summarizes the characteristics of colonial literature in these
words: "Before the year 1765, we find in this country, not one
American people, but many American peoples . . . . No cohesive
principle prevailed, no centralizing life; each little nation was
working out its own destiny in its own fashion." But he adds that
with that year the colonial isolation came to an end, and that
the student must thereafter "deal with the literature of one
multitudinous people, variegated, indeed, in personal traits, but
single in its commanding ideas and in its national destinies." It
is easy to be wise after the event. Yet there was living in
London in 1765, as the agent for Pennsylvania, a shrewd and bland
Colonial--an honorary M. A. from both Harvard and Yale, a D.C.L.
of Oxford and an LL.D. of St. Andrews who was by no means sure
that the Stamp Act meant the end of Colonialism. And Franklin's
uncertainty was shared by Washington. When the tall Virginian
took command of the Continental Army as late as 1775, he
"abhorred the idea of independence." Nevertheless John Jay,
writing the second number of the "Federalist" in 1787, only
twelve years later, could say: "Providence has been pleased to
give this one connected country to one united people; a people
descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language,
professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of
government."

CHAPTER IV. THE REVOLUTION

If we turn, however, to the literature produced in America
between the passage of the Stamp Act in 1765 and the adoption of
the Constitution in 1787, we perceive that it is a literature of
discord and passion. Its spirit is not that of "one united