nearer to the ordinary interests of life than, for instance, Aldrich: he likes narrative and dramatic as well as lyric themes. By virtue of How Old Brown Took Harper's Ferry, Alice of Monmouth, Wanted-A Man, and Gettysburg, he became one more of our laureates of the great war. Yet he is never a passionate singer. Even heroic deeds are likely to receive at his hands the highly artistic treatment which results in the idyl, and this, as his titles show, is one of his favorite forms of poetry. At times, his fancy has played with lighter occasional and bohemian verse. The city finds him a sympathetic bard, and a wandering organ-grinder called forth a unique poem of genuine inspiration-Pan in Wall Street.

Mr. Stedman's later energies have been given over to critical work, and he has published Victorian Poets (1875), Poets of America (1885), and The Nature and Elements of Poetry (1892), with their accompanying Anthologies. By these works, with their poetic sympathy and insight, sane judgment, luminous style, and kindly, sometimes over-kindly, temper, he has placed himself foremost among our literary critics since Lowell. His service, indeed, has been peculiarly great. He has done one thing that Lowell was not fitted to do. He has helped to put criticism on a fairly definite basis without removing it from the realm of personal taste and appreciation. Scholars are under obligations to him for the measure of order which he has introduced into the chaos of minor contemporary poetry, while many a young student owes him a debt for being set in the way to a love of the best that literature can afford.

Among writers of the Middle East whose work has been done outside of the cities, perhaps the most prominent is John Burroughs, who was born in the Catskill region of New York in 1837. Apart from a few years spent in teaching and as a Treasury clerk at Washington, Mr. Burroughs has remained devoted to the country life in

John Bur roughs, 1837

which he received his earliest training. His writings, largely the fruits of his studies of nature, whether of the habits of birds or of the habits of berries, which he loves to cultivate, inevitably remind us of those of Thoreau, of whom in his naturalist's ardor he is fully the equal. But he is quite without Thoreau's eccentricity of temper.

As befits a writer of

One gets

the later time, he carries with him more of the scientist's spirit, and he is never obtrusive with his moralizing. from him undiluted sunshine and field-odor and bird-song. Wake-Robin (1871), Winter Sunshine (1875), Birds and Poets (1877), Locusts and Wild Honey (1879), Fresh Fields (1884), reveal in their titles not a little of their character. Mr. Burroughs is also a literary critic of fine perceptions and poetic sympathies, as his Indoor Studies (1889) shows. He was one of the earliest defenders of Walt Whitman, and has published several appreciative essays upon Whitman's work. of Day (1900) is a volume of religious discussions. general public, however, he remains the naturalist, and he has been a potent influence, after Thoreau, upon the large body of writers upon outdoor subjects who at present enjoy such popularity.

Light

To the

Here might follow the names of many who have made later New York, even more conspicuously than later Boston, a centre of literary activity. There are some, like Richard Watson Gilder, poet, and veteran editor of the Century, who have long since won their circle of admirers. There are others, like George Edward Woodberry of Columbia University, alternately poet and critic, or Hamilton Wright Mabie of The Outlook, critic and engaging essayist, who are yearly strengthening their claims to admiration. And there is, or rather was, one in particular, who drifted from the West into the eastern metropolis, whom it is difficult not to praise at length, half in confidence that the future will sustain the praise. But though Richard

Hovey (1864-1900) easily surpassed all the younger singers in the native gift of poetry, his work scarcely bears the stamp of the great poet; his grasp upon life was not secure enough and his exuberant fancy nearly always fell short of the true shaping imagination, dallying with mere prettiness or wandering into regions of obscurity and mysticism, so that it is doubtful whether any further exercise of his powers would have made him more than death has now left him, a minor singer. Poetry and criticism, it would seem, simply hold their own in the East, keeping still at the lower level where they were left by the death of Longfellow, Lowell, and Holmes. There, as elsewhere, fiction now affords the preferred outlet of creative activity.

CHAPTER XI

LATE MOVEMENTS IN FICTION

The change that came over American literature in the latter part of the nineteenth century is most perceptible in the method and spirit of its fiction. It must be evident to the most casual observer that fiction has developed out of all proportion to other literary forms, until now the novel furnishes the staple leisure-reading of nearly all classes. So rapid, however, has been this development, and so multiform are its products, which change form almost from day to day, that anything like a history of the movement is at this stage impossible. The most that can be done is to indicate a few of the major tendencies and to put on record a few of the more important names.

Foremost among the changes to be noted has been the rise of what is commonly known as realism. This has been professedly an attempt to draw nearer to the conditions of real life. Vagueness of scene, abnormal characters, mysterious and impossible happenings, have been abandoned in favor of familiar and even commonplace scenes and events. The interest of plot, with its elements of surprise and terror, has been subordinated to the interest attaching to the development of character in the midst of the actual problems of existence. In short, romanticism, or the unrestrained play of fancy, has given way to simple fidelity to truth, and we no longer cali our works of fiction romances, but novels. In this matter America has been a close follower in the footsteps of

Great Britain. The change from Brown, Cooper, and Poe through Hawthorne, Mrs. Stowe, and Holmes, to Bret Harte, Howells, and James, may be likened (though the individual comparisons will not hold) to the change from Scott and Bulwer, through Charlotte Bronte and Dickens, to Thackeray, George Eliot, and Meredith.

Concomitant with this development of the novel of character, of social problems, and of realistic scenes, there has been a marked tendency to specialize or localize. Every profession and occupation, from the priest's to the ward politician's, from the banker's to the burglar's, has been thoroughly exploited by the industrious novelist. Every section of the country, too, from the lakes and pine forests of northern Maine to the deserts and orange orchards of southern California, has found, or seems destined to find, its local historian in the guise of a writer of fiction. This has gradually led to a more and more lavish use of "local color "—that is, technicalities of profession or trade, details of local scenery, and above all, provincial dialect, to secure which the novelist often goes deliberately into a course of training. Fiction almost ceases to be fiction in its photographic reproduction of unselected and unarranged facts. It is clear that this is a natural but extreme outgrowth of the realistic method. There is, of course, virtue in local color, and the greatest artist need not. perhaps henceforth may not, dispense with it. But it cannot alone carry a piece of fiction beyond the temporary popularity which waits on novelty. The great work of art must portray, under whatever local and temporary guises, universal and eternal verities.

Turning from the character of this late fiction to its form, we note, in addition to the novel of standard length, a very popular variety known as the short story. The main characteristics of the short story are the same as those of the