Of Ford he had never heard.

Gray had had his day.

Prior he had never read, but understood he was a very childish writer.

Chaucer and Spenser he tied in a couple, and dismissed by saying, that he thought it was neither more nor less than affectation to talk of authors who wrote in a tongue no longer intelligible.
This was the most literary conversation I was ever present at in Cincinnati.* *( The pleasant, easy, unpretending talk on all subjects, (which I enjoyed in Mr.Flint's family, was an exception (to every thing else I met at Cincinnati.
In truth, there are many reasons which render a very general diffusion of literature impossible in America.

I can scarcely class the universal reading of newspapers as an exception to this remark; if I could, my statement would be exactly the reverse, and I should say that America beat the world in letters.