No. 7. 



REPORT 



OF 



THE COMMITTEE ON ENGLISH LITERATURE 



AND 



THE COMMITTEE ON COMPOSITION AND 

 RHETORIC. 



TO THE BOAED OF OVERSEERS OF HARVARD COLLEGE ; 



The Committee on English Literature and the Committee on 

 Composition and Rhetoric, having met in joint session this year, 

 together with the officers of the English Department who attended 

 by invitation, make the following joint report of their conclusions. 



The distinction between the work confided to the two committees 

 is in practice not very clear. They are dealing with the same pro- 

 fessors and instructors, and .the latter are themselves teaching the 

 students the canons of composition and rhetoric, together with a 

 knowledge of English Literature. Eeading and writing as studies 

 are closely interwoven, and the work of the English Department as 

 a whole may safely be referred to a single committee. We therefore 

 recommend that a committee " On English," like the committees 

 " On French" and " On German," be substituted hereafter for the 

 two existing committees, believing that in this way a duplication of 

 effort will be avoided, and the work of supervision and assistance be 

 done more efficiently. 



The professors of the Department of English have for some time 

 deplored the lack of a publication fund for the perpetuation of notable 

 theses for the Ph.D. degree, written by students in that Department. 

 It is urged that the graduate and other advanced students of English 

 comprise one of the largest and best trained bodies of productive 

 scholars to be found in the English Department of any university. 

 But the University has no fund to provide for the publication of the 

 results of investigations by either instructors or students in the De- 

 partment. The Department has in mind only scholarly productions 

 such as are published the world over by subventions from universities, 



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