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Fredericksburg, Va. (Virginia, United States) (search for this): chapter 11
ment, even at the time, is apt to fix upon some one poem by each poet, for instance, and connect the author with that poem inseparably thenceforward. Fate appears to assign to each some one boat, however small, on which his fame may float down towards immortality, even if it never attains it. This is the case, for instance, with Longfellow's Hiawatha, Lowell's Commemoration Ode, Holmes's Chambered Nautilus, Whittier's Snow-bound, Mrs. Howe's Battle Hymn, Whitman's My Captain, Aldrich's Fredericksburg sonnet, Helen Jackson's Spinning, Thoreau's Smoke, Bayard Taylor's Song of the Camp, Emerson's Daughters of time, Burroughs's Serene I Fold my hands, Piatt's The morning Street, Mrs. Hooper's I slept and dreamed that life was beauty, Stedman's Thou art mine, Thou hast given thy word, Wasson's All's well, Brownlee Brown's Thalatta, Ellery Channing's To-morrow, Harriet Spofford's In a summer evening, Lanier's Marshes of Glynn, Mrs. Moulton's The closed gate, Eugene Field's Little boy Blue,
United States (United States) (search for this): chapter 11
f the other side of nature could scarcely repay. Yet it is possible that the lesson of Darwin's limitations may be scarcely less valuable than that of his achievements. By his strength he revolutionized the world of science. By his weakness he gave evidence that there is a world outside of science. It is easy to cite the testimony of other high scientific authorities to the essential onesidedness of the exclusively scientific mind. The late Clarence King, formerly Director of the United States Geological Survey, wrote thus, shortly before his death: See Book and heart, p. 32. With all its novel powers and practical sense, I am obliged to admit that the purely scientific brain is miserably mechanical; it seems to have become a splendid sort of self-directed machine, an incredible automaton, grinding on with its analyses or constructions. But for pure sentiment, for all that spontaneous, joyous Greek waywardness of fancy, for the temperature of passion and the subtle thrill
Puritan (Ohio, United States) (search for this): chapter 11
have tried their hands at authorship during the past few years, while their more powerful neighbors have been making money; and presently England and Germany and America may take their turn again at the gray goose quill now turned into a golden pen. Three dangers. So far as the collective future of American literature is concerned, it may be said, that there are three leading obstacles commonly alleged, which it must overcome. These are : 1. The alleged influence of the so-called Puritan tradition. 2. The alleged materialism of the age. 3. The mainly scientific tendency of education and thought. Let us consider these in order: The alleged obstacle of Puritanism. 1. It was Matthew Arnold who maintained that the Puritan spirit in America was utterly hostile to literature and art. As to the Puritan period, it is needless to say that the forest pioneer did not compose orchestral symphonies or the founders of a nation carve statues of one another. Thoughtful and
Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania, United States) (search for this): chapter 11
o are contributing most to raise the tone of American literature are the men who have never yet written a book, and have scarcely time to read one, but by their heroic energies in other spheres are.providing materials from which a national literature shall one day be built. The man who constructs a great mechanical work helps literature, for he gives a model which shall one day inspire us to construct literary works as great. We do not wish to be forever outdone by the iron machinery of Pittsburg or the grain elevators of Chicago. We have hardly yet arrived at our literature,--other things must come first; we are busy with our railroads, perfecting the vast alimentary canal by which the nation assimilates raw immigrants at the rate of a million a year. We are not yet producing, we are digesting; food now, literary composition by-and-by; Shakespeare did not write Hamlet at the dinner table. It is of course impossible to explain this to foreigners, and they still talk of composing
Chicago (Illinois, United States) (search for this): chapter 11
e tone of American literature are the men who have never yet written a book, and have scarcely time to read one, but by their heroic energies in other spheres are.providing materials from which a national literature shall one day be built. The man who constructs a great mechanical work helps literature, for he gives a model which shall one day inspire us to construct literary works as great. We do not wish to be forever outdone by the iron machinery of Pittsburg or the grain elevators of Chicago. We have hardly yet arrived at our literature,--other things must come first; we are busy with our railroads, perfecting the vast alimentary canal by which the nation assimilates raw immigrants at the rate of a million a year. We are not yet producing, we are digesting; food now, literary composition by-and-by; Shakespeare did not write Hamlet at the dinner table. It is of course impossible to explain this to foreigners, and they still talk of composing, while we talk of dining. Trans
Concord (Massachusetts, United States) (search for this): chapter 11
d art. It makes indeed a part of the magic of new books that no man can guess securely at their future. I remember vividly the surprise of my old friend and guide, Professor Edward Tyrrell Channing, then the highest literary authority in America, when I inserted in my Commencement oration at Harvard in 1841, a boyish compliment to Tennyson; only two or three copies of whose first thin volumes had as yet crossed the Atlantic, though these had been read with enthusiasm by young people at Concord and at Cambridge. I, exhorting young poets with the mature enthusiasm of seventeen, bade them lay down their Spenser and their Tennyson and look within, and Professor Channing let it pass in the understanding that by Spenser I meant the highest authority, and by Tennyson, the lowest. This construction I refused with some indignation, for it was a capital passage of which I was quite proud and which had been written by my elder sister. When I explained my real views — as to Tennyson, the
Massachusetts (Massachusetts, United States) (search for this): chapter 11
ged materialism of the age. 3. The mainly scientific tendency of education and thought. Let us consider these in order: The alleged obstacle of Puritanism. 1. It was Matthew Arnold who maintained that the Puritan spirit in America was utterly hostile to literature and art. As to the Puritan period, it is needless to say that the forest pioneer did not compose orchestral symphonies or the founders of a nation carve statues of one another. Thoughtful and scholarly men created Massachusetts Colony, at least, and could at most bring hither the traditions of their universities and leave them embodied in a college. Their life was only historically inconsistent with what we now call culture; there was no logical antagonism; indeed, that life had in it much of the material of art in its sturdiness, its enthusiasm, and its truthfulness. To deny this is to see in art only something frivolous and insincere. Major John Hathorne put his offenders on trial and convicted and hanged
Macbeth (search for this): chapter 11
omain of science; not long since, to speak of one instance, came that extraordinary discovery which has revealed in the bright star Algol a system of three and perhaps four stellar bodies, revolving round each other and influencing each other's motions, and this at a distance so great that the rays of light which reveal them left their home fifty years ago. The imagination is paralyzed before a step so vast; yet it all lies within the domain of science, while science can no more tell us how Macbeth or Hamlet came into existence than if the new astronomy had never been born. It is as true of the poem as of the poet--Nascitur, nonfit. We cannot even define what poetry is; and Thoreau remarks that there never yet was a definition of it so good but the poet would proceed to disregard it by setting aside all its requisitions. Shelley says that a man cannot say, I will compose poetry. The greatest poet even cannot say it, for the mind in creation is as a fading coal, which some invi
Harriet Beecher Stowe (search for this): chapter 11
mlet at the dinner table. It is of course impossible to explain this to foreigners, and they still talk of composing, while we talk of dining. Transatlantic opinion. If the judgment of another nation is, as it has been called, that of a contemporary posterity, it is worth while to consider what sort of American literary product has excited the widest interest abroad. The greatest transatlantic successes of this kind which American novelists have yet attained-those won by Cooper and Mrs. Stowe--have come through a daring Americanism of subject, which introduced in each case a new figure to the European world,first the Indian, then the negro. Whatever the merit of the work, it was plainly the theme which conquered. Bret Harte's popularity in England is due to the same cause; and there are other instances which come readily to mind. Such successes are little likely to be repeated, for they were based on temporary situations, never to recur. The mere oddities or exceptions of
Theodore Parker (search for this): chapter 11
pinion, was apt to find the college doors closed against him, and only the country lyceum — the people's collegeleft open. Slavery had to be abolished before the most accomplished orator of the nation could be invited to address the graduates of his own university. The first among American scholars was nominated year after year, only to be rejected, before the academic societies of his own neighborhood. Yet during all that time the rural lecture associations showered their invitations on Parker and Phillips; culture shunned them, but the plain people heard them gladly. The home of real thought was outside, not inside, the college walls. That time is past, and the literary class has now come more into sympathy with the popular heart. Even the apparent indifference of a popular audience to culture and high finish may be in the end a wholesome influence, recalling us to those more important things, compared to which these are secondary qualities. The indifference is only compara
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