“Dear me!” she exclaimed, laughing. “I can fancy I see you, a grim old pedagogue, with a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles and a snuff-coloured coat! What would be your new system, Mr Professor?”
“Well,” said I, “in the first place, I should not dream of putting books like Schiller’s dramas into their hands, as is the ordinary course, before they were able to translate pretty fluently, gathering the sense of what they read without the aid of a dictionary. I say nothing against the masterpieces of the great German classic. I like Schiller, myself. But, what boy or girl can appreciate the poetry of his descriptions, and the grandeur of his verse, when every second word they meet with is a stumbling-block, that has to be sought out diligently in the lexicon ere they can understand the context? Instead of this inculcating a love for what they read, it breeds disgust. Even now, I confess, I cannot take an interest in William Tell, just because he, and his fellow Switzers, of Uri and elsewhere, will always be associated in my mind with so many lines of translation and repetition that I had to learn by heart at school.”
“But, what would you give your pupils to study in lieu of such works?” she asked.
“Vividly interesting stories—novels, if you like—in the language they had to learn. Not short pieces, or ‘elegant extracts;’ but, good, long tales of thrilling adventure and well worked-up plots, whose interest, and the desire to know what was coming next, would make them read on and stammer out the sense, until they reached the dénouement. And, if it should be objected that German and French novels are not exactly what you would place before young children for study, I would retort, that, the majority of the works of our best authors are now translated into both those languages almost as soon as they are published over here; let them read those! However, you were saying that you did not think German poetry pleasing or euphonious?”
“No,” she said, “I do not; although, it may be owing to what you have remarked, that school study has given me a distaste for it. Still, you have now made me wish that I knew more of it. I think I will take it up again; and, perhaps, Mr Professor, under your tuition, I may learn better to like it.”
“I should be only too glad, Min,” I said, “to unfold its beauties to you; but, I’m the worst teacher in the world, and too impatient of blunders. Yet, I don’t think I could be a very hard master to you” I added, lowering my voice to a whisper.
“Couldn’t you?” she said. “I don’t know about that, Master Frank! I well remember a particular evening, and my birthday party; and how a certain gentleman—whom I won’t name—behaved then and since.”
“Oh! Haven’t you forgiven me yet, Min?” I exclaimed. “I thought—”
“Don’t mind about that,” she said, hurriedly.—“Go on with what you were telling me concerning German; the others will hear you! Do you think the language soft?”
“I can’t say exactly that it is as soft as our own,” I proceeded to say, for the benefit of Miss Spight, who appeared to be listening to our conversation.—“But, a good many people, who call the Teuton tongue uncouth, seem to forget its close resemblance both in style and expression, to English. Either language can be rendered in the vernacular of the other, without losing its force or even sound; and that is more than can be said for French or Italian. Shakspeare, for instance, in German, is almost equally as telling and forcible as Shakspeare in English; while, in French—Bah! you should just hear it as once I heard it, and you would laugh! Indeed, if we are strictly logical on the point of the euphony of language, the Italian dialect, which we deem so soft and liquid, sounds quite harsh, I’m told, in comparison with the labial syllables that the Polynesian islanders use in the South Seas.”