THE PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS. 
11 
treasures') Our present library is upstairs, and inconvenient of 
access, and its walls are already filled, so that if the Government 
or some generous individual, imitating the example set in many 
other towns, should make us a present of some hundreds of volumes 
a new library would be a necessity. Plymouth has now a Free 
Library and a Public Library, the latter providing popular works 
for the generality of ordinary readers. When shall she have a 
Library of learned books (and manuscripts if we can procure them) 
fit for the student in literature, science, and art? A thousand 
pounds would meet this urgent want, and put our Institution, as it 
ought at all times to be, out of debt. 
In the realm of Literature the prolific fertility of our age has 
been regarded by some as matter rather for regret than congratula- 
tion. It is said that when such a large number of works of every 
kind is produced, of which a considerable proportion must neces- 
sarily be of inferior quality, the good will be to a certain extent 
swamped, and the taste of the reading public proportionately 
lowered. Undoubtedly much of our modern literature is of very 
ephemeral interest and slight construction, but this is due rather 
to the widening than the lowering of general culture. It is not 
that there are fewer readers of culture nowadays, but that the less 
educated classes are also becoming readers, and to meet the greater 
demand we have a large number of lesser luminaries. It is easy 
perhaps to point to the two or three greatest names of our time ; 
but below these come others whose claims to notice fall very little 
short of theirs, and below these again many others in the slightest 
of gradations, till we are astonished at the wonderful literary activity 
that prevails around us. It is this above all that distinguishes 
the Victorian era of English literature, though in the number of 
great names to which it can point it is surpassed by none. 
That age cannot surely be deficient in poetic genius which has pro- 
duced such men as Tennyson, Browning, and Arnold. In Tennyson 
we have the greatest master of lyric utterance that England has 
ever produced. His writings enjoy — and deservedly so — a very high 
degree of popularity. This is owing, not to the lofty sentiments 
they express, or their elaborate character-drawing, but to their 
exquisite simplicity and beauty. His subjects are usually simple 
in outline, but filled in with the greatest delicacy and minuteness ; 
not a touch but adds to their beauty, and not a beauty-giving touch 
omitted. His narrative verse is most perfect of its kind. 
