tive of admirable effects, in impressing upon us, even chasers for them. For this was the period, renthrough shame and stripes, a better sense of na- dered somewhat famous by the contemptuous sneer tional dignity than we seemed before to entertain. of the British critic, contained in the phrase,Our ocean-victories followed, at the happy moment, since made proverbial by the noble commentary to confirm in us the new-born sense of pride and which American Literature has passed upon itpatriotism. That war, so equally distinguished by Who reads an American book ?" Verily, up to this humiliating disasters and exhilarating successes, period, writers of American books were few indeed. did very much to sever. the links that bound the The national mind, in every thing that belonged to mind of the nation to its old colonial faith. A gene- the fine arts, belles-lettres and the superior sciences, ral intellectual awakening seemed to follow it, seems to have acknowledged its incapacity, and to and we suspect that the records of our patent of have surrendered itself, passively, to the foreign fire, (taken as one of the signs of intellectual pro- teacher, which had so recently been its tyrant. gress, though in matters merely utilitarian,) will No works of art issued from the native press-no show a more remarkable advance in the history of fancy, no fiction, no humor, no romance! The imadomestic inventions, from the year 1815 to that of gination of the nation-the resources of which are, 1835-a term of twenty years-than can be shown in reality, wondrous and unsurpassable,* crouching by any other country, of similar population, in the in shadow, with wing folded, and head drooping same space of time. The arts are kindred. Those upon its bosom,-was not even conjectured to have of mere utility and those of beauty and refinement, an existence! however dissimilar in their uses and habiliments, It was natural enough that, in the newly-born belong yet to the same great family. They are not passion for thorough independence, which distin-! hostile, though the one presides at the piano, while guished the feelings of our people at the close of to the other is deputed the humbler duties of put the war of 1812,—and which led to the adoption ting the household in proper order. The physical of a government system for the protection of dowants of the individual supplied, those of his intel-mestic manufactures,--the policy which this feellect clamor for their dues. It is a sufficient proof ing declared, should also extend itself to other of the natural intellectual tendencies of the Ame- objects than those which concerned the physical rican people, that their anxiety for their mental being only. The policy which declared for making supplies did not linger and wait upon those which our own woollens, necessarily gave some thought to concerned the animal nature only. The non-inter- books. But no such protection was afforded by course with Great Britain, which had cut off the government to this branch of domestic industry. supplies of blankets, woollens and other commodi- The notion seems to have been, if our bodies are ties of like nature, had been far more decidedly beneficial in cutting off the supply of books. It *This remark may surprise those, who, not regarding the was in the very midst of the conflict that Ameri- thousand circumstances which have tended to discourage ean Literature, such as it is, first sprang into exis-the progress of the American imagination, in its legitimate tence. The Port-Folio, by Dennie, one of our best periodicals, was first published in 1812. This was not the only instance. The laws of demand and supply did not fail to produce their effects, and the same national spirit, which clamored for our own manufactures, was equally busy, if less clamorous, in striving to supply the lack of Literature. The preparation of school and classical books, which has since become one of the most extensive businesses of the American publisher, may be said to have begun at this period.. At all events, we shall be perfectly safe in saying that, prior to 1815, the issues from the American press were not only reprints wholly from foreign sources, but were confined chiefly to works of science and education. We need make no special exception in behalf of the building great cities, sending forth noble fleets,--penetrating domestic histories, which, in small editions, were the wildest regions-winning the mastery every where, and generally so many appeals to local patriotism, and now confronting the masters of the old world and challengaccordingly, most usually, were published by sub-ing them to a fair field and no favor. This is the cause of scription. As little may be said of the young quarrel and vexation, of sneer, and hate, and disparagement. poet, who, here and there, in some one or other And all this the work of fifty years! Verily, if this do not eity, sent forth his slender volume at his own expense, rather with the view to seeing his verses in print, than with any sanguine hope of finding pur direction, infer its absence, from the deficiency of its ima ginative Literature-a deficiency, which, we hope to show, exists only in the ignorance of our critics as to what the nation has really done. But the proofs of the most vigorous imaginative presence are every where around us—in the boldness of our public and social designs-in the rapid and vehement energies of our people,-in the very extravagance of their contemplations, the unfamiliar elevation and novelty of their modes of speech, their swelling character, and really remarkable progress. The history of the people of the United States is itself a great and astonishing romance. It is a history belonging to that school of which Robinson Crusoe is an admirable example. Here is a nation, like the individual, cast naked upon the desert, ignorant, unlettered, poor, desolate, yet, out of themselves and the wondrous resources of their nature, contriving means against all enemies, without and within-shaking themselves free from the "old man of the sea"-no inappropriate term for the mother country-founding a great empire, prove the presence of a daring wing, then never nation possessed one. The imagination has more to do with the ordinary works of útilitarianism, than ordinary people seem o imagine. 1 the universal tongues of art and song, was one of those convictions that never sleep until they have realized all the proofs which are necessary to the full establishment and recognition of their pretensions. free from foreign dominion, it matters little that proach of incapacity, urged, not more by the British our thoughts, our feelings, our souls, should still reviewer, than the European reader. Her eyes remain in bondage. The noble and emphatic sen- suddenly became unscaled, purged, like those of timent, already quoted, of Dr. Channing,-" We the eagle, whose mighty youth had been mewed up; say, let others spin and weave for us, but let them and the universal feeling of her people might be not think for us!"-suggesting, as it does, the only compared, without extravagance of figure, to that great, true and patriotic principle, upon which the of the explorer,-long desponding, wearied in his opinions of a citizen should be moulded, in all that search and hopeless of success,-who, at the least concerns such a relation, would have shocked the expected moment, sees land!-sees the green slopes, genius of the spinning Jenny, and caused the the wild, gorgeous shrubbery, and the huge mounthroes of a moral earthquake in every manufac-tains of the unknown empire, suddenly standing turing mart from Passamaquoddy to Pittsburg. out upon his sight! The "anch' io son pittore!" of The slavish nature, however, which thus preferred the modest painter, was suddenly ours. We, too, the most ordinary interests of humanity, to those could have our possessions in the intellectual, as in which are calculated to lift it into excellence, and the natural world. All was not a blank in taste to the rarer walks of achievement, was rebuked by and Literature. Europe shall yet receive us, and the better genius of the nation; and, without any we shall have our word in her high places of poprotection from government, without a tax on any liteness and refinement! The conviction, that we other branch of business, that of American Litera- too might put in our claims to appear among those ture was begun. To the genius of Fennimore nations which had long before been endowed with Cooper, we feel confident in saying, we owe the first signs of a power, the first unfoldings of a wing, which has since soared so famously, and which is destined to still higher flights, if not denied and delayed by untoward and unfriendly circumstance. The first writings of this author ap- It does not militate against the claim here adpeared in 1819. How closely upon the footsteps vanced for Mr. Cooper to show that the novels of of war! How soon was the question of the Bri- Charles Brockden Brown-works in fiction of a tish Reviewer--" who reads an American book?"- rarely imaginative and highly original complexionanswered by the writer, whose works, but a few were published in America so far back as 1798, years after, were read in the language of every 1801. We could show, with little difficulty, that nation in Christendom! As if to illustrate the con- there were other names of men of genius, at petest through which the nation had just gone, and riods equally remote, by whom-the mere date of to maintain the vigorous spirit which she had shown their publication being alone considered-the wriin dealing with an enemy equally insolent and tings of Mr. Cooper were anticipated. But, so powerful, the earliest work of his pen, which drew far as their effect upon the public taste and spirit the eyes of the country upon him, was founded is concerned, they might as well have remained upon events in the great struggle, with the same unpublished to this day. Their works had no cirenemy, in 1776! The publication of “The Spy," culation, did not, in the least degree, affect the which was the work in question, had an effect upon popular feeling, and prompted no farther search the American people, infinitely beyond any plea- after a vein which was equally rich in quantity and sure which they might have gathered from its pe- kind. It is to their misfortune and to the reproach rusal, as a romance. It was contemporaneous, in of the country that this was the case. But the publication, with "The Pirate" of Walter Scott-truth is, the nation was not then prepared to recoga work which did not give such ample develop-nize its own genius-had not then the courage to ment to the powers of its author, and thus afforded assert a genius at all, without first securing the an additional opportunity to the American reader, British imprimatur. Her training for this, from to institute comparisons between them, not unfavorable to the native writer. Even as a successful imitation only of Walter Scott, it was an event to rejoice a youthful people, hitherto doubtful of their resources-nay, denying them-ashamed, for the first time, of their own previous unperformance, and solicitous of fame in new departments;-when they discovered, suddenly rising in their midst, a genius-until then unknown-full of vigor, and marching, with admirable bearing, upon the very track hitherto trodden only by the "Great Unknown!" The event opened the eyes of the nation, already anxious to give the lie to the scornful re necessity, the hands of the foe-defeat, shame, foreign and domestic reproach-was yet to come. The genius of American Literature was born and could only be born, when the American people were prepared to receive and entertain her, to acknowledge her charms and to assert her pretensions. Such seed is seldom wasted—it comes with the occasion that demands it, and is very apt to come, "broad cast," when the soil is ready for its growth. There is a potential significance in this last little paragraph, upon which we have need to linger. The Literature of a nation, having but the single audience, cannot long exist, or must exist under the most humiliating disadvantages, if that nation, circumstances, it would be difficult to reproach. whether through ignorance of just standards, defi- Nor is it the least evil of this condition of the naciency of taste, or imbecility of will-or all com- tional mind, that it will not examine the intellectual bined-is incapable of awarding an original deci- claims of its own citizens, and dare not award its sion upon the merits of its authors. The only judginent upon them. It is not content with being authors of a nation, who illustrate its career, and passive merely: with the sycophancy which is chahelp its progress in the paths of moral improvement, racteristic of such servility, it seeks to anticipate are those who represent its spirit and partake its the foreign arbiter by judgments hostile to the precharacteristics. This is more particularly true of tensions of its sons-taking for granted—with the a nation whose government recognizes the people usual littleness of a self-esteem that lacks all the as the only sources of its power. If the nation, other essentials of judgment,-that an unfavorable then, be base and slavish, distrustful of its own decision is a safe one—at least for itself—and perresources, and doubtful of the genius of its sons, mits it the privilege of seeming to assert the positheir achievements will be watched with distrust, tion of the judge, when, really, it maintains only and met with every species of discouragement. that of the executioner. American criticism has Zimmerman gives a most deplorable picture of the but two frequently exhibited this one characteristic degraded intellectual condition of the German na- of judgments only, in considering the claims and tion, in this very particular, in their servile homage performances of American authorship. to the French genius in the time of Voltaire-the What followed from the first successes of Mr. French being the courtly language, and French Cooper and the appreciation of his countrymen ? philosophy, (so called,) in the accursed scepticism We say appreciation, for the fact is undeniable, that it taught of all things noble, having fairly emascu- public opinion in America, did not wait in his case, lated the popular spirit, equally of its originality as it had ever done before, for the award of British and its faith. The wonderful birth and progress tribunals. The verdict was equally instantaneous to excellence of native German genius, but a few and favorable; and the courage which dictated it years after the lament of Zimmerman, is equally was the result of that new spirit of independence, astonishing and encouraging, as it shows this pros- which was the great fruit of the war of 1812. Of the tration of a nation's mind to depend, not upon any long line of beautiful fictions, the work of his hand, thing radical or organic, and to be eradicable by which adorn the infant Literature of our country, it certain conservative influences which are probably is not within our province to speak. Our present deeply seated in the genius of every nation. Where objects will not admit of individual analysis, which this intellectual prostration is found, the motive to might seem invidious, and is not essential to our authorship is almost wholly wanting; and the supe-history. But the effect of his successes upon the rior genius, in obedience to his intellectual tendency, native intellect, in stimulating its movements, givin utter despair of his country, expatriates himself; ing courage to its exertions, and converting it from and, in the countenance afforded by other countries, a concern of amateurship and dilettantism into an quickly learns to forget, and even to repudiate his own. This melancholy history is true of several Americans, whose patriotism, under the existing 1 employment and a profession, was absolutely wonderful! and here, by the way, it may be well to remark, that the Literature of a people depends wholly upon the fact that it is made a profession. Nothing has ever come from amateur performances in letters or the arts. It must be a daily work, an habitual labor, exercise leading to perfection, and Here is a passage by way of sample. The American reader will be apt, involuntarily, to apply the language of Zimmerman, spoken of the Germans, before the awakening of the national genius, to his own country. The histories the stimulus of daily necessities impelling to daily are not unlike, as well in the sleep as the awakening. exercise. If the reader would learn any thing on "In Europe (America?) there exists a great nation dis- this head, let him look to the history of British tinguished by laboriousness and industry, possessing men Literature. He would see how little we owe to of inventive faculties and of great genius, in as great number as any other, little addicted to luxury, and the most the Sachvilles, the Rochesters, the Carews, the Taliant among the brave. This nation, nevertheless, hates Sucklings, et id omne genus-the tribe of clever and despises itself; purchases, praises and imitates only what gentlemen about town, and how much we owe to a foreign; it imagines that no dress can be elegant, no food or the day-laborers in letters-the constant workieswire delicious or even palatable, no dwelling commodious, unless the Shakspeares, the Johnsons (Ben and Sam) the stuff, taylor, clothes, cook, wine, furniture and architect come to it at an excessive expense and from abroad, and what adds a Popes, the Drydens-not forgetting that wondrous ext to all, from a country inhabited by its natural enemies. galaxy of genius, which, in spite of degradation, This singular nation exalts and praises solely and above mea- poverty, public scorn and private misery, still art, the genius and the wit of foreigners, the paintings of fondly labored at the shrine of the British Draforeigners, and especially with regard to Literature, foreign matic Muse, leaving a vast storehouse of material, tocks, written in the most miserable style, are solely purchased, wild song and wondrous story, from which the inore read and admired by these infatuated people, who know little even of their own history, save from the faulty, unfaithful and slenderly endowed moderns will long continue to malicious relations of foreign authors!" replenish their exhausted censers. I need not the professional poet, however, its pleasures may be said to "be born of pain and nurtured in convulsion." The law of nature, however, by which they are born poets-" poeta nascitur"-keeps them in shackles. Their obedience is maintained in spite of them. They acknowledge an iron necessity not less unyielding than that of the Grecian Fates! more especially designate the Beaumonts, the vexing the dreams-depriving the nights of renoFletchers, the Massingers, the Fords, the Dek-vating rests, enfeebling the frame and souring the kars, the Shirleys, the Rowleys, the Middletons temper. Its consolations are chiefly from within, and hundreds more-the true depositories of En- in the exciting nature of studies and contemplaglish genius-springing up in legions, as if, to use tions, which, while they exhilarate the fancy, by the humble figure employed in a previous paragraph, their intoxicating effects, enfeeble and destroy the they had been sown, broad cast, by the lavish hands frame. "Poetry," says Coleridge-himself one of a Deity who never sows in vain! That, up to of the greatest geniuses of the age in which it the period which we have designated as the com- starved-" has been to me its own exceeding great mencement of American Literature, the writings reward," and what he has said so felicitously has of Americans were not, and could not, be held in been probably felt by all who have ever professed, estimation, was due simply to the fact that Litera- what seems to me to have been singularly misture among us had not arrived at the dignity of a named, when called "La Gaie Science." Such it profession. The song was written by the gentle- may have been to the Minstrels of Provence. To man in night-gown and slippers; the tale by one who apologized, usually, for this wandering into forbidden grounds-possibly alleging a vacant mind, or an erring mood, for the solitary trespass; and promising, if forgiven for this, never, in like manner, to offend again. It would be something wonderful, indeed, if the expectations of the reader, under such assurances, should be extravagantstill more wonderful if he should attach any im- If such, in all countries, seems to have been the portance to a pursuit, which the amateur seemed, destiny of the belles-lettres writer-if such are prima facie, to regard as trifling if not improper. his sufferings, (and the painful history of British That this will be the natural condition of the popu- Literature abounds in proofs,) and such, and so lar thought, in a country subject to new and trying unsubstantial his rewards, what are the inducenecessities of the humblest kind, is natural enough. ments, even under the best circumstances, to auThat it should continue to be the popular thought. thorship in America?--Here, where we receive when the necessities of life are overcome, when unlimited supplies of the best books, in every dewant is driven from our doors, when plenty smiles partment, and in our mother tongue, from Great upon the land, and other lands are drained for their Britain; here, where the same books are presentluxuries, would indicate a most miserable intellec-ed to us at one fifth the cost at which they are sold tual inferiority, which, happily, is not our case. in the country where produced; here, where a On the contrary, as we have shown, a national general doubt almost universally seems to have necessity led to the birth of a national Literature. prevailed, as to the intellectual capacity, for such With the requisitions of the people, the profes- writings, of our own people; here, where we were sional author sprang into existence. From a sin-accustomed to defer to a foreign country the gle belles-lettres writer, we soon possessed hun-highest and noblest duty of a people, that of formdreds, eager for notice in the new vocation; and ing, upon intrinsic standards, our own judgments struggling, on short commons, to be heard in song in almost every intellectual matter! With all these and story. If they could live by this profession, things to discourage, the public looking on intheir demands, as is every where the case in the differently,--the publisher receiving reluctantly,— history of British Literature, were readily satisfied. the mental productions of the native, the local geThose who allege cupidity and mercenary views nius could not be restrained; and, stimulated by against the literary man, because he seeks ade- impulses born equally of patriotism and the muse, quate compensation for his toils, betray a singular the first offerings of American Literature promised ignorance of literary history. With a few splen- to be equally valuable and abundant. It would exdid and recent exceptions, authorship has been ceed our limits were we to attempt any catalogue most usually the least productive of occupations. raisonnée, of what has been done by native authorThere is scarcely an original living writer, whether ship, within that period which we have allotted to in America or England-as there has been no dead the achievements of American letters; but, by the one-who, if pecuniary results were his objects, help of a valuable pamphlet which is before us, would not instantly resort to any other occupation. prepared and published in London, by Mr. George I can scarcely direct my attention to any other, in Putnam, of the publishing house of Wiley & which the employé is not more at ease in his Putnam, we are enabled, without trouble, to array worldly concerns-better provided with the luxu- some facts bearing upon this subject, which are ries of life, and better prepared for the enjoyment better calculated than any thing we could say to of them. Literature is a self-denying vocation, prove the importance and patriotism of American tasking thought, and imagination, and sensibility-authorship. This pamphlet, we may say in this Theology 66 68 works, 66 "" place, contains some admirable answers, drawn | Neal, of Philadelphia, published, about 1839, a vochiefly from the argumentum ad homines, in reply lume called Charcoal Sketches," with illustrato the sneers of the British critics, on the subject tions; his name appended in full. This volume of American intellect. It is shown that, in nearly appears entire, plates and all, in the middle of "Pic every department of Literature, American writers Nic Papers," etc.," edited by C. Dickens, Esq. 3 have advanced to a position of the highest respec-vols: London, 1841," &c. The American books tability, frequently equality, and sometimes supe- reprinted in England, as English, within the last riority, in comparison with those of Europe, that ten years, according to the same authority, are hundreds of American books are annually repub-reported as follow: lished in London, frequently as English books, with their titles altered, their prefaces suppressed, and ali those distinguishing marks obliterated, by which their origin might be detected; that some of their most distinguished Reviews do not scruple to appropriate entire articles from American periodicals, taking care to alter the ear-marks, the titles, the signatures, &c., and sometimes to suppress the word America and substitute that of England. We make an extract from Mr. Putnam's preface in illustration of these startling assertions, the shocking dishonesty of which is only best understood, when it is remembered, that they decry us, in the very moment of their robbery, with the decaration that we have nothing fit to steal. Juvenile Total, 56 52 46 41 66 26 22 12 44 46 10 66 18 44 382. This will help us to an understanding, not only of “But, “who reads an American book ?" asks the Edinburgh Review. A good many do so, without "We have also good English authority for the being themselves aware of it. The case of the opinion, that the Hebrew Grammar, by Nordhei"oldest" London Review appreciating the articles mer; the Hebrew- English Lexicon, by Robinson; of the "North American" well enough to appro- the Greek Lexicon to the New Testament, by the priate some of them entire, as original, acciden- same; the Commentary on Isaiah, by Barnes; tally omitting to mention their origin, is not a soli- System of Theology, by Dwight; Geography of Palestine, by Robinson; Anthon's Text Books; tary one. American periodicals have contributed Prescott's "Ferdinand and Isabella;" "Medical "considerably" to those of England, in mutually Jurisprudence," by Beck; Ray's "Jurisprudence innocent unconsciousness. Some few American of Insanity;" and "Webster's Dictionary of the Enwriters would scarcely recognize their own offspring glish (!!!) Language," are all the best works, in under their new names and foreign dress. ... their several departments, in the language." Who, in looking over a list of titles, would supThe popularity of Cooper and Irving and Brockpose that "Quebec and New York, or the Three den Brown, and others of our belles-lettres writers Beauties," was the same as "Burton, or the Sieges," in England is already known, and Mr. Putnam tells 2nd Cortes, or the Fall of Mexico," a reprint of us that the "only translations known in English of “The Infidel;”—that The Last Day's of Ame- the classical works of Eschenburg, Butmann, Gelian" is no other than Mr. Ware's "Probus," and senius, Jahn, Ramshorn and Winer are the AmeMontacute," only a new title for " A New Home;" rican. From the same comprehensive pamphlet, that Mr. Muzzey's "Young Maiden" and "Young we take the following table, which will assist the Wife," are translated into "The English maiden" reader greatly in his inquiry into a subject hitherto and the "English wife," and Mr. Spark's "Life of too little regarded. It proposes to show, though Ledyard, the American Traveller" is only made necessarily very imperfectly, the number of Amemore attractive as "Memoirs of Ledyard, the rican publications for the last fifteen years. African Traveller" (anon), and two volumes of his "Writings of Washington," in 12 vols., are reprinted with the original title and apparently as if complete. Dr. Harris' "Natural History of the Bible," Bancroft's Translation of Heeren's polities of Greece," and Everett's "Translation of Batman's Greek Grammar" were all reprinted and sold as English books. Judge Story's "Law of Bailments" was chopped into fragments, and appended, here and there, by Mr. Theobald, in his notes on Sir William Jones. These are a few spemens...... One more may be mentioned: Mr. |