" These sneers, although containing a large proportion
of truth, exasperated the young nation beyond control. The provincialism
of the day writhed under any suggestion that the New World was not the
rival of the Old in every intellectual particular. A broader spirit
would have confessed that time is required for the development of
genius and the surroundings which conduce to a high development of
intellectual and artistic life. Two decades later, Lowell satirised
this American tendency in the _Fable for Critics_ by saying that while
the Old World has produced barely eight poets, the New World begets
a whole crop each year.
"Why, there's scarcely a huddle of log-huts and shanties,
That has not brought forth its own Miltons and Dantes;
I myself know ten Byrons, one Coleridge, three Shelleys,
Two Raphaels, six Titians, (I think) one Apelles,
Leonardos and Rubenses plenty as lichens,
One (but that one is plenty) American Dickens,
A whole flock of Lambs, any number of Tennysons,--
In short, if a man has the luck to have any sons,
He may feel pretty certain that one out of twain
Will be some very great person over again.
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