R,CHARD MONCKTON MILNES was born in the year - OUDL Home

xivPrefaceWith the two authentic pictures of the Oxford andCambridge of the decade we end—end with them becausethey make the spring board for the decades to come, thefive of them, now nearly past. These are perhaps, then,if we examine them closely, the most significant picturesof all. For out of that Oxford, looking 'mild andmodest and mid-Victorian beside the Oxford of today,but.. .alive and moving', out of that Cambridge, whichsaw the making of Newnham and Girton, most that stillsteadies, if it with ever greater difficulty dominates, theimmediate intellectual life of England has come. Mildthey may have looked, both of them; but from DrMacan's and Mr Heitland's mellow pages come echoes ofconflict enough. It was a time (for all kindliness ofreminiscence) of hard struggle, that is clear, for menthere, whose eyes were, as they should have been, on thefuture rather than the past;'... a period', says Dr Macan,'of disappointment, unsatisfied demands, apparent reaction,yet with a touch of Spring in the air'. Thanksthen, to the men, in the persons of these honouredsurvivors of them, who endured the disappointments,refused to be satisfied, withstood the reaction, and hadthe faith that could discern the 'touch of Spring inthe air'.There will never be a time when Oxford and Cambridgeand England have not need of their like. By a widerview than we can take from the top of the pile—thoughit makes a high enough pile, heaven knows!—of imaginativeand sometimes unimaginative literature, the Englands ofthe Eighteen-seventies and Nineteen-twenties may havemore in common than the change in the noise of theirlife lets us suppose. And, to pillage Mr de la Mare oncemore, 'The very years we now so actively occupy willsoon be packed up in an old satchel....' But, no.! Thereare limits to an editor's privilege.H. G-B.