Seventy-odd years ago the Rev. Sydney Smith wrote in the Edinburg Review
as follows: “Literature, the Americans have none—no native literature,
we mean. It is all imported. They had a Franklin, indeed, and may afford
to live for half a century on his fame. There is, or was, a Mr. Dwight,
who wrote some poems, and his baptismal name was Timothy. There is also a
small account of Virginia, by Jefferson, an epic by Joel Barlow, and some
pieces of pleasantry by Mr. Irving. But why should the Americans write
books, when a six weeks’ passage brings them, in their own tongue, our
sense, science and genius in bales and hogsheads?”
Times have changed since Mr. Smith wrote this somewhat sarcastic summary
of our native literature; for, while it is true that we still import
British “sense, science, and genius in bales and hogsheads,” it is done
now on principles of reciprocity, and we return quite as good and perhaps
nearly as much as we receive.
Americans do not instance Mr. Dwight, whose “baptismal name was Timothy,”
or Mr. Barlow, the author of the epic so sneeringly referred to, as the
chiefs of American poesy; yet we need not blush for either of them; for
the first was a distinguished scholar the President of Yale College, and
the author of the hymn so dear to many pious hearts:
“I love thy kingdom, Lord!
The house of Thine abode;
The church our blest Redeemer saved
With His own precious blood.”
The other, Mr. Barlow, was a well-known man of letters and politician in
his day, author of the “Columbiad,” the epic referred to by Mr. Smith,
and minister plenipotentiary of the United States to the coast of France
at a critical period of our history. As to the “Columbiad,” it has
been pronounced by competent critics to be equal in merit to Addison’s
“Campaign,” and surely it is no disgrace to have equalled Addison.
It was the fashion in those days for Englishmen to sneer at Americans;
and so we find in another review, written by the same gentleman in 1820,
this language: “During the thirty or forty years of their independence,
they have done absolutely nothing for the sciences, for the arts,
for literature, or even for the statesmanlike studies of politics or
political economy.... In the four quarters of the globe who reads an
American book? or looks at an American picture or statue? What does the
world yet owe to American physicians or surgeons? What new substances
have their chemists discovered? or what old ones have they analyzed? What
new constellations have been discovered by the telescopes of Americans?
What have they done in mathematics? Who drinks out of American glasses?
or eats from American plates? or wears American coats or gowns? or sleeps
in American blankets?” In the very same year that this array of rather
insolent queries was propounded by Sydney Smith, the genial Washington
Irving, in the advertisement to the first English edition of his Sketch
Book, remarks: “The author is aware of the austerity with which the
writings of his countrymen have been treated by British critics.” We have
not a particle of doubt as to the “austerity” in question. The salvos
of Old Ironsides and the roar of Jackson’s guns at New Orleans, were
unpleasant facts not yet forgotten by Englishmen.
But Sydney Smith was not quite fair towards our countrymen. It was
“during the thirty or forty years of their independence” referred to that
Fulton’s steamboat revolutionized navigation, that Rittenhouse developed
a mathematical skill second only to that of Newton; that West delighted
even royalty itself with the creations of his pencil; while in “the
statesmanlike studies of politics or political economy,” it was during
this very period that Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison, and their coadjutors
did more to develop the true principles of government and politics than
had ever been done before in the history of the world. True, we had not
much to boast of, but it would have been only just to give us credit
for what we were worth. Moreover, in a small way, but to the extent it
was possible under the circumstances, the English colonists in America
had cultivated letters from the beginning. In 1685, Cotton Mather wrote
his Memorable Providences; in 1732, Franklin began to issue his Poor
Richard’s Almanac; in 1749, Jonathan Edwards published his Life of David
Brainerd, and in 1754, his famous treatise on The Freedom of the Will and
Moral Agency. Besides these, which perhaps stand out most conspicuously,
there were many minor works of more or less excellence, over most of
which the iniquity of oblivion, to use the fine phrase of Sir Thomas
Browne, hath scattered her poppy.
The moment that the Edinburg Review was thus dealing our fathers these
heavy blows seemed to be the real starting point in our career of
literary greatness. William Cullen Bryant, Washington Irving, James K.
Paulding, Richard H. Dana, James Fenimore Cooper, Mrs. Sigourney and a
host of others were giving direction to that stream of literature that
has since flowed broad and free over our land, imparting life and vigor
and beauty to our society and institutions. It is, however, anterior to
the year 1820, the thirty or forty years of our national independence,
during which Mr. Smith says we have done “absolutely nothing” in
literature, science or art, to which we must more particularly advert.
The literary product of those years was scanty enough, it is true.
The student of this period will not find much, and not all of that of
the first order, to reward his labor—not much, at least, as compared
with other nations at the same time. But may there not have been some
sufficient reason for this, outside of any downright intellectual
deficiencies on the part of our fathers? Let us for a moment consider the
condition of things at that time in this country.
In the first place, at the time referred to, the citizens of the United
States were in a daily struggle with the material difficulties of their
situation. The country was new. The region west and north of the Ohio
and Mississippi was yet an almost unbroken wilderness, while the country
east and south of those rivers was but sparsely populated. At the same
time the tide of immigration was sweeping into the country, and with it
all the rush and turmoil incident to life in a new country was going on.
Forests were to be cut down; farms were to be cleared up; houses were
to be built; roads were to be made; bridges were to be thrown across
the rivers; while a livelihood was to be compelled from the forests,
the streams, and the fields. The conditions of a new country are not
favorable to the cultivation of the arts, of sciences, or of literature.
Why do not Englishmen twit the people of Australia because during the
past forty or fifty years in which they have prospered so greatly in
material things, they have not produced a Macaulay, a Tennyson, a
Gladstone, a Tyndall, or a Huxley? It would be just as fair to do it.
Not only was there this hand to hand contest with their physical
environment, but the political conditions were also unfavorable to any
general dalliance with the Muses. Only in times of tranquility and ease
is it possible.
“To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,
Or with the tangles of Neaera’s hair.”
The country at the period referred to, had just emerged from a long and
exhausting war. Society was almost broken up; the arts of peace were
well nigh forgotten; the finances were in almost hopeless confusion; the
form of government was unsettled, and scarcely yet determined upon. The
first thing to do was to evolve some system and some security out of this
chaos. Politics alone occupied the moments of leisure. When, finally,
authority had crystallized into definite government the people were not
allowed to be at rest. Murderous wars with the Indians on the frontiers;
the machinations of French emissaries; British oppression of American
commerce, and at length another long and bloody war with England,
harassed the minds of the people, and prevented them from giving
themselves up more generally to the kindly and refining influences of
literature and art. When we consider all the circumstances in the case,
there seems a degree of severity in Sydney Smith’s sneers and taunts.
But though circumstances were thus unfavorable to the cultivation of
letters, yet something was done in this direction nevertheless. Smith
refers flippantly enough to Dwight, Jefferson, Barlow and Irving. But
besides these there were others, not brilliant luminaries perhaps, yet
stars shining in the darkness according to their orders and degrees.
We do not design here to enter upon any discussion of their respective
merits, but we may mention as a writer of that period no less a character
than George Washington, whose greatness in other spheres of life has
entirely eclipsed any fame of which he may be worthy as an author, yet
whose Farewell Address alone would entitle him to a place among the
most accurate writers of English. Among others we may name John Adams,
whose pen was scarcely less eloquent than his tongue; Francis Hopkinson,
author of The Battle of the Kegs and many other pieces, of which it has
been said, that “while they are fully equal to any of Swift’s writings
for wit, they have nothing at all in them of Swift’s vulgarity;” Dr.
Benjamin Rush, a distinguished writer on medical and social topics; John
Trumbull, the author of McFingal and The Progress of Dullness; James
Madison, afterward President of the United States, one of the ablest
writers in The Federalist; Philip Freneau, a poet of the Revolution and
the period immediately following; Alexander Hamilton, a contributor to
The Federalist, and one of the clearest of political writers; Joseph
Dennie, the author of The Lay Preacher, and editor of The Portfolio;
Joseph Hopkinson, author of Hail, Columbia; Charles Brockden Brown,
author of Wieland, Arthur Mervyn, and other works, and who was perhaps
the first American who wholly devoted his life to literary pursuits;
William Wirt, author of the British Spy, the Life of Patrick Henry,
and other works; and Lyman Beecher, the author of a work on Political
Atheism, anti several volumes of sermons and public addresses. This list
might easily be extended, but its length as it now stands, as well as the
merits of the writers adduced, is sufficient to contradict effectually
the statement that America had “no native literature,” and that during
the thirty or forty years immediately subsequent to the Revolution she
had done “absolutely nothing” for polite letters. Much of this early
literature still remains, and is read; many of these authors are still
familiar to this generation, and it is generally admitted that the writer
whose fame survives a century is assured of a literary immortality.
Sydney Smith was an acute man, a learned man, a great wit, a ready and
elegant writer, a trenchant critic, but the names of some of these
humble Americans whom he did not deign to mention, or mentioned only to
scoff, bid fair to stand as long in the annals of literature as his own.
On the eastern slope of the Andes are a thousand springs from which the
slender rills, half hidden at times by the grass, scarcely at any time
seen or heard, trickle down the side of the immense mountain range, here
and there falling into each other and swelling in volume as they flow,
until at length is formed the mighty Amazon, that drains the plateaus and
valleys of half a continent. So the beginnings of our literature, like
the beginnings of every literature, are small, indistinct, half hidden;
but as they proceed, these little rills of thought and expression grow
and expand, until the mighty stream is formed that irrigates the whole
world of intellectual activity.
This stream, as we have said, first began to assume definite form and
direction about the time that Sydney Smith was uttering his tirades
against the genius and achievements of our countrymen. In 1817, appeared
in the North American Review a remarkable poem called “Thanatopsis.” The
author was a young man named William Cullen Bryant, only twenty-three
years of age; yet the poem had been written four years before. The annals
of literature do not furnish another example of such excellence at so
early an age. The poem yet stands as one of the most exquisite in the
language. A recent critic has characterized it as “lofty in conception,
beautiful in execution, full of chaste language and delicate and striking
imagery, and, above all, pervaded by a noble and cheerful religious
philosophy.” This first effort on the part of Bryant was succeeded by a
long career of eminence in the field of literature. In 1818 appeared a
volume of miscellanies called “The Sketch Book,” by Washington Irving, a
young man who had already acquired some slight reputation as a dabbler
in literature of a trifling or humorous kind. The Sketch Book was almost
immediately honored by republication in England. This initial volume was
followed by a second series of miscellanies called “Bracebridge Hall,”
which was published in London in 1822. In the preliminary chapter the
author pleasantly adverts to the general feeling with which American
authorship was regarded in England. “It has been a matter of marvel to my
European readers,” says he, “that a man from the wilds of America should
express himself in tolerable English. I was looked upon as something
new and strange in literature; a kind of demi-savage, with a feather
in his hand instead of on his head; and there was a curiosity to hear
what such a being had to say about civilized society.” In the same year
with Irving’s Sketch Book appeared Drake’s Culprit Fay, a poem that has
not been surpassed in its kind since Milton’s Comus. In 1821 Percival
issued his first volume of poems, Dana his Idle Man, and Cooper, his
Precaution. His last named volume was at once followed by a long list of
works including such famous titles as The Spy, The Last of the Mohicans,
The Pathfinder, and The Deerslayer. It marked the advent of our most
distinguished novelist—a man who has been styled the Walter Scott of
America. He justly stands in the same rank with the mighty Wizard of the
North, and has no other equal. Thus the stream of American literature
rolled on its course, and was swelled as it flowed by the contributions
of Everett, Prescott, Bancroft, Emerson, Hawthorne, Poe, Willis, Holmes,
Whittier, Lowell, and a host of others, whose names the world will not
willingly let die.
America has not yet produced a Shakespere or a Milton; but it must be
remembered that England has produced but one, each of these in a period
of a thousand years. Anywhere below these two great names, American
literature of the last seventy years is able to parallel the best work
that has been produced by our kinsmen on the other side of the Atlantic.
In wealth and elegance of diction, in depth of thought or feeling, in
brightness and grace of expression, in any of the thousand forms and
flights in which genius seeks to express himself, the current literature
of America stands on a level with the current literature of England; and
Sydney Smith’s sneers, which must have touched our fathers to the quick,
find no response now except the smile of contempt which alone they ever
deserved.