They too, in all
ages, all lands, have been creators, fashioning, making types of men
and women, as Adam and Eve are made in the divine fable. Behold,
shaped, bred by orientalism, feudalism, through their long growth and
culmination, and breeding back in return--(when shall we have an
equal series, typical of democracy?)--behold, commencing in primal
Asia, (apparently formulated, in what beginning we know, in the gods
of the mythologies, and coming down thence,) a few samples out of the
countless product, bequeath'd to the moderns, bequeath'd to America as
studies. For the men, Yudishtura, Rama, Arjuna, Solomon, most of
the Old and New Testament characters; Achilles, Ulysses, Theseus,
Prometheus, Hercules, Aeneas, Plutarch's heroes; the Merlin of Celtic
bards; the Cid, Arthur and his knights, Siegfried and Hagen in the
Nibelungen; Roland and Oliver; Roustam in the Shah-Nemah; and so on to
Milton's Satan, Cervantes' Don Quixote, Shakspere's Hamlet, Richard
II., Lear, Marc Antony, &c., and the modern Faust. These, I say, are
models, combined, adjusted to other standards than America's, but of
priceless value to her and hers.
Among women, the goddesses of the Egyptian, Indian and Greek
mythologies, certain Bible characters, especially the Holy Mother;
Cleopatra, Penelope; the portraits of Brunhelde and Chriemhilde in
the Nibelungen; Oriana, Una, &c.; the modern Consuelo, Walter Scott's
Jeanie and Effie Deans, &c., &c. (Yet woman portray'd or outlin'd at
her best, or as perfect human mother, does not hitherto, it seems to
me, fully appear in literature.
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