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DEMOCRACY 
 AND OTHER ADDRESSES 
 
 BY 
 
 JAMES RUSSELL ^LOWELL 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
 
 1887 
 
Copyright, 1886, 
 Br JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 
 
 AU rights reserved. 
 
 FIFTH THOUSAND 
 
 The Riverside Press, Cambridge: 
 Electrotype* and Printed by H. 0. Houghton & Co. 
 
 GIFT 
 
d*, 
 
 To G. W. SMALLEY, ESQ. 
 
 MY DEAR SMALLEY, You heard several of 
 these Addresses delivered, and were good enough to 
 think better of them than I did. As this was one 
 of my encouragements to repeat them before a larger 
 audience, perhaps you will accept the dedication of 
 the volume which contains them. 
 
 Faithfully yours, J. R. LOWELL. 
 
 DEERFOOT FARM, November 10. 1886. 
 
 902 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 DEMOCRACY 1 
 
 INAUGURAL ADDRESS ON ASSUMING THE PRESI 
 DENCY OF THE BIRMINGHAM AND MIDLAND IN 
 STITUTE, BIRMINGHAM, ENGLAND, 6 OCTOBER, 
 
 1884. 
 
 GARFIELD 43 
 
 SPOKEN ON THE DEATH OF PRESIDENT GAR- 
 FIELD AT THE MEMORIAL MEETING IN EXETER 
 HALL, LONDON, 24 SEPTEMBER, 1881. 
 
 STANLEY 57 
 
 SPEECH AT THE MEETING IN THE CHAPTER 
 HOUSE OF WESTMINSTER ABBEY IN COMMEMO 
 RATION OF DEAN STANLEY, 13 DECEMBER, 1881. 
 
 FIELDING 65 
 
 ADDRESS ON UNVEILING THE BUST OF FIELD 
 ING, DELIVERED AT SHIRE HALL, TAUNTON, 
 
 SOMERSETSHIRE, ENGLAND, 4 SEPTEMBER, 1883. 
 
 COLERIDGE 89 
 
 ADDRESS ON UNVEILING THE BUST OF COLE 
 RIDGE AT WESTMINSTER ABBEY, 7 MAY, 1885. 
 
 BOOKS AND LIBRARIES 105 
 
 ADDRESS AT THE OPENING OF FREE PUBLIC 
 LIBRARY IN CHELSEA, MASSACHUSETTS, 22 DE 
 CEMBER, 1885. 
 
 WORDSWORTH 135 
 
 ADDRESS AS PRESIDENT OF THE WORDS 
 WORTH SOCIETY, 10 MAY, 1884. 
 
vi CONTENTS. 
 
 DON QUIXOTE 157 
 
 NOTES READ AT THE WORKINGMEN S COLLEGE, 
 
 GREAT ORMOND STREET, LONDON. 
 
 HARVARD ANNIVERSARY 187 
 
 ADDRESS DELIVERED IN SANDERS THEATRE, 
 CAMBRIDGE, NOVEMBER 8, 1886, ON THE Two 
 HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF THE 
 FOUNDATION OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY. 
 
DEMOCRACY. 
 
 INAUGURAL ADDRESS ON ASSUMING THE PRESIDENCY 
 
 OF THE BIRMINGHAM AND MIDLAND INSTITUTE, 
 
 BIRMINGHAM, ENGLAND, 6 OCTOBER, 1884. 
 
DEMOCRACY. 
 
 HE must be a born leader or misleader 
 of men, or must have been sent into the 
 world unfurnished with that modulating and 
 restraining balance-wheel which we call a 
 sense of humor, who, in old age, has as 
 strong a confidence in his opinions and in 
 the necessity of bringing the universe into 
 conformity with them as he had in youth. 
 In a world the very condition of whose be 
 ing is that it should be in perpetual flux, 
 where all seems mirage, and the one abiding 
 thing is the effort to distinguish realities 
 from appearances, the elderly man must be 
 indeed of a singularly tough and valid fibre 
 who is certain that he has any clarified re 
 siduum of experience, any assured verdict of 
 reflection, that deserves to be called an opin 
 ion, or who, even if he had, feels that he is 
 justified in holding mankind by the button 
 while he is expounding it. And in a world 
 
4 DEMOCRACY. 
 
 of daily nay, almost hourly journalism, 
 where every clever man, every man who 
 thinks himself clever, or whom anybody else 
 thinks clever, is called upon to deliver his 
 judgment point-blank and at the word of 
 command on every conceivable subject of 
 human thought, or, on what sometimes seems 
 to him very much the same thing, on every 
 inconceivable display of human want of 
 thought, there is such a spendthrift waste of 
 all those commonplaces which furnish the 
 permitted staple of public discourse that 
 there is little chance of beguiling a new 
 tune out of the one-stringed instrument on 
 which we have been thrumming so long. In 
 this desperate necessity one is often tempted 
 to think that, if all the words of the diction 
 ary were tumbled down in a heap and then 
 all those fortuitous juxtapositions and com 
 binations that made tolerable sense were 
 picked out and pieced together, we might 
 find among them some poignant suggestions 
 towards novelty of thought or expression. 
 But, alas ! it is only the great poets who 
 seem to have this unsolicited profusion of 
 unexpected and incalculable phrase, this in 
 finite variety of topic. For everybody else 
 everything has been said before, and said 
 
DEMOCRACY. 5 
 
 over again after. He who has read his Aris 
 totle will be apt to think that observation 
 has on most points of general applicability 
 said its last word, and he who has mounted 
 the tower of Plato to look abroad from it 
 will never hope to climb another with so 
 lofty a vantage of speculation. Where it is 
 so simple if not so easy a thing to hold one s 
 peace, why add to the general confusion of 
 tongues ? There is something disheartening, 
 too, in being expected to fill up not less than 
 a certain measure of time, as if the mind 
 were an hour-glass, that need only be shaken 
 and set on one end or the other, as the case 
 may be, to run its allotted sixty minutes with 
 decorous exactitude. I recollect being once 
 told by the late eminent naturalist Agassiz 
 that when he was to deliver his first lecture 
 as professor (at Zurich, I believe) he had 
 grave doubts of his ability to occupy the pre 
 scribed three quarters of an hour. He was 
 speaking without notes, and glancing anx 
 iously from time to time at the watch that 
 lay before him on the desk. " When I had 
 spoken a half hour," he said, " I had told 
 them everything I knew in the world, every 
 thing! Then I began to repeat myself," he 
 added, roguishly, " and I have done nothing 
 
6 DEMOCRACY. 
 
 else ever since." Beneath the humorous ex 
 aggeration of the story I seemed to see the 
 face of a very serious and improving moral. 
 And yet if one were to say only what he 
 had to say and then stopped, his audience 
 would feel defrauded of their honest meas 
 ure. Let us take courage by the example 
 of the French, whose exportation of Bor 
 deaux wines increases as the area of their 
 land in vineyards is diminished. 
 
 To me, somewhat hopelessly revolving 
 these things, the undelayable year has rolled 
 round, and I find myself called upon to say 
 something in this place, where so many wiser 
 men have spoken before me. Precluded in 
 my quality of national guest, by motives of 
 taste and discretion, from dealing with any 
 question of immediate and domestic concern, 
 it seemed to me wisest, or at any rate most 
 prudent, to choose a topic of comparatively 
 abstract interest, and to ask your indulgence 
 for a few somewhat generalized remarks on 
 a matter concerning which I had some ex 
 perimental knowledge, derived from the use 
 of such eyes and ears as Nature had been 
 pleased to endow me withal, and such re 
 port as I had been able to win from them. 
 The subject which most readily suggested 
 
DEMOCRACY. 7 
 
 itself was the spirit and the working of those 
 conceptions of life and polity which are 
 lumped together whether for reproach or 
 commendation under the name of Democ 
 racy. By temperament and education of a 
 conservative turn, I saw the last years of 
 that quaint Arcadia which French travellers 
 saw with delighted amazement a century 
 ago, and have watched the change (to me a 
 sad one) from an agricultural to a proletary 
 population. The testimony of Balaam should 
 carry some conviction. I have grown to 
 manhood and am now growing old with the 
 growth of this system of government in my 
 native land, have watched its advances, or 
 what some would call its encroachments, 
 gradual and irresistible as those of a glacier, 
 have been an ear-witness to the forebodings 
 of wise and good and timid men, and have 
 lived to see those forebodings belied by the 
 course of events, which is apt to show itself 
 humorously careless of the reputation of 
 prophets. I recollect hearing a sagacious 
 old gentleman say in 1840 that the doing 
 away with the property qualification for suf 
 frage twenty years before had been the ruin 
 of the State of Massachusetts ; that it had 
 put public credit and private estate alike at 
 
8 DEMOCRACY. 
 
 the mercy of demagogues. I lived to see 
 that Commonwealth twenty odd years later 
 paying the interest on her bonds in gold, 
 though it cost her sometimes nearly three for 
 one to keep her faith, and that while suf 
 fering an unparalleled drain of men and 
 treasure in helping to sustain the unity and 
 self-respect of the nation. 
 
 If universal suffrage has worked ill in our 
 larger cities, as it certainly has, this has 
 been mainly because the hands that wielded 
 it were untrained to its use. There the elec 
 tion of a majority of the trustees of the pub 
 lic money is controlled by the most ignorant 
 and vicious of a population which has come 
 to us from abroad, wholly unpractised in 
 self-government and incapable of assimila 
 tion by American habits and methods. But 
 the finances of our towns, where the native 
 tradition is still dominant and whose affairs 
 are discussed and settled in a public assem 
 bly of the people, have been in general hon 
 estly and prudently administered. Even in 
 manufacturing towns, where a majority of 
 the voters live by their daily wages, it is not 
 so often the recklessness as the moderation 
 of public expenditure that surprises an old- 
 fashioned observer. " The beggar is in the 
 
DEMOCRACY. 9 
 
 saddle at last," cries Proverbial Wisdom. 
 " Why, in the name of all former experience, 
 does n t he ride to the Devil ? " Because in 
 the very act of mounting he ceased to be a 
 beggar and became part owner of the piece 
 of property he bestrides. The last thing we 
 need be anxious about is property. It al 
 ways has friends or the means of making 
 them. If riches have wings to fly away 
 from their owner, they have wings also to 
 escape danger. 
 
 I hear America sometimes playfully ac 
 cused of sending you all your storms, and 
 am in the habit of parrying the charge by 
 alleging that we are enabled to do this be 
 cause, in virtue of our protective system, we 
 can afford to make better bad weather than 
 anybody else. And what wiser use could we 
 make of it than to export it in return for the 
 paupers which some European countries are 
 good enough to send over to us who have not 
 attained to the same skill in the manufac 
 ture of them ? But bad weather is not the 
 worst thing that is laid at our door. A 
 French gentleman, not long ago, forgetting 
 Burke s monition of how unwise it is to draw 
 an indictment against a whole people, has 
 charged us with the responsibility of what- 
 
10 DEMOCRACY. 
 
 ever he finds disagreeable in the morals or 
 manners of his countrymen. If M. Zola or 
 some other competent witness would only go 
 into the box and tell us what those morals 
 and manners were before our example cor 
 rupted them ! But I confess that I find lit 
 tle to interest and less to edify me in these 
 international bandyings of " You re an 
 other." 
 
 I shall address myself to a single point 
 only in the long list of offences of which we 
 are more or less gravely accused, because 
 that really includes all the rest. It is that 
 we are infecting the Old World with what 
 seems to be thought the entirely new disease 
 of Democracy. It is generally people who 
 are in what are called easy circumstances 
 who can afford the leisure to treat thenj.- 
 selves to a handsome complaint, and these 
 experience an immediate alleviation when 
 once they have found a sonorous Greek name 
 to abuse it by. There is something consola 
 tory also, something flattering to their sense 
 of personal dignity, and to that conceit of 
 singularity which is the natural recoil from 
 our uneasy consciousness of being common 
 place, in thinking ourselves victims of a 
 malady by which no one had ever suffered 
 
DEMOCRACY. 11 
 
 before. Accordingly they find it simpler to 
 class under one comprehensive heading what 
 ever they find offensive to their nerves, their 
 tastes, their interests, or what they suppose 
 to be their opinions, and christen it Democ 
 racy, much as physicians label every obscure 
 disease gout, or as cross-grained fellows lay 
 their ill-temper to the weather. But is it 
 really a new ailment, and, if it be, is Amer 
 ica answerable for it ? Even if she were, 
 would it account for the phylloxera, and 
 hoof-and-mouth disease, and bad harvests, 
 and bad English, and the German bands, 
 and the Boers, and all the other discomforts 
 with which these later days have vexed the 
 souls of them that go in chariots? Yet I 
 have seen the evil example of Democracy in 
 America cited as the source and origin of 
 things quite as heterogeneous and quite as 
 little connected with it by any sequence of 
 cause and effect. Surely this ferment is 
 nothing new. It has been at work for cen 
 turies, and we are more conscious of it only 
 because in this age of publicity, where the 
 newspapers offer a rostrum to whoever has a 
 grievance, or fancies that he has, the bubbles 
 and scum thrown up by it are more notice 
 able on the surface than in those dumb ages 
 
12 DEMOCRACY. 
 
 when there was a cover of silence and sup 
 pression on the cauldron. Bernardo Nava- 
 gero, speaking of the Provinces of Lower 
 Austria in 1546, tells us that " in them there 
 are five sorts of persons, Clergy, Barons, 
 Nobles, Burghers, and Peasants. Of these 
 last no account is made, because they have 
 no voice in the Diet" l 
 
 Nor was it among the people that subver 
 sive or mistaken doctrines had their rise. A 
 Father of the Church said that property was 
 theft many centuries before Proudhon was 
 born. Bourdaloue reaffirmed it. Montes 
 quieu was the inventor of national work 
 shops, and of the theory that the State owed 
 every man a living. Nay, was not the 
 Church herself the first organized Democ 
 racy? A few centuries ago the chief end 
 of man was to keep his soul alive, and then 
 the little kernel of leaven that sets the gases 
 
 1 Below the peasants, it should be remembered, was 
 still another even more helpless class, the servile farm- 
 laborers. The same witness informs us that of the ex 
 traordinary imposts the Peasants paid nearly twice as 
 much in proportion to their estimated property as the 
 Barons, Nobles, and Burghers together. Moreover, the 
 upper classes were assessed at their own valuation, while 
 they arbitrarily fixed that of the Peasants who had no 
 voice. (Relazioni degli Ambasciatori Veneti, Serie L, 
 tomo L, pp. 378, 379, 389.) 
 
DEMOCRACY. 13 
 
 at work was religious, and produced the 
 Reformation. Even in that, far-sighted per 
 sons like the Emperor Charles V. saw the 
 germ of political and social revolution. Now 
 that the chief end of man seems to have be 
 come the keeping of the body alive, and as 
 comfortably alive as possible, the leaven 
 also has become wholly political and social. 
 But there had also been social upheavals 
 before the Reformation and contemporane 
 ously with it, especially among men of Teu 
 tonic race. The Reformation gave outlet 
 and direction to an unrest already existing. 
 Formerly the immense majority of men 
 our brothers knew only their sufferings, 
 their wants, and their desires. They are be 
 ginning now to know their opportunity and 
 their power. All persons who see deeper 
 than their plates are rather inclined to thank 
 God for it than to bewail it, for the sores 
 of Lazarus have a poison in them against 
 which Dives has no antidote. 
 
 There can be no doubt that the specta 
 cle of a great and prosperous Democracy on 
 the other side of the Atlantic must react 
 powerfully on the aspirations and political 
 theories of men in the Old World who do 
 not find things to their mind ; but, whether 
 
14 DEMOCRACY. 
 
 for good or evil, it should not be overlooked 
 that the acorn from which it sprang was 
 ripened on the British oak. Every suc 
 cessive swarm that has gone out from this 
 officina gentium has, when left to its own 
 instincts may I not call them hereditary 
 instincts ? assumed a more or less thor 
 oughly democratic form. This would seem 
 to show, what I believe to be the fact, that 
 the British Constitution, under whatever 
 disguises of prudence or decorum, is essen 
 tially democratic. England, indeed, may be 
 called a monarchy with democratic tenden 
 cies, the United States a democracy with con 
 servative instincts. People are continually 
 saying that America is in the air, and I am 
 glad to think it is, since this means only 
 that a clearer conception of human claims 
 and human duties is beginning to be preva 
 lent. The discontent with the existing order 
 of things, however, pervaded the atmosphere 
 wherever the conditions were favorable, long 
 before Columbus, seeking the back door of 
 Asia, found himself knocking at the front 
 door of America. I say wherever the con 
 ditions were favorable, for it is certain that 
 the germs of disease do not stick or find a 
 prosperous field for their development and 
 
DEMOCRACY. 15 
 
 noxious activity unless where the simplest 
 sanitary precautions have been neglected. 
 " For this effect defective comes by cause," 
 as Polonius said long ago. It is only by in 
 stigation of the wrongs of men that what are 
 called the Rights of Man become turbulent 
 and dangerous. It is then only that they 
 syllogize unwelcome truths. It is not the 
 insurrections of ignorance that are danger 
 ous, but the revolts of intelligence : 
 
 The wicked and the weak rebel in vain, 
 Slaves by their own compulsion. 
 
 Had the governing classes in France during 
 the last century paid as much heed to their 
 proper business as to their pleasures or man 
 ners, the guillotine need never have severed 
 that spinal marrow of orderly and secular 
 tradition through which in a normally con 
 stituted state the brain sympathizes with the 
 extremities and sends will and impulsion 
 thither. It is only when the reasonable and 
 practicable are denied that men demand the 
 unreasonable and impracticable ; only when 
 the possible is made difficult that they fancy 
 the impossible to be easy. Fairy tales are 
 made out of the dreams of the poor. No ; 
 the sentiment which lies at the root of de 
 mocracy is nothing new. I am speaking al- 
 
16 DEMOCRACY. 
 
 ways of a sentiment, a spirit, and not of a 
 form of government ; for this was but the 
 outgrowth of the other and not its cause. 
 This sentiment is merely an expression of 
 the natural wish of people to have a hand, 
 if need be a controlling hand, in the man 
 agement of their own affairs. What is new 
 is that they are more and more gaining that 
 control, and learning more and more how 
 to be worthy of it. What we used to call 
 the tendency or drift what we are being 
 taught to call more wisely the evolution of 
 things has for some time been setting 
 steadily in this direction. There is no good 
 in arguing with the inevitable. The only 
 argument available with an east wind is to 
 put on your overcoat. And in this case, 
 also, the prudent will prepare themselves to 
 encounter what they cannot prevent. Some 
 people advise us to put on the brakes, as 
 if the movement of which we are conscious 
 were that of a railway train running down 
 an incline. But a metaphor is no argu 
 ment, though it be sometimes the gunpow 
 der to drive one home and imbed it in the 
 memory. Our disquiet comes of what nurses 
 and other experienced persons call grow 
 ing-pains, and need not seriously alarm us. 
 
DEMOCRACY. 17 
 
 They are what every generation before us 
 certainly every generation since the in 
 vention of printing has gone through with 
 more or less good fortune. To the door of 
 every generation there comes a knocking, 
 and unless the household, like the Thane of 
 Cawdor and his wife, have been doing some 
 deed without a name, they need not shudder. 
 It turns out at worst to be a poor relation 
 who wishes to come in out of the cold. The 
 porter always grumbles and is slow to open 
 " Who s there, in the name of Beelze 
 bub ? " he mutters. Not a change for the 
 better in our human housekeeping has ever 
 taken place that wise and good men have not 
 opposed it, have not prophesied with the 
 alderman that the world would wake up to 
 find its throat cut in consequence of it. The 
 world, on the contrary, wakes up, rubs its 
 eyes, yawns, stretches itself, and goes about 
 its business as if nothing had happened. 
 Suppression of the slave trade, abolition of 
 slavery, trade unions, at all of these excel 
 lent people shook their heads despondingly, 
 and murmured " Ichabod." But the trade 
 unions are now debating instead of conspir 
 ing, and we all read their discussions with 
 comfort and hope, sure that they are learn- 
 
18 DEMOCRACY. 
 
 ing the business of citizenship and the diffi 
 culties of practical legislation. 
 
 One of the most curious of these frenzies 
 of exclusion was that against the emancipa 
 tion of the Jews. All share in the govern 
 ment of the world was denied for centuries 
 to perhaps the ablest, certainly the most 
 tenacious, race that had ever lived in it 
 the race to whom we owed our religion and 
 the purest spiritual stimulus and consolation 
 to be found in all literature a race in 
 which ability seems as natural and heredi 
 tary as the curve of their noses, and whose 
 blood, furtively mingling with the bluest 
 bloods in Europe, has quickened them with 
 its own indomitable impulsion. We drove 
 them into a corner, but they had their re 
 venge, as the wronged are always sure to 
 have it sooner or later. They made their 
 corner the counter and banking-house of the 
 world, and thence they rule it and us with the 
 ignobler sceptre of finance. Your grandfa 
 thers mobbed Priestley only that you might 
 set up his statue and make Birmingham 
 the headquarters of English Unitarianism. 
 We hear it said sometimes that this is an 
 age of transition, as if that made matters 
 clearer ; but can any one point us to an age 
 
DEMOCRACY. 19 
 
 that was not ? If he could, he would show 
 us an age of stagnation. The question for 
 us, as it has been for all before us, is to 
 make the transition gradual and easy, to 
 see that our points are right so that the 
 train may not come to grief. For we should 
 remember that nothing is more natural for 
 people whose education has been neglected 
 than to spell evolution with an initial " r." 
 A great man struggling with the storms of 
 fate has been called a sublime spectacle ; but 
 surely a great man wrestling with these new 
 forces that have come into the world, master 
 ing them and controlling them to benefi 
 cent ends, would be a yet sublimer. Here 
 is not a danger, and if there were it would 
 be only a better school of manhood, a nobler 
 scope for ambition. I have hinted that what 
 people are afraid of in democracy is less the 
 thing itself than what they conceive to be its 
 necessary adjuncts and consequences. It is 
 supposed to reduce all mankind to a dead 
 level of mediocrity in character and culture, 
 to vulgarize men s conceptions of life, and 
 therefore their code of morals, manners, and 
 conduct to endanger the rights of prop 
 erty and possession. But I believe that the 
 real gravamen of the charges lies in the 
 
20 DEMOCRACY. 
 
 habit it has of making itself generally dis 
 agreeable by asking the Powers that Be at 
 the most inconvenient moment whether they 
 are the powers that ought to be. If the 
 powers that be are in a condition to give a 
 satisfactory answer to this inevitable ques 
 tion, they need feel in no way discomfited 
 by it. 
 
 Few people take the trouble of trying to 
 find out what democracy really is. Yet this 
 would be a great help, for it is our lawless 
 and uncertain thoughts, it is the indefinite- 
 ness of our impressions, that fill darkness, 
 whether mental or physical, with spectres 
 and hobgoblins. Democracy is nothing more 
 than an experiment in government, more 
 likely to succeed in a new soil, but likely to 
 be tried in all soils, which must stand or fall 
 on its own merits as others have done before 
 it. For there is no trick of perpetual mo 
 tion in politics any more than in mechanics. 
 President Lincoln defined democracy to be 
 " the government of the people by the peo 
 ple for the people." This is a sufficiently 
 compact statement of it as a political ar 
 rangement. Theodore Parker said that 
 " Democracy meant not I m as good as 
 you are, but 4 You re as good as I am. " 
 
DEMOCRACY. 21 
 
 And this is the ethical conception of it, nec 
 essary as a complement of the other ; a con 
 ception which, could it be made actual and 
 practical, would easily solve all the riddles 
 that the old sphinx of political and social 
 economy who sits by the roadside has been 
 proposing to mankind from the beginning, 
 and which mankind have shown such a sin 
 gular talent for answering wrongly. In this 
 sense Christ was the first true democrat that 
 ever breathed, as the old dramatist Dekker 
 said he was the first true gentleman. The 
 characters may be easily doubled, so strong 
 is the likeness between them. A beautiful 
 and profound parable of the Persian poet 
 Jellaladeen tells us that " One knocked at 
 the Beloved s door, and a voice asked from 
 within Who is there ? and he answered 
 4 It is I. Then the voice said, This house 
 will not hold me and thee ; and the door 
 was not opened. Then went the lover into 
 the desert and fasted and prayed in solitude, 
 and after a year he returned and knocked 
 again at the door ; and again the voice 
 asked Who is there ? and he said It is 
 thyself ; and the door was opened to him." 
 But that is idealism, you will say, and this 
 is an only too practical world. I grant it ; 
 
22 DEMOCRACY. 
 
 but I am one of those who believe that the 
 real will never find an irremovable basis till 
 it rests on the ideal. It used to be thought 
 that a democracy was possible only in a 
 small territory, and this is doubtless true of 
 a democracy strictly defined, for in such all 
 the citizens decide directly upon every ques 
 tion of public concern in a general assem 
 bly. An example still survives in the tiny 
 Swiss canton of Appenzell. But this imme 
 diate intervention of the people in their own 
 affairs is not of the essence of democracy ; it 
 is not necessary, nor indeed, in most cases, 
 practicable. Democracies to which Mr. Lin 
 coln s definition would fairly enough apply 
 have existed, and now exist, in which, though 
 the supreme authority reside in the people, 
 yet they can act only indirectly on the na 
 tional policy. This generation has seen a 
 democracy with an imperial figurehead, and 
 in all that have ever existed the body politic 
 has never embraced all the inhabitants in 
 cluded within its territory, the right to share 
 in the direction of affairs has been confined 
 to citizens, and citizenship has been further 
 restricted by various limitations, sometimes 
 of property, sometimes of nativity, and al 
 ways of age and sex. 
 
DEMOCRACY. 23 
 
 The framers of the American Constitu 
 tion were far from wishing or intending to 
 found a democracy in the strict sense of the 
 word, though, as was inevitable, every ex 
 pansion of the scheme of government they 
 elaborated has been in a democratical direc 
 tion. But this has been generally the slow 
 result of growth, and not the sudden innova 
 tion of theory ; in fact, they had a profound 
 disbelief in theory, and knew better than to 
 commit the folly of breaking with the past. 
 They were not seduced by the French fal 
 lacy that a new system of government could 
 be ordered like a new suit of clothes. They 
 would as soon have thought of ordering a 
 ii^w suit of flesh and skin. It is only on the 
 roaring loom of time that the stuff is woven 
 for such a vesture of their thought and ex 
 perience as they were meditating. They 
 recognized fully the value of tradition and 
 abit as the great allies of permanence and 
 stability. They all had that distaste for in 
 novation which belonged to their race, and 
 many of them a distrust of human nature 
 derived from their creed. The day of senti 
 ment was over, and no dithyrambic affirma 
 tions or fine-drawn analyses of the Rights of 
 Man would serve their present turn. This 
 
24 DEMOCRACY. 
 
 was a practical question, and they addressed 
 themselves to it as men of knowledge and 
 judgment should. Their problem was how 
 to adapt English principles and precedents 
 to the new conditions of American life, and 
 they solved it with singular discretion. They 
 put as many obstacles as they could contrive, 
 not in the way of the people s will, but of 
 their whim. With few exceptions they prob 
 ably admitted the logic of the then accepted 
 syllogism, democracy, anarchy, despotism. 
 But this formula was framed upon the expe 
 rience of small cities shut up to stew within 
 their narrow walls, where the number of 
 citizens made but an inconsiderable fraction 
 of the inhabitants, where every passion was 
 reverberated from house to house and from 
 man to man with gathering rumor till every 
 impulse became gregarious and therefore 
 inconsiderate, and every popular assembly 
 needed but an infusion of eloquent sophis 
 try to turn it into a mob, all the more dan 
 gerous because sanctified with the formality 
 of law. 1 
 
 1 The effect of the electric telegraph in reproducing- 
 this trooping of emotion and perhaps of opinion is yet to 
 be measured. The effect of Darwinism as a disintegra 
 tor of humanitarianism is also to be reckoned with. 
 
DEMOCRACY. 25 
 
 Fortunately their case was wholly different. 
 They were to legislate for a widely-scattered 
 population and for States already practised 
 in the discipline of a partial independence. 
 They had an unequalled opportunity and 
 enormous advantages. The material they 
 had to work upon was already democratical 
 >y instinct and habitude. It was tempered 
 to their hands by more than a century s 
 schooling in self-government. They had but 
 to give permanent and conservative form to 
 a ductile mass. In giving impulse and di 
 rection to their new institutions, especially 
 in supplying them with checks and balances, 
 they had a great help and safeguard in their 
 federal organization. The different, some 
 times conflicting, interests and social systems 
 of the several States made existence as a 
 Union and coalescence into a nation condi 
 tional on a constant practice of moderation 
 and compromise. The very elements of dis 
 integration were the best guides in political 
 training. Their children learned the lesson 
 of compromise only too well, and it was the 
 application of it to a question of fundamen 
 tal morals that cost us our civil war. We 
 learned once for all that compromise makes 
 a good umbrella but a poor roof ; that it is 
 
26 DEMOCRACY. 
 
 a temporary expedient, often wise in party 
 politics, almost sure to be unwise in states 
 manship. 
 
 Has not the trial of democracy in Amer 
 ica proved, on the whole, successful ? If it 
 had not, would the Old World be vexed 
 with any fears of its proving contagious ? 
 This trial would have been less severe could 
 it have been made with a people homogene 
 ous in race, language, and traditions, whereas 
 the United States have been called on to 
 absorb and assimilate enormous masses of 
 foreign population, heterogeneous in all 
 these respects, and drawn mainly from that 
 class which might fairly say that the world 
 was not their friend, nor the world s law. 
 The previous condition too often justified 
 the traditional Irishman, who, landing in 
 New York and asked what his politics were, 
 inquired if there was a Government there, 
 and on being told that there was, retorted, 
 " Thin I m agin it ! " We have taken from 
 Europe the poorest, the most ignorant, the 
 most turbulent of her people, and have made 
 them over into good citizens, who have added 
 to our wealth, and who are ready to die in 
 defence of a country and of institutions 
 which they know to be worth dying for. 
 
DEMOCRACY. 27 
 
 The exceptions have been (and they are 
 lamentable exceptions) where these hordes 
 of ignorance and poverty have coagulated in 
 great cities. But the social system is yet to 
 seek which has not to look the same terrible 
 wolf in the eyes. On the other hand, at this 
 very moment Irish peasants are buying up 
 the worn-out farms of Massachusetts, and 
 making them productive again by the same 
 virtues of industry and thrift that once made 
 them profitable to the English ancestors of 
 the men who are deserting them. To have 
 achieved even these prosaic results (if you 
 choose to call them so), and that out of ma 
 terials the most discordant, I might say 
 the most recalcitrant, argues a certain be 
 neficent virtue in the system that could do 
 it, and is not to be accounted for by mere 
 luck. Carlyle said scornfully that America 
 meant only roast turkey every day for every 
 body. He forgot that States, as Bacon said 
 of wars, go on their bellies. As for the 
 security of property, it should be tolerably 
 well secured in a, country where every other 
 man hopes to be rich, even though the only 
 property qualification be the ownership of 
 two hands that add to the general wealth. 
 Is it not the best security for anything to 
 
28 DEMOCRACY. 
 
 interest the largest possible number of per 
 sons in its preservation and the smallest in 
 its division? In point of fact, far-seeing 
 men count the increasing power of wealth 
 and its combinations as one of the chief dan 
 gers with which the institutions of the United 
 States are threatened in the not distant fu 
 ture. The right of individual property is 
 no doubt the very corner-stone of civilization 
 as hitherto understood, but I am a little im 
 patient of being told that property is enti 
 tled to exceptional consideration because it 
 bears all the burdens of the State. It bears 
 those, indeed, which can most easily be borne, 
 but poverty pays with its person the chief 
 expenses of war, pestilence, and famine. 
 Wealth should not forget this, for poverty 
 is beginning to think of it now and then. 
 Let me not be misunderstood. I see as 
 clearly as any man possibly can, and rate as 
 highly, the value of wealth, and of heredi 
 tary wealth, as the security of refinement, 
 the feeder of all those arts that ennoble and 
 beautify life, and as making a country worth 
 living in. Many an ancestral hall here in 
 England has been a nursery of that culture 
 which has been of example and benefit to 
 all. Old gold has a civilizing virtue which 
 
DEMOCRACY. 29 
 
 new gold must grow old to be capable of 
 secreting. 
 
 I should not think of coming before you 
 to defend or to criticise any form of govern 
 ment. All have their virtues, all their de 
 fects, and all have illustrated one period or 
 another in the history of the race, with sig 
 nal services to humanity and culture. There 
 is not one that could stand a cynical cross- 
 examination by an experienced criminal law 
 yer, except that of a perfectly wise and per 
 fectly good despot, such as the world has 
 never seen, except in that white-haired king 
 of Browning s, who 
 
 Lived long ago 
 In the morning of the world, 
 When Earth was nearer Heaven than now." 
 
 The English race, if they did not invent 
 government by discussion, have at least car 
 ried it nearest to perfection in practice. It 
 seems a very safe and reasonable contrivance 
 for occupying the attention of the country, 
 and is certainly a better way of settling 
 questions than by push of pike. Yet, if one 
 should ask it why it should not rather be 
 called government by gabble, it would have 
 to fumble in its pocket a good while before 
 it found the change for a convincing reply. 
 
30 DEMOCRACY. 
 
 As matters stand, too, it is beginning to be 
 doubtful whether Parliament and Congress 
 sit at Westminster and Washington or in 
 the editors rooms of the leading journals, 
 so thoroughly is everything debated before 
 the authorized and responsible debaters get 
 on their legs. And what shall we say of 
 government by a majority of voices ? To a 
 person who in the last century would have 
 called himself an Impartial Observer, a nu 
 merical preponderance seems, on the whole, 
 as clumsy a way of arriving at truth as could 
 well be devised, but experience has appar 
 ently shown it to be a convenient arrange 
 ment for determining what may be expedi 
 ent or advisable or practicable at any given 
 moment. Truth, after all, wears a different 
 face to everybody, and it would be too te 
 dious to wait till all were agreed. She is said 
 to lie at the bottom of a well, for the very 
 reason, perhaps, that whoever looks down in 
 search of her sees his own image at the bot 
 tom, and is persuaded not only that he has 
 seen the goddess, but that she is far better- 
 looking than he had imagined. 
 
 The arguments against universal suffrage 
 are equally unanswerable. " What," we ex 
 claim, " shall Tom, Dick, and Harry have as 
 
DEMOCRACY. 31 
 
 much weight in the scale as I ? " Of course, 
 nothing could be more absurd. And yet 
 universal suffrage has not been the instru 
 ment of greater unwisdom than contrivances 
 of a more select description. Assemblies 
 could be mentioned composed entirely of 
 Masters of Arts and Doctors in Divinity 
 which have sometimes shown traces of hu 
 man passion or prejudice in their votes. 
 Have the Serene Highnesses and Enlight 
 ened Classes carried on the business of Man 
 kind so well, then, that there is no use in try 
 ing a less costly method ? The democratic 
 theory is that those Constitutions are likely 
 to prove steadiest which have the broadest 
 base, that the right to vote makes a safety- 
 valve of every voter, and that the best way 
 of teaching a man how to vote is to give him 
 the chance of practice. For the question is 
 no longer the academic one, " Is it wise to 
 give every man the ballot? " but rather the 
 practical one, " Is it prudent to deprive 
 whole classes of it any longer ? " It may 
 be conjectured that it is cheaper in the long 
 run to lift men up than to hold them down, 
 and that the ballot in their hands is less 
 dangerous to society than a sense of wrong 
 in their heads. At any rate this is the di- 
 
32 DEMOCRACY. 
 
 lemma to which the drift of opinion has been 
 for some time sweeping us, and in politics a 
 dilemma is a more unmanageable thing to 
 hold by the horns than a wolf by the ears. 
 It is said that the right of suffrage is not 
 valued when it is indiscriminately bestowed, 
 and there may be some truth in this, for 
 I have observed that what men prize most 
 is a privilege, even if it be that of chief 
 mourner at a funeral. But is there not dan 
 ger that it will be valued at more than its 
 worth if denied, and that some illegitimate 
 way will be sought to make up for the want 
 of it ? Men who have a voice in public af 
 fairs are at once affiliated with one or other 
 of the great parties between which society is 
 divided, merge their individual hopes and 
 opinions in its safer, because more general 
 ized, hopes and opinions, are disciplined by 
 its tactics, and acquire, to a certain degree, 
 the orderly qualities of an army. They no 
 longer belong to a class, but to a body cor 
 porate. Of one thing, at least, we may be 
 certain, that, under whatever method of help 
 ing things to go wrong man s wit can con 
 trive, those who have the divine right to gov 
 ern will be found to govern in the end, and 
 that the highest privilege to which the ma- 
 
DEMOCRACY. 33 
 
 jority of mankind can aspire is that of being 
 governed by those wiser than they. Uni 
 versal suffrage has in the United States 
 sometimes been made the instrument of in 
 considerate changes, under the notion of re 
 form, and this from a misconception of the 
 true meaning of popular government. One 
 of these has been the substitution in many 
 of the States of popular election for official 
 selection in the choice of judges. The same 
 system applied to military officers was the 
 source of much evil during our civil war, 
 and, I believe, had to be abandoned. But 
 it has been also true that on all great ques 
 tions of national policy a reserve of prudence 
 and discretion has been brought out at the 
 critical moment to turn the scale in favor of 
 a wiser decision. An appeal to the reason 
 of the people has never been known to fail 
 in the long run. It is, perhaps, true that, 
 by effacing the principle of passive obedi 
 ence, democracy, ill understood, has slack 
 ened the spring of that ductility to discipline 
 which is essential to " the unity and married 
 calm of States." But I feel assured that ex 
 perience and necessity will cure this evil, as 
 they have shown their power to cure others. 
 And under what frame of policy have evils 
 
34 DEMOCRACY. 
 
 ever been remedied till they became intoler 
 able, and shook men out of their indolent 
 indifference through their fears ? 
 
 We are told that the inevitable result of 
 democracy is to sap the foundations of per 
 sonal independence, to weaken the principle 
 of authority, to lessen the respect due to em 
 inence, whether in station, virtue, or genius. 
 If these things were so, society could not 
 hold together. Perhaps the best forcing- 
 house of robust individuality would be where 
 public opinion is inclined to be most over 
 bearing, as he must be of heroic temper who 
 should walk along Piccadilly at the height 
 of the Season in a soft hat. As for author 
 ity, it is one of the symptoms of the time 
 that the religious reverence for it is declining 
 everywhere, but this is due partly to the fact 
 that statecraft is no longer looked upon as 
 a mystery, but as a business, and partly to 
 the decay of superstition, by which I mean 
 the habit of respecting what we are told to 
 respect rather than what is respectable in 
 itself. There is more rough and tumble in 
 the American democracy than is altogether 
 agreeable to people of sensitive nerves and 
 refined habits, and the people take their po 
 litical duties lightly and laughingly, as is, 
 
DEMOCRACY. 35 
 
 perhaps, neither unnatural nor unbecoming 
 in a young giant. Democracies can no 
 more jump away from their own shadows 
 than the rest of us can. They no doubt 
 sometimes make mistakes and pay honor to 
 men who do not deserve it. But they do 
 this because they believe them worthy of it, 
 and though it be true that the idol is the 
 measure of the worshipper, yet the worship 
 has in it the germ of a nobler religion. But 
 is it democracies alone that fall into these 
 errors ? I, who have seen it proposed to erect 
 a statue to Hudson, the railway king, and 
 have heard Louis Napoleon hailed as the 
 saviour of society by men who certainly had 
 no democratic associations or leanings, am 
 not ready to think so. But democracies 
 have likewise their finer instincts. I have 
 also seen the wisest statesman and most 
 pregnant speaker of our generation, a man 
 of bumble birth and ungainly manners, of 
 little culture beyond what his own genius 
 supplied, become more absolute in power 
 than any monarch of modern times through 
 the reverence of his countrymen for his hon 
 esty, his wisdom, his sincerity, his faith in 
 God and man, and the nobly humane sim 
 plicity of his character. And I remember 
 
36 DEMOCRACY. 
 
 another whom popular respect enveloped as 
 with a halo, the least vulgar of men, the 
 most austerely genial, and the most inde 
 pendent of opinion. Wherever he went he 
 never met a stranger, but everywhere neigh 
 bors and friends proud of him as their or 
 nament and decoration. Institutions which 
 could bear and breed such men as Lincoln 
 and Emerson had surely some energy for 
 good. No, amid all the fruitless turmoil and 
 miscarriage of the world, if there be one 
 thing steadfast and of favorable omen, one 
 thing to make optimism distrust its own ob 
 scure distrust, it is the rooted instinct in 
 men to admire what is better and more beau 
 tiful than themselves. The touchstone of 
 political and social institutions is their abil 
 ity to supply them with worthy objects of 
 this sentiment, which is the very tap-root of 
 civilization and progress. There would 
 seem to be no readier way of feeding it with 
 the elements of growth and vigor than such 
 an organization of society as will enable men 
 to respect themselves, and so to justify them 
 in respecting others. 
 
 Such a result is quite possible under other 
 conditions than those of an avowedly demo- 
 cratical Constitution. For I take it that the 
 
DEMOCRACY. 37 
 
 real essence of democracy was fairly enough 
 defined by the First Napoleon when he said 
 that the French Revolution meant " la car- 
 riere ouverte aux talents " a clear path 
 way for merit of whatever kind. I should 
 be inclined to paraphrase this by calling de 
 mocracy that form of society, no matter what 
 its political classification, in which every man 
 had a chance and knew that he had it. If 
 a man can climb, and feels himself encour 
 aged to climb, from a coalpit to the highest 
 position for which he is fitted, he can well 
 afford to be indifferent what name is given 
 to the government under which he lives. 
 The Bailli of Mirabeau, uncle of the more 
 famous tribune of that name, wrote in 1771 : 
 " The English are, in my opinion, a hundred 
 times more agitated and more unfortunate 
 than the very Algerines themselves, because 
 they do not know and will not know till 
 the destruction of their over-swollen power, 
 which I believe very near, whether they are 
 monarchy, aristocracy, or democracy, and 
 wish to play the part of all three." Eng 
 land has not been obliging enough to fulfil 
 the Bailli s prophecy, and perhaps it was 
 this very carelessness about the name, and 
 concern about the substance of popular gov- 
 
38 DEMOCRACY. 
 
 ernment, this skill in getting the best out of 
 things as they are, in utilizing all the mo 
 tives which influence men, and in giving one 
 direction to many impulses, that has been a 
 principal factor of her greatness and power. 
 Perhaps it is fortunate to have an unwritten 
 Constitution, for men are prone to be tinker 
 ing the work of their own hands, whereas 
 they are more willing to let time and circum 
 stance mend or modify what time and cir 
 cumstance have made. All free govern 
 ments, whatever their name, are in reality 
 governments by public opinion, and it is on 
 the quality of this public opinion that their 
 prosperity depends. It is, therefore, their 
 first duty to purify the element from which 
 they draw the breath of life. With the 
 growth of democracy grows also the fear, if 
 not the danger, that this atmosphere may be 
 corrupted with poisonous exhalations from 
 lower and more malarious levels, and the 
 question of sanitation becomes more instant 
 and pressing. Democracy in its best sense 
 is merely the letting in of light and air. 
 Lord Sherbrooke, with his usual epigram 
 matic terseness, bids you educate your future 
 rulers. But would this alone be a sufficient 
 safeguard? To educate the intelligence is 
 
DEMOCRACY. 39 
 
 to enlarge the horizon of its desires and 
 wants. And it is well that this should be 
 so. But the enterprise must go deeper and 
 prepare the way for satisfying those desires 
 and wants in so far as they are legitimate. 
 What is really ominous of danger to the 
 existing order of things is not democracy 
 (which, properly understood, is a conserva 
 tive force), but the Socialism, which may find 
 a fulcrum in it. If we cannot equalize con 
 ditions and fortunes any more than we can 
 equalize the brains of men and a very 
 sagacious person has said that " where two 
 men ride of a horse one must ride behind " 
 we can yet, perhaps, do something to cor 
 rect those methods and influences that lead 
 to enormous inequalities, and to prevent their 
 growing more enormous. It is all very well 
 to pooh-pooh Mr. George and to prove him 
 mistaken in his political economy. I do not 
 believe that land should be divided because 
 the quantity of it is limited by nature. Of 
 what may this not be said ? A fortiori, we 
 might on the same principle insist on a divi 
 sion of human wit, for I have observed that 
 the quantity of this has been even more 
 inconveniently limited. Mr. George himself 
 has an inequitably large share of it. But he 
 
40 DEMOCRACY. 
 
 is right in his impelling motive ; right, also, 
 I am convinced, in insisting that humanity 
 makes a part, by far the most important 
 part, of political economy; and in thinking 
 man to be of more concern and more con 
 vincing than the longest columns of figures 
 in the world. For unless you include hu 
 man nature in your addition, your total is 
 sure to be wrong and your deductions from 
 it fallacious. Communism means barba 
 rism, but Socialism means, or wishes to mean, 
 cooperation and community of interests, sym 
 pathy, the giving to the hands not so large 
 a share as to the brains, but a larger share 
 than hitherto in the wealth they must com 
 bine to produce means, in short, the prac 
 tical application of Christianity to life, and 
 has in it the secret of an orderly and benign 
 reconstruction. State Socialism would cut 
 off the very roots in personal character 
 self-help, forethought, and frugality which 
 nourish and sustain the trunk and branches 
 of every vigorous Commonwealth. 
 
 I do not believe in violent changes, nor do 
 I expect them. Things in possession have 
 a very firm grip. One of the strongest 
 cements of society is the conviction of man 
 kind that the state of things into which they 
 
DEMOCRACY. 41 
 
 are born is a part of the order of the uni 
 verse, as natural, let us say, as that the sun 
 should go round the earth. It is a convic 
 tion that they will not surrender except on 
 compulsion, and a wise society should look 
 to it that this compulsion be not put upon 
 them. For the individual man there is no 
 radical cure, outside of human nature itself, 
 for the evils to which human nature is heir. 
 The rule will always hold good that you 
 must 
 
 Be your own palace or the world s your gaol. 
 
 But for artificial evils, for evils that spring 
 from want of thought, thought must find a 
 remedy somewhere. There has been no pe 
 riod of time in which wealth has been more 
 sensible of its duties than now. It builds 
 hospitals, it establishes missions among the 
 poor, it endows schools. It is one of the 
 advantages of accumulated wealth, and of 
 the leisure it renders possible, that people 
 have time to think of the wants and sorrows 
 of their fellows. But all these remedies are 
 partial and palliative merely. It is as if we 
 should apply plasters to a single pustule of 
 the small-pox with a view of driving out the 
 disease. The true way is to discover and to 
 extirpate the germs. As society is now con- 
 
42 DEMOCRACY. 
 
 stituted these are in the air it breathes, in 
 the water it drinks, in things that seem, and 
 which it has always believed, to be the most 
 innocent and healthful. The evil elements 
 it neglects corrupt these in their springs and 
 pollute them in their courses. Let us be of 
 good cheer, however, remembering that the 
 misfortunes hardest to bear are those which 
 never come. The world has outlived much, 
 and will outlive a great deal more, and men 
 have contrived to be happy in it. It has 
 shown the strength of its constitution in 
 nothing more than in surviving the quack 
 medicines it has tried. In the scales of the 
 destinies brawn will never weigh so much as 
 brain. Our healing is not in the storm or in 
 the whirlwind, it is not in monarchies, or 
 aristocracies, or democracies, but will be re 
 vealed by the still small voice that speaks to 
 the conscience and the heart, prompting us 
 to a wider and wiser humanity. 
 
GARFIELD. 
 
 SPOKEN ON THE DEATH OF PRESIDENT GARFIELD AT 
 
 THE MEMORIAL MEETING IN EXETER HALL, 
 
 LONDON, 24 SEPTEMBER, 1881. 
 
GARFIELD. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY NOTE.* 
 
 ONE thing and one only makes the record of 
 the meeting at Exeter Hall on the 24th Septem 
 ber worthy of separate publication, and confers 
 on it a certain distinction. Not what was said, 
 but where it was said, in unison with what other 
 voices, and in what atmosphere of sympathy, as 
 spontaneous as it was universal, gives to the 
 words spoken here their true point and emphasis. 
 Never before have Americans, speaking in Eng 
 land, felt so clearly that they were in the land, 
 not only of their fathers, but of their brethren, 
 
 Their elder brothers, but one in blood. 
 
 For the first time their common English tongue 
 found its true office when Mother and Daughter 
 spoke comforting words to each other over a sor 
 row, which, if nearer to one, was shared by both. 
 English blood, made up of the best drops from 
 
 1 Printed first as a preface to the memorial volume, 
 containing a record of the proceedings at the Exeter Hall 
 meeting. 
 
46 GARFIELD. 
 
 the veins of many conquering, organizing, and 
 colonizing races, is a blood to be proud of, and 
 most plainly vindicates its claim to dominion 
 when it recognizes kinship through sympathy 
 with what is simple, steadfast, and religious in 
 character. When we learn to respect each other 
 for the good qualities in each, we are helping to 
 produce and foster them. 
 
 It is often said that sentimental motives never 
 guide or modify the policy of nations, and it is 
 no doubt true that statecraft more and more 
 means business, and not sentiment ; yet men as 
 old as the late Lord Stratford de Redcliffe could 
 remember at least two occasions during their 
 lives when a sentiment, and that, too, a literary 
 sentiment, had much to do with the shaping of 
 events and the new birth of nations. We would 
 not over-estimate the permanent value of this out 
 burst of feeling on both sides the sea, of this 
 grasp of the hand across a recent grave, but we 
 may safely affirm that they were genuine, and 
 had, therefore, something of the enduring virtue 
 that belongs to what is genuine, and to that only. 
 It is something that two great nations have 
 looked at each other kindly through their tears. 
 It will at least be more awkward to quarrel here 
 after. The sight of the British flag at half-mast 
 on the day of an American funeral was something 
 to set men thinking, and that fruitfully, of the 
 great duty that is laid upon the English race 
 
GARFIELD. 47 
 
 among mankind. Well may we be proud of the 
 Ancient Mother, and we will see to it that she 
 have no reason to be ashamed of her children. 
 
 It behoves us Americans who have experienced 
 nothing but the kindness and hospitality and 
 sympathy of England, to express thus publicly 
 our sense of them. Especially would we thank 
 the venerable prelate whose address we are per 
 mitted to include in this little volume. And em 
 phatically would we express our conviction that 
 the wreath sent with such touching delicacy of 
 feeling by her Majesty the Queen to be laid upon 
 the bier of President Garfield, will be hung upon 
 a golden nail in the Temple of Concord. 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen, Countrymen and 
 Countrywomen, The object of this meet 
 ing, as you all know, is to testify our respect 
 for the character and services of the late 
 President Garfield, and in so doing to offer 
 such consolation as is possible to a noble 
 mother and a noble wife, suffering as few 
 women have been called upon to suffer. It 
 may seem a paradox, but the only alleviation 
 of such grief is a sense of the greatness and 
 costliness of the sacrifice that gave birth to 
 it, and this sense is brought home to us by 
 the measure in which others appreciate our 
 loss. It is no exaggeration to say that the 
 
48 GARFIELD. 
 
 recent profoundly touching spectacle of wo 
 manly devotedness in its simplicity, its con 
 stancy, and its dignity has moved the heart 
 of mankind in a manner without any pre 
 cedent in living memory. But to Americans 
 everywhere it comes home with a pang of 
 mingled sorrow, pride, and unspeakable do 
 mestic tenderness that none but ourselves 
 can feel. This pang is made more poignant 
 by exile, and yet you will all agree with me 
 in feeling that the universal sympathy ex 
 pressed here by all classes and conditions of 
 men has made us sensible as never before, 
 that, if we are in a strange, we are not in a 
 foreign land, and that if we are not at home 
 we are at least in what Hawthorne so aptly 
 called the Old Home. I should gladly dwell 
 more at length upon this fact, so consoling 
 and so full of all good omen, but I must 
 not infringe on the resolutions which will be 
 presented to you by others. Yet I should 
 do injustice to your feelings, no less than to 
 my own, if I did not offer here our grateful 
 acknowledgments to the august lady who, 
 herself not unacquainted with grief, has 
 shown so repeatedly and so touchingly how 
 true a woman s heart may beat under the 
 royal purple. 
 
GARFIELD. 49 
 
 On an occasion like this, when we are met 
 together that we may give vent to a common 
 feeling so deep and so earnest as to thrust 
 aside every consideration of self, the wish of 
 us all must be that what is said here should 
 be simple, strong, and manly as the charac 
 ter of the illustrious magistrate so untimely 
 snatched from us in the very seed-time of 
 noble purpose, that would have sprung up in 
 service as noble, that we should be as ten 
 der and true as she has shown herself to be 
 in whose bereavement we reverently claim 
 to share as children of the blessed country 
 that gave birth to him and to her. We can 
 not find words that could reach that lofty 
 level. This is no place for the turnings and 
 windings of dexterous rhetoric. In the 
 presence of that death-scene so homely, so 
 human, so august in its unostentatious hero 
 ism, the commonplaces of ordinary eulogy 
 stammer with the sudden shame of their own 
 ineptitude. Were we allowed to follow the 
 natural promptings of our hearts, we would 
 sum up all praise in the sacred old words, 
 "Well done, thou good and faithful ser 
 vant." 
 
 That death-scene was more than singular ; 
 it was unexampled. The whole civilized 
 
50 GARFIELD. 
 
 world was gathered about it in the breath 
 less suspense of anxious solicitude, listened 
 to the difficult breathing, counted the flut 
 tering pulse, was cheered by the momentary 
 rally and saddened by the inevitable relapse. 
 And let us thank God and take courage 
 when we reflect that it was through the man 
 liness, the patience, the religious fortitude 
 of the splendid victim that the tie of human 
 brotherhood was thrilled to a consciousness 
 of its sacred function. The one touch of 
 nature that makes the whole world kin is a 
 touch of heroism, our sympathy with which 
 dignifies and ennobles. Science has wrought 
 no greater marvel in the service of human 
 ity than when it gave the world a common 
 nervous system, and thus made mankind 
 capable of a simultaneous emotion. 
 
 One remarkable feature of that death- 
 scene was the imperturbable good nature of 
 the sufferer. This has been sometimes called 
 a peculiarly American quality, a weakness 
 if in excess or misapplied, but beautiful in 
 its own genial place, as there and then it 
 was. General Garfield once said to a friend, 
 " They tell me it is a defect of my character, 
 but I cannot hate anybody." Like Socrates, 
 he seemed good-humored even with death, 
 
QARFIELD. 51 
 
 though there have been few men from whom 
 death has ever wrenched a fairer heritage of 
 opportunity. Physicians tell us that all men 
 die well, but surely he was no ordinary man 
 who could die well daily for eleven agonizing 
 weeks, and of whom it could be said at 
 last, 
 
 He nothing common did, or mean, 
 
 Upon that memorable scene. 
 
 A fibre capable of such strain and wear as 
 that is used only in the making of heroic 
 natures. Twenty years ago General Garfield 
 offered his life to his country, and he has 
 died for her as truly and more fruitfully now 
 than if fate had accepted the offer then. 
 Not only has his blood re-cemented our 
 Union, but the dignity, the patience, the 
 self-restraint, the though tfulness for others, 
 the serene valor which he showed under cir 
 cumstances so disheartening and amid the 
 wreck of hopes so splendid, are a possession 
 and a stimulus to his countrymen forever. 
 The emulation of examples like his makes 
 nations great, and keeps them so. The soil 
 out of which such men as he are made is 
 good to be born on, good to live on, good to 
 die for and to be buried in. 
 
 I had not the honor of any intimacy of 
 
52 GARFIELD. 
 
 friendship with this noble man. Others will 
 speak of him from more intimate knowledge. 
 I saw him once or twice only, but so deeply 
 was I impressed with the seriousness and 
 solidity of his character, with his eager in 
 terest in worthy objects, and with the states 
 manlike furniture of his mind, that when, 
 many years afterwards, he was nominated 
 for the Presidency I rejoiced in the wisdom 
 of the selection, and found in my memory an 
 image of him clearer than that of any man 
 I ever met of whom I had seen so little. 
 And I may add that I have never known 
 any man concerning whom a loving and ad 
 miring testimony was so uniform from men 
 of every rank and character who had known 
 him. 
 
 None knew him but to love him, 
 None named him but to praise. 
 
 I shall not retrace the story of his life, 
 but there is nothing that occurs to me so per 
 fect in its completeness since the Biblical 
 story of Joseph. The poor lad who at thir 
 teen could not read dies at fifty the tenant 
 of an office second in dignity to none on 
 earth, and the world mourns his loss as that 
 of a personal relative. I find the word 
 coming back to my lips in spite of me, " He 
 
GARFIELD. 53 
 
 was so human" An example of it was his 
 kissing his venerable mother on the day of 
 his inauguration. It was criticised, I re 
 member hearing at the time, as a sin against 
 good taste. I thought then, and think now, 
 that if we had found the story in Plutarch 
 we should have thought no worse of the hero 
 of it. 
 
 It was this pliability of his to the impulse 
 of unconventional feeling that endeared him 
 so much to his kind. Among the many 
 stories that have been sent me, illustrating 
 the sorrow so universally felt here, none 
 have touched me so much as these two : 
 An old gardener said to his mistress, " Oh, 
 ma am, we felt somehow as if he belonged 
 to us ; " and in a little village on the coast, 
 where an evangelist held nightly services on 
 the beach, prayer was offered regularly for 
 the recovery of the President, the weather- 
 beaten fishermen who stood around the 
 preacher with bowed, uncovered heads fer 
 vently responding, " Amen." You will also 
 be interested to know that the benevolent 
 Sir Moses Montefiore, now in his ninety- 
 seventh year, telegraphed last week to Pales 
 tine to request that prayers might be offered 
 for the President in the synagogues of the 
 
54 GARFIELD. 
 
 four holy cities. It was no common man 
 who could call forth, and justly call forth, an 
 emotion so universal, an interest so sincere 
 and so humane. 
 
 I said that this is no place for eulogy. 
 They who deserve eulogy do not need it, and 
 they who deserve it not are diminished by 
 it. The dead at least can bear the truth, 
 and have a right to that highest service of 
 human speech. We are not called upon 
 here to define Garfield s place among the 
 memorable of mankind. A great man is 
 made up of qualities that meet or make great 
 occasions. We may surely say of him that 
 the great qualities were there, and were al 
 ways adequate to the need, although, less 
 fortunate than Lincoln, his career was 
 snapped short just as they were about to be 
 tested by the supreme trial of creative states 
 manship. We believe that he would have 
 stood the test, and we have good reason for 
 our faith. For this is certainly true of him, 
 that a life more strenuous, a life of more 
 constantly heightening tendency of fulfil 
 ment, of more salutary and invigorating ex 
 ample, has not been lived in a country that 
 is rich in instances of such. Well may we 
 be proud of him, this brother of ours, recog- 
 
GARFIELD. 55 
 
 nized also as a brother wherever men honor 
 what is praiseworthy in man. Well may 
 we thank God for him, and love more the 
 country that could produce and appreciate 
 him. Well may we sorrow for his loss, but 
 not as those without hope. Great as the loss 
 is and the loss of faculties trained like his 
 is the hardest of all to replace yet we 
 should show a want of faith in our country 
 if we called it irreparable. Three times 
 within living memory has the Yice-President 
 succeeded to the presidential function with 
 out shock to our system, without detriment 
 to our national honor, and without check to 
 our prosperity. It would be an indignity to 
 discuss here the character of him who is now 
 our chief magistrate, and who, more than 
 any one, it is safe to say, has felt the pain 
 of this blow. But there is no indecorum in 
 saying what is known to all, that he is a gen 
 tleman of culture, of admittedly high intelli 
 gence, of unimpeachable character, of proved 
 administrative ability, and that he enters on 
 his high duties with a full sense of what such 
 a succession implies. I am not one of those 
 who believe that democracy any more than 
 any other form of government will go of 
 itself. I am not a believer in perpetual mo- 
 
56 GARFIELD. 
 
 tion in politics any more than in mechanics, 
 but, in common with all of you, I have an 
 imperturbable faith in the honesty, the intel 
 ligence, and the good sense of the American 
 people, and in the destiny of the American 
 Republic. 
 
STANLEY. 
 
 SPEECH AT THE MEETING IN THE CHAPTER HOUSE OF 
 
 WESTMINSTER ABBEY IN COMMEMORATION OF 
 
 DEAN STANLEY, 13 DECEMBER, 1881. 
 
STANLEY. 
 
 I AM very glad to have the privilege of 
 uniting in this tribute to the memory of the 
 remarkable man whose loss was felt as a 
 personal bereavement by so great and so va 
 rious a multitude of mourners, and, as has 
 been so well said by his successor, a multi 
 tude of mourners which included many who 
 had never seen his face. I feel especially 
 happy because it seems to me that my pres 
 ence here is an augury of that day, which 
 may be distant, but which I believe will 
 surely come, when the character and services 
 of every eminent man of the British race in 
 every land, under whatever distant skies he 
 may have been born, shall be the common 
 possession and the common inheritance and 
 the common pride of every branch which is 
 sprung from our ancestral stem. As I look 
 round upon this assembly, I feel that I may 
 almost be pardoned if I apply again the well- 
 known line, 
 
60 STANLEY. 
 
 Si monumentum requiris, circumspice. 
 
 The quality and the character of this meet 
 ing are in themselves a monument and a 
 eulogy. It would be out of place for me to 
 attempt any characterization of Dean Stan 
 ley in the presence of those so much more 
 fitted than myself for the task ; but I may 
 be allowed to say a few words from the point 
 of view of a stranger. I remember, on the 
 day of the Dean s funeral, what struck me 
 as most remarkable was seeing all ranks and 
 conditions of men equalized, all differences 
 of creed obliterated, all animosities of sect 
 and party appeased by the touch of that 
 common sympathy in sorrow. The news 
 papers, as was natural and proper, remarked 
 upon the number of distinguished persons 
 who were present. To me, it seemed vastly 
 more touching to look upon the number of 
 humble and undistinguished persons, who 
 felt that their daily lives had lost a consola 
 tion and their hearts a neighbor and a friend. 
 If I were to put in one word what struck 
 me as perhaps the leading characteristic of 
 Dean Stanley, and what made him so dear 
 to many, I should say it was not his charity, 
 though his charity was large, for charity 
 has in it sometimes, perhaps often, a savor 
 
STANLEY. 61 
 
 of superiority, it was not his toleration, 
 for toleration, I think, is apt to make a con 
 cession of what should be simply recognized 
 as a natural right, but it was rather, as it 
 seems to me, the wonderful many-sidedness 
 of his sympathies. I remember my friend 
 Dr. Holmes, whose name I am sure is 
 known, and if known is dear to most of you, 
 called my attention to an epitaph in the 
 neighborhood of Boston, in New England. 
 It recorded the name and date of the death 
 of a wife and mother, and then added sim 
 ply, " She was so pleasant." That always 
 struck me in Dean Stanley. I think no 
 man ever lived who was so pleasant to so 
 many people. We visited him as we visit a 
 clearer sky and a warmer climate. In think 
 ing of this meeting this morning, I was 
 reminded of a proverbial phrase which we 
 have in America, and which, I believe, we 
 carried from England : we apologize for the 
 shortcomings and faults of our fellow-beings 
 by saying, " There is a great deal of human 
 nature in man." I think the one leading 
 characteristic of Dean Stanley and I say 
 it to his praise was the amount of human 
 nature there was in him. So sweet, so gra 
 cious, so cheerful, so illuminating was it that 
 
62 STANLEY. 
 
 there could not have been too much of it. 
 It brought him nearer to all mankind, it 
 recognized and called out the humanity that 
 was in other men. His sympathies were so 
 wide that they could not be confined by the 
 boundaries of the land in which he was 
 born: they crossed the channel and they 
 crossed the ocean. No man was a foreigner 
 to him, far less any American. And, in 
 supporting the resolution, I should be in 
 clined to make only one amendment : it 
 would be to propose that the memorial, in 
 stead of being national, should be interna 
 tional. Since I came into the room, I have 
 heard from Sir Rutherford Alcock that he 
 has received from Boston, through the hands 
 of Rev. Phillips Brooks, a friend of Dean 
 Stanley, a contribution of ,206 toward the 
 Stanley Hall. I am sure I am not pledging 
 my countrymen to too much when I say that 
 they will delight to share in this tribute to 
 the late Dean. And England has lately 
 given them, in so many ways, such touching 
 and cordial reasons for believing that they 
 cannot enter as strangers to any sorrow of 
 hers, that I am sure you will receive most 
 substantial and most sympathetic help from 
 your kindred people on the other side of the 
 
STANLEY. 63 
 
 Atlantic, with whom the bonds of sympathy 
 have been lately drawn more close, and by 
 nothing more strikingly than by the sympa 
 thy expressed, sir, by your Royal Mother, 
 in a way which touched every heart on the 
 other side of the Atlantic, and has called 
 forth repeated expressions of gratitude. It 
 will give me great pleasure to do all I can 
 to aid the enterprise which is started here 
 to-day. 
 
FIELDING. 
 
 ADDRESS ON UNVEILING THE BUST OF FIELDING, DE 
 LIVERED AT SHIRE HALL, TAUNTON, SOMERSET 
 SHIRE, ENGLAND, 4 SEPTEMBER, 1883. 
 
FIELDING. 
 
 I SHOULD have preferred that this office 
 I am to perform to-day had fallen to another. 
 Especially does it seem fitting that an Eng 
 lish author should take the first place in do 
 ing honor to the most thoroughly English of 
 writers; and yet there is something very 
 pleasant to me in thinking that my presence 
 here to-day bears witness to the union of our 
 tongue and of our literary traditions. I 
 seem to be not inappropriately verifying the 
 prophecy of Samuel Daniel made nearly 
 three centuries ago : 
 
 And who in time knows whither we may vent 
 The treasure of our tongue, to what strange shores 
 
 The gain of our best glory may be sent 
 To enrich unknowing nations with our stores ? 
 
 What worlds in the yet unformed Occident 
 May come refined with accents that are ours ? 
 
 I wish that I could hope to repay some part, 
 however small, of this obligation by any 
 accents of mine. A whisper will ever and 
 
68 FIELDING. 
 
 anon make itself heard by the inward ear of 
 literary men, asking the importunate ques 
 tions, " Pray, do you not ascribe a rather 
 disproportionate relative importance to the 
 achievements of those of your own craft ? " 
 and "Does not genius manifest itself in 
 many other ways, and those of far more 
 practical usefulness to mankind ? " No 
 doubt an overestimate of ourselves and of 
 our own doings is a very common human 
 failing, as we are all ready to admit when 
 we candidly consider our neighbors, and yet 
 the world is led by a true instinct to agree 
 with us in assigning to works of imagination 
 a usefulness higher in kind than any other 
 and in allowing to their authors a certain 
 right of sanctuary in our affections, within 
 whose limit the ordinary writs of human 
 censure do not run ; for not only are the 
 most vivid sensations of which our moral 
 and intellectual nature is capable received 
 through the imagination, but that mysterious 
 faculty, in its loftiest and purest exercise, 
 rescues us from our narrow personality, and 
 lifts us up to regions of serener scope and 
 more ideal satisfaction. It cheats us with 
 a semblance of creative power that seems 
 almost divine, and exhilarates us by a mo- 
 
FIELDING. 69 
 
 mentary enlargement of the boundaries of 
 our conscious being, as if we had been 
 brought into some nearer relationship with 
 elemental forces. This magic, it is true, is 
 wrought to the full only by the three or four 
 great poets, and by them only in their finest 
 and most emancipated moments. Well may 
 we value this incomparable gift ; well may 
 we delight to honor the men who were its 
 depositaries and instruments. Homer and 
 2Eschylus, and Dante and Shakespeare, 
 speak to us as to their contemporaries, with 
 an authority accumulated by all the years 
 between them and us, and with a voice 
 whose very remoteness makes it seem more 
 divinely clear. At the height which these 
 men were sometimes capable of reaching, the 
 processes of the mind seem to be intuitive. 
 But sometimes we find our treasure in more 
 earthen vessels ; sometimes this wonder 
 working faculty is bestowed upon men 
 whose natural and congenial element is the 
 prose of cities and the conventionalized emo 
 tion of that artificial life which we are 
 pleased to call real. Here it is forced to 
 combine itself as best it may with the un 
 derstanding, and it attains its ends such 
 lower ends as only are possible through 
 
70 FIELDING. 
 
 observation and slowly-hoarded experience. 
 Even then, though it may have lost its high 
 est, it has not lost all its charm nor all the 
 potency of its sway ; for I am inclined to 
 think that it is some form or other, some de 
 gree or other, of this vivid a vis of imagina 
 tion which breaks the fetters of men s self- 
 consciousness for a while, and enables them 
 to play with their faculties instead of toil 
 ing with them gives them, in short, an in 
 definably delightful something that we call 
 originality, or, when it addresses itself to 
 artistic creation, genius. A certain sacred- 
 ness was once attributed to the builders of 
 bridges and makers of roads, and we but 
 follow a natural and praiseworthy impulse 
 when we cherish the memory and record the 
 worth of any man of original and especially 
 of creative mind, since it is the office of such 
 also to open the highway for our fancy and 
 our thought, through the chiaroscuro of tan 
 gled actualities in which we dwell, to com 
 merce with fresh forms of nature and new 
 varieties of man. It is the privilege of gen 
 ius that to it life never grows commonplace 
 as to the rest of us, and that it sees Falstaffs 
 or Don Quixotes or Squire Westerns where 
 we have never seen anything more than the 
 
FIELDING. 71 
 
 ordinary Toms and Dicks and Harries whom 
 an inscrutable Providence has seen fit to send 
 into an already overpopulated world. These 
 genius takes by the hand and leads through 
 a maze of imaginary adventures ; exposes to 
 a cross-play of fictitious circumstances, to the 
 friction of other personages as unreal as 
 themselves, and we exclaim " Why, they 
 are alive ; this is creation ! " Yes, genius 
 has endowed them with a fulness of life, a 
 completeness of being, such as even they 
 themselves had never dreamed of, and they 
 become truly citizens of the world forever. 
 A great living poet, who has in his own 
 work illustrated every form of imagination, 
 has told us admirably what the secret of this 
 illusory creativeness is, as no one has a bet 
 ter right to know. 
 
 I find first 
 
 Writ down for very a b c of fact, 
 In the beginning God made heaven and earth, 
 From which, no matter in what lisp, I spell 
 And speak you out a consequence that man 
 Man, as befits the made, the inferior thing 1 , 
 Purposed since made to grow, not make in turn ; 
 Yet forced to try and make, else fail to grow, 
 Formed to rise, reach at, if not grasp and gain 
 The good beyond him ; which attempt is growth 
 Repeats God s process in man s due degree, 
 A harmony man s proportionate result ; 
 Creates not, but resuscitates perhaps. 
 
72 FIELDING. 
 
 No less man, bounded, yearning 1 to be free, 
 May so project his surplusage of soul, 
 In search of body ; so add self to self, 
 By owning 1 what lay ownerless before, 
 So find, so fill full, so appropriate forms. 
 . . . Though nothing 1 which had never life, 
 Shall get life from him, be, not having been, 
 Yet something dead may get to live again. 
 
 Now the man whom we are met to com 
 memorate to-day felt this necessity and per 
 formed this feat, and his works are become 
 a substantial part of that English litera 
 ture which may be said not merely to exist, 
 but to live. They have become so, among 
 other reasons, because he had the courage to 
 be absolutely sincere, if he had not always 
 the tact to see where sincerity is out of place. 
 We may discuss, we may estimate him, but 
 we cannot push him from his place. His 
 imagination was of that secondary order of 
 which I have spoken, subdued to what it 
 worked in ; and his creative power is not 
 less in degree than that of more purely ideal 
 artists, but was different in kind, or, if not, 
 is made to seem so by the more vulgar sub 
 stance in which it wrought. He was inferior 
 also in having no touch of tragic power or 
 passion, though he can be pathetic when he 
 will. There is nowhere a scene more pa- 
 
FIELDING. 73 
 
 thetic than that of the supper Amelia pre 
 pares for Booth, who never comes to share it, 
 and it is pathos made of materials as homely 
 as Wordsworth himself would have chosen. 
 Certainly Fielding s genius was incapable of 
 that ecstasy of conception through which the 
 poetic imagination seems fused into a molten 
 unity with its material, and produces figures 
 that are typical without loss of characteris 
 tic individuality, as if they were drawn, not 
 from what we call real life, but from the 
 very source of life itself, and were cast in 
 that universal mould about which the subtlest 
 thinkers that have ever lived so long busied 
 themselves. Fielding s characters are very 
 real persons ; but they are not types in the 
 same sense as Lear and Hamlet. They seem 
 to be men whom we have seen rather than 
 men whom we might see if we were lucky 
 enough men who have been rather than 
 who might have been. He was especially a 
 humorist ; and the weakness of the humorist 
 is that he can never be quite unconscious, 
 for in him it seems as if the two lobes of the 
 brain were never in perfect unison, so that 
 if ever one of them be on the point of sur 
 rendering itself to a fine frenzy of unquali 
 fied enthusiasm, the other watches it, makes 
 
74 FIELDING. 
 
 fun of it, renders it uneasy with a vague 
 sense of absurd incongruity, till at last it 
 is forced to laugh when it had rather cry. 
 Heine turned this to his purpose, and this is 
 what makes him so profoundly, and yet 
 sometimes so unpleasantly, pathetic. Shake 
 speare, as remarkable in this, perhaps, as in 
 anything else, is the only man in whom the 
 rarest poetic power has worked side by side 
 at the same bench with humor, and has not 
 been more or less disenchanted by it. I have 
 lingered so long on general questions, not 
 because I feared to meet more directly an 
 objection which I am told has been made to 
 this tribute of respect and affection for Field 
 ing, but because I doubted whether it was 
 necessary or wise to notice it at all ; and yet, 
 though it must be admitted that his books 
 cannot be recommended virginibus pueris- 
 que, I will say frankly that it is not because 
 they would corrupt, but because they would 
 shock ; and surely this need not affect the 
 fact that he was a great and original genius 
 who has done honor to his country, which is 
 what we chiefly have to consider here. A 
 gallery of Somersetshire worthies from which 
 he was absent would be as incomplete as a 
 history of English literature that should not 
 mention him. 
 
FIELDING. 75 
 
 Fielding needs no recognition from us ; his 
 fame is established and admitted, and his 
 character is gradually clearing itself of the 
 stains with which malice or jealousy or care 
 less hearsay had darkened it. It has become 
 an established principle of criticism that in 
 judging a man we must take into account 
 the age in which he lived, and which was as 
 truly a part of him as he of it. Fielding s 
 genius has drawn forth the sympathetic com 
 mendation of such widely different men as 
 Gibbon, Scott, Coleridge, Thackeray, and 
 Leslie Stephen, and of such a woman as 
 George Eliot. I possess a copy of " Tom 
 Jones," the margins of which are crowded 
 with the admiring comments of Leigh Hunt, 
 as pure-minded a man as ever lived, and a 
 critic whose subtlety of discrimination and 
 whose soundness of judgment, supported as 
 it was on a broad base of truly liberal schol 
 arship, have hardly yet won fitting apprecia 
 tion. There can be no higher testimonials to 
 character then these ; and lately Mr. Austin 
 Dobson has done, perhaps, as true a service 
 as one man of letters ever did to another by 
 reducing what little is known of the life of 
 Fielding from chaos to coherence by ridding 
 it of fable, by correcting and coordinating 
 
T6 FIELDING. 
 
 dates, by cross-examining tradition till it 
 stamineringly confessed that it had no visible 
 means of subsistence, and has thus enabled us 
 to get some authentic glimpse of the man as 
 he really was. He has rescued the body 
 of Fielding from beneath the swinish hoofs 
 which were trampling it as once they tram 
 pled the Knight of La Mancha, whom Field 
 ing so heartily admired. "We really know 
 almost as little of Fielding s life as of Shake 
 speare s, but what we do know on any valid 
 evidence is, I think, on the whole, highly 
 creditable to him. Thrown upon the town 
 at twenty with no training that would fit him 
 for a profession, with the principles and 
 tastes of the class to which he belonged by 
 birth, and with a nominal allowance from 
 his father of 200 a year, which, as he hu 
 morously said, " anybody might pay that 
 would," it is possible that when he had 
 money in his pocket he may have spent it in 
 ways that he might blush to remember, and 
 when his pocket was empty may have tried to 
 replenish it by expedients that were not to 
 his taste. But there is no proof of this ex 
 cept what is purely inferential, and there is 
 evidence of the same kind, but stronger, that 
 he had habits of study and industry that are 
 
FIELDING. 77 
 
 not to be put on at will as one puts on his 
 overcoat, and that are altogether inconsistent 
 with the dissolute life he is supposed to have 
 led. The dramatic pieces that he wrote dur 
 ing his early period were, it is true, shame 
 fully gross, though there are humorous hints 
 in them that have been profitably worked up 
 by later writers ; but what strikes me most in 
 them is that there is so little real knowledge 
 of life, the result of personal experience, and 
 that the social scenery and conception of 
 character are mainly borrowed from his im 
 mediate predecessors, the dramatists of the 
 Restoration. In grossness his plays could 
 not outdo those of Dryden, whose bust has 
 stood so long without protest in Westmin 
 ster Abbey. As to any harm they can do 
 there is little to be apprehended, for they 
 are mostly as hard to read as a Shapira 
 manuscript. I do not deny that Fielding s 
 temperament was far from being over nice. 
 I am willing to admit, if you will, that the 
 woof of his nature was coarse and animal. 
 I should not stop short of saying that it was 
 sensual. Yet he liked and admired the 
 highest and best things of his time the 
 art of Hogarth, the acting of Garrick, the 
 verse of Pope. He is said indeed to have 
 
78 FIELDING. 
 
 loved low company, but his nature was so 
 companionable and his hunger for knowl 
 edge so keen, that I fancy he would like any 
 society that was not dull, and any conversa 
 tion, however illiterate, from which he could 
 learn anything to his purpose. It may be 
 suspected that the polite conversation of the 
 men of that day would differ little, except in 
 grammar, from the talk of the pothouse. 
 
 As I have said, we must guard against 
 falling into the anachronism of forgetting 
 the coarseness of the age into which he was 
 born, and whose atmosphere he breathed. 
 It was a generation whose sense of smell was 
 undisturbed by odors that would now evoke 
 a sanitary commission, and its moral nostrils 
 were of an equally masculine temper. A 
 coarse thread shows itself here and there, 
 even through the satiny surface of the fas 
 tidious Gray, and a taint of the century that 
 gave him birth may be detected now and 
 then in the " Doctor " of the pure and alto 
 gether admirable Southey. But it is ob 
 jected that there is an immoral tendency 
 in " Joseph Andrews," " Tom Jones," and 
 " Amelia." 
 
 Certainly none of them is calculated to 
 serve the cause of virtue, or at any rate, of 
 
FIELDING. 79 
 
 chastity, if measured by the standard of to 
 day. But as certainly that standard looks 
 a little awkward in the hands of people who 
 read George Sand and allow an expurgated 
 edition of the Decalogue for the use of them 
 that go in chariots. I confess that in my 
 impatience of such criticism I feel myself 
 tempted, when Fielding s muse shows a too 
 liberal ankle, to cry out with Tarn O Shanter, 
 " Weel dune, cutty sark ! " His bluntness 
 is more wholesome than the refinement of 
 such critics, for the second of the Seven 
 Deadly Sins is not less dangerous when she 
 talks mysticism and ogles us through the 
 gaps of a fan painted with the story of the 
 Virgin Martyr. He did not go in search of 
 impurity as if he relished the reek of it, like 
 some French so-called realists for whose title- 
 pages I should be inclined to borrow an in 
 scription from the old tavern-signs, " Enter 
 tainment for Man and Beast." He painted 
 vice when it came in his way (and it was 
 more obvious in his time) as a figure in the 
 social landscape, and in doing so he was per 
 haps a better moralist than those who ignore 
 it altogether, or only when it lives in a gen 
 teel quarter of the town. He at least does 
 not paint the landscape as a mere background 
 
80 FIELDING. 
 
 for the naked nymph. He never made the 
 blunder of supposing that the Devil always 
 smelt of sulphur. He thought himself to be 
 writing history, and called his novels Histo 
 ries, as if to warn us that he should tell the 
 whole truth without equivocation. He makes 
 all the sins of his heroes react disastrously 
 on their fortunes. He assuredly believed 
 himself to be writing with an earnest moral 
 purpose in his two greater and more delib 
 erately composed works, and indeed clearly 
 asserts as much. I also fully believe it, for 
 the assertion is justified by all that we know 
 of the prevailing qualities of his character, 
 whatever may have been its failings and 
 lapses, if failings and lapses they were. It 
 does not seem to have occurred to the Eng 
 lish clergyman who wrote the epitaph over 
 his grave at Lisbon that there was any 
 question about the matter, and he especially 
 celebrates the moral purpose and effect of 
 Fielding s works in Latin that would, per 
 haps, have made the subject of it a little un 
 comfortable. How, then, are we to explain 
 certain scenes in these books, except by sup 
 posing that Fielding was utterly unconscious 
 that there was any harm in them? Perhaps 
 we might also say that he was so sincere a 
 
FIELDING. 81 
 
 hater of cant and sham and hypocrisy that 
 in his wrath against them he was not careful 
 to consider the want of ceremonious decorum 
 in his protest, and forgot that frankness 
 might stop short of cynicism without losing 
 any of its virtue. He had so hearty an Eng 
 lish contempt for sentimentality that he did 
 not always distinguish true sentiment from 
 false, and setting perhaps an over-value on 
 manliness, looked upon refinement as the 
 ornament and protection of womanly weak 
 ness rather than as what it quite as truly 
 is the crown and complement of manly 
 strength. He admired Richardson, and 
 frankly expressed his admiration ; yet I 
 think that over a bowl of punch he might 
 have misnamed him the " Homer of Board 
 ing-school Misses," just as Sainte-Beuve 
 called Octave Feuillet the " Alfred de Mus- 
 set of Boarding-schools." 
 
 But besides all this, Fielding was a natu 
 ralist, in the sense that he was an instinctive 
 and careful observer. He loved truth, and, 
 for an artist, seems to have too often missed 
 the distinction between truth and exacti 
 tude. He forgot the warning of Sir Walter 
 Raleigh, perhaps more important to the 
 artist than to the historian, that it is dan- 
 
82 FIELDING. 
 
 gerous to follow truth too near the heels. 
 His aim was to paint life as he saw it, not 
 as he wished it was or hoped it might be ; 
 to show us what men really did, not what 
 they were pleased to believe they thought 
 it would be well for other men to do : and 
 this he did with a force, a directness, and a 
 vividness of coloring that make him in the 
 truest sense a painter of history. No one 
 can fail to admit the justice of the analogy 
 between him and his friend Hogarth in this 
 respect, pointed out by Mr. Dobson. In 
 both cases we may regret that their model 
 was too often no better than she should be. 
 In the case both of Tom Jones and of Booth, 
 it is to be noted, so far as the moral purpose 
 is concerned, that their lapse from virtue al 
 ways draws after them a retribution which 
 threatens ruin to their dearest desires. I 
 think it was Thackeray who said that Field 
 ing had dared to paint a man an exploit 
 for which no one would have the courage 
 now. 
 
 This is not the place or occasion for a 
 critical estimate of Fielding, even could one 
 add anything of value to what has been 
 already said by competent persons. If 
 there were a recognized standard in criti- 
 
FIELDING. 83 
 
 cism, as in apothecaries measure, so that by 
 adding a grain of praise to this scale, or 
 taking away a scruple of blame from that, 
 we could make the balance manifestly even 
 in the eyes of all men, it might be worth 
 while to weigh Hannibal ; but when each of 
 us stamps his own weights, and warrants the 
 impartiality of his own scales, perhaps the 
 experiment may be wisely foregone. Let it 
 suffice here to state generally the reasons for 
 which we set a high value on this man whose 
 bust we unveil to-day. Since we are come 
 together, not to judge, but only to commem 
 orate, perhaps it would be enough to say, in 
 justification of to-day s ceremony, that Field 
 ing was a man of genius ; for it is hardly 
 once in a century, if so often, that a whole 
 country catches so rare and shy a specimen 
 of the native fauna, and proportionably 
 more seldom that a county is so lucky. But 
 Fielding was something more even than this. 
 It is not extravagant to say that he marks 
 an epoch, and that we date from him the 
 beginning of a consciously new form of lit 
 erature. It was not without reason that 
 Byron, expanding a hint given somewhere 
 by Fielding himself, called him " the prose 
 Homer of human nature." He had more 
 
84 FIELDING. 
 
 than that superficial knowledge of literature 
 which no gentleman s head should be with 
 out. He knew it as a craftsman knows the 
 niceties and traditions of his craft. He saw 
 that since the epic in verse ceased to be re 
 cited in the market-places, it had become an 
 anachronism ; that nothing but the charrn of 
 narrative had saved Ariosto, as Tasso had 
 been saved by his diction, and Milton by his 
 style ; but that since Milton every epic had 
 been born as dead as the Pharaohs more 
 dead, if possible, than the " Columbiad " 
 of Joel Barlow and the " Charlemagne " 
 of Lucien Bonaparte are to us. He saw 
 that the novel of actual life was to replace 
 it, and he set himself deliberately (after 
 having convinced himself experimentally in 
 Parson Adams that he could create charac 
 ter) to produce an epic on the lower and 
 more neighborly level of prose. However 
 opinions may differ as to the other merits 
 of " Tom Jones," they are unanimous as to 
 its harmony of design and masterliness of 
 structure. 
 
 Fielding, then, was not merely, in my 
 judgment at least, an original writer, but 
 an originator. He has the merit, what 
 ever it may be, of inventing the realistic 
 
FIELDING. 85 
 
 novel, as it is called. I do not mean to say 
 that there had been no stories professedly of 
 real life before. The story of " Francioii " 
 is such, and even more notably " Gil Bias," 
 not to mention others. But before Fielding 
 it seems to me that real life formed rather 
 the scenic background than the substance, 
 and that the characters are, after all, merely 
 players who represent certain types rather 
 than the living types themselves. Fielding, 
 as a novelist, drew the motives that im 
 pel his characters in all their actions from 
 human nature, and not from artificial life. 
 When I read " Gil Bias," I do not become 
 part of the story I listen to an agreeable 
 story-teller who narrates and describes, and 
 I wait to hear what is going to happen ; but 
 in Fielding I want to see what people are 
 going to do and say, and I can half guess 
 what will happen, because I know them and 
 what they are and what they are likely to 
 do. They are no longer images, but actual 
 beings. Nothing can persuade me, for ex 
 ample, that I do not know the sound of 
 Squire Western s voice. 
 
 Fielding did not and could not idealize, 
 his object being exact truth, but he realized 
 the actual truth around him as none had 
 
86 FIELDING. 
 
 done before and few have done since. As a 
 creator of characters that are actuated by a 
 motive power within themselves, and that 
 are so livingly real as to become our famil 
 iar acquaintances, he is among the greatest. 
 Abraham Adams is excellent, and has had a 
 numerous progeny, but I think that even he 
 is inferior in originality, in coherence, and 
 in the entire keeping of look, speech, motive, 
 and action, to Squire Western, who is, in 
 deed, one of the most simple and perfect 
 creations of genius. If he has been less 
 often copied than Parson Adams, may it not 
 be because he is a more finished work of art, 
 and, therefore, more difficult to copy ? I 
 need not expatiate on the simple felicity and 
 courteousness of his style, the unobtrusive 
 clothing of a thought as clear as it is often 
 profound, or on the good-nature of his satire, 
 in which he reminds one of Chaucer, or on 
 the subtle gravity of his irony, more delicate 
 than that of Swift, and, therefore, perhaps 
 even more deadly. I will only say that I 
 think it less perfect, because more obviously 
 intentional, in " Jonathan Wild " than in 
 such masterpieces as the account of Cap 
 tain BlifiTs death, and the epitaph upon 
 his tomb. When it seems most casual and 
 
FIELDING. 87 
 
 inadvertent, it often cuts deepest, as when 
 Squire Western, impatient of Parson Sup- 
 pie s intervention, says to him, " Arn t in 
 pulpit now ; when art a got up there then I 
 never mind what dost say." I must not 
 forget to say a word of his dialogue, which, 
 except where he wishes to show off his at 
 tainments in classical criticism, as in some 
 chapters of "Amelia," is altogether so ad 
 mirably spirited and characteristic that it 
 makes us wonder at his failure as a dram 
 atist. We may read Fielding s character 
 clearly in his books, for it was not complex, 
 but especially in his "Voyage to Lisbon," 
 where he reveals it in artless inadvertence. 
 He was a lovingly thoughtful husband, a 
 tender father, a good brother, a useful and 
 sagacious magistrate. He was courageous, 
 gentle, thoroughly conscious of his own dig 
 nity as a gentleman, and able to make that 
 dignity respected. If we seek for a single 
 characteristic which more than any other 
 would sum him up, we should say that it 
 was his absolute manliness, a manliness in 
 its type English from top to toe. It is emi 
 nently fitting, therefore, that the reproduc 
 tion of his features, which I am about to 
 unveil, should be from the hand of a woman. 
 
88 FIELDING. 
 
 Let me close with a quotation which was a 
 favorite with Fielding : 
 
 Verum ubi plura nitent, . . . non ego paucis 
 Offendar maculis, quas aut incuria fudit, 
 Aut humana parum cavit natura. 
 
COLERIDGE. 
 
 ADDRESS ON UNVEILING THE BUST OF COLERIDGE, 
 IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY, 7 MAY, 1885. 
 
COLERIDGE. 
 
 I SHOULD have preferred for many rea 
 sons, on which I need not dwell, for they 
 must be present to the minds of all who hear 
 me, that the duty I have undertaken to per 
 form here to-day had fallen to other hands. 
 But the fact that this memorial of one who, 
 if not a great poet and a great teacher, had 
 in him the almost over-abundant materials 
 of both, is the gift of one of my countrymen, 
 the late Rev. Dr. Mercer, of Newport, Rhode 
 Island, through his executrix, Mrs. Pell, 
 seems to supply that argument of fitness 
 that would otherwise have been absent. It 
 does more, and for this I prize it the more ; 
 it adds a fresh proof, if any were needed, 
 that not all the waters of that ocean which 
 divides but cannot divorce them can wash 
 out of the consciousness of either nation the 
 feeling that we hold our intellectual property 
 in common, that we own allegiance to the 
 
92 COLERIDGE. 
 
 same moral and literary traditions, and that 
 the fame of those who have shed lustre on 
 our race, as it is an undivided inheritance, 
 so it imposes an equal debt of gratitude, an 
 equal responsibility, on the two great branches 
 of it. Twice before I have had the honor 
 of speaking within the precincts of this 
 structure, the double sanctuary of religion 
 and renown, surely the most venerable of 
 ecclesiastical buildings to men of English 
 blood. Once again I was a silent spectator 
 while his body was laid here to mingle with 
 consecrated earth who more deeply than any 
 other in modern times had penetrated with 
 the ferment of his thought the thinking of 
 mankind, an event of deep significance as 
 the proclamation of that truce between sci 
 ence and religion which is, let us hope, the 
 forerunner of their ultimate reconciliation. 
 When I spoke here it was in commemora 
 tion of personal friends, one of them the late 
 Dean Stanley, dear to all who knew him ; 
 the other an American poet, dear to all who 
 speak the English tongue. It is to com 
 memorate another friend that I come here 
 to-day, for who so worthy of the name as 
 one who was our companion and teacher in 
 the happiest hours of our youth, made doubly 
 
COLERIDGE. 93 
 
 happy by the charm of his genius, and who 
 to our old age brings back, if not the pres 
 ence, at least the radiant image of the youth 
 we have lost ? Surely there are no friends 
 so constant as the poets, and among them, I 
 think, none more faithful than Coleridge. 
 I am glad to have a share in this repara 
 tion of a long injustice, for as we looked 
 about us hitherto in Poet s Corner we were 
 tempted to ask, as Cavalcante dei Cavalcanti 
 did of Dante, If these are here through lof 
 tiness of genius, where is he? It is just 
 fifty-one years ago that I became the pos 
 sessor of an American reprint of Galignani s 
 edition of Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats in 
 one volume. It was a pirated book, and I 
 trust I may be pardoned for the delight I 
 had in it. I take comfort from the thought 
 that there must be many a Scottish minister 
 and laird now in Heaven who liked their 
 claret none the less that it had paid no tribute 
 to the House of Hanover. I have heard 
 this trinity of poets taxed with incongruity. 
 As for me, I was grateful for such infinite 
 riches in a little room, and never thought of 
 looking a Pegasus in the mouth whose triple 
 burden proved a stronger back than that 
 even of the Templars traditional steed. 
 
94 COLERIDGE. 
 
 Much later, but still long ago, I read the 
 " Friend," the " Biographia Literaria," and 
 other prose works of Coleridge. In what 
 may be given me to say I shall be obliged to 
 trust chiefly to a memory which at my time 
 of life is gradually becoming one of her 
 own reminiscences, and is forced to com 
 pound as best she may with her inexorable 
 creditor Oblivion. But perhaps she will 
 serve me all the better for the matter in 
 hand, for what is proper here is at most 
 a rapid generalization rather than a demon 
 stration in detail of his claims to grateful 
 remembrance. I shall naturally trust my 
 self to judge him by his literary rather than 
 by his metaphysical achievement. In the lat 
 ter region I cannot help being reminded of 
 the partiality he so often betrays for clouds, 
 and see him, to use his own words, " making 
 the shifting clouds seem what you please," 
 or "a traveller go from mount to mount 
 through cloudland, gorgeous land." Or 
 sometimes I think of him as an alchemist in 
 search of the philosopher s stone, and strip 
 ping the lead, not only from his own roof, 
 but from that of the parish church itself, to 
 quench the fiery thirst of his alembic. He 
 seems never to have given up the hope of 
 
COLERIDGE, 95 
 
 finding in the imagination some universal 
 solvent, some magisterium majus, by which 
 the lead of skepticism should be transmuted 
 into the pure gold of faith, or, at least, per 
 suaded to believe itself so. But we should 
 not forget that many earnest and superior 
 minds found his cloud castles solid habita 
 tions, nor that alchemy was the nursing 
 mother of chemistry. He certainly was a 
 main influence in showing the English mind 
 how it could emancipate itself from the vul 
 garizing tyranny of common sense, and teach 
 ing it to recognize in the imagination an im 
 portant factor not only in the happiness but 
 in the destiny of man. In criticism he was, 
 indeed, a teacher and interpreter whose ser 
 vice was incalculable. He owed much to 
 Lessing, something to Schiller, and more to 
 the younger Schlegel, but he owed most 
 to his own sympathetic and penetrative im 
 agination. This was the lifted torch (to 
 borrow his own words again) that bade the 
 starry walls of passages, dark before to the 
 apprehension of even the most intelligent 
 reader, sparkle with a lustre, latent in them 
 to be sure, but not all their own. As John 
 son said of Burke, he wound into his subject 
 like a serpent. His analysis was elucidative 
 
96 COLERIDGE. 
 
 mainly, if you will, but could not have been 
 so except in virtue of the processes of con 
 structive and philosophical criticism that had 
 gone on so long in his mind as to make its 
 subtle apprehension seem an instinct. As 
 he was the first to observe some of the sky s 
 appearances and some of the shyer revela 
 tions of outward nature, so he was also first 
 in noting some of the more occult phenom- 
 ( ena of thought and emotion. It is a criti 
 cism of parts and passages, and was scat 
 tered carelessly in obiter dicta, but it was 
 not a bringing of the brick as a specimen of 
 the whole house. It was comparative anat 
 omy, far rather, which from a single bone re 
 constructs the entire living organism. Many 
 of his hints and suggestions are more preg 
 nant than whole treatises, as where he says 
 that the wit of Hudibras is the wit of 
 thought. 
 
 But what I think constitutes his great 
 power, as it certainly is his greatest charm, 
 is the perpetual presence of imagination, as 
 constant a quality with him as fancy is with 
 Calderon. She was his lifelong housemate, 
 if not always hanging over his shoulders 
 and whispering in his ear, yet within easy 
 call, like the Abra of Prior 
 
COLERIDGE. 97 
 
 Abra was with him ere he spoke her name, 
 And if he called another, Abra came. 
 
 It was she who gave him that power of sym 
 pathy which made his Wallenstein what I 
 may call the most original translation in our 
 language, unless some of the late Mr. Fitz 
 gerald s be reckoned such. He was not ex 
 act any more than Chapman. The molten 
 material of his mind, too abundant for the 
 capacity of the mould, overflowed it in 
 gushes of fiery excess. But the main object 
 of translation he accomplishes. Poetry is 
 reproduced as poetry, and genius shows it 
 self as genius, patent even in the march of 
 the verse. As a poet, the impression he 
 made upon his greater contemporaries will, 
 I believe, be the ultimate verdict of criti 
 cism. They all thought of him what Scott 
 said of him, " No man has all the resources 
 of poetry in such profusion. . . . His fancy 
 and diction would long ago have placed him 
 above all his contemporaries had they been 
 under the direction of a sound judgment and 
 a steady will." No doubt we have in Cole 
 ridge the most striking example in literature 
 of a great genius given in trust to a nerve 
 less will and a fitful purpose. But I think 
 the secret of his doing no more in poetry is 
 
98 COLERIDGE. 
 
 to be found in the fact that the judgment, so 
 far from being absent, grew to be there in 
 excess. His critical sense rose like a forbid 
 ding apparition in the path of his poetic pro 
 duction. I have heard of a military engineer 
 who knew so well how a bridge should be 
 built that he could never build one. It cer 
 tainly was not wholly indolence that was to 
 blame in Coleridge s case, for though he used 
 to say early in life that he had no " finger 
 industry," yet he left behind him a mass of 
 correspondence, and his letters are generally 
 long. But I do not care to discuss a ques 
 tion the answer to which must be left mainly 
 to conjecture or to the instinct of individual 
 temperament. It is enough for us here that 
 he has written some of the most poetical 
 poetry in the language, and one poem, the 
 " Ancient Mariner," not only unparalleled, 
 but unapproached in its kind, and that kind 
 of the rarest. It is marvellous in its mas 
 tery over that delightfully fortuitous incon 
 sequence that is the adamantine logic of 
 dreamland. Coleridge has taken the old 
 ballad measure and given to it by an inde 
 finable charm wholly his own all the sweet 
 ness, all the melody and compass of a sym 
 phony. And how picturesque it is in the 
 
COLERIDGE. 99 
 
 proper sense of the word. I know nothing 
 like it. There is not a description in it. It 
 is all picture. Descriptive poets generally 
 confuse us with multiplicity of detail ; we 
 cannot see their forest for the trees ; but 
 Coleridge never errs in this way. With in 
 stinctive tact he touches the right chord of 
 association, and is satisfied, as we also are. 
 I should find it hard to explain the singular 
 charm of his diction, there is so much nicety 
 of art and purpose in it, whether for music 
 or meaning. Nor does it need any explana 
 tion, for we all feel it. The words seem com 
 mon words enough, but in the order of them, 
 in the choice, variety, and position of the 
 vowel -sounds they become magical. The 
 most decrepit vocable in the language throws 
 away its crutches to dance and sing at his 
 piping. I cannot think it a personal pecul 
 iarity, but a matter of universal experience, 
 that more bits of Coleridge have imbedded 
 themselves in my memory than of any other 
 poet who delighted my youth unless I 
 should except the sonnets of Shakespeare. 
 This argues perfectness of expression. Let 
 me cite an example or two : 
 
 The sun s rim dips, the stars rush out, 
 At one stride comes the dark ; 
 
100 COLERIDGE. 
 
 With far-heard whisper through the dark 
 Off shot the spectre barque. 
 
 Or take this as a bit of landscape : 
 
 Beneath yon birch with silver bark 
 And boughs so pendulous and fair, 
 The brook falls scattered down the rock, 
 And all is mossy there. 
 
 It is a perfect little picture and seems so 
 easily done. But try to do something like 
 it. Coleridge s words have the unashamed 
 nakedness of Scripture, of the Eden of dic 
 tion ere the voluble serpent had entered it. 
 This felicity of speech in Coleridge s best 
 verse is the more remarkable because it was 
 an acquisition. His earlier poems are apt 
 to be turgid, in his prose there is too often a 
 languor of prof usen ess, and there are pages 
 where he seems to be talking to himself and 
 not to us, as I have heard a guide do in the 
 tortuous caverns of the Catacombs when he 
 \ was doubtful if he had not lost his way. But 
 when his genius runs freely and full in his 
 prose, the style, as he said of Pascal, " is a 
 garment of light." He knew all our best 
 prose and knew the secret of its composition. 
 When he is well inspired, as in his best po 
 etry he commonly is, he gives us the very 
 quintessence of perception, the clearly crys- 
 
COLERIDGE. 101 
 
 tallized precipitation of all that is most pre 
 cious in the ferment of impression after the 
 impertinent and obtrusive particulars have 
 evaporated from the memory. It is the pure 
 visual ecstacy disengaged from the confused 
 and confusing material that gave it birth. 
 It seems the very beatitude of artless simpli 
 city, and is the most finished product of art. 
 I know nothing so perfect in its kind since 
 Dante. The tiny landscape I have cited re 
 minds me in its laconic adequacy of 
 
 Li ruscelletti che de verdi colli 
 
 Del Casentin discendon giuso in Arno, 
 
 Faccendo i lor canali e freddi e molli. 
 
 I confess that I prefer the " Ancient Mar 
 iner " to " Christabel," fine as that poem is 
 in parts and tantalizing as it is in the sug 
 gestion of deeper meanings than were ever 
 there. The " Ancient Mariner " seems to 
 have come of itself. In " Christabel " I 
 fancy him saying, " Go to, let us write an 
 imaginative poem." It never could be fin* 
 ished on those terms. 
 
 This is not the time nor the place to pass 
 judgment on Coleridge the man. Doubtless 
 it would have been happier for him had he 
 been endowed with the business faculty that 
 makes his friend Wordsworth so almost 
 
102 COLERIDGE. 
 
 irritatingly respectable. But would it have 
 been happier for us ? We are here to-day 
 not to consider what Coleridge owed to him 
 self, to his family, or to the world, but what 
 we owe to him. Let us at least not volun 
 teer to draw his frailties from their dread 
 abode. Our own are a far more profitable 
 subject of contemplation. Let the man of 
 imaginative temperament, who has never 
 procrastinated, who has made all that was 
 possible of his powers, cast the first stone. 
 The cairn, I think, will not be as tall as 
 Hector s. With Coleridge I believe the 
 opium to have been congenital, and if we 
 may judge by many a profoundly pathetic 
 cry both in his poems and his letters, he 
 answered grievously for his frailties during 
 the last thirty years of his life. In an un 
 published letter of his he says, speaking of 
 another, but thinking certainly of himself, 
 "An unfortunate man, enemy to himself 
 only, and like all of that character expiat 
 ing his faults by suffering beyond what the 
 severest judge would have inflicted as their 
 due punishment." There let us leave it, for 
 nothing is more certain than that our per 
 sonal weaknesses exact the uttermost far 
 thing of penalty from us while we live. 
 
COLERIDGE. 103 
 
 Even in the dilapidation of his powers, due 
 chiefly, if you will, to his own unthrifty man 
 agement of them, we might, making proper 
 deductions, apply to him what Mark Antony 
 says of the dead Caesar 
 
 He was the ruins of the noblest man 
 That ever lived in the tide of time. 
 
 Whatever may have been his faults and 
 weaknesses, he was the man of all his gener 
 ation to whom we should most unhesitatingly 
 allow the distinction of genius, that is, of 
 one authentically possessed from time to 
 time by some influence that made him better 
 and greater than himself. If he lost himself 
 too much in what Mr. Pater has admirably 
 called " impassioned contemplation," he has 
 at least left us such a legacy as only genius, 
 and genius not always, can leave. It is for 
 this that we pay him this homage of mem 
 ory. He himself has said that 
 
 It seems like stories from the land of spirits 
 If any man obtain that which he merits, 
 Or any merit that which he attains. 
 
 Both conditions are fulfilled to-day. 
 
BOOKS AND LIBRARIES. 
 
 ADDRESS AT THE OPENING OF THE FREE PUBLIC 
 
 LIBRARY IN CHELSEA, MASSACHUSETTS, 
 
 22 DECEMBER, 1886. 
 
BOOKS AND LIBRARIES. 
 
 A FEW years ago my friend, Mr. Alex 
 ander Ireland, published a very interesting 
 volume which he called " The Book-Lover s 
 Enchiridion," the handbook, that is to say, 
 of those who love books. It was made up 
 of extracts from the writings of a great 
 variety of distinguished men, ancient and 
 modern, in praise of books. It was a chorus 
 of many voices in many tongues, a hymn of 
 gratitude and praise, full of such piety and 
 fervor as can be paralleled only in songs ded 
 icated to the supreme Power, the supreme 
 Wisdom and the supreme Love. Nay, there 
 is a glow of enthusiasm and sincerity in it 
 which is often painfully wanting in those 
 other too commonly mechanical compositions. 
 We feel at once that here it is out of the 
 fulness of the heart, yes, and of the head, 
 too, that the mouth speaketh. Here was 
 none of that compulsory commonplace which 
 
108 BOOKS AND LIBRARIES. 
 
 is wont to characterize those " testimonials 
 of celebrated authors," by means of which 
 publishers sometimes strive to linger out the 
 passage of a hopeless book toward its requi- 
 escat in oblivion. These utterances which 
 Mr. Ireland has gathered lovingly together 
 are stamped with that spontaneousness which 
 is the mint-mark of all sterling speech. It 
 is true that they are mostly, as is only nat 
 ural, the utterances of literary men, and 
 there is a well-founded proverbial distrust 
 of herring that bear only the brand of the 
 packer, and not that of the sworn inspector. 
 But to this objection a cynic might answer 
 with the question, " Are authors so prone, 
 then, to praise the works of other people 
 that we are to doubt them when they do it 
 unasked?" Perhaps the wisest thing I 
 could have done to-night would have been to 
 put upon the stand some of the more weighty 
 of this cloud of witnesses. But since your 
 invitation implied that I should myself say 
 something, I will endeavor to set before you 
 a few of the commonplaces of the occasion, 
 as they may be modified by passing through 
 my own mind, or by having made themselves 
 felt in my own experience. 
 
 The greater part of Mr. Ireland s wit- 
 
BOOKS AND LIBRARIES. 109 
 
 nesses testify to the comfort and consolation 
 they owe to books, to the refuge they have 
 found in them from sorrow or misfortune, 
 to their friendship, never estranged and 
 outliving all others. This testimony they 
 volunteered. Had they been asked, they 
 would have borne evidence as willingly to 
 the higher and more general uses of books 
 in their service to the commonwealth, as 
 well as to the individual man. Consider, 
 for example, how a single page of Burke 
 may emancipate the young student of poli 
 tics from narrow views and merely contem 
 poraneous judgments. Our English ances 
 tors, with that common-sense which is one 
 of the most useful, though not one of the 
 most engaging, properties of the race, made 
 a rhyming proverb, which says that 
 
 When land and goods are gone and spent, 
 Then learning 1 is most excellent ; 
 
 and this is true so far as it goes, though it 
 goes perhaps hardly far enough. The law 
 also calls only the earth and what is immov 
 ably attached to it real property, but I am of 
 opinion that those only are real possessions 
 which abide with a man after he has been 
 stripped of those others falsely so called, 
 and which alone save him from seeming and 
 
110 BOOKS AND LIBRARIES. 
 
 from being the miserable forked radish to 
 which the bitter scorn of Lear degraded 
 every child of Adam. The riches of scholar 
 ship, the benignities of literature defy for 
 tune and outlive calamity. They are beyond 
 the reach of thief or moth or rust. As they 
 cannot be inherited, so they cannot be alien 
 ated. But they may be shared, they may 
 be distributed, and it is the object and office 
 of a free public library to perform these 
 beneficent functions. 
 
 " Books," says Wordsworth, " are a real 
 world," and he was thinking, doubtless, of 
 such books as are not merely the triumphs 
 of pure intellect, however supreme, but of 
 those in which intellect infused with the 
 sense of beauty aims rather to produce de 
 light than conviction, or, if conviction, then 
 through intuition rather than formal logic, 
 and, leaving what Donne wisely calls 
 
 Unconcerning things matters of fact 
 
 to science and the understanding, seeks to 
 give ideal expression to those abiding reali 
 ties of the spiritual world for which the out 
 ward and visible world serves at best but as 
 the husk and symbol. Am I wrong in using 
 the word realities ? wrong in insisting on the 
 
BOOKS AND LIBRARIES. HI 
 
 distinction between the real and the actual ? 
 in assuming for the ideal an existence as 
 absolute and self subsistent as that which 
 appeals to our senses, nay, so often cheats 
 them, in the matter of fact ? How very 
 small a part of the world we truly live in is 
 represented by what speaks to us through 
 the senses when compared with that vast 
 realm of the mind which is peopled by 
 memory and imagination, and with such 
 shining inhabitants ! These walls, these 
 faces, what are they in comparison with the 
 countless images, the innumerable popula 
 tion which every one of us can summon up 
 to the tiny show-box of the brain, in mate 
 rial breadth scarce a span, yet infinite as 
 space and time? and in what, I pray, are 
 those we gravely call historical characters, 
 of which each new historian strains his neck 
 to get a new and different view, in any 
 sense more real than the personages of fic 
 tion? Do not serious and earnest men dis 
 cuss Hamlet as they would Cromwell or 
 Lincoln ? Does Caesar, does Alaric, hold ex 
 istence by any other or stronger tenure than 
 the Christian of Bunyan or the Don Quixote 
 of Cervantes or the Antigone of Sophocles ? 
 Is not the history which is luminous because 
 
112 BOOKS AND LIBRARIES. 
 
 of an indwelling and perennial truth to na 
 ture, because of that light which never was 
 on land or sea, really more true, in the high 
 est sense, than many a weary chronicle with 
 names and date and place in which " an 
 Amurath to Amurath succeeds " ? Do we 
 know as much of any authentic Danish 
 prince as of Hamlet ? 
 
 But to come back a little nearer to Chel 
 sea and the occasion that has called us to 
 gether. The founders of New England, if 
 sometimes, when they found it needful, an 
 impracticable, were always a practical people. 
 Their first care, no doubt, was for an ade 
 quate supply of powder, and they encouraged 
 the manufacture of musket bullets by enact 
 ing that they should pass as currency at a 
 farthing each a coinage nearer to its nom 
 inal value and not heavier than some with 
 which we are familiar. Their second care 
 was that " good learning should not perish 
 from among us," and to this end they at once 
 established the Grammar (Latin) School in 
 Boston, and soon after the college at Cam 
 bridge. The nucleus of this was, as you all 
 know, the bequest in money by John Har 
 vard. Hardly less important, however, was 
 the legacy of his library, a collection of good 
 
BOOKS AND LIBRARIES. 113 
 
 books, inconsiderable measured by the stand 
 ard of to-day, but very considerable then as 
 the possession of a private person. From 
 that little acorn what an oak has sprung, 
 and from its acorns again what a vocal for 
 est, as old Howell would have called it, old 
 Howell whom I love to cite, because his 
 name gave their title to the " Essays of 
 Elia," and is borne with slight variation by 
 one of the most delightful of modern au 
 thors. It was, in my judgment, those two 
 foundations, more than anything else, which 
 gave to New England character its bent, and 
 to Boston that literary supremacy which, I 
 am told, she is in danger of losing, but which 
 she will not lose till she and all the world 
 lose Holmes. 
 
 The opening of a free public library, then, 
 is a most important event in the history of 
 any town. A college training is an excel 
 lent thing ; but, after all, the better part of 
 every man s education is that which he gives 
 himself, and it is for this that a good library 
 should furnish the opportunity and the means. 
 I have sometimes thought that our public 
 schools undertook to teach too much, and 
 that the older system, which taught merely 
 the three R s, and taught them well, leaving 
 
114 BOOKS AND LIBRARIES. 
 
 natural selection to decide who should go 
 farther, was the better. However this may 
 be, all that is primarily needful in order to 
 use a library is the ability to read. I say 
 primarily, for there must also be the inclina 
 tion, and, after that, some guidance in read 
 ing well. Formerly the duty of a librarian 
 was considered too much that of a watch-dog, 
 to keep people as much as possible away 
 from the books, and to hand these over to 
 his successor as little worn by use as he 
 could. Librarians now, it is pleasant to see, 
 have a different notion of their trust, and 
 are in the habit of preparing, for the direc 
 tion of the inexperienced, lists of such books 
 as they think best worth reading. Cata 
 loguing has also, thanks in great measure to 
 American librarians, become a science, and 
 catalogues, ceasing to be labyrinths without 
 a clew, are furnished with finger-posts at 
 every turn. Subject catalogues again save 
 the beginner a vast deal of time and trouble 
 by supplying him for nothing with one at 
 least of the results of thorough scholarship, 
 the knowing where to look for what he wants. 
 I do not mean by this that there is or can be 
 any short cut to learning, but that there may 
 be, and is, such a short cut to information 
 
BOOKS AND LIBRARIES. 115 
 
 that will make learning more easily acces 
 sible. 
 
 But have you ever rightly considered what 
 the mere ability to read means ? That it is 
 the key which admits us to the whole world 
 of thought and fancy and imagination? to 
 the company of saint and sage, of the wisest 
 and the wittiest at their wisest and wittiest 
 moment ? That it enables us to see with the 
 keenest eyes, hear with the finest ears, and 
 listen to the sweetest voices of all time ? 
 More than that, it annihilates time and space 
 for us ; it revives for us without a miracle 
 the Age of Wonder, endowing us with the 
 shoes of swiftness and the cap of darkness, 
 so that we walk invisible like fern-seed, and 
 witness unharmed the plague at Athens or 
 Florence or London ; accompany Caesar on 
 his marches, or look in on Catiline in coun- 
 fcil with his fellow conspirators, or Guy 
 Fawkes in the cellar of St. Stephen s. We 
 i often hear of people who will descend to any 
 servility, submit to any insult, for the sake 
 of getting themselves or their children into 
 what is euphemistically called good society. 
 Did it ever occur to them that there is a 
 select society of all the centuries to which 
 they and theirs can be admitted for the 
 
116 BOOKS AND LIBRARIES. 
 
 asking, a society, too, which will not involve 
 them in ruinous expense and still more ruin 
 ous waste of time and health and faculties ? 
 Southey tells us that, in his walk one 
 stormy day, he met an old woman, to whom, 
 by way of greeting, he made the rather ob 
 vious remark that it was dreadful weather. 
 She answered, philosophically, that, in her 
 opinion, " any weather was better than 
 none ! " I should be half inclined to say 
 that any reading was better than none, al 
 laying the crudeness of the statement by the 
 Yankee proverb, which tells us that, though 
 " all deacons are good, there s odds in dea 
 cons." Among books, certainly, there is 
 much variety of company, ranging from the 
 best to the worst, from Plato to Zola, and 
 the first lesson in reading well is that which 
 teaches us to distinguish between literature 
 and merely printed matter. The choice lies 
 wholly with ourselves. We have the key 
 put into our hands ; shall we unlock the 
 pantry or the oratory ? There is a Walla- 
 chian legend which, like most of the fig 
 ments of popular fancy, has a moral in it. 
 One Bakala, a good-for-nothing kind of fel 
 low in his way, having had the luck to offer 
 a sacrifice especially well pleasing to God, 
 
BOOKS AND LIBRARIES. 117 
 
 is taken up into heaven. He finds the Al 
 mighty sitting in something like the best 
 room of a Wallachian peasant s cottage 
 there is always a profound pathos in the 
 homeliness of the popular imagination, 
 forced, like the princess in the fairy tale, to 
 weave its semblance of gold tissue out of 
 straw. On being asked what reward he de 
 sires for the good service he has done, Ba- 
 kala, who had always passionately longed to 
 be the owner of a bagpipe, seeing a half 
 worn-out one lying among some rubbish in 
 a corner of the room, begs eagerly that it 
 may be bestowed on him. The Lord, with 
 a smile of pity at the meanness of his choice, 
 grants him his boon, and Bakala goes back 
 to earth delighted with his prize. With an 
 infinite possibility within his reach, with the 
 choice of wisdom, of power, of beauty at his 
 tongue s end, he asked according to his kind, 
 and his sordid wish is answered with a gift 
 as sordid. Yes, there is a choice in books as 
 in friends, and the mind sinks or rises to the 
 level of its habitual society, is subdued, as 
 Shakespeare says of the dyer s hand, to what 
 it works in. Cato s advice, cum bonis am- 
 bula, consort with the good, is quite as true 
 if we extend it to books, for they, too, in- 
 
118 BOOKS AND LIBRARIES. 
 
 sensibly give away their own nature to the 
 mind that converses with them. They either 
 beckon upwards or drag down. Du gleichst 
 dem Geist den du begreifst, says the World 
 Spirit to Faust, and this is true of the as 
 cending no less than of the descending scale. 
 Every book we read may be made a round 
 in the ever-lengthening ladder by which we 
 climb to knowledge and to that temper 
 ance and serenity of mind which, as it is the 
 ripest fruit of Wisdom, is also the sweetest. 
 But this can only be if we read such books 
 as make us think, and read them in such a 
 way as helps them to do so, that is, by en 
 deavoring to judge them, and thus to make 
 them an exercise rather than a relaxation 
 of the mind. Desultory reading, except as 
 conscious pastime, hebetates the brain and 
 slackens the bow-string of Will. It commu 
 nicates as little intelligence as the messages 
 that run along the telegraph wire to the 
 birds that perch on it. Few men learn the 
 highest use of books. After lifelong study 
 many a man discovers too late that to have 
 had the philosopher s stone availed nothing 
 without the philosopher to use it. Many a 
 scholarly life, stretched like a talking wire to 
 bring the wisdom of antiquity into commu- 
 
BOOKS AND LIBRARIES. 119 
 
 nion with the present, can at last yield us no 
 better news than the true accent of a Greek 
 verse, or the translation of some filthy noth 
 ing scrawled on the walls of a brothel by 
 some Pompeian idler. And it is certainly 
 true that the material of thought reacts 
 upon the thought itself. Shakespeare him 
 self would, have been commonplace had he 
 been paddocked in a thinly-shaven vocab 
 ulary, and Phidias, had he worked in wax, 
 only a more inspired Mrs. Jarley. A man 
 is known, says the proverb, by the com 
 pany he keeps, and not only so, but made by 
 it. Milton makes his fallen angels grow 
 small to enter the infernal council room, but 
 the soul, which God meant to be the spa 
 cious chamber where high thoughts and gen 
 erous aspirations might commune together, 
 shrinks and narrows itself to the measure of 
 the meaner company that is wont to gather 
 there, hatching conspiracies against our bet 
 ter selves. We are apt to wonder at the 
 scholarship of the men of three centuries 
 ago and at a certain dignity of phrase that 
 characterizes them. They were scholars be 
 cause they did not read so many things as 
 we. They had fewer books, but these were 
 of the best. Their speech was noble, be- 
 
120 BOOKS AND LIBRARIES. 
 
 cause they lunched with Plutarch and supped 
 with Plato. We spend as much time over 
 print as they did, but instead of communing 
 with the choice thoughts of choice spirits, 
 and unconsciously acquiring the grand man 
 ner of that supreme society, we diligently in 
 form ourselves, and cover the continent with 
 a cobweb of telegraphs to inform ,us, of such 
 inspiring facts as that a horse belonging 
 to Mr. Smith ran away on Wednesday, se 
 riously damaging a valuable carryall; that 
 a son of Mr. Brown swallowed a hickory nut 
 on Thursday ; and that a gravel bank caved 
 in and buried Mr. Robinson alive on Friday. 
 Alas, it is we ourselves that are getting 
 buried alive under this avalanche of earthy 
 impertinences ! It is we who, while we might 
 each in his humble way be helping our fel 
 lows into the right path, or adding one block 
 to the climbing spire of a fine soul, are will 
 ing to become mere sponges saturated from 
 the stagnant goosepond of village gossip. 
 This is the kind of news we compass the 
 globe to catch, fresh from Bungtown Centre, 
 when we might have it fresh from heaven by 
 the electric lines of poet or prophet ! It is 
 bad enough that we should be compelled to 
 know so many nothings, but it is downright 
 
BOOKS AND LIBRARIES. 121 
 
 intolerable that we must wash so many bar 
 row-loads of gravel to find a grain of mica 
 after all. And then to be told that the abil 
 ity to read makes us all shareholders in the 
 Bonanza Mine of Universal Intelligence ! 
 
 One is sometimes asked by young people 
 to recommend a course of reading. My 
 advice would be that they should confine 
 themselves to the supreme books in what 
 ever literature, or still better to choose some 
 one great author, and make themselves thor 
 oughly familiar with him. For, as all roads 
 lead to Rome, so do they likewise lead away 
 from it, and you will find that, in order to 
 understand perfectly and weigh exactly any 
 vital piece of literature, you will be gradu 
 ally and pleasantly persuaded to excursions 
 and explorations of which you little dreamed 
 when you began, and will find yourselves 
 scholars before you are aware. For remem 
 ber that there is nothing less profitable than 
 scholarship for the mere sake of scholarship, 
 nor anything more wearisome in the attain 
 ment. But the moment you have a definite 
 aim, attention is quickened, the mother of 
 memory, and all that you acquire groups 
 and arranges itself in an order that is lucid, 
 because everywhere and always it is in intel- 
 
122 BOOKS AND LIBRARIES. 
 
 ligent relation to a central object of constant 
 and growing interest. This method also 
 forces upon us the necessity of thinking, 
 which is, after all, the highest result of all 
 education. For what we want is not learn 
 ing, but knowledge; that is, the power to 
 make learning answer its true end as a 
 quickener of intelligence and a widener of 
 our intellectual sympathies. I do not mean 
 to say that every one is fitted by nature or 
 inclination for a definite course of study, or 
 indeed for serious study in any sense. I am 
 quite willing that these should " browse in a 
 library," as Dr. Johnson called it, to their 
 hearts content. It is, perhaps, the only way 
 in which time may be profitably wasted. 
 But desultory reading will not make a " full 
 man," as Bacon understood it, of one who 
 has not Johnson s memory, his power of as 
 similation, and, above all, his comprehensive 
 view of the relations of things. "Read 
 not," says Lord Bacon, in his Essay of Stud 
 ies, " to contradict and confute ; nor to be 
 lieve and take for granted ; nor to find talk 
 and discourse ; but to weigh and consider. 
 Some books are to be tasted, others to be 
 swallowed, and some few to be chewed and 
 digested ; that is, some books are to be read 
 
BOOKS AND LIBRARIES. 123 
 
 only in parts ; others to be read, but not cu 
 riously [carefully], and some few to be read 
 wholly and with diligence and attention. 
 Some books also may be read by deputy" 
 This is weighty and well said, and I would 
 call your attention especially to the wise 
 words with which the passage closes. The 
 best books are not always those which lend 
 themselves to discussion and comment, but 
 those (like Montaigne s Essays) which dis 
 cuss and comment ourselves. 
 
 I have been speaking of such books as 
 should be chosen for profitable reading. A 
 public library, of course, must be far wider 
 in its scope. It should contain something 
 for all tastes, as well as the material for a 
 thorough grounding in all branches of knowl 
 edge. It should be rich in books of refer 
 ence, in encyclopaedias, where one may learn 
 without cost of research what things are 
 generally known. For it is far more useful 
 to know these than to know those that are 
 not generally known. Not to know them is 
 the defect of those half-trained and there 
 fore hasty men who find a mare s nest on 
 every branch of the tree of knowledge. A 
 library should contain ample stores of his- 
 r, which, if it do not always deserve the 
 
124 BOOKS AND LIBRARIES. 
 
 pompous title which Bolingbroke gave it, of 
 philosophy teaching by example, certainly 
 teaches many things profitable for us to 
 know and lay to heart ; teaches, among 
 other things, how much of the present is still 
 held in mortmain by the past ; teaches that, 
 if there be no controlling purpose, there is, 
 at least, a sternly logical sequence in human 
 affairs, and that chance has but a trifling 
 dominion over them ; teaches why things are 
 and must be so and not otherwise, and that, 
 of all hopeless contests, the most hopeless is 
 that which fools are most eager to challenge 
 with the Nature of Things ; teaches, per 
 haps, more than anything else, the value of 
 personal character as a chief factor in what 
 used to be called destiny, for that cause is 
 strong which has not a multitude, but one 
 strong man behind it. History is, indeed, 
 mainly the biography of a few imperial men, 
 and forces home upon us the useful lesson 
 how infinitesimally important our own pri 
 vate affairs are to the universe in general. 
 History is clarified experience, and yet how 
 little do men profit by it ; nay, how should 
 we expect it of those who so seldom are 
 taught anything by their own ! Delusions, 
 especially economical delusions, seem the 
 
BOOKS AND LIBRARIES. 125 
 
 only things that have any chance of an 
 earthly immortality. I would have plenty 
 of biography. It is no insignificant fact 
 that eminent men have always loved their 
 Plutarch, since example, whether for emu 
 lation or avoidance, is never so poignant as 
 when presented to us in a striking personal 
 ity. Autobiographies are also instructive 
 reading to the student of human nature, 
 though generally written by men who are 
 more interesting to themselves than to their 
 fellow men. I have been told that Emerson 
 and George Eliot agreed in thinking Rous 
 seau s "Confessions" the most interesting 
 book they had ever read. 
 
 A public library should also have many 
 and full shelves of political economy, for the 
 dismal science, as Carlyle called it, if it 
 prove nothing else, will go far towards prov 
 ing that theory is the bird in the bush, 
 though she sing more sweetly than the night 
 ingale, and that the millennium will not 
 hasten its coming in deference to the most 
 convincing string of resolutions that were 
 ever unanimously adopted in public meeting. 
 It likewise induces in us a profound and 
 wholesome distrust of social panaceas. 
 
 I would have a public library abundant 
 
126 BOOKS AND LIBRARIES. 
 
 in translations of the best books in all lan 
 guages, for, though no work of genius can 
 be adequately translated, because every word 
 of it is permeated with what Milton calls 
 " the precious life-blood of a master spirit " 
 which cannot be transfused into the veins of 
 the best translation, yet some acquaintance 
 with foreign and ancient literatures has the 
 liberalizing effect of foreign travel. He 
 who travels by translation travels more has 
 tily and superficially, but brings home some 
 thing that is worth having, nevertheless. 
 Translations properly used, by shortening 
 the labor of acquisition, add as many years 
 to our lives as they subtract from the pro 
 cesses of our education. Looked at from 
 any but the aesthetic point of view, transla 
 tions retain whatever property was in their 
 originals to enlarge, liberalize, and refine the 
 mind. At the same time I would have also 
 the originals of these translated books as a 
 temptation to the study of languages, which 
 has a special use and importance of its own 
 in teaching us to understand the niceties of 
 our mother tongue. The practice of transla 
 tion, by making us deliberate in the choice 
 of the best equivalent of the foreign word in 
 our own language, has likewise the advan- 
 
BOOKS AND LIBRARIES. 127 
 
 tage of continually schooling us in one of 
 the main elements of a good style, pre 
 cision ; and precision of thought is not only 
 exemplified by precision of language, but is 
 largely dependent on the habit of it. 
 
 In such a library the sciences should be 
 fully represented, that men may at least 
 learn to know in what a marvellous museum 
 they live, what a wonder-worker is giving 
 them an exhibition daily for nothing. Nor 
 let Art be forgotten in all its many forms, 
 not as the antithesis of Science, but as her 
 elder or fairer sister, whom we love all the 
 more that her usefulness cannot be demon 
 strated in dollars and cents. I should be 
 thankful if every day-laborer among us could 
 have his mind illumined, as those of Athens 
 and of Florence had, with some image of 
 what is best in architecture, painting, and 
 sculpture, to train his crude perceptions and 
 perhaps call out latent faculties. I should 
 like to see the works of Ruskin within the 
 reach of every artisan among us. For I 
 hope some day that the delicacy of touch 
 and accuracy of eye that have made our me 
 chanics in some departments the best in the 
 world, may give us the same supremacy in 
 works of wider range and more purely ideal 
 scope. 
 
128 BOOKS AND LIBRARIES. 
 
 Voyages and travels I would also have, 
 good store, especially the earlier, when the 
 world was fresh and unhackneyed and men 
 saw things invisible to the modern eye. 
 They are fast sailing ships to waft away from 
 present trouble to the Fortunate Isles. 
 
 To wash down the drier morsels that every 
 library must necessarily offer at its board, 
 let there be plenty of imaginative literature, 
 and let its range be not too narrow to stretch 
 from Dante to the elder Dumas. The world 
 of the imagination is not the world of 
 abstraction and nonentity, as some con 
 ceive, but a world formed out of chaos by a 
 sense of the beauty that is in man and the 
 earth on which he dwells. It is the realm 
 of Might-be, our haven of refuge from the 
 shortcomings and disillusions of life. It is, 
 to quote Spenser, who knew it well 
 
 The world s sweet inn from care and wearisome turmoil. 
 
 Do we believe, then, that God gave us in 
 mockery this splendid faculty of sympathy 
 with things that are a joy forever? For my 
 part, I believe that the love and study of 
 works of imagination is of practical utility 
 in a country so profoundly material (or, as 
 we like to call it, practical) in its leading 
 
BOOKS AND LIBRARIES. 129 
 
 tendencies as ours. The hunger after purely 
 intellectual delights, the content with ideal 
 possessions, cannot but be good for us in 
 maintaining a wholesome balance of the 
 character and of the faculties. I for one 
 shall never be persuaded that Shakespeare 
 left a less useful legacy to his countrymen 
 than Watt. We hold all the deepest, all 
 the highest satisfactions of life as tenants 
 of imagination. Nature will keep up the 
 supply of what are called hard-headed peo 
 ple without our help, and, if it come to 
 that, there are other as good uses for heads 
 as at the end of battering rams. 
 
 I know that there are many excellent peo 
 ple who object to the reading of novels as a 
 waste of time, if not as otherwise harmful. 
 But I think they are trying to outwit nature, 
 who is sure to prove cunninger than they. 
 Look at children. One boy shall want a 
 chest of tools, and one a book, and of those 
 who want books one shall ask for a botany, 
 another for a romance. They will be sure 
 to get what they want, and we are doing a 
 grave wrong to their morals by driving them 
 to do things on the sly, to steal that food 
 which their constitution craves and which 
 is wholesome for them, instead of having it 
 
130 BOOKS AND LIBRARIES. 
 
 freely and frankly given them as the wisest 
 possible diet. If we cannot make a silk 
 purse out of a sow s ear, so neither can we 
 hope to succeed with the opposite experiment. 
 But we may spoil the silk for its legitimate 
 uses. I can conceive of no healthier reading 
 for a boy, or girl either, than Scott s novels, 
 or Cooper s, to speak only of the dead. I 
 have found them very good reading at least 
 for one young man, for one middle-aged man, 
 and for one who is growing old. No, no 
 banish the Antiquary, banish Leather Stock 
 ing, and banish all the world ! Let us not 
 go about to make life duller than it is. 
 
 But I must shut the doors of my imagi 
 nary library or I shall never end. It is left 
 for me to say a few words of cordial acknowl 
 edgment to Mr. Fitz for his judicious and 
 generous gift. I have great pleasure in be 
 lieving that the custom of giving away money 
 during their lifetime (and there is nothing 
 harder for most men to part with, except 
 prejudice) is more common with Americans 
 than with any other people. It is a still 
 greater pleasure to see that the favorite 
 direction of their beneficence is towards the 
 founding of colleges and libraries. My ob 
 servation has led me to believe that there is 
 
BOOKS AND LIBRARIES. 131 
 
 no country in which wealth is so sensible of 
 its obligations as our own. And, as most of 
 our rich men have risen from the ranks, may 
 we not fairly attribute this sympathy with 
 their kind to the benign influence of democ 
 racy rightly understood? My dear and 
 honored friend, George William Curtis, told 
 me that he was sitting in front of the late 
 Mr. Ezra Cornell in a convention, where one 
 of the speakers made a Latin quotation. 
 Mr. Cornell leaned forward and asked for a 
 translation of it, which Mr. Curtis gave him. 
 Mr. Cornell thanked him, and added, " If 
 I can help it, no young man shall grow up 
 in New York hereafter without the chance, 
 at least, of knowing what a Latin quotation 
 means when he hears it." This was the 
 germ of Cornell University, and it found 
 food for its roots in that sympathy and 
 thoughtfulness for others of which I just 
 spoke. This is the healthy side of that 
 good nature which democracy tends to fos 
 ter, and which is so often harmful when it 
 has its root in indolence or indifference ; 
 especially harmful where our public affairs 
 are concerned, and where it is easiest, be 
 cause there we are giving away what belongs 
 to other people. It should be said, how- 
 
132 BOOKS AND LIBRARIES. 
 
 ever, that in this country it is as laudably 
 easy to procure signatures to a subscription 
 paper as it is shamefully so to obtain them 
 for certificates of character and recommen 
 dations to office. And is not this public 
 spirit a national evolution from that frame 
 of mind in which New England was colo 
 nized, and which found expression in these 
 grave words of Robinson and Brewster : 
 " We are knit together as a body in a most 
 strict and sacred bond and covenant of the 
 Lord, of the violation of which we make 
 great conscience, and by virtue whereof we 
 hold ourselves strictly tied to all care of 
 each other s good, and of the whole." Let 
 us never forget the deep and solemn import 
 of these words. The problem before us is 
 to make a whole of our many discordant 
 parts, our many foreign elements, and I 
 know of no way in which this can better be 
 done than by providing a common system of 
 education and a common door of access to 
 the best books by which that education may 
 be continued, broadened, and made fruitful. 
 For it is certain that, whatever we do or 
 leave undone, those discordant parts and 
 foreign elements are to be, whether we will 
 or no, members of that body which Robinson 
 
BOOKS AND LIBRARIES. 133 
 
 and Brewster had in mind, bone of our bone, 
 and flesh of our flesh, for good or ill. I am 
 happy in believing that democracy has 
 enough vigor of constitution to assimilate 
 these seemingly indigestible morsels and 
 transmute them into strength of muscle and 
 symmetry of limb. 
 
 There is no way in which a man can build 
 so secure and lasting a monument for him 
 self as in a public library. Upon that he 
 may confidently allow " Resurgam " to be 
 carved, for, through his good deed, he will 
 rise again in the grateful remembrance and 
 in the lifted and broadened minds and for 
 tified characters of generation after genera 
 tion. The pyramids may forget their build 
 ers, but memorials such as this have longer 
 memories. 
 
 Mr. Fitz has done his part in providing 
 your library with a dwelling. It will be for 
 the citizens of Chelsea to provide it with 
 worthy habitants. So shall they, too, have 
 a share in the noble eulogy of the ancient 
 wise man: "The teachers shall shine as 
 the firmament, and they that turn many to 
 righteousness as the stars forever and ever." 
 
WORDSWORTH. 
 
 ADDRESS AS PRESIDENT OF THE WORDSWORTH SOCIETY, 
 10 MAY, 1884. 
 
WORDSWORTH. 
 
 IN an early volume of the " Philosophical 
 Transactions" there is a paper concerning 
 " A certain kind of lead found in Germany 
 proper for Essays." That it may have been 
 first found in Germany I shall not question, 
 but deposits of this depressing mineral have 
 been discovered since in other countries also, 
 and we are all of us more or less familiar with 
 its presence in the essay, nowhere more 
 than when this takes the shape of a critical 
 dissertation on some favorite poet. Is this, 
 then, what poets are good for, that we may 
 darken them with our elucidations, or bury 
 them out of sight under the gathering silt of 
 our comments? Must we, then, peep and 
 botanize on the rose of dawn or the passion 
 flower of sunset ? I should rather take the 
 counsel of a great poet, the commentaries on 
 whom already make a library in themselves, 
 and say, 
 
 State content!, umana gente, al gut a, 
 
138 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 be satisfied if poetry be delightful, or help 
 ful, or inspiring, or all these together, but 
 do not consider too nicely why it is so. 
 
 I would not have you suppose that I am 
 glancing covertly at what others, from Cole 
 ridge down, have written of Wordsworth. 
 I have read them, including a recent very 
 suggestive contribution of Mr. Swinburne, 
 with no other sense of dissatisfaction than 
 that which springs from " desiring this man s 
 art and that man s scope." No, I am think 
 ing only that whatever can be profitably or 
 unprofitably said of him has been already 
 said, and that what is said for the mere sake 
 of saying it is not worth saying at all. More 
 over, I myself have said of him what I 
 thought good more than twenty years ago. 1 
 It is as wearisome to repeat one s self as it 
 is profitless to repeat others, and that we 
 have said something, however inadequate it 
 may afterwards seem to us, is a great hin 
 drance to saying anything better. 
 
 The only function that a president of the 
 Wordsworth Society is called on to perform 
 is that of bidding it farewell at the end of 
 his year, and it is perhaps fortunate that I 
 have not had the leisure to prepare a dis- 
 
 1 Among my Books. 
 
WORDSWORTH. 139 
 
 course so deliberate as to be more worthy of 
 the occasion. Without unbroken time there 
 can be no consecutive thought, and it is my 
 misfortune that in the midst of a reflection 
 or of a sentence I am liable to be called 
 away by the bell of private or public duty. 
 Even had I been able to prepare something 
 that might have satisfied me better, I should 
 still be at the disadvantage of following next 
 after a retiring president l who always has 
 the art of saying what all of us would be 
 glad to say if we could, and who in his ad 
 dress last year gave us what seemed to me 
 the finished model of what such a perform 
 ance should be. 
 
 During the year that has passed since our 
 last Annual Meeting, however idle the rest 
 of us may have been, our secretary has been 
 fruitfully busy, and has given us two more 
 volumes of what it is safe to say will be the 
 standard and definitive edition of the poet s 
 works. In this, the chronological arrange 
 ment of the several poems, and still more, 
 the record in the margin of the author s cor 
 rections or repentances (pentimenti, as the 
 Italians prettily call them), furnish us with a 
 kind of self-registering instrument of the ex- 
 
 1 Mr. Matthew Arnold. 
 
140 WORDS WORTH. 
 
 actest kind by which to note, if not always 
 the growth of his mind, yet certainly the 
 gradual clarification of his taste, and the 
 somewhat toilsome education of his ear. It 
 is plain that with Wordsworth, more than 
 with most poets, poetry was an art, an art, 
 too, rather painfully acquired by one who 
 was endowed by nature with more of the vis 
 ion than of the faculty divine. Some of the 
 more important omissions, especially, seem 
 silently to indicate changes of opinion, 
 though oftener, it may be suspected, of 
 mood, or merely a shifting of the point of 
 view, the natural consequence of a change 
 for the better in his own material condition. 
 One result of this marshalling of the 
 poems by the natural sequence of date is 
 the conviction that, whatever modifications 
 Wordsworth s ideas concerning certain so 
 cial and political questions may have un 
 dergone, these modifications had not their 
 origin in inconsiderate choice, or in any 
 seduction of personal motive, but were the 
 natural and unconscious outcome of en 
 larged experience, and of more profound 
 reflection upon it. I see no reason to think 
 that he ever swerved from his early faith in 
 the beneficence of freedom, but rather that 
 
WORDSWORTH. 141 
 
 he learned the necessity of defining more 
 exactly in what freedom consisted, and the 
 conditions, whether of time or place, under 
 which alone it can be beneficent, of insisting 
 that it must be an evolution and not a man 
 ufacture, and that it should coordinate itself 
 with the prior claims of society and civiliza 
 tion. The process in his mind was the or 
 dinary crystallization of sentiment hitherto 
 swimming in vague solution, and now precip 
 itated in principles. He had made the in 
 evitable discovery that comes with years, of 
 how much harder it is to do than to see what 
 t were good to do, and grew content to build 
 the poor man s cottage, since the means did 
 not exist of building the prince s palace he 
 had dreamed. It is noticeable how many of 
 his earlier poems turn upon the sufferings of 
 the poor from the injustice of man or the 
 unnatural organization of society. He him 
 self had been the victim of an abuse of the 
 power that rank and wealth sometimes put 
 into the hands of unworthy men, and had 
 believed in political methods, both for rem 
 edy and prevention. He had believed also 
 in the possibility of a gregarious regener 
 ation of man by sudden and sharp, if need 
 were by revolutionary expedients, like those 
 
142 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 impromptu conversions of the inhabitants of 
 a city from Christ to Mahomet, or back 
 again, according to the creed of their con 
 queror, of which we read in medieval ro 
 mances. He had fancied that the laws of 
 the universe would curtsy to the resolves 
 of the National Convention. He had seen 
 this hope utterly baffled and confuted, as it 
 seemed, by events in France, by events that 
 had occurred, too, in the logical sequence 
 foretold by students of history. He had 
 been convinced, perhaps against his will, 
 that a great part of human suffering has its 
 root in the nature of man, and not in that of 
 his institutions. Where was the remedy to 
 be found, if remedy indeed there were ? It 
 was to be sought at least only in an im 
 provement wrought by those moral influ 
 ences that build up and buttress the personal 
 character. Goethe taught the self - culture 
 that results in self-possession, in breadth and 
 impartiality of view, and in equipoise of 
 mind; Wordsworth inculcated that self -de 
 velopment through intercourse with man and 
 nature which leads to self-sufficingness, self- 
 sustainment, and equilibrium of character. 
 It was the individual that should and could 
 be leavened, and through the individual the 
 
WORDS WORTH. 143 
 
 lump. To reverse the process was to break 
 the continuity of history and to wrestle with 
 the angel of destiny. 
 
 And for one of the most powerfully effec 
 tive of the influences for which he was seek 
 ing, where should he look if not to Reli 
 gion? The sublimities and amenities of 
 outward nature might suffice for William 
 Wordsworth, might for him have almost 
 filled the place of a liberal education ; but 
 they elevate, teach, and above all console 
 the imaginative and solitary only, and suf 
 fice to him who already suffices to himself. 
 The thought of a god vaguely and vapor- 
 ously dispersed throughout the visible crea 
 tion, the conjecture of an animating princi 
 ple that gives to the sunset its splendors, its 
 passion to the storm, to cloud and wind their 
 sympathy of form and movement, that sus 
 tains the faith of the crag in its forlorn en 
 durance, and of the harebell in the slender 
 security of its stem, may inspire or soothe, 
 console or fortify, the man whose physical 
 and mental fibre is so sensitive that, like 
 the spectroscope, it can both feel and record 
 these impalpable impulses and impressions, 
 these impersonal vibrations of identity be 
 tween the fragmentary life that is in him- 
 
144 WORDS WORTH. 
 
 self and the larger life of the universe 
 whereof he is a particle. Such supersensual 
 emotions might help to make a poem, but 
 they would not make a man, still more a so 
 cial being. Absorption in the whole would 
 not tend to that development of the individ 
 ual which was the corner-stone of Words 
 worth s edifice. 
 
 That instinct in man which leads him to 
 fashion a god in his own image, why may it 
 not be an instinct as natural and wholesome 
 as any other ? And it is not only God that 
 this instinct embodies and personifies, but 
 every profounder abstract conception, every 
 less selfish devotion of which man is capa 
 ble. Was it, think you, of a tiny crooked 
 outline on the map, of so many square miles 
 of earth, or of Hume and Smollett s History 
 that Nelson was thinking when he dictated 
 what are perhaps the most inspiring words 
 ever uttered by an Englishman to English 
 men ? Surely it was something in woman s 
 shape that rose before him with all the po 
 tent charm of noble impulsion that is hers 
 as much through her weakness as her 
 strength. And the features of that divine 
 apparition, had they not been painted in 
 every attitude of their changeful beauty by 
 Romney ? 
 
WORDSWORTH. 145 
 
 Coarse and rudimentary as this instinct is 
 in the savage, it is sublimed and etherealized 
 in the profoundly spiritual imagination of 
 Dante, which yet is forced to admit the le 
 gitimacy of its operation. Beatrice tells 
 him 
 
 Thus to your minds it needful is to speak, 
 Because through sense alone they understand : 
 It is for this that Scripture condescends 
 Unto your faculties and feet and hands, 
 To God attributes, meaning something else. 
 
 And in what I think to be the sublimest 
 reach to which poetry has risen, the conclu 
 sion of the " Paradiso," Dante tells us that 
 within the three whirling rings of vari-col- 
 ored light that symbolize the wisdom, the 
 power, and the love of God, he seems to see 
 the image of man. 
 
 Wordsworth would appear to have been 
 convinced that this Something deeply inter 
 fused, this pervading but illusive intimation, 
 of which he was dimly conscious, and that 
 only by flashes, could never serve the ordi 
 nary man, who was in no way and at no 
 time conscious of it, as motive, as judge, and 
 more than all as consoler, could never fill 
 the place of the Good Shepherd. Observa 
 tion convinced him that what are called the 
 
146 WORDS WORTH. 
 
 safeguards of society are the staff also of 
 the individual members of it ; that tradition, 
 habitude, and heredity are great forces, 
 whether for impulse or restraint. He had 
 pondered a pregnant phrase of the poet 
 Daniel, where he calls religion " mother of 
 Form and Fear." A growing conviction of 
 its profound truth turned his mind towards 
 the Church as the embodiment of the most 
 potent of all traditions, and to her public 
 offices as the expression of the most socially 
 humanizing of all habitudes. It was no 
 empty formalism that could have satisfied 
 his conception, but rather that " Ideal Form, 
 the universal mould," that forma mentis 
 ceterna which has given shape and expres 
 sion to the fears and hopes and aspirations 
 of mankind. And what he understood by 
 Fear is perhaps shadowed forth in the " Ode 
 to Duty," in which he speaks to us out of an 
 ampler ether than in any other of his poems, 
 and which may safely "challenge insolent 
 Greece and haughty Rome "for a compari 
 son either in kind or degree. 
 
 I ought not to detain you longer from the 
 interesting papers, the reading of which has 
 been promised for this meeting. No mem 
 ber of this Society would admit that its ex- 
 
WORDSWORTH. 147 
 
 istence was needed to keep alive an interest 
 in the poet, or to promote the study of his 
 works. But I think we should all consent 
 that there could be no better reason for its 
 being than the fact that it elicits an utter 
 ance of the impression made by his poetry 
 on many different minds looking at him from 
 as many different points of view. That he 
 should have a special meaning for every one 
 in an audience so various in temperament 
 and character might well induce us to credit 
 him with a wider range of sympathies and 
 greater breadth of thought than each of us 
 separately would, perhaps, be ready to admit. 
 
 But though reluctant to occupy more than 
 my fair share of your time, the occasion 
 tempts me irresistibly to add a few more 
 words of general criticism. It has seemed 
 to me that Wordsworth has too commonly 
 been estimated rather as philosopher or 
 teacher than as poet. The value of what he 
 said has had more influence with the jury 
 than the way in which he said it. There 
 are various methods of criticism, but I think 
 we should all agree that literary work is to 
 be judged from the purely literary point of 
 view. 
 
 If it be one of the baser consolations, it 
 
148 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 is also one of the most disheartening con 
 comitants of long life, that we get used to 
 everything. Two things, perhaps, retain 
 their freshness more perdurably than the 
 rest, the return of spring, and the more 
 poignant utterances of the poets. And 
 here, I think, Wordsworth holds his own 
 with the best. But Mr. Arnold s volume of 
 selections from him suggests a question of 
 some interest, for the Wordsworth Society 
 of special interest, How much of his 
 poetry is likely to be a permanent posses 
 sion? The answer to this question is in 
 volved in the answer to a question of wider 
 bearing, What are the conditions of per 
 manence? Immediate or contemporaneous 
 recognition is certainly not dominant among 
 them, or Cowley would still be popular, 
 Cowley, to whom the Muse gave every gift 
 but one, the gift of the unexpected and in 
 evitable word. Nor can mere originality 
 assure the interest of posterity, else why are 
 Chaucer and Gray familiar, while Donne, 
 one of the subtlest and most self-irradiating 
 minds that ever sought an outlet in verse, is 
 known only to the few ? " Since Virgil there 
 have been at most but four cosmopolitan 
 authors, Dante, Cervantes, Shakespeare, 
 
WORDS WORTH. 149 
 
 and Goethe. These have stood the supreme 
 test of being translated into all tongues, be 
 cause the large humanity of their theme, and 
 of their handling of it, needed translation 
 into none. Calderon is a greater poet than 
 Goethe, but even in the most masterly trans 
 lation he retains still a Spanish accent, and 
 is accordingly interned (if I may Anglicize 
 a French word) in that provincialism which 
 we call nationality. 
 
 When one reads what has been written 
 about Wordsworth, one cannot fail to be 
 struck by the predominance of the personal 
 equation in the estimate of his value, and 
 when we consider his claim to universal rec 
 ognition, it would not be wise to overlook 
 the rare quality of the minds that he has 
 most attracted and influenced. If the char 
 acter of the constituency may be taken as 
 the measure of the representative, there can 
 be no doubt that, by his privilege of inter 
 esting the highest and purest order of intel 
 lect, Wordsworth must be set apart from the 
 other poets, his contemporaries, if not above 
 them. And yet we must qualify this praise 
 by the admission that he continues to be in 
 sular ; that he makes no conquests beyond 
 the boundaries of his mother-tongue ; that, 
 
150 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 more than perhaps any other poet of equal 
 endowment, he is great and surprising in 
 passages and ejaculations. In these he truly 
 
 Is happy as a lover, and attired 
 
 In sudden brightness, like a man inspired ; 
 
 in these he loses himself, as Sir Thomas 
 Browne would say, in an O, altitudo^ where 
 his muse is indeed a muse of fire, that can 
 ascend, if not to the highest heaven of in 
 vention, yet to the supremest height of im 
 personal utterance. Then, like Elias the 
 prophet, " he stands up as fire, and his word 
 burns like a lamp." But too often, when 
 left to his own resources, and to the con 
 scientious performance of the duty laid upon 
 him to be a great poet quand meme, he 
 seems diligently intent on producing fire by 
 the primitive method of rubbing the dry 
 sticks of his blank verse one against the 
 other, while we stand in shivering expecta 
 tion of the flame that never comes. In his 
 truly inspired and inspiring passages it is 
 remarkable also that he is most unlike his 
 ordinary self, least in accordance with his 
 own theories of the nature of poetic expres 
 sion. When at his best, he startles and way 
 lays as only genius can, but is furthest from 
 
WORDSWORTH. 151 
 
 that equanimity of conscious and constantly 
 indwelling power that is the characteristic 
 note of the greatest work. If Wordsworth 
 be judged by the ex ungue leonem standard, 
 by passages, or by a dozen single poems, no 
 one capable of forming an opinion would 
 hesitate to pronounce him, not only a great 
 poet, but among the greatest, convinced in 
 the one case by the style, and in both by the 
 force that radiates from him, by the stimulus 
 he sends kindling through every fibre of the 
 intellect and of the imagination. At the 
 same time there is no admittedly great poet 
 in placing whom we are forced to acknowl 
 edge so many limitations and to make so 
 many concessions. 
 
 Even as a teacher he is often too much of 
 a pedagogue, and is apt to forget that poetry 
 instructs not by precept and inculcation, but 
 by hints and indirections and suggestions, 
 by inducing a mood rather than by enforcing 
 a principle or a moral. He sometimes im 
 presses our fancy with the image of a school 
 master whose class-room commands an un 
 rivalled prospect of cloud and mountain, of 
 all the pomp and prodigality of heaven and 
 earth. From time to time he calls his pupils 
 to the window, and makes them see what, 
 
1 52 WORDS WOR Tff, 
 
 without the finer intuition of his eyes, they 
 had never seen ; makes them feel what, with 
 out the sympathy of his more penetrating 
 sentiment, they had never felt. It seems the 
 revelation of a new heaven and a new earth, 
 and to contain in itself its own justification. 
 Then suddenly recollecting his duty, he shuts 
 the window, calls them back to their tasks, 
 and is equally well pleased and more discur 
 sive in enforcing on them the truth that the 
 moral of all this is that in order to be happy 
 they must be virtuous. If the total absence 
 of any sense of humor had the advantage 
 sometimes of making Wordsworth sublimely 
 unconscious, it quite as often made him so to 
 his loss. 
 
 In his noblest utterances man is absent 
 except as the antithesis that gives a sharper 
 emphasis to nature. The greatest poets, I 
 think, have found man more interesting than 
 nature, have considered nature as no more 
 than the necessary scenery, artistically harm 
 ful if too pompous or obtrusive, before which 
 man acts his tragi-comedy of life. This pe 
 culiarity of Wordsworth results naturally 
 from the fact that he had no dramatic power, 
 and of narrative power next to none. If he 
 tell us a story, it is because it gives him the 
 
WORDS WORTH. 153 
 
 chance to tell us something else, and to him 
 of more importance. In Scott s narrative 
 poems the scenery is accessary and subor 
 dinate. It is a picturesque background to 
 his figures, a landscape through which the 
 action rushes like a torrent, catching a hint 
 of color perhaps from rock or tree, but never 
 any image so distinct that it tempts us aside 
 to reverie or meditation. With Wordsworth 
 the personages are apt to be lost in the land 
 scape, or kept waiting idly while the poet 
 muses on its deeper suggestions. And he 
 has no sense of proportion, no instinct of 
 choice and discrimination. All his thoughts 
 and emotions and sensations are of equal 
 value in his eyes because they are his, and 
 he gives us methodically and conscientiously 
 all he can, and not that only which he can 
 not help giving because it must and will be 
 said. One might apply to him what Miss 
 Skeggs said of Dr. Burdock, that " he sel 
 dom leaves anything out, as he writes only 
 for his own amusement." There is no limit 
 to his let us call it fecundity. He was 
 dimly conscious of this, and turned by a 
 kind of instinct, I suspect, to the sonnet, be 
 cause its form forced boundaries upon him, 
 and put him under bonds to hold his peace 
 
154 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 at the end of the fourteenth line. Yet even 
 here nature would out, and the oft recurring 
 same subject continued lures the nun from 
 her cell to the convent parlor, and tempts 
 the student to make a pulpit of his pensive 
 citadel. The hour-glass is there, to be sure, 
 with its lapsing admonition, but it reminds 
 the preacher only that it can be turned. 
 
 I have said that Wordsworth was insular, 
 but, more than this, there is also something 
 local, I might say parochial, in his choice of 
 subject and tone of thought. I am not sure 
 that what is called philosophical poetry ever 
 appeals to more than a very limited circle of 
 minds, though to them it appeals with an 
 intimate power that makes them fanatical 
 in their preference. Perhaps none of those 
 whom I have called universal poets (unless 
 it be Dante) calls out this fanaticism, for 
 they do not need it, fanaticism being a sure 
 token either of weakness in numbers or of 
 weakness in argument. The greatest poets 
 interest the passions of men no less than 
 their intelligence, and are more concerned 
 with the secondary than the primal sym 
 pathies, with the concrete than with the ab 
 stract. 
 
 But I have played the advocatus diaboli 
 
WORDS WORTH. 155 
 
 long enough. I come back to the main 
 question from which I set out. Will Words 
 worth survive, as Lucretius survives, through 
 the splendor of certain sunbursts of imagi 
 nation refusing for a passionate moment to 
 be subdued by the unwilling material in 
 which it is forced to work, while that mate 
 rial takes fire in the working as it can and 
 wdll only in the hands of genius, as it cannot 
 and will not, for example, in the hands of 
 Dr. Akenside ? Is he to be known a cen 
 tury hence as the author of remarkable pas 
 sages? Certainly a great part of him will 
 perish, not, as Ben Jonson said of Donne, 
 for want of understanding, but because too 
 easily understood. His teaching, whatever 
 it was, is part of the air we breathe, and has 
 lost that charm of exclusion and privilege 
 that kindled and kept alive the zeal of his 
 acolytes while it was still sectarian, or even 
 heretical. But he has that surest safeguard 
 against oblivion, that imperishable incentive 
 to curiosity and interest that belongs to all 
 original minds. His finest utterances do 
 not merely nestle in the ear by virtue of 
 their music, but in the soul and life, by vir 
 tue of their meaning. One would be slow 
 to say that his general outfit as poet was so 
 
156 WORDS WORTH. 
 
 complete as that of Dryden, but that he 
 habitually dwelt in a diviner air, and alone 
 of modern poets renewed and justified the 
 earlier faith that made poet and prophet 
 interchangeable terms. Surely he was not 
 an artist in the strictest sense of the word ; 
 neither was Isaiah ; but he had a rarer gift, 
 the capability of being greatly inspired. Pop 
 ular, let us admit, he can never be ; but as 
 in Catholic countries men go for a time into 
 retreat from the importunate dissonances 
 of life to collect their better selves again by 
 communion with things that are heavenly, 
 and therefore eternal, so this Chartreuse of 
 Wordsworth, dedicated to the Genius of Sol 
 itude, will allure to its imperturbable calm 
 the finer natures and the more highly tem 
 pered intellects of every generation, so long 
 as man has any intuition of what is most sa 
 cred in his own emotions and sympathies, or 
 of whatever in outward nature is most capa 
 ble of awakening them and making them 
 operative, whether to console or strengthen. 
 And over the entrance-gate to that purify 
 ing seclusion shall be inscribed, 
 
 Minds innocent and quiet take 
 This for an hermitage. 
 
DON QUIXOTE. 
 
 NOTES READ AT THE WORKINGMEN S COLLEGE, GREAT 
 ORMOND STREET, LONDON. 
 
DON QUIXOTE. 
 
 IN every literature which can be in any 
 sense called national there is a flavor of the 
 soil from which it sprang, in which it grew, 
 and from which its roots drew nourishment. 
 This flavor, at first, perhaps, the cause of 
 distaste, gives a peculiar relish when we 
 have once learned to like it. It is a limi 
 tation, no doubt, and when artificially com 
 municated, or in excess, incurs the reproach 
 of provincialism, just as there are certain 
 national dishes that are repugnant to every 
 foreign palate. But it has the advantage 
 of giving even to second-class writers in a 
 foreign language that strangeness which in 
 our own tongue is possible only to original 
 ity either of thought or style. When this 
 savor of nationality is combined with original 
 genius, as in such a writer as Calderon for 
 example, the charm is incalculably height 
 ened. 
 
 Spanish literature, if it have nothing that 
 
160 DON QUIXOTE. 
 
 for height and depth can be compared with 
 the " Divina Commedia" of Dante (as in 
 deed what other modern literature has ?), is 
 rich in works that will repay study, and 
 evolved itself by natural processes out of 
 the native genius, the history, and the min 
 gled races of the country more evidently, 
 perhaps, than that of any other modern peo 
 ple. It was of course more or less modified 
 from time to time by foreign, especially by 
 French, influences in its earlier period, by 
 Italian in the sixteenth century, and in later 
 times again by French and German influ 
 ences more or less plainly marked, but 
 through all and in spite of all, by virtue of 
 the vigor of its native impulse, it has given 
 an essentially Spanish character to all its 
 productions. Its earliest monument, the 
 " Song of the Cid," is in form a reproduction 
 of the French " Chanson de Geste," a song 
 of action or of what has been acted, but the 
 spirit which animates it is very different 
 from that which animates the " Song of Ro 
 land," its nearest French parallel in subject 
 and form. The Spanish Romances, very 
 much misrepresented in the spirited and 
 facile reproductions of Lockhart, are beyond 
 question the most original and fascinating 
 
DON QUIXOTE. 161 
 
 popular poetry of which we know anything. 
 Their influence upon the form of Heine s 
 verse is unmistakable. In the Drama, also, 
 Spain has been especially abundant and in 
 ventive. She has supplied all Europe with 
 plots, and has produced at least one drama 
 tist who takes natural rank with the greatest 
 in any language by his depth of imagination 
 and fertility of resource. For fascination 
 of style and profound suggestion, it would 
 be hard to name another author superior to 
 Calderon, if indeed equal to him. His charm 
 was equally felt by two minds as unlike 
 each other as those of Goethe and Shelley. 
 These in themselves are sufficient achieve 
 ments, and the intellectual life of a nation 
 could maintain itself on the unearned incre 
 ment of these without further addition to 
 its resources. But Spain has also had the 
 good fortune to produce one book which by 
 the happiness of its conception, by the va 
 riety of its invention, and the charm of its 
 style, has been adopted into the literature of 
 mankind, and has occupied a place in their 
 affection to which few other books have been 
 admitted. 
 
 "We have no word in English so compre 
 hensive as the Dlchtung of the Germans, 
 
162 DON QUIXOTE. 
 
 which includes every exercise of the creative 
 faculty, whether in the line of pathos or hu 
 mor, whether in the higher region of imagi 
 nation or on the lower levels of fancy where 
 the average man draws easier breath. It is 
 about a work whose scene lies on this in 
 ferior plane, but whose vividness of intui 
 tion and breadth of treatment rank it among 
 the highest achievements of imaginative lit 
 erature, that I shall say a few words this 
 evening, and I trust that I shall see nothing 
 in it that in the author s intention, at least, 
 is not honestly to be found there ; certainly 
 that I shall not pretend to see anything 
 which others have professed to discover there, 
 but to which nature has made me color 
 blind. 
 
 I ask your attention this evening not to 
 an essay on " Don Quixote," still less to an 
 essay on Cervantes, but rather to a few illus 
 trative comments on his one immortal book 
 (drawn almost wholly from notes written on 
 its margin in repeated readings), which may 
 tend to throw a stronger light on what I 
 shall not scruple to call its incomparable 
 originality both as a conception and a study 
 of character. It is one of the few books 
 that can lay undisputed claim to the distinc- 
 
DON QUIXOTE. 163 
 
 tion of being universal and cosmopolitan, 
 equally at home in all languages and wel 
 come to all kindreds and conditions of men ; 
 a human book in the fullest sense of the 
 word ; a kindly book, whether we take that 
 adjective in its original meaning of natural, 
 or in its present acceptation, which would 
 seem to imply that at some time or other, 
 not too precisely specified in history, to be 
 kindly and to be natural had been equiva 
 lent terms. I can think of no book so thor 
 oughly good-natured and good-humored, and 
 this is the more remarkable because it shows 
 that the optimism of its author had survived 
 more misfortune and disenchantment than 
 have fallen to the lot of many men, even the 
 least successful. I suspect that Cervantes, 
 with his varied experience, maimed at the 
 battle of Lepanto, a captive in Algiers, 
 pinched with poverty all his life, and writing 
 his great book in a debtor s prison, might 
 have formed as just an estimate of the van 
 ity of vanities as the author of the Book 
 of Ecclesiastes. But the notion of Welt- 
 schmerz, or the misery of living and acting 
 in this beautiful world, seems never to have 
 occurred to him, or, if it did, never to have 
 embittered him. Had anybody suggested 
 
164 DON Q.U1XOTE. 
 
 the thought to him, he would probably have 
 answered, " Well, perhaps it is not the best 
 of all possible worlds, but it is the best we 
 have, or are likely to get in my time. Had 
 I been present at its creation, I might, per 
 haps, as Alfonso the learned thought he 
 might, have given some useful advice for its 
 improvement, and, were I consulted even 
 now, could suggest some amendments in my 
 own condition therein. But after all, it is 
 not a bad world, as worlds go, and the 
 wisest plan, if the luck go against us, is to 
 follow the advice of Durandarte in the Cave 
 of Montesinos, Patience, and shuffle the 
 cards. His sense of humor kept his nature 
 sweet and fresh, and made him capable of 
 seeing that there are two sides to every ques 
 tion, even to a question in which his own 
 personal interest was directly involved. In 
 his dedication of the Second Part of " Don 
 Quixote " to the Conde de Lemos, written 
 in old age and infirmity, he smiles cheerfully 
 on Poverty as on an old friend and life 
 long companion. St. Francis could not have 
 looked with more benignity on her whom he 
 chose, as Dante tells us, for his bride. 
 
 I have called " Don Quixote " a cosmo 
 politan book, and I know of none other that 
 
DON QUIXOTE. 165 
 
 can compete with it in this respect unless it 
 be "Robinson Crusoe." But "Don Quix 
 ote," if less verisimilar as a narrative, and 
 I am not sure that it is, appeals to far 
 higher qualities of mind and demands a far 
 subtler sense of appreciation than the mas 
 terpiece of Defoe. If the latter represent 
 in simplest prose what interests us because 
 it might happen to any man, the other, 
 while seeming never to leave the low level 
 of fact and possibility, constantly suggests 
 the loftier region of symbol, and sets before 
 us that eternal contrast between the ideal 
 and the real, between the world as it might 
 be and the world as it is, between the fer 
 vid completeness of conception and the chill 
 inadequacy of fulfilment, which life sooner 
 or later, directly or indirectly, forces upon 
 the consciousness of every man who is 
 more than a patent digester. There is a 
 moral in "Don Quixote," and a very pro 
 found one, whether Cervantes consciously 
 put it there or not, and it is this : that who 
 ever quarrels with the Nature of Things, 
 wittingly or unwittingly, is certain to get 
 the worst of it. The great difficulty lies in 
 finding out what the Nature of Things really 
 and perdurably is, and the great wisdom, 
 
 
166 DON QUIXOTE. 
 
 after we have made this discovery, or per 
 suaded ourselves that we have made it. is in 
 accommodating our lives and actions to it 
 as best we may or can. And yet, though all 
 this be true, there is another and deeper 
 moral in the book than this. The pathos 
 which underlies its seemingly farcical tur 
 moil, 1 the tears which sometimes tremble un 
 der our lids after its most poignant touches 
 of humor, the sympathy with its hero which 
 survives all his most ludicrous defeats and 
 humiliations and is only deepened by them, 
 the feeling that he is after all the one noble 
 and heroic figure in a world incapable of 
 comprehending him, and to whose inhabi 
 tants he is distorted and caricatured by the 
 crooked panes in those windows of custom 
 and convention through which they see him, 
 all this seems to hint that only he who has 
 the imagination to conceive and the courage 
 to attempt a trial of strength with what 
 
 1 I can think of no better instance to show how thin is 
 the partition that divides humor from pathos than the 
 lustration of the two vulgar Laises (distraidas mozas) 
 by the pure imagination of Don Quixote (Part. Prim, 
 cap. ii.). The sentiment is more natural and truer than 
 that which Victor Hugo puts into the mouth of Marion 
 Delorme when she tells her lover that "his love has 
 given her back her virginity." To him it might, but it 
 would rather have reproached her with the loss of it. 
 
DON QUIXOTE. 167 
 
 foists itself on our senses as the Order of 
 Nature for the time being can achieve great 
 results or kindle the cooperative and efficient 
 enthusiasm of his fellow -men. The Don 
 Quixote of one generation may live to hear 
 himself called the savior of society by the 
 next. How exalted was Don Quixote s own 
 conception of his mission is clear from what 
 is said of his first sight of the inn (Part. 
 Prim. cap. iii.), that " it was as if he had 
 seen a star which guided him not to the por 
 tals, but to the fortress of his redemption," 
 where the allusion were too daring were he 
 not persuaded that he is going forth to re 
 deem the world. Cervantes, of course, is 
 not so much speaking in his own person, 
 as telling what passed in the mind of his 
 hero. 
 
 Am I forcing upon Cervantes a meaning 
 alien to the purpose of his story and anach 
 ronistic to the age in which he lived ? I 
 do not think so, and if I err I do so in good 
 company. I admit that there is a kind of 
 what is called constructive criticism, which 
 is sometimes pushed so far beyond its proper 
 limits as to deserve rather the name of de 
 structive, as sometimes, in the so-called res 
 toration of an ancient building, the mate- 
 
168 DON QUIXOTE. 
 
 rials of the original architect are used in the 
 erection of a new edifice of which he had 
 never dreamed, or, if he had dreamed of 
 it, would have fancied himself the victim of 
 some horrible nightmare. I would not will 
 ingly lay myself open to the imputation of 
 applying this method to Cervantes, and at 
 tribute to him a depth of intention which, 
 could he be asked about it, would call up 
 in his eyes the meditative smile that must 
 habitually have flickered there. Spaniards 
 have not been wanting who protested against 
 what they consider to be the German fashion 
 of interpreting their national author. Don 
 Juan Valera, in particular, one of the best 
 of contemporary Spanish men of letters, 
 both as critic and novelist, has argued the 
 negative side of the question with force and 
 acumen in a discourse pronounced on his 
 admission to the Spanish Academy. But I 
 must confess that, while he interested, he 
 did not convince me. I could quite under 
 stand his impatience at what he considered 
 the supersubtleties of interpretation to which 
 our Teutonic cousins, who have taught uf 
 so much, are certainly somewhat prone. We 
 have felt it ourselves when the obvious 
 meaning of Shakespeare has been rewritten 
 
DON QUIXOTE. 169 
 
 into Hegelese, by some Doctor of Philosophy 
 desperate with the task of saying something 
 when everything had been already said, and 
 eager to apply his new theory of fog as an 
 illuminating medium. But I no not think 
 that transcendental criticism can be charged 
 with indiscretion in the case of " Don Quix 
 ote." After reading all that can be said 
 against the justice of its deductions, or divi 
 nations if you choose to call them so, I am in 
 clined to say, as Turner did to the lady who, 
 after looking at one of his pictures, declared 
 that she could not see all this in nature, 
 "Madam, don t you wish to heaven you 
 could ? " I believe that in all really great 
 imaginative work we are aware, as in na 
 ture, of something far more deeply inter 
 fused with our consciousness, underlying the 
 obvious and familiar, as the living spirit of 
 them, and accessible only to a heightened 
 sense and a more passionate sympathy. He 
 reads most wisely who thinks everything 
 into a book that it is capable of holding, and 
 it is the stamp and token of a great book so 
 to incorporate itself with our own being, so 
 to quicken our insight and stimulate our 
 thought, as to make us feel as if we helped 
 to create it while we read. Whatever we 
 
170 DON QUIXOTE. 
 
 can find in a book that aids us in the con 
 duct of life, or to a truer interpretation of 
 it, or to a franker reconcilement with it, we 
 may with a good conscience believe is not 
 there by accident, but that the author meant 
 that we should find it there. Cervantes cer 
 tainly intended something of far wider scope 
 than a mere parody on the Romances of 
 Chivalry, which before his day had ceased to 
 have any vitality as motives of human con 
 duct, or even as pictures of a life that any 
 body believed to have ever existed except in 
 dreamland. That he did intend his book 
 as a good-humored criticism on doctrinaire 
 reformers who insist, in spite of all history 
 and experience, on believing that society is a 
 device of human wit or an imposture of hu 
 man cunning, and not a growth, an evolu 
 tion from natural causes, is clear enough in 
 more than one passage to the thoughtful 
 reader. It is also a satire on all attempts 
 to remake the world by the means and 
 methods of the past, and on the humanity of 
 impulse which looks on each fact that rouses 
 its pity or its sense of wrong as if it was or 
 could be complete in itself, and were not in- 
 dissolubly bound up with myriads of other 
 facts both in the past and the present. When 
 
DON QUIXOTE. 171 
 
 we say that we are all of us the result of the 
 entire past, we perhaps are not paying the 
 past a very high compliment ; but it is no 
 less true that whatever happens is in some 
 sense, more or less strict, the result of all 
 that has happened before. As with all men 
 of heated imaginations, a near object of 
 compassion occupies the whole mind of Don 
 Quixote ; the figure of the present sufferer 
 looms gigantic and shuts out all perception 
 of remoter and more general considerations. 
 Don Quixote s quarrel is with the struc 
 ture of society, and it is only by degrees, 
 through much mistake and consequent suf 
 fering, that he finds out how strong that 
 structure is ; nay, how strong it must be in 
 order that the world may go smoothly and 
 the course of events not be broken by a 
 series of cataclysms. The French Revolu 
 tionists with the sincerest good intentions 
 set about reforming in Don Quixote s style, 
 and France has been in commotion ever 
 since. They carefully grubbed up every root 
 that drew its sustenance from the past, and 
 have been finding out ever since to their 
 sorrow that nothing with roots can be made 
 to order. " Do right though the heavens 
 fall " is an admirable precept so long as the 
 
172 DON QUIXOTE. 
 
 heavens do not take you at your word and 
 come down about your ears still worse 
 about those of your neighbors. It is a rule 
 rather of private than public obligation 
 for indeed it is the doing of right that keeps 
 the heavens from falling. After Don Quix 
 ote s temporary rescue of the boy Andres 
 from his master s beating, the manner in 
 which he rides off and discharges his mind 
 of consequences is especially characteristic 
 of reform by theory without study of cir 
 cumstances. It is a profound stroke of 
 humor that the reformer Don Quixote should 
 caution Sancho not to attempt making the 
 world over again, and to adapt himself to 
 circumstances. 
 
 In one of his adventures, it is in perfect 
 keeping that he should call on all the world 
 to stop "till he was satisfied." It is to be 
 noted that in both Don Quixote s attempts 
 at the redress of particular wrong (Andre s 
 and the galley-slaves) the objects (I might 
 call them victims) of his benevolence come 
 back again to his discomfiture. In the case 
 of Andre s, Don Quixote can only blush, but 
 Sancho (the practical man without theories) 
 gives the poor fellow a hunch of bread and 
 a few pennies, which are very much to the 
 
DON QUIXOTE. 173 
 
 purpose. Cervantes gives us a plain hint 
 here that all our mistakes sooner or later 
 surely come home to roost. It is remark 
 able how independent of time and circum 
 stance the satire of the great humorists 
 always is. Aristophanes, Eabelais, Shake 
 speare, Moliere, seem to furnish side-lights 
 to what we read in our morning paper. As 
 another instance of this in Cervantes, who 
 is continually illustrating it, read the whole 
 scene of the liberation of the galley-slaves. 
 How perfectly does it fit those humanitarians 
 who cannot see the crime because the person 
 of the criminal comes between them and it ! 
 That Cervantes knew perfectly well what he 
 was about in his satire and saw beneath the 
 surface of things is shown by the appari 
 tion of the police and of the landlord with 
 the bill in his hand, for it was these that 
 brought the Good Old Times to their forlorn 
 Hie Jacet. 
 
 Coleridge, who in reach and range of in 
 telligence, in penetration of insight, and in 
 comprehensiveness of sympathy ranks among 
 the first of critics, says, "Don Quixote is 
 not a man out of his senses, but a man in 
 whom the imagination and the pure reason 
 are so powerful as to make him disregard 
 
174 DON QUIXOTE. 
 
 the evidence of sense when it opposed their 
 conclusions. Sancho is the common sense 
 of the social man-animal unenlightened and 
 unsanctified by the reason. You see how he 
 reverences his master at the very time he is 
 cheating him." W. S. Landor thought that 
 Coleridge took the hint for this enlargement 
 of the scope of the book from him, but if 
 I remember rightly it was Bouterwek who 
 first pointed criticism in the right direction. 
 Down to his time u Don Quixote " had been 
 regarded as a burlesque, a farcical satire on 
 the Romances of Chivalry, just as Shy lock 
 was so long considered a character of low 
 comedy. 
 
 But " Don Quixote," whatever its deeper 
 meanings may be, has a literary importance 
 almost without parallel, arid it is time that 
 we should consider it briefly. It would be 
 hard to find a book more purely original 
 and without precedent. Cervantes himself 
 says in the preface to the First Part that 
 he knows not what book he is following 
 in it. Indeed, he follows none, though we 
 find traces of his having read the " Golden 
 Ass " and Greek Romances. It was the 
 first time that characters had been drawn 
 from real life with such nicety and dis- 
 
DON QUIXOTE. 175 
 
 crimination of touch, with such minuteness 
 in particulars, and yet with such careful 
 elimination of whatever was unessential that 
 the personages are idealized to a proper ar 
 tistic distance from mere actuality. With 
 all this, how perfectly life-like they are ! 
 As Don Quixote tells us that he was almost 
 ready to say he had seen Amadis, and pro 
 ceeds to describe his personal appearance 
 minutely, so we could affirm of the Knight of 
 la Mancha and his Squire. They are real 
 not because they are portraits, not because 
 they are drawn from actual personages, but 
 rather because of their very abstraction and 
 generalization. They are not so much taken 
 from life as informed with it. They are 
 conceptions, not copies from any model ; cre 
 ations as no other characters but those of 
 Shakespeare are in so full and adequate a 
 manner ; developed out of a seminal idea 
 like the creatures of nature, not the matter- 
 of-fact work of a detective s watchfulness, 
 products of a quick eye and a faithful mem 
 ory, but the true children of the imaginative 
 faculty from which all the dregs of observa 
 tion and memory have been distilled away, 
 leaving only what is elementary and univer 
 sal. I confess that in the productions of 
 
176 DON QUIXOTE. 
 
 what is called the realistic school I generally 
 find myself in company that is little to my 
 taste, dragged back into a world from which 
 I am only too willing to escape, and set to 
 grind in the prison house of the Philistines. 
 I walk about in a nightmare, the supreme 
 horror of whicli is that my coat is all but 
 tonholes for bores to thrust their fingers 
 through and bait me to their heart s con 
 tent. Give me the writers who take me for 
 a while out of myself and (with pardon be it 
 spoken) away from my neighbors ! I do not 
 ask that characters should be real ; I need 
 but go into the street to find such in abun 
 dance. I ask only that they should be pos 
 sible, that they should be typical, because 
 these I find in myself and with these can 
 sympathize. Hector and Achilles, Clytem- 
 nestra and Antigone, Roland and Oliver, 
 Macbeth and Lear, move about, if not in 
 worlds not realized, at least in worlds not 
 realized to any eye but that of imagination, 
 a world far from the police reports, a world 
 into which it is a privilege, I might almost 
 call it an achievement, to enter. Don Quix 
 ote and his Squire are inhabitants of this 
 world, in spite of the prosaic and often vul 
 gar stage on which their tragi-comedy is 
 
DON QUIXOTE. 177 
 
 acted, because they are symbolical, because 
 they represent the two great factors of hu 
 man character and springs of human action 
 the Imagination and the Understanding. 
 If you would convince yourself how true 
 this is, compare them with Sir Hudibras and 
 Ralpho or still better with Roderick Ran 
 dom and Strap. There can be no better 
 proof that Cervantes meant to contrast the 
 ideal with the matter of fact in the two 
 characters than his setting side by side im 
 ages of the same woman as reflected in the 
 eyes of Sancho and his master ; in other 
 words, of common sense and passion. 1 
 
 I shall not trouble you with any labored 
 analysis of humor. If you wish to know 
 what humor is I should say read " Don 
 Quixote." It is the element in which the 
 whole story lives and moves and has its 
 being, and it wakens and flashes round the 
 course of the narrative like a phosphorescent 
 sea in the track of a ship. It is nowhere 
 absent ; it is nowhere obtrusive ; it lightens 
 and plays about the surface for a moment 
 and is gone. It is everywhere by sugges 
 tion, it is nowhere with emphasis and insist 
 ence. There is infinite variety, yet always 
 
 1 Part. Prim. cap. x. xxxi. 
 
178 DON QUIXOTE. 
 
 in harmony with the characters and the 
 purpose of the fable. The impression it 
 produces is cumulative, not sudden or start 
 ling. It is unobtrusive as the tone of good 
 conversation. I am not speaking of the fun 
 of the book, of which there is plenty, and 
 sometimes boisterous enough, but of that 
 deeper and more delicate quality, suggestive 
 of remote analogies and essential incongru 
 ities, which alone deserves the name of 
 humor. 
 
 This quality is so diffused in " Don Quix 
 ote," so thoroughly permeates every pore 
 and fibre of the book, that it is difficult to 
 exemplify it by citation. Take as examples 
 the scene with the goatherds, where Don 
 Quixote, after having amply supped, dis 
 courses so eloquently of that Golden Age 
 which was happy in having nothing to eat 
 but acorns or to drink but water ; where, 
 while insisting that Sancho should assume 
 equality as a man he denies it to him as San 
 cho, by reminding him that it is granted by 
 one who is his natural lord and master, 
 there is such a difference, alas, between uni 
 versal and particular Brotherhood! Take 
 the debate of Don Quixote (already mad) 
 as to what form of madness he should as- 
 
DON QUIXOTE. 179 
 
 sume ; the quarrel of the two madmen, Don 
 Quixote and Cardenio, about the good fame 
 of Queen Mad&sima, a purely imaginary 
 being ; the resolution of Don Quixote, when 
 forced to renounce knight-errantry, that he 
 will become a shepherd of the kind known 
 to poets, thus exchanging one unreality for 
 another. Nay, take the whole book, if you 
 would learn what humor is, whether in its 
 most obvious or its most subtle manifesta 
 tions. The highest and most complete illus 
 tration is the principal character of the story. 
 I do not believe that a character so abso 
 lutely perfect in conception and delineation, 
 so psychologically true, so full of whimsical 
 inconsistencies, all combining to produce an 
 impression of perfect coherence, is to be 
 found in fiction. He was a monomaniac, 1 
 all of whose faculties, his very senses them 
 selves, are subjected by one overmastering 
 prepossession, and at last conspire with it, 
 almost against their will, in spite of daily 
 disillusion and of the uniform testimony of 
 facts and events to the contrary. The key 
 to Don Quixote s character is given in the 
 first chapter where he is piecing out his im- 
 
 1 That Cervantes had made a study of madness is evi 
 dent from the Introduction to the Second Part. 
 
180 DON QUIXOTE, 
 
 perfect helmet with a new visor. He makes 
 one of pasteboard, and then, testing it with 
 his sword, shatters it to pieces. He pro 
 ceeds to make another strengthened with 
 strips of iron, and " without caring to make 
 a further trial of it, commissioned and held 
 it for the finest possible visor." Don Quix 
 ote always sees what he wishes to see ; in 
 deed, always sees things as they are unless 
 the necessities of his hallucination compel 
 him to see them otherwise, and it is won 
 derful with what ingenuity he makes every 
 thing bend to those necessities. Cervantes 
 calls him the sanest madman and the mad 
 dest reasonable man in the world. Sancho 
 says that he was fitter to be preacher than 
 knight-errant. He makes facts courtesy to 
 his prepossessions. At the same time, with 
 exact truth to nature, he is never perfectly 
 convinced himself except in moments of ex 
 altation, and when the bee in his bonnet 
 buzzes so loudly as to prevent his hearing 
 the voice of reason. Cervantes takes care 
 to tell us that he was never convinced that 
 he was really a knight-errant till his cere 
 monious reception at the castle of the Duke. 
 Sancho, on the other hand, sees every 
 thing in the dry light of common sense, ex- 
 
DON QUIXOTE. 181 
 
 cept when beguiled by cupidity or under the 
 immediate spell of his master s imagination. 
 Grant the imagination its premises, and its 
 logic is irresistible. Don Quixote always 
 takes these premises for granted, and Sancho, 
 despite his natural shrewdness, is more than 
 half tempted to admit them, or at any rate 
 to run the risk of their being sound, on the 
 chance of the reward which his master per 
 petually dangled before him. This reward 
 was that island of which Don Quixote con 
 fesses he cannot tell the name because it 
 is not down on any map. With delightful 
 humor, it begins as some island, then be 
 comes the island, and then one of those isl 
 ands. And how much more probable does 
 this vagueness render the fulfilment of the 
 promise than if Don Quixote had locked 
 himself up in a specific one 1 A line of re 
 treat is thus always kept open, while Sancho s 
 eagerness is held at bay by this seemingly 
 chance suggestion of a choice in these hy 
 pothetical lordships. This vague potentiality 
 of islands eludes the thrust of any definite 
 objection. And when Sancho is inclined to 
 grumble his master consoles him by saying, 
 " I have already told thee, Sancho, to give 
 thyself no care about it ; for even should the 
 
182 DON QUIXOTE. 
 
 island fail us, there are the kingdoms of Di- 
 namarca and Sobradisa that would fit you as 
 the ring fits the finger, and since they are 
 on terra firma, you should rejoice the more." 
 All his terra firma was in dreamland. It 
 should seem that Sancho was too shrewd 
 for such a bait, and that here at least was 
 an exception to that probability for which 
 I have praised the story. But I think it 
 rather a justification of it. We must re 
 member how near the epoch of the story 
 was to that of the Conquistador es, when 
 men s fancies were still glowing with the 
 splendid potentialities of adventure. And 
 when Don Quixote suggests the possibility of 
 creating Sancho a marquis, it is remarkable 
 that he mentions the title conferred upon 
 Cortes. The conscience of Don Quixote is 
 in loyalty to his ideal ; he prizes desert as an 
 inalienable possession of the soul. The con 
 science of Sancho is in the eyes of his neigh 
 bors, and he values repute for its worldly 
 advantages. When Sancho tries to divert 
 his master from the adventure of the Fulling 
 Mills by arguing that it was night, and that 
 none could see them, so that they might well 
 turn out of the way to avoid the danger, 
 and begs him rather to take a little sleep, 
 
DON QUIXOTE. 183 
 
 Don Quixote answers indignantly : " Sleep 
 thou, who wast born for sleep. As for me, I 
 shall do whatever I see to be most becoming 
 to my profession." With equal truth to 
 nature in both cases, Sancho is represented 
 as inclined to believe the extravagant delu 
 sions of his master because he has seen and 
 known him all his life, while he obstinately 
 refuses to believe that a barber s basin is 
 the helmet of Mambrino because he sees 
 and knows that it is a basin. Don Quixote 
 says of him to the Duke, " He doubts every 
 thing and believes everything." Cervantes 
 was too great an artist to make him wholly 
 vulgar and greedy and selfish, though he 
 makes him all these. He is witty, wise ac 
 cording to his lights, affectionate, and faith 
 ful. When he takes leave of his imaginary 
 governorship he is not without a certain 
 manly dignity that is almost pathetic. 
 
 The ingenuity of the story, the probabil 
 ity of its adventures, the unwearied fecun 
 dity of invention shown in devising and 
 interlacing them, in giving variety to a sin 
 gle theme and to a plot so perfectly simple 
 in its conception, are all wonderful. The 
 narrative flows on as if unconsciously, and 
 our fancies float along with it. It is no- 
 
184 DON QUIXOTE. 
 
 ticeable, too, in passing, what a hypsethral 
 story it is, how much of it passes in the 
 open air, how the sun shines, the birds sing, 
 the brooks dance, and the leaves murmur 
 in it. This is peculiarly touching when we 
 recollect that it was written in prison. In 
 the First Part Cervantes made the mistake 
 (as he himself afterwards practically ad 
 mits) of introducing unprofitable digressions, 
 and in respect to the propriety and congru- 
 ousness of the adventures which befall Don 
 Quixote I must also make one exception. I 
 mean the practical jokes played upon him 
 at the Duke s castle, in which his delusion 
 is forced upon him instead of adapting 
 circumstances to itself or itself to circum 
 stances, according to the necessity of the 
 occasion. These tend to degrade him in 
 the eyes of the reader, who resents rather 
 than enjoys them, and feels the essential 
 vulgarity of his tormentors through all their 
 fine clothes. It is quite otherwise with the 
 cheats put upon Sancho, for we feel that 
 either he will be shrewd enough to be more 
 than even with the framers of them, or that 
 he is of too coarse a fibre to feel them 
 keenly. But Don Quixote is a gentleman 
 and a monomaniac, qualities, the one of 
 
DON QUIXOTE. 185 
 
 which renders such rudeness incongruous, 
 and the other unfeeling. He is, moreover, a 
 guest. It is curious that Shakespeare makes 
 the same mistake with Falstaff in the 
 " Merry Wives of Windsor," and Fielding 
 with Parson Adams, and in both cases to 
 our discomfort. The late Mr. Edward Fitz 
 gerald (yuis desiderio sit pudor aut modus 
 tarn cari capitisf) preferred the Second 
 Part to the First, and, but for these scenes, 
 which always pain and anger me, I should 
 agree with him. For it is plain that Cer 
 vantes became slowly conscious as he went 
 on how rich was the vein he had hit upon, 
 how full of various and profound suggestion 
 the two characters he had conceived and 
 who together make a complete man. No 
 doubt he at first proposed to himself a par 
 ody of the Romances of Chivalry, but his 
 genius soon broke away from the leading- 
 strings of a plot that denied free scope to his 
 deeper conception of life and men. 
 
 Cervantes is the father of the modern 
 novel, in so far as it has become a study and 
 delineation of character instead of being a 
 narrative seeking to interest by situation 
 and incident. He has also more or less di 
 rectly given impulse and direction to all hu- 
 
186 DON QUIXOTE. 
 
 moristic literature since his time. We see 
 traces of him in Moliere, in Swift, and still 
 more clearly in Sterne and Kichter. Field 
 ing assimilated and Smollett copied him. 
 Scott was his disciple in the " Antiquary," 
 that most delightful of his delightful novels. 
 Irving imitated him in his " Knickerbocker," 
 and Dickens in his "Pickwick Papers." I 
 do not mention this as detracting from their 
 originality, but only as showing the wonder 
 ful virility of his. The pedigrees of books 
 are as interesting and instructive as those of 
 men. It is also good for us to remember 
 that this man whose life was outwardly a 
 failure restored to Spain the universal em 
 pire she had lost* 
 
 
HAEVARD ANNIVERSARY. 
 
 ADDRESS DELIVERED IN SANDERS THEATRE, CAMBRIDGE, 
 NOVEMBER 8, 1886, ON THE TWO HUNDRED AND 
 FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF THE FOUNDA 
 TION OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY. 
 
HARVARD ANNIVERSARY. 
 
 IT seems an odd anomaly that, while re 
 spect for age and deference to its opinions 
 have diminished and are still sensibly di 
 minishing among us, the relish of antiquity 
 should be more pungent and the value set 
 upon things merely because they are old 
 should be greater in America than any 
 where else. It is merely a sentimental rel 
 ish, for ours is a new country in more senses 
 than one, and, like children when they are 
 .fancying themselves this or that, we have to 
 play very hard in order to believe that we 
 are old. But we like the game none the 
 worse, and multiply our anniversaries with 
 honest zeal, as if we increased our centuries 
 by the number of events we could congratu 
 late on having happened a hundred years 
 ago. There is something of instinct in this, 
 and it is a wholesome instinct if it serve to 
 quicken our consciousness of the forces that 
 are gathered by duration and continuity ; if 
 
190 HARVARD ANNIVERSARY. 
 
 it teach us that, ride fast and far as we may, 
 we carry the Past on our crupper, as im 
 movably seated there as the black Care of 
 the Roman poet. The generations of men 
 are braided inextricably together, and the 
 very trick of our gait may be countless gen 
 erations older than we. 
 
 I have sometimes wondered whether, as 
 the faith of men in a future existence grew 
 less confident, they might not be seeking 
 some equivalent in the feeling of a retro 
 spective duration, if not their own, at least 
 that of their race. Yet even this continuance 
 is trifling and ephemeral. If the tablets 
 unearthed and deciphered by Geology have 
 forced us to push back incalculably the birth 
 day of man, they have in like proportion im 
 poverished his recorded annals, making even 
 the Platonic year but as a single grain of the 
 sand in Time s hour-glass, and the inscrip 
 tions of Egypt and Assyria modern as yes 
 terday s newspaper. Fancy flutters over 
 these vague wastes like a butterfly blown out 
 to sea, and finds no foothold. It is true that, 
 if we may put as much faith in heredity as 
 seems reasonable to many of us, we are all 
 in some transcendental sense the coevals of 
 primitive man, and Pythagoras may well 
 
HARVARD ANNIVERSARY. 191 
 
 have been present in Euphorbus at the siege 
 of Troy. Had Shakespeare s thought taken 
 this turn when he said to Time ? 
 
 Thy pyramids built up with newer might 
 To me are nothing novel, nothing strange ; 
 They are but dressings of a former sight. 
 
 But this imputed and vicarious longevity, 
 though it may be obscurely operative in our 
 lives and fortunes, is no valid offset for the 
 shortness of our days, nor widens by a hair s 
 breadth the horizon of our memories. Man 
 and his monuments are of yesterday, and we, 
 however we may play with our fancies, must 
 content ourselves with being young. If 
 youth be a defect, it is one that we outgrow 
 only too soon. 
 
 Mr. Ruskin said the other day that he 
 could not live in a country that had neither 
 castles nor cathedrals, and doubtless men of 
 imaginative temper find not only charm but 
 inspiration in structures which Nature has 
 adopted as her foster-children, and on which 
 Time has laid his hand only in benediction. 
 It is not their antiquity, but its association 
 with man, that endows them with such sen 
 sitizing potency. Even the landscape some 
 times bewitches us by this glamour of a 
 human past, and the green pastures and 
 
192 HARVARD ANNIVERSARY. 
 
 golden slopes of England are sweeter both 
 to the outward and to the inward eye that 
 the hand of man has immemorially cared 
 for and caressed them. The nightingale 
 sings with more prevailing passion in Greece 
 that we first heard her from the thickets of 
 a Euripidean chorus. For myself, I never 
 felt the working of this spell so acutely 
 as in those gray seclusions of the college 
 quadrangles and cloisters at Oxford and 
 Cambridge, conscious with venerable asso 
 ciations, and whose very stones seemed hap 
 pier for being there. The chapel pavement 
 still whispered with the blessed feet of that 
 long procession of saints and sages and 
 scholars and poets, who are all gone into 
 a world of light, but whose memories seem 
 to consecrate the soul from all ignobler 
 companionship. 
 
 Are we to suppose that these memories 
 were less dear and gracious to the Puritan 
 scholars, at whose instigation this college 
 was founded, than to that other Puritan who 
 sang the dim religious light, the long-drawn 
 aisles and fretted vaults, which these mem 
 ories recalled? Doubtless all these things 
 were present to their minds, but they were 
 ready to forego them all for the sake of that 
 
HARVARD ANNIVERSARY. 193 
 
 truth whereof, as Milton says of himself, 
 they were members incorporate. The piti 
 ful contrast which they must have felt 
 between the carven sanctuaries of learning 
 they had left behind and the wattled fold 
 they were rearing here on the edge of the 
 wilderness is to me more than tenderly it 
 is almost sublimely pathetic. When I 
 think of their unpliable strength of purpose, 
 their fidelity to their ideal, their faith in 
 God and in themselves, I am inclined to say 
 with Donne that 
 
 We are scarce our fathers shadows cast at noon. 
 
 Our past is well-nigh desolate of aesthetic 
 stimulus. We have none or next to none of 
 these aids to the imagination, of these coigns 
 of vantage for the tendrils of memory or 
 affection. Not one of our older buildings 
 is venerable, or will ever become so. Time 
 refuses to console them. They all look as 
 if they meant business, and nothing more. 
 And it is precisely because this College 
 meant business, business of the gravest im 
 port, and did that business as thoroughly as 
 it might with no means that were not nig 
 gardly except an abundant purpose to do its 
 best, it is precisely for this that we have 
 gathered here to-day. We come back hither 
 
194 HARVARD ANNIVERSARY. 
 
 from the experiences of a richer life, as the 
 son who has prospered returns to the house 
 hold of his youth, to find in its very homeli 
 ness a pulse, if not of deeper, certainly of 
 fonder, emotion than any splendor could 
 stir. " Dear old Mother," we say, " how 
 charming you are in your plain cap and the 
 drab silk that has been turned again since 
 we saw you ! You were constantly forced 
 to remind us that you could not afford to 
 give us this and that which some other boys 
 had, but your discipline and diet were whole 
 some, and you sent us forth into the world 
 with the sound constitutions and healthy 
 appetites that are bred of simple fare." 
 
 It is good for us to commemorate this 
 homespun past of ours ; good, in these days 
 of a reckless and swaggering prosperity, 
 to remind ourselves how poor our fathers 
 were, and that we celebrate them because 
 for themselves and their children they chose 
 wisdom and understanding and the things 
 that are of God rather than any other 
 riches. This is our Founders Day, and we 
 are come together to do honor to them all : 
 first, to the Commonwealth which laid our 
 corner-stone ; next, to the gentle and godly 
 youth from whom we took our name, him- 
 
HARVARD ANNIVERSARY. 195 
 
 self scarce more than a name, and with 
 them to the countless throng of benefactors, 
 rich and poor, who have built us up to what 
 we are. We cannot do it better than in the 
 familiar words : " Let us now praise famous 
 men and our fathers that begat us. The 
 Lord hath wrought great glory by them 
 through his great power from the begin 
 ning. Leaders of the people by their coun 
 sels, and, by their knowledge of learning, 
 meet for the people ; wise and eloquent in 
 their instructions. There be of them that 
 have left a name behind them that their 
 praises might be reported. And some there 
 be which have no memorial, who are per 
 ished as though they had never been. But 
 these were merciful men whose righteous 
 ness hath not been forgotten. With their 
 seed shall continually remain a good inherit 
 ance. Their seed standeth fast, and their 
 children for their sakes." 
 
 This two hundred and fiftieth anniversary 
 of our College is not remarkable as com 
 memorating any memorable length of days. 
 There is hardly a country in Europe but can 
 show us universities that were older than 
 ours now is when ours was but a grammar- 
 school, with Eaton as master. Bologna, 
 
196 HARVARD ANNIVERSARY. 
 
 Paris, Oxford, were already famous schools 
 when Dante visited them, as I love to think 
 he did, six hundred years ago. We are an 
 cient, it is true, on our own continent, an 
 cient even as compared with several German 
 universities more renowned than we. But 
 it is not primarily the longevity of our Alma 
 Mater upon which we are gathered here to 
 congratulate her and each other. Kant says 
 somewhere that, as the records of human 
 transactions accumulate, the memory of man 
 will have room only for those of supreme 
 cosmopolitical importance. Can we claim 
 for the birthday we are keeping a significance 
 of so wide a bearing and so long a reach ? 
 If we may not do that, we may at least af 
 firm confidently that the event it records and 
 emphasizes is second in real import to none 
 that has happened in this western hemi 
 sphere. The material growth of the colonies 
 would have brought about their political 
 separation from the Mother Country in the 
 fulness of time, without that stain of blood 
 which unhappily keeps its own memory green 
 so long. But the founding of the first Eng 
 lish college here was what saved New Eng 
 land from becoming a mere geographical ex 
 pression. It did more, for it insured, and I 
 
HARVARD ANNIVERSARY. 197 
 
 believe was meant to insure, our intellectual 
 independence of the Old World. That in 
 dependence has been long in coming, but it 
 will come at last ; and are not the names of 
 the chiefest of those who have hastened its 
 coming written on the roll of Harvard Col 
 lege? 
 
 I think this foundation of ours a quite 
 unexampled thing. Surely never were the 
 bases of such a structure as this has become, 
 and was meant to be, laid by a community 
 of men so poor, in circumstances so unpre 
 cedented, and under what seemed such sul 
 len and averted stars. The colony, still in 
 significant, was in danger of an Indian war, 
 was in the throes of that Antinomian con 
 troversy which threatened its very existence, 
 yet the leaders of opinion on both sides 
 were united in the resolve that sound learn 
 ing and an educated clergy should never 
 cease from among them or their descendants 
 in the commonwealth they were building 
 up. In the inidst of such fears and such tu 
 mults Harvard College was born, and not 
 Marina herself had a more blusterous birth 
 or a more chiding nativity. The prevision 
 of those men must have been as clear as 
 their faith was steadfast. Well they knew 
 
198 HARVARD ANNIVERSARY. 
 
 and had laid to heart the wise man s pre 
 cept, " Take fast hold of instruction ; let 
 her not go ; for she is thy life." 
 
 There can be little question that the ac 
 tion of the General Court received its im 
 pulse and direction from the clergy, men of 
 eminent qualities and of well-deserved au 
 thority. Among the Massachusetts Bay col 
 onists the proportion of ministers, trained at 
 Oxford and Cambridge, was surprisingly 
 large, and, if we may trust the evidence of 
 contemporary secular literature, such men 
 as Higginson, Cotton, Wilson, Norton, Shep- 
 hard, Bulkley, Davenport, to mention no 
 more, were, in learning, intelligence, and 
 general accomplishment, far above the aver 
 age parson of the country and the church 
 from which their consciences had driven 
 them out. The presence and influence of 
 such men were of inestimable consequence 
 to the fortunes of the colony. If they were 
 narrow, it was as the Sword of Righteous 
 ness is narrow. If they had but one idea, it 
 was as the leader of a forlorn hope has but 
 one, and can have no other, namely, to do 
 the duty that is laid on him, and ask no 
 questions. Our Puritan ancestors have been 
 misrepresented and maligned by persons 
 
HARVARD ANNIVERSARY. 199 
 
 without imagination enough to make them 
 selves contemporary with, and therefore able 
 to understand, the men whose memories they 
 strive to blacken. That happy breed of 
 men who, both in church and state, led our 
 first emigration, were children of the most 
 splendid intellectual epoch that England 
 has ever known. They were the coevals of 
 a generation which passed on in scarcely 
 diminished radiance the torch of life kin 
 dled in great Eliza s golden days. Out of 
 the New Learning, the new ferment alike 
 religious and national, and the New Discov 
 eries with their suggestion of boundless pos 
 sibility, the alembic of that age had distilled 
 a potent elixir either inspiring or intoxicat 
 ing, as the mind that imbibed it was strong 
 or weak. Are we to suppose that the lips 
 of the founders of New England alone were 
 unwetted by a drop of that stimulating 
 draught ? that Milton was the only Puri 
 tan that had read Shakespeare and Ben Jon- 
 son and Beaumont and Fletcher ? I do not 
 believe it, whoever may. Did they flee from 
 persecution to bacoittb chemselves^\Tseiutors 
 in turn ? This means only that they would 
 not permit their holy enterprise to be hin 
 dered or their property to be damaged even 
 
200 HARVARD ANNIVERSARY. 
 
 by men with the most pious intentions and 
 as sincere, if not always so wise, as they. 
 They would not stand any nonsense, as the 
 phrase is, a mood of mind from which their 
 descendants seem somewhat to have degen 
 erated. They were no more unreasonable 
 than the landlady of Taylor the Platonist in 
 refusing to let him sacrifice a bull to Jupiter 
 in her back-parlor. The New England Puri 
 tans of the second generation became nar 
 row enough, and puppets of that formalism 
 against which their fathers had revolted. 
 But this was the inevitable result of that 
 isolation which cut them off from the great 
 currents of cosmopolitan thought and ac 
 tion. Communities as well as men have a 
 right to be judged by their best. We are 
 justified in taking the elder Winthrop as a 
 type of the leading emigrants, and the more 
 we know him the more we learn to rever 
 ence his great qualities, whether of mind or 
 character. The posterity of those earnest 
 and single-minded men may have thrown the 
 creed of their fathers into the waste-basket, 
 -.3^^]^^&^by Ifo iflvTid to .the duties they 
 believed it to involve is the most precious 
 and potent drop in their transmitted blood. 
 It is especially noteworthy that they did not 
 
HARVARD ANNIVERSARY. 201 
 
 make a strait-waistcoat of this creed for their 
 new college. The more I meditate upon 
 them, the more I am inclined to pardon 
 the enthusiasm of our old preacher when he 
 said that God had sifted three kingdoms to 
 plant New England. 1 
 
 The Massachusetts Bay Colony itself also 
 was then and since without a parallel. It 
 was established by a commercial company, 
 whose members combined in themselves the 
 two by no means incongruous elements of 
 religious enthusiasm and business sagacity, 
 the earthy ingredient, as in dynamite, hold 
 ing in check its explosive partner, which yet 
 could and did explode on sufficient concus 
 sion. They meant that their venture should 
 be gainful, but at the same time believed 
 that nothing could be long profitable for the 
 body wherein the soul found not also her 
 advantage. They feared God, and kept 
 their powder dry because they feared Him 
 
 1 Writing 1 in the country, with almost no books about 
 me, I have been obliged to trust wholly to my memory 
 in my references. My friend Dr. Charles Deane, the 
 most learned of our historical antiquarians, kindly in 
 forms me that the passage alluded to in the text should 
 read, "God sifted a whole Nation that he might send 
 choice Grain out into this Wilderness." Stough ton s 
 Election Sermon, preached in 1668. 
 
202 HARVARD ANNIVERSARY. 
 
 and meant that others should. I think their 
 most remarkable characteristic was their 
 public spirit, and in nothing did they show 
 both that and the wise forecast that gives it 
 its best value more clearly than when they 
 resolved to keep the higher education of 
 youth in their own hands and under their 
 own eye. This they provided for in the 
 college. Eleven years later they established 
 their system of public schools, where read 
 ing and writing should be taught. This 
 they did partly, no doubt, to provide feed 
 ers for the more advanced schools, and so 
 for the college, but even more, it may safely 
 be inferred, because they had found that the 
 polity to which their ends, rough-hew them 
 as they might, must be shaped by the con 
 ditions under which they were forced to act, 
 could be safe only in the hands of intelli 
 gent men, or, at worst, of men to whom they 
 had given a chance to become such. 
 
 In founding the College, they had three 
 objects : first, the teaching of the Humanities 
 and of Hebrew, as the hieratic language ; 
 second, the training of a learned as well as 
 godly clergy ; and third, the education of the 
 Indians, that they might serve as mission 
 aries of a higher civilization and of a purer 
 
HARVARD ANNIVERSARY. 203 
 
 religion, as the necessary preliminary thereto. 
 The third of these objects, after much effort 
 and much tribulation, they were forced to 
 abandon. John Winthrop, Jr., in a letter 
 written to the Honorable Eobert Boyle in 
 1663, gives us an interesting glimpse of a pair 
 of these dusky catechumens. " I make bold," 
 he says, u to send heere inclosed a kind of 
 rarity ; ... It is two papers of Latin com 
 posed by two Indians now scollars in the 
 Colledge in this country, and the writing is 
 with their own hands. . . . Possibly as a 
 novelty of that kind it may be acceptable, 
 being a reall fruit of that hopefull worke y* 
 is begu amongst them . . . testifying thus 
 much that I received them of those Indians 
 out of their own hands, and had ready an 
 swers fro them in Latin to many questions 
 that I propounded to them in y* language, 
 and heard them both express severall sen 
 tences in Greke also. I doubt not but those 
 honorable fautores Scientiarum [the Royal 
 Society] will gladly receive the intelligence 
 of such Vestiqia Doctrines in this wilderness 
 
 t/ 
 
 amongst such a barbarous people." Alas, 
 these Vestigia became only too soon retror- 
 sum ! The Indians showed a far greater 
 natural predisposition for disfurnishing the 
 
204 HARVARD ANNIVERSARY. 
 
 outside of other people s heads than for fur 
 nishing the insides of their own. Their own 
 wild life must have been dear to them ; the 
 forest beckoned just outside the College door, 
 and the first blue-bird of spring whistled 
 them back to the woods. They would have 
 said to the president, with the Gypsy steward 
 in the old play when he heard the new-come 
 nightingale, " Oh, Sir, you hear I am called." 
 At any rate, our College succeeded in keep 
 ing but one of these wild creatures long 
 enough to make a graduate of him, and he 
 thereupon vanishes into the merciful shadow 
 of the past. His name but, as there was 
 only one Indian graduate, so there is only 
 one living man who can pronounce his uncon 
 verted name, and I leave the task to Dr. 
 Hammond Trumbull. 
 
 I shall not attempt, even in brief, a history 
 of the College. It has already been excel 
 lently done. A compendium of it would be 
 mainly a list of unfamiliar names, and Cole 
 ridge has said truly that such names "are 
 non-conductors ; they stop all interest." 
 
 The fame and usefulness of all institutions 
 of learning depend on the greatness of those 
 who teach in them, 
 
 Queis arte benigna, 
 
 Et meliore Into finxit praecordia Titan, 
 
HARVARD ANNIVERSARY. 205 
 
 and great teachers are almost rarer than 
 great poets. We can lay claim to none such 
 (I must not speak of the living), unless it be 
 Agassiz, whom we adopted, but we have had 
 many devoted and some eminent. It has not 
 been their fault if they have not pushed far 
 ther forward the boundaries of knowledge. 
 Our professors have been compelled by the 
 necessities of the case (as we are apt to call 
 things which we ought to reform, but do not) 
 to do too much work not properly theirs, and 
 that of a kind so exacting as to consume the 
 energy that might have been ample for higher 
 service. They have been obliged to double 
 the parts of professor and tutor. During the 
 seventeenth century we have reason to think 
 that the College kept pretty well up to the 
 standard of its contemporary colleges in 
 England, so far as its poverty would allow. 
 It seems to have enjoyed a certain fame 
 abroad among men who sympathized with the 
 theology it taught, for I possess a Hebrew 
 Accidence, dedicated some two hundred years 
 ago to the " illustrious academy at Boston in 
 New England," by a Dutch scholar whom I 
 cannot help thinking a very discerning per 
 son. That the students of that day had 
 access to a fairly good library may be inferred 
 
206 HARVARD ANNIVERSARY. 
 
 from Cotton Mather s " Magnalia," though 
 he knew not how to make the best use of it, 
 and is a very nightmare of pedantry. That 
 the College had made New England a good 
 market for books is proved by John Dunton s 
 journey hither in the interests of his trade. 
 During the eighteenth and first quarter of 
 the nineteenth centuries, I fancy the condi 
 tion of things here to have been very much 
 what it was in the smaller English colleges of 
 the period, if we may trust the verses which 
 Gray addressed to the goddess Ignorance. 
 Young men who were willing mainly to teach 
 themselves might get something to their ad 
 vantage, while the rest were put here by 
 their parents as into a comfortable quaran 
 tine, where they could wait till the gates of 
 life were opened to them, safe from any con 
 tagion of learning, except such as might be 
 developed from previous infection. I am 
 speaking of a great while ago. Men are apt, 
 I know, in after life to lay the blame of their 
 scholastic shortcomings at the door of their 
 teachers. They are often wrong in this, and 
 I am quite aware that there are some pupils 
 who are knowledge-proof ; but I gather from 
 tradition, which I believe to be trustworthy, 
 that there have been periods in the history 
 
HARVARD ANNIVERSARY. 207 
 
 of the college when the students might have 
 sung with Bishop Golias : 
 
 Hi nos decent, sed indocti ; 
 Hi nos decent, et nox nocti 
 Indicat scientiam. 
 
 Despite all this, it is remarkable that the 
 two first American imaginative artists, All- 
 ston in painting and Greenough in sculp 
 ture, were graduates of Harvard. A later 
 generation is justly proud of Story. 
 
 We have a means of testing the general 
 culture given here towards the middle of the 
 last century in the Gratulatio presented by 
 Harvard College on the accession of George 
 III. It is not duller than such things usually 
 are on the other side of the water, and it 
 shows a pretty knack at tagging verses. It 
 is noteworthy that the Greek in it, if I re 
 member rightly, is wholly or chiefly Governor 
 Bernard s. A few years earlier, some of the 
 tracts in the Whitfield controversy prove that 
 the writers had got here a thorough training 
 in English at least. They had certainly not 
 read their Swift in vain. 
 
 But the chief service, as it was the chief 
 office, of the College during all those years 
 was to maintain and hand down the tradi 
 tions of how excellent a thing Learning was, 
 
208 HARVARD ANNIVERSARY. 
 
 even if the teaching were not always adequate 
 by way of illustration. And yet, so far as 
 that teaching went, it was wise in this, that 
 it gave its pupils some tincture of letters 
 as distinguished from mere scholarship. It 
 aimed to teach them the authors, that is, the 
 few great ones, the late Professor Popkin, 
 whom the older of us remember, would have 
 allowed that title only to the Greeks, and 
 to teach them in such a way as to enable the 
 pupil to assimilate somewhat of their thought, 
 sentiment, and style, rather than to master the 
 minuter niceties of the language in which 
 they wrote. It struck for their matter, as 
 Montaigne advised, who would have men 
 taught to love Virtue instead of learning to 
 decline virtus. It set more store by the 
 marrow than by the bone that encased it. It 
 made language, as it should be, a ladder to 
 literature, and not literature a ladder to 
 language. Many a boy has hated, and 
 rightly hated, Homer and Horace the peda 
 gogues and grammarians, who would have 
 loved Homer and Horace the poets, had he 
 been allowed to make their acquaintance. 
 The old method of instruction had the prime 
 merit of enabling its pupils to conceive that 
 there is neither ancient nor modern on the 
 
HARVARD ANNIVERSARY. 209 
 
 narrow shelves of what is truly literature. 
 We owe a great debt to the Germans. No 
 one is more indebted to them than I, but 
 is there not danger of their misleading us in 
 some directions into pedantry ? In his pref 
 ace to an Old French poem of the thirteenth 
 century, lately published, the editor informs 
 us sorrowfully that he had the advantage of 
 listening only two years and a half to the 
 lectures of Professor Gaston Paris, in which 
 time he got no farther than through the first 
 three vowels. At this rate, to master the 
 whole alphabet, consonants and all, would be 
 a task fitter for the centurial adolescence of 
 Methuselah than for our less liberal ration of 
 years. I was glad my editor had had this 
 advantage, and I am quite willing that Old 
 French should get the benefit of such scrupu 
 losity, but I think I see a tendency to train 
 young men in the languages as if they were 
 all to be editors, and not lovers of polite 
 literature. Education, we are often told, is 
 a drawing out of the faculties. May they 
 not be drawn out too thin ? I am not under 
 valuing philology or accuracy of scholarship. 
 Both are excellent and admirable in their 
 places. But philology is less beautiful to 
 me than philosophy, as Milton understood the 
 
210 HARVARD ANNIVERSARY. 
 
 word, and mere accuracy is to Truth as a 
 plaster-cast to the marble statue ; it gives 
 the facts, but not their meaning. If I must 
 choose, I had rather a young man should 
 be intimate with the genius of the Greek 
 dramatic poets than with the metres of their 
 choruses, though I should be glad to have 
 him on easy terms with both. 
 
 For more than two hundred years, in its 
 discipline and courses of study, the College 
 followed mainly the lines traced by its found 
 ers. The influence of its first half century 
 did more than any other, perhaps more than 
 all others, to make New England what it is. 
 During the one hundred and forty years 
 preceding our War of Independence it had 
 supplied the schools of the greater part of 
 New England with teachers. What was 
 even more important, it had sent to every 
 parish in Massachusetts one man, the clergy 
 man, with a certain amount of scholarship, a 
 belief in culture, and generally pretty sure 
 to bring with him or to gather a consider 
 able collection of books, by no means wholly 
 theological. Simple and godly men were 
 they, the truest modern antitypes of Chau 
 cer s Good Parson, receiving much, some 
 times all, of their scanty salary in kind, and 
 
HARVARD ANNIVERSARY. 211 
 
 eking it out by the drudgery of a cross- 
 grained farm where the soil seems all back 
 bone. If there was no regular practitioner, 
 they practised without fee a grandmotherly 
 sort of medicine, probably not much more 
 harmful ( 0, dura messorum ilia) than the 
 heroic treatment of the day. They con 
 trived to save enough to send their sons 
 through college, to portion their daughters, 
 decently trained in English literature of the 
 more serious kind, and perfect in the duties 
 of household and dairy, and to make modest 
 provision for the widow, if they should leave 
 one. With all this, they gave their two 
 sermons every Sunday of the year, and of a 
 measure that would seem ruinously liberal 
 to these less stalwart days, when scarce ten 
 parsons together could lift the stones of 
 Diomed which they hurled at Satan with 
 the easy precision of lifelong practice. And 
 if they turned their barrel of discourses at 
 the end of the Horatian ninth year, which 
 of their parishioners was the wiser for it ? 
 Their one great holiday was Commencement, 
 which they punctually attended. They shared 
 the many toils and the rare festivals, the 
 joys and the sorrows, of their townsmen as 
 bone of their bone and flesh of their flesh, 
 
212 HARVARD ANNIVERSARY. 
 
 for all were of one blood and of one faith. 
 They dwelt on the same brotherly level with 
 them as men, yet set apart from and above 
 them by their sacred office. Preaching the 
 most terrible of doctrines, as most of them 
 did, they were humane and cheerful men, 
 and when they came down from the pulpit 
 seemed to have been merely twisting their 
 " cast-iron logic " of despair, as Coleridge 
 said of Donne, " into true-love-knots." Men 
 of authority, wise in council, independent, 
 for their settlement was a life-tenure, they 
 were living lessons of piety, industry, fru 
 gality, temperance, and, with the magis 
 trates, were a recognized aristocracy. Surely 
 never was an aristocracy so simple, so harm 
 less, so exemplary, and so fit to rule. I re 
 member a few lingering survivors of them 
 in my early boyhood, relics of a serious but 
 not sullen past, of a community for which in 
 civic virtue, intelligence, and general effi 
 cacy I seek a parallel in vain : 
 
 rusticorum mascula militum 
 Proles . . . docta . . . 
 
 Versare glebas et severse 
 Matris ad arbitrium recisos 
 
 Portare fustes. 
 
 I know too well the deductions to be 
 
HARVARD ANNIVERSARY. 213 
 
 made. It was a community without charm, 
 or with a homely charm at best, and the life 
 it led was visited by no muse even in dream. 
 But it was the stuff out of which fortunate 
 ancestors are made, and twenty-five years 
 ago their sons showed in no diminished 
 measure the qualities of the breed. In every 
 household some brave boy was saying to his 
 mother, as Iphigenia to hers, 
 
 Tlaai yap p "EAA7j<n KOivbv ere/c cs ovxl <rol 
 
 Nor were Harvard s sons the last. This hall 
 commemorates them, but their story is writ 
 ten in headstones all over the land they 
 saved. 
 
 To the teaching and example of those rev 
 erend men whom Harvard bred and then 
 planted in every hamlet as pioneers and out 
 posts of her doctrine, Massachusetts owes 
 the better part of her moral and intellectual 
 inheritance. They, too, were the progeni 
 tors of a numerous and valid race. My 
 friend Dr. Holmes was, I believe, the first 
 to point out how large a proportion of our 
 men of light and leading sprang from their 
 loins. The illustrious Chief Magistrate of 
 the Republic, who honors us with his pres 
 ence here to-day, has ancestors italicized in 
 
214 HARVARD ANNIVERSARY. 
 
 our printed registers, and has shown himself 
 worthy of his pedigree. 
 
 During the present century, I believe that 
 Harvard received and welcomed the new 
 learning from Germany at the hands of Ev 
 erett, Bancroft, and Ticknor, before it had 
 been accepted by the more conservative uni 
 versities of the Old Home. Everett s trans 
 lation of Buttmann s Greek Grammar was 
 reprinted in England, with the " Massachu 
 setts " omitted after " Cambridge," at the 
 end of the preface, to conceal its American 
 origin. Emerson has told us how his intel 
 lectual life was quickened by the eloquent 
 enthusiasm of Everett s teaching. Mr. Ban 
 croft made strenuous efforts to introduce 
 a more wholesome discipline and maturer 
 methods of study, with the result of a rebel 
 lion of the Freshman Class, who issued a 
 manifesto of their wrongs, written by the late 
 Robert Rantoul, which ended thus : " Shall 
 FREEMEN bear this? FRESHMEN are free 
 men ! " They, too, remembered Revolution 
 ary sires. Mr. Bancroft s translation of 
 Heeren was the first of its kind, and it is 
 worth mention that the earliest version from 
 the prose of Henry Heine into English was 
 made here, though not by a graduate of 
 
HARVARD ANNIVERSARY. 215 
 
 Harvard. Ticknor also strove earnestly to 
 enlarge the scope of the collegiate courses of 
 study. The force of the new impulse did 
 not last long, or produce, unless indirectly, 
 lasting results. It was premature, the stu 
 dents were really school-boys, and the col 
 lege was not yet capable of the larger uni 
 versity life. The conditions of American 
 life, too, were such that young men looked 
 upon scholarship neither as an end nor as 
 a means, but simply as an accomplishment, 
 like music or dancing, of which they were to 
 acquire a little more or a little less, gener 
 ally a little less, according to individual taste 
 or circumstances. It has been mainly dur 
 ing the last twenty-five years that the Col 
 lege, having already the name, but by no 
 means all the resources, of a university, has 
 been trying to perform some, at least, of the 
 functions which that title implies. 
 
 Now half appears 
 
 The tawny lion, pawing to get free 
 
 Let us, then, no longer look backwards, 
 but forwards, as our fathers did when they 
 laid our humble foundations in the wilder 
 ness. The motto first proposed for the Col 
 lege arms was, as you know, Veritas, writ 
 ten across three open books. It was a noble 
 
210 HARVARD ANNIVERSARY. 
 
 one, and, if the full bearing of it was un 
 derstood, as daring as it was noble. Per 
 haps it was discarded because an open book 
 seemed hardly the fittest symbol for what is 
 so hard to find, and, if ever we fancy we 
 have found it, so hard to decipher and to 
 translate into our own language and life. 
 Pilate s question still murmurs in the ear of 
 every thoughtful, and Montaigne s in that of 
 every honest man. The motto finally sub 
 stituted for that, Christo et Ecclesice, is, 
 when rightly interpreted, substantially the 
 same, for it means that we are to devote our 
 selves to the highest conception we have of 
 Truth and to the preaching of it. Fortu 
 nately, the Sphinx proposes her conundrums 
 to us one at a time and at intervals propor 
 tioned to our wits. 
 
 Joseph de Maistre says that " un homme 
 d esprit est tenu de savoir deux choses : 1, 
 ce qu il est; 2, ou il est." The questions 
 for us are, In what sense are we become a 
 university? And then, if we become so, 
 What and to what end should a university 
 aim to teach now and here in this America 
 of ours whose meaning no man can yet com 
 prehend ? And, when we have settled what 
 it is best to teach, comes the further ques- 
 
HARVARD ANNIVERSARY. 217 
 
 tion, How are we to teach it? Whether 
 with an eye to its effect on developing char 
 acter or personal availability, that is to say, 
 to its effect in the conduct of life, or on the 
 chances of getting a livelihood ? Perhaps 
 we shall find that we must have a care for 
 both, and I cannot see why the two need 
 be incompatible ; but if they are, I should 
 choose the former term of the alternative. 
 
 In a not remote past, society had still cer 
 tain recognized, authoritative guides, and 
 the college trained them as the fashion of 
 the day required. But 
 
 Damnosa quid non imminuit dies ? 
 
 That ancient close corporation of official 
 guides has been compelled to surrender its 
 charter. We are pestered with as many 
 volunteers as at Niagara, and, as there, if we 
 follow any of them, may count on paying for 
 it pretty dearly. The office of the higher 
 instruction, nevertheless, continues to be as 
 it always was, the training of such guides ; 
 only it must now try to fit them out with as 
 much more personal accomplishment and 
 authority as may compensate the loss of 
 hierarchical prestige. 
 
 When President Walker, it must be now 
 nearly thirty years ago, asked me in common 
 
218 HARVARD ANNIVERSARY. 
 
 with my colleagues what my notion of a uni 
 versity was, I answered, " A university is a 
 place where nothing useful is taught ; but a 
 university is possible only where a man may 
 get his livelihood by digging Sanscrit roots." 
 What I meant was that the highest office of 
 the somewhat complex thing so named was 
 to distribute the true Bread of Life, the pane 
 degli angeli, as Dante called it, and to breed 
 an appetite for it; but that it should also 
 have the means and appliances for teaching 
 everything, as the medieval universities 
 aimed to do in their trivium and quadri- 
 vium. I had in mind the ideal and the 
 practical sides of the institution, and was 
 thinking also whether such an institution 
 was practicable, and, if so, whether it was 
 desirable, in a country like this. I think it 
 eminently desirable, and, if it be, what should 
 be its chief function? I choose rather to 
 hesitate my opinion than to assert it roundly. 
 But some opinion I am bound to have, either 
 my own or another man s, if I would be in 
 the fashion, though I may not be wholly 
 satisfied with the one or the other. Opin 
 ions are " as handy," to borrow our Yankee 
 proverb, " as a pocket in a shirt," and, I may 
 add, as hard to come at. I hope, then, that 
 
HARVARD ANNIVERSARY. 219 
 
 the day will come when a competent pro 
 fessor may lecture here also for three years 
 on the first three vowels of the Romance 
 alphabet, and find fit audience, though few. 
 I hope the day may never come when the 
 weightier matters of a language, namely, 
 such parts of its literature as have overcome 
 death by reason of their wisdom and of the 
 beauty in which it is incarnated, such parts 
 as are universal by reason of their civilizing 
 properties, their power to elevate and fortify 
 the mind, I hope the day may never come 
 when these are not predominant in the teach 
 ing given here. Let the Humanities be 
 maintained undiminished in their ancient 
 right. Leave in their traditional pre-emi 
 nence those arts that were rightly called lib 
 eral ; those studies that kindle the imagina 
 tion, and through it irradiate the reason ; 
 those studies that manumitted the modern 
 mind ; those in which the brains of finest 
 temper have found alike their stimulus and 
 their repose, taught by them that the power 
 of intellect is heightened in proportion as it 
 is made gracious by measure and symmetry. 
 Give us science, too, but give first of all, and 
 last of all, the science that ennobles life and 
 makes it generous. I stand here as a man 
 
220 HARVARD ANNIVERSARY. 
 
 of letters, and as a man of letters I must 
 speak. But I am speaking with no exclusive 
 intention. No one believes more firmly than 
 I in the usefulness, I might well say the ne 
 cessity, of variety in study, and of opening 
 the freest scope possible to the prevailing 
 bent of every mind when that bent shows 
 itself to be so predominating as to warrant 
 it. Many-sidedness of culture makes our 
 vision clearer and keener in particulars. 
 For after all, the noblest definition of Sci 
 ence is that breadth and impartiality of view 
 which liberates the mind from specialties, 
 and enables it to organize whatever we learn, 
 so that it become real Knowledge by being 
 brought into true and helpful relation with 
 the rest. 
 
 By far the most important change that 
 has been introduced into the theory and 
 practice of our teaching here by the new 
 position in which we find ourselves has been 
 that of the elective or voluntary system of 
 studies. We have justified ourselves by the 
 familiar proverb that one man may lead a 
 horse to water, but ten can t make him drink. 
 Proverbs are excellent things, but we should 
 not let even proverbs bully us. They are 
 the wisdom of the understanding, not of the 
 
HARVARD ANNIVERSARY. 221 
 
 higher reason. There is another animal, 
 which even Simonides could compliment 
 only on the spindle-side of his pedigree, and 
 which ten men could not lead to water, much 
 less make him drink when they got him 
 thither. Are we not trying to force univer 
 sity forms into college methods too narrow 
 for them ? There is some danger that the 
 elective system may be pushed too far and 
 too fast. There are not a few who think 
 that it has gone too far already. And they 
 think so because we are in process of trans 
 formation, still in the hobbledehoy period, 
 not having ceased to be a college, nor yet 
 having reached the full manhood of a uni 
 versity, so that we speak with that ambigu 
 ous voice, half bass, half treble, or mixed of 
 both, which is proper to a certain stage of 
 adolescence. We are trying to do two things 
 with one tool, and that tool not specially 
 adapted to either. Are our students old 
 enough thoroughly to understand the import 
 of the choice they are called on to make, 
 and, if old enough, are they wise enough ? 
 Shall their parents make the choice for 
 them ? I am not sure that even parents are 
 so wise as the unbroken experience and 
 practice of mankind. We are comforted by 
 
222 HARVARD ANNIVERSARY. 
 
 being told that in this we are only comply 
 ing with what is called the Spirit of the 
 Age, which may be, after all, only a finer 
 name for the mischievous goblin known to 
 our forefathers as Puck. I have seen sev 
 eral Spirits of the Age in my time, of very 
 different voices and summoning in very dif 
 ferent directions, but unanimous in their 
 propensity to land us in the mire at last. 
 Would it not be safer to make sure first 
 whether the Spirit of the Age, who would 
 be a very insignificant fellow if we docked 
 him of his capitals, be not a lying spirit, 
 since such there are ? It is at least curious 
 that, while the more advanced teaching has 
 a strong drift in the voluntary direction, 
 the compulsory system, as respects primary 
 studies, is gaining ground. Is it indeed so 
 self-evident a proposition as it seems to 
 many that " You may "is as wholesome a 
 lesson for youth as " You must " ? Is it so 
 good a fore-schooling for Life, which will 
 be a teacher of quite other mood, making 
 us learn, rod in hand, precisely those lessons 
 we should not have chosen ? I have, to be 
 sure, heard the late President Quincy (cla- 
 rum et venerabile nomen) say that if a young 
 man came hither and did nothing more than 
 
HARVARD ANNIVERSARY. 223 
 
 nib his shoulders against the college build 
 ings for four years, he would imbibe some 
 tincture of sound learning by an involuntary 
 process of absorption. The founders of the 
 College also believed in some impulsions to 
 wards science communicated d tergo but of 
 sharper virtue, and accordingly armed their 
 president with that ductor dubitantmm 
 which was wielded to such good purpose by 
 the Reverend James Bowyer at Christ s 
 Hospital in the days of Coleridge and 
 Lamb. They believed with the old poet 
 that whipping was "a wild benefit of na 
 ture," and, could they have read Words 
 worth s exquisite stanza, 
 
 One impulse from a vernal wood 
 Can teach us more of man, 
 Of moral evil and of good, 
 Than all the sages can, 
 
 they would have struck out " vernal " and 
 inserted " birchen " on the margin. 
 
 I am not, of course, arguing in favor of 
 a return to those vapulatory methods, but 
 the birch, like many other things that have 
 passed out of the region of the practical, 
 may have another term of usefulness as a 
 symbol after it has ceased to be a reality. 
 
 One is sometimes tempted to think that 
 
224 HARVARD ANNIVERSARY. 
 
 all learning is as repulsive to ingenuous 
 youth as the multiplication table to Scott s 
 little friend Marjorie Fleming, though this 
 is due in great part to mechanical meth 
 ods of teaching. " I am now going to tell 
 you," she writes, " the horrible and wretched 
 plaege that my multiplication table gives 
 me ; you can t conceive it ; the most Devil 
 ish thing is 8 times 8 and 7 times 7 ; it is 
 what nature itself can t endure." I know 
 that I am approaching treacherous ashes 
 which cover burning coals, but I must on. 
 Is not Greek, nay, even Latin, yet more un 
 endurable than poor Marjorie s task? How 
 many boys have not sympathized with Heine 
 in hating the Romans because they invented 
 Latin Grammar? And they were quite 
 right, for we begin the study of languages 
 at the wrong end, at the end which nature 
 does not offer us, and are thoroughly tired 
 of them before we arrive at them, if you 
 will pardon the bull. But is that any reason 
 for not studying them in the right way ? I 
 am familiar with the arguments for making 
 the study of Greek especially a matter of 
 choice or chance. I admit their plausibility 
 and the honesty of those who urge them. I 
 should be willing also to admit that the 
 
HARVARD ANNIVERSARY. 225 
 
 study of the ancient languages without the 
 hope or the prospect of going on to what 
 they contain would be useful only as a form 
 of intellectual gymnastics. Even so they 
 would be as serviceable as the higher mathe 
 matics to most of us. But I think that a 
 wise teacher should adapt his tasks to the 
 highest, and not the lowest, capacities of the 
 taught. For those lower also they would 
 not be wholly without profit. When there 
 is a tedious sermon, says George Herbert, 
 
 God takes a text and teacheth patience, 
 
 not the least pregnant of lessons. One of 
 the arguments against the compulsory study 
 of Greek, namely, that it is wiser to give 
 our time to modern languages and modern 
 history than to dead languages and ancient 
 history, involves, I think, a verbal fallacy. 
 Only those languages can properly be called 
 dead in which nothing living has been writ 
 ten. If the classic languages are dead, they 
 yet speak to us, and with a clearer voice 
 than that of any living tongue. 
 
 Graiis ingenium, Gratis dedit ore rotundo 
 Musa loqui, praeter laudem nullius avaris. 
 
 If their language is dead, yet the litera 
 ture it enshrines is rammed with life as per 
 haps no other writing, except Shakespeare s, 
 
226 HARVARD ANNIVERSARY. 
 
 ever was or will be. It is as contemporary 
 with to-day as with the ears it first enrap 
 tured, for it appeals not to the man. of then 
 or now, but to the entire round of human 
 nature itself. Men are ephemeral or evanes 
 cent, but whatever page the authentic soul 
 of man has touched with her immortaliz 
 ing finger, no matter how long ago, is still 
 young and fair as it was to the world s gray 
 fathers. Oblivion looks in the face of the 
 Grecian Muse only to forget her errand. 
 Plato and Aristotle are not names but things. 
 On a chart that should represent the firm 
 earth and wavering oceans of the human 
 mind, they would be marked as mountain- 
 ranges, forever modifying the temperature, 
 the currents, and the atmosphere of thought, 
 astronomical stations whence the movements 
 of the lamps of heaven might best be ob 
 served and predicted. Even for the mas 
 tering of our own tongue, there is no ex 
 pedient so fruitful as translation out of an 
 other ; how much more when that other is 
 a language at once so precise and so flexi 
 ble as the Greek ! Greek literature is also 
 the most fruitful comment on our own. 
 Coleridge has told us with what profit he 
 was made to study Shakespeare and Milton 
 
HARVARD ANNIVERSARY. 227 
 
 in conjunction with the Greek dramatists. 
 It is no sentimental argument for this study 
 that the most justly balanced, the most se 
 rene, and the most fecundating minds since 
 the revival of learning have been steeped 
 in and saturated with Greek literature. We 
 know not whither other studies will lead us, 
 especially if dissociated from this ; we do 
 know to what summits, far above our lower 
 region of turmoil, this has led, and what 
 the many-sided outlook thence, Will such 
 studies make anachronisms of us, unfit us 
 for the duties and the business of to-day ? 
 I can recall no writer more truly modern 
 than Montaigne, who was almost more at 
 home in Athens and Rome than in Paris. 
 Yet he was a thrifty manager of his estate 
 and a most competent mayor of Bordeaux. 
 I remember passing once in London where 
 demolition for a new thoroughfare was going 
 on. Many houses left standing in the rear 
 of those cleared away bore signs with the 
 inscription "Ancient Lights." This was the 
 protest of their owners against being built 
 out by the new improvements from such 
 glimpse of heaven as their fathers had, with 
 out adequate equivalent. I laid the moral 
 to heart. 
 
228 HARVARD ANNIVERSARY. 
 
 I am speaking of the College as it has 
 always existed and still exists. In so far as 
 it may be driven to put on the forms of the 
 university, I do not mean the four Facul 
 ties, merely, but in the modern sense, we 
 shall naturally find ourselves compelled to 
 assume the method with the function. Some 
 day we shall offer here a chance, at least, to 
 acquire the omne scibile. I shall be glad, 
 as shall we all, when the young American 
 need no longer go abroad for any part of his 
 training, though that may not be always a 
 disadvantage, if Shakespeare was right in 
 thinking that 
 
 Home-keeping youths have ever homely wits. 
 
 I should be still gladder if Harvard should 
 be the place that offered the alternative. It 
 seems more than ever probable that this will 
 happen, and happen in our day. And when 
 ever it does happen, it will be due, more than 
 to any and all others, to the able, energetic, 
 single-minded, and yet fair-minded man who 
 has presided over the College during the try 
 ing period of transition, and who will by a 
 rare combination of eminent qualities carry 
 that transition forward to its accomplish 
 ment without haste and without jar, ohne 
 Hast, ohne Hast. He more than any of his 
 
HARVARD ANNIVERSARY. 229 
 
 distinguished predecessors has brought the 
 university into closer and more telling re 
 lations with the national life in whatever 
 that life has which is most distinctive and 
 most hopeful. 
 
 But we still mainly occupy the position of 
 a German Gymnasium. Under existing cir 
 cumstances, therefore, and with the methods 
 of teaching they enforce, I think that special 
 and advanced courses should be pushed on, 
 so far as possible, as the other professional 
 courses are, into the post-graduate period. 
 The opportunity would be greater because 
 the number would be less, and the teaching 
 not only more thorough, but more vivifying 
 through the more intimate relation of teacher 
 and pupil. Under those conditions the vol 
 untary system will not only be possible, but 
 will come of itself, for every student will 
 know what he wants and where he may get 
 it, and learning will be loved, as it should be, 
 for its own sake as well as for what it gives. 
 The friends of university training can do 
 nothing that would forward it more than the 
 founding of post-graduate fellowships and 
 the building and endowing of a hall where 
 the holders of them might be commensals, 
 remembering that when Cardinal Wolsey 
 
230 HARVARD ANNIVERSARY. 
 
 built Christ Church at Oxford his first care 
 was the kitchen. Nothing is so great a 
 quickener of the faculties or so likely to 
 prevent their being narrowed to a single 
 groove as the frequent social commingling 
 of men who are aiming at one goal by differ 
 ent paths. If you would have really great 
 scholars, and our life offers no prizes for 
 such, it would be well if the university could 
 offer them. I have often been struck with 
 the inaiiy-sided versatility of the Fellows of 
 English colleges who have kept their wits 
 in training by continual fence one with 
 another. 
 
 During the first two centuries of her exist 
 ence, it may be affirmed that Harvard did 
 sufficiently well the only work she was called 
 on to do, perhaps the only work it was pos 
 sible for her to do. She gave to Boston her 
 scholarly impress, to the Commonwealth her 
 scholastic impulse. To the clergy of her 
 training was mainly intrusted the oversight 
 of the public schools ; these were, as I have 
 said, though indirectly, feeders of the Col 
 lege, for their teaching was of the plainest. 
 But if a boy in any country village showed 
 uncommon parts, the clergyman was sure to 
 hear of it. He and the Squire and the 
 
HARVARD ANNIVERSARY. 231 
 
 Doctor, if there was one, talked it over, and 
 that boy was sure to be helped onward to 
 college ; for next to the five points of Cal 
 vinism our ancestors believed in a college 
 education, that is, in the best education that 
 was to be had. The system, if system it 
 should be called, was a good one, a practical 
 application of the doctrine of Natural Selec 
 tion. Ah ! how the parents nay, the whole 
 family moiled and pinched that their boy 
 might have the chance denied to them ! 
 Mr. Matthew Arnold has told us that in 
 contemporary France, which seems doomed 
 to try every theory of enlightenment by 
 which the fingers may be burned or the 
 house set on fire, the children of the public 
 schools are taught in answer to the question, 
 u Who gives you all these fine things ? " to 
 say, "The State." Ill fares the State in 
 which the parental image is replaced by an 
 abstraction. The answer of the boy of whom 
 I have been speaking would have been in a 
 spirit better for the State and for the hope of 
 his own future life : " I owe them, under God, 
 to my own industry, to the sacrifices of my 
 father and mother, and to the sympathy of 
 good men." Nor was the boy s self-respect 
 lessened, for the aid was given by loans, to 
 
232 HARVARD ANNIVERSARY. 
 
 be repaid when possible. The times have 
 changed, and it is no longer the ambition of 
 a promising boy to go to college. They are 
 taught to think that a common-school educa 
 tion is good enough for all practical pur 
 poses. And so perhaps it is, but not for all 
 ideal purposes. Our public schools teach 
 too little or too much : too little if education 
 is to go no further, too many things if what 
 is taught is to be taught thoroughly ; and the 
 more they seem to teach, the less likely is 
 education to go further, for it is one of the 
 prime weaknesses of a democracy to be satis 
 fied with the second-best if it appear to an 
 swer the purpose tolerably well, and to be 
 cheaper as it never is in the long run. 
 
 Our ancestors believed in education, but 
 not in making it wholly eleemosynary. And 
 they were wise in this, for men do not value 
 what they get for nothing any more than 
 they value air and light till deprived of 
 them. It is quite proper that the cost of 
 our public schools should be paid by the 
 rich, for it is their interest, as Lord Sher- 
 brooke said, " to educate their rulers." But 
 it is to make paupers of the pupils to furnish 
 them, as is now proposed, with text-books, 
 slates, and the like at public cost. This is 
 
HARVARD ANNIVERSARY. 233 
 
 an advance towards that State Socialism 
 which, if it ever prevail, will be deadly to 
 certain homespun virtues far more precious 
 than most of the book-knowledge in the 
 world. It is to be hoped that our higher 
 institutions of learning may again be brought 
 to bear, as once they did, more directly on 
 the lower, that they may again come into 
 such closer and graduated relation with them 
 as may make the higher education the goal 
 to which all who show a clear aptitude shall 
 aspire. I know that we cannot have ideal 
 teachers in our public schools for the price 
 we pay or in the numbers we require. But 
 teaching, like water, can rise no higher than 
 its source, and, like water again, it has a 
 lazy aptitude for running down-hill unless 
 a constant impulse be applied in the other 
 direction. Would not this impulse be fur 
 nished by the ambition to send on as many 
 pupils as possible to the wider sphere of 
 the university ? Would not this organic re 
 lation to the Higher Education necessitate 
 a corresponding rise in the grade of intelli 
 gence, capacity, and culture demanded in the 
 teachers ? 
 
 Harvard has done much by raising its 
 standard to force upwards that also of the 
 
234 HARVARD ANNIVERSARY. 
 
 preparatory schools. The leaven thus in 
 fused will, let us hope, filter gradually down 
 wards till it raise a ferment in the lower 
 grades as well. What we need more than 
 anything else is to increase the number of 
 our highly cultivated men and thoroughly 
 trained minds ; for these, wherever they go, 
 are sure to carry with them, consciously or 
 not, the seeds of sounder thinking and of 
 higher ideals. The only way in which our 
 civilization can be maintained even at the 
 level it has reached, the only way in which 
 that level can be made more general and be 
 raised higher, is by bringing the influence 
 of the more cultivated to bear with greater 
 energy and directness on the less cultivated, 
 and by opening more inlets to those indirect 
 influences which make for refinement of 
 mind and body. Democracy must show its 
 capacity for producing not a higher average 
 man, but the highest possible types of man 
 hood in all its manifold varieties, or it is a 
 failure. No matter what it does for the body, 
 if it do not in some sort satisfy that inextin 
 guishable passion of the soul for something 
 that lifts life away from prose, from the com 
 mon and the vulgar, it is a failure. Unless it 
 know how to make itself gracious and win- 
 
HARVARD ANNIVERSARY. 235 
 
 ning, it is a failure. Has it done this ? Is it 
 doing this ? Or trying to do it ? Not yet, I 
 think, if one may judge by that commonplace 
 of our newspapers that an American who 
 stays long enough in Europe is sure to find 
 his own country unendurable when he comes 
 back. This is not true, if I may judge from 
 some little experience, but it is interesting 
 as implying a certain consciousness, which 
 is of the most hopeful augury. But we must 
 not be impatient ; it is a far cry from the 
 dwellers in caves to even such civilization 
 as we have achieved. I am conscious that 
 life has been trying to civilize me for now 
 nearly seventy years with what seem to me 
 very inadequate results. We cannot afford 
 to wait, but the Race can. And when I 
 speak of civilization I mean those things 
 that tend to develop the moral forces of 
 Man, and not merely to quicken his aesthetic 
 sensibility, though there is often a nearer 
 relation between the two than is popularly 
 believed. 
 
 The tendency of a prosperous Democracy 
 and hitherto we have had little to do but 
 prosper is towards an overweening con 
 fidence in itself and its home-made methods, 
 an overestimate of material success, and a 
 
236 HARVARD ANNIVERSARY. 
 
 corresponding indifference to the things of 
 the mind. The popular ideal of success 
 seems to be more than ever before the ac 
 cumulation of riches. I say " seems," for 
 it may be only because the opportunities are 
 greater. I am not ignorant that wealth is 
 the great fertilizer of civilization, and of the 
 arts that beautify it. The very names of 
 civilization and urbanity show that the re 
 finement of manners which made the arts 
 possible is the birth of cities where wealth 
 earliest accumulated because it found itself 
 secure. Wealth may be an excellent thing, 
 for it means power, it means leisure, it means 
 liberty. 
 
 But these, divorced from culture, that is, 
 from intelligent purpose, become the very 
 mockery of their own essence, not goods, but 
 evils fatal to their possessor, and bring with 
 them, like the Niblung hoard, a doom in 
 stead of a blessing. A man rich only for 
 himself has a life as barren and cheerless as 
 that of the serpent set to guard a buried 
 treasure. I am saddened when I see our suc 
 cess as a nation measured by the number of 
 acres under tillage or of bushels of wheat ex 
 ported ; for the real value of a country must 
 be weighed in scales more delicate than the 
 
HARVARD ANNIVERSARY. 237 
 
 Balance of Trade. The garners of Sicily 
 are empty now, but the bees from all climes 
 still fetch honey from the tiny garden-plot 
 of Theocritus. On a map of the world you 
 may cover Judea with your thumb, Athens 
 with a finger-tip, and neither of them figures 
 in the Prices Current ; but they still lord it 
 in the thought and action of every civilized 
 man. Did not Dante cover with his hood 
 all that was Italy six hundred years ago ? 
 And, if we go back a century, where was 
 Germany outside of Weimar ? Material 
 success is good, but only as the necessary 
 preliminary of better things. The measure 
 of a nation s true success is the amount it 
 has contributed to the thought, the moral en 
 ergy, the intellectual happiness, the spiritual 
 hope and consolation, of mankind. There 
 is no other, let our candidates flatter us as 
 they may. We still make a confusion be 
 tween huge and great. I know that I am 
 repeating truisms, but they are truisms that 
 need to be repeated in season and out of sea 
 son. 
 
 The most precious property of Culture 
 and of a college as its trustee is to maintain 
 higher ideals of life and its purpose, to keep 
 trimmed and burning the lamps of that 
 
238 HARVARD ANNIVERSARY. 
 
 pharos, built by wiser than we, which warns 
 from the reefs and shallows of popular doc 
 trine. In proportion as there are more thor 
 oughly cultivated persons in a community 
 will the finer uses of prosperity be taught 
 and the vulgar uses of it become disreputable. 
 And it is such persons that we are commis 
 sioned to send out with such consciousness 
 of their fortunate vocation and such devo 
 tion to it as we may. We are confronted 
 with unexampled problems. First of all is 
 democracy, and that under conditions in 
 great part novel, with its hitherto imper 
 fectly tabulated results, whether we consider 
 its effect upon national character, on popular 
 thought, or on the functions of law and gov 
 ernment ; we have to deal with a time when 
 the belief seems to be spreading that truth 
 not only can but should be settled by a show 
 of hands rather than by a count of heads, 
 and that one man is as good as another for 
 all purposes, as, indeed, he is till a real 
 man is needed ; with a time when the press 
 is more potent for good or for evil than ever 
 any human agency was before, and yet is 
 controlled more than ever before, by its in 
 terests as a business rather than by its sense 
 of duty as a teacher, and must purvey news 
 
HARVARD ANNIVERSARY. 239 
 
 instead of intelligence ; with a time when 
 divers and strange doctrines touching the 
 greatest human interests are allowed to run 
 about unmuzzled in greater number and va 
 riety than ever before since the Reformation 
 passed into its stage of putrefactive fermen 
 tation ; with a time when the idols of the 
 market-place are more devoutly worshipped 
 than ever Diana of the Ephesians was ; 
 when the guilds of the Middle Ages are re 
 vived among us with the avowed purpose of 
 renewing by the misuse of universal suffrage 
 the class-legislation to escape which we left 
 the Old World ; when the electric telegraph, 
 by making public opinion simultaneous, is 
 also making it liable to those delusions, pan 
 ics, and gregarious impulses which trans 
 form otherwise reasonable men into a mob ; 
 and when, above all, the better mind of the 
 country is said to be growing more and more 
 alienated from the highest of all sciences 
 and services, the government of it. I have 
 drawn up a dreary catalogue, and the moral 
 it points is this : That the College, in so far 
 as it continues to be still a college, as in 
 great part it does and must, is and should 
 be limited by certain pre-existing conditions, 
 and must consider first what the more gen- 
 
240 HARVARD ANNIVERSARY. 
 
 eral objects of education are without neg 
 lecting special aptitudes more than cannot 
 be helped. That more general purpose is, I 
 take it, to set free, to supple, and to train 
 the faculties in such wise as shall make them 
 most effective for whatever task life may 
 afterwards set them, for the duties of life 
 rather than for its business, and to open 
 windows on every side of the mind where 
 thickness of wall does not prevent it. 
 
 Let our aim be as hitherto to give a good 
 all-round education fitted to cope with as 
 many exigencies of the day as possible. I 
 had rather the college should turn out one 
 of Aristotle s four-square men, capable of 
 holding his own in whatever field he may 
 be cast, than a score of lopsided ones de 
 veloped abnormally in one direction. Our 
 scheme should be adapted to the wants of 
 the majority of under-graduates, to the ob 
 jects that drew them hither, and to such 
 training as will make the most of them after 
 they come. Special aptitudes are sure to 
 take care of themselves, but the latent pos 
 sibilities of the average mind can only be 
 discovered by experiment in many direc 
 tions. When I speak of the average mind, 
 I do not mean that the courses of study 
 
HARVARD ANNIVERSARY. 241 
 
 should be adapted to the average level of 
 intelligence, but to the highest, for in these 
 matters it is wiser to grade upwards than 
 downwards, since the best is the only thing 
 that is good enough. To keep the wing- 
 footed down to the pace of the leaden-soled 
 disheartens the one without in the least en 
 couraging the other. u Brains," says Ma- 
 chiavelli, " are of three generations, those 
 that understand of themselves, those that 
 understand when another shows them, and 
 those that understand neither of themselves 
 nor by the showing of others." It is the 
 first class that should set the stint ; the 
 second will get on better than if they had 
 set it themselves ; and the third will at least 
 have the pleasure of watching the others 
 show their paces. 
 
 In the College proper, I repeat, for it is 
 the birthday of the College that we are cele 
 brating, it is the College that we love and of 
 which we are proud, let it continue to give 
 such a training as will fit the rich to be 
 trusted with riches, and the poor to with 
 stand the temptations of poverty. Give to 
 History, give to Political Economy, that 
 ample verge the times demand, but with no 
 detriment to those liberal Arts which have 
 
242 HARVARD ANNIVERSARY. 
 
 formed open-minded men and good citizens 
 in the past, nor have lost the skill to form 
 them. Let it be our hope to make a gentle 
 man of every youth who is put under our 
 charge; not a conventional gentleman, but 
 a man of culture, a man of intellectual re 
 source, a man of public spirit, a man of 
 refinement, with that good taste which is the 
 conscience of the mind, and that conscience 
 which is the good taste of the soul. This 
 we have tried to do in the past, this let us 
 try to do in the future. We cannot do this 
 for all, at best, perhaps only for the few ; 
 but the influence for good of a highly trained 
 intelligence and a harmoniously developed 
 character is incalculable ; for though it be 
 subtle and gradual in its operation, it is as 
 pervasive as it is subtle. There may be few 
 of these, there must be few, but 
 
 That few is all the world which with a few 
 Doth ever live and move and work and stirre. 
 
 If these few can best be winnowed from the 
 rest by the elective system of studies, if the 
 drift of our colleges towards that system be 
 general and involuntary, showing a demand 
 for it in the conditions of American life, 
 then I should wish to see it unfalteringly 
 carried through. I am sure that the matter 
 
HARVARD ANNIVERSARY, 243 
 
 will be handled wisely and with all fore 
 thought by those most intimately concerned 
 in the government of the College. 
 
 They who, on a tiny clearing pared from 
 the edge of the woods, built here, most 
 probably with the timber hewed from the 
 trees they felled, our earliest hall, with the 
 solitude of ocean behind them, the mystery 
 of forest before them, and all about them 
 a desolation, must surely (si quis animis 
 celestibis locus) share our gladness and our 
 gratitude at the splendid fulfilment of their 
 vision. If we could but have preserved the 
 humble roof which housed so great a future, 
 Mr. Ruskin himself would almost have ad 
 mitted that no castle or cathedral was ever 
 richer in sacred associations, in pathos of 
 the past, and in moral significance. They 
 who reared it had the sublime prescience 
 of that courage which fears only God, and 
 could say confidently in the face of all dis 
 couragement and doubt, " He hath led me 
 forth into a large place; because he de 
 lighted in me He hath delivered me." We 
 cannot honor them too much ; we can repay 
 them only by showing, as occasions rise, that 
 we do not undervalue the worth of their 
 example. 
 
244 HARVARD ANNIVERSARY. 
 
 Brethren of the Alumni, it now becomes 
 my duty to welcome in your name the guests 
 who have come, some of them so far, to 
 share our congratulations and hopes to-day. 
 I cannot name them all and give to each his 
 fitting phrase. Thrice welcome to them all, 
 and, as is fitting, first to those from abroad, 
 representatives of illustrious seats of learn 
 ing that were old in usefulness and fame 
 when ours was in its cradle ; and next to 
 those of our own land, from colleges and 
 universities which, if not daughters of Har 
 vard, are young enough to be so, and are 
 one with her in heart and hope. I said that 
 I should single out none by name, but I 
 should not represent you fitly if I gave no 
 special greeting to the gentleman who brings 
 the message of John Harvard s College, 
 Emmanuel. The welcome we give him 
 could not be warmer than that which we 
 offer to his colleagues, but we cannot help 
 feeling that in pressing his hand our own 
 instinctively closes a little more tightly, as 
 with a sense of nearer kindred. There is 
 also one other name of which it would be 
 indecorous not to make an exception. You 
 all know that I can mean only the President 
 of our Republic. His presence is a signal 
 
HARVARD ANNIVERSARY. 245 
 
 honor to us all, and to us all I may say a 
 personal gratification. We have no politics 
 here, but the sons of Harvard all belong to 
 the party which admires courage, strength 
 of purpose, and fidelity to duty, and which 
 respects, wherever he may be found, the 
 
 Justum ac tenacem propositi virum, 
 
 who knows how to withstand the 
 
 Civium ardor prava jubentium. 
 
 He has left the helm of state to be with us 
 here, and so long as it is intrusted to his 
 hands we are sure that, should the storm 
 come, he will say with Seneca s Pilot, u O 
 Neptune, you may save me if you will ; you 
 may sink me if you will ; but whatever 
 happen, I shall keep iny rudder true." 
 
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