Part 32

YOUR ROYAL HIGHNESSES, MY LORDS, AND GENTLEMEN:--I think that I can explain who the artist might have been who painted the reversed rainbow of which the Professor[11] has just spoken. I think, after hearing the too friendly remarks made about myself, that he was probably some artist who was to answer for his art at a dinner of the Royal Society; and, naturally, instead of painting the bow of hope, he painted the reverse, the bow of despair. [Laughter.] When I received your invitation, Mr. President, to answer for "Literature," I was too well aware of the difficulties of your position not to know that your choice of speakers must be guided much more by the necessities of the occasion than by the laws of natural selection. [Laughter and cheers.] I remembered that the dictionaries give a secondary meaning to the phrase "to answer for," and that is the meaning which implies some expedient for an immediate necessity, as, for example, when one takes shelter under a tree from shower he is said to make the tree answer for shelter. [Laughter.] I think even an umbrella in the form of a tree has certainly one very great advantage over its artificial namesake--viz., that it cannot be borrowed, not even for the exigencies for which the instrument made of twilled silk is made use of, as those certainly will admit who have ever tried it during one of those passionate paroxysms of weather to which the Italian climate is unhappily subject. [Laughter.]

I shall not attempt to answer for Literature, for it appears to me that Literature, of all other things, is the one which most naturally is expected to answer for itself. It seems to me that the old English phrase with regard to a man in difficulties, which asks: "What is he going to do about it?" perhaps should be replaced in this period of ours, when the foundations of everything are being sapped by universal discussion, with the more pertinent question: "What is he going to say about it?" ["Hear! Hear!" and laughter.] I suppose that every man sent into the world with something to say to his fellow-men could say it better than anyone else if he could only find out what it was. I am sure that the ideal after-dinner speech is waiting for me somewhere with my address upon it, if I could only be so lucky as to come across it. I confess that hard necessity, or, perhaps I may say, too soft good nature, has compelled me to make so many unideal ones that I have almost exhausted my natural stock of universally applicable sentiment and my acquired provision of anecdote and allusion. I find myself somewhat in the position of Heine, who had prepared an elaborate oration for his first interview with Goethe, and when the awful moment arrived could only stammer out that the cherries on the road to Weimar were uncommonly fine. [Laughter.]

But, fortunately, the duty which is given to me to-night is not so onerous as might be implied in the sentiment that has called me up. I am consoled, not only by the lexicographer as to the meaning of the phrase "to answer for," but also by an observation of mine, which is, that speakers on an occasion like this are not always expected to allude except in distant and vague terms to the subject on which they are specially supposed to talk.

Now, I have a more pleasing and personal duty, it appears to me, on this my first appearance before an English audience on my return to England. It gives me great pleasure to think that, in calling upon me, you call upon me as representing two things which are exceedingly dear to me, and which are very near to my heart. One is that I represent in some sense the unity of English literature under whatever sky it may be produced; and the other is that I represent also that friendliness of feeling, based on a better understanding of each other, which is growing up between the two branches of the British stock. [Cheers.] I could wish that my excellent successor here as American Minister could fill my place to-night, for I am sure that he is as fully inspired as I ever was with a desire to draw closer the ties of friendship between the mother and the daughter, and could express it in a more eloquent and more emphatic manner than even I myself could do--at any rate in a more authoritative manner.

For myself, I have only to say that I come back from my native land confirmed in my love of it and in my faith in it. I come back also full of warm gratitude for the feeling that I find in England; I find in the old home a guest-chamber prepared for me, and a warm welcome. [Cheers.] Repeating what his Royal Highness the Commander-in-Chief has said, that every man is bound in duty, if he were not bound in affection and loyalty, to put his own country first, I may be allowed to steal a leaf out of the book of my adopted fellow-citizens in America; and while I love my native country first, as is natural, I may be allowed to say I love the country next best which I cannot say has adopted me, but which, I will say, has treated me with such kindness, where I have met with such universal kindness from all classes and degrees of people, that I must put that country at least next in my affection.

I will not detain you longer. I know that the essence of speaking here is to be brief, but I trust that I shall not lay myself open to the reproach that in my desire to be brief I have resulted in making myself obscure. [Laughter.] I hope I have expressed myself explicitly enough; but I would venture to give another translation of Horace's words, and say that I desire to be brief, and therefore I efface myself. [Laughter and cheers.]

* * * * *

INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT

[Speech of James Russell Lowell at the dinner of the Incorporated Society of Authors, London, July 25, 1888, given to the "American Men and Women of Letters" who happened to be in London on that date.]

MR. CHAIRMAN, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:--I confess that I rise under a certain oppression. There was a time when I went to make an after-dinner speech with a light heart, and when on my way to the dinner I could think over my exordium in my cab and trust to the spur of the moment for the rest of my speech. But I find as I grow older a certain aphasia overtakes me, a certain inability to find the right word precisely when I want it; and I find also that my flank becomes less sensitive to the exhilarating influences of that spur to which I have just alluded. I had pretty well made up my mind not to make any more after-dinner speeches. I had an impression that I had made quite enough of them for a wise man to speak, and perhaps more than it was profitable for other wise men to listen to. [Laughter.] I confess that it was with some reluctance that I consented to speak at all to-night. I had been bethinking me of the old proverb of the pitcher and the well which is mentioned, as you remember, in the proverb; and it was not altogether a consolation to me to think that that pitcher, which goes once too often to the well, belongs to the class which is taxed by another proverb with too great length of ears. [Laughter.] But I could not resist. I certainly felt that it was my duty not to refuse myself to an occasion like this--an occasion which deliberately emphasizes, as well as expresses, that good feeling between our two countries which, I think, every good man in both of them is desirous to deepen and to increase. If I look back to anything in my life with satisfaction, it is to the fact that I myself have, in some degree, contributed--and I hope I may believe the saying to be true--to this good feeling. [Applause.]

You alluded, Mr. Chairman, to a date which gave me, I must confess, what we call on the other side of the water "a rather large contract." I am to reply, I am to answer to Literature, and I must confess that a person like myself, who first appeared in print fifty years ago, would hardly wish to be answerable for all his own literature, not to speak of the literature of other people. But your allusion to sixty years ago reminded me of something which struck me as I looked down these tables.

Sixty years ago the two authors you mentioned, Irving and Cooper, were the only two American authors of whom anything was known in Europe, and the knowledge of them in Europe was mainly confined to England. It is true that Bryant's "Water-Fowl" had already begun its flight in immortal air, but these were the only two American authors that could be said to be known in England. And what is even more remarkable, they were the only American authors at that time--there were, and had been, others known to us at home--who were capable of earning their bread by their pens. Another singular change is suggested to me as I look down these tables, and that is the singular contrast they afford between the time when Johnson wrote his famous lines about those ills that assail the life of the scholar, and by the scholar he meant the author--

"Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the gaol."

And I confess when I remember that verse it strikes me as a singular contrast that I should meet with a body of authors who are able to offer a dinner instead of begging one; that I have sat here and seen "forty feeding like one," when one hundred years ago the one fed like forty when he had the chance. [Laughter.]

You have alluded also, in terms which I shall not qualify, to my own merits. You have made me feel a little as if I were a ghost revisiting the pale glimpses of the moon, and reading with considerable wonder my own epitaph. But you have done me more than justice in attributing so much to me with regard to International Copyright. You are quite right in alluding to Mr. Putnam, who, I think, wrote the best pamphlet that has been written on the subject; and there are others you did not name who also deserve far more than I do for the labor they have expended and the zeal they have shown on behalf of International Copyright,

## particularly the secretaries of our international society--Mr. Lathrop

and Mr. G. W. Green. And since I could not very well avoid touching upon the subject of International Copyright, I must say that all American authors without exception have been in favor of it on the moral ground, on the ground of simple justice to English authors. But there were a great many local, topical considerations, as our ancestors used to call them, that we were obliged to take into account, and which, perhaps, you do not feel as keenly here as we did. But I think we may say that the almost unanimous conclusion of American authors latterly has been that we should be thankful to get any bill that recognized the principle of international copyright, being confident that its practical application would so recommend it to the American people that we should get afterwards, if not every amendment of it that we desire, at least every one that is humanly possible. I think that perhaps a little injustice has been done to our side of the question; I think a little more heat has been imported into it than was altogether wise. I am not so sure that our American publishers were so much more wicked than their English brethren would have been if they had had the chance. [Laughter.] I cannot, I confess, accept with patience any imputation that implies that there is anything in our climate or in our form of government that tends to produce a lower standard of morality than in other countries. The fact is that it has been partly due to a certain--may I speak of our ancestors as having been qualified by a certain dulness? I mean no disrespect, but I think it is due to the stupidity of our ancestors in making a distinction between literary property and other property. That has been at the root of the whole evil.

I, of course understand, as everybody understands, that all property is the creature of municipal law. But you must remember that it is the conquest of civilization, that when property passes beyond the boundaries of that _municipium_ it is still sacred. It is not even yet sacred in all respects and conditions. Literature, the property in an idea, has been something that it is very difficult for the average man to comprehend. It is not difficult for the average man to comprehend that there may be property in a form which genius or talent gives to an idea. He can see it. It is visible and palpable, this property in an idea when it is exemplified in a machine, but it is hardly so apprehensible when it is subtly interfused in literature. Books have always been looked on somewhat as _feræ naturæ_, and if you have ever preserved pheasants you know that when they fly over your neighbor's boundaries he may take a pot shot at them. I remember that something more than thirty years ago Longfellow, my friend and neighbor, asked me to come and eat a game pie with him. Longfellow's books had been sold in England by the tens of thousands, and that game pie--and you will observe the felicity of its being a game pie, _feræ naturæ_ always you see--was the only honorarium he had ever received from this country for reprinting his works.

I cannot help feeling as I stand here that there is something especially--I might almost use a cant word and say monumentally--interesting in a meeting like this. It is the first time that English and American authors, so far as I know, have come together in any numbers, I was going to say to fraternize, when I remembered that I ought perhaps to add to "sororize." We, of course, have no desire, no sensible man in England or America has any desire, to enforce this fraternization at the point of the bayonet. Let us go on criticising each other; it is good for both of us. We Americans have been sometimes charged with being a little too sensitive; but perhaps a little indulgence may be due to those who always have their faults told to them, and the reference to whose virtues perhaps is sometimes conveyed in a foot-note in small print. I think that both countries have a sufficiently good opinion of themselves to have a fairly good opinion of each other. They can afford it; and if difficulties arise between the two countries, as they unhappily may,--and when you alluded just now to what De Tocqueville said in 1828 you must remember that it was only thirteen years after our war,--you must remember how long it has been to get in the thin end of the wedge of International Copyright; you must remember it took our diplomacy nearly one hundred years to enforce its generous principle of the alienable allegiance, and that the greater part of the bitterness which De Tocqueville found in 1828 was due to the impressment of American seamen, of whom something like fifteen hundred were serving on board English ships when at last they were delivered. These things should be remembered, not with resentment but for enlightenment. But whatever difficulties occurred between the two countries, and there may be difficulties that are serious, I do not think there will be any which good sense and good feeling cannot settle. [Applause.]

I think I have been told often enough to remember that my countrymen are apt to think that they are in the right, that they are always in the right; that they are apt to look at their side of the question only. Now, this conduces certainly to peace of mind and imperturbability of judgment, whatever other merits it may have. I am sure I do not know where we got it. Do you? I also sympathize most heartily with what has been said by the chairman with regard to the increasing love for England among my countrymen. I find on inquiry that they stop longer and in greater numbers every year in the old home, and feel more deeply its manifold charms. They also are beginning to feel that London is the centre of the races that speak English, very much in the sense that Rome was the centre of the ancient world. And I confess that I never think of London, which I also confess that I love, without thinking of that palace which David built, sitting in hearing of a hundred streams--streams of thought, of intelligence, of activity. And one other thing about London, if I may be allowed to refer to myself, impresses me beyond any other sound I have ever heard, and that is the low, unceasing roar that one hears always in the air. It is not a mere accident, like the tempest or the cataract, but it is impressive because it always indicates human will and impulse and conscious movement, and I confess that when I hear it I almost feel that I am listening to the roaring loom of time. A few words more. I will only say this, that we, as well as you, have inherited a common trust in the noble language which, in its subtle compositiveness, is perhaps the most admirable instrument of human thought and human feeling and cunning that has ever been unconsciously devised by man. May our rivalries be in fidelity to that trust. We have also inherited certain traditions, political and moral, and in doing our duty towards these it seems to me that we shall find quite enough occupation for our united thought and feeling. [Long-continued applause.]

JOHN LOWELL

HUMORS OF THE BENCH

[Speech of Judge John Lowell at a banquet given by the Boston Merchants' Association in Boston, May 23, 1884, in his honor, upon his retirement from the bench of the United States Circuit Court.]

GENTLEMEN:--I hardly know why I am here. I suppose I must have decided some case in favor of our honored chairman. But, then, if every one in whose favor I have decided a case should give me a dinner I should have some thousands to eat, if I could live long enough.

I observe that in your invitation to me you say very little, if anything, about any judicial qualities which I may have displayed in office, but you do mention my courtesy and patience. You are right. There are better judges here to-night than I ever was; but in courtesy and consideration, which I learned at my mother's knee, I hope I have not been surpassed. I have received several compliments of the same kind. I will tell you one story about that.

I was sitting one day up in court. The jury had just gone out, when a very nice looking young man came up. His hair was a little short, I believe, but I didn't notice it particularly. Said he, "Good-morning, Jedge." "Good morning." "You don't remember me?" he said. "Your countenance is familiar to me," I said, "but it does not impress itself on my memory." Said he: "Four years ago to-day you sentenced me to four years' imprisonment in the State prison." I suppose it ought to have been five, I don't know. He said: "I got out to-day, and I thought I would make my first call on you." [Laughter. A voice: "That was his courtesy."] True; and mine then came in. Said I: "Many happy returns of the day." [Great laughter and applause.] He took it very kindly and went off. I haven't seen him since.

I might have resigned some time ago. I was waiting to be turned out. [Laughter.] I got tired of waiting. I will tell you how that is now. My great-grandfather was judge of the District Court, appointed by Washington; then he was made circuit judge by Adams. Well, Adams made a good many circuit judges, and they were all Federalists; and when the Democrats--they called themselves Republicans--all the same, you know [laughter]--when the Republicans came in they abolished the court to get rid of the judges. They made a circuit court here about nineteen years ago, and they appointed my friend Shepley the first judge. I told him if the Democrats only got in soon enough he would go the way of my grandfather. He admitted it. When I was appointed I expected the same thing. In fact, some of our prominent Democrats told me so. I said, "All right, bring on your bear. Bring on your Democratic President." So I waited for that Democratic President about eight years. I got tired of waiting. That is the only reason I resign now. [Laughter and applause.]

You take things so good-naturedly I will tell you one or two more stories. One of the principal difficulties we have is in serving on the jury. The members of the Merchants' Association always presented me with a certificate showing that they were members of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company.[12] [Laughter.] But a man who was not a house guard came into my private office one day just as the jury was about to be impanelled. Said he: "Judge, I hear you live out of town." Said I: "Yes." Said he: "I guess you burn kerosene. You don't have electric lights or anything of that kind? Well," said he, "if you will let me off this jury I will give you the darnedest nice can of kerosene ever you see." Said I: "Young man, I see in your mind the exact virtues which would be most useful,--a justice and probity which will make you serve the country most admirably as a juryman." So he served. I don't know but that if it had been a barrel it might have been different. [Great laughter.]

Another tried the intimidation dodge. He says: "Jedge, I have been exposed to the small-pox, and expect it to break out every minute." Said I: "Break!" [Laughter.] He broke into the jury box and served his country well, and had no incapacitating disease that I ever heard of.

I don't know that there is much of anything else, except that I would give some advice. I am going to draw up some rules for my successor, and the first one will be: "Always decide in favor of the Merchants' Association." When there are two Merchants' Associations together, in different interests, then you must do like that jury in Kennebec county. There was a jury there which was very prompt and satisfactory. When they got through, the judge said: "Gentlemen, I thank you very much for the very satisfactory character of your verdicts, for the great promptness with which they have been rendered, without a single disagreement." The foreman returned thanks for the compliment, and said that the jury had escaped the delays and disagreements to which his Honor had referred, by always tossing up a copper as soon as they had retired, and abiding by the result of the throw.