from his English contemporaries.

His characters, mean

while, are lifelessly conventional. In "Ormond," for example, the villanous seducer who out-Lovelaces Lovelace in a literal Philadelphia is irretrievably "make believe;" and so is the incredibly spotless Constantia Dudley, who, oddly enough, is said to have impressed Shelley as the most perfect creature of human imagination. There is a funny touch in “Ormond,” which brings out as clearly as anything the contrast between Brown's true backgrounds and his tritely fictitious characters. Constantia Dudley, with a blind father on her hands, in the midst of epidemic yellow fever, is persecuted by her seducer at a moment when the total resources of the family amount to about five dollars. Old Mr. Dudley - who incidentally and for no reason has once been a drunkard, but has now recovered every paternal excellence has travelled all over the world. In the course of his journeys in Italy he has remarked that the people of that country live very well on polenta, which is nothing but a mixture of Indian meal and water, resembling the Hasty Pudding so dear to the heart of Joel Barlow. In Philadelphia at that time Indian meal could be purchased very cheaply. With about two dollars and three quarters, then, Constantia procures meal enough to preserve the lives of her father, herself, and their devoted servant for something like three months, thereby triumphantly protecting her virtue from the assaults of wealthy persecution. Now, it is said that these facts concerning the price and the nutritive qualities of Indian meal are as true as were the horrors of yellow fever. Constantia and her father, meanwhile, and the wicked seducer, whose careers were so affected by these statistics, are rather less like anything human than are such marionettes as doubtless delighted the Italian travels of Mr. Dudley.

The veracity of Brown's backgrounds appears again in "Edgar Huntley." The incidents of this story are unimportant, except as they carry a somnambulist into the woods

and caves of the Pennsylvanian country. These, despite some theatrically conventional touches, are almost as real as the somnambulist is not. Such incongruities cannot blend harmoniously; Brown's incessant combination of reality in nature with unreality in character produces an effect of bewildering confusion.

Nor is this confusion in Brown's novels wholly a matter of conception. Few writers anywhere seem at first more hopelessly to lack constructive power. Take "Arthur Mervyn," for example: the story begins in the first person; the narrator meets somebody in whose past history he is interested; thereupon the second personage begins to narrate his own past, also in the first person; in the course of this narrative a third character appears, who soon proceeds to begin a third autobiography; and so on. As one who is bewildered by this confusion, however, pauses to unravel it or to wonder what it means, a significant fact presents itself. Whoever tries to write fiction must soon discover one of his most difficult problems to be the choice and maintenance of a definite point of view. To secure one, this device of assuming the first person is as old as the "Odyssey," where Odysseus narrates so many memorable experiences to the king of the Phæacians. In brief, a resort to this world-old device generally indicates a conscious effort to get material into manageable form. Paradoxical as it seems, then, these inextricable tangles of autobiography, which make Brockden Brown's construction appear so formless, probably arose from an impotent sense that form ought to be striven for; and, indeed, when any one of his autobiographic episodes is taken by itself, it will generally be found pretty satisfactory.

When we come to the technical question of style, too, the simple test of reading aloud will show that Brockden Brown's sense of form was unusual. Of course his work shows many of the careless faults inevitable when men write with undue haste; and his vocabulary is certainly turgid;

and consciously trying to write effectively, he often wrote absurdly; but the man's ear was true. In reading any page of his aloud, you will find your voice dwelling where the sense requires it to dwell. Critics have remarked that if you wish to distinguish between the style of Addison and that of Steele, all you need do is to apply a vocal test. Addison's ear was so delicate that you require little art to bring out the emphasis of his periods; Steele wrote more for the eye. In other words, Steele comparatively lacked a trait which Addison and Brockden Brown possessed - an instinctive sense of formal phrasing.

If we regard Brockden Brown only as an imitator, — and as such he is perhaps most significant, we may instructively remark that the literature of America begins exactly where the pure literature of a normally developed language is apt to leave off. A great literature, originating from the heart of the people, declares itself first in spontaneous songs and ballads and legends; it is apt to end in prose fiction. With laboured prose fiction our American literature begins. The laboured prose fiction of Brown has traits, however, which distinguish it from similar work in England. To begin with, the sense of horror which permeates it is not conventional but genuine. Brockden Brown could instinctively feel, more deeply than almost any native Englishman since the days of Elizabeth, what mystery may lurk just beyond human ken. In the second place, Brown's work, for all its apparent confusion, proves confused chiefly by impotent, futile attempt to assure his point of view by autobiographic device. In the third place he reveals on almost every page an instinctive sense of rhythmical form.

Brown's six novels are rather long, and all hastily written; and in his short, invalid life he never attempted any other form of fiction. As one considers his work, however, one may well incline to guess that if he had confined his attempts to single episodes, if he had had the originality, in short, to invent

the short story, he might have done work favourably comparable with that of Irving or Poe or even Hawthorne. Brockden Brown, in brief, never stumbled on the one literary form which he might have mastered; pretty clearly that literary form was the sort of romantic short story whose motive is mysterious; and since his time that kind of short story has proved itself the most characteristic phase of native American fiction.

II

WASHINGTON IRVING

THE name of Washington Irving reminds us rather startlingly how short is the real history of American letters. Although he has been dead for a little more than forty years, many people still remember him personally; and when in 1842 he went as President Tyler's minister to Spain, he passed through an England where Queen Victoria had already been five years on the throne, and he presented his credentials to Queen Isabella II., who, although long exiled from her country, is still a not very old lady in Paris. Yet in one sense this Irving, who has not yet faded from living memory, may be called, more certainly than Brockden Brown, the first American man of letters. At least, he was the first whose work has remained popular; and the first, too, who was born after the Revolution had made native Americans no longer British subjects but citizens of the United States. His parents, to be sure, were foreign, his father Scotch, his mother English; but he himself was born in New York in 1783. He was not very strong; his early habits were rather desultory and his education irregular; he studied law and was admitted to the bar, but never practised much; and at the age of twenty-one he was sent abroad for his health. There he remained two years.

His distinctly American character first becomes salient during this trip abroad, at that time an unusual experience. He was of simple origin; his family were in respectable trade. Born in England, he might have been as accomplished and agreeable as he ever became, but he could hardly have