The candidates who seemed likely to dispute, at the best
ad- vantage, the Oxford Professorship of Poetry with Principal Shairp, of St. Andrew's, namely, Mr. Palgrave, the accomplished poet, editor, and critic, and Mr. Courthorpe, whose brilliant treatment of "The Birds" of Aristophanes drew so much attention some years ago, have retired, and left Principal Shairp in possession of the field. No one doubts that he can criticise poetry with a depth and delicacy likely to make the Chair in his hands a post of some importance, if only he will treat it as a post of some importance. Unfortunately, the demands made on the Oxford Professor of Poetry by the conditions of the foundation are very slight, and it has not been usual for the Professor to go much beyond those requirements. Could not Principal Shairp inaugurate a better tradition, and give Oxford each year at least a continuous course of lectures on some one great poet, such as would suffice to make his genius better understood by the English people ? We know no man more thoroughly competent to the task than Principal Shairp, for while he has the delicate dis- crimination which makes his poetic criticism true and character- istic, he has also that depth of nature and conviction which give a certain breadth of human, as well as purely critical, interest to his essays on the English poets.
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