![]() ![]() For all that American literature is,-in the apt phrase of Mr. The social atmosphere is not the same on the opposite shores of the Western ocean and the social organization is different in many particulars. The men who have set down the feelings and the thoughts, the words and the deeds of the inhabitants of the United States have not quite the same outlook on life that we find in the men who have made a similar record in the British Isles. None the less is it undeniable that there is in Franklin and Emerson, in Walt Whitman and Mark Twain, whatever their mastery of the idiom they inherited in common with Steele and Carlyle, with Browning and Lamb, an indefinable and intangible flavor which distinguishes the first group from the second. Theocritus may never have set foot on the soil of Greece, and Thoreau never adventured himself on the Atlantic to visit the island-home of his ancestors yet the former expressed himself in Greek and the latter in English,-and how can either be neglected in any comprehensive survey of the literature of his own tongue? Maeterlinck are not more indisputably a part of the literature of the French language than the works of Franklin and Emerson, of Hawthorne and Poe are part of the literature of the English language. The works of Anthony Hamilton and Rousseau, Mme. Just as Alexandrian literature is Greek, so American literature is English and as Theocritus demands inclusion in any account of Greek literature, so Thoreau cannot be omitted from any history of English literature as a whole. Of course, when we consider it carefully we cannot fail to see that the literature of a language is one and indivisible and that the nativity or the domicile of those who make it matters nothing. THE customary antithesis between American literature and English literature is unfortunate and misleading in that it seems to exclude American authors from the noble roll of those who have contributed to the literature of our mother-tongue. HUMPHREY MILFORD 1914 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ![]() Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters NEW YORK OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS THE OXFORD BOOK OF AMERICAN ESSAYS CHOSEN BY BRANDER MATTHEWS Professor in Columbia University Produced from images available at The Internet Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE OXFORD BOOK OF AMERICAN ESSAYS *** With this eBook or online at Title: The Oxford Book of American Essays Re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and withĪlmost no restrictions whatsoever. The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Oxford Book of American Essays, by Various ![]()
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