Themes retelling the plot of novel or play are seldom satisfactory. Satisfactorily to summarize the story of a work of any length requires more literary grasp than can possibly be expected in a secondary
school. It is far better to set the wits of children to work to fill up gaps of time in the stories as they are originally written; to imagine what Macbeth and his wife had said to each other before he goes to the chamber of Duncan in the second act, for instance, or the talk between Silas Marner and Eppie after the visit in which Godfrey Cass disclosed himself as the girl's father. These are not easy subjects, and it is not to be expected that the grade of work produced will be high, but it is at least likely to be original and genuine.
Description is a snare into which it is easy for teacher or pupil to fall. It generally means the more or less conscious imitation of passages from the reading, or a sort of crazy-quilt of scraps in which sentences of the author are clumsily pieced together. In the highest grades good work may sometimes be obtained by asking pupils to describe the setting of a scene in a play, but this is far too difficult for most classes.
Examination of character, of situations, or of motives affords the best opportunity for written work in connection with literary study. To make literary study subordinate to the practice of composition is manifestly wrong, yet in many schools this is done in practice even if it is not justified in theory. Children should be taught to write by other means than by themes in connection with the masterpieces of literature. The old cry against using "Paradise Lost," and the soliloquies of Hamlet as exercises in parsing might well be repeated with
added emphasis of the modern fashion of making Shakespeare and Milton mere adjuncts to a course in composition. The written work is, of course, to be corrected where it is faulty, but its chief purpose should never be anything outside of the better understanding and appreciation of the authors read.
In a brief, sensible pamphlet on "Methods of Teaching of Novels" May Estelle Cook remarks:
There is another point which I should like to make for the study of character, though with some hesitation, since there is room for great difference of opinion about it. It is this: that the study of character leads directly to the exercise of the moral instinct. Whether we like it or not, it is true that the school-boy—even the boy, and much more the girl—will raise the question, "Is it right?" and "Is it wrong?" and that we must either answer or ignore these questions. My own feeling about it is that this irrepressible moral instinct was included by Providence partly for the purpose of making a special diversion in favor of the English teacher. . . . A boy will read scenes in "Macbeth" through a dozen times for the sake of deciding whether Macbeth or Lady Macbeth was chiefly responsible for the murder of Duncan, when he will read them only once for the story; and this extra zeal is not so much because he wants to satisfy a craving for facts, as because he enjoys fixing praise or blame. . . . My experience with the Sir Roger de Coverley papers has been that the class failed to get any imaginative grasp of them until I frankly appealed to the moral instinct by asking, "What did Addison mean to teach in this paper?" "Did the Eighteenth Century need that lesson?" and "Do we still need it?" By that process the class have finally reached a grasp
of Sir Roger which has given them fortitude to write a theme on "Sir Roger at an Afternoon Tea."
My own definition of imagination is evidently not that of the writer, and I am not able to agree that this appeal to the moral instinct develops anything other than an intellectual understanding; but that point is unimportant here. The thing which is to be noted is that on the moral side children may be able to think intelligently and individually in regard to the characters and the situations of the plays and the novels read. The teacher, in choosing such subjects for written work, must, of course, be careful to avoid topics which have already been considered in the book itself. In a novel by George Eliot, for instance, all possible moral issues are likely to be so discussed and rediscussed by the novelist as to leave little room for the thought of the reader to exercise itself independently; but in all the plays of Shakespeare, and in the fiction of most of the masters, the opportunities are ample.
The supreme test of any subject which is to be given to students in their written work is whether it is one upon which it is reasonable to suppose they can and will have thought which is individual and therefore original. If it were necessary to make nice distinctions between that which is and that which is not legitimately part of the study of literature as an art, one must go much further than this. The writing of themes, however, is part of the examinational side of the work; the main thing is