Modern Eloquence Volume Ii Part 28

INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT

[Speech of James Russell Lowell at the dinner of the Incorporated Society of Authors, London, July 25, 1888, given to the "American Men and Women of Letters" who happened to be in London on that date.]

MR. CHAIRMAN, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:--I confess that I rise under a certain oppression. There was a time when I went to make an after-dinner speech with a light heart, and when on my way to the dinner I could think over my exordium in my cab and trust to the spur of the moment for the rest of my speech. But I find as I grow older a certain aphasia overtakes me, a certain inability to find the right word precisely when I want it; and I find also that my flank becomes less sensitive to the exhilarating influences of that spur to which I have just alluded. I had pretty well made up my mind not to make any more after-dinner speeches. I had an impression that I had made quite enough of them for a wise man to speak, and perhaps more than it was profitable for other wise men to listen to. [Laughter.] I confess that it was with some reluctance that I consented to speak at all to-night. I had been bethinking me of the old proverb of the pitcher and the well which is mentioned, as you remember, in the proverb; and it was not altogether a consolation to me to think that that pitcher, which goes once too often to the well, belongs to the cla.s.s which is taxed by another proverb with too great length of ears. [Laughter.] But I could not resist. I certainly felt that it was my duty not to refuse myself to an occasion like this--an occasion which deliberately emphasizes, as well as expresses, that good feeling between our two countries which, I think, every good man in both of them is desirous to deepen and to increase. If I look back to anything in my life with satisfaction, it is to the fact that I myself have, in some degree, contributed--and I hope I may believe the saying to be true--to this good feeling. [Applause.]

You alluded, Mr. Chairman, to a date which gave me, I must confess, what we call on the other side of the water "a rather large contract." I am to reply, I am to answer to Literature, and I must confess that a person like myself, who first appeared in print fifty years ago, would hardly wish to be answerable for all his own literature, not to speak of the literature of other people. But your allusion to sixty years ago reminded me of something which struck me as I looked down these tables.

Sixty years ago the two authors you mentioned, Irving and Cooper, were the only two American authors of whom anything was known in Europe, and the knowledge of them in Europe was mainly confined to England. It is true that Bryant's "Water-Fowl" had already begun its flight in immortal air, but these were the only two American authors that could be said to be known in England. And what is even more remarkable, they were the only American authors at that time--there were, and had been, others known to us at home--who were capable of earning their bread by their pens. Another singular change is suggested to me as I look down these tables, and that is the singular contrast they afford between the time when Johnson wrote his famous lines about those ills that a.s.sail the life of the scholar, and by the scholar he meant the author--

"Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the gaol."

And I confess when I remember that verse it strikes me as a singular contrast that I should meet with a body of authors who are able to offer a dinner instead of begging one; that I have sat here and seen "forty feeding like one," when one hundred years ago the one fed like forty when he had the chance. [Laughter.]

You have alluded also, in terms which I shall not qualify, to my own merits. You have made me feel a little as if I were a ghost revisiting the pale glimpses of the moon, and reading with considerable wonder my own epitaph. But you have done me more than justice in attributing so much to me with regard to International Copyright. You are quite right in alluding to Mr. Putnam, who, I think, wrote the best pamphlet that has been written on the subject; and there are others you did not name who also deserve far more than I do for the labor they have expended and the zeal they have shown on behalf of International Copyright, particularly the secretaries of our international society--Mr. Lathrop and Mr. G. W. Green. And since I could not very well avoid touching upon the subject of International Copyright, I must say that all American authors without exception have been in favor of it on the moral ground, on the ground of simple justice to English authors. But there were a great many local, topical considerations, as our ancestors used to call them, that we were obliged to take into account, and which, perhaps, you do not feel as keenly here as we did. But I think we may say that the almost unanimous conclusion of American authors latterly has been that we should be thankful to get any bill that recognized the principle of international copyright, being confident that its practical application would so recommend it to the American people that we should get afterwards, if not every amendment of it that we desire, at least every one that is humanly possible. I think that perhaps a little injustice has been done to our side of the question; I think a little more heat has been imported into it than was altogether wise. I am not so sure that our American publishers were so much more wicked than their English brethren would have been if they had had the chance. [Laughter.] I cannot, I confess, accept with patience any imputation that implies that there is anything in our climate or in our form of government that tends to produce a lower standard of morality than in other countries. The fact is that it has been partly due to a certain--may I speak of our ancestors as having been qualified by a certain dulness? I mean no disrespect, but I think it is due to the stupidity of our ancestors in making a distinction between literary property and other property. That has been at the root of the whole evil.

I, of course understand, as everybody understands, that all property is the creature of munic.i.p.al law. But you must remember that it is the conquest of civilization, that when property pa.s.ses beyond the boundaries of that _municipium_ it is still sacred. It is not even yet sacred in all respects and conditions. Literature, the property in an idea, has been something that it is very difficult for the average man to comprehend. It is not difficult for the average man to comprehend that there may be property in a form which genius or talent gives to an idea. He can see it. It is visible and palpable, this property in an idea when it is exemplified in a machine, but it is hardly so apprehensible when it is subtly interfused in literature. Books have always been looked on somewhat as _ferae naturae_, and if you have ever preserved pheasants you know that when they fly over your neighbor's boundaries he may take a pot shot at them. I remember that something more than thirty years ago Longfellow, my friend and neighbor, asked me to come and eat a game pie with him. Longfellow's books had been sold in England by the tens of thousands, and that game pie--and you will observe the felicity of its being a game pie, _ferae naturae_ always you see--was the only honorarium he had ever received from this country for reprinting his works.

I cannot help feeling as I stand here that there is something especially--I might almost use a cant word and say monumentally--interesting in a meeting like this. It is the first time that English and American authors, so far as I know, have come together in any numbers, I was going to say to fraternize, when I remembered that I ought perhaps to add to "sororize." We, of course, have no desire, no sensible man in England or America has any desire, to enforce this fraternization at the point of the bayonet. Let us go on criticising each other; it is good for both of us. We Americans have been sometimes charged with being a little too sensitive; but perhaps a little indulgence may be due to those who always have their faults told to them, and the reference to whose virtues perhaps is sometimes conveyed in a foot-note in small print. I think that both countries have a sufficiently good opinion of themselves to have a fairly good opinion of each other. They can afford it; and if difficulties arise between the two countries, as they unhappily may,--and when you alluded just now to what De Tocqueville said in 1828 you must remember that it was only thirteen years after our war,--you must remember how long it has been to get in the thin end of the wedge of International Copyright; you must remember it took our diplomacy nearly one hundred years to enforce its generous principle of the alienable allegiance, and that the greater part of the bitterness which De Tocqueville found in 1828 was due to the impressment of American seamen, of whom something like fifteen hundred were serving on board English s.h.i.+ps when at last they were delivered.

These things should be remembered, not with resentment but for enlightenment. But whatever difficulties occurred between the two countries, and there may be difficulties that are serious, I do not think there will be any which good sense and good feeling cannot settle.

[Applause.]

I think I have been told often enough to remember that my countrymen are apt to think that they are in the right, that they are always in the right; that they are apt to look at their side of the question only.

Now, this conduces certainly to peace of mind and imperturbability of judgment, whatever other merits it may have. I am sure I do not know where we got it. Do you? I also sympathize most heartily with what has been said by the chairman with regard to the increasing love for England among my countrymen. I find on inquiry that they stop longer and in greater numbers every year in the old home, and feel more deeply its manifold charms. They also are beginning to feel that London is the centre of the races that speak English, very much in the sense that Rome was the centre of the ancient world. And I confess that I never think of London, which I also confess that I love, without thinking of that palace which David built, sitting in hearing of a hundred streams--streams of thought, of intelligence, of activity. And one other thing about London, if I may be allowed to refer to myself, impresses me beyond any other sound I have ever heard, and that is the low, unceasing roar that one hears always in the air. It is not a mere accident, like the tempest or the cataract, but it is impressive because it always indicates human will and impulse and conscious movement, and I confess that when I hear it I almost feel that I am listening to the roaring loom of time. A few words more. I will only say this, that we, as well as you, have inherited a common trust in the n.o.ble language which, in its subtle compositiveness, is perhaps the most admirable instrument of human thought and human feeling and cunning that has ever been unconsciously devised by man. May our rivalries be in fidelity to that trust. We have also inherited certain traditions, political and moral, and in doing our duty towards these it seems to me that we shall find quite enough occupation for our united thought and feeling.

[Long-continued applause.]

JOHN LOWELL

HUMORS OF THE BENCH

[Speech of Judge John Lowell at a banquet given by the Boston Merchants'

a.s.sociation in Boston, May 23, 1884, in his honor, upon his retirement from the bench of the United States Circuit Court.]

GENTLEMEN:--I hardly know why I am here. I suppose I must have decided some case in favor of our honored chairman. But, then, if every one in whose favor I have decided a case should give me a dinner I should have some thousands to eat, if I could live long enough.

I observe that in your invitation to me you say very little, if anything, about any judicial qualities which I may have displayed in office, but you do mention my courtesy and patience. You are right.

There are better judges here to-night than I ever was; but in courtesy and consideration, which I learned at my mother's knee, I hope I have not been surpa.s.sed. I have received several compliments of the same kind. I will tell you one story about that.

I was sitting one day up in court. The jury had just gone out, when a very nice looking young man came up. His hair was a little short, I believe, but I didn't notice it particularly. Said he, "Good-morning, Jedge." "Good morning." "You don't remember me?" he said. "Your countenance is familiar to me," I said, "but it does not impress itself on my memory." Said he: "Four years ago to-day you sentenced me to four years' imprisonment in the State prison." I suppose it ought to have been five, I don't know. He said: "I got out to-day, and I thought I would make my first call on you." [Laughter. A voice: "That was his courtesy."] True; and mine then came in. Said I: "Many happy returns of the day." [Great laughter and applause.] He took it very kindly and went off. I haven't seen him since.

I might have resigned some time ago. I was waiting to be turned out.

[Laughter.] I got tired of waiting. I will tell you how that is now. My great-grandfather was judge of the District Court, appointed by Was.h.i.+ngton; then he was made circuit judge by Adams. Well, Adams made a good many circuit judges, and they were all Federalists; and when the Democrats--they called themselves Republicans--all the same, you know [laughter]--when the Republicans came in they abolished the court to get rid of the judges. They made a circuit court here about nineteen years ago, and they appointed my friend Shepley the first judge. I told him if the Democrats only got in soon enough he would go the way of my grandfather. He admitted it. When I was appointed I expected the same thing. In fact, some of our prominent Democrats told me so. I said, "All right, bring on your bear. Bring on your Democratic President." So I waited for that Democratic President about eight years. I got tired of waiting. That is the only reason I resign now. [Laughter and applause.]

You take things so good-naturedly I will tell you one or two more stories. One of the princ.i.p.al difficulties we have is in serving on the jury. The members of the Merchants' a.s.sociation always presented me with a certificate showing that they were members of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company.[12] [Laughter.] But a man who was not a house guard came into my private office one day just as the jury was about to be impanelled. Said he: "Judge, I hear you live out of town."

Said I: "Yes." Said he: "I guess you burn kerosene. You don't have electric lights or anything of that kind? Well," said he, "if you will let me off this jury I will give you the darnedest nice can of kerosene ever you see." Said I: "Young man, I see in your mind the exact virtues which would be most useful,--a justice and probity which will make you serve the country most admirably as a juryman." So he served. I don't know but that if it had been a barrel it might have been different.

[Great laughter.]

Another tried the intimidation dodge. He says: "Jedge, I have been exposed to the small-pox, and expect it to break out every minute." Said I: "Break!" [Laughter.] He broke into the jury box and served his country well, and had no incapacitating disease that I ever heard of.

I don't know that there is much of anything else, except that I would give some advice. I am going to draw up some rules for my successor, and the first one will be: "Always decide in favor of the Merchants'

a.s.sociation." When there are two Merchants' a.s.sociations together, in different interests, then you must do like that jury in Kennebec county.

There was a jury there which was very prompt and satisfactory. When they got through, the judge said: "Gentlemen, I thank you very much for the very satisfactory character of your verdicts, for the great promptness with which they have been rendered, without a single disagreement." The foreman returned thanks for the compliment, and said that the jury had escaped the delays and disagreements to which his Honor had referred, by always tossing up a copper as soon as they had retired, and abiding by the result of the throw.

One word in a more serious vein. I wish to express, in closing, my profound gratification that my efforts to do my duty simply and industriously should have met with your approval, and my grat.i.tude for its public and spontaneous expression. [Applause.]

LORD LYTTON

(SIR EDWARD BULWER-LYTTON)

MACREADY AND THE ENGLISH STAGE

[Speech of Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton at a public dinner given to William C. Macready, London, March 1, 1851, on the occasion of the tragedian's withdrawal from the stage. Lord Lytton, in proposing the toast of the evening, delivered the following speech.]

GENTLEMEN:--When I glance through this vast hall, and feel how weak and indistinct is my voice, I feel that I must frankly throw myself upon your indulgence, and entreat your most patient and courteous attention while I approach that subject which unites to-day an a.s.sembly so remarkable for the numbers and distinction of those who compose it.

We are met to do honor to an eminent man, who retires into private life after those services to the public which are most felt at the moment we are about to lose them. There are many among you far better qualified than I am to speak critically of the merits of Mr. Macready as an actor, but placed as I am in this chair, I feel that I should justly disappoint you if I did not seek to give some utterance to those sentiments of admiration of which you have made me the representative.

Gentlemen, this morning I read in one of the literary journals, some qualifying remarks as to the degree of Mr. Macready's genius; and now, as I recognize here many who are devoted to literature and art, I will ask them if I am not right in this doctrine--that the true measure of the genius of an artist is the degree of excellence to which he brings the art that he cultivates. Judge of Mr. Macready by this test, and how great is that genius that will delight us no more; for it is because it has so achieved what I will call the symmetry of art that its height and its breadth have been often forgotten. We know that it is the uneven and irregular surface that strikes us as the largest, and the dimensions of a genius, like those of a building, are lost in the justness of its proportions; and therefore it is that in recalling the surpa.s.sing excellence of our guest as an artistical performer, one is really at a loss to say in what line of character he has excelled the most. The t.i.tanic grandeur of Lear, the human debas.e.m.e.nt of Werner, the frank vivacity of Henry V, the gloomy and timorous guilt of King John, or that--his last--personation of Macbeth, in which it seemed to me that he conveyed a more correct notion of what Shakespeare designed than I can recollect to have read in the most profound of the German critics; for I take it, what Shakespeare meant to represent in Macbeth was the kind of character which is most liable to be influenced by a belief in supernatural agencies--a man who is acutely sensitive to all impressions, who has a restless imagination more powerful than his will, who sees daggers in the air and ghosts in the banquet-hall, who has moral weakness and physical courage, and who--as our guest represented him--alternates perpetually between terror and daring--a trembler when oppressed by his conscience, and a warrior when defied by his foe. But in this and in all that numberless crowd of characters which is too fresh in your memories for me to enumerate, we don't so much say "How well this was spoken," or "How finely that was acted," but we feel within ourselves how true was the personation of the whole.

Gentlemen, there is a word that is often applied to artists and to authors, and I think we always apply it improperly when we speak of a superior intellect--I mean the word "versatile." Now, I think the proper word is "comprehensive." The man of genius does not vary and change, which is the meaning of the word versatile, but he has a mind sufficiently expanded to comprehend variety and change. If I can succeed in describing the circle, I can draw as many lines as I please from the centre straight to the circ.u.mference, but it must be upon the condition--for that is the mathematical law--that all these lines shall be equal, one to the other, or it is not a circle that I describe. Now, I do not say our guest is versatile; I say that he is comprehensive; and the proof that he has mastered the most perfect form of the comprehensive faculty is this--that all the lines he has created within the range of his art are equal the one to the other. And this, gentlemen, explains to us that originality which even his detractors have conceded to him.

Every great actor has his manner as every great writer has his style.

But the originality of our guest does not consist in his manner alone, but in his singular depth of thought. He has not only accomplished the obvious and essential graces of the actor--the look, the gesture, the intonation, the stage play--but he has placed his study far deeper. He has sought to penetrate into the subtlest intentions of the poet, and made poetry itself the golden key to the secrets of the human heart. He was original because he never sought to be original but to be truthful; because, in a word, he was as conscientious in his art as he is in his actions. Gentlemen, there is one merit of our guest as an actor upon which, if I were silent, I should be indeed ungrateful. Many a great performer may attain to a high reputation if he restrains his talents to acting Shakespeare and the great writers of the past; but it is perfectly clear that in so doing he does not advance one inch the literature of his time. It has been the merit of our guest to recognize the truth that the actor has it in his power to a.s.sist in creating the writer. He has identified himself with the living drama of his period, and by so doing, he has half created it. Who does not recollect the rough and manly vigor of Tell, the simple grandeur of Virginius or the exquisite sweetness and dignity and pathos with which he invested the self-sacrifice of Ion; and who does not feel that but for him, these great plays might never have obtained their hold upon the stage, or ranked among those masterpieces which this age will leave to posterity?

And what charm and what grace, not their own, he has given to the lesser works of an inferior writer, it is not for me to say.

But, gentlemen, all this, in which he has sought to rally round him the dramatic writers of his time, brings me at once from the merits of the actor to those of the manager. I recall, gentlemen, that brief but glorious time when the drama of England appeared suddenly to revive and to promise a future that should be worthy of its past; when by a union of all kindred arts, and the exercise of a taste that was at once gorgeous and severe, we saw the genius of Shakespeare properly embodied upon our stage, though I maintain that the ornament was never superior to the work. Just remember the manner in which the supernatural agency of the weird sisters was made apparent to our eye, in which the magic Isle of Prospero rose before us in its mysterious and haunted beauty, and in which the knightly character of the hero of Agincourt received its true interpretation from the pomp of the feudal age, and you will own you could not strip the scene of these effects without stripping Shakespeare himself of half the richness and depth of his conceptions.

But that was the least merit of that glorious management. Mr. Macready not only enriched the scene, but he purified the audience; and for the first time since the reign of Charles II, a father might have taken his daughters to a public theatre with as much safety from all that could shock decorum as if he had taken them to the house of a friend. And for this reason the late lamented Bishop of Norwich made it a point to form the personal acquaintance of Mr. Macready, that he might thank him, as a prelate of the Church, for the good he had done to society.

Gentlemen, I cannot recall that period without a sharp pang of indignant regret, for if that management had lasted some ten or twelve years, I know that we would have established a permanent school for actors--a fresh and enduring field for dramatic poetry and wit--while we should have educated an audience up to feel that dramatic performances in their highest point of excellence had become an intellectual want that could no more be dispensed with than the newspaper or review. And all this to be checked or put back for ages to come! Why? Because the public did not appreciate the experiment! Mr. Macready has told us that the public supported him n.o.bly, and that his houses overflowed. Why then? Because of the enormous rent and exactions, for a theatre which even in the most prosperous seasons, make the exact difference between profit and loss.

Gentlemen, it is not now the occasion to speak of remedies for that state of things. Remedies there are, but they are for legislation to effect. They involve considerations with regard to those patents which are secured to certain houses for the purpose of maintaining in this metropolis the legitimate drama, and which I fear, have proved the main obstacle to its success.

But these recollections belong to the past. The actor--the manager--are no more. Whom have we with us to-day? Something grander than actor, or manager: to-day we have with us the man. Gentlemen, to speak of those virtues which adorn a home, and are only known in secret, has always appeared to me to be out of place upon public occasions; but there are some virtues which cannot be called private, which accompany a man everywhere, which are the essential part of his public character, and of these it becomes us to speak, for it is to these that we are met to do homage. I mean integrity, devotion to pure ends, a high ambition, manly independence, and honor that never knew a stain. Why should we disguise from ourselves that there are great prejudices to the profession of an actor? Who does not know that our n.o.ble guest has lived down every one such prejudice, not falling into the old weakness of the actor, and for which Garrick could not escape the sarcasm of Johnson, of hankering after the society and patronage of the great? The great may have sought in him the accomplished gentleman, but he has never stooped his bold front as an Englishman to court any patronage meaner than the public, or to sue for the smile with which fas.h.i.+on humiliates the genius it condescends to flatter. And therefore it is that he has so lifted up that profession to which he belongs into its proper rank amid the liberal arts; and therefore it is, that in glancing over the list of our stewards we find every element of that aristocracy upon which he has never fawned uniting to render him its tribute of respect. The ministers of foreign nations--men among the n.o.blest of the peers of England--veterans of those professions of which honor is the lifespring--the chiefs of literature and science and art--ministers of the Church, sensible of the benefits he has bestowed upon society in banis.h.i.+ng from the stage what had drawn upon it the censure of the pulpit--all are here and all unite to enforce the truth, the great truth, which he leaves to those who come after him--that let a man but honor his calling, and the calling will soon be the honor of the man.

Gentlemen, I cannot better sum up all I would say than by the words which the Roman orator applied to the actor of his day; and I ask you if I may not say of our guest as Cicero said of Roscius--"He is a man who unites yet more of virtues than of talents, yet more of truth than of art, and who, having dignified the scene by the various portraitures of human life, dignifies yet more this a.s.sembly by the example of his own."

Gentlemen, the toast I am about to propose to you is connected with many sad a.s.sociations but not to-day. Later and longer will be cherished whatever may be sad of these mingled feelings that accompany this farewell--later, when night after night we shall miss from the play-bill the old familiar name, and feel that one source of elevated delight is lost to us forever. To-day let us rejoice that he whom we prize and admire is no worn-out veteran retiring to a rest he can no longer enjoy--that he leaves us in the prime of his powers, with many years to come, in the course of nature, of that dignified leisure for which every public man must have sighed in the midst of his triumphs, and though we cannot say of him that his "way of life is fall'n into the sere, the yellow leaf," yet we can say that he has prematurely obtained "that which should accompany old age, as honor, love, obedience, troops of friends;" and postponing for this night all selfish regret, not thinking of the darkness that is to follow, but of the brightness of the sun that is to set, I call upon you to drink with full gla.s.ses and full hearts, "Health, happiness and long life to William Macready."