old guest, and to be at once on such intimate terms with the family
as to have a homely, genuine interest in its every member – it is,
I say, something to be in this novel and happy frame of mind. And,
as it is of your creation, and owes its being to you, I have no
reluctance in urging it as a reason why, in addressing you, I
should not so much consult the form and fashion of my speech, as I
should employ that universal language of the heart, which you, and
such as you, best teach, and best can understand. Gentlemen, in
that universal language – common to you in America, and to us in
England, as that younger mother-tongue, which, by the means of, and
through the happy union of our two great countries, shall be spoken
ages hence, by land and sea, over the wide surface of the globe – I
thank you.
I had occasion to say the other night in Boston, as I have more
than once had occasion to remark before, that it is not easy for an
author to speak of his own books. If the task be a difficult one
at any time, its difficulty, certainly, is not diminished when a
frequent recurrence to the same theme has left one nothing new to
say. Still, I feel that, in a company like this, and especially
after what has been said by the President, that I ought not to pass
lightly over those labours of love, which, if they had no other
merit, have been the happy means of bringing us together.
It has been often observed, that you cannot judge of an author’s
personal character from his writings. It may be that you cannot.
I think it very likely, for many reasons, that you cannot. But, at
least, a reader will rise from the perusal of a book with some
defined and tangible idea of the writer’s moral creed and broad
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Dickens, Charles – Speeches, Literary & Social
purposes, if he has any at all; and it is probable enough that he
may like to have this idea confirmed from the author’s lips, or
dissipated by his explanation. Gentlemen, my moral creed – which
is a very wide and comprehensive one, and includes all sects and
parties – is very easily summed up. I have faith, and I wish to
diffuse faith in the existence – yes, of beautiful things, even in
those conditions of society, which are so degenerate, degraded, and
forlorn, that, at first sight, it would seem as though they could
not be described but by a strange and terrible reversal of the
words of Scripture, “God said, Let there be light, and there was
none.” I take it that we are born, and that we hold our
sympathies, hopes, and energies, in trust for the many, and not for
the few. That we cannot hold in too strong a light of disgust and
contempt, before the view of others, all meanness, falsehood,
cruelty, and oppression, of every grade and kind. Above all, that
nothing is high, because it is in a high place; and that nothing is
low, because it is in a low one. This is the lesson taught us in
the great book of nature. This is the lesson which may be read,
alike in the bright track of the stars, and in the dusty course of
the poorest thing that drags its tiny length upon the ground. This
is the lesson ever uppermost in the thoughts of that inspired man,
who tells us that there are
“Tongues in the trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.”
Gentlemen, keeping these objects steadily before me, I am at no
loss to refer your favour and your generous hospitality back to the
right source. While I know, on the one hand, that if, instead of
being what it is, this were a land of tyranny and wrong, I should
care very little for your smiles or frowns, so I am sure upon the
other, that if, instead of being what I am, I were the greatest
genius that ever trod the earth, and had diverted myself for the