William Dean Howell's Review of Dunbar's Book, Majors and Minors
Source:Harper's Weekly, June 27,1896, pages 630-631

There has come to me from the hand of a friend, very unofficially, a little book of verse, dateless, placeless, without a publisher, which has greatly interested me. Such foundlings of the press always appeal to one by their forlornness; but commonly the appeal is to one's pity only, which is moved all the more if tbe author of the book has innocently printed his picture with his verse. In this present case I felt a heightened pathos in the appeal from the fact that the face which confronted me when I opened the volume was the face of a young Negro, with the race traits strangely accented: the black skin, the woolly hair, the thick out-rolling lips, and the mild, soft eyes of the pure African type. One cannot be very sure of the age of these people, but I should have thought that this poet was about twenty years old, and I suppose that a generation ago he would have been worth, apart from his literary gift, twelve or fifteen hundred dollars under the hammer. My sense of all this was intensified when I came to read the little book and to recognize its artistic quality; but I hope that the love of dramatic contrasts has not made me overvalue it as a human' event, or that I do not think unduly well of it because it is the work of a man whose race has not hitherto made its mark in art.

I do not forget what the race has done in some other arts; I know that it has achieved something worthy of more than respect on the stage; that in sculpture its attempts have been worthy of note; that in oratory Booker XVashington is the equal of the most eloquent and forcible speakers among us; that in fiction Dumas is the chief glory of the romantic school. But I do not remember any English-speaking Negro, at least, who has till now done in verse work of at all the same moment as Paul Laurence Dunbar, the author of the volume I am speaking of.

Burns has long had the consecration of the world's love and honor, and I shall not do this unknown, but not ungifted poet the injury of comparing him with Burns; yet I do not think one can read his Negro pieces without feeling that they are of like impulse and inspiration with the work of Burns when he was most Burns, when he was most Scotch, when he was most peasant. When Burns was least himself he wrote literary English, and Mr. Dunbar writes literary English when he is least himself. But not to urge the mischievous parallel further, he is a real poet whether he speaks a dialect or writes a language. He calls his little book Majors and Minors; the Majors being in our American English, and the minors being in dialect, the dialect of the middle-south Negroes and the middle-south whites, for the poet's ear has been quick for the accent of his neighbors as well as for that of his kindred. I have no means of knowing whether he values his majors more than his minors, but I should not suppose it at all unlikely, and I am bound to say none of them are despicable. In very many I find proofs of honest thinking and true feeling, and in some the record of experience whose genuineness the reader can test by his own. (Mr. Howells here reprinted Conscience and Remorse.)

Most of these pieces, however, are like most of the pieces of most young poets, cries of passionate aspiration and disappointment, more or less personal or universal, which except for the Negro face of the author one could not find specially notable. It is when we come to Mr. Dunbar's Minors that we feel ourselves in the presence of a man with a direct and fresh authority to do the kind of thing he is doing. I wish I could give the whole of the longest of these pieces which he calls The Party, but I must content myself with a passage or two. They will impart some sense of the jolly rush of its movement, its vivid picturesqueness, its broad characterization; and will perhaps suffice to show what vistas into the simple, sensuous, joyous nature of his race, Mr. Dunbar opens. (The first and last stanzas are quoted.)
One sees how the poet exults in his material as the artist always does; it is not for him to blink its commonness, or to be ashamed of its rudeness, and in his treatment of it he has been able to bring us nearer to the heart of primitive human nature in his race than anyone else has yet done. The range between appetite and emotion is not great, but it is here that his race has hitherto had its being, with a lift now and then far above and beyond it. A rich humorous sense pervades his recognition of this fact, without excluding a fond sympathy, and it is the blending of these which delights me in all his dialect verse. (When de Co'n Pone's Hot is quoted.)

Several of the pieces are pure sentiment, like The Deserted Plantation, but these without lapsing into sentimentality recall the too easy pathos of the pseudo-Negro poetry of the minstrel show. There is no such suggestion in "Co'n Pone" or in the following poem which is purely and intensely black, as I may say, in its feeling. (When Malindy Sings.)

I hope the reader likes as much as I like the strong, full pulse of the music in all these things. Mr. Dunbar's race is nothing if not lyrical, and he comes by his rhythm honestly. But what is better, what is finer, what is of larger import in his work is what is conscious and individual in it. He is, so far as I know, the first man of his color to study his race objectively, to analyze it to himself, and then to represent it in art as he felt it and found it to be; to represent it humorously, yet tenderly, and above all so faithfully that we know the portrait to be undeniably like. A race which has reached this effect in any of its members can no longer be held wholly uncivilized; and intellectually Dunbar makes a stronger claim for the Negro than any Negro has yet done.

I am speaking of him as a black poet when I should be speaking of him as a poet; but the notion of what he is insists too strongly for present impartiality. I hope I have not praised him too much, because he has surprised me so very much, for his excellences are positive and not comparative. If his Minors had been written by a white man, I should have been struck by their very uncommon quality; I should have said that they were wonderful divinations. But since they are the expressions of a race-life from within the race, they seem to me indefinitely more valuable and significant. I have sometimes fancied that the Negro thought black and felt black, that they were racially so utterly alien and distinct from ourselves that there could never be common intellectual and emotional ground between us, and that whatever eternity might do to reconcile us, the end of time would find us as far asunder as ever. But this little book has given me pause in my speculation. Here in the artistic effect, at least, is white thinking and white feeling in a black man; and perhaps the human unity, not the race unity, is the precious thing, the divine thing after all. "God hath made of one blood all nations of men;" perhaps the proof of this saying is to appear in the arts, and our hostilities and prejudices are to vanish in them.

Mr. Dunbar, at any rate, seems to have fathomed the souls of his simple white neighbors as well as those of his black kindred, and certainly he has reported as faithfully what passes in them as any man of our race has yet done with respect to souls of his. It would be very incomplete recognition of his work not to speak particularly of the non-Negro dialect pieces, and it is to the lover of homely and tender poetry that I commend such charming sketches as Speakin' o' Christmas, After a Visit, Lonesome, and The Spellin' Bee. They are good, very good, and it is perhaps only the novelty of the achievement that seems to give superior value to fine irony and neat satire of such a black piece as Accountability.

Dear Mr. Howells:
I have seen your article in Harper's and felt its effect. That I have not written you sooner is neither the result of wilful neglect or lack of gratitude. It has taken time for me to recover from the shock of delightful surprise. My emotions have been too much for me. I could not thank you without "gushing," and I did not want to "gush."
Now from the very depths of my heart I want to thank you. You yourself do not know what you have done for me. I feel much as a poor, insignificant, hopeless boy would feel to have himself knighted.
I can tell you nothing about myself because there is nothing to tell. My whole life has been simple, obscure, and uneventful. I have written little pieces and sometimes recited them, but it seemed hardly by my volition.
The kindly praise that you have accorded me will be an incentive to more careful work. My greatest fear is that you have been more kind to me than just.
I have written to thank Mr. Herne for putting the book into your hands. I have only seen the man on the stage, but I have laughed and cried with him until I love him.
Again thanking you, Mr. Howells, for your more than kindness.
I am,
Sincerely yours,
Paul Laurence Dunbar
140 Zeigler Street
Dayton, Ohio