A Discourse on the Prospects of Letters and Taste in Virginia: Pronounced Before the Literary and Philosophical Society of Hampden-Sydney College, at ... in September, 1827 (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from A Discourse on the Prospects of Letters and Taste in Virginia: Pronounced Before the Literary and Philosophical Society of Hampden-Sydney College, at Their Fourth Anniversary, in September, 1827I have not thought proper to undertake to entertain you with high-sounding generalities, applicable, or rather inapplicable, alike to all countries and to all times nor to attempt to amuse you with the display of a portion of that great stock of sentiment and opinion, which, after the civilians, I may call matter communis juris; opin ions, which no one is so obtuse as not to have adopted, and sentiments which no one is perverse or sluggish enough not to feel. The times need minuter observation and the suggestion of palpable faults. I am sure, too, that you chiefly desire individuality in the speaker, who is called before your learned body at each returning annual meeting. Such, in a high degree, have been all the discourses hitherto delivered to the Society. And at the outset, I cannot but dread the contrast, which it may occur to some to institute between my own hum ble efforts and the display which it was the good for tune of the Society to witness at its last assembling here. N 0 one admires, more than myself, the classical propriety, the rare felicity of speech of the member to Whom I allude with you, I listened with astonish ment at the elegant fluency, I will even say, the provoking fluency, with which he pours out the richest thoughts in aptest phrase with you may I regret the occasion which draws him away from Virginia and from this Society.