Page:Tennyson; the Leslie Stephen lecture.djvu/9



invitation to give this lecture before the University of Cambridge is an honour too great for any conventional words of acknowledgment; but I may be permitted at the outset to offer my thanks to the University, and further to say that even if it had been possible to decline an invitation which comes with more than the force of a command, the name of Leslie Stephen would have been enough to drive away all craven scruples, and to put spirit, as he has done so often, into the hesitating wits and will.

No one standing in this place with a task so serious before him could ask for better auspices; and I think it a fortunate thing that I am able to remember Leslie Stephen here to-day as in a sort of way his vassal and one of his company. I have sat by his side at College tables; I heard him speak, in