t consider
it as a legacy to be improved. Any nation that potters with any glory of
its past, as a thing dead and done for, is to that extent renegade. If
that be granted, not all our pride in a Shakespeare can excuse the
relaxation of an effort--however vain and hopeless--to better him, or
some part of him. If, with all our native exemplars to give us courage,
we persist in striving to write well, we can easily resign to other
nations all the secondary fame to be picked up by commentators.

Recent history has strengthened, with passion and scorn, the faith in
which I wrote the following pages.

ARTHUR QUILLER-COUCH
November 1915

CONTENTS

LECTURE

I INAUGURAL

II THE PRACTICE OF WRITING

III ON THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN VERSE AND PROSE

IV ON THE CAPITAL DIFFICULTY OF VERSE

V INTERLUDE: ON JARGON

VI ON THE CAPITAL DIFFICULTY OF PROSE

VII SOME PRINCIPLES REAFFIRMED

VIII ON THE LINEAGE OF ENGLISH LITERATURE (I)

IX ON THE LINEAGE OF ENGLISH LITERATURE (II)

X ENGLISH LITERATURE IN OUR UNIVERSITIES (I)

XI ENGLISH LITERATURE IN OUR UNIVERSITIES (II)

XII ON STYLE

INDEX

LECTURE I.

INAUGURAL

Wednesday, January 29, 1913

In all the long quarrel set between philosophy and poetry I know of
nothing finer, as of nothing more pathetically hopeless, than Plato's
return upon himself in his last dialogue 'The Laws.' There are who find
that dialogue (left unrevised) insufferably dull, as no doubt it is
without form and garrulous. But I think they will read it with a new
tolerance, may-be even with a touch of feeling, if upon second thoughts
they recognise in its twisting and turnings, its prolixities and
repetitions, the scruples of an old man who, knowing that his time in
this world is short, would not go out of it pretending to know more than
he does, and even in matters concerning which he was once very sure has
come to divine that, after all, as Renan says, 'La Verite consiste dans
les nuances.' Certainly 'the mind's dark cottage battered and decayed'
does in that last dialogue admit some wonderful flashes,

From Heaven descended to the low-roofed house
Of Socrates,

or rather to that noble 'banquet-hall deserted' which aforetime had
entertained Socrates.

Suffer me, Mr Vice-Chancellor and Gentlemen, before reaching my text, to
remind you of the characteristically beautiful setting. The place is
Crete, and the three i