earlier generation. Their names will be found in such limbos of
the dead as Griswold's "Poets and Poetry of America" and Poe's
"Literati." They knew "the town" in their day, and pleased its
very easily pleased taste. The short-lived literary magazines of
the eighteen-forties gave them their hour of glory. As
representatives of passing phases of the literary history of New
York their careers are not without sentimental interest, but few
of them spoke to or for the country as a whole. Two figures,
indeed, stand out in sharp contrast with those habitual strollers
on Broadway and frequenters of literary gatherings, though each
of them was for a while a part of Knickerbocker New York. To all
appearances they were only two more Bohemians like the rest, but
the curiosity of the twentieth century sets them apart from their
forgotten contemporaries. They are two of the unluckiest--and yet
luckiest--authors who ever tried to sell a manuscript along
Broadway. One of them is Edgar Allan Poe and the other is Walt
Whitman. They shall have a chapter to themselves.

But before turning to that chapter, we must look back to New
England once more and observe the blossoming-time of its ancient
commonwealths. During the thirty years preceding the Civil War
New England awoke to a new life of the spirit. So varied and rich
was her literary productiveness in this era that it still remains
her greatest period, and so completely did New England writers of
this epoch voice the ideals of the nation that the great majority
of Americans, even today, regard these New Englanders as the
truest literary exponents of the mind and soul of the United
States. We must take a look at them.

CHAPTER VI. THE TRANSCENDENTALISTS