is the home of accurate scholarship? Surely no Cambridge man would
willingly be a sloven in speech, oral or written? Surely here, if
anywhere, should be acknowledged of all what Newman says of the classics,
that 'a certain unaffected neatness and propriety and grace of diction
may be required of any author, for the same reason that a certain
attention to dress is expected of every gentleman.' After all, what are
the chief differentiae between man and the brute creation but that he
clothes himself, that he cooks his food, that he uses articulate speech?
Let us cherish and improve all these distinctions.

But shall we now look more carefully into these twin questions of
perspicuity and accuracy: for I think pursuing them, we may almost reach
the philosophic kernel of good writing. I quoted Newman playfully a
moment ago. I am going to quote him in strong earnest. And here let me
say that of all the books written in these hundred years there is perhaps
none you can more profitably thumb and ponder than that volume of his in
which, under the title of "The Idea of a University," he collected nine
discourses addressed to the Roman Catholics of Dublin with some lectures
delivered to the Catholic University there. It is fragmentary, because
its themes were occasional. It has missed to be appraised at its true
worth, partly no doubt by reason of the colour it derives from a religion
still unpopular in England. But in fact it may be read without offence by
the strictest Protestant; and the book is so wise--so eminently wise--as
to deserve being bound by the young student of literature for a frontlet
on his brow and a talisman on his writing wrist.

Now you will find much pretty swordsmanship in its pages, but nothing
more trenchant than the passage in which Newman assails and puts to rout
the Persian host of infidels--I regret to say, for the most part Men of
Science--who would persuade us that good writing, that style, is