It was Sydney Smith, a famous English wit, who voiced a general opinion of our early literature in the scornful question, "Who reads an American book?" We may understand his attitude, which was that of our own critics, if we remember that in this, as in every other period, there were two literary movements, a major and a minor; and that it was the work of minor writers which first received notice in English newspapers and magazines. Here, for instance, is our poetry as exemplified in the popular "Annuals" of that day, The Talisman , The Token , Friendship's Offering , and many other favorites,—dear old collections, full of new-made graves, urns, weeping willows, tears and sentimentality. Here are the fifty-odd volumes of Lydia Sigourney and a few romances of Catherine Sedgwick, such as Hope Leslie and Redwood,—sentimental stories which were republished in England and translated into various European languages. The common people on both sides of the Atlantic read these stories gladly, but the critics saw in them only weak copies of English originals. In this country Noah Webster anticipated foreign criticism when he declared (1792) that "a hundred volumes of modern novels may be read without acquiring a new idea."

When the work of our major writers appeared, a multitude of delighted English readers stood up to answer the irritating question. Critics more thoughtful than Smith, knowing that national enthusiasm finds voice in a national literature, had expected something pristine and vigorous from the new nation, Sketch Book  (1819). \"It has been a matter of marvel to my European readers,\" he writes, \"that a man from the wilds of America should express himself in tolerable English. I was looked upon as something new and strange in literature, a kind of demisavage with a feather in his hand instead of on his head.\"") ?> and when Cooper's books began to be published abroad these critics found what they had expected. Here were good stories, a little crude perhaps, but fresh and genuine,—stories with the breath of sea and forest in them, and with a rush of adventure that reminded Englishmen of Rob Roy  and the Heart of Midlothian . So, having enjoyed the tales and being in a condescending humor, they christened Cooper "the American Scott." A little earlier had appeared Irving, with a grace and charm that recalled the best productions of their beloved Spectator , and him they called "the American Addison." Then followed Bryant, with his natural refinement and his deep understanding of nature, and he became known to a few as "the American Wordsworth." Only Poe escaped, for the simple reason that England had no writer with whom to compare him.

Though the names thus given to our writers are pleasantly suggestive, the fact remains that the first quality of our national literature is its originality. Irving's first work, the Knickerbocker History , is a unique book; there are no other tales like The Spy , The Red Rover  and The Last of the Mohicans ; and if there be any other poem than "A Forest Hymn" which reflects the instinctive reverence of primitive man in the presence of nature, we have never found it.

A second characteristic of our literature in this period is its harmony with our natural environment. Nature had been sadly neglected in the greater part of the literature of the eighteenth century; when it was mentioned, for effect, every bird was apt to be a nightingale, every flower a primrose, and stock expressions such as "vernal winds" and "sylvan beauties" had been worn threadbare by repetition. Our first national writers changed all that, and the change was as welcome as rain to the parched grass. Bryant was by far our best observer, and his poetry reflects the spirit of nature and of the man who stands silent and reverent before her revelation. Cooper, though inaccurate in details, reflects something of the charm and mystery of the great wilderness, and he is the first in modern literature to use the ocean as the scene of romance and adventure. Irving has less love of nature than either Bryant or Cooper; but in much of his work he remembers the influence of the hills and the Hudson, and is at his best in "Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle," where he puts himself in harmony with the American landscape.

A third noticeable quality of our first national literature is its intense patriotism. This appears in many forms: in the national songs of Pinkney, Halleck, Drake and Percival; in the restrained passion of patriotism, cold as a star but clear and steadfast, which shines in Bryant's verse; in numerous popular lyrics, like "Adams and Liberty," "Warren's Address," "The American Flag," The Star-Spangled Banner" and "Home, Sweet Home"; in dramas like "Eutaw Springs," "Marion," "Siege of Boston," "Washington at Valley Forge," and many others of the same kind. In these early melodramas, which quickened American patriotism by recalling the heroic age of the Revolution, we have a parallel to the popular chronicle plays which voiced the pride and the national enthusiasm of the early Elizabethans.

Even more significant are the legendary and historical tales which appeared in this period. Crude as they are, we are interested in them as a reflection of the first national consciousness. As a result of the long struggle of the pioneers, of the faith and the work of colonizers and state builders, America had become a nation; she felt reverence for the past, confidence in the future, the thrill of national unity,—all of which are essential to national literature. She had, moreover, a history of two hundred years, a history of brave men and epic achievement; and our writers, like those of the older nations, could now look backward to a golden age of heroism. Irving created an old world of legend, the first to appear in American letters. Cooper glorified the old frontiersman and the soldier and sailor of past conflicts. Other writers heard the sursum corda , and a host of historical romances reflected the joy of the young nation in its old heroes. Kennedy's Horse-Shoe Robinson , Simms's trilogy of Revolutionary novels beginning with The Partisan , Paulding's The Dutchman's Fireside , Lydia Child's Hobomok  and The Rebels , Bird's Nick of the Woods ,—these are but a suggestion to the reader who would learn for himself what kind of tales delighted American readers of a century ago, when the nation was young, when art seemed of less, and enthusiasm of more, consequence than they do now.

We must note also the emphasis laid on moral and religious sentiments by practically all the writers of this period, and the first appearance of literary criticism,—a very significant detail, since criticism cannot begin until critics are assured of a considerable body of native literature to work upon. North American Review  (1815), the New England Magazine  (1831), the Knickerbocker Magazine  (1832) and the Southern Literary Messenger  (1834) are a few of the best. The critical work of Poe and of the so-called \"Knickerbocker School\" will be considered later.") ?> There are doubtless other general characteristics, but we emphasize only these three: the originality of the new writers, their rare harmony with nature, and their ardent patriotism born of reverence and faith,—that reverence for the past and faith in the future which ennobles a man's love of his home and country.

Those who are fond of finding the explanation of books in the author's environment will be disappointed in Irving. Though the New York in which he was born (1783) was a straggling town of quaint houses, orchards and cabbage gardens, he began to write his Salmagundi  essays as if he were recording gossip from the clubs and coffeehouses of a great city. The country at large was growing and exulting; there were wars, bitter political strifes, discoveries that set the world agog; but Irving's pen reflected nothing of the excitement. He was in England after the Battle of Waterloo, and again during the uproar attending the Reform Bill; he arrived in Spain at a time of revolution; but we look in vain for any suggestion of these stirring events in his pages. For Irving dwells in the romantic past, not in the present or future.

His father was a Scotchman of the Covenanter type, his mother an Englishwoman, gentle and indulgent to her children. They had settled in America long enough before the Revolution to catch the spirit of the new land, and had been stanch patriots during the occupation of New York by the British soldiers. To these parents, who still cherished a love for their old home, our author owed that rare sympathy which made him understand and revere England, while he remained splendidly loyal to his own country.

Unlike his brothers, who were college trained, Irving had but a scant education. This was due partly to delicate health, and partly to his dislike of routine work of any kind. He was naturally an idler, like his old Mateo of the Alhambra , and took many holidays that were not on the calendar. He explored the Hudson, shot squirrels in the woods of Harlem, or loafed in the sunshine on the Battery watching the ships go out to sea, taking the long thread of his dreams with them. At sixteen he was through with school and began with a wry face to study law. Also he began to write, and in 1802 first published, in his brother's newspaper, some light essays in imitation of Addison. Then he was seriously threatened with consumption, and his brothers sent him abroad in the hope that the long sea voyage might save his life.

One must read Irving's letters to appreciate his joy and wonder in the Old World. Fate was unusually kind to this lover of the romantic; for besides giving him a happy time, she arranged that he should see Nelson's fleet sweeping the sea to Trafalgar, that he should be arrested as an English spy at Nice, and that his ship should be boarded by pirates in the Mediterranean. After eighteen months of travel he returned home in excellent health, dabbled in Blackstone again, and was presently admitted to the bar. To this period, when his head was busy with law and his heart was on a literary vacation, belong his Salmagundi  papers, which first gave him a local reputation, and which probably led to his appointment as one of the attorneys at the famous trial of Aaron Burr,—an event which at that time (1804–1807) occupied the attention of the entire country.

The date 1809 is noteworthy, for in that year Irving published his Knickerbocker History . This book met with instant success at home, and its fame spread to England, where Scott was one of its delighted readers; but the surprised young author was still afraid to follow his spirit and commit himself wholly to literature, as Brown had done. Instead, he went into partnership with his brothers, who were importers of hardware. The War of 1812 broke out, but not until the burning of Washington was Irving roused. Then he offered his services to the Governor of New York, and for a time did the inglorious work of a military secretary. Under the genial, ease-loving exterior there was a heroic strain in Irving, and he was sorely disappointed when he was not allowed to accompany his friend, the gallant Decatur, in the naval expedition against the Algerian pirates. Failing in this ambition, he went on a business trip to England, intending to be gone a few months. Seventeen years passed before he saw his native land again.

In England our young author was speedily enmeshed in the affairs of the Irving Brothers, whose trade had been almost ruined by the war. The firm failed in 1818, which is another memorable date in Irving's life. Up to that time he had perhaps taken life too easily, depending on his generous brothers. The common calamity roused him, and he turned seriously to literature with the determination to earn a living by his own effort. Through the influence of Walter Scott, "that golden-hearted man," he was offered pleasant employment as an editor; but distrusting his fitness for routine work he declined the offer, finished a few essays and sent them to America. This was the beginning of the Sketch Book  (1820), which definitely settled Irving's career as a writer. At this time Brown was dead, Poe was at school in Richmond, Bryant was struggling with the law, and Cooper had not yet planned The Spy . Irving was therefore our only professional man of letters, and he depended at first as much upon English as upon American readers. Bracebridge Hall  (1821) and Tales of a Traveller  (1824) are two more important results of this English period of his life. Then, welcoming the suggestion of Alexander Everett, our minister to Spain, that he should translate Navarrete's Voyages of Columbus , he hastened to Madrid, where he proved himself as much of an explorer in the Old World as was ever De Soto in the New.

The next three years (1826–1829) were the most fruitful of Irving's life. He had intended to make a translation, but the mass of unused material in the Spanish archives presently led him to attempt his own story of Columbus. Soon the romantic history, the legends and traditions of this old land of cross and crescent, began to fascinate Irving, as the first book of fairy stories fascinates a child. The very names had magic in them. Granada, Guadalajara, Andalusia,—who can read them, even now, without the desire to mount and away to the land of enchantment? Irving spent his mornings in the Jesuit College at St. Isidoro, an exquisite old place, refined by years of study and meditation, where every shelf of parchment-bound books opened to him a wonderland. It was the first scholarly discipline he had ever known, and he responded as a plant that is taken out of its earthen pot and set in its native soil and air. The Life and Voyages of Columbus  (1828), Conquest of Granada  (1829), Spanish Voyages of Discovery  (1831) and Alhambra  (1832) were the immediate results of his first visit; and to his study of Spanish records we owe also the later Moorish Chronicles , Legends of the Conquest of Spain  and Mahomet and his Successors .

This busy, happy Spanish period was ended by his appointment as Secretary of the American Legation in London. He held this position for two years, receiving such attention as England gave to her own great writers; then the call of his country became irresistible, and he turned homeward in 1832. His reception here was all that an author could desire. He had quietly answered the galling question, "Who reads an American book?" and the whole nation delighted to do him honor.

One who reads Irving's letters of this period finds two significant reflections of the author: his modesty, which was proof against the perils of success; and his amazement at the changes which had taken place here, and which made him feel like Rip Van Winkle after a long sleep. He had left New York a country town, over which drowsy Dutch traditions still hovered; he found it a city of two hundred thousand people, stored with wealth, buzzing with tremendous energy; and this local transformation was typical of the entire country. He felt the excitement of the mighty Western movement, and went to see for himself the wonders of the great plains. The Tour of the Prairies  (1835), Astoria  (1836) and Adventures of Captain Bonneville  (1837) are the literary results of his journey. In reading them we are again conscious of the manly soul that is hidden in this dreamer and story-teller. He is enthusiastic over a good horse; he enters headlong into the excitement of buffalo running, forgetting the danger till he is almost thrown under the feet of a charging bull; he loves the vast open spaces, the march with adventurous men, the bivouac under the stars. Moreover, he is the original discoverer of that stirring romance of the West, which has inspired so many writers ever since.

Tired of his wandering, Irving now bought a little Dutch cottage at Tarrytown overlooking the Hudson, remodeled it till it was all nooks and gables, and called it Sunnyside. He lived there with his relatives in great happiness for the remainder of his life, with the exception of four years which he spent abroad as our ambassador to Spain. He had declined many political offices which were offered him by a grateful nation, knowing his unfitness for the work involved; but he accepted this mission, which was urged upon him by Webster and President Tyler, modestly thinking that the honor was offered to the profession of letters. He proved, on the whole, a worthy member of that splendid group—Franklin, Randolph, Laurens, Jefferson, Motley, Everett, Bancroft, Lowell, and other literary men—who have at various times represented America at the courts of Europe.

To the last period of Irving's life, after his return from Spain, belong his Sunnyside sketches known as Wolfert's Roost  (1855), and the three important biographies: Life of Goldsmith  (1849), Mahomet and his Successors  (1850) and the monumental Life of Washington , the last volume of which was published only a little while before Irving's death, in 1859. Loved as he was in his own home and honored by the nation, his closing years were like an October day, mellow, serene and fruitful. In one of his Easy Chair  papers Curtis describes Irving as men met him tripping along Broadway, affable, happy, courteous, with a suggestion of the "old school" in his dress and manners, as if he had "just stepped out of his own books." As he had once accepted the mission to Spain, not as a personal gift but as a mark of respect to literature, so now he received the honors that were showered upon him, as a generous tribute of youth to age. He was delighted with the thought that old gentlemen were still respected "and were even becoming fashionable."

There are various classifications of our author's works, but one who depends upon them is speedily brought to confusion. Irving's spirit is constant; the romantic always appeals to him; and while one may safely call the Knickerbocker History  a work of humor, and the Life of Columbus  a biography, other productions like the Sketch Book  defy classification. Simply for convenience, therefore, we divide his twenty-odd volumes into three parts, corresponding to the early, middle and later periods of his life.

The chief works of the early period are the boyish Jonathan Oldstyle  essays, Salmagundi  and the hilarious Knickerbocker History . The general character of the Salmagundi  papers Salmagundi, or the Whim-whams and Opinions of Launcelot Langstaff, Esq., and others . The \"others\" were Irving's brother William, and James K. Paulding. Irving follows the fashion of his age in using assumed names. He appears first as Jonathan Oldstyle, then as Launcelot Langstaff, Diedrich Knickerbocker and Geoffrey Crayon.") ?> may be inferred from the name (which is that of an appetizing hash, compounded of meat, smoked fish, eggs, onions and spices) and from the startling announcement of the young authors:

"Our purpose is simply to instruct the young, reform the old, correct the town and castigate the age. This is an arduous task, and therefore we undertake it with confidence."

Of these airy papers, which were begun and ended as a jest, we may simply say, "They had their day and ceased to be." A few readers, however, are still interested in them; and such readers cite the "Chronicle of the Renowned and Ancient City of Gotham," as an instance of Irving's power to create a lasting tradition.

The most notable work of this period was A History of New York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty, by Diedrich Knickerbocker  (1809), which some critics regard as the first literary work of national importance produced in America. If the critics are right, then our national literature began with a joke. The alleged historian was a queer Dutch antiquarian, who suddenly disappeared, leaving an unpaid board bill and a package of manuscript. After advertising for him in the newspapers, Irving professed to publish the manuscript in order to pay the board bill.

Opening the Knickerbocker History , we find that the first book is merely a burlesque of a popular history of New York, which began, in the historic fashion of those days, with the creation of the world. The second book consists largely of making fun of the New Jersey settlers. We advise the reader to skip these two books, the humor of which now seems tedious, and, to read (in an abridged edition) the last three books, which chronicle the doughty deeds of three Dutch governors: Wouter Van Twiller, William the Testy, and Peter the Headstrong. The whole work is a huge farce, and Irving increased the ridiculous effect by dedicating it to the Historical Society, gravely announcing that its one merit was its scrupulous accuracy. Its boisterous fun is directed against the Dutch colonists, with here and there a somewhat malicious fling at the Yankees, showing that Irving was influenced by an English fashion and by a local prejudice. Dutch,—possibly to make men forget tbat the gallant little Dutch squadron had once swept the English from the sea. Irving's prejudice against New England was shared by Cooper and by many other New York writers of the period (see p. 216).") ?> The latter leads him into an occasional display of bad taste, which is in marked contrast to the refinement of his life and of all his later writings.

Aside from these blemishes, the book is characterized by rollicking good nature, though the fun is often carried to a point where, like children's fooling, it becomes tiresome. The humor consists largely in relating fact and absurdity, the obvious and the impossible, in the same strain of sober gravity. Irving holds close enough to historical dates and personages to give an impression of reality; then he leads his characters into the most ridiculous and outrageous adventures. It is the grain of truth in the bushel of nonsense that gives point to his humor, and that makes his Dutch heroes at once familiar and grotesque, like faces seen in a doorknob.

The works of Irving's middle period may be grouped in three divisions, showing the influences of England, Spain and America respectively. In the first are the Sketch Book  (1820), Bracebridge Hall  (1822), Tales of a Traveller  (1824) and a part of the Crayon Miscellanies  (1825). These are all of the same sketchy character, revealing the author's impressions as traveler, critic, essayist, and story-teller. They are all characterized by a mingling of humor and pathos, sentiment and sentimentality.

The Sketch Book  is probably the best known and loved of all Irving's works. One might analyze the romantic sentiment and the Addisonian style of these delicate sketches of English and American life, but the book is one to read and enjoy, not to criticize as we criticize the Knickerbocker History . Every reader must find his own favorite sketches, and we merely indicate our own in naming the following: "Rip Van Winkle" and "Sleepy Hollow," which have made the Hudson more renowned for its legends than for its commerce; the Christmas stories, which inspired Dickens and which mark the beginning of our modern joyous celebration of the festival; "Stratford" and "Westminster Abbey," which may be likened to a pair of romantic spectacles that every American puts on when he visits these literary shrines; and for variety, the "Spectre Bridegroom" and "The Angler." One should not attempt this last, however, unless he likes fishing and understands Isaac Walton.

Bracebridge Hall , one of the most charming of Irving's works, is a series of sketches and stories of English country life suggesting Addison's Sir Roger de Coverley . Our own favorites in Bracebridge Hall  are the Introduction, the May-Day and Christmas sketches, the stories of "Dolph Heyliger," "The Stout Gentleman" and "Annette Delabre." The Tales of a Traveller , which Irving thought the best of his works, is on the whole inferior to the two we have just mentioned; but after reading "Wolfert Webber" (which may have influenced Poe to write "The Gold Bug") and "The Bold Dragoon," which delighted Scott by its grotesque imagination, we understand Irving's place as the first, and still one of the best, of our short-story writers.

The remarkable series of books on Spanish themes belong also to the middle period. Irving began with the Life of Columbus  (1828), a readable book, having the rare combination of historical accuracy and warm human interest. It remains, after a hundred years, probably our best biography of the great explorer. Columbus naturally suggested his patrons, Ferdinand and Isabella, and all the chivalry and romance of Spanish history. Here Irving lost himself in a wonderland, and even his serious works, such as the Conquest of Granada  (1829), have an atmosphere of romance rather than of history. The best of his Spanish books is The Alhambra  (1832), a collection of descriptive essays, legends and stories, all clustering about the last stronghold of the Moors. When Prescott called this "the beautiful Spanish Sketch Book," he said enough in its favor. Indeed, one who reads the Sketch Book  and The Alhambra  meets Irving at the highest point he ever reached as a writer.

The series of books on American pioneer themes completed the work of this fruitful middle period. The Tour of the Prairies  (1835) describes Irving's wanderings with a party of explorers through the unknown region between the Arkansas and the Red rivers. Hitherto he had been absorbed in the past, but when he crossed the Mississippi he was instantly inspired by the romance of the present. Though apparently a lazy observer, he is at times keener or more accurate than Cooper, and there is a zest, a hearty joy of wild life, in his pages which probably influenced Parkman in his Oregon Trail . Altogether, this Tour , though generally neglected, will appeal to a few readers as one of the most significant of Irving's works. It reveals an entirely new side of the author's character and his rare power of finding a romantic interest in the silent places, as once before, in "The Voyage," he had found it even on the lonely sea.

Astoria , a jumbled, chaotic account of the fur house at the mouth of the Columbia, is plainly hack work and of no consequence. Much better is the Adventures of Captain Bonneville , compiled largely from the journal of that daring explorer. Here is a helter-skelter story of pack trains, exploration and fighting, with side excursions among the "free trappers" of the Rocky Mountains. It has small literary value but plenty of adventure, and we have known at least one reader to be wide-awake over its camp fires at midnight who might have grown sleepy in Bracebridge Hall .

To the last period of Irving's life belong the volume of sketches known as Wolfert's Roost  and the three biographies of Mahomet, Goldsmith and Washington. The Life of Goldsmith  is a tender, uncritical appreciation of one of the most lovable geniuses in English literature. The Life of Washington  was in its day a notable work, in that it combined a lover's enthusiasm with a historian's desire for fact and truth; but the theme was too great for Irving's failing powers. He was at his best in the sketch; and the career of Washington offered a vast panorama of history, filled with complex movements and contending forces, through which one great figure moved steadily to its appointed end. Perhaps, from this viewpoint, the life of Washington has not yet been written; the puzzled reader must sometime choose between earlier biographers, who emphasize Washington's superhuman virtues, and later writers, who seem somewhat too diligent to discover his faults. We suggest, therefore, that though Irving was not a critical scholar, his abridged Life of Washington , as edited and supplemented in a sympathetic way by John Fiske, is still a very good book to read.

Irving signed his first essays "Jonathan Oldstyle," and the name is pleasantly suggestive of his literary masters, Addison and Goldsmith, who were going out of fashion when he began to write. The most pervasive quality of his style is its charm, an indefinite word, which means simply that his manner is attractive, that it is a pleasure to read or to listen to him. If we analyze his work more minutely, we find that the first definite quality of his style is its naturalness. He writes without effort, and finds without seeking the most felicitous word and the most expressive metaphor. The naturalness is increased, moreover, by the harmony between tone and theme, and by Irving's rare ability to give "local color" to his narrative. Though he writes of many things, of Old-World castles and New-World prairies, of men and women, ghosts and goblins, we feel in each of his stories the very atmosphere of his scene and the harmony between his manner and his subject.

Next in importance is the clearness, the transparency of Irving's style, which is so marked that the poet Campbell declared he had "added clarity to the English tongue." By "transparent" we mean that his thought is so well expressed that we are never in doubt of his meaning, and that he always keeps modestly out of our way, calling attention not to himself but to what he is saying. Added to these qualities are a certain balance and melody of his sentences, and an unmistakable refinement, as of culture and wide reading, which commands respect wherever heard. This last quality seems more remarkable in view of the fact that Irving could hardly be called a scholar, or even a disciplined reader. It is evidently from within, like a child's singing, and we are content to appreciate without trying to explain it.

To Irving's humor, boisterous and crude in the Knickerbocker History  but becoming more and more delicate in his later works, and to the love of romance and sentiment which are reflected even in his serious works, we have already called attention. His sentiment is generally wholesome, but, like Brown, he shows the influence of literary fashion by occasional lapses into sentimentality. Here, for instance, are "Rural Funerals," "The Widow and Her Son" and "The Broken Heart," which Byron and many others found an occasion for tears but which will hardly stand our critical analysis. They aim rather too obviously to make us cry; and many readers resent such a deliberate attempt at their emotions, knowing that the world's grief—which Irving never felt very deeply—is too simple and sacred a thing for sentimentality. We are to remember, however, that Irving wrote to please, not to reform; that his readers loved tears, urns and new-made graves in their stories and poems; and that a sentimental interest in sad or funereal subjects was a marked characteristic of English and American literature for a full century following Gray's Elegy .

There are critics who say that Irving has no message, but they belong with those who never detect a sermon unless it begins with a text and ends with a "finally." There are many kinds of sermons, the best of which are not too obvious; and some messages, like the bluebird's song, might suffer harm from too definite expression. It is true that Irving, like his historian of Bracebridge Hall , is merely an observer of life. He has neither problems nor ambitions; he enters not into the doubts and struggles of humanity; he never takes sides in strife, having, as he says, "a most melancholy good opinion of all my fellow creatures." But in a world of reforms and reformers, and in a literature that welcomes the "problem" novel, it is rather refreshing to find one to whom life seems good, and whose work always suggests the legend written on the old sundials: horas non numero nisi serenas , "I count only the sunny hours."

We can accept, therefore, the dictum of the English critic Hazlitt, that Irving is "a filigree man," remembering that the old Greek and Etruscan filigrees were of exquisite beauty and sometimes inclosed a jewel. We accept also a general judgment of our own writers, that Irving is the companion of an idle hour rather than the friend to whom we turn in adversity. But let us not leave him with this negative tribute. He was, first of all, remarkable as a discoverer of literary material, and his discoveries have been freely used by writers on both sides of the Atlantic. Again, by his delicate sympathy he found his way to the hearts of America, England and Spain successively; and he established the famous principle, which De Quincey formulated, that "not to sympathize is not to understand." Finally, by his style, his attention to artistic form, his development of the essay and the modern short story, he exerted a strong and wholesome influence at the beginning of our national literature. Though he died half a century ago, he is still to thousands of men and women a cheerful comrade, whose message is that we live in a good world, and that the best way to show our appreciation is to give thanks and enjoy it. As he wrote modestly in "The Christmas Dinner":

"If I can by any lucky chance in these days of evil rub out one wrinkle from the brow of care, or beguile the heavy heart of one moment of sorrow; if I can now and then penetrate through the gathering film of misanthropy, prompt a benevolent view of human nature and make my reader more in good humor with his fellow beings and himself,—surely, surely, I shall not then have written entirely in vain."

Bryant was of Pilgrim stock and counted himself among the descendants of John and Priscilla Alden, who are immortalized in a poem written by another descendant and called "The Courtship of Miles Standish." His father was a country doctor, a lover of books and poetry; his mother was a Puritan, with all that the name implies of devotion to lofty ideals and practical duty:

That Bryant's mother merited every line of this fine old eulogy is shown by her diary and by the testimony of the poet, who attributed his ideals and his success largely to his mother's influence.

He was born (1794) in Cummington, a frontier village in the rugged hill country of Massachusetts. There his boyhood was passed, attending the district school or working on the farm by day, and reading before the open fire at night. A dull, secluded, heavy-laden life it may seem to us now, with its days of anxiety and pain; but it was ennobled by the companionship of good parents and good books, and dignified by the Puritan spirit, which regarded small duties by the light of great principles. Nor must we forget the curtain of the day, when the whole family was accustomed to kneel together in prayer. As the grandfather offered his petition for a blessing on home and friends and nation, the small boy would whisper the desire of his own heart that he might some day be his country's poet. Later he will leave this lonely farm, will study, travel, become a leader of affairs in a great city; but he will ever do his best work in the remembrance of his childhood. There is only one way to get the spirit of Bryant's poetry, and that is to put yourself in sympathy with a Puritan boy looking up at the eternal hills.

He fitted for college in the old-fashioned way; by studying with the learned ministers of the neighborhood. For one dollar a week, so the record runs, he obtained his scanty fare of bread-and-milk and his liberal mental pabulum of Latin, Greek and mathematics. He learned quickly, and in his sixteenth year easily passed his examination for the sophomore class in Williams College. Even at this early age he had won local recognition; some of his boyish verses were printed in the newspapers, and "The Embargo," a bitter satire directed against Jefferson's administration, was published in Boston and ran through a second edition.

Bryant left Williams after two terms, intending to enter the junior class at Yale. Alas! his father had no money, and the boy went sorrowfully back to the farm. It was at this time, when he grieved in secret over the failure of his college plans, that he wrote "Thanatopsis," which takes an added luster from the fact that it was written by a youth of seventeen. Then followed a long period of law studies, and of practice as a country lawyer at Great Barrington. That he disliked this work is evident from his letters and from the closing lines of "Green River"; but there was no chance to earn one's bread by poetry in those days, and Bryant held faithfully to the law until he had mastered it, still following the Puritan ideal of duty. Meanwhile his reputation as a poet was established by the publication of his early poems in the North American Review . Review , assured the other editors that they had been imposed upon; that there was \"no one on this side of the Atlantic capable of writing such verses.\" The remark is suggestive of the state of poetry in America at that time.") ?> In 1821 appeared his first modest little volume called Poems . The date marks the definite appearance of national poetry in America.

Three years later, in 1824, Bryant abandoned the law and followed his heart into the world of letters. He moved to New York, which was then becoming famous as a literary center, and became an editor of the New York Review . Magazines led a will-o'-the-wisp kind of life in those days, and after a few sparkles generally went out in darkness. The Review  failed, and Bryant, the lover of solitude and poetry, was glad to find work with the Evening Post , where he was plunged into the turmoil of news and politics. In three years, such was his ability, he was editor-in-chief of this newspaper, and held the position for more than half a century.

The rest of Bryant's life belongs to journalism rather than to literature, and we note only a few significant characteristics. At that time our newspapers were generally devoted to party politics, but Bryant determined to make his work national and to speak the truth fearlessly, without regard to party or prejudice. In consequence, many regard him as the first of our great editors and the father of modern journalism. Naturally his poetry suffered from his absorption in temporary affairs; though he published a slender volume of verse every few years, he made little or no improvement on his earliest work. His business prospered greatly; he traveled much at home and abroad; he was a recognized literary leader, and was called upon to make an address at many a public function. Letters of a Traveller  (1850) and Letters from the East  (1869) are quite neglected.") ?> His home life during all these years of prosperity was beautifully serene and happy. He kept his scholarly interests to the end, and his last important achievement was the translation of the Iliad  and the Odyssey  into blank verse. This translation, a notable work in itself, is especially remarkable in view of the fact that it represents six years' labor on the part of a man already past his threescore years and ten.

Looking back on his long, quiet life, the first work of the historian is to account, not for his poetry or journalism, but for the place which he holds in our national literature,—a place much higher than the quality of his poetry would seem to warrant. His position was well indicated by Cooper, who said, "The rest of us"—meaning himself, Irving, Poe, and the Knickerbocker School—"may be mentioned now and then, but Bryant is the real American author." In New York especially he towered above the minor poets of his age; and throughout the country he was, until the triumph of Longfellow, generally regarded as the first of our national singers. The glamour of worldly success was about him, as it was about Franklin, and this made men more ready to applaud his poetic talent. He had won fame and fortune as the most successful journalist of his day; he was recognized not simply as poet and scholar, but as a successful business man, the first citizen of a great city and a leader in national affairs. In this last respect he completely overshadowed Irving and Poe, who took little or no interest in public matters. Moreover, his life was noble, in all respects worthy of his place and art. Whittier and Emerson both paid generous tribute to his greatness of soul, and Lincoln, after his memorable visit to New York in 1855, declared that "it was worth the journey East to see such a man."

Sentiment also played a leading part in Bryant's honors. His life began in the days of Washington, and he lived to celebrate the one-hundredth birthday of the nation in 1876. Men saw in him a living bridge which joined the old to the new; a reminder, in the days of Calhoun and Webster, of the old struggle between Jefferson and Hamilton; a literary leader whose work began with the attempts of the Hartford Wits to establish a national literature, and who lived to give a generous welcome to Longfellow and Lanier, who were greater poets than himself. To the solid achievement of the present, therefore, was added a romantic glamour from the past, and America, as the criticism of the period clearly shows, could find nothing too good in the way of praise to offer to her noble old pioneer who had outlived his great contemporaries.

On all these accounts—his talent, his poetry, his worldly success, his leadership in public affairs, his sterling character, his association with the remote past—Bryant held a prominent position for more than fifty years. North and South, East and West, Canada, Cuba and Mexico as well as the United States,—all honored him as the New World's poet. Later singers undoubtedly produced better work; probably no other ever won quite so commanding a place in American letters as Bryant occupied in the middle of the nineteenth century.

As it is easy to misunderstand Bryant or to misjudge the value of his verse, we venture at the outset to call attention to three general considerations:

First, though he wrote for seventy-odd years, his collected poems, aside from his translation of Homer, fill only one volume; and of these poems all that are permanent might easily be printed on fifty pages. We have our own opinion that, as Brooke said of Coleridge, these few pages should be bound in gold; but if we compare our aged poet with Keats or Shelley, who died under thirty, we must admit frankly that both in quantity and quality he falls below the standard of the English masters.

Second, in reading Bryant one is conscious after a time of a certain monotony, which is due to the fact that our poet holds always to the same level. He never touches either the heights or the deeps of human life. He produces no epic, no comedies or tragedies, no passionate outcry, no glorious romance. He has a few simple themes, which he treats with such classic simplicity that we are apt to overlook his restrained emotion, just as the careless reader never feels the fire that lurks in the calm, Puritan verse of George Herbert. To many readers, indeed, who know Bryant only as the author of the melancholy "Thanatopsis," he seems cold and didactic; but to the few, who have stood alone among the hills or under the stars, Bryant is a true poet, second only to Wordsworth in his ability to express man's thought and feeling in presence of the mighty life of nature.

Third, Bryant's work, aside from its intrinsic merits, is remarkable for this,—that it definitely establishes a standard of American verse. In his first boyish attempts Bryant was plainly a provincial, copying English models as all other American poets had done before him; but when he abandoned these models to follow his own spirit he became the founder of a new national poetry. Before 1821, the year of his first volume, our poets generally thought that they must write like Pope, or some other English master, to win success; after that date, encouraged by Bryant's example, they dared to be themselves. His place in our poetry, therefore, is comparable to that of Jefferson in the history of democracy. Though he established no school and had no follower, all our modern poets are his debtors. Indeed, in view of his work, his contemporaries were probably justified in calling him "the father of American poetry."

Of the first thirty poems in our edition of Bryant, it happens that twelve deal with death in some form, and twelve with nature,—a chance arrangement, we might think, until we examine the book and find that four fifths of the poems are devoted to these two subjects. One can explain the nature poems on the ground that a man's pen, like his face, generally reflects what he loves best; but the thoughtful reader will surely ask, Why should a young poet be interested in death, or a young man winning his fame and fortune be forever thinking of the grave? The answer leads us at once to the secret of Bryant's work, and to the general literary influences which surrounded the beginning of our national poetry.

We are to remember, first of all, that though Bryant became a liberal in matters of theology, he never outgrew his Puritan training. We may remember also that the Puritan took no shortsighted view of life, as bounded by earth's horizon; he worked in time for eternity, and settled the problems of this world by principles that should make him feel at home in heaven. The two greatest Puritan books are Paradise Lost  and Pilgrim's Progress ; and both are more deeply concerned with the future than with the present life. Our poet, as the result of his early training, shared the abiding Puritan interest in the hereafter, and always looked upon death, the gateway between two worlds, with supreme interest. Moreover, he was a delicate child, and was threatened with consumption; he had seen a beloved sister taken away by the same dread disease,—that little sister whom he remembers with such tenderness in "The Death of the Flowers." At an age when other boys are joyously interested in life as an eternal springtime, he often faced the great question of immortality. Though he grew strong and lived to a hale old age, he never quite lost the bearing of one who had seen the majesty which death gives to the humblest dwelling, and who had accustomed himself to look without fear or trembling into the Reaper's face, as one who asks a question.

So far, Bryant's peculiar interest seems to be personal, but we must reckon also with the poetry of his age, with the Garlands , Tokens  and other collections that appeared in America and England. All these reflect a deep interest in funereal subjects, an interest which chills or repels us now, but which then amounted almost to enthusiasm. Probably the best-known English poem in his day was Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard  (1750). Amid a thousand poems on the grave it retained its popularity for a full century. Next to the Elegy , we would place Young's The Complaint, or Night Thoughts  and Blair's The Grave ; terribly gloomy poems they seem to the modern reader, but they were widely read and quoted on both sides of the Atlantic during this entire period. Bryant's poems on death and the grave are, therefore, like those of Poe, largely a reflection of the literary taste or fashion which influenced English and American poets from the middle of the seventeenth to the middle of the eighteenth century. If we read, for instance, that part of Blair's Grave  beginning:

we shall find an interesting parallel to the following passage from "Thanatopsis":

waste,—", "") ?>

Footnote: Probably both Bryant and Blair borrowed this conception from Thucydides, who declared that the earth is but a sepulcher of famous men. The influence of Homer in "Thanatopsis" is shown in such sounding expressions as "the all-beholding sun." In the first stanza, in the "communion" with nature, her "healing sympathy," etc. some critics detect the influence of Wordsworth.

This "Thanatopsis"(A View of Death) is generally placed at the head of Bryant's works,—unfortunately, we think, for it is less imaginative than other poems of his on the same subject. If we dared criticize this old favorite, we would confess frankly that the hills and trout streams which we have loved since childhood have never once appeared to us as decorations on the universal tomb. Such a conception of nature seems to us hardly more poetic than that of Alaskan Indians, who say that the earth is a huge animal, vegetation is its fur, and men and animals are parasites on its back. Notwithstanding the majestic sweep and harmonious verse of "Thanatopsis," we find it very cold comfort. Bryant also found it so, as is evident from the two additions which he made to his original work: the opening stanza, giving a more cheerful view of nature, and the ending with its pleasant hope of dreams. One who begins with "Thanatopsis," therefore, should not end the subject with this pagan view of death, but should read also "The Return of Youth," with its golden promise, and especially "Tree-Burial," reflecting the sorrow and immortal hope of a mother's love.

The numerous nature poems of Bryant ally him with Thomson, Cowper, Wordsworth and other leaders of the romantic movement in English literature. The reader will soon understand Bryant's prevailing mood if he begin with "A Forest Hymn" and read in succession the "Winter Piece" (with its suggestion of Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey"), "A Rain Dream," "The Prairies," "The Yellow Violet," "To a Fringed Gentian," "Green River," "Autumn Woods," "Summer Wind" and "The Night Journey of a River." All these are rather somber, and for a pleasant contrast we add "The Gladness of Nature" and the rollicking "Robert of Lincoln." One who has any appreciation of nature will surely find his own mood somewhere reflected in these poems, though they are all more in sympathy with the stern and majestic than with the gladsome aspects of the outdoor world.

Many readers find more satisfaction in the lyrics poetry—so called because originally it was intended to be sung to the accompaniment of a lyre—now refers to verse which expresses the poet's own mood or feeling. It is contrasted with epic, dramatic, and descriptive poetry, which are concerned with external events or persons. A lyric is a short poem, reflecting some single mood or feeling of the poet himself. Bryant rarely writes a true lyric, but generally includes more or less description of external things, and adds a moral lesson.") ?> of Bryant than in his poems of death or nature. Prominent among these lyrics are "The Evening Wind," "June," "Death of the Flowers" and "Song of Marion's Men." To the student who has read all the above poems, and found their range somewhat narrow, we suggest also, by way of variety, a few unclassified poems such as "The Poet," "Antiquity of Freedom," "O Mother of a Mighty Race" and "The Planting of the Apple Tree." Strangely enough, this stern singer attempted two long journeys into Fairyland; but his mind was too Puritanic to find itself at ease in Oberon's country, and we are loth to recommend "Sella" and "The Little People of the Snow" except to the most inquisitive readers.

Last but not least on our list comes "To a Waterfowl," the most artistic of all Bryant's works. In this little poem one may find three things: a single strong impression, a question such as the human heart instinctively asks, and the profound answer, all reflected without an unnecessary word, with an attention to form and melody rarely equaled, and then only by a master of poetry. That the reader may better appreciate this gem we venture to give its history.

Bryant had just finished his law studies (1815) and was journeying on foot through a sparsely settled country, seeking a village without a lawyer wherein he might begin his work among men. He was unknown and poor; his dearest plans had failed; he was doubtful of himself, of his health, of the profession he had chosen, of the big world itself, which he faced there alone in the sad twilight. Suddenly, across the afterglow of sunset, a solitary wild duck passed swiftly and was gone. Many of us have noted that sunset flight of the black mallard—the pulsating wings, the arrowy line drawn for an instant against the golden splendor, the tiny speck of life swallowed up in the immensity of the dusk—and we understand perfectly the question that rose unbidden from this man's lonely heart:

Line by line he draws the picture, as he sees it there on the rugged hillside, till it is all clear and sharp as an etching; then, as an artist gives the ultimate personal touch by signing the canvas he has painted, Bryant writes himself down in the last stanza:

Here, in a few exquisite lines, we have not simply the picture of a wild duck against the twilight, but an intensely human experience; and the experience ends with a word of faith so simple and sincere that, after the lapse of a century, thousands of human hearts are still uplifted by it. Matthew Arnold, who was a very cold critic, grew almost enthusiastic over "To a Waterfowl"; and Hartley Coleridge, another English poet and critic, praised it extravagantly as "the best short poem in the English language."

There are two achievements of Bryant which deserve special attention: he is our first poet of nature, and the first to embody in his work the national spirit. As Emerson said of him, "He is our native, sincere, original, patriotic poet. . . .  He is original because he is sincere,—a true painter of the face of the country and of the sentiments of his own people." This condensed criticism suggests an analysis of Bryant as the poet of nature and the nation.

In addition to the songs of birds there are many harmonies, tones and overtones in nature, though few men be silent and attentive enough to hear them. The tinkle of a brook, the rush of a torrent or a tempest, the murmur of waves, the hum of innumerable insects, the soft breathing of the pines, the rustling of the aspens, the faint vibration of certain forest trees grown dry and resonant as violins,—all these sounds are in the air incessantly, producing a universal melody and music,

Musicians declare that all these musical sounds are pitched upon and harmonize with one deep undertone, which is a kind of keynote to all nature. Though many of our poets have been conscious of this mighty symphony, only two of them, Bryant and Lanier, have tried deliberately to reflect it in verse. By the music of his lines Lanier tries to suggest, and often does suggest to a remarkable degree, the subtle, changing harmonies which his sensitive musical soul had detected. Bryant hears nothing of the joyous melody which fascinated the Southern poet, but only the keynote, the deep undertone as of a church organ, which rolls through his "Forest Hymn" like a summons to praise and prayer.

For Bryant was, we repeat, in a superlative way the high priest of Nature. Perhaps if we call him the druid of nature, we shall better express our thought. His religion was not theological but instinctive. There is something elemental in his verse, which reflects the feeling of the primitive man in presence of the wilderness or the sounding sea. Unlike Blake, who found elves, fairies and blithe spirits revealing themselves in flowers and stars, Bryant saw in Nature a manifestation of the one living God. Nature's grandeur, her immensity, her sublimity appealed to him profoundly. In her presence he bowed down his soul as one who worships. The deep organ tone of his blank verse is characteristic of his own attitude of devotion.

Though he wrote mostly of the rugged Northern landscape, and though he is called by some critics "the New England poet," a broad nationality which knows no sectionalism and no prejudice is perhaps the chief quality of Bryant's poetry. This is shown, first, in the perfect naturalness of his impressions, his "Hymn" sounding equally well in the spruce forests of Maine or under the mighty redwoods of California; and second, in a certain moral and didactic tendency which we call "Puritanic" and which has influenced the national spirit. If we were to sum up the Puritan influence, we should say that it reveals itself in four ways: in an insistence on facts, in a devotion to high moral and spiritual ideals, in a strong sense of responsibility which made the Puritan everywhere a teacher, and in the fundamental belief in God and man which made him a theologian and a democrat. In Bryant's verse all these qualities are manifest. He takes no liberties with the facts of nature, but is the most accurate and reliable of our poets; he never wavers from a high moral ideal, and he generally adds to his poems some lesson of faith or duty, of freedom or patriotism. In all this Bryant shows himself the true Puritan; and because the Puritan quality has entered deep into American life, he is the poet of the whole nation.

As for Bryant's style, it is as simple and as forceful as the man himself. Occasionally, as in "June," he tries an elaborate versification, but for the most part he confines himself to the four-line stanza and to blank verse. Though a classical scholar, he uses Anglo-Saxon words whenever possible,—strong, homely words, suggestive of dear old things like poker and tongs, which our fathers found old and our children find delightfully new. Two other qualities of his style should be mentioned: its harmony with the subject, and its transparency. It reveals not only Bryant's thought but the nature and quality of his mind,—a little austere, perhaps, but fundamentally noble and sincere. As a contemporary wrote of him, "It is the glory of this man that his character outshone his great talent and his large fame."

Our novelist was born (1789) in Burlington, New Jersey, but his life is largely associated with central New York. Here his father settled in 1790, building his manor house by Otsego Lake, and founding the village which is still called Cooperstown. In this frontier settlement with its noble surroundings, The Pioneers , chap. xxi. In the character of Judge Templeton the novelist has portrayed some characteristics of his own father.") ?> where all the works of man seemed like ugly scars on the face of nature, Cooper passed his childhood. Here he met his two romantic heroes, the buckskin-clad trapper and the silent-footed Indian, trailing in from the wilderness to trade furs for powder. A rude backwoods school held him for a time; then he was sent to Albany to study with a minister. At thirteen he entered Yale College, where he thought so much of play and so little of study that he was presently expelled for some youthful frolic. Lionel Lincoln  he says scornfully that what little he learned in college had been long since forgotten.") ?>

The practical side of Cooper's education began when he shipped aboard a merchantman as a preparation for the American navy, which he soon entered as midshipman. Of his short naval service, we know very little. He was sent to help build a war-ship on Lake Ontario, where he picked up the knowledge and "local color" which appear in The Pathfinder ; and he was for a time in command of a gunboat on Lake Champlain, where he learned of the old Indian war-trail to Canada, which is followed in The Last of the Mohicans .

At twenty-one, Cooper married and resigned from the navy, just before our second war with England. His wife was the daughter of a Loyalist, and it is due partly to her influence that Cooper is so unusually considerate to the Tories in his Revolutionary stories. For the next ten years he was a farmer in the Hudson valley, and not till he was thirty-one years old did he show any indication of his literary power. His first book, Precaution&thinsp —a tedious, artificial romance of English society, of which Cooper knew little or nothing—was of no consequence, but the fact of having written it proved a tonic to his imagination. Led by his wife, he resolved to write an American story, and discovered that a novelist does best when he "paints the scene from his own door." He located his story in Westchester County, where he was then living and where a thousand memories of the Revolution still lingered, and he chose an obscure American spy of that region for his hero. The Waverley novels had prepared the public for the historical romance, and when The Spy  appeared (1821) it was instantly successful. The next year it was published and praised in England, and it was speedily translated into several European languages.

This unexpected success determined Cooper's career as a literary man. In his second noteworthy novel, The Pioneers  (1823), he abandoned the literary treasures of the Revolution to write the romance of the wilderness. Here was something entirely new in fiction; not even Scott had produced anything like it; and the reading world gave it enthusiastic welcome.

Not content with conquering in two new regions, Cooper opened yet another realm to fiction. He had by this time moved to New York City, where he founded a famous club, the "Bread and Cheese Lunch," which included the poets Bryant and Halleck, Verplanck the editor of Shakespeare, Morse the inventor, and other celebrities of the period. One day some members of this club were discussing the unknown author of the Waverley novels. The Pirate  had just appeared, and one critic asserted that Scott could not possibly be the author of such a work, which only a sailor could have written. Cooper declared, on the contrary, that The Pirate  was the work of a landsman; and to convince the critic he resolved to write a sea tale as it should be done. The result was The Pilot  (1823–1824), our first modern romance of the sea.

A sad change began in Cooper's life (1826), when he packed his penates in a trunk and sailed away to Europe. He was gone seven years, at a time when America was changing with bewildering rapidity, and the effect was disastrous. Being naturally a conservative, he dropped easily into the indolent ways of the Old World, grew out of sympathy with the restlessness of his native land, and began that long series of criticisms which ended in general ill temper and misunderstanding.

Wherever Cooper went, the fame of his Spy  and Pioneers  had preceded him, and he received the honor which European nations offer freely to men of letters. Unfortunately he was drawn into controversy, at first unwillingly, when he loyally defended Lafayette in a political dispute, and then eagerly when he denounced certain false notions of America that were and still are prevalent in Europe. A prejudice has more lives than a cat, and Cooper was soon fighting the same old falsehoods that Franklin had slain in vain. His Notions of Americans picked up by a Travelling Bachelor  (1828) offended Europe and America alike, and the author became instantly a storm center of newspaper controversy.

Aside from the controversial works of this period, Cooper wrote The Prairie , The Red Rover , The Wept of Wish-ton-Wish  and The Water Witch . The first two novels are among his best, and we never think of them as belonging to his European period. More significant are The Bravo , The Heidenmauer  and The Headsman , which were occasioned by the expulsion of the Bourbons from France and by the Polish struggle for independence.

With his return home, in 1833, began another long period of controversy, occasioned partly by Cooper's attempts to reform his countrymen Letter to his Countrymen  (1834), The Monikins  (1835) and especially Home as Found  (1857).") ?> and partly by his History of the Navy  (1839). The latter was a painstaking work, but because it spoke the truth frankly it offended partisans on both sides of an acrid dispute which was then waging over the rival commanders Perry and Elliott at the Battle of Lake Erie. We would ignore this controversy were it not for the fact that it marks a forward step in the history of newspaper criticism. On one side was Cooper, with too little charity and humor, perhaps, but sincere and truth-loving; on the other was the public press, with its fickleness and love of sensation. Papers that never heard of Cooper, save as a writer of stories, rushed to take sides, read a word hastily, found that he had criticized America and the Whig party, and straightway began reviling him and all his works.

Perhaps it would have been better if Cooper had ignored such attacks; certainly he injured himself and stopped the sale of his books; but there are authors and authors, and a fighter cannot tarry to count his profits when the cry is raised, "The Philistines be upon thee!" To every attack he responded, first by presenting the facts and demanding an apology, then by bringing libel suits. Alone he fought the entire Whig press of the country. The smaller papers were first disposed of, and when the Albany Journal  and the New York Tribune  were fined and silenced, Cooper's victory was complete. It is generally alleged that he aimed to vindicate himself, but that is only half the truth. The principle he laid down was that personalities form no part of legitimate criticism, and in winning his case he conferred unmixed blessing upon others. The more considerate tone of present-day criticism is due largely to Cooper's heroic struggle. The press, no less than the author or critic, owes a debt of gratitude to the man who fought for the sacredness of private character in all public discussion.

For the rest of his life our author returned to the peace of the old home at Cooperstown. The echoes of controversy died away; a new generation read the Leatherstocking tales with renewed delight, and Cooper regained something of his lost popularity. All the while love, like a cheerful fire, brightened his home; his old friends remained loyal; his own character, always rugged and true, grew more gentle and charitable as age brought its sad wisdom. But he never became reconciled to the public which had treated him so harshly, and one of his last commands was that his letters be kept secret and that no one should be authorized to write his biography.

A man who plans his first vacation in the woods generally asks two questions: What must I take for necessity, and what useless baggage of civilization may I leave behind for convenience? Facing an outing among Cooper's sixty-seven volumes, one may well repeat the same questions, since the greater part of his work belongs in the literary attic, as any librarian will tell you.

We first divide the works into two almost equal parts, fiction on one side, miscellaneous subjects on the other. Of the latter, the History of the Navy  (1839) and Lives of Distinguished Naval Officers  (1846) are still readable. The rest of his miscellanies are headed toward oblivion, and may well be left to follow their own ways.

Of the thirty-two books of fiction, we again make equal division and cast the half aside. There remain sixteen romances, which fall naturally into groups suggested by the author's first three notable works, The Spy , The Pioneers  and The Pilot . The first group consists of historical romances, the second of the inimitable Leatherstocking tales, and the third of romances of the sea.

As many of these stories appeared while Scott occupied the center of the literary stage, it was inevitable that the two writers should be compared. Almost from the beginning our novelist was called "The American Scott," but the implied criticism seems to us unwarranted. Cooper was the kind of man to follow his own compass and blaze his own trail, and in his forest and sea tales especially he was a leader, not a follower. In his historical novels he aimed at a romantic and perhaps exaggerated portrayal of the heroism of his own country in times past; and in this he was undoubtedly influenced by Scott, who had done the same for Scotland and England; but as the latter novelist's range was wider, he described a larger number of enduring characters and appealed to a more universal interest than was possible to his American contemporary. Except in their aims, therefore, there can hardly be any fair comparison of the two writers.

In one important respect, which is generally overlooked, Cooper seems to have depended on earlier novelists, and his work suffers in consequence. We refer to the majority of his "females" as he calls them,—weak, garrulous, sentimental creatures, unlike any known types of American women, but bearing a strong resemblance to the heroines met in nearly all romances of "sensibility." Perhaps the most noticeable point of resemblance between Scott and Cooper is that both alike were too much influenced by the prevailing literary fashion of making a heroine of fiction as unlike the natural woman as possible. Otherwise our novelist was a vigorous and original genius who told a tale in his own way, without much regard to any other writer.

The publication of The Spy  (1821) was an important event in our literary history. Up to that time America had been, in the matter of fiction especially, almost slavishly dependent on England in literary matters. Our authors often affected foreign ways and names; our critics echoed the opinions they had read in English magazines. The coming of The Spy  was like the ringing of another Liberty bell. Our own critics, roused to independent enthusiasm, called it the foundation of American romance; while English reviewers began to speak of Cooper, of whom they had never before heard, as "the distinguished American novelist." The Sketch Book  had just made Irving known in England, but The Spy  passed the bounds of language as well as of nationality. It repeated its success in many of the countries of Europe and South America, and is still probably more widely known than any other American work of fiction with the exception of Uncle Tom's Cabin .

At first reading The Spy  seems hardly worthy of such honor. It has glaring faults; its crude style and stilted dialogue suffer by comparison with the work of our later novelists; but the chief thing to remember is this: that our first contribution to international fiction stands the hard test of time; that it is still widely known and read, while hundreds of better-written novels are forgotten. And this suggests that The Spy  owes its place to real power, not to chance or the passing humor of the age which first welcomed it.

The reasons for its enduring interest are threefold. It is, first of all, a good story of vigorous action and undaunted personal courage. With the young, at least, such a story can never grow old. It throws the glamour of romance over the men and women of the Revolution, standing in this respect almost alone; The Partisan  (1835) to Mitchell's Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker  (1897). None of these, with the possible exception of Kennedy's Horse-Shoe Robinson , seems destined to a permanent place in literature.") ?> and it creates one original character, Harvey Birch, whose patriotism appeals powerfully to men of every nation. "When war comes men stand by their chief" says the old Saxon proverb. It is easy to do that, to serve chief or country knowing that the service will be known and honored; but here is a patriot who serves without hope or possibility of reward. In order to help Washington he becomes known as a spy for the British army. The Spy  reflects the civil discord of Patriots and Tories, which was especially bitter in Westchester County, where the scene is laid (see p. 90).") ?> He is hated by the Patriots; a price is set upon his head; several times he barely escapes death at the hands of the soldiers whom he is secretly serving. His courage is proved to the uttermost when he destroys the paper, given him by Washington, which would make known his loyalty to the very men who were preparing to hang him. The last battle is fought and won; America is free; the nation heaps rewards and honors upon its heroes; but Harvey Birch goes on his lonely way, branded and despised as a traitor. And the last scene, where the old man haunts the battlefields of a later war, still hiding his mighty secret, reminds us again that the real heroes of every conflict are mostly unknown:

2 From Lowell, "All Saints." footnote

There is wide difference of opinion concerning the relative merits of Cooper's other historical romances, and in selecting a few of them we are guided largely by a personal preference. First in historical order, though not in interest, comes Mercedes of Castile , a story of the discovery of America. This still interests many readers by its ocean pictures and by its portrayal, in a romantic way, of the character of Columbus.

The Wept of Wish-ton-Wish , a narrative of Colonial life in Connecticut, attracts and puzzles us by its musical title. "Wish-ton-Wish" (an Indian term for the whippoorwill) is the name given to the home of Mark Heathcote, an old Quaker whom Cooper calls "the venerable religionist." The "Wept" (that is, the bewept, the one mourned for) refers to a little girl who is stolen by the savages, and who returns later as the bride of an Indian chief. This narrative shows astonishing creative vigor. It has adventure enough for a dozen novels; it introduces one romantic figure, the old regicide, hiding in the wilderness from the wrath of King Charles; and it has many dramatic situations, notably that in which a mother tries to make herself known to her own child, who has forgotten her people and even her native language. With all these possibilities the story is ruined by careless observation, artificial talk, and especially by the characters, which have scarcely more naturalness than the wooden animals of a Noah's ark. Nevertheless the book is worth reading, if only to show how Cooper could spoil an excellent story by neglecting the essential details.

In Lionel Lincoln  our novelist returned to the Revolution, and planned a series of romances to be called "Legends of the Thirteen Republics," of which this should serve as an introduction. He worked hard on this book, reading endless documents in order to make his narrative true to the facts; but unfortunately he did nothing to remove his own prejudice against New England, and this prejudice is largely responsible for a very dull story. The most vivid parts of the book are the descriptions of the battles of Lexington and Bunker Hill; the latter, according to Bancroft, being the best account of the fight that has ever been written. In a different and better spirit is Satanstoe , (1840–1846) which culminated in Dorr's Rebellion and the Anti-rent War. Other novels of this series are The Chain Bearer  and The Redskins . The same Anti-rent War which inspired Satanstoe  produced also Ruth Hall's Downrenter's Son .") ?> a tale of Colonial life in New York. The book is marred by Cooper's political theories, and again he shows his prejudice by dragging in a villain from New England; but for the most part he sticks to his real work, which is to tell a tale. Satanstoe  has still power to interest many readers, partly by its adventures, partly by its vivid pictures of American life in the middle of the eighteenth century.

If the beginner must choose among these stories, we suggest The Last of the Mohicans , which presents Natty Bumppo, a favorite character in American fiction, in the most favorable light. As the five books constitute a single drama in five acts, they should all be read, if possible, in this natural order, which happens also to be alphabetical: The Deerslayer , The Last of the Mohicans , The Pathfinder , The Pioneers  and The Prairie . In our analysis we shall interrupt this natural order and begin with The Pioneers  (1823), which was the first to be written.

When Cooper wrote this book he probably had no idea of a series of romances; otherwise he would hardly have painted such a shabby picture of his heroes. He aimed simply to portray the life of a frontier village, with its restless characters that hovered like skirmishers in advance of American civilization. One of these characters was Natty Bumppo, an old woodsman with an inborn love of the wild; another was Chingachgook the Indian, a sad relic of the past, despised and neglected in a land that once shivered at the sound of his war whoop. Both these characters seemed strange yet familiar to American readers; strange, because they had never appeared in romantic literature; familiar, because their doubles were to be seen in almost every village. We have met such characters even in our own day. We remember how we watched and followed them at a distance; how we went tiptoe through the woods where they set their traps; how our wild instincts were stirred by the report of their old rifles, or by the smoke that rose from their camp fires. So we can understand why the young readers of that age, having detected a world of romance and adventure in these two old men, begged Cooper to tell them the whole story. Led by this widespread interest he rejuvenated Natty and Chingachgook, and made them the central figures of the Leatherstocking drama.

Unlike most of Cooper's works, The Pioneers  interests us by its scenes and characters rather than by its adventure. The story element is comparatively weak, but the backwood scenes are strongly realistic and the characters are, on the whole, the best that Cooper has drawn. He gathers together some thirty people—the squire, the foreigner, "the quality," the odds and ends of a frontier village—and, excepting only his inane heroines, they impress us, in contrast with the minor characters of his other romances, as being remarkably true to life. Cooper is so deficient in humor that his attempts at fun generally bore us; but in Ben Pump we have a rough suggestion of Sam Weller, and one scene especially, where Ben shares Natty's punishment by placing himself in the "bilboes," is worthy of a place in the Pickwick Papers&thinsp.

The Deerslayer  (1841) should be read first by those who intend to enjoy the whole drama of Leatherstocking. The action takes place on the shores and waters of Otsego, at a time when lake and forest are still Indian country. Here we meet Natty and his friend Chingachgook as young men on their first warpath. The main figures are well drawn,—even the two feminine characters, the beautiful Judith and the simple Hetty, are far above Cooper's average,—but the interest of the story lies almost entirely in its pioneer scenes and adventures.

In The Last of the Mohicans  (1826) we find the same two heroes in the vigor of manhood, and our interest in Chingachgook is heightened by the presence of his son Uncas, the last of the Mohican chiefs. The nobility of these two savages is emphasized by the treachery of their Huron enemies, and Cooper evidently intended to present here both sides of the Indian character. The scenes of the story follow the old Indian war trail to the St. Lawrence, and from beginning to end we are in the midst of stirring adventure. That Cooper knows little of Indians and less of woodcraft, that many of his incidents are impossible,—all this seems of small consequence. The lure of the trail is upon us; the excitement of moving incidents makes us forget probabilities; we hurry on to the end, and lay down the book with the criticism that it is one of the best adventure stories we have ever read.

Next in the series is The Pathfinder  (1840), which takes us through the wilderness to the Great Lakes. Cooper considered this the best of his novels; which is only another indication that authors, like mothers, have incomprehensible favorites among their children. Then comes The Pioneers , which we have already examined. At the end of this book the old hero turns his face westward, and we follow his last trail in The Prairie  (1827). Leatherstocking is now a mere relic of the past; his eye is too dim to sight his famous rifle; he no longer follows a savage enemy; and instead of his love of adventure we find the gentleness, the patience, the profound wisdom of old age. Contrasted with him are the restless squatters who disturb his solitude; and to keep up our interest in good Indians we have the young Pawnee chief, a reincarnation of the vanished Uncas. There is an abundance of action and adventure; over the scene broods the mystery of the illimitable prairies; and the old woodsman's last days among friendly Indians seem a fitting conclusion to the whole Leatherstocking drama,—which ends, as it began more than half a century earlier, on the outer verge of the American frontier.

In this romance Cooper treats us to a bit of psychology which almost startles us by its truth to life, by its contrast with his usual, unsatisfactory method of explaining human action. We refer to the rough-handed justice of old Ishmael and the terrible punishment of the criminal. That scene in which the old squatter returns at night to the place of judgment, his harsh nature subdued by the silent majesty of earth and heaven, is perhaps the strongest to be found in Cooper's sixty-odd volumes. Notwithstanding various inconsistencies in the portrayal, the figure of Ishmael stands out at the end, bold, vigorous, commanding, like the silhouette of a blasted pine against the sunset.

It was a daring venture in the early part of the last century, before Cooper and Herman Melville had begun to write the romance of the deep, to lay the scene of a story at sea. To the readers of that age it seemed incredible that any romantic interest could attach to a place that was associated in their minds with dangers or dizzy heads, with storm or wreck or loneliness unspeakable. In polite literature the ocean, except as one watched it safely from the shore, had been represented as the lifeless, maddening waste of "The Ancient Mariner"; in all churches it was coupled in hymns and litanies with perils and afflictions from which men prayed to be delivered; in the Apocalypse one who had a vision of a new heaven and a new earth had written the significant line, "And there was no more sea." That Cooper should overcome this general apprehension, making the ocean a place of romance rather than of fear, was in itself no small triumph. That he shared the general doubt of the success of his first sea venture appears from the fact that he "backed his anchor" by locating the half of his romance on solid ground, where his audience felt more at home. Fate, however, seems to have played with the author; the land incidents and the heroines which he inserted with the hope of interesting his readers only served to bore them, while his ships and seamen roused them to a new enthusiasm.

This first sea tale, The Pilot  (1823), is by many critics regarded as Cooper's best. The scene is laid off the English coast, which at a critical period in our Revolution was thrown into a state of terror by the daring raids of one man in a swift ship, who alternately played with and defied the whole British navy. Interest in The Pilot  is supposed to center in the mysterious Mr. Gray, who turns out to be the famous John Paul Jones in disguise. We confess, however, to finding him a foggy kind of character, utterly unlike our ideal of the gallant naval officer who first sent aloft the stars and stripes to float over a man-of-war, and who startled old England at her very gates as Coriolanus "fluttered the Volscians." Far more interesting are the common sailors, especially Long Tom Coffin, a splendid type of the Nantucket seaman, and the most original of Cooper's characters. Aside from this vigorous figure, our interest is held by a succession of vivid sea pictures, such as working the ship offshore against the pressure of a landward gale, and the stirring flight of the American frigate.

The Red Rover  is our own favorite among the sea tales. Wing and Wing , The Two Admirals , Afloat and Ashore  and The Water Witch .") ?> Indeed, if we were asked to recommend only one of Cooper's books, we should name this in preference even to the best of the Leatherstocking romances. The plot is an absorbing one, and the action keeps us continually on the sea. The hero is an original and refreshing kind of pirate, and the minor characters, if not quite natural, are better than we commonly find in Cooper's romances. Among them we are glad to find one real woman, disguised as a boy but very different from the gay Rosalind, from whom Cooper may have taken the suggestion for his character. To many readers, however, the greatest charm of The Red Rover  is found in its pictures of the sea, pictures so vividly, powerfully drawn that they fairly take us off-soundings; we lose grip on solid ground and seem to view the scenes from the deck of a reeling ship.

It is hardly too severe a criticism to say that, next to the vigor of Cooper's style, its most prominent quality is carelessness,—a confident, attractive kind of sangfroid, like that of the voyageur who steps into any canoe and takes up any kind of paddle, trusting his own strength and skill rather than his instruments to carry him to the end of his journey. His matter is chiefly romantic and adventurous. The adventures are such as delight healthy and vigorous young people, but they seldom appeal to mature readers who have accustomed themselves to the best work of English and American novelists.

Aside from his careless style, his tedious moralizing and his insipid "females," our chief criticism of Cooper is leveled at his inaccuracy, his lack of harmony with his own incidents and characters. We may overlook the fact that Leatherstocking talks at one moment like a book of etiquette and then slips into the backwoods dialect; but we can hardly forgive a novelist for making a master of Indian woodcraft do impossible feats at one point and flounder at the next like a tenderfoot on his first trail. The fact is that Cooper can give a splendid impression of sea and forest as a whole, but he is slovenly and inaccurate in details; and to analyze his work is to spoil our first good impression.

In The Last of the Mohicans , for instance, we see Indians trailing an enemy through an unbroken forest at midnight. Wonderful skill! But the depths of a primeval forest are black as the pit at night; one can hardly discern a moose there at arm's length, much less the print of a moccasin; and the keenest woodsman is at a loss until he learns to look up, not down, and shape his course by the black bulk of trees against the lighter sky. Again, Chingachgook draws a beaver skin over his head, goes into a beaver lodge, and looks out of the door while his enemies pass by. Rare cunning! But the beaver's lodge has no door or window; its only entrance is a muddy tunnel under water; there is no possible way for a man to get in without tearing the structure to pieces. In another chapter Natty Bumppo, in order to save Uncas from torture, disguises himself in the skin of a black bear, waddles into the Huron camp, and readily fools the keen-eyed warriors. Marvelous! But aside from the difficulty of fitting a man's long legs into the short stockings of a bear, we wonder what tailor-bird Natty found in the woods to sew him up in the skin, since safety pins were surely not among pioneer inventions.

Enough of Cooper's faults! They are many and easily seen, and the question arises, How does he find so many enthusiastic readers? The answer is, simply, that his virtues are great enough to outweigh his faults; we overlook the latter as we forget the peculiarities of a relative who leaves us a goodly legacy. With all his shortcomings, he claims a leading place among American romancers, and his claim rests upon four solid foundations: First, he has a tale to tell, a stirring tale which moves the dullest reader out of his lethargy, making him long to do brave deeds and play his part manfully in the world. Second, he adds the two realms of sea and forest to fiction, and creates three new types of characters which never lose their charm. These are the noble Indian in Chingachgook, the woodsman in Natty Bumppo, and the American sailor in Long Tom Coffin. Third, he has a vivid imagination; he invents new plots and adventures as easily as Longfellow makes rimes; he paints the changing panorama of ocean and forest with a power that knows no doubt and feels no weariness. Follow, for example, the flight of that ship through five long chapters of The Red Rover . From the moment she clears the harbor, a stately, beautiful vessel, until she rolls as a helpless tub on the billows, while the pirate craft sweeps by like a storm-driven cloud, we have a series of descriptions of sea and storm which for sustained vigor have hardly a parallel in literature. Reading such scenes we appreciate Balzac's criticism: "If Cooper had succeeded in the painting of character to the same extent that he did in the painting of the phenomena of nature, he would have uttered the last word of our art."

Finally, all these romances have, like those of Scott, a bracing, healthful atmosphere. In the sixteen books upon which his fame rests, Cooper leaves the "problem" novel to others; he writes in a hearty, wholesome way for young people who have no problems, and for men and women who would fain forget them. Here are no false situations, no forbidden topics, no shadows of impurity. When with Cooper, we travel the open spaces, warmed with the sunshine, swept clean by the winds of God. Here are characters with the tang of brine and wood smoke in them; stories of love, brave fighting and loyal friendships, which boys and men like to read because they deal in honest human nature. Since heroism and human nature are of abiding interest, Cooper's romances bid fair to justify Bryant's prediction, that they will last as long as the English language. The Spy  and the Leatherstocking tales, are still widely read in practically every country of Europe and South America, as well as in his own country. As an indication of the widespread interest in his earlier romances we quote from S. F. B. Morse, the inventor of the telegraph, who writes (1833) as follows: \"In every city of Europe that I visited the works of Cooper were conspicuously placed in the windows of every bookshop. They are published, as soon as he produces them, in thirty-four different places in Europe. They have been seen by American travellers in the languages of Turkey and Persia, in Egypt, at Jerusalem, at Ispahan.\"") ?>

One who plants a garden must have some preference for flowers or fruit and a willingness to work out his purpose; else will the weeds, which require no cultivation, crowd in riotously to fill all vacant places. Even so, one who rears a child should from the beginning take some thought and do some faithful work in the direction of his moral education. This homily is founded on the text of Poe's life. Its tragedy was set in motion, its catastrophe made inevitable, long before Poe was old enough to know anything about such matters.

His father—a descendant of patriotic ancestors in Maryland—had abandoned the study of law to become an actor. He married an English actress, and while the two were playing an engagement in Boston their son Edgar was born, in 1809. The poor mother, on whose shoulders the burden of family support lay heavily, seems to have fought a hard and losing battle. Both parents died destitute in Richmond; their children were adopted by different families, and Edgar found a home in the house of John Allan, a tobacco merchant. The next scene, foreshadowing the tragedy, shows a bright, attractive child standing on a chair, a glass of wine in his hand, offering a toast or a pretty speech to a thoughtless dinner company.

The boy's education began in a private school. He went abroad with his foster parents, and for five years was a pupil in the Manor House School at Stoke Newington, near London. Then followed several years with private tutors in Richmond, and at seventeen he entered the University of Virginia.

A study of Poe during these early years leaves certain impressions, which grow upon us as we read his works. At home he was treated indulgently, and in the Virginia society of those days he acquired a polish, a neatness of appearance, a deference towards women, in a word, the indelible stamp of a gentleman; but neither at home nor in society did he receive the sympathy which his soul craved, and he was always forming romantic attachments to women older than himself. Here, for instance, is his boyish love for the mother of one of his schoolmates, and his frantic despair at her untimely death. She was the first of many Helens to whom he went for sympathy, and who reappear vaguely in his tales and poems.

A second impression is that of Poe's aloofness. In school he made many acquaintances but no real friends; for friendship requires giving, the giving of one's self, and Poe was too self-centered to give himself unreservedly to anybody. The morbid unreality of his work, which critics explain as a manifestation of his strange genius, seems to us largely the result of his self-absorption, which kept him from knowing his fellow men. Like Manfred, he walked through the world without ever seeing humanity:

footnoteFrom Byron, Manfred, II, 2.

Poe's college life was short and unsatisfactory. He made a brilliant record in some studies, but he drank, gambled and ran deep into debt. At the end of the first year Mr. Allan took him from the university and set him to work in the tobacco business. He stayed at his desk only a few months before he broke with his foster father and wandered out into the world.

In Boston he signalized his new freedom by publishing a handful of poems; Tamerlane and other Poems, by a Bostonian . Boston, 1827.") ?> then, knowing no other way of earning a living, he enlisted in the army and served honorably for two years. At the death of Mrs. Allan he became reconciled to his foster father, who secured his appointment as a cadet to West Point. Here he made an excellent beginning, but presently he neglected his duties, was dismissed from the Military Academy, and drifted into the world again. Why he left an honorable career to starve on hack work has never been explained. We have only his own account of the matter, and that is untrustworthy.

To the next few years belong the popular accounts of his wanderings abroad and of his fighting with the Greeks, like Byron,—a myth for which Poe himself is largely responsible. The facts are that he went to Baltimore and supported himself by writing for the newspapers, but not until he had tried and failed to secure a political appointment. His literary career may be dated from 1833, when his "Manuscript Found in a Bottle" won him a money prize Baltimore Saturday Visitor for the best story and the best poem. Poe easily won the first, and would have won the second by his fine poem \"The Coliseum,\" had the conditions allowed a writer to win both prizes. Kennedy was one of the judges (see p. 248).") ?> and the friendship of John P. Kennedy, who presently found a place for Poe on the staff of the Southern Literary Messenger .

Poe now settled in Richmond, and a splendid career opened before him. While in Baltimore he had lived with his aunt, Mrs. Clemm, and her daughter Virginia, of whom he wrote long afterward:

This cousin was but a child in her fourteenth year when Poe married her, in 1833. Her mother came with her to the new home in Richmond, and in the lean years that followed, these two women were "as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land." But the sky was blue and serene in those first days, the happiest that Poe ever knew. He had a home where love was; his friends appreciated his ability; the Messenger  published his work and gave prominence to the criticisms that soon made him known in the literary world. Everything pointed to fame and fortune, when suddenly he left or was dismissed from the magazine and became a wanderer once more.

Again we have conflicting accounts of the calamity. We do not know the facts; we merely infer that a touchy humor, an ambition to run a magazine of his own, the curse of drink, Evening Mirror , records of Poe (1844) that he was \"a quiet, patient, industrious, and most gentlemanly person, commanding the utmost respect and good feeling by his unfailing deportment and polish.\"") ?> —all these entered into it. He moved to New York, to Philadelphia, then back to New York, repeating in each new abode the old story of failure. He joined the staffs of various magazines and newspapers, only to lose or resign his place just as success hovered over his head. He revised and republished his little volume of poems; he sold and resold his tales and criticisms for a pittance; when Cooper or Irving made a popular "hit" he would try a book in the same vein; Journal of Julius Rodman  appeared (1838) the year after Irving's Captain Bonneville . There are several other instances of his \"following the market.\"") ?> and, like Goldsmith, he wrote textbooks on subjects of which he had only a smattering of knowledge. We mention these shifts and makeshifts simply to suggest that Poe's life was a struggle for daily bread,—a weary, anxious, heartbreaking struggle, unrelieved by comforts, made harder by lack of plain necessities. When his industry failed of reward Mrs. Clemm kept boarders. Only for that noble woman, genius must have starved and love gone cold. Meanwhile Virginia, the beautiful child wife, grew pale and paler before their troubled eyes.

We pass rapidly over the remaining years, as one reads a tragedy which has reached its climax and hastens on to the catastrophe. In 1844 he went with Virginia to New York, and his first letter to Mrs. Clemm is profoundly suggestive. He speaks of the journey; of leaving "Sis" in the boat, because it was raining and her lungs were weak; of his refusal to hire a cab because the driver, seeing his necessity, demanded a dollar for a ten-cent job; of buying an umbrella, and of the boarding house they found in Greenwich Street. With the zest of a boy he goes on to describe the supper, its "great dish of elegant ham," its slices of other good things "piled up like a mountain." It is said that geniuses are great eaters; but here is a genius who is hungry, who has worked and despaired, who eats and is hopeful, and who rejoices because he can jingle a few coins in his pocket which may suffice till he find work again. It is all simple, natural, human. Unlike his elaborate tales, which fly off into the region of shadows, this poor letter Edgar Allan Poe , p. 201.") ?> touches the heart of humanity.

A new home was established in a little cottage in Fordham (now the Bronx) where Poe worked hard on a proposed history of American literature. This curious work, which began with the present, was never finished; a part of it appeared serially in Godey's Lady's Book  in 1846, and was published later as The Literati  (1850). It consisted largely of critical or personal estimates of writers who were then living; its chief effect was to make a number of petty enemies and raise a storm of hostile criticism that followed Poe to his death, and afterwards. Meanwhile Virginia grew very ill. There were no comforts in the house; the desperate condition of the family may be judged from the fact that some friend, with more zeal than discretion, made an appeal in the newspapers for charity. It was but a last drop added to a bitter cup, and Poe drank it to the dregs. Two letters of this period deserve attention for the light they throw on the author's home life. The first is from Poe to his wife:

"My Dear Heart—My Dear Virginia—Our mother will explain to you why I stay away from you this night. I trust the interview I am promised will result in some substantial good for me—for your sake and hers. Keep up your heart in all hopefulness, and trust yet a little longer. On my last great disappointment I should have lost my courage but for you—my little darling wife. You are my greatest and only stimulus now, to battle with this uncongenial, unsatisfactory and ungrateful life.

"I shall be with you to-morrow P.M., and be assured until I see you I will keep in loving remembrance your last words and your fervent prayer.

"Sleep well and may God grant you a peaceful summer with your devoted
"EDGAR."

The second is from a friend who visited the family in the bleak winter season:

" . . . There was no clothing on the bed; which was only straw, but a snow-white counterpane and sheets. The weather was cold, and the sick lady had the dreadful chills that accompany the hectic fever of consumption. She lay on the straw bed, wrapped in her husbands greatcoat, with a large tortoise-shell cat on her bosom. . . . The coat and the cat were the sufferer's only means of warmth, except as her husband held her hands and her mother her feet. Mrs. Clemm was passionately fond of her daughter, and her distress on account of her illness and poverty and misery was dreadful to see."

Such a picture is fortunately unique in our literary history. When a strong man goes down in the waste of the far North, battling alone with cold or hunger, the natives speak of it as "cruel hard"; what it was for a poet, in a wealthy city, to watch an idolized woman die without suitable food or clothing must be left to the imagination.

footnote 'From the Dirge, in Cymbeline , IV, 2.

We quote the lines softly to ourselves when the curtain falls on the terrible scene, early in 1847. But our eyes still follow that lonely, grief-stricken figure which follows on foot to the grave, wrapped in the same coat that had kept his Virginia warm when living.

Into the details of the next few frenzied years we do not care to enter. That Poe was ill and suffering is evident enough; that he was also mentally unbalanced has not occurred to some of his critics. We hear it in the ravings of his speech and letters; we suspect it in "Ulalume" and "Annie," with their mixture of genius and madness, and even in "Annabel Lee," which voices his love and grief for his dead wife, but which runs to a measure that is gay rather than sorrowful.

After two unmanly years, which we would fain forget, Poe became engaged to a widow (Mrs. Shelton) of Richmond. Generous friends raised a fund to give him a new start, and hopefully, with money in his pocket, he began the journey to New York, intending to settle his affairs and return quickly to Richmond, to love and a new life. Three days later he was found unconscious in Baltimore and died in the hospital there without telling what had happened. It was Longfellow who suggested that these two lines should be written on his monument:

footnote From Poe, "For Annie," a half-mad lyric, written after the loss of Virginia. The monument was erected in Baltimore, many years after Poe's death.

For a long period after Poe's death our critics, in their zeal to judge the man, overlooked the originality and power of his writing. At the present time the pendulum swings the other way; the tendency is to forget the weakness of the man and to overestimate the value of his work. Between the first and the latest judgment sixty years have passed. During practically all that time Poe has challenged attention. Mary critics have assailed, but none could have safely ignored him. He has also, perhaps, to a greater degree than any other American author, laid his spell upon writers at home and abroad. Therefore, though the greater part of his work repels the ordinary reader, let us go softly about the task of judging it. His various productions fall naturally into three classes,—literary criticisms, prose tales, and lyrics. By the first he was chiefly known while living; by the last he will probably be longest remembered.

In his critical work, beginning about the year 1835, Poe attempted to carry out in this country the purpose of Coleridge. Christabel  and The Ancient Mariner .") ?> By that time America's opinion of her own literature was very different from what it had been in the days when the editors of the North American Review  refused to believe (1817) that "Thanatopsis" was the work of an American, and when Cooper, in order to gain favorable notice of his Precaution (1820), published it as the romance of an alleged English author. Influenced by the success of Bryant, and perhaps excited by the honors awarded to Irving and Cooper in Europe, our writers went to the opposite extreme in glorifying our literary productions. The critical faculty began to be exercised by a few men, each in his local "school" at New York or Charleston, who praised each other's work immoderately, with somewhat more of patriotic pride or generosity than of discernment. In the Southern Literary Messenger , Poe characterized such efforts as the work of a mutual admiration society; he declared his purpose to criticize "independently and fearlessly, in accordance with established literary standards." So far he did well, and he marks the beginning of true criticism in this country. He was certainly independent and fearless; he had also the insight to recognize such writers as Hawthorne, Tennyson and Mrs. Browning before the world was aware of their genius. We wish we could add that he was also wise, impersonal and just, but such is not the fact. His own conception of poetry made him narrow-minded, and he let personalities prejudice his judgment. This part of his work, therefore, is of little interest except to critics, who consider that his theory of composition—of the short story especially—is worthy of careful attention.

It is said that America's most significant contribution to general literature is the short story. Whatever honor is due us on that account should be offered largely to Irving and Poe. If the latter is not the actual discoverer of the modern short story, The Philosophy of the Short-story  (1901), and Smith, The American Short Story  (1912). The latter includes a good bibliography of the subject.") ?> as some critics allege, he at least brought it by his own effort to a high state of development. At the present time his influence extends to numberless writers, at home and abroad, who are making the short story the most popular form of literature. This influence is the more remarkable because it is due wholly to Poe's method of work, not to any interest attached to his subject; for unlike Irving, whose subjects were mostly attractive, Poe's matter is generally abnormal and repulsive. We shall examine here a few groups of stories that illustrate the author's peculiar genius.

"The Gold Bug" is the most readable of the so-called analytical stories, that is, stories which center in a mystery to be solved, and which are supposed to stimulate that peculiar form of mental activity suggested by the words "following a clue." In such stories Poe was in his element; he had a keen, analytical mind that delighted in solving puzzles and cryptograms. This appears in "The Gold Bug," in which he uses his expert knowledge of cipher writing to find a pirate's buried treasure. The theme is old, but Poe shows his originality by making our interest center not in the greed of finding an immense store of gold and jewels, as a lesser writer would surely have done, but in the reading of Captain Kidd's cryptic message, which tells where the treasure is hidden.

Three other notable stories of this mental-puzzle class are "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," "The Mystery of Marie Roget" and "The Purloined Letter." These are remarkable for two things: they portray the only real character, Dupin, to be found in Poe's writings; and they mark the beginning of the flood of modern detective stories. Old Sleuth, Sherlock Holmes and all the rest of the tribe are copies of Dupin; and Kipling's "Bimi" was probably suggested by a grotesque incident in Poe's "Murders in the Rue Morgue."

In his allegorical tales Poe uses some external object or event to symbolize a mental experience and, incidentally perhaps, to point a moral lesson. The Literati .") ?> "The Black Cat" and "The Telltale Heart" are good examples of this class. They illustrate the author's ability to grip and horrify his readers; but they are repulsive stories, though cunningly worked out, and their characters are not human beings but rather faces,—wild or expressionless faces, upon which insanity has set its awful seal.

"William Wilson" seems to us the most suggestive and wholesome of the allegorical tales. It contains some biographical material from Poe's English schooldays, and in this respect, as being even remotely connected with his own experience, it is unique among his stories. Conscience here assumes the form and substance of a man, who appears at every crisis of the hero's life and points out to him the ways of good and evil. The tale is an allegory of man's double nature; one who reads it must recognize Poe's influence over Stevenson (in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde ) and other writers who make use of the dual personality as a motive of their stories.

The pseudoscientific tales, with their smattering of science and their extravagant adventure, are a type of romance associated with the name of Jules Verne, who belongs unquestionably to Poe's school. Two of the best of these tales are "A Descent into the Maelstrom," a wonderful bit of imaginative and descriptive writing, and "The Unparallelled Adventure of One Hans Pfaal," describing a trip to the moon. There is a parade here of some superficial scientific knowledge, but this is quickly forgotten by one who feels the power of Poe's imagination, who hears the appalling roar of waters, or looks down with reeling senses from a stupendous height. We can readily believe that the hero's hair turned white in the maelstrom; our own hair feels a shade lighter after merely reading about it. The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket , a bloodcurdling sea story; and The Journal of Julius Rodman , a story of Western adventure. In Eureka, a Prose Poem , with an amateur's knowledge of astronomy and metaphysics, Poe attempts to explain the creation and present state of the universe.") ?>

We have examined enough of Poe's stories to appreciate the title Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque  (1839) which he gave to his collection. The climax of his uncanny power is reached in his tales of preternatural horrors. In some of these he makes use of the fascination of terror, of the hypnotic spell which fear casts upon certain minds; in others he appeals to that morbid interest which leads some men to read the revolting details of a murder, for instance, or to carry away ghastly souvenirs of a holocaust. Perhaps the most typical of these gruesome stories are "The Fall of the House of Usher" and "Ligeia," in which he makes use of a favorite theory, or hallucination, that the will survives for a time in the body of a person after death. There are two widely different ways of looking at these and all other stories of the same class; which are, in general, realistic descriptions of morbidness or insanity, and of the spectral horrors which are ignorantly associated with groans and graveyards at midnight. One critic sees in them Poe's wonderful mastery of technic, and his artistic handling of two legitimate motives: the fascination of fear, and the appeal of the horrible. Another sees, chiefly, an indication of Poe's abnormal imagination, of his lack of sanity and moral balance; and to such a critic the "art" of these stories resembles a mere artifice, a stage trick to produce an effect. It is obviously impossible to reconcile such views; hence the endless controversy over Poe's works. Considered not as an ordinary story but as an impression, the "House of Usher" is a remarkable piece of literary work; and even one who dislikes the somber impression is forced to admire the skillful way in which it is produced. It is one of the best examples of the so-called story of atmosphere to be found in English or any other language.

A little more wholesome, but still moving in the realm of phantoms, is the "Manuscript Found in a Bottle." This is a powerfully realistic story of a man who found himself aboard a specter ship with a silent crew of ghosts—a veritable Flying Dutchman of the Antarctic—cruising endlessly over seas of eternal darkness and desolation. To the same class, but suggesting the more delicate imagination of some of his poems, belong the strange group of tales concerning disembodied spirits, such as "The Colloquy of Monas and Una," and also the two little sketches, "Shadow" and "Silence," which lay a spell upon us but which we do not attempt to classify or to explain.

Poe attempted many humorous stories such as "The Devil in the Belfry," but they do not attract us. Unlike the true humorist, who laughs with men, Poe laughs at them; he lacks the deep undercurrent of sympathy and human kindness, without which humor is artificial and without understanding. Much more interesting than these humorous attempts are certain miscellaneous stories: "The Masque of the Red Death," a powerful but meaningless story of pestilence; "The Pit and the Pendulum," describing the horrors of torture during the Inquisition; "The Cask of Amontillado," a study of revenge as practiced by the Italians; and "The Assignation," a melodramatic story of love as it might have been in Venice. In the last-named story Poe's originality is strikingly evident. The theme is an old one, which has been used in the same way over and over again by Italian and French romancers; but Poe avoids the usual, vulgar intrigue and makes the interest of his story center in the utterly unexpected character of the meeting between two lovers.

Recently a cultured woman was found reading Poe's "Ulalume" and a few other lyrics, which she thought very beautiful. "And what do they mean to you?" was asked. "Nothing, absolutely nothing," she said; "I don't understand a word of them. I read them just for the mood or the melody."

This criticism is so nearly perfect that we are tempted to leave the subject here; but we must try to understand, if possible, Poe's motive in writing beautiful but apparently meaningless verse. His theory was that poetry must concern itself, not with life or truth or nature, but with beauty alone; that the beauty, because it is of a "supernal" kind, must always be associated with melancholy; that the most beautiful imaginable object is a beautiful woman, and the greatest possible sorrow is the loss of such a being; that the true poem, therefore, must be a kind of dirge, a lament for the death of beauty in the form of woman. Hence Poe's succession of shadowy Helens and Lenores; hence his despair and lamentation at their untimely death. To the mature mind this is an abnormal, a diseased conception of poetry, but we must harbor it for a moment if we are to appreciate Poe's verse; for with a few brilliant exceptions, like "The Coliseum" and "The Bells," he follows his theory and has but two subjects: his lost beauty, and his own woe.

With this introduction, we leave the reader with the melodious lyrics in which Poe has added variety and color to our poetry. For an expression of his prevailing mood, we suggest "To Helen," "Ulalume," "The Raven," "To One in Paradise," "Lenore," the song "Ligeia" (from Al Aaraaf ), "A Dream within a Dream," "Eulalie," "For Annie," "The Sleeper" and "Annabel Lee." For variety we add "Israfel," the noble "Coliseum," Childe Harold , Canto IV, stanza 114.") ?> the melodious "Bells," the lurid "City in the Sea," the phantasmal "Haunted Palace" and the terrible allegory of "The Conqueror Worm."

Here, in a dozen pages, we have the quintessence of Poe's genius. Aside from the melody, the first thing to attract us is the variety of verse forms. Poe maintained that each poem must have a distinct individuality, which he secured by varying the rime, meter and refrain. The second noticeable quality is the narrow range and monotony of the subject; for nearly all these poems are but variations of a single mood,—a dull, helpless, hopeless mood, suggesting Coleridge's "Ode to Dejection." Love, loss, despair; love, loss, despair,—the melancholy burden runs through the verse like the drip, drip of rain from a roof. Poe makes a lyric out of his despair, just as Chopin weaves the monotony of falling raindrops into his most perfect "Prelude"; but exquisite as they are, lyric and prelude are alike unbearable if long continued. The charm of these poems, which rank with the greatest of their kind in our literature, is that their form is exquisitely finished; that they are a true reflection of the despairing mood which produced them; and that, long after our reading, they haunt us like a strain of sad, wild music. Their weakness lies in the fact that their impulse came not from healthy life but from nerves; and that, unlike most of the poems which we cherish, they have no message or inspiration for humanity.

In a book of rhetoric Poe's style would probably be termed "adequate," but the word does not satisfy us. His aim in every work was to make a single strong impression. In this aim he is like the sensational writer of our own day, though his method is entirely different. Any shouting will attract attention, but Poe never shouts. He first decides what effect or impression he wants to create; then from first word to last he makes every incident, every character, every description bear steadily upon that predetermined impression. When the effect is so vivid that even the dullest readers must feel it, the tale ends. Herein Poe is utterly unlike Hawthorne, who when he began a tale often had no idea how it would turn out. If we remember how an artist finishes a portrait, with here a touch of light or there a deeper shadow, and then think of Poe as painting a mental picture of horror, with lurid lights and shadows of gross darkness, we shall have a suggestion of his method. His impression is seldom a wholesome one; what he does may not seem worth doing; but we must confess that it is invariably well done. Effectiveness, therefore, is the chief quality of his style; and it is this effectiveness, this almost perfect accomplishment of what he aims to do, that leads critics to rate Poe as a master of the short story.

In view of this analysis of Poe's method it seems ridiculous, as if one were to bump his head against a moonbeam, to say that the chief characteristic of his matter is its unreality; but such is the fact. There are no such things as his cats, ghouls, demons, and mere ghosts of characters; and the only way to account for their effect is to remember that unrealities may make a strong impression in a lonely old ruin at night,—which is where we commonly imagine ourselves to be while reading Poe. He dwells in a land of phantoms that flit about like bats in the darkness; he is chiefly occupied with shadows, not natural shadows, suggestive of substance and light, but spectral shadows that do perverse things, —as in his famous "Raven," for instance, where the shadow comes down to the floor instead of remaining on the ceiling, where it properly belongs:

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footnote 2 Poe has described the elaborate way in which he prepared "The Raven" (see his "Philosophy of Composition"). A controversy arose immediately over the question of how much Poe was indebted in this poem to another Southern poet, Dr. Chivers of Georgia. (See Woodberry, "The Poe-Chivers Papers," in The Century , January–February, 1903; also "Poe and Chivers," in the Virginia edition of Poe's Works , Vol. VII.) It was Stedman, we think, who first pointed out that Poe evidently borrowed from Mrs. Browning rather than from Chivers. Compare, for instance, the third stanza of "The Raven," beginning, "And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain," with that stanza in "Lady Geraldine's Courtship" beginning, "With a murmurous stir uncertain, in the air the purple curtain."

Generalization is always dangerous, and often unjust, but it would seem, as Lanier suggested, that Poe's work as a whole is lacking in some necessary intellectual quality. Great literature owes its power to a combination of ideas and imagination, of strong intellect and profound emotion. It has meaning as well as form, truth as well as beauty; and to read it is to have a better understanding of life. A candid study of Poe's work shows that the greater part of it is simply emotional and, therefore, more or less unbalanced and disordered.

It is hardly necessary to point out that, since Poe deals with unrealities, nature and humanity are not reflected in his work. He gives us many descriptions, but the light is ghastly and the landscape not of earth. He depicts a hundred characters, but, with the possible exception of Dupin, there is not a man or a woman among them. Perhaps the chief reason for his weakness here is that he seeks not truth but an effect; he never stands aside to let nature or man or history speak its own message, but uses these as looking-glasses or sounding boards to reflect himself or his own voice. Another reason is that Poe is so self-centered that he cannot put himself in the place of another; his chief characters are all repetitions of himself or of his shadow. He is like a modern illustrator who draws one picture that interests us, and then a hundred more that soon grow wearisome, since they are all from the same model, and all like the first save for the pose or the clothing. In the story of "The Gold Bug," for instance, there are two chief characters, the hero and his negro servant Jupiter. The hero is Poe with his love of cryptograms, and Jupiter is as much a Bushman or an Eskimo as a Southern negro. So in all his works, Poe's hero is invariably himself; the rest of his characters are shadows or nonentities.

Our final characterization takes the form of a question, which the student must answer for himself. As we have noted, many critics at home and abroad regard Poe as a great literary artist; others regard him as a cunning worker in stage effects; and these men honestly differ because of their different conceptions of art, one being content with "art for art's sake," the other insisting that art must be steadily viewed in its relation to humanity. Those who regard art as inspired first of all by a vision of truth, and who would define art as the expression of life in forms that give pleasure by appealing to our sense of the true, the good, and the beautiful, will probably hesitate over the greater part of Poe's work. With normal life his prose has little or nothing to do; and his poetry was the result of a theory of beauty that hardly included either truth or goodness. That his work was "beautifully done," meaning that it was adequately or effectively done, cannot be questioned. Shall we therefore class it with the great pictures and the great poems which, in addition to their excellence of form, have the power to inspire humanity by revealing the glory of the imperfect and the beauty of the commonplace? And shall we apply the term "art" or "craft" to Poe's expression of our human life in literature?

Simms was born and reared in Charleston, South Carolina. He was a poor boy who, unlike Poe or Kennedy, knew little of the comfort and social culture which we associate with Southern life. His mother died when he was a child; his father moved westward with the pioneers, leaving him in the care of a grandmother, who told him stirring tales and sang to him many a ballad of the Revolution. In this way was his ambition first stirred to write the romance of his country. We remember in this connection the childhood of another romanticist, Walter Scott, whose impulse to literature came from listening to his grandmother's tales and ballads of the Scottish border.

There is another parallel nearer home. Like his Northern contemporary Bryant, the young Simms was well acquainted with hard work; like him he studied law, while cherishing the ambition to become his country's poet; and like him he abandoned the courts (1827) to follow his heart into the wide world of letters. For the next forty years he was both creator and encourager of literature, doing his best by lectures and essays to promote the appreciation of good books among his countrymen. He was for a long time the central figure in the Charleston "school," a group of literary men which included Timrod and Hayne, who later became famous as Southern poets; and he was always in the best sense a citizen, playing his part manfully in the affairs of his native state. We cannot enter into the details of his career; but one who reads the story of his life will find it an epitome of the history of the Carolinas, from the "great debate" between Calhoun and Webster to the close of the Civil War.

The breadth of Simms's literary taste stamps him as one of the notable men of our First National period. His thirty-odd romances of Colonial and Revolutionary days represent only a small part of his accomplishment. By constant study and travel he made himself an authority on local history, and his History of South Carolina  and his South Carolina  in the Revolution  are still standard works. As a biographer, Irving is the only man of this period to be compared with him. While Irving, with one conspicuous exception, went abroad for his heroes, Simms was content to bide at home and, in such works as his lives of Marion and Greene, to show the heroism that glorified his own people. He was a poet also, with several volumes to his credit, and desired to be remembered as a bard rather than as a novelist. In addition to all this he wrote plays, short stories, literary and political essays; he edited magazines, and was an editor also of some of Shakespeare's dramas.

One good result of all this work was to broaden and nationalize the spirit of our literature. We are to remember that there was at this time a New England, a Knickerbocker, and a Southern "school"; that "literary centers" were emphasized, and that each of a dozen cities considered itself the real hub of the American world of letters. Against all this narrowness and provincialism Simms's efforts were quietly, steadily directed. His border tales cover a dozen states and have a national rather than a sectional appeal. His Revolutionary romances are all laid in the South; but in this he rightly followed the example of most novelists, who present general truths or ideals under local conditions, and who do their best work amid scenes and characters with which they have been familiar from childhood. He has been called "the Cooper of the South"; but the criticism proceeds on the unwarranted assumption that Cooper belongs to the North exclusively. It is not the Southerner or the Northerner but the American that appeals to us in the heroes of Simms and Cooper. Moreover, Simms lived for a time in the North, where many of his books were published; he had readers in every state; he was in friendly correspondence with all the important literary men of the nation. He exercised, therefore, a wholesome unifying influence on our sadly divided world of letters.

It is a pity, in view of Simms's aim and endeavor, that we cannot heartily recommend his books; but the fact is that he wrote too hurriedly, too carelessly, too sensationally at times, to produce a work of enduring interest. He has many of Cooper's faults, of slipshod style and tedious moralizing; but he has also some of Cooper's virtues: an eye for picturesque effects, a love of stirring adventure, an ability to find sentiment and chivalry under a rough exterior. In addition, he can portray the character of a gentleman, which Cooper could never do, and some of his heroines are in pleasant contrast to Cooper's "females"; but he lacks the rugged strength, the epic interest of Cooper's best work, and his books have never received or deserved such attention as is given to The Spy , The Red Rover  and the drama of Leatherstocking.

The Yemassee  (1835), a story of Indian warfare in Colonial days, and The Partisan  (1835), a romance of the Revolution, are generally considered the best of Simms's romances. The reader will find some highly colored sketches of frontier life in his short stories, such as are included in The Wigwam and the Cabin ; and in "The Lost Pleiad" and "The Poet's Vision" a suggestion of Simms's talent and of his limitation as a poet. The last sonnet is so characteristic of the author, and so good in itself, that we quote it entire:

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