American writers of to-day

Front matter

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Preface

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS once defined luncheon as " a reflection on breakfast and an insult to dinner." In a similar spirit, one might define a preface as a reflection on the author's skill and an insult to his readers' intelligence; for, if a book requires elaborate exegesis, if its purpose demands careful explanation, something must needs be wrong with either book or reader. Nobody need feel under the slightest obligation, therefore, to read this preface; but should it occur to some one to glance a second time at this page, let him be assured that these studies of contemporary American literature make no pretence of being complete, comprehensive, exhaustive. There was a vague purpose in the author's mind, when he began writing, to supplement these chapters with some attempt at a general survey of the American literature of our own time, after the manner of Mrs. Oliphant's " Victorian Age of English Literature." This would have given them more formal completeness, even if it did not otherwise add to their value. Should the reception of his vJ PREFACE.

book encourage him to persevere, he may yet fulfil that intention.

In the meantime, he ventures to hope that what he has done may fill a vacant place. There is very little that makes any pretence of being serious criticism of the writers of our own day. Let any one ransack even a large library, and he will in most cases go away empty-handed of books that will aid him in the study and comprehension of current literature. Some of our leading periodicals contain reviews of lately published books that are worthy to rank with the best critical writing; but these reviews only partially supply the reader's wants. What he desires is an intelligent and critical account of an author's whole performance, not a review of any particular work; something that will help him to comprehend the nature and value of a writer's contribution to our literature, to estimate his significance, to perceive his characteristics and idiosyncracies, — in a word, to read him understandingly. If these studies have any value, it is their fitness in some sort to satisfy this desire. The writer does not afi"ect what Scott felicitously called " the big bow-wow style," nor has he any ambition to be a Jeffrey with a " This will never do " for anything that he does not himself like; still less does he aspire to make and unmake authors' reputations. The motto placed on the titlepage has been throughout borne in mind. He has tried to read our American

PREFACE.

Vll authors sympathetically, intelligently, diligently, and to report as well as he is able the results of this reading. Making no claims to infallibihty, he has striven to give his report honestly, and

"nothing extenuate Nor set down aught in malice."

Partly for the convenience of those who lack other books of reference, partly because the facts recited throw a side-light on the literary work of the writers studied, some biographical details are interwoven with the critical remarks. If to any the book seem to lose dignity because of this, possibly in the judgment of other readers this feature will add to its interest and value.

New York, October 2, 1894.

Contents

Page

I. Edmund Clarence Stedman 3

II. Francis Parkman 27

I. Edmund Clarence Stedman

AMERICA has as yet produced no poet who was poet and nothing else. No counterpart of a Wordsworth or a Tennyson, conscious of his high calling, has devoted his life to the faithful and singlehearted worship of the Muses. This may be, in part, due to the hard conditions of life in a new world. Every man has had to face the problem of making a living, and we are even now only beginning to see grow up among us a leisure class. A people that have had to subdue the wilderness, to tunnel the mountains, to bridge rivers, to build railways and telegraphs and factories, to dig wealth out of the bowels of the earth, may be pardoned if they have somewhat neglected the worship of the beautiful in eager quest of the useful. Our country has thus far been too deeply intent on utilitarian aims, its ideals have been too gross and unspiritual, for the up-bringing of great poets.

For, even had the poet been born, he had been given scant encouragement to devote his life to his art. A Tennyson, a Scott, a Byron, receives princely sums for his verse, but what American poet has been able to live by his art alone? Of all our Scant rewards singers, Longfcllow Came nearest to this, poesy. yet he was far past middle life before he

was able to surrender his bread-winning profession and give all his time to literature. Only one born to affluence, like a Browning, can venture to devote his life to work for which his fellows show so slight esteem and offer a reward so niggard.

As a compensation, in some sort, for the lack of great poets, America has been dowered with an unusual proportion of clever men of letters, — poets, but not poets solely ; men whose Yankee shrewdness and adaptability have enabled them to do many kinds of work, and to touch nothing that they have not adorned. Poe,^ Bryant, Longfellow, Emerson, Lowe^ll, among the dead. Holmes, Stedman, Aldrich, Howells, among the living, are names that at once suggest themselves to us. It may well be that our literature as a whole is more brilliant and many-sided than it would have been had these and others been able to give themselves wholly to poetry. There are those who hold that, if one has the true afflatus in any degree, and is conscious of a message to deliver to the world, he will find a way and a time to speak it forth. Much may plausibly be said for this view of the case ; one instinctively disbelieves in the " mute, inglorious Miltons," for had they been Miltons they had been neither mute nor inglorious. And yet, there may easily be such a thing as the partial delivery of a message. The skylark will surely sing, but we may believe that he will soar higher and pipe a clearer, more melodious note, when the heavens are propitious.

I.

Edmund Clarence Stedman was born at Hartford, Conn., October 8, 1833. He is a scion of the purest New England stock. Like many other men of genius, he seems to have inherited his mental and moral traits largely from his mother, a sister of William E. Dodge, and daughter of the Rev. Aaron Cleveland, great-grandfather of Grover Cleveland. Quite early

in life he showed special aptitude for lit- An early aptitude for litera-

erature, and gave promise of at least con- '"re. siderable talent. While a student a*- Yale College he won honors in Greek and English, obtaining first prize with a poem on "Westminster Abbey " that was published in the " Yale Literary Miscellany" in 1851. For some boyish escapade he was suspended from college in his junior year, and never returned to take his degree. What his offence was does not appear, but that it was no serious affair is evidenced by the mildness of the penalty, and still more by the subsequent action of his college, which in 1871 restored him to his class rank and conferred on him the degree of Master of Arts.

His college course being terminated in this summary way, young Stedman adopted journalism as his calling, and, after a brief and not too profitable experience with country newspapers in Connecticut, he found a place on the staff of the " New York Tribune " in 1854. Here he remained until i860, when he joined the staff of the " New York World," and for some time served as war correspondent. As a journalist, one gathers that he was faithful, hard-working, and reasonably successful, without being brilliant. Perhaps enough of his strict New England training still abode with him to hinder his advancement. One requires an ample stock of native assurance and an acquired hardihood above common, and must overboard with all his fine scruples and nice sensitiveness of conscience, if he A trial of jour- would get to the top lu joumalism. It may nahsm. ^^ reasonably conjectured that the discov-

ery of this had something to do with Mr. Stedman's course ; if so, it is to his credit that he was not willing to pay the price of success in the calling he had ignorantly chosen. Another reason doubtless actuated him ; he still cherished dreams of becoming a poet. He had continued to woo the Muses at intervals, with a flattering degree of success ; and he had grounds for hoping that, with added years and experience, if he could attain pecuniary independence, he might write his name high on the roll of American singers.

After a brief experience of office-holding, under Attorney-General Bates, Mr. Stedman returned to New York, and in 1864 became a stock-broker. Those were times in which fortunes were daily made " on the street," and the still youthful broker may have cherished visions of a speedy retirement, and the

EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN.

spending of the best years of his life among his books, in the practice of his beloved art. If such a piurge into were his day-dreams, this modern Alnas- ^" ^"^"'' char soon found them rudely shattered. He was not long in learning that if fortunes are quickly won in Wall Street, they are as quickly swept away again. It was another lake of Tantalus to the would-be poet. Several times he saw his fortune just within his grasp, and once it seemed to be fully attained, when a turn of fortune's wheel compelled him to begin over again. What seemed at the beginning to be but the occupation of a few years at most, turned out to be the grinding work of a lifetime. Within a few years, if rumor is to be trusted, dame Fortune has been more kind, but her favors have come too late. The productive years of stalwart manhood are gone. The desire of great achievement doubtless remains, but the full opportunity can never return. It is the old story: Ah ! si la jeunesse savait — si la vieillesse pouvait ! " When I was a boy," says Thackeray somewhere, " I used to pass a confectioner's window. There was taffy in it; I wanted some, but the taffy was a shilling, and I had none. Now I have the shilling, but I don't care for taffy."

II

Mr. Stedman's versifying began, as we have seen, in his college days. His prize poem he has never reprinted, possibly because he shares Macaulay's opinion that a prize poem is like a prize sheep, and that " prize sheep are good for nothing but to make tallow candles, and prize poems are good for nothing but to light them." It must be confessed that Tennyson's " Timbuctoo " is a powerful confirmation of this theory, and it might be difficult to name any other production that would tend to disprove it. But Mr. Stedman has not exercised this severity in the case of all \{\'s> juvenilia, and for this one is grateful, since we are now able to trace the growth of his genius and his art as we could not otherwise. What among his early writings he deemed worthy of preservation, he included Poems, Lyric ^^ " Po^ms, Lyric and Idyllic," which apandidyihc. pearcd in i860 with the imprint of Charles Scribner. The verses that formed this volume may still be found in the author's collected works, of which they fill the first eighty-five pages.

This was a rather remarkable book for a young man of twenty-seven to print, — remarkable chiefly for its promise, as was but natural, but remarkable in some measure for actual achievement also. The verse manifested present as well as potential power. We find, what we might expect, obvious traces of the influence of other poets, the result of generous admiration and unconscious imitation. There is more than a suggestion of Hood and Saxe, especially of the latter, in " The Diamond Wedding; " and one asks himself whether " Penelope " would have been written except by a poet who had read and even studied Tennyson's " Ulysses." " Flood Tide," too, is in the spirit, as well as the measure, of " Locksley Hall," and couplets like

EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN.

the following might well have been among the fragments that the elder poet was unable to work into his theme : —

" Shame upon all listless dreamers early hiding from the strife, Sated with some little gleaning of the harvest-fields of life ! "

" Calm, and slowly lifting upward, rose the eastern glory higher, Gilding sea, and shore, and vessel, and the city-crowning spire."

In " The Sleigh-Ride," again, we have a reminiscence of Shelley, and a little scrutiny would doubtless detect other cases of similarity. Fortunate is the youthful poet who chooses such masters as these in his art. But there are verses here in which the poet utters a note of his own ; " The Singer " is a nearly perfect bit of workmanship, and " The Freshet " is an idyll that only country-bred readers can fully appreciate.

Probably the most spirited piece in the book was, " How Old Brown Took Harper's Ferry," and it still ranks among the best poems inspired by xiiejoim the event that it commemorates; indeed, J^--"^" '^='"«'Jone is much inclined to rank it above all competitors. Though the poet skips the hard places in Brown's' Kansas career, — if he knew of the Pottawotamie massacres when he wrote, — he indulges in less unmeasured hero-worship than has been the fashion in certain circles of the North. But if his poem would hardly have passed muster then (and it would still less pass now) as a cool historic estimate of John Brown, it is still worthy of respect as an outburst of lofty moral sentiment and passionate patriotic feeling, however illlO AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY.

chosen the occasion, or unworthy the object. Almost prophetic, in the Hght of subsequent events, seems this closing stanza, written before Brown's execution, in answer to the cry of " Hang him ! " that went up from the South : —

" But, Virginians, don't do it! for I tell you that the flagon. Filled with blood of Old Brown's offspring, was first poured

by Southern hands ; And each drop from Old Brown's life-veins, like the red gore

of the dragon, May spring up a vengeful Fury, hissing through your slaveworn lands !

And Old Brown, Ossawatomie Brown, May trouble you more than ever, when you 've nailed his coffin down ! "

The publication of this volume may have convinced the judicious few that a poet had appeared who " knew to sing and build the lofty rhyme," but it certainly made no great sensation. On the whole, it may be said to have been " favorably received," — a phrase that has a pretty sound and is usefully vague. The times were not auspicious for the launching of poetical ventures. The people of the North were too intent on sterner themes to regard verses, except such as had a martial ring or appealed to the rising antislavery fervor. The John Brown ballad was the only poem that was keyed to the feeling of the day, and therefore the book had only un succh d'estime, though it deserved more. All things considered, it was fortunate to escape a worse fate.

EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN li

III

The second period of Mr. Stedman's poetic activityis the decade between i860 and 1870. It is distinguished by the publication of two volumes, — " Alice of Monmouth " (New York, 1864) and " The Blameless Prince" (Boston, 1869), — and was rounded off by the issue in 1873 of a complete edition of the poetical works, bearing the imprint of Ticknor and Fields. It was during this ten or twelve years that the greater part of Mr. Stedman's work as poet was done. Absorbed as he was, first by the most exacting and exhausting of callings, and afterwards by the hardlyless distracting cares of business, he was quite unable to repress the spirit that strove within him for utterance in verse.

" Alice of Monmouth " was described in the subtitle as " An Idyll of the Great War," and other poems were included in the volume. This title-poem was a romance in verse. Experiments of this kind have been sometimes phenomenally successful, but not always. Scott gained an unbounded popularity, as ^^ ^^ n of the permanent as it was sudden, by means of Great war. his " Marmion " and " The Lady of the Lake," but even he failed disastrously in some of his later ventures. Tennyson, a far greater poet, though he measurably succeeded in " The Princess," failed dismally in " Maud," which is only saved from oblivion by two, or at most three, exquisite lyrics embedded in the rubbish. The younger Lytton, as " Owen

Meredith," achieved immediate but transitory fame among sentimental misses with " Lucile," — thanks to heroic steahng from George Sand, — but it is now pretty well agreed that while " Lucile " may be a romance, it is not a poem. " Alice of Monmouth " was neither a disastrous failure nor a marvellous success. It is a story that ought to have appealed to American readers, in the midst of the Civil War, with peculiar force. It has poetic merit of a high order, but it never became a popular book. This fate is not a little hard to justify, or even to understand. There was no lack of popular interest in the theme ; readers greedily devoured, as fast as the groaning presses could turn them out, war novels of the most trashy and sensational kind, written in an indescribable style, that can be pronounced neither English nor American ; there seemed to be literally no limit to the appetite of the public for reading of this kind. It may be that the workmanship of this poem was too fine, its passion too sublimated, its charm too ethereal, to please the multitude. It is still so unfamiliar to American readers, of more than ordinary intelligence and culture, that one might quote from it almost anywhere and vainly challenge a roomful of such people to identify the passage. One exception should be noted, — which, however, is only partially an exception, — and that is the spirited " Cavalry Song," which is the fifth number of Part XI. of the poem : —

" Our good steeds snuff the evening air, Our pulses with their purpose tingle ;

The foeman's fires are twinkling there ; He leaps to hear our sabres jingle !

HALT !

Each carbine sends its whizzing ball : Now, cling ! clang ! forward all, Into the fight ! "

This song of three stanzas is, as it deserves to be, one of the best known and most admired of Stedman's poems. Yet it is safe to say, not one in a thousand of those who have read it in some anthology of American verse holds it for anything but an independent lyric, or would fail to be astonished on hearing that it is but a small portion of a poem of some fifty closely printed octavo pages.

" The Blameless Prince " is even less known. In this case one cannot wish the verdict of the public reversed. It is not a wholesome poem. A vein of cynicism runs through it that quite vitiates TheEiameit for those who still believe that men are '^^^ ^"""' true and women chaste. The burden of the story is that those who are praised by the world for purity and honor are sinners in secret ; and yet, being such sinners, deserve that we should pity and spare them, for

" He who brightest is, and best.

Still may fear the secret test That shall try his heart aright."

A tale whose moral is so immoral is deservedly neglected by readers. It is the one thing in all Mr. Stedman's writings, whether verse or prose, that is not clean and bracing.

In the collected poems of 1873 were most of those with which Mr. Stedman's name is most closely connected, — those of which one instinctively thinks whenever his name is mentioned. There were four spirited war-lyrics — " Sumter," " Wanted — a Man," " Gettysburg," and " Kearney at Seven Pines " — The first " com- wliicli, of their kind, are scarcely surpassed piete " edition, jj^ q^,j. literature. All of these but the " Sumter " have been included, along with the " Cavalry Song," in the collection of " American War Ballads and L}'rics " made by Mr. George Gary Eggleston ; and every reader of taste will pronounce them to be among the very best things in the two volumes. Very few of the great mass of poems called forth by the Civil War still stir the blood like these.

Verses of a more peaceful sort were also first gathered in this volume. " Pan in Wall Street " is deservedly a prime favorite with everybody who can appreciate a blend of fancy and humor. Who has not felt the charm of " Laura, My Darling," the poem/<?r excellence of all wedded lovers? What reminiscences of boyhood days and rural sports in " Country Sleighing" and "The Doorstep," — the latter worthy to live alongside of " Zekle's Courtin'." And where is there a prettier child's poem than " What the Winds Bring" ?

In all these later poems there is but one that even suggests the manner of any other poet. One may be wrong about that instance, but in the " Dartmouth Ode " are tones that seem like echoes of Lowell's " Commemoration Ode." The resemblance is more in the structure of the verse and the general manner than in anything more specific, except in one case to be noted. Of any actual imitation there is of course no trace ; there are no verbal similarities ; there is not even the same manner of handling the theme; and the theme itself is distinct from that of Lowell's ode, though similar. Still, the eighth strophe, in which the character of Chase is described and eulogized, impresses one as strikingly like Lowell's familiar tribute to Lincoln. The suggestion is so spontaneous and so strong, one can hardly resist an inference that Lowell's ode suggested in some degree Mr. Stedman's, and in particular that the two passages specified are thus related. One hesitates about saying this, but as the resemblance is no closer than Mr. Stedman has himself traced between Tennyson and Theocritus, it can do no harm to let it stand. It is certainly no worse to owe a hint to a contemporary poet than to one who has been dead long enough to be forgotten, though perhaps the choice is less prudent.

Mr. Stedman's latest verse has shown no falling-off from that of his prime. He had not passed his prime, indeed, when his last book appeared, — " Hawthorne and Other Poems" (Boston, 1876). These verses were included in the " Household Edition " of his poetical works (Boston, 1884). On various occasions, unfornately too infrequent, he has broken silence since that time, but he has published no volume. His careful

ri-.i . • , 1 • 1 , , ,1 workmanship.

Ihere is, m this latest verse, the same

careful and conscientious literary art, the same high purpose, that mark all his best work. None of our American poets has been less content with " the first fine careless rapture " of song, none has spared less the labor of the file. Not that his poems appear labored, that they smell of the lamp — that were indeed crude literary art ; rather his verse by its very perfectness of form, its apparently unstudied simplicity and easy grace, gives token of the severe labor without which this supreme excellence is unattainable.

IV

With the interruption of his original work, began Mr. Stedman's labors as a critic. A sort of introduction to this was the editing, in conjunction with Mr. T. B. Aldrich, of " Cameos from Landor " (Boston, 1874). His actual critical work, however, was not undertaken until the following year, when the first of what proved to be an extended series of essays was Victorian published in " Scribner's Magazine " (now

Poets of "The Century"). One series of these

essays was collected into a volume, with the title "Victorian Poets" (Boston, 1875, London, 1876); another and later collection being entitled "Poets of America" (Boston, 1886). The popularity of both volumes was immediate, great, and well deserved ; the former has reached its twenty-first edition, while the latter is in its eleventh. Nor is the reason of this popularity far to seek. For the service undertaken in these essays but one other American could be thought of as the author's equal in equipment;

and while to Lowell we may concede equal or superior learning and breadth of vision, and a style quite unapproachable, we cannot grant that in equipoise, in impartial judgment, in coolness of mind, he was Mr. Stedman's equal. Lowell, had he attempted a similar task, would have written delightful essays, in themselves contributions of high value to our literature, apart from their critical content; but in saying this does not one hint at their probable defect? They would have been rather literature than criticism. In our author's case, temperament, scholarship, and experience combined to make him almost the ideal critic. While by no means incapable of generous admiration, he is not prone to let the „.

' ■■• His equipment

warmth of his emotion obscure the clear- asacmic. ness of his mental operations. His judgment is not biassed by affection; he knows how to be kindly just, but he does not know how to be weakly partial. The partisan of no theory of art, the champion of no school, a citizen of the world, his candid spirit and catholic taste inspire confidence, not merely in the rectitude of his intent, but in the trustworthiness of his interpretations, the correctness of his canons, and the accuracy of his conclusions. The uninstructed reader instinctively feels that he is following a safe guide ; and, while the instructed reader may differ from the critic on questions of detail, he will differ seldom, and then with modest self-distrust; and he is not likely to dispute the sincerity or sanity of that which he declines to accept as authoritative.

AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY.

Every man has the defects of his quahties, as the French say. Mr. Stedman is so thorough an artist in verse, he comprehends so fully the resources as well as the limitations of his art, that he lacks patience with one who seems careless of the mere form of expression. This makes his criticism of Browning unsatisfactory, because unsympathetic. All that he says is true, or at His limita- least iugcnious, but one is conscious through- *'°"^' out the essay that the critic has failed to grasp

and express the whole truth. Indeed, no man to whom poetry is primarily an art can understand Browning. Mr. Stedman fails, with the best intentions in the world, frankly and sincerely to admire Browning, and his attempt to force an admiration that he does not feel makes his criticism less valuable than is its wont. This is the more curious, because he so ardently admires Walt Whitman, — a man who was not only not an artist, but who lost no opportunity to tell the world how much he despised art.

One of Mr. Stedman's largest critical undertakings has been the editing, in connection with Miss Ellen The Library M. Hutchinsou, of a " Library of American

of American

Literature. Literature " (New York, 1 888-1 89 1 ). This library has filled ten large octavo volumes. The making of the selections, and the preparation of the large amount of critical and biographical matter accompanying them, gave abundant scope for the exercise of the largest learning, the soundest judgment, and the best taste. Regarding the value of his labors there is no difference of opinion. By common

EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN.

consent this is the completest collection of representative writings of American authors, and the best guide to a systematic study of our literature, that has ever been made.

The latest claim of Mr. Stedman on our gratitude is the publication of his lectures on " The Nature and Elements of Poetry." In this volume he at once discusses the fundamental principles of the art of poetry and illustrates them from the practice of the great masters of the art. The book is thus both creed and criticism. He has little faith in untutored genius, in those who compose by the light of nature The Nature and

^ ■> ^ Elements of

and pour forth in the ears of an astonished Poetry. world " their profuse strains of unpremeditated art." To him poetry is not merely an art, but the noblest of the arts, and not the least difficult, — as little to be acquired without study and practice as likely to be acquired by practice and study solely

Definition of terms is always desirable and generally indispensable; and a definition of poetry is none the less helpful in a discussion of this kind because the thing to be defined is vague and elusive, and refuses to be adequately expressed in words. Mr. Stedman's definition is broad and inclusive, yet sufficiently definite : " Poetry is rhythmical, imaginative language, expressing the invention, taste, thought, passion, and insight, of the human soul." It is the art of expression in verse, in briefer terms. But this implies, first of all, that the poet have some thought requiring imaginative expression, and that he be capable of giving his thought a fitting form. This is why he is poet {poietes, maker, creator), and without this he is a mere mechanical versifier. But how to have such a thought? This requires " the vision and the faculty divine," the power to see into the very heart of things, the creative insight — what, in a word, we mean by " genius." But thus far poetry is not sufficiently difi*erentiated from prose; we need the further qualification that it is the rhythmical expression of the visions of genius. Even this does not completely differentiate poetry from prose, for there is a prose rhythm, and prose may be so imaginative, so like to poetry in all save form, as to be best described by the term " poetic prose." The rhythm of poetry is marked by regularity, while the characteristic of prose rhythm is flexibility and variety. Just as soon as sentences become rhythmical according to a fixed alternation of syllable and accent, in regular sequence, the form of expression is no longer prose but verse. Mr. Stedman's definition Poetiy defined, should, therefore, be amended somewhat as follows : " Poetry is the expression in imaginative language and in regular rhythm, of the human soul's invention, taste, thought, passion, and insight."