Page:Flint and Feather (1914).djvu/21

 Botany Bay--a bay as unknown almost as any bay in Laputa--that voyage which resulted in the founding of a cluster of great nations any one of whose mammoth millionaires could now buy up Ilium and the Golden Fleece combined if offered in the auction mart? The Spirit of Antiquity knows not that captain. In a thousand years' time, no doubt, these things may be as ripe for poetic treatment as the voyage of the Argonauts; but on a planet like this a good many changes may occur before an epic poet shall arise to sing them. Mr. Lighthall would remind us, did we in England need reminding, that Canada owes her very existence at this moment to a splendid act of patriotism--the withdrawal out of the rebel colonies of the British loyalists after the war of the revolution. It is 'the noblest epic migration the world has ever seen,' says Mr. Lighthall, 'more loftily epic than the retirement of Pius AEneas from Ilion.' Perhaps so, but at present the dreamy spirit of Antiquity knows not one word of the story. In a thousand years' time he will have heard of it, possibly, and then he will carefully consider those two 'retirements' as subjects for epic poetry."

The article went on to remark that until the Spirit of Antiquity hears of this latter retirement and takes it into his consideration, it must, as poetic material, give way to another struggle which he persists in considering to be greater still--the investment by a handful of Achaians of a little town held by a handful of Trojans. It is the power of this Spirit of Antiquity that tells against English poetry as a reflex of the life of man. In Europe, in which, as Pericles said, "The whole earth is the tomb of illustrious men," the Spirit of Antiquity is omnipotent.