L 、,、་འ ོ HAP Entered according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1858, by in the Clerk's Office of the District Court in and for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. PHILADELPHIA: COLLINS, PRINTER. PREFACE. SOON after the publication of my "English Literature of the Nineteenth Century"-seven years ago-the publishers announced the present work; and in about a year after, nearly half of it was done. But I found that, with the arduous professional duties of my school, I was working too hard, and therefore I suspended my labors upon the book entirely, and for four or five years (while residing for a greater part of the time in the country), I wrote not a line for it. But it being continually inquired for, in consequence of its early announcement, I determined a year ago to complete the work as soon as I could, and as best I might be able; and the result is now before the public. I have deemed it but simple justice to myself, as well as to my publishers, to state these facts, lest it might be supposed that I had been laboring upon my book for the whole seven years, which would raise expectations as to its completeness and finish, that I fear the volume itself will not justify. Besides, one who has such a scholastic charge might be supposed to have enough to employ his time, without engaging in such outside literary labors as seem more befitting the professed author. I say these things, not to deprecate criticism upon my work-on the contrary, I cordially invite it but merely as a partial apology for the defects that may be found in it. In the preparation of all works of this character, there are difficulties which they only can appreciate who have been engaged in such labors. But in this work the difficulties are peculiar: First, from the two questions, that must, at the very outset, be answered--What is American Literature? and, When does it begin? Secondly, from the vast amount of material to select from, at times absolutely overwhelming. And, thirdly, from the impossibility of giving entire satisfaction either to living authors, or to the friends and kindred of those that are deceased. Respecting the question, what is American Literature, I would remark that, in my view, it would be absurd to apply this term to the occasional and transient literary effusions that appeared on this side of the Atlantic, for a century after the settlement of the country. Colonies of Great Britain, speaking the same language, governed by the same laws, manufacturing but little ourselves, but dependent on the mother country. for a large portion of our material comforts, it was natural for us to look to her also for our intellectual aliment. And we did so. Not even forty years ago, the "Edinburgh Review" thus wrote: "Literature, the Americans have none; no native literature we mean. * * But why should the Americans write books, when a six weeks' passage brings them, in their own tongue, our sense, science, and genius, in bales and hogsheads ?" At this very plain language, that had a good deal of truth in it, we were much offended, which was very foolish. We might have answered the reviewer somewhat thus: "True, we have Vol. xxxi. p. 144, December, 1818. had as yet but little literature of our own. We have had a greater, a higher, a nobler work to do than to write books. We have had to found a great nation. A vast continent was before us to subdue. The 'means whereby to live' were first to be provided. Dwellings were to be built; school-houses and church edifices were to be erected; literary, scientific, and religious educational institutions were to be founded; and then, in the natural course of things, would come forth and be embodied, the creations of the intellect, the fancy, and the imagination. In short, instead of writing any great work, we were acting a still greater one. We were making those very subjects upon which the future historian, traveller, essayist, poet, might employ his pen for the delight and instruction of other generations." Such might have been our answer; and who would not have acknowledged its conclusiveness? But as soon as our "gristle was hardened into the bone of manhood," we began to think of setting up for ourselves; and then, indeed, we began to think for ourselves. And here we have an answer, as correct as I can give, to the question, what is American Literature; namely, that it is the product of those minds that have been nurtured, trained, developed, matured, on our own soil, by the manners, habits, scenery, circumstances, and institutions peculiar to ourselves. This answer, too, determines, with considerable precision, the date of American Literature-that its native growth and development began with our Revolutionary period. Our first thoughts were, of course, directed to our own condition, to our relations to the mother country, to our forms of government, and to the great principles of political government, of public economy, and of civil liberty; and then came forth, Minerva-like, a literature of a political character, to which, for strength, clearness, and comprehensiveness of thought, for just and sound reasoning, and for effective and lofty eloquence, the world had never seen the parallel; for the high encomium passed by Edmund Burke upon our first colonial Congress is no less beautiful than just. This literature is embodied in the speeches and letters of James Otis, the elder Adams, Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, Jay, Madison, and other patriots of the Revolution. Thenceforth, by degrees, as our strength increased, as our views expanded, as our facilities for learning were multiplied, as our scholarship assumed a higher and a higher grade, we entered, successively, the various fields of literature, and reaped rich and still richer harvests from them all, so that our dear good old mother is now proud to acknowledge us as her own, and to confess that in some of the walks of science we have, in our onward march, left even her behind. In History, she acknowledges that Irving, Prescott, Bancroft, Hildreth, and Motley are equal to any on her side of the Atlantic. In Theology and Biblical Literature, Dwight and Barnes have, probably, as many readers in England, as here; while no review in that department in Great Britain is superior, for varied and profound learning, to "The Bibliotheca Sacra." As a novelist, the English Reviews themselves being judges, Mrs. Stowe is without a rival in either hemisphere: as many copies, probably, of Bryant and Longfellow have been sold in England, as of Coleridge or The London Quarterly Review," for December, 1811 (only twenty-three years after the extract from "The Edinburgh Review" just quoted was written), in reviewing Dr. Robinson's Palestine, thus writes. "We are not altogether pleased that for the best and most copious work on the geography and antiquities of the Holy Land, though written in English, we should be indebted to an American divine." |