[AN ATTEMPT IN OUTLINE ONLY]—[ITS DIFFICULTIES]— [THE EARLY STAGES]—[THE ORIGINS AND PIONEERS]— [TICKNOR]—[LONGFELLOW]—[EMERSON]—[POE]— [LOWELL: HIS GENERAL POSITION]—[‘AMONG MY BOOKS’]— [‘MY STUDY WINDOWS‘]—[‘ESSAYS ON THE ENGLISH POETS’]— [LAST ESSAYS]—[O. W. HOLMES]—[THE WHOLE DUTY OF CRITICS STATED BY HIM IN ALIA MATERIA]— [WHITMAN AND THE “DEMOCRATIC” IDEAL]—[MARGARET FULLER]— [RIPLEY]—[WHIPPLE]—[LANIER].
An attempt in outline only.
I am very well aware of the arguments which may be advanced against attempting to extend our survey of criticism across the Atlantic. I at least do not undervalue the apparently formal, but in truth real, objection that we have undertaken European criticism only: while I appreciate the opposite demur, that the space of an appendix is as uncomplimentary and as uncomplementary as total exclusion would be. But after having taken counsel of more than one American friend, by no means specially Anglophile in temper, I found that, apparently, the inclusion even in this form would be at least sometimes taken in the spirit in which it is meant, while on the other hand I had myself felt very strongly the disadvantage of excluding such a critic as Mr Lowell, who has all the characteristics of the best of our own with an inviting differentia. The bursting-point, however, of this volume is pretty nearly reached; and I must again observe that there is no invidious intention in the proportion of the notice. I have endeavoured to allot to Mr Lowell himself a space (allowing for differences of scale and type) not, I think, unfair in proportion to his English fellows; others I have had to survey more in summary. But I hope that the whole may at any rate provide a not inadequate outline-sketch of the subject; and in this hope I submit it, not merely to English readers, but to those still more nearly concerned, from some of whom this book has received attention at once of the most candid (in the better pre-Sheridanian sense of that word) and of the most searchingly competent.
Its difficulties.
The difficulties of the task are complicated by the necessity, according to our plan, of omitting living writers. The history of American criticism appears, even more than that of other departments of literature, to be very mainly a history of the present; and I could write ex abundanti on that. The “middle distance” is also well provided. But the origins are singularly obscure, and appear to be regarded with neither pride nor interest by Americans themselves. When I thought of this excursus first, some years ago, I was referred by an American friend to two articles[[1146]] which had appeared not long before in The International Monthly on “American Literary Criticism and the Doctrine of Evolution.” The title gave me some forebodings in its doubleness; yet this might be interpreted favourably, for how can you treat the “evolution” of a subject without treating its history? I found, however, that the author, though his papers lacked neither thought nor style, was wholly occupied with the doctrine of evolutionary criticism generally, as against judicial and appreciative; and that he did not even propose to meddle with the history of his subject save by occasional allusion. The histories of American literature have afforded me something more, but not much.
The early stages.
I do not mention this in any spirit of fault-finding, for few people are less likely than myself to need reminding that in literary and critical history, as elsewhere, you cannot make bricks without straw, and still less without clay. There was, and there could be, little attempt at important criticism in “colonial” times, and the immense material expansion of the earlier Republican period was very little more favourable to it than the quiescence and dependence of the Monarchical.[[1147]]