LATER LIFE.—In 1867, he supplemented his purely American training with a trip to Europe, Egypt, and the Holy Land. The story of his journey is given in The Innocents Abroad (1869), the work which first made him known in every part of the United States. A Tramp Abroad (1880), and Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World (1897), are records of other foreign travels. While they are largely autobiographical, and show in an unusually entertaining way how he became one of the most cosmopolitan of our authors, these works are less important than those which throb with the heart beats of that American life of which he was a part in his younger days.

In 1884 he became a partner in the publishing house of Charles L. Webster and Co. This firm incurred risks against his advice, and failed. The failure not only swallowed up every cent that he had saved, but left him, past sixty, staggering under a load of debt that would have been a despair to most young men. Like Sir Walter Scott in a similar misfortune, Mark Twain made it a point of honor to assume the whole debt. He lectured, he wrote, he traveled, till finally, unlike Scott, he was able to pay off the last penny of the firm's indebtedness. His life thus set a standard of honor to Americans, which is to them a legacy the peer of any left by any author to his nation.

After his early pioneer days, his American homes were chiefly in New England. For many years he lived in Hartford, Connecticut. In 1908 he went to a new home at Redding, Connecticut. His last years were saddened by the death of his daughter and his wife. His death in 1910 made plain the fact that few American authors had won a more secure place in the affections of all classes.

It does not seem possible that the life of any other American author can ever closely resemble his. He had Elizabethan fullness of experience. Even Sir Walter Raleigh's life was no more varied; for Mark Twain was a printer, pilot, soldier, miner, newspaper reporter, editor, special correspondent, traveler around the world, lecturer, biographer, writer of romances, historian, publisher, and philosopher.

STORIES OF THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY.—The works by which Mark Twain will probably be longest known are those dealing with the scenes of his youth. He is the historian of an epoch that will never return. His works that reveal the bygone life of the Mississippi Valley are not unlikely to increase in fame as the years pass. He resembles Hawthorne in presenting the early history of a section of our country. New England was old when Hawthorne was a boy, and he imaginatively reconstructed the life of its former days. When Mark Twain was young, the West was new; hence his task in literature was to preserve contemporary life. He has accomplished this mission better than any other writer of the middle West.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) is a story of life in a Missouri town on the Mississippi River. Tom Sawyer, the hero, is "a combination," says the author, "of the characteristics of three boys whom I knew." Probably Mark Twain himself is the largest part of this combination. The book is the record of a wide-awake boy's impression of the life of that day. The wretched common school, the pranks of the boys, the Sunday school, the preacher and his sermon, the task of whitewashing the fence, the belief in witches and charms, the half-breed Indian, the drunkard, the murder scene, and the camp life of the boys on an island in the Mississippi,—are all described with a vividness and interest due to actual experience. The author distinctly says, "Most of the adventures recorded in this book really occurred; one or two were experiences of my own, the rest those of boys who were schoolmates of mine."



Huckleberry Finn (1885) has been called the Odyssey of the Mississippi. This is a story of life on and along the great river, just before the middle of the nineteenth century. Huckleberry Finn, the son of a drunkard, and the friend of Tom Sawyer, is the hero of the book. The reader becomes deeply interested in the fortunes of Jim, a runaway slave, who accompanies Huck on a raft down the river, and who is almost hourly in danger of being caught and returned or again enslaved by some chance white man.

One of the strongest scenes in the story is where Huck debates with himself whether he shall write the owner where to capture Jim, or whether he shall aid the poor creature to secure his freedom. Since Huck was a child of the South, there was no doubt in his mind that punishment in the great hereafter awaited one who deprived another of his property, and Jim was worth eight hundred dollars. Huck did not wish to lose his soul, and so he wrote a letter to the owner. Before sending it, however, he, like Hamlet, argued the case with himself. Should he send the letter or forfeit human respect and his soul? The conclusion that Huck reached is thoroughly characteristic of Mark Twain's attitude toward the weak. The thirty-first chapter of Huckleberry Finn, in which this incident occurs, could not have been written by one who did not thoroughly appreciate the way in which the South regarded those who aided in the escape of a slave. Another unique episode of the story is the remarkable dramatic description of the deadly feud between the families of the Shepherdsons and the Grangerfords.

This story is Mark Twain's masterpiece, and it is not improbable that it will continue to be read as long as the Mississippi flows toward the Gulf. Of Mark Twain's achievement in these two tales, Professor William Lyon Phelps of Yale says: "He has done something which many popular novelists have signally failed to accomplish—he has created real characters. His two wonderful boys, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, are wonderful in quite different ways. The creator of Tom exhibited remarkable observation; the creator of Huck showed the divine touch of imagination.... Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn are prose epics of American life."

Mark Twain says that he was reared to believe slavery a divine institution. This fact makes his third story of western life, Pudd'nhead Wilson. interesting for its pictures of the negro and slavery, from a different point of view from that taken by Mrs. Stowe in Uncle Tom's Cabin.

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS.—During his lifetime, Mark Twain's humor was the chief cause of his well-nigh universal popularity. The public had never before read a book exactly like his Innocents Abroad. Speaking of an Italian town, he says, "It is well the alleys are not wider, because they hold as much smell now as a person can stand, and, of course, if they were wider they would hold more, and then the people would die." Incongruity, or the association of dissimilar ideas, is the most frequent cause of laughter to his readers. His famous cablegram from England that the report of his death was much exaggerated is of this order, as is also the following sentence from Roughing It:—

"Then he rode over and began to rebuke the stranger with a six-shooter, and the stranger began to explain with another."

Such sentences convey something more than a humorous impression. They surpass the usual historical records in revealing in an incisive way the social characteristics of those pioneer days. His humor is often only a means of more forcibly impressing on readers some phase of the philosophy of history. Even careless readers frequently recognize that this statement is true of much of the humor in A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court, which is one of his most successful exhibitions of humor based on incongruity.

While his humor is sometimes mechanical, coarse, and forced, we must not forget that it also often reveals the thoughtful philosopher. To confirm this statement, one has only to glance at the humorous philosophy that constitutes Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar.

Mark Twain's future place in literature will probably be due less to humor than to his ability as a philosopher and a historian. Humor will undoubtedly act on his writings as a preservative salt, but salt is valuable only to preserve substantial things. If matter of vital worth is not present in any written work, mere humor will not keep it alive.

One of his most humorous scenes may be found in the chapter where Tom Sawyer succeeds in getting other boys to relieve him of the drudgery of whitewashing a fence. That episode was introduced to enable the author to make more impressive his philosophy of a certain phase of human action:—

"He had discovered a great law of human action without knowing it—namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. If he had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do."

His statement about illusions shows that his philosophy does not always have a humorous setting:—

"The illusions are the only things that are valuable, and God help the man who reaches the time when he meets only the realities."

Hatred of hypocrisy is one of his emphatic characteristics. If Tom Sawyer enjoyed himself more in watching a dog play with a pinch-bug in church than in listening to a doctrinal sermon, if he had a better time playing hookey than in attending the execrably dull school, Mark Twain is eager to expose the hypocrisy of those who would misrepresent Tom's real attitude toward church and school. While Mark Twain is determined to present life faithfully as he sees it, he dislikes as much as any Puritan to see evil triumph. In his stories, wrongdoing usually digs its own grave.

His strong sense of justice led him to write Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc (1896), to defend the Maid of Orleans. Because he loved to protect the weak, he wrote A Dogs Tale (1904). For the same reason he paid all the expenses of a negro through an eastern college.

Although he was self-taught, he gradually came to use the English language with artistic effect and finish. His style is direct and energetic, and it shows his determination to say a thing as simply and as effectively as possible. One of the rules in Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar is, "As to the Adjective: when in doubt, strike it out." He followed this rule. Some have complained that the great humorist's mind, like Emerson's, often worked in a disconnected fashion, but this trait has been exaggerated in the case of both. Mark Twain has certainly made a stronger impression than many authors whose "sixthly" follows more inevitably. It is true that his romances do not gather up every loose end, that they do not close with a grand climax which settles everything; but they reflect the spirit of the western life, which also had many loose ends and left much unsettled.

His mingled humor and philosophy, his vivid, interesting, contemporary history, which gives a broad and sympathetic delineation of important phases of western life and development, fill a place that American literature could ill afford to leave vacant.

SUMMARY

Lincoln spoke to the common people in simple virile English, which serves as a model for the students of Oxford University. Bret Harte wrote stories filled with the humor and the pathos of the rough mining camps of the far West. Eugene Field's simple songs appeal to all children. The virtues of humble homes, the smiles and tears of everyday life, are presented in James Whitcomb Riley's poems. Mark Twain, philosopher, reformer of the type of Cervantes, and romantic historian, has, largely by means of his humor, made a vivid impression on millions of Americans. Every member of this group had an unusual development of humor. Each one was imbued with the democratic spirit and eager to present the elemental facts of life. For these reasons, the audiences of this group have been numbered by millions.

REFERENCES

Roosevelt's The Winning of the West.

Turner's Rise of the New West.

Hart's National Ideals Historically Traced.

Johnston's High School History of the United States (612 pp.).

Clemens's Life on the Mississippi.

Clemens's Roughing It.

Schurz's Abraham Lincoln. (Excellent.)

Morse's Abraham Lincoln.

Chubb's Selections from the Addresses, Inaugurals, and Letters of Abraham Lincoln, edited with an Introduction and Notes. (Macmillan's Pocket Classics.)

Boynton's Bret Harte.

Pemberton's The Life of Bret Harte.

Erskinels Leading American Novelists, pp. 325-379. (Harte.)

Canby's The Short Story in English, Chap. XIV. (Harte.)

Field's The Eugene Field Book, edited by Burt and Cable. (Contains autobiographical matter and Field's best juvenile poems and stories.)

Thompson's Eugene Field, 2 vols.

Field's The Writings in Prose and Verse of Eugene Field, Sabine Edition, 12 vols.

Garland's A Dialogue between James Whitcomb Riley and Hamlin Garland, in Me duress Magazine, February, 1894.

In Honor of James Whitcomb Riley, with a Brief Sketch of his Life, by Hughes, Beveridge, and Others, Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1906.

Clemens's Autobiography.

Matthews's Biographical Criticism of Mark Twain, in the Introduction to The Innocents Abroad.

Phelps's Essays on Modern Novelists. (Mark Twain; excellent.)

Henderson's Mark Twain, in Harpers Magazine, May, 1909.

Howells's My Mark Twain.

SUGGESTED READINGS

Lincoln.—The Gettysburg Address, part of the Second Inaugural Address.

Harte.—Tennessee's Partner, and How Santa Claus came to Simpson's Bar. Harte's two greatest stories, The Luck of Roaring Camp and The Outcasts of Poker Flat, should be read in mature years. These stories may all be found in the single volume, entitled The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Stories. (Riverside Aldine Press Series.)

Field.—Little Boy Blue, The Duel, Krinken, Wynken, Blynken, and Nod, The Rock-a-By Lady. These poems may all be found in Burt and Cable's The Eugene Field Book.

Riley.—When the Frost is on the Punkin, The Clover, The First Bluebird, Ike Walton's Prayer, A Life Lesson, Away, Griggsby's Station, Little Mahala Ashcraft, Our Hired Girl, Little Orphant Annie. These poems may be found in the three volumes, entitled Neighborly Poems, Afterwhiles, and Rhymes of Childhood.

Mark Twain.—Life on the Mississippi, Chaps. VIII., IX., XIII. Roughing It, Chap. II. If the first two chapters of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn are read, the time will probably be found to finish the books. For specimens of his humor at its best, read Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar, printed at the beginning of the twenty-one chapters of Pudd'nhead Wilson. His humor depending on incongruity is well shown in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthurs Court. The Prince and the Pauper is a fascinating story of sixteenth-century England.

QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS

Why does Oxford University display on its walls The Gettysburg Address of Lincoln? What books helped mold his style?

What period of our development do Bret Harte's stories illustrate? What are some special characteristics of his short stories? Does he belong to the school of Poe or Hawthorne? Which one of our great short story writers has the most humor,—Irving, Hawthorne, Poe, or Harte? Which one of them do you enjoy the most?

Why is Eugene Field called the poet-laureate of children? Which of his poems indicated for reading do you prefer? What are the most striking qualities of his verse?

Point out the chief characteristics of Riley's verse. What lines please you most for their humor, references to rural life, optimism, kindly spirit, and pathos? Why is he so widely popular?

Which of Mark Twain's works are most valuable to the student of American literature and history? In what sense is he a historian? What phases of western development does he describe? Give instances (a) of his humor which depends on incongruity, (b) of his philosophical humor, (c) of his hatred of hypocrisy, and (d) of his solicitude for the weak. Why is he said to belong to the school of Cervantes? What specially impresses you about Mark Twain's style?



CHAPTER VII

THE EASTERN REALISTS

FROM ROMANTICISM TOWARD REALISM.—The enormous circulation of magazines in the United States has furnished a wide market for the writers of fiction. Magazines have especially stimulated the production of short stories, which show how much technique their authors have learned from Poe. The increased attention paid to fiction has led to a careful study of its guiding principles and to the formation of new rules for the practice of the art.

When we look back at the best work of earlier writers of American fiction, we shall find that it is nearly all romantic. In the eighteenth century, Charles Brockden Brown wrote in conformity to the principles of early romanticism, and combined the elements of strangeness and terror in his tales. The modified romanticism persisting through the greater part of the nineteenth century demanded that the _unusual_ should at least be retained in fiction as a dominating factor. Irving's _Rip Van Winkle_ has the older element of the impossible, and _The Legend of Sleepy Hollow_ shows fascinating combinations of the unusual. Cooper achieved his greatest success in presenting the Indians and the stalwart figure of the pioneer against the mysterious forest as a background. Hawthorne occasionally availed himself of the older romantic materials, as in _The Snow Image_, Rappaccini's Daughter_, and _Young Goodman Brown_, but he was more often attracted by the newer elements, the strange and the unusual, as in _The Scarlet Letter_ and _The House of the Seven Gables_. Poe followed with a combination of all the romantic materials,—the supernatural, the terrible, and the unusual. Bret Harte applied his magnifying glass to unusual crises in the strange lives of the western pioneers. By a skillful use of light and shadow, Mark Twain heightened the effect of the strange scenes through which he passed in his young days. Almost all the southern writers, from Simms to Cable and Harris, loved to throw strong lights on unusual characters and romantic situations.

The question which the romanticists, or idealists, as they were often called in later times, had accustomed themselves to ask, was, "Have these characters or incidents the unusual beauty or ugliness or goodness necessary to make an impression and to hold the attention?" The masters of the new eastern school of fiction took a different view, and asked, "Is our matter absolutely true to life?"

REALISM IN FICTION.—The two greatest representatives of the new school of realism in fiction are William D. Howells and Henry James. Both have set forth in special essays the realist's art of fiction. The growing interest in democracy was the moving force in realism. In that realist's textbook, Criticism and Fiction (1891), Howells says of the aristocratic spirit in literature:—

"It is averse to the mass of men; it consents to know them only in some conventionalized and artificial guise.... Democracy in literature is the reverse of all this. It wishes to know and to tell the truth, confident that consolation and delight are there; it does not care to paint the marvelous and impossible for the vulgar many, or to sentimentalize and falsify the actual for the vulgar few."

"Realism is nothing more and nothing less than the truthful treatment of material," says Howells. He sometimes insists on considering "honesty" and "realism" as synonymous terms. His primary object is not merely to amuse by a pleasant story or to startle by a horrible one. His object is to reflect life as he finds it, not only unusual or exceptional life. He believes that it is false to real life to overemphasize certain facts, to overlook the trivial, and to make all life dramatic. He says that the realist in fiction "cannot look upon human life and declare this thing or that thing unworthy of notice, any more than the scientist can declare a fact of the material world beneath the dignity of his inquiry."

Howells recognizes the great importance of the spirit of romanticism, and says that it was at the beginning of the nineteenth century

"... making the same fight against effete classicism which realism is making to-day against effete romanticism.... The romantic of that day and the real of this are in certain degree the same. Romanticism then sought, as realism seeks now, to widen the bounds of sympathy, to level every barrier against aesthetic freedom, to escape from the paralysis of tradition. It exhausted itself in this impulse; and it remained for realism to assert that fidelity to experience and probability of motive are essential conditions of a great imaginative literature."

Henry James in his essay, The Art of Fiction, denies that the novelist is less concerned than the historian about the quest for truth. He says, "The only reason for the existence of a novel is that it does compete with life. When it ceases to compete as the canvas of the painter competes, it will have arrived at a very strange pass." To the intending novelist he says:—

"All life belongs to you, and don't listen either to those who would shut you up into corners of it and tell you that it is only here and there that art inhabits, or to those who would persuade you that this heavenly messenger wings her way outside of life altogether, breathing a superfine air and turning away her head from the truth of things."

It must not be supposed that Howells and James were the original founders of the realistic school, any more than Wordsworth, Coleridge, and their associates were the originators of the romantic school. History has not yet discovered the first realist or the first romanticist. Both schools have from time to time been needed to hold each other in check. Howells makes no claim to being considered the first realist. He distinctly says that Jane Austen (1775-1817) had treated material with entire truthfulness. Henry James might have discovered that Fielding had preceded him in writing, "It is our business to discharge the part of a faithful historian, and to describe human nature as it is, not as we would wish it to be."

An occasional revolt against extreme romanticism is needed to bring literature closer to everyday life. The tendency of the followers of any school is to push its conclusions to such an extreme that reaction necessarily sets in. Some turned to seek for the soul of reality in the uninteresting commonplace. Others learned from Shakespeare the necessity of looking at life from the combined point of view of the realist and the romanticist, and they discovered that the great dramatist's romantic pictures sometimes convey a truer idea of life than the most literal ones of the painstaking realist. Critics have pointed out that the original History of Dr. Faustus furnished Marlowe with a realistic account of Helen of Troy's hair, eyes, "pleasant round face," lips, "neck, white like a swan," general figure, and purple velvet gown, but that his two romantic lines:—

"Was this the face that launched a thousand ships, And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?"

enable any imaginative person to realize her fascination better than pages of realistic description. But we must not forget that it was an achievement for the writers of this group to insist that truth must be the foundation for all pictures of life, to demonstrate that even the pillars of romanticism must rest on a firm basis in a world of reality, and to teach the philosophy of realism to a school of younger writers.

By no means all of the eastern fiction, however, is realistic. THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH (1836-1907), for instance, wrote in a romantic vein The Story of a Bad Boy, which ranks among the best boys' stories produced in the last half of the nineteenth century. There were many other writers of romantic fiction, but the majority of them at least felt the restraining influence of the realistic school.

REALISM IN POETRY.—One eastern poet, Walt Whitman, took a step beyond any preceding American poet in endeavoring to paint with realistic touches the democracy of life. He defined the poet as the indicator of the path between reality and the soul. He thus proclaims his realistic creed:—

"I will not have in my writing any elegance or effect or originality to hang in the way between me and the rest like curtains. I will have nothing hang in the way, not the richest curtains. What I tell I tell for precisely what it is. Let who may exalt or startle or fascinate or soothe, I will have purposes as health or heat or snow has and be as regardless of observation. You shall stand by my side and look in the mirror with me."

The subject of his verse is the realities of democracy. No other great American poet had indulged in realism as extreme as this:—

"The butcher-boy puts off his killing-clothes, or sharpens his knife at the stall in the market, I loiter enjoying his repartee and his shuffle and break-down."

Whitman says boldly:—

"And the cow crunching with depress'd head surpasses any statue."

He discarded ordinary poetic meter, because it seemed to lack the rhythm of nature. It is, however, very easy for a poet to cross the line between realism and idealism, and we sometimes find adherents of the two schools disagreeing whether Whitman was more realist or idealist in some of his work, for instance, in a line or verse unit, like this, when he says:—

"That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly softly wash again, and ever again, this soil'd world."



The fact that not all the later eastern poets were realistic needs emphasis. Thomas Bailey Aldrich, perhaps the most noted successor of New England's famous group, was frequently an exquisite romantic artist, or painter in miniature, as these eight lines which constitute the whole of his poem, Identity, show:—

"Somewhere—in desolate wind-swept space— In Twilight-land—in No-man's-land— Two hurrying Shapes met face to face, And bade each other stand.

"And who are you?' cried one, agape, Shuddering in the gloaming light. 'I know not,' said the second Shape, 'I only died last night!'"

WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS, 1837-1920



The foremost leader of realism in modern American fiction, the man who influenced more young writers than any other novelist of the last quarter of the nineteenth century, was William Dean Howells, who was born in Martin's Ferry, Ohio, in 1837. He never went to college, but obtained valuable training as a printer and editor in various newspaper offices in Ohio. He was for many years editor of the Atlantic Monthly and an editorial contributor to the New York Nation and Harper's Magazine. In these capacities, as well as by his fiction, he reached a wide public. Later he turned his attention mainly to the writing of novels. So many of their scenes are laid in New England that he is often claimed as a New England writer.

His strongest novels are A Modern Instance (1882), The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885), The Minister's Charge (1886), Indian Summer (1886), and A Hazard of New Fortunes (1889). These belong to the middle period of his career. Before this, his mastery of character portrayal had not culminated, and later, his power of artistic selection and repression was not so strictly exercised.

The Rise of Silas Lapham is a story of the home life and business career of a self-made merchant, who has the customary braggadocio and lack of culture, but who possesses a substantial integrity at the root of his nature. The little shortcomings in social polish, so keenly felt by his wife and daughters, as they rise to a position due to great wealth, the small questions of decorum, and the details of business take up a large part of the reader's attention; but they are treated with such ease, naturalness, repressed humor, refinement of art, and truth in sketching provincial types of character, that the story is a triumph of realistic creation. A Modern Instance is not so pleasant a book, but the attention is firmly held by the strong, realistic presentation of the jealousy, the boredom, the temptations, and the dishonesty exhibited in a household of a commonplace, ill-mated pair. Indian Summer begins well, proceeds well, and ends well. It may be a trifle more conventional than the two other novels just mentioned, but it is altogether delightful. The conversations display keen insight into the heart of the young, imaginative girl and of the older woman and man. The Minister's Charge is thoroughly individual. The young boy seems so close to his readers that every detail in his life becomes important. The other people are also full of real blood, while the background is skillfully arranged to heighten the effect of the characters. A Hazard of New Fortunes would be decidedly improved if many pages were omitted, but it is full of lifelike characters, and it sometimes approaches the dramatic, in a way unusual with Howells.

In his effort to present life without any misleading ideas of heroism, beauty, or idyllic sweetness, Howells sometimes goes so far toward the opposite extreme as to write stories that seem to be filled with commonplace women, humdrum lives, and men like Northwick in The Quality of Mercy, of whom one of the characters says:—

"He was a mere creature of circumstances like the rest of us! His environment made him rich, and his environment made him a rogue. Sometimes I think there was nothing to Northwick except what happened to him."

But in such work as the five novels enumerated, Howells shows decided ability in portraying attractive characters, in making their faults human and as interesting as their virtues, in causing ordinary life to yield variety of incident and amusing scenes, and, finally, in engaging his characters in homelike, natural, self-revealing conversations, which are often spiced with wit.

Howells does not always have a plot, that is, a beginning, a climax, and a solution of all the questions suggested. He has, of course, a story, but he does not find it necessary to present the entire life of his characters, if he can accurately portray them by one or more incidents. After that purpose is accomplished, the story often ceases before the reader feels that a real ending has been reached.

Howells rarely startles or thrills; he usually both interests and convinces his readers by a straightforward presentation of everyday, well-known scenes and people. The strongest point in his art is the easy, natural way in which he seems to be retailing faithfully the facts exactly as they happened, without any juggling or rearranging on his part. His characters are so clearly presented that they do not remain in dreary outline, but emerge fully in rounded form, as moving, speaking, feeling beings. His keen insight into human frailties, his delicate, pervading humor, his skill in handling conversations, and his delightfully clear, easy, natural, and familiar style make him a realist of high rank and a worthy teacher of young writers.

HENRY JAMES, 1843-1916



The name most closely associated with Howells is that of Henry James, who was born in New York. William James (1842-1910) the noted psychologist, was an older brother. Henry James is called an "international novelist" because he lived mostly abroad and laid the scenes of his novels in both Europe and America. His sympathy with England in the European war caused him to become a British subject in 1915, eight months before his death in 1916.

Like Howells, James was a leader in modern realistic fiction. His work has been called the "quintessence of realism." But instead of selecting, as Howells does, the well-known types of the average people, James prefers to study the ordinary mind in extraordinary situations, surroundings, and combinations. For this reason, his characters, while realistically presented, rarely seem well-known and obvious types.

James was the first American to succeed in the realistic short story, that is, the story stripped of the supernatural and romantic elements used by Hawthorne and Poe. James selects neither a commonplace nor a dramatic situation, but chooses some difficult and out-of-the-way theme, and clears it up with his keen, subtle, impressionistic art. A Passionate Pilgrim, The Madonna of the Future, and The Lesson of the Master are short stories that show his abstruse, unusual subject matter and his analytical methods.

He was a very prolific writer. He published as many as three volumes in twelve months. Year after year, with few exceptions, he brought out either a novel, a book of essays, or a volume of short stories. His most interesting novels are Roderick Hudson (1875), Daisy Miller: A Study (1878), The Portrait of a Lady (1881), and The Princess Casamassima (1886).

Daisy Miller is a brilliant study of the Italian experiences of an American girl of the unconventionally independent type. She is beautiful, frank, original, but whimsical, shallow, and headstrong. One minute she attracts, the next moment she repels. One feels baffled and provoked, but is held to the book by the spell of a writer who is clever, intellectual, a master of style, and a skilled scientist in dissecting human character. In Roderick Hudson and The Portrait of a Lady, the characters are much more interesting, the situations are larger, the human emotion deeper, and the books richer from every point of view. These novels also show Americans in European surroundings. Isabel Archer and Ralph Touchet in The Portrait of a Lady have qualities that deeply stir the admiration and emotions. Every scene in which these characters appear adds to the pleasure in being able to know and love them, even though they are merely characters in a book.

Only a few such persons as these, so rich in the qualities of the heart, appear in James's novels. He has portrayed a greater variety of men and women than any other American writer, but they usually interest him for some other quality than their power to love and suffer. He is tempted to regard life from the intellectual viewpoint, as a problem, a game, and a panorama. He does not, like Hawthorne, enter into the sanctuary and become the hero, laying the lash of remorse upon his back. James stands off, a disinterested onlooker, and exhibits his characters critically, accurately, minutely, as they take their parts in the procession or game. Brilliant and faultless as the portraits are, they too frequently appear cold, pitiless renditions of life, often of life too trivial to seem worthy the searching study that he gives it. Ralph Touchet, Roderick Hudson, Isabel Archer, and Miss Light are sufficient to prove the tremendous power possessed by James to present the emotional side of life. Both in theory and practice, however, he usually prefers to remain the disinterested, impartial, detached spectator.

Like Howells, James does not depend upon a plot. There is little action in his works. The interest is psychological, and a chance word, an encounter on the street, even a look, may serve to change an attitude of mind and affect the outcome.

The popular impression that James is impossible to understand and that he uses words to obscure his meaning is, of course, false, although in his later novels his style is extremely involved and often difficult to follow. In such works as The Wings of a Dove (1902) and The Golden Bowl (1904), for example, there are long and intricate psychological explanations, which are most abstruse and confusing. It is this later work which has given rise to the common saying that William James wrote psychology like a novelist, and Henry James, novels like a psychologist.

Judged by his best work, however, such as The Portrait of a Lady and Roderick Hudson, Henry James must be acknowledged a master of English style. His keen analytical mind is reflected in a brilliant, highly polished, and impressively incisive style. In a few perfectly selected words the subtlest thoughts are clearly revealed. In these masterpieces, the reader is constantly delighted by the artist's skill, which leads ever deeper into human motives after it would seem that the heart and mind could disclose no further secrets. Such skill shows a mastery of language rarely surpassed in fiction. At his best, James has a fineness and sureness of touch, and a command of perfectly fitting words, as well as elegance and grace in style.

MARY E. WILKINS FREEMAN, 1862-



Mary Eleanor Wilkins (Mrs. Freeman), known for her realistic stories of the provincial New Englander, was born in Randolph, Massachusetts. With humor to see the little eccentricities of the people among whom she lived and a sympathetic understanding of their heroic qualities, she has created real men and women,—farmers, school teachers, prim spinsters, clergymen, stern Roman matrons,—all unmistakable types of New England village life. Her unfailing ability to transplant the reader into rock-ribbed, snow-clad New England, with its many fond associations for most Americans, is proof of her power as an artist. Her art is subtle, and it commands both attention and admiration, as she reveals every slight move in a simple plot and with extraordinary deftness of touch brings out the most delicate shadings that differentiate her characters.

Her style is easy and clear, and is pervaded by a fine sense of humor. Her short stories are her most artistic work, especially those in the two volumes, A New England Nun, and Silence and Other Tales; but she can also tell a long story well, as is shown in Pembroke, which combines at their best all her qualities as a novelist.

She is distinctly a realist of Howells's school, presenting the daily rounds of the life which she knew intimately, and making complete stories of such meager material as the subterfuges which two poor but proud sisters practiced in order to make one black silk dress, owned in partnership, appear as if each really possessed "a gala dress." She takes stolid, practical characters, who have seemingly nothing attractive in their composition, and by her sympathetic treatment causes them to appeal strongly to human hearts. She discovers heroic qualities in apparently commonplace homes and families, and finds humorous or pathetic possibilities in men and women whom most writers would consider very unpromising. Miss Wilkins knows that in rural New England romantic things do happen, tragedies do occur, and heroes and heroines do appear in unexpected quarters to meet emergencies, and she occasionally transfers such events to her pages, thereby enlivening them without sacrificing the reality of her pictures. But the triumph of her art consists in her facile handling of simple incidents and everyday men and women and her power to carry them without a hint of sentimentality to a natural, artistic, effective climax, heightened usually by a touch of either humor or pathos.

WALT WHITMAN, 1819-1892



Life.—Suffolk County, Long Island, in which is situated the village of West Hills, where Walt Whitman was born in 1819, was in some ways the most remarkable eastern county in the United States. Hemmed in on a narrow strip of land by the ocean on one side and Long Island Sound on the other, the inhabitants saw little of the world unless they led a seafaring life. Many of the well-to-do farmers, as late as the middle of the nineteenth century, never took a land journey of more than twenty miles from home. Because of such restricted environment, the people of Suffolk County were rather insular in early days, yet the average grade of intelligence was high, for some of England's most progressive blood had settled there in the first half of the seventeenth century.

Nowhere else in this country, not even at the West, was there a greater feeling of independence and a more complete exercise of individuality. There was a certainty about life and opinions, a feeling of relationship with everybody, a defiance of convention, that made Suffolk County the fit birthplace of a man who was destined to trample poetic conventions under his feet and to sing the song of democracy. In Walt Whitman's young days, all sorts and conditions of men on Long Island met familiarly on equal terms. The farmer, the blacksmith, the carpenter, the mason, the woodchopper, the sailor, the clergyman, the teacher, the young college student home on his vacation,—all mingled as naturally as members of a family. No human being felt himself inferior to any one else, so long as the moral proprieties were observed. Nowhere else did there exist a more perfect democracy of conscious equals. Although Whitman's family moved to Brooklyn before he was five years old, he returned to visit relatives, and later taught school at various places on Long Island and edited a paper at Huntington, near his birthplace. In various ways Suffolk County was responsible for the most vital part of his early training. In his poem, There Was a Child Went Forth, he tells how nature educated him in his island home. In his prose work, Specimen Days and Collect, which all who are interested in his autobiography should read, he says, "The successive growth stages of my infancy, childhood, youth, and manhood were all pass'd on Long Island, which I sometimes feel as if I had incorporated."

Like Mark Twain, Walt Whitman received from the schools only a common education but from life he had an uncommon training. His chief education came from associating with all sorts and conditions of people. In Brooklyn he worked as a printer, carpenter, and editor. His closest friends were the pilots and deck hands of ferry boats, the drivers of New York City omnibuses, factory hands, and sailors. After he had become well known, he was unconventional enough to sit with a street car driver in front of a grocery store in a crowded city and eat a watermelon. When people smiled, he said, "They can have the laugh—we have the melon."



His Suffolk County life might have left him democratic but insular; but he traveled widely and gained cosmopolitan experience. In 1848 he went leisurely to New Orleans, where he edited a newspaper, but in a short time he journeyed north along the Mississippi, traveled in Canada, and finally returned to New York, having completed a trip of eight thousand miles.

After his return, he seems to have worked with his father in Brooklyn for about three years, building and selling houses. He was then also engaged on a collection of poems, which, in 1855, he published under the title of Leaves of Grass. From this time he was known as an author.

In 1862 he went South to nurse his brother, who was wounded in the Civil War. For nearly three years, the poet served as a volunteer nurse in the army hospitals in Washington and its vicinity. Few good Samaritans have performed better service. He estimated that he attended on the field and in the hospital eighty thousand of the sick and wounded. In after days many a soldier testified that his recovery was aided by Whitman's kindly ministrations. Finally, however, his own iron constitution gave way under this strain.

When the war closed, he was given a government clerkship in Washington, but was dismissed in 1865, because of hostility aroused by his Leaves of Grass. He soon received another appointment, however, which he held until 1873, when a stroke of paralysis forced him to relinquish his position. He went to Camden, New Jersey, where he lived the life of a semi-invalid during the rest of his existence, writing as his health would permit. He died in 1892, and was buried in Harleigh Cemetery, near Camden.

POETRY.—Whitman gave to the world in 1855 the first edition of the poems, which he called Leaves of Grass. His favorite expression, "words simple as grass," and his line:—

"I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars,"

give a clue to the idea which prompted the choice of such an unusual title. He continued to add to these poems during the rest of his life, and he published in 1892 the tenth edition of Leaves of Grass, in a volume containing four hundred and twenty-two closely printed octavo pages.

Whitman intended Leaves of Grass to be a realistic epic of American democracy. He tried to sing this song as he heard it echoed in the life of man and man's companion, Nature. While many of Whitman's poems have the most dissimilar titles, and record experiences as unlike as his early life on Long Island, his dressing of wounds during the Civil War, his comradeship with the democratic mass, his almost Homeric communion with the sea, and his memories of Lincoln, yet according to his scheme, all of this verse was necessary to constitute a complete song of democracy. His poem, I Hear America Singing, shows the variety that he wished to give to his democratic songs:—

"I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear, Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong, The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam, The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work, The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck, The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he stands, The woodcutter's song, the ploughboy's on his way in the morning, or at noon intermission or at sundown, The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of the girl sewing or washing, Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else."

His ambition was to put human life in America "freely, fully, and truly on record."

His longest and one of his most typical poems in this collection is called Song of Myself, in which he paints himself as a representative member of the democratic mass. He says:—

"Agonies are one of my changes of garments, I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person, My hurts turn livid upon me as I lean on a cane and observe. * * * * * Not a youngster is taken for larceny but I go up too, and am tried and sentenced."

In these four lines, he states simply what must be the moving impulse of a democratic government if it is to survive. Here is the spirit that is to-day growing among us, the spirit that forbids child labor, cares for orphans, enacts model tenement laws, strives to regenerate the slum districts, and is increasing the altruistic activities of clubs and churches throughout the country. But these verses will not submit to iambic or trochaic scansion, and their form is as strange as a democratic government was a century and a half ago to the monarchies of Europe. Place these lines beside the following couplet from Pope:—

"Self-love and Reason to one end aspire, Pain their aversion, Pleasure their desire."

Here the scansion is regular, the verse polished, the thought undemocratic. The world had long been used to such regular poetry. The form of Whitman's verse came as a distinct shock to the majority.

Sometimes what he said was a greater shock, as, for instance, the line:—

"I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world."

For a considerable time many people knew Whitman by this one line alone. They concluded that he was a barbarian and that all that he said was "yawp." Although much of his work certainly deserved this characterization, yet those who persisted in reading him soon discovered that their condemnation was too sweeping, as most were willing to admit after they had read, for instance, When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd, a poem that Swinburne called "the most sonorous nocturn yet chanted in the church of the world." The three motifs of this song are the lilac, the evening star, and the hermit thrush:—

"Lilac and star and bird twined with the chant of my soul, There in the fragrant pines and the cedars dusk and dim."

In the same class we may place such poems as Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking, where we listen to a song as if from

"Out of the mocking-bird's throat, the musical shuttle."

Whitman also wrote in almost regular meter his dirge on Lincoln, the greatest dirge of the Civil War:—

"O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done, The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won, The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting."

In 1888 Whitman wrote that "from a worldly and business point of view, Leaves of Grass has been worse than a failure—that public criticism on the book and myself as author of it yet shows mark'd anger and contempt more than anything else." But he says that he had comfort in "a small band of the dearest friends and upholders ever vouchsafed to man or cause." He was also well received in England. He met with cordial appreciation from Tennyson. John Addington Symonds (1840-1893), a graduate of Oxford and an authority on Greek poetry and the Renaissance, wrote, "Leaves of Grass, which I first read at the age of twenty-five, influenced me more, perhaps, than any other book has done except the Bible; more than Plato, more than Goethe." Had Whitman lived until 1908, he would probably have been satisfied with the following statement from his biographer, Bliss Perry, formerly professor of English at Princeton, "These primal and ultimate things Whitman felt as few men have ever felt them, and he expressed them, at his best, with a nobility and beauty such as only the world's very greatest poets have surpassed."

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS. His most pronounced single characteristic is his presentation of democracy:—

"Stuff'd with the stuff that is coarse and stuff'd with the stuff that is fine."

He said emphatically, "Without yielding an inch, the working man and working woman were to be in my pages from first to last." He is the only American poet of his rank who remained through life the close companion of day laborers. Yet, although he is the poet of democracy, his poetry is too difficult to be read by the masses, who are for the most part ignorant of the fact that he is their greatest representative poet.

He not only preached democracy, but he also showed in practical ways his intense feeling of comradeship and his sympathy with all. One of his favorite verses was

"And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral drest in his shroud."

His Civil War experiences still further intensified this feeling. He looked on the lifeless face of a son of the South, and wrote:—

"... my enemy is dead, a man divine as myself is dead."

Like Thoreau, Whitman welcomed the return to nature. He says:—

"I am enamour'd of growing out-doors, Of men that live among cattle or taste of the ocean or woods."

He is the poet of nature as well as of man. He tells us how nature educated him:—

"The early lilacs became part of this child, And grass and white and red morning-glories, and white and red clover, and the song of the phoebe-bird, And the Third-month lambs and the sow's pink-faint litter, and the mare's foal and the cow's calf."

He delights us

"... with meadows, rippling tides and trees and flowers and grass, And the low hum of living breeze—and in the midst God's beautiful eternal right hand."

No American poet was more fond of the ocean. Its aspect and music, more than any other object of nature, influenced his verse. He addresses the sea in lines like these:—

"With husky-haughty lips, O sea! Where day and night I wend thy surf-beat shore, Imaging to my sense thy varied strange suggestions, (I see and plainly list thy talk and conference here,) Thy troops of white-maned racers racing to the goal, Thy ample, smiling face, dash'd with the sparkling dimples of the sun."

He especially loves motion in nature. His poetry abounds in the so-called motor images. [Footnote: For a discussion of the various types of images of the different poets, see the author's Education of the Central Nervous System, Chaps. VII., VIII., IX., X.] He takes pleasure in picturing a scene

"Where the heifers browse, where geese nip their food with short jerks,"

or in watching

"The white arms out in the breakers tirelessly tossing."

While his verse is fortunately not without idealistic touches, his poetic theory is uncompromisingly realistic, as may be seen in his critical prose essays, some of which deserve to rank only a little below those of Lowell and Poe. Whitman says:—

"For grounds for Leaves of Grass, as a poem, I abandoned the conventional themes, which do not appear in it: none of the stock ornamentation, or choice plots of love or war, or high exceptional personages of Old-World song; nothing, as I may say, for beauty's sake—no legend or myth or romance, nor euphemism, nor rhyme."

His unbalanced desire for realism led him into two mistakes. In the first place, his determination to avoid ornamentation often caused him to insert in his poems mere catalogues of names, which are not bound together by a particle of poetic cement. The following from his Song of Myself is an instance:—

"Land of coal and iron! land of gold! land of cotton, sugar, rice! Land of wheat, beef, pork! land of wool and hemp! land of the apple and the grape!"

In the second place, he thought that genuine realism forbade his being selective and commanded him to put everything in his verse. He accordingly included some offensive material which was outside the pale of poetic treatment. Had he followed the same rule with his cooking, his chickens would have been served to him without removing the feathers. His refusal to eliminate unpoetic material from his verse has cost him very many readers.

He further concluded that it was unfitting for a democratic poet to be hampered by the verse forms of the Old World. He discarded rhyme almost entirely, but he did employ rhythm, which is determined by the tone of the ideas, not by the number of syllables. This rhythm is often not evident in a single line, but usually becomes manifest as the thought is developed. His verse was intended to be read aloud or chanted. He himself says that his verse construction is "apparently lawless at first perusal, although on closer examination a certain regularity appears, like the recurrence of lesser and larger waves on the seashore, rolling in without intermission, and fitfully rising and falling." There is little doubt that he carried in his ear the music of the waves and endeavored to make his verse in some measure conform to that. He says specifically that while he was listening to the call of a seabird

"... on Paumanok's [Footnote: The Indian name for Long Island.] gray beach, With the thousand responsive songs at random, My own songs awaked from that hour, And with them the key, the word up from the waves."

In ideals he is most like Emerson. Critics have called Whitman a concrete translation of Emerson, and have noticed that he practiced the independence which Emerson preached in the famous lecture on The American Scholar (p. 185). In 1855 Emerson wrote to Whitman: "I am not blind to the worth of the wonderful gift of Leaves of Grass. I find it the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed."

Whitman is America's strangest compound of unfiltered realism, alloyed with rich veins of noble idealism. No students of American democracy, its ideals and social spirit, can afford to leave him unread. He sings, "unwarped by any influence save democracy,"

"Of Life, immense in passion, pulse, and power, Cheerful, for freest action form'd under the laws divine."

Intelligent sympathy with the humblest, the power to see himself "in prison shaped like another man and feel the dull unintermitted pain," prompts him to exclaim:—

"I seize the descending man and raise him with resistless will."

An elemental poet of democracy, embodying its faults as well as its virtues, Whitman is noteworthy for voicing the new social spirit on which the twentieth century is relying for the regeneration of the masses.

SUMMARY

American fiction had for the most part been romantic from its beginning until the last part of the nineteenth century. Charles Brockden Brown, Irving, Cooper, Hawthorne, Poe, Bret Harte, and Mark Twain were all tinged with romanticism. In the latter part of the last century, there arose a school of realists who insisted that life should be painted as it is, without any addition to or subtraction from reality. This school did not ask, "Is the matter interesting or exciting?" but, "Is it true to life?"

Howells and James were the leaders of the realists. Howells uses everyday incidents and conversations. James not infrequently takes unusual situations, so long as they conform to reality, and subjects them to the most searching psychological analysis. Mary Wilkins Freeman, a pupil of Howells, shows exceptional skill in depicting with realistic interest the humble life of provincial New England. While this school did not turn all writers into extreme realists, its influence was felt on the mass of contemporary fiction.

Walt Whitman brings excessive realism into the form and matter of verse. For fear of using stock poetic ornaments, he sometimes introduces mere catalogues of names, uninvested with a single poetic touch. He is America's greatest poet of democracy. His work is characterized by altruism, by all-embracing sympathy, by emphasis on the social side of democracy, and by love of nature and the sea.

REFERENCES

Stanton's A Manual of American Literature.

Alden's Magazine Writing and the New Literature.

Perry's A Study of Prose Fiction, Chap. IX., Realism.

Howells's Criticism and Fiction.

Burt and Howells's The Howells Story Book. (Contains biographical matter.)

Henry James's The Art of Fiction.

Phelps's William Dean Howells, in Essays on Modern Novelists.

Brownell's Henry James, in American Prose Masters.

Canby's The Short Story in English. (James.)

Whitman's Leaves of Grass (1897), 446 pp. (Contains all of his poems, the publication of which was authorized by himself.)

Triggs's Selections from the Prose and Poetry of Walt Whitman. (The best for general readers.)

Perry's Walt Whitman, his Life, and Work. (Excellent.)

G. R. Carpenter's Walt Whitman.

Platt's Walt Whitman. (Beacon Biographies)

Noyes's An Approach to Walt Whitman. (Excellent.)

Bucke's Walt Whitman. (A biography by one of his executors.)

In Re Walt Whitman, edited by his literary executors. (Supplements Bucke.)

Burroughs's Whitman: A Study.

Symonds's Walt Whitman: A Study.

Dowden's The Poetry of Democracy, in Studies in Literature.

Stevenson's Familiar Studies of Men and Books. (Whitman.)

Whitman's Works, edited by Triggs. (Putnam Subscription Edition.) Vol. X. contains a bibliography and reference list of 98 pp.

SUGGESTED READINGS

THE PROSE REALISTS.—Sections II., XV., and XXVIII., from Howells's Criticism and Fiction. Silas Lapham is the best of his novels. Those who desire to read more should consult the list on p. 373 of this book.

In Henry James, read either The Portrait of a Lady or Roderick Hudson. A Passionate Pilgrim, and The Madonna of the Future are two of his best short stories.

Read any or all of these short stories by Mary Wilkins Freeman: A New England Nun, A Gala Dress, in the volume, A New England Nun and Other Stories, Evelina's Garden, in the volume, Silence and Other Stories. Her best long novel is Pembroke.

WALT WHITMAN.—While the majority of his poems should be left for mature years, the following, carefully edited by Triggs in his volume of Selections, need not be deferred:—

Song of Myself, Triggs, pp. 105-120. (Begin with the line on p. 105, "A child said, What is the Grass?"), Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking, pp. 154-160, I Hear America Singing, p. 100, Reconciliation p. 175, O Captain! My Captain, p. 184, When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed, pp. 176-184, Patrolling Barnegat, p. 163, With Husky-Haughty Lips, O Sea! p. 232.

Selections from his prose, including Specimen Days, Memoranda of the War, and his theories of art and poetry, may be found in Triggs, pp. 3-95.

QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS

THE PROSE REALISTS.—To what school did the best writers in American fiction belong, prior to the last quarter of the nineteenth century? What was the subject of each? What is the realistic theory advanced by Howells? In what respects does this differ from the practice of the romantic school?

Take any chapter of Silas Lapham and of either The Portrait of a Lady, or of Roderick Hudson, and show how Howells and James differ from the romanticists. What difference do you notice in the realistic method and in the style of Howells and of James?

What special qualities characterize the work of Mary Wilkins Freeman? What is the secret of her success in so employing a little realistic incident as to hold the reader's attention? Compare the two short stories, The Madonna of the Future (James) and A New England Nun (Wilkins Freeman) and show how James's interest lies in the subtle psychological problem, while Mrs. Freeman's depends on the unfolding of simple emotions. It will also be found interesting to compare the method of that early English realist Jane Austen, e.g. in her novel Emma, with the work of the American realists.

In general, do you think that the romantic or the realistic school has the truer conception of the mission and art of fiction? Why is it desirable that each school should hold the other in check?

WALT WHITMAN.—How did his early life prepare him to be the poet of democracy? To what voices does he specially listen in his poem, I Hear America Singing? In his Song of Myself, point out some passages that show the modern spirit of altruism. In Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking, what lines best show his lyric gift? What individual objects stand out most strongly and poetically? Could this poem have been written by one reared in the middle West? Why does he select the lilacs, evening star, and hermit thrush, as the motifs of the poem, When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd? In Patrolling Barnegat, do you notice any resemblance to Anglo-Saxon poetry of the sea, e.g. to Beowulf or The Seafarer? In With Husky-Haughty Lips, O Sea! what touches are unlike those of Anglo-Saxon poets? (See the author's History of English Literature, pp. 21, 25, 33, 35, 37.) Which of Whitman's references to nature do you consider the most poetic? How does O Captain! My Captain! differ in form from the other poems indicated for reading? What qualities in his verse impress you most?



A GLANCE BACKWARD

Lack of originality is a frequent charge against young literatures, but the best foreign critics have testified to the originality of the Knickerbocker Legend, of Leatherstocking, of the great Puritan romances, in which the Ten Commandments are the supreme law, of the work of that southern wizard who has taught a great part of the world the art of the modern short story and who has charmed the ear of death with his melodies, of America's unique humor, so conspicuous in the service of reform and in rendering the New World philosophy doubly impressive.

American literature has not only produced original work, but it has also delivered a worthy message to humanity. Franklin has voiced an unsurpassed philosophy of the practical. Emerson is a great apostle of the ideal, an unexcelled preacher of New World self-reliance. His teachings, which have become almost as widely diffused as the air we breathe, have added a cubit to the stature of unnumbered pupils. We still respond to the half Celtic, half Saxon, song of one of these:—

"Luck hates the slow and loves the bold, Soon come the darkness and the cold."

American poets and prose writers have disclosed the glory of a new companionship with nature and have shown how we,

"... pocketless of a dime may purchase the pick of the earth."

After association with them, we also feel like exclaiming:—

"Earth of the vitreous pour of the full moon just tinged with blue! ... rich apple-blossom'd earth! Smile, for your lover comes."

No other literature has so forcibly expressed such an inspiring belief in individuality, the aim to have each human being realize that this plastic world expects to find in him an individual hero. Emerson emphasized "the new importance given to the single person." No philosophy of individuality could be more explicit than Walt Whitman's:—

"The whole theory of the universe is directed unerringly to one single individual,—namely to You."

This emphasis on individuality is an added incentive to try "to yield that particular fruit which each was created to bear." We feel that the universe is our property and that we shall not stop until we have a clear title to that part which we desire. As we study this literature, the moral greatness of the race seems to course afresh through our veins, and our individual strength becomes the strength of ten.

No other nation could have sung America's song of democracy:—

"Stuff'd with the stuff that is coarse and stuff'd with the stuff that is fine."

The East and the West have vied in singing the song of a new social democracy, in holding up as an ideal a

"... love that lives On the errors it forgives,"

in teaching each mother to sing to her child:—

"Thou art one with the world—though I love thee the best, And to save thee from pain, I must save all the rest. Thou wilt weep; and thy mother must dry The tears of the world, lest her darling should cry."

True poets, like the great physicians, minister to life by awakening faith. The singers of New England have made us feel that the Divine Presence stands behind the darkest shadow, that the feeble hands groping blindly in the darkness will touch God's strengthening right hand. Amid the snows of his Northland, Whittier wrote:—

"I know not where his islands lift Their fronded palms in air; I only know I cannot drift Beyond his love and care."

Lanier calls from the southern marshes, fringed with the live oaks "and woven shades of the vine":—

"I will fly in the greatness of God as the marsh-hen flies In the freedom that fills all the space 'twixt the marsh and the skies: By so many roots as the marsh-grass sends in the sod I will heartily lay me a-hold on the greatness of God."

The impressive moral lesson taught by American literature is a presence not to be put by. Lowell's utterance is typical of our greatest authors:—

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

Hawthorne wrote his great masterpiece to express this central truth:—

"To the untrue man, the whole universe is false,—it is impalpable,— it shrinks to nothing within his grasp."

Finally, American literature has striven to impress the truth voiced in these lines:—

"As children of the Infinite Soul Our Birthright is the boundless whole....

"High truths which have not yet been dreamed, Realities of all that seemed....

"No fate can rob the earnest soul Of his great Birthright in the boundless whole!"



SUPPLEMENTARY LIST OF AUTHORS AND THEIR CHIEF WORKS

[Footnote: For a complete record of the work of contemporary authors, consult Who's Who in America.]

EASTERN AUTHORS

ABBOTT, JACOB (1803-1879), b. Hallowell, Maine. One of America's most voluminous writers on all classes of popular subjects. He wrote one hundred and eighty volumes and aided in the preparation of thirty-one more. Illustrated Histories, The Rollo Books.

ADAMS, HENRY (1838- ), b. Boston, Mass. Historian. History of the United States from 1801 to 1817, that is, under Jefferson's and Madison's administrations. 9 vols. Excellent for this important period.

ALCOTT, LOUISA MAY (1832-1888), b. Germantown, Pa. Daughter of Amos Bronson Alcott. Writer of wholesome, humorous, and interesting stories for young people. Little Women, An Old-Fashioned Girl, Eight Cousins, Rose in Bloom.

ALLSTON, WASHINGTON (1779-1843), b. Waccamaw, S. C. Moved to New England and graduated at Harvard in 1800. Artist; early poet of Wordsworthian school. The Sylphs of the Seasons, and Other Poems.

AMES, FISHER (1758-1808), b. Dedham, Mass. Orator, statesman. Best speech, On the British Treaty (1796).

AUSTIN, JANE G. (1831-1894), b. Worcester, Mass. Novelist of early colonial New England. Standish of Standish, Betty Alden, Dr. Le Baron and his Daughters, A Nameless Nobleman, David Alden's Daughter, and Other Stories of Colonial Times.

BACHELLER, IRVING (1859- ), b. Pierrepont, N. Y. Novelist. Eben Holden, D'ri and I, Darrel of the Blessed Isles.

BANCROFT, GEORGE (1800-1891), b. Worcester, Mass. Historian, diplomatist. History of the United States, from the Discovery of the Continent to the Establishment of the Constitution in 1789, 6 vols. History of the Formation of the Constitution of the United States, 2 vols. Covers the period to the inauguration of Washington. The volumes on the Revolutionary War and the formation of the Constitution are the best part of the work. While Bancroft's improved methods of research among original authorities almost entitle him to be called the founder of the new American school of historical writing, yet the best critics do not to-day consider his work scientific. They regard it more as an apotheosis of democracy, written by a man who loved truth intensely, who shirked no drudgery in original investigations, but who shows the strong bias of the days of Andrew Jackson in the tendency to believe that what democracy does is almost necessarily right.

BANGS, JOHN KENDRICK (1862- ), b. Yonkers, N. Y. Humorist. House-Boat on the Styx, The Idiot at Home, A Rebellious Heroine.

BARR, AMELIA E. (1831- ), b. Ulverston, Lancashire, Eng. Anglo-American novelist. A Bow of Orange Ribbon, Jan Vedder's Wife, A Daughter of Fife, and Between Two Loves.

BATES, ARLO (1850- ), b. East Machias, Me. Educator, author. Under the Beech Tree (poems), Talks on the Study of Literature.

BEDOTT, WIDOW. See WHITCHER, FRANCES.

BEECHER, HENRY WARD (1813-1887), b. Litchfield, Conn. Congregational clergyman, widely popular as a preacher and lecturer. Delivered noted anti-slavery lectures in England. Some of his published works are Eyes and Ears, Life Thoughts, Star Papers, Yale Lectures on Preaching.

"BILLINGS, JOSH." See SHAW, HENRY WHEELER.

BOKER, GEO. H. (1823-1890), b. Philadelphia, Pa. Dramatist, poet, diplomat. Francesca da Rimini, Dirge for a Soldier.

"BREITMANN, HANS." See LELAND, CHARLES GODFREY.

BROOKS, PHILLIPS (1835-1893), b. Boston, Mass. Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts. One of the foremost preachers of his day. Wrote many works on religious subjects, also Essays and Addresses, Letters of Travel.

BROWN, ALICE (1857- ), b. Hampton Falls, N. H. Novelist, The Story of Thyrza, John Winterburn's Family, Country Neighbors, Tiverton Tales, The Mannerings.

BROWNE, CHARLES F. ("Artemus Ward") (1834-1867), b. Waterford, Maine. Newspaper writer and lecturer. Famous humorist of the middle of the nineteenth century. Artemus Ward: His Book, Artemus Ward: His Travels, Artemus Ward in London.

BROWNSON, ORESTES A. (1803-1876), b. Stockbridge, Vt. Clergyman, journalist, Christian socialist. Brownson's Quarterly Review (1844-1875), New Views of Christianity, Society, and the Church.

BUNNER, HENRY CUYLER (1855-1896), b. Oswego, N. Y. Editor of Puck for many years. A clever and successful short-story writer. Short Sixes, Love in Old Cloathes, Zadoc Pine and Other Stories.

BURROUGHS, JOHN (1837- ), b. Roxbury, N. Y. An exact observer of life in the woods and one of the most conservative and entertaining writers on nature. He tells only what he sees and does not draw on his fancy to endow animals with man's power to reason. Some of his nature books are: Wake-Robin, Signs and Seasons, Pepacton, Riverby, Locusts and Wild Honey, Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers. Indoor Studies and Whitman, A Study, show keen critical powers and genuine literary appreciation. Burroughs reminds the reader of Thoreau in closeness of observation and honesty of expression, but Burroughs is less of a philosopher and poet and more of a scientist.

CARY, ALICE (1820-1871) and her sister Phoebe Gary (1824-1871), b. Miami Valley, near Cincinnati, Ohio. Moved to New York, N. Y. Poets. Poems by Alice and Phoebe Cary.

CHAMBERS, ROBERT W. (1865- ), b. Brooklyn, N. Y. Author of exciting romances. The Red Republic, A King and a Few Dukes, The Conspirators.

CHARMING, WILLIAM ELLERY (1780-1842), b. Newport, R. I. Great Unitarian preacher and reformer. Spiritual Freedom, Evidences of Christianity and of Revealed Religion, Self-Culture, Slavery.

CHILD, LYDIA MARIA (1802-1880), b. Medford, Mass. Novelist, editor. Hobomok, a story of life in colonial Salem; The Rebels, a tale of the Revolution, introduces James Otis, Governor Hutchinson, and the Boston Massacre; Appeal for that Class of Americans called Africans.

CHURCHILL, WINSTON (1871- ), b. St. Louis, Mo. Home in Cornish, N. H. Novelist. Richard Carvel, The Crisis, and The Crossing are interesting novels of American historical events. Mr. Crewe's Career.

CLARKE, JAMES FREEMAN (1810-1888), b. Hanover, N. H. Noted Unitarian clergyman. Orthodoxy: Its Truths and Errors, Ten Great Religions, Self-Culture.

CONE, HELEN GRAY (1859- ), b. New York, N. Y. Poet. Oberon and Puck, The Ride to the Lady, Verses Grave and Gay.

COOKE, ROSE TERRY (1827-1892), b. West Hartford, Conn. Poet and short-story writer. The Two Villages is her best-known poem, and The Deacon's Week one of her best stories.

CRAIGIE, PEARL MARY TERESA ("John Oliver Hobbes") (1867-1906), b. Boston, Mass. Novelist. School for Saints, The Herb Moon, The Flute of Pan, The Tales of John Oliver Hobbes.

CRANCH, CHRISTOPHER PEARSE (1813-1892), b. Alexandria, Va. Educated in Massachusetts. Artist, transcendental poet, and contributor to The Dial. Best poems, Gnosis, I in Thee.

CRANE, STEPHEN (1870-1900), b. Newark, N. J. Novelist. The Red Badge of Courage is a remarkable romance of the American Civil War.

CRAWFORD, FRANCIS MARION (1854-1909), b. Bagni di Lucca, Italy. Voluminous writer of novels and romances. Some are historical, and the scenes of the best of them are laid in Italy. He wrote his Zoroaster and Marzio's Crucifix in both English and French, and received a reward of one thousand francs from the French Academy. Saracinesca, Sant' Ilario, and Don Orsino, a trio of novels about one Roman family, and Katherine Lauderdale and its sequel, The Ralstons, are among his best works.

CURTIS, GEORGE WILLIAM (1824-1892), b. Providence, R. I. Literary and political essayist, civil service reformer, and critic. Was a resident in his youth at Brook Farm. Spent four years of his early life in foreign travel. Nile Notes of a Howadji and The Howadji in Syria are poetic descriptions of his trip. His masterpiece is Prue and I, a prose idyl of simple, contented, humble life. The largest part of his work was done as editor. He was editor of Putnam's Magazine at the time of its failure in 1857, and undertook to pay up every creditor, a task which consumed sixteen years. He wrote the Easy Chair papers in Harper's Monthly. A volume of these essays contains some of his easiest, most urbane, and humorous writings. They are light and in the vein of Addison's Spectator. In Orations and Addresses are to be found some of his strongest and most polished speeches on moral, historical, and political subjects.

DANA, RICHARD HENRY, SR. (1787-1879), b. Cambridge, Mass. Author, diplomat, judge. Co-editor North American Review when it published Bryant's Thanatopsis. Champion of the romantic school of Wordsworth and Coleridge. Dana's best known poem, The Buccaneer, shows the influence of this school.

DANA, RICHARD HENRY, JR. (1815-1882), b. Cambridge, Mass. Lawyer, statesman, author. His Two Years before the Mast keeps, its place among the best books written for boys during the nineteenth century. The British admiralty officially adopted this book for circulation in the navy.

DAVIS, RICHARD HARDING (1864-1916), b. Philadelphia, Pa. Journalist, playwright, novelist. Best works are short stones of New York life, such as Van Bibber and Others, Gallegher and Other Stories. The Bar Sinister, which holds boys spellbound, is an excellent story of a dog.

DELAND, MARGARETTA WADE (1857- ), b. Allegheny, Pa. Voluminous writer of stories. Old Chester Tales, Dr. Lavendar's People, John Ward, Preacher.

DICKINSON, EMILY (1830-1886), b. Amherst, Mass. Author of unique short lyrics. Poems.

DICKINSON, JOHN (1732-1808), b. Crosia, Md. Statesman. The Farmer's Letters to the Inhabitants of the British Colonies.

DODGE, MARY MAPES (1838-1905), b. New York, N. Y. Editor of Saint Nicholas Magazine. Among her juvenile books may be mentioned Hans Brinker, Donald and Dorothy, The Land of Pluck.

DORR, JULIA C. R. (1825- ), b. Charleston, S. C. Moved to Vermont. Poet, novelist. Poems, In Kings' Houses, Farmingdale.

DWIGHT, JOHN S. (1813-1893), b. Boston, Mass. Musician, transcendentalist. Best poem, Rest, appeared in first number of The Dial.

EGAN, MAURICE FRANCIS (1852- ), b. Philadelphia, Pa. Diplomat, poet, essayist, novelist. Preludes, Songs and Sonnets, Lectures on English Literature, The Ghost of Hamlet.

EVERETT, EDWARD (1794-1865), b. Dorchester, Mass. Orator, statesman. Orations and Speeches.

FIELDS, JAMES T. (1817-1881), b. Portsmouth, N. H. Editor Atlantic Monthly and publisher. Yesterdays with Authors.

FISKE, JOHN (1842-1901), b. Hartford, Conn. Scientist and historian. His histories are both philosophical and interesting. The Critical Period of American History, The Beginnings of New England, The American Revolution, The Discovery of America.

FORD, PAUL LEICESTER (1865-1902), b. Brooklyn, N. Y. Novelist, historian. The Honorable Peter Stirling, Janice Meredith.

FOSTER, STEPHEN COLLINS (1826-1864), b. Pittsburgh, Pa. Writer of some of the most widely known songs of the nineteenth century. Old Folks at Home ("Down on the Suwanee River"), My Old Kentucky Home, Nellie was a Lady.

FREDERIC, HAROLD (1856-1898), b. Utica, N.Y. Novelist, journalist. The Damnation of Theron Ware, Gloria Mundi.

GILDER, RICHARD WATSON (1844-1909), b. Bordentown, N. J. Editor and poet. Editor of Century Magazine until his death. Poems: The New Day, Five Books of Song, For the Country.

GOODWIN, MAUD WILDER (1856- ), b. Ballston Spa, N. Y. Writer of romances, chiefly historical. The Colonial Cavalier, or Southern Life before the Revolution, Four Roads to Paradise.

GRANT, ROBERT (1852- ), b. Boston, Mass. Novelist, essayist, jurist. Confessions of a Frivolous Girl, An Average Man, The Art of Living.

GREELEY, HORACE (1811-1872), b. Amherst, N. H. Founder and editor of The Tribune, New York, N. Y. Exerted strong influence on the thought of his time. Recollections of a Busy Life.

GREEN, ANNA KATHARINE (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs) (1846- ), b. Brooklyn, N. Y. Voluminous writer of interesting detective stories, of which The Leavenworth Case is the most noted.

GUINEY, LOUISE IMOGEN (1861- ), b. Boston, Mass. Poet, essayist. The White Sail and Other Poems, A Roadside Harp, The Martyr's Idyl and Shorter Poems.

HALE, EDWARD EVERETT (1822-1909), b. Boston, Mass. Unitarian divine, author, philanthropist. Best known story, The Man without a Country. Wrote many miscellaneous essays.

HARDY, ARTHUR S. (1847- ), b. Andover, Mass. Educator, novelist, diplomat. But Yet a Woman, Wind of Destiny, Passe Rose.

HARLAND, HENRY ("Sidney Luska") (1861-1905), b. Petrograd, Russia. Novelist. The Cardinal's Snuff-Box, My Friend Prospero, The Lady Paramount.

HAWTHORNE, JULIAN (1846- ), b. Boston, Mass., son of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Novelist, essayist. Deserves to be called his father's Boswell for the excellent and sympathetic two volumes, entitled Nathaniel Hawthorne and his Wife.

HEDGE, FREDERICK H. (1805-1890), b. Cambridge, Mass. Clergyman, transcendentalist. Best poem, Questionings, appeared in The Dial.

HIGGINSON, THOMAS WENTWORTH (1823- ), b. Cambridge, Mass. Unitarian minister, prominent anti-slavery agitator, author. Life of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Cheerful Yesterdays, Contemporaries, Old Cambridge.

"HOBBES, JOHN OLIVER," See CRAIGIE, PEARL MARY TERESA.

HOLLAND, J. G. (1819-1881), b. Belchertown, Mass. Editor of the first series of Scribner's Monthly, wrote several poems, of which Bitter-Sweet was the most popular, and several novels, the best of which is Arthur Bonnicastle.

HOLLEY, MARIETTA (1850- ), b. Ellisburg, N. Y. Humorist, Author of Josiah Allen's Wife, My Opinions and Betsey Bobbet's, Sweet Cicely, Samantha at Saratoga, and Poems.

HOWARD, BLANCHE WILLIS (1847-1898), b. Bangor, Maine. Novelist. Guenn is an unusually strong novel. One Summer, Aunt Serena, and The Open Door are wholesome, pleasing stories.

HOWE, JULIA WARD (1819-1910), b. New York, N. Y. Philanthropist, author of the famous Battle Hymn of the Republic.

HUTCHINSON, THOMAS (1711-1780), b. Boston, Mass. America's greatest historical writer before the nineteenth century. His great work is The History of the Province of Massachusetts Bay.

IRELAND, JOHN (1838- ), b. Ireland. Roman Catholic archbishop. The Church and Modern Society.

JANVIER, THOMAS ALLIBONE (1849-1913), b. Philadelphia, Pa. Journalist and author. Color Studies, Stories of Old New Spain, An Embassy to Provence, The Passing of Thomas.

JEWETT, SARAH ORNE (1849-1909), b. South Berwick, Maine. Artistic novelist of old New England villages. Deephaven, The Country of the Pointed Firs, The Tory Lover. She shows a more genial side of New England life than Miss Wilkins gives.

KING, CHARLES (1844- ), b. Albany, N. Y. Soldier, novelist. A War-Time Wooing, The Colonel's Daughter, The Deserter, The General's Double.

KIRK, ELLEN OLNEY (1842- ), b. Southington, Conn. Novelist. Through Winding Ways, A Midsummer Madness, The Story of Margaret Kent, Marcia.

LARCOM, LUCY (1826-1893), b. Beverly Farms, Mass. A factory hand in Lowell, encouraged by Whittier to write. Poems; A New England Girlhood, Outlined from Memory.

LATHROP, GEORGE P. (1851-1898), b. Oahu, Hawaii. Son-in-law of Nathaniel Hawthorne, editor, author. A Study of Hawthorne, Spanish Vistas, Newport.

LAZARUS, EMMA (1849-1887), b. New York, N. Y. Poet, translator, essayist. Admetus, Songs of a Semite, Poems.

LELAND, CHARLES GODFREY ("Hans Breitmann") (1824-1903), b. Philadelphia, Pa. Humorist. Hans Breitmann's Ballads, written in what is known as Pennsylvania Dutch dialect.

LOCKE, DAVID ROSS ("Petroleum V. Nasby") (1833-1888), b. Vestal, N. Y. Political satirist. Nasby Letters.

LODGE, HENRY CABOT (1850- ), b. Boston, Mass. Statesman, historian, essayist. A Short History of the English Colonies in America, Alexander Hamilton, Daniel Webster, Studies in History, Hero Tales from American History (with Theodore Roosevelt).

"LUSKA, SIDNEY." See HARLAND, HENRY.

MABIE, HAMILTON W. (1846-1916), b. Cold Spring, N. Y. Editor, essayist. My Study Fire, William Shakespeare: Poet, Dramatist, and Man, Essays on Books and Culture.

MACKAYE, PERCY WALLACE (1875- ), b. New York, N. Y. Dramatist. Jeanne d'Arc, Sappho and Phaon, The Canterbury Pilgrims, Ticonderoga and Other Poems.

MCMASTER, JOHN BACH (1852- ), b. Brooklyn, N. Y. Historian and professor of American history. A History of the People of the United States from the Revolution to the Civil War. 7 vols. An entertaining history, sometimes suggestive of Macaulay.

MARKS, MRS. LIONEL. See PEABODY, JOSEPHINE PRESTON.

"MARVEL, IK." See MITCHELL, DONALD G.

MELVILLE, HERMAN (1819-1891), b. New York, N. Y. Novelist. Typee Omoo, Mardi, White Jacket or the World in a Man of War, Moby Dick or the White Whale contain interesting accounts of his wide travels.

MITCHELL, DONALD GRANT ("Ik Marvel") (1822-1908), b. Norwich, Conn. Essayist. Reveries of a Bachelor, Dream Life.

MITCHELL, S. WEIR (1829- ), b. Philadelphia, Pa. Physician, novelist, and poet. Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker; The Adventures of Francois; Dr. North and his Friends; and Constance Trescot.

MOORE, CLEMENT CLARKE (1779-1863), b. New York, N. Y. Oriental scholar and poet. Known to children to-day for his poem, 'Twas the Night before Christmas.

MOULTON, ELLEN LOUISE CHANDLER (1835-1908), b. Pomfret, Conn. Story writer, poet, correspondent. Some Women's Hearts, Swallow Flights and Other Poems, In Childhood's Country.

"NASBY, PETROLEUM V." See LOCKE, DAVID ROSS.

ODELL, JONATHAN (1737-1818), b. Newark, N.J. Clergyman, greatest anti-Revolution poetic satirist. Shows influence of Dryden and Pope. The American Congress, The American Times.

O'REILLY, JOHN BOYLE (1844-1890), b. Ireland. Journalist, poet. Songs, Legends and Ballads; Moondyne; Songs from the Southern Seas.

"PARTINGTON, MRS." See SHILLABER, BENJAMIN P.

PAULDING, JAMES KIRKE (1779-1860), b. Pleasant Valley, N.Y. Satirical humorist and descriptive writer. The Dutchman's Fireside. Assisted Irving in the Salmagundi papers.