"I do not know of
any poetry to quote which adequately expresses this yearning for
the Wild. Approached from this side, the best poetry is tame. I do
not know where to find in any literature, ancient or modern, any
account which contents me of that Nature with which even I am
acquainted. You will perceive that I demand something which no
Augustan nor Elizabethan age, which no culture, in short, can give.
Mythology comes nearer to it than anything. How much more fertile a
Nature, at least, has Grecian mythology its root in than English
literature! Mythology is the crop which the Old World bore before
its soil was exhausted, before the fancy and imagination were
affected with blight; and which it still bears, wherever its
pristine vigor is unabated. All other literatures endure only as
the elms which overshadow our houses; but this is like the great
dragon- tree of the Western Isles, as old as mankind, and, whether
that does or not, will endure as long; for the decay of other
literatures makes the soil in which it thrives".
