Addresses in America, 1919

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,[2] he ran the gamut of those qualities as none of the others did; and as critic and analyst of literature surpassed them all.