Perhaps Samuel Johnson Was A

What Has A Writer To Be Bombastic About? Whatever Good A Man May Write Is The Consequence Of Accident, Luck, Or Surprise, And Nobody Is More Surprised Than An Honest Writer When He Makes A Good Phrase Or Says Something Truthful.

Hardly A Book Of Human Worth, Be It Heaven's Own Secret, Is Honestly Placed Before The Reader; It Is Either Shunned, Given A Periclean Funeral Oration In A Hundred And Fifty Words, Or Interred In The Potter's Field Of The Newspapers Back Pages.

Look At This Poet William Carlos Williams: He Is Primitive And Native, And His Roots Are In Raw Forest And Violent Places; He Is Word-sick And Place-crazy. He Admires Strength, But For What? Violence! This Is The Cult Of The Frontier Mind.

Man Is At The Nadir Of His Stregth When The Earth, The Seas, The Mountains Are Not In Him, For Without Them His Soul Is Unsourced, And He Has No Images By Which To Abide.

The Newspaper Has Debauched The American Until He Is A Slavish, Simpering, And Angerless Citizen; It Has Taught Him To Be A Lump Mass-man Toward Fraud, Simony, Murder, And Lunacies More Vile Than Those Of Commodus Or Caracalla.