John Lothrop Motley, A Memoir Part 14

The President now called on Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, who said:--

"The thoughts which suggest themselves upon this occasion are such as belong to the personal memories of the dear friends whom we have lost, rather than to their literary labors, the just tribute to which must wait for a calmer hour than the present, following so closely as it does on our bereavement."

"His first literary venture of any note was the story called 'Morton's Hope; or, The Memoirs of a Provincial.' This first effort failed to satisfy the critics, the public, or himself. His personality pervaded the characters and times which he portrayed, so that there was a discord between the actor and his costume.

Brilliant pa.s.sages could not save it; and it was plain enough that he must ripen into something better before the world would give him the reception which surely awaited him if he should find his true destination.

"The early failures of a great writer are like the first sketches of a great artist, and well reward patient study. More than this, the first efforts of poets and story-tellers are very commonly palimpsests: beneath the rhymes or the fiction one can almost always spell out the characters which betray the writer's self. Take these pa.s.sages from the story just referred to:

"'Ah! flattery is a sweet and intoxicating potion, whether we drink it from an earthen ewer or a golden chalice. . . . Flattery from man to woman is expected: it is a part of the courtesy of society; but when the divinity descends from the altar to burn incense to the priest, what wonder if the idolater should feel himself transformed into a G.o.d!'

"He had run the risk of being spoiled, but he had a safeguard in his aspirations.

"'My ambitious antic.i.p.ations,' says Morton, in the story, were as boundless as they were various and conflicting. There was not a path which leads to glory in which I was not destined to gather laurels. As a warrior, I would conquer and overrun the world; as a statesman, I would reorganize and govern it; as a historian, I would consign it all to immortality; and, in my leisure moments, I would be a great poet and a man of the world.'

"Who can doubt that in this pa.s.sage of his story he is picturing his own visions, one of the fairest of which was destined to become reality?

"But there was another element in his character, which those who knew him best recognized as one with which he had to struggle hard, --that is, a modesty which sometimes tended to collapse into self- distrust. This, too, betrays itself in the sentences which follow those just quoted:--

"'In short,' says Morton, 'I was already enrolled in that large category of what are called young men of genius, . . . men of whom unheard-of things are expected; till after long preparation comes a portentous failure, and then they are forgotten. . . .

Alas! for the golden imaginations of our youth. . . . They are all disappointments. They are bright and beautiful, but they fade.'"

The President appointed Professor Lowell to write the Memoir of Mr.

Quincy, and Dr. Holmes that of Mr. Motley, for the Society's "Proceedings."

Professor William Everett then spoke as follows:

"There is one incident, sir, in Mr. Motley's career that has not been mentioned to-day, which is, perhaps, most vividly remembered by those of us who were in Europe at the outbreak of our civil war in 1861. At that time, the ignorance of Englishmen, friendly or otherwise, about America, was infinite: they knew very little of us, and that little wrong. Americans were overwhelmed with questions, taunts, threats, misrepresentations, the outgrowth of ignorance, and ignoring worse than ignorance, from every cla.s.s of Englishmen.

Never was an authoritative exposition of our hopes and policy worse needed; and there was no one to do it. The outgoing diplomatic agents represented a bygone order of things; the representatives of Mr. Lincoln's administration had not come. At that time of anxiety, Mr. Motley, living in England as a private person, came forward with two letters in the 'Times,' which set forth the cause of the United States once and for all. No unofficial, and few official, men could have spoken with such authority, and been so certain of obtaining a hearing from Englishmen. Thereafter, amid all the clouds of falsehood and ridicule which we had to encounter, there was one lighthouse fixed on a rock to which we could go for foothold, from which we could not be driven, and against which all a.s.saults were impotent.

"There can be no question that the effect produced by these letters helped, if help had been needed, to point out Mr. Motley as a candidate for high diplomatic place who could not be overlooked.

Their value was recognized alike by his fellow-citizens in America and his admirers in England; but none valued them more than the little band of exiles, who were struggling against terrible odds, and who rejoiced with a great joy to see the stars and stripes, whose centennial anniversary those guns are now celebrating, planted by a hand so truly worthy to rally every American to its support."

G.

POEM BY WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.

I cannot close this Memoir more appropriately than by appending the following poetical tribute:--

IN MEMORY OF JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY.

BY WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.

Sleep, Motley, with the great of ancient days, Who wrote for all the years that yet shall be.

Sleep with Herodotus, whose name and praise Have reached the isles of earth's remotest sea.

Sleep, while, defiant of the slow delays Of Time, thy glorious writings speak for thee And in the answering heart of millions raise The generous zeal for Right and Liberty.

And should the days o'ertake us, when, at last, The silence that--ere yet a human pen Had traced the slenderest record of the past Hushed the primeval languages of men Upon our English tongue its spell shall cast, Thy memory shall perish only then.