534 AMERICAN LITERATURE. CHARLES BROCKDEN Supplementary List. BROWN.-(1771-1810)-Philadelphia-Wieland; Ormond; Arthur Mervyn; Edgar Huntly. JAMES KIRKE PAULDING.-(born 1779)-associated with Irving in Salmagundi -John Bull and Brother Jonathan; The Dutchman's Fireside; Westward Ho! JAMES HALL. (born 1793)-Philadelphia―a judge in Illinois-Letters from the West; Wilderness and War-Path. JOHN P. KENNEDY.-(born 1795)-Virginia (?)-follower of Irving-Swallow Barn; Horse-Shoe Robinson. WILLIAM WARE.-(born 1797)--Massachusetts-Unitarian clergyman-Fall of Palmyra; Probus, or Rome in the Third Century. ROBERT M. BIRD.-(1803-1854)-Newcastle, Delaware-a doctor of medicineCalavar and The Infidel (Mexican romances); Nick of the Woods; Hawks of Hawk Hollow. WILLIAM SIMMS.-(born 1807)—planter of South Carolina-Guy Rivers; Beauchamp; Wigwam and Cabin. T. B. THORPE.-(born 1815)-Westfield, Massachusetts-Mysteries of the Backwoods; Big Bear of Arkansas. Our list must close with the names of Miss SEDGWICK (Hope Leslie); Miss LOTHROP (Dollars and Cents); Miss WARNER (The Wide Wide World and Queechy); Mrs. KIRKLAND (New Home and Forest Life); and SAMUEL GOODRICH (Peter Parley), author of an immense number of tales and educational works. ESSAYISTS, CRITICS, AND ORATORS. WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING, born in 1780, at Newport in Rhode Island, though ranking high amongst theologians, finds a fitter place among the most eloquent American Essayists. After a distinguished career at Harvard College, he lived for a while as a tutor in Virginia, and in 1803 was ordained minister of a Unitarian church in Boston. National Literature, Milton, Napoleon, Fenelon, Self-Culture, The Elevation of the Labouring Classes, are among the subjects he has written and lectured upon. Brilliant and original thoughts, clothed in language of rare fire and beauty, characterize all the works of this eminent man. Discourses on the Evidences of Revealed Religion form his chief theological work. One of his strongest feelings was hatred of the Slave-Trade; AMERICAN LITERATURE. 535 and his last public utterance was upon the emancipation of British slaves in the West Indies. He died of typhus fever in 1842. EDWARD EVERETT, born in 1794, at Dorchester near Boston, originally a Unitarian minister, became Governor of Massachusetts, American minister in London (1841-46), and Secretary of State for the United States. His literary fame rests on his Orations and Speeches. He wrote largely for the North American Review, which he edited for four years (1820–24). RALPH WALDO EMERSON, born in 1803 at Boston, became, after studying at Harvard, minister of a Unitarian church. This connection soon ceasing, he buried himself at Concord, to study and to write. He has spoken to the public principally through lectures, afterwards collected and published. His chief work is Representative Men, embracing strikingly eloquent estimates of Montaigne, Goëthe, Plato, Swedenborg, Shakspere, and Napoleon. Supplementary List. ALEXANDER HAMILTON.-(1757-1804)-island of Nevis-a lawyer and statesman of the Revolution-The Federalist, to which Madison and Jay also contributed. ALEXANDER EVERETT.-(1790-1847)-Boston-elder brother of the oratordiplomatist-Europe; New Ideas on Population; America; Essays. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.-(born 1809)-Cambridge, Massachusetts-Professor of Anatomy at Cambridge-lives now at Boston-Poems; Autocrat at the Breakfast-Table (essays). MARGARET FULLER. (1810-1850) - Cambridge, Massachusetts - Marchesa D'Ossoli-Woman in the Nineteenth Century; Summer on the Lakes. HENRY THEODORE TUCKERMAN.-(born 1813)—Thoughts on the Poets; Characteristics of Literature; Diary of a Dreamer; New England Philosophy. RUFUS GRISWOLD.-(1815-1857)-Benson, Vermont-Baptist minister-Curiosities of American Literature; Poets and Prose-Writers of America. The Lectures of HENRY REED (drowned in the wreck of the Arctic) upon English Literature, and of EDWIN WHIPPLE, upon Subjects connected with Literature and Life, are fine specimens of eloquent and accurate criticism. THEODORE PARKER, a Unitarian minister, has written Essays upon German Literature, Labour, and the Labouring Classes. DANIEL WEBSTER (1782-1852), HENRY CLAY (1777-1852), and JOHN CALHOUN (1782-1850), are the leading names in American oratory. NOAH WEBSTER'S English Dictionary, and ANTHON'S Editions of the Classics belong to this section. 536 AMERICAN LITERATURE. SCIENTIFIC WRITERS. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, born in 1706 at Boston, began life as a printer's boy. Steadily he rose by native genius, conjoined with industry and prudence, to a foremost place among his countrymen. Poor Richard's Almanac, a repertory of Proverbial Philosophy for the poor, begun in 1732, lasted for twenty-five years. This collection is otherwise known as The Way to Wealth. He won great fame by his scientific researches, especially into the laws of Electricity, the results of which are embodied in various letters and papers. He wrote also numerous Essays, Historical, Political, and Commercial, and an Autobiography of great value. His Letters, too, have been published. In all the great political movements of the Revolution he took a leading share; but the crown of his statesmanship was won when, as Minister Plenipotentiary at the court of France, whither he went in 1776, he secured the aid of French bayonets and cannon for the struggling Americans. He died in 1790. Supplementary List. JOHN JAMES AUDUBON.-(1780-1851)-son of a French admiral settled in Louisiana-travelled much-Birds of America. HENRY CAREY.-(born 1793)-Philadelphia—a publisher-The Credit System; Past, Present, and Future; Harmony of Interests; The Slave Trade. ORVILLE DEWEY.-(born 1794)—Sheffield, Massachusetts-Unitarian minister— Moral Views of Commerce, Society, and Politics; The Old World and the New. MATTHEW F. MAURY.-(born 1806)—Virginia—captain in United States NavyPhysical Geography of the Sea. THEOLOGIANS AND SCHOLARS. JONATHAN EDWARDS, born in 1703, at East Windsor in Connecticut, ranks highest among American divines. He was licensed as a Congregationalist minister in 1722. The honourable office of President in the College of New Jersey, Princeton, was conferred on him in 1757, but in the following year he died of small pox. His principal work, The Freedom of the Will, is a master-piece of AMERICAN LITERATURE. 537 metaphysical reasoning. Treatises from his pen upon The History of Redemption, True Virtue, God's Chief End in the Creation, Original Sin, and the Religious Affections, also display great power of thought, "warm piety, and profound acquaintance with the Scriptures." Supplementary List. JOHN WITHERSPOON.-(1722-1794)-Scotland-President of Princeton CollegeEcclesiastical Characteristics. TIMOTHY DWIGHT.—(1752–1817)-Northampton, Massachusetts-Congregational minister, army chaplain, President of Yale College (1795-1817)—History, Eloquence, and Poetry of the Bible; Theology Explained and Defended (chief work); Poems. CHARLES HODGE.-(born 1797)-Philadelphia-Professor of Biblical Literature at Princeton-Commentaries on Romans, Ephesians, First Corinthians; History of the Presbyterian Church in the States. ALBERT BARNES.-(born 1798)-Philadelphia-Presbyterian minister-Notes on the Gospels and other Commentaries. JOSEPH ADDISON ALEXANDER.—(1809-1860)—Philadelphia-Professor in Princeton College-chief works upon Isaiah and the Psalms-associated with Dr. Hodge in a Commentary on the New Testament. HENRY WARD BEECHER.-(born 1813)-Litchfield, Connecticut-Congregationalist minister-brother of Mrs. Stowe-Lectures; Star Papers; Life-Thoughts. TRAVELLERS. JOHN LLOYD STEPHENS, born in New Jersey in 1805, published in 1836-37 Incidents of Travel in Egypt, Arabia, Palestine, Yucatan, and Central America. Italy, Greece, Turkey, Russia, Germany, and France came also within the limit of his wanderings. Overtasking his strength in surveying the Isthmus of Panama with a view to the connection of the oceans by a railway, he died in 1852, at the age of forty-seven. EDWARD ROBINSON, born in 1794, at Southington in Connec ticut, before entering on his duties as Professor of Biblical Literature in the Union Theological Seminary at New York, spent two years in the Holy Land and the surrounding countries, which on his return he described in Biblical Researches in Palestine, Mount Sinai, and Arabia Petræa (1841). This learned and valuable work obtained for him the gold medal of the Geographical Society. 538 AMERICAN LITERATURE. Among American travellers of the last century, we may name JOHN BARTRAM (1701-1777), who described East Florida; JOHN WOOLMAN (1720–1772), a Quaker, in whose Journal of a Tour in England Charles Lamb delighted; JONATHAN CARVER (1732-1780), who explored the interior of North America, trying to reach the Pacific; and JOHN LEDYARD (1751-1789), who travelled both in frozen Siberia and burning Africa, dying at Cairo. TIMOTHY FLINT, the novelist (1780-1840) contributed to this branch of American literature The Geography and History of the Mississippi Valley-HENRY SCHOOLCRAFT (born 1793), Tours in Missouri, Arkansas, and the Copper Region of Lake Superior, besides various important works upon the Red Race in America-and CHARLES WILKES, of the United States Navy, A Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition, giving an account of travels in Chili, Peru, and the South Seas. CALEB CUSHING's Reminiscences of Spain; GEORGE CHEEVER's Pilgrim in the Shadow of Mont Blanc and Pilgrim in the Shadow of the Jungfrau; BAYARD TAYLOR's Sketches in the East; J. T. HEADLEY'S Letters from Italy, the Alps, and the Rhine, are among the most readable books of late American travel. |