LITERATURE 



307 



The three greatest names during the Colonial American troops. " Hail Columbia " was a 

 period were: Cotton Mather (1663-1728), Jona- ! 



AL _ T^ J 1_ / 1 rf/\o i*rrro\ < O A ! A ^I T?^*..*.!.-!?** 



than Edwards (1703-1758), Benjamin Franklin 

 ( 1 70H-1790). The most celebrated book by Cot- 

 ton Mather was the "Magnalia Christi Ameri- 

 cana." or "great things done by Christ for the 

 American people." Jonathan Edwards' princi- 

 pal work is entitled "Inquiry into the Freedom 

 of the Will." The best known of Franklin's 

 works are his " Autobiography," " Father Abra- 

 ham's Speech," and " Poor Richard's Almanac." 

 The early writings of Benjamin Franklin fall 

 within the Colonial period, but his state papers 

 and his later works belong to the Revolutionary 

 period. The first newspaper published in Amer- 

 ica was "Public Occurrences," in 1690. "The 

 Boston News Letter" was published in 1704; 

 "The Boston Gazette" in 1719. 



Revolutionary Period. By the middle 

 of the Eighteenth Century great changes were 

 manifested in the character of the colonies. 

 They had become closer neighbors and they 

 had discovered that they had much in common. 

 The old isolation was broken down, and with 

 united voice they protested against foreign 

 injustice. The character of the writings of the 

 Colonial period was theological, the character 

 of the writings of the Revolutionary period was 

 political. The writers of the day denounced 

 tyranny and proclaimed for liberty and self- 

 reliance. and thus laid the foundations for our 

 national literature. Already, for half a century, 

 the weekly newspapers, as well as a few monthly 

 magazines for a decade or more, had been pub- 

 lishing and discussing political news, so that the 

 people of the colonies had been educated to 

 think and write upon such subjects. The Amer- 

 ican colleges had contributed their share to the 

 spirit of independence, and educated men were 

 ready to act as leaders. It is not strange, there- 

 fore, that the state papers of the Revolutionary 

 period form a body of exceedingly able docu- 

 ments. "When your lordship looks at the 

 papers transmitted to us from America," said 

 Chatham, in 1775, "when you consider their 

 y, firmness, and wisdom, you cannot but 

 respect their cause." 



The greatest orator of Massachusetts was 

 James Otis; the greatest orator of Virginia, 

 Patrick Henry. Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, 

 John Jay, Alexander Hamilton, all were able 

 . There were some attempts at general 



literature, history, essay, biography, fiction, and 

 there were a few poets of an inferior sort. The bal- 

 lad literatii!' itionary days is said to have 



'nt im M| Lord ( 'hatham. The 

 Bongs curn-nt in America durinir this era are his- 

 :ii.U ami artistically monotonous. 

 D rude TOM I he :ichie\. 



home"; or 



ridicule, like ".luck P.rair." the British Lion; or, 

 like the ' 1 ate of Burgoy; -erthrow of 



vaulting ambition; or. a^ in "Wyoming Mas- 

 l>e\\ail the f;ite o| the fallen; or, OS in 

 "Free Am. | lrate tin- triumph of the 



good cause. Am<.n- the very rude national an- 

 themsoi it,, \\ , Yankee Doodle 



able a.s havinu been an old Dutch c:\tch adapted 

 into an I : ncal chant, and adopted. 



with conscious or unconscious irony, by the 



somewhat later production, by Joseph Hopkin- 

 spn; and the' " Star-Spangled Banner," by Fran- 

 cis S. Key, is associated with the traditions of 

 the second British War. As inspired with the 

 spirit of the Eighteenth, though belonging in 

 date to the early years of the Nineteenth Cen- 

 tury, we may mention the "Pilgrim Fathers" 

 of J. Pierpont; Woodworth's "Old Oaken 

 Bucket"; "Home, Sweet Home," by J. H. 

 Payne ; the humorous burlesque of J. G. Saxe, 

 "Miss MacBride"; and the verses of the great 

 painter and romancer, Washington Allston, 

 with the refrain, "We are One." Francis 

 Hopkinson's "Battle of the Kegs"; Joel 

 Barlow's "Hasty Pudding"; the humorous 

 "Wants of Man," by Quincy Adams; the 

 "Conquest of Canaan," and Columbia," also 

 by Quincy Adams, are the best verses of their 

 time. 



Period of the Republic. The best en- 

 ergies, of the American people have been concen- 

 trated on the development of vast material re- 

 sources and the building of a great nation. It 

 is not to be expected that a century of such 

 activity would produce a literature equal to 

 that of the Mother Country with her centuries 

 of assimilation and development. American 

 literature has no name that can rank with the 

 highest. She has never produced a Shakespere 

 or a Milton, but her long roll of honorable names 

 who have written prose and verse give promise 

 of the literature that may be produced in Amer- 

 ica when time has ripened this nation and when 

 the great genius shall be born. 



The center of literary production during the 

 last century shifted from place to place along 

 the Atlantic coast. It was first in New York 

 and began with the writers who formed the 

 Knickerbocker school. From 1830 to ix:>;> the 

 literary center shifted to Cambridge and Con- 

 cord. where it remained for more than half a 

 century. Since the deaths of Hawthorne. Long- 

 fellow, Emerson, Lowell, Holmes, the leaders of 

 the Con cord -Cambridge school, there has been 

 no one center of literary preeminence. New 

 writers have arisen in many parts of the country 

 and a general interest in letters has been 

 diffused. 



With the first decade of the Nineteenth Cen- 

 tury the stress of war and politics was relaxed 

 and the time was favorable for the beginnings 

 of our national literature. 



The principal writers during the pion< 

 riod of American literature \\ere \\a-humton 

 Irving, .lamrs |\irk I'aulding. James Fenimore 



<'< .per. .lo-eph Hodman Drake. 1 i/(Jrecne 

 liam Cullen Bryant. Kdgar Allen 

 Poe. It was Washington Irving who, by his 



Halleck, William Cullen 



"Knickerbocker I irh Hook," 



removed from us the taunt. "Who reads an 

 American Book?" Cooperim- I type 



of novel in his Crocking Tales," and 



Bryant gave us p the new world. Edgar 



Allen Poe created the musie of poetry H. 

 had never been s 



literary history of New Kniiland divides 

 into tl Qtad l'\ three groups 



of writers. First, the jM.litical group, including 

 the great orators; second, the INNM-. and theo- 



