Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Perhaps no reproach is oftener addressed to those who call themselves philologists than that they are unconcerned with that beauty which has furnished a distinctive epithet for the word ‘literature’ in the phrase belles lettres, that they lack imagination and insight, and that they are quite unfitted to impart to others a sense of the spiritual values which inhere in the productions that form the subject-matter of their studies. An eloquent writer, who is himself a capable investigator, has recently presented this view in an essay which deserves the attention of every teacher of literature, and especially of every teacher of English literature.
Note 1 in page 185 Address of the President of the Modern Language Association of America, at its Annual Meeting held at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pa., December, 1897.