Outlines of English and American Literature Part 56

For other romances of the period we have no convenient term except to call them old-fas.h.i.+oned. Such, for instance, are Blanche Willis Howard's _One Summer_ and Arthur Sherburne Hardy's _Pa.s.se Rose_ and _But Yet a Woman_,--pleasant, leisurely, exquisitely finished romances, which belong to no particular time or place and which deserve the fine old name of romance, because they seem to grow young rather than old with the pa.s.sing years.

POETRY SINCE 1876. It is commonly a.s.sumed that the last half century has been almost exclusively an age of prose. The student of literature knows, on the contrary, that one difficulty of judging our recent poetry lies in the amount and variety of it. Since 1876 more poetry has been published here than in all the previous years of our history; and the quality of it, if one dare judge it as a whole, is surprisingly good. The designation of "the prose age," therefore, should not blind us to the fact that America never had so many poets as at present. Whether a future generation will rank any of these among our elder poets is another question. Of late years we have had no singer to compare with Longfellow, to be sure; but we have had a dozen singers who reflect the enlarging life of America in a way of which Longfellow never dreamed. He lived mostly in the past and was busy with legends, folklore, songs of the night; our later singers live in the present and write songs of the day. And this suggests the chief characteristic of recent poetry; namely, that it aims to be true to life as it is here and now rather than to life as it was romantically supposed to be in cla.s.sic or medieval times. [Footnote: The above characterization applies only to the best, or to what most critics deem best, of our recent poetry. It takes no account of a large ma.s.s of verse which leaves an impression of faddishness in the matter of form or phrase or subject. Such verse appeals to the taste of the moment, but Time has an effective way of dealing with it and with all other insincerities in literature.]

This emanc.i.p.ation of our poetry from the past, with the loss and gain which such a change implies, was not easily accomplished, and the terrible reality of the great war was perhaps the decisive factor in the struggle.

Before the war our poetry was largely conventional, imitative, sentimental; and even after the war, when Miller's _Songs of the Sierras_ and John Hay's _Pike-County Ballads_ began to sing, however crudely, of vigorous life, the acknowledged poets and critics of the time were scandalized. Thus, to read the letters of Bayard Taylor is to meet a poet who bewails the lack of poetic material in America and who "hungers," as he says, for the romance and beauty of other lands. He writes _Songs of the Orient_, _Lars: a Pastoral of Norway_, _Prince Deukalion_ and many other volumes which seem to indicate that poetry is to be found everywhere save at home. Even his "Song of the Camp" is located in the Crimea, as if heroism and tenderness had not recently bloomed on a hundred southern battlefields. So also Stedman wrote his _Alectryon_ and _The Blameless Prince_, and Aldrich spent his best years in making artificial nosegays (as Holmes told him frankly) when he ought to have been making poems. These and many other poets said proudly that they belonged to the cla.s.sic school; they all read Sh.e.l.ley and Keats, dreamed of medieval or cla.s.sic beauty, and in unnumbered reviews condemned the crudity of those who were trying to find beauty at their own doors and to make poetry of the stuff of American life.

[Ill.u.s.tration: EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN]

[Sidenote: STEDMAN AND ALDRICH]

It was the war, or rather the new American spirit that issued from the war, which finally a.s.sured these poets and critics that mythology and legend were, so far as America was concerned, as dead as the mastodon, and that life itself was the only vitally interesting subject of poetry. Edmund Clarence Stedman (1833-1908), after writing many "finished" poems that were praised and forgotten, manfully acknowledged that he had been following the wrong trail and turned at last to the poetry of his own people. His _Alice of Monmouth_, an idyl of the war, and a few short pieces, such as "Wanted: a Man," are the only parts of his poetical works that are now remembered. Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1836-1907) went through the same transformation. He had a love of formal beauty, and in the exquisite finish of his verse has had few rivals in American poetry; but he spent the great part of his life in making pretty trifles. Then he seemed to waken to the meaning of poetry as a n.o.ble expression of the truth or beauty of this present life, and his last little book of _Songs and Sonnets_ contains practically all that is worth remembering of his eight or nine volumes of verse.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH]

[Sidenote: JOAQUIN MILLER]

One of the first in time of the new singers was Cincinnatus Heine Miller or, as he is commonly known, Joaquin Miller (1841-1912). His _Songs of the Sierras_ (1871) and other poems of the West have this advantage, that they come straight from the heart of a man who has shared the stirring life he describes and who loves it with an overmastering love. To read his _My Own Story_ or the preface to his _s.h.i.+p in the Desert_ is to understand from what fullness of life came lines like these:

Room! room to turn round in, to breathe and be free, To grow to be giant, to sail as at sea With the speed of the wind on a steed with his mane To the wind, without pathway or route or a rein.

Room! room to be free, where the white-bordered sea Blows a kiss to a brother as boundless as he; Where the buffalo come like a cloud on the plain, Pouring on like the tide of a storm-driven main, And the lodge of the hunter to friend or to foe Offers rest, and unquestioned you come or you go.

My plains of America! seas of wild lands!...

I turn to you, lean to you, lift you my hands.

Indeed, there was a splendid promise in Miller, but the promise was never fulfilled. He wrote voluminously, feeling that he must express the lure and magic of the boundless West; but he wrote so carelessly that the crude bulk of his verse obscures the originality of his few inspired lines. To read the latter is to be convinced that he was a true poet who might have accomplished a greater work than Whitman, since he had more genius and manliness than the eastern poet possessed; but his personal oddities, his zeal for reforms, his love of solitude, his endless quest after some unnamed good which kept him living among the Indians or wandering between Mexico and the ends of Alaska,--all this hindered his poetic development.

It may be that an Indian-driven arrow, which touched his brain in one of his numerous adventures, had something to do with his wanderings and his failure.

There is a poetry of thought that can be written down in words, and there is another poetry of glorious living, keenly felt in the winds of the wilderness or the rush of a splendid horse or the flight of a canoe through the rapids, for which there is no adequate expression. Miller could feel superbly this poetry of the mountaineer, the plainsman and the voyageur; that he could even suggest or half reveal it to others makes him worthy to be named among our most original singers.

[Sidenote: IRWIN RUSSELL]

The hundred other poets of the period are too near for criticism, too varied even for cla.s.sification; but we may at least note two or three significant groupings. In one group are the dialect poets, who attempt to make poetry serve the same end as fiction of the local-color school. Irwin Russell, with his gay negro songs tossed off to the tw.a.n.ging accompaniment of his banjo, belongs in this group. His verses are notable not for their dialect (others have done that better) but for their fidelity to the negro character as Russell had observed it in the old plantation days. There is little of poetic beauty in his work; it is chiefly remarkable for its promise, for its opening of a new field of poesie; but unfortunately the promise was spoiled by the author's fitful life and his untimely death.

[Ill.u.s.tration: JOAQUIN MILLER]

[Sidenote: CARLETON AND RILEY]

Closely akin to the dialect group in their effective use of the homely speech of country people are several popular poets, of whom Will Carleton and James Whitcomb Riley are the most conspicuous. Carleton's "Over the Hills to the Poorhouse" and other early songs won him a wide circle of readers; whereupon he followed up his advantage with _Farm Ballads_ and other volumes filled with rather crude but sincere verses of home and childhood. For half a century these sentimental poems were as popular as the early works of Longfellow, and they are still widely read by people who like homely themes and plenty of homely sentiment in their poetry.

Riley won an even larger following with his _Old Swimmin' Hole_, _Rhymes of Childhood Days_ and a dozen other volumes that aimed to reflect in rustic language the joys and sorrows of country people. Judged by the number of his readers he would be called the chief poet of the period; but judged by the quality of his work it would seem that he wrote too much, and wrote too often "with his eye on the gallery." He was primarily an entertainer, a platform favorite, and in his impersonation of country folk was always in danger of giving his audience what he thought they would like, not what he sincerely felt to be true. Hence the impression of the stage and a "make-up" in a considerable part of his work.

At times, however, Riley could forget the platform and speak from the heart as a plain man to plain men. His work at such moments has a deeper note, more simple and sincere, and a few of his poems will undoubtedly find a permanent place in American letters. The best feature of his work is that he felt no need to go far afield, to the Orient or to mythology, but found the beauty of fine feeling at his door and dared to call one of his collections _Poems Here at Home_.

[Sidenote: TYPICAL POETS]

In a third group of recent poets are those who try to reflect the feeling of some one type or race of the many that make up the sum total of American life. Such are Emma Lazarus, speaking finely for the Jewish race, and Paul Lawrence Dunbar, voicing the deeper life of the negro,--not the negro of the old plantation but the negro who was once a slave and must now prove himself a man. In the same group we are perhaps justified in placing Lucy Larcom, singing for the mill girls of New England, and Eugene Field, who shows what fun and sentiment may brighten the life of a busy newspaper man in a great city.

Finally come a larger number of poets who cannot be grouped, who sing each of what he knows or loves best: Celia Thaxter, of the storm-swept northern ocean; Madison Cawein, of nature in her more tender moods; Edward Rowland Sill, of the aspirations of a rare Puritan soul. More varied in their themes are Edith Thomas, Emily d.i.c.kinson, Henry C. Bunner, Richard Watson Gilder, George Edward Woodberry, William Vaughn Moody, Richard Hovey, and several others who are perhaps quite as notable as any of those whom we have too briefly reviewed. They all sing of American life in its wonderful complexity and have added poems of real merit to the book of recent American verse. And that is a very good book to read, more inspiring and perhaps more enduring than the popular book of prose fiction.

MISCELLANEOUS PROSE. The historian who is perplexed by our recent poetry or fiction must be overwhelmed by the flood of miscellaneous works covering every field of human endeavor. As one who wanders through a forest has no conception of the forest itself but only of individual trees, so the reader of latter-day literature can form no distinct impression of it as a whole but must linger over the individual authors who happen to attract his attention. Hence in all studies of contemporary literature we have the inevitable confusion of what is important with what merely seems so because of its nearness or newness or appeal to our personal interests. The reader is amused by a _David Harum_, or made thoughtful by a _Looking Backward_, or wonderstruck by a _Life of Lincoln_ as big as a ten-volume history; and he thinks, "This is surely a book to live." But a year pa.s.ses and _David Harum_ is eclipsed by a more popular hero of fiction, _Looking Backward_ is relegated to the shelf of forgotten tracts, and Nicolay and Hay's "monumental" biography becomes a source book, which someone, it is to be hoped, will some day use in making a life of Lincoln that will be worthy of the subject and of the name of literature.

[Sidenote: NATURE WRITERS]

There is one feature in our recent literature, however, which attracts the attention of all critics; namely, the number of nature writers who have revealed to us the beauty of our natural environment, as Ruskin awakened his readers to the beauty of art and Joaquin Miller to the unsung glory of the pioneers. In this respect, of adding to our enjoyment of human life by a new valuation of all life, our nature literature has no parallel in any age or nation.

To be specific, one must search continental literatures carefully to find even a single book that belongs unmistakably to the outdoor school. In English literature we find several poets who sing occasionally of the charms of nature, but only two books in fourteen centuries of writing that deal frankly with the great outdoors for its own sake: one is Isaac Walton's _Complete Angler_ (1653), the other Gilbert White's _Natural History of Selborne_ (1789). [Footnote: There were other works of a scientific nature, and some of exploration, but no real nature books until the first notable work of Richard Jefferies (one of the best of nature writers) appeared in 1878. By that time the nature movement in America was well under way.] In American literature the story is shorter but of the same tenor until recent times. From the beginning we have had many journals of exploration; but though the joy of wild nature is apparent in such writings, they were written to increase our knowledge, not our pleasure in life. Josselyn's _New England's Rarities_ (1672), Alexander Wilson's _American Ornithology_ (1801), Audubon's _Birds of America_ (1827),--these were our nearest approach to nature books until Th.o.r.eau's _Walden_ (1854) called attention to the immense and fascinating field which our writers had so long overlooked.

Th.o.r.eau, it will be remembered, was neglected by his own generation; but after the war, when writers began to use the picturesque characters of plantation or mining camp as the material for a new American literature, then the living world of nature seemed suddenly opened to their vision.

Bradford Torrey, himself a charming nature writer, edited Th.o.r.eau's journals, and lo! these neglected chronicles became precious because the eyes of America were at last opened. Maurice Thompson wrote as a poet and scholar in the presence of nature, John Muir as a reverent explorer, and William Hamilton Gibson as an artist with an eye single to beauty; then in rapid succession came Charles Abbott, Rowland Robinson, John Burroughs, Olive Thorne Miller, Florence Bailey, Frank Bolles, and a score more of a somewhat later generation. Most of these are frankly nature writers, not scientists; they aim not simply to observe the shy, fleeting life of the woods or fields but to reflect that life in such a way as to give us a new pleasure by awakening a new sense of beauty.

It is a remarkable spectacle, this rediscovery of nature in an age supposed to be given over to materialism, and its influence appears in every branch of our literature. The nature writers have evidently done a greater work than they knew; they have helped a mult.i.tude of people to enjoy the beauty of a flower without pulling it to pieces for a Latin name, to appreciate a living bird more than a stuffed skin, and to understand what Th.o.r.eau meant when he said that the _anima_ of an animal is the only interesting thing about him. Because they have given us a new valuation of life, a new sense of its sacredness and mystery, their work may appeal to a future generation as the most original contribution to recent literature.

[Sidenote: HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY]

Another interesting feature of recent times is the importance attached to historical and biographical works, which have increased so rapidly since 1876 that there is now no period of American life and no important character or event that lacks its historian. The number of such works is astonis.h.i.+ng, but their general lack of style and broad human interest places them outside of the field of literature. The tendency of recent historical writing, for example, is to collect facts _about_ persons or events rather than to reproduce the persons or events so vividly that the past lives again before our eyes. The result of such writing is to make history a puppet show in which dead figures are moved about by unseen economic forces; meanwhile the only record that lives in literature is the one that represents history as it really was in the making; that is, as a drama of living, self-directing men.

[Ill.u.s.tration: JOHN FISKE]

There is at least one recent historian, however, whose style gives distinction to his work and makes it worthy of especial notice. This is John Fiske (1842-1901), whose field and method are both unusual. He began as a student of law and philosophy, and his first notable book, _Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy_, attracted instant attention in England and America by its literary style and rare lucidity of statement. It was followed by a series of essays, such as _The Idea Of G.o.d_, _The Destiny Of Man_ and _The Origin of Evil_, which were so far above others of their kind that for a time they were in danger of becoming popular. Of a thousand works occasioned by the theory of evolution, when that theory was a nine days' wonder, they are among the very few that stand the test of time by affording as much pleasure and surprise as when they were first written.

It was comparatively late in life that our philosopher turned historian, and his first work in this field, _American Political Ideals Viewed from the Standpoint of Universal History_, announced that here at last was a writer with broad horizons, who saw America not as an isolated nation making a strange experiment but as adding a vital chapter to the great world's history. It was a surprising work, unlike any other in the field of American history, and it may fall to another generation to appreciate its originality. Finally Fiske took up the study of particular periods or epochs, viewed them with the same deep insight, the same broad sympathy, and reflected them in a series of brilliant narratives: _Old Virginia and her Neighbors_, _The Beginnings of New England_, _Dutch and Quaker Colonies in America_ and a few others, the series ending chronologically with _A Critical Period of American History_, the "critical" period being the time of doubt and struggle over the Const.i.tution. These narratives, though not unified, form a fairly complete history from the Colonial period to the formation of the Union.

To read any of these books is to discover that Fiske is concerned not chiefly with events but with the meaning or philosophy of events; that he has a rare gift of delving below the surface, of seeing in the endeavors of a handful of men at Jamestown or Plymouth or Philadelphia a profoundly significant chapter of universal history. Hence we seem to read in his pages not the story of America but the story of Man. Moreover, he had enthusiasm; which means that his heart was young and that he could make even dull matters vital and interesting. Perhaps the best thing that can be said of his work is that it is a pleasure to read it,--a criticism which is spoken for mature or thoughtful readers rather than for those who read history for its dramatic or heroic interest.

[Sidenote: LITERARY HISTORY]

Another feature of our recent prose is the number of books devoted to the study of American letters; and that, like the study of nature, is a phenomenon which is without precedent. Notwithstanding Emerson's plea for independence in _The American Scholar_ (1837), our critics were busy long after that date with the books of other lands, thinking that there was no American literature worthy of their attention. In the same year that Emerson made his famous address Royal Robbins made what was probably the first attempt at a history of American literature. [Footnote: _Chambers'

History of the English Language and Literature, to which is added A History of American Contributions to the English Language and Literature, by Royal Robbins (Hartford, 1837)_. It is interesting to note that the author complained of the difficulty of his task in view of the fact that there were at that time over two thousand living American authors.] It consisted of a few tag-ends attached to a dry catalogue of English writers, and the scholarly author declared that, as there was only one poor literary history then in existence (namely, Chambers'), he must depend largely on his own memory for correcting the English part of the book and creating a new American part. Nor were conditions improved during the next forty years.

[Ill.u.s.tration: EDWARD EVERETT HALE]

After the war, however, the viewpoint of our historians was changed. They began to regard American literature with increasing respect as an original product, as a true reflection of human life in a new field and under the stimulus of new incentives to play the fine old game of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." In 1878 appeared Tyler's _History of American Literature 1607-1765_ in two bulky volumes that surprised readers by revealing a ma.s.s of important writings in a period supposed to be barren of literary interest; and the surprise increased when the same author produced two more volumes dealing with the literature of the Revolution. In 1885 came Stedman's _Poets of America_, an excellent critical study of New World poetry; and two years later Richardson published the first of his two splendid volumes of _American Literature_. These good beginnings were followed by a host of biographies dealing with every important American author, until we now have choice of a large a.s.sortment of literary material where Royal Robbins had none at all.

Such formal works are for the student, but the reader who goes to books for recreation has also been remembered. Edward Everett Hale's _James Russell Lowell and his Friends_, Higginson's _Old Cambridge_, Howells's _Literary Friends and Acquaintance_, Trowbridge's _My Own Story_, Mrs. Field's _Authors and Friends_, Stoddard's _Homes and Haunts of our Elder Poets_, Curtis's _Homes of American Authors_, Mitch.e.l.l's _American Lands and Letters_,--these are but few of many recent books of reminiscences, all bearing witness to the fact that American literature has a history and tradition of its own. It is no longer an appendix to English literature but an original record, to be cherished as we cherish any other precious national heritage, and to stand or fall among the literatures of the world as it shall be found true or false to the fundamental ideals of American life.

BIBLIOGRAPHY. The best work on our recent literature is Pattee, A History of American Literature since 1870 (Century Co., 1915), which deals with two hundred or more writers. A more sketchy attempt at a contemporaneous history is Vedder, American Writers of To-day (Silver, 1894, revised 1910), devoted to nineteen writers whom the author regards as most important.

From a mult.i.tude of books dealing with individual authors or with special types of literature we have selected the following brief list, which is suggestive rather than critical.

_Study of Fiction_. Henry James, The Art of Fiction; Howells, Criticism in Fiction; Crawford, The Novel: What It Is; Smith, The American Short Story; Canby, The Short Story in English.

_Biography_. Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe, by C. E. Stowe.

Life of Bret Harte, by Pemberton, or by Merwin, or by Boynton. Life of Bayard Taylor, by Marie Taylor and Horace Scudder; or by Smyth, in American Men of Letters. Life of Stedman, by Laura Stedman and G. M. Gould. Life of Thomas Bailey Aldrich, by Greenslet. Letters of Sarah Orne Jewett, edited by Annie Fields. Life of Edward Rowland Sill, by Parker. Thompson's Eugene Field. Mrs. Field's Charles Dudley Warner. Grady's Joel Chandler Harris. Life of Mark Twain, by Paine, 3 vols.

_Historical and Reminiscent_. Page, The Old South; Nicholson, The Hoosiers; Howells, My Literary Pa.s.sions; Henry James, Notes of a Son and Brother; Stoddard, Recollections Personal and Literary, edited by Hitchc.o.c.k; Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Chapters from a Life; Trowbridge, My Own Story.