# A History of American Literature/Chapter 1

AMERICAN LITERATURE.
I.
INTRODUCTORY.
Definition — "Literature is the class of writings distinguished for beauty of style or expression, as poetry, essays, or history, in distinction from scientific treatises and works which contain positive knowledge." — Webster.
The literature of a nation is the entire body of literary productions that has emanated from the people of the nation during its history, preserved by the arts of writing and printing. It is the embodiment of the best thoughts and fancies of a people.
The History of a Literature is not merely a chronological record of all the writers and writings of a language. It is much more; it is, in reality, the history of the evolution of the language and of the intellectual development of the people. It should constantly inquire into the causes that tended to produce literature of one kind and not of another. It should trace the influence of great writers upon their language and their times. It should be a guide, ever leading the student to the best books, training his judgment so as to enable him to estimate critically literary productions, and ​teaching him the true place that every book and author occupies in the world of letters.
Fundamental Principles. — To pursue the study of a literature to the best advantage one needs a thorough knowledge of the language, history, social customs, and spirit of the people that produced it, as well as a general idea of the geography and climate of their country. The great agencies which determine the character of a literature must be borne constantly in mind:
1. Race. — The hereditary disposition of the makers of the literature must first be noted. The races inhabiting the warmer climates are naturally impulsive, with strong passions. The northern races are more cold and reserved. These characteristics are stamped upon the literary product of these races.
2. Environment. — The surroundings of a people have a great effect upon their intellectual development. What of the climate? Is the land fertile and easy to work, or does it compel the husbandman to expend great energy upon it? Is it subject to depressing fogs, like Britain, or to violent extremes of temperature like Norway? Is it mountainous like Greece, or flat like Holland? Is it inland like Russia, or maritime like England? It is this agency that gives color to a literature.
3. Epoch. — What was the spirit of the ago? What has been the history of the nation? Has it been free during the whole of its history? Has it had to maintain a constant fight against invaders, or has it been itself an invader? What perplexing questions, intellectual, moral, social, has it been called upon to settle? In what great ​movements or events has it participated? These things exert a powerful influence on the intellectual development of a people. It is this agency that divides the history of a literature into periods.
4. Personality. — The personality of the writers who produce a literature is not the least of the agencies that determine its character. The individuality, the "personal equation," of the makers of masterpieces, is something that defies analysis, yet it is this that gives life to the writings of a nation. Without it the agencies of race, environment, and epoch would tend to produce an unvarying product. This element gives diversity to a literature.
The Early History of all literatures is much the same. The evolution from barbarism to civilization is always slow. The language, at first limited and barren, yet sufficient to voice all the needs and emotions of savage life, becomes more expressive. War brings contact with other nations; conquest adds foreign elements. At length the rude shoutings over war and victory become rhythmical, and literature begins. The first notes are always in verse, rude and unmetrical, yet nevertheless verse, for childhood takes naturally to metres. The bloody song of Lamech to his wives, Gen. iv. 23, 24, is the first poem of which the world has a record. Beowulf, a terrible tale of war and carnage, is the first note in the grand chorus of English song.
American Literature. — The term a literature may be defined as "all the literary productions in a given language."
​By this definition English literature would embrace all the writings that have emanated from the race speaking the English language. The writings of America would, therefore, be only a branch drawing life from the great trunk of English letters. But this is not so. It is now generally admitted that the literature of America has become an independent one. It is an exception, and the only exception, to the rule given above. In no other case in all history have there been two distinct literatures written in the same language.
This conclusion has not been reached without discussion. It is acknowledged that our literature is still true to the great fundamental principles underlying English thought and institutions; that it had its birth and childhood in the land of Chaucer and of Spenser; that until the second quarter of the Nineteenth Century it was bound intellectually to England, and that it is using to-day the language of Wordsworth and Tennyson. But this does not prove that our literature is not now an independent one, for we have been for more than a century an independent nation; and we are recognized abroad not as Englishmen in America, but as a distinct type with as marked an individuality as have the English themselves. (See Remarks on National Literature, by W. E. Channing, 1823; also E. P. Whipple's American Literature, and Richardson, I., v-xx. 1
The Beginnings of our Literature. — To study American literature philosophically, one must go back to the ​beginnings of the language in which it is written. A study of the literature and the intellectual development of England through the Elizabethan Age, should. precede the thorough study of the American writers. This portion of English history is held in common by both nations. The elements of race and environment, as they affected our English ancestors, must be fully understood in order for us to appreciate the character and spirit of the founders of our nation. We must weigh the great events of British history and their influence upon the development of the English race. We must acquaint ourselves with the history and development of English thought and language; with the great minds that have shaped and moulded these from Cædmon to Chaucer and from Chaucer to Shakespeare. This done, we have mastered Book I. of the History of American Thought and Literature. It remains then to trace the intellectual evolution of a part of the English people under a new environment, amid new scenes of action.
Epoch. — (Tyler, 11-15.) Our literature made its first feeble beginnings in a most fortunate time, a time—
"When the firmament of English literature was all ablaze with the light of her full-orbed and most dazzling writers, the wits, the dramatists, scholars, orators, singers, philosophers, who formed that incomparable group of titanic men gathered in London during the earlier years of the seventeenth century." — Tyler.
When Jamestown was settled in 1607, Spenser had been dead only eight years; Shakespeare was at the ​height of his powers; Raleigh, a prisoner in the Tower of London, was engaged on his History of the World, and Bacon had just commenced his marvellous work, The Novum Organum. "The very air of London must have been electric with the daily words of these immortals," who made the Elizabethan Age the most glorious period since classic times. American literature was indeed fortunate in the time of its birth.