LIFE AND LETTERS OF JAMES GATES PERCIVAL. 185 



man, " I see a man go up like a rocket, I expect before 

 long to see the stick come down." The times were 

 singularly propitious to mediocrity. As in Holland one 



had only to 



" Invent a shovel and be a magistrate," 



so here to write a hundred blank verses was to be im 

 mortal, till 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 surpassing 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 atmos 

 phere which is the breath of life to all artistic produc 

 tion; that our scholarship, such as it was, was mostly 

 of that theological sort which acts like a prolonged 

 drouth 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 coun 

 try 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 lit 

 erature we were bound to produce without further 

 delay. If that little dribble of an Avon had succeeded 

 in engendering Shakespeare, what a giant might we not 

 look for from the mighty womb of Mississippi ! Physical 

 Geography 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 



