7 MAY 1864, Page 1

The controversy is very warm at Oxford on the desirability

of accepting or declining the Government proposal to endow the chair of Greek. We have ourselves received a letter from a Master of Arts in favour of that proposal, on the ground that the canonry which the Government proposes to place at the disposal either of the University or any college in it which may choose to endow the Professorship, will assuredly tempt some college to do for the Greek Professorship what a college not many years ago did for the Latin. This, however, is confessedly an argument grounded on a hope. Anxious as we are for the end in view, we do not believe that it should be secured at the great risk of limiting the appointment for a long period of years to a clergyman. When the. Bishop of London argues that in any case the chances are that a clergyman will be, as he usually has been, the fittest person, he forgets the enormous change caused by the recent multiplication of lay fel- lowships. No doubt it was so while almost all the fellowships were clerical, but now the number of laymen is increasing every year who are eminently fitted for such a post. We have been told by a high authority that if the Professorship were vacated to- morrow, out of six men who would occur to him for the post three at least would be lay fellows. And the proportion is likely to increase. Nothing could be more unwise than to invent a new and powerful motive for excluding them from the appointment.