"In accepting your kind invitation, I confess that I was ignorant of my perils. I did not follow the counsel of my grandmamma with the four g's in having an eye to my own safety. For I fear that if I had dreamed of being called on to answer for American literature, one of those 'previous engagements,' which crop out so opportunely, would have stood between me and my present trying position. I had meant, if called upon, to say a few words about a Japanese youth who studied law in Boston, a very cultivated and singularly charming young person, who died not very long after his return to his native country. Some of you may remember young Enouie—I am not sure that I spell it rightly, and I know that I cannot pronounce it properly; for from his own lips it was as soft as an angel's whisper. His intelligence, his delicate breeding, the loveliness of his character, captivated all who knew him. We loved him, and we mourned for him as if he had been a child of our own soil. But of him I must say no more.
"In speaking of American literature we naturally think first of our historical efforts. We see that books hold but a small part of American history. The axe and the ploughshare are the two pens with which our New World annals have been principally written, with schoolhouses as notes of interrogation, and steeples as exclamation points of pious adoration and gratitude. Within half a century the railroad has ruled our broad page all over, and rewritten the story, with States for new chapters and cities for paragraphs. This is the kind of history which he who runs may read, and he must run fast and far if he means to read any considerable part of it.
"But we must not forget our political history, perishable in great measure as to its form, long enduring in its results. This literature is the index of our progress—in both directions—forward and the contrary. From the days of Washington and Franklin to the times still fresh in our memory, from the Declaration of Independence to the proclamation which enfranchised the colored race, our political literature, with all its terrible blunders and short-comings, has been, after all, the fairest expression the world has yet seen of what a free people and a free press have to say and to show for themselves.
"But besides 'Congressional Documents' and the like, the terror of librarians and the delight of paper-makers, we do a good deal of other printing. We make some books, a good many books, a great many books, so many that the hyperbole at the end of St. John's gospel would hardly be an extravagance in speaking of them. And among these are a number of histories which hold an honorable place on the shelves of all the great libraries of Christendom. Why should I enumerate them? For history is a Boston specialty. From the days of Prescott and Ticknor to those of Motley and Parkman, we have always had an historian or two on hand, as they used always to have a lion or two in the Tower of London.
"Next to the historians naturally come the story-tellers and romancers. The essential difference is—I would not apply the rough side of the remark to historians like the best of our own, but it is very often the fact—that history tells lies about real persons and fiction tells truth through the mouths of unreal ones. England threw open the side doors of its library to Irving. The continent flung wide its folding doors to Cooper. Laplace was once asked who was the greatest mathematician of Germany. 'Pfaff is the greatest,' he answered. 'I thought Gauss was,' the questioner said. 'You asked me,' rejoined Laplace, 'who was the greatest mathematician of Germany. Gauss was the greatest mathematician of Europe.' So, I suppose we might say The Pilot is or was the most popular book ever written in America, but Uncle Tom's Cabin is the most popular story ever published in the world. And if The Heart of Mid Lothian added a new glory of romance to the traditions of Auld Reekie, The Scarlet Letter did as much for the memories of our own New England. I need not speak of the living writers, some of whom are among us, who have changed the old scornful question into 'Who does not read an American book?'
"As to poetical literature, I must confess that, except a line or two of Philip Freneau's, I know little worthy of special remembrance before the beginning of this century, always excepting, as in duty bound, the verses of my manifold grandmother. The conditions of the country were unfavorable to the poetical habit of mind. The voice that broke the silence was that of Bryant, a clear and smooth baritone, if I may borrow a musical term, with a gamut of a few notes of a grave and manly quality. Then came Longfellow, the poet of the fireside, of the library, of all gentle souls and cultivated tastes, whose Muse breathed a soft contralto that was melody itself, and Emerson, with notes that reached an octave higher than any American poet—a singer whose
Voice fell like a falling star.
Like that of the bird addressed by Wordsworth—
At once far off and near,