Professor Skeat's) another ten years at least. For our time, then, and
probably for many generations after, this edition of Chaucer will be
accepted as final.

* * * * *

And the Clarendon Press.

And I seem to see in this edition of Chaucer the beginning of the
realization of a dream which I have cherished since first I stood
within the quadrangle of the Clarendon Press--that fine combination of
the factory and the palace. The aspect of the Press itself repeats, as
it were, the characteristics of its government, which is conducted by
an elected body as an honorable trust. Its delegates are not intent
only on money-getting. And yet the Clarendon Press makes money, and
the University can depend upon it for handsome subsidies. It may well
depend upon it for much more. As the Bank of England--to which in its
system of government it may be likened--is the focus of all the other
banks, private or joint-stock, in the kingdom, and the treasure-house,
not only of the nation's gold, but of its commercial honor, so the
Clarendon Press--traditionally careful in its selections and
munificent in its rewards--might become the academy or central temple
of English literature. If it would but follow up Professor Skeat's
Chaucer with a resolution to publish, at a pace suitable to so large
an undertaking, _all the great English classics_, edited with all the
scholarship its wealth can command, I believe that before long the
Clarendon Press would be found to be exercising an influence on
English letters which is at present lacking, and the lack of which
drives many to call, from time to time, for the institution in this
country of something corresponding to the French Academy. I need only