broadened its sympathies. The latter was the Maecenas to a band of
brilliant youths who used to meet for literary suppers at his beautiful
home." Among these brilliant youths were Paul Hamilton Hayne and Henry
Timrod, two of the best poets the South has produced. The _Southern
Literary Gazette_, founded by Simms, and _Russell's Magazine_, edited
by Hayne, were published at Charleston. Louisville and New Orleans
were likewise literary centers of more or less influence.

Yet it is a notable fact that none of these literary centers gave rise to
a distinctive group or school of writers. The influence of these centers
did not consist in one great dominating principle, but in a general
stimulus to literary effort. In this respect it may be fairly claimed
that the South was more cosmopolitan than the North. In New England,
theology and transcendentalism in turn dominated literature; and not a
few of the group of writers who contributed to the Atlantic Monthly were
profoundly influenced by the anti-slavery agitation. They struggled up
Parnassus, to use the words of Lowell,--

"With a whole bale of _isms_ tied together with rime."

But the leading writers of the South, as will be seen later, have been
exempt, in large measure, from the narrowing influence of one-sided
theological or philosophical tenets. They have not aspired to the role of
social reformers; and in their loyalty to art, they have abstained from
fanatical energy and extravagance.

The major poets of the South stand out in strong, isolated individuality.
They were not bound together by any sympathy other than that of a common
interest in art and in their Southern home. Their genius was nourished on
the choicest literary productions of England and of classic antiquity;