ABSTRACT
Amidst uncertain institutions, and a heterogeneous population, we have mainly but a feeble and an imitative literature, that servilely copies everything from abroad, and then seriously pretends to call its secondary inanities "an American Literature". Channing has since figured, and Prescott has lately come forward: but in neither is there anything to distinguish them, except as less American, if by American, is meant in our authorship something that is not English. The elder Adams, President Washington and Mr. Jefferson, have the same general characteristics; but the first two in much the greater degree; since, on the whole, they attempted less to be fine writers, without attaining it, than did the sage of Monticello. An original literature implies a race either not derivative from another since its refinement had reached the point of literary cultivation; or one which, if secondary, has, in new seats, under a new body of influences, formed for itself a fresh and complete identity of its own.
