Battery with its white-winged ships to the Harlem woods where was
    good squirrel shooting, Irving rambled at ease on many a day when
    the neighbors said he ought to have been at his books. He was the
    youngest of the family; his constitution was not rugged, and his
    gentle mother was indulgent. She would smile when he told of
    reading a smuggled copy of the _Arabian Nights_ in school,
    instead of his geography; she was silent when he slipped away from
    family prayers to climb out of his bedroom window and go to the
    theater, while his sterner father thought of him as sound asleep in
    his bed.

    Little harm came from these escapades, for Irving was a merry lad
    with no meanness in him; but his schooling was sadly neglected. His
    brothers had graduated from Columbia; but on the plea of delicate
    health he abandoned the idea of college, with a sigh in which there
    was perhaps as much satisfaction as regret. At sixteen he entered a
    law office, where he gave less time to studying Blackstone than to
    reading novels and writing skits for the newspapers.

    [Sidenote: FINDING HIMSELF]

    This happy indifference to work and learning, this disposition to
    linger on the sunny side of the street, went with Irving through
    life. Experimentally he joined his brothers, who were in the
    hardware trade; but when he seemed to be in danger of consumption
    they sent him to Europe, where he enjoyed himself greatly, and
    whence he returned perfectly well. Next he was sent on business to
    England; and there, when the Irving Brothers failed, their business
    having been ruined by the War of 1812, Irving manfully resolved to
    be no longer a burden on others and turned to literature for his
    support. With characteristic love of doing what he liked he refused
    a good editorial position (which Walter Scott obtained for him) and
    busied himself with his _Sketch Book_ (1820). This met with a
    generous welcome in England and America, and it was followed by the
    equally popular _Bracebridge Hall_ and _Tales of a
    Traveller_. By these three works Irving was assured not only of
    literary fame but, what was to him of more consequence, of his
    ability to earn his living.

    [Sidenote: LIFE ABROAD]

    Next we find him in Spain, whither he went with the purpose of
    translating Navarrete's _Voyages of Columbus_, a Spanish book,
    in which he saw a chance of profit from his countrymen's interest
    in the man who discovered America. Instead of translating another
    man's work, however, he wrote his own _Life and Times of
    Columbus_ (1828). The financial success of this book (which is
    still our most popular biography of the great explorer) enabled
    Irving to live comfortably in Spain, where he read diligently and
    accumulated the material for his later works on Spanish history.

    [Illustration: "SUNNYSIDE," HOME OF IRVING]

    By this time Irving's growing literary fame had attracted the
    notice of American politicians, who rewarded him with an
    appointment as secretary of the legation at London. This pleasant
    office he held for two years, but was less interested in it than in
    the reception which English men of letters generously offered him.
    Then he apparently grew homesick, after an absence of seventeen
    years, and returned to his native land, where he was received with
    the honor due to a man who had silenced the galling question, "Who
    reads an American book?"

    [Sidenote: HIS MELLOW AUTUMN]

    The rest of Irving's long life was a continued triumph. Amazed at
    first, and then a little stunned by the growth, the hurry, the
    onward surge of his country, he settled back into the restful past,
    and was heard with the more pleasure by his countrymen because he
    seemed to speak to them from a vanished age. Once, inspired by the
    tide of life weeping into the West, he journeyed beyond the
    Mississippi and found material for his pioneering books; but an
    active life was far from his taste, and presently he built his
    house "Sunnyside" (appropriate name) at Tarrytown on the Hudson.
    There he spent the remainder of his days, with the exception of
    four years in which he served the nation as ambassador to Spain.
    This honor, urged upon him by Webster and President Tyler, was
    accepted with characteristic modesty not as a personal reward but
    as a tribute which America had been wont to offer to the profession
    of letters.

CHIEF WORKS OF IRVING. A good way to form a general impression of Irving's
works is to arrange them chronologically in five main groups. The first,
consisting of the _Salmagundi_ essays, the _Knickerbocker
History_ and a few other trifles, we may call the Oldstyle group, after
the pseudonym assumed by the author. [Footnote: Ever since Revolutionary
days it had been the fashion for young American writers to use an assumed
name. Irving appeared at different times as "Jonathan Oldstyle," "Diedrich
Knickerbocker" and "Geoffrey Crayon, Gent."] The second or Sketch-Book
group includes the _Sketch Book_, _Bracebridge Hall_ and _Tales
of a Traveller_. The third or Alhambra group, devoted to Spanish and
Moorish themes, includes _The Conquest of Granada_, _Spanish Voyages
of Discovery_, _The Alhambra_ and certain similar works of a later
period, such as _Moorish Chronicles_ and _Legends of the Conquest of
Spain_. The fourth or Western group contains _A Tour on the
Prairies_, _Astoria_ and _Adventures of Captain Bonneville_.
The fifth or Sunnyside group is made up chiefly of biographies, _Oliver
Goldsmith_, _Mahomet and his Successors_ and _The Life of
Washington_. Besides these are some essays and stories assembled under
the titles of _Spanish Papers_ and _Wolfert's Roost_.

The _Salmagundi_ papers and others of the Oldstyle group would have
been forgotten long ago if anybody else had written them. In other words,
our interest in them is due not to their intrinsic value (for they are all
"small potatoes") but to the fact that their author became a famous
literary man. Most candid readers would probably apply this criticism also
to the _Knickerbocker History_, had not that grotesque joke won an
undeserved reputation as a work of humor.

[Sidenote: KNICKERBOCKER HISTORY]

The story of the Knickerbocker fabrication illustrates the happy-go-lucky
method of all Irving's earlier work. He had tired of his _Salmagundi_
fooling and was looking for variety when his eyes lighted on Dr. Mitchill's
_Picture of New York_, a grandiloquent work written by a prominent
member of the Historical Society. In a light-headed moment Irving and his
brother Peter resolved to burlesque this history and, in the approved
fashion of that day, to begin with the foundation of the world. Then Peter
went to Europe on more important business, and Irving went on with his joke
alone. He professed to have discovered the notes of a learned Dutch
antiquarian who had recently disappeared, leaving a mass of manuscript and
an unpaid board-bill behind him. After advertising in the newspapers for
the missing man, Irving served notice on the public that the profound value
of Knickerbocker's papers justified their publication, and that the
proceeds of the book would be devoted to paying the board-bill. Then
appeared, in time to satisfy the aroused curiosity of the Historical
Society, to whom the book was solemnly dedicated, the _History of New
York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty, by
Diedrich Knickerbocker_ (1809).

This literary hoax made an instant sensation; it was denounced for its
scandalous irreverence by the members of the Historical Society, especially
by those who had Dutch ancestors, but was received with roars of laughter
by the rest of the population. Those who read it now (from curiosity, for
its merriment has long since departed, leaving it dull as any
thrice-repeated joke) are advised to skip the first two books, which are
very tedious fooling, and to be content with an abridged version of the
stories of Wouter van Twiller, William the Testy and Peter the Headstrong.
These are the names of real Dutch governors of New Amsterdam, and the dates
given are exact dates; but there history ends and burlesque begins. The
combination of fact and nonsense and the strain of gravity in which
absurdities are related have led some critics to place the _Knickerbocker
History_ first in time of the notable works of so-called American humor.
That is doubtless a fair classification; but other critics assert that real
humor is as purely human as a smile or a tear, and has therefore no
national or racial limitations.

[Sidenote: SKETCH BOOK]

The _Sketch Book_, chief of the second group of writings, is perhaps
the best single work that Irving produced. We shall read it with better
understanding if we remember that it was the work of a young man who,
having always done as he pleased, proceeds now to write of whatever
pleasant matter is close at hand. Being in England at the time, he
naturally finds most of his material there; and being youthful, romantic
and sentimental, he colors everything with the hue of his own disposition.
He begins by chatting of the journey and of the wide sea that separates him
from home. He records his impressions of the beautiful English country,
tells what he saw or felt during his visit to Stratford on Avon, and what
he dreamed in Westminster Abbey, a place hallowed by centuries of worship
and humanized by the presence of the great dead. He sheds a ready tear over
a rural funeral, and tries to make us cry over the sorrows of a poor widow;
then to relieve our feelings he pokes a bit of fun at John Bull. Something
calls his attention to Isaac Walton, and he writes a Waltonian kind of
sketch about a fisherman. In one chapter he comments on contemporary
literature; then, as if not quite satisfied with what authors are doing, he
lays aside his record of present impressions, goes back in thought to his
home by the Hudson, and produces two stories of such humor, charm and
originality that they make the rest of the book appear almost commonplace,
as the careless sketches of a painter are forgotten in presence of his
inspired masterpiece.

These two stories, the most pleasing that Irving ever wrote, are "Rip van
Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." They should be read if one reads
nothing else of the author's twenty volumes.

[Illustration: RIP VAN WINKLE]

[Sidenote: SPANISH THEMES]

The works on Spanish themes appeal in different ways to different readers.
One who knows his history will complain (and justly) that Irving is
superficial, that he is concerned with picturesque rather than with
important incidents; but one who likes the romance of history, and who
reflects that romance plays an important part in the life of any people,
will find the legends and chronicles of this Spanish group as interesting
as fiction. We should remember, moreover, that in Irving's day the romance
of old Spain, familiar enough to European readers, was to most Americans
still fresh and wondrous. In emphasizing the romantic or picturesque side
of his subject he not only pleased his readers but broadened their horizon;
he also influenced a whole generation of historians who, in contrast with
the scientific or prosaic historians of to-day, did not hesitate to add the
element of human interest to their narratives.

[Sidenote: THE ALHAMBRA]

The most widely read of all the works of the Spanish group is _The
Alhambra_ (1832). This is, on the surface, a collection of
semihistorical essays and tales clustering around the ancient palace, in
Granada, which was the last stronghold of the Moors in Europe; in reality
it is a record of the impressions and dreams of a man who, finding himself
on historic ground, gives free rein to his imagination. At times, indeed,
he seems to have his eye on his American readers, who were then in a
romantic mood, rather than on the place or people he was describing. The
book delighted its first critics, who called it "the Spanish Sketch Book";
but though pleasant enough as a romantic dream of history, it hardly
compares in originality with its famous predecessor.

[Sidenote: WESTERN STORIES]

Except to those who like a brave tale of exploration, and who happily have
no academic interest in style, Irving's western books are of little
consequence. In fact, they are often omitted from the list of his important
works, though they have more adventurous interest than all the others
combined. _A Tour on the Prairies_, which records a journey beyond the
Mississippi in the days when buffalo were the explorers' mainstay, is the
best written of the pioneer books; but the _Adventures of Captain
Bonneville_, a story of wandering up and down the great West with plenty
of adventures among Indians and "free trappers," furnishes the most
excitement. Unfortunately this journal, which vies in interest with
Parkman's _Oregon Trail_, cannot be credited to Irving, though it
bears his name on the title-page. [Footnote: The _Adventures_ is
chiefly the work of a Frenchman, a daring free-rover, who probably tried in
vain to get his work published. Irving bought the work for a thousand
dollars, revised it slightly, gave it his name and sold it for seven or
eight times what he paid for it. In _Astoria_, the third book of the
western group, he sold his services to write up the records of the fur
house established by John Jacob Astor, and made a poor job of it.]

[Illustration: OLD DUTCH CHURCH, SLEEPY HOLLOW
Mentioned by Irving in "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow"]

[Sidenote: BIOGRAPHIES]

Of the three biographies _Oliver Goldsmith_ (1849) is the best,
probably because Irving had more sympathy and affinity with the author of
"The Deserted Village" than with Mahomet or Washington. The _Life of
Washington_ (1855-1859) was plainly too large an undertaking for
Irving's limited powers; but here again we must judge the work by the
standards of its own age and admit that it is vastly better than the
popular but fictitious biographies of Washington written by Weems and other
romancers. Even in Irving's day Washington was still regarded as a demigod;
his name was always printed in capitals; and the rash novelist who dared to
bring him into a story (as Cooper did in _The Spy_) was denounced for
his lack of reverence. In consequence of this false attitude practically
all Washington's biographers (with the exception of the judicious Marshall)
depicted him as a ponderously dignified creature, stilted, unlovely,
unhuman, who must always appear with a halo around his head. Irving was too
much influenced by this absurd fashion and by his lack of scholarship to
make a trustworthy book; but he gave at least a touch of naturalness and
humanity to our first president, and set a new biographical standard by
attempting to write as an honest historian rather than as a mere
hero-worshiper.

AN APPRECIATION OF IRVING. The three volumes of the Sketch-Book group and
the romantic _Alhambra_ furnish an excellent measure of Irving's
literary talent. At first glance these books appear rather superficial,
dealing with pleasant matters of no consequence; but on second thought
pleasant matters are always of consequence, and Irving invariably displays
two qualities, humor and sentiment, in which humanity is forever
interested. His humor, at first crude and sometimes in doubtful taste (as
in his _Knickerbocker History_) grew more refined, more winning in his
later works, until a thoughtful critic might welcome it, with its kindness,
its culture, its smile in which is no cynicism and no bitterness, as a true
example of "American" humor,--if indeed such a specialized product ever
existed. His sentiment was for the most part tender, sincere and manly.
Though it now seems somewhat exaggerated and at times dangerously near to
sentimentality, that may not be altogether a fault; for the same criticism
applies to Longfellow, Dickens and, indeed, to most other writers who have
won an immense audience by frankly emphasizing, or even exaggerating, the
honest sentiments that plain men and women have always cherished both in
life and in literature.

[Sidenote: STYLE OF IRVING]

The style of Irving, with its suggestion of Goldsmith and Addison (who were
his first masters), is deserving of more unstinted praise. A "charming"
style we call it; and the word, though indefinite, is expressive of the
satisfaction which Irving's manner affords his readers. One who seeks the
source of his charm may find it in this, that he cherished a high opinion
of humanity, and that the friendliness, the sense of comradeship, which he
felt for his fellow men was reflected in his writing; unconsciously at
first, perhaps, and then deliberately, by practice and cultivation. In
consequence, we do not read Irving critically but sympathetically; for
readers are like children, or animals, in that they are instinctively drawn
to an author who trusts and understands them.

Thackeray, who gave cordial welcome to Irving, and who called him "the
first ambassador whom the New World of letters sent to the Old," was deeply
impressed by the fact not that the young American had an excellent prose
style but that "his gate was forever swinging to visitors." That is an
illuminating criticism; for we can understand the feeling of the men and
women of a century ago who, having read the _Sketch Book_, were eager
to meet the man who had given them pleasure by writing it. In brief, though
Irving wrote nothing of great import, though he entered not into the stress
of life or scaled its heights or sounded its deeps, we still read him for
the sufficient but uncritical reason that we like him.

In this respect, of winning our personal allegiance, Irving stands in
marked contrast to his greatest American contemporary, Cooper. We read the
one because we are attracted to the man, the other for the tale he has to
tell.

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT (1794-1878)

Bryant has been called "the father of American song," and the year 1821,
when his first volume appeared, is recorded as the natal year of American
poetry. Many earlier singers had won local reputations, but he was the
first who was honored in all the states and who attained by his poetry
alone a dominating place in American letters.

That was long ago; and times have changed, and poets with them. In any
collection of recent American verse one may find poems more imaginative or
more finely wrought than any that Bryant produced; but these later singers
stand in a company and contribute to an already large collection, while
Bryant stood alone and made a brave beginning of poetry that we may
honestly call native and national. Before he won recognition by his
independent work the best that our American singers thought they could do
was to copy some English original; but after 1821 they dared to be
themselves in poetry, as they had ever been in politics. They had the
successful Bryant for a model, and the young Longfellow was one of his
pupils. Moreover, he stands the hard test of time, and seems to have no
successor. He is still our Puritan poet,--a little severe, perhaps, but
American to the core,--who reflects better than any other the rugged spirit
of that puritanism which had so profoundly influenced our country during
the early, formative days of the republic.

[Illustration: WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT]

    LIFE. In the boyhood of Bryant we shall find the inspiration for
    all his enduring work. He was of Pilgrim stock, and was born (1794)
    in the little village of Cummington, in western Massachusetts.
    There, with the Berkshire Hills and the ancient forest forever in
    sight, he grew to man's stature, working on the farm or attending
    the district school by day, and reading before the open fire at
    night. His father was a physician, a scholarly man who directed his
    son's reading. His mother was a Puritan, one of those quiet,
    inspiring women who do their work cheerfully, as by God's grace,
    and who invariably add some sign or patent of nobility to their
    sons and daughters. There was also in the home a Puritan
    grandfather who led the family devotions every evening, and whose
    prayers with their rich phraseology of psalm or prophecy were
    "poems from beginning to end." So said Bryant, who attributed to
    these prayers his earliest impulse to write poetry.

    Between these two influences, nature without and puritanism within,
    the poet grew up; in their shadow he lived and died; little else of
    consequence is reflected in the poems that are his best memorial.

    [Sidenote: THE CITIZEN]

    The visible life of Bryant lies almost entirely outside the realm
    of poesie. He as fitted for Williams by country ministers, as was
    customary in that day; but poverty compelled him to leave college
    after two brief terms. Then he studied law, and for nine or ten
    years practiced his profession doggedly, unwillingly, with many a
    protest at the chicanery he was forced to witness even in the
    sacred courts of justice. Grown weary of it at last, he went to New
    York, found work in a newspaper office, and after a few years'
    apprenticeship became editor of _The Evening Post_, a position
    which he held for more than half a century. His worldly affairs
    prospered; he became a "leading citizen" of New York, prominent in
    the social and literary affairs of a great city; he varied the
    routine of editorship by trips abroad, by literary or patriotic
    addresses, by cultivating a country estate at Long Island. In his
    later years, as a literary celebrity, he loaned his name rather too
    freely to popular histories, anthologies and gift books, which
    better serve their catchpenny purpose if some famous man can be
    induced to add "tone" to the rubbish.

    [Sidenote: THE POET]

    And Bryant's poetry? Ah, that was a thing forever apart from his
    daily life, an almost sacred thing, to be cherished in moments
    when, his day's work done, he was free to follow his spirit and
    give outlet to the feelings which, as a strong man and a Puritan,
    he was wont to restrain. He had begun to write poetry in childhood,
    when his father had taught him the value of brevity or compression
    and "the difference between poetic enthusiasm and fustian."
    Therefore he wrote slowly, carefully, and allowed ample time for
    change of thought or diction. So his early "Thanatopsis" was hidden
    away for years till his father found and published it, and made
    Bryant famous in a day. All this at a time when English critics
    were exalting "sudden inspiration," "sustained effort" and poems
    "done at one sitting."

    Once Bryant had found himself (and the blank verse and simple
    four-line stanza which suited his talent) he seldom changed, and he
    never improved. His first little volume, _Poems_ (1821),
    contains some of his best work. In the next fifty years he added to
    the size but not to the quality of that volume; and there is little
    to indicate in such poems as "Thanatopsis" and "The Flood of Years"
    that the one was written by a boy of seventeen and the other by a
    sage of eighty. His love of poetry as a thing apart from life is
    indicated by the fact that in old age, to forget the grief
    occasioned by the death of his wife, he gave the greater part of
    six years to a metrical translation of the Greek poet Homer. That
    he never became a great poet or even fulfilled his early promise is
    due partly to his natural limitations, no doubt, but more largely
    to the fact that he gave his time and strength to other things. And
    a poet is like other men in that he cannot well serve two masters.

THE POETRY OF BRYANT. Besides the translation of the _Iliad_ and the
_Odyssey_ there are several volumes of prose to Bryant's credit, but
his fame now rests wholly on a single book of original poems. The best of
these (the result of fifty years of writing, which could easily be printed
on fifty pages) may be grouped in two main classes, poems of death and
poems of nature; outside of which are a few miscellaneous pieces, such as
"The Antiquity of Freedom," "Planting of the Apple Tree" and "The Poet," in
which he departs a little from his favorite themes.

[Sidenote: POEMS OF DEATH]

Bryant's poems on death reflect something of his Puritan training and of
his personal experience while threatened with consumption; they are also
indicative of the poetic fashion of his age, which was abnormally given to
funereal subjects and greatly influenced by such melancholy poems as Gray's
"Elegy" and Young's "Night Thoughts." He began his career with
"Thanatopsis" (or "View of Death"), a boyhood piece which astonished
America when it was published in 1817, and which has ever since been a
favorite with readers. The idea of the poem, that the earth is a vast
sepulcher of human life, was borrowed from other poets; but the stately
blank verse and the noble appreciation of nature are Bryant's own. They
mark, moreover, a new era in American poetry, an original era to replace
the long imitative period which had endured since Colonial times. Other and
perhaps better poems in the same group are "The Death of the Flowers," "The
Return of Youth" and "Tree Burial," in which Bryant goes beyond the pagan
view of death presented in his first work.

That death had a strange fascination for Bryant is evident from his
returning again and again to a subject which most young poets avoid. Its
somber shadow and unanswered question intrude upon nearly all of his nature
pieces; so much so that even his "June" portrays that blithe, inspiring
month of sunshine and bird song as an excellent time to die. It is from
such poems that one gets the curious idea that Bryant never was a boy, that
he was a graybeard at sixteen and never grew any younger.

[Sidenote: POEMS OF NATURE]

It is in his poems of nature that Bryant is at his best. Even here he is
never youthful, never the happy singer whose heart overflows to the call of
the winds; he is rather the priest of nature, who offers a prayer or hymn
of praise at her altar. And it may be that his noble "Forest Hymn" is
nearer to a true expression of human feeling, certainly of primitive or
elemental feeling, than Shelley's "Skylark" or Burns's "Mountain Daisy."
Thoreau in one of his critical epigrams declared it was not important that
a poet should say any particular thing, but that he should speak in harmony
with nature; that "the tone of his voice is the main thing." If that be
true, Bryant is one of our best poets. He is always in harmony with nature
in her prevailing quiet mood; his voice is invariably gentle, subdued,
merging into the murmur of trees or the flow of water,--much like Indian
voices, but as unlike as possible to the voices of those who go to nature
for a picnic or a camping excursion.

Among the best of his nature poems are "To a Waterfowl" (his most perfect
single work), "Forest Hymn," "Hymn to the Sea," "Summer Wind," "Night
Journey of a River," "Autumn Woods," "To a Fringed Gentian," "Among the
Trees," "The Fountain" and "A Rain Dream." To read such poems is to
understand the fact, mentioned in our biography, that Bryant's poetry was a
thing apart from his daily life. His friends all speak of him as a
companionable man, receptive, responsive, abounding in cheerful anecdote,
and with a certain "overflowing of strength" in mirth or kindly humor; but
one finds absolutely nothing of this genial temper in his verse. There he
seems to regard all such bubblings and overflowings as unseemly levity (lo!
the Puritan), which he must lay aside in poetry as on entering a church. He
is, as we have said, the priest of nature, in whom reverence is uppermost;
and he who reads aloud the "Forest Hymn," with its solemn organ tone, has
an impression that it must be followed by the sublime invitation, "O come,
let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker."

[Illustration: BRYANT'S HOME, AT CUMMINGTON]

[Sidenote: IN LIGHTER MOOD]

Though Bryant is always serious, it is worthy of note that he is never
gloomy, that he entirely escapes the pessimism or despair which seizes upon
most poets in times of trouble. Moreover, he has a lighter mood, not gay
but serenely happy, which finds expression in such poems as "Evening Wind,"
"Gladness of Nature" and especially "Robert of Lincoln." The exuberance of
the last-named, so unlike anything else in Bryant's book of verse, may be
explained on the assumption that not even a Puritan could pull a long face
in presence of a bobolink. The intense Americanism of the poet appears in
nearly all his verse; and occasionally his patriotism rises to a prophetic
strain, as in "The Prairie," for example, written when he first saw what
was then called "the great American desert." It is said that the honeybee
crossed the Mississippi with the first settlers, and Bryant looks with
kindled imagination on this little pioneer who

  Fills the savannas with his murmurings,
  And hides his sweets, as in the golden age,
  Within the hollow oak. I listen long
  To his domestic hum, and think I hear
  The sound of that advancing multitude
  Which soon shall fill these deserts. From the ground
  Comes up the laugh of children, the soft voice
  Of maidens, and the sweet and solemn hymn
  Of Sabbath worshippers. The low of herds
  Blends with the rustling of the heavy grain
  Over the dark brown furrows. All at once
  A fresher wind sweeps by, and breaks my dream,
  And I am in the wilderness alone.

OUR PIONEER POET. From one point of view our first national poet is a
summary of all preceding American verse and a prophecy of better things to
come. To be specific, practically all our early poetry shows the
inclination to moralize, to sing a song and then add a lesson to it. This
is commonly attributed to Puritan influence; but in truth it is a universal
poetic impulse, a tribute to the early office of the bard, who was the
tribal historian and teacher as well as singer. This ancient didactic or
moralizing tendency is very strong in Bryant. To his first notable poem,
"Thanatopsis," he must add a final "So live"; and to his "Waterfowl" must
be appended a verse which tells what steadfast lesson may be learned from
the mutable phenomena of nature.

Again, most of our Colonial and Revolutionary poetry was strongly (or
weakly) imitative, and Bryant shows the habit of his American predecessors.
The spiritual conception of nature revealed in some of his early poems is a
New World echo of Wordsworth; his somber poems of death indicate that he
was familiar with Gray and Young; his "Evening Wind" has some suggestion of
Shelley; we suspect the influence of Scott's narrative poems in the
neglected "Stella" and "Little People of the Snow." But though influenced
by English writers, the author of "Thanatopsis" was too independent to
imitate them; and in his independence, with the hearty welcome which it
received from the American public, we have a prophecy of the new poetry.

[Sidenote: HIS ORIGINALITY]

The originality and sturdy independence of Bryant are clearly shown in his
choice of subjects. In his early days poetry was formal and artificial,
after the manner of the eighteenth century; the romantic movement had
hardly gained recognition in England; Burns was known only to his own
countrymen; Wordsworth was ridiculed or barely tolerated by the critics;
and poets on both sides of the Atlantic were still writing of larks and
nightingales, of moonlight in the vale, of love in a rose-covered cottage,
of ivy-mantled towers, weeping willows, neglected graves,--a medley of
tears and sentimentality. You will find all these and little else in _The
Garland_, _The Token_ and many other popular collections of the
period; but you will find none of them in Bryant's first or last volume.
From the beginning he wrote of Death and Nature; somewhat coldly, to be
sure, but with manly sincerity. Then he wrote of Freedom, the watchword of
America, not as other singers had written of it but as a Puritan who had
learned in bitter conflict the price of his heritage:

  O Freedom! thou art not, as poets dream,
  A fair young girl, with light and delicate limbs,
  And wavy tresses gushing from the cap
  With which the Roman master crowned his slave
  When he took off the gyves. A bearded man,
  Armed to the teeth, art thou; one mailéd hand
  Grasps the broad shield, and one the sword; thy brow,
  Glorious in beauty though it be, is scarred
  With tokens of old wars; thy massive limbs
  Are strong with struggling.

He wrote without affectation of the Past, of Winter, of the North Star, of
the Crowded Street, of the Yellow Violet and the Fringed Gentian. If the
last-named poems now appear too simple for our poetic taste, remember that
simplicity is the hardest to acquire of all literary virtues, and that it
was the dominant quality of Bryant. Remember also that these modest flowers
of which he wrote so modestly had for two hundred years brightened our
spring woods and autumn meadows, waiting patiently for the poet who should
speak our appreciation of their beauty. Another century has gone, and no
other American poet has spoken so simply or so well of other neglected
treasures: of the twin flower, for example, most fragrant of all blooms; or
of that other welcome-nodding blossom, beloved of bumblebees, which some
call "wild columbine" and others "whippoorwill's shoes."

In a word, Bryant was and is our pioneer poet in the realm of native
American poetry. As Emerson said, he was our first original poet, and was
original because he dared to be sincere.

JAMES FENIMORE COOPER (1789-1851)

In point of time Cooper is the first notable American novelist. Judging by
the booksellers, no other has yet approached him in the sustained interest
of his work or the number of his readers.

[Sidenote: THE MAN]

On first analysis we shall find little in Cooper to account for his abiding
popularity. The man himself was not exactly lovable; indeed, he had almost
a genius for stirring up antagonism. As a writer he began without study or
literary training, and was stilted or slovenly in most of his work. He was
prone to moralize in the midst of an exciting narrative; he filled
countless pages with "wooden" dialogue; he could not portray a child or a
woman or a gentleman, though he was confident that he had often done so to
perfection. He did not even know Indians or woodcraft, though Indians and
woodcraft account for a large part of our interest in his forest romances.

[Sidenote: THE STORYTELLER]

One may enjoy a good story, however, without knowing or caring for its
author's peculiarities, and the vast majority of readers are happily not
critical but receptive. Hence if we separate the man from the author, and
if we read _The Red Rover_ or _The Last of the Mohicans_ "just
for the story," we shall discover the source of Cooper's power as a writer.
First of all, he has a tale to tell, an epic tale of heroism and manly
virtue. Then he appeals strongly to the pioneer spirit, which survives in
all great nations, and he is a master at portraying wild nature as the
background of human life. The vigor of elemental manhood, the call of
adventure, the lure of primeval forests, the surge and mystery of the
sea,--these are written large in Cooper's best books. They make us forget
his faults of temper or of style, and they account in large measure for his
popularity with young readers of all nations; for he is one of the few
American writers who belong not to any country but to humanity. At present
he is read chiefly by boys; but half a century or more ago he had more
readers of all classes and climes than any other writer in the world.

    LIFE. The youthful experiences of Cooper furnished him with the
    material for his best romances. He was born (1789) in New Jersey;
    but while he was yet a child the family removed to central New
    York, where his father had acquired an immense tract of wild land,
    on which he founded the village that is still called Cooperstown.
    There on the frontier of civilization, where stood the primeval
    forest that had witnessed many a wild Indian raid, the novelist
    passed his boyhood amid the picturesque scenes which he was to
    immortalize in _The Pioneers_ and _The Deerslayer_.

    [Sidenote: HIS TRAINING]

    Cooper picked up a little "book learning" in a backwoods school and
    a little more in a minister's study at Albany. At thirteen he
    entered Yale; but he was a self-willed lad and was presently
    dismissed from college. A little later, after receiving some scant
    nautical training on a merchantman, he entered the navy as
    midshipman; but after a brief experience in the service he married
    and resigned his commission. That was in 1811, and the date is
    significant. It was just before the second war with Great Britain.
    The author who wrote so much and so vividly of battles, Indian
    raids and naval engagements never was within sight of such affairs,
    though the opportunity was present. In his romances we have the
    product of a vigorous imagination rather than of observation or
    experience.

    [Illustration: JAMES FENIMORE COOPER]

    His literary work seems now like the result of whim or accident.
    One day he flung down a novel that he was reading, declaring to his
    wife that he could write a better story himself. "Try it,"
    challenged his wife. "I will," said Cooper; and the result was
    _Precaution_, a romance of English society. He was then a
    farmer in the Hudson valley, and his knowledge of foreign society
    was picked up, one must think, from silly novels on the subject.

    Strange to say, the story was so well received that the gratified
    author wrote another. This was _The Spy_ (1821), dealing with
    a Revolutionary hero who had once followed his dangerous calling in
    the very region in which Cooper was now living. The immense success
    of this book fairly drove its author into a career. He moved to New
    York City, and there quickly produced two more successful romances.
    Thus in four years an unknown man without literary training had
    become a famous writer, and had moreover produced four different
    types of fiction: the novel of society in _Precaution_, the
    historical romance in _The Spy_, and the adventurous romance
    of forest and of ocean in _The Pioneers_ and _The Pilot_.

    [Sidenote: YEARS OF STRIFE]

    Cooper now went abroad, as most famous authors do. His books,
    already translated into several European languages, had made him
    known, and he was welcomed in literary circles; but almost
    immediately he was drawn into squabbles, being naturally inclined
    that way. He began to write political tirades; and even his
    romances of the period (_The Bravo_, _The Heidenmauer_,
    _The Headsman_) were devoted to proclaiming the glories of
    democracy. Then he returned home and proceeded to set his
    countrymen by the ears (in such books as _Home as Found_) by
    writing too frankly of their crudity in contrast with the culture
    of Europe. Then followed long years of controversy and lawsuits,
    during which our newspapers used Cooper scandalously, and Cooper
    prosecuted and fined the newspapers. It is a sorry spectacle, of no
    interest except to those who would understand the bulk of Cooper's
    neglected works. He was an honest man, vigorous, straightforward,
    absolutely sincere; but he was prone to waste his strength and
    embitter his temper by trying to force his opinion on those who
    were well satisfied with their own. He had no humor, and had never
    pondered the wisdom of "Who drives fat oxen should himself be fat."

    [Illustration: OTSEGO HALL, HOME OF COOPER]

    The last years of his life were spent mostly at the old home at
    Cooperstown, no longer a frontier settlement but a thriving
    village, from which Natty Bumppo and Chingachgook had long since
    departed. Before his death (1851) the fires of controversy had sunk
    to ashes; but Cooper never got over his resentment at the public,
    and with the idea of keeping forever aloof he commanded that none
    of his private papers be given to biographers. It is for lack of
    such personal letters and documents that no adequate life of Cooper
    has yet been written.

COOPER'S WORKS. There are over sixty volumes of Cooper, but to read them
all would savor of penance rather than of pleasure. Of his miscellaneous
writings only the _History of the Navy_ and _Lives of Distinguished
Naval Officers_ are worthy of remembrance. Of his thirty-two romances
the half, at least, may be ignored; though critics may differ as to whether
certain books (_The Bravo_ and _Lionel Lincoln_, for example)
should be placed in one half or the other. There remain as the measure of
Cooper's genius some sixteen works of fiction, which fall naturally into
three groups: the historical novels, the tales of pioneer life, and the
romances of the sea.

[Sidenote: THE SPY]

_The Spy_ was the first and probably the best of Cooper's historical
romances. Even his admirers must confess that it is crudely written, and
that our patriotic interest inclines us to overestimate a story which
throws the glamor of romance over the Revolution. Yet this faulty tale
attempts to do what very few histories have ever done fairly, namely, to
present both sides or parties of the fateful conflict; and its unusual
success in this difficult field may be explained by a bit of family
history. Cooper was by birth and training a stanch Whig, or Patriot; but
his wife, to whom he was devotedly attached, was the daughter of an
unbending Tory, or Loyalist; and his divided allegiance is plainly apparent
in his work. Ordinarily his personal antagonisms, his hatred of "Yankees,"
Puritans and all politicians of the other party, are dragged into his
stories and spoil some of them; but in _The Spy_ he puts his
prejudices under restraint, tells his tale in an impersonal way, dealing
honestly with both Whigs and Tories, and so produces a work having the
double interest of a good adventure story and a fair picture of one of the
heroic ages of American history.

Aside from its peculiar American interest, _The Spy_ has some original
and broadly human elements which have caused it, notwithstanding its
dreary, artificial style, to be highly appreciated in other countries, in
South American countries especially. The secret of its appeal lies largely
in this, that in Harvey Birch, a brave man who serves his country without
hope or possibility of reward, Cooper has strongly portrayed a type of the
highest, the most unselfish patriotism.

The other historical novels differ greatly in value. Prominent among them
are _Mercedes of Castile_, dealing with Columbus and the discovery of
America; _Satanstoe_ and _The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish_, depicting
Colonial life in New York and New England respectively; and _Lionel
Lincoln_, which is another story of the Revolution, more labored than
_The Spy_ and of less sustained interest.

[Sidenote: THE SEA STORIES]

Cooper's first sea story, _The Pilot_ (1823), was haphazard enough in
both motive and method, [Footnote: The Waverley novels by "the great
unknown" were appearing at this time. Scott was supposed to be the author
of them, but there was much debate on the subject. One day in New York a
member of Cooper's club argued that Scott could not possibly have written
_The Pirate_ (which had just appeared), because the nautical skill
displayed in the book was such as only a sailor could possess. Cooper
maintained, on the contrary, that _The Pirate_ was the work of a
landsman; and to prove it he declared that he would write a sea story as it
should be written; that is, with understanding as well as with imagination.
_The Pilot_ was the result.] but it gave pleasure to a multitude of
readers, and it amazed critics by showing that the lonely sea could be a
place of romantic human interest. Cooper was thus the first modern novelist
of the ocean; and to his influence we are partly indebted for the stirring
tales of such writers as Herman Melville and Clark Russell. A part of the
action of _The Pilot_ takes place on land (the style and the
characters of this part are wretchedly stilted), but the chief interest of
the story lies in the adventures of an American privateer commanded by a
disguised hero, who turns out to be John Paul Jones. Cooper could not
portray such a character, and his effort to make the dashing young captain
heroic by surrounding him with a fog of mystery is like his labored attempt
to portray the character of Washington in _The Spy_. On the other
hand, he was thoroughly at home on a ship or among common sailors; his sea
pictures of gallant craft driven before the gale are magnificent; and Long
Tom Coffin is perhaps the most realistic and interesting of all his
characters, not excepting even Leatherstocking.

Another and better romance of the sea is _The Red Rover_ (1828). In
this story the action takes place almost wholly on the deep, and its vivid
word pictures of an ocean smiling under the sunrise or lashed to fury by
midnight gales are unrivaled in any literature. Other notable books of the
same group are _The Water Witch_, _Afloat and Ashore_ and _Wing
and Wing_. Some readers will prize these for their stories; but to
others they may appear tame in comparison with the superb descriptive
passages of _The Red Rover_.

[Sidenote: LEATHERSTOCKING TALES]

When Cooper published _The Pioneers_ (1823) he probably had no
intention of writing a series of novels recounting the adventures of Natty
Bumppo, or Leatherstocking, and his Indian friend Chingachgook; otherwise
he would hardly have painted so shabby a picture of these two old heroes,
neglected and despised in a land through which they had once moved as
masters. Readers were quick to see, however, that these old men had an
adventurous past, and when they demanded the rest of the story Cooper wrote
four other romances, which are as so many acts in the stirring drama of
pioneer life. When these romances are read, therefore, they should be taken
in logical sequence, beginning with _The Deerslayer_, which portrays
the two heroes as young men on their first war trail, and following in
order with _The Last of the Mohicans_, _The Pathfinder_, _The
Pioneers_ and _The Prairie_. If one is to be omitted, let it be
_The Pathfinder_, which is comparatively weak and dull; and if only
one is to be read, _The Last of the Mohicans_ is an excellent choice.

After nearly a century of novel writing, these five books remain our most
popular romances of pioneer days, and Leatherstocking is still a wingéd
name, a name to conjure with, in most civilized countries. Meanwhile a
thousand similar works have come and gone and been forgotten. To examine
these later books, which attempt to satisfy the juvenile love of Indian
stories, is to discover that they are modeled more or less closely on the
original work of the first American novelist.

COOPER'S SCENES AND CHARACTERS. Even in his outdoor romances Cooper was
forever attempting to depict human society, especially polite society; but
that was the one subject he did not and could not understand. The sea in
its grandeur and loneliness; the wild lakes, stretching away to misty,
unknown shores or nestling like jewels in their evergreen setting; the
forest with its dim trails, its subdued light, its rustlings, whisperings,
hints of mystery or peril,--these are his proper scenes, and in them he
moves as if at ease in his environment.

[Illustration: COOPER'S CAVE
Scene of Indian fight in _The Last of the Mohicans_]

In his characters we soon discover the same contrast. If he paints a hero
of history, he must put him on stilts to increase his stature. If he
portrays a woman, he calls her a "female," makes her a model of decorum,
and bores us by her sentimental gabbing. If he describes a social
gathering, he instantly betrays his unfamiliarity with real society by
talking like a book of etiquette. But with rough men or manly men on land
or sea, with half-mutinous crews of privateers or disciplined man-of-war's
men, with woodsmen, trappers, Indians, adventurous characters of the border
or the frontier,--with all these Cooper is at home, and in writing of them
he rises almost to the height of genius.

[Sidenote: THE RETURN TO NATURE]

If we seek the secret of this contrast, we shall find it partly in the
author himself, partly in a popular, half-baked philosophy of the period.
That philosophy was summed up in the words "the return to nature," and it
alleged that all human virtues flow from solitude and all vices from
civilization. Such a philosophy appealed strongly to Cooper, who was
continually at odds with his fellows, who had been expelled from Yale, who
had engaged in many a bitter controversy, who had suffered abuse from
newspapers, and who in every case was inclined to consider his opponents as
blockheads. No matter in what society he found himself, in imagination he
was always back in the free but lawless atmosphere of the frontier village
in which his youth was spent. Hence he was well fitted to take the point of
view of Natty Bumppo (in _The Pioneers_), who looked with hostile eyes
upon the greed and waste of civilization; hence he portrayed his uneducated
backwoods hero as a brave and chivalrous gentleman, without guile or fear
or selfishness, who owed everything to nature and nothing to society.
Europe at that time was ready to welcome such a type with enthusiasm. The
world will always make way for him, whether he appears as a hero of fiction
or as a man among men.

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS. The faults of Cooper--his stilted style and
slipshod English, his tedious moralizing, his artificial dialogue, his
stuffed gentlemen and inane "females," his blunders in woodcraft--all these
are so easily discovered by a casual reader that the historian need not
linger over them. His virtues are more interesting, and the first of these
is that he has a story to tell. Ever since Anglo-Saxon days the
"tale-bringer" has been a welcome guest, and that Cooper is a good
tale-bringer is evident from his continued popularity at home and abroad.
He may not know much about the art of literature, or about psychology, or
about the rule that motives must be commensurate with actions; but he knows
a good story, and that, after all, is the main thing in a novel.

Again, there is a love of manly action in Cooper and a robustness of
imagination which compel attention. He is rather slow in starting his tale;
but he always sees a long trail ahead, and knows that every turn of the
trail will bring its surprise or adventure. It is only when we analyze and
compare his plots that we discover what a prodigal creative power he had.
He wrote, let us say, seven or eight good stories; but he spoiled ten times
that number by hasty or careless workmanship. In the neglected _Wept of
Wish-Ton-Wish_, for example, there is enough wasted material to furnish
a modern romancer or dramatist for half a lifetime.

[Sidenote: DESCRIPTIVE POWER]

Another fine quality of Cooper is his descriptive power, his astonishing
vigor in depicting forest, sea, prairie,--all the grandeur of wild nature
as a background of human heroism. His descriptions are seldom accurate, for
he was a careless observer and habitually made blunders; but he painted
nature as on a vast canvas whereon details might be ignored, and he
reproduced the total impression of nature in a way that few novelists have
ever rivaled. It is this sustained power of creating a vast natural stage
and peopling it with elemental men, the pioneers of a strong nation, that
largely accounts for Cooper's secure place among the world's fiction
writers.

[Sidenote: MORAL QUALITY]

Finally, the moral quality of Cooper, his belief in manhood and womanhood,
his cleanness of heart and of tongue, are all reflected in his heroes and
heroines. Very often he depicts rough men in savage or brutal situations;
but, unlike some modern realists, there is nothing brutal in his morals,
and it is precisely where we might expect savagery or meanness that his
simple heroes appear as chivalrous gentlemen "without fear and without
reproach." That he was here splendidly true to nature and humanity is
evident to one who has met his typical men (woodsmen, plainsmen, lumbermen,
lonely trappers or timber-cruisers) in their own environment and
experienced their rare courtesy and hospitality. In a word, Cooper knew
what virtue is, virtue of white man, virtue of Indian, and he makes us know
and respect it. Of a hundred strong scenes which he has vividly pictured
there is hardly one that does not leave a final impression as pure and
wholesome as the breath of the woods or the sea.

EDGAR ALLAN POE (1809-1849)

It is a pleasant task to estimate Irving or Bryant, but Poe offers a hard
nut for criticism to crack. The historian is baffled by an author who
secretes himself in the shadow, or perplexed by conflicting biographies, or
put on the defensive by the fact that any positive judgment or opinion of
Poe will almost certainly be challenged.

At the outset, therefore, we are to assume that Poe is one of the most
debatable figures in our literature. His life may be summed up as a pitiful
struggle for a little fame and a little bread. When he died few missed him,
and his works were neglected. Following his recognition in Europe came a
revival of interest here, during which Poe was absurdly overpraised and the
American people berated for their neglect of a genius. Then arose a
literary controversy which showed chiefly that our critics were poles apart
in their points of view. Though the controversy has long endured, it has
settled nothing of importance; for one reader regards Poe as a literary
_poseur_, a writer of melodious nonsense in verse and of grotesque
horrors in prose; while another exalts him as a double master of poetry and
fiction, an artist without a peer in American letters.

Somewhere between these extremes hides the truth; but we shall not here
attempt to decide whether it is nearer one side or the other. We note
merely that Poe is a writer for such mature readers as can appreciate his
uncanny talent. What he wrote of abiding interest or value to young people
might be printed in a very small book.

    BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. Notwithstanding all that has been written
    about Poe, we do not and cannot know him as we know most other
    American authors, whose lives are as an open book. He was always a
    secretive person, "a lover of mystery and retreats," and such
    accounts of his life as he gave out are not trustworthy. He came
    from a good Maryland family, but apparently from one of those
    offshoots that are not true to type. His father left the study of
    law to become a strolling actor, and presently married an English
    actress. It was while the father and mother were playing their
    parts in Boston that Edgar was born, in 1809.

    [Illustration: EDGAR ALLAN POE]

    Actors led a miserable life in those days, and the Poes were no
    exception. They died comfortless in Richmond; their three children
    were separated; and Edgar was adopted by John Allan, a wealthy
    tobacco merchant. It was in the luxurious Allan home that the boy
    began the drinking habits which were his bane ever afterwards.

    [Sidenote: POE'S SCHOOL DAYS]

    The Allans were abroad on business from 1815 to 1820, and during
    these years Edgar was at a private school in the suburbs of London.
    It was the master of that school who described the boy as a clever
    lad spoiled by too much pocket money. The prose tale "William
    Wilson" has some reflection of these school years, and, so far as
    known, it is the only work in which Poe introduced any of his
    familiar experiences.

    Soon after his return to Richmond the boy was sent to the
    University of Virginia, where his brilliant record as a student was
    marred by his tendency to dissipation. After the first year Mr.
    Allan, finding that the boy had run up a big gambling debt, took
    him from college and put him to work in the tobacco house.
    Whereupon Edgar, always resentful of criticism, quarreled with his
    foster father and drifted out into the world. He was then at
    eighteen, a young man of fine bearing, having the taste and manners
    of a gentleman, but he had no friend in the world, no heritage of
    hard work, no means of earning a living.

    [Illustration: WEST RANGE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA]

    [Sidenote: HIS WANDERINGS]

    Next we hear vaguely of Poe in Boston where he published a tiny
    volume, _Tamerlane and Other Poems, by a Bostonian_ (1827).
    Failing to win either fame or money by his poetry he enlisted in
    the army under an assumed name and served for about two years. Of
    his army life we know nothing, nor do we hear of him again until
    his foster father secured for him an appointment to the military
    academy at West Point. There Poe made an excellent beginning, but
    he soon neglected his work, was dismissed, and became an Ishmael
    again. After trying in vain to secure a political office he went to
    Baltimore, where he earned a bare living by writing for the
    newspapers. The popular but mythical account of his life (for which
    he himself is partly responsible) portrays him at this period in a
    Byronic rôle, fighting with the Greeks for their liberty.

    [Sidenote: FIRST SUCCESS]

    His literary career began in 1833 when his "Manuscript Found in a
    Bottle" won for him a prize offered by a weekly newspaper. The same
    "Manuscript" brought him to the attention of John Pendleton
    Kennedy, who secured for him a position on the staff of the
    _Southern Literary Messenger_. He then settled in Richmond,
    and in his grasp was every thing that the heart of a young author
    might desire. He had married his cousin, Virginia Clem, a beautiful
    young girl whom he idolized; he had a comfortable home and an
    assured position; Kennedy and other southern writers were his loyal
    friends; the _Messenger_ published his work and gave him a
    reputation in the literary world of America. Fortune stood smiling
    beside him, when he quarreled with his friends, left the Messenger
    and began once more his struggle with poverty and despair.

    [Sidenote: A LIFE OF FRAGMENTS]

    It would require a volume to describe the next few years, and we
    must pass hurriedly over them. His pen was now his only hope, and
    he used it diligently in an effort to win recognition and a living.
    He tried his fortune in different cities; he joined the staffs of
    various periodicals; he projected magazines of his own. In every
    project success was apparently within his reach when by some
    weakness or misfortune he let his chance slip away. He was living
    in Fordham (a suburb of New York, now called the Bronx) when he did
    his best work; but there his wife died, in need of the common
    comforts of life; and so destitute was the home that an appeal was
    made in the newspapers for charity. One has but to remember Poe's
    pride to understand how bitter was the cup from which he drank.

    After his wife's death came two frenzied years in which not even
    the memory of a great love kept him from unmanly wooing of other
    women; but Poe was then unbalanced and not wholly responsible for
    his action. At forty he became engaged to a widow in Richmond, who
    could offer him at least a home. Generous friends raised a fund to
    start him in life afresh; but a little later he was found
    unconscious amid sordid surroundings in Baltimore. He died there,
    in a hospital, before he was able to give any lucid account of his
    last wanderings. It was a pitiful end; but one who studies Poe at
    any part of his career has an impression of a perverse fate that
    dogs the man and that insists on an ending in accord with the rest
    of the story.

THE POETRY OF POE. Most people read Poe's poetry for the melody that is in
it. To read it in any other way, to analyze or explain its message, is to
dissect a butterfly that changes in a moment from a delicate, living
creature to a pinch of dust, bright colored but meaningless. It is not for
analysis, therefore, but simply for making Poe more intelligible that we
record certain facts or principles concerning his verse.

[Sidenote: THEORY OF POETRY]

Perhaps the first thing to note is that Poe is not the poet of smiles and
tears, of joy and sorrow, as the great poets are, but the poet of a single
mood,--a dull, despairing mood without hope of comfort. Next, he had a
theory (a strange theory in view of his mood) that the only object of
poetry is to give pleasure, and that the pleasure of a poem depends largely
on melody, on sound rather than on sense. Finally, he believed that poetry
should deal with beauty alone, that poetic beauty is of a supernal or
unearthly kind, and that such beauty is forever associated with melancholy.
To Poe the most beautiful imaginable object was a beautiful woman; but
since her beauty must perish, the poet must assume a tragic or despairing
attitude in face of it. Hence his succession of shadowy Helens, and hence
his wail of grief that he has lost or must soon lose them.

[Sidenote: THE RAVEN]

All these poetic theories, or delusions, appear in Poe's most widely known
work, "The Raven," which has given pleasure to a multitude of readers. It
is a unique poem, and its popularity is due partly to the fact that nobody
can tell what it means. To analyze it is to discover that it is extremely
melodious; that it reflects a gloomy mood; that at the root of its sorrow
is the mysterious "lost Lenore"; and that, as in most of Poe's works, a
fantastic element is introduced, an "ungainly fowl" addressed with
grotesque dignity as "Sir, or Madame," to divert attention from the fact
that the poet's grief is not simple or human enough for tears:

  And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, _still_ is sitting
  On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
  And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,
  And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
  And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
      Shall be lifted--nevermore!

Equally characteristic of the author are "To One in Paradise," "The
Sleeper" and "Annabel Lee,"--all melodious, all in hopeless mood, all
expressive of the same abnormal idea of poetry. Other and perhaps better
poems are "The Coliseum," "Israfel," and especially the second "To Helen,"
beginning, "Helen, thy beauty is to me."

Young readers may well be content with a few such lyrics, leaving the bulk
of Poe's poems to such as may find meaning in their vaporous images. As an
example, study these two stanzas from "Ulalume," a work which some may find
very poetic and others somewhat lunatic:

  The skies they were ashen and sober;
    The leaves they were crispéd and sere--
    The leaves they were withering and sere;
  It was night in the lonesome October
    Of my most immemorial year;
  It was hard by the dim lake of Auber,
    In the misty mid region of Weir--
  It was down by the dank tarn of Auber,
    In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.

  Here once, through an alley Titanic
    Of cypress, I roamed with my soul--
    Of cypress, with Psyche, my soul.
  These were days when my heart was volcanic
    As the scoriac rivers that roll--
    As the lavas that restlessly roll
  Their sulphurous currents down Yaanek,
    In the ultimate climes of the pole--
  That groan as they roll down Mount Yaanek,
    In the realms of the boreal pole.

This is melodious, to be sure, but otherwise it is mere word juggling, a
stringing together of names and rimes with a total effect of lugubrious
nonsense. It is not to be denied that some critics find pleasure in
"Ulalume"; but uncritical readers need not doubt their taste or
intelligence if they prefer counting-out rimes, "The Jabberwock," or other
nonsense verses that are more frankly and joyously nonsensical.

POE'S FICTION. Should it be asked why Poe's tales are nearly all of the
bloodcurdling variety, the answer is that they are a triple reflection of
himself, of the fantastic romanticism of his age, and of the taste of
readers who were then abnormally fond of ghastly effects in fiction. Let us
understand these elements clearly; for otherwise Poe's horrible stories
will give us nothing beyond the mere impression of horror.

[Sidenote: THE MAN AND HIS TIMES]

To begin with the personal element, Poe was naturally inclined to
morbidness. He had a childish fear of darkness and hobgoblins; he worked
largely "on his nerves"; he had an abnormal interest in graves, ghouls and
the terrors which preternatural subjects inspire in superstitious minds. As
a writer he had to earn his bread; and the fiction most in demand at that
time was of the "gothic" or _Mysteries of Udolpho_ kind, with its
diabolical villain, its pallid heroine in a haunted room, its medley of
mystery and horror. [Footnote: As Richardson suggests, the popular novels
of Poe's day are nearly all alike in that they remind us of the fat boy in
_Pickwick_, who "just wanted to make your flesh creep." Jane Austen
(and later, Scott and Cooper) had written against this morbid tendency, but
still the "gothic" novel had its thousands of shuddering readers on both
sides of the Atlantic.] At the beginning of the century Charles Brockden
Brown had made a success of the "American gothic" (a story of horror
modified to suit American readers), and Poe carried on the work of Brown
with precisely the same end in view, namely, to please his audience. He
used the motive of horror partly because of his own taste and training, no
doubt, but more largely because he shrewdly "followed the market" in
fiction. Then as now there were many readers who enjoyed, as Stevenson
says, being "frightened out of their boots," and to such readers he
appealed. His individuality and, perhaps, his chief excellence as a
story-writer lay in his use of strictly logical methods, in his ability to
make the most impossible yarn seem real by his reasonable way of telling
it. Moreover, he was a discoverer, an innovator, a maker of new types,
since he was the first to introduce in his stories the blend of calm,
logical science and wild fancy of a terrifying order; so he served as an
inspiration as well as a point of departure for Jules Verne and other
writers of the same pseudo-scientific school.

[Sidenote: GROUPS OF STORIES]

Poe's numerous tales may be grouped in three or four classes. Standing by
itself is "William Wilson," a story of double personality (one good and one
evil genius in the same person), to which Stevenson was indebted in his
_Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_. Next are the tales of
pseudo-science and adventure, such as "Hans Pfaall" and the "Descent into
the Maelstrom," which represent a type of popular fiction developed by
Jules Verne, H. G. Wells and many others, all of whom were more or less
influenced by Poe. A third group may be called the ingenious-mystery
stories. One of the most typical of these is "The Gold Bug," a tale of
cipher-writing and buried treasure, which contains the germ, at least, of
Stevenson's _Treasure Island_. To the same group belong "The Murders
in the Rue Morgue" and other stories dealing with the wondrous acumen of a
certain Dupin, who is the father of "Old Sleuth," "Sherlock Holmes" and
other amateur detectives who do such marvelous things in fiction,--to
atone, no doubt, for their extraordinary dullness in real life.

Still another group consists of phantom stories,--ghastly yarns that serve
no purpose but to make the reader's spine creep. The mildest of these
horrors is "The Fall of the House of Usher," which some critics place at
the head of Poe's fiction. It is a "story of atmosphere"; that is, a story
in which the scene, the air, the vague "feeling" of a place arouse an
expectation of some startling or unusual incident. Many have read this
story and found pleasure therein; but others ask frankly, "Why bother to
write or to read such palpable nonsense?" With all Poe's efforts to make it
real, Usher's house is not a home or even a building in which dwells a man;
it is a vacuum inhabited by a chimera. Of necessity, therefore, it tumbles
into melodramatic nothingness the moment the author takes leave of it.

[Sidenote: WHAT TO READ]

If it be asked, "What shall one read of Poe's fiction?" the answer must
depend largely upon individual taste. "The Gold Bug" is a good story,
having the adventurous interest of finding a pirate's hidden gold; at
least, that is how most readers regard it, though Poe meant us to be
interested not in the gold but in his ingenious cryptogram or secret
writing. The allegory of "William Wilson" is perhaps the most original of
Poe's works; and for a thriller "The House of Usher" may be recommended as
the least repulsive of the tales of horror. To the historian the chief
interest of all these tales lies in the influence which they have exerted
on a host of short-story writers at home and abroad.

[Illustration: _SOUTHERN LITERARY MESSENGER_ BUILDING]

AN ESTIMATE OF POE. Any summary of such a difficult subject is
unsatisfactory and subject to challenge. We shall try here simply to
outline Poe's aim and method, leaving the student to supply from his own
reading most of the details and all the exceptions.

Poe's chief purpose was not to tell a tale for its own sake or to portray a
human character; he aimed to produce an effect or impression in the
reader's mind, an impression of unearthly beauty in his poems and of
unearthly horror in his prose. Some writers (Hawthorne, for example) go
through life as in a dream; but if one were to judge Poe by his work, one
might think that he had suffered a long nightmare. Of this familiar
experience, his youth, his army training, his meeting with other men, his
impressions of nature or humanity, there is hardly a trace in his work; of
despair, terror and hallucinations there is a plethora.

[Sidenote: HIS METHOD]

His method was at once haphazard and carefully elaborated,--a paradox, it
seems, till we examine his work or read his records thereof. In his poetry
words appealed to him, as they appeal to some children, not so much for
their meaning as for their sound. Thus the word "nevermore," a gloomy,
terrible word, comes into his mind, and he proceeds to brood over it. The
shadow of a great loss is in the word, and loss meant to Poe the loss of
beauty in the form of a woman; therefore he invents "the lost Lenore" to
rime with his "nevermore." Some outward figure of despair is now needed,
something that will appeal to the imagination; and for that Poe selects the
sable bird that poets have used since Anglo-Saxon times as a symbol of
gloom or mystery. Then carefully, line by line, he hammers out "The Raven,"
a poem which from beginning to end is built around the word "nevermore"
with its suggestion of pitiless memories.

Or again, Poe is sitting at the bedside of his dead wife when another word
suddenly appeals to him. It is Shakespeare's

                    Duncan is in his grave;
  After life's fitful fever he sleeps well.

And from that word is born "For Annie," with an ending to the first stanza
which is an epitome of the poem, and which Longfellow suggested as a
fitting epitaph for Poe's tomb:

  And the fever called "Living"
    Is conquered at last.

He reads Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner," and his "Manuscript
Found in a Bottle" is the elaborated result of his chance inspiration. He
sees Cooper make a success of a sea tale, and Irving of a journal of
exploration; and, though he knows naught of the sea or the prairie, he
produces his hair-raising _Arthur Gordon Pym_ and his _Journal of
Julius Rodman_. Some sailor's yarn of a maelstrom in the North Sea comes
to his ears, and he fabricates a story of a man who went into the
whirlpool. He sees a newspaper account of a premature burial, and his
"House of Usher" and several other stories reflect the imagined horror of
such an experience. The same criticism applies to his miscellaneous
thrillers, in which with rare cunning he uses phantoms, curtains, shadows,
cats, the moldy odor of the grave,--and all to make a gruesome tale
inspired by some wild whim or nightmare.

In fine, no other American writer ever had so slight a human basis for his
work; no other ever labored more patiently or more carefully. The unending
controversy over Poe commonly reduces itself to this deadlock: one reader
asks, "What did he do that was worth a man's effort in the doing?" and
another answers, "What did he do that was not cleverly, skillfully done?"

    SUMMARY. The early part of the nineteenth century (sometimes called
    the First National period of American letters) was a time of
    unusual enthusiasm. The country had recently won its independence
    and taken its place among the free nations of the world; it had
    emerged triumphant from a period of doubt and struggle over the
    Constitution and the Union; it was increasing with amazing rapidity
    in territory, in population and in the wealth which followed a
    successful commerce; its people were united as never before by
    noble pride in the past and by a great hope for the future. It is
    not surprising, therefore, that our first really national
    literature (that is, a literature which was read by practically the
    whole country, and which represented America to foreign nations)
    should appear in this expansive age as an expression of the
    national enthusiasm.

    [Sidenote: CHIEF WRITERS]

    The four chief writers of the period are: Irving, the pleasant
    essayist, story-teller and historian; Bryant, the poet of primeval
    nature; Cooper, the novelist, who was the first American author to
    win world-wide fame; and Poe, the most cunning craftsman among our
    early writers, who wrote a few melodious poems and many tales of
    mystery or horror. Some critics would include also among the major
    writers William Gilmore Simms (sometimes called "the Cooper of the
    South"), author of many adventurous romances dealing with pioneer
    life and with Colonial and Revolutionary history.

    The numerous minor writers of the age are commonly grouped in local
    schools. The Knickerbocker school, of New York, includes the poets
    Halleck and Drake, the novelist Paulding, and one writer of
    miscellaneous prose and verse, Nathaniel P. Willis, who was for a
    time more popular than any other American writer save Cooper. In
    the southern school (led by Poe and Simms) were Wilde, Kennedy and
    William Wirt. The West was represented by Timothy Flint and James
    Hall. In New England were the poets Percival and Maria Brooks, the
    novelists Sarah Morton and Catherine Sedgwick, and the historians
    Sparks and Bancroft. The writers we have named are merely typical;
    there were literally hundreds of others who were more or less
    widely known in the middle of the last century.

    [Sidenote: FOREIGN INFLUENCE]

    The first common characteristic of these writers was their
    patriotic enthusiasm; the second was their romantic spirit. The
    romantic movement in English poetry was well under way at this
    time, and practically all our writers were involved in it. They
    were strongly influenced, moreover, by English writers of the
    period or by settled English literary traditions. Thus, Irving
    modeled his style closely on that of Addison; the early poetry of
    Bryant shows the influence of Wordsworth; the weird tales of Poe
    and his critical essays were both alike influenced by Coleridge;
    and the quickening influence of Scott appears plainly in the
    romances of Cooper. The minor writers were even more subject to
    foreign influences, especially to German and English romanticism.
    There was, however, a sturdy independence in the work of most of
    these writers which stamps it as original and unmistakably
    American. The nature poetry of Bryant with its rugged strength and
    simplicity, the old Dutch legends and stories of Irving, the
    pioneer romances of Cooper and Simms, the effective short stories
    of Poe,--these have hardly a counterpart in foreign writings of the
    period. They are the first striking expressions of the new American
    spirit in literature.

    SELECTIONS FOR READING. Irving's Sketch Book, in Standard English
    Classics and various other school editions (see "Texts" in General
    Bibliography); The Alhambra, in Ginn and Company's Classics for
    Children; parts of Bracebridge Hall, in Riverside Literature;
    Conquest of Granada and other works, in Everyman's Library.

    Selections from Bryant, in Riverside Literature and Pocket
    Classics.

    Cooper's Last of the Mohicans, in Standard English Classics and
    other school editions; the five Leatherstocking tales, in
    Everyman's Library; The Spy, in Riverside Literature.

    Selections from Poe, prose and verse, in Standard English Classics,
    Silver Classics, Johnson's English Classics, Lake English Classics.

    Simms's The Yemassee, in Johnson's English Classics. Typical
    selections from minor authors of the period, in Readings from
    American Literature and other anthologies (see "Selections" in
    General Bibliography).

    BIBLIOGRAPHY. For works covering the whole field of American
    history and literature see the General Bibliography. The following
    are recommended for a special study of the early part of the
    nineteenth century.

    _HISTORY_. Adams, History of the United States, 1801-1817, 9
    vols.; Von Holst, Constitutional and Political History, 1787-1861,
    8 vols.; Sparks, Expansion of the American People; Low, The
    American People; Expedition of Lewis and Clarke, in Original
    Narratives Series (Scribner); Page, The Old South; Drake, The
    Making of the West.

    _LITERATURE_. There is no good literary history devoted to
    this period. Critical studies of the authors named in the text may
    be found in Richardson's American Literature and other general
    histories. For the lives of minor authors see Adams, Dictionary of
    American Authors, or Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography.

    _Irving_. Life and Letters, by P. M. Irving, 4 vols., in
    Crayon edition of Irving's works. Life by Warner, in American Men
    of Letters; by Hill, in American Authors; by Boynton (brief), in
    Riverside Biographies.

    Essays by Brownell, in American Prose Masters; by Payne, in Leading
    American Essayists; by Perry, in A Study of Prose Fiction; by
    Curtis, in Literary and Social Addresses.

    _Bryant_. Life, by Godwin, 2 vols.; by Bigelow, in American
    Men of Letters; by Curtis. Wilson, Bryant and his Friends.

    Essays, by Stedman, in Poets of America; by Curtis, in Orations and
    Addresses; by Whipple, in Literature and Life; by Burton, in
    Literary Leaders.

    _Cooper_. Life, by Lounsbury, in American Men of Letters; by
    Clymer (brief), in Beacon Biographies.

    Essays, by Erskine, in Leading American Novelists; by Brownell, in
    American Prose Masters; by Matthews, in Gateways to Literature.

    _Poe_. Life, by Woodberry, in American Men of Letters; by
    Trent, in English Men of Letters; Life and Letters, 2 vols., by
    Harrison.

    Essays, by Stedman, in Poets of America; by Brownell, in American
    Prose Masters; by Burton, in Literary Leaders; by Higginson, in
    Short Studies of American Authors; by Andrew Lang, in Letters to
    Dead Authors; by Gates, in Studies and Appreciations; by Gosse, in
    Questions at Issue.

    _Simms_. Life, by Trent, in American Men of Letters. Critical
    studies by Moses, in Literature of the South; by Link, in Pioneers
    of Southern Literature; by Wauchope, in Writers of South Carolina.

    _FICTION_. A few novels dealing with the period are: Brown,
    Arthur Merwyn; Kennedy, Swallow Barn; Paulding, Westward Ho; Mrs.
    Stowe, The Minister's Wooing; Cooke, Leather Stocking and Silk;
    Eggleston, The Circuit Rider, The Hoosier Schoolmaster; Winthrop,
    John Brent.

THE PERIOD OF CONFLICT (1840-1876)

  The muffled drum's sad roll has beat
    The soldier's last tattoo;
  No more on Life's parade shall meet
    That brave and fallen few.
  On Fame's eternal camping-ground
    Their silent tents are spread,
  And Glory guards, with solemn round,
    The bivouac of the dead.

           O'Hara, "The Bivouac of the Dead"

    POLITICAL HISTORY. To study the history of America after 1840 is to
    have our attention drawn as by a powerful lodestone to the Civil
    War. It looms there in the middle of the nineteenth century, a
    stupendous thing, dominating and dwarfing all others. To it
    converge many ways that then seemed aimless or wandering, the
    unanswered questions of the Constitution, the compromises of
    statesmen, the intrigues of politicians, the clamor of impatient
    reformers, the silent degradation of the slave. And from it, all
    its passion and suffering forgotten, its heroism remembered,
    proceed the unexpected blessings of a finer love of country, a
    broader sense of union, a surer faith in democracy, a better
    understanding of the spirit of America, more gratitude for her
    glorious past, more hope for her future. So every thought or
    mention of the mighty conflict draws us onward, as the first sight
    of the Rockies, massive and snow crowned, lures the feet of the
    wanderer on the plains.

    We shall not attempt here to summarize the war between the South
    and the North or even to list its causes and consequences. The
    theme is too vast. We note only that the main issues of the
    conflict, state rights and slavery, had been debated for the better
    part of a century, and might still have found peaceful solution had
    they not been complicated by the minor issues of such an age of
    agitation as America never saw before and, as we devoutly hope, may
    never see again.

    [Illustration: "The Man" (Abraham Lincoln)]

    [Sidenote: THE AGE OF AGITATION]

    Such agitation was perhaps inevitable in a country that had grown
    too rapidly for its government to assimilate the new possessions.
    By the Oregon treaty, the war with Mexico and the annexation of
    Texas vast territories had suddenly been added to the Union, each
    with its problem that called for patient and wise deliberation, but
    that a passionate and half-informed Congress was expected to settle
    overnight. With the expansion of territory in the West came a
    marvelous increase of trade and wealth in the North, and a
    corresponding growth in the value of cotton and slave labor in the
    South. Then arose an economic strife; the agricultural interests of
    one part of the country clashed with the manufacturing interests of
    another (in such matters as the tariff, for example), and in the
    tumult of party politics it was impossible to reach any harmonious
    adjustment. Finally, the violent agitation of the slave question
    forced it to the front not simply as a moral or human but as a
    political issue; for the old "balance of power" between the states
    was upset when the North began to outstrip the South in population,
    and every state was then fiercely jealous of its individual rights
    and obligations in a way that we can now hardly comprehend.

    As a result of these conflicting interests and the local or
    sectional passions which they aroused, there was seldom a year
    after 1840 when the country did not face a situation of extreme
    difficulty or danger. Indeed, even while Webster was meditating his
    prophetic oration with its superb climax of "Liberty and Union, now
    and forever, one and inseparable," many of the most thoughtful
    minds, south and north, believed that Congress faced a problem
    beyond its power to solve; that no single government was wise
    enough or strong enough to meet the situation, especially a
    government divided against itself.

    [Sidenote: THE WIND AND THE WHIRLWIND]

    In the midst of the political tumult, which was increased by the
    clamor of agitators and reformers, came suddenly the secession of a
    state from the Union, an act long threatened, long feared, but
    which arrived at last with the paralyzing effect of a thunderbolt.
    Then the clamor ceased; minor questions were swept aside as by a
    tempest, and the main issues were settled not by constitutional
    rights, not by orderly process of law or the ballot, but by the
    fearful arbitrament of the sword. And even as the thunderbolt fell
    and the Union trembled, came also unheralded one gaunt, heroic,
    heaven-sent man to lead the nation in its hour of peril:

      Oh, slow to smite and swift to spare,
        Gentle and merciful and just!
      Who in the fear of God didst bear
        The sword of power, a nation's trust!

    Such is an outline of the period of conflict, an outline to which
    the political measures or compromises of the time, its sectional
    antagonism, its score of political parties, its agitators,
    reformers, and all other matters of which we read confusedly in the
    histories, are but so many illuminating details.

    SOCIAL AND INTELLECTUAL CHANGES. The mental ferment of the period
    was almost as intense as its political agitation. Thus, the
    antislavery movement, which aimed to rescue the negro from his
    servitude, was accompanied by a widespread communistic attempt to
    save the white man from the manifold evils of our competitive
    system of industry. Brook Farm [Footnote: This was a Massachusetts
    society, founded in 1841 by George Ripley. It included Hawthorne,
    Dana and Curtis in its large membership, and it had the support of
    Emerson, Greeley, Channing, Margaret Fuller and a host of other
    prominent men and women] was the most famous of these communities;
    but there were more than thirty others scattered over the country,
    all holding property in common, working on a basis of mutual
    helpfulness, aiming at a nobler life and a better system of labor
    than that which now separates the capitalist and the workingman.

    [Sidenote: WIDENING HORIZONS]

    This brave attempt at human brotherhood, of which Brook Farm was
    the visible symbol, showed itself in many other ways: in the
    projection of a hundred social reforms; in the establishment of
    lyceums throughout the country, where every man with a message
    might find a hearing. In education our whole school system was
    changed by applying the methods of Pestalozzi, a Swiss reformer;
    for the world had suddenly become small, thanks to steam and
    electricity, and what was spoken in a corner the newspapers
    immediately proclaimed from the housetops. In religious circles the
    Unitarian movement, under Channing's leadership, gained rapidly in
    members and in influence; in literature the American horizon was
    broadened by numerous translations from the classic books of
    foreign countries; in the realm of philosophy the western mind was
    stimulated by the teaching of the idealistic system known as
    Transcendentalism.

    [Sidenote: TRANSCENDENTALISM]

    Emerson was the greatest exponent of this new philosophy, which
    made its appearance here in 1836. It exalted the value of the
    individual man above society or institutions; and in dealing with
    the individual it emphasized his freedom rather than his subjection
    to authority, his soul rather than his body, his inner wealth of
    character rather than his outward possessions. It taught that
    nature was an open book of the Lord in which he who runs may read a
    divine message; and in contrast with eighteenth-century philosophy
    (which had described man as a creature of the senses, born with a
    blank mind, and learning only by experience), it emphasized the
    divinity of man's nature, his inborn ideas of right and wrong, his
    instinct of God, his passion for immortality,--in a word, his
    higher knowledge which transcends the knowledge gained from the
    senses, and which is summarized in the word "Transcendentalism."

    We have described this in the conventional way as a new philosophy,
    though in truth it is almost as old as humanity. Most of the great
    thinkers of the world, in all ages and in all countries, have been
    transcendentalists; but in the original way in which the doctrine
    was presented by Emerson it seemed like a new revelation, as all
    fine old things do when they are called to our attention, and it
    exercised a profound influence on our American life and literature.

LITERATURE OF THE PERIOD. The violent political agitation and the profound
social unrest of the period found expression in multitudinous works of
prose or verse; but the curious fact is that these are all minor works, and
could without much loss be omitted from our literary records. They are
mostly sectional in spirit, and only what is national or human can long
endure.

[Sidenote: MINOR WORKS]

To illustrate our criticism, the terrible war that dominates the period
never had any worthy literary expression; there are thousands of writings
but not a single great poem or story or essay or drama on the subject. The
antislavery movement likewise brought forth its poets, novelists, orators
and essayists; some of the greater writers were drawn into its whirlpool of
agitation, and Whittier voiced the conviction that the age called for a man
rather than a poet in a cry which was half defiance and half regret:

  Better than self-indulgent years
    The outflung heart of youth,
  Than pleasant songs in idle ears
    The tumult of the truth!

That was the feeling in the heart of many a promising young southern or
northern poet in midcentury, just as it was in 1776, when our best writers
neglected literature for political satires against Whigs or Tories. Yet of
the thousand works which the antislavery agitation inspired we can think of
only one, Mrs. Stowe's _Uncle Tom's Cabin_, which lives with power to
our own day; and there is something of universal human nature in that
famous book, written not from knowledge or experience but from the
imagination, which appeals broadly to our human sympathy, and which makes
it welcome in countries where slavery as a political or a moral issue has
long since been forgotten.

[Sidenote: GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS]

Though the ferment of the age produced no great books, it certainly
influenced our literature, making it a very different product from that of
the early national period. For example, nearly every political issue soon
became a moral issue; and there is a deep ethical earnestness in the essays
of Emerson, the poems of Longfellow and the novels of Hawthorne which sets
them apart, as of a different spirit, from the works of Irving, Poe and
Cooper.

Again, the mental unrest of the period showed itself in a passion for new
ideas, new philosophy, new prose and poetry. We have already spoken of the
transcendental philosophy, but even more significant was the sudden
broadening of literary interest. American readers had long been familiar
with the best English poets; now they desired to know how our common life
had been reflected by poets of other nations. In answer to that desire
came, first, the establishment of professorships of _belles-lettres_
in our American colleges; and then a flood of translations from European
and oriental literatures. As we shall presently see, every prominent writer
from Emerson to Whitman was influenced by new views of life as reflected in
the world's poetry. Longfellow is a conspicuous example; with his songs
inspired by Spanish or German or Scandinavian originals he is at times more
like an echo of Europe than a voice from the New World.

[Illustration: BIRTHPLACE OF LONGFELLOW, AT FALMOUTH (NOW PORTLAND), MAINE]

[Sidenote: AN AGE OF POETRY]

Finally, this period of conflict was governed more largely than usual by
ideals, by sentiment, by intense feeling. Witness the war, with the heroic
sentiments which it summoned up south and north. As the deepest human
feeling cannot be voiced in prose, we confront the strange phenomenon of an
American age of poetry. This would be remarkable Poetry enough to one who
remembers that the genius of America had hitherto appeared practical and
prosaic, given to action rather than speech, more concerned to "get on" in
life than to tell what life means; but it is even more remarkable in view
of the war, which covers the age with its frightful shadow. As Lincoln, sad
and overburdened, found the relief of tears in the beautiful ending of
Longfellow's "Building of the Ship," so, it seems, the heart of America,
torn by the sight of her sons in conflict, found blessed relief in songs of
love, of peace, of home, of beauty,--of all the lovely and immortal ideals
to which every war offers violent but impotent contradiction. And this may
be the simple explanation of the fact that the most cherished poems
produced by any period of war are almost invariably its songs of peace.

THE GREATER POETS

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW (1807-1882)

When Longfellow sent forth his _Voices of the Night_, in 1839, that
modest little volume met with a doubly warm reception. Critics led by Poe
pounced on the work to condemn its sentimentality or moralizing, while a
multitude of readers who needed no leader raised a great shout of welcome.

Now as then there are diverse critical opinions of Longfellow, and
unfortunately these opinions sometimes obscure the more interesting facts:
that Longfellow is still the favorite of the American home, the most
honored of all our elder poets; that in foreign schools his works are
commonly used as an introduction to English verse, and that he has probably
led more young people to appreciate poetry than any other poet who ever
wrote our language. That strange literary genius Lafcadio Hearn advised his
Japanese students to begin the study of poetry with Longfellow, saying that
they might learn to like other poets better in later years, but that
Longfellow was most certain to charm them at the beginning.

The reason for this advice, given to the antipodes, was probably this, that
young hearts and pure hearts are the same the world over, and Longfellow is
the poet of the young and pure in heart.

    LIFE. The impression of serenity in Longfellow's work may be
    explained by the gifts which Fortune offered him in the way of
    endowment, training and opportunity. By nature he was a gentleman;
    his home training was of the best; to his college education four
    years of foreign study were added, a very unusual thing at that
    time; and no sooner was he ready for his work than the way opened
    as if the magic _Sesame_ were on his lips. His own college
    gave him a chair of modern languages and literature, which was the
    very thing he wanted; then Harvard offered what seemed to him a
    wider field, and finally his country called him from the
    professor's chair to teach the love of poetry to the whole nation.
    Before his long and beautiful life ended he had enjoyed for half a
    century the two rewards that all poets desire, and the most of them
    in vain; namely, fame and love. The first may be fairly won; the
    second is a free gift.

    [Illustration: HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW]

    Longfellow was born (1807) in the town of Falmouth, Maine, which
    has since been transformed into the city of Portland. Like Bryant
    he was descended from Pilgrim stock; but where the older poet's
    training had been strictly puritanic, Longfellow's was more liberal
    and broadly cultured. Bryant received the impulse to poetry from
    his grandfather's prayers, but Longfellow seems to have heard his
    first call in the sea wind. Some of his best lyrics sing of the
    ocean; his early book of essays was called _Driftwood_, his
    last volume of poetry _In the Harbor_; and in these lyrics and
    titles we have a reflection of his boyhood impressions in looking
    forth from the beautiful Falmouth headland, then a wild,
    wood-fringed pasture but now a formal park:

      I remember the black wharves and the slips,
        And the sea tides tossing free,
      And Spanish sailors with bearded lips,
      And the beauty and mystery of the ships,
        And the magic of the sea.

    [Sidenote: THE CALL OF BOOKS]

    This first call was presently neglected for the more insistent
    summons of literature; and thereafter Longfellow's inspiration was
    at second hand, from books rather than from nature or humanity.
    Soon after his graduation from Bowdoin (1825) he was offered a
    professorship in modern languages on condition that he prepare
    himself for the work by foreign study. With a glad heart he
    abandoned the law, which he had begun to study in his father's
    office, and spent three happy years in France, Spain and Italy.
    There he steeped himself in European poetry, and picked up a
    reading knowledge of several languages. Strangely enough, the
    romantic influence of Europe was reflected by this poet in a book
    of prose essays, _Outre Mer_, modeled on Irving's _Sketch
    Book_.

    [Sidenote: YEARS OF TEACHING]

    For five years Longfellow taught the modern languages at Bowdoin,
    and his subject was so new in America that he had to prepare his
    own textbooks. Then, after another period of foreign study (this
    time in Denmark and Germany), he went to Harvard, where he taught
    modern languages and literature for eighteen years. In 1854 he
    resigned his chair, and for the remainder of his life devoted
    himself whole-heartedly to poetry.

    His literary work began with newspaper verses, the best of which
    appear in the "Earlier Poems" of his collected works. Next he
    attempted prose in his _Outre Mer_, _Driftwood Essays_
    and the romances _Hyperion_ and _Kavanagh_. In 1839
    appeared his first volume of poetry, _Voices of the Night_,
    after which few years went by without some notable poem or volume
    from Longfellow's pen. His last book, _In the Harbor_,
    appeared with the news of his death, in 1882.

    [Sidenote: HIS SERENITY]

    Aside from these "milestones" there is little to record in a career
    so placid that we remember by analogy "The Old Clock on the
    Stairs." For the better part of his life he lived in Cambridge,
    where he was surrounded by a rare circle of friends, and whither
    increasing numbers came from near or far to pay the tribute of
    gratitude to one who had made life more beautiful by his singing.
    Once only the serenity was broken by a tragedy, the death of the
    poet's wife, who was fatally burned before his eyes,--a tragedy
    which occasioned his translation of Dante's _Divina Commedia_
    (by which work he strove to keep his sorrow from overwhelming him)
    and the exquisite "Cross of Snow." The latter seemed too sacred for
    publication; it was found, after the poet's death, among his
    private papers.

    [Sidenote: HIS WORK AND INFLUENCE]

    Reading Longfellow's poems one would never suspect that they were
    produced in an age of turmoil. To be sure, one finds a few poems on
    slavery (sentimental effusions, written on shipboard to relieve the
    monotony of a voyage), but these were better unwritten since they
    added nothing to the poet's song and took nothing from the slave's
    burden. Longfellow has been criticized for his inaction in the
    midst of tumult, but possibly he had his reasons. When everybody's
    shouting is an excellent time to hold your tongue. He had his own
    work to do, a work for which he was admirably fitted; that he did
    not turn aside from it is to his credit and our profit. One demand
    of his age was, as we have noted elsewhere, to enter into the
    wealth of European poetry; and he gave thirty years of his life to
    satisfying that demand. Our own poetry was then sentimental, a kind
    of "sugared angel-cake"; and Longfellow, who was sentimental enough
    but whose sentiment was balanced by scholarship, made poetry that
    was like wholesome bread to common men. Lowell was a more brilliant
    writer, and Whittier a more inspired singer; but neither did a work
    for American letters that is comparable to that of Longfellow, who
    was essentially an educator, a teacher of new ideas, new values,
    new beauty. His influence in broadening our literary culture, in
    deepening our sympathy for the poets of other lands, and in making
    our own poetry a true expression of American feeling is beyond
    measure.

MINOR POEMS. It was by his first simple poems that Longfellow won the
hearts of his people, and by them he is still most widely and gratefully
remembered. To name these old favorites ("The Day is Done," "Resignation,"
"Ladder of St. Augustine," "Rainy Day," "Footsteps of Angels," "Light of
Stars," "Reaper and the Flowers," "Hymn to the Night," "Midnight Mass,"
"Excelsior," "Village Blacksmith," "Psalm of Life") is to list many of the
poems that are remembered and quoted wherever in the round world the
English language is spoken.

[Sidenote: VESPER SONGS]

Ordinarily such poems are accepted at their face value as a true expression
of human sentiment; but if we examine them critically, remembering the
people for whom they were written, we may discover the secret of their
popularity. The Anglo-Saxons are first a busy and then a religious folk;
when their day's work is done their thoughts turn naturally to higher
matters; and any examination of Longfellow's minor works shows that a large
proportion of them deal with the thoughts or feelings of men at the close
of day. Such poems would be called _Abendlieder_ in German; a good
Old-English title for them would be "Evensong"; and both titles suggest the
element of faith or worship. In writing these poems Longfellow had,
unconsciously perhaps, the same impulse that leads one man to sing a hymn
and another to say his prayers when the day is done. Because he expresses
this almost universal feeling simply and reverently, his work is dear to
men and women who would not have the habit of work interfere with the
divine instinct of worship.

Further examination of these minor poems shows them to be filled with
sentiment that often slips over the verge of sentimentality. The sentiments
expressed are not of the exalted, imaginative kind; they are the sentiments
of plain people who feel deeply but who can seldom express their feeling.
Now, most people are sentimental (though we commonly try to hide the fact,
more's the pity), and we are at heart grateful to the poet who says for us
in simple, musical language what we are unable or ashamed to say for
ourselves. In a word, the popularity of Longfellow's poems rests firmly on
the humanity of the poet.

[Sidenote: TYPICAL POEMS]

Besides these vesper songs are a hundred other short poems, among which the
reader must make his own selection. The ballads should not be neglected,
for Longfellow knew how to tell a story in verse. If he were too prone to
add a moral to his tale (a moral that does not speak for itself were better
omitted), we can overlook the fault, since his moral was a good one and his
readers liked it. The "occasional" poems, also, written to celebrate
persons or events (such as "Building of the Ship," "Hanging of the Crane,"
"Morituri Salutamus," "Bells of Lynn," "Robert Burns," "Chamber over the
Gate") well deserved the welcome which the American people gave them. And
the sonnets (such as "Three Friends," "Victor and Vanquished," "My Books,"
"Nature," "Milton," "President Garfield," "Giotto's Tower") are not only
the most artistic of Longfellow's works but rank very near to the best
sonnets in the English language.

AMERICAN IDYLS. In the same spirit in which Tennyson wrote his _English
Idyls_ the American poet sent forth certain works reflecting the beauty
of common life on this side of the ocean; and though he never collected or
gave them a name, we think of them as his "American Idyls." Many of his
minor poems belong to this class, but we are thinking especially of
_Evangeline_, _Miles Standish_ and _Hiawatha_. The
last-named, with its myths and legends clustering around one heroic
personage, is commonly called an epic; but its songs of Chibiabos,
Minnehaha, Nokomis and the little Hiawatha are more like idyllic pictures
of the original Americans.

[Sidenote: EVANGELINE]

_Evangeline: a Tale of Acadie_ (1847) met the fate of Longfellow's
earlier poems in that it was promptly attacked by a few critics while a
multitude of people read it with delight. Its success may be explained on
four counts. First, it is a charming story, not a "modern" or realistic but
a tender, pathetic story such as we read in old romances, and such as young
people will cherish so long as they remain young people. Second, it had a
New World setting, one that was welcomed in Europe because it offered
readers a new stage, more vast, shadowy, mysterious, than that to which
they were accustomed; and doubly welcomed here because it threw the glamor
of romance over familiar scenes which deserved but had never before found
their poet. Third, this old romance in a new setting was true to universal
human nature; its sentiments of love, faith and deathless loyalty were such
as make the heart beat faster wherever true hearts are found. Finally, it
was written in an unusual verse form, the unrimed hexameter, which
Longfellow handled as well, let us say, as most other English poets who
have tried to use that alluring but difficult measure. For hexameters are
like the Italian language, which is very easy to "pick up," but which few
foreigners ever learn to speak with the rhythm and melody of a child of
Tuscany.

Longfellow began his hexameters fairly well, as witness the opening lines
of _Evangeline_:

  This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,
  Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,
  Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic,
  Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms.
  Loud from its rocky caverns the deep-voiced neighboring ocean
  Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest.

Occasionally also he produced a very good but not quite perfect line or
passage:

  And as the voice of the priest repeated the service of sorrow,
  So with a mournful sound, like the voice of a vast congregation,
  Solemnly answered the sea, and mingled its roar with the dirges.

One must confess, however, that such passages are exceptional, and that one
must change the proper stress of a word too frequently to be enthusiastic
over Longfellow's hexameters. Some of his lines halt or hobble, refusing to
move to the chosen measure, and others lose all their charm when spoken
aloud:

  When she had passed it seemed like the ceasing of exquisite music.

That line has been praised by critics, but one must believe that they never
pronounced it. To voice its sibilant hissing is to understand the symbol
for a white man in the Indian sign language; that is, two fingers of a hand
extended before the face, like the fork of a serpent's tongue. [Footnote:
This curious symbol, a snake's tongue to represent an Englishman, was
invented by some Indian whose ears were pained by a language in which the
_s_ sounds occur too frequently. Our plurals are nearly all made that
way, unfortunately; but Longfellow was able to make a hissing line without
the use of a single plural.] On the whole, Longfellow's verse should be
judged not by itself but as a part of the tale he was telling. Holmes
summed up the first impression of many readers by saying that he found
these "brimming lines" an excellent medium for a charming story.

That is more than one can truthfully say of the next important idyl, _The
Courtship of Miles Standish_ (1858). The story is a good one and, more
than all the histories, has awakened a romantic interest in the Pilgrims;
but its unhappy hexameters go jolting along, continually upsetting the
musical rhythm, until we wish that the tale had been told in either prose
or poetry.

[Sidenote: SONG OF HIAWATHA]

_The Song of Hiawatha_ (1855) was Longfellow's greatest work, and by
it he will probably be longest remembered as a world poet. The materials
for this poem, its musical names, its primitive traditions, its fascinating
folklore, were all taken from Schoolcraft's books about the Ojibway
Indians; its peculiar verse form, with its easy rhythm and endless
repetition, was copied from the _Kalevala_, the national epic of
Finland. Material and method, the tale and the verse form, were finely
adapted to each other; and though Longfellow showed no originality in
_Hiawatha_, his poetic talent or genius appears in this: that these
tales of childhood are told in a childlike spirit; that these forest
legends have the fragrance of hemlock in them; and that as we read them,
even now, we seem to see the wigwam with its curling smoke, and beyond the
wigwam the dewy earth, the shining river, and the blue sky with its pillars
of tree trunks and its cloud of rustling leaves. The simplicity and
naturalness of primitive folklore is in this work of Longfellow, who of a
hundred writers at home and abroad was the first to reveal the poetry in
the soul of an Indian.

As the poem is well known we forbear quotation; as it is too long, perhaps,
we express a personal preference in naming "Hiawatha's Childhood," his
"Friends," his "Fishing" and his "Wooing" as the parts most likely to
please the beginner. The best that can be said of _Hiawatha_ is that
it adds a new tale to the world's storybook. That book of the centuries has
only a few stories, each of which portrays a man from birth to death,
fronting the problems of this life, meeting its joy or sorrow in man
fashion, and then setting his face bravely to "Ponemah," the Land of the
Hereafter. That Longfellow added a chapter to the volume which preserves
the stories of Ulysses, Beowulf, Arthur and Roland is undoubtedly his best
or most enduring achievement.

[Illustration: THE TAPROOM, WAYSIDE INN, SUDBURY]

HIS EXPERIMENTAL WORKS. Unless the student wants to encourage a sentimental
mood by reading _Hyperion_, Longfellow's prose works need not detain
us. Much more valuable and readable are his translations from various
European languages, and of these his metrical version of _The Divine
Comedy_ of Dante is most notable. He attempted also several dramatic
works, among which _The Spanish Student_ (1843) is still readable,
though not very convincing. In _Christus: a Mystery_ he attempted a
miracle play of three acts, dealing with Christianity in the apostolic,
medieval and modern eras; but not even his admirers were satisfied with the
result. "The Golden Legend" (one version of which Caxton printed on the
first English press, and which a score of different poets have paraphrased)
is the only part of _Christus_ that may interest young readers by its
romantic portrayal of the Middle Ages. To name such works is to suggest
Longfellow's varied interests and his habit of experimenting with any
subject or verse form that attracted him in foreign literatures.

The _Tales of a Wayside Inn_ (1863-1873) is the most popular of
Longfellow's miscellaneous works. Here are a score of stories from ancient
or modern sources, as told by a circle of the poet's friends in the Red
Horse Inn, at Sudbury. The title suggests at once the _Canterbury
Tales_ of Chaucer; but it would be unwise to make any comparison between
the two works or the two poets. The ballad of "Paul Revere's Ride" is the
best known of the _Wayside Inn_ poems; the Viking tales of "The Saga
of King Olaf" are the most vigorous; the mellow coloring of the Middle Ages
appears in such stories as "The Legend Beautiful" and "The Bell of Atri."

CHARACTERISTICS OF LONGFELLOW. The broad sympathy of Longfellow, which made
him at home in the literatures of a dozen nations, was one of his finest
qualities. He lived in Cambridge; he wrote in English; he is called the
poet of the American home; but had he lived in Finland and written in a
Scandinavian tongue, his poems must still appeal to us. Indeed, so simply
did he reflect the sentiments of the human heart that Finland or any other
nation might gladly class him among its poets.

[Sidenote: A POET OF ALL PEOPLES]

For example, many Englishmen have written about their Wellington, but, as
Hearn says, not even Tennyson's poem on the subject is quite equal to
Longfellow's "Warden of the Cinque Ports." The spirit of the Spanish
missions, with their self-sacrificing monks and their soldiers "with hearts
of fire and steel," is finely reflected in "The Bells of San Blas." The
half-superstitious loyalty of the Russian peasant for his hereditary ruler
has never been better reflected than in "The White Czar." The story of
Belisarius has been told in scores of histories and books of poetry; but
you will feel a deeper sympathy for the neglected old Roman soldier in
Longfellow's poem than in anything else you may find on the same theme. And
there are many other foreign heroes or brave deeds that find beautiful
expression in the verse of our American poet. Of late it has become almost
a critical habit to disparage Longfellow; but no critic has pointed out
another poet who has reflected with sympathy and understanding the feelings
of so many widely different peoples.

[Illustration: LONGFELLOW'S LIBRARY IN CRAIGIE HOUSE, CAMBRIDGE]

Naturally such a poet had his limitations. In comparison with Chaucer, for
example, we perceive instantly that Longfellow knew only one side of life,
the better side. Unhappy or rebellious or turbulent souls were beyond his
ken. He wrote only for those who work by day and sometimes go to evensong
at night, who hopefully train their children or reverently bury their dead,
and who cleave to a writer that speaks for them the fitting word of faith
or cheer or consolation on every proper occasion. As humanity is largely
made of such men and women, Longfellow will always be a popular poet. For
him, with his serene outlook, there were not nine Muses but only three, and
their names were Faith, Hope and Charity.

[Sidenote: POETIC FAULTS]

Concerning his faults, perhaps the most illuminating thing that can be said
is that critics emphasize and ordinary readers ignore them. The reason for
this is that every poem has two elements, form and content: a critic looks
chiefly at the one, an ordinary reader at the other. Because the form of
Longfellow's verse is often faulty it is easy to criticize him, to show
that he copies the work of others, that he lacks originality, that his
figures are often forced or questionable; but the reader, the young reader
especially, may be too much interested in the charm of the poet's story or
the truth of his sentiment to dissect his poetic figures. Thus, in the
best-known of his earlier poems, "A Psalm of Life," he uses the famous
metaphor of "footprints on the sands of time." That is so bad a figure that
to analyze is to reject it; yet it never bothers young people, who would
understand the poet and like him just as well even had he written
"signboards" instead of "footprints." The point is that Longfellow is so
obviously a true and pleasant poet that his faults easily escape attention
unless we look for them. There is perhaps no better summary of our poet's
qualities than to record again the simple fact that he is the poet of young
people, to whom sentiment is the very breath of life. Should you ask the
reason for his supremacy in this respect, the answer is a paradox.
Longfellow was not an originator; he had no new song to sing, no new tale
to tell. He was the poet of old heroes, old legends, old sentiments and
ideals. Therefore he is the poet of youth.

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER (1807-1892)

The strange mixture of warrior and peace lover in Whittier has led to a
strange misjudgment of his work. From the obscurity of a New England farm
he emerged as the champion of the Abolitionist party, and for thirty
tumultuous years his poems were as war cries. By such work was he judged as
"the trumpeter of a cause," and the judgment stood between him and his
audience when he sang not of a cause but of a country. Even at the present
time most critics speak of Whittier as "the antislavery poet." Stedman, for
example, focuses our attention on certain lyrics of reform which he calls
"words wrung from the nation's heart"; but the plain fact is that only a
small part of the nation approved these lyrics or took any interest in the
poet who wrote them.

Such was Whittier on one side, a militant poet of reform, sending forth
verses that had the brattle of trumpets and the waving of banners in them:

  Lift again the stately emblem on the Bay State's rusted shield,
  Give to Northern winds the Pine Tree on our banner's tattered field.
  Sons of men who sat in council with their Bibles round the board,
  Answering England's royal missive with a firm, "Thus saith the Lord!"
  Rise again for home and freedom! set the battle in array!
  What the fathers did of old time we their sons must do to-day.

On the other side he was a Friend, or Quaker, and the peaceful spirit of
his people found expression in lyrics of faith that have no equal in our
poetry. He was also a patriot to the core. He loved America with a profound
love; her ideals, her traditions, her epic history were in his blood, and
he glorified them in ballads and idyls that reflect the very spirit of
brave Colonial days. To judge Whittier as a trumpeter, therefore, is to
neglect all that is important in his work; for his reform poems merely
awaken the dying echoes of party clamor, while his ballads and idyls belong
to the whole American people, and his hymns of faith to the wider audience
of humanity.

    LIFE. The span of Whittier's life was almost the span of the
    nineteenth century. He was born (1807) in the homestead of his
    ancestors at Haverhill, Massachusetts, and spent his formative
    years working in the fields by day, reading beside the open fire at
    night, and spending a few terms in a "deestrict" school presided
    over by teachers who came or went with the spring. His schooling
    was, therefore, of the scantiest kind; his real education came from
    a noble home, from his country's history, from his toil and outdoor
    life with its daily contact with nature. The love of home and of
    homely virtues, the glorification of manhood and womanhood, the
    pride of noble traditions, and always a background of meadow or
    woodland or sounding sea,--these were the subjects of Whittier's
    best verse, because these were the things he knew most intimately.

    [Sidenote: FIRST VERSES]

    It was a song of Burns that first turned Whittier to poetry; but
    hardly had he begun to write songs of his own when Garrison, the
    antislavery agitator, turned his thought from the peaceful farm to
    the clamoring world beyond. Attracted by certain verses (Whittier's
    sister Elizabeth had sent them secretly to Garrison's paper) the
    editor came over to see his contributor and found to his surprise a
    country lad who was in evident need of education. Instead of asking
    for more poetry, therefore, Garrison awakened the boy's ambition.
    For two terms he attended the Haverhill Academy, supporting himself
    meanwhile by making shoes. Then his labor was needed at home; but
    finding his health too delicate for farm work he chose other
    occupations and contributed manfully to the support of his family.

    [Illustration: JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER]

    For several years thereafter Whittier was like a man trying to find
    himself. He did factory work; he edited newspapers; he showed a
    talent for political leadership; he made poems which he sold at a
    price to remind him of what he had once received for making shoes.
    While poetry and politics both called to him alluringly a crisis
    arose; Garrison summoned him; and with a sad heart, knowing that he
    left all hope of political or literary success behind, he went over
    to the Abolitionist party. That was in 1833, when Whittier was
    twenty-six years old. At that time the Abolitionists were detested
    in the North as well as in the South, and to join them was to
    become an outcast.

    [Sidenote: STORM AND STRESS]

    Then came the militant period of Whittier's life. He became editor
    of antislavery journals; he lectured in the cause; he was stoned
    for his utterances; his printing shop was burned by a mob.
    Meanwhile his poems were sounding abroad like trumpet blasts,
    making friends, making enemies. It was a passionate age, when
    political enemies were hated like Hessians, but Whittier was always
    chivalrous with his opponents. Read his "Randolph of Roanoke" for a
    specific example. His "Laus Deo" (1865), a chant of exultation
    written when he heard the bells ringing the news of the
    constitutional amendment prohibiting slavery, was the last poem of
    this period of storm and stress.

    [Illustration: OAK KNOLL, WHITTIER'S HOME, DANVERS, MASSACHUSETTS]

    In the following year Whittier produced _Snow-Bound_, his
    masterpiece. Though he had been writing for half a century, he had
    never won either fame or money by his verse; but the publication of
    this beautiful idyl placed him in the front rank of American poets.
    Thereafter he was a national figure, and the magazines which once
    scorned his verses were now most eager to print them. So he made an
    end of the poverty which had been his portion since childhood.

    [Sidenote: PEACEFUL YEARS]

    For the remainder of his life he lived serenely at Amesbury, for
    the most part, in a modest house presided over by a relative. He
    wrote poetry now more carefully, for a wider audience, and every
    few years saw another little volume added to his store: _Ballads
    of New England_, _Miriam and Other Poems_, _Hazel
    Blossoms_, _Poems of Nature_, _St. Gregory's Quest_,
    _At Sundown_. When he died (1892) he was honored not so widely
    perhaps as Longfellow, but more deeply, as we honor those whose
    peace has been won through manful strife. Holmes, the ready poet of
    all occasions, expressed a formal but sincere judgment in the
    lines:

      Best loved and saintliest of our singing train,
        Earth's noblest tributes to thy name belong:
      A lifelong record closed without a stain,
        A blameless memory shrined in deathless song.

EARLIER WORKS. [Footnote: Though we are concerned here with Whittier's
poetry, we should at least mention certain of his prose works, such as
_Legends of New England_, _Leaves from Margaret Smith's Journal_
and _Old Portraits and Modern Sketches_. The chief value of these is
in their pictures of Colonial life.] In Whittier's poetry we note three
distinct stages, and note also that he was on the wrong trail until he
followed his own spirit. His earliest work was inspired by Burns, but this
was of no consequence. Next he fell under the spell of Scott and wrote
"Mogg Megone" and "The Bridal of Pennacook." These Indian romances in verse
are too much influenced by Scott's border poems and also by sentimental
novels of savage life, such as Mrs. Child's _Hobomok_; they do not
ring true, and in this respect are like almost everything else in
literature on the subject of the Indians.

[Sidenote: REFORM POEMS]

In _Voices of Freedom_ (1849) and other poems inspired by the
antislavery campaign Whittier for the first time came close to his own age.
He was no longer an echo but a voice, a man's voice, shouting above a
tumult. He spoke not for the nation but for a party; and it was inevitable
that his reform lyrics should fall into neglect with the occasions that
called them forth. They are interesting now not as poems but as sidelights
on a critical period of our history. Their intensely passionate quality
appears in "Faneuil Hall," "Song of the Free," "The Pine Tree," "Randolph
of Roanoke" and "The Farewell of an Indian Slave Mother."

There is a fine swinging rhythm in these poems, in "Massachusetts to
Virginia" especially, which recalls Macaulay's "Armada"; and two of them at
least show astonishing power and vitality. One is "Laus Deo," to which we
have referred in our story of the poet's life. The other is "Ichabod"
(1850), written after the "Seventh of March Speech" of Webster, when that
statesman seemed to have betrayed the men who elected and trusted him.
Surprise, anger, scorn, indignation, sorrow,--all these emotions were
loosed in a flood after Webster's speech; but Whittier waited till he had
fused them into one emotion, and when his slow words fell at last they fell
with the weight of judgment and the scorching of fire upon their victim. If
words could kill a man, these surely are the words. "Ichabod" is the most
powerful poem of its kind in our language; but it is fearfully unjust to
Webster. Those who read it should read also "The Lost Occasion," written
thirty years later, which Whittier placed next to "Ichabod" in the final
edition of his poems. So he tried to right a wrong (unfortunately after the
victim was dead) by offering generous tribute to the statesman he had once
misjudged.

BALLADS AND AMERICAN IDYLS. Whittier's manly heart and his talent for
flowing verse made him an excellent ballad writer; but his work in this
field is so different from that of his predecessors that he came near to
inventing a new type of poetry. Thus, many of the old ballads celebrate the
bravery that mounts with fighting; but Whittier always lays emphasis on the
higher quality that we call moral courage. "Barclay of Ury" will illustrate
our criticism: the verse has a martial swing; the hero is a veteran who has
known the lust of battle; but his courage now appears in self-mastery, in
the ability to bear in silence the jeers of a mob. Again, the old ballad
aims to tell a story, nothing else, and drives straight to its mark; but
Whittier portrays the whole landscape and background of the action. He
deals largely with Colonial life in New England, and his descriptions of
place and people are unrivaled in our poetry. Read one of his typical
ballads, "The Wreck of Rivermouth" or "The Witch's Daughter" or "The
Garrison of Cape Ann" or "Skipper Ireson's Ride," and see how closely he
identifies himself with the place and time of his story.

[Illustration: STREET IN OLD MARBLEHEAD
Skipper Ireson's home on extreme right]

[Sidenote: PATRIOTIC QUALITY]

There is one quality, however, in which our Quaker poet resembles the old
ballad makers, namely, his intense patriotism, and this recalls the fact
that ballads were the first histories, the first expression not only of
brave deeds but of the national pride which the deeds symbolized. Though
Whittier keeps himself modestly in the background, as a story teller ought
to do, he can never quite repress the love of his native land or the
quickened heartbeats that set his verse marching as if to the drums. This
patriotism, though intense, was never intolerant but rather sympathetic