The Project Gutenberg EBook of Platform Monologues, by T. G. Tucker

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Title: Platform Monologues

Author: T. G. Tucker

Release Date: August 2, 2006 [EBook #18969]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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PLATFORM
MONOLOGUES

By

T. G. TUCKER

LITT.D. (CAMB.); HON. LITT.D. (DUBLIN)
Professor of Classical Philology in the University of Melbourne

MELBOURNE
THOMAS C. LOTHIAN
1914
_PRINTED IN ENGLAND_

Copyright.
First Edition May, 1914.

PREFACE

The following monologues were given as public addresses, mostly to
semi-academical audiences, and no alteration has been made in their
form. Their common object has been to plead the cause of literary study
at a time when that study is being depreciated and discouraged. But
along with the general plea must go some indication that literature can
be studied as well as read. Hence some of the articles attempt--what
must always be a difficult task--the crystallizing of the salient
principles of literary judgment.

The present collection has been made because the publisher believes that
a sufficiently large number of intelligent persons will be interested in
reading it. On the whole that appears to be at least as good a reason as
any other for printing a book.

The addresses on "The Supreme Literary Gift," "The Making of a
Shakespeare," and "Literature and Life," have appeared previously as
separate brochures. Those on "Two Successors of Tennyson" and "Hebraism
and Hellenism" were printed in the Melbourne _Argus_ at the time of
their delivery, and are here reproduced by kind permission of that
paper. The talk upon "The Future of Poetry" has not hitherto appeared in
print.

Though circumstances have prevented any development of the powers and
work of the two "Successors of Tennyson," there is nothing either in the
criticism of those writers or in the principles applied thereto which
seems to call for any modification at this date. For the rest, it is
hoped