) has been undermined by nineteenth-century
ideas and science. What does this immense and almost abnormal
development of Philanthropy mean among the moderns? One doubts if
there ever will come a day when the moral laws and moral standards
will be supplanted as over all: while time proceeds (I find it so
myself) they will probably be intrench'd deeper and expanded wider.
Then the expanded scientific and democratic and truly philosophic
and poetic quality of modernism demands a Deific identity and scope
superior to all limitations, and essentially including just as well
the so-call'd evil and crime and criminals--all the malformations, the
defective and abortions of the universe.
Sometimes the bulk of the common people (who are far more 'cute than
the critics suppose) relish a well-hidden allusion or hint carelessly
dropt, faintly indicated, and left to be disinterr'd or not. Some
of the very old ballads have delicious morsels of this kind. Greek
Aristophanes and Pindar abounded in them. (I sometimes fancy the old
Hellenic audiences must have been as generally keen and knowing as any
of their poets.) Shakspere is full of them. Tennyson has them. It is
always a capital compliment from author to reader, and worthy the
peering brains of America. The mere smartness of the common folks,
however, does not need encouraging, but qualities more solid and
opportune.
What are now deepest wanted in the States as roots for their
literature are Patriotism, Nationality, Ensemble, or the ideas of
these, and the uncompromising genesis and saturation of these.
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