Neither
Longfellow's "Excelsior" nor Poe's "Bells" nor Whittier's "Maud
Muller" is among the best poems of the three writers in question,
yet there was something in each of these productions which caught
the fancy of a whole American generation. It expressed one phase
of the national mind in a given historical period.
The historian of literature is bound to take account of this
question of literary vogue, as it is highly significant of the
temper of successive generations in any country. But it is of
peculiar interest to the student of the literature produced in
the United States. Is this literature "American," or is it
"English literature in America," as Professor Wendell and other
scholars have preferred to call it? I should be one of the last
to minimize the enormous influence of England upon the mind and
the writing of all the English-speaking countries of the globe.
Yet it will be one of the purposes of the present book to
indicate the existence here, even in colonial times, of a point
of view differing from that of the mother country, and destined
to differ increasingly with the lapse of time.
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