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