I have time for reference to none of these, and can
only summarize the end of the process. If, therefore, I seem to
generalize unduly, I hope that my deficiencies may be charged
against the exigencies of the occasion. But I generalize the more
boldly because I am speaking, after all, of an English literature;
not in a Roman-Greek relationship of unnaturalized borrowings (for
we Americans imitate less and less), but English by common
cultural inheritance, by identical language, and by deeply
resembling character. Nevertheless, the more American literature
diverges from British (and that divergence is already wide) the
more truly English, the less colonial does it become. A Briton
should not take unkindly assertions of independence, even such
ruffled independence as Lowell expressed in "The Biglow Papers":
I guess the Lord druv down Creation's spiles
'Thout no _gret_ helpin' from the British Isles,
An' could contrive to keep things pooty stiff
Ef they withdrawed from business in a miff;
I han't no patience with such swelling fellers ez
Think God can't forge 'thout them to blow the bellerses.
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