Page:Points of View (1924).pdf/96

 "Bryant, the American Wordsworth," "Miller, the American Byron." Insensibly they have slipped into the assumption that for every American author there must necessarily be a superior English counterpart. In their determination to show no soft indulgence to native writers, to avoid all chauvinistic infatuations, they have "leaned over backwards"—till at the present time our own authors are complaining, not without grounds, that, in the educational field at least, the English has become the "protected" branch of authorship among us.

But to return to our question:—Is it not an unsound policy to select for study an inferior author, merely because he is American? A Yankee answer to this question would be: Is it not an unsound policy to assume that an author, merely because he is American, must be inferior? And now for an answer which I have tried to make straightforward. I cannot make it entirely simple and at the same time adequate, for it requires careful qualification. It is generally an unsound policy to select for uncritical assimilation an American author who is the inferior of an available and equivalent author, whether he be English, Italian, or Greek, or beside whatever national banner he may stand beneath the flag of the republic of letters. If the best authors were always available, and if they always supplied our needs, there would be small reason for reading any other than the best. But as a matter of fact, the best Greek and Italian authors, say, are, to most American students, only imperfectly available; and foreign