For,
in conjunction with some other gentlemen now present, I have just
embarked in a design with Sir Bulwer Lytton, to smoothe the rugged
way of young labourers, both in literature and the fine arts, and
to soften, but by no eleemosynary means, the declining years of
meritorious age. And if that project prosper as I hope it will,
and as I know it ought, it will one day be an honour to England
where there is now a reproach; originating in his sympathies, being
brought into operation by his activity, and endowed from its very
cradle by his generosity. There are many among you who will have
each his own favourite reason for drinking our chairman's health,
resting his claim probably upon some of his diversified successes.
According to the nature of your reading, some of you will connect
him with prose, others will connect him with poetry. One will
connect him with comedy, and another with the romantic passions of
the stage, and his assertion of worthy ambition and earnest
struggle against those
"twin gaolers of the human heart,
Low birth and iron fortune."
Again, another's taste will lead him to the contemplation of Rienzi
and the streets of Rome; another's to the rebuilt and repeopled
streets of Pompeii; another's to the touching history of the
fireside where the Caxton family learned how to discipline their
natures and tame their wild hopes down. But, however various their
feelings and reasons may be, I am sure that with one accord each
will help the other, and all will swell the greeting, with which I
shall now propose to you "The Health of our Chairman, Sir Edward
Bulwer Lytton.
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