Fitz-Greene Halleck.—The final quatrain of “The American Flag” was written by Drake’s associate in the “Croaker Papers,” Fitz-Greene Halleck (1790–1867). Halleck was a witty poet, who aimed at no lasting fame, but humorously chastised the passing follies of New York society, much as Lord Byron scourged society in London. He wrote clearly and gracefully, and was greatly overpraised in his time. His satiric poem “Fanny” (1819) was highly popular. “Marco Bozzaris,” a lyric recital of the Byronic type, portrayed with a good deal of life, but with a suspicion of rant too, a dramatic incident in the struggle of modern Greece against the Turk. His tribute to Burns (1827) was warmly approved by the Scottish bard’s sister: “nothing finer,” she said in 1855, “has been written about Robert.” “Red Jacket” and the monody on “Drake” also belong to Halleck’s early period. In fact, his main activity as a poet was confined to the ten or eleven years commencing with the death of Drake (1820). As Allston was the first of our poets to arouse much admiration abroad, so Halleck was the first to receive notable posthumous honours at home. In general, he owed a large measure of his inspiration to Washington Irving.
James Kirke Paulding.—So did James Kirke Paulding (1779–1860), though his “Lay of the Scotch Fiddle” (1813) was a parody of Walter Scott’s “Lay of the Last Minstrel,” and though his title to enduring fame, as he supposed, was an epic, “The Backwoodsman” (1818), representing life on the American frontier. Neither the clever ballad, nor the prosy epic, nor his second instalment of Salmagundi has outwitted the envy of time. In its own day Paulding’s effort to repeat the first success of Irving was eclipsed by “The Croakers” of Halleck and Drake. His “Peter Piper” still lingers.
John Howard Payne.—A case similar to “Peter Piper” is that of a song in “Clari” (1823), one of the dramas by John Howard Payne (1791–1852). Payne, who tried his hand at various pursuits, was a friend of Irving, and acquainted with Coleridge and Lamb. At one time he was United States consul at Tunis. As an actor and a journalist he knew the temper of his American public; hence he was able to enjoy a considerable reputation as playwright. His “Brutus” (1818) was well received; yet he would be totally forgotten save for a single lyric in “Clari,” “Home, Sweet Home,” which successive generations of his countrymen have handed down as an heirloom of the people.
Woodworth, Morris, Hoffman, Willis, etc.—Two other writers of the same period, now known chiefly through brief and homely songs or rhetorical selections, were Samuel Woodworth (1785–1842), still remembered for “The Old Oaken Bucket” (1826), and George P. Morris (1802–64), whose “Woodman, Spare That Tree” and “The Main Truck” (otherwise called “A Leap for Life”) have re-echoed from the platform of many a village schoolhouse, and given many a young rustic his principal conceptions of impassioned eloquence. The songs of Charles Fenno Hoffman (1806–84), while by no means so familiar as these, are not at all inferior. Hoffman was a student at Columbia College, bred up in the literary traditions of New York City. So also were James W. Eastburn (1797–1819) and Robert C. Sands (1799–1832). Under a rather indefensible nomenclature, all three would be included with Paulding and Halleck as members of the “Knickerbocker School,” the bright luminary in which is Irving (“Diedrich Knickerbocker”). To these we may add McDonald Clarke (1798–1842), “the mad poet,” irritatingly personal in his allusions to the belles of the metropolis; Park Benjamin (1809–64); and N. P. Willis (1806–67), whose reign of cleverness succeeded that of Halleck. Flippant, careless how or whom he hit, Willis made an extraordinary name at home, and was able to create a stir abroad. In America he published where and what he pleased, for the editors were glad to pay him well, so eager were people to read him. But he had the reward of a lightly won popularity: when the generation for whom he wrote had passed away he was deservedly neglected. His championship of American literature against the strictures of Lockhart and Marryat, and the redeeming candour of his opinions, make poor amends for his abuse of talents that might have improved, rather than satisfied, the taste of the garish day.
William Cullen Bryant.—However different in aim and permanence from the last mentioned adherent of the “Knickerbocker School,” to the same general category may be assigned William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878), who from 1826 until his death was an active force in the literary life of New York. The author of “Thanatopsis” and one of the best verse translations of Homer was born in Cummington, Massachusetts, attended a local school, was taught Latin and Greek by private tutors, two clergymen of ability, and studied for part of a year at Williams College, where the standard of scholarship was then low. Leaving that institution in 1811, he made ready to enter the profession of law. During his preparation he had an interval of experience as adjutant in the State militia. After that, he practised as a lawyer in his native State, at Plainfield and Great Barrington, until 1825, when he yielded to the strong propensity of nature, and took up literature for the business of life.
As a mere child, Bryant showed an exceptional leaning toward poetry. He was unweariedly studious, and an omnivorous reader. He wrote verses before he was nine; in his youth, so he says, he varied his private devotions from the ordinary Calvinistic models, by supplicating that he “might receive the gift of poetic genius and write verses that might endure.” The gift came to him through the instrumentality of Wordsworth’s “Lyrical Ballads” (the American edition of 1802), whose mastery over him he afterwards acknowledged, and bore witness to in his practice. At first, however, he was imbued with the tendencies of his own predecessors in America. A Federalist in his political sympathies, he opposed the aims of Jefferson’s administration—although later he grew to be a staunch supporter of “Jeffersonian Democracy.” Encouraged by his father, a well-known physician, who himself indulged in verse, young Cullen, before he was fifteen, saw in print his political satire “The Embargo” (1808), a work in the manner of Freneau and Trumbull, in which Jefferson was invited to resign the presidency. In Wordsworth, fortunately, Byrant had a model choicer than the satirists. He became acquainted with “Lyrical Ballads” in 1810. Sometime in the autumn of 1811, his inward eye having been taught to see the operation of a benign and healing spirit in the world of nature, this thoughtful youth, now about to begin the study of law, and, as it were, to commence the effort of life, was moved to record his sentiments on the all-pervading fact of death: the universal debt is not an evil; to pay it is as natural as to be born; and to obey the voice of nature, to confide in her will, is the source of human satisfaction. That is the burden of “Thanatopsis.”
When “Thanatopsis” was submitted by the poet’s father to The North American Review (in 1817), people would hardly believe that such an exalted strain had been conceived outside of England. “Thanatopsis” and “To a Waterfowl” (written in 1815) are indeed in many ways Wordsworthian; the similarity is immediately noticeable. Yet the similarity is not complete. In the first place, they are founded, and very definitely founded, upon the natural scenery of Bryant’s own New England environment; and they sprang out of a unified individual experience to which his personal observation contributed as much as his reading. But, as has been remarked before, the note of Bryant is a less joyous note than that of his great English exemplar, not only because of a difference in the selection of subjects, but through a difference in the treatment of detail as well. It is not to be expected that in perfection of technique a boy of seventeen could equal a poet who at the age of thirty-two (when Wordsworth first became at all generally known in America) was virtually master of his craft. Moreover, “Thanatopsis” as we now have it is actually an immense improvement upon the version that came out in The North American; yet in finality of expression it cannot vie with the “Lines” associated with Tintern Abbey, not to speak of certain portions of “The Prelude” or “The Excursion” written in the zenith of Wordsworth’s power. Still, “Thanatopsis” was the first great American poem; in its ultimate form it bids fair to please most readers in all ages. The majesty of Thucydides is borrowed in the conception that the whole earth is the sepulchre of famous men; there is Homeric splendour of epithet in such expressions as the “all-beholding sun.” The “healing sympathy” of nature, of course, is Wordsworthianism pure and simple; but the poem as a whole is tinged with a pantheism much more stoical than the pantheism of Wordsworth, and curiously out of keeping with the touch of New England moralising toward the end. This touch is even more pronounced in the verses “To a Waterfowl.”
“To a Waterfowl” was published with several other poems, including “Thanatopsis,” in 1821. According to that wayward genius Hartley Coleridge, it is the best short poem in the English language; a perilously sweeping judgment, like Shelley’s on “France,” the magnificent ode by Hartley’s father. At all events, “To a Waterfowl” is hardly surpassed by any of Bryant’s later work, and probably unsurpassed by anything of comparable subject and scope ever written in America.
In 1821, Bryant, then practising law at Great Barrington, was married to Miss Frances Fairchild. In 1825, he gave up the law and a secure livelihood, and, removing to New York, assumed the editorship of The New York Review. After a brief connection with The United States Review, he became assistant editor of The Evening Post; in 1829 he was made editor-in-chief. His lifelong guidance of this most influential paper is briefly touched upon elsewhere. It may be readily thought that Bryant’s prolonged editorial labours interfered with his subsequent development as a poet. Yet his partial ownership of The Post finally gave him abundant means for travel and a widening of his experience in his own and foreign lands; and his habits of industry, supported by a temperate bodily régime, enabled him to achieve during his extended career a noble literary monument outside of journalism.
By 1832 he was ready to publish another edition of his “Poems,” adding more than eighty pieces that were new—notably, the “Forest Hymn,” the “Song of Marion’s Men,” and “The Death of the Flowers.” At intervals of a few years (1834, 1836, 1842, 1844, etc.) other editions or volumes followed; giving evidence that his imagination was not dormant, for they contained in each case material in part or wholly fresh. Thus the “Poems” of 1854 included “O Mother of a Mighty Race” and “Robert of Lincoln,” the latter a favourite with many, though inferior to Bryant’s general standard. Of the “Thirty Poems” issued ten years later (1864), twenty-seven were new; the presence of selections, in English, from Book V of the Odyssey is worthy of particular remark. They had already appeared, a few months before, in The Atlantic Monthly.