e men
and nations must live before they can make literature. Boys and girls do
not write books. Oregon and Van Diemen's Land produce no literature:
they are too busy living. The first attempts at literature of any
country, as of our own, are apt to be unreal and imitative and
transitory, because life has not yet accumulated and presented itself in
forms which recommend themselves to literature. The wars must come, the
clamorous problems must arise, the new types of character must be
evolved, the picturesque social complication must develop, a life must
come, and then will be the true time for a literature.... Literature
grows feeble and conceited unless it ever recognizes the priority and
superiority of life, and stands in genuine awe before the greatness of
the men and of the ages which have simply lived.

CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN (1771-1810)

Not only was Brockden Brown the first American man-of-letters
proper,--one writing for a living before we had any real literature of
our own,--but his work possessed a genuine power and originality which
gives it some claim to remembrance for its own sake. And it is fair
always to remember that a given product from a pioneer indicates a far
greater endowment than the same from one of a group in a more developed
age. The forerunner lacks not one thing only, but many things, which
help his successors. He lacks the mental friction from, the emulation
of, the competition with, other writers; he lacks the stimulus and
comfort of sympathetic companionship; he lacks an audience to spur him
on, and a market to work for; lacks labor-saving conventions, training,
and an environment that heartens him instead of merely tolerating him.
Like Robinson Crusoe, he must make his tools before he can use them. A
meagre result may therefore be a proof of great abilities.

[Illustration: CHARLES B. BROWN]

The United States in 1800 was mentally and morally a colony of Great
Britain still. A few hundred thousand white families scattered over
about as many square miles of territory, much of it refractory
wilderness with more refractory inhabitants; with no cities of any size,
and no communication save by wretched roads or by sailing vessels; no
rich old universities for centres of culture, and no rich leisured
society to enjoy it; the energies of the people perforce absorbed in
subduing material obstacles, or solidifying a political experiment
disbelieved in by the very men who organized it;--neit