History of American Literature Part 13

_The Pioneers; or the Sources of the Susquehanna_ (1823).

_The Prairie; a Tale_ (1827)

[Ill.u.s.tration: LEATHERSTOCKING]

This sequence may be easily remembered from the fact that the first chief words in the t.i.tles, "Deerslayer," "Mohicans," "Pathfinder," "Pioneers,"

and "Prairie," are arranged in alphabetical order. These books are the prose _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ of the eighteenth-century American pioneer.

Instead of relating the fall of Ilium, Cooper tells of the conquest of the wilderness. The wanderings or Leatherstocking in the forest and the wilderness are subst.i.tuted for those of Ulysses on the sea. This story could not have been related with much of the vividness of an eye-witness of the events, if it had been postponed beyond Cooper's day. Before that time had forever pa.s.sed, he fixed in living romance one remarkable phase of our country's development. The persons of this romantic drama were the Pioneer and the Indian; the stage was the trackless forest and the unbroken wilderness.

[Ill.u.s.tration: COOPER AT THE AGE OF FORTY FIVE]

_The Last of the Mohicans_ has been the favorite of the greatest number of readers. In this story Chingachgook, the Indian, and Uncas, his son, share with Hawkeye our warmest admiration. The American boy longs to enter the fray to aid Uncas. Cooper knew that the Indian had good traits, and he embodied them in these two red men. Scott took the same liberty of presenting the finer aspects of chivalry and neglecting its darker side.

Cooper, however, does show an Indian fiend in Magua.

Cooper's work in this series brings us face to face with the activities of nature and man in G.o.d's great out of doors. Cooper makes us realize that the life of the pioneer was not without its elemental spirit of poetry. We may feel something of this spirit in the reply of Leatherstocking to the trembling Cora, when she asked him at midnight what caused a certain fearful sound:--

"'Lady,' returned the scout, solemnly, 'I have listened to all the sounds of the woods for thirty years, as a man will listen, whose life and death depend so often on the quickness of his ears. There is no whine of the panther, no whistle of the catbird, nor any invention of the devilish Mingos, that can cheat me. I have heard the forest moan like mortal men in their affliction; often and again have I listened to the wind playing its music in the branches of the girdled trees; and I have heard the lightning cracking in the air, like the snapping of blazing brush, as it spitted forth sparks and forked flames; but never have I thought that I heard more than the pleasure of him, who sported with the things of his hand. But neither the Mohicans, nor I, who am a white man without a cross, can explain the cry just heard.'"

In addition to the five _Leatherstocking Tales_, three other romances show special power. They are:--

_The Spy; a Tale of the Neutral Ground_ (1821).

_The Pilot; a Tale of the Sea_ (1824).

_The Red Rover; a Tale_ (1828).

The last two show Cooper's mastery in telling stories of the sea. Tom Coffin, in _The Pilot_, is a fine creation.

Some of the more than thirty works of fiction that Cooper wrote are almost unreadable, and some appeal more to special students than to general readers. _Satanstoe_ (1845), for instance, gives vivid pictures of mid-eighteenth century colonial life in New York.

The English critic's query, "Who reads an American book?" could have received the answer in 1820, "The English public is reading Irving." In 1833, Morse, the inventor of the electric telegraph, had another answer ready--"Europe is reading Cooper." He said that as soon as Cooper's works were finished they were published in thirty-four different places in Europe. American literature was commanding attention for its original work.

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS.--Cooper's best romances are masterpieces of action and adventure in the forest and on the sea. No other writer has so well told the story of the pioneer. He is not a successful novelist of the drawing-room. His women are mediocre and conventional, of the type described in the old Sunday school books. But when he leaves the haunts of men and enters the forest, power comes naturally to his pen. His greatest stage of action is the forest. He loved wild nature and the sea.

He often availed himself of the Gothic license of improbability, his characters being frequently rescued from well-nigh impossible situations.

His plots were not carefully planned in advance; they often seem to have been suggested by an inspiration of the moment. He wrote so rapidly that he was careless about the construction of his sentences, which are sometimes not even grammatical.

It is easy, however, to exaggerate Cooper's faults, which do not, after all, seriously interfere with the enjoyment of his works. A teacher, who was asked to edit critically _The Last of the Mohicans_, said that the first time he read it, the narrative carried him forward with such a rush, and bound him with such a spell, that he did not notice a single blemish in plot or style. A boy reading the same book obeyed the order to retire at eleven, but having reached the point where Uncas was taken prisoner by the Hurons, found the suspense too great, and quietly got the book and read the next four chapters in bed. Cooper has in a pre-eminent degree the first absolutely necessary qualification of the writer of fiction--the power to hold the interest. In some respects he resembles Scott, but although the "Wizard of the North" has a far wider range of excellence, Leatherstocking surpa.s.ses any single one of Scott's creations and remains a great original character added to the literature of the world. These romances have strong ethical influence over the young. They are as pure as mountain air, and they teach a love for manly, n.o.ble, and brave deeds. "He fought for a principle," says Cooper's biographer, "as desperately as other men fight for life."

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT, 1794-1878

[Ill.u.s.tration: WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT]

LIFE.-The early environment of each of the three great members of the New York group determined to an unusual degree the special literary work for which each became famous. Had Irving not been steeped in the legends of the early Dutch settlers of Manhattan, hunted squirrels in Sleepy Hollow, and voyaged up the Hudson past the Catskills, he would have had small chance of becoming famous as the author of the "Knickerbocker Legend." Had Cooper not spent his boyhood on the frontier, living in close touch with the forest and the pioneer, we should probably not have had _The Leatherstocking Tales_. Had it not been for Bryant's early Puritan training and his a.s.sociation with a peculiar type of nature, he might have ended his days as a lawyer.

Bryant was born in c.u.mmington, among the hills of western Ma.s.sachusetts. In her diary, his mother thus records his birth:--

"Nov. 3, 1794. Stormy, wind N. E. Churned. Seven in the evening a son born."

His poetry will be better understood, if we emphasize two main facts in his early development. In the first place, he was descended from John and Priscilla Alden of Mayflower stock and reared in strict Puritan fas.h.i.+on.

Bryant's religious training determined the general att.i.tude of all his poetry toward nature. His parents expected their children to know the _Bible_ in a way that can scarcely be comprehended in the twentieth century. Before completing his fourth year, his older brother "had read the _Scriptures_ through from beginning to end." At the age of nine, the future poet turned the first chapter of _Job_ into cla.s.sical couplets, beginning:--

"Job, good and just, in Uz had sojourned long, He feared his G.o.d and shunned the way of wrong.

Three were his daughters and his sons were seven, And large the wealth bestowed on him by heaven."

Another striking fact is that the prayers which he heard from the Puritan clergy and from his father and grandfather in family wors.h.i.+p gave him a turn toward n.o.ble poetic expression. He said that these prayers were often "poems from beginning to end," and he cited such expressions from them as, "Let not our feet stumble on the dark mountains of eternal death." From the Puritan point of view, the boy made in his own prayers one daring variation from the pet.i.tions based on scriptural sanction. He prayed that he "might receive the gift of poetic genius, and write verses that might endure." His early religious training was responsible for investing his poetry with the dignity, gravity, and simplicity of the Hebraic _Scriptures_.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BRYANT AS A YOUNG MAN]

In the second place, he pa.s.sed his youth in the fine scenery of western Ma.s.sachusetts, which is in considerable measure the counterpart of the Lake Country which bred Wordsworth. The glory of this region reappears in his verse; the rock-ribbed hills, the vales stretching in pensive quietness between them, the venerable woods of ash, beech, birch, hemlock, and maple, the complaining brooks that make the valleys green, the rare May days:--

"When beechen buds begin to swell, And woods the blue bird's warble know."

[Footnote: Bryant: _The Yellow Violet_.]

His a.s.sociation with such scenes determined the subject matter of his poetry, and his Puritan training prescribed the form of treatment.

He had few educational advantages,--a little district schooling, some private tutoring by a clergyman, seven month's stay in Williams College, which at the time of his entrance in 1810 had a teaching staff of one professor and two tutors, besides the president. Bryant left Williams, intending to enter Yale; but his father, a poor country physician who had to ride vast distances for small fees, was unable to give him any further college training.

Bryant, at about the age of eighteen, soon after leaving Williams, wrote _Thanatopsis_,--with the exception of the opening and the closing parts. He had already written at the age of thirteen a satiric poem, _The Embargo_, which had secured wide circulation in New England. Keenly disappointed at not being able to continue his college education, he regretfully began the study of law in order to earn his living as soon as possible. He celebrated his admission to the bar by writing one of his greatest short poems, _To a Waterfowl_ (1815). When he was a lawyer practicing in Great Barrington, Ma.s.sachusetts, he met Miss f.a.n.n.y Fairchild, to whom he addressed the poem,--

"O fairest of the rural maids!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: FACSIMILE OF RECORD OF BRYANT'S MARRIAGE]

Religious in all things, he prepared this betrothal prayer, which they repeated together before they were married in the following year--

"May Almighty G.o.d mercifully take care of our happiness here and hereafter. May we ever continue constant to each other, and mindful of our mutual promises of attachment and truth. In due time, if it be the will of Providence, may we become more nearly connected with each other, and together may we lead a long, happy, and innocent life, without any diminution of affection till we die."

In 1821, the year in which Cooper published _The Spy_ and Sh.e.l.ley wrote his _Adonais_ lamenting the death of Keats, Bryant issued the first volume of his verse, which contained eight poems, _Thanatopsis_, _The Inscription for Entrance to a Wood_, _To a Waterfowl_, _The Ages_, _The Fragment from Simonides_, _The Yellow Violet_, _The Song_, and _Green River_. This was an epoch-making volume for American poetry. Freneau's best lyrics were so few that they had attracted little attention, but Bryant's 1821 volume of verse furnished a new standard of excellence, below which poets who aspired to the first rank could not fall. During the five years after its publication, the sales of this volume netted him a profit of only $14.92, but a Boston editor soon offered him two hundred dollars a year for an average of one hundred lines of verse a month. Bryant accepted the offer, and wrote poetry in connection with the practice of law.

Unlike Irving and Charles Brockden Brown, Bryant attended to his legal work doggedly and conscientiously for nine years, but he never liked the law, and he longed to be a professional author. In 1825 he abandoned the law and went to New York City. Here he managed to secure a livelihood for awhile on the editorial force of short-lived periodicals. In 1827, however, he became a.s.sistant editor, and in 1829 editor-in-chief, of _The New York Evening Post_--a position which he held for nearly fifty years, until his death.

The rest of his life is more political and journalistic than literary. He made _The Evening Post_ a power in the development of the nation, but his work as editor interfered with his poetry, although he occasionally wrote verse to the end of his life.

In middle life he began a series of trips abroad, and wrote many letters describing his travels. To occupy his attention after his wife died in 1866, he translated Homer's _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_, at the nearly uniform rate of forty lines a day. This work still remains one of the standard poetic translations of Homer.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BRYANT'S HOME, ROSLYN, L.I.]

As the years pa.s.sed, he became New York's representative citizen, noted for high ideals in journalism and for incorruptible integrity, as well as for the excellence of his poetry. He died in 1878, at the age of eighty four, and was buried at Roslyn, Long Island, beside his wife.

POETRY.--_Thanatopsis_, probably written in 1811, was first published in 1817 in _The North American Review_, a Boston periodical. One of the editors said to an a.s.sociate, "You have been imposed upon. No one on this side of the Atlantic is capable of writing such verses." The a.s.sociate insisted that Dr. Bryant, the author, had left them at the office, and that the Doctor was at that moment sitting in the State Senate, representing his county. The editor at once dashed away to the State House, took a long look at the Doctor, and reported, "It is a good head, but I do not see _Thanatopsis_ in it." When the father was aware of the misunderstanding, he corrected it, but there were for a long time doubts whether a boy could have written a poem of this rank. In middle age the poet wrote the following to answer a question in regard to the time of the composition of _Thanatopsis_:--

"It was written when I was seventeen or eighteen years old--I have not now at hand the memorandums which would enable me to be precise--and I believe it was composed in my solitary rambles in the woods. As it was first committed to paper, it began with the half line--'Yet a few days, and thee'--and ended with the beginning of another line with the words--'And make their bed with thee.' The rest of the poem--the introduction and the close--was added some years afterward, in 1821."

_Thanatopsis_ remains to-day Bryant's most famous production. It is a stately poem upon death, and seems to come directly from the lips of Nature:--