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asked what we hope in this particular? We answer, Much. We see reasons for anticipating an increased and more efficient direction of talent to this object. But on these we cannot enlarge. There is, however, one ground of expectation to which we will call a moment's attention. We apprehend that literature is to make progress through an important change in society, which civilization and good institutions are making inore and more apparent. It seems to us that, through these causes, political life is less and less regarded as the only or chief sphere for superior minds, and that influence and honor are more and more accumulated in the hands of literary and thinking men. Of consequence, more and more of the intellect of communities is to be drawn to literature. The distinction between antiquity and the present times, in respect to the importance attached to political life, seems to us striking; and it is not an accidental difference, but founded on permanent causes which are to operate with increased power. In ancient times everything, abroad and at home threw men upon the public, and generated an intense thirst for political power. On the contrary, the improvement of later periods inclines men to give importance to literature. For example, the instability of the ancient republics, the unsettled relations of different classes of society, the power of demagogues and orators, the intensity of factions, the want of moral and religious restraints, the want of some regular organ for expressing the public mind, the want of precedents and precise laws for the courts of justice, these and other circumstances gave to the ancient citizen a feeling as if revolutions and convulsions were inseparable from society, turned his mind with unremitting anxiety to public affairs, and made a participation of political power an important, if not an essential, means of personal safety. Again, the ancient citizen had no home, in our sense of the word. He lived in the market, the forum, the place of general resort, and of course his attention was very much engrossed by affairs of state. Again, religion, which now more than all things throws a man upon himself, was in ancient times a public concern, and turned men to political life. The religion of the heart and closet was unknown. The relation of the gods to particular states was their most prominent attribute; and, to conciliate their favor to the community, the chief end of worship. Accordingly, religion consisted chiefly in public and national rites. In Rome the highest men in the state presided at the altar, and, adding to their other titles that of Supreme

Fontift, performed the most solemn functions of the priesthood. Thus the whole strength of the religious principle was turned into political channels. The gods were thought to sustain no higher office than a political one, and of consequence this was esteemed the most glorious for men. Once more, in ancient times political rank was vastly more efficient, whether for good or for evil, than at present, and of consequence was the object of a more insatiable ambition. It was almost the only way of access to the multitude. The public man held a sway over opinion, over his country, perhaps over foreign states, now unknown. It is the influence of the press and of good institutions to reduce the importance of the man of office. In proportion as private individuals can act on the public mind; in proportion as a people read, think, and have the means of expressing and enforcing their opinions; in proportion as laws become fixed, known, and sanctioned by the moral sense of the community; in proportion as the interest of the state, the principles of administration, and all public measures are subjected to free and familiar discussion,- government becomes a secondary influence. The power passes into the hands of those who think, write, and spread their minds far and wide. Accordingly, literature is to become more and more the instrument of swaying men, of doing good, of achieving fame. The contrast between ancient and modern times in the particulars now stated is too obvious to need illustration, and our great inference is equally clear. The vast improvements which in the course of ages have taken place in social order, in domestic life, in religion, in knowledge, all conspire to one result, all tend to introduce other and higher influences than political power, and to give to that form of intellectual effort which we call literature dominion over human affairs. Thus truth, we apprehend, is more and more felt; and from its influence, joined with our peculiar condition and free institutions, we hope for our country the happiness and glory of a pure, deep, rich, beautiful, and ennobling literature.

Turning to Channing as a man of letters, it is of prime importance that we get the appropriate point of view. Neglecting this, we may well find ourselves astonished at the estimation in which he was held in his lifetime as a literary character

and at his own literary self-consciousness. His purely literary output, or what was then considered so, was limited to three or four articles in the Christian Examiner, which were published between the years 1825 and 1830. I say "three or four," because the two Napoleon articles were one article in two parts. In our own time for a distinguished clergyman to drop into literature flutters nobody. He may drop to the depth of a short story or a novel, or into poetry, and we are not surprised. But Dr. Channing's Examiner articles were great events in Boston and beyond when they appeared. Dr. Furness tells us that he was surprised to find Dr. Channing making the Milton venture. In the Unitarian circle, after the first doubt of its propriety had subsided, it was probably thought superior to Macaulay's "Milton," which had appeared a year earlier in the Edinburgh Review. Something must be pardoned, Dr. Furness says, to the admiration of the small new sect for what was done by its own chief. More must be pardoned to the state of literature at that time in the United States. About 1830 Channing wrote certain elaborate "Remarks on National Literature," which should go to the account of his literary achievement. The article was written in the future tense. The writer was no laudator temporis acti. He calls no honored names except those strangely contrasted ones of Edwards and Franklin. A better illustration of the lucus a non lucendo it would be hard to find. And yet in 1830 there were some brave beginnings of the century's literature which a less abstract method than Channing's would have interwoven with the texture of his prophetical discourse. That he was kin with Allston and Dana may have made him less than kind to them, but Bryant had already written his best pieces, "Thanatopsis" and "A Forest Hymn," still unexcelled; Pierpont, some admirable things; while, if Charles Brockden Brown's chamber of horrors did not invite him, Irving's "Sketch Book" should have done so, and Cooper's likeness to Scott should not have been sufficient to obscure the rugged strength of his own proper face. But, when Channing's articles appeared, there was no such "mob of gentlemen who write with ease" and write extremely well as we have now. Judged by purely literary standards, hundreds of these write better than Channing. But, "in the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king," and it is not strange that under the general conditions that prevailed from 1825 to 1830 Channing's literary product earned for him the enthusiastic

admiration of his co-religionists and of many who were not joined to their assembly.— Chadwick.

When Channing wrote his famous paper on National Literature in 1830, we had very little original American literature of importance. Dwight, Trumbull, and Barlow had long before written their pretentious epics, Franklin had written, Charles Brockden Brown had published his stories, Marshall had written his Life of Washington, and John Quincy Adams his Lectures on Rhetoric. The North American Review had been established in 1815, and two years later had published the youthful Bryant's "Thanatopsis." Irving and Cooper were doing their best work. This was the background. The great satisfaction as we read Channing's noble prophecy and plea is in seeing what has resulted from the outburst of American genius which immediately followed. See the sections upon Channing's literary work in the lives of Channing by W. H. Channing and Chadwick. For notice of Channing's influence upon Emerson, see the various lives of Emerson. See also Emerson's own tribute to Channing's intellectual influence, in his "Historic Notes of Life and Letters in New England."

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ROBINSON'S FAREWELL ADDRESS TO THE PILGRIMS UPON THEIR DEPARTURE FROM HOLLAND, 1620. THE ACCOUNT BY EDWARD WINSLOW IN HIS "HYPOCRISIE

UNMASKED," PRINTED IN 1646.

"In the next place, for the wholsome counsell Mr. Robinson gave that part of the Church whereof he was Pastor, at their departure from him to begin the great worke of Plantation in New England, amongst other wholeome Instructions and Exhortations, hee used these expressions, or to the same purpose: We are now ere long to part asunder, and the Lord knoweth whether ever he should live to see our faces again: but whether the Lord had appointed it or not, he charged us before God and his blessed Angels, to follow him no further then he followed Christ. And if God should reveal anything to us by any other instrument of his, to be as ready to receive it, as ever we were to receive any truth by his Ministry: For he was very confident the Lord had more truth and light yet to breake forth out of his holy Word. He took occasion also miserably to bewaile the state and condition of the Reformed churches, who were come to a period in Religion, and would goe no further then the instruments of their Reformation: As for example, the Lutherans they could not be drawne to goe beyond what Luther saw, for whatever part of God's will he had further imparted and revealed to Calvin, they will rather die then embrace it. And so also, saith he, you see the Calvinists, they stick where he left them: A misery much to bee lamented; For though they were precious shining lights in their times, yet God had not revealed his whole will to them: And were they now living, saith hee, they would bee as ready and willing to embrace further

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