Читать книгу History of American Literature - Reuben Post Halleck - Страница 20

The great English writers between the colonization of Jamestown in 1607 and the outbreak of the French and Indian War in 1754 are: (1) JOHN MILTON (1608–1674), the great poetic spokesman of Puritan England, whose Comus is addressed to those, who:—

" … by due steps aspire To lay their just hands on that golden key That opes the palace of eternity,"

whose Sonnets breathe a purposeful prayer to live this life as ever in his great Taskmaster's eye, and whose Paradise Lost is the colossal epic of the loss of Eden through sin; (2) JOHN BUNYAN (1628–1688), whose Pilgrim's Progress addressed itself in simple, earnest English to each individual human being, telling him what he must do to escape the City of Destruction and to reach the City of All Delight; (3) JOHN DRYDEN (1631–1700), a master in the field of satiric and didactic verse and one of the pioneers in the field of modern prose criticism; (4) ALEXANDER POPE (1688–1744), another poet of the satiric and didactic school, who exalted form above matter, and wrote polished couplets which have been models for so many inferior poets; (5) the essayists, RICHARD STEELE (1672–1729) and JOSEPH ADDISON (1672–1719), the latter being especially noted for the easy, flowing prose of his papers in the Spectator; (6) JONATHAN SWIFT (1667–1745), a master of prose satire, whose Gulliver's Travels has not lost its fascination; (7) DANIEL DEFOE (1661?-1731) whose Robinson Crusoe continues to increase in popularity; (8) SAMUEL RICHARDSON (1689–1761), and HENRY FIELDING (1707–1754), the two great mid-eighteenth-century novelists.

The colonial literature of this period was influenced only in a very minor degree by the work of these men, for a generation usually passed before the influence of contemporary English authors appeared in American literature. In the next chapter, we shall see evidences of the influence of Pope. Benjamin Franklin will tell us how Bunyan and Addison were his teachers, and the early fiction will show its indebtedness to the work of Samuel Richardson.