SIR EDWARD GOSSE

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 104, 29 October 1925, Page 20

SIR EDWARD GOSSE

'-AST OF THE PRE-RAPHAELITES

A HIT AT OXFOKD,

(FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.) LONDON, 14th September. Yesterday Sir Edmund Gosse, the veteran critic and poet, and author of "Father and Son," celebrated his golden wedding. Press representatives approached him to congratulate him and Lady Gosse, and sub-leaders have been published regarding his career. The "Morning Post" recalls the fact that he became in succession an assistant in the Library of the British Museum, translator to the Board of Trade, and Chief Librarian to the House of Lords, and thus saved himself from the Egyptian bondage of day-to-day journalism or the making of unnecessary novels, and at the same time kept in the company of books and conversant with literary affairs at Home and abroad.

''Ili was as an interpreter of the beauties of great literatures, England's and those of France aik. Scandinavia and other lands, that he will be remembered—nay, revered —with the liveliest sense of gratitude," the "Morning Post" continues. "His love of fine poetry and prose has been for generations a noble contagion, and all the youjiger 1 critics, as well as the more creative writers, have kindled their torches at, the undying flame of his enthusiasm. He has made literary criticism more than a

minor art, for all his literary dissertations Have in them the living sparks of now inspiration. Since lie has also been an expert in the art oF living, the bookish life has never been to him a halfveiled world apart, a moon as it were which shows only one of its two faces. He is (lip. oldcft of our established critics, and y t in a- very real sense the youngest of all." CONTEMPT FOR OXFORD TEACHING. To a, "Daily Express" representative. Sir Edmund mentioned that ho was the last of the Prc-Raphaclites. "How many wore there?" asked tiu interviewer, incautiously. "What? You don't know all about that great, movement? Where wore you educated ?" "At Oxford," said the representative meekly.

"I have the greatest contempt for the way they teach at Oxford," said Sir Edmund. "The only things of any value there are the games that are played. The modern young man has no mental discipline. He thinks he can loarii all about everything by- casual conversation instead of from books. That is impossible. My advice" I.to him is to read, read, read. He is always playing games or motoring'or dancing, and gives no time to serious study. I was nhlc'to do so when a boy, so why should-not he?"

When it was pointed out that the modern j'oung man might prefer to learn life at first hand. Sir Edmund snorted, and said ho could not argue with anyone who did not know all about the PreRaphaelitcs.

REAL STUDENTS OF LITERATURE. "1 am'a little disappointed," Sir.Edmund confessed to another journalist, "in the modern young man. as a student. The expensively .educated young man seems not to care to read anything but the newest sensation. You have to go (o the working people, of the North country in order to find real students of literature, men and women who read books—not books- about books." AS GOOD FISH IN. THE SEA. Sir Edmund made it clear, however, he is no enemy of youth, but the reverse. Concerning writers, he said : "i •mi sure there are as good h'sh in tlw> s:>a as ever came out of it, and J greatly admire many of the younger school of clitics, such as J. C. Squire, Robert Lyud, and Lytton Strachey. J hope i am not too old to help file young writers of to-day; 1 have always felt that old critics arc too apt to behave as

if they did not care about the following generation. I suffered from that sort ol thing myself in the 705." Looking back over* his career as a writer, Sir Edmund emphasised most of his admiration for France and^ her literature. "I think," he said, ''1 am one of the most confirmed Francophiles' in England. Saint Bouve, the greit French critic, has been the only man ■ upon whose style I have consciously modelled my own. I am very proud of having had my book 'Father and Son' crowned by the French Academy. And lam proud, too, of being a doctor of the Sovbonne University, a distinction not held, so far as I know, by any other English littraleur."

Concerning his own work he recalls with the greatest satisfaction the help he pave Swinburne, Rossetti, and the pie-Raphaelites in general, and Walter Pater; his friendship with Swinburne, Pater, Stevenson, and Maurice Barres; his championship of Ibsen; and his work in the Encyclopaedia Britannica.