ay | Interest in = « ey } Sou ern Letters . wnas, W. Kent, M, A., Ph.D i (5 Venti The C. Alphonse Smith Collection of American Literature BWequeathed to Th THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT CHAPEL HILL ENDOWED BY THE DIALECTIC AND PHILANTHROPIC SOCIETIES PS261 K,3 Ce 3 The Revival of Interest In Southern Letters. BY CHAS. W. KENT, M. A., PH.D. 2s se Literature in the South. BY HAMILTON W. MABIE. ‘ 1900: B. F. JOHNSON PUBLISHING COs, RICHMOND, VA. CR WU Te Beas etn Manny Ce VPM : f via be oi ee fi IN, anes gud Vey Whe mS ; ipl q] Wie, Ah thy y i Ch ane PRY iy) {1-0 CCD. THE REVIVAL OF INTEREST IN SOUTHERN LETTERS. THE REVIVAL OF INTEREST IN SOUTHERN LETTERS, AND A PLEA FOR THE PRESERVATION OF THE SOUTH- | LAND’S PAST. BY CHARLES W. KENT, M. A., PH.D.* Linden Kent Professor of English Literature, University of Virginia. ore by permission of the Faculty of the University of Tennessee. ) Y last formal address at this University, Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen, was delivered in your beautiful Young Men’s Christian As- sociation building, and its theme was “The Outlook for Southern Literature.’ With no intention of trav- ersing the same ground, | have allowed myself to be controlled in part by the pleasant memory of the - favorable hearing then received, in larger part by my own present and pressing occupations, in selecting, as the theme for this day and this platform, “The Re- vival of Interest in Southern Letters, and a Plea for the Preservation of our Southland’s Past.” Gratified, gentlemen of the faculty, by your invitation to return to this the scene of such pleasant and such prosperous *Annual address at the University of Tennessee Commencement June 13, 1899. Delivered without notes or manuscript, the printed form is the substance but not the exact fashion of the address. iad: 8 years of my professional life, but somewhat depressed by the gravity of the duty imposed upon me, I bal- anced in my mind whether I should attempt to please by some fervid flight of fancy those whose ears are readily tickled by graceful words, or rather utter a more sedate and thoughtful message, which, if by chance it reach a larger audience, may prove a hint of my own aim and desire and a suggestion not value- less to us all. This platform seems, too, peculiarly suited for the discussion of such a theme, for from it one speaks to audiences not so homogeneous as to commend or condemn with preconceived and fore- determined unanimity, but to audiences representing variety of origin and history and ready to listen to any proposition honestly put forward and to examine any claim frankly expounded. Moreover, reverbera- tions from this platform roll, as I know, into neigh- boring States, and if the speaker voices thoughts that are clear and true they may, perchance, leave faint impressions elsewhere as here. Mr. President, most honored friend, permit me to identify myself with you in order to gain the added force of your approval and sound judgment in saying that we who have lived through the period since Sixty-Five, who have belonged to the generation that coincides with this significant third of our closing century, have passed through two stages of experi- ence and are now well into the third. Our first was the stage of s 9 SILENT SUFFERING, or sometimes even of sullen solitude. What more natural than that a people sustained by an assured confidence in the righteousness of its cause, fired by unselfish and unremunerated zeal, flushed by timely but transient triumphs; then worn by overwhelming hardships, grieved by uncounted and unawaited dis- asters, and finally humiliated by a delayed but none the less direful defeat; what rnore natural, I say, than that a people thus tried should in the first decade—in the midst of social revolution and strained and sad- dening readjustments—have clung to its glorious past as its only sacred heritage. We clung to our achieve- ments in our country’s past, knew in our hearts and felt that no section of this country had added so many stars to the national flag, given so much terri- tory to the Union, played so active a part in making the nation, and so long presided over its destinies as the South. We could not forget that in the time that _ tried men’s souls, the fruitful days of the Revolution, Southern leaders had been in the very forefront of every patriotic movement; that for fifty-two of the first sixty-four years of our national life Southern men occupied the President’s chair; that for sixty-two years the Chief Justice of our Supreme Court was a Southerner; that the war of 1812 was forced by South- erners and won by a Southern general; that this Union is indebted to Southern men for the great Northwest, and to a Virginian for the Louisiana ac- ¥ Io quisition, which will soon be fittingly celebrated ; that the great Texas empire was acquired by the South, and Florida became ours under Southern statesman- ship. Pardon a Virginian’s pride as he recalls that Cornwallis surrendered to Washington, of Westmore- land; that Mexico yielded to Taylor of Orange and Scott of Petersburg; that Lewis and Clark went upon their famous explorations from Albemarle, and that your own John Sevier was born in Rockingham. But, sirs, these and hundreds of other things just as significant—Charleston’s interest in letters, Georgia’s contribution to female education, and Tennessee’s pride in her experiments in State-making—though remembered with pride, nay, even in those first sad days of reconstruction, with something perhaps of supercilious sullenness and injured self-esteem, were rarely mentioned save within the family circle. We refused to reveal our precious memories to those who might smile scornfully at our latent pride, or to de- liver our treasures to those who might handle them with irreverent hands. The past, at least, was ours, and we would hold it sacred and speak of it, if at all, with something of that solemn pathos and subdued sadness with which we mentioned our sainted dead. Our next stage was that of PREMATURE PATRIOTISM, and found its salient catchword in the glib phrase, the “New South.” The wiser leaders of this new II movement were not oblivious of the past, nor lacking in courage in portraying its greatness, but there were many Southerners who used the phrase with such trite flippancy as to suggest their own ignorance of their fathers’ deeds, or with such boldness and blatant as- sertiveness as seemingly to chide their fathers for their adoration of the past. The phrase “New South” was a word to conjure with, and bottomless booms, shrewd deals, fanciful financiering flourished under its aegis, and our firm grasp on some of the strong prin- ciples we once had stood for seemed loosened and our love of the old-fashioned cardinal virtues lessened. Old men thought—and many young ones shared their thinking—that this “New South’ meant breaking with the old South., Let us bury the past came to mean far more than burying its discords, its animosi- ties, its disasters, its defeats, its despairs; it seemed to mean as well its local attachments, its loves, its life, its splendid traditions, its charm of manner, its chiv- _ alry and high ideals, its achievements and its hallowed history. The departure from proverbial dignity seemed too far, the readiness of offered though unso- licited apologies, the subserviency of prompt prostra- tion to the East was neither flattering to them nor just to ourselves. But it cannot be denied that this movement was of value in calling us away—at least the younger men— from the failures of the past, from repinings for for- tunes lost and pleasures vanished, from lives of luxu- @ I2 rious idleness or of unsustained purpose, and in re- © minding us of the abundant opportunities for useful and successful living. The history of the South’s recent growth is also the history of the South’s re- duction of her army of idlers. From the busy, bust- ling East we have learned good lessons of well-de- fined purpose in life, careful. plans and preparation for our careers, and that persevering and persistent labor that extorts success. The West and North had shown by hundreds and thousands of striking exam- ples that Southern youth under conditions favorable to energy and effort have in them all the elements of success. What was needed in the South was not a change of men, as much as a change of conditions, and the changed condition of the “New South,” with its enterprises and its industries, its multiplying busi- ness and its growing demand of men, render it now. unnecessary and unwise for her sons to leave her for fairer fields. In the days of our humiliation we had not cared for the splendid literary achievements of our Puritan brethren, but in the days of our growing interest in our renewed Union we set to studying our American literature, learning, to our surprise, from the omis- sions as well as from the developed chapters of our Manuals, that American literature is “‘of necessity,’ as one of their writers says, “that of New England and New York.” I venture the assertion that our South- ern youth to-day are as familiar with the writers of — 13 the New England school as are the boys of Boston or of Concord, but the New England boys—alas! it is true of our Southern youth as well—are lamenta- bly ignorant of the literature of the South. Our American boys, without in any wise undervaluing these Puritan productions, should recognize that the knee-buckled knickerbockers, the quiet Quakers, the wide-awake Westerners and the self-conceited South- erners have not failed to contribute their share to the sum total of this American literature. And it is this lesson that we are learning as we ad- vance in our third period of SELF-RESPECTING LOYALTY. We are full partners now in ali the common posses- sions of our country, and glory, without reserve or apology, in all her national achievements. We are proud of New England’s contributions to the world’s best thought. We visit New York with the Ameri- -can’s proud sense of ownership of his metropolis. We have incorporated Pennsylvania’s history into our own colonial records, and we look upon the West with radiant maternal pride. In return we expect that the South shall be recognized fairly and fully, without prejudice of its storied past or apology for its present. If ours be the burden of the war let ours be, too, the sympathy such burden should elicit. The South, let it be known once for all, is proud of its past, though there may have been mistakes and * 14 suffering due to them, but it is far more concerned with the present, with its problems and possibilities, and it is bold enough to hope that when she has fin- ished following the will-o’-the-wisp of political vaga- ries, relearned her old lesson of devotion to principle, given over her self-defensive and self-seeking policies and conceived more broadly and unselfishly of her duties to our common country, she may again be ready to take in the Nation’s councils the place, she so long held, of political primacy. But, Mr. President, the feature of this revival to which I shall address myself more particularly is the REVIVAL OF LETTERS. In the pertods when we were either remembering our past with silent sadness or striving to forget it altogether, we allowed ample time for many of those who made that past and knew its history to depart, and we buried not merely many a man, but many a fact held in faithful and reverent memory. Our Southland has sore occasion to regret the hushed voices and withered hands, for the stories they might have told, the records they might have written, are perhaps as irrevocable as the spirits that would have inspired them. Day by day we are forced to record the deaths of those who go to their graves with death- less stories of their eventful lives unwritten. But there is a growing recognition of this unfor- tunate state, and there is now an earnest, at times al- 15 most feverish and inconsiderate haste, in gathering and recording this material. Let us grant ungrudg- ingly that this healthy and hopeful change is due in large part to our Eastern and Foreign critics, who by praising our achievements have given us confi- dence in our own judgments and enlarged our pride in our own writers. Their demand, too, to know more, and the avidity with which they seize upon all that is given, is a part of that revival of interest which is now witnessed in many ways. It is shown, for example, by the present epidemic of Southern magazines. If boys devote themselves to making toy boats it is generally because there is water near where they may test them, and though the boats may be frail and faulty, they may prove to be good first studies in ship-building. If editors and publishers launch their magazines it is because with more or less shrewdness they suspect that there is at hand a buoyant sea of appreciation upon which they may float them in safety, and if these magazines, built without good business skill, tempting the fickle pub- lic sea without the prosperous breezes of financial sup- port, the remunerative cargo of advertisements, and the judicious steering of an experienced helmsman, should founder and go down, at least the costly ex- periment may aid the next adventurer. More significant far than the numerous experi- ments with that constant chimera—a Southern maga- zine—are the open columns of the magazines already 16 established and prosperous. The venerable Parke Godwin writes me that the two leading literary edi- tors of the New York Evening Post—the arch anti- slavery journal of America—have both been Vir- ginians, John R. Thompson and George Cary Eggle- — ston, and if it were ever true that Northern editors discriminated against Southern writers as such, it is no longer. On the contrary, the editors fully realize what Pancoast, of Philadelphia, has so well expressed: “The Southern story writers have done more than give us studies of new localities; we feel instinctively a different quality in their work. If we contrast it with the productions of New England, intellectual, self-examining, self-conscious, we feel the richer col- oring, the warmer blood and quicker pulses of the South. Read the most characteristic of Hawthorne’s stories and then turn to Mars’ Chan or Meh Lady of Thomas Nelson Page. It is like passing from the world of thought to the world of action, from the analysis of life to living. The fine-spun problems of mind and conscience have no place in this world, but instead we have a story of which men and women never tire, which is almost as old in its essential ele- ments as human life. It is a world to be alive in, a young world, where the men are full of knightly cour- tesies and knightly courage, and where the women - are good and fair; a world of young heroes who can lead a cavalry charge up the slope to fall under the very lips of the cannon; of simple-hearted slaves, 17 whose lives are too barren to hold anything beyond an unquestioning and indestructible fidelity; of wo- men who seem to belong with those heroines of Homer, Shakespeare, or Scott, whom the world sup- poses itself to have outgrown. Or let us put such 4 book as Cable’s Grandissimes beside such a keen and clever study of Boston as Howell’s “A Woman’s Reason,’ and it is like the tropic warmth of the gulf stream after the chill of northern waters; let us place the fair, gentle, placid Priscilla, that old time Puritan ideal of maidenly perfection, beside one of Cable’s heroines, a creature of life, impulse, and movement, with a sparkle of the Gallic blood; vivacious, sensi- tive, appealing, changeable—and we shall know that, whatever else this Southern literature may be, at the least it is different.” And it is because editors recog- nize this difference that they have freely welcomed the best of our Southern writers; it is because they recognize in our Southern poets not only different themes—the swaying, sighing pine, the mocking bird, the generous marshes—but a different music, a livelier lilt, or a more lingering melody, that they gladly print their songs; and they welcome our more serious essays too when we speak for ourselves and frankly. When your faultless manuscript, my brother, is re- turned to you, with a politely stereotyped note of thanks, question first the manuscript’s merits, and then the editor’s malevolence, and if, my young poet, 18 your verses are not at once appreciated remember that the “South’s sad singers” waited in vain for the reasonable reward of their labors and did not live long enough to see the fame which a tardy world now bestows. Lanier, long recognized by a growing circle of the select in England and America, is fast securing that safer fame which is found in the love of the many. Chautauqua, which fitly represents that large class between the favored few, who enjoy full college privi- leges, and the great number who are denied them, last year made Lanier the patron saint, so to speak, of the graduating class, and lines from his mellifluous poems were quoted in sermon and speech, under trees and in halls. His poems were read by hun- dreds who a few years ago had never heard of him. John R. Thompson, the courteous gentleman, lecturer, poet, and editor, the friend of Tennyson and Thackeray abroad, the patron of Aldrich and Ike Marvel, Hayne, and Timrod at home, has just been honored in his old alma mater. I missed, sir, to my great regret, the exercise of yesterday, because my esteem for Thompson’s life and talents constrained me to be present at the unveiling of his portrait. From his alma mater will, it is hoped, soon issue an edition of his uncollected poems. Mississippi is preparing to honor with a bronze statue Irwin Russell, who first discovered the literary possibilities of negro dialect and first appreciated the literary value of the pathos es and humor of the negro character, and Charleston having already raised a monument to Paul Hayne, is now planning to pay tardy honor to her more bril- liant poet, the sweetest singer of the war, the incar- nate spirit of Southern song, Henry Timrod. The new edition of his poems brings him within reach of the general public, and promises a popularity denied him by the exigencies of the war. And, ladies and gentlemen, I invite you one and all to gather on the seventh of next October in the pub- lic hall of the University of Virginia to share with us in what has been called “the most notable event’ of our literary annals, the presentation to the University of a bronze bust of Edgar Allan Poe. The semi-cen- tennial of his death is to be celebrated in his alma mater by summoning around this faithful artistic rep- resentation of his face and spirit the friends and ad- mirers of Poe from all lands and giving them an opportunity to testify to his literary greatness and to --their obligations to him. Over a hundred papers and magazines have had accounts of this bronze bust, and the movement has brought about what has been called a Poe revival. To the students of the University will belong the credit, and this thought suggests another evidence of this reviving interest in Southern letters, and that is the attitude of institutions of learning to- ward it.. Sporadic investigation largely as a matter of curiosity has been heretofore undertaken, but at a number of our Southern institutions these authors 20 are now studied without any misgiving or apology. Withoutoverestimating any work because of its geo- graphical origin, leaders of Southern youth are feel- ing more and more that they should be informed about Southern as well as Eastern books, and pro- vision 1s being more amply made for the careful and scholarly investigation of Southern literary and his- torical questions. My brother alumni of the Univer- sity of Virginia who honor me here will rejoice with me that to our library has just been given an endow- ment fund, the interest of which is to be used in pro- curing books on Virginia history and literature. Am I not enough at home in the midst of friends, who for five years were kind to me far beyond my deserts, to beg without presumption that some one to whom the gift would be easy, provide here the means for a care-" ful study of the rich unwritten history of Tennessee? There seems to be evidence enough that there is at present genuine and increasing interest in South- ern letters, but care must be taken to fix this interest permanently and prevent it from becoming a mere transient and illusory fad or fashion. Such renewed zeal in Southern letters will prove valuable only if persistent and patient; for what is to be accomplished is a task not for a day, but for years, yet it is a task well worth performing. The works of some of our best authors are extant in incomplete editions and need careful re-editing by some practiced hand. Hayne’s writings after 1882 21 have not, 1 believe, been collected, nor is there a sin- gle handy volume containing all of Russell’s work. Marshall’s writings on the Federal Constitution, I am told, have never been published in full, and many of Jefferson’s letters are unprinted. Moreover, the writings of some of our authors have never been col- lected or edited at all, and if they are to be found at all must be searched for in the pages of defunct pe- riodicals or even the columns of the ordinary dailies. Twenty-six years after his death, there is no collec- tion of the writings, prose or poetry, of John R. Thompson; the semi-prophetic writings of Burwell are mainly to be found in DeBow’s Review, and I know of happy poetical paraphrases of Scott and Dickens that have never been printed at all. These are mere signs of a widespread condition. There are nearly fifteen hundred authors mentioned in Manly’s catalogue of Southern writers, and yet it is doubtful whether more than one-third have been fully _ edited. But there is another source yet from which much is to be expected. I was recently reading an old let- ter written by a visitor to Mt. Vernon in the year before Washington died. Written with the freedom of a private communication and with the vividness and vivacity for which the letters of ladies are famous, it gave a better insight into the social and domestic life of the day than could a whole volume of objective disquisitions on the abstract theme. The rich treas- 22 ures hid in garret trunks, once poured itco the his- torian’s lap; secrets, social and political, now stored in old family letters once told, will furnish new chap- ters of surprising charm and inestimable value. Let those who know where such treasures lie, where such secrets are, go to the limit of propriety and respect to persons in making them known. There are whole series of letters that might be published, and even — complete diaries that with judicious omissions, might be made public. As life is made up of details, so literature relies both for its material and its history on these apparent trivialities, and we shall not have an adequate account of Southern life and Southern let- ters until this material shall have been gathered and classified, then grasped by some one with such gifts of generalization as to comprehend in one consistent whole these perplexing minutiae. New England has written its own history thoroughly, and has made her recognition easy by first recognizing herself. There are no unknown writers in New England, no meri- torious productions still unprinted, no important facts unexamined and unrecorded, but the Southern States have paid but little attention to such matters until recently, and even now the several historical and lite- rary societies devoted to this purpose are craving financial support, begging aid they should have by right, and deploring lack of general interest in their aim and undertakings. In the mean time there is not a good manual of Southern literature, though Miss 23 Manly’s is a useful catalogue of our writers; there is no good volume given to the criticism of our poets; no adequate discussion anywhere of our prose writers; no connected account of our literary movements and measures; no good anthology of our poetry, except for our lyrics, and no reasonably complete collection of biographical sketches readily accessible. Our youth are of necessity growing up in ignorance of the South’s achievements, because those who could have told us neglected it in their day, and those who may tell it, though less well, have not yet taken up the task. Yet, without full knowledge of the South’s contri- butions to our national history and literature, the true and finished story of this nation cannot be written. Our part in colonial history and in the making of the nation is cheerfully conceded by all save a few preju- diced and blinded bigots, but there seems to be on the part of those who write of a later period a latent fear -lest they concede too much, a cautious and pains- taking anxiety lest recognition be too frank and com- mendation too generous. Yet there are signs that the Von Holst school of historical criticism, foreign in _ its origin and foreign to our ideals of free thought, free speech, free institutions and free enjoyment of all the immunities and privileges of citizens, freedom to admire all men of heroic mould and saintly lives, freedom to claim all greatness, whether it served our narrower purpose or not—is losing somewhat its pres- 24 tige and the wiser and gentler spirits of our day ad- mire sometimes where they cannot approve and proudly acclaim what they have not always loved. It is true a recent writer speaks most disparagingly of Calhoun, but then a far wiser man, who totally disagreed with Calhoun, has praised his splendid intel- lect, his honesty and his courage. It is true that our new Congressional Library, with its ample propor- tions, has no room for the names of Lee and Jack- son and Stuart, but then Washington politicians must live, they think, and their faint-hearted fanaticism is proverbially a part of their stock in trade. What dif- ference does it make? Has not Henderson given Jackson his right place? Does anyone now dare dis- parage the superb leadership of the great military chieftain, Lee, and do we not at heart approve the good judgment of the cavalry prince of the Franco-_ Prussian war, Frederick Carl, who would hang above his own picture that of no cavalry leader save that of our own dashing and daring Jeb Stuart? Our united country cannot afford to forget these men any more than it can surrender Maury, our greatest geographer, or Audubon, or Clay, or relin- quish its claim to William C. Preston, perhaps next to Edward Everett, our greatest academical orator. Nor must the history of our nation’s life when it re- cords the unsurpassed devotion of the Puritan fathers leave unrecorded the quenchless heroism and un- stinted ardor of sturdy Scotch-Irish Presbyterianism, 25 which everywhere erected twin altars to learning and to God; nor the inflaming evangelism of Whitfield and Asbury, and the new spirituality of Methodism; nor the conservative influence of the Episcopal church, with its perpetual contributions to substan- tial culture and high refinement; nor the democratic influence by example and model of all congregational forms of church government, which foster the spirit of individual responsibility and a sense of sane equal- ity. The religious life of the South has been singu- larly free from whims and fancies, and if the whole body of theological writings, sound, orthodox, and strong, could now be collected it would be a bulwark against encroaching laxity and a fortress of safe con- servatism. _ But even with literature taken more narrowly, with poetry and fiction, the state of affairs is totally un- satisfactory. We may without discouragement admit the relative poverty of our literature in view of its _ present promise, but it is easy enough to select a few names which apart from all sentiment—though I do not know why we should abolish sentiment—fully de- serve our recognition and our study. Yet when we turn to the usual hand-books we are led to believe that they count for little. They have challenged the admiration of the foreign world, but they receive little notice in the pages of our text-books, and less, alas, at our own hands. I am not inclined to bring charges of prejudice, for I know too well the difficulty of pro- 26 curing information about these writers, and I am willing to defend these text-book authors by saying that they, as we, are ignorant, but this, friends, is my contention, that we must hasten the day when neither through ignorance nor prejudice can it happen that Stedman can give fifty pages to Walt Whitman with his “huge collops of the raw material of poetry” and “his barbaric yawp,’ and five lines to the divinely gifted Timrod; that Richardson should give forty pages to Cooper and four to that pioneer of romance, Simms; that Pancoast, in my opinion, the most im- partial and fair-minded writer who has as yet entered the field of American literary criticism, should in a book devoted to literature, give as much space to Franklin as to Poe, and leave entirely unmentioned Father Ryan and Father Tabb, and have no word for James Barron Hope, twice summoned by his State, and once by his country, to recite memorial poems; that Pattee should give as much space to Howells as to Cable, Harris, and Page combined, or should find several pages for the discussion of the Rev. Mr. Roe, and not room to mention even the names of Robert Burns Wilson and James Lane Allen; or finally, that Houghton, Mifflin & Co. should give the sanction of their dignified seal to a collection of Masterpieces of American Literature, which includes Mr. O’Reilly’s prosaic lines on The Puritan, and omits Poe’s Raven! Brothers of the South, nay, brothers everywhere, who love fairness, appreciate merit, and earnestly de- 27 sire Our country’s greatness of mind and heart, as well as of extent and might, it is ours, it is yours, to labor, with love, if possible, but always honestly and earnestly, that our writers, wherever born, wherever they live, may receive their due. The task here in the South is most difficult, for we were ever too prone to let the dead past bury its dead, and the future will find even more difficulty than we if it is left to assume a labor of love unaccomplished by us. Young men of this University, young men of all Universities, with no apology and no arrogance, no boasting and no browbeating, with loving labor, with honest minds, and with a strong sense of the sanctity of truth, save for your country and yourselves the lives and labors of your ancestors. The time, beyond all other times, is favorable. In the busy days of our colonial life we found little time for letters, and devoted ourselves in the days of nation-making to state-papers, speeches and com- mentaries. Between 1800 and 1850, our first national period, began much of our best literature. The lite- tary momentum then acquired carried us with com- mendable attainments through the decade of the pre- monition of war, and even through the war itself. From the war to 1876 the period of reconstruction lasted. That year signalized by the centennial of our country’s existence was perhaps more signally marked—by the peaceful decision of the Hayes-Tilden contest, the direst threat our reunited union has ever 28 had, the withdrawal of troops from Louisiana, and Hampton’s election in South Carolina. The recon- struction days were over and our country was again reunited, but there is needed for a reunion more than legislative enactments and the withdrawal of forces; there are needed common ideals, similar sentiments, a pride in patriotism. ‘These had, I believe, been slowly, perhaps, and steadily growing, but an im- mense impulse was given them by the recent war with Spain. We may differ, as no doubt we do, honestly, about that war, its causes, its necessity, its conse- quences, but we are as one, I presume, in believing that its battles by land and by sea showed that our manhood had not degenerated, it showed further that there are no sectional dividing lines in personal bravery, and it showed again to the surprise of some, the gratification of all, that this, our common coun- try, was, nay is, united more closely and compactly than we knew. The spirit of the time is promised peace. We have had all the excitement, the stir, the mental inspiration and elation of a successful war and we have sunk back quietly into the lap of pros- perity. Our hearts have been warmed, not over- heated or hardened; our pride has been kindled into enthusiasm. The value of an outside force in cement- ing domestic parts has been felt and the new motive force of a splendid heroism has served the double pur- pose of a test of manhood and an incentive to great deeds. In this full patriotism of the present day there 29 is no stain of sectionalism, no sorrows of division. There is much to increase our love of country, noth- ing to lessen our love of the state. We recall that once upon a time the splendid fleet of proud Spain sailed forth to meet and destroy the forces of a little green island in a northern sea; from the sunken Armada the victorious English navy car- ried back not only the triumphant news of a signal victory but the rich cargo of national pride and confi- dence. These made England stronger and more glo- rious than ever; there was a joy in living, a bound- ing expansiveness in the contemplation of her new territory beyond the sea, her victories in her own waters, her supremacy over domestic contentions, her united country, and out of them sprang almost with- out preparation and unexpectedly the splendid ex- pression of the world’s best thought. The Elizabethan era in literature is the Elizabethan era of natural pros- perity and self-respect. We have heard of another conflict between the sons of old Spain and the descendants of these nations she some three hundred years ago strove to subjugate, and the analogy may not be fanciful, that out of the victories of Manila bay and Santiago may spring a new pride, a new patriotism, a new national purpose that may find its best expression not in a new and ex- panded government, but in a newly expanded and re- splendent literature. Pride and patriotism before now have been translated into song and story. This is 30 just the time for generous and gracious emulation in claiming our full part in this nation, and just the time of peace and plenty for leisure and labor in substan- tiating our claim. Now or never, it would seem, is the time not merely for making history, but for re- cording the history we have made. The surest pledge of a nation’s present is her faith in a heroic past; the best guarantee of a nation’s fu- ture is her full use of the present opportunities. And, sirs, her greatest opportunities to-day are found in her educational institutions, at once the garner-houses and seed-distributors of our literary life. In such in- stitutions as this, zealous professors and loving and ambitious disciples must unite to increase the sum of our rich stores; from such institutions as this, must go forth the professors themselves and their scholars to give the people more of the knowledge they have acquired. Let a university be in the focus of the world’s past learning, but let it be a lens to dissemi- nate the inspiring rays of light. The duties of a uni- versity must always be twofold, to collect, collate and classify knowledge and to apply knowledge to life, which is wisdom. The old theory that scholarship is the sole end and aim of a university career has given away now to the higher, nobler conception that a uni- versity’s higher purpose is to fit men for life. The world needs men of complete character more than men of crammed craniums, and character develop- ment finds a sure and potential stimulus in the study 31 of the deeds and thoughts of our greatest leaders, our prudent counsellors, our star-guided geniuses. The privileges of our universities and colleges are great. It is theirs to foster and extend this patriotic regard for American institutions and prepare men to meet their needs. The professors must assume the anxious and responsible labor of moulding minds and must be content to do the extra work required by their high places, without extra remuneration or even adequate emolument. Students, too, must pay the penalty of learning by bearing patiently and bravely the hardship it imposes, and meet obstacles with the good cheer of one challenged to overcome rather than with the depression of one doomed to defeat. Professors and students alike are laboring that others entering into their labors may learn the lesson of deeper and purer love of state, and make more sure and lasting our state’s permanent prosperity. Does the state, then, owe nothing to her institutions? In _ her organic capacity the state can do little towards making men of her boys, true citizens of her subjects, save by providing the environments in which growth _ may be attained and wisdom acquired. The discipline needed is to be found in the universities. If battles are won by men behind the guns, it is well to remem- ber that behind the men were the schools where they were trained or the stern discipline of ship’s school- ing. The state’s clear duty to herself and her citizens is to contribute of her finances, the inconsiderable OS Sih 32 portion needed to equip her universities and enable men of brain and breadth to do her work. No state proud of her achievements and concerned about her prospects dare act niggardly toward her university, for the university is the conservator of her history and should interpret to the children of the day that experience which teaches for the future. Pride in the past is the regenerative force of the future. As is the state’s interest in education so is the guarantee of her prosperity. It is now a generally ac- cepted axiom of our prudential philosophy that a father can leave his son no better fortune than a good education. A cultivated mind and a well rounded character firmly rooted in fixed principles far out- value gold and silver. A state can never measure its wealth in taxable property, for its real treasures are its true men. Therefore she can give her children no greater boon than the opportunity for thorough train- ing. The collected wisdom of the state will not transcend the individual wisdom of her wisest men, who, whatever else they neglect, will not omit the education of their children. re Ay RANA UNI Ang Pann sd YY | wy ay iit Me Hye y Ay Ail Meda LMAO UD EIR MUI bedi Wie ya) py MEME vi ) HT ; . ive i , MH) iN Hy ny uh a fy My Hay MT Wy hitb AV ' Ute PCM ENO f Aree aay MOU iaiaiae WINS mY | OA ta LITERATURE IN THE SOUTH. Apropos of this address of Dr. Kent’s we reprint, by permission the fol- lowing editorial from THE OuTLooK for December 2, 1899, written by Mr. Hamilton W. Mabie, of New York: In the widening of literary activity which during the past two decades has been giving us something approaching a national literature, the South has borne a very notable part; indeed, it may be said that it has borne the chief part. At the close of the war American literature meant, to the vast majority of readers in this country and abrvad, the New England writers, with Irving, Bryant, and Poe; and there are readers, and even writers of text-books on the sub- ject, who are still at this point. But the country has gone far beyond it; the old reputations are safe, but we are living in a broader day, and the sections are lost in the Nation. Every part of the country has found some expression in literature, and the open- minded student of the spiritual progress of America _ hears a chorus of voices where he once heard only a few individual tones. To this increasing volume of literary expression the South has made a contribution of the most original and significant kind. The genius of the old South went into the management of public affairs, and gave the country a group of statesmen who would have [ 35 ] 36 added dignity to the most illustrious periods of states- manship. Such men as Washington, Jefferson, Madi- son, and Marshall, to cite the earliest examples, do not suffer by comparison with the foremost public men of any country; and the traditions of ability, character, and devotion to the public service created by these eminent servants of the State were sustained to the very middle of the century. In no section of the country was there deeper interest in public affairs and more general and intelligent discussion of public questions than in the old South. It was the misfor- tune rather than the fault of the Southern people that slavery, being an anachronism in a cultivated modern society, diverted the vital forces of the section from their normal channel and interrupted natural develop- ment. The South never lacked institutions, like the Uni- © versity of Virginia, which kept alive the best tradi- tions of scholarship; it never lacked that fine old- fashioned culture which kept the delightful homes on the tidewaters of Virginia, on the South Carolina plantations, and in many other localities, in touch with the best of thought and art which the Old World could send to the New. Indeed, it may be questioned whether, within a much smaller circle, the love of letters for their own sake was not keener than in New England, where there was a much larger group of highly educated men, but where ethical and 37 religious questions made literature as literature a mat- ter of secondary importance. Social, industrial, and political conditions in the old South did not, however, foster and stimulate lit- erary expression. Plantation life produced a society which resembled-in taste and interest the English country society of the last century; social intercourse became one of the finest arts of life; but the attrition of mind with mind in cities was largely lost. None of the elements of an active literary life was present; writers were few; there were no publishers of means, and the circle of readers was too small to give an author of the first rank adequate support. The “Southern Literary Messenger,” under Poe’s editor- ship, seemed to promise definite encouragement to Southern writers and to offer a kind of leadership to Southern literary development; but Poe, although not lacking in editorial sagacity, was not fitted by temperament to do such a work. Professor William M. Thornton, of the University of Virginia, not long ago reviewed the literary his- tory of the South in an address full of affection for his section, but full also of sound literary judgment, an address which deserves careful reading at the hands of all Northern students of our literature. For, limited as was the literary expression of the old South, it has not, as arule, had adequate attention; the great majority of our literary histories and text-books have shown, in this respect, lamentable lack of perspective, 38 a lack due not to sectional prejudice, but to the pre- possessions of a period when for most Northern read- ers New England literature and American literature were interchangeable terms. - Poe, Timrod, and Lanier must be seriously reck- oned with in any adequate account of American litera- ture, and Professor Thornton is quite within bounds in claiming for them poetic equality with Bryant, Whittier, and Longfellow: Surely it is not the blind partiality of a Southerner for men and things Southern that makes me discern in our own poets—in Poe and Timrod and Lanier—a truer poetic spirit, a deeper union with the divine po- tencies of beauty and goodness and love, than are to be found in their brother singers—even in Bryant and Whittier and Longfellow. When we reflect upon the shortness of their sorrowing lives, on the anxie- — ties and sufferings which clouded their mortal days, on the noble courage with which they strove for op- portunity to utter forth their heaven-inspired mes- sages, on the rich possibilities of their fates had health and ease been given to them, our admiration for their genius is deepened, and all the fountains of our pity are unsealed. The South of to-day has, however, no explanations to make; her quota of writers of original gift and genuine art is perhaps more important than that fur- nished by any other section of the country. Mr. Har- ris is one of the first writers of the day by virtue of the freshness of his materials and of his art; Mr. Page 39 has given us those softly touched and deeply human- ized pictures of an older society which, in their sim- plicity and sincerity, carry the assurance of long life with them; Mr. Allen has interpreted another phase of the same social life with an art of surpassing beauty; the memory of Richard Malcolm Johnston will long be kept green by his delightful, humorous sketches of Middle Georgia; Mrs. Stuart knows how to set humor and pathos flowing, after the manner of nature, from the same springs; Miss King has shown the most sensitive and vital skill in her New Orleans studies; Mr. Cable’s art long ago evidenced his right to a permanent place in American fiction; Miss Mur- free has made the isolated plateau of the Tennessee country familiar ground to the whole country; and, latest of this vigorously gifted group, Miss Johnston has brought back with graphic skill the manner and spirit of the colonial times on the tidewaters of the James river. These writers exhibit very distinctly certain quali- ties of the Southern temperament from which much _ may be expected in the literature of the future. That temperament is strong in the primal qualities of litera- ture—passion, sentiment, emotion, and humor. It is not afraid of emotion, as the Northern temperament often is. It has a native bent towards certain high ideals, and has not been touched by the frost of the critical atmosphere. There is, perhaps, too little criti- cism in the South; but there is, on the other hand, that courage of emotion which all the great artist } have had. The work of these writers shows the origi- native impulses; it is not the product of ripe scholar-@ ship nor of a cosmopolitan culture; it comes from the} heart rather than from the analytical faculties ;, it deals! with the universal emotions, believes in them, exalts) them, and idealizes them. It is made of flesh and blood; it is, therefore, simple, tender, humorous, and Mioeeten human. And these qualities give atta that it has long life before it. a It is a matter of minor importance from what et tion our literature comes, so long as we have it; our real books belong to the whole country, wherever they happen to be born, but the contribution of the South of to-day to American letters is so significant and so characteristic that it ought to be studied mors carefully as a whok. | Gaylord Bros. Be ge et ‘cpt y acuse, N. Y. Pia. iN 21, 1908 This book is due at the WALTER R. DAVIS LIBRARY on the last date stamped under ‘‘Date Due.” If not on hold it may be renewed by bringing it to the library. DATE DUE