STUDIES IN CLASSIC AMERICAN LITERATURE BY D. H. LAWRENCE NEW YORK THOMAS SELTZER 1923 CONTENTS FOREWORD I. THE SPIRIT OF PLACE II. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN III. HECTOR ST. JOHN DE CRÈVECŒUR IV. FENIMORE COOPER'S WHITE NOVELS V. FENIMORE COOPER'S LEATHERSTOCKING NOVELS VI. EDGAR ALLAN POE VII. NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE AND "THE SCARLET LETTER" VIII. HAWTHORNE'S "BLITHEDALE ROMANCE" IX. DANA'S "TWO YEARS BEFORE THE MAST" X. HERMAN MELVILLE'S "TYPEE" AND "OMOO" XI. HERMAN MELVILLE'S "MOBY DICK" XII. WHITMAN FOREWORD Listen to the States asserting: "The hour has struck! Americans shall be American. The U.S.A. is now grown up artistically. It is time we ceased to hang on to the skirts of Europe, or to behave like schoolboys let loose from European schoolmasters--" All right, Americans, let's see you set about it. Go on then, let the precious cat out of the bag. If you're sure he's in. Et interrogatum ab omnibus: "Ubi est ille Toad-in-the-Hole?" Et iteratum est ab omnibus: "Non est inventus!" Is he or isn't he inventus? If he is, of course, he must be somewhere inside you, Oh American. No good chasing him over all the old continents, of course. But equally no good _asserting_ him merely. Where is this new bird called the true American? Show us the homunculus of the new era. Go on, show us him. Because all that is visible to the naked European eye, in America, is a sort of recreant European. We want to see this missing link of the next era. Well, we still don't get him. So the only thing to do is to have a look for him under the American bushes. The old American literature, to start with. "The old American literature! Franklin, Cooper, Hawthorne & Co.? All that mass of words! all so unreal!" cries the live American. Heaven knows what we mean by reality. Telephone, tinned meat, Charlie Chaplin, water-taps, and World-Salvation, presumably. Some insisting on the plumbing, and some on saving the world: these being the two great American specialties. Why not? Only, what about the young homunculus of the new era, meanwhile? You can't save yourself before you are born. Look at me trying to be midwife to the unborn homunculus!