Page:Inaugural lecture on The Study of History.djvu/10



was with a feeling of deep discouragement that I realized on December 18 last, that I was expected within six or seven weeks to face my colleagues of the Modern History School, and the whole University, with an Inaugural Lecture. Such an address ought to be a sort of profession of faith, a solemn setting forth of the views which the newly-appointed professor holds, and the programme which he intends to carry out, so far as in him lies, during his tenure of his chair. I have heard many inaugural lectures; most of them were interesting, some were pronouncements of much importance and high literary merit. And now I have to come before you, not like so many of my predecessors with all the prestige of a reputation gained outside Oxford, not with the glamour of the unknown about me, but simply as a veteran college tutor with twenty-one years of essays and lectures behind me, to say what I must say. How can such a work-a-day being, known personally to almost every one here present, the most simple and comprehensible of phenomena, hope to deliver to you any message that you do not already know by heart? All that I can set forth is the impression which twenty-one years of practical teaching, interspersed with such research as my leisure would allow, has left upon my mind. I have no dreams of revolutionizing the University; I have no 'divine