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CHAPTER XV.

GENERAL REMARKS.

We have endeavoured in the foregoing pages to supply a few facts respecting American literature, and to place those facts before the reader with as little parade as possible. Where titles are introduced they are intended to represent such works as are the types of their class, books which have received the approval of competent judges, and which are known on both sides of the Atlantic. What has been stated is mainly the result of careful investigation and extensive reading. The object in view, was the arrangement into narrative form, with some regard to chronological order, of such facts as would go towards imparting to the general reader a correct and comprehensive outline of the rise and progress of American literature. How far this object has been accomplished it is for the reader to judge. The whole labour may be a failure: but, if so, we feel confident that the materials we have thrown together are in themselves good, and may yet prove acceptable to readers under the treatment of a writer better qualified than ourselves for the task. We shall be content to know that the facts we have brought to light may tend to remove prejudices now honestly entertained by many Europeans respecting American literature, and that our remarks may incite to further inquiry.

Great authors rise at long intervals. England has but one Shakspeare, and but one Milton. Within the two centuries which have elapsed since the successful settlement of Virginia and Massachusetts, many of her most cherished authors lived. The majority of these, however, are as much American as English. The marked distinction between the two nations did not show itself in their literature before the American Revolution. Then the colonists began to think for themselves, and their writings took the impress of the new state of things. What has been accomplished in the past fifty years should satisfy any American. Another half century of equal progress will leave no doubt as to the fact of an American literature. An English author of distinction, recently returned from the United States, lately stated at a public dinner in London that Great Britain and the United States are now the only depositories of pure literature. An American would hesitate to make such a declaration :-an Englishman could do it with propriety. It is bold. Some may ask, is it correct? Yes. At this time no Continental author can write and publish his independent thoughts without the danger of exile or imprisonment before his eyes. Tyranny must be conciliated at the sacrifice of honest conviction, and purity is thus destroyed. And if Continental countries no longer foster a pure literature, where must we seek it? The answer is to be found in Mr. Mackay's speech. Fifty years ago the most sanguine believer in the eventual success of American literature would hardly have ventured to predict, that at this time the most popular living poet in Great Britain would be an American, and that American books would constitute a large and important part of the popular reading of the British public. Yet such is the fact. The wonder is that a country, then so dependent on foreign ideas, should now influence old communities by her thoughts. It has been justly observed, that we are not so much governed by the opinions

writers teach, as by the sentiments they inspire. For years the teachings of American authors were coldly received in Europe: but the sentiments their writings elicited have rewarded them with a more patient reception at the hands of the present generation than the criticism of thirty years ago augured. And at this period American authors find readers in Europe because of the purity of their style, the originality of their views, and the thoughts they suggest. Notwithstanding all the severe remarks expended on the works of transAtlantic writers, their teachings are by no means powerless in the Old World. It is not claiming too much to say that American literature has a marked original character; that much of it is destined to endure for ages, and that it has already a powerful influence in advancing the mental and material welfare of civilized man. It is a recognised power through the sentiments it inspires.

It is not yet forty years since the United States were taunted with the allegation that in the fifty years they had been a nation they had not produced a book that would stand the test of time. The remark was illiberal. A nation's literature is not the growth of a day. Carthage had no literature, although she existed four hundred years in the full enjoyment of the light of Grecian learning. She expired, and left no sign of her mental power. Rome was no better off during the same period, and, had she shared the fate of her rival, the Latin tongue would not now be a depository of pure classical literature. Is it presumptuous, then, to ask whether, if the American Republic were now to meet the doom of Carthage, there is not much in her literature that would not live? Irving's pure English will assuredly continue to adorn the language of which it is a part, so long as that language shall remain recorded. He and his fellow American authors have stampt the impress of their nationality upon the English tongue. In the four hundred years that Rome occupied Britain, she failed to leave a single living evidence of it on the language of the people. But in the eighty-two years of the existence of the United States, the Republic has infused her spirit into the English language, and has extended that language over the greater part of the continent of North America, to say nothing of the remote islands of the Pacific.

The steady progress of American authorship, in the face of unjust opposition, is not the least remarkable event in the history of the nation. A people less self-reliant would have been disheartened with half the illiberal criticism to which the Americans have been subjected. For very many years European critics viewed all Americans books with disdain. As a rule, American works were subjected to the most illiberal tests, and not only underwent the ordeal of severe criticism, but were often received with that prejudice so long entertained in Europe towards everything American. In the first twenty-five years of the present century, American books were often reviewed for the sole purpose of fault-finding and ridicule. The critics had a standard of their own creation, formed from European ideas solely, and never for a moment seemed to imagine that other people had a right to think for themselves, or that what was a proper model in one country might, from the prevalence of a different style of thought and education, be totally unadapted to another. They believed, or pretended to believe, that theirs was the rule of excellence, and in its application not only committed palpable blunders, but dealt unjustly and unkindly with incritorious works, simply because of their origin; and, not content with de

nouncing the books themselves, wandered abroad to indulge in uncalled-for vitu. peration of the American people and their institutions. That these ill-advised effusions had a bad effect on both sides of the Atlantic was natural. But their influence has happily past. The feelings they temporarily aroused have been extinguished, and criticism of the order under notice is now only indulged by the envious and illiberal few, American literature being fairly recognised in Europe by all whose opinions merit respect.

To judge properly of a literature the reader ought to have access to a comprehensive collection of the works of which it is composed. Very many American productions will not, from their nature and the limited demand that exists for them, admit of re-production in Europe. The supply must, therefore, depend upon importation, and it is gratifying to the writer, as an American, to mention, that Mr. Trübner, the enterprising projector and publisher of the volume of which these pages form a part, has for years imported into Great Britain books which probably would never have reached Europe without his aid. To him many recent American authors are mainly indebted for their introduction to British readers. His Bibliographical Guide to American Literature, published in 1955, was the first effort made in Europe towards a properly arranged list of American books, and the wonderful success it met with was deserved. The want of, and demand for, such a work in Great Britain, were a flattering compliment to American literature. Since its publication American books are in such constant requirement, that scarcely a steamship trading between Liverpool and the United States makes a homeward trip without bringing a consignment for London, and the demand is rapidly on the inThis fact shows the existence of an extensive appreciation of American literature in Great Britain not publicly known; and it is fair to infer that the books imported by Mr. Trübner make their way into the hands of those capable of forming a just estimate of their value.

crease.

Human progress has been so rapid of late years, that deep-rooted national prejudices are fast disappearing from the popular mind. The people of different countries are beginning to see that there is something good in each and every nation that no one country can arrogate to itself the right to establish on its own ideas a standard of universal excellence, and that, after all, the world is to be improved by an exchange of thoughts, and by a more general and more frequent intercourse among people. One of the fruits of this principle is the increased attention of most European nations to the merits of American literature. We cannot conclude our remarks without acknowledging that a vast number of comparatively worthless literary productions have an American origin; but in a country so new it would be unfair to expect universal excellence. Worthless books, like worthless individuals, soon pass into oblivion; and, as improvement of the human race is the paramount aim of this age, we have made it a duty to direct attention to the valuable in American literature, in order to make it more generally known. The structure we have reared may want the ornaments of architecture, and the masterly proportions of a grand design; but, while it lacks these, it doubtless has within a fund of information, which will repay the one who has the time to enter its portals.

BENJAMIN MORAN.

PUBLIC LIBRARIES

OF

THE UNITED STATES.

THE early history of Libraries in America derives a special interest for Englishmen from the fact that it is preeminently a record of reciprocal good offices, between some of the best men of both countries. There is not a Library in the United States, of the age of a century and upwards, which does not treasure on its roll of benefactors the name of many a liberal-minded Englishman, who saw that in lending what furtherance he could to the cause of learning in the rising community, he was at once discharging a plain duty, and sowing the seeds of an abundant harvest, of which his own posterity would surely reap a portion, though they might never behold the fields in which it was to grow.

Many have been the flippant and shallow sneers which, in more recent days, have been thrown by writers of a certain school-small, but noisy-at the Americans, for their alleged disregard of literature of the higher order, and especially for their want of those great collections of books, without which thorough scholarship and lofty literary enterprise are alike impossible.

Perhaps an unlucky remark which fell from a North American Reviewer, some years ago, may have been the germ of some of these depreciatory statements. For in these days of countless periodicals a casual and hasty paragraph will sometimes attain a singular vitality by mere dint of repetition. Literature will not be much promoted, observed this writer, by a "facility for accumulating quotations by means of huge libraries.” * Of course, a brother critic on this side of the water speedily improves the occasion, by assuring his readers that the "spirit of pride which leads us to contemn what we do not possess, has unhappily had its effect on the Americans, and induced them to undervalue the advantages of public libraries." Other writers follow the lead, until we find the grave historian of Europe, Sir Archibald Alison, asserting not only that "literature meets with little encouragement in America," but that American historians will have to write the history of the present gener*North American Review, No. 65.

+ Foreign Quarterly Review, Vol. vii. p. 227.

h

ation from the archives of other lands, so "utterly regardless" are their countrymen of "historical records and monuments."

Most true it is that America can show no great encyclopædical collection like the Imperial Library at Paris, or the British Museum Library in London, or the Bodleian at Oxford. Such repositories as these are the slow growth of centuries. They need the combination of many favourable circumstances, and the laborious efforts of several successive generations of benefactors. The rude and arduous pioneer work which the American Colonists had to perform, might well have tasked their utmost energies, to the exclusion of all thought for the wants of their future historians and scholars, in the way of a great public provision of books. That Collegiate and other Educational Libraries, indeed, should be formed in the States may be regarded as but the natural sequence of that wise and far-sighted policy which led the Legislature of Massachusetts to enact (more than two hundred years ago) that "when any town shall increase to the number of one hundred families they shall, under penalty,... set up a grammar-school; "*-thus initiating one of the best systems of school organization which the world has seen, and deciding on broad and enduring principles a question, which in the mother-country is to this day made the arena of petty sectarian conflicts. But it would be vain indeed to expect any elaborate collection of the muniments of history, and the rarities of literature, from men who not only had before them the conversion of a vast wilderness into a civilised and religious community, but of whom it might be said with literal truth, that "they who builded and they who bare burdens, . . . . with one hand wrought at the work, and with the other hand held a weapon."

It will, however, become apparent in the course of our brief review of the rise and progress of Public Libraries in the United States, that even in times of savage warfare and intestine difficulty there have been Americans who were thoughtfully providing for the wants of the men of letters of a more quiet period to come; whilst, on the other hand, the Union, as à country, has long been distinguished for the wide diffusion of a popular taste for reading, and the large facilities presented for the gratification of that taste. The discrimination, too, which time was sure to bring with it, is visibly advancing. No circumstance in recent days has more noticeably affected the book-markets of Europe, than the rapid growth of the American demand for good, choice, and fine books. Always a nation of readers, they are becoming, not indeed a nation of critics, but-what is much better-of generous appreciators of the literature of all Europe, as well as of their own. Seventy years ago it was said of them: "It is scarce possible to conceive the number of readers with which every little town abounds. The common people are on a footing in point of literature with the middle ranks of Europe." But the same writer tells us, that “of expensive publications they have none. A single book of the value of £5 or £10 is nowhere to be found here."† Sixty-four years after these passages were penned, another writer, Mr. Henry Stevens, of Vermont-who has had

• Charters and general laws of the Colony and Province of Massachusetts Bay. (Boston, 1814. 8vo.)

+ Bibliotheca Americana (1789), Preface.

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