For a while it seemed as if American
literature would be only a feeble imitation of these models, but a change
finally came, as will be shown in later chapters. It is to be hoped,
however, that American writers of the future will never cease to learn from
Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Bunyan, and Wordsworth.
AMERICAN LITERATURE AN IMPORTANT STUDY.--We should not begin the study of
American literature in an apologetic spirit. There should be no attempt to
minimize the debt that America owes to English literature, nor to conceal
the fact that American literature is young and has not had time to produce
as many masterpieces as England gave to the world during a thousand years.
However, it is now time also to record the fact that the literature of
England gained something from America. Cultivated Englishmen to-day
willingly admit that without a study of Cooper, Poe, and Hawthorne no one
could give an adequate account of the landmarks of achievement in fiction,
written in our common tongue. French critics have even gone so far as to
canonize Poe. In a certain field he and Hawthorne occupy a unique place in
the world's achievement. Again, men like Bret Harte and Mark Twain are not
common in any literature.
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