knowing in ancient
literature, and in the literature of France, Italy, Germany, and Spain,
has been translated into our own tongue. It is scarcely possible that
the translation of any book of the highest class can be equal to the
original. But, though the finer touches may be lost in the copy, the
great outlines will remain. An Englishman who never saw the frescoes in
the Vatican may yet, from engravings, form some notion of the exquisite
grace of Raphael, and of the sublimity and energy of Michael Angelo. And
so the genius of Homer is seen in the poorest version of the Iliad; the
genius of Cervantes is seen in the poorest version of Don Quixote. Let
it not be supposed that I wish to dissuade any person from studying
either the ancient languages or the languages of modern Europe. Far from
it. I prize most highly those keys of knowledge; and I think that no man
who has leisure for study ought to be content until he possesses several
of them. I always much admired a saying of the Emperor Charles the
Fifth. "When I learn a new language," he said, "I feel as if I had got
a new soul." But I would console those who have not time to make
themselves linguists by assuring them that, by means of their own mother
tongue, they may obtain ready access to vast intellectual treasures, to
treasures such as might have been envied by the greatest linguists of
the age of Charles the Fifth, to treasures surpassing those which were
possessed by Aldus, by Erasmus, and by Melancthon.

And thus I am brought back to the point from which I started. I have
been requested to invite you to fill your glasses to the Literature of
Britain; to that literature, the brightest, the purest, the most durable
of all the glories of our country; to that literature, so rich in
precious truth and precious fiction; to that literature which boasts of
the prince of all poets and of the prince of all philosophers; to that
literature which has exercised an influence wider than that of our
commerce, and mightier than that of our arms; to that literature which
has taught France the principles of liberty, and has furnished Germany
with models of art; to that literature which forms a tie closer than the
tie of consanguinity between us and the commonwealths of the valley of
the Mississippi; to that literature before the light of which impious
and cruel superstitions are fast taking flight on the banks of the
Ganges; to that literature which will, in future ages, instruct a