The “revolt of the language departments” in 1890 was, as we have seen, an appeal for their adequate recognition and representation in the councils of the university and University College and for more teachers to meet the heavy demands made on them. But even before reaping the modest rewards of the revolt, that is, the appointment of Cameron as lecturer in French in 1891 and the promotions of John Squair (French), W.H. Van der Smissen (German), W.H. Fraser (Italian and Spanish), and William Dale (Latin) to associate professorships in 1892, Modern Languages suffered another blow at the hands of the academic powers.

A curriculum revision for the 1890-91 calendar, born of long discussion by the Board of Arts Studies and the Faculty of Arts and approved by the Senate, had prescribed that for the next five years every Pass undergraduate should take, besides English, four years of Latin plus four years of “any two of the three languages Greek, French, German.” This demotion of Greek to the level of French and German was so unacceptable to a phalanx of school and university classicists, apparently spearheaded by Maurice Hutton, that before the first year was out, the Senate had been led by devious means to pass a statute restoring the language prescription in effect since 1885 of “either Greek, or French and German” (with Hebrew a footnoted option for either French or German but without the accompanying requirement of two years of French or German if Greek were elected) and to block all attempts by the faculty, led by James Loudon, to have the matter reopened for full debate. The statute held good, so

The 1890s brought the first attempts to remedy the disrepute into which the Pass

Course had fallen, long since a subject of heated discussion. Almost from its founding in 1880 the Varsity had carried editorials and letters lamenting the disadvantages suffered by the student who sought a more general education than that obtainable in an Honour course and so had to endure the stigma of assumed mediocrity attached to being “only a passman” (see 2, 9 Dec. 1881). The concern of some members of the faculty with this sense of inferiority is reflected in a long “Editorial Comment” opening the Varsity of 8 December 1891, which deplored the early death of a motion brought before the university Senate “some time ago ... to substitute for the terms Pass and Honour, as applied to the two courses open to undergraduates, those of General and Special” and so put an end to “the odium arising from a misleading title.” The senators who helped to defeat that motion, representative of a long line of professors over the years whose pride in the Honour Course led them to look down their noses at anyone in the Pass

Course, no doubt included in their number the man responsible for this statement printed in the calendar of 1894-95 (76). It is the climax of a warning addressed to each Honour student in English that “he” must pay serious attention not only to his Honour subjects but also to his Pass subjects in all years. “His [the Honour student’s] knowledge of the [Pass] subjects is expected to be of a wider, more accurate, and altogether higher character than that expected of the mere Pass students.”

By 1919-20 standards in both Pass and Honour courses had risen. For the former, in the first two years, standing depended on 50 per cent in each of six subjects or a 50 per cent average, while in the third and fourth years, 75 per cent of all examination marks earned grade a standing, 60 per cent a grade b, and 50 per cent a grade c. In Honour subjects, standings of class i for 75 per cent and class ii for 66 per cent remained the same. But class iii rose to 60 per cent, and 50 per cent earned a bl (below the line, but passing), while less than 50 per cent

could be granted credit as a Pass subject. This Honour scale would remain unchanged, and the Pass scale would eventually be raised in accordance: 75 per cent, 66 per cent, and 60 per cent indicating a, b, and c standing respectively.

In the 1909 revision of the requirements and options in the General Course, French was not specifically required, but in practice it was almost always the other “foreign language” that had to be continued in the first two years and often the chosen option for the one “foreign language” required in the last two years. The promised wider options among subjects offered in the last two years of the New General Course did not apply to choices within a subject, and the curriculum in French shows very little variation during this period. The first two years were limited almost entirely to grammar, dictation, and translation, English-French and French-English. The latter presumably continued to be based on the prescribed

texts for senior matriculation, though no reading texts are listed for first and second years in the calendars from 1895 to 1919. Students in third-year General studied prose texts, always including a Bossuet oraison funèbre and Voltaire’s Zadig (later sometimes Micromégas), followed by two or three items such as Paul et Virginie, Pêcheur d’Islande, Graziella, or Daudet’s Contes. In the fourth year the standard reading programme during this period was one play each by Racine, Molière, Hugo, and Augier, sandwiched between fables by La Fontaine and some nineteenth-century verse.

Suddenly in 1919, however, as if to compensate for the retrogression in terminology from “General” to “Pass,” the Pass Course received a startling face-lift and the dignity of having its four-year programme printed on a separate page in the calendar. In a revolution that must have jolted both students and

instructors out of familiar ruts, first year was told it must read at least 350 pages of modern French from a long list of books, some written by such old stand-bys of matriculation texts as Octave Feuillet and Émile Souvestre, but others challengingly new, including Musset’s Fantasio and On ne badine pas avec l’amour, along with selections from standard French histories and others concerning the war just ended. These pieces of living history were read in a collection of war sketches, Sous les armes (1918), edited by Marcel Moraud, a new appointment to University College, and his edition of Maurice Barrès, Colette Baudoche, heads the list of modern texts prescribed for reading in second-year Pass French.

With equal suddenness the Pass programme in third- and fourth-year French, ceasing to offer a bouquet of prose followed by a nosegay of theatre and verse,

took on the nature, if not the scope, of the Honour programme, that is, sequential studies in history and literature. The third-year course was announced as “Standards of the Classical Age and the Main Ideas of the Eighteenth Century, Studies in French Literature from Malherbe to the Philosophes” and the fourth-year as “Forces and Movements in French Literature since 1780.” French 3a brings strength to the programme by adding Corneille’s Le Cid to masterpieces of Molière, Racine, and La Fontaine while assisting an instructor in the movement of ideas with good anthologies of seventeenth-century prose and of Voltaire. French 4a follows suit, adding Balzac’s Gobseck to a series of representative texts from Hugo and Augier to Rostand and Bazin, supported by anthologies of Rousseau, nineteenth-century lyrics, and contes des romanciers naturalistes. It would seem that the French Department had elevated its Pass courses to the point envisaged by President Falconer in his report for the year

1908-09, when an attempt had been made to raise the quality of the Pass menu. “Too many students have entered the honour course, partly because the general course did not give them the training they desired, partly because of the greater prestige of the former. It is hoped that the general course will be found to have risen greatly in value, and correspondingly in prestige, becoming the most popular course for the average student.”

The Honour Course in French, as we have seen, had already reached a lofty – some would say over-lofty – standard before 1890. There was the same stress now on language work as in the General Course but at a more advanced level. The establishment in 1895 in Honour Moderns of a required first-year course in Phonetics was a great aid to the acquisition of a good pronunciation in French, as well as in the four other European languages being studied, along with English, by

in modern French was presumably taken care of by the reading of two or three out of seventeen recommended nineteenth-century texts, from Labiche to Daudet. Second year brought Corneille, Racine, Molière (three plays), La Bruyère, Bossuet, and Boileau; third year, some of La Chanson de Roland, eighteenth-century theatre, and verse and prose by eight authors from Lesage to Chateaubriand and Madame de Staël; fourth year, another eight authors, from Lamartine to Leconte de Lisle and Maupassant. Any desire for change seems to have been satisfied by tinkering with the relative quantities of specialization to be allowed in third and fourth years. But apart from minor changes, the French Honour programme stood still as if sacrosanct.

In 1913-14, however, the existence of considerable dissatisfaction with the Modern Language programme was suddenly revealed in the pages of the

selection of material studied and fresh combinations with other subjects, especially the Classics with their depth and discipline. Why not English, French, and Latin, or Greek, Latin, and Italian, or Comparative Classical and Modern Literature, as at Harvard, not forgetting that French, in the hands of a well-prepared teacher, is unrivalled as a gracious initiator into the problems of thought and civilization and as a model instrument of expression.

which they seem to be held ... by a system which in its present form is paternalistic, conservative and antiquated.” Will did not add much to Clark’s shrewd castigations except a heightening of generalization as he depicted the fate of the better student, frustrated at the standards set by the backward student, condemned to “sordid textual grubbing without food for the intellect or satisfaction for the imagination,” overwhelmed by “the multiplicity of subjects [that] make too great a demand upon the student’s time, dispersing his energy, and encouraging superficiality,” so that “during term he is an automaton registering the obiter dicta of his professor; in the examination hall he is an animated synopsis.” (On this point, Will no doubt deserves some credit for the modest modification of the Modern Languages programme, which from 1914 on prescribed two instead of three of English, German, French, Italian, and Spanish in third and fourth years, each four hours, with two hours devoted to a third language.)

Together with Will’s censure of the excessive quantity of work expected of Moderns students went a ringing condemnation of the teaching of literature by centuries, for the instructor “a Procrustean bed upon which to shockingly abbreviate or to painfully attenuate a man’s faculties” and for the student an encouragement to “looseness of thought and treatment, generalization, and second-hand statement rather than direct observation,” unless accompanied by more intensive courses where an instructor could specialize. This criticism was to go unheeded by the department for over half a century. Some professors then, as later, no doubt solved their own problems by taking more time on favourite authors or segments, some even making no pretense of “covering the course.” For the examinations, however, usually set by an examiner other than the teacher, the student still had to be ready to write on any of the authors announced for “coverage” and to treat them in the context of the century. How else maintain the

History; second, History of France in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries; third and fourth, the same respectively for the eighteenth century and from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the present. French teachers now, and for the next years, took turns at playing historian.

The year 1916 saw two other innovations of greater significance, in line with Will’s call to break away from arbitrary century stanchions and offer teachers of the department some fresh scope. One was a third-year one-hour course in literary criticism from Du Bellay to Madame de Staël entitled “The Classic Ideal as Represented in Critical Writings from the Pléiade to the Beginnings of Romanticism.” The other, more startling, was a fourth-year course in “Contemporary Literature,” with readings in a dozen authors from Becque and Heredia to Barrès, Rostand, and de Regnier and including Verlaine, France, Loti,

Hervieu, Brieux, Margueritte, and Maeterlinck. This latter course, unlisted for some time in the Modern Languages specifications, was apparently at first an optional supplementary credit and a rewarding side-excursion for students having enough stamina and eagerness to stray from the beaten paths.