colonial life, in which he proved himself a leading spirit, he had the
literary zeal to complete his translation of Ovid's _Metamorphoses_,
which he had begun in England. After the toilsome day, spent in
introducing iron works or in encouraging shipbuilding, he sat down at
night, within the shadow of surrounding forests, to construct his
careful, rhymed pentameters. The conditions under which he wrote were
very far removed from the Golden Age which he described,--

"Which uncompelled
And without rule, in faith and truth, excelled."

The promise of this bright, heroic beginning in poetry was not realized;
and scarcely another voice was heard in verse in the South before the
Revolution. The type of civilization developed in the South prior to the
Civil War, admirable as it was in many other particulars, was hardly
favorable to literature. The energies of the most intelligent portion of
the population were directed to agriculture or to politics; and many of
the foremost statesmen of our country--men like Washington, Jefferson,
Marshall, Calhoun, Benton--were from the Southern states. The system of
slavery, while building up baronial homes of wealth, culture, and
boundless hospitality, checked manufacture, retarded the growth of
cities, and turned the tide of immigration westward. Without a vigorous
public school system, a considerable part of the non-slaveholding class
remained without literary taste or culture.

The South has been chiefly an agricultural region, and has adhered to
conservative habits of thought. While various movements in theology,
philosophy, and literature were stirring New England, the South pursued
the even tenor of its way. Of all parts of our country, it has been most
tenacious of old customs and beliefs. Before the Civil War the cultivated