To the Woodnymphs [pp. 111-112]

SOUTHERN LITERARY MIESSENGER.
111
are fathered on the poor Americans, are distempered
excrescences of the overgrown British trunk. Nothing
but the appeal to a standard of former golden days of
literature and classic taste, can save the noble tongue
of freemen from becoming an unwieldy, cacophonious,
inconsistent mass of crudities. How much more is
there danger, lest the other party, by encouraging un authorized and American inventions in language, lay
the foundation for provincial dialects, which shall hope lessly diverge from one another, until the Mississippiarn
and the Virginian shall be as diverse as were the Athe nian and the Macedonian. What this difference was,
may be seen at at a glance even in Demosthenes on the
crown; where the orator blunders in Attic, while he
reads in the same breath a decree of the Byzantes in
broad-mouthed Doric.
To some minds this may seem a trifling subject;
like the countryman's nightingale in Catullus,'vox et
praeterea nihil.' But, as Mirabeau said, Words are
things. Language and thought act reciprocally. Unity
of speech presupposes unity of thinking; but it also
propagates it. Where provincial dialects begin togrow
into languages, there is a corresponding divergence of
national feeling. In our boundless country, after all
our attempts to the contrary, this diversity of language
will take place. It is now taking place. We begin to
distinguish by his idiom and his pronunciation, the
Newv Englander, the Southron, and the native of the
great Western Valley. And there is no possibility of
avoiding a separation of greater moment, without some
common and acknowledged standard to which the appeal may be made; a standard not fabricated, but
adopted-which shall be maintained by men of letters,
in opposition to the immensely varying license of the
illiterate mass in the respective districts of America.
Such a standard exists in the authorized classics of
Great Britain. If we depart from this, we not only
fall to pieces at home, but eventually sever our literature from that of the mother country; a mishap to be
deprecated by every man who wishes his posterity to
drink at "the well-spring of English, pure and undefiled," or who desires our American authors to be honored in Great Britain. We would not be such purists
in language, as to stigmatize every word not found in
Johnson. There is a fastidiousness on one side, as
evil as the recklessness on the other. Fox rejected all
words not found in Dryden, and Bulwer speaks of one
so addicted to the Saxon element of our tongue, that
his English stalks abroad "as naked as a Pict." New
objects are discovered in nature, new distinctions are
taken in science, new relations are discerned in ancient
truthls, and all these justify new words. But we are
not in danger of pruning too close in this land of universal license. The purity and melody of our language
are threatened from the side of indiscriminate adoption
of needless words and phrases. The basest provincialisms begin to install themselves in works of reputed
elegance; and grammatical solecisms are daily "being
engrafted" on our stock. The last phrase is here inserted as a specimen, with our challenge to all the sciolists and misses who use it, to furnish an instance of a
similar construction, in any writer of merit, from Robert of Gloucester to Sir James Mackintosh.
Provincialisms are cited abroad as Americanisms.
Though "I guess" is often used by Locke in the Yan
kee acceptation, yet even in America it is confined to a
particular region, where un-English phraseology is rife.
So the sad abuse of that poetical word evening to mean
afterncoon —an abuse which makes mere prose of such a
verse as
"Like a bright exhalation in the evening,"
is confined to a'section' of our states. Mutual recrimination and banter tend to rub off these points of vulgarity, which show themselves most in such as move in
narrow circ'es. No one State or District can justifiably
throw stones, for we all live in glass houses. We have
known a Ne-v Englander laugh at the Southern use of
the word clever; ignorant utterly that the latter is the
only English acceptation. And in like manner we
knew a vagrant word-catcher to have in his list of Virginianisins Good bye t' ye, a phrase purely Shakspearian.
The Philadelphian calls a certain savoury bird a Quail;
according to Wilson, he is right, and the Marylander
wrong in calling it a Partridge. But the Southron makes
reprisals in the case of another sort of game, for he
rightly calls that a Hare which the North-man eats
under the title of Rabbit. To speak of pronunciation
would be endless. That of the South accords with England's best orators and dictionaries in all such words
as tutor vice tootor-path, wrath, carpet, garden, &c. Yet
many sedulous students of Walker never find this out.
Dr. Noah Webster would fain have us believe that
orthoepy demands such sounds as natutr,featur, creatur.
We rejoice that even in Connecticut this barbarism is
growing into discredit. The learned Doctor would also
imprlpove English so as to write Savior for Saviour, Bridegoom for Bridegroom, Duelist for Duellist, and the like.
We humbly crave leave to wait until any one English
work can be produced in which these elegancies shall
appear. It is an English, not an american language which
we are called upon to nurture and perfect. Let no scholar
deem it beneath his dignity to aid in the work. Then
we shall no longer see such a term asfirstly in a work
on metaphysics, nor hear such a double adverb as illy
on the floor of Congress-no longer hear of an event's
transpiring, before it has become public, nor of an argument being predicated on such and such facts.
BOREALIS.
TO THE WOODNYMPHS.
Ye Nymphs of the woodlands!
I come to your bowers,
Where the wild roses grow
And the eglantine flowers:
Where the trees and wild vines
In their spring-dress arrayed,
Entwine their green foliage
And weave the cool shade.
Oh! I come o'er the hills
By the moon's dewy lightI come where the waters
Gush sparkling and brightWhere the green woods are fresh,
And the cool valleys cheered
With the sweet mellow strains
Of the wild forest bird.