e living on the seacoast from Georgia to Maine, and had not yet even crossed the great Appalachian range of mountains. The chief men of one colony knew little of the leaders in the

much that had literary value. No national literature c

side against the French and Indians, and learned that the defeat of one was the defeat of all. After a desperate struggle France lost, and the Anglo-Saxon ra

o play his part in changing the New World's history. He was determined to rule according to his own personal inclinations. He dominated his cabinet and controlled Parliament by bribery. He decided that the American colonies should feel the weight of his authority, and in 1763 his prime minister, George Grenville, undertook to execute measures in restraint of colonial trade. Numbers of commodities, l

e Revolution, thus expresses

great king, wh

s upon paper and

n his tea and stampt

this king is then

ESSA

f Lexington (1775), writers were busy on both sides of the dispute, for no great movement begins without opposition. Many colonists did n

n 1776 he published a pamphlet entitled Common Sense, which advocated complete political independence of England. The sledge hammer blows which

tion: THO

true, turns to her reproach.... This new world hath been the asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty from every part of Europe. Hither have they fled, not from the tender

ossible expedition, I think the game is pretty nearly up." In those gloomy days, sharing the privations of the

hine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country;

the Crisis, it was forthcoming. Sixteen of these appeared during the progress of the struggle for liberty. He had an almost Shakespearean intuition of what would appeal to the exigencies of each case. After the Americans had triumphed

ion: THOMA

ft directions that the words, "Author of the Declaration of American Independence," should immediately follow his name on his monument. No other American prose writer has, in an equal num

tterances have become classic. It has been said that he "poured the soul of the continent" into that Declaration, but he did more than that. He poured into it the soul of all freedom-loving humanity, and he was accepted as the spokesman of the dweller on the S

as in this Declaration a deathless battle song against the monsters that would throttl

with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secur

happiness has served as an ideal to inspire some of the best things in our literature. This ideal has not yet been completely reached, but it is finding expression in every effort for the social and moral improvements of our population. Jefferson went a

(p. 50). In 1774, at the age of seventeen, Hamilton wrote in answer to a Tory who maintained that England ha

records. They are written as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by

on: ALEXAND

s: "They show great maturity, a more remarkable maturity than has ever been exhib

r the convention had completed its work, it seemed probable that the states would reject the proposed constitution. To win its acceptance, Hamilton, in collaboration with JAMES MADISON (1751-1836) and JOHN JAY (1745-1829), wrote the famous Federalist papers. There were eighty-five of these, but Hamilton wrote more than both of his ass

OR

progressed slowly, entailing not only severe pecuniary loss but also actual suffering to the revolutionists, many lost their former enthusiasm and were willing to have peace at any price. At this period in our history the orator was as necessary as the soldi

ses of Americans at any time on mere suspicion of the concealment of smuggled goods. Otis resigned his office and took the side of the colonists, attacking the constitutionality of a law that allowed the right of unlimited search and that was really designed to curtail the trade of the colonies. He had the advantage of

ation: J

is castle. This writ, if it should be declared legal, would totally annihilate this privilege. Custom-house officers may enter our houses, when they please; we are commanded to perm

g to give up a lucrative office to speak for the rights of the humblest cottager. He, like the majority of the orators of the Revolution

thy of a gentleman or a man are to sacrifice estate, ease, health, and applause, and even life, to the sacred calls of

this speech for five hours, and called Otis "a flame of fire." "Then and there

), a young Virginia lawy

ongress, in 1

tion: PAT

distinctions between Virginians, New Yorkers, and New Engl

, and helped to weld the colonies together. In 1775 we can hear

tural to man to indulge

eyes against a painful

till she transform

ture but by the past. And judging by the past, I wish to know what there has been in the conduct of the British ministry fo

, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almight

nation an intenser desire for liberty, that their effect has not yet passed away, and

of the Continental Congress. When there was talk of peace between the colonies and the mother country, he had the distinction of being one of two Americans for whom England proclaimed in advance t

tion: SAM

rymen, that is a father,

because you had nouris

e Declaration of Indep

ns like a Pu

, and a heart like the nether millstone. We have this day restored the Sovereign, to whom alone men ought to be obedient. He reigns in heave

and diction. A century before, this compound of patriot, poli

and acquaintance with it or to liberal culture or to both, (3) from the fact that the subject of their orations appealed forcibly to the interest of that special time, (4) from their character and personality. Most of wh

. 71) were lawyers. Life was becoming more diversified, and there were avenues other than theology attractive to the educated man. At the same time, we must remember that the clergy have never ceased to be a mighty power in American life. They were not silent or uninfluential during the Revolution.

FRANKLIN,

on: BENJAMI

1706, one of the seventeen children of a poor tallow chandler, that his branch of the Franklin family had lived for three hundred years or more in the village of Ecton, Northamptonshire, where the head of the family, in Queen Mary's reign, read from an English Bible concealed under a stool, while a child watched for the coming of the officers. He relates how he attended school from th

tle volumes.... Plutarch's Lives there was in which I read abundantly, and I still think that time spent to great advantage. There was also a book of De Foe's, called an Essay on Projects, and another of Dr. Mathe

e papers from Addison's Spectator. Franklin says that the "little ability" in writing, deve

ip. No such letters were ever written, and the boy found himself without money three thousand miles from home. By working at the printer's trade he supported himself for eighteen months in London. He relates how his companions at the press drank six pints of strong beer a day, while he proved that the "Water-American," as he was called, was stronger than any of them. The workmen insisted that he should contribute to th

at the age of forty-two made sufficient money to be able to retire from the active administration of this business. He defined leisure as "time for doing something us

to correct some faults of the first. So I might, besides correcting the faults, change some sinister accidents and events of it for others more favorable. But though this were

irst fire department, improved the postal service, helped to pave and clean the streets, invented the Franklin stove, for which he refused to take out a patent, took decided steps toward improving education and founding the Uni

orld-wide fame. Harvard and Yale gave him honorary degrees. England made him a Fellow of the Royal So

rance. The report of his examination in the English House of Commons, relative to the repeal of the Stamp Act, impressed both Europe and America with his wonderful capacity. Never before had an American given Europe such an exhibition of knowledge, powers of argum

until France aided us with her money and her navy. It is doubtful if any man has ever been more popular away from home than Franklin was in France. The French regarded him as "the personification of the rights of

ndependence, the treaty of alliance with France, the treaty of peace with England at the close of the Revolution, and the Constitution of the United States. He had also be

F THE TITLE-PAGE TO "POOR

t, but because it is the best policy. He needs to be supplemented by the great spiritual teachers. He must not be despised for this reason, for the great spiritual forces fail when they neglect the material foundations imposed on mortals. Franklin was as necessary as Jonathan Edwards. Franklin knew the importance of those foundation habits, without which higher morality is not possible. He impressed on men the necessity of being regular, temperate, industri

n parenthesis indicate t

one ey'd horse for

ecret, if two of th

at has it, but his th

and they'll fol

to do to-morrow; do

onful of honey will catch more fli

ry year by savings banks and societies in France and England, as well as in the United States. "Dost thou love life?" asks Poor Richard in The Way to Wealth. "Then," he continues, "do not squander time, for that's the stuff life is made of." Franklin modestly disclaimed much originality in the selection of these proverbs, but it is true that he made many of them more definite, incisive, and a

blished anonymously in a newspaper An Edict of the King of Prussia. This Edict proclaimed that it was a matter of common knowledge that Britain had been settled by Hengist and Horsa and other German colonists, and that, in consequence of this fact, the King of Prussia had the right to regulate the commerce, manufactures, taxes, and laws of the En

le, easy, natural way of relating events. Simplicity, practicality, suggestiveness, common sense, were his leading attributes. His sense of humor kept him from being tireso

OLMAN,

is best worth seeing. It will broaden the reader's sympathies and develop a keener sense of responsibility for lessening the misery of the world and for protecting even the sparrow from falling. It will cultivate precisely that side of human nature which stands most in need of development. To emphasize these points, Charles Lamb said, "Get

hopkeeper's clerk and then a tailor. This lack of early training and broad experience affects his writings, which are not remarkabl

ssion for overworked oxen and horses. He journeyed among the Indians, and endeavored to improve their condition. It cut him to the quick to see traders try to intoxicate them so as to get

is Journal the following entry, which

that in aiming to do business quickly and to gain

Franklin's Autobiography first and John Woolman's Journal second. Franklin looked s

MERICAN

plained that some of his congregation were reading forbidden books, and he gave from the pulpit the names of the guilty parties. These books were probably English novels. Sir Leslie Stephen thinks that Richardson's Pamela (1740) may have been one of the books under the ban. There is little doubt that a Puritan church member would have been disciplined if he had been known to be a reader of some of Fielding's works,

eading of novels imperiled the salvation of the soul. To-day we know that certain novels are as dangerous to the soul as leprosy to the body, but we have become more discriminating. We have le

tion had given a new creation to the literature of England. Samuel Richardson (1689-1761) had published Pamela in

om we fortunately do not meet outside of books. One of these characters, looking at some flowers embroidered by the a

pirit appears in sober statement of the most self-evident truths. "Death, my dear Maria, is a serious event," says the heroine of one of these novels. An

rance of Charles Brockden Brown's Wieland 1798. Only an antiquary need linger ove

from the classic or didactic school of Samuel Richardson and a turning toward the new Gothic or romantic

son (1709-1784) in prose were the most influential of this school. They are called classicists because they looked to the old classic authors for their guiding rules. Horace, mo

Nature to adv

ght, but ne'er so

Essay on Critici

complete sense. This was not inaptly termed "rocking horse meter." The prose writers loved t

continues longer on the wing.... Dryden is read with

on of the writer away from the matter. The American poetry of th

demned the Arabian Nights, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Tempest, and other "monstrous irregularities of Shakespeare." T

eridge (1772-1834), Shelley (1792-1822), and Keats (1795-1821). The terms "romantic" and "imaginative" were at first in great measure synonymous. The romanticists maintained tha

ic school of fiction was soon noted for its lavish use of the unusual, the mysterious, and the terrible. Improbability, or the necessity for calling in the supernatural to untie some knot, did not seriously disturb this school. The standard definition of "Gothic" in fiction soon came to include an element of strangeness added to terror. When the taste for the extreme Gothic declined, ther

CKDEN BROWN

n: CHARLES B

but, unlike Brown, he did not make literature the business of his life. Descended from ancestors who came over on the ship with William Penn, Brown at the age of te

d, in common with the rest of mankind, to innumerable casualties; but, if these be shunned, we are unalterably fated to die of consumption." In 1810, before he had

the publication of Wieland. These romances show a striking change from the American fiction which had preceded them. They are no longer didactic and sentimental, but Gothic or romantic. Working under English influe

e, Ormond, Arthur Mervyn, or Memoirs of the Year 1793, and Edgar Huntly. The results of his own experience with the yellow fever plague in Philadelphia give a

ian a valuable literary asset from the Gothic romancer's point of view. In Chapter XVI., he reverses Captain Smith's story and has Edgar Huntly rescue a young girl from torture and kill an Indian. In the next two chapters, the hero kills four Indians. The English recognized this introduction of a new element of strangeness added to terror and gave Brown the credit of developing an "Americanized" Gothic. He disclosed to future writers of fiction, like James Fenimore Cooper (p. 125), a new mine of American materials. This romance has a second distinguishing characteristic,

weird subject matter, but not in artistic ability, he reminds us of Poe. Brown could devise striking incidents, but he lacked the power to weave them together in a well-constructed plot. He sometimes forgot that important incidents needed further elaboration or reference, and he occasionally left them suspended in mid-air. His lack of humor was too often re

nwilling to leave it unfinished. Brown will probably be longest remembered for his strong pictures of the yellow fever epidemi

HE HARTF

independence. A group of poets, sometimes known as the Hartford Wits, determined to take the kingdom of poet

Dwight determined to immortalize himself by an epic poem. He acc

se arms to Isra

empire of the

aven to hold t

ice, and anim

ion: TIMOT

h unreadable to-day. It is doubtful if twenty-five people in our times have ev

, where beauteou

ers o'er her fa

ering generalities. Dwight's best known poetry is found in his song,

olumbia, to

world, and the ch

s a poet. He determined in The Vision of Columbus (1787), afterwards expanded into the ponderous Columbiad, to surpass H

rd the carbon c

unders rock the s

tion: JOE

f cannon and thunder and lightning. Barlow, like many others, certainly did not understand that bigne

native region

nnsylvanians c

Commenting on this, the Connecticut Gazette of September 24, 1757, says, "the Son of Rev'd. Mr. Trumble of Waterbury ... passed a good Examination, altho but little more than seven years of age; but on account of his Youth his father does not intend he shall at present contin

that age. Early in his twenties he satirized in classical c

nt authors

ne beauty t

g on in one

tongues and l

tion: JOH

t gave a powerful impetus to the Continental cause. It has been said that the poem "is to be considered as one of the forces of the Revolution, bec

he Puritans and upheld the Royalists, while Trumbull discharged his venomed shafts at the adherents of the king. In M'Fingal, a Tory bent on destroying

fail'd, and v

the ground hi

oak, o'ertu

tempests f

sunk with al

e plough to

s else-but all

versed in

nes from M'Fingal have

s. The following

r felt the

opinion of

man with

s before h

sharp it ne

t is not t

irst part of M'Fingal passed through some forty editions, many of them printed without the author's consent. This fact is said

RENEAU,

ion: PHILI

in America before the Revolutionary War. He graduated at Princeton

his Revolutionary satires would be an almost complete commentary on the whole Revolutionary struggle; nearly every important emergency and phase of which

the top of a c

a mighty soft p

n his temper the

name and by far

atriotic colonists s

Jove wit

never be rule

thi

e Lion shall th

een teeth and be sh

s not his best, however impor

remarkable for their simplicity, sinc

house besi

sts plant

Wordsworth and Coleridge, as is also The

that dost so

silent, du

hy honied b

little bran

s self in w

ee shun the

here the gua

ft waters m

an poet had equaled them. The following will repay careful reading:

buried near his home at

, New

TERATURE O

dison, Steele, and Defoe, had passed away before the middle of the century. The creato

(1737-1794), who wrote The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; EDMUND BURKE (1729-1797), best known to-day for his Speech on C

high ideals, and heaven-climbing imagination, had long been the model that inspired cold intellectual poetry. In the latter part of the century, romantic feeling and imagination won their battle and came into their

ountry, and man

cal Ballads (1798) included the wonderful romantic poem of The Ancient Mariner, and poems by Wordswo

lower Enjoys the

e American poets of this age, save Freneau in a few short lyrics, felt but little of this great

left-born wild-flo

han the win

cks its

Otranto and GODWIN'S Caleb Williams did not allow their imaginations to be fettered by either the probable

HISTORIC

dominant in North America. Had the French won, this book would have been chiefly a history of French lite

erned in fact as well as in name by England. The most independent men that the world has ever produced came to America to escape tyranny at home. The descendants of these men started the American Revolution, signed the Declaration of Independence

ering on anarchy. The wisest men feared that the independence so dearly bought would be lost. Finally, the separate states adopted a Constitution which united them, and in 1789 they chose Washington as the president of this Union. His Farewell Address, issued to the American people toward the end of his administration, breathes the prayer "that your union

s and habits which lead

ality are indisp

e vast central territory, known as the Louisiana Purchase, affected the entire subsequent development of the country and its literature. Thomas Jefferson still exerts an influence on our literature and instituti

adoption of the Constitution, is the wonderful pioneer movement toward t

ts of any of the great migrations of mankind upon the older continents.... From 1790 to 1800, the mean population of the period being about four and a half millions, sixty-five thous

er one hundred and two thousand square miles of absolutely new territory.... No other people could have done this. No: nor the half of it. Any other

MM

erty and show the influence of the Revolution. The orators, James Otis, Patrick Henry, and Samuel Adams, were inspired by the same cause. The words of Patrick Henry,

, and the value of practical common sense. He was the first of our writers to show a balanced sense of humor and to use it as an agent in impressing truth on unwilling listeners. He is an equally great apostle of the practical and the altruistic,

. The victory of the English school of romanticists influenced Charles Brockden Brown, the first professional American author, to throw off the yoke of classical didacticism and regularity and to write a group of Gothic romances, in which the imagination was given a fre

ely to write poetry. "Th

ote a vast quantity of v

the influence of the cla

short lyrics which sugge

dsw

oduced no authors who can rank with the contemporary school of English writers, such as Burns, Wordsworth, and Coleridge

h the Revolutionary War, (b) the adoption of a constitution and the formation of a republic, and (c) the magnitude of the

S FOR FUR

TOR

any of the English histories mentioned on p. 60. For the English lite

special periods of the Ameri

mation of

of Conflict and Montc

and Indi

ican Revolut

al Period of A

e Making of

story of Amer

f the United States

ution,

brief compass. An account of much of the history of the period is given in the biographies of Washington b

TE

History of the Americ

American Lite

terary Histo

tory of Ameri

s Benjami

Many-Side

ican Novelists, pp. 3-

ow

Early Amer

TED RE

ons from Thomas Paine'

es see p. 62.] 344-347;

Crisis,-Cairns, 347-352;

I., 22

H., III, 286-289; and in almost all the histories of the United States-should be read

ng a paper from the Federalist, may be foun

merican Orations, 11-17. For Patrick Henry's most famous speech, see Cairns, 335-338; S. & H., III., 214-218; Johnston, I., 18-23

phy. Selections may be found in Carpenter, 31-36; Cairn

either in the various e

5-319; Carpenter, 36-43;

, III.,

s, 307-313; S. & H.

uninteresting reading. Chaps. XVI., XVII., and XVIII. of Edgar Huntly show the hero of that romance rescuing a girl from tort

ns, 482-488; Carpenter, 97-100. For Indian adventures or out-of-door life i

m Dwight, Barlow, and

III., 403-413, 426-429,

, 440, 441, 447; S. & H

merican Antho

S AND SU

of Independence likened to the old battle songs of the Anglo-Saxon race? What is remarkable about Jefferson's power of expression? In the

ions and records of experience to be found in Franklin's Autobiography? In what ways are his writings still useful to humanity? Sele

s called "Gothic"? What

ng him? Specify three st

from Brown. What does

color to

impress you? Do these poets belong to the classic or the romantic school? What English influenc