AMERICAN SERVILITY.

(Saturday Review.)

It is not we who call the American public servile, it is Mr. Thomas Davidson, writing in an American magazine. The servility of which he speaks is literary ; the spirit of America is in bondage to the literature of England. In fact, according to Mr. Davidson, America has not really begun to be American yet. Her people are unpatriotic, and they show their lack of patriotism—first, by "a willingness to break the laws when they happen to be inconvenient;" next, by cultivating a foreign Muse on imported literary food-stuffs. The former charge we may leave to the consideration of the Americans, though we had understood that a readiness to obey only such laws as we do not care particularly to infringe was one of the noblest characteristics of the free modern spirit everywhere.

"Courts for cowards were erected,"

says the poet of the " Jolly Beggars," not, indeed, uttering his own opinion, but prophesying of the future which is now the present.

But as to literature, Mr. Davidson's reproach against his countrymen is precisely that urged often by foreigners. "No one who understands that a national literature must be an embodiment of the national ideal will affirm that ours is extensive." But what is the American national ideal ; or has America, or has any country, a national ideal at all? If it has, in what works is the ideal to be found ? If we take Emerson's, Mr. Lowell's, Mr. Whittiers, we know what the ideals of these authors are ; but it is less easy to be sure that the ideal is national, or that Chicago and New York follow the perfect path of the New England sages. To make a great deal of money, to make it in a hurry, to treat Nature mainly as a raw material, would, perhaps, seem, on a general view, more near to the American ideal than any "quietly and persistently striving to be simply noble." Of course, the some remarks may be made about any country. Our English energies are not entirely devoted to living the precise life, in the manner of Wordsworth. Germany does not exclusively pursue after the ideal of Goethe. Mr. Davidson's countrymen may console them themselves by reflecting that they are no worse than other people. A nation of idealists is not likely to be found anywhere in a hurry. But Mr. Davidson, we presume, means that his countrymen, when they are not on the trail of the Emersonian ideal, are still panting in pursuit of some other literary standard, which is not their own, but foreign. " The reading public craves unpatriotic literature." This means, perhaps, no more than a tendency to buy English pirated novels cheap, rather than to buy native novels dear. The absence of copyright, combined with the passion for the cheap,has caused this lack of patriotism, but ideals have very little to do with the matter. We venture to think that, on the whole, we have more entertaining novelists than America possesses at present. The American public clearly thinks so, too ; besides, it can get their works for next to nothing. So it buys them, but its ideals will be little affected by its studies. We read Gaboriau, and never dream of taking to murder, or forgery, or to the trade of the amateur detective. We read Cooper, without wanting to scalp even a Mingo. We read Mr. Howell's, untempted to imitate his style, or to adopt his ideas, or to bring bring our manners into conformity with those which he describes. Mr. Davidson takes things much more seriously. He appears to think that English fiction is one long dithyramb in praise of persons with titles. The American reads it, and, like the Caledonian when introduced to port,

" He drinks the poison, and his spirit dies."

No American can become a lord, but he can, is he chooses, be " as drunk as a lord," or otherwise can accommodate his life to lordly ideas, and he does so, Mr. Davidson says. Now we venture to maintain that English fiction troubles itself very little about lords. Take Mr. Besant, take Charles Reade, take Mr. Stevenson, Mr. Kipling, Mr. Gissing, Mr. Meredith, Mrs. Oliphant, take almost any living novelist who is likely to be successful in America, and you will find but little of the peerage in his pages. There is not much in these and other authors, say in Mr. Thomas Hardy, to corrupt an American ideal. None of them slavishly worship wealth, which is, no doubt, a besetting American temptation. None of them hold up luxury as an aim and end of life. The unpatriotic American may, "lower his moral tone some," if it is easily lowered by reading the cheap serials said to be preferred by milliners' apprentices. But as to decent " foreign " literature, French, German, Russian, or English, proving a moral plague to America, we disdain the imputation in the name of Europe at large. By all means let American authors " bring out the latent poetry " of American life. It seems to need a good deal of bringing out, and as a rule, to struggle for expression in dialects which might puzzle a philologist. It is a fine ambition, to throw around American life "ennobling charms which Burns and Scott threw around the life of the Scottish people." But there is no conspicuous example of an American Scott or Burns before the world at present. Mark Twain, indeed, brought out the latent poetry of the Mississippi, and, perhaps, as much has been done for "The Great Smoky Mountains." On the whole, however, the poetry of life in Chicago seems to be inconspicuous, and the poet who can illustrate it has still to be found. That is not our fault here in Europe, nor the fault of our literature. We administer, says Mr. Davidson, "a subtle atavistic poison, which puts to sleep the new man, the free American, in us, and wakes the slumbering, servility, or overbearing Englishman." What a deplorable confession is this! Here we have a huge population of new and free Americans, and they cannot speak for themselves ; they must follow the star of an alien Remphan. It is in no way our fault if it be true that Americans, lacking rank, have to make wealth take its place. The whole population of New York may follow Thoreau into the woods if it likes ; all the elderly men of business may become Forest-sages; we are not interfering them. It is not by reading any one of our respectable novelists that Americans will be made snobbish, he taught meanly to admire mean things. Mr. Winter's little book, "Grey Days and Golden" (Douglas), will show Mr. Davidson what kind of lesson an American may learn from the country and the books of Scott, Byron, Burns, and Shakespeare. There is not one ideal of American excellence, one of English, and so forth. All good and self-respecting lives aim at the same excellencies.

 Morning Bulletin 9 July 1891,