Page:The Cambridge History of American Literature, v3.djvu/131

 Ik Marvel 113 affiliated with many other American essayists — Emerson, Bryant, ' Bayard Taylor, ^ Curtis — who made their travels the basis of a great body of work that varies from the decorous pace of well-phrased description to graceful flights of fancy and even to soarings of the creative imagination. Before we leave Mitchell there is, however, to be noted one point which differentiates him from the majority of American essayists. Again like Irving, whose life Mitchell's parallels in details of ill health, early travels abroad, the study and abandon- ment of law, and the tenure of official position in Europe, the author of Dream Life held to the belief that a writer is not called upon to take an active part in the great political and social questions of his day, if he feels that he can best express himself and, in the long run, most effectively serve mankind through adherence to his literary art along the lines of his own predilections. Irving, of course, was at one time most adversely criticized by his countrymen for jurt such an attitude, and his protracted stay abroad was misconstrued as a form of national renegadism. Mitchell escaped hostile comment for his general abstention from participation in those public topics, ranging from the abolition of slavery and the preservation of the Union to Civil Service reform, woman suffrage, national copyright, and other themes of social betterment that led Whittier,^ Lowell/ Curtis, and Higginson, and indeed almost all the leading American poets and essayists for the last fifty years, to become, at times, propagandists. This absence of the outright didactic note is a decided characteristic of Ik Mar- vel, leaving him none the less creditably in the brotherhood of those authors whose message remains abidingly sweet and wholesome. The most remarkable blending of the man of letters and the devoted public servant among American authors is mani- fested in the life and writings of George WilHam Curtis (1824- 92). In all the literary essays and addresses of Curtis, and in even the briefest of his papers for "The Easy Chair," is apparent his incomparably suave diction; but here, too, is that firmness of thought clothing his civic aspirations in the im- pregnable armour of dauntless and logical convictions. And ■ See Book II, Chap. v. ' See Book III, Chaps, x and xiv. 3 See Book II, Chap. xiii. " lUd., Chap. xxiv. VOL. ni — 8