Thus would a precedent, disastrous beyond expression to the interests of liberal instruction and culture, as well as to the reputation of the University--we mean the severance of the study of Classical Literature from that of our own--be at least deprived of its authority. Thus would the mass at any rate be leavened, and such institutions in the provinces and elsewhere as have, unlike Oxford and Cambridge, had the wisdom to separate their Chairs of Language and Literature, know where to go for those who should fill them; and thus, finally, would there be some chance of the literary curriculum in Oxford ceasing to be a by-word in the Universities of the Continent and America. Since the first edition of these essays appeared the liberality of Mr. John Passmore Edwards has supplied the scholarship here desiderated, and Oxford has instituted a University scholarship, bearing the donor’s name, “for the encouragement and promotion of the study of English Literature in connection with the Classical Literatures of Greece and Rome.” FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 3: For the sort of textbook from which the student who is a candidate for “honours in English” will be required to get his knowledge of this poem, see _infra_, the review of the Clarendon Press Edition of Shelley’s _Adonais_.] [Footnote 4: The Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford, one of the chief legislators for the new School, thinks otherwise, and we should like to place the following passage on record. In his extraordinary _History of English Prose_ (p. 485) he writes thus: “The idea that English literature rests upon a classical basis has been formulated and industriously circulated as the watchword of a pedantic faction, and hardly any organ of current literature has proved itself strong enough, or vigilant enough, to secure itself against the insidious entrance of the above indoctrination.” And so it comes to pass that we read in the account of the debate in Congregation, on the occasion of the former attempt to establish this School:-- “The proposal to add the Professors of Greek and Latin to the Board of Studies was rejected by thirty-eight votes to twenty-four, Professor Earle maintaining that the fallacious notion that English literature was derived from the classics was so strong that it was unwise to place even the Professor of Latin on the Board.”--_Times_, May 26, 1887.] [Footnote 5: και μην πεπωκως γ’, ὡς θρασυνεσθαι πλεον, βροτειον αιμα, κωμος εν δομοις μενει δυσπεμπτος εξω ξυγγονων Ερινυων. --_Agamem._, 1159-61. ] [Footnote 6: For ample illustration of this, see _infra_ the review of the Clarendon Press edition of Shelley’s _Adonais_.] [Footnote 7: They may all be found in full in a _Pall Mall “Extra”_ (January, 1887), and in the present writer’s _Study of English Literature_.]