Page:Inaugural lecture on The Study of History.djvu/12

 history professors whom I personally remember? The chair which I myself have the honour to hold has but a short record. This is, I believe, the first inaugural lecture by a Chichele Professor of Modern History that any member of this University has ever attended. When the professorship was founded in 1862, and my dear old predecessor Montagu Burrows was chosen as its first occupant, the custom of delivering such harangues does not seem to have been yet fully established. At any rate, I can find no trace either in the oral tradition of the College, or in written archivesthere was no University Gazette till 1870—that he thought it necessary to open his first professorial term in such a fashion. If he did set forth his views on history, and the way in which it should be taught, in any formal address, I make no doubt that it was as sensible and patriotic as was every other speech of his to which I listened, during the twenty-two years that we were members of All Souls College together. He was a man who always strove to do his duty, and we may take it that he laid down for himself in 1862 precisely the course that he actually carried out for the forty-three years of solid and unassuming work that followed his election to the chair. In his early days he was a popular lecturer—in his later time audiences had drifted away and historical teaching had taken to developments that were unfamiliar to him. But to the last his terminal lectures were carefully prepared and duly delivered: he always did his best to bring them up to the level of the last modern discoveries: he frequently composed an entirely new course: for he was not one of those professors who are contented to discharge statutory obligations by the constant repetition of a limited number of familiar exercises, in the