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

[Sidenote: DESCRIPTIVE POWER]

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

[Sidenote: MORAL QUALITY]

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

* * * * *

EDGAR ALLAN POE (1809-1849)

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

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

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

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



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

[Sidenote: POE'S SCHOOL DAYS]

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

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



[Sidenote: HIS WANDERINGS]

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

[Sidenote: FIRST SUCCESS]

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

[Sidenote: A LIFE OF FRAGMENTS]

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

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

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

[Sidenote: THEORY OF POETRY]

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

[Sidenote: THE RAVEN]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Sidenote: THE MAN AND HIS TIMES]

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

[Sidenote: GROUPS OF STORIES]

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

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

[Sidenote: WHAT TO READ]

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



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

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

[Sidenote: HIS METHOD]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

[Sidenote: CHIEF WRITERS]

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

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

[Sidenote: FOREIGN INFLUENCE]

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

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

Selections from Bryant, in Riverside Literature and Pocket Classics.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



CHAPTER III

THE PERIOD OF CONFLICT (1840-1876)

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

O'Hara, "The Bivouac of the Dead"

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

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



[Sidenote: THE AGE OF AGITATION]

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

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

[Sidenote: THE WIND AND THE WHIRLWIND]

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

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

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

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

[Sidenote: WIDENING HORIZONS]

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

[Sidenote: TRANSCENDENTALISM]

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

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

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

[Sidenote: MINOR WORKS]

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

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

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

[Sidenote: GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS]

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

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



[Sidenote: AN AGE OF POETRY]

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

* * * * *

THE GREATER POETS

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW (1807-1882)

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

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

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

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



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

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

[Sidenote: THE CALL OF BOOKS]

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

[Sidenote: YEARS OF TEACHING]

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

His literary work began with newspaper verses, the best of which appear in the "Earlier Poems" of his collected works. Next he attempted prose in his Outre Mer, Driftwood Essays and the romances Hyperion and Kavanagh. In 1839 appeared his first volume of poetry, Voices of the Night, after which few years went by without some notable poem or volume from Longfellow's pen. His last book, In the Harbor, appeared with the news of his death, in 1882.

[Sidenote: HIS SERENITY]

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

[Sidenote: HIS WORK AND INFLUENCE]

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

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

[Sidenote: VESPER SONGS]

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

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

[Sidenote: TYPICAL POEMS]

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

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

[Sidenote: EVANGELINE]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Sidenote: SONG OF HIAWATHA]

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

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



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

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

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

[Sidenote: A POET OF ALL PEOPLES]

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



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

[Sidenote: POETIC FAULTS]

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

* * * * *

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER (1807-1892)

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

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

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

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

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

[Sidenote: FIRST VERSES]

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



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

[Sidenote: STORM AND STRESS]

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



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

[Sidenote: PEACEFUL YEARS]

For the remainder of his life he lived serenely at Amesbury, for the most part, in a modest house presided over by a relative. He wrote poetry now more carefully, for a wider audience, and every few years saw another little volume added to his store: Ballads of New England, Miriam and Other Poems, Hazel Blossoms, Poems of Nature, St. Gregory's Quest, At Sundown. When he died (1892) he was honored not so widely perhaps as Longfellow, but more deeply, as we honor those whose peace has been won through manful strife. Holmes, the ready poet of all occasions, expressed a formal but sincere judgment in the lines:

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

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

[Sidenote: REFORM POEMS]

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

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

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



[Sidenote: PATRIOTIC QUALITY]

There is one quality, however, in which our Quaker poet resembles the old ballad makers, namely, his intense patriotism, and this recalls the fact that ballads were the first histories, the first expression not only of brave deeds but of the national pride which the deeds symbolized. Though Whittier keeps himself modestly in the background, as a story teller ought to do, he can never quite repress the love of his native land or the quickened heartbeats that set his verse marching as if to the drums. This patriotism, though intense, was never intolerant but rather sympathetic with men of other lands, as appears in "The Pipes at Lucknow", a ballad dealing with a dramatic incident of the Sepoy Rebellion. The Scotsman who could read that ballad unmoved, without a kindling of the eye or a stirring of the heart, would be unworthy of his clan or country.

Even better than Whittier's ballads are certain narrative poems reflecting the life of simple people, to which we give the name of idyls. "Telling the Bees," "In School Days," "My Playmate," "Maud Muller," "The Barefoot Boy,"—there are no other American poems quite like these, none so tender, none written with such perfect sympathy. Some of them are like photographs; and the lens that gathered them was not a glass but a human heart. Others sing the emotion of love as only Whittier, the Galahad of poets, could have sung it,—as in this stanza from "A Sea Dream":

Draw near, more near, forever dear! Where'er I rest or roam, Or in the city's crowded streets, Or by the blown sea foam, The thought of thee is home!

SNOW-BOUND. The best of Whittier's idyls is Snow-Bound (1866), into which he gathered a boy's tenderest memories. In naming this as the best poem in the language on the subject of home we do not offer a criticism but an invitation. Because all that is best in human life centers in the ideal of home, and because Whittier reflected that ideal in a beautiful way, Snow-Bound should be read if we read nothing else of American poetry. There is perhaps only one thing to prevent this idyl from becoming a universal poem: its natural setting can be appreciated only by those who live within the snow line, who have seen the white flakes gather and drift, confining every family to the circle of its own hearth fire in what Emerson calls "the tumultuous privacy of storm."

The plan of the poem is simplicity itself. It opens with a description of a snowstorm that thickens with the December night. The inmates of an old farmhouse gather about the open fire, and Whittier describes them one by one, how they looked to the boy (for Snow-Bound is a recollection of boyhood), and what stories they told to reveal their interests. The rest of the poem is a reverie, as of one no longer a boy, who looks into his fire and sees not the fire-pictures but those other scenes or portraits that are graved deep in every human heart.

[Sidenote: CHARM OF SNOW-BOUND]

To praise such a work is superfluous, and to criticize its artless sincerity is beyond our ability. Many good writers have explained the poem; yet still its deepest charm escapes analysis, perhaps because it has no name. The best criticism that the present writer ever heard on the subject came from a Habitant farmer in the Province of Quebec, a simple, unlettered man, who was a poet at heart but who would have been amazed had anyone told him so. His children, who were learning English literature through the happy medium of Evangeline and Snow-Bound, brought the latter poem home from school, and the old man would sit smoking his pipe and listening to the story. When they read of the winter scenes, of the fire roaring its defiance up the chimney-throat at the storm without,

What matter how the night behaved? What matter how the north-wind raved? Blow high, blow low, not all its snow Could quench our hearth-fire's ruddy glow,—

then he would stir in his chair, make his pipe glow fiercely, and blow a cloud of smoke about his head. But in the following scene, with its memories of the dead and its immortal hope, he would sit very still, as if listening to exquisite music. When asked why he liked the poem his face lighted: "W'y I lak heem, M'sieu Whittier? I lak heem 'cause he speak de true. He know de storm, and de leetle cabane, and heart of de boy an' hees moder. Oui, oui, he know de man also."

Nature, home, the heart of a boy and a man and a mother,—the poet who can reflect such elemental matters so that the simple of earth understand and love their beauty deserves the critic's best tribute of silence.

POEMS OF FAITH AND NATURE. Aside from the reform poems it is hard to group Whittier's works, which are all alike in that they portray familiar scenes against a natural background. In his Tent on the Beach (1867) he attempted a collection of tales in the manner of Longfellow's Wayside Inn, but of these only one or two ballads, such as "Abraham Davenport" and "The Wreck of Rivermouth," are now treasured. The best part of the book is the "Prelude," which pictures the poet among his friends and records his impressions of sky and sea and shore.

[Sidenote: TWO VIEWS OF NATURE]

The outdoor poems of Whittier are interesting, aside from their own beauty, as suggesting two poetic conceptions of nature which have little in common. The earlier regards nature as a mistress to be loved or a divinity to be worshiped for her own sake; she has her own laws or mercies, and man is but one of her creatures. The Anglo-Saxon scops viewed nature in this way; so did Bryant, in whose "Forest Hymn" is the feeling of primitive ages. Many modern poets (and novelists also, like Scott and Cooper) have outgrown this conception; they regard nature as a kind of stage for the drama of human life, which is all-important.

Whittier belongs to this later school; he portrays nature magnificently, but always as the background for some human incident, sad or tender or heroic, which appears to us more real because viewed in its natural setting. Note in "The Wreck of Rivermouth," for example, how the merry party in their sailboat, the mowers on the salt marshes, the "witch" mumbling her warning, the challenge of a careless girl, the skipper's fear, the river, the breeze, the laughing sea,—everything is exactly as it should be. It is this humanized view of the natural world which makes Whittier's ballads unique and which gives deeper meaning to his "Hampton Beach," "Among the Hills," "Trailing Arbutus," "The Vanishers" and other of his best nature poems.

[Sidenote: WHITTIER'S CREED]

Our reading of Whittier should not end until we are familiar with "The Eternal Goodness," "Trust," "My Soul and I," "The Prayer of Agassiz" and a few more of his hymns of faith. Our appreciation of such hymns will be more sympathetic if we remember, first, that Whittier came of ancestors whose souls approved the opening proposition of the Declaration of Independence; and second, that he belonged to the Society of Friends, who believed that God revealed himself directly to every human soul (the "inner light" they called it), and that a man's primal responsibility was to God and his own conscience. The creed of Whittier may therefore be summarized in two articles: "I believe in the Divine love and in the equality of men." The latter article appears in all his poems; the former is crystallized in "The Eternal Goodness," a hymn so trustful and reverent that it might well be the evensong of humanity.

CHARACTERISTICS OF WHITTIER. One may summarize Whittier in the statement that he is the poet of the home and the hills, and of that freedom without which the home loses its chief joy and the hill its inspiration. In writing of such themes Whittier failed to win the highest honors of a poet; and the failure was due not to his lack of culture, as is sometimes alleged (for there is no other culture equal to right living), but rather to the stern conditions of his life, to his devotion to duty, to his struggle for liberty, to his lifelong purpose of helping men by his singing. Great poems are usually the result of seclusion, of aloofness, but Whittier was always a worker in the world.

[Sidenote: A NATURAL SINGER]

His naturalness is perhaps his best poetic virtue. There is in his verse a spontaneous "singing" quality which leaves the impression that poetry was his native language. It is easy to understand why Burns first attracted him, for both poets were natural singers who remind us of what Bede wrote of Cadmon: "He learned not the art of poetry from men." Next to his spontaneity is his rare simplicity, his gift of speaking straight from a heart that never grew old. Sometimes his simplicity is as artless as that of a child, as in "Maud Muller"; generally it is noble, as in his modest "Proem" to Voices of Freedom; occasionally it is passionate, as in the exultant cry of "Laus Deo"; and at times it rises to the simplicity of pure art, as in "Telling the Bees." The last-named poem portrays an old Colonial custom which provided that when death came to a farmhouse the bees must be told and their hives draped in mourning. It portrays also, as a perfect, natural background, the path to Whittier's home and his sister's old-fashioned flower garden, in which the daffodils still bloom where she planted them long ago.

[Sidenote: THE MAN AND THE POET]

That Whittier was not a great poet, as the critics assure us, may be frankly admitted. That he had elements of greatness is also without question; and precisely for this reason, because his power is so often manifest in noble or exquisite passages, there is disappointment in reading him when we stumble upon bad rimes, careless workmanship, mishandling of his native speech. Our experience here is probably like that of Whittier's friend Garrison. The latter had read certain poems that attracted him; he came quickly to see the poet; and out from under the barn, his clothes sprinkled with hayseed, crawled a shy country lad who explained bashfully that he had been hunting hens' nests. Anything could be forgiven after that; interest in the boy would surely temper criticism of the poet.

Even so our present criticism of Whittier's verse must include certain considerations of the man who wrote it: that he smacked of his native soil; that his education was scanty and hardly earned; that he used words as his father and mother used them, and was not ashamed of their rural accent. His own experience, moreover, had weathered him until he seemed part of a rugged landscape. He knew life, and he loved it. He had endured poverty, and glorified it. He had been farm hand, shoemaker, self-supporting student, editor of country newspapers, local politician, champion of slaves, worker for reform, defender of a hopeless cause that by the awful judgment of war became a winning cause. And always and everywhere he had been a man, one who did his duty as he saw it, spake truth as he believed it, and kept his conscience clean, his heart pure, his faith unshaken. All this was in his verse and ennobled even his faults, which were part of his plain humanity. As Longfellow was by study of European literatures the poet of books and culture, so Whittier was by experience the poet of life. The homely quality of his verse, which endears it to common men, is explained on the ground that he was nearer than any other American poet to the body and soul of his countrymen.

* * * * *

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL (1819-1891)

The work of Lowell is unusual and his rank or position hard to define. Though never a great or even a popular writer, he was regarded for a considerable part of his life as the most prominent man of letters in America. At the present time his reputation is still large, but historians find it somewhat easier to praise his works than to read them. As poet, critic, satirist, editor and teacher he loomed as a giant among his contemporaries, overtopping Whittier and Longfellow at one time; but he left no work comparable to Snow-Bound or Hiawatha, and one is puzzled to name any of his poems or essays that are fairly certain to give pleasure. To read his volumes is to meet a man of power and brilliant promise, but the final impression is that the promise was not fulfilled, that the masterpiece of which Lowell was capable was left unwritten.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. Lowell came from a distinguished family that had "made history" in America. His father was a cultured clergyman; he grew up in a beautiful home, "Elmwood," in the college town of Cambridge; among his first companions were the noble books that filled the shelves of the family library. From the beginning, therefore, he was inclined to letters; and though he often turned aside for other matters, his first and last love was the love of poetry.

At fifteen he entered Harvard, where he read almost everything, he said, except the books prescribed by the faculty. Then he studied law and opened an office in Boston, where he found few clients, being more interested in writing verses than in his profession. With his marriage in 1844 the first strong purpose seems to have entered his indolent life. His wife was zealous in good works, and presently Lowell, who had gayly satirized all reformers, joined in the antislavery campaign and proceeded to make as many enemies as friends by his reform poems.



[Sidenote: VARIED TASKS]

Followed then a period of hard, purposeful work, during which he supported himself by editing The Pennsylvania Freeman and by writing for the magazines. In 1848, his banner year, he published his best volume of Poems, Sir Launfal, A Fable for Critics and the first series of The Biglow Papers. It was not these volumes, however, but a series of brilliant lectures on the English poets that caused Lowell to be called to the chair in Harvard which Longfellow had resigned. He prepared for this work by studying abroad, and for some twenty years thereafter he gave courses in English, Italian, Spanish and German literatures. For a part of this time he was also editor in turn of The Atlantic Monthly and The North American Review.

[Sidenote: LIFE ABROAD]

In the simpler days of the republic, when the first question asked of a diplomat was not whether he had money enough to entertain society in a proper style, the profession of letters was honored by sending literary men to represent America in foreign courts, and Lowell's prominence was recognized by his appointment as ambassador to Spain (1877) and to England (1880). It was in this patriotic service abroad that he won his greatest honors. In London especially he made his power felt as an American who loved his country, as a democrat who believed in democracy, and as a cultured gentleman who understood Anglo-Saxon life because of his familiarity with the poetry in which that life is most clearly reflected. Next to keeping silence about his proper business, perhaps the chief requirement of an ambassador is to make speeches about everything else, and no other foreign speaker was ever listened to with more pleasure than the witty and cultured Lowell. One who summed up his diplomatic triumph said tersely that he found the Englishmen strangers and left them all cousins.