PRESIDENTIAL ADDEESS — SECTION I. 421 



US have as much as we can of our own tongue, and, in order to 

 retain the best of the ancients, let us make them pass into our 

 own language by adoption, that is, by scholarly translation. 



I know that I am laying myself open to the retort. Why 

 have you not begun in your own school if tliese are your views ? 

 My answer is. Schoolmasters are powerless until the reform 

 has begun at the universities. So long as the classics have the 

 lion's share of the honours and prizes at the universities, so 

 long as the classics are necessary for matriculation, for degrees, 

 for admission to the law and all the learned professions, so 

 long must they remain the chief work of the schools. Any 

 school neglecting them would lose rank and sink into obscurity. 

 The schools have done what they can by the introduction of a 

 modern side, in which no classics are taught ; but whilst all the 

 best boys, looking forward to the universities and professions, 

 are driven perforce into the classical side, the modern side is 

 encumbered with backward boys, and cannot be taken as a fair 

 sample of what the extended study of English literature would 

 do in our schools. Let the universities give to English a fair 

 trial ; let them award to English literature the same prizes 

 and scholarships, in value and number, as they do now to 

 Latin and Greek ; let them allow English language and litera- 

 ture to be done as an alternative for the classics in any univer- 

 sity examination ; and I have no doubt whatever of the final 

 result. We should soon have the majority of our boys and 

 girls trained, as were the ancients, in the best writings of their 

 own tongue, conversant with the best thoughts that have 

 moved the world in the past, and not absolutely ignorant, as 

 they too often are now, of the great problems which face us in 

 our life's journey to-day. We should have a far larger pro- 

 portion of them who on leaving school would prize litertiture 

 as the treasure-house of the world's knowdedge, who would 

 turn to her for comfort in time of trouble and despondency, 

 who would love her as the friend to hold converse with in 

 leisure-hours, would honour her as the ever-present artist that 

 interprets to us alike the beauties and the secrets of nature, 

 and would reverence her as the prophet and priest that fills our 

 souls with noble ideals and high aspirations. It can hardly be 

 claimed that our present system produces this effect. Any 

 love of literature that we may possess is not the result of our 

 school training : it is an aftergrowth which has sprung up in 

 spite of early neglect. We see now everywhere in the numerous 

 societies for home-reading which have been started in all 

 English-speaking communities a growing sense of the value of 

 our literature, and also a protest against our present system of 

 education, which feeds us during the most acquisitive years of 

 our lives, when the memory is freshest and the heart warmest, 

 not upon the true fruits of the tree of knowledge, but upon the 



