A Manual of American Literature

by Unknown

Edgar Allan Poe.—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1869), like the three authors just mentioned, was a poet, yet to his own time he was perhaps even better known as a short story writer and essayist. Opinions about the value of his literary work have been as various as those respecting his character; but it is safe to claim for him no mean place among writers of criticism. In this department of literature he undertook to bring about a reform among American authors who had passed from timid deference to English opinion into the stage of noisy and indiscriminate praise of every piece of writing produced in this country. From a study of Coleridge, Poe had come to the conclusion that poetry was a matter of “intellectual happiness”; its soul was the imagination. A person of metaphysical acumen, therefore, by noting how poetic moods are excited, could produce a finer poem than one who, lacking the analytical faculty, could only feel the emotions he desired to arouse in his readers. Poe laid great stress, too, on perfection of form as of the utmost importance in producing an effect; truth was a secondary matter, except in detail, and as a means of securing assent to a conclusion which might be essentially untruthful. The object of poetry, he thought, is to arouse a subtle, indefinite pleasure; this was imparted by music; hence the necessity of melody, of the refrain.

As a critic, Poe was often savage in the extreme; but it must be remembered, as we look back upon him, that the urbanity of the modern book reviewer was then a thing unknown. Poe’s literary judgments have in the main been justified, although some of his unsparing attacks in “The Literati of New York” arouse resentment even at this late day, while his equally unrestrained laudation of certain of his now wholly forgotten contemporaries leads one near to contemptuous amusement. Poe’s most important contribution to the theory of writing are two essays usually reprinted with his poems; of these “The Philosophy of Composition” first appeared in Graham’s Magazine for April, 1846, and “The Poetic Principle,” originally a lecture, was printed in Sartain’s Magazine for October, 1850. Perhaps an essay “On Critics and Criticism” ought also to be mentioned; it was first published in Graham’s Magazine for January, 1850.

Ralph Waldo Emerson.—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882), serious, high-minded, and well balanced, affords a striking contrast in almost every way to Poe. Born in Boston, he was graduated from Harvard College at the age of nineteen. After teaching school for a time, he became minister of the Old North Church in his native city, but in 1835 withdrew from his charge because of his aversion to the rite of the Lord’s Supper. Taking up his residence at Concord, Massachusetts, he spent the rest of his years in writing and lecturing. While engaged in the latter work he went as far west as California and made two visits abroad. During the first, Emerson met Wordsworth, Coleridge, Landor, and De Quincey, who received him graciously, George Eliot, who referred to him as “the first man she had ever seen,” and Carlyle, who found in the visitor a hero well worthy of sincere admiration. Dignified and simple in manner, deep and kindly in thought, he found contentment in an uneventful career; sympathising strongly with those who would live the life of the spirit, he supported in theory the Brook Farm experiment; advocating anti-slavery ideas, he opened his church to Abolition agitators; but objecting on principle to war, he proposed to buy the slaves and educate them morally. He went down to his grave loved by his neighbours and honoured by many who knew him only through his works.

Emerson made his earliest appearance as a writer in a book entitled “Nature” (1836), but he first attracted real attention by his Phi Beta Kappa oration before Harvard College in 1837. This address, now published in his collected works as “The American Scholar,” made so strong an appeal to his listeners to break away from the influence of England in matters of authorship that Holmes with his usual felicity termed it “our literary Declaration of Independence.” For three or four years, beginning in 1840, Emerson was editor of The Dial. In 1841 he published his first collection of “Essays”; and three years later his second. From then on at irregular intervals other volumes of like content appeared; of these the most important, in all probability, are “Representative Men” (1850), “The Conduct of Life” (1860), and “Society and Solitude” (1870). There is no need of an enumeration of Emerson’s books, since they are all similar in form, content, and purpose. While Emerson is in no true sense a philosopher, he did project a theory of life. Sincerity he regarded as fundamental, and his belief in the formative influence of great men was almost identical with that held by Carlyle. By the possession of “transcendental reason,” man, according to Emerson, becomes intuitively aware of the truth. This truth or doctrine has been reduced by some critic to three propositions: (1) God is in all things and all things are in God. (2) Each created existence is essential to every other created existence. (3) Nothing which has once existed ever ceases to exist. To the average reader these ideas are bewildering and have been collectively designated as “a new philosophy maintaining that nothing is everything in general, and everything is nothing in particular.” It is related as a fact, that after an address by Emerson before a college society, the minister in charge of the meeting devoutly prayed that the hearers might be preserved from ever again being compelled to listen to such transcendental nonsense. At the close of the meeting Emerson imperturbably remarked that the gentleman seemed a very conscientious, plain-spoken man.

The distance between Emerson’s thought and that of most men laid him open to the charge of obscurity, an accusation which is still widely repeated by those who do not trouble themselves to read or to think. It cannot be denied that Emerson is often mystical, and that he must find spiritual insight and almost poetic imagination in those who would penetrate to the heart of his teachings; but it is unfair to give the impression that, save to the initiated, he is nearly always incomprehensible. Page after page of his writings offers no difficulty whatever to the most cursory reader, and his work as a whole is within the ken of any serious and unprejudiced reader. In style Emerson is sometimes forbidding through a strong tendency to condensation of expression; but the beauty of his thought frequently draws to itself a diction and order which transform his prose into veritable poetry. His strong, earnest spirituality is never fanatical, his perfect trust in what he called the Over-Soul is never sentimental, his full confidence that the world is making for ultimate good is never unpractical. Looking upon the universe as “one vast symbol of God,” he escaped pantheism on one hand and materialism on the other. As a teacher uttering his uplifting thought through literature, Emerson, it may be confidently said, stands without a rival among American writers.

Henry David Thoreau.—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) is by many readers coupled with Emerson. Born in Concord, Massachusetts, he spent the greater part of his life in his native town and its vicinity. He was graduated at Harvard College in 1837, although he refused his diploma on the ground that it was not worth five dollars. He gave occasional lectures and wrote many books: of these he himself published but two, “A Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers” (1849) and “Walden, or Life in the Woods” (1854). To these have been added from time to time since Thoreau’s death several volumes entitled “Excursions in Field and Forest” (1863), “The Maine Woods” (1864), “Cape Cod” (1865), and “A Yankee in Canada” (1866). The greater part of his voluminous journal was published in 1906 and 1907, though extensive selections had been previously printed in four volumes bearing respectively the names of the four seasons of the year. More than any other well-known American author, Thoreau strove to get at Nature’s inmost heart. Withdrawing to Walden Pond, he spent the larger part of his time for two years in reading and meditation; feeling then that his object had been accomplished, he returned to town life. For a brief period, Thoreau lived as an inmate of Emerson’s household and became an unconscious disciple of the man who entertained him. A transcendentalist imbued with a strong spirit of otherworldliness, he may perhaps be best summed up in Emerson’s words. “He was bred to no profession; he never married; he lived alone; he never went to church; he never voted; he refused to pay a tax to the state; he ate no flesh; he drank no wine; he never knew the use of tobacco; and though a naturalist he used neither rod nor gun.” Thomas Wentworth Higginson has pointed out that Thoreau’s fame has survived two of the greatest dangers that can beset reputation—a brilliant satirist for critic (Lowell), and an injudicious friend for biographer (Channing).

Minor Transcendentalists.—Minor transcendentalists, and connected therefore with Emerson and Thoreau, were Amos Bronson Alcott (1799–1888), and Sarah Margaret Fuller (1810–1850). Both, like Emerson, were contributors to The Dial but unlike him did not hold aloof from the Brook Farm experiment. Alcott’s chief works were “Tablets” (1868), “Concord Days” (1872), and “Table Talk” (1877); Margaret Fuller’s, “A Summer on the Lakes” (1843), “Woman in the Nineteenth Century” (1844), and “Papers on Literature and Art” (1846). Other essayists who may be mentioned as identifying themselves with the Brook Farm movement or with the Transcendental Club out of which it grew, were three noted clergymen, William Ellery Channing (1780–1842), the founder of the club; Theodore Parker (1810–1860), the pulpit representative of its theories, and James Freeman Clarke (1810–1888), a frequent contributor to its organ, The Dial. In later years each of these men published works which are still occasionally read. Channing’s numerous writings were brought together in five volumes in 1841, and, under the title “The Perfect Life,” a selection from them was made in 1872. He must not be confused with a younger William Ellery Channing (1818–1901), his brother’s son, the author of a monograph on “Thoreau, the Poet Naturalist” (1873) and of “Conversations from Rome” (1902). Parker’s chief works aside from his sermons were “Miscellaneous Writings” (1843) and “Historic Americans” (1870); Clarke’s, “Orthodoxy, its Truths and Errors” (1866) and “Ten Great Religions” (1871).

The Transcendental Movement appealed to all sorts and conditions of men: philosophers exchanged ideas with journalists, and ministers with writers of fiction. Of the members who later became known as editors the most important were George Ripley (1802–1880), Charles Anderson Dana (1819–1897), and George William Curtis (1824–1892), all of whom at some time or other were upon the staff of The New York Tribune. Ripley and Dana were joint editors of “The American Encyclopedia” (1857–1863); but they also worked independently, the former putting together fourteen volumes entitled “Specimens of Foreign Standard Literature” (1838–1842), the latter making that still famous collection “The Household Book of Poetry and Song” (1857). Curtis’ interests were so many and so various that he has been classified as journalist, orator, publicist, and author. His most important works were “Lotus Eating” (1852), “Potiphar Papers” (1853), and “Essays from the Easy Chair” (1891), the last a collection of brief papers originally contributed to Harper’s Magazine.