Speeches: Literary and Social

FEBRUARY 7, 1842

Gentlemen,--To say that I thank you for the earnest manner in which
you have drunk the toast just now so eloquently proposed to you--to
say that I give you back your kind wishes and good feelings with
more than compound interest; and that I feel how dumb and powerless
the best acknowledgments would be beside such genial hospitality as
yours, is nothing. To say that in this winter season, flowers have
sprung up in every footstep's length of the path which has brought
me here; that no country ever smiled more pleasantly than yours has
smiled on me, and that I have rarely looked upon a brighter summer
prospect than that which lies before me now, {4} is nothing.

But it is something to be no stranger in a strange place--to feel,
sitting at a board for the first time, the ease and affection of an
old guest, and to be at once on such intimate terms with the family
as to have a homely, genuine interest in its every member--it is, I
say, something to be in this novel and happy frame of mind. And,
as it is of your creation, and owes its being to you, I have no
reluctance in urging it as a reason why, in addressing you, I
should not so much consult the form and fashion of my speech, as I
should employ that universal language of the heart, which you, and
such as you, best teach, and best can understand. Gentlemen, in
that universal language--common to you in America, and to us in
England, as that younger mother-tongue, which, by the means of, and
through the happy union of our two great countries, shall be spoken
ages hence, by land and sea, over the wide surface of the globe--I
thank you.

I had occasion to say the other night in Boston, as I have more
than once had occasion to remark before, that it is not easy for an
author to speak of his own books. If the task be a difficult one
at any time, its difficulty, certainly, is not diminished when a
frequent recurrence to the same theme has left one nothing new to
say. Still, I feel that, in a company like this, and especially
after what has been said by the President, that I ought not to pass
lightly over those labours of love, which, if they had no other
merit, have been the happy means of bringing us together.

It has been often observed, that you cannot judge of an author's
personal character from his writings. It may be that you cannot.
I think it very likely, for many reasons, that you cannot. But, at
least, a reader will rise from the perusal of a book with some
defined and tangible idea of the writer's moral creed and broad
purposes, if he has any at all; and it is probable enough that he
may like to have this idea confirmed from the author's lips, or
dissipated by his explanation. Gentlemen, my moral creed--which is
a very wide and comprehensive one, and includes all sects and
parties--is very easily summed up. I have faith, and I wish to
diffuse faith in the existence--yes, of beautiful things, even in
those conditions of society, which are so degenerate, degraded, and
forlorn, that, at first sight, it would seem as though they could
not be described but by a strange and terrible reversal of the
words of Scripture, "God said, Let there be light, and there was
none." I take it that we are born, and that we hold our
sympathies, hopes, and energies, in trust for the many, and not for
the few. That we cannot hold in too strong a light of disgust and
contempt, before the view of others, all meanness, falsehood,
cruelty, and oppression, of every grade and kind. Above all, that
nothing is high, because it is in a high place; and that nothing is
low, because it is in a low one. This is the lesson taught us in
the great book of nature. This is the lesson which may be read,
alike in the bright track of the stars, and in the dusty course of
the poorest thing that drags its tiny length upon the ground. This
is the lesson ever uppermost in the thoughts of that inspired man,
who tells us that there are


"Tongues in the trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything."


Gentlemen, keeping these objects steadily before me, I am at no
loss to refer your favour and your generous hospitality back to the
right source. While I know, on the one hand, that if, instead of
being what it is, this were a land of tyranny and wrong, I should
care very little for your smiles or frowns, so I am sure upon the
other, that if, instead of being what I am, I were the greatest
genius that ever trod the earth, and had diverted myself for the
oppression and degradation of mankind, you would despise and reject
me. I hope you will, whenever, through such means, I give you the
opportunity. Trust me, that, whenever you give me the like
occasion, I will return the compliment with interest.

Gentlemen, as I have no secrets from you, in the spirit of
confidence you have engendered between us, and as I have made a
kind of compact with myself that I never will, while I remain in
America, omit an opportunity of referring to a topic in which I and
all others of my class on both sides of the water are equally
interested--equally interested, there is no difference between us,
I would beg leave to whisper in your ear two words: INTERNATIONAL
COPYRIGHT. I use them in no sordid sense, believe me, and those
who know me best, best know that. For myself, I would rather that
my children, coming after me, trudged in the mud, and knew by the
general feeling of society that their father was beloved, and had
been of some use, than I would have them ride in their carriages,
and know by their banker's books that he was rich. But I do not
see, I confess, why one should be obliged to make the choice, or
why fame, besides playing that delightful REVEIL for which she is
so justly celebrated, should not blow out of her trumpet a few
notes of a different kind from those with which she has hitherto
contented herself.

It was well observed the other night by a beautiful speaker, whose
words went to the heart of every man who heard him, that, if there
had existed any law in this respect, Scott might not have sunk
beneath the mighty pressure on his brain, but might have lived to
add new creatures of his fancy to the crowd which swarm about you
in your summer walks, and gather round your winter evening hearths.

As I listened to his words, there came back, fresh upon me, that
touching scene in the great man's life, when he lay upon his couch,
surrounded by his family, and listened, for the last time, to the
rippling of the river he had so well loved, over its stony bed. I
pictured him to myself, faint, wan, dying, crushed both in mind and
body by his honourable struggle, and hovering round him the
phantoms of his own imagination--Waverley, Ravenswood, Jeanie
Deans, Rob Roy, Caleb Balderstone, Dominie Sampson--all the
familiar throng--with cavaliers, and Puritans, and Highland chiefs
innumerable overflowing the chamber, and fading away in the dim
distance beyond. I pictured them, fresh from traversing the world,
and hanging down their heads in shame and sorrow, that, from all
those lands into which they had carried gladness, instruction, and
delight for millions, they brought him not one friendly hand to
help to raise him from that sad, sad bed. No, nor brought him from
that land in which his own language was spoken, and in every house
and hut of which his own books were read in his own tongue, one
grateful dollar-piece to buy a garland for his grave. Oh! if every
man who goes from here, as many do, to look upon that tomb in
Dryburgh Abbey, would but remember this, and bring the recollection
home!

Gentlemen, I thank you again, and once again, and many times to
that. You have given me a new reason for remembering this day,
which is already one of mark in my calendar, it being my birthday;
and you have given those who are nearest and dearest to me a new
reason for recollecting it with pride and interest. Heaven knows
that, although I should grow ever so gray, I shall need nothing to
remind me of this epoch in my life. But I am glad to think that
from this time you are inseparably connected with every recurrence
of this day; and, that on its periodical return, I shall always, in
imagination, have the unfading pleasure of entertaining you as my
guests, in return for the gratification you have afforded me to-
night.