There is a good deal of popular ignorance about writing; it is commonly
thought that good writing comes of a natural gift and that without
the gift the trick can not be turned. This is true of great writing,
but not of good. Any one with good natural intelligence and a fair
education can be taught to write well, as he can be taught to draw
well, or play billiards well, or shoot a rifle well, and so forth; but
to do any of these things greatly is another matter. If one can not do
great work it is worth while to do good work and think it great.
I have had some small experience in teaching English composition, and
some of my pupils are good enough to permit me to be rather proud of
them. Some I have been able only to encourage, and a few will recall my
efforts to profit them by dissuasion. I should not now think it worth
while to teach a pupil to write merely well, but given one capable of
writing greatly, and five years in which to train him, I should not
permit him to put pen to paper for at least two of them—except to make
notes. Those two years should be given to broadening and strengthening
his mind, teaching him how to think and giving him something to
think about—to sharpening his faculties of observation, dispelling
his illusions and destroying his ideals. That would hurt: he would
sometimes rebel, doubtless, and have to be subdued by a diet of bread
and water and a poem on the return of our heroes from Santiago.
If I caught him reading a newly published book, save by way of
penance, it would go hard with him. Of our modern education he should
have enough to read the ancients: Plato, Aristotle, Marcus Aurelius,
Seneca and that lot—custodians of most of what is worth knowing. He
might retain what he could of the higher mathematics if he had been
so prodigal of his time as to acquire any, and might learn enough of
science to make him prefer poetry; but to learn from Euclid that the
three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles, yet not to
learn from Epictetus how to be a worthy guest at the table of the gods,
would be accounted a breach of contract.
But chiefly this fortunate youth with the brilliant future should
learn to take comprehensive views, hold large convictions and make
wide generalizations. He should, for example, forget that he is an
American and remember that he is a Man. He should be neither Christian,
nor Jew, nor Buddhist, nor Mahometan, nor Snake Worshiper. To local
standards of right and wrong he should be civilly indifferent. In the
virtues, so-called, he should discern only the rough notes of a general
expediency; in fixed moral principles only time-saving predecisions of
cases not yet before the court of conscience. Happiness should disclose
itself to his enlarging intelligence as the end and purpose of life;
art and love as the only means to happiness. He should free himself of
all doctrines, theories, etiquettes, politics, simplifying his life
and mind, attaining clarity with breadth and unity with height. To him
a continent should not seem wide, nor a century long. And it would be
needful that he know and have an ever present consciousness that this
is a world of fools and rogues, blind with superstition, tormented
with envy, consumed with vanity, selfish, false, cruel, cursed with
illusions—frothing mad!
We learn in suffering what we teach in song—and prose. I should pray
that my young pupil would occasionally go wrong, experiencing the
educational advantages of remorse; that he would dally with some of the
more biting vices. I should be greatly obliged if Fortune would lay
upon him, now and then, a heavy affliction. A bereavement or two, for
example, would be welcome, although I should not care to have a hand
in it. He must have joy, too—O, a measureless exuberance of joy; and
hate, and fear, hope, despair and love—love inexhaustible, a permanent
provision. He must be a sinner and in turn a saint, a hero, a wretch.
Experiences and emotions—these are necessaries of the literary life. To
the great writer they are as indispensable as sun and air to the rose,
or good, fat, edible vapors to toads. When my pupil should have had two
years of this he would be permitted to try his ’prentice hand at a pig
story in words of one syllable. And I should think it very kind and
friendly if Mr. George Sylvester Vierick would consent to be the pig.
1899.