Read "Home as Found" for comparison of the topics treated with those in the "Salmagundi" and "Croaker" papers, for observation on the variety of American weaknesses presented, for a decision as to how fundamental or how superficial these weaknesses were, and for a conclusion as to the amount of evident ill temper in the book. CHAPTER XI WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT The mention of Irving, Cooper, and Bryant as representatives of New York in the early nineteenth century is likely to mislead students into thinking of them as literary associates. As a matter of fact they seem not to have had any more contact than any other three educated residents of the city. They were not unsociable men, but each went his own social way. Until his period of controversy Cooper was leading member of a literary club of which he had been the founder. Irving, without going to the pains of organizing a group, was the natural center of one which delighted in his company and emulated his ways of thinking and writing. Bryant, instead of being drawn after either of these older men, stepped into journalism, becoming a friend of the great editors and the political leaders. Irving was the only one of the three who was born and bred in town. Cooper and Bryant were not sons of New York; they were among the first of its long list of eminent adopted children. Bryant (1794-1878) was born at Cummington, Massachusetts. His descent can be traced to the earliest Plymouth families, and, on his mother's side, to Priscilla Alden. His father was a much-loved country doctor, the third of the family in recent generations to follow this budding profession. He was a man of dignities in his town, a state representative and senator, and a welcome friend of the Boston book-lovers. His services were so freely given, however, that he had little money to spend on his boy's education. This was carried on, according to a common custom, under charge of clergymen, though not the least important teaching came direct from the father's guidance of his reading and criticism of his writing. Bryant's talents began to show promise while he was still a boy, for he read eagerly, and in his early 'teens wrote a number of "pieces" which were more or less widely circulated in print. One of these, "The Embargo," a political satire addressed to President Jefferson, ran to two editions and roused so much doubt as to its authorship that his father's friends soberly certified to it as the work of a boy of thirteen. In these years Bryant made Alexander Pope his adored model, and for so young an imitator he succeeded remarkably well. A little later he fell under the influence of a group of minor Englishmen who have rather wickedly been nicknamed the "Graveyard Poets" because of the persistency with which they versified on death, the grave, and the after-life. "Thanatopsis," written before he was eighteen, was a reflection of and a response to