140 LIFE AND LETTERS OF JAMES GATES PERCIVAL. 



somebody else wrote a hundred and fifty blanker ones. It had 

 been resolved unanimously that we must and would have a 

 national literature. England, France, Spain, Italy, each already 

 had one, Germany was getting one made as fast as possible, 

 and Ireland vowed that she once had one far suppassing them 

 all. To be respectable, we must have one also, and that 

 speedily. That we were not yet, in any true sense, a nation ; 

 that we wanted that literary and social atmosphere which is the 

 breath of life to all artistic production; that our scholarship, 

 such as it was, was mostly of that theological sort which acts 

 like a prolonged drought upon the brain ; that our poetic fathers 

 were Joel Barlow and Timothy Dwight was nothing to the 

 purpose ; a literature adapted to the size of the country was 

 what we must and would have. Given the number of square 

 miles, the length of the rivers, the size of the lakes, and you 

 have the greatness of the literature we were bound to produce 

 without further delay. If that little dribble of an Avon had suc 

 ceeded in engendering Shakespeare, what a giant might we not 

 look for from the mighty womb of Mississippi ! Physical geo 

 graphy for the first time took her rightful place as the tenth and 

 most inspiring Muse. A glance at the map would satisfy the 

 most incredulous that she had done her best for us, and should 

 we be wanting to the glorious opportunity ? Not we indeed ! 

 So surely as Franklin invented the art of printing, and Fulton 

 the steam-engine, we would invent us a great poet in time to 

 send the news by the next packet to England, and teach her 

 that we were her masters in arts as well as arms. 



Percival was only too ready to be invented, and he forthwith 

 produced his bale of verses from a loom capable of turning off 

 a hitherto unheard-of number of yards to the hour, and perfectly 

 adapted to the amplitude of our territory, inasmuch as it was 

 manufactured on the theory of covering the largest surface with 

 the least possible amount of meaning that would hold words 

 together. He was as ready to accept the perilous emprise, and 

 as loud in asserting his claim thereto, as Sir Kay used to be, 

 and with much the same result. Our critical journals and 

 America certainly has led the world in a department of letters 

 which of course requires no outfit but the power to read and 

 write, gratuitously furnished by our public schools received 

 him with a shout of welcome. Here came the true deliverer at 

 last, mounted on a steed to which he himself had given the new- 

 name of Pegasus, for we were to be original in everything 

 and certainly blowing his own trumpet with remarkable vigour 



