CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

_Literature_

What does the American read? In “Jörn Uhl,” the apprentice in the Hamburg bookshop says to his friend: “If I am to tell you how to be wise and cunning, then go where there are no books. Do you know, if I had not had my father, I should have gone to America—for a fact! And it would have gone hard with anybody who poked a book at me.” In that way many a man in Europe, who is long past his apprenticeship, still pictures to himself America: Over in America nobody bothers about books. And he would not credit the statement that nowhere else are so many books read as in America. The American’s fondness for reading finds clearest expression in the growth of libraries, and in few matters of civilization is America so well fitted to teach the Old World a lesson. Europe has many large and ancient collections of books, and Germany more than all the rest; but they serve only one single purpose—that of scientific investigation; they are the laboratories of research. They are chiefly lodged with the great universities, and even the large municipal libraries are mostly used by those who need material for productive labours, or wish to become conversant with special topics.

Exactly the same type of large library has grown up in America; and here, too, it is chiefly the universities whose stock of books is at the service of the scientific world. Besides these, there are special libraries belonging to learned societies, state law libraries, special libraries of government bureaus and of museums, and largest of all the Library of Congress. The collection of such scientific books began at the earliest colonial period, and at first under theological auspices. The Calvinist Church, more than any other, inclined to the study of books. As early as 1790 the catalogue of Harvard College contained 350 pages, of which 150 were taken up by theological works. Harvard has to-day almost a million books, mostly in the department of literature, philology, history, philosophy, and jurisprudence. There are, moreover, in Boston the state library of law, with over a hundred thousand volumes; the Athenæum, with more than two hundred thousand books; the large scientific library of the Institute of Technology, and many others. Similarly, in other large cities, the university libraries are the nucleus for scientific labours, and are surrounded by admirable special libraries, particularly in New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia. Then, too, the small academic towns, like Princeton, Ithaca, New Haven, and others, have valuable collections of books, which in special subjects are often unique. For many years the American university libraries have been the chief purchasers of the special collections left by deceased European professors. And it often happens, especially through the gift of grateful alumni, that collections of the greatest scientific value, which could not be duplicated, come into the possession even of lesser institutions.

In many departments of investigation, Washington takes the lead with the large collection of the various scientific, economic, and technical bureaus of the government. The best known of these is the unique medical library of the War Department. Then there is the Library of Congress, with many more than a million volumes, which to-day has an official right to one copy of every book published in the United States, and so may claim to be a national library. It is still not comparable to the many-sided and complete collection of the British Museum; the national library is one-sided, or at least shows striking gaps. Having started as the Library of Congress, it has, aside from its one copy of every American book and the books on natural science belonging to the Smithsonian Institution, few books except those on politics, history, political economy, and law. The lack of space for books, which existed until a few years ago, made it seem inexpedient to spend money for purposes other than the convenience of Congressmen. But the American people, in its love for books, has now erected such a building as the world had never before seen devoted to the storing of books. The new Congressional Library was opened in 1897, and since the stacks have still room for several million volumes, the library will soon grow to an all-round completeness like that at London. This library has a specially valuable collection of manuscripts and correspondences.

All the collections of books which we have so far mentioned are virtually like those of Germany. But since they mostly date from the nineteenth century, the American libraries are more modern, and contain less dead weight in the way of unused folios. Much more important is their greatly superior accessibility. Their reading-rooms are more comfortable and better lighted, their catalogues more convenient, library hours longer, and, above all, books are much more easily and quickly delivered. Brooks Adams said recently, about the library at Washington as a place for work, that this building is well-nigh perfect; it is large, light, convenient, and well provided with attendants. In Paris and London, one works in dusty, forbidding, and overcrowded rooms, while here the reading-rooms are numerous, attractive, and comfortable. In the National Library at Paris, one has to wait an hour for a book; in the British Museum, half an hour; and in Washington, five minutes. This rapid service, which makes such a great difference to the student, is found everywhere in America; and everywhere the books are housed in buildings which are palatial, although perhaps not so beautiful as the Washington Library.

Still, all these differences are unessential; in principle the academic libraries are alike in the New and Old Worlds. The great difference between Europe and America begins with the libraries which are not learned, but which are designed to serve popular education. The American public library which is not for science, but for education, is to the European counterpart as the Pullman express train to the village post-chaise.

The scientific libraries of Boston, including that of Harvard University, contain nearly two million printed works; but the largest library of all is distinct from these. It is housed on Copley Square, in a renaissance palace by the side of the Art Museum, and opposite the most beautiful church in America. The staircase of yellow marble, the wonderful wall-paintings, the fascinating arcade on the inner court, and the sunlit halls are indeed beautiful. And in and out, from early morning till late evening, weekday and Sunday, move the people of Boston. The stream of men divides in the lower vestibule. Some go to the newspaper room, where several hundred daily newspapers, a dozen of them German, hang on racks. Others wander to the magazine rooms, where the weekly and monthly papers of the world are waiting to be read. Others ascend to the upper stories, where Sargent’s famous pictures of the Prophets allure the lover of art, in order to look over more valuable special editions and the art magazines, geographical charts, and musical works. The largest stream of all goes to the second floor, partly into the huge quiet reading-room, partly into the rotunda, which contains the catalogue, partly into the hall containing the famous frescoes of the Holy Grail, where the books are given out. Here a million and a half books are delivered every year to be taken home and read. And no one has to wait; an apparatus carries the applicant’s card with wonderful speed to the stacks, and the desired book is sent back in automatic cars. Little children meanwhile wander into the juvenile room, where they find the best books for children. And everything invites even the least patient reader to sit down quietly with some sort of a volume—everything is so tempting, so convenient and comfortable, and so surpassingly beautiful. And all this is free to the humblest working-man.

And still, if the citizen of Massachusetts were to be asked of what feature of the public libraries he is most proud, he would probably not mention this magnificent palace in Boston, the capital of the state, but rather the 350 free public libraries scattered through the smaller cities and towns of this state, which is after all only one-third as large as Bavaria. It is these many libraries which do the broadest work for the people. Each little collection, wherever it is, is the centre of intellectual and moral enlightenment, and plants and nourishes the desire for self-perfection. Of course, Massachusetts has done more in this respect than any other part of the country—especially more than the South, which is backward in this respect. But there is no longer any city of moderate size which has not a large public library, and there is no state which does not encourage in every possible way the establishment of public libraries in every small community, giving financial aid if it is necessary.

Public libraries have become the favourite Christmas present of philanthropists, and while the hospitals, universities, and museums have still no reason for complaint, the churches now find that superfluous millions are less apt to go to gay church windows than to well-chosen book collections. In the year 1900 there existed more than 5,383 public libraries having over a thousand volumes; of these 144 had more than fifty thousand, and 54 had more than a hundred thousand volumes. All together contained, according to the statistics of 1900, more than forty-four million volumes and more than seven million pamphlets; and the average growth was over 8 per cent. There are probably to-day, therefore, fifteen million volumes more on the shelves. The many thousand libraries which have fewer than 999 books are over and above all this.

The make-up of such public libraries may be seen from the sample catalogue gotten out by the Library Association a few years since, as a typical collection of five thousand books. This catalogue which, with the exception of the most important foreign classics, contains only books in English, including, however, many translations, contains 227 general reference books, 756 books on history, 635 on biography, 413 on travel, 355 on natural science, 694 in belles-lettres, 809 novels, 225 on art, 220 on religion, 424 on social science, 268 on technical subjects, etc. The cost of this sample collection is $12,000. The proportions between the several divisions are about the same in larger collections. In smaller collections, belles-lettres have a somewhat greater share. The general interest taken by the nation in this matter is shown by the fact that the first edition of twenty thousand copies of this sample catalogue, of six hundred pages, was soon exhausted.

The many-sidedness of this catalogue points also to the manifold functions of the public library. It is meant to raise the educational level of the people, and this can be done in three ways: first, interest may be stimulated along new lines; second, those who wish to perfect themselves in their own subjects or in whatsoever special topics, may be provided with technical literature; and third, the general desire for literary entertainment may be satisfied by books of the best or at least not of the worst sort. The directors of libraries see their duties to lie in all three directions. The libraries guide the tastes and interests of the general public, and try to replace the ordinary servant-girl’s novel with the best romances of the day and shallow literature with works which are truly instructive. And no community is quite content until its public library has become a sort of general meeting-place and substitute for the saloon and the club. America is the working-man’s paradise, and attractive enough to the rich man; but the ordinary man of the middle classes, who in Germany finds his chief comfort in the Bierhalle, would find little comfort in America if it were not for the public library, which offers him a home. Thus the public library has come to be a recognized instrument of culture along with the public school; and in all American outposts the school teacher and librarian are among the pioneers.

The learned library cannot do this. To be sure, the university library can help to spread information, and conversely the public library makes room for thousands of volumes on all sorts of scientific topics. But the emphasis is laid very differently in the two cases, and if it were not so neither library would best fulfil its purpose. The extreme quiet of the reference library and the bustle and stir of the public library do not go together. In the one direction America has followed the dignified traditions of Europe; in the other, it has opened new paths and travelled on at a rapid pace. Every year discovers new ideas and plans, new schemes for equipment and the selection of books, for cataloguing, and for otherwise gaining in utility. When, for instance, the library in Providence commenced to post a complete list of books and writings pertaining to the subject of every lecture which was given in the city, it was the initiation of a great movement. The juvenile departments are the product of recent years, and are constantly increasing in popularity. There are even, in some cases, departments for blind readers. The state commissions are new, and so also the travelling libraries, which are carried from one village to another.

The great schools for librarians are also new. The German librarian is mostly a scholar; but the American believes that he has improved on the European library systems, not so much by his ample financial resources as by having broken with the academic custom, and having secured librarians with a special library training. And since there are such officials in many thousand libraries, and the great institutions create a constant demand for such persons, the library schools, which offer generally a three years’ course, have been found very successful.

Admittedly, all this technical apparatus is expensive; the Boston library expends every year a quarter of a million dollars for administrative expenses. But the American taxpayer supports this more gladly than any other burden, knowing that the public library is the best weapon against alcoholism and crime, against corruption and discontent, and that the democratic country can flourish only when the instinct of self-perfection as it exists in every American is thoroughly satisfied.

The reading of the American nation is not to be estimated wholly by the books in public libraries, since it also includes a tremendous quantity of printed material that goes to the home of every citizen. Three hundred and forty American publishers place their wares every year on the market, and the part bought by the public libraries is a very small proportion. A successful novel generally reaches its third hundred thousand; of course, such gigantic editions are limited to novels and school-books. The number of annual book publications is much smaller than in Germany; but it must be considered that, first, the American electrotype process does not lend itself to new and revised editions; and that small brochures are replaced in America by the magazine articles. On the other hand, the number of copies published is perhaps larger than in Germany. And then, too, among the upper classes, a great many German, French, and Italian books are purchased from Europe.

The great feature for all classes of the population is the tremendous production of periodical literature. Statistics show that in the United States in the year 1903, there were published 2,300 daily papers, more than 15,000 weeklies, 2,800 monthlies, and 200 quarterlies—in all, 21,000 periodicals. These are more periodicals than are published in all Europe; in Germany alone there are 7,500. The tremendous significance of these figures, particularly as compared with the European, becomes clear only when one considers the number of copies which these periodicals circulate. Not merely the newspapers of the three cities having over a million inhabitants, but also those of the larger provincial towns, reach a circulation of hundreds of thousands; and more surprising still is the unparalleled circulation of the weekly and monthly papers. Huge piles of magazines, containing the most serious sort of essays, are sold from every news-stand in a few hours. And anybody who knows New England is not surprised at the statement which T. W. Higginson makes in his recollections, that he came once to a small Massachusetts village of only twenty-four homes, nineteen of which subscribed to the _Atlantic Monthly_, a publication which is most nearly comparable to the _Deutsche Rundschau_.

The surprisingly large sales of expensive books among rich families is quite as gratifying as the huge consumption of magazines among the middle classes. Editions de luxe are often sold entire at fabulous prices before the edition is out, and illustrated scientific works costing hundreds of dollars always find a ready sale. These are merely the symptoms of the fact that every American home has its bookcases proportionate to its resources, and large private libraries are found not merely in the homes of scholars and specialists. In the palaces of merchant princes, the library is often the handsomest room, although it is sometimes so papered with books that it looks as if the architect had supplied them along with the rugs and chandeliers. One more commonly finds that the library is the real living-room of the house. If one looks about in such treasure apartments, one soon loses the sense of wonder completely; rare editions and valuable curiosities are there brought together with the greatest care and intelligence into an appropriate home. There are probably very few German private houses with collections of books and paintings comparable, for instance, to that of J. Montgomery Sears in Boston. The whole interior is so wonderfully harmonious that even the autograph poems and letters of Goethe and Schiller seem a matter of course. But from the book-shelves of the millionaire to the carefully selected little shelf of the poor school-ma’am, from the monumental home of the national library to the modest little library building of every small village, from the nervous and rapid perusal of the scholar to the slow making-out of the working-man who pores over his newspaper on the street corner, or of the shop-girl with the latest novel in the elevated train, there is everywhere life and activity centring around the world of print, and this popularity of books is growing day by day.

By far the most of what the American reads is written by Americans. This does not mean that any important book which appears in other parts of the world escapes him; on the contrary just as the American everywhere wants only the best, uses the latest machines and listens to the most famous musicians, so in the matter of literature he is observant of every new tendency in poetry, whether from Norway or Italy, and the great works of the world’s literature have their thoughtful readers. There are probably more persons who read Dante in Boston than in Berlin. Of German intellectual productions, the scientific books are most read, and if strictly scientific they are read in the original by the best educated Americans; the popular books are mostly read in translation. Of the belles-lettres, Schiller and Lessing are generally put aside with the school-books, while Goethe and Heine remain welcome; and beside them are translations of modern story-writers from Freytag and Spielhagen down to Sudermann. French literature is more apt to be read in the original than German, but with increasing distaste. The moral feeling of the American is separated by such a chasm from the atmosphere of the Parisian romance that modern French literature has never become so popular in America as it has in Germany.

As a matter of course, English literature of every sort has by far the greatest influence; English magazines are little read or appreciated, while English poetry, novels, dramas, and works of general interest are as much read in America as in England. Books so unlike as the novels of Mrs. Ward, of Du Maurier, and of Kipling have about the same very large circulation; and all the standard literature of England, from Chaucer to Browning, forms the educational background of every American, especially of every American woman. In spite of all this, it remains true that the most of that which is read in the United States is written by Americans.

How and what does the American write?

Europe has a ready answer, and pieces together a mental picture of “echt amerikanische” literature out of its unfriendly prejudices, mostly reminiscent of Buffalo Bill and Barnum’s circus. It is still not forgotten how England suddenly celebrated Joaquin Miller’s freakish and inartistic poems of the Western prairie as the great American achievement, and called this tasteless versifier, who was wholly unrecognized in his own country, the American Byron. He was not only unimportant, but he was not typically American. And of American humour the European observer has about as just an opinion. Nothing but ridiculous caricatures are considered. Mark Twain’s first writings, whose sole secret was their wild exaggeration, were more popular in Germany than in America; while the truly American humour of Lowell or Holmes has lain unnoticed. The American is supposed to be quite destitute of any sense for form or measure, and to be in every way inartistic; and if any true poet were to be granted to the New World, he would be expected to be noisy like Niagara. In this sense the real literature of America has hitherto remained un-American, perhaps too un-American. For the main thing which it has lacked has been force. There have been men like Uhland, Geibel, and Heyse, but there has so far been no one like Hebbel.

There is no absolutely new note in American literature, and especially no one trait which is common to all American writings and which is not found in any European. If there is anything unique in American literature, it is perhaps the peculiar combination of elements long familiar. An enthusiastic American has said that to be American means to be both fresh and mature, and this is in fact a combination which is new, and which well characterizes the literary temperament of the country. To be fresh and young generally means to be immature, and to be mature and seasoned means to have lost the enthusiasm and freshness of youth. Of course, this is not a contradiction realized. It would be impossible, for instance, to be both naïve and mature; but the American is not and never has been naïve. Just as this nation has never had a childhood, has never originated ballads, epics, and popular songs, like other peoples during their naïve beginnings, because this nation brought with it from Europe a finished culture; so the vigorous youthfulness in the national literary temperament has in it nothing of naïve simplicity. It is the enthusiasm of youth, but not the innocence of boyhood. It would also be impossible to be both fresh and decadent; the American is mature but not over-ripe, not weakened by the sceptical ennui of senility.

To be fresh means to be confident, optimistic and eager, lively, unspoiled, and courageous; it means to strive toward one’s best ideals with the ardour of youth; while to be mature means to understand things in their historic connection, in their true proportions, and with a due feeling for form; to be mature means to be simple, and reposeful, and not breathlessly anxious over the outcome of things. To be sure, this optimistic feeling of strength, this enthusiastic self-confidence, is hardly able to seize the things which are finest and most subtle. It looks only into the full sunlight, never into the shadows with their less obvious beauties. There are no half-tones, no sentimental and uncertain moods; wonder and meditation come into the soul only with pessimism. And most of all, the enthusiasm of youth not only looks on but wants to work, to change and to make over; and so the American is less an artist than an insistent herald. Behind the observer stands always the reformer, enthusiastic to improve the world. On the other hand, the disillusionment of maturity should have cooled the passions, soothed hot inspiration, and put the breathless tragic muse to sleep. It avoids dramatic excitement, holds aloof, and looks on with quiet friendliness and sober understanding of mankind. So it happens that finished art is incompatible with such an enthusiastic eagerness to press onward, and sensuous emotion is incompatible with such an idealism. And so we find in the American temperament a finished feeling for form, but a more ethical than artistic content, and we find humour without its favourite attendant of sentiment. Of course, the exceptions crowd quickly to mind to contradict the formula: had not Poe the demoniac inspiration; was not Hawthorne a thorough artist; did not Whitman violate all rules of form; and does not Henry James see the half-tones? And still such variations from the usual are due to exceptional circumstances, and every formula can apply only in a general way.

Still, in these general traits, one can see the workings of great forces. This enthusiastic self-confidence and youthful optimism in literature are only another expression of American initiative, which has developed so powerfully in the fight with nature during the colonial and pioneer days, and which has made the industrial power of America. And, as Barrett Wendell has shown, not a little of this enthusiastic and spontaneous character is inherited from the old English stock of three hundred years ago. In England itself, the industrial development changed the people; the subjects of Queen Victoria were very little like those of Queen Elizabeth; the spontaneity of Shakespeare’s time no longer suits the smug and insular John Bull. But that same English stock found in America conditions that were well calculated to arouse its spontaneity and enthusiasm.

Then, on the other hand, the clear, composed, and formal maturity which distinguish the literary work of the new nation is traceable principally to the excellent influence of English literature. The ancient culture of England spared this nation a period of immaturity. Then, too, there has been the intellectual domination of the New England States, whose Puritan spirit has given to literature its ethical quality, and at the same time contributed a certain quiet superiority to the common turmoil. Throughout the century, and even to-day, almost all of the best literature originates with those who are consciously reacting against the vulgar taste. Just because the number of sellers and readers of books is so much greater than in Europe, the unliterary circles of readers who, as everywhere, enjoy the broadly vulgar, must by their numbers excite the disgust of the real friend of literature; and this conscious duty of opposition, which becomes a sort of mission, sharpens the artistic consciousness, fortifies the feeling of form, and struggles against all that is immature.

Undoubtedly these external conditions are as responsible for many of the failings of American literature as for its excellences; most of all for the lack of shading and twilight tones, of all that is dreamy, pessimistic, sentimental, and “decadent.” This is a lack in the American life which in other important connections is doubtless a great advantage. There are no old castles, no crumbling ruins, no picturesque customs, no church mysticism, nor wonderful symbols; there are no striking contrasts between social groups, no romantic vagabondage, and none of the fascinating pomp of monarchy. Everywhere is solid and healthy contentment, thrifty and well clothed, on broad streets, and under a bright sun. It is no accident that true poets have not described their own surroundings, but have taken their material so far as it has been American, as did Hawthorne, from the colonial times which were already a part of the romantic past, or out of the Indian legends, or later from the remote adventurous life of the West, or from the negro life in far Southern plantations; the daily life surrounding the poet was not yet suitable for poetry. And by being so cruelly clear and without atmosphere as not to invite poetic treatment, it has left the whole literature somewhat glaringly sharp, sane, and homely.

Fiction stands in the centre of the characteristic literary productions; but also literature in the broader sense, including everything which interprets human destinies, as history and philosophy, or even more broadly including all the written products of the nation, everything reflects the essential traits of the literary temperament. In fact, the practical literature, especially the newspaper, reveals the American physiognomy most clearly. In better circles in America, it is proper to deplore the newspaper as a literary product, and to look on it as a necessary evil; and doubtless most newspapers serve up a great deal that is trivial and vulgar, and treat it in a trivial and vulgar way. But no one is forced, except by his own love for the sensational, to choose his daily reading out of this majority. Everybody knows that there is a minority of earnest and admirable papers at his disposal. Apart from newspaper politics and apart from the admirable industrial organization of the newspaper—both of which we have previously spoken of—the newspapers of the country are a literary product whose high merit is too often underestimated. The American newspapers, and of these not merely the largest, are an intellectual product of well-maintained uniformity of standard.

To be sure, the style is often light, the logic unsound, the information superficial; but, taken as a whole, the newspaper has unity and character. Thousands of loose-jointed intellects crowd into journalism every year—more than in any other country; but American journalism, like the nation as a whole, has an amazing power of assimilation. Just as thousands of Russians and Italians land every year in the rags of their wretchedness, and in a few years become earnest American citizens, so many land on the shores of American journalism who were not intended to be the teachers or entertainers of humanity, and who nevertheless in a few years are quite assimilated. The American newspapers, from Boston to San Francisco, are alike in style and thought; and it must be said, in spite of all prejudices, that the American newspaper is certainly literature. The American knows no difference between unpolitical chatter written with a literary ambition and unliterary comment written with a political ambition. In one sense the whole newspaper is political, while at the same time it is nothing but feuilleton, from the editorials, of which every large newspaper has three or four each day, to the small paragraphs, notes, and announcements with which the editorial page generally closes. From the Washington letter to the sporting gossip, everything tries in a way to have artistic merit, and everything bears the stamp of American literature. Nothing is pedantic. There is often a great lack of information and of perspective—perhaps, even, of conscientiousness in the examination of complaints—but everything is fresh, optimistic, clear and forcible, and always humorous between the lines.

In the weekly papers, America achieves still more. The light, fresh, and direct American style there finds its most congenial field. The same is true of the monthly papers in a somewhat more ambitious and permanent way. The leading social and political monthlies, like the venerable _North American Review_, which errs merely in laying too much emphasis on the names of its well-known contributors, and others are quite up to the best English reviews. The more purely literary _Atlantic Monthly_, which was founded in 1857 by a small circle of Boston friends, Lowell, Longfellow, Emerson, Holmes, Whittier, and Motley, and which has always attracted the best talent of the country, is most nearly comparable to the _Revue des Deux Mondes_. Every monthly paper specially cultivates that literary form for which America has shown the most pronounced talent—the essay. The magazine essay entirely takes the place of the German brochure, a form which is almost unknown in America. The brochure, depending as it does wholly on its own merits to attract the attention of the public, must be in some way sensational to make up for its diminutive size; while an essay which is brought before the reader on the responsibility of a magazine needs no such motive power. It is one among many, and takes its due place, being only one of the items of interest that make up the magazine.

While in German literary circles the problems of the day are mostly argued in brochures, and the essay is a miniature book really written for the easy instruction of a public which would not read long books, the American essay is half-way between. It is living and satirical like the German brochure, but conservative and instructive like the German “Abhandlung.” Only when a number of essays on related topics come from the same pen are they put together and published as a separate book. We have already mentioned that America is oversupplied with such volumes of essays, which have almost all the same history—they were first lectures, then magazine articles, and now they are revised and published in book form. Their value is, of course, very diverse; but in general, they are interesting and important, often epoch-making, and the form is admirable. A distinguished treatment, pointed humour, a rich and clear diction, uncommonly happy metaphors, and a careful polish are united so as to make one forget the undeniable haste with which the material is gathered and the superficiality of the conclusions arrived at. So it happens that the essayists who appear in book form are much more appreciated by the reading public than their German colleagues, and that every year sees several hundred such volumes put on the market. The motto, “fresh and mature,” is nowhere more appropriate.

But the American remains an American, even in the apparently international realm of science. It is a matter of course for an historian to write in the personal style. Parkman, Motley, Prescott, and Fiske are very different types of historians; and nevertheless, they have in common the same way of approaching the subject and of giving to it form and life. But even in so purely a scientific work as William James’s two-volume “Principles of Psychology,” one finds such forcible and convincing turns of thought, so personal a form given to abstract facts, and such freshness together with such ripe mastery, as could come only from an American.

Oratory may be accounted an off-shoot of actual literature. A nation of politicians must reserve an honourable place for the orator, and for many years thousands of factors in public life have contributed to develop oratory, to encourage the slightest talent for speaking, and to reward able speakers well. Every great movement in American history has been initiated by eloquent speakers. Before the Revolution, Adams and Otis, Quincy and Henry, precipitated the Revolution by their burning words. And no one can discuss the great movement leading up to the Civil War without considering the oratory of Choate, Clay, Calhoun, Hayne, Garrison, and Sumner; of Wendell Phillips, the great popular leader, and Edward Everett, the great academician, and of Daniel Webster, the greatest statesman of them all.

In the present times of peace, the orator is less important than the essayist, and most of the party speeches to-day have not even a modest place in literature. But if one follows a Presidential campaign, listens to the leading lawyers of the courts, or follows the parliamentary debates of university students, one knows that the rhetorical talent of the American has not died since those days of quickening, and would spring up again strong and vigorous if any great subject, greater than were silver coinage or the Philippine policy, should excite again the nation. Keenness of understanding, admirable sense of form in the single sentence as in the structure of the whole, startling comparisons, telling ridicule, careful management of the climax, and the tone of conviction seem to be everybody’s gift. Here and there the phrase is hollow and thought is sacrificed to sound, but the general tendency goes toward brevity and simplicity. A most delightful variation of oratory is found in table eloquence; the true American after-dinner speech is a finished work of art. Often, of course, there are ordinary speeches which simply go from one story to another, quite content merely to relate them well. In the best speeches the pointed anecdote is not lacking either, but it merely decorates the introduction; the speaker then approaches his real subject half playfully and half in earnest, very sympathetically, and seeming always to let his thoughts choose words for themselves. The speeches at the Capitol are sometimes better than those in the Reichstag; but those at American banquets are not only better than the speeches at Festessen and Kommersen, but they are also qualitatively different—true literary works of art, for which the American is especially fitted by the freshness, humour, enthusiasm, and sense of symmetry which are naturally his.

Whoever looks about among journalists, essayists, historians, and orators will return more than once to the subject of belles-lettres; and this is truer in America than elsewhere. As we have already seen, pure literature is strongly biased toward the practical; it is glad to serve great ideas, whether moral or social. Poetry itself is sometimes an essay or sermon. We need not think here of romances which merely sermonize, and are therefore artistically second-rate, such as “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” or of such literary rubbish as Bellamy’s “Utopia”; even true poets like Whittier must, in the history of emancipation, be classed with the political writers. And although the problem novel in the three-volume English form is not favoured in America because of its poor literary form, the short satirical and clean-cut society novel, which may break away at any moment into the essay or journalistic manner, has become all the more popular. Further, this being the time of America’s industrial struggle, society has not become so intellectually aristocratic that being a poet is a life profession. The leading novelists have had to be active in almost all fields of literature; they have frequently begun as journalists, and have generally been essayists, editors, or professors at the same time.

The eighteenth century was unfruitful for the New World, in lyric as in epic literature. The literary history discovers many names, but they are of men who created nothing original, and who cannot be compared with the great English geniuses. America was internally as well as externally dependent on England; and if one compares the utter intellectual unfruitfulness of Canada to-day with the feverish activity of her southern neighbour, one will inevitably ask whether political colonies can ever create literature. When freedom was first obtained by the colonies, a condition of new equilibrium was reached after a couple of decades of uncertainty and unrest, and then American literature woke up. Even then it was not free, and did not care to be free, from English precedents; and yet there were original personalities which came to the front. Washington Irving was, as Thackeray said, the first ambassador which the New World of literature sent to the Old. English influences are unmistakable in the tales of Irving, although he was a strong and original writer. His “Sketch-Book,” published in 1819, has remained the most popular of his books, and the poetic muse has never been hunted away from the shores of the Hudson where Rip Van Winkle passed his long slumbers.

The American novel had still not appeared. The romances of Brown, laid in Pennsylvania, were highly inartistic in spite of their forcible presentation. Then James Fenimore Cooper discovered the untouched treasures of the infinite wilderness. His “Spy” appeared in 1821, and he was at once hailed as the American Scott. In the next year appeared “The Pioneers,” the first of his Leather-stocking Tales of wild Indian life. And after Cooper’s thirty-two romances there followed many tales by lesser writers. Miss Sedgwick was the first woman to attain literary popularity, and her romances were the first which depicted the life of New England. At the same time a New England youth began to write verses which, by their serene beauty, were incomparably above all earlier lyric attempts of his native land. Bryant’s first volume of poems appeared in 1821, and therewith America had a literature, and England’s sarcastic question, “Who ever reads an American book?” was not asked again.

The movement quickly grew to its first culmination. A brilliant period commenced in the thirties, when Hawthorne, Holmes, Emerson, Longfellow, Thoreau, Curtis, and Margaret Fuller, all of New England, became the luminaries of the literary New World. And like the prelude to a great epoch rings the song of the one incomparable Edgar Allan Poe, who did not fight for ideas like a moral New Englander, but sang simply in the love of song. Poe’s melancholy, demoniacal, and melodious poetry was a marvellous fountain in the country of hard and sober work. And Poe was the first whose fantasy transformed the short story into a thing of the highest poetical form. In New England no one was so profoundly a poet as Nathaniel Hawthorne, the author of “The Scarlet Letter.” His “Marble Faun,” of which the scene is laid in Italy, may show him in his fullest maturity, but his greatest strength lay in the romances of Massachusetts, which in their emotional impressiveness and artistic finish are as beautiful as an autumn day in New England. Ralph Waldo Emerson, the rhapsodical philosopher, wrote poems teeming over with thought, and yet true poems, while Whittier was the inspired bard of freedom; and besides these there was the trio of friends, Longfellow, Lowell, and Holmes. Harvard professors they were, and men of distinguished ability, whose literary culture made them the proper educators of the nation. Thomas Wentworth Higginson is the only one of this circle now living, remaining over, as it were, from that golden age. He fought at first to free the slaves, and then he became the stout defender of the emancipation of women, and is to-day, as then, the master of the reflective essay. His life is full of “cheerful yesterdays”; his fame is sure of “confident tomorrows.”

Longfellow is, to the German, mainly the sensitive transposer of German poetry; his sketch-book, “Hyperion,” opened up the German world of myth, and brought the German romance across the ocean. His ballads and his delightful idyll of “Evangeline” clothed New England life, as it were, in German sentiment; and even his Indian edda, “Hiawatha,” sounds as if from a German troubadour wandering through the Indian country. Longfellow became the favourite poet of the American home, and American youth still makes its pilgrimage to the house in Cambridge where he once lived. Lowell was perhaps more gifted than Longfellow, and certainly he was the more many-sided. His art ranged from the profoundest pathos by which American patriotism was aroused in those days of danger, to the broadest and most whimsical humour freely expressed in dialect verses; and he also wrote the most finished idyllic poetry and keenly satirical and critical essays. It is common to exalt his humorous verses, “The Biglow Papers,” to the highest place of typical literary productions of America; nevertheless, his essential quality was fine and academic. Real American humour undoubtedly finds its truer expression in Holmes. Holmes was also a lyric poet, but his greatest work was the set of books by the “Autocrat.” His “Autocrat of the Breakfast Table” has that serious smile which makes world literature. It was the first of a long series, and at the writing he was a professor of anatomy, sixty-four years old.

Then there were many lesser lights around these great ones. At the middle of the century Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote her “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” of which ten thousand copies were sold every day for many months. And romance literature in general began to increase. At the same time appeared the beautiful songs of Bayard Taylor, whose later translation of Faust has never been surpassed, and the scarcely less admirable lyrics of Stedman and Stoddard. So it happened that at the time when the Civil War broke out, America, although deficient in every sort of productive science except history, had a brilliant literature. Science needed, first of all, solid academic institutions, which could only be built patiently, stone on stone—a work which has been witnessed by the last three decades of the century. Poetry, however, needed only the inner voice which speaks to the susceptible heart, and the encouragement of the people. For science there has been a steady, quiet growth, parallel with the growth of the institutions; for letters there have been changing fortunes, times of prosperity and times of stagnation. When the powder and smoke of the Civil War had blown away the happy days of literature were over; it began to languish, and only at the present day is it commencing to thrive once more.

This does not mean that there has been no talent for three decades, or that the general interest in literature has flagged. Ambitious writers of romance like Howells, James, Crawford, and Cable; novelists like Aldrich, Bret Harte, and Hale, Mary Wilkins, and Sarah Orne Jewett; poets like Lanier and Whitman, and humourists like Stockton and Mark Twain, have done much excellent work, and work that is partly great, and have shown the way to large provinces of literary endeavour. Nevertheless, compared with the great achievements which had gone before, theirs is rather a time of intermission. And yet many persons are quite prepared to say that Howells is the greatest of all American authors, and his realistic analyses among the very best modern romances. And Howells himself pays the same tribute to Mark Twain’s later and maturer writings.

But there is one poet about whom only the future can really decide; this is Walt Whitman. His “Leaves of Grass,” with their apparently formless verse, were greatly praised by some; by others felt to be barbarous and tasteless. There has been a dispute similar to that over Zarathustra of Nietzsche. And even as regards content, Whitman may be compared with Nietzsche, the radical democrat with the extreme aristocrat, for the exaggerated democratic exaltation of the ego leads finally to a point in which every single man is an absolute dictator in his own world, and therefore comes to feel himself unique, and proudly demands the right of the Uebermensch. “When they fight, I keep silent, go bathing, or sit marvelling at myself,” says this prophet of democracy. “In order to learn, I sat at the feet of great masters. Oh, that these great masters might return once more to learn of me.” The similarity between American and German intellects could readily be traced further, and was, perhaps, not wholly unfitted to reveal a certain broad literary perspective. As we have compared Whitman and Nietzsche, so we might compare Bryant with Platen, Poe with Heine, Hawthorne with Freytag, Lowell with Uhland, Whittier with Rückert, Holmes with Keller, Howells with Fontane, Crawford with Heyse, and so on, and we should compare thus contemporaries of rather equal rank. But such a parallelism, of course, could not be drawn too far, since it would be easy to show in any such pair important traits to belie the comparison.

In the positively bewildering literature of to-day, the novel and the short story strongly predominate. The Americans have always shown a special aptitude and fondness for the short story. Poe was the true master of that form, and the grace with which Aldrich has told the story of Marjorie Daw, and Davis of Van Bibber, the energy with which Hale has cogently depicted the Man Without a Country, or Bret Harte the American pioneer, and the intimacy with which Miss Wilkins and Miss Jewett have perpetuated the quieter aspects of human existence, show a true instinct for art. A profound appreciation, fresh vigour, and fine feeling for form, graceful humour and all the good qualities of American literature, combine to make the short story a perfect thing. It is not the German _Novelle_, but is, rather, comparable to the French _conte_. The short stories are not all of the single type; some are masculine and others feminine in manner. The finely cut story, which is short because the charm of the incidents would vanish if narrated in greater detail, is of the feminine type. And, of the masculine, is the story told in cold, sharp relief, which is short because it is energetic and impatient of any protracted waits. In both cases, everything unessential is left out. Perhaps the American is nowhere more himself than here; and short stories are produced in great numbers and are specially fostered by the monthly magazines.

Of humourists there are fewer to-day than formerly. Neither the refined humour of Irving, Lowell, and Holmes, nor the broader humour of Bret Harte and Mark Twain, finds many representatives of real literary importance. There are several, it is true, who are delighted with Dooley’s contemporary comment in the Irish dialect, but there is a much truer wit in the delicately satirical society novels of Henry James, and to a less degree in those of Grant, Herrick, Bates, and a hundred others, or in the romances of common life, such as Westcott’s “David Harum.”

The historical romance has flourished greatly. At first the fantasy went to far regions, and the traditional old figures of romance were tricked out in the gayest foreign costumes. The most popular of all has been Wallace’s “Ben Hur.” The Americans have long since followed the road which German writers have taken from Ebers to Dahn and Wildenbruch, and have revived their own national past. To be sure, the tremendous editions of these books are due rather to the desire for information than the love of poetry. The public likes to learn its national history while being entertained, since the national consciousness has developed so noticeably in the last decade and the social life of America in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries has doubtless become thus living and real for millions of Americans. Æsthetic motives predominate, nevertheless, and although books like Churchill’s “The Crisis,” Bacheller’s “D’ri and I,” Miss Johnston’s “Audrey,” Ford’s “Janice Meredith,” and others similar are merely books of the day, and will be replaced by others on the next Christmas-trees, nevertheless they are works of considerable artistic merit. They are forcibly constructed, dramatic, full of invention and delightful diction. It is undeniable that the general level of the American romance is to-day not inferior to that of Germany.

Historical romance aims, first of all, to awaken the national consciousness. So, for instance, the romances of the versatile physician, Weir Mitchell, are first of all histories of the Revolutionary period of the whole nation, and, secondarily, histories of early Pennsylvania. But the story which depends on local colour flourishes too. Here shows itself strongly that trait which is distinguishable in American writing through the whole century, from Irving, Cooper, and Bryant to the present day—the love of nature. Almost every part of the country has found some writer to celebrate its landscape and customs, not merely the curious inhabitants of the prairie and gold-fields, but the outwardly unromantic characters of the New England village and the Tennessee mountains, of the Southern plantations and the Western States. And new stories of this sort appear every day. Especially the new West figures prominently in literature; and the tireless ambition on which the city of Chicago is founded is often depicted with much talent. The novels of Fuller, Norris, and others are all extraordinarily forceful descriptions of Western life and civilization. The South of to-day, which shows symptoms of awaking to new life, is described more from the Northern than from the Southern point of view. It is surprising that the mental life of the American negro has attracted so little attention, since the short stories of Chestnut point to unexplored treasures.

The longer efforts are always in prose, and since the time of Evangeline epic verse has found almost no representative. Verse is almost wholly lyrical. The history of American lyric is contained in the large and admirable collections of Stedman, Onderdonk, and others; and it is the history of, perhaps, the most complete achievement of American literature. One who knows the American only in the usual caricature, and does not know what an idealist the Yankee is, would be surprised to learn that the lyric poem has become his favourite field. The romantic novel, which appeals to the masses, may have, perhaps, a commercial motive, while the book of verse is an entirely disinterested production. The lyric, in its fresh, intense, and finished way, reveals the inner being of American literature, and surprisingly much lyric verse is being written to-day. Even political newspapers, like the _Boston Transcript_, publish every day some lyric poem; and although here as everywhere many volumes of indifferent verse see the light of day, still the feeling for form is so general that one finds very seldom anything wholly bad and very often bits of deep significance and beauty. Here, too, the best-known things are not the most admirable. We hear too much of Markham’s “The Man With the Hoe,” and too little of Santayana’s sonnets or of Josephine Preston Peabody. Here, too, local colour is happily in evidence—as, for instance, in the well-known verses of Riley. The Western poet goes a different road from the Eastern. The South has never again sent a messenger so full of melodies as Sidney Lanier.

There is a strong lyric tendency also in the dramatic compositions of the day. The true drama has always been more neglected than any other branch of art, and if it is true that the Americans have preserved the temperament and point of view of Elizabethan England, it is high time for some American Shakespeare to step forth. Until now, extremely few plays of real literary worth have been written between the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans. Dramatists there have been always, and the stage is now more than ever supplied by native talent; but literature is too little considered here. The rural dramas having the local colour of Virginia and New England are generally better than the society pieces: and the very popular dramatizations of novels are stirring, but utterly cheap. On the other hand, the American has often applied the lyric gift in dramatic verse, and in dramas of philosophic significance such as Santayana’s admirable “Lucifer” or Moody’s “Masque of Judgment.” The stunted growth of American dramatic writing is closely connected with the history of the American stage, a subject which may lead us from literature to the sister arts.