Homer was doubtless a patriot, but he
shows no signs of having been a bigot. He described that great
international episode with singular impartiality; what chiefly interested
him was the play of human nature. Nevertheless, there is no evidence that
the Greeks were backward in admitting his claims as their national poet;
and we may legitimately conclude that were an American Homer--whether in
prose or poetry--to appear among us, he might pitch his scene where he
liked--in Patagonia, or on the banks of the Zambezi--and we should accept
the situation with perfect equanimity. Only let him be a native of New
York, or Boston, or San Francisco, or Mullenville, and be inspired with
the American idea, and we ask no more. Whatever he writes will belong to
our literature, and add lustre to it.
One hears many complaints about the snobbishness of running after things
European. Go West, young man, these moralists say, or go down Fifth
Avenue, and investigate Chatham Street, and learn that all the elements of
romance, to him who has the seeing eye, lie around your own front doorstep
and back yard. But let not these persons forget that he who fears Europe
is a less respectable snob than he who studies it.
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