A Manual of American Literature

by Unknown

Walt Whitman.—His belief in immortality, in the absolute and eternal value of each individual person and thing, constitutes the main element of permanence in the writings of Walt (= Walter) Whitman. He too had in his veins a strain of blood from the Quakers; though he was born (May 31, 1819) in a family that took little cognisance of religion. His mother, Louisa Van Velsor, was of mingled Dutch and Welsh descent, illiterate, but in the eyes of her second child, the poet, always “perfect.” When this child was four years old, his father and name-sake, a good carpenter and of honest Connecticut ancestry, but a slipshod householder, removed from West Hills, Huntington Township, Long Island, to the “village,” as it then was, of Brooklyn; not before the impresses of rural life had entered unawares into the heart of the child; and not too late for the life of the future metropolis to become an imperishable part of his experience. The poet’s formative years were passed in the midst of the growing population centred at New York. He attended the public schools of Brooklyn until he was thirteen, then, with a scanty knowledge of reading, writing, and arithmetic, entered a lawyer’s office as errand-boy, his employers giving him access during free hours “to a big circulating library.” “Up to that time,” he says, “this was the signal event of my life.” “For a time I now revel’d in romance-reading of all kinds; first the ‘Arabian Nights,’ all the volumes, an amazing treat. Then, with sorties in very many other directions, took in Walter Scott’s novels, one after another, and his poetry.” From errand-boy he became typesetter, varying his desultory labours for The Patriot, and The Star, by excursions on Long Island, by contributing “sentimental bits” to local newspapers, and by active participation in several debating societies. At eighteen he turned country schoolmaster; and shifting from that, he set up as editor of The Long Islander, hiring some help, but himself doing most of the work, including the distribution of his weekly sheet to its patrons. In 1841 he returned to New York, became editor of The Daily Aurora, wrote for The Tattler, and published stories in The Democratic Review. In later years it was his “serious wish to have all these crude and boyish pieces quietly dropp’d in oblivion.” Meanwhile he attended the theatre, continued his observation of the crowds at the Brooklyn ferries and in the streets of New York, and his study of nature on the shores of Long Island, read newspapers, “went over thoroughly the Old and New Testaments, and absorbed ... Shakespeare, Ossian, the best translations [available] of Homer, Æschylus, Sophocles, the old German Nibelungen, the ancient Hindoo poems, and one or two other masterpieces, Dante’s among them.” A brief connection with The Brooklyn Eagle was terminated by Whitman’s falling out with the radical faction of the Democrats; whereupon he seized “a good chance to go down to New Orleans on the staff of The Crescent, a daily to be started there.” Accompanied by his younger brother, “Jeff,” he crossed the Alleghanies, and took steamer down the Ohio and the Mississippi—“a leisurely journey and working expedition”; then “after a time plodded back northward, up the Mississippi, and around to and by way of the Great Lakes, ... to Niagara Falls and Lower Canada, finally returning through central New York and down the Hudson; travelling altogether probably 8000 miles this trip, to and fro.” In the experiences of his life up to this point lay the materials for his “Leaves of Grass,” which he published at his own expense in 1855, having done part of the typesetting himself. A copy sent to Emerson elicited from him a letter in which the book was characterised as “the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed.” The next year Whitman brought out a second and amplified edition, printing Emerson’s laudatory letter and his own answer in the Preface, and on the back the quotation, “I greet you at the beginning of a great career,” with Emerson’s name beneath. This act of questionable taste failed to augment the sale of the volume; nor was the edition of 1860 more successful. In 1862, Whitman’s younger brother having been wounded during service in the Union Army, the poet was brought into contact with the army hospitals. He continued his ministrations to the sick and suffering almost uninterruptedly until the hospitals in Washington were closed. “From cot to cot they called him, often in tremulous tones or in whispers; they embraced him, they touched his hand, they gazed at him. To one he gave a few words of cheer, for another he wrote a letter home, ... to another, some special friend, very low, he would give a manly farewell kiss. He did the things for them which no nurse or doctor could do, and he seemed to leave a benediction at every cot as he passed along.” By sheer personal magnetism he saved many lives. The record of his connection with the war is to be found in his “Specimen Days,” in the posthumous collection of letters entitled “The Wound-Dresser” (1898), in “Drum Taps,” published in 1865, and in the “Sequel to Drum Taps,” which contained his poems on Lincoln (among them the threnody, “O Captain! My Captain!”), published later in the same year. Shortly after the war was over, Whitman, who had found a place as clerk in the Department of the Interior, was discharged by Secretary Harlan, Harlan having discovered the authorship of “Leaves of Grass,” in his opinion “an indecent book.” The poet quickly received another position, in the office of the Attorney-General; and his enthusiastic friend and champion, W. D. O’Connor, brought out a defence of Whitman, written in terms of exaggerated praise, under the famous title of “The Good Grey Poet.” A fourth edition of “Leaves of Grass,” revised, and supplemented by “Drum Taps,” was published in 1867; a fifth, including the “Passage to India,” in 1871. The sixth and seventh editions appeared in 1876 and 1881–1882; the eighth (1888–1889) contained in addition “November Boughs,” and the ninth (1891–1892) “Good-bye my Fancy.” In 1873, Whitman, disabled by a stroke of paralysis, gave up his position in Washington and removed to Camden, New Jersey, where he lived with George Whitman until 1879. By this time he had so far recovered that he could make a journey to the West, followed by another, the next year, to Canada. In 1881, the sale of his works allowed him to settle, at Camden, in a home of his own. Here he lived in comparative comfort, the object of a good deal of curiosity, receiving visitors, some of them very distinguished, and, as his strength allowed, adding to his stock of verse. In 1888, he had a second stroke of paralysis, but he lived on, preserving his courage and mental alertness, until 1892. He died on March 26th of that year. If we can credit his statement made in 1890, he was probably survived by four out of six children that were not born in wedlock.

In many ways, Whitman corresponds to the ideal presented in the “natural man” of Rousseau; if space allowed, a profitable comparison might be made between “the good grey poet” and the French forerunner of American democracy. At the outset, the excessive sentimentalism of Rousseau would constitute a patent difference. But Whitman’s assumption of equality among individuals, in so far as they are not spoiled by what he deems a false and artificial education, is nothing new to the reader of Rousseau; and his preference of the “powerful, uneducated,” raw material of humanity has its counterpart in the sympathetic attitude of Rousseau toward the burgher and peasant classes which formed the part of society that he really understood. Moreover, both of these authors demand an individual standard—which is no standard—of judgment. Both desire to be appreciated, yet refuse to be appraised according to standards which the cumulative wisdom of mankind in the past, of the greatest democracy, has attained to and approved. Both try to regard organisation and the subordination of one person or thing to another as unnatural. In the case of Whitman at least, it is for want of philosophical standards, and for want of a consistent effort to determine what is meant by nature and natural, that the so-called literature of democracy has been so hard to measure.

In the first place, then, if we are to measure Whitman at all, we must make certain postulates. For example, we must postulate that restraint in literature, as in life, is a law of nature. This, Whitman is not disposed to admit. In private life, it is true, he was more temperate and continent than certain passages in “Leaves of Grass” led casual readers to surmise. But he saw fit to beget children, out of wedlock, without assuming the responsibility of their nurture and education. Are the duties which modern society lays upon parents less natural than the alleged practice of Rousseau, or are they more? Again, Whitman decides to address the public in the guise of a poet. Now in practice, be it observed, he is much truer to the demands of a poetic ear than are many of our conventional versifiers; and though he has a predilection for colloquial diction and syntax, he is in his own way not unscrupulous in the matter of technique. The changes that he made in successive editions of his main work, “Leaves of Grass,” are of deep interest to the student of poetic art. At the same time, he repudiates literary convention, and recognizes no law as binding upon one who contracts to write for his fellow men, save the law of his individual being. There is, however, no law, or science, or art, of the individual as such. Poetry, according to the deepest thinkers on this subject, is the rhythmical utterance of the individual in harmony with universal law; and criticism has for its province the recognition of that universal law in the particular poet. In so far, then, as Whitman’s irregularly trained personality succeeds in expressing what is true for all men, or for many, or for representative and typical men, uttering that truth in terms that are both choice and generally intelligible,—in so far as he actually conforms to the best conventions—he is a great poet, perhaps our greatest native poet. He succeeds often. It is to be noted that he is most successful when, as in his lament for Lincoln, he adopts a regular metrical form.

On Whitman’s achievement as spokesman of modern democracy perhaps too much stress has already been laid. Following his own lead, his interpreters have been inclined to associate his idiosyncrasies, his departures from the normal, his lapses from good taste in referring to the physiology of sex, too closely with the nature of this achievement. In dealing with the “poetry of democracy,” it seems to have escaped observation that an age of popular freedom and republican ideals may produce a literature of high refinement and perfect balance between literary tradition and the impulses of the individual author. It is well to remember that the masterpieces of art which ennobled Athens under Pericles were the expression of—for Greece—an age of democracy; and that the epics of Milton, however conventional in one sense, were the outpourings of a nobler champion of liberty than Whitman. Referring to the practice of studying his illustrious predecessors, Whitman has said: “Now, if eligible, O that the great masters might return and study me!” Something like this is sure to take place. In order to appreciate him rightly, we must confront him, full of the spirit of those authors, Sophocles, Dante, Milton, and their peers, by the standard of whom one is bound to estimate poetry. If thus confronted, Whitman’s lustre, so bright in the eyes of his cult, begins to wane; still, the tributes paid him by W. M. Rossetti, Freiligrath, Dowden, Björnson, Symonds, may not lightly be set aside. Taken at its best, his poetry, as Emerson said, “has the best merits, namely, of fortifying and encouraging.” His prose works ought not to be dismissed so summarily as must here be the case; being less subject to suspicious innovation than his verse, conforming naturally to expected canons, his prose, in particular his prose criticism, is well worth study. It is direct. Genius, said Whitman, is almost one hundred per cent directness.

Bret Harte, Joaquin Miller, Edward Rowland Sill.—We turn to the poetry of the Far West. Francis Bret Harte (1839–1902), born at Albany, New York, after a varied youth in California won a sudden renown through his “Heathen Chinee” and “Condensed Novels.” His later success as a prolific writer of short stories tended to obscure his talent as a humourist in verse; and even in the present decade, when his death has called fresh attention to the value of his literary work as a whole, his poetry is hardly known as it should be. Probably in the course of years his “East and West Poems” (1871) and “Echoes of the Foothills” (1874) will entertain more readers than they now do in comparison with “The Luck of Roaring Camp.” There is likely to come a time when pioneer life among the gold-mines will appeal less than it does to the present generation; whereas the permanent aspects of external nature, as Harte has caught them in “Crotalus,” can never cease to interest. The details of his life are recounted in another part of this volume.

Cincinnatus Hiner Miller (born 1841), another celebrity of the West, was reared in a log-cabin in Indiana. After a few years of life on a farm in Oregon, he went to the gold-fields of California. When he had met almost every kind of experience imaginable, he studied law, and practised in Oregon. In 1870 he brought out a small volume of poems, one of them entitled “Joaquin,” the name of a Mexican brigand, Joaquin Murietta, in whose defence he had already written, and henceforth his pen-name. His volume, “Songs of the Sierras,” for which he at first vainly tried to find a publisher, produced, when finally accepted and issued, a sensation that recalled the days of Byron. His vogue has since declined, though he is still read, a collective edition of his poems having been published in 1897.

Much less famous than either Harte or Miller, not having the virility of the former, yet possessing a finer sensibility than the latter, was Edward Rowland Sill (1841–1887), a third poet of the Far West. Sprung from a family in Connecticut, a teacher in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, finally professor of English literature in the University of California, Sill, in “Hermione, and Other Poems,” “The Hermitage, and Later Poems” (1867), “The Venus of Milo, and Other Poems,” published (1888) after his death, sent forth a rill of poetry, slender but pure. In the opinion of his friends and many besides, Sill’s death cut short a poetic career of unusual promise. His poems were collected in 1902, in a single volume, and again in 1906; in the latter edition they are arranged chronologically.

Miscellaneous and Later Poets.—Under this heading must be gathered a handful of writers whom the classification thus far adopted has not accounted for, some of whom would not easily admit of classification. However, it is not the purpose of this Manual to consider in detail the current writers of verse throughout America, among whom distinctions of value can rarely be established.

Hans Breitmann.—Charles Godfrey Leland (1824–1903) might be associated with Bayard Taylor. He is said to have neglected mathematics at Princeton for Carlyle and Spinoza; he studied abroad, returned to Philadelphia to engage in the practice of law, but gave this up for work as an editor. During the Civil War his pen was active in defence of the Union. Afterward he became popular through his “Hans Breitmann Ballads,” in picturesque dialect displaying the humour of the shrewd jovial German immigrant before the war. Leland made himself an authority on gypsy lore, and was busy in several fields as a translator. During his long residence abroad, he enjoyed an acquaintance with many distinguished men of letters in Europe. Besides his ballads in dialect and translations from J. V. Scheffel, he wrote verse of serious intent; for example, “The Music Lesson of Confucius, and Other Poems,” in which, like Taylor, he desired to unite the ideals of Christianity with those of Hellenism. The deaths of Leland, Stoddard, Aldrich, and Stedman within the last five years took almost the last survivors of an elder generation in American letters.

Richard Henry Stoddard.—In the year of his death, 1903, R. H. Stoddard was called by his friend, E. C. Stedman, “the most distinguished of living American poets.” He was born in Hingham, Massachusetts, July 2, 1825. Educated in the schools of New York City, he supplemented by private reading his brief opportunities for regular study, and from worker in a foundry became connected with Bayard Taylor as a journalist. In 1853, Hawthorne aided him in securing a position in the New York Custom-House. From 1860 to 1870 he was literary editor of the New York World; in 1880 he took a similar post on The Mail and Express. His first volume of poetry, “Footprints” (1849), was afterwards suppressed; his second, “Poems” (1852), secured him an audience. “Songs of Summer” (1857) was a collection of poems that had been printed in various magazines. The latter part of his life was marked by great activity as an editor and biographer, somewhat after the fashion of Stedman. Most of his poetry subsequent to the collective edition of 1880 is included in “The Lion’s Cub, with Other Verse” (1890). He preserved his lyrical quality to a great age. Like several of our leading poets, Stoddard reached his highest level in dealing with the theme of Abraham Lincoln.