1810-15.

IMITATION OF BRITISH MODELS.

287

that our forefathers were intellectually the slaves of Britain. The longing for English praise, the submission to English literary judgment, the fear of English censure, and the base humility with which it was received, was dwelt on incessantly in magazines, in newspapers, in addresses, in recollections of distinguished men, and in the prefaces to books.

When we examine an American literary production, said the reviewer of a wretched book written in imitation of English models, the first thing we do is to determine whether the author has or has not adopted an English fashionable model. If he has, we then hasten to find out if he derived his characters, views, and opinions from the same source, and we confess that if we find he has, our estimate of him is lowered. We consider it a breach of duty to the republic of letters in America to assist, by servile conformity, the fashion now prevalent for everything foreign in literature. The inevitable consequence of such a taste is a state of colonization of intellect, of subserviency to the critical opinion of the once mother country.

Another, reviewing Paulding's "Backwoodsman," had much to say in praise of a man hardy enough to select for his poem an American character with American life and scenery. We have, said the reviewer, no ferocious giants, no frowning battlements, no lordly knights, no damsels in distress. With us all is plain, simple, unsophisticated Nature. The most terrible necromancer among us is the sheriff; but even his gates readily open on the exhibition of a bit of paper. In such utter absence of anything like a hero, or even a suitable scene for a poetic eye in a fine frenzy to roll upon, it requires uncommon nerves and powerful motives to publish an epic lay which deals with American scenery and life on the frontier.

Much the same condition prevailed, another critic remarked, in the literary as in the industrial world. In the manufacture of coarse fabrics we distanced Great Britain. In the manufacture of fine goods we could not approach her. So in literature. The great literary staple of our country was the newspaper, on which the very best talent was spent and wasted. Next must be placed pamphlets, magazines, and periodicals, which, with a few books of travel and some popular histories, generally succeeded and were widely read. But in

the higher and finer branches of the art of writing, and especially in that of poetry, we were strikingly inferior to our transatlantic rivals. The beauty and sublimity of our scenery was unrivalled; our lakes and rivers could nowhere be surpassed; our heavens were more than Grecian; yet they seemed to offer no themes to the poets. We lacked the "donjons," "samoons," "siroccos," "lairs," "gazelles," "knights," pages," and "friars,” white, black, and gray, so necessary in all fashionable poetry.*

The citizens of the United States, one of the early editors of the North American Review remarked, are not yet emancipated, nor can they expect to be for some time to come, from a degree of dependence on foreign opinion in everything regarding literature. Yet native criticism was steadily gaining ground, as it showed greater talent, and the time was perhaps not remote when foreign literary decisions would be sought for chiefly from curiosity. Then our own tribunals would be looked up to as the supreme authority.†

If half the trash, exclaims another writer, which, sanctioned by the title of English novels, circulates through the Union, paying its way as it goes, were of American origin, it would meet the contempt it deserves. If we could be brought to put the stamp of our own approbation on our own literary coin, without awaiting the image and superscription of foreign potentates of taste, there would be more of it on the market, and we should grow richer by the liberality of our policy."

Yet another critic attributed the "neglect manifested in this country of its own literary productions, and the blind, often unjust preference given to those coming from England," to a long habit of looking up to England as the fountain-head of fashion in dress, furniture, and manners. For it was with literature as with clothes. It was not enough that the cloth be of fine texture and prime quality, and the garment well fitted to the wearer. It must have the fashionable imported cut and air, or the tailor who made it would be looked on as a

* Analectic Magazine 1818, pp. 120, 121.

Tudor's Miscellanies.

The Literary and Scientific Repository, vol. iv, p. 86. # Ibid., vol. ii, p. 52.

1810-20.

LACK OF NATIVE POETS.

289

botch. Had Scott's ballads been written in Philadelphia, would they have had currency in London? And wanting it there, who would have looked at them in America? It so happened that a change, just as essential in the fashions of literature as in the fashions of clothes or furniture, was wanted in England. The full, resounding line of Dryden and the harmonious diction of Pope could no longer hold their ground. The public ear demanded something new; a species of vampedup doggerel had the good fortune to please it, and Scott reigned the favorite of the day on each side of the ocean.

In Great Britain the low state of literature in America, the total absence of poetry, and, indeed, the general depravity of our people and government, was accounted for on other grounds. Whenever a critic condescended to notice our country and our writers-and there were many who did he was sure to find good and sufficient reasons why Americans could not produce a poet for five centuries to come. There is, said one, and he was a sample of his class, in the national stock of recollections and associations a paucity of the elements of poetry. There is in the calculating, sceptical, self-accommodating habits of the people something contractive of the spirit of poetry. Americans have no childhood of society to go back to for legends of the dimly distant past; no relics of feudal tyranny and papal superstition scattered over their landscape, pleasing the eye and recalling the past; no masterpieces of art to kindle the imagination. Women and home are not the same words, do not awaken the same sentiments and associations in America as in England. What the Englishman means by his country can never be known by a people one half of whom are slaves. When to these causes is added the habit of relying on imported literature-a habit springing, on the one hand, from a conscious inferiority and native poverty of mind, and, on the other, from a calculating indolence which seeks to supply its wants with the least exertion-it ceases to be surprising that America cannot boast of one real poet.*

But the charge of intellectual subserviency to Great Britain must not be taken too seriously. That our country

* Eclectic Review, 1819.

men in 1825 should prefer "Marmion," "The Lay of the Last Minstrel," "The Lady of the Lake," "Lalla Rookh," "The Corsair," "Marino Faliero," "The Lyrical Ballads," "The Excursion," "Waverley," and "Guy Mannering," to the novels of Brown, the poetry of Trumbull and Dwight, and the odes and laments that abound in the reviews, museums, and repositories of the time, was right. We do so to-day. Their preference was not subserviency, but sound literary judgment. Never in the course of two centuries had Great Britain produced at one time such a goodly company of men of letters. Jane Austen and Maria Edgeworth, Mrs. Hemans, Burns, Byron, Hallam, Coleridge, Keats, Moore, Wordsworth, Scott, were authors with whom our countrymen could not compete. Their novels and poems went everywhere, sold everywhere, were read everywhere, not because the Americans were without literary judgment, but because they possessed it in the highest degree. That a nation which produced such writers should be deferred to in literary matters was to be expected. This gathering of men and women was phenomenal, and the influence of English literary opinion was phenomenal. Our countrymen deferred to it just as we defer to the advice of the ablest physicians, the skill of the greatest surgeons, the leadership of the most successful commanders.

On the other hand, it was no more than human that our own writers should feel this influence keenly, and that American literary journals should resent it bitterly. They correctly stated a condition, but attributed it to a wrong cause. Yet it would be a great mistake to suppose that we were without American men of letters. Indeed, it was during the first quarter of the nineteenth century that some of the most typical of American books were produced by some of the most original American writers.

First in point of time was Irving. He was born in New York city, April third, 1783, just a few days before peace with Great Britain was proclaimed throughout the land, and in token of gratitude to the great man who led our armies through the struggle so happily ended received the name of Washington. The youngest of a family of eleven children, he inherited from his mother the traits both of mind and

1783-1809.

WASHINGTON IRVING.

291

character that so distinguished him in after life, and grew up a vivacious, mischief-loving lad, delighting in books, music, and the theatre, fond of companionship, and averse to methodical study and protracted mental work. At sixteen he became a student in a law office; but the literary spirit was strong within him, and in 1802 Irving began to write for the Morning Chronicle over the name of Jonathan Oldstyle. The letters are of no value save as an additional illustration of the enormous influence of Addison and Steele on the young writers of the day, for the letters were closely modelled on the Spectator and the Tatler.

In 1804 Irving was sent abroad to improve his health, but returned to New York in 1806, where his literary tastes and good fellowship made him one of a band of lively young men who as "The Nine Worthies or "The Lads of Kilkenny" frequented the city taverns, and held what they considered wild revelries on the banks of the Passaic in an old house they called Cockloft Hall. In company with two of these companions, Irving, in 1806, began the publication of Salmagundi, a semi-monthly periodical in the manner of the Spectator, and especially designed to "instruct the young, reform the old, correct the town, and castigate the age." But the partners soon wearied of supplying the town with a fortnightly allowance of wit and humor, and after twenty numbers the publication ceased, though the success had been surprising.

This venture determined Irving's career. He now practically abandoned law, devoted himself more and more to literature, and was soon at work on "The History of New York." Dr. Samuel L. Mitchell had published what he called a "Picture of New York," which seemed so fair a mark for ridicule that Irving and his brother Peter determined to satirize it, and had their book well under way when Peter Irving was called by business to Europe, and the completion of the task fell on Washington. As Philadelphia was then the centre of the book trade and of letters, the manuscript was sent to a Philadelphia publisher, and when all was ready announcements of a novel sort appeared in the newspapers. First came the statement that a "small, elderly gentleman, dressed in

VOL. V.