Chapter II: Literature of the New Nation (1800-1840) (2)

_The Spy_ was the first and probably the best of Cooper's historical romances. Even his admirers must confess that it is crudely written, and that our patriotic interest inclines us to overestimate a story which throws the glamor of romance over the Revolution. Yet this faulty tale attempts to do what very few histories have ever done fairly, namely, to present both sides or parties of the fateful conflict; and its unusual success in this difficult field may be explained by a bit of family history. Cooper was by birth and training a stanch Whig, or Patriot; but his wife, to whom he was devotedly attached, was the daughter of an unbending Tory, or Loyalist; and his divided allegiance is plainly apparent in his work. Ordinarily his personal antagonisms, his hatred of "Yankees," Puritans and all politicians of the other party, are dragged into his stories and spoil some of them; but in _The Spy_ he puts his prejudices under restraint, tells his tale in an impersonal way, dealing honestly with both Whigs and Tories, and so produces a work having the double interest of a good adventure story and a fair picture of one of the heroic ages of American history.

Aside from its peculiar American interest, _The Spy_ has some original and broadly human elements which have caused it, notwithstanding its dreary, artificial style, to be highly appreciated in other countries, in South American countries especially. The secret of its appeal lies largely in this, that in Harvey Birch, a brave man who serves his country without hope or possibility of reward, Cooper has strongly portrayed a type of the highest, the most unselfish patriotism.

The other historical novels differ greatly in value. Prominent among them are _Mercedes of Castile_, dealing with Columbus and the discovery of America; _Satanstoe_ and _The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish_, depicting Colonial life in New York and New England respectively; and _Lionel Lincoln_, which is another story of the Revolution, more labored than _The Spy_ and of less sustained interest.

[Sidenote: THE SEA STORIES]

Cooper's first sea story, _The Pilot_ (1823), was haphazard enough in both motive and method, [Footnote: The Waverley novels by "the great unknown" were appearing at this time. Scott was supposed to be the author of them, but there was much debate on the subject. One day in New York a member of Cooper's club argued that Scott could not possibly have written _The Pirate_ (which had just appeared), because the nautical skill displayed in the book was such as only a sailor could possess. Cooper maintained, on the contrary, that _The Pirate_ was the work of a landsman; and to prove it he declared that he would write a sea story as it should be written; that is, with understanding as well as with imagination. _The Pilot_ was the result.] but it gave pleasure to a multitude of readers, and it amazed critics by showing that the lonely sea could be a place of romantic human interest. Cooper was thus the first modern novelist of the ocean; and to his influence we are partly indebted for the stirring tales of such writers as Herman Melville and Clark Russell. A part of the action of _The Pilot_ takes place on land (the style and the characters of this part are wretchedly stilted), but the chief interest of the story lies in the adventures of an American privateer commanded by a disguised hero, who turns out to be John Paul Jones. Cooper could not portray such a character, and his effort to make the dashing young captain heroic by surrounding him with a fog of mystery is like his labored attempt to portray the character of Washington in _The Spy_. On the other hand, he was thoroughly at home on a ship or among common sailors; his sea pictures of gallant craft driven before the gale are magnificent; and Long Tom Coffin is perhaps the most realistic and interesting of all his characters, not excepting even Leatherstocking.

Another and better romance of the sea is _The Red Rover_ (1828). In this story the action takes place almost wholly on the deep, and its vivid word pictures of an ocean smiling under the sunrise or lashed to fury by midnight gales are unrivaled in any literature. Other notable books of the same group are _The Water Witch_, _Afloat and Ashore_ and _Wing and Wing_. Some readers will prize these for their stories; but to others they may appear tame in comparison with the superb descriptive passages of _The Red Rover_.

[Sidenote: LEATHERSTOCKING TALES]

When Cooper published _The Pioneers_ (1823) he probably had no intention of writing a series of novels recounting the adventures of Natty Bumppo, or Leatherstocking, and his Indian friend Chingachgook; otherwise he would hardly have painted so shabby a picture of these two old heroes, neglected and despised in a land through which they had once moved as masters. Readers were quick to see, however, that these old men had an adventurous past, and when they demanded the rest of the story Cooper wrote four other romances, which are as so many acts in the stirring drama of pioneer life. When these romances are read, therefore, they should be taken in logical sequence, beginning with _The Deerslayer_, which portrays the two heroes as young men on their first war trail, and following in order with _The Last of the Mohicans_, _The Pathfinder_, _The Pioneers_ and _The Prairie_. If one is to be omitted, let it be _The Pathfinder_, which is comparatively weak and dull; and if only one is to be read, _The Last of the Mohicans_ is an excellent choice.

After nearly a century of novel writing, these five books remain our most popular romances of pioneer days, and Leatherstocking is still a wingéd name, a name to conjure with, in most civilized countries. Meanwhile a thousand similar works have come and gone and been forgotten. To examine these later books, which attempt to satisfy the juvenile love of Indian stories, is to discover that they are modeled more or less closely on the original work of the first American novelist.

COOPER'S SCENES AND CHARACTERS. Even in his outdoor romances Cooper was forever attempting to depict human society, especially polite society; but that was the one subject he did not and could not understand. The sea in its grandeur and loneliness; the wild lakes, stretching away to misty, unknown shores or nestling like jewels in their evergreen setting; the forest with its dim trails, its subdued light, its rustlings, whisperings, hints of mystery or peril,--these are his proper scenes, and in them he moves as if at ease in his environment.

In his characters we soon discover the same contrast. If he paints a hero of history, he must put him on stilts to increase his stature. If he portrays a woman, he calls her a "female," makes her a model of decorum, and bores us by her sentimental gabbing. If he describes a social gathering, he instantly betrays his unfamiliarity with real society by talking like a book of etiquette. But with rough men or manly men on land or sea, with half-mutinous crews of privateers or disciplined man-of-war's men, with woodsmen, trappers, Indians, adventurous characters of the border or the frontier,--with all these Cooper is at home, and in writing of them he rises almost to the height of genius.

[Sidenote: THE RETURN TO NATURE]

If we seek the secret of this contrast, we shall find it partly in the author himself, partly in a popular, half-baked philosophy of the period. That philosophy was summed up in the words "the return to nature," and it alleged that all human virtues flow from solitude and all vices from civilization. Such a philosophy appealed strongly to Cooper, who was continually at odds with his fellows, who had been expelled from Yale, who had engaged in many a bitter controversy, who had suffered abuse from newspapers, and who in every case was inclined to consider his opponents as blockheads. No matter in what society he found himself, in imagination he was always back in the free but lawless atmosphere of the frontier village in which his youth was spent. Hence he was well fitted to take the point of view of Natty Bumppo (in _The Pioneers_), who looked with hostile eyes upon the greed and waste of civilization; hence he portrayed his uneducated backwoods hero as a brave and chivalrous gentleman, without guile or fear or selfishness, who owed everything to nature and nothing to society. Europe at that time was ready to welcome such a type with enthusiasm. The world will always make way for him, whether he appears as a hero of fiction or as a man among men.

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS. The faults of Cooper--his stilted style and slipshod English, his tedious moralizing, his artificial dialogue, his stuffed gentlemen and inane "females," his blunders in woodcraft--all these are so easily discovered by a casual reader that the historian need not linger over them. His virtues are more interesting, and the first of these is that he has a story to tell. Ever since Anglo-Saxon days the "tale-bringer" has been a welcome guest, and that Cooper is a good tale-bringer is evident from his continued popularity at home and abroad. He may not know much about the art of literature, or about psychology, or about the rule that motives must be commensurate with actions; but he knows a good story, and that, after all, is the main thing in a novel.

Again, there is a love of manly action in Cooper and a robustness of imagination which compel attention. He is rather slow in starting his tale; but he always sees a long trail ahead, and knows that every turn of the trail will bring its surprise or adventure. It is only when we analyze and compare his plots that we discover what a prodigal creative power he had. He wrote, let us say, seven or eight good stories; but he spoiled ten times that number by hasty or careless workmanship. In the neglected _Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish_, for example, there is enough wasted material to furnish a modern romancer or dramatist for half a lifetime.

[Sidenote: DESCRIPTIVE POWER]

Another fine quality of Cooper is his descriptive power, his astonishing vigor in depicting forest, sea, prairie,--all the grandeur of wild nature as a background of human heroism. His descriptions are seldom accurate, for he was a careless observer and habitually made blunders; but he painted nature as on a vast canvas whereon details might be ignored, and he reproduced the total impression of nature in a way that few novelists have ever rivaled. It is this sustained power of creating a vast natural stage and peopling it with elemental men, the pioneers of a strong nation, that largely accounts for Cooper's secure place among the world's fiction writers.

[Sidenote: MORAL QUALITY]

Finally, the moral quality of Cooper, his belief in manhood and womanhood, his cleanness of heart and of tongue, are all reflected in his heroes and heroines. Very often he depicts rough men in savage or brutal situations; but, unlike some modern realists, there is nothing brutal in his morals, and it is precisely where we might expect savagery or meanness that his simple heroes appear as chivalrous gentlemen "without fear and without reproach." That he was here splendidly true to nature and humanity is evident to one who has met his typical men (woodsmen, plainsmen, lumbermen, lonely trappers or timber-cruisers) in their own environment and experienced their rare courtesy and hospitality. In a word, Cooper knew what virtue is, virtue of white man, virtue of Indian, and he makes us know and respect it. Of a hundred strong scenes which he has vividly pictured there is hardly one that does not leave a final impression as pure and wholesome as the breath of the woods or the sea.

* * * * *

EDGAR ALLAN POE (1809-1849)

It is a pleasant task to estimate Irving or Bryant, but Poe offers a hard nut for criticism to crack. The historian is baffled by an author who secretes himself in the shadow, or perplexed by conflicting biographies, or put on the defensive by the fact that any positive judgment or opinion of Poe will almost certainly be challenged.

At the outset, therefore, we are to assume that Poe is one of the most debatable figures in our literature. His life may be summed up as a pitiful struggle for a little fame and a little bread. When he died few missed him, and his works were neglected. Following his recognition in Europe came a revival of interest here, during which Poe was absurdly overpraised and the American people berated for their neglect of a genius. Then arose a literary controversy which showed chiefly that our critics were poles apart in their points of view. Though the controversy has long endured, it has settled nothing of importance; for one reader regards Poe as a literary _poseur_, a writer of melodious nonsense in verse and of grotesque horrors in prose; while another exalts him as a double master of poetry and fiction, an artist without a peer in American letters.

Somewhere between these extremes hides the truth; but we shall not here attempt to decide whether it is nearer one side or the other. We note merely that Poe is a writer for such mature readers as can appreciate his uncanny talent. What he wrote of abiding interest or value to young people might be printed in a very small book.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. Notwithstanding all that has been written
about Poe, we do not and cannot know him as we know most other
American authors, whose lives are as an open book. He was always a
secretive person, "a lover of mystery and retreats," and such
accounts of his life as he gave out are not trustworthy. He came
from a good Maryland family, but apparently from one of those
offshoots that are not true to type. His father left the study of
law to become a strolling actor, and presently married an English
actress. It was while the father and mother were playing their
parts in Boston that Edgar was born, in 1809.

Actors led a miserable life in those days, and the Poes were no
exception. They died comfortless in Richmond; their three children
were separated; and Edgar was adopted by John Allan, a wealthy
tobacco merchant. It was in the luxurious Allan home that the boy
began the drinking habits which were his bane ever afterwards.

[Sidenote: POE'S SCHOOL DAYS]

The Allans were abroad on business from 1815 to 1820, and during
these years Edgar was at a private school in the suburbs of London.
It was the master of that school who described the boy as a clever
lad spoiled by too much pocket money. The prose tale "William
Wilson" has some reflection of these school years, and, so far as
known, it is the only work in which Poe introduced any of his
familiar experiences.

Soon after his return to Richmond the boy was sent to the
University of Virginia, where his brilliant record as a student was
marred by his tendency to dissipation. After the first year Mr.
Allan, finding that the boy had run up a big gambling debt, took
him from college and put him to work in the tobacco house.
Whereupon Edgar, always resentful of criticism, quarreled with his
foster father and drifted out into the world. He was then at
eighteen, a young man of fine bearing, having the taste and manners
of a gentleman, but he had no friend in the world, no heritage of
hard work, no means of earning a living.

[Sidenote: HIS WANDERINGS]

Next we hear vaguely of Poe in Boston where he published a tiny
volume, _Tamerlane and Other Poems, by a Bostonian_ (1827).
Failing to win either fame or money by his poetry he enlisted in
the army under an assumed name and served for about two years. Of
his army life we know nothing, nor do we hear of him again until
his foster father secured for him an appointment to the military
academy at West Point. There Poe made an excellent beginning, but
he soon neglected his work, was dismissed, and became an Ishmael
again. After trying in vain to secure a political office he went to
Baltimore, where he earned a bare living by writing for the
newspapers. The popular but mythical account of his life (for which
he himself is partly responsible) portrays him at this period in a
Byronic rôle, fighting with the Greeks for their liberty.

[Sidenote: FIRST SUCCESS]

His literary career began in 1833 when his "Manuscript Found in a
Bottle" won for him a prize offered by a weekly newspaper. The same
"Manuscript" brought him to the attention of John Pendleton
Kennedy, who secured for him a position on the staff of the
_Southern Literary Messenger_. He then settled in Richmond,
and in his grasp was every thing that the heart of a young author
might desire. He had married his cousin, Virginia Clem, a beautiful
young girl whom he idolized; he had a comfortable home and an
assured position; Kennedy and other southern writers were his loyal
friends; the _Messenger_ published his work and gave him a
reputation in the literary world of America. Fortune stood smiling
beside him, when he quarreled with his friends, left the Messenger
and began once more his struggle with poverty and despair.

[Sidenote: A LIFE OF FRAGMENTS]

It would require a volume to describe the next few years, and we
must pass hurriedly over them. His pen was now his only hope, and
he used it diligently in an effort to win recognition and a living.
He tried his fortune in different cities; he joined the staffs of
various periodicals; he projected magazines of his own. In every
project success was apparently within his reach when by some
weakness or misfortune he let his chance slip away. He was living
in Fordham (a suburb of New York, now called the Bronx) when he did
his best work; but there his wife died, in need of the common
comforts of life; and so destitute was the home that an appeal was
made in the newspapers for charity. One has but to remember Poe's
pride to understand how bitter was the cup from which he drank.

After his wife's death came two frenzied years in which not even
the memory of a great love kept him from unmanly wooing of other
women; but Poe was then unbalanced and not wholly responsible for
his action. At forty he became engaged to a widow in Richmond, who
could offer him at least a home. Generous friends raised a fund to
start him in life afresh; but a little later he was found
unconscious amid sordid surroundings in Baltimore. He died there,
in a hospital, before he was able to give any lucid account of his
last wanderings. It was a pitiful end; but one who studies Poe at
any part of his career has an impression of a perverse fate that
dogs the man and that insists on an ending in accord with the rest
of the story.

THE POETRY OF POE. Most people read Poe's poetry for the melody that is in it. To read it in any other way, to analyze or explain its message, is to dissect a butterfly that changes in a moment from a delicate, living creature to a pinch of dust, bright colored but meaningless. It is not for analysis, therefore, but simply for making Poe more intelligible that we record certain facts or principles concerning his verse.

[Sidenote: THEORY OF POETRY]

Perhaps the first thing to note is that Poe is not the poet of smiles and tears, of joy and sorrow, as the great poets are, but the poet of a single mood,--a dull, despairing mood without hope of comfort. Next, he had a theory (a strange theory in view of his mood) that the only object of poetry is to give pleasure, and that the pleasure of a poem depends largely on melody, on sound rather than on sense. Finally, he believed that poetry should deal with beauty alone, that poetic beauty is of a supernal or unearthly kind, and that such beauty is forever associated with melancholy. To Poe the most beautiful imaginable object was a beautiful woman; but since her beauty must perish, the poet must assume a tragic or despairing attitude in face of it. Hence his succession of shadowy Helens, and hence his wail of grief that he has lost or must soon lose them.

[Sidenote: THE RAVEN]

All these poetic theories, or delusions, appear in Poe's most widely known work, "The Raven," which has given pleasure to a multitude of readers. It is a unique poem, and its popularity is due partly to the fact that nobody can tell what it means. To analyze it is to discover that it is extremely melodious; that it reflects a gloomy mood; that at the root of its sorrow is the mysterious "lost Lenore"; and that, as in most of Poe's works, a fantastic element is introduced, an "ungainly fowl" addressed with grotesque dignity as "Sir, or Madame," to divert attention from the fact that the poet's grief is not simple or human enough for tears:

And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, _still_ is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted--nevermore!

Equally characteristic of the author are "To One in Paradise," "The Sleeper" and "Annabel Lee,"--all melodious, all in hopeless mood, all expressive of the same abnormal idea of poetry. Other and perhaps better poems are "The Coliseum," "Israfel," and especially the second "To Helen," beginning, "Helen, thy beauty is to me."

Young readers may well be content with a few such lyrics, leaving the bulk of Poe's poems to such as may find meaning in their vaporous images. As an example, study these two stanzas from "Ulalume," a work which some may find very poetic and others somewhat lunatic:

The skies they were ashen and sober;
The leaves they were crispéd and sere--
The leaves they were withering and sere;
It was night in the lonesome October
Of my most immemorial year;
It was hard by the dim lake of Auber,
In the misty mid region of Weir--
It was down by the dank tarn of Auber,
In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.

Here once, through an alley Titanic
Of cypress, I roamed with my soul--
Of cypress, with Psyche, my soul.
These were days when my heart was volcanic
As the scoriac rivers that roll--
As the lavas that restlessly roll
Their sulphurous currents down Yaanek,
In the ultimate climes of the pole--
That groan as they roll down Mount Yaanek,
In the realms of the boreal pole.

This is melodious, to be sure, but otherwise it is mere word juggling, a stringing together of names and rimes with a total effect of lugubrious nonsense. It is not to be denied that some critics find pleasure in "Ulalume"; but uncritical readers need not doubt their taste or intelligence if they prefer counting-out rimes, "The Jabberwock," or other nonsense verses that are more frankly and joyously nonsensical.

POE'S FICTION. Should it be asked why Poe's tales are nearly all of the bloodcurdling variety, the answer is that they are a triple reflection of himself, of the fantastic romanticism of his age, and of the taste of readers who were then abnormally fond of ghastly effects in fiction. Let us understand these elements clearly; for otherwise Poe's horrible stories will give us nothing beyond the mere impression of horror.

[Sidenote: THE MAN AND HIS TIMES]

To begin with the personal element, Poe was naturally inclined to morbidness. He had a childish fear of darkness and hobgoblins; he worked largely "on his nerves"; he had an abnormal interest in graves, ghouls and the terrors which preternatural subjects inspire in superstitious minds. As a writer he had to earn his bread; and the fiction most in demand at that time was of the "gothic" or _Mysteries of Udolpho_ kind, with its diabolical villain, its pallid heroine in a haunted room, its medley of mystery and horror. [Footnote: As Richardson suggests, the popular novels of Poe's day are nearly all alike in that they remind us of the fat boy in _Pickwick_, who "just wanted to make your flesh creep." Jane Austen (and later, Scott and Cooper) had written against this morbid tendency, but still the "gothic" novel had its thousands of shuddering readers on both sides of the Atlantic.] At the beginning of the century Charles Brockden Brown had made a success of the "American gothic" (a story of horror modified to suit American readers), and Poe carried on the work of Brown with precisely the same end in view, namely, to please his audience. He used the motive of horror partly because of his own taste and training, no doubt, but more largely because he shrewdly "followed the market" in fiction. Then as now there were many readers who enjoyed, as Stevenson says, being "frightened out of their boots," and to such readers he appealed. His individuality and, perhaps, his chief excellence as a story-writer lay in his use of strictly logical methods, in his ability to make the most impossible yarn seem real by his reasonable way of telling it. Moreover, he was a discoverer, an innovator, a maker of new types, since he was the first to introduce in his stories the blend of calm, logical science and wild fancy of a terrifying order; so he served as an inspiration as well as a point of departure for Jules Verne and other writers of the same pseudo-scientific school.

[Sidenote: GROUPS OF STORIES]

Poe's numerous tales may be grouped in three or four classes. Standing by itself is "William Wilson," a story of double personality (one good and one evil genius in the same person), to which Stevenson was indebted in his _Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_. Next are the tales of pseudo-science and adventure, such as "Hans Pfaall" and the "Descent into the Maelstrom," which represent a type of popular fiction developed by Jules Verne, H. G. Wells and many others, all of whom were more or less influenced by Poe. A third group may be called the ingenious-mystery stories. One of the most typical of these is "The Gold Bug," a tale of cipher-writing and buried treasure, which contains the germ, at least, of Stevenson's _Treasure Island_. To the same group belong "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" and other stories dealing with the wondrous acumen of a certain Dupin, who is the father of "Old Sleuth," "Sherlock Holmes" and other amateur detectives who do such marvelous things in fiction,--to atone, no doubt, for their extraordinary dullness in real life.

Still another group consists of phantom stories,--ghastly yarns that serve no purpose but to make the reader's spine creep. The mildest of these horrors is "The Fall of the House of Usher," which some critics place at the head of Poe's fiction. It is a "story of atmosphere"; that is, a story in which the scene, the air, the vague "feeling" of a place arouse an expectation of some startling or unusual incident. Many have read this story and found pleasure therein; but others ask frankly, "Why bother to write or to read such palpable nonsense?" With all Poe's efforts to make it real, Usher's house is not a home or even a building in which dwells a man; it is a vacuum inhabited by a chimera. Of necessity, therefore, it tumbles into melodramatic nothingness the moment the author takes leave of it.

[Sidenote: WHAT TO READ]

If it be asked, "What shall one read of Poe's fiction?" the answer must depend largely upon individual taste. "The Gold Bug" is a good story, having the adventurous interest of finding a pirate's hidden gold; at least, that is how most readers regard it, though Poe meant us to be interested not in the gold but in his ingenious cryptogram or secret writing. The allegory of "William Wilson" is perhaps the most original of Poe's works; and for a thriller "The House of Usher" may be recommended as the least repulsive of the tales of horror. To the historian the chief interest of all these tales lies in the influence which they have exerted on a host of short-story writers at home and abroad.

AN ESTIMATE OF POE. Any summary of such a difficult subject is unsatisfactory and subject to challenge. We shall try here simply to outline Poe's aim and method, leaving the student to supply from his own reading most of the details and all the exceptions.

Poe's chief purpose was not to tell a tale for its own sake or to portray a human character; he aimed to produce an effect or impression in the reader's mind, an impression of unearthly beauty in his poems and of unearthly horror in his prose. Some writers (Hawthorne, for example) go through life as in a dream; but if one were to judge Poe by his work, one might think that he had suffered a long nightmare. Of this familiar experience, his youth, his army training, his meeting with other men, his impressions of nature or humanity, there is hardly a trace in his work; of despair, terror and hallucinations there is a plethora.

[Sidenote: HIS METHOD]

His method was at once haphazard and carefully elaborated,--a paradox, it seems, till we examine his work or read his records thereof. In his poetry words appealed to him, as they appeal to some children, not so much for their meaning as for their sound. Thus the word "nevermore," a gloomy, terrible word, comes into his mind, and he proceeds to brood over it. The shadow of a great loss is in the word, and loss meant to Poe the loss of beauty in the form of a woman; therefore he invents "the lost Lenore" to rime with his "nevermore." Some outward figure of despair is now needed, something that will appeal to the imagination; and for that Poe selects the sable bird that poets have used since Anglo-Saxon times as a symbol of gloom or mystery. Then carefully, line by line, he hammers out "The Raven," a poem which from beginning to end is built around the word "nevermore" with its suggestion of pitiless memories.

Or again, Poe is sitting at the bedside of his dead wife when another word suddenly appeals to him. It is Shakespeare's

Duncan is in his grave;
After life's fitful fever he sleeps well.

And from that word is born "For Annie," with an ending to the first stanza which is an epitome of the poem, and which Longfellow suggested as a fitting epitaph for Poe's tomb:

And the fever called "Living"
Is conquered at last.

He reads Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner," and his "Manuscript Found in a Bottle" is the elaborated result of his chance inspiration. He sees Cooper make a success of a sea tale, and Irving of a journal of exploration; and, though he knows naught of the sea or the prairie, he produces his hair-raising _Arthur Gordon Pym_ and his _Journal of Julius Rodman_. Some sailor's yarn of a maelstrom in the North Sea comes to his ears, and he fabricates a story of a man who went into the whirlpool. He sees a newspaper account of a premature burial, and his "House of Usher" and several other stories reflect the imagined horror of such an experience. The same criticism applies to his miscellaneous thrillers, in which with rare cunning he uses phantoms, curtains, shadows, cats, the moldy odor of the grave,--and all to make a gruesome tale inspired by some wild whim or nightmare.

In fine, no other American writer ever had so slight a human basis for his work; no other ever labored more patiently or more carefully. The unending controversy over Poe commonly reduces itself to this deadlock: one reader asks, "What did he do that was worth a man's effort in the doing?" and another answers, "What did he do that was not cleverly, skillfully done?"

* * * * *

SUMMARY. The early part of the nineteenth century (sometimes called
the First National period of American letters) was a time of
unusual enthusiasm. The country had recently won its independence
and taken its place among the free nations of the world; it had
emerged triumphant from a period of doubt and struggle over the
Constitution and the Union; it was increasing with amazing rapidity
in territory, in population and in the wealth which followed a
successful commerce; its people were united as never before by
noble pride in the past and by a great hope for the future. It is
not surprising, therefore, that our first really national
literature (that is, a literature which was read by practically the
whole country, and which represented America to foreign nations)
should appear in this expansive age as an expression of the
national enthusiasm.

[Sidenote: CHIEF WRITERS]

The four chief writers of the period are: Irving, the pleasant
essayist, story-teller and historian; Bryant, the poet of primeval
nature; Cooper, the novelist, who was the first American author to
win world-wide fame; and Poe, the most cunning craftsman among our
early writers, who wrote a few melodious poems and many tales of
mystery or horror. Some critics would include also among the major
writers William Gilmore Simms (sometimes called "the Cooper of the
South"), author of many adventurous romances dealing with pioneer
life and with Colonial and Revolutionary history.

The numerous minor writers of the age are commonly grouped in local
schools. The Knickerbocker school, of New York, includes the poets
Halleck and Drake, the novelist Paulding, and one writer of
miscellaneous prose and verse, Nathaniel P. Willis, who was for a
time more popular than any other American writer save Cooper. In
the southern school (led by Poe and Simms) were Wilde, Kennedy and
William Wirt. The West was represented by Timothy Flint and James
Hall. In New England were the poets Percival and Maria Brooks, the
novelists Sarah Morton and Catherine Sedgwick, and the historians
Sparks and Bancroft. The writers we have named are merely typical;
there were literally hundreds of others who were more or less
widely known in the middle of the last century.

[Sidenote: FOREIGN INFLUENCE]

The first common characteristic of these writers was their
patriotic enthusiasm; the second was their romantic spirit. The
romantic movement in English poetry was well under way at this
time, and practically all our writers were involved in it. They
were strongly influenced, moreover, by English writers of the
period or by settled English literary traditions. Thus, Irving
modeled his style closely on that of Addison; the early poetry of
Bryant shows the influence of Wordsworth; the weird tales of Poe
and his critical essays were both alike influenced by Coleridge;
and the quickening influence of Scott appears plainly in the
romances of Cooper. The minor writers were even more subject to
foreign influences, especially to German and English romanticism.
There was, however, a sturdy independence in the work of most of
these writers which stamps it as original and unmistakably
American. The nature poetry of Bryant with its rugged strength and
simplicity, the old Dutch legends and stories of Irving, the
pioneer romances of Cooper and Simms, the effective short stories
of Poe,--these have hardly a counterpart in foreign writings of the
period. They are the first striking expressions of the new American
spirit in literature.

SELECTIONS FOR READING. Irving's Sketch Book, in Standard English
Classics and various other school editions (see "Texts" in General
Bibliography); The Alhambra, in Ginn and Company's Classics for
Children; parts of Bracebridge Hall, in Riverside Literature;
Conquest of Granada and other works, in Everyman's Library.

Selections from Bryant, in Riverside Literature and Pocket
Classics.

Cooper's Last of the Mohicans, in Standard English Classics and
other school editions; the five Leatherstocking tales, in
Everyman's Library; The Spy, in Riverside Literature.

Selections from Poe, prose and verse, in Standard English Classics,
Silver Classics, Johnson's English Classics, Lake English Classics.

Simms's The Yemassee, in Johnson's English Classics. Typical
selections from minor authors of the period, in Readings from
American Literature and other anthologies (see "Selections" in
General Bibliography).

BIBLIOGRAPHY. For works covering the whole field of American
history and literature see the General Bibliography. The following
are recommended for a special study of the early part of the
nineteenth century.

_HISTORY_. Adams, History of the United States, 1801-1817, 9
vols.; Von Holst, Constitutional and Political History, 1787-1861,
8 vols.; Sparks, Expansion of the American People; Low, The
American People; Expedition of Lewis and Clarke, in Original
Narratives Series (Scribner); Page, The Old South; Drake, The
Making of the West.

_LITERATURE_. There is no good literary history devoted to
this period. Critical studies of the authors named in the text may
be found in Richardson's American Literature and other general
histories. For the lives of minor authors see Adams, Dictionary of
American Authors, or Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography.

_Irving_. Life and Letters, by P. M. Irving, 4 vols., in
Crayon edition of Irving's works. Life by Warner, in American Men
of Letters; by Hill, in American Authors; by Boynton (brief), in
Riverside Biographies.

Essays by Brownell, in American Prose Masters; by Payne, in Leading
American Essayists; by Perry, in A Study of Prose Fiction; by
Curtis, in Literary and Social Addresses.

_Bryant_. Life, by Godwin, 2 vols.; by Bigelow, in American
Men of Letters; by Curtis. Wilson, Bryant and his Friends.

Essays, by Stedman, in Poets of America; by Curtis, in Orations and
Addresses; by Whipple, in Literature and Life; by Burton, in
Literary Leaders.

_Cooper_. Life, by Lounsbury, in American Men of Letters; by
Clymer (brief), in Beacon Biographies.

Essays, by Erskine, in Leading American Novelists; by Brownell, in
American Prose Masters; by Matthews, in Gateways to Literature.

_Poe_. Life, by Woodberry, in American Men of Letters; by
Trent, in English Men of Letters; Life and Letters, 2 vols., by
Harrison.

Essays, by Stedman, in Poets of America; by Brownell, in American
Prose Masters; by Burton, in Literary Leaders; by Higginson, in
Short Studies of American Authors; by Andrew Lang, in Letters to
Dead Authors; by Gates, in Studies and Appreciations; by Gosse, in
Questions at Issue.

_Simms_. Life, by Trent, in American Men of Letters. Critical
studies by Moses, in Literature of the South; by Link, in Pioneers
of Southern Literature; by Wauchope, in Writers of South Carolina.

_FICTION_. A few novels dealing with the period are: Brown,
Arthur Merwyn; Kennedy, Swallow Barn; Paulding, Westward Ho; Mrs.
Stowe, The Minister's Wooing; Cooke, Leather Stocking and Silk;
Eggleston, The Circuit Rider, The Hoosier Schoolmaster; Winthrop,
John Brent.