I
It is now, Gentlemen, five years less a term since, feeling (as
they say of other offenders) my position acutely, I had the
honour of reading an Inaugural before this University and the
impudence to loose, in the course of it, a light shaft against a
phrase in the very Ordinance defining the duties of this Chair.
'It shall be the duty of the Professor,' says the Ordinance, 'to
deliver courses of lectures on English Literature from the age of
Chaucer onwards, and otherwise to promote, so far as may be in
his power, the study in the University of the subject of English
Literature.'
That was the phrase at which I glanced--'the subject of English
Literature'; and I propose that we start to-day, for reasons that
will appear, by subjecting this subject to some examination.