To the Editor of the Atlantic Magazine. DOMESTIC LITERATURE. Materiam dat locus ipse. OVID. A writer in the first number of this magazine, whom, though coinciding with him in the main, I shall take the liberty of flatly contradicting, in some of his positions, has asserted that the history, superstitions and natural and moral features of our country, are inadequate for the purposes of poetry and fiction. That, as he says, 'our national associations are few,'* I am willing to concede; but I insist that the local associations are many, and of deep interest. Some of them, too, are beginning to assume the rust of antiquity. They have arrived at a respectable old age, being quite beyond the memory of living men, and therefore affording scope for imagination; while they are not, on the other hand, so hidden in the shadows of past days, as to lose the charm of personal interest. The writer goes on to say,-Of the mummery of aboriginal superstition, little can be learned, and of that little, it seems that nothing can be made; of traditionary history we have hardly any that is of a romantic character.' Both of these propositions I beg leave most cordially to deny. I admit, that the belief in witchcraft' will not afford materials for romance, equal to those with which the once far-spread dominion of judicial astrology has supplied modern romancers. But I deny that the grand and beautiful works of nature absolutely require historical associations, to render them fit themes for the imagination; an inference which the writer referred to seems disposed to make in his essay. On all these things, in their order, I propose to make a few comments, which must necessarily be desultory, and, I fear, trite; premising, that I was led to them by two works just published,f which, with several others that have recently appeared, and many, we hope, that are to follow, do and will, of themselves, sufficiently refute any dogmas, predicated on abstract reasoning, that assert the impossibility of creating a literature purely domestic. The pamphlet entitled Letters from Fort * Vide page 21 of this Magazine. + Letters found in the ruins of Fort Braddock, including an interesting American tale. O. Wilder & Jas. M. Campbell, 1824. Sketch of Connecticut, forty years since. Hartford. Oliver Cooke & Sons, 1824. pp. 278. Braddock,' is full of excellent hints for an historical and descriptive novel. Little more can be said of it, as it is merely a sketch, a skeleton of a story; although some of the parts are very finely sustained. The Sketch of Connecticut' will, I presume, be reviewed at some length, in this magazine. I shall therefore only remark here, that it seems written in a very chaste style, and bears internal evidence of being the production of a lady. I may, however, be mistaken. The ideals of the Indian character has been drawn in the sweetest of modern poems, Gertrude of Wyoming; in which its attributes of the cool and calculating courage of man, united to the passive bravery of the nobler animals; the knowledge assimilated to instinct, which the red men seem to have borrowed from the irrational inhabitants of their forests; their reserve; their acquired suppression of passion, which yet runs in quick and silent currents, beneath the external ice; their adherence to a promise made; their faith in ancestral superstitions; their predominant and inextinguishable lust of revenge,—are all embodied in the character of Outalissi, and exhibited in poetry as chaste as it is noble, as mellifluous as it is graphic. As monumental brass unchanged his look, A stoic of the woods, a man without a tear. The character of the Oneida chief is a pure poetical abstraetion. That of Mohegan, in the Pioneers, is drawn by one who observes accurately, and describes what he sees faithfully. He chose to introduce his Indian into a picture of still life; for which posterity will name him with gratitude, long after all the puffing, quack reviewing, and tea-table criticism of the day, has vanished and evaporated. In the letters from Fort Braddock, before referred to, Weshop, an Indian, is introduced, with very good effect, by the author. In his rapid narrative, he has thrown out this character in fine relief. Weshop is despatched with letters, from the friend of an unfortunate person, confined under a charge of murder, to the governor and council of New-York. Fleet and silent as one of his own arrows, the messenger leaves his employer, and appears in his forest garb, among the abodes of civilized and mercenary men. He delivers neither credentials nor letter, but appears before the council in the character of an ambassador, for whom he is mistaken. He is lodged under the same roof with him whom he came to rescue; and, at the dead of night, opens his prison doors, points out the path to liberty, and through rivers, rapids, forests, morasses, and the apparently trackless wilderness, conducts him in safety to the bosom of his བ་ friend, by means which, though apparently incredible, well authenticated accounts compel us to recognise as natural. "For then The bow string of my spirit was not slack; I bore thee like the quiver on my back, Nor foemen then, nor cougar's conch I fear'd, And dost thou not remember how we cheer'd Upon the last hill-top, when white men's huts appear'd ?" There is not, at present, spirit enough in the country to publish a new edition of Brockton Brown's novels. We prefer paying for English magazines, that inform us what he wrote about, to possessing his works; of which, it seems, we can only find out the merit, when some transatlantic critic, having exhausted all other topics, thinks fit to wander even to our literature, for a subject to eke out his columns. From my recollections, however, I think he makes little use of the aborigines in his tales; although he might, indubitably, have found among them materials peculiarly suited to the character of his genius; which loved a tale of wild and singular events, produced by extraordinary hallucinations of the mind, rather than by unusual combinations of place and circumstance; and preferred for the creation of its romance, the gothic and grotesque delineations of some mental or moral obliquity, to all the machinery of inquisitions, castles or dungeons. The ceremonies and customs of the different Indian tribes of this continent have been, in many instances, minutely decribed; and as, though generally similar, they vary with the differences of origin and climate, as materially as those of civilized nations, they offer different resources to the writer of fic tion. So, also, their fabulous legends and religious superstitions have a great variety of character. While, in the north, they point to hyperborean cold and the regions of darkness, or to boundless plains and lakes, where the spirit expatiates untired, in chasing the phantom elk, or buffalo, or beaver; in the south, the imagination reposes on sunny isles and sparkling waters, graceful women and ravishing music. Of the mummery of aboriginal superstition,' one may learn as much as he pleases, by reading the accounts of those who have examined the subject; and he may make as much use of it as he is able. The creative faculty is wanting; not the materials to be wrought upon. If scenes of unparalleled torture and indefatigable endurance, persevering vengeance, and unfailing friendship, hair-breadth escapes, and sudden ambush; if the horrors of gloomy forests and unexplored caverns, tenanted by the most terrible of banditti; if faith in wild predictions, and entire submission of the soul to the power of ancient legends and visionary prophecies, are useful to the poet or romancer, here they may be found in abundance and endless variety. The former might even discover the hint of an epic, in some of the traditions belonging to this continent. For instance, when the fathers of the Lenapé, according to their own account, crossed the Missisippi, from the west, and after great battles gradually exterminated from the soil the gigantic race by whom it was occupied, and who had reared the towers and forts and towns of which vestiges are still remaining, full scope is given to the indulgence of an imagination, capable of constructing an heroic poem. It would, to be sure, want the charm of national association or interest; still it would point to the institutions and character of the principal tribes, who were our immediate predecessors, as occupants of the country we possess; with whose more recent history, we are, or may be, in some degree, familiar. That the facts are meagre, and the tradition imperfect, is true; but there is therefore more room for invention; and there are no records or vouchers, to contradict what might be invented. The appliances and means for illustration, description and machinery, are ample and numerous. And the difficulties of such an undertaking, cannot be stated as an objection; for no epic, since Homer's, has been composed without great labour; though it may be an easy matter to indite an entertaining poetical history in blank verse, like Madoc. Had the Paradise Lost never been written, who would have thought the fall of man a fit subject for an epic poem ? But we are disposed to go much farther, and to assert, that the pure and abstract elements of poetry are to be found in the conceptions and notions of some of our aborigines, if we are to give credit to those who have related them. Their mythology, so to speak, if less gorgeous and sublime, is more refined and less ridiculous, than that of the Hindoos. The latter worship their million images, without associating with their adoration of the uncouth idol, the idea of the original personification, which it was intended to indicate; while the natives of this continent had a spirit or genius, as the cause of every natural effect, and personified every moral influence. And if we combine the various attributes, said to be ascribed by them to the Spirit of Dreams, we might even be led to believe that they worshipped the creative power of intellect, and invoked the faculty of pure imagination. Poetry and prophecy are identified by all rude nations, as they were by the American Indians. He who would employ their machinery, in verse, needs not introduce barbarous names, insusceptible of being euphonised; but may employ, directly, the personification and its attributes; and, in so doing, speak the universally intelligible language of poetry. An exhaustless mine, too, of metaphor and simile, is open in the fancies and habits of these natives; the wonders, phenomena, curiosities and productions of the country, but yet as little employed. The perception of these belongs only to the original mind; and it seems some sacred bard is yet to arise among us, in whose hand shall be the hazel wand, at whose bidding the fountains of domestic poetry are to flow, freshly and purely, from our own native soil. The altar and the sacrifice are prepared for the rite, which is to propitiate nature, to inspire her votary with the divine afflatus ;-the priest alone is wanting. Southey's Songs of the North American Indians,' possess very few beauties. He manufactures his prose and poetry too much on the same principles. Moore has been much happier in employing the few traditions and local associations, which he met with in this country; and a few of his beautiful songs might be mentioned, as evidence in favour of their fitness for the purposes of modern poetry. The next position of the writer on whom I have been commenting, is, "that of traditionary history we have hardly any, that is of a romantic character." To prove the contrary, we should be obliged to enter a field, entirely too wide to be surveyed in our present limits. We can only refer to an article in the third volume of the North American Review, page 480, enumerating many of the materials for romance writing, in the History of the settlers of New-England. Let the writer read the few pages there devoted to this topic, and recant this obiter dictum, at his leisure. The reviewer hazards, however, one prediction, which has been, perhaps, already contradicted. "Whoever," says he, (page 484.) " in this country, first attains the rank of a first rate writer of fiction, we venture to predict will lay his scene here." The author of the Spy, (which is another instance in point, as being partly founded upon tradition,) commenced his career in our own state. It remains to be seen, whether he will find the eastern soil as congenial to his powers as our own. Unquestionably, the history of New-England is more prolific in romantic incident, and picturesque variety of characters and conflicting principles, than that of any other part of the United States. The accounts of them, too, are numerous, and were written at the time of their occurrence, by those who were part of what they saw, and described it graphi |
