Inquiries and Opinions | Page 6

common to men of science. Milton
practised his pen in Latin verse, but never hesitated to compose his epic
in English. Latin served Descartes and Spinoza, men of science again;
and it was not until the nineteenth century that the invading vernaculars
finally ousted the language of the learned which had once been in
universal use. And even now Latin is retained by the church which still
styles itself Catholic.
It was as fortunate as it was necessary that the single language of the
learned should give way before the vulgar tongues, the speech of the
people, each in its own region best fitted to phrase the feelings and the
aspirations of races dissimilar in their characteristics and in their ideals.
No one tongue could voice the opposite desires of the northern peoples
and of the southern; and we see the several modern languages revealing
by their structure as well as by their vocabularies the essential qualities
of the races that fashioned them, each for its own use. Indeed, these

racial characteristics are so distinct and so evident to us now that we
fancy we can detect them even tho they are disguised in the language of
Rome; and we find significance in the fact that Seneca, the
grandiloquent rhetorician, was by birth a Spaniard, and that Petronius,
the robust realist, was probably born in what is now France.
The segregation of nationality has been accompanied by an increasing
interest in the several states out of which the nation has made itself, and
sometimes even by an effort to raise the dialects of these provinces up
to the literary standard of the national language. In this there is no
disloyalty to the national ideal,--rather is it to be taken as a tribute to
the nation, since it seeks to call attention again to the several strands
twined in the single bond. In literature this tendency is reflected in a
wider liking for local color and in an intenser relish for the flavor of the
soil. We find Verga painting the violent passions of the Sicilians, and
Reuter depicting the calmer joys of the Platt-Deutsch. We see
Maupassant etching the canny and cautious Normans, while Daudet
brushed in broadly the expansive exuberance of the Provençals. We
delight alike in the Wessex-folk of Mr. Hardy and in the humorous
Scots of Mr. Barrie. We extend an equal welcome to the patient figures
of New England spinsterhood as drawn by Miss Jewett and Miss
Wilkins, and to the virile Westerners set boldly on their feet by Mr.
Wister and Mr. Garland.
What we wish to have explored for us are not only the nooks and
corners of our own nation; those of other races appeal also to our
sympathetic curiosity. These inquiries help us to understand the larger
peoples, of whom the smaller communities are constituent elements.
They serve to sharpen our insight into the differences which divide one
race from another; and the contrast of Daudet and Maupassant on the
one hand with Mark Twain and Kipling on the other brings out the
width of the gap that yawns between the Latins (with their solidarity of
the family and their reliance on the social instinct) and the Teutons
(with their energetic independence and their aggressive individuality).
With increase of knowledge there is less likelihood of mutual
misunderstandings; and here literature performs a most useful service
to the cause of civilization. As Tennyson once said: "It is the authors,

more than the diplomats, who make nations love one another."
Fortunately, no high tariff can keep out the masterpieces of foreign
literature which freely cross the frontier, bearing messages of good-will
and broadening our understanding of our fellowmen.
IV
The deeper interest in the expression of national qualities and in the
representation of provincial peculiarities is to-day accompanied by an
increasing cosmopolitanism which seems to be casting down the
barriers of race and of language. More than fourscore years ago, Goethe
said that even then national literature was "rather an unmeaning term"
as "the epoch of world-literature was at hand." With all his wisdom
Goethe failed to perceive that cosmopolitanism is a sorry thing when it
is not the final expression of patriotism. An artist without a country and
with no roots in the soil of his nativity is not likely to bring forth flower
and fruit. As an American critic aptly put it, "a true cosmopolitan is at
home,--even in his own country." A Russian novelist set forth the same
thought; and it was the wisest character in Turgenieff's 'Dimitri
Roudine' who asserted that the great misfortune of the hero was his
ignorance of his native land:--"Russia can get along without any of us,
but we cannot do without Russia. Wo betide him who does not
understand her, and still more him who really forgets