The times., 1898-10-09
A Comparison With the Speech
of London.
A BRIToN TO- OUR AID
Mr.. William Archer breaches a
Timely Sermon to EngIishmen
Who Criticise What They Call
America nfsm-He Calls Attention
to What He Calls LondOnese,

much-needed sermon in the current num-
Der of the Pail Mall Magazine. He pre-
faces his main remarks by the statement:
"a misleading metaphor may do a great
deal to beget and perpetuate confusion of
thought; and such a metaphor, | suggest.
is that which describes England as the
mother country of America Tennyson
has given 1t literary sanction In the line
Gigantic Daughter OF the West and Mr.
William Watson, in his sonnet beginning
% towering daughter, Titan of the West,
repeats the phrase without misgiving
Both poets ignore the flight of time, and
mistake an historical for an actual rela-
ton. The America of today is not the
daughter of the England of today. They
are both daughters and co-heiresses of
the England of the past, and especially
we may say, of seventeenth century Eng
land. The same spirit which refused ship
money TO Charles l refused tea-money to
George III the same spirit which drew
up the Petition of Right dictated the Dec
laration of independence 1t was Eng
lands misconception of her true relation
to her American colonies that finally
aIienated them. She tried to be not only
motherland, but a stepmotherland.
and the United States nobly and inevita-
bly, broke her leading strings. And now,
after a lapse of a century and quarter.
we have no shadow of an excuse fo1' put
ting on maternal airs toward the trans
atlantic republic. We. no less than the
Americans, are revolted children of the
England of North and Grenyille, though
our revolt has been a bloodless one. Sure
| ly, then, our relation. is fraternal, not
parental and ilial. Or since signif-
cant personifcation-a remnant either of
mythology or of chivalry-makes nations
feminine of gender. iet Us say that we
are sister commemorative. This is not
the mere question of terms it may at first
sight appear. The false metaphor begets
false feelings on both sides. England, as
the mother-country. fails into ali the be-
setting sins of parenthood-a pedagogic
habit. an assumption of, superior wisdom.
experience, even virtue. and a resentful
amazement at every manifestation Of in
dividuality on the. part OF her offspring
| that does not happen to be quite conven-
| lent"
or the English language ne declares:
Undoubtedly IT, is the most precious
! icIiOpHi VI Jul 4atcB anu elS SA4NAi We
must reverence and guard il Nor must
we islanders talk as though we held it
| in fee-simple, and allowed our transat-
/ lantic kinsfolk merely a conditional usu-
1 fruct of 1t. Their property in il is as
! complete and indefeasible as our own:
| and we should rejoice 10 accept their aid
! in the conservation and renovation
equally Indispensable processes) of this
! superb and priceless heritage.
Of hoo NJ, s,Ft tH.a
century so convincingly set forth the rea-
sons why America, absorbed in the con-
quest Of nature and In material progress.
| could not produce anything great in the
! way of literature. that their arguments
remain imbedded in many minds even to
! this day, when events have conclusively
falsified them. 1t is quite commonplace
with some people that America has not
developed a great American literature. If
this merely mean that in casting off her
allegiance to George III America did not
cast off her allegiance to Chaucer,
Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, Addison,
| Swift, Pope, the reproach, if IL be one,
must be accepted. If it be a humiliation
TO American authors 10 own the tradi-
tions and standards established by these
men, and thereby to enrol themselves in
their immortal fellowship. why, then it
must be owned that they have deliber-
! American OF vivid originality tried to es-
cape it, and with what result? Simply
that Whitman holds a place of his own,
somewhat like that of Blake, one might
say, in the literature of the English Ian
guage, and has produced at least as much
effect in England as in America. If, on
the other hand, it be implied that Ameri-
can literature feebly initiates English lit
erature and fails to present an original
nd al inf a nf American
life, no reproach could well be more fla
grantly unjust. 1t is not only the alb
stract merit of American literature,
though that Is very high, but precisely
the Americanism of 1t, that gives 1t its
value in the eyes of all thinking English
men. Only one American author of the
first rank could possibly. at a superficial
glance, appear-not so much English as
European, cosmopolitan. l mean. OF
course Edgar Allen Poe, who
has left perhaps deeper
impress upon literature outside the Eng
disappearing countries than any other
imaginative writer of the century, with
the exception of Byron. Poe was born
idealist, a creature of pure Intelligence.
Whether in poetry or fiction, he was al
ways solving problems: and it is hard TO
be distinctively national in an exercise OF
pure intelligence. We do not look for To-
cal color In, for example, the agreeable
essays of Euclid. But Poe's intelligence
was, at bottom, of a Enthusiastically
American type. He was the Edison OF
romance. AS for the other great writers
Of America, what can be more patent
than their Americanism? Speaking on
ly, for the present, of those who have
joined the majority, | would name two
who seem to me toeStand with Poe in the
very front rank of original genius. They
are Emerson that Star=like spirit, dwell
ing in a serener ether than ours. which.
though we may never attain, it is yet
a refreshment to look up to; and Haw-
thorne, not perhaps the greatest romano
, er in the English tongue but certainly
the purest artist in that sphere of fiction
Now. it is a mere truism to say that each
of these men was in his way, a typical
product of New England, inconceivable
as the offspring of any other soil in the
world. Emerson. it has been said not
without truth, was the first of the Ameri-
can humorists, carrying, into metaphysics
that gift of realistic vision and inspired
hyperbole which has somehow beer
|, grated upon the Anglo-Saxon character
. by the conditions Of American life. AS
for Hawthorne, though he has felt an6
reproduced the physical charm of Rome
more subtly than any other artist, his
genius drew at once it's strength and Its
delicacy from his Puritan ancestry an6
environment. To realize how intimately
, he smacks of the soil. we have but tc
think of that marvellous scene In The
Blithdale Romance, the search for Zeno
bias body. From what does 1t derive 1t:
!, peculiar quality, its haunting SAVIOR
: Simply from the presence of SilaS Foster
! that delightful incarn2tion Of the New
England yeoman. If thought anything
had happened to Zenobia, l should fee
Jrtt ~ u rr-srx t1nC