these
pleaders let me mention Mr F. B. Money-Coutts (now Lord Latymer)
and a Cambridge man, Dr R. G. Moulton, now Professor of Literary
Theory and Interpretation in the University of Chicago. Of both
these writers I shall have something to say. But first and
generally, if you ask me why all their pleas have not yet
prevailed, I will give you my own answer--the fault as usual lies
in ourselves--in our own tameness and incuriosity.

There is no real trouble with the _taboo_ set up by professionals
and puritans, if we have the courage to walk past it as Christian
walked between the lions; no real tyranny we could not overthrow,
if it were worth while, with a push; no need at all for us to
`wreathe our sword in myrtle boughs.' What tyranny exists has
grown up through the quite well-meaning labours of quite
well-meaning men: and, as I started this lecture by saying, I have
never heard any serious reason given why we should not include
portions of the English Bible in our English Tripos, if we
choose.

Nos te,
Nos facimus, Scriptura, deam.

Then why don't we choose?

To answer this, we must (I suggest) seek somewhat further back.
The Bible--that is to say the body of the old Hebrew Literature
clothed for us in English--comes to us in our childhood. But how
does it come?

Let me, amplifying a hint from Dr Moulton, ask you to imagine a
volume including the great books of our own literature all bound
together in some such order as this: "Paradise Lost," Darwin's
"Descent of Man," "The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle," Walter Map, Mill
"On Liberty," Hooker's "Ecclesiastical Polity," "The Annual
Register," Froissart, Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations," "Domesday
Book," "Le Morte d'Arthur," Campbell's "Lives of the Lord
Chancellors," Boswell's "Johnson," Barbour's "The Bruce,"
Hakluyt's "Voyages," Clarendon, Macaulay, the plays of
Shakespeare, Shelley's "Prometheus Unbound," "The Faerie Queene,"
Palgrave's Golden Treasury, Bacon's Essays, Swinburne's "Poems
and Ballads," FitzGerald's "Omar Khayyam," Wordsworth, Browning,
"Sartor Resartus," Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy," Burke's
"Letters on a Regicide Peace," "Ossian," "Piers Plowman," Burke's
"Thoughts on the Present Discontents," Quarles, Newman's
"Apologia", Donne's Sermons, Ruskin, Blake, "The Deserted
Village," Manfred, Blair's "Grave," "The Complaint of Deor,"
Bailey's "Festus," Thompson's "Hound of Heaven."

Will you next imagine that in this volu