Chapter XXI

_Literature in the United States.--Poets.--Novelists.--
Essayists.--Critics.--Historians.--Humorists.--Journalists.--
Writers for the Young.--Future of American Literature._

America has not yet produced a transcendent literary genius; but she has the right to be proud of a national literature which includes poets, historians, novelists, essayists, and critics of a superior order.

The English admit that the best history of their literature has been written by a Frenchman, M. Taine. The _Athenaeum_ acknowledged, a short while ago, that the best criticism on the English poets of the Victorian era was that written by Mr. Edmund Clarence Stedman, himself one of the most graceful bards of contemporary America.

In this rapid sketch, I must needs confine myself to the mention of merely the principal names which adorn the different branches of American literature.

In poetry, the bright lights are William Cullen Bryant and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, both pure and noble, and as much appreciated by the English as by their own compatriots; Edgar Allan Poe, James Russell Lowell, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Edmund Clarence Stedman, Bayard Taylor, John Greenleaf Whittier, Walt Whitman, Richard Watson Gilder, Edgar Fawcett, William Winter (the celebrated dramatic critic of the _New York Tribune_), Maria Brooks, and a number of women, who form a graceful garland in this garden of poets. In the Western dialects, a young poet, Mr. Whitcombe Riley, knows how to draw tears through the smiles which his humour provokes: he promises to be the future Jasmin of America.

In the domain of romance, we find writers whose reputation is as firmly established in Europe as in America. Who has not read in his youth the novels of Fenimore Cooper? Who has not thrilled over the weird tales of Poe? Among the most famous names in fiction are also Washington Irving, Parker Willis, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Marion Crawford, Frank Stockton, George W. Cable, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Henry James, W. D. Howells, Julian Hawthorne, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Charles Dudley Warner, Bret Harte (who is also a poet), Edward Eggleston, Brander Matthews, Eliza Wetherell. All these names are household words wherever the English tongue is spoken. The greatest success of the century has been attained by an American novel, directed against slavery, and instrumental in its destruction.

Its author, Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, is a sister of the celebrated Henry Ward Beecher, whom America still mourns.

In the philosophical essay, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Robert Ingersoll are unapproachable in their different styles. The first shines by his originality and a subtle power of reasoning; the second by the grandeur of his language, his keen, clear reasoning power, and his humour and pathos.

In literary criticism must be named George William Curtis, as well as Stedman and Winter, already named among the poets.

History is perhaps, of all the branches of American literature, that which has found its highest expression. Washington Irving, with his _History of Columbus_; Prescott, with the _History of Ferdinand and Isabella_, the _History of the Conquest of Mexico and Peru_, and the _History of Philip II._; Bancroft, with a _History of the American Revolution_; Hildreth, Sparks, and others, have produced a national history from the discovery of their country down to our own days.

It seems curious that the vast and grandiose regions they inhabit should not have inspired the Americans with taste and talent for descriptions of Nature. Fenimore Cooper is the only great scene painter produced by the immensities of the great Western Continent.

Humorists swarm in the United States. Artemus Ward and Mark Twain are two pseudonyms justly famous at home and abroad. There is a third on the road that leads to similar celebrity. Bill Nye has the same droll way as Mark Twain of droning out irresistible comicalities with that solemn _sang froid_ which is not met with outside the frontiers of Yankeeland. When he mounts the platform, the audience prepares to be dislocated with laughter.

Although the names of Charles A. Dana, Whitelaw Reid, Park Godwin, and many others, are well known to the reading public of America, it is in the large Reviews, and not in the newspapers, that really literary articles are to be found.

Children--if there are any children in America--are not forgotten by literature. It is safe to affirm that there is no country where children are so well written for, by authors who have the secret of instructing them while they charm and amuse them. Love and sympathy for children must be a spontaneous outgrowth of the gay and tender American character. Mrs. Hodgson Burnett, the late Louisa Alcott, Mrs. Lippincott (better known as Grace Greenwood), and Fanny Fern, will for ages to come fascinate the whole of the English-speaking juvenile world.

In these rapid outlines, I must have omitted many names. I hope I have mentioned enough to show a guarantee of a brilliant literary future for the country.

A nation so intelligent, so energetic, so prominent in the world of action, could not possibly be sterile in the domain of thought.