A History of American Literature

Front matter

A HISTORY OF

WITH A VIEW TO THE

FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES UNDERLYING ITS DEVELOPMENT

Preface

In the preparation of this history of the rise and development of American literature the author has had clearly in mind the limitations to which every textbook on literature must be subject. Such a work can be at best only directive. It can trace the influences of race, environment, and epoch, and indicate causes and results; it can insist that the student follow the logical order, rejecting everything not worthy of his attention and emphasizing sufficiently the emphatic points; it can furnish him with a plan for estimating the personality and influence of each individual author; but more it cannot do. No one ever learned literature from a text-book, not even when it was supplemented by copious extracts from the authors considered. Fragments of an author's writings, like fragments of any work of art, give only vague ideas of the whole. He who has studied merely "Thanatopsis" or "Evangeline" knows very little of Bryant or Longfellow. A knowledge of "Rip Van Winkle" provides the key to only a very small part of Irving's domain. Actual contact with all of the important writings of the leading authors is imperative if one would understand a literature. The text-book that does not emphasize this and aim merely to guide the student and supplement his efforts is superfluous. The conning of names and dates, of details and characteristics, of criticisms of books that the pupil has never seen, if not supplemented by copious draughts from the living fountain heads, can but result in mental stagnation and a loathing of the entire subject.

Throughout this work the author has endeavored to follow the development of the American spirit and of American thought under the agencies of race, environment, epoch, and personality. He has recognized that the literature of a nation is closely entwined with its history, both civil and religious. As far as possible he has made the authors speak for themselves, and he has supplemented his own estimates by frequent criticisms from the highest authorities; but in presenting these criticisms he has not aimed to do the student's work for him, nor to furnish ready-made estimates for him in commit to memory without having examined the works criticised; but, rather, to provide information that should lead to an intelligent study of the author or book in hand.

This book implies other books. It should not be taught without them. If the school library is deficient, they may be had from some private or public collection. Some of the more important works, as those of Irving, Bryant, Emerson, Longfellow, Whittier, Holmes, and the like, may surely be procured by any class. The amount of reading done must, necessarily, depend upon the length of the course and the nature of the class. The directions as to what books shall be read are largely suggestive. Much must be left to the judgment of the teacher, will whom, indeed, it rests whether the study shall be helpful and stimulating or dry and lifeless.

The author gratefully acknowledges his obligations to Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Messrs. G. P. Putnam's Sons, Messrs. Flood & Vincent, and Messrs. Lee & Shepard, who have permitted the use of extracts from their copyrighted works, and to all others who have in any way aided in the preparation of the volume.

F. L. P.

State College, PA., January, 1896.

Books of Reference

UNITED STATES HISTORY. Bancroft's History of the United States, 1492—1789. Hildreth's History of the United States, 1492—1820. Cooke's Virginia. Fiske's Beginnings of New England. Parkman's France and England in North America. Fiske's American Revolution. Fiske's Critical Period of American History, 1783—1789. Schouler's History of the United States, 1783—1861. MacMaster's History of the People of the United States, 1783—1861. Adams' History of the United States, 1801—1817. Benton's Thirty Years' View, 1820—1850. Drake's Making of the Great West. Roosevelt's Winning of the West. Greeley's American Conflict. Davis' Rise and Fall of the Confederacy. Nicolay and Hay's Abraham Lincoln. Blaine's Twenty Years in Congress, 1802—1882. Andrews' History of Our Own Day, 1869—1895. LITERARY HISTORY AND CRITICISM. Welsh's English Literature and Language. Taine's English Literature. Tyler's American Literature. Richardson's American Literature. Stedman's Poets of America. Whipple's American Literature, Essays and Reviews. Nichol's American Literature. Beers' Outline Sketch of American Literature. White's Philosophy of American Literature. Curtis' Literary and Social Essays. Higginson's Short Studies of American Authors. Lowell's A Fable for Critics, Among My Books. Whittier's Literary Recreations. Hawei's American Humorists. Julian Hawthorne's Confessions and Criticisms. Stewart's Evenings in a Library. Deshler's Afternoons with the Poets. Scudder's Men and Letters. Vedder's American Writers of To-day. Tappan's Topical Notes on American Authors BIOGRAPHY. Warner, Editor, American Men of Letters Series. Morse, Editor, American Statesman Series. Whipple's Recollections of American Authors Curtis' Homes of American Authors. S. K. Bolton's Famous American Authors. Franklin's Autobiography completed by Bigelow. Irving's Life of Washington Tyler's Three Men of Letters. Irving's Life of Irving. Godwin's Life of Bryant. Cabot's Life of Emerson. Hawthorne's Nathaniel Hawthorne and his Wife. Longfellow's Life of Longfellow. Pickard's Life of Whittier. Morse's Life of Holmes. CENTRAL AUTHORITIES AND COLLECTIONS. Stedman and Hutchinson's Library of American Literature. Poole's Index to Magazine Literature. Appleton's Cyclopedia of Biography. Allibone's Dictionary of Authors. Adams' Handbook of American Authors. Smith's Synopsis of American Literature. Beers' Century of American Literature. Cleveland's Handbook of American Literature. Underwood's Builders of American Literature. Johnson's American Orations.

Introductory

I.

INTRODUCTORY.

Definition — "Literature is the class of writings distinguished for beauty of style or expression, as poetry, essays, or history, in distinction from scientific treatises and works which contain positive knowledge." — Webster.

The literature of a nation is the entire body of literary productions that has emanated from the people of the nation during its history, preserved by the arts of writing and printing. It is the embodiment of the best thoughts and fancies of a people.

The History of a Literature is not merely a chronological record of all the writers and writings of a language. It is much more; it is, in reality, the history of the evolution of the language and of the intellectual development of the people. It should constantly inquire into the causes that tended to produce literature of one kind and not of another. It should trace the influence of great writers upon their language and their times. It should be a guide, ever leading the student to the best books, training his judgment so as to enable him to estimate critically literary productions, and teaching him the true place that every book and author occupies in the world of letters.

Fundamental Principles. — To pursue the study of a literature to the best advantage one needs a thorough knowledge of the language, history, social customs, and spirit of the people that produced it, as well as a general idea of the geography and climate of their country. The great agencies which determine the character of a literature must be borne constantly in mind:

1. Race. — The hereditary disposition of the makers of the literature must first be noted. The races inhabiting the warmer climates are naturally impulsive, with strong passions. The northern races are more cold and reserved. These characteristics are stamped upon the literary product of these races.

2. Environment. — The surroundings of a people have a great effect upon their intellectual development. What of the climate? Is the land fertile and easy to work, or does it compel the husbandman to expend great energy upon it? Is it subject to depressing fogs, like Britain, or to violent extremes of temperature like Norway? Is it mountainous like Greece, or flat like Holland? Is it inland like Russia, or maritime like England? It is this agency that gives color to a literature.

3. Epoch. — What was the spirit of the ago? What has been the history of the nation? Has it been free during the whole of its history? Has it had to maintain a constant fight against invaders, or has it been itself an invader? What perplexing questions, intellectual, moral, social, has it been called upon to settle? In what great movements or events has it participated? These things exert a powerful influence on the intellectual development of a people. It is this agency that divides the history of a literature into periods.

4. Personality. — The personality of the writers who produce a literature is not the least of the agencies that determine its character. The individuality, the "personal equation," of the makers of masterpieces, is something that defies analysis, yet it is this that gives life to the writings of a nation. Without it the agencies of race, environment, and epoch would tend to produce an unvarying product. This element gives diversity to a literature.

The Early History of all literatures is much the same. The evolution from barbarism to civilization is always slow. The language, at first limited and barren, yet sufficient to voice all the needs and emotions of savage life, becomes more expressive. War brings contact with other nations; conquest adds foreign elements. At length the rude shoutings over war and victory become rhythmical, and literature begins. The first notes are always in verse, rude and unmetrical, yet nevertheless verse, for childhood takes naturally to metres. The bloody song of Lamech to his wives, Gen. iv. 23, 24, is the first poem of which the world has a record. Beowulf, a terrible tale of war and carnage, is the first note in the grand chorus of English song.

American Literature. — The term a literature may be defined as "all the literary productions in a given language."

By this definition English literature would embrace all the writings that have emanated from the race speaking the English language. The writings of America would, therefore, be only a branch drawing life from the great trunk of English letters. But this is not so. It is now generally admitted that the literature of America has become an independent one. It is an exception, and the only exception, to the rule given above. In no other case in all history have there been two distinct literatures written in the same language.

This conclusion has not been reached without discussion. It is acknowledged that our literature is still true to the great fundamental principles underlying English thought and institutions; that it had its birth and childhood in the land of Chaucer and of Spenser; that until the second quarter of the Nineteenth Century it was bound intellectually to England, and that it is using to-day the language of Wordsworth and Tennyson. But this does not prove that our literature is not now an independent one, for we have been for more than a century an independent nation; and we are recognized abroad not as Englishmen in America, but as a distinct type with as marked an individuality as have the English themselves. (See Remarks on National Literature, by W. E. Channing, 1823; also E. P. Whipple's American Literature, and Richardson, I., v-xx. 1

The Beginnings of our Literature. — To study American literature philosophically, one must go back to the beginnings of the language in which it is written. A study of the literature and the intellectual development of England through the Elizabethan Age, should precede the thorough study of the American writers. This portion of English history is held in common by both nations. The elements of race and environment, as they affected our English ancestors, must be fully understood in order for us to appreciate the character and spirit of the founders of our nation. We must weigh the great events of British history and their influence upon the development of the English race. We must acquaint ourselves with the history and development of English thought and language; with the great minds that have shaped and moulded these from Cædmon to Chaucer and from Chaucer to Shakespeare. This done, we have mastered Book I. of the History of American Thought and Literature. It remains then to trace the intellectual evolution of a part of the English people under a new environment, amid new scenes of action.

Epoch.—(Tyler, 11–15.) Our literature made its first feeble beginnings in a most fortunate time, a time—

"When the firmament of English literature was all ablaze with the light of her full-orbed and most dazzling writers, the wits, the dramatists, scholars, orators, singers, philosophers, who formed that incomparable group of titanic men gathered in London during the earlier years of the seventeenth century."—Tyler.

When Jamestown was settled in 1607, Spenser had been dead only eight years; Shakespeare was at the height of his powers; Raleigh, a prisoner in the Tower of London, was engaged on his History of the World, and Bacon had just commenced his marvellous work, The Novum Organum. "The very air of London must have been electric with the daily words of these immortals," who made the Elizabethan Age the most glorious period since classic times. American literature was indeed fortunate in the time of its birth.

The First Colonial Period

II.

THE FIRST COLONIAL PERIOD.

1607—1688

The Renaissance. — The Fifteenth Century is the awakening of literature, science, and art, from the long slumber of the Dark Ages. As the direct result of this emancipation of Europe, there came a period of great activity in almost every sphere of action.

The newly invented art of printing with movable types marked an era in the history of book-making; the invention of gunpowder completely revolutionized the science of war, while the mariner's compass marked a turning-point in the history of navigation. Everywhere was to be seen the activity of fresh intellectual life.

Spirit of the Age. — The Sixteenth Century is the age of discovery. Columbus, Cabot, De Gama, Balboa, Magellan, made six world-revolutionizing discoveries in twenty-nine years. Cortez found a wonderland in Mexico; Pizarro opened up a new El Dorado in Peru; De Soto discov-

ered a mighty inland river which told of a vast extent of land to the northward, and soon the world was ready to believe almost any marvellous tale.

The new continent, with its strange vegetable and animal life, with its mystery and its wealth, appealed powerfully to the imagination of the masses. It was literally a new world that was opened to the eyes of Europeans, a world peopled by a race of beings as distinct and individual as if the only one ever created on the planet, the objects of the most intense curiosity in the Old World.

It was a century of feverish dreams of new empires, of gold, of conquest. The return of Pizarro from Peru with his shiploads of treasure set all of Europe on fire. Spain, England, and France took the lead, and vied with each other in a mad scramble for the new continent.

The Colonial Age. — (Fisher's Colonial Era, Thwaite's The Colonies: 1492—1750.) The Age of Discovery was succeeded in America by the Colonial Age. The spirt of maritime adventure and exploration which had grown into a passion during the early part of the Sixteenth Century began to subside as the new continent became better known, and the nations now sought to make good to acquired territory by planting colonies.

America had a powerful influence in moulding the spirit of the age.

"Every great European event affected the fortunes of America. Did a state prosper, it sought an increase of wealth by plantations in the west. Was a sect persecuted, it escaped to the new world."—Bancroft, Vol. II.

The Colonial Age may be divided into two distinct periods,—The First Colonial Period, which extends from 1607, the year of Jamestown settlement, to 1688, the year of the revolution which placed William and Mary on the English throne; and The Second Colonial Period, which opens with the date 1688 and ends in 1765, the year of the Stamp Act and the birth of the Revolutionary spirit in the colonies.

The First Colonial Period (1607–1688).

(Fisher's Colonial Era; Bancroft, Vol. I.; Hildreth, Vol. I.; Lodge's English Colonies in America.) During the eighty-one years included in the first colonial period, thirteen colonies of widely differing characteristics, founded for thirteen different reasons, yet all of them of English stock in the end, were planted along the Atlantic coast of America.

The eighty years were filled with action. It was no easy task to subdue a raw continent. To establish homes in a savage wilderness subject to cruel winters; to hew down the forest; to clear the rocky, stump-strewn fields and fit them for cultivation; to be constantly in terror of wild beasts and savage men,—all of these things called for unrelenting physical toil, and left little time to be devoted to the arts and graces of literature.

The whole period produced nothing of literary worth. A few writings, the offspring mainly of necessity, have come down to us, but they are valuable simply as curiosities or as documents for the historian. The period is to be studied not for its literary product, but for the light it throws on our later literary history.

Virginia and Massachusetts.—(Tyler, 83–85; Fiske, Civil Government, 16–19, 57–62; Johns Hopkins University Studies.) The two colonies of Virginia and Massachusetts are all that need be studied in an elementary history of American literature. They are the fountain heads of all that is strongest in our national and our literary history. Planted for widely different reasons, by men of almost opposite traits of character, and for more than a century having no intercourse at all with each other, they at length became the intellectual centres of our early national life. Lowell has called them "The two great distributing centres of the English race" in America. (See Among My Books, 1st series, 239.)

1. VIRGINIA.

"Britons: you stay too long; Quickly aboard bestow you; And with a merry gale Swell your stretch'd sail; With vows as strong As the winds that blow you.

And cheerfully at sea, Success you still entice: To get the pearl and gold; And ours to hold; Virginia Earth's only paradise.

So sang the grand old Elizabethan poet, Michael Drayton, when the three vessels that were fitting on the Thames for their memorable voyage were completing arrangements. England had made attempt after attempt during the reign of Elizabeth to establish colonies in her vast possessions in the west, but all of them had failed miserably. But in 1603 it was discovered that Virginia could be reached by sailing due west instead of taking the long dangerous route by way of the West Indies,—a discovery that created great excitement throughout England, and indeed throughout Europe. As a result, large numbers became eager to try their fortunes in the vast unknown El Dorado, now for the first time made accessible. The newly organized London Company soon sent out a fleet of three small ships, which, after being blown about by the winds of the Atlantic from April until December, were at last swept blindly and roughly by a fierce storm into the mouth of Chesapeake Bay. The building of the few rude huts which soon arose on the bank of the James was the most significant event that had happened in the new world since its discovery. It marked the opening of a new era in the history of North America.

The Settlers of Virginia.—(Cooke, 16–33; Neill's His- tory of the Virginia Company, 1869; Stith's Settlement of Virginia, 1865.) It will be found important, as throwing light on our later literary development, to look carefully at these early emigrants who laid the foundation of Virginia. Of the one hundred and five men who composed the first expedition, nearly one-half were "gentlemen" with absolutely no experience in manual labor, and a large proportion of the remainder were soldiers and servants. They were of the Royalist party, and the Church of England. Many of them had squandered their ancestral estates and now sought America, led on by dreams of sudden conquest, and dazzling riches. Many were adventurers born of the protracted wars with Spain; some were worthless idlers, and even criminals fleeing from justice. Not one of them dreamed of a permanent home in the new land. They had had no falling out with the mother country; they had no desire to found a new order of society; they were without religious scruples or anything else, save a desire for speedy wealth—for gold that could be picked up in large nuggets without exertion.

Many of the later arrivals, drawn by the rich tobacco plantation, were from the higher classes, yet during the first half-century "the large proportion of the settlers in Virginia were of inferior quality, personally and socially," and many of them were broken men, adventurers, bankrupts, criminals."

The Physical Geography of Virginia had much to do in shaping its history. It has a delightful climate, a soil of marvellous fertility; it is traversed by numerous noble rivers, many of them navigable for a long distance from the sea, a fact that made it easy for plantations to rely upon supplies brought by vessels up the rivers, and that made the village grocery store, which was so prominent a feature in New England, a useless institution. The land was early found to be very favorable for the cultivation of tobacco, a crop which exhausts the soil more rapidly than almost any other. It was at first found more profitable to move to new fields after exhausting one plantation than to resort to the use of fertilizers, which accounts for the early scattering of the colonists over a wide area. Tobacco at once became the one crop of Virginia; it made manufacturing impossible. "Its influence," says one writer, "permeated the entire social sphere of the colony, directed its laws, and was an element in all its political and religious disturbances."

Social Conditions. — As a result of these combinations there arose a system of society which was peculiar to Virginia. The people did not settle in villages as in New England, but lived far distant from each other on large estates. "In Jamestown, the capital of the state, there were only eighteen houses." The owner of a large estate, grown rich from the cultivation of tobacco which he shipped, himself, to England, surrounded himself with laborers and slaves and lived in imitation of the owners of the English estates, a free and hospitable life, spending his leisure time in field sports and politics. Two classes of society were the result: the rich landowners, and the poor laborers and slaves. This condition of society made free schools impossible. During the whole of the first Colonial period, "no mention is anywhere made in the records of schools, or any provision for the instruction of youth."

Another significant fact is that there was no permanent printing press in the colony until 1729. Education and literature were frowned upon. Sir William Berkeley, governor of Virginia from 1641 to 1677, in one of his reports remarked:

"I thank God there are no free schools nor printing; and I hope we shall not have these hundred years; for learning has brought disobedience and heresy and sects into the world and printing has divulged them and libels against the best government. God keep us from both."

It is needless to say that a society made up of such persons, and under such conditions, could not possibly be favorable to the cultivation of literature. Indeed, so unfavorable was it that, during the whole of her history Virginia has not produced a purely literary work of even the second rank. Many of the planters came from the ruling families of England, and from the discipline acquired from the managing of large estates they learned that mastery over men and events that made the state "the Mother of Presidents," of fiery orators and astute statesmen, but the conditions were far from conducive to literary life and effort.

Early Writings in Virginia. — The literature of the Colonial age in Virginia is so scanty and uninteresting as to deserve little attention. Much of it was written for purely practical ends with little thought of finish or literary beauty. Interspersed with this is the work of a few English scholars who made a brief sojourn in the new land and then flitted back across the ocean. Of the principal writers of the first Colonial period, all except one, Alexander Whitaker, who had come "to bear the name of God to the heathen" of the New World, returned to England after a few years. The writings of the period may be roughly gathered into four groups:

1. Letters to friends in England. These, written often in haste, with no thought of literary finish, are full of observations on the strange scenes and surroundings into which the lives of their writers had fallen. They are of value now only so far as they throw light on the history, society, and spirit of the age that produced them.

2. Descriptions of the Indians, of the geography of the country, of the new flora and fauna, and of the history of the early days of the settlement. Smith's A True Relation, etc., and A Map of Virginia; and Whitaker's Good News from Virginia, are the best examples of this class of literature.

3. Letters legal, and reports to the Companies in England, as, for example, Smith's Answers to the Seven Questions, etc.

4. Scholarly works written by Englishmen of leisure sojourning for a time in America. These cannot be classed as American Literature any more than Irving's Sketch Book can be called an English book because it was written in England. Among such writings may be mentioned Sandys' translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses.

Captain John Smith (1579-1631). "The father of Virginia, the true leader who first planted the Saxon race within the borders of the United States." — Bancroft.

Life (by William Gilmore Simms; by G. S. Hillard, in Sparks' American Biography. Vol. II.; by C. D. Warner. See also Eggleston's Pocahontas, and Henry Adams' Historical Essays, 42. The chief authorities on the life of Smith are his own autobiographical writings).

The romantic life of Captain John Smith is too well known to need retelling. His character, too, needs no new light shed upon it. We must acknowledge that he was inordinately vain, fond of boasting, impetuous, imperious, restless, yet we know that his shrewdness, his indomitable courage, and his sound judgment more than once saved the Virginia Colony from ruin. "It is not too much to say," writes an eminent English critic, "that bad not Captain Smith strove, fought, and endured as he did, the present United States of America might never have come into existence. It was contrary to all probability that where so many had succumbed already, the Southern Virginia Company's expedition of 1606—7 should have succeeded."

Cooke, the historian of Virginia, writes of Smith:

"His endurance was unshrinking, and his life in Virginia indicated plainly that he had enormous recoil. He was probably never really cast down, and seems to have kept his heart of hope, without an effort in the darkest hours, when all around him despaired."

Smith as a Writer. — (Tyler, 16-38; Richardson, I., 63-72.) Of the nine works, with American themes, written by Smith, three were composed in Virginia. His first book, written during the thirteen months following the establishment of the colony, and published in London the next year, is doubly interesting, in that it is the first book produced on this continent, and that it tells in detail the story of those memorable months at Jamestown. Its full title is as follows:

"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 said Collony, to a worshipfull friend of his in England. London 1608."

Smith's second work was a very spicy reply to the seven questions put by the London Company, to him as governor of Virginia. With this, Smith sent his third American work, entitled A Map of Virginia, etc., which, however, was not published until 1612.

2. MASSACHUSETTS.

The Pilgrims. — (Bradford and Winslow's Journal, and Bradford's History of the Plymouth Plantation; Palfrey's History of New England; Fiske's Beginnings of New England, 66-104; Doyle's The Puritan Colonies, Vol. II.; Young's Chronicles of the Pilgrims; Drake's The Making of New England, Bancroft, Vol. 1., 194–214.) The small band of adventurers who sought Virginia in 1606, led on by dreams of "pearl and gold," were swept along by a three days' storm and driven as by the hand of fate into the noblest bay along the Atlanticcoast, to a land of wonderful beauty and fruitfulness, at a time when all nature was robed in the freshness and beauty of the early springtime. What a contrast with the Pilgrims, who fourteen years later, wearied by persecution, exiled from their native land, without money or means to return across the sea, even had they desired to do so, were landed on the savage coast of Massachusetts, at the very beginning of a cruel, northern winter. The Virginians had all been men, many of them inured to hardships like war and to lives of adventure, but here were women and little children,—whole families. Many were sick. For months it was a battle with cold, hunger, disease, hostile Indians, wild beasts; a battle for mere existence. Never was there a more unpromising venture as viewed from a practical standpoint; never was there a more discouraging outlook than from the huts of Plymouth during that memorable winter; yet never has there been a venture that has yielded grander results. Dec. 20, 1620, is the most significant date in our history.

Required Reading — Mrs. Hemans' "Landing of the Pilgrims;" Longfellow's "Courtship of Miles Standish." See also Mrs. Child's Hobomok; Mrs. Stowe's The Mayflower, Mrs. Austen's The Standish of Standish, Betty Aiden, Dr. LeBaron and his Daughters, and A Nameless Nobleman