The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844: Volume 23, Number 6Various
General
The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844: Volume 23, Number 6
Various
Periodicals
with the relish of pleasure. All who favor it with their productions have
different tastes and faculties of mind. Each one endeavors to do the best
with his theme. He ornaments it in diction, or tasks his fancy, or
explores the secrets of science, or illustrates the events and scenes of
his country: he excites broad-mouthed laughter, by salutary jest and pun;
he expatiates in pathetic sentences, or murmurs in the mellow cadence of
song; or arouses interest by the embellishments wherewith history is
refined, and which shed a light over the dim annals of the past, making
them to smile,
----'even as the radiant glow,
Kindling rich woods, whereon the etherial bow
Sleeps lovingly awhile.'
'Now what I thought beside, while looking over my proof, was this: that a
'circulating medium,' through which so many minds communicated their
thoughts, produced and clothed with befitting language in solitary labor;
smoothed, strengthened, or harmonized by revision, and rendered impressive
by those helps and researches of which every _readable_ writer must avail
himself; such a medium, I say, merits the esteem and respect of all. It
deserves not to be taken up for judgment, at a momentary glance, by the
undiscerning eye of careless inquiry. It should be read impartially, and
spoken of, in all worthy points, with praise; in faulty ones, with
tenderness. Our literature, I take it, is not yet a sufficiently flowery
pursuit, to enable any of its votaries to sow its walks with brambles. By
its influence, _the country_ is to be mentally illustrated; the clanking
shackles of transatlantic humbug are to be thrown off; and the
establishment of wholesome feelings, and reliance upon our own
intellectual resources, firmly effected. I love to see the general press
engaged now and then in cheering onward the laborers in the more
unfrequented and toilsome avenues of our literary vineyard. It sends a
GOD-speed to the bosoms of those whose travails are more for their country
than themselves; and who are content, in anonymous pride, to believe, that
it heralds that bright day of mental refinement which will ere long, among
the freest and noblest confederacy of nations on earth, irradiate the
utmost borders of that holy circumference,
'Our Native Land!'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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