AMERICAN LITERATURE 



229 



AMERICAN LITERATURE 



prose or his poetry. Certainly little in the 

 entire range of literature in English can sur- 

 pass in pure music some of his verse. 



The skies they were ashen and sober ; 



The leaves they were crisped and sere, 



The leaves they were wickering: and sere ; 



It was night in the lonesome October 



Of my most immemorial year; 



It was hard by the dim lake of Auber, 



In the misty mid-region of Weir: 



It was down by the dank tarn of Auber, 



In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir. 



A lesser writer, but one much admired in 

 his own day and still read with pleasure, was 

 Nathaniel P. Willis, who wrote both prose and 

 poetry. 



Later Prose Writers. As writers become 

 more numerous it is simpler to consider sepa- 

 rately the two great branches, prose-writers 

 and poets, though some have attained distinc- 

 tion in both. The two men who stand in the 

 very front rank among men of letters, if the 

 opinion of the majority of critics be taken, 

 were born early in the nineteenth century- 

 Emerson in 1803 and Hawthorne a year later. 

 The philosophy of the one, with its inspiring, 

 prophetic note, and the romances of the other, 

 with their perfect artistry, made it apparent 

 that the formative period of American litera- 

 ture was over. Prescott, Motley and Parkman 

 proved that the United States could not only 

 make history, but write it, and they left a 

 worthy tradition of historic writing which later 

 writers, such as Fiske, Roosevelt and Wilson, 

 have worthily supported. 



Contemporary with Emerson and Haw- 

 thorne, but claimed by a later period because 

 they lived longer, were Oliver Wendell Holmes 

 and James Russell Lowell. Both wrote poetry, 

 and Lowell especially is known for that rather 

 than for his prose works, but his essays marked 

 an epoch in the history of criticism in Amer- 

 Holmes's Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, 

 with its delightfully-intimate but scholarly 

 style, ranks as one of the classics of literature. 

 A charming example of Holmcs's clever way 

 "i" treating his material is the following: 



i we are as yet small children, long be- 

 fore the time when those two grown ladles offer 

 us the choice of Hercules, there comes to us a 

 youthful angel, holding in his right hand cubes 

 like dice, and In his left spheres like marbles, 

 cubes are of stainless Ivory, and on each is 

 written in letters of gold TRI-TII. The spheres 

 are veined and streaked and spotted beneath, with 

 a dark crimson flush above where the light falls 

 on them, and In a certain aspect you can make 

 >tit upon every one of them the three letters, 



L. I 



The child to whom they are offered very prob- 

 ably clutches at both. The spheres are the most 

 convenient things in the world ; they roll with the 

 least possible impulse just where the child would 

 have them. The cubes will not roll at all ; they 

 have a great talent for standing still, and always 

 keep right side up. But very soon the young 

 philosopher finds that things which roll so easily 

 are very apt to roll Into the wrong corner, and 

 to get out of his way when he most wants them, 

 while he always knows where to find the others, 

 which stay where they are left. 



Of later prose writers, many have attained 

 distinction, especially in the field of fiction. 

 Harriet Beecher Stowe, Howells, Mary E. Wil- 

 kins Freeman, Henry James, Silas Weir 

 Mitchell, Bret Harte, Edward Eggleston each 

 name stands for something distinctive in 

 American literature. It is impossible to think 

 of Mrs. Stowe, for instance, without connect- 

 ing her with her epoch-making Uncle Tom's 

 Cabin; of Mary E. Wilkins Freeman without 

 calling up pictures, wonderfully clear but none 

 too cheerful, of New England life; of Edward 

 Eggleston without associating him with pic- 

 turesque pioneer days in Indiana. A novelist, 

 too, was Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), but 

 his humor was so distinctive and distinguish- 

 ing a characteristic that his genuine st 

 telling power has not always been appreciated 

 by all Americans. 



More recently, there has been an ever- 

 expanding list. The drama may flourish or 

 languish, poetry go unheard, essays gather 

 dust, but the stream of fiction flows on. To 

 name but a few of the outstanding figures, 

 there have been Joel Chandler Harris, Frank 

 Norris, James Lane Allen, Edith Wharton, 

 George W. Cable, Anthony Hope Hawkins, 

 Margaret Deland, Booth Tarkington, Gertrude 

 Atherton, Winston Churchill and Robert Her- 

 rick. In the article NOVEL there is given a list 

 of the fiction-writers treated in these volumes, 

 and that index includes not merely those 

 named above, but numerous others. 



Poets. Those New England contempora- 

 ries, Holmes, Emerson and I.nw.-ll. who pro- 

 duced some of the finest of American prose, 

 formed with Longfellow and Whittier the most 

 distinguished group of poets the United States 

 has yet aeen. Critics may declare that some 

 of these were popular poets rather than great 

 poets, but criticism cannot loosen the firm 

 hold wlndi they have on the affections of 

 their readers. Longfellow's Hiawatha stands 

 to thousands as the supreme epic of America, 

 and the schoolboy never ceases to thrill at 

 hearing how 



