LECTURE I

1. The course of study to which I to-day invite you, closes the work of six years which I have been permitted to carry forward in this University; and I am desirous, under the contingency either of its being thought desirable that some other teacher should succeed me, or that my own health should prevent my continuing in the responsibility of such office, that my addresses to you should close as they began, with the words of the greatest of English painters. Nor should I hold my own work in any right sense accomplished unless I made not a few only of his words, but the substance of all, known to you in their simplicity and enduring truth as the only entirely classical teaching yet extant on the subject of art.

2. Classical, and for ever trustworthy, as the honest and passionate utterance of a great man who knew his business; and yet capable, as all noble scripture is, of being utterly misapplied and misunderstood ; and in an age of decrepitude and wilful error in art sure to be misunderstood, and that more fatally in proportion to its real power and value. You have often heard it said of me that I contradict myself.