Page:Points of View (1924).pdf/172

 had the ear to sustain their melody. So complete, indeed, is the present exclusion of musical elements from our prose, that whenever one of us discovers a stray cadence in his work, he joins the Poetry Society.

The research for a distinctive American style may fairly be said to begin with Emerson's first essay on "Nature," of which the gist is this: Discover, become, and express yourselves and nothing but yourselves. It was an injunction congenial to the spirits of a people who were then scrutinizing their own bosoms for new theories of government, religion, and social intercourse. Emerson himself and his more intelligent friends knew from experience of what immense assistance classical models are in this great business of self-discovery; but the main Emersonian impetus was toward a fresh exploratory contact with nature, and its not infrequent consequence was a self-reliant "blurting out" of whatever whim for the moment possessed the disciple. "Hundreds of writers," Emerson declares in a passage which called for revolt and indicated its direction, "hundreds of writers may be found in every long-civilized nation, who for a short time believe, and make others believe, that they see and utter truths, who do not of themselves clothe one thought in its natural garment, but who feed unconsciously on the language created by the primary writers of the country, those, namely, who hold primarily on nature. But wise men pierce this rotten diction and fasten words again to visible things."