s to me that one of the greatest functions of literature at this
moment is not merely to produce great works, but also to protect the
English language--that noble, that most glorious instrument--against
those hosts of invaders which I observe have in these days sprung up. I
suppose that every one here has noticed the extraordinary list of names
suggested lately in order to designate motion by electricity [laughter];
that list of names only revealed what many of us had been observing for
a long time--namely, the appalling forces that are ready at a moment's
notice to deface and deform our English tongue. [Laughter.] These
strange, fantastic, grotesque, and weird titles open up to my prophetic
vision a most unwelcome prospect. I tremble to see the day approach--and
I am not sure that it is not approaching--when the humorists of the
headlines of American journalism shall pass current as models of
conciseness, energy, and color of style. [Cheers and laughter.]

Even in our social speech this invasion seems to be taking place in an
alarming degree and I wonder what the Pilgrim Fathers of the seventeenth
century would say if they could hear their pilgrim children of the
nineteenth century who come over here, on various missions, and among
others, "On the make." [Laughter.] This is only one of the thousand such
like expressions which are invading the Puritan simplicity of our
tongue. I will only say that I should like, for my own part, to see in
every library and in every newspaper office that admirable passage in
which Milton, who knew so well how to handle both the great instrument
of prose and the nobler instrument of verse--declared that next to the
man who furnished courage and intrepid counsels against an enemy he
placed the man who should enlist small bands of good authors to resist
that barbarism which invades the minds and the speech of men in methods
and habits of speaking and writing.

I thank you for having allowed me the honor of saying a word as to the
happiest of all callings and the most imperishable of all arts. [Loud
cheers.]

JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY

THE POETS' CORNER

[Speech of John Lothrop Motley, United States Minister to England at the
eighty-fourth annual banquet of the Royal Literary Fund, London, May
28, 1873. The Right-Hon. William E. Gladstone, First Minister of the
Crown, was chairman. The Bishop of Derry proposed the toast, "The
Literature of the United States, and Mr. Motley," w