SOURCE: "Americanisms and Briticisms," in The Collected Essays & Addresses of the Rt. Hon. Augustine Birrell 1880-1920, Vol. Three, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1923, pp. 168-73.

In the following review of Americanisms and Briticisms, Birrell lambastes what he sees as Matthews's project to erect a barrier of nationalism between national literatures.

Messrs. Harper Bros., of New York, have lately printed and published, and Mr. Brander Matthews has written, the prettiest possible little book, called Americanisms and Briticisms, with other Essays on other Isms. To slip it into your pocket when first you see it is an almost irresistible impulse, and yet—would you believe it?—this pretty little book is in reality a bomb, intended to go off and damage British authors by preventing them from being so much as quoted in the States. Mr. Brander Matthews, however, is so obviously a good-natured man, and his little fit of the spleen...