The evening times., 1898-10-04
THE ENGLISH TONGUE.

Pail Mall Magazine. Mr.. William Archer
has an article on America and the Eng
lish Language" in which he says that
these nations are both daughters and
coheiresses of the England of the past"
and that the habit of regarding them as
mother and daughter has been fruitful of
misunderstanding. They are really joined
together in sisterhood, which has been
most happily preserved in spite of war
ring elements. At one time there was a
possibility that political hostility, the
separation caused by broad sea and the
rapid Introduction of people of foreign
spire even to modify the language, but
the instinct OF kinship, the annihiiation
of distance by modern invention and the
swift assimilation of immigrants averted
that danger. The result is that the
English language occupies a unique po-
sition among the tongues of the earth.
1t is unique in two dimensions-in alti-
tude and in eXpanse. 1t scars to the
highest heights of human utterance and
1t covers an unequaled area of the
earthS surface"
1t is to be noted too. that this language
is as much the property of the Americans
as ii is of the English. No approach could
be more fagrantly unjust than to say
that American literature feebly initiates
English literature. There is a common
inheritance of old masters, but a new in
dividuality in both countries, and it is it's
americanism that gives to American lit
erature its chief value. only one Ameri-
can author of the first rank could posi-
bly,. at a superficial glance appear not so
much English as European, cosmopoli-
tan" This Is Edgar Allan Poe. who has
left perhaps a deeper impress upon litera-
ture outside the English-speaking coun-
tries than any other imaginative writer
of the century, with the exception OF
Byron" Beginning with Poe the author
summarizes his opinions of various
American writer's as follows:
Poe was a born idealist a creature OF
pure intelligence. Whether in poetry or
fiction, he was always solving problems
and il is hard TO be distinCtively national
in an exercise Of pure intelligence We do
not look for local corol in, for example.
the agreeable essays of Euclid. But Poe S
intelligence was, at bottom, of a charac-
teristically American type. He was the
Edison of romance. AS for the other
great writer's OF America, what can b.
more patent than their Americanism?
Speaking only. for the present, OF
those who have joined the majority, l
would name TWO who seem TO me 10
stand with Poe in the very front rank of
original genius They are Emerson. that
starlike spirit. dwelling in serener ether
than ours which, though we may never
attain it, is vet a refreshment to look up
to: and Hawthorne. not perhaps the
greatest romaEcer in the English tongue,
but certainly the purest artist in that
sphere of fiction. Now. 1t is a mere tru-
ism to say that each of these men was.
In his way. a typical product OF Ne"
England inconceivable as the offspring
of any other soil In the world. Emerson
! il has been said not without truth, was
| the first of the American humorists, car
| rying into metaphysics that gift of real
| istic vision and inspired hyperhole which
! has somehow been grated upon the An
! glo-Saxon character by the conditions OF
| American life. As for Hawthorne,
| though he has felt and reproduced the
| physical charm of Rome more subtly
| than any other artist, mis- genius drew al
! once its strength and its dellcacy from
! his Puritan ancestry and environment
| To realize how intimately he smacks OF
| the soil, we have but to think of that
marvellous scene in The Blithedale Ro-
nance the search for Zenobia's body
! From what does il derive its peculiar
quality. its haunting SAVIOR? Simply from
the presence of Silas Foster that delight
full incarnation of the New England yeo-
man. If l thought anything had hap
pened to Zenobia, / should feel kind o
sorrowful.' said the grim Silas; and
there never was a speech more dramati-
caIly true, or, in its context, more bitter
ly pathetic.
Even while English critics were prov
ing that there could be no such thing a
an American literature. Washington Irv-
ing and Fenimore Cooper were laying its
foundation on thoroughly American ba-
sis. Irving was none the less American
for loving the picturesque traditions OF
his English ancestry; Cooper gallant
and fertile genius, did his country and
our language an estimable service by
adding a whole group of specihcaiIy
American figures TO the deathleSs aris-
tocracy of the realms of romance, Then
in the generation which has just passed
away. we have such men as Thoreau
racy of his native soil; Longfellow. in his
day and way the chief Interpreter oi
America to England: Whittier, the poe,
of Quaker Pennsylvania, as LonsfelloW
was the poet of Puritan Massachusetts,
| Lowell, courtly cosmopolitan, and ye
| the creator of Hosea Bigiow; Holmes. a:
American in his humor as Lamb was En-
| glish. who justly ranks with Lamb ant
| Goldsmith among the personally best
! beloved writer's of the English tongue
| Prescott in the sphere of history parallel
! ed the achievements of Cooper in fiction
| by giving literary form TO the romance o
| the new world; while Motley was inspire,
! (too ardently, perhaps) by the spirit o
! free America in writing the great epic o
! religious and political freedom in Europe
"Fiually. il must not be forgotten tina
| in Uncle Toms Cabin a tragicall
| American production. Mrs. Reecher Stow
! added TO the literature of the Enghsi
| language the most potent, the most dy
| manic pamphlet ever hurled into the are
ma of national life.
.'Of all that a host of living American
| are doing for the literature of our com
| mon tongue. 1t is impossible to speal
| adequately, and it would be mpertinen
| to speak perfunctorily. Not the Ameri
| canism merely, but the localism of tn
dominant school of fiction is its chic
and. to my thinking, its most valuabl
! characteristic Every region of the re
public. one might almost say every State
! has its interpreter, and generally YER
| able one, for example, Miss wilkins. il
the North: Miss Murfree. in the Middl
States. and Mr.. Cable in the South. An
cannot deny myself the pleasure of ex
pressing my conviction that if a work o
incontestable genius has been issued il
the English language during the las
! quarter Of a century it is that brillian
romance of the great rivers The Ad
| ventures of Huckleberry Finn.
MOnarchs of the Earth.
(Erou the Iowa State RppiS.pr)