The Arkansas banner., 1844-03-27

tional Literature With the acquisitions of the people, the professional author sprang into existence. From single belles-lettres writer, we soon possessed hundreds, eager fornotice in thenewvocaton; and struggling, on short commons, to be heard in song and story. If they could lire by this profession, their demands, as Is every where the case inl the history of British Literature, were readily satisfied. Those who alege cupldity and mercenary views against the literary man, because he seeks adequate compensation for his tolls, betray singular ignorance of litera- ry history. With few splendid and recent exceptions, authorship has been most usually the least productive of occupations. There is searely ali original living writer, whether in America or Engand-as there has been no dead one--who, if pecunary results were his objects, would not instantly resort to any other occupation. l can scarcely direct my attention to any other, in which the employe is not more at ease in his worldly concerns better provided with the luxuries of life, and better prepared for the enjoyment of them. Literature is self-denying vocation, fasking thought, and imagination, and sensbility- vexing the dreams--depriving the nights of renoyating rests, enieebling the frame and sourng the temper. Its cancellations are chiefly from within, in the exciting nature of studies and eontemplations, which, while they exhiarate the fancy, by their intoxicat- ing effects, enfeeble and destroy the frame. 'sPoetry," says Colcridge--himself one of the greatest geniuses of the age in which it starved@sshas been to me it's own exceeding great reward,'' and what he has said so fehcitously has been probably felt by all who have ever professed. what seems to have been singularly misnamed, when called"La Gaie Science" Such 1t may have been to the Minstres of Provence. To the professional poet, however, it's pleasures may be said to ''be born of pain and nurtured in convulsion." The law of nature, however, by which they are born poets-'spoeta noscitm''-keeps them in shackles. Their obedience is main tained in spite of them. They acknowledge an iron necessity not less unyielding than that of the Grecan Fates!
 If such, in all countries, seems to have been the destiny of the belles-lettres writer if such are his suflerings, fand the painful history of British Literature abounds in prools,) and such, and so unsubstantial his rewards, what are the inducements, even un- der the best circumstances, 10 authorship ln America ;--IIere, where we receive unlimited supplies of the best books, i'll every depart- ment, and in our mother tongue, from Great Britain; here, where the same books are pre- sented to us at one fifth the cost at which they are sold in the country where produced; here, where general doubt almost mlver- sally seems to have prevailed, as to the in- tellectual capacity, for such writings, of our own people; here, where we were accus- toned to defer to foreign country the high est and noblest duty of a people, that of form ing, upon intrinsic standards, our own judg ments in almost every intellectual matter!- With all these things to dlscourage,-the public looking on indiilerently, pub- fisher receiving reluetantly,- mental pro- auctions of the native, the local genius could not be restrained; and, stimulated by im- pulses born equally of patriotism and the muse, the first offerings of American Lltera- ture promised to be equally valuable and abundant. It would exceed our limits were we to attempt any catalogue raaSonee, of what has been done by native authorship, within that period which we have allotted to the achievements of American letters; but, by the help of valuable pamphlet which IS be- fore us, prepared and published in London, by Mr. George Putnam, of the publishing house of Wiley & Putnam, we are enabled, without trouble, to array some facts bearing upon this subject, which are better calculated than any thing we could say to prove the importance and patriotism of American au- thorship. This pamphlet, we may say in this place, contains some admirable answers, drawn chiefly from the argunaentum ad honti neS, in reply to the sneers of the British crit | ics, on the subject of American intellect. It is shown that, in nearly every department of Literature, American writers have advanced to position of the highest responsibility, ire quently equality, and sometimes superiority, in comparison with those of Erope,-that hundreds of American books arc annually republished in London, frequently as English books, with their titles altered, their preiaces suppressed, and all those distinguishing marks obliterated, by which their origin might be detected that some of their most distin- guished Reviews do not scruple to appropri- ate entire articles from American periodicals, taking care to alter the ear-marks, the titles, the signatures, &c., and sometimes to sup press the word America and substitute that of England. We make an extract from MT. Putnam's preface in illustration of these startling assertions, the shocking dishonesty of which is only best understood, when i. Is remembered, that they decry us, in the very moment of their robbery, with the declaration that we have nothing fit to steal
 .sBut, "who reads an American book f' asks the Edinburgh Review. A good many do so, without being themselves aware of it. The case of the ssoldest'' London Review approaching the articles of the ''North Ameri- can' well enough to appropriate some of them entire, as original, accidentally emitting to mention their origin, is not solitary one. American periodicals have contributed "con- siderablyn to those of England, in mutually nnocentuneonsciousne Some few Amerl- can writers would scarcely recognize their own offspring under their new names and