Chapter XIII: Part 13

_Minor Transcendentalists._--Minor transcendentalists, and connected therefore with Emerson and Thoreau, were Amos Bronson Alcott (1799-1888), and Sarah Margaret Fuller (1810-1850). Both, like Emerson, were contributors to _The Dial_ but unlike him did not hold aloof from the Brook Farm experiment. Alcott’s chief works were “Tablets” (1868), “Concord Days” (1872), and “Table Talk” (1877); Margaret Fuller’s, “A Summer on the Lakes” (1843), “Woman in the Nineteenth Century” (1844), and “Papers on Literature and Art” (1846). Other essayists who may be mentioned as identifying themselves with the Brook Farm movement or with the Transcendental Club out of which it grew, were three noted clergymen, William Ellery Channing (1780-1842), the founder of the club; Theodore Parker (1810-1860), the pulpit representative of its theories, and James Freeman Clarke (1810-1888), a frequent contributor to its organ, _The Dial_. In later years each of these men published works which are still occasionally read. Channing’s numerous writings were brought together in five volumes in 1841, and, under the title “The Perfect Life,” a selection from them was made in 1872. He must not be confused with a younger William Ellery Channing (1818-1901), his brother’s son, the author of a monograph on “Thoreau, the Poet Naturalist” (1873) and of “Conversations from Rome” (1902). Parker’s chief works aside from his sermons were “Miscellaneous Writings” (1843) and “Historic Americans” (1870); Clarke’s, “Orthodoxy, its Truths and Errors” (1866) and “Ten Great Religions” (1871).

The Transcendental Movement appealed to all sorts and conditions of men: philosophers exchanged ideas with journalists, and ministers with writers of fiction. Of the members who later became known as editors the most important were George Ripley (1802-1880), Charles Anderson Dana (1819-1897), and George William Curtis (1824-1892), all of whom at some time or other were upon the staff of _The New York Tribune_. Ripley and Dana were joint editors of “The American Encyclopedia” (1857-1863); but they also worked independently, the former putting together fourteen volumes entitled “Specimens of Foreign Standard Literature” (1838-1842), the latter making that still famous collection “The Household Book of Poetry and Song” (1857). Curtis’ interests were so many and so various that he has been classified as journalist, orator, publicist, and author. His most important works were “Lotus Eating” (1852), “Potiphar Papers” (1853), and “Essays from the Easy Chair” (1891), the last a collection of brief papers originally contributed to _Harper’s Magazine_.

_Oliver Wendell Holmes._--Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894) stands in some contrast to the chief writers of the Transcendental School. On the whole they were marked by deliberate seriousness, but he possessed a clear, crisp spontaneity which often broke forth into sparkling fun. Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a member of what he facetiously styled “The Brahmin Caste” of New England, he counted among his ancestors more than one English governor of the Colonial period and that famous woman of her time, Anne Bradstreet, “the Tenth Muse.” After being graduated from Harvard College in 1829, he studied law for a year and then turned to medicine. Completing his education in Paris, Holmes returned to America in 1835 to enter upon the practice of his profession, but in 1839 accepted a professorship of anatomy at Dartmouth College, in New Hampshire. The following year he entered upon a similar position in the Harvard Medical School, and remained there until 1882. In 1886, Holmes visited Europe and received honorary degrees from Edinburgh, Oxford, and Cambridge. The eight remaining years of his life he spent quietly at his home in Boston, graciously receiving even strangers, who felt that they had not really seen that city unless they had shaken Dr. Holmes by the hand.

Of Holmes’ prose work his “Breakfast Table” series best defends his right to claim a permanent place of fame. “The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table,” after appearing serially in the first and second volumes of _The Atlantic Monthly_ (1857-1858), was immediately republished in book form, and was succeeded by “The Professor at the Breakfast Table” (1859), “The Poet at the Breakfast Table” (1872), and “Over the Tea-Cups” (1891). These works, which have been rather aptly characterised as “a cross between an essay and a drama,” contain comments on almost everything in the heavens above, the earth beneath, and the waters under the earth. The books are at times delightfully whimsical and scintillatingly witty, at others deeply serious and minutely analytic, and at still others tenderly generous and movingly pathetic. Holmes’ other important works in prose are two volumes of biography, a “Memoir of John Lothrop Motley” (1879) and a “Life of Ralph Waldo Emerson” (1884); one book of essays, “Pages from an Odd Volume of Life” (1883); and one diary of travel, “Our Hundred Days in Europe” (1887).

_Willis_, _Mitchell_, _and Warner_.--Nathaniel Parker Willis (1806-1867), Donald Grant Mitchell (born in 1822), and Charles Dudley Warner (1829-1900) are suggested by the mention of Holmes, for they, like him, were writers of the “genial” essay. Willis was born in Portland, Maine, and was graduated from Yale at the age of twenty-one. Entering upon a journalistic career in 1828, he spent a considerable number of years abroad, whence he sent home for the periodicals of his day frequent accounts of his foreign travel and experiences. His complete works have been collected into thirteen volumes, but the best of his writing may be found in two books published during his lifetime, “Pencillings by the Way” (1835) and “Letters from Under a Bridge” (1840). Willis wrote with most painstaking care. It has been left upon record by James Parton that Willis “bestowed upon everything he did the most careful labour, making endless erasures and emendations. On an average he blotted one line out of every three that he wrote, and on one page of his editorial writing there were but three lines left unaltered.” It may be added, in passing, that Willis’ father in 1827 founded the well known and widely read _Youth’s Companion_. Mitchell, for many years better known as “Ik Marvel,” was, like Willis, a New Englander by birth and a graduate of Yale College. He, also, spent a few years abroad, acting, in fact, as United States Consul at Venice in 1853-1855. His works were many, but he is best known as the author of “Reveries of a Bachelor” (1850) and “Dream Life” (1851). Warner was in many respects the strongest writer of this group. A New Englander by birth, he was graduated at Hamilton College, Clinton, New York, then studied law at the University of Pennsylvania, and finally began the practice of his profession in Chicago. In 1860 he was called to Hartford, Connecticut, as editor of a daily paper, and from then on gave himself up to journalism and other literary interests. His works were many and varied; the most important are “My Summer in a Garden” (1870), “Backlog Studies” (1872), “My Winter on the Nile” (1876), and a “Life of Washington Irving” (1881).

_Some Travellers._--Bayard Taylor’s experiences abroad found their expression in a number of books; but, readable as they all are, the first, “Views Afoot” (1846), is the best. It is a work to be compared with Irving’s “Sketch Book” and Longfellow’s “Outre Mer”; it may not be far wrong to assign it to a place between the two, inferior to the first, superior to the second. From Taylor’s numerous works in other departments of pure literature, “Studies in German Literature” (1879) and “Essays and Notes” (1880) may be chosen for mention.

At the risk of departing somewhat from chronological order, one may mention at this point a few authors who, like Taylor, left records of their travels and adventures. The earliest of these, an older man in fact than Taylor, was Elisha Kent Kane (1820-1857), the Arctic explorer, who related in “The Grinnell Expeditions” (1854-1856), the story of the two unsuccessful attempts to find Sir John Franklin. Much nearer to our time were Henry M. Stanley (1841-1890) and George Kennan (born in 1845). Stanley was born in Wales, it is true, and was knighted by Queen Victoria in 1890; but his explorations in Africa were made while he was a citizen of the United States. His best-known work is his first, “How I Found Livingston” (1872). Kennan experienced adventures in still another part of the world. Sent to Siberia by the American Telegraph Association to superintend the construction of lines, he published, in 1870, “Tent Life in Siberia.” Several years later he returned to the same country as correspondent of _The Century Magazine_ to investigate social and political conditions there. He published the results of his observations in “Siberia and the Exile System” (1891).

_Holland_, _Lowell_, _and Others_.--The essay of travel, it will have to be admitted, has carried us pretty well out of the realm of pure literature and brought us down to very recent times. If we have seemed to ignore certain writers, some less and some greater, it was but to return to them for fuller mention. Josiah Gilbert Holland (1819-1881) was born in Belchertown, Massachusetts, and while still a young man became associate editor of _The Springfield Republican_. In 1870 he assisted in the foundation of _Scribner’s Monthly_ and became its editor-in-chief. He tried his hand at various forms of literature and at one time was not far from being the most popular writer in the United States. To this day there is hardly an American household unprovided with a copy of one of the early editions of “Timothy Titcomb’s Letters” (1858), “Gold Foil” (1859), or “Plain Talks on Familiar Subjects” (1865). James Russell Lowell (1819-1891) contributed many articles to _The Atlantic_ and _The North American Review_; some of this work has not yet been collected, but the best of it may be found scattered through the seven volumes of his complete prose works (1890-1891). During his lifetime Lowell published several collections of essays; the most valuable are “Fireside Travels” (1864), “Among my Books” (1870), and “My Study Windows” (1871). As one looks over their contents, one is surprised at the versatility of their writer. The essay of reminiscence, “A Moosehead Journal” or “Cambridge Thirty Years Ago,” balances the essay of travel, “At Sea” or “A Few Bits of Roman Mosaic”; the historical essay, “New England Two Centuries Ago,” is matched by the nature study, “My Garden Acquaintance”; the purely literary sketch, “Shakespeare Once More,” stands beside the book review “Witchcraft” or “A Great Public Character”; and the political speech, “Democracy” or “Tariff Reform,” adds a certain virility to the notes of a response to the toast “Our Literature” or to the address on “Books and Reading” delivered at the opening of a free public library. Lowell is ironical in “On a Certain Condescension in Foreigners,” witty in “A Good Word for Winter,” genial in “A Library of Old Authors,” sympathetic in “Emerson the Lecturer,” just in “Thoreau,” firm in “Reconstruction” and “Abraham Lincoln,” thoughtful in “The Rebellion: Its Causes and Consequences,” and scholarly in “Chaucer” and “Dante.” Aristocratic in the best sense of that much abused term, cultured in manner, robust and vigorous in thought, clean and fresh in mind, Lowell still stands forth as America’s finest representative man of letters.

The greatness of Lowell has by no means dimmed the renown of certain of his lesser contemporaries. Edward Everett Hale (born in 1822), Thomas Wentworth Higginson (born in 1823), and Charles Eliot Norton (1827-1908) deserve at least passing mention, although the first two are better known for contributions to magazines than for books, and the last has gained attention mainly through his biographical work and his translation of Dante. Owing to the popularity of a story, “The Man Without a Country,” Dr. Hale has unfortunately become known as an author of one book, but his “Puritan Politics in England and New England” (1869) is valuable, and his “Franklin in France” (1887), written with the assistance of his son, is interesting and trustworthy. Mr. Higginson has tried his hand at biography, historical memoranda, criticism, and fiction: probably his best work is found in “Outdoor Papers” (1863), “Atlantic Essays” (1871), and “The New World and the New Book” (1891). Of the three authors here mentioned, Dr. Norton is the most important; he is more than a writer; he is in addition a scholar. Knowing intimately all of the foremost writers of this country, he was hardly less well acquainted with the most important English authors of the middle and later Victorian period. In addition to his monumental prose translation of Dante’s “New Life” (1858) and “Divine Comedy” (1892), he has edited such books as “The Early Letters of Thomas Carlyle” (1886), “The Letters of James Russell Lowell” (1893), and “The Letters of John Ruskin” (1904). His chief original works are “Notes of Travel and Study in Italy” (1859) and “Historical Studies of Church-Building in the Middle Ages” (1880). The scholarship of Dr. Norton immediately suggests that of other men. George Ticknor (1791-1887) by the date of his birth seems to belong to a period slightly earlier than that of Norton; in fact he immediately preceded Longfellow as professor of belles-lettres at Harvard. His chief work was “A History of Spanish Literature” (1849). As a valuable piece of criticism, it has not been superseded, and even in Spain is accepted as authoritative. Somewhat later than Ticknor in point of time was Francis James Child (1825-1896). Educated at Harvard College, he was a professor there for nearly half a century. Devoting himself to the study of the ballad as a literary form, he published the results of his work in eight volumes under the title “English and Scottish Popular Ballads” (1857-1859). Closely connected with these several authors was James Thomas Fields (1817-1881). Founder of _The Atlantic Monthly_ and member of a famous publishing house, he was acquainted more or less intimately with every important American writer of the last half of the nineteenth century. He was not without literary skill himself, publishing among other works “Yesterdays with Authors” (1872) and “Underbrush” (1881). His wife, Annie Adams Fields (born in 1834), has written a number of books in a similar vein: the most valuable, perhaps, are “A Shelf of Old Books” and “Authors and Friends,” both published in 1896.

_Shakespearean Scholars._--Harking back to Norton and Ticknor as representative American students of foreign literatures, one naturally takes pleasure in seeing that the field of Shakespearean scholarship has been by no means neglected in this country. Henry Norman Hudson (1814-1886) may be said to have been the first American to turn a furrow; for, after publishing “Lectures on Shakespeare” (1848), he devoted himself to a critical study of the plays and finally produced a work still mentioned with respect, “Shakespeare: His Life, Art, and Characters” (1872). Meanwhile Richard Grant White (1822-1885) had published “The Authorship of the Three Parts of Henry VI.” (1859) and “Memoirs of the Life of Shakespeare” (1865). Interested in other subjects for a time, he wrote “Words and Their Uses” (1870) and “England Without and Within” (1881); then, returning to his early interests, he produced “Studies in Shakespeare” (1885). Perhaps Edwin Percy Whipple (1819-1886) deserves mention at this place, for after writing “Essays and Reviews” (1849), and “Character and Characteristic Men” (1866), he published “The Literature of the Age of Elizabeth” (1869). Nor is it possible to overlook Thomas Raynesford Lounsbury (born in 1838), who added to his extensive “Studies in Chaucer” (1892) a trilogy of studies entitled “Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist” (1901), “Shakespeare and Voltaire” (1902), and “The Text of Shakespeare” (1906). But easily the foremost Shakespearean scholar in America is Horace Howard Furness (born in 1833), whose “Variorum Shakespeare” as a painstaking and authoritative work stands unsurpassed in any language. Recently Mr. Furness has associated his son with him in his investigations, and we may therefore expect with some confidence that a study of Shakespeare on the largest scale up to this time attempted may be completed according to the traditions with which it was begun.

_Literary Historians._--Widely interested as the scholars of this country have been in the greater writers and the more important literature of other lands, there has been no dearth of attention to our own. Moses Coit Tyler (1835-1900), sometime professor of American history at Cornell University, was the author of two valuable works, “History of American Literature during the Colonial Times” (1878) and “Literary History of the American Revolution” (1897). Charles Francis Richardson (born in 1851), professor of English in Dartmouth College, has covered the whole range of our literary history down to 1885 in his “American Literature” (1887); and Barrett Wendell (born in 1855) of Harvard University, in his “Literary History of America” (1901), has brought his treatment of the same topic down to the beginning of the present century. Professor Wendell has written upon other American topics in “Stelligeri” (1893), and “A Life of Cotton Mather” (1891). More recently he has published two works, both the result of his residence abroad as a lecturing professor: the substance of the first, “The Temper of the Seventeenth Century in English Literature” (1904), was delivered before Trinity College, Cambridge; that of the second, “The France of To-Day” (1907) was gathered while he was giving a course of lectures in Paris.

Members of other American college faculties have given evidence of minute research and strong inspiration in books not a few. James Brander Matthews (born in 1852) of Columbia University, and George Edward Woodberry (born in 1855), for many years connected with the same university, have both written books that have gained popular approval; of the former, “French Dramatists of the Nineteenth Century” (1881) and “The Historical Novel” (1901) certainly deserve mention; of the latter, “The Life of Poe” (1885) and “The Appreciation of Literature” (1907). No less significant than these men are Felix Emmanuel Schelling (born in 1858) of the University of Pennsylvania, whose latest work is “The Elizabethan Drama” (1908), and Vida Dutton Scudder (born in 1861) of Wellesley College, who cannot be left unnoticed, so thorough and satisfactory are her “Life of the Spirit in the Modern English Poets” (1895) and “Social Ideals in English Letters” (1898). Woodrow Wilson, president of Princeton University, has spared time from his political and historical studies to write an interesting volume of essays called “Mere Literature” (1896); President Wilson’s former colleague, Bliss Perry (born in 1860), now editor of _The Atlantic Monthly_ and professor of belles-lettres at Harvard, has published a valuable “Study of Prose Fiction” (1902), and another Princeton professor, Henry Jackson Van Dyke (born in 1852), has written an especially useful study called “The Poetry of Tennyson” (1889), and has also shown himself a master of the leisurely essay in “Little Rivers” (1895) and “Fisherman’s Luck” (1899).

_The Nature Writers._--Professor Van Dyke’s “outdoor essays,” as they are sometimes called, carry us back to the earlier nature writers, for between him and Thoreau there is no wide hiatus. John Burroughs (born in 1837) has written a considerable number of books dealing with his observations out of doors, although he has by no means neglected the purely literary topic. The mention of his earlier works gives an adequate index of all his subject-matter. “Wake-Robin” appeared in 1870, “Birds and Poets” in 1875, and “Whitman, a Study” in 1896. To be closely associated with Mr. Burroughs is Bradford Torrey (born in 1843); his chief works are “Birds in the Bush” (1885), “The Footpath Way” (1892), and “A World of Green Hills” (1898). Nor can Olive Thorne Miller (born in 1831) be overlooked: she began to write studies of birds about 1880, and among other works, all of considerable interest, she has published “In Nesting Time” (1888), “A Bird-Lover in the West” (1894), and “Under the Tree-Tops” (1897). The writers just mentioned are not to be regarded, of course, as scientists or even as scientific writers in the commonly accepted sense of those terms. They look upon nature with the loving rather than the analytic eye, and register their appreciative feelings rather than their minute observations. They have much in common, therefore, with the purely literary essayists whose names are not far from legion. Although unable to mention all who have recently attracted attention, we must not forget William Winter (born in 1836), whose best prose works date back but a quarter of a century: he published “Shakespeare’s England” in 1888, “Gray Days and Gold” in 1891, and “The Life and Art of Edwin Booth” in 1894. Neither can we ignore Hamilton Wright Mabie (born in 1845), literary editor of _The Outlook_. His books are many and widely popular: probably the series of three volumes called “My Study Fire” (1890, 1894, and 1899) and “Shakespeare: Poet, Dramatist, and Man” (1900) are best known. Not less significant is Paul Elmer More (born in 1864) of the editorial staff of _The Nation_. In addition to translations from Sanskrit and from Greek, he has published five books all bearing the title “Shelburne Essays” (1904-1908).

_Other Essayists._--Finally, so far as essayists are concerned, some rapid review must be made of the novelists and the later poets who have not restricted themselves to the fields of their chief labour. This takes us back as far as Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864), whose “Our Old Home” (1863) is a collection of valuable essays on various English topics. The saying “Like father, like son” was exemplified when Julian Hawthorne (born in 1846) brought out “Saxon Studies” (1876), a book of like purport with his father’s. The mention of more than one writer in a family suggests the elder Henry James (1811-1882) and his two sons, William and Henry. The father is best remembered as a theological and philosophical writer through his “Moralism and Christianity” (1852) and “Lectures and Miscellanies” (1852). The elder son, William James (born in 1842), for many years professor of psychology in Harvard University, besides being the author of several technical works in the science to which he is devoted, has written “The Will to Believe, and Other Essays” (1897), “Is Life Worth Living?” (1898), and “Pragmatism” (1906). The younger Henry James (born in 1843), in addition to being a novelist, is also the author of “A Little Tour in France” (1884), “Partial Portraits” (1888), and “Essays in London and Elsewhere” (1893). For some reason not strongly apparent, William Dean Howells (born in 1837) is almost always associated in the minds of readers with Henry James the novelist. Editor for a time of _The Atlantic Monthly_, and later connected first with the staff of _Harper’s Magazine_, and afterwards with that of _The Cosmopolitan_, he has made many books of essays. The best are “Venetian Life” (1866), “Italian Journeys” (1867), and “Criticism and Fiction” (1895). Belonging by birth to a later decade, Francis Marion Crawford (born in 1854) is near to being America’s most prolific writer. His most important work, outside the domain of the novel, is a small volume connected in content with the art which he chiefly affects, “The Novel, What It Is” (1903). It attracted much attention upon its appearance, and is still often quoted. Mr. Crawford is also the author of “The Rulers of the South” (1900) and “Gleanings from Venetian History” (1905). The woman novelists cannot be ignored as writers of essays, for not only do they possess powers of penetration and insight, but two of them, at least, have swayed public opinion to no inappreciable extent. Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) in addition to her many books of fiction wrote a very much discussed study entitled “Lady Byron Vindicated” (1870) and “The American Woman’s Home” (1869), at one time thought to be the final word upon domestic questions. A writer of hardly less importance was Helen Hunt Jackson (1831-1885), still popularly known by her pseudonym of “H. H.” Her most valuable study was “A Century of Dishonour” (1881), in which she laid bare the ill-treatment accorded the American Indians; she succeeded through its pages in doing much to ameliorate their unfortunate condition. Mrs. Jackson’s “Bits of Travel” (1873) and “Between Whiles” (1887) are interesting and readable.

The more important later poets who have contributed to essay literature are led by that erratic but remarkable genius, Walt Whitman (1819-1892). His collected “Prose Works,” published in the year of his death, contain much more true common sense than his writings are popularly assumed to show. The main titles included in the contents are those of small volumes printed at various intervals: “Specimen Days” (1882), “November Boughs” (1888), and “Good-Bye, My Fancy” (1891). Edmund Clarence Stedman (1833-1908) and Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1836-1907), who in their poetry followed the traditions established by Longfellow and Lowell, were the authors of not unimportant prose works. The former wrote three valuable books: “Victorian Poets” (1875), “Poets of America” (1885), and “The Nature and Elements of Poetry” (1892); the latter author produced two volumes of travel and reminiscence: “From Ponkapog to Pesth” (1883) and “An Old Town by the Sea” (1893). Possibly allied rather with Whitman than with the other poets just mentioned, Sidney Lanier (1842-1881) may justly stand at the close of our list of American critical writers. He subjected the methods of metrical composition to minute scrutiny, and published the results of his investigations as “The Science of English Verse” (1881). Turning then to a study of fiction, he wrote an important work entitled “The English Novel and Its Development” (1885). Since Lanier’s death, his executors have brought together many of his lectures and papers under the titles of “Music and Poetry” (1898), and “Shakspere and his Forerunners” (1902).

=The Humourists.=--It is a far cry from the serious thought of Sidney Lanier to the ludicrous perversities of Mark Twain; yet between these two lies an extensive territory freely admitted by foreign critics to be distinctly and perhaps typically American. The humour of this country is different from that found anywhere else in the world. At times, it is true, it exhibits the sparkling characteristics of the Irishman’s wit, at others the keen shrewdness of the Frenchman’s _bon-mot_; certainly it is never less sprightly than the work of the English joker, nor less spontaneous than that of the German jester. In fact it may savour of any one, or of all the qualities just mentioned, and even of many others. The truth of the matter is, composite as a nation, we preserve in our humour the best traits of the elements out of which we are formed, and pretty generally add to the mixture a flavour indigenous to the soil upon which we flourish.

_Humour of the Colonial Period._--In the early periods of our history, conscious humour did not exist. The colonists were too intent upon subduing the wilderness and safeguarding their religion to spend time in making fun. Their steeple-crowned hats, their staid garb, and the severe simplicity of their speech and conduct may seem ridiculous to us now; but, depend upon it, these were very serious matters to the Puritans themselves. A sudden outbreak of frivolity, whether it showed in a departure from the accepted dress or in an unusual use of language, would have been looked upon as sufficient cause for an immediate ecclesiastical investigation and solemn condemnation. Surely a community that in all seriousness could pass a law making it a finable offence in a man to kiss his wife on Sunday, would have been horror-stricken at the irreverent flippancy of Eli Perkins and of George Ade, and would no doubt have called down anathema upon Bill Nye and possibly even upon Carolyn Wells.

_Humour of the Revolutionary Period._--Nor did circumstances permit the rise of humour in the Revolutionary period. The great joke of that time was the struggle between the pigmy and the giant, ending in the discomfiture of the latter to the tune of

“Yankee Doodle came to town.”

A few grim remarks have come down to us, it must be admitted, remarks which amuse us now, but which could have been little provocative of laughter when they were uttered. Certainly we have no record of hilarious mirth filling the chamber when at the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Franklin sharply replied to the remark, “Well, in this matter I suppose we must all hang together,” with the words, “Yes, or we shall all hang separately!” Life indeed was far too serious in both the earlier periods of American history and literature to be made a source of amusement. True, we have not a little work, satiric in tone, from such writers as the patriot, John Trumbull (1750-1831), and the Tory, Jonathan Odell (1737-1881), of whom the first in his “M’Fingal” (1775-1782) imitated Butler’s “Hudibras,” and the second in his “Word of Congress” (1779) and “The American Times” (1780) followed models set up by Dryden, Pope, and Churchill. Joel Barlow (1754-1812), too, deserves passing mention here for his mock-heroic poem, “The Hasty Pudding” (1793); and Philip Freneau (1752-1832) must be named on account of several briefer pieces of verse intended, no doubt, to be funny, but succeeding only in being abusive and vituperative of British leaders and British methods. On the whole, the efforts of all these writers, so far as humour is concerned, were little better than clumsy; and nowadays, if we bother with their works at all, we laugh at the authors rather than with them.

_The Imitative School._--Conscious or deliberate American humour, then, can hardly be said to have shown itself before the early years of the nineteenth century. When it did appear, moreover, it was strongly imitative of English models and exhibited itself not as the most striking trait, but as only one of many qualities characterising an author’s style. Indeed, barring the work of a mere handful of writers, we find such American humour as is likely to live woven into books which endure for other reasons than because they awaken laughter. For the earliest instance of any importance, we may mention Washington Irving, a writer already discussed as an essayist. He exhibits in various parts of his work a sparkling effervescence which, if a little more spontaneous than that found in _The Spectator_, is none the less strongly suggestive, like his more serious work, of Addison and Steele, and perhaps also of Goldsmith and Swift.

_The Restrained School._--Less noticeably imitative of foreign work, the whimsicalities of Oliver Wendell Holmes, of James Russell Lowell, and of Charles Dudley Warner have been deemed sufficiently important to make each the subject of a chapter in more than one English work vainly endeavouring to analyse and classify that subtle something which makes American humour funny. With apparent gravity Holmes could ask the startling question, “Why is an onion like a piano?” and in answer convulse his readers with the atrocious pun, “Because it smell odious!” His characterisation of an afternoon reception as “Giggle, gabble, gobble, git,” is worthy of frequent quotation; and one passage in his “Music Grinders” is of perennial value. Wearied by the discordant tunes issuing from a hurdy-gurdy, the distracted poet at last exclaims:

“But hark! the air again is still
The music all is ground,
And silence, like a poultice, comes
To heal the blows of sound.”

The man who has had the experience here set down, appreciates both the pathos and the humour of a passage like that. Lowell’s humour is akin to that of Holmes. It breaks out in nearly every essay that he wrote, and almost runs riot in some of his poems. Speaking of the destruction of a certain hill that a city street might be improved, he remarked in “Cambridge Thirty Years Ago” (1854): “The landscape was carried away cart-load by cart-load, and, dumped down on the roads, forms a part of that unfathomable pudding which has, I fear, drawn many a teamster and pedestrian to the use of phrases not commonly found in English dictionaries.” There is much humour in Lowell, more stirring than this, but the quotation exhibits the readiness with which he would give an unexpected turn to a sentence, or throw in an unlooked-for reference or expression, too delicate to be shocking, too subtle to arouse loud laughter, but capable none the less of sending a ripple of amusement over the calmest gravity. For work professedly humorous throughout, we must turn to “A Fable for Critics” (1848) or to “The Biglow Papers” (1848). Both contain much good hard common sense, but the humour instead of being a mere accident of expression is the real reason for the existence of the greater part of each work. More closely allied to Lowell, perhaps, than to either Irving or Holmes, Warner produced no work exclusively funny. Still there is hardly a page of “My Summer in a Garden” (1870) or of “In the Wilderness” (1878) which does not have at least one laughable sentence. For this reason Warner defies quotation: his chapters must be read in their entirety rather than in chance snatches.

_The Professional Humourists._--Turning now from those writers of humour who have been looked upon by some critics as forming an “imitative school” and by others as constituting what they have more happily termed a “restrained school,” we come upon a widely extended group of writers who profess to have no higher calling than the awakening of mere laughter. If we call them collectively the “professional school of American humourists,” we need not feel ourselves debarred from regarding them as falling naturally into several classes, to each of which we may give some special name, such as “the milder school,” “the women humourists,” “the boisterous group,” and the like. We must not forget, however, that no hard and fast dividing lines can be drawn between the different classes, since the fact that a writer is a woman does not necessarily prevent her writing boisterous humour, or that a man who is generally almost clown-like may not sometimes produce a rare and refined piece of fun. Furthermore, it happens that the very naturalness with which the humourists fall into groups and classes prevents their being discussed in chronological order. The milder fun-makers have existed side by side with their hilarious brethren from the beginning, so that one must ignore, except in the slightest way, the order determined mainly by accidents of birth, or dates of publication.

_The Women Humourists._--Politeness demands that we speak of the women humourists first: in the fore-front of these we must place Mrs. Frances Miriam Whitcher (1811-1852). She made her first appearance as a writer in _Neal’s Saturday Gazette_ about 1845, and to that paper contributed a long series of articles purporting to come from the pen of “the Widow Bedott.” From the first she attracted attention, and interest in her work has never wholly ceased. Such was the demand for her writings that after her death two collections of articles from her pen were made and published as “The Widow Bedott Papers” (1855), and “Widow Sprigg, Mary Elmer, and Other Sketches” (1867).

Closely related in form and content to “The Widow Bedott Papers” was a book published in 1873 with the title “My Opinions and Betsy Bobbet’s.” Although immediately popular, it was for many years supposed to be the work of its professed author, Samanthy Allen; but by the time “P. A. and P. I. or Samanthy at the Centennial” appeared, in 1876, the secret had leaked out that “Josiah Allen’s Wife” was the pseudonym of Marietta Holley (born in 1844), a native of Adams, New York. A contributor to _Peterson’s Magazine_, _The Christian Union_, _The Independent_, and other periodicals, and the author of numerous books, she has gained considerable renown. Her earlier works are her best; for as time went on she diluted her skill in fun-making by permitting her interest in the temperance question, the woman-suffrage movement, and negro education to interfere with the power of her wit. Miss Holley’s work has attracted some attention abroad, and has been translated into several foreign languages. Merely pausing to mention Mary Abigail Dodge (1830-1896), a native of Hamilton, Massachusetts, who, forming her pseudonym from a part of her own name and from that of her birthplace, made herself famous as “Gail Hamilton” in work both grave and gay; and stopping only to call attention to the fact that Harriet Beecher Stowe in “Old Town Folks” (1869) gave us an unusually funny book, we may choose from the host of women who are moving us to laughter the most industrious of them all, Carolyn Wells. As a writer of the verse form called the _limerick_ she has more than once equalled Edward Lear, and as a parodist she shocks a reader to silence by her audacity.

_The Milder Humourists._--In what may be called the milder school of American humourists Seba Smith (1792-1868) was the leader in point of time. Graduated from Bowdoin College in 1818, Smith began almost immediately to contribute editorially to the papers of Portland, Maine. In addition to more serious works, he wrote, under the pen-name of “Major Jack Downing,” a series of political articles in New England dialect, thus anticipating Lowell’s “Biglow Papers” by several years. Smith was the author of a number of books, the best known of which are probably “Way Down East” (1853) and “My Thirty Years Out of the Senate” (1859), the latter a homely and vigorous parody of Senator T. H. Benton’s “Thirty Years’ View of the American Government.” Writing not long after Seba Smith, John Godfrey Saxe (1816-1887) early sprang into fame. The author of a considerable amount of prose, he attracted far wider attention by his verse. In the latter he showed the working of a strong English influence; indeed, it is not too much to say that had there been no Thomas Hood, there would have been no Saxe. Born at Highgate, Vermont, and graduated from Middlebury College in 1843, he soon became interested in both journalism and politics; but he is now best remembered by his work in verse. His “Humorous and Satirical Poems” (1850) fairly bristle with puns from beginning to end, and the surprising fact about them is that they are so good and so well set in their places that rarely does a reader feel inclined to accuse Saxe of overstraining his powers.

_Leland_, _Field_, _Riley_, _and Harris_.--Merely mentioning in passing the name of Saxe’s contemporary, Frederick Swartwout Cozzens (1818-1869), author of “The Sparrowgrass Papers” (1856), we call attention to Robert Henry Newell (1836-1901), whose “Orpheus C. Kerr Papers” in three volumes (1861-1869) contained presumably funny comments on the Civil War, and to David Ross Locke (1833-1888), who, writing under the pseudonym of “Petroleum Vesuvius Naseby,” wittily supported the administration of Lincoln, and attacked that of Johnson, in newspaper articles afterward collected into a book entitled “Divers Views, Opinions, and Prophecies of Yours Truly” (1865). These three men, although deserving mention on account of the position they once held, are now little read, but their contemporary Charles Godfrey Leland (1824-1903) seems to have established something like permanent renown for himself. Graduated from Princeton in 1846, he became prominent in various fields of journalism and authorship. His best-known work is “Hans Breitmann’s Ballads,” of which a collected edition appeared in 1895. These poems are written in the dialect known as Pennsylvania Dutch, and relate the exploits of their clownish hero in various exigencies and circumstances. In this same school of mild humourists we may class also a number of writers most of whom are still in the prime of life. From the host we select three as typical. Eugene Field (1850-1895), whose untimely death cut short a career of promise already blossoming into fulfilment, may be mentioned first. In addition to much serious work, he published “The Tribune Primer” (1882), a mock imitation of a child’s first reading-book, and “Culture’s Garden” (1887), a series of clever skits directed against those who make a pretence of ultra-refinement. With Field for some reason James Whitcomb Riley (born in 1853) has always been popularly associated, possibly because both wrote poems having childhood as subject-matter. Mr. Riley’s humorous work is scattered through his several books, of which “Rhymes of Childhood” (1890) and “Home Folks” (1900) are typical, if not the best. An author of a series of books which appeal at once to students of popular tradition and to general readers whether young or old is found in Joel Chandler Harris (1848-1908). Publishing a book in 1880 on Afro-American folk-lore under the title “Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings,” Mr. Harris found to his surprise that he had an audience who listened to him with mirth instead of gravity. It is improbable that more than a mere handful of his readers suspect for even a moment that the several stories put into the mouth of Uncle Remus are a real contribution to anthropological data. In his later years, Mr. Harris wisely threw all his reports into literary form, with the result that there was a steady rise in his popularity as he gave us successively “Nights with Uncle Remus” (1883), “Mingo, and Other Sketches” (1884), and “Daddy Jake, the Runaway” (1889).

_The Boisterous Humourists._--Turning now to the “boisterous school” of American humour, we may dwell for a time upon the chief characteristics exhibited by members of the group. In the first place, most of them have forgotten how to spell. There is something ludicrous in the appearance of the word “through” masquerading in the garb “thru,” whatever may be the plea of the society of spelling reformers to the contrary; and certainly no one, except a school-teacher, can be other than amused to see such common words as “laugh,” “feel,” “funny,” and the like making their bows as “laff,” “feal,” and “phuny.” Laughable as this may be, however, it is not too much to insist that, if the appeal is only to the eye, if the wit evaporates when the words are not seen but merely heard, then the humour is not of very high order. In the second place, most of the members of the boisterous school, along with their loss of power as spellers, have also forgotten how to tell the truth. “This inclination towards outrageous exaggeration,” said Lowell, “is a prime characteristic of American humour.” “There is,” he says elsewhere, “something irresistibly comic in the conception of a negro so black that charcoal made a white mark on him, or in the idea of a soil so fertile that a nail planted in it becomes a railroad spike before morning.” This example of untruthfulness might also be taken as an illustration of the third trait of the group now under discussion--that of producing the most absurd paradoxes and of bringing into juxtaposition the most diverse uses of the same word. This is more than mere word-play; it is rather what might be termed the apotheosis of the pun. It underlies the majority of jokes that are found in the American newspaper, and is at once the admiration and the despair of those who try to analyse or to imitate the subtlety of our humour.

_Josh Billings._--With these three characteristics in mind we may now give some brief attention to the humourists themselves. Of the “boisterous school” the earliest were Henry Wheeler Shaw, Benjamin Penhallow Shillaber, and Charles Farrar Browne. If by chance these names seem quite unfamiliar, the strangeness will disappear when attention is called to the fact that the three men respectively wrote under the _noms de plume_ of “Josh Billings,” “Mrs. Partington,” and “Artemus Ward.” Shaw (1818-1885) was born in Lanesborough, Massachusetts, and died in Monterey, California. To complete his formal education he entered Hamilton College in Clinton, New York; but tiring of the life there, he went on to the West and spent a number of years undergoing the many experiences offered by frontier life. Returning East in 1858, he became an auctioneer in Poughkeepsie, New York, where he also began to contribute to various magazines and newspapers. He attracted little attention until he invented an amusing system of phonetic spelling supposed to represent his homely method of pronunciation. His chief works were his “Farmer’s Allminax” published annually between 1870 and 1880, “Every Boddy’s Friend” (1876), and “Josh Billings’ Spice Box” (1881). A quotation or two will exhibit both the thought and the form which characterise the contents of his several volumes of writing:

“Fallin’ in luv is like fallin’ in molases--sweet but drefful dobby.”

“Yu can’t tell what makes a kis taste so good eny more than you kin a peech. Eny man who kin set down wher it is cool and tell what a kis tastes like hain’t got eny more taste in his mouth than a knot-hol hez.”

_Mrs. Partington._--Benjamin P. Shillaber (1814-1890) was influenced by Sheridan even more strongly than was Saxe by the elder Hood. Mrs. Partington is America’s Mrs. Malaprop. Her misuse of the English language Shillaber recorded in three books bearing the several titles, “Life and Sayings of Mrs. Partington” (1854), “Partingtonian Patchwork” (1873), and “Ike and his Friend” (1879). Mrs. Partington’s likeness to her English predecessor, or, as she would undoubtedly have said, her “predecessoress,” may be seen in her chance remark: “I am not so young as I was once, and I don’t believe I shall ever be, if I live to the age of Samson, which, heaven knows as well as I do, I don’t want to, for I wouldn’t be a centurion or an octagon and survive my factories and become idiomatic by any means. But then there is no knowing how a thing will turn out till it takes place, and we shall come to an end some day, though we may never live to see it.”

_Artemus Ward._--Charles F. Brown (1834-1867), the third of the humourists writing about the middle of the last century, was born in Waterford, Maine, and lived in various parts of the United States as his newspaper work called him first to one town and then to another. He made extensive lecture trips, and finally went in 1866 to England, where he died in March of the following year. He had the distinction of being the first American contributor to _Punch_. He published during his lifetime a number of books, among which were “Artemus Ward: His Book” (1865), “Artemus Ward: His Book of Goaks” (1865), and “Artemus Ward in London” (1867). Undoubtedly his best single work was a lecture giving an account of his visit to the Mormons. Learning from Brigham Young that he was married to eighty wives and sealed to as many more, Artemus remarked that the prophet was “the most marriedest man” he ever saw. Ward then went on to say: “In a privit conversashun with Brigham I learnt the follerin’ fax: It takes him six weeks to kiss his wives. He don’t do it only onct a year and sez it’s wuss nor cleanin’ house. He don’t pretend to know his children, there is so many of ’em, tho they all know him. He sez about every child he meats call him Par and he takes it for granted it is so.”

_Later Writers of Boisterous Humour._--Taking up now the writers who were born in the decade immediately preceding the turning point of the nineteenth century, we may regard as worthy of special mention Charles Heber Clark, Charles Bertrand Lewis, Robert Jones Burdette, and Edgar Wilson Nye. Of these, all save one are still living and still writing. Mr. Clark was born in Berlin, Maryland, in 1841. For many years he has been the editor of _The Textile Record_, published in Philadelphia, to which he has contributed a number of articles on economic themes. He is best known, however, by two books of humour: “Out of the Hurly Burly” and “Elbow Room,” both written under the _nom de plume_ of “Max Adeler.” Mr. Lewis (born in 1842) is best known by his pseudonym, “M. Quad,” a title drawn from the parlance of printers. Mr. Lewis’ earlier work was much more spontaneous than that which he is producing now. Connected with _The Detroit Free Press_, he contributed to it a steady stream of character sketches of great variety. Collecting them later, he published them under various titles. Of these volumes the best are “Brother Gardener’s Lime-Kiln Club,” “Quad’s Odds,” and “Mr. and Mrs. Bowser.”

Edgar W. Nye (1850-1896), best known as “Bill Nye,” was born in Shirley, Maine, and died near Asheville, North Carolina. Educated in Wisconsin, he first turned his attention to the study of law. Abandoning that pursuit after having been admitted to the bar, he dabbled in several different occupations, and finally became a newspaper correspondent. For a short time he travelled with James Whitcomb Riley, the two giving a series of entertainments which proved widely popular. Nye’s published works were many, but they have little chance of permanent life. As good as any are “Bill Nye and the Boomerang” (1881), “A Comic History of the United States” (1894), and “The Railroad Guide” (1888), the last written in partnership with Mr. Riley. Mr. Burdette, the last of the quartette here mentioned together, was born in Greensboro, Pennsylvania, in 1844, and received his schooling in Peoria, Illinois. During the Civil War he was a soldier in the Union Army. At the close of the struggle, Mr. Burdette returned to Peoria, where he was connected with first one and then another of the newspapers published there. Finally, failing in a paper issued under his own proprietorship, he went to Burlington, Iowa, and became a member of the staff of _The Hawkeye_. While engaged in newspaper work, Mr. Burdette began to write funny things to amuse his invalid wife; and these, published later in the columns of the paper, have made him known throughout the United States. He was licensed as a Baptist preacher in 1887, since when he has signed himself Robert Burdette, D., on the ground that the abbreviation _D._ is the next thing to that of _D.D._ Mr. Burdette’s best humorous work may be read in “The Rise and Fall of the Moustache and other Hawkeyetems” (1877) and “Chimes from a Jester’s Bells” (1897).

_Mark Twain._--Of American humourists “Mark Twain,” known in private life as Samuel Langhorne Clemens, is readily placed foremost by critics and admirers both at home and abroad. He has the right to be considered the Nestor of our writers, for, born in 1835, he began to produce his earliest work when Irving was in his prime, and has therefore seen at least one phase of every school in our literature. His younger years were those of the decline of the Knickerbocker writers; he saw the rise and fall of the Concord group, the Cambridge poets, and the New York writers; and now he is present at the general upward movement all over the country, including the South and the West. His relation to our literature is not unlike that of Fanny Burney to the novel; she was born before Richardson published “The History of Sir Charles Grandison,” and did not die until twelve years after the birth of George Meredith, thus being contemporaneous with the greatest English novelists from the first to the last. Mr. Clemens was born in Florida, Missouri, and when scarcely thirteen years old was apprenticed to a printer. Barring a few years spent as pilot upon the Mississippi, he has devoted his life to literary work. His writings include “The Innocents Abroad” (1869), the humorous record of a trip in the countries of the Eastern Hemisphere; “The Gilded Age” (1873), a novel written conjointly with Charles Dudley Warner; “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” (1876), and “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” (1884), both books about boys whose exploits are interesting to young and old alike; “A Connecticut Yankee at the Court of King Arthur” (1889), a cruel parody of Malory’s “Morte d’Arthur”; and “Christian Science,” an attempt, despite all the fun it makes, to report sincerely upon a careful investigation of the claims of Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy and her disciples. It is unfortunate for Mr. Clemens that he is a humourist, for he has had to suffer the lot long ago mentioned by Holmes as the fate of the fun-producer: no one can ever take such a man seriously; no one can believe that he ever has any other purpose than to tickle our fancy or awaken our laughter. Yet it is not impossible that future critics may come to regard “The Prince and the Pauper” (1882) and “The Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc” (1896), two serious and dignified pieces of writing, as Mr. Clemens’s best work.

Within recent years Oxford University has conferred the degree of D.C.L. upon Mr. Clemens in recognition of his contributions to literature. This action by a great institution of learning has filled many minds with surprise, nor have all of them quite recovered their mental equilibrium yet. Some, indeed, are still asking the old question, “Is Saul also among the prophets?” and can hardly believe their ears when they receive the answer, “Yea, verily!” Humour at last seems to be coming to its own. Said Mr. Meredith a few years ago: “Comedy, we have to admit, was never one of the most honoured of the Muses. She was in her origin, short of laughter, the loudest expression of the little civilisation of men.” While it must be admitted that when he wrote this the greatest English writer now living had in mind something much more delicate, much more refined, much more subtle, than anything yet produced in America, it is not beyond thought that even he would let us classify the fun-makers of this country as true humourists. They deal little in satire, little in irony, but they have much in common with those to whom Mr. Meredith said: “If you laugh all round a person, tumble him, roll him about, deal him a smack, and drop a tear on him, own his likeness to you, and yours to your neighbour, spare him as little as you shun, pity him as much as you expose, it is a spirit of Humour that is moving you.”

V. THE ORATORS AND THE DIVINES.