Thomas Raynesford Lounsbury

“ To picture to the eye the sound which has fallen upon the ear, so that it should never be mistaken for anything [Pg 74] else, was the problem that presented itself to the man or men who devised that invention which, imperfect as it is, still remains the greatest and most useful to which the human mind has given birth. To represent a sound by one character in one place and by another in another would have seemed to them as absurd as it would to a painter to have the figure of a horse stand for a horse in one picture, and in another picture for a different animal. ”

“ Cooper had written, "that as nature has given its periods to the stages of animal life, it has also set limits to all moral and political ascendency. While the city of the Medici is receding from its crumbling walls, like the human form shrinking into 'the lean and slippered pantaloon,' the Queen of the Adriatic sleeping on her muddy isles, and Rome itself is only to be traced by fallen temples and buried columns, the youthful vigor of America is fast covering the wilds of the West with the happiest fruits of human industry." ”

“ It is evident from this one fact that the desire to make the spelling conform as far as possible to the pronunciation—the one object for which spelling was devised—is far from being confined to the men of the English-speaking race. Even when it cannot succeed in its main object, it aims to bring about uniformity by sweeping away the anomalous. The movement for spelling reform now going on with us is, therefore, no isolated undertaking. It is simply part of a world-wide movement in the interests of law and order. There is an intellectual conscience as well as a moral one. ”

“ You boast, he practically said to them, of the superiority of your scenery, in which you are not to be compared with Europe; but you constantly abuse your climate which is equal to, if not finer, than that of any region in the Old World. You stand up manfully for your manners and tastes, which you ought to correct; but you are incessantly apologizing for your institutions of which you ought to be proud. The defects imputed in Europe to the inhabitants of the United States, such as the want of morals, honesty, order, decency, liberality, and religion, were not at all our defects. ”

“ No people traveled as much as we; none traveled with so little enjoyment or so few comforts. Taste and knowledge and tone were too little concentrated anywhere, too much diffused everywhere, to make head against the advances of an overwhelming mediocrity. Of society there was but little; for what it suited the caprice of certain people to call such was little more than the noisy, screeching, hoydenish romping of both sexes. The taint of provincialism was diffused over all feelings and beliefs. Of arts and letters the country possessed none or next to none. ”

“ It is enough to know that it exists. A thorough-going reform of English orthography would therefore be one of the most gigantic of enterprises, even if men were fully informed about it and their hearts were set upon it. But a distinct majority of the educated class, though not educated on this subject, are opposed to it. Naturally the profounder their ignorance, the more intense is their hostility. It is no wonder, therefore, that many, in contemplating this dead-weight of prejudice that must be unloaded, have come to despair of the language ever being relieved in the slightest of the burden. ”

“ It never keeps up that prolonged strain upon the feelings which characterizes the work that preceded it, and which while a defect in the eyes of some is to most readers its special charm. There are, indeed, in many of Cooper's stories, situations more thrilling and scenes more stirring than can be found in "The Prairie," though in it there is no lack of these. But of all his tales it is much the most poetical. Man sinks into insignificance in the presence of these mighty solitudes; for throughout the whole book the immensity of nature hangs over the spirit like a pall. ”

“ But the comments and communications which appear in the course of any controversy on spelling reform, especially those intended to be satirical, furnish the most striking illustrations of this all-prevailing, all-pervading ignorance. There is rarely furnished a more edifying spectacle than the attempt made, in some cases by men of very genuine ability, to write what they call phonetically. In every discussion there are sure to come up with unfailing regularity certain examples that indicate the density of the darkness in which the minds of men are enveloped. ”

“ The literature of the sea presents no more thrilling chapter than that which, describing the passage of the great frigate through the narrow channel, gives every detail with such vividness and power that the most unimaginative cannot merely see ship, shore, and foaming water, but almost hear the roaring of the wind, the creaking of the cordage, and the dashing of the waves against the breakers. ”

“ We like the present orthography because we are used to it. When once the point of intimate familiarity with the form of a word has been reached, it makes thenceforward no difference to us how wide is the divergence between the pronunciation and the spelling which is ostensibly designed to represent the pronunciation. As little difference does it make if the form with which we have become familiar not merely fails to indicate the origin of the word, but on the contrary suggests and even imposes upon the mind a belief in an utterly false derivation. ”

“ I confess to feeling little admiration for that grammar-school training which consists in teaching the pupil how much more he knows about our tongue than the great masters who have moulded it; which practically sets up the claim that the only men who are able to write English properly are the men who have never shown any capacity to write it at all; and which seeks, in a feeble way, to cramp usage by setting up distinctions that never existed, and laying down rules which it requires uncommon ignorance of the language to make or to heed. ”

“ The conflict between the old that is going out and the new that is coming in cannot fail to produce more or less of annoyance. These disturbances, indeed, last only for a time; but to some they are very real while they do last. Those of us who believe that the permanent benefits accruing to the users of our tongue from a reform of our orthography outweigh immensely the temporary inconveniences and annoyances to which they will be subject, can well afford to bear with the hesitation of those who like the end in view, but dislike the time and toil that must be gone through in order to reach it. ”

“ No man could go through the conflicts which Cooper had been carrying on for so many years unharmed or unscarred. For the hostility entertained and expressed toward him in England he cared but little. But though too proud to parade his sufferings, the injustice done him in his own land aroused in his heart an indignation which had in it, however, as much pain as anger. He could not fail to see that he was in a false position, that his motives were misunderstood where even they were not deliberately misrepresented. ”

“ He will recognize that the obstacles which stand in the way of the reform of English spelling are not merely greater in number but are harder to overcome than those which beset any other cultivated tongue of modern Europe. Incomplete as is the survey, it is a melancholy picture which it presents. To him who has not become so accustomed to disorder that he has learned to love it for its own sake, the view is distinctly disheartening. The present orthography fulfills neither its legitimate office of denoting pronunciation nor its illegitimate one of disclosing derivation. ”

“ By it his reputation and his fortunes were profoundly affected. It worked a complete revolution both in the sentiments with which he regarded others, and in the sentiments with which others regarded him. The most intense lover of his country, he became the most unpopular man of letters to whom it has ever given birth. For years a storm of abuse fell upon him, which for violence, for virulence, and even for malignity, surpassed anything in the history of American literature, if not in the history of literature itself. ”

“ Accordingly, as difference in a hitherto unheard method of pronunciation has always affected men by the mere sound of it, so does now a new spelling affect them by the sight of it. It arrests the attention of all. Of some it excites the resentment; to others it almost causes convulsions of agony. Hence, those who advocate a pure phonetic spelling—in itself the only strictly rational method—are holding forth a counsel of perfection to a body of persons who are so steeped in orthographic iniquity that they have come to think it the natural condition of the race. ”

“ It is because I look upon this sentiment of association as the main bulwark of our present orthography that I have always taken the ground that it is only through a rising generation that any thorough-going reform can ever be accomplished. It is asking too much of human nature to expect a generation already risen to go a second time through the fiery ordeal of learning to spell. ”

“ Men were contented with the examination of mere external phenomena, which, whether good or bad in themselves, belonged to a period of growth and were certain to pass away. Not the slightest sympathy existed with the feelings and aspirations of a people closely allied in blood and speech, and the lack of desire involved the lack of ability to enter into the spirit of their institutions. There was no idea that there could be other types of character than those found on British soil, or any room or reason for the play of other social and political forces than were at work in British communities. ”

“ It is not the personality of the actors to which the attention is supremely drawn, though even in that there is ample field for the exhibition of striking characterization. It is the events that carry us along; it is the catastrophe to which they are hurrying that excites the feelings and absorbs the thoughts. There can be no greater absurdity than to speak of this kind of story, as is sometimes done, as being inferior in itself to those devoted exclusively to the delineation of manners or character, or even of the subtler motives which act upon the heart and life. ”

“ Even the far keener enjoyment of rendering him miserable by making evident to his reluctant but slowly dawning intelligence how much of an ignoramus, not to say idiot, he has shown himself in his acts and utterances—even this most poignant of pleasures loses its relish if indulgence in it can be secured only at the cost of much personal trouble. This is just as true of spelling reform as of any other movement. ”

“ It is, therefore, not surprising that the existing orthography should come to seem to such men not the comparatively late creation it is, but as something which has about it all the flavor of antiquity. As an inevitable result, there has been further imparted to it the odor of sanctity. Ignorance is recognized everywhere as a mother of devotion. Nowhere has there been a more striking manifestation of this truth than in the case of our spelling. ”

“ Men had begun to tire of the novel of adventure. It was not that it had lost its hold upon the public; it had lost the supreme hold which for twenty years it had maintained. The mighty master was dead; to some extent his influence had died before him. The later work he did, had in several instances detracted from, rather than added to the fame he had won by the earlier. Cooper's own ventures in the field of foreign fiction, whatever their absolute merit, could not be compared with those in which he had drawn the life of the ocean, or the streams and forests of his native land. ”

“ We are often condescendingly assured by the opponent of spelling reform that its advocates forget that words have a history of their own. After indulging in this not particularly startling remark he almost invariably goes on to make clear by illustration that he himself has no conception of what it means. “Shall we,” asks a writer, after reciting this well-worn formula—“shall we mask the Roman origin of Cirencester and Towcester by spelling them Sissiter and Towster,” as they are pronounced? Now it may not be wise, for various reasons, to alter the orthography of proper names. ”

“ Whatever excellencies this particular work displayed, they were not the excellencies of a novel. Accuracy of detail, even in historical romance, is only a minor virtue. The modern reader is, indeed, often inclined to doubt whether it is a virtue at all now that modern research is constantly showing that so much we have been wont to look upon as fact is nothing more than fable. So superior is the imagination of man turning out to his memory that one is tempted to fancy that instead of going to history for our fiction we shall yet have to turn about and go to fiction for our history. ”

“ If the criticism is both destructive and just, the very death of the subject against which it is directed causes it to perish in the ruin it has brought about. If it is unjust, it is certain to be speedily forgotten, unless he who suffers from it takes the pains to perpetuate its memory, or some later investigator drags it from its obscurity for the sake of pointing out its absurdity. The creative literature of the past is the utmost the present can be expected to read. ”

“ Any one who has the slightest conception of what a reform of our spelling on pure phonetic principles means will absolve those now urging reform from putting forward any scheme of that sort. It requires, indeed, a singular innocence of all knowledge of this particular subject to make such a charge. Certain changes recommended would, indeed, have brought particular words nearer a phonetic standard. But if everything proposed were to be universally adopted—and even ten times more—the real disease which afflicts our orthography would be but partially alleviated. ”

“ But to his enemies they furnished ample opportunities for misrepresentation and abuse.
But any account of Cooper would be of slight value that failed to take notice of his love of country. No other man of letters has there been in America, or perhaps in any other land, to whom this has been a passion so absorbing. It entered into the very deepest feelings of his heart. Even in the storm of calumny, which fell upon him in his later years, if the flame of his patriotism seemed at times to die away, any little circumstance was sure to revive it at once. ”

“ Phonetic spelling is not a destructive but a conservative agency. Just as the creation of literature holds a language fast to its moorings, just as it renders it stable by arresting all speedy verbal or grammatical change, so the establishment of phonetic spelling would operate upon orthoepy. The exact pronunciation would be imposed upon the word by its very form. No one could mistake it, no one would be tempted to disregard it. From it there would never be variation save when a change in the sound imperatively demanded a change in the spelling to indicate it. ”

“ Women like them may be far more useful members of society than the stormier characters of fiction that are dear to the carnal-minded. They may very possibly be far more agreeable to live with; but they are not usually the women for whom men are willing or anxious to die.
These are imperfections that have led to the undue depreciation of Cooper among many highly cultivated men. Taken by themselves they might seem enough to ruin his reputation beyond redemption. It is a proof of his real greatness that he triumphs over defects which would utterly destroy the fame of a writer of inferior power. ”

“ In truth, the comparison just made is sufficient of itself to lay this ghastly specter of an argument which haunts so persistently the imagination of many opponents of phonetic spelling. It is with our pronunciation as with our timepieces. None of our watches run precisely alike. Few if any can be called unqualifiedly correct. For all that, with the aid of these imperfect and never precisely agreeing instruments, we manage to transact with little friction and delay the daily business of a life in which [Pg 325] we have constantly to wait upon one another’s movements. ”

“ With us it has become both the belief and the practice that if a letter has once got into the spelling of a word, no matter how unlawfully, it has acquired the right of remaining there forever. In consequence, our language is encumbered with a lot of alphabetic squatters which have settled down upon the orthography without any regard to the opposing claims of either derivation or pronunciation. The mental attitude which at first tolerated and at last has learned to love these nuisances sprang up after the invention of printing. ”

“ In the lonely hunter, now nearing his grave, there is a pathetic grandeur, which is a natural development, and not an artificial addition. Though he has hurried as far away as possible from the din of the settlements, he is no longer querulous and irritable as in his old age in the Otsego hills. He has learned to recognize the inevitable. While he does not cease to regret, he has ceased to denounce. He knows that the majestic solitude of nature will not long remain undisturbed, nor its more majestic silence unbroken ”

“ As he invariably proved himself entirely destitute of common sense in his ordinary conduct, he was led to fancy that he was not merely a man of ability, but a man of genius; and during the whole of his life he perpetually posed as that most intolerable of literary nuisances, a man of unappreciated genius. In spite of the fact that he had been hospitably entertained and befriended by Cooper, he could not be satisfied, because their common publisher looked upon the latter as the "greatest literary genius in America." ”

“ This was provincialism pushed to an extreme. Whatever we may think of its actual value, English aristocracy resembles in this gold and silver, that it has an accepted value independent of the character of its representatives. It is, therefore, current throughout the civilized world; whereas American aristocracy is like local paper money: worth nothing except in its own country, and even there receiving little recognition or circulation outside of the immediate neighborhood in which it is found. ”

“ It is not for an American to find fault with the laudatory tone of a work which reflects the ardent love of country felt by the writer. Yet in many respects it is a singular production. In manner it is calm, grave, almost (p. 103) philosophical; there is not the slightest effort at fine writing; the tone can never be said to be even fervid. Yet it must be confessed that not in the most exalted of Fourth of July orations does the national eagle scream with a shriller note, or wing his way with a more unflagging flight. ”

“ The reader will look in vain for the revelation of sentiment, or for the exhibition of passion. The love-story is rarely well done; but the love-story plays a subordinate part in the composition. The moment his imagination is set on fire with the conception of adventure, vividness and power come unbidden to his pen. The pictures he then draws are as real to the mind as if they were actually seen by the eye. It is doubtless due to the fact that these fits of inspiration came to him only in certain kinds of composition, that the excellence of many of his stories lies largely in detached scenes. ”

“ Of all the novels (p. 053) written by Cooper, "The Last of the Mohicans" is the one in which the interest not only never halts, but never sinks. It is, indeed, an open question, whether a higher art would not have given more breathing-places in this exciting tale, in which the mind is hurried without pause from sensation to sensation. But this is a fault, if it be a fault, which the reader will always forgive, whatever the critic may say. The latter, indeed, can see much to blame if he look at the work purely as an artistic creation. ”

“ It is, in fact, often absurdly false when the general reading public represents the uncultivated many. On matters which come legitimately within the scope of their judgment the verdict of the great mass of men is infinitely more trustworthy than that of any small body of men, no matter how cultivated. Of plenty of that narrow judgment of select circles which mistakes the cackle of its little coterie for the voice of the world, Cooper was made the subject, and sometimes the victim, during his lifetime. ”

“ As he appears in "The Pioneers" he is merely an old man who has made his home in the hills in advance of the tide of settlement. He is the solitary hunter who views with dislike clearings and improvements, who cannot breathe freely in streets, who hates the sight of masses of men, who looks with especial loathing upon the civilization whose first (p. 054) work is to fell the trees he has learned to love, whose first exercise of power is to draw the network of the law around the freedom and irresponsibility of forest life. ”

“ Whatever hostility actually existed sprang mainly from causes creditable to himself. If Cooper disliked England for its depreciation of America, he hated with a hatred akin to loathing, the recreant Americans who mistook the relation they bore to their native land, and apologized for its character and existence, instead of apologizing for their own. For these men he made no effort to hide the contempt he felt. This class, far larger then in numbers than now, came mainly from the great cities. Many of them had wealth and social position to make up for their lack of ability ”

“ Unfortunately, the nation in all such cases is itself both party and judge, and the question of right becomes, in consequence, a hard one to decide as a matter of fact. Cooper's intense convictions would therefore have been likely to have led the country into war, had he had the control of events,--and war, too, at a time when under the agencies of peace it was daily gathering strength to meet a coming drain upon its resources in a conflict which but few were then far-sighted enough to see would squander wealth as lavishly as it wasted blood. ”

“ Even the meekness with which they submitted to the most depreciatory estimate of themselves was outdone by the anxiety with which they hurried to assure the world that they, the most cultivated of the American race, did not presume to have so high an opinion of the writings of some one of their countrymen as had been expressed by enthusiasts, whose patriotism had proved too much for their discernment. Never was any class so eager to free itself from charges that imputed to it the presumption of holding independent views of its own. ”

“ No one, in fact, had ever left the country with warmer wishes or more enthusiastic expressions of admiration and regard. It was but little more than a week after his return when another invitation to a public dinner was offered him by some of the most prominent citizens of New York. In this they expressly asserted that he had won their esteem and affection, not merely by his talents, but by his manly defense, while abroad, of the institutions of his country. The invitation seemed to surprise Cooper as well as the language in which it was couched. ”