On the Art of Writing | Page 3

have
heard many names proposed for the Commission of the Peace, and on
many grounds, but never one on the ground that its owner had a
conservative taste in verse!
Nevertheless, as Plato saw, we must deal with these poets somehow. It
is possible (though not, I think, likely) that in the ideal State there
would be no Literature, as it is certain there would be no Professors of
it; but since its invention men have never been able to rid themselves of
it for any length of time. _Tamen usque recurrit._ They may forbid
Apollo, but still he comes leading his choir, the Nine:--
[Greek: Akletos men egoge menoimi ken es de kaleunton Tharsesas
Moisaisi snu amepeaisin ikoiman.]
And he may challenge us English boldly! For since Chaucer, at any rate,
he and his train have never been [Greek: akletoi] to us--least of all here
in Cambridge.
Nay, we know that he should be welcome. Cardinal Newman,
proposing the idea of a University to the Roman Catholics of Dublin,
lamented that the English language had not, like the Greek, 'some
definite words to express, simply and generally, intellectual proficiency
or perfection, such as "health," as used with reference to the animal
frame, and "virtue," with reference to our moral nature.' Well, it is a
reproach to us that we do not possess the term: and perhaps again a
reproach to us that our attempts at it--the word 'culture' for
instance--have been apt to take on some soil of controversy, some
connotative damage from over-preaching on the one hand and
impatience on the other. But we do earnestly desire the thing. We do

prize that grace of intellect which sets So-and-so in our view as 'a
scholar and a gentleman.' We do wish as many sons of this University
as may be to carry forth that lifelong stamp from her precincts;
and--this is my point--from our notion of such a man the touch of
literary grace cannot be excluded. I put to you for a test Lucian's
description of his friend Demonax--
His way was like other people's; he mounted no high horse; he was just
a man and a citizen. He indulged in no Socratic irony. But his discourse
was full of Attic grace; those who heard it went away neither disgusted
by servility, nor repelled by ill-tempered censure, but on the contrary
lifted out of themselves by charity, and encouraged to more orderly,
contented, hopeful lives.
I put it to you, Sir, that Lucian needs not to say another word, but we
know that Demonax had loved letters, and partly by aid of them had
arrived at being such a man. No; by consent of all, Literature is a nurse
of noble natures, and right reading makes a full man in a sense even
better than Bacon's; not replete, but complete rather, to the pattern for
which Heaven designed him. In this conviction, in this hope, public
spirited men endow Chairs in our Universities, sure that Literature is a
good thing if only we can bring it to operate on young minds.
That he has in him some power to guide such operation a man must
believe before accepting such a Chair as this. And now, Sir, the terrible
moment is come when your [Greek: xenos] must render some
account--I will not say of himself, for that cannot be attempted--but of
his business here. Well, first let me plead that while you have been
infinitely kind to the stranger, feasting him and casting a gown over
him, one thing not all your kindness has been able to do. With
precedents, with traditions such as other Professors enjoy, you could
not furnish him. The Chair is a new one, or almost new, and for the
present would seem to float in the void, like Mahomet's coffin.
Wherefore, being one who (in my Lord Chief Justice Crewe's phrase)
would 'take hold of a twig or twine-thread to uphold it'; being also
prone (with Bacon) to believe that 'the counsels to which Time hath not
been called, Time will not ratify'; I do assure you that, had any legacy

of guidance been discovered among the papers left by my predecessor,
it would have been eagerly welcomed and as piously honoured. O, trust
me, Sir!--if any design for this Chair of English Literature had been left
by Dr Verrall, it is not I who would be setting up any new stage in your
agora! But in his papers--most kindly searched for me by Mrs
Verrall--no such design can be found. He was, in truth, a stricken man
when he came to the Chair, and of what he would have built we can
only be sure that, had it been this or had it been that, it would infallibly
have borne the impress of one