Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

survival, in literature only, of the earlier tradition that a woman's virtue was entirely at the mercy of any designing man of pleasing address. This probably came down from English writers of the 17th and 18th centuries through Charles Brockden Brown and others. It is fully as foreign to the time and place as are references to "the inconstant fair" and extravaganzas of mistress-worship-with which it is often found.

Fashions change as to what is permissible and what indelicate in writing and speech; and the literature of this period according to present views, is sometimes coarse and sometimes prudish. One reviewer1 objects to the Stout Gentleman in Bracebridge Hall because the affair with the chambermaid is indelicate. On the other hand many passages which Irving wrote, that today could be described only by the word coarse, evidently seemed perfectly proper.

In the country, and on the frontier, there probably existed the same conditions that exist among our rural population today-comparative purity of life, often accompanied by coarseness of speech and actions. In the cities there was still some of the old time gallantry. It was said to be possible for a woman to travel by stage-coach, unattended, throughout the country, without fear of annoyance.

had been. She was reclining on the trunk of an aged tree, and supporting with a hand of snow a brain of fire. I could not, did not, disturb her I felt an awe and veneration which none can dream of. Not far behind her stood a solitary willow, under whose drooping branches I found concealment,-- here I observed her and listened to the thrilling tones of a voice, sweet and heavenly as the music of a seraph *** she sang of love, of treachery, and of cruel inconstant man, and a deep melancholy flowed through every line- she tore a portrait from her bosom - kissed it - and placed it there again;then with a shriek she rose and wept-tear followed tear adown the cheek where roses once had bloomed - her lily hands she mingled with her jetty hair - she plucked it and gave it to the winds, which seemed to sigh and moan, as lamenting the fall of virtue — and then with fleetness that bid defiance to the rein-deer's speed, she ascended a rugged, barren cliff, whose towering top frowned upon the bubbling stream below-prostrate she knelt before the Throne of Mercy, and breathed a prayer in all the agony of a broken heart-then, rising from her humble pcsture, she rushed into the gulf beneath-a groan - a struggle - silence reigned — SHE DIED! THE VICTIM OF SEDUCTION!! *

GEORGE.

For other articles on the same subject, and in much the same strain see Rural Repository, Hudson, N. Y., i., 22, (June, 1824); Ladies' Magazine, Savannah, i., 4 (February, 1819); and many other periodicals of about this time.

1 Literary and Scientific Repository, iv., 422.

OTHER TENDENCIES.

Few things are harder to imagine than the conditions of an age that differs from our own. The task is especially hard in case of a period that was in some respects so modern, and in some so far removed from the life of today. It is hard to put ourselves in the places of men who read most of the best literature that we read, who lived under the same government, discussed the same political questions, and thought many of the same thoughts, but who had no railroads, no telegraphs, none of the modern conveniences without which it seems as if we could not exist. Even the absence of electric, gas, and kerosene lights would seem to us almost an insurmountable obstacle in the way of pursuing literary studies.

Books, while in one way and another within the reach of most, were comparatively scarce. Not many were published in the United States, and before the war commercial restrictions made it difficult to import. This state of affairs of course changed to some extent during this period. American publishers found it profitable to issue editions of English works, which they could reprint without paying royalty;2 and in time many works by American authors were undertaken. Still, reading matter was so rare that there was an incentive to master a good book.

Somewhat strangely, the fine arts in America were in a flourishing condition. Washington Allston, a brother-in-law of Dana, a man who seems to have fascinated every one who met him, won fame as a painter both at home and abroad. S. F. B. Morse, later the inventor of the telegraph, was prominent in New York art circles, as were Inman and many others.

In music, little had been produced on this side the water. The old-fashioned tunes were still played at rural dances. Imme

1 Ticknor, Life of Prescott, 9; quoted by Godwin.

*S. G. Goodrich, Recollections, ii., 110, says, speaking of the period before 1820: "The successful booksellers of the country-Carey, Small, Thomas, Warner, of Philadelphia; Campbell, Duyckinck, Reed, Kirk & Mercein, Whiting & Watson, of New York; Beers & Howe, of New Haven; O. D. Cooke, of Hartford; West & Richardson, Cummings & Hilliard, R. P. & C. Williams, S. T. Armstrong, of Boston were for the most part the mere reproducers and sellers of English books."

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

diately after the war martial airs were of course popular, and both commercial and naval interests gave vogue to songs of the sea. In polite circles the fashionably correct thing seems to have been to sing the songs of Burns and Moore, with their countless imitations.1

FOREIGN INFLUENCES-ENGLISH.

It has already been said that at this time there was little connection between European and American politics; but in the field of letters the influence of the old world was more marked. The state of English literature was such as to prove an inspiration. Notable publications by Byron, Wordsworth, and Scott bear the date 1815.2 Not only these men, but Coleridge, Keats, Moore, Maria Edgeworth, Miss Austin, Hallam, Hazlitt, and many others were producing some of their best work about this time. At no other period since the Elizabethan age had English writers been better fitted to exercise strong influence, and on the whole influence for good, upon their contemporaries.

It was

The two ideas for which the most prominent of these English writers stood were democracy and love of nature. natural that the expression of either of these should be responsively met in America. The bold, free romances of Scott, both in verse and in prose, appealed to a people who knew, by direct acquaintance or close tradition, such picturesque characters as the savage and the backwoodsman, and whose attention had been called by a recent war to the heroic deeds of their ancestors in colonial and revolutionary times. The poems were perhaps more enthusiastically received in America than in England. Young ladies could repeat the whole of The Lady of the Lake from memory. Every versifier attempted the octo-syllabic measure; even Bryant, at an early age, began an Indian narrative

1 Samuel Longfellow, Life of H. W. Longfellow, i., 14, gives the following list of music popular in the boyhood of the poet; The Battle of Prague, Governor Brooks's March, Washington's March, Henry's Cottage Maid, Brignal's Banks, Bonnie Doon, The Last Rose of Summer, Oft in the Stilly Night, Money Musk, Fisher's Hornpipe, The Haymakers.

Byron, Hebrew Melodies; Scott, Lord of the Isles, Guy Mannering; Wordsworth, The White Doe of Rylestone, Poems.

after the manner of Scott.1 Similar results followed the publication of the novels. Not only Cooper, but a host of lesser prose writers, were disciples of the author of Waverly.

The influence of Wordsworth is not easy to trace. He is quoted more widely than any other living poet except Byron, and is often referred to in an appreciative way by American writers. The exact form that this appreciation took, however, was not altogether such as would have been pleasing to Wordsworth. One of the most thorough reviews of the time2 patronizes the Lyrical Ballads, which are said to have succeeded in spite of "their grossness, their childishness, and their vanity"; gives high praise to The Excursion and other blank verse poems, and seems to consider Wordsworth best when he is drawing most inspiration from Milton. There were readers, however, who appreciated the Lyrical Ballads. Bryant said "that upon opening the book a thousand springs seemed to gush up at once in his heart, and the face of Nature, of a sudden, to change into a strange freshness and life." Still, it is doubtful if Wordsworth was widely read. As late as 1834 the American Quarterly Observert complains; "Just consider the estimation in which Wordsworth is regarded in this country. A small edition of his select poems was published in Boston in 1824, in beautiful style, and yet a considerable portion of the edition is unsold. In these ten years, what scores of the volumes of Mrs. Hemans,

1 Godwin, Life of Bryant, i., 141.

"Atlantic Magazine, New York, ii., 334 and 419 (1825). The reviewer says: "The Excursion * * * contains within its compass more pure and manly poetry, more beautiful embodying of pure and noble thoughts, more definite revealing of the secret influ ences which so wonderfully sway our complicated being, than can be found in almost any other poem since the great English Epic was given to the world. Most seriously and most painfully do we regret that an obstinate and petulant adherence to the mere form and shadow of a theory, utterly unworthy of the noble mind of Wordsworth, still desecrates, by its intrusion, the sacred structure that he has reared for immortality." "Yet nothing can be easier than the removal of this blot. The change of the word Pedlar as often as it occurs (we believe it occurs but once) to any other of the appellations of the old man, the Itinerant, the Traveller, the Wanderer, or the Solitary,- the erasure of some half a dozen lines, and the alteration of as many more,- would obviate the very reasonable complaint of those in whose minds the name of Pedlar is inseparably associated with base uses and vulgar recollections."

$ Richard H. Dana; quoted by Godwin, Life of Bryant, i., 104. July, 1834; page 147.

of Scott, Byron, and Pope have been scattered abroad." It is impossible, however, to estimate the influence of an author by the number of volumes sold. The truth probably is that Wordsworth was a "poet's poet"; that no living Englishman had a stronger hold on those American writers who themselves had the strongest hold on their own countrymen; but that his works were far less read by the masses than were those of Byron.

[ocr errors]

This was perfectly natural. Wordsworth's appreciation of nature was too subtile to be fully understood by the man of affairs. Byron loved nature too, but he loved her most in her grander manifestations, the ocean and the storm; and he expressed his feelings in a form that could be understood by the American sailor or the American backwoodsman. His democracy, too, was of a freer, more aggressive sort than was Wordsworth's, and approached nearer to the spirit of the American pioneer.

As might be expected, Byron found eager readers, perhaps his most eager readers, in the West. The pioneers saw nature as he saw it, and they regarded the rights of man much as he regarded them. Still, they could not commend, or even excuse his morals. The backwoodsmen were not Puritans, who took pleasure in repressing passions and desires, but rather mea whose passions and desires were so natural and whose habits of life were by necessity so restricted, that they could scarcely understand a life given over to cynical vice.1

The reviews of Byron's works in American magazines and the remarks on his death from press and pulpit are an interesting study. The religious journals treated the poet, as they do to the present day, with patronizing pity. The tone of criticism in the distinctively literary reviews was determined largely by the attitude of the editor toward England and English writers. Byron was the most popular English writer of the hour; his character and some things in his writings were clearly open to

1 See a very interesting series of articles on The Character of Lord Byron, signed R. N., in the Cincinnati Literary Gazette for 1825. There are many other notes on Byron and his work throughout this volume. See also a review of Don Juan in the Western Review ii., 1.

« AnteriorContinuar »