American literature; a text book for the use of schools and colleges

Preface

American Literature has of late been receiving considerable attention. Professor Moses Coit Tyler and Professor Charles F. Richardson have each published histories about it. Under the editorship of Charles Dudley Warner, a series of volumes on American men of letters is now appearing. Mr. E. C. Stedman, in conjunction with Mrs. Hutchinson, has followed up his " Poets of America " with a handsome array of tomes entitled " American Authors," and Mrs. Sarah K. Bolton's "Famous American Authors'* does a similar thing on a much smaller scale. Many American authors have themselves been yielding to an autobiographical impulse, the fruits of which have appeared in magazines and newspapers. Mr. John Bigelow has won the gratitude of students by his exhaustive work on Benjamin Franklin ; and Emerson, Thoreau, Poe, and others have been the subjects of various biographers. Our literary men seem in no immediate danger of being forgotten.

It is singular, therefore, that so few school manuals, devoted exclusively to American Literature, have yet been put forth. Until quite lately, almost the only approaches to such a thing have been in the form of supplements to manuals of English Literature, or of Universal Literature — essays of a dozen or a score of pages, appended in a shamefaced manner to the latter extremity of a volume. Shaw's " EngUsh Literature," for example, concludes with a very concise "sketch" of our leading writers, written by H. T. Tuckerman — a careful and scholarly piece of work, and good enough for English pupils, but quite inadequate to the needs of our own schools and academies. There can be no question of the expediency of affording the rising generation of this country an adequate notion of what American Letters really are. But books like those above mentioned are not suited to this purpose, and were not designed iv PREFACE.

for it. A school-book was wanted : something to be used in the class-room, to be studied for what it contained, and to indicate further lines of research where such are required. No work is so certain to lead to results of lasting value as that which is pursued independently.

To meet these needs, the present "Manual " has been written. In preparing it, we have examined books of biography and criticism, both well-known and obscure. We have had recourse to various public libraries, and to some private ones. Where authorities have conflicted, we have hunted down our facts through the columns of magazines, pamphlets and monographs. When no conflict existed, we have availed ourselves of the best published statements. But in the matter of passing critical judgments upon literary work, we have followed our independent conviction, and must be held responsible therefor.

Kindly aid has come to us from several sources. Mr. Charles W. Stevenson, of W^arrensburg, Mo., and Messrs. H. C. Davis and C. C. Hemming, of Gainesville, Texas, have lent valuable books and papers. Dr. Leslie Waggener, chairman of the Faculty of Texas University, has given friendly counsel ; and to these and other friends we return our hearty thanks.

The selections from the writings of O. W. Holmes, R. W. Emerson, J. G. Whittier, Bayard Taylor, J. R. Lowell, and H. W. Longfellow are used by permission of and arrangement with Houghton, Mifflin and Company, Publishers, Boston, Mass.

TABLE' OF CONTENTS.

For Names of Writers see General Index at End of Volume.

PAGE

Preface iii

To Teachers vii

Introduction ix

CHAPTER I. Colonial Literature i

CHAPTER n.

Benjamin Franklin 14

CHAPTER 111.

The Revolutionary Period 22

CHAPTER IV.

Pioneer Period , 37

CHAPTER V.

Some Statesmen and Historians 69

CHAPTER VI.

V vi TABLE OF CONTENTS.

CHAPTER VII.

PAGE

Religious and Social Reformers , ii8

CHAPTER VIII.

Nathaniel Hawthorne , 155

CHAPTER IX.

From Hawthorne to Bret Harte 170

CHAPTER X.

The Innovators 241

CHAPTER XI.

Writers of To-day 267

TO TEACHERS.

This manual is intended to be, not an end in itself, but a means to an end. It is not to be regarded as a substitute for independent literary study. It is a method and a guide ; did it attempt to be more, it would attempt too much. At the present day it is hardly necessary to remind teachers of this.

Mastery of the lines of study herein marked out involves considerable reading on the pupil's part. Under proper encouragement and guidance, pupils will not be found to show aversion to reading. The practical experience of several years has convinced us that if a pupil be led with tact, and if the leader be himself an intelligent student, genuine interest may be awakened and maintained. Every human activity has found expression in literature, and no human mind can fail to find somewhere in literature congenial food. Longfellow may find an echo in those to whom Emerson is too remote. If Jonathan Edwards be too abstruse, try Irving's essays ; or his " Knickerbocker," should Bancroft seem dry. Something can be found to suit every grade of development and variety of temperament.

It will often happen that those features in a book which please the pupil, are not those which a cultivated judgment would prefer. Enlightened appreciation of literature is a plant of slow growth. What one gets from a book depends on what one brings to its perusal. Let not the teacher, therefore, feel discouraged. If ninety per cent of a beginning class dislike poetry, do not try to convert them by argument ; read them Longfellow's " Paul Revere," or Browning's " How they brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix," or Campbell's " Hohenlinden," or even Cowper's "John Gilpin"; and before you have finished, their conversion will have commenced.

viii TO TEACHERS.

It has been left to the teacher to supply questions involving rhetorical criticism, when such are deemed desirable. Youthful literary enthusiasm is apt to be checked by over-insistence upon technical details. The thought is the vital thing, and should be the goal of early study. " Poetry," says Matthew Arnold, " is a criticism of life." ,» Do not lead the pupil to suppose that it is an illustration of rhetorical and metrical rules.

Such questions as have been included in the volume are suggestive mainly. Encourage the pupils to ask and answer questions of their own. Make the class a forum of free literary discussion ; thus stimulating interest, increasing critical acumen, impressing striking features and revealing the tastes and ability of the pupils. Make them tell in their own words the substance of their yesterday's reading. Cause the author and his work to live in their minds, and you will not find them lacking in proficiency.

Standard writers are now obtainable at so cheap a rate, that any one may afford the material for a year's reading in connection with this manual. Lovell's twenty-cent " Library," for example, contains Bryant, Willis, Poe, some of Whittier and Longfellow, Cooper, Irving and Emerson. Selections from the best American authors are to be had at fifteen cents a number in Houghton's Riverside Literature Series. Complete editions, when accessible, are of course to be preferred to selections ; and the spread of free libraries tends to smooth the way. The objection of expense, at all events, is not a serious one.

A list of useful reference-books is appended. They should be comprised in every school library.

Notice of errors detected in this volume, and suggestions and criticisms looking to its improvement, will be thankfully received by the authors.

Introduction

In criticism, as in biography, the optimist does best. For true optimism impHes not indiscriminate complacency, but beUef in growth towards higher states. It is faith in man's The point of destiny, and in the Divine ordering thereof. In deal- view, ing with the subject of American Hterature, optimism is not expedient only, but indispensable. Unless we can see promise in it, there is not much, as yet, that we can see. After a few great names, — to be told off, perhaps, on the fingers of one hand, — we are at the end of our original creative geniuses. All the rest are either reflections of these, or of European models, or else are really nothing at all but print and paper.

There is no ground for discouragement in this. Genius, like other phenomena, is subject to statistics, and America, in proportion to her age and population, has had as many gen- ^j^^ condiiuses as any other nation. The mass of all literature tion in of modern times is made up of writings below the first -^"i®"*^^- class. Readers no more than authors can or ought to be always at concert pitch. We like to climb a mountain now and then ; but we live in the valleys. And in American literature there are many pleasant glades, with a certain distinctiveness of scenery, wherein we may wander harmlessly and even profitably. These native vales of ours are broadening as we advance, and assuming a richer as well as a more characteristic aspect. They remind us less of England, of the Rhine, of the Campagna, or what not, and more of America — of something that we can never find abroad. Meanwhile, our mountains, after the fashion of high things, have always been individual. Seldom, in the world of letters, do we find such another heaven-scaling crag, with its feet in the deep sea, as Webster : nor so pure a summit, sublime with transcendental snows,

ix

X INTR OD UCTION.

as Emerson : nor anything to match that enchanted height, dim with fairy mists, and near and remote as the rainbow, that is Hawthorne. As for Frankhn, he is a sort of table-land, a continent above a continent ; perambulating which we do not reahze our elevation, till we come to the brink.

The fact nevertheless remains that modesty best befits our present literary predicament. The potential is not the actual ; the acorn, though it be the source of the oak, is but an acorn ; and, because our literature looks healthy in embryo, we are not to speak of it as if it were anything more than embryonic. We have accomplished less in literature than in any other branch of human effort. A shipwrecked mariner, cast upon a desert island, and obliged to wring his subsistence from the hand of savage Material de- i^^^ure, does not begin by writing an epic, a novel velopment or even a pliilosophic history. These things will be written about him, a thousand years hence, by his posterity. The intellect which, among us, now chooses its field of work with so much success in commerce, in manufacture, in science or in politics, — things immediately essential to the development of our country and people, — might, under settled and mature conditions, have achieved corresponding triumphs in literature. And the day for such achievements will doubtless come ; but we will not seek to anticipate it, for eminence in letters seldom comes to a nation until its eminence in other respects has begun to decline.

Literature as one of the fine arts is less than a century old with us ; for although much that Franklin wrote has in it that quality Pure litera- ^^ modernness that is one of the surest literary tests, turebuta yet his aim was always practical or didactic. Irving cen ury o . ^^^ almost the first of our writers to cultivate literature for its own sake. The productions of our colonial period can be called hterature by courtesy only. They consist of historical and geographical memoranda, and of theological essays and arguments. The Revolutionary era is rich in speeches, protocols and declarations, often elevated in sentiment and massive in thought, but dyed in the passionate hues of patriotism and parti-

INTR OD UC TION. xi

sanship, and necessarily lacking the repose and balance that

belong to pure literature. The voice of Charles Brockj T? , r ..*.,, The outline,

den Brown was as that of one crying m the wilderness ; his lungs were strong, and his will good, but his tones were unmodulated, broken and discordant. Irving was the first to discover a native vein, and in his Knickerbocker and Catskill legends he worked it to admirable effect. Cooper chose the Indians, and the sea in war; Herman Melville, with an unsurpassed fascination of manner, told of sea Hfe in peace. Then Emerson, Hawthorne, Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes and the rest ushered in the present generation.

Up to this point, the divisions of periods, schools, styles or phases are practically the same in all manuals and histories of literature. It is with the contemporary and all but contemporary writers that divergences of classification begin. A great deal has been said on this subject, and with sufficient emphasis. However comparatively moderate may be the value of American literature, there is no doubt that it has been immoderately gossiped about. Sidney Smith began it with his famous interrogation, and the din of criticism and defence has been growing ever since. We have heard sweeping condemnations, often unjust ; we have The method given ear to vociferous eulogies, generally foolish, o^ grouping. " Schools " have been detected, where none existed ; geniuses have been proclaimed, where there were only ingenious echoes or showy charlatans : " tendencies " have been discovered, which ended in a cul-de-sac : there has been here and there a bit of log-rolling, and now and then a note of spite or jealousy. Meanwhile, the supply of writers has been constantly augmenting — though of persons who ought to write the number is now, as it ever has been and probably always will be, very small. But the genuine voice is not certain to be the most widely heard, at first ; and the very elect among literary detectives may sometimes be deceived by specious counterfeit. Time is needed to develop a true perspective, and to starve out the fat impostors. Contemporary judgments are sure to involve some errors ; the best course seems to be, first to adopt a sound but not too rigid method of xu

INTRODUCTION.

grouping ; and secondly, to pick out such illustrative figures as shall, upon impartial consideration, appear most nearly representative and graphic. The plan is readily formulated ; but rightly and conscientiously to carry it out is not easy.

Literary groups are likely to be engendered, not by the personal idiosyncrasies of any single writer, however eminent, but by the features anc^^g^ditions of the land and period in which the writing is done. We might expect to find, for example, a Civil- War group. As a matter of fact, though war histories have been abundant, war novels have been few, and war poetry not important. But the histories, useful as material, are scarcely literature; no history of the war has appeared that is final or philosophic. The novels may come later, when time has merged the memory of the struggle in a richer atmosphere, and has healed its wounds. Again, we may look for a class of minds who will find a congenial literary topic in the negro — his humorous, pathetic, dialectal, religious and political phases. And, in truth, this field has been ardently and even fanatically worked ; it might with advantage be allowed to lie fallow for a season or two. Once more, men like Bret Harte and Joaquin Miller will find their inspiration in frontier scenes and episodes ; others, like James, will apply to society themes the stimulus of international comparisons ; others will seek inspiration among politicians, social reformers, and labor-agitators ; and still others, in company with Mr. Howells, will strive by patient dissection and refined comment to give value to the commonplace and the vulgar. To counterbalance these, there will be a group whose choice of a subject is conditioned mainly by its imaginative or dramatic promise ; and another who rejoice in subjective, introspective, esoteric and transcendental studies. Then there will always be the sad- eyed army of humorists; and the poets and the naturalists — the Thoreaus and Burroughses, who ensconce themselves under Nature's wing, and divide their time between extolling her, and criticising civilization. In short, each aspect of national activity and circumstance will attract its special knot of investigators and devotees, and each newly hatched author will betake himself to the one or the other, as his innate sympathies dictate.

INTRODUCTION. xiii

A classification upon this principle seems natural, and has other

manifest advantages. The principle is of permanent application :

as lonaj as the national feature exists, there will the . . , ° ' A natural

writers be gathered together. It is a principle which classifica-

will become more comprehensive the longer it is tionasop- ^ * posed to an

applied ; for the tendency of all human activity is artificial

towards special lines of work ; and writers will be ^^^'

impelled to "devote themselves to such, not only by natural

preference, but by condign necessity ; competition is already so

great that nothing short of special fitness can secure employment.

It is a principle, therefore, m accord with the law of evolution,

which is not the case with such artificial classifications as that

which specifies a " Realistic School," a " Concord School," and so

forth. There will always be writers, no doubt, who produce work

in more fields than one ; but even they will survive in their best

work only, and that will easily be assigned to its proper place.

And again, there will be isolated individuals who have no obvious

affiliations, the beauty of whose genius is its own excuse for

being. They may safely be left to themselves ; there will never

be so many of them as to create confusion.

Having adopted our classification, the next step, as we have

said, is to concentrate attention upon those writers in each group

who embody in the fullest degree its proper characteristics. The

others may be no less meritorious from the point of view of

literary workmanship ; but in an elementary text-book such as

this, where, out of a hundred names, but one can be mentioned,

that one must be, first of all, characteristic : study of _,. .

him must be study of the general traits of his group, with each

The strictest and most systematic process of exclusion ^^^^'

is indispensable to a clear conception of the quality and drift of

our contemporary literature. To attempt anything approaching

a large faniiliarity with it, would be worse than futile. The value

of the whole body of American literature is (as we have already

intimated) but moderate : and although every school pupil in this

country should know something — and know it accurately and

systematically — about our representative writers and their books ;

xiv INTR OD UC TION.

and though they should give the subject an examination fuller than foreign schools would demand, — yet the sense of proportion must not be lost. Our writers have contributed but a fraction to the world's sources of culture ; and if we would avoid the crippling of provincialism, we must not only concede this fact theoretically, but practically act upon it.

Let the student bear it in mind, then, that the surest way to enhance the prosperity of American literature in the future, is to The test to submit it, now, to the severest tests. A high standard Reapplied. — ^^e highest — is imperative. Boys and girls now at school will, a few years hence, furnish material for a new generation of American authors. Let them study this manual, not for the glorification of home products, but to realize, by learning what has been done, how much remains to do. The purest patriotism is the most exacting ; let us prove our faith in the literature of this continent by refusing to be satisfied with less than perfection. Perfection can never be reached ; but we can always climb towards it. Literatures, and manuals of literature, come and go ; but all are of no avail unless the human mind. Divinely endowed, vindicates its birthright by aiming at a loftier and broader culture than the world has yet known.

AMERICAN LITERATURE.

COLONIAL LITERATURE.

As THE physical analysis of the Universe begins with protoplasm, so must intelligent study of a literature begin with examination of the inchoate material upon which the literature is based.

Literature in the higher sense is a criticism of hfe. But the

Colonial days of America were days of action, not of thought

about action. The men who crossed the sea in quest The condi-

of civil and religious liberty, came not to write, but to ^^^^^ ^^^

. , the charac-

do. Two subjects occupied them, — the Fear of God, terof the

and the Conduct of the Colony. Such things as they beginning:, wrote either told the bald story of their daily hfe, or discussed religion, or mingled the two. They took up the pen only in the intervals of grasping the Bible, the sword, or the plough- handle. As literature, their productions are, in almost all instances, destitute of value. They are tedious, hfeless and repulsive. Yet, if you have imagination and human sympathy enough, you may detect in this protoplasmic rubbish the germs of qualities which, in their perfect development, made the genius of such men as Webster, Emerson and Hawthorne.

The first American writings are not only not hterature ; they

were not even written by Americans. There were no

The source American born people, except the Indians, in those of our first

days. American literature, then, begins with books ^°°^^*

written about America by foreigners.

AMERICAN LITERATURE.

Character.

Captain John Smith (15 79-1631) was the first American annalist. He was a daring, restless, impetuous but shrewci man ; of imagination too warm and vanity too inordinate to allow of his telling plain truth. He was more quick to magnify virtue in speech than to illustrate it by deed. But, considering how easily, in those times, he might have become a buccaneer and pirate, it is to his credit that he was content to remain an adventurer, a pioneer and a gasconading chronicler

and pamphleteer.

He wrote much : but his writings are of less value than, at the time, were his services in the Virginia Colony. Of the nine books treating more or less of America we give the full titles of the first two. It will be unnecessary for the student to read more of them than this : and the same may be said of nearly all the American books (so-called) of the seventeenth century. They are material for history, not for criticism.

"A True Relation of such occurrences and accidents of noate as hath happened in Virginia since the first planting of that Collony, which is now resident in the South part thereof, till the last return from thence. Written by Captaine Smith, Coronell of the said Collony, to a worshipfull friend of his in England. London, 1608."

The second title-page reads as follows : — *' A Map of Virginia. With a Description of the Countrey, the Commodities, People, Government, and Religion. Written by Captaine Smith, sometimes Governour of the Countrey. Whereunto is annexed the proceedings of those colonies, since their first departure from England, etc. by W. S. Oxford, 161 2."

Smith's modern fame is due chiefly to the romantic tale of his connection with Pocahontas, the daughter of the Indian chief Powhatan. Whether or not his account of her rescue of him

Captain John Smith.

be true, is not known. We shall, however, lose noth- ThePocahoning by believing it. Smith himself told it so often *^^ story, that, whether really true or false, it doubtless seemed true to him. " It is true," he observes in one place, " in our greatest extremitie they shot me, slue three of my men, and by the folly of them that fled tooke me prisoner; yet God made Pocahontas the King's daughter the meanes to deliver me : and thereby taught me to know their trecheries to preserve the rest." Smith spent less than three years in America, including his visit to the Isles of Shoals on the New England coast ; but he fell in love with the country, and always did what he could to advance its interests.

Other early Virginia annalists are George Percy, William Strachey (whose account of a storm that shipwrecked him is, by some, thought to have been in Shakespeare's mind a t, * when he wrote " The Tempest ") , and John Hammond, minor writ- In Maryland, George Alsop attempted a humorous ®^^' descriptive work, part prose, part doggerel. In New York, Daniel Denton tried to stimulate immigration by declaring, in his " Brief Description," that " If there be any terrestrial Canaan, 'tis surely here ! " Daniel Coxe of New Jersey, taking a broader point of view, advised the union of the English Colonies as a means of preventing Spanish and French supremacy. Gabriel Thomas of Pennsylvania, in his " Historical and Geographical Account," gives data to show that people squeezed by poverty in the Old W^orld might find life easier in the New. And John Lawson (to make an end of this dry catalogue) found something to say about the country and inhabitants of North Carolina. All these writers belong to the first quarter of the seventeenth century.

Meanwhile, in New England, the Puritan chroniclers were less fruitful. They had come to New England to get spiritual hberty, not material profit ; to lay up treasure not on earth, . . but in heaven. Their bleak land had no allurements tion in New for ordinary emigrants, and the Puritans cared not to ^^8^l*^<** invite such. Moreover, they were too busy killing and converting Indians, fasting and worshipping, building and farming, to find time to write. They were not of a literary turn of mind.

Nevertheless, certain of them, perhaps, recognized the historical as well as the religious significance of their exile in the New History of ^orld. William Bradford (1588-165 7), a Yorkshire Plymoutli yeoman, sailed for Plymouth in his thirty-third year, Plantation. ^^^ y^ ^.j^g xi^jiX, year was made governor of the Colony. He was reelected to that position some thirty times ; his administration was both bold and wise, and he was an inveterate diarist. His "History of Plymouth Plantation," begun in 1631, was continued uninterruptedly down to 1646. It was a day-to-day chronicle, and is trustworthy and methodical. His nephew used his Ms. in compiling his New England History ; Thomas Prince (1687-1758) drew from it materials for his "Universal History" ; later, it found its way into the archives of the Old South Church in Boston, which was sacked by the British in 1776; and finally, in 1853, it was discovered in an English library, and was copied and published in this country. Bradford was a fairly good writer, and far more modest than Captain John Smith. " I shall endevor," he says, "to manifest [my subject] in a plane stile, with singular regard unto ye simple trueth in all things, at least as near as my slender judgement can attaine the same." And his " endevor " was successful.

Edward Winslow (1595-1655), a fellow-passenger with Bradford on the Mayflotver, kept a truthful and intelligent journal during the years 1620 and 1621, and was the author and "Good of three other works of a historical and historico-theo- Newsfrom logical character. He acted as diplomatic agent for land ^^' ^^ Colony to England, and was thrice elected governor. He died of a fever in the West Indies in 1655, after a somewhat romantic and active life. Some of Winslow's descriptions show keen observation, as for example, this of the " Great Sagamore, Masasoit " : "In his person he is a very lusty man, in his best years, an able body, grave of countenance, and spare of speech ; in his attire little or nothing differing from the rest of his followers, only in a great chain of white bone beads about his neck ; and at it, behind his neck, hangs a little bag of tobacco, which he drank, and gave us to drink. His face

COLONIAL LITERATURE.

was painted with a sad, red-like murrey, and oiled both head and face, that he looked greasily."

The "History of New England from 1630 to 1649," by John Winthrop (1587-1649), first governor of Massachusetts, and, in 1643, president of the United Colonies of New England, is less readable than Bradford's record, but is rhetorically its superior. Winthrop was of a somewhat aristocratic ^^^^^ ^^ temper, but firm and wise ; a magnanimous and faithful man. He was accused of undue exercise of power ; but he was vindicated from the charge, and his speech on that occasion (1645) is strong and able. He reminds the people that, by electing him to his office, they had invested him with a measure of Divine authority. Yet a magistrate is a man of like infirmities as other men. He covenants to govern according to God's law and man's, to the best of his skill.

But if his skill prove inadequate, that is the electors' fault, not his.

Only if the evil be in his will, can it be required of him. Liberty is of two kinds, natural and civil. " If you stand for some

natural corrupt liberties, and will do what is good in your own eyes, you will not endure the least weight of authority . . . but if you will be satisfied to enjoy such civil and lawful liberties, such as Christ allows you, then will you quietly and cheerfully submit unto that authority which is set over you for your good. ... So shall your liberties be preserved, in upholding the honor and power of authority amongst you." Sentiments like these have not yet become antiquated.

In 1637, one Thomas Morton, known to history as Morton of Merry Mount, published "The New England Canaan," a book written in antagonism to the Puritan sentiment, and in sympathy