[From Fraser's Magazine.]
LACK OF POETRY IN AMERICA.
After the Americans had established their political nationality beyond cavil, and taken a positive rank among the powers of the civilized world, they still remained subject to reproach, that in the worlds of Art, Science, and Literature, they had no national existence. Admitting, or, at any rate, feeling, the truth of this taunt, they bestirred themselves resolutely to produce a practical refutation of it. Their first and fullest success was, as might be expected from their notoriously utilitarian character, in practical inventions. In oratory, notwithstanding a tendency to more than Milesian floridness and hyperbole, they have taken no mean stand among the free nations of christendom. In history, despite the disadvantages arising from the scarcity of large libraries, old records, and other appliances of the historiographer, they have produced some books which are acknowledged to be well worthy a place among our standard works, and which have acquired, not merely an English, but a continental reputation. In the fine arts, notwithstanding obviously still greater impediments—the want at home, not only of great galleries and collections, but of the thousand little symbols and associations that help to educate the artist—the consequent necessity of going abroad to seek all that the student requires—they have still made laudable progress. The paintings of Washington Allston are the most noteworthy lions in Boston; the statues of Powers command admiration even in London. In prose fiction, the sweet sketches of Irving have acquired a renown second only to that of the agreeable essayists whom he took for his models, while the Indian and naval romances of Cooper are purchased at liberal prices by the chary bibliopoles of England, and introduced to the Parisian public by the same hand which translated Walter Scott. In poetry alone they are still palpably inferior: no world-renowned minstrel has yet arisen in the New Atlantis, and the number of those versifiers who have attained a decided name and place among the lighter English literature of their day, or whose claims to the title of poet are acknowledged in all sections of their own country, is but small.
If we come to inquire into the causes of this deficiency, we are apt at first to light upon several reasons why it should not exist. In the first place, there is nothing unpoetical about the country itself, but every thing highly the reverse. All its antecedents and traditions, its discovery, its early inhabitants, its first settlement by civilized men, are eminently romantic. It is not wanting in battle-grounds, or in spots hallowed by recollections and associations of patriots and sages. The magnificence of its scenery is well known. The rivers of America are at the same time the most beautiful and the most majestic in the world: the sky of America, though dissimilar in hue, may vie in loveliness with the sky of Italy. No one who has floated down the glorious Hudson (even amid all the un-ideal associations of a gigantic American steamer), who has watched the snowy sails—so different from the tarry, smoky canvas of European craft—that speck that clear water; who has noticed the faultless azure and snow of the heaven above, suggesting the highest idea of purity, the frowning cliffs that palisade the shore, and the rich masses of foliage that overhang them, tinged a thousand dyes by the early autumn frost—no one who has observed all this, can doubt the poetic capabilities of the land.
A seeming solution, indeed, presents itself in the business, utilitarian character of the people; and this solution would probably be immediately accepted by very many of our readers. Brother Jonathan thinks and talks of cotton, and flour, and dollars, and the ups and downs of stocks. Poetry doesn't pay: he can not appreciate, and does not care for it. "Let me get something for myself," he says, like the churl in Theocritus. "Let the gods whom he invokes reward the poet. What do we want with more verse? We have Milton and Shakspeare (whether we read them or not). He is the poet for me who asks me for nothing;" and so the poor Muses wither (or as Jonathan himself might say, wilt) away, and perish from inanition and lack of sympathy. Very plausible; but now for the paradox. So far from disliking, or underrating, or being indifferent to poetry, the American public is the most eager devourer of it, in any quantity, and of any quality; nor is there any country in which a limited capital of inspiration will go farther. Let us suppose two persons, both equally unknown, putting forth a volume of poems on each side of the Atlantic; decidedly the chances are, that the American candidate for poetic fame will find more readers, and more encouragement in his country, than the British in his. Very copious editions of the standard English poets are sold every year, generally in a form adapted to the purses of the million; to further which end they are frequently bound two or three in a volume (Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats, for instance, is a favorite combination). Even bardlings like Pollok enjoy a large number of readers and editions. Nor is there—notwithstanding the much-complained-of absence of an international copyright law—any deficiency of home supply for the market. Writing English verses, indeed, is as much a part of an American's education, as writing Latin verses is of an Englishman's; recited "poems" always holding a prominent place among their public collegiate exercises; about every third man, and every other woman of the liberally-educated classes, writes occasional rhymes, either for the edification of their private circle, or the poets'-corner of some of the innumerable newspapers that encumber the land; and the number of gentlemen and ladies one meets who have published a volume of Something and Other Poems, is perfectly astounding.
The true secret seems to be, that the Americans, as a people, have not received that education which enables a people to produce poets. For, however true the poeta nascitur adage may be negatively of individuals, it is not true positively of nations. The formation of a national poetic temperament is the work of a long education, and the development of various influences. A peculiar classicality of taste, involving a high critical standard, seems necessary, among the moderns, to high poetic production; and such a taste has not yet been formed in America. True, there are kinds of poetry—the Ballad and the Epic, which, so far as we can trace them, are born, Pallas-like, full-grown; which sound their fullest tone in a nation's infancy, and are but faintly echoed in its maturity. But there are numbers in which lisps the infancy, not of a nation merely, but of a race. And the Americans were an old race though a young nation. They began with too much civilization for the heroic school of poetry: they have not yet attained enough cultivation for the philosophic.