man was sent to Yale as a more suitable institution. When he returned to Boston he was the most orthodox fop the city had ever seen. He tried to do some editorial work but failed and moved to New York in disgust. Here he was more successful and finally was sent to England as a magazine correspondent. With no money and few friends he was still able to make his way into English society, to meet the titled and wealthy, and finally to marry a rich heiress in spite of her knowledge of his poverty. His dandified habits and wonderful assurance carried him through where many a better man would have failed. The death of his first wife was followed by a second marriage. He soon found himself embroiled in money troubles and finally settled down to unremitting toil to support himself and family honorably. He lived to be sixty-one years of age. The popularity of both his prose and poetry was phenomenal and they must have had some merit. His Absalom, Hagar in the Wilderness and other metrical paraphrases of scriptural narrative are still enjoyed by the devout, particularly in the less cultured communities. His poems, sacred, passionate and humorous, his letters from abroad, his criticisms on current literature and the good-natured essays in which he attempted to help out some needy and deserving literary friend have all disappeared from public recollection. Studies 1. Why was it to be expected that the general theme of the earliest colonial literature would be religious in character? 2. Compare the spirit that dominated the American literature of this age with the spirit of the age of Pope and Dryden. 3. Suppose that Shakespeare's writings had been known to the colonists. Do you think that they would have rivaled in popularity the works of Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards? Does it seem probable that they might even have been entirely neglected? Why? 4. What is there in the nature of Franklin's philosophy that makes its influence far more widereaching than that of Emerson and Carlyle? 5. Characterize the style of literature and name some of the writers of the Revolutionary period. 6. Why was it that an original literature, really American in tone, was not possible till after the Revolution? 7. Tell something of Channing's personality and of his influence. 8. Name the qualities that make Irving's style artistic. 9. Explain fully what is meant by this criticism of Irving as an author: "He saw life through the literary atmosphere, and had no theories to ventilate, no reforms to advocate, no specific moral value to enforce." 10. What purpose in their writings did Irving and Cooper have in common? How did their works mark a departure from the "literature of knowledge"? Compare the personality of Cooper with that of Scott. II. Which of the English poets does William Cullen Bryant seem to resemble most closely? 12. Describe the unusual power possessed by Poe that gives to his poems their originality and fascination. National Period-The Civil War Group Boston But we have dwelt long enough on the first school of American literature, if school it may be called, and must turn our attention from the New York center to Boston, where the greatest of American writers were coming into prominence. To understand their relationships and the significance of their work we glance again at the history of that intellectual city. Boston has always occupied a somewhat isolated position. It is not on any of the great highways to other places. It is not the terminus. of any great transatlantic steamship lines, and until the construction of its numerous railways, was not in ready communication with other American cities. When people go to Boston it is because they have business in Boston; while New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Chicago, St. Louis and other great cities are on lines of travel that naturally bring to them many people whose ultimate destination is elsewhere. Boston stands for the whole of eastern Massachusetts and what is true of her is true of the entire region. Add to this fact of geographical isolation the further conditions that Boston and vicinity were settled by a people possessed of high moral sentiment, intense energy and the stern power of selfrepression; that her settlers came to this country to be free to worship as they pleased and that |