THE USE OF MASTERPIECES AS WHOLES
With the increasing tendency to consider the literary quality and
fitness of the reading matter used in our schools, longer poems and
stories, like "Snow Bound," "Rip Van Winkle," "Hiawatha," "Aladdin,"
"The Courtship of Miles Standish," "The Great Stone Face," and even
"Lady of the Lake" and "Julius Caesar," are read and studied as complete
wholes. Many of the books now used as readers are not collections of
short selections and extracts, as formerly, but editions of single
poems, or kindred groups, like "Sohrab and Rustum," or the "Arabian
Nights," or "Gulliver's Travels," or a collection of a few complete
stories or poems of a single author, as Hawthorne's "Stories of the
White Hills," or Lowell's "Vision of Sir Launfal," and other poems. Even
the regular series of readers are often made up largely of longer poems
and prose masterpieces.
The significance of this change is the deeper regard which is being paid
to good literature as a strong agency of true culture. The real thought
and the whole thought of the best authors is sought for, presupposing,
of course, that they are within the range of the children's
comprehension. The reading books of a generation ago contained
oftentimes just as choice literary materials as now; but the chief
purpose of its selection was to give varied exercise in oral reading,
not to cultivate a taste for good literature by furnishing complete
poetic and prose specimens for full and enthusiastic study. The teachers
who lay stress on elocutionary skill are not quite satisfied with this
drift toward literary study as such. It remains to be seen how both
aims, good oral rendering and superior literary training, can be secured
at the same time.
At the close of the last chapter of this volume we give a carefully
selected series of the literary materials adapted to the different
grades. This body of selections, taken from a wide range of literature,
will constitute a basis for our whole treatise. Having made plain by our
previous discussion what we understand by the quality of literary
masterpieces, we will next consider why these poems and stories should
be read and studied as complete wholes, not by fragments or by extracts,
but as whole works of literary art.
1. A stronger interest is developed by the study, for several weeks, of
a longer complete masterpiece. The interest grows as we move into such a
story or poem as "Sohrab and Rustum." A longer and closer acquaintance
with the characters represented produces a stronger personal sympathy,
as in the case of Cordelia in "King Lear," or of Silas Marner. The time
usually spent in school upon some classic fragment or selection is
barely sufficient to start up an interest. It does not bring us past the
threshold of a work of art. We drop it just at the point where the
momentum of interest begins to show itself. Think of the full story of
Aladdin or Crusoe or Ulysses. Take an extract from "Lady of the Lake,"
"Rip Van Winkle," "Evangeline." The usual three or four pages given in
the reader, even if taken from the first part, would scarcely suffice to
bring the children into the movement of the story; but oftentimes the
fragment is extracted from the body of the play without preliminary or
sequence. In reading a novel, story, or poem, we do not begin to feel
strongly this interest till two or three chapters are passed. Then it
begins to deepen, the plot thickens, and a desire springs up to follow
out the fortune of the characters. We become interested in the persons,
and our thoughts are busy with them in the midst of other employments or
in leisure moments. The personality of the hero takes hold of us as that
of an intimate friend. Such an interest, gradually awakened and deepened
as we move into the comprehension of a work of art, is the open sesame
to all the riches of an author's storehouse of thought.
This kind of interest presupposes in the children the ability to
appreciate and enjoy the thought, and even the style, of the author.
Interest in this sense is a fundamental test of the suitableness of the
story or poem to lay hold of the inner life of the children. In many
cases there will be difficulties at the outset in awakening this genuine
form of interest, but if the selection is appropriate, the preparation
and skill of the teacher will be equal to its accomplishment.
As we get deeper into the study of masterpieces, we shall discover that
there are stronger and deepening sources of a genuine interest. Even the
difficulties and problems which are supposed to dampen interest will be
found, with proper study, to be the source of a stronger appreciation
and enthusiasm. The refining and strengthening of these interests in
literature leads on steadily to the final goal of study, a cultivated
taste and habit of using the best books.
2. A complete work of a master writer is a unit of thought. It is almost
as complete a whole as a living organism. Its parts, like the branches
of a tree, have no vitality except in communication with the living
trunk. In the "Vision of Sir Launfal," there is a single thought, like a
golden thread, running through the poem, which gives unity and
perfection to it. The separate parts of the poem have very great
intrinsic beauty and charm, but their deeper and more vital relation is
to this central thought. The story of "The Great Stone Face" is the
grouping of a series of interesting episodes along the path of a single
developing motive in the life of Ernest. A great writer would scarcely
waste his time in trying to produce a work of art without a controlling
motive, collecting his thought, as it were, around a vacuum. This
hub-thought must become the centre of all intelligent study. The effort
to unravel the motive of the author is the deeper stimulus of thoughtful
work by both teacher and pupils.
In other studies, like geography, history, and natural science, we are
gradually picking out the important units of study, the centres of
thought and interest, the types. This effort to escape from the
wilderness of jumbled and fractional details into the sunlit region of
controlling ideas, is a substantial sign of progress in the teacher's
work. In literature these units have been already wrought out into
perfect wholes by first-class thinkers.
In the greatest of all studies, the works of the literary masters, we
have the surest models of inspiring thought, organized and focussed upon
essential topics. Teachers, in some cases, are so little accustomed to
lift their heads above the tall grass and weeds around them, that they
are overtaken by surprise and bewilderment when called upon to take
broad and liberal surveys of the topography of school studies.
It is fortunate that we have, within the fenced boundaries of the
commonly recognized school course, these shining specimens of organized,
and, what we might call, intelligent thought.
We can set the children at work digging for the root-thoughts of those
who are the masters of strong thinking. This digging process is not
wholly out of place with children. Their abundant energy can be turned
to digging if there is anything worth digging for. Ruskin, in "Sesame
and Lilies," says:--
"And it is just the same with men's best wisdom. When you come to a good
book, you must ask yourself: 'Am I inclined to work as an Australian
miner would? Are my pickaxes and shovels in good order, and am I in good
trim myself, my sleeves well up to the elbow, and my breath good, and my
temper?' And, keeping the figure a little longer, even at cost of
tiresomeness, for it is a thoroughly useful one, the metal you are in
search of, being the author's mind or meaning, his words are as the rock
which you have to crush and smelt in order to get at it. And your
pickaxes are your own care, wit and learning; your smelting furnace is
your own thoughtful soul. Do not hope to get at any good author's
meaning without those tools and that fire; often you will need sharpest,
finest chiselling, and patientest fusing, before you can gather one
grain of the metal."
It is not the dreamy, hammock-soothing, vacation idling with pleasant
stories that we are now considering. This happy lotus-land has also its
fitting season, in the sultry heats of summer, when tired people put
their minds out to grass. Any study will grow dull and sleepy that lacks
energy.
Teachers who shrink back with anxiety lest works such as Irving's
"Sketch Book," "Evangeline," "Merchant of Venice," and "Marmion," are
too hard for children in sixth, seventh, and eighth grades, should
consider for a moment what classical preparatory schools for centuries
have required of boys from ten to twelve years of age, the study of
"Caesar," "Eutropius," and "Virgil," of "Herodotus" and "Xenophon," in
unknown languages extremely difficult to master. Yet it has been
claimed for ages, by the best scholars, that this was the true
strength-producing discipline for boys. It would hardly be extravagant
to say that the masterpieces of literature now used, in our intermediate
and grammar grades, are not a quarter so difficult and four times as
appropriate and interesting as the Latin and Greek authors just cited.
It seems obvious that we are summoned to a more energetic study and
treatment of our masterpieces.
This struggle to get at the deeper undercurrent of thought in an author
is the true stimulus and discipline of such studies.
A great author approaches his deeper thought step by step. He has many
side-lights, variety of episode and preliminary. He provides for the
proper scenery and setting for his thought. He does not bring us at
once, point blank, upon his hero or upon the hero's fate. There is
great variety of inference and suggestion in the preparation and
grouping of the artist's work. As in climbing some mountain peak, we
wind through canon, along rugged hillsides and spurs, only now and then
catching a glimpse of the towering object of our climb, reaching, after
many a devious and toilsome march, the rugged backbone of the giant; so
the poet carries us along many a winding road, through byways and
thickets, over hill and plain, before he brings us into full view of the
main object of search. But after awhile we do stand face to face with a
real character, and are conscious of the framework upon which it is
built. King Saul has run his course and is about to reap the reward of
his doings, to lie down in the bed which he has prepared. We see the
author's deeper plan, and realize that his characters act along the line
of the silent but invincible laws of social life and conduct. These deep
significant truths of human experience do not lie upon the surface. If
we are really to get a deep insight into human character, as portrayed
by the masters, we must not be in haste. We should be willing to follow
our guide patiently and await results.
A complete masterpiece, studied as a whole, reveals the author's power.
It gives some adequate perception of his style and compass. A play, a
poem, a novel, a biography, is a unit. No single part can give a
satisfactory idea of the whole. A single scene from "Crusoe" or from
the "Merchant of Venice" does not give us the author's meaning. An
extract from one of Burke's speeches supplies no adequate notion of his
statesmanlike grasp of thought. To get some impression of what Daniel
Webster was we must read a whole speech. A literary product is like a
masterpiece of architecture. The whole must stand out in the due
proportion of its parts to reveal the master's thought.
"Walk about Zion, and go round about her:
Tell the towers thereof.
Mark ye well her bulwarks, consider her palaces;
That ye may tell it to the generations following."
To have read through with care and thoughtful appreciation a single
literary masterpiece and to have felt the full measure of a master's
power, is a rare and lasting stroke of culture. As children move up
through the grades they may receive the strong and abiding impress of
the masters of style. Let it come to them in its undiminished strength.
To feel the powerful tonic effect of the best stories and poems suited
to their age will give them such an appreciation of what is genuine and
good in literature, that frivolous and trashy reading is measured at its
true value.
The fragments and extracts with which our higher readers are filled are
not without power and influence upon culture. They have given many
children their first taste of the beauty and strength of literature.
But it is a great mistake to tear these gems of thought from their
setting in literature and life, and to jam them into the close and
crowded quarters of a text-book. Why satisfy ourselves with crumbs and
fragments when a full rich feast may be had for the asking?
In some cases it is said that the reading of fragments of large poems or
plays has excited curiosity and led to the reading of the larger wholes.
This is doubtless true, but in the greater number of cases we are
inclined to think the habit of being satisfied with fragments has
checked the formation of any appreciation of literary wholes. This
tendency to be satisfied with piecemeal performances illustrates
painfully the shallowness and incoherency of much of our educational
work. If teachers cannot think beyond a broken page of Shakespeare, why
should children burden themselves with the labor of thought? Charles
Kingsley, in his essay on English literature, says:--
"But I must plead for whole works. 'Extracts' and 'Select Beauties' are
about as practical as the worthy in the old story, who, wishing to sell
his house, brought one of the bricks to market as a specimen. It is
equally unfair on the author and on the pupil; for it is impossible to
show the merits or demerits of a work of art, even to explain the truth
or falsehood of any particular passage, except by viewing the book as an
organic whole."
What would the authors themselves say upon seeing their work thus
mutilated? There is even a touch of the farcical in the effort to read
naturally and forcibly and discuss intelligently a fragment like
Antony's speech over Caesar.
3. The moral effect of a complete masterpiece is deeper and more
permanent. Not only do we see a person acting in more situations,
revealing thus his motives and hidden springs of action, but the thread
of his thought and life is unravelled in a steady sequence. Later acts
are seen as the result of former tendencies. The silent reign of moral
law in human actions is discovered. Slowly but surely conduct works out
its own reward along the line of these deeper principles of action. Even
in the books read in the early grades these profound lessons of life
come out clear and strong. Robinson Crusoe, Theseus, Siegfried,
Hiawatha, Beauty and the Beast, Jason, King Arthur, and Ulysses are not
holiday guests. They are face to face with the serious problems of life.
Each person is seen in the present make-up and tendency of his
character. When the eventual wind-up comes, be it a collapse or an
ascension, we see how surely and fatally such results spring from such
motives and tendencies. Washington is found to be the first in the
hearts of his countrymen; Arnold is execrated; King Lear moves on
blindly to the reward which his own folly has prearranged; Macbeth
entangles himself in a network of fatal errors; Adam Bede emerges from
the bitter ordeal of disappointment with his manly qualities subdued but
stronger. Give the novelist or poet time and opportunity, and he is the
true interpreter of conduct and destiny. He reveals in real and yet
ideal characters the working out in life of the fundamental principles
of moral action.
4. A classic work is often a picture of an age, a panoramic survey of an
historical epoch. Scott's "Marmion" is such a graphic and dramatic
portrayal of feudalism in Scotland. The castle with its lord,
attendants, and household, the steep frowning walls and turrets, the
moat, drawbridge, and dungeon, the chapel, halls, and feastings, the
knight clad in armor, on horseback with squire and troop,--these are the
details of the first picture. The cloister and nuns, with their
sequestered habits and dress, their devotion and masses, supply the
other characteristic picture of that age, with Rome in the background.
The court scene and ball in King James's palace, before the day of
Flodden, the view of Scotland's army from the mountain side, with the
motley hordes from highland and lowland and neighboring isles, and
lastly, the battle of Flodden itself, where wisdom is weighed and valor
put to the final test,--all these are but the parts of a well-adjusted
picture of life in feudal times on the Scottish border. There is
incidental to the narrative much vivid description of Scotch scenery
and geography, of mountain or valley, of frowning castle or rocky coast,
much of Scotch tradition, custom, superstition, and clannishness. The
scenes in cloister and dungeon and on the battle-field are more
intensely real than historical narratives can be. While not strict
history, this is truer than history because it brings us closer to the
spirit of that time. Marmion and Douglas stand out more clear and
lifelike than the men of history.
Although feudalism underwent constant changes and modifications in every
country of Europe, it is still true that "Marmion" is a type of feudal
conditions, not only in Scotland, but in other parts of Europe, and a
full perception of Scott's poem will make one at home in any part of
European history during feudal times. As a historical picture of life,
it is a key to the spirit and animating ideas that swayed the Western
nations during several centuries. It is fiction, not history, in the
usual sense, and yet it gives a more real and vivid consciousness of the
forces at work in that age than history proper.
While the plot of the story covers a narrow field, only a few days of
time and a small area of country, its roots go deep into the whole
social, religious, and political fabric of that time. It touches real
history at a critical point in the relations between England and
Scotland. It is stirred also by the spirit of the Scotch bard and of
minstrelsy. It shows what a hold Rome had in those days, even in the
highlands of Scotland. It is full of Scotch scenery and geography. It
rings with the clarion of war and of battle. It reveals the contempt in
which letters were held even by the most powerful nobles. Oxen are
described as drawing cannon upon the field of Flodden, and in time these
guns broke down the walls of feudalism. As a historical picture Marmion
is many-sided, and the roots of the story reach out through the whole
fabric of society, showing how all the parts cohere. Such a piece of
historical literature may serve as a centre around which to gather much
and varied information through other school and home readings. Children
may find time to read "Ivanhoe," "The Crusades," "Roland," "Don
Quixote," "The Golden Legend," "Macbeth," "Goetz von Berlichingen," etc.
They will have a nucleus upon which to gather many related facts and
ideas. It should also be brought into proper connection with the regular
lessons in history and geography. History reveals itself to the poet in
these wonderfully vivid and lifelike types. In many of these historical
poems, as "William Tell," "Evangeline," "Crusoe," "The Nibelung Song,"
"Miles Standish," the "Odyssey," "Sohrab and Rustum," some hero stands
in the centre of the narrative, and can be understood as a
representative figure of his times only as the whole series of events in
his life is unrolled.
Where the study of larger literary wholes has been taken up in good
faith, it has brought a rich blessing of intelligent enthusiasm. Even
in primary schools, where literary wholes like "Hiawatha," "Robinson
Crusoe," and the "Golden Touch" are handled with a view to exploit their
whole content, there has been a remarkable enrichment of the whole life
of the children. Such a treatment has gone so deep into the problems and
struggling conditions of life delineated, that the children have become
occupied with the tent-making, boat-building, spinning, and various
constructions incident to the development of the story.
5. If it is true, as clearly expressed by strong thinkers in the most
various fields of deeper investigation, that many of the chief literary
products that have come down to us from former ages are the only means
by which we can be brought into vital touch and sympathy with the spirit
and motives then ruling among men; if it is equally true that children
will not grow up to the proper appreciation and interpretation of our
present life, except as they have experienced, in thought and interest
at least, the chief struggles and motives of our fathers,--we may find
in these historic and literary materials the deep and living springs of
true education for children.
The thought of the educative power of this ancestral literature has been
forcibly expressed by many eminent writers.
Scudder, in "Literature in School," says:--
"There is the element of continuity. In the Roman household there stood
the cinerary urns which held the ashes of the ancestors of the family.
Do you think the young ever forgot the unbroken line of descent by which
they climbed to the heroic founders of the state? In the Jewish family
the child was taught to think and speak of the God of Abraham, and of
Isaac, and of Jacob. In that great succession he heard a voice which
told him his nation was not of a day. It is the business of the old to
transmit to the young the great traditions of the past of the country;
to feed anew the undying flame of patriotism.
"It is this concentration in poetry and the more lofty prose which gives
to literary art its preciousness as a symbol of human endeavor, and
renders it the one essential and most serviceable means for keeping
alive the smouldering coals of patriotism. It is the torch passed from
one hand to another, signaling hope and warning; and the one place above
all others where its light should be kindled is where the young meet
together, in those American temples which the people have built in every
town and village in the country."
Mabie, in "Books and Culture" (pp. 88, 89-113), says:--
"Now, it is upon this imperishable food which the past has stored up
through the genius of great artists that later generations feed and
nourish themselves. It is through intimate contact with these
fundamental conceptions, worked out with such infinite pain and
patience, that the individual experience is broadened to include the
experience of the race."
"The student of literature, therefore, finds in its noblest works not
only the ultimate results of race experience and the characteristic
quality of race genius, but the highest activity of the greatest minds
in their happiest and most expansive moments. In this commingling of the
best that is in the race and the best that is in the individual, lies
the mystery of that double revelation which makes every work of art a
disclosure, not only of the nature of the man behind it, but of all men
behind him. In this commingling, too, is preserved the most precious
deposit of what the race has been and done, and of what the man has
seen, felt, and known. In the nature of things no educational material
can be richer, none so fundamentally expansive and illuminative."
Emerson, in his "Essay on History," says:--
"The advancing man discovers how deep a property he has in
literature,--in all fable as well as in all history. He finds that the
poet was no odd fellow who described strange and impossible situations,
but that universal man wrote by his pen a confession true for one and
true for all. His own secret biography he finds in lines wonderfully
intelligible to him, dotted down before he was born. One after another
he comes up in his private adventures with every fable of AEsop, of
Homer, of Hafiz, of Ariosto, of Chaucer, of Scott, and verifies them
with his own head and hands.
"The beautiful fables of the Greeks, being proper creations of the
imagination and not of the fancy, are universal verities. What a range
of meanings and what perpetual pertinence has the story of Prometheus!
Besides its primary value as the first chapter of the history of Europe
(the mythology thinly veiling authentic facts, the invention of the
mechanic arts and the migration of colonies), it gives the history of
religion with some closeness to the faith of later ages."
"Thus in all ways does the soul concentrate and reproduce its treasures
for each pupil. He, too, shall pass through the whole cycle of
experience. He shall collect into a focus the rays of nature. History no
longer shall be a dull book. It shall walk incarnate in every just and
wise man. You shall not tell me by languages and titles a catalogue of
the volumes you have read. You shall make me feel what periods you have
lived. A man shall be the Temple of Fame. He shall walk, as the poets
have described that goddess, in a robe painted all over with wonderful
events and experiences; his own form and features by their exalted
intelligence shall be that variegated vest. I shall find in him the
Foreworld; in his childhood the Age of Gold; the Apples of Knowledge;
the Argonautic Expedition; the calling of Abraham; the building of the
Temple; the Advent of Christ; Dark Ages; the Revival of Letters; the
Reformation; the discovery of new lands; the opening of new sciences,
and new regions in man."
6. It is not intended to limit the reading of the schools to the longer
classics, such as "Snow-Bound," "The Vision of Sir Launfal," and
Webster's Bunker Hill speech, etc. There are also many shorter poems and
stories, ballads, and myths, that are equally good and stand out as
strong, complete expressions of thought such as Tennyson's "Brook,"
Longfellow's "Village Blacksmith," Whittier's "Barefoot Boy," and many
others. These shorter pieces should be interspersed among the longer,
and freely used to give greater variety and zest to reading exercises.
Many of the finest literary products of the language are found in these
shorter poems and stories. They also should be studied for the beauty
and unity of thought contained in each.
7. But the _sustained power_ gained from the full and rich study of
longer classics is the best fruitage of the reading work. Every term of
school should lead the children into the full appreciation of one or
more of these masterly works. The value of such study is well expressed
by Scudder in his "Literature in Schools" (pp. 54-56):--
"The real point of practical reform, however, is not in the preference
of American authors to English, but in the careful concentration of the
minds of boys and girls upon standard American literature, in
opposition to a dissipation over a desultory and mechanical acquaintance
with scraps from a variety of sources, good, bad, and indifferent. In my
paper on 'Nursery Classics in School,' I argued that there is a true
economy in substituting the great books of that portion of the world's
literature which represents the childhood of the world's mind for the
thin, quickly forgotten, feeble imaginations of insignificant
bookmakers. There is an equally noble economy in engaging the child's
mind, when it is passing out of an immature state into one of rational,
intelligent appropriation of literature, upon such carefully chosen
classic work as shall invigorate and deepen it. There is plenty of
vagrancy in reading; the public libraries and cheap papers are
abundantly able to satisfy the truant: but it ought to be recognized
once for all that the schools are to train the mind into appreciation of
literature, not to amuse it with idle diversion; to this end, the
simplest and most direct method is to place before boys and girls for
their regular task in reading, not scraps from this and that author,
duly paragraphed and numbered, but a wisely selected series of works by
men whom their country honors, and who have made their country worth
living in.
"The continuous reading of a classic is in itself a liberal education;
the fragmentary reading of commonplace lessons in minor morals, such as
make up much of our reading-books, is a pitiful waste of growing mental
powers. Even were our reading-books composed of choice selections from
the highest literature, they would still miss the very great advantage
which follows upon the steady growth of acquaintance with a sustained
piece of literary art. I do not insist, of course, that 'Evangeline'
should be read at one session of the school, though it would be
exceedingly helpful in training the powers of the mind if, after this
poem had been read day by day for a few weeks, it were to be taken up
first in its separate thirds, and then in an entire reading. What I
claim is that the boy or girl who has read 'Evangeline' through steadily
has acquired a certain power in appropriating literature which is not to
be had by reading a collection of minor poems,--the power of
long-sustained attention and interest."
8. The study of literary wholes, whether longer or shorter, in the
common school is based upon the notion that the full, rich thought of
the author is the absorbing purpose of our effort. Literature is a
reservoir of mental refinement and riches, for the gaining of which we
can afford to sacrifice many things and make many even good things
subordinate. The words of the wise man in recommending wisdom to the
sons of men are not inappropriate: "Hear; for I will speak of excellent
things and the opening of my lips shall be right things, and wickedness
is an abomination to my lips. Receive my instruction and not silver; and
knowledge rather than choice gold. For wisdom is better than rubies;
and all the things that may be desired are not to be compared to it."
To get at the wisdom of the best thinkers of the world, so far as it is
accessible to children, is the straightforward aim of such study. The
teachers of reading, if they but realized it, are the guardians of a
temple more beautiful than the Parthenon in the days of Pericles, more
impressive than the sacred towers and porticos at Jerusalem; they are
the custodians of a treasure far more rich and lasting than that in any
palace of a king. Such comparisons, indeed, are almost belittling to the
dignity of our subject. How noble and vast is the temple of literature!
What single mind can grasp its proportions or the boundless beauty of
its decorations? Moreover, it is a living temple, ever springing up
afresh, in all its pristine strength and beauty, whereever minds are
found reverent, studious, and thoughtful.
9. The old proverb suggests that we "beware of the man of one book," and
is significant of a strong practical truth. Our modern life demands a
somewhat broader basis of operations than one book can furnish. But a
few of the great books, well mastered, give the main elements of
strength.
Mabie has a short chapter on the "Books of Life" which "include the
original, creative, first-hand books in all literatures, and constitute
in the last analysis a comparatively small group, with which any
student can thoroughly familiarize himself. The literary impulse of the
race has expressed itself in a great variety of works of varying charm
and power, but the books which are fountain-heads of vitality, ideas,
and beauty are few in number."
The effect upon the teacher of the study of a few of the "Books of Life"
is deserving of emphasis. First, by limiting the choice to a few things,
teachers are able, without burdening themselves, to penetrate into the
deeper thought and meaning of standard works which are good specimens
and criteria of all superior literature. Teachers are enabled thus to
become, in a limited way, real students of literature. It has been
observed, not seldom, that teachers of usual capacity, when turned into
a single rich field like that of "Hiawatha" or the "Merchant of Venice"
or "The Lays of Ancient Rome" or the "Lady of the Lake," receive an
awakening which means much for their general culture and teaching power.
The scattering of the attention over miscellaneous selections and
fragments can hardly produce this awakening.
Certain difficulties are incident to the reading of longer works as
wholes which it is well to recognize.
1. There is no such nice grading of verbal and language difficulties as
has been wrought out in some of the standard readers. On this point
Scudder says (p. 41 of "Literature in Schools"):--
"The drawback to the use of these nursery classics in the schoolroom
undoubtedly has been in the absence of versions which are intelligible
to children of the proper age, reading by themselves. The makers of the
graded reading-books have expended all their ingenuity in grading the
ascent. They have been so concerned about the gradual enlargement of
their vocabularies that they have paid slight attention to the ideas
which the words were intended to convey. But just this gradation may be
secured through the use of these stories, and it only needs that they
should be written out in a form as simple, especially as regards the
order of words, as that which obtains in the reading-books of equivalent
grade."
But in the longer classics for more advanced grades there can be no such
adaptation, and the author's form should be retained. The authors of
"Rip Van Winkle" or "Snow-Bound" or "Horatius at the Bridge" were not
trying to phrase their thought to meet the needs of children, but wrote
as the spirit moved them. The greater vigor and intensity of the
author's style will make up, however, in large part, for this defect in
easy grading. Children are not so much afraid of big or new words, if
there is attractiveness and power of thought. The larger richness and
variety of language in a fruitful author is a positive advantage as
compared with the leanness and dulness of many a smoothly graded reading
lesson.
2. It is claimed that there is, in some masterpieces, like "Evangeline"
or one of Webster's speeches, a monotony and tiresome sameness which
grows burdensome to pupils ere the conclusion is reached. At least there
is much less variety in style and thought than in an equal number of
pages in the usual reader.
In some cases there is good ground for this criticism. It may be a
defect in the writer's style, or in not finding a suitable selection for
the class. In some cases it is due to lack of power in the teacher to
bring the children properly into close contact with the author's
thought.
But dulness and apathy are often found in reading short selections as
well as in longer ones. Generally speaking, longer pieces are apt to
kindle a deeper and stronger interest. Many of the longer selections
have also great variety of rhetorical style. Dickens's "Christmas Carol"
is employed in one of the drill books in reading to illustrate all
phases of voice and tone.
3. It is not an unusual experience to find that a longer story or poem
seems too hard for a class, and it may be impossible to interest them
because of verbal or thought difficulties. But the teacher should not
give up the struggle at once. Often, in a new author, difficulties that
seem at first insurmountable give way before vigorous effort, and a
lively interest is awakened. This has been noticed in Macaulay's "Lays
of Ancient Rome," in Irving's "Rip Van Winkle," in Scott's "Lady of the
Lake," also in Webster's "Speech in reply to Hayne." The teacher should
not depend wholly upon the author's making himself intelligible and
interesting to the children. His own enthusiasm, clear grasp of thought,
suggestive assignment of lesson, and skill in comment and question
should awaken insight and attention. It is advisable at times to pass by
specially difficult passages, or leave them for later special study.
4. In some schools it is not possible to secure books containing the
complete classics. But even the regular readers often contain complete
poems and stories, and several of the large companies are publishing
many of the complete masterpieces in good print and binding, no more
expensive than the regular readers.
5. The greatest difficulty, after all, is the lack of experience of many
teachers with the longer classics. In many cases their inability to
select what would suit their classes is a hindrance. But the experience
of many teachers with these materials is rapidly settling the question
as to the place and importance of the leading masterpieces as well as of
many shorter selections.