sympathy. It is not needed to compare "The Gold Bug" with
"Paradise Lost"; nobody denies the superior literary stature of the
latter, although, as the Oxford Senior Wrangler objected, "What
does it prove?" But I appeal to Emerson, who, in his poem of "The
Mountain and the Squirrel," states the nub of the argument, with
incomparable felicity, as follows:--you will recall that the two
protagonists had a difference, originating in the fact that the
former called the latter "Little Prig." Bun made a very sprightly
retort, summing up to this effect:--


"Talents differ; all is well and wisely put;
If I cannot carry forests on my back,
Neither can you crack a nut."


Andes and Paradises Lost are expedient and perhaps necessary in
their proper atmosphere and function; but Squirrels and Gold Bugs
are indispensable in our daily walk. There is as fine and as true
literature in Poe's Tales as in Milton's epics; only the elevation
and dimensions differ. But I would rather live in a world that
possessed only literature of the Poe caliber, than shiver in one
echoing solely the strains of the Miltonian muse. Mere human
beings are not constructed to stand all day a-tiptoe on the misty
mountain tops; they like to walk the streets most of the time and
sit in easy chairs. And writings that picture the human mind and
nature, in true colors and in artistic proportions, are literature,
and nobody has any business to pooh-pooh them. In fact, I feel as
if I were knocking down a man of straw. I look in vain for any
genuine resistance. Of course "The Gold Bug" is literature; of