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
assimilation 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.
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