During the nineteenth century the United States took a high and firm place in the domain of literature, and, it may be said, has evolved a literature that in scope and style is peculiar to her institutions and environment. Her array of authors, both in number and reputation, compares favorably with that of countries boasting of a thousand years of literary domination, and her literature is as diversified and practical as her activities. Among the many illustrious historians of the century she numbers her Bancroft, her Hildreth, her Prescott, her Motley, worthy counterparts of England’s Lingard, Hallam, Macaulay, Buckle, and Kinglake. Among her poets are Longfellow, Whittier, Bryant, Lowell, Halleck, fit companions of Tennyson, Browning, Wordsworth, Scott, Swinburne. Among her novelists are Cooper, Hawthorne, Stowe, worthy congeners of Dickens, Thackeray, and Eliot. And so, the comparison holds in travel, philosophy, theology, law, and science.
If in dramatic literature the United States has, during the century, produced few authors of permanent reputation, and perhaps none to be compared with Knowles, Boucicault, Taylor, and Robertson, of the Old World, nevertheless it cannot be said of these that their plays have had more than a stage value. The drama of the century in following the demand for artistic and commercial results has sustained only in part the reputation of its literature. But in lieu of this partial decadence, there have sprung up new branches of literature which are, in a measure, compensatory. Among these are the critical literature of arts and design, the literature of philology, or of language, and the literature of political and social science. To these must be added two other kinds or classes of literature which, if not peculiar to the century, have yet found in it their most surprising evolution, greatest glory, and widest influence. These are the literature of the newspaper and magazine, as distinguished from that of the book.
JOHN G. WHITTIER.
But before making further mention of these, let us read somewhat of New World literature as viewed from a critical English standpoint. Says the critic, “English critics are apt to bear down on the writers and thinkers of the New World with a sort of aristocratic hauteur; they are perpetually reminding them of their immaturity and their disregard of the golden mean. Americans, on the other hand, are hard to please. Ordinary men among them are as sensitive to foreign censure as the irritable genius of other lands. Mr. Emerson is permitted to impress home truths on his countrymen, as ‘Your American eagle is very well; but beware of the American peacock.’ Such remarks are not permitted to Englishmen. If they point to any flaws in transatlantic manners or ways of thinking with an effort after politeness, it is ‘the good-natured cynicism of well-to-do age;’ if they commend transatlantic institutions or achievements, it is, according to Mr. Lowell, ‘with that pleasant European air of self-compliment in condescending to be pleased by American merit which we find so conciliating.’
“Now that the United States have reached their full majority, it is time that England should cease to assume the attitude of guardian, and time that they should be on the alert to resent the assumption. Foremost among the more attractive features of transatlantic [American] literature is its freshness. The authority which is the guide of old nations constantly threatens to become tyrannical; they wear their traditions like a chain; and, in canonization of laws of taste, the creative laws are depressed. Even in England we write under fixed conditions; with the fear of critics before our eyes, we are all bound to cast our ideas into similar moulds, and the name of ‘free thinker’ has grown to a term of reproach. Bunyan’s ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’ is perhaps the last English book written without a thought of being reviewed. There is a gain in the habit of self-restraint fostered by this state of things; but there is a loss in the consequent lack of spontaneity; and we may learn something from a literature that is ever ready for adventures. In America the love of uniformity gives place to impetuous impulses; the most extreme sentiments are made audible, the most noxious ‘have their day and cease to be;’ and the truth being left to vindicate itself, the overthrow of error, though more gradual, may at last prove more complete. A New England poet can write with confidence of his country as the land
“‘Where no one suffers loss or bleeds
For thoughts that men calls heresies.’
ALFRED TENNYSON.
“Another feature of American literature is comprehensiveness. What it has lost in depth it has gained in breadth. Addressing a vast audience, it appeals to universal sympathies. In the Northern States, where comparatively few have leisure to write well, almost every man, woman, and child can read, and does read. Books are to be found in every log-hut, and public questions are discussed by every scavenger. During the Civil War, when the Lowell factory-girls were writing verses, the ‘Biglow Papers’ were being recited in every smithy. The consequence is, that, setting aside the newspapers, there is little that is sectional in the popular religion or literature; it exalts and despises no class, and almost wholly ignores the lines that in other countries divide the upper ten thousand and the lower ten million. Where manners make men, the people are proud of their peerage, but they blush for their boors. In the New World there are no ‘Grand Seigniors’ and no human vegetables; and if there are fewer giants, there are also fewer manikins. American poets recognize no essential distinction between the ‘village blacksmith’ and the ‘caste of Vere de Vere.’ Burns speaks for the one; Byron and Tennyson for the other; Longfellow, to the extent of his genius, for both. The same spirit which glorifies labor denounces every form of despotism but that of the multitude. Freed of the excesses due to wide license, and restrained by the good taste and culture of her nobler minds, we may anticipate for the literature of America, under the mellowing influences of time, an illustrious future.”