Provincialism is local pride unduly inflated. It is the temper
that is ready to hail as a Swan of Avon any local gosling who
has taught himself to make an unnatural use of his own quills.
It is always tempting us to stand on tiptoe to proclaim our
own superiority. It prevents our seeing ourselves in proper
proportion to the rest of the world. It leads to the preparation
of school manuals in which the threescore years and ten of
American literature are made equal in importance to the thousand
years of literature produced in Great Britain. It tends to
render a modest writer, like Longfellow, ridiculous by comparing
him implicitly with the half-dozen world poets. In the final
resort, no doubt, every people must be the judge of its own
authors; but before that final judgment is rendered every people
consults the precedents, and measures its own local favorites
by the cosmopolitan and eternal standards.--BRANDER
MATTHEWS.
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