W CHAPTER XIII Later Essayists HEN, speaking to his classmates on their graduation from college, William Ellery Channing' made the address entitled The Present Age (1798), the note that he uttered was one that thenceforth reverberated throughout our national life and literature. It showed affiliation with the French Revolution, and with the England of Burns, Shelley, and Wordsworth; and notable is the emphasis on the possibility of all human progress, not alone American progress, and on the importance of that culture which shall be shared by all classes of mankind. To material objects Channing gave their due, but regarded them merely as the manifestations of character and of power that have in higher fields their most inspiring representation; and beauty was for him a vast treasury of benediction wherefrom he wished his fellow men to draw the priceless blessings available to the poorest purse. Thus the essay on Self-Culture, written as an address in 1838, is a composition to which the writings of Emerson, Curtis, Higginson, Mabie, and later authors owe a decided, even if in some cases unconscious, debt-the practical and poetical blending of humanity with the humanities. As Channing was the earliest in that firmament of lectureressayists where Emerson shone as the most benignant star, so Nathaniel Parker Willis' is the prototype of later semi-literary American journalists. Now, the mark of the journalist, the trait which surely establishes both his immediate success and his final oblivion, is the intentness of seizure on what the present can give, in swift, exciting, easily apprehensible interest. It was always the present that fascinated Willis; and, save in fleeting moSee Book II, Chap. VIII. Ibid., Chap. III. 2 ments of early days, his vision did not seek the future with any sincere scrutiny. Revelling in personalities, he is expository only secondarily, if at all; and inspiring never. The writer of our own time who works up an interview with some man of mark is following Willis not alone in his interest in the superficialities of personality, but often in the very tricks of style, varying from gaudy metaphor to the epithet that has the tang of the unexpected. Our journalists, by and large, remain lesser members of the Willis tribe. 2 Still a third writer, Washington Irving,' exerted a notable influence as the originator of a literary form which, for want of a better phrase, might be called the story-essay, wherein the narrative element runs its gentle course over a bed of personal reflections and descriptive comment of individual flavour. He had a whole school of followers, and even Hawthorne3 for a time moved among them; while two more natural inheritors of his moods of tender sentiment and gentle satire are Donald Grant Mitchell (1822-1908) and George William Curtis, with whom the history of our later essayists may well begin. The two volumes, Reveries of a Bachelor (1850) and Dream Life (1851), which Mitchell, as a young writer, issued under the pseudonym of Ik Marvel, are volumes that strike the same chords whose artistically modulated music resounds in so much of Irving, to whom the latter volume was dedicated; while in The Lorgnette, or Studies of the Town (1850) we have a series of papers directly modelled on Salmagundi. These sketches, despite the facile manner of their kindly satire, belong in the topical realm of ephemera, and are of interest mainly to the historical critic, who, harking back to the days of The Spectator and The Tatler, finds in them another nexus between English and American literature. Not so, however, can we dismiss Reveries of a Bachelor and Dream Life. Their hold on the affections of later generations is secure despite that naïve sentimentality frequently displayed by American literature in the period just preceding the Civil War. Both these books present a series of pictures in the imaginary life of their author, and there is a general adherence to the concept of life as a succession of the seasons. This parallel does not, however, 2 Ibid., Chap. vii. 1 See Book II, Chap. IV. 3 Ibid., Chap. XI. lead into paths of wintry regret. We find even December logic taking on a golden hue in such a sentence as this from the Reveries: "Affliction has tempered joy, and joy adorned affliction. Life and all its troubles have become distilled into a holy incense rising ever from your fireside—an offering to your household Gods." "And what if age comes"-Mitchell writes further on, in the vein of Browning's Rabbi Ben Ezra-"what else proves the wine? It is but retreating towards the pure sky depths." The note of joy in the springtime of life, the accent of sympathy for young griefs as well as young loves, echo from these charming pages; while the ingenuousness of Ik Marvel's sentiments is embedded in an old-fashioned form of sentimental phraseology which brings a smile to the lips of the sophisticated critic. But after all it is the smile in the reader's heart that attests the lasting human appeal of both the Reveries and Dream Life. These books were written while their author was still in his twenties, and they have the immaturity, both of technique and philosophy, which precedes the labour of the craftsman and the experiences of the man; yet they have also, with the aroma of youth, that even subtler fragrance the gift of the gods to all who comprehend the value of the dreaming hour. There are two elements in these works secondary in interest only to the major themes of love, sorrow, and ambition. One is the immediate affection for nature, nowhere more beautifully expressed than in this springtime picture: "The dandelions lay along the hillocks like stars in a sky of green." The other note is of love for old books. These themes are repeatedly found in Mitchell's later writings; and My Farm of Edgewood (1863) Edgewood was his country home near New Haven -began a series of volumes among the earliest of a steadily increasing department of American literature revolving around agricultural and rural themes. Mitchell's own experiences with the soil of his native Connecticut are, in My Farm of Edgewood, recounted with the seriousness of the scientific farmer and the grace of the man of letters. In Wet Days at Edgewood (1865) his pleasant discourse ranges from ancient country poets to the latest practical studies of soil cultivation; while in the yet later volume Rural Studies, with Hints for Country Places (1867) he continues in confidential I mood to the widening circles of those readers whose love for country life his own writings had in no small measure developed. Thus Mitchell figures in a very personal way in the large group of American writers on nature, and deserves recognition as an influential pioneer in directing, with the urbanity of the scholar, the attention of his countrymen to non-urban delights. This point is emphasized because, all told, American essayists have, in their treatment of nature, covered an exceptionally wide range, and approached this theme, both as to style and interpretation, in ways that repay the most interested study: Audubon, the important naturalist, indulging in exaggerated poetical rhetoric in acquainting us with the habits of birds; Emerson and Thoreau,3 not impervious to the interest of nature's details, yet winning from them the highest spiritual sustenance for the world of men; Agassiz1 and Warner and Mabie and Burroughs and John Muir, approaching each according to his temperament and qualifications this ever bountiful theme. From some of these authors we derive knowledge concerning animal life and plant life; from others, messages of the intimate relationship between human life and the great world of nature. But Mitchell, in his Edgewood writings, stands as one whose main interest sprang from the soil itself. Towards the end of his long life, Mitchell wrote four volumes on English Lands, Letters, and Kings (1890), and two on American Lands and Letters (1897-99). Here are many shrewd observations concerning his contemporaries, as well as pungent estimates, often mingled with humour, of the writings and character of earlier authors; but these books, with their wealth of pictures, were intended for the public at large, and cannot be considered as original contributions to critical literature. In them we have the somewhat obvious fruit of his travels, experiences, and readings, but in a manner that has less flavour than the gleanings of travel, published in far younger days, such as A New Sheaf from the Old Fields of Continental Europe (1847). Those earlier descriptive papers and legends, so immediately related to Irving's Tales of a Traveller, are more in accord with Mitchell's fame as the author of the Reveries and Dream Life, and through them Mitchell is most pleasantly 1 See Book III, Chap. XXVI. 3 Ibid., Chap. x. * See Book II, Chap. IX. Ik Marvel 2 113 affiliated with many other American essayists—Emerson, Bryant, Bayard Taylor, Curtis-who made their travels the basis of a great body of work that varies from the decorous pace of well-phrased description to graceful flights of fancy and even to soarings of the creative imagination. Before we leave Mitchell there is, however, to be noted one point which differentiates him from the majority of American essayists. Again like Irving, whose life Mitchell's parallels in details of ill health, early travels abroad, the study and abandonment of law, and the tenure of official position in Europe, the author of Dream Life held to the belief that a writer is not called upon to take an active part in the great political and social questions of his day, if he feels that he can best express himself and, in the long run, most effectively serve mankind through adherence to his literary art along the lines of his own predilections. Irving, of course, was at one time most adversely criticized by his countrymen for just such an attitude, and his protracted stay abroad was misconstrued as a form of national renegadism. Mitchell escaped hostile comment for his general abstention from participation in those public topics, ranging from the abolition of slavery and the preservation of the Union to Civil Service reform, woman suffrage, national copyright, and other themes of social betterment that led Whittier,3 Lowell, Curtis, and Higginson, and indeed almost all the leading American poets and essayists for the last fifty years, to become, at times, propagandists. This absence of the outright didactic note is a decided characteristic of Ik Marvel, leaving him none the less creditably in the brotherhood of those authors whose message remains abidingly sweet and wholesome. The most remarkable blending of the man of letters and the devoted public servant among American authors is manifested in the life and writings of George William Curtis (182492). In all the literary essays and addresses of Curtis, and in even the briefest of his papers for "The Easy Chair," is apparent his incomparably suave diction; but here, too, is that firmness of thought clothing his civic aspirations in the impregnable armour of dauntless and logical convictions. And * See Book II, Chap. v. › See Book II, Chap. XIII. VOL. II-8 * See Book III, Chaps. x and XIV. 4 Ibid., Chap. XXIV. |