Lord Salisbury presided on Wednesday at the ninety-third anniversary dinner
in aid of the Royal Literary Fund, at which, however, he did not make a very gracious speech. Con- sidering that Lord Salisbury has been himself a frequent and very able contributor to English journalism, the extremely condescending, not to call it rather scornful, tone which he adopted in speaking of Oxford University, of which he himself is Chancellor, as "a great manufactory for the manu- facture of literary men," and as " manufacturing a very large number of poets," was not in good taste. As it was Lord Salisbury's object to obtain assistance for those literary men who had failed in earning a competence, it was hardly judicious to speak of the literary class in this contemptuous and also very untrue way, as a class which can be manufactured either by a great University or by any agency at all. Lord Salisbury's own great faculty of scorn was certainly never manufactured, either at Oxford or elsewhere, and we ourselves should doubt whether Oxford teaching did not rather tend to take the edge off a surgical instrument of great natural power. But doubt- less, even if it were so, the spirit of caste has adequately restored that fine edge of sarcasm which the spirit of culture may have partially blunted.
Previous page
