The Boston Watchman adds to such commendations as the above the following testimony:
“The plan is an ingenious one, and is carried out with spirit. It need not be said that the fine literary taste and critical acumen of Prof. Wilkinson are shown to much advantage. Only by a fair trial can the practical worth of such a series be proved. We have found pleasure in reading the volume.”
In suggesting to Dr. Wilkinson the idea of this “After-school Series,” I requested him:
1. To give in two volumes the substance of what the college boy in his preparatory and college course would learn of Greek literature—not the language, but the literature;
2. To put into his books as far as possible the method and spirit of the college recitation room, discussing collateral topics, introducing biographical and classical incidents, and employing illustrations from modern life and literature; to put his individuality into the work, so that teacher and pupils might be brought into friendly relations, and thus something of the animation and enthusiasm of the recitation room be enjoyed by solitary students.
It is Dr. Wilkinson’s attempt to realize this idea that produces the impression upon one critic of the “uninstructive chattiness” of the author. To a man who has just spent eight years in the study of the classics, and who makes them a specialty, there may be some things in Dr. Wilkinson’s book which are not instructive; to people for whom the book was written, there is not an uninstructive page in the book. Perfection in the recitation room may not be possible. Qualities in the viva voce teacher which attract and delight and benefit one student may not so favorably impress, and may sometimes almost annoy, another. A member of the Circle writes (in reference, no doubt, to Dr. Wilkinson’s book): “One author frequently converses, as it were, with the reader, telling him in a friendly way of the many things he will relate after a while.… The book has caused the Circle to be ridiculed, and I could not think it was not without cause.”
I can readily see how a college graduate, just released from the recitation room, with lofty ideals of scholarship, and with really a vast amount of knowledge, might depreciate with a tone of contempt such a work as that of Dr. Wilkinson. I can see, too, how that smile of contempt from a scholar with local reputation might annoy and afflict less cultivated people belonging to a local circle who, devoted to an institution, are anxious that it and its text-books should receive the commendation of cultivated men. Just such commendation Dr. Wilkinson’s books have received. There may be now and then a slight tone of “chattiness.” There may be too frequent “forecasting of plan and purpose,” but on the whole the Professor’s work is admirably done, and has received the unqualified approval of our best students, men and women of the highest culture, eminent professors of Greek and Latin who fully understand and appreciate the aim of the author. I can assure my correspondent that there is nothing in Dr. Wilkinson’s books to cause the Circle or the books to be “ridiculed” by any true scholar.
A recent university graduate, and I have no doubt a brilliant scholar, writes:
“I wonder if it is safe to hint that, while the Chautauqua Idea is a noble and praiseworthy one, it is possible that the working out of the Idea may be defective?… When the members of the Circle read so faithfully the works prescribed, giving in many cases time that can ill be spared, it is but just that the very best should be given them to study, that alone will be of profit to the members, and help them to grow.”