Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Margaret Fuller Ossoli

[138] minds of the need of something fresh and indigenous, which controlled the criticism of the Transcendentalists; and sometimes made them unjust to the early poetry of a man like Longfellow, who still retained the European symbols, and exasperated them by writing about “Pentecost” and “bishop's-caps,” just as if this continent had never been discovered.

The most striking illustration of the direct literary purpose of this movement is not to be found in the early writings of Emerson, though they make it plain enough; but in a remarkable address given at Cambridge by a young man, whose career was cut short by death, after he had given promise of important service. Robert Bartlett, of Plymouth, Massachusetts, graduated at Cambridge in 1836, and in his “Master of Arts” oration, three years after, took for his theme the phrase, “No good possible, but shall one day be real.” The address attracted great attention, and was afterwards published in an English magazine,¹ under the title, “A Voice from America. The hope of literature.” Nothing then written -nothing in even the “Dial” itself-has preserved for us so good a picture of the working of the new impulse among educated minds, at that day; but the most remarkable passage was that in which the young student announced the possibilities of American Literature, as follows:--

When Horace was affecting to make himself a