Page:America Today, Observations and Reflections.djvu/183

 English critics of the beginning of the century so convincingly set forth the reasons why America, absorbed in the conquest of nature and in material progress, could not produce anything great in the way of literature, that their arguments remain embedded in many minds even to this day, when events have conclusively falsified them. It is a commonplace with some people that America has not developed a great American literature. If this merely means that, in casting off her allegiance to George III., America did not cast off her allegiance to Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, Addison, Swift, Pope, the reproach, if it be one, must be accepted. If it be a humiliation to American authors to own the traditions and standards established by these men, and thereby to enrol themselves in their immortal fellowship, why, then it must be owned that they have deliberately incurred that humiliation. One American of vivid originality tried to escape it, and with what result? Simply that Whitman holds a place of his own, somewhat like that of Blake one might say, in the literature of the English language, and has produced at least as much effect in England as in America. If, on the other hand, it be implied that American literature feebly imitates English literature, and fails to present an original and adequate interpretation of American life, no reproach could well be more flagrantly unjust. It is not only the abstract merit of American literature, though that is very high, but precisely the