New-York tribune., 1907-10-01
FULTON.

Anniversaries would often be we'll worth cell
ebrating if they served no other purpose than to
recall utteranceS and judgments of the past and
thus 10 warn men to be temperate in speech by
showing how the surer judgment OF posterity
has made mockery of the ipSe dirits of mans
own time The case of Robert Fulton is in
point. The centenary of his Clermont is in
elaborate process of commemoration. Much at
tentiOn was given to il at jamestown the other
day, and In the future the city and state
of New York will celebrate it with pOmp and
pageantry. and also with permanent memorials.
seldom surpassed on any such occasion; all Of
which receives the thoughtful and discriminate
ing approval Of the world. Yet less than
century ago what the esteem in which Full
ton held by his contemporaries?
Such. both pro and contra. as we imagine no
man to-day would venture to express. Re
call, for example, the eulogium pronounced by
Cadwalader Golden before the Literary and
Philosophical Society of New York"--and Golden
of Quaker parentage, and. therefore, given
TO sOberness of thought and yea and nay di
rectness Of speech. We cannot think" he said,
that ii will be imputed 10 an undue partiality
IF say that there cannot be found on the
records of departed worth the name of a per-
son to whose individual exertions mankind are
more indebted than they are TO Robert Fulton"
We expect there will be some "spelbinding'
ana ulSUIdluIlH DtlOfe the / uItOn centenary is
past, but We shall! be surprised if anything in
twentieth century spreadeagleism surpasses or
even rivals that masterpiece Of the early nine
teenth
Neither do We think that Mr.. Machen the
United States of Gehenna" specialist OF the
London Academy" even when he gets his sec
ond wind. will easily surpass In abusiveness and
invective the good old Quarterly Review" Of
those halcyon and vOcferous DAYS Fulton in
its calm and luminous vision, was a "yagrant
adventurer." who had not the slightest preten-
sion to the discovery of n method for propel-
ling boats by steam" nor "any claim either to
the invention of applying steam engine to a
boat or the apparatus OF wheels or other ma
'chinery to drive her through the water" There
could be no question to whom the invention Of
the steamboat was due. That person was not
Fulton, nor Fitch, nor Miller, nor Symngton
but none other than the ilustrious Jonathan
HullS
1t was in that same number. indeed in the
same article. that the Quarterly" said that
CObbett occasionally contrived Ito diversity the
savage growl Of the tiger with the mop and
move of the ape" and il was in the immedi-
ately preceding number that 1t printed the "sav-
age and tartarly' review Of "Endymlon" which
was said to have killed Keats-with its char
acterizaton of his poetry as 'the most incongru-
Gus ideas in the most unCOuth language" and of
Keats himself as a copyist of Leigh Hunt, more
'unintellgbe, almost as rugged, twice rs diff
fuse and ten times more tiresome and absurd
than his prototype" Fulton, as we'll as Keats
can now regard with cOmplacence alike the in
temperate abuse and the extravagant praise Of
those times. But we, we laugh over those
prepSterous citatiOns-are sure that all the
cocksure, sphere moving judgments Of our day
Will better stand the rest Of time q century
hence?