PROFESSOR NICHOL'S HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE.*

[FIRST NOTICE.]

THE first centenary of American national life was celebrated -only a few years ago, and the first distinctive epoch of Ameri- can literature is just drawing to a close, so we may say that it has taken a hundred years to originate, develop, and exhaust the first movement of a new literature. The writers by whom this movement is popularly represented form two groups, of which the first is merely imitative, although exhibiting great merit. Its chief names are Fenimore Cooper, Washington Irving, and Bryant, and it is evident that each of these belongs to a previously existent literary tendency, as, for instance, Cooper to that revived by Scott, Irving to that which began in Addison, and Bryant to that school of poetry of which Words- worth is the greatest representative. The second group con- sists of Emerson, Hawthorne, Longfellow, Holmes, and Lowell, and furnishes the first true representatives of American litera- ture, so far as it has reached in its first epoch. We have here • AIRIVIIICall Literature an Historical Sketch, 1620-1880. By John Nichol, LL.D., Profevor of English Lite-atnre in the University of Glasgow. Edin- burgh: Adm.' and Charles Black. 1852.

new and distinctive work ; it is no longer merely a change of local environment, it is a fresh intellectual departure. Whittier does not belong to this group, either by personal connection or by common intellectual endowment; he is merely contempo- rary. Of these literary co-workers and friends it seemed natural that the shy Hawthorne should be the first to take his leave ; after a while, Longfellow left another "vacant chair" in the circle, and a few weeks later Emerson quitted a life which he had found "unnecessarily long ;" Holmes sang the Iron Gate of his seventieth birthday four years ago ; Mr. Lowell alone is still in his maturity. Without seeming, therefore, to hurry these two last from the scene which they have long adorned, we may say that the second group has come to an end, and with it the period which a future German historian will call the first Bliithezeit of American literature.

The manifest close of a literary epoch furnishes the historians and critics with their opportunity, and accordingly we find that the composition of works on American authors has commenced. We have already three biographies of Longfellow, with the authorised one to follow ; four biographies of Emerson, and other works announced ; biographies of Lowell and Whittier, and one of Holmes in the press ; several volumes of a series of American Men of Letters, and a large number of essays in the periodicals. Mr. E. 0. Stedman's conscientious and sug- gestive studies of Victorian Poets were undertaken, their author tells us, as preparatory training to fit him for a work upon the poetry of his own country ; and it can hardly be long before Professor Moses Colt Tyler adds to his scholarly History of American Literature a third volume, dealing with the modern period. Almost all the above works, however,—with the special exception of the last-named—are unsatisfactory, and in several cases they are mere bookmakers' productions. We do not remember one of them by an American on an American, which is not spoiled in a greater or less degree by the writer's pride in his compatriot, a pleasant thing in itself, but one which may easily grow into obstructive propor- tions. These books are always interesting and useful records of fact, but as embodying the verdicts of dispassionate and qualified literary criticism, they are mostly of little value, As instances of this amiable weakness, take Mr. Warner's statement that since Gulliver, England has produced; no piece of humour equal to Irving's Knickerbocker's History of New York, or Mr. Conway's attempt to show that Emerson anticipated Darwin. Up to the present time, however, we have had no serious history of the whole period of American literature. Indeed, it is not unusual to find English writers declaring that there is as yet no such thing as American literature, that all the works of American authors are imitative and European in spirit. The essentials of American life—these writers say—the vast physical features of the continent, and the unbounded aspirations of the people, have never received any adequate expression ; no man can represent America who has not thrown off the trammels of European literary tradition. "We want a national literature," says the ambitions Mr. Hathaway, in Kavanagh, commensurate with our mountains and rivers,— commensurate with Niagara, and the Alleghanies, and the Great Lakes. We want a national epic that shall correspond to the size of the country—that shall be to all other epics what Banvard's Panorama of the Mississippi is to all other paint- ings, the largest in the world !" It is a feeling like this which prompts the common saying that Walt Whitman is the first genuine representative of America, a statement about as reasonable as if we were to point to the bursting of a cannon as the culmination of the art of gunnery. Physical features have no connection with literature, except through the long process in which they form some of the conditions of that social life which, in its turn, produces the new order of mind that expresses itself partly in literature ; a man is no more likely to be a great writer because he dwells by a great mountain, than to be a shallow thinker because a shallow stream runs past his door. A great voice was lifted in the wilderness of Craigenputtock, and what literature has Switzerland to show for her Alps ? No one—if we may venture here upon an Americanism—thinks that a tall man naturally tells tall stories. "Nothing has hitherto been de- manded of rivers and lakes in other parts of the world," wrote Mr. Lowell, characteristically, in a far back number of the North American Review, "except fish and mill privileges, or, at most, a fine waterfall or a pretty island. The received treatises upon mountainous obstetrics give no hint of any parturition to be expected, except of mice. Let us not be in any hurry to per.

form the Cassarian operation." Many persons, too, who know nothing of Whitman, consider Fenimore Cooper the most repre- sentative American writer, because he tells chiefly of that Western life which, to their imagination, is the special feature of the New World. Bat nationality has little in common with locality ; a literature is national only in so far as it.is universal, paradoxical as the statement may seem. " Colonns, with a gleaming altar crowned," and "all-but-island, olive-silvery Sirmio," are only the backgrounds of voices speaking for every human heart. For the literature of America to be national—to quote Longfellow again—" it is not necessary that the war- whoop should ring in every line, and every page be rife with scalps, tomahawks, and wampum." In one sense, of course, the works which have been written in America since 1776 constitute an indisputable American literature, but there is a national literature in a sense much truer than this forced one, and one which Englishmen are just beginning to recognise. But, as we have said, up to the present time there has been no serious history of the whole period of it, and we are fortunate that the fact has escaped the notice of the bookmakers of our time. The volume before us has, therefore, the rare advantage of filling a gap in our libraries, and we welcome it on that account, as well as for its own great merits.

Professor Nichol has wisely chosen to write an historical sketch, rather than a complete history, and has thus been able to make his book extremely readable from beginning to end, which could hardly have been the case if he had compelled him- self to furnish a detailed record. Almost every page bears marks of a scholarly acquaintance with many fields of know- ledge, and a remarkably apt memory. The history and literature of several nations are drawn upon to furnish instructive parallels to the various movements of American thought, and when the author wishes to explain the comparative position of a writer or a work, he showers comparisons upon us in almost embarrassing abundance. This eclecticism results in a decided originality of view : it is at once clear to the reader that Professor Nichol has formed his opinions for himself upon the evidence ; he is in- dependent of any particular school, and even when he repeats a familiar verdict he supports it with new reasons of his own. His knowledge of American history is extensive and sympa- thetic, and—although we shall have occasion to point out numerous errors—he has evidently studied American letters long and conscientiously. He is singularly free from the ordi- nary prejudices of an English critic writing upon American matters, and we have been charmed by the sincerity with which he fills the delicate position of an impartial spectator. If at one moment we find him demolishing some preposterous American claim, at the next he is denouncing some piece of English ignorance or patronage ; Oxford and Boston speak through him in turn. When we add that the book contains many brilliant passages and not a few caustic ones (we shall have something to say later on about the style), we shall have said enough to show that Professor Nichol's work possesses unusual interest and value.

The first chapter is devoted to a general survey of the con- ditions and characteristics of American literature. Under "Conditions," the author treats of the influences of geography, climate, history, and government; under "Characteristics," he discusses the spirit of hope and confidence in labour, the want of continuity in ideas which is produced by a want of continuity in life, the consequent impatience and instability, and the tendency to lawlessness, inaccuracy, and irreverence, in a country "where vehemence, vigour, and wit are common ; good taste, profundity, and imagination rare,—a country whose untamed material imparts its tamelessness to the people, and diverts them from the task of civilisation to the desire of conquest." This chapter was originally delivered as a lecture, and is very pleasant reading, abounding in pertinent illustrations and quotations, Horace furnishing, perhaps, rather too many of the latter. Professor Nichol shows in an entertaining way the crude notions of English travellers and critics about America, and of Americans about England, a state of things the more to be regretted since it is travel which supplies the student of the literature of the present with that griidic and basis of comparison which the reading of history furnishes to the student of the past. The only English work of genius on America is Dickens's caricature, and the books on England by Emerson and Hawthorne are the least satisfactory productions of their authors, Professor Nichol, however, does not hesitate to apportion the degree of blame, and the following remarks seem to us very just

" ljntravelled Englishmen know much less of America as a whole —less of her geography, her hiatory, her constitution, and of the lives of her great men —than Americans know of England. Of the mistakes on both sides—ludicrous and grave—we have the larger share The source of this greater ignorance lies not so much in greater indifference as in greater difficulty. England is one, compact and oomparatively stable. The United States are many, vast, various,. and in perpetual motion. An old country is a study, but a new country is a problem. It is hard to realise the past, but it is harder to read the present ; to predict the future is impossible."

Professor Nichol writes with appreciation and sympathy of the vast problem which has to be solved by a country whose popu- lation contains large ad.mixtures of Irish, Germans, Scan- dinavians, Chinese, French, and Spanish, and which has been sown with the germs of all politics and all religions.

"The State that is blent, and the literature that is constructed, out of these often jarring elements, must in the long-run be like no one ingredient ; it must be an amalgam of all. Englishmen are too prone to forget that the partially kindred blood, which ought to promote friendship, cannot insure identity of aim. Safe in their island home, they smile at a turbulence largely due to the lawless spirits they have banished across the seas. The Old World is strong enough to over- look the petulance of the New, which in its turn is great enough to. receive, and, it may be, in process of time to harmonise, the elements of discord in the Old."

The sketch of the literature of the Colonial Period, 1620- 1765, which forms the second chapter, is the least interest- ing part of the book, but not the least valuable. The literary platitudes and theological rumours of this period have received final treatment in the two handsome volumes of Professor Tyler's history, but most English readers would be as little. likely to follow his long, conscientious account as to seek out the original works, so that Professor Nichol's sketch, covering thirty pages, is a welcome relief. It is based almost entirely upon Tyler's work, a debt which is fully acknowledged by the author, and tells in a pleasant way all that the majority of English readers will care to know. When this dull period is once left behind, Professor Nichol's book rapidly increases in interest.

The next chapter, entitled " The Revolution Period" (why, by the way, does he not adopt the common American title of Revolutionary Period ?), deals with the great names of Franklin, Hamilton, and Jefferson, the Declaration of Inde- pendence, the Federalists, and the effects of war and contro- versy on literature, and is a graphic and terse chronicle of this very important and interesting epoch. The same may be said of the succeeling chapter, on "American Politics and Oratory."

It is a common statement that every American is a good speaker, bat few Europeans are acquainted with the real oratory upon which this general compliment is based. In this chapter, besides a few instructive remarks about American political parties—a dark subject to most Englishmen—the author shows the aims and relative positions of such representative men as Calhoun, Clay, Webster, Everett, Channing, Parker, Garrison, Sumner, and Phillips. The specimens of their oratory are striking, and in most cases well chosen. The extract from Parker, however, who was certainly one of the most forcible- speakers that America has produced, is utterly inadequate, and conveys no idea of his tremendous power. A passage should have been taken from one of his anti-slavery sermons preached in the Boston Music Hall. The twelve pages devoted to Daniel Webster give an interesting account of a man little known in England, an account which has, however, a most grave defect. Professor Nichol says :—" Webster stood resolutely on hia ground against the extension of the area of slavery. He urged its abolition in the District of Columbia, but held that the Con- stitution gave no further powers._ In this spirit is conceived his last considerable speech in the Senate, that of March 7th, 1850, entitled by himself, For the Constitution and the Union,' in which he accepts and defends the Compromise Bill." Now, a sketch of Webster's political life which omits all specific refer- ence to his defence of the Fugitive Slave Bill is not only in- complete, but also seriously misleading, as is the above para- graph, for not one English reader in five hundred will under- stand all that is signified by the "Compromise Bill." (The "Compromise measures" would be more accurate. One of them was this Bill, permitting Southern slave-owners to seize their- slaves in the free States, and capable of gross misuse,—no coloured person at the North being secure from seizure as a runaway slave.) How can the English reader—whose ignor- ance of American history has been pointed out by Pro- fessor Nichol himself, in a passage we have already quoted —be expected to know that these two harmless-looking words tell of an ineffaceable blot upon the memory of a man whom the author describes as "the grandest post-Revolu-

:Con figure of the New World " ? By way of killing two birds with one stone, we will try to remedy the two last-mentioned omissions in Professor Nichas book, by quoting a passage which will show at the same time the character of Theodore Parker's eloquence, and the truth about Webster and the Fugitive Slave Bill. It is from Parker's speech before the 'Circuit Court of the United States, at Boston, in answer to the charge of misdemeanour for his speeches against the Bill.

"At that time, Massachusetts had in the Senate of the nation a disappointed politician,—a man of great understanding, of most mighty powers of speech, and what more than all else contributed to his success in life, the most magnificent and commanding personal appearance. At that time—his ambition nothing abated by the many years which make men venerable—he was a bankrupt in money, a bankrupt in reputation, and a bankrupt in morals —I speak only of his public morals, not his private—a bankrupt in political character, pensioned by the Money Power of the North. Thrice disappointed, he was at that time gaming for - the Presidency. When the South laid down the Fugitive Slave Bill on the national Faro.table, Mr. Webster bet his all upon that card. He staked his mind, and it was one of vast compass; his eloquence, which could shake the continent ; his position, the senatorial influence of Massachusetts; his wide reputation, which rang with many a noble word for justice and the rights of man ; he staked his conscience and his life. Gentlemen, you know the rest,—the card won, the South took the trick, and Webster lost all he could lose,—his conscience, his position, his reputation ; not his wide compassing mind, not his earth-shaking eloquence. Finally, he lost his—life. Peace to his mighty shade! God be merciful to him that showed no mercy. The warning of his fall is worth more than the guidance of his success. Let us forgive ; it were wicked to forget. For fifty years, no American has had -such opportunity to serve his country in an hour of need. Never has an American so signally betrayed the trust,—not one, since Benedict Arnold turned a less ignoble traitor !"

We suggest to Professor Nichol to take the opportunity which the call for a second edition of his book will doubtless soon give him, to add this eloquent and terrible denunciation to his chapter on "American Politics and Oratory."

In a second notice, we shall speak of the literary verdicts of this volume, and point out a large number of inaccuracies.