Brown occupies a curious position in our literature. He
seems historically important, but personally of small
consequence; he marks an important literary epoch, but
is unknown to modern readers. So he reminds us of the
pioneer who blazed a trail through the Indian-haunted
forest and cleared the space where the town hall
Some men put themselves so completely into their work that the only way to get acquainted with them is to read what they have written. With Brown the case is reversed; he hides behind his books, and we must study his life before we can understand his writings.
He was born in Philadelphia, in 1771. Like Woolman, he
was of Quaker descent and training; but he soon broke
away from the gentle discipline, being influenced by
the writings of Godwin, that same English radical who
exercised an unfortunate influence over the poet
Shelley.
Alcuin (1797). Such
notions were quietly ignored here, but they raised a
tempest about the ears of Shelley in England.") ?>
As a child he was precocious, and in his
first school made havoc of his health by overstudy.
Exiled by disease from the sports of vigorous boys, he
had two unfailing
Schooldays over, and with them the golden age, Brown
took up the burden of life in a lawyer's office.
Presently he wearied of the law, as did Irving later,
and abandoned it to commit himself definitely to
literature, beginning with essays and poems for the new
magazines. Philadelphia now seemed to him strait and
The tragedy of Brown's life is suggested by the fact that he died of consumption, in 1810, before his powers had reached maturity; the heroism of it may be inferred from one of his last letters, in which he says that a single half-hour of health was all that he could remember. And he adds, with a touch of infinite pathos, that had his pilgrimage been longer he might have lighted at last on hope.
Of the six novels mentioned, the beginner will do well to choose Edgar Huntley , which is, on the whole, the best of Brown's works. In the preface, which is well worth reading, we find that our first novelist is actuated by two motives. The first was to oppose the prevailing "Gothic" romances, with all their ghostly claptrap; and here, all unconsciously, Brown was working with the same intent and purpose as Jane Austen. Pride and Prejudice , was written in 1797 (a year before Brown published his first romance, Wieland ), but it did not find a publisher till sixteen years later.") ?> His second motive, also original and independent, was to make an American book, to lay the scene in his own country, and to use the romantic material of Colonial life which had lain neglected for two centuries. In the latter motive he anticipated Cooper, who, after trying one novel of English society, plainly followed Brown's lead in finding his literary material on our own frontier.
The story of Edgar Huntley is a strange
"I have said that I slept. My memory assures me of this; it informs me of the previous circumstances of my laying aside my clothes, of placing the light upon a chair within reach of my pillow, of throwing myself upon the bed and of gazing on the rays of the moon reflected on the wall and almost obscured by those of the candle. I remember my occasional relapse into fits of incoherent fancies, the harbingers of sleep. I remember, as it were, the instant when my thought ceased to flow and my senses were arrested by the leaden wand of forgetfulness."
Here is a mental picture which we instantly recognize
as true. When the hero wakes from his natural sleep, he
is bruised and sore, as if beaten with a club; he is
at the bottom of a pit in gross darkness. As he feels
his way out, in a chaos of doubt and fear, he meets a
ferocious panther and slays the beast. Then, attracted
by a dim light, he stumbles upon a band of Indians with
a captive white girl, sleeping around a fire in a
gloomy cave. So far this is almost as good as the
Arabian Nights , wherein castles grow like toadstools,
and marvels come and go like the clouds. We enjoy the
adventures, and especially the Indians, who are
somewhat truer to nature than are Cooper's smoky
philosophers; but there is a mystery about this hero,
who goes to sleep in his bed and wakes up in "antres
vast and desarts idle," which is not cleared up till we
learn that he is a
The same weakness is shown in all of Brown's novels. We find dark and direful strangers, secret murders, conspiracies galore; and at the end some wretchedly inadequate motive to account for them all. In Wieland , for example, a man in the midst of ideal happiness is called by a supernatural voice to murder his wife and children. Horrors upon horrors attend this awful mystery; and at the end we find only the "squeak and gibber" of a ventriloquist. Yet there is a dramatic power and intensity in the story which makes us read on:
"I now come to the mention of a person with whose name the most turbulent sensations are connected. It is with a shuddering reluctance that I enter on the province of describing him. . . . My blood is congealed and my fingers are palsied when I call up his image. Shame upon my cowardly and infirm heart! Hitherto I have proceeded with some degree of composure; but now I must pause. I mean not that dire remembrance shall subdue my courage or baffle my design; but this weakness cannot be immediately conquered. I must desist for a little while."
After such an introduction we insist on knowing what happened. Our interest is aroused, first, by the fact that the hero is introduced under startling conditions, and then is allowed to tell his own story. Just as in Othello we read with a more lively interest when the Moor begins to relate his adventures, so in all Brown's stories the characters make a direct appeal to the reader. Another device, which he uses excellently, is to paint a scene so vividly that we expect some adventure to follow. As the oldest teller of ghost stories put his hearers on tiptoe for the specter by describing the dark night, the fearsome old house, the moaning wind, so Brown plays upon our imagination to make us anticipate the horror before it appears. Though he lacks the highest qualities as a writer, it is much to say of a first novelist that he knows how to attract attention, and to paint vivid pictures of human emotion against a suitable natural background.
Brown's faults are so obvious that we may pass over them silently and give attention to certain significant qualities that are reflected in all his romances. The points to be emphasized are these: that these books, now dead, were once very much alive; that this forgotten prophet was once honored in his own country and in England; and that he won success by reflecting in an original way two marked characteristics of his age. These are summed up in the words "sensibility" and "mystery," which furnish the key to Brown's novels and to practically all the fiction of the age in Europe and America.
Now "sensibility" is defined as the ability to feel sensations and emotions; in literature it means unusual sensitiveness, delicacy of feeling, responsiveness to every emotion of pleasure or pain. At the close of the eighteenth century "sensibility" was a kind of fetish, just as "humor" was in the days of Ben Jonson. In the romances of this period men were not simply glad or sorry; they had transports of joy, paroxysms of grief; they danced up and down the gamut of feeling as if human nature were a stretched nerve, vibrating to every breath of emotion. Coupled with this sensibility was a mawkish and garrulous sentimentality, repulsive to us now, but very dear to an age that considered it proper for a lady to talk like Richardson's Pamela , to "fall senseless on the sofa," or "sink fainting into the arms of an attendant" at every unusual announcement Man of Feeling (1771) is an epitome of this literary fad. Sheridan burlesqued it in the character of Lydia Languish, in The Rivals (1775). At this time the \"Gothic\" romances of Mrs. Radcliffe and the sentimental romances of Frances Burney were immensely popular on both sides of the Atlantic. In this country about twenty novels were published before Brown's, and they are all stories of \"sensibility\" and sentimentality.") ?>
That Brown was influenced by the prevailing literary
fad is shown by the interest which his characters take
in their sensibilities. The hero may be rescuing a girl
from Indians, or dozing in front of his own fire; but
always, everywhere, he is making minute analysis of his
own feelings. So far Brown follows the fashion. His
independence is shown by his choice of American themes,
and by the fact that, in portraying human feeling, he
is more of a psychologist than a sentimentalist, more
interested in the scientific explanation of an emotion
than in the prevailing book of etiquette. It was this
new variation of an old theme that made him popular,
and if we read him candidly, we shall find that he was
probably in advance of most of his English and German
contemporaries.
Mysteries of
Udolpho (1794) and Goethe's Sorrows of Werther (1774)
seem to us more mawkish than anything Brown ever wrote;
though the first was written by the most popular
English novelist of that day, and the second by the
greatest of all German writers. (See, in this
connection, Richardson, American Literature , ii,
The second characteristic of Brown's novels is the
sense of horror that pervades them; and here our
author reflects, not simply the fashion of his
age, but the tendency of humanity in all
ages to create for itself imaginary fears. Wherever you
find him, whether in a primitive cave or in a modern
office, man is always surrounded by mystery. He stands,
as the first Colonists stood, fronting an unknown sea
with an unknown wilderness at his back; and his
imagination
always peoples the unknown with fantastic terrors.
Dragons and doppelgänger were very real to the
Anglo-Saxons; enchantment and witchcraft to all
peoples of the Middle Ages. In Brown's day English
romancers, after a period of general skepticism, were
filling the unknown with ghosts, supernatural voices,
and other horrors as artificial as their own periwigs.
He had a vivid imagination, well suited to creating
terror out of mystery; but he had also a practical
balance-wheel from his Quaker forbears, and he shared
the common-sense spirit of his nation. The result was
that he first created a mysterious horror, and then
explained it by somnambulism, or ventriloquism, or some
other ism dear to a people that had just begun to
dabble in
There are other things worthy of note in Brown's neglected romances: their stilted dialogue, so characteristic of an age which insisted that literary persons must speak unnaturally; their photographic reproduction of the dress and manners of the gentlefolk of those days; their keen observations and admirable descriptions of nature; their vivid pictures of the scourge of smallpox, which compare favorably with Defoe's famous description of the plague in London. All these are interesting; but we emphasize only the "sensibility" and the horror of mystery which give the keynote to all his work. And instead of criticizing Brown for his evident faults, we are impelled to praise him for his unnoticed virtues. It is no small triumph for any novelist, while reflecting the literary fashions of his age, to go beyond his contemporaries in the direction of truth and naturalness. He was, we repeat, the founder of the American novel, and his successors were Cooper and Hawthorne.
If we include in our view not only the war but also its immediate causes and consequences, the Revolutionary period extends from the Stamp Act of 1765 to the close of the century. In our analysis of the period, we found four important historical movements. The first was social and industrial; it was concerned with the rapid growth of the country, the increase in trade and wealth, and the appearance of many towns, each a center of social life. The second was the intense agitation over the Stamp Act and other measures of taxation, which aroused and united the Colonies in opposition to England. The third was the Revolutionary War, which established American independence. During the war there were two great parties in violent opposition: the Whigs or Patriots, who demanded independence; and the Tories or Loyalists, who were in favor of continued union with England. The fourth movement was the adoption of the Constitution, the merging of the Colonies into the United States of America. This union was accomplished only after a long struggle between two antagonistic parties: the Federalists, who sought a strongly centralized national government; and the Anti-Federalists, who sought to keep the governing power as largely as possible in the hands of the individual states. The Constitution was regarded as a balance or fair compromise between these two parties.
The literature of the period shows the effect of all these historical movements. The new social life demanded newspapers, magazines, brighter and more varied types of literature than had prevailed during the Colonial period. The turmoil after the Stamp Act led to a rapid development of popular oratory; the strife between Patriots and Tories produced numerous ballads and satires; the struggle over the Constitution developed a new type of political writing which has been well called "citizen literature." In general, the literature of the Revolution has a practical and worldly bent, in contrast to the religious spirit of Colonial writings.
In our study we noted, first, the general characteristics of Revolutionary literature, the contrast between its imitative poetry and its individualistic prose. The citizen literature especially reflects a strong, original and creative impulse of the American mind. Next we considered the life and works of Benjamin Franklin, who marks the transition from the Colonial to the Revolutionary age. He was a voluminous writer, but his aim was always practical, or utilitarian, rather than artistic. He is remembered in our literature chiefly by his Autobiography .
Of the Revolutionary orators, James Otis and Patrick Henry were chosen as typical of the period. The typical statesman was Washington, the object of whose life and work was to establish nationality in America. Two other statesmen, Hamilton and Jefferson, were studied at length, because they were leaders, and are still the types, of the two great parties that are found in every free government. The most memorable literary work of Jefferson was the Declaration of Independence, which we considered as a piece of literature rather than as a state paper. The chief work of Hamilton was a series of political essays included in The Federalist .
In studying the poetry of the Revolution we noted, first, the songs, ballads and verse satires in which Patriot and Loyalist reflected their political convictions and animosities; second, the efforts of the so-called Hartford Wits to establish a national rather than provincial poetry; and third, the life and works of Philip Freneau. The latter's poems fall into two significant classes: political songs and satires, reflecting the turmoil of the age; and occasional poems of nature and humanity, which reveal Freneau as an American forerunner of the romantic movement in modern poetry.
Of the many miscellaneous writers of the Revolution the two most notable are Thomas Paine, whose Common Sense and The Crisis are among the most powerful pamphlets that ever influenced a nation's history; and John Woolman, whose Journal has been called "the sweetest and purest autobiography in the language."
At the end of the Revolutionary period we note the
definite appearance of the American novel. Some
thirty-five works of fiction, mostly of the exaggerated
romantic type, were written before 1800; but
their authors are now unknown even by name to most readers.
The one fiction writer of the period who
deserves recognition is Charles Brockden
Brown. He was the first professional man of letters in
America, and he may be regarded as the founder of the
American novel. His models were the German and English
authors of the so-called Gothic
Franklin's Autobiography, edited for class use by Trent and Wells, in Standard English Classics (Ginn and Company); the same work in Maynard's English Classics, Holt's English Readings, and other series. Poor Richard's Almanac and other Papers (a good selection) in Riverside Literature series. Washington's Farewell Address, in Standard English Classics, etc.; the same, with Washington's Journal, Circular Letters to the Governors, and other selections, in Old South Leaflets. In the same series, selections from Hamilton and Jefferson. The Federalist, in Everyman's Library. Woolman's Journal, in Macmillan's Pocket series, etc. Crèvecœur's Letters from an American Farmer in Everyman's Library.
There are no convenient editions of Brown, Paine or Freneau. Selections from these authors, and from all others mentioned in the text, may be found in Trent and Wells, Cairns, Carpenter's American Prose, Bronson's American Poems, etc. See "Selections" in the General Bibliography.
Historical textbooks: Montgomery, Muzzey, Channing, etc. For extended works in history and literature, see the General Bibliography. The following special works are useful in studying the Revolutionary period.
History . Winsor, Reader's Handbook of the American Revolution; Fiske, American Revolution, and Critical Period of American History; Hart, Formation of the Union; Walker, Making of the Nation; Fisher, Struggle for American Independence; Sloane, French War and the Revolution; Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution.
Political . Gordy, Political Parties,
Biographical . Lives of important historical characters, each in one volume as a rule, in American Statesmen series; Parton, Life of Franklin, of Jefferson, of Burr; Rives, Life and Times of James Madison, 3 vols.; Trent, Southern Statesmen of the Old Regime (Washington, Jefferson, Randolph); Sparks, Men who made the Nation; Parker, Historic Americans; Green, Pioneer Mothers of America, 3 vols.; C. F. Adams, John Adams's Diary.
Supplementary . Parkman, Half Century of Conflict, Montcalm and Wolfe; Hinsdale, The Old Northwest; Fiske, American Political Ideas; Earle, Stage Coach and Tavern Days, Diary of Anna Green Winslow, a Boston School Girl of 1771; Crawford, Romantic Days in the Early Republic.
Literature . Tyler, Literary History of the American Revolution, 2 vols.; (Putnam), includes all the writers of the period. Miss Loshe, Early American Novel (1907); Magoon, Orators of the American Revolution (1848); Sears, American Literature in the Colonial and National Periods (1892). For works on individual writers, Franklin, Freneau, etc., see below.
Collateral Reading . Women of Colonial and Revolutionary Times: Martha Washington, by Anne Wharton; Mercy Warren, by Alice Brown; Dolly Madison, by Maud Goodwin; Catherine Schuyler, by Mary Humphreys, etc. (Scribner); Green, Pioneer Mothers of America; Mills, Through the Gates of Old Romance (a book of the love stories of Freneau, Benjamin West, and other notable men of Revolutionary times).
Franklin . Texts: Works, edited by A. H. Smyth; by Bigelow (1887). Sayings of Poor Richard, edited by Ford (Putnam). Autobiography, etc. (see Selections for Reading, above).
Biography and Criticism: Life (including the Autobiography supplemented by many letters), edited by Bigelow, 3 vols.; Life, by McMaster, in American Men of Letters; by Morse, in American Statesmen; by Parton, 2 vols.; Ford, The Many-Sided Franklin; Fisher, The True Benjamin Franklin, in "True" Biographies. Franklin bibliography, by Ford (Brooklyn, 1889).
Hamilton . Texts: Works, edited by Lodge, 9 vols. (1885). The Federalist, edited by Dawson; by Ford; by Lodge.
Biography and Criticism: Life, by Morse, 2 vols.; by Lodge, in American Statesmen; Sumner, Alexander Hamilton (a critical study, in Makers of America series); Culbertson, Alexander Hamilton (Yale University Press, 1910); Basset, The Federalist System, in the American Nation, edited by Hart, Vol. II.
Jefferson . Texts: Works, 10 vols., edited by Ford
Biography and Criticism: Life by Schouler, in Makers of America; by Morse, in American Statesmen; by Curtis, in "True" Biographies; by Parton, by Watson, etc.; Trent, Southern Statesmen of the Old Regime; Channing, The Jeffersonian System, in Hart's American Nation, Vol. XII.
The Hartford Wits . Texts: No complete editions are available. Dwight's Conquest of Canaan (Hartford, 1875) and Travels in New England and New York, 4 vols. (New Haven, 1821); Trumbull's Works, with Memoir, 2 vols. (Hartford, 1820); Trumbull's M'Fingal, edited by Lossing (1881).
Biography and Criticism: Tyler, Three Men of Letters (1895); Todd, Life and Letters of Joel Barlow (1895); Sheldon, Pleiades of Connecticut (Atlantic Monthly, 1865); Trumbull, Origin of M'Fingal (Historical Magazine, 1868).
Freneau . Texts: No complete edition of works; Poems,
edited by Pattee, 3 vols. (Princeton University
Library,
Biography and Criticism: Life, by Mary Austin (1901); Forman, Political Activities of Philip Freneau (Johns Hopkins University Studies); More, in Shelburne Essays, Fifth Series (1908); Greenslet, in Atlantic Monthly (December, 1904).
Brown . Texts: Works, 6 vols. (Philadelphia, 1857, revised 1887).
Biography and Criticism: Life, by Dunlap, 2 vols. (1815); by Prescott, in Biographical and Critical Miscellanies; and in Spark's Library of American Biography. Miss Loshe, Early American Novel; Erskine, Leading American Novelists; Morse, in Century Magazine, Vol. XXVI; Brown's connection with Shelley, in Dowden's Life of Shelley.
Historical Fiction . Older Romances of the Revolution : Catherine Sedgwick, The Linwoods; Lydia Child, The Rebels; Cooper, The Spy, The Pilot, Lionel Lincoln; Kennedy, Horse-Shoe Robinson; Paulding, Old Continental; Simms, The Scout, The Partisan, Katherine Walton.
Later Romances : Hawthorne, Septimius Felton; Cooke, Henry St. John; Winthrop, Edwin Brothertoft; Butterworth, Patriot Schoolmaster; Ford, Janice Meredith; Thompson, Alice of Old Vincennes; Frederick, In the Valley; Mitchell, Hugh Wynne; Harrison, Son of the Old Dominion; Coggeswell, The Regicides; Eggleston, A Carolina Cavalier; Churchill, Richard Carvel.
Books for Young People . Revolutionary History : Fiske,
Irving's Washington and His Country (Ginn and Company);
Dickson, Hundred Years of Warfare,
Revolutionary Stories : Hawthorne, Grandfather's Chair; Coffin, Boys of '76; Helen Cleveland, Stories of the Brave Old Days; Lillian Price, Lads and Lassies of Other Days.
(Note: Questions in class should be based, first, on selections read from the various authors, and second, on parts of the text marked for study. It is not expected that the student should be able to answer all the general questions below. They are intended, chiefly, to stimulate his thinking and to arouse his patriotic interest in American literature and history.)
1. The period in which our independence was won is called the Age of Revolution: what events in European history and literature justify the title? What did America contribute to the age, in matters of government and literature?
2. Read the historical introduction to the Revolutionary period, and tell in your own words what effect each historic movement had upon our literature. It is said that, in passing from Colonial to Revolutionary times, our literature shifted its center of interest from heaven to earth; explain, criticize, challenge the statement. What common characteristics do you find in Colonial and Revolutionary literature?
3. What is meant by citizen literature? Why should it appear during the Revolutionary period? What are its qualities? What works of the present day belong to this class? How do they compare in spirit and motive with the earlier works?
4. Explain the prevalence of satire and of ballads in Revolutionary poetry. Describe the two main parties during the Revolution, and name some of the literary works of each. Why are Patriot ballads in general better known than ballads of the Loyalists? How do you account for the fact that the wretched doggerel of "Yankee Doodle" is remembered, while better ballads are forgotten?
5. How do you account for the fact that Revolutionary prose is better, more original and independent, than Revolutionary verse? (Note that Franklin's early prose is imitative.) In what ways does "the American spirit" reveal itself in both prose and poetry?
6. Quote from any of Washington's later and earlier works to show that he was animated by the national rather than by the provincial spirit. What is the value of his Farewell Address? Why should it be studied as a "classic"? It is said that the Farewell Address was the work of Washington and his friends, Hamilton being prominent among the latter: what evidence of composite authorship do you find in the work itself?
7. What two parties were prominent at the time of the adoption of the Constitution? Do you see any connection between these two parties and the Whigs and Tories of the Revolution? or between them and the two main political parties of the present day? Fiske has said that in politics all men are followers of either Hamilton or Jefferson; criticize the statement.
8. In what ways were Hamilton and Jefferson typical of two great parties? Give a brief sketch of Hamilton's life, and of his service to America. What literary work made him known before the Revolution? By what is he now remembered? What is the general character of The Federalist ?
9. Sketch briefly Jefferson's life and service, and note the contrast with Hamilton. What qualities in Jefferson led to his being called at various times to speak for a large party or for the nation? What are his chief literary works? The Declaration of Independence has been called an Anglo-Saxon battle song; why? What national and race qualities does it reveal?
10. Franklin . (a ) In what way does Franklin mark the transition from the Colonial to the Revolutionary age? He has been called "the teacher of a new order in America"; give your reasons for upholding or denying the allegation.
(b ) What typical character, and of what sort, did Franklin introduce in his almanac? Show any resemblances between this character and the hero of any modern story, such as David Harum or Eben Holden . Make a list of Franklin's maxims that are still in daily use. Show the mixture of truth and error in these sayings.
(c ) Quote from some of the minor works you have read to illustrate Franklin's humor. Do you find any definite resemblances between Franklin's humor and that of later writers, Holmes, Stockton or Mark Twain for instance? It is customary to speak of "American humor"; what is meant by this? And how does American differ from English or German humor?
(d ) Why should Franklin's Autobiography be studied as a "classic"? What are its qualities of style? How do you account for Franklin's careless disregard of the work, and for the world's keen appreciation of it? As a matter of speculation, if such a book had been written by an unknown author, would you be interested in it?
(e ) Make a brief comparison between Franklin and Edwards, having in mind the careers of the two men, the interest of their works, their style, their motive in writing, and the different classes of readers to whom they appealed. Explain the statement that these two men represent the two sides of the American mind.
11. Who was John Woolman? An English critic, Charles Lamb, wrote, "Get the writings of John Woolman by heart, and love the early Quakers"; why should one exhortation suggest the other? What is the general character of Woolman's Journal ? Can you explain why a modern college president should place it among the great and ennobling books of the world?
12. What influence did Paine exert upon the American Revolution? Describe briefly Common Sense and The Crisis . To what American traits did they appeal? Hundreds of strong political pamphlets appeared before the Revolution; how do you account for the extraordinary success of Common Sense ?
13. Divide Freneau's poems into two main classes, and show that in each class Freneau was a reflection of his age. What is the present value of his satires? of his romantic poems? Who were his English models? In what ways did he show originality and independence?
14. Who were the Hartford Wits? What noble motive bound them together? What are the chief works of each? How do you account for the fact that their minor poems (Dwight's hymns and Barlow's "Hasty Pudding" for instance) are remembered, while their ambitious works are forgotten? What is the general character of M'Fingal ? Account, on historical grounds, for its great popularity.
15. Why is Brown called our first professional man of letters? In what other respects is he notable? Give three characteristics of his romances, and show how they reappear constantly in later American fiction. What general literary tendencies of this age are reflected in his works? How do his romances compare with contemporary English and German romances? In what way does he show an advance in novel writing?
Why the Indian became a romantic figure in Revolutionary poetry and fiction. The Revolutionary drama. Earliest American fiction (not including Brown's works). Common elements in Brown, Poe, Hawthorne and Cooper. Original source of Franklin's maxims. The almanac in American life and literature. The first American magazines. The Loyalist side of the Revolution. M'Fingal and Hudibras . Franklin and Voltaire. Paine and Defoe. Freneau and the early English romanticists. Prose pamphlet and verse satire in the Revolution. European echoes of the Declaration of Independence. Two life-stories (Franklin's Autobiography and Woolman's Journal ). What is American humor?