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to his horse, because, as he says, the horse knows what is French and what is not. The Anglo-Saxon carter and shepherd speak an admirably terse and effective language to their teams and collies, but it cannot by any stretch be called English. Miners of Lancashire or Staffordshire also speak a fine-sounding language, and are devoted to it, but it is not the English of the rest of England, and that very fact is partly the cause of their pride. We may hope that our true and characteristic dialects will be long in disappearing, but also that standard English may be added to them; bi-lingualism is in every way more desirable than Babel.

Our chief concern, however, must be with Standard English itself. It is no mere patriotic boast to say that it is the most important language in the world; it is on the way to becoming the universal language, and International Conferences have actually declared that it ought to take that place. On the other hand, there is a group in the United States who talk of frankly abandoning the name and the use of English and substituting the "American language," which they declare to be already in existence among them. We do not share this hope or expectation, because we greatly value community of language as a link of understanding between the two peoples, and as the possible basis of a feeling of fellowship. The matter is one which concerns us in England very nearly, because the language used by Americans both in speech and in literature has always been attractive to our people, and because it is now coming over here more frequently and more actively than it has ever done. Language owes a large proportion of its

changes to the taste and freedom of youth, especially at schools and universities. It is an important fact that out of about 4000 undergraduates at Oxford to-day, there are 1000 who come from America or from the outlying parts of the British Empire. I have heard it said recently that it is often difficult for older people to understand what is being said in conversation by a group of Oxford undergraduates.

I can believe this, but I must add that it does not much alarm me; fashions in language are very catching, but they have a way of passing very quickly -they seem to thrust each other out. The peculiar dialects and vocabularies of Max Adeler, Bret Harte and Mark Twain ran through the schools of England like a prairie fire. The fire has so completely burnt itself out that most of those under the age of 25 years whom I have lately questioned declare that they have never read a word of any of the three. They have even forgotten, or almost forgotten, the dialect of O. Henry, which was equally popular only three years ago, but is now as dead as Uncle Remus or Helen's Babies. A word or a phrase here and there no doubt survives because it deserves to survive, and this, after all, is very much what has been happening for centuries, in the main to our great advantage.

I believe then that we can stand a great deal of new slang, absorb the desirable part of it, and work off the rest. The danger would seem to lie in a different direction-in a possible degradation of the structure of language. The structure of language, or in other words, the form of expression in speech, is so intimately connected with the structure of the mind or the form of thought itself, that it is impossible to

change the one in any serious degree without changing the other. The world seems to have entered upon an age in which the most necessary quality for language is not so much greater flexibility as greater precision. The steady permeation of our life by scientific method has had some evil effects, but has undoubtedly strengthened us on the intellectual side, and given at any rate greater possibilities to the arts. It would be paradoxical and lamentable too if at the same moment a general lapse into slipshod ways of writing and speaking should occur and should react, as it inevitably must, upon national ways of thought.

The remedy is not easy to find, and if found will be still more difficult to apply. The Poet Laureate has been happily inspired in the foundation of his Society for Pure English, which devotes itself to scientific and historical study of the uses of English in the past and present, and without claiming to legislate or to deliver academic judgments, places the facts before the English-speaking world in such a way that the legitimate inferences can be easily drawn. Americans have been fortunately possessed by the same idea, and a combination of their best scholarship with our own for the practical purpose of recording and furthering the development of our common language is at this moment in progress. The proposed Society will have neither the will nor the power to compel change or to arrest it, but it can hardly be doubted that it might have a beneficent and far-reaching effect, not only upon the future of the English language, but, as a natural corollary, upon the thought and influence of the English-speaking races.

SOME TASKS FOR DRAMATIC SCHOLARSHIP.

BY HARLEY GRANVILLE-BARKER, F.R.S.L.

[Read June 7th, 1922.]

I ASSUME, to begin with, that dramatic art has need of the services pure scholarship can render. I may be told that in this respect it has nothing to complain of. Certainly we can find in the British Museum Library a mass of critical literature upon drama. But two things are noticeable about this. An overwhelming proportion of it-of the native English product certainly-is devoted to Elisabethan drama; and even so a large part is written by people who, you might suppose, could never have been inside a theatre in their lives.

It would be unreasonable to complain of the first limitation, and unwise, considering scholarly tastes— though the taste of the scholar in drama, as in light literature, is often, to the plain man, surprisingunwise to lay stress upon the second. Elisabethan and Jacobean drama were until recently so much more vital and historically interesting than any that succeeded them, that here was comparatively the fairest field for anyone interested in drama itself, and positively a very fertile one for any student of either the life or literature of that period. The field has now been cropped pretty close, however. In some places, I think, it has been trodden bare.

But the second limitation-the scholar's indifference to the theatre-has been a serious one for us,

VOL. III, N.S.

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and, I suggest, for the scholar too. For him, because he has often gone to great trouble to elucidate points which, if he could but have seen or even imagined the play in being-acted, that is, in a theatre, where a play belongs-would have elucidated themselves. For us, because those of us who wish to inform ourselves thoroughly upon these matters, have to wade through a large amount of what is, frankly, very learned rubbish.

And Shakespeare, of course, has suffered most— as he has also profited much-at the hands of the commentators.

With the minor Elisabethans, with the Jacobeans, the plain man, the average lover of English drama, need have a very limited concern. He has at present, as a rule, no concern with them at all. He can quote you "Marlowe's mighty line" (without being too sure who gave it that certificate), he can probably quote at least two of the mighty lines themselves, "Holla, ye pampered jades of Asia," and "Was this the face that launched a thousand ships?"-though the very editor of a literary paper has been known to get the latter one wrong. He remembers that Lamb was very strong on the old dramatists," and that Swinburne has lavished orotund and-be it said with as much respect as possible-often very ridiculous praise upon Webster, Tourneur, Massinger and their fellows.

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The question of the absolute value of this school of drama I will not discuss. It has recently been made the object of very destructive criticism by Mr. William Archer, who feels more strongly on the subject than I do, and speaks more learnedly than ever I can.

Personally, I am prepared to welcome the minor

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