The plain deduction is this: get at the originals at all cost. Do not be satisfied with essays, or dissertations, or commentaries. Go and see the originals, unlock the secrets of the tongue in which they were first presented, and then there will open upon you such a Renaissance as dawned upon the astonied humanists of the 15th century. The main use of such a lecture as that which I am now delivering is that you should be discontented with it, and should desire to pass from the illustration, the commentary, the appreciation, to a direct study of the great originals. Such a course may indeed be impracticable for many of you, who in middle life cannot turn aside to the labour of acquiring another language; for the mastering of a language is always an arduous task, and all the more so as we advance in years. But if we cannot ourselves learn, this generation ought at least to stimulate and direct the next. For I fear that the present knowledge of Greek in this country is confined to a small minority, while there is still a great majority who have some ambition to be really cultivated. I remember some years ago undertaking to teach a class at Chautauqua the _Alcestis_ of Euripides. The difficulty that confronted me was that a score of Greek texts of the play were not forthcoming, and that even in New York they were not found without search and delay. The Greek masterpieces share indeed this quality with other examples of perfect art, that even a copy is well worth having, and so the many excellent translations from the Greek which you have in all your libraries, are by no means to be despised. But if you can attain the originals, and master them, the translations, even if they have helped you in this task, lose all their value. I remember seeing in Mr. Gladstone’s library at Hawarden a whole section of his great accommodation for books devoted to translations of the _Iliad_ into many languages. There were scores, perhaps hundreds, of versions in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Danish, Norwegian, Russian, Hindustani, and many other tongues, sent to him by the translators as tributes of esteem for his own Homeric studies. I asked him did he ever open any of them? He said, “No; all the time I can spare I devote to studying the great originals.” But was there ever a clearer demonstration than these myriad translations of the greatness of a literary masterpiece? Even when there are many excellent versions already published in their own language men will not be content with these efforts, but will ever attempt again the fascinating, never ending, never convincing task. You could tell, without knowing any tongue but English, that there are four supreme poems which have exercised a fascination over men that never grows old. They are the _Iliad_ of Homer, the _Agamemnon_ of Æschylus, the _Inferno_ of Dante, the _Faust_ of Goethe. Two of these are Greek; but note also that, while we could find in Greek several rivals[3] which are of hardly less