The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. XX. No. 1023, August 5, 1899

Vol. XX.—No. 1023.]
AUGUST 5, 1899.
By LILY WATSON.
OPEN-AIR SKETCHING.
All rights reserved. ]
After all the serious advice we have given to our readers as to the literature that is to make them wise, it is pleasant to write of self-culture through the study of the best poetry.
It is, however, not by deliberately taking poetry as a vehicle of education, hunting up every allusion, parsing difficult sentences, and picking the whole thing to pieces, that readers will fall under its sway and know the power of its magic spell. We have often mourned in secret at the prevailing fashion of “getting up” this, that, and the other poem for examinations, and have wondered what such an introduction to English literature is worth. Of this method of handling the work of poets one may use Wordsworth’s phrase:
“We murder to dissect.”
Is it desirable, then, to pass by allusions without comprehending them? Have we not praised the aspiring student who wants to know, for instance, who was the
“daughter of the gods, divinely tall
And most divinely fair,”