Oliver Wendell Holmes.—Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894) stands in some contrast to the chief writers of the Transcendental School. On the whole they were marked by deliberate seriousness, but he possessed a clear, crisp spontaneity which often broke forth into sparkling fun. Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a member of what he facetiously styled “The Brahmin Caste” of New England, he counted among his ancestors more than one English governor of the Colonial period and that famous woman of her time, Anne Bradstreet, “the Tenth Muse.” After being graduated from Harvard College in 1829, he studied law for a year and then turned to medicine. Completing his education in Paris, Holmes returned to America in 1835 to enter upon the practice of his profession, but in 1839 accepted a professorship of anatomy at Dartmouth College, in New Hampshire. The following year he entered upon a similar position in the Harvard Medical School, and remained there until 1882. In 1886, Holmes visited Europe and received honorary degrees from Edinburgh, Oxford, and Cambridge. The eight remaining years of his life he spent quietly at his home in Boston, graciously receiving even strangers, who felt that they had not really seen that city unless they had shaken Dr. Holmes by the hand.
Of Holmes’ prose work his “Breakfast Table” series best defends his right to claim a permanent place of fame. “The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table,” after appearing serially in the first and second volumes of The Atlantic Monthly (1857–1858), was immediately republished in book form, and was succeeded by “The Professor at the Breakfast Table” (1859), “The Poet at the Breakfast Table” (1872), and “Over the Tea-Cups” (1891). These works, which have been rather aptly characterised as “a cross between an essay and a drama,” contain comments on almost everything in the heavens above, the earth beneath, and the waters under the earth. The books are at times delightfully whimsical and scintillatingly witty, at others deeply serious and minutely analytic, and at still others tenderly generous and movingly pathetic. Holmes’ other important works in prose are two volumes of biography, a “Memoir of John Lothrop Motley” (1879) and a “Life of Ralph Waldo Emerson” (1884); one book of essays, “Pages from an Odd Volume of Life” (1883); and one diary of travel, “Our Hundred Days in Europe” (1887).
Willis, Mitchell, and Warner.—Nathaniel Parker Willis (1806–1867), Donald Grant Mitchell (born in 1822), and Charles Dudley Warner (1829–1900) are suggested by the mention of Holmes, for they, like him, were writers of the “genial” essay. Willis was born in Portland, Maine, and was graduated from Yale at the age of twenty-one. Entering upon a journalistic career in 1828, he spent a considerable number of years abroad, whence he sent home for the periodicals of his day frequent accounts of his foreign travel and experiences. His complete works have been collected into thirteen volumes, but the best of his writing may be found in two books published during his lifetime, “Pencillings by the Way” (1835) and “Letters from Under a Bridge” (1840). Willis wrote with most painstaking care. It has been left upon record by James Parton that Willis “bestowed upon everything he did the most careful labour, making endless erasures and emendations. On an average he blotted one line out of every three that he wrote, and on one page of his editorial writing there were but three lines left unaltered.” It may be added, in passing, that Willis’ father in 1827 founded the well known and widely read Youth’s Companion. Mitchell, for many years better known as “Ik Marvel,” was, like Willis, a New Englander by birth and a graduate of Yale College. He, also, spent a few years abroad, acting, in fact, as United States Consul at Venice in 1853–1855. His works were many, but he is best known as the author of “Reveries of a Bachelor” (1850) and “Dream Life” (1851). Warner was in many respects the strongest writer of this group. A New Englander by birth, he was graduated at Hamilton College, Clinton, New York, then studied law at the University of Pennsylvania, and finally began the practice of his profession in Chicago. In 1860 he was called to Hartford, Connecticut, as editor of a daily paper, and from then on gave himself up to journalism and other literary interests. His works were many and varied; the most important are “My Summer in a Garden” (1870), “Backlog Studies” (1872), “My Winter on the Nile” (1876), and a “Life of Washington Irving” (1881).
Some Travellers.—Bayard Taylor’s experiences abroad found their expression in a number of books; but, readable as they all are, the first, “Views Afoot” (1846), is the best. It is a work to be compared with Irving’s “Sketch Book” and Longfellow’s “Outre Mer”; it may not be far wrong to assign it to a place between the two, inferior to the first, superior to the second. From Taylor’s numerous works in other departments of pure literature, “Studies in German Literature” (1879) and “Essays and Notes” (1880) may be chosen for mention.
At the risk of departing somewhat from chronological order, one may mention at this point a few authors who, like Taylor, left records of their travels and adventures. The earliest of these, an older man in fact than Taylor, was Elisha Kent Kane (1820–1857), the Arctic explorer, who related in “The Grinnell Expeditions” (1854–1856), the story of the two unsuccessful attempts to find Sir John Franklin. Much nearer to our time were Henry M. Stanley (1841–1890) and George Kennan (born in 1845). Stanley was born in Wales, it is true, and was knighted by Queen Victoria in 1890; but his explorations in Africa were made while he was a citizen of the United States. His best-known work is his first, “How I Found Livingston” (1872). Kennan experienced adventures in still another part of the world. Sent to Siberia by the American Telegraph Association to superintend the construction of lines, he published, in 1870, “Tent Life in Siberia.” Several years later he returned to the same country as correspondent of The Century Magazine to investigate social and political conditions there. He published the results of his observations in “Siberia and the Exile System” (1891).
Holland, Lowell, and Others.—The essay of travel, it will have to be admitted, has carried us pretty well out of the realm of pure literature and brought us down to very recent times. If we have seemed to ignore certain writers, some less and some greater, it was but to return to them for fuller mention. Josiah Gilbert Holland (1819–1881) was born in Belchertown, Massachusetts, and while still a young man became associate editor of The Springfield Republican. In 1870 he assisted in the foundation of Scribner’s Monthly and became its editor-in-chief. He tried his hand at various forms of literature and at one time was not far from being the most popular writer in the United States. To this day there is hardly an American household unprovided with a copy of one of the early editions of “Timothy Titcomb’s Letters” (1858), “Gold Foil” (1859), or “Plain Talks on Familiar Subjects” (1865). James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) contributed many articles to The Atlantic and The North American Review; some of this work has not yet been collected, but the best of it may be found scattered through the seven volumes of his complete prose works (1890–1891). During his lifetime Lowell published several collections of essays; the most valuable are “Fireside Travels” (1864), “Among my Books” (1870), and “My Study Windows” (1871). As one looks over their contents, one is surprised at the versatility of their writer. The essay of reminiscence, “A Moosehead Journal” or “Cambridge Thirty Years Ago,” balances the essay of travel, “At Sea” or “A Few Bits of Roman Mosaic”; the historical essay, “New England Two Centuries Ago,” is matched by the nature study, “My Garden Acquaintance”; the purely literary sketch, “Shakespeare Once More,” stands beside the book review “Witchcraft” or “A Great Public Character”; and the political speech, “Democracy” or “Tariff Reform,” adds a certain virility to the notes of a response to the toast “Our Literature” or to the address on “Books and Reading” delivered at the opening of a free public library. Lowell is ironical in “On a Certain Condescension in Foreigners,” witty in “A Good Word for Winter,” genial in “A Library of Old Authors,” sympathetic in “Emerson the Lecturer,” just in “Thoreau,” firm in “Reconstruction” and “Abraham Lincoln,” thoughtful in “The Rebellion: Its Causes and Consequences,” and scholarly in “Chaucer” and “Dante.” Aristocratic in the best sense of that much abused term, cultured in manner, robust and vigorous in thought, clean and fresh in mind, Lowell still stands forth as America’s finest representative man of letters.
The greatness of Lowell has by no means dimmed the renown of certain of his lesser contemporaries. Edward Everett Hale (born in 1822), Thomas Wentworth Higginson (born in 1823), and Charles Eliot Norton (1827–1908) deserve at least passing mention, although the first two are better known for contributions to magazines than for books, and the last has gained attention mainly through his biographical work and his translation of Dante. Owing to the popularity of a story, “The Man Without a Country,” Dr. Hale has unfortunately become known as an author of one book, but his “Puritan Politics in England and New England” (1869) is valuable, and his “Franklin in France” (1887), written with the assistance of his son, is interesting and trustworthy. Mr. Higginson has tried his hand at biography, historical memoranda, criticism, and fiction: probably his best work is found in “Outdoor Papers” (1863), “Atlantic Essays” (1871), and “The New World and the New Book” (1891). Of the three authors here mentioned, Dr. Norton is the most important; he is more than a writer; he is in addition a scholar. Knowing intimately all of the foremost writers of this country, he was hardly less well acquainted with the most important English authors of the middle and later Victorian period. In addition to his monumental prose translation of Dante’s “New Life” (1858) and “Divine Comedy” (1892), he has edited such books as “The Early Letters of Thomas Carlyle” (1886), “The Letters of James Russell Lowell” (1893), and “The Letters of John Ruskin” (1904). His chief original works are “Notes of Travel and Study in Italy” (1859) and “Historical Studies of Church-Building in the Middle Ages” (1880). The scholarship of Dr. Norton immediately suggests that of other men. George Ticknor (1791–1887) by the date of his birth seems to belong to a period slightly earlier than that of Norton; in fact he immediately preceded Longfellow as professor of belles-lettres at Harvard. His chief work was “A History of Spanish Literature” (1849). As a valuable piece of criticism, it has not been superseded, and even in Spain is accepted as authoritative. Somewhat later than Ticknor in point of time was Francis James Child (1825–1896). Educated at Harvard College, he was a professor there for nearly half a century. Devoting himself to the study of the ballad as a literary form, he published the results of his work in eight volumes under the title “English and Scottish Popular Ballads” (1857–1859). Closely connected with these several authors was James Thomas Fields (1817–1881). Founder of The Atlantic Monthly and member of a famous publishing house, he was acquainted more or less intimately with every important American writer of the last half of the nineteenth century. He was not without literary skill himself, publishing among other works “Yesterdays with Authors” (1872) and “Underbrush” (1881). His wife, Annie Adams Fields (born in 1834), has written a number of books in a similar vein: the most valuable, perhaps, are “A Shelf of Old Books” and “Authors and Friends,” both published in 1896.
Shakespearean Scholars.—Harking back to Norton and Ticknor as representative American students of foreign literatures, one naturally takes pleasure in seeing that the field of Shakespearean scholarship has been by no means neglected in this country. Henry Norman Hudson (1814–1886) may be said to have been the first American to turn a furrow; for, after publishing “Lectures on Shakespeare” (1848), he devoted himself to a critical study of the plays and finally produced a work still mentioned with respect, “Shakespeare: His Life, Art, and Characters” (1872). Meanwhile Richard Grant White (1822–1885) had published “The Authorship of the Three Parts of Henry VI.” (1859) and “Memoirs of the Life of Shakespeare” (1865). Interested in other subjects for a time, he wrote “Words and Their Uses” (1870) and “England Without and Within” (1881); then, returning to his early interests, he produced “Studies in Shakespeare” (1885). Perhaps Edwin Percy Whipple (1819–1886) deserves mention at this place, for after writing “Essays and Reviews” (1849), and “Character and Characteristic Men” (1866), he published “The Literature of the Age of Elizabeth” (1869). Nor is it possible to overlook Thomas Raynesford Lounsbury (born in 1838), who added to his extensive “Studies in Chaucer” (1892) a trilogy of studies entitled “Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist” (1901), “Shakespeare and Voltaire” (1902), and “The Text of Shakespeare” (1906). But easily the foremost Shakespearean scholar in America is Horace Howard Furness (born in 1833), whose “Variorum Shakespeare” as a painstaking and authoritative work stands unsurpassed in any language. Recently Mr. Furness has associated his son with him in his investigations, and we may therefore expect with some confidence that a study of Shakespeare on the largest scale up to this time attempted may be completed according to the traditions with which it was begun.
Literary Historians.—Widely interested as the scholars of this country have been in the greater writers and the more important literature of other lands, there has been no dearth of attention to our own. Moses Coit Tyler (1835–1900), sometime professor of American history at Cornell University, was the author of two valuable works, “History of American Literature during the Colonial Times” (1878) and “Literary History of the American Revolution” (1897). Charles Francis Richardson (born in 1851), professor of English in Dartmouth College, has covered the whole range of our literary history down to 1885 in his “American Literature” (1887); and Barrett Wendell (born in 1855) of Harvard University, in his “Literary History of America” (1901), has brought his treatment of the same topic down to the beginning of the present century. Professor Wendell has written upon other American topics in “Stelligeri” (1893), and “A Life of Cotton Mather” (1891). More recently he has published two works, both the result of his residence abroad as a lecturing professor: the substance of the first, “The Temper of the Seventeenth Century in English Literature” (1904), was delivered before Trinity College, Cambridge; that of the second, “The France of To-Day” (1907) was gathered while he was giving a course of lectures in Paris.
Members of other American college faculties have given evidence of minute research and strong inspiration in books not a few. James Brander Matthews (born in 1852) of Columbia University, and George Edward Woodberry (born in 1855), for many years connected with the same university, have both written books that have gained popular approval; of the former, “French Dramatists of the Nineteenth Century” (1881) and “The Historical Novel” (1901) certainly deserve mention; of the latter, “The Life of Poe” (1885) and “The Appreciation of Literature” (1907). No less significant than these men are Felix Emmanuel Schelling (born in 1858) of the University of Pennsylvania, whose latest work is “The Elizabethan Drama” (1908), and Vida Dutton Scudder (born in 1861) of Wellesley College, who cannot be left unnoticed, so thorough and satisfactory are her “Life of the Spirit in the Modern English Poets” (1895) and “Social Ideals in English Letters” (1898). Woodrow Wilson, president of Princeton University, has spared time from his political and historical studies to write an interesting volume of essays called “Mere Literature” (1896); President Wilson’s former colleague, Bliss Perry (born in 1860), now editor of The Atlantic Monthly and professor of belles-lettres at Harvard, has published a valuable “Study of Prose Fiction” (1902), and another Princeton professor, Henry Jackson Van Dyke (born in 1852), has written an especially useful study called “The Poetry of Tennyson” (1889), and has also shown himself a master of the leisurely essay in “Little Rivers” (1895) and “Fisherman’s Luck” (1899).