time!" Each has its uses, no doubt. I am far from suggesting that the
one should drive out the other. It is precisely the advantage of our
linguistic position that it so enormously enlarges the stock of
semi-synonyms at our disposal. To reject a forcible Americanism merely
because we could, at a pinch, get on without it, is--Mr. Lang will
understand the forcible Scotticism--to "sin our mercies."

Mr. Lang is under a certain illusion, I think, in his belief that in
hardening our hearts against Americanism's we should raise no barrier
between ourselves and the classical authors of America. He says: "Let us
remark that they [Americanisms] do not occur in Hawthorne, Poe, Lowell,
Longfellow, Prescott, and Emerson, except when these writers are
consciously reproducing conversations in dialect." He made the same
remark on a previous occasion; when his opponent (see the _Academy_,
March 30, 1895) opened a volume of Hawthorne and a volume of Emerson,
and in five minutes found in Hawthorne "He had named his two children,
one _for_ Her Majesty and one _for_ Prince Albert," and in Emerson
"Nature tells every secret once. Yes; but in man she tells it _all the
time_." The latter phrase is one which Mr. Lang explicitly puts under
his ban. He is an ingenious and admirable translator: I wish he would
translate Emerson's sentence from American into English, without loss of
brevity, directness, and simple Saxon strength. For my part, I can think
of nothing better than "In man she is always telling it," which strikes
me as a feeble makeshift. "All the time," I suggest, is precisely one of
the phrases we should accept with gratitude--if, indeed, it be not
already naturalised.

Mr. Lang is peculiarly unfortunate in calling Oliver Wendell Holmes to
witness against his particular and pet aversion "I belong here" or "That
does not belong there." Writing of "needless Americanisms," he says,