Americans rather like to repeat that story of Mr. Gladstone, when the talk is of English culture.
The American as a rule is a better linguist than the Englishman,—he is quicker, that is, to pick up a modern language and likely to speak it with a better accent. "Never trust an Englishman who speaks French without an English accent," said Prince Bismarck; and the remark, however unjust it may be to an occasional individual, showed a shrewd insight into the English character. There is always to be recognised the fact that there are tens—perhaps hundreds—of thousands of Englishmen who speak Hindustani, Pushtu, or the language of any one of a hundred remote peoples with whom the Empire has traffic, while the American has had no contact with other peoples which called for a knowledge of any tongue but his own, except that in a small way some Spanish has been useful. But so far as European languages go, the Englishman, in more or less constant and intimate relation with each of the peoples of Europe, has been so well satisfied of his own superiority to each that it has seemed vastly more fitting that they should learn his language than that he should trouble to learn theirs. Under any circumstances, is it not obviously easier for each one of the European peoples to learn to talk English than for the Englishman to learn eight European tongues with eighty miscellaneous dialects?
When an Englishman does learn a foreign language, it is most commonly for literary or scholastic purposes, rather than (with the exception of French in certain classes) for conversational use. The American on the other hand, having had no need of languages in the past, coming now in contact with the world, sees that there are three or four languages of Europe which it is most desirable that he should know, if only for commercial purposes; and a language learned for commercial purposes must be mastered colloquially and idiomatically. The American is not distracted by the need of Sanskrit or of any one of the numerous more or less primitive tongues which a certain proportion of the English people must acquire if the business of the Empire is to go on. Nor is his vision confused by seeing all the European tongues jumbled, as it were, together before him at too close range. He can distinguish which are the essential or desirable languages for his purposes; and the rising generation of Americans is learning those languages more generally, and in a more practical way, than is the rising generation of Englishmen.
And yet we have not crossed that morass;—nor perhaps, however superior in folly we may be to the angels, is it desirable that we should in plain daylight. We have at most found some slight vantage-ground: thrown up a mole-hill of a Pisgah from which we can attain a distant view of what lies beyond the swamp, even if perchance we have taken some mirages and ignes fatui for solid landscape and actual illuminations.
The ambitions and ideals of the two peoples are fundamentally alike; nor is there so great a difference as appears on the surface in their method of striving to attain those ideals and realise those ambitions, albeit the American uses certain tools (modern he calls them, the Englishman preferring to say new-fangled) to which the Englishman's hands have not taken kindly. It is natural that the English nation, having a so much larger past, should be more influenced by it than the American. It is natural that the American, conscious that his national character has but just shaped itself out of the void, with all the future before it, should look more to the present and the future than the Englishman.
The Englishman prefers to turn almost exclusively to the study of antiquity—the art and philosophies and letters of past ages—for the foundation of his work, and thence to push on between almost strictly British lines. The American seeks rather to absorb only so much of the wisdom and taste of antiquity as may serve for an intelligent comprehension of the world-art, the world-philosophies, the world-literature of to-day, and then, borrowing what he will from each department of those, to strive on that foundation to build something better than any. There are many scholars and students in America who would prefer to see the people less eager to push on. There are many thinkers and educators in England who hold that English scholarship and training dwell altogether too much in the past and that it were better if England would look more abroad and would give larger attention to the conditions of modern life—the conditions which her youth will have to meet in the coming generation.
If an American were asked which of the two peoples was the more cultivated, the more widely informed, he would probably say: "You fellows have been longer at the game than we have. You've had more experience in the business; but we believe we've got every bit as good raw material as you and a blamed sight better machinery. Also we are more in earnest and work that machinery harder than you. Maybe we are not turning out as good goods yet—and maybe we are. But it's a dead sure thing that if we aren't yet, we're going to."
A common index to the degree of cultivation in any people is found in their everyday language—their spoken speech; but here again in considering America from the British standpoint we have to be careful or we may be entrapped into the same fallacy as threatens us when we propose to judge the United States by its newspapers. In the first place the right of any people to invent new forms of verbal currency to meet the requirements of its colloquial exchange must be conceded. There was a time when an Americanism in speech was condemned in England because it was American. When so many of the Americanisms of ten years ago are incorporated in the daily speech even of educated Englishmen to-day, it would be affectation to put forward such a plea nowadays. Going deeper than this, we undoubtedly find that the educated Englishman to-day speaks with more precision than the educated American. The educated Englishman speaks the language of what I have already called the public school and university class. But while the Englishman speaks the language of that class, the American speaks the language of the whole people. That is not, of course, entirely true, for there are grades of speech in the United States, but it is relatively true—true for the purpose of a comparison with the conditions in Great Britain. The Englishman may be surprised at the number of solecisms committed in the course of an hour's talk by a well-to-do New Yorker whom he has met in the company of gentlemen in England. He would perhaps be more surprised to find a mechanic from the far West commit no more. The tongue of educated Englishmen is not the tongue of the masses—nor is it a difference in accent only, but in form, in taste, in grammar, and in thought. If in England the well-to-do and gentle classes had commercial transactions only among themselves, it is probable that a currency composed only of gold and silver would suffice for their needs; copper is introduced into the coinage to meet the requirements of the poor. American speech has its elements of copper for the same reason—that all may be able to deal in it, to give and take change in its terms. It is the same fact as we have met before, of the greater homogeneousness of the American people—the levelling power (for want of a better phrase) of a democracy.
The Englishman may object, and with justice, that because an educated man must incorporate into his speech words and phrases and forms which are necessary for communication with the vulgar, there is no reason why he should not be able to reserve those forms and phrases for use with the vulgar only. A gentleman does not pay half-a-crown, lost at the card table to a friend, in coppers. Why cannot the educated American keep his speech silver and gold for educated ears? All of which is just. There are people in the United States who speak with a preciseness equal to that of the most exacting of English precisians, but they are not fenced off as in England within the limits of a specified class; while the common speech of the American people, which is used by a majority of those who would in England come within the limits of that fenced area, is much more careless in form and phrase than the speech of educated Englishmen. It may be urged that it is much less careless, and better and vastly more uniform, than any one of the innumerable forms of speech employed by the various lower classes in England; which is true. The level of speech is better in America; but the speech of the educated and well-to-do is generally much better in England. All this, however (which is mere commonplace) may be conceded, but, though educated Americans may use a more debased speech than educated Englishmen, the point is that it is not safe to argue therefrom to an inferiority in culture in America; because the American uses his speech for other and wider purposes than the Englishman. The different American classes, just as they dress alike, read the same newspapers and magazines, and, within limits, eat the same food, so they speak the same language. It is unjust to compare that language with the language used in England only by the educated classes.
