emacy, I
cannot believe that our best intellect ought to be practised in the
awestruck submissiveness of mind that too often results from our
classical education. That is why I admire the American spirit in
literature. The Americans seem to have little of the reverent,
exclusive attitude which we value so highly. They are preoccupied in
their own native inspiration. They will speak, without any sense of
absurdity, of Shakespeare and E.A. Poe, of Walter Scott and Hawthorne,
as comparable influences. They are like children, entirely absorbed in
the interest and delight of intent creation. But though their
productions are at present, with certain notable exceptions, lacking in
vitality and quality, this spirit is, I believe, the spirit in which
new ideas and new literatures are produced. I do not desire to see the
Americans more critical of the present or more deferential to the past.
I do not desire to see them turn with a hopeless wonder to the study of
the great English masterpieces. Indeed, I think that our own tendency
in England to reverence, our constant appeal to classical standards, is
an obstacle to our intellectual and artistic progress. We are like
elderly writers who tend to repeat their own beloved mannerisms, and
who contemn and decry the work of younger men, despairing of the
future. A nation may reach a point, like an ancient and noble dynasty
of princes, where it is overshadowed and overweighted by its own past
glories, and where it learns to depend upon prestige rather than upon
vigour, to wrap itself in its own dignity. What I would rather see is
an elasticity, a recklessness, a prodigal trying of experiments, a
discontented underrating of past traditions, than a meek acquiescence
in their supremacy. What is our present condition? We have few poets of
the first rank, few essayists or reflective writers, few dramatists,
few biographers. I do not at all wish to underrate the immense vitality
of our imaginative faculties, which shows itself in our vast output of
fiction; but even here we have few masters, and our critics know and
care little for style; they are entirely preoccupied with plot and
incident and situation. What we lack is true originality, tranquil
force; we are all occupied in trying to startle and surprise, to make a
sensation. How little the Greeks cared for that! It was beauty and
charm, delicate colour, fine subtlety of which they were, in search;
they held all things holy, yet nothing sol