Webster: "I cannot but applaud your zeal for preserving the purity of our language."*

At the close of the eighteenth century, political independence having been achieved, there is a natural stirring of pride among writers, and a craving for self-reliance makes itself distinctly felt. But it does not materialize into action. On the contrary, stress is laid upon showing the world that now, as ever, the new land keeps pace in purity of speech and in elegance of style with the mother country. Such is to name only the chief representatives -evidently the aim and the trend of thought of Washington Irving and Longfellow. Both are proud of introducing American matter into literature, of applying American local color in abundant measure; but as to form, they adhere strictly to tradition.

Many years after the Declaration of Independence it was still the highest praise that

*C. Alphonso Smith, "Die Amerikanische Literatur," Berlin, 1912, p. 4. Charles Whibley lauds the purity of the present American literary language also: "American slang knocks in vain for admission into American literature. It has no part

in the fabric of the gravely written language. Men of letters have disdained its use with a scrupulousness worthy of our own eighteenth century. The best of them have written an English as pure as a devout respect for tradition can make it you contrast the English literature of to-day with the American, you will find differences of accent and expression so slight that may neglect them." Ibid., p. 98.

If

you

could be accorded an American author that he emulated his English model so successfully that one might exclaim: "It could be taken for the work of an Englishman."

When Bryant's "Thanatopsis" appeared, people were carried away by the poem-because they were reminded of Wordsworth, Keats, and Shelley. In fact, the Greek word itself-an arbitrary coinage of Bryant's, as Epipsychidion was a coinage of Shelley's-indicates an English model, and the rhythm of English blank verse was ringing in the ears of the American.*

The fame of Washington Irving was based upon his being a reminder of Addison, and it was said of Cooper-with great injustice and greatly to his annoyance that he was the American Scott.

Lowell may be regarded as the first American literary man of culture, taste, esprit, and creative force, who rebelled against this self-imposed servitude and asserted the right of Americans to their own individuality in language and style. "A Fable for Critics," which appeared in the

*American histories of literature point to Wordsworth as Bryant's teacher. That is not to be disputed; but "Thanatopsis reminds one of Keats, not of Wordsworth. If one compares the first verses of the American with the opening lines of "Endymion," he will be surprised at the resemblance of the melody.

revolutionary year 1848, embodies a veritable declaration of independence of American litera

ture.

And how did the world outside of America and England feel toward American authorship? The first American writer to become famous throughout Europe was Benjamin Franklin; the first to be read by all Europe was James Fenimore Cooper; the first that convinced all Europe of the existence of an American literature was Nathaniel Hawthorne. Franklin owed his fame to a successful political mission and to the invention of the lightning-rod; otherwise his homely, Philistine wisdom would hardly have found an audience beyond the narrow limits of his native land. In Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales what told was the new subject-matter, the strange world of primeval forest and prairie. It was in Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Scarlet Letter" that the work of a master of narrative on American soil was first recognized; the year 1850 is the natal year of the American novel, in the highest significance of that term, as measured by European standards. Hawthorne's work has its place by the side of “Père Goriot and "The Newcomes," by the side of "Adam Bede" and "Anna Karenina."

Thenceforth the relation to England becomes wholly different-friendlier, more intimate. There is no longer any hatred of English literature, because there is no longer the fear of the schoolmaster's rod; from the day that England renounces her untenable right of guardianship, both nations, English and American, become aware of the true historic relation between American and English literature: it is the relation between branch and tree.

3. THE TWO PERIODS OF AMERICAN

LITERATURE

The history of American literature in the nineteenth century-it is substantially only this that we have to take into account as belonging to the domain of belles-lettres-is divided into two unequal parts, of fundamentally different nature. The first extends to the close of the Civil War (1865), and is in the main the history of authorship as it was pursued in the northeastern section, particularly in the New England States; it is only in the second period, dating from the middle of the sixties, that we are concerned with the literature of the rest of the states, with American literature in general. During the first period intellectual America

has its centre of gravity in New England, or, to be more exact, in Massachusetts; Boston is the hub of the literary world.*

For all American idealists Boston was a sort of celestial city, somewhat as Jerusalem is for believers the world over.

"I want you to remember, my dear child," says an enthusiastic Pennsylvania doctor to his niece, "that in Boston you are not only in the birthplace of American liberty, but the yet holier scene of its resurrection. There everything that is noble and grand and liberal and enlightened in the national life has originated."†

In the forties there was gathered in Massachusetts that group of high-souled men, who, under the name of Transcendentalists, became world-renowned-Alcott, Emerson, Channing, Thoreau. And when the glory of the saints of Concord was eclipsed, there beamed the splendor of the poets, scholars, and humorists of Cambridge-Agassiz, Longfellow, Holmes, Lowell, Motley. That in itself suffices to explain why Massachusetts so long retained the leadership

*"Boston State House is the hub of the solar system," says Oliver Wendell Holmes in jest; this is often incorrectly quoted. "The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table," p. 125 (O. W. Holmes, Writings, 13 vols., Riverside Press).

†Howells, "A Chance Acquaintance," p. 21 (Boston, 1874).