“But I do see with them, and very discerningly, notwithstanding your comparison.  Now there is that ‘Skeleton in Armor,’ his last effusion, I believe, that you are all making such a work over—­fine-sounding thing enough, I grant you, ingenious rhyme, and all that.  But I know where the framework came from!  Old Drayton furnished that in his ’Battle of Agincourt.’” Then in a clear, sonorous voice, he gave some specimens of each, so as to point the resemblance, real or imaginary.

“You are content with mere externs in finding your similitudes, Major Favraud!  In power of thought, beauty of expression, what comparison is there?  Drayton’s verse is poor and vapid, even mean, beside Longfellow’s.”

“I grant you that.  I have never for one moment disputed the ability of those Yankees.  Their manufacturing talents are above all praise, but when it comes to the ‘God-fire,’ as an old German teacher of mine used to say, our simple Southern poets leave them all behind—­’Beat them all hollow,’ would be their own expression.  You see, Miss Harz, that Cavalier blood of ours, that inspired the old English bards, will tell, in spite of circumstances.”

“But genius is of no rank—­no blood—­no clime!  What court poet of his day, Major Favraud, compared with Robert Burns for feeling, fire, and pathos?  Who ever sung such siren strains as Moore, a simple Irishman of 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!  What trumpet like to Campbell!  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 small white teeth sternly, with an eye like a burning coal, looked forward into space, his whole face contracting.