Many of us believe, however, that the essays, the novels, and the poetry,
as well as the statistical digests, ought to go to the making up of a
national literature. It has been discovered, however, that the existence
of the former does not depend, to the same extent as that of the latter,
upon the employment of exclusively American material. A book about the
census, if it be not American, is nothing; but a poem or a romance, though
written by a native-born American, who, perhaps, has never crossed the
Atlantic, not only may, but frequently does, have nothing in it that can
be called essentially American, except its English and, occasionally, its
ideas. And the question arises whether such productions can justly be held
to form component parts of what shall hereafter be recognized as the
literature of America.
How was it with the makers of English literature? Beginning with Chaucer,
his "Canterbury Pilgrims" is English, both in scene and character; it is
even mentioned of the Abbess that "Frenche of Paris was to her unknowe";
but his "Legende of Goode Women" might, so far as its subject-matter is
concerned, have been written by a French, a Spanish, or an Italian
Chaucer, just as well as by the British Daniel.
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