THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

Evening Star, Volume 11221, Issue 11221, 21 April 1900, Page 2

THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

Mr Choate, speaking at the Authors’ Club m London recently, made the following observations on the English language and the most famous bookslt was this “ teachableness " of all people who spoke the English tongue that constituted their great power iu the present and their great prospect for the future. This English tongue had done an immense thing for them on both sides of the water. It had welded them into one homogeneous and united people, speaking with one voice, and acting with one will, to work out their destiny, and it had done the same thing for the widely-spreading members of the British Empire—as they had had an example in this very year—making them one people, united for the common liberties of all.—(Cheers.) And what had it not done—this same English language—for all who spoke it? It had given them their highest aims and their highest ideals. It had taught them to love liberty, and to be devoted to law.—(Cheers.) He congratulated the authors of that society, and all authors of England and America, upon the splendid opportunities open before them through the ever-widening circle of the audience to which they addressed themselves. Ho supposed of all the great authors of one hundred or two hundred .years ago there were more of their books published and read in two or three years at the close of. the nineteenth century than during the whole of their lifetimes. He mentioned * pon Quixote, 7 1 The Pilgrim’a Progress,’ the ■ Ontnpleab Angler,’ and ‘ Robinson Crusoe ’ as being the most famous books handed down to the present generation. In this connection 'Mr Choate referred to the service rendered by the * Daily News ’ in its recent articles on the best - books for children,; and quoted the verdict of the competitors for its' prize a« illustrating the pre-eminence l Still enjoyed by ‘ Robinson Crusoe.? Time, continued Mr Choate, bad sifted all literature, but diow the united judgment of mankind had centred upon those four books, but bf all the really wonderful books - which had ;been • given: to the world, and how it had selected t,hole masterpieces and: given thsnj such glory, and other valuable works had sunk 1 into insignfiicanoe and almost into oblivion; it was really very hard, to say. , How little pecuniary benefit the authors got from these works the members of,that club well,know, but they won that great harvest of immortality which was given to each. All that was known was that in each: ca?e the work was the ripe fruit of a matured,judgment, for none of those books were written bv young men. ,