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

222 R. W. Macanfor which Oxford had to wait several decades. And sostrong has been the old literary tradition of classical' Greats', that in the present scientific age the Universityhas thought it could do nothing better for the Greeklessyouth surviving the war than to devise a sort of antitype,or parody, of Literae Humaniores in a Final School, embracingPhilosophy, History, and Economics, all withouttears, that is to say, English for the English. Happilythings are different with the late-born Research Degrees(B.Litt., B.Sc., D.Ph., D.Litt., D.Sc.), for which candidateschoose their own subjects of study, pursue themat leisure, and obtain academic Honours only on theproduction of adequate literary results. Such results aremore scientific and at the same time more literary thananything procurable in the old-fashioned Schools of theUniversity. Only in justice to l'ancien regime be it rememberedthat the better system was germinating in theUniversity of the 'seventies, under the multiplication ofsubjects, the increase in the Professoriate, the organisationof combined College Lectures, the adoption by Collegeteachers of academic work as a permanent career, therising number of students: in short, the growth of thoseelements and movements in the life of the University,which were germane to the work of the Commission of1877, and as developed ah intra by succeeding generationshave made the Oxford of 1928, if juxtaposed with theOxford of the first half of the nineteenth century, or evenof the 'seventies, look really rather like a new academicheaven and earth in little.Granted that the Schools had merely a paedagogicrelation to literature, yet University prizes served as incentivesto authorship, especially in the native tongue.Such prizes are generally awarded under conditionshardly felt as hindrances to production; though thesubject be prescribed, the composition is voluntary, and