party.  It expressed itself in his elaborate arraignment of Napoleon in the Unitarian organ, the Christian Examiner, for 1827-28; in his Remarks on Associations, and his paper On the Character and Writings of John Milton, 1826.  This was his most considerable contribution to literary criticism.  It took for a text Milton’s recently discovered Treatise on Christian Doctrine—­the tendency of which was anti-Trinitarian—­but it began with a general defense of poetry against “those who are accustomed to speak of poetry as light reading.”  This would now seem a somewhat superfluous introduction to an article in any American review.  But it shows the nature of the milieu through which the liberal movement in Boston had to make its way.  To re-assert the dignity and usefulness of the beautiful arts was, perhaps, the chief service which the Massachusetts Unitarians rendered to humanism.  The traditional prejudice of the Puritans against the ornamental side of life had to be softened before polite literature could find a congenial atmosphere in New England.  In Channing’s Remarks on National Literature, reviewing a work published in 1823, he asks the question, “Do we possess what may be called a national literature?” and answers it, by implication at least, in the negative.  That we do now possess a national literature is in great part due to the influence of Channing and his associates, although his own writings, being in the main controversial, and, therefore, of temporary interest, may not themselves take rank among the permanent treasures of that literature.

1.  Washington Irving. Knickerbocker’s History of New York. The Sketch Book. Bracebridge Hall. Tales of a Traveler. The Alhambra. Life of Oliver Goldsmith.

2.  James Fenimore Cooper. The Spy. The Pilot. The Red Rover. The Leather-stocking Tales.

3.  Daniel Webster. Great Speeches and Orations.  Boston:  Little, Brown & Co. 1879.

4.  William Ellery Channing. The Character and Writings of John Milton. The Life and Character of Napoleon Bonaparte. Slavery. [Vols.  I and II of the Works of William E. Channing.  Boston:  James Munroe & Co. 1841.]

5.  Joseph Rodman Drake. The Culprit Fay. The American Flag. [Selected Poems.  New York. 1835.]

6.  Fitz-Greene Halleck. Marco Bozzaris. Alnwick Castle. On the Death of Drake. [Poems.  New York. 1827.]

[1]Compare Carlyle’s Herr Diogenes Teufelsdroeckh, in Sartor Resartus, the author of the famous “Clothes Philosophy.”

[Transcriber’s Note:  Earlier in this chapter is the abbreviation “Phi.  B. K.”.  The “Phi” replaces the actual Greek character that was in the original text.]

CHAPTER IV.