Page:Seventeen lectures on the study of medieval and modern history and kindred subjects.djvu/394

ing together; it must be so in logic and grammar; in mathematics, possibly, although there it must be more difficult; in language, if the pupils are forward, it must be feasible: but in abstruse philosophy and in minute historical research it is not possible to do both things easily and at once. An arrangement of occasional epideictic lectures, ordinary elementary teaching in class, and informal instruction out of class, is symmetrical enough and useful enough where it can be applied, but it is not of universal application, or suited to Professors of all calibres. Restricting my remark to my own study, I will say, if an Oxford Professor of History is to be a man to be trusted to maintain the reputation of his University, to keep abreast with foreign scholars, and to conduct research on his own account, he ought to have been left with some discretion as to the management of his teaching. I have often felt, when I was busy with some matter that required concentration of thought and continuity of investigation, that I would rather have broken into my line of work by going and giving a lecture in Euclid or Algebra, than by coming down to an elementary discourse, in which, from the very affinity of the subjects, I should be constantly tempted to revert to the minute point on which my special labours in my study were fixed, to the confusion of the class and to the damage of the subject that I had to treat before them. It was in order to avoid this that for some years I wrote out my lectures before term began; a plan which has obvious drawbacks, chiefly in what is called losing touch with the class. Afterwards I lectured on texts rather more freely; latterly, as my classes regularly diminished, I took up more out-of-the-way subjects, and very nearly succeeded in getting rid of my classes altogether; in the end I have reverted to my first plan. Well, perhaps I never was fit for the place; anyhow, on the now stereotyped plan of the Professoriate, it is as well that I should go. I am told that the great historical works of the great foreign professors have been accomplished by men who have done much elementary lecturing and much informal instruction. That is true, but it is to be remembered that the great German professors have the power and the right to