Southern Literature From 1579-1895 A comprehensive review, with copious extracts and criticisms for the use of schools and the general reader

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Title: Southern Literature From 1579-1895

A comprehensive review, with copious extracts and criticisms

for the use of schools and the general reader

Author: Louise Manly

Release Date: November 16, 2008 [EBook #27279]

Language: English

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Southern Literature

From 1579-1895.

A Comprehensive Review, with Copious Extracts

and Criticisms

FOR THE USE OF SCHOOLS AND THE GENERAL READER

Containing an Appendix with a Full List of Southern Authors

BY

LOUISE MANLY

——

ILLUSTRATED

——

RICHMOND, VA.

B. F. Johnson Publishing Company

1900

——————

Copyright, 1895, by

Louise Manly.

——————

PREFACE.

THE primary object of this book is to furnish our children with material for becoming acquainted with the development of American life and history as found in Southern writers and their works. It may serve as a reader supplementary to American history and literature, or it may be made the ground-work for serious study of Southern life and letters; and between these extremes there are varying degrees of usefulness.

To state its origin will best explain its existence. This may furthermore be of some help to teachers in using the book, though each teacher will use it as best suits his classes and methods.

The study of History is rising every day in importance. Sir Walter Raleigh in his Historie of the World well said, It hath triumphed over time, which besides it nothing but eternity hath triumphed over. It is the still living word of the vanished ages.

The best way of teaching history has of late years received much attention. One excellent method is to read, in connection with the text-book, good works of fiction, dramas, poetry, and historical novels, bearing upon the different epochs, and also to read the works of the authors themselves of these different periods. We thus make history and literature illustrate and beautify each other. The dry dates become covered with living facts, the past is peopled with real beings instead of hard names, fiction receives a solid basis for its airy architecture, and the mind of the pupil is interested and broadened. Even the difficult subjects of politics and institutions gradually assume a more pleasing aspect by being associated with individual human interests, and condescend to simplify themselves through personal relations.

To illustrate this method, which I have used with great success in teaching English History:

In connection with the times of the early Britons, read Tennyson’s Idyls of the King.

At the Norman Conquest, Bulwer’s Harold.

At the reign of Richard I. (Coeur de Lion), Scott’s Ivanhoe and Talisman, Shakspere’s King John.

At the reign of Elizabeth, Scott’s Kenilworth, the non-historical plays of Shakspere, as he lived at that epoch, Bacon’s Essays, and others.

I mention merely a few. The amount of reading can be increased almost indefinitely and will depend on the time of the pupil, the plan of the teacher, and the accessibility of the books. Most of the books necessary for English History are now published in cheap form and are within reach of every pupil.

A great deal of reading is very desirable; it is the only way to give our pupils any broad view of literature and history, and to cultivate a taste for reading in those destitute of it. It is often the only opportunity for reading which some pupils will ever have, and it lasts them a life-time as a pleasure and a benefit.[1]

The reading may be done in the class or out of school hours. It is well to read as much as practicable in class, and to have some sketch of the outside reading given in class.

Geography must also go hand in hand with history, a point now well understood. But its importance can hardly be exaggerated and its practice is of the utmost value. One must use maps to study and read intelligently.

In American History pursue a similar course, as for example:

At the period of discovery and early settlement, read Irving’s Columbus, Simms’ Vasconselos (De Soto’s Expedition), and Yemassee, John Smith’s Life and Writings, Longfellow’s Hiawatha and Miles Standish, Kennedy’s Rob of the Bowl, Strachey’s Works, Mrs. Preston’s Colonial Ballads, &c.

In Revolutionary times, the Revolutionary novels of Simms and Cooper, Kennedy’s Horse-Shoe Robinson; the great statesmen of the day, as Jefferson, Adams, Patrick Henry, Hamilton, Washington; Cooke’s Fairfax in which Washington appears as a youthful surveyor, and Virginia Comedians in which Patrick Henry appears, Thackeray’s Virginians; and others.

Each teacher will make his own list as his time and command of books allow. And each State or section of our great country will devote more time to its own special history and literature; this is right, for knowledge like charity begins at home, and gradually widens until it embraces the circle of the universe.

In collecting material for classes in American History to read in accordance with this plan, it was found easy to get cheap editions of Irving, Longfellow, Cooper, and other writers of the northern States, but almost impossible to get those of the southern, in cheap or even expensive editions. And the present volume has been prepared to supply in part this deficiency. To fit it to the plan suggested, the dates of the writers and the period and character of their works have been indicated, and some selections from them given for reading,—too little, it is feared, to be of much service, and yet enough to stimulate to further interest and study.

The materials have been found so abundant, even so much more abundant than I suspected when undertaking the work, that it has been a hard task to make a selection from the rich masses of interesting writing. I fear that the work is too fragmentary and contains too many writers to make a lasting impression in a historical point of view.

If, however, it leads to a sympathetic study of Southern life and literature, and especially if it makes young people acquainted with our writers of the past and with something of the old-time life and the spirit that controlled our ancestors, it will serve an excellent purpose.

Our writers should be compared with those of other sections and other countries; and due honor should be given them, equally removed from over-praise and from depreciation. If we, their countrymen, do not know and honor them, who can be expected to do so? No people is great whose memory is lost, whose interest centres in the present alone, who looks not reverently back to true beginnings and hopefully forward to a grand future.

So I would urge my fellow-teachers to a fresh diligence in studying and worthily understanding the life and literature of our past, and in impressing them upon the minds of the rising generation, so as to infuse into the new forms now arising the best and purest and highest of the old forms fast passing away.

My sincere thanks are hereby tendered to the scholars who have aided me by their advice and encouragement, to living authors and the relatives of those not living who have generously given me permission to copy extracts from their writings, to the publishers who have kindly allowed me to use copyrighted matter, to Miss Anna M. Trice, Mr. Josiah Ryland, Jr., and the officials of the Virginia State Library where I found most of the books needed in my work, and to Mr. David Hutcheson, of the Library of Congress. My greatest indebtedness is to Professor William Taylor Thom and Professor John P. McGuire, for scholarly criticism and practical suggestions in the course of preparation.

1895.Louise Manly.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] See Professor Woodrow Wilson’s excellent article on the University study of Literature and Institutions, in the Forum, September, 1894.

LIST OF WORKS FOR REFERENCE.

Appleton: Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 6 vols.

Duyckinck: Cyclopaedia of American Literature, 2 vols.

Allibone: Dictionary of Authors, 3 vols.

Kirk: Supplement to Allibone, 2 vols.

Stedman: Poets of America.

Stedman and Hutchinson: Library of American Literature, 11 vols.

Poe: Literati of New York.

Griswold: Poets and Poetry of America.

Prose Writers of America.

Female Poets of America.

Hart: American Literature, Eldredge Bros., Phila.

Davidson: Living Writers of the South, (1869).

Miss Rutherford: American Authors, Franklin Publishing Company, Atlanta, Georgia.

Southern Literary Messenger, 1834-1863.

Southern Quarterly Review, 1842-1855.

De Bow’s Commercial Review.

The Land We Love, 1865-1869.

Southern Review, and Eclectic Review, Baltimore.

Southland Writers, by Ida Raymond (Mrs. Tardy).

Women of the South in Literature, by Mary Forrest.

Fortier: Louisiana Studies, F. F. Hansell, New Orleans.

Ogden: Literature of the Virginias, Independent Publishing Company, Morgantown, West Virginia.

C. W. Coleman, Jr.: Recent Movement in the Literature of the South, Harper’s Monthly, 1886, No. 74, p. 837.

T. N. Page: Authorship in the South before the War, Lippincott’s Magazine, 1889, No. 44, p. 105.

Professor C. W. Kent, University of Virginia: Outlook for Literature in the South.

People’s Cyclopedia (1894).

Table of Contents

In Chronological Order.

FIRST PERIOD ... 1579-1750.

SECOND PERIOD ... 1750-1800.

THIRD PERIOD ... 1800-1850.

FOURTH PERIOD ... 1850-1895.

INDEX.

FOOTNOTE:

[2] Ginseng-Digger.

List of Illustrations.

Southern Literature.

FIRST PERIOD ... 1579-1750.

JOHN SMITH.

1579=1631.

Captain John Smith, the first writer of Virginia, was born at Willoughby, England, and led a life of rare and extensive adventure. Lamenting and repenting, he says, to have seen so many Christians slaughter one another, in France and the Lowlands, he enlisted in the wars against the Turks. He was captured by them and held prisoner for a year, but escaped and travelled all over Europe. He finally joined the expedition to colonize Virginia, and came over with the first settlers of Jamestown in 1607. His life here is well known; he remained with the colony two years. He afterwards returned to America as Admiral of New England, but did not stay long. He spent the remainder of his life in writing accounts of himself and his travels, and of the colonies in America.

WORKS.

True Relation (1608).

Map of Virginia (1612).

Description of New England (1616).

New England’s Trials (1620).

Accidence for Young Seamen (1626).

Generall Historie of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles (1624).

True Travels (1630).

Advertisements for Inexperienced Planters of New England (1631).

Captain John Smith.

Captain Smith’s style is honest and hearty in tone, picturesque, often amusing, never tiresome. It is involved and ungrammatical at times, but not obscure. The critics have professed to find many inaccuracies of historical statement; but the following, from Professor Edward Arber, the editor of the English Reprint of Smith’s Works, will acquit him of this charge:

"Inasmuch as the accuracy of some of Captain Smith’s statements has, in this generation, been called in question, it was but our duty to subject every one of the nearly forty thousand lines of this book to a most searching criticism; scanning every assertion of fact most keenly, and making the Text, by the insertion of a multitude of cross-references, prove or disprove itself.

"The result is perfectly satisfactory. Allowing for a popular style of expression, the Text is homogeneous; and the nine books comprising it, though written under very diverse circumstances, and at intervals over the period of twenty-two years (1608-1630), contain no material contradictions. Inasmuch, therefore, as wherever we can check Smith, we find him both modest and accurate, we are led to think him so, where no such check is possible, as at Nalbrits in the autumn of 1603, and on the Chickahominy in the winter of 1607-’8." See Life, by Simms, by Warner, and by Eggleston in Pocahontas.

RESCUE OF CAPTAIN SMITH BY POCAHONTAS, OR MATOAKA.

(From Generall Historie.)

[This extract from his Generall Historie is in the words of a report by eight gentlemen of the Jamestown Colony. It is corroborated by Captain Smith’s letter to the Queen on the occasion of Pocahontas’ visit to England after her marriage to Mr. John Rolfe. Matoaka, or Matoax, was her real name in her tribe, but it was considered unlucky to tell it to the English strangers.]

Rescue of Captain Smith by Pocahontas.

At last they brought him [Smith] to Meronocomoco, where was Powhatan their Emperor. Here more than two hundred of those grim Courtiers stood wondering at him, as he had beene a monster; till Powhatan and his trayne had put themselues in their greatest braveries. Before a fire vpon a seat like a bedstead, he sat covered with a great robe, made of Rarowcun skinnes, and all the tayles hanging by. On either hand did sit a young wench of 16 or 18 yeares; and along on each side the house, two rowes of men, and behind them as many women, with all their heads and shoulders painted red; many of their heads bedecked with the white downe of Birds; but every one with something; and a great chayne of white beads about their necks.

At his entrance before the King, all the people gaue a great shout. The Queene of Appamatuck was appointed to bring him water to wash his hands, and another brought him a bunch of feathers, in stead of a Towell to dry them; having feasted him after their best barbarous manner they could, a long consultation was held, but the conclusion was, two great stones were brought before Powhatan; then as many as could layd hands on him, dragged him to them, and thereon laid his head, and being ready with their clubs, to beate out his braines, Pocahontas, the Kings dearest daughter, when no intreaty could prevaile, got his head in her armes, and laid her owne vpon his to saue him from death: whereat the Emperour was contented he should liue to make him hatchets, and her bells, beads, and copper; for they thought him as well of all occupations as themselues. For the King himselfe will make his owne robes, shooes, bowes, arrowes, pots; plant, hunt, or doe anything so well as the rest.

They say he bore a pleasant shew,

But sure his heart was sad.

For who can pleasant be, and rest,

That liues in feare and dread:

And having life suspected, doth

It still suspected lead.

Two dayes after, Powhatan having disguised himselfe in the most fearefullest manner he could, caused Captain Smith to be brought forth to a great house in the woods, and there vpon a mat by the fire to be left alone. Not long after from behinde a mat that divided the house, was made the most dolefullest noyse he ever heard; then Powhatan, more like a devill than a man, with some two hundred more as blacke as himselfe, came vnto him and told him now they were friends, and presently he should goe to James towne, to send him two great gunnes, and a gryndstone, for which he would giue him the Country of Capahowosick, and for ever esteeme him as his sonne Nantaquoud.

So to James towne with 12 guides Powhatan sent him. That night, they quartered in the woods, he still expecting (as he had done all this long time