Tanqueray’ of Pinero, the ‘Gioconda’ of d’Annunzio are all of them cast in the same dramatic mold; but it is also a fact that the metal of which each is made was smelted in the native land of its author.  Similar as they are in structure, in their artistic formula, they are radically dissimilar in their essence, in the motives that move the characters and in their outlook on life; and this dissimilarity is due not alone to the individuality of the several authors,—­it is to be credited chiefly to the nationality of each.

Of course, international borrowings have always been profitable to the arts,—­not merely the taking over of raw material, but the more stimulating absorption of methods and processes and even of artistic ideals.  The Sicilian Gorgias had for a pupil the Attic Isocrates; and the style of the Athenian was imitated by the Roman Cicero, thus helping to sustain the standard of oratory in every modern language.  The ’Matron of Ephesus’ of Petronius was the great-grandmother of the ‘Yvette’ of Maupassant; and the dialogs of Herondas and of Theocritus serve as models for many a vignette of modern life.  The ‘Golden Ass’ went before ‘Gil Blas’ and made a path for him; and ‘Gil Blas’ pointed the way for ‘Huckleberry Finn.’  It is easy to detect the influence of Richardson on Rousseau, of Rousseau on George Sand, of George Sand on Turgenieff, of Turgenieff on Mr. Henry James, of Mr. James on M. Paul Bourget, of M. Bourget on Signor d’Annunzio; and yet there is no denying that Richardson is radically English, that Turgenieff is thoroly Russian, and that d’Annunzio is unquestionably Italian.

In like manner we may recognize the striking similarity—­but only in so far as the external form is concerned—­discoverable in those short-stories which are as abundant as they are important in every modern literature; and yet much of our delight in these brief studies from life is due to the pungency of their local flavor, whether they were written by Kjelland or by Sacher-Masoch, by Auerbach or by Daudet, by Barrie or by Bret Harte.  “All can grow the flower now, for all have got the seed”; but the blossoms are rich with the strength of the soil in which each of them is rooted.

This racial individuality is our immediate hope; it is our safeguard against mere craftsmanship, against dilettant dexterity, against cleverness for its own sake, against the danger that our cosmopolitanism may degenerate into Alexandrianism and that our century may come to be like the age of the Antonines, when a “cloud of critics, of compilers, of commentators darkened the face of learning,” so Gibbon tells us, and “the decline of genius was soon followed by the corruption of taste.”  It is the spirit of nationality which will help to supply needful idealism.  It will allow a man of letters to frequent the past without becoming archaic and to travel abroad without becoming exotic, because it will supply him always with a good reason for remaining a citizen of his own country.