Shakespeare had died four years before the Pilgrims landed at
Plymouth. When an American goes to Paris he can neither read the books, nor
converse with the citizens, if he knows no language but his own. Let him
cross to London, and he will find that, although more than three hundred
years have elapsed since the first colonists came to America, he
immediately feels at home, so far as the language and literature are
concerned.
For nearly two hundred years after the first English settlements in
America, the majority of the works read there were written by English
authors. The hard struggle necessary to obtain a foothold in a wilderness
is not favorable to the early development of a literature. Those who
remained in England could not clear away the forest, till the soil, and
conquer the Indians, but they could write the books and send them across
the ocean. The early settlers were for the most part content to allow
English authors to do this. For these reasons it would be surprising if
early American literature could vie with that produced in England during
the same period.
When Americans began to write in larger numbers, there was at first close
adherence to English models.
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