Chapter VI: Part 6

In this first reading the teacher will do well to indicate such points of stage-setting as are not evident, and such stage "business" as is necessary to the understanding of the scene. It is as well, however, not to give too much stress to this. To follow the play of emotions is with children instinctive, and this they will do without dwelling on the details of the scene too closely in a material sense. At least a very little aid will be sufficient at this stage. In a subsequent reading these matters may be more fully brought out, although I am convinced that even then it is easy to overdo the insisting upon aids to visualization.

What may be done and should not be omitted is the interspersion in passing of comments so brief that they do not interrupt, yet which throw light upon meanings which might otherwise be likely to pass unnoticed. Nothing should be touched upon in this way which is so complicated as to require more than a word or two to make it plain. What I mean is illustrated by these examples:

I come Graymalkin.
Paddock calls.—_i_, 9, 10.

The voice in reading conveys the idea that the witches speak to familiar spirits in the air, but it is well to state that fact explicitly.

What, can the devil speak true?—_iii_, 107.

Banquo thinks instantly of the word of the witches,

Glamis, and thane of Cawdor, etc.—_iii_, 111-119.

In these lines and in 126-147, it is of so much importance that the distinction between the asides and the direct speech be appreciated that it may be well to call attention to the changes.

Cousins, a word, I pray you.—_iii_, 126.

Banquo draws the others aside, probably to tell them of the prediction by the witches of the news they have brought, and this gives Macbeth a moment by himself to think of the strangeness of it.

Think upon what hath chanced.—_iii_, 153.

This is said, of course, to Banquo.

We will establish our estate upon
Our eldest son, Malcolm.—_iv_, 37.

Here the conditions of succession already spoken of may be alluded to, and the fact noted that if Macbeth had entertained any hopes of succeeding Duncan legitimately, these were now dispelled.

And when goes hence?—_v_, 60.

The sinister suggestion of this may well be emphasized by calling attention to it.

By your leave, hostess.—_vi_, 31.

With these words Duncan, who has taken the hand of Lady Macbeth, turns to lead her in.

VI

Once the play has been read as a whole the way has been prepared for more careful attention to details. For each recitation the parts should be assigned beforehand for oral reading, three or four pupils being assigned to each part so that in a long scene opportunity is given for bringing a number of the students to their feet.[180:1] It is well to prepare for this second reading by selecting the central motive of the play, and having the class discuss it. In the case of "Macbeth" it is easy to select ambition as the main thread. In some plays a single passion or emotion is not so easily detached, but it is generally needful to remember that if children are to be impressed and are to see things clearly, they must be dealt with simply; so that even at the expense of slighting for the time being some of the strands it is well to keep to the principle of naming one and holding to it with straightforwardness until the work is tolerably familiar.

The children should be made to say—not to write, for contagion of ideas is of the greatest importance here—what they understand by ambition, how far they have noticed it in others, and perhaps how far felt it themselves. A wise teacher should have little difficulty in making such a talk personal enough to enforce the idea without letting it become too intimate. It can be brought out that the test of ambition is the extent of the sacrifices one is willing to make to gratify it. The ambition already spoken of to excel in class, to be at the head of the school baseball nine or football team, to be popular with friends, and so on for the common ambitions of life may seem trifling, but it belongs to the language of the child's life. Here and there the teacher finds pupils who might seize the conception of ambition without starting so near the rudiments, but most need it; I am unable to see how any can be hurt by it. It is much more difficult to get a conception vividly into the minds of twenty pupils together than it is to impress the same thing upon a hundred separately, and I should never feel that I could afford to neglect the humblest means which might be serviceable. The talk, moreover, does not stop here. It is to be led on to what the boys and girls would wish to be in the world; and from this to historic instances of what men have done to gratify their ambitions. The assassination of the late King of Servia is still so recent as to seem much more real than murders farther back in history, and it lends itself well to the effort to make vital the tragedy that is being studied. I am not for an instant urging that literature shall be treated in too realistic a manner, as I hope to show before I conclude; but I do not feel that there is any fear of making it too real to the boys and girls with whom one must deal to-day in our schools.

It is perhaps well, too, that some comment should be made at this stage on the supernatural element. A class is likely to have had geometry by the time it has come to the study of Shakespeare, and most children can with very little difficulty be made to understand that in "Macbeth" and "The Ancient Mariner" the existence of the supernatural is the hypothesis upon which the work proceeds. When this is understood it is not amiss to develop the idea that Shakespeare perhaps introduced the witches as a way of showing how evil thoughts and desires spring up in the heart. The class will easily see that the ideas of ambition, of the possibility of gaining the crown, which little by little grew in the heart of Macbeth can be better shown to an audience by putting the words into the mouths of the witches than by means of soliloquies. This giving of reasons why the dramatist does one thing or another should not be pressed too far and should be touched upon with caution. It is often better to let a detail go unremarked than to run the risk of confusing the mind of the pupil. The witches, however, are almost sure to be remarked upon, and they must be considered frankly.

In this second reading such obscure passages as have been glided over before are to be taken into consideration. If the pupils have, as they should have, texts unencumbered with notes, they may be given a scene or two at a time, and told to use their wits in elucidating the difficulties. Often they show surprising intelligence in this line, and the bestowal of praise where it is deserved is one of the most effective as well as one of the pleasantest parts of the whole process. What they cannot elucidate alone, they may be if possible helped to work out in class, or, if this fails, may be told outright. If they have tried to arrive at the true meaning, they are in a condition when an explanation will have its best and fullest effect.

Passages in the first act of "Macbeth" which I have thus far passed over deliberately, to the end that the pupil be not bothered over too many difficulties at once, are such as these:

Fair is foul, and foul is fair,—_i_, 11.

Where the Norweyan banners flout the sky
And fan our people cold.—_ii_, 49, 50.

Nor would we deign him burial of his men
Till he disbursed, at Saint Colme's inch.—_ii_, 59, 60.

Ten thousand dollars.—_ii_, 62.

If, as is likely to be the case, the greater part or all of the class have passed the word "dollars" without notice, that fact serves to illustrate the need of care in reading. That they should pass it, moreover, illustrates also how the anachronism might pass unnoticed in Shakespeare's time, when historical accuracy was the last thing about which a playwright bothered his head. The teacher may well here refer back to the idea of considering literature as the algebra of the emotions, and remind the class that as the poet was not endeavoring to write history or to tell what happened in a concrete instance, but only to represent the abstract principle of such a situation as that in which Macbeth and his wife were involved, a departure from historical accuracy is of no importance so long as it does not disturb the effect on the mind of the audience or reader.

No more that thane of Cawdor shall receive
Our bosom interest.—_ii_, 63, 64.

I'll give thee a wind.—_iii_, 11.

The supposed power of the witches to control the winds and the superstitions of the sailors about buying favorable weather from them may be taken up in the first reading; but it seems better to leave it for the time when the effect of the play as a whole has been secured, and the interruption will be less objectionable.

His wonders and his praises do contend
Which should be thine or his: silenced with that.—_iii_, 63.

That, trusted home.—_iii_, 120.

Poor and single business.—_vi_, 16.

Like the poor cat i' the adage.—_vii_, 45.

It is not necessary to continue this list. Its length is decided by the one fixed principle to which is no exception: it is too long the moment the teacher fails to hold the interest of the class in the work which is being done. No amount of information acquired or skill in passing examinations can compensate for the harm done by associating the plays of Shakespeare in the minds of the student with the idea of dulness or boredom.

Textual explanation, however, is of small importance as compared to an intelligent grasp of the office and effect of each incident and each scene in the development of the story and of the characters of the actors in the tragedy. At the end of each scene, or for that matter at any point which seems well to the instructor, the students should in this second reading be called upon to comment orally on what has been done in the play and what has been shown. I have much more faith in the genuineness of what a boy says on his feet in the class room than in what he may write at home. A teacher with the gentlest hint may at once stop humbug and conventionality when it is spoken, but when stock phrases, conventional opinions, views imperfectly remembered or consciously borrowed from somebody's notes have been neatly copied out in a theme, no amount of red ink corrects the evil that has been done. The important thing is to get an appreciation, no matter how limited or imperfect it may be, which is yet genuine and intelligent.

With the matter of disputed readings, I may say in parenthesis, the teacher in the secondary school has no more to do than to answer doubts which may arise in the minds of the pupils. Personally I should offer to the consideration of the class the conjectural reading of the line

Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself.—_vii_, 27.
Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps its selle (saddle);

because it seems to me so plausible and because it is likely to commend itself. For the most part, however, I should let sleeping dogs lie, and if nobody noticed the possible confusion of the text, I would not risk confusion of mind by calling attention to it.

The personal opinions of the class upon the actions and the acts of the characters are not difficult to get at in this way, and often will be the more fully shaped and more clearly thought out if the pupil is constrained to defend an unpopular view. I am not introducing anything new, for this sort of discussion is carried on by every intelligent teacher; it is mentioned here only for the sake of completeness in the process of treating a play in the class-room.

VII

It may seem superfluous to some teachers to end the study as it began, by a complete, uninterrupted reading of the whole. It is possible that sometimes it would weary a class already weary of going over the same ground; but if so the class has been on the wrong tack throughout. I make the suggestion, however, in confidence that the effect will be good, and that the students will enjoy this review. Whether the reading is done by teacher or pupils depends somewhat upon circumstances; but it should certainly be by the pupils if possible.

VIII

I have carefully and intentionally omitted all mention of the study of the sources of the plot, the probable date of the play, and things of that sort which interest thorough Shakespearean scholars, and which are the chosen subjects of pedantic formalists. Metrical effects and subtilties are beyond any pupils I have ever encountered in secondary schools. I do not believe that students in the secondary schools should be troubled with any study of this sort. The teacher should of course be prepared briefly to answer any questions of this nature which are put, and to show the pupils where in books of reference information may be found. The great principle is, however, to include in the study nothing which does not enhance the impression of the play as a work of imaginative literature, and to omit everything which can possibly be spared without endangering this general effect.

The danger of overshadowing literary study with irrelevant information is great and constant. The amount of special knowledge which a child must acquire to appreciate a play of Shakespeare's is unhappily large in any case; and the constant aim of the teacher should be to reduce this to a minimum. It is far better that a pupil go through the work with imaginative delight and fail to get the exact meaning of half the obscure passages than that he be bored and wearied by an exact explanation of all of them at the expense of the inspiration of the work as a whole. My painful doubts of the wisdom of our present scheme of insisting upon the study of literature in the common schools arises largely from the unhappy necessity of having so much explained and the too common lack of courage to do a sufficient amount of judicious ignoring of difficulties.

IX

I cannot shirk entirely, as I should be glad to do, the question of written work on the play we have been considering.[188:1] It is a thousand pities that children must be required to write anything about "Macbeth" when they have read it; but it is evident that under existing conditions they will be required to produce something on paper. In regard to this I must repeat that they should never be asked to write as exercises in composition. Everything that a child writes is, in one sense, a rhetorical exercise, but the teacher should impress it upon the class that here the chief aim is to get an expression of the child's thought. The more completely the children can be made to feel that this is not a "composition," but a statement of impressions, of personal tastes, and of opinions, the better.

What subjects are suited for written work is a matter which must be decided by each teacher according to the dispositions, the knowledge, the aptitude shown by the scholars in a particular class. It will inevitably be influenced largely by examination-papers; and in the face of the lists of subjects provided by these it is idle to offer any particular suggestions. In general the test of a subject, so far as real benefit is concerned, is whether it is one upon which the student may fairly be expected to be able to feel and to reason in terms of his own experience. A subject is suited to his needs so long, and so long only, as he is able to consider it as a matter which might concern him personally. He may think crudely and he must of course think inadequately; but he should at least think sincerely and without regard to what somebody else has thought before him. He should be original in the sense that he is putting down his own impressions, is writing thoughts which have not been gathered from books, but have been come at by considering the play in the light of whatever knowledge he personally has of life and human nature.

Much may depend, it is worth remarking, upon the way a subject for theme-work is given out. Phrases count greatly in all human affairs, but especially in the development of children. Adults are supposed to understand words so readily as to be free from the danger of receiving wrong impressions from phraseology which is unfamiliar; but whether this be true or not, certain it is that the young are often bewildered by words and queerly affected by turns of language. The same theme-subject may be hopelessly incomprehensible or at least unhappily remote when stated in one way, while in another wording it is entirely possible. The first essential is to make clear beyond all possibility of doubt what is required, and this is to be accomplished only by using language which the student understands. The teacher must here as in all instruction keep constantly in mind that language that is clear and familiar to him may be nothing less than cryptic to the class. I remember a lad in a country school who was hopelessly bewildered when confronted with the subject given out by his teacher: "What Character in this Book Appeals to You Most, and on what Grounds?" yet who wrote easily enough a very respectable theme when I said: "She only wants you to pick out the person in the book you like best, and tell why you like him." "Oh, is that all?" he said at first incredulously. "But that isn't saying anything about grounds." The incident, absurd as it is, is really typical.

I have usually found that the word "compare" will reduce most students to mere memories, as they strive almost mechanically to reproduce things set down in the notes of text-books. Nothing is more common than subjects like "Compare the Characters of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth," "Compare 'L'Allegro' and 'Il Penseroso,'" and so on. The result is generally a statement of the criticisms of the characters or works mentioned, a statement which is a poor rehash of notes, but has of real comparison no trace. The comparison calls for analytical powers far beyond anything pupils are likely to have developed; and when a boy asked me not so very long ago what a teacher expected of him when he had been required to compare Sir Roger de Coverley and Will Honeycomb I was forced to reply that I was utterly unable even to conjecture. I regard the frequent appearance of theme-subjects of this sort in the secondary schools with mingled envy and wonder: envy for the teachers who apparently possess the power to elicit satisfactory work on these lines, and wonder that the power to do this work seems so completely to disappear when the pupil leaves the secondary schools.

To comment on the subjects which have actually stood upon entrance examinations in the last half-dozen years would in the first place be invidious, in the second would expose me to an unpleasant danger of seeming to challenge attention to papers for which I have been personally responsible, and in the third place would do no possible good. A teacher with common sense can make the application of the general principles I have stated if he choose; and he will at least minimize the unfortunate necessity of making the written work a preparation for examinations.

X

Memorizing is perhaps best done in connection with the last reading of the play, but that is a mere detail. Students should be encouraged to commit to memory the finest passages, and should be given an opportunity of repeating them in the class with as much intelligent effectiveness as possible. They should not, of course, be encouraged or allowed to rant or to "spout" Shakespeare; but the teacher should insist that at least lines be recited so that the meaning is brought out clearly, and he should encourage the speaker to give each passage as if it were being spoken as the expression of a distinct personal thought.

. . . . . . . . .

As I said at the beginning of this chapter, I have not endeavored to provide a model, but merely for the sake of suggestiveness to offer an illustration. This is at least one way in which the study of a play may be taken up in the secondary school. Whether it is the best way for a given case is another matter; and I must at the risk of tiresome iteration add that here as everywhere the highest function of the teacher is to discover what is the best possible method not for the world in general, but for the particular class to be dealt with at the moment.

FOOTNOTES:

[167:1] A metal covering for the head: a helmet.

[175:1] Page 80.

[180:1] Personally I would never have a pupil recite except on his feet.

[188:1] See chapter xi.

XIV

CRITICISM

What should be used in the way of tests of the knowledge of pupils is a puzzling question for any teacher. Like any other pedagogically natural and necessary inquiry, it can be answered only with a repetition of the caution that no set of hard and fast rules will apply to all schools or to all classes. Students themselves, however, would often be perplexed if they were not given definite tasks to perform, definite questions to answer, definite facts to memorize. In acquiring the vocabulary needed for the reading of a play both teacher and pupil feel with satisfaction that legitimate because tangible work is being done; and for either it is hard to appreciate the fact that the essential thing in the study of literature is too intangible to be tested or measured by specific standards. In what I have called the inspirational treatment of literature both are likely to feel as if a vacation is being taken from real work, since the impression is general that the only method of keeping within the limits of useful educational progress is dependent upon the accomplishing of concrete tasks.

The need of fitting students for examinations is generally allowed in practice to answer the question what shall be done. I have already said that I have personally little faith in the ultimate value of much of the drill thus imposed, and it is hardly to be supposed that any intelligent teacher could be satisfied to let matters rest here. Certainly a pupil who graduates from the high school should have some power of criticising intelligently any book which comes into his hands, and of forming estimates of diction, general form, and to a less extent even of style. His criticism is necessarily incomplete; but it should be genuine and sound as far as it goes. Such a result is not dependent upon the power of passing examinations, but is chiefly secured by precisely that training in appreciation which is least formal and may easily appear farthest from practice in criticism.

Some actual and definite criticism, however, is legitimately a part of the school-work; and concerning this certain things present themselves to my mind as obvious. In the first place criticism is of no value, but rather is harmful, if it fails to be genuine. From this follows the deduction that no criticism can profitably be required until the child is old enough to form an opinion, and that at no stage should comments be asked which are beyond the child's intellectual development. In the early stages criticism is necessarily genuine in proportion as it is personal; and it must have become entirely easy and natural before it can safely be made at all theoretic.

In the early stages of the use of literature in education, as has been said already, the aim is to help the child to enjoy, and to understand so that enjoyment may be inevitable. This should normally be done in the home, but since in a large number of cases in the common schools the effects of home training in literature are so lamentably wanting, the teacher must in most cases undertake to begin at the very beginning. So far as criticism goes, the early stages are of course merely the rudimentary likings or dislikings, and the encouragement of expression of such tastes. Following this comes naturally the putting into word of reasons for preferences. This must be done with simplicity, in the homeliest and most unconventional manner, and above all with no hint to the child that he is doing anything so large as to "criticise." It is precisely at this stage that children are most in danger of contracting the habit of repeating parrot-like the opinions of their elders. All of us have to begin life by receiving the views of adults, and we are all—except in the rare instances of extraordinary geniuses, who need not be much considered here—eager to conceal lack of knowledge by glib repetitions of the ideas of others. To force young pupils to give opinions when they have none of their own to give is to repeat the mistake which Wordsworth notes in his "Lesson for Fathers." The child in the poem unthinkingly declared that he preferred his new home to the old. His father insists upon a reason, and the poor little fellow, having none, is forced into the lie:

"At Kilve there is no weathercock,
And that's the reason why."

In the lower grades the thing which may well and wisely be done is to accustom the children to literature and to literary language. If pupils come to the upper grades and show that this has not been done, the teacher still has it to do, just as he must teach them the alphabet or the multiplication-table if they arrive without the knowledge of these essentials to advanced work. This is the only safe foundation upon which work may rest, and although to acquire it consumes the time which should be put on more elaborate study, that study cannot be soundly done until the rudimentary preparation is well mastered. Criticism must be postponed until the pupil is prepared for it.

Criticism, whenever it come, must begin simply, and it must be connected with the actual life and experience of the child. We are constantly endangering success in teaching by being unwilling to stop at the limits of the possible. Boys and girls will be frank about what they read if they are once really convinced that frankness is what is expected and desired. They are constantly, if not always consciously, on the watch for what the teacher wishes them to say. Whatever encourages them to think for themselves and to state that thought unaffectedly and freely is what is educationally valuable, and this only.

Opinions concerning characters in tales perhaps do as well as anything for the beginning of criticism in classes. A teacher may say to a pupil: "Suppose you had known Silas Marner, what would you have thought of him?" The child is easily led to perceive the difference between seeing or knowing such a man in real life, with its limited chances of any knowledge of character, of the past history of the weaver, of his secret thoughts, or of his feelings, and knowing him from the book which gives all these details so fully. The question then becomes: "Suppose you had in some way found out about him all that the novel tells, what would you have felt?" The teacher will easily detect and should with the gentlest firmness and the firmest gentleness suppress any conventional answers. The young girl who with glib conventionality declares that Silas was a noble character whom she pities because of the way in which he was misunderstood may be questioned whether if she had lived in Raveloe she would have seen more than the homely, unsocial stranger, and whether, even had she known all that was concealed under his homely life, she could have held out against his general unpopularity. She is forced to think when she is asked whether among those who live around her may not be men and women whose lives are as pathetic and as misjudged as was that of the weaver. Children have ideas about the personages in the stories they hear or read, and it is only necessary to encourage, in each pupil according to his temperament, first the formulating of these clearly and then the frank stating of them.

In all this sort of criticism one thing which should be sedulously avoided is any appearance of drawing a moral. Deliberately to draw a moral is almost inevitably to defeat any lesson which the tale might enforce if it is left to make its own effect. The point to be aimed at here is not to turn the story into a sermon, but to make it as close to the individual life of the child as is possible. The difference is in essence that between being told a thing and experiencing it. Once this relation is established, the child feels an emotional share in the matter such as can be created by no amount of sermonizing. It may be doubted if any genuine child ever drew a moral spontaneously, and in all this work spontaneity is the beginning of wisdom.

After the pupil has come to have some notion, more or less clear according to his own mental development, of what the personages in a story or a play are like, he easily goes on to determine the relation of one event to another, the interrelation between the separate parts of the work. He should be able to tell in a general way at least what influence one character has upon another, and of the responsibility of each in the events of the narrative.

These opinions should as much as possible be put into speech before being written. The subject should be talked out, however, in a manner so sincere and straightforward as to make conventionality impossible. Students must be held rigorously to honest and simple expression of real beliefs and feelings. In every class, and perhaps especially among girls, are likely to be some who will surely repeat conventional phrases. Children pick up set phrases with surprising ease, and will offer them whenever they have reason to believe such counterfeit will be received instead of real coin. These shams are easily recognized, and they should be mercilessly dealt with, almost anything except sarcasm, that weapon which is forbidden to the teacher, being legitimate against such cant. The student who repeats a set phrase is usually effectually disposed of by a request to explain, to make clear, and to prove; so that the habit of meaningless repetition cannot grow unless the teacher is insensitive to it. The genuine ideas of the pupils may be developed and put into word in the class, and afterwards the writing out will involve getting them into order and logical sequence.

It may be objected that by this process each scholar will borrow ideas from what he hears said in the class. This is in reality no serious drawback to the method. If the individuals are trained to think for themselves, each will judge the views which are presented in class, and will make them his own by shaping and modifying them. In any case the danger of a student's getting too many ideas is not large, and those he gets from his peers, his classmates, are much more likely to appeal to him and to remain in his mind than any which he culls from books. The notions will sometimes be crude, but they will be so corrected and discussed in recitation that they cannot be essentially false.

Any criticism which is received from pupils, whether spoken or written, must first of all be intelligent. Sound common sense is the only safe basis for any comment, and the higher the grade of a work of literature imaginatively the more easy is it to treat it in a common-sense spirit. Pupils should be made to feel not only that they have a right to any opinion of their own on what they read, but that they are expected to have one; and that this opinion may be of any nature whatever, so long as they can justify it by sound reasons. Still farther than this, they should be allowed freely to cherish tastes for which they cannot give formal justification—provided they can show a reasonable appreciation of the real qualities of the work they like or dislike. In the higher regions of imaginative work the power of analysis of the most able critic may fail; and it is manifestly idle to expect from school-children exhaustive criticism of high things which yet they may feel deeply.

Since it is of so much importance that all comment and criticism shall be sincere, care must be taken to keep work within limits which make sincerity possible. Students must not be required to perform tasks which are in the nature of things impossible. To push beyond dealing with comparatively simple matters in a frank and direct manner, is inevitably to encourage the use of conventional phrases and to replace sincerity with cant.

A nice question connects itself with the determination of how much it is proper and wise to require of children: it is how much farther it is well to call upon them to criticise literature than we should ask them to comment on life. We need to know what we are doing, and though an examination of the character and motives of a criminal in a book is not the same thing as would be this sort of criticism applied to a flesh and blood neighbor, the two processes are the same in essence. The better the teacher succeeds in arousing the imagination of the pupil, moreover, the more closely the two approach. We should be sure that we are doing well in requiring of the young, who would not and should not be encouraged to dwell on actual crime and suffering, that they produce original opinions upon these things as represented in fiction.

It is of course to be allowed that no teaching can make fictions vital and real in exactly the same way as is that which is known actually to have happened. An imaginative child vitalizes the story which touches him, but does not bring it home to himself as he would occurrences within the circle of his own experience. It may be urged that by encouraging him to analyze sin in the comparatively remote world of fancy we give him a chance to perceive its moral hatefulness without that distrust of his fellows which might come if he were forced to learn the lesson from the harsher happenings of life; and that in books the knowledge of character and circumstance is so much fuller than it is likely to be in experience that he is able to see more clearly. The fact remains, however, that we should hardly expect or desire a lucid and reasonable estimate of the late King and Queen of Servia from the school-children who are being made to write laborious reams on the motives and the character of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth; that we should be shocked at finding boys and girls considering in real life occurrences like the seduction of Olivia Primrose, or suspicions like those Gareth entertained of Lynette. We certainly cannot afford to be prurient, or to confine the young to goody-goody books. They may generally be safely trusted, it seems to me, to read any tale or poem of first-class merit, although its subject were as painful as that of "Œdipus." They will receive it as they receive facts of life told by a wholesome-minded person, often with very little real perception of the darkest and most sinister side. It will be as it was with young Copperfield when he read Fielding's masterpiece and took delight in the hero, "a child's Tom Jones, a harmless creature." When it comes to the discussion of motives, of character, of black events in fiction, the case is different. The child is forced to take a new attitude; to accumulate the opinions of his elders, to view life from their more sophisticated point of view; and inevitably to receive a fresh, and not always a desirable insight into evil. I am not inclined to dogmatize on this point, and touch upon it chiefly for the sake of suggesting that teachers may do well to keep it a little in mind. Each case, it seems to me, must be decided upon its own merit, and I at least have no arbitrary rules to lay down. Of one thing, however, I am sure, and that is that whatever is taken up at all should be treated with absolute and fearless frankness.

All criticism of diction, style, or whatever belongs to literary workmanship necessarily comes late. In the secondary schools I believe very little can profitably be done in this line at all. Of this I shall speak later in connection with the study of workmanship, but here I may say that I suppose most teachers to recognize the obvious absurdity of such questions about metres and metrical effects as are given on page 43. That they should be gravely proposed in a book of advice is indication that somebody believes in them; but any class of students with which I have ever had to deal would be reduced to mechanical repetition of cant conventionality by the bare sight of such interrogations.

One thing which is of importance is the need of encouraging pupils to judge of any work as a whole. It is so much easier to deal with details than with a complete work that constantly students leave schools where the training is in many respects excellent, and have gained no ability to go beyond the examination of particulars. The far more important power of estimating a book or a play from its total effect has not been cultivated. No teacher should forget that the ability to deal fairly with a whole is of as much more value than any facility in minute criticism as that whole is greater than any of its parts.

This does not mean that a student can well summarize everything he reads or that he may wisely attempt it. It does imply that at least his attention shall have been directed over and over to the great fact that the study of details is not the study of a masterpiece; that he shall have been required to judge a book or a play, so far as he is able, as a whole work and with reference to its entire effect. In talking with undergraduates even about short works, pieces no longer than a single essay of Steele or a simple lyric, I constantly find that they are apt to have no conception whatever that they could or should do anything but pick out minute details. I ask what it amounts to as a whole, how it justifies itself, or what is its value as a complete poem or essay, and they seem utterly unable to see what I am driving at. The painful attempt to find out what I wish them to say so entirely occupies their minds as to render them incapable of using whatever power of judgment they may possess. Not long ago one boy said to me: "I didn't know it made any difference what the poem was about if you could pick out things in it." "What do you suppose it was written for?" I asked. A look of painful bewilderment came into his face, and he answered that he supposed some folks liked to write that way. I inquired whether he would test a bridge—he was an engineering student—by picking out bits without seeing how the parts held together and how strong it was as a whole, and he returned with puzzled frankness: "But a bridge has a use." "Very good," was what I assured him, "and so does a poem. Can't you appreciate that mankind has not been keeping poems from generation to generation without finding out if they really are useless? Any work of literature that is really good must be of value as a whole, and you have not got hold of it until you are able to see what it is for as a single thing, a complete unit." The fact is so evident that it seems almost absurd to mention it in a book intended for teachers, but scores of boys come yearly from the fitting-schools who prove how often the fact is ignored,—ignored, very likely, because it is taken for granted, but no less ignored with seriously ill effects.

In general, criticism in the secondary schools should have to do only with the good points of work. Unless a pupil himself shows that he perceives shortcomings in what is read, it is on the whole the place of the instructor to keep the attention of the class fixed on merits, while defects are ignored. This is not to be interpreted as meaning that any weakness should ever be allowed to pass for a merit; or as indicating that it is ever wise to shirk a difficulty. Any intelligent pupil, for instance, should see for himself that the metaphors are sadly and inexcusably mixed in the passage:

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them.

It is necessary to meet this knowledge frankly, and to show him how it is that Shakespeare can be so great in spite of faults like this. It is the inclination of childhood to feel that a man must be perfect to be great, but even at the cost of encountering the difficulty of such a faith the truth must be told. In general, however, it is as well not to go out of the way to enforce the doctrine of human fallibility, and the youthful mind is best nourished by being fed on what is good, rather than by being taught to perceive what is bad.

When a pupil is asked to put into words the reason why a piece is written, he should be required to answer by a complete sentence, a properly phrased assertion. He is not unlikely to begin by giving a single term, an incomplete and tentative phrase, or at best a fragmentary statement. For the sake of the clearness of his own idea and of the habit of accurate thinking, he should be encouraged and expected to make the idea clear and the statement finished. Student-criticism, as I have said perhaps often enough already, cannot in the nature of things be either profound or exhaustive, but it should be intelligent and well defined as far as it goes.

XV

LITERARY WORKMANSHIP

The appreciation of literary workmanship dawns very slowly on the child's mind. In the secondary schools not much can be accomplished in the way of making students feel the niceties of literary art; but something should be done to enforce the nature and the worth of technique. Much that touches the undergraduate's feelings he cannot analyze, and should never in any work of the secondary schools be asked to criticise. He should, however, if he is to be systematically trained in the study of masterpieces, have knowledge enough of the qualities which distinguish them from lesser work to perceive on what their claims to superiority are founded. Children so naturally and so generally feel that distinctions which do not appeal to them are arbitrary, and it is of so much importance to guard against any feeling of this sort in the case of literature, that it is worth while to be at some pains to make distinctions perceptible, even if they may not always be made entirely clear.

One of the tests of rank in civilization is appreciation of workmanship. The savage knows nothing of mechanics beyond the power of a lever in prying up a rock, the action of a bowstring, or crude facts of this sort. A machine to him is not only incomprehensible, but supernatural: a locomotive is a fire-devil, and a loom or a printing-press, should he see one, a useful spirit. At the other end of the scale of appreciation of mechanical appliances is the inventor who devises or the trained engineer who understands the most complicated engines of modern ingenuity. Somewhere between stands any one of us,—the ordinary pupil presumably far above the savage, but far below the expert. In the appreciation of the art of the painter, at the bottom of the scale is the bushman who can look at the clever painting of a man and not know what it represents, and at the top the great painters of the world and those who can best enter into the spirit of their productions. In this scale again each of us stands somewhere; the average school-boy is unhappily likely to be so far down as to take delight in the colored illustrations of the Sunday newspapers and to be utterly indifferent to a Titian or a Rembrandt. In comprehension of the value and effect of language, the same principle obtains. The scale extends from the savage tribes with a vocabulary of but a few hundred words for the entire speech of the race and no power of making combinations beyond the simplest, to the cultivated nations with perhaps a couple of hundred thousand words and the art of producing the highest forms of prose and of poetry. The scale is a long one, and its development has taken uncounted ages; but somewhere in the line each individual has his place. The degree of the civilization of a race is unerringly determined by its command of the written word; the mental rank of the individual is no less certainly fixed by his power of using and of comprehending human speech.

This general truth is easily brought home to young people by reminding them how they began their knowledge of language with the acquirement of single words and went on to appreciate how much more may be expressed by word-combinations. After the infantile "give" came in turn "p'ease give" and "please give me a drink." From such stages each of them has gone on learning. They have constantly increased their vocabulary, their knowledge of the value of words, of word-arrangement, and of sentence-construction. Gradually by practical experience they have gained some appreciation of all those points which make up the sum of instruction in classes in composition. They now need to be shown that literary appreciation is the extension of this knowledge along the same lines; that it is the means of advancing toward a higher place in that scale which extends from the ignorant savage to the sages. They may in this way be brought to a conception of literary technique as a matter connected with the process of perception which they have been carrying on from childhood.

How value in all workmanship is to be judged by the effects produced is admirably illustrated by machinery, but it is hardly less evident in the case of language. The simpler forms of sentence come to be used by the child in place of single disconnected words because with sentences he can do more in the way of communicating his ideas and obtaining what he desires. To illustrate more complicated forms of language we have only to remind the child how carefully he orders his speech when he is endeavoring to coax a favor from an unwilling friend or a reluctant parent. The child feels himself clever just in proportion as he is able so to frame his plea that it secures his end. He may be reminded that he selects most carefully the terms which suggest such things and ideas as favor his wish and avoids any that might hint at possible objections. Out of these homely, universal experiences of childhood it is possible to build up in the mind of the pupil a very fair notion of the nature and the use of literary workmanship; a notion, moreover, which is at once sound in principle and entirely adequate as a working basis.

Teaching consists principally in helping pupils to extend ideas which they have received from daily life. In this matter of literary workmanship, for instance, it means showing them that they have, without being especially conscious of the fact, a responsiveness to well-turned forms of speech and to skilful use of words. They may perhaps be made to appreciate this with especial vividness by having their attention called to the pleasure they take in clever or apt sayings from their fellows or from joking speeches. This form of illustration must, it is true, be used with discretion. It is always difficult to lead the mind of a child from the concrete to the general. Not a few children—and children, too, of considerable intelligence—are not unlikely, if jesting remarks are instanced, to conclude that good literary workmanship means something amusing. With due care, however, a class may be led to see how the same quality of apt presentation in word which pleases them in the sayings of schoolmates is what, carried farther, is the foundation of literary technique.

Concrete examples of thoughts so well expressed that they have come to be almost part of common speech are abundant. The crisp, dry phrases of Pope lend themselves admirably as illustration, they are so neat, so compact, and, it may be added, so free from delicate sentiment which might be blurred in the handling.

Order is heaven's first law.
An honest man's the noblest work of God.

The class can supply examples in most cases, and be pleased with itself for being able to do so. The finer instances from greater writers may be led up to, the epigrams of Emerson, the imaginative phrases of Shakespeare; and so on to longer examples, with illustrations from the rolling paragraphs of Macaulay, the panoplied prose of De Quincey, and after that from lyrics and passages in blank verse. Thus much may be done in the way of instruction in technique fairly early in high-school work. With it or after it at a proper interval should follow instruction in regard at least to the mechanical differences between prose and poetry and what they mean. I have mentioned earlier[212:1] the impression students often bring from the reading of Macaulay's "Milton." The remarks there quoted are selected from answers to a question of an entrance paper in regard to the difference in form and in quality between prose and poetry. Others from the same examination show yet more strikingly the general haziness of conception in the minds of the candidates:

In prose words are thrown together in a way to make good sense
and to form good English. Poetry is the grouping of words into
a metric [_sic_] system.

Poetry is often written in rhyme, while prose is expressed in
sentences.

Poetry is the name given to writing that is written in verse
form. One does not as a rule get the meaning of things when
they are written in verse form.

Prose may be verse when dealt with by such an author as
Shakespeare or Milton, but prose usually consists of words
arranged in sentences and paragraphs without any special order.

Poetry is used as a pastime, and as such is all right.

Between good blank verse and prose there is not much difference
except in the form of wording in which it is put upon the page.

For me, the difference between prose and poetry is this: Prose
does not rhyme and poetry does. Under such a definition, all
literature not poetry must be prose. Therefore Shakespeare's
works are prose.

The illustrations might be much extended, but these will show the confusion which existed in the minds of boys who had been painfully drilled in the college entrance requirements. I have not selected the examples for their absurdity, although in a melancholy way they are droll enough; but I have meant them to illustrate the confusion which existed in the minds of a large number of the candidates at that particular examination of what makes the vital difference between prose and poetry. It is not my contention that teachers in the secondary schools are to go into minute details in regard to poetic form; but I do believe that it is idle to talk about the rank of a writer as a poet or of the beauty of Shakespeare's verse to students who do not know the difference between verse and prose.