At A Dinner Of This
Kind, Which Is So Rich In Every Delicacy Which The Most Sensitive
Palate Could Desire,
And which boasts wines as delicate and as
fragrant in bouquet as one of Mr. Frechette's sonnets - (Cheers) - and I
Might add also as one of my friend LeMay's hopefullest lyrics -
(Cheers), it would be ungenerous of me to keep you very long. I will
content myself therefore with a remark or two regarding the peculiar
features which seem to inspire our literature, at the present time,
and by our literature I mean English literature in its broadest sense
and amplest significance. Perhaps at no period of letters, in the
whole history of literature from the days of Chaucer and Raleigh, from
the renaissance, through the classic period, to more modern times, to
our own day in fact, has the cultured world seen such a brilliant
array of brilliant men and women, who write the English prose which
delights our fire-sides, and enriches our minds at the present time.
The world has never presented to mankind before, in all its years of
usefulness, such a galaxy of great essayists and novelists as we have
enjoyed and enjoy now, within a period of fifty or sixty years, and
which properly belong to our own age. The era is rich in stalwart
minds, in magnificent thinkers, in splendid souls. Carlyle, Emerson,
Wilson, Morley, Froude, Holmes, Harrison, Darwin, Huxley, Spencer,
Mill, Buckle, Lewes. In fiction the list is too long for mention, but,
in passing, I may note George Eliot - a woman who writes as if her soul
had wings, William Black who paints almost as deftly as Walter Scott,
Thomas Hardy, Anthony Trollope, Thackeray, Dickens, Reade, William
Howells, who has not forgotten to write of the grandeur of the
Saguenay, and William Kirby whose Chien d'Or will serve to keep
a memory green in many a Quebecer's heart. I need hardly name more.
The list could, I am well aware, be extended indefinitely, and as each
of you doubtless has your favourite novelist, I need not waste your
time by the simple enumeration of men and women who have from time to
time, beguiled away the hours with their stories of the heart, or of
purpose, or of endeavour. We get blase now and then perhaps
through the reading of so many moderns, but the cure for that lies
within easy range. We can take a peep at those old fellows in old-
fashioned bindings, who used to delight our grandfathers in the "brave
days of old," when Richardson told the story of "Pamela," and
"Clarissa Harlowe," when Fielding wrote "Tom Jones," and Smollett
narrated the history of "Humphrey Clinker," and the career of
"Tristram Shandy" found a truthful historian in that mad parson
Lawrence Sterne. We might even read those ancient authors, ancient in
style at least, for a change, and still be reading English literature
in its truest and widest sense. But it is less with the fiction-
writers that we have to deal, than with the thinkers who have given to
belles-lettres in this age, its robustness and vigour. In
political economy, in scientific thought, in history, in moral
philosophy and in polite learning, and in criticism, I think our day
has produced the greatest teachers, as well as the largest number of
them since the English tongue had a literature of its own. (Applause.)
This is true at least in prose writing. I know that in poetry we are
surpassed in grandeur and majesty by the bards of other periods of our
mental activity, I know that we have not produced a Milton yet, nor a
Dryden, nor a Pope - I leave Shakespeare and Chaucer out of the
question, nor a Spenser. We have very many more than our share of
really tuneful singers and fine poets like Tennyson and Longfellow,
Morris and Swinburne, the Arnolds and Lowell - all of them sweet and in
every way charming, none of them grand and magnificent like the sons
of song of the great days of poesy. We have singers and singers, minor
poets and minor poets, all engaged in weaving for our delight very
many pretty fancies; graceful story-tellers in verse, if you will, but
our chief strength lies in prose, sober, scholarly and healthful
prose. Our fame will rest on that branch of the service. (Applause.)
Turning to Canada, I might say that our mental outfit is by no means
beggarly. In fiction we have produced, and I confine myself
particularly to those who have written in English, Judge Haliburton,
James DeMille, Wm. Kirby, John Lesperance. (Applause.) In poetry,
Heavysege, John Reade, Roberts, Charles Sangster, Wm. Murdoch,
Chandler, Howe; in history, Beamish Murdoch, Todd, Morgan, Hannay, Mr.
LeMoine - (Applause) - whom I see present here to night; Dr. Miles, Mr.
Harper, the efficient Rector of our High School, and others of more or
less repute. In Science, Dr. Dawson and Sir Wm. Logan; in logic, Wm.
Lyall; in rhetoric, James DeMille. In political and essay writing we
have a good list, the most prominent names being Goldwin Smith, whom
we may fairly claim, Bourinot, Haliburton, Todd, Howe, Elder, Ellis,
Griffin, Anglin, Dymond, McDougall, White. (Cheers.) And here I would
just say to you - for I have spoken longer than I intended - over-taxed
your patience I fear very much - that we must, if we would ever become
great in helping to form current thought and the intellectual movement
of the day, renounce all sectionalism in letters, and go in for the
great goal which all may aspire to who wish. When the French Academy
hailed our friend Frechette as a brother poet, the act was not done
because he was a Canadian, but because he was a poet, writing and
speaking the French tongue. (Applause.) There is no such thing really
as Canadian literature or American literature. It is all English
literature, and we should all strive to add to the glory of that
literature. We can do it, in our way, as well as Moore and Lover and
Lever and Carleton and McGee did, when they added the splendid work of
their genius to build up the renown and prestige of the parent stock.
(Applause.) As Scott and Burns, Dunbar and Hector McNeill, and
Tannahill and James Hogg and bluff "Kit North;" all of Scotland, did
to make the English literature massive and spirited and grand.
(Applause.) As Hawthorne and Longfellow, Holmes and Bryant, Cooper and
Irving, and Motley did, and as our own John Reade (cheers) and Charles
Roberts, a new poet whose star has just arisen, and Bourinot -
(cheers) - and the rest of them are doing now.
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