old, but of its commercial honor, so the
Clarendon Press--traditionally careful in its selections and
munificent in its rewards--might become the academy or central temple
of English literature. If it would but follow up Professor Skeat's
Chaucer with a resolution to publish, at a pace suitable to so large
an undertaking, _all the great English classics_, edited with all the
scholarship its wealth can command, I believe that before long the
Clarendon Press would be found to be exercising an influence on
English letters which is at present lacking, and the lack of which
drives many to call, from time to time, for the institution in this
country of something corresponding to the French Academy. I need only
cite the examples of the Royal Society and the Marylebone Cricket
Club to show that to create an authority in this manner is consonant
with our national practice. We should have that centre of correct
information, correct judgment, correct taste--that intellectual
metropolis, in short--which is the surest check upon provinciality in
literature; we should have a standard of English scholarship and an
authoritative dictionary of the English language; and at the same time
we should escape all that business of the green coat and palm branches
which has at times exposed the French Academy to much vulgar intrigue.

Also, I may add, we should have the books. Where now is the great
edition of Bunyan, of Defoe, of Gibbon? The Oxford Press did once
publish an edition of Gibbon, worthy enough as far as type and paper
could make it worthy. But this is only to be found in second-hand
book-shops. Why are two rival London houses now publishing editions of
Scott, the better illustrated with silly pictures "out of the artists'
heads"? Where is the final edition of Ben Jonson?

These and the rest are to come, perhaps. Of late we have had from
Oxford a great Boswell and a great Chaucer, and the magnificent
Dictionary is under weigh. So that it may be the dream is in process
of being realized, though none of us shall live to see its full
realization. Meanwhile such a work as Professor Skeat's Chaucer is not
only an answer to much chatter that goes up from time to time about
nine-tenths of the work on English literature being done out of
England. This and similar works are the best of all possible answers
to those gentlemen who so often interrupt their own chrematistic
pursuits to point out in the monthly magazines the short-comings of
ou