His poetry is usually more tinctured with feeling than with thought. Diffuseness is his greatest fault. The Sonnets of his later years and an occasional poem, like Morituri Salutamus (1875), show more condensation, but parts of even Hiawatha would be much improved if told in fewer words.

Some complain that Longfellow finds in books too much of the source of his inspiration; that, although he did not live far from Evangeline's country, he never visited it, and that others had to tell him to substitute pines or hemlocks for chestnut trees. Many critics have found fault with his poetry because it does not offer "sufficient obstruction to the stream of thought,"—because it does not make the mind use its full powers in wrestling with the meaning. It is a mistake, however, to underestimate the virtues of clearness and simplicity. Many great men who have been unsuccessful in their struggle to secure these qualities have consequently failed to reach the ear of the world with a message. While other poets should be read for mental development, the large heart of the world still finds a place for Longfellow, who has voiced its hopes that

"... the night shall be filled with music, And the cares that infest the day, Shall fold their tents like the Arabs, And as silently steal away."

Like most Puritans, Longfellow is usually over-anxious to teach a lesson; but the world must learn, and no one has surpassed him as a poetic teacher of the masses.

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER, 1807-1892



Life.—Whittier says that the only unusual circumstance about the migration of his Puritan ancestor to New England in 1638 was the fact that he brought over with him a hive of bees. The descendants of this very hive probably suggested the poem, Telling the Bees, for it was an old English custom to go straightway to the hive and tell the bees whenever a member of the family died. It was believed that they would swarm and seek another home if this information was withheld. The poet has made both the bees and the snows of his northern home famous. He was born in 1807 in the same house that his first American ancestor built in East Haverhill, about thirty-two miles northwest of Boston. The Whittiers were farmers who for generations had wrung little more than a bare subsistence from the soil. The boy's frail health was early broken by the severe labor. He had to milk seven cows, plow with a yoke of oxen, and keep busy from dawn until dark.

Unlike the other members of the New England group of authors, Whittier never went to college. He received only the scantiest education in the schools near his home. The family was so poor that he had to work as a cobbler, making slippers at eight cents a pair, in order to attend the Haverhill academy for six months. He calculated his expenses so exactly that he had just twenty-five cents left at the end of the term.

Two events in his youth had strong influence on his future vocation. When he was fourteen, his school-teacher read aloud to the family from the poems of Robert Burns. The boy was entranced, and, learning that Burns had been merely a plowman, felt that there was hope for himself. He borrowed the volume of poems and read them again and again. Of this experience, he says: "This was about the first poetry I had ever read (with the exception of the Bible, of which I had been a close student) and it had a lasting influence upon me. I began to make rhymes myself and to imagine stories and adventures." The second event was the appearance in print of some of his verses, which his sister had, unknown to him, sent to a Newburyport paper edited by William Lloyd Garrison. The great abolitionist thought enough of the poetry to ride out to Whittier's home and urge him to get an education. This event made an indelible impression on the lad's memory.

Realizing that his health would not allow him to make his living on a farm, he tried teaching school, but, like Thoreau, found that occupation distasteful. Through Garrison's influence, Whittier at the age of twenty-one procured an editorial position in Boston. At various times he served as editor on more than half a dozen different papers, until his own health or his father's brought him back to the farm. Such occupation taught him how to write prose, of which he had produced enough at the time of his death to fill three good-sized volumes, but his prose did not secure the attention given to his verse. While in Hartford, editing The New England Review, he fell in love with Miss Cornelia Russ, and a few days before he finally left the city, he wrote a proposal to her in three hundred words of wandering prose. Had he expressed his feelings in one of his inimitable ballads, it is possible that he might have been accepted, for neither she nor he ever married. In the year of her death, he wrote his poem, Memories, which recounts some recollections earlier than his Hartford experiences:—

"A beautiful and happy girl, With step as light as summer air, Eyes glad with smiles, and brow of pearl Shadowed by many a careless curl Of unconfined and flowing hair; A seeming child in everything, Save thoughtful brow and ripening charms, As nature wears the smile of Spring When sinking into Summer's arms."

He was a Quaker and he came to Hartford in the homespun clothes of the cut of his sect. He may have been thinking of Miss Russ and wondering whether theology had anything to do with her refusal, when in after years he wrote:—

"Thine the Genevan's sternest creed, While answers to my spirit's need The Derby dalesman's simple truth."



As Whittier was a skillful politician, he had hopes of making a name for himself in politics as well as in literature. He was chosen to represent his district in the state legislature and there is little doubt that he would have been sent to the national congress later, had he not taken a step which for a long time shut off all avenues of preferment. In 1833 he joined the abolitionists. This step had very nearly the same effect on his fortunes as the public declaration of an adherence to the doctrines of anarchy would to-day have on a man similarly situated. "The best magazines at the North would not open their pages to him. He was even mobbed, and the office of an anti-slavery paper, which he was editing in Philadelphia, was sacked. He wrote many poems to aid the abolition cause. These were really editorials expressed in verse, which caught the attention in a way denied to prose. For more than thirty years such verse constituted the most of his poetical production. Lowell noticed that the Quaker doctrine of peace did not deter Whittier from his vigorous attack on slavery. In A Fable for Critics (1848), Lowell asks:—

"... O leather-clad Fox? Can that be thy son, in the battlers mid din, Preaching brotherly love and then driving it in To the brain of the tough old Goliath of sin, With the smoothest of pebbles from Castaly's spring Impressed on his hard moral sense with a sling?"

Whittier did, however, try to keep the spirit of brotherly love warm throughout his life. He always preferred to win his cause from an enemy peacefully. When he was charged with hating the people of the South, he wrote:—

"I was never an enemy to the South or the holders of slaves. I inherited from my Quaker ancestry hatred of slavery, but not of slaveholders. To every call of suffering or distress in the South, I have promptly responded to the extent of my ability. I was one of the very first to recognize the rare gift of the Carolinian poet Timrod, and I was the intimate friend of the lamented Paul H. Hayne, though both wrote fiery lyrics against the North."

With a few striking exceptions, his most popular poems were written after the close of the Civil War. His greatest poem, Snow-Bound, was published in the year after the cessation of hostilities (1866). His last thirty years were a time of comparative calm. He wrote poetry as the spirit moved him. He had grown to be loved everywhere at the North, and his birthday, like Longfellow's, was the occasion for frequent celebrations. For years before the close of the war, in fact until Snow-Bound appeared, he was very poor, but the first edition of that poem brought him in ten thousand dollars, and after that he was never again troubled by poverty. In a letter written in 1866, he says:—

"If my health allowed me to write I could make money easily now, as my anti-slavery reputation does not injure me in the least, at the present time. For twenty years I was shut out from the favor of booksellers and magazine editors, but I was enabled by rigid economy to live in spite of them."



His fixed home for almost all of his life was in the valley of the Merrimac River, at East Haverhill, until 1836, and then at Amesbury, only a few miles east of his birthplace. He died in 1892 and was buried in the Amesbury cemetery.

POETRY.—Although Whittier wrote much forcible anti-slavery verse, most of this has already been forgotten, because it was directly fashioned to appeal to the interests of the time. One of the strongest of these poems is Ichabod (1850), a bitter arraignment of Daniel Webster, because Whittier thought that the great orator's Seventh of March Speech of that year advised a compromise with slavery. Webster writhed under Whittier's criticism more than under that of any other man.

"... from those great eyes The soul has fled: When faith is lost, when honor dies The man is dead!"

Thirty years later, Whittier, feeling that perhaps Webster merely intended to try to save the Union and do away with slavery without a conflict, wrote The Lost Occasion, in which he lamented the too early death of the great orator:—

"Some die too late and some too soon, At early morning, heat of noon, Or the chill evening twilight. Thou, Whom the rich heavens did so endow With eyes of power and Jove's own brow, * * * * * Too soon for us, too soon for thee, Beside thy lonely Northern sea, Where long and low the marsh-lands spread, Laid wearily down thy august head."

Whittier is emphatically the poet of New England. His verses which will live the longest are those which spring directly from its soil. His poem entitled The Barefoot Boy tells how the typical New England farmer's lad acquired:—

"Knowledge never learned of schools, Of the wild bee's morning chase, Of the wild flower's time and place, Flight of fowl and habitude Of the tenants of the wood."



His greatest poem, the one by which he will probably be chiefly known to posterity, is Snow-Bound, which describes the life of a rural New England household. At the beginning of this poem of 735 lines, the coming of the all-enveloping snowstorm, with its "ghostly finger tips of sleet" on the window-panes, is the central event, but we soon realize that this storm merely serves to focus intensely the New England life with which he was familiar. The household is shut in from the outside world by the snow, and there is nothing else to distract the attention from the picture of isolated Puritan life. There is not another poet in America who has produced such a masterpiece under such limitations. One prose writer, Hawthorne, in The Scarlet Letter, had indeed taken even more unpromising materials and achieved one of the greatest successes in English romance, but in this special narrow field Whittier has not yet been surpassed by poets.

The sense of isolation and what painters would call "the atmosphere" are conveyed in lines like these:—

"Shut in from all the world without, We sat the clean-winged hearth about, Content to let the north wind roar In baffled rage at pane and door, While the red logs before us beat The frost line back with tropic heat; And ever when a louder blast Shook beam and rafter as it passed, The merrier up its roaring draught The great throat of the chimney laughed."

In such a focus he shows the life of the household; the mother, who often left her home to attend sick neighbors, now:—

"... seeking to express Her grateful sense of happiness For food and shelter, warmth and health, And love's contentment, more than wealth,"

the uncle:—

"... innocent of books, Was rich in lore of fields and brooks, * * * * * A simple, guileless, childlike man, Strong only on his native grounds, The little world of sights and sounds Whose girdle was the parish bounds,"

the aunt, who:—

"Found peace in love's unselfishness,"

the sister:—

"A full rich nature, free to trust, Truthful and even sternly just, Impulsive, earnest, prompt to act, And make her generous thought a fact, Keeping with many a light disguise The secret of self-sacrifice."

Some read Snow-Bound for its pictures of nature and some for its still more remarkable portraits of the members of that household. This poem has achieved for the New England fireside what Burns accomplished for the hearths of Scotland in The Cotter's Saturday Night.

Whittier wrote many fine short lyrical poems, such as Ichabod, The Lost Occasion, My Playmate (which was Tennyson's favorite), In School Days, Memories, My Triumph, Telling the Bees, The Eternal Goodness, and the second part of A Sea Dream. His narrative poems and ballads are second only to Longfellow's. Maud Muller, Skipper Iresons Ride, Cassandra Southwick, Barbara Frietchie, and Mabel Martin are among the best of these.

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS—Whittier and Longfellow resemble each other in simplicity. Both are the poets of the masses, of those whose lives most need the consolation of poetry. Both suffer from diffuseness, Whittier in his greatest poems less than Longfellow. Whittier was self-educated, and he never traveled far from home. His range is narrower than Longfellow's, who was college bred and broadened by European travel. But if Whittier's poetic range is narrower, if he is the poet of only the common things of life, he shows more intensity of feeling. Often his simplest verse comes from the depths of his heart. He wrote In School Days forty years after the grass had been growing on the grave of the little girl who spelled correctly the word which the boy had missed:—

"'I'm sorry that I spelt the word: I hate to go above you, Because,'—the brown eyes lower fell,— 'Because you see, I love you!'

* * * * *

"He lives to learn, in life's hard school, How few who pass above him Lament their triumph and his loss, Like her,—because they love him."

Whittier's simplicity, genuineness, and sympathetic heart stand revealed in those lines.

His youthful work shows traces of the influence of many poets, but he learned most from Robert Burns. Whittier himself says that it was Burns who taught him to see

"... through all familiar things The romance underlying,"

and especially to note that

"Through all his tuneful art, how strong The human feeling gushes!"

The critics have found three indictments against Whittier; first, for the unequal value of his poetry; second, for its loose rhymes; and third, for too much moralizing. He would probably plead guilty to all of these indictments. His tendency to moralize is certainly excessive, but critics have too frequently forgotten that this very moralizing draws him closer to the heart of suffering humanity. There are times when the majority of human beings feel the need of the consolation which he brings in his religious verse and in such lines as these from Snow-Bound:—

"Alas for him who never sees The stars shine through his cypress trees Who, hopeless, lays his dead away, Nor looks to see the breaking day Across the mournful marbles play! Who hath not learned, in hours of faith, The truth to flesh and sense unknown, That Life is ever lord of Death And Love can never lose its own!"

He strives to impress on all the duty of keeping the windows of the heart open to the day and of "finding peace in love's unselfishness."

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL, 1819-1891



Early Years.—James Russell Lowell, the son of the Rev. Charles Lowell, was a descendant of one of the best of the old New England families. The city of Lowell and the Lowell Institute of Boston received their names from uncles of the author. His mother's name was Spence, and she used to tell her son that the Spence family, which was of Scotch origin, was descended from Sir Patrick Spens of ballad fame. She loved to sing to her boy in the gloaming:—

"O forty miles off Aberdeen, 'Tis fifty fathoms deep, And there lies gude Sir Patrick Spens, Wi' the Scots lords at his feet."



From her Celtic blood her son inherited a tendency toward poetry. When a child, he was read to sleep with Spenser's Faerie Queene and he found amusement in retelling its stories to his playmates.

James Russell Lowell was born in 1819, in the suburbs of Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the fine old historic home called "Elmwood," which was one of the few homes to witness the birth and death of a great American author and to remain his native residence for seventy-two years.

His early opportunities were in striking contrast to those of Whittier; for Lowell, like his ancestors for three generations, went to Harvard. Because of what the Lowell side of his family called "the Spence negligence," he was suspended from college for inattention to his studies and sent to Concord to be coached by a tutor. We know, however, that a part of Lowell's negligence was due to his reading and imitating such poetry as suited his fancy. It was fortunate that he was sent to Concord, for there he had the opportunity of meeting Emerson and Thoreau and of drinking in patriotism as he walked "the rude bridge that arch'd the flood" (p. 179). He was elected class poet, but he was not allowed to return in time to deliver his poem before his classmates, although he received his degree with them in 1838.

MARRIAGE AND NEW IMPULSES.—Like Irving and Bryant, Lowell studied law, and then gave up that profession for literature. In 1839 he met Miss Maria White, a transcendentalist of noble impulses. Before this he had made fun of the abolitionists, but under her influence he followed men like Whittier into the anti-slavery ranks. She was herself a poet and she wrote to Lowell after they became engaged:—

"I love thee for thyself—thyself alone; For that great soul whose breath most full and rare Shall to humanity a message bear, Flooding their dreary waste with organ tone."

Under such inspiration, "the Spence negligence" left him, and with rapid steps he entered the temple of fame. In December, 1844, the month in which he married her, he wrote the finest lines ever penned by him:—

"Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,— Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown, Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own."

Lowell's twenty-ninth year, 1848, is called his annus mirabilis, the wonderful year of his life. He had published small volumes of poems in 1840, 1843, and 1847, but in 1848 there appeared three of his most famous works,—The Biglow Papers, First Series, A Fable for Critics, and The Vision of Sir Launfal.

As Mrs. Lowell's health was delicate, Lowell took her abroad, in 1851, for a year's stay. Thackeray came over on the same ship with them, on their return in 1852, and proved a genial companion. The next year Mrs. Lowell died. When he thought of the inspiration which she had given him and of the thirteen years of her companionship, he said, "It is a million times better to have had her and lost her, than to have had and kept any other woman I ever saw."



LATER WORK.—After his great bereavement in 1853, Lowell became one of America's greatest prose writers. In 1855 he was appointed Longfellow's successor in the Harvard professorship of modern languages and polite literature, a position which he held, with the exception of two years spent in European travel, until 1877. The duties of his chair called for wide reading and frequent lecturing, and he turned much of his attention toward writing critical essays. The routine work of his professorship often grew irksome and the "Spence negligence" was sometimes in evidence in his failure to meet his classes. As a teacher, he was, however, frequently very stimulating.

He was the editor of the Atlantic Monthly, from its beginning in 1857 until 1861. All of the second series of the Biglow Papers appeared in this magazine. From 1864 to 1872 he was one of the editors of the North American Review.

In 1877 he became the minister of the United States to Spain. The Spanish welcomed him to the post that Washington Irving had once filled. In 1880 Lowell was transferred to England, where he represented his country until 1885. No other American minister has ever proved a greater success in England. He was respected for his literary attainments and for his ability as a speaker. He had the reputation of being one of the very best speakers in the Kingdom, and he was in much demand to speak at banquets and on special occasions. Many of his articles and speeches were on political subjects, the greatest of these being his address on Democracy, at Birmingham, in 1884.

Although his later years showed his great achievements in prose, he did not cease to produce poetry. The second series of the Biglow Papers was written during the Civil War. His Ode Recited at the Harvard Commemoration in 1865, in honor of those who fell in freeing the slave,

"Who in warm life-blood wrote their nobler verse,"

his three memorial poems: (1) Ode Read at the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Fight at Concord Bridge (1875), (2) Under the Old Elm (1875), written in commemoration of Washington's taking command of the Continental forces under that tree, a century before, and (3) Ode for the Fourth of July, 1876, are well-known patriotic American poems.

After returning from England and passing from the excitement of diplomatic and social life to a quiet New England home, he wrote:—

"I take my reed again and blow it free Of dusty silence, murmuring, 'Sing to me.' And, as its stops my curious touch retries, The stir of earlier instincts I surprise,— Instincts, if less imperious, yet more strong, And happy in the toil that ends with song."

In 1888 he published a volume of poems called Heartsease and Rue. He died in 1891 and was buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery, near his "Elmwood" home, not far from the last resting place of Longfellow.



POETRY.—Lowell wrote many short lyrical poems, which rank high. Some of them, like Our Love is not a Fading Earthly Flower, O Moonlight Deep and Tender, To the Dandelion, and The First Snow-Fall are exquisite lyrics of nature and sentiment. Others, like The Present Crisis, have for their text, "Humanity sweeps onward," and teach high moral ideals. Still others, like his poems written in commemoration of some event, are instinct with patriotism.

He is best known for three long poems, The Biglow Papers, A Fable for Critics and The Vision of Sir Launfal. All of these, with the exception of the second series of The Biglow Papers, appeared in his wonderful poetic year, 1848.

He will, perhaps, be longest known to posterity for that remarkable series of papers written in what he called the Yankee dialect and designed at first to stop the extension of slavery and afterwards to suppress it. These are called "Biglow Papers" because the chief author is represented to be Hosea Biglow, a typical New England farmer. The immediate occasion of the first series of these Papers was the outbreak of the Mexican War in 1846. Lowell said in after years, "I believed our war with Mexico to be essentially a war of false pretences, and that it would result in widening the boundaries and so prolonging the life of slavery." The second series of these Papers, dealing with our Civil War, began to be published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1862. The poem lives to-day, however, not for its censure of the war or for its attack on slavery, but for its expression of the mid-nineteenth century New England ideals, hard common sense, and dry humor. Where shall we turn for a more incisive statement of the Puritan's attitude toward pleasure?

"Pleasure doos make us Yankees kind o' winch, Ez though't wuz sunthin' paid for by the inch; But yit we du contrive to worry thru, Ef Dooty tells us thet the thing's to du, An' kerry a hollerday, ef we set out, Ez stiddily ez though't wuz a redoubt."

The homely New England common-sense philosophy is in evidence throughout the Papers. We frequently meet, such expressions as:—

"I like the plain all wool o' common-sense Thet warms ye now, an' will a twelve-month hence."

"Now's the only bird lays eggs o' gold."

"Democracy gives every man The right to be his own oppressor."

"But Chance is like an amberill,—it don't take twice to lose it."

"An' you've gut to git up airly, Ef you want to take in God."

In the second series of the Papers, there is one of Lowell's best lyrics, The Courtin'. It would be difficult to find another poem which gives within the compass of four lines a better characterization of many a New England maiden:—

"... she was jes' the quiet kind Whose naturs never vary, Like streams that keep a summer mind, Snowhid in Jenooary."

This series contains some of Lowell's best nature poetry. We catch rare glimpses of

"Moonshine an' snow on field an' hill All silence an' all glisten,"

and we actually see a belated spring

"Toss the fields full o' blossoms, leaves, an' birds."

The Vision of Sir Launfal has been the most widely read of Lowell's poems. This is the vision of a search for the Holy Grail. Lowell in a letter to a friend called the poem "a sort of story and more likely to be popular than what I write about generally." But the best part of the poem is to be found in the apotheosis of the New England June, in the Prelude to Part I.:—

"And what is so rare as a day in June? Then, if ever, come perfect days; Then Heaven tries the earth if it be in tune, And over it softly her warm ear lays."

The poem teaches a noble lesson of sympathy with suffering:—

"Not what we give, but what we share,— For the gift without the giver is bare; Who gives himself with his alms feeds three,— Himself, his hungering neighbor, and Me."

Lowell said that he "scrawled at full gallop" A Fable for Critics, which is a humorous poem of about two thousand long lines, presenting an unusually excellent criticism of his contemporary authors. In this most difficult type of criticism, Lowell was not infallible; but a comparison of his criticisms with the verdicts generally accepted to-day will show his unusual ability in this field. Not a few of these criticisms remain the best of their kind, and they serve to focus many of the characteristics of the authors of the first half of the nineteenth century. It will benefit all writers, present and prospective, to read this criticism on Bryant:—

"He is almost the one of your poets that knows How much grace, strength, and dignity lie in Repose; If he sometimes fall short, he is too wise to mar His thought's modest fulness by going too far; 'Twould be well if your authors should all make a trial Of what virtue there is in severe self-denial, And measure their writings by Hesiod's staff, Who teaches that all has less value than half."

Especially humorous are those lines which give a recipe for the making of a Washington Irving and those which describe the idealistic philosophy of Emerson:—

"In whose mind all creation is duly respected As parts of himself—just a little projected."

Prose.—Lowell's literary essays entitle him to rank as a great American critic. The chief of these are to be found gathered in three volumes: Among My Books (1870), My Study Windows (1871), Among My Books, Second Series (1876). These volumes as originally issued contain 1140 pages. If we should wish to persuade a group of moderately intelligent persons to read less fiction and more solid literature, it is doubtful if we could accomplish our purpose more easily than by inducing them to dip into some of these essays. Lowell had tested many of them on his college students, and he had noted what served to kindle interest and to produce results. We may recommend five of his greater literary essays, which would give a vivid idea of the development of English poetry from Chaucer to the death of Pope. These five are: Chaucer, in My Study Windows; Spenser, in Among My Books, Second Series; Shakespeare Once More, and Dryden, in Among My Books, First Series; and Pope, in My Study Windows. If we add to these the short addresses on Wordsworth and Coleridge, delivered in England, and printed in the volume Democracy and Other Addresses (1886), we shall have the incentive to continue the study of poetry into the nineteenth century.

Lowell's criticism provokes thought. It will not submit to a passive reading. It expresses truth in unique and striking ways. Speaking of the French and Italian sources on which Chaucer drew, Lowell says:—

"Should a man discover the art of transmuting metals, and present us with a lump of gold as large as an ostrich egg, would it be in human nature to inquire too nicely whether he had stolen the lead? ...

"Chaucer, like Shakespeare, invented almost nothing. Wherever he found anything directed to Geoffrey Chaucer, he took it and made the most of it....

"Sometimes he describes amply by the merest hint, as where the Friar, before setting himself softly down, drives away the cat. We know without need of more words that he has chosen the snuggest corner."

Lowell usually makes the laziest readers do a little pleasant thinking. It is common for even inert students to investigate his meaning; for instance, in his statements that in the age of Pope "everybody ceremoniously took a bushel basket to bring a wren's egg to market in," and that everybody "called everything something else."

The high ideals and sterling common sense of Lowell's political prose deserve special mention. In Democracy (1886), which should be read by every citizen, Lowell shows that old age had not shattered his faith in ideals. "I believe," he said, "that the real will never find an irremovable basis until it rests on the ideal." Voters and lawmakers are to-day beginning to realize that they will go far to find in the same compass a greater amount of common sense than is contained in these words:—

"It is only when the reasonable and the practicable are denied that men demand the unreasonable and impracticable; only when the possible is made difficult that they fancy the impossible to be easy. Fairy tales are made out of the dreams of the poor." [Footnote: Democracy and Other Addresses, p. 15.]

General Characteristics.—Lowell has written verse which shows sympathetic treatment of nature. His lines To the Dandelion:—

"Dear common flower, that grow'st beside the way, Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold, First pledge of blithesome May Which children pluck, and full of pride uphold * * * * * ... thou art more dear to me Than all the prouder summer-blooms may be,"

show rare genuineness of feeling. No one not enthusiastic about nature would ever have heard her calling to him:—

"To mix his blood with sunshine, and to take The winds into his pulses."

He invites us in March to watch:—

"The bluebird, shifting his light load of song From post to post along the cheerless fence,"

and in June to lie under the willows and rejoice with

"The thin-winged swallow, skating on the air."

Another pronounced characteristic which he has in common with the New England group is nobility of ideals. His poem entitled For an Autograph, voices in one line the settled conviction of his life:—

"Not failure, but low aim, is crime."

He is America's greatest humorist in verse. The Biglow Papers and A Fable for Critics are ample justification for such an estimate.

As Lowell grew older, his poetry, dominated too much by his acute intellect, became more and more abstract. In Under the Old Elm, for example, he speaks of Washington as:—

"The equestrian shape with unimpassioned brow That paces silent on through vistas of acclaim."

It is possible to read fifty consecutive lines of his Commemoration Ode without finding any but abstract or general terms, which are rarely the warp and woof out of which the best poetry is spun. This criticism explains why repeated readings of some of his poems leave so little impression on the mind. Some of the poetry of his later life is, however, concrete and sensuous, as the following lines from his poem Agassiz (1874) show:—

"To lie in buttercups and clover-bloom, Tenants in common with the bees, And watch the white clouds drift through gulfs of trees, Is better than long waiting in the tomb."

In prose literary criticism, he keeps his place with Poe at the head of American writers. Lowell's sentences are usually simple in form and easily understood; they are frequently enlivened by illuminating figures of rhetoric and by humor, or rendered impressive by the striking way in which they express thought, e.g. "The foolish and the dead alone never change their opinion." A pun, digression, or out-of-the-way allusion may occasionally provoke readers, but onlookers have frequently noticed that few wrinkle their brows while reading his critical essays, and that a pleased expression, such as photographers like, is almost certain to appear. He has the rare faculty of making his readers think hard enough for agreeable exercise, and yet he spares them undue fatigue and rarely takes them among miry bogs or through sandy deserts.

Lowell's versatility is a striking characteristic. He was a poet, reformer, college professor, editor, literary critic, diplomatist, speaker, and writer on political subjects. We feel that he sometimes narrowly escaped being a genius, and that he might have crossed the boundary line into genius-land, if he had confined his attention to one department of literature and had been willing to write at less breakneck speed, taking time and thought to prune, revise, and suppress more of his productions. Not a few, however, think that Lowell, in spite of his defects, has left the impress of genius on some of his work. When his sonnet, Our Love is not a Fading Earthly Flower, was read to a cultured group, some who did not recognize the authorship of the verses thought that they were Shakespeare's.

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, 1809-1894



LIFE.—The year 1809 was prolific in the birth of great men, producing Holmes, Poe, Lincoln, Tennyson, and Darwin. Holmes was descended from Anne Bradstreet, New England's "Tenth Muse" (p. 39) His father was a Congregational clergyman, preaching at Cambridge when Oliver was born. The family was in comfortable circumstances, and the boy was reared in a cultured atmosphere. In middle age Holmes wrote, "I like books,—I was born and bred among them, and have the easy feeling, when I get into their presence, that a stable boy has among horses."

He graduated from Harvard in the famous class of 1829, for which he afterward wrote many anniversary poems. He went to Paris to study medicine, a science that held his interest through life. For thirty-five years he was professor of anatomy in the Harvard Medical School, where he was the only member of the faculty who could at the end of the day take the class, fagged and wearied, and by his wit, stories, and lively illustrations both instruct and interest the students.

His announcement, "small fevers gratefully received," his humor in general, and his poetry especially, did not aid him in securing patients. His biographer says that Holmes learned at his cost as a doctor that the world had made up its mind "that he who writes rhymes must not write prescriptions, and he who makes jests should not escort people to their graves." He later warned his students that if they would succeed in any one calling they must not let the world find out that they were interested in anything else. From his own point of view, he wrote:—

"It's a vastly pleasing prospect, when you're screwing out a laugh, That your very next year's income is diminished by a half, And a little boy trips barefoot that your Pegasus may go, And the baby's milk is watered that your Helicon may flow."

He was driven, like Emerson and Lowell, to supplement his modest income by what he called "lecture peddling." Although Holmes did not have the platform presence of these two contemporaries, he had the power of reaching his audiences and of quickly gaining their sympathy, so that he was very popular and could always get engagements.

His scientific training made him intolerant of any philosophical or religious creed which seemed to him to be based merely upon superstition or tradition. He was thoroughly alert, open-minded, and liberal upon all such questions. On subjects of politics, war, or the abolition of slavery, he was, on the other hand, strongly conservative. He had the aristocratic dread of change. He was distinctly the courtly gentleman, the gifted talker, and the social, genial, refined companion.



Holmes was a conscientious worker, but he characteristically treated his mental processes in a joking way, and wrote to a friend: "I like nine tenths of any matter I study, but I do not like to lick the plate. If I did, I suppose I should be more of a man of science and find my brain tired oftener than I do." Again he wrote, "my nature is to snatch at all the fruits of knowledge and take a good bite out of the sunny side—after that let in the pigs." Despite these statements, Holmes worked steadily every year at his medical lectures. He was very particular about the exactness and finish of all that he wrote, and he was neither careless nor slipshod in anything. His life, while filled with steady, hard work, was a placid one, full of love and friendships, and he passed into his eightieth year with a young heart. He died in 1894, at the age of eighty-five, and was buried in Mt. Auburn cemetery not far from Longfellow and Lowell.

POETRY.—In 1836 he published his first volume of verse. This contained his first widely known poem, Old Ironsides, a successful plea for saving the old battleship, Constitution, which had been ordered destroyed. With the exception of this poem and The Last Leaf, the volume is remarkable for little except the rollicking fun which we find in such favorites as The Ballad of the Oysterman and My Aunt. This type of humor is shown in this simile from The Ballad:—

"Her hair drooped round her pallid cheeks, like seaweed on a clam," and in his description of his aunt:—

"Her waist is ampler than her life, For life is but a span."

He continued to write verses until his death. Among the last poems which he wrote were memorials on the death of Lowell (1891) and Whittier (1892). As we search the three volumes of his verse, we find few serious poems of a high order. The best, and the one by which he himself wished to be remembered, is The Chambered Nautilus. No member of the New England group voiced higher ideals than we find in the noble closing stanza of this poem:—

"Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, As the swift seasons roll! Leave thy low-vaulted past! Let each new temple, nobler than the last, Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, Till thou at length art free, Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!"

Probably The Last Leaf, which was such a favorite with Lincoln, would rank second. This poem is remarkable for preserving the reader's equilibrium between laughter and tears. Some lines from The Voiceless are not likely to be soon forgotten:—

"A few can touch the magic string, And noisy Fame is proud to win them:— Alas for those that never sing, But die with all their music in them!"

He wrote no more serious poem than Homesick in Heaven, certain stanzas of which appeal strongly to bereaved hearts. It is not easy to forget the song of the spirits who have recently come from earth, of the mother who was torn from her clinging babe, of the bride called away with the kiss of love still burning on her cheek, of the daughter taken from her blind and helpless father:—

"Children of earth, our half-weaned nature clings To earth's fond memories, and her whispered name Untunes our quivering lips, our saddened strings; For there we loved, and where we love is home."

When Holmes went to Oxford in 1886, to receive an honorary degree, it is probable that, as in the case of Irving, the Oxford boys in the gallery voiced the popular verdict. As Holmes stepped on the platform, they called, "Did he come in the One-Hoss Shay?" This humorous poem, first known as The Deacon's Masterpiece, has been a universal favorite. How the Old Hoss Won the Bet tells with rollicking humor what the parson's nag did at a race. The Boys, with its mingled humor and pathos, written for the thirtieth reunion of his class, is one of the best of the many poems which he was so frequently asked to compose for special celebrations. No other poet of his time could equal him in furnishing to order clever, apt, humorous verses for ever recurring occasions.

PROSE.—He was nearly fifty when he published his first famous prose work. He had named the Atlantic Monthly, and Lowell had agreed to edit it only on condition that Holmes would promise to be a contributor. In the first number appeared The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. Holmes had hit upon a style that exactly suited his temperament, and had invented a new prose form. His great conversational gift was now crystallized in these breakfast table talks, which the Autocrat all but monopolizes. However, the other characters at the table of this remarkable boarding house in Boston join in often enough to keep up the interest in their opinions, feelings, and relations to each other. The reader always wants to know the impression that the Autocrat's fine talk makes upon "the young man whom they call 'John.'" John sometimes puts his feelings into action, as when the Autocrat gives a typical illustration of his mixture of reasoning and humor, in explaining that there are always six persons present when two people are talking:—



"Three Johns.

1. The real John; known only to his Maker.

2. John's ideal John; never the real one, and often very unlike him.

3. Thomas's ideal John; never the real John, nor John's John, but often very unlike either.

"Three Thomases.

1. The real Thomas.

2. Thomas's ideal Thomas.

3. John's ideal Thomas."

"A certain basket of peaches, a rare vegetable, little known to boarding-houses, was on its way to me," says the Autocrat, "via this unlettered Johannes. He appropriated the three that remained in the basket, remarking that there was just one apiece for him. I convinced him that his practical inference was hasty and illogical, but in the meantime he had eaten the peaches." When John enters the debates with his crushing logic of facts, he never fails to make a ten strike.

A few years after the Autocrat series had been closed, Holmes wrote The Professor at the Breakfast Table; many years later The Poet at the Breakfast Table appeared; and in the evening of life, he brought out Over the Teacups, in which he discoursed at the tea table in a similar vein, but not in quite the same fresh, buoyant, humorous way in which the Autocrat talked over his morning coffee. The decline in these books is gradual, although it is barely perceptible in the Professor. The Autocrat is, however, the brightest, crispest, and most vigorous of the series, while Over the Teacups is the calmest, as well as the soberest and most leisurely.

Holmes wrote three novels, Elsie Venner, The Guardian Angel, and The Mortal Antipathy, which have been called "medicated novels" because his medical knowledge is so apparent in them. These books also have a moral purpose, each in turn considering the question whether an individual is responsible for his acts. The first two of these novels are the strongest, and hold the attention to the end because of the interest aroused by the characters and by the descriptive scenes.

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS.—Humor is the most characteristic quality of Holmes's writings. He indeed is the only member of the New England group who often wrote with the sole object of entertaining readers. Lowell also was a humorist, but he employed humor either in the cause of reform, as in The Biglow Papers, or in the field of knowledge, in endeavoring to make his literary criticisms more expressive and more certain to impress the mind of his readers.

Whenever Holmes wrote to entertain, he did not aim to be deep or to exercise the thinking powers of his readers. Much of his work skims the surface of things in an amusing and delightful way. Yet he was too much of a New Englander not to write some things in both poetry and prose with a deeper purpose than mere entertainment. The Chambered Nautilus, for instance, was so written, as were all of his novels. His genial humor is thus frequently blended with unlooked-for wisdom or pathos.

Whittier has been called provincial because he takes only the point of view of New England. The province of Holmes is still narrower, being mainly confined to Boston. He expresses in a humorous way his own feelings, as well as those of his fellow townsmen, when he says in The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table:—

"Boston State House is the hub of the solar system. You couldn't pry that out of a Boston man if you had the tire of all creation straightened out for a crowbar."

Like Irving, Holmes was fond of eighteenth-century English writers, and much of his verse is modeled after the couplets of Pope. Holmes writes fluid and rippling prose, without a trace of effort. His meaning is never left to conjecture, but is stated in pure, exact English. He not only expresses his ideas perfectly, but he seems to achieve this result without premeditation. This apparent artlessness is a great charm. He has left America a new form of prose, which bears the stamp of pure literature, and which is distinguished not so much for philosophy and depth as for grace, versatility, refined humor, bright intellectual flashes, and artistic finish.

THE HISTORIANS

Three natives of Massachusetts and graduates of Harvard, William H. Prescott, John Lothrop Motley, and Francis Parkman, wrote history in such a way as to entitle it to be mentioned in our literature. We cannot class as literature those historical writings which are not enlivened with imagination, invested with at least an occasional poetic touch, and expressed in rare style. Unfortunately the very qualities that render history attractive as literature often tend to raise doubts about the scientific method and accuracy of the historian. For this reason few histories keep for a great length of time a place in literature, unless, like Irving's Knickerbocker's History of New York, they aim to give merely an imaginative interpretation of a past epoch. They may then, like Homer's Iliad, Shakespeare's Macbeth, and some of Irving's and Cooper's work, be, in Celtic phrase, "more historical than history itself." History of this latter type lives, and is a treasure in the literature of any nation.

WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT (1796-1859).—Like Washington Irving, Prescott was attracted by the romantic achievements of Spain during the years of her brilliant successes, and he wrote four histories upon Spanish subjects: a History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella (1837), a History of the Conquest of Mexico (1843), a History of the Conquest of Peru (1847), and a History of the Reign of Philip II. (1855-1858), the last of which he did not live to complete.

He was a careful, painstaking student. He learned the Spanish language, had copies made of all available manuscripts and records in Europe, and closely compared contemporary accounts so as to be certain of the accuracy of his facts. Then he presented them in an attractive form. His Ferdinand and Isabella and the part he finished of Philip II. are accurate and authoritative to-day because the materials which he found for them are true. The two histories on the Spanish conquests in the New World are not absolutely correct in all their descriptions of the Aztecs and Incas before the arrival of the Spaniards. This is due to no carelessness on Prescott's part, but to the highly colored accounts upon which he had to depend for his facts, and to the lack of the archaeological surveys which have since been carried on in Mexico and Peru. These two histories of the daring exploits of a handful of adventurers in hostile lands are as thrilling and interesting as novels. We seem to be reading a tale from the Arabian Nights, as we follow Pizarro and see his capture of the Peruvian monarch in the very sight of his own army, and view the rich spoils in gold and silver and precious stones which were carried back to Spain. In relating the conquest of Mexico by Cortez, Prescott writes the history of still more daring adventures. His narrative is full of color, and he presents facts picturesquely.

JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY (1814-1877).—As naturally as the love of adventure sent Prescott to the daring exploits of the Spanish feats of arms, so the inborn zeal for civil and religious liberty and hatred of oppression led Motley to turn to the sturdy, patriotic Dutch in their successful struggle against the enslaving power of Spain. His histories are The Rise of the Dutch Republic (1856), The History of the United Netherlands (1860-1868), The Life and Death of John of Barneveld, Advocate of Holland (1874).



The difference in temperament between Prescott and Motley is seen in the manner of presenting the character of Philip II. In so far as Prescott drew the picture of Philip II., it is traced with a mild, cool hand. Philip is shown as a tyrant, but he is impelled to his tyranny by motives of conscience. In Motley's The Rise of the Dutch Republic, this oppressor is an accursed scourge of a loyal people, the enemy of progress, of liberty, and of justice. Motley's feelings make his pages burn and flash with fiery denunciation, as well as with exalted praise.

The Rise of the Dutch Republic is the recital of as heroic a struggle as a small but determined nation ever made against tremendous odds. Amid the swarm of men that crowd the pages of this work, William the Silent, of Orange, the central figure, stands every inch a hero, a leader worthy of his cause and of his people. Motley with an artist's skill shows how this great leader launched Holland on her victorious career. This history is a living story, faithful to facts, but it is written to convince the reader that "freedom of thought, of speech, and of life" are "blessings without which everything that this earth can afford is worthless."

In choosing to write of the struggle of Holland for her freedom, Motley was actuated by the same reason that prompted his forefathers to fight on Bunker Hill. He wanted to play at least a historian's part in presenting "the great spectacle which was to prove to Europe that principles and peoples still existed, and that a phlegmatic nation of merchants and manufacturers could defy the powers of the universe, and risk all their blood and treasure, generation after generation, in a sacred cause."

The History of the United Netherlands continues this story after Holland, free and united, proved herself a power that could no longer remain unheeded in Europe. The Life and Death of John of Barneveld, which brings the history of Holland down to about 1623, was planned as an introduction to a final history of that great religious and political conflict, called the Thirty Years' War,—a history which Motley did not live to finish.

Although no historian has spent more time than Motley in searching the musty records and state archives of foreign lands for matter relating to Holland, it was impossible for a man of his temperament, convictions, and purpose to write a calm, dispassionate history. He is not the cool judge, but the earnest advocate, and yet he does not distort facts. He is just and can be coldly critical, even of his heroes, but he is always on one side, the side of liberty and justice, pleading their cause. His temperament gives warmth, eloquence, and dramatic passion to his style. Individual incidents and characters stand forth sharply defined. His subject seems remarkably well suited to him because his love of liberty was a sacred passion. With this feeling to fire his blood, the unflinching Hollander to furnish the story, and his eloquent style to present it worthily, Motley's Rise of the Dutch Republic is a prose epic of Dutch liberty.

Francis Parkman (1823-1893)—The youngest and greatest of this group of historians was born of Puritan blood in Boston in 1823. Parkman's life from early childhood was a preparation for his future work, and when a mere lad at college, he had decided to write a history of the French and Indian War. He was a delicate child, and at the age of eight was sent to live with his grandfather, who owned at Medway, near Boston, a vast tract of woodland. The boy roamed at will through these forests, and began to amass that wood lore of which his histories hold such rich stores. At Harvard he overworked in the gymnasium with the mistaken purpose of strengthening himself for a life on the frontier.

In 1846, two years after graduation, he took his famous trip out west over the Oregon Trail, where he hunted buffalo on the plains, dragged his horse through the canyons to escape hostile Indians, lived in the camp of the warlike Dacota tribe, and learned by bitter experience the privations of primitive life.

His health was permanently impaired by the trip. He was threatened with absolute blindness, and was compelled to have all his notes read to him and to dictate his histories. For years he was forbidden literary work on account of insomnia and intense cerebral pain which threatened insanity, and on account of lameness he was long confined to a wheel chair. He rose above every obstacle, however, and with silent fortitude bore his sufferings, working whenever he could, if for only a bare half hour at a time.

His amazing activity during his trips, both in America and abroad, is shown in the Massachusetts Historical Society Library, which contains almost two hundred folio volumes, which he had experts copy from original sources. With few exceptions, he visited every spot which he described, and saw the life of nearly every tribe of Indians. His battle with ill health, his strength of character, and his energetic first-hand study of Indian and pioneer life are remarkable in the history of American men of letters. He died near Boston in 1893.



Because of their subject matter, Parkman's works are of unusual interest to Americans. When he returned from his pioneer western trip, he wrote a simple, straightforward account, which was in 1849 published in book form, under the title of The California and Oregon Trail. This book remains the most trustworthy, as well as the most entertaining, account of travel in the unsettled Northwest of that time. Indians, big game, and adventures enough to satisfy any reasonable boy may be found in this book.

His histories cover the period from the early French settlements in the New World to the victory of the English over the French and Indian allies. The titles of his separate works, given in their chronological order, are as follows :—

The Pioneers of France in the New World (1865) describes the experiences of the early French sailors and explorers off the Newfoundland coast and along the St. Lawrence River.

The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century (1867) tells of the work of the self-forgetting Jesuit Fathers in their mission of mercy and conversion among the Indians. Fifty pages of the Introduction give an account of the religion, festivities, superstitions, burials, sacrifices, and military organization of the Indians.

La Salle, or the Discovery of the Great West (1869), is the story of La Salle's heroic endeavors and sufferings while exploring the West and the Mississippi River.

The Old Regime in Canada (1874) presents the internal conflicts and the social development of Canada in the seventeenth century.

Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV. (1877) continues the history of Canada as a French dependency, and paints in a lively manner Count Frontenac's character, his popularity with the Indians, and his methods of winning laurels for France.

A Half Century of Conflict (1892) depicts the sharp encounter between the French and English for the possession of the country, and the terrible deeds of the Indians against their hated foes, the English.

Montcalm and Wolfe (1884) paints the final scenes of the struggle between France and England, closing practically with the fall of Quebec.

The History of the Conspiracy of Pontiac (1851) shows one more desperate attempt of a great Indian chief to combine the tribes of his people and drive out the English. The volume closes with the general smoking of the pipe of peace and the swearing of allegiance to England. The first forty-five pages describe the manners and customs of the Indian tribes east of the Mississippi.

The general title, France and England in North America, indicates the subject matter of all this historical work. The central theme of the whole series is the struggle between the French and English for this great American continent. The trackless forests, the Great Lakes, the untenanted shores of the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi form an impressive background for the actors in this drama,—the Indians, traders, self-sacrificing priests, and the French and English contending for one of the greatest prizes of the world.

In his manner of presenting the different ideals and civilizations of England and France in this struggle, he shows keen analytical power and strong philosophical grasp. He is accurate in his details, and he summarizes the results of economic and religious forces in the strictly modern spirit. At the same time, these histories read like novels of adventure, so vivid and lively is the action. While scholars commend his reliability in dealing with facts, boys enjoy his vivid stories of heroism, sacrifice, religious enthusiasm, Indian craft, and military maneuvering. The one who begins with The Conspiracy of Pontiac, for instance, will be inclined to read more of Parkman.

In the first volumes the style is clear, nervous, and a trifle ornate. His facility in expression increased with his years, so that in Montcalm and Wolfe he has a mellowness and dignity that place him beside the best American prose writers. Although Prescott's work is more full of color, he does not surpass Parkman in the presentation of graphic pictures, Parkman has neither the solemn grandeur of Prescott nor the rapid eloquence of Motley, but Parkman has unique merits of his own,—the freshness of the pine woods, the reality and vividness of an eyewitness, an elemental strength inherent in the primitive nature of his novel subject. He secured his material at first hand in a way that cannot be repeated. Parkman's prose presents in a simple, lucid, but vigorous manner the story of the overthrow of the French by the English in the struggle for a mighty continent. As a result of this contest, Puritan England left its lasting impress upon this new land.

ENGLISH LITERATURE OF THE PERIOD

Most of the work of the great New England group of writers was done during the Victorian age—a time prolific of famous English authors. The greatest of the English writers were THOMAS CARLYLE (1795-1881), whose Sartor Resartus and Heroes and Hero Worship proved a stimulus to Emerson and to many other Americans; LORD MACAULAY (1800-1859), whose Essays and History of England, remarkable for their clearness and interest, affected either directly or indirectly the prose style of numberless writers in the second half of the nineteenth century; JOHN RUSKIN (1819-1900), the apostle of the beautiful and of more ideal social relations; MATTHEW ARNOLD (1822-1888), the great analytical critic; CHARLES DICKENS (1812-1870), whose novels of the lower class of English life are remarkable for vigor, optimism, humor, the power to caricature, and to charm the masses; WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY (1811-1863), whose novels, like Vanity Fair, remain unsurpassed for keen satiric analysis of the upper classes; and GEORGE ELIOT (1819-1880), whose realistic stories of middle class life show a new art in tracing the growth and development of character instead of merely presenting it with the fixity of a portrait. To this list should be added CHARLES DARWIN (1809-1882), whose Origin of Species (1859) affected so much of the thought of the second half of the nineteenth century.

The two greatest poets of this time were ALFRED TENNYSON (1809-1892) and ROBERT BROWNING (1812-1889). Browning's greatest poetry aims to show the complex development of human souls, to make us understand that:—

"He fixed thee 'mid this dance Of plastic circumstance."

[Footnote: Rabbi Ben Ezra.]

His influence on the American poets of this group was very slight. Whittier's comment on Browning's Men and Women is amusing:—

"I have only dipped into it, here and there, but it is not exactly comfortable reading. It seemed to me like a galvanic battery in full play—its spasmodic utterances and intense passion make me feel as if I had been taking a bath among electric eels."

Tennyson through his artistic workmanship and poetry of nature exerted more influence. His Arthurian legends, especially Sir Galahad (1842), seem to have suggested Lowell's Vision of Sir Launfal (1848). The New England poets in general looked back to Burns, Wordsworth, Keats, and other members of the romantic school of poets. Lowell was a great admirer of Keats, and in early life, like Whittier, was an imitator of Burns.

LEADING HISTORICAL FACTS

As might be inferred from the literature of this period—from Whittier's early poems, Mrs. Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, Lowell's The Biglow Papers, and from emphatic statements in Emerson and Thoreau—the question of slavery was the most vital one of the time. From 1849, when California, recently settled by gold seekers, applied for admission as a state, with a constitution forbidding slavery, until the end of the Civil War in 1865, slavery was the irrepressible issue of the republic. The Fugitive Slave Law, which was passed in 1850 to secure the return of slaves from any part of the United States, was very unpopular at the North and did much to hasten the war, as did also the decision of the United States Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case (1857), affirming that slaves were property, not persons, and could be moved the same as cattle from one state to another. Various compromise measures between the North and the South were vainly tried. When Abraham Lincoln was elected President in 1860, South Carolina led the South in seceding from the Union. In 1861 began the Civil War, which lasted four years and resulted in the restoration of the Union and the freeing of the slaves.

Before Holmes, the last member of this New England group, died in 1894, both North and South had more than regained the material prosperity which they had enjoyed before the war. The natural resources of the country were so great and the energy of her sons so remarkable that not only was the waste of property soon repaired, but a degree of prosperity was reached which would probably never have been possible without the war. More than one million human beings perished in the strife. Many of these were from the more cultured and intellectual classes on both sides. Centuries will not repair that waste of creative ability in either section. France, after the lapse of more than two hundred years, is still suffering from the loss of her Huguenots. It is impossible to compute what American literature has lost as a result of this war, not only from the double waste involved in turning the energies of men to destruction and subsequently to the necessary repairs, but also from the sacrifice of life of those who might have displayed genius with the pen or furnished an encouraging audience to the gifted ones who did not speak because there were none to hear.

The development of inventions during this period revolutionized the world's progress. Cities in various parts of the country had begun to communicate with each other by electricity, when Thoreau was living at Walden; when Emerson was writing the second series of his Essays; Longfellow, his lines about cares "folding their tents like the Arabs and as silently stealing away"; Lowell, his verses To the Dandelion; and Holmes, his complaint that his humor was diminishing his practice. By the time that Longfellow had finished The Courtship of Miles Standish, and Holmes The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, messages had been cabled across the Atlantic. A comparison with an event of the preceding period will show the importance of this method of communication. The treaty of peace to end the last war with England was signed in Belgium, December 24, 1814. On January 8, 1815, the bloody battle of New Orleans was fought. News of this fight did not reach Washington until February 4. A week later information of the treaty of peace was received at New York. A new process of welding the world together had begun, and this welding was further strengthened by the invention of that modern miracle, the telephone, in 1876.

The result of the battle between the ironclads, the Monitor and the Merrimac (1862), led to a change in the navies of the entire world. Alaska was bought in 1867, and added an area more than two thirds as large as the United States comprised in 1783. The improvement and extension of education, the interest in social reform, the beginning of the decline of the "let alone doctrine," the shortening of the hours of labor, and the consequent increase in time for self-improvement,—are all especially important steps of progress in this period.

Authors could no longer complain of small audiences. At the outbreak of the Civil War the United States had a population of thirty-one millions, while the combined population of Great Britain and Ireland was then only twenty-nine millions. Before Holmes passed away in 1894 the population of 1860 had doubled. The passage of an international copyright law in 1891 at last freed American authors from the necessity of competing with pirated editions of foreign works.

SUMMARY

The great mid-nineteenth century group of New England writers included Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, who were often called the Concord group, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, Daniel Webster, Longfellow, Whittier, Lowell, Holmes, and the historians, Prescott, Motley, and Parkman.

The causes of this great literary awakening were in some measure akin to those which produced the Elizabethan age,—a "re-formation" of religious opinion and a renaissance, seen in a broader culture which did not neglect poetry, music, art, and the observation of beautiful things.

The philosophy known as transcendentalism left its impress on much of the work of this age. The transcendentalists believed that human mind could "transcend" or pass beyond experience and form a conclusion which was not based on the world of sense. They were intense idealists and individualists, who despised imitation and repetition, who were full of the ecstasy of discoveries in a glorious new world, who entered into a new companionship with nature, and who voiced in ways as different as The Dial and Brook Farm their desire for an opportunity to live in all the faculties of the soul.

The fact that the thought of the age was specially modified by the question of slavery is shown in Webster's orations, Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, the poetry of Whittier and Lowell, and to a less degree in the work of Emerson, Thoreau, and Longfellow.

We have found that Emerson's aim, shown in his Essays and all his prose work, is the moral development of the individual, the acquisition of self-reliance, character, spirituality. Some of his nature poetry ranks with the best produced in America. Thoreau, the poet-naturalist, shows how to find enchantment in the world of nature. Nathaniel Hawthorne, one of the great romance writers of the world, has given the Puritan almost as great a place in literature as in history. In his short stories and romances, this great artist paints little except the trial and moral development of human souls in a world where the Ten Commandments are supreme.

Longfellow taught the English-speaking world to love simple poetry. He mastered the difficult art of making the commonplace seem attractive and of speaking to the great common heart. His ability to tell in verse stories like Evangeline and Hiawatha remains unsurpassed among our singers. Whittier was the great antislavery poet of the North. Like Longfellow, he spoke simply but more intensely to that overwhelming majority whose lives stand most in need of poetry. His Snow-Bound makes us feel the moral greatness of simple New England life. The versatile Lowell has written exquisite nature poetry in his lyrics and Vision of Sir Launfal and The Biglow Papers. He has produced America's best humorous verse in The Biglow Papers and A Fable for Critics. He is a great critic, and his prose criticism in Among My Books and the related volumes is stimulating and interesting. His political prose, of which the best specimen is Democracy, is remarkable for its high ideals. Holmes is especially distinguished for his humor in such poems as The Deacon's Masterpiece, or the Wonderful One-Hoss Shay and for the pleasant philosophy and humor in such artistic prose as The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. He is the only member of this group who often wrote merely to entertain, but his Chambered Nautilus shows that he also had a more serious aim.

When we come to the historians, we find that Prescott wrote of the romantic achievements of Spain in the days of her glory; Motley, of the struggles of the Dutch Republic to keep religious and civil liberty from disappearing from this earth; Parkman, of the contest of the English against the French and Indians to decide whether the institutions and literature of North America should be French or English.

This New England literature is most remarkable for its moral quality, its gospel of self-reliance, its high ideals, its call to the soul to build itself more stately mansions.

REFERENCES FOR FURTHER STUDY

HISTORICAL

For contemporary English history consult the histories mentioned on p. 60. The chapter on Victorian literature in the author's History of English Literature gives the trend of literary movements on the other side of the Atlantic during this period.

Contemporary American history may be traced in the general works listed on p. 61, or in Woodrow Wilson's Division and Reunion.

LITERARY

GENERAL WORKS

In addition to the works of Richardson, Wendell, and Trent (p. 61), the following may be consulted:—

Nichol's American Literature.

Churton Collins's The Poets and Poetry of America.

Vincent's American Literary Masters.

Stedman's Poets of America.

Onderdonk's History of American Verse.

Lawton's The New England Poets.

Erskine's Leading American Novelists. (Mrs. Stowe, Hawthorne.)

Brownell's American Prose Masters. (Especially Emerson and Lowell.)

Howells's Literary Friends and Acquaintance. (Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes.)

SPECIAL WORKS

Frothingham's Transcendentalism in New England.

Dowden's Studies in Literature. (Transcendentalism.)

Swift's Brook Farm.

Fields's The Life and Letters of Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Lodge's Daniel Webster.

Woodberry's Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Holmes's Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Garnett's Life of Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Sanborn's Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Cabot's A Memoir of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 2 vols.

E. W. Emerson's Emerson in Concord.

Lowell's Emerson the Lecturer, in Works, Vol. I.

Woodbury's Talks with Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Sanborn's Henry David Thoreau.

Salt's Life of Henry David Thoreau.

Channing's Thoreau, The Poet Naturalist.

Marble's Thoreau, His Home, Friends, and Books.

James Russell Lowell's Thoreau, in Works, Vol. I.

Burroughs's Indoor Studies, Chap. 1., Henry D. Thoreau.

Woodberry's Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Henry James's Hawthorne.

Conway's Life of Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Fields's Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Julian Hawthorne's Nathaniel Hawthorne and his Wife.

George Parsons Lathrop's A Study of Hawthorne.

Bridge's Personal Recollections of Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Rose Hawthorne Lathrop's Memories of Hawthorne.

Julian Hawthorne's Hawthorne and his Circle.

Gates's Studies and Appreciations. (Hawthorne.)

Canby's The Short Story in English, Chap. XII. (Hawthorne.)

Samuel Longfellow's Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow with Extracts from his Journals and Correspondence, 3 vols.

Higginson's Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Carpenter's Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Robertson's Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Carpenter's John Greenleaf Whittier.

Higginson's John Greenleaf Whittier.

Perry's John Greenleaf Whittier.

Pickard's Life and Letters of John Greenleaf Whittier, 2 vols.

Pickard's Whittier-Land.

Greenslet's James Russell Lowell, his Life and Work.

Hale's James Russell Lowell. (Beacon Biographies.)

Scudder's James Russell Lowell, A Biography, 2 vols.

Hale's James Russell Lowell and his Friends.

James Russell Lowell's Letters, edited by Charles Eliot Norton.

Morse's Life and Letters of Oliver Wendell Holmes, 2 vols.

Haweis's American Humorists.

Ticknor's Life of William Hickling Prescott.

Ogden's William Hickling Prescott.

Peck's William Hickling Prescott.

Holmes's John Lothrop Motley, A Memoir.

Curtis's The Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley.

Sedgwick's Francis Parkman.

Farnham's A Life of Francis Parkman.

SUGGESTED READINGS

Since the works of the authors of the New England group are nearly always accessible, it is not usually necessary to specify editions or the exact place where the readings may be found. Those who prefer to use books of selections will find that Page's The Chief American Poets, 713 pp., contains nearly all of the poems recommended for reading. Prose selections may be found in Carpenter's American Prose, and still more extended selections in Stedman and Hutchinson's Library of American Literature.

TRANSCENDENTALISM AND THE DIAL.—Read Emerson's lecture on The Transcendentalist, published in the volume called Nature, Addresses, and Lectures. The Dial is very rare and difficult to obtain outside of a large library. George Willis Cooke has collected in one volume under the title, The Poets of Transcendentalism, An Anthology (1903), 341 pp., some of the best of the poems published in The Dial, as well as much transcendental verse that appeared elsewhere.

SLAVERY AND ORATORY.—Selections from Uncle Tom's Cabin may be found in Carpenter, 312-322; S. & H., VII., 132-144. Webster's Reply to Hayne is given in Johnston's American Orations, Vol. I., 248-302. There are excellent selections from Webster in Carpenter, 105-118, and S. & H., IV., 462-469. Selections from the other orators mentioned may be found in Johnston and S. & H.

EMERSON.—Read from the volume, Nature, Addresses, and Lectures, the chapters called Nature, Beauty, Idealism, and the "literary declaration of independence" in his lecture, The American Scholar. From the various other volumes of his Essays, read Self-Reliance, Friendship, Character, Civilization.

From his nature poetry, read To Ellen at the South, The Rhodora, Each and All, The Humble-Bee, Woodnotes, The Snow-Storm. For a poetical exposition of his philosophy, read The Problem, The Sphinx, and Brahma.

THOREAU.—If possible, read all of Walden; if not, Chaps. I., Economy, IV., Sounds, and XV., Winter Animals (Riverside Literature Series). From the volume called Excursions, read the essay Wild Apples. Many will be interested to read here and there from his Notes on New England Birds and from the four volumes, compiled from his Journal, describing the seasons.

HAWTHORNE.—At least one of each of the different types of his short stories should be read. His power in impressing allegorical or symbolic truth may be seen in The Snow Image or The Great Stone Face. As a specimen of his New England historical tales, read one or more of the following: The Gentle Boy, The Maypole of Merry Mount, Lady Eleanore's Mantle, or even the fantastic Young Goodman Brown, which presents the Puritan idea of witchcraft. For an example of his sketches or narrative essays, read The Old Manse (the first paper in Mosses from an Old Manse) or the Introduction to The Scarlet Letter.

The Scarlet Letter may be left for mature age, but The House of the Seven Gables should be read by all.

From his books for children, The Golden Touch (Wonder Book) at least should be read, no matter how old the reader.

LONGFELLOW.—His best narrative poem is Hiawatha, and its strongest part is The Famine, beginning:—

"Oh, the long and dreary Winter!"

The opening lines of Evangeline should be read for both the beauty of the poetry and the novelty of the meter. The first four sections of The Courtship of Miles Standish should be read for its pictures of the early days of the first Pilgrim settlement. His best ballads are The Wreck of the Hesperus, The Skeleton in Armor, Paul Revere's Ride, and The Birds of Killingworth. For specimens of his simple lyrics, which have had such a wide appeal, read A Psalm of Life, The Ladder of St. Augustine, The Rainy Day, The Day is Done, Daybreak, Resignation, Maidenhood, My Lost Youth.

WHITTIER.—Read the whole of Snow-Bound, and for specimens of his shorter lyrics, Ichabod, The Lost Occasion, My Playmate, Telling the Bees, The Barefoot Boy, In School Days, My Triumph, An Autograph, and The Eternal Goodness. His best ballads are Maud Muller, Skipper Ireson's Ride, and Cassandra Southwick.

LOWELL.—From among his shorter lyrical poems, read Our Love is not a Fading Earthly Flower, To the Dandelion, The Present Crisis, The First Snow-Fall, After the Burial, For an Autograph, Prelude to Part I. of The Vision of Sir Launfal. From The Biglow Papers, read What Mr. Robinson Thinks (No. III., First Series), The Courtin' (Introduction to Second Series), Sunthin' in the Pastoral Line (No. VI., Second Series). From A Fable for Critics, read the lines on Cooper, Poe, and Irving.

The five of Lowell's greater literary essays mentioned on page 254 show his critical powers at their best. The student who wishes shorter selections may choose those paragraphs which please him and any thoughts from the political essay Democracy which he thinks his neighbor should know.

HOLMES.—Read The Deacon's Masterpiece, or the Wonderful One-Hoss Shay, The Ballad of the Oysterman, The Boys, The Last Leaf, and The Chambered Nautilus. From The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, the student may select any pages that he thinks his friends would enjoy hearing.

THE HISTORIANS.—Selections from Prescott, Motley, and Parkman may be found in Carpenters American Prose.

QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS

POETRY.—Compare Emerson's Woodnotes with Bryant's Thanatopsis and A Forest Hymn. Make a comparison of these three poems of motion: The Evening Wind (Bryant), The Humble-Bee (Emerson), and Daybreak (Longfellow), and give reasons for your preference. Compare in like manner The Snow-Storm (Emerson), the first sixty-five lines of Snow-Bound (Whittier), and The First Snow-Fall (Lowell). To which of these three simple lyrics of nature would you award the palm: To the Fringed Gentian (Bryant), The Rhodora (Emerson), To the Dandelion (Lowell)? After making your choice of these three poems, compare it with these two English lyrics of the same class: To a Mountain Daisy (Burns), Daffodils (Wordsworth, the poem beginning "I wandered lonely as a cloud"), and again decide which poem pleases you most.

Compare the humor of these two short poems describing a wooing: The Courtin' (Lowell), The Ballad of the Oysterman (Holmes). Discuss the ideals of these four poems: A Psalm of Life (Longfellow), For an Autograph (Lowell), An Autograph (Whittier), The Chambered Nautilus (Holmes).

What difference in the mental characteristics of the authors do these two retrospective poems show: My Lost Youth (Longfellow), Memories (Whittier)? For a more complete answer to this question, compare the girls in these two poems: Maidenhood (Longfellow):—

"Maiden, with the meek, brown eyes, In whose orbs a shadow lies,"

and In School Days (Whittier), beginning with the lines where he says of the winter sun long ago:—

"It touched the tangled golden curls, And brown eyes full of grieving."

Matthew Arnold, that severe English critic, called one of these poems perfect of its kind, and Oliver Wendell Holmes cried over one of them. The student who reads these carefully is entitled to rely on his own judgment, without verifying which poem Arnold and Holmes had in mind.

Compare Longfellow's ballads: The Skeleton in Armor, The Birds of Killingworth, and The Wreck of the Hesperus, with Whittier's Skipper Ireson's Ride, Cassandra Southwick, and Maud Muller.

Compare Whittier's Snow-Bound with Burns's Cotter's Saturday Night. In Whittier's poem, what group of lines descriptive of (a) nature, and (b) of inmates of the household pleases you most?

What parts of Hiawatha do you consider the best? What might be omitted without great damage to the poem?

In The Courtship of Miles Standish, which incidents or pictures of the life of the Pilgrims appeal most strongly to you?

What was the underlying purpose in writing The Biglow Papers and One-Hoss Shay? Do we to-day read them chiefly for this purpose or for other reasons? In what does the humor of each consist?

PROSE.—Why is it said that Mrs. Stowe showed a knowledge of psychological values? What were the chief causes of the influence of Uncle Tom's Cabin?

What are Webster's chief characteristics? Why does he retain his preeminence among American orators?

What transcendental qualities does Emerson's prose show? From any of his Essays select thoughts which justify Tyndall's (p. 192) statement about Emerson's stimulating power. What passages show him to be a great moral teacher?

What was Thoreau's object in going to Walden? Of what is he the interpreter? What was his mission? What passages in Walden please you most? What is the reason for such a steady increase in Thoreau's popularity?

Point out the allegory or symbolism in any of Hawthorne's tales. Which of his short stories do you like best? What is Hawthorne's special aim in The Snow Image and The Gentle Boy? What qualities give special charm to sketches like The Old Manse and the Introduction to The Scarlet Letter? What is the underlying motive to be worked out in The House of the Seven Gables? Why is it said that the Ten Commandments reign supreme in Hawthorne's world of fiction? Was he a classicist or a romanticist (p. 219)? What qualities do you notice in his style?

In Lowell's critical essays, what unusual turns of thought do you find to challenge your attention? Does he employ humor in his serious criticism?

What most impresses you in reading selections from The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, the humor, sprightliness, and variety of the thought, or the style? What especially satisfactory pages have you found?

Make a comparison (a) of the picturesqueness and color, (b) of the energy of presentation, (c) of the power to develop interest, and (d) of the style, shown in the selections which you have chosen from Prescott, Motley, and Parkman. Compare their style with that of Macaulay in his History of England.



CHAPTER V

SOUTHERN LITERATURE

PLANTATION LIFE AND ITS EFFECT UPON LITERATURE.—Before the war the South was agricultural. The wealth was in the hands of scattered plantation owners, and less centered in cities than at the North. The result was a rural aristocracy of rich planters, many of them of the highest breeding and culture. A retinue of slaves attended to their work and relieved them from all manual labor. The masters took an active part in public life, traveled and entertained on a lavish scale. Their guests were usually wealthy men of the same rank, who had similar ideals and ambitions. Gracious and attractive as this life made the people, it did not bring in new thought, outside influences, or variety. Men continued to think like their fathers. The transcendental movement which aroused New England was scarcely felt as far south as Virginia. The tide of commercial activity which swept over the East and sent men to explore the West did not affect the character of life at the South. It was separated from every other section of the country by a conservative spirit, an objection to change, and a tendency toward aristocracy.

Such conditions retarded the growth of literature. There were no novel ideas that men felt compelled to utter, as in New England. There was little town life to bring together all classes of men. Such life has always been found essential to literary production. Finally, there was inevitably connected with plantation life a serious question, which occupied men's thoughts.

SLAVERY.—The question that absorbed the attention of the best southern intellect was slavery. In order to maintain the vast estates of the South, it was necessary to continue the institution of slavery. Many southern men had been anxious to abolish it, but, as time proceeded, they were less able to see how the step could be taken. As a Virginian statesman expressed it, they were holding a wolf by the ears, and it was as dangerous to let him go as to hold on. At the North, slavery was an abstract question of moral right or wrong, which inspired poets and novelists; at the South, slavery was a matter of expediency, even of livelihood. Instead of serving as an incentive to literary activity, the discussion of slavery led men farther away from the channels of literature into the stream of practical politics.

POLITICAL VERSUS LITERARY AMBITIONS.—The natural ambition of the southern gentleman was political. The South was proud of its famous orators and generals in Revolutionary times and of its long line of statesmen and Presidents, who took such a prominent part in establishing and maintaining the republic. We have seen (p. 68) that Thomas Jefferson of Virginia wrote one of the most memorable political documents in the world, that James Madison, a Virginian President of the United States, aided in producing the Federalist papers (p. 71), that George Washington's Farewell Address (p. 100) deals with such vital matters as morality almost entirely from a political point of view. Although the South produced before the Civil War a world-famous author in Edgar Allan Poe, her glorious achievements were nevertheless mainly political, and she especially desired to maintain her former reputation in the political world. The law and not literature was therefore the avenue to the southerner's ambition.

Long before the Civil War, slavery became an unusually live subject. There was always some political move to discuss in connection with slavery; such, for instance, as the constitutional interpretation of the whole question, the necessity of balancing the admission of free and slave states to the Union, the war with Mexico, the division of the new territory secured in that conflict, the right of a state to secede from the Union. Consequently, in ante bellum days, the brilliant young men of the South had, like their famous ancestors of Revolutionary times, abundance of material for political and legal exposition, and continued to devote their attention to public questions, to law, and to oratory, instead of to pure literature. They talked while the North wrote.

In the days before the war, literature suffered also because the wealthy classes at the South did not regard it as a dignified profession. Those who could write often published their work anonymously. Richard Henry Wilde (1789-1847), a young lawyer, wrote verses that won Byron's praise, and yet did not acknowledge them until some twenty years later. Sometimes authors tried to suppress the very work by which their names are to-day perpetuated. When a Virginian found that the writer of

"Thou wast lovelier than the roses In their prime; Thy voice excelled the closes Of sweetest rhyme;"

was his neighbor, Philip Pendleton Cooke (1816-1850), he said to the young poet, "I wouldn't waste time on a thing like poetry; you might make yourself, with all your sense and judgment, a useful man in settling neighborhood disputes." A newspaper in Richmond, Virginia, kept a standing offer to publish poetry for one dollar a line.

EDUCATIONAL HANDICAPS.—Before the war there was no universal free common school system, as at present, to prepare for higher institutions. The children of rich families had private tutors, but the poor frequently went without any schooling. William Gilmore Simms (p. 306) says that he "learned little or nothing" at a public school, and that not one of his instructors could teach him arithmetic. Lack of common educational facilities decreased readers as well as writers.

Until after the war, whatever literature was read by the cultured classes was usually English. The classical school of Dryden and Pope and the eighteenth century English essayists were especially popular. American literature was generally considered trashy or unimportant. So conservative was the South in its opinions, that individuality in literature was often considered an offense against good taste. This was precisely the attitude of the classical school in England during a large part of the eighteenth century. Until after the Civil War, therefore, the South offered few inducements to follow literature as a profession.

THE NEW SOUTH.—After the South had passed through the terrible struggle of the Civil War, in which much of her best blood perished, there followed the tragic days of the reconstruction. These were times of readjustment, when a wholly new method of life had to be undertaken by a conservative people; when the uncertain position of the negro led to frequent trouble; when the unscrupulous politician, guided only by desire for personal gain, played on the ignorance of the poor whites and the enfranchised negroes, and almost wrecked the commonwealth. Had Lincoln lived to direct affairs after the war, much suffering might have been avoided, and the wounds of the South might have been more speedily healed.

These days, however, finally passed, and the South began to adapt herself to the changed conditions of modern life. In these years of transition since the Civil War, a new South has been evolved. Cities are growing rapidly. Some parts of the South are developing even faster than any other sections of the country. Men are running mills as well as driving the plow. Small farms have often taken the place of the large plantation. A system of free public schools has been developed, and compulsory education for all has been demanded. Excellent higher institutions of learning have multiplied. Writers and a reading public, both with progressive ideals, have rapidly increased. In short, the South, like the East and the West, has become more democratic and industrial, less completely agricultural, and has paid more attention to the education of the masses.

It would, however, be a mistake to suppose that the southern conservatism, which had been fostered for generations, could at once be effaced. The South still retains much of her innate love of aristocracy, loyalty to tradition, disinclination to be guided by merely practical aims, and aversion to rapid change. This condition is due partly to the fact that the original conservative English stock, which is still dominant, has been more persistent there and less modified by foreign immigration.

CHARACTERISTICS OF SOUTHERN LITERATURE.—The one who studies the greatest authors of the South soon finds them worthy of note for certain qualities. Poe was cosmopolitan enough to appeal to foreign lands even more forcibly than to America, and yet we shall find that he has won the admiration of a great part of the world for characteristics, many of which are too essentially southern to be possessed in the same degree by authors in other sections of the country. The poets of the South have placed special emphasis on (1) melody, (2) beauty, (3) artistic workmanship. In creations embodying a combination of such qualities, Poe shows wonderful mastery. More than any other American poet, he has cast on the reader

"... the spell which no slumber Of witchery may test, The rhythmical number Which lull'd him to rest."

After reading Poe and Lanier, we feel that we can say to the South what Poe whispered to the fair Ligeia:—

"No magic shall sever Thy music from thee."

The wealth of sunshine flooding the southern plains, the luxuriance of the foliage and the flowers, and the strong contrasts of light and shade and color are often reflected in the work of southern writers. Such verse as this is characteristic:—

"Beyond the light that would not die Out of the scarlet-haunted sky, Beyond the evening star's white eye Of glittering chalcedony, Drained out of dusk the plaintive cry Of 'whippoorwill!' of 'whippoorwill!'"

[Footnote: Cawein, Red Leaves and Roses.]

In the work of her later writers of fiction, the South has presented, often in a realistic setting of natural scenes, a romantic picture of the life distinctive of the various sections,—of the Creoles of Louisiana, of the mountaineers of Tennessee, of the blue grass region of Kentucky, of Virginia in the golden days, and of the Georgia negro, whose folk lore and philosophy are voiced by Uncle Remus.

EDGAR ALLAN POE, 1809-1849



EARLY LIFE.—The most famous of all southern writers and one of the world's greatest literary artists happened to be born in Boston because his parents, who were strolling actors, had come there to fill an engagement. His grandfather, Daniel Poe, a citizen of Baltimore, was a general in the Revolution. His service to his country was sufficiently noteworthy to cause Lafayette to kneel at the old general's grave and say, "Here reposes a noble heart."

An orphan before he was three years old, Poe was reared by Mr. and Mrs. John Allan of Richmond, Virginia. In 1815, at the close of the War of 1812, his foster parents went to England and took him with them. He was given a school reader and two spelling books with which to amuse himself during the long sailing voyage across the ocean. He was placed for five years in the Manor School House, a boarding school, at Stoke Newington, a suburb of London. Here, he could walk by the very house in which Defoe wrote Robinson Crusoe. But nothing could make up to Poe the loss of a mother and home training during those five critical years. The head master said that Poe was clever, but spoiled by "an extravagant amount of pocket money." The contrast between his school days and adult life should be noted. We shall never hear of his having too much money after he became an author.

In 1820 the boy returned with the Allans to Richmond, where he prepared for college, and at the age of seventeen entered the University of Virginia. "Here," his biographer says, "he divided his time, after the custom of undergraduates, between the recitation room, the punch bowl, the card-table, athletic sports, and pedestrianism." Although Poe does not seem to have been censured by the faculty, Mr. Allan was displeased with his record, removed him from college, and placed him in his counting house. This act and other causes, which have never been fully ascertained, led Poe to leave Mr. Allan's home.

Poe then went to Boston, where, at the age of eighteen, he published a thin volume entitled Tamerlane and Other Poems. Disappointed at not being able to live by his pen, he served two years in the army as a common soldier, giving both an assumed name and age. He finally secured an appointment to West Point after he was slightly beyond the legal age of entrance. The cadets said in a joking way that Poe had secured the appointment for his son, but that the father substituted himself after the boy died. Feeling an insatiable ambition to become an author, Poe neglected his duties at West Point, and he was, fortunately for literature, discharged at the age of twenty-two.