YOUR ROYAL HIGHNESSES, MY LORDS, AND GENTLEMEN,--I think I can explain who the artist might have been who painted the reversed rainbow of which the professor has just spoken. I think, after hearing the too friendly remarks made about myself, that he was probably some artist who was to answer for his art at a dinner of the Royal Society (_laughter_); and, naturally, instead of painting the bow of hope, he painted the reverse, the bow of despair. (_Laughter._) When I received your invitation, Mr. President, to answer for “Literature,” I was too well aware of the difficulties of your position not to know that your choice of speakers must be guided much more by the necessities of the occasion than by the laws of natural selection. (_Laughter and cheers._) I remembered that the dictionaries give a secondary meaning to the phrase “to answer for,” and that is the meaning which implies some expedient for an immediate necessity, as for example, when one takes shelter under a tree from a shower one is said to make the tree answer for an umbrella. (_Laughter._) I think even an umbrella in the form of a tree has certainly one very great advantage over its artificial namesake--viz., that it cannot be borrowed (_laughter_), not even for the exigencies for which the instrument made of twilled silk is made use of, as those certainly will admit who have ever tried it during one of those passionate paroxysms of weather to which the Italian climate is unhappily subject. (_Laughter._) I shall not attempt to answer for literature, for it appears to me that literature, of all other things, is the one which is most naturally expected to answer for itself. It seems to me that the old English phrase with regard to a man in difficulties, which asks “What is he going to do about it?” perhaps should be replaced in this period of ours, when the foundations of everything are being sapped by universal discussion, with the more pertinent question, “What is he going to say about it?” (_“Hear, hear,” and laughter._) I suppose that every man sent into the world with something to say to his fellow men could say it better than anyone else if he could only find out what it was. (_Laughter._) I am sure that the ideal after-dinner speech is waiting for me somewhere with my address upon it, if I could only be so lucky as to come across it. (_Laughter._) I confess that hard necessity, or perhaps, I may say, too soft good nature, has compelled me to make so many unideal ones that I have almost exhausted my natural stock of universally applicable sentiment and my acquired provision of anecdote and allusion. (_Laughter._) I find myself somewhat in the position of Heine, who had prepared an elaborate oration