Choice Specimens of American Literature, and Literary Reader · Chapter 154=194.= Disadvantages of Colonial Life
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It is our misfortune, in one sense, to have succeeded, at the very outset of our career, to an over-grown inheritance in the literature of the mother country, and to have stood for a century in that political and social relation towards her, which was of all others most unfavorable to any originality in genius and opinions. Our good fathers piously spoke of England as their home. The inferiority—the discouraging and degrading inferiority—implied in a state of colonial dependence, chilled the enthusiasm of talent, and repressed the aspirations of ambition. Our youth were trained in English schools to classical learning and good manners; but no scholarship—great as we believe its efficacy to be—can either inspire or supply, the daring originality and noble pride of genius, to which, by some mysterious law of nature, the love of country and a national spirit seem to be absolutely necessary. We imported our opinions ready-made—"by balefuls," if it so pleases the Rev. Sidney Smith. We were taught to read by English school-masters—and to reason by English authors—English clergymen filled our pulpits, English lawyers our courts—and above all things, we deferred to and dreaded the dictatorial authority and withering contempt of English criticism. It is difficult to imagine a state of things more fatal to intellectual dignity and enterprise, and the consequences were such as might have been anticipated. What is still more lamentable, although the cause has in a good measure ceased, the effect continues, nor do we see any remedy for the evil until our youth shall be taught to go up to the same original and ever-living fountains of all literature, at which the Miltons, and the Barrows, and the Drydens drank in so much of their enthusiasm and inspiration, and to cast off entirely that slavish dependence upon the opinions of others which they must feel, who take their knowledge of what it is either their duty, their interest, or their ambition to learn, at second hand.
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=Francis L. Hawks, 1798-1866.= (Manual, p. 480.)
From "Narrative of the United States Expedition to Japan."