PREFACE.

I APPREHEND that the University, though she exacts nothing of the kind, in some degree expects that those whom she has honoured with her Professorships should give what they have to give sooner or later to the world. Such being the case, I need advance no other reason for publishing these Lectures. The lectures which I have delivered in my time are of course more in number than those contained in this volume, but owing to a variety of accidents my manuscripts fell into confusion, and have many of them gone astray. I am obliged, therefore, to content myself with what comes readiest to my hand.

Of the Lectures that are missing I rather regret some, particularly two on 'Jason and Medea' and one on the tragedy of 'Hamlet.' My examination of 'Hamlet' ought to have come in between what I say of 'Othello' and what I say of 'Macbeth,' and its absence leaves rather a disastrous gap in the Shakspere series. It cannot, however, be helped now, and so many

able men have written about 'Hamlet' that the world, perhaps, needs nothing more.

Of the Lectures which do appear, I have only to say in other words much the same as I said on a former occasion. When people talk of a feeling for poetry they are guided by a just instinct. The north country mathematician observed, after reading 'Virgil' through, 'It proves nought;' now what he says of one poet we may extend to poets in general: poetry proves nought, and is too impalpable to be cut up into abstract propositions.

Any listeners, moreover, that I might have were not bound to come, nor if they did come were they bound to stay my business, having once got hold of them, was to keep them in the Taylor Building till I had done speaking, if I could: accordingly, I thought it better to avoid all attempts at subtle criticism. I tried instead to interest my audience (and I may perhaps be pardoned for saying that I do not consider myself to have failed in doing so) by what the Greeks used to call Epideictic Orations. I trust, therefore, that any reader of mine, disposed to think my style too florid, or again too light and familiar, for a University lecturer will bear in mind what I have aimed at, will bear in mind that I claim for my Addresses every privilege of a speech: a speech, too, belonging to a particular class of orations, namely, as I have just said, Epideictic Orations. Now, for such a speech, in my judgment, 'tous les genres sont bons,

hors le genre ennuyeux.' With regard to another point, my experience is, that if you choose remote and recondite subjects to lecture upon, nobody comes to hear you; if, on the other hand, you choose such well-worn topics as the genius of Wordsworth, or of Scott, or of Shakspere, you incur, almost of necessity, obligations to previous writers. I have endeavoured to acknowledge honestly such debts, when I was clear to whom they were owing; but of course much that I pass over in silence may be, and probably is, derived more or less, in one way or another, from older critics; I hope that for this class of obligations a general acknowledgment may suffice. I plead guilty also (the Lectures having been delivered at times often widely separated from each other) to a certain amount of repetition, but I do not repeat myself unless I consider the subject worth returning to; I have, therefore, had my manuscripts printed just as I found them.

With regard to the Poems at the end of the book, I have had lately so few opportunities of spending either time or thought upon versifying, that I certainly should not have published them, had it not been that to write an ode in honour of Lord Salisbury, for the Oxford Commemoration of 1870, became my duty as Poetry Professor; indeed, it was perhaps the chief single act of my professorship. It seemed, therefore, but reasonable that I should attach this Ode to the Lectures, and, that once done, the few pieces of verse lying about in my drawers naturally followed in its wake.

Two of these poems-namely, 'The Loss of the Birkenhead' and 'The Red Thread of Honour,' have appeared before in a volume of mine long since out of print.

I republish these two poems here for different reasons: I republish The Loss of the Birkenhead' because, at the request of Mr. Palgrave, I made in it, to suit his excellent section of verses for children, some slight alterations.

The Red Thread of Honour' I republish without any alteration at all, upon quite other grounds; it has been, I understand, translated into Pushtoo, and has become a favourite among the villagers of the Northwestern frontier of India; my informant added that the tradition of 'The Red Thread' was universally known among them. I was gratified to learn this unexpected fact, I confess, partly perhaps from the vanity natural to the genus irritabile, but partly, also, because it showed that I have managed to express the strong interest I feel in any gallant barbarians who try to hold their own against the overwhelming resources of a civilised power, with some tolerable effect.

Of the longest among the poems, Neamet and Noam,' I have nothing to say, except a few words in reference to its versification. The story struck me, when I happened to be more at leisure than usual, as susceptible of poetical treatment; I hesitated for some time as to the form in which I should put it, and finally

decided upon the rhymed heroic of Dryden and Pope: for certain purposes this old-fashioned measure is yet unsurpassed. With regard to what we may perhaps call the serious epigram, such as that, God

Or again,

Lives through all life, extends through all extent,
Spreads undivided, operates unspent.

The spider's touch, how exquisitely fine,
Feels at each thread, and lives along the line.

And other phrases of this kind, they cannot be expressed with the same force and terseness in any other metre that I know of. But a narrative poem, written in such strong and stinging couplets, would over-stimulate the critical palate-would remind us, in fact, of the Irishman's matchless apple pie that was to be made entirely of quince. Dryden, therefore, had recourse to triplets, to Alexandrines, and other poetical stratagems in the hope of making his verses more fluent and less monotonous. I have followed Dryden in this, I have even gone a little beyond him; Shelley, and others since his time, have thrown a new light on the capabilities of the rhymed heroic, and I have not scrupled to take the hints that they afford. Still, however, I have endeavoured, in the main, to keep to the well-known metre of 'Theodore and Honoria,' 'Palamon and Arcite,' and other such poems, belonging to the end of the seventeenth or the beginning of the eighteenth century. Mr. Morris's rhymed decasyllables may be just as good, may be