kground, unless you know the kind of men for whom
Chaucer wrote and the kind of men whom he made speak; that is the
_national_ side with which all our literature is concerned.

_The second._ Literature being so personal a thing, you cannot
understand it until you have some personal under-standing of the
men who wrote it. Donne is Donne; Swift, Swift; Pope, Pope;
Johnson, Johnson; Goldsmith, Goldsmith; Charles Lamb, Charles
Lamb; Carlyle, Carlyle. Until you have grasped those men, as men,
you cannot grasp their writings. That is the _personal_ side of
literary study, and as necessary as the other.

_The third._ That the writing and speaking of English is a living
art, to be practised and (if it may be) improved. That what these
great men have done is to hand us a grand patrimony; that they
lived to support us through the trial we are now enduring, and to
carry us through to great days to come. So shall our sons, now
fighting in France, have a language ready for the land they shall
recreate and repeople.

[Footnote 1: Donne's _Sermon II preached at Pauls upon Christmas
Day, in the Evening._ 1624.]

LECTURE VII

THE VALUE OF GREEK AND LATIN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 1918

I

I have promised you, Gentlemen, for to-day some observations on
_The Value of Greek and Latin in English Literature_: a mild,
academic title, a _camouflage_ title, so to say; calculated to
shelter us for a while from the vigilance of those hot-eyed
reformers who, had I advertised _The Value of Greek and Latin in
English Life_ might even now be swooping from all quarters of the
sky on a suggestion that these dry bones yet were flesh: for
the eyes I dread are not only red and angry, but naturally
microscopic--and that indeed, if they only knew it, is their
malady. Yet 'surely' groaned patient job, 'there _is_ a path
which the vulture's eye hath not seen!'

You, at any rate, know by this time that wherever these
lectures assert literature they assert life, perhaps even too
passionately, allowing neither the fact of death nor the
possibility of divorce.

II

But let us begin with the first word, '_Value_'--'The _Value_ of
Greek and Latin in English Literature.' What do I mean by
'Value'? Well, I use it, generally, in the sense of 'worth'; but
with a particular meaning, or shade of meaning, too. And, this
particular meaning is not the particular meaning intended (as I
suppose) by men of commerce who, on news