As the public is content with crude and hasty writing, the crowd, who are capable of such performance, rush in, eager to carry off the prize of voluminousness, if not of excellence; and, in consequence, we surpass all other nations in the number of worthless books which we print. In fact, the great national defect is haste, and therefore a want of thoroughness in our work.
But we have no thought of entering into an extended examination
of the causes to which the feebleness of American literature is to be attributed. The very general recognition of the fact that it is feeble, even when not marred by grosser faults, is probably the most assuring evidence that in the future we may hope for something better.
Our weakness, however it may be accounted for, is most perceptible in the highest realms of thought—philosophy and poetry. To the former our contributions are valueless. No original thinker has appeared among us; no one who has even aspired to anything higher than the office of a commentator. This, indeed, can hardly be matter for surprise, since we may be naturally supposed to inherit from the English their deficiency in power of abstract thought and metaphysical intuition. But in poetry they excel all other nations, whether ancient or modern; and as they have transmitted to us their mental defects, we might not unreasonably hope to be endowed with their peculiar gifts of mind. Deprived of the philosophic brow, we might hope for some compensation, at least, in the poet’s eye in a fine frenzy rolling. But even in this we seem not to have been highly favored. Nothing could well be more wretched than American verse-making during the colonial era. We doubt whether a single line of all that was written from the landing of the Pilgrims down to the war of Independence is worth preserving. Pope, when he wrote his Dunciad, found but one American worthy even of being damned to so unenviable an immortality.
Freneau, who was the most popular and the most gifted poet of the Revolution, is as completely unknown to this generation as though he had never written; and, indeed,
he wrote nothing which, without great loss to the world, may not be forgotten. And to this class, whom nor gods nor columns permit to live, belong nearly all who in America have courted the Muse. In our entire poetical literature there are not more than half a dozen names which deserve even passing notice, and the greatest of these cannot be placed higher than among the third-rate poets of England.
Without adopting the crude theory of Macaulay that as civilization advances poetry necessarily declines, we shall be at no loss for reasons to account for this absence of the highest poetic gifts. Neither the character of the early settlers in this country, nor their religious faith, nor their social and political conditions of life, were of the kind from which inspiration to high thinking and flights of fancy might naturally be expected to spring. The Puritans were hard, unsympathetic, with no appreciation of beauty. In their eyes art of every kind was at best useless, even when not tending to give a dangerous softness and false polish to manners. Their religious faith intensified this feeling, and caused them to turn with aversion from what had been so long and so intimately associated, as almost to be identified, with Catholic worship. Their sour looks, their nasal twang, their affected simplicity, their contempt of literature, and their dislike of the most innocent amusements, would hardly lead the Muse, even if invited, to smile on them. Habits of thought and feeling not unlike theirs had, it is true, in Milton, been found to be not incompatible with the highest gifts of imagination and expression. But Milton had not the Puritan contempt of letters. He was, on the contrary, a man of extensive
reading and great culture; and his proud and lofty spirit was not too high to stoop to flattery as servile and as elegant as ever a tyrant received. His lines on ecclesiastical architecture and music in Il Penseroso prove that he had a keen perception of the beauty and grandeur of Catholic worship. He was, in fact, in many respects more a Cavalier than a Roundhead. He had, besides, in the burning passions of his age, the bitter strife of party and sect, in the scorn and contempt of the nobles for the low-born—which in the civil wars had been trodden beneath the iron heel of war, only to rise with the monarchy in more offensive form—that which fired him to the adventurous song “that with no middle flight intends to soar,” and made him deify rebellion in Satan, who, rather than be subject, would not be at all.
In the primitive and simple social organization of the American colonies there was nothing to fire the soul or kindle the indignation that makes poets. And even nature presented herself to our ancestors rather as a shrew to be conquered than as a mistress to be wooed with harmonious numbers and sweet sounds of melody. If to this we add, what few will deny, that the equality of conditions in our society, however desirable from a political or philanthropic point of view, is to the poetic eye but a flat and weary plain, without any of the inspiration of high mountains and long-withdrawing vales, of thundering cataracts that lose themselves in streams that peacefully glide all unconscious of the roar and turmoil of waters of which they are born, we will find nothing strange in the practical and unimaginative character of the American people. We know of no better example of the
tameness of the American Muse than Whittier. He is one of our most voluminous writers of verse, and various causes, most of which are doubtless extrinsic to the literary merit of his compositions, have obtained for him very general recognition. He lacks, indeed, the culture of Longfellow, his wide acquaintance with books and the world, and his careful study of the literatures of the European nations. He lacks also his large sympathies and catholic thought, his elevation of sentiment and power of finished and polished expression.