November 10, 1856
A few books were piled disorderly over the mantel-piece, and some characteristic pictures—a Hercules, a Bacchus, and a satyr—were pasted, unframed, upon the rude walls.
 . . . .
I said, while looking at the pictures in his study: “Which, now, of the three, particularly, is the new poet here—this Hercules, the Bacchus, or the satyr?” On which he begged me not to put my questions too close, meaning to take, as I inferred, the virtues of the three to himself unreservedly. And I think he might fairly, being himself the modern Pantheon—satyr, Silenus, and him of the twelve labours—combined.

-Amos Bronson Alcott

 

          Amos Bronson Alcott, from The Journals of Bronson Alcott, ed. Odell Shepherd (Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1938) in Myerson 334-335.