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2  

Tillyard writes: “we thought that if a man entered his subject in this way he could learn to deal with the experience of life better than if he had been trained to accumulate the facts of vowel-changes in Middle English dialects or of literary biography” (1958:83).

3  

See Tillyard (1958:82–92). Like Basil Willey (above, n. 7), he employs the more general, uncapitalized term “liberalism” to characterize the essential quality of Cambridge English Studies, but makes it clear that, in this matter, and despite his “gossipy” style, Quiller-Couch gave a genuine lead (83–84). See also his analysis of factors later undermining the “grounding principle of liberalism” in the subject (127–28). There are, of course, a number of different accounts of the development of “English’’ as an academic subject in Britain. For a provocative and persuasive alternative history, see Robert Crawford (ed.) The Scottish Invention of English Literature (1998).

4  

Tillyard judges the “English Moralists” paper to be “Q’s most tangible service to the Cambridge English School.” The paper proved “a success from the beginning” (1958:118). Willey confirms this (1968: 17–18).

5  

All references to As You Like It are from the New Shakespeare edition (Quiller-Couch and Dover Wilson 1926).

6  

On this notion of law, see Eagleton 1986:35–63.

7  

See Schanzer 1960:81–89.

8  

See Evans 1986:145–90 and Grady 1996:210.

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