) Ruskin, the Englishman, charges as a fearful and
serious lack that my poems have no humor. A profound German critic
complains that, compared with the luxuriant and well-accepted songs
of the world, there is about my verse a certain coldness, severity,
absence of spice, polish, or of consecutive meaning and plot. (The
book is autobiographic at bottom, and may-be I do not exhibit and make
ado about the stock passions: I am partly of Quaker stock.) Then
E.C. Stedman finds (or found) mark'd fault with me because while
celebrating the common people _en masse_, I do not allow enough
heroism and moral merit and good intentions to the choicer classes,
the college-bred, the _etat-major_. It is quite probable that S. is
right in the matter. In the main I myself look, and have from the
first look'd, to the bulky democratic _torso_ of the United States
even for esthetic and moral attributes of serious account--and refused
to aim at or accept anything less. If America is only for the rule
and fashion and small typicality of other lands (the rule of the
_etat-major_) it is not the land I take it for, and should to-day feel
that my literary aim and theory had been blanks and misdirections.
Strictly judged, most modern poems are but larger or smaller lumps of
sugar, or slices of toothsome sweet cake--even the banqueters dwelling
on those glucose flavors as a main part of the dish. Which perhaps
leads to something: to have great heroic poetry we need great
readers--a heroic appetite and audience.
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