Part 8 (2/2)
contributions to the work of self-realisation have been in the main retrospective, but nevertheless of the first importance. He is the ”sacred poet” of the Mississippi. If any work of incontestable genius, and plainly predestined to immortality, has been issued in the English language during the past quarter of a century, it is that brilliant romance of the Great Rivers, _The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn_.
Intensely American though he be, ”Mark Twain” is one of the greatest living masters of the English language. To some Englishmen this may seem a paradox; but it is high time we should disabuse ourselves of the prejudice that residence on the European side of the Atlantic confers upon us an exclusive right to determine what is good English, and to write it correctly and vigorously. We are apt in England to cla.s.s as an ”Americanism” every unfamiliar, or too familiar, locution which we do not happen to like. As a matter of fact, there is a pretty lively interchange between the two countries of slipshod and vulgar ”journalese;” and as the picturesque reporter is a greater power in America than he is with us, we perhaps import more than we export of this particular commodity. But there can be no rational doubt, I think, that the English language has gained, and is gaining, enormously by its expansion over the American continent. The prime function of a language, after all, is to interpret the ”form and pressure” of life--the experience, knowledge, thought, emotion, and aspiration of the race which employs it. This being so, the more tap-roots a language sends down into the soil of life, and the more varied the strata of human experience from which it draws its nourishment, whether of vocabulary or idiom, the more perfect will be its potentialities as a medium of expression. We must be careful, it is true, to keep the organism healthy, to guard against disintegration of tissue; but to that duty American writers are quite as keenly alive as we. It is not a source of weakness but of power and vitality to the English language that it should embrace a greater variety of dialects than any other civilised tongue. A new language, says the proverb, is a new sense; but a multiplicity of dialects means, for the possessors of the main language, an enlargement of the pleasures of the linguistic sense without the fatigue of learning a totally new grammar and vocabulary. So long as there is a potent literary tradition keeping the core of the language one and indivisible, vernacular variations can only tend, in virtue of the survival of the fittest, to promote the abundance, suppleness, and nicety of adaptation of the language as a literary instrument. The English language is no mere historic monument, like Westminster Abbey, to be religiously preserved as a relic of the past, and reverenced as the burial-place of a bygone breed of giants. It is a living organism, ceaselessly busied, like any other organism, in the processes of a.s.similation and excretion. It has before it, we may fairly hope, a future still greater than its glorious past. And the greatness of that future will largely depend on the harmonious interplay of spiritual forces throughout the American Republic and the British Empire.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote M: I do not mean that we are callous to American criticism, or always take it in good part when it comes home to us. I think with shame, for example, of the stupid insolence with which certain English journalists used for years to treat Mr. W.D. Howells, merely because he had expressed certain literary judgments from which they dissented. What I do mean, and believe to be true, is that we are _habitually unconscious_ of American criticism, while Americans may rather be said to be _habitually over-conscious_ that the eyes of England and of the world are on them. The existence of this habit of mind seems to me no less evident than the fact that it is rapidly correcting itself.]
[Footnote N: I went to see Poe's grave in Baltimore, marked by a mean and ugly monument, little more than a mere tombstone. It is surely time that a worthy memorial should be raised, at his burial-place or elsewhere, to this unique genius. England and the English-speaking world would gladly contribute. For a masterly criticism and vindication of Poe, let me refer the reader to Mr. John M. Robertson's _New Essays towards a Critical Method_. London and New York, 1897.]
[Footnote O: For the reasons of this barrenness, see an essay on _Two Studies in the South_, in Professor Brander Matthews' _Aspects of Fiction_. New York, 1896.]
[Footnote P: Founded on a novel by Miss Helen H. Gardener.]
THE AMERICAN LANGUAGE
I
Nothing short of an imperative sense of duty could tempt me to set forth on that most perilous emprise, a discussion of the American language.
The path is beset with man-traps and spring-guns. Not all the serious causes of dissension between England and America have begotten half the bad blood that has been engendered by trumpery questions of vocabulary, grammar, and p.r.o.nunciation. I cannot hope to escape giving offence, probably on both sides; but if I can induce one or two people on either side to think twice before they scoff once, I shall not have written in vain.
In the way of scoffing, we English have doubtless (and inevitably) been the worst offenders. We have habitually used ”Americanism” as a term of reproach, implying, if not saying in so many words, that America was the great source of pollution, and of nothing but pollution, to the otherwise limpid current of our speech. Dean Alford wrote offensively to this effect; Archbishop Trench, on the other hand, discussed the relations between the English of America and the English of England with courtesy and good sense.[Q] He protested against certain transatlantic neologisms, including in his list that excellent old word ”to berate,”
and a word so useful and so eminently consonant with the spirit of the language as ”to belittle;” but, whether wise or unwise, his protest was at least civil. Other writers, both in books and periodicals, have been apt to take their tone from the Dean rather than from the Archbishop. It may even be said that the instinct of the majority of Englishmen, which finds heedless expression in the newspapers and common talk, is to regard Americanisms as necessarily vulgar, and (conversely) vulgarisms as probably American. If challenged and brought to book, they can generally realise the narrowness and injustice of this way of thinking; yet they relapse into it next moment. It is time we should be on our guard against so insidious a habit. Its reduction to absurdity may be found (alackaday!) in _Fors Clavigera_ for June 1, 1874. With shame and sorrow I transcribe the pa.s.sage, for the time has not yet come for it to be forgotten. If it were merely the aberration of an individual, however distinguished, it were better kept out of sight, out of mind; but it is, I repeat, the reckless exaggeration of a not altogether uncommon habit of thought:--
”England taught the Americans all they have of speech or thought, hitherto. What thoughts they have not learned from England are foolish thoughts; what words they have not learned from England, unseemly words; the vile among them not being able even to be humorous parrots, but only obscene mocking-birds.”
Can we wonder that Americans have retorted with some asperity upon criticisms in which any approach to such insolent insularism is even remotely or inadvertently implied?
The American retort, however, has not always been judicious or dignified. It has too often consisted in the mere pitting of one linguistic prejudice against another. It is very easy to prove that there are bad speakers and bad writers in both countries, and the attempt to determine which country has the more numerous and the greater sinners is exceedingly unprofitable. The ”You're another” style of argument has been far too prevalent. Here we have Mr. Gilbert M. Tucker, for instance, in a book ent.i.tled _Our Common Speech_ (1895) implying, if he does not absolutely a.s.sert (p. 173), that a ”boldness of innovation” in matters linguistic, amounting to ”absolute licentiousness,” is more characteristic of England than of America. The suggestion leaves my British withers entirely unwrung, for I approve of bold innovation in language, trusting to the impermanence of the unfit to counteract the effects of licentiousness. If I could believe that we British were the bolder innovators, I should admit it without blenching; but observation and probability seem to me to point with one accord in the opposite direction. New words are begotten by new conditions of life; and as American life is far more fertile of new conditions than ours, the tendency towards neologism cannot but be stronger in America than in England. America has enormously enriched the language, not only with new words, but (since the American mind is, on the whole, quicker and wittier than the English) with apt and luminous colloquial metaphors; and I know not why Mr. Tucker should disclaim the credit.
He next sets forth to show how recent English writers are corrupting the language; and, in doing so, he falls into some curious errors.
d.i.c.kens was boldly innovating when he made Silas Wegg say, ”Mr. Boffin, I never bargain”--”haggle,” it would seem, is the proper word. But if Mr. Tucker will look into the matter, he will find it extremely probable that this was the original sense of the word ”bargain,” and quite certain that it was a very early sense; for instance--
”So worthless peasants bargain for their wives, As market-men for oxen, sheep, or horse.”
I HENRY VI., V. v. 53.
And, in any case, is it possible to set up such a distinction between ”bargaining” and ”haggling” as to be worth an international wrangle?
”Starved” for frozen is to Mr. Tucker an innovation; it was used both by Shakespeare and Milton. ”a.s.sist” in the sense of to ”be present at” is an ”absurd” innovation; it was used by Gibbon and by Prescott, a ”tolerably good authority,” says Mr. Tucker himself, ”in the use of English.” Miss Yonge is taken to task for saying, ”Theodora _flung_ away and was rus.h.i.+ng off;” but Milton says, ”And crop-full out of doors he flings.” Charles Reade ”is guilty of such phrases as 'Wardlaw whipped before him,' 'Ransome whipped before it;'” but the Princess in _Love's Labour's Lost_ is guilty of saying, ”Whip to our tents, as roes run o'er the land,” and the word occurs in the same sense in Ben Jonson and Steele, to search no further. The simple fact is that Mr. Tucker has not happened to note the intransitive sense of ”to fling” and ”to whip,”
which has been current in the best authors for centuries. He is very severe on the English habit of ”inserting utterly superfluous words,”
instancing from Lord Beaconsfield, ”He was _by way of_ intimating that he was engaged on a great work,” and, from a magazine, ”She was _by way of_ painting the shrimp girl.” Now, this is not an elegant expression, and for my part I should be at some pains to avoid it; but it has a perfectly distinct meaning, and is not a mere redundancy. If Mr. Tucker supposes that ”She was by way of painting the shrimp girl” means exactly the same as ”She was painting the shrimp girl,” he misses one of the fine shades of the English language. Similarly, his remark on the ”peculiar misuse of the affix _ever_, as in saying 'What_ever_ are you doing?'” stands in need of reconsideration. It is wrong, certainly, to treat _ever_ as an affix, and to mistake the first two words of ”What ever are you doing?” for the one word ”whatever;” but to suppose the ”ever” meaningless and inert, is to overlook a clearly marked and very useful gradation of emphasis. ”What are you doing?” expresses simple curiosity; ”What ever are you doing?” expresses surprise; ”What the devil are you doing?” expresses anger--we need not run farther up the scale. Nor is this use of ”ever” an innovation, licentious or otherwise.
”Ever” has for centuries been employed as an intensive particle after the interrogative p.r.o.nouns and adverbs how, who, what, where, why. For instance, in _The World of Wonders_ (1607), ”I shall desire him to consider how ever it was possible to get an answer from these priests.”
One of the most remarkable paragraphs in Mr. Tucker's book is that in which he proves ”the greater permanence and steadiness of our American speech as compared with that of the mother country” by going through Halliwell's _Dictionary of Archaisms and Provincialisms_, and picking out 76 words which Halliwell regards as obsolete, but which in America are all alive and kicking. (The vulgarism is mine, not Mr. Tucker's.) Now as a matter of fact not one of these words is really obsolete in England, and most of them are in everyday use; for instance, adze, affectation, agape, to age, air (appearance), appellant, apple-pie order, baker's dozen, bamboozle, bay window, between whiles, bicker, blanch, to brain, burly, catcall, clodhopper, clutch, coddle, copious, cosy, counterfeit money, crazy (dilapidated), crone, crook, croon, cross-grained, cross-patch, cross purposes, cuddle, to cuff (to strike), cleft, din, earnest money, egg on, greenhorn, jack-of-all-trades, loophole, settled, ornate, to quail, ragam.u.f.fin, riff-raff, rigmarole, scant, seedy, out of sorts, stale, tardy, trash. How Halliwell ever came to cla.s.s these words as archaic I cannot imagine; but I submit that any one who sets forth to write about the English of England ought to have sufficient acquaintance with the language to check and reject Halliwell's amazing cla.s.sification. Does Mr. Tucker so despise British English as never to read an English book? How else is one to account for his imagining for a moment that clodhopper, clutch, copious, cosy, cross-grained, greenhorn, and rigmarole are obsolete in England?
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