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Macaulay (search for this): chapter 7
list named Bismarck. Young Motley wrote a couple of unsuccessful novels, dabbled in diplomacy, politics, and review-writing, and finally, encouraged by Prescott, settled down upon Dutch history, went to Europe to work up his material in 1851, and, after five years, scored an immense triumph with his Rise of the Dutch Republic. He was a brilliant partisan, hating Spaniards and Calvinists, and wrote all the better for this bias. He was an admirable sketcher of historical portraits, and had Macaulay's skill in composing special chapters devoted to the tendencies and qualities of an epoch or to the characteristics of a dynasty. Between 1860 and 1868 he produced the four volumes of the History of the United Netherlands. During the Civil War he served usefully as American minister to Vienna, and in 1869 was appointed minister to London. Both of these appointments ended unhappily for him. Dr. Holmes, his loyal admirer and biographer, does not conceal the fact that a steadier, less exci
Thackeray (search for this): chapter 7
the elixir of immortality. But his vitality was ebbing, and in May, 1864, he passed away in his sleep. He rests under the pines in Sleepy Hollow, near the Alcotts and the Emersons. It is difficult for contemporary Americans to assess the value of such a man, who evidently did nothing except to write a few books. His rare, delicate genius was scarcely touched by passing events. Not many of his countrymen really love his writings, as they love, for instance the writings of Dickens or Thackeray or Stevenson. Everyone reads, at some time of his life, The Scarlet letter, and trembles at its passionate indictment of the sin of concealment, at its agonized admonition, Be true! Be true! Perhaps the happiest memories of Hawthorne's readers, as of Kipling's readers, hover about his charming stories for children; to have missed The Wonder-book is like having grown old without ever catching the sweetness of the green world at dawn. But our public has learned to enjoy a wholly differe
Wendell Phillips (search for this): chapter 7
ations. The Doctor came naturally by his preference for a man of family, being one himself. He was a descendant of Anne Bradstreet, the poetess. Dorothy Q., whom he had made the most picturesque of the Quincys, was his great-grandmother. Wendell Phillips was his cousin. His father, the Rev. Abiel Holmes, a Yale graduate, was the minister of the First Church in Cambridge, and it was in its gambrel-roofed parsonage that Oliver Wendell was born in 1809. Know old Cambridge? Hope you do.- Born His young friend Motley, of Dutch Republic fame, was another Boston Brahmin, born in the year of Prescott's graduation from college. IHe attended George Bancroft's school, went to Harvard in due course, where he knew Holmes, Sumner, and Wendell Phillips, and at Gottingen became a warm friend of a dog-lover and duelist named Bismarck. Young Motley wrote a couple of unsuccessful novels, dabbled in diplomacy, politics, and review-writing, and finally, encouraged by Prescott, settled down upon
Abiel Holmes (search for this): chapter 7
endell Phillips was his cousin. His father, the Rev. Abiel Holmes, a Yale graduate, was the minister of the Ficrat would call the cumulative humanities. Young Holmes became the pet and the glory of his class of 1829 at thereafter they held fifty-six meetings, of which Holmes attended fifty and wrote poems for forty-three. Mawn right, but they remain the Boys to all lovers of Holmes's verses. His own career as a poet had begun durin be seen in his patriotic poems and his hymns. For Holmes possessed, in spite of all his limitations in poetiofessors nor poets are at their best at this meal. Holmes wrote three novels-of which Elsie Venner, a somewhaelf is still contagious. To pronounce the words Doctor Holmes in any company of intelligent Americans is the p James Russell Lowell was ten years younger than Holmes, and though he died three years before the Doctor, though by birth as much of a New England Brahmin as Holmes, and in his later years as much of a Boston and Cam
Edgar Allan Poe (search for this): chapter 7
aste, seems somewhat oldfashioned, like Irving or Addison. He is perhaps too completely a New Englander to be understood by men of other stock, and has never, like Poe and Whitman, excited strong interest among European minds. Yet no American is surer, generation after generation, of finding a fit audience. Hawthorne's genius for instance, but in the actual performance of the critical function he was surpassed in method by Arnold and perhaps in inerrant perception, in a limited field, by Poe. It was as a poet, however, that he first won his place in our literature, and it is by means of certain passages in the Biglow papers and the Commemoration Ode repainting style, all these were theirs. But the wild ecstasy that thrilled the young Emerson as he crossed the bare Common at sunset, the supernal beauty of which Poe dreamed in the Fordham cottage, the bay horse and hound and turtle-dove which Thoreau lost long ago and could not find in his hut at Walden, these were something wh
Tennyson (search for this): chapter 7
llow the Poet. His outward life, like Hawthorne's, was barren of dramatic incident, save the one tragic accident by which his second wife, the mother of his children, perished before his eyes in 1861. He bore the calamity with the quiet courage of his race and breeding. But otherwise his days ran softly and gently, enriched with books and friendships, sheltered from the storms of circumstance. He had leisure to grow ripe, to remember, and to dream. But he never secluded himself, like Tennyson, from normal contacts with his fellowmen. The owner of the Craigie House was a good neighbor, approachable and deferential. He was even interested in local Cambridge politics. On the larger political issues of his day his Americanism was sound and loyal. It is disheartening, he wrote in his Cambridge journal for 1851, to see how little sympathy there is in the hearts of the young men here for freedom and great ideas. But his own sympathy never wavered. His linguistic talent helped hi
Matthew Arnold (search for this): chapter 7
t it is felt in most of his longer efforts in prose, and accounts for a certain dissatisfaction which many grateful and loyal readers nevertheless feel in his criticism. Lowell was more richly endowed by nature and by breadth of reading than Matthew Arnold, for instance, but in the actual performance of the critical function he was surpassed in method by Arnold and perhaps in inerrant perception, in a limited field, by Poe. It was as a poet, however, that he first won his place in our literaArnold and perhaps in inerrant perception, in a limited field, by Poe. It was as a poet, however, that he first won his place in our literature, and it is by means of certain passages in the Biglow papers and the Commemoration Ode that he has most moved his countrymen. The effectiveness of The present crisis and Sir Launfal, and of the Memorial Odes, particularly the Ode to Agassiz, is likewise due to the passion, sweetness, and splendor of certain strophes, rather than to the perfection of these poems as artistic wholes. Lowell's personal lyrics of sorrow, such as The Changeling, the first Snowfall, after the Burial, have touche
Spenser (search for this): chapter 7
eritance and temperament, though not in doctrine or in sympathy. His literary affiliations were with the English and German Romanticists, and he possessed, for professional use, the ideas and vocabulary of his transcendental friends. Born in Salem in 1804, he was descended from Judge Haw. thorne of Salem Witchcraft fame, and from a long line of sea-faring ancestors. He inherited a morbid solitariness, redeemed in some measure by a physical endowment of rare strength and beauty. He read Spenser, Rousseau, and the Newgate Calendar, was graduated at Bowdoin, with Longfellow, in the class of 1825, and returned to Salem for thirteen brooding lonely years in which he tried to teach himself the art of story-writing. His earliest tales, like Irving's, are essays in which characters emerge; he is absorbed in finding a setting for a preconceived moral ; he is in love with allegory and parable. His own words about his first collection of stories, Twice-told tales, have often been quoted:
Bismarck (search for this): chapter 7
the younger historians are incompetent for the task. Prescott died in 1859, in the same year as Irving, and he already seems quite as remote from the present hour. His young friend Motley, of Dutch Republic fame, was another Boston Brahmin, born in the year of Prescott's graduation from college. IHe attended George Bancroft's school, went to Harvard in due course, where he knew Holmes, Sumner, and Wendell Phillips, and at Gottingen became a warm friend of a dog-lover and duelist named Bismarck. Young Motley wrote a couple of unsuccessful novels, dabbled in diplomacy, politics, and review-writing, and finally, encouraged by Prescott, settled down upon Dutch history, went to Europe to work up his material in 1851, and, after five years, scored an immense triumph with his Rise of the Dutch Republic. He was a brilliant partisan, hating Spaniards and Calvinists, and wrote all the better for this bias. He was an admirable sketcher of historical portraits, and had Macaulay's skill in
Nathaniel Hawthorne (search for this): chapter 7
n they were seekers after the unattainable. Hawthorne, for example, sojourned at Concord and at Brimaginative moral romance, The Marble Faun. Hawthorne returned home in 1860 and settled in the Way; no reader of The Scarlet letter can forget Hawthorne's implicit condemnation of the unimaginative. By an incomparable succession of pictures Hawthorne exhibits the travail of their souls. In the But the Norseman would have failed to rival Hawthorne's delicate manipulation of his shadows, and nt of the Maules. In The Blithedale romance Hawthorne stood for once, perhaps, too near his materik is not quite focussed. In The Marble Faun Hawthorne comes into his own again. Its central probled guide-book to the Eternal City. All of Hawthorne's books, in short, have a central core of psrom Bowdoin at eighteen. Like his classmate Hawthorne, he had been a wide and secretly ambitious rngfellow the Poet. His outward life, like Hawthorne's, was barren of dramatic incident, save the[10 more...]
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