The earliest American name of note in the book-making of the 19th c. is William Wirt; a Maryland lawyer, author of Letters of a British Spy, and an admirable Life elf Patrick Henry, attorney-general of the United States, and once a candidate for presi dent. About the same time the country was amused by Thomas Green Fessenden, who sent forth Terrible Tractoriation, a satire on the wonderful medical discovery of metallic tractors; also political satire; and a humorous story in verse called The Country Lovers, which was republished in England. In theological writing the names of Archibald Alexander and Lyman Beecher are conspicuous:. and amidst this abundance of serious ness and satire comes the learned, pleasant, and genial John James Audubon, the distinguished American ornithologist and naturalist, of whose great book Cuvier said, It is the most magnificent iuoutmeat that art has ever erected to ornithology." In the days of these inert and th•ir immediate successors literary activity was sup pressed by the political events of the hour. We had barely escaped war with France in Jefferson's administration, but did not escape one with England in Madison's. Thera could be little of importation from abroad, and the means for producing hooks at home were primitive mid restricted. Our next literature was necessarily for the roost part , political, and the forum was its place of expression. There we find Henry Clay, Cal houn, and, somewhat later, Webster and Benton. But during or after the war, we hear from such writers as Henry M. Breckenridge (History of the &wild War with Great Britain); Moses Stuart, the father of American biblical criticism; William Ellery Chan ruing, theologian, and writer on many subjects, of whom it was said in Frazer's Magazine "Channing is unquestionably the first writer of the age. From his writings may be extractul some of the richest poetry and richest conceptions clothed in language unfortu nately for our literature too little studied in the days in which we live." Then Timothy Flint first made us acquainted with the valley of the Mississippi; and Henry Wheaton, in his History of the ;Audit Men, gave us our first knowledge of the people who discovered and dwelt in America five centuries before Columbus made the second discovery.
Both the political and literary fields now began to glow with the rising fame of Daniel Webster and Thomas hart Benton, for years the eastern and western stars in the galaxy of American statesmen. while Clay and Calhoun shone steadily from the south. The true day of American literature was at hand; the sun that was to rise never again to set while we arc a nation was lighting the morning horizon—the literary sun, that came in the person of Washington Irving. Born after the revolution and of age just as the sec ond war closed, he seems to have escaped the affliction of polities and partisanship, and to have grown up thoroughly a man of letters. It is quite unnecessary to refer to his many works, historical or imaginative, for they are everywhere known. Irving was the first author of note to employ that style of humorous exaggeration which has been so much abused in our days, and whose abuse foreigners choose to cull the great blot upon American literature. We presume there will be no vote against accepting _Diedrich Knickerbocker as a typical American author, tire Magnus Apollo, in our galaxy of liter ary gods. There was another American author in the same period (John Sanderson), whose work, The American in Paris, was thought worthy of translation by no less a writer than Jules Janie. Gillian C. Verplanek appeared anonymously as a political
satirist in 1819, and was afterwards the author of many discourses on art and literature. In 1827, Richard 11. Dana published The Buccaneer, and in 1833 The Idle Man, the one highly praised by prof. Wilson in Bit's/afoot?, and the other by William C. Bryant. The next conspicuous star iu the literary galaxy is James Fenimore Cooper, the most prolific and most popular of American writers of fiction. " He wrote," says Bryant, " for man kind at hap; hence it is that he has earned a fame wider than any author of modern times. The creations of MS genius shall survive through centuries to come, and only perish with our language." Among poet of note at, this period are Charles Sprague, Lydia II. Sigourney, James A. Hillhouse, Henry Timrod, and John G. C. Brainerd, whose poems passed to a third edition in 1842, edited by John G. Whittier. In John Howard Payne we had a precocious but gifted dramatist; in Henry Rowe Schoolcraft a diligent student and historian of the Indians; in Henry C. Carey an able political economist; in Jan Neal in poet and critic, and the first writer on American literature for foreign read ers (in a series of articles in Blackwood): in Jared Sparks a careful and voluzninons his torian ;.in Edward Robinson an accomplished biblical scholar; and in William Ware a writer of classical romances.
William Cullen Bryant led the modern army of American poets by the publication of "thanatopsis in 1816. immediately followed by Joseph Rodman Drake, Fitz Greene HaIJ leek, James G. Percival, and Maria Brooks. In the same period, or soon after, we find John P. Kennedy, the novelist, with Swallow Barn and Horse Shoe Robinson; Horace Mann on education; George Bush in biblical lore and Hebrew grammar; George Ticknor in history of .Cpanish Literature; James K. Paulding. co-laborer with Irving; Washing ton Allston, painter and poet; Robert C. Sands, in history and fiction: and minor lights.
Edward Everett., his brother Alexander 1L, William Prescott, and George Bancroft form the front rank of modern American historians, and at least three of them have won deservedly high renown; and later in the same department appear John L. Stephens, Richard itildreth, John R. Brodhead, J. Lothrop Motley, and Francis Parkman. In lighter literature we find George P. Morris, George D. Prentice, Theodore S. Fay, William Gilmore Simms, Nathaniel P. Willis, Joseph C. Neal, Charles Fenno Hoffman, and Willis Gaylord Clark. George P. Marsh has written upon Scandinavian languages; S. G. Goodrich (Peter Parley) for the young; George B. Cheever on political and moral reform; Ralph Hoyt sonic unique poems; Robert T. Conrad successful dramas; Elilm Burritt (the " Learned Blacksmith") his reflections: Alfred B. Street pastoral poetry; William W. Story a volume of poems; Edwin P. Whipple critical essays; Donald G. Mitchell (" Ik Marvel") pleasant essays; Frederick S. Cozzeos similar works; George W. Curtis the Potiphar Papers; William Allen Butler, Nothing to Fear; Robert Dale Owen on mysticism; A. L. 'Youmans on chemistry and other sciences; Richard Grant White on Shakespeare, and criticisms on grammar and words; William T. Adams ("Oliver Optic") for boys and girls; J. T. Trowbridge poems and domestic stories; and A. Bron son Alcott on education and philosophy.