Good morning, gentlemen. Before I pass to the subject of my lecture today I
must deal briefly with a personal matter of some delicacy. Since I began
this series of lectures on the Art of Poetry I notice that the new
Professor of Poetry at Oxford, Mr. W.P. KER, in what I think is
questionable taste, has delivered an inaugural lecture on the _same_
subject under the _same_ title. On the question of good taste I do not wish
to say much, except that I should have thought that any colleague of mine,
even an entirely new Professor in a provincial university, would have
recognised the propriety of at least communicating to me his intention
before committing this monstrous plagiarism.
However, as I say, on that aspect of the matter I do not propose to dwell,
though it does seem to me that decency imposes certain limits to that kind
of academic piracy, and that those limits the Professor has overstepped. In
these fermenting days of licence and indiscipline persons in responsible
positions at our seats of learning have a great burden of example to bear
before the world, and if it were to go forth that actions of this type may
be taken with impunity by highly-paid Professors then indeed we are not far
from Bimetallism and the breaking-up of laws.
Now let us glance for a moment at the substance of the lecture. I should
have been glad if Professor KER had had the courtesy to show it to me
before it was delivered, instead of my having to wait till it was printed
and buy it in a shop, because I might have induced him to repair the more
serious errors and omissions in his work. For really, when you come to
analyse the lecture, what thin and bodyless stuff it is. Let me at once pay
tribute to my colleague's scholarship and learning, to the variety of his
citations. But, after all, anyone can buy a Quotation Dictionary and quote
bits out of SWINBURNE. That surely--(see FREIDRICH'S _Crime and Quotation_,
pp. 246-9)--is not the whole task of a Professor of Poetry.