countenanced interference. When she passed in the streets, she seemed affable to her people, and her affability was never shaken. But she was a Queen, who, though she lived in no splendid isolation, though she appealed to the fancy of the world by no freak of luxury or extravagance, kept always aloof from impertinence or vain popularity. So when she died she was mourned not only by her people, whose grief was the sincerest, but by other kings, upon whose office she has conferred an honourable dignity. And thus it was that the simple grandeur of her naval procession best befitted the grand simplicity of her life and reign. She ruled the sea as no monarch has ever ruled there, and her progress from Osborne to Portsmouth impressed her admirers, with its mysterious poetry and its vague echoes of music and artillery, more deeply than the finest array of scarlet and gold. Her epitaph is written in the hearts of her subjects, her title to greatness is indisputable, and the last eloquent words of Elizabeth might well have been repeated with her last breath. "To be a King," said Elizabeth when for the last time she opened Parliament, "and to wear a crown is a thing more glorious to them that see it than it is pleasant to them that bear it. For myself, I was never so much enticed with the glorious name of King or the royal authority of a Queen, as delighted that God had made me His instrument to maintain His truth and glory, and to defend this kingdom from dishonour, damage, tyranny, and oppression.' It was a proud boast, which Queen Victoria, in her devotion to the Divine will, might have echoed without pride or wilfulness.

Literature at the universities.

APRIL.

THE announcement that a famous philanthropist is intent to found a scholarship at Oxford, which shall encourage the study of literature, recalls a reproach aimed at our universities since the beginning of time. Oxford and Cambridge, we have been told with painful iteration, have sedulously neglected the pursuit of letters. Our philanthropist evidently indorses the popular charge, and while we applaud his generosity, we may perhaps suggest without churlishness that his welldoing might have found a better occasion. There is an old proverb, "owls to Athens"; and though we are not blind to the manifold and grievous sins constantly sinned by our universities, they stand in no bitterer need of the humanities than London (let us say) or Birmingham. But the philanthropist may justly claim that the weight of authority inclines to his side, even though the method of reform is all his own.

The line of scholars and poets that have denounced their university as a harsh step-mother is long and varied. In the 'Return from Parnassus,' the unprofitableness of learning is already celebrated; and the Elizabethans condemned the mere scholar with an eloquence only justified by experience. The poet, always a rebel against the commonplace, resented then, as he resents now, the interference of the erudite, and no sooner was he come to take his place among the wits of London than he blamed his university for an empty pocket. Gray was less reasonable, and yet more violent

The complaints of poets.

than the Elizabethans. They at least shook the dust of Cambridge from their feet, while Gray spent a studious life within the precincts of a despised college. His distaste of Cambridge was acquired early. As Kit Smart, his contemporary, deplored the fate of an eagle chained in a college court, so Gray felt the fetters heavy upon his proud intellect. "Surely it was of this place, now Cambridge, but formerly known by the name of Babylon,”— thus he wrote in the first year of his residence-" that the prophet spoke when he said, 'The wild beasts of the desert shall dwell there; and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there: their forts and towers shall be a den for ever, a joy of wild asses; there shall the great owl make her nest, and lay and hatch and gather under her shadow; it shall be a court of dragons; the screech-owl also shall rest there, and find for herself a place of rest.'" And yet, for all his profession of contempt, Gray found a serener peace in Cambridge than he could have found elsewhere. There, in the quiet seclusion of Pembroke, he studied the classics, watched the flowers grow in the college garden, and spun his gossamer web of poetry. What if "the high and mighty Prince Roger, surnamed the Long," appeared ridiculous to his witty eye, there were still books at his elbow, and birds sang in the trees.

Contemptuous as was Gray, Gibbon equalled the contempt of his denunciation. "To the University of Oxford," he wrote, "I acknowledge no obligation; and she will as cheerfully renounce me for a son, as I am willing to disclaim her for a mother." But what could Oxford or any other university have taught the author of the 'Decline and Fall'? No human institution has ever yet been designed for the training of infant prodigies, and Gibbon was prodigious in the cradle. “I arrived at Oxford," he confessed, "with a stock of

erudition that might have puzzled a doctor, and a degree of ignorance of which a schoolboy would have been ashamed." We admit the erudition, we refuse to believe in the ignorance; and truly a boy who at fifteen was an adept in "exotic history," and "had already exhausted all that could be learned in English of the Arabs and Persians," had little to get from the Oxford professors. So Southey and Shelley, Johnson and Darwin, all reproach their useless universities; and they reproached them because they asked too much of their teaching. Being inventors in literature or science, they expected to increase their own stock of learning within the walls of a college, and they forgot, in their displeasure at wasted time, that valuable knowledge comes of itself. As we have insisted before in these pages, the instruction of a university should have no end in view. If neither Oxford nor Cambridge can make lawyers or doctors, much less can they create historians or men of letters. Discipline is theirs to give they cannot hope to retard or improve the achievement of an original mind.

Pedagogic neglect.

However, the complaints of Gray and Gibbon have found many an echo. It is complained, with a perfect justice, that our universities have done little for modern literature, that as a result of pedagogic neglect the task of criticism is disgracefully performed, and that the editing of English texts is left to the half-literate. Now, in these complaints there is a very large grain of truth. Our critics are no better than we and our literature deserve; our literary editors are wont to confuse the art of letters with philology; and the universities stand aside in moody indifference. But why should they not thus stand aside? We have no right to expect of any institution more than it can give. Oxford and Cambridge are ready with an admirable opportunity; and if a man be honestly interested in literature, he can learn more from books than

all the professors and all the lecturers of Europe can teach him. The true man of letters, in brief, needs no encouragement either from triposes or "post-graduate" courses, and we contemplate the errors of editors and critics with a cheerful spirit, because we know well that literature, if it be worth anything, will cheerfully survive the folly of pedants and the impotence of institutions.

In the first place, literature is untaught and unteachable. Taste and ear and fancy are given to few, and given waywardly. Even the true scholar is Literature unteachable. ready-made before he betakes himself to Oxford or Cambridge, and if his scholarship is distinguishable from pedantry, he carries to the university far more than the university can give him. Porson was an eminent Grecian, not because he passed through the curriculum of Eton and Trinity, but because an appreciation of Greek literature was in his blood. No other system could have impaired or bettered his faculty; and as the highest scholarship cannot be forced, so the more delicate art of letters must be left to grow up in an unweeded garden. Marlowe and Jonson did not acquire their divine gift on the banks of the Cam. Maybe Gabriel Harvey profited as much from the discipline of Pembroke College as Spenser. To Thackeray, Tennyson, and FitzGerald, Trinity doubtless meant above all the meeting-place of friends, and if literature can be taught, a wise companionship is its purest encouragement.

That an appreciation of literature cannot be acquired is, then, the clearest lesson of literary history. But even if such an appreciation might be artificially inculcated, this painful inculcation would not be the business of our universities. As we have said before, the universities are not asked to equip their alumni for the practical professions. Their highest privilege is to provide such a discipline as shall render all tasks easy. When Gibbon protested against the impotence of Oxford, he was guilty