But I will not detain you any longer for, as I did say, I did not come here to make a speech, and I did not know what I was going to say when I came. I generally, on such occasions, trust to the spur of the moment, and sometimes the moment forgets its spur. [Laughter and applause.] * * * * * LITERATURE [Speech of James Russell Lowell at the annual banquet of the Royal Academy, London, May 1, 1886, in response to the toast, "The Interests of Literature." The President of the Academy, Sir Frederic Leighton, said, in introducing Mr. Lowell: "In the name of letters, of English letters, in the broadest sense, I rejoice to turn, not for the first time at this table, to one who counts among the very foremost of their representatives. As a poet richly endowed, as a critic most subtle and penetrating, among humorists the most genial, as a speaker not surpassed--who shall more fittingly rise in the name of Literature than Mr. Russell Lowell, whom I welcome once more to this country, as one not led to it to-day by mere hap and chance of diplomatic need, but drawn, I would fain believe, as by the memory of many friends."] 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.]