Part 28

Space forbids any delay upon George Henry Boker (1823-1890), diplomat and dramatist, and his metrical drama, “Francesca da Rimini” (1856); or Francis Miles Finch (1827-1907), professor in Cornell University, and his celebrated poem “The Blue and the Gray” (in _The Atlantic Monthly_, 1867), a gift of healing from the North to the South; or John Hay (1838-1905), whose manifold services to his country were roofed and crowned with an abiding interest in literature (“Pike County Ballads,” published in _The New York Tribune_); or Richard Watson Gilder (born 1844), editor of _The Century Magazine_, social reformer, and author of several volumes of finished verse; or Stephen Collins Foster (1836-1864), composer, whose songs, “The Old Folks at Home,” “The Suwanee River,” “My Old Kentucky Home,” familiar the country over, are significant of the influence which the negroes have exerted on the language and art of the whites; or Will H. Thompson (born 1848), and “The High Tide at Gettysburg”; or John Townsend Trowbridge (born 1827), one of the original contributors to _The Atlantic Monthly_, author of “The Vagabonds” (1863), and steeped in the spirit of New England; or John Boyle O’Reilly (1844-1890), the Fenian, who escaped from imprisonment in Australia, and became a journalist in Boston (“Songs, Legends, and Ballads,” “Songs of the Southern Seas,” etc.); or Eugene Field (1850-1895), witty, eccentric, friend and student of children; or Richard Hovey (1864-1900), cut off in the flower of his promise (“Taliesin: a Masque,” 1899); or Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906), the negro poet, dead before his time, who wrote good and stirring English as well as pathetic dialect; or William Vaughn Moody, professor in the University of Chicago (“The Masque of Judgment,” 1900); or Bliss Carman (born 1861) and Clinton Scollard (born 1860). All these and many more must pass with insufficient notice or none; otherwise the page would contain only a meaningless enumeration of names and dates. As was implied at the beginning, very few American writers who have won distinction in other ways have refrained from publishing a volume of lyrics “and other poems.” Also, in spite of the slender encouragement from publishers to new authors of original verse, the occasional volume from the hitherto and hereafter unknown poetaster, who foots the bill for printing, continues to emerge and sink again at the present day.

The immediate outlook for poetry in the United States is not bright. It does not appear that with the material growth of the country we have developed a unified national spirit capable of expression at the hands of a great poet, were he to arise. It does not appear that we have among the younger men a first-class poet capable of expressing the national soul, were this more unified and precise. Furthermore, the type of humanistic education which fostered our elder poets of New England is generally discredited, and seems to be passing away without leaving any hope of a popular training in the near future worthy to succeed it. Simplicity, rigour, precision, and accuracy, all of them friendly to the poetic spirit, and among its necessary conditions, have fewer and fewer champions in the schools. Many subjects are studied, and almost nothing is mastered and retained. Memory, the mother of the Muses, is not in esteem. “Literature” is taught--though not learned; yet the children know no poetry. Worst of all, and a primary cause of much of the evil, the reading of standard works within the family is becoming less and less common. In particular, though there is much talk about the Bible, the Bible, like the classics, is becoming unfamiliar, to the great detriment of popular thought and style.

On the other hand, to offset the deficiency of our secondary schools and the decay of culture in the home, the last thirty years have witnessed an immense expansion in advanced scholarship, most notable, perhaps, in the investigation of the vernacular and related literatures. Graduate study of English, and of the literatures from which English literature has sprung, offers a refuge to such persons as have a serious and abiding interest in belles-lettres; it is undoubtedly developing the personalities of investigators to the highest point of efficiency possible under present conditions, and making ready for another generation, more fortunate, whose poetry shall find root in the fields that are to-day so thoroughly cultivated; working downward, it is already tending to bring about salutary changes here and there in the procedure of the schools, and hence eventually to have an influence in the home. A generation of scholars to clear the way, as in the beginning of the Renaissance--to produce the literary atmosphere which now is wanting--may be regarded as a hopeful sign of a generation of poets to come. Finally, if American poetry now seems moribund, we must yet remember the eternal power that the true poet is always in alliance with; the power that at any time can make the poet say of any literature: The maid is not dead, but sleepeth.[21]

IV. THE ESSAYISTS AND THE HUMOURISTS.

=English Influences on American Letters.=--Springing from a common stock, the two branches of eighteenth-century English literature showed many similarities. The charge of imitation and even of plagiarism has been brought against the American writers of that period; but it seems in no way unsafe to point to the single origin as the probable cause of the same characteristics appearing in the literature produced here, and that produced in the mother-country. No one can deny, of course, that not a few of our authors went to school to Englishmen, but the assertion that America until recently has produced nothing but pinchbeck literature is as false as it is absurd. That like produces like may be a trite saying, but its frequent repetition does not impair its truth. The English mind, whether expressing itself at home or in the colonies, naturally put forth the same kind of shoots: that their development was not in all respects equally rapid, that in time they became so much unlike as to appear unrelated, can be traced, no doubt, to the unsheltered fortune of the American scion in early days, and to the complete removal of the slip from the parent stem in after-years.

With this thought in mind, the most thorough-going American may admit, without apologetic reserve, that the essayists of eighteenth-century England have counterparts in Irving and certain of his contemporaries, and that those of a slightly later date have much in common with Emerson and Thoreau. Should one feel, however, that excusable pride is to be taken only in those authors who exhibit qualities indigenous to America, one may triumphantly mention Warner, and Lowell, and Margaret Fuller; for, although these essayists show the racial instinct of English writers, they are none the less emphatically American in thought, tone, and expression. In passing, it is perhaps well to notice that a large number of American writers have tried their hands at more than one form of literature. For this reason Irving is discussed as an essayist, although he might be placed with the humourists, or perhaps better still, with fiction-writers, since he has the right to dispute with Poe the claim to be regarded as the progenitor of the American short story. Again, Emerson, like George Eliot, felt that his fame would eventually rest upon his poetry, but his readers almost always think and speak of him as an essayist. Lowell, Longfellow, and Whittier, on the other hand, are properly reviewed at large as poets, despite the fact that their prose work is not inconsiderable nor unimportant and must therefore receive some attention in even a rapid survey of the American essay.

_Washington Irving._--Washington Irving (1783-1859), the first essayist of importance in the National Period of American Literature, was born in New York City. Unable on account of ill-health to continue his education, Irving went abroad in 1804. Returning two years later, he was admitted to the bar, but he never engaged in the actual practice of law. In 1815 Irving again went to Europe, this time upon matters connected with the cutlery business in which, as silent partner, he was engaged with his brothers. It was seventeen years before he again set foot upon his native soil, but when he did come back, he was widely known, both for his writings and for his diplomatic service as member of the American legations, first at Madrid (1826-1829) and later at London (1829-1831). During the next decade, Irving was in this country, living quietly at Sunnyside, as he called his home at Tarrytown-on-the-Hudson. In 1842, accepting an appointment as Minister to Spain, he went to Europe for a third time and remained abroad four years. Upon his return home, he gave himself up entirely to writing, finishing his monumental work upon Washington but a short time before his death. He is buried in the Tarrytown Sleepy-Hollow Cemetery--within sight of the road down which one of his characters, Ichabod Crane, made his precipitous flight in mad endeavour to escape the headless horseman.

Irving’s first book, “A History of New York,” published as from the pen of “Diedrich Knickerbocker,” appeared in 1809. It attracted immediate attention and established its author’s reputation as a humourist; but unfortunately its fun at the expense of the ancestors of certain American families roused not a little rancour. Irving’s next work, “The Sketch Book,” was published, first in parts in 1819, and then in two volumes in the following year. This book and “Bracebridge Hall, or The Humourists” (1822), “Tales of a Traveller” (1824), “The Alhambra” (1832), and “Wolfert’s Roost” (1855), are all miscellaneous collections of sketches, short stories, and character studies, of which one volume is not inferior to another. The first of them received cordial recognition from Scott, who arranged for its publication in London; and the last had a wide circulation both in America and in England.

During Irving’s first visit to Spain, he became interested in certain biographical and historical material there easily accessible, and put it to use when he was writing “The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus” (1828), “The Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada” (1829), “The Voyages of the Companions of Columbus” (1831), “The Alhambra,” already mentioned, and “The Life of Mahomet” (1849). Upon Irving’s return to America his interest in the same kind of material continued, and led him to publish “The Life of Goldsmith” (1849), and “The Life of Washington” in six volumes (1855-1859). Irving’s other works are “A Tour on the Prairies” (1835), “Astoria” (1836), and “The Adventures of Captain Bonneville” (1837).

Irving was the first American writer to gain literary reputation abroad; nor was the interest which he awakened there merely that of curiosity wondering what would come out of a wilderness. It may be that the great bulk of his work is not widely read at present, but such stories as “Rip Van Winkle,” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” such sketches as “The Stout Gentleman” and “Moonlight on the Alhambra” are perennial. Irving was hardly skilful in his use of pathos, degenerating not infrequently into the sentimental and even into the maudlin; yet the buoyancy of his fascinating and delicate humour has seldom been matched by any other American writer. His graceful, almost faultless style is akin to that of the writers of _The Spectator_, although it savours now and then of Goldsmith, and has, according to Scott, a dash of Swift. Perhaps Lowell best summed up the matter of Irving and his style in “A Fable for Critics”:

“To a true poet-heart add the fun of Dick Steele, Throw in all of Addison, _minus_ the chill,

* * * * *

Sweeten just to your own private liking, then strain, That only the finest and clearest remain,

* * * * *

And you’ll find a choice nature, not wholly deserving A name either English or Yankee,--just Irving.”

_Bryant and Others._--William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878) is generally thought of as a poet, but his prose was not inconsiderable either in amount or in value. During his long connection with the New York _Evening Post_, from 1826 until the end of his life, he wrote daily editorials of high literary quality, contributed to many other journals, and delivered frequent orations upon various subjects. A collection of Bryant’s prose works in two volumes was published in 1894: one who reads them is convinced that their author was possessed of a clear, smooth style, an accurate, careful judgment, and good common sense. Whittier (1807-1892) and Longfellow (1807-1882) may not improperly be mentioned here, although, like Bryant, they also are best known as poets. Whittier was closely associated with William Lloyd Garrison in the Abolition movement and contributed much to its literature. Controversial writing, however, seldom lives, and Whittier’s has not proved an exception to the rule. In addition to one or two attempts at novel-writing, Whittier published “Supernaturalism in New England” (1847), “Old Portraits and Modern Sketches” (1850), and “Literary Recreations” (1854); but these works are not important in style or in matter. The demands of metre and rhyme upon Whittier seem to have prevented the appearance, in his poetry, of certain crudities which sadly mar his prose. Longfellow’s prose, on the other hand, is more important. It is marked by a delicacy and refinement which would go far towards keeping it well known, if the author’s greater fame as a poet did not eclipse his renown as a prose writer. In addition to two romances, he published “Outre Mer” (1825), a volume in aim and content somewhat like Irving’s “Sketch Book”; and under the title of “Drift Wood” he included in the first edition of his “Complete Prose Works” (1857) a collection of stray essays and book reviews originally contributed to various periodicals.

_Edgar Allan Poe._--Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1869), like the three authors just mentioned, was a poet, yet to his own time he was perhaps even better known as a short story writer and essayist. Opinions about the value of his literary work have been as various as those respecting his character; but it is safe to claim for him no mean place among writers of criticism. In this department of literature he undertook to bring about a reform among American authors who had passed from timid deference to English opinion into the stage of noisy and indiscriminate praise of every piece of writing produced in this country. From a study of Coleridge, Poe had come to the conclusion that poetry was a matter of “intellectual happiness”; its soul was the imagination. A person of metaphysical acumen, therefore, by noting how poetic moods are excited, could produce a finer poem than one who, lacking the analytical faculty, could only feel the emotions he desired to arouse in his readers. Poe laid great stress, too, on perfection of form as of the utmost importance in producing an effect; truth was a secondary matter, except in detail, and as a means of securing assent to a conclusion which might be essentially untruthful. The object of poetry, he thought, is to arouse a subtle, indefinite pleasure; this was imparted by music; hence the necessity of melody, of the refrain.

As a critic, Poe was often savage in the extreme; but it must be remembered, as we look back upon him, that the urbanity of the modern book reviewer was then a thing unknown. Poe’s literary judgments have in the main been justified, although some of his unsparing attacks in “The Literati of New York” arouse resentment even at this late day, while his equally unrestrained laudation of certain of his now wholly forgotten contemporaries leads one near to contemptuous amusement. Poe’s most important contribution to the theory of writing are two essays usually reprinted with his poems; of these “The Philosophy of Composition” first appeared in _Graham’s Magazine_ for April, 1846, and “The Poetic Principle,” originally a lecture, was printed in _Sartain’s Magazine_ for October, 1850. Perhaps an essay “On Critics and Criticism” ought also to be mentioned; it was first published in _Graham’s Magazine_ for January, 1850.

_Ralph Waldo Emerson._--Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), serious, high-minded, and well balanced, affords a striking contrast in almost every way to Poe. Born in Boston, he was graduated from Harvard College at the age of nineteen. After teaching school for a time, he became minister of the Old North Church in his native city, but in 1835 withdrew from his charge because of his aversion to the rite of the Lord’s Supper. Taking up his residence at Concord, Massachusetts, he spent the rest of his years in writing and lecturing. While engaged in the latter work he went as far west as California and made two visits abroad. During the first, Emerson met Wordsworth, Coleridge, Landor, and De Quincey, who received him graciously, George Eliot, who referred to him as “the first man she had ever seen,” and Carlyle, who found in the visitor a hero well worthy of sincere admiration. Dignified and simple in manner, deep and kindly in thought, he found contentment in an uneventful career; sympathising strongly with those who would live the life of the spirit, he supported in theory the Brook Farm experiment; advocating anti-slavery ideas, he opened his church to Abolition agitators; but objecting on principle to war, he proposed to buy the slaves and educate them morally. He went down to his grave loved by his neighbours and honoured by many who knew him only through his works.

Emerson made his earliest appearance as a writer in a book entitled “Nature” (1836), but he first attracted real attention by his Phi Beta Kappa oration before Harvard College in 1837. This address, now published in his collected works as “The American Scholar,” made so strong an appeal to his listeners to break away from the influence of England in matters of authorship that Holmes with his usual felicity termed it “our literary Declaration of Independence.” For three or four years, beginning in 1840, Emerson was editor of _The Dial_. In 1841 he published his first collection of “Essays”; and three years later his second. From then on at irregular intervals other volumes of like content appeared; of these the most important, in all probability, are “Representative Men” (1850), “The Conduct of Life” (1860), and “Society and Solitude” (1870). There is no need of an enumeration of Emerson’s books, since they are all similar in form, content, and purpose. While Emerson is in no true sense a philosopher, he did project a theory of life. Sincerity he regarded as fundamental, and his belief in the formative influence of great men was almost identical with that held by Carlyle. By the possession of “transcendental reason,” man, according to Emerson, becomes intuitively aware of the truth. This truth or doctrine has been reduced by some critic to three propositions: (1) God is in all things and all things are in God. (2) Each created existence is essential to every other created existence. (3) Nothing which has once existed ever ceases to exist. To the average reader these ideas are bewildering and have been collectively designated as “a new philosophy maintaining that nothing is everything in general, and everything is nothing in particular.” It is related as a fact, that after an address by Emerson before a college society, the minister in charge of the meeting devoutly prayed that the hearers might be preserved from ever again being compelled to listen to such transcendental nonsense. At the close of the meeting Emerson imperturbably remarked that the gentleman seemed a very conscientious, plain-spoken man.

The distance between Emerson’s thought and that of most men laid him open to the charge of obscurity, an accusation which is still widely repeated by those who do not trouble themselves to read or to think. It cannot be denied that Emerson is often mystical, and that he must find spiritual insight and almost poetic imagination in those who would penetrate to the heart of his teachings; but it is unfair to give the impression that, save to the initiated, he is nearly always incomprehensible. Page after page of his writings offers no difficulty whatever to the most cursory reader, and his work as a whole is within the ken of any serious and unprejudiced reader. In style Emerson is sometimes forbidding through a strong tendency to condensation of expression; but the beauty of his thought frequently draws to itself a diction and order which transform his prose into veritable poetry. His strong, earnest spirituality is never fanatical, his perfect trust in what he called the Over-Soul is never sentimental, his full confidence that the world is making for ultimate good is never unpractical. Looking upon the universe as “one vast symbol of God,” he escaped pantheism on one hand and materialism on the other. As a teacher uttering his uplifting thought through literature, Emerson, it may be confidently said, stands without a rival among American writers.

_Henry David Thoreau._--Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) is by many readers coupled with Emerson. Born in Concord, Massachusetts, he spent the greater part of his life in his native town and its vicinity. He was graduated at Harvard College in 1837, although he refused his diploma on the ground that it was not worth five dollars. He gave occasional lectures and wrote many books: of these he himself published but two, “A Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers” (1849) and “Walden, or Life in the Woods” (1854). To these have been added from time to time since Thoreau’s death several volumes entitled “Excursions in Field and Forest” (1863), “The Maine Woods” (1864), “Cape Cod” (1865), and “A Yankee in Canada” (1866). The greater part of his voluminous journal was published in 1906 and 1907, though extensive selections had been previously printed in four volumes bearing respectively the names of the four seasons of the year. More than any other well-known American author, Thoreau strove to get at Nature’s inmost heart. Withdrawing to Walden Pond, he spent the larger part of his time for two years in reading and meditation; feeling then that his object had been accomplished, he returned to town life. For a brief period, Thoreau lived as an inmate of Emerson’s household and became an unconscious disciple of the man who entertained him. A transcendentalist imbued with a strong spirit of otherworldliness, he may perhaps be best summed up in Emerson’s words. “He was bred to no profession; he never married; he lived alone; he never went to church; he never voted; he refused to pay a tax to the state; he ate no flesh; he drank no wine; he never knew the use of tobacco; and though a naturalist he used neither rod nor gun.” Thomas Wentworth Higginson has pointed out that Thoreau’s fame has survived two of the greatest dangers that can beset reputation--a brilliant satirist for critic (Lowell), and an injudicious friend for biographer (Channing).