Symbolism is indeed evident throughout his imaginative works; in “The Black Cat,” for example, remorse is indicated by the cat’s flaming eye; in “William Wilson,” a guilty conscience is the man’s double. Of ornamentation there is plenty; Poe revelled in a wealth of beautiful images of Oriental and Gothic splendour.
In some of his tales, Poe reveals a certain kinship with Hawthorne. Both are fond of dwelling in a remote world. Both depict states of the soul; brief experiences; evanescent dreams. But Hawthorne’s is always a moral world; Poe’s, while never immoral, is prevailingly unmoral. In Hawthorne’s tales we are never long forgetful of the Puritan heritage of conscience; Poe’s indifference to moral issues is a not surprising result of his cavalier temperament. Both writers undoubtedly owe something to the weird imagination of Ernst Hoffmann (1776–1822); Poe also continues the literary tradition of Mrs. Radcliffe, “Monk” Lewis, and the “Tales of Terror.” Comparison with these writers suggests two other facts: first, that Poe was not a novelist, but a writer of short stories; he knew little about ordinary life, and nothing of human character, save through study of his own; he preferred a small canvas whereon his picture should be painted with Pre-Raphaelite fidelity and elaborate pains, and was unable or unwilling to undertake a work on the scale of what we now call novels; secondly, that he was always a romancer, with a bias for medievalism as pronounced as if his characters wore armour and his pages were full of tournaments and chivalry.
If Poe has often been without honour in his own country and in England, he has been enthusiastically received on the Continent. In France he early became known through the magnificent translation of Charles Baudelaire, and his influence has never waned.[13] In Spain, Italy, and Germany he continues to be widely read and is generally regarded as the foremost man of letters hitherto produced by America. Time, that relentless and perverse critic, has given him a place of honour among the makers of world-literature, and his fame is secure.
Some Minor Writers.—At the novel-writing contemporaries of Kennedy, Simms, and Poe we can take but a passing glance. James Lawson (1799–1880), a Scotchman who, graduating from the University of Glasgow, came to America in 1815 and engaged in the mercantile and insurance business, is remembered for his “Tales and Sketches by a Cosmopolite” (1830), mainly relating to Scottish domestic life and romance. He was a friend of Edwin Forrest and Gilmore Simms. Richard Penn Smith (1799–1854) was the author of “The Forsaken” (1831), a novel of the American Revolution still worth reading. Henry William Herbert (1807–58), eldest son of the Rev. William Herbert, dean of Manchester, was graduated from the University of Cambridge with distinction in 1829 and in 1830 came to America, engaging in teaching Greek and writing for magazines. In 1834 he published a historical novel, “The Brothers, a Tale of the Fronde,” which he had begun in The American Monthly Magazine; following it up with “Cromwell” (1837), “Marmaduke Wyvil” (1843), and “The Roman Traitor” (1848), a romance founded on the conspiracy of Catiline. He also wrote many tales and sketches of romantic incidents in European history. As a writer on sports, under the name of “Frank Forester,” he became a popular authority, and may be said to have been the first writer who introduced field sports into American fiction.
Robert Montgomery Bird (1805–54), a native of Delaware, began his literary career by writing tragedies; one of these, “The Gladiator,” was frequently played by Edwin Forrest. His first two novels, “Calavar” (1834) and “The Infidel” (1835), were descriptions of life in Mexico during the Spanish conquest; while “Nick of the Woods, or The Jibbenainosay” (1837), powerfully portrayed the thirst for vengeance aroused in American backwoodsmen, and thus sharply contrasted the real Indians with the somewhat idealised types in Cooper’s stories. He also wrote “Sheppard Lee” (1836), “The Hawks of Hawk Hollow” (1835), and “The Adventures of Robin Day” (1839), a romantic novel of adventure. Although conscientious, he was not a skillful writer, and his extravagant and exciting tales are no longer read. Theodore Sedgwick Fay (1807–98), a New York lawyer and journalist, was the author of “Norman Leslie” (1835), a somewhat tame and highly moralised picture of life in New York City at the beginning of the century; its poverty of artistic merit excited the wrath of Poe, who helped to consign it to a merciful oblivion. Fay also wrote two novels directed against the practice of duelling: “The Countess Ida” (1840), the scene of which is laid in Europe, and “Hoboken, a Romance of New York” (1843), the action of which takes place in a locality notorious for the duels fought there. In 1835 appeared “Grace Seymour” by Hannah F. Lee (1780–1865), a story for the young, and, like the stories of Fay, with a moral purpose. In “Clinton Bradshaw” (1835), Frederick William Thomas (1811–66) painted with moderate success the social life of New York in the early years of the century. Like Fay, however, Thomas was too easily led from the path of artistic virtue by his desire to improve the minds of his readers. Thomas also wrote “East and West” (1836), in which he ably described a Mississippi steamboat race, and “Howard Pinckney” (1840), a novel of contemporary life in which both plot and character are handled not without skill.
Daniel Pierce Thompson.—The moral and educational improvement of the reader is likewise an evident purpose in the work of Daniel Pierce Thompson (1793–1868), a Vermont jurist, whose “May Martin, or The Money-Digger” appeared in 1835. His most famous work, which is still widely read, was “The Green Mountain Boys, a Romance of the Revolution” (1840), in which are described the early methods of fighting the Indians. Other stories of New England life from his pen were “Locke Amsden, or The Schoolmaster” (1845), in which he evidently drew upon his own experience, “Lucy Hosmer” (1848), “The Rangers, or The Tory’s Daughter” (1851), a story dealing with the Revolutionary campaigns of 1777 in Vermont, “Tales of the Green Mountains” (1852), “Gaut Gurley, or The Trappers of Lake Umbagog” (1857), and “The Doomed Chief” (1860).
Hall, Hildreth, Hoffman.—While Thompson was delineating Vermont life, James Hall (1793–1868) wrote of the then far West. Born in Philadelphia, Hall saw service in the War of 1812, and in 1820 went to Illinois and engaged in law and newspaper work. His “Sketches of History, Life, and Manners in the West” (1835) and several later volumes of tales are characterised by a natural and easy style, much skill in narrative, and general fidelity to detail. The distinction of writing the first of the army of anti-slavery novels belongs to the historian Richard Hildreth (1807–65). “Archy Moore” (1837) was republished in England, being reviewed by The Spectator and other papers. A rather extravagant narrative, it purports to be the autobiography of a Virginia slave during the War of 1812. A second edition with a continuation was published in 1852 as “The White Slave.” Charles Fenno Hoffman (1806–84), after studying at Columbia College and preparing for the bar, practised law for three years in New York, then abandoned it for journalism and literature. He was the founder of The Knickerbocker Magazine, associated later, for many years, with the name of its editor, Lewis Gaylord Clark, and was connected with various other periodicals. His two novels, “Greyslaer” (1840), founded on the celebrated Beauchamp murder case in Kentucky,—a novel of intense interest which reminds some readers of Cooper,—and “Vanderlyn” (published serially in The American Monthly Magazine in 1837), like his other writings, reflect a generous and refined character. His promising career was cut short in 1849 by insanity.
William Ware.—In March, 1836, there appeared in The Knickerbocker Magazine the first of a series of “Letters from Palmyra,” which aroused much interest. They purported to be written by a young Roman noble who visited Palmyra in the reign of Zenobia. They vividly presented the everyday life of the Roman Empire and at once gave their author high rank as a classical scholar. William Ware (1797–1852) graduated from Harvard College in 1816 and became a Unitarian clergyman; for some years he edited The Christian Examiner. The “Letters from Palmyra” were published in book form in 1837; the book is now called “Zenobia,” from the title of the English reprint. It was followed in 1838 by a sequel, “Probus,” in which the last persecution of Roman Christians is ably and energetically described. The title of this book was afterward changed to “Aurelian.” His third novel, “Julian, or Scenes in Judea” (1841), narrated many episodes in the life of Jesus of Nazareth, the crucifixion forming a powerful climax to the story.
Mathews and Briggs.—A highly imaginative and somewhat absurd romance entitled “Behemoth, a Legend of the Mound-Builders” (1839) was the work of Cornelius Mathews (1817–89), a New York dramatist and magazine writer. His “Career of Puffer Hopkins” (1841) set forth some phases of contemporary political life; it first appeared serially in Arcturus, which Mathews edited in 1840–42. Another novel of his was “Moneypenny, or The Heart of the World” (1850), a story of city and country life. All of Mathews’ stories, however, have a journalistic flavour. In the same year with Mathews, Charles Frederick Briggs (1840–77), a New York journalist, entered the ranks of the novelists with his “Adventures of Harry Franco, a Tale of the Great Panic” (1839), following it with “The Haunted Merchant” (1843) and “The Trippings of Tom Pepper” (1847). All of his novels have a certain value as humorous pictures of New York City life; through them runs a vein of amusing satire. Briggs was later the first editor of Putnam’s Monthly.
Henry W. Longfellow.—It was in 1839 also that Longfellow published his once popular “Hyperion, a Romance,” in which, in connection with a pathetic love story, he mainly sought, in the style of Richter, to convey his romantic impressions of the life and traditions of the Old World. The volume is charged, if not surcharged, with sentiment. Paul Flemming’s enthusiasm for the quaint and picturesque in European lore and scenery takes us back to the days when Continental Europe was for Americans a land of romance, and when visits to the Old World were still not accomplished without difficulty and had not lost their novelty. Of a wholly different texture is the only other prose tale written by Longfellow, “Kavanagh, a Tale,” which appeared in 1849 and which probably suffered by coming so near the romantic and fascinating “Evangeline.” It is a bookish and uneventful story of New England life; Hawthorne said of it, “Nobody but yourself would dare to write so quiet a book.” Yet it is written in a characteristically graceful style, and shows that the scholar-poet was a good observer of the life around him, though he could not give that life an air of reality in his portraiture.