Throughout the nineteenth century, as we have already observed'
both writers and readers had been actively interested in the
creation of an American literature' Longfellow had made a plea
for a native American poetry as early as 1825' but like many
others he had thought chiefly in terms of substituting native
New England birds for the skylarks and nightingales of English
poetry' and he soon received the futility of that kind of
superficial nationalism. Other writers followed William Gilmore
Simms in the belief that "to he national in literature, one must
needs be sectional." But as Melville said in the mid-century,
the usual mistake of those Americans who looked forward to e
coming of a literary genius among us was that "they somehow
fancy he will come in the costume of Queen Elizabeth's day."
However popular these fallacies may once have been, need not
concern us here. They had, after all, no influence except among
second- and third-rate authors. We can learn more from another
and more enduring attitude towa