It was quite on the cards that a
new American language might have developed from a fusion of all the
diverse tongues of all the scattered races of the earth.
Nothing of the sort, as we know, has happened. The instinct of kinship
from the first kept political enmity in check; the Atlantic has been
practically wiped out; and English has easily absorbed, in America, all
the other idioms which have been brought into contact, rather than
competition, with it. The result is that the English language occupies a
unique position among the tongues of the earth. It is unique in two
dimensions--in altitude and in expanse. It soars to the highest heights
of human utterance, and it covers an unequalled area of the earth's
surface. Undoubtedly it is the most precious heirloom of our race, and
as such we must reverence and guard it. Nor must we islanders talk as
though we hold it in fee-simple, and allowed our trans-Atlantic kinsfolk
merely a conditional usufruct of it. Their property in it is as complete
and indefeasible as our own; and we should rejoice to accept their aid
in the conversation and renovation (equally indispensable processes) of
this superb and priceless heritage.
English critics of the beginning of the century so convincingly set
forth the reasons why America, absorbed in the conquest of nature and in
material progress, could not produce anything great in the way of
literature, that their arguments remain embedded in many minds even to
this day, when events have conclusively falsified them.
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