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1853 AD (search for this): chapter 2
p. 331. For twenty years he continued to be, according to his own statement, the obscurest man of letters in America. Goodrich testifies that it was almost impossible to find a publisher for Twice-told tales in 1837, and I can myself remember how limited a circle greeted the reprint in the enlarged edition of 1841. When Poe, about 1846, wrote patronizingly of Hawthorne, he added, It was never the fashion, until lately, to speak of him in any summary of our best authors. Poe's Works (ed. 1853), III. 189. Whittier once told me that when he himself had obtained, with some difficulty, in 1847, the insertion of one of Hawthorne's sketches in The National Era, the latter said quietly, There is not much market for my wares. It has always seemed to me the greatest triumph of his genius, not that he bore poverty without a murmur, -for what right has a literary man, who can command his time and his art, to sigh after the added enjoyments of mere wealth?-but that he went on doing work of
1853 AD (search for this): chapter 3
r Willis might find herself placed among the Muses. Poe complimented and rather patronized Hawthorne, but found him only peculiar and not original; Works, ed. 1853, III., 202. saying of him, He has not half the material for the exclusiveness of literature that he has for its universality, whatever that may mean; and finally hlance between his Midnight Mass for the Dying year and Tennyson's Death of the Old year, as belonging to the most barbarous class of literary piracy. Works, ed. 1853, III., 325. To make this attack was, as he boasted, to throttle the guilty; Works, ed. 1853, III., 300. and while dealing thus ferociously with Longfellow, thu1853, III., 300. and while dealing thus ferociously with Longfellow, thus condescendingly with Hawthorne, he was claiming a foremost rank among American authors for obscurities now forgotten, such as Mrs. Amelia B. Welby and Estelle Anne Lewis. No one ever did more than Poe to lower the tone of literary criticism in this country; and the greater his talent, the greater the mischief. As a poet he h
October 28th, 1853 AD (search for this): chapter 4
ame, and he has told it plainly. There is nowhere recorded, he complains, a simple and irrepressible satisfaction with the gift of life, any memorable praise of God. ... If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance, like flowers and sweet-scented herbs,--is more elastic, starry, and immortal,--that is your success. Walden, pp. 85, 233. Note.--The following passage is now first published, from Thoreau's manuscript diary, the date being Oct. 28, 1853:-- For a year or two past, my publisher, Munroe, has been writing from time to time to ask what disposition should be made of the copies of A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, still on hand, and at last suggesting that he had use for the room they occupied in his cellar. So I had them all sent to me here; and they have arrived to-day by express, piling the man's wagon, seven hundred and six copies out of an edition of one thousand, which I bought of Munroe four years ago,
1879 AD (search for this): chapter 1
Preface. These brief papers were originally published in The literary world (Boston), and are here reprinted in a revised form, with some additions. Cambridge, Mass., Dec. i, 1879.
Agassiz (search for this): chapter 7
old, has never seen an artist, though the picturesque figure of Allston had but lately disappeared from the streets, at the time mentioned, and Cheney, Staigg, and Eastman Johnson might be seen there any day, with plenty of other artists less known. The household is perfectly amazed and overwhelmed at the sight of two foreigners, although there probably were more cultivated Europeans in Boston thirty years ago than now, having been drawn thither by the personal celebrity or popularity of Agassiz, Ticknor, Longfellow, Sumner, and Dr. Howe. The whole picture-though it is fair to remember that the author calls it a sketch only — seems more like a delineation of American society by Fortunio or Alexandre Dumas fils, than like a portraiture by one to the manor born. The truth is, that Mr. James's cosmopolitanism is, after all, limited: to be really cosmopolitan, a man must be at home even in his own country. There are no short stories in our recent literature, I think, which are so
Allston (search for this): chapter 7
ole sketch of the Wentworth family gives a sense of vagueness. It is not difficult to catch a few unmistakable points, and portray a respectable elderly gentleman reading The daily Advertiser; but all beyond this is indefinite, and, when otherwise, sometimes gives quite an incorrect impression of the place and period described. The family portrayed has access to the best society in Boston; yet the daughter, twenty-three years old, has never seen an artist, though the picturesque figure of Allston had but lately disappeared from the streets, at the time mentioned, and Cheney, Staigg, and Eastman Johnson might be seen there any day, with plenty of other artists less known. The household is perfectly amazed and overwhelmed at the sight of two foreigners, although there probably were more cultivated Europeans in Boston thirty years ago than now, having been drawn thither by the personal celebrity or popularity of Agassiz, Ticknor, Longfellow, Sumner, and Dr. Howe. The whole picture-t
Americans (search for this): chapter 5
an he admitted: he was not merely a good-natured observer, like Geoffrey Crayon, Gentleman, but he had thoughts and purposes, something to protest against, and something to say. He is often classed with Mr. James as representing the international school of novelists, yet in reality they belong to widely different subdivisions. After all, Mr. James has permanently set up his easel in Europe, Mr. Howells in America; and the latter has been, from the beginning, far less anxious to compare Americans with Europeans than with one another. He is international only if we adopt Mr. Emerson's saying, that Europe stretches to the Alleghanies. As a native of Ohio, transplanted to Massachusetts, he never can forego the interest implied in this double point of view. The Europeanized American, and, if we may so say, the Americanized American, are the typical figures that re-appear in his books. Even in The lady of the Aroostook, although the voyagers reach the other side at last, the real co
Americans (search for this): chapter 7
se — which is more probable — it is another instance of that haste in literary workmanship which is one of Mr. James's besetting sins. It may be one result of this extreme rapidity of production, that Mr. James uses certain catch-words so often as to furnish almost a shibboleth for his style; such words, for instance, as brutal, puerile, immense. Another result is seen in his indifference to careful local coloring, especially where the scene is laid in the United States. When he draws Americans in Europe, he is at home; when he brings Europeans across the Atlantic, he never seems quite sure of his ground, except in Newport, which is in some respects the least American spot on this continent. He opens his Europeans by exhibiting horse-cars in the streets of Boston nearly ten years before their introduction, and his whole sketch of the Wentworth family gives a sense of vagueness. It is not difficult to catch a few unmistakable points, and portray a respectable elderly gentleman r
Austen (search for this): chapter 5
tening to conversation, a musical voice gratifies us almost more than wit or wisdom. Mr. Howells is without an equal in America — and therefore without an equal among his English-speaking contemporaries — as to some of the most attractive literary graces. He has no rival in halftints, in modulations, in subtile phrases that touch the edge of an assertion and yet stop short of it. He is like a skater who executes a hundred graceful curves within the limits of a pool a few yards square. Miss Austen, the novelist, once described her art as a little bit of ivory, on which she produced small effect after much labor. She underrated her own skill, as the comparison in some respects underrates that of Howells; but his field is — or has until lately seemed to be — the little bit of ivory. This is attributing to him only what he has been careful to claim for himself. He tells his methods very frankly, and his first literary principle has been to look away from great passions, and rath
Balzac (search for this): chapter 7
s a sort of self-training, gained at the expense of his readers; each sheet, each story, has been hurried into print before the ink was dry, in order to test it on the public,--a method singularly removed from the long and lonely maturing of Hawthorne. L'oisivete est necessaire aux esprits, aussi bien que le travail. Even the later books of Mr. James, especially his travels and his essays, show something of this defect. What a quarry of admirable suggestions is, for instance, his essay on Balzac; but how prolix it is, what repetitions, what a want of condensation and method! The same is true; in a degree, of his papers on George Sand and Turgenieff, while other chapters in his French Poets and Novelists are scarcely more than sketches: the paper on the Theatre Francais hardly mentions Sarah Bernhardt; and, indeed, that on Turgenieff says nothing of his masterpiece, Terres Vierges. Through all these essays he shows delicacy, epigram, quickness of touch, penetration; but he lacks s
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