on the counter,-thinks I, That man has an axe to grind. When I see a man flattering the people, making great professions of attachment to liberty, who is in private life a tyrant, methinks, Look out, good people! that fellow would set you turning grindstones. When I see a man hoisted into office by party spirit, without a single qualification to render him either respectable or useful,-alas! methinks, deluded people, you are doomed for a season to turn the grindstone for a booby.

NINETEENTH CENTURY

LITERATURE

CHAPTER II.

GENERAL SURVEY; IRVING.

MERICAN literature could not properly exist until the American nation had entered on its independent career. During the colonial period the people were occupied in subduing the wilderness and adapting themselves to new conditions of life. Few but the scholarly preachers of the gospel had inclination or leisure for writing, and the chief printed productions of the times were religious and theological. For books of other kinds the people looked to the mother country. In the Revolutionary period questions of human rights and government were urgent and drew forth treatises of marked ability. Yet there were some evidences of literary activity in Other directions. Newspapers, now struggling into existence, furnished a ready means for circulating satires and occasional

verses.

With the beginning of the new century the turbulence of war had ceased, a stable government was formed, and the minds of Americans were turned from their former dependence on the writers of England. There came an original tone of thought, a deep reflection on the new aspects of the world, a wholesome independence of mind. For a time Philadelphia seemed likely to become the literary centre, as it was the capital, of the nation. Charles Brockden Brown was the first American novelist, and Joseph Dennie, the editor of the Portfolio, was hailed as the American Addison, but his writings are now forgotten. Philadelphia continued to be the place of publication even for New England authors, and Graham's Magazine

was the medium through which Longfellow and others reached the public.

But the pioneers of the new era of American literature belonged to New York, if not by birth, by choice of residence. Three men stand forth as representatives of this class—Irving, Cooper and Bryant. Widely different in their nature and training, as in their finished work, they were yet all distinctively American. The cheerful Irving began as a playful satirist and delineator of oddities, and became a skillful sketcher of the pleasant features of merry England and picturesque Spain, as well as of his beloved Hudson. In much of his work he exhibits the contrast of the past with the present, producing sometimes humorous, and sometimes pathetic scenes. Cooper belonged to that lake region of New York where the Indians and whites came into closest contact and unequal conflict. He revealed to Europe the romance of the American forest. Again, as an officer in the navy, he acquired such familiarity with sea-life, as to make him the foremost sea-novelist of the language. Excellent in description and well furnished with material, he yet rated his own abilities too highly, and wrote much which may readily be ignored. Bryant early displayed his power as a meditative poet on nature, but the duties of active life summoned him to quite different work in New York City. As editor of a daily newspaper, he battled strenuously and honorably for righteousness until in old age he received the loving veneration of his fellow-citizens. But in literature he remains the author of "Thanatopsis" and a translator of Homer.

The influence of Harvard College as a promoter of learning tended to give Boston a supremacy in literature. Here the North American Review was early established, and the study of German and other foreign literatures was promoted. The Unitarian movement, apart from its theological effects, had a distinct uplifting effect on American culture. Channing and Emerson, Longfellow and Lowell, assisted, each in his own way, in broadening and elevating the minds of their countryAs an outgrowth of this humanitarian tendency came the anti-slavery movement, which stirred some of these writers to passionate outbursts, but could not draw them from their literary pursuits. At a later period, the civil war left a more lasting impression on their characters and work, yet when it

men.

had passed, the survivors made still nobler contributions to literature. Whittier, the Quaker poet and anti-slavery lyrist, wrote the most popular ballad of the war, and afterwards showed his best art in peaceful themes. So also Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe was able to present the wrongs of slavery in a popular romance, and thus urge on the war, yet later contented herself with mild pictures of domestic life. Apart from most of the foregoing, and by a method peculiarly his own, Hawthorne studied the spiritual facts of New England life, and unveiled its mysteries and romance. Others more quickly won recognition; his subtler genius required longer time for correct appreciation. Gradually his true worth has been discerned, and now he is acknowledged to be the chief representative of American romance.

In remarkable contrast with Hawthorne in life and character and work stands the brilliantly gifted, but miserably unfortunate, Edgar A. Poe. He not only proved himself the greatest metrical artist of the English language, weaving words into music at his pleasure, but he was the skillful producer of weird romances and cunningly devised tales, usually gloomy and terrible, sometimes extravagant. His erratic course and untimely death have drawn the pity of the world. His melodious verses have been models for Tennyson and Swinburne, as well as French poets. W. G. Simms was the prolific romanticist of the South, seeking to rival Cooper in the delineation of the Indians, and in reproducing the Revolutionary scenes of his native State. John P. Kennedy wrote also a novel of the Revolution, and sketched country life in Virginia.

Of American poets Longfellow has been the most popular, partly from his choice of subjects easily understood by all, and partly from his artistic treatment of them. His sympathetic heart and his generous culture have enabled him to give adequate expression to the common human emotions.

Lowell is distinctly the most cultured of American poets, and has excelled as essayist and critic. Yet he has not reached the popularity of Longfellow or Whittier, and is perhaps most widely known as a humorist and writer of Yankee dialect. In his later years he was a noble representative of America in foreign courts.

Dr. O. W. Holmes was noted as a skillful writer of occa

sional verses before his peculiar merits as a prose-writer were displayed in the Atlantic Monthly. Here his "Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table" was a brilliant combination of humor, satire and scholarship, and interspersed were some of his best poems. He was devoted to Boston, which he celebrated as "the hub of the solar system."

The size of the present work has not afforded sufficient room for the adequate treatment of history and historians. But the work of Americans in this department must at least be mentioned, as they have attained special fame and are truly representative of the country. William H. Prescott (1796-1859), in spite of the affliction of blindness, devoted his life to historical studies, and produced standard works on the history of Spain, Mexico, and Peru. Written in a stately and dignified style, they have stood the test of time and the investigation of later students. George Bancroft (1800-1891), after studying in German universities and teaching a classical school in Massachusetts, undertook to prepare an exhaustive history of the United States down to the adoption of the Constitution. The many public positions, which he held, partly helped and partly hindered the completion of his great work. Almost fifty years elapsed before the twelfth and final volume appeared. While the whole forms a lasting monument to the author's industry, its very length has prevented it from attaining the highest suc

cess.

Most successful in securing popular attention and applause was John Lothrop Motley (1814-77), who, after ten years of patient research, published in 1856, "The Rise and Fall of the Dutch Republic." Other works connected with the history of the Netherlands occupied his later years, except so far as he was engaged in diplomatic service. His thorough mastery of his subject and his power of pictorial presentation of the past make vivid the men and events of a critical period in European history.