Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1855,

BY CHARLES SCRIBNER,

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York.

R. CRAIGHEAD, ELECTROTYPER AND STEREOTYPER, 53 Vesey Street, N. Y

CA. ALVORD, Printer.

810.3

8 D95

PREFACE.

IN submitting the following work to the Public, it may not be amiss, though the numerous articles of which it is composed must speak separately for themselves, to offer a few words of general introduction, setting forth the intent, the necessary limitations, and presenting a few suggestions, which may give unity to the apparent variety.

The design of the Cyclopædia is to bring together as far as possible in one book convenient for perusal and reference, memorials and records of the writers of the country and their works, from the earliest period to the present day. In the public and private library it is desirable to have at hand the means of information on a number of topics which associate themselves with the lives of persons connected with literature. There are numerous points of this kind, not merely relating to authorship, but extending into the spheres of social and political life, which are to be sought for in literary biography, and particularly in the literary biography of America, where the use of the pen has been for the most part incidental to other pursuits. The history of the literature of the country involved in the pages of this work, is not so much an exhibition of art and invention, of literature in its immediate and philosophical sense, as a record of mental progress and cultivation, of facts and opinions, which derives its main interest from its historical rather than its critical value. It is important to know what books have been produced, and by whom; whatever the books may have been or whoever the men.

It is in this light that we have looked upon the Cyclopædia of American Literature, a term sufficiently comprehensive of the wide collection of authors who are here included under it. The study and practice of criticism may be pursued elsewhere: here, as a matter of history, we seek to know in general under what forms and to what extent literature has been developed. It is not the purpose to sit in judgment, and admit or exclude writers according to individual taste, but to welcome all guests who come reasonably well introduced, and, for our own part, perform the character of a host as quietly and efficiently as practicable.

A glance at the contents of this work will show that an endeavor has been made to include as wide a range of persons and topics as its liberal limits will permit. It has been governed by one general design, to exhibit and illustrate the products of the pen on American soil.

This is connected more closely here, than in the literature of other countries, with biographical details not immediately relating to books or authorship; since it is only of late that a class of authors by profession has begun to spring up. The book-producers of the country have mostly devoted their lives to other callings. They have been divines, physicians, lawyers, college-professors, politicians, orators, editors, active military men, travellers, and, incidentally, authors. It is necessary, therefore, in telling their story, to include many details not of a literary character, to exhibit fairly the proportion which literature bore in their lives.

As the work has not been restricted to professed authors, of whom very few would have been found, neither has it been limited to writers born in the country. It is sufficient

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for the purpose that they have lived and written here, and that the land has been enriched by their labors. Indeed it is one of the marked facts in American cultivation, that in its early formative period it was so fortunate as to start with some of the finest products of the European mind. The divines of Cambridge, who brought with them to the New World the seed of literary, as well as of political and religious life; the men who taught at Harvard and William and Mary, who first spoke from the pulpits, who wrote the first historical records, who furnished the supplies for the first presses, were Englishmen by birth, as they and their successors were by political constitution, down to the comparatively recent period of the Revolution. Even since that period, the mental vigor of the country has been as constantly recruited by European minds, as its material conquests of the soil have been extended by European arms and hands. To ignore this, would be treasonable to the higher interests of letters, whose greatest benefit is to associate all nations in intellectual amity and progress. With pleasure we have placed upon these pages, accounts of foreign scholars and writers who have visited us and lived among us, frequently enduring privation, and freely expending their talents and energies in the literary service of the country. It is an honor, as it is a most liberal advantage to America, that men like Berkeley, Priestley, Dr. Cooper, Witherspoon, Nesbit, Follen, Lieber, Schaff, Agassiz, Guyot, have freely joined their contributions to the stock of our own authors. The country has received their books, and profited by their lessons and experience. It cannot grudge the few pages which justice, no less than gratitude and affection, assigns to their story.

The arrangement of the work, it will be seen, is chronological, following as nearly as practicable the date of birth of each individual.

As a record of National Literature, the Cyclopædia may be divided into three general periods; the Colonial Era, the Revolutionary Period, and the Present Century.

Each of these is marked by its distinct characteristics. The writers of the first period include the New England Puritan school, the patient, laborious, well read, and acute divines, the scholars who gave life to the early seats of learning, the first race of chroniclers, several genial observers of nature, as the Bartrams, and an occasional quaint poet, who penned verses without consulting the pleasure of Minerva. In this period there is rudeness, roughness, but much strength; frequently a high order of eloquence; great diligence, and an abundant collection of materials for history. Harvard College, William and Mary, Yale, the College of New Jersey, King's College New York, the University of Pennsylvania, the College of Rhode Island, and Dartmouth College, were established in The great men of this period were Roger Williams, Cotton, Hooker, the Mathers, Blair, Colden, Logan, the Bartrams, Jonathan Edwards-chiefly proficients in divinity and science; while Franklin heralded the more general literary cultivation which was to follow.

this era.

The next, the Revolutionary period, may be said to have begun and ended with the discussion of legal and constitutional principles. It was inaugurated by Otis, Dickinson, Jefferson, and Adams, and closed with the labors of Hamilton, Madison, and Jay, in the Federalist. The political and judicial arguments form its staple. They were the first distinctive voices of America heard in the old world. There had been as good Puritan divinity published in England as had been broached in Massachusetts and Connecticut; the age of Dryden and of Pope had undoubtedly furnished better poets than the land of Anne Bradstreet and Michael Wigglesworth; but here was a new experience in government, a fresh manly interpretation of constitutional right, expressed succinctly, forcibly, eloquently in the colonial writings, fast ceasing to be colonial, which compelled a hearing, and elicited the generous admiration of Chatham. Nor was this literature confined to didactic political disquisition. In Francis Hopkinson it had a polished champion, who taught by wit, what Dickinson and Drayton unfolded with argument and eloquence; while Trumbull, Freneau, and Brackenridge caught the various humors of the times, and introduced a new spirit into American literature. The intellect of the country was thoroughly awakened. At

the close of the period in 1799, Dr. Benjamin Rush, whose mental activity had assisted in promoting the result, wrote: "From a strict attention to the state of mind in this country, before the year 1774, and at the present time, I am satisfied the ratio of intellect is as twenty to one, and of knowledge as one hundred to one, in these states, compared with what they were before the American Revolution."

The third period exhibited the results of this increased capacity. It gave a new range to divinity and moral science, in writers like Channing; Calhoun and Webster illustrated the principles of political science; Marshall, Kent, and Story interpreted law; Paulding, Irving, Cooper, Simms, Emerson, opened new provinces in fiction and polite literature; Hillhouse, Bryant, Halleck, Dana, Longfellow, sang their profound and sweet melodies; the national life at the earliest moment found its historian in Bancroft; oratory gained new triumphs in the halls of Congress, and a genial race of writers filled the various departments of letters, in turn thoughtful, sentimental, or humorous, as the occasion or theme required. To enumerate them here, would be to repeat the index of these volumes.

In another light, this literature may be looked at in its relations to the several portions of the country-the kind and extent of the productiveness varying with the character and opportunities of each region. When the different elements of the question have been duly considered, it will be found that mental activity has been uniformly developed. The early settlements of the North; its possession of the main seats of learning, drawing together numerous professors; its commercial centres, calling forth the powers of the press; its great cities, have given it the advantage in the number of authors: but without these important stimuli, the South and West have been vigorous producers in the fields of literature. Virginia and South Carolina, whose long settlement and Atlantic relations fairly bring them into view for competition here, have yielded their fair proportion of authors; their literature naturally assuming a political character. It is not a just test in the comparison to take the results of colleges and great cities, where literary men are drawn together, and contrast their numbers with the isolated cultivation of an agricultural region, where letters are solely pursued for their own sake, as the ornament or solace of life, seldom as a means of support, and where that book-generating person, the author by profession, is almost wholly unknown. We are rather to look for the social literary cultivation. Tested in this way, by their political representatives, their orators, their citizens who travel abroad; the men who are to be met at home, on the plantations, and in large rural districts, there is a literary cultivation in the South and West proportionate with any other part of the country. In the number of books on the list of American bibliography, their quota is neither slight nor unimportant.

It has been an object in this work to exhibit fairly and amply all portions of the country. The literature of the South is here more fully displayed than ever before. The notices might readily have been extended, but in this, as in other cases, the work has been governed by necessary limitations. It is very evident to any one who has looked at the statistics of the subject, that it would not be practicable, even on the generous scale of these volumes, to introduce all the writers of the country. With great labor and patience such a work might be undertaken, but its extent would soon place it beyond the reach of ordinary purchasers. For that remote end, a complete American bibliography would be required; and it is probable that at some future time it will be executed. But the plan of the present Cyclopædia is different. It required selection. On consultation with the publishers, it was found that two royal octavos of the present liberal size could be afforded at a moderate price, which would place the work within the reach of the entire class of purchasers; that any extension beyond this would involve an increase in cost unfavorable to its circulation. This was the material limit. On the other side the space seemed sufficient for the display of the comparatively brief period of American authorship, when the whole vast range of English literature was, successfully for the purpose, included by Messrs. Chambers in about the same compass.

The next question respected the distribution of the space. It was considered that,