he
best intellects of the ancients, such as Longinus and Quintilian, whose
writings have been preserved to us just because they were prized. Nor can
I imagine an earthly gift more covetable by you, Gentlemen, than that of
persuading your fellows to listen to your views and attend to what you
have at heart.

Suppose, sir, that you wish to become a journalist? Well, and why not? Is
it a small thing to desire the power of influencing day by day to better
citizenship an unguessed number of men, using the best thought and
applying it in the best language at your command?... Or are you, perhaps,
overawed by the printed book? On that, too, I might have a good deal to
say; but for the moment would keep the question as practical as I can.

Well, it is sometimes said that Oxford men make better journalists than
Cambridge men, and some attribute this to the discipline of their great
School of _Literae Humaniores_, which obliges them to bring up a weekly
essay to their tutor, who discusses it. Cambridge men retort that all
Oxford men are journalists, and throw, of course, some accent of scorn on
the word. But may I urge--and remember please that my credit is pledged
to _you_ now--may I urge that this is not a wholly convincing answer?
For, to begin with, Oxford men have not changed their natures since
leaving school, but are, by process upon lines not widely divergent from
your own, much the same pleasant sensible fellows you remember. And,
next, if you truly despise journalism, why then despise it, have done
with it and leave it alone. But I pray you, do not despise it if you mean
to practise it, though it be but as a step to something better. For while
the ways of art are hard at the best, they will break you if you go
unsustained by belief in what you are trying to do.

In asking you to practise the written word, I began with such
low but necessary things as propriety, perspicuity, accuracy.
But _persuasion_--the highest form of persuasion at any rate--cannot be
achieved without a sense of beauty. And now I shoot a second rapid--_I
want you to practise verse, and to practise it assiduously_.... I am
quite serious. Let me remind you that, if there ever was an ancient
state of which we of Great Britain have great right and should have
greater ambition to claim ourselves the spiritual heirs, that state was
Imperial Rome. And of the Romans (whom you will allow to have been a
practical people) nothing is more certain than the value