OCR Text |
Show AMERICAN LITERATURE. American literature has now become so far English that it has supplied us with more household words than the literature of any other country, except France. Mr. Lowell's own "Biglow Papers" have lent us some - notably the skeptical criticism of John P. Robinson on the culture of Palestine, and the warning as to the necessity of early rising when one is attempting to circumvent the Absolute. From a writer much less frivolous than he is commonly thought to be, Mark Twain, we have derived not only by-words but opportunities for that inextinguishable laughter which seems to refresh and renew the whole system. If Mark Twain had written nothing but the account of his purchase of the celebrated Mexican plug, and his account of how he once increased the circulation of an agricultural paper, he would have made his mark among the humorists who have used the English language. Mr. Bret Harte has supplied us with the immortal economical reflections of Bill Nye, and bus formulated the doubt which we all feel in the presence of the Mongolian race, the doubt whether Aryan man is not played out, has not had his innings, and is on the point of following the Toltecs into the grave of vanished peoples. But these are only the first names that occur. Our fiction owes its most refined and elaborate pages to Mr. James and Mr. Howells, our anthropology is under a heavy debt to Mr. Bancroft and Mr. Morgan, our criticism is sharpened by contact with that of half a dozen brilliant writers, and perhaps it is only in poetry that we will venture to think, if we may use an appropriate expression, "we have the inner tracks." The American Caucasians are certainly not played out, and we may perhaps expect from them the poet who is to succeed our foremost living masters. -London News. |