whose acute and fearless mind finds a fit vehicle in clear and vigorous English and to me seems winged by that vivid air which plays about the Alpine peaks his feet have in the past so dearly loved to tread—­I mean my friend, Mr. Leslie Stephen.”]

MR. PRESIDENT, YOUR ROYAL HIGHNESS, MY LORDS, AND GENTLEMEN:—­When a poet or a great imaginative writer has to speak in this assembly he speaks as to brethren-in-arms, to persons with congenial tastes and with mutual sympathies, but when, instead of the creative writer, the Academy asks a critic to speak to them, then nothing but your proverbial courtesy can conceal the fact that they must really think they are appealing to a natural enemy.  I have the misfortune to be a critic [laughter], but in this assembly I must say I am not an art critic.  Friends have made a presumptuous attempt to fathom the depth of my ignorance upon artistic subjects, and they have thought that in some respects I must be admirably qualified for art criticism. [Laughter.]

As a literary critic I have felt, and I could not say I was surprised to find how unanimously critics have been condemned by poets and artists of all generations.  I need only quote the words of the greatest authority, Shakespeare, who in one of his most pathetic sonnets reckons up the causes of the weariness of life and speaks of the spectacle of—­

  “Art made tongue-tied by authority,
  And folly (doctor-like), controlling skill.”

The great poet probably wrote these words after the much misrepresented interview with Lord Bacon in which the Chancellor explained to the poet how “Hamlet” should have been written, and from which it has been inferred that he took credit for having written it himself. [Laughter.] Shakespeare naturally said what every artist must feel; for what is an artist?  That is hardly a question to be asked in such an assembly, where I have only to look round to find plenty of people who realize the ideal artist, persons who are simple, unconventional, spontaneous, sweet-natured [laughter], who go through the world influenced by impressions of everything that is beautiful, sublime, and pathetic.  Sometimes they seem to take up impressions of a different kind [laughter]; but still this is their main purpose—­to receive impressions of images, the reproduction of which may make this world a little better for us all.  For such people a very essential condition is that they should be spontaneous; that they should look to nothing but telling us what they feel and how they feel it; that they should obey no external rules, and only embody those laws which have become a part of their natural instinct, and that they should think nothing, as of course they do nothing, for money; though they would not be so hard-hearted as to refuse to receive the spontaneous homage of the world, even when it came in that comparatively vulgar form. [Laughter.]