A History of American Literature/Chapter 10
X.
THE POETS.
In July, 1818, there appeared in the North American Review an essay on American poetry from the pen of William Cullen Bryant, in which he singled out and estimated those who up to that time had produced worthy verse on this side of the Atlantic. The list is singularly suggestive. The only poets he saw fit "to interrupt in their passage to oblivion," were the Rev. John Adams, Joseph Green, Francis Hopkinson, Dr. Church, Freneau; the Connecticut poets, Trumbull, Dwight, Barlow, Humphreys, and Hopkins; the youthful poet William Clifton, St. John Honeywood, and Robert Treat Paine. Of these poets, who were the bright particular representatives of American poetry almost at the end of the first quarter of the Nineteenth Century, scarcely one is to-day more than a mere name.
One style may be said to characterize the work of all these poets. Bryant, in the essay mentioned, denounced the style of poetry then prevalent, "as in too many instances tinged with a sickly and affected imitation of the peculiar manner of the late popular poets of England." Pope, with his heroic couplets, dominated American verse long after the revolt of the English natural school had thrown off its chain.
The first strong, original note in American poetry came from Bryant. Although nurtured on the rhymes of Pope and Thomson, and writing his juvenile productions in heroic couplets, he was, never1777—1844. Thomas Campbell.
1788—1824. Lord Byron.
1779—1852. Thomas Moore.
1792—1822. P. B. Shelley.
1796—1821. John Keats.
1784—1859. Leigh Hunt.
1798—1845. Thomas Hood
1770—1850. William Wordsworth.
1772—1834. S. T. Coleridge.
1774—1843. Robert Southey.theless, the first influence that helped to free our song from the "ten-linked chain." The publication of "Thanatopsis" in 1817, and of The Ages and Other Poems in 1821, marks an epoch in the history of our poetry.
While American verse was thus making its first feeble beginnings, the firmament of English poetry was still glowing with the brilliant lights that had given glory to the second great creative period of English literature. In 1821, the birth year of American literature in all its departments, since it witnessed the production of The Sketch Book, The Spy, and Bryant's first volume of poems, Keats had just finished his short but brilliant career, Shelley was to follow him a year later and Byron soon after, while Wordsworth and Coleridge and Southey and scores of lesser lights were at the zenith, with Tennyson on the eastern horizon.
William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878).
"Bryant's writings transport us into the depths of the solemn, primeval forest; to the shores of the lonely lake; to the banks of the wild, nameless stream; or the brow of the rocky upland rising like a promontory from amidst a wide ocean of foliage; while they shed around us the glories of a climate fierce in its extremes, but splendid in all its vicissitudes,"—Washington Irving.
Life (Parke Godwin's William Cullen Bryant, 1883, is the standard life of the poet; other Lives have been"Thanatopsis"
"The Ages"
"To a Waterfowl"
"Death of the Flower"
"The Flood of Years"
"The Voice of Autumn"
Translation of the Iliad and the Odyssey. written by John Bigelow, in The American Men of Letters Series, 1890; by David J. Hill, in The American Authors Series, 1879; and by A. J. Symington. See also George William Curtis' Homes of American Authors, 1853; James Grant Wilson's Bryant and his Friends; R. H. Stoddard's Homes and Haunts of our Elder Poets; and Bryant's "Boys of my Boyhood," St. Nicholas for December, 1876).
Although the best part of Bryant's life-work was connected with New York, he belongs nevertheless to New England. Born in Cummington, Massachusetts, of the old Mayflower stock, he passed his boyhood and early manhood amid the Berkshire Hills, and his poems are as true to the New England landscape and spirit as are those of Whittier.
Bryant's father was a physician of good education and scholarly habits. His home was isolated, and his children had but few social privileges, but to compensate in a measure for this, he had gathered a large library for the times, one in which the English poets seem to have been largely represented, and in this his family revelled during the long winter evenings. In the brief autobiographical fragment given in Godwin's Life of Bryant, the poet tells remarkable stories of the precocity of his family, but these can easily be believed when we remember the poet's own early achievements. He produced excellent verses in his early boyhood; at the age of thirteen we find him writing a satire on Jefferson's administration, so excellent that the public could not believe it the work of a mere boy; and at the age of seventeen he wrote "Thanatopsis," which is, perhaps, "the highwater mark of American poetry."
In 1810 Bryant entered the class of 1813 in Williams College.
"I remained there two terms only, but I pursued my studies with the intent to become a student at Yale, for which I prepared myself, intending to enter the Junior Class there. My father, however, was not able, as he told me, to bear the expense. I had received an honorable dismission from Williams College, and was much disappointed at being obliged to end my college course in that way."—From a letter to H. W. Powers, 1878.
Bryant next turned his attention to the law and in 1815 was admitted to the bar. The next nine years were quietly passed in the practice of his profession in the villages of Plainfield and Great Barrington, Massachusetts. But the poet was sadly out of place. In his poem, "Green River," published at this time, he complained of being
It was a positive relief when, in 1825, through the influence of friends which his little volume of poems, published in 1821, had won for him, he went to New York City and devoted himself to literary work. During the following year he was made one of the editors of the New York Evening Post, becoming soon after editor-in-chief of the paper, a position that he hold for the rest of his life—a period of over half a century.
Bryant's life, like that of most men of letters, was bare of incident. The only variations from the monotonous life of the city editor were his six visits to Europe. During the last years of his life he was in almost constant demand as an orator on great occasions. Bryant died in New York City, June 12, 1878. On May 29 he had delivered an address in Central Park at the unveiling of the Mazzini statue. It was an exceedingly warm day and the sun shone fiercely down on the unprotected heal of the poet. Later in the day, overcome with dizziness, he fell, striking his head on a stone curbing, from the effects of which blow he never rallied.
Thanatopsis (1811).—
"Thanatopsis' alone would establish a claim to genius."—Christopher North.
Written "shortly after he was withdrawn from college, while residing with his parents at Cummington in the summer of 1811, and before he had attained his eighteenth year."—Godmin.
Published in North American Review, September, 1817.
"There was no mistaking the quality of these verses. The stamp of genius was upon every line. No such verses had been made in America before. They soon found their way into the school books of the country. They were quoted from the pulpit and upon the hustings. Their gifted author had a national fame before he had a vote, and in due time 'Thanatopsis' took the place which it still retains among the masterpieces of English didactic poetry."—Godwin's Life of Bryant.
Required Reading.—"Thanatopsis." The best study of Bryant's poetry for classroom use is Alden's Studies in Bryant.
To a Waterfowl (1819).—
"When he journeyed on foot over the hills to Plainfield on the 15th of December, 1816, to see what inducements it offered him to commence there the practice of the profession to which he had just been licensed, he says in one of his letters that he felt 'very forlorn and desolate.' The world seemed to grow bigger and darker as he ascended, and his future more uncertain and desperate. The sun had already set, leaving behind it one of those brilliant seas of chrysolite and opal which often flood the New England skies, and, while pausing to contemplate the rosy splendor with rapt admiration, a solitary bird made its winged way along the illuminated horizon. He watched the lone wanderer until it was lost in the distance. He then went on with new strength and courage. When he reached the house where he was to stop for the night, he immediately sat down and wrote the lines, "To a Waterfowl," the concluding verse of which will perpetuate to future ages the lesson in faith which the scene had impressed upon him.
Required Reading.—"To a Waterfowl."
The Ages (1821).—The matchless poems just mentioned at once placed Bryant in the very front rank of American poets, a position that he has held until the present day. In 1821 he was invited to deliver the annual poem at Harvard, and he responded with the magnificent production, "The Ages," which, at the earnest request of his friends, he published, together with seven others, among which were "Thanatopsis," "To a Waterfowl," "Inscription for the Entrance of a Wood, "The Yellow Violet," and "Green River."
Poems of Nature.—Like Wordsworth, Bryant loved nature intensely, and the greater number of his poems were inspired by this love. He caught the poetry of the Indian Summer as Irving did its romance. He is the poet of the New England autumn. No one has so well pictured its brilliant foliage, its fading flowers, its dreamy, melancholy days. "Autumn Woods," "November," "The Death of the Flowers," "The Voice of Autumn," and "October" are poems that have become a part of our English language. He is also the poet of the New England wild flowers. The yellow violet, the fringed gentian, and the painted cup are as inseparably connected with his name as the rhodora is with Emerson's, the wild honeysuckle with Freneau's, the dandelion with Lowell's, the goldenrod with Whittier's, and the flower-de-luce with Longfellow's. He is the poet of all others that has sung best of the boundless forest and the prairies.
For Class Reading.—The five autumn poems mentioned above, also "The Yellow Violet," "The Fringed Gentian," "The Painted Cup," "The Prairies," "The Forest Hymn."
His Uniform Excellence.—No poet has written so few inferior productions as Bryant. Hardly a line of all that he produced could be spared. Conscientious and painstaking, he was his own severest critic. His works. can be judged by the severest standards and not fall short. He did not succeed by accident; he succeeded by fine poetic genius and patient hard work. He wrote no long poem. To pick here and there from his poems as a sample of his powers is taking an unfair advantage. To understand the poetic work of Bryant one must read. all that he has written.
The Translation of Homer (1871–1872).—
"One of the finest specimens of pure Saxon English in our language."—Bigelow.
The translation of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey occupied the last years of Bryant's life. It has been observed that "Thanatopsis" is the most remarkable work ever done by a youth of eighteen; in like manner it may be said that the translation of Homer is the most remarkable work ever done by a man of eighty. It immediately became the standard English translation of the great epic poet. The old Greek had never been brought so near to readers of English.
Required Reading.—"Ulysses among the Phæacians." Odyssey, Book V.
Bryant's Style.—(Stedman, iii; Richardson, II., 35-49 Whipple's Literature and Life; John Wilson's Essays: Critical and Imaginative; Bayard Taylor's Critical Essays and Literary Notes; Deshler's Afternoons with the Poets [Bryant's Sonnets]; George William Curtis' Address before the New York Historical Society; Lowell's Fable for Critics.)
Bryant's poems are cold and stately. There is in them none of the passion and fire that characterize much of the work of Whittier and Longfellow and Poe. Everything in his verse is classically moulded, like a Greek frieze carved from cold marble, yet faultless in its art. He was a perfect master of English, and no American has better understood the technique of his art. His blank verse has never been surpassed; stately and melodious, it reminds one of Milton.
His Character.—"There is probably no eminent man in the country upon whose life and genius and career the verdict of his fellow citizens would be more immediate and unanimous. His character and life had a simplicity and austerity of outline that had become universally familiar, like a neighboring mountain or the sea. His convictions were very strong, and his temper uncompromising; he was independent beyond most Americans. He was an editor and a partisan; but he hold politics and all other things subordinate to the truth and the common welfare, and his earnestness and sincerity and freedom from selfish ends took the sting of personality from his opposition, and constantly placated all who, like him, sought lofty and virtuous objects....This same bent of nature showed itself in the character of his verse. His poetry is intensely and distinctively American. He was a man of scholarly accomplishment, familiar with other languages and literature. But there is no tone or taste of anything not peculiarly American in his poetry. It is as characteristic as the wine of the Catawba grape, and could have been written only in America by an American naturally sensitive to whatever is most distinctively American."—George William Curtis.
Required Reading.—Poems on Bryant's Seventieth Birthday by Holmes, Whittier, and Lowell.
"The Dawn of Imagination."—The imaginative element was slow to enter American literature. The Puritan mind dealt with facts, not fancies. Wild vagaries like the Fäerie Queene and The Midsummer Night's Dream held no beauties for him that could enjoy The Day of Doom. The ponderous Revolutionary poets kept their feet firmly on the solid earth, while Bryant, dignified and majestic, never attempted the light paces of fancy. The dawn of imagination," as Professor Richardson terms it, came with Drake and Halleck.
Joseph Rodman Drake (1795–1820).
"Drake was a born singer,—almost an improvisatore,—whose imaginative faculty, although of rather flimsy texture, was always rapid, joyous, and infectious."—Bayard Taylor.
Life.—(No life of Drake and no complete collection of his poems have yet been published. See Wilson's Life of Halleck, and Bryant and his Friends; also Richardson, II., 24-27.) The lives of Joseph Rodman Drake and the English poet Keats seem to have had much in common. Born the same year, they died within a few months of each other of the same disease. ForcedThe Croaker Papers.
"The American Flag"
The Culprit Fay. from childhood to struggle with poverty, each received no systematic education, and each at length chose the medical profession as a means for winning daily bread. When consumptive tendencies became marked, Drake sought in vain for relief in New Orleans, while Keats went to the south of Europe. Both died at the early age of twenty-five, when life had hardly begun. Farther than this the comparison may not safely be made, for although Drake produced a few lyrics of exquisite beauty that are not forgotten, Keats has left work that will stand while the language endures.
One of the most important circumstances in the lives of Drake and Fitz-Greene Halleck, and indeed one of the most charming episodes in the history of American literature, was the life-long friendship of the two poets, which began some months after Halleck's removal to New York in 1811. The chief literary result of this friendship was The Croaker Papers, a series of light, satirical poems, "contributed," in the words of Halleck, "anonymously to the columns of the New York Evening Post from March to June, 1819, and occasionally afterwards." After the death of Drake these Papers were published in an elegant edition, but they are now more easily to be found in the 1868 edition of Halleck's poems.
"Whoever among the present generation wishes to learn something of the leading men of the city and state and of the social, scientific, and political events of so interesting a decade as that of 1819–1829 in New York history, cannot but be enlightened, as well as greatly amused, by a perusal of these sprightly poems."—J. G. Wilson.
But Drake's claim to remembrance rests almost wholly upon The Culprit Fay, written, according to the best authority, in 1816, when the poet was in his twenty-third year. This fanciful rhyme of fairyland, laid amid the Highlands of the Hudson, tells with minuteness the story of a fay, who, for loving "an earthly maid," was condemned by the fairy court to purge his wings with a drop caught when
"The sturgeon leaps in the bright moonshine;"
and to follow with speed the first shooting star, for
The melody of this dainty creation is haunting in its sweetness; its movement is rapid and spontaneous, its descriptions of fairy equipment exquisitely drawn. Poe called it fanciful rather than imaginative; some have complained that it is extravagant in color and figure, yet it remains, notwithstanding, one of the most charming of fairy tales, a veritable midsummer night's dream.
Required Reading.—The Culprit Fay.
Fitz-Greene Halleck (1790–1867).
"A natural lyrist, whose pathos and eloquence were inborn, and whose sentiment, though he wrote in the prevailing English mode. was that of his own land."—Stedman.
Life (by James Grant Wilson, 1869. See also the elegant Memorial of Fitz-Greene Halleck containing the addresses and poems delivered at the dedi"Marco Bozzaris."
"Burns."
"Red Jacket."
"Alnwick Castle."
"Fanny."
"On the Death of Joseph Redman Drake".cation of the Halleck Monument in Guilford, Connecticut, and at the unveiling of the Central Park statue, 1877, with numerous engravings. See also Wilson's Bryant and his Friends, 1886; Poe's Literati and Lowell's Fable for Critics.) Castle."
As late as 1846, Poe, in his Literati of New York, declared that
"Our principal poets are perhaps most frequently named in this order: Bryant, Halleck, Dana, Sprague, Longfellow, Willis, and so on—Halleck coming second in the series, but holding, in fact, a rank in the public opinion quite equal to that of Bryant."
But it was the fame of his early work that kept Halleck's name thus prominent. Drake, with his vivacity and his fine fancy, seems to have been his inspiration. The edition of his poems published in 1827, seven years after the death of his young friend, contains nearly everything of value that Halleck has given to the world. In it was "Marco Bozzaris," his finest lyric, an heroic ode that has the ring of Campbell at his best, and it also contained the fine poems "Burns" and "Alnwick Castle" and the immortal tribute to his early friend Drake, commencing
In 1849, at the death of John Jacob Astor, in whose counting-room he had been employed for sixteen years, Halleck returned to his native Guilford, Connecticut, whence he had wandered a half century before, to settle down, as he expressed it,
"Passing rich with forty pounds a year,"
from the estate of his late employer. Here he died in 1867, nearly fifty years after the youthful poet whose name stands linked with his.
"Halleck's importance is at once perceived, if we project him against the background of his time. His position is almost that of the German poet, Gellert,—the first to sing a natural note, in a waste of dulness and imitation, and growing silent as he lived to be the contemporary of far greater men. Each of his lyrics came forth like a burst of light, because the poetic atmosphere was one of level gloom. He was the American twin brother of Campbell, to whom, as a poet, he always felt nearest, yet whom he never imitated. The ten years, from 1817 to 1827, begin and complete his season of productiveness. Nothing that he wrote before or after that period possesses any vitality; and it is probable, in fact, that he will only be known to later generations by six poems, which I venture to name in the order of their excellence: 'Marco Bozzaris,' 'Burns,' 'Red Jacket,' 'Alnwick Castle,' 'The Field of the Grounded Arms,' and 'On the Death of Drake.' His Fanny may still be read with interest, but its original charm faded away with the surprise of its appearance."—Bayard Taylor.
Required Reading.—"Marco Bozzaris," "On the Death of Drake," and "Burns." Also Whittier's poem "Fitz-Greene Halleck."
MINOR POETS.
Washington Allston (1779–1848), whom Underwood designates as "perhaps the greatest painter of our English race," was one of the most cultured men of early New England; a writer of force and imagination, and a conversationalist of the very first order. He was born in South Carolina, but removing in early boyhood to New England, he was graduated at Harvard in 1800, and shortly afterwards entered the Royal Academy in England. He spent much of his life abroad, especially in Rome, where Irving found him in 1804, and became so charmed with the man and his life that he for a time seriously contemplated the study of painting as a lifework. Allston's chief poetical work, the Sylphs of the Seasons, appeared in London in 1813. But, while his poems have many beauties, it is chiefly as an influence. that he is remembered in literature. Compared with many of his contemporaries, his production was small indeed, yet it should not be forgotten that, in introducing America to the culture of Europe, Allston did a service to our literature second only to that rendered by Longfellow.
John Pierpont (1785–1866), a native of Connecticut and a graduate of Yale, after a short career as a lawyer and a merchant, was ordained in 1819 as pastor of the Hollis Street Church, Boston, where he served for more than a quarter of a century. His Airs of Palestine, 1816, gave him a wide popularity. Ile wrote very voluminously both in prose and verse, his poems being chiefly hymns and odes written for various occasions, but his fame, like the refrain of his best-known poem, is "passing away." (See Wilson's Bryant and his Friends.)
Richard Henry Dana (1787–1879), like Bryant, lived to see almost the whole history of American literature, from its first feeble beginnings until the present time.
With few other authors has time so reversed her first judgments. For almost half a century Dana was counted with the three or four greatest American poets, while to-day he is remembered chiefly by his long poem, The Buccaneers. But though, like Allston's, his actual production was small, his influence for good on our literature, in its most critical period, cannot be overestimated. Aside from his poems, he contributed to the North American Review a series of papers on the English poets, that won for him a place that he still bolds among the best American literary critics. He delivered lectures on Shakespeare, published several thin volumes of poetry and two psychological novels, and in 1821, assisted by Bryant and Allston, established in Boston The Idle Man, a periodical somewhat after the style of Johnson's Rambler and Idler.
Dana was a native of Cambridge, Massachusetts, where the most of his life was passed, and where he died at the great age of ninety-two. His son, R. H. Dana, Jr. (1815–1882), was the author of Two Years Before the Mast (1837), by many considered the best sea narrative in the language. See page 152.
See Bryant and his Friends; Whipple's Essays and Reviews, Vol. II., also Adams' Life of R. H. Dana, Jr.
Lydia Huntley Sigourney (1791–1865), a native of Norwich, Connecticut, was the author of no less than forty-six distinct works in prose and verse. Her sympathies and her sincere religious convictions shine sweetly from all her writings. As a poet, she was exceedingly popular, especially with religious readers. "Niagara," "The Death of an Infant," and "Winter" are among her best poems. See Whittier's Poem to Lydia H. Sigourney.
Charles Sprague (1791–1875) is another example of the emptiness of contemporary fame. During the first half of the century he ranked second only to Bryant and Halleck, but to-day he is little more than a vague memory. Sprague was a banker in Boston, and during the whole of his long life never went ten miles from his native city. His Ode to Shakespeare, a carefully elaborated production, which really possesses literary merit of a high order, was hailed by contemporary critics as the equal of Gray's Progress of Poesy, and the superior even of Dryden's "Alexander's Feast." As an orator, Sprague won many laurels. His Fourth of July oration, of 1825, has been declaimed by thousands of schoolboys.
Maria Gowen Brooks (1795–1845), hailed by Southey as "Maria del Occidente," was a native of Medford, Massachusetts. In 1830 she visited England, where she lived for a time in the home of the poet Southey, who declared her "the most impassioned and most imaginative of all the poetesses." Her chief work, Zophiel; or the Bride of Seven, London, 1833, a poem evidently inspired by the Book of Tobit in the Apocrypha, shows great artistic skill and power, but lacks simplicity and human tenderness. It is purely an intellectual production. Idomen; or the Vale of Yumuri, an autobiographic poem, appeared shortly before the author's death.
James Gates Percival (1795–1857), a native of Connecticut, an eminent scholar and linguist, was at one time considered the most promising American poet, but his verses were hastily written and never revised, and his carelessness has consigned him, along with others far less gifted, to oblivion. His best known poems are "The Coral Grove," "Seneca Lake," and "Mary."
See Lowell's My Study Windows.
John G. C. Brainerd (1796–1828), born in New London, Connecticut, and a member of the class of 1815 at Yale, died of consumption at the early age of thirty-two. His poems, little lyrics charmingly constructed, possess, in many instances, merits of a high order. His "Fall of Niagara," containing only nineteen lines, was declared by Jared Sparks to be the most forcible and the most graphically correct poem ever written on the great cataract. A complete edition of Brainerd's poems, with an appreciative memoir by Whittier, appeared four years after the poet's death. An elegant edition, with a memoir by the Rev. Royal Robbins, was published in Hartford in 1842.
George P. Morris (1802–1864), a native of Philadelphia, whom Tuckerman mentions as pre-eminently "the song-writer of America," was during nearly all of his life connected with journalism in New York City. His lyrics like "My Mother's Bible," "Woodman, Spare that Tree," and scores of others, which deal with the common experiences of home life, are "heart-songs" that can never grow old. No poet of his generation was more loved both in Europe and America.
See Literary Criticisms, by Horace Binney Wallace.
Single Poem Poets.—This period of American literature produced a large number of single lyrics which have become famous apart from the names of their authors. Among these may be mentioned "The Star-spangled Banner," by Francis Scott Key (1779–1843); "The Old Oaken Bucket," by Samuel Woodworth (1785–1842); and "My Life is like a Summer Rose," by Richard Henry Wilde (1789–1847). Although John Howard Payne (1792–1852) wrote upwards of sixty dramas, he is now remembered solely on account of his little lyric "Home, Sweet Home," originally a part of his play The Maid of Milan.