Page:The Cambridge History of American Literature, v4.djvu/152

— J 564 The English Language in America authentic vernacular; they cannot be made to serve as illus- trations of any wanton perversity on the part of Americans. But cannot all these historical reasons for American English being what it is be granted (and they pretty generally are) and still leave us facing a very desperate situation about which some- thing should be done? History, after all, brings no solution to the problem which it helps to define. It does not furnish a standard, it can only show us the steps by which all present English has gone very badly astray. But a standard is pre- cisely what is wanted ; lack of standard, our academy was quite persuaded, is what ails American English. Enough has been J said already to suggest the hopelessness of finding such a stand- ard in literary South British. Just what sort of folly that leads to may be seen in the case of the academician who lamented that Americans wrote toward when an Englishman, "following the established usage of prose," wrote towards. Towards is not the established usage of prose, and quite as many Englishmen write toward as towards. All that the academician can mean is that he personally prefers towards. No one could deny him the privilege of choosing, but no one would attach the slightest significance to his choice either way. Much the same can be said of most of the differences of detail between literary English in America and the same thing in England ; they are too trivial to be worth much trouble in trying to remove them. But even the attempt to remove these peculiarities of American English in deference to some standard outside itself may work harm vastly greater than it is proposed to help. If English had remained the literary language of a small homo- geneous group, who like the Athenians could consent instantly in the pleasure of jeering a misplaced accent, the single and precise kind of standard which some critics of English seem to have in mind might have been successfully applied to it. But English has become the common possession of many scattered peoples. It is quite possible that this involves some sacrifice with some gain. English can hardly become the adequate expression of so varied a human experience, the medium of so many diverse men, without losing something in the direction of perfect uniformity as against its gains in range. This expansion has its too evident dangers, but to try to correct them by a single narrow standard is not only impossible; it is