Page:The Harveian oration 1890.djvu/9

 THE HAEVEIAN OEATION.

The pleasure, Sir, with which I learnt from your lips that I had this year to discharge the time- honoured functions of " Harveian Orator" was largely alloyed with dismay at the difficult nature of the task before me. My predecessors have been so numerous (this commemoration of benefactors is held to-day for the 172nd time), they have also been so well equipped for the work by literary skill, by training and by knowledge, that it might well be thought that nothing could be easier, or more cer- tain to be successful, than to follow faithfully in their steps. But, unfortunately, the very number of my predecessors and their individual excellence render this course impossible : for, it is one thing to imitate with more or less success the style and method of a great writer or speaker, it is another and a very different matter to reproduce his actual words and facts, to publish, so to speak, a new edition of his work with no real change except in the title page. Now, Harvey's shield has been burnished so often and with such sharp-sighted devotion that no spot or stain remains upon it, —