Page:Margaret Fuller by Howe, Julia Ward, Ed. (1883).djvu/140

Rh known Margaret's opinion of her compeers in literature, and with her appreciation of these, not always just or adequate, her views of the noble national life to which American literature, in its maturer growth, should give expression.

Margaret says, at the outset, that "some thinkers" may accuse her of writing about a thing that docs not exist. "For," says she, it does not follow, because many books are written by persons born in America, that there exists an American literature. Books which imitate or represent the thoughts and life of Europe do not constitute an American literature. Before such can exist, an original idea must animate this nation, and fresh currents of life must call into life fresh thoughts along its shores."

In reviewing these first sentences, we are led to say that they partly commend themselves to our judgment, and partly do not. Here, as in much that Margaret has written, a solid truth is found side by side with an illusion. The statement that an American idea should lie at the foundation of our national life and its expression is a truth too often lost sight of by those to whom it most imports. On the other hand, the great body of the world's literature is like an ocean in whose waves and tides there is a continuity which sets at naught the imposition of definite limits. Literature is first of all human; and American books, which express human thought, feeling, and experience, are American literature, even if they show no distinctive national feature.

In what follows, Margaret confesses that her own studies have been largely of the classics of foreign countries. She has found, she says, a model "in the simple masculine minds of the great Latin authors."