AMERICAN LITERATURE. A hun dred years ago and for half a century after ward, every assembly of students in this coun try was entertained by discussions on a °Pos sible Literature" of America,— how soon there would be an American literature was a favorite question, grief or complaint that there was not an American literature came in if the speaker or writer were of cynical vein. The introspection which was thus developed among people who were born for something better than introspec tion had its good results. Every printed word, one may say, was collected, which showed that between 1602 and the 19th century any man or woman had written anything in America. Such a collection as Samuel Kettell's 'Specimens of American shows the eagerness with which critics who were forecasting a glorious future for our literature were willing to pre serve all the crystals from the past and eager to persuade us that they werejewels. The truth seems to be that for the 17th and 18th centuries there was no class of men or women who would now be called °literary people." At the same time, the new settlers and the men and women of half a dozen generations which followed said what they had to say, and gen erally said it well. For they did not think much about the way of saying it, they did not talk much about it, they had no professional critics. There were among them those who "harked back" to English models. After the establishment of newspapers (see NEWSPA PERS), which runs back to the year 1704, the sad necessity of journalism compelled the press to create every week a given number of square inches of what is called °matter." Thus there appeared in the three cities a few of those writers who have to write as much when they have nothing to say as when they eagerly pro claim something not known to the world before.
It was not until 1555 that in the printed books of England the first fruits of the dis covery of America appeared. Richard Eden then published his translation of Peter Martyr's 'Decades,' and he adds to them some new nar ratives of voyages not described in the original An English translation of Ribaut's was printed in 1563. In 1576 the first edition of Sir Humphrey Gilbert's plea for a northwest passage appeared, and an account of Frobish er's voyages was published in 1578. In 1582 we touch solid ground as we come upon the name of Hakluyt. The island of Roanoke has the honor of furnishing the first original American work to English literature. The four letters
of Ralph Lane, who was the first commander of Raleigh's first colony, are the oldest American writings now extant of any Englishman and were perhaps the first ever written. They were written 12 Aug. 1585 from what he calls Porte Ferdynando. One of them was to the famous Sir Philip Sidney. They were printed in 1860 for the first time in the 'Transactions of the American Antiquarian Society.' The English archives have now been thoroughly searched and have probably yielded up all that can be found in them of intercourse with America in this mythical century. There are two or three narratives of the adventures of sailors who straggled from Mexico, where the Spaniards had made them prisoners, to the fisheries of the northeast. where they were relieved by the fish ermen. The earliest of these is dated in the year 1582. In the collections of Hakluyt and Purchas will be found other narratives of a similar character which struggled into print in one way or another. Professor Tyler in his admirable survey of the subject sees the first note of the birth of American literature in the ode of Michael Drayton, published in 1607, the year always assigned as the birthday of the nation, the year of the birth of Virginia, the year of John Smith and Powhatan and Pocahontas.
The history and criticism which belong to this subject have been admirably handled by the Messrs. Duyckinck, by Professor Tyler's 'His tory of American Literature from Colonial Times,' by Mr. Kettell, who has been named, and by Prof. Charles F. Richardson's 'Amer ican Literature' (1607-1885). It must be enough here to say that Capt.. John Smith in his various accounts of Virginia and of his voyages on the coast created a real interest in that °brave new world which hath such people in it." Dr. Tyler refers also to George Percy, William Strachey, Alexander Whitaker, John Pory and George Sandys. The original edi tions of the publications of these men are now among the most interesting nuggets of the book collectors. The Hakluyt Society has re published many of them and has proved its value to the students of our early history. There is one interesting tract of Strachey's which would answer one pathetic question. He says, "Before I have done I will tell you the story of the lost colony.' But in nothing that has been found of Strachey's is that history. told.