efore 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
stage in your agora! But in his papers--most kindly searched for me by
Mrs Verrall--no such design can be found. He was, in truth, a stricken
man when he came to the Chair, and of what he would have built we can
only be sure that, had it been this or had it been that, it would
infallibly have borne the impress of one of the most beautiful minds of
our generation. The gods saw otherwise; and for me, following him, I came
to a trench and stretched my hands to a shade.

For me, then, if you put questions concerning the work of this Chair, I
must take example from the artist in Don Quixote, who being asked what he
was painting, answered modestly, 'That is as it may turn out.' The course
is uncharted, and for sailing directions I have but these words of your
Ordinance:

It shall be the duty of the Professor to deliver courses of lectures
on English Literature from the age of Chaucer onwards, and otherwise
to promote, so far as may be in his power, the study in the
University of the subject of English Literature.

And I never even knew that English Literature had a 'subject'; or,
rather, supposed it to have several! To resume:

The Professor shall treat this subject on literary and critical
rather than on philological and linguistic lines:

--a proviso which at