BRITICISMS VERSUS AMERICANISMS 337 



shall live and flourish or decline and perish in the English tongue. No 

 sovereign, no nation can determine this, either by decree or by statute. 

 The most that the British can say in derogation of an alleged Ameri- 

 canism is that it is current only in America and is not authorized by 

 British usage. But this does not make it un-English, if it bears the 

 American sign manual. 



It is perfectly absurd for the British critics to condemn American- 

 isms offhand and to attempt to read them out of the language, simply 

 because they are not in accord with British usage. In so doing they 

 give proof of their insularity and fail to exhibit a spirit of liberality 

 and sweet reasonableness. Indeed, they seem disposed, at all events, to 

 take themselves too seriously as guardians of the English language. 

 It is well enough for a critic to throw his influence on the side of the 

 preservation of the purity and propriety of speech. But it is sheer 

 folly to allow one's pedantry to go to such a length as Malherbe, that 

 ' tyrant of words and syllables,' who on his death-bed angrily rebuked 

 his nurse for the solecisms of her language, exclaiming in extenuation 

 of his act, ' Sir, I will defend to my very last gasp the purity of the 

 French language.' It is related of him that he was so fatal a precisian 

 in the choice of words that he spent three years in composing an ode 

 on the death of a friend's wife, and when at last the ode was completed,, 

 his friend had married again, and the purist had only his labor for his. 

 pains. jSTow your true British pedant seems to think it his bounden 

 duty to reject summarily every word or expression which does not. 

 bear the pure English hall-mark, and that as for Americanisms they are 

 an abomination which must inevitably work the speedy corruption and 

 ultimate decadence of the noble English tongue. Such an one, whether 

 from his precisianism or his prejudice, fails utterly to recognize in 

 Americanisms conclusive evidence of the inherent potency, vigor and 

 vitality of the English language on American lips. 



VOL. lxix. — 22. 



