but the words "freely accessible" move us to a febrile remonstrance. In two states of the Union the restrictions on publications in foreign languages are virtually prohibitive and in one it is illegal to buy or sell any book in any foreign tongue. Not Le Livre de Mon Ami, not Heine, not Don Quixote, not Tolstoi or Omar, not even a textbook in astronomy. This is "learning" the foreigner with a vengeance; and we sincerely hope the movement will be kept up. Because it is the essence of America that no foreign thing or person has ever taken root here, that the American tradition has rejected all the corruptions of Europe and, alone of all nations, has developed its life in magnificent isolation. The hated foreigner will presently learn that if he wants to write masterpieces—not to speak of reading them—he must write them in American.
Mr. Henry Mencken would approve more heartily of the preceding sentence than of the spelling adopted by The Dial, because he has devoted a gay and provocative book to The American Language (Knopf). The rightest thing in the book is Mr. Mencken's understanding of America; he is one of the few men who understand its national character, because he has none of the absurd Anglo-Saxon prejudices and knows quite well that a goodly number of those who are creating our language and our character are several thousand miles removed from the Atlantic seaboard. We are the conservators of language and of morals, and the creators as well. Mr. Mencken, with his freely-running prejudice against the English, counts every change, even if it is a corruption, as a blow for freedom. There are moments when he seems to care less for the language than for a rap at the British Empire; and he hates the pedants so much that one fancies him reading Walter Pater in the grammar of Ring Lardner. His prejudices are more apparent than his principles; but he has done a good work of scholarship and he has shown that one can care for letters without being dull.
In 1829, Mr. Mencken notes, one Samuel L. Knapp published his Lectures on American Literature, and challenging England to produce a "tuneful sister" surpassing Mrs. Sigourney, proclaimed his belief that the poetry of America would in time rival that of Greece and Rome. Perhaps it has already surpassed them. But when it is joined to music the poetry of America fails to inspire its com-
