Literature for Children

by Orton Lowe

"They hear like Ocean on a western beach
The surge and thunder of the Odyssey."—Lang.

There is not the slightest necessity for schoolmen's staring at one another when it is proposed to let boys once more look through magic casements at the classic myths of Greece and Rome. These masters of knowledge can depend upon it that their pedagogic systems are wrong if they set themselves up against the primitive feelings of mystery and fear. There is yet too strong a trace in the blood to forsake the gods and heroes that have satisfied instincts, very human and commendable, for many generations. No goblin nor witch needs to be cast out when the blood flows red; it is merely an indication of abundant life drawn from the strength and courage that marked an heroic age. If a boy's talents be anything but mediocre, they will naturally turn to this age to satisfy a longing. It is small wonder that the young Keats should stay up all night reading Chapman's Homer, or should translate the Æneid into English "just for fun." These glimpses were pure serene to a poet who afterwards caught in such a rare way their classic beauty; and the gods surely loved him for it, for they decreed that he should die young.

The charm of the myths of Greek and Roman literature is enduring, because they embody both truth and beauty—sometimes held to be one and the same. Nothing but a perverted taste, that is fed on the prosaic processes of material achievements or the artificial standards of a moral system, could fail to find pleasure and inspiration in them. Their appeal is artistic, to the sense of beauty. Their truth is a deification of the longings of the human heart as it seeks for comfort and protection in a world whose mysterious events can hardly be fathomed. And their gods and heroes embody the great virtues that marked a classic people as much as they did the beauty of their intellectual achievements—the virtues of courage, patience, honour, loyalty, contentment. A normal disposition will take satisfaction in this interpretation of truth and beauty. Not only will its possessor be satisfied, but he will be ennobled by the very presence of these qualities before his keen senses. The world will seem to him more than a place in which he is to toil and spin day after day; his soul will dwell apart on a mountain where not all mortals can ever climb, a mountain crowded with culture. He can temporarily leave the common crofts, seek his solace and confession, and be all the better to ply again his allotted task. He will learn of one spot where the greed and brutality of industrial progress cannot set its heel and leave the print of what is practical and ugly.

This cry for the practical has laid a curse on the culture of many a boy. He has been educated for the eight or ten hours that he works for his board and keep, and the rest of his waking day finds him ill at ease in a field of study or an appreciation of the better things of life. Not being able to "speak Greek" or to talk with men who do speak Greek, he naturally turns to the spectacular, the ornate, the frivolous. Nothing of an order above the broadly burlesque or the melodramatic will hold his interest and attention. The theatre of Dionysus is too severely classical in the beauty with which it represents life in action, and he never learns to sit out a pure tragedy, hear "sweetest Shakespeare warble his native wood-notes wild," or dilate on the right emotions, if "Jonson's learnéd sock be on."

The boy's talents are in all probability not at fault. They are merely dressed in the prevailing fashion. This fashion is set by a standard of what is useful for material success in life. The subject-matter of education must be scientific facts, and with these facts the boy must be taught to reason. The uselessness of imagination and memory as mental powers is held up to him. It is not for him to enrich his mind by what an active and retentive memory can give him of classic literature. In fact, the memory is looked upon, by the "scientific gent" (as Thackeray labelled him) in his laboratory, as a minor concern and left to work out its own salvation—if it really needs to be saved. And as for the memory being used to chronicle the exploits of mythical heroes in an age of superstition, that would be unthinkable in the day of scientific research. Let not the boy then be held up to blame if he is no more able to name the Olympian council than was Tom Sawyer to name the first two disciples chosen. The fault is with the system, the rational scientific system.

Greek is well nigh gone from the high school course. Latin is under indictment. In their stead we are to have such substitutes as biology and chemistry. The exploits of Achilles and the wanderings of Æneas are to be supplanted by the dissection of an oyster and the making of soap. Now oysters and soap are all right in their way, and it is a good thing we have the one to eat and the other to wash with; but when it comes to using them to satisfy the instinct for a fight or for the discovery of a hidden treasure, that is a stupid and brutal forcing of a theory. If progress must come at the price of selling a boy's birthright for a mess of pottage, it is a pity some one cannot smite her with the edge of a sword. The study of the humanities that has been the bone and sinew of generations past cannot give place to the scientific vogue without wrecking the hope and desire of many a romantic youth. To leave out the classics is to proclaim a material age to be bigoted, boastful, and self-sufficient. Yet that is exactly what the scientific educator, who calls himself modern and progressive, is proposing, because business demands it. What claim has a business demand on academic policy, anyhow? Is not vagabondia as much entitled to the floor?

"The descent to Avernus is easy." Reformed spelling is not so hard as Greek roots. In fact, the plan is to follow along the line of least resistance. The memory must not be cumbered with dead matter if the boy can reason on experiments for practical business demands. And are not the myths of these Greek and Latin languages too imaginative and impractical, covered with too much of academic dust, to serve a purpose in a practical age? This is heralded from educational convention to educational convention, and whilst the breaking of idols goes merrily on, a few brave teachers who speak Greek are regularly taking a Spartan stand to preserve what yet remains of the classic structure. In a boastful age they are not going to forget. If Homer and Ovid are forced by business demands from the academic halls, what hope is there left in Israel?

The one and only one seems to be the myths in translation. Their claim to the attention of teachers can be clearly given from the preface to the best telling of them that has yet appeared, Bulfinch's "Age of Fable; or, Beauties of Mythology," a happy title to such a valuable book: "If no other knowledge deserves to be called useful but that which helps to enlarge our possessions or to raise our station in society, then Mythology has no claims to the appellation. But if that which tends to make us happier and better can be called useful, then we claim that epithet for our subject; for Mythology is the handmaid of literature, and literature is one of the best allies of virtue and promoters of happiness.

"Without a knowledge of mythology much of the elegant literature of our own language cannot be understood and appreciated. When Byron calls Rome 'the Niobe of nations,' or says of Venice, 'she looks a Sea-Cybele fresh from ocean,' he calls up to the mind of one familiar with our subject illustrations more vivid and striking than the pencil could furnish, but which are lost to the reader ignorant of mythology. Milton abounds in similar allusions. The short poem 'Comus' contains more than thirty such, and the ode 'On the Morning of the Nativity' half as many. Through 'Paradise Lost' they are scattered profusely. This is one reason why we often hear people say that they cannot enjoy Milton. But were these persons to add to their solid acquirements the easy learning of this little volume, much of the poetry of Milton which has appeared to them 'harsh and crabbed' would be found 'musical as is Apollo's lute.'"

The truth of this last statement is very evident to the English teacher in high school work. He must stop to teach myths that should be the common possession of all children before he can go on with his work in the "Minor Poems." If boys would enter the high school with some of the classic myths firmly drilled into them, they would read with pleasure the most imaginative of all the English poets. Mythology in translation is a fixed possession of English literature, and it must be grasped more or less in detail before the boy can ever expect to have the marks of literary culture and to read figurative composition with ease. With the beginning of school life must begin the learning of myths by word of mouth. No classical dictionary can later take the place of this practice. These myths are to be mastered and reproduced in good English; and after a few years of such drill the children will read the stories of gods and heroes with the same ease that they do a colloquial fairy tale. It is the same old step from the story-teller to the book and a quiet corner where no one can break the spell.