AMERICAN LITERATURE

INTRODUCTION

THIS book aims to trace briefly the rise and growth of literature in America. The word literature is here used in its broadest sense the written record of the life of a people or nation. Of literature in its more restricted sense

"writing which has claim to consideration on the ground of beauty of form or emotional effect" - the first two hundred years of English life in America produced only a few examples; the first hundred years scarcely one. During this time, however, there were produced many pieces of writing an acquaintance with which is essential to an understanding of the life of our forefathers, and which throw not a little light on genuine literary productions of the later period.

It is only three centuries since the first permanent English colony was planted on the shores of the James. That little band of settlers found a vast expanse of country over which roamed at will savage tribes of red men. Their only writings consisted of hieroglyphics scratched rudely on bark or stone for the purpose of conveying information of passing interest. So far as is known they had not a single permanent record of any kind. The only literature, therefore, that can be called American is that produced by the European settlers of America, and we are interested in only so much of that as was produced in the thirteen English colonies and their outgrowth, the United States. To

this literature by common consent the name American has been limited.

England at the time of the dawn of American literature was enjoying a period of great prosperity and influence, thanks to the genius and wisdom of Queen Elizabeth, who had lived till four years before the landing at Jamestown. James I, as king of England and Scotland, had united the crowns of the two countries. He was encouraging the expansion of British trade and the extension of the British domain by subsidizing exploration, and by granting royal patents to his noble friends for the colonizing of America.

Englishmen of this happy period possessed a rich heritage of literature, including the works of Chaucer, Malory, Spenser, and Marlowe. They were enjoying the companionship of such immortals as Beaumont and Fletcher, Ben Jonson, Bacon, and Shakspere. Under the direction of the authors themselves they saw acted those great dramas that will be the delight and inspiration of millions. so long as the English language shall exist.

When our forefathers sailed away from the shores of England to Virginia and to Massachusetts, they carried with them, as Englishmen, an interest in this priceless. heritage. As we trace the growth of literature in America we shall observe that the literary dependence of America on England gradually became less in the same way and for much the same reason as did the political dependence. As America became settled and her men and women found time for self-culture and contemplation, she became less dependent on the mother country for literary inspiration; and with nationality came literature in its more restricted sense, a literature permeated with the freshness and the vigor of the land that gave it birth.

While no division of American literature into periods can be entirely satisfactory, it will be convenient to recognize

four up to the year 1892

this survey.

These are:

1. From John Smith to Benjamin Franklin (1608-1758). 2. From Benjamin Franklin to Washington Irving (1758– 1809).

3. From Washington Irving to the end of the Civil War (1809-1865).

4. From the end of the Civil War to the deaths of Walt Whitman and John G. Whittier (1865-1892).

CHAPTER I

FROM JOHN SMITH TO BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

AMERICAN literature had a beginning very different from that of most nations. Most literatures began before the language in which they were subsequently written had a definite form. They began in verse, usually in the songs of bards who celebrated the heroic deeds of individuals and of tribes. They expressed the emotions, beliefs, aspirations, of a society more or less primitive, a civilization but slightly developed. Our knowledge of these beginnings rests on a long period of oral transmission.

Quite in contrast to such conditions, the author of the first book written on American soil knew that his work could be manifolded by the printing press within a few months of its completion. His language was the language of one of the world's great literatures, even then at its highest achievement. Furthermore, it was the language of a civilization second to none, of a nation acknowledging no superior in intellectual or physical accomplishment. It looked back nine centuries to a great epic poem, Beowulf; two centuries to Chaucer, a poet whose breadth of view made him a world figure; and a few decades to the defeat of the Spanish Armada, a victory that showed the men who spoke the language to be truly great spirits.

John Smith (1580-1631). — The author of this first book was John Smith, whose writings belong to history rather than to literature, and to England rather than to America, but who cannot be omitted from a sketch like the present. Born in Lincolnshire, England, in 1580, he had from the