CLASSIC MYTHS IN LITERATURE
"Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne."--KEATS.
"They hear like Ocean on a western beach
The surge and thunder of the Odyssey."--LANG.
THERE is not the slightest necessity for schoolmen's staring at one
another when it is proposed to let boys once more look through magic
casements at the classic myths of Greece and Rome. These masters of
knowledge can depend upon it that their pedagogic systems are wrong if
they set themselves up against the primitive feelings of mystery and
fear. There is yet too strong a trace in the blood to forsake the gods
and heroes that have satisfied instincts, very human and commendable,
for many generations. No goblin nor witch needs to be cast out when the
blood flows red; it is merely an indication of abundant life drawn from
the strength and courage that marked an heroic age. If a boy's talents
be anything but mediocre, they will naturally turn to this age to
satisfy a longing. It is small wonder that the young Keats should stay
up all night reading Chapman's Homer, or should translate the AEneid
into English "just for fun." These glimpses were pure serene to a poet
who afterwards caught in such a rare way their classic beauty; and the
gods surely loved him for it, for they decreed that he should die young.
The charm of the myths of Greek and Roman literature is enduring,
because they embody both truth and beauty--sometimes held to be one and
the same. Nothing but a perverted taste, that is fed on the prosaic
processes of material achievements or the artificial standards of a
moral system, could fail to find pleasure and inspiration in them. Their
appeal is artistic, to the sense of beauty. Their truth is a deification
of the longings of the human heart as it seeks for comfort and
protection in a world whose mysterious events can hardly be fathomed.
And their gods and heroes embody the great virtues that marked a classic
people as much as they did the beauty of their intellectual
achievements--the virtues of courage, patience, honour, loyalty,
contentment. A normal disposition will take satisfaction in this
interpretation of truth and beauty. Not only will its possessor be
satisfied, but he will be ennobled by the very presence of these
qualities before his keen senses. The world will seem to him more than a
place in which he is to toil and spin day after day; his soul will dwell
apart on a mountain where not all mortals can ever climb, a mountain
crowded with culture. He can temporarily leave the common crofts, seek
his solace and confession, and be all the better to ply again his
allotted task. He will learn of one spot where the greed and brutality
of industrial progress cannot set its heel and leave the print of what
is practical and ugly.
This cry for the practical has laid a curse on the culture of many a
boy. He has been educated for the eight or ten hours that he works for
his board and keep, and the rest of his waking day finds him ill at ease
in a field of study or an appreciation of the better things of life. Not
being able to "speak Greek" or to talk with men who do speak Greek, he
naturally turns to the spectacular, the ornate, the frivolous. Nothing
of an order above the broadly burlesque or the melodramatic will hold
his interest and attention. The theatre of Dionysus is too severely
classical in the beauty with which it represents life in action, and he
never learns to sit out a pure tragedy, hear "sweetest Shakespeare
warble his native wood-notes wild," or dilate on the right emotions, if
"Jonson's learned sock be on."
The boy's talents are in all probability not at fault. They are merely
dressed in the prevailing fashion. This fashion is set by a standard of
what is useful for material success in life. The subject-matter of
education must be scientific facts, and with these facts the boy must be
taught to reason. The uselessness of imagination and memory as mental
powers is held up to him. It is not for him to enrich his mind by what
an active and retentive memory can give him of classic literature. In
fact, the memory is looked upon, by the "scientific gent" (as Thackeray
labelled him) in his laboratory, as a minor concern and left to work out
its own salvation--if it really needs to be saved. And as for the memory
being used to chronicle the exploits of mythical heroes in an age of
superstition, that would be unthinkable in the day of scientific
research. Let not the boy then be held up to blame if he is no more able
to name the Olympian council than was Tom Sawyer to name the first two
disciples chosen. The fault is with the system, the rational scientific
system.
Greek is well nigh gone from the high school course. Latin is under
indictment. In their stead we are to have such substitutes as biology
and chemistry. The exploits of Achilles and the wanderings of AEneas are
to be supplanted by the dissection of an oyster and the making of soap.
Now oysters and soap are all right in their way, and it is a good thing
we have the one to eat and the other to wash with; but when it comes to
using them to satisfy the instinct for a fight or for the discovery of a
hidden treasure, that is a stupid and brutal forcing of a theory. If
progress must come at the price of selling a boy's birthright for a mess
of pottage, it is a pity some one cannot smite her with the edge of a
sword. The study of the humanities that has been the bone and sinew of
generations past cannot give place to the scientific vogue without
wrecking the hope and desire of many a romantic youth. To leave out the
classics is to proclaim a material age to be bigoted, boastful, and
self-sufficient. Yet that is exactly what the scientific educator, who
calls himself modern and progressive, is proposing, because business
demands it. What claim has a business demand on academic policy, anyhow?
Is not vagabondia as much entitled to the floor?
"The descent to Avernus is easy." Reformed spelling is not so hard as
Greek roots. In fact, the plan is to follow along the line of least
resistance. The memory must not be cumbered with dead matter if the boy
can reason on experiments for practical business demands. And are not
the myths of these Greek and Latin languages too imaginative and
impractical, covered with too much of academic dust, to serve a purpose
in a practical age? This is heralded from educational convention to
educational convention, and whilst the breaking of idols goes merrily
on, a few brave teachers who speak Greek are regularly taking a Spartan
stand to preserve what yet remains of the classic structure. In a
boastful age they are not going to forget. If Homer and Ovid are forced
by business demands from the academic halls, what hope is there left in
Israel?
The one and only one seems to be the myths in translation. Their claim
to the attention of teachers can be clearly given from the preface to
the best telling of them that has yet appeared, Bulfinch's "Age of
Fable; or, Beauties of Mythology," a happy title to such a valuable
book: "If no other knowledge deserves to be called useful but that which
helps to enlarge our possessions or to raise our station in society,
then Mythology has no claims to the appellation. But if that which tends
to make us happier and better can be called useful, then we claim that
epithet for our subject; for Mythology is the handmaid of literature,
and literature is one of the best allies of virtue and promoters of
happiness.
"Without a knowledge of mythology much of the elegant literature of our
own language cannot be understood and appreciated. When Byron calls Rome
'the Niobe of nations,' or says of Venice, 'she looks a Sea-Cybele fresh
from ocean,' he calls up to the mind of one familiar with our subject
illustrations more vivid and striking than the pencil could furnish, but
which are lost to the reader ignorant of mythology. Milton abounds in
similar allusions. The short poem 'Comus' contains more than thirty
such, and the ode 'On the Morning of the Nativity' half as many. Through
'Paradise Lost' they are scattered profusely. This is one reason why we
often hear people say that they cannot enjoy Milton. But were these
persons to add to their solid acquirements the easy learning of this
little volume, much of the poetry of Milton which has appeared to them
'harsh and crabbed' would be found 'musical as is Apollo's lute.'"
The truth of this last statement is very evident to the English teacher
in high school work. He must stop to teach myths that should be the
common possession of all children before he can go on with his work in
the "Minor Poems." If boys would enter the high school with some of the
classic myths firmly drilled into them, they would read with pleasure
the most imaginative of all the English poets. Mythology in translation
is a fixed possession of English literature, and it must be grasped more
or less in detail before the boy can ever expect to have the marks of
literary culture and to read figurative composition with ease. With the
beginning of school life must begin the learning of myths by word of
mouth. No classical dictionary can later take the place of this
practice. These myths are to be mastered and reproduced in good English;
and after a few years of such drill the children will read the stories
of gods and heroes with the same ease that they do a colloquial fairy
tale. It is the same old step from the story-teller to the book and a
quiet corner where no one can break the spell.
Fortunately there is not so extensive a field of mythology suitable for
use as there is of fairy literature, and the boy can easily hope to make
it his own. The field must exclude both the modern nature myths that
have been compounded to suit the occasion, and the cruder and more
recent discoveries of savage races. In short, Greek mythology must make
both the beginning and the end of what is to be learned; for there has
been no nation other than Greece that has developed a mythical faith so
intellectual in its scope and so beautiful in its expression. This
beauty has been expressed through both art and literature. It would be
an almost unpardonable neglect on the part of a teacher if a boy were
permitted to go through school and not be familiar with the heroic age.
He should know the stories of the gods and heroes; know the Olympian
council, the labours of Hercules, the adventures of Jason, of Perseus,
of Achilles; he should know the Trojan War in its picturesque greatness
and the wonderful exploits of Odysseus on his homeward journey; and he
should know such stories as those of Apollo, of Oedipus, of Orpheus,
of Admetus, of Proserpine, of Niobe, and of Psyche. This knowledge of
Greek mythology will bring one of the most pleasurable and stimulating
of all feelings to a boy, the consciousness of wandering at ease in a
domain where all mortals have not been privileged to enter.
Almost hand in hand with the Greek myths must be taken their variations
in Roman life and the few that seem to be original there. Although the
Greek and Roman deities had most attributes in common, they were yet
distinct, each having his particular name. It is unfortunate that the
Latin names have come into such extensive use and that we always speak
of Jupiter instead of Zeus, and Venus instead of Aphrodite. But the
Hellenic spirit is hard to keep foremost in this commercial age. If the
glare of the arc light could be screened at times and the starry sky be
read as a book wherein the constellations still hold their Greek names,
some of the heroes that have been made permanent might inspire the
observer with a feeling to read again their story. Yet let us have the
sweetness of the rose, whatever be its name.
It is rather perplexing to know what myths to give the child when he
first enters school and through the first four or five years of his
school life. The taste and culture of the teacher have much to do with
this. But whatever is given, give it as it is written without deforming
it by having it adapted to suit the years of the boy. He can understand
many things of which the teacher is not aware. Take it directly from
"The Age of Fable," and at the start remove all difficulties of telling
by drilling on the pronunciation of proper names. Then let the boy learn
the myth through the ear and tell it fluently and exactly. While doing
this, the art that is so closely woven with Greek myths must become
familiar also. The boy must be able to recognize such works as
"Aphrodite of Melos," "Apollo of the Belvidere," "Diana of Versailles,"
"The Faun of Praxiteles," "The Laocooen Group," and "Nike of
Samothrace." The refining influence that comes through them is not easy
to explain, but it comes. Take it for what it is worth, as you take the
myths themselves. And at no time should the teacher seek for
philosophical arrangement and interpretation, that at best is merely a
confusion of words, or moralize on something that is purely dramatic
instead of didactic. The myths are stories and should be used as
stories.
A reasonably good list to use for this kind of drill work in, say the
first four grades, is the following, to be learned in the order written:
"Latona and the Frogs," "Arachne," "Niobe," "Midas and the Golden
Touch," "Apollo and Daphne," "Pandora and her Box." "Narcissus," "Ceres
and Proserpine," "Ulysses and Polyphemus," "Daedalus," "AEolus,"
"Philemon," "Vulcan," "Cyparissus and the Stag," "Arion," "Ulysses and
the Sirens," "Callisto and Areas," "Ariadne's Thread." "Io and the
Gadfly," "Perseus and Medusa," "The Wooden Horse," "Phaeton," "Pygmalion
and Galatea," "AEsculapius and Apollo," "Jason and the Golden Fleece,"
"The Death of Hector," "Cupid and Psyche," "Ulysses and Penelope,"
"Pegasus," "Orpheus and Eurydice," "The Labors of Hercules," "Admetus
and Alcestis." After mastering these stories, the boy will be ready to
read for himself.
Let him first read Hawthorne's "The Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys,"
and then the companion volume, "Tanglewood Tales for Girls and Boys; a
Second Wonder-Book." These are indispensable. Then he must read a good
edition of Kingsley's "Heroes; or, Greek Fairy Tales for My Children."
That is a delightful book, despite its deplorable tendency to preach.
Now he is ready for that charming continuous tale, Lamb's "Adventures of
Ulysses," which of course he must own and keep near at hand. He can now
take up and learn the second most valuable work he can own as a student
of literature, Bulfinch's "Age of Fable." Of course it is understood
that Palgrave's "Golden Treasury" is to be the first most valuable one.
Some dozen years ago there appeared in a magazine a story called "The
Little Brother of the Books." It was the story of a small crippled boy
who each afternoon went his way to a certain book stall and was always
found absorbed in the same book. The book was the "Age of Fable." That
he did this is not strange to any one who owns the book and knows it
well. There are few compilations in which the richness of a literature
is gathered together and retold in a way that will make it endure as a
book. Yet this is true of the "Age of Fable." Every student should own
an illustrated copy of it, and preferably one that has never been
edited. It is told as a story, and a captivating story it is. A
quotation from the preface cannot be resisted here: "Our book is not
for the learned, nor for the theologian, nor for the philosopher, but
for the reader of English literature, of either sex, who wishes to
comprehend the allusions so frequently made by public speakers,
lecturers, essayists, and poets, and those which occur in polite
conversation.
"We trust our young readers will find it a source of entertainment;
those more advanced, a useful companion in their reading; those who
travel, and visit museums and galleries of art, an interpreter of
paintings and sculptures; those who mingle in cultivated society, a key
to allusions which are occasionally made; and, last of all, those in
advanced life, pleasure in retracing a path of literature which leads
them back to the days of their childhood, and revives at every step the
associations of the morning of life.
"The permanency of these associations is beautifully expressed in the
well-known lines of Coleridge:
"'The intelligible forms of ancient poets,
The fair humanities of old religion,
The Power, the Beauty, and the Majesty
That had their haunts in dale or piny mountain,
Or forest, by slow stream, or pebbly spring,
Or chasms and watery depths; all these have vanished.
They live no longer in the faith of reason;
But still the heart doth need a language; still
Doth the old instinct bring back the old names,
Spirits or gods that used to share this earth
With man as with their friend; and at this day
'Tis Jupiter who brings whate'er is great
And Venus who brings every thing that's fair.'"