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- her own authors, I say, have the priority of appreciation. I was much
pleased with a hot-headed Carolina cousin of mine, who once said,--‘If
there were no other American to stand by, in literature, why, then, I
would stand by Pop Emmons and his _Fredoniad_, and till a better epic
came along, swear it was not very far behind the _Iliad_.’ Take away the
words, and in spirit he was sound.
Not that American genius needs patronage in order to expand. For that
explosive sort of stuff will expand though screwed up in a vice, and
burst it, though it were triple steel. It is for the nation’s sake, and
not for her authors’ sake, that I would have America be heedful of the
increasing greatness among her writers. For how great the shame, if
other nations should be before her, in crowning her heroes of the pen!
But this is almost the case now. American authors have received more
just and discriminating praise (however loftily and ridiculously given,
in certain cases) even from some Englishmen, than from their own
countrymen. There are hardly five critics in America; and several of
them are asleep. As for patronage, it is the American author who now
patronises his country, and not his country him. And if at times some
among them appeal to the people for more recognition, it is not always
with selfish motives, but patriotic ones.
It is true, that but few of them as yet have evinced that decided
originality which merits great praise. But that graceful writer, who
perhaps of all Americans has received the most plaudits from his own
country for his productions,--that very popular and amiable writer,
however good and self-reliant in many things, perhaps owes his chief
reputation to the self-acknowledged imitation of a foreign model, and to
the studied avoidance of all topics but smooth ones. But it is better to
fail in originality, than to succeed in imitation. He who has never
failed somewhere, that man cannot be great. Failure is the true test of
greatness. And if it be said, that continual success is a proof that a
man wisely knows his powers,--it is only to be added, that, in that
case, he knows them to be small. Let us believe it, then, once for all,
that there is no hope for us in these smooth, pleasing writers that know
their powers. Without malice, but to speak the plain fact, they but
furnish an appendix to Goldsmith, and other English authors. And we want
no American Goldsmiths, nay, we want no American Miltons. It were the
vilest thing you could say of a true American author, that he were an
American Tompkins. Call him an American and have done, for you cannot
say a nobler thing of him. But it is not meant that all American writers
should studiously cleave to nationality in their writings; only this, no
American writer should write like an Englishman or a Frenchman; let him
write like a man, for then he will be sure to write like an American.
Let us away with this leaven of literary flunkeyism toward England. If
either must play the flunkey in this thing, let England do it, not us.
While we are rapidly preparing for that political supremacy among the
nations which prophetically awaits us at the close of the present
century, in a literary point of view, we are deplorably unprepared for
it; and we seem studious to remain so. Hitherto, reasons might have
existed why this should be; but no good reason exists now. And all that
is requisite to amendment in this matter, is simply this: that while
fully acknowledging all excellence everywhere, we should refrain from
unduly lauding foreign writers, and, at the same time, duly recognise
the meritorious writers that are our own; those writers who breathe that
unshackled, democratic spirit of Christianity in all things, which now
takes the practical lead in this world, though at the same time led by
ourselves--us Americans. Let us boldly condemn all imitation, though it
comes to us graceful and fragrant as the morning; and foster all
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