History of American Literature Part 30

LOWELL.--From among his shorter lyrical poems, read _Our Love is not a Fading Earthly Flower, To the Dandelion, The Present Crisis, The First Snow-Fall, After the Burial, For an Autograph, Prelude to Part I. of The Vision of Sir Launfal._ From _The Biglow Papers,_ read _What Mr. Robinson Thinks_ (No. III., _First Series_), _The Courtin'_ (_Introduction_ to _Second Series_), _Sunthin' in the Pastoral Line_ (No. VI., _Second Series_). From _A Fable for Critics,_ read the lines on Cooper, Poe, and Irving.

The five of Lowell's greater literary essays mentioned on page 254 show his critical powers at their best. The student who wishes shorter selections may choose those paragraphs which please him and any thoughts from the political essay _Democracy_ which he thinks his neighbor should know.

HOLMES.--Read The _Deacon's Masterpiece, or the Wonderful One-Hoss Shay_, _The Ballad of the Oysterman_, _The Boys_, _The Last Leaf,_ and _The Chambered Nautilus._ From _The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table,_ the student may select any pages that he thinks his friends would enjoy hearing.

THE HISTORIANS.--Selections from Prescott, Motley, and Parkman may be found in Carpenters _American Prose_.

QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS

POETRY.--Compare Emerson's _Woodnotes_ with Bryant's _Thanatopsis_ and _A Forest Hymn_. Make a comparison of these three poems of motion: _The Evening Wind_ (Bryant), _The Humble-Bee_ (Emerson), and _Daybreak_ (Longfellow), and give reasons for your preference. Compare in like manner _The Snow-Storm_ (Emerson), the first sixty-five lines of _Snow-Bound_ (Whittier), and _The First Snow-Fall_ (Lowell). To which of these three simple lyrics of nature would you award the palm: _To the Fringed Gentian_ (Bryant), _The Rhodora_ (Emerson), _To the Dandelion_ (Lowell)? After making your choice of these three poems, compare it with these two English lyrics of the same cla.s.s: _To a Mountain Daisy_ (Burns), _Daffodils_ (Wordsworth, the poem beginning "I wandered lonely as a cloud"), and again decide which poem pleases you most.

Compare the humor of these two short poems describing a wooing: _The Courtin'_ (Lowell), _The Ballad of the Oysterman_ (Holmes). Discuss the ideals of these four poems: _A Psalm of Life_ (Longfellow), _For an Autograph_ (Lowell), _An Autograph_ (Whittier), _The Chambered Nautilus_ (Holmes).

What difference in the mental characteristics of the authors do these two retrospective poems show: _My Lost Youth_ (Longfellow), _Memories_ (Whittier)? For a more complete answer to this question, compare the girls in these two poems: _Maidenhood_ (Longfellow):--

"Maiden, with the meek, brown eyes, In whose orbs a shadow lies,"

and _In School Days_ (Whittier), beginning with the lines where he says of the winter sun long ago:--

"It touched the tangled golden curls, And brown eyes full of grieving."

Matthew Arnold, that severe English critic, called one of these poems perfect of its kind, and Oliver Wendell Holmes cried over one of them. The student who reads these carefully is ent.i.tled to rely on his own judgment, without verifying which poem Arnold and Holmes had in mind.

Compare Longfellow's ballads: _The Skeleton in Armor_, _The Birds of Killingworth_, and _The Wreck of the Hesperus_, with Whittier's _Skipper Ireson's Ride_, _Ca.s.sandra Southwick_, and _Maud Muller_.

Compare Whittier's _Snow-Bound_ with Burns's _Cotter's Sat.u.r.day Night_. In Whittier's poem, what group of lines descriptive of (_a_) nature, and (_b_) of inmates of the household pleases you most?

What parts of _Hiawatha_ do you consider the best? What might be omitted without great damage to the poem?

In _The Courtship of Miles Standish_, which incidents or pictures of the life of the Pilgrims appeal most strongly to you?

What was the underlying purpose in writing _The Biglow Papers_ and _One-Hoss Shay_? Do we to-day read them chiefly for this purpose or for other reasons? In what does the humor of each consist?

PROSE.--Why is it said that Mrs. Stowe showed a knowledge of psychological values? What were the chief causes of the influence of _Uncle Tom's Cabin_?

What are Webster's chief characteristics? Why does he retain his preeminence among American orators?

What transcendental qualities does Emerson's prose show? From any of his _Essays_ select thoughts which justify Tyndall's (p. 192) statement about Emerson's stimulating power. What pa.s.sages show him to be a great moral teacher?

What was Th.o.r.eau's object in going to Walden? Of what is he the interpreter? What was his mission? What pa.s.sages in _Walden_ please you most? What is the reason for such a steady increase in Th.o.r.eau's popularity?

Point out the allegory or symbolism in any of Hawthorne's tales. Which of his short stories do you like best? What is Hawthorne's special aim in _The Snow Image_ and _The Gentle Boy_? What qualities give special charm to sketches like _The Old Manse_ and the _Introduction_ to _The Scarlet Letter_? What is the underlying motive to be worked out in _The House of the Seven Gables_? Why is it said that the Ten Commandments reign supreme in Hawthorne's world of fiction? Was he a cla.s.sicist or a romanticist (p.

219)? What qualities do you notice in his style?

In Lowell's critical essays, what unusual turns of thought do you find to challenge your attention? Does he employ humor in his serious criticism?

What most impresses you in reading selections from _The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table_, the humor, sprightliness, and variety of the thought, or the style? What especially satisfactory pages have you found?

Make a comparison (_a_) of the picturesqueness and color, (_b_) of the energy of presentation, (_c_) of the power to develop interest, and (_d_) of the style, shown in the selections which you have chosen from Prescott, Motley, and Parkman. Compare their style with that of Macaulay in his _History of England_.

CHAPTER V

SOUTHERN LITERATURE

PLANTATION LIFE AND ITS EFFECT UPON LITERATURE.--Before the war the South was agricultural. The wealth was in the hands of scattered plantation owners, and less centered in cities than at the North. The result was a rural aristocracy of rich planters, many of them of the highest breeding and culture. A retinue of slaves attended to their work and relieved them from all manual labor. The masters took an active part in public life, traveled and entertained on a lavish scale. Their guests were usually wealthy men of the same rank, who had similar ideals and ambitions.

Gracious and attractive as this life made the people, it did not bring in new thought, outside influences, or variety. Men continued to think like their fathers. The transcendental movement which aroused New England was scarcely felt as far south as Virginia. The tide of commercial activity which swept over the East and sent men to explore the West did not affect the character of life at the South. It was separated from every other section of the country by a conservative spirit, an objection to change, and a tendency toward aristocracy.

Such conditions r.e.t.a.r.ded the growth of literature. There were no novel ideas that men felt compelled to utter, as in New England. There was little town life to bring together all cla.s.ses of men. Such life has always been found essential to literary production. Finally, there was inevitably connected with plantation life a serious question, which occupied men's thoughts.

SLAVERY.--The question that absorbed the attention of the best southern intellect was slavery. In order to maintain the vast estates of the South, it was necessary to continue the inst.i.tution of slavery. Many southern men had been anxious to abolish it, but, as time proceeded, they were less able to see how the step could be taken. As a Virginian statesman expressed it, they were holding a wolf by the ears, and it was as dangerous to let him go as to hold on. At the North, slavery was an abstract question of moral right or wrong, which inspired poets and novelists; at the South, slavery was a matter of expediency, even of livelihood. Instead of serving as an incentive to literary activity, the discussion of slavery led men farther away from the channels of literature into the stream of practical politics.

POLITICAL VERSUS LITERARY AMBITIONS.--The natural ambition of the southern gentleman was political. The South was proud of its famous orators and generals in Revolutionary times and of its long line of statesmen and Presidents, who took such a prominent part in establishing and maintaining the republic. We have seen (p. 68) that Thomas Jefferson of Virginia wrote one of the most memorable political doc.u.ments in the world, that James Madison, a Virginian President of the United States, aided in producing the _Federalist_ papers (p. 71), that George Washington's _Farewell Address_ (p. 100) deals with such vital matters as morality almost entirely from a political point of view. Although the South produced before the Civil War a world-famous author in Edgar Allan Poe, her glorious achievements were nevertheless mainly political, and she especially desired to maintain her former reputation in the political world. The law and not literature was therefore the avenue to the southerner's ambition.

Long before the Civil War, slavery became an unusually live subject. There was always some political move to discuss in connection with slavery; such, for instance, as the const.i.tutional interpretation of the whole question, the necessity of balancing the admission of free and slave states to the Union, the war with Mexico, the division of the new territory secured in that conflict, the right of a state to secede from the Union. Consequently, in ante bellum days, the brilliant young men of the South had, like their famous ancestors of Revolutionary times, abundance of material for political and legal exposition, and continued to devote their attention to public questions, to law, and to oratory, instead of to pure literature.

They talked while the North wrote.

In the days before the war, literature suffered also because the wealthy cla.s.ses at the South did not regard it as a dignified profession. Those who could write often published their work anonymously. Richard Henry Wilde (1789-1847), a young lawyer, wrote verses that won Byron's praise, and yet did not acknowledge them until some twenty years later. Sometimes authors tried to suppress the very work by which their names are to-day perpetuated. When a Virginian found that the writer of

"Thou wast lovelier than the roses In their prime; Thy voice excelled the closes Of sweetest rhyme;"

was his neighbor, Philip Pendleton Cooke (1816-1850), he said to the young poet, "I wouldn't waste time on a thing like poetry; you might make yourself, with all your sense and judgment, a useful man in settling neighborhood disputes." A newspaper in Richmond, Virginia, kept a standing offer to publish poetry for one dollar a line.

EDUCATIONAL HANDICAPS.--Before the war there was no universal free common school system, as at present, to prepare for higher inst.i.tutions. The children of rich families had private tutors, but the poor frequently went without any schooling. William Gilmore Simms (p. 306) says that he "learned little or nothing" at a public school, and that not one of his instructors could teach him arithmetic. Lack of common educational facilities decreased readers as well as writers.

Until after the war, whatever literature was read by the cultured cla.s.ses was usually English. The cla.s.sical school of Dryden and Pope and the eighteenth century English essayists were especially popular. American literature was generally considered trashy or unimportant. So conservative was the South in its opinions, that individuality in literature was often considered an offense against good taste. This was precisely the att.i.tude of the cla.s.sical school in England during a large part of the eighteenth century. Until after the Civil War, therefore, the South offered few inducements to follow literature as a profession.

THE NEW SOUTH.--After the South had pa.s.sed through the terrible struggle of the Civil War, in which much of her best blood perished, there followed the tragic days of the reconstruction. These were times of readjustment, when a wholly new method of life had to be undertaken by a conservative people; when the uncertain position of the negro led to frequent trouble; when the unscrupulous politician, guided only by desire for personal gain, played on the ignorance of the poor whites and the enfranchised negroes, and almost wrecked the commonwealth. Had Lincoln lived to direct affairs after the war, much suffering might have been avoided, and the wounds of the South might have been more speedily healed.

These days, however, finally pa.s.sed, and the South began to adapt herself to the changed conditions of modern life. In these years of transition since the Civil War, a new South has been evolved. Cities are growing rapidly. Some parts of the South are developing even faster than any other sections of the country. Men are running mills as well as driving the plow.

Small farms have often taken the place of the large plantation. A system of free public schools has been developed, and compulsory education for all has been demanded. Excellent higher inst.i.tutions of learning have multiplied. Writers and a reading public, both with progressive ideals, have rapidly increased. In short, the South, like the East and the West, has become more democratic and industrial, less completely agricultural, and has paid more attention to the education of the ma.s.ses.

It would, however, be a mistake to suppose that the southern conservatism, which had been fostered for generations, could at once be effaced. The South still retains much of her innate love of aristocracy, loyalty to tradition, disinclination to be guided by merely practical aims, and aversion to rapid change. This condition is due partly to the fact that the original conservative English stock, which is still dominant, has been more persistent there and less modified by foreign immigration.

CHARACTERISTICS OF SOUTHERN LITERATURE.--The one who studies the greatest authors of the South soon finds them worthy of note for certain qualities.

Poe was cosmopolitan enough to appeal to foreign lands even more forcibly than to America, and yet we shall find that he has won the admiration of a great part of the world for characteristics, many of which are too essentially southern to be possessed in the same degree by authors in other sections of the country. The poets of the South have placed special emphasis on (1) melody, (2) beauty, (3) artistic workmanship. In creations embodying a combination of such qualities, Poe shows wonderful mastery.

More than any other American poet, he has cast on the reader

"... the spell which no slumber Of witchery may test, The rhythmical number Which lull'd him to rest."

After reading Poe and Lanier, we feel that we can say to the South what Poe whispered to the fair Ligeia:--

"No magic shall sever Thy music from thee."

The wealth of sunshine flooding the southern plains, the luxuriance of the foliage and the flowers, and the strong contrasts of light and shade and color are often reflected in the work of southern writers. Such verse as this is characteristic:--