EDITORS DAILY CRIMSON. - Yesterday's CRIMSON contained an attack upon the English department which seems to me very questionable, not to say unjust. The writer has left no doubt as to what course he attacks; it is, of course, English 8, and the author assailed is Byron. I believe the writer to be in the wrong when he says that too much time is given to rehearsing the petty incidents of an author's life; for what is there that so excites an interest in an author as to obtain a knowledge of his private life, and then to observe to what extent his life influences his writings? The lecture-room is not the place for a consideration of style, or for making an acquaintance with an author's writings, until a careful private study of said author has been made. But a lecture should contain all the facts of personal history, so that a just private opinion may be made upon his works.

The writer of the communication evidently forgets to what extent Byron's private life reappears in his writings, and it would be just as wise, then, to crush Byron's name from the list of English men of letters, as to suppress his personal history from the lecture-room. Indeed, as the instructor carefully explained, no more time was expended on the incidents of the private life of Byron than was proportionate to its effects on his writings.

It is generally thought that, when a man is old enough to enter Harvard College, he is old enough to endure a recital that would be out of place in a Grammar school, and not be shocked; but the writer of this communication seems to have been offended at what is unavoidable and absolutely essential to education, and would permit his personal prejudice to stand in the way of what seems a just and impartial plan of instruction.

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