Modern Eloquence Volume Ii Part 7

JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE

MEN OF LETTERS

[Speech of James A. Froude at the banquet of the Royal Academy, London, April 29, 1876. The President, Sir Francis Grant, in introducing Mr.

Froude, said: "The next toast is 'The Interests of Literature and Science.' This toast is always so welcome and so highly appreciated that it needs no exordium from the chair. I cannot a.s.sociate with the interests of literature a name more worthy than that of Mr. Froude, the scholar and distinguished historian."]

SIR FRANCIS GRANT, YOUR ROYAL HIGHNESSES, MY LORDS, AND GENTLEMEN:--While I feel most keenly the honor which you confer upon me in connecting my name with the interests of literature, I am embarra.s.sed, in responding, by the nature of my subject. What is literature, and who are men of letters? From one point of view we are the most unprofitable of mankind--engaged mostly in blowing soap-bubbles. [Laughter.] From another point of view we are the most practical and energetic portion of the community. [Cheers.] If literature be the art of employing words skillfully in representing facts, or thoughts, or emotions, you may see excellent specimens of it every day in the advertis.e.m.e.nts in our newspapers. Every man who uses a pen to convey his meaning to others--the man of science, the man of business, the member of a learned profession--belongs to the community of letters. Nay, he need not use his pen at all. The speeches of great orators are among the most treasured features of any national literature. The orations of Mr. Grattan are the text-books in the schools of rhetoric in the United States. Mr. Bright, under this aspect of him, holds a foremost place among the men of letters of England.

[Cheers.]

Again, sir, every eminent man, be he what he will, be he as unbookish as he pleases, so he is only eminent enough, so he holds a conspicuous place in the eyes of his countrymen, potentially belongs to us, and if not in life, then after he is gone, will be enrolled among us. The public insist on being admitted to his history, and their curiosity will not go unsatisfied. [Cheers.] His letters are hunted up, his journals are sifted; his sayings in conversation, the doggerel which he writes to his brothers and sisters are collected, and stereotyped in print.

[Laughter.] His fate overtakes him. He cannot escape from it. We cry out, but it does not appear that men sincerely resist the liberty which is taken with them. We never hear of them instructing their executors to burn their papers. [Laughter.] They have enjoyed so much the exhibition that has been made of their contemporaries that they consent to be sacrificed themselves.

Again, sir, when we look for those who have been most distinguished as men of letters, in the usual sense of the word; where do we find them?

The famous lawyer is found in his chambers, the famous artist is found in his studio. Our foremost representatives we do not find always in their libraries; we find them, in the first place, in the service of their country. ["Hear! Hear!"] Owen Meredith is Viceroy of India, and all England has applauded the judgment that selected and sent him there.

[Cheers.] The right honorable gentleman [Mr. Gladstone] who three years ago was conducting the administration of this country with such brilliant success was first generally known to his countrymen as a remarkable writer. During forty years of arduous service he never wholly deserted his original calling. ["Hear! Hear!"] He is employing an interval of temporary retirement to become the interpreter of Homer to the English race [cheers], or to break a lance with the most renowned theologians in defence of spiritual liberty. [Cheers.]

A great author, whose life we have been all lately reading with delight, contemplates the year 3000 as a period at which his works may still be studied. If any man might be led reasonably to form such an antic.i.p.ation for himself by the admiration of his contemporaries, Lord Macaulay may be acquitted of vanity. The year 3000 is far away, much will happen between now and then; all that we can say with certainty of the year 3000 is that it will be something extremely different from what any one expects. I will not predict that men will then be reading Lord Macaulay's "History of England." I will not predict that they will then be reading "Lothair." [Laughter.] But this I will say, that if any statesman of the age of Augustus or the Antonines had left us a picture of patrician society at Rome, drawn with the same skill, and with the same delicate irony with which Mr. Disraeli has described a part of English society in "Lothair," no relic of antiquity would now be devoured with more avidity and interest. [Loud cheers.] Thus, sir, we are an anomalous body, with very ill-defined limits. But, such as we are, we are heartily obliged to you for wis.h.i.+ng us well, and I give you our most sincere thanks. [Cheers.]

MELVILLE WESTON FULLER

THE SUPREME COURT

[Speech of Melville W. Fuller at the fifth annual dinner of the New England Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, December 22, 1888. The President, Heman L. Wayland, D.D., said in introducing Justice Fuller:--"The reverence of New England for law and her readiness to make law (a readiness, perhaps our enemies will say, to make them for other people) naturally suggests the topic which is first on the programme--'New England in the Supreme Court.' I shall not enlarge upon the sentiment, lest I should only mar the canvas which will shortly be illumined by the hand of a master. The case of New England versus The World has long been in court; the evidence is in; the learned counsel have been heard; and now, before the case is finally given to the intelligent jury of the human race, it remains only that we hear a charge from his honor, the Chief Justice of the United States."]

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN OF THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY:--I thank you sincerely for the courtesy which has afforded me the opportunity of being with you this evening, and am deeply sensible of the compliment paid in the request to respond to the sentiment just given.

We all know--we have heard over and over again--that the "Day We Celebrate" commemorates an emigration peculiar in its causes. It was not the desire to acquire wealth or power, nor even the spirit of adventure, that sent these colonists forth. They did not go to return, but to abide; and while they sought to make another country theirs, primarily to enjoy religious independence, they were much too sagacious not to know that emanc.i.p.ation from the ecclesiastical thraldom, of which they complained, involved the attainment of political rights and immunities as well. And so this day commemorates not simply the heroism of struggle and endurance in silence and apart, for a great cause, not simply the unfeigned faith which rendered such heroism possible, but the planting of that germ of local self-government which has borne glorious fruit in the reconcilement of individual freedom with a national sway of imperial proportions.

It commemorates the advent of that first written const.i.tution of civil government, that first attempt of a people in that form, by self-imposed fundamental law, to put it out of their own power to work injustice; that agreement, signed upon the sea, "to enact, const.i.tute and frame such just and equal laws and ordinances, acts, const.i.tutions and offices," as should be "thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the colony," to which all "due submission and obedience" was promised. And this was followed a few years later in the sister colony of Ma.s.sachusetts Bay by that "Body of Liberties" which, it is well said, may challenge comparison with Magna Charta itself or the latest Bill of Rights. Instinct with the spirit of common law, though somewhat ameliorating its rigor, these "rites, privileges and liberties," to be "impartially and inviolably enjoyed and observed throughout our jurisdiction forever," commence with the preamble that "the free fruition of such liberties, Immunities and privileges humanitie, Civilitie and Christianitie call for as due to every man in his place and proportion without impeachment and Infringement, hath ever been and ever will be the tranquillitie and Stabilitie of Churches and Commonwealths. And the deniall and deprivall thereof, the disturbance.

If not the ruine of both. We hould it therefore our dutie and saftie, whilst we are about the further establishment of this Government, to collect and expresse all such freedomes as for present we foresee may concern us, and our posteritie after us."

And so they ordain that no man's life or liberty or property can be taken away, or his honor or good name stained, or his goods or estate in any way damaged under color of law or countenance of authority, unless by due process; that every person, inhabitant or foreign, shall enjoy the same justice and law general to the plantation; that there shall be no monopolies, except for new inventions profitable to the country, and for a short time; no imprisonment without bail except for crimes capital and contempts in open court; freedom of alienation and power to devise; no primogeniture, no escheats on attainder and execution for felony; succor to those fleeing from tyranny; full freedom to advise, vote, give verdict or sentence according to true judgment and conscience; in short, the expression or the indication of those safeguards to liberty, the possession of which enables a people to become and to remain free.

Well may we claim for these doc.u.ments large influence in forerunning the organic laws of the several States, and that matchless instrument which a century ago was framed in this fortunate city, which had been blessed before as the place where the Declaration put on immortality.

And now in the latter half of the third century, since the bearers of the underlying principles of Republican rule placed their feet upon that rock, whose shadow was to become a solace to the weariness of the perpetual toils and encounters of the land, we may well hope that what they sought has been achieved, an enduring Government of laws and not of men; security to freedom and to justice, "justice, that venerable virtue, without which," as exclaimed New England's eloquent orator, "freedom, valor and power are but vulgar things."

It is delightful to keep these remembrances alive, and while duly recognizing the rightful claims of all our brothers to their share in the foundation of the inst.i.tutions of a common country, to dwell upon what the forefathers were, what they accomplished and what they still accomplish through the works that follow them. And as it is not unnatural that at the same time we should felicitate ourselves upon whatever of eminence or good fortune has attended the efforts of their descendants, the reference, Mr. President, you have made in connection with this toast to the court over which I have the honor to preside enables me with propriety to indulge in an allusion to those from New England who have labored in that field.

On the seventh of April, 1789, a committee was appointed by the Senate "to bring in a bill for organizing the judiciary of the United States."

Able as were his colleagues, it has been generally conceded that "that great act was penned" by the chairman of that committee, Oliver Ellsworth, of Connecticut. On the twenty-fourth of September--the day upon which the Judiciary Act became a law--President Was.h.i.+ngton nominated for the Supreme Court of the United States a chief justice and five a.s.sociates, among the latter William Cus.h.i.+ng, of Ma.s.sachusetts, who, after holding high judicial office under the Crown, but supporting the cause of his country in the Revolution, becoming the first chief justice of the State of Ma.s.sachusetts, pa.s.sed from that distinguished station to the Federal bench, as one of his eminent successors has done in our day, and who was commissioned to, but compelled to decline, the heads.h.i.+p of the court. Then came Ellsworth, whose great services in framing the Federal Const.i.tution in the Connecticut Convention, in the United States Senate, in high diplomatic position, were complemented by those he performed in the discharge of the duties of this exalted office.

And so, following the careers of Marshall and Taney, Chase (fresh from magnificent conduct of the national finances under circ.u.mstances of tremendous difficulty), and Waite, from long and successful practice at the bar, won enduring fame by deserving and obtaining the commendation that a place rendered so ill.u.s.trious by their predecessors had lost nothing in their hands; men of New England birth, thus dividing in number the inc.u.mbency in succession to Ellsworth, while he who has but just entered upon that service, proud of the Prairie State from whence he comes, has never ceased to regard with affection that particular portion of the Fatherland in which he first saw the light.

Ellsworth and Waite, Baldwin and Field, and Strong, of Connecticut; Chase and Woodbury, and Clifford, of New Hamps.h.i.+re; Cus.h.i.+ng and Storey, and Curtis, and Gray, of Ma.s.sachusetts--these are names written imperishably upon the records of the Court. But of the five from Connecticut, Pennsylvania and California and Ohio claim four, and of the three from New Hamps.h.i.+re, Ohio and Maine two; while the Old Bay State preserved her hold on hers.

Surely it is not too much for me to say, that up to the present time New England has in this sphere of public usefulness vindicated her t.i.tle to regard by the exhibition on the part of her sons of that devotion to duty and that adherence to principle which characterized the men to whose memory the celebration of this day is dedicated.

May that memory ever be precious, and reliance upon that Providence which sustained them under the tribulations of their time, and has conducted their children in triumphant progress through succeeding years, never be less. [Applause.]

HAMLIN GARLAND

REALISM VERSUS ROMANTICISM

[Speech of Hamlin Garland at the eighty-second dinner of the Sunset Club, Chicago, Ill., January 31, 1895. The chairman of the evening, Arthur W. Underwood, introduced Mr. Garland to speak in relation to the general subject of the evening's discussion, "The Tendency and Influence of Modern Fiction." Mr. Underwood said: "To some of us the field of modern fiction may have seemed before this evening a wilderness without a chart. We are fortunate in having with us a man who has left the 'main travelled roads' of fiction and, to mix metaphors a little, a man who can tell us whether the 'idols' that are 'crumbling' are those of the realist or those of the idealist,--Mr.

Hamlin Garland."]

GENTLEMEN:--It is very interesting and pleasant to have the critic come at the problem in his mathematical fas.h.i.+on, but that will not settle it. I will tell you what will settle it--the human soul of the creative man; because if he has the creative power and impulse in him it will make no difference to him whether or not a single person in the world reads or understands his book, or appreciates and understands his painting. What could the critic do with Claude Monet thirty-five years ago? What could the critic do with Robert Browning when he appeared? What has the critic done thus far with Walt Whitman, the greatest spiritual democrat this nation has ever produced? This question is not settled by the schools; it is not settled by critics; it is not to be settled by a group of realists or a group of veritists, or the latest group of impressionists. It is to be settled by the creative impulse of the man, first; and second, and always subordinate to the real artist, the public.

Now, I am perfectly willing to admit that there has been for the past year or two a revival of what might be called the "s.h.i.+lling shocker" in literature, but it seems to me Professor McClintock entirely overestimates and exaggerates the influence of the "yore and gore"

fictionists; and even if it were true that they filled the magazines to the exclusion of Mr. Read [Opie P. Read] and myself--

[Mr. Read: Which they don't:]

Which they don't--and if it were true that the pendulum is swinging toward the "s.h.i.+lling shocker," it does not follow that it will be a century before there is a return to the thoughtful study of social life.

This romance can die, and these books be as dead as Hugh Conway's "Called Back" in less than ten years. I am perfectly willing to admit all these mutations of taste, but there is something deeper than that.

Do you know, I have a notion that the reign of cheap melodrama and farce-comedy on our stage and of the "s.h.i.+lling shocker" during the last two years is due largely to our financial condition. Many of you are business men, and I know how you talk. I ask you to go to see a serious play, and you say: "Well, I will tell you; I am pretty well worn out when business is done, and things are not going just as they should, and I would rather go to the theatre to laugh these days. I don't care to go to the theatre to think."

In precisely the same way, when you are called upon, after a hard day of business care and worry, to read a book, and I say to you: "Read Israel Zangwill's 'Children of the Ghetto'; it is one of the greatest studies of our day," you say: "The fact is, I should go to sleep over it. I must have something that has fighting in it. I want 'yore and gore' fiction this year. Later on, when I get over my business difficulties and get where things are easy with me, I'll try Zangwill's 'Children of the Ghetto.' I will sit down with my wife and have her read it aloud." There is great significance in this confession as it appears to me.

And what is this "yore and gore" fiction when you a.n.a.lyze it? It is simply a sublimated "dime novel" which, by reason of increased demand for easy reading, on the part of the tired brain, has been put into a little better cover, and published by Harpers. Hitherto it was published by Beadle or some other fellow of that sort. It is current now. The people are reading it. They will continue to do so for a year or two, and then it will disappear. I like what Zangwill said of it a while ago.

I cannot quote it exactly, but it was like this: "I had a dream the other night, wherein I scrambled over the roofs of buildings pursued by detectives. I lowered myself by drain pipes. I did business in dark corridors. I retreated up narrow pa.s.sages with my good broadsword flaming, and laid scores of men at my feet. I was sealed up in dungeons.

I was s.n.a.t.c.hed out of the deep by the hair of my head. I slew men in hecatombs; and then, when the morning came and I awoke, there was not a shred of intellectual wrack left behind on which my mind could take hold. I had dreamed it all with the cerebellum. It was all organic. Why didn't I dream a novel by Turgenef, or Bjornsen? It takes brains to write "Fathers and Sons" or the "Bankrupt," and it takes brains to read such masterpieces."

With all due respect to the very calm and fine position taken by Professor McClintock [Prof. W. D. McClintock had a.s.serted his belief that the twentieth century would stand for a great revival of romantic literature], this novel of l.u.s.t and war does not strike me as being very high-cla.s.s art. It may seem good and fine and fresh and inspiring, this fiction which slays its millions, but I am a good deal of a Quaker. I would not slay anybody for anything. Therefore, such art does not appear beautiful to me. I do not believe it is good for our youth to read "yore and gore" fiction.

There _are_ romancers--Prof. McClintock named one--who have personal quality. I don't care what school of fiction a man belongs to if he has something to say to me which has not been said a thousand times by somebody else. Such a man is Robert Louis Stevenson. He slew men also, but he uttered something beside war cries. But this "s.h.i.+lling shocker,"

this searching after the dreadful and the unknown which is red with blood, does not strike me as literature at all. It is all the work of the cerebellum. It is not the work of the cerebrum. I should put it like this--If a man can tell us something that has not been told before; if he can add something to the literature of the world--a real creation--if he can, like the coral insect, build his own little cell upon the great underlying ma.s.s of English literature, I do not care what you call him, nor what he calls himself, he is worthy my support.

It is not safe to always reckon a man's merit by the sale of his books.

The author of "Old Sleuth" measured in that way would be the greatest American writer, in fact, the greatest writer of any time. You can't reckon the sale of such books by numbers; you reckon them by tons. It is easy to make a book sell, but the thing is to produce an original work of art, to put something forth with the imprint of your own personality as a creative artist.

I believe old Walt Whitman stated the whole problem when he said: "All that the past was not, the future will be." I do not believe that the future of the world is to be a future of war. I believe it is to be a future of industrial peace as Professor Pearson [Charles W. Pearson] has indicated. And I believe that the literature and the art of that future will not be based upon war; it will be humanitarian, and at its best always an individual statement of life. In other words, the whole tendency of modern art is towards the celebration of the individual by the individual, and you cannot cla.s.s writers in any hard and fast division. There is not an artist living who delineates "things as they are." There is not a writer living holding that for a theory, or who has that desire for a fundamental impulse. Art is selection, and upon the individual soul of the creative artist is laid the burden of choice. It is in the way he chooses his material and in the way he works it out that he is to be judged. He may be a story-teller like Stevenson, or he may be a novelist like Zangwill. All I ask of him is just simply this--he must be an individual creative artist; he must not repeat, must not imitate for the sake of gain.