PASTOR ET OVES. 43 Huntley ney: 1865. Maria of the Cape. Each poet, moreover, tried his hand at every form of work, and each thought it specially incumbent upon himself to write a drama, not solely for the stage, but that America might not be deficient in the most complex order of poetical composition. Since the heyday of the Della Cruscans never were so many neophytes and amateurs suffered to bring their work before the public. Women took part in the campaign, and, truth to say, were often more spontaneous and natural than their brother-writers. One of the sex, Mrs. Sigourney, long had been sup- Lydia plying the prose and verse that answered to the sim- Howard ple wants of a primitive constituency. Another, Sigour"Maria del Occidente," gained something like fame, 1791and even beyond the seas. She was, in fact, a wòman of ardent feeling, instinctive art, and undoubted met- Gowen rical talent, though scarcely meriting the praise which Lamb and Southey awarded her, or the extravagant eulogium of her modern editor. There was no lack of The Sentirivals to her success among the American pupils of Mrs. Hemans and Miss Landon. Such caterers to the literary market were found not only upon this side of the Atlantic. England was slowly escaping from her own sentimentalists; the "Annuals" and "Souvenirs were still in vogue, and the fashions of the two countries were less divided than now. Poe, with a Curative critical eye made somewhat keen by practice, saw the applica ludicrous side of all this, and poured out vials of wrath upon his contemporaries, though with no just claim to impartiality. Lowell, from a classical distance, celebrated their follies in the lines beginning, "But stay, here comes Tityrus Griswold, and leads on Brooks: 1795-1845. mentalists. tions. Survival of the fittest. and Emerson were gaining influence at that very time; that others since eminent in our literature were gradually distinguished from the multitude; that, however absurd and depressing the condition just set forth, a superficial literary movement may be better than no. movement at all. As the voyage progressed, it really was surprising how soon the dullards and pretenders went below, while the born sailors helped the vessel forward. The fit survivors of a brood of poets and authors soon obtained a grateful hearing, and a few publishers found pleasure and profit in nursing the works of these home-writers. A number of poets men of individual traits, but allied in sentiment and taste, and belonging to the same generation - seemed to arise at once, and gained the position which they have steadfastly held to the present day. Experimental failures needful to ultimate success. Genuine quality of the more recent school. II. ALL this preliminary ferment, then, was in some way needful. The experiments of many who thought themselves called enabled the few who were chosen to find motives and occasions for work of real import. The first year of the new dispensation was worth more in its product than the score of years preceding it. The poets who now came to the front have gained distinction justly, vying with those of other countries in finish and thought, and in that reflection of the life about them which alone could make them the leaders of a national school. At the recent date when the formation of such a school became manifest, these poets spoke truthfully for our people as they were and had been. One who gives their verse the fair consideration which he would extend to that of any foreign land or language is led to this conclusion. POETRY OF NATURE. The new poetry was not autochthonous in the sense of differing from all previous outgrowth of the universal human heart, and as at variance with forms that have long seemed natural to our mother-tongue, but rather in unaffected presentation of the feeling and ideas of its constituency, and after this wise was as national, fresh, and aspiring as America herself. If this land has not yet grown to full voice, it has not lacked a characteristic expression in the verse of our favorite ⚫ poets. Their careers, we have seen, began almost simultaneously at the close of the second fifth of this century, and have been prolonged until now, through a period of nearly fifty years. Let me again briefly refer to the elements which our literature hitherto might justly be called upon to idealize, and make some mention of the leading poets whose song has been the response to such a call. 45 III. they are the most American verse. 1. Truth ful reflec tion of Na ture. I HAVE said that a fellowship with the spirit of Traits of natural Landscape, and the recognition of its beauty and majesty, were the earliest, as constant, traits of American verse. of nature has not often been the second, in the progress of ideality. applies to primitive races. The aborigines of a country are almost a part of its mould, - or, at least, so closely related to its dumb fauna that they reflect but little on the mountains, woods, and waters which appear to surround them as a matter of course. Heroic or savage deeds of prowess are their first incitements to poetic utterance. Even an extended period of culture and growth has not always led them to consider the landscape objectively. Of this the Greeks, with order re versed. their curious disregard of natural scenery, are a familiar example. They observed nature only to inform it with their own life, until there was no river or tree without its genius. First, epic action; next, patriotism and devotion; afterward, dramatic passion; last of all, The usual analysis and reflective art. In our own settlements, a race that already had gone through these stages took possession of a new world. A struggle with its conditions involved a century of hardship and distrust. The final triumph, the adjustment of the people to their locality, brought a new understanding, out of which came the first original quality in our poetry and design. Here it is to be remembered that descriptive literature, poetry or prose, though not earlier upon the record of intellectual development, is lower as respects the essential worth of Art than that which is emotional or dramatic. In the full prime of creative work, the one must serve as a background for the other, upon which attention chiefly is concentrated. All in all, it was a foregone conclusion that our first independent artists should betake themselves to the Our first study and utilization of American scenery. In painting, our first distinctive school - for such I do not term the early group of historical and portrait painters, from West to Allston has been that of the landscapists. Let us own that when either poetry or painting deals with nature in no copyist's fashion, but with a sense of something "deeply interfused," it may reach the higher plane of art-expression. To this end our modern painters, upon the whole, have striven, from the time of Cole. The hands of Durand, Inness, Kensett, the two Giffords, Whittredge, McEntee, Church, Bierstadt, Brown, Martin, Wyant, have given us a landscape-school that, for sincerity and freshness, is notable on either continent, and is constantly gain distinctive group of painters. BRYANT AND HIS SUCCESSORS. Song. 47 ing in technique and variety from the experiments of younger men. The literary counterpart of this school Their com began with Bryant, the Druid of our forests, the high-peers in priest of Nature in her elemental types. These he has celebrated with the coolness and breadth that were traits of the earlier painters named, though lacking the freedom and detail of their successors. It is dangerous to measure one art by another, or to confuse their terms; yet we feel that the relationship between the pictures of Durand and Kensett, for example, and the meditative verse of Bryant from "Thanatopsis" and "A Forest Hymn" to "The Night Journey of a River"- is near and suggestive. Bryant was at the head of our reflective poets, find- Bryant. ing his bent at the outset, and holding it to the very close. His work rose to an imaginative height which descriptive poetry of itself rarely attains. Wilcox: 1794-1827. Alfred Street: treatment of land He was followed - at an obvious distance-by Carlos Percival, Wilcox, Street, and other mild celebrants of nature, who failed of his breadth and elevation. Their patient measures show how strongly the scenery of Billings America has impressed her people. To the present 1811-81. day, the landscape, however incidental to the poetry of Emerson, Whittier, Thoreau, Lowell, and Taylor, is constantly there, and fresh as a rocky pasture-ground Fresh and original in New England or Pennsylvania compared with a storied park of Warwickshire. In the work of Mrs. Thaxter, Piatt, and other recent idyllists, it is natural, sympathetic, -in short, thoroughly American. And for me the value of the poetry of Whitman and Joaquin Miller does not belong to the method and democratic vistas of the one, and the melodramatic romance of the other; but to Whitman's fresh, absolute handling of outdoor nature, and to the fine surprises which Miller gives us in haunting pictures of the plains, the sierra, and the sundown seas. scape. |