In his "Essays in Criticism," Matthew Arnold
enters a general complaint against English prose writers for a lack of
mental flexibility, and against Addison particularly for the
commonplaceness of his ideas. He was a severe and exacting critic.
DAVID A. WASSON.
Bryant, Longfellow, Emerson, Hawthorne and Whittier were all nearly of
the same age, and formed a literary galaxy such as has been rare enough
in any country or period of history. They are distinguished, however, by
one peculiarity--a slight sentimentalism which belonged to the time in
which they grew up, and is most strongly marked in Longfellow and least
so in Hawthorne. Fifteen or twenty years later there appeared, as
usually happens, a number of talented imitators or admirers, and with
them two men of equal genius who may be looked upon as the corrective
and antidote for their predecessors. These were James Russell Lowell and
David Atwood Wasson.
They were as different as Goldsmith and Dr. Johnson. Lowell was a fine
poet, a humorist and man of the world. He wrote easily and lived easily.
He was the companion of wealthy and distinguished men. He acquired
prosperity, as it were, by natural inclination. Next to the King of
Prussia he was the most fortunate man of his time. He knew something of
sorrow, but of hardship and misfortune only by hearsay. He was the child
of summer, and revelled in it; but this continual happiness brought with
it certain limitations.
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