tly shaped his verse; how Browning returned ever upon Italy to
inspire his best and correct his worse.

Of Anglo-Saxon prose I know little indeed, but enough of the world to
feel reasonably sure that if it contained any single masterpiece--or
anything that could be paraded as a masterpiece--we should have heard
enough about it long before now. It was invented by King Alfred for
excellent political reasons; but, like other ready-made political
inventions in this country, it refused to thrive. I think it can be
demonstrated, that the true line of intellectual descent in prose lies
through Bede (who wrote in Latin, the 'universal language'), and not
through the Blickling Homilies, or, AElfric, or the Saxon Chronicle. And I
am sure that Freeman is perversely wrong when he laments as a 'great
mistake' that the first Christian missionaries from Rome did not teach
their converts to pray and give praise in the vernacular. The vernacular
being what it was, these men did better to teach the religion of the
civilised world--_orbis terrarum_--in the language of the civilised
world. I am not thinking of its efficiency for spreading the faith; but
neither is Freeman; and, for that, we must allow these old missionaries
to have known their own business. I am thinking only of how this 'great
mistake' affected our literature; and if you will read Professor
Saintsbury's "History of English Prose Rhythm" (pioneer work, which yet
wonderfully succeeds in illustrating what our prose-writers from time to
time were trying to do); if you will study the Psalms in the Authorised
Version; if you will consider what Milton, Clarendon, Sir Thomas Browne,
were aiming at; what Addison, Gibbon, Johnson; what Landor, Thackeray,
Newman, Arnold, Pater; I doubt not your rising from the perusal convinced
that our nation, in this storehouse of Latin to refresh and replenish its
most sacred thoughts, has enjoyed a continuous blessing: that the Latin
of the Vulgate and the Offices has been a background giving depth and, as
the painters say, 'value' to nine-tenths of our serious writing.

And now, since this and the previous lecture run something counter to a
great deal of that teaching in English Literature which nowadays passes
most acceptably, let me avoid offence, so far as may be, by defining one
or two things I am _not_ trying to do.

I am not persuading you to despise your linguistic descent. English is
English--our language; and all its history to be ven