"I shall not attempt to conceal the enthusiasm which I feel for meritorious performances of native Americans. Nor can I repress my indignation at the unjust manner in which they are treated by the reviewers of England. America, notwithstanding their aspersions, has attained an eminence in literature, which is, at least, respectable. Like Hercules in his cradle, she has manifested a gigantic grasp, and discovered that she will be great. The wisdom, penetration and eloquence of her statesmen are undoubted—they are known and acknowledged throughout Europe. The gentlemen of the law, who fill her benches of justice, and who are heard at the bar, are eminently distinguished by the powers of reason, and by plausibility of address.... Our historians have not been numerous. Some, however, who have unrolled our records of truth claim a considerable portion of praise.... The prospect before us is now brightening. Histories have been promised from pens which have raised our expectations. The death of our great Washington has left a subject for the American historian which has never been surpassed in dignity.... From the poems and fictions of the Columbian Muse, several works might be selected, which deserve high and distinguishing praise. The poetry of our country has not yet, I hope, assumed its most elevated and elegant form. Beneath our skies, fancy neither sickens nor dies. The fire of poetry is kindled by our storms. Amid our plains, on the banks of our waters, and on our mountains, dwells the spirit of inventive enthusiasm.
"These regions are not formed only to echo the voice of Europe, but from them shall yet sound a lyre which shall be the admiration of the world.
"From the exhibition of American talent I indulge the warmest expectations. I behold, in imagination, the Newtons, the Miltons and the Robertsons of this new world, and I behold the sun of genius pouring on our land his meridian beams.
"In order to concentrate the force of her literature, the genius of America points to a National University, so warmly recommended, and remembered in his will, by our deceased friend and father. Such an establishment, far more than a pyramid that reached the clouds, would honor the name of Washington" (p. 81).
The Philadelphia writers had their own little thrills, and their own little ambitions, and amid the poverty of their intellectual surroundings they refreshed themselves with visions of the giant things to come at large. James Hall, in his "Letters from the West," wrote: "The vicinity of Pittsburg may one day wake the lyre of the Pennsylvanian bard to strains as martial and as sweet as Scott; ... believe me, I should tread with as much reverence over the mausoleum of a Shawanee chief, as among the catacombs of Egypt, and would speculate with as much delight upon the site of an Indian village as in the gardens of Tivoli, or the ruins of Herculaneum."
American critics soon caught the contagion of sneering censure, and caused the Port Folio to say, in 1811: "American critics seem, in almost all cases, to have entered into a confederacy to exterminate American poetry. If an individual has the temerity to jingle a couplet, and to avow himself descended from Americans, the offence is absolutely unpardonable." When Fenimore Cooper published his first novel, he suppressed his name and wrote instead, "Precaution, by an Englishman."
Still, a notable feature of the American magazines was a general insistence upon or, perhaps, a preference for subjects out of American history, or articles dealing with what might be called American archæology—sketches of the life and character of "the ancients of these lands"—or, at least, contributions that were tricked out in some local garb or color. The minds of young American writers turned with alacrity to the subjects that lay nearest to them and which were intimately connected with the life of the country. A national literature was never altogether absent from their thoughts, however the fear of English censure or ridicule may have checked the aspiration. John Webbe, in his prospectus to the first American magazine, said that the new venture would be "an attempt to erect on neutral principles a publick theatre in the centre of the British Empire in America" (Amer. Weekly Mercury, October 30, 1740).
A discussion of the Philadelphia magazines takes us back to a time when Philadelphia led all the cities of the country in culture, in commerce, in statecraft and in authorship. Every new experiment in literature was first tried in Philadelphia. Her's was the first monthly magazine (January, 1741), and her's, too, the first daily newspaper (Amer. Daily Advertiser, December 21, 1784). The first religious magazine was Sauer's Geistliches Magazien (1764)—for which Christopher Sauer cast his own type, the first made in America—and the first religious weekly was The Religious Remembrancer (September 4, 1813). Philadelphia led off with the first penny paper (The Cent) in 1830; and the first mathematical journal (The Annulus), and the first Juvenile Magazine (1802), and the first illustrated comical paper on an original plan, The John Donkey, in 1848, were all Philadelphia adventures.
There is scarcely a notable name in the literature of America that is not in some way connected with the Philadelphia magazines. Dennie and Brown, the first professional men-of-letters on this continent, were Philadelphia editors. Washington Irving edited the Analectic Magazine. James Russell Lowell, Edgar Allan Poe and Bayard Taylor were editorial writers on Graham's Magazine, and John Greenleaf Whittier edited The Pennsylvania Freeman.
Bryant and Cooper and Longfellow and Hawthorne and a hundred lesser men were constant contributors to the Philadelphia journals.