[Speech of John Morley at the banquet of the Royal Academy, London, May
3, 1890. Sir Frederic Leighton, President of the Academy, said in
introducing Mr. Morley: "With Literature I associate, not for the
first time, the name of a master of strong and sober English, a man in
whose writings the clear vision of a seeker after truth controls the
generous fervor of an idealist, and of whom every appreciator of a
fine literary temper must earnestly hope that the paths upon which he
has so long trod with growing honor may never become wholly strangers
to his feet--I mean Mr. John Morley."]
MR. PRESIDENT, YOUR ROYAL HIGHNESS, MY LORDS, LADIES AND
GENTLEMEN:--I feel that I am more unworthy now than I was eight
years ago to figure as the representative of literature before this
brilliant gathering of all the most important intellectual and social
interests of our time. I have not yet been able like the Prime Minister,
to go round this exhibition and see the works of art that glorify your
walls; but I am led by him to expect that I shall see the pictures of
Liberal leaders, including M. Rochefort. [Laughter.] I am not sure
whether M. Rochefort will figure as a man of letters or as a Liberal
leader, but I can understand that his portrait would attract the Prime
Minister because M. Rochefort is a politician who was once a Liberal
leader, and who has now seen occasion to lose his faith in Parliamentary
government. [Laughter and cheers.] Nor have I seen the picture of "The
Flowing Tide," but I shall expect to find in that picture when I do see
it a number of bathing-machines in which, not the younger generation,
but the elder generation are incarcerated. [Laughter.] The younger
generation, as I understand, are waiting confidently--for the arrival of
the "Flowing Tide," and when it arrives, the elderly gentlemen who are
incarcerated in those machines [laughter] will be only too anxious for a
man and a horse to come and deliver them from their imminent peril.
[Laughter and cheers.]
I thought that I detected in the last words of your speech, in proposing
this toast, Mr. President, an accent of gentle reproach that any one
should desert the high and pleasant ways of literature for the turmoil
and the everlasting contention of public life. I do not suppose that
there has ever been a time in which there was less of divorce between
literature and public life than the present time. ["Hear! Hear!"] There
have been in the reign of the Queen two eminent statesmen who have
thrice had the distinction of being Prime Minister, and oddly enough,
one of those statesmen [Lord Derby] has left behind him a most spirited
version of Homer, while the other eminent statesman [William E.
Gladstone]--happily still among us, still examines the legends and the
significance of Homer. [Cheers.] Then when we come to a period nearer to
ourselves, and look at those gentlemen who have in the last six years
filled the office of Minister for Ireland, we find that no fewer than
three [George Otto Trevelyan, John Morley, and Arthur Balfour] were
authors of books before they engaged in the very ticklish business of
the government of men. ["Hear! Hear!"] And one of these three Ministers
for Ireland embarked upon his literary career--which promised ample
distinction--under the editorial auspices of another of the three. We
possess in one branch of the Legislature the author of the most
fascinating literary biography in our language. We possess also another
writer whose range of knowledge and of intellectual interest is so great
that he has written the most important book upon the Holy Roman Empire
and the most important book upon the American Commonwealth [James
Bryce]. [Cheers.]
The first canon in literature was announced one hundred years ago by an
eminent Frenchman who said that in literature it is your business to
have preferences but no exclusions. In politics it appears to be our
business to have very stiff and unchangeable preferences, and exclusion
is one of the systematic objects of our life. [Laughter and cheers.] In
literature, according to another canon, you must have a free and open
mind and it has been said: "Never be the prisoner of your own opinions."
In politics you are very lucky if you do not have the still harder
fate--(and I think that the gentlemen on the President's right hand will
assent to that as readily as the gentlemen who sit on his left) of being
the prisoner of other people's opinions. [Laughter.] Of course no one
can doubt for a moment that the great achievements of literature--those
permanent and vital works which we will never let die--require a
devotion as unceasing, as patient, as inexhaustible, as the devotion
that is required for the works that adorn your walls; and we have
luckily in our age--though it may not be a literary age--masters of
prose and masters of verse. No prose more winning has ever been written
than that of Cardinal Newman; no verse finer, more polished, more
melodious has ever been written than that of Lord Tennyson and Mr.
Swinburne. [Cheers.]
It seems to me that one of the greatest functions of literature at this
moment is not merely to produce great works, but also to protect the
English language--that noble, that most glorious instrument--against
those hosts of invaders which I observe have in these days sprung up. I
suppose that every one here has noticed the extraordinary list of names
suggested lately in order to designate motion by electricity [laughter];
that list of names only revealed what many of us had been observing for
a long time--namely, the appalling forces that are ready at a moment's
notice to deface and deform our English tongue. [Laughter.] These
strange, fantastic, grotesque, and weird titles open up to my prophetic
vision a most unwelcome prospect. I tremble to see the day approach--and
I am not sure that it is not approaching--when the humorists of the
headlines of American journalism shall pass current as models of
conciseness, energy, and color of style. [Cheers and laughter.]
Even in our social speech this invasion seems to be taking place in an
alarming degree and I wonder what the Pilgrim Fathers of the seventeenth
century would say if they could hear their pilgrim children of the
nineteenth century who come over here, on various missions, and among
others, "On the make." [Laughter.] This is only one of the thousand such
like expressions which are invading the Puritan simplicity of our
tongue. I will only say that I should like, for my own part, to see in
every library and in every newspaper office that admirable passage in
which Milton, who knew so well how to handle both the great instrument
of prose and the nobler instrument of verse--declared that next to the
man who furnished courage and intrepid counsels against an enemy he
placed the man who should enlist small bands of good authors to resist
that barbarism which invades the minds and the speech of men in methods
and habits of speaking and writing.
I thank you for having allowed me the honor of saying a word as to the
happiest of all callings and the most imperishable of all arts. [Loud
cheers.]