The first thing, then, to be noted about the reading of English
(with which alone I am concerned) is that for Englishmen it has
been made, by Act of Parliament, compulsory.
The next thing to be noted is that in our schools and Colleges
and Universities it has been made, by Statute or in practice, all
but impossible.
The third step is obvious--to reconcile what we cannot do with
what we must: and to that aim I shall, under your patience,
direct this and the following lecture. I shall be relieved at all
events, and from the outset, of the doubt by which many a
Professor, here and elsewhere, has been haunted: I mean the doubt
whether there really _is_ such a subject as that of which he
proposes to treat. Anything that requires so much human ingenuity
as reading English in an English University _must_ be an art.