AMERICAN ESSAYS.* IN his brief introduction Professor Brander Matthews rightly
—as we think—condemns as unfortunate and misleading "the customary antithesis between 'American' and `English' literature." As he puts it, " the works of Anthony Hamilton and Rousseau, Mme. de Stael and M. Maeterlinck are not more indisputably a part of the literature of the French language than the works of Franklin and Emerson, of Haw- thorne and Poe are part of the literature of the English language." Rightly, too, he insists on the possession of an indefinable and intangible but characteristic flavour by the American writers, and, while approving of Mr. Howells's description of American literature as " a condition of English literature," none the less maintains that it is distinctively American. Nobody can cavil at these generalizations, or at his remarks on the Protean character of the essay form, the essential charm of which resides in the fact that "it is not formal, that it may be whimsical in its point of departure, and capricious in its ramblings after it has got itself under way." These preliminary observations prompt us to antici- pate that the editor will construe his functions in a spirit of judicious latitude, and this anticipation is strengthened by his declaration that among these American essayists will be found all sorts and conditions of men, "poets adventuring themselves in prose, novelists eschewing story-telling, states- men turning for a moment to matters of less weight, men of science and men of affairs chatting about themselves and airing their opinions at large." But when he comes to indicate the principles of exclusion we begin to have mis- givings. We have no objection to his ruling out set orations, but when he announces his intention of excluding purely literary criticism and fiction we begin to wonder how Addison would have fared if Professor Brander Matthews had edited an anthology of English essayists. When, however, we come to the body of the book we find that it has suffered quite as much from the process of inclusion as from that of exclusion. The editor, as we have seen, has specifically banned literary criticism, and there is not a single example of the work of Mr. Paul Elmer More, whose Shelburne Essays perhaps reach the high-water mark of contemporary American literary criticism, and whose delightful paper on "The Paradox of Oxford " would have been peculiarly appropriate for insertion in this collection. On what principle, therefore, the editor includes Poe's famous analysis of the "Raven" we are at a loss to say, unless indeed it is to be regarded as an essay in aetiology; and we are confronted with a similar inconsistency in the case of Mr. Trent's paper "On Translating the Odes of Horace." At the same time, he has made an exception in favour of the drama, and inserted R. H. Dana's study of Kean's acting and Mr. Henry James's genial survey of the stars of the Thecitre Francais. Theodore Winthrop, who was cut of in his early prime in the first year of the Civil War, was a gallant and engaging figure, but "Our March to Washington," by which be is represented in this volume, is simply good journalism—vivid staccato narrative. But amongst the errors of inclusion we rank highest the insertion of a number cf excellent, thoughtful, and suggestive papers of the " publicist " order : patriotic, didactic, instructive, we readily admit, but destitute of the qualities which Professor Brander Matthews has very correctly enumerated as the abiding characteristics of the true essay—" the familiar style and the everyday vocabu- lary, the apparent simplicity and the seeming absence of effort, the horror of pedantry, the scorn of affectation .. . and the flavour of good talk and sprightly conversation." To this category belong Dr. Eliot's " Five American Contributions to Civilization," Thomas Wentworth Higginson's "Americanism in Literature," and Senator Lodge's "Colonialism in the United States." As well-reasoned statements, surveys, or historical reviews they are admirable, but it is precisely the qualities which excite admiration which remove them from the category of the essay as illustrated by the beat masters of that genre. Moreover, these long, solid, and academic utterances occupy space—some seventy-five pages, to be precise—which might have been profitably devoted to half-a-dozen representative American writers who are conspicuous by their absence. Professor Brander Matthews has sanctioned the dialogue
• The Oxford Rook of American Essays. Chosen by Brander Matthews. Professor in Columbia University. London: Humphrey Milford. [es. nat../ form in a specimen of Franklin's " playful wisdom "; he might have gone a little further and fared no worse by including one of "Mr. Dooley's " conversations with Hen- nessy. There is nothing by Mark Twain in the collection ; nothing, again, by Artemus Ward, though many of his papers, notably the delightful series which he contributed to Punch, have the true essence of the essay in them. It ought to have been possible, again, to find in the fugitive papers of Ambrose Bierce some example of that sardonic humour in which he excelled. And, lastly, the woman writers of America are entirely excluded, though Miss Agnes Repplier's work, to mention only one name, certainly deserved consideration.
But we must not end on a note of dissatisfaction. With all reservations, we owe Professor Brander Matthews gratitude for enabling us to renew our friendship with Washington Irving, Emerson, Holmes, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Thoreau. Thorean's essay on " Walking "—in spite of its length— is the best in the book, and worthy of the best company. Hawthorne's paper on "Buds and Bird-Voices" is an exquisite salutation of the New England spring. But of all these elder essayists none appeals to us in this hour of trial more nearly than Oliver Wendell Holmes in his "Bread and the Newspaper "—written during the war of 1861-65. All that he says about war simplifying our mode of being, melting away petty social distinctions and sectarian barriers, and bringing strange and extraordinary things to the surface is as tree now as it was fifty years ago :-
" A young man was drowned not very long ago in the river running under our windows. A few days afterwards a field-piece was dragged to the water's edge, and fired many times over the river. We asked a bystander, who looked like a fisherman, what that was for. It was to break the gall,' he said, and so bring the drowned person to the surface. A strange physiological fancy and a very odd non sequitur; but that is not our present point. A good many extraordinary objects do really come to the surface when the great guns of war shake the waters, as when they roared over Charleston harbour. Treason came up, hideous, fit only to be huddled into its dishonourable grave. But the wrecks of precious virtues, which had been covered with the waves of pros- perity, came up also. And all sorts of unexpected and unheard-of things, which had lain unseen during our national life of fourscore years, came up and are coming up daily, shaken from their bed by the concussions of the artillery bellowing around us. . . . What- ever miseries this war brings upon us, it is making us wiser, and, we trust, better. Wiser, for we are learning our weakness, our narrowness, our selfishness, our ignorance, in lessons of sorrow and shame. Better, because all that is noble in men and women is demanded by the time, and our people are rising to the standard the time calls for. For this is the question the hour is putting to each of us: Are you ready, if need be, to sacrifice all that you have and hope for in this world, that the generations to follow you may inherit a whole country whose natural conditions shall be peace, and not a broken province which must live under the per- petual threat, if not in the constant presence, of war and all that war brings with it P If we are all ready for this sacrifice, battles may be lost, but the campaign and its grand object must be won.'
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