low degree? No Cavalier blood there, I fancy! What power, what beauty in
the poems of Walter Scott! Byron was a poet in spite of his condition,
not because of it. Hear Barry Cornwall--how he stirs the blood I What
trumpet like to Campbell I What mortal voice like to Shelley's? the
hybrid angel! What full orchestra surpassed Coleridge for harmony and
brilliancy of effect? Who paints panoramas like Southey? Who charms like
Wordsworth? Yet these were men of medium condition, all--I hate the
conceits of Cowley, Waller, Sir John Suckling, Carew, and the like. All
of your Cavalier type, I believe, a set of hollow pretenders mostly."

"All this is overwhelming, I grant," bowing deferentially. "But I return
to my first idea, that Puritan blood was not exactly fit to engender
genius; and that in the rich, careless Southern nature there lurks a
vein of undeveloped song that shall yet exonerate America from the
charge of poverty of genius, brought by the haughty Briton! Yes, we will
sing yet a mightier strain than has ever been poured since the time of
Shakespeare! and in that good time coming weave a grander heroic poem
than any since the days of Homer! Then men's souls shall have been
tried in the furnace of affliction, and Greek meets not Greek, but
Yankee. For we Southerners only bide our time!"

And he cut his spirited lead-horse, until it leaped forward suddenly, as
though to vent his excitement, and, setting his email white teeth
sternly, with an eye like a burning coal, looked forward into space, his
whole face contracting.

"The Southern lyre has been but lightly swept so far, Miss Harz," he
continued, a moment later, "and only by the fingers of love; we need
Bellona to give tone to our orchestra."