THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH
Two Lectures given to the Class in Education
in the University
LECTURE I
In this lecture I propose to tell you not how English ought to be taught, but simply how I teach English. I know nothing of pedagogy; I have never attended a Normal School; I have read very few books on teaching in general, and only one on the teaching of English in particular; I know nothing of the methods which you yourselves are being taught to employ. I ask you, then, to take my lectures simply as a personal document, a relation of what I have gathered from my own experience. Such a document, if sincere, must be valuable, and I need, I think, make no apology if I mention as discoveries of my own, methods and principles which are, perhaps, commonplaces with the educationalist.
In the matter of teaching every man must work out his own salvation; I believe that he cannot take his methods ready-made from another. The method which suits me and gets me the best result may not suit you. And so, though I believe that every teacher of English ought to follow certain general principles which I will try to lay down, I believe also that it is a fatal mistake for any man to attempt to model his way of teaching exactly upon that of another. To-day, then, I propose simply to tell you of some of the things which I discovered for myself, some of the difficulties I met with, some of the faults which I have overcome, or am still trying to overcome.
I see before myself still a long and weary road, which must be travelled before I reach anything approaching my ideal. In fact, I hope, as every teacher ought to hope, that I shall never reach a point where I can say I am satisfied, for as sure as I do, I shall know that I have ceased to make progress. As long as a man struggles, he is advancing; when he ceases to struggle, he has ceased to advance; and when he ceases to advance, it is almost certain that he has commenced to go backward.
For the purposes of this lecture I shall take the teaching of English to mean the teaching of English literature only. I have had no experience of High School work, and therefore my remarks refer to the teaching of average University students of the first or second year, very much the same sort of students as you have to deal with in your High Schools. The methods I adopt with my Honour Classes differ widely from those I use with pass students.
Before one attempts to describe his method of teaching, he should make very clear his conception of the object for which the subject is studied. One may read a piece of literature, for example, in many different ways. One may treat it as a piece of art, a record of life, a truth that some fellow-man has seen in a moment of clear-sightedness, has "snatched from the eternal silence," and has set down that we may see it too. Again, one may read it with a view to its structure, as an example of literary technique; or one may treat it as an historical document, a reflection of the spirit of the age which produced it; or, again, as an exercise in philology, as material for the study of words. According as one object or another predominates, so will the method of teaching change; if one object is sought to the exclusion of all others, the method of teaching will, of course, vary with the object in view. The philologist will subordinate everything to the study of philology; the historian will fasten all his attention on the evidences of date, the local references, the flavour of contemporary philosophy, politics, religion, or whatever it may be; the technician will be entirely occupied with form, metre, structure.
Hamlet, for example, may be treated as a work of art, as the history of a man doomed to destruction through an inherent and fatal flaw, a human soul caught in the web of circumstance and tortured to death; or it may be treated as a study in the language of the Elizabethans; or as an example of the stagecraft of Shakespeare; or even as material for constructing ingenious cipher messages revealing the fact that, as Shakespeare was utterly unable to write plays for himself, Bacon kindly wrote them for him.
The first question which the teacher of literature must ask is, what is the relative importance of all these objects for which literature may be studied. Which should be the main end of our teaching, and which should be subordinate? On the answer he gives to that question will depend the method of his teaching.
Personally, I have no doubt whatever as to which of these things is the most important, although I may have some doubts as to the relative importance of the others. To me a piece of literature is first and foremost a work of art, a record of life in forms of truth and beauty, a spiritual revelation; it speaks to my intellect, but only that, through my intellect, it may reach my heart. If it reaches my intellect only, if it penetrates no farther, if it does not become part of my being, if the experience it records does not become my experience, then it is of little value to me, it is not my piece of literature, and I want no literature that I cannot make my own.
I wish sincerely that we could root out for ever and utterly abolish the false notion that most students and many teachers have, that Literature is not an important subject, that it is only a side-line, very nice to know something about, but not in the same class with "useful" and practical subjects like history and science. This is a tremendous and a fatal misconception. It is by Art and Art alone that Humanity progresses; progress in Science or in mere knowledge does not necessarily mean progress in any of those things in which Man stands supreme above the rest of creation, those spiritual qualities which raise him to the level of the Divine. We know that a man may take a course in Science, or any purely intellectual subject, and come out at the end of it still uncultured and coarse-minded, with low ideals, with the higher instincts undeveloped; he may go through a course of Literature, too, it is true, and emerge in a similar condition, but not if the Literature has been properly presented to him, and if he has really assimilated the best thoughts of the highest minds.
Art is the source of our highest pleasure, the capacity for which raises us above the beast. Without that capacity, men are no better than sheep or goats "who nourish a blind life within the brain."
A thing of beauty is a joy for ever,
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep,
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
Not only is Literature the source of our highest pleasure, but it is the source of our highest development. It is the most potent factor in the slow process of raising Humanity to a higher spiritual level; it is the true motive power of the world.
Well might the poet say of himself and his fellow poets:
We are the music-makers,
We are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;—
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
We are the movers and the shakers
Of the world for ever it seems.
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown:
And three with a new song's measure
Can trample a kingdom down.
Assuming, then, that the appreciation of literature as art, as the record of spiritual experience, is the principal thing to be gained from its study, the question arises how is such an appreciation to be taught?
In what I am going to say on this subject, I will speak of poetry, and you will understand my remarks to apply in a lesser degree to prose.
Poetry is the finest flower of the human mind; and therefore the most difficult of all things to appreciate. In writing poetry the whole of a man's being is in a state of intense activity. His intellect, his emotion, his imagination, are all roused to the highest pitch. He is lifted for the time being to a plane of experience much higher than the normal; he is giving out the very best that is in him.
Wordsworth has described for us how the poetic mood drove him distracted with intensity of thought over hill and dale, and how when the mood had passed he would return to his friends pale and utterly exhausted both in mind and body.
His own mind did like a tempest strong
Come to him thus and drove the weary wight along.
All poetry worth reading is the result of some such exalted mood as that, and poetry so written cannot be read in cold blood. Poetry which leaves you cold, with your emotions untouched, which does not in some measure lift you out of yourself, is either not poetry at all, or else poetry which you have not the capacity to appreciate.
One appreciates a poem only in so far as one reproduces it sympathetically in oneself; that is, only so far as one feels over again the emotions which the writer who produced it felt as he gave them expression. In other words, by the appreciation of literature one gains at second-hand the highest spiritual experience.
It follows that one can appreciate poetry only to the extent to which one is capable of such experience. No one can appreciate fully all kinds of poetry; if any one could do so, it would mean that he was a universal genius, since the whole range of emotional experience would have to be within his control. The extent of the average man's powers of appreciation is distinctly limited; some can sympathize only with the more obvious and elemental emotions, while some are capable of appreciating more subtle and refined shades of feeling. That is why nearly every one can appreciate to some extent a poet like Shakespeare, who always deals with big, elemental emotions, although, since Shakespeare is at the same time able to express the most subtle feelings, there are few who can appreciate him in full. This is why it is more difficult to appreciate Wordsworth than Shakespeare—Wordsworth's emotions are more out of the range of ordinary experience—and still more difficult to appreciate Shelley, whose range of emotion is often entirely alien from experience.
The point I wish to make is that a teacher can teach properly only poetry which he himself is capable of appreciating, and therefore literature is the most difficult of all subjects to teach, since it requires in the individual certain qualifications beyond the merely intellectual. For the lack of these qualifications, no brilliancy of intellect can compensate.
The teacher who knows a piece of poetry with his head only can never teach it as it ought to be taught. He may be able to repeat it word for word, he may know all about its history, its philology, its structure, but if he has not felt it, if he has not reproduced it sympathetically within himself, he cannot teach it. Similarly the student, unless he is capable of sympathizing with such emotions as are recorded in poetry, will be unable to get more than a head knowledge of it. If this power of sympathizing is present in ever so small a degree, it can be indefinitely developed under the inspiration of a good teacher.
What follows then? First, that a teacher who lacks the higher appreciation of literature can certainly never teach it to others, although probably thirty or forty per cent. of his pupils, more gifted than himself by Nature in this respect, will get an appreciation in spite of him. Secondly, that even supposing a teacher has this appreciation, it will be of little use to him, unless he has the power of communicating it to others, that is, of awakening in them sympathy with what he himself feels.
Assuming, then, that the teacher has this appreciation, what is the best way of communicating it? There are, perhaps, only two possible ways. One is by talking about the poem, by trying to describe its effect upon one; but the better and more effective way is by reading, by vocal interpretation. All literature, but especially poetry, is written not for the eye, but for the ear. Its appeal, then, should be made, not through the eye but through the ear. The sound of the words, not singly, but in groups, the rhythm, the intonation, all these give the atmosphere of a poem. Sound is to a poem what colour is to a picture. Get away from the printed word, the mere symbol; it means something for the head, it is true, but nothing for the heart until it is translated into sound.
The first thing a teacher of literature must do, then, is to learn to read. He need not take a course in elocution; stamping, gesticulating, waving his arms, shouting, whispering, hissing, and other tricks of the professional elocutionist will benefit him little; all that is necessary is that he should be able, by the intonation of his voice, to convey to his students the effect which a poem has made upon himself. Diligent practice, the subjection of the voice to the will—these are what he needs. The average man cannot hope to reach any very high degree of efficiency as a reader, but all that the teacher needs is to be able to read clearly, with a voice well controlled and capable of expressing various shades of emotion, with a good sense of rhythm and the grouping of vowel sounds.
The first thing, then, for one who would teach literature is to endeavour to reach at least that stage of vocal culture which I have described. Of course, a good deal may be done in the way of conveying appreciation of a poem by talking about it, but to talk about a poem well is almost as difficult as to read it well, and at the best is not nearly so effective.
Assuming that a man is equipped with these essentials, a true appreciation of literature and the power of communicating his appreciation to others, how is he to approach the teaching of a piece of literature?
The first thing he must do is to assimilate it thoroughly himself, to go over it again and again, to practise again and again the vocal interpretation of it, to be sure that he has caught the spirit not only of the whole, but of the smallest part, that no shade of meaning, however subtle, has escaped him.
"We must long inhale," says Corson, "the choral atmosphere of a work of genius before we attempt, if we attempt at all, any intellectual formulation of it; which formulation must necessarily be comparatively limited, because genius, as genius, is transcendental, and therefore outside the domain of the intellect."
Then, having assimilated it, let him go further and get a background for it. Let him know, if possible, its history, what suggested it, under what circumstances it was composed, its relation to other writings of the poet and of the age, what the best critics have said about it, and so on. Let him endeavour to neglect no scrap of information which will increase his own appreciation and understanding of the poem. When he has done all this, then, and not till then, is he ready to teach it. If he has plenty of time and a small class, he will probably begin by trying to find out how far his pupils have assimilated the spirit of the poem. His task is then to interpret the piece of literature, to try to give the student the impression it has made on him, what it means to him, what emotions it arouses in him. This is to be done by reading it, or, if the piece is long, by reading such parts of it as will form a connected whole, filling in with descriptive narrative. In many cases it will be necessary before attempting an interpretation to say a few words which will enable the pupil to listen to the reading in the proper frame of mind, and will create the proper atmosphere for him.
When the first impression has been made, the work has only just begun. Suppose one has hit the right keynote, that the class has caught the spirit of the poem; there will still be much of it which is unintelligible or misty to them.
Not realizing this, I used to make a mistake when I first began to teach. I thought it was necessary that the pupils should understand the poem in detail before they could get the general effect. I used, therefore, to begin by analysis, by pulling the poem to pieces, showing its structure, the order of ideas, the meaning of words, and when I thought everything was perfectly clear I would give the general effect, or very often would leave that to the students themselves. This was a fatal mistake. By going through the process of analysis first, I had rendered an appreciation of the piece as a whole ever so much more difficult; while if I had begun by trying to get the general effect, and had succeeded, no amount of analysis could have destroyed that first impression.
On this point Professor Corson says: "The spiritual appeals which are made by every form of art, be it in colour, in sound, in stone, in poetry, or whatever may be the medium employed, must be responded to directly, immediately (in the literal sense of the word), or not at all. Of course, the extent of the response may be indefinitely increased. But there must be, to begin with, a direct, immediate response, however limited it may be. There is no roundabout way to such appeals. The inductive method is not applicable to spiritual matters. The very word induction, is absurd, in connection with the spiritual. It belongs exclusively to the intellectual domain."
When the first impression has been made, then will come the analysis, and I am convinced that this analysing process is one which the student, especially the young student, cannot dispense with, and which is an exceedingly valuable mental training.
The analysis will include a treatment not only of the literary form of the poem, but a thorough study of its language, of the historical and literary allusions contained in it, of any images or metaphors which may be obscure, and, in fact, anything which will contribute to a better understanding of the poem as a whole. The teacher will now probably ask: "How far is this process of analysis to go? Must one study the philology of every word, must one analyse the metre of every poem?" I have already given the answer to these questions. I said that the analysis would include a study of anything which will contribute to the better understanding of the poem as a whole. There is the secret. The total effect must never be lost sight of. The metre is to be studied only to an extent which will enable the student to catch the rhythm and read the poem correctly for himself. Names and technicalities matter not a whit. He may never have heard of an iambic pentameter, or an anapaest, or a trochee, but as long as he grasps the rhythm and sees the relations of the various parts of the literary structure, he knows all that is necessary for a thorough appreciation of the poem as a whole. Similarly, the derivation of a word should never be given unless it helps to the better understanding of the sense of the word as that word is used in the particular passage under discussion; otherwise the obtrusion of the etymology is simply an impertinence.
Some teachers make interpretation by paraphrase a prominent part of this analytical process; this should be avoided. It may be necessary sometimes to paraphrase difficult passages, but not one-tenth as often as most teachers and editors consider it necessary. A paraphrase is at best an inferior rendering, a substitution of something similar, but of a lower kind, often a substitution of the baldest prose for the highest poetry. "I pray thee avoid it." Some editors are over-fond of analysis; probably because they wish to show they are earning the money they get for editing. Let the poem, as far as possible, tell its own story in its own words.
When the analytic or discursive process has been completed, what remains? A return to the general. Having considered the poem in its parts, one now endeavours to reproduce the effect of the poem as a whole, but this time, if the analysis has been well done, the effect ought to be greatly heightened. The student will now see, not through a glass darkly, but will meet the poet face to face.
There are two things to be observed with regard to this process from the general, through the discursive, back to the general again. One is that the processes should, if possible, be kept separate; that one should keep, if possible, at the same level throughout any one lesson. This cannot be done if one changes from appreciation to analysis and back again on the same day. The second is that the analytic process is best left as far as possible to the student himself. I myself used to make the mistake of doing too much for the student; I used to try to analyse the poem thoroughly for him in class. I now think it better simply to point out difficulties and leave them to the student to solve, to suggest questions and leave them to the student to answer. The work may not be so thoroughly done, but the student receives a valuable stimulus which he would otherwise miss. I always give an opportunity for any difficulties which the student is unable to solve for himself to be brought to me.
LECTURE II
In my last lecture I tried to emphasize what I considered to be the most important objects of literary study, i.e., the appreciation of literature as art. I said that I thought it necessary that the teacher of English should have both a true appreciation of literature himself and the capacity for arousing appreciation in others. I pointed out that the teacher's first duty was to awaken in his students a response to the inner life or soul of the piece of literature with which he was dealing, that the best way of doing so was by a good vocal interpretation; and that it was therefore the duty of every teacher of English to learn to read well. I suggested that after the first response had been gained, there should come a thorough analysis, a study of form, structure, philology, and exact meaning, but that this process of analysis should be carried only so far as was necessary to a thorough appreciation of the work as a whole.
I now come to the question of how far a study of the history of literature is desirable for the ordinary student, I mean the student who does not desire to specialize in the subject.
Personally, I am a firm believer in the historical method of dealing with literature, not only because I think that a knowledge of the history of literature greatly heightens one's appreciation of literary works, but because I believe that many students, who would otherwise never do so, are by this method led to take an interest in, and so gradually acquire a taste for, literature.
Some books (using the word book in the sense of any literary work) are for all time—Homer, Virgil, Dante, Milton, Shakespeare; some books are for their own time only; some books are for their own time and a limited period afterwards. But whatever be the vitality of a book, no matter to which of these classes it belongs, there is no doubt that it belongs in the first instance to its own time, and cannot help being to some degree a reflection of the spirit of the age in which it was produced. This means that not only may the book be used as an historical document, as a means of catching the spirit of its age, but that, conversely, a study of the epoch at which it was produced cannot fail to illuminate to a greater or less degree the meaning of the book.
Critics like Taine and Sainte-Beuve looked on books as primarily historical documents. Behind the book one looked for the man, behind the man one found the innumerable circumstances which went to mould his personality. In this way of looking at things the individual becomes of comparatively small importance; he is interesting mainly because he is a type of his age; his book is interesting because it reveals the type.
Much can be said for this deterministic way of looking at literature, and some excellent results have been produced by Taine's style of criticism, but few critics of to-day would look on it with favour. To-day, the book is of primary importance; the man and the age are studied that they may throw light on the book. However exaggerated the historical method, as carried out by Taine, may appear, I think we must admit that in a modified form it may be of very great value.
We all know that a literary work is flavoured by the personality of the writer. From our experience as teachers we learn that we can read a personal document more sympathetically if we know who wrote it.
I have sometimes commenced to read an essay under the impression that it was written by a student A, and have been annoyed at certain ways of thinking and methods of expression that seemed to me forced and unnatural; I have turned to the back of the essay, seen the name of the writer, discovered my mistake, and re-read the essay with the personality of B instead of A at the back of my mind, and then the essay seemed to me to go smoothly, and to be characteristic of the writer.
Undoubtedly, the book takes a distinct and peculiar tinge from the personality of the author, and therefore to get the proper atmosphere, to read a book with thorough sympathy, we should find out all that we possibly can about the man who wrote it. Of course, the thing works both ways. We study the man that we may better appreciate his book; we study the book to find the man. How little can be done in some cases towards determining the personality of the man from his book is shown by the outstanding instance of Shakespeare. More than three hundred years' study of that marvellous book has entirely failed to reveal the personality of the author; upon that question critics are still in hopeless conflict.
Again, since the personality of a man is undoubtedly moulded, to a large extent, by his age and environment, we should go farther back still, and having studied our man, we should relate him to his age.
No writer is so individualistic that he can wholly escape the tinge of his epoch. I will venture to say that no one who has been accustomed to study literature by the historical method, and to recognize in books the contemporary flavour, would be likely to take, say, a piece of prose written in the first half of the seventeenth century for the product of the eighteenth or nineteenth century, or could possibly mistake a typical sixteenth-century lyric for a typical nineteenth-century one.
If we study our literature, then, historically as well as artistically, our books will be to us not only works of art, but something more; they will become linked to long trains of association, which will carry us out into the life and happiness and suffering of our fellow-men, and further still, out into the shock and sway of great world-movements, into the sphere where the Time-spirit weaves unceasingly the web of life.
Let me give you an example of how this way of treating literature can be carried out with even a junior class.
I have been studying with the Freshmen some of Goldsmith's poetry, The Traveller and The Deserted Village. We first took the poems in themselves, studied them as works of art, read them, tried to get the spirit, then analysed and studied them in detail. We next went on to a study of the life of Goldsmith. We followed his strange and romantic career, followed him in his sufferings and struggles and triumphs, saw him in his weakness and in his strength. Further than that, we saw him in relation to his contemporaries. We became acquainted through him with the famous circle of which he was a member, the circle of wits and scholars that gathered round Johnson—Burke, Reynolds, Garrick, and the rest. We then learned something of the literary ideals of that school, and how they determined the form of Goldsmith's work. We saw, too, how Johnson and Goldsmith helped to set literature free from the bonds of patronage. We saw something of the politics and the social conditions of the age.
My claim is that, in consequence of that study, those students, when they return to The Traveller and The Deserted Village to read them again for their own pleasure or to review them for their examination, will find their pleasure in them greatly enhanced by having at the back of their minds the personality of the author and the spirit of his time. Things that seemed stiff and pedantic to them before will be forgiven or passed over now, because they will know that they do not belong to Goldsmith himself, but are only a condition of his writing imposed on him by his age; they will appreciate better all those passages in which the kindliness and sympathy and generosity of the author are strongly marked, and finally they will feel hovering around these living documents not only the spirit of the dead author, but the spirit of the great old Doctor Johnson, with the spook of Boswell probably still in attendance, and all that noble and witty company who walked and talked on earth so many years ago.
I have heard people object to the study of the history of literature by young students on this ground—that it must mean to a large extent a memorizing of names and dates, a mere empty repetition of facts about works that have never been read.
To that objection I do not now attach very much weight, although at one time I did. In the first place, the study need not be a mere empty repetition. A skilful description of the contents of a work will give a student a very fair idea of its spirit and meaning, and often arouse in him a desire to read it for himself. In the second place, it is good for him that he should have the benefit of the experience of the most competent students and critics of English literature, so that he may know what is best worth reading, and so that when he comes to continue his studies for himself, if he ever does, he may spend his time to the best advantage. One does not object to studying the map of a country, even if there is no intention of visiting all the places marked thereon.
I would say, then, that the best plan with the young student who has had some elementary training in the appreciation of literature is to take some representative works of a particular period, and through a careful study of them in the way I have described, reach out and grasp the whole period in its essential features.
So much for the history of literature. Now to retrace our steps, and return to what I said in my first lecture about the method of attacking a particular literary work. I daresay it sounded simple and easy enough; first get your general effect, let the poem make its own impression as a unit, as a work of art; then will come your analysis, and then a return to the general.
But it is in the application of this simple principle to different kinds of literature that the teacher will find his greatest problems. Every new work will provide a new puzzle. How much need I say about this by way of introduction? What is the best way to present this? What illustrative extracts should I make from this? How much help should I give the student with this?
A teacher has to teach the First Book of Paradise Lost. He has three quarters of an hour or an hour to make his first impression; on that first impression may depend the whole success of his teaching. It is obvious that with young students it will not do to plunge straight into a reading of the poem; they must be prepared for the reading; an atmosphere must be created; they must come to the reading in a proper, receptive attitude. How much introduction is necessary?
Personally, I spend one whole hour talking about the poem. I point out as well as I can the plan of the whole poem, and how that plan is carried out, so as to get the relation of the First Book to the whole; I talk a little about epic poetry in general and what one is to expect from an epic poem; I point out the magnitude of Milton's task, the spirit in which he approached his work, the purpose and meaning of that work, and in every way I try to arouse an attitude of interest and expectancy.
The next day, I do not begin to take up Book I in fragments, but I give a reading designed to give the story of the whole book in a series of the most striking passages, strung together by connecting narrative.
We are now ready to study the poem analytically, and as we take up each part and dissect it, the students always have in view the relation of each part to the whole book, and, from the first lecture, to the whole poem.
How to teach a play of Shakespeare is a subject that might well demand a whole lecture to itself. Shakespeare is undoubtedly the best material for teaching literature that we have, and is suitable for all grades, from the lowest to the highest. Of course, I need scarcely say that the method of treatment and presentation for honour students will naturally differ entirely from that appropriate to beginners.
But there is one thing certain, that a play of Shakespeare, whether one teaches it to beginners or to advanced students, demands on the part of the teacher a most intense study. He must be soaked in it; he must be thoroughly familiar with it down to the smallest detail; he must have thought out the setting of every scene; he must have formed a clear conception of every character; he must have decided definitely the exact tone and emphasis with which every speech should be delivered; and lastly, he must decide how he may most effectively present it to his students.
But this, you will say, is putting too big a demand upon the teacher. It is a demand which few of us are able to fulfil, but I am convinced myself that every teacher should keep such an ideal in view, and work toward it patiently. I have been studying Hamlet off and on myself for ten years, I have been teaching it for four, and I am only just beginning to get some confidence about it now. I hope perhaps if I study it for ten years more to be able to teach it with some success.
The great actor Salvini studied the part of Lear for eight years before he made any attempt to commit it to memory.
Shakespeare is thus, in a sense, the most difficult of all authors to teach, for one can never exhaust him; in another sense he is the easiest, for even the poorest teacher cannot help making some effect with him. The latter fact, however, should not make us content with slovenly work.
In this connection I may say that I am convinced that the greatest aid to success on the part of the teacher of English literature is painstaking and exact study for himself—not to be content with something that will do, but to absorb and reabsorb the spirit of the best works, and never to be satisfied that he knows them well enough. The number of works that he can know thus thoroughly will be limited at first, but their range will be constantly increasing; and therefore the work that he will be compelled to do in a more or less imperfect fashion will be constantly decreasing.
As an example of how a single poem can be made sometimes to serve as an introduction to the whole of an author's work or to a large portion of it, let us take a very short and simple poem of Browning and see what can be made of it. Let me read to you A Woman's Last Word.
Probably this poem, like many of Browning's, produces at the first reading only a vague and indefinite impression, a sort of groping sensation, in short, a wonder as to what it is all about.
Let us analyse it. Whence did the difficulty arise? Evidently not from the language. It was from the fact that we did not know what went before; that from what is given us here, a mere scrap of experience, we had to construct the whole; and from the fact that we had to follow a sequence of thoughts suggested by circumstances unknown to us, instead of, as is usual in poetry, a series of actions or events which serve as a backbone or substructure for the thought.
Herein lie the two main difficulties of appreciating that large class of Browning poetry known under the heading, dramatic monologues.
They are dramatic because they are spoken not in the person of the author, but in that of some imaginary character, whose personality the author assumes, but they differ from drama, as it is generally understood, first, because they are monologues, not dialogues; secondly, the circumstances, occasions, and settings of the monologues, instead of being suggested at the outset, are only indicated from time to time, and have to be picked up as we go along; thirdly, we have to follow a sequence of thoughts without any help from accompanying events or actions; and lastly, we are given no information, except incidentally, as to what goes before and comes after.
In other dramatic monologues of Browning the problem becomes more complicated, first, from the fact that in most of them he attempts to reveal a character, not merely a psychological situation, as in A Woman's Last Word; secondly, from the extraordinary variety of the characters he attempts to present.
The characters into whose mouths Browning puts his poems are a very varied assortment. In one poem, perhaps, it is a Greek philosopher who speaks, in the next a modern English divine; now it is an Italian duke of the sixteenth century, and now an Italian patriot of the nineteenth century. Each of these personages has a definite atmosphere and a typical environment, and that atmosphere and environment we must construct for ourselves before we can appreciate the poem properly.
Take, for example, the two poems, Fra Lippo Lippi and Andrea del Sarto. Each of these deals not only with the character and some of the history of an individual Italian painter, but sets forth in addition a particular phase in the development of Italian art, and at the same time gives us an insight into Browning's theory of art. To appreciate these poems, then, we must know something of the history of the historic personages who are represented as speaking, something of the Italy of their time; we must know in outline at least something of the history of Italian art, and have some knowledge of the technicalities of painting. Very many of Browning's poems are concerned with periods and personages about whom the ordinary reader knows nothing, hence the absolute need of some sort of a commentary, or of constant recourse to an encyclopaedia in reading him.
There is another difficulty connected with Browning's favourite form, the dramatic monologue. Most of these poems are only scraps of experience; we get no information, except by hints, of what has gone before; we are equally left to guess what comes after. The problem before us is something like that of reconstructing a whole conversation of which we have overheard only a small part.
Again, many of the poems do not describe a series of events, but only a series of thoughts or reflections. Hence there is nothing or very little to guide us in grasping the connection between the various parts of the poem, and many of the poems have to be read and re-read many times before the meaning begins to dawn on us.
In A Woman's Last Word there is not a single difficult phrase. The whole difficulty arises from the fact that it is a scrap, and from the fact that it is a series of thoughts without any action to thread them together and to make them definite.
Browning's poems are sometimes difficult to read because the ideas which he is expressing are profound and difficult to grasp; but far more often they are difficult because of his extraordinary way of expressing perfectly simple and easy ideas.
For example, here is a perfectly easy and obvious thought—that every day we see men winning money and reputation by mere imitation of some style that has caught the public taste, while the original inventor or discoverer of that style lives in obscurity and neglect. How does Browning express it?
Hobbs hints blue—straight he turtle eats,
Nobbs prints blue—claret crowns his cup,
Nokes outdares Stokes in azure feats—
Both gorge. Who finished the murex up?
What porridge had John Keats?
The point about the murex in this extract illustrates another difficulty with Browning, his assumption of knowledge on the part of his reader of all sorts of curious and out-of-the-way information. He is full of allusions to technical points in such things as painting, music, medicine, and classical scholarship which are as a rule known to only specialists in these particular subjects.
I might mention lastly in this connection a peculiarity of Browning's thought, namely, its tremendous rapidity. Let me illustrate. A beginner works out a problem in mathematics; he feels his way step by step; he puts down everything in order, and in going over the question we can follow easily every detail of the reasoning. A master mathematician confronted with the same problem would see his way from the beginning right through to the end; he would leave out half of the intermediate steps because to him they were quite obvious and not worth putting down, and when we came to look over his work we might completely fail to see how he had reached his conclusion.
So with Browning. Browning skips from thought to thought with great rapidity, leaving intermediate steps to be filled in by the intelligence of the reader. As Chesterton says, if Browning had to describe a quarrel between two men which culminated in one calling the other a liar and knocking him downstairs, he would probably do it something like this:
What then? You lie—and doormat below stairs
Takes bump from back.
That is to say, he would be in such a hurry to get his man to the bottom of the stairs that he would leave out half of the intermediate steps.
I have given you this fairly full discussion as an example of how a rather difficult thing may be done, namely, how a single poem may sometimes be used to give an introduction to a poet and prepare a class for reading the remainder of his work.
Before I close let me give you a couple of things I have discovered about teaching which may be useful to you. First, it is more important to be physically fit than to be well prepared. If you feel well and look it, your class will be in good humour even if you are not well prepared. Be worried and tired, and your class will soon become worried and tired too. Secondly, it is better to teach too little than too much. Do not subject your class to mental indigestion. Thirdly, one should always try to appear interested. Lastly, one should never appear to be in a hurry. Nothing annoys a class more than to be rushed madly from point to point without a breathing space.