Naturally enough, this moral obsession has given a strong colour to
American literature. In truth, it has coloured it so brilliantly that
American literature is set off sharply from all other literatures. In
none other will you find so wholesale and ecstatic a sacrifice of
aesthetic ideas, of all the fine gusto of passion and beauty, to notions
of what is meet, proper and nice. From the books of grisly sermons that
were the first American contribution to letters down to that amazing
literature of "inspiration" which now flowers so prodigiously, with two
literary ex-Presidents among its chief virtuosi, one observes no
relaxation of the moral pressure. In the history of every other
literature there have been periods of what might be called moral
innocence--periods in which a naif _joie de vivre_ has broken through
all concepts of duty and responsibility, and the wonder and glory of the
universe have been hymned with unashamed zest. The age of Shakespeare
comes to mind at once: the violence of the Puritan reaction offers a
measure of the pendulum's wild swing.
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