It is not easy for a man to speak of his own books.I daresay that few persons have been more interested in mine than I, and if it be a general principle in nature that a lover's love is blind, and that a mother's love is blind, I believe it may be said of an author's attachment to the creatures of his own imagination, that it is a perfect model of constancy and devotion, and is the blindest of all.But the objects and purposes I have had in view are very plain and simple, and may be easily told.I have always had, and always shall have, an earnest and true desire to contribute, as far as in me lies, to the common stock of healthful cheerfulness and enjoyment.I have always had, and always shall have, an invincible repugnance to that mole-eyed philosophy which loves the darkness, and winks and scowls in the light.I believe that Virtue shows quite as well in rags and patches, as she does in purple and fine linen.I believe that she and every beautiful object in external nature, claims some sympathy in the breast of the poorest man who breaks his scanty loaf of daily bread.Ibelieve that she goes barefoot as well as shod.I believe that she dwells rather oftener in alleys and by-ways than she does in courts and palaces, and that it is good, and pleasant, and profitable to track her out, and follow her.I believe that to lay one's hand upon some of those rejected ones whom the world has too long forgotten, and too often misused, and to say to the proudest and most thoughtless - "These creatures have the same elements and capacities of goodness as yourselves, they are moulded in the same form, and made of the same clay; and though ten times worse than you, may, in having retained anything of their original nature amidst the trials and distresses of their condition, be really ten times better;" I believe that to do this is to pursue a worthy and not useless vocation.Gentlemen, that you think so too, your fervent greeting sufficiently assures me.That this feeling is alive in the Old World as well as in the New, no man should know better than I - I, who have found such wide and ready sympathy in my own dear land.That in expressing it, we are but treading in the steps of those great master-spirits who have gone before, we know by reference to all the bright examples in our literature, from Shakespeare downward.
There is one other point connected with the labours (if I may call them so) that you hold in such generous esteem, to which I cannot help adverting.I cannot help expressing the delight, the more than happiness it was to me to find so strong an interest awakened on this side of the water, in favour of that little heroine of mine, to whom your president has made allusion, who died in her youth.I had letters about that child, in England, from the dwellers in log-houses among the morasses, and swamps, and densest forests, and deep solitudes of the far west.Many a sturdy hand, hard with the axe and spade, and browned by the summer's sun, has taken up the pen, and written to me a little history of domestic joy or sorrow, always coupled, I am proud to say, with something of interest in that little tale, or some comfort or happiness derived from it, and my correspondent has always addressed me, not as a writer of books for sale, resident some four or five thousand miles away, but as a friend to whom he might freely impart the joys and sorrows of his own fireside.Many a mother - I could reckon them now by dozens, not by units - has done the like, and has told me how she lost such a child at such a time, and where she lay buried, and how good she was, and how, in this or that respect, she resembles Nell.I do assure you that no circumstance of my life has given me one hundredth part of the gratification I have derived from this source.I was wavering at the time whether or not to wind up my Clock, and come and see this country, and this decided me.I felt as if it were a positive duty, as if I were bound to pack up my clothes, and come and see my friends; and even now Ihave such an odd sensation in connexion with these things, that you have no chance of spoiling me.I feel as though we were agreeing -as indeed we are, if we substitute for fictitious characters the classes from which they are drawn - about third parties, in whom we had a common interest.At every new act of kindness on your part, I say to myself "That's for Oliver; I should not wonder if that was meant for Smike; I have no doubt that is intended for Nell;" and so I become a much happier, certainly, but a more sober and retiring man than ever I was before.
Gentlemen, talking of my friends in America, brings me back, naturally and of course, to you.Coming back to you, and being thereby reminded of the pleasure we have in store in hearing the gentlemen who sit about me, I arrive by the easiest, though not by the shortest course in the world, at the end of what I have to say.
But before I sit down, there is one topic on which I am desirous to lay particular stress.It has, or should have, a strong interest for us all, since to its literature every country must look for one great means of refining and improving its people, and one great source of national pride and honour.You have in America great writers - great writers - who will live in all time, and are as familiar to our lips as household words.Deriving (as they all do in a greater or less degree, in their several walks) their inspiration from the stupendous country that gave them birth, they diffuse a better knowledge of it, and a higher love for it, all over the civilized world.I take leave to say, in the presence of some of those gentleman, that I hope the time is not far distant when they, in America, will receive of right some substantial profit and return in England from their labours; and when we, in England, shall receive some substantial profit and return in America for ours.Pray do not misunderstand me.Securing to myself from day to day the means of an honourable subsistence, Iwould rather have the affectionate regard of my fellow men, than Iwould have heaps and mines of gold.But the two things do not seem to me incompatible.They cannot be, for nothing good is incompatible with justice; there must be an international arrangement in this respect: England has done her part, and I am confident that the time is not far distant when America will do hers.It becomes the character of a great country; FIRSTLY, because it is justice; SECONDLY, because without it you never can have, and keep, a literature of your own.
Gentlemen, I thank you with feelings of gratitude, such as are not often awakened, and can never be expressed.As I understand it to be the pleasant custom here to finish with a toast, I would beg to give you: AMERICA AND ENGLAND, and may they never have any division but the Atlantic between them.