Questions at Issue by Edmund Gosse

For the audacious query which stands at the head of this essay, it is not I, but an American editor, who must bear the blame, if blame there be. It would never have occurred to me to tie such a firebrand to the tail of any of my little foxes. He gave it to me, just as Mr. Pepys gave _Gaze not on Swans_ to ingenious Mr. Birkenshaw, to make the best I could of a bad argument. On the face of it the question is absurd. There lies on my table a manual of American poetry by Mr. Stedman, in which the meed of immortality is awarded to about one hundred of Columbia's sons and daughters. No one who has a right to express an opinion is likely to deny that the learning, fidelity, and catholic taste which are displayed in this book are probably at this time of day shared, in the same degree, with its author, by no other living Anglo-Saxon writer. Why, then, should not Mr. Stedman's admirable volume be taken as a complete and satisfactory answer to our editor's query?

Simply because everything is relative, and because it may be amusing to apply to the subject of Mr. Stedman's criticism a standard more cosmopolitan and much less indulgent than his. Mr. Stedman has mapped out the heavens with a telescope; what can an observer detect with the naked eye?