The only American colonial who ranks with Edwards as a writer and thinker, Benjamin Franklin, while also a New Englander, is always regarded as a representative of the middle colo nies. Other interesting writers were grouped about him in Philadelphia, but New York and New Jersey produced few of any consequence. As a student of nature Franklin was only the fore most of an interesting group of men such as James Logan, John Bertram, and John Winthrop, of Harvard. As a writer and thinker on political subjects he exemplified the spirit of the age that was to produce publicists like John Dickinson, whose Letters from a Former (1767) focused the spirit of resistance; Samuel and John Adams, Jefferson, Hamilton, and Madison—men whose political writings, culminating in The Federalist (1788), astonished Europe and reached what per haps is the high-water mark in this species of composition. For, as is well known, the eighteenth century was not less predominatingly political than the seventeenth had been theologi cal. It was also utilitarian, and so Franklin, who thoroughly summed up his age, was the cre ator of Poor Richard, whose Alumnae may almost be said to be the foundation stone of popular education in America. It is probably his de lightful A atobiography, however, that gives Franklin his position as the writer of the only literary classic produced in America before the nineteenth century. Taken along with his let ters, this book, in both style and substance, fur nishes its with one of the most remarkable self revelations in literature. We read from a sense of duty a few authors of our Revolutionary pe riod, like the satirists Francis Hopkinson and John Trumbull, author of ,1IeFingal (1775-82) ; we know Time Indian Burying Ground, and a few other verses of the patriotic poet, Philip Fru neau ; we remember from our histories that the ill-fated Thomas Godfrey was the author of our first real po tical tragedy, The Prince of Par thia (1765) ; we smile at the mention of Joel Barlow's Vision of Columbus (1787), which de veloped into his formidable epic, The Columbiad (1807) ; but for many of us the true American literature of the eighteenth century is repre sented by the miscellaneous writings of Franklin, This, however, is not altogether fair. Several of Franklin's contemporaries deserve to be re membered as writers of interest and of some im portance. Among these are the Quaker John WooImam the loyalist historian of Massachu setts; Thomas Hutchinson,the patriotic historian and portentous dramatist and poet; Mrs. Mercy Otis Warren; the negro poetess. Phillis Wheatley, whose imitative verses astonished the learned of her (lay; the laborious poet, Rev. Timothy Dwight, whose Conquest of Canaan (1785), to gether with the productions of the so-called "Hartford Wits,"was intended to lay the founda tion of a real American literature, and has at least been buried sufficiently deep for that pur pose; the novelist, Mrs. Susanna Haswell Row son, whose Charlotte Temple (1790) is still read —all these and a few other writers should be re membered before we accuse the eighteenth cen tury in America of literary barrenness. These are not a tithe of the authors whom a serious literary historian would feel obliged to treat, and even we must add to them such a conscientious, if dull, historian as the Rev. William Stith, of Virginia, the distinctly more picturesque de fender of the Old Dominion, Robert Beverley, and the genial cavalier, Colonel William Byrd, of Westover, whose History of the Dividing Line (1729) between Virginia and :North Carolina is a remarkably entertaining production. To these Southern historians the name or Dr. David Ram say, of South Carolina, should be added; but it is of more importance not to forget the greater works of two citizens by adoption—the English man, Thomas Paine, and the Frenchman, Hector St. Jean de Caweeceur. Paine's Crisis and his Common Sense (1776) did perhaps more to make independence the goal of the American Revolu tionists than any other contemporary writings, and it was the spirit of the Revolution that ani mated his later but less acceptable books. Creve cceur's Letters from an A meriean Farmer (1782) are full of an idealism more charming than can be found in Paine and of a love of nature almost worthy of Thoreau himself.
The confused period between the close of the Revolution and the beginning of the nineteenth century was naturally not propitious to litera ture. But many of the writers mentioned in the last paragraph did their best work in it, and to them we may add the names of Royall Tyler, whose play, entitled The Contrast (1786), was the first American comedy of importance; Noah Webster and Lindley Murray, famous later for their works in lexicography and grammar; Jere my Belknap, author of one of the best of our early State histories, that of New Hampshire (1784) ; William Dunlap, whose history of the American Stage (1832) is still important, and Joseph Dennie, a writer of a mildly Addisonian type, whose Portfolio, founded in 1801, marked, with the contemporaneous establishment of the New York Evening Post, the great aid that jour nalism would give to literature throughout the new century.
But a more conspicuous writer than any of these, our first novelist, Charles Brockden Brown, had written Ids three most important novels, Wie land, Ormond, and Arthur Mervyn in the three closing years of the eighteenth century. He pub fished three other novels in 1801, and his literary activity, which was mainly associated with Phila delphia, promised much for the new Republic. But his work was cut short by ill-health and an early death, and to modern readers his stories, while marked by distinct imaginative pourer, are too plainly connected with the extravagant school of Godwin and Mrs. Radcliffe to be attractive. Brown deserves, however, to be remembered as the first American who made the profession of letters a success, and he was a genuine prede cessor of Hawthorne and Poe.
The opening decade of the nineteenth century was one of great political importance; but it is marked by few literary names of note, John Mar shall's Lifc of Washington (1804) being less im portant than his judicial decisions, and the writ ings of the key. :NI. L. Weems and William Wirt not meaning much to the sophisticated readers of a century since. But in 1809 a work that will probably never lose its interest made it certain that American literature, in the true sense of the term, had been born. In this year ton Irving gave the world "Diedrich Knicker bocker's" History of New York. Irving may be a little out of fashion to-day with some readers, and he may seem almost as much a British as an American classic; but a he is. whose style has perhaps not been surpassed, and whose es says, short stories and works of travel, biogra phy and history must be read by all cultivated Americans. During his long life he was the worthy head of the Knickerbocker school of writers who made New York the literary centre of the country before the rise of New England Transcendent a h sm.
It was more than a decade, however, after Irving's success before a really great writer arose to keep him company. Such poets as Washington Allston, John Pierpont and Mrs. Sigourney, and such a dramatist as John Howard Payne, can not send us back. with any great enthusiasm, to the second decade of the century just. passed. It is true, nevertheless, that the founding of the North Amcrican Review at Boston in May, 1815, was an important event, and that by publishing two years later the youthful Bryant's Tim »atop sis, it introduced to the world a poet of dignity and pourer, who, if not precisely great, was at least able to interpret pleasingly and satisfac torily to Americans the natural beauties of their native land. Two other poets, inferior to Bryant, yet still remembered, .Joseph Rodman Drake, author of The Culprit Pay, and Fitz Greene Halleek, author of an elegy on Drake and some stirring lyrics, also made their first appear ance in this decade.
When James Fenimore Cooper published Pre caution, in 1820, he gave the public no evidence that one of the greatest of modern writers of fiction had arisen. A competent reader of The Spy, which was issued the very next year, might, however, have perceived the fact.. Two years later, The Pilot and The Pioneers showed that al though Cooper might be essentially a follower of Scott, and although his style might be often slip shod and his power of characterization, especially in the case of women, almost nil, he was, never theless, master in his own splendid domain, the sea, the forest, and the prairie. The Leather stocking Tales hare been frequently called the real American epic, and a reCognition of the truth of this statement would prevent many per sons from underrating the genius of one of the few Americans who have won a world-wide fame by their writings. America has produced several authors of finer genius than Cooper possessed, but perhaps none of larger.