FOREWORDS. THE great task of Colonial and Revolutionary America was to settle the Atlantic seaboard, establish provincial governments, and achieve independence and national union. The great task of the Republic has been to extend the national domain to Mexico and the Pacific Ocean, carve out new states from this territory and bring them into the Union, throttle secession, rid the nation of the incubus of slavery, furnish an asylum for the poor and oppressed of the Old World, and play a leading part in the development of modern industrial civilization. We have already seen how slight and crude American literature was during the first two centuries. Even the literature of the Republic is still a minor product in comparison with the nation's achievements in other fields. The United States is even yet too young, too crass, too much absorbed in the struggle with physical nature, it has not even yet enough of the mellowing that comes with time, of the enriching and beautifying of the national life that wait upon venerable historic associations, ancient legend, and the noble leisure of an old civilization, to produce the greatest art. American literature at its best is still much below English and Italian and Greek literatures at their best. As a whole it is inferior even to English literature of the nineteenth century. No false patriotism or personal affection for a favorite author should blind us to these facts. Tennyson, Carlyle, Thackeray, Shelley, Wordsworth, Scott, what six American poets and prose-writers shall we place on an equality with these men? And how puny are our greatest compared with the giants of the ages Goethe, Milton, Shakspere, Dante, Virgil, Sophocles, Homer. But we may, nevertheless, justly be proud of the literature of the Republic. The day of Wigglesworth and Barlow has forever gone. The day of Irving, Poe, Longfellow, Hawthorne, Lowell, and Emerson has come ; and in them and their fellows we have given beautiful gifts unto men. Even within the period of the Republic, however, the years of literary bloom have been all too few. Since the War of the Revolution four generations have come upon the scene. In the first generation, ending approximately with the War of 1812, American literature shared in the general weakness and crudeness of the young nation's life, although it shared likewise in the promise of coming strength. In the second and third generations, ending approximately with the Civil War, lived and wrote most of the authors who first lifted our literature out of the dust, and gave it an honorable though subordinate place among the literatures of the world. In the fourth generation, ending with the century, American literature has been characterized by fresh beginnings and a new spirit rather than by great achievement. literature, like our country, seems to be standing upon the threshold of a new era. Just what that era will be, no man can say; but there is reason for the faith that it will not be unworthy of the maturing life of a great people. Our III. THE PERIOD OF THE REPUBLIC. (1789-1900.) I. THE LITERATURE OF THE TIME OF NATIONAL BEGINNINGS (1789-1815). tion, 1789. First tariff, 1789. Funding the national debt, 1790. 1809. War with Tripoli, 1801-1805. Pacific, 1804-1806. Fulton's steamboat on the Hudson, 1807. Jay's treaty with Great Britain, The Embargo, 1807-1809. 1794. Adams's 1801. Preparations for war with France, 1798. Kentucky nullification resolutions, 1799. Death of Washington, 1799. Importation of slaves forbidden, First steamboat on the Ohio and Burns's poems, 1786-1802. LITERATURE IN ENGLAND. Poems by Southey, 1794-1814. 1808. Ann Radcliffe's romances, 1789- Lewis's romances and tales, 1795 1797. Burke's Reflections on the French Wordsworth and Coleridge's Lyri Revolution, 1790. Blake's later poems, 1791-1794. cal Ballads, 1798. Landor's Gebir, 1798. Campbell's Pleasures of Hope, 1799; Gertrude of Wyoming, 1809. |