classes of the Southern states found their intellectual nourishment in
the older English classics, and Pope, Addison, and Shakespeare formed a
part of every gentleman's library. There were no great publishing houses
to stimulate literary production; and to this day Southern writers are
dependent chiefly on Northern publishers to give their works to the
public. Literature was hardly taken seriously; it was rather regarded, to
use the words of Paul Hamilton Hayne, "as the choice recreation of
gentlemen, as something fair and good, to be courted in a dainty, amateur
fashion, and illustrated by _apropos_ quotations from Lucretius, Virgil,
or Horace." Thus it happened that before the Civil War literature
in the South, whether prose or poetry, had a less vigorous development
than in the Middle States and New England.

Yet it has been common to undervalue the literary work of the South.
While literature was not generally encouraged there before the Civil
War,--a fact lamented by gifted, representative writers,--there were at
least two literary centers that exerted a notable influence. The first
was Richmond, the home of Poe during his earlier years, and of the
_Southern Literary Messenger_, in its day the most influential magazine
south of the Potomac. It was founded, as set forth in its first issue,
in 1834, to encourage literature in Virginia and the other states
of the South; and during its career of twenty-eight years it stimulated
literary activity in a remarkable degree. Among its contributors we find
Poe, Simms, Hayne, Timrod, John Esten Cooke, John R. Thompson, and
others--a galaxy of the best-known names in Southern literature.

The other principal literary center of the South was Charleston.
"Legare's wit and scholarship," to adopt the words of Mrs. Margaret J.
Preston, "brightened its social circle; Calhoun's deep shadow loomed over
it from his plantation at Fort Hill; Gilmore Simms's genial culture