qualities of patience, resignation, and hopefulness. Repetition makes the
majority of things seem commonplace, but even repetition has not robbed
lines like these of their power:--
"Be still, sad heart! and cease repining,
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all;
Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary."
Nine days before he died, he wrote his last lines with the same simplicity
and hopefulness of former days:--
"Out of the shadows of night
The world rolls into light.
It is daybreak everywhere."
As we examine these typical poems, we shall find that all of them appeal to
our common experiences or aspirations, and that all are expressed in that
simple language which no one need read twice to understand.
BALLADS.--Longfellow knew how to tell a story which preserved the
simplicity and the vigor of the old ballad makers. His _The Wreck of the
Hesperus_ (1839) starts in the true fashion to make us wish to finish the
tale:--
"It was the schooner Hesperus,
That sailed the wintry sea;
And the skipper had taken his little daughter
To bear him company."
Longfellow says that he wrote this ballad between twelve and three in the
morning and that the composition did not come to him by lines, but by
stanzas.
Even more vigorous is his ballad of _The Skeleton in Armor_ (1840). The
Viking hero of the tale, like young Lochinvar, won the heart of the
heroine, the blue-eyed daughter of a Norwegian prince.
"When of old Hildebrand
I asked his daughter's hand,
Mute did the minstrels stand
To hear my story."
The Viking's suit was denied. He put the maiden on his vessel before he was
detected and pursued by her father. Those who think that the gentle
Longfellow could not write poetry as energetic as Scott's _Lochinvar_
should read the following stanza:--
"As with his wings aslant,
Sails the fierce cormorant,
Seeking some rocky haunt,
With his prey laden,--
So toward the open main,
Beating to sea again,
Through the wild hurricane,
Bore I the maiden."
Those who are fond of this kind of poetry should turn to Longfellow's
_Tales of a Wayside Inn_ (1863), where they will find such favorites as
_Paul Revere's Ride_ and _The Birds of Killingworth_.
LONGER POEMS.--No other American poet has equaled Longfellow's longer
narrative poems. Bryant and Poe would not attempt long poems. The flights
of Whittier and Emerson were comparatively short. It is unusually difficult
to write long poems that will be read. In the case of _Evangeline_ (1847),
_Hiawatha_ (1855), and _The Courtship of Miles Standish_ (1858), Longfellow
proved an exception to the rule.
_Evangeline_ is based upon an incident that occurred during the French and
Indian War. In 1755 a force of British and colonial troops sailed from
Boston to Acadia (Nova Scotia) and deported the French inhabitants.
Hawthorne heard the story, how the English put Evangeline and her lover on
different ships and how she began her long, sad search for him. When
Hawthorne and Longfellow were discussing this one day at dinner at the
Craigie House, the poet said, "If you really do not want this incident for
a tale, let me have it for a poem." Hawthorne consented to give his
classmate all poetical rights to the story.
_Evangeline_ is the tale of a love "that hopes and endures and is patient."
The metrical form, dactylic hexameter, is one that few of our poets have
successfully used, and many have thought it wholly unfitted to English
verse. Longfellow has certainly disproved their theory, for his success
with this meter is pronounced. The long, flowing lines seem to be exactly
adapted to give the scenes the proper atmosphere and to narrate the
heroine's weary search. The poem became immediately popular. It was the
first successful long narrative poem to appear in the United States.
Whittier had studied the same subject, but had delayed making verses on it
until he found that it had been suggested to Longfellow. In a complimentary
review of the poem, Whittier said, "Longfellow was just the one to write
it. If I had attempted it, I should have spoiled the artistic effect of the
poem by my indignation at the treatment of the exiles by the colonial
government."
From the moment that Evangeline appears, our interest does not lag.
"Fair was she to behold, that maiden of seventeen summers.
* * * * *
When she had passed, it seemed like the ceasing of exquisite music."
[Illustration: LONGFELLOW'S STUDY]
The imagery of the poem is pleasing, no matter whether we are listening to
"the murmuring pines and the hemlocks," the softly sounding Angelus, the
gossiping looms, the whir of wings in the drowsy air, or seeing the barns
bursting with hay, the air filled with a dreamy and mystical light, the
forest arrayed in its robes of russet and scarlet and yellow, and the
stars, those "forget-me-nots of the angels," blossoming "in the infinite
meadows of heaven."
[Illustration: HIAWATHA]
_The Song of Hiawatha_ was begun by Longfellow in 1854, after resigning the
professorship of modern languages at Harvard. He seemed to revel in his new
freedom, and in less than a year he had produced the poem by which he will
probably be longest known to posterity. He studied Schoolcraft's _Algic
Researches_ and the same author's _History, Condition, and Prospects of the
Indian Tribes of the United States_, and familiarized himself with Indian
legends. The simplicity of Longfellow's nature and his ability as a poetic
artist seemed rarely suited to deal with these traditions of a race that
never wholly emerged from childhood.
Longfellow's invitation to hear this _Song_ does not include all, but only
"Ye whose hearts are fresh and simple,
Who have faith in God and nature."
Those who accept this invitation will rejoice to accompany Shawondasee, the
South-Wind, when he sends northward the robin, bluebird, and swallow. They
will also wish to go with Kabibonokka, the North-Wind, as he paints the
autumn woods with scarlet and sends the snowflakes through the forests.
They will be glad to be a child with Hiawatha, to hear again the magical
voices of the forest, the whisper of the pines, the lapping of the waters,
the hooting of the owl, to learn of every bird and beast its language, and
especially to know the joy of calling them all brothers. They will gladly
accompany Hiawatha to the land of the Dacotahs, when he woos Minnehaha,
Laughing Water, and hears Owaissa, the bluebird, singing:--
"Happy are you, Hiawatha,
Having such a wife to love you!"
But the guests will be made of stern stuff if their eyes do not moisten
when they hear Hiawatha calling in the midst of the famine of the cold and
cruel winter:--
"Give your children food, O father!
Give us food or we must perish!
Give me food for Minnehaha,
For my dying Minnehaha."
_Hiawatha_ overflows with the elemental spirit of childhood. The sense of
companionship with all earth's creatures, the mystery of life and of
Minnehaha's departure to the Kingdom of Ponemah, make a strong appeal to
all who remember childhood's Eden.
_The Courtship of Miles Standish_ (1858), in the same meter as
_Evangeline_, is a romantic tale, the scene of which is laid
"In the Old Colony days, in Plymouth, the land of the Pilgrims."
We see Miles Standish, the incarnation of the Puritan church militant, as
he
"... wistfully gazed on the landscape,
Washed with a cold gray mist, the vapory breath of the east-wind,
Forest and meadow and hill, and the steel-blue rim of the ocean,
Lying silent and sad in the afternoon shadows and sunshine."
Priscilla Mullins, the heroine of the poem, is a general favorite.
Longfellow and Bryant were both proud to trace their descent from her. This
poem introduces her
"Seated beside her wheel, and the carded wool like a snow-drift
Piled at her knee, her white hands feeding the ravenous spindle,
While with her foot on the treadle she guided the wheel in its motion.
* * * * *
She, the Puritan girl, in the solitude of the forest,
Making the humble house and the modest apparel of homespun
Beautiful with her beauty, and rich with the wealth of her being!"
This story has more touches of humor than either _Evangeline_ or
_Hiawatha_. Longfellow uses with fine effect the contradiction between the
preaching of the bluff old captain, that you must do a thing yourself if
you want it well done, and his practice in sending by John Alden an offer
of marriage to Priscilla. Her reply has become classic:
"Why don't you speak for yourself, John?"
Longfellow's _Christus, a Mystery_, was the title finally given by him to
three apparently separate poems, published under the titles, _The Golden
Legend_ (1851), _The Divine Tragedy_ (1871), and _The New England
Tragedies_ (1868). His idea was to represent the origin, the medieval
aspect, and the Puritan conception of Christianity--a task not well suited
to Longfellow's genius. _The Golden Legend_ is the most poetic, but _The
New England Tragedies_ is the most likely to be read in future years, not
for its poetic charms, but because it presents two phases of New England's
colonial history, the persecution of the Quakers and the Salem witchcraft
delusion.
GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS.--An eminent Scotch educator says that Longfellow
has probably taught more people to love poetry than any other
nineteenth-century poet, English or American. He is America's best and most
widely read story-teller in verse. Success in long narrative poems is rare
in any literature. Probably the majority of critics would find it difficult
to agree on any English poet since Chaucer who has surpassed Longfellow in
this field.
He has achieved the unusual distinction of making the commonplace
attractive and beautiful. He is the poet of the home, of the common people,
and of those common objects in nature which in his verses convey a lesson
to all. He has proved a moral stimulus to his age and he has further helped
to make the world kindlier and its troubles more easily borne. This was his
message:--
"Bear through sorrow, wrong and ruth
In thy heart the dew of youth,
On thy lips the smile of truth."
His poetry is usually more tinctured with feeling than with thought.
Diffuseness is his greatest fault. The _Sonnets_ of his later years and an
occasional poem, like _Morituri Salutamus_ (1875), show more condensation,
but parts of even _Hiawatha_ would be much improved if told in fewer words.
Some complain that Longfellow finds in books too much of the source of his
inspiration; that, although he did not live far from Evangeline's country,
he never visited it, and that others had to tell him to substitute pines or
hemlocks for chestnut trees. Many critics have found fault with his poetry
because it does not offer "sufficient obstruction to the stream of
thought,"--because it does not make the mind use its full powers in
wrestling with the meaning. It is a mistake, however, to underestimate the
virtues of clearness and simplicity. Many great men who have been
unsuccessful in their struggle to secure these qualities have consequently
failed to reach the ear of the world with a message. While other poets
should be read for mental development, the large heart of the world still
finds a place for Longfellow, who has voiced its hopes that
"... the night shall be filled with music,
And the cares that infest the day,
Shall fold their tents like the Arabs,
And as silently steal away."
Like most Puritans, Longfellow is usually over-anxious to teach a lesson;
but the world must learn, and no one has surpassed him as a poetic teacher
of the masses.
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER, 1807-1892
[Illustration: JOHN G. WHITTIER]
Life.--Whittier says that the only unusual circumstance about the migration
of his Puritan ancestor to New England in 1638 was the fact that he brought
over with him a hive of bees. The descendants of this very hive probably
suggested the poem, _Telling the Bees_, for it was an old English custom to
go straightway to the hive and tell the bees whenever a member of the
family died. It was believed that they would swarm and seek another home if
this information was withheld. The poet has made both the bees and the
snows of his northern home famous. He was born in 1807 in the same house
that his first American ancestor built in East Haverhill, about thirty-two
miles northwest of Boston. The Whittiers were farmers who for generations
had wrung little more than a bare subsistence from the soil. The boy's
frail health was early broken by the severe labor. He had to milk seven
cows, plow with a yoke of oxen, and keep busy from dawn until dark.
Unlike the other members of the New England group of authors, Whittier
never went to college. He received only the scantiest education in the
schools near his home. The family was so poor that he had to work as a
cobbler, making slippers at eight cents a pair, in order to attend the
Haverhill academy for six months. He calculated his expenses so exactly
that he had just twenty-five cents left at the end of the term.
Two events in his youth had strong influence on his future vocation. When
he was fourteen, his school-teacher read aloud to the family from the poems
of Robert Burns. The boy was entranced, and, learning that Burns had been
merely a plowman, felt that there was hope for himself. He borrowed the
volume of poems and read them again and again. Of this experience, he says:
"This was about the first poetry I had ever read (with the exception of the
Bible, of which I had been a close student) and it had a lasting influence
upon me. I began to make rhymes myself and to imagine stories and
adventures." The second event was the appearance in print of some of his
verses, which his sister had, unknown to him, sent to a Newburyport paper
edited by William Lloyd Garrison. The great abolitionist thought enough of
the poetry to ride out to Whittier's home and urge him to get an education.
This event made an indelible impression on the lad's memory.
Realizing that his health would not allow him to make his living on a farm,
he tried teaching school, but, like Thoreau, found that occupation
distasteful. Through Garrison's influence, Whittier at the age of
twenty-one procured an editorial position in Boston. At various times he
served as editor on more than half a dozen different papers, until his own
health or his father's brought him back to the farm. Such occupation taught
him how to write prose, of which he had produced enough at the time of his
death to fill three good-sized volumes, but his prose did not secure the
attention given to his verse. While in Hartford, editing _The New England
Review_, he fell in love with Miss Cornelia Russ, and a few days before he
finally left the city, he wrote a proposal to her in three hundred words of
wandering prose. Had he expressed his feelings in one of his inimitable
ballads, it is possible that he might have been accepted, for neither she
nor he ever married. In the year of her death, he wrote his poem,
_Memories_, which recounts some recollections earlier than his Hartford
experiences:--
"A beautiful and happy girl,
With step as light as summer air,
Eyes glad with smiles, and brow of pearl
Shadowed by many a careless curl
Of unconfined and flowing hair;
A seeming child in everything,
Save thoughtful brow and ripening charms,
As nature wears the smile of Spring
When sinking into Summer's arms."
He was a Quaker and he came to Hartford in the homespun clothes of the cut
of his sect. He may have been thinking of Miss Russ and wondering whether
theology had anything to do with her refusal, when in after years he
wrote:--
"Thine the Genevan's sternest creed,
While answers to my spirit's need
The Derby dalesman's simple truth."
[Illustration: WHITTIER AT THE AGE OF TWENTY-NINE]
As Whittier was a skillful politician, he had hopes of making a name for
himself in politics as well as in literature. He was chosen to represent
his district in the state legislature and there is little doubt that he
would have been sent to the national congress later, had he not taken a
step which for a long time shut off all avenues of preferment. In 1833 he
joined the abolitionists. This step had very nearly the same effect on his
fortunes as the public declaration of an adherence to the doctrines of
anarchy would to-day have on a man similarly situated. "The best magazines
at the North would not open their pages to him. He was even mobbed, and the
office of an anti-slavery paper, which he was editing in Philadelphia, was
sacked. He wrote many poems to aid the abolition cause. These were really
editorials expressed in verse, which caught the attention in a way denied
to prose. For more than thirty years such verse constituted the most of his
poetical production. Lowell noticed that the Quaker doctrine of peace did
not deter Whittier from his vigorous attack on slavery. In A Fable for
Critics (1848), Lowell asks:--
"... O leather-clad Fox?
Can that be thy son, in the battlers mid din,
Preaching brotherly love and then driving it in
To the brain of the tough old Goliath of sin,
With the smoothest of pebbles from Castaly's spring
Impressed on his hard moral sense with a sling?"
Whittier did, however, try to keep the spirit of brotherly love warm
throughout his life. He always preferred to win his cause from an enemy
peacefully. When he was charged with hating the people of the South, he
wrote:--
"I was never an enemy to the South or the holders of slaves. I inherited
from my Quaker ancestry hatred of slavery, but not of slaveholders. To
every call of suffering or distress in the South, I have promptly
responded to the extent of my ability. I was one of the very first to
recognize the rare gift of the Carolinian poet Timrod, and I was the
intimate friend of the lamented Paul H. Hayne, though both wrote fiery
lyrics against the North."
With a few striking exceptions, his most popular poems were written after
the close of the Civil War. His greatest poem, _Snow-Bound_, was published
in the year after the cessation of hostilities (1866). His last thirty
years were a time of comparative calm. He wrote poetry as the spirit moved
him. He had grown to be loved everywhere at the North, and his birthday,
like Longfellow's, was the occasion for frequent celebrations. For years
before the close of the war, in fact until _Snow-Bound_ appeared, he was
very poor, but the first edition of that poem brought him in ten thousand
dollars, and after that he was never again troubled by poverty. In a letter
written in 1866, he says:--
"If my health allowed me to write I could make money easily now, as my
anti-slavery reputation does not injure me in the least, at the present
time. For twenty years I was shut out from the favor of booksellers and
magazine editors, but I was enabled by rigid economy to live in spite of
them."
[Illustration: KITCHEN FIREPLACE IN WHITTIER'S HOME, EAST HAVERHILL, MASS.]
His fixed home for almost all of his life was in the valley of the Merrimac
River, at East Haverhill, until 1836, and then at Amesbury, only a few
miles east of his birthplace. He died in 1892 and was buried in the
Amesbury cemetery.
POETRY.--Although Whittier wrote much forcible anti-slavery verse, most of
this has already been forgotten, because it was directly fashioned to
appeal to the interests of the time. One of the strongest of these poems is
_Ichabod_ (1850), a bitter arraignment of Daniel Webster, because Whittier
thought that the great orator's _Seventh of March Speech_ of that year
advised a compromise with slavery. Webster writhed under Whittier's
criticism more than under that of any other man.
"... from those great eyes
The soul has fled:
When faith is lost, when honor dies
The man is dead!"
Thirty years later, Whittier, feeling that perhaps Webster merely intended
to try to save the Union and do away with slavery without a conflict, wrote
_The Lost Occasion_, in which he lamented the too early death of the great
orator:--
"Some die too late and some too soon,
At early morning, heat of noon,
Or the chill evening twilight. Thou,
Whom the rich heavens did so endow
With eyes of power and Jove's own brow,
* * * * *
Too soon for us, too soon for thee,
Beside thy lonely Northern sea,
Where long and low the marsh-lands spread,
Laid wearily down thy august head."
Whittier is emphatically the poet of New England. His verses which will
live the longest are those which spring directly from its soil. His poem
entitled _The Barefoot Boy_ tells how the typical New England farmer's lad
acquired:--
"Knowledge never learned of schools,
Of the wild bee's morning chase,
Of the wild flower's time and place,
Flight of fowl and habitude
Of the tenants of the wood."
[Illustration: WHITTIER'S BIRTHPLACE IN WINTER (SCENE OF "SNOW BOUND")]
His greatest poem, the one by which he will probably be chiefly known to
posterity, is _Snow-Bound_, which describes the life of a rural New England
household. At the beginning of this poem of 735 lines, the coming of the
all-enveloping snowstorm, with its "ghostly finger tips of sleet" on the
window-panes, is the central event, but we soon realize that this storm
merely serves to focus intensely the New England life with which he was
familiar. The household is shut in from the outside world by the snow, and
there is nothing else to distract the attention from the picture of
isolated Puritan life. There is not another poet in America who has
produced such a masterpiece under such limitations. One prose writer,
Hawthorne, in _The Scarlet Letter_, had indeed taken even more unpromising
materials and achieved one of the greatest successes in English romance,
but in this special narrow field Whittier has not yet been surpassed by
poets.
The sense of isolation and what painters would call "the atmosphere" are
conveyed in lines like these:--
"Shut in from all the world without,
We sat the clean-winged hearth about,
Content to let the north wind roar
In baffled rage at pane and door,
While the red logs before us beat
The frost line back with tropic heat;
And ever when a louder blast
Shook beam and rafter as it passed,
The merrier up its roaring draught
The great throat of the chimney laughed."
In such a focus he shows the life of the household; the mother, who often
left her home to attend sick neighbors, now:--
"... seeking to express
Her grateful sense of happiness
For food and shelter, warmth and health,
And love's contentment, more than wealth,"
the uncle:--
"... innocent of books,
Was rich in lore of fields and brooks,
* * * * *
A simple, guileless, childlike man,
Strong only on his native grounds,
The little world of sights and sounds
Whose girdle was the parish bounds,"
the aunt, who:--
"Found peace in love's unselfishness,"
the sister:--
"A full rich nature, free to trust,
Truthful and even sternly just,
Impulsive, earnest, prompt to act,
And make her generous thought a fact,
Keeping with many a light disguise
The secret of self-sacrifice."
Some read Snow-Bound for its pictures of nature and some for its still more
remarkable portraits of the members of that household. This poem has
achieved for the New England fireside what Burns accomplished for the
hearths of Scotland in _The Cotter's Saturday Night_.
Whittier wrote many fine short lyrical poems, such as _Ichabod_, _The Lost
Occasion_, _My Playmate_ (which was Tennyson's favorite), _In School Days_,
_Memories_, _My Triumph_, _Telling the Bees_, _The Eternal Goodness_, and
the second part of _A Sea Dream_. His narrative poems and ballads are
second only to Longfellow's. _Maud Muller_, _Skipper Iresons Ride_,
_Cassandra Southwick_, _Barbara Frietchie_, and _Mabel Martin_ are among
the best of these.
GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS--Whittier and Longfellow resemble each other in
simplicity. Both are the poets of the masses, of those whose lives most
need the consolation of poetry. Both suffer from diffuseness, Whittier in
his greatest poems less than Longfellow. Whittier was self-educated, and he
never traveled far from home. His range is narrower than Longfellow's, who
was college bred and broadened by European travel. But if Whittier's poetic
range is narrower, if he is the poet of only the common things of life, he
shows more intensity of feeling. Often his simplest verse comes from the
depths of his heart. He wrote _In School Days_ forty years after the grass
had been growing on the grave of the little girl who spelled correctly the
word which the boy had missed:--
"'I'm sorry that I spelt the word:
I hate to go above you,
Because,'--the brown eyes lower fell,--
'Because you see, I love you!'
* * * * *
"He lives to learn, in life's hard school,
How few who pass above him
Lament their triumph and his loss,
Like her,--because they love him."
Whittier's simplicity, genuineness, and sympathetic heart stand revealed in
those lines.
His youthful work shows traces of the influence of many poets, but he
learned most from Robert Burns. Whittier himself says that it was Burns who
taught him to see
"... through all familiar things
The romance underlying,"
and especially to note that
"Through all his tuneful art, how strong
The human feeling gushes!"
The critics have found three indictments against Whittier; first, for the
unequal value of his poetry; second, for its loose rhymes; and third, for
too much moralizing. He would probably plead guilty to all of these
indictments. His tendency to moralize is certainly excessive, but critics
have too frequently forgotten that this very moralizing draws him closer to
the heart of suffering humanity. There are times when the majority of human
beings feel the need of the consolation which he brings in his religious
verse and in such lines as these from _Snow-Bound:_--
"Alas for him who never sees
The stars shine through his cypress trees
Who, hopeless, lays his dead away,
Nor looks to see the breaking day
Across the mournful marbles play!
Who hath not learned, in hours of faith,
The truth to flesh and sense unknown,
That Life is ever lord of Death
And Love can never lose its own!"
He strives to impress on all the duty of keeping the windows of the heart
open to the day and of "finding peace in love's unselfishness."
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL, 1819-1891
[Illustration: J.R. LOWELL]
Early Years.--James Russell Lowell, the son of the Rev. Charles Lowell, was
a descendant of one of the best of the old New England families. The city
of Lowell and the Lowell Institute of Boston received their names from
uncles of the author. His mother's name was Spence, and she used to tell
her son that the Spence family, which was of Scotch origin, was descended
from Sir Patrick Spens of ballad fame. She loved to sing to her boy in the
gloaming:--
"O forty miles off Aberdeen,
'Tis fifty fathoms deep,
And there lies gude Sir Patrick Spens,
Wi' the Scots lords at his feet."
[Illustration: LOWELL'S MOTHER]
From her Celtic blood her son inherited a tendency toward poetry. When a
child, he was read to sleep with Spenser's _Faerie Queene_ and he found
amusement in retelling its stories to his playmates.
James Russell Lowell was born in 1819, in the suburbs of Cambridge,
Massachusetts, in the fine old historic home called "Elmwood," which was
one of the few homes to witness the birth and death of a great American
author and to remain his native residence for seventy-two years.
His early opportunities were in striking contrast to those of Whittier; for
Lowell, like his ancestors for three generations, went to Harvard. Because
of what the Lowell side of his family called "the Spence negligence," he
was suspended from college for inattention to his studies and sent to
Concord to be coached by a tutor. We know, however, that a part of Lowell's
negligence was due to his reading and imitating such poetry as suited his
fancy. It was fortunate that he was sent to Concord, for there he had the
opportunity of meeting Emerson and Thoreau and of drinking in patriotism as
he walked "the rude bridge that arch'd the flood" (p. 179). He was elected
class poet, but he was not allowed to return in time to deliver his poem
before his classmates, although he received his degree with them in 1838.
MARRIAGE AND NEW IMPULSES.--Like Irving and Bryant, Lowell studied law, and
then gave up that profession for literature. In 1839 he met Miss Maria
White, a transcendentalist of noble impulses. Before this he had made fun
of the abolitionists, but under her influence he followed men like Whittier
into the anti-slavery ranks. She was herself a poet and she wrote to Lowell
after they became engaged:--
"I love thee for thyself--thyself alone;
For that great soul whose breath most full and rare
Shall to humanity a message bear,
Flooding their dreary waste with organ tone."
Under such inspiration, "the Spence negligence" left him, and with rapid
steps he entered the temple of fame. In December, 1844, the month in which
he married her, he wrote the finest lines ever penned by him:--
"Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,--
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own."
Lowell's twenty-ninth year, 1848, is called his _annus mirabilis_, the
wonderful year of his life. He had published small volumes of poems in
1840, 1843, and 1847, but in 1848 there appeared three of his most famous
works,--_The Biglow Papers, First Series_, _A Fable for Critics_, and _The
Vision of Sir Launfal._
As Mrs. Lowell's health was delicate, Lowell took her abroad, in 1851, for
a year's stay. Thackeray came over on the same ship with them, on their
return in 1852, and proved a genial companion. The next year Mrs. Lowell
died. When he thought of the inspiration which she had given him and of the
thirteen years of her companionship, he said, "It is a million times better
to have had her and lost her, than to have had and kept any other woman I
ever saw."
[Illustration: MRS. MARIA WHITE LOWELL]
LATER WORK.--After his great bereavement in 1853, Lowell became one of
America's greatest prose writers. In 1855 he was appointed Longfellow's
successor in the Harvard professorship of modern languages and polite
literature, a position which he held, with the exception of two years spent
in European travel, until 1877. The duties of his chair called for wide
reading and frequent lecturing, and he turned much of his attention toward
writing critical essays. The routine work of his professorship often grew
irksome and the "Spence negligence" was sometimes in evidence in his
failure to meet his classes. As a teacher, he was, however, frequently very
stimulating.
He was the editor of the _Atlantic Monthly_, from its beginning in 1857
until 1861. All of the second series of the _Biglow Papers_ appeared in
this magazine. From 1864 to 1872 he was one of the editors of the North
American Review.
In 1877 he became the minister of the United States to Spain. The Spanish
welcomed him to the post that Washington Irving had once filled. In 1880
Lowell was transferred to England, where he represented his country until
1885. No other American minister has ever proved a greater success in
England. He was respected for his literary attainments and for his ability
as a speaker. He had the reputation of being one of the very best speakers
in the Kingdom, and he was in much demand to speak at banquets and on
special occasions. Many of his articles and speeches were on political
subjects, the greatest of these being his address on _Democracy_, at
Birmingham, in 1884.
Although his later years showed his great achievements in prose, he did not
cease to produce poetry. The second series of the _Biglow Papers_ was
written during the Civil War. His _Ode Recited at the Harvard
Commemoration_ in 1865, in honor of those who fell in freeing the slave,
"Who in warm life-blood wrote their nobler verse,"
his three memorial poems: (1) _Ode Read at the One Hundredth Anniversary of
the Fight at Concord Bridge_ (1875), (2) _Under the Old Elm_ (1875),
written in commemoration of Washington's taking command of the Continental
forces under that tree, a century before, and (3) _Ode for the Fourth of
July_, 1876, are well-known patriotic American poems.
After returning from England and passing from the excitement of diplomatic
and social life to a quiet New England home, he wrote:--
"I take my reed again and blow it free
Of dusty silence, murmuring, 'Sing to me.'
And, as its stops my curious touch retries,
The stir of earlier instincts I surprise,--
Instincts, if less imperious, yet more strong,
And happy in the toil that ends with song."
In 1888 he published a volume of poems called _Heartsease and Rue_. He died
in 1891 and was buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery, near his "Elmwood" home,
not far from the last resting place of Longfellow.
[Illustration: LOWELL'S STUDY, ELMWOOD]
POETRY.--Lowell wrote many short lyrical poems, which rank high. Some of
them, like _Our Love is not a Fading Earthly Flower_, _O Moonlight Deep and
Tender_, _To the Dandelion_, and _The First Snow-Fall_ are exquisite lyrics
of nature and sentiment. Others, like _The Present Crisis_, have for their
text, "Humanity sweeps onward," and teach high moral ideals. Still others,
like his poems written in commemoration of some event, are instinct with
patriotism.
He is best known for three long poems, _The Biglow Papers_, _A Fable for
Critics_ and _The Vision of Sir Launfal_. All of these, with the exception
of the second series of _The Biglow Papers_, appeared in his wonderful
poetic year, 1848.
He will, perhaps, be longest known to posterity for that remarkable series
of papers written in what he called the Yankee dialect and designed at
first to stop the extension of slavery and afterwards to suppress it. These
are called "Biglow Papers" because the chief author is represented to be
Hosea Biglow, a typical New England farmer. The immediate occasion of the
first series of these _Papers_ was the outbreak of the Mexican War in 1846.
Lowell said in after years, "I believed our war with Mexico to be
essentially a war of false pretences, and that it would result in widening
the boundaries and so prolonging the life of slavery." The second series of
these _Papers_, dealing with our Civil War, began to be published in the
_Atlantic Monthly_ in 1862. The poem lives to-day, however, not for its
censure of the war or for its attack on slavery, but for its expression of
the mid-nineteenth century New England ideals, hard common sense, and dry
humor. Where shall we turn for a more incisive statement of the Puritan's
attitude toward pleasure?
"Pleasure doos make us Yankees kind o' winch,
Ez though't wuz sunthin' paid for by the inch;
But yit we du contrive to worry thru,
Ef Dooty tells us thet the thing's to du,
An' kerry a hollerday, ef we set out,
Ez stiddily ez though't wuz a redoubt."
The homely New England common-sense philosophy is in evidence throughout
the _Papers_. We frequently meet, such expressions as:--
"I like the plain all wool o' common-sense
Thet warms ye now, an' will a twelve-month hence."
"Now's the only bird lays eggs o' gold."
"Democracy gives every man
The right to be his own oppressor."
"But Chance is like an amberill,--it don't take twice to lose it."
"An' you've gut to git up airly,
Ef you want to take in God."
In the second series of the _Papers_, there is one of Lowell's best lyrics,
_The Courtin'_. It would be difficult to find another poem which gives
within the compass of four lines a better characterization of many a New
England maiden:--
"... she was jes' the quiet kind
Whose naturs never vary,
Like streams that keep a summer mind,
Snowhid in Jenooary."
This series contains some of Lowell's best nature poetry. We catch rare
glimpses of
"Moonshine an' snow on field an' hill
All silence an' all glisten,"
and we actually see a belated spring
"Toss the fields full o' blossoms, leaves, an' birds."
_The Vision of Sir Launfal_ has been the most widely read of Lowell's
poems. This is the _vision_ of a search for the Holy Grail. Lowell in a
letter to a friend called the poem "a sort of story and more likely to be
popular than what I write about generally." But the best part of the poem
is to be found in the apotheosis of the New England June, in the _Prelude
to Part I.:_--
"And what is so rare as a day in June?
Then, if ever, come perfect days;
Then Heaven tries the earth if it be in tune,
And over it softly her warm ear lays."
The poem teaches a noble lesson of sympathy with suffering:--
"Not what we give, but what we share,--
For the gift without the giver is bare;
Who gives himself with his alms feeds three,--
Himself, his hungering neighbor, and Me."
Lowell said that he "scrawled at full gallop" _A Fable for Critics_, which
is a humorous poem of about two thousand long lines, presenting an
unusually excellent criticism of his contemporary authors. In this most
difficult type of criticism, Lowell was not infallible; but a comparison of
his criticisms with the verdicts generally accepted to-day will show his
unusual ability in this field. Not a few of these criticisms remain the
best of their kind, and they serve to focus many of the characteristics of
the authors of the first half of the nineteenth century. It will benefit
all writers, present and prospective, to read this criticism on Bryant:--
"He is almost the one of your poets that knows
How much grace, strength, and dignity lie in Repose;
If he sometimes fall short, he is too wise to mar
His thought's modest fulness by going too far;
'Twould be well if your authors should all make a trial
Of what virtue there is in severe self-denial,
And measure their writings by Hesiod's staff,
Who teaches that all has less value than half."
Especially humorous are those lines which give a recipe for the making of a
Washington Irving and those which describe the idealistic philosophy of
Emerson:--
"In whose mind all creation is duly respected
As parts of himself--just a little projected."
Prose.--Lowell's literary essays entitle him to rank as a great American
critic. The chief of these are to be found gathered in three volumes:
_Among My Books_ (1870), _My Study Windows_ (1871), _Among My Books_,
_Second Series_ (1876). These volumes as originally issued contain 1140
pages. If we should wish to persuade a group of moderately intelligent
persons to read less fiction and more solid literature, it is doubtful if
we could accomplish our purpose more easily than by inducing them to dip
into some of these essays. Lowell had tested many of them on his college
students, and he had noted what served to kindle interest and to produce
results. We may recommend five of his greater literary essays, which would
give a vivid idea of the development of English poetry from Chaucer to the
death of Pope. These five are: _Chaucer_, in _My Study Windows; Spenser_,
in _Among My Books, Second Series; Shakespeare Once More_, and _Dryden_, in
_Among My Books, First Series_; and _Pope_, in _My Study Windows_. If we
add to these the short addresses on _Wordsworth_ and _Coleridge_, delivered
in England, and printed in the volume _Democracy and Other Addresses_
(1886), we shall have the incentive to continue the study of poetry into
the nineteenth century.
Lowell's criticism provokes thought. It will not submit to a passive
reading. It expresses truth in unique and striking ways. Speaking of the
French and Italian sources on which Chaucer drew, Lowell says:--
"Should a man discover the art of transmuting metals, and present us with
a lump of gold as large as an ostrich egg, would it be in human nature to
inquire too nicely whether he had stolen the lead? ...
"Chaucer, like Shakespeare, invented almost nothing. Wherever he found
anything directed to Geoffrey Chaucer, he took it and made the most of
it....
"Sometimes he describes amply by the merest hint, as where the Friar,
before setting himself softly down, drives away the cat. We know without
need of more words that he has chosen the snuggest corner."
Lowell usually makes the laziest readers do a little pleasant thinking. It
is common for even inert students to investigate his meaning; for instance,
in his statements that in the age of Pope "everybody ceremoniously took a
bushel basket to bring a wren's egg to market in," and that everybody
"called everything something else."
The high ideals and sterling common sense of Lowell's political prose
deserve special mention. In _Democracy_ (1886), which should be read by
every citizen, Lowell shows that old age had not shattered his faith in
ideals. "I believe," he said, "that the real will never find an irremovable
basis until it rests on the ideal." Voters and lawmakers are to-day
beginning to realize that they will go far to find in the same compass a
greater amount of common sense than is contained in these words:--
"It is only when the reasonable and the practicable are denied that men
demand the unreasonable and impracticable; only when the possible is made
difficult that they fancy the impossible to be easy. Fairy tales are made
out of the dreams of the poor." [Footnote: _Democracy and Other
Addresses_, p. 15.]
General Characteristics.--Lowell has written verse which shows sympathetic
treatment of nature. His lines _To the Dandelion_:--
"Dear common flower, that grow'st beside the way,
Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold,
First pledge of blithesome May
Which children pluck, and full of pride uphold
* * * * *
... thou art more dear to me
Than all the prouder summer-blooms may be,"
show rare genuineness of feeling. No one not enthusiastic about nature
would ever have heard her calling to him:--
"To mix his blood with sunshine, and to take
The winds into his pulses."
He invites us in March to watch:--
"The bluebird, shifting his light load of song
From post to post along the cheerless fence,"
and in June to lie under the willows and rejoice with
"The thin-winged swallow, skating on the air."
Another pronounced characteristic which he has in common with the New
England group is nobility of ideals. His poem entitled _For an Autograph_,
voices in one line the settled conviction of his life:--
"Not failure, but low aim, is crime."
He is America's greatest humorist in verse. _The Biglow Papers_ and _A
Fable for Critics_ are ample justification for such an estimate.
As Lowell grew older, his poetry, dominated too much by his acute
intellect, became more and more abstract. In _Under the Old Elm_, for
example, he speaks of Washington as:--
"The equestrian shape with unimpassioned brow
That paces silent on through vistas of acclaim."
It is possible to read fifty consecutive lines of his _Commemoration Ode_
without finding any but abstract or general terms, which are rarely the
warp and woof out of which the best poetry is spun. This criticism explains
why repeated readings of some of his poems leave so little impression on
the mind. Some of the poetry of his later life is, however, concrete and
sensuous, as the following lines from his poem _Agassiz_ (1874) show:--
"To lie in buttercups and clover-bloom,
Tenants in common with the bees,
And watch the white clouds drift through gulfs of trees,
Is better than long waiting in the tomb."
In prose literary criticism, he keeps his place with Poe at the head of
American writers. Lowell's sentences are usually simple in form and easily
understood; they are frequently enlivened by illuminating figures of
rhetoric and by humor, or rendered impressive by the striking way in which
they express thought, _e.g._ "The foolish and the dead alone never change
their opinion." A pun, digression, or out-of-the-way allusion may
occasionally provoke readers, but onlookers have frequently noticed that
few wrinkle their brows while reading his critical essays, and that a
pleased expression, such as photographers like, is almost certain to
appear. He has the rare faculty of making his readers think hard enough for
agreeable exercise, and yet he spares them undue fatigue and rarely takes
them among miry bogs or through sandy deserts.
Lowell's versatility is a striking characteristic. He was a poet, reformer,
college professor, editor, literary critic, diplomatist, speaker, and
writer on political subjects. We feel that he sometimes narrowly escaped
being a genius, and that he might have crossed the boundary line into
genius-land, if he had confined his attention to one department of
literature and had been willing to write at less breakneck speed, taking
time and thought to prune, revise, and suppress more of his productions.
Not a few, however, think that Lowell, in spite of his defects, has left
the impress of genius on some of his work. When his sonnet, _Our Love is
not a Fading Earthly Flower_, was read to a cultured group, some who did
not recognize the authorship of the verses thought that they were
Shakespeare's.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, 1809-1894
[Illustration: OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES]
LIFE.--The year 1809 was prolific in the birth of great men, producing
Holmes, Poe, Lincoln, Tennyson, and Darwin. Holmes was descended from Anne
Bradstreet, New England's "Tenth Muse" (p. 39) His father was a
Congregational clergyman, preaching at Cambridge when Oliver was born. The
family was in comfortable circumstances, and the boy was reared in a
cultured atmosphere. In middle age Holmes wrote, "I like books,--I was born
and bred among them, and have the easy feeling, when I get into their
presence, that a stable boy has among horses."
He graduated from Harvard in the famous class of 1829, for which he
afterward wrote many anniversary poems. He went to Paris to study medicine,
a science that held his interest through life. For thirty-five years he was
professor of anatomy in the Harvard Medical School, where he was the only
member of the faculty who could at the end of the day take the class,
fagged and wearied, and by his wit, stories, and lively illustrations both
instruct and interest the students.
His announcement, "small fevers gratefully received," his humor in general,
and his poetry especially, did not aid him in securing patients. His
biographer says that Holmes learned at his cost as a doctor that the world
had made up its mind "that he who writes rhymes must not write
prescriptions, and he who makes jests should not escort people to their
graves." He later warned his students that if they would succeed in any one
calling they must not let the world find out that they were interested in
anything else. From his own point of view, he wrote:--
"It's a vastly pleasing prospect, when you're screwing out a laugh,
That your very next year's income is diminished by a half,
And a little boy trips barefoot that your Pegasus may go,
And the baby's milk is watered that your Helicon may flow."
He was driven, like Emerson and Lowell, to supplement his modest income by
what he called "lecture peddling." Although Holmes did not have the
platform presence of these two contemporaries, he had the power of reaching
his audiences and of quickly gaining their sympathy, so that he was very
popular and could always get engagements.
His scientific training made him intolerant of any philosophical or
religious creed which seemed to him to be based merely upon superstition or
tradition. He was thoroughly alert, open-minded, and liberal upon all such
questions. On subjects of politics, war, or the abolition of slavery, he
was, on the other hand, strongly conservative. He had the aristocratic
dread of change. He was distinctly the courtly gentleman, the gifted
talker, and the social, genial, refined companion.
[Illustration: HOLMES'S STUDY]
Holmes was a conscientious worker, but he characteristically treated his
mental processes in a joking way, and wrote to a friend: "I like nine
tenths of any matter I study, but I do not like to _lick the plate_. If I
did, I suppose I should be more of a man of science and find my brain tired
oftener than I do." Again he wrote, "my nature is to snatch at all the
fruits of knowledge and take a good bite out of the sunny side--after that
let in the pigs." Despite these statements, Holmes worked steadily every
year at his medical lectures. He was very particular about the exactness
and finish of all that he wrote, and he was neither careless nor slipshod
in anything. His life, while filled with steady, hard work, was a placid
one, full of love and friendships, and he passed into his eightieth year
with a young heart. He died in 1894, at the age of eighty-five, and was
buried in Mt. Auburn cemetery not far from Longfellow and Lowell.
POETRY.--In 1836 he published his first volume of verse. This contained his
first widely known poem, _Old Ironsides_, a successful plea for saving the
old battleship, _Constitution_, which had been ordered destroyed. With the
exception of this poem and _The Last Leaf_, the volume is remarkable for
little except the rollicking fun which we find in such favorites as _The
Ballad of the Oysterman_ and _My Aunt_. This type of humor is shown in this
simile from _The Ballad_:--
"Her hair drooped round her pallid cheeks, like seaweed on a clam," and in
his description of his aunt:--
"Her waist is ampler than her life,
For life is but a span."
He continued to write verses until his death. Among the last poems which he
wrote were memorials on the death of Lowell (1891) and Whittier (1892). As
we search the three volumes of his verse, we find few serious poems of a
high order. The best, and the one by which he himself wished to be
remembered, is The _Chambered Nautilus_. No member of the New England group
voiced higher ideals than we find in the noble closing stanza of this
poem:--
"Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!
Leave thy low-vaulted past!
Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!"
Probably _The Last Leaf_, which was such a favorite with Lincoln, would
rank second. This poem is remarkable for preserving the reader's
equilibrium between laughter and tears. Some lines from _The Voiceless_ are
not likely to be soon forgotten:--
"A few can touch the magic string,
And noisy Fame is proud to win them:--
Alas for those that never sing,
But die with all their music in them!"
He wrote no more serious poem than _Homesick in Heaven_, certain stanzas of
which appeal strongly to bereaved hearts. It is not easy to forget the song
of the spirits who have recently come from earth, of the mother who was
torn from her clinging babe, of the bride called away with the kiss of love
still burning on her cheek, of the daughter taken from her blind and
helpless father:--
"Children of earth, our half-weaned nature clings
To earth's fond memories, and her whispered name
Untunes our quivering lips, our saddened strings;
For there we loved, and where we love is home."
When Holmes went to Oxford in 1886, to receive an honorary degree, it is
probable that, as in the case of Irving, the Oxford boys in the gallery
voiced the popular verdict. As Holmes stepped on the platform, they called,
"Did he come in the One-Hoss Shay?" This humorous poem, first known as _The
Deacon's Masterpiece_, has been a universal favorite. _How the Old Hoss Won
the Bet_ tells with rollicking humor what the parson's nag did at a race.
_The Boys_, with its mingled humor and pathos, written for the thirtieth
reunion of his class, is one of the best of the many poems which he was so
frequently asked to compose for special celebrations. No other poet of his
time could equal him in furnishing to order clever, apt, humorous verses
for ever recurring occasions.
PROSE.--He was nearly fifty when he published his first famous prose work.
He had named the _Atlantic Monthly_, and Lowell had agreed to edit it only
on condition that Holmes would promise to be a contributor. In the first
number appeared _The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table._ Holmes had hit upon
a style that exactly suited his temperament, and had invented a new prose
form. His great conversational gift was now crystallized in these breakfast
table talks, which the Autocrat all but monopolizes. However, the other
characters at the table of this remarkable boarding house in Boston join in
often enough to keep up the interest in their opinions, feelings, and
relations to each other. The reader always wants to know the impression
that the Autocrat's fine talk makes upon "the young man whom they call
'John.'" John sometimes puts his feelings into action, as when the Autocrat
gives a typical illustration of his mixture of reasoning and humor, in
explaining that there are always six persons present when two people are
talking:--
[Illustration: THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST TABLE ]
"Three Johns.
1. The real John; known only to his Maker.
2. John's ideal John; never the real one, and often very unlike him.
3. Thomas's ideal John; never the real John, nor John's John, but often
very unlike either.
"Three Thomases.
1. The real Thomas.
2. Thomas's ideal Thomas.
3. John's ideal Thomas."
"A certain basket of peaches, a rare vegetable, little known to
boarding-houses, was on its way to me," says the Autocrat, "_via_ this
unlettered Johannes. He appropriated the three that remained in the basket,
remarking that there was just one apiece for him. I convinced him that his
practical inference was hasty and illogical, but in the meantime he had
eaten the peaches." When John enters the debates with his crushing logic of
facts, he never fails to make a ten strike.
A few years after the _Autocrat_ series had been closed, Holmes wrote _The
Professor at the Breakfast Table_; many years later _The Poet at the
Breakfast Table_ appeared; and in the evening of life, he brought out _Over
the Teacups_, in which he discoursed at the tea table in a similar vein,
but not in quite the same fresh, buoyant, humorous way in which the
Autocrat talked over his morning coffee. The decline in these books is
gradual, although it is barely perceptible in the _Professor_. The
_Autocrat_ is, however, the brightest, crispest, and most vigorous of the
series, while _Over the Teacups_ is the calmest, as well as the soberest
and most leisurely.
Holmes wrote three novels, _Elsie Venner_, _The Guardian Angel_, and _The
Mortal Antipathy_, which have been called "medicated novels" because his
medical knowledge is so apparent in them. These books also have a moral
purpose, each in turn considering the question whether an individual is
responsible for his acts. The first two of these novels are the strongest,
and hold the attention to the end because of the interest aroused by the
characters and by the descriptive scenes.
GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS.--Humor is the most characteristic quality of
Holmes's writings. He indeed is the only member of the New England group
who often wrote with the sole object of entertaining readers. Lowell also
was a humorist, but he employed humor either in the cause of reform, as in
The _Biglow Papers_, or in the field of knowledge, in endeavoring to make
his literary criticisms more expressive and more certain to impress the
mind of his readers.
Whenever Holmes wrote to entertain, he did not aim to be deep or to
exercise the thinking powers of his readers. Much of his work skims the
surface of things in an amusing and delightful way. Yet he was too much of
a New Englander not to write some things in both poetry and prose with a
deeper purpose than mere entertainment. _The Chambered Nautilus_, for
instance, was so written, as were all of his novels. His genial humor is
thus frequently blended with unlooked-for wisdom or pathos.
Whittier has been called provincial because he takes only the point of view
of New England. The province of Holmes is still narrower, being mainly
confined to Boston. He expresses in a humorous way his own feelings, as
well as those of his fellow townsmen, when he says in _The Autocrat of the
Breakfast Table:_--
"Boston State House is the hub of the solar system. You couldn't pry that
out of a Boston man if you had the tire of all creation straightened out
for a crowbar."
Like Irving, Holmes was fond of eighteenth-century English writers, and
much of his verse is modeled after the couplets of Pope. Holmes writes
fluid and rippling prose, without a trace of effort. His meaning is never
left to conjecture, but is stated in pure, exact English. He not only
expresses his ideas perfectly, but he seems to achieve this result without
premeditation. This apparent artlessness is a great charm. He has left
America a new form of prose, which bears the stamp of pure literature, and
which is distinguished not so much for philosophy and depth as for grace,
versatility, refined humor, bright intellectual flashes, and artistic
finish.
THE HISTORIANS
Three natives of Massachusetts and graduates of Harvard, William H.
Prescott, John Lothrop Motley, and Francis Parkman, wrote history in such a
way as to entitle it to be mentioned in our literature. We cannot class as
literature those historical writings which are not enlivened with
imagination, invested with at least an occasional poetic touch, and
expressed in rare style. Unfortunately the very qualities that render
history attractive as literature often tend to raise doubts about the
scientific method and accuracy of the historian. For this reason few
histories keep for a great length of time a place in literature, unless,
like Irving's _Knickerbocker's History of New York_, they aim to give
merely an imaginative interpretation of a past epoch. They may then, like
Homer's _Iliad_, Shakespeare's _Macbeth_, and some of Irving's and Cooper's
work, be, in Celtic phrase, "more historical than history itself." History
of this latter type lives, and is a treasure in the literature of any
nation.
WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT (1796-1859).--Like Washington Irving, Prescott was
attracted by the romantic achievements of Spain during the years of her
brilliant successes, and he wrote four histories upon Spanish subjects: a
_History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella_ (1837), a _History of the
Conquest of Mexico_ (1843), a _History of the Conquest of Peru_ (1847), and
a _History of the Reign of Philip II_. (1855-1858), the last of which he
did not live to complete.
He was a careful, painstaking student. He learned the Spanish language, had
copies made of all available manuscripts and records in Europe, and closely
compared contemporary accounts so as to be certain of the accuracy of his
facts. Then he presented them in an attractive form. His _Ferdinand and
Isabella_ and the part he finished of _Philip II_. are accurate and
authoritative to-day because the materials which he found for them are
true. The two histories on the Spanish conquests in the New World are not
absolutely correct in all their descriptions of the Aztecs and Incas before
the arrival of the Spaniards. This is due to no carelessness on Prescott's
part, but to the highly colored accounts upon which he had to depend for
his facts, and to the lack of the archaeological surveys which have since
been carried on in Mexico and Peru. These two histories of the daring
exploits of a handful of adventurers in hostile lands are as thrilling and
interesting as novels. We seem to be reading a tale from the _Arabian
Nights_, as we follow Pizarro and see his capture of the Peruvian monarch
in the very sight of his own army, and view the rich spoils in gold and
silver and precious stones which were carried back to Spain. In relating
the conquest of Mexico by Cortez, Prescott writes the history of still more
daring adventures. His narrative is full of color, and he presents facts
picturesquely.
JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY (1814-1877).--As naturally as the love of adventure
sent Prescott to the daring exploits of the Spanish feats of arms, so the
inborn zeal for civil and religious liberty and hatred of oppression led
Motley to turn to the sturdy, patriotic Dutch in their successful struggle
against the enslaving power of Spain. His histories are _The Rise of the
Dutch Republic_ (1856), _The History of the United Netherlands_
(1860-1868), _The Life and Death of John of Barneveld_, _Advocate of
Holland_ (1874).
[Illustration: JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY]
The difference in temperament between Prescott and Motley is seen in the
manner of presenting the character of Philip II. In so far as Prescott drew
the picture of Philip II., it is traced with a mild, cool hand. Philip is
shown as a tyrant, but he is impelled to his tyranny by motives of
conscience. In Motley's _The Rise of the Dutch Republic_, this oppressor is
an accursed scourge of a loyal people, the enemy of progress, of liberty,
and of justice. Motley's feelings make his pages burn and flash with fiery
denunciation, as well as with exalted praise.
_The Rise of the Dutch Republic_ is the recital of as heroic a struggle as
a small but determined nation ever made against tremendous odds. Amid the
swarm of men that crowd the pages of this work, William the Silent, of
Orange, the central figure, stands every inch a hero, a leader worthy of
his cause and of his people. Motley with an artist's skill shows how this
great leader launched Holland on her victorious career. This history is a
living story, faithful to facts, but it is written to convince the reader
that "freedom of thought, of speech, and of life" are "blessings without
which everything that this earth can afford is worthless."
In choosing to write of the struggle of Holland for her freedom, Motley was
actuated by the same reason that prompted his forefathers to fight on
Bunker Hill. He wanted to play at least a historian's part in presenting
"the great spectacle which was to prove to Europe that principles and
peoples still existed, and that a phlegmatic nation of merchants and
manufacturers could defy the powers of the universe, and risk all their
blood and treasure, generation after generation, in a sacred cause."
_The History of the United Netherlands_ continues this story after Holland,
free and united, proved herself a power that could no longer remain
unheeded in Europe. _The Life and Death of John of Barneveld_, which brings
the history of Holland down to about 1623, was planned as an introduction
to a final history of that great religious and political conflict, called
the Thirty Years' War,--a history which Motley did not live to finish.
Although no historian has spent more time than Motley in searching the
musty records and state archives of foreign lands for matter relating to
Holland, it was impossible for a man of his temperament, convictions, and
purpose to write a calm, dispassionate history. He is not the cool judge,
but the earnest advocate, and yet he does not distort facts. He is just and
can be coldly critical, even of his heroes, but he is always on one side,
the side of liberty and justice, pleading their cause. His temperament
gives warmth, eloquence, and dramatic passion to his style. Individual
incidents and characters stand forth sharply defined. His subject seems
remarkably well suited to him because his love of liberty was a sacred
passion. With this feeling to fire his blood, the unflinching Hollander to
furnish the story, and his eloquent style to present it worthily, Motley's
_Rise of the Dutch Republic_ is a prose epic of Dutch liberty.
Francis Parkman (1823-1893)--The youngest and greatest of this group of
historians was born of Puritan blood in Boston in 1823. Parkman's life from
early childhood was a preparation for his future work, and when a mere lad
at college, he had decided to write a history of the French and Indian War.
He was a delicate child, and at the age of eight was sent to live with his
grandfather, who owned at Medway, near Boston, a vast tract of woodland.
The boy roamed at will through these forests, and began to amass that wood
lore of which his histories hold such rich stores. At Harvard he overworked
in the gymnasium with the mistaken purpose of strengthening himself for a
life on the frontier.
In 1846, two years after graduation, he took his famous trip out west over
the Oregon Trail, where he hunted buffalo on the plains, dragged his horse
through the canyons to escape hostile Indians, lived in the camp of the
warlike Dacota tribe, and learned by bitter experience the privations of
primitive life.
His health was permanently impaired by the trip. He was threatened with
absolute blindness, and was compelled to have all his notes read to him and
to dictate his histories. For years he was forbidden literary work on
account of insomnia and intense cerebral pain which threatened insanity,
and on account of lameness he was long confined to a wheel chair. He rose
above every obstacle, however, and with silent fortitude bore his
sufferings, working whenever he could, if for only a bare half hour at a
time.
His amazing activity during his trips, both in America and abroad, is shown
in the Massachusetts Historical Society Library, which contains almost two
hundred folio volumes, which he had experts copy from original sources.
With few exceptions, he visited every spot which he described, and saw the
life of nearly every tribe of Indians. His battle with ill health, his
strength of character, and his energetic first-hand study of Indian and
pioneer life are remarkable in the history of American men of letters. He
died near Boston in 1893.
[Illustration: FRANCIS PARKMAN]
Because of their subject matter, Parkman's works are of unusual interest to
Americans. When he returned from his pioneer western trip, he wrote a
simple, straightforward account, which was in 1849 published in book form,
under the title of _The California and Oregon Trail._ This book remains the
most trustworthy, as well as the most entertaining, account of travel in
the unsettled Northwest of that time. Indians, big game, and adventures
enough to satisfy any reasonable boy may be found in this book.
His histories cover the period from the early French settlements in the New
World to the victory of the English over the French and Indian allies. The
titles of his separate works, given in their chronological order, are as
follows :--
_The Pioneers of France in the New World_ (1865) describes the experiences
of the early French sailors and explorers off the Newfoundland coast and
along the St. Lawrence River.
_The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century_ (1867) tells of
the work of the self-forgetting Jesuit Fathers in their mission of mercy
and conversion among the Indians. Fifty pages of the _Introduction_ give an
account of the religion, festivities, superstitions, burials, sacrifices,
and military organization of the Indians.
_La Salle, or the Discovery of the Great West_ (1869), is the story of La
Salle's heroic endeavors and sufferings while exploring the West and the
Mississippi River.
_The Old Regime in Canada_ (1874) presents the internal conflicts and the
social development of Canada in the seventeenth century.
_Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV_. (1877) continues the
history of Canada as a French dependency, and paints in a lively manner
Count Frontenac's character, his popularity with the Indians, and his
methods of winning laurels for France.
_A Half Century of Conflict_ (1892) depicts the sharp encounter between the
French and English for the possession of the country, and the terrible
deeds of the Indians against their hated foes, the English.
_Montcalm and Wolfe_ (1884) paints the final scenes of the struggle between
France and England, closing practically with the fall of Quebec.
_The History of the Conspiracy of Pontiac_ (1851) shows one more desperate
attempt of a great Indian chief to combine the tribes of his people and
drive out the English. The volume closes with the general smoking of the
pipe of peace and the swearing of allegiance to England. The first
forty-five pages describe the manners and customs of the Indian tribes east
of the Mississippi.
The general title, _France and England in North America_, indicates the
subject matter of all this historical work. The central theme of the whole
series is the struggle between the French and English for this great
American continent. The trackless forests, the Great Lakes, the untenanted
shores of the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi form an impressive
background for the actors in this drama,--the Indians, traders,
self-sacrificing priests, and the French and English contending for one of
the greatest prizes of the world.
In his manner of presenting the different ideals and civilizations of
England and France in this struggle, he shows keen analytical power and
strong philosophical grasp. He is accurate in his details, and he
summarizes the results of economic and religious forces in the strictly
modern spirit. At the same time, these histories read like novels of
adventure, so vivid and lively is the action. While scholars commend his
reliability in dealing with facts, boys enjoy his vivid stories of heroism,
sacrifice, religious enthusiasm, Indian craft, and military maneuvering.
The one who begins with _The Conspiracy of Pontiac_, for instance, will be
inclined to read more of Parkman.
In the first volumes the style is clear, nervous, and a trifle ornate. His
facility in expression increased with his years, so that in _Montcalm and
Wolfe_ he has a mellowness and dignity that place him beside the best
American prose writers. Although Prescott's work is more full of color, he
does not surpass Parkman in the presentation of graphic pictures, Parkman
has neither the solemn grandeur of Prescott nor the rapid eloquence of
Motley, but Parkman has unique merits of his own,--the freshness of the
pine woods, the reality and vividness of an eyewitness, an elemental
strength inherent in the primitive nature of his novel subject. He secured
his material at first hand in a way that cannot be repeated. Parkman's
prose presents in a simple, lucid, but vigorous manner the story of the
overthrow of the French by the English in the struggle for a mighty
continent. As a result of this contest, Puritan England left its lasting
impress upon this new land.
ENGLISH LITERATURE OF THE PERIOD
Most of the work of the great New England group of writers was done during
the Victorian age--a time prolific of famous English authors. The greatest
of the English writers were THOMAS CARLYLE (1795-1881), whose _Sartor
Resartus_ and _Heroes and Hero Worship_ proved a stimulus to Emerson and to
many other Americans; LORD MACAULAY (1800-1859), whose _Essays_ and
_History of England_, remarkable for their clearness and interest, affected
either directly or indirectly the prose style of numberless writers in the
second half of the nineteenth century; JOHN RUSKIN (1819-1900), the apostle
of the beautiful and of more ideal social relations; MATTHEW ARNOLD
(1822-1888), the great analytical critic; CHARLES DICKENS (1812-1870),
whose novels of the lower class of English life are remarkable for vigor,
optimism, humor, the power to caricature, and to charm the masses; WILLIAM
MAKEPEACE THACKERAY (1811-1863), whose novels, like _Vanity Fair_, remain
unsurpassed for keen satiric analysis of the upper classes; and GEORGE
ELIOT (1819-1880), whose realistic stories of middle class life show a new
art in tracing the growth and development of character instead of merely
presenting it with the fixity of a portrait. To this list should be added
CHARLES DARWIN (1809-1882), whose _Origin of Species_ (1859) affected so
much of the thought of the second half of the nineteenth century.
The two greatest poets of this time were ALFRED TENNYSON (1809-1892) and
ROBERT BROWNING (1812-1889). Browning's greatest poetry aims to show the
complex development of human souls, to make us understand that:--
"He fixed thee 'mid this dance
Of plastic circumstance."
[Footnote: _Rabbi Ben Ezra_.]
His influence on the American poets of this group was very slight.
Whittier's comment on Browning's _Men and Women_ is amusing:--
"I have only dipped into it, here and there, but it is not exactly
comfortable reading. It seemed to me like a galvanic battery in full
play--its spasmodic utterances and intense passion make me feel as if I
had been taking a bath among electric eels."
Tennyson through his artistic workmanship and poetry of nature exerted more
influence. His Arthurian legends, especially _Sir Galahad_ (1842), seem to
have suggested Lowell's _Vision of Sir Launfal_ (1848). The New England
poets in general looked back to Burns, Wordsworth, Keats, and other members
of the romantic school of poets. Lowell was a great admirer of Keats, and
in early life, like Whittier, was an imitator of Burns.
LEADING HISTORICAL FACTS
As might be inferred from the literature of this period--from Whittier's
early poems, Mrs. Stowe's _Uncle Tom's Cabin_, Lowell's _The Biglow
Papers_, and from emphatic statements in Emerson and Thoreau--the question
of slavery was the most vital one of the time. From 1849, when California,
recently settled by gold seekers, applied for admission as a state, with a
constitution forbidding slavery, until the end of the Civil War in 1865,
slavery was the irrepressible issue of the republic. The Fugitive Slave
Law, which was passed in 1850 to secure the return of slaves from any part
of the United States, was very unpopular at the North and did much to
hasten the war, as did also the decision of the United States Supreme Court
in the Dred Scott case (1857), affirming that slaves were property, not
persons, and could be moved the same as cattle from one state to another.
Various compromise measures between the North and the South were vainly
tried. When Abraham Lincoln was elected President in 1860, South Carolina
led the South in seceding from the Union. In 1861 began the Civil War,
which lasted four years and resulted in the restoration of the Union and
the freeing of the slaves.
Before Holmes, the last member of this New England group, died in 1894,
both North and South had more than regained the material prosperity which
they had enjoyed before the war. The natural resources of the country were
so great and the energy of her sons so remarkable that not only was the
waste of property soon repaired, but a degree of prosperity was reached
which would probably never have been possible without the war. More than
one million human beings perished in the strife. Many of these were from
the more cultured and intellectual classes on both sides. Centuries will
not repair that waste of creative ability in either section. France, after
the lapse of more than two hundred years, is still suffering from the loss
of her Huguenots. It is impossible to compute what American literature has
lost as a result of this war, not only from the double waste involved in
turning the energies of men to destruction and subsequently to the
necessary repairs, but also from the sacrifice of life of those who might
have displayed genius with the pen or furnished an encouraging audience to
the gifted ones who did not speak because there were none to hear.
The development of inventions during this period revolutionized the world's
progress. Cities in various parts of the country had begun to communicate
with each other by electricity, when Thoreau was living at Walden; when
Emerson was writing the second series of his _Essays_; Longfellow, his
lines about cares "folding their tents like the Arabs and as silently
stealing away"; Lowell, his verses _To the Dandelion_; and Holmes, his
complaint that his humor was diminishing his practice. By the time that
Longfellow had finished _The Courtship of Miles Standish_, and Holmes _The
Autocrat of the Breakfast Table_, messages had been cabled across the
Atlantic. A comparison with an event of the preceding period will show the
importance of this method of communication. The treaty of peace to end the
last war with England was signed in Belgium, December 24, 1814. On January
8, 1815, the bloody battle of New Orleans was fought. News of this fight
did not reach Washington until February 4. A week later information of the
treaty of peace was received at New York. A new process of welding the
world together had begun, and this welding was further strengthened by the
invention of that modern miracle, the telephone, in 1876.
The result of the battle between the ironclads, the _Monitor_ and the
_Merrimac_ (1862), led to a change in the navies of the entire world.
Alaska was bought in 1867, and added an area more than two thirds as large
as the United States comprised in 1783. The improvement and extension of
education, the interest in social reform, the beginning of the decline of
the "let alone doctrine," the shortening of the hours of labor, and the
consequent increase in time for self-improvement,--are all especially
important steps of progress in this period.
Authors could no longer complain of small audiences. At the outbreak of the
Civil War the United States had a population of thirty-one millions, while
the combined population of Great Britain and Ireland was then only
twenty-nine millions. Before Holmes passed away in 1894 the population of
1860 had doubled. The passage of an international copyright law in 1891 at
last freed American authors from the necessity of competing with pirated
editions of foreign works.
SUMMARY
The great mid-nineteenth century group of New England writers included
Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, who were often called the Concord group, and
Harriet Beecher Stowe, Daniel Webster, Longfellow, Whittier, Lowell,
Holmes, and the historians, Prescott, Motley, and Parkman.
The causes of this great literary awakening were in some measure akin to
those which produced the Elizabethan age,--a "re-formation" of religious
opinion and a renaissance, seen in a broader culture which did not neglect
poetry, music, art, and the observation of beautiful things.
The philosophy known as transcendentalism left its impress on much of
the work of this age. The transcendentalists believed that human mind
could "transcend" or pass beyond experience and form a conclusion which
was not based on the world of sense. They were intense idealists and
individualists, who despised imitation and repetition, who were full of
the ecstasy of discoveries in a glorious new world, who entered into a
new companionship with nature, and who voiced in ways as different as
_The Dial_ and Brook Farm their desire for an opportunity to live in all
the faculties of the soul.
The fact that the thought of the age was specially modified by the question
of slavery is shown in Webster's orations, Harriet Beecher Stowe's _Uncle
Tom's Cabin_, the poetry of Whittier and Lowell, and to a less degree in
the work of Emerson, Thoreau, and Longfellow.
We have found that Emerson's aim, shown in his _Essays_ and all his prose
work, is the moral development of the individual, the acquisition of
self-reliance, character, spirituality. Some of his nature poetry ranks
with the best produced in America. Thoreau, the poet-naturalist, shows how
to find enchantment in the world of nature. Nathaniel Hawthorne, one of the
great romance writers of the world, has given the Puritan almost as great a
place in literature as in history. In his short stories and romances, this
great artist paints little except the trial and moral development of human
souls in a world where the Ten Commandments are supreme.
Longfellow taught the English-speaking world to love simple poetry. He
mastered the difficult art of making the commonplace seem attractive and of
speaking to the great common heart. His ability to tell in verse stories
like _Evangeline_ and _Hiawatha_ remains unsurpassed among our singers.
Whittier was the great antislavery poet of the North. Like Longfellow, he
spoke simply but more intensely to that overwhelming majority whose lives
stand most in need of poetry. His _Snow-Bound_ makes us feel the moral
greatness of simple New England life. The versatile Lowell has written
exquisite nature poetry in his lyrics and _Vision of Sir Launfal_ and _The
Biglow Papers_. He has produced America's best humorous verse in _The
Biglow Papers_ and _A Fable for Critics_. He is a great critic, and his
prose criticism in _Among My Books_ and the related volumes is stimulating
and interesting. His political prose, of which the best specimen is
_Democracy_, is remarkable for its high ideals. Holmes is especially
distinguished for his humor in such poems as _The Deacon's Masterpiece, or
the Wonderful One-Hoss Shay_ and for the pleasant philosophy and humor in
such artistic prose as _The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table_. He is the
only member of this group who often wrote merely to entertain, but his
_Chambered Nautilus_ shows that he also had a more serious aim.
When we come to the historians, we find that Prescott wrote of the romantic
achievements of Spain in the days of her glory; Motley, of the struggles of
the Dutch Republic to keep religious and civil liberty from disappearing
from this earth; Parkman, of the contest of the English against the French
and Indians to decide whether the institutions and literature of North
America should be French or English.
This New England literature is most remarkable for its moral quality, its
gospel of self-reliance, its high ideals, its call to the soul to build
itself more stately mansions.
REFERENCES FOR FURTHER STUDY
HISTORICAL
For contemporary English history consult the histories mentioned on p. 60.
The chapter on Victorian literature in the author's _History of English
Literature_ gives the trend of literary movements on the other side of the
Atlantic during this period.
Contemporary American history may be traced in the general works listed on
p. 61, or in Woodrow Wilson's _Division and Reunion_.
LITERARY
GENERAL WORKS
In addition to the works of Richardson, Wendell, and Trent (p. 61), the
following may be consulted:--
Nichol's _American Literature_.
Churton Collins's _The Poets and Poetry of America_.
Vincent's _American Literary Masters_.
Stedman's _Poets of America_.
Onderdonk's _History of American Verse_.
Lawton's _The New England Poets_.
Erskine's _Leading American Novelists_. (Mrs. Stowe, Hawthorne.)
Brownell's _American Prose Masters_. (Especially Emerson and Lowell.)
Howells's _Literary Friends and Acquaintance_. (Longfellow, Lowell,
Holmes.)
SPECIAL WORKS
Frothingham's _Transcendentalism in New England_.
Dowden's _Studies in Literature_. (Transcendentalism.)
Swift's _Brook Farm_.
Fields's _The Life and Letters of Harriet Beecher Stowe_.
Lodge's _Daniel Webster_.
Woodberry's _Ralph Waldo Emerson_.
Holmes's _Ralph Waldo Emerson_.
Garnett's _Life of Ralph Waldo Emerson_.
Sanborn's _Ralph Waldo Emerson_.
Cabot's _A Memoir of Ralph Waldo Emerson_, 2 vols.
E. W. Emerson's _Emerson in Concord_.
Lowell's _Emerson the Lecturer_, in _Works_, Vol. I.
Woodbury's _Talks with Ralph Waldo Emerson_.
Sanborn's _Henry David Thoreau_.
Salt's _Life of Henry David Thoreau_.
Channing's _Thoreau, The Poet Naturalist_.
Marble's _Thoreau_, _His Home_, _Friends_, and _Books_.
James Russell Lowell's _Thoreau_, in _Works_, Vol. I.
Burroughs's _Indoor Studies_, Chap. 1., _Henry D. Thoreau_.
Woodberry's _Nathaniel Hawthorne_.
Henry James's _Hawthorne_.
Conway's _Life of Nathaniel Hawthorne_.
Fields's _Nathaniel Hawthorne_.
Julian Hawthorne's _Nathaniel Hawthorne and his Wife_.
George Parsons Lathrop's _A Study of Hawthorne_.
Bridge's _Personal Recollections of Nathaniel Hawthorne_.
Rose Hawthorne Lathrop's _Memories of Hawthorne_.
Julian Hawthorne's _Hawthorne and his Circle_.
Gates's _Studies and Appreciations_. (Hawthorne.)
Canby's _The Short Story in English_, Chap. XII. (Hawthorne.)
Samuel Longfellow's _Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow with Extracts from
his Journals and Correspondence_, 3 vols.
Higginson's _Henry Wadsworth Longfellow_.
Carpenter's _Henry Wadsworth Longfellow_.
Robertson's _Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow_.
Carpenter's _John Greenleaf Whittier_.
Higginson's _John Greenleaf Whittier_.
Perry's _John Greenleaf Whittier_.
Pickard's _Life and Letters of John Greenleaf Whittier_, 2 vols.
Pickard's _Whittier-Land_.
Greenslet's _James Russell Lowell, his Life and Work_.
Hale's _James Russell Lowell_. (_Beacon Biographies_.)
Scudder's _James Russell Lowell, A Biography_, 2 vols.
Hale's _James Russell Lowell and his Friends_.
James Russell Lowell's _Letters_, edited by Charles Eliot Norton.
Morse's _Life and Letters of Oliver Wendell Holmes_, 2 vols.
Haweis's _American Humorists_.
Ticknor's _Life of William Hickling Prescott_.
Ogden's _William Hickling Prescott_.
Peck's _William Hickling Prescott_.
Holmes's _John Lothrop Motley, A Memoir_.
Curtis's _The Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley_.
Sedgwick's _Francis Parkman_.
Farnham's _A Life of Francis Parkman_.
SUGGESTED READINGS
Since the works of the authors of the New England group are nearly always
accessible, it is not usually necessary to specify editions or the exact
place where the readings may be found. Those who prefer to use books of
selections will find that Page's _The Chief American Poets_, 713 pp.,
contains nearly all of the poems recommended for reading. Prose selections
may be found in Carpenter's _American Prose_, and still more extended
selections in Stedman and Hutchinson's _Library of American Literature_.
TRANSCENDENTALISM AND THE DIAL.--Read Emerson's lecture on _The
Transcendentalist_, published in the volume called _Nature, Addresses,
and Lectures_. _The Dial_ is very rare and difficult to obtain outside
of a large library. George Willis Cooke has collected in one volume
under the title, _The Poets of Transcendentalism, An Anthology_ (1903),
341 pp., some of the best of the poems published in _The Dial_, as well
as much transcendental verse that appeared elsewhere.
SLAVERY AND ORATORY.--Selections from _Uncle Tom's Cabin_ may be found in
Carpenter, 312-322; S. & H., VII., 132-144. Webster's _Reply to Hayne_ is
given in Johnston's _American Orations_, Vol. I., 248-302. There are
excellent selections from Webster in Carpenter, 105-118, and S. & H., IV.,
462-469. Selections from the other orators mentioned may be found in
Johnston and S. & H.
EMERSON.--Read from the volume, _Nature, Addresses, and Lectures_, the
chapters called _Nature_, _Beauty_, _Idealism_, and the "literary
declaration of independence" in his lecture, _The American Scholar_. From
the various other volumes of his _Essays_, read _Self-Reliance_,
_Friendship_, _Character_, _Civilization_.
From his nature poetry, read _To Ellen at the South_, _The Rhodora_, _Each
and All_, _The Humble-Bee_, _Woodnotes_, _The Snow-Storm_. For a poetical
exposition of his philosophy, read _The Problem_, _The Sphinx_, and
_Brahma_.
THOREAU.--If possible, read all of _Walden_; if not, Chaps. I., _Economy_,
IV., _Sounds_, and XV., _Winter Animals_ (Riverside Literature Series).
From the volume called _Excursions_, read the essay _Wild Apples_. Many
will be interested to read here and there from his _Notes on New England
Birds_ and from the four volumes, compiled from his _Journal_, describing
the seasons.
HAWTHORNE.--At least one of each of the different types of his short
stories should be read. His power in impressing allegorical or symbolic
truth may be seen in _The Snow Image_ or _The Great Stone Face_. As a
specimen of his New England historical tales, read one or more of the
following: _The Gentle Boy_, _The Maypole of Merry Mount_, _Lady Eleanore's
Mantle_, or even the fantastic _Young Goodman Brown_, which presents the
Puritan idea of witchcraft. For an example of his sketches or narrative
essays, read _The Old Manse_ (the first paper in _Mosses from an Old
Manse_) or the _Introduction_ to _The Scarlet Letter_.
_The Scarlet Letter_ may be left for mature age, but _The House of the
Seven Gables_ should be read by all.
From his books for children, _The Golden Touch (Wonder Book)_ at least
should be read, no matter how old the reader.
LONGFELLOW.--His best narrative poem is _Hiawatha_, and its strongest part
is _The Famine_, beginning:--
"Oh, the long and dreary Winter!"
The opening lines of _Evangeline_ should be read for both the beauty of the
poetry and the novelty of the meter. The first four sections of _The
Courtship of Miles Standish_ should be read for its pictures of the early
days of the first Pilgrim settlement. His best ballads are _The Wreck of
the Hesperus, The Skeleton in Armor, Paul Revere's Ride,_ and _The Birds of
Killingworth._ For specimens of his simple lyrics, which have had such a
wide appeal, read _A Psalm of Life, The Ladder of St. Augustine, The Rainy
Day, The Day is Done, Daybreak, Resignation, Maidenhood, My Lost Youth._
WHITTIER.--Read the whole of _Snow-Bound,_ and for specimens of his shorter
lyrics, _Ichabod_, _The Lost Occasion_, _My Playmate_, _Telling the Bees_,
_The Barefoot Boy_, _In School Days_, _My Triumph_, _An Autograph,_ and
_The Eternal Goodness._ His best ballads are _Maud Muller, Skipper Ireson's
Ride,_ and _Cassandra Southwick._
LOWELL.--From among his shorter lyrical poems, read _Our Love is not a
Fading Earthly Flower, To the Dandelion, The Present Crisis, The First
Snow-Fall, After the Burial, For an Autograph, Prelude to Part I. of The
Vision of Sir Launfal._ From _The Biglow Papers,_ read _What Mr. Robinson
Thinks_ (No. III., _First Series_), _The Courtin'_ (_Introduction_ to
_Second Series_), _Sunthin' in the Pastoral Line_ (No. VI., _Second
Series_). From _A Fable for Critics,_ read the lines on Cooper, Poe, and
Irving.
The five of Lowell's greater literary essays mentioned on page 254 show his
critical powers at their best. The student who wishes shorter selections
may choose those paragraphs which please him and any thoughts from the
political essay _Democracy_ which he thinks his neighbor should know.
HOLMES.--Read The _Deacon's Masterpiece, or the Wonderful One-Hoss Shay_,
_The Ballad of the Oysterman_, _The Boys_, _The Last Leaf,_ and _The
Chambered Nautilus._ From _The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table,_ the
student may select any pages that he thinks his friends would enjoy
hearing.
THE HISTORIANS.--Selections from Prescott, Motley, and Parkman may be found
in Carpenters _American Prose_.
QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS
POETRY.--Compare Emerson's _Woodnotes_ with Bryant's _Thanatopsis_ and _A
Forest Hymn_. Make a comparison of these three poems of motion: _The
Evening Wind_ (Bryant), _The Humble-Bee_ (Emerson), and _Daybreak_
(Longfellow), and give reasons for your preference. Compare in like manner
_The Snow-Storm_ (Emerson), the first sixty-five lines of _Snow-Bound_
(Whittier), and _The First Snow-Fall_ (Lowell). To which of these three
simple lyrics of nature would you award the palm: _To the Fringed Gentian_
(Bryant), _The Rhodora_ (Emerson), _To the Dandelion_ (Lowell)? After
making your choice of these three poems, compare it with these two English
lyrics of the same class: _To a Mountain Daisy_ (Burns), _Daffodils_
(Wordsworth, the poem beginning "I wandered lonely as a cloud"), and again
decide which poem pleases you most.
Compare the humor of these two short poems describing a wooing: _The
Courtin'_ (Lowell), _The Ballad of the Oysterman_ (Holmes). Discuss the
ideals of these four poems: _A Psalm of Life_ (Longfellow), _For an
Autograph_ (Lowell), _An Autograph_ (Whittier), _The Chambered Nautilus_
(Holmes).
What difference in the mental characteristics of the authors do these two
retrospective poems show: _My Lost Youth_ (Longfellow), _Memories_
(Whittier)? For a more complete answer to this question, compare the girls
in these two poems: _Maidenhood_ (Longfellow):--
"Maiden, with the meek, brown eyes,
In whose orbs a shadow lies,"
and _In School Days_ (Whittier), beginning with the lines where he says of
the winter sun long ago:--
"It touched the tangled golden curls,
And brown eyes full of grieving."
Matthew Arnold, that severe English critic, called one of these poems
perfect of its kind, and Oliver Wendell Holmes cried over one of them. The
student who reads these carefully is entitled to rely on his own judgment,
without verifying which poem Arnold and Holmes had in mind.
Compare Longfellow's ballads: _The Skeleton in Armor_, _The Birds of
Killingworth_, and _The Wreck of the Hesperus_, with Whittier's _Skipper
Ireson's Ride_, _Cassandra Southwick_, and _Maud Muller_.
Compare Whittier's _Snow-Bound_ with Burns's _Cotter's Saturday Night_. In
Whittier's poem, what group of lines descriptive of (_a_) nature, and (_b_)
of inmates of the household pleases you most?
What parts of _Hiawatha_ do you consider the best? What might be omitted
without great damage to the poem?
In _The Courtship of Miles Standish_, which incidents or pictures of the
life of the Pilgrims appeal most strongly to you?
What was the underlying purpose in writing _The Biglow Papers_ and
_One-Hoss Shay_? Do we to-day read them chiefly for this purpose or for
other reasons? In what does the humor of each consist?
PROSE.--Why is it said that Mrs. Stowe showed a knowledge of psychological
values? What were the chief causes of the influence of _Uncle Tom's Cabin_?
What are Webster's chief characteristics? Why does he retain his
preeminence among American orators?
What transcendental qualities does Emerson's prose show? From any of his
_Essays_ select thoughts which justify Tyndall's (p. 192) statement about
Emerson's stimulating power. What passages show him to be a great moral
teacher?
What was Thoreau's object in going to Walden? Of what is he the
interpreter? What was his mission? What passages in _Walden_ please you
most? What is the reason for such a steady increase in Thoreau's
popularity?
Point out the allegory or symbolism in any of Hawthorne's tales. Which of
his short stories do you like best? What is Hawthorne's special aim in _The
Snow Image_ and _The Gentle Boy_? What qualities give special charm to
sketches like _The Old Manse_ and the _Introduction_ to _The Scarlet
Letter_? What is the underlying motive to be worked out in _The House of
the Seven Gables_? Why is it said that the Ten Commandments reign supreme
in Hawthorne's world of fiction? Was he a classicist or a romanticist (p.
219)? What qualities do you notice in his style?
In Lowell's critical essays, what unusual turns of thought do you find to
challenge your attention? Does he employ humor in his serious criticism?
What most impresses you in reading selections from _The Autocrat of the
Breakfast Table_, the humor, sprightliness, and variety of the thought, or
the style? What especially satisfactory pages have you found?
Make a comparison (_a_) of the picturesqueness and color, (_b_) of the
energy of presentation, (_c_) of the power to develop interest, and (_d_)
of the style, shown in the selections which you have chosen from Prescott,
Motley, and Parkman. Compare their style with that of Macaulay in his
_History of England_.
CHAPTER V
SOUTHERN LITERATURE
PLANTATION LIFE AND ITS EFFECT UPON LITERATURE.--Before the war the South
was agricultural. The wealth was in the hands of scattered plantation
owners, and less centered in cities than at the North. The result was a
rural aristocracy of rich planters, many of them of the highest breeding
and culture. A retinue of slaves attended to their work and relieved them
from all manual labor. The masters took an active part in public life,
traveled and entertained on a lavish scale. Their guests were usually
wealthy men of the same rank, who had similar ideals and ambitions.
Gracious and attractive as this life made the people, it did not bring in
new thought, outside influences, or variety. Men continued to think like
their fathers. The transcendental movement which aroused New England was
scarcely felt as far south as Virginia. The tide of commercial activity
which swept over the East and sent men to explore the West did not affect
the character of life at the South. It was separated from every other
section of the country by a conservative spirit, an objection to change,
and a tendency toward aristocracy.
Such conditions retarded the growth of literature. There were no novel
ideas that men felt compelled to utter, as in New England. There was little
town life to bring together all classes of men. Such life has always been
found essential to literary production. Finally, there was inevitably
connected with plantation life a serious question, which occupied men's
thoughts.
SLAVERY.--The question that absorbed the attention of the best southern
intellect was slavery. In order to maintain the vast estates of the South,
it was necessary to continue the institution of slavery. Many southern men
had been anxious to abolish it, but, as time proceeded, they were less able
to see how the step could be taken. As a Virginian statesman expressed it,
they were holding a wolf by the ears, and it was as dangerous to let him go
as to hold on. At the North, slavery was an abstract question of moral
right or wrong, which inspired poets and novelists; at the South, slavery
was a matter of expediency, even of livelihood. Instead of serving as an
incentive to literary activity, the discussion of slavery led men farther
away from the channels of literature into the stream of practical politics.
POLITICAL VERSUS LITERARY AMBITIONS.--The natural ambition of the southern
gentleman was political. The South was proud of its famous orators and
generals in Revolutionary times and of its long line of statesmen and
Presidents, who took such a prominent part in establishing and maintaining
the republic. We have seen (p. 68) that Thomas Jefferson of Virginia wrote
one of the most memorable political documents in the world, that James
Madison, a Virginian President of the United States, aided in producing the
_Federalist_ papers (p. 71), that George Washington's _Farewell Address_
(p. 100) deals with such vital matters as morality almost entirely from a
political point of view. Although the South produced before the Civil War a
world-famous author in Edgar Allan Poe, her glorious achievements were
nevertheless mainly political, and she especially desired to maintain her
former reputation in the political world. The law and not literature was
therefore the avenue to the southerner's ambition.
Long before the Civil War, slavery became an unusually live subject. There
was always some political move to discuss in connection with slavery; such,
for instance, as the constitutional interpretation of the whole question,
the necessity of balancing the admission of free and slave states to the
Union, the war with Mexico, the division of the new territory secured in
that conflict, the right of a state to secede from the Union. Consequently,
in ante bellum days, the brilliant young men of the South had, like their
famous ancestors of Revolutionary times, abundance of material for
political and legal exposition, and continued to devote their attention to
public questions, to law, and to oratory, instead of to pure literature.
They talked while the North wrote.
In the days before the war, literature suffered also because the wealthy
classes at the South did not regard it as a dignified profession. Those who
could write often published their work anonymously. Richard Henry Wilde
(1789-1847), a young lawyer, wrote verses that won Byron's praise, and yet
did not acknowledge them until some twenty years later. Sometimes authors
tried to suppress the very work by which their names are to-day
perpetuated. When a Virginian found that the writer of
"Thou wast lovelier than the roses
In their prime;
Thy voice excelled the closes
Of sweetest rhyme;"
was his neighbor, Philip Pendleton Cooke (1816-1850), he said to the young
poet, "I wouldn't waste time on a thing like poetry; you might make
yourself, with all your sense and judgment, a useful man in settling
neighborhood disputes." A newspaper in Richmond, Virginia, kept a standing
offer to publish poetry for one dollar a line.
EDUCATIONAL HANDICAPS.--Before the war there was no universal free common
school system, as at present, to prepare for higher institutions. The
children of rich families had private tutors, but the poor frequently went
without any schooling. William Gilmore Simms (p. 306) says that he "learned
little or nothing" at a public school, and that not one of his instructors
could teach him arithmetic. Lack of common educational facilities decreased
readers as well as writers.
Until after the war, whatever literature was read by the cultured classes
was usually English. The classical school of Dryden and Pope and the
eighteenth century English essayists were especially popular. American
literature was generally considered trashy or unimportant. So conservative
was the South in its opinions, that individuality in literature was often
considered an offense against good taste. This was precisely the attitude
of the classical school in England during a large part of the eighteenth
century. Until after the Civil War, therefore, the South offered few
inducements to follow literature as a profession.
THE NEW SOUTH.--After the South had passed through the terrible struggle of
the Civil War, in which much of her best blood perished, there followed the
tragic days of the reconstruction. These were times of readjustment, when a
wholly new method of life had to be undertaken by a conservative people;
when the uncertain position of the negro led to frequent trouble; when the
unscrupulous politician, guided only by desire for personal gain, played on
the ignorance of the poor whites and the enfranchised negroes, and almost
wrecked the commonwealth. Had Lincoln lived to direct affairs after the
war, much suffering might have been avoided, and the wounds of the South
might have been more speedily healed.
These days, however, finally passed, and the South began to adapt herself
to the changed conditions of modern life. In these years of transition
since the Civil War, a new South has been evolved. Cities are growing
rapidly. Some parts of the South are developing even faster than any other
sections of the country. Men are running mills as well as driving the plow.
Small farms have often taken the place of the large plantation. A system of
free public schools has been developed, and compulsory education for all
has been demanded. Excellent higher institutions of learning have
multiplied. Writers and a reading public, both with progressive ideals,
have rapidly increased. In short, the South, like the East and the West,
has become more democratic and industrial, less completely agricultural,
and has paid more attention to the education of the masses.
It would, however, be a mistake to suppose that the southern conservatism,
which had been fostered for generations, could at once be effaced. The
South still retains much of her innate love of aristocracy, loyalty to
tradition, disinclination to be guided by merely practical aims, and
aversion to rapid change. This condition is due partly to the fact that the
original conservative English stock, which is still dominant, has been more
persistent there and less modified by foreign immigration.
CHARACTERISTICS OF SOUTHERN LITERATURE.--The one who studies the greatest
authors of the South soon finds them worthy of note for certain qualities.
Poe was cosmopolitan enough to appeal to foreign lands even more forcibly
than to America, and yet we shall find that he has won the admiration of a
great part of the world for characteristics, many of which are too
essentially southern to be possessed in the same degree by authors in other
sections of the country. The poets of the South have placed special
emphasis on (1) melody, (2) beauty, (3) artistic workmanship. In creations
embodying a combination of such qualities, Poe shows wonderful mastery.
More than any other American poet, he has cast on the reader
"... the spell which no slumber
Of witchery may test,
The rhythmical number
Which lull'd him to rest."
After reading Poe and Lanier, we feel that we can say to the South what Poe
whispered to the fair Ligeia:--
"No magic shall sever
Thy music from thee."
The wealth of sunshine flooding the southern plains, the luxuriance of the
foliage and the flowers, and the strong contrasts of light and shade and
color are often reflected in the work of southern writers. Such verse as
this is characteristic:--
"Beyond the light that would not die
Out of the scarlet-haunted sky,
Beyond the evening star's white eye
Of glittering chalcedony,
Drained out of dusk the plaintive cry
Of 'whippoorwill!' of 'whippoorwill!'"
[Footnote: Cawein, _Red Leaves and Roses_.]
In the work of her later writers of fiction, the South has presented, often
in a realistic setting of natural scenes, a romantic picture of the life
distinctive of the various sections,--of the Creoles of Louisiana, of the
mountaineers of Tennessee, of the blue grass region of Kentucky, of
Virginia in the golden days, and of the Georgia negro, whose folk lore and
philosophy are voiced by Uncle Remus.
EDGAR ALLAN POE, 1809-1849
[Illustration: EDGAR ALLAN POE]
EARLY LIFE.--The most famous of all southern writers and one of the world's
greatest literary artists happened to be born in Boston because his
parents, who were strolling actors, had come there to fill an engagement.
His grandfather, Daniel Poe, a citizen of Baltimore, was a general in the
Revolution. His service to his country was sufficiently noteworthy to cause
Lafayette to kneel at the old general's grave and say, "Here reposes a
noble heart."