The Revolution itself might be expected to inspire poetry, but a close consideration of the conditions of the time would explain why it did not. The only notable writers of the latter part of the eighteenth century are Franklin (1706-90) and Thomas Paine (1737-1809). Paine remained an Englishman and is not included in chronicles of American literature, but his spirited and superb first work, _Common Sense_, is essentially an expression of the American sentiment, and I prefer to include it here. His _Rights of Man_ and _Age of Reason_ count rather as English classics, but Paine was a cosmopolitan and would doubtless prefer to be numbered amongst American writers. Washington Irving (1783-1859) really opens the period of distinguished American literature. His _Knickerbocker History of New York_, _Sketch_ _Book_, and _Alhambra_ take rank in world literature. J. Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851) was for decades read throughout the English-speaking world, and even beyond it, for his stories of the war with the Indians, though one would hardly call them classics of fiction. William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878) is the first poet of distinction, and his _Thanatopsis_, though early, has every mark of great poetry. By the middle of the century America had a group of writers to compare with those of any country. Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49) even in his prematurely closed career achieved poetry of a very high order, especially _The Raven and Other Poems_. A prose-poem, _Eureka_, which he wrote shortly before his death should be read for the interest of his opinions. Bayard Taylor (1825-78) also wrote fine poetry (_Poems of the Orient_, etc.) and gave us one of the most satisfactory versions of Goethe’s _Faust_, a most difficult achievement. Two early historians also must be included here: William Hickling Prescott (1796-1859), whose _Ferdinand and Isabella_, _Conquest of Mexico_, and _Conquest of Peru_ would distinguish any writer, and are remarkable when we reflect that the author was blind, and John Lothrop Motley (1814-77), whose _History of the Rise of the Dutch Republic_ and _History of the United Netherlands_ are finely written works. Of the great crowd of American writers of the next generation I would select Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82) and Walt Whitman (1819-92) as the greatest from the literary point of view. Emerson’s _Essays_ are written generally in a noble English which no English writer of the nineteenth century has surpassed. Whitman’s _Leaves of Grass_, on the other hand, is indisputably an American classic. Even Emerson, whose moral dignity must have been shocked by many of Whitman’s sentiments, pronounced the book “the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed.” After these, as great and distinctive writing I would give Bret Harte’s stories, Mark Twain’s works, Lowell’s _Bigelow Papers_, and Thoreau’s _Walden_ and _In the Maine Woods_.