"It gives me great pleasure to find that you are about establishing a
literary paper at Richmond,--and I earnestly hope the attempt will be
successful. You have abundance of talent among you; and the situation
of so many well educated men, placed above the necessity of laboring
either manually or professionally, affords ample leisure for the
cultivation of literature. Hitherto your writings have been principally
political; and in that class you have had few rivals. The same talent,
directed to other pursuits in literature, will, unquestionably, produce
similar results,--and Virginia, in addition to her other high claims to
the consideration of the world, may then easily aspire to the same
distinction in other branches that she has attained in politics.
* * * * *
"Besides, the muses must certainly abide somewhere in the beautiful
vallies, and on the banks of the clear streams of the mountains of
Virginia. Solitude is the nurse of the imagination; and if there be any
Virginia lass or lad that ever seeks, they will assuredly find
inspiration, among the retired quiet beauties of her lonely retreats.
Doubtless they only want a vehicle for their effusions,--and I cannot
bring myself to believe that your contemplated paper will suffer from
the absence of contributors or subscribers.
* * * * *
"If your young writers will consult their own taste and genius, and
forget there ever were such writers as Scott, Byron, and Moore, I will
be bound they produce something original; and a tolerable original is
as much superior to a tolerable imitation, as a substance is to a
shadow. Give us something new--something characteristic of yourselves,
your country, and your native feelings, and I don't care what it is. I
am somewhat tired of licentious love ditties, border legends, affected
sorrows, and grumbling misanthropy. I want to see something wholesome,
natural, and national. The best thing a young American writer can do,
is to forget that any body ever wrote before him; and above all things,
that there are such caterpillars as critics in this world."