EMERSONEMERSON
By far the greatest of the Transcendental group and one of the most original figures in American literature was Ralph Waldo Emerson—a figure, indeed, in many ways unique in all literature. Born in Boston in 1803, the son of a Unitarian clergyman and a member of a large and sickly family, he followed the predestined path through Harvard College, graduating with no especial honors, entered the ministry, and served as pastor of the Second Church of Boston until 1832. Then, finding himself ill at ease in the position, he resigned, and, settling at Concord, turned to lecturing, first on scientific subjects and then on manners and morals. His reputation grew steadily, and, especially in the generation younger than himself, he awakened the deepest enthusiasm.
In 1836, the publication of a little volume called "Nature" gave conclusive evidence of his talent, and, followed as it was by his "Essays," "Representative Men," and "Conduct of Life," established his reputation as seer, interpreter of nature, poet and moralist—a reputation which has held its own against the assaults of time.
And yet no personality could be more puzzling or elusive. He was at once attractive and repulsive—there was a certain line which no one crossed, a charmed circle in which he dwelt alone. There was about him a certain coldness and detachment, a self-sufficiency, and a prudence which held him backfrom giving himself unreservedly to any cause. He lacked heart and temperament. He was a homely, shrewd and cold-blooded Yankee, to put it plainly. Yet, with all that, he was a serene and benignant figure, of an inspiring optimism, a fine patriotism, and profound intellect—a stimulator of the best in man. Upon this basis, probably, his final claim to memory will rest.
Another Transcendental eccentric with more than a touch of genius was Henry David Thoreau, and it is noteworthy that his fame, which burned dimly enough during his life, has flamed ever brighter and brighter since his death. This increase of reputation is no doubt due, in some degree, to the "return to nature," which has recently been so prominent in American life and which has gained a wide hearing for so noteworthy a "poet-naturalist"; but it is also due in part to a growing recognition of the fact that as a writer of delightful, suggestive and inspiring prose he has had few equals.
Thoreau is easily our most extraordinary man of letters. Born in Concord of a poor family, but managing to work his way through Harvard, he spent some years teaching; but an innate love of nature and of freedom led him to seek some form of livelihood which would leave him as much his own master as it was possible for a poor man to be. To earn money for any other purpose than to provide for one's bare necessities was to Thoreau a grievous waste of time, so it came about that for many years he was a sort of itinerant tinker, a doer of odd jobs.Another characteristic, partly innate and party cultivated, was a distrust of society and a dislike of cities. "I find it as ever very unprofitable to have much to do with men," he wrote; and finally, in pursuance of this idea, he built himself a little cabin on the shore of Walden pond, where he lived for some two years and a half.
It was there that his best work was done, for, at bottom, Thoreau was a man of letters rather than a naturalist, with the most seeing eye man ever had. "Walden, or Life in the Woods," and "A Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers" contain the best of Thoreau, and any boy or girl who is interested in the great outdoors, as every boy and girl ought to be, will enjoy reading them.
The last of the Transcendental group worthy of mention here is George William Curtis, a versatile and charming personality, not a genius in any sense, but a writer of pleasant and amusing prose, an orator of no small ability, and one of the truest patriots who ever loved and labored for his country. It is in this latter aspect, rather than as the author of "Nile Notes" and "The Potiphar Papers," that Curtis is best remembered to-day. The books that he produced have, to a large extent, lost their appeal; but the work he did during the dark days of reconstruction and after entitles him to admiring and grateful remembrance.
It is scarcely possible to close a chapter upon American prose writers without referring to at leastone of the great editors who have done so much to mould American public opinion. To James Gordon Bennett and Charles A. Dana only passing reference need be made; but Horace Greeley deserves more extended treatment.
GREELEYGREELEY
Early in the last century, on a rocky little farm in New Hampshire, lived a man by the name of Zaccheus Greeley, a good neighbor, but a bad manager—so bad that, in 1820, when his son Horace was nine years old, the farm was seized by the sheriff and sold for debt. The proceeds of the sale did not pay the debt, and so, in order to escape arrest, for they imprisoned people for debt in those days, Zaccheus Greeley fled across the border into Vermont, where his family soon joined him. He managed to make a precarious living by working at odd jobs, in which, of course, the boy joined him whenever he could be of any use.
He was a rather remarkable boy, with a great fondness for books, and when he was eleven years old, he tried to get a position in a printing office, but was rejected because he was too young. Four years later, he heard that a boy was wanted in an office at East Poultney, and he hastened to apply for the position. He was a lank, ungainly and dull-appearing boy, and the owner of the office did not think he could ever learn to be a printer, but finally put him to work, with the understanding that he was to receive nothing but his board and clothes for the first six months, and after that forty dollars a year additional.
The boy soon showed an unusual aptitude for the business, and finally decided that the little village was too restricted a field for his talents. With youth's sublime confidence, he decided to go to New York City. He managed to get a position in a printing office there, and two years later, at the age of twenty-two, he and a partner established the first one-cent daily newspaper in the United States. It was ahead of the times, however, and had to be abandoned after a few months.
But he had discovered his peculiar field, and in 1840 he established another paper which he called the "Log Cabin," in which he supported William Henry Harrison through the famous "log cabin and hard cider" campaign. The paper was a success, and in the year following he established the New York "Tribune," which was destined to make him both rich and famous. For more than thirty years he conducted the "Tribune," making it the most influential paper in the country. He became the most powerful political writer in the United States, and in every village groups gathered regularly to receive their papers and to see what "Old Horace" had to say. He was to his readers a strong and vivid personality—they had faith in his intelligence and honesty, and they believed that he would say what he believed to be right, regardless of whose toes were pinched. It was as different as possible to the anonymous journalism of to-day, when not one in a hundred of a newspaper's readers knows anything about the personality of the editor.
We have already referred to the fact that, at the beginning of secession, Greeley doubted the right of the North to compel the seceding states to remain in the Union. Indeed, he counselled peaceful separation rather than war, as did many others, but he was later a staunch supporter of President Lincoln's policy.
We have also spoken of the fact that, when Grant was re-nominated for President in 1872, a large section of the party, believing him incompetent, broke away from the party and named a candidate of their own. The party they formed was called the Liberal Republican, and their candidate was Horace Greeley. They managed to secure for him the support of the Democratic convention, which placed him at the head of the Democratic ticket, but they could not secure the support of the Democrats themselves, who could not forget that Greeley had been fighting them all his life; and the result was that he was overwhelmingly defeated. He had not expected such a result, his health had been undermined by the labors and anxieties of the campaign, and before the rejoicing of the Republicans was over, Greeley himself lay dead.
Irving, Washington.Born at New York City, April 3, 1783; went abroad for health, 1804; returned to America, 1806; published "Knickerbocker's History of New York," 1809; attaché of legation at Madrid, 1826-29; secretary of legation at London, 1829-32;minister to Spain, 1842-46; died at Sunnyside, near Tarrytown, New York, November 28, 1859.
Cooper, James Fenimore.Born at Burlington, New Jersey, September 15, 1789; entered Yale, 1802, but left after three years; midshipman in United States navy, 1808-11, when he resigned his commission; published first novel, "Precaution," anonymously, 1820, and followed it with many others; died at Cooperstown, New York, September 14, 1851.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel.Born at Salem, Massachusetts, July 4, 1804; graduated at Bowdoin College, 1825; served in Custom House at Boston, 1838-41; at Brook Farm, 1841; settled at Concord, Massachusetts, 1843; surveyor of the port of Salem, 1846-49; United States consul at Liverpool, 1853-57; published "Twice-Told Tales," 1837; "Mosses from an Old Manse," 1846; "The Scarlet Letter," 1850; "The House of the Seven Gables," 1851; and a number of other novels and collections of tales; died at Plymouth, New Hampshire, May 19, 1864.
Stowe, Harriet Beecher.Born at Litchfield, Connecticut, June 14, 1812; educated at Hartford, Connecticut; taught school there and at Cincinnati; published "Uncle Tom's Cabin," 1852; "Dred," 1856; and a number of other novels; died at Hartford, Connecticut, July 1, 1896.
Clemens, Samuel Langhorne.Born at Florida, Missouri, November 30, 1835; apprenticed to printer, 1847; alternated between mining and newspaper work, until the publication of "Innocents Abroad," 1869,made him famous as a humorist; died at Redding, Connecticut, April 22, 1910; published many collections of short stories and several novels.
Bancroft, George.Born at Worcester, Massachusetts, October 3, 1800; graduated at Harvard, 1817; collector of the port of Boston, 1838-41; Democratic candidate for governor of Massachusetts, 1844; secretary of the navy, 1845-46; minister to Great Britain, 1846-49; minister to Berlin, 1867-74; published first volume of his "History of the United States," 1834, last volume, 1874; died at Washington, Jan. 17, 1891.
Prescott, William Hickling.Born at Salem, Massachusetts, May 4, 1796; published "History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella," 1838; "Conquest of Mexico," 1843; "Conquest of Peru," 1847; "History of the Reign of Philip II," 1858; died at Boston, January 28, 1859.
Motley, John Lothrop.Born at Dorchester (now part of Boston), Massachusetts, April 15, 1814; graduated at Harvard, 1831; studied abroad, 1831-34; United States minister to Austria, 1861-67, and to Great Britain, 1869-70; published "Rise of the Dutch Republic," 1856; "History of the United Netherlands," 1868; "Life and Death of John of Barneveld," 1874; died in Dorset, England, May 29, 1877.
Parkman, Francis.Born at Boston, September 16, 1823; graduated at Harvard, 1844; published "The Conspiracy of Pontiac," 1851, and continued series of histories dealing with the French in America to "A Half Century of Conflict," 1892; died at Jamaica Plain, near Boston, November 8, 1893.
Alcott, Amos Bronson.Born at Wolcott, Connecticut, November 29, 1799; a book-peddler and school-teacher, conducting a school in Boston, 1834-37; removed to Concord, 1840; published "Orphic Sayings," 1840; "Tablets," 1868; "Concord Days," 1872; "Table-Talk," 1877; "Sonnets and Canzonets," 1882; died at Boston, March 4, 1888.
Alcott, Louisa May.Born at Germantown, Pennsylvania, November 29, 1832; teacher in early life and army nurse during Civil War; published "Little Women," 1868; "Old-Fashioned Girl," 1869; "Little Men," 1871, and many other children's stories; died at Boston, March 6, 1888.
Fuller, Sarah Margaret, Marchioness Ossoli.Born at Cambridgeport, Massachusetts, May 23, 1810; editedBoston Dial, 1840-42; literary criticNew York Tribune, 1844-46; published "Summer on the Lakes," 1843; "Woman in the Nineteenth Century," 1845; "Papers on Art and Literature," 1846; went to Europe, 1846; married Marquis Ossoli, 1847; drowned off Fire Island, July 16, 1850.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo.Born at Boston, Massachusetts, May 25, 1803; graduated at Harvard, 1821; Unitarian clergyman at Boston, 1829-32; commenced career as lecturer, 1833, and continued for nearly forty years; edited theDial, 1842-44; published "Nature," 1836; "Essays," 1841; "Poems," 1846; "Representative Men," 1850; and other books of essays and poems; died at Concord, Massachusetts, April 27, 1882.
Thoreau, Henry David.Born at Concord, Massachusetts, July 12, 1817; graduated at Harvard, 1837;lived alone at Walden Pond, 1845-47; published "A Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers," 1849; "Walden, or Life in the Woods," 1854; died at Concord, May 6, 1862. Several collections of his essays and letters were published after his death.
Curtis, George William.Born at Providence, Rhode Island, February 24, 1824; joined the Brook Farm Community, 1842, and afterwards spent some years in travel; published "Nile Notes of a Howadji," "The Howadji in Syria," "The Potiphar Papers," and other books; prominent as an anti-slavery orator and as the editor of "Harper's Weekly"; died at West New Brighton, Staten Island, August 31, 1892.
Greeley, Horace.Born at Amherst, New Hampshire, February 3, 1811; foundedNew York Tribune, 1841; member of Congress from New York, 1848-49; candidate of Liberal-Republican and Democratic parties for President, 1872; died at Pleasantville, Westchester County, New York, November 29, 1872.
"Poetry," says the Century dictionary, "is that one of the fine arts which addresses itself to the feelings and the imagination by the instrumentality of musical and moving words"; and that is probably as concise a definition of poetry as can be evolved. For poetry is difficult to define. Verse we can describe, because it is mechanical; but poetry is verse with a soul added.
It is for this very reason that there is so wide a variance in the critical estimates of the work of individual poets. The feelings and imagination of no two persons are exactly the same, and what will appeal to one will fail to appeal to the other; so that it follows that what is poetry for one is merely verse for the other. Tastes vary in poetry, just as they do in food. Indeed, poetry is a good deal like food. We all of us like bread and butter, and we eat it every day and get good, solid nourishment from it; but only the educated palate can appreciate the refinements of caviar, or Gorgonzola cheese, or some rare and special vintage. So most of us derive a mild enjoyment from the works of such poets as Longfellow and Tennyson and Whittier; but it requiresa trained taste to appreciate the subtle delights of Browning or Edgar Allan Poe.
Now the taste for the simple and obvious is a natural taste—the child's taste, healthy, and, some will add, unspoiled; but poetry must be judged by the nicer and more exacting standard, just as all other of the fine arts must. I wonder if you have ever read what is probably the most perfect lyric ever written by an American? I am going to set it down here as an example of what poetry can be, and I want you to compare your favorite poems, whatever they may be, with it. It is by Edgar Allan Poe and is called
TO HELENHelen, thy beauty is to meLike those Nicæan barks of yore;That gently, o'er a perfumed sea,The weary, wayworn wanderer boreTo his own native shore.On desperate seas long wont to roam;Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,Thy Naiad airs, have brought me homeTo the glory that was GreeceAnd the grandeur that was Rome.Lo! in yon brilliant window-nicheHow statue-like I see thee stand,The agate lamp within thy hand!Ah, Psyche, from the regions whichAre Holy Land!
TO HELEN
Helen, thy beauty is to meLike those Nicæan barks of yore;That gently, o'er a perfumed sea,The weary, wayworn wanderer boreTo his own native shore.
On desperate seas long wont to roam;Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,Thy Naiad airs, have brought me homeTo the glory that was GreeceAnd the grandeur that was Rome.
Lo! in yon brilliant window-nicheHow statue-like I see thee stand,The agate lamp within thy hand!Ah, Psyche, from the regions whichAre Holy Land!
In 1821—the same year which saw the publication ofThe Spy, the first significant American novel—there appeared at Boston a little pamphlet of forty-fourpages, bound modestly in brown paper boards, and containing eight poems. Two of them were "To a Waterfowl" and "Thanatopsis," and that little volume marked the advent of the first American poet—William Cullen Bryant. Out of the great mass of verse produced on our continent for two centuries after the Pilgrim Fathers landed on Plymouth Rock, his was the first which displayed those qualities which make for immortality.
Before him our greatest poets had been Philip Freneau, the "Poet of the Revolution"; Francis Scott Key, whose supreme achievement was "The Star-Spangled Banner"; Fitz-Greene Halleck, known to every school-boy by his "Marco Bozzaris," but chiefly memorable for a beautiful little lyric, "On the Death of Joseph Rodman Drake"; and Drake himself, perhaps the greatest of the four, but dying at the age of twenty-five with nothing better to his credit than the well-known "The American Flag," and the fanciful and ambitious "The Culprit Fay." But these men were, at best, only graceful versifiers, and Bryant loomed so far above them and the other verse-makers of his time that he was hailed as a miracle of genius, a sort of Parnassan giant whose like had never before existed. We estimate him more correctly to-day as a poet of the second rank, whose powers were limited but genuine. Indeed, even in his own day, Bryant's reputation waned somewhat, for he never fulfilled the promise of that first volume, and "To a Waterfowl" and "Thanatopsis" remain the best poems he ever wrote.
William Cullen Bryant was born at Cummington, Massachusetts, in 1794, the son of a physician, from whom he received practically all his early training, and who was himself a writer of verse. The boy's talent for versification was encouraged, and some of his productions were recited at school and published in the poet's corner of the local newspaper. In 1808, when Bryant was fourteen years old, the first volume of his poems was printed at Boston, with an advertisement certifying the extreme youth of the author. It contained nothing of any importance, and why anyone should care to read dull verse because it was written by a child is incomprehensible, but the book had some success, and Bryant's father was a very proud man.
Three years later, Bryant entered Williams College, but soon left, and, not having the means to pay his way through Yale, gave up the thought of college altogether, and began the study of law. He also read widely in English literature, and while in his seventeenth year produced what may fairly be called the first real poem written in America, "Thanatopsis," a wonderful achievement for a youth of that age. Six months later came the beautiful lines, "To a Waterfowl," and Bryant's career as a poet was fairly begun. In 1821 came the thin volume in which these and other poems were collected, and its success finally decided its author to relinquish a career at the bar and to turn to literature.
In the years that followed, Bryant produced a few other noteworthy poems, yet it is significant of thethinness of his inspiration that, though he began writing in early youth and lived to the age of eighty-four, his total product was scant in the extreme when compared with that of any of the acknowledged masters. His earnings from this source were never great, and, removing to New York, he secured, in 1828, the editorship of theEvening Post, with which he remained associated until his death.
In his later years, he became an imposing national figure. But his poetry never regained the wide acceptation which it once enjoyed, largely because taste in verse has changed, and we have come to lay more stress upon beauty than upon ethical teaching.
America has never lacked for versifiers, and Bryant's success encouraged a greater throng than ever to "lisp in numbers"; but few of them grew beyond the lisping stage, and it was not until the middle of the century that any emerged from this throng to take their stand definitely beside the author of "Thanatopsis." Then, almost simultaneously, six others disengaged themselves—Longfellow, Whittier, Poe, Lowell, Holmes and Emerson—and remain to this day the truest poets in our history.
Of Emerson we have already spoken. His poetry has been, and still is, the subject of controversy. To some, it is the best in our literature; to others, it is not poetry at all, but merely rhythmic prose. It is lacking in passion, in poetic glow—for how can fire come out of an iceberg?—but about some of itthere is the clean-cut beauty of the cameo. You know, of course, his immortal quatrain,
Rhodora! if the sages ask thee whyThis charm is wasted on the earth and sky,Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing,Then Beauty is its own excuse for being.
Rhodora! if the sages ask thee whyThis charm is wasted on the earth and sky,Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing,Then Beauty is its own excuse for being.
More than once he hit the bull's-eye, so to speak, in just that splendid way.
Of the others, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow is easily first in popular reputation, if not in actual achievement. Born at Portland, Maine, in 1807, of a good family, he developed into an attractive and promising boy; was a classmate at Bowdoin College of Nathaniel Hawthorne, and after three years' study abroad, was given the chair of modern languages there. For five years he held this position, filling it so well that in 1834 he was called to Harvard. He entered upon his duties there after another year abroad, and continued with them for eighteen years. The remainder of his life was spent quietly amid a congenial circle of friends at Cambridge. He was essentially home-loving, and took no strenuous interest in public affairs; for this reason, perhaps, he won a warmer place in public affection than has been accorded to any other American man-of-letters, for the American people is a home-loving people, and especially admires that quality in its great men.
From his earliest youth, Longfellow had written verses of somewhat unusual merit for a boy, though remarkable rather for smoothness of rhythm thanfor depth or originality of thought. His modern language studies involved much translation, but his first book, "Hyperion," was not published until 1839. It attained a considerable vogue, but as nothing to the wide popularity of "Voices of the Night," which appeared the same year. Two years later appeared "Ballads and Other Poems," and the two collections established their author in the popular heart beyond possibility of assault. They contained "A Psalm of Life," "The Reaper and the Flowers," "The Village Blacksmith," and "Excelsior," which, however we may dispute their claims as poetry, have taken their place among the treasured household verse of the nation.
Four years later, in "The Belfry of Bruges and Other Poems," he added two more to this collection, "The Day is Done" and "The Bridge." The publication, in 1847, of "Evangeline" raised him to the zenith of his reputation. His subsequent work confirmed him in popular estimation as the greatest of American poets—"Hiawatha," "The Courtship of Miles Standish," and such shorter poems as "Resignation," "The Children's Hour," "Paul Revere's Ride," and "The Old Clock on the Stairs."
But, after all, Longfellow was not a really great poet. He lacked the strength of imagination, the sureness of insight and the delicacy of fancy necessary to great poetry. He was rather a sentimentalist to whom study and practice had given an exceptional command of rhythm. The prevailing note of his best-known lyrics is one of sentimental sorrow—thenote which is of the very widest appeal. His public is largely the same public which weeps over the death of little Nell and loves to look at Landseer's "The Old Shepherd's Chief Mourner." Longfellow and Dickens and Landseer were all great artists and did admirable work, but scarcely the very highest work. But Longfellow's ballads "found an echo in the universal human heart," and won him an affection such as has been accorded no other modern poet. His place is by the hearth-side rather than on the mountain-top—by far the more comfortable and cheerful position of the two.
The year of Longfellow's birth witnessed that of another American poet, more virile, but of a narrower appeal—John Greenleaf Whittier. Whittier's birthplace was the old house at East Haverhill, Massachusetts, where many generations of his Quaker ancestors had dwelt. The family was poor, and the boy's life was a hard and cramped one, with few opportunities for schooling or culture; yet its very rigor made for character, and developed that courage and simplicity which were Whittier's noblest attributes.
What there was in the boy that moved him to write verse it would be difficult to say—some bent, some crotchet, which defies explanation. Certain it is that he did write; his sister sent some of his verses to a neighboring paper, and the result was a visit from its editor, William Lloyd Garrison, who encouraged the boy to get some further schooling, and afterwards helped him to secure a newspaper positionin Boston. But his health failed him, and he returned to Haverhill, removing, in 1836, to Amesbury, where the remainder of his life was spent.
He had already become interested in politics, had joined the abolitionists, and was soon the most influential of the protestants against slavery. Into this battle he threw himself heart and soul. It is amusing to reflect that, though a Quaker and advocate of non-resistance, he probably did more to render the Civil War inevitable than any other one man. During the war, his lyrics aided the Northern cause; and as soon as it was over, he labored unceasingly to allay the evil passions which the contest had aroused. He lived to the ripe age of eighty-five, simply and bravely, and his career was from first to last consistent and inspiring, one of the sweetest and gentlest in history.
Although Whittier was endowed with a brighter spark of the divine fire than Longfellow, he himself was conscious that he did not possess
The seerlike power to showThe secrets of the heart and mind.
The seerlike power to showThe secrets of the heart and mind.
He was lacking, too, in intellectual equipment—in culture, in mastery of rhythm and diction, in felicitous phrasing. And yet, on at least two occasions, he rang sublimely true—in his denunciation of Webster, "Ichabod," and in his idyll of New England rural life, "Snow-Bound."
The third of these New England poets, and also the least important, is Oliver Wendell Holmes. Bornat Cambridge, in the inner circle of New England aristocracy, educated at Harvard, and studying medicine in Boston and Paris, he practiced his profession for twelve years, until, in 1847, he was called to the chair of anatomy and physiology at Harvard, continuing in that position until 1882. He lived until 1894, the last survivor of the seven poets whom we have mentioned.
During his student days, Holmes had gained considerable reputation as a writer of humorous and sentimental society verse, and during his whole life he wrote practically no other kind. Long practice gave him an easy command of rhythm, and a careful training added delicacy to his diction. He became remarkably dexterous in rhyme, and grew to be the recognized celebrant of class reunions and public dinners. Urbane, felicitous and possessing an unflagging humor, he was the prince of after-dinner poets—not a lofty position, be it observed, nor one making for immortal fame. His highwater mark was reached in three poems, "The Chambered Nautilus," "The Deacon's Masterpiece," and that faultless piece of familiar verse, "The Last Leaf," all of which are widely and affectionately known. He lacked power and depth of imagination, the field in which he was really at home was a narrow one, and the verdict of time will probably be that he was a pleasant versifier rather than a true poet.
His claim to the attention of posterity is likely to rest, not on his verses, but upon a sprightly hodgepodge of imaginary table-talk, called "The Autocratof the Breakfast-Table"—a warm-hearted, kindly book, which still retains its savor.
And this brings us to our most versatile man-of-letters—James Russell Lowell. Born at Cambridge, in the old house called "Elmwood," so dear to his readers, spending an ideal boyhood in the midst of a cultured circle, treading the predestined path through Harvard, studying law and gaining admission to the bar—such was the story of his life for the first twenty-five years. As a student at Harvard, he had written a great deal of prose and verse of considerable merit, and he continued this work after graduation, gaining a livelihood somewhat precarious, indeed, yet sufficient to render it unnecessary for him to attempt to practice law. But it was not until 1848 that he really "struck his gait."
Certainly, then, he struck it to good purpose by the publication of the "Biglow Papers" and "A Fable for Critics," and stood revealed as one of the wisest, wittiest, most fearless and most patriotic of moralists and satirists. For the "Biglow Papers" mark a culmination of American humorous and satiric poetry which has never since been rivalled; and the "Fable for Critics" displays a satiric power unequalled since the days when Byron laid his lash along the backs of "Scotch Reviewers."
Both were real contributions to American letters, but as pure poetry both were surpassed later in the same year by his "Vision of Sir Launfal." These three productions, indeed, promised more for the future than Lowell was able to perform. He hadgone up like a balloon; but, instead of mounting higher, he drifted along at the same level, and at last came back to earth.
The succeeding seven years saw no production of the first importance from his pen, although a series of lectures on poetry, which he delivered before the Lowell Institute, brought him the offer of the chair at Harvard which Longfellow had just relinquished. Two years later, he became editor of theAtlantic Monthly, holding the position until 1861. During this time, he wrote little, but the opening of the Civil War gave a fresh impetus to his muse, his most noteworthy contribution to letters being the "Commemoration Ode" with which he marked its close—a poem which has risen steadily in public estimation, and which is, without doubt, the most notable of its kind ever delivered in America. The poems which he published during the next twenty years did little to enhance his reputation, which, as a poet, must rest upon his "Biglow Papers," his odes, and his "Vision of Sir Launfal."
Yet poetry was but one of his modes of expression, and, some think, the less important one. Immediately following the Civil War, he turned his attention to criticism, and when these essays were collected under the titles "Among My Books" and "My Study Windows," they proved their author to be the ablest critic, the most accomplished scholar, the most cultured writer—in a word, the greatest all-around man-of-letters, in America.
This prominence brought him the offer of theSpanish mission, which he accepted, going from Madrid to London, in 1880, as Ambassador to Great Britain, and remaining there for five years. The service he did there is incalculable; as the spokesman for America and the representative of American culture, he took his place with dignity and honor among England's greatest; his addresses charmed and impressed them, and he may be fairly said to have laid the foundations of that cordial friendship between America and Great Britain which exists to-day. "I am a bookman," was Lowell's proudest boast—not only a writer of books, but a mighty reader of books; and he is one of the most significant figures in American letters.
So we come to the man who measures up more nearly to the stature of a great poet than any other American—Edgar Allan Poe. Outside of America, there has never been any hesitancy in pronouncing Poe the first poet of his country; but, at home, it is only recently his real merit has come to be at all generally acknowledged.
Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston in 1809—a stroke of purest irony on the part of fate, for he was in no respect a Bostonian, and it was to Bostonians especially that he was anathema. His parents were actors, travelling from place to place, and his birth at Boston was purely accidental. They had no home and no fortune, but lived from hand to mouth, in the most precarious way, and both of them were dead before their son was two years old. He had an elder brother and a younger sister, andthese three babies were left stranded at Richmond, Virginia, entirely without money. Luckily they were too young to realize how very dark their future was, and the Providence which looks after the sparrows also looked after them. The wife of a well-to-do tobacco merchant, named John Allan, took a fancy to the dark-eyed, dark-haired boy of two, and, having no children of her own, adopted him.
It was better fortune than he could have hoped for, for he was brought up in comfort in a good home, and his foster-parents seem to have loved him and to have been ambitious for his future. He was an erratic boy, and was soon to get into the first of those difficulties which ended by wrecking his life. For, entering the University of Virginia, he made the mistake of associating with a fast set, with whom he had no business, and ended by losing heavy sums of money, which he was, of course, unable to pay, and which his foster-father very properly refused to pay for him. Instead, he removed the boy from college and put him to work in his office at Richmond.
Edgar felt that, in refusing to pay his debts, his foster-father had besmirched his honor. The thought rankled in his soul, and he ended by running away from home. He got to Boston, somehow, and enlisted in the army, serving for three years as a private. At the end of that time, there was a reconciliation between him and his foster-father, and the latter provided a substitute for him in the army, and securedhim an appointment to the military academy at West Point.
Why Poe should have felt that he was fitted for army life is difficult to understand, since he had always been impatient of discipline; but to West Point he went and very promptly got into trouble there, which culminated, at the end of the year, in court-martial and dismissal. He knew that his foster-father's patience was exhausted, and that he could expect nothing more from him, and he soon proved himself incapable of self-support.
He drifted from New York to Baltimore, often without knowing where his next meal was coming from, and finally, at Baltimore, his father's widowed sister gave him a home, and he soon married her fragile daughter, Virginia Clemm. But he had long been a prey to intemperance, and his habits in consequence were so irregular that he was unable to retain any permanent position. The truth seems to be that Poe was of a temperament so intensely nervous and sensitive that the smallest amount of alcoholic stimulant excited him beyond control, and he lacked the will-power to leave it alone altogether, which was his only chance of safety.
Yet he had gained a certain reputation with discerning people by the publication of a few poems of surprising merit, as well as a number of tales as remarkable and compelling as have ever been written in any language. That is a broad statement, and yet it is literally true. Not only is Poe America's greatest poet, but he is still moredecidedly her greatest short-story writer—so much the greatest, that with the exception of Nathaniel Hawthorne, she has never produced another to rival him.
If further testimony to his genius were needed, it might be found in the fact that he was still unable to make a living with his pen, and was forced to see his wife growing daily weaker without the means to provide her proper nourishment. His sufferings were frightful; he was compelled to bend his pride to an appeal for public charity, and the death of his wife wrecked such moral self-control as he had remaining.
The rest is soon told. There was a rapid deterioration, and on October 3, 1849, he was found unconscious in a saloon at Baltimore, where an election had been in progress and where Poe had been made drunk and then used as an illegal voter. He was taken to a hospital, treated for delirium tremens, and died three days later, a miserable outcast, at an age where he should have been at the very zenith of his powers. The pages of the world's history show no death more pathetically tragic.
Such a death naturally offended right-thinking people. Especially did it offend the New England conscience, which has never been able to divorce art from morals; and as the literary dominance of New England was at that time absolute, Poe was buried under a mass of uncharitable criticism. It should not be forgotten that he had struck the poisoned barb of his satire deep into many a New Englandsage, and it was, perhaps, only human nature to strike back. So it came to pass that Poe was pointed out, not as a man of genius, but as a horrible example and degrading influence to be sedulously avoided.
With foreign readers, all this counted for nothing. They were concerned not with the life of the man, but with the work of the artist, and they found that work consummately good. They were charmed and thrilled by the haunting melody of his verse and the weird horror of his tales. In his own country, recognition of his genius has grown rapidly of recent years. Within his own sphere, he is unquestionably the greatest artist America can boast—he climbed Parnassus higher than any of his countrymen, and if he did not quite attain a seat among the immortals, he at least caught some portion of their radiance.
After Poe, the man whom foreign critics consider America's most representative poet is another who has been without honor in his own country, and about whom, even yet, there is the widest difference of opinion—Walt Whitman. Whitman was ostracized for many years not because of his life, which was regular and admirable enough, but because of his verse, which is exceedingly irregular in more than one respect.
Whitman was by birth and training a man of the people. His father was a carpenter, and, after receiving a common-school education, the boy entered a printer's office at the age of thirteen. A printer'soffice is, in itself, a source of education, and Whitman soon began to write for the papers, finally going to New York City, where, for twelve years, he worked on Newspaper Row, as reporter or compositor, making friends with all sorts and conditions of men and entering heart and soul into the busy life of the great city. The people, the seething masses on the streets, had a compelling fascination for him.
Tiring of New York, at last, he started on a tramp trip to the southwest, worked in New Orleans and other towns, swung around through the northwest, and so back to Brooklyn, where he became, strangely enough, a contractor—a builder and seller of houses. He had been reading a great deal, all these years, but as yet had given no indication of what was to be his literary life-work.
And yet, fermenting inside the man and at last demanding expression, was a strange new philosophy of democracy, all-tolerant, holding the individual to be of the first importance, male and female equal, the body to be revered no less than the soul. For the promulgation of this philosophy, some worthy literary form was needed—poetry, since that was the noblest form, but poetry stripped of conventions and stock phrases, as "fluent and free as the people and the land and the great system of democracy which it was to celebrate." With some such idea as this, not outlined in words, nor, perhaps, very clearly understood even by himself, Whitman set to work, and the result was the now famous "Leaves ofGrass," a collection of twelve poems, printed by the author in Brooklyn in 1855.
Like most other philosophies and prophecies, it fell on heedless ears. Few people read it, and those who did were exasperated by its far-fetched diction or scandalized by its free treatment of delicate topics. In the next year, a second edition appeared, containing thirty-two poems; but the book had practically no sale.
Then came the Civil War, and Whitman, volunteering not for the field, but for work in the hospitals, proved that the doctrine of brotherly love, so basic to his poems, was basic also to his character. "Not till the sun excludes you, neither will I exclude you," he had declared; and now he devoted himself to nursing, on battlefield, in camp and hospital, doing what he could to cheer and lighten the worst side of war, an attractive and inspiring figure.
Lincoln, looking out of a window of the White House, saw him go past one day; a majestic person with snow-white beard and hair, his cotton shirt open at the throat, six feet tall and perfectly proportioned; and the President, without knowing who he was, but mistaking him probably for a common laborer, turned to a friend who stood beside him and remarked, "There goes a man!" And Whitman was a man. Up to that time, he had never been ill a day; but two years later, at the age of fifty-three, his health gave way, under the strain of nursing, and from that time until his death he was, physically,"a man in ruins." Mentally, he was as alert and virile as ever.
He was given a clerical position in one of the departments at Washington after that, remaining there until, in 1873, an attack of paralysis incapacitated him even for clerical labor. Meanwhile he had issued his poems of the war, under the title "Drum-Taps," and had softened some hostile hearts by the two noble tributes to Lincoln there included, "O Captain, my Captain!" and "When Lilacs last in the Dooryard Bloom'd." But his poetry brought him no income and, for a time, after his removal to Camden, New Jersey, where the remainder of his life was to be passed, he was in absolute want. Friends increased, however; his poems were re-issued, and his last years were spent in the midst of a circle of disciples, who hailed Whitman as a seer and prophet and were guilty of other fatuities which made the judicious grieve and did much to keep them alienated from the poet's work.
Since his death, his fame has become established on a firmer basis than hysterical adulation; but it is yet too soon to attempt to judge him, to say what his ultimate rank will be. It seems probable that it will be a high one, and it is possible that, centuries hence, the historian of American letters will start with Whitman as the first exponent of an original and democratic literature, disregarding all that has gone before as merely imitative of Europe.
Of our lesser poets, only a few need be mentioned here. Bayard Taylor, born in Pennsylvania in 1825,of Quaker stock and reared in the tenets of that sect, at one time loomed large in American letters, but it is doubtful whether anything of his has the quality of permanency. His personality was a picturesque and fascinating one and his life interesting and romantic.
A poor boy, burning with the itch to write and especially to travel; at the age of nineteen making his way to England, and from there to Germany; spending two years in Europe, enduring hardships, living with the common people; and finally returning home to find that his letters to the newspapers had been read with interest and had won a considerable audience—these were the first steps in his struggle for recognition. He collected his letters into a book called "Views Afoot," which at once became widely popular, and his reputation was made.
But it was a reputation as a reporter and traveller, and Taylor, much as he despised it, was never able to get away from it. He became, perforce, a sort of official traveller for the American people, journeyed in California, in the Orient, in Russia, Lapland—in most of the out-of-the-way corners of the world—and his books of travel were uniformly interesting and successful. They do not attract to-day, not, as Park Benjamin put it, because Taylor travelled more and saw less than any other man who ever lived, but because they lack the charm of style, depth of thought, and keenness of observation which the present generation has come to expect.
During all this time, Taylor was struggling withpathetic earnestness for recognition as a novelist and poet, but with poor measure of success. His novels were crude and amateurish, and have long since become negligible; but his verse is somewhat more important. His travels in the East furnished him material for his "Poems of the Orient," which represent him at his best.
His ambition, however, was to write a great epic; but for this he lacked both intellectual and emotional equipment, and his attempts in this field were virtual failures. These failures were to him most tragic; not only that, but he found himself financially embarrassed, and was forced to turn to such hack work as the writing of school histories in order to gain a livelihood. But his friends, of whom he had always a wide circle, secured him the mission to Germany, and he entered on his duties in high spirits—only to die suddenly one morning while sitting in his library at Berlin. A generous, impulsive and warm-hearted man, Bayard Taylor will be remembered for what he was, rather than for what he did.
Two other poets, whose deaths occurred not many months ago, have made noteworthy contributions to American letters—Edmund Clarence Stedman and Thomas Bailey Aldrich. Of the two, Aldrich was by far the better craftsman, his verse possessing a wit, a daintiness and perfection of finish which sets it apart in a class almost by itself. In prose, too, Aldrich wrote attractively, but always rather with the air of a dilettante, and without the depth and passion of genius. Stedman also possessed wit andpolish, though in less degree, and the verse of both these men is delightful reading.
More recent still has been the death of a man whose verse ranks with that of either Stedman or Aldrich—Richard Watson Gilder. Some of his lyrics are very beautiful, but they appeal to the intellect rather than to the heart. Perhaps for this reason, as well as for a certain lack of substance and virility, his verse has never had a wide appeal.
Two men whose names have become household words because of their delightful verses for and about children are Eugene Field and James Whitcomb Riley. Field is the greater of the two, for he possessed a depth of feeling and insight which is lacking in Riley. Few lyrics have been more widely popular than his "Little Boy Blue" and "Dutch Lullaby"; while Riley's "Little Orphant Annie" and "The Raggedy Man" are equally well known.
Alice and Phoebe Cary are remembered for a few simply-written lyrics; Julia Ward Howe's "Battle-Hymn of the Republic" lives as the worthiest piece of verse evoked by the Civil War; and Joaquin Miller is known for a certain rude power in song; but none of them is of sufficient importance to demand extended study.
It will be noted that, among all the poets who have been mentioned here, not one was distinctively of the South. Poe's youth was spent in Richmond, but he was in no sense Southern. Indeed, the South has only three names to offer of even minor importance—SidneyLanier, Henry Timrod, and Paul Hamilton Hayne. None of these men produced anything of the first order, and much of their verse is marred by amateurishness and want of finish—the result, in the first place, of defective training, and, in the second place, of an incapacity for taking pains, of a habit which relied too much on "inspiration" and too little on intellectual effort.
For verse, to be perfect, must be polished like a diamond, slowly and carefully, until every facet sparkles. This means that the right word or phrase must be searched for until it is found. Perhaps you have read Mr. Barrie's inimitable story "Sentimental Tommy," and you will remember how Tommy failed to write the prize essay because he couldn't think of the right word, and would be satisfied with no other. Well, that is the spirit. Somebody has said that "easy writing makes hard reading," and this is especially true of poetry. Inspiration doesn't extend to technic—that must be acquired, like any art, with infinite pains.
Of the three poets, Lanier, Timrod, and Hayne, Lanier was by far the greatest, and has even become, in a small way, the centre of a cult; but his voice, while often pure and sweet, lacks the strength needed to carry it down the ages. He is like a little brook making beautiful some meadow or strip of woodland; but only mighty rivers reach the ocean. Lanier is memorable not so much for his work as for the gallant fight he made against the consumption which he had contracted as the result of exposure inthe Confederate army during the Civil War. The war also played a disastrous part in the lives of both Hayne and Timrod, for it impoverished both of them, and did much to hasten the latter's death.
Timrod, too, rose occasionally to noble utterance, but his voice is fainter and his talent more slender than Lanier's. His life was a painful one, marred by poverty and disease, and he died at the age of thirty-eight. Hayne's work is even less important, for he did not, like Timrod and Lanier, touch an occasional height of inspired utterance. His name is cherished in his native state of South Carolina, and in Georgia, where his last years were spent; but his poems are little read elsewhere.
Timrod and Hayne were both born at Charleston, South Carolina, as was a third poet and novelist, who, in his day, loomed far larger than either of them, but who is now almost forgotten, except by students of American literature—William Gilmore Simms. Few American writers have produced so much—eighteen volumes of verse, three dramas, thirty-five novels and volumes of short stories, and about as many more books of history, biography and miscellany—and none, of like prominence in his day, has dropped more completely out of sight. In common with the other Southern writers we have mentioned, Simms lacked self-restraint and the power of self-criticism.
Genius has been defined as the capacity for taking pains; and perhaps it is because Southern writers have lacked this capacity that none of them hasproved to be a genius. Elbert Hubbard says that Simms "courted oblivion—and won her" by returning to the South after having achieved some success in the North; but it is doubtful if this had anything to do with it. The truth is that Simms's work has lost its appeal because of its inherent defects, and there is no chance that its popularity will ever be regained. And yet, while his verse is negligible—although he always thought himself a greater poet than novelist—some of his tales of the Carolinas and the Southwest possess a rude power and interest deserving of a better fate. Certainly Simms seems to have been the best imaginative writer the antebellum South produced.
American imaginative literature to-day resembles a lofty plateau rather than a mountain range. It shows a high level of achievement, but no mighty peaks. Novelists and poets alike have learned how to use their tools; they work with conviction—but in clay rather than in marble. In other words, they work without what we call inspiration; they have talent, but not genius. This is, perhaps, partly the fault of the age, which has come to place so high a value upon literary form that the quality of the material is often lost sight of. Let us hope that some day a genius will arise who will be great enough to disregard form and to strike out his own path across the domain of letters.
Meanwhile, it is safe to advise boys and girls to spend their time over the old things rather than over the new ones. There is so much good literature inthe world that there is really no excuse for reading bad, and the latest novel will not give half the solid entertainment to be got from scores of the older ones. One of the most valuable and delightful things in the world is the power to appreciate good literature. To have worthy "friends on the shelf," in the shape of great books, is to insure oneself against loneliness and ennui.
Bryant, William Cullen.Born at Cummington, Massachusetts, November 3, 1794; studied at Williams College, 1810-11; admitted to the bar, 1815; published "Thanatopsis," 1816; editor-in-chiefNew York Evening Post, 1829; published first collection of poems, 1821, and others from time to time until his death, at New York City, June 12, 1878.
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth.Born at Portland, Maine, February 27, 1807; graduated at Bowdoin College, 1825; travelled in Europe, 1826-29; professor of modern languages at Bowdoin, 1829-35; professor of modern languages andbelles lettresat Harvard, 1836-54; published "Voices of the Night," 1839; "Ballads and Other Poems," 1841; "Poems on Slavery," 1842; and many other collections of his poems, until his death at Cambridge, Massachusetts, March 24, 1882.
Whittier, John Greenleaf.Born at Haverhill, Massachusetts, December 17, 1807; attended Haverhill Academy; edited "American Manufacturer," at Boston, 1829; edited theHaverhill Gazette, 1830; becamesecretary of the American Anti-Slavery Society, 1836; member of Massachusetts legislature, 1835-36; settled at Amesbury, Massachusetts, 1840; published "Legends of New England," 1831; "Moll Pitcher," 1832; and many other collections of his poems until his death at Hampton Falls, New Hampshire, September 7, 1892.
Holmes, Oliver Wendell.Born at Cambridge, Massachusetts, August 29, 1809; professor of anatomy and physiology, Harvard Medical School, 1847-82; published "Autocrat of the Breakfast Table," 1858; "Elsie Venner," 1861; "Songs in Many Keys," 1861; and other collections of poems and essays; died at Cambridge, October 7, 1894.
Lowell, James Russell.Born at Cambridge, Massachusetts, February 22, 1819; graduated at Harvard, 1838; professor ofbelles lettresat Harvard, 1855; editorAtlantic Monthly, 1857-62; editorNorth American Review, 1863-72; minister to Spain, 1877-80; minister to Great Britain, 1880-85; published "A Year's Life," 1841; "Vision of Sir Launfal," 1845; "A Fable for Critics," 1848; "The Biglow Papers," 1848; and many other collections of essays, criticisms, and poems; died at Cambridge, August 12, 1891.
Poe, Edgar Allan.Born at Boston, January 19, 1809; entered University of Virginia, 1826; ran away from home, 1827; published "Tamerlane and Other Poems, by a Bostonian," 1827; enlisted in the army as Edgar A. Perry, rising to rank of sergeant-major, 1829; entered West Point, July 1, 1830; dismissed, March 6, 1831; married Virginia Clemm, 1835, who died in 1847; published "Poems," 1831; "Tales of theGrotesque and Arabesque," 1840; died at Baltimore, October 7, 1849.
Whitman, Walt or Walter.Born at West Hills, Long Island, May 31, 1819; a printer, carpenter, and journalist in early life; volunteered as army nurse, 1861; seized with hospital malaria, 1864; held government position at Washington, 1864-73; disabled by paralysis and removed to Camden, New Jersey, where he died, March 26, 1892. "Leaves of Grass," published originally in 1855, was many times revised, a final edition appearing in 1892.
Taylor, Bayard.Born at Kennett Square, Chester County, Pennsylvania, January 11, 1825; apprenticed to a printer, 1842; travelled on foot through Europe, 1844-46; in Egypt, Asia Minor, and Syria, 1851-52; in India, China, and Japan, 1852-53; secretary of legation at St. Petersburg, 1862-63; minister to Berlin, 1878; died at Berlin, December 19, 1878. He published collections of poems and travel letters.
Stedman, Edmund Clarence.Born at Hartford, Connecticut, October 8, 1833; entered Yale, 1839, leaving in junior year; was correspondentNew York World, 1861-63; later became stockbroker in New York City, retiring only a short time before his death in New York, January 18, 1908. Published several collections of poems.
Aldrich, Thomas Bailey.Born at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, November 11, 1836; editor ofEvery Saturday, 1870-74; editor ofThe Atlantic Monthly, 1881-90; published "Bells," 1855; "Ballad of Baby Bell," 1856; and many other collections of poetry, togetherwith several novels and collections of short stories; died March 19, 1907.
Field, Eugene.Born at St. Louis, Missouri, September 2, 1850; began newspaper work at age of twenty-three, and ten years later became associated with theChicago Daily News, where most of his work appeared; his first book of verse, "A Little Book of Western Verse," was published in 1889, and a number of others followed; died at Chicago, Illinois, November 4, 1895.
Riley, James Whitcomb.Born at Greenfield, Indiana, 1853; entered journalism at Indianapolis, 1873; wrote first verses, 1875; first book of verse, "The Old Swimmin'-Hole and 'Leven More Poems," published in 1883; numerous volumes since then.
Lanier, Sidney.Born at Macon, Georgia, February 3, 1842; served in Confederate Army, and suffered exposure which resulted in consumption; studied and practised law till 1873; then decided to devote life to music and poetry; played first flute in the Peabody Symphony Orchestra at Baltimore; lecturer on English literature at Johns Hopkins University, 1879-81; complete poems published 1881; died at Lynn, North Carolina, September 7, 1881.
Timrod, Henry.Born at Charleston, South Carolina, December 8, 1829; educated at the University of Georgia, studied law and supported himself as a private tutor until the Civil War; war correspondent and then assistant editor ofThe South Carolinian, at Columbia, until Sherman burned the town; died at Columbia, South Carolina, October 6, 1867; his poems, edited by Paul Hamilton Hayne, published 1873.
Hayne, Paul Hamilton.Born at Charleston, South Carolina, January 1, 1830; graduated at the University of South Carolina, editedRussell's Magazineand theLiterary Gazette, and served for a time in the Confederate Army; first poems published 1855; complete edition, 1882; died near Augusta, Georgia, July 6, 1886.
Simms, William Gilmore.Born at Charleston, South Carolina, April 17, 1806; admitted to bar, 1827, but abandoned law for literature and journalism; first poems published 1827; resided at Hingham, Massachusetts, 1832-33, where longest poem, "Atalantis," was written; first novel, "Martin Faber," published 1833, and followed by many others; returned to South Carolina, 1833, and died at Charleston, June 11, 1870.
If background and tradition are needed for literature, they are even more needed for art, and it is curiously worth noting that the background and traditions of England did not serve for her child across the sea. In both literature and art, so far as vital and significant achievement is concerned, the young nation had to find itself, and, starting from a rude and rough beginning, work its way upward of its own strength. Perhaps in no other way may the youth of America be so completely realized as by the thought that all of real importance in both literature and art which she can boast has been produced within the past ninety years—little more than the three score years and ten which the Psalmist assigned as the span of a single life.
We do not mean to say that European influence is not plainly to be traced in both our art and literature. There is a family resemblance, so to speak, as between a child and its parents, and yet the child has an individuality of its own. In literature, Cooper, Poe, Hawthorne, Longfellow, Whitman are distinctively American; and, as we shall find, so are our masters of painting and sculpture.
American art begins with John Singleton Copley. There had been daubers before him, as there were after, but Copley was the first man born in America who produced paintings which the world still contemplates with pleasure. Copley was born in Boston in 1737, his father dying shortly afterwards, and his mother supporting herself by keeping a tobacco shop. About 1746 she married again, most fortunately for her son, for her second husband was Peter Pelham, a mezzotint engraver of considerable merit, who gave the boy lessons in drawing. He proved an apt and precocious pupil, and by the time he had reached seventeen had executed a number of portraits.
His reputation steadily increased, and his income from his work was so satisfactory that he hesitated to try his fortunes in the larger field of London. Finally, in 1774, he sailed for England, and in the next year sent for his family to join him there. The opening of the Revolution persuaded him to stay in England, as there would be no demand for his work in America in so tumultuous a time. In London his talents brought him ample patronage, his income enabled him to live the stately and dignified life he loved, so that, when the Revolution ended, there seemed no reason why he should abandon it for the crudities of Boston. He therefore continued in London until the end of his life, which came in 1815.
Copley was a laborious and painstaking craftsman, setting down what he saw upon canvas with uncompromising sincerity. He worked very slowly andmany stories are told of how he tried the patience of his sitters. The result was a series of portraits which preserve the very spirit of the age—serious, self-reliant and capable, pompous and lacking humor. His later work has an atmosphere and repose which his early work lacks, but it is less important to America. His early portraits, which hang on the walls of so many Boston homes, and which Oliver Wendell Holmes called the titles of nobility of the old Boston families, are priceless documents of history.
Copley was an artist from choice rather than necessity; he followed painting because it assured him a good livelihood, and he was a patient and painstaking craftsman. His life was serene and happy; he was without the tribulations, as he seems to have been without the enthusiasms of the great artist. Not so with his most famous contemporary, Benjamin West, whose life was filled to overflowing with the contrast and picturesqueness which Copley's lacked.
West was born in 1738 at a little Pennsylvania frontier settlement. His parents were Quakers, and to the rigor and simplicity of frontier life were added those of that sect. But even these handicaps could not turn the boy aside from his vocation, for he was a born painter, if there ever was one. At the age of six he tried to draw, with red and black ink, a likeness of a baby he had been set to watch; a year later, a party of friendly Indians, amused by some sketches of birds and leaves he showed them, taught him how to prepare the red and yellow colors which they used on their ornaments. His mother furnishedsome indigo, brushes were secured by clipping the family cat—no doubt greatly to its disgust—and with these crude materials he set to work.
His success won him the present of a box of paints from a relative in Philadelphia. With that treasure the boy lived and slept, and his mother, finally discovering that he was running away from school, found him in the garret with a picture before him which she refused to let him finish lest he should spoil it. That painting was preserved to be exhibited sixty-six years later.
The boy's talent was so evident, and his determination to be a painter so fixed, that his parents finally overcame their scruples against an occupation which they considered vain and useless, and sent him to Philadelphia. There he lived as frugally as possible, saving his money for a trip to Italy, and finally, at the age of twenty-two, set sail for Europe.
His success there was immediate. He gained friends in the most influential circles, spent three years in study in Italy, and going to London in 1764, received so many commissions that he decided to live there permanently. He wrote home for his father to join him, and to bring with him a Miss Shewell, to whom West was betrothed. He also wrote to the young lady, stating that his father would sail at a certain time, and asking her to join him. The letter fell into the hands of Miss Shewell's brother, who objected to West for some reason, and who promptly locked the girl in her room. Three friends of West's concluded that this outrage upontrue love was not to be endured, smuggled a rope-ladder to her, and got her out of the house and safely on board the vessel. These three friends were Benjamin Franklin, Francis Hopkinson and William White, the latter the first Bishop of the American Episcopal Church, and the exploit was one which they were always proud to remember. Miss Shewell reached London safely and the lovers were happily married.
Meanwhile West's success had been given a sudden impetus by his introduction to King George III. The two men became lifelong friends, and the King gave him commission after commission, culminating in a command to decorate the Royal Chapel at Windsor. His first reverse came when the King's mind began to fail. His commissions were cancelled and his pensions stopped. He was deposed from the Presidency of the Royal Academy, which he had founded, and was for a time in needy circumstances; but the tide soon turned, and his last years were marked by the production of a number of great paintings. He died at the age of eighty-two, and was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral with splendid ceremonies. So ended one of the most remarkable careers in history.
West was, perhaps, more notable as a man than as an artist, for his fame as a painter has steadily declined. His greatest service to art was the example he set of painting historical groups in the costume of the period instead of in the vestments of the early Romans, as had been the custom. Thisinnovation was made by him in his picture of the death of General Wolfe, and created no little disturbance. His friends, including Reynolds, protested against such a desecration of tradition; even the King questioned him, and West replied that the painter should be bound by truth as well as the historian, and to represent a group of English soldiers in the year 1758 as dressed in classic costume was absurd. After the picture was completed, Reynolds was the first to declare that West had won, and that his picture would occasion a revolution in art—as, indeed, it did.
It is difficult to understand the habit of thought which insisted on clothing great men in garments they could never by any possibility have worn, yet it persisted until a comparatively late day. The most famous example in this country is Greenough's statue of Washington, just outside the Capitol. One looks at it with a certain sense of shock, for the Father of His Country is sitting half-naked, in a great arm chair, with some drapery over his legs, and a fold hanging over one shoulder. We shall have occasion in the next chapter to speak of it and of its maker.
Another of West's services to art was the wholehearted way in which he extended a helping hand to any who needed it. He was always willing to give such instruction as he could, and among his pupils were at least four men who added not a little to American art—Charles Willson Peale, Gilbert Stuart, John Trumbull, and Thomas Sully.
Peale was born in Maryland in 1741, and was,among other things, a saddler, a coach-maker, a clock-maker and a silversmith. He finally decided to add painting to his other accomplishments, so he secured some painting materials and a book of instructions and set to work. In 1770, a number of gentlemen of Annapolis furnished him with enough money to go to England, a loan which he promised to repay with pictures upon his return. West received him kindly, and when Peale's money gave out, as it soon did, welcomed him into his own house. Peale remained in London for four years, returning to America in time to join Washington as a captain of volunteers, and to take part in the battles of Trenton and Germantown.