In assimilating this to English nature, literary genius incurred its greatest obligation, and in thereby discovering artistic freedom found its greatest good. This academic tradition has created English culture, which is perhaps best described as an instinctive standard of judgment, and is the necessary complement to that openness of mind that has characterized English literature from the first. Nor is this last word a paradox, but the simple truth, as is plain from the assimilative power here dwelt upon. The English genius is always itself; no element of greatness could inhere in it otherwise; but, in literature, it has had the most open mind of any nation. A third trait of high distinction in English literature, of which this list is a reminder, and one not unconnected with its continuity and receptivity, is its copiousness. This is not a matter of mere number, of voluminousness; there is an abundance of kinds. In the literature of knowledge, what branch is unfruitful, and in the literature of power, what fountainhead is unstruck by the rod? Only the Italian genius in its prime shows such supreme equality in diversity. How many human interests are exemplified, and how many amply illustrated, exhibiting in a true sense and not by hyperbole myriad-minded man! In the English genius there seems something correspondent to this marvellous efficacy of faculty and expression; it has largeness of power. The trait most commonly thought of in connection with Aristotle as an individual--"master of those who know"--and in connection with mediæval schoolmen as a class, is not less characteristic of the English, though it appears less. The voracity of Chaucer for all literary knowledge, which makes him encyclopædic of a period, is matched at the end of these centuries by Newman, whose capaciousness of intellect was inclusive of all he cared to know. Bacon, in saying, "I take all knowledge to be my province," did not so much make a personal boast as utter a national motto. The great example is, of course, Shakespeare, on whose universality later genius has exhausted metaphor; but for everything that he knew in little, English can show a large literature, and exceeds his comprehensiveness. The fact is best illustrated by adverting to what this list spares. English is rich in translations, and in this sort of exchange the balance of trade is always in favor of the importer. Homer alone is included here,--to except the Bible, which has been so inbred in England as to have become an English book to an eye that clings to the truth through all appearances; but how rich in great national books is a literature that can omit so noble a work, though translated, and one so historic in English, as North's Plutarch! In the literature of knowledge, Greek could hardly have passed over Euclid; but Newton's Principia is here not required. Sir Thomas More is one of the noblest English names, and his Utopia is a memorable book; but it drops from the list. Nor is it names