_No one who wishes to become a B.A. and M.A. of Oxford is forced to
study_
(_a_) English Composition or Literature;
(_b_) The History of the British Empire;
(_c_) The geography of the globe we inhabit;
(_d_) The scientific discoveries and inventions which have profoundly
altered the conditions of modern life;
(_e_) Any of the Fine Arts;
(_f_) Any of the Laws of England;
(_g_) The rules which guide the Law Courts in estimating the value of
human testimony;
(_h_) The Art of Government and Economics;
(_i_) The Art of War;
(_j_) French, German or any Modern Language.
* * * * *
In my discredited trade of a novelist--that is to say, the trade of
people who create out of their own brains new things--we have a
technique of phrase. Unimportant to the pedant, as are the methods by
which we are sometimes able to secure a great, and even grateful
public, we still have our little catchwords and there is a certain
freemasonry of craft.
One finishes up, it is generally understood, with “a canter down the
straight.” Bursting away from the restrictions of the Essay, glad to
have finished with an academic convention which says one must write
this way and so, let me attempt to crystallize just what this paper
means, from my own, and doubtless limited, point of view. It means
this.
Upon the sturdy oak, generations old, in which the University may be
typified in allegory, a dusty parasite of ivy has been clinging. This
parasite, which has clogged the newer shoots from the old tree, is a
parasite of the classical and especially of the history don and
pedant. Law, Science and Mathematics have entered Oxford as a bright
light comes into the dark. Here, all is well. And in regard to the
older arts, I think, and many other people who are in the centre of
the ferment of change think with me, all is about to be reconstituted
in a freer air. It remains as a wonder that past and present
undergraduates, the guests of the hotel, remain so individually and
cumulatively distinct from the obstructionist section of its managers
and landlords.
In the darkest days it is astonishing to see how many men reading
history have been able to educate themselves brilliantly in spite of
all opposition. And if Oxford can send out into the world such men as
she is giving to the community now, in spite of the influences which
have checked and hampered them, what may she not do in the days which
are at hand, when the parasite shall be cut down from the old tree and
growth shall be unhampered by the incompetent?
Those days, I am convinced, are at hand, and, curiously enough, it is
the influence of James Anthony Froude which is precipitating the
revolution. What the great historian could not do in his life, the
immortality of his writings is accomplishing. Under Froude’s banner a
devoted and influential band is enlisted. The work of change is
proceeding with wonderful vigour and rapidity.
Let us gird up our loins to push and elbow out the discredited and
effete, and if necessary pay hirelings, and employ executioners to end
the unfortunate history of the immediate past, to destroy the
Obstructionists, the Historicides, and those whom only annihilation
will convince of error.
In conclusion I submit that I have neither been conjecturing what I
cannot find, nor insinuating what I dare not assert; and if a sincere
conviction and a prolonged scrutiny give one title to a part in the
growing condemnation of the Historicides I shall be proud to think
that I have taken a very humble place in the coming renaissance.