IV. Minor Poetry

§ The Knickerbocker School

footnote 1 The name is often used loosely to designate all New York literary men,—not only Irving, Cooper and Bryant, who first made the city a "literary center," but later writers such as Bayard Taylor and Stedman. Aside from furnishing the name and a few trivial essays, Irving had little to do with the "school"; Cooper was always a man of the sea and of the open country; Bryant a New England Puritan; Poe a Southerner; Taylor from the Middle West, and Stedman from Connecticut. These men were too deeply concerned with literature in its human or national aspects to be claimed by any local school, and the name, as applied to them, is misleading.

This unfortunate term is used here to designate a small group of writers who were associated with the common idea of making New York a literary center, and whose work is now forgotten, largely because of its local and temporary character. A book, to have any chance of permanence, must do one of two things: it must emphasize universal ideals under peculiar local conditions—as in the stories of Cable or Bret Harte, for instance—or else it must proceed on the principle that there is no Mason and Dixon's line in literature, and appeal to the whole country by reflecting the national ideals and enthusiasm.

With two of these Knickerbockers, Paulding and Willis, we may well be content to have a bowing acquaintance. Paulding's Salmagundi  essays, written in connection with Irving, and his numerous stories, plays and sketches, are now wholly neglected. A few of his romances, however, notably The Dutchman's Fireside  (1831) and Westward Ho!  (1832), still find a few interested readers.

Nathaniel Parker Willis (1806–1867) came to New York from his birthplace in Portland, Maine. He was a versatile genius who attempted almost every kind of literary work, and did it well enough to win immediate praise. It is evident from his numerous works in prose and verse that he was a graceful, often an entertaining writer; but he was too eager to please his own age, which, judged by its Tokens  and Garlands , was abnormally fond of sentimentality. Yesterday he was popular throughout the country, and from his vantage ground looked with pity upon the struggling Poe; to-day his works are unknown even by name. A few readers still find pleasure in his verses; others may be attracted by his Pencillings by the Way , a series of fleeting impressions of travel and of the noted men and women whom Willis met in Europe. Here, for instance, is his account of an interview with Lady Blessington,—a leader of London society, a literary woman widely known in her own day, and still remembered for her Conversations with Lord Byron . She had expressed great surprise that she and other authors received so many kind letters from America, where, she supposed, few people had any acquaintance with books. The answer of Willis indicates that remarkable appreciation of literature which one still finds in thousands of American towns and villages:

"I accounted for it by the perfect seclusion in which great numbers of cultivated people live in our country, who, having neither intrigue, nor fashion, nor twenty other things to occupy their minds, as in England, depend entirely upon books, and consider an author who has given them pleasure as a friend. 'America,' I said, 'has probably more literary enthusiasts than any country in the world; and there are thousands of romantic minds in the interior of New England who know perfectly every writer this side the water, and hold them all in affectionate veneration, scarcely conceivable by a sophisticated European. If it were not for such readers, literature would be the most thankless of vocations. I, for one, would never write another line.' "

In the life of Joseph Rodman Drake (1795–1820) there is a strange parallelism to that of the poet Keats. They were born in the same year, and were of the same delicate, beauty-loving temperament. Both were early acquainted with toil and poverty; both loved poetry, but studied medicine to earn a livelihood; both had consumption and journeyed southward in search of health; and both died at twenty-five, before their powers had reached maturity. To carry the comparison further and include their works would be unjust to Drake, who cannot possibly be classed with the major poets. He is remembered now by two poems: "The American Flag," a patriotic but grandiloquent effusion; and "The Culprit Fay," a unique poem recounting the adventures of a fairy knight who had fallen in love with a mortal maiden. The following selection may serve to illustrate Drake's work and to suggest the poetic taste of his age, which was satisfied with prettiness rather than with beauty:

The stars are on the moving stream, And fling, as its ripples gently flow, A burnished length of wavy beam In an eel-like, spiral line below; The winds are whist and the owl is still, The bat in the shelvy rock is hid, And naught is heard on the lonely hill But the cricket's chirp, and the answer shrill Of the gauze-winged katy-did; And the plaint of the wailing whippoorwill, Who moans unseen, and ceaseless sings, Ever a note of wail and woe, Till morning spreads her rosy wings, And earth and sky in her glances glow. * * * * * * * They come from beds of lichen green, They creep from the mullein's velvet screen; Some on the backs of beetles fly From the silver tops of moon-touched trees, Where they swung in their cobweb hammocks high, And rocked about in the evening breeze; Some from the hum-bird's downy nest— They had driven him out by elfin power, And, pillowed on plumes of his rainbow breast, Had slumbered there till the charmèd hour; Some had lain in the scoop of the rock, With glittering ising-stars inlaid; And some had opened the four-o'clock, And stolen within its purple shade. And now they throng the moonlight glade, Above, below, on every side, Their little minim forms arrayed In the tricksy pomp of fairy pride!

The friendship between Drake and Fitz-Greene Halleck (1790–1867) of Guilford, Connecticut, might well be the subject of a very interesting chapter in American literature. We can only note here that a memorial of their friendship, Halleck's "Green be the turf above thee," is one of the best-known poems surviving from this period. The association of the two men, who were of the type described as "free lances," began on the Hudson, in a common love of poetry; and presently both were engaged in writing The Croakers , a series of bright satires in verse, directed at men, manners and customs of New York society in the early part of the nineteenth century. Happy, good-natured satires they were, though their delicate point is now hardly discoverable unless one has an intimate knowledge of the period. Halleck's longest poem, Fannie  (1819), is of the same general character, being a gay commentary on the fashions, books, social and political doctrines that interested our grandfathers and grandmothers.

More lasting, and more suggestive of Halleck's power, are many of his lyrics, such as "On the Death of Drake," "Alnwick Castle" and "The Field of the Grounded Arms," which are well worth reading. Here also are "Red Jacket," a shrewd criticism of Cooper and his Indians; "Burns," a fine appreciation of the Scottish poet; and the immortal "Marco Bozzaris," beloved of every schoolboy. This last is not so much a national as a race war-song, suggesting as it does the primeval vigor of the old Anglo-Saxon "Fight at Finnsburgh." It is said that King Olaf once called for a song "with a sword in every line." The old Viking would have been satisfied had his gleeman responded with:

An hour passed on—the Turk awoke; That bright dream was his last; He woke—to hear his sentries shriek, "To arms! they come! the Greek! the Greek!" He woke—to die midst flame and smoke, And shout and groan and sabre-stroke, And death-shots falling thick and fast As lightning from the mountain-cloud; And heard, with voice as trumpet loud, Bozzaris cheer his band: "Strike—till the last armed foe expires; Strike—for your altars and your fires; Strike—for the green graves of your sires; God—and your native land!"