ON THE STUDY OF LITERATURE.[1]

[Footnote 1:  The annual address to the students of the London Society for the Extension of University Teaching, delivered at the Mansion House, February 26th, 1887.]

When my friend Mr. Goschen invited me to discharge the duty which has fallen to me this afternoon I confess that I complied with many misgivings.  He desired me to say something on the literary side of education.  Now, it is almost impossible—­and I think those who know most of literature will be readiest to agree with me—­to say anything new in recommendation of literature in a scheme of education.  I have felt, however, that Mr. Goschen has worked with such zeal and energy for so many years on behalf of this good cause, that anybody whom he considered able to render him any co-operation owed it to him in its fullest extent.  The Lord Mayor has been kind enough to say that I am especially qualified to speak on English literature.  I must, however, remind the Lord Mayor that I have strayed from literature into the region of politics; and I am not at all sure that such a journey conduces to the aptness of one’s judgment on literary subjects, or adds much to the force of one’s arguments on behalf of literary study.  Politics are a field where action is one long second-best, and where the choice constantly lies between two blunders.  Nothing can be more unlike in aim, in ideals, in method, and in matter, than are literature and politics.  I have, however, determined to do the best that I can; and I feel how great an honour it is to be invited to partake in a movement which I do not hesitate to call one of the most important of all those now taking place in English society.

What is the object of the movement?  What do the promoters aim at?  I take it that what they design is to bring the very best teaching that the country can afford, through the hands of the most thoroughly competent men, within the reach of every class of the community.  Their object is to give to the many that sound, systematic, and methodical knowledge, which has hitherto been the privilege of the few who can afford the time and money to go to Oxford and Cambridge; to diffuse the fertilising waters of intellectual knowledge from their great and copious fountain-heads at the Universities by a thousand irrigating channels over the whole length and breadth of our busy, indomitable land.  Gentlemen, this is a most important point.  Goethe said that nothing is more frightful than a teacher who only knows what his scholars are intended to know.  We may depend upon it that the man who knows his own subject most thoroughly is most likely to excite interest about it in the minds of other people.  We hear, perhaps more often than we like, that we live in a democratic age.  It is true enough, and I can conceive nothing more democratic than such a movement as this, nothing which is more calculated to remedy defects that are incident to