There is no derogation of new things in this plea I make specially to you who may be candidates in our School of English. You may remember my reading to you in a previous lecture that liberal poem of Cory’s invoking the spirit of “dear divine Comatas,” that + 

Two minds shall flow together, the English and the Greek. + 

Well, I would have your minds, as you read our literature, reach back to that Dorian shepherd through an atmosphere⁠—his made ours⁠—as through veils, each veil unfolding a value. So you will recognise how, from Chaucer down, our literature has panted after the Mediterranean water-brooks. So through an atmosphere you will link (let me say) Collins’s “Ode to Evening,” or Matthew Arnold’s “Strayed Reveller” up to the “Pervigilium Veneris,” Mr. Sturge Moore’s “Sicilian Vine-Dresser” up to Theocritus, Pericles’ funeral oration down to Lincoln’s over the dead at Gettysburg. And as I read you just now some part of an English oration in the Latin manner, so I will conclude with some stanzas in the Greek manner. They are by Landor⁠—a proud promise by a young writer, hopeful as I could wish any young learner here to be. The title⁠— + 

Tanagra! think not I forget + 

Thy beautifully storied streets; + 

Be sure my memory bathes yet + 

In clear Thermodon, and yet greets + 

The blithe and liberal shepherd-boy, + 

Whose sunny bosom swells with joy + 

When we accept his matted rushes + 

Upheav’d with sylvan fruit; away he bounds, and blushes. + 

A gift I promise: one I see + 

Which thou with transport wilt receive, + 

The only proper gift for thee, + 

Of which no mortal shall bereave + 

In later times thy mouldering walls, + 

Until the last old turret falls; + 

A crown, a crown from Athens won, + 

A crown no god can wear, beside Latona’s son. + 

There may be cities who refuse + 

To their own child the honours due, + 

And look ungently on the Muse; + 

But ever shall those cities rue + 

The dry, unyielding, niggard breast, + 

Offering no nourishment, no rest, + 

To that young head which soon shall rise + 

Disdainfully, in might and glory, to the skies. + 

Sweetly where cavern’d Dirce flows + 

Do white-arm’d maidens chaunt my lay, + 

Flapping the while with laurel-rose + 

The honey-gathering tribes away; + 

And sweetly, sweetly Attic tongues + 

Lisp your Corinna’s early songs; + 

To her with feet more graceful come + 

The verses that have dwelt in kindred breasts at home. + 

O let thy children lean aslant + 

Against the tender mother’s knee, + 

And gaze into her face, and want + 

To know what magic there can be + 

In words that urge some eyes to dance, + 

While others as in holy trance + 

Look up to heaven: be such my praise! + 

Why linger? I must haste, or lose the Delphic bays. + 