Addresses in America by John Galsworthy — Read

We celebrate to-night the memory of a great man of Letters. What strikes me most about that glorious group of New England writers――Emerson and Longfellow, Hawthorne, Whittier, Thoreau, Motley, Holmes, and Lowell――is a certain measure and magnanimity. They were rare men and fine writers, of a temper simple and unafraid.

I confess to thinking more of James Russell Lowell as a critic and master of prose than as a poet. His single-hearted enthusiasm for Letters had a glowing quality which made it a guiding star for the frail barque of culture. His humour, breadth of view, sagacity, and the all-round character of his activities has hardly been equalled in your country. Not so great a thinker or poet as Emerson, not so creative as Hawthorne, so original in philosophy and life as Thoreau, so racy and quaint as Holmes, he ran the gamut of those qualities as none of the others did; and as critic and analyst of literature surpassed them all.