Another obvious cause of inferiority in the national literature, is the very slight acquaintance with the best models of composition, which is thought necessary for persons called well educated.  There may be reason for deprecating the lavish expense of time bestowed in England on the acquirement of Latin and Greek, and it may be doubtful whether the power of composing in these languages with correctness and facility, be worth all the labour it costs; but as long as letters shall be left on the earth, the utility of a perfect familiarity with the exquisite models of antiquity, cannot be doubted.  I think I run no risk of contradiction, when I say that an extremely small proportion of the higher classes in America possess this familiar acquaintance with the classics.  It is vain to suppose that translations may suffice.  Noble as are the thoughts the ancients have left us, their power of expression is infinitely more important as a study to modern writers; and this no translation can furnish.  Nor did it appear to me that their intimacy with modern literature was such as to assist them much in the formation of style.  What they class as modern literature seems to include little beyond the English publications of the day.

To speak of Chaucer, or even Spenser, as a modern, appears to them inexpressibly ridiculous; and all the rich and varied eloquence of Italy, from Dante to Monti, is about as much known to them, as the Welsh effusions of Urien and Modred, to us.

Rousseau, Voltaire, Diderot, &c., were read by the old federalists, but now they seem known more as naughty words, than as great names.  I am much mistaken if a hundred untravelled Americans could be found, who have read Boileau or Le Fontaine.  Still fewer are acquainted with that delightful host of French female writers, whose memoirs and letters sparkle in every page with unequalled felicity of style.  The literature of Spain and Portugal is no better known, and as for “the wits of Queen Anne’s day,” they are laid en masse upon a shelf, in some score of very old-fashioned houses, together with Sherlock and Taylor, as much too antiquated to suit the immensely rapid progress of mind which distinguishes America.

The most perfect examples of English writing, either of our own, or of any former day, have assuredly not been produced by the imitation of any particular style; but the Fairy Queen would hardly have been written, if the Orlando had not; nor would Milton have been the perfect poet he was, had Virgil and Tasso been unknown to him.  It is not that the scholar mimics in writing the phrases he has read, but that he can neither think, feel, nor express himself as he might have done, had his mental companionship been of a lower order.