style and his thought show an originality and a force such as had not previously been found in America. He won the approval of critical minds at home and abroad. The best of his poetry was written while he was still a young man; the kind of excellence which he commanded is seen in Thanatopsis, To a Waterfowl, and The Battlefield. Bryant held an acknowledged preeminence. "The rest of us," said the novelist Cooper, "may be mentioned now and then, but Bryant is the real American author." Justness of phrasing, a fine sense of the beauty of Nature and her consolatory power, a restrained emotional feeling these would seem to be the contributions of Bryant to American verse. The greater part of his long career was devoted to prose writing; for this reason, perhaps, he did not respond to the strong poetic influences which made noteworthy the middle portion of the century. The work of the Southern poets during the period which we are discussing, was somewhat limited in Southern amount, but of good quality. Richard Poets Henry Wilde, one of the earlier poets, is remembered by his graceful lines, My Life Is Like the Summer Rose. The name of Henry Timrod is usually associated with that of his friend and biographer, Paul Hamilton Hayne. Both were deeply affected by the Civil War, as a result of which they lost property and means of livelihood; both evinced the poetic temperament and left work of marked beauty and typical Southern sentiment. Timrod's work is found in the volume edited and published after his death by Hayne; best of his poems, perhaps, is the stirring ode, The Cotton Boll. Hayne wrote some artistic lyrics, of which The Mocking-Bird clearly shows his feeling for beauty. William Gilmore Simms was a very versatile author and, next to Poe, the most widely known writer of the South. He began to write early and for more than forty years poured forth a stream of poems, novels, and histories, besides acting as editor of several magazines. The Song in March gives a good idea of his poetic ability. John Esten Cooke was also a novelist, but he is better known to modern readers by virtue of two or three short poems. Greatest of Southern writers-by some, indeed, regarded as the most remarkable literary figure which Edgar Allan our country has produced was Edgar Allan Poe. Marked out for sorrow by the peculiar qualities of his own temperament and also, it must be said, by the circumstances of an unsympathetic environment, Poe produced work of the highest genius. The America of his day was unfriendly to his special literary gifts; he would doubtless have lived out a happier life elsewhere in the England, for instance, of Shelley and Keats, of De Quincey and Hazlitt. The details of his career will be found elsewhere in this book; a modern writer has compared him, not inaptly, to a solitary land-bird winging its way with increasing weariness over the stormy sea into which it is sure to fall at last. His work separates itself naturally into the two divisions of prose and poetry. The former includes the short story — a type which he handled with a mastery that has never been surpassed. Of the various kinds which engaged his His skill we may note "detective" tales, such as The Gold Bug and The Mysteries of the Rue Morgue; stories of horror, like The Pit and the Pendulum; tales of conscience, notably The Black Cat and The Tell-Tale Heart; romances of death The Masque of the Red Death, and that masterpiece, The Fall of the House of Usher. poetry, comprising a not very extensive body of verse, is characterized throughout by music and a melancholy mysticism. He himself said that "the vagueness of exaltation aroused by a sweet air (which should be strictly indefinite and never too strongly suggestive) is precisely what we should aim at in poetry." The moods expressed are sometimes weird, but they are always expressed with sincere poetic feeling. No American poetry has equalled the melodic charm of his best work: one might select The Haunted Palace as most clearly exemplifying his gift of almost magical melody. New influences, inseparable from the strong development of the Republic, brought about a remarkable New Influences outgrowth of poetry which distinguished the middle third of the century. Under the stimulus of a broadening literary sense, and the stirring appeal of the political movement that culminated in the Civil War, there came a literary revival in New England which produced the greatest body of poetry and prose yet seen in our country. In poetry, five names are outstanding Emerson, Longfellow, Whittier, Holmes, and Lowell. Space forbids here any critical estimate of their relative value, but a brief discussion of their work will serve to in dicate the salient features of this most important divi sion of our poetry. talism One of the moving causes which led to the revival of letters in New England — and in itself a factor of Transcenden- vital import was the remarkable movement known as "transcendentalism." Briefly and somewhat inadequately, it may be defined as "an impatience of routine thinking," a breaking away from the hard and fast rules of conventional thought, a revolt against tradition. It laid stress upon individuality. Beginning in the sphere of religion, it soon concerned itself with social questions, and with literature. Of the movement Lowell said that it had "a very solid kernel, full of the most deadly explosiveness. The effect upon the literature of the day was stimulating to the highest degree; even those who owed little allegiance to its teachings and who were inclined to smile at the vagaries into which some of its devotees were led, themselves reacted strongly to its influence. Phrases such as these could not fail to stir the hearts of thoughtful men: "Each man has his own vocation. The talent is the call. There is one direction in which all space is open to him. He has faculties silently inviting him thither to endless exertion." The most remarkable exponent of the new idealism was Ralph Waldo Emerson. He was educated at Harvard University and after serving for a time as minister in a Boston church resigned because of his opinions upon certain matters of doctrine. He went to England, in Ralph Waldo 1832, and met Thomas Carlyle, who exercised a lifelong influence upon his thought. The philosophic teachings of Emerson were promulgated through several series of lectures; beginning in New England in 1832, he afterwards gave courses in Scotland and England, and in the Middle States. It was the age of the lectureplatform; but we may be sure that very few lecturers were more consistently successful than was Emerson. The best short summary is one by the eminent English writer, Harriet Martineau: "There is a vague nobleness and thorough sweetness about him which move people to their very depths, without their being able to explain why . . . He conquers minds as well as hearts, wherever he goes; and, without convincing anybody's reason of any one thing, exalts their reasons, and makes their minds worth more than they ever were before." It is generally conceded that he moved more naturally in the field of prose than in that of poetry; indeed, we have his own words: "I am naturally keenly susceptible to the pleasures of rhythm, and cannot believe but one day I shall attain to that splendid dialect, so ardent is my wish; and these wishes, I suppose, are ever only the buds of power; but up to this hour I have never had a true success in these attempts." The truth is that poetry does not adapt itself to the somewhat rarefied philosophizing which Emerson sought to comprise within its limits; and while we revere the pure and beautiful spirit which underlies everything he wrote, we miss the perfection of that "splendid dialect" which is found in the work of his great contemporaries. |