"Mr. Townsend's fellow countrymen must feel themselves to be put under a beautiful obligation to him by his work entitled 'Kentucky in American Letters'. He has thus fenced off for the lovers of New World literature a well watered bluegrass pasture of prose and verse, which they may enter and range through according to their appetites for its peculiar green provender and their thirst for the limestone spring. This strip of pasture is a hundred years long; its breadth may not be politely questioned!" -Introduction