“Yes; true;” said Cornelia, hesitating over her argument.  “Well, I must conclude that I am not imaginative.”

“On the contrary, permit me to say that you are.  But your imagination is unpractised, and asks to be fed with a spoon.  We English are more imaginative than most nations.”

“Then, why is it not manifested?”

“We are still fighting against the Puritan element, in literature as elsewhere.”

“Your old bugbear, Mr. Barrett!”

“And more than this:  our language is not rich in subtleties for prose.  A writer who is not servile and has insight, must coin from his own mint.  In poetry we are rich enough; but in prose also we owe everything to the licence our poets have taken in the teeth of critics.  Shall I give you examples?  It is not necessary.  Our simplest prose style is nearer to poetry with us, for this reason, that the poets have made it.  Read French poetry.  With the first couplet the sails are full, and you have left the shores of prose far behind.  Mr. Runningbrook coins words and risks expressions because an imaginative Englishman, pen in hand, is the cadet and vagabond of the family—­an exploring adventurer; whereas to a Frenchman it all comes inherited like a well filled purse.  The audacity of the French mind, and the French habit of quick social intercourse, have made them nationally far richer in language.  Let me add, individually as much poorer.  Read their stereotyped descriptions.  They all say the same things.  They have one big Gallic trumpet.  Wonderfully eloquent:  we feel that:  but the person does not speak.  And now, you will be surprised to learn that, notwithstanding what I have said, I should still side with Mr. Runningbrook’s fair critic, rather than with him.  The reason is, that the necessity to write as he does is so great that a strong barrier—­a chevaux-de-frise of pen points—­must be raised against every newly minted word and hazardous coiner, or we shall be inundated.  If he can leap the barrier he and his goods must be admitted.  So it has been with our greatest, so it must be with the rest of them, or we shall have a Transatlantic literature.  By no means desirable, I think.  Yet, see:  when a piece of Transatlantic slang happens to be tellingly true—­something coined from an absolute experience; from a fight with the elements—­we cannot resist it:  it invades us.  In the same way poetic rashness of the right quality enriches the language.  I would make it prove its quality.”

Cornelia walked on gravely.  His excuse for dilating on the theme, prompted her to say:  “You give me new views”:  while all her reflections sounded from the depths:  “And yet, the man who talks thus is a hired organ-player!”

This recurring thought, more than the cogency of the new views, kept her from combating certain fallacies in them which had struck her.

“Why do you not write yourself, Mr. Barrett?”

“I have not the habit.”