The South in prose and poetry

Preface

For a long time the literature of the South was neglected, or, perhaps, it is nearer the truth to say that it was ignored. Thomas Nelson Page, in a speech some years ago, stated that the rest of the world looked upon the South as a section of the United States without a literature, and the Encyclopaedia Britannica, an authority throughout the world, published an arraignment far more scathing than this. We of the South have no one to blame for this condition of affairs but ourselves. It is only natural that, if we did not seem to place a proper value upon our own writers, no other section was going to herald their fame except where the overwhelming force of genius compelled it.

We can but take the form of the mold in which we are cast. Our range of vision is limited by our horizon, and unless that horizon is lifted our field of vision will always remain the same. To those whose knowledge of American literature has been acquired merely from text-books written by men who have given scant space to the authors of the South, it is, in spite of its truth, an astonishing fact that Simms ranks only second to Hawthorne; that Poe surpasses all the other of our poets ; that Calhoun was our most profound logician, and Maury the greatest American scientist of his day.

There has, in recent years, however, begun a strong movement to rescue our literature from iv PREFACE.

oblivion and give it its proper place among the written records of our nation's intellectual growth. A number of sound critical works have been written and many excellent compilations made. My excuse for adding to this latter class of books is that I have tried to make mine one that would be especially pleasing to the youth of the South. I have sought, in selecting the article of each writer, to give preference to simplicity and the element of interest rather than to present those passages that best represent the author's genius or his most finished literary style, though I admit in a few instances I have not adhered to this policy. I have endeavored to include every class and form of writing that would be of interest to student and teacher, and, as far as I could, to choose a lesser known selection to one that would be tiresome through its familiarity. I have striven at all times to bear in mind that it was a reader that I was compiling.

I hope that this book will be received in the spirit in which it is written; that it will aid, at least, a little in fostering among the girls and boys of the South a greater love and respect for their section of the country without in any manner lessening in their hearts the ardent affection and earnest patriotism that their fathers have ever felt for the Union, and, above all, I hope that there may be found in it a spark of inspiration that will kindle in the minds of some of its young readers the noble desire to devote themselves to the preservation of the literature and the history of the South.