Wartime Oxford was short of lecturers, and [CS} Lewis immediately set about pulling strings to get [Charles] Williams to lecture for the English Faculty. He began in February 1940, speaking on Milton, and the results exceeded all expectations.<\/p>\n
Fifty years later, former students still remembered his performances vividly \u201d\u201c \u201d\u02dcMounting the steps at a bound and launching straight into a flood of quotation\u2019; \u201d\u02dctelling students \u201cNever mind what Mr. so-and-so says about it, read the text and think for yourself!\u201d\u009d\u2019; \u201d\u02dcdeclaiming like an Old Testament prophet or an enthusiastic evangelical preacher\u2019; \u201d\u02dcLeaping from one side of the stage to the other, and acting in turn the part of each character he was talking about\u2019; \u201d\u02dcclutch[ing] his copy of Wordsworth, once almost throwing it into the air, but luckily catching it again\u201d\u00a6 totally absorbed in his fascination with the subject\u2019; \u201d\u02dcPacing up and down the platform\u201d\u00a6 return[ing] to its centre table three times to bang on it three times with his fist to impress on his audience that \u201cEternity \u201d\u201d forbids thee \u201d\u201c to forget\u201d\u009d\u2019. In short, \u201d\u02dcElectrifying!\u2019 Some of those students went on to become teachers of English and throughout their careers returned to their notes on those lectures for inspiration.<\/p>\n
Lewis was so impressed with Williams\u2019s lecture on the theme of chastity in Milton\u2019s Comus that he declared, \u201d\u02dcThat beautiful carved room had probably not witnessed anything so important since some of the great medieval or Renaissance lectures. I have at last, if only for once, seen a university doing what it was founded to do: teaching Wisdom.\u2019<\/p>\n