Washington, March 17, 1836.
AMERICANISMS.
The Americanisms of our language have been a prolific source of ridicule and reproach for the British critics. When a word in an American publication has fallen upon the eyes of these literary lynxes, which they have thought an innovation, they have fiercely denounced it as Yankee slang—as a proof of our uneducated ignorance; they have even denied that we understand the English language, or can speak or write it intelligibly. In most of the cases it turned out and was demonstrated, that the poor words thus assailed were true and genuine English, used by their best writers and speakers; found in their best dictionaries; but unhappily for the poor things, unknown to these erudite and conceited knights of the pen, either too careless to turn to their books for information, or having none to turn to. In a few instances in which we have taken a little license with the language, we have seen that after overloading us with abuse for the birth of the child, they have taken it to themselves, and put it into the service of writers and orators of the highest rank. Such was the fate of our Americanisms—to advocate, influential, in the sense in which we use it, and several others. They found the brats really not such deformities as they supposed, and were willing to adopt and use them; but this did not abate their contempt of the parents. Englishmen residing in England, seem to claim an exclusive right in the invention of English words. In Bulwer's character of Rienzi, this hero is said to have been avid of personal power. This is the coinage of the ingenious author; at least I find no authority for it even in the latest dictionaries, nor in any other writer of reputation. Now I have no objection to the introduction of a new word into our language by Mr. Bulwer or any body else, provided that it be done with due discretion, and subject to some just regulation and principle. In the first place, it should be necessary, supplying a want, or at least obviously convenient in the expression of some idea with more precision than it can be done by any existing word. In the second place, it should be in full consistence and harmony with the idiom of the language. Lord Kames, on using a word of his own making, gives this note. "This word, hitherto not in use, seems to fulfil all that is required by Demetrius Phalereus in coining a new word—first, that it be perspicuous; and next, that it be in the tone of the language."
I find no fault with Mr. Bulwer for the production of his mint, but I will not acknowledge that he, or any other English author, has a better right than an American to take this license. We understand the language as well as they do; we derive our knowledge from the same sources, and we shall use the liberty with as much caution, propriety and discrimination. If this monopolizing, exclusive people, could have their way, they would not suffer us to spin a pound of cotton, or hammer out a bar of iron; and now, forsooth, we must not presume to turn a noun into a verb, or add a monosyllable to the stock of English words.
H.