[Speech of John Lothrop Motley, United States Minister to England at the
eighty-fourth annual banquet of the Royal Literary Fund, London, May
28, 1873. The Right-Hon. William E. Gladstone, First Minister of the
Crown, was chairman. The Bishop of Derry proposed the toast, "The
Literature of the United States, and Mr. Motley," which was loudly
cheered.]
MR. CHAIRMAN, MY LORDS AND GENTLEMEN:--I can scarcely find
fitting words to express my gratitude for the warm and genial manner in
which the toast of "American Literature" has been received by this
distinguished assembly. I wish that the honor of responding to it had
been placed in worthier hands. Two at least of our most eminent men of
letters I thought were in England, or near it--one, that most original,
subtle, poetical and graceful of thinkers and essayists, Mr. Emerson
[cheers]; the other, one of our most distinguished poets and
prose-writers, second to none in the highest spheres of imagination and
humor: Mr. Lowell. [Cheers.] I had hoped to meet them both, but I look
in vain for their friendly and familiar faces. In their absence, I
venture to return thanks most sincerely, but briefly, for the eloquent
and sympathetic words with which the distinguished prelate has spoken of
our literature. I do so in behalf of the eminent poets and prose-writers
in every department of literature and science, many of whose names
tremble on my lips, but the long roll-call of which I will not
enumerate, who are the living illustrators of our literature, and who it
is a gratification to know are almost as familiar and highly appreciated
in the old land of our forefathers as they are at home [cheers]; but I
for one like to consider them all as fellow-citizens in the great
English-speaking Republic of letters--where all are brothers, not
strangers to each other. And as an illustration of this, I believe that
it is not long since one of our famous poets whose exquisite works are
familiar in every palace and every cottage all over the world where the
English language is spoken--Mr. Longfellow--was recently requested to
preside at one of your meetings. [Cheers.]
I can produce nothing new on that great subject, which seems the
inevitable one for an American on such an occasion as this, the
international bond of a common language, a common literature, and
centuries of common history and tradition, which connects those two
great nations, the United Empire and the United Republic. May the
shadows of both never grow less and may that international bond
strengthen its links every year! [Cheers.] What is the first hallowed
spot in the Transatlantic pilgrimage of every true American? What is the
true Mecca of his heart? Not the hoary tombs of the Pharaohs, and the
one hundred gated cities of the Nile. Not the Acropolis and the
Parthenon, the plains of Marathon, the Pass of Thermopylæ, thrilling as
they are with heroic and patriotic emotion; not the Forum and the
Coliseum and the triumphal arches of Rome. No; the pious pilgrim from
the Far West seeks a sequestered, old-fashioned little town, in the
heart of the most delicious rural scenery that even old England can
boast; he walks up a quiet, drowsy, almost noiseless street, with quaint
old houses, half brick, half timber, hardly changed of aspect since they
looked out on the Wars of the Roses. He comes to an ancient, ivy-mantled
tower hard by a placid, silvery stream on which a swan is ever sailing;
he passes through a pleached alley under a Gothic gateway of the little
church, and bends in reverence before a solitary tomb, for in that tomb
repose the ashes of Shakespeare. [Cheers.] We claim our share in every
atom of that consecrated dust. Our forefathers, who first planted the
seeds of a noble civilization in New England and Virginia, were
contemporaries and countrymen of the Swan of Avon. So long as we all
have an undivided birthright in that sublimest of human intellects, and
can enjoy, as none others can, those unrivalled masterpieces, Americans
and Englishmen can never be quite foreigners to each other though seas
between as broad have rolled since the day when that precious dust wore
human clothing. [Cheers.]
And what is the next resting-place in our pilgrim's progress--the
pilgrim of Outre-Mer? Surely that stately and beautiful pile which we
have all seen in our dreams long before we looked upon it with the eyes
of flesh, time-honored Westminster Abbey. I can imagine no purer
intellectual pleasure for an American than when he first wanders through
those storied aisles, especially if he have the privilege which many of
our countrymen have enjoyed, of being guided there by the hand of one
whose exquisite urbanity and kindliness are fit companions to his
learning and his intellect, the successor of the ancient Abbot, the
historian of the Abbey, the present distinguished Dean of Westminster
[Dean Stanley], to whom we have listened with such pleasure to-night.
[Cheers.] And it will be in the Poets' Corner that we shall ever linger
the longest. Those statues, busts and mural inscriptions are prouder
trophies than all the banners from the most ensanguined battle-fields
that the valor of England has ever won, and with what a wealth of
intellect is that nation endowed which after the centuries of immortal
names already enshrined there has had the proud although most melancholy
honor of adding in one decade--scarcely more than ten years--the names
of Macaulay, Grote, Dickens, Thackeray, and Lytton? [Cheers.] They are
our contemporaries, not our countrymen; but we cannot afford to resign
our claim to some portion of their glory as illustrators of our common
language. And I would fain believe that you take a fraternal interest in
the fame of those whom we too have lost, and who were our especial
garland--Washington Irving, Fenimore Cooper, Everett, Hawthorne, and
Prescott.
But I have trespassed far longer upon your attention than I meant to do
when I arose; and I shall therefore only once more thank you for the
great kindness with which you have received the toast of the Literature
of the United States. [Cheers.]