Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1904-03-31

and delivered by him at the recent an
nual meeting of the Bowdoln aiuiiiiii VI
| Boston. The meeting WAS Ill d way d
celebration of the Tooth anniversary vi
the birth of Hawthorne, one vi
Rowdoin's most distinguished aluihni.
The college is planning to make the
celebration of the centennial Oh MS
birth one of the features of the coming
commencement week. hawthorne WAS
born July 4th 1904 at Salem, Mass. lie
| Graduated from BoWdoin i'll lS25.)
| | remember reading, long ago, all
article in an old Review. i'll when the
fact was remarked, that at the opening
of the nineteenth century literature IN
England was in the hands almost eX-
lclusively of young men. The age OIL
Goldsmith and Johnson had passed.
Crabbe. Rogers and Clifford were still
| writing, the last with Il vein OF bitter
ness that might have been learned in
the school of Junius, but these We're
almost the only exceptions. The con-
yuisiOn of the French Revolution had
left Il broad chasm between the past
and the present. Few Of the writer's of
the eighteenth century remained. lii
the main, literary England was young
England.
| These young men fell easily into
groups. First. there were the founders
of the Edinburgh Review, Sydney
Smith. Francis Jeffrey Francis Horner
Cat whose early death all England
seems to have grieveO, and Henry
BrOugham. The united ages of these
four men, when the first number of
their Edinburgh Review appeared. was
about one hundred and seven years.
Then there was the Tory element in
literature, grouped about Blackwood's
MagaZine;- among them, John Wilson
or Christopher North, Lockhart, James
I!ogs, the Ettrick Shepherd. William
Maginn and others, all comparatively
young men.
The third group a larger one, may
conveniently be styled the friends Of
Charles Lamb: the element of the sup
pcrs IN Lambs rooms in the Inner
Temple was one Of the common bonds
of union among them. This group
unlike the two earlier ones of whg and
| tory, was not political but literary;
some Of them were among the most
delightful of literary characters. and
they clustered about the London
Magazine in which the Essays of
Ella" first appeared. They included
Coleridge, Southey, Dyer. Wordsworth,
and later, Hazitt, Talfourd Goodwin
DeQuincey, Proctor, Leigh Hunt, Cary
Hood and many others. OF course
many of these, like Coeridge, Southey
and Wordsworth, as Campbell, Moore
and Sir Walter Scott, might Just as
well be regarded as single lights. shin
toI,- ~,
of the first magnitude. as to be classed
in this third group, but they were all
friends of Lamb; and so, according to
this authority, the literary heavens of
the opening of the nineteenth century,
are complete, with the exception of the
brilliant and famous names of Byron
and Shelley. These two made a con-
stellatiOn by themselves, the brightest
in all the sky. the Gemini of that
literary armament.
BY some dim and vague association
Of ideas. when l was honored by your
presidents invitation to be present
this evening, and understood that
Hawthorne was to be the principal
subject of the evenings thought and
discourse, this old magazine article
came to my mind, and it seemed that
this same constellation, the Gemin,
more than any other. more than all
Others. ruled our BOwdoin heavens
The names of the stars in that con-
Stellation are not Byron and Shelley; to
us, they are names of finer lustre, cvcn
than those. They are Longfcllow and
Hawthorne; men of genius both. whose
lives moved to ideal ends. in solitude or
among men. The aroma of high
character and fine culture abidcS in all
they were. in all they have done. Each
lof them wrote with the scholars and
the artists pen. and made of his Eng
fish style an element 50 pure that the
ARREST creatures of the imagination
might disport themselves at will i'm it,
i'm all the lightness of motion, in the
wavy grace of flowing and vanishing
outlines.
| They were mere boys when they went
to BoWdoin. LonGfelloW was not nine
teen when he graduated. and Haw-
thorne just twcnty-onc. When the
time comcs-and | hope it will not be
at Il distant day-fOr BOwdOin to COM
m"morate them by some worthy mOnu-
m"nt in the beautiful quadrangle
which the now library building, Hub
bard Hall. has completed, | hope they
VIII he represented as young men, as
youths, Just as they were when they
were accustomed to loiter in the CLEAN
AMI shadow" of those familiar paths
If it is urged as an objection to this
rs it was when some of us tried to in
siSt that the Longfcllow statue in Port
land should be of the young LonGfellow
THAT, for purposes of statuary. the
materials for the likeness i'll youth are
somewhat mcagre. it strikes me that is
of little Importance. if only the repre-
sentation itself is Il worthy one. The
statue need not be wholly ideal. There
are some pictures of both of them in
youth. | believe. But. if need be, let
US have an ideal Longfellow, an ideal
Hawthorne. at Bowdoin. provided only
the marble or the bronze pictures them
i'll youth keeps them and holds them
in immortal youth. Our special re
lation u them IS in their youth. When
their fame was won. they belonged not
to us but to the world. not to our time
but to all the future.
We like to remember that they have
| themselves. again and again. recorded
OleaSant recollectiouS of their early