The Literary Retrospect

No chapter of any nation's history has greater interest than that which recalls the beginnings of its literature. The story of American books and writers includes the early output of Puritan theologians and chroniclers, and a striking picture it gives of the struggle against hostile Indians, an adverse climate, and, we might almost add, the evolution of new ideas. The preceding volumes have dealt with that period. Our present concern is with the modern pioneers of a literature known the world through by its national characteristics, a literature still in the making, but with abundant promise of a future worthy of American genius. Our selection is taken from "The Literature of the Nineteenth Century," by Prof. John P. Lamberton.

NEWSPAPERS appeared early in the eighteenth century. In 1704 the first American newspaper, The Boston News-Letter, was established. The second, The New England Courant, was started by James Franklin, in 1720. His troubles in connection with it are well known from his younger brother Benjamin's famous "Autobiography." In 1765, at the time of the Stamp Act, there were forty news-papers in the Colonies.

In the year 1800, the gateway to a century of almost magical national development, the population of the free States was 2,684,616, of the slave States 2,621,316, making a total of 5,305,932. Philadelphia was the chief city of the country. It had been the national capital during the Revolution, though it fell for a time into possession of the British army. Here the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederaton, and the Federal Constitution had been framed and signed. Here the Federal Congress met and Washington held his Republican court. Here were the American Philosophical Society, which had grown out of Franklin's Junto; the Philadelphia Library, mother of all institutions of that kind; and the University of Pennsylvania, likewise the outgrowth of Franklin's matchless genius for public enterprise. The first American monthly magazine had been issued here by Franklin in 1741. After the establishment of peace in 1783, other magazines were issued, the principal being the American Museum. The city, therefore, was the literary centre of the new nation, though the political capital was in 1800 removed to Washington. Foreigners of distinction still resorted to Philadelphia, whither they came to visit or to settle in the New World. It boasted itself to be the American Athens. Noah Webster was a pioneer of note. As a student of Yale he played the fife as one of Washington's escort. He produced his Compendious Dictionary in 1805. The state of the literary profession may be judged by this epigram by Joseph Dennie, "the American Addison:" "To study with a view to becoming an author by profession in America is a prospect of no less flattering promise than to publish among the Esquimaux an essay on delicacy of taste or to found an academy of sciences in Lapland." Among the earlier writers whose names survive are those of Trumbull, the satirist; Joel Barlow, William Dunlap, Philip Freneau; Joseph Hopkinson, writer of "Hail, Columbia!" and Francis Scott Key, author of "The Star Spangled Banner." Charles Brockden Brown came later, and may be regarded as America's first professional man of letters and writer of romance.

Washington Irving was the first to gain for American literature the recognition of European critics. He was born in New York city in 1783. His indeed was an international mission - to heal to some extent, by the sympathetic charm of his style and his personality, the breach between the two countries, aggravated by the second war of 1812. He became "the first literary Ambassador of the New World to the Old." Like a loyal son of the soil, he breathed the breath of literary immortality into the traditions of his own country, as well as voyaged to England in order to write about English scenes and associations. Professor Richardson has remarked that he was "the first conspicuous American author who was neigher a Puritan nor a southron; his local tone was that of New York city and the Hudson." Quick to assimilate the customs and characteristics of other lands, he was the first to make distinctly American themes familiar to the world of letters. Returning to New York after a long residence in England, Irving gathered around him a group of friends now known as the Knickerbocker school, which comprised James Kirke Paulding (a connection of Irving by marriage, who afterwards became Secretary of the Navy, under Van Buren), and the poets Drake and Halleck. All four were Knickerbockers to the bone. Irving served as minister to Spain from 1842 to 1846. His " Life of Columbus" and other writings on Spanish themes were followed by the "Life of Washington," and sundry minor works.

Associated in memory with Irving are the poets Joseph Rodman Drake (1795-1820) and Fitz-Greene Halleck (1790-1867). These two comrades made their debut in the Irving style in the "Croaker Papers," a series of humorous and satirical verses contributed to the New York Evening Post. In the year that Irving in Europe published "The Sketch Book" (1819), Drake gave America "The Culprit Fay." Three years before this, Bryant had produced his unique "Thanatopsis;" and Drake's "Fay," a delicate fairy tale of the Highlands of the Hudson, was the second best' poem then produced in America.