the truth told by him in rugged plainness becomes convincing. Commenting upon the hypocritical preachers who came to Virginia, he declares that "very few of good conversation would adventure thither yet many came, such as wore black coats and could babble in a pulpit, roar in a tavern, exact from their parishioners, and rather by their dissoluteness destroy than feed their flocks."

In all comparisons he is the true American; his is the best land on the globe. He pities the "base, slavish, penurious life" of the English laborer. Many, he thinks, "itch out their wearisome lives in reliance of other men's charities, an uncertain and unmanly expectation." Again, he writes: "I have seriously considered when I have (passing the streets) heard the several cries and noting the commodities and the worth of them they have carried and cried up and down, how possibly a livelihood could be exacted out of them, as to cry 'matches,' 'small coal,' 'blacking,' 'pen and ink,' 'thread,' 'laces,' and a hundred more such kind of trifling merchandises." It is the observing, shrewd, practical American who writes this,-the first specimen of his tribe. He is impatient at the sight of oppression; no excuse is accepted for loss of time and of energy; reverence for customs does not blind his eyes to resulting miseries. His work has the strong, masculine healthiness of an intellect that has felt the freshness, the unrestraint of a vast, new country.

XI

Hammond's book was published in 1656; in 1666 there appeared a little volume, entitled A Character of the Province of Maryland. Its author, GEORGE ALSOP, was a young emigrant, who in 1658, being then in his twentieth year, sold his labor for four years in advance in order that he might secure

George
Alsop

passage to America. He was a thorough despiser of Cromwell, and, as this had been the partial cause of his leaving England, he at once returned upon the accession of King Charles. But the few years that he remained in Maryland served to make material for the drollest papers of the early Colonial period. Imbued with the spirit of mirth, it is indeed a “dish of discourse." It is a mixture of prose and so-called poetry, a jumble of interesting facts, ridiculous descriptions, and indelicate and often vulgar assertions. In Alsop we have the loud-laughing country wit who is also able to write. He spares no one, not even himself. Yet mingled with his humor is some genuine enthusiasm for the productiveness of America.

"Here, if the devil had such a vagary in his head as he had once among the Gadarines, he might drown a thousand head of hogs and they'd ne'er be missed; for the very woods of this province swarm with them." And, again, he declares that "herds of deer are as numerous in the province of Maryland as cuckolds can be in London, only their horns are not so well dressed and tipped with silver." The same years that Alsop was writing his drolleries, the psalm-singing settlers far north of him were calmly reading a cheerful little volume dealing with eternal damnation and other pleasant features of the hereafter, and entitled The Day of Doom. What a contrast!

XII

Here we may close the record of the first period in Southern Literature. It is still a literature of transported Englishmen; but in the next Close of the period it ceases to be such. Pride in First Period America as a home-land is slowly gaining expression; it is a period of enthusiastic descriptions; in its predominance of the

material and nature-loving over the religious and æsthetic, it at once asserts one of the main differences between the literatures of the two sections.

Meanwhile the New England settlement had begun and was prospering. Stern Religion was its monarch. The theological tone pervaded all thought, all literature; in the South it never had a start. In 1639 a printing press had been placed in the President House at Harvard, and by 1640 that monstrosity of verse, The Bay Psalm Book, had been printed. Then followed a stream of really learned theology, with, now and then, an almanac or semi-scientific work for variety, until at length, in 1662, a book of verse, The Day of Doom, mentioned above, changed the current. The less austere type of character found along the Southern coast began and continued to run a different course. But all this becomes more evident in the period that follows.

CHAPTER II

NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS

(1676-1740)

I

John Milton and American Literature were born on almost the same dates. The year of his death (1674) is nearly that of the end of what may be considered the first period in the Southern branch of that literature. But Milton's poetry did not influence greatly the writings of the South either in those first years or in the period now to be examined. He was too much a Puritan for these people, was too severe, possessed too much moral earnestness. The planter's life, with its easy contentment, hospitality, and rough luxury, was not of the same spirit.

Yet, from another source, there at length came into the literature of the Virginia colonies the very earnestness, the very thoughtfulness, the very moral purpose that had made Milton distasteful to them. in his own day. That source was Bacon's Rebellion (1676). From that time forth a notable change came over all American writings. Of course, other causes besides this small but valiant uprising helped to bring in the new era. America was now becoming a true home-land. There now lived many men and women who had been born in Virginia, who had seen no other land, and who possessed, therefore, a genuine love for these hills and valleys. Also,

in the earlier days every one who received any education whatever had gone back to old England for it; but now Harvard and Yale were at hand, while in the colony itself, as early as 1693, William and Mary College had been opened. Under the management of its founder, James Blair, who was its president for fifty years, it rapidly advanced in both scholastic and financial ability, and by 1776 was the richest educational institution in America. Again, the fertility of the soil and the vast amount of unclaimed land had made a comfortable living easy to obtain, while the freedom from the restraints of European life was something to be appreciated. These circumstances and many others had changed the people from a band of temporary colonists, ever looking to an ultimate return to England, to a firmly united community, or social body, contented with their home and looking forward only to a greater expansion of their own local activities.

The first three quarters of the century, then, had been a period of transporting English civilization and culture to America; the last quarter saw the creation of a national consciousness. In this period Southern colonists began to write for Southern colonists, and not for foreign readers. Originality began to assert itself. Local history, local conditions, and, above all, local politics received written discussion. Less was written now, it is true; for, in the lack of literary environment, production languished; but what was written was more truly American. It was far less geographical and descriptive than the literature of the previous era: and the reason is obvious. The men that composed the greater portion of the body of readers were men of the new land, acquainted with all the details of American life and its environments, and they cared noth