...single poet, whether of comedies or fables? But, perhaps, he would answer, as he has already done: "When we shall have existed as a people as long as...Voltaire, the English a Shakspeare and Milton, should the reproach be still true, we will enquire from what unfriendly causes it has proceeded, that the...

...Indes (Amsterdam, 1770). - Eds. 505 ed. Maestricht. 1774. "America has not yet produced one good poet." When we shall have existed as a people as long as...Virgil, the French a Racine and Voltaire, the English a Shakespeare and Milton, should this reproach be still true, we will inquire from what unfriendly causes...

...inferiority by arguing that it was unfair to disparage American culture for not producing a poet until "we shall have existed as a people" as long as the Greeks and Romans had before producing a Homer or Virgil. Yet later on, in the same work, he reasoned that...

...argument that would be valid for decades: the United States would in time create its own canon of writing. "When we shall have existed as a people as long as...Virgil, the French a Racine and Voltaire, the English a Shakespeare and Milton . . . then the United States would produce one of its own" (1787, in Ruland...

...endeavor, he railed against Abbe Raynall's assertion that America had not yet produced a single good poet. "When we shall have existed as a people as long as...Virgil, the French a Racine and Voltaire, the English a Shakespear and Milton, should this reproach still be true," Jefferson promised, claiming for his fellow...

...one man of genius in a single art or a single science." "America has not yet produced one good poet." When we shall have existed as a people as long as...Virgil, the French a Racine and Voltaire, the English a Shakespeare and Milton, should this reproach be still true, we will enquire from what unfriendly causes...