INTRODUCTION. ix 



This circumstance is, that the wide dissemination of our 

 race over the western and the northern continents is raising up 

 new centres of culture which derive their tone from England, 

 which provide her men of letters with a public destined to 

 become more ample than Europe could afford, were Europe 

 English, and which promises to afford them, at no distant date, 

 all the advantages of exterior criticism, unwarped by having 

 had to pass through a foreign medium. When Australia shall 

 have become more thoroughly differentiated from the mother 

 country than is now the case, the capability of impressing an 

 Australian audience will be no bad test of the merit of an 

 English author. At present she is too much a reproduction of 

 England, and has too little indigenous literature of worth to 

 inspire confidence in her critical deliverances. American 

 culture seems almost venerable in comparison, and has had 

 time to develop literary types which entitle it to an independent 

 rank among intellectual civilisations. Though far more 

 intimately connected with the culture of the parent country 

 than the Roman was with the Greek, being much more of an 

 offshoot than of a copy, it renders English letters the same 

 service as Rome rendered to the Greeks, in subjecting them to 

 the criticism of an intelligent and impartial opinion, and greatly 

 extending their circulation and usefulness. Thanks to America, 

 the preservation of English literature, so far as already existing, 

 is assured, and the prospect of its continued existence is 

 indefinitely strengthened. What the mother country has 

 already produced of excellent is safe, and the stimulus to future 

 production is rendered infinitely more active. The English 

 author now speaks to an audience of a hundred millions, soon 

 to be doubled and trebled, even apart from the reasonable 

 anticipation that it may ere very long include the cultivated 

 classes of India and Japan, if not even of China. In presence 

 of such a majestic fact, European criticism, however welcome 

 and valuable, is not essential. The imprimatur of Paris or 

 Berlin is not wanted ; and the time is arriving when the 

 Continental writer who would rise to cosmopolitan fame must 

 captivate the Anglo-American public. From this point of view 



