Last revised 22 June 2024

Note to the latest revision of 22 June 2023: I am still working on a thorough revision of this account, based on more recent research. Many of the conclusions sketched here still stand, though several important details are now much clearer to me, and as a result I can give a more precise account of the emergence of the concept of Oxford English Texts.

Please send corrections and additional information to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

This note covers the Oxford English Texts series up to 1939. For a checklist of subsequent editions see my further note, also on this site: "The Oxford English Texts 1940 to the present Day"

The series of scholarly editions known as the Oxford English Texts (OET) is familiar to most students of English literature, and to a modest extent to collectors, since these volumes are often pleasantly printed. Volume III of the standard History of the Oxford University Press (2013) covers the period 1896 to 1970 in great detail, and provides useful discussions of the series, from which I learned, for example, that R. W. Chapman was largely responsible for its development. However, I am not quite convinced by the History's observation that the OET series began in essence with Grierson's 1912 edition of Donne. As will become apparent from my discussion below, that is both too late and too early.

On other points the History is, quite understandably, elliptical; the eventual choice of a blue binding for the OET is noted but left undated. That is forgiveable, but unfortunate since the decision tells us much about how the press saw the series. Furthermore, and again irreproachably, not all of the books related to the series are discussed. More information can perhaps be found somewhere in biographical discussions of the press employees or the University printers, or in another standard history not at present available to me, but in the meantime, and for my own purposes, I have tried to form a view on the subject of the OET's genesis and evolution from examination of copies in my possession, bookseller listings on abebooks.com, and correspondence with booksellers including Jarndyce and Peter Goodden Books.

Crucial evidence has been obtained from the series listings printed on the dust wrappers of three copies. The first is a wrapper dated July 1932 on a copy of the blue cloth edition of the 1914 Vaughan in my possession.

The second wrapper is dated May 1934 and was seen on a blue cloth bound edition of the 1912 Coleridge in the stock of Jarndyce (at 29th October 2020). This 1934 wrapper gives the first use of the series title, "Oxford English Texts", and describes 22 titles in 30 volumes, the collection being available as a uniform set for £18 10s.

The third is the wrapper to my own copy of the 1939 edition of H. W. Garrod’s Poetical Works of John Keats, which lists 23 titles in 33 volumes, the set being available for £22 10s. This wrapper is reproduced below:

1. Oxford English Texts series listing as it appears on the cover of what I believe to be a first issue of the 1939 Keats.

The list on both the 1934 and 1939 wrappers contain a number of surprises. The 1934 wrapper lists H. C. Beeching’s 1900 edition of Milton, Hutchinson’s Shelley of 1904, and Clark's 1907 edition of the Shirburn Ballads, none of which are today considered to be in the OET series. The 1939 wrapper omits the 1907 Shirburn Ballads, but continues to list the 1900 Milton and the 1904 Shelley. However, these editions of Milton and Shelley disappear from subsequent listings in the post-war period. A full list of all titles that I have observed as described at some point by the OUP as Oxford English Texts is given below. The following discussion attempts to describe the emergence of the series as a publishing concept.

It seems that the Clarendon Press began to produce scrupulously edited and printed editions of major works of English literature with the Beeching Milton of 1900, but that the endeavour did not begin to approach its recognisable format until the first volume of Saintsbury’s Minor Poets of the Caroline Period in 1905 and Sampson’s superb Poetical Works of William Blake in the same year. The two volume edition of S. T. Coleridge's Complete Poetical Works of 1912 is also an important moment, and a testament to the growing ambition of the press, the earlier issues of this magnificent set being decorated with an expensively printed engraving of C. R. Leslie's portrait drawing of Coleridge. This engraving is on tinted Ingres paper and is tipped in to the bound volume. Later issues, even of the 1912 pages, print this drawing, I think lithographically, on regular paper.

For some time, the books, or at least most of them – the Hutchinson edition of Shelley of 1904 may be an exception – appeared bound in a stout terracotta buckram cloth with a paper label, and sometimes, but perhaps not always, in a wrapper. I have never seen such a thing myself, but some booksellers provide evidence of a wrapper on terracotta bindings:

2. Wrapper on a terracotta buckram copy of the 1927 Crashaw. Information and photograph from the website of the booksellers, Rothwell & Dunworth.

I have seen a photograph, in a bookseller listing, of one such jacket, which is dated July 1931 (7/31; my thanks to Jim McCue for explaining this convention to me) on a copy of the 1900 Milton in a terracotta buckram binding. The rear panel of this jacket lists ten titles "In the Same Series", the latest of which is the 1930 Lovelace, and it is possible that wrappers were first applied to the terracotta bindings at or just before this time. However, the fact that there are no surviving wrappers on terracotta bindings that are known to be early, i.e. pre-1920, is not firm proof; the custom of retaining wrappers and even treasuring them is relatively recent, and not even universal today, some preferring, as I do myself, the hard outline and surface of a unwrappered book. There may have been wrappers before and during the First War, but purchasers simply threw them away as a matter of course, as if they were shopkeeper's paper bags.

It would appear that the terracotta binding was available up to and including the 1930 edition of Wilkinson’s Poems of Richard Lovelace, the last production for which I can find evidence of its application, though according to the 1934 wrapper terracotta cloth was still available on the entire series in that year.

It is not clear exactly when the press began also to bind in blue cloth, issuing in a wrapper of a dun colour with traces of blue fibre, nor is it known when blue cloth became standard and and terracotta buckram unavailable, but it seems that this was probably in the middle 1930s and certainly by 1939 and the Garrod edition of Keats. The adoption of blue cloth might be taken as a landmark in the conception of the series as such, inviting comparison with the already established Oxford Classical Texts, though there seem to have been other pressures.

3. Representative examples of terracotta buckram, and blue cloth, on identical page sets, in this case the 1915 Herrick.

I cannot be certain about this, and there is some evidence against the idea, but it seems possible that the press bound these books only in terracotta buckram up until the middle to late 1920s, then added the option of blue cloth, applying the new livery retrospectively to the earlier editions, right back to Beeching’s Milton, where they had unbound sheets held in stock.

My own copy of Beeching's Milton is bound in a recognisable OET blue, with gilt titling and head and foot spine decorations. This copy has been dated by an earlier owner: 18 June 1928. As far as I can tell, the blue binding of the Milton is very unusual, with terracotta bindings being relatively common, a fact at least consistent with the hypothesis that the blue binding is a late innovation. Furthermore, my copy of the 1928 Osborne, bound in blue cloth with gilt arms on the front cover, is dated 1928 by an earlier and possibly the original owner; blue bindings of this edition seem common, and terracotta bindings less so, which would at a minimum not be inconsistent with the hypothesis that the press regarded blue as the standard after the middle 1920s, and only offered terracotta buckram on request.

There can be little doubt that unbound sheets were held for long periods before being bound. My own copy of the 1912 Deloney is bound in blue cloth, which as far as I can tell is a less common state than terracotta buckram, and was issued for sale in a highly unusual light blue Ingres paper wrapper with minimal printing. A small paper label is pasted on the spine noting that additional "war costs" had increased the price to 21 shillings, up from the 18 shillings indicated underneath and as listed on the wrapper of the 1939 Keats, so we can presume with confidence that the war referred to is that of 1939–1945. The blue cloth is of a slightly lower grade than those known to have been manufactured in the 1930s, and it may be a war time economy standard. (Curiously, this copy was sold new on the 24th of December 1954 in the bookshop of the University College of the Gold Coast, now Ghana.)

Additional scraps of suggestive but inconclusive evidence in support of the view that the blue livery was introduced between 1926 and 1928 and applied retrospectively to earlier editions can be found on the wrapper of my own copy of the 1914 Vaughan, a photograph of which can be seen below:

4. Jacket of my own copy of the 1914 Vaughan. 

The wrapper is clearly dated July 1932 ("[7/32]") at the foot of the listing.  Several other features may be noted. Firstly, the latest of the books listed is the 1930 Lovelace. Secondly, while the wrapper describes a "Series" this is not referred to as the "Oxford English Texts", and the listing, while acknowledged as incomplete, concentrates on recent editions, and is selective in regard to earlier editions. Thirdly, the spine clearly states that this is the "Blue Cloth Edition". A fourth, tangentially relevant, is the curious reference to an India Paper edition of the 1927 Marvell Poems and Letters, of which I had never heard let alone seen. A fifth, a minor point, is that the 1928 Bunyan is mistakenly dated 1929.

The reference to the blue cloth edition on the spine leads me to infer that this option was relatively recent and had not yet been fixed upon as standard, otherwise there would be no need to mention it in this way. I suggest therefore, that this jacket is evidence that the Clarendon Press decided in or around 1926 to offer blue bindings as part of a determined effort to establish as authoritative this as yet unnamed series. These bindings were applied to unbound sheets from earlier editions, such as the 1914 Vaughan, and even the Beeching Milton of 1900. Terracotta buckram was still available, and continued to be so certainly until 1934 and perhaps later.

However, it is obviously possible that this is mistaken, and that the press offered the blue binding from a much earlier date, but on the present evidence this seems unlikely. Perhaps a blue-bound copy will come to light with an early ownership inscription, but without such evidence we can for the time being assume that blue cloth editions were only available from the mid-1920s on.

The precise moment at which the terracotta livery was abandoned is not clear to me.  Bookseller listings provide evidence of terracotta bindings on the 1937 Landor, but I have not seen such bindings on the 1939 Keats, or of still later volumes in the series, such as the 1941 Herbert, or the 1941 Johnson. The May 1934 wrapper clearly shows that terracotta buckram was still available, at least on request. This wrapper also informs the reader that the book is part of the "Oxford English Texts", which is the earliest reference to the series that I have so far found. It adds that the series is "Uniformly bound in cloth with paper labels, or alternatively in blue cloth, gilt lettering". We can infer that there may be terracotta buckram bindings on all titles listed on the 1934 wrapper, and up to and including the 1937 Landor. The situation after that date is unclear.

With regard to the blue livery, I further suspect that the first release of a new edition (or the first release of an older edition now bound in blue cloth, if that is what happened) was honoured with the arms on the front cover being gilt, and in later issues only blind-stamped, but this is extremely speculative. All I can say with confidence is that some copies have gilt arms and some have blind-stamped arms. However, on the basis of comparison of two copies of the 1928 Bunyan, one with gilt arms and one without, I am prepared to say that it seems to me that the copies with gilt arms have bindings that are slightly superior in other ways, such as grade of cloth and rigidity of boards.

5. Cover of my copy of the 1923 Herbert of Cherbury, showing the gilt rather than the blind-stamped arms.

In summary, it seems that the Oxford English Text series as we think of it today, blue bound and on a par with the Oxford Classical Texts (OCT), only gradually took shape as a coherent project. It isn't clear precisely when the blue livery appeared, but, and in spite of the absence of evidence for terracotta copies of the 1914 Vaughan, I am drawn to the idea that the blue binding was introduced in the mid 1920s, after which it was applied to unbound stock of the earlier publications, but did not become standard until the mid or later 1930s. We know from the May 1934 wrapper that terracotta buckram was still available alongside blue cloth on all the titles then listed in the series, but it seems to have been uncommonly requested and may not have been available by 1939.

If this account is correct, it indicates an only gradual and somewhat hesitant emergence of a conceptually defined series on the lines that we now recognise, confidently asserting that there are English Texts on a par with Classical Texts. Judging from my blue bound copy of the 1900 Milton, with its 1928 inscription, that first retrospective binding could be in the years 1926 to 1928. I have a hunch, no more, that the 1926 Blake and Wordsworth texts may be a decisive moment. – Certainly, the period 1926 to 1930 saw a striking number of publications, seven editions in total, and some of them of landmark importance, the Marvell for example. If the press was forming a view and making a determined effort to deliver an integrated series at this time, this would explain the decision to bind the 1900 Milton and others in the blue livery.

We can infer from the July 1932 wrapper that a relatively firm concept of a series of some sort was arrived at in the early 1930s, though it was not yet referred to as the Oxford English Texts, the May 1934 wrapper providing the first use of that form of words of which I am aware. It seems that at some time between 1932 and 1934 the press looked back over its stock, and its previous binding practices, and assigned 22 titles (30 volumes) to the OET series and advertised it in the latter year as comprising a set, available for the price of £18 10s, and, as noted above, uniformly bound in either terracotta buckram with paper labels or in blue cloth, gilt titling and decorations.

Then, for reasons that are unclear, the series became dormant, with nothing being added to the lists apart from the 1937 Landor, which is a very unusual title of which I have seen only one copy, my own, which is bound in blue cloth with gilt arms. (The bibliography of this edition is also curious, but I will not discuss it here.)

The 1939 Garrod edition of Keats seems to have been an attempt to relaunch and bring into sharp focus the concept of the Oxford English Texts as an integrated whole. The series now amounted to 23 titles and 33 volumes, the Shirburn Ballads of 1907 having been mysteriously removed, perhaps because it was not only out of print but in little demand (copies are certainly hard to come by at present). On what principles the lists of 1932, 1934, and 1939 were chosen, and why, for example, Guthkelch and Nichol Smith's beautiful 1920 edition of A Tale of a Tub was not included in the 1932 and 1934 listings, or why Harold Williams' three volume 1937 edition of Swift's poems was not present in the 1939 listing, is unknown. Presumably, Swift's face just didn't fit in the series as it was then conceived. Certainly, the OET is haunted by what Watts-Dunton called, in 1903, the Renascence of Wonder, indicating contempt for almost every writer between Marvell and Blake. That narrow conception, and what I feel is a prim and unjustifiable over-rating of the apparently transcendent, weakened a little – Johnson was added to the series in 1941 – but a canonising edition of Swift has been left, first, to Blackwells and now to Cambridge, and Pope was resigned to Methuen and Yale. 

The following checklist summarises the data available to me on which this note has been based:

A checklist of the Oxford English Texts Series up to 1939: Derived from the listings on the 1934 and 1939 wrappers described above, from copies in the author's possession, and from information taken from online bookseller listings (mostly abe.com). I am aware that this list omits some information relating to corrected reprints, and I will add this as time permits.

1900–1909

1900: The Poetical Works of John Milton. Edited by Rev. H. C. Beeching. Copies seen in terracotta buckram with a paper label, dark blue cloth with gilt lettering, and in a smooth crimson cloth with gilt lettering. The crimson binding can be dated to the year of publication on the basis of a Clarendon Press catalogue bound in to a copy in my possession. A copy in blue cloth, with gilt arms on the front cover, which I also possess, is dated by the first owner 18 June 1928. This edition is not generally recognised as in the OET series, but it is referred to as such in the listing on the 1934 and 1939 wrappers described above.

1904: The Complete Poetical Works of Shelley. Edited by Thomas Hutchinson. This edition is not generally recognised as in the OET series, but it is referred to as such in the listing on the 1934 and 1939 wrappers described above. The original binding is not known certainly to me: I own a copy in a blue cloth binding which differs from the OET blue cloth style common after 1926, and may date from 1904. Evidence from booksellers listings and accompanying photographs shows that there were copies in a terracotta buckram, with a paper label, but whether these were issued in 1904 and, or, later is not known. This edition was reset and published, without the tipped in facsimiles of Shelley’s handwriting, in the Oxford Standard Author’s series in 1934, but in a Royal Octavo format uncommon, perhaps unique in the OSA series at that time. I suspect that the 1904 edition was reissued in a more recognisably standard OET blue binding, but I have not seen such a copy.

1905: Minor Poets of the Caroline Period. Volume I. For Volume II see 1906, and for Volume III see 1921. Sets seen in both terracotta buckram and blue cloth. My own set is in blue cloth.

1905: The Poetical Works of William Blake. Edited by John Sampson. Copies only seen in blue cloth, but bookseller listings provide evidence of copies bound in terracotta buckram.

1906: The Poetical Works of John Keats. Edited by H. Buxton Forman. My own copy is in terracotta buckram, but bookseller listings indicate blue bindings with gilt lettering similar to those found on the 1904 Shelley (see above).

1906: Minor Poets of the Caroline Period. Volume II. For vol 1 see 1905 above, and for vol III see 1921 below.

1907. The Shirburn Ballads 1585–1616. Edited by Andrew Clark. Copies seen only in terracotta buckram. Listed as an OET volume on the 1934 wrapper described above, but not listed as an OET volume on later wrappers, perhaps because no unbound sheets remained.

1909: Spenser’s Faerie Queene. Edited by J. C. Smith. Two volumes. Copies seen in both terracotta buckram and blue cloth.

1909: Campion’s Works. Edited by Percival Vivian. Copies seen only in blue cloth, but bookseller listings provide evidence of copies bound in terracotta buckram. My own copy has gilt arms on the front cover. Subsequent lithographical reprints did not, it seems, attempt to correct errors (if any).

1910–1919

1910: Spenser’s Minor Poems. Edited by Ernest de Sélincourt. Copies seen in both terracotta buckram and blue cloth.

1912: The Poems of John Donne. Edited by Herbert J. C. Grierson. Two volumes. Copies seen in both terracotta buckram and blue cloth. I have both, with my blue cloth copy, which is a shade lighter than any other of the editions, having the gilt arms on the front cover.

1912: The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Edited by Ernest Hartley Coleridge. Two volumes. Copy seen in terracotta buckram and blue cloth. My own copy is in terracotta buckram, and volume one is ornamented with an engraved frontispiece, a portrait of Coleridge drawn by C. R. Leslie, impressed on a light blue, very superior, laid Ingres paper, and tipped in to the volume. I have seen evidence of a later issue bound in blue cloth, and with a wrapper dated May 1934 (05/34), where the frontispiece is printed, apparently lithographically, on a white paper of regular quality. The text pages of this copy appear to date from 1912. I infer that though the press still had unbound 1912 text pages in 1934, they had exhausted their supply of the Ingres paper frontispiece.

1912: The Complete Works of George Savile First Marquess of Halifax. Edited by Walter Raleigh. Copies seen in both terracotta buckram and blue cloth. My own blue cloth copy has the gilt arms to the front cover.

1912: The Works of Thomas Deloney. Edited by Francis Oscar Mann. Copy seen in a blue cloth binding, with a light blue Ingres paper dust wrapper, with an additional paper label noting that additional war costs, the 1939–1945 war, had increased the price to 21 shillings. This wrapper has no series list or date. Bookseller listings provide evidence of copies bound in terractotta buckram.

1914: The Works of Henry Vaughan. Edited by Leonard Cyril Martin. Two volumes. Copies seen only in blue cloth, but bookseller listings provide evidence of copies in terracotta buckram. 2nd edition, in one volume, 1956. 

1915: The Poetical Works of Robert Herrick. Edited by F. W. Moorman. Copies seen in terracotta buckram and dark blue cloth. 2nd edition, revised and enlarged, edited by L. C. Martin, 1956.

1920–1929

1921: Minor Poets of the Caroline Period. Volume III. For volumes I and II see 1905 and 1906 above.

1923: The Poems English & Latin of Edward Lord Herbert of Cherbury. Edited by G. C. Moore Smith. Copies seen in both terracotta buckram (dated by a previous owner 11 October 1929) and blue cloth. My own blue cloth copy has gilt arms on the front cover.

1926: The Prelude, or Growth of a Poet’s Mind by William Wordsworth. Edited by Ernest de Selincourt. My own copy is in blue cloth with gilt arms, but I have seen a copy of the first impression in terracotta buckram. A second impression was produced in 1928, copy not seen, making corrections, and again in 1932, the latter, which I also own, being printed photolithographically and bound in blue cloth. 2nd edition, 1959, revised by Helen Darbishire.

1926: The Prophetic Writings of William Blake. Edited by D. J. Sloss and J. P. R. Wallis. Two volumes. My own copy is in blue cloth, but evidence from bookseller listings suggest that it was issued in terracotta buckram. The binding on my copy does not have the gold arms, and, oddly, numbers the volumes 1 (Arabic) and II (Roman), rather than I and II.

1927: The Poems English Latin and Greek of Richard Crashaw. Edited by L. C. Martin. Copy seen in blue cloth, but evidence from bookseller listings provides evidence of copies bound in terracotta buckram. 2nd Edition, 1957.

1927: The Poems & Letters of Andrew Marvell. Edited by H. M. Margoliouth. Two volumes. Copies seen in both terracotta buckram and blue cloth, terracotta buckram being distinctly uncommon. The 1932 wrapper describes this edition as also being available in one volume and printed on India Paper; I have not seen this issue. 2nd edition, edited by H. M. Margoliouth, 1951; 3rd edition, edited by H. M. Margoliouth, revised by Pierre Legouis with the collaboration of E. E. Duncan-Jones, 1971.

1928: The Letters of Dorothy Osborne to William Temple. Edited by G. C. Moore Smith. Copies seen in blue cloth and terracotta buckram.

1928: The Pilgrim’s Progress from this World to That which is to Come. Edited by James Blanton Wharey. Copy seen only in blue cloth. My own copy has the gilt arms on the front cover. Bookseller listings provide evidence of copies bound in terracotta buckram.

1930–1939

1930: The Poems of Richard Lovelace. Edited by C. H. Wilkinson. Copy seen only in blue cloth, but bookseller listings provide evidence of copies bound in terracotta buckram. Based on a two volume large paper edition printed and published in 1925. "Reprinted lithographically [...] 1953 from the corrected sheets of the first edition." The subsequent 1963 lithographic reprint was not apparently corrected. 

1937: The Poetical Works of Walter Savage Landor. Three volumes. Edited by Stephen Wheeler. Copy seen only in blue cloth. My own copy has gilt arms on the front covers. Bookseller listings provide evidence of copies in terracotta buckram.

1939: The Poetical Works of John Keats. Edited by H. W. Garrod. Copy seen only in blue cloth. My own copy has the gilt arms on the front cover. 2nd edition, 1958.

There is a widespread but unfocused suspicion that something is wrong with universities, and with rigorous scholarship and research in general, but this suspicion has yet to go much beyond exasperated complaints about "political correctness", a sarcastic and unhelpful term, and a demand for more balance and freedom, which is, judging by the results, too nebulous to be useful. It seems obvious that more precision is required in diagnosing the problem before a remedy can be suggested. In this note I suggest that there is an inevitable and undesirable conflict between the processes of intellectual creation and the social institutions that are in most cases required to support them. No absolute solution is likely to be found, and it may be that we must content ourselves with mitigatory measures.

I begin with Quine's description of science as a network of provisional propositions extending from mathematics on the one side to history on the other. Perhaps the most significant aspect of this view is that being a network, and not a system, the propositions are not necessarily consistent one with another (their value is determined within their own domain of application), and that consequently when one or more of these propositions are found wanting, because of new data for example, they can be replaced or new propositions added without causing failure throughout the rest of the network, as would be the case were it a systematic philosophy. Quine's view is itself empirically strong; it corresponds with actual scientific practise at its best, in other words with the observed behaviour of scientists generating propositions (and here and below I use "science" in the maximally broad Quinean sense).

However, this raises the question whether such a network of propositions can ever be an entirely comfortable fit within an organisational structure, governmental and bureaucratic, which is essentially and necessarily systematic. That is to say that though the organisational structure of the university, and behind that the funding body of the state, in our own time, is and must be systematic, otherwise it could not function, this means that it will never be happy with and will actually be to a degree threatened by the rather different properties of the network of propositions that we, following Quine, call science.

Clearly it is not lethally incompatible – much good work is in fact done – but many of the problems around science in the universities, are, on this view, the cumulative outcome of the long-term residence of the scientific network within a systematic institutional, and governmental framework. As time goes on, the requirements of the system will tend to erode the quality of the network. It will erode it not only because it sometimes, though thankfully rarely, insists on the adoption of propositions that are inadequate though systematically convenient, such as those of Lysenko, but much more insidiously because it is subtly inimical to change in the network that will disrupt the systemic organisation of the institution. This opposition need not be strong to be harmful, for the quality of the network of propositions is, as is plain from Quine's description, derived from the rate of changes in the network, deletions, replacements and extensions, in other the words the rate at which it is revised in the light of new data. Even a small degradation in that rate could be, over time, cumulatively harmful.

What can be done about this? The difficulties are real, but one need not despair. For example, measures can be taken to ensure that the rate of propositional deletion and replacement remains high. I think myself that ensuring that the institutional framework is modular, and the modules as small as may be, is an important element. Even Departments may be too large. With that in mind I regret the increasing centrality of the University as opposed to the Colleges, in Cambridge, in Oxford, and elsewhere, and the dwindling number of non-university funded academics. To an extent institutional systems actually recognise this problem, but their response is, typically, to extend the system by creating new elements, new departments or "Centres", to use the administrative jargon, or Graduate Schools. Such attempts are intrinsically difficult – institutional creation by saltation is hazardous – and usually go quite unsupported by the existing system, which is content to let these ventures die a natural death. But in any case the effort doesn't actually address the main problem, which is the frictional effect of the existing systematic institutions. Splitting these institutions into smaller units might work, but it would be very difficult and unpopular, not least because it would disturb the status arrangements of the current staff, eroding differentials. I apologise for raising a topic that tact usually rules out of polite conversation, but in the real world rank and hierarchy matter a very great deal, as we all know.

An alternative, or perhaps a supplement to the departmental fragmentation, would be to encourage the existence of "associations" rather than formal departments. We know from the history of science and scholarship that these have been extremely productive of intellectual change, and many of us will have had positive experience from very lively phases in the existence of Societies composed of researchers interested in a particular area. However, these associations either tend not to last long, in their most valuable phases, or to become systematically institutionalised in order to survive, in which case the disruptive value of the association is diminished.

I wonder also whether much of the conflict between institutional system and intellectual network arises because the network and its operators are often required to contribute so heavily to an educational system. Educators are, quite understandably, reluctant to really engage with the provisionality and fluidity of the outer edge of thought. Whewell, for example, would not allow thermodynamics into the Cambridge tripos in the mid-nineteenth century because it was too advanced and uncertain. I am not saying that Whewell was wrong; not all; institutionally he was almost certainly right. But one cannot help wondering whether exclusion from the Tripos held back intellectual advance outside the lecture hall and supervision. An example might illustrate the point. As a consequence of Whewell's decision, Alfred Marshall's formal instruction in natural sciences was confined to the uncontroversial physics of his day. Doubtless he knew of thermodynamics, but the fact that it did not have the prestige of inclusion in the Tripos meant that it was not second nature to him. I have often wondered if economics might have taken a more productive line if his remarkable gifts had been forced to assimilate at an early age the admittedly provisional work of Clausius and Thomson.

Perhaps in addition to increased modularity within the system it would be worth considering more research positions free of teaching, and more institutions dedicated to research without any obligation to educate, even at the graduate level. This would have the benefit of minimising the degree to which the systematic educational institution feels threatened by fluid research network. I don't say it would be perfect, but it might help.

A further point needs to be guarded against, not because it is at present a problem, but because though safe from the hazard at present there is possibility that the United Kingdom might become exposed to this issue in the medium to longer term, say ten to fifty years. As I noted, even if systemic institutional braking causes only a small reduction in the rate of change in the propositional network this can over time be cumulatively undesirable. Small or medium-sized linguistic groups are at a particular risk of falling behind if they become insulated from the disruptive input of other propositional networks. Such a group would tend to become increasingly systematic in its orientation. Colloquially we would say it was 'inward looking'. Mathematics helps a great deal here – the lack of this common means of conceptual formation is one of the reasons that the humanities are much more vulnerable to institutional or systematic sclerosis – and happily, the United Kingdom is further protected against this problem by the fact that the international natural language of science is English. Indeed, I would cite this fact as one of the reasons why scientific research in the UK has held up so well in spite of many other countervailing difficulties. But this fortunate situation may not endure, and it would be foolish to ignore the possibility of the emergence of an alternative scientific language group, Chinese say, which is large enough to maintain a high rate of change within its network by absorbing corrections from outside but without the trouble of returning the favour. After all, we have witnessed this before; English replaced Latin as the scientific language, and in a somewhat similar circumstances to that obtaining today, with vast economic growth in Great Britain creating a viable new network that quickly surpassed that of Latin. It is incidentally worth noting that economic growth in Britain preceded scientific distinction: there is no crude linear connection between science and wealth, and Terence Kealey is surely on to something there. It is no accident, perhaps, that Bacon, whom Kealey blames for much of popular supposition that science leads to wealth, was a systematic philosopher, a lawyer, and a courtier in systematic status society. Bacon was pulled in two directions, rather as modern universities are, in fact.

With all that in mind, there is a clear need, I think, to keep the British propositional network and its contributors open to the networks of the rest of the world, as they are today. Consequently, I have some sympathy with those who worry that Brexit might reduce international intellectual connections. I think the fear is overstated, and relatively easily tackled, but there certainly is a perception in the rest of the world that Britain wishes to cut itself off. That is wrong, but it needs to be addressed, firstly by ensuring that British scientists travel, and that overseas scientists continue to come to Britain, but also that there is more emphasis placed on modern languages for scientists and indeed for engineers.

In summary, the recommendation is that if our institutions are to be as little inimical to a high rate of propositional change as is possible, there should be smaller and less stable departments, less teaching, more research institutions, particularly non-governmental institutions, more associations formal and informal, and more foreign languages. That is a tall order and it doesn't sound cheap. The question is whether the price is worth paying, and that is essentially a question of economy and political economy.

Finally, these are only mitigatory measures, and will not deliver entirely satisfactory results. In order that systems do not ultimately dominate propositional networks it will be necessary to accept that institutions, subjects, departments, even universities themselves, do not have infinite, valuable lives and do not deserve preservation for their own sakes. They are only a means to an end.

There are thermodynamic limits to knowledge, for in a condition of radiation equilibrium nothing can be known, and thus the thermodynamic state of a system, the universe itself, for example, determines what can in principle be known. This potential is dynamic. What could be known yesterday is not what can be known today. But these variations are of little practical significance to us, since only a tiny fraction of the instantaneous potential for knowledge is actually realised; hardly any of the changes in the universe have consequences elsewhere that amount to the creation of an image, or a reflection. The universe knows almost nothing of itself. Furthermore, the very little that it knows of itself is lost in short order. There is only the smallest chance that a reflection of any state will come into being, and even if it does, that reflection will be quickly disappear. Truth will not out, and it is certainly not eternal.

What is true at the universal level is, naturally enough, also true on earth. Most states of the world and its component pieces pass without notice, and even when noticed are only briefly observed and reflected upon. Who is to say that this is not paradise? To be observed, to be recorded, isn't that what an organism fears most? The bird that ignores you in the garden will quickly become alert and evasive if you fix it with a binocular stare.

There is no evidence whatsoever for a transcendent aspect to music; these are noises, more or less pleasant and more or less interesting, and found in all combinations of those continua. Admirers of music must either content themselves with these humble and entirely parochial values, abandoning any attempt to take credit beyond their own delight, or they must reject music altogether in their disappointment.

Some will feel that Stevenson's claims to the honor of poetic status are slight, that he is a minor poet at best and, in general, only an extremely competent versifier. It is certainly true that his writings, metrical and unmetred, have a low frequency of those passages causing the mind to perceive infinite meaning, the endless reverberations, the "visions" to which Ivor Gurney referred to as characteristic of a poem's "inexplicable significance" (see his letter to Marion Scott, 29th of September 1916). But Gurney, in the same breath, spoke also of the "vistas" of poetry. – "Visions and vistas" was in fact the sequence of his phrase, introducing a distinction that he presumably thought important. We all know about the Visions, the winged touchstones of poetry, but the vistas also serve, standing and waiting. I have myself been hitherto careless of that difference, but now think that it should be taken more seriously. Yes, one must concede, that the readerly experience of a poetic "vista" is closer to coherent and provisionally terminated prosaic reasoning than the experiences that we might term "visions", for vistas are still born of the sublunary landscape, and do not hover above the earth as supernatural annunciations of transcendence. Nevertheless, the focal point is left vague, and the vista peters out into mist and distance, and beyond that more distance still. Enchantment, of a kind, is lent on a very long lease, to the view. Vistas are not visions, but they are nonetheless varieties of mysterious meaning.

Of such effects, Stevenson has a respectable supply, "The Woodman" in Songs of Travel, a meditation on the implications of Darwinism, and consequently a favourite of W. D. Hamilton, being a good example.

The fact, as it seems to me, that they all ring hollow, in the last comparison, should not blind us to the difference.

Recalled inscription to the 1915 Oxford edition of Wordsworth's Tract on Convention of Cintra:

Go, Wordy's prose in Dicey's Ed.,
   Be boring to the last degree;
And when she reads and yawns in bed,
   Exasperated, she will long for me.

Love in the theological, abstract philosophical or moral sense is a synonym for virtue as understood by the rigorists. It is a denial of the self, though encumbered by the inevitable paradox that by supressing its own wishes in order to serve those of another, it reserves one selfish wish for satisfaction, that of being seen to be virtuous or loving, for it is never free of self-advertisement, however gently it protests its mystery.

My doctoral dissertation on Wyndham Lewis has recently been made freely available on the University of Cambridge website:

The sense of an absolute moral orientation is weakest at the extremes of wealth and income in any society, amongst the richest because they can deploy resources to evade the consequences of any transgression, and amongst the poor because they have little or nothing to lose and much to gain. The strongest sense of moral rectitude, the strongest belief in moral absolutes, is felt by those in the middle of the distribution, since those towards the centre are threatened not only by those at the amoral extremes but also by competition from those immediately above and below them. The middle of the distribution benefits most from moral regulation, and loses least.

But away with crude binning, and the class analysis that it implies. Take any three individuals and arrange them in order of wealth, and the chances are that the central individual will have the strongest sense of objective morality. Put a society's individuals in order of wealth, or arrange them in order of income, or some combination of both, and, in spite of numerous exceptions, it will be found that proximity to the centre of the range is an excellent predictor of the strength of absolute moral adhesions.

Hostility to astrology is disproportional to its historical merits. Yes, contemporary crass, micro-divination is to be despised, but ancient astrologers were simply proto-astronomers, proto-physicalists, aware that the universe at large and components of it must have a causal role in the behaviour of organisms on earth. Who, today, would dispute the role, historical and instantaneous, of the sun in the development of life; who would deny that the gravitational field of the planets is real, though faint. That it is conscious or intentionally directed, we for very good reasons doubt, and here we part from the predominantly animistic astrologers of antiquity whose determination to find personalities in the planets now seems comic (perhaps our tendency to see human behaviour in terms of intentions will look as quaint a thousand years hence).

The sneering modern scientist should actually honour ancient astrology as a worthy ancestor, rather than taking his tune from the Christian church, which was the natural enemy of this quasi-pagan proto-science, with its multiplicity of causal factors, its strange reluctance to find a single will behind all phenomena, more than a hint that it was all an elaborate symbolisation of arbitrary process beyond human understanding, and above all, because it seems to lack any sense of a transcendent morality.