so as to increase the work to the dimensions and scope of a Bibliotheca Americana, or reliable catalogue raisonné of American books. In the course of their researches, the Publishers consulted many works bearing upon the subject of which the Introduction treats, and take pleasure in acknowledging their obligation to the productions of Messrs. Norton, Roorbach, Munsell, Putnam, Griswold, and others, for valuable information. With these remarks the Publishers respectfully lay before the searcher after the good in American literature this little volume, confident that it will be found useful for reference. TRÜBNER & Co. INTRODUCTION. CHAPTER I. A Survey of American Mind and Literary Progress from 1640 to 1820. THE absurd theory of man's intellectual degeneracy in the New World obtained considerable popularity among Europeans shortly subsequent to the formation of the United States Government, the Abbé Raynal, in his History of the Indies, being among the first of philosophers and sages to publish the pitiful fiction. Since then, all who aim at the not very desirable distinction of depreciating America have adopted the Abbé's argument, with various modifications, according to time and circumstances, notwithstanding the many able refutations it has received. Mr. Jefferson, third President of the Republic, proved the Abbé in error from his own mouth, by quoting the celebrated speech of Logan, the Indian chief, as one of the finest specimens of human eloquence extant. This the churchman conceded; but declared it to be the production of Mr. Jefferson. The statesman received the reply both as a compliment to himself and as a retraction of the Abbé's absurdity, which it clearly was. Since then, the decided progress of America in all that ennobles man is too palpable to be openly denied, although there are many who refuse to allow this merit, or attribute it to European influence. Much of this feeling is owing, doubtless, to a want of proper knowledge; and, so far as the subject of American literature is concerned, we design to present some historical facts, as an appropriate introduction to the succeeding catalogue of transatlantic books. Our position enables us to judge impartially, and we venture some statements relative to American letters, which if not new to all, will at least be so to many. In performing this self-imposed task we shall endeavour honestly to trace the origin and rise of American literature, to state its merits fairly, to name its brightest ornaments, and to call British attention to the benefits a closer acquaintance with it would confer on the reading public of this-the parent country. In executing this design, it is no part of our purpose to take a partisan or prejudiced view; we merely aim at the recital and consideration of facts. It is worthy of note that the printing press was early introduced into the British American colonies. The men who battled with the inhospitable clime and savages of New England for a new home were not unconscious of its value, nor regardless of its light. They arrived in the cold wilderness of Massachusetts in December, 1620, and from that period until 1630 received additions from the Old World. In 1631 their second settlement was formed at Cambridge-a name significant of their love of learning; where, as early as 1638, they built an academy, which in process of time became an honoured college, establishing a printing house at the same epoch, in which, in January, 1639, printing was first executed in that part of America which extends from the Mexican Gulf to the Arctic Ocean. These handmaids to mental culture had their influence in creating a taste for literature, and are to be regarded as the germs of that freedom of thought and universal intelligence which all concede as characteristic of the American people. That the press was but partially employed at first is natural, from the limited number of the colonists, and their occupations of farming and repelling the Indians; but it is a remarkable fact that, in a year after its establishment, or in 1640, an American book was issued from it (being the first published in what are now the United States), which was soon after reprinted in England, where it passed through no less than eighteen editions, the last being issued in 1754; thus maintaining a hold on English popularity for one hundred and fourteen years! This was the "Bay Psalm Book." It passed through twenty-two editions in Scotland, where it was extensively known, the last bearing date 1759; and as it was reprinted without the compiler enjoying pecuniary benefit from its sale, we have irrefutable proof that England pirated the first American book, being in reality the original aggressor in this line. This first American work enjoyed a more lasting reputation and had a wider circulation than any volume since of American origin, having passed, in all, through seventy editions-a very remarkable number for the age in which it flourished. Success attended the colonial press; and in 1663 the first Bible printed in America was published at Cambridge. It was unlawful to print an English version of the Scriptures-that right being a monopoly enjoyed by some Court favourite in England. The one printed in Massachusetts was Eliot's famous Indian Bible, and although fifteen hundred copies were struck off, they are now quite rare, and "sealed books," as the tongue in which they are written is literally a "dead language;" the tribe and all who had a knowledge of the dialect being long extinct. Eliot's work is unique; being at once a monument to his piety, perseverance, and learning. Its literary successor was Newman's Concordance of the Scriptures. This was compiled by the light of pine knots, in a log cabin, in one of the frontier settlements of Massachusetts. It was the first of its kind, and for more than a century was admitted to be the most perfect, holding its place in public esteem until superseded by Cruden's, which it suggested. That learning was appreciated by the Pilgrim Fathers is not very remarkable. They were a thoughtful people, despising ignorance. The wonder is that they found time, surrounded as they were by the multifarious troubles incident to the introduction of civilization into a wilderness, to regard letters at all; and it is not to be supposed their writings should be either profound or brilliant. Scholarship, however, was common among them, there being but few men educated in New England not familiar with the classics. Cotton Mather was justly regarded one of the most learned men of his time. He wrote in seven languages with facility, was the author of no less than three hundred and eighty-three works-one of which at least is still preserved in the standard religious literature-and became a Fellow of the Royal Society, being the first American to receive that honour. Franklin, whose authority is current in England, bears testimony to Mather's merit. He says of his Essays to do Good, "perhaps they gave me a tone of thinking that had an influence on some of the principal future events of my life." It is rare to observe literature and art growing simultaneously with the planting of a colony. The rough work of clearing the forest allows but little time for the elegancies of refined life, even where the inclination for such exists; and yet what monarchical colony, still under the fostering care of the parent government, has added one tithe as much to man's stock of mental delights as the American nation has done in the brief period of its existence ? It is contended by Mr. Alison and others of his class that "European habits and ideas are necessary to the development of mind in America." If this theory be correct, Canada, so long under English ideas and control, ought to be prolific in authors. But what are the facts in her case? Who can point to a Canadian author of note? That country was ceded to Great Britain in 1763. In the following year a press was established at Quebec, being the first in the colony, and no other existed there until 1775, when one was set up at Montreal. An English author, writing of the United States and Canada, in 1789, says, "There is one miserable bookseller in Quebec, who is supported by publishing a weekly gazette, in French and English (which, however, is neither French nor English); and another in Montreal, supported on the same terms." This was the truth, nor was there a second press in Montreal until an American introduced it there in 1807; and the first printing done at Kingston, Canada, was also the work of an American. In the case of British India the facts are still more noticeable. Bombay came into the possession of England in 1661, and yet printing is not known to have been exercised there until 1792, or more than one hundred and thirty years after! This contrasts unfavourably with American extension of the press, and bears its own_comment. Other instances deserve notice. Calcutta, the capital of British India, was founded in 1690, as an English factory. The exact period of the introduction of typography is not clear, but the earliest books known to have been printed there bear date 1778. In this instance "European ideas" do not appear to have operated to create a literature in India, however much they are supposed to have aided its development in America. But as a slight illustration of the effects of American and British achievements in encouraging literary desires in new countries, the history of Shawneetown, on the Ohio, offers a contrast to Calcutta. In 1818 that place was a forest; in 1826, eight years later, it was a thriving village, with two newspapers!! A few other instances or parallel cases are conceived to be pertinent. Whereever American enterprise penetrates, the printing press is found. It follows, as indispensable to American life. The citizen requires mental as well as alimentary food, and so great is the desire for reading, that printing presses were carried with the army into Mexico, in the war of 1846, from which newspapers were regularly issued, giving all necessary particulars of the campaign. But we design to turn attention to other facts more decidedly in the way of contrast. We have shown that printing was exercised in America in 1639. The first typography executed in Rochester, Kent, the seat of an English bishopric, bears date 1648, or nine years after the art was introduced into the forests of Massachusetts; and the earliest printing done in the great manufacturing city of Manchester was in the year 1732, or nearly one hundred years subsequent to the establishment of a press in America. The art was first practised at Glasgow (Scotland) and Cambridge (Massachusetts) the same year; at Exeter, the seat of another English bishopric, in 1668—thirty years later than in the United States; and not in the great commercial city of Liverpool until after the year 1750-one hundred and eleven years later than in the United States-when the population was not far short of 25,000; nor was a newspaper printed there before May, 1756. New York, Philadelphia, and Boston were immensely in advance of her then (as they are now), with fewer inhabitants. Another instance of this kind, and we will revert to other matters. Louisiana was settled by the French, under whose rule and that of Spain it continued for more than a century up to 1803, when it was sold to the United States. At that time there was but one press in the province, but in less than a year several printing houses were established by Americans in the city of New Orleans alone, This patronage of the press has its source in the literary tastes of the people, and nothing is more natural than where there are printers there are authors. A taste for reading induces authorship, just as appetite grows by what it feeds on. Prejudice destroys appreciation, and in this we have the secret of that depreciating opinion of American literature, so often expressed in Europe. To meet with its opposite is refreshing in our days. The author of the work on American books before quoted, although writing in 1789, speaks with so much liberality and justice, that his views deserve repetition, as forming a strong contrast to those of Mr. Alison. After some general observations he says, "America may claim the possession of all useful learning. Science has not only reared her head, but flourished with a degree of vigour in the New World that threatens to surpass the Old. Their orators, lawyers, physicians, historians, philosophers, and mathematicians may be fairly opposed to our most successful cultivators of science and the liberal arts ;" and although this opinion is rather florid, it contains much less extravagant praise than appears to the prejudiced mind, as a little investigation will show. To make this apparent we intend to quote another view of American mind, and then answer both quotations by facts. In the January number of the Edinburgh Review, of 1820, at page 69, will be found a criticism on Adam Seybert's Statistical Annals of the United States, published at Philadelphia, in 1818. The writer, who subsequently proved to be the Rev. Sydney Smith, says sneeringly of the Americans, "during the thirty or forty years of their independence they have done absolutely nothing for the sciences, for the arts, for literature, or even for the statesmanlike studies of politics or political economy;" and goes on to ask where are their Foxes, Burkes, Scotts, Byrons, Siddons, etc., concluding this catalogue of confident "wheres" with a sentence whose spirit is frequently quoted, and which is as follows: "In the four quarters of the globe, who reads an American book? or goes to an American play? or looks at an American picture or statue? What have they done in mathematics or science ?" Now we propose to answer some of these confident interrogations; and in doing so shall confine ourselves to facts, well known even to the writer of the sneer. The witty Canon was so fond of irony, that the whole thing may have been one of his jokes; but, however that may be, we shall view it as commonly received, and as its language warrants. To the first query it may be answered, that many American books were then read in England, which country may or may not be in one " of the four quarters of the globe," according to individual opinion. Even Sydney Smith may have read-aye, studied an American book, for it is scarcely possible Englishmen can be ignorant of the fact that LINDLEY MURRAY was an American. His Grammar of the English language, we suspect, commanded some attention in the last century; and it is not expanding probability too far to suppose the tart reviewer to have acquired a scientific knowledge of his parent tongue from an American work. Murray's Grammar was first published in 1795-sufficiently early to have fallen into Sydney's schoolboy hands-and has not yet either been surpassed or entirely superseded. The same author compiled an English Reader, once very popular as a school book, and wrote a work on the Power of Religion, which passed through seventeen editions-six of which were published in this country. Other American books, on profound subjects, were not unknown here at that time. Jonathan Edwards, said to have been the first man of the world during the second quarter of the eighteenth century, has many European admirers now. The British people need not be told he was an American, nor will those familiar with his works deny his right to the above high encomium. As a theologian, Dr. Chalmers and Robert Hall declare him to have been the greatest in all Christian ages; and as a metaphysician, in which abstruse science he particularly excelled, those high authorities, Dugald Stewart and Sir James Macintosh, pronounce him unsurpassed. His works supplied Godwin the fundamental principles of his Political Justice; and Dugald Stewart asserts that his essay on the Will never was and never will be answered. He has been ranked with Bacon as a philosopher-a position his genius fully justifies. And yet this man was born in a wilderness, and received his education in an institution inferior to many second-rate preparatory schools of this time. It is barely possible Englishmen are not aware Benjamin West, President of the Royal Academy, was an American. His pictures were "looked at," before the advent of this century, if not in one, at least in a part "of one of the four quarters of the globe." William Beckford, who was believed to be somewhat of a critic in art, pronounced West's Lear "as fine as the Laocoon,'' exclaiming, when he beheld it, "The painter must have been inspired when he painted |