History of American Literature Part 28

Before Holmes, the last member of this New England group, died in 1894, both North and South had more than regained the material prosperity which they had enjoyed before the war. The natural resources of the country were so great and the energy of her sons so remarkable that not only was the waste of property soon repaired, but a degree of prosperity was reached which would probably never have been possible without the war. More than one million human beings perished in the strife. Many of these were from the more cultured and intellectual cla.s.ses on both sides. Centuries will not repair that waste of creative ability in either section. France, after the lapse of more than two hundred years, is still suffering from the loss of her Huguenots. It is impossible to compute what American literature has lost as a result of this war, not only from the double waste involved in turning the energies of men to destruction and subsequently to the necessary repairs, but also from the sacrifice of life of those who might have displayed genius with the pen or furnished an encouraging audience to the gifted ones who did not speak because there were none to hear.

The development of inventions during this period revolutionized the world's progress. Cities in various parts of the country had begun to communicate with each other by electricity, when Th.o.r.eau was living at Walden; when Emerson was writing the second series of his _Essays_; Longfellow, his lines about cares "folding their tents like the Arabs and as silently stealing away"; Lowell, his verses _To the Dandelion_; and Holmes, his complaint that his humor was diminishing his practice. By the time that Longfellow had finished _The Courtship of Miles Standish_, and Holmes _The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table_, messages had been cabled across the Atlantic. A comparison with an event of the preceding period will show the importance of this method of communication. The treaty of peace to end the last war with England was signed in Belgium, December 24, 1814. On January 8, 1815, the b.l.o.o.d.y battle of New Orleans was fought. News of this fight did not reach Washington until February 4. A week later information of the treaty of peace was received at New York. A new process of welding the world together had begun, and this welding was further strengthened by the invention of that modern miracle, the telephone, in 1876.

The result of the battle between the ironclads, the _Monitor_ and the _Merrimac_ (1862), led to a change in the navies of the entire world.

Alaska was bought in 1867, and added an area more than two thirds as large as the United States comprised in 1783. The improvement and extension of education, the interest in social reform, the beginning of the decline of the "let alone doctrine," the shortening of the hours of labor, and the consequent increase in time for self-improvement,--are all especially important steps of progress in this period.

Authors could no longer complain of small audiences. At the outbreak of the Civil War the United States had a population of thirty-one millions, while the combined population of Great Britain and Ireland was then only twenty-nine millions. Before Holmes pa.s.sed away in 1894 the population of 1860 had doubled. The pa.s.sage of an international copyright law in 1891 at last freed American authors from the necessity of competing with pirated editions of foreign works.

SUMMARY

The great mid-nineteenth century group of New England writers included Emerson, Th.o.r.eau, Hawthorne, who were often called the Concord group, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, Daniel Webster, Longfellow, Whittier, Lowell, Holmes, and the historians, Prescott, Motley, and Parkman.

The causes of this great literary awakening were in some measure akin to those which produced the Elizabethan age,--a "re-formation" of religious opinion and a renaissance, seen in a broader culture which did not neglect poetry, music, art, and the observation of beautiful things.

The philosophy known as transcendentalism left its impress on much of the work of this age. The transcendentalists believed that human mind could "transcend" or pa.s.s beyond experience and form a conclusion which was not based on the world of sense. They were intense idealists and individualists, who despised imitation and repet.i.tion, who were full of the ecstasy of discoveries in a glorious new world, who entered into a new companionship with nature, and who voiced in ways as different as _The Dial_ and Brook Farm their desire for an opportunity to live in all the faculties of the soul.

The fact that the thought of the age was specially modified by the question of slavery is shown in Webster's orations, Harriet Beecher Stowe's _Uncle Tom's Cabin_, the poetry of Whittier and Lowell, and to a less degree in the work of Emerson, Th.o.r.eau, and Longfellow.

We have found that Emerson's aim, shown in his _Essays_ and all his prose work, is the moral development of the individual, the acquisition of self-reliance, character, spirituality. Some of his nature poetry ranks with the best produced in America. Th.o.r.eau, the poet-naturalist, shows how to find enchantment in the world of nature. Nathaniel Hawthorne, one of the great romance writers of the world, has given the Puritan almost as great a place in literature as in history. In his short stories and romances, this great artist paints little except the trial and moral development of human souls in a world where the Ten Commandments are supreme.

Longfellow taught the English-speaking world to love simple poetry. He mastered the difficult art of making the commonplace seem attractive and of speaking to the great common heart. His ability to tell in verse stories like _Evangeline_ and _Hiawatha_ remains unsurpa.s.sed among our singers.

Whittier was the great antislavery poet of the North. Like Longfellow, he spoke simply but more intensely to that overwhelming majority whose lives stand most in need of poetry. His _Snow-Bound_ makes us feel the moral greatness of simple New England life. The versatile Lowell has written exquisite nature poetry in his lyrics and _Vision of Sir Launfal_ and _The Biglow Papers_. He has produced America's best humorous verse in _The Biglow Papers_ and _A Fable for Critics_. He is a great critic, and his prose criticism in _Among My Books_ and the related volumes is stimulating and interesting. His political prose, of which the best specimen is _Democracy_, is remarkable for its high ideals. Holmes is especially distinguished for his humor in such poems as _The Deacon's Masterpiece, or the Wonderful One-Hoss Shay_ and for the pleasant philosophy and humor in such artistic prose as _The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table_. He is the only member of this group who often wrote merely to entertain, but his _Chambered Nautilus_ shows that he also had a more serious aim.

When we come to the historians, we find that Prescott wrote of the romantic achievements of Spain in the days of her glory; Motley, of the struggles of the Dutch Republic to keep religious and civil liberty from disappearing from this earth; Parkman, of the contest of the English against the French and Indians to decide whether the inst.i.tutions and literature of North America should be French or English.

This New England literature is most remarkable for its moral quality, its gospel of self-reliance, its high ideals, its call to the soul to build itself more stately mansions.

REFERENCES FOR FURTHER STUDY

HISTORICAL

For contemporary English history consult the histories mentioned on p. 60.

The chapter on Victorian literature in the author's _History of English Literature_ gives the trend of literary movements on the other side of the Atlantic during this period.

Contemporary American history may be traced in the general works listed on p. 61, or in Woodrow Wilson's _Division and Reunion_.

LITERARY

GENERAL WORKS

In addition to the works of Richardson, Wendell, and Trent (p. 61), the following may be consulted:--

Nichol's _American Literature_.

Churton Collins's _The Poets and Poetry of America_.

Vincent's _American Literary Masters_.

Stedman's _Poets of America_.

Onderdonk's _History of American Verse_.

Lawton's _The New England Poets_.

Erskine's _Leading American Novelists_. (Mrs. Stowe, Hawthorne.)

Brownell's _American Prose Masters_. (Especially Emerson and Lowell.)

Howells's _Literary Friends and Acquaintance_. (Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes.)

SPECIAL WORKS

Frothingham's _Transcendentalism in New England_.

Dowden's _Studies in Literature_. (Transcendentalism.)

Swift's _Brook Farm_.

Fields's _The Life and Letters of Harriet Beecher Stowe_.

Lodge's _Daniel Webster_.

Woodberry's _Ralph Waldo Emerson_.

Holmes's _Ralph Waldo Emerson_.

Garnett's _Life of Ralph Waldo Emerson_.

Sanborn's _Ralph Waldo Emerson_.

Cabot's _A Memoir of Ralph Waldo Emerson_, 2 vols.

E. W. Emerson's _Emerson in Concord_.

Lowell's _Emerson the Lecturer_, in _Works_, Vol. I.

Woodbury's _Talks with Ralph Waldo Emerson_.

Sanborn's _Henry David Th.o.r.eau_.

Salt's _Life of Henry David Th.o.r.eau_.

Channing's _Th.o.r.eau, The Poet Naturalist_.

Marble's _Th.o.r.eau_, _His Home_, _Friends_, and _Books_.

James Russell Lowell's _Th.o.r.eau_, in _Works_, Vol. I.