Out of the development of the languages so blended sprung variety, harmony, style, and, as a consequence, taste in composition. In every epoch of our literature, in each of its manifestations, from Gower and Chaucer to Tennyson and Longfellow, we find the presence of this classic attribute, first dim and struggling, then actual and triumphant, forming, moulding, beautifying, and perfecting. The benefits which our civilisation has derived from this process are incalculable. It would be a sorry day for us on both sides of the Atlantic when the common standards depending on taste in writing should be lost. Those of speech would soon follow, and the language would become a confused mass of barbarisms. The effects upon its character would soon be traced. I believe, from certain indications, that it will rest with us in the frequent fluctuations of changing style, to vindicate our {120} title of depositories of the permanent models of the literature and language, by becoming also its preservers—in other words, to oppose a barrier to evident tendencies towards overgrowth, obscurity, and corruption. If so it be, the influence will be felt as a reflex one, extending backward to the shores where the language originated, and so again illustrating the invisible and indivisible tie that binds us together, "Old Ocean" to the contrary notwithstanding.
Our original Saxon tongue was not conquered by the Greek and Roman, as were those of the nations of the South of Europe; it appropriated them—leading them, as it were, in a kind of magnificent triumph. Out of the interfusion, such as it was, came a dialect and afterwards a literature, wholly sui generis. We find the same characteristic in the assimilation of the Roman civil law by our own common law. Our legal system did not become Latinised—but whatever was good, sound, and relevant in the civil law became incorporated and was Anglicised. In dwelling upon our literature for a moment, I shall not, as is usually done, glorify particular names—Spenser, Shakespeare, the dramatists, Milton, Bacon, Hooker, Jeremy Taylor, Burke, the classicists so-called. All the long array of great thinkers, eloquent preachers, exquisite poets, and novelists will occur at once to everyone. Let me rather dwell, as more germane to our present purpose, upon certain traits common to all, notwithstanding the diversities of styles and epochs. I would mention, then, as one such {121} trait, a certain solidity of thought—a something derived from the actual experience of life and close experimental contact with nature. This is visible at all times, and impresses one as quite in keeping with that other something in the character of the people (if the two can be at all separated), which has led to the creation and preservation of their political institutions. It is certainly a native quality, being equally characteristic of the very loftiest and most fervent productions of English genius, and of those which have no other claim upon us than sober good sense. Carrying the thought a little farther, these observations of man and nature become a positive force in the formation of individual character, and, of course, of society. It is this sure, well-grounded, homelike quality which, among all the other literatures of the world, peculiarly distinguishes the English, united as it may be and has been in many instances, with the utmost perfection of art. It is to detract from an almost universal characteristic to cite instances, but what other literature has productions like the Pilgrim's Progress, Robinson Crusoe, or poetry in this respect like Cowper's Task? What is Shakespeare but a revelation of familiar thought and feeling sublimed by genius? What is Milton, classicist as he is, in the garden scenes of Paradise, but the painter of an English home? The very flowers of his Paradise seem made to bloom there. Addison and all the essayists,—in what does their charm consist, but in their communion with daily life and thought? So, too, as to their legitimate successors, the great {122} novelists. The new world they have given us—what is it but an accurate representation of the men and women we have known, and a delightful participation in all their experiences? Truly we have a rich and ever-abiding inheritance in this literature. The inheritance itself is a positive gift, but it is more. It points out infallibly the direction our minds should take in dealing with those from whom we have derived it. With such a genuine emanation before us of the mental, moral, political, and religious life of a people, shall we go amiss in extending to them our sympathies and establishing a mutual friendship? In this way we know them—know them as we can in no other way—not through the obscuring haze of momentary passion, and the disturbance of abnormal aberrations, but through a medium deep as the life of nations and of universal binding efficacy. If language and literature have made us one, by what unhallowed process shall we be "put asunder"?
I have used the word "English" in reference to literature following the common style; of course I include our own. In all that is best, it shows the common origin. Franklin, the Federalist; the great indigenous Webster, who knew so well "what blood flowed in his veins";[8]
"I am happy to stand here to-day and to remember that, although my ancestors, for several generations, lie buried beneath the soil of the Western Continent, yet there has been a time when my ancestors and your ancestors toiled in the same cities and villages, cultivated adjacent fields, and worked together {123} to build up that great structure of civil polity which has made England what England is."
The refined and genial Irving—and all our later names are classed together in thought;—a noble republic free from enmity and faction, in which they march under one banner and shed a single influence. An English boy recites The Song of Marion's Men, with as much enthusiasm as an American. Longfellow is a household name in England as with us; Emerson was received in Oxford and Cambridge as a "new light" along with Newman and Carlyle. The time is not far distant, if we will be true to ourselves, when America will be classic ground to the Englishman, as, long since, Irving declared, England was to America. I have not been able to perceive that there lingers in the English mind one trace of the old-time disparagement of American books, things, and manners. Candid and just criticism they may employ towards us, as to themselves; that right is inalienable and it has its uses; but their praise is more frequent than their censure, and being accompanied by discernment, has more value. English criticism has sometimes made a classic reputation for our authors—as in the case of Poe and Hawthorne. Walt Whitman is more curiously and tolerantly read there than among ourselves. As we have developed, the disposition has grown to accord us a full appreciation. At no time whatever, though half-serious, half-humorous badinage may have existed, has there ever been a particle of envy.
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I thus place before the English-American people some of the influences of a common literature. Pursue the subject as we may, through all its ramifications, the stronger becomes the conviction of its power to unite us for good and noble purposes.[9]
V.—THE SAME POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS
In the formation of the Constitution of the United States the theory and spirit, substance and form, of the political institutions of England were most strikingly followed. Here is another natural bond of sympathy, fellowship, and nationality, of the strongest nature between these countries.
A brief review of the cardinal points in the political development of the English-speaking people seems an essential feature of this aspect of the question.