Modern Eloquence Volume Iii Part 18

LESLIE STEPHEN

THE CRITIC

[Speech of Leslie Stephen at the annual banquet of the Royal Academy, London, April 29, 1893, in response to the toast, "Literature." Sir Frederic Leighton, President of the Academy, spoke of Literature as "that in which is garnered up the heat that feeds the spiritual life of men." In the vein of personal compliment he said: "For literature I turn to a distinguished writer whose acute and fearless mind finds a fit vehicle in clear and vigorous English and to me seems winged by that vivid air which plays about the Alpine peaks his feet have in the past so dearly loved to tread--I mean my friend, Mr. Leslie Stephen."]

MR. PRESIDENT, YOUR ROYAL HIGHNESS, MY LORDS, AND GENTLEMEN:--When a poet or a great imaginative writer has to speak in this a.s.sembly he speaks as to brethren-in-arms, to persons with congenial tastes and with mutual sympathies, but when, instead of the creative writer, the Academy asks a critic to speak to them, then nothing but your proverbial courtesy can conceal the fact that they must really think they are appealing to a natural enemy. I have the misfortune to be a critic [laughter], but in this a.s.sembly I must say I am not an art critic. Friends have made a presumptuous attempt to fathom the depth of my ignorance upon artistic subjects, and they have thought that in some respects I must be admirably qualified for art criticism.

[Laughter.]

As a literary critic I have felt, and I could not say I was surprised to find how unanimously critics have been condemned by poets and artists of all generations. I need only quote the words of the greatest authority, Shakespeare, who in one of his most pathetic sonnets reckons up the causes of the weariness of life and speaks of the spectacle of--

"Art made tongue-tied by authority, And folly (doctor-like), controlling skill."

The great poet probably wrote these words after the much misrepresented interview with Lord Bacon in which the Chancellor explained to the poet how "Hamlet" should have been written, and from which it has been inferred that he took credit for having written it himself. [Laughter.]

Shakespeare naturally said what every artist must feel; for what is an artist? That is hardly a question to be asked in such an a.s.sembly, where I have only to look round to find plenty of people who realize the ideal artist, persons who are simple, unconventional, spontaneous, sweet-natured [laughter], who go through the world influenced by impressions of everything that is beautiful, sublime, and pathetic.

Sometimes they seem to take up impressions of a different kind [laughter]; but still this is their main purpose--to receive impressions of images, the reproduction of which may make this world a little better for us all. For such people a very essential condition is that they should be spontaneous; that they should look to nothing but telling us what they feel and how they feel it; that they should obey no external rules, and only embody those laws which have become a part of their natural instinct, and that they should think nothing, as of course they do nothing, for money; though they would not be so hard-hearted as to refuse to receive the spontaneous homage of the world, even when it came in that comparatively vulgar form. [Laughter.]

But what is a critic? He is a person who enforces rules upon the artist, like a gardener who snips a tree in order to make it grow into a preconceived form, or grafts upon it until it develops into a monstrosity which he considers beautiful. We have made some advance upon the old savage. The man who went about saying, "This will never do," has become a thing of the past. The modern critic if he has a fault has become too genial; he seems not to distinguish between the functions of a critic and the founder of a new religious sect. [Laughter.] He erects shrines to his ideals, and he burns upon them good, strong, stupefying incense. This may be less painful to the artist than the old-fashioned style; but it may be doubted whether it is not equally corrupting, and whether it does not stimulate a selfishness equally fatal to spontaneous production; whether it does not in the attempt to encourage originality favor a spurious type which consists merely in setting at defiance real common sense, and sometimes common decency.

I hope that critics are becoming better, that they have learned what impostors they have been, and that their philosophy has been merely the skilful manipulation of sonorous words, and that on the whole, they must lay aside their magisterial role and cease to suppose they are persons enforcing judicial decisions or experts who can speak with authority about chemical a.n.a.lysis. I hope that critics will learn to lay aside all pretension and to see only things that a critic really can see, and express genuine sympathy with human nature; and when they have succeeded in doing that they will be received as friends in such gatherings as the banquet of the Royal Academy. [Cheers.]

RICHARD SALTER STORRS

THE VICTORY AT YORKTOWN

[Speech of Rev. Dr. Richard S. Storrs at a banquet of the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York, given November 5, 1881, in New York City, in honor of the guests of the nation, the French diplomatic representatives in America, and members of the families descended from our foreign sympathizers and helpers, General Lafayette, Count de Rochambeau, Count de Gra.s.se, Baron von Steuben and others, who had been present at the centennial celebration of the victory at Yorktown. The chairman, James M. Brown, vice President of the Chamber of Commerce, proposed the toast to which Dr. Storrs responded, "The Victory at Yorktown: it has rare distinction among victories, that the power which seemed humbled by it looks back to it now without regret, while the peoples who combined to secure it, after the lapse of a century of years, are more devoted than ever to the furtherance of the freedom to which it contributed."]

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN OF THE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE:--It is always pleasant to respond to your invitations and to join with you on these festival occasions. You remember the reply of the English lady [Lady Dufferin] perhaps, when the poet Rogers sent her a note saying: "Will you do me the favor to breakfast with me to-morrow?" To which she returned the still more laconic autograph, "Won't I?" [Laughter.]

Perhaps one might as well have that lithographed as his reply to your cordial and not infrequent invitations. [Laughter.] I do not know whether you are aware of it, on this side of the East River--perhaps you don't read the newspapers much--but in that better part of the great metropolis in which it is my privilege to live, we think of showing our appreciation of this Chamber of Commerce by electing for Mayor next week, one of your younger members, the son of one of your older and most distinguished members, my honored friend, Mr. Low. [Applause.]

It is certainly especially pleasant to be here this evening, Mr.

President and gentlemen, when we meet together, men of commerce, men of finance, lawyers, journalists, physicians, clergymen, of whatever occupation, all of us, I am sure, patriotic citizens, to congratulate each other upon what occurred at Yorktown a hundred years ago, on the 19th of October, 1781, and to express our hearty honor and esteem for these distinguished descendants or representatives of the gallant men who then stood with our fathers as their a.s.sociates and helpers.

[Applause.]

It has always seemed to me one of the most significant and memorable things connected with our Revolutionary struggle, that it attracted the attention, elicited the sympathy, inspired the enthusiasm, and drew out the self-sacrificing co-operation of so many n.o.ble spirits, loving freedom, in different parts of Western and Central Europe. [Applause.]

You remember that Lord Camden testified from his own observation in 1775, about the time of the battle of Concord Bridge, that the merchants, tradesmen, and common people of England were on the side of the Colonists, and that only the landed interest really sustained the Government. So the more distant Poland sent to us Count Pulaski of n.o.ble family, who had been a brilliant leader for liberty at home, who fought gallantly in our battles, and who poured out his life in our behalf in the a.s.sault upon Savannah. [Cheers.] And it sent another, whose name has been one to conjure with for freedom from that day to this; who planned the works on Bemis Heights, against which Burgoyne in vain hurled his a.s.sault; who superintended the works at West Point; who, returning to his own country, fought for Poland as long as there was a Poland to fight for; whom the very Empire against which he had so long and so fiercely contended on behalf of his country, honored and eulogized after his death--Thaddeus Kosciusko. [Cheers.]

Germany sent us Von Steuben; one, but a host, whose services in our war were of immense and continual aid to our troops; who fought gallantly at Yorktown; and who, chose afterwards, to finish his life in the country for which he had fearlessly drawn his sword. [Applause.] France sent us Lafayette [loud cheers], young, brilliant, with everything to detain him at home, who had heard of our struggle, at Metz, you remember, in a conversation with the Duke of Gloucester, in whom the purpose was there formed, in a flash, to identify himself with the fortunes of the remote, poor, unfriended, and almost unknown colonists; who came, against every opposition, in a ship which he had bought and fitted for the purpose, and whose name, as has well been said in the sentiment in which we have already united, will be joined imperishably with that of Washington, as long as the history of our country continues. [Applause.]

With him came John DeKalb, the intrepid Alsatian, who, after fighting gallantly through the war, up to the point of his death, fell at Camden, pierced at last by many wounds. [Cheers.] With them, or after them, came others, Gouvion, Duportail--some of their names are hardly now familiar to us--Duplessis, Duponceau, afterward distinguished in literature and in law, in the country in which he made his residence. There came great supplies of military equipment, important, we may say indispensable, aids of money, clothing, and of all the apparatus of war; and, finally, came the organized naval and military force, with great captains at the head, Rochambeau [loud cheers], Chastellux, De Choisy, De Lauzun, St.

Simon, De Gra.s.se--all this force brilliantly representative, as we know, of our foreign allies, in the victory at Yorktown. [Applause.]

I suppose there has never been a stranger contrast on any field of victory, than that which was presented, between the worn clothing of the American troops, soiled with mud, rusted with storm, wet with blood, and the fresh white uniforms of the French troops, ornamented with colored tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs; the poor, plain battle-flags of the Colonists, stained with smoke and rent with shot, compared with the shining and lofty standards of the French army, bearing on a ground of brilliant white silk emblazoned in gold embroidery the Bourbon lilies. [Applause.] Indeed such a contrast went into everything. The American troops were made up of men who had been, six years before, mechanics, farmers, merchants, fishermen, lawyers, teachers, with no more thought of any exploits to be accomplished by them on fields of battle than they had of being elected Czars of all the Russias. They had a few victories to look back to; Bennington, Stillwater, Cowpens, Kings Mountain, and the one great triumph of Saratoga. They had many defeats to remember; Brandywine, where somebody at the time said that the mixture of the two liquors was too much for the sober Americans [laughter], Camden, Guilford Court-house, and others, with one tragic and terrible defeat on the heights of Long Island. There were men who had been the subjects, and many of them officers of the very power against which they were fighting; and some of the older among them might have stood for that power at Louisbourg or Quebec. On the other hand, the French troops were part of an army, the l.u.s.tre of whose splendid history could be traced back for a thousand years, beyond the Crusaders, beyond Charlemagne.

Their officers had been trained in the best military schools of the time. They were amply provided with the last and choicest equipments of war. They had gallantly achieved victory, or as gallantly sustained defeat on almost every princ.i.p.al battle-field in Europe. They were now confronting an enemy whom that army had faced in previous centuries on sea and land; and very likely something of special exhilaration and animation went into their spirit from thought of this, as they a.s.sailed the English breastworks, swarming into the trenches, capturing the redoubts, storming the lines with that strange battle-shout, in our republican American air: "Vive le Roi!" [Applause.]

A singular combination! Undoubtedly, to unfold the influences which had led to it would take months instead of minutes, and occupy volumes rather than sentences. I think however, that we reckon too much on national rivalry, or national animosity, when we seek to explain it, although these no doubt had their part in it. Doubtless the eager efforts of Silas Dean, our first diplomatic representative in Europe--efforts too eager for courtesy or wisdom--had a part in it; and the skilful diplomacy of Franklin had, as we know, a large and important influence upon it. The spirit of adventure, the desire for distinction upon fresh fields, had something to do with it. But the princ.i.p.al factor in that great effort was the spirit of freedom--the spirit that looked to the advancement and the maintenance of popular liberty among the peoples of the earth, wherever civilization had gone; that spirit which was notably expressed by Van der Capellen, the Dutch orator and statesman, when he vehemently said, in presence of the States-General of Holland, in reply to an autograph letter of George III soliciting their aid, that this was a business for hired janissaries rather than for soldiers of a free State; that it would be, in his judgment, "superlatively detestable" to aid in any way to overcome the Americans, whom he regarded as a brave people, righting in a manly, honorable, religious manner, not for the rights which had come to them, not from any British legislation but from G.o.d Almighty. [Applause.]

That spirit was native to Holland. But that spirit was also widely in France. The old temper and enthusiasm for liberty, both civil and religious, had not pa.s.sed away. Sixty years and more since the accession of Louis XV had perhaps only intensified this spirit. It had entered the higher philosophical minds. They were meditating the questions of the true social order, with daring disregard of all existing inst.i.tutions, and their spirit and instructions found an echo even in our Declaration of Independence. They made it more theoretical than English state papers have usually been. Palpably, the same spirit which afterward broke into fierce exhibition, when the Bastille was stormed in 1789, or when the First Republic was declared in 1792, was already at work in France, at work there far more vitally and energetically than was yet recognized by those in authority; while it wrought perhaps in the field offered by this country, more eagerly and largely because it was repressed at home.

So it was that so many brilliant Frenchmen came as glad volunteers. It was because of this electric and vital spirit looking toward freedom.

Travelling was slow. Communication between continents was tardy and difficult. A sailing ship, dependent upon the wind, hugged the breeze or was driven before the blast across the stormy North Atlantic. The steamship was unknown. The telegraph wire was no more imagined than it was imagined that the Rhine might flow a river of flame or that the Jungfrau or the Weisshorn might go out on a journey.

But there was this distributed spirit of freedom, propagating itself by means which we cannot wholly trace, and to an extent which was scarcely recognized, which brought volunteers in such numbers to our sh.o.r.es, that Washington, you know, at one time, expressed himself as embarra.s.sed to know what to do with them; and there were fervent and high aspirations going up from mult.i.tudes of households and of hearts in Central and in Western Europe, which found realization in what we claim as the greatest and most fruitful of American victories. [Applause.] The impulse given by that victory to the same spirit is one on which we can never look back without grat.i.tude and gladness. It was an impulse not confined to one nation but common to all which had had part in the struggle. We know what an impulse it gave to everything greatest and best in our own country. The spirit of popular exhilaration, rising from that victory at Yorktown, was a force which really established and moulded our national Government. The nation rose to one of those exalted points, those supreme levels, in its public experience, where it found a grander wisdom, where it had n.o.bler forecast than perhaps it otherwise could have reached. In consequence of it, our Government came, which has stood the storm and stress of a hundred years. We may have to amend its Const.i.tution in time to come, as it has been amended in the past; but we have become a nation by means of it. It commands the attention--to some extent, the admiration--of other people of the earth; at all events, it is bound to endure upon this continent as long as there remains a continent here for it to rest upon. [Cheers.]

Then came the incessant movement westward: the vast foreign immigration, the occupation of the immense grainfields, which might almost feed the hungry world; the multiplication of manufacturers, supplying everything, nearly, that we need; the uncovering of mines, bringing out the wealth which has actually disturbed the money standards of the world; the transforming of territories into States by a process as swift and magical almost as that by which the turbid mixture of the chemist is crystallized into its delicate and translucent spars; the building of an empire on the Western coast, looking out toward the older continent of Asia. [Cheers.]

We know, too, what an impulse was given to popular rights and hopes in England. We rejoice in all the progress of England. That salute fired at the British flag the other day at Yorktown [cheers] was a stroke of the hammer on the horologe of time, which marks the coming of a new era, when national animosities shall be forgotten, and only national sympathies and good-will shall remain. It might seem, perhaps, to have in it a tone of the old "diapason of the cannonade"; but on the thoughtful ear, falls from the thundering voice of those guns, a note of that supreme music which fell on the ear of Longfellow, when "like a bell with solemn sweet vibration" he heard "once more the voice of Christ say: 'Peace!'" [Loud applause.]

We rejoice in the progress of English manufactures, which extracts every force from each ounce of coal, and pounds or weaves the English iron into nearly everything for human use except boots and brown-bread [laughter]; in the commerce which spreads its sails on all seas; in the wealth and splendor that are a.s.sembled in her cities; but we rejoice more than all in the constant progress of those liberal ideas to which such an impulse was given by this victory of Yorktown. [Cheers.] You remember that Fox is said to have heard of it "with a wild delight"; and even he may not have antic.i.p.ated its full future outcome. You remember the hissing hate with which he was often a.s.sailed, as when the tradesman of Westminster whose vote he had solicited, flung back at him the answer: "I have nothing for you, sir, but a halter," to which Fox, by the way, with instant wit and imperturbable good-nature, smilingly responded: "I could not think, my dear sir, of depriving you of such an interesting family relic." [Laughter.] Look back to that time and then see the prodigious advance of liberal ideas in England, the changed political condition of the workingman. Look at the position of that great Commoner, who now regulates the English policy, who equals Fox in his liberal principles and surpa.s.ses him in his eloquence--Mr.

Gladstone. [Cheers.] The English troops marched out of Yorktown, after their surrender, to that singularly appropriate tune, as they thought it, "The World Turned Upside Down." [Laughter.] But that vast disturbance of the old equilibrium which had balanced a King against a Nation, has given to England the treasures of statesmanship, the treasures of eloquence, a vast part of the splendor and the power which are now collected under the reign of that one royal woman in the world, to whom every American heart pays its eager and unforced fealty--Queen Victoria. [Loud applause.]

We know what an impulse was given to the same spirit in Germany. Mr.

Schurz will tell us of it in eloquent words. But no discourse that he can utter, however brilliant in rhetoric; no a.n.a.lysis, however lucid; no clear and comprehensive sweep of his thought, though expressed in words which ring in our ears and live in our memories, can so fully and fittingly ill.u.s.trate it to us as does the man himself, in his character and career--an Old World citizen of the American Republic whose marvellous mastery of our tough English tongue is still surpa.s.sed by his more marvellous mastery over the judgments and the hearts of those who hear him use it. [Cheers.]

What an impulse was given to the same spirit in France we know. At first, it fell upon a people not altogether prepared to receive it.

There was, therefore, a pa.s.sionate effervescence, a fierce ebullition into popular violence and popular outrage which darkened for the time the world's annals. But we know that the spirit never died; and through all the winding and b.l.o.o.d.y paths in which it has marched, it has brought France the fair consummation of its present power and wealth and renown.

[Cheers.] We rejoice in its multiform manufactures, which weave the woollen or silken fibre into every form and tissue of fabric; in the delicate, dainty skill which keeps the time of all creation with its watchwork and clockwork; which ornaments beauty with its jewelry, and furnishes science with its finest instruments; we rejoice in the 14,000 miles of railway there constructed, almost all of it within forty years; we rejoice in the riches there acc.u.mulated; we rejoice in the expansion of the population from the twenty-three millions of the day of Yorktown to the thirty-eight millions of the present; but we rejoice more than all in the liberal spirit evermore there advancing, which has built the fifteen universities, and gathered the 41,000 students into them; which builds libraries and higher seminaries, and multiplies common schools: which gives liberty if not license to the press. [Cheers.]

We rejoice in the universal suffrage which puts the 532 deputies into the Chamber and which combines the Chamber of Deputies with the Senate into a National a.s.sembly to elect the President of the Republic. We rejoice in the rapid political education now and always going on in France, and that she is to be hereafter a n.o.ble leader in Europe, in ill.u.s.trating the security and commending the benefits of Republican inst.i.tutions. [Applause.]

France has been foremost in many things; she was foremost in chivalry, and the most magnificent spectacles and examples which that inst.i.tution ever furnished were on her fields. She was foremost in the Crusades and the volcanic country around Auvergne was not more full of latent fire than was the spirit of her people at the Council of Clermont or before the appeal of Peter the Hermit and St. Bernard. She led the march of philosophical discussion in the Middle Ages. She has been foremost in many achievements of science and art. She is foremost to-day in piercing with tunnels the mountain-chains, that the wheels of trade may roll un.o.bstructed through rocky barriers, and cutting ca.n.a.ls through the great isthmuses that the keels of commerce may sweep unhindered across the seas. But she has never yet had an office so ill.u.s.trious as that which falls to her now--to show Europe how Republican inst.i.tutions stimulate industry, guarantee order, promote all progress in enterprise and in thought, and are the best and surest security for a nation's grandest advancement.

That enthusiasm which has led her always to champion ideas, which led her soldiers to say in the first Revolution: "With bread and iron we will march to China," entering now into fulfilment of this great office, will carry her influence to China and beyond it; her peaceful influence on behalf of the liberty for which she fought with us at Yorktown, and for which she has bled and struggled with a pathetic and lofty stubbornness ever since. [Cheers.]

I do not look back merely then from this evening; I see ill.u.s.trated at Yorktown the lesson of that hour; that colonies maturing into great commonwealths, and peoples combining for common liberties are the best pledges of the world's future, but I look forward as well and see France in Europe, a Republic, the United States on this continent, a Republic, standing again in the future as before, shoulder to shoulder, expecting with tranquil and exultant spirit the grander victory yet to come, the outcome of which shall be liberty to all the peoples of the world, and that benign and divine peace which is the sure and sovereign fruit of such a liberty. [Applause.]

WILLIAM SCUDDER STRYKER

DUTCH HEROES OF THE NEW WORLD

[Speech of William S. Stryker at the fifth annual dinner of the Holland Society of New York, January 10, 1890. The vice-President, Robert B. Roosevelt, presided, and called upon General Stryker to respond to the toast, "The Dutch Soldier in America."]

MR. PRESIDENT:--As well-born Dutchmen, full, of course, to-night of the spirit which creates Dutch courage, it is pleasant for us to look across the seas, to recall the martial life of our progenitors and to speak of their great deeds for liberty. It is conducive to our family pride to trace back the source of the blessings we enjoy to-day through all the brilliant pages of Netherland history to the time when the soldiers of freedom--the "Beggars"--chose rather to let in the merciless ocean waves than to surrender to the ruthless invader. [Applause.]

We love to say that we can see in the glory of free inst.i.tutions in this century the steady outgrowth of that germ of human liberty which was planted by the st.u.r.dy labor, which was watered by the tears and blood, and fructified by the precious lives of those who fought by land and sea in the battles of the sixteenth century. [Applause.]