a little over a year he moved to Chicago, where he resumed the practice of his profession, at the same time contributing a large number of articles to the leading reviews and newspapers, upon literary and timely subjects. It was during the years spent in this city that he wrote the pages that follow. In 1898 he went to Alaska to obtain material for a book on that Territory, and incidentally to do some prospecting, and there, December 20, 1899, he died, at the age of forty-five. This outline may assist the reader to a more satisfactory appreciation of this volume than he otherwise would have. Had Mr. Onderdonk lived to superintend the book's publication he would doubtless have revised and extended his notices of certain poets whom he briefly mentions in his concluding chapter. While I am aware that as these notices stand they are not altogether so full and explicit as their subjects deserve, yet they are as he wrote them, an inherent part of the volume, and therefore I have not felt at liberty to change them. For I am persuaded that however much the reader may differ from the author's estimate of a poet or a poem, all will applaud the spirit in which that estimate is conceived and offered. WILLIAM HOLMES ONDERDONK. EVANSTON, ILL., August, 1901. CONTENTS Introductory. - - The Elizabethan Era.- First American ballad. - - Puritan civilization. - Bay Psalm Book. - Elegiac verse. - Mrs. Anne Bradstreet as "The Tenth Muse."- Puritanism in the later generation.— Apotheosis of the Doleful.— Michael Wig- glesworth and his Gloomy Epic. - Death and the tomb the most prolific topics. — First native American poet. - Influence Pennsylvania writers. - Slight literary influence of the Quakers. - Benjamin Franklin and the Junto. - James Ralph.-Satir- ized by Pope.—Thomas Godfrey, first native dramatist. — Nathaniel Evans. His tribute to science. - Rogers and his 47 Early ballads. The French and Indian wars. 'Pietas et Gratu- FRENEAU AND THE CONNECTICUT CHOIR. — 1765-1815 "Laureate of the Revolution." - Superiority of Freneau's work. "Cantos from a Prison Ship.”— His Indian poems. — Paral- leled by Schiller, Campbell, and Scott. "The House of Night." First American poem showing imagination. - First national poet. Perverted literary taste of the time. — The 60 DELLA CRUSCAN ECHOES. - 1785-1815 Relative importance of female writers.-Della Cruscanism. 103 Growth of American art and its effect. Artist and poet.-R. H. Dana, Sr. literature. - Charles Sprague. - John Pierpont and his reform Literature on Manhattan Island.-"The Salmagundi Papers.". Paulding and his Epic. "The Croakers." - Drake and Halleck. - Satiric poetry. - Period of "Annuals." - Sands, Bryant, and Verplanck.-N. P. Willis, Poet of Society. - - - - - Unnatural sentimentalism. - Hillhouse and Brainerd. — Year 1821 important in our literature. — Percival and his Byronic tenden- cies. Mrs. Sigourney and Mrs. Brooks. John Neal. Minor singers from the South. - Dabney and Maxwell. — Wilde and his famous "Stanzas." - Pinckney as a song-writer. -Religious poetry. — Robert Dinsmore, pioneer of American dialect verse.- - Transition era from the mechanical and arti- ficial to the creative and natural. - American provincialism.— 151 William Cullen Bryant. - POETS OF NATURE AND AMERICAN LIFE. — 1817-1870 His breadth of mind. - Went direct to nature. - His reserve. His Hellenic cast of mind. - His na- Henry W. Longfellow. - A new literary era. - Advance shown in |