Mr. Copeland spoke last night in Sever 11 on Matthew Arnold, Walter Pater, and Henry James. In brief the talk was as follows:

Philistine, Barbarian and Populist, were catch words with Matthew Arnold. The upper class in England he calls the barbarian class. He has said that we have no upper class in America, and therefore have no barbarians. To him the American citizens are chiefly Philistines, or people of the middle class, with very few Populists. He has, however, discovered that our Philistines are livelier than those of England.

Matthew Arnold makes three appeals to the world. First, he is a poet, though to many persons he means little in this character. In his verse he cares only to sing of the beautiful things of tragedy and pathos, without trying to teach; while in his prose he is ever intent upon teaching. In his essays his great aim is to reform the Philistine. Another guise in which Matthew Arnold appears to us is as the gentle critic of pure literature; the reader and the commentator of the best things, which he wished to see prevail. In this character he wrote his essay on Keats, which gives such pleasure to lovers of Keats, and his essay on Shelley, which gives less pleasure to the friends of Shelley. Arnold was an ideal educator. He liked to go about among the schools, and he was ever on the lookout for defects in the methods of teaching. He made the greatest mistake of his critical career when he lauded Shelley's letters to the skies, saying that they would long outlive his poetry. Arnold says of himself that there was in him a good, definite streak of the Philistine. Yet we should not dwell too much upon the mistakes of a man so full of generous enthusiasm for the best things. Matthew Arnold, Walter Pater and Henry James were all apostles to the Philistines.

Walter Pater was not only a writer, he was also a figure in academic life. During all his working life he was a Fellow, or a resident, at Oxford, and it is there we like best to think of him. Pater was in no way a reformer. He cared as much for the past as Matthew Arnold and Henry James did for the present. As a critic Pater dwelt most fondly upon those who were dead. In a little book of criticisms, called "Appreciations," we find him coming nearer the present. In this book he speaks of people only, or almost only, to praise them. In spite of Pater's urbanity, we are sometimes conscious of a faint note of patronage in his criticism. The hyperaesthetic side of Pater has been skillfully satirized under

the character of Mr. Rose in "The New Republic," written by Mallock. Pater's beautiful book on the Renaissance, and his enchanting volume of imaginary portraits, show him at his best. This unquestioned masterpiece, however, is "Marius the Epicurean," which, to a well tuned mind, is one of the most beautiful, suggestive and inspiring books in the English language. It is not the philosophy of the book, but rather its pictorial qualities which make it attractive. In contrast to Matthew Arnold, who wished to make the best things prevail, Pater dwells upon the best things, without trying to make them prevail.

In Henry James, the third of the third of the apostles to the Philistines, we find a man as little of a reformer as Pater, but differing from him in his great love for the present. Most of the best imaginative writers of our day have received a word of praise from Henry James. He is as dangerous a model for young writers to follow as could well be found. He has so many subtle things to say that he often becomes deeply involved in the saying of them. In "The Tragic Muse," Mr. James's best known novel, he divides himself from the rest of the literary fraternity by his enthusiasm for the art of acting. In this work he has not only given us a comment on the theatre, but also a living character in the person of the actress heroine.

After the talk Mr. Copeland read Matthew Arnold's "Requiescat," and selections from Pater's "Marius the Epicurean." Mr. Copeland's next lecture will be given in Sever 11, on February 12. The subject will be "The New Woman."