We have received a long and able letter from Mr.
W. Sanders, a Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford, for which we regret that we have no space, against our advocacy of Sir Francis Doyle's candi- dature for the Chair of Poetry at Oxford, and in favour of Mr. Ruskin's critical genius. He makes, however, the mistake of supposing that we opposed Mr. Ruskin from political dislike to his perverted course on the Jamaica question. We agree with him that such a reason would be unworthy and beside the. mark. Our ground was solely that we believe Sir Francis Doyle to be the truer and wiser critic of the two. Mr. Ruskin's eye for natural scenery is vivid beyond that of any living man, but we sincerely believe his criticisms on other and far more important elements in poetry to be radically unsound—worth less than nothing, a negative quantity. His genius we do not dispute ; but it runs in so narrow a channel, and is so little aware in how narrow a channel it does run, that we believe that he would prove the most misleading of critics, and one likely, by virtue of his genius, to start a thoroughly false school of taste for under- graduates.
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