PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS. 753 
poetry, English poetry that is, had its fair share of attention, 
or anything like it, in the old English system of education. 
The plea for the study of English literature in the univer- 
sities put forward by John Eachard in 1668 went unregarded, 
though winged with the feather of a very pretty wit, till 
the present day, when the heavier attack of Mr. Churton 
Collins has at last made a gap in the enemy's ranks. We 
cannot acquit the educators of English youth in the past of 
wholesale neglect of the masterpieces of English literature. 
By haphazard, indeed, and in a random scrambling way, I 
believe most Englishmen of brains and culture did gain 
some knowledge of at least our greater lights, of Shakespeare 
certainly, of Milton probably, and of a few of the really 
great, but that is the most we can say. I hold no brief for 
the old system from the point of view of poetry in educa- 
tion, and cannot here enter into the vexed question of the 
benefits arising or likely to arise from the study of Greek 
and Latin poetry by English schoolboys and youths. 
In dealing with the modern style, I must return to the 
case of Mill and my main conclusion from it. If cannot but 
think that the tendency now-a-days is to make our educa- 
tive system too exclusively rational and intellectual, to 
appeal to the reasoning faculties rather than to the gentler 
and more spiritual emotions. (The appeal to some of the 
lower emotions, the combative especially, is no doubt quite 
strong enough.) I must venture to say that I think Mill’s 
disease is by no means unknown ‘in the present generation, 
but that it exists in a very much milder form—milder by 
reason of the less terrible result upon the less. susceptible 
and celicate organism. I must not pause to describe what 
would seem to me to be the present-day forms and symptoms 
of emotional starvation in the young, nor would I be under- 
stood to speak of the disease as present and rampant, but 
rather as incipient and menacing. I would say that there 
seems to be a danger, if things continue to develop as they 
do at present, that our youth may cultivate the mnemonic 
and mechanically rational powers at the expense of the 
feelings, and that very serious injury to character may be 
the result. 
Coming to the more practical side of the question, as I 
hope to do by degrees, I must now describe how the term 
“poetry ” is to be understood in this paper. If I thought 
it necessary to choose a definition of poetry for my purpose 
I should choose either that of Wordsworth: “ Poetry is the 
spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” or the more 
mystical one of Coleridge: “ Poetry is the blossom and the 
fragrance of all human knowledge, thoughts, passions, 
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