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American Literature ; an Historical Sketch, 1620-1880
American Literature an Historical Sketch 16201880 Author:John Nichol Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: PERIODS OF LITERATURE. 29 CHAPTER II. THE COLONIAL PERIOD. We may trace the influence of the controlling facts or tendencies to which we have referred, ... more »through the three great periods under which American history obviously falls : — I. The Colonial, or Period of Settlement. ' II. The revolutionary, or Period of Struggle for Independence. III. The first three quarters of the Nineteenth century. I. The voices of the first period are, to the modern English reader, few, faint, and far. It was a time of great and fruitful activity. The constitutions of the early states were being tentatively laid down, and social rules of life, destined to influence their descendants, were being formulated by the settlers; but literature, outside the range of a primitive politics and a severe theology, was only beginning, under unfavourable conditions, to exist. The prose and rude verse of the Colonial days are, with some exceptions, the stammering speech of an energetic, industrial people, whose hands are in constant conflict with barren deserts, wild beasts, or rude tribes ; whose hearts are aflame with fervour ; but whose heads are bewildered by superstitions, as natural to their circumstances as to their age. That age was, in some respects, fortunate in having no professional authors; for the absence of literary ambitions, with their attendant jealousies, left the pioneersof civilisation more free to devote themselves to their besetting tasks, to accomplish which, and not to secure either present praise or future fame, they gave alike their sinews and their brains. Professor Coit Tyler's recent book on this Era of the Dawn is so judicious, fair, and full (its sole grave defect being a sometimes diffusive iteration of exaggerated praise), that most readers, whose life is limited, will...« less