their march, the ideas that animate them, the common hopes and
loyalties that make up the life of their spirit. To become aware
of these general tendencies is to understand the "American" note
in our national writing.

Our historians have taught us that the history of the United
States is an evolution towards political unity. The separatist,
particularist movements are gradually thrust to one side. In
literary history, likewise, we best remember those authors who
fall into line with what we now perceive to have been the course
of our literary development. The erratic men and women, the
"sports" of the great experiment, are ultimately neglected by the
critics, unless, like the leaders of political insurrections,
those writing men and women have raised a notable standard of
revolt. No doubt the apparently unique literary specimens, if
clearly understood in their origins and surroundings, would be
found rooted in the general laws of literary evolution. But these
laws are not easy to codify and we must avoid the temptation to
discover, in any particular period, more of unity than there
actually was. And we must always remember that there will be
beautiful prose and verse unrelated to the main national
tendencies save as "the literature of escape." We owe this lesson
to the genius of Edgar Allan Poe.

Let us test these principles by applying them to the earliest
colonists. The first book written on the soil of what is now the
United States was Captain John Smith's "True Relation" of the
planting of the Virginia colony in 1607. It was published in
London in 1608. The Captain was a typical Elizabethan adventurer,
with a gift, like so many of his class, for picturesque