y of thinking;
yet they relapse into it next moment. It is time we should be on our
guard against so insidious a habit. Its reduction to absurdity may be
found (alackaday!) in _Fors Clavigera_ for June 1, 1874. With shame and
sorrow I transcribe the passage, for the time has not yet come for it
to be forgotten. If it were merely the aberration of an individual,
however distinguished, it were better kept out of sight, out of mind;
but it is, I repeat, the reckless exaggeration of a not altogether
uncommon habit of thought:--

"England taught the Americans all they have of speech or thought,
hitherto. What thoughts they have not learned from England are
foolish thoughts; what words they have not learned from England,
unseemly words; the vile among them not being able even to be
humorous parrots, but only obscene mocking-birds."

Can we wonder that Americans have retorted with some asperity upon
criticisms in which any approach to such insolent insularism is even
remotely or inadvertently implied?

The American retort, however, has not always been judicious or
dignified. It has too often consisted in the mere pitting of one
linguistic prejudice against another. It is very easy to prove that
there are bad speakers and bad writers in both countries, and the
attempt to determine which country has the more numerous and the greater
sinners is exceedingly unprofitable. The "You're another" style of
argument has been far too prevalent. Here we have Mr. Gilbert M. Tucker,
for instance, in a book entitled _Our Common Speech_ (1895) implying,
if he does not absolutely assert (p. 173), that a "boldness of
innovation" in matters linguistic, amounting to "absolute
licentiousness," is more characteristic of England than of America. The
suggestion leaves my British withers entirely unwrung, for I approve of
bold innovation in language, trusting to the impermanence of the unfit
to counteract the effects of licentiousness. If I could believe that we
British were the bolder innovators, I should admit it without blenching;
but observation and probability seem to me to point with one accord in
the opposite direction. New words are begotten by new conditions of
life; and as American life is far more fertile of new conditions than
ours, the tendency towards neologism cannot but be stronger in America
than in England. America has enormously enriched the language, not only
with new words, but (since the American mind