n title of "Mr." Dexter would have been
infinitely too mean and common. He therefore boldly took the step of
self-ennobling, and gave himself forth--as he said, obeying "the voice of
the people at large"--as "Lord Timothy Dexter," by which appellation he
has ever since been known to the American public.

If to be the pioneer in the introduction of Old World titles into
republican America can confer a claim to be remembered by posterity, Lord
Timothy Dexter has a right to historic immortality. If the true American
spirit shows itself most clearly in boundless self-assertion, Timothy
Dexter is the great original American egotist. If to throw off the
shackles of Old World pedantry, and defy the paltry rules and examples of
grammarians and rhetoricians, is the special province and the chartered
privilege of the American writer, Timothy Dexter is the founder of a new
school, which tramples under foot the conventionalities that hampered and
subjugated the faculties of the poets, the dramatists, the historians,
essayists, story-tellers, orators, of the worn-out races which have
preceded the great American people.

The material traces of the first American nobleman's existence have
nearly disappeared. The house is still standing, but the statues, the
minarets, the arches, and the memory of the great Lord Timothy Dexter
live chiefly in tradition, and in the work which he bequeathed to
posterity, and of which I shall say a few words. It is unquestionably a
thoroughly original production, and I fear that some readers may think I
am trifling with them when I am quoting it literally. I am going to make
a strong claim for Lord Timothy as against other candidates for a certain
elevated position.

Thomas Jefferson is commonly recognized as the first to proclaim before
the world the political independence of America. It is not so generally
agreed upon as to who was the first to announce the literary emancipation
of our country.

One of Mr. Emerson's biographers has claimed that his Phi Beta Kappa
Oration was our Declaration of Literary Independence. But Mr. Emerson
did not cut himself loose from all the traditions of Old World
scholarship. He spelled his words correctly, he constructed his
sentences grammatically. He adhered to the slavish rules of propriety,
and observed the reticences which a traditional delicacy has considered
inviolable in decent society, European and Oriental alike. When he wrote
poetry, he commonly selected su