they
inspire a love for what is noble and manly. Irving was almost as popular in
England as in the United States, but Cooper was the first American author
to be read widely throughout Europe.
William Cullen Bryant is the first great American poet. He belongs to
Wordsworth's school of nature poets. Bryant's verse, chiefly reflective and
descriptive, is characterized by elevation, simplicity, and moral
earnestness. His range is narrow. His communion with nature often leads him
to the grave, but no other American poet invests it with as much majesty as
is found in _Thanatopsis_. His strict Puritan training causes him to
present the eternal verities in his poetry. Unlike Irving, Cooper, and the
minor writers, his object is not entertainment.
The influence of steam, the more rapid emigration westward, the increase of
the democratic spirit, and the beginning of the modern era with its
strenuous materialistic trend in the administration of Andrew Jackson
marked a great change in the development of the nation. The taking of our
vast southwest territory from Mexico was an event second only in importance
to the Louisiana Purchase.
REFERENCES FOR FURTHER STUDY
HISTORICAL
In addition to the American and English histories suggested on pp. 60, 61,
the following may be consulted: Burgess's _The Middle Period_, 1817-1858;
Coman's _The Industrial History of the United States_, Chaps. VI. and VII.;
Bogart's _Economic History of the United States_, Chap. XIV; Sparks's _The
Expansion of the American People_.
LITERARY
Richardson's _American Literature_.
Trent's _A History of American Literature_.
Wendell's _History of Literature in America_.
Stanton's _A Manual of American Literature_.
Herford's _The Age of Wordsworth_.
Stedman's _Poets of America_. (Drake, Halleck, Bryant.)
_The Croakers_, pp. 255-385, in _The Poetical Writings of Fitz-Greene
Halleck_, edited by James Grant Wilson.
Wilson's _Fitz-Greene Halleck's Life and Letters_.
Irving's, Pierre M.: _Life and Letters of Washington Irving_, 4 vols.
Warner's _The Work of Washington Irving_ (60 pages, excellent).
Warner's _Washington Irving_ (304 pages, _American Men of Letters_).
Payne's _Leading American Essayists_, pp. 43-134. (Irving.)
Canby's _The Short Story in English_, pp. 218-226. (Irving.)
Lounsbury's _James Fenimore Cooper_. (_American Men of Letters_;
excellent.)
Clymer's _James Fenimore Cooper_. (_Beacon Biographies_.)