teach or the Savages of America (1766), supposedly by ROBERT ROGERS, an American officer in the French and Indian War, portrays with much realism the deceit and cruelty of the whites in their dealings with the red men; but the Indians themselves are not at all true to life, Pontiac talking and acting like a European statesman, and his son Philip being a sort of Edmund-Iago. The Disappointment; or the Force of Credulity (1767), by ANDREW BARTON, is a rollicking comedy about buried treasure, and contains real though sometimes coarse humor. MERCY WARREN'S The Adulateur (1773) deals, under a thin disguise, with the Boston Massacre. Her comedy The Group (1775) makes scornful fun of the leading New England Loyalists. She also wrote two commonplace historical plays, The Sack of Rome and The Ladies of Castile; they have some strength of style, but are often bombastic, and the blank verse is wooden. The Fall of British Tyranny (1776), of uncertain authorship, recounts in prose the events of the struggle thus far, and satirizes the Tories and British with considerable the plays of Shakspere, Dryden, Otway, and others were performed in Philadelphia, New York, and Annapolis, by a company consisting in part of professionals. Hallam's London company played in Williamsburg, Va., in 1752-1753; in New York, in 1753-1754; in Philadelphia, in 1754. Reorganized, it acted in New York in 1758, 1761-1766; in Philadelphia, 1759; in Annapolis, 1760; in Newport, 1761; in Providence, 1762. A permanent theatre was built in Philadelphia in 1766; in New York, 1767; in Annapolis, 1771; in Charleston, S. C., 1773. During the occupation of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia by British troops, plays were given by the officers. Congress, by recommendations to the states in 1774 and 1778, did all it could to close the theatre elsewhere; in 1774 the American company left Philadelphia for Jamaica; but in 1781 the first playhouse in Baltimore was erected. After the Revolution professional players cautiously resumed operations in Philadelphia, in 1784; in New York and Savannah, in 1785; in Maryland and Virginia, in 1786. rude vigor. Of much more literary merit are *The Battle of Bunker's-Hill (1776) and The Death of General Montgomery (1777), by HUGH H. BRACKENRIDGE; both are reading dramas only, consisting of long speeches in rather stiff blank verse, but they show considerable literary culture and are inspired by an ardent and noble patriotism. The Blockheads (1776), making coarse fun of the fright of the British officers in Boston after the battle of Bunker Hill; The Battle of Brooklyn (1776), by some Tory or British hand, portraying the American soldiers and generals as cowards and grossly immoral; The Motley Assembly (1779), a few loosely connected scenes of small force, directed against Tories and Whig turncoats; and The Blockheads (1782), an opera, expressing the Loyalist dislike of the French alliance as dangerous to liberty, and pining for friendship once more with "dear Albion " - all deserve mention merely as mirrors of the strife and passion of the times. In The Patriot Chief (1784), said to be by PETER MARKOE, we return to the realm of pure literature. The scene is Lydia; the main characters are Otanes, Araspes, Ismene, and the Lydian king; the plot is the conventional one of political ambition, love, and mistaken identity; and the style is in general high-flying and stagey. The Drama in England itself was now in a bad way, and had been for long; it was not to be expected that plays of high merit could yet be written in the New World. The first rich harvests of American literature were to be reaped in other fields; and after two centuries of preparation the reaping-time was now not far distant. FOREWORDS. THE great task of Colonial and Revolutionary America was to settle the Atlantic seaboard, establish provincial governments, and achieve independence and national union. The great task of the Republic has been to extend the national domain to Mexico and the Pacific Ocean, carve out new states from this territory and bring them into the Union, throttle secession, rid the nation of the incubus of slavery, furnish an asylum for the poor and oppressed of the Old World, and play a leading part in the development of modern industrial civilization. We have already seen how slight and crude American literature was during the first two centuries. Even the literature of the Republic is still a minor product in comparison with the nation's achievements in other fields. The United States is even yet too young, too crass, too much absorbed in the struggle with physical nature, it has not even yet enough of the mellowing that comes with time, of the enriching and beautifying of the national life that wait upon venerable historic associations, ancient legend, and the noble leisure of an old civilization, to produce the greatest art. American literature at its best is still much below English and Italian and Greek literatures at their best. As a whole it is inferior even to English literature of the nineteenth century. No false patriotism or personal affection for a favorite author should blind us to these facts. Tennyson, Carlyle, Thackeray, Shelley, Wordsworth, |