Of course, the main trouble about any kind of newspaper work is that it kills all opportunity for original literary work—but I could afford the sacrifice.
Certain branches of teaching admit of opportunity for literary work,—particularly those in which teaching rises to the dignity of the lecture....
The main result of holding a chair of English literature for six years has been to convince me that I know very little about English literature, and never could learn very much. I have learned enough, indeed, to lecture upon the general history of English literature, without the use of notes or books; and I have been able to lecture upon the leading poets and prose-writers of the later periods. But I have not the scholarship needed for the development and exercise of the critical faculty, in the proper sense of the term. I know nothing of Anglo-Saxon: and my knowledge of the relation of English literature to other European literature is limited to the later French and English romantic and realistic periods.
Under these circumstances you might well ask how I could fill my chair. The fact is that I never made any false pretences, and never applied for the post. I realized my deficiencies; but I soon felt where I might become strong, and I taught literature as the expression of emotion and sentiment,—as the representation of life. In considering a poet I tried to explain the quality and the powers of the emotion that he produces. In short, I based my teaching altogether upon appeals to the imagination and the emotions of my pupils,—and they have been satisfied (though the fact may signify little, because their imagination is so unlike our own).
Should I attempt to lecture on literature in America, I should only follow the same lines—which are commonly held to be illegitimate, but in which I very firmly believe there are great possibilities. Subjects upon which I think that I have been partly successful are such as these:—
The signification of Style and Personality.
Respective values of various styles. Error of the belief that one method is essentially superior to another.
Physiological signification of the true Realism—as illustrated by the Norse writers and, in modern times, by Flaubert and Maupassant. Psychological signification of Romantic methods.
Metaphysical poetry of George Meredith: illustrating the application of the Evolutional Philosophy to Ethics.
D. G. Rossetti and Christina Rossetti.