e Ordinance, '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.'

That was the phrase at which I glanced--'the subject of English
Literature'; and I propose that we start to-day, for reasons that
will appear, by subjecting this subject to some examination.

II

'The _Subject_ of English Literature.' Surely--for a start--there
is no such thing; or rather, may we not say that everything is,
has been or can be, a subject of English Literature? Man's loss
of Paradise has been a subject of English Literature, and so has
been a Copper Coinage in Ireland, and so has been Roast
Sucking-pig, and so has been Holy Dying, and so has been Mr Pepys's
somewhat unholy living, and so have been Ecclesiastical Polity,
The Grail, Angling for Chub, The Wealth of Nations, The Sublime
and the Beautiful, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,
Prize-Fights, Grecian Urns, Modern Painters, Intimations of
Immortality in early Childhood, Travels with a Donkey, Rural
Rides and Rejected Addresses--_all_ these have been subjects of
English Literature: as have been human complots and intrigues as
wide asunder as "Othello" and "The School for Scandal"; persons
as different as Prometheus and Dr Johnson, Imogen and Moll
Flanders, Piers the Plowman and Mr Pickwick; places as different
as Utopia and Cranford, Laputa and Reading Gaol. "Epipsychidion"
is literature: but so is "A Tale of a Tub."

Listen, for this is literature:

If some king of the earth have so large an extent of
dominion, in north, and south, so that he hath winter and
summer together in his dominions, so large an extent east and
west as that he hath day and night together in his dominions,
much more hath God mercy and judgement together: He
brought light out of darkness, not out of a lesser light; he
can bring thy summer out of winter, though thou have no spring;
though in the ways of fortune, or understanding, or
conscience, thou have been benighted till now, wintered and
frozen, clouded and eclipsed, damped and benumbed,
smothered and stupefied till now, now God comes to thee,
not as in the dawning of the day, not as in the bud of the
spring, but as the sun at noon to illustrate all shadows, as
the sheaves in harvest, to fill all penuries, all occasions
invite his mercies, and all times are