"In Literature it is
only the wild that attracts us. Dulness is but another name for
tameness. It is the uncivilized free and wild thinking in "Hamlet"
and "Iliad," in all the Scriptures and Mythologies, not learned in
the schools, that delights us. As the wild duck is more swift and
beautiful than the tame, so is the wild-the mallard-thought, which
'mid falling dews wings its way above the fens. A truly good book
is something as natural, and as unexpectedly and unaccountably fair
and perfect, as a wild flower discovered on the prairies of the
West or in the jungles of the East. Genius is a light which makes
the darkness visible, like the lightning's flash, which perchance
shatters the temple of knowledge itself,-and not a taper lighted at
the hearth-stone of the race, which pales before the light of
common day...."
