Taine, who delighted to point out all this, and whose English Literature remains8 a monument of the defects as well as of the advantages of his method, was of course not the inventor of the climatic theory. It is older than Aristotle, who discusses it in his treatise9 on Politics. It was a topic of interest to the scholars of the Renaissance10. Englishmen of the seventeenth century, with an unction of pseudo-science added to their natural patriotism11, discovered in the English climate one of the reasons of England's greatness. Thomas Sprat, writing in 1667 on the History of the Royal Society, waxes bold and asserts: "If there can be a true character given of the Universal Temper of any Nation under Heaven, then certainly this must be ascribed to our countrymen, that they have commonly an unaffected sincerity13, that they love to deliver[Pg 5] their minds with a sound simplicity14, that they have the middle qualities between the reserved, subtle southern and the rough, unhewn northern people, that they are not extremely prone15 to speak, that they are more concerned what others will think of the strength than of the fineness of what they say, and that a universal modesty16 possesses them. These qualities are so conspicuous17 and proper to the soil that we often hear them objected to us by some of our neighbor Satyrists in more disgraceful expressions.... Even the position of our climate, the air, the influence of the heaven, the composition of the English blood, as well as the embraces of the Ocean, seem to join with the labours of the Royal Society to render our country a Land of Experimental Knowledge."
The excellent Sprat was the friend and executor of the poet Cowley, who has in the Preface to his Poems a charming passage about the relation of literature to the external circumstances in which it is written.
"If wit be such a Plant that it scarce receives heat enough to keep it alive even in the summer of our cold Clymate, how can it choose but wither20 in a long and a sharp winter? a warlike, various[Pg 6] and a tragical21 age is best to write of, but worst to write in." And he adds this, concerning his own art of poetry: "There is nothing that requires so much serenity22 and chearfulness of spirit; it must not be either overwhelmed with the cares of Life, or overcast23 with the Clouds of Melancholy24 and Sorrow, or shaken and disturbed with the storms of injurious Fortune; it must, like the Halcyon25, have fair weather to breed in. The Soul must be filled with bright and delightful26 Idaeas, when it undertakes to communicate delight to others, which is the main end of Poesie. One may see through the stile of Ovid de Trist., the humbled27 and dejected condition of Spirit with which he wrote it; there scarce remains any footstep of that Genius, Quem nec Jovis ira, nec ignes, etc. The cold of the country has strucken through all his faculties28, and benummed the very feet of his Verses."
Madame de Sta?l's Germany, one of the most famous of the "national character" books, begins with a description of the German landscape. But though nobody, from Ovid in exile down to Madame de Sta?l, questions the general significance of place, time, and circumstances as affecting the nature of a literary product, when[Pg 7] we come to the exact and as it were mathematical demonstration29 of the precise workings of these physical influences, our generation is distinctly more cautious than were the literary critics of forty years ago. Indeed, it is a hundred years since Fisher Ames, ridiculing30 the theory that climate acts directly upon literary products, said wittily31 of Greece: "The figs32 are as fine as ever, but where are the Pindars?" The theory of race, in particular, has been sharply questioned by the experts. "Saxon" and "Norman," for example, no longer seem to us such simple terms as sufficed for the purpose of Scott's Ivanhoe or of Thierry's Norman Conquest, a book inspired by Scott's romance. The late Professor Freeman, with characteristic bluntness, remarked of the latter book: "Thierry says at the end of his work that there are no longer either Normans or Saxons except in history.... But in Thierry's sense of the word, it would be truer to say that there never were 'Normans' or 'Saxons' anywhere, save in the pages of romances like his own."
There is a brutal34 directness about this verdict upon a rival historian which we shall probably persist in calling "Saxon"; but it is no[Pg 8] worse than the criticisms of Matthew Arnold's essay on "The Celtic Spirit" made to-day by university professors who happen to know Old Irish at first hand, and consequently consider Arnold's opinion on Celtic matters to be hopelessly amateurish35.
The wiser scepticism of our day concerning all hard-and-fast racial distinctions has been admirably summed up by Josiah Royce. "A race psychology," he declares, "is still a science for the future to discover.... We do not scientifically know what the true racial varieties of mental type really are. No doubt there are such varieties. The judgment36 day, or the science of the future, may demonstrate what they are. We are at present very ignorant regarding the whole matter."
Nowhere have the extravagances of the application of racial theories to intellectual products been more pronounced than in the fields of art and literature. Audiences listen to a waltz which the programme declares to be an adaptation of a Hungarian folk-song, and though they may be more ignorant of Hungary than Shakespeare was of Bohemia, they have no hesitation37 in exclaiming: "How truly Hungarian this[Pg 9] is!" Or, it may be, how truly "Japanese" is this vase which was made in Japan—perhaps for the American market; or how intensely "Russian" is this melancholy tale by Turgenieff. This prompt deduction38 of racial qualities from works of art which themselves give the critic all the information he possesses about the races in question,—or, in other words, the enthusiastic assertion that a thing is like itself,—is one of the familiar notes of amateur criticism. It is travelling in a circle, and the corregiosity of Corregio is the next station.
Blood tells, no doubt, and a masterpiece usually betrays some token of the place and hour of its birth. A knowledge of the condition of political parties in Athens in 416 B.C. adds immensely to the enjoyment39 of the readers of Aristophanes; the fun becomes funnier and the daring even more splendid than before. Molière's training as an actor does affect the dramaturgic quality of his comedies. All this is demonstrable, and to the prevalent consciousness of it our generation is deeply indebted to Taine and his pupils. But before displaying dogmatically the inevitable40 brandings of racial and national traits on a national literature, before pointing to this[Pg 10] and that unmistakable evidence of local or temporal influence on the form or spirit of a masterpiece, we are now inclined to make some distinct reservations. These reservations are not without bearing upon our own literature in America.
There are, for instance, certain artists who seem to escape the influences of the time-spirit. The most familiar example is that of Keats. He can no doubt be assigned to the George the Fourth period by a critical examination of his vocabulary, but the characteristic political and social movements of that epoch41 in England left him almost untouched. Edgar Allan Poe might have written some of his tales in the seventeenth century or in the twentieth; he might, like Robert Louis Stevenson, have written in Samoa rather than in the Baltimore, Philadelphia, or New York of his day; his description of the Ragged42 Mountains of Virginia, within very sight of the university which he attended, was borrowed, in the good old convenient fashion, from Macaulay; in fact, it requires something of Poe's own ingenuity43 to find in Poe, who is one of the indubitable assets of American literature, anything distinctly American.
Wholly aside from such spiritual insulation[Pg 11] of the single writer, there is the obvious fact that none of the arts, not even literature, and not all of them together, can furnish a wholly adequate representation of racial or national characteristics. It is well known to-day that the so-called "classic" examples of Greek art, most of which were brought to light and discoursed44 upon by critics from two to four centuries ago, represent but a single phase of Greek feeling; and that the Greeks, even in what we choose to call their most characteristic period, had a distinctly "romantic" tendency which their more recently discovered plastic art betrays. But even if we had all the lost statues, plays, poems, and orations45, all the Greek paintings about which we know so little, and the Greek music about which we know still less, does anybody suppose that this wealth of artistic expression would furnish a wholly satisfactory notion of the racial and psychological traits of the Greek people?
One may go even further. Does a truly national art exist anywhere,—an art, that is to say, which conveys a trustworthy and adequate expression of the national temper as a whole? We have but to reflect upon the European and American judgments47, during the last thirty[Pg 12] years, concerning the representative quality of the art of Japan, and to observe how many of those facile generalizations48 about the Japanese character, deduced from vases and prints and enamel49, were smashed to pieces by the Russo-Japanese War. This may illustrate50 the blunders of foreign criticism, perhaps, rather than any inadequacy51 in the racially representative character of Japanese art. But it is impossible that critics, and artists themselves, should not err33, in the conscious endeavor to pronounce upon the infinitely52 complex materials with which they are called upon to deal. We must confess that the expression of racial and national characteristics, by means of only one art, such as literature, or by all the arts together, is at best imperfect, and is always likely to be misleading unless corroborated53 by other evidence.
For it is to be remembered that in literature, as in the other fields of artistic activity, we are dealing54 with the question of form; of securing a concrete and pleasurable embodiment of certain emotions. It may well happen that literature not merely fails to give an adequate report of the racial or national or personal emotions felt during a given epoch, but that it fails to report[Pg 13] these emotions at all. Not only the "old, unhappy, far-off" things of racial experience, but the new and delight-giving experiences of the hour, may lack their poet. Widespread moods of public elation19 or wistfulness or depression have passed without leaving a shadow upon the mirror of art. There was no one to hold the mirror or even to fashion it. No note of Renaissance criticism, whether in Italy, France, or England, is more striking, and in a way more touching56, than the universal feeling that in the rediscovery of the classics men had found at last the "terms of art," the rules and methods of a game which they had long wished to be playing. Englishmen and Frenchmen of the sixteenth century will not allow that their powers are less virile57, their emotions less eager, than those of the Greeks and Romans. Only, lacking the very terms of art, they had not been able to arrive at fit expression; the soul had found no body wherewith to clothe itself into beauty. As they avowed58 in all simplicity, they needed schoolmasters; the discipline of Aristotle and Horace and Virgil; a body of critical doctrine59, to teach them how to express the France and England or Italy of their day, and[Pg 14] thus give permanence to their fleeting60 vision of the world. Na?ve as may have been the Renaissance expression of this need of formal training, blind as it frequently was to the beauty which we recognize in the undisciplined vernacular61 literatures of medi?val Europe, those groping scholars were essentially62 right. No one can paint or compose by nature. One must slowly master an art of expression.
Now through long periods of time, and over many vast stretches of territory, as our own American writing abundantly witnesses, the whole formal side of expression may be neglected. "Literature," in its narrower sense, may not exist. In that restricted and higher meaning of the term, literature has always been uncommon63 enough, even in Athens or Florence. It demands not merely personal distinction or power, not merely some uncommon height or depth or breadth of capacity and insight, but a purely64 artistic training, which in the very nature of the case is rare. Millions of Russians, perhaps, have felt about the general problems of life much as Turgenieff felt, but they lacked the sheer literary art with which the Notes of a Sportsman was written. Thousands of[Pg 15] frontier lawyers and politicians shared Lincoln's hard and varied65 and admirable training in the mastery of speech, but in his hands alone was the weapon wrought66 to such perfection of temper and weight and edge that he spoke67 and wrote literature without knowing it.
Such considerations belong, I am aware, to the accepted commonplaces,—perhaps to what William James used to call "the unprofitable delineation68 of the obvious." Everybody recognizes that literary gifts imply an exceptionally rich development of general human capacities, together with a professional aptitude69 and training of which but few men are capable. There is but one lumberman in camp who can play the fiddle70, though the whole camp can dance. Thus the great book, we are forever saying, is truly representative of myriads71 of minds in a certain degree of culture, although but one man could have written it. The writing member of a family is often the one who acquires notoriety and a bank account, but he is likely to have candid72 friends who admit, though not always in his presence, that, aside from this one professional gift and practice, he is not intellectually or emotionally or spiritually superior to his brothers[Pg 16] and sisters. Waldo Emerson thought himself the intellectual inferior of his brother Charles; and good observers loved to maintain that John Holmes was wittier73 than Oliver Wendell, and Ezekiel Webster a better lawyer than Daniel.
Applied74 to the literary history of a race, this principle is suggestive. We must be slow to affirm that, because certain ideas and feelings did not attain75, in this or that age or place, to purely literary expression, they were therefore not in existence. The men and women of the colonial period in our own country, for instance, have been pretty uniformly declared to have been deficient76 in the sense of beauty. What is the evidence? It is mostly negative. They produced no poetry, fiction, painting, sculpture, or music worthy46 of the name. They were predominantly Puritan, and the whole world has been informed that English Puritanism was hostile to Art. They were preoccupied77 with material and moral concerns. Even if they had remained in England, Professor Trent affirms, these contemporaries of Milton and Bunyan would have produced no art or literature. Now it is quite true that for nearly two hundred years after the date[Pg 17] of the first settlement of the American colonists78, opportunities for cultivating the arts did not exist. But that the sense of beauty was wholly atrophied79, I, for one, do not believe. The passionate80 eagerness with which the forefathers81 absorbed the noblest of all poetry and prose in the pages of their one book, the Bible; the unwearied curiosity and care with which those farmers and fishermen and woodsmen read the signs of the sky; their awe82 of the dark wilderness83 and their familiar traffic with the great deep; the silences of lonely places; the opulence84 of primeval meadows by the clear streams; the English flowers that were made to bloom again in farmhouse85 windows and along garden walks; the inner visions, more lovely still, of duty and of moral law; the spirit of sacrifice; the daily walk with God, whether by green pastures of the spirit or through ways that were dark and terrible;—is there in all this no discipline of the soul in moral beauty, and no training of the eye to perceive the exquisite86 harmonies of the visible earth? It is true that the Puritans had no professional men of letters; it is true that doctrinal sermons provided their chief intellectual sustenance87; true that their lives were stern, and[Pg 18] that many of the softer emotions were repressed. But beauty may still be traced in the fragments of their recorded speech, in their diaries and letters and phrases of devotion. You will search the eighteenth century of old England in vain for such ecstasies88 of wonder at the glorious beauty of the universe as were penned by Jonathan Edwards in his youthful Diary. There is every presumption89, from what we know of the two men, that Whittier's father and grandfather were peculiarly sensitive to the emotions of home and neighborhood and domesticity which their gifted descendant—too physically90 frail91 to be absorbed in the rude labor92 of the farm—has embodied93 in Snow-Bound. The Quaker poet knew that he surpassed his forefathers in facility in verse-making, but he would have been amused (as his Margaret Smith's Journal proves) at the notion that his ancestors were without a sense of beauty or that they lacked responsiveness to the chords of fireside sentiment. He was simply the only Whittier, except his sister Elizabeth, who had ever found leisure, as old-fashioned correspondents used to say, "to take his pen in hand." This leisure developed in him the sense—latent no doubt in his ancestors—of[Pg 19] the beauty of words, and the excitement of rhythm. Emerson's Journal in the eighteen-thirties glows with a Dionysiac rapture94 over what he calls "delicious days"; but did the seven generations of clergymen from whom Emerson descended95 have no delicious and haughty96 and tender days that passed unrecorded? Formal literature perpetuates97 and glorifies98 many aspects of individual and national experience; but how much eludes99 it wholly, or is told, if at all, in broken syllables100, in Pentecostal tongues that seem to be our own and yet are unutterably strange!
To confess thus that literature, in the proper sense of the word, represents but a narrow segment of personal or racial experience, is very far from a denial of the genuineness and the significance of the affirmations which literature makes. We recognize instinctively101 that Whittier's Snow-Bound is a truthful102 report, not merely of a certain farmhouse kitchen in East Haverhill, Massachusetts, during the early nineteenth century, but of a mode of thinking and feeling which is widely diffused103 wherever the Anglo-Saxon race has wandered. Perhaps Snow-Bound lacks a certain universality of suggestiveness[Pg 20] which belongs to a still more famous poem, The Cotter's Saturday Night of Burns, but both of these portrayals105 of rustic106 simplicity and peace owe their celebrity107 to their truly representative character. They are evidence furnished by a single art, as to a certain mode and coloring of human existence; but every corroboration108 of that evidence heightens our admiration109 for the artistic sincerity and insight of the poet. To draw an illustration from a more splendid epoch, let us remind ourselves that the literature of the "spacious110 times of great Elizabeth"—a period of strong national excitement, and one deeply representative of the very noblest and most permanent traits of English national character—was produced within startlingly few years and in a local territory extremely limited. The very language in which that literature is clothed was spoken only by the court, by a couple of counties, and at the two universities. Its prose and verse were frankly111 experimental. It is true that such was the emotional ferment112 of the score of years preceding the Armada, that great captains and voyagers who scarcely wrote a line were hailed as kings of the realm of imagination, and that Puttenham, in phrases which[Pg 21] that generation could not have found extravagant113, inscribes114 his book on Poetry to Queen Elizabeth as the "most excellent Poet" of the age. Well, the glorified115 political images may grow dim or tawdry with time, but the poetry has endured, and it is everywhere felt to be a truly national, a deeply racial product. Its time and place and hour were all local; but the Canadian and the American, the South African and Australasian Englishman feels that that Elizabethan poetry is his poetry still.
When we pass, therefore, as we must shortly do, to the consideration of this and that literary product of America, and to the scrutiny117 of the really representative character of our books, we must bear in mind that the questions concerning the race, the place, the hour, the man,—questions so familiar to modern criticism,—remain valid118 and indeed essential; but that in applying them to American writing there are certain allowances, qualifications, adjustments of the scale of values, which are no less important to an intelligent perception of the quality of our literature. This task is less simple than the critical assessment119 of a typical German or French or Scandinavian writer, where the strain of blood[Pg 22] is unmixed, the continuity of literary tradition unbroken, the precise impact of historical and personal influences more easy to estimate. I open, for example, any one of half a dozen French studies of Balzac. Here is a many-sided man, a multifarious writer, a personality that makes ridiculous the merely formal pigeon-holing and labelling processes of professional criticism. And yet with what perfect precision of method and certainty of touch do Le Breton, for example, or Brunetière, in their books on Balzac, proceed to indicate those impulses of race and period and environment which affected12 the character of Balzac's novels! The fact that he was born in Tours in 1799 results in the inevitable and inevitably120 expert paragraphs about Gallic blood, and the physical exuberance121 of the Touraine surroundings of his youth, and the post-revolutionary tendency to disillusion122 and analysis. And so with Balzac's education, his removal to Paris in the Restoration period, his ventures in business and his affairs of love, his admiration for Shakespeare and for Fenimore Cooper; his mingled123 Romanticism and Realism; his Titanism and his childishness; his stupendous outline for the Human Comedy; and[Pg 23] his scarcely less astounding124 actual achievement. All this is discussed by his biographers with the professional dexterity125 of critics trained intellectually in the Latin traditions and instinctively aware of the claims of race, biographers familiar with every page of French history, and profoundly interested, like their readers, in every aspect of French life. Alas116, we may say, in despairing admiration of such workmanship, "they order these things better in France." And they do; but racial unity126, and long lines of national literary tradition, make these things easier to order than they are with us. The intellectual distinction of American critical biographies like Lounsbury's Cooper or Woodberry's Hawthorne is all the more notable because we possess such a slender body of truly critical doctrine native to our own soil; because our national literary tradition as to available material and methods is hardly formed; because the very word "American" has a less precise connotation than the word "New Zealander."
Let us suppose, for instance, that like Professor Woodberry a few years ago, we were asked to furnish a critical study of Hawthorne. The author of The Scarlet127 Letter is one of the[Pg 24] most justly famous of American writers. But precisely128 what national traits are to be discovered in this eminent129 fellow-countryman of ours? We turn, like loyal disciples130 of Taine and Sainte-Beuve, to his ancestral stock. We find that it is English as far back as it can be traced; as purely English as the ancestry131 of Dickens or Thackeray, and more purely English than the ancestry of Browning or Burke or His Majesty132 George the Fifth. Was Hawthorne, then, simply an Englishman living in America? He himself did not think so,—as his English Note-Books abundantly prove. But just what subtle racial differentiation133 had been at work, since William Hawthorne migrated to Massachusetts with Winthrop in 1630? Here we face, unless I am mistaken, that troublesome but fascinating question of Physical Geography. Climate, soil, food, occupation, religious or moral preoccupation, social environment, Salem witchcraft134 and Salem seafaring had all laid their invisible hands upon the physical and intellectual endowment of the child born in 1804. Does this make Nathaniel Hawthorne merely an "Englishman with a difference," as Mr. Kipling, born in India, is an "Englishman with a[Pg 25] difference"? Hawthorne would have smiled, or, more probably, he would have sworn, at such a question. He considered himself an American Democrat135; in fact a contra mundum Democrat, for good or for ill. Is it, then, a political theory, first put into full operation in this country a scant136 generation before Hawthorne's birth, which made him un-English? We must walk warily137 here. Our Canadian neighbors of English stock have much the same climate, soil, occupations, and preoccupations as the inhabitants of the northern territory of the United States. They have much the same courts, churches, and legislatures. They read the same books and magazines. They even prefer baseball to cricket. They are loyal adherents138 of a monarchy139, but they are precisely as free, as self-governing, and—in the social sense of the word—as "democratic"—in spite of the absence of a republican form of government—as the citizens of that "land of the free and home of the brave" which lies to the south of them. Yet Canadian literature, one may venture to affirm, has remained to this hour a "colonial" literature, or, if one prefers the phrase, a literature of "Greater Britain." Was Hawthorne[Pg 26] possibly right in his instinct that politics did make a difference, and that in writing The Marble Faun,—the scene of which is laid in Rome,—or The House of the Seven Gables,—which is a story of Salem,—he was consistently engaged in producing, not "colonial" or "Greater-British" but distinctly American literature? We need not answer this question prematurely140, if we wish to reserve our judgment, but it is assuredly one of the questions which the biographers and critics of our men of letters must ultimately face and answer.
Furthermore, the student of literature produced in the United States of America must face other questions almost as complicated as this of race. In fact, when we choose Hawthorne as a typical case in which to observe the American refashioning of the English temper into something not English, we are selecting a very simple problem compared with the complexities141 which have resulted from the mingling142 of various European stocks upon American soil. But take, for the moment, the mere55 obvious matter of expanse of territory. We are obliged to reckon, not with a compact province such as those in which many Old World literatures[Pg 27] have been produced, but with what our grandfathers considered a "boundless143 continent." This vast national domain144 was long ago "organized" for political purposes: but so far as literature is concerned it remains unorganized to-day. We have, as has been constantly observed, no literary capital, like London or Paris, to serve as the seat of centralized authority; no code of literary procedure and conduct; no "lawgivers of Parnassus"; no supreme145 court of letters, whose judgments are recognized and obeyed. American public opinion asserts itself with singular unanimity146 and promptness in the field of politics. In literary matters we remain in the stage of anarchic individualism, liable to be stampeded from time to time by mob-excitement over a popular novel or moralistic tract147, and then disintegrating148, as before, into an incoherent mass of individually intelligent readers.
The reader who has some personal acquaintance with the variations of type in different sections of this immense territory of ours finds his curiosity constantly stimulated149 by the presence of sectional and local characteristics. There are sharply cut provincial150 peculiarities151, of course,[Pg 28] in Great Britain and in Germany, in Italy and Spain, and in all of the countries a corresponding "regional" literature has been developed. Our provincial variations of accent and vocabulary, in passing from North to South or East to West, are less striking, on the whole, than the dialectical differences found in the various English counties. But our general uniformity of grammar and the comparatively slight variations in spoken accent cover an extraordinary variety of local and sectional modes of thinking and feeling. The reader of American short stories and lyrics152 must constantly ask himself: Is this truth to local type consistent with the main trend of American production? Is this merely a bit of Virginia or Texas or California, or does it, while remaining no less Southern or Western in its local coloring, suggest also the ampler light, the wide generous air of the United States of America?
The observer of this relationship between local and national types will find some American communities where all the speech or habitual153 thought is of the future. Foreigners usually consider such communities the most typically "American," as doubtless they are; but there[Pg 29] are other sections, still more faithfully exploited by local writers, where the mood is wistful and habitually154 regards the past. America, too, like the Old World,—and in New England more than elsewhere,—has her note of decadence155, of disillusion, of autumnal brightness and transiency. Some sections of the country, and notably156 the slave-holding states in the forty years preceding the Civil War, have suffered widespread intellectual blight157. The best talent of the South, for a generation, went into politics, in the passionately158 loyal endeavor to prop18 up a doomed159 economic and social system; and the loss to the intellectual life of the country cannot be reckoned. Over vast sections of our prosperous and intelligent people of the Mississippi Basin to-day the very genius of commonplaceness seems to hover160. Take the great State of Iowa, with its well-to-do and homogeneous population, its fortunate absence of perplexing city-problems, its general air of prosperity and content. It is a typical state of the most typically American portion of the country; but it breeds no books. Yet in Indiana, another state of the same general conditions as to population and prosperity, and only one generation[Pg 30] further removed than Iowa from primitive161 pioneer conditions, books are produced at a rate which provokes a universal American smile. I do not affirm that the literary critic is bound to answer all such local puzzles as this. But he is bound at least to reflect upon them, and to demand of every local literary product throughout this varied expanse of states: Is the root of the "All-American" plant growing here, or is it not?
Furthermore, the critic must pursue this investigation162 of national traits in our writing, not only over a wide and variegated163 territory, but through a very considerable sweep of time. American literature is often described as "callow," as the revelation of "national inexperience," and in other similar terms. It is true that we had no professional men of letters before Irving and that the blossoming time of the notable New England group of writers did not come until nearly the middle of the nineteenth century. But we have had time enough, after all, to show what we wish to be and what we are. There have been European books about America ever since the days of Columbus; it is three hundred years since the first books were[Pg 31] written in America. Modern English prose, the language of journalism164, of science, of social intercourse165, came into being only in the early eighteenth century, in the age of Queen Anne. But Cotton Mather's Magnalia, a vast book dealing with the past history of New England, was printed in 1702, only a year later than Defoe's True-Born Englishman. For more than two centuries the development of English speech and English writing on this side of the Atlantic has kept measurable pace—now slower, now swifter—with the speech of the mother country. When we recall the scanty166 term of years within which was produced the literature of the age of Elizabeth, it seems like special pleading to insist that America has not yet had time to learn or recite her bookish lessons.
This is not saying that we have had a continuous or adequate development, either of the intellectual life, or of literary expression. There are certain periods of strong intellectual movement, of heightened emotion, alike in the colonial epoch and since the adoption167 of our present form of government, in which it is natural to search for revelations of those qualities which we now feel to be essential to our national[Pg 32] character. Certain epochs of our history, in other words, have been peculiarly "American," and have furnished the most ideal expression of national tendencies.
If asked to select the three periods of our history which in this sense have been most significant, most of us, I imagine, would choose the first vigorous epoch of New England Puritanism, say from 1630 to 1676; then, the epoch of the great Virginians, say from 1766 to 1789; and finally the epoch of distinctly national feeling, in which New England and the West were leaders, between 1830 and 1865. Those three generations have been the most notable in the three hundred years since the permanent settlements began. Each of them has revealed, in a noble fashion, the political, ethical168, and emotional traits of our people; and although the first two of the three periods concerned themselves but little with literary expression of the deep-lying characteristics of our stock, the expression is not lacking. Thomas Hooker's sermon on the "Foundation of Political Authority," John Winthrop's grave advice on the "Nature of Liberty," Jefferson's "Declaration," Webster's "Reply to Hayne," Lincoln's[Pg 33] "Inaugurals," are all fundamentally American. They are political in their immediate169 purpose, but, like the speeches of Edmund Burke, they are no less literature because they are concerned with the common needs and the common destiny. Hooker and Winthrop wrote before our formal national existence began; Jefferson, at the hour of the nation's birth; and Lincoln, in the day of its sharpest trial. Yet, though separated from one another by long intervals170 of time, the representative figures of the three epochs, English in blood and American in feeling, are not so unlike as one might think. A thorough grasp of our literature thus requires—and in scarcely less a degree than the mastery of one of the literatures of Europe—a survey of a long period, the search below the baffling or contradictory171 surface of national experience for the main drift of that experience, and the selection of the writers, of one generation after another, who have given the most fit and permanent and personalized expression to the underlying172 forces of the national life.
There is another preliminary word which needs no less to be said. It concerns the question of international influences upon national[Pg 34] literature. Our own generation has been taught by many events that no race or country can any longer live "to itself." Internationalism is in the very atmosphere: and not merely as regards politics in the narrowed sense, but with reference to questions of economics, sociology, art, and letters. The period of international isolation173 of the United States, we are rather too fond of saying, closed with the Spanish-American War. It would be nearer the truth to say that so far as the things of the mind and the spirit are concerned, there has never been any absolute isolation. The Middle West, from the days of Jackson to Lincoln, that raw West described by Dickens and Mrs. Trollope, comes nearer isolation than any other place or time. The period of the most eloquent174 assertions of American independence in artistic and literary matters was the epoch of New England Transcendentalism, which was itself singularly cosmopolitan175 in its literary appetites. The letters and journals of Emerson, Whitman, and Thoreau show the strong European meat on which these men fed, just before their robust176 declarations of our self-sufficiency. But there is no real self-sufficiency, and Emerson and Whitman[Pg 35] themselves, in other moods, have written most suggestive passages upon our European inheritances and affiliations177.
The fortunes of the early New England colonies, in fact, were followed by Protestant Europe with the keen solicitude178 and affection of kinsmen179. Oliver Cromwell signs his letter to John Cotton in 1651, "Your affectionate friend to serve you." The settlements were regarded as outposts of European ideas. Their Calvinism, so cheaply derided180 and so superficially understood, even to-day, was the intellectual platform of that portion of Europe which was mentally and morally awake to the vast issues involved in individual responsibility and self-government. Contemporary European democracy is hardly yet aware that Calvin's Institutes is one of its great charters. Continental181 Protestantism of the seventeenth century, like the militant182 Republicanism of the English Commonwealth183, thus perused184 with fraternal interest the letters from Massachusetts Bay. And if Europe watched America in those days, it was no less true that America was watching Europe. Towards the end of the century, Cotton Mather, "prostrate185 in the[Pg 36] dust" before the Lord, as his newly published Diary tells us, is wrestling "on the behalf of whole nations." He receives a "strong Persuasion186 that very overturning Dispensations of Heaven will quickly befal the French Empire"; he "lifts up his Cries for a mighty187 and speedy Revolution" there. "I spread before the Lord the Condition of His Church abroad ... especially in Great Britain and in France. And I prayed that the poor Vaudois may not be ruined by the Peace now made between France and Savoy. I prayed likewise for further Mortifications upon the Turkish Empire." Here surely was one colonial who was trying, in Cecil Rhodes's words, to "think continentally188!"
Furthermore, the leaders of those early colonies were in large measure university men, disciplined in the classics, fit representatives of European culture. It has been reckoned that between the years 1630 and 1690 there were in New England as many graduates of Cambridge and Oxford189 as could be found in any population of similar size in the mother country. At one time during those years there was in Massachusetts and Connecticut alone a Cambridge graduate for every two hundred and[Pg 37] fifty inhabitants. Like the exiled Greeks in Matthew Arnold's poem, they "undid190 their corded bales"—of learning, it is true, rather than of merchandise—upon these strange and inhospitable shores: and the traditions of Greek and Hebrew and Latin scholarship were maintained with no loss of continuity. To the lover of letters there will always be something fine in the thought of that narrow seaboard fringe of faith in the classics, widening slowly as the wilderness gave way, making its invisible road up the rivers, across the mountains, into the great interior basin, and only after the Civil War finding an enduring home in the magnificent state universities of the West. Lovers of Greek and Roman literature may perhaps always feel themselves pilgrims and exiles in this vast industrial democracy of ours, but they have at least secured for us, and that from the very first day of the colonies, some of the best fruitage of internationalism. For that matter, what was, and is, that one Book—to the eyes of the Protestant seventeenth century infallible and inexpressively sacred—but the most potent191 and universal commerce of ideas and spirit, passing from the Orient,[Pg 38] through Greek and Roman civilization, into the mind and heart of Western Europe and America?
"Oh, East is East, and West is West, And never the twain shall meet,"
declares a confident poet of to-day. But East and West met long ago in the matchless phrases translated from Hebrew and Greek and Latin into the English Bible; and the heart of the East there answers to the heart of the West as in water face answereth to face. That the colonizing192 Englishmen of the seventeenth century were Hebrews in spiritual culture, and heirs of Greece and Rome without ceasing to be Anglo-Saxon in blood, is one of the marvels193 of the history of civilization, and it is one of the basal facts in the intellectual life of the United States of to-day.
Yet that life, as I have already hinted, is not so simple in its terms as it might be if we had to reckon merely with the men of a single stock, albeit194 with imaginations quickened by contact with an Oriental religion, and minds disciplined, directly or indirectly195, by the methods and the literatures which the Revival196 of Learning imposed upon modern Europe. American formal[Pg 39] culture is, and has been, from the beginning, predominantly English. Yet it has been colored by the influences of other strains of race, and by alien intellectual traditions. Such international influences as have reached us through German and Scandinavian, Celtic and Italian, Russian and Jewish immigration, are well marked in certain localities, although their traces may be difficult to follow in the main trend of American writing. The presence of Negro, Irishman, Jew, and German, has affected our popular humor and satire197, and is everywhere to be marked in the vocabulary and tone of our newspapers. The cosmopolitan character of the population of such cities as New York and Chicago strikes every foreign observer. Each one of the manifold races now transplanted here and in process of Americanization has for a while its own newspapers and churches and social life carried on in a foreign dialect. But this stage of evolution passes swiftly. The assimilative forces of American schools, industry, commerce, politics, are too strong for the foreign immigrant to resist. The Italian or Greek fruit pedler soon prefers to talk English, and his children can be made to talk nothing else. This extraordinary amalgamating[Pg 40] power of English culture explains, no doubt, why German and Scandinavian immigration—to take examples from two of the most intelligent and educated races that have contributed to the up-building of the country—have left so little trace, as yet, upon our more permanent literature.
But blood will have its say sooner or later. No one knows how profoundly the strong mentality198 of the Jew, already evident enough in the fields of manufacturing and finance, will mould the intellectual life of the United States. The mere presence, to say nothing of the rapid absorption, of these millions upon millions of aliens, as the children of the Puritans regard them, is a constant evidence of the subtle ways in which internationalism is playing its part in the fashioning of the American temper. The moulding hand of the German university has been laid upon our higher institutions of learning for seventy years, although no one can demonstrate in set terms whether the influence of Goethe, read now by three generations of American scholars and studied by millions of youth in the schools, has left any real mark upon our literature. Abraham Lincoln, in his store-keeping[Pg 41] days, used to sit under a tree outside the grocery store of Lincoln and Berry, reading Voltaire. One would like to think that he then and there assimilated something of the incomparable lucidity199 of style of the great Frenchman. But Voltaire's influence upon Lincoln's style cannot be proved, any more than Rousseau's direct influence upon Jefferson. Tolsto? and Ibsen have, indeed, left unmistakable traces upon American imaginative writing during the last quarter of a century. Frank Norris was indebted to Zola for the scheme of that uncompleted trilogy, the prose epic200 of the Wheat; and Owen Wister has revealed a not uncommon experience of our younger writing men in confessing that the impulse toward writing his Western stories came to him after reading the delightful pages of a French romancer. But all this tells us merely what we knew well enough before: that from colonial days to the present hour the Atlantic has been no insuperable barrier between the thought of Europe and the mind of America; that no one race bears aloft all the torches of intellectual progress; and that a really vital writer of any country finds a home in the spiritual life of every other country, even though[Pg 42] it may be difficult to find his name in the local directory.
Finally, we must bear in mind that purely literary evidence as to the existence of certain national traits needs corroboration from many non-literary sources. If it is dangerous to judge modern Japan by the characteristics of a piece of pottery201, it is only less misleading to select half a dozen excellent New England writers of fifty years ago as sole witnesses to the qualities of contemporary America. We must broaden the range of evidence. The historians of American literature must ultimately reckon with all those sources of mental and emotional quickening which have yielded to our pioneer people a substitute for purely literary pleasures: they must do justice to the immense mass of letters, diaries, sermons, editorials, speeches, which have served as the grammar and phrase-book of national feeling. A history of our literature must be flexible enough, as I have said elsewhere, to include "the social and economic and geographical202 background of American life; the zest203 of the explorer, the humor of the pioneer; the passion of old political battles; the yearning204 after spiritual truth and social readjustment;[Pg 43] the baffled quest of beauty. Such a history must be broad enough for the Federalist and for Webster's oratory205, for Beecher's sermons and Greeley's editorials, and the Lincoln-Douglas debates. It must picture the daily existence of our citizens from the beginning; their working ideas, their phrases and shibboleths206 and all their idols207 of the forum208 and the cave. It should portray104 the misspelled ideals of a profoundly idealistic people who have been usually immersed in material things."
Our most characteristic American writing, as must be pointed209 out again and again, is not the self-conscious literary performance of a Poe or a Hawthorne. It is civic210 writing; a citizen literature, produced, like the Federalist, and Garrison's editorials and Grant's Memoirs211, without any stylistic consciousness whatever; a sort of writing which has been incidental to the accomplishment212 of some political, social, or moral purpose, and which scarcely regards itself as literature at all. The supreme example of it is the "Gettysburg Address." Homeliness213, simplicity, directness, preoccupation with moral issues, have here been but the instrument of beauty; phrase and thought and feeling have a[Pg 44] noble fitness to the national theme. "Nothing of Europe here," we may instinctively exclaim, and yet the profounder lesson of this citizen literature of ours is in the universality of the fundamental questions which our literature presents. The "Gettysburg Address" would not to-day have a secure fame in Europe if it spoke nothing to the ear and the heart of Europe. And this brings us back to our main theme. Lincoln, like Franklin, like many another lesser214 master of our citizen literature, is a typical American. In the writing produced by such men, there cannot but be a revelation of American characteristics. We are now to attempt an analysis of these national traits, as they have been expressed by our representative writers.
Simple as the problem seems, when thus stated, its adequate performance calls for a constant sensitiveness to the conditions prevalent, during a long period, in English and Continental society and literature. The most rudimentary biographical sketch215 of such eminent contemporary American authors as Mr. Henry James and Mr. Howells shows that Europe is an essential factor in the intellectual life and in the artistic procedure of these writers. Yet[Pg 45] in their racial and national relationships they are indubitably American. In their local variations from type they demand from the critic an understanding of the culture of the Ohio Valley, and of Boston and New York. The analysis of the mingled racial, psychological, social, and professional traits in these masters of contemporary American fiction presents to the critic a problem as fascinating as, and I think more complex than, a corresponding study of Meredith or Hardy216, of Daudet or D'Annunzio. In the three hundred years that have elapsed since Englishmen who were trained under Queen Elizabeth settled at Jamestown, Virginia, we have bred upon this soil many a master of speech. They have been men of varied gifts: now of clear intelligence, now of commanding power; men of rugged217 simplicity and of tantalizing218 subtlety219; poets, novelists, orators220, essayists, and publicists, who have interpreted the soul of America to the mind of the world. Our task is to exhibit the essential Americanism of these spokesmen of ours, to point out the traits which make them most truly representative of the instincts of the tongue-tied millions who work and plan and[Pg 46] pass from sight without the gift and art of utterance221; to find, in short, among the books which are recognized as constituting our American literature, some vital and illuminating222 illustrations of our national characteristics. For a truly "American" book—like an American national game, or an American city—is that which reveals, consciously or unconsciously, the American mind.
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devoted
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| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
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triumphant
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| adj.胜利的，成功的；狂欢的，喜悦的 | |
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tenacious
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| adj.顽强的，固执的，记忆力强的，粘的 | |
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undoubtedly
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| adv.确实地，无疑地 | |
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latitude
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| n.纬度，行动或言论的自由(范围)，(pl.)地区 | |
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longitude
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| n.经线，经度 | |
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artistic
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| adj.艺术(家)的，美术(家)的；善于艺术创作的 | |
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remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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treatise
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| n.专著；(专题)论文 | |
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renaissance
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| n.复活，复兴，文艺复兴 | |
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patriotism
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| n.爱国精神，爱国心，爱国主义 | |
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affected
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| adj.不自然的，假装的 | |
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sincerity
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| n.真诚，诚意；真实 | |
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simplicity
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| n.简单，简易；朴素；直率，单纯 | |
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prone
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| adj.(to)易于…的，很可能…的；俯卧的 | |
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modesty
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| n.谦逊，虚心，端庄，稳重，羞怯，朴素 | |
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conspicuous
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| adj.明眼的，惹人注目的；炫耀的，摆阔气的 | |
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prop
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| vt.支撑；n.支柱，支撑物；支持者，靠山 | |
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elation
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| n.兴高采烈，洋洋得意 | |
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wither
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| vt.使凋谢，使衰退，(用眼神气势等)使畏缩；vi.枯萎，衰退，消亡 | |
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tragical
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| adj. 悲剧的, 悲剧性的 | |
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serenity
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| n.宁静，沉着，晴朗 | |
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overcast
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| adj.阴天的，阴暗的，愁闷的；v.遮盖，（使）变暗，包边缝；n.覆盖，阴天 | |
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melancholy
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| n.忧郁，愁思；adj.令人感伤（沮丧）的，忧郁的 | |
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halcyon
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| n.平静的，愉快的 | |
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delightful
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| adj.令人高兴的，使人快乐的 | |
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humbled
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| adj. 卑下的，谦逊的，粗陋的 vt. 使 ... 卑下，贬低 | |
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faculties
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| n.能力( faculty的名词复数 )；全体教职员；技巧；院 | |
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demonstration
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| n.表明，示范，论证，示威 | |
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ridiculing
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| v.嘲笑，嘲弄，奚落( ridicule的现在分词 ) | |
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wittily
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| 机智地，机敏地 | |
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figs
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| figures 数字，图形，外形 | |
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err
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| vi.犯错误，出差错 | |
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brutal
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| adj.残忍的，野蛮的，不讲理的 | |
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amateurish
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| n.业余爱好的，不熟练的 | |
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judgment
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| n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见 | |
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hesitation
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| n.犹豫，踌躇 | |
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deduction
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| n.减除，扣除，减除额；推论，推理，演绎 | |
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enjoyment
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| n.乐趣；享有；享用 | |
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inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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epoch
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| n.(新)时代；历元 | |
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ragged
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| adj.衣衫褴褛的，粗糙的，刺耳的 | |
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ingenuity
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| n.别出心裁；善于发明创造 | |
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discoursed
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| 演说（discourse的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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orations
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| n.（正式仪式中的）演说，演讲( oration的名词复数 ) | |
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worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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judgments
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| 判断( judgment的名词复数 )； 鉴定； 评价； 审判 | |
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generalizations
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| 一般化( generalization的名词复数 )； 普通化； 归纳； 概论 | |
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enamel
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| n.珐琅，搪瓷，瓷釉；(牙齿的)珐琅质 | |
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illustrate
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| v.举例说明，阐明；图解，加插图 | |
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inadequacy
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| n.无法胜任，信心不足 | |
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infinitely
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| adv.无限地，无穷地 | |
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corroborated
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| v.证实，支持（某种说法、信仰、理论等）( corroborate的过去式 ) | |
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dealing
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| n.经商方法，待人态度 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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touching
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| adj.动人的，使人感伤的 | |
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virile
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| adj.男性的；有男性生殖力的；有男子气概的；强有力的 | |
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avowed
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| adj.公开声明的，承认的v.公开声明，承认( avow的过去式和过去分词) | |
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doctrine
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| n.教义；主义；学说 | |
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fleeting
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| adj.短暂的，飞逝的 | |
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vernacular
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| adj.地方的，用地方语写成的；n.白话；行话；本国语；动植物的俗名 | |
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essentially
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| adv.本质上，实质上，基本上 | |
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uncommon
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| adj.罕见的，非凡的，不平常的 | |
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purely
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| adv.纯粹地，完全地 | |
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varied
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| adj.多样的，多变化的 | |
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wrought
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| v.引起；以…原料制作；运转；adj.制造的 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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delineation
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| n.记述；描写 | |
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aptitude
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| n.(学习方面的)才能，资质，天资 | |
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fiddle
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| n.小提琴；vi.拉提琴；不停拨弄，乱动 | |
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myriads
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| n.无数，极大数量( myriad的名词复数 ) | |
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candid
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| adj.公正的，正直的；坦率的 | |
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wittier
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| 机智的，言辞巧妙的，情趣横生的( witty的比较级 ) | |
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applied
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| adj.应用的；v.应用，适用 | |
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attain
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| vt.达到，获得，完成 | |
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deficient
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| adj.不足的，不充份的，有缺陷的 | |
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77
preoccupied
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| adj.全神贯注的，入神的；被抢先占有的；心事重重的v.占据（某人）思想，使对…全神贯注，使专心于( preoccupy的过去式) | |
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78
colonists
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| n.殖民地开拓者，移民，殖民地居民( colonist的名词复数 ) | |
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79
atrophied
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| adj.萎缩的，衰退的v.（使）萎缩，（使）虚脱，（使）衰退( atrophy的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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80
passionate
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，激昂的，易动情的，易怒的，性情暴躁的 | |
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81
forefathers
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| n.祖先，先人；祖先，祖宗( forefather的名词复数 )；列祖列宗；前人 | |
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82
awe
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| n.敬畏，惊惧；vt.使敬畏，使惊惧 | |
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83
wilderness
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| n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等，荒漠 | |
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84
opulence
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| n.财富，富裕 | |
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85
farmhouse
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| n.农场住宅（尤指主要住房） | |
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86
exquisite
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| adj.精美的；敏锐的；剧烈的，感觉强烈的 | |
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87
sustenance
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| n.食物，粮食；生活资料；生计 | |
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88
ecstasies
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| 狂喜( ecstasy的名词复数 )； 出神； 入迷； 迷幻药 | |
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89
presumption
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| n.推测，可能性，冒昧，放肆，[法律]推定 | |
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90
physically
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| adj.物质上，体格上，身体上，按自然规律 | |
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91
frail
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| adj.身体虚弱的；易损坏的 | |
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92
labor
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| n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦 | |
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93
embodied
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| v.表现( embody的过去式和过去分词 )；象征；包括；包含 | |
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94
rapture
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| n.狂喜；全神贯注；着迷；v.使狂喜 | |
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95
descended
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| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
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96
haughty
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| adj.傲慢的，高傲的 | |
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97
perpetuates
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| n.使永存，使人记住不忘( perpetuate的名词复数 )；使永久化，使持久化，使持续 | |
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98
glorifies
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| 赞美( glorify的第三人称单数 )； 颂扬； 美化； 使光荣 | |
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99
eludes
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| v.（尤指机敏地）避开( elude的第三人称单数 )；逃避；躲避；使达不到 | |
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100
syllables
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| n.音节( syllable的名词复数 ) | |
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101
instinctively
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| adv.本能地 | |
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102
truthful
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| adj.真实的，说实话的，诚实的 | |
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103
diffused
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| 散布的，普及的，扩散的 | |
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104
portray
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| v.描写，描述；画(人物、景象等) | |
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105
portrayals
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| n.画像( portrayal的名词复数 )；描述；描写；描摹 | |
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106
rustic
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| adj.乡村的，有乡村特色的；n.乡下人，乡巴佬 | |
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107
celebrity
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| n.名人，名流；著名，名声，名望 | |
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108
corroboration
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| n.进一步的证实，进一步的证据 | |
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109
admiration
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| n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕 | |
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110
spacious
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| adj.广阔的，宽敞的 | |
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111
frankly
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| adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说 | |
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112
ferment
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| vt.使发酵；n./vt.（使）激动，（使）动乱 | |
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113
extravagant
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| adj.奢侈的；过分的；(言行等)放肆的 | |
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114
inscribes
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| v.写，刻( inscribe的第三人称单数 ) | |
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115
glorified
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| 美其名的，变荣耀的 | |
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116
alas
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| int.唉(表示悲伤、忧愁、恐惧等) | |
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117
scrutiny
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| n.详细检查，仔细观察 | |
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118
valid
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| adj.有确实根据的；有效的；正当的，合法的 | |
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119
assessment
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| n.评价；评估；对财产的估价，被估定的金额 | |
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120
inevitably
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| adv.不可避免地；必然发生地 | |
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121
exuberance
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| n.丰富；繁荣 | |
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122
disillusion
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| vt.使不再抱幻想，使理想破灭 | |
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123
mingled
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| 混合，混入( mingle的过去式和过去分词 )； 混进，与…交往[联系] | |
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124
astounding
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| adj.使人震惊的vt.使震惊，使大吃一惊astound的现在分词) | |
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125
dexterity
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| n.(手的)灵巧，灵活 | |
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126
unity
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| n.团结，联合，统一；和睦，协调 | |
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127
scarlet
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| n.深红色，绯红色，红衣；adj.绯红色的 | |
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128
precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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129
eminent
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| adj.显赫的，杰出的，有名的，优良的 | |
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130
disciples
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| n.信徒( disciple的名词复数 )；门徒；耶稣的信徒；（尤指）耶稣十二门徒之一 | |
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131
ancestry
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| n.祖先，家世 | |
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132
majesty
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| n.雄伟，壮丽，庄严，威严；最高权威，王权 | |
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133
differentiation
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| n.区别，区分 | |
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134
witchcraft
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| n.魔法，巫术 | |
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135
democrat
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| n.民主主义者，民主人士；民主党党员 | |
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136
scant
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| adj.不充分的，不足的；v.减缩，限制，忽略 | |
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137
warily
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| adv.留心地 | |
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138
adherents
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| n.支持者，拥护者( adherent的名词复数 )；党羽；徒子徒孙 | |
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139
monarchy
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| n.君主，最高统治者；君主政体，君主国 | |
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140
prematurely
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| adv.过早地，贸然地 | |
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141
complexities
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| 复杂性(complexity的名词复数)； 复杂的事物 | |
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142
mingling
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| adj.混合的 | |
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143
boundless
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| adj.无限的；无边无际的；巨大的 | |
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144
domain
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| n.(活动等)领域，范围；领地，势力范围 | |
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145
supreme
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| adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的 | |
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146
unanimity
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| n.全体一致，一致同意 | |
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147
tract
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| n.传单，小册子，大片(土地或森林) | |
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148
disintegrating
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| v.（使）破裂[分裂，粉碎]，（使）崩溃( disintegrate的现在分词 ) | |
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149
stimulated
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| a.刺激的 | |
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150
provincial
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| adj.省的，地方的；n．外省人，乡下人 | |
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151
peculiarities
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| n. 特质, 特性, 怪癖, 古怪 | |
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152
lyrics
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| n.歌词 | |
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153
habitual
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| adj.习惯性的；通常的，惯常的 | |
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154
habitually
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| ad.习惯地，通常地 | |
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155
decadence
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| n.衰落，颓废 | |
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156
notably
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| adv.值得注意地，显著地，尤其地，特别地 | |
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157
blight
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| n.枯萎病；造成破坏的因素；vt.破坏，摧残 | |
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158
passionately
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| ad.热烈地，激烈地 | |
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159
doomed
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| 命定的 | |
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160
hover
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| vi.翱翔，盘旋；徘徊；彷徨，犹豫 | |
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161
primitive
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| adj.原始的；简单的；n.原(始)人，原始事物 | |
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162
investigation
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| n.调查，调查研究 | |
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163
variegated
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| adj.斑驳的，杂色的 | |
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164
journalism
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| n.新闻工作，报业 | |
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165
intercourse
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| n.性交；交流，交往，交际 | |
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166
scanty
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| adj.缺乏的，仅有的，节省的，狭小的，不够的 | |
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167
adoption
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| n.采用，采纳，通过；收养 | |
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168
ethical
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| adj.伦理的，道德的，合乎道德的 | |
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169
immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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170
intervals
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| n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 )；间隔时间；[数学]区间；（戏剧、电影或音乐会的）幕间休息 | |
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171
contradictory
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| adj.反驳的，反对的，抗辩的；n.正反对，矛盾对立 | |
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172
underlying
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| adj.在下面的，含蓄的，潜在的 | |
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173
isolation
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| n.隔离，孤立，分解，分离 | |
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174
eloquent
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| adj.雄辩的，口才流利的；明白显示出的 | |
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175
cosmopolitan
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| adj.世界性的，全世界的，四海为家的，全球的 | |
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176
robust
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| adj.强壮的，强健的，粗野的，需要体力的，浓的 | |
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177
affiliations
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| n.联系( affiliation的名词复数 )；附属机构；亲和性；接纳 | |
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178
solicitude
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| n.焦虑 | |
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179
kinsmen
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| n.家属，亲属( kinsman的名词复数 ) | |
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180
derided
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| v.取笑，嘲笑( deride的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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181
continental
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| adj.大陆的，大陆性的，欧洲大陆的 | |
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182
militant
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| adj.激进的，好斗的；n.激进分子，斗士 | |
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183
commonwealth
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| n.共和国，联邦，共同体 | |
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184
perused
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| v.读（某篇文字）( peruse的过去式和过去分词 )；（尤指）细阅；审阅；匆匆读或心不在焉地浏览（某篇文字） | |
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185
prostrate
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| v.拜倒，平卧，衰竭；adj.拜倒的，平卧的，衰竭的 | |
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186
persuasion
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| n.劝说；说服；持有某种信仰的宗派 | |
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187
mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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188
continentally
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| adj.大陆的，大陆性的，欧洲大陆的；〈美〉（独立战争时）美洲殖民地的n.欧洲大陆人；〈美〉（独立战争中的）美国兵[纸币]；〈美俚〉（起源于英国的）欧洲大陆发式 | |
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189
Oxford
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| n.牛津（英国城市） | |
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190
Undid
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| v. 解开, 复原 | |
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191
potent
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| adj.强有力的，有权势的；有效力的 | |
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192
colonizing
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| v.开拓殖民地，移民于殖民地( colonize的现在分词 ) | |
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193
marvels
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| n.奇迹( marvel的名词复数 )；令人惊奇的事物（或事例）；不平凡的成果；成就v.惊奇，对…感到惊奇( marvel的第三人称单数 ) | |
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194
albeit
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| conj.即使；纵使；虽然 | |
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195
indirectly
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| adv.间接地，不直接了当地 | |
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196
revival
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| n.复兴，复苏，（精力、活力等的）重振 | |
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197
satire
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| n.讽刺，讽刺文学，讽刺作品 | |
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198
mentality
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| n.心理，思想，脑力 | |
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199
lucidity
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| n.明朗，清晰，透明 | |
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200
epic
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| n.史诗，叙事诗；adj.史诗般的，壮丽的 | |
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201
pottery
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| n.陶器，陶器场 | |
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202
geographical
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| adj.地理的；地区(性)的 | |
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203
zest
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| n.乐趣；滋味，风味；兴趣 | |
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204
yearning
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| a.渴望的；向往的；怀念的 | |
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205
oratory
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| n.演讲术；词藻华丽的言辞 | |
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206
shibboleths
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| n.（党派、集团等的）准则( shibboleth的名词复数 )；教条；用语；行话 | |
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207
idols
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| 偶像( idol的名词复数 )； 受崇拜的人或物； 受到热爱和崇拜的人或物； 神像 | |
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208
forum
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| n.论坛，讨论会 | |
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209
pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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210
civic
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| adj.城市的，都市的，市民的，公民的 | |
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211
memoirs
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| n.回忆录；回忆录传( mem,自oir的名词复数) | |
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212
accomplishment
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| n.完成，成就，（pl.）造诣，技能 | |
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213
homeliness
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| n.简朴，朴实；相貌平平 | |
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214
lesser
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| adj.次要的，较小的；adv.较小地，较少地 | |
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215
sketch
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| n.草图；梗概；素描；v.素描；概述 | |
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216
hardy
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| adj.勇敢的，果断的，吃苦的；耐寒的 | |
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217
rugged
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| adj.高低不平的，粗糙的，粗壮的，强健的 | |
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218
tantalizing
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| adj.逗人的；惹弄人的；撩人的；煽情的v.逗弄，引诱，折磨( tantalize的现在分词 ) | |
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219
subtlety
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| n.微妙，敏锐，精巧；微妙之处，细微的区别 | |
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220
orators
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| n.演说者，演讲家( orator的名词复数 ) | |
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221
utterance
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| n.用言语表达，话语，言语 | |
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222
illuminating
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| a.富于启发性的，有助阐明的 | |
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