Here is no
Tolstoi painting the soul of his race in a few pages: Harte is
simply a disciple of Poe and Dickens, turning the Poe
construction trick gracefully, with Dickensy characters and
consistently romantic action.
The West has been rediscovered many a time since that decade
which witnessed the first literary bonanza of Mark Twain and Bret
Harte. It will continue to be discovered, in its fresh sources of
appeal to the imagination, as long as Plains and Rockies and
Coast endure, as long as there is any glow upon a distant
horizon. It is not places that lose romantic interest: the
immemorial English counties and the Bay of Naples offer
themselves freely to the artist, generation after generation.
What is lost is the glamour of youth, the specific atmosphere of
a given historical epoch. Colonel W. F. Cody ("Buffalo Bill") has
typified to millions of American boys the great period of the
Plains, with its Indian fighting, its slaughter of buffaloes, its
robbing of stage-coaches, its superb riders etched against the
sky. But the Wild West was retreating, even in the days of Daniel
Boone and Davy Crockett.
Pages:
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278