excessive sexuality. It is one-sided to upbraid Puritanism for its lack of poetic and artistic sense and disdain for intellectual progress. There are more poetry and romanticism in the Old and New Testaments, which the Puritans never tired of reading, than in their ultra-realist opponents; and a pretty thesis for a literary degree could be written on the way in which the highly imaginative, journalistic sensationalism of Poe grew out of the estrangement from nature and humanity which Puritanism, and transcendentalism after it, fostered by their fantastic imaginings.
Alongside of the so-called American Realists there is a long list of modern poets, both realist and idealist, many more of the latter than of the former. Machinery and capitalism have by no means uprooted Romanticism in America—on the contrary, they may even have strengthened it, for the real miracles of modern mechanics have fostered the belief in the marvellous which is the main element in Romanticism. Witness the works of H. G. Wells and their influence on American literature.
There are, too, numbers of women writers though proportionately fewer than in England. This disproportion interests me, for I cannot quite account for it. Two of the newer American authoresses, Miss Cather and Miss Canfield, describe the West or, rather, the Middle West where—not in the East—many American sociologists now tend to place the modern centre of American culture. Both of them analyse Puritanism, albeit less one-sidedly and negatively than the male writers. Miss Canfield makes a frankly critical effort to formulate a truer and purer view of men and women, and of their relationship to each other, than that of the American decadents who have followed in the train of European decadence; but she simplifies her problem by painting her Mephistopheles so black that the American Marguerite can hardly fail to withstand him. In Miss Cather’s work there is a description of the Czech immigrants; and, notwithstanding her affection for them, her account is realistically accurate.
The influence of Europe upon American literature is interesting to trace. Besides the English influence, which was formerly decisive, that of French, Russian and Scandinavian writers is particularly evident in the more recent American work, whereas German influence expresses itself rather in science. America is being Europeanized just as Europe is being Americanized. Of her own accord America tends towards an increasing intellectual activity and condemns the
