CONTENTS

PAGE
I.[AT THE LOWELL CENTENARY]1
II.[AMERICAN AND BRITON]11
III.[FROM A SPEECH AT THE LOTUS CLUB, NEW YORK]45
IV.[FROM A SPEECH TO THE SOCIETY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES, NEW YORK]51
V.[ADDRESS AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY]54
VI.[TO THE LEAGUE OF POLITICAL EDUCATION, NEW YORK]67
VII.[TALKING AT LARGE]73

ADDRESSES IN AMERICA

1919

I
AT THE LOWELL CENTENARY

We celebrate to-night the memory of a great man of Letters. What strikes me most about that glorious group of New England writers—Emerson and Longfellow, Hawthorne, Whittier, Thoreau, Motley, Holmes, and Lowell—is a certain measure and magnanimity. They were rare men and fine writers, of a temper simple and unafraid.

I confess to thinking more of James Russell Lowell as a critic and master of prose than as a poet. His single-hearted enthusiasm for Letters had a glowing quality which made it a guiding star for the frail barque of culture. His humour, breadth of view, sagacity, and the all-round character of his activities has hardly been equalled in your country. Not so great a thinker or poet as Emerson, not so creative as Hawthorne, so original in philosophy and life as Thoreau, so racy and quaint as Holmes, he ran the gamut of those qualities as none of the others did; and as critic and analyst of literature surpassed them all.

But I cannot hope to add anything of value to American estimate and praise of Lowell—critic, humorist, poet, editor, reformer, man of Letters, man of State affairs. I may, perhaps, be permitted however to remind you of two sayings of his: “I am never lifted up to any peak of vision—but that when I look down in hope to see some valley of the Beautiful Mountains I behold nothing but blackened ruins, and the moans of the down-trodden the world over.... Then it seems as if my heart would break in pouring out one glorious song that should be the Gospel of Reform, full of consolation and strength to the oppressed—that way my madness lies.” That was one side of the youthful Lowell, the generous righter of wrongs, the man. And this other saying: “The English-speaking nations should build a monument to the misguided enthusiasts of the plains of Shinar, for as the mixture of many bloods seems to have made them the most vigorous of modern races, so has the mingling of divers speeches given them a language which is perhaps the noblest vehicle of poetic thought that ever existed.” That was the other side of Lowell, the enthusiast for Letters; and that the feeling he had about our language.