hical sketch of such eminent contemporary
American authors as Mr. Henry James and Mr. Howells shows that Europe
is an essential factor in the intellectual life and in the artistic
procedure of these writers. Yet in their racial and national
relationships they are indubitably American. In their local variations
from type they demand from the critic an understanding of the culture
of the Ohio Valley, and of Boston and New York. The analysis of the
mingled racial, psychological, social, and professional traits in these
masters of contemporary American fiction presents to the critic a
problem as fascinating as, and I think more complex than, a
corresponding study of Meredith or Hardy, of Daudet or D'Annunzio. In
the three hundred years that have elapsed since Englishmen who were
trained under Queen Elizabeth settled at Jamestown, Virginia, we have
bred upon this soil many a master of speech. They have been men of
varied gifts: now of clear intelligence, now of commanding power; men
of rugged simplicity and of tantalizing subtlety; poets, novelists,
orators, essayists, and publicists, who have interpreted the soul of
America to the mind of the world. Our task is to exhibit the essential
Americanism of these spokesmen of ours, to point out the traits which
make them most truly representative of the instincts of the tongue-tied
millions who work and plan and pass from sight without the gift and
art of utterance; to find, in short, among the books which are
recognized as constituting our American literature, some vital and
illuminating illustrations of our national characteristics. For a truly
"American" book--like an American national game, or an American
city--is that which reveals, consciously or unconsciously, the American
mind.

II

The American Mind

The origin of the phrase, "the American mind," was political. Shortly
after the middle of the eighteenth century, there began to be a
distinctly American way of regarding the debatable question of British
Imperial control. During the period of the Stamp Act agitation our
colonial-bred politicians and statesmen made the discovery that there
was a mode of thinking and feeling which was native--or had by that
time become a second nature--to all the colonists. Jefferson, for
example, employs those resonant and useful words "the American mind" to
indicate that throughout the American colonies an essential unity of
opinion had been developed as regards the chief politic