But there were other and less weighty considerations than influence and marriage in these lectures. They supplied opportunity for suggestions on simple affairs such as the choice of books, ways of spending time and money, manners, conversation, and the like. Often questions of the day, politics in a very general sense, and social problems were led up to. Miss Beale might be unacademic to a fault in these lectures, but she had that power of inspiration which made every poem she prized, every character she admired, live immortally for those who heard her speak of them. The actual reading—specially of poetry—was a delight to both reader and hearers. Miss Beale had a strong dramatic instinct, a keen enjoyment of poetry and the right use of words. She had also a wonderful voice, which she managed well, and though always quiet and restrained in manner carried her audience with her unweariedly. The literature lesson was long, specially in the early days when, owing to short distances and small numbers, no time was occupied by arrangements for prayers. For thirty or forty minutes corrected notes were returned and criticised, then the lecture proper would begin and go on for a full hour. Sometimes the whole time, an hour and a half, was taken up by the lecture. It was certainly very unusual for any one to find it too long. A further interest in these lectures lay in an effort to make them language lessons. As a matter of fact, though much interested in language herself, Miss Beale did little more than inspire a wish to study it further. Perhaps this was her aim in touching upon it at all. She would often bring to her lesson a table of Grimm’s Law, explain it very rapidly, and appear to expect that it should be as rapidly remembered. Miss Beale’s literature was by no means confined to Shakspere’s plays. All the greatest and many lesser works in the English tongue were taken in their turn. But she would seldom take the works of any whose thought seemed to her inferior; would have little, for instance, to do with Dryden and Pope. Style in itself had no attraction, and the growth of literary form, unless accompanied by the development of noble thought, was of little interest. No subject, perhaps, was more after her own choice than the poems of Spenser. She would dwell with unfailing delight on the complicated allegories of the _Faëry Queene_, or on the Hymns to ‘Heavenly Love’ and ‘Heavenly Beauty.’ Nor was a school year ever allowed to pass without her introducing the higher classes in the College to some of Browning’s works. How many must have learned to know his greater short poems by hearing her read them.[70]