principles most clearly marked, if only because with the younger
children the teacher is nearer to Nature and mistakes punish themselves
more visibly. There also the dead weight of tradition has been less
oppressive. Before Madame Montessori's star had risen above the
firmament the best teachers in English infant schools had solved the
fundamental problems of how to teach good English. The principle
is that what the child speaks or writes shall come from its own
brain. The first medium of expression is, of course, the tongue. No
children, not even English children, are tongue-tied by nature, but
they are generally timid and sensitive. If they find their adult world
discouraging communicativeness with anger, or sarcasm, or pedantry,
they will close down upon the rock of silence like the limpet which
you must smash before you move. Probably before he comes to school the
child has already been silenced by a mother or father whose love will
bear anything for the child except to listen to him. It is wonderful
to watch the skilled teacher of infants repairing this mischief,
re-establishing confidence between innocence and wisdom, unlocking
hearts and tongues, creating an atmosphere of freedom in which she
possesses, in reality, absolute control. Instead of limpets you
behold sea-anemones full open. The children talk at great length in
co-ordinate construction about their mother and the baby's tooth, and
when they have finished they sit quiet listening to others. Sometimes
the teacher takes up her parable and tells them about Cinderella or the
King of the Golden River. In other lessons other mediums of expression
appear--pencils, chalk, plastic clay, music, dance, drama. The teacher
continues unobtrusively feeding the children with beautiful things, she
sings and plays to them, shows them pictures and exhibits gentleness,
calm, and love.
Amid all the fog of controversy and all the noise of disputing
cheap-jacks that surrounds the art and practice of education I
see some of these infants' class-rooms as clear beacons showing
the incontestably true course. I cannot see any limit of years to
its progress. Many boys' and girls' schools have grasped the same
principles and extended them to the age of fourteen with the same
undeniable success in the results. Naturally, as the child grows the
method has to be adapted, but the principle remains steadfast. I would
not describe it as "freedom," because the child is not free, though he
feels free. One never doubts the existence of a controlling will. But
what is encouraged is authentic expression. In writing, topics are set
which draw out of the child's own world the child's own thoughts. He is
guided to think for himself and to speak his thoughts fearlessly. The
skill of the teacher is shown mainly in the choice of subjects and the
discretion with which corrections are made. Observation is translated
into description, first in speech and then, when the pencil has been
mastered, in writing. A child of nine may be asked to describe a corner
of the class-room so that a blind man could understand exactly what
is there and what it looks like. A child of twelve may be asked to
describe the prettiest room she ever saw. A child of fourteen may be
asked to describe the Harrow Road (_a_) on a Saturday night, (_b_) on a
Sunday morning. Why stop at fourteen?
As well as observation and description, the infant school trains the
elements of imagination and invention. Cannot the child who at eight
years old wrote on "If I were the King...." profitably be asked to
write on "If I had been Oliver Cromwell...." at eighteen? In one girls'
school the teacher merely wrote on the blackboard "When the Moon went
out" and left the rest to the class. In the same way children can
be trained to argue _pro_ and _contra_ about problems of their own
lives which clearly admit of argument, like "Would you rather be six
or sixteen?" "Would you rather be a boy or a girl?" People new to
the method might suppose that, although the brighter children could
possibly attack such themes with success, the ordinary or dull child
would be left staring. It is not so. Whole classes of children trained
in this way produce work which is pleasant to read. The essentials seem
to be stimulating topics, authentic expression without dictation, and
constant practice. To one who has seen the elementary steps there is no
magic in the Perse Plays or the Draconian Poems. They are natural. It
is dullness that is artificial. Real dullness, such as one finds in
Common Rooms, Mess Rooms, Pulpits, and Government Offices is the fruit
of a long, careful, and generally expensive education in that quality.
In teaching a young person to speak and write you are also teaching
him to think, because words represent thoughts. The adult may be able
to think connectedly in silence, but the child generally cannot.
The child's world is, however, at the largest a little one, and it
is necessary to enlarge it by various means, including stories and
pictures, songs and books. The book gradually becomes more prominent
as the art of reading is mastered. A child constantly encouraged to
express himself freely, always giving out and seldom taking in, would
develop a number of unpleasant qualities. Therefore reading is only
second to writing in its importance. A generous supply of good books is
the second fundamental necessity of sound English teaching. So far as
I know, no school has ever reached the limit in this direction. There
is an excellent society which bases its method of teaching mainly on
copious reading and has been able to multiply seven-fold the usual
reading programme of primary schools. But they seem to put the book a
little too much into the foreground. It is citizens that we seek to
educate. For them books should be the background of real life. We do
not all possess those opulent libraries into which Ruskin would turn
his princesses to browse at will; but I subscribe to his doctrine in
principle. Mere quantity of reading is a great thing. The more children
read, the better they will choose their books.
Now these two things alone, authentic expression and copious reading,
are capable of producing good English. Children taught well in these
methods can, without any formal instruction in spelling or grammar,
write correctly as well as pleasantly. Something more is needed for
those who seek to become scholars in English, and still more if they
aim at the study of language. For such as these the teaching may
gradually and progressively develop a scientific character. In the
earliest stages fluency was itself a chief aim, and the teacher was
compelled to be very sparing of interruptions and corrections. She
had to use discretion and to judge for herself what mistakes were
dangerous. She might not interpose though twenty successive clauses
were joined together by "and," because she knew that it is natural
for language to begin with co-ordinates and that mere mental growth
combined with practice in reading and writing will cure the fault.
She corrected vulgarisms, like "he done it," not with any grammatical
disquisition but dogmatically. Even where the children come from homes
where the King's English is never spoken, systematic speech-training
in the infants' school can correct and refine language before pen is
put to paper. These infant years seem to be intended by Nature for
the learning of language. Ears are sharp and memories retentive. But
habits once formed at that age, whether good or bad, are very difficult
to eradicate later on. Perhaps pronunciation is best taught through
disguised phonetics in the singing lesson and elocution in the poetry
lesson.
In the first written work it may be found that the spelling is all
wrong. Great controversies rage on this subject. But it seems right
to regard bad spelling as a disease which needs careful individual
diagnosis in the earliest stages, when it can be cured so as to give no
more trouble. Most often it springs from some fault in the method by
which the child has learnt to read. Some people are allowed to grow up
incapable of spelling because they make out the printed word by some
process of guesswork and never fix the letters upon their memory. Good
or bad spelling very rapidly becomes automatic.
Much the same is true of grammar. As I have said before, accurate
use of language can be attained by purely empirical and dogmatic
methods. Grammar is no essential preliminary to good English, but
nevertheless there may be a good case for teaching it later on to
those who can afford the time. It is well that English boys and girls
should know something of the history and structure of their language
as well as their constitution. It may be necessary for the linguist to
understand the common grammatical technique of all languages. Moreover,
teachers naturally seek to limit the domain of mere dogma and to give
explanations where they can. Thus a child can easily be cured of saying
"Between you and I" merely through the teacher's command, "Say _me_."
He can be cured of saying "Like I did" in the same way. He will of
course be on surer ground if he understands the reason. Only let it be
English grammar and not Latin grammar that is used. The reason why the
child should say "I am taller than he" is, if a reason must be given,
that _than_ is historically identical with _then_, not that "_quam_
takes the same case after it as before it."
If we could only keep our eyes steadily fixed on the goal and discard
formalism, tradition, and antiquated examinations, there is in the work
of the best infants' and elementary schools a broad enough base for us
to build a sound structure of English up to the University and beyond.
Perhaps some day a progressive University may try the experiment of an
English Arts Course in which the first part would consist solely of
Advanced Reading and Writing, and the second part of options between
English Philosophy, English Philology, English Poetics, or English
Criticism. It need not be any lower in standard than an Oxford Greats
course.
We could not well spare the scholars. On the contrary, those who
believe with me that English contains all things necessary to culture
will be most anxious to enlist for its service the finest scholarship
of the day. Some will think the fare provided in such a course as I
have outlined too rich in sugar or fat and wanting in the tougher
constituents which produce bone and muscle. It is essential to require
more and more precision and accuracy as the child passes through the
phases of adolescence. This was the real virtue of the old classical
training, and it is too often wanting on Modern Sides. We must
contemplate something very like the best of classical teaching applied
to English Classics for big boys and girls.
I write as a Pharisee of the Pharisees, brought up at the feet of
Gamaliel. A man like Robert Whitelaw loved the literature of Greece
and Rome with such devotion that its very forms were sacred to him.
A false quantity or a false concord was to him a personal affront:
it caused him physical pain. Accents and particles mattered to him
and so they mattered to us. There was a right and a wrong. We did not
understand why, but we knew and felt his scorn of anything careless or
superficial. He read Sophocles aloud with an intensity that at first
puzzled and then infected us. Occasionally, but all too rarely, it was
his task to do the same with Chaucer or Browning. Why not?
But at this point I labour with a sense of unreality. Is it possible
to capture for our language a tithe of that old classical fervour? We
have buried our Grammarian upon his peak, fronting the sunrise. He
settled _hoti's_ business. I have heard him lecture for an hour upon
the future sense of the optative with an enthusiasm that was drawn from
some pure source in the depths. Doubtless he survives in disciples. Is
it the mere mystery and power of the Word that inspires them? I will
not believe that it is any inherent virtue possessed by Propertius but
denied to Shelley that inspires the classical scholar. But where are
our inspired teachers of English? I have an impression of critical,
quizzical gentlemen, deeply learned in Elizabethan drama or Saxon
dialect, but all the same terribly mild. I cannot picture one of their
disciples seriously moved by a misplaced "and which" or an unrelated
participle in English. Something is missing.
There are thousands of genuine lovers of English literature scattered
up and down the country, people who feel the thrill of delight in
verbal beauty quite as keenly as any classical scholar. But they
want leaders and a voice. We suffer our fools too gladly in English
studies. Any lunatic is allowed to criticise, traduce, misinterpret
Dryden, Carlyle, Addison, even Shakespeare, as if they were our private
playthings. They are not. They are worthy of their pedestals of worship
just as much as Homer and Aristotle.
The issue of the War has established more firmly than ever the
predominance of the English language in the world. If our schools
would rise to their opportunity and raise English into a culture
worthy of its qualities there seems no reason why it should not become
the universal medium of civilisation for the world. The richness and
variety of its literature and the simplicity and flexibility of its
structure render it, as a language, amply sufficient. Whether this
is visionary or not, it is no longer safe for those who cherish the
humanities in education to rely upon the old impregnable position of
Latin and Greek. The world has received one of those secular shocks in
which tradition crumbles to dust.
AN ARTICLE ON PARTICLES
By ALICE MEYNELL
"_Inconquerable_"--BACON
A general good habit might long ago have been ruled for our national
literature in the use of two negatives--"un" or "in," and "less."
A good rule once made known, long ago, would surely have lasted.
We might set about it even yet, though with much to chastise. Let
us try. The fault of "un" and "in" is of long standing. That of a
misapplied "less" is probably quite modern. What I have to suggest is
an obvious enough correction, but the offence is broadcast, therefore
correction cannot surely be inopportune or importunate. For who is
there who does not give the teutonic "un" to the Latin or Romance word,
writing "unfortunate" or "ungracious"? Or who now is careful to write
"inconquerable"? Any man to-day would certainly write "unconquerable."
It may not be that Bacon is always consistent; nor is Landor, who had
something--but that something has proved altogether ineffectual--to
say on this question of good English. We must own the incorrect use of
the German particle to be the commonest thing in the world, but the
incorrect use of the Latin or Romantic derivative, on the other hand,
does not occur.
The Teutonic "un" comes more readily to the English pen than the Latin
"in," and thus is joined habitually to the wrong kind of adjective
and verb and adverb. Not only, moreover, to the Romantic word, but
also to the Greek. We have learnt to write "asymmetry," but not to
avoid "unsymmetrical." There is also a very frequent jumble, so that
"uncivil" appears in the same phrase with "incivility," and "unable"
with "inability," "undigested" with "indigestible," "ungrateful" with
"ingratitude"--but I need cite no more. It is worth noting that these
confusions are not due to a kind of reluctance in the use of "un" for
nouns. We have many nouns with the "un" (not otherwise to my purpose):
"unrest," "unbelief," "unfaith," "unhappiness," "untruth," "unthrift,"
"unskilfulness," and so forth.
Now I know well that the reader has been courteously waiting until I
should draw breath for a paragraph in order to say "_Undiscovered_:
Shakespeare." It is all too true. I can only repeat, murmuring,
"_Inconquerable_: Bacon."
There is nothing in English that we should prize more dearly than
our right negative particles of both derivations, and especially
our particle of German derivation in its right Teutonic place. That
"un" implies, encloses so much, denies so much, refuses so much,
point-blank, with a tragic irony that French, for example, can hardly
compass. Compare our all-significant "unloved," "unforgiven," with any
phrase of French. There are abysses, in those words, at our summons,
deep calling to deep, dreadful or tender passion, the thing and its
undoing locked together, grappled. But in order to keep these great
significances the "un" should not be squandered as we squander it. And
neither should the less closely embraced "in" be so neglected. It has
its right place and dignity and is, as it were, more deliberate. It is
worth while, furthermore, to enhance the value of both our negative
particles (one of them, of course, shared with French) by considering
how poor a negative that last-named tongue has often and often to use
for lack of a better; not even a particle, but a thing unfastened,
a weak separate word, a half-hearted denial--"_peu_." Let us try to
keep our "un" in its right place by considering how, for instance, it
makes of "undone" a word of incomparable tragedy, surpassing "defeated"
and "ruined" and all others of their kind. "Undone" has the purely
English faculty, moreover, of giving to a little familiar word a sudden
greatness, such greatness as leaps to Lear's "every inch." This was
found to be intranslatable when Rossi acted King Lear in Italian; he
had to speak the phrase in English. Wonderfully well furnished as
we are for all adventures, is it not then time that we reviewed and
revised our habits, and restored to their proper lineage the great
contemporary histories of our language by a right and left distribution
of the "in" and the "un"? Our incorrect ways were never standardized,
or they standardized themselves by precedent. No, it is all too late.
We shall never undo the habit now, or cease to be "unconscious" in our
custom.
But for the other particle--"the less"--there is hope or there might
be, but for Shakespeare's strange and slightly ambiguous "viewless." We
might at least check new coinings. "Less" is in the construction here
to be considered, though not in other combinations, fairly equivalent
to the Teutonic "without." It has great value. It also locks close
meanings with its word. But that word should be a noun, and not a verb.
Yet it is a verb at the present day, not only in hasty column after
column, but in page by deliberate page, and especially in stanza by
deliberate stanza. For no doubt the perfervid poets have spread that
fashion. You will find "relentless" scattered in modern verse, and
"quenchless" and "tireless" frequent. Keats, instigated indirectly if
not directly by Leigh Hunt, has "utterless." The misuse of "less" is
even somewhat more to be resisted than that of "un" because in the
case first named the grammatical construction of our English words
(and we have not too many laws of construction) is violated. And
beautiful words that are neglected for "quenchless" and "relentless"
pass out of use; the words that have "less" for their lawful negative
are cheapened; and writers of talent learn to dash and as it were to
gesticulate.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES AND NEWS
_Correspondence from readers on all subjects of bibliographical
interest is invited. The Editor will, to the best of his ability,
answer all queries addressed to him._
GENERAL NOTES
We are glad to see that the Clarendon Press has published Mr. Percy
Simpson's edition of _Every Man in His Humour_, a pioneer volume to
the complete edition of Ben Jonson's Works, which the same editor,
in conjunction with Professor Herford, has been for many years
preparing. Their edition should, we think, be definitive (we use Sir
Eric's magical word with extreme caution for fear of provoking the
National Union of Textual Editors to down books and refuse to continue
their researches). A new edition of Ben Jonson's work is certainly
needed: Gifford, re-edited by Cunningham, is sadly inadequate; the
text is bad and the notes explain nothing that one wants to know.
One walks darkling through the _Discoveries_. Take Ben's remarks
about painting--they are Hermetic. What, for instance, does this
mean? "Parrhasius was the first won reputation by adding symmetry
to picture.... Eupompus gave it splendour by numbers and other
elegancies." We shall indeed be grateful to the new editors if they
can tell us exactly how Eupompus gave splendour to art by numbers--and
other elegancies. The secret might be whispered along the galleries of
Burlington House.
* * * * *
Another interesting book that should soon, though there is no news of
its immediate arrival, be coming from the Clarendon Press is the third
volume of Mr. Saintsbury's _Caroline Poets_. The first two volumes
of this massive anthology opened up a whole province of literature
hitherto almost unknown to the general reader. In the last this great
work of excavation and exploration should be completed. With the
exception of Chamberlayne and the Matchless Orinda the Carolines of
Mr. Saintsbury's choice have been very obscure. In the last volume,
we understand, he intends to soar to the dizzy heights of eminence on
which Cleveland stands. A good critical edition of Cleveland will be
welcomed by all lovers of seventeenth-century literature. The early
editions of his works are a piratical sort of publication. Some of his
poems were, even in his own life-time, attributed to other writers,
notably his _Hermaphrodite_, which was fathered on Randolph, and which
he claimed as his own in an amusing little poem appended, later on,
to the stolen piece. And yet, in spite of Cleveland's claim to his
own property, Carew Hazlitt, in his reprint of Randolph, continues to
attribute the _Hermaphrodite_ to its wrongful owner. A very unnecessary
and supererogatory blunder.
* * * * *
While we are on the subject of the Caroline Poets we would like to
express a pious hope that some day, when we are all immensely rich,
the Clarendon Press, or some other great publishing institution, will
bring out a complete corpus of English poetry. More than a century has
elapsed since Chalmers issued his _English Poets_, and the book, in
spite of bad editing and very imperfect--indeed non-existent--critical
apparatus, is still an extremely useful one. It contains a complete
Gower, a complete Lydgate, a complete Hawes, and a complete Skelton.
The text of these older poets is indeed atrocious; but the fact remains
that they are there, reprinted and easily accessible in Chalmers's
stout volumes. For any study of the eighteenth century Chalmers is
invaluable; everything is in him, from the _Ruins of Rome_ to the
_Pleasures of Digestion_--or is it the _Art of Preserving Health_? A
well-edited Chalmers would be a work of immense value. And if the
Clarendon Press would go on, in the same edition, from the Carolines to
the Georgians and back, through the Elizabethans and Tudors as far as
the Brutians (the contemporaries of our first Trojan king), we should
be for ever grateful. But before that comes to pass we must all, as has
already been hinted, be immensely rich
* * * * *
A rather battered Purchas's _Pilgrim_ minus its title-page came into
our hands recently. It appears to be the second edition, but the only
actual indication of date that we can discover is to be found in the
following passage, on which by a happy chance we lighted while turning
over the pages of the book. "Sultan Achmet is now, Anno 1613, five and
twentie yeares old: of good stature, strong and active more than any of
his Court. He hath three thousand Concubines." We cannot help believing
that someone had been pulling the Reverend Samuel Purchas's leg on the
subject of young Sultan Achmet's harem.
* * * * *
The other day we bought a charming little first edition of _Candide_
(1759). The title-page is amusing: "Candide, ou l'Optimisme, traduit
de l'Allemand de Mr. le Docteur Ralph"; no publisher or place, but the
date MDCCLIX. It was often Voltaire's custom not to acknowledge his
publications till they were a success. _Zadig_ (1749) is similarly
without author's or publisher's name.
* * * * *
Perhaps some of our readers may be able to throw some light on a
curious and interesting book, _Specimens of Macaronic Poetry_,
published by J. Richard Beckley in 1831. The volume contains epics
written on a single letter, like that which begins:
Cattorum canimus certemina clara canumque,
Odes in this style:
Emma! fer chartam, calamos, et inkum,
And the old Scottish Testament of Mr. Andro Kennedy, of which the first
stanza runs: