Page:The Cambridge History of American Literature, v3.djvu/147

Other Essayists 129 of Winter, underlies the literary work of Laurence Hutton (1843-1904),^ his companion in the field of dramatic criticism and along the byways of foreign travel. Among collectors Hutton is remembered for the treasures he amassed, especially books relating to the theatre and play-bills. The corollary of this enthusiasm is found in his papers and addresses on the drama, wherefrom arises winningly the human note. He wrote, also, a series of volumes describing literary pilgrimages in Eng- land, Italy, and many another land, — voltmies that place him graciously in the large company of American essayists whose theme has been that of travel ; and with him our own journey fittingly ends. The scope of present-day essayists is far wider than that of the men of the preceding century. The tendency is away from the traditionary essay of morals or of literary culture, partially because the classics are no longer part and parcel of our education, and largely because science and social economics are more and more requisitioning the pens of many of our most brilliant contemporary essayists. We have, however, many writers, of course, whose work continues the literary tradition ; and to name Howells, Woodberry, Santayana, Wood- row Wilson, Henry Van Dyke, Brander Matthews, Paul Elmer More, Agnes Repplier, and John Burroughs — foremost among nature writers — were yet to omit others well deserving of inclusion lest too long a catalogue of ships should still over- look some bark of letters already worthily launched, Our grateful task has been to write of the men who have gone by, a group of noble gentlemen, whose attitude towards hfe was that of the idealist, and whose courtesy of spirit and courtesy of phrase are permeating traits of their work. Not even in the harshest days of the Civil War is there a brow-beating epithet or sneering causticity. If the American essayists and critics owe a debt to the English writers of the eighteenth and nine- teenth centuries — as indeed they do — they have removed from their inheritance all taint of bitterness and cruel satire, and our critical literature has (with the exception of Poe in his unin- spired moments) no mean, no biassed, no tyrannical — and no fulsome — appraiser of literary values or of the motives of men's actions. If, however, we turn to our group of later essayists " See also Book III, Chap. xvui. VOL. Ill — 9