_Literature in the United States.--Poets.--Novelists.--
Essayists.--Critics.--Historians.--Humorists.--Journalists.--
Writers for the Young.--Future of American Literature._
America has not yet produced a transcendent literary genius; but she has
the right to be proud of a national literature which includes poets,
historians, novelists, essayists, and critics of a superior order.
The English admit that the best history of their literature has been
written by a Frenchman, M. Taine. The _Athenaeum_ acknowledged, a short
while ago, that the best criticism on the English poets of the Victorian
era was that written by Mr. Edmund Clarence Stedman, himself one of the
most graceful bards of contemporary America.
In this rapid sketch, I must needs confine myself to the mention of
merely the principal names which adorn the different branches of
American literature.
In poetry, the bright lights are William Cullen Bryant and Henry
Wadsworth Longfellow, both pure and noble, and as much appreciated by
the English as by their own compatriots; Edgar Allan Poe, James Russell
Lowell, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Edmund Clarence Stedman, Bayard Taylor,
John Greenleaf Whittier, Walt Whitman, Richard Watson Gilder, Edgar
Fawcett, William Winter (the celebrated dramatic critic of the _New York
Tribune_), Maria Brooks, and a number of women, who form a graceful
garland in this garden of poets. In the Western dialects, a young poet,
Mr. Whitcombe Riley, knows how to draw tears through the smiles which
his humour provokes: he promises to be the future Jasmin of America.
In the domain of romance, we find writers whose reputation is as firmly
established in Europe as in America. Who has not read in his youth the
novels of Fenimore Cooper? Who has not thrilled over the weird tales of
Poe? Among the most famous names in fiction are also Washington Irving,
Parker Willis, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Marion
Crawford, Frank Stockton, George W. Cable, Frances Hodgson Burnett,
Henry James, W. D. Howells, Julian Hawthorne, Thomas Bailey Aldrich,
Charles Dudley Warner, Bret Harte (who is also a poet), Edward
Eggleston, Brander Matthews, Eliza Wetherell. All these names are
household words wherever the English tongue is spoken. The greatest
success of the century has been attained by an American novel, directed
against slavery, and instrumental in its destruction.
Its author, Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, is a sister of the celebrated
Henry Ward Beecher, whom America still mourns.
In the philosophical essay, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Robert Ingersoll are
unapproachable in their different styles. The first shines by his
originality and a subtle power of reasoning; the second by the grandeur
of his language, his keen, clear reasoning power, and his humour and
pathos.
In literary criticism must be named George William Curtis, as well as
Stedman and Winter, already named among the poets.
History is perhaps, of all the branches of American literature, that
which has found its highest expression. Washington Irving, with his
_History of Columbus_; Prescott, with the _History of Ferdinand and
Isabella_, the _History of the Conquest of Mexico and Peru_, and the
_History of Philip II._; Bancroft, with a _History of the American
Revolution_; Hildreth, Sparks, and others, have produced a national
history from the discovery of their country down to our own days.
It seems curious that the vast and grandiose regions they inhabit should
not have inspired the Americans with taste and talent for descriptions
of Nature. Fenimore Cooper is the only great scene painter produced by
the immensities of the great Western Continent.
Humorists swarm in the United States. Artemus Ward and Mark Twain are
two pseudonyms justly famous at home and abroad. There is a third on the
road that leads to similar celebrity. Bill Nye has the same droll way as
Mark Twain of droning out irresistible comicalities with that solemn
_sang froid_ which is not met with outside the frontiers of Yankeeland.
When he mounts the platform, the audience prepares to be dislocated with
laughter.
Although the names of Charles A. Dana, Whitelaw Reid, Park Godwin, and
many others, are well known to the reading public of America, it is in
the large Reviews, and not in the newspapers, that really literary
articles are to be found.
Children--if there are any children in America--are not forgotten by
literature. It is safe to affirm that there is no country where children
are so well written for, by authors who have the secret of instructing
them while they charm and amuse them. Love and sympathy for children
must be a spontaneous outgrowth of the gay and tender American
character. Mrs. Hodgson Burnett, the late Louisa Alcott, Mrs. Lippincott
(better known as Grace Greenwood), and Fanny Fern, will for ages to come
fascinate the whole of the English-speaking juvenile world.
In these rapid outlines, I must have omitted many names. I hope I have
mentioned enough to show a guarantee of a brilliant literary future for
the country.
A nation so intelligent, so energetic, so prominent in the world of
action, could not possibly be sterile in the domain of thought.