For a time after my arrival in the island I was accustomed to speak with admiration of the great literatures of Europe, one of the few features of our Western civilisation which I felt it no shame to mention. I would launch into glowing praises of the beauty and aptness of the expression, the nobleness of the music, and the majesty and harmony of each work. When I spoke of Homer and Æschylus, of Dante and Milton, of Shakespeare and Goethe, I was unbounded in my admiration of their lofty genius in the management of their material. Questioned as to the character of their thoughts, I contended that there was no need for these to be absolutely new; the greatest merit of such poets was that they took the wisdom of their age or country, or the wisdom of all ages and countries, and expressed it in a way that was inimitable. Their material they had gathered from books or from the experience of their time; and most of their great poems had been analysed by admiring commentators into their original elements; the source from which almost every idea had been taken could be pointed out. But this was only to enhance the value of their work, to increase their greatness. It was one of the commonest observations amongst literary men in the West, when defending themselves against the charge of plagiarism, that there was no such thing as absolute originality of idea or material; the great merit in literature, the test of its lastingness, was the originality or freshness of expression; the rest belonged to the age or people in which it was produced, or to mankind of all ages and nations. And young men and women were encouraged to learn foreign languages, and especially the classical tongues, at all hazards, because translations missed what was distinctive in the great authors; if they would enjoy the true flavour of their originality, they must learn and study the language of the great books for themselves.