published in America that is read to-day for its imaginative or artistic qualities; second, that at the beginning of the nineteenth century letters were first recognized in America as a profession, and that though the work of the best writers was still, for several decades, either slender or crude, the literature of the nation grew steadily in breadth and quality until, toward the middle of the century, we had in the East a group of writers who were recognized as great both at home and abroad, and whose work we still rank clearly above all that has been produced since; and third, that in the last few decades, or since our civil war, the literary impulse has betrayed itself in every corner of our land, sending forth a wealth of literature of which some account must be taken, but upon which judgment cannot yet be final. These three large and well defined periods may be indicated thus: I. THE BEGINNINGS, extending from the founding of the colony at Jamestown in 1607 down to about 1800. II. THE CREATIVE IMPULSE, extending from the first decade of the nineteenth century to the civil war. III. THE PERIOD OF LATER ACTIVITY, extending from the civil war to the present time. It will be well, at this point, to note also some geographical distinctions. Before the wide diffusion of our literature with the growth of our territory and population, it flourished only along the Atlantic seaboard. That region may be conveniently divided into three sections: the North, or Massachusetts Bay region-New England-with a literary capital at Boston; the South, or the region about the James River and Chesapeake Bay, with literary capitals (in the later time) at Richmond, Baltimore, and Washington; and the somewhat vaguely defined intermediate region of the Hudson and Delaware Rivers, with capitals at New York and Philadelphia. We shall find first one and then another of these sections the centre of the highest literary activity. CHAPTER 1 THE COLONIAL PERIOD.-CAVALIER, PURITAN, AND QUAKER 1607-1765 Our forefathers did not find it easy to cultivate simultaneously the soil and the Muses. Their situation, like that of most colonists, was an unnatural one. There was a lack of harmony between themselves and their surroundings which only generations of slow adjustment could remedy. On the one hand they were far too civilized to develop a folkliterature of song and legend, while on the other hand their environment was too primitive to foster that literature of culture which the educated element among them was fitted to enjoy. In England the era immediately before and after the colonization of America was eminently an era of court literature. Sir Philip Sidney, courtier, warrior, romancer, and poet, was the ideal of the early Elizabethans. Spenser never ceased to mourn his half-enforced banishment to the wilds of Ireland. The dramatists flocked to London. Bacon rose to be lord chancellor and a peer. Milton, half a century later, was secretary to the Commonwealth. Dryden was poet laureate. Addison was secretary of state. Pope was a London "wit," who throve, like his predecessors, under a system of liberal patronage. It was too much to expect that the men who crossed the sea and changed their sky should change also their nature and find in their strange surroundings inspiration to some new kind of song. Of course, an original genius might have arisen here. But original geniuses are rare, and the actual numbers of the new inhabitants were so small that the law of chance was against such an event. Besides, men or families with a strong bias toward literature and art were not likely to cast in their lot with bands of adventurers. The charms of nature were little felt or understood. The modern romantic spirit was not yet rife, and poets did not fly to the wilderness to assuage their woes or minister to their love of the picturesque. Not for more than a century was a Chateaubriand to visit our shores, penetrate the "forest primeval," and stand in rapt admiration on the banks of the Mississippi while the trunks of fallen oaks and pines floated past him between the islands of yellow waterlilies. Moreover, those of Puritan faith, coming here for freedom to worship God after their own manner, were almost wholly bound up in that worship. The emotional side of their nature, finding the satisfaction of its needs in their religion, led them neither to the solace of the fields and the sky nor to the delights of art. Of art, indeed, they were suspicious, as something concerning itself more with form than with spirit, a worship, as it were, of graven images, and intimately connected with Rome and Romanism, the objects of their most deadly hatred. Yet almost from the first day of the landing of the colonists, at Jamestown in 1607 and at Plymouth in 1620, writing went on; for many of the colonists were, after the manner of their time, educated people, and the leaders at least were lettered men. The first books, of course, remained long in manuscript or were sent to England for publication. By 1639, however, a printing-press was imported and set up at Cambridge. On it were printed, first a sheet or pamphlet, The Freeman's Oath, and second, Pierce's Almanack. The Bay Psalm Book, 1640, was the first printed book. In 1636 a college (now Harvard University) was founded and two years later named after the man who endowed it with one-half |