that the chariot must be drawn.

I foresee, then, these lectures condemned as the utterances of a
man who, occupying a Chair, has contrived to fall betwixt two
stools. My thoughts have too often strayed from my audience in a
University theatre away to remote rural class-rooms where the
hungry sheep look up and are not fed; to piteous groups of
urchins standing at attention and chanting "The Wreck of the
Hesperus" in unison. Yet to these, being tied to the place and
the occasion, I have brought no real help.

A man has to perform his task as it comes. But I must say this in
conclusion. Could I wipe these lectures out and re-write them in
hope to benefit my countrymen in general, I should begin and end
upon the text to be found in the twelfth and last--that a liberal
education is not an appendage to be purchased by a few: that
Humanism is, rather, a _quality_ which can, and should, condition
all our teaching; which can, and should, be impressed as a
character upon it all, from a poor child's first lesson in
reading up to a tutor's last word to his pupil on the eve of a
Tripos.

ARTHUR QUILLER-COUCH
July 7, 1920.




CONTENTS