general, and usually in particular, is not to be understood. That
we have sprung from a Puritanical loin, and been nourished in the
past from the breast of Victorianism, is obvious. In this we have
been not too much, but too narrowly, English. We have read
Tennyson when it might have been better to have read Shakespeare
or Chaucer. But to wish to break with English literature in order
to become altogether American is like desiring to invent an
entirely new kind of clothes. I shall not give up trousers because
my fourth great-grandfather, who was a Yorkshireman, wore them,
and his pattern no longer fits my different contour. I shall make
me a pair better suiting my own shanks--yet they shall still be
trousers. But in any case, language binds us.

Indeed, in this welter of newcomers here in America, whose children
learn, read, write only English, the tradition of Anglo-
American literature is all that holds us by a thread above chaos.
If we could all be made to speak German, or Italian, or Spanish,
there would be cause, but no excuse, for an attempted revolution.
But English is dominant here and will remain so. Could we hope to
make an American literary language without dependence on English
literature, a protective tariff on home-made writing, or an
embargo against books more than a year old, or imported from
across the Atlantic, would be worth trying; but the attempts so
far are not encouraging. This has not been the way in the past by
which original literatures have been made. They have sucked
nourishment where it could best be found, and grown great from the
strength that good food gave them.

One can sympathize with the desire to nationalize our literature
at all costs; and can understand lashings out at the tyranny of