JOSIAH QUINCY

WELCOME TO DICKENS

[Speech of Josiah Quincy, Jr., at the banquet given by the “Young Men of Boston” at Boston, Mass., February 1, 1842, to Charles Dickens, upon his first visit to America.  Mr. Quincy was the President of the evening.  About two hundred gentlemen sat at the tables, the brilliant company including George Bancroft, Richard H. Dana, Sr., Richard H. Dana, Jr., Washington Allston, the painter, Oliver Wendell Holmes, George S. Hillard, Josiah Quincy, President of Harvard College, the Governor of the State, the Mayor of the city, and Thomas C. Grattan, the British Consul.]

GENTLEMEN:—­The occasion that calls us together is almost unprecedented in the annals of literature.  A young man has crossed the ocean, with no hereditary title, no military laurels, no princely fortune, and yet his approach is hailed with pleasure by every age and condition, and on his arrival he is welcomed as a long-known and highly valued friend.  How shall we account for this reception?  Must we not at the first glance conclude with Falstaff, “If the rascal have not given me medicines to make me love him, I’ll be hanged:  it could not be else—­I have drunk medicines.”

But when reflection leads us to the causes of this universal sentiment, we cannot but be struck by the power which mind exercises over mind, even while we are individually separated by time, space, and other conditions of our present being.  Why should we not welcome him as a friend?  Have we not walked with him in every scene of varied life?  Have we not together investigated, with Mr. Pickwick, the theory of Tittlebats?  Have we not ridden together to the “Markis of Granby” with old Weller on the box, and his son Samivel on the dickey?  Have we not been rook-shooting with Mr. Winkle, and courting with Mr. Tupman?  Have we not played cribbage with “the Marchioness,” and quaffed the rosy with Dick Swiveller?  Tell us not of animal magnetism!  We, and thousands of our countrymen, have for years been eating and talking, riding and walking, dancing and sliding, drinking and sleeping, with our distinguished guest, and he never knew of the existence of one of us.  Is it wonderful that we are delighted to see him, and to return in a measure his unbounded hospitalities?  Boz a stranger!  Well may we again exclaim, with Sir John Falstaff, “D’ye think we didn’t know ye?—­We knew ye as well as Him that made ye.”

But a jovial fellow is not always the dearest friend; and, although the pleasure of his society would always recommend the progenitor of Dick Swiveller, “the perpetual grand of the glorious Appollers,” in a scene like this, yet the respect of grave doctors and of fair ladies proves that there are higher qualities than those of a pleasant companion to recommend and attach them to our distinguished guest.  What is the charm that unites so many suffrages?  It is that in the lightest hours, and in the most degraded scenes which he has portrayed, there has been a reforming object and a moral tone, not formally thrust into the canvas, but infused into the spirit of the picture, with those natural touches whose contemplation never tires.