Introductory Address
7
ores which have so often been associated, in the past, with violent Toryism in politics and dense obscurantism in thought. He does not come to us from godless London University, nor from Cambridge with its mildly Whiggish proclivities. He is a son, and a very loyal son, of Oxford; but he has known how to absorb the best of her culture—if I may use a somewhat discredited word—without drinking in either her prejudices or her snobbishnesses or her cowardices. I suppose we may take Matthew Arnold as a type of Oxford enlightenment in the last generation, and I am far from undervaluing his work or his influence; but imagine Matthew Arnold coming down to address us here to-night! Or think of Pater! Think of
