Albert Henry Smyth

“ Hawthorne:
Philadelphia, Jan. 16, 1845.
My Dear Sophia:—I wished to write to you before I left home, but in the hurry of those last hours I had no time, and instead of delicate sentiments could only send you gross plum-cake, which I must hope you received. We are most delightfully situated here in every respect, surrounded with kind and sympathizing friends, yet allowed by them to be as quiet and retired as we choose; but it is always a pleasure to know you can have society if you wish for it, by walking a few steps beyond your own door. ”

“ Sydney Smith waved American literature contemptuously aside in the Edinburgh Review. The Quarterly was brutal in its attacks upon timid transatlantic books. William Godwin reproached American ignorance, and proceeded to locate Philadelphia upon the Chesapeake Bay. No wonder that the Port Folio exclaimed in 1810, "The fastidious arrogance with which the reviewers and magazine makers of Great Britain treat the genius and intellect of this country is equalled by nothing but their profound ignorance of its situation."
The insolence of Great Britain affected American writers in two ways. ”

“ To relate the history of the Philadelphia magazines is to tell the story of Philadelphia literature. The story is not a stately nor a splendid one, but it is exceedingly instructive. It helps to exhibit the process of American literature as an evolution, and it illustrates perilous and important chapters in American history. For a hundred years Pennsylvania was the seat of the ripest culture in America. ”

“ The greatness of Philadelphia is the inspiration and the pride of the Critic. "Having often heard Philadelphia called the 'Athens of the United States,' 'the birthplace of American literature,' I was naturally delighted at the prospect of a visit to so celebrated a city" (p. 14) . And again: "Philadelphia with all its faults and follies is, in a literary and scientific point of view, the first city of the Empire" (p. 20) . The Critic fired its last arrow May 10, 1820.
Dennie's Port Folio continued to be the admiration and the despair of contemporary editors and authors. ”

“ The Philadelphia magazines, from Franklin's to Graham's, furnished ample opportunities for "young blushing writers eager for the bays." Their articles, it is true, were often a kind of yeasty collection of fond and winnowed opinions, but among these shallow fopperies there would at times be heard a strain of higher mood. Nor is the story of these magazines altogether without its pathos. American writers, after the Revolution which lost England her colonies, felt themselves to be under the opprobrium of the literary world. ”

“ Soon after beginning the study of law, Dennie wrote, "In the infancy of a profession 'tis chimerical to talk of undeviating integrity. Let hair-brained enthusiasts prate in their closets as loudly as they please to the contrary, a young adventurer in any walk of life must take advantage of the events and weaknesses of his fellow-mortals, or be content to munch turnip in a cell amidst want and obscurity." ”

“ In 1817 the London Monthly Magazine began to copy from the Port Folio.
But about 1820 the prestige of Philadelphia begins to fade and her ancient influences to hang about her "like a giant's robe upon a dwarfish thief." In this year (Port Folio, page [Pg 146] 463) is heard the first note of alarm. New England is gaining; "with such rivalry Philadelphia must yield the proud title which she has borne, or rouse from the withering lethargy in which she slumbers." New York jealousy is increasing. ”

“ A serener voice is that of John Blair Linn, brother-in-law of Charles Brockden Brown, who was not out of love with his nativity, nor accustomed to disable the benefits of his country. In his "Powers of Genius," which was beautifully reprinted in England, we read:
"I shall not attempt to conceal the enthusiasm which I feel for meritorious performances of native Americans. Nor can I repress my indignation at the unjust manner in which they are treated by the reviewers of England. America, notwithstanding their aspersions, has attained an eminence in literature, which is, at least, respectable. ”

“ American critics soon caught the contagion of sneering censure, and caused the Port Folio to say, in 1811: "American critics seem, in almost all cases, to have entered into a confederacy to exterminate American poetry. If an individual has the temerity to jingle a couplet, and to avow himself descended from Americans, the offence is absolutely unpardonable." When Fenimore Cooper published his first novel, he suppressed his name and wrote instead, "Precaution, by an Englishman." ”

“ Many are the works of this kind which have risen and fallen in America, and many of them have enjoyed but a brief existence. This circumstance has always at first sight given me some uneasiness, but when I come more soberly to meditate upon it my courage revives, and I discover no reason for my doubts. Many works have actually been reared and sustained by the curiosity and favour of the public. ”

“ We meet the first notice of Benjamin West, as a boy of 19 years, in Bradford's second American Magazine. In the first volume of the Port Folio we find the first of a long series of [Pg 100] sketches in praise of West's genius and generosity. "It is a melancholy and miraculous circumstance," the satirical writer begins, "that this American artist, after experiencing the good fortune to be born and educated in Pennsylvania, should sullenly retreat to England and exchange the glorious privileges of our happy, tranquil and rising Republic for the smoke and servility of the city of London. ”

“ Although he edited but one volume, he is the first American editor, and the honors are transferred from New York to Philadelphia.
Charles Brockden Brown was the first man in America to cultivate literature as a profession; Dennie was the second. When inaugurating the Port Folio he wrote of himself: "He has long been urged by a sober wish, or, if the sneering reader will have it so, he has long been deluded by the visionary whim, of [Pg 109] making literature the handmaid of fortune, or at least of securing something like independence, by exertion, as a man of letters." ”

“ There is scarcely a notable name in the literature of America that is not in some way connected with the Philadelphia magazines. Dennie and Brown, the first professional men-of-letters on this continent, were Philadelphia editors. Washington Irving edited the Analectic Magazine. James Russell Lowell, Edgar Allan Poe and Bayard Taylor were editorial writers on Graham's Magazine, and John Greenleaf Whittier edited The Pennsylvania Freeman.
Bryant and Cooper and Longfellow and Hawthorne and a hundred lesser men were constant contributors to the Philadelphia journals. ”

“ He has done little or nothing since but make-believe about criticism, talk dawdle-poetry with a lisp, write irresistible verses under the name of 'Sedley' in his own magazine, twitter sentimentally about 'little Moore,' his 'dear little Moore'—puffing [Pg 151] himself all the time anonymously in the newspaper, while he is damning himself, with unmistakable sincerity, twelve times a year in his own magazine. We do not think very highly of the mutton-headed Athenians at Philadelphia; but we do think, nevertheless, that Mr. John E. Hall is a little too much of a blockhead even for their meridian. ”

“ Those who managed the publication have commonly either changed their principles, remitted their zeal, or voluntarily relinquished their trade, or last of all, and like other men, have died. Such works have flourished for a time, and they ceased to flourish, by the fault or misfortune of the proprietors. The public is always eager to encourage one who devotes himself to their rational amusement, and when he ceases to demand or to deserve their favour they feel more regret than anger in withdrawing it. ”

“ The American Museum was the first magazine in Philadelphia to reflect faithfully the internal state of America. Bradford's magazines, intensely loyal, looked across the ocean and saw little at home worthy of record. Paine and Brackenridge expended their erratic genius in abusive satire upon the Tories; the [Pg 70] Columbian Magazine avoided the serious political problems of the times, and granted much of its space to agricultural improvements and the beginnings of manufactures. ”

“ Sarah Bache to Benjamin Franklin: "The publisher of The United States Magazine wrote to you some time ago to desire you would send him some newspapers, and sent you some of his first numbers. I suppose you never received them. I now send six, not that I think you will find much entertainment in them, but you may have heard that there was such a per [Pg 58] formance, and may like to see what it is; besides, its want of entertainment may induce you to send something that may make the poor man's magazine more useful and pleasing. ”

“ You may, in the course of your trade, have accommodated yourself to twenty different fashions, and have served twenty classes of customers; have copied at one time a Parisian, at another a London fashion, and have truckled to the humours, now of a precise enthusiast, and now of a smart free-thinker. ”

“ The gradual accumulation of books about books, of criticisms on both, of reviews of the critics, of newspaper accounts of the reviews, of weekly summaries of the newspapers, seems to be carrying us ever further from the face of reality into a mere commerce of ideas on which no healthy soul can live. ”

“ In January, 1787, or one month after withdrawing from the management of The Columbian Magazine, Matthew Carey published the first number of The American Museum, or Repository of Ancient and Modern Fugitive Pieces, etc., Prose and Poetical, which proved to be the first really successful literary undertaking of the kind in America. General Washington said of it in a letter dated June 25, 1788: "No more useful literary plan has ever been undertaken in America." ”

“ As I possess nothing but zeal I can promise to exert nothing else; but my consolation is, that aided by that powerful spirit, many have accomplished things much more arduous than that which I propose to myself. ”

“ I little thought to have lived until their light should be hidden by a cloud of delirious bats who had left their native obscurity and madly rushed to uncongenial day, vermin which are likely to be of direful omen to our country unless the land be speedily cleansed of them. ”

“ Leigh Hunt was not the only English poet of far-shining fame who was of American origin. Percy Bysshe Shelley was the grandson of a quack doctor in Newark, N. J., who, according to a local tradition, married the widow of a New York miller. Fitz-Greene Halleck lived and died in an old house in Guilford, Connecticut, built upon ground that had belonged to Bysshe Shelley, before he went to England and became master of Castle Goring. Many [Pg 106] another great life in England was bound with strands of intimate connection to the history of America. ”

“ When the rush took place, I saw a man spring up and catch hold of the iron which supported a lamp on one side of the door, by which he raised himself so as to run over the heads of the crowd into the theatre. ”

“ Robert Aitken, at the Pope's Head, issued the first English Bible in America in 1782, and his daughter, Jane, printed Charles Thomson's translation of the Septuagint in four superb volumes in 1808. Robert Bell successfully compiled Blackstone's Commentaries in 1772, "a stupendous enterprise." Bell did much by his good taste and [Pg 11] untiring industry to advance the literary culture of the city. "The more books are sold," he declared in one of his broadsides, "the more will be sold, is an established Truth well known to every liberal reader, and to every bookseller of experience. ”

“ The eagerness of Philadelphia social circles for each new thing in literature enabled booksellers to import large supplies from England and to undertake splendid editions of notable books. Dr. Johnson was made to feel amiable for a moment toward America on being presented with a copy of Rasselas bearing a Philadelphia imprint.
The first American editions of Shakespeare and of Milton, of "Pamela" and of "The Vicar of Wakefield" were printed in Philadelphia. In the same city, in 1805, Aristotle's "Ethics" and "Politics" were published for the first time in America. ”

“ From New York he proceeded to Philadelphia. No such acting had been seen in America. The excitement among play-going people was extraordinary. "He was to play Richard on a Monday night, and on Sunday evening the steps of the theatre were covered with groups of porters, and other men of the lower orders, prepared to spend the night there, that they might have the first chance of taking places in the boxes. I saw some take their hats off and put on night-caps. At ten o'clock the next morning the door was opened to them, and at that time the street in front of the theatre was impassable. ”

“ Paulding is dubbed "The Cabbage Bard," and the caustic reviewer proceeds to write: "We had a Dennie and a Clifton, yet the classical elegance of the one has not availed to preserve his countrymen from being intoxicated by the quaintness and affectation of the Salmagundi school, and the purity and wit of the other have as little proved powerful to save his work from being deserted for the bathos and silliness of the 'Backwoodsman.' I remember them both. In private life they united qualities which are seldom found together, brilliancy of conversation and modesty of deportment. ”

“ But we are, in spite of this disappointment of our expectations, the happiest of mortals or spirits, and cling to the skirts of every passing hour, although we know the next will bring us still more joy. ”

“ No mawkish sentimentality—no diluted commonplaces—no pompous parade of swollen words—no tumid prosiness can find admission into our columns, for we shall avoid alike the hackneyed author whose reputation takes the place of ability, and the unfledged scribbler whose crudities are utter abominations. ”