AN ANGRY CRITIC.

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 246, 17 October 1925, Page 22

AN ANGRY CRITIC.

Sir Edmund Gosse, the well-known man of letters, has been receiving much attention in the Press during the past week because of the deluge of congratulatory messages which have come to him and Lady Gosse on the occasion of their golden wedding anniversary (wrote the London correspondent of the "Christian Science Monitor" on August 20th.) His unexpected views of the desirability or otherwise of an Oxford education were divulged through the following incident : A young newspaper reporter was calling upon him, and in the course of conversation Sir Edmund said: "Yes, I am the last of the Pre-Raphaelites —last and least of those caricatured and described by Max Beerbohm in his book on them." The newspaper man incautiously displayed a very meagre knowledge of the Pre-Raphaelites, and inquired how many of them there were. "What? You don't know all about that great movement?" said Sir Edmund. "Where were you educated?" "At Oxford," replied the newspaper representative. "I have the greatest contempt for the way they teach at Oxford," said Sir Edmund. "The only tilings of any value there are the games that are played. The modern young man has no mental discipline. He thinks he can learn all about everything by casual conversation instead of from books. That is impossible. My advice to him is to read, read, read. He is always playing games, or motoring or dancing, and he "ives no time to serious study. I was able to do so when I was a boy, so why not he?" The reporter made bold to suggest that possibly the modern young manpreferred to learn life at first hand, rather than out of books, at which Sir Edmund snorted and declared that he could waste no more time arguing with anyone who iidn't know all about the Pre-Raphaelites.