Nor did it appear to me that their intimacy with modern literature was such as to assist them much in the formation of style.

What they class as modern literature seems to include little beyond the English publications of the day.
To speak of Chaucer, or even Spenser, as a modern, appears to them inexpressibly ridiculous; and all the rich and varied eloquence of Italy, from Dante to Monti, is about as much known to them, as the Welsh effusions of Urien and Modred, to us.
Rousseau, Voltaire, Diderot, &c., were read by the old federalists, but now they seem known more as naughty words, than as great names.

I am much mistaken if a hundred untravelled Americans could be found, who have read Boileau or Le Fontaine.
Still fewer are acquainted with that delightful host of French female writers, whose memoirs and letters sparkle in every page with unequalled felicity of style.

The literature of Spain and Portugal is no better known, and as for "the wits of Queen Anne's day," they are laid _en masse_ upon a shelf, in some score of very old-fashioned houses, together with Sherlock and Taylor, as much too antiquated to suit the immensely rapid progress of mind which distinguishes America.
The most perfect examples of English writing, either of our own, or of any former day, have assuredly not been produced by the imitation of any particular style; but the Fairy Queen would hardly have been written, if the Orlando had not; nor would Milton have been the perfect poet he was, had Virgil and Tasso been unknown to him.

It is not that the scholar mimics in writing the phrases he has read, but that he can neither think, feel, nor express himself as he might have done, had his mental companionship been of a lower order.
They are great novel readers, but the market is chiefly furnished by England.