iterature of the New
World will inevitably have an accent of its own, but it must speak
the mother-language of civilization, share in its culture, accept its
discipline.

It has been said disparagingly of Longfellow and his friends: "The
houses of the Brahmins had only eastern windows. The souls of the whole
school lived in the old lands of culture, and they visited these lands
as often as they could, and, returning, brought back whole libraries
of books which they eagerly translated." But even if Longfellow and his
friends had been nothing more than translators and diffusers of European
culture, their task would have been justified. They kept the ideals
of civilization from perishing in this new soil. Through those eastern
windows came in, and still comes in, the sunlight to illumine the
American spirit. To decry the literatures of the Orient and of Greece
and Rome as something now outgrown by America, is simply to close the
eastern windows, to narrow our conception of civilization to merely
national and contemporaneous terms. It is as provincial to attempt this
restriction in literature as it would be in world-politics. We must
have all the windows open in our American writing, free access to ideas,
knowledge of universal standards, perception of universal law.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

An authoritative account of American Literature to the close of the
Revolution is given in M. C. Tyler's "History of American Literature
during the Colonial Time," 2 volumes (1878) and "Literary History of the
American Revolution," 2 volumes (1897). For a general survey see Barrett
Wendell, "A Literary History of America" (1900), W. P. Trent, "American
Literature" (1903), G. E. Woodberry, "America in Literature" (1903),
W. C. Bronson, "A Short History of American Literature" (1903), with an
excellent bibliography, W. B. Cairns, "History of American Literature"
(1912), W. P. Trent and J. Erskine, "Great American Writers" (1912), and
W. Riley, "American Thought" (1915). The most recent and authoritative
account is to be found in "The Cambridge History of American
Literature," 3 volumes edited by Trent, Erskine, Sherman, and Van Doren.

The best collection of American prose and verse is E. C. Stedman and
E. M. Hutchinson's "Library of American Literature," 11 volumes
(1888-1890). For verse alone, see E. C. Stedman, "An American Anthology"
(1900), and W. C. Bronson, "American Poems," 1625-1892 (1912). For
criticism of leading author