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Reuben Post Halleck >> History of American Literature
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27 Produced by Tom Allen, Charles Franks
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE
BY REUBEN POST HALLECK, M.A. (YALE)
AUTHOR OF "HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE"
[Illustration: THE RETURN OF RIP VAN WINKLE]
PREFACE
The wide use of the author's _History of English Literature_, the favor
with which it has been received in all parts of the United States, and the
number of earnest requests for a _History of American Literature_ on the
same plan, have led to the writing of this book. It has not appeared sooner
because the author has followed his rule of making a careful first-hand
study, not only of all the matter discussed, but also of a far greater
amount, which, although it must be omitted from a condensed textbook, is,
nevertheless, necessary as a background for judgment and selection.
The following chapters describe the greatest achievements in American
literature from the earliest times until the present. Many pupils fail to
obtain a clear idea of great American authors and literary movements
because textbook writers and teachers ignore the element of truth in the
old adage, "The half is greater than the whole," and dwell too much on
minor authors and details, which could reasonably be expected to interest
only a specialist. In the following pages especial attention has been paid,
not only to the individual work of great authors, but also to literary
movements, ideals, and animating principles, and to the relation of all
these to English literature.
The author has further aimed to make this work both interesting and
suggestive. He has endeavored to present the subject in a way that
necessitates the comparison of authors and movements, and leads to
stimulating thinking. He has tried to communicate enough of the spirit of
our literature to make students eager for a first-hand acquaintance with
it, to cause them to investigate for themselves this remarkable American
record of spirituality, initiative, and democratic accomplishment. As a
guide to such study, there have been placed at the end of each chapter
_Suggested Readings_ and still further hints, called _Questions and
Suggestions_. In _A Glance Backward_, the author emphasizes in brief
compass the most important truths that American literature teaches, truths
that have resulted in raising the ideals of Americans and in arousing them
to greater activity.
Any one who makes an original study of American literature will not be a
mere apologist for it. He will marvel at the greatness of the moral
lesson, at the fidelity of the presentation of the thought which has
molded this nation, and at the peculiar aptness which its great authors
have displayed in ministering to the special needs and aspirations of
Americans. He will realize that the youth who stops with the indispensable
study of English literature is not prepared for American citizenship,
because our literature is needed to present the ideals of American life.
There may be greater literatures, but none of them can possibly take the
place of ours for citizens of this democracy.
The moral element, the most impressive quality in American literature, is
continuous from the earliest colonial days until the present. Teachers
should be careful not to obscure this quality. As the English scientist,
John Tyndall, has shown in the case of Emerson, this moral stimulus is
capable of adding immeasurably to the achievement of the young.
The temptation to slight the colonial period should be resisted. It has
too often been the fashion to ask, Why should the student not begin the
study of American literature with Washington Irving, the first author
read for pure pleasure? The answer is that the student would not then
comprehend the stages of growth of the new world ideals, that he would
not view our later literature through the proper atmosphere, and that he
would lack certain elements necessary for a sympathetic comprehension of
the subject.
The seven years employed in the preparation of this work would have been
insufficient, had not the author been assisted by his wife, to whom he is
indebted not only for invaluable criticism but also for the direct
authorship of some of the best matter in this book.
R. P. H.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
COLONIAL LITERATURE
CHAPTER II
THE EMERGENCE OF A NATION
CHAPTER III
THE NEW YORK GROUP
CHAPTER IV
THE NEW ENGLAND GROUP
CHAPTER V
SOUTHERN LITERATURE
CHAPTER VI
WESTERN LITERATURE
CHAPTER VII
THE EASTERN REALISTS
A GLANCE BACKWARD
* * * * *
SUPPLEMENTARY LIST OF AUTHORS AND THEIR CHIEF WORKS
INDEX
[Transcriber's note:
Index not included in this electronic version.]
HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE
CHAPTER I
COLONIAL LITERATURE
RELATION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE.--The literature produced in that part of
America known as the United States did not begin as an independent
literature. The early colonists were Englishmen who brought with them their
own language, books, and modes of thought. England had a world-famous
literature before her sons established a permanent settlement across the
Atlantic. Shakespeare had died four years before the Pilgrims landed at
Plymouth. When an American goes to Paris he can neither read the books, nor
converse with the citizens, if he knows no language but his own. Let him
cross to London, and he will find that, although more than three hundred
years have elapsed since the first colonists came to America, he
immediately feels at home, so far as the language and literature are
concerned.
For nearly two hundred years after the first English settlements in
America, the majority of the works read there were written by English
authors. The hard struggle necessary to obtain a foothold in a wilderness
is not favorable to the early development of a literature. Those who
remained in England could not clear away the forest, till the soil, and
conquer the Indians, but they could write the books and send them across
the ocean. The early settlers were for the most part content to allow
English authors to do this. For these reasons it would be surprising if
early American literature could vie with that produced in England during
the same period.
When Americans began to write in larger numbers, there was at first close
adherence to English models. For a while it seemed as if American
literature would be only a feeble imitation of these models, but a change
finally came, as will be shown in later chapters. It is to be hoped,
however, that American writers of the future will never cease to learn from
Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Bunyan, and Wordsworth.
AMERICAN LITERATURE AN IMPORTANT STUDY.--We should not begin the study of
American literature in an apologetic spirit. There should be no attempt to
minimize the debt that America owes to English literature, nor to conceal
the fact that American literature is young and has not had time to produce
as many masterpieces as England gave to the world during a thousand years.
However, it is now time also to record the fact that the literature of
England gained something from America. Cultivated Englishmen to-day
willingly admit that without a study of Cooper, Poe, and Hawthorne no one
could give an adequate account of the landmarks of achievement in fiction,
written in our common tongue. French critics have even gone so far as to
canonize Poe. In a certain field he and Hawthorne occupy a unique place in
the world's achievement. Again, men like Bret Harte and Mark Twain are not
common in any literature. Foreigners have had American books translated
into all the leading languages of the world. It is now more than one
hundred years since Franklin, the great American philosopher of the
practical, died, and yet several European nations reprint nearly every year
some of his sayings, which continue to influence the masses. English
critics, like John Addington Symonds, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Edward
Dowden, have testified to the power of the democratic element in our
literature and have given the dictum that it cannot be neglected.
Some of the reasons why American literature developed along original lines
and thus conveyed a message of its own to the world are to be found in the
changed environment and the varying problems and ideals of American life.
Even more important than the changed ways of earning a living and the
difference in climate, animals, and scenery were the struggles leading to
the Revolutionary War, the formation and guidance of the Republic, and the
Civil War. All these combined to give individuality to American thought and
literature.
Taken as a whole, American literature has accomplished more than might
reasonably have been expected. Its study is especially important for us,
since the deeds associated with our birthplace must mean more to us than
more remarkable achievements of men born under other skies. Our literature,
even in its humble beginnings, contains a lesson that no American can
afford to miss. Unless we know its ideals and moral aims and are swayed by
them, we cannot keep our heritage.
WHY VIRGINIA WAS COLONIZED.--In 1607 the first permanent English colony
within the present limits of the United States was planted at Jamestown in
Virginia. The colony was founded for commercial reasons by the London
Company, an organization formed to secure profits from colonization. The
colonists and the company that furnished their ship and outfit expected
large profits from the gold mines and the precious stones which were
believed to await discovery. Of course, the adventurers were also
influenced by the honor and the romantic interest which they thought would
result from a successful settlement.
When the expedition sailed from England in December, 1606, Michael Drayton,
an Elizabethan poet, wrote verses dedicated "To the Virginian Voyage."
These stanzas show the reason for sending the colonizers to Virginia:--
"You brave heroic minds,
Worthy your country's name,
That honor still pursue,
Whilst loit'ring hinds
Lurk here at home with shame,
Go and subdue.
* * * * *
And cheerfully at sea,
Success you still entice,
To get the pearl and gold;
And ours to hold
Virginia,
Earth's only paradise."
The majority of the early Virginian colonists were unfit for their task.
Contemporary accounts tell of the "many unruly gallants, packed hither by
their friends to escape ill destinies." Beggars, vagabonds, indentured
servants, kidnapped girls, even convicts, were sent to Jamestown and became
the ancestors of some of the "poor white trash" of the South. After the
execution of Charles I. in 1649, and the setting up of the Puritan
Commonwealth, many of the royalists, or Cavaliers, as they were called,
came to Virginia to escape the obnoxious Puritan rule. They became the
ancestors of Presidents and statesmen, and of many of the aristocratic
families of the South.
The ideals expressed by Captain John Smith, the leader and preserver of the
Jamestown colony, are worthy to rank beside those of the colonizers of New
England. Looking back at his achievement in Virginia, he wrote, "Then
seeing we are not born for ourselves but each to help other ... Seeing
honor is our lives' ambition ... and seeing by no means would we be abated
of the dignities and glories of our predecessors; let us imitate their
virtues to be worthily their successors."
WHY THE PURITANS COLONIZED NEW ENGLAND.--During the period from 1620 to
1640, large numbers of Englishmen migrated to that part of America now
known as New England. These emigrants were not impelled by hope of wealth,
or ease, or pleasure. They were called Puritans because they wished to
purify the Church of England from what seemed to them great abuses; and the
purpose of these men in emigrating to America was to lay the foundations of
a state built upon their religious principles. These people came for an
intangible something--liberty of conscience, a fuller life of the
spirit--which has never commanded a price on any stock exchange in the
world. They looked beyond
"Things done that took the eye and had the price;
O'er which, from level stand,
The low world laid its hand,
Found straightway to its mind, could value in a trice."
These Puritans had been more than one century in the making. We hear of
them in the time of Wycliffe (1324-1384). Their religion was a constant
command to put the unseen above the seen, the eternal above the temporal,
to satisfy the aspiration of the spirit. James I. (reign, 1603-1625) told
them that he would harry them out of the kingdom unless they conformed to
the rites of the Established Church. His son and successor Charles I.
(reign, 1625-1649) called to his aid Archbishop Laud (1573-1645), a bigoted
official of that church. Laud hunted the dissenting clergy like wild
beasts, threw them into prison, whipped them in the pillory, branded them,
slit their nostrils, and mutilated their ears. JOHN COTTON, pastor of the
church of Boston, England, was told that if he had been guilty only of an
infraction of certain of the Ten Commandments, he might have been pardoned,
but since his crime was Puritanism, he must suffer. He had great trouble in
escaping on a ship bound for the New England Boston.
[Illustration: JOHN COTTON]
Professor Tyler says: "New England has perhaps never quite appreciated its
great obligations to Archbishop Laud. It was his overmastering hate of
nonconformity, it was the vigilance and vigor and consecrated cruelty with
which he scoured his own diocese and afterward all England, and hunted down
and hunted out the ministers who were committing the unpardonable sin of
dissent, that conferred upon the principal colonies of New England their
ablest and noblest men."
It should be noted that the Puritan colonization of New England took place
in a comparatively brief space of time, during the twenty years from 1620
to 1640. Until 1640 persecution drove the Puritans to New England in
multitudes, but in that year they suddenly stopped coming. "During the one
hundred and twenty-five years following that date, more persons, it is
supposed, went back from the New to the Old England than came from the Old
England to the New," says Professor Tyler. The year 1640 marks the
assembling of the Long Parliament, which finally brought to the block both
Archbishop Laud (1645) and King Charles I. (1649), and chose the great
Puritan, Oliver Cromwell, to lead the Commonwealth.
ELIZABETHAN TRAITS.--The leading men in the colonization of Virginia and
New England were born in the reign of Queen Elizabeth (1558-1603), and they
and their descendants showed on this side of the Atlantic those
characteristics which made the Elizabethan age preeminent.
In the first place, the Elizabethans possessed initiative. This power
consists, first, in having ideas, and secondly, in passing from the ideas
to the suggested action. Some people merely dream. The Elizabethans dreamed
glorious dreams, which they translated into action. They defeated the
Spanish Armada; they circumnavigated the globe; they made it possible for
Shakespeare's pen to mold the thought and to influence the actions of the
world.
If we except those indentured servants and apprentices who came to America
merely because others brought them, we shall find not only that the first
colonists were born in an age distinguished for its initiative, but also
that they came because they possessed this characteristic in a greater
degree than those who remained behind. It was easier for the majority to
stay with their friends; hence England was not depopulated. The few came,
those who had sufficient initiative to cross three thousand miles of
unknown sea, who had the power to dream dreams of a new commonwealth, and
the will to embody those dreams in action.
In the second place, the Elizabethans were ingenious, that is, they were
imaginative and resourceful. Impelled by the mighty forces of the
Reformation and the Revival of Learning which the England of Elizabeth
alone felt at one and the same time, the Elizabethans craved and obtained
variety of experience, which kept the fountainhead of ingenuity filled. It
is instructive to follow the lives of Elizabethans as different as Sir
Philip Sidney, William Shakespeare, Sir Walter Raleigh, Captain John Smith,
and John Winthrop, and to note the varied experiences of each. Yankee
ingenuity had an Elizabethan ancestry. The hard conditions of the New World
merely gave an opportunity to exercise to the utmost an ingenuity which the
colonists brought with them.
In the third place, the Elizabethans were unusually democratic; that is,
the different classes mingled together in a marked degree, more than in
modern England, more even than in the United States to-day. This
intermingling was due in part to increased travel, to the desire born of
the New Learning to live as varied and as complete a life as possible, and
to the absence of overspecialization among individuals. This chance for
varied experience with all sorts and conditions of men enabled Shakespeare
to speak to all humanity. All England was represented in his plays. When
the Rev. Thomas Hooker, born in the last half of Elizabeth's reign, was
made pastor at Hartford, Connecticut, he suggested to his flock a
democratic form of government much like that under which we now live.
Let us remember that American life and literature owe their most
interesting traits to these three Elizabethan qualities--initiative,
ingenuity, and democracy. Let us not forget that the Cambridge University
graduate, the cooper, cloth-maker, printer, and blacksmith had the
initiative to set out for the New World, the ingenuity to deal with its
varied exigencies, and the democratic spirit that enabled them to work side
by side, no matter how diverse their former trades, modes of life, and
social condition.
CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH, 1579-1631
[Illustration: JOHN SMITH]
The hero of the Jamestown colony, and its savior during the first two
years, was Captain John Smith, born in Willoughby, Lincolnshire, in 1579,
twenty-four years before the death of Elizabeth and thirty-seven before the
death of Shakespeare. Smith was a man of Elizabethan stamp,--active,
ingenious, imaginative, craving new experiences. While a mere boy, he could
not stand the tediousness of ordinary life, and so betook himself to the
forest where he could hunt and play knight.
In the first part of his young manhood he crossed the Channel, voyaged in
the Mediterranean, fought the Turks, killing three of them in single
combat, was taken prisoner and enslaved by the Tartars, killed his inhuman
master, escaped into Russia, went thence through Europe to Africa, was in
desperate naval battles, returned to England, sailing thence for Virginia,
which he reached at the age of twenty-eight.
He soon became president of the Jamestown colony and labored strenuously
for its preservation. The first product of his pen in America was _A True
Relation of Virginia_, written in 1608, the year in which John Milton was
born. The last work written by Smith in America is entitled: _A Map of
Virginia, with a Description of the Country, the Commodities, People,
Government, and Religion_. His description of the Indians shows his
capacity for quickly noting their traits:--
"They are inconstant in everything, but what fear constraineth them to
keep. Crafty, timorous, quick of apprehension and very ingenious. Some
are of disposition fearful, some bold, most cautious, all savage.
Generally covetous of copper, beads, and such like trash. They are soon
moved to anger, and so malicious that they seldom forget an injury: they
seldom steal one from another, lest their conjurors should reveal it, and
so they be pursued and punished. That they are thus feared is certain,
but that any can reveal their offences by conjuration I am doubtful."
Smith has often been accused of boasting, and some have said that he was
guilty of great exaggeration or something worse, but it is certain that he
repeatedly braved hardships, extreme dangers, and captivity among the
Indians to provide food for the colony and to survey Virginia. After
carefully editing _Captain John Smith's Works_ in a volume of 983 pages,
Professor Edwin Arber says: "For [our] own part, beginning with
doubtfulness and wariness we have gradually come to the unhesitating
conviction, not only of Smith's truthfulness, but also that, in regard to
all personal matters, he systematically understates rather than exaggerates
anything he did."
Although by far the greater part of Smith's literary work was done after he
returned to England, yet his two booklets written in America entitle him to
a place in colonial literature. He had the Elizabethan love of achievement,
and he records his admiration for those whose 'pens writ what their swords
did.' He was not an artist with his pen, but our early colonial literature
is the richer for his rough narrative and for the description of Virginia
and the Indians.
In one sense he gave the Indian to literature, and that is his greatest
achievement in literary history. Who has not heard the story of his capture
by the Indians, of his rescue from torture and death, by the beautiful
Indian maiden, Pocahontas, of her risking her life to save him a second
time from Indian treachery, of her bringing corn and preserving the colony
from famine, of her visit to England in 1616, a few weeks after the death
of Shakespeare, of her royal reception as a princess, the daughter of an
Indian king, of Smith's meeting her again in London, where their romantic
story aroused the admiration of the court and the citizens for the
brown-eyed princess? It would be difficult to say how many tales of Indian
adventure this romantic story of Pocahontas has suggested. It has the honor
of being the first of its kind written in the English tongue.
Did Pocahontas actually rescue Captain Smith? In his account of his
adventures, written in Virginia in 1608, he does not mention this rescue,
but in his later writings he relates it as an actual occurrence. When
Pocahontas visited London, this story was current, and there is no evidence
that she denied it. Professor Arber says, "To deny the truth of the
Pocahontas incident is to create more difficulties than are involved in its
acceptance." But literature does not need to ask whether the story of
Hamlet or of Pocahontas is true. If this unique story of American adventure
is a product of Captain Smith's creative imagination, the literary critic
must admit the captain's superior ability in producing a tale of such
vitality. If the story is true, then our literature does well to remember
whose pen made this truth one of the most persistent of our early romantic
heritages. He is as well known for the story of Pocahontas as for all of
his other achievements. The man who saved the Virginia colony and who first
suggested a new field to the writer of American romance is rightly
considered one of the most striking figures in our early history, even if
he did return to England in less than three years and end his days there in
1631.
LITERARY ACTIVITY IN VIRGINIA COLONY
A POSSIBLE SUGGESTION FOR SHAKESPEARE'S TEMPEST.--WILLIAM STRACHEY, a
contemporary of Shakespeare and secretary of the Virginian colony, wrote at
Jamestown and sent to London in 1610 the manuscript of _A True Repertory of
the Wrack and Redemption of Sir Thomas Gates, Kt., upon and from the
Islands of the Bermudas_. This is a story of shipwreck on the Bermudas and
of escape in small boats. The book is memorable for the description of a
storm at sea, and it is possible that it may even have furnished
suggestions to Shakespeare for _The Tempest_. If so, it is interesting to
compare these with what they produced in Shakespeare's mind. Strachey tells
how "the sea swelled above the clouds and gave battle unto heaven." He
speaks of "an apparition of a little round light, like a faint star,
trembling and streaming along with a sparkling blaze, half the height upon
the main mast, and shooting sometimes from shroud to shroud." Ariel says to
Prospero:--
"I boarded the king's ship; now on the beak,
Now in the waist, the deck, in every cabin,
I flam'd amazement: Sometimes I'ld divide,
And burn in many places; on the topmast,
The yards, and bowsprit, would I flame distinctly,
Then meet and join."
Strachey voices the current belief that the Bermudas were harassed by
tempests, devils, wicked spirits, and other fearful objects. Shakespeare
has Ferdinand with fewer words intensify Strachey's picture:--
"Hell is empty,
And all the devils are here."
The possibility that incidents arising out of Virginian colonization may
have turned Shakespeare's attention to "the still vex'd Bermoothes" and
given him suggestions for one of his great plays lends added interest to
Strachey's True Repertory. But, aside from Shakespeare, this has an
interest of its own. It has the Anglo-Saxon touch in depicting the wrath of
the sea, and it shows the character of the early American colonists who
braved a wrath like this.
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