[Speech of Lord Houghton, in response to William Cullen Bryant, at a
breakfast given in his honor at the Century Club, New York, October
17, 1875. William Cullen Bryant, President of the Club, presided, and
said in part: "Our guest, Lord Houghton, was not born a lord, but he
was born a poet, which I take to be something better. Some forty years
ago, I think it was, he wandered in Switzerland, Italy and Greece, and
the impressions made upon his mind are woven into his beautiful series
of poems published under the title of 'Memorials of Many Scenes.' At a
later period, perhaps ten years afterward, he traveled in Egypt and
the western coast of Asia, and returned, bringing with him a sheaf of
'Palm-Leaves,' a series of charming poems, inspired by the remarkable
places which he visited, and by the incidents of his journey. These
'palm-leaves,' let me say, have a perennial verdure, they are yet as
green as when they were gathered and still breathe Sabæan odors--the
spicy perfume of the Orient--what the old poet Donne calls 'the
almighty balm of the early East.' He is now a traveler in our
territory, a region almost without antiquities, but of sufficient
interest to attract his steps hither. He will doubtless see faults in
our social and political condition--the eyes of a stranger are quicker
to discern them than our own can be--but let us hope that he will
carry back to his native land the recollections of a cordial reception
among our people, such as I hope we are ever ready to accord to
personal worth, to genius, and to services rendered to the human race.
The only time I ever saw Dr. Bowring, which was some thirty years
since, when he was a member of Parliament, of the party called
Radical, is memorable with me on account of the eulogy of our guest,
which he uttered with much warmth and enthusiasm. He praised the
generosity of his sentiments and the largeness of his sympathies. 'At
his table,' he added, 'you meet with men of various differing
opinions; the only title to his hospitality and esteem is personal
merit.' The same rule of preference which he applied to the
individuals whom he admitted to his friendship, had governed him
throughout a long public life in the measures which he had supported.
His co-operation and efficient aid have been given to proceedings and
measures which contemplate the well-being of the people--to useful and
beneficial reforms. In their favor he steadily gave his vote and
raised his voice. In honoring him we, therefore, honor not only the
poet, but the philanthropist and the statesman. I propose, therefore,
the health of Lord Houghton."]
MR. BRYANT AND GENTLEMEN:--In finding myself here now for the
first time, I am agitated by conflicting emotions, by my pleasure in
being among you, and by my regret at not having been here before.
In alluding to my poetic experience, Mr. Bryant mentioned that I had
passed many years of my early life in Italy, and while he was so doing
there arose in my memory a little incident not inapplicable to my
present position. I passed some time at Venice; and one summer evening,
on the Piazza di San Marco, my attention was attracted by an old man,
who walked up and down with a mingled air of wonder and delight, and
who, after I had observed him for some moments, came and asked me in the
Venetian dialect what streets he was to take toward a certain remote
portion of the city. I said I was a foreigner, and that he, being a
native of the place, must know its geography better than I could. He
then told me that he was there for the first time. He had passed all his
life in his own distinct world, there earning his daily bread, and
occupied by its little local interests. At last a friend had told him
that he must see the Place and Church of San Marco before he died, and
put him in a boat and landed him there, and now he wanted to find his
way home, charmed and contented.
Gentlemen, I am in the position of that Venetian veteran, and shall
return to my country, happy that I have at last found my way to this
great place and habitation--the civitas of English-speaking people. Not
that I have ever failed to regard this country in many senses as my own,
from the time when I took moral comfort from the flight of Mr. Bryant's
"Wild Fowl" across the ocean, and took the best lesson of life from the
Psalm of Longfellow. Since then I have ever been with you in all your
intellectual progress, and in the necessarily checkered course of your
constitutional history, and never more than in the late solemn years, in
all the national difficulties which you have so energetically, so
persistently, and so humanely surmounted.
In looking back to my impressions of those times, I sometimes think that
my sympathy with you was not wholly unselfish, but that I felt that, if
I had ever written anything which has a chance of a prolonged existence,
I should wish it to be read, not by any distracted and impotent
communities of British race, but by America, one and indivisible. And,
gentlemen, this is not unnatural, for amid all the divisions or
distractions of your history, your literature has ever been patriotic
and national. Literature, in truth, has been to you a good and faithful
emigrant, reproductive not only of all intellectual growth, but of the
sympathies--the largest sympathies--which bind together man to man. It
has settled among you every classic writer of British origin, and from
the Continent it has brought to you Goethe, Schiller, and Heinrich
Heine. It is also noticeable that by the side of these great
colonizations of thought you have not refused to receive and to pass to
your furthest Territories the humblest addition, the single volume of
verse, the chance felicitous expression of combined thought and feeling,
even some accidental refrain of song that had pleasantly caught the ear
and gone to the heart of man.
And this brings me to say to you one professional word respecting that
art and the nature of poetry that you have been kind enough to connect
with my name. The greater part of the verses I have written were that
product of the lyrical period of youth which is by no means uncommon in
modern civilization. It exhibits itself sometimes in the strangest
manner, without connection with other culture, or even the most common
intellectual opportunities. Of this I happen to have given to the world
a signal instance in the volume I published of the poems of David Gray,
a Scotch weaver-boy, who, without one advantage beyond the common
education of his class, described all the nature within his ken in the
highest poetic perfection, and passed away, leaving a most pathetic
record of a short life of imaginative sensibility. You can contrast this
simple and wayside flower of a faculty with such rich and complete
cultivation as it can assume in the efflorescence of Tennyson or
Swinburne; but in whatever form you find it, do not the less value the
faculty itself. Permit me to say that in no condition of society can it
be encouraged and fertilized more usefully than among yourselves. For
not only will it bring with it calm and comfort amid all the
superabundant activities, ambitions, and confusions of daily life, but
it has also the regulative powers teaching men to divide the sphere of
the imagination from that of practical life, and thus obviating the
dangers that so often arise from the want of this distinction.
There is no better preservative than the exercise of the poetic faculty
from religious hallucinations, from political delusions, and I would say
even from financial extravagances. Therefore, through the whole vast
range of this new world, be on the watch to look out for and to
encourage this great gift to man. Do not be too hard with any
imperfections or absence of refinement which may accompany its
exhibition. Do not treat it too critically or with too much scholastic
censure. Recognize also its value on another ground--the extension and
the perpetuation of our great common language--an interest not less dear
to every one of us here present than to the future welfare of mankind:--
"Beyond the vague Atlantic deep,
Far as the farthest prairies sweep,
Where mountain wastes the sense appall
Where burns the radiant Western Fall,
One duty lies on old and young--
With filial piety to guard,
As on its greenest native sward,
The glory of the English tongue!
"That ample speech, that subtle speech,
Apt for the needs of all in each,
Strong to endure, yet prompt to bend
Wherever human feelings tend,
Preserve its force, expand its powers,
And through the maze of civil life,
In letters, commerce, e'en in strife,
Remember, it is yours and ours!"
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