uld have
been infinitely too mean and common. He therefore boldly took the step
of self-ennobling, and gave himself forth--as he said, obeying "the
voice of the people at large"--as "Lord Timothy Dexter," by which
appellation he has ever since been known to the American public.

If to be the pioneer in the introduction of Old World titles into
republican America can confer a claim to be remembered by posterity,
Lord Timothy Dexter has a right to historic immortality. If the true
American spirit shows itself most clearly in boundless self-assertion,
Timothy Dexter is the great original American egotist. If to throw
off the shackles of Old World pedantry, and defy the paltry rules and
examples of grammarians and rhetoricians, is the special province and
the chartered privilege of the American writer, Timothy Dexter is the
founder of a new school, which tramples under foot the conventionalities
that hampered and subjugated the faculties of the poets, the dramatists,
the historians, essayists, story-tellers, orators, of the worn-out races
which have preceded the great American people.

The material traces of the first American nobleman's existence have
nearly disappeared. The house is still standing, but the statues, the
minarets, the arches, and the memory of the great Lord Timothy Dexter
live chiefly in tradition, and in the work which he bequeathed to
posterity, and of which I shall say a few words. It is unquestionably a
thoroughly original production, and I fear that some readers may think I
am trifling with them when I am quoting it literally. I am going to
make a strong claim for Lord Timothy as against other candidates for a
certain elevated position.

Thomas Jefferson is commonly recognized as the first to proclaim before
the world the political independence of America. It is not so
generally agreed upon as to who was the first to announce the literary
emancipation of our country.

One of Mr. Emerson's biographers has claimed that his Phi Beta Kappa
Oration was our Declaration of Literary Independence. But Mr. Emerson
did not cut himself loose from all the traditions of Old World
scholarship. He spelled his words correctly, he constructed his
sentences grammatically. He adhered to the slavish rules of propriety,
and observed the reticences which a traditional delicacy has considered
inviolable in decent society, European and Oriental alike. When he wrote
poetry, he commonly selected subjects which seemed adapte