d violently works. He had also acquired much learning.
Indeed, I should suppose that on the subject of literature he was the most
learned man in Britain. Unfortunately, he was quite bereft of original
taste. The root of the matter was not in him. The frowning structure of
his vast knowledge overawed many people, but it never overawed an
artist--unless the artist was excessively young and naive. A man may heap
up facts and facts on a given topic, and assort and label them, and have
the trick of producing any particular fact at an instant's notice, and
yet, despite all his efforts and honest toil, rest hopelessly among the
profane. Churton Collins was such a man. He had no artistic feeling. Apart
from the display of learning, which is always pleasant to the man of
letters, his essays were arid and tedious. I never heard him lecture, but
should imagine that he was an ideal University Extension lecturer. I do
not mean this to be in the least complimentary to him as a critic. His
book, "Illustrations Tennyson," was an entirely sterile exercise proving
on every page that the author had no real perceptions about literature. It
simply made creative artists laugh. They knew. His more recent book on
modern tendencies displayed in an acute degree the characteristic
inability of the typical professor to toddle alone when released from the
leading-strings of tradition.

* * * * *

I fear that most of our professors are in a similar fix. There is
Professor George Saintsbury, a regular Albert Memorial of learning. In my
pensive moments I have sometimes yearned to know as many facts about
literature as Professor Saintsbury knows, though he did once, I am told,
state that "Wuthering Heights" was written by Charlotte. (That must have
been a sadly shocking day for Mr. Clement Shorter!) I have found his
Liebig "History of French Literature" very useful; it has never failed to
inform me what I ought to think about the giants of the past. More
important, Professor Saintsbury's critical introductions to the whole
series of Dent's English edition of Balzac are startlingly just. Over and
over again he hits the nail on the head and spares his finger. I have
never understood by what magic he came to accomplish these prefaces. For
the root of the matter is no more in Professor Saintsbury than it was in
Churton Collins. He has not comprehended what he was talking about. The
proof--his style and his occasional pronounc