1886 'MIDDLE ENGLISH PHILOLOGY 469 



wisdom of attempting to mould one's style by any other 

 process than that of striving after the clear and forcible 

 expression of definite conceptions ; in which process the 

 Glassian precept, " first catch your definite conceptions," 

 is probably the most difficult to obey. But still I mark 

 among distinguished contemporary speakers and writers 

 of English, saturated with antiquity, not a few to whom, 

 it seems to me, the study of Hobbes might have taught 

 dignity ; of Swift, concision and clearness ; of Goldsmith 

 and Defoe, simplicity. 



Well, among a hundred young men whose university 

 career is finished, is there one whose attention has ever 

 been directed by his literary instructors to a page of 

 Hobbes, or Swift, or Goldsmith, or Defoe ? In my boy- 

 hood we were familiar with Robinson Crusoe, The Vicar 

 of Wakefield, and Gulliver's Travels ; and though the 

 mysteries of "Middle English" were hidden from us, 

 my impression is we ran less chance of learning to write 

 and speak the "middling English" of popular orators 

 and headmasters than if we had been perfect in such 

 mysteries and ignorant of those three masterpieces. It 

 has been the fashion to decry the eighteenth century, as 

 young fops laugh at their fathers. But we were there in 

 germ ; and a " Professor of Eighteenth Century History 

 and Literature " who knew his business might tell young 

 Englishmen more of that which it is profoundly im- 

 portant they should know, but which at present remains 

 hidden from them, than any other instructor ; and, 

 incidentally, they would learn to know good English 

 when they see or hear it perhaps even to discriminate 

 between slipshod copiousness and true eloquence, and that 

 alone would be a great gain. 



As for the incitement to answer Mr. Lilly, Mr. 

 Spencer writes from Brighton on November 3 : 



I have no doubt your combative instincts have been 

 stirred within you as you read Mr. Lilly's article, 



