The Republican journal., 1910-03-24
The Beginning of American
Literature.

IA paper read at the meeting of John Cochran
Chapter, D. A. R., Belfast March IA, 1901
Were we to ask some of the critics
about the beginnings Of American Lit
erature, they probably would answer
with the paradox that, since there was
no American Literature, there was no
beginning, but we prefer to take bit
different view from w. D. Howells, who
says American Literature is but con-
dition of English Literature, and the
rest of the clan of ultra-conservative
critics.
While we must acknowledge that our
Chaucers, Shakespeares and Millions are
not yet writing for the magazines"
who knows but that they may be learn
ing motion songs in kindergarten or
translating their Caesar in High school
even now, and with such an alluring
possibility in mind we must be eager to
have their national literary tree ready
for them.
The stories Of the colonies in Virginia
and New England are toe we'll known to
need repetition in this connection, though
thorough understanding of conditions
in both places is necessary before we can
hope to understand the literary effort of
colonial times, or rather, the lack of it.
So busy were the new corners in both
places in Telling trees, repelling Indian
attacks, planting corn and gathering
their all-too-scanty harvests, that what
ever literary aspirations they may have
brought over from the old country must
have been almost literally starved to
death.
In American Land and Letters DON
aid Mitchell says: 1.-THE need to do things
seemed, under these new and rare West
ern lights, so much larger than the need
to write about them. There are those
who tell US John Milton might have come
with his friend Winthrop, and that there
might have been paradise Lost dat
ing from Higganum or Pawtucket. 1t
seems to me very doubtful. The multi
tudinous and pressing wants here would
have had other holds upon the large mind
of the poet, and the great spring floods
would have drowned 'Casalia.' Even the
Samson Agonestes would, l think, have
had his classic locks shorn at Naumkeag;
plenty of thunder would there have been,
with perhaps added flame and wrath in
his Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed
Printing" and still larger and weightier
defamation against the "Ekon Basiliki,'
but no murmurous diapason of sweet
sounds about 'Russet lawns and fallows
gray. -
Some little feeling for the necessity of
colonies at about the same time, but the
early writing done in America was the
work of persons who were not only of
English birth, but whose stay here was
destined to Ce short. John Smith, who
wrote THE True Relation of Virginia,
which was the first book written by an
American colonist, and George Sandys,
who had reputation as poet when he |
accepted an official position in Virginia,
and there finished translating Ovid's
'Metamorphosis,'' were cases in point.
Although the New Woman move
ment was unthought of, it remained for
a woman to give to America the first
literary work that was distinctly Ameri-
can. Although Anne Bradstreet was
born in England she became thoroughly
identified with American thought and
feeling, and her influence in her day and,
indeed, in succeeding generations, was
great. Born of Puritan stock in England
in 1912 she married at 16 and came to
this country with her husband, Governor
in 1880. She became the
mother of eight children, and when we
read that most of her poems We're writ
ten before she was thirty, while at the
head of large household in those DAYS
OF heavy manual labor, we wonder if we
modern women really know the meaning
of the phrase ''the strenuous life.'' Her
range of thought was wide, and while
most of her poems held more than a
tinge of the severe Puritanism which
was the keynote of life as well as litera-
ture at that time, some of her work
dealing with nature had much more than
ordinary merit.
The title page of her book of poems,
published in London in 1850, gives an idea
Of the scope of her work-''The Tenth
Muse, lately Sprung up in America, Or
Several Poems Compiled with Great Va
:iety of Wit and Learning, Fuel of De-
light, Wherein especially is Contained a
Complete Discourse and Description of
The -Four Elements, Constitutions, Ages
If Man, Seasons of the Year, together
With an exact Epitome of the Four Great
Monarchies, viz, The Assyrian, Persian,
irecian, Roman, Also Dialogue be-
tween Old England and New, concerning
he late troubles, with divers other
pleasant and serious poems. By gen.
,lewoman of Those Parts. Iondon,
$780,"
T. w. Higginson tells US that "the
New England divine, who had horror