An orphan before he was three years old,_History of American Literature

John Allan of Richmond, Virginia. In 1815, at the close of the War of 1812,

his foster parents went to England and took him with them. He was given a

school reader and two spelling books with which to amuse himself during the

long sailing voyage across the ocean. He was placed for five years in the

Manor School House, a boarding school, at Stoke Newington, a suburb of

London. Here, he could walk by the very house in which Defoe wrote

_Robinson Crusoe_. But nothing could make up to Poe the loss of a mother

and home training during those five critical years. The head master said

that Poe was clever, but spoiled by "an extravagant amount of pocket

money." The contrast between his school days and adult life should be

noted. We shall never hear of his having too much money after he became an

author.

In 1820 the boy returned with the Allans to Richmond, where he prepared for

college, and at the age of seventeen entered the University of Virginia.

"Here," his biographer says, "he divided his time, after the custom of

undergraduates, between the recitation room, the punch bowl, the

card-table, athletic sports, and pedestrianism." Although Poe does not seem

to have been censured by the faculty, Mr. Allan was displeased with his

record, removed him from college, and placed him in his counting house.

This act and other causes, which have never been fully ascertained, led Poe

to leave Mr. Allan's home.

Poe then went to Boston, where, at the age of eighteen, he published a thin

volume entitled _Tamerlane and Other Poems_. Disappointed at not being able

to live by his pen, he served two years in the army as a common soldier,

giving both an assumed name and age. He finally secured an appointment to

West Point after he was slightly beyond the legal age of entrance. The

cadets said in a joking way that Poe had secured the appointment for his

son, but that the father substituted himself after the boy died. Feeling an

insatiable ambition to become an author, Poe neglected his duties at West

Point, and he was, fortunately for literature, discharged at the age of

twenty-two.

HIS GREAT STRUGGLE.--Soon after leaving West Point, Poe went to his kindred

in Baltimore. In a garret in that southern city, he first discovered his

power in writing prose tales. In 1833 his story, _MS. Found in a Bottle_,

won a prize of one hundred dollars offered by a Baltimore paper. In 1834

Mr. Allan died without mentioning Poe in his will; and in spite of his

utmost literary efforts, Poe had to borrow money to keep from starving.

After struggling for four years in Baltimore, he went to Richmond and

became editor of the _Southern Literary Messenger_. He worked very hard in

this position, sometimes contributing to a single number as much as forty

pages of matter, mostly editorials and criticisms of books. In Baltimore he

had tested his power of writing short stories, but in Richmond his work

laid the foundation of his reputation as a literary critic. While here, he

married his cousin, Virginia Clemm. Perhaps it was irregular habits that

caused him to lose the profitable editorship of the _Messenger_ soon after

he married. Let us remember, however, that his mother-in-law was charitable

enough not to unveil his weakness. "At home," she said, "he was as simple

and affectionate as a child."

[Illustration: POE'S COTTAGE, FORDHAM, NEW YORK]

The principal part of the rest of his life was passed in Philadelphia and

New York, where he served as editor of various periodicals and wrote

stories and poems. In the former city, he wrote most of the tales for which

he is to-day famous. With the publication of his poem, _The Raven_, in New

York in 1845, he reached the summit of his fame. In that year he wrote to a

friend, "_The Raven_ has had a great 'run'--but I wrote it for the express

purpose of running--just as I did _The Gold Bug_, you know. The bird beat

the bug, though, all hollow." And yet, in spite of his fame, he said in the

same year, "I have made no money. I am as poor now as ever I was in my

life."

The truth was that it would then have been difficult for the most

successful author to live even in the North without a salaried position,

and conditions were worse in the South. Like Hawthorne, Poe tried to get a

position in a customhouse, but failed.

[Illustration: VIRGINIA CLEMM]

He moved to an inexpensive cottage in Fordham, a short distance from New

York City, where he, his wife, and mother-in-law found themselves in 1846

in absolute want of food and warmth. The saddest scene in which any great

American author figured was witnessed in that cottage in "the bleak

December," when his wife, Virginia, lay dying in the bitter cold. Because

there was insufficient bed clothing to keep her warm, Poe gave her his coat

and placed the family cat upon her to add its warmth.

Her death made him almost completely irresponsible. The stunning effect of

the blow may be seen in the wandering lines of _Ulalume_ (1847). The end

came to him in Baltimore in 1849, the same year in which he wrote the

beautiful dirge of _Annabel Lee_ for his dead wife. He was only forty when

he died. This greatest literary genius of the South was buried in Baltimore

in a grave that remained unmarked for twenty-six years.

In anticipation of his end, he had written the lines:--

"And oh! of all tortures,--

_That_ torture the worst

Has abated--the terrible

Torture of thirst

For the napthaline river

Of Passion accurst:--

I have drank of a water

That quenches all thirst."

HIS TALES.--He wrote more than sixty tales, some of which rank among the

world's greatest short stories. The most important of these productions may

be classified as tales (1) of the supernatural, like _The Fall of the House

of Usher_ and _Ligeia_, (2) of conscience, like _William Wilson_, that

remarkable forerunner of _Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_, (3) of pseudo-science,

like _A Descent into the Maelstrom_, (4) of analysis or ratiocination, like

_The Gold Bug_ and that wonderful analytical detective story, the first of

its kind, _The Murders in the Rue Morgue_, the predecessor of later

detective stories, like _The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes_, and (5) of

natural beauty, like _The Domain of Arnheim_.

This classification does not include all of his types, for his powerful

story, _The Pit and the Pendulum_, does not belong to any of these classes.

He shows remarkable versatility in passing from one type of story to

another. He could turn from a tale of the supernatural to write a model for

future authors of realistic detective stories. He could solve difficult

riddles with masterly analysis, and in his next story place a

conscience-stricken wretch on the rack and then turn away calmly to write a

tale of natural beauty. He specially liked to invest an impossible story

with scientific reality, and he employed Defoe's specific concrete method

of mingling fact with fiction. With all the seriousness of a teacher of

physics, Poe describes the lunar trip of one Hans Pfaall with his balloon,

air-condenser, and cat. He tells how the old cat had difficulty in

breathing at a vast altitude, while the kittens, born on the upward

journey, and never used to a dense atmosphere, suffered little

inconvenience from the rarefaction. He relates in detail the accident which

led to the detachment from the balloon of the basket containing the cat and

kittens, and we find it impossible not to be interested in their fate. He

had the skill of a wizard in presenting in remarkably brief compass

suggestion after suggestion to invest his tales with the proper atmosphere

and to hypnotize the reader into an unresisting acceptance of the march of

events. Even a hostile critic calls him "a conjuror who does not need to

have the lights turned down."

In one respect his tales are alike, for they are all romantic (p. 88) and

deal with the unusual, the terrible, or the supernatural. Some of these

materials suggest Charles Brockden Brown (p. 89), but Poe, working with the

genius of a master artist, easily surpassed him.

HIS DEVELOPMENT OF THE MODERN SHORT STORY.--Poe has an almost world-wide

reputation for the part which he played in developing the modern short

story. The ancient Greeks had short stories, and Irving had written

delightful ones while Poe was still a child; but Poe gave this type of

literature its modern form. He banished the little essays, the moralizing,

and the philosophizing, which his predecessors, and even his great

contemporary, Hawthorne, had scattered through their short stories. Poe's

aim in writing a short story was to secure by the shortest air-line passage

the precise effect which he desired. He was a great literary critic, and

his essays, _The Philosophy of Composition_ and _The Poetic Principle_,

with all their aberrations, have become classic; but his most famous piece

of criticism--almost epoch-making, so far as the short story is

concerned--is the following:--

"A skillful literary artist has constructed a tale. If wise, he has not

fashioned his thoughts to accommodate his incidents; but having

conceived, with deliberate care, a certain unique or single _effect_ to

be wrought out, he then invents such incidents,--he then combines such

events as may best aid him in establishing this preconceived effect. If

his very initial sentence tend not to the outbringing of this effect,

then he has failed in his first step. In the whole composition there

should be no word written, of which the tendency, direct or indirect, is

not to the one pre-established design."

Poe's greatest supernatural tale, _The Fall of the House of Usher_, should

be read in connection with this criticism. His initial sentence thus

indicates the atmosphere of the story:--

"During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the

year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been

passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of

country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew

on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher."

Each following stroke of the master's brush adds to the desired effect. The

black and lurid tarn, Roderick Usher with his mental disorder, his sister

Madeline, subject to trances, buried prematurely in a vault directly

underneath the guest's room, the midnight winds blowing from every

direction toward the House of Usher, the chance reading of a sentence from

an old and musty volume, telling of a mysterious noise, the hearing of a

muffled sound and the terrible suggestion of its cause,--all tend to

indicate and heighten the gloom of the final catastrophe.

In one of his great stories, which is not supernatural, _The Pit and the

Pendulum_, he desires to impress the reader with the horrors of medieval

punishment. We may wonder why the underground dungeon is so large, why the

ceiling is thirty feet high, why a pendulum appears from an opening in that

ceiling. But we know when the dim light, purposely admitted from above,

discloses the prisoner strapped immovably on his back, and reveals the

giant pendulum, edged with the sharpest steel, slowly descending, its arc

of vibration increasing as the terrible edge almost imperceptibly

approaches the prisoner. We find ourselves bound with him, suffering from

the slow torture. We would escape into the upper air if we could, but Poe's

hypnotic power holds us as helpless as a child while that terrible edge

descends.

A comparison of these stories and the most successful ones published since

Poe's time, on the one hand, with those written by Irving or Hawthorne, on

the other, will show the influence of Poe's technique in making almost a

new creation of the modern short story.

[Illustration: HOUSE WHERE POE WROTE "THE RAVEN"

(Near Eighty-fourth Street, New York)]

POETRY.--Poe wrote a comparatively small amount of verse. Of the

forty-eight poems which he is known to have written, not more than nine are

masterpieces, and all of these are short. It was a favorite article of his

poetic creed that there could be no such creation as a long poem, that such

a poem would in reality be a series of poems. He thought that each poem

should cause only one definite emotional impression, and that a long poem

would lack the necessary unity. He says that he determined in advance that

_The Raven_ should contain about one hundred lines.

His poetic aim was solely "the creation of beauty." He says:--

"Regarding, then, Beauty as my province, my next question referred to the

_tone_ of its highest manifestation; and all experience has shown that

this tone is one of _sadness_. Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme

development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears. Melancholy

is thus the most legitimate of all the poetical tones."

[Footnote: _The Philosophy of Composition_.]

He then concludes that death is the most melancholy subject available for a

poet, and that the death of a beautiful woman "is unquestionably the most

poetical topic in the world." From the popularity of _The Raven_ at home

and abroad, in comparison with other American poems, it would seem as if

the many agreed with Poe and felt the fascination of the burden of his

song:--

"Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,

It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore--

Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore."

[Illustration: FACSIMILE OF FIRST STANZA OF ANNABEL LEE]

His most beautiful poem, _Annabel Lee_, is the dirge written for his wife,

and it is the one great poem in which he sounds this note of lasting

triumph:--

"And neither the angels in heaven above,

Nor the demons down under the sea,

Can ever dissever my soul from the soul

Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE."

A few of his great poems, like _Israfel_ and _The Bells_, do not sing of

death, but most of them make us feel the presence of the great Shadow. The

following lines show that it would be wrong to say, as some do, that his

thoughts never pass beyond it:--

"And all my days are trances,

And all my nightly dreams

Are where thy dark eye glances,

And where thy footstep gleams--

In what ethereal dances,

By what eternal streams."

[Footnote: _To One in Paradise_.]

It would be difficult to name a poet of any race or age who has surpassed

Poe in exquisite melody. His liquid notes soften the harshness of death. No

matter what his theme, his verse has something of the quality which he

ascribes to the fair Ligeia:--

"Ligeia! Ligeia!

My beautiful one!

Whose harshest idea

Will to melody run."

The fascination of his verse is not due to the depth of thought, to the

spiritual penetration of his imagination, or to the poetic setting of noble

ideals, for he lacked these qualities; but he was a master in securing

emotional effects with his sad music. He wedded his songs of the death of

beautiful women to the most wonderful melodies, which at times almost

transcend the limits of language and pass into the realm of pure music. His

verses are not all-sufficient for the hunger of the soul; but they supply

an element in which Puritan literature was too often lacking, and they

justify the transcendental doctrine that beauty is its own excuse for

being.

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS.--Poe was a great literary artist, who thought that

the creation of beauty was the object of every form of the highest art. His

aim in both prose and poetry was to produce a pronounced effect by artistic

means. His continued wide circulation shows that he was successful in his

aim. An English publisher recently said that he sold in one year 29,000 of

Poe's tales, or about three times as many of them as of any other

American's work.

The success with which Poe met in producing an effect upon the minds of his

readers makes him worthy of careful study by all writers and speakers, who

desire to make a vivid impression. Poe selected with great care the point

which he wished to emphasize. He then discarded everything which did not

serve to draw attention to that point. On his stage the colored lights may

come from many different directions, but they all focus on one object.

Hawthorne and Poe, two of the world's great short-story writers, were

remarkably unlike in their aims. Hawthorne saw everything in the light of

moral consequences. Poe cared nothing for moral issues, except in so far as

the immoral was ugly. Hawthorne appreciated beauty only as a true

revelation of the inner life. Poe loved beauty and the melody of sound for

their own attractiveness. His effects, unlike Hawthorne's, were more

physical than moral. Poe exalted the merely technical and formal side of

literary excellence more than Hawthorne.

Poe's prose style is direct, energetic, clear, and adequate to the

occasion. His mind was too analytic to overload his sentences with

ornament, and too definite to be obscure. He had the same aim in his style

as in his subject matter,--to secure an effect with the least obstruction.

[Illustration: BUST OF POE IN UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA]

His poetry is of narrower range than his prose, but his greatest poems hold

a unique position for an unusual combination of beauty, melody, and

sadness. He retouched and polished them from year to year, until they stand

unsurpassed in their restricted field. He received only ten dollars for

_The Raven_ while he was alive, but the appreciation of his verse has

increased to such an extent that the sum of two thousand dollars was

recently paid for a copy of the thin little 1827 edition of his poems.

It has been humorously said that the French pray to Poe as a literary

saint. They have never ceased to wonder at the unusual combination of his

analytic reasoning power with his genius for imaginative presentation of

romantic materials,--at the realism of his touch and the romanticism of his

thought. It is true that many foreign critics consider Poe America's

greatest author. An eminent English critic says that Poe has surpassed all

the rest of our writers in playing the part of the Pied Piper of Hamelin to

other authors. At home, however, there have been repeated attempts to

disbar Poe from the court of great writers. Not until 1910 did the board of

electors vote him a tablet in the Hall of Fame for Great Americans.

It may be admitted that Poe was a technical artist, that his main object

was effectiveness of impression and beauty of form, that he was not

overanxious about the worth of his subject matter to an aspiring soul, and

that he would have been vastly greater if he had joined high moral aim to

his quest of beauty. He overemphasized the romantic elements of

strangeness, sadness, and horror. He was deficient in humor and sentiment,

and his guiding standards of criticism often seem too coldly intellectual.

Those critics who test him exclusively by the old Puritan standards

invariably find him wanting, for the Puritans had no room in their world

for the merely beautiful.

Poe's genius, however, was sufficiently remarkable to triumph over these

defects, which would have consigned to oblivion other writers of less

power. In spite of the most determined hostile criticism that an American

author has ever known, the editions of Poe's works continue to increase.

The circle of those who fall under his hypnotic charm, in which there is

nothing base or unclean, is enlarged with the passing of the years. As a

great literary craftsman, he continues to teach others. He is now not

likely to be dislodged from that peculiar, narrow field where he holds a

unique and original position among the great writers of the world.

WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS, 1806-1870

William Gilmore Simms, often styled the "Cooper of the South," was born of

poor parents in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1806. His mother died when

he was very young, and his father moved west into the wilds of Mississippi.

The boy was left behind to be reared by his grandmother, a poor but clever

woman, who related to him tales of the Revolutionary War, through which she

had lived. During a visit to his father, these tales were supplemented by

stories of contemporary life on the borders of civilization. In this way

Simms acquired a large part of the material for his romances.

[Illustration: WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS]

He prospered financially, married well, became the owner of a fine estate,

and bent every effort to further southern literature and assist southern

writers. He became the center of a group of literary men in Charleston, of

whom Hayne and Timrod were the most famous. The war, however, ruined Simms.

His property and library were destroyed, and, though he continued to write,

he never found his place in the new order of life. He failed to catch the

public ear of a people satiated with fighting and hair-raising adventures.

He survived but six years, and died in Charleston in 1870.

Being of humble birth, Simms lacked the advantage of proper schooling.

Although he was surrounded by aristocratic and exclusive society, he did

not have the association of a literary center, such as the Concord and

Cambridge writers enjoyed. He found no publishers nearer than New York, to

which city he personally had to carry his manuscripts for publication. Yet

with all these handicaps, he achieved fame for himself and his loved

Southland. This victory over adverse conditions was won by sheer force of

indomitable will, by tremendous activity, and by a great, honest, generous

nature.

His writings show an abounding energy and versatility. He wrote poetry,

prose fiction, historical essays, and political pamphlets, and amazed his

publishers by his speed in composition. His best work is _The Yemassee_

(1835), a story of the uprising of the Indians in Carolina. The midnight

massacre, the fight at the blockhouse, and the blood-curdling description

of the dishonoring of the Indian chief's son are told with infectious vigor

and rapidity. _The Partisan_ (1835), _Katherine Walton_ (1851), and _The

Sword and Distaff_ (1852), afterwards called _Woodcraft_, also show his

ability to tell exciting tales, to understand Indian character, and to

commemorate historical events in thrilling narratives.

Simms wrote rapidly and carelessly. He makes mistakes in grammar and

construction, and is often stilted and grandiloquent. All of his romances

are stories of adventure which are enjoyed by boys, but not much read by

others. Nevertheless, his best works fill a large place in southern

literature and history. They tell in an interesting way the life of the

border states, of southern crossroads towns, of colonial wars, and of

Indian customs. What Cooper did for the North, Simms accomplished for the

South. He lacked Cooper's skill and variety of invention, and he created no

character to compare with Cooper's Leatherstocking; but he excelled Cooper

in the more realistic portrayal of Indian character.

HENRY TIMROD, 1829-1867

[Illustration: HENRY TIMROD]

Henry Timrod was born in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1829. He attended

the University of Georgia; but was prevented by delicate health and poverty

from taking his degree. He was early thrown upon his own resources to earn

a livelihood, and having tried law and found it distasteful, he depended

upon teaching and writing. His verses were well received, but the times

preceding the Civil War were not propitious for a poor poet. As he was not

strong enough to bear arms at the outbreak of hostilities, he went to the

field as a war correspondent for a newspaper in Charleston and he became

later an associate editor in Columbia. His printing office was demolished

in Sherman's march to the sea, and at the close of the war Timrod was left

in a desperate condition. He was hopelessly ill from consumption; he was in

the direst poverty; and he was saddened by the death of his son. There was

no relief for Timrod until death released him from his misery in 1867. Yet

in spite of all his trials, he desired earnestly to live, and when his

sister told him that death would, at least, bring him rest, he replied,

"Yes, my sister, but love is sweeter than rest."

Timrod's one small volume of poetry contains some of the most spontaneous

nature and love lyrics in the South. In this stanza to _Spring_, the

directness and simplicity of his manner may be seen:--

"In the deep heart of every forest tree

The blood is all aglee,

And there's a look about the leafless bowers

As if they dreamed of flowers."

He says in _A Vision of Poesy_ that the poet's mission is to

"... turn life's tasteless waters into wine,

And flush them through and through with purple tints."

His best known and most original poem is _The Cotton Boll_. This

description of the wide stretches of a white cotton field is one of the

best in the poem. He shows the field

"... lost afar

Behind the crimson hills and purple lawns

Of sunset, among plains which roll their streams

Against the Evening Star!

And lo!

To the remotest point of sight,

Although I gaze upon no waste of snow,

The endless field is white;

And the whole landscape glows,

For many a shining league away,

With such accumulated light

As Polar lands would flash beneath a tropic day!"

Simplicity and sincerity in language, theme, and feeling are special

characteristics of Timrod's verse. His lyrics are short and their volume

slight, but a few of them, like _Spring_ and _The Lily Confidante_, seem

almost to have sung themselves. So vivid is his reproduction of the spirit

of the awakening year in his poem _Spring_, that, to quote his own lines:--

"... you scarce would start,

If from a beech's heart,

A blue-eyed Dryad, stepping forth, should say,

'Behold me! I am May.'"

Timrod shows the same qualities of simplicity, directness, and genuine

feeling in his war poetry. No more ringing lines were written for the

southern cause during the Civil War than are to be found in his poems,

_Carolina_ and _Ethnogenesis_.

PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE, 1830-1886

[Illustration: PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE]

Paul Hamilton Hayne was born in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1830. His

family was rich and influential, and he inherited a fortune in his own

right. After graduating at Charleston College, he studied law, but devoted

his independent leisure entirely to literature. He became associated with

_The Southern Literary Gazette_, and was the first editor of _Russell's

Magazine_, an ambitious venture launched by the literary circle at the

house of Simms. Hayne married happily, and had every prospect of a

prosperous and brilliant career when the war broke out. He enlisted, but

his health soon failed, and at the close of the war he found himself an

invalid with his fortune destroyed. He went to the Pine Barrens of Georgia,

where he built, on land which he named Copse Hill, a hut nearly as rude as

Thoreau's at Walden. Handicapped by poverty and disease, Hayne lived here

during the remainder of his life, writing his best poems on a desk

fashioned out of a workbench. He died in 1886.

Hayne wrote a large amount of poetry, and tried many forms of verse, in

almost all of which he maintained a smoothness of meter, a correctness of

rhyme, and, in general, a high level of artistic finish. He is a skilled

craftsman, his ear is finely attuned to harmonious arrangements of sounds,

and he shows an acquaintance with the best melodists in English poetry. The

limpid ease and grace in his lines may be judged by this dainty poem:--

"A tiny rift within the lute

May sometimes make the music mute!

By slow degrees, the rift grows wide,

By slow degrees, the tender tide--

Harmonious once--of loving thought

Becomes with harsher measures fraught,

Until the heart's Arcadian breath

Lapses thro' discord into death!"

His best poems are nature lyrics. In _The Woodland Phases_, one of the

finest of these, he tells how nature is to him a revelation of the

divine:--

"And midway, betwixt heaven and us,

Stands Nature in her fadeless grace,

Still pointing to our Father's house,

His glory on her mystic face."

Hayne found the inspiration for his verse in the scenes about his forest

home: in the "fairy South Wind" that "floateth on the subtle wings of

balm," in

"... the one small glimmering rill

That twinkles like a wood-fay's mirthful eye,"

in the solitary lake

"Shrined in the woodland's secret heart,"

"His blasted pines, smit by the fiery West,

Uptowering rank on rank, like Titan spears,"

in the storm among the Georgian hills, in the twilight, that

"... on her virginal throat

Wears for a gem the tremulous vesper star,"

and in the mocking-birds, whose

"... love notes fill the enchanted land;

Through leaf-wrought bars they storm the stars,

These love songs of the mocking-birds!"

The chief characteristics of his finest poetry are a tender love of nature,

a profusion of figurative language, and a gentle air of meditation.

SIDNEY LANIER, 1842-1881

[Illustration: SIDNEY LANIER]

LIFE.--Sidney Lanier was the product of a long line of cultured ancestors,

among whom appeared, both in England and America, men of striking musical

and artistic ability. He was born in Macon, Georgia, in 1842. He served in

the Confederate army during the four years of the war, and was taken

prisoner and exposed to the hardest conditions, both during his confinement

and after his release. The remainder of his life was a losing fight against

the ravages of consumption.

He was fairly successful for a short time in his father's law office; but

if ever a man believed that it was his duty to devote his every breath to

the gift of music and poetry bestowed upon him, that man was Lanier. His

wife agreed with him in his ideals and faith, so in 1873 he left his family

in Georgia and went to Baltimore, the land of libraries and orchestras. He

secured the position of first flute in the Peabody orchestra, and, by sheer

force of genius, took up the most difficult scores and faultlessly led all

the flutes. He read and studied, wrote and lectured like one who had

suffered from mental starvation. In 1879 he received the appointment of

lecturer on English literature at the Johns Hopkins University, a position

which his friends had long wished to see him fill. He held it only two

years, however, before his death. His health had fast been failing. He

wrote part of the time while lying on his back, and, because of physical

weakness, he delivered some of his lectures in whispers. In search of

relief, he was taken to Florida, Texas, and North Carolina, but no

permanent benefit came, and he died in his temporary quarters in North

Carolina in 1881.

Works.--Lanier wrote both prose and poetry. His prose comprises books for

children and critical studies. _The Science of English Verse_ (1880) and

_The English Novel_ (1883) are of interest because of their clear setting

forth of his theory of versification and art. In his poetry he strives to

embody the ideals proclaimed in his prose work, which are, first, to write

nothing that is not moral and elevating in tone, and, second, to express

himself in versification which is obedient to the laws of regular musical

composition, in rhyme, rhythm, vowel assonance, alliteration, and

phrasings.

Lanier's creed, that the poet should be an inspiration for good to his

readers, is found in his lines:--

"The artist's market is the heart of man,

The artist's price some little good of man."

The great inspiration of his life was love, and he has some fine love

poems, such as _My Springs_, _In Absence_, _Evening Song_, and _Laus

Mariae_. In _The Symphony_, which voices the social sorrow for the

overworked and downtrodden, he says the problem is not one for the head but

the heart:--

"Vainly might Plato's brain revolve it,

Plainly the heart of a child could solve it."

In ending the poem, he says that even

"Music is Love in search of a word."

Strong personal love, tender pitying love for humanity, impassioned love of

nature, and a reverent love of God are found in Lanier.

The striking musical quality of Lanier's best verse is seen in these

stanzas from _Tampa Robins_:--

"The robin laughed in the orange-tree:

'Ho, windy North, a fig for thee:

While breasts are red and wings are bold

And green trees wave us globes of gold,

Time's scythe shall reap but bliss for me

--Sunlight, song, and the orange-tree.

* * * * *

"'I'll south with the sun and keep my clime;

My wing is king of the summer-time;

My breast to the sun his torch shall hold;

And I'll call down through the green and gold,

_Time, take thy scythe, reap bliss for me,

Bestir thee under the orange-tree_.'"

The music of the bird, the sparkle of the sunlight, and the pure joy of

living are in this poem, which is one of Lanier's finest lyrical outbursts.

_The Song of the Chattahoochee_ is another of his great successes in pure

melody. The rhymes, the rhythm, the alliteration beautifully express the

flowing of the river.

His noblest and most characteristic poem, however, is _The Marshes of

Glynn_. It seems to breathe the very spirit of the broad open marshes and

to interpret their meaning to the heart of man, while the long, sweeping,

melodious lines of the verse convey a rich volume of music, of which he was

at times a wonderful master.

"Oh, what is abroad in the marsh and the terminal sea?

Somehow my soul seems suddenly free

From the weighing of fate and the sad discussion of sin,

By the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn."

This poem, original and beautiful, both in subject and form, expresses

Lanier's strong faith in God. He says:--

"As the marsh-hen secretly builds on the watery sod,

Behold, I will build me a nest on the greatness of God:

I will fly in the greatness of God as the marsh-hen flies

In the freedom that fills all the space 'twixt the marsh and the skies:

By so many roots as the marsh-grass sends in the sod

I will heartily lay me a-hold of the greatness of God."

No Puritan could show a truer faith than Lanier's, nor a faith more

poetically and devoutly expressed. In his _Sunrise_ he attains at times the

beauty of _The Marshes of Glynn_, and voices in some of the lines a

veritable rhapsody of faith. Yet for sustained elevation of feeling and for

unbroken musical harmonies, _Sunrise_ cannot equal _The Marshes of Glynn_,

which alone would suffice to keep Lanier's name on the scroll of the

greater American poets.

General Characteristics.--Lanier is an ambitious poet. He attempts to voice

the unutterable, to feel the intangible, to describe the indescribable, and

to clothe this ecstasy in language that will be a harmonious accompaniment

to the thought. This striving after practically impossible effects

sometimes gives the feeling of artificiality and strain to his verse. It is

not always simple, and sometimes one overcharged stanza will mar an

otherwise exquisite poem.

On the other hand, Lanier never gives voice to anything that is merely

trivial or pretty. He is always in earnest, and the feeling most often

aroused by him is a passionate exaltation. He is a nature poet. The color,

the sunshine, the cornfields, the hills, and the marshes of the South are

found in his work. But more than their outer aspect, he likes to interpret

their spirit,--the peace of the marsh, the joy of the bird, the mystery of

the forest, and the evidences of love everywhere.

The music of his lines varies with his subjects. It is light and

delicate in _Tampa Robins_, rippling and gurgling in _The Song of the

Chattahoochee_, and deeply sonorous in _The Marshes of Glynn_. Few

surpass him in the long, swinging, grave harmonies of his most highly

inspired verse. In individual lines, in selected stanzas, Lanier has few

rivals in America. His poetical endowment was rich, his passion for

music was a rare gift, his love of beauty was intense, and his soul was

on fire with ideals.

FATHER RYAN, 1839-1886

[Illustration: FATHER RYAN]

Another poet who will long be remembered for at least one poem is Abram

Joseph Ryan (1839-1886), better known as "Father Ryan." He was a Roman

Catholic priest who served as chaplain in the Confederate army, and though

longing and waiting only for death in order to go to the land that held joy

for him, he wrote and worked for his fellow-man with a gentleness and

sympathy that left regret in many hearts when he died in Louisville,

Kentucky, in 1886.

He loved the South and pitied her plight, and in his pathetic poem, _The

Conquered Banner_, voiced the woe of a heart-broken people:--

"Furl that Banner, softly, slowly!

Treat it gently--it is holy--

For it droops above the dead.

Touch it not--unfold it never--

Let it droop there, furled forever,

For its people's hopes are dead."

JOHN BANNISTER TABB, 1845-1909

[Illustration: JOHN BANNISTER TABB]

John Bannister Tabb was born in 1845 on the family estate in Amelia County,

Virginia. He was a strong adherent of the southern cause, and during the

war he served as clerk on one of the boats carrying military stores. He was

taken prisoner, and placed in Point Lookout Prison, where Lanier also was

confined. After the war, Tabb devoted some time to music and taught school.

His studies led him toward the church, and at the age of thirty-nine he

received the priest's orders in the Roman Catholic church. When he died in

1909, he was a teacher in St. Charles College, Ellicott City, Maryland. He

had been blind for two years.

Tabb's poems are preeminently "short swallow-flights of song," for most of

them are only from four to eight lines long. Some of these verses are

comic, while others are grave and full of religious ardor. The most

beautiful of all his poems are those of nature. The one called _The Brook_

is among the brightest and most fanciful:--

"It is the mountain to the sea

That makes a messenger of me:

And, lest I loiter on the way

And lose what I am sent to say,

He sets his reverie to song

And bids me sing it all day long.

Farewell! for here the stream is slow,

And I have many a mile to go."

[Footnote: _Poems_, 1894.]

_The Water Lily_ is another dainty product, full of poetic feeling for

nature:--

"Whence, O fragrant form of light,

Hast thou drifted through the night,

Swanlike, to a leafy nest,

On the restless waves, at rest?

"Art thou from the snowy zone

Of a mountain-summit blown,

Or the blossom of a dream,

Fashioned in the foamy stream?"

[Footnote: _The Water Lily_, from _Poems_, 1894.]

In _Quips and Quiddits_ he loves to show that type of humor dependent on

unexpected changes in the meaning of words. The following lines illustrate

this characteristic:--

"To jewels her taste did incline;

But she had not a trinket to wear

Till she slept after taking quinine,

And awoke with a ring in each ear."

Tabb's power lay in condensing into a small compass a single thought or

feeling and giving it complete artistic expression. The more serious poems,

especially the sacred ones, sometimes seem to have too slight a body to

carry their full weight of thought, but the idea is always fully expressed,

no matter how narrow the compass of the verse. His poetry usually has the

qualities of lightness, airiness, and fancifulness.

JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS, 1848-1908

[Illustration: JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS]

Joel Chandler Harris was born at Eatonton, in the center of Georgia in

1848. He alludes to himself laughingly as "an uncultured Georgia cracker."

At the age of twelve, he was setting type for a country newspaper and

living upon the plantation of the wealthy owner of this paper, enjoying the

freedom of his well-selected library, hunting coons, possums, and rabbits

with his dogs, and listening to the stories told by his slaves. The boy

thus became well acquainted with many of the animal fables known to the

negroes of Georgia. Later in life, he heard a great many more of these

tales, while traveling through the cotton states, swapping yarns with the

negroes after he had gained their confidence. His knowledge of their

hesitancy about telling a story and his sympathy with them made it possible

for him to hear rare tales when another would probably have found only

silence. Sometimes, while waiting for a train, he would saunter up to a

group of negroes and start to tell a story himself and soon have them on

tiptoe to tell him one that he did not already know. In many ways he became

the possessor of a large part of the negro folklore. He loved a story and

he early commenced to write down these fables, making of them such

delightful works of art that all America is his debtor, not only for thus

preserving the folklore of a primitive people in their American

environment, but also for the genuine pleasure derived from the stories

themselves. They are related with such humor, skill, and poetic spirit that

they almost challenge comparison with Kipling's tales of the jungle. The

hero is the poor, meek, timid rabbit, but in the tales he becomes the

witty, sly, resourceful, bold adventurer, who acts "sassy" and talks big.

Harris says that "it needs no scientific investigation to show why he [the

negro] selects as his hero the weakest and most harmless of all animals,

and brings him out victorious in contests with the bear, the wolf, and the

fox. It is not virtue that triumphs, but helplessness; it is not malice,

but mischievousness." Sometimes, as is shown in _The Wonderful Tar Baby

Story_, a trick of the fox causes serious trouble to the rabbit; but the

rabbit usually invents most of the pranks himself. The absurdly incongruous

attitude of the rabbit toward the other animals is shown in the following

conversation, which occurs in the story of _Brother Rabbit and Brother

Tiger_, published in _Uncle Remus and His Friends_:--

"Brer Tiger 'low, 'How come you ain't skeer'd er me, Brer Rabbit? All de

yuther creeturs run when dey hear me comin'.'

"Brer Rabbit say, 'How come de fleas on you ain't skeer'd un you? Dey er

lots littler dan what I is.'

"Brer Tiger 'low, 'Hit's mighty good fer you dat I done had my dinner,

kaze ef I'd a-been hongry I'd a-snapped you up back dar at de creek.'

"Brer Rabbit say, 'Ef you'd done dat, you'd er had mo' sense in yo' hide

dan what you got now.'

"Brer Tiger 'low, 'I gwine ter let you off dis time, but nex' time I see

you, watch out!'

"Brer Rabbit say, 'Bein's you so monst'us perlite, I'll let you off too,

but keep yo' eye open nex' time you see me, kaze I'll git you sho.'"

[Illustration: BRER RABBIT AND THE TAR BABY

(Courtesy of D. Appleton & Co.)]

The glee of the negro in the rabbit's nonchalant bearing is humorously

given in this paragraph:--

"Well, I wish ter goodness you could er seed 'im 'bout dat time. He went

'long thoo de woods ez gay ez a colt in a barley-patch. He wunk at de

trees, he shuck his fisties at de stumps, he make like he wuz quoilin'

wid 'is shadder kaze it foller 'long atter 'im so close; en he went on

scan'lous, mon!"

The three books that contain the most remarkable of these tales are: _Uncle

Remus, His Songs and His Sayings_ (1880), _Nights with Uncle Remus_ (1881),

_Uncle Remus and His Friends_ (1892). In the volume, _Told by Uncle Remus_

(1905), the same negro relates more stories to the son of the "little boy,"

who had many years before listened to the earlier tales. The one thing in

these books that is absolutely the creation of Harris is the character of

Uncle Remus. He is a patriarchal ex-slave, who seems to be a storehouse of

knowledge concerning Brer Rabbit, Brer Fox, Brer B'ar, and indeed all the

animals of those bygone days when animals talked and lived in houses. He

understands child nature as well as he knows the animals, and from the

corner of his eye he keeps a sharp watch upon his tiny auditor to see how

the story affects him. No figure more living, original, and lovable than

Uncle Remus appears in southern fiction. In him Harris has created, not a

burlesque or a sentimental impossibility, but an imperishable type, the

type of the true plantation negro.

Harris also writes entertainingly of the slaves and their masters on the

plantation and of the poor free negroes, in such stories as _Mingo and

Other Sketches_ (1884) and _Free Joe_ (1887). He further presents a vivid

picture of the Georgia "crackers" and "moonshiners"; but his inimitable

animal stories, and Uncle Remus who tells them, have overshadowed all his

other work, and remain his most distinctive and original contribution to

American literature. These tales bid fair to have something of the

immortality of those myths which succeeding generations have for thousands

of years enjoyed.

THOMAS NELSON PAGE, 1853-

Thomas Nelson Page was born on Oakland Plantation in Hanover County,

Virginia, in 1853. He graduated at Washington and Lee University in 1872,

and took a degree in law at the University of Virginia in 1874. He

practiced law in Richmond, wrote stories and essays upon the old South, and

later moved to Washington to live.

[Illustration: THOMAS NELSON PAGE]

His best stories are the short ones, like _Marse Chan_ and _Meh Lady_, in

which life on the Virginia plantations during the war is presented. Page is

a natural story-teller. He wastes no time in analyzing, describing, and

explaining, but sets his simple plots into immediate motion and makes us

acquainted with his characters through their actions and speech. The regal

mistresses of the plantations, the lordly but kind-hearted masters, the

loving, simple-minded slaves, and handsome young men and maidens are far

from complex personalities. They have a primitive simplicity and

ingenuousness which belong to a bygone civilization. The strongest appeal

in the stories is made by the negroes, whose faith in their masters is

unquestioning, and sometimes pathetic.

Some old negro who had been a former slave usually tells the story, and

paints his "marster," his "missus," and his "white folks," as the finest in

the region. He looks back upon the bygone days as a time when "nuthin' warn

too good for niggers," and is sure that if his young "marster" did not get

the brush "twuz cause twuz a bob-tailed fox." In _Meh Lady_ the negro

relating the tale is the true but unconscious hero. This kindly

presentation of the finest traits of slave days, the idealizing of the

characters, and the sympathetic portrayal of the warm affection existing

between master and slave give to Page's books a strong note of romanticism.

The humor is mild, quaint, and subtle, and it often lies next to tears.

Page is preeminently a short-story writer. He possesses the restraint, the

compression, the art, the unity of idea necessary to the production of a

good short story.

GEORGE W. CABLE, 1844-

[Illustration: GEORGE W. CABLE]

George Washington Cable is of Virginia and New England stock, but he was

born in New Orleans in 1844, and called this beautiful city his home until

1884, when he moved to Connecticut. The following year he selected

Northampton, Massachusetts, as a permanent residence. He was but fourteen

when his father died, leaving the family in straitened circumstances. The

boy thereupon left school and went to work. Four years later he entered the

Confederate army. So youthful was his appearance, that a planter, catching

sight of him, exclaimed, "Great heavens! Abe Lincoln told the truth. We

_are_ robbing the cradle and the grave!" He served two years in the

southern army, and after the war returned penniless to his native city. His

efforts to find employment are described in his most realistic novel, _Dr.

Sevier_. He was a surveyor, a clerk to cotton merchants, and a reporter on

the New Orleans _Picayune_; but his tastes were literary, and after the

publication in 1879 of a volume of short stories, _Old Creole Days_, his

attention was turned wholly to literature.

Cable's _Old Creole Days_ is a collection of picturesque short stories of

the romantic Creoles of New Orleans. _Jean-ah-Poquelin_, the story of an

old recluse, is most artistically told. There are few incidents; Cable

merely describes the former roving life of Jean, tells how suddenly it

stopped, how he never again left the old home where he and an African mute

lived, and how Jean's younger brother mysteriously disappeared, and the

suspicion of his murder rested upon Jean's shoulders. The explanation of

these points is unfolded by hints, conjectures, and rare glimpses into the

Poquelin grounds at night, and finally by an impressive but simple

description of Jean's funeral, at which the terrible secret is completely

revealed. The deftest and finest touch of an artist is seen in the working

out of this pathetic story.

_Madame Delphine_, now included in the volume _Old Creole Days_, is equally

the product of a refined art. Here is shown the anguish of a quadroon

mother who turns frantically from one to another for help to save her

beautiful child, the ivory-tinted daughter of the South. When every one

fails, the mother heart makes one grand sacrifice by which the end is

gained, and she dies at the foot of the altar in an agony of remorse and

love. The beautiful land of flowers, the jasmine-scented night of the

South, the poetic chivalry of a proud, high-souled race are painted vividly

in this idyllic story. Its people are not mortals, its beauty is not of

earth, but, like the carved characters on Keats's Grecian urn, they have

immortal youth and cannot change. Keats could have said to the lovers in

_Madame Delphine_, as to his own upon the vase:--

"Forever wilt thou love, and she be fair!"

Cable's best long works are _The Grandissimes_ (1880), _Dr. Sevier_ (1884),

and _Bonaventure, a Prose Pastoral of Arcadian Louisiana_ (1888). Of these

three, _The Grandissimes_ is easily first in merit. It is a highly romantic

work, full of dramatic episodes, and replete with humor. The abundance and

variety of interesting characters in this romance evidence the great

fertility and power of invention possessed by Cable. First of all, there is

the splendid Creole, Honore' Grandissime, the head of the family,--a man

who sees far into the future, and places his trust in the young American

republic. Combating the narrow prejudices of his family, he leads them in

spite of themselves to riches and honor. Opposing him in family counsels is

his uncle, Agricola Fusilier, the brave, blustering, fire-eating

reactionary. There is also the beautiful quadroon, Palmyre Philosophe. The

"united grace and pride of her movement was inspiring, but--what shall we

say?--feline? It was a femininity without humanity,--something that made

her, with all her superbness, a creature that one would want to find

chained." Beside her are the dwarf Congo woman and Clemence, the

sharp-tongued negress, who sells her wares in the streets and sends her

bright retorts back to the young bloods who taunt her. There is Bras

Coupe', the savage slave, who had once been a chief in Africa and who

fights like a fiend against enslavement, blights the broad acres with his

curse, lives an exile in snake-infested swamps, and finally meets a most

tragic fate. These unusual and somewhat sensational characters give high

color, warmth, and variety to the romance. The two exquisite Creole women,

Aurora and her daughter, Clotilde, are a triumph of delicate

characterization, being at one and the same time winning, lovable,

illogical, innocent, capable, and noble. The love scene in which Aurora

says "no," while she means "yes," and is not taken at her word, is as

delicious a bit of humor and sentiment as there is in modern fiction. In

neither _Dr. Sevier_ nor _Bonaventure_ are there the buoyancy, vital

interest, and unity of impression of _The Grandissimes_, which is one of

the artistic products of American novelists. Cable may not have rendered

the Creole character exactly true to life; but he has in a measure done for

these high-spirited, emotional, brave people what Irving did for the

Knickerbockers of New York and what Hawthorne did for the Puritan.

Cable has also given graphic pictures of New Orleans. His poetic powers of

description enabled him to make the picturesque streets, the quaint

interiors, the swamps, bayous, forests, and streams very vivid realities to

his readers. He has warmth of feeling and a most refined and subtle humor.

His scenes are sometimes blood-curdling, his characters unusual, and the

deeds described sensational; but in his best work, his manner is so quiet,

his English so elegant, and his treatment so poetic, that the effect is

never crude or harsh, but always mild and harmonious.

JAMES LANE ALLEN, 1849-

James Lane Allen was born in 1849 near Lexington, in the rich blue-grass

section of Kentucky. He did not leave the state until he was twenty-two, so

that his education both at school and college was received in Kentucky, and

all his early and most impressionable years were passed amid Kentucky

scenes. Many of these years were spent on a farm, where his faculty for

observing was used to good advantage. As he grew older, he took his share

in the farm work and labored in the fields of hemp, corn, and wheat, which

he describes in his works. He graduated from Transylvania College,

Lexington, and taught for several years, but after 1884 devoted himself to

writing.

[Illustration: JAMES LANE ALLEN]

In 1891, Allen published _Flute and Violin and Other Kentucky Tales and

Romances_. For artistic completeness, Allen wrote nothing superior to the

story in this collection, entitled, _King Solomon of Kentucky_, a tale of

an idle vagabond who proved capable of a heroism from which many heroes

might have flinched. All of the stories are romantic and pathetic. _The

Kentucky Cardinal_ (1894) and _Aftermath_ (1895) are poetic idyls, whose

scenes are practically confined within one small Kentucky garden, where the

strawberries grow, the cardinal sings, and the maiden watches across the

fence her lover at his weeding. The compass of the garden is not too small

to embody the very spirit of out-of-doors, which is continuously present in

these two delightful stories.

From the human point of view, _The Choir Invisible_ (1897) is Allen's

strongest book. John Gray, Mrs. Falconer, and Amy are convincingly alive.

No better proof of the vital interest they arouse is needed than the

impatience felt by the reader at John's mistaken act of chivalry, which

causes the bitterest sorrow to him and Mrs. Falconer. Allen's later works,

_The Reign of Law_ (1900), _The Mettle of the Pasture_ (1903), _The Bride

of the Mistletoe_ (1909), lose in charm and grace what they gain as studies

of moral problems. The hardness and incompleteness of outline of the

character portrayals and the grimness of spirit in the telling of the tales

make these novels uninviting after the luxuriance of the earlier books.

The setting is an important part of Allen's stories. He describes with the

graphic touch of a true nature lover the witchery of Kentucky's fallow

meadows, the beauty of her hempfields, the joys of a June day. A noisy

conflict could not occur in the restful garden of _The Kentucky Cardinal_,

while in the frontier garden of Mrs. Falconer, in _The Choir Invisible_,

the ambitious, fiery John Gray seems not out of harmony because the

presence of the adjacent wild forest affects the entire scene. In one way

or another, the landscapes, by preparing the reader for the moods of the

characters, play a part in all of Allen's novels. He is a master of the art

that holds together scenes and actions. His descriptive powers are unusual,

and his style is highly wrought. It is more that of the literary essayist

than of the simple narrator, and it is full of poetic touches, delicate

suggestions, and refined art.

MARY N. MURFREE (CHARLES EGBERT CRADDOCK), 1850-

Miss Mary Noailles Murfree, better known as Charles Egbert Craddock, was

born in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, in 1850. For fifteen years she spent her

summers in the Tennessee mountains among the people of whom she writes. Her

pen name of Charles Egbert Craddock deceived her publishers into the belief

that she was a man. Both Howells and Thomas Bailey Aldrich accepted her

stories for the _Atlantic Monthly_ without suspecting her sex, and Aldrich

was a surprised man the day she entered his office and introduced herself

as Charles Egbert Craddock.

The stories that suggested to her editors a masculine hand are lively

recitals of family feuds, moonshiners' raids, circuit court sessions,

fights over land grants, discoveries of oil, and many similar incidents,

which make up the life of a people separated from the modern world by

almost inaccessible mountains. The rifle is used freely by this people, and

murder is frequent, but honor and bravery, daring and sacrifice, are not

absent, and Craddock finds among the women, as well as the men, examples of

magnanimity and heroism that thrill the reader.

[Illustration: MARY N. MURFREE (Charles Egbert Craddock)]

The presence of the mountains is always imminent, and seems to impress the

lives of the people in some direct way. To Cynthia Ware, for instance, in

the story, _Drifting Down Lost Creek_, Pine Mountain seems to stand as a

bar to all her ambitions and dreams:--

"Whether the skies are blue or gray, the dark, austere line of its summit

limits the horizon. It stands against the west like a barrier. It seems

to Cynthia Ware that nothing which went beyond this barrier ever came

back again. One by one the days passed over it, and in splendid

apotheosis, in purple and crimson and gold, they were received into the

heavens and returned no more. She beheld love go hence, and many a hope.

Even Lost Creek itself, meandering for miles between the ranges, suddenly

sinks into the earth, tunnels an unknown channel beneath the mountain,

and is never seen again."

And, finally, after a tremendous self-sacrifice, when all appears lost and

her future looks colorless and hopeless, she fears that the years of her

life are "like the floating leaves drifting down Lost Creek, valueless,

purposeless, and vaguely vanishing in the mountains." All of the stories

are by no means so tragically sad as this one, but all are overshadowed by

the mountains. Among the best of the novels, _Down the Ravine_ and _The

Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountain_ may be mentioned. Craddock shows

marked ability in delineating this primitive type of level-headed,

independent people, and she tells their story with ease and vigor. The

individual characters are not strongly differentiated in her many books,

and the heroines bear considerable resemblance to each other, but the

entire community of mountain folk, their ideals, hopes, and circumscribed

lives are clearly and vividly shown.

MADISON J. CAWEIN, 1865-1914

[Illustration: MADISON J. CAWEIN]

Cawein spent the greater part of his life in Louisville, Kentucky, where he

was born in 1865 and died in 1914. He wrote more than twenty volumes of

verse, the best of which he collected in five volumes (1907) and later in

one volume (1911). The appreciative English critic, Edmund Gosse, in his

_Introduction_ to the 1907 collection, calls Cawein "the only hermit

thrush" singing "through an interval comparatively tuneless." W. D.

Howells's (p. 373) _Foreword_ in the 1911 volume emphasizes Cawein's

unusual power of making common things 'live and glow thereafter with

inextinguishable beauty.'

Cawein actually writes much of his poetry out of doors in the presence of

the nature which he is describing. His lyrics of nature are his best verse.

He can even diminish the horror of a Kentucky feud by placing it among:--

"Frail ferns and dewy mosses and dark brush,--

Impenetrable briers, deep and dense,

And wiry bushes,--brush, that seemed to crush

The struggling saplings with its tangle, whence

Sprawled out the ramble of an old rail-fence."

In his verses the catbird nests in the trumpet vine, the pewee pours forth

a woodland welcome, the redbird sings a vesper song, the lilacs are musky

of the May, the bluebells and the wind flowers bloom. We hear

"... tinkling in the clover dells,

The twilight sound of cattle bells."

His verse often shows exactness of observation, characteristic of modern

students of nature, as well as a romantic love of the outdoor world. Note

the specific references to the shape and color of individual natural

objects in these lines from Cawein:--

"May-apples, ripening yellow, lean

With oblong fruit, a lemon-green,

Near Indian-turnips, long of stem,

That bear an acorn-oval gem."

He loves the nymphs of mythology, the dryads, naiads, and the fairies. One

of his poems is called _There Are Fairies_:--

"There are fairies, I could swear

I have seen them busy where

Rose-leaves loose their scented hair,

* * * * *

Leaning from the window sill

Of a rose or daffodil,

Listening to their serenade,

All of cricket music made."

In luxuriance of imagery and profuse appeal to the senses, he is the Keats

of the South. Lines like these remind us of the greater poet's _The Eve of

St. Agnes_:--

"Into the sunset's turquoise marge

The moon dips, like a pearly barge

Enchantment sails through magic seas

To fairyland Hesperides."

Keats exclaims:--

"O for a beaker full of the warm South."

Cawein proceeds to fill the beaker from the summer of a southern land,

where

"The west was hot geranium-red,"

where

"The dawn is a warp of fever,

The eve is a woof of fire,"

and where

"The heliotropes breathe drowsy musk

Into the jasmine-dreamy air."

Cawein sometimes suffers from profuseness and lack of pruning, but the

music, sentiment, imaginative warmth, and profusion of nature's charms in

his best lyrics rouse keen delight in any lover of poetry. While he revels

in the color, warmth, and joys of nature, it should also be observed that

he can occasionally strike that deeper note which characterizes the great

nature poets of the English race. In _A Prayer for Old Age_, he asks:--

"Never to lose my faith in Nature, God:

But still to find

Worship in trees; religion in each sod;

And in the wind

that breathe the universal God."

SUMMARY

The lack of towns, the widely separated population, the aristocratic nature

of the civilization depending on slave labor, the absorption of the people

in political questions, especially the question of slavery, the attitude

toward literature as a profession, the poverty of public education, the

extreme conservatism and isolation of the South, and, finally, the Civil

War, and the period of reconstruction after it,--were all influences that

served to retard the development of literature in the South.

The greatest name in southern literature is that of Edgar Allan Poe, the

literary artist, the critic, the developer of the modern short story, the

writer of superlatively melodious verse. He was followed by Simms, who was

among the first in the South to live by his pen. His tales of adventure are

still interesting and important for the history that they embody. Timrod's

spontaneity and strength appear in lyrics of war, nature, and love. Hayne,

a skilled poetic artist, is at his best in lyrics of nature. Lanier's poems

of nature embody high ideals in verse of unusual melody, and voice a faith

in "the greatness of God," as intense as that of any Puritan poet. Lanier

shared with Simms, Hayne, and Timrod the bitter misfortunes of the war.

Father Ryan is affectionately remembered for his stirring war lyrics and

Father Tabb for his nature poems, sacred verse, and entertaining humor. The

nature poetry of Cawein abounds in the color and warmth of the South.

In modern southern fiction there is to be found some of the most

imaginative, artistic, and romantic work of the entire country in the

latter quarter of the nineteenth century. Rich local color renders much of

this fiction attractive. Harris fascinates the ear of the young world with

the Georgia negro's tales of Brer Fox and Brer Rabbit. The Virginia negroes

live in the stories of Page. Craddock introduces the Tennessee mountaineer,

and Allen, the Kentucky farmer, scholar, and gentleman, while Cable paints

the refined Creole in the fascinating city of New Orleans.

Notwithstanding the use of dialect and other realistic touches of local

color, the fiction is largely romantic. The careful analysis of motives and

detailed accounts of the commonplace, such as the eastern realists

developed in the last part of the nineteenth century, are for the most part

absent from this southern fiction.

A strong distinguishing feature of this body of fiction is the large part

played by natural scenes. Allen shows unusual skill in employing nature to

heighten his effects. If the poetic and vivid scenes were removed from

Cable's stories, they would lose a large part of their charm. When Miss

Murfree chooses eastern Tennessee for the scene of her novels, she never

permits the mountains to be forgotten. These writers are lovers of nature

as well as of human beings. The romantic prose fiction as well as the

poetry is invested with color and beauty.

REFERENCES

Page's _The Old South_.

Page's _Social Life in Old Virginia before the War_.

Hart's _Slavery and Abolition_.

Baskerville's _Southern Writers_, 2 vols.

Link's _Pioneers of Southern Literature_, 2 vols.

Moses's _The Literature of the South_.

Holliday's _A History of Southern Literature_.

Manly's _Southern Literature_.

Painter's _Poets of the South_.

Woodberry's _The Life of Edgar Allan Poe, Personal and Literary, with his

chief Correspondence with Men of Letters,_ 2 vols., 1909. (The best life.)

Woodberry and Stedman's _The Works of Edgar Allan Poe with a Memoir,

Critical Introductions, and Notes_, 10 vols.

Harrison's _The Virginia Edition of the Works of Edgar Allan Poe_, 17 vols.

(Contains excellent critical essays.)

Harrison's _Life and Letters of Edgar Allan Poe_, 2 vols.

Stedman's _Poets of America_. (Poe.)

Fruit's _The Mind and Art of Poe's Poetry_.

Canby's _The Short Story in English_, Chap. XI. (Poe.)

Baldwin's _American Short Stories_. (Poe.)

Payne's _American Literary Criticism_. (Poe.)

Prescott's _Selections from the Critical Writings of Edgar Allan Poe,

edited with an Introduction and Notes_.

Gates's _Studies and Appreciations_. (Poe.)

Trent's _William Gilmore Simms_.

Erskine's _Leading American Novelists_. (Simms.)

Ward's _Memorial of Sidney Lanier_, in _Poems of Sidney Lanier_, edited by

his Wife.

Burt's _The Lanier Book_.

Burt and Cable's _The Cable Story Book_.

Page's _The Page Story Book_.

An orphan before he was three years old, Poe was reared by Mr. and Mrs.