GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS
any English translation has yet conveyed to ourselves.
Such a metre, then, will be added to our standard verse-forms. It will be accepted by poets and critics, and the world will read it, arguing no more of dactyls and spondees than it now argues of iambics in blank-verse. Nor will any new English Homer tread upon the renown of Mr. Bryant's crowning work, until the English hexameter—with all its compensating qualities, by which alone we can preserve delicate shades of meaning and the epic movement—has been firmly established among us, and a great poet, imbued with the classical spirit, has become its acknowledged master.
Until then, Mr. Bryant's noble translation has filled the literary void. A host of English readers will long return to it with admiration and delight. Let us revere and cherish the fame of our eldest bard. He still remains among us, unchanged and monumental, surrounded by the unsettled, transitional art of the later generation,—as some Doric temple remains, in a land where grotesque and artificial structures have sprung up for a time,—an emblem of the strength of a more natural period, teaching the beauty of simplicity, and the endurance of that which is harmonious and true.
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