And now, since this and the previous lecture run something counter to a great deal of that teaching in English Literature which nowadays passes most acceptably, let me avoid offence, so far as may be, by defining one or two things I am not trying to do.

I am not persuading you to despise your linguistic descent.  English is English—­our language; and all its history to be venerated by us.

I am not persuading you to despise linguistic study. All learning is venerable.

I am not persuading you to behave like Ascham, and turn English prose into pedantic Latin; nor would I have you doubt that in the set quarrel between Campion, who wished to divert English verse into strict classical channels, and Daniel, who vindicated our free English way (derived from Latin through the Provencal), Daniel was on the whole, right, Campion on the whole, wrong:  though I believe that both ways yet lie open, and we may learn, if we study them intelligently, a hundred things from the old classical metres.

I do not ask you to forget what there is of the Northmen in your blood.  If I desired this, I could not worship William Morris as I do, among the later poets.

I do not ask you to doubt that the barbarian invaders from the north, with their myths and legends, brought new and most necessary blood of imagination into the literary material—­for the time almost exhausted—­of Greece and Rome.

Nevertheless, I do contend that when Britain (or, if you prefer it, Sleswick)

     When Sleswick first at Heaven’s command
     Arose from out the azure main,

she differed from Aphrodite, that other foam-born, in sundry important features of ear, of lip, of eye.

Lastly, if vehement assertions on the one side have driven me into too vehement dissent on the other, I crave pardon; not for the dissent but for the vehemence, as sinning against the very principle I would hold up to your admiration—­the old Greek principle of avoiding excess.

But I do commend the patient study of Greek and Latin authors—­in the original or in translation—­to all of you who would write English; and for three reasons.

(1) In the first place they will correct your insularity of mind; or, rather, will teach you to forget it.  The Anglo-Saxon, it has been noted, ever left an empty space around his houses; and that, no doubt, is good for a house.  It is not so good for the mind.

(2) Secondly, we have a tribal habit, confirmed by Protestant meditation upon a Hebraic religion, of confining our literary enjoyment to the written word and frowning down the drama, the song, the dance.  A fairly attentive study of modern lyrical verse has persuaded me that this exclusiveness may be carried too far, and threatens to be deadening.  ’I will sing and give praise,’ says the Scripture, ’with the best member that I have’—­meaning the tongue.  But the old Greek was an ’all-round man’ as we say.  He sought to praise and give thanks with all his members, and to tune each to perfection.  I think his way worth your considering.