X

Memorizing is perhaps best done in connection with the last reading of the play, but that is a mere detail. Students should be encouraged to commit to memory the finest passages, and should be given an opportunity of repeating them in the class with as much intelligent effectiveness as possible. They should not, of course, be encouraged or allowed to rant or to "spout" Shakespeare; but the teacher should insist that at least lines be recited so that the meaning is brought out clearly, and he should encourage the speaker to give each passage as if it were being spoken as the expression of a distinct personal thought.

. . . . . . . . .

As I said at the beginning of this chapter, I have not endeavored to provide a model, but merely for the sake of suggestiveness to offer an illustration. This is at least one way in which the study of a play may be taken up in the secondary school. Whether it is the best way for a given case is another matter; and I must at the risk of tiresome iteration add that here as everywhere the highest function of the teacher is to discover what is the best possible method not for the world in general, but for the particular class to be dealt with at the moment.

FOOTNOTES:

[167:1] A metal covering for the head: a helmet.

[175:1] Page [80].

[180:1] Personally I would never have a pupil recite except on his feet.

[188:1] See [chapter xi].

XIV
CRITICISM

What should be used in the way of tests of the knowledge of pupils is a puzzling question for any teacher. Like any other pedagogically natural and necessary inquiry, it can be answered only with a repetition of the caution that no set of hard and fast rules will apply to all schools or to all classes. Students themselves, however, would often be perplexed if they were not given definite tasks to perform, definite questions to answer, definite facts to memorize. In acquiring the vocabulary needed for the reading of a play both teacher and pupil feel with satisfaction that legitimate because tangible work is being done; and for either it is hard to appreciate the fact that the essential thing in the study of literature is too intangible to be tested or measured by specific standards. In what I have called the inspirational treatment of literature both are likely to feel as if a vacation is being taken from real work, since the impression is general that the only method of keeping within the limits of useful educational progress is dependent upon the accomplishing of concrete tasks.

The need of fitting students for examinations is generally allowed in practice to answer the question

what shall be done. I have already said that I have personally little faith in the ultimate value of much of the drill thus imposed, and it is hardly to be supposed that any intelligent teacher could be satisfied to let matters rest here. Certainly a pupil who graduates from the high school should have some power of criticising intelligently any book which comes into his hands, and of forming estimates of diction, general form, and to a less extent even of style. His criticism is necessarily incomplete; but it should be genuine and sound as far as it goes. Such a result is not dependent upon the power of passing examinations, but is chiefly secured by precisely that training in appreciation which is least formal and may easily appear farthest from practice in criticism.

Some actual and definite criticism, however, is legitimately a part of the school-work; and concerning this certain things present themselves to my mind as obvious. In the first place criticism is of no value, but rather is harmful, if it fails to be genuine. From this follows the deduction that no criticism can profitably be required until the child is old enough to form an opinion, and that at no stage should comments be asked which are beyond the child's intellectual development. In the early stages criticism is necessarily genuine in proportion as it is personal; and it must have become entirely easy and natural before it can safely be made at all theoretic.

In the early stages of the use of literature in

education, as has been said already, the aim is to help the child to enjoy, and to understand so that enjoyment may be inevitable. This should normally be done in the home, but since in a large number of cases in the common schools the effects of home training in literature are so lamentably wanting, the teacher must in most cases undertake to begin at the very beginning. So far as criticism goes, the early stages are of course merely the rudimentary likings or dislikings, and the encouragement of expression of such tastes. Following this comes naturally the putting into word of reasons for preferences. This must be done with simplicity, in the homeliest and most unconventional manner, and above all with no hint to the child that he is doing anything so large as to "criticise." It is precisely at this stage that children are most in danger of contracting the habit of repeating parrot-like the opinions of their elders. All of us have to begin life by receiving the views of adults, and we are all—except in the rare instances of extraordinary geniuses, who need not be much considered here—eager to conceal lack of knowledge by glib repetitions of the ideas of others. To force young pupils to give opinions when they have none of their own to give is to repeat the mistake which Wordsworth notes in his "Lesson for Fathers." The child in the poem unthinkingly declared that he preferred his new home to the old. His father insists upon a reason, and the poor little fellow, having none, is forced into the lie:

"At Kilve there is no weathercock,

And that's the reason why."

In the lower grades the thing which may well and wisely be done is to accustom the children to literature and to literary language. If pupils come to the upper grades and show that this has not been done, the teacher still has it to do, just as he must teach them the alphabet or the multiplication-table if they arrive without the knowledge of these essentials to advanced work. This is the only safe foundation upon which work may rest, and although to acquire it consumes the time which should be put on more elaborate study, that study cannot be soundly done until the rudimentary preparation is well mastered. Criticism must be postponed until the pupil is prepared for it.

Criticism, whenever it come, must begin simply, and it must be connected with the actual life and experience of the child. We are constantly endangering success in teaching by being unwilling to stop at the limits of the possible. Boys and girls will be frank about what they read if they are once really convinced that frankness is what is expected and desired. They are constantly, if not always consciously, on the watch for what the teacher wishes them to say. Whatever encourages them to think for themselves and to state that thought unaffectedly and freely is what is educationally valuable, and this only.

Opinions concerning characters in tales perhaps do as well as anything for the beginning of criticism

in classes. A teacher may say to a pupil: "Suppose you had known Silas Marner, what would you have thought of him?" The child is easily led to perceive the difference between seeing or knowing such a man in real life, with its limited chances of any knowledge of character, of the past history of the weaver, of his secret thoughts, or of his feelings, and knowing him from the book which gives all these details so fully. The question then becomes: "Suppose you had in some way found out about him all that the novel tells, what would you have felt?" The teacher will easily detect and should with the gentlest firmness and the firmest gentleness suppress any conventional answers. The young girl who with glib conventionality declares that Silas was a noble character whom she pities because of the way in which he was misunderstood may be questioned whether if she had lived in Raveloe she would have seen more than the homely, unsocial stranger, and whether, even had she known all that was concealed under his homely life, she could have held out against his general unpopularity. She is forced to think when she is asked whether among those who live around her may not be men and women whose lives are as pathetic and as misjudged as was that of the weaver. Children have ideas about the personages in the stories they hear or read, and it is only necessary to encourage, in each pupil according to his temperament, first the formulating of these clearly and then the frank stating of them.

In all this sort of criticism one thing which should be sedulously avoided is any appearance of drawing a moral. Deliberately to draw a moral is almost inevitably to defeat any lesson which the tale might enforce if it is left to make its own effect. The point to be aimed at here is not to turn the story into a sermon, but to make it as close to the individual life of the child as is possible. The difference is in essence that between being told a thing and experiencing it. Once this relation is established, the child feels an emotional share in the matter such as can be created by no amount of sermonizing. It may be doubted if any genuine child ever drew a moral spontaneously, and in all this work spontaneity is the beginning of wisdom.

After the pupil has come to have some notion, more or less clear according to his own mental development, of what the personages in a story or a play are like, he easily goes on to determine the relation of one event to another, the interrelation between the separate parts of the work. He should be able to tell in a general way at least what influence one character has upon another, and of the responsibility of each in the events of the narrative.

These opinions should as much as possible be put into speech before being written. The subject should be talked out, however, in a manner so sincere and straightforward as to make conventionality impossible. Students must be held rigorously to honest and simple expression of real beliefs and feelings. In every class, and perhaps especially

among girls, are likely to be some who will surely repeat conventional phrases. Children pick up set phrases with surprising ease, and will offer them whenever they have reason to believe such counterfeit will be received instead of real coin. These shams are easily recognized, and they should be mercilessly dealt with, almost anything except sarcasm, that weapon which is forbidden to the teacher, being legitimate against such cant. The student who repeats a set phrase is usually effectually disposed of by a request to explain, to make clear, and to prove; so that the habit of meaningless repetition cannot grow unless the teacher is insensitive to it. The genuine ideas of the pupils may be developed and put into word in the class, and afterwards the writing out will involve getting them into order and logical sequence.

It may be objected that by this process each scholar will borrow ideas from what he hears said in the class. This is in reality no serious drawback to the method. If the individuals are trained to think for themselves, each will judge the views which are presented in class, and will make them his own by shaping and modifying them. In any case the danger of a student's getting too many ideas is not large, and those he gets from his peers, his classmates, are much more likely to appeal to him and to remain in his mind than any which he culls from books. The notions will sometimes be crude, but they will be so corrected and discussed in recitation that they cannot be essentially false.

Any criticism which is received from pupils, whether spoken or written, must first of all be intelligent. Sound common sense is the only safe basis for any comment, and the higher the grade of a work of literature imaginatively the more easy is it to treat it in a common-sense spirit. Pupils should be made to feel not only that they have a right to any opinion of their own on what they read, but that they are expected to have one; and that this opinion may be of any nature whatever, so long as they can justify it by sound reasons. Still farther than this, they should be allowed freely to cherish tastes for which they cannot give formal justification—provided they can show a reasonable appreciation of the real qualities of the work they like or dislike. In the higher regions of imaginative work the power of analysis of the most able critic may fail; and it is manifestly idle to expect from school-children exhaustive criticism of high things which yet they may feel deeply.

Since it is of so much importance that all comment and criticism shall be sincere, care must be taken to keep work within limits which make sincerity possible. Students must not be required to perform tasks which are in the nature of things impossible. To push beyond dealing with comparatively simple matters in a frank and direct manner, is inevitably to encourage the use of conventional phrases and to replace sincerity with cant.

A nice question connects itself with the determination of how much it is proper and wise to

require of children: it is how much farther it is well to call upon them to criticise literature than we should ask them to comment on life. We need to know what we are doing, and though an examination of the character and motives of a criminal in a book is not the same thing as would be this sort of criticism applied to a flesh and blood neighbor, the two processes are the same in essence. The better the teacher succeeds in arousing the imagination of the pupil, moreover, the more closely the two approach. We should be sure that we are doing well in requiring of the young, who would not and should not be encouraged to dwell on actual crime and suffering, that they produce original opinions upon these things as represented in fiction.

It is of course to be allowed that no teaching can make fictions vital and real in exactly the same way as is that which is known actually to have happened. An imaginative child vitalizes the story which touches him, but does not bring it home to himself as he would occurrences within the circle of his own experience. It may be urged that by encouraging him to analyze sin in the comparatively remote world of fancy we give him a chance to perceive its moral hatefulness without that distrust of his fellows which might come if he were forced to learn the lesson from the harsher happenings of life; and that in books the knowledge of character and circumstance is so much fuller than it is likely to be in experience that he is able

to see more clearly. The fact remains, however, that we should hardly expect or desire a lucid and reasonable estimate of the late King and Queen of Servia from the school-children who are being made to write laborious reams on the motives and the character of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth; that we should be shocked at finding boys and girls considering in real life occurrences like the seduction of Olivia Primrose, or suspicions like those Gareth entertained of Lynette. We certainly cannot afford to be prurient, or to confine the young to goody-goody books. They may generally be safely trusted, it seems to me, to read any tale or poem of first-class merit, although its subject were as painful as that of "Œdipus." They will receive it as they receive facts of life told by a wholesome-minded person, often with very little real perception of the darkest and most sinister side. It will be as it was with young Copperfield when he read Fielding's masterpiece and took delight in the hero, "a child's Tom Jones, a harmless creature." When it comes to the discussion of motives, of character, of black events in fiction, the case is different. The child is forced to take a new attitude; to accumulate the opinions of his elders, to view life from their more sophisticated point of view; and inevitably to receive a fresh, and not always a desirable insight into evil. I am not inclined to dogmatize on this point, and touch upon it chiefly for the sake of suggesting that teachers may do well to keep it a little in mind. Each case, it seems to me, must be

decided upon its own merit, and I at least have no arbitrary rules to lay down. Of one thing, however, I am sure, and that is that whatever is taken up at all should be treated with absolute and fearless frankness.

All criticism of diction, style, or whatever belongs to literary workmanship necessarily comes late. In the secondary schools I believe very little can profitably be done in this line at all. Of this I shall speak later in connection with the study of workmanship, but here I may say that I suppose most teachers to recognize the obvious absurdity of such questions about metres and metrical effects as are given on page [43]. That they should be gravely proposed in a book of advice is indication that somebody believes in them; but any class of students with which I have ever had to deal would be reduced to mechanical repetition of cant conventionality by the bare sight of such interrogations.

One thing which is of importance is the need of encouraging pupils to judge of any work as a whole. It is so much easier to deal with details than with a complete work that constantly students leave schools where the training is in many respects excellent, and have gained no ability to go beyond the examination of particulars. The far more important power of estimating a book or a play from its total effect has not been cultivated. No teacher should forget that the ability to deal fairly with a whole is of as much more value than any

facility in minute criticism as that whole is greater than any of its parts.

This does not mean that a student can well summarize everything he reads or that he may wisely attempt it. It does imply that at least his attention shall have been directed over and over to the great fact that the study of details is not the study of a masterpiece; that he shall have been required to judge a book or a play, so far as he is able, as a whole work and with reference to its entire effect. In talking with undergraduates even about short works, pieces no longer than a single essay of Steele or a simple lyric, I constantly find that they are apt to have no conception whatever that they could or should do anything but pick out minute details. I ask what it amounts to as a whole, how it justifies itself, or what is its value as a complete poem or essay, and they seem utterly unable to see what I am driving at. The painful attempt to find out what I wish them to say so entirely occupies their minds as to render them incapable of using whatever power of judgment they may possess. Not long ago one boy said to me: "I didn't know it made any difference what the poem was about if you could pick out things in it." "What do you suppose it was written for?" I asked. A look of painful bewilderment came into his face, and he answered that he supposed some folks liked to write that way. I inquired whether he would test a bridge—he was an engineering student—by picking out bits without seeing how the parts held

together and how strong it was as a whole, and he returned with puzzled frankness: "But a bridge has a use." "Very good," was what I assured him, "and so does a poem. Can't you appreciate that mankind has not been keeping poems from generation to generation without finding out if they really are useless? Any work of literature that is really good must be of value as a whole, and you have not got hold of it until you are able to see what it is for as a single thing, a complete unit." The fact is so evident that it seems almost absurd to mention it in a book intended for teachers, but scores of boys come yearly from the fitting-schools who prove how often the fact is ignored,—ignored, very likely, because it is taken for granted, but no less ignored with seriously ill effects.

In general, criticism in the secondary schools should have to do only with the good points of work. Unless a pupil himself shows that he perceives shortcomings in what is read, it is on the whole the place of the instructor to keep the attention of the class fixed on merits, while defects are ignored. This is not to be interpreted as meaning that any weakness should ever be allowed to pass for a merit; or as indicating that it is ever wise to shirk a difficulty. Any intelligent pupil, for instance, should see for himself that the metaphors are sadly and inexcusably mixed in the passage:

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,

And by opposing end them.

It is necessary to meet this knowledge frankly, and to show him how it is that Shakespeare can be so great in spite of faults like this. It is the inclination of childhood to feel that a man must be perfect to be great, but even at the cost of encountering the difficulty of such a faith the truth must be told. In general, however, it is as well not to go out of the way to enforce the doctrine of human fallibility, and the youthful mind is best nourished by being fed on what is good, rather than by being taught to perceive what is bad.

When a pupil is asked to put into words the reason why a piece is written, he should be required to answer by a complete sentence, a properly phrased assertion. He is not unlikely to begin by giving a single term, an incomplete and tentative phrase, or at best a fragmentary statement. For the sake of the clearness of his own idea and of the habit of accurate thinking, he should be encouraged and expected to make the idea clear and the statement finished. Student-criticism, as I have said perhaps often enough already, cannot in the nature of things be either profound or exhaustive, but it should be intelligent and well defined as far as it goes.

XV
LITERARY WORKMANSHIP

The appreciation of literary workmanship dawns very slowly on the child's mind. In the secondary schools not much can be accomplished in the way of making students feel the niceties of literary art; but something should be done to enforce the nature and the worth of technique. Much that touches the undergraduate's feelings he cannot analyze, and should never in any work of the secondary schools be asked to criticise. He should, however, if he is to be systematically trained in the study of masterpieces, have knowledge enough of the qualities which distinguish them from lesser work to perceive on what their claims to superiority are founded. Children so naturally and so generally feel that distinctions which do not appeal to them are arbitrary, and it is of so much importance to guard against any feeling of this sort in the case of literature, that it is worth while to be at some pains to make distinctions perceptible, even if they may not always be made entirely clear.

One of the tests of rank in civilization is appreciation of workmanship. The savage knows nothing of mechanics beyond the power of a lever in prying up a rock, the action of a bowstring, or crude facts

of this sort. A machine to him is not only incomprehensible, but supernatural: a locomotive is a fire-devil, and a loom or a printing-press, should he see one, a useful spirit. At the other end of the scale of appreciation of mechanical appliances is the inventor who devises or the trained engineer who understands the most complicated engines of modern ingenuity. Somewhere between stands any one of us,—the ordinary pupil presumably far above the savage, but far below the expert. In the appreciation of the art of the painter, at the bottom of the scale is the bushman who can look at the clever painting of a man and not know what it represents, and at the top the great painters of the world and those who can best enter into the spirit of their productions. In this scale again each of us stands somewhere; the average school-boy is unhappily likely to be so far down as to take delight in the colored illustrations of the Sunday newspapers and to be utterly indifferent to a Titian or a Rembrandt. In comprehension of the value and effect of language, the same principle obtains. The scale extends from the savage tribes with a vocabulary of but a few hundred words for the entire speech of the race and no power of making combinations beyond the simplest, to the cultivated nations with perhaps a couple of hundred thousand words and the art of producing the highest forms of prose and of poetry. The scale is a long one, and its development has taken uncounted ages; but somewhere in the line each individual has his

place. The degree of the civilization of a race is unerringly determined by its command of the written word; the mental rank of the individual is no less certainly fixed by his power of using and of comprehending human speech.

This general truth is easily brought home to young people by reminding them how they began their knowledge of language with the acquirement of single words and went on to appreciate how much more may be expressed by word-combinations. After the infantile "give" came in turn "p'ease give" and "please give me a drink." From such stages each of them has gone on learning. They have constantly increased their vocabulary, their knowledge of the value of words, of word-arrangement, and of sentence-construction. Gradually by practical experience they have gained some appreciation of all those points which make up the sum of instruction in classes in composition. They now need to be shown that literary appreciation is the extension of this knowledge along the same lines; that it is the means of advancing toward a higher place in that scale which extends from the ignorant savage to the sages. They may in this way be brought to a conception of literary technique as a matter connected with the process of perception which they have been carrying on from childhood.

How value in all workmanship is to be judged by the effects produced is admirably illustrated by machinery, but it is hardly less evident in the case

of language. The simpler forms of sentence come to be used by the child in place of single disconnected words because with sentences he can do more in the way of communicating his ideas and obtaining what he desires. To illustrate more complicated forms of language we have only to remind the child how carefully he orders his speech when he is endeavoring to coax a favor from an unwilling friend or a reluctant parent. The child feels himself clever just in proportion as he is able so to frame his plea that it secures his end. He may be reminded that he selects most carefully the terms which suggest such things and ideas as favor his wish and avoids any that might hint at possible objections. Out of these homely, universal experiences of childhood it is possible to build up in the mind of the pupil a very fair notion of the nature and the use of literary workmanship; a notion, moreover, which is at once sound in principle and entirely adequate as a working basis.

Teaching consists principally in helping pupils to extend ideas which they have received from daily life. In this matter of literary workmanship, for instance, it means showing them that they have, without being especially conscious of the fact, a responsiveness to well-turned forms of speech and to skilful use of words. They may perhaps be made to appreciate this with especial vividness by having their attention called to the pleasure they take in clever or apt sayings from their fellows or from joking speeches. This form of illustration

must, it is true, be used with discretion. It is always difficult to lead the mind of a child from the concrete to the general. Not a few children—and children, too, of considerable intelligence—are not unlikely, if jesting remarks are instanced, to conclude that good literary workmanship means something amusing. With due care, however, a class may be led to see how the same quality of apt presentation in word which pleases them in the sayings of schoolmates is what, carried farther, is the foundation of literary technique.

Concrete examples of thoughts so well expressed that they have come to be almost part of common speech are abundant. The crisp, dry phrases of Pope lend themselves admirably as illustration, they are so neat, so compact, and, it may be added, so free from delicate sentiment which might be blurred in the handling.

Order is heaven's first law.

An honest man's the noblest work of God.

The class can supply examples in most cases, and be pleased with itself for being able to do so. The finer instances from greater writers may be led up to, the epigrams of Emerson, the imaginative phrases of Shakespeare; and so on to longer examples, with illustrations from the rolling paragraphs of Macaulay, the panoplied prose of De Quincey, and after that from lyrics and passages in blank verse. Thus much may be done in the way of instruction in technique fairly early in high-school

work. With it or after it at a proper interval should follow instruction in regard at least to the mechanical differences between prose and poetry and what they mean. I have mentioned earlier[212:1] the impression students often bring from the reading of Macaulay's "Milton." The remarks there quoted are selected from answers to a question of an entrance paper in regard to the difference in form and in quality between prose and poetry. Others from the same examination show yet more strikingly the general haziness of conception in the minds of the candidates:

In prose words are thrown together in a way to make good sense and to form good English. Poetry is the grouping of words into a metric [sic] system.

Poetry is often written in rhyme, while prose is expressed in sentences.

Poetry is the name given to writing that is written in verse form. One does not as a rule get the meaning of things when they are written in verse form.

Prose may be verse when dealt with by such an author as Shakespeare or Milton, but prose usually consists of words arranged in sentences and paragraphs without any special order.

Poetry is used as a pastime, and as such is all right.

Between good blank verse and prose there is not much difference except in the form of wording in which it is put upon the page.

For me, the difference between prose and poetry is this: Prose does not rhyme and poetry does. Under such a definition, all literature not poetry must be prose. Therefore Shakespeare's works are prose.

The illustrations might be much extended, but these will show the confusion which existed in the minds of boys who had been painfully drilled in the college entrance requirements. I have not selected the examples for their absurdity, although in a melancholy way they are droll enough; but I have meant them to illustrate the confusion which existed in the minds of a large number of the candidates at that particular examination of what makes the vital difference between prose and poetry. It is not my contention that teachers in the secondary schools are to go into minute details in regard to poetic form; but I do believe that it is idle to talk about the rank of a writer as a poet or of the beauty of Shakespeare's verse to students who do not know the difference between verse and prose.

I may be allowed to remark in passing that to my mind the influence of the theories of Macaulay's "Milton" alluded to above illustrates the difference in effect of that which appeals to the personal experience and feelings of boys and that which they are forced to receive without such inward interpretation. The boys who were trained in the "Milton" were trained also in Carlyle's "Burns." The Carlyle, with its eloquent appreciation of the office of the poet, the seer to whom has been given "a gift of vision," had apparently left no trace upon their minds. They had, however, been forced, too often unwilling, over numerous pages of what they were assured was poetry of the highest quality, yet which to them was unintelligible

and wearisome. When Macaulay declared that poetry was a relic of barbarism they seized upon the theory eagerly because it justified their own feelings, because it coincided with their own impressions; and thenceforth they doubtless held complacently to their faith in the obsolete uselessness of verse, fortified by so high an authority.

In the whole body of papers in the examination from which I have been quoting very few gave the impression that the writer had a clear conception that somehow, even if he could not express it, a vital difference exists between poetry and prose. The greater number of the boys seemed to think that rhyme made the distinction, or that distortion of sentences was the leading characteristic. Not one teacher in a score had succeeded in impressing upon his pupils the fundamental truth that the only excuse poetry can have for existing is that it fulfils an office impossible for prose. Yet nothing which can properly be called the study of poetry can be done until this prime fact is recognized with entire clearness. Beyond the entirely unanalytical enjoyment of verse, the native responsiveness to rhythm, and the uncritical pleasure with which one learns to love literature and to seek it as a means of pleasure, the first, the most primary, the absolutely indispensable fact to be thoroughly impressed on a young student is that poetry uses form as a part, and an essential part, of its language. The boy must be made to understand that just as he tries by his tone, by his manner, by his

smile, to produce in his hearers the mood in which he wishes them to receive what he has to say, so the poet by his melody, by the form of his verse, by his ringing rhythms or long, melting cadences, by his rhyme or his pauses, is endeavoring to interpret the ideas he expresses as surely as he is by the statements he makes. The truth which the teacher knows, that not infrequently the metrical effect is really of more value and significance than the ideas stated, is naturally for the most part too deep for the comprehension of pupils at this stage. It would only confuse a class to go so far as this; but if we are to "study" poetry, we must have at least a working definition of what poetry is, and one which shall commend itself to the children with whom we are working.

As a mere suggestion which may be of practical use to some teachers, I would call attention to what may be done by comparing certain pieces of prose with the poems which have grown out of them. I know of nothing better for this use than Tennyson's "Ballad of the Revenge" and the prose version of Sir Walter Raleigh from which it is taken. In many parts the language is almost identical,—but with the differences between robust prose and a stirring lyric. The teacher who can make a class see what the distinction is, what the ballad accomplishes that Raleigh has not attempted, will have made clear by concrete example what poetry does and why it is written. Another example is Byron's "Destruction of Sennacherib"

compared with the original version of the incident as given in the Bible.

It may seem to some teachers that I am going rather deep, but to such I should simply propound the question what they understand by the study of poetry. The natural error of the untrained mind is to regard the intellectual content of a poem as its reason for being, and to foster such an error as this is to make forever improbable if not impossible any intelligent or genuine insight into poetry whatever. If we are not to protect children against this mistake, fatal as it is to any perception of the real province and nature of poetic art, what do we expect to accomplish in all the extensive attention which is under the present system devoted to the works of the masters?

That so many boys failed to answer satisfactorily in this matter of distinguishing between prose and poetry is of course not conclusive evidence either of general ignorance or of conscious fault on the part of instructors. Boys often fail in attempts to state distinctions about which they are yet reasonably clear in their minds, and it may well be that many who gave absurd replies would have no difficulty in discriminating between verse and prose,—at least when verse fulfilled the specification of the candidate who wrote:

A jagged appearance is the main form-characteristic of blank verse. Each sentence is a separate line, and every other sentence is indented about a quarter of an inch.

It would be interesting to present to pupils who have finished the study of the college requirements half a dozen brief selections, some prose and some poetry, but all printed in solid paragraphs. The number of students who could accurately and confidently distinguish in every case would be a not unfair test of the extent to which the distinction is understood.

Teachers probably fail to make this matter clear because they not unnaturally assume that of course any intelligent lad in his teens must know the distinction between prose and poetry. Natural as such an assumption may be, however, it is often—indeed, I am tempted to say generally—wrong. The chief business of the modern teacher is after all the instructing of pupils in things which they would naturally be supposed to know already. It is certainly safer never to assume in any grade that a student knows anything whatever until he has given absolute proof. The weakest points in the education of the modern student are certainly those which are continually taken for granted.

One of the most serious obstacles in the way of bringing young people to understand technical excellence and to appreciate literary value is the difficulty of having school-work done with proper deliberation. It is doubtful if any process in education can profitably be hurried; it is certain that nothing of worth can be done in the study of literature which is not conducted in a leisurely manner. The first care of an instructor in this delicate

and difficult branch must be to insure a genial atmosphere: an atmosphere of tranquillity and of serenity. No matter how tall a heap of prescribed books may block the way to the end of the school year, each masterpiece that is dealt with should be treated with deference and an amount of time proportioned not to its number of pages but to the speed with which the class can assimilate its worth and beauty. If worst comes to worst, I would have a teacher say honestly to his pupils: "We have taken up almost all of the term by treating what we have studied as literature instead of huddling through it as a mechanical task. For the sake of examinations we are forced to crowd the other books in. The process is not fair to them or to you; so do not make the mistake of supposing that this is the proper way of treating real books." Children who have been properly trained will understand the situation and will appreciate the justice of the proposition.

In this connection is of interest the remark of an undergraduate who said that he obtained his first impression of style and of the effectiveness of words from translating. "I suppose the truth is," he explained with intelligence, "that in English I never read slowly enough to get anything more than the story or what was said. When I was grubbing things out line by line and word by word I at last got an idea of what my teachers had meant when they talked about the effect of the choice of words." Many of us can look back to the days

when we learned grammar from Latin rather than from English, although we had been over much the same thing in our own tongue. In the foreign language we had to go deliberately and we had to apply the principles we learned. Only when the student is treating literature so slowly and thoroughly that these conditions are reproduced does he come to any comprehension of style or indeed of the real value of literature.

Readers of all ages naturally and normally read anything the first time for the intellectual content: for the story, for the information, for that meaning, in short, which is the appeal to the intellectual comprehension. The great majority are entirely satisfied to go no farther. They do not, indeed, perceive the reason for going farther; and they are too often left in ignorance of the fact that they have entirely missed the qualities which entitle what they have read to be considered literature in the higher sense.

In this they are often encouraged, moreover, by the unhappy practice of making paraphrases. The paraphrasing of masterpieces is to me nothing less than a sacrilege. It degrades the work of art in the mind of the child, and contradicts the fundamental principle that poetry exists solely because it expresses what cannot be adequately said in any other way. A paraphrase bears the same relation to a lyric, for instance, that a drop of soapy water does to the iridescent bubble of which it was once the film. The old cry against the selection of

passages from Milton for exercises in parsing should be repeated with triple force against the use of literature as material for children to translate from the words of the poet into their own feeble phraseology. The parsing was by far the lesser evil. It is often necessary to have an oral explanation of difficult passages; but this should be always expressly presented as simply a means to help the child to get at the real significance of a lyric, a sort of ladder to climb by. Any paraphrasing and explaining should be carefully held to its place as an inadequate and unfortunate necessity. The class should never be allowed to think that any paraphrase really represents a poet, or that it is to be regarded in any light but that of apologetic tolerance.

In this matter of workmanship, as everywhere else in the process of dealing with literature, much depends upon the character of the class. Much must always be left unaccomplished, and much is always wisely left even unattempted. Often the teacher must go farther in individual cases than would naturally have been the case in a given grade because questions will be asked which lead on. It is often necessary, for instance, to explain that the crowding forward of events made unavoidable by stage conditions is not a violation of truth, but a conforming to the truth of art. A lad will object that things could not move forward so rapidly, and it is then wise to show him that dramatic truth does not include faithfulness to time, but may

condense the events of days into an hour so long as it is true to human nature and to the effects those events would have had if occurring at intervals however great. Again children will object in a tale that the incidents are not likely to have happened; and it is then necessary to make clear the distinction between probability and possibility, and how fiction may deal with either. These matters, however, are to be left to the intelligence of the individual instructor. If he cannot manage them wisely without advice, he cannot do it with arbitrary rules.

For a last word on the matter of training students in the appreciation of literary form and workmanship I should offer a warning against attempting too much. Something is certainly unavoidable, but of minutiæ it is well to exercise what Burke calls "a wise and salutary neglect." Literary language must be learned or all intelligent work is utterly impossible; since form is an important element in all artistic language, it is not possible to ignore this. The extent to which work can and should go in the study of form in a given class is one of the matters which the instructor has to decide; and when he has decided it he must resolutely refuse to allow himself to be unhappy because in the great realm of literature are so many noble tracts of which he has not even hinted to his class the existence. If he has done the lesser work well he has at least put his students in a condition to do the greater for themselves; if he had attempted more he might have accomplished nothing.

FOOTNOTES:

[212:1] Page [36].

XVI
LITERARY BIOGRAPHY

How far the biography of authors shall be a part of the school-work is a question which deserves attention. I began these talks by calling attention to the fact that it is so much easier to teach details about the life of a writer than it is to train the youthful mind to a true appreciation of literature itself. Teachers naturally and almost unconsciously fall into the habit of over-emphasizing this division of the history of literature, and questions about the lives of authors are dangerously easy to formulate for recitation or for examination-paper. Nothing, however, should be allowed to obscure the idea that the work and not the worker is the thing with which study should be concerned; and everybody would agree that in theory the limit to biographical inquiry in secondary-school study is the extent to which a knowledge of an author's career or personality aids to the understanding of what he has written.

To say this, however, is much like restating the question. Like a good deal that passes for argument, it only puts the problem in other words; for we are at once confronted with the doubt how far a pupil in the secondary school is likely to be

helped by knowing about the facts of a writer's life. At the beginning of the "Spectator" Addison remarks:

I have observed that a reader seldom peruses a book with pleasure, till he knows whether the writer of it be a black or a fair man, of a mild or choleric disposition, married or a bachelor, with other particulars of the like nature, that conduce very much to the right understanding of an author.

I may frankly confess that this is so entirely untrue of myself that I am perhaps not a fair judge for others. Since it is to me a matter almost of indifference who wrote a book, where or when he lived, what he was and what he did, I have not perhaps estimated rightly the effect of biography on children. I am firm in my belief, however, that for making literature more clear, more vivid, more attractive, the effect of a knowledge of the author's life is with children apt to be practically nothing. If they are interested in a book, they may on that account like to know something of the man who wrote it, but I have yet to find a student who really cared for a piece of literature because he had been made to learn facts about the author. That a book was written in a given age will account to him for fashions of thought strange to-day, but he is seldom able to carry such analysis beyond the most general idea.

In regard to helping scholars in the secondary schools to understand a given piece of literature by instructing them about the personality of the

writer, I am quite as skeptical. It may be that one lad in a hundred may come to a better appreciation of a book from what he knows of the temperament of the author. It is possible to point this out in occasional striking instances. If a boy read "A Modest Proposal," a teacher naturally calls attention to the character of Swift as having determined the ferocious form which this plea for humanity has taken; in dealing with "The Journal of the Plague Year" it is inevitable that the instructor speak of the journalistic tendency of Defoe, which led him to write on topics which were at the moment before the public. In either case the result is not important in the sense of going much beyond what the student may be made to feel without any mention of the writer or the writer's peculiarities.

It is very easy to delude ourselves into feeling that we are being helpful when in reality we are simply being pedagogic. If our pupils were so far advanced as to be able to perceive the subtle relations between character and literature, between the nature of a writer and the interpretation we are to put upon what he has written, they would in most cases be better fitted to instruct us than to receive any instruction we are able to furnish. It is sometimes well to give pupils things which we are aware they cannot grasp; to show them the existence of lines of thought which they are not yet qualified to carry out. Our aim in this is to broaden their perceptions, and to direct them

toward truths which later they may investigate for themselves. In the secondary schools, however, very little of this sort can be profitably done in connection with anything so complex and subtle as the relation of the character of an author to his work. Young people must take literature at its face value, so to say, and in teaching them to do this is more than room for all the energies a teacher in these grades can bring to bear.

The history of literature, its development, its relations to the evolution of human thought, should all be as far as possible familiar to the teacher; and no instructor with knowledge and enthusiasm is likely to ignore any of these in dealing with masterpieces. They must all, however, be brought forward with care, for it is easy to overwhelm the mind of the young, especially in an age like the present when a child goes to school with attention already strained by the imperative and insistent calls of daily life. Students on leaving the high school should be familiar with the place in the centuries of authors they have especially studied, and of the score or so of writers most important in English literature from Chaucer down. With the exact details of biography they need not have been concerned. If they have had curiosity enough to look these up as a matter of individual interest, it is well, although I am not sure that anything is gained by encouraging this research. To know of Shakespeare, of Chaucer, and of Milton, for instance, what may be put into a dozen lines;

and of lesser writers to have proportionate information, seems to me ample. The work and not the worker is of importance; the book and not the author; the poem and not the poet.

Many teachers will not agree with me in giving to the personality and the biographies of writers so small a place. Every man must judge by his own experience, and I can only say that every year I deal with classes in literature I find myself deliberately giving less attention to the history of literature. I have insisted already upon the danger that such study shall take the place of the consideration of literature itself, and I have now attempted to reënforce that thought by stating definitely what it seems to me wise to attempt in the secondary schools. I do not desire to be dogmatic, however, and here as elsewhere the conclusion of the whole matter is that while the question of the wisdom of giving extended instruction in literary history or biography is to be carefully considered, each instructor must frame the answer according to personal experience and the individual needs of any given class.

XVII
VOLUNTARY READING

No teacher who is really concerned with the development of the pupil's mind can afford to ignore outside influences. Indeed, even were a teacher conceivable who, consciously or unconsciously, cared only to drag scholars over the prescribed course, he would yet be forced to take into account the effect of every-day life and circumstance, and under existing conditions every teacher is sure to find that he is to a great extent obliged to do the work of the home in all that relates to the æsthetic training of a large number of children. In teaching literature it is not only wise but it is easy to discover and to a large extent to influence whatever reading pupils do of their own will outside of the required work.

Thoroughly to accomplish all that a teacher desires, or even all that is often expected of him, would be possible only to the gods; and it is evident enough that no instructor can exercise complete parental supervision over all the life of the pupils under him. Certain things in the training of the young are accomplished at home or go forever undone. Perhaps the most serious difficulty in this whole complicated business of education is

that the schoolmaster is so largely called upon to undo what is done outside the schoolroom. He may at least be thankful that in the matter of reading he is dealing with something tangible, something in which so many of his flock may with skilful management be influenced.

In a leaflet published under the auspices of the New England Association of Teachers of English, "The Voluntary Reading of High School Scholars," Professor W. C. Bronson, of Brown University, comments on the fact that the mind of the young person is likely to perceive little relation between the literature administered at school and the books voluntarily read outside. He says:

Many of our high-school youth are leading a double life in things literary: in the class-room Doctor Jekyll studies the lofty idealism of "Comus" or "Paradise Lost;" outside, Mr. Hyde revels in the yellow journalism and the flashy novel; and in many cases Doctor Jekyll does not even realize that he has changed into another and lower being.

The difficulty in making boys and girls realize a connection between school-work and actual life is familiar to every teacher. I am personally convinced that one reason for this—although obviously not the only one—is the modern tendency to diminish the sense of value and necessity by too much yielding to the inclination of the child. Coaxing along the line of the least resistance is sure to produce an effective even if hardly conscious indifference, which is far less healthy than the temper

of mind bred by insistence upon progress along the line of duty. Be that as it may, however, the modern scholar generally regards school as one thing and life as practically another. Books read in the class-room, books studied, discussed as a part of formal and required work, are felt to be remote from daily existence and almost as something a bit unreal. They may be even enjoyed, and yet seem to the illogical youthful mind as having a certain adult quality which sets them apart from any vital connection with the life of youth. It is not uncommon, I believe, for a boy to like a book in his private capacity, reading it for simple and unaffected pleasure, and yet to feel it almost a duty to be bored by the same book when it comes up as a part of the work of the school-room.

Very likely a hint of the explanation of the whole matter is to be found in this last fact. In the first place the work of the schoolroom, however gently administered, represents compulsion, and we have trained the rising generation to feel that compulsion is a thing to be abhorred. Perhaps nothing could ever make school-work the same as the life which is voluntary and spontaneous; but modern methods have generally not succeeded in minimizing this difficulty. In the second place, teachers are too often uncareful or unable to soften the differences between reading without responsibility of thoroughness and reading with the consciousness that class-room questionings may lie beyond. Almost any child has the power of treating

a book or a poem as a friend when he reads for pleasure and of regarding the same book as an enemy when it becomes a lesson. The thing is normal and not unhealthy; but it is to be reckoned with and counteracted.

Professor Bronson, in his brief discussion of the matter, goes on to remark that where the Jekyll and Hyde attitude of mind exists—which to some degree, I believe, would be in every pupil—

The first task of the teacher is to make the pupil fully realize it and to urge upon him the necessity of discrimination in his voluntary reading. For this purpose ridicule of trashy books by name and praise of good books, with reasons why they are good, may well fill the part of a recitation period, now and then, even though the routine work suffer a little. For the same purpose, it is very desirable that more of the best modern literature be made a part of the English course, especially in the earlier years, when the pupil's taste is forming, for it is easier to bring such works into close relation with his voluntary reading. The teacher of English may also consider himself recreant if he does not give his class advice about the reading of magazines and instructions how to read the newspapers.

With the spirit of this I agree entirely. The letter does not seem to me entirely satisfactory. I have learned to be a little afraid of ridicule as a means of affecting the minds of the young in any direction. It is the easiest of methods, but no less is it the one which requires the most prudence and delicacy. It is the one which is most surely open to the error of the point of view. If the teacher tries

to lessen the inclination of pupils for specific books by ridicule, he can do no good unless he is able to make the class feel that these books are ridiculous not only according to the standards of the teacher but according to the standard of the child. To prove that from the instructor's point of view a book is poor and silly amounts to little if the work really appeals to the young. No more is effected than would be accomplished if the teacher told lusty lads that to him playing ball seemed a foolish form of amusement. They appreciate at once that he is speaking from a point of view which is not theirs and which they have no wish to share. He must be able to make it evident that the book in question, with its attractions, which he must frankly acknowledge, is poor when judged by standards which the pupils feel to be true and which belong to the sphere of boyhood.

I confess with contrition that in my zeal for good literature I have in earlier days spoken contemptuously of popular and trashy books which I had reason to think my boys probably enjoyed and admired. I believe I was wrong. Now I do not hesitate to say what I think about any book when a student asks me, but I make it a rule never in class to attack specific books or authors for anything but viciousness, and that question is hardly likely to arise in the secondary schools. I cannot afford to run the risk of alienating the sympathies of my pupils, and of arousing a feeling that my point of view is so far removed from theirs that they cannot

trust my opinions to be sympathetic. The normal attitude of the child toward the adult is likely enough to be that of believing "grown-ups" to be so far from understanding what children really care for as to be entirely untrustworthy in the selection of reading. The child disregards or distrusts the judgments of his elders not on abstract grounds, but merely from an instinctive feeling that adults do not look at things from his point of view. I always fear lest by an unwise condemnation of a book which a lad has enjoyed I may be strengthening this perfectly natural and inevitably stubborn conviction.

The first and most important means of influencing outside reading is by impressing upon the child's mind the idea that he is studying literature chiefly for the sake of reading to himself and for himself. About this should be no doubt or uncertainty. No child should for a moment be allowed to suppose that such dealing with books as is possible in the school-room can be chiefly for its own sake, can be so much an end as a means. To allow him to suppose that the few works he goes over can be held adequately to represent the great literary treasures of the race, or that he can be supposed to do more than to learn how to deal with literature for himself, is at once to make instruction in this branch more an injury than a benefit. It would be no more reasonable than to allow him to think that he learns the multiplication-table for the sake of his school "sums" rather than

that he may have an effective tool to help him in the practical affairs of life.

To influence outside work of any sort is difficult, especially in city schools where the pupils are subject to so many distractions. The teacher is generally obliged to make his effort in this direction almost entirely individual, treating no two scholars exactly in the same way, and he is not infrequently obliged to employ a considerable amount of shrewdness in the process. "When I wish to talk to John Smith about his reading," a clever teacher said in my hearing, "I send to him to see me about his spelling, or his handwriting, or anything to give an excuse for a chat. Then I bring in the thing I am aiming at as if by accident." The number of instructors possessed of the adroitness, the time, and the patience for this sort of finesse is probably not large; but much may be done by words dropped apparently by chance, if only the instructor has the matter earnestly at heart.

How far the relation of books in the required reading to books read voluntarily may profitably be insisted upon in class must depend largely upon the particular pupils involved. Every teacher will certainly do well to find out what his students are reading outside, if they are reading anything, and he should then consider what use to make of his knowledge. The very fact that he concerns himself about the matter will call the attention of the class to the fact that a connection exists; and that it is real enough to be worth heeding. Any wise

teacher will find an advantage in having indications of the natural tastes and inclinations of those he is trying to train, and to know what the boys and girls really like to read will often correct a tendency to speak of the required readings in a tone that is outside the range of the sympathies of the scholars. If he knows that the girls are fond of weeping over "The Broken Heart of the Barmaid," that the boys revel in "The Bloody Boot-jack," that both find "Mrs. Pigs of the Potato-patch" exquisitely amusing, he sees at once that he must be cautious in dwelling on the pathos of "Evangeline," the romance of "The Flight of a Tartar Tribe," or the humor of Charles Lamb. Children fed on intellectual viands so coarse would find real literature insipid, and must be trained with frank acceptance of that fact.

To say that teachers may also often do something in the way of arousing parents to do their part in guiding the reading of children is to go somewhat outside of my field. The public asks so much of teachers already that any hint of labor in the homes of pupils seems—and in many cases would be—nothing less than the suggestion of an impossibility. If I were to urge the matter, I should do it purely on the ground that teachers may sometimes greatly lessen the difficulty of the task they undertake in the school-room by a little judicious labor in the home. In the public schools to-day many children, perhaps even a majority, come from homes wherein no literary standard is

apparent, and where for the most part none exists. They are being given a training which their parents did not have, and they feel themselves better able to direct their elders in things intellectual than their fathers and mothers are to advise them. In these cases, certainly very numerous, the teacher must accept the inevitable, and do what he can by inducing his pupils to talk with him about their outside reading. Where parents are more cultivated, much may often be effected by the simple request or suggestion that the young folk be supervised a little in the choice of books. The teacher must of course use tact in doing anything in this line, especially in those cases where such a request is most needed. Parents who pay least attention to such matters are especially likely to resent interference with their prerogative of neglecting their children, though they may generally be reached by the flattery of a carefully phrased request for coöperation. Few things are more delicate to handle than neglected duties, and the fathers and mothers who shirk all responsibility for the mental training of their offspring must be approached as if they jealously tried to leave nothing in this line for any teacher to do.

The most common fault of young people to-day in connection with reading is the neglect of books altogether or the devouring of fiction of a poor quality. To urge boys and girls to read good books or to admonish them to avoid poor ones is seldom likely to effect much. Such direct and general

appeal is sure to seem to them part of the teacher's professional routine work, and not to alter their inclinations or to make any especial difference with their practice. Children are led to care for good reading only by being made acquainted with books that appeal to them; and they are protected against poor or injurious reading only by being given a taste for what is better.

This summing-up of the situation is easily made, but how to make children acquainted in a vital and pleasant fashion with good books and how to cultivate the taste is really the whole problem which we are studying. This is the aim and the substance of all genuine teaching of literature, and everything in these talks is an attempt to help toward an answer. When the problem of voluntary reading has been satisfactorily solved the work of the teacher is practically done, for the pupil is sure to go forward in the right direction whether he is led or not. All that treatment of literature which for convenience I have called "inspirational" is directly in the line of developing and raising the taste of young readers, and beyond this I do not see that specific rules can be given. Personal influence is after all what tells, and the most that can be done here is to call attention to the fact that in so far as a teacher can influence and direct the voluntary reading of a pupil he has secured a most efficient aid to his school-work in literature.

XVIII
IN GENERAL

Throughout these talks I have tried to deal with the teaching of literature in practical fashion, not letting theory lead me to forget the conditions actually existing. To consider an ideal state of things might be interesting, but it would hardly help the teacher bothered by the difficulties of every-day school-work. I have intended always to keep well within the field of ordinary experience, and to make suggestions applicable to average teaching. How well I have succeeded can be judged better by teachers than by me; but I wish in closing to insist that at least I believe that what I have said is every-day common sense.

I have throughout assumed always that no teacher worthy of the name can be content with merely formal or conventional results, but will be determined that pupils shall be brought to some understanding of what literature really is and of why it is worthy of serious attention—to some appreciation, in a word, of literature as an art. If an instructor could be satisfied with fitting boys and girls for examinations, nothing could be simpler or easier; but I am sure that I am right in believing that our public-school teachers are eagerly anxious

to make of this study all that is possible in the line of developing and ennobling their pupils.

Every earnest teacher knows that literature cannot be taught by arbitrary methods. The handling of classes studying the masterpieces of genius must be shaped by the knowledge and the inspiration of the individual teacher or it is naught. Neither I nor another may give a receipt for strengthening the imagination, for instilling taste, for arousing enthusiasm. All that any book of this sort can effect, and all that I have endeavored to do, is to protest against methods that are formal and deadening, to offer suggestions which may—even if only by disagreement—help to make definite the teacher's individual ideas, and to warn against dangers which beset the path of all of us to whom is committed the high office of teaching this noble art.

The idea which I have hoped most strongly to enforce is the possibility of arousing in children, even in those bred without refining or intellectual influences, an appreciation of the spirit and the teachings of the great writers, a love for good books which may lead them to go on with the study after they have passed beyond the school-room. The best literature is so essentially human, it so truly and so irresistibly appeals to natural instincts and interests, that for its appreciation nothing is needed but that it be understood. To produce and to cultivate such understanding should be, I believe, the chief aim of any course in literature.

The understanding and the appreciation must of course vary according to the temperament and the responsiveness of the child. Miracles are not to be expected. No teacher need suppose that the street Arab and the newsboy will lie down with Browning and rise up with Chaucer; that Sally and Molly will give up chewing gum for Shakespeare, or that Tom, Dick, and Harry will prefer Wordsworth to football. In his own way and to his own degree, however, each child will enjoy whatever literature he has comprehended. As far as he can be made to care for anything not directly personal or appealing to the senses, he may be made to care for this. Nature has taken care of the matter of fitting children to understand and to love literature as it has prepared them to desire life. To bring the young into appreciation of the best that has been thought and recorded by man, there is but one way: make them familiar with it.

It is a mistake to suppose, moreover, that an especial sort of books is needed for children. A selection there should be, and it is manifestly necessary to exercise common sense in choice of works for study. A class that will be deeply interested in "Macbeth" would be simply puzzled and bored by "Troilus and Cressida." Childish games for the intellect there may be, as there are childish amusements for the body; but so far as serious training is concerned there is neither adult literature nor juvenile literature, but simply literature.

The range of the mind of a child is limited, and

the experience demanded for the simplest comprehension of a work may be necessarily beyond the possible reach of child life.[240:1] The limitations of youth have, however, and should have, the same effect in literature as in life. They restrict the comprehension and the appreciation of the facts of existence, and equally they restrict the comprehension and the appreciation of the facts in what is read. The impressions which the child takes from what he sees or from what he reads are not those of his elders, although this is less generally true of emotions than of facts. The important point is that the impressions shall be vital and wholesome, and above all else that they be true with the actual verity of human experience. We all commit errors in the conclusions we draw from life; and children will make mistakes in the lessons they draw from books. Books which are wise and sane, however, will sooner or later correct any misconceptions they beget, just as life in time makes clear the false conclusions which life itself has produced.

I have spoken more or less about the enjoyment of this study by children, and it is difficult if not impossible to conceive that if a class is rightly handled most children will not find the work a pleasure. It is necessary, however, to be a little on our guard in the practical application of the principle that children get nothing out of literature unless they enjoy it. They certainly cannot enjoy it unless they get something out of it; but it will

hardly do to make the enjoyment of a class too entirely the test by which to decide what work the class shall do. Pupils should be stimulated to solid effort in the way of application and concentration, and I have already pointed out that in mastering the difficulties of literary language they should be made to do whatever drudgery is needed, whether they are inclined to it or not. They cannot, moreover, read with intelligence anything with real thought in it, until they have learned concentration of mind. Children, like their elders, value most what has cost something to attain, and facile enjoyment may mean after-indifference.

The contagion of enthusiasm is one of the means by which children are most surely induced to put forth their best efforts to understand and to assimilate. If the teacher is genuinely enthusiastic in his love for a masterpiece, even if this be something that might seem to be over the heads of the children, he arouses them in a way impossible of attainment by any other means. A boy once said to me with that shrewdness which is characteristic of youth, "My teacher didn't like that book, and we all knew it by the way she praised it." Sham enthusiasm does not deceive children; but they are always impressed by the genuine, and no influence is more powerful.

The most serious obstacle which teachers of literature to-day meet with, I am inclined to think, is the difficulty children have in seizing abstract ideas.[241:1] So long as study and instruction are

confined to the concrete and the particular the pupil works with good will and intelligence. The moment the boundary is crossed into the region of the general, he becomes confused, baffled, and unable to follow. The algebra of life is too much for the brain which is accustomed to deal only with definite values. What is evidently needed all along the line is the cultivation of the reasoning powers in the ability to deal with abstract thought. Personally I believe that this could be best secured by the simplification of the work in the lower grades, and by the introduction of thorough courses in English grammar and the old-fashioned mental arithmetic. If some forty per cent. of the present curriculum could be suppressed altogether, and then ten per cent. of the time gained given to these two admirable branches, the results of training in the lower grades, I am convinced, would show an enormous improvement. I may be wrong in this, and in any case we must deal with things as they exist; and the teacher of literature must accept the fact that he has largely to train his class in breadth of thinking. He will be able to deal with generalizations only so far as he is assured that his students will grasp them, and this will generally mean so far as he is able to teach them to deal with this class of ideas.

This book has stretched beyond the limits which in the beginning were set for it, and in the

end the one thing of which I am most conscious is of having accomplished the emphasizing of the difficulties of the branch of work with which it is concerned. If I have done nothing more than that, I have discouraged where I meant to help; and I can only hope that at least between the lines if not in the actual statements may be found by the earnest and hard-working teachers of the land—that class too little appreciated and worthy so much honor—hints which will make easier and more effective their dealing with this most important and most difficult requirement of the modern curriculum.

FOOTNOTES:

[240:1] See pages [68-70].

[241:1] See page [112].

INDEX

The Riverside Press

Electrotyped and printed by H. O. Houghton & Co.

Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A.

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:

Variations in spelling and hyphenation remain as in the original. Ellipses match the original.

Pages ii, vi, viii, and 244 are blank in the original.

The following corrections have been made to the original text:

Page 165: XIII[original has "XII">[

Page 174: gnaw till the ship springs a leak[original has "aleak">[

Page 245, under "Examinations": best prepared for by broad teaching, 122;[original has a comma]

Page 247: Teaching of literature, aim of, 11-27, 69-70,[original has a semi-colon] 236