1911), an Amherst graduate, came under the influence of Noah Webster and studied philology. For many years he was a member of the Lafayette College faculty, and made important contributions to his subject. With the aid of his son and namesake he compiled a large Thesaurus-Dictionary of the English Language (1903). During his later years he was an editor of The Standard Dictionary and of The New English (Oxford) Dictionary. William Dwight Whitney (1827-1896), a graduate of Williams, was long a professor at Yale, and became editor-in-chief of The Century Dictionary. He wrote several important volumes on philology. Among a later generation of philologists may be mentioned James W. Bright (1852- ), a graduate of Lafayette, and since 1891 a professor at Johns Hopkins; Albert S. Cook (1853- ), a graduate of Jena, and since 1889 a member of the Yale faculty; Oliver F. Emerson (1860– ), who graduated at Iowa College, and has taught at Cornell and at Western Reserve University; and George L. Kittredge (1860- ), a graduate of Harvard and a member of its English faculty since 1888. All of these accomplished scholars have written with authority concerning the history of our language and the literature of the earlier periods. 5. Literary History and Criticism.-A much larger group of men have made special studies of particular periods or kinds of literature. George Ticknor (1791-1871), a graduate of Dartmouth, should be mentioned as the pioneer, although his great History of Spanish Literature (1849) does not fall within our scope. Henry N. Hudson (1814-1886) and Richard Grant White (1821-1885), a graduate of New York University, were both noted Shakespeare scholars in their day; both wrote critical estimates of his work and edited his plays. Francis J. Child (1825-1896), one of the honored graduates of Harvard and for over forty years a member of its faculty, specialized in the study of the Old English Ballads, and became the leading authority on that subject. His final edition of the ballads is still the standard text, and is a fitting monument to one of America's most learned scholars. A similar honor in another field belongs to Horace Howard Furness (1833-1912), a Philadelphian, who graduated at Harvard, and devoted virtually his entire life to the famous Variorum edition of Shakespeare's plays. About two years' intensive study and labor were required to supply the text for each portly volume devoted to a single play. When Doctor Furness died, his son, Horace Howard Furness, Jr. (1865- ), also a Harvard graduate, continued the task for which he had been carefully trained by his father. New volumes of the Variorum Shakespeare continue to appear at the usual intervals, making available all the information required by the most exacting student. Other scholars who were contemporaries of the elder Furness were Moses Coit Tyler (1835–1900), a Yale graduate and a member of the Cornell faculty, who wrote exhaustive histories of American literature of the colonial and revolutionary periods, and James Morgan Hart (18391916), a graduate of Princeton and also a professor at Cornell, who wrote extensively on English besides inspiring a large group of his students to undertake important work in the same field. 6. More Recent Scholarship. In a somewhat younger group are included many distinguished scholars, some of whom are still living and making noteworthy contributions to critical literature. Among these are Caleb T. Winchester (1847-1920), of Wesleyan, an authority on the principles of criticism; Henry A. Beers (1847- ), of Yale, who writes mostly of modern literature; Charles F. Richardson (18511913), of Dartmouth, author of an important history of American literature; Francis B. Gummere (1855-1919), of Haverford College, a pupil of Professor Child at Harvard, and a notable authority on the ballad and primitive literature; Barrett Wendell (1855-1921), of Harvard, who specialized on Shakespeare and Jacobean literature; and Felix E. Schelling (1858- ), of the University of Pennsylvania, a recognized authority on the Elizabethan drama and on the lyric poetry of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The most notable of the Southern scholars are William P. Trent (1862- ), who before accepting a call to Columbia University taught for twelve years at the University of the South; John Bell Henneman (1864–1908), who succeeded Professor Trent; and Charles Alphonso Smith (1864- ), formerly of the University of North Carolina, more recently of the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis. If we were to enumerate the American scholars born after the Civil War the mere list would extend far beyond our limits. Within that group are the most energetic and the most prolific of the present generation of academic men who, for the most part, combine the responsibilities of college or university teaching with the pleasures of original research. Our survey of American scholarship may fittingly close with mention of the recently completed Cambridge History of American Literature (1917–1921), in four volumes, modelled after the earlier Cambridge History of English Literature. In that monumental review of our literary history many of our leading scholars were invited to collaborate by contributing chapters on topics with which they were most familiar. CHAPTER XVII AMERICAN PERIODICALS An Acorn That Grew "The Saturday Evening Post"-Some LessFavored Acorns-"The Port Folio"-The Golden Age of Boston—“ The North American Review"-Spread of the Magazines-The Supremacy of New York-"Harper's Magazine"-"The Century Magazine""Scribner's Magazine"-"The Atlantic Monthly"-Literary Reviews -Current Periodicals—The Literary Weeklies. 1. An Acorn That Grew.-When Samuel Keimer, an eccentric Philadelphia printer who was Benjamin Franklin's first employer, decided in 1728 to establish a weekly paper in that city, he called it The Universal Instructor in All Arts and Sciences, and Pennsylvania Gazette. Within a year it was taken over by Franklin and was renamed The Pennsylvania Gazette. Under that title it continued to appear, in spite of many adversities, until 1821, when its name was changed to The Saturday Evening Post. The enthusiasm of the new owners and editors was so great that by 1827 they were able to boast of a circulation in excess of 7,000 copies a week. After a while its fortunes again wavered, and it was a rather unimportant weekly when it was taken over by the Curtis Publishing Company in 1899, and placed under the editorial direction of George Horace Lorimer. Since then it has enjoyed the most spectacular growth in the history of American periodicals. The Saturday Evening Post is to-day the most popular and the most widely circulated magazine in the world. For several years |