Edward William Johnston (aka Il Secretario): "American Letters," Part I

Edward William Johnston under the pen name IL SECRETARIO, "American Letters -- Their Character and Advancement." The American Review: A Whig Journal of Politics, Literature, Art and Science. Vol I, Issue 6 (June 1845): pages 575-581.

In this essay, Johnston discusses the role of literature and literary criticism and explores whether there is yet at the time of writing a full-blown "American Literature:"

Amidst certain institutions and a heterogeneous population, we have mainly but a feeble and an imitative literature, that serviley copies everything from abroad, and then seriously pretends to call its secondary inanities 'an American Literature.' (p. 576).

Is there an American school of writers? None, certainly, unless they who degrade and vulgarize the tongue and the taste of the country by performances, the whole merit of which consists in their adoption of a particular local slang . . . are the models of a new and noble literature that is to be for us. When these things shall be found for us a learning, the Ethiopian Minstrels will create for us a Music, and the disciples of Jim Crow a Theatre of our own. (pp. 576-577).*

Johnston notes the "concise elegance" of Benjamin Franklin, the "general correctness and vigor" of the "political prose writers of the Revolution" and the "higher and peculiar merit" of Washington Irving.  He dismisses James Fennimore Cooper as an American original: "little more need be said than that he is confessedly the pupil of Walter Scott. His subjects only were American . . . His style has no great elegance or originality. Except where rapidity of incidents harries him on, it is all the while flat or tawdry: it creeps, or it goes on immeasurable stilts."  (p. 577). 

As far as Johnston could tell at the time (on the verge of the Mexican-American War), there was no great American prose tradition established quite yet. It was probably too early. "So much for prose, then, And now, as to verse, is there anything more original? Have we found a new set of Muses . . .?

*Though this sentiment is expressed through the scrim of racialism and racism not atypical of his times, Johnston was actually onto something: the roots of blues, jazz, and African American literature, among other developments that would flourish in the following (i.e. 20th) century.