SUPPLEMENT. ENGLISH LITERATURE IN AMERICA. CHAPTER I. THE COLONIAL PERIOD. THE literature of the United States is a branch, but an inseparable and growing branch, of English literature. Its roots are planted, not in the soil of America, but in the soil of England. It is a continuation and development in America (with some original features, no doubt, and subject to new impulses) of a literature which had existed in England for centuries before that offshoot appeared. In short, the litera ture of the United States is English literature produced in America by American writers. The relation resembles somewhat that of Roman literature to the literature of Ancient Greece, with this great difference, however, that in the modern instance the branch and the stem use the same language. The literature of America started with this undoubted advantage, that the instrument of thought -the mother tongue-was in perfect form for the purpose of literary expression before the writers beyond the Atlantic began to use it. They also enjoyed another advantage—namely, that they were entitled to regard themselves as heirs to the old stores of English literature, from Caedmon to Chaucer, and from Chaucer to Milton. The best American writers belonged to schools the acknowledged masters of which lived and wrote (15) 34 530 ENGLISH LITERATURE IN AMERICA. in England. The greatest merit of American writers is that some of them have added to these stores some things which Englishmen would not willingly let die. The history of English literature in the United States falls naturally into two periods :— 1. The Colonial Period, from the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers, 1620, to the Declaration of Independence, 1776-one hundred and fifty-six years 2. The National Period, from the Declaration of Independence to the present time, 1776 to 1893-one hundred and seventeen years. The bridge between the two periods in history was of course the War of Independence, and there is a corresponding bridge in the literature; but that was simply the closing act of the Colonial era, and has no right to be treated as a distinct period. The National Period is, as might be expected, much more interesting from a literary point of view than the Colonial. Indeed, nearly everything that is entitled to be called literature belongs to it. Much good work, however, of a preliminary kind was done in the earlier period; and of it, therefore, some notice must be taken. The Colonial Period extended over rather more than a century and a half. A century and a half is not a long time in the lifetime of a nation. Whether the amount of growth, especially of intellectual growth, accomplished in that time is great or small must depend on a variety of causes. One important consideration is, whether the period occurs early or occurs late in the nation's history. For example, the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, to which the period in question belongs, formed an advanced section in the march of English thought and letters, and their literary products, though not the richest, were yet both rich and abundant. To mention only the greatest names, there flourished in that time Milton, Bunyan, Dryden, Swift, Addison, Pope, Hume, Gibbon, and Burke. It would, of course, have been unreasonable to expect anything even remotely comparable with this wealth of production ( THE COLONIAL PERIOD. 531 to be shown in America at the same time, and in point of fact not even toward the close of the period was a single writer produced whose name can be compared with the least of these mentioned. The contrast points instructively to the difference between a new country and an old one. The American colonists had other things to attend to than the recreation of the intellect and the making of books. They were pioneers in a new country, and had to provide for the immediate wants of their families. They had to clear the forest primeval, to till the soil, and to build houses, and at the same time to be constantly on the watch against subtle and relentless enemies. That pioneer work did not go on during the whole of the century and a half under notice. Ere long towns began to rise, and schools and colleges as well as churches were planted. The best work done by the colonists for literature was done by providing educational machinery. They were essentially religious persons. It was for the sake of freedom of religion that they had left the mother country and had cast themselves on an uncertain future in a new land. One of the first things they thought of was how to provide and train a supply of pastors for their churches. To that was due their system of colleges, and the colleges implied a system of common schools as the foundation on which they were to build. It is a remarkable and creditable fact that the four most important colleges in the United States were founded during the Colonial Period: Harvard in 1638, William and Mary in 1693, Yale in 1716, and Princeton in 1746. Though these colleges have now been expanded into catholic institutions, they were at first merely theological. Their purpose was to supply the immediate wants of the hour. Their object was, not to cultivate learning for its own sake, but to keep up a succession of ministers for the churches; and if the colonists had done nothing else, they would have earned the eternal gratitude of their successors. The conditions under which the colonists lived were not favourable to the cultivation of literature. Indeed, there is 532 ENGLISH LITERATURE IN AMERICA. something in the position of colonists which prevents a separate or independent literary development. They are content to take their books, as they do their clothing and their furniture and much else, in the first instance from the mother country. In early days, when a Canadian or an Australian wrote a book which he thought of more than local interest, he sent it to England for publication. So it was with the American colonists at the beginning. Many of their earliest books were printed and published in England. The literature that was produced was purely imitative. The earliest writers were men who had been born and educated in England. Some of them had been trained at Oxford or at Cambridge, and therefore the American colleges were based on the model of these old and well-loved institutions. Their books also were modelled on those they had read at home as regarded their form, but they were designed to support the peculiar tenets which their authors held and for which they had suffered. Hence they were mostly of a religious character. Almost the first book printed in America was the Bay Psalm Book, produced at Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1639 or 1640. The books produced during the Colonial Period belonged chiefly to two classes-namely, religious and theological works, and local histories or memoirs written by the early settlers. Examples of the former were Increase Mather's sermons and pamphlets, and his son Cotton Mather's Magnalia Christi Americana, first published in London in 1702. As examples of the latter, we may take John Winthrop's History of New En gland (1630 to 1649, but not fully published till 1826), and William Bradford's History of Plymouth Plantation. These books have furnished later writers with valuable materials; but they are not in themselves literature in the true sense. The attempts at imaginative writing were few and not very successful. So early as 1647 an Ipswich clergyman named Nathaniel Ward wrote a satire on English manners and customs, entitled The Simple Cobbler of Aggerwam; but it is a singularly heavy and uninteresting production. The earliest THE COLONIAL PERIOD. 533 poetry produced in the colonies was written by a woman, Mrs. Anne Bradstreet, the daughter of a governor and the wife of a secretary of the colony. She was a very learned woman, and thought it incumbent on her to put as much of her learning as possible into her verses. The only other poetical product of the period is Michael Wigglesworth's Day of Doom, a solemnly dull but in some parts unconsciously amusing description of the last Judgment. In a line characteristic of the time, the poet assigns to non-elect infants the easiest room in hell. From the whole period of one hundred and fifty-six years it would be difficult to cull more than a dozen names that are worth noticing; and of these only three stand out prominently, or are deserving of a place in the history of English literature. These are Cotton Mather, Jonathan Edwards, and Benjamin Franklin, of whom more detailed notices are given below. Toward the close of the period, the great controversy pending between the colonists and the mother country caused men's pulses to beat quickly, and called into activity moral and intellectual forces that had been previously dormant. The first indications of the new life were seen in the number of speeches that were delivered, and of pamphlets that were issued dealing with the burning question of the hour. While Benjamin Franklin was in London representing the cause of the colonists, hundreds of meetings were held in the principal towns to protest against the proposed taxation. Among the patriots who with voice and pen upheld the popular cause against the home government were James Otis, Josiah Quincy, junior, John Thomas, and Burke Henry. After the wordy strife had lasted for ten years, it was transmuted into a warfare of swords in 1775. Then came in 1776 the famous Declaration of Independence. That document, written chiefly by Thomas Jefferson, afterwards third President of the United States, was not only an important historical paper as the charter of a new nation; it was also a valuable contribution to literature, and it formed a fitting starting-point for the independent period in the national history |