Page:Seventeen lectures on the study of medieval and modern history and kindred subjects.djvu/13

 INAUGURAL.

(Feb. 7, 1867.)

HE giving of an Inaugural Lecture is an occasion which compels and may well excuse a little trepidation. The speaker, although he is wisely restrained by academic decorum from courting or fearing the thunder, propitious or otherwise, of right or left, cannot divest himself of the feeling that he is really about to take the omens of his future success, and cannot but be anxious to make, if he possibly can, a promising beginning. This is especially the case when he is called upon, as I am now, for the first time in his life, to address an academic, I may even say an educated, audience. He has not learned the tone of authority which befits the professorial character: it is no mere matter of form for him to deprecate adverse criticism; he feels that he must introduce himself, in a way that is of necessity painful both to his self-respect and to his modesty, to an audience from whom he has at least as much to learn as he can ever hope to teach them. I can indeed hardly use the word teach without reservation. I am so sensible of the greatness of the field, the variety of the instruments, the infinite multitude of the workers employed on the subject to which my labours in this place are to be devoted, that I am afraid even to advertise myself as a teacher, and would rather be looked on as a helper and trainer in a school in which every man has to learn his own lessons.

For I am thoroughly convinced that the purpose which is answered by the study of Modern and Medieval History is twofold; it is at once the process of acquisition of a stock of facts, an ignorance of which unfits a man from playing the very humblest part as a citizen, or even watching the politics B