Fuller does justice to the temperaments of both these literary heroesreconciling differences, showing like results under different names, and that God's world is wide enough for both. The sketch of George Herbert's character is derived from a reverent study of his sacred poems, which would do honor to the cloisters of Oxford itself; the local scenery, the description of the lane being, probably, derived from the narrative of the pastoral Izaak Walton. The scene as described, in the neighborhood of Salisbury, bears a singular resemblance to the actual region.

66

"The Prose Works of Milton" is a fruitful hint to the young readers of America to study the "Areopagiticas" of the great poet. The Life of Mackintosh is a study of character, with a motto from " Sartor Resartus," which of itself, with Miss Fuller for interpreter, is evidence of care and mature feeling. The English Modern Drama, the plays of Marston, Sterling, the tragedy of Athelwolf, Philip Von Artevelde; the Poets of the People, the hand-loom weaver Thom, Prince, the Hon. Mrs. Norton, &c., are severally discussed, An article on Miss Barrett joins in the tributes to this foremost of English poetesses; and another on Browning, is the first American recognition of a new poet, whose vigor and originality, in spite of great eccentricity and harshness, have directed to him the hopes of the new London generation. The Lives of the Great Composers, Haydn, Mozart, Handel, Bach, Beethoven, and a paper on Washington Allston, (a companion to the essay by Mrs. Jameson,) must be left with the philosophical studies of character in the articles upon Swedenborg and Wesley, with a recommendation to the reader's most cherished hours. They will reward a careful and faithful study.

The subject of American literature is certainly no new one, at least so far as the title goes. We remember to have seen essays on American literature and lives of "our authors," so long as we can remember to have seen anything. There was Samuel L. Knapp, who used to write notices of American authors, just as Mr. Poe and Mr. Griswold are doing now-adays. Every new magazine that was started, and on an average we suppose

we may reckon one a month, had its deliberate presidential message on this fruitful theme. Washington Irving gave it an early position in his SketchBook; John Neal hammered away upon it, (not forgetting himself,) in Blackwood's Magazine, across the water; Mr. Cooper probably included it in his Notions of a Travelling Bachelor; Mr. Simms, in his last published volume of Views and Reviews, has handled the topic; a cart-load of col-, lege addresses have been delivered on it. There has been no want of nursing-fathers and nursing-mothers. In spite of this evidence to the contrary, it is an extraordinary circumstance, that there are here and there found persons of a skeptical turn of mind, who doubt, if after all, any such thing exists as American literature worthy the name. It must be admitted that the forms, the collections, biographies, &c., have been kept up with exemplary diligence. How has it come to pass, that while so much has been written, so much asserted, that so little has been believed. Are all the biographies to go for nothing, the puffs and "first-rate notices?" Yea, verily; posterity will not honor the drafts of the critics; they are good only for oysters and champagne in the present time! "Say something of me that will stick, in heaven's name!" was the language of a distinguished litterateur, whose biography has been written several times, though the gentleman is still in the hey-day of his powers, whose portrait has been engraved, of whom a thousand fine things have been written, and not one believed. Unfortunately, they wont stick; the article reputation can, it seems, be counterfeited by the false imitation notoriety, in all but the essential quality, that, namely, of adhesiveness-the Atalantean strengtheningplaster, as the quack advertisements call it, will never raise the world till it adheres.

Any one who comes before the public in future, with anything more on his lips about American literature, who is talking for oysters and champagne, and not for truth and candor, should be made to feel the peculiarity of his position. He should gently led by the ears, and instructed to procure the oysters and champagne on some other tack. Such impudent bal

derdash as has been written on this theme, is disgraceful to the country.

Now, Miss Fuller, be it known at the outset, to prevent all further alarm of an ungallant prologue, does not bring before us the old story on American literature. As all America should know, she is no follower of little petty conveniences; she is incapable of the lap-dog school of complaisances, is conscious that her country is great and powerful enough to hear the truth; that its atmosphere is republican, and that there are no ill manners, (which might be accounted such in an old decrepid system of royalty.) in uttering that truth. Whether it will make friends or foes, our authoress is conscious of one guide only; her honest independent convictions, convictions based on all due knowledge of the literature of the world, and inspired by a generous ardor and a true instinct. Miss Fuller gives a chapter to a summary of the case. It is apparently fragmentary, but will be found upon examination sufficiently comprehen

sive.

It tests the current literary coin of the country; and it must be admitted, in many cases, finds it of a low per centage of the precious metal; of much of a lower rate; and of all that is counterfeit, our authoress says nothing.

By American literature is meant something more than the mechanical products of paper and type, consumed in the preparation of books by American manufacturers. We suppose if all the sermons preached in the country in a year were to be printed, they would make a very respectable bulk, and fill the shelves of historical societies, as well as Falstaff's ragged regiment filled trenches-" food for powder" but would they constitute an American literature? They certainly would, according to the standard of dry measure or avoirdupois - whatever it is by which collections of American poetry are made up, and so would equally well a series of bound volumes of the papers filed in chancery, or the complete set of the New-York Directory, which Mr. Putnam bears with him to England for the British Museum. This is not literature, in Miss Fuller's use of the word. By American literature, she understands a literature which shall be an expression of

the original, naturally developed life of the country, in such high and elevated forms, as to rank with the literature of the world. It must be genuine, and it must be elevated. This, we take it, is what Miss Fuller intends to convey, though in other words; it is what we have always understood to be meant by the phrase,-the standard by which we have measured what has been already attained. Let us see what this standard designs, and how much there is to measure by it. It is an obvious truism when stated, that a literature cannot be called a national literature, unless it is the original spontaneous growth of the country, reflecting the life of the country. Yet simple as this assertion is, it has been anything but followed or lived up to by the so-called American authors. Their chief characteristic has been, that they were imitators and reproducers of foreign models, particularly the numerous school of New-England authors. We have had feeble echoes of the school of Pope, of the school of Addison, the obscurity of Shelley, without the mystic genius which first gave it birth; little imitations of this man's humor and that man's sentiment; American reflexes without end-" very American" Coleridges and Scotts, and Bulwers, and Mrs. Hemanses. We have had European topics and an English handling of them. If models were necessary, if our language was not new, and some reproduction was inevitable, it might have been of the spirit rather than the letter, and the imitation might have been of an age and school of British letters, more in harmony with the true life of our age and people, than the comparatively effeminate, enfeebled productions of the days of Addison. The country has yet to profit in faith, simplicity and honesty, by the vigorous, sincere, though unpolished literature of the age of Elizabeth. The established charge of imitation is fatal to the claims of much of our so-called literature, to be considered American literature. There is, of course, much too that is genuine. There are many pure-minded men and women working intelligently in the good cause, to whom all honor is due!

Granted that a literature must be genuine, it must also be elevated. Our

newspapers are genuine exponents of the lives of the people in their daily intercourse; in their buying and selling, joke-making and President-making; but they are not a literature for the country, though they may be creating authors, and may contain a great deal of the raw material. Literature exhibits itself in various forms. Let us call the roll and see what American names are put in. We begin with poetry, and first for the epic. Will Joel Barlow's Columbiad be brought forward, or Dwight's production, "whose christian name was Timothy ?"-that era of provincial patriotism has gone by which would have supported such laughable pretensions. No living writer, we believe, has attempted an epic. Well, there is the dramatic. We have hope and expectation only, though Miss Fuller whets that expectation by her good word for a new play, which we trust, with her, may be the harbinger of a new dramatic era for America. Still the dramatic temple is yet to be built. Is Metamora the corner-stone of a national dramatic literature, or Spartacus,

or

-?-the list is blank. Take the lyric then. There are, undoubtedly, some good song writers, clever versifiers for an occasional sentiment; but where are our Burns, Beranger, or Moore, as these authors represent the life of Scotland, or France, or Ireland? We have no national minstrel. In didactic and descriptive poetry we have Bryant, true to the soil; Dana of just and noble sentiment, though but a very fractional part of Coleridge and Wordsworth in poetic power; Longfellow, enthusiastic, elegant, but looking abroad rather than at home; Mathews, in his Poems on Man, national in bis choice of his subject, bold and original in invention, felicitous in imagery; yet, in this work at least, the reformer and critic, rather than the "simple, passionate, sensuous" poet. We will not go on lest we should seem to disparage merit that does actually exist, by bringing it to a standard where it will be found wanting. Yet that standard must be reached before we can claim from the world respect for a worthy national literature.

Does Miss Fuller write at random, then, when she commences her essay? "some thinkers may object that we are about to write of that which has, as yet, no existence."

It will be a more agreeable duty to follow her in her generous estimate of what has been done, than to busy ourselves with what has been left undone.

To Brockden Brown, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Longfellow, separate papers are devoted. The latter is the least complimentary; it contains, perhaps the passages of the greatest severity in the book. Yet justice is done to what is praiseworthy in the poet's writings. Our authoress has lived in "the Modern Athens," and become tired of hearing Aristides always called the just. The following estimate of his claims is impartial :"Longfellow is artificial and imitative. He borrows incessantly, and mixes what he borrows, so that it does not appear to the best advantage. He is very faulty in using broken or mixed metaphors. The ethical part of his writing has a hollow, second-hand sound. He has, however, elegance, a love of the beautiful, and a fancy for what is large and manly, if not a full sympathy with it. His verse breathes at times much sweetness; and, if not allowed to supersede what is better, may promote

a

taste for good poetry. Though imitative, he is not mechanical." Justice is done to the "industry and power of clear and elegant arrangement" of Mr. Prescott. His choice of picturesque subjects, of great interest in themselves, is noticed; and the absence of "leading views and discernment as to the motives of action and the spirit of an era." The common admiration of the merits of Bryant, Bancroft, Dr. Channing, Emerson, Irving, and Cooper, is cordially reiterated-of the poems of William Ellery Channing, Cornelius Mathews, and of the new romance of Margaret, generous mention is made. In connection with the last we have an account of the unpublished play of Witchcraft, which confirms what has been already said of its merit in the daily press; and some supplementary extracts in the appendix, which present still more direct and authentic evidence of its value.

Of the important suggestions relating to the Press we have hardly left ourselves room to speak. Miss Fuller looks to the periodical literature of the country with hope and anxiety; she sees in it a field for the exercise of the most important intellectual and moral

services. The Press, honorably directed by educated men of invincible truth and integrity, appears to her, as it is in this country, a station of infinite worth and happiness. May her remarks be cherished.

Here we might leave our subject; but the possible danger of being misunderstood, and of conveying a false impression of the book before us, compels us to add yet a few words. It is usual, when a writer approaches the consideration of "our authors," with any other language than that of undiscriminating eulogy, to raise the cry of Americanism, to talk of foreign criticism and subservience to the English press and British opinions. Now, the writers who usually resort to this stale outcry of Wolf, Wolf! should be the last in the world to say anything of deference to foreign writers, since the source of their weakness, and of the very evil complained of, is the imitation of these very transatlantic monsters. It is not, be assured, most intelligent public, out of any lack of patriotism, or want of reverence for the country, that such authors as Miss Fuller take up the critical lash, or raise the warning voice against the quack and pretender. A true, genuine, invincible AMERICANISM is what is insisted upon,-what is sought out, encouraged, and for which a confident hope is expressed. Nor does a

censure of the hitherto prevalent schools of writing imply any censure of the American mind or capacity; it may imply that the age for a national literature has not yet arrived; that the ground has yet to be opened, and the quarries worked, for the very foundations of the temple; but it does not say that there will be no temple, or that the American race will lack genius to build it. Those convinced most deeply of the false and the unreal have the surest faith in the true. In this they believe, and for this they will strive. The material wants of a vast country, bound by two great oceans, once provided for, actual men and women, youth and old age, friends and lovers, occupying the mountains and valleys, the plains and river-sides, the spiritual interests of man will find a voice. His existence will not pass away unsung. From that bright fervid look which the American wears, will break forth sparks of celestial intelligence. Poesy, the precious power, nourished in the dark soil of material life, shall grow and expand, and shed its precious sweetness on the air. We shall not always be pressing to our lips the faded herbarium of a foreign clime. We shall not always be mocked with the feeble words, the toothless utterances, the withering embrace of age, but shall welcome youth and beauty in our homes.

To suppose that fewer instances of moral delinquency have been perpetrated in the particular department of letters, than in any other, would be, to say the least of it, very unphilosophical, since the risk of purloining the fruits of other men's brains with impunity, is unquestionably less than in that of most other depredations. If the pilferers of the purse are not more amenable to justice than are those who commit like infringements upon the productions of genius, the latter merit a no less rigid requital of rebuke. True, it may be urged in extenuation, that great scope should be allowed in determining the exact limits of literary property, since there must necessarily exist what is termed the "commonwealth of literature,"-yet we venture to premise that the most strenuous advocates of the plea, will, in the main, be found to be actuated by motives, no less equivocal in kind, than they are specious in pretence. Could we invoke the spirits of the departed, what "pitiless plaints" would be preferred against the spoliations of many a modern scribe, who, to avoid the sin of thinking for himself, has chosen the more summary mode of allowing others to do so in his stead. Yet, after all, who can complain, when such a vast economy of time and trouble may be achieved by the labor-saving process. A poem, indeed, that formerly occupied in its construction twenty long years, can thus be produced, with scarcely inferior success, in as many minutes; and the Herculean task that wasted the mid-night oil of a devoted life, now lingers but a few brief hours ere it opes into being. The grave asceticism of the olden time must give place to the new achievements of the "march of mind;" and it has been reserved for the authors of the modern Augustan age to "winnow the wheat" of the withered crop; and with the celerity of steam-power, afresh to irrigate the soil, by "adapting" it for spontaneous

and perennial verdure. Ought we not, indeed, speedily to anticipate the annihilation of all invidious restrictions of prescriptive rights, by the universal recognition of a community of goods, the free-born toleration of socialism, and the claims of a more enlightened philanthropy?

The doctrines of expediency, however, do not always run parallel with those of equity and even-handed justice; and since we are compelled to adjudicate the question by the higher standard of moral rectitude, we must allow no meaner motives to govern our decisions in this matter. It is no easy task, amidst the prolific outpourings of the press of our day, to attempt an expose of the many "dread counterfeits of dead men's thoughts" which living plagiarism is continually recasting and sending forth for,

:

This trade of knowledge is replete,
As others are, with fraud and cheat;-
Such cheats as scholars put upon
Other men's reason, and their own ;-
A sort of drapery, to ensconce
Absurdity and ignorance.

The term plagiarist is derived, or rather Anglicized, from Plagiarius, used among the Romans to designate a person who abducted a freeman for the purpose of selling him as a slave, for which offence the culprit was condemned by the Flavian law, ad plagio, to be whipped. In a metaphorical sense, the word implies author-theft, and has been since applied to such as appropriate, without due acknowledgement, the thoughts and expressions of an author. The best modern definition we remember, is given in a curious work, styled the "Tin Trumpet," where the plagiarist is described as a "purloiner, who filches the fruit that others have gathered, and then throws away the basket." Much of the authorcraft of the present day has become a mere bagatelle. Far too many books have been inflicted upon the patient