National Literature the Exponent of National Character [pp. 201-225]

Exponent of National Character.
regard to our literature, as well as every thing else connected
with our country, has very much improved of late. The time
has passed by when the ridiculous fictions of Mrs. Trollope,
Captain Hall, Mr. Dickens, et id omne genus, could be confided
in, even by the more ignorant and credulous of their own
countrymen. The last English travellers whose writings have
reached us, Lord Carlisle and Lady Mary Wortley, are with
few exceptions as favourable in their judgments as any candid
American could desire. For our own part, we believe the former contemptuous tone of the English press toward American
literature to have proceeded not more from political jealousy
than from pure ignorance. We therefore attribute the altered
tone of their public journals quite as much to improvements in
steam navigation, as to the obvious advance in our national
literature.
It will be as much for the literary as for the political interest of England and America, that a good understanding
should subsist between them. Our own originality will hardly
be improved by laborious deviations from established models,
or the purity of our style by any affected eccentricities of
orthography and syntax. Until the Revolution their literature was ours, for until then we were one people. We may
therefore lawfully feel pride mingle with the pleasure with
which we study the great productions of British genius. We
need not eschew every thing received in order to establish our
own originality. Our language will not be refined by contempt for Milton, Bacon, Shakspeare, and Addison; nor our
theology exalted by a voluntary ignorance of the judicious
Hookei, the eloquent Bishop Taylor, the gentle-hearted Leighton, the exhaustive Barrow, the invincible Chillingworth, the
learned and vigorous South, the ingenious and unanswerable
Butler-men who were the strength of the English Establishment-the ornaments and defenders of our common Christianity. And are we likely to profit by a neglect of the great
nonconformist divines, John Owen, the glory of Oxford and
prince of the Puritan theologians-the profound and philosophic Howe-the fervent and saintly Baxter-the silvertongued Bates-the heart-searching and heavenly minded Flavel? Are these the men to be despised and neglected?
1852.]
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