American ideas for English readersLowell, James Russell
General
American ideas for English readers
Lowell, James Russell
Speeches, addresses, etc., American
✠
V.
AT THE UNVEILING OF THE GRAY MEMORIAL.
The following address was delivered on the occasion of the unveiling of
the bust of the poet Gray in the hall of Pembroke College, Cambridge,
May 26, 1885:
I have been asked to say a few words, but they must be very
few, as the train is waiting for me that takes me back to
keep an engagement. Mr. Gosse has told you he has been
present at many memorial unveilings, and the newspapers
inform me that I also have been present at the unveiling
of perhaps too many. But never have I been present on any
occasion with more pleasure than on this. You have now, in
the words which Lord Houghton quoted, and which I would
extend in a wider sense than he did, a beautiful memorial
to Gray in permanent form. We also, thanks to Mr. Gosse,
possess a photograph of this memorial in permanent form.
But we have in our hearts and memories, I think, a memorial
to the man quite as true and quite as permanent--that is,
permanent for us. Very few words are fitting on an occasion
which commemorates the one of the English poets who has
written less and pleased more perhaps than any other. There
is a certain appropriateness in my speaking here to-day. I
come here to speak simply as the representative of several
countrymen and countrywomen of mine who have renewed
that affirmation, which I like always to renew, of the
unity of our English race by giving something more solid
than words in commemoration of the poet they loved. And,
I think there is another claim which I perhaps have for
speaking here to-day, and that is that the most picturesque
anecdote relative to the life of Gray--perhaps the most
picturesque related of the life of any poet, certainly of
any English poet--belongs to the Western hemisphere; I mean
the anecdote which connects the name of Wolfe with that of
Gray. Nothing could have been more picturesque than the
surroundings of that saying of Wolfe’s--of that English
hero--and nothing could have been more momentous than the
action and the consequence that followed from it, and which
made the United States, which I have lately represented,
possible. That, I think, gives me a certain right also to
speak here.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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