attention wholly to the best. In the half-century with which we now have to do, some dozen American authors attained to such relative preeminence that it is easy to forget that their writings constitute only a part of the literature of their times; and it is one of the functions of a history of literature to remind the reader that mountains imply foot-hills and a plain, and to help him to see the literary landscape in its entirety. For this reason the work of representative minor writers will be sketched-in as a setting for the greater, that the latter may thereby be taken out of the literary vacuum in which they might otherwise seem to stand.

The Poets, Essayists, and Writers of Prose Fiction may for convenience be loosely grouped into schools according to the section of the country in which they lived. The New York, or "Knickerbocker," School had precedence in time. Its great names are Irving, Cooper, and Bryant; but it includes several other writers of no mean ability, who, like other minor authors of the period, have a claim upon our gratitude for their part in creating that better literary atmosphere without which their more famous brethren could not have "waxed so great." It is not strange that New York City early developed into somewhat of a literary centre. The mixture of many nationalities in its population encouraged breadth of ideas and a cosmopolitan spirit, at the same time that it afforded some striking contrasts in character and mode of life, the old Dutch element in particular furnishing materials both amusing and picturesque. The beautiful and impressive scenery of the Hudson was another feature of evident literary value. The great drawback, then as now, was the excess of the commercial

spirit over the intellectual and artistic. But the New York even of the years 1820 to 1840 was far from devoid of the finer culture. At the earlier date its population was 123,706, at the later 312,710; and the causes and consequents of the higher civilization in large citieswealth, leisure, and refinement; churches, schools, colleges, and libraries; the theatre, the opera, the newspaper, and the magazine were present in more and more

abundance.

Among the minor authors who grew up amid these conditions, JAMES K. PAULDING (1778-1860), Irving's lifelong friend, and Secretary of the Navy under Van Buren, has an honorable place. He wrote some verse, including The Lay of the Scotch Fiddle (1813)—a clever parody on Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel, full of honest contempt for the British navy, and The Backwoodsman (1818), a tale of frontier life, in rather prosaic style. But his best work was in prose. He assisted Irving in the Salmagundi papers, unaided brought out a second series in 1819-1820, and wrote several tales and novels besides much miscellaneous matter. His best novel, The Dutchman's Fireside (1831), combines some of the most attractive features of Cooper's and Irving's work, containing exciting incidents of Indian warfare, delicate pen-pictures of Hudson scenery, and amusing sketches of Dutch life and character. A more brilliant man was JOSEPH RODMAN DRAKE (1795-1820), a physician, by whose early death American literature suffered a severe loss. The Culprit Fay, written in 1819, handles the time-worn material of fairy-lore with a fresh and delicate touch and a fancy that is in places exquisite. Drake's

part in the Croaker poems, published anonymously in

The Evening Post in 1819, shows his gift for light satiric and society verse; and his poem, The American Flag, in the same series, beginning,

When Freedom, from her mountain height,

unites patriotic fervor with poetic beauty. The name of FITZ-GREENE HALLECK (1790-1867), a bank clerk, is always associated with Drake's because of the close and beautiful friendship between the two men. Halleck was Drake's associate in the popular Croaker sallies; and a few of his later poems-Marco Bozzaris (1825), a spirited martial lyric on the Greeks' struggle for freedom from the Turks; Alnwick Castle (1827), beginning with romantic revery and ending in a vein of humorous satire; Burns (1827), of which Burns's sister said, in 1855, “nothing finer has been written about Robert"; and Red Jacket (1828), a humorous but sympathetic portrait of the famous Indian chief, who,

was yet

With look like patient Job's eschewing evil;
With motions graceful as a bird's in air;

in sober truth, the veriest devil That e'er clinched fingers in a captive's hair!

won deserved fame in their day, and are not yet wholly forgotten. Most of Halleck's other work is on a lower plane, although Fanny (1819), a rather lame attempt to follow in the footsteps of Byron in Beppo and Don Juan, was popular for several years. JOHN HOWARD PAYNE (1791-1852), actor, playwright, journalist, and United States consul at Tunis, a friend of Irving, Coleridge, and Lamb, is now remembered chiefly by his song of Home, Sweet Home (in his opera, Clari, 1823); but in his life

time he had considerable fame as a clever dramatist, Brutus (1818) being one of his most successful plays. The more pretentious poems of SAMUEL WOODWORTH (1785-1842) have gone down into oblivion, but he still sips immortality from The Old Oaken Bucket (1826). GEORGE P. MORRIS (1802-1864), who with Woodworth founded The New York Mirror in 1823, pleased the taste of the times by his short and easy poems of commonplace sentiment-Woodman, Spare That Tree; My Mother's Bible; The Main Truck; etc. CHARLES F. HOFFMAN (1806-1884), whose literary life was cut short by insanity in 1849, founded The Knickerbocker magazine in 1833, edited several other periodicals, and was a versatile and voluminous author, writing sketches of Western life, two novels (Vanderlyn and Greyslaer), and many poems; of the poems those on love, nature, and Indian life have some originality, although the influence of Byron and Moore upon them is often apparent. A more considerable figure in the literary world of his day, though he has since sadly dwindled, was NATHANIEL P. WILLIS (1806-1867). It is the fashion nowadays to sneer at Willis's "milk-and-water paraphrases of Scripture stories, and in truth they are better fitted for babes than for men. But it should be remembered that in these poems of diluted pathos and effeminate sensibility Willis was merely doing with a good deal of literary grace what many other poets of the time were doing with none; and, in particular, that this sickly stuff constituted only a small part of his literary output. Some of his poems have a pretty fancy. Bianca Visconti (1837) and Tortesa the

His two plays,

Usurer (acted

in New York, 1838; in London, 1839), are written in

manly style, and the lighter scenes show literary deftness and lively wit. His prose writings were varied and entertaining, his sketches of notables whom he met abroad having some permanent interest. And he did much to further general literary culture at home by his labors as founder or editor of several magazines.1 ALFRED B. STREET (1811-1881), state librarian of New York, in Frontenac (1849) made an ambitious but not very successful attempt to handle Indian and frontier life in Scott's narrative manner; his nature poems are full of fine observation, and have some beauty of mood and expression, although they are far inferior to Bryant's in .depth and strength; The Gray Forest-Eagle (in Poems, 1845), his best-known poem, has sweep of pinion, but is more rhetorical than poetical. Let it suffice, in passing to the great trio of the New York group, to mention ROBERT C. SANDS (1799–1832), WILLIAM LEGGETT (18021839), RALPH HOYT (1806-1878), PARK BENJAMIN (18091864), and HENRY T. TUCKERMAN (1813-1871), who, with " many more whose names on earth are dark," contributed their share to the literature of the Empire State.

WASHINGTON IRVING,2 the first American man of letters

1 Some of his works are these: Sketches (poems), 1827; Melanie and Other Poems, 1835; Pencillings by the Way, 1835, 1844; Letters from under a Bridge, 1840; Poems of Passion, 1843; Lady Jane and Humorous Poems, 1844; Dashes at Life with a Free Pencil, 1845; Hurrygraphs, 1851; Paul Fane (novel), 1857; The Convalescent, 1859. Willis's father founded The Youth's Companion in 1827. The poet established The American Monthly Magazine in 1829, which in 1831 was merged in The New York Mirror, with which he was connected for many years; in 1839 he started The Corsair, to which Thackeray contributed; in 1846, with Morris, he founded The Home Journal and was one of its editors for the rest of his life.

2 LIFE.

Born in New York City, April 3, 1783. Father, Scotch