of
good repute, and so silently dissuading us from base thoughts, low ends,
ignoble gains; seeing, moreover, that a man will often do more to match
his father's virtue than he would to improve himself; I shall endeavour,
in this and my next lecture, to scour that spur of ancestry and present
it to you as so bright and sharp an incentive that you, who read English
Literature and practise writing here in Cambridge, shall not pass out
from her insensible of the dignity of your studies, or without pride or
remorse according as you have interpreted in practice the motto,
_Noblesse oblige_.

'Tis wisdom, and that high,
For men to use their fortune reverently
Even in youth.

Let me add that, just as a knowledge of his family failings will help one
man in economising his estate, or warn another to shun for his health the
pleasures of the table, so some knowledge of our lineage in letters may
put us, as Englishmen, on the watch for certain national defects (for
such we have), on our guard against certain sins which too easily beset
us. Nay, this watchfulness may well reach down from matters of great
moment to seeming trifles. It is good for us to recognise with Wordsworth
that

We must be free or die, who speak the tongue
That Shakespeare spake; the faith and morals hold
Which Milton held. In everything we are sprung
Of Earth's first blood, have titles manifold.

But, though less important, it is good also to recognise that, as sons of
Cambridge, we equally offend against her breeding when in our scientific
writings we allow ourselves to talk of a microbe as an 'antibody.'

Now, because a great deal of what I have to say this morning, if not
heretical, will yet run contrary to the vogue and practice of the Schools
for these thirty years, I will take the leap into my subject over a
greater man's back and ask you to listen with particular attention to the
following long passage from a writer whose opinion you may challenge, but
whose authority to speak as a master of English prose no one in this room
will deny.

When (says Cardinal Newman) we survey the stream of human affairs for
the last three thousand years, we find it to run thus:--At first sight
there is so much fluctuation, agitation, ebbing and flowing, that we
may despair to discern any law in its movements, taking the earth as
its bed and mankind as its contents; but on looking more closely and
attentively we sh