After all however, why should they be reproached for this? They have gained their little reputation hardly. “It were too much to spend that little”—so grudgingly acquiesced in by their beloved countrymen—“rashly.” No wonder they fight shy. It is their duty—considering what they have at stake—their little all. There is Washington Irving now; he has obtained the reputation of being—what?—why at the best, of being only the American Addison, in the view of Englishmen. And is this a title to care much for? Would such a name, though Addison stood far higher in the opinion of the English themselves, than he now does, or ever again will, be enough to satisfy the ambition of a lofty minded, original thinker? Would such a man falter and reef his plumage midway up the altitude of his blinding and brave ascent, to be called the American Addison, or even what in my view were ten thousand times better, the American Goldsmith.[2] No—up to the very key stone of the broad blue firmament! he would say, or back to the vile earth again: ay, lower than the earth first! Understand me however. I do not say this lightly nor disparagingly. I love and admire Washington Irving. I wish him all the reputation he covets, and of the very kind he covets. Our paths never did, never will cross each other. And so with Mr. Cooper; and a multitude more, of whom we may rightfully be proud. They have gained just enough popular favor to make them afraid of hazarding one jot or tittle of it, by stepping aside into a new path. No one of these could avail me in my design. They would have everything to lose, and nothing to gain by embarking in it. While I—what had I to lose—nay what have I to lose? I am not now, I never have been, I never shall be an author by trade. The opinion of the public is not the breath of life to me; for if the truth must be told, I have to this hour very little respect for it—so long as it is indeed the opinion of the public—of the mere multitude, the careless, unthinking judgment of the mob, unregulated by the wise and thoughtful.
[2] I speak here of Goldsmith’s prose, not of his poetry. Heaven forbid!
To succeed as I hoped, I must put everything at hazard. It would not do for me to imitate anybody. Nor would it do for my country. Who would care for the American Addison where he could have the English by asking for it? Who would languish, a twelvemonth after they appeared, for Mr. Cooper’s imitations of Sir Walter Scott, or Charles Brockden Brown’s imitations of Godwin? Those, and those only, who after having seen the transfiguration of Raphael, (or that of Talma,) or Dominichino’s St. Jerome, would walk away to a village painting room, or a provincial theatre, to pick their teeth and play the critic over an imitation of the one or a copy of the other. At the best, all such things are but imitations. And what are imitations? Sheer mimicry—more or less exalted to be sure; but still mimicry—wherever the copies of life are copied and not life itself: a sort of high-handed, noon-day plagiarism—nothing more. People are never amazed, nor carried away, nor uplifted by imitations. They are pleased with the ingenuity of the artist—they are delighted with the closeness of the imitation—but that is all. The better the work is done, the worse they think of the workman. He who can paint a great picture, cannot copy—David Teniers to the contrary notwithstanding; for David never painted a great picture in his life, though he has painted small ones, not more than three feet square, which would sell for twenty-five thousand dollars to day.
Yes—to succeed, I must imitate nobody—I must resemble nobody; for with your critic, resemblance in the unknown to the known, is never anything but adroit imitation. To succeed therefore, I must be unlike all that have gone before me. That were no easy matter; nor would be it so difficult as men are apt to believe. Nor is it necessary that I should do better than all who have gone before me. I should be more likely to prosper, in the long run, by worse original productions—with a poor story told in poor language, (if it were original in spirit and character) than by a much better story told in much better language, if after the transports of the public were over, they should be able to trace a resemblance between it and Walter Scott, or Oliver Goldsmith, or Mr. Addison.
So far so good. There was, beyond a doubt, a fair chance in the great commonwealth of literature, even though I should not achieve a miracle, nor prove myself both wiser and better than all the authors who had gone before me. And moreover, might it not be possible—possible I say—for the mob are a jealous guardian of sepulchres and ashes, and high-sounding names, particularly where a name will save them the trouble of judging for themselves, or do their arguments for them in the shape of a perpetual demonstration, whatever may be the nature of the controversy in which they are involved—might it not be possible then, I say, that, as the whole body of mankind have been growing wiser and wiser, and better and better, since the day when these great writers flourished, who are now ruling “our spirits from their urns,” that authors may have improved with them?—that they alone of the whole human race, by some possibility, may not have remained altogether stationary age after age—while the least enquiring and the most indolent of human beings—the very multitude—have been steadily advancing both in knowledge and power? And if so, might it not be possible for some improvements to be made, some discoveries, even yet in style and composition, by lanching forth into space. True, we might not be certain of finding a new world, like Columbus, nor a new heaven, like Tycho Brahe; but we should probably encounter some phenomena in the great unvisited moral sky and ocean; we should at least find out, after a while—which would of itself be the next greatest consolation for our trouble and anxiety, after that of discovering a new world or a new system,—that there remained no new world nor system to be discovered; that they who should adventure after us, would have so much the less to do for all that we had done; that they must follow in our steps; that if our health and strength had been wasted in a prodigious dream, it would have the good effect of preventing any future waste of health and strength on the part of others in any similar enterprize.
Islands and planets may still be found, we should say, and they that find them, are welcome to them; but continents and systems cannot be beyond where we have been; and if there be any within it, why—they are neither continents nor systems.
But then, after all, there was one plain question to be asked, which no honest man would like to evade, however much a mere dreamer might wish to do so. It was this. After all my fine theory—what are my chances of success? And if successful, what have I to gain? I chose to answer the last question first. Gain!—of a truth, it were no easy matter to say. Nothing here, nothing now—certainly nothing in America, till my bones have been canonized; for my countrymen are a thrifty, calculating people—they give nothing for the reputation of a man, till they are sure of selling it for more than they give. Were they visited by saints and prophets instead of gifted men, they would never believe that they were either saints or prophets, till they had been starved to death—or lived by a miracle—by no visible means; or until their cast-off clothes, bones, hair and teeth, or the furniture of the houses wherein they were starved, or the trees under which they had been chilled to death, carved into snuff-boxes or walking-sticks, would sell for as much as that sympathy had cost them, or as much as it would come to, to build a monument over—I do not say over their unsheltered remains, for by that time there would be but little or no remains of them to be found, unmingled with the sky and water, earth and air about them, save perhaps in here and there a museum or college where they might always be bought up, however, immortality and all—for something more than compound interest added to the original cost—but to build a monument or a shed over the unappropriated stock, with certain privileges to the manufacturer of the walking-sticks and snuff-boxes aforesaid, so long as any of the material remained; taking care to provide with all due solemnity, perhaps by an act of the legislature, for securing the monopoly to the sovereign state itself.
Thus much perhaps I might hope for from my own people. But what from the British? They were magnanimous, or at least they would bear to be told so; and telling them so in a simple, off-hand, ingenuous way, with a great appearance of sincerity, and as if one had been carried away by a sudden impulse, to speak a forbidden truth, or surprised into a prohibited expression of feeling by some spectacle of generosity, in spite of his constitutional reserve and timidity and caution, would be likely to pay well. But I would do no such thing. I would flatter nobody—no people—no nation. I would be to nobody—neither to my own countrymen, nor to the British—unless I were better paid for it, than any of my countrymen were ever yet paid either at home or abroad.
No—I choose to see for myself, by putting the proof touch like a hot iron to their foreheads, whether the British are indeed a magnanimous people. But then, if I do all this, what are my chances of reward, even with the British themselves? That was a fearful question to be sure. The British are a nation of writers. Their novel-writers are as a cloud. True—true—but they still want something which they have not. They want a real American writer—one with courage enough to write in his native tongue. That they have not, even at this day. That they never had. Our best writers are English writers, not American writers. They are English in every thing they do, and in every thing they say, as authors—in the structure and moral of their stories, in their dialogue, speech and pronunciation, yea in the very characters they draw. Not so much as one true Yankee is to be found in any of our native books: hardly so much as one true Yankee phrase. Not so much as one true Indian, though you hardly take up a story on either side of the water now, without finding a red-man stowed away in it; and what sort of a red-man? Why one that uniformly talks the best English the author is capable of—more than half the time perhaps out-Ossianing Ossian.
I have the modesty to believe that in some things I am unlike all the other writers of my country—both living and dead; although there are not a few, I dare say who would be glad to hear of my bearing a great resemblance to the latter. For my own part I do not pretend to write English—that is, I do not pretend to write what the English themselves call English—I do not, and I hope to God—I say this reverently, although one of their Reviewers may be again puzzled to determine “whether I am swearing or praying” when I say so—that I never shall write what is now worshipped under the name of classical English. It is no natural language—it never was—it never will be spoken alive on this earth: and therefore, ought never to be written. We have dead languages enough now; but the deadest language I ever met with or heard of, was that in use among the writers of Queen Anne’s day.