But the very hope of this Chair, Sir (as I conceive it), relies on the
courage of the young. As Literature is an Art and therefore not to be
pondered only, but practised, so ours is a living language and therefore
to be kept alive, supple, active in all honourable use. The orator can
yet sway men, the poet ravish them, the dramatist fill their lungs with
salutary laughter or purge their emotions by pity or terror.
The historian 'superinduces upon events the charm of order.'
The novelist--well, even the novelist has his uses; and I would warn you
against despising any form of art which is alive and pliant in the hands
of men. For my part, I believe, bearing in mind Mr. Barrie's "Peter Pan"
and the old bottles he renovated to hold that joyous wine, that even
Musical Comedy, in the hands of a master, might become a thing of
beauty. Of the Novel, at any rate--whether we like it or not--we have to
admit that it does hold a commanding position in the literature of our
times, and to consider how far Mr. Lascelles Abercrombie was right the
other day when he claimed, on the first page of his brilliant study of
Thomas Hardy, that 'the right to such a position is not to be disputed;
for here, as elsewhere, the right to a position is no more than the
power to maintain it.' You may agree with that or you may not; you may
or may not deplore the forms that literature is choosing now-a-days; but
there is no gainsaying that it is still very much alive. And I would say
to you, Gentlemen, 'Believe, and be glad that Literature and the English
tongue are both alive.' Carlyle, in his explosive way, once demanded of
his countrymen, 'Shakespeare or India? If you had to surrender one to
retain the other, which would you choose?' Well, our Indian Empire is
yet in the making, while the works of Shakespeare are complete and
purchasable in whole calf; so the alternatives are scarcely _in pari
materia_; and moreover let us not be in a hurry to meet trouble half
way. But in English Literature, which, like India, is still in the
making, you have at once an Empire and an Emprise. In that alone you