If we did not send our books abroad, it is certain that foreign libraries might, and, if they were wise, would, decline to lend us their books. And a very good thing too. It benefits us to visit foreign libraries, and it will benefit foreigners to visit ours. In these days of rapid and cheap locomotion, there is less reason than ever for sending books racing about all over the world. If you go to Simancas, to Venice, or to the Public Record Office, you may consult and copy the records of Spain, of Venice, and of England, for yourself. If you had rather not go, you can get attested copies of any document which you desire to have, but you cannot borrow. And it should be the same with all great libraries. If a man wishes for a partial or a complete collation of a Bodleian book, or for a complete transcript, he most certainly ought to be able to get it accurately done, and I should hope that in this University he would get it done gratis, though it would be no hardship or injustice if such work were charged for at a modest rate. If a man unable to visit us is willing to pay for a transcript or collation, and there is no one here either able or willing to make it, then there is a substantial grievance; but in no seat of learning ought such a thing to be possible. In any University that deserves the name, and especially in a University so richly endowed as ours is, there ought to be, and if funds were not wasted there might be, a number of keen-eyed men skilled in every ordinary language of Europe and of Asia, able and willing for the mere love of learning to do this sort of work thoroughly well. It should be the same in London. It is shameful to us as Englishmen, considering what our Eastern Empire is, that there should be the least difficulty in getting any MS. properly transcribed or properly collated either here or at the India Office. Let us reform ourselves in very deed, and not in name only, as quickly as may be. Although a University does not mean a place where the _omne scibile_ is either known or taught, it is certain that such a University as Oxford pretends to be (and might have been) ought to contain even amongst its College fellows men skilled in all but the most outlandish tongues. Mr. Ellis’ letter appeared in the _Academy_ of February 26, 1887. It consists of two parts more or less intertwined, that is to say, of objections to opinions which he believes me to hold though I do not, and of an attempt to justify the lending out of books. The personal part (I do not mean this in any disagreeable sense) has been answered, so far as it required an answer, in the _Academy_ of March 5, 1887, and need not be repeated here.