This makes you less conspicuous,
and so more comfortable. And when you stay any length of time you fall
naturally into English ways. Then when you come back you seem to us,
to use one of the Englishman's most delightful words, to "swank"
dreadfully. And in that is the whole story.
Mr. James declares that in the work of two equally good writers you
could still tell by the writing which was that of the Englishman and
which that of the American. The assumption of course is that where
they differed the American would be the inferior writer. Mr. James
prefers the English atmosphere. And the Englishman is inclined to
regard us in our deviation as a sort of imperfect reproduction of
himself. What is his is ours, it is true; but what's ours is our own.
That is, we have inherited a noble literature in common. But we write
less and less like an Englishman all the while. Our legacy of language
brought over in the Mayflower has become adapted to our own
environment, been fused in the "melting-pot," and quickened by our own
life to-day. Whether for better or for worse--it may be either--the
literary touch is rapidly going by the board in modern American
writing.
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