Cooper's novels have a very puny vitality. Some descriptions of scenery, and some insulated adventures, have great merit: but it is not human life that he presents. His female characters are far from human; and in his selections of the chances of mortal existence, he usually chooses the remotest. He has a vigour of perception and conception, which might have made him, with study and discipline, a great writer. As it is, he is, I believe, regarded as a much-regretted failure.
The Americans have a poet. Bryant has not done anything like what he can and will do: but he has done some things that will live. Those of his poems which are the best known, or the most quoted, are smooth, sweet, faithful descriptions of nature, such as his own imagination delights in. I shall always remember the voice and manner with which he took up a casual remark of mine, about sights to be seen in the pine-barrens. When the visitors had all departed, his question "And what of the pine-barrens?" revealed the spirit of the poet. Of his poems of this class, "The Evening Wind" is to me the most delicious. But others,—"The Past," and "Thanatopsis"—indicate another kind, and a higher degree of power. If he would live for his gifts, if his future years could be devoted to "clear poetical activity," "looking up," like the true artist, "to his dignity and his calling," that dignity and that calling may prove to be as lofty as they no doubt appeared in the reveries of his boyhood; and he may be listened to as lovingly over the expanse of future time, as he already is over that of the ocean.
The Americans have also a historian of promise. Mr. Bancroft's History of the United States is little more than begun: but the beginning is characterised by an impartial and benevolent spirit, and by the indications which it affords of the author's fidelity to democratic principles; the two primary requisites in a historian of the republic. The carrying on the work to a completion will be a task of great toil and anxiety: but it will be a most important benefit to society at large, if it fulfils its promise.
The periodical literature of the United States is of a very low order. I know of no review where anything like impartial, enlightened criticism is to be found. The North American Review had once some reputation in England; but it has sunk at home and abroad, less from want of talent than of principle. If it has any principle whatever at present, it seems to be to praise every book it mentions, and to fall in as dexterously as possible with popular prejudice. The American Quarterly, published at Philadelphia, is uninteresting from the triteness of its morals, and a general dearth of thought, amidst a good deal of cleverness. The Southern Review, published at Charleston,—sometime ago discontinued, but I believe lately renewed,—is the best specimen of periodical literature that the country has afforded. After the large deductions rendered necessary by the faults of southern temper, this Review maintains its place above the rest; a rank which is, I believe, undisputed.
I met with one gem in American literature, where I should have least expected it:—in the Knickerbocker; a New York Monthly Magazine. Last spring, a set of papers began to appear, called "Letters from Palmyra,"[28] six numbers of which had been issued when I left the country. I have been hitherto unable to obtain the rest: but if they answer to the early portions, there can be no doubt of their being shortly in everybody's hands, in both countries. These letters remain in my mind, after repeated readings, as a fragment of lofty and tender beauty. Zenobia, Longinus, and a long perspective of characters, live and move in natural majesty; and the beauties of description and sentiment appear to me as remarkable as the strong conception of character, and of the age. If this anonymous fragment be not the work of a true artist,—if the work, when entire, do not prove to be of a far higher order than anything which has issued from the American press,—its early admirers will feel yet more surprise than regret.
It is continually said, on both sides of the water, and with much truth, that the bad state of the laws of literary property is answerable for some of the depression of American literature. It is true that the imperfection of these laws inflicts various discouragements on American writers, while it is disgracefully injurious to foreign authors. It is true that American booksellers will not remunerate native authors while they can purloin the works of British writers: and that the American public has a strong disposition to listen to the utterance of the English in preference to the prophets of their own country. It is true that in America, where every man must work for his living, it is a discouragement to the pursuit of literature that a living cannot, except in a few rare cases, be got by it. But all this is no solution of the fact of the non-existence of literature in America: which fact is indeed no mystery. The present state of the law, by which the works of English authors are pirated, undefended against mutilation, and made to drive native works out of the market, is so conspicuously bad, that there is every prospect of a speedy alteration: but there is nothing in the abuse which can silence genius, if genius is wanting to speak. It ought by this time to be understood that there is no power on earth which can repress mental force of the highest kinds; which can stifle the utterance of a thoroughly-moved spirit: certainly no power which is held by piratical booksellers under defective laws. Such discouragement is unjust and harsh; but it cannot be fatal. If a native genius, of a far higher order than any English, had been existing in America for the last ten years, he would have made himself heard ere this, and won his way into the general mind and heart through a host of bookselling harpies, and a chaos of lawlessness: he would have done this, even if it had been necessary to give his dinner for paper, and sell his bed to pay the printer;—expedients which it is scarcely conceivable that any author in that thriving land should be driven to. The absence of protection to foreign literary property is injurious enough, without its being made answerable for the deficiency of literary achievement. The causes lie deeper, and will not have ceased to operate till long after the law shall have been made just in this particular.
Some idea of the literary taste of the country may be arrived at through a mention of what appeared to me to be the comparative popularity of living or recent British authors.
I heard no name so often as Mrs. Hannah More's. She is much better known in the country than Shakspeare. This is, of course, an indication of the religious taste of the people; and the fact bears only a remote relation to literature. Scott is idolised; and so is Miss Edgeworth; but I think no one is so much read as Mr. Bulwer. I question whether it is possible to pass half a day in general society without hearing him mentioned. He is not worshipped with the dumb self-surrendering reverence with which Miss Edgeworth is regarded: but his books are in every house; his occasional democratic aspirations are in every one's mouth; and the morality of his books is a constant theme of discussion, from among the most sensitive of the clergy down to the "thinking, thoughtless school-boy" and his chum. The next name is, decidedly, Mrs. Jameson's. She is altogether a favourite; and her "Characteristics of Women" is the book which has made her so. At a considerable distance follows Mrs. Hemans. Byron is scarcely heard of. Wordsworth lies at the heart of the people. His name may not be so often spoken as some others; but I have little doubt that his influence is as powerful as that of any whom I have mentioned. It is less diffused, but stronger. His works are not to be had at every store; but within people's houses they lie under the pillow, or open on the work-box, or they peep out of the coat-pocket: they are marked, re-marked, and worn. Coleridge is the delight of a few. So is Lamb; regarded, however, with a more tender love. I heard Mr. Hallam's name seldom, but always in a tone of extraordinary respect, and from those whose respect is most valuable.
No living writer, however, exercises so enviable a sway, as far as it goes, as Mr. Carlyle. It is remarkable that an influence like his should have been gained through scattered articles of review and speculation, spread over a number of years and a variety of periodicals. The Americans have his "Life of Schiller;" but it was not that. His articles in the Edinburgh Review met the wants of several of the best minds in the society of New England; minds weary of cant, and mechanical morals, and seeking something truer to rest upon. The discipleship immediately instituted is honourable to both. Mr. Carlyle's remarkable work, "Sartor Resartus," issued piecemeal through Fraser's Magazine, has been republished in America, and is exerting an influence proportioned to the genuineness of the admiration it has excited. Perhaps this is the first instance of the Americans having taken to their hearts an English work which came to them anonymously, unsanctioned by any recommendation, and even absolutely neglected at home. The book is acting upon them with wonderful force. It has regenerated the preaching of more than one of the clergy; and, I have reason to believe, the minds and lives of several of the laity. It came as a benefactor to meet a pressing want; how pressing, the benefited testify by the fervour of their gratitude.