Page:Inaugural lecture on The Study of History.djvu/24

 Bible for the undergraduate, and that a textual knowledge of it was the one thing on which some of our local teachers were laying what I privately considered almost too great a stress. A little while after giving his Inaugural he wrote to a friend, 'The teaching business at Oxford, which goes on at high pressure, is in itself utterly absurd.' Professor Firth has taught and examined for the School himself, so knows a great deal more about it than Froude or Freeman, but I think he is rather hard upon it when he says that 'he must complain that it does extremely little for the exceptional man who wishes to study history for its own sake'. I was myself one of those unfortunate exceptionals, and know perfectly well that it did a good deal for me—though I had only a scant ten months to read for it.

So, begging for the indulgence of an audience which has perhaps come to hear of higher matters, I must state my humble conviction that our present system, as it works out in the teaching of the average college tutor and the examinations by the University which follow, has done admirably in the past and is still vigorous and successful. I do not maintain that the curriculum could not be improved. I do not pretend to say that there have not been in my memory insufficiently equipped tutors, and dull tutors, and (what is more frequent) tutors of high gifts, who were yet utterly unable to inspire or interest even the most conscientious pupil The worst teacher without exception that I ever knew was a man who had obtained the highest possible University distinctions, and had also done meritorious work in research. He did not teach in Oxford, so no one need try to identify him. But I am thinking of the system as worked by its best exponents, not its less satisfactory ones. And, so