American English. 



335 



Century gave place not long ago* to an article, by Mr. Fitzedward 

 Hall, in which it is gravely, as well as elegantly, stated that William 

 Cullen Bryant lived among a people among whom our language is 

 daily becoming more and more depraved," and that whoever compares 

 the diction of Edgar Huntly," a forgotten novel published in 1709, 

 with Mr. Bryant's letters, "the English of which is not much worse 

 than that of ninety-nine out of every hundred of his college-bred com- 

 patriots, will very soon become aware to what degree the art of writing 

 our language has declined among educated " people in the United 

 States! 



That such rubbish should be written by a recognized authority in 

 philology ceases to be surprising when it is understood that the 

 author is — not a Briton, as might be supposed, but one of those extraor- 

 dinary Americans of the Henry James, Jr., stripe who seem to regard 

 it rather as matter of regret than otherwise that they were not born 

 in Europe, f Yet that the editor of such a magazine as that in which 

 this effusion appeared should think it worth while to print and pre- 

 sumably to pay for it, is a phenomenon which suggests two interesting 

 reflections. The first, of comparatively minor importance, is merely 

 that our English cousins have a good deal yet to learn about our com- 

 mon language as used in the two countries. The second is, that where 

 there is so much smoke there must bo some flame. That is, making 

 all allowances, there must really exist certain noticeable variations 

 between the styles of writing and speaking that are current on the 

 opposite sides of the Atlantic ; for if no differences at all could be 

 found, it is hardly probable that an intelligent man, however strongly 

 British his prepossessions, would care to publish a dissertation in 

 which our practice is deliberately set down as distinctly inferior to 

 that of his own nation. In what these differences consist, and in what 

 particulars the mother tongue may be thought to have become espe- 

 cially "depraved" in this country, are questions deserving attention. 



I. 



In the first place, it will hardly be denied in any quarter that the 

 speech of the United States is quite unlike that of Great Britain in 



*Issue of September, 1880. 



+ Or he may remind some readers of "Mr. Carroll Gansevoort" in Edgar Fawcett's 

 bright story, "A Gentleman of Leisure." Mr. Gansevoort, a New Yorker by birth, who 

 "would consider himself disgraced if he wore a pair of trousers or carried an umbrella 

 that was not of English make," rebukes a friend for committing the frightful Americanism 

 of saying that he fished with a pole (instead of a rod), and upon the culprit's perpetrating 

 the further enormity of speakinoj of catching four dozen fine trout, remarks : " Upon my 

 word, I beg your pardon, old fellow, but it always amuses them so on the other side when 

 we speak about catcldng fish. There they don't catch them, you know ; they kill them!' 



