The English Department has been fortunate in having the remarkable research and enthusiasm of Professor John Livingston Lowes. His work with the romantic poets, and particularly with Coleridge, has in past years given Harvard students a unique advantage in the study of nineteenth century poetry. But this year the department has not felt the full benefits of his efforts and English 72 has been unsatisfactory to a considerable number of its members. This is due in part to the large size of the course which interferes with Professor Lowes' provocative lecture method. But the real difficulty is that, although the material of the course is adapted to the interest and background of the graduate student, a great number of the students taking the course are undergraduates.

Graduate students who know the essential characteristics of the poets studied can perhaps profit by a discussion of the minute points relative to the revision and chronology of particular poems. Such minutiae, however, are at once uninteresting and unintelligible to undergraduates; these men are taking the course for the very reason that they do not yet have a general understanding of the poets and their place in their time. If the lecturer continues to devote his attention to a meticulous consideration of details the course should be made open exclusively to graduates. Undergraduates would not be led to take a course from which they are not prepared to profit, and graduates would profit by the smaller size of the class.

The age of nineteenth century romanticism is of such great appeal both to men in and out of the field of English that it would be unfortunate if there were no single course to give the undergraduate a general and yet not superficial view of the period. To make two courses of English 72, one for undergraduates and the other for graduates, is the necessary solution.