SOURCE: "America and the English Literary Tradition," in The Living Age, No. 3928, October 18, 1919, pp. 170-76.

In the following essay, O'Sullivan discusses the English literary influences on Morley's writings.

To encounter the venerable names of Marlowe, of Burton of the Anatomy, of Dr. Johnson, and Wordsworth and George Borrow, in a quite modern American novel, is almost as startling as it would be to find them in a Bolshevist manifesto. Rare enough now in America are the writers who continue the English literary tradition, and accordingly some interest may be felt by English people in the one who does. Nor is Mr. Christopher Morley a 'left-over' from the New England period when the inspiration, at least, of American literature was imported from England, if it sometimes suffered a seachange in the process.

Some years ago I was asked to lunch in New York at a restaurant in the neighborhood...