But here at the close of my hour, the double argument, that Literature is an Art and English a living tongue, has led me right up to a fourth principle, the plunge into which (though I foresaw it from the first) all the coward in me rejoices at having to defer to another lecture.  I conclude then, Gentlemen, by answering two suspicions, which very likely have been shaping themselves in your minds.  In the first place, you will say, ’It is all very well for this man to talk about “cultivating an increased sensibility,” and the like; but we know what that leads to—­to quackery, to aesthetic chatter:  “Isn’t this pretty?  Don’t you admire that?"’ Well, I am not greatly frightened.  To begin with, when we come to particular criticism I shall endeavour to exchange it with you in plain terms; a manner which (to quote Mr Robert Bridges’ “Essay on Keats”) ’I prefer, because by obliging the lecturer to say definitely what he means, it makes his mistakes easy to point out, and in this way the true business of criticism is advanced.’  But I have a second safeguard, more to be trusted:  that here in Cambridge, with all her traditions of austere scholarship, anyone who indulges in loose distinct talk will be quickly recalled to his tether.  Though at the time Athene be not kind enough to descend from heaven and pluck him backward by the hair, yet the very genius loci will walk home with him from the lecture room, whispering monitions, cruel to be kind.

‘But,’ you will say alternatively, ’if we avoid loose talk on these matters we are embarking on a mighty difficult business.’  Why, to be sure we are; and that, I hope, will be half the enjoyment.  After all, we have a number of critics among whose methods we may search for help—­from the Persian monarch who, having to adjudicate upon two poems, caused the one to be read to him, and at once, without ado, awarded the prize to the other, up to the great Frenchman whom I shall finally invoke to sustain my hope of building something; that is if you, Gentlemen, will be content to accept me less as a Professor than as an Elder Brother.

The Frenchman is Sainte-Beuve, and I pay a debt, perhaps appropriately here, by quoting him as translated by the friend of mine, now dead, who first invited me to Cambridge and taught me to admire her—­one Arthur John Butler, sometime a Fellow of Trinity, and later a great pioneer among Englishmen in the study of Dante.  Thus while you listen to the appeal of Sainte-Beuve, I can hear beneath it a more intimate voice, not for the first time, encouraging me.

Sainte-Beuve then—­si magna licet componere parvis—­is delivering an Inaugural Lecture in the Ecole Normale, the date being April 12th, 1858.  ‘Gentlemen,’ he begins, ’I have written a good deal in the last thirty years; that is, I have scattered myself a good deal; so that I need to gather myself together, in order that my words may come before you with all the more freedom and confidence.’  That is his opening; and he ends:—­