-1886

IMPRESSION OF FROUDE

89

temporary history and said, laughing, that M. Chamerlain had told him we were living in the midst of a revolution, but I don't know, he added, with rippling laughter. I think I discerned a certain weakness in his character, the visible sign of which was this laughter which he protracted in a rather silly-not forced, not hearty, but silly manner. But I saw in him great kindness, great apparent sympathy, and real humanity, blended with a mysterious something which belonged wholly to some corner of his nature, which was not even partially revealed; so that it reminded me of what Theocritus says of Hylas, παρέων γε μάλα σχεδόν εἴδετο πόῤῥω. He shook hands at meeting and parting in a limp way, but said very kindly, "I hope we shall often meet" he did not, as Carlyle, Browning and Swinburne always did, come with me to the door, but rang for the servant to show me out, and I left him bustling aimlessly about some papers.

This was followed by another interview in December, when my father visited him with a view to getting a written opinion from him relative to the English Literature question. Froude was quite unsympathetic though he promised to write.

My father remarks in the " commonplace "

book:

He kept his promise and sent a remarkably feeble letter, composed studiously with the object of showing that he was determined not to acquiesce

in my views as to the connection of Classical Literature with ours.

As the English Literature question assumes a somewhat prominent position at this time it may be given the distinction of a chapter to itself.

I

CHAPTER VI

1886-7

ENGLISH LITERATURE AT THE UNIVERSITIES

T is nearly four o'clock in the morning of Sep. 23, 1886, when I have just finished my article on "English Literature at the Universities." I have been glancing over some of the back pages, and am very dissatisfied with it indeed, it seems loose and feeble: perhaps it will look better in print. I hope it may direct attention to a serious question. It is a relief to get it done, but it doesn't satisfy me at all. I have been at it for about four months, a very much shorter time than I have given to any other Quarterly article. [And yet I now hear, Oct. 18th, that it is perhaps in point of style the best thing I have written: it has certainly made a very great sensation and, on the whole, I am quite satisfied with it.]

It is no exaggeration to say that the article here referred to in the Memoirs created a great sensation —and more—it was the subject of a controversy which, as a paper put it, "excited more interest than any merely literary subject has aroused since the days of Macaulay." And not only was the whole of the literary and scholastic world involved

in the controversy, but the ecclesiastical and political world shared in it. When such men as W. E. Gladstone, John Bright, Dr Benson (then Archbishop of Canterbury), Cardinal Manning, Dr Fairbairn, Lord Coleridge (then Lord Chief Justice), Prof. Huxley, Matthew Arnold, and Lord Lytton (to mention but a few), gave their opinions on the subject, it will be seen how universal was the interest shown.

His article in the Quarterly Review may be said to have been the climax of a controversy in which interest had first been aroused by his two articles which appeared in the Pall Mall Gazette on May 28 and 31, 1886, entitled "An Educational Crisis, and how to avert it."

These articles were the prelude to the article which appeared in the October following in the Quarterly Review entitled "English Literature at the Universities," which aroused a storm of controversy and also created something of a sensation in literary circles. For, in order to exemplify the need for a School of English Literature, he had occasion to criticize severely a book written by a prominent teacher at one of the universities; so that in addition to the general issues involved, some feeling was aroused in certain quarters because it was thought that the first part of the article was a personal attack. But

-1887 NEGLECT OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 93

as a "leader" in the Pall Mall Gazette pointed out: "The Quarterly Reviewer, it is right to recall, did not in reality make any personal attack at all; he incidentally criticized a particular book because its author was first the darling of the literary journals, and secondly a teacher of the most important College at Cambridge. Here, argued the Reviewer, is a particular case to illustrate my general remarks on the slovenly character of so much contemporary criticism, and on the contempt in which English literature is held at the universities."

An idea of the article may be gathered from these few extracts :

Why Oxford and Cambridge should not deem the interpretation of our national literature as worthy of their serious attention as the study of our national history-how it has come to pass that, while the most liberal and enlightened views prevail with regard to the teaching of history, the teaching of literature is either neglected altogether, or abandoned contemptuously to dilettants and philologists-is a problem which we at least are quite unable to solve.

It is indeed half painful, half ludicrous, to reflect that at the present moment, in Oxford alone, upwards of £3000 a year are expended on the interpretation of writings which are confessedly of no literary value, and of interest only as monuments of language, while not one farthing