We publish in another column a reply to a previous communication on the present method of study in English VIII. About the same time last year we published a similar communication concerning the parallel course of the one in question, English VIII. But the complaint in the first case was that a too microscopic study of a writer's work was made, while the study of his life was wholly neglected. To criticise the method of study at present pursued by Professor Hill would give rise to a host of suggestions as to the correct way in which a course of study in English literature should be carried on. We do not wish to censure our critic or criticise the ground which he has taken, but in a course which is so given up to independent research and individual work as English VIII, the criticism must be considered as slightly hypercritical. If Byron was a brute, we want to know it just as distinctly as to know whether Wordsworth was after all a wingless angel. Yet, it is true that the rehearsal of personal memories at times grows to be tiresome garrulity. If some golden mean could be found some way by which we could all study that portion of a writer's life and works which would exactly meet the wishes of all, the complaint would be well based. But such a mean has not been discovered. We are still forced to wade, knee-deep at times, through a mass of personal reminiscences some trivial and unmeaning, others nauseous and repulsive, to arrive at a just conception of a writer, not only as an author, but also as a man.