CHAPTER V. CHAPTER V. 
"A country which has no national literature, or a literature too insignificant to force its way abroad, must always be, to its neighbours, at least in every important spiritual respect, an unknown and misestimated country. Its towns may figure on our maps; its revenues, population, manufactures, political connexions, may be recorded in statistical books: but the character of the people has no symbol and no voice; we cannot know them by speech and discourse, but only by mere sight and outward observation of their manners and procedure. Now, if both sight and speech, it both travellers and native literature, are found but ineffectual in this respect, how incalculably more so the former alone!"
Edinburgh Review.--Vol. xlvi. p. 309.
There is but one method by which most nations can express thegeneral mind: by their literature. Popular books are the ideas ofthe people put into language by an individual. To aself-governing people there are two methods open: legislation isthe expression of the popular mind, as well as literature.
If the national mind of America be judged of by itslegislation, it is of a very high order; so much less violence tothe first principles of morals is exhibited there than in anyother social arrangements that the world has yet seen. If theAmerican nation be judged of by its literature, it may bepronounced to have no mind at all.
The two appearances are, however, reconcilable. The mind of anation grows, like that of an individual; and its growthfollows somewhat the same course. Therre may be in each amind, vigorous and full of promise, unerring in the recognitionof true principles, but apt to err in the application of them;ardent in admiration of all faithful and beautiful expression ofmind by others; but not yet knowing how to utter itself. Theyouthful philosopher or poet is commonly a metaphysician beforehe indicates what he is ultimately to become. In the age of vividconsciousness, before he is twenty, the invisible and intangibleworld of reality opens to him with a distinctness and lustrewhich make him in after time almost envy himselfhist youthful years. In this bright spiritual world, much is asindisputably revealed to him as material objects to the bodilyeye: principles in full prominence; and a long perspective ofcertainties melting imperceptably into probabilities; and lost atlast in the haze of possibility, bright with the meridian sun offaith. To him
"The primal duties shine aloft, like stars:
The charities that soothe and heal and bless
Lie scattered at the feet of men, like flowers."
But of all this he can, for some time, express nothing. Heburns with convictions, but can testify them to others only byrecognising the expression which others have obtained the powerof affording. If he makes the attempt, he is eitherunintelligible or trite.
This appears to me to be the stage at which the mind ofAmerica has arrived. That the legislation of the country is, onthe whole, so noble, is owing to the happy circumstance (anatural one in tbe order of Providence, by which great agents riseup when a great work has to be done) that accomplishedindividuals were standing ready to help the people to anexpression of its first convictions. The earliest convictions ofa nation so circumstanced are of their fundamental and commonrights: and the expression must be legislation. This has beendone so well by the Americans that there is every reason toanticipate that more will follow; since principles are so linkedtogether that it is scarcely possible to grasp one withouttouching another. Accordingly, though there is no contributionyet to the Philosophy of Mind from America, many thinking men arefeeling after its principles amidst the accumulations of the oldworld: though no light has been given to society from theAmerican press on the principles of politics, Americans may beheard quoting Burke from end to end of the country, infalliblyseparating the democratic aspirations of his genius from thearistocratic perversions of his temper and education: thoughAmerica has yet witnessed no creation, either in literature orthe arts, and cannot even distinguish a creation from acombination, imitation, or delineation, yet the power ofadmiration which she shows in hailing that which is far inferiorto what she needs,--the vigour with which, after incessantdisappointment, she applies herself to the produce of her press,to find the imperishable in what is just as transient as all thathas gone before,--is a prophecy that a creator will arise. Thefaith that America is to have an artist of some order isuniversal: and such a faith is a sufficient guarantee of theevent. Every ephemeron of a tale-writer, a dramatist, novelist,lyrist, and sonnetteer, has been taken by one or another for theman. But he has not come out of his silence yet; and it is likelythat it may still be long before he does. Every work of geniusis, as has been said, a mystery till it appears. What itsprinciples and elaboration may be, it is for one man only--itsauthor--to conceive: but it is plain what it will not be. It willnot be, more or less, a copy of anything now existing. It willnot be a mere delineation of what passes before the bodily eye,unillumined and unvivified by the light and movement ofprinciples, of which forms are but the exponents. It will not bean exhibition of the relations which conventionalisms mutuallybear, however fine may be the perception, and however clever thepresentation may be. Further than this American literature has,as yet, produced nothing.
There is another reason, besides those which have beenmentioned, why it would be highly unjust and injurious toconclude that there is nothing more in the nation's heart andbrain than has come out before the eye. The American nation ismade up of contributions from almost all other civilised nations:and, though the primary truths of God, and the universalcharacteristics of Man are common to them all, there are infinitediversities to be blended into unity before a national charactercan arise; before a national mind can be seen to actuate the massof society. It is probable that the first great work of geniusthat appears will be the most powerful instrument for effectingthis blending and reconciling: but the appearance of such a workis doubtless retarded in proportion to the checks and repressionof social sympathy caused by the diversity of influences underwhich society proceeds. The tuning for the concert has begun;some captious persons are grumbling at the discord; someinexperienced expectants take a wail here, and a flourish there,to be music: but the hur has not struck. The leader has not yetcome to his place, to play the chord which shall bring the choralresponse that must echo over the world.
I saw the house which Berkeley built in Rhode Island,--builtin the particular spot where it is, that he might have to pass,in his rides, over the hill which lies between it and Newport,and feast himself with the tranquil beauty of the sea, the bayand the downs, as they appear from the ridge of the eminence. Isaw the pile of rocks, with its ledges and recesses, where he issaid to have meditated and composed his "MinutePhilosopher." It was at first melancholy to visit these hisretreats, and think how empty the land still is of the philosophyhe loved. But the more one sees of the people, and the less oftheir books, the stronger grows the hope of the stranger. Onefinds the observation of many turned inwards. Fragments ofspiritual visions occur to one and another. Though somedogmatise, and others wait for revelation, and none seem toremember the existence of the experimental method, still there isa reaching after the Philosophy of Mind. At Harvard University,the chair of Mental Philosophy has been vacant for above eightyears: it having been the custom formerly to indoctrinate thestudents with a certain number of chapters of Locke; and no manbeing now found hardy enough to undertake to discharge the dutythus; and the way not being yet clear to any one who wold layopen the whole field of this philosophy, and let the studentsgather what they could out of it. Such impediments do not existbeyond the walls; and many young minds are at work withoutguidance, to whom guidance, however acceptable, is not necessary.If the lectures which are given to young ladies, who arecarefully misinformed from Reid and Stewart,--if the reviews andpanegyrics of Dr. Brown, hazarded without the slightestconception of the nature and extent of his meaning, are likely tothrow the observer into despair;--if he is amazed to see acoterie disputing upon the ultimate principles perceived by PureReason, while he fins within himself no evidence of the existenceof this Pure Reason, and believes that if it did universallyexist, ultimate principles could admit of no dispute,--he is yetcheered by finding, not only eagerness in the pursuit of thephilosophical ideas of others, but traces of some originality ofspeculation. There is a little book, by a Swedenborgian, called"The Growth of the Mind," which is, I believeunquestionably, an original work. From its originality, and thebeauty of some of its images, and yet more of its exhibition ofcertain relations, it is highly interesting, though it is notfound to command that extensive assent, which is the onlyguarantee of the soundness of works on the Philosophy of Mind.Mankind may demur for ages to the earth being round, and to itsmoving through space; but where the primary appeal, as in thePhilosophy of Mind, must be to consciousness, works which do notcommand assent to their fundamental positions are failures asphilosophy, though they may have inferior merits and attractions.
The best productions of American literature are, in myopinion, the tales and sketches in which the habits and mannersof the people of the country are delineated, with exactness, withimpartiality of temper, and without much regard to thepicturesque. Such are the tales of Judge Hall of Cincinnati. Suchare the tales by the author of Swallow Barn; where, however,there is the addition of a good deal of humour, and a subtractionof some of the truth. Miss Sedgwick's tales are of the highestorder of tbe three, from the moral beauty which they breathe.This moral beauty is of a much finer character than the bonhommiewhich is the charm of Irving's pictures of manners.She sympathises where he good-naturedly observes; she cheerilyloves where he gently quizzes. Miss Sedgwick's novels have thismoral beauty too; as has everything she touches: but they havegreat and irretrievable faults as works of art. Tale-writing isher forte: and in this vocation, no one who has observed herstriking progression will venture to say what she may notachieve.
Among the host of tales which appear without the names oftheir authors are three, which strike me as excellent in theirseveral ways: "Allen Prescott," containing the historyof a New England boy, drawn to the life, and in a just andamiable spirit: "The New England Housekeeper," in whichthe menage of a rising young lawyer, with its fresh joysand ludicrous perplexities, is humorously exhibited: and"Memoirs of a New England Village Choir," a sketch ofeven higher merit.
Irving's writings have had their meed. He has lived in thesunshine of fame for many years, and in the pleasantconsciousness that he has been a benefactor to the presentgeneration, by shedding some gentle, benignant, and beguilinginfluences on many intervals of their rough and busy lives. Morethan this he has probably not expected; and more than this hedoes not seem likely to achieve. If any of his works live, itwill be his Columbus: and the later of his productions will bethe first forgotten.
Cooper's novels have a very puny vitality. Some descriptionsof scenery, and some insulated adventures, have great merit: butit is not human life that he presents. His female characters arefar from human; and in his selections of the chances of mortalexistence, he usually chooses tbe remotest. He has a vigour ofperception and conception, which might have made him, with studyand discipline, a great writer. As it is, he is, I believe,regarded as a much-regretted failure.
The Americans have a poet. Bryant has not done anything likewhat he can and will do; but he has done some things that willlive. Those of his poems which are the best known, or the mostquoted, are smooth, sweet, faithful descriptions of nature, suchas his own imagination delights in. I shall always remember thevoice and manner with which he took up a casual remark of mine,about sights to be seen in the pine-barrens. When the visitorshad all departed, his question "And what of thepine-barrens?" revealed the spirit of the poet. Of his poemsof this class, "The Evening Wind" is to me the mostdelicious. But others--"The Past," and"Thanatopsis"--indicate another kind, and a higherdegree of power. If he would live for his gifts, if his futureyears could be devoted to "clear poetical activity,""looking up," like the true artist, " to hisdignity and his calling," that dignity and that calling mayprove to be as lofty as they no doubt appeared in the reveries ofhis boyhood; and he may be listened to as lovingly over theexpanse of future time, as he already is over that of the ocean.
The Americans have also a historian of promise. Mr.Bancroft'shistory of the United States is little more than begun: but thebeginning is characterised by an impartial and benevolent spirit,and by the indications which it affords of the author's fidelityto democratic principles; the two primary requisites in ahistorian of the republic. The carrying on the work to acompletion will be a task of great toil and anxiety: but it willbe a most important benefit to society at large, if it fulfilsits promise.
The periodical literatare of the United States is of avery low order. I know of no review where anything likeimpartial, enlightened criticism is to be found. The NorthAmerican Review had once some reputation in England; butit has sunk at home and abroad, less from want of talent than ofprinciple. If it has any principle whatever at present, it seemsto be to praise every book mentions; and to fall in asdexterously as possible with popular prejudice. The AmericanQuarterly, published at Philadelphia, is uninteresting from thetriteness of its morals, and a general dearth of thought, amidsta good deal of cleverness. The Southern Review, published atCharleston,--sometime ago discontinued, but I believe latelyrenewed,--is the best specimen of periodical literature that thecountry has afforded. After the large deductions renderednecessary by the faults of southern temper, this Review maintainsits place above the rest; a rank which is, I believe, undisputed.
I met with one gem in American literature, where I should haveleast expected it:--in the Knickerbocker; a New Vork MonthlyMagazine. Last spring, a set of papers began to appear, called"Letters from Palmyra,"* six numbers of which had beenissued when I left the country. I have been hitherto unable toobtain the rest: but if they answer to the early portions, therecan be no doubt of their being shortly in everybody's hands, inboth countries. These letters remain in my mind, after repeatedreadings, as a fragment of lofty and tender beauty. Zenobia,Longinus, and a long perspective of characters, live and move innatural majesty; and the beauties of description and sentimentappear to me as remarkable as the strong conception of character,and of the age. If this anonymous fragment be not the work of atrue artist,--if the work, when entire, do not prove to be of afar higher order than anything which has issued from the Americanpress,--its early admirers will feel yet more surprise thanregret.
It is continually said, on both sides of the water, and withmuch truth, that the bad state of the laws of literary propertyis answerable for some of the depression of American literature.It is true that the imperfection of these laws inflicts variousdiscouragements on American writers, while it is disgracefullyinjurious to foreign authors. It is true that Americanbooksellers will not remunerate native authors while they canpurloin the works of British writers: and that the Americanpublic has a strong disposition to listen to the utterance of theEnglish in preference to the prophets of their own country. It istrue that in America, where every man must work for his living,it is a discouragement to the pursuit of literature that a livingcannot, except in a few rare cases, be got by it. But all this isno solution of the fact of the non-existence of literature inAmerica: which fact is indeed no mystery. The present state ofthe law, by which the works of English authors are pirated,
undefended against mutilation, and made to drive native worksout of the market, is so conspicuously bad, that there isevery prospect of a speedy alteration: but there is nothing inthe abuse which can silence genius, if genius is wantingto speak. It ought by this time to be understood that there is noanswer on earth which can repress mental force of the highestkinds; which can stifle the utterance of a thoroughly-movedspirit: certainly no power which is held by piratical booksellersunder defective laws. Such discouragement is unjust and harsh;but it cannot be fatal. If a native genius, of a far higher orderthan any English, had been existing in America for the last tenyears, he would have made himself heard ere this, and won his wayinto the general mind and heart through a host of booksellingharpies, and a chaos of lawlessness: he would have done this,even if it had been necessary to give his dinner for paper, andsell his bed to pay the printer;--expedients which it isscarcely conceivable that any author in that thriving land shouldbe driven to. The absence of protection to foreign literaryproperty is injurious enough, without its being made answerablefor the deficiency of literary achievement. The causes liedeeper, and will not have ceased to operate till long after thelaw shall have heen made just in this particular.
Some idea of the literary taste of the country may be arrivedat through a mention of what appeared to me to be the comparativepopularity of living or recent British authors.
I heard no name so often as Mrs. Hannah More's. She is muchbetter known in the country than Shakspeare. This is, of course,an indication of the religious taste of the people; and the factbears only a remote relation to literature. Scott is idolised;and so is Miss Edgeworth; but I think no one is so much read asMr. Bulwer. I question whether it is possible to pass half a dayin general society without hearing him mentioned. He is notworshipped with the dumb self-surrendering reverence with whichMiss Edgeworth is regarded: but his books are in every house; hisoccasional democratic aspirations are in every one's mouth; andthe morality of his books is a constant theme of discussion, fromamong the most sensitive of the clergy down to the"thinking, thoughtless school-boy" and his chum. Thenext name is, decidedly, Mrs. Jameson's. She is altogether afavourite; and her "Characteristics of Women" is thebook which has made her so. At a considerable distance followsMrs. Hemans. Byron is scarcely heard of. Wordsworth lies at theheart of the people. His name may not be so often spoken as someothers; but I have little doubt that his influence is as powerfulas that of any whom I have mentioned. It is less diffused, butstronger. His works are not to be had at every store; but withinpeople's houses they lie under the pillow, or open on thework-box, or they peep out of the coat-pocket: they are marked,re-marked, and worn. Coleridge is the delight of a few. So isLamb; regarded, however, with a more tender love. I heard Mr.Hallam's name seldom, but always in a tone of extraordinaryrespect, and from those whose respect is most valuable.
No living writer, however, exercises so enviable a sway, asfar as it goes, as Mr. Carlyle. It is remarkable that aninfluence like his should have been gained through scatteredarticles of review and speculation, spread over a number of yearsand a variety of periodicals. The Americans have his "Lifeof Schiller;" but it was not that. His articles in theEdinburgh Review met the wants of several of the best minds inthe society of New England; minds weary of cant, and mechanicalmorals, and seeking something truer to rest upon. Thediscipleship immediately instituted is honourable to both. Mr.Carlyle's remarkable work, "Sartor Resartus," issuedpiecemeal through Fraser's Magazine, has been republished inAmerica, and is exerting an influence proportioned to thegenuineness of the admiration it has excited. Perhaps this is thefirst instance of the Americans having taken to their hearts anEnglishwork which came to them anonymously, unsanctioned by anyrecommendation, and even absolutely neglected at home. The bookis acting upon them with wonderful force. It hasregenerated the preaching of more than one of the clergy; and, Ihave reason to believe, the minds and lives of several of thelaity. It came as a benefactor to meet a pressing want; howpressing, the benefited testify by the fervour of theirgratitude.
I know of no method by which the Americans could be assistedto utter what they may have in them so good as one which has beenproposed, but which is not yet, I believe, in course of trial. Ithas been proposed that a publication should be established, opento the perfectly full and free discussion of every side of everyquestion, within a certain department of inquiry;--Social Morals,for instance. There are difficulties at present in the way ofpresenting the whole of any subject to the public mind;difficulties arising from the unprincipled partiality of thecommon run of newspapers, the cautious policy of reviewers, thefear of opinion entertained by individual writers, and theimpediments thrown in the way of free publication by the stateof the laws relating to literary property. A publicationdevoted to the object of presenting, without fear or favour, allthat can be said on any subject, without any restriction, exceptin the use of personalities towards opponents, would be the bestpossible remedy, under the circumstances, for the inconveniencescomplained of; the finest stimulus to the ascertainment of truth;the best education in the art of free and distinct utterance. Apublication like this, under the editorship of such a man as Dr.Follen, a man full of learning, philosophy, and that devout loveof truth which is a guarantee of impartiality, would be a highhonour to the country, and a good lesson to some older societies,from which the fear of free discussion has not yet vanished. Aneditor worthy of the work would decline the responsibility ofsuppressing any views, coming within the range of subjectsembraced. He would merely weed out personalities; cherish thespirit of justice and charity; and for the sake of these,strengthen the weaker side, where he saw that it was inadequatelydefended. It may be said that editors who would thus dischargetheir function are rare. They are so: but there is Dr. Follen; aliving reply to the objection.
I have not the apprehension which some entertain that such apublication would be feared and rejected by the public. At first,it would excite some surprise and perplexity; one-sidedness beingso generally the characteristic of periodicals in America, thatit would take some time to convey the idea of a consistentopposite practice. But the American public has given no evidenceof a dislike to be made acquainted with truth; but quite thecontrary. My own conviction is, that before two years from itscommencement, such a work would be in the houses of all thehonest thinkers and most principled doers in the country; andthat eloquent voices would, by its means, make themselves heardfrom many a remote dwelling-place; using with delight their meansof utterance; and proving that the dearth of American literatureis not owing to vacuity of thought or deadness of feeling. At anyrate, such an experiment would astertain whether the want is ofmeans of utterance, or of something to utter.
*"Letters of Lucius M. Piso, from Palmyra, to his friendMarcus Curtius, at Rome: now first translated andpublished." They present a picture of the state of tbe Eastin the reign of Aurelian; and are to end, I suppose, with thefall of Palmyra.
From Harriet Martineau, Society in America, VolumeIII, Part III, Chapter V - "Utterance." London:Saunders and Otley, 1837, pp. 205-223.
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