Take them all round, the newspapers of the leading
American cities, in their editorial columns at any rate, are at least as
well written as the newspapers of London; and in magazines and books the
average level of literary accomplishment is certainly very high. There
are bad and vulgar writers on both sides of the Atlantic; but until the
beams are removed from our own eyes, we may safely trust the Americans
to attend to the motes in theirs.
POSTSCRIPT.--When this paper originally appeared, it formed the text for
an editorial article in the _Daily News_, in which Mr. Andrew Lang's
sign manual was not to be mistaken. Mr. Lang brought my somewhat
desultory discussion very neatly to a point. He admitted that we
habitually use "Americanism" as a term of reproach; "but," he asked,
"who is reproached? Not the American (who may do as he pleases) but the
English writer, who, in serious work, introduces, needlessly, an
American phrase into our literature. We say 'needlessly' when our
language already possesses a consecrated equivalent for the word or
idiom."
In the first place, one has to remark that many English critics are far
from accepting Mr. Lang's principle that "the American may do as he
pleases, of course.
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