whose lucid spirituality made the calm beauty of his words the fit reflection of a noble personality, which in our day strongly attracted the later and greater Quaker, Whittier. The more definitely literary endeavor was mostly feeble, the name of the French Crèvecœur having some significance because his "Letters for an American Farmer" are the first examples of sketches of native types and places by one whose point of view was comparative and his manner lively. Of poetry the quantity was satisfactory, if not the quality. Songs and ballads striking a popular note were numerous, lacking in art, but of a wholesome patriotism, and possessed of much more life than the jejune imitations of the style of Pope, Johnson, or Addison. Most worthy of mention in a sketch like this are Joel Barlow, John Trumbull, Timothy Dwight, and Philip Freneau. The two first named were of the little group residing in Hartford, Connecticut, and known as the "Hartford wits." Dwight was president of Yale, an ancestor of the later president of the same name, while Freneau, a Huguenot Frenchman by race, was a graduate of the college now known as Princeton, lived in New York and Philadelphia, and pursued the varied occupations of sea captain and editor. Trumbull was a learned lawyer and judge; he did much verse, in which the influence of Gray and Collins, as lyric models, was apparent. He wrote his best-known poem as a vigorous burlesque of epic style to satirize the Tories; its interest is of the time, and the nature of the subject precludes the performance from being American in any true sense. Dwight's chief contribution is also epic in form and serious in intention, "The Conquest of Canaan," whose eleven books are commonplace and respectable to a maddening degree. Barlow is an example of what often happens in poetry; his ponderous " Colum biad," in which the theme at least is properly native, is but a curiosity to-day, while his brief "Hasty Pudding" contains a genuine lively humor and picturesque accounts of native rural scenes, like the husking bee: contrary to the "Columbiad," the breath of life is in it, and the poem can still be read with some pleasure. Far above these other poets, or would-be poets, is Freneau. In spite of the fact that his work often seems a sort of sounding-board for the reduplication of the strains of standard masters, this singer possessed real imagination, and at times wore the singing robes with the true grace of the bard born not made. There are touches of nature description in his verse "The Wild Honeysuckle " is an example — which foretell Bryant. His somber "House of Night," most remarkable of his longer pieces, has here and there a haunting quality like that of Poe's, and could only have been produced by a man of genius for imaginative metrical expression. In a word, Freneau is the sole American poet who before the nineteenth century could fairly be given the name in its higher meaning. His "Wild Honeysuckle" is well worth quotation, and here follows: THE WILD HONEYSUCKLE Fair flower, that dost so comely grow, By Nature's self in white array'd, Thus quietly thy summer goes, Thy days declining to repose. Smit with those charms that must decay, They died nor were those flowers less gay, From morning suns and evening dews If nothing once, you nothing lose, That last line has a touch of the true magic of expression. From among his contemporaries who wrote prose, Benjamin Franklin towers as a very leviathan of the literary waters. His fame is so thoroughly fixed in our history, his activity took so many directions, that one has to detach his literary accomplishment from his reputation as editor, scientist, diplomat, educationist, philanthropist, and man of the world, in order to appreciate it. Franklin's life was a long one; he began early to express himself in print, and he was a voluminous writer who left many books. But his permanent contribution to our letters is to be found in "Poor Richard's Almanac," to which it may be well to add his "Autobiography," for an equivalent to which we have to come down to our own era and name that by General Grant. The "Almamay fairly be called an American classic of its kind; it lives to-day in many beautiful editions, and is widely read. Its rich common sense, its aphoristic wisdom, couched in rustic phrase and homely wisdom, pat and perfect for its nac purpose, and what is more, the revelation of some of the fundamental American traits thus early in our history, make it a valuable document in the case of American literature. The salt of its humor would alone preserve it. That such a work should be produced by the middle of the eighteenth century, argues strongly that an independent literature would spring up on this continent if only time were given it. Franklin is the embodiment of shrewd, sane, good sense; his morality is that of a town policeman; his doctrine is utilitarian; there is no height of aspiration or burst of poetry in him. He is worldly and other worldly rather than spiritual. But his time and his own life largely explain the mundane quality of his work. The eighteenth century in England was one of small ideas, or the lack of them, of urban thought and ways. The ethical writers were cold, narrow, and hard; it was an age of taste, wit, and elegance rather than of poetry and of passion. Franklin, like every other writer, felt the influence of the time and spirit; it is best to accept him in his limitations as well as in his unquestionable greatness. He is one of the sturdily salient figures, both in the life and letters of our early history, and certainly the most considerable man of letters before the year 1800. It is within the period of the republic, from 1789 to the present time, that the major triumphs of our literature have been won. Indeed, it is almost accurate to say that the writers who have made us famous and taken a fixed place in our galaxy fall after the opening of the nineteenth century. The exception best worth speaking of after Franklin is that of a man who may fitly be called the Father of American Fiction, Charles Brockden Brown. He was a Philadelphia recluse and scholar, who began to publish as early as 1797, and whose best-known novel, "Wieland," dates from 1798. Brown, though trained for the law, devoted himself to letters, edited magazines, and gave a rather pathetic example of a man who, in a day when literature as a profession hardly existed, tried to live by it, only to die before he was forty. Brown's "Wieland" is still read by students, and the general reader will at least find it interesting and powerful. The man's genius was exceptionally somber; he is the natural forerunner of Poe, a greater master of the weird and terrible. It is instructive to find a writer and thinker thus early making use of psychologic marvels in fiction, yet treating them as did Poe after him in the temper of the scientific investigator. Had Brown's fate fallen on more propitious times, he might have won a secure place in fiction; as it is, his importance historically in the evolution of American novel making is great, for he may be pointed to as the founder of serious fiction in this country. "Wieland" can be had in a good modern edition, with a brief introductory sketch of the author's life. But better days for literature were near at hand. Brown found himself practically alone and unencouraged in Philadelphia in his effort to produce worthy imaginative writing, but in New York, by the might of his genius, and upon seemingly barren ground, another writer of the early nineteenth century, and a greater, not only sowed seed that should make his name famous, but caused to spring up about him a school of New York literary men, so that the metropolis was regarded for years as the center of such activity. That man was Washington Irving, whom we shall now consider in full as our first American leader of literature. |