Part 14 (1/2)

The President now called on Dr Oliver Wendell Holest the to the personal memories of the dear friends e have lost, rather than to their literary labors, the just tribute to whichso closely as it does on our bereavement”

”His first literary venture of any note was the story called 'Morton's Hope; or, The Memoirs of a Provincial' This first effort failed to satisfy the critics, the public, or himself His personality pervaded the characters and times which he portrayed, so that there was a discord between the actor and his costues could not save it; and it was plain enough that he ive him the reception which surely awaited him if he should find his true destination

”The early failures of a great writer are like the first sketches of a great artist, and well reward patient study More than this, the first efforts of poets and story-tellers are very commonly palimpsests: beneath the rhymes or the fiction one can almost always spell out the characters which betray the writer's self Take these passages from the story just referred to:

”'Ah! flattery is a sweet and intoxicating potion, whether we drink it froolden chaliceFlattery from man to woman is expected: it is a part of the courtesy of society; but when the divinity descends from the altar to burn incense to the priest, onder if the idolater should feel himself transfor spoiled, but he had a safeguard in his aspirations

”'My ambitious anticipations,' says Morton, in the story, were as boundless as they were various and conflicting There was not a path which leads to glory in which I was not destined to gather laurels As a warrior, I would conquer and overrun the world; as a statesovern it; as a historian, I would consign it all to ireat poet and a e of his story he is picturing his own visions, one of the fairest of which was destined to become reality?

”But there was another elenized as one hich he had to struggle hard, --that is, a modesty which sometimes tended to collapse into self- distrust This, too, betrays itself in the sentences which follow those just quoted:--

”'In short,' says Morton, 'I was already enrolled in that large category of what are called young s are expected; till after long preparation cootten

Alas! for the golden iinations of our youthThey are all disappointht and beautiful, but they fade'”

The President appointed Professor Lowell to write the Memoir of Mr

Quincy, and Dr Hols”

Professor William Everett then spoke as follows:

”There is one incident, sir, in Mr Motley's career that has not been mentioned to-day, which is, perhaps, most vividly remembered by those of us ere in Europe at the outbreak of our civil war in 1861 At that tilishmen, friendly or otherwise, about America, was infinite: they knew very little of us, and that little wrong Americans were overwhelmed with questions, taunts, threats,worse than ignorance, frolishmen