"I am sure that there is not another man lecturing in the United States today who would be more welcome at Oxford," said Heathcote William Garrod, the Charles Eliot Norton lecturer from Oxford at Harvard this year, discussing the appointment of John, Livingston Lowes Ph.D. '06, professor of English, who will be the first George Eastman Visiting Professor to the University of Oxford during 1930-31.

"Up until the end of the war the school of English at Oxford was comparatively small, but today it numbers about 300 men who are reading in English literature at the University. As it exists today it is largely the creation of the late Sir Walter Raleigh, who was a professor at Oxford from 1904 to 1919. When the school was started people feared that it would become a school of 'literary lounging', therefore there has been a good deal of the stiffening of the scholarship of English literature of late.

"The school has had one or two losses in the last few years, of men of purely literary interests. As a result there are people who feel that there is a danger that the emphasis may fall in the near future upon the scholarship of literature, and upon bibliography. There is a special need at the moment for a man with a wide interest for literature, and Professor Lowes will fit this need admirably."

"At Oxford we have only one professor of modern English literature in the entire university," continued Professor Garrod, "so that Professor Lowes will in reality be an additional lecturer in English literature. He will, however, be the only outstanding teacher of the moment whose particular interest is in the Romantic movement."

Professor Lowes has been chosen to inaugurate the professorship recently established at Oxford by George Eastman of Rochester, New York. He was elected by a committee composed of the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford, the Master of Balliol College, the Warden of New College, and two representatives of the Rhodes trustees, one of whom is Frank Aydejotte, president of Swarthmore College.