The preservation of a pure English diction is not sufficiently aimed
at in America. Some are so entirely Britannic, as to receive every
thing for legal tender in letters, which comes across the water. This
is thenceforward duly '_marqué au coin_.' Others are so patriotically
republican, as to set about the task of nursing the countless brood of
cis-Atlantic words, into literary respectability. Both are in error.
It is not enough to avoid Amercanisms; nor is it expedient to
manufacture a pye-bald dialect, of vulgarisms and provincialisms, for
the mere satisfaction of calling it our own. In England, no less than
here, the language is growing to an unhealthy exuberance, and many of
the words which {111} are fathered on the poor Americans, are
distempered excrescences of the overgrown British trunk. Nothing but
the appeal to a standard of former golden days of literature and
classic taste, can save the noble tongue of freemen from becoming an
unwieldy, cacophonious, inconsistent mass of crudities. How much more
is there danger, lest the other party, by encouraging unauthorized and
American inventions in language, lay the foundation for provincial
dialects, which shall hopelessly diverge from one another, until the
Mississippian and the Virginian shall be as diverse as were the
Athenian and the Macedonian. What this difference was, may be seen at
a glance even in Demosthenes on the crown; where the orator blunders
in Attic, while he reads in the same breath a decree of the Byzantes
in broad-mouthed Doric.
To some minds this may seem a trifling subject; like the countryman's
nightingale in Catullus, '_vox et praeterea nihil_.' But, as Mirabeau
said, _Words are things._ Language and thought act reciprocally. Unity
of speech presupposes unity of thinking; but it also propagates it.
Where provincial dialects begin to grow into languages, there is a
corresponding divergence of national feeling. In our boundless
country, after all our attempts to the contrary, this diversity of
language will take place. It is now taking place. We begin to
distinguish by his idiom and his pronunciation, the New Englander, the
Southron, and the native of the great Western Valley. And there is no
possibility of avoiding a separation of greater moment, without some
common and acknowledged standard to which the appeal may be made; a
standard not fabricated, but adopted--which shall be maintained by men
of letters, in opposition to the immensely varying license of the
illiterate mass in the respective districts of America.
Such a standard exists in the authorized classics of Great Britain. If
we depart from this, we not only fall to pieces at home, but
eventually sever our literature from that of the mother country; a
mishap to be deprecated by every man who wishes his posterity to drink
at "the well-spring of English, pure and undefiled," or who desires
our American authors to be honored in Great Britain. We would not be
such purists in language, as to stigmatize every word not found in
Johnson. There is a fastidiousness on one side, as evil as the
recklessness on the other. Fox rejected all words not found in Dryden,
and Bulwer speaks of one so addicted to the Saxon element of our
tongue, that his English stalks abroad "as naked as a Pict." New
objects are discovered in nature, new distinctions are taken in
science, new relations are discerned in ancient truths, and all these
justify new words. But we are not in danger of pruning too close in
this land of universal license. The purity and melody of our language
are threatened from the side of indiscriminate adoption of needless
words and phrases. The basest provincialisms begin to install
themselves in works of reputed elegance; and grammatical solecisms are
daily "being engrafted" on our stock. The last phrase is here inserted
as a specimen, with our challenge to all the sciolists and misses who
use it, to furnish an instance of a similar construction, in any
writer of merit, from Robert of Gloucester to Sir James Mackintosh.
Provincialisms are cited abroad as Americanisms. Though "_I guess_" is
often used by Locke in the Yankee acceptation, yet even in America it
is confined to a particular region, where un-English phraseology is
rife. So the sad abuse of that poetical word _evening_ to mean
_afternoon_--an abuse which makes mere prose of such a verse as
"Like a bright exhalation in the evening,"
is confined to a 'section' of our states. Mutual recrimination and
banter tend to rub off these points of vulgarity, which show
themselves most in such as move in narrow circles. No one State or
District can justifiably throw stones, for we all live in glass
houses. We have known a New Englander laugh at the Southern use of the
word _clever_; ignorant utterly that the latter is the only English
acceptation. And in like manner we knew a vagrant word-catcher to have
in his list of Virginianisms _Good bye t' ye_, a phrase purely
Shakspearian. The Philadelphian calls a certain savoury bird a
_Quail_; according to Wilson, he is right, and the Marylander wrong in
calling it a _Partridge_. But the Southron makes reprisals in the case
of another sort of game, for he rightly calls that a _Hare_ which the
North-man eats under the title of _Rabbit_. To speak of pronunciation
would be endless. That of the South accords with England's best
orators and dictionaries in all such words as _tutor_ vice
_tootor_--_path_, _wrath_, _carpet_, _garden_, &c. Yet many sedulous
students of Walker never find this out. Dr. Noah Webster would fain
have us believe that orthoepy demands such sounds as _natur_,
_featur_, _creatur_. We rejoice that even in Connecticut this
barbarism is growing into discredit. The learned Doctor would also
improve English so as to write _Savior_ for _Saviour_, _Bridegoom_ for
_Bridegroom_, _Duelist_ for _Duellist_, and the like. We humbly crave
leave to wait until any one English work can be produced in which
these elegancies shall appear. It is an _English_, not an _American_
language which we are called upon to nurture and perfect. Let no
scholar deem it beneath his dignity to aid in the work. Then we shall
no longer see such a term as _firstly_ in a work on metaphysics, nor
hear such a double adverb as _illy_ on the floor of Congress--no
longer hear of an event's _transpiring_, before it has become public,
nor of an argument being _predicated_ on such and such facts.