TO
H. F. S. and H. M. C.

First edition 1920
reprinted 1920,1921
Pocket edition 1924
reprinted 1925, 1928, 1933, 1939




PREFACE

The following twelve lectures have this much in common with a
previous twelve published in 1916 under the title "On the Art of
Writing"--they form no compact treatise but present their central
idea as I was compelled at the time to enforce it, amid the dust
of skirmishing with opponents and with practical difficulties.

They cover--and to some extent, by reflection, chronicle--a
period during which a few friends, who had an idea and believed
in it, were fighting to establish the present English Tripos at
Cambridge. In the end we carried our proposals without a vote:
but the opposition was stiff for a while; and I feared, on
starting to read over these pages for press, that they might be
too occasional and disputatious. I am happy to think that, on the
whole, they are not; and that the reader, though he may wonder at
its discursiveness, will find the argument pretty free from
polemic. Any one who has inherited a library of 17th century
theology will agree with me that, of all dust, the ashes of dead