HUMOROUS. "ARTEMUS WARD," Chas. F. Browne (1836-1867), a very celebrated humorist, author of Artemus Ward, his Book, Artemus Ward Among the Mormons, Artemus Ward Among the Fenians, and Artemus Ward in England. "MRS. PARTINGTON," Mr. B. P. Shillaber (1814-1890), author of Life and Sayings of Mrs. Partington, Knitting Work, etc. "JOSH BILLINGS," H. W. Shaw (1818-1887), author of Sayings of Josh Billings, Josh Billings on Ice, Farmer's Alminax, etc. Very witty and wise, but not always refined. CHARLES DUDley Warner (1829-1900), a genial and refined writer, author of My Summer in a Garden, Back-log Studies, Baddeck and that Sort of Thing, and joint author with Mark Twain of the Gilded Age. CHARLES G. LELAND (Hans Breitmann), C. H. WEBB (John Paul), JAME M. BAILEY (Danbury News Man), D. R. LOCKE (Petroleum V. Nasby), MELVILLE D. LANDON (Eli Perkins), and R. H. NEWELL (Orpheus C. Kerr -office-seeker), are also noted humorists. ENGLISH CONTEMPORARIES. This age in American Literature is coextensive with the Victorian age in English Literature, represented by Tennyson, Macaulay, and others. LATER AMERICAN LITERATURE. SINCE 1876. OUR literature seems to have taken a new impetus from the Civil War, and a new era may be said to have begun with the second century of our national life. Most of the great writers who had shed lustre upon the age had either passed away or had practically ceased to write, and a multitude of new writers came forward to contend for the laurel. Some, however, had already won some distinction, and are treated of in the former part of this book. Others have entered the arena since or have lately come into prominence, and some of these will now be briefly noticed. OUR LATER POETS. We have an abundance of poetry, perhaps more than ever before, but no poets of commanding genius like Longfellow, Whit tier, Holmes, and Lowell. Probably the public voice would pro claim Aldrich our laureate, with Stedman not far below him. These have been noticed elsewhere. A few younger poets remain to be noticed here. SIDNEY LANIER (1842-1881). The life of this child of genius was a sad one, reminding us of Keats. It was a long and losing struggle with poverty and disease. No child of the Sunny South since Poe ever excited so much interest. He was first of all a musical enthusiast, and his poems are a sort of verbal music. Some of the most beautiful are-My Springs, Corn, The Song of the Chattahoochie, Sunrise, and The Marshes of Glynn. (See Poems, 1884, with memoir by Dr. Ward.) He also wrote a novel, Tiger Lilies, and a treatise on The Science of English Verse, based on musical ideas. In 1879 he became a lecturer on English Literature in Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, and some of his lectures were published in a volume entitled The English Novel. He died in 1881. Lanier's love of nature amounted to a passion, and his poetry is full of it. Witness these lines: "The leaves that wave against my cheek, caress Like women's hands; the embracing boughs express A subtlety of mighty tenderness; The copse depths into little noises start, That sound anon like beatings of a heart, Anon like talk 'twixt lips not far apart."-Corn. JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY (1854 -), born in Indiana and called the "Hoosier Poet," has written mostly in the dialect of the West. Most dialect poetry is poor and ephemeral, but Mr. Riley has thrown such a wealth of genuine sentiment, dry humor, and quaint wisdom into his verse as to give it a high and permanent value. Many of his poems represent child life, and he seems to see child nature, especially boy nature, right through. Witness The Raggedy Man and The Boy Lives on Our Farm. And such poems as Fessler's Bees, The Literary, Tradin Joe, etc., with their drollery and pathos, are inimitable. His only sustained effort is a dramatic poem entitled Flying Islands of the Night. Mr. Riley is the best of our dialect poets, but he is not merely a dialect poet; he has written many beautiful poems in correct English, of which Away, Give Me the Baby and The Poet of the Future are examples. Some of his collections of poems are-Neighborly Poems, Afterwhiles, Pipes of Pan (prose and verse), Rhymes of Childhood, Green Fields and Running Brooks, and A Child-World. "O the rain and the sun and the sun and the rain! When the tempest is done, then the sunshine again; In lull or in roar, But smile and be brave till the voyage is o'er."-A Song of the Cruise. 66 EUGENE FIELD (1850-1895), credited to the West, though reared and educated in New England, was a miscellaneous writer, dashing off poems, sketches, short essays, squibs, etc., for the columns of a newspaper. Much of his work, therefore, was only for the day, and will perish, but some of it attained wide popularity, and bids fair to be lasting, especially his childhood poems, some of which are perhaps the best ever written in this country, by man or woman. Indeed, he has been called the laureate of childhood." He was a man of very lovable personality, which perhaps had something to do with the popularity of his writings. When, in 1895, he died, in the very flower of manhood, there was a universal outburst of love, admiration, and regret. Some of his verse, like Riley's, is in the Western dialect, but most of it is not. Little Boy Blue is generally considered his best child's poem. Speaking of the toys: "And they wonder, as waiting these long years through, In the dust of that little chair, What has become of our Little Boy Blue, Since he kissed them and put them there." The Rock-a-by Lady, New-year's Eve, The Singing in God's Acre, Ben Apfelgarten, The Bow-leg Boy, and many others, are also exquisite in their way. His works, Sabine edition, are published in 10 vols. Some of these are in prose. A few of the titles are— A Little Book of Western Verse, Love Songs of Childhood, With Trumpet and Drum, and Songs and Other Verse. His works abound in genuine humor-wit and pathos combined. "Out yonder in the moonlight, wherein God's Acre lies, Go walking angels to and fro, singing their lullabies. Their radiant wings are folded, and their eyes are bended low, The Shepherd guardeth His sheep. Fast speedeth the night away, Soon cometh the glorious day; Sleep, weary ones, while ye may, Sleep, oh, sleep!"- The Singing in God's Acre. JOHN JAMES PIATT (1835 -) and his wife, S. M. B. PIATT (1836), are also from the Great West, though they have for many years lived in Washington. Mr. Piatt's poems are mainly idyllic and reflective, and he has been called "the laureate of prairie and homestead life" (Stedman). He began his literary career in 1860, when he and Mr. Howells published a volume entitled Poems by Two Friends. Since then he has published several volumes, among them Landmarks, and Idyls and Lyrics of the Ohio Valley. The Nests at Washington is the joint production of himself and wife. Mrs. Piatt has published A Woman's Poems and A Voyage to the Fortunate Isles. Some of her poems are exquisite, among them The House below the Hill, There Was a Rose, Enchanted, and The Gift of Tears. "To the quick brow Fame grudges her best wreath, The Guerdon, by J. J. P. Ah me! "The legend says, in Paradise The Gift of Tears, by Mrs. P. MRS. HELEN HUNT JACKSON, formerly Helen Fiske (18311885) won a great reputation soon after the war by Poems and Bits of Travel, published under the initials " H. H." She afterwards published several other volumes, among them A Century of Dishonor (on the Indian question), and Ramona, a sort of Uncle Tom's Cabin of the Indian. Her poetry was praised by Emerson, and it has been said that " Excepting Mrs. Browning it is doubtful whether any woman, at least in our day, has written poetry so informed with spiritual truth, so free from all extraneous elements, so glowing with the highest beauty (Underwood). Some of the best are- -Resurgam, Gondolieds, Thought, and The Zone of Calms. Mrs. Jackson lived in Colorado for some years 1885. and died there in "The birds must know. Who wisely sings The common air has generous wings, Songs make their way."-The Way to Sing. LUCY LARCOM (1826-1893) was successively a mill girl of Lowell, Mass., a teacher, an editress, and a poet. Her Hannah Binding Shoes made her famous at once, and her sudden fame was well sustained in A New England Girlhood, Wild Roses of Cape Ann, Childhood Songs, At the Beautiful Gate, and several other excellent books of verse and prose. There is a "Household Edition" of her poems; and a volume containing her Life, Letters, and Diary has been published since her death in 1893. Her poems resemble those of Alice Cary, being characterized by refined sentiment, lively fancy, and great felicity and beauty of expression. But there is in them, as in those of all our female poets, a lack of creative power. Among the best of Miss Larcom's single poems, in addition to the one mentioned above, are- The Red School House, A Strip of Blue, and Skipper Ben. "How they went down Never was known in the still old town, Faced his fate in the furious night, Faced the mad billows with hunger white, Just within hail of the beacon-light, That shone on a woman sweet and trim, MRS. MARGARET J. PRESTON (1827-1897), daughter of Dr. |
