[Speech delivered by Matthew Arnold in response to the toast, "The Interests of Literature," at the annual banquet of the Royal Academy, London, May 1, 1875.]
Mr. President and Gentlemen:—Literature, no doubt, is a great and splendid art, allied to that great and splendid art of which we see around us the handiwork. But, sir, you do me an undeserved honor when, as President of the Royal Academy, you desire me to speak in the name of Literature. Whatever I may have once wished or intended, my life is not that of a man of letters, but of an Inspector of Schools [laughter], and it is with embarrassment that I now stand up in the dread presence of my own official chiefs who have lately been turning on their Inspector an eye of suspicion. [Laughter.]
Therefore, sir, I cannot quite with propriety speak here as a literary man and as a brother artist; but, since you have called upon me, let me at least quote to you, and apply for my own benefit and that of others, something from a historian of literature. Fauriel, the French literary historian, tells us of a company of Greeks settled somewhere in southern Italy, who retained for an extraordinary length of time their Greek language and civilization. However, time and circumstances were at last too strong for them; they began to lose, they felt themselves losing, their distinctive Greek character; they grew like all the other people about them. Only, once every year they assembled themselves together at a public festival of their community, and there, in language which the inroads of barbarism were every year more and more debasing,
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