Thus quietly thy summer goes, Smit with those charms that must decay, They died - nor were those flowers less gay, From morning suns and evening dews If nothing once, you nothing lose, That last line has a touch of the true magic of expression. From among his contemporaries who wrote prose, Benjamin Franklin towers as a very leviathan of the literary waters. His fame is so thoroughly fixed in our history, his activity took so many directions, that one has to detach his literary accomplishment from his reputation as editor, scientist, diplomat; educationist, philanthropist, and man of the world, in order to appreciate it. Franklin's life was a long one; he began early to express himself in print, and he was a voluminous writer who left many books. But his permanent contribution to our letters is to be found in "Poor Richard's Almanac," to which it may be well to add his "Autobiography," for an equivalent to which we have to come down to our own era and name that by General Grant. The "Almanac" may fairly be called an American classic of its kind; 'it lives to-day in many beautiful editions, and is widely read. Its rich common sense, its aphoristic wisdom, couched in rustic phrase and homely wisdom, pat and perfect for its purpose, and what is more, the revelation of some of the fundamental American traits thus early in our history, make it a valuable document in the case of American literature. The salt of its humor would alone preserve it. That such a work should be produced by the middle of the eighteenth century, argues strongly that an independent literature would spring up on this continent if only time were given it. Franklin is the embodiment of shrewd, sane, good sense; his morality is that of a town policeman; his doctrine is utilitarian; there is no height of aspiration or burst of poetry in him. He is worldly and other worldly rather than spiritual. But his time and his own life largely explain the mundane quality of his work. The eighteenth century in England was one of small ideas, or the lack of them, of urban thought and ways. The ethical writers were cold, narrow, and hard; it was an age of taste, wit, and elegance rather than of poetry and of passion. Franklin, like every other writer, felt the influence of the time and spirit; it is best to accept him in his limitations as well as in his unquestionable greatness. He is one of the sturdily salient figures, both in the life and letters of our early history, and certainly the most considerable man of letters before the year 1800. It is within the period of the republic, from 1789 to the present time, that the major triumphs of our literature have been won. Indeed, it is almost accurate to say that the writers who have made us famous and taken a fixed place in our galaxy fall after the opening of the nineteenth century. The exception best worth speaking of after Franklin is that of a man who may fitly be called the Father of American Fiction, Charles Brockden Brown. He was a Philadelphia recluse and scholar, who began to publish as early as 1797, and whose best-known novel, "Wieland," dates from 1798. Brown, though trained for the law, devoted himself to letters, edited magazines, and gave a rather pathetic example of a man who, in a day when literature as a profession hardly existed, tried to live by it, only to die before he was forty. Brown's "Wieland" is still read by students, and the general reader will at least find it interesting and powerful. The man's genius was exceptionally somber; he is the natural forerunner of Poe, a greater master of the weird and terrible. It is instructive to find a writer and thinker thus early making use of psychologic marvels in fiction, yet treating them as did Poe after him in the temper of the scientific investigator. Had Brown's fate fallen on more propitious times, he might have won a secure place in fiction; as it is, his importance historically in the evolution of American novel making is great, for he may be pointed to as the founder of serious fiction in this country. "Wieland" can be had in a good modern edition, with a brief introductory sketch of the author's life. But better days for literature were near at hand. Brown found himself practically alone and unencouraged in Philadelphia in his effort to produce worthy imaginative writing, but in New York, by the might of his genius, and upon seemingly barren ground, another writer of the early nineteenth century, and a greater, not only sowed seed that should make his name famous, but caused to spring up about him a school of New York literary men, so that the metropolis was regarded for years as the center of such activity. That man was Washington Irving, whom we shall now consider in full as our first American leader of literature. CHAPTER II IRVING THE first American to win not only national but international fame in letters was Washington Irving. The study of our literary leaders therefore fitly and happily begins with him—a man pleasant in his life as he was wholesome in his varied and delightful work. One can hardly realize to-day, when the incomes of authors are generous, and literature has a social and commercial life in several of our large cities, what an utter lack of center and atmosphere Irving had to face when, very early in the nineteenth century, he essayed to turn from the mercantile pursuits of his family, in which he had been trained and first immersed, to the prosecution of letters both as an interest and a chance of support. New York in the opening decades of the century had little interest in literature; there was no life from which a young aspirant might get encouragement - no salon, no social self-consciousness of the place of letters in an enlightened community. Those who would see this plainly should consult Charles Dudley Warner's excellent brochure on Irving. Men of letters throughout the United States when the young Washington began to write were few and far between; there was no sense of associative life among authors. On the other hand, there was no support of literature on the part of the public, no inducement to adopt this profession on the part of those possessing indisputable talent. Yet just because of this paucity of rivals, this smallness of the supply as well as of the demand, a man like Irving had his opportunity, seized it, made the demand by the attraction of what he supplied, and became the Father of American Literature. He is the For it is certainly just to give him this title. first of our authors to give dignity to letters, to produce work that won international recognition - Franklin had foreign fame as a diplomat and scientist rather than man of letters to found and foster a local school of literature. The Knickerbocker writers, who drew their name from one of Irving's most famous books, we call the group of literary folk who lived in and about New York under the leadership or at least encouraged by the influence of Washington Irving. This genial autocrat of our early literature had the writing gift in his own individuality rather than by family predisposition. His father was a Scotchman in trade, his mother English, neither of them born in this land. When Irving was born in 1783 in New York City, his father was engaged in mercantile pursuits, and the family was one of plain, comfortable respectability, Presbyterian in its church leanings. Young Washington was a lively lad who at twelve years of age was scribbling verse and prose, and a year later was guilty of a play for amateur performers. His love for the theater was a youthful passion and his biographers give us some amusing incidents connected with the taste; among others, a picture of the stripling attending nine o'clock family prayers and then stealing forth from his bedroom window in order to hurry to the unholy playhouse. He made various excursions in the Sleepy Hollow regions of the Hudson, |