Chapter VII: Part 7

I may be allowed to remark in passing that to my mind the influence of the theories of Macaulay's "Milton" alluded to above illustrates the difference in effect of that which appeals to the personal experience and feelings of boys and that which they are forced to receive without such inward interpretation. The boys who were trained in the "Milton" were trained also in Carlyle's "Burns." The Carlyle, with its eloquent appreciation of the office of the poet, the seer to whom has been given "a gift of vision," had apparently left no trace upon their minds. They had, however, been forced, too often unwilling, over numerous pages of what they were assured was poetry of the highest quality, yet which to them was unintelligible and wearisome. When Macaulay declared that poetry was a relic of barbarism they seized upon the theory eagerly because it justified their own feelings, because it coincided with their own impressions; and thenceforth they doubtless held complacently to their faith in the obsolete uselessness of verse, fortified by so high an authority.

In the whole body of papers in the examination from which I have been quoting very few gave the impression that the writer had a clear conception that somehow, even if he could not express it, a vital difference exists between poetry and prose. The greater number of the boys seemed to think that rhyme made the distinction, or that distortion of sentences was the leading characteristic. Not one teacher in a score had succeeded in impressing upon his pupils the fundamental truth that the only excuse poetry can have for existing is that it fulfils an office impossible for prose. Yet nothing which can properly be called the study of poetry can be done until this prime fact is recognized with entire clearness. Beyond the entirely unanalytical enjoyment of verse, the native responsiveness to rhythm, and the uncritical pleasure with which one learns to love literature and to seek it as a means of pleasure, the first, the most primary, the absolutely indispensable fact to be thoroughly impressed on a young student is that poetry uses form as a part, and an essential part, of its language. The boy must be made to understand that just as he tries by his tone, by his manner, by his smile, to produce in his hearers the mood in which he wishes them to receive what he has to say, so the poet by his melody, by the form of his verse, by his ringing rhythms or long, melting cadences, by his rhyme or his pauses, is endeavoring to interpret the ideas he expresses as surely as he is by the statements he makes. The truth which the teacher knows, that not infrequently the metrical effect is really of more value and significance than the ideas stated, is naturally for the most part too deep for the comprehension of pupils at this stage. It would only confuse a class to go so far as this; but if we are to "study" poetry, we must have at least a working definition of what poetry is, and one which shall commend itself to the children with whom we are working.

As a mere suggestion which may be of practical use to some teachers, I would call attention to what may be done by comparing certain pieces of prose with the poems which have grown out of them. I know of nothing better for this use than Tennyson's "Ballad of the Revenge" and the prose version of Sir Walter Raleigh from which it is taken. In many parts the language is almost identical,—but with the differences between robust prose and a stirring lyric. The teacher who can make a class see what the distinction is, what the ballad accomplishes that Raleigh has not attempted, will have made clear by concrete example what poetry does and why it is written. Another example is Byron's "Destruction of Sennacherib" compared with the original version of the incident as given in the Bible.

It may seem to some teachers that I am going rather deep, but to such I should simply propound the question what they understand by the study of poetry. The natural error of the untrained mind is to regard the intellectual content of a poem as its reason for being, and to foster such an error as this is to make forever improbable if not impossible any intelligent or genuine insight into poetry whatever. If we are not to protect children against this mistake, fatal as it is to any perception of the real province and nature of poetic art, what do we expect to accomplish in all the extensive attention which is under the present system devoted to the works of the masters?

That so many boys failed to answer satisfactorily in this matter of distinguishing between prose and poetry is of course not conclusive evidence either of general ignorance or of conscious fault on the part of instructors. Boys often fail in attempts to state distinctions about which they are yet reasonably clear in their minds, and it may well be that many who gave absurd replies would have no difficulty in discriminating between verse and prose,—at least when verse fulfilled the specification of the candidate who wrote:

A jagged appearance is the main form-characteristic of blank
verse. Each sentence is a separate line, and every other
sentence is indented about a quarter of an inch.

It would be interesting to present to pupils who have finished the study of the college requirements half a dozen brief selections, some prose and some poetry, but all printed in solid paragraphs. The number of students who could accurately and confidently distinguish in every case would be a not unfair test of the extent to which the distinction is understood.

Teachers probably fail to make this matter clear because they not unnaturally assume that of course any intelligent lad in his teens must know the distinction between prose and poetry. Natural as such an assumption may be, however, it is often—indeed, I am tempted to say generally—wrong. The chief business of the modern teacher is after all the instructing of pupils in things which they would naturally be supposed to know already. It is certainly safer never to assume in any grade that a student knows anything whatever until he has given absolute proof. The weakest points in the education of the modern student are certainly those which are continually taken for granted.

One of the most serious obstacles in the way of bringing young people to understand technical excellence and to appreciate literary value is the difficulty of having school-work done with proper deliberation. It is doubtful if any process in education can profitably be hurried; it is certain that nothing of worth can be done in the study of literature which is not conducted in a leisurely manner. The first care of an instructor in this delicate and difficult branch must be to insure a genial atmosphere: an atmosphere of tranquillity and of serenity. No matter how tall a heap of prescribed books may block the way to the end of the school year, each masterpiece that is dealt with should be treated with deference and an amount of time proportioned not to its number of pages but to the speed with which the class can assimilate its worth and beauty. If worst comes to worst, I would have a teacher say honestly to his pupils: "We have taken up almost all of the term by treating what we have studied as literature instead of huddling through it as a mechanical task. For the sake of examinations we are forced to crowd the other books in. The process is not fair to them or to you; so do not make the mistake of supposing that this is the proper way of treating real books." Children who have been properly trained will understand the situation and will appreciate the justice of the proposition.

In this connection is of interest the remark of an undergraduate who said that he obtained his first impression of style and of the effectiveness of words from translating. "I suppose the truth is," he explained with intelligence, "that in English I never read slowly enough to get anything more than the story or what was said. When I was grubbing things out line by line and word by word I at last got an idea of what my teachers had meant when they talked about the effect of the choice of words." Many of us can look back to the days when we learned grammar from Latin rather than from English, although we had been over much the same thing in our own tongue. In the foreign language we had to go deliberately and we had to apply the principles we learned. Only when the student is treating literature so slowly and thoroughly that these conditions are reproduced does he come to any comprehension of style or indeed of the real value of literature.

Readers of all ages naturally and normally read anything the first time for the intellectual content: for the story, for the information, for that meaning, in short, which is the appeal to the intellectual comprehension. The great majority are entirely satisfied to go no farther. They do not, indeed, perceive the reason for going farther; and they are too often left in ignorance of the fact that they have entirely missed the qualities which entitle what they have read to be considered literature in the higher sense.

In this they are often encouraged, moreover, by the unhappy practice of making paraphrases. The paraphrasing of masterpieces is to me nothing less than a sacrilege. It degrades the work of art in the mind of the child, and contradicts the fundamental principle that poetry exists solely because it expresses what cannot be adequately said in any other way. A paraphrase bears the same relation to a lyric, for instance, that a drop of soapy water does to the iridescent bubble of which it was once the film. The old cry against the selection of passages from Milton for exercises in parsing should be repeated with triple force against the use of literature as material for children to translate from the words of the poet into their own feeble phraseology. The parsing was by far the lesser evil. It is often necessary to have an oral explanation of difficult passages; but this should be always expressly presented as simply a means to help the child to get at the real significance of a lyric, a sort of ladder to climb by. Any paraphrasing and explaining should be carefully held to its place as an inadequate and unfortunate necessity. The class should never be allowed to think that any paraphrase really represents a poet, or that it is to be regarded in any light but that of apologetic tolerance.

In this matter of workmanship, as everywhere else in the process of dealing with literature, much depends upon the character of the class. Much must always be left unaccomplished, and much is always wisely left even unattempted. Often the teacher must go farther in individual cases than would naturally have been the case in a given grade because questions will be asked which lead on. It is often necessary, for instance, to explain that the crowding forward of events made unavoidable by stage conditions is not a violation of truth, but a conforming to the truth of art. A lad will object that things could not move forward so rapidly, and it is then wise to show him that dramatic truth does not include faithfulness to time, but may condense the events of days into an hour so long as it is true to human nature and to the effects those events would have had if occurring at intervals however great. Again children will object in a tale that the incidents are not likely to have happened; and it is then necessary to make clear the distinction between probability and possibility, and how fiction may deal with either. These matters, however, are to be left to the intelligence of the individual instructor. If he cannot manage them wisely without advice, he cannot do it with arbitrary rules.

For a last word on the matter of training students in the appreciation of literary form and workmanship I should offer a warning against attempting too much. Something is certainly unavoidable, but of minutiæ it is well to exercise what Burke calls "a wise and salutary neglect." Literary language must be learned or all intelligent work is utterly impossible; since form is an important element in all artistic language, it is not possible to ignore this. The extent to which work can and should go in the study of form in a given class is one of the matters which the instructor has to decide; and when he has decided it he must resolutely refuse to allow himself to be unhappy because in the great realm of literature are so many noble tracts of which he has not even hinted to his class the existence. If he has done the lesser work well he has at least put his students in a condition to do the greater for themselves; if he had attempted more he might have accomplished nothing.

FOOTNOTES:

[212:1] Page 36.

XVI

LITERARY BIOGRAPHY

How far the biography of authors shall be a part of the school-work is a question which deserves attention. I began these talks by calling attention to the fact that it is so much easier to teach details about the life of a writer than it is to train the youthful mind to a true appreciation of literature itself. Teachers naturally and almost unconsciously fall into the habit of over-emphasizing this division of the history of literature, and questions about the lives of authors are dangerously easy to formulate for recitation or for examination-paper. Nothing, however, should be allowed to obscure the idea that the work and not the worker is the thing with which study should be concerned; and everybody would agree that in theory the limit to biographical inquiry in secondary-school study is the extent to which a knowledge of an author's career or personality aids to the understanding of what he has written.

To say this, however, is much like restating the question. Like a good deal that passes for argument, it only puts the problem in other words; for we are at once confronted with the doubt how far a pupil in the secondary school is likely to be helped by knowing about the facts of a writer's life. At the beginning of the "Spectator" Addison remarks:

I have observed that a reader seldom peruses a book with
pleasure, till he knows whether the writer of it be a black
or a fair man, of a mild or choleric disposition, married or
a bachelor, with other particulars of the like nature, that
conduce very much to the right understanding of an author.

I may frankly confess that this is so entirely untrue of myself that I am perhaps not a fair judge for others. Since it is to me a matter almost of indifference who wrote a book, where or when he lived, what he was and what he did, I have not perhaps estimated rightly the effect of biography on children. I am firm in my belief, however, that for making literature more clear, more vivid, more attractive, the effect of a knowledge of the author's life is with children apt to be practically nothing. If they are interested in a book, they may on that account like to know something of the man who wrote it, but I have yet to find a student who really cared for a piece of literature because he had been made to learn facts about the author. That a book was written in a given age will account to him for fashions of thought strange to-day, but he is seldom able to carry such analysis beyond the most general idea.

In regard to helping scholars in the secondary schools to understand a given piece of literature by instructing them about the personality of the writer, I am quite as skeptical. It may be that one lad in a hundred may come to a better appreciation of a book from what he knows of the temperament of the author. It is possible to point this out in occasional striking instances. If a boy read "A Modest Proposal," a teacher naturally calls attention to the character of Swift as having determined the ferocious form which this plea for humanity has taken; in dealing with "The Journal of the Plague Year" it is inevitable that the instructor speak of the journalistic tendency of Defoe, which led him to write on topics which were at the moment before the public. In either case the result is not important in the sense of going much beyond what the student may be made to feel without any mention of the writer or the writer's peculiarities.

It is very easy to delude ourselves into feeling that we are being helpful when in reality we are simply being pedagogic. If our pupils were so far advanced as to be able to perceive the subtle relations between character and literature, between the nature of a writer and the interpretation we are to put upon what he has written, they would in most cases be better fitted to instruct us than to receive any instruction we are able to furnish. It is sometimes well to give pupils things which we are aware they cannot grasp; to show them the existence of lines of thought which they are not yet qualified to carry out. Our aim in this is to broaden their perceptions, and to direct them toward truths which later they may investigate for themselves. In the secondary schools, however, very little of this sort can be profitably done in connection with anything so complex and subtle as the relation of the character of an author to his work. Young people must take literature at its face value, so to say, and in teaching them to do this is more than room for all the energies a teacher in these grades can bring to bear.

The history of literature, its development, its relations to the evolution of human thought, should all be as far as possible familiar to the teacher; and no instructor with knowledge and enthusiasm is likely to ignore any of these in dealing with masterpieces. They must all, however, be brought forward with care, for it is easy to overwhelm the mind of the young, especially in an age like the present when a child goes to school with attention already strained by the imperative and insistent calls of daily life. Students on leaving the high school should be familiar with the place in the centuries of authors they have especially studied, and of the score or so of writers most important in English literature from Chaucer down. With the exact details of biography they need not have been concerned. If they have had curiosity enough to look these up as a matter of individual interest, it is well, although I am not sure that anything is gained by encouraging this research. To know of Shakespeare, of Chaucer, and of Milton, for instance, what may be put into a dozen lines; and of lesser writers to have proportionate information, seems to me ample. The work and not the worker is of importance; the book and not the author; the poem and not the poet.

Many teachers will not agree with me in giving to the personality and the biographies of writers so small a place. Every man must judge by his own experience, and I can only say that every year I deal with classes in literature I find myself deliberately giving less attention to the history of literature. I have insisted already upon the danger that such study shall take the place of the consideration of literature itself, and I have now attempted to reënforce that thought by stating definitely what it seems to me wise to attempt in the secondary schools. I do not desire to be dogmatic, however, and here as elsewhere the conclusion of the whole matter is that while the question of the wisdom of giving extended instruction in literary history or biography is to be carefully considered, each instructor must frame the answer according to personal experience and the individual needs of any given class.

XVII

VOLUNTARY READING

No teacher who is really concerned with the development of the pupil's mind can afford to ignore outside influences. Indeed, even were a teacher conceivable who, consciously or unconsciously, cared only to drag scholars over the prescribed course, he would yet be forced to take into account the effect of every-day life and circumstance, and under existing conditions every teacher is sure to find that he is to a great extent obliged to do the work of the home in all that relates to the æsthetic training of a large number of children. In teaching literature it is not only wise but it is easy to discover and to a large extent to influence whatever reading pupils do of their own will outside of the required work.

Thoroughly to accomplish all that a teacher desires, or even all that is often expected of him, would be possible only to the gods; and it is evident enough that no instructor can exercise complete parental supervision over all the life of the pupils under him. Certain things in the training of the young are accomplished at home or go forever undone. Perhaps the most serious difficulty in this whole complicated business of education is that the schoolmaster is so largely called upon to undo what is done outside the schoolroom. He may at least be thankful that in the matter of reading he is dealing with something tangible, something in which so many of his flock may with skilful management be influenced.

In a leaflet published under the auspices of the New England Association of Teachers of English, "The Voluntary Reading of High School Scholars," Professor W. C. Bronson, of Brown University, comments on the fact that the mind of the young person is likely to perceive little relation between the literature administered at school and the books voluntarily read outside. He says:

Many of our high-school youth are leading a double life in
things literary: in the class-room Doctor Jekyll studies the
lofty idealism of "Comus" or "Paradise Lost;" outside, Mr.
Hyde revels in the yellow journalism and the flashy novel; and
in many cases Doctor Jekyll does not even realize that he has
changed into another and lower being.

The difficulty in making boys and girls realize a connection between school-work and actual life is familiar to every teacher. I am personally convinced that one reason for this—although obviously not the only one—is the modern tendency to diminish the sense of value and necessity by too much yielding to the inclination of the child. Coaxing along the line of the least resistance is sure to produce an effective even if hardly conscious indifference, which is far less healthy than the temper of mind bred by insistence upon progress along the line of duty. Be that as it may, however, the modern scholar generally regards school as one thing and life as practically another. Books read in the class-room, books studied, discussed as a part of formal and required work, are felt to be remote from daily existence and almost as something a bit unreal. They may be even enjoyed, and yet seem to the illogical youthful mind as having a certain adult quality which sets them apart from any vital connection with the life of youth. It is not uncommon, I believe, for a boy to like a book in his private capacity, reading it for simple and unaffected pleasure, and yet to feel it almost a duty to be bored by the same book when it comes up as a part of the work of the school-room.

Very likely a hint of the explanation of the whole matter is to be found in this last fact. In the first place the work of the schoolroom, however gently administered, represents compulsion, and we have trained the rising generation to feel that compulsion is a thing to be abhorred. Perhaps nothing could ever make school-work the same as the life which is voluntary and spontaneous; but modern methods have generally not succeeded in minimizing this difficulty. In the second place, teachers are too often uncareful or unable to soften the differences between reading without responsibility of thoroughness and reading with the consciousness that class-room questionings may lie beyond. Almost any child has the power of treating a book or a poem as a friend when he reads for pleasure and of regarding the same book as an enemy when it becomes a lesson. The thing is normal and not unhealthy; but it is to be reckoned with and counteracted.

Professor Bronson, in his brief discussion of the matter, goes on to remark that where the Jekyll and Hyde attitude of mind exists—which to some degree, I believe, would be in every pupil—

The first task of the teacher is to make the pupil fully
realize it and to urge upon him the necessity of discrimination
in his voluntary reading. For this purpose ridicule of trashy
books by name and praise of good books, with reasons why they
are good, may well fill the part of a recitation period, now
and then, even though the routine work suffer a little. For the
same purpose, it is very desirable that more of the best modern
literature be made a part of the English course, especially
in the earlier years, when the pupil's taste is forming, for
it is easier to bring such works into close relation with his
voluntary reading. The teacher of English may also consider
himself recreant if he does not give his class advice about
the reading of magazines and instructions how to read the
newspapers.

With the spirit of this I agree entirely. The letter does not seem to me entirely satisfactory. I have learned to be a little afraid of ridicule as a means of affecting the minds of the young in any direction. It is the easiest of methods, but no less is it the one which requires the most prudence and delicacy. It is the one which is most surely open to the error of the point of view. If the teacher tries to lessen the inclination of pupils for specific books by ridicule, he can do no good unless he is able to make the class feel that these books are ridiculous not only according to the standards of the teacher but according to the standard of the child. To prove that from the instructor's point of view a book is poor and silly amounts to little if the work really appeals to the young. No more is effected than would be accomplished if the teacher told lusty lads that to him playing ball seemed a foolish form of amusement. They appreciate at once that he is speaking from a point of view which is not theirs and which they have no wish to share. He must be able to make it evident that the book in question, with its attractions, which he must frankly acknowledge, is poor when judged by standards which the pupils feel to be true and which belong to the sphere of boyhood.

I confess with contrition that in my zeal for good literature I have in earlier days spoken contemptuously of popular and trashy books which I had reason to think my boys probably enjoyed and admired. I believe I was wrong. Now I do not hesitate to say what I think about any book when a student asks me, but I make it a rule never in class to attack specific books or authors for anything but viciousness, and that question is hardly likely to arise in the secondary schools. I cannot afford to run the risk of alienating the sympathies of my pupils, and of arousing a feeling that my point of view is so far removed from theirs that they cannot trust my opinions to be sympathetic. The normal attitude of the child toward the adult is likely enough to be that of believing "grown-ups" to be so far from understanding what children really care for as to be entirely untrustworthy in the selection of reading. The child disregards or distrusts the judgments of his elders not on abstract grounds, but merely from an instinctive feeling that adults do not look at things from his point of view. I always fear lest by an unwise condemnation of a book which a lad has enjoyed I may be strengthening this perfectly natural and inevitably stubborn conviction.

The first and most important means of influencing outside reading is by impressing upon the child's mind the idea that he is studying literature chiefly for the sake of reading to himself and for himself. About this should be no doubt or uncertainty. No child should for a moment be allowed to suppose that such dealing with books as is possible in the school-room can be chiefly for its own sake, can be so much an end as a means. To allow him to suppose that the few works he goes over can be held adequately to represent the great literary treasures of the race, or that he can be supposed to do more than to learn how to deal with literature for himself, is at once to make instruction in this branch more an injury than a benefit. It would be no more reasonable than to allow him to think that he learns the multiplication-table for the sake of his school "sums" rather than that he may have an effective tool to help him in the practical affairs of life.

To influence outside work of any sort is difficult, especially in city schools where the pupils are subject to so many distractions. The teacher is generally obliged to make his effort in this direction almost entirely individual, treating no two scholars exactly in the same way, and he is not infrequently obliged to employ a considerable amount of shrewdness in the process. "When I wish to talk to John Smith about his reading," a clever teacher said in my hearing, "I send to him to see me about his spelling, or his handwriting, or anything to give an excuse for a chat. Then I bring in the thing I am aiming at as if by accident." The number of instructors possessed of the adroitness, the time, and the patience for this sort of finesse is probably not large; but much may be done by words dropped apparently by chance, if only the instructor has the matter earnestly at heart.

How far the relation of books in the required reading to books read voluntarily may profitably be insisted upon in class must depend largely upon the particular pupils involved. Every teacher will certainly do well to find out what his students are reading outside, if they are reading anything, and he should then consider what use to make of his knowledge. The very fact that he concerns himself about the matter will call the attention of the class to the fact that a connection exists; and that it is real enough to be worth heeding. Any wise teacher will find an advantage in having indications of the natural tastes and inclinations of those he is trying to train, and to know what the boys and girls really like to read will often correct a tendency to speak of the required readings in a tone that is outside the range of the sympathies of the scholars. If he knows that the girls are fond of weeping over "The Broken Heart of the Barmaid," that the boys revel in "The Bloody Boot-jack," that both find "Mrs. Pigs of the Potato-patch" exquisitely amusing, he sees at once that he must be cautious in dwelling on the pathos of "Evangeline," the romance of "The Flight of a Tartar Tribe," or the humor of Charles Lamb. Children fed on intellectual viands so coarse would find real literature insipid, and must be trained with frank acceptance of that fact.

To say that teachers may also often do something in the way of arousing parents to do their part in guiding the reading of children is to go somewhat outside of my field. The public asks so much of teachers already that any hint of labor in the homes of pupils seems—and in many cases would be—nothing less than the suggestion of an impossibility. If I were to urge the matter, I should do it purely on the ground that teachers may sometimes greatly lessen the difficulty of the task they undertake in the school-room by a little judicious labor in the home. In the public schools to-day many children, perhaps even a majority, come from homes wherein no literary standard is apparent, and where for the most part none exists. They are being given a training which their parents did not have, and they feel themselves better able to direct their elders in things intellectual than their fathers and mothers are to advise them. In these cases, certainly very numerous, the teacher must accept the inevitable, and do what he can by inducing his pupils to talk with him about their outside reading. Where parents are more cultivated, much may often be effected by the simple request or suggestion that the young folk be supervised a little in the choice of books. The teacher must of course use tact in doing anything in this line, especially in those cases where such a request is most needed. Parents who pay least attention to such matters are especially likely to resent interference with their prerogative of neglecting their children, though they may generally be reached by the flattery of a carefully phrased request for coöperation. Few things are more delicate to handle than neglected duties, and the fathers and mothers who shirk all responsibility for the mental training of their offspring must be approached as if they jealously tried to leave nothing in this line for any teacher to do.

The most common fault of young people to-day in connection with reading is the neglect of books altogether or the devouring of fiction of a poor quality. To urge boys and girls to read good books or to admonish them to avoid poor ones is seldom likely to effect much. Such direct and general appeal is sure to seem to them part of the teacher's professional routine work, and not to alter their inclinations or to make any especial difference with their practice. Children are led to care for good reading only by being made acquainted with books that appeal to them; and they are protected against poor or injurious reading only by being given a taste for what is better.

This summing-up of the situation is easily made, but how to make children acquainted in a vital and pleasant fashion with good books and how to cultivate the taste is really the whole problem which we are studying. This is the aim and the substance of all genuine teaching of literature, and everything in these talks is an attempt to help toward an answer. When the problem of voluntary reading has been satisfactorily solved the work of the teacher is practically done, for the pupil is sure to go forward in the right direction whether he is led or not. All that treatment of literature which for convenience I have called "inspirational" is directly in the line of developing and raising the taste of young readers, and beyond this I do not see that specific rules can be given. Personal influence is after all what tells, and the most that can be done here is to call attention to the fact that in so far as a teacher can influence and direct the voluntary reading of a pupil he has secured a most efficient aid to his school-work in literature.

XVIII

IN GENERAL

Throughout these talks I have tried to deal with the teaching of literature in practical fashion, not letting theory lead me to forget the conditions actually existing. To consider an ideal state of things might be interesting, but it would hardly help the teacher bothered by the difficulties of every-day school-work. I have intended always to keep well within the field of ordinary experience, and to make suggestions applicable to average teaching. How well I have succeeded can be judged better by teachers than by me; but I wish in closing to insist that at least I believe that what I have said is every-day common sense.

I have throughout assumed always that no teacher worthy of the name can be content with merely formal or conventional results, but will be determined that pupils shall be brought to some understanding of what literature really is and of why it is worthy of serious attention—to some appreciation, in a word, of literature as an art. If an instructor could be satisfied with fitting boys and girls for examinations, nothing could be simpler or easier; but I am sure that I am right in believing that our public-school teachers are eagerly anxious to make of this study all that is possible in the line of developing and ennobling their pupils.

Every earnest teacher knows that literature cannot be taught by arbitrary methods. The handling of classes studying the masterpieces of genius must be shaped by the knowledge and the inspiration of the individual teacher or it is naught. Neither I nor another may give a receipt for strengthening the imagination, for instilling taste, for arousing enthusiasm. All that any book of this sort can effect, and all that I have endeavored to do, is to protest against methods that are formal and deadening, to offer suggestions which may—even if only by disagreement—help to make definite the teacher's individual ideas, and to warn against dangers which beset the path of all of us to whom is committed the high office of teaching this noble art.

The idea which I have hoped most strongly to enforce is the possibility of arousing in children, even in those bred without refining or intellectual influences, an appreciation of the spirit and the teachings of the great writers, a love for good books which may lead them to go on with the study after they have passed beyond the school-room. The best literature is so essentially human, it so truly and so irresistibly appeals to natural instincts and interests, that for its appreciation nothing is needed but that it be understood. To produce and to cultivate such understanding should be, I believe, the chief aim of any course in literature.

The understanding and the appreciation must of course vary according to the temperament and the responsiveness of the child. Miracles are not to be expected. No teacher need suppose that the street Arab and the newsboy will lie down with Browning and rise up with Chaucer; that Sally and Molly will give up chewing gum for Shakespeare, or that Tom, Dick, and Harry will prefer Wordsworth to football. In his own way and to his own degree, however, each child will enjoy whatever literature he has comprehended. As far as he can be made to care for anything not directly personal or appealing to the senses, he may be made to care for this. Nature has taken care of the matter of fitting children to understand and to love literature as it has prepared them to desire life. To bring the young into appreciation of the best that has been thought and recorded by man, there is but one way: make them familiar with it.

It is a mistake to suppose, moreover, that an especial sort of books is needed for children. A selection there should be, and it is manifestly necessary to exercise common sense in choice of works for study. A class that will be deeply interested in "Macbeth" would be simply puzzled and bored by "Troilus and Cressida." Childish games for the intellect there may be, as there are childish amusements for the body; but so far as serious training is concerned there is neither adult literature nor juvenile literature, but simply literature.

The range of the mind of a child is limited, and the experience demanded for the simplest comprehension of a work may be necessarily beyond the possible reach of child life.[240:1] The limitations of youth have, however, and should have, the same effect in literature as in life. They restrict the comprehension and the appreciation of the facts of existence, and equally they restrict the comprehension and the appreciation of the facts in what is read. The impressions which the child takes from what he sees or from what he reads are not those of his elders, although this is less generally true of emotions than of facts. The important point is that the impressions shall be vital and wholesome, and above all else that they be true with the actual verity of human experience. We all commit errors in the conclusions we draw from life; and children will make mistakes in the lessons they draw from books. Books which are wise and sane, however, will sooner or later correct any misconceptions they beget, just as life in time makes clear the false conclusions which life itself has produced.

I have spoken more or less about the enjoyment of this study by children, and it is difficult if not impossible to conceive that if a class is rightly handled most children will not find the work a pleasure. It is necessary, however, to be a little on our guard in the practical application of the principle that children get nothing out of literature unless they enjoy it. They certainly cannot enjoy it unless they get something out of it; but it will hardly do to make the enjoyment of a class too entirely the test by which to decide what work the class shall do. Pupils should be stimulated to solid effort in the way of application and concentration, and I have already pointed out that in mastering the difficulties of literary language they should be made to do whatever drudgery is needed, whether they are inclined to it or not. They cannot, moreover, read with intelligence anything with real thought in it, until they have learned concentration of mind. Children, like their elders, value most what has cost something to attain, and facile enjoyment may mean after-indifference.

The contagion of enthusiasm is one of the means by which children are most surely induced to put forth their best efforts to understand and to assimilate. If the teacher is genuinely enthusiastic in his love for a masterpiece, even if this be something that might seem to be over the heads of the children, he arouses them in a way impossible of attainment by any other means. A boy once said to me with that shrewdness which is characteristic of youth, "My teacher didn't like that book, and we all knew it by the way she praised it." Sham enthusiasm does not deceive children; but they are always impressed by the genuine, and no influence is more powerful.

The most serious obstacle which teachers of literature to-day meet with, I am inclined to think, is the difficulty children have in seizing abstract ideas.[241:1] So long as study and instruction are confined to the concrete and the particular the pupil works with good will and intelligence. The moment the boundary is crossed into the region of the general, he becomes confused, baffled, and unable to follow. The algebra of life is too much for the brain which is accustomed to deal only with definite values. What is evidently needed all along the line is the cultivation of the reasoning powers in the ability to deal with abstract thought. Personally I believe that this could be best secured by the simplification of the work in the lower grades, and by the introduction of thorough courses in English grammar and the old-fashioned mental arithmetic. If some forty per cent. of the present curriculum could be suppressed altogether, and then ten per cent. of the time gained given to these two admirable branches, the results of training in the lower grades, I am convinced, would show an enormous improvement. I may be wrong in this, and in any case we must deal with things as they exist; and the teacher of literature must accept the fact that he has largely to train his class in breadth of thinking. He will be able to deal with generalizations only so far as he is assured that his students will grasp them, and this will generally mean so far as he is able to teach them to deal with this class of ideas.

* * * * *

This book has stretched beyond the limits which in the beginning were set for it, and in the end the one thing of which I am most conscious is of having accomplished the emphasizing of the difficulties of the branch of work with which it is concerned. If I have done nothing more than that, I have discouraged where I meant to help; and I can only hope that at least between the lines if not in the actual statements may be found by the earnest and hard-working teachers of the land—that class too little appreciated and worthy so much honor—hints which will make easier and more effective their dealing with this most important and most difficult requirement of the modern curriculum.

FOOTNOTES:

[240:1] See pages 68-70.

[241:1] See page 112.

INDEX

Abilities of children differ, 30, 60.

Abstract ideas, 23, 112-115.

Acting out poems, 94.

Addison, _De Coverley Papers_, 128, 138, 146-150;
_Spectator_, 146, 223.

Analysis _vs._ synthesis, 21.

Art, literature an, 53;
not to be translated into words, 2;
purpose of, 1, 73.

Bach, _Passion Music_, 116.

Beethoven, 53;
_Ninth Symphony_, 116.

Biography, literary, 222-226.

Blake, William, quoted, 31;
_The Tiger_, 93, 96-108.

Bronson, W. C., _Voluntary Reading_, 228, 230.

Brown, Dr. John, quoted, 79.

Browning, 72, 115, 239;
_How they Brought the Good News_, 113;
_The Lost Leader_, 114.

Burke, 221;
_Speech on Conciliation_, 37, 65, 138-146.

Byron, _Destruction of Sennacherib_, 133, 215.

Carlyle, _Burns_, 213.

Chaucer, 225, 239.

Children, abilities differ, 30, 60;
at disadvantage, 118;
comply mechanically, 93;
conceal feeling, 85;
do not know how to study, 46-48;
know when bored, 52;
learn life by living, 19;
must be taught in own language, 68;
must do own work, 58;
must form estimates, 70;
not affected by preaching, 18;
puzzled by literature, 49;
responsive to metrical effects, 117;
skip morals, 89;
their world, 18, 79;
too much demanded of, 45;
understand only through personal experience, 15, 67.

Coleridge, 72;
_Ancient Mariner_, 37, 84, 85, 181.

College entrance requirements, 8, 30, 138, 213;
books, 34-38;
editors of, 6.

Conventionality, how met, 197.

Cook, May Estelle, _Methods of Teaching Novels_, 128.

"Cramming," 59.

Criticism, 193-206;
asked of pupils, 44;
of trashy books, 231;
must take pupil's point of view, 231.

Decker, quoted, 169.

Defoe, _Journal of the Plague Year_, 224.

Deliberation in work necessary, 217.

Description, how written by pupils, 127.

De Quincey, 211;
definition of literature, 123;
_Flight of a Tartar Tribe_, 234.

Diagrams, futility of, 6.

Dickens, quoted, 7, 202.

Didactic literature, 22, 109.

Edgeworth, Maria, _Parents' Assistant_, 23.

Eliot, George, 129;
_Silas Marner_, 5, 32, 37, 56, 127, 152, 197.

Emerson, 211;
quoted, 65.

Emotion, aim of literature to arouse, 85;
in literature, 2, 90;
the motive power, 24.

Enthusiasm, connected with culture, 24;
contagious, 241;
necessary in teaching, 55;
justification of, 57;
reason to be reached through, 40, 50.

_Evangeline_, 234;
questions on, 42, 43, 45.

Examinational teaching, 74, 121-135.

Examinations, 28, 44, 70, 184;
an Institute paper, 130-135;
best prepared for by broad teaching, 122;
boy's view of, 8, 9;
danger of, 40;
entrance, 35, 45;
inevitable, 121;
necessarily a makeshift, 4;
not the aim in teaching, 28, 73;
study for, 121-130;
valuable only as tests, 121;
what counts in, 125;
what examinations should test, 44.

Fables, truth of, 21.

Fielding, _Tom Jones_, 202.

Goldsmith, _Vicar of Wakefield_, 44, 56, 152.

Hawthorne, quoted, 167.

_Heart of Oak Series_, 91.

Honesty essential in teaching, 54.

Illustrations, care in using, 211.

_Il Percone_, 32.

Imagination essential in study of literature, 3;
not created but developed, 53;
nourished by literature, 26.

Inspirational use of literature, 74, 88-95, 117, 236.

Irving, _Life of Goldsmith_, 37.

_Ivanhoe_, 37, 152;
quoted, 169;
study of, 159-163.

Johnson, Samuel, quoted, 91.

"Juvenile" literature, 80.

Lamb, Charles, 234.

Language of literature, 63-67, 118;
of pupils, 64, 68-70;
value judged by effect, 209.

Life, "realities of," 20.

Limitations, inevitable, 46-48;
must be accepted, 31, 196;
youthful, 240.

Litchfield, Mary E., quoted, 77.

Literature, a Fine Art, 53;
aim of, 85;
algebraic, 112;
approached through personal experience, 67, 69;
deals with abstract ideas, 67;
difficulty in teaching, 28-38;
defined by De Quincey, 123;
essentially human, 238;
history of, 40, 222;
"juvenile," 80, 239;
language of, 63-67, 118;
measured by life, 56;
must be connected with life, 68;
must be taught in language of learner, 68;
not didactic, 22, 109;
not taught by arbitrary methods, 238;
nourishes imagination, 26;
pupils indifferent to, 48;
relation to life, 110;
reproduces mood, 116;
symbolic, 113;
truth in, 112-114;
vocabulary of, 74;
why included in school course, 11-27.
_See_ Study of Literature; Teaching of Literature; Literary
Workmanship.

Literary appreciation, may be unconscious, 93.

Literary workmanship, 207-221.

Longfellow, 83;
_Evangeline_, 42, 43, 45.

Macaulay, 211, 214;
_Life of Johnson_, 37;
_Milton_, 35, 36, 212, 213.

_Macbeth_, 3, 5, 37, 40, 57, 69, 76, 77, 83, 85, 118, 124, 202;
false explanations of words in, 63;
Miss Cook on, 128;
note on, 32;
study of, 165-192.

_Machiavellus_, 32.

Memorizing, 191.

_Merchant of Venice_, 6, 81, 118.

Metrical effects, 116;
beyond ordinary students, 186;
children susceptible to, 117;
in _Evangeline_, 43;
relation to character, 119;
study of, 94;
_vs._ intellectual content, 216.

Middleton, _Witch_, 32.

Milton, 15, 53, 117, 220, 225;
_Comus_, 34, 85, 117, 228;
_Il Penseroso_, 34, 41, 190;
_L'Allegro_, 34, 41, 190;
_Lycidas_, 34, 117;
_Paradise Lost_, 123, 127, 131, 228.

_Milton_, Macaulay's, 35, 36, 212, 213.

Moral, drawn by children, 129;
not to be drawn by teacher, 71-73, 163, 164, 198;
skipped by children, 89.

North, _Plutarch's Lives_, 170.

Notes, 75, 136;
to be studied first, 76.

Novel, study of, 152-164.

_Œdipus_, 202.

Oral recitation, 180, 184, 198.

Originality in children, 43.

Parables, truth of, 21-22.

Paraphrases, 219.

Plutarch, 170.

Poetry, compared with prose, 211-217;
nature of, 215.

Point of departure, 83, 143.

Point of view, 82, 149, 180.

Pope, quoted, 211.

Praise, not to be given beforehand, 70;
when wise, 71.

Prose, compared with poetry, 212-217.

Quicken tree, 168.

Raleigh, 25, 26, 64, 215.

Raphael, _Dresden Madonna_, 57.

Ray, 168.

Reading, aloud, 61, 154, 177;
final, of play, 186;
first, of play, 176-179;
in concert, 62;
intelligent, basis of study, 61-67;
second, of play, 179-186;
voluntary, 227-236.

Readings, disputed, 185.

Reference, books of, 136, 137.

Rembrandt, 208;
_The Night Watch_, 57.

Riche, Barnabie, quoted, 167.

Ridicule, danger of, 230.

Roosevelt, President, 57.

Sarcasm, forbidden, 199.

Scott, _Ivanhoe_, 37, 152, 159-163, 169;
_Lady of the Lake_, 37.

Shakespeare, 13, 16, 46, 47, 48, 49, 53, 57, 69, 72, 90, 117, 119,
129, 142, 168, 170, 181, 183, 184, 186, 187, 191, 206, 211,
212, 213, 225, 239;
_Hamlet_, 77, 127;
ill-judged notes on, 32;
_Julius Cæsar_, 34;
_Lear_, 168;
_Macbeth_, 3, 5, 32, 37, 40, 57, 63, 69, 76, 77, 83, 85, 118, 128,
165-192, 202, 239;
_Merchant of Venice_, 6, 81, 118;
_Midsummer Night's Dream_, 32;
_Othello_, 83, 167;
quoted, 205;
reason of greatness unexplained, 55;
_Richard III_, 166;
_Romeo and Juliet_, 6;
_Tempest_, 118;
_Troilus and Cressida_, 239.

_Silas Marner_, 5, 37, 56, 127, 152, 197;
note on, 32.

_Sir Roger de Coverley Papers_, 128, 138;
study of, 146-150.

_Speech on Conciliation_, 37, 65;
study of, 138-146.

Stevenson, _Treasure Island_, 152-159.

Swift, _A Modest Proposal_, 224.

Study of literature, in lower grades, 30;
must be deliberate, 217;
not study about literature, 40;
not study of notes, 34;
object of, 27, 29, 31;
obstacles to to-day, 39-60;
overweighted with details, 187;
puzzling to students, 47, 48;
test of success in, 30;
used as gymnasium, 88.

Summary, not a criticism, 204.

Supernatural, the, 84;
in _Macbeth_, 181;
in _The Ancient Mariner_, 181.

Superstition, about witch, 173;
about quicken tree, 168.

Synthesis _vs._ analysis, 21.

Teacher asks too much, 41-46;
ignores strain on pupil, 80;
must have clear ideas, 27, 49, 149;
must take things as they are, 39;
not clear as to object, 49;
not equal to demands, 53-60;
obliged to do work of home, 227;
to lead, not to drive, 58.

Teaching, helping to extend ideas, 210;
method in, 136, 224.

Teaching of literature, aim of, 11-27, 69-70, 236;
cannot be done by rule, 86, 138;
choice of selections in, 90-92;
confused methods, 6;
deals with emotion, 2;
educational, 3, 74, 109-120;
examinational, 3, 74, 121-135;
fine passages taken up in, 80;
importance of reading aloud in, 61;
inspirational, 49, 74, 88-95, 117;
must be adapted to average mind, 89;
preliminary, 74-87;
uncertainty in, 1-10;
written work in, 126.

Technique, instruction in. _See_ Workmanship, literary.

Tennyson, 49;
_Elaine_, 37;
_Merlin and Vivian_, 170;
_Princess_, 37;
_Revenge_, 26, 215.

Text, 136;
model, 137.

Thoroughness, 119.

Titian, 53, 208.

Translating, effect of, 218.

_Treasure Island_, study of, 152-159.