The Rev. William Alexander, Dean of Emly, has been brought
forward as a candidate for the vacant Chair of Poetry at Oxford. He is far the most formidable rival whom Sir Francis Doyle is likely to have. Mr. Alexander is a real poet,—though a poet verging on the rhetorician. Many of his occasional poems have appeared in these columns during the last six years under the signature of" W. A.", and not a few of them,—eapecially, we think, that on the death of the late Archbishop of Armagh, Lord John Beresford,—have attracted a good deal of attention for their bril- liant, if too unchastened, imagination. Mr. Alexander's greatest claim, however, to the Chair will rest on some of his critical essays, —which, with certain of his poems, are now, we believe, in the press. His criticism on Victor Hugo, published about two years ago in a volume of Dublin essays, was a very poetical and masterly piece of criticism. We are not of the Dean of Emly's theological school, and assailed pretty sharply some months ago a paper on dogmatic theology read by him at the Church Congress at York. Bat we hope that the Oxford Liberals will be liberal enough not to let theological differences so far prejudice them as to prevent their fair consideration of Mr. Alexander's high claims as a poet, critic, and powerful thinker.
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