Page:Oregon Literature by Horner.djvu/37

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OREGON LITERATURE.
25

be a whole-souled air in the literature of Eastern Oregon somewhat after the Dryden type, while finish and fine feeling of the Pope style will characterize the literature of Western Oregon.


COLLEGE INFLUENCE.

The college influence must not be overlooked in the study of literature. We are told that our national literature thrived only as the colleges of the nation prospered. The great literature of our country is but the confluence of streams flowing out of the fountain heads, Harvard, Yale, William and Mary, and other great colleges of the nation. So in our state there was the Oregon academy which gradually developed into the University of Oregon at Eugene, whence came the noted Joaquin Miller. He may have written in the Sierras and sung of their grandeur; he may have bowed to the muses in the East; his soul may have been mellowed with the sentiments of the vine-clad Italy, yet he is an Oregon poet,—simply a child away from home.

Pacific University, like Jupiter who conceived Minerva full grown and complete, sent out as her first graduate Harvey W. Scott, who is recognized throughout the nation as a distinguished journalist and critic.

History tells us that Washington Irving was the first embassador from the new world to the old—the first American writer to obtain recognition on the continent. So Bethel college, now known only