with nothing but the bare text, without notes of any kind unless with
a glossary of terms not to be found in available books of reference.
In the matter of looking up difficulties the books of reference in the
school library should be used; and if the school has no library beyond
the dictionary, I should still hold to my opinion. The vocabulary may
be very largely worked out with any fairly comprehensive dictionary,
and what cannot be discovered in this way is better taken _viva voce_
in recitation than swallowed from notes without even the trouble of
asking. Much will be done, moreover, by the not unhealthy spirit of
emulation which is sure to exist where the pupils are set to use their
wits and to report the result in class. They will remember much better;
and, what in general education is of the very first importance, they
will have admirable practice in the use of books of reference. Many
difficulties must be explained by the teacher; but this, I insist, is
better than the following of notes, a habit which is sure to degenerate
into lifeless memorizing. The model text for school use would be
cut in those few passages not suited for the school-room, would be
clearly printed, and would be as free as possible from any outside
matter whatever. In the case of poetry the ideal method would be to
keep the text out of the hands of the student altogether until all
work necessary to the mastering of the vocabulary had been done: but
in practice such voluntary reading as a pupil chose to do beforehand
would do no harm other than possibly to distract his attention from
the learning of the meaning of words and phrases. In prose he will
generally be in a key which allows the interruption of a pause for
looking up words without much injury to the effect of the work.
The study of prose is of course directed by the same principles as that
of poetry, but the application is in school-work somewhat modified
in details. In the first place the vocabulary of any prose used
in the schools is not likely to contain obsolete words such as are
found in Shakespeare, and in the second place the length of a novel
forbids its being read aloud in class in its entirety. I have taken my
illustrations chiefly from books included in the College Requirements,
because these books are the ones with which the majority of teachers
are obliged to work. The Sir Roger de Coverley papers are sure to
be taken up in any school-room where literature is studied to-day,
and Burke "On Conciliation" is one of the inevitable obstacles in
the way of every boy who wishes to enter college. Whatever the work,
however, the important thing is that each pupil shall understand, shall
appreciate, and shall connect what he reads with his own life.
The order in which different works are taken up in class is a matter
of much moment. No rules can be given arbitrarily to govern the
arrangement of the readings, since much depends upon the individual
class to be dealt with. On general principles, for instance, it might
seem that Burke's "Speech," as being the least imaginative of the
prescribed work, might well come first; but on the other hand, the
argument demands intellectual capacity and maturity which will often
require that it be not put before a given group of scholars until they
have had all the training they can gain from the other requirements.
A teacher can hardly afford to have any rule in the whole treatment
of literature which is not so flexible that it may be modified or
disregarded entirely when circumstances require. The ideal method,
perhaps, would be to give a class first a few short pieces as tests,
and then to arrange their longer work upon the basis of the result.
If the "Speech" is to be taken up first or last, it must be preceded by
a clear understanding of the history of the conditions with which Burke
dealt. This knowledge should have been obtained in the history class,
and the use of facts obtained in another branch affords one of the
opportunities for doing that useful thing which should be kept always
in sight, the enforcing of the fact that all education is one, although
for convenience of handling necessarily divided into various branches.
If the class has not had the requisite instruction in history, the
teacher of English is forced to pause and supply the deficiency, as
it is hopeless to try to go on without it. The argument of Burke is
pretty tough work for any class of high-school students, and without
familiarity with the circumstances which called it forth is utterly
unintelligible.
The vocabulary of Burke contains few words which need to be studied
beforehand, and indeed it is perhaps better to treat the speech as
so far a logical rather than an imaginative work that without other
preparation than a thorough mastery of the circumstances under which
it was delivered and of the political issues with which it dealt the
class may be given the text directly. In the first reading the thing
to be insured is the intelligent comprehension of the language and of
the argument. In the first half-dozen paragraphs, for instance, such
passages as these must be made perfectly clear:
I hope, Sir, that notwithstanding the austerity of the Chair,
your good nature will incline you to some degree of indulgence
toward human frailty.
The grand penal bill.
Returned to us from the other House.
We are not at all embarrassed (unless we please to make
ourselves so) by any incongruous mixture of coercion and
restraint.
From being blown about by every wind of fashionable doctrine.
This is clear enough in meaning, but the class should notice the
suggestion of the biblical phrase which insinuates that a good deal of
the political fluctuation which has complicated the question of the
treatment of the colonies has been like the hysterical instability of
those who run after every fresh eccentricity offered in the name of
religion.
I really did not think it safe or manly to have fresh
principles to seek upon every fresh mail that should arrive
from America.
It is in your equity to judge.
Parliament, having an enlarged view of objects.
A situation which I will not miscall, which I dare not name.
That the public tribunal (never too indulgent to a long and
unsuccessful opposition) would now scrutinize our conduct with
unusual severity.
We must produce our hand.
Somewhat disreputably.
The whole oration is studded with passages such as these, and it is
the habit of too many instructors to expect the student to depend upon
notes for the solution of such difficulties. I have already indicated
that I believe this to be an unwise and weakening process; and in a
political document of this sort a drill for elucidating difficulties
may well be undertaken when in an imaginative work more latitude may be
allowed in the way of sliding over them.
The reading of the speech as a whole could hardly be attempted with any
profit until the class has mastered its technicalities and its logic.
The oration differs in this from more imaginative literature. Here it
is not only proper but necessary to make analysis part of the first
reading.
The class should for itself make a summary of the speech as it goes
forward. For each paragraph should be devised a single sentence which
gives clearly and concisely the thought, so that at the conclusion a
complete skeleton shall have been made. Each student should make these
sentences for himself as part of his preparation of a lesson, and from
a comparison in the class the final form may be selected. Some of the
school editions do this admirably, but one of two things seems to me
indisputable: either the "Speech" is too difficult for students to
handle or they should make their own summaries. To do this part of the
work for them is to deprive the study of its most valuable element.
The best justification such a selection can have for its inclusion
in the list of required books is that it may fairly be used for this
careful analytical work without prejudice to the effect of the piece as
a whole. In other words, no objection exists to treating this especial
selection first from the purely intellectual point of view. To consider
a play of Shakespeare first intellectually would seem to me utterly
wrong; but this argument of Burke is intentionally addressed to the
reason rather than to the imagination, and would therefore logically be
so read.
Beside the mere interpretation of difficult passages, the pupil should
be made to discern and to weigh the value and effect of the admirable
sentences in which the orator has condensed whole trains of logic.
The concessions of the weak are the concessions of fear.
A wise and salutary neglect.
The power of refusal, the first of all revenues.
The voluntary flow of heaped-up plenty.
All government—indeed, every human benefit and enjoyment,
every virtue and every prudent act—is founded on compromise
and barter.
The study of phrases of this sort is admirable training for the
reasoning faculties of the scholar, it educates the powers of reading,
and it may be made a continuous lesson in the nature and value of
literary technique. Of this study of literary workmanship I shall speak
later; here it is sufficient to point the necessity at once and the
advantage of dwelling on these vital thoughts so admirably expressed.
By the time the oration has been gone through with, and a summary of
each paragraph made in the class, a skeleton is ready from which the
argument may be considered as a whole. In some schools students will be
able to criticise from an historical point of view, and any intelligent
boy to whom the oration is given for study should be able to judge of
the logic of the plea.
If the "Speech" is to justify its claim to being literature in the
higher sense, however, it is not possible to stop with the intellectual
study. The question of what constitutes literature is better taken up,
it seems to me, near the end of the course of secondary work, if it is
to come in at all; but preparation for dealing with that question must
come all along the line. When Burke has been studied for his political
meanings, his argument summed up and examined, the intellectual force
of the parts and of the whole sufficiently considered, then it is
necessary to look at the imaginative qualities of the work.
I would never set children to examine any piece of prose or verse for
any qualities until I was sure they understood what they are to look
for. If they are to examine the oration for imaginative passages,
they must first know clearly what an imaginative passage is. Here the
previous training of the class is to be reckoned with. Some classes
must be taught the significance of the term "imaginative" by having
the passages pointed out to them and then analyzed; others are so far
advanced as to be able to discover them. The thing I wish to emphasize
is that when the simply intellectual study has progressed far enough,
the imaginative must follow. Passages which may be used here are such
as these:
My plan . . . does not propose to fill your lobby with
squabbling colony agents, who will require the interposition
of your mace at every instant to keep peace among them. It
does not institute a magnificent auction of finance, where
captivated provinces come to general ransom by bidding against
each other, until you knock down the hammer, and determine a
proportion of payments beyond all powers of algebra to equalize
and settle.
* * * * *
Such is the strength with which population shoots in that part
of the world, that, state the numbers as high as we will,
whilst the dispute continues, the exaggeration ends.
* * * * *
Look at the manner in which the people of New England have of
late carried on the whale fishery. Whilst we follow them among
the tumbling mountains of ice, and behold them penetrating into
the deepest frozen recesses of Hudson Bay and Davis Strait,
whilst we are looking for them beneath the Arctic Circle, we
hear that they have pierced into the opposite region of polar
cold, that they are at the antipodes and engaged under the
frozen Serpent of the south. Falkland Island, which seemed
too remote and romantic an object for the grasp of national
ambition, is but a stage and resting-place in the progress of
their victorious industry. Nor is the equinoctial heat more
discouraging to them than the accumulated winter of both poles.
We know that while some of them draw the line and strike the
harpoon on the coast of Africa, others run the longitude and
pursue their gigantic game along the coast of Brazil. No sea
but is vexed by their fisheries. No climate that is not witness
of their toils.
* * * * *
A people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and not
yet hardened into the bone of manhood.
Passages of this sort are frequent in the speech, and it is not
difficult to make the pupils not only recognize them, but appreciate
the quality which distinguishes them from the matter-of-fact statements
of figures, statistics, or other necessary information.
A step further is to make the class see how the imagination shows in a
passage like the famous sentence:
I do not know the method of drawing up an indictment against a
whole people.
These dozen or so words may profitably be made the subject for an
entire lesson, and if this seem a proportionately extravagant amount
of time to give to a single line, I can only say that to do one thing
thoroughly is not only better than to do a score superficially, but in
the long run it is economy of time as well. If the class can be led to
discuss the meaning of the phrase, and the principles upon which Burke
rested the argument which is behind this superb proposition, not only
will the hour have been well spent in developing the ideas of the
students, but the whole oration will be wonderfully illuminated. When
to this is added an adequate understanding of the imaginative grasp
which seizes the personality of a whole nation, perceives its majesty,
its sovereignty, and the impossibility of arraigning it before the bar
like a criminal, the student is getting the best that the study of the
oration can give him.
Written work should be kept within the limits of the capability of
the individual pupil to think intelligently. Perhaps the best means
of enforcing upon a class the vigor of Burke's style at once and the
completeness of the oration as a whole is that of requiring from each
an expression, as clear and as exact as possible, of just what the
orator wished to effect, and an estimate, as critical as the pupil is
capable of making, of how the means employed were especially adapted
to carry out his purpose. Such work will be useless if the teacher
does the reasoning, but much may be elicited by skilful leading in
recitation, and after the scholars have done all that they can do, the
instructor may add his comment.
After the "Speech on Conciliation" may reasonably come, if the required
list of readings is being followed, the "Sir Roger de Coverley Papers."
Here one deals with work more deliberately imaginative. Preparation
for taking up these essays should begin with a brief account of the
"Spectator" and of the circumstances under which they were written. The
less elaborate this is the better, so long as it serves the purpose of
giving the class some notion of the point of view; and indeed it is to
be doubted whether as a matter of fact any great harm would be done if
even this were omitted. What is needed is to interest the class in the
work, and facts about times and circumstances seldom effect much real
good in this study.
The vocabulary will give little trouble. It is well to be sure that
the readers understand beforehand such words as may be rather remote
from daily speech. In the account of the club (March 2, 1710-11),
for instance, the list given out for test might include such terms
as these: baronet, country-dance, shire, humor, modes, Soho-square,
quarter-sessions, game-act. In the first paragraph, from which these
words are taken, are also two or three phrases which should be familiar
before the reading is undertaken: "never dressed afterward," "in
his merry humors," "rather beloved than esteemed," and "justice of
the quorum." The historical allusions, as represented by the names
Lord Rochester, Sir George Etherege, and Dawson, go also into this
preliminary study.
The paper should be first read as a whole, with no other interruption
than may come in the form of questions from the class. The teacher
should make no effort at anything here but intelligent reading. Then
the paper may be given out for careful study; the form of this may be
varied at the pleasure of the teacher and the needs of the class. The
presentation of character is the point to be most strongly brought
out, and this must be done delicately but as completely as possible.
The "De Coverley Papers" necessarily seem to the modern youth extremely
remote from actual life as he knows it, and the majority of Institute
students with whom I have talked admit that they found Addison very
quiet, or, in their own phrase, "slow." The characters are accordingly
apt to appear to them dim and unreal; to be hardly more alive than the
figures on an ancient tapestry. This feeling cannot be wholly overcome,
especially in the limited time which is at the command of the teacher
of school literature, yet whatever vividness of impression a reader
of the essays gets is directly proportional to the extent to which
Sir Roger and his friends emerge from the land of shadows, and seem
to the boys and girls genuine flesh and blood. The chief care of the
instructor in dealing with these papers, the aim to which everything
else should be subordinated, is to encourage and to develop the sense
of reality. The little touches by which the personality of the old
knight is shown must be dwelt upon as each appears; and in the end a
summary of these may be made as a means of stating briefly but clearly
Sir Roger's character. Constantly, too, by means homely enough to
be clearly and easily intelligible to the class, must each of these
passages be connected with the personal experiences of the children.
In the essay generally headed "Sir Roger at Home," for instance, the
author remarks:
Sir Roger, who is very well acquainted with my humor, lets me
rise and go to bed when I please; dine at his own table, or in
my chamber, as I think fit; sit still, and say nothing, without
bidding me be merry.
The whole situation, that of a notable man's visit to a country
squire, is utterly foreign to the pupil's probable experience. He can,
however, be made to recall occasions in which he has been considered
and his wishes consulted. He may or may not as a guest have tested
different forms of hospitality, but he easily decides how under given
circumstances he would wish to be treated. From this he is without
difficulty led to an appreciation of the consideration with which Sir
Roger was intent not upon his own wishes or the ease of his household,
but upon the pleasure of his guest. Few boys or girls can have come to
the school age without understanding what a drawback to good spirits
it is to be told to be merry, and they can appreciate the common sense
of the knight in thinking of this, and his tact in not bothering his
guest. The same thoughtful kindness is shown in the way Sir Roger
protected his lion from sightseers. Incidentally the point may be made
in passing that Addison humorously took this means of impressing on the
reader of the "Spectator" the importance of the supposed writer.
The best preparation a teacher can make for dealing with these
essays is to get clearly into his own mind the personality, the
characteristics, even the outward appearance of each of the characters
dealt with. It is impossible to make these quiet and delicately drawn
pictures real and alive unless we have for them a genuine love and a
sense of acquaintance; and I know of no method by which in practical
work this can be communicated except by the vivifying of such passages
as that quoted above.
Each student should bring to the class a statement of what he regards
as the chief thought in each paper as it comes up,—not the moral of
the paper, but the chief end which the writer seems to have in view,
the thought which most strongly strikes the reader. These opinions
should be talked over in class, and from them one produced which at
least the majority of the class are willing to accept. No pupil,
however, should be discouraged from holding to his own original
proposition, or from adopting a view at variance with that of the
majority.
Always if possible,—and personally I should make it possible, even at
the sacrifice of other things,—the paper should last of all be read
as a whole without interruption. The fact should always be kept before
the minds of the pupils that the essay is not a collection of detached
facts or thoughts, but that it is a whole, and that it can fairly be
received only in its entirety.
* * * * *
To stretch out illustrations of the teaching of particular books would
only be tedious, and I trust I have done enough to make evident what I
believe should be the spirit of work done in the "studying" of prose
in the secondary schools. The matter is of comparative simplicity as
contrasted with the handling of poetry; and I have therefore reserved
most of my space for the latter. No one knows better than I that any
formal method is fatal to real and vital work; and what I have written
has been largely inspired by a knowledge that many instructors are at a
loss to formulate any rational method at all, while others, I am forced
sorrowfully to add, seem never even to have perceived that any method
is possible.
XII
THE STUDY OF THE NOVEL
Whatever may be the entrance requirements and whatever the prescribed
course in the way of fiction, I should begin the study of the novel
with a modern book. To hold the attention of the majority of modern
children long enough for them to form any adequate idea of the quality
and characteristics of any work of the length of an ordinary novel,
long enough for them to gain an idea which conceives of the work
as a whole and not as a collection of detached scenes and scraps,
is sufficiently difficult in any case. It should not be made more
difficult by selecting as a text a book requiring effort in the
understanding of vocabulary, point of view, setting, and the rest.
"Ivanhoe" is good in its place, but it is not adapted to use as first
aid to the untrained. It is probable that a class after sufficient
experience in fiction may be able to handle "Silas Marner," and it is
apparently fated by the powers that be that they must struggle with
"The Vicar of Wakefield;" but they certainly need preliminary practice
before they are set to grapple with those fictions so remote from
their daily lives. They should begin with something as near their own
world as possible; and "Treasure Island," the scene laid in the land
of boyhood's imaginings, is an excellent example of the sort of story
which may well be used to introduce them to the serious consideration
of this branch of literature.
A little preliminary talk may well precede the actual reading. The
teacher should be sure that the class has a fair idea of what piracy
is,—a matter generally of little difficulty,—and of the social
conditions under which the tale begins. The actual geography of the
romance need not be considered much, although students lose nothing if
they are trained to the habit of knowing accurately the location of
such real places as are named in any story; but the imaginary geography
of the tale, the topography of the island, should be well mastered.
Beyond this, the teacher should have prepared a list of words to be
learned before any reading is done. This should include all those in
the first assignment that are likely to bother the child in the first
going over of the text. In the opening chapter, for instance, such
words as these:
Buccaneer (title of Part I).
Capstan bars.
Connoisseur.
Dry Tortugas.
Spanish Main.
Hawker.
Assizes.
In this chapter are a couple of allusions to the costume of the time,
but as they are intelligible only when taken as sentences they may be
left for the reading in class:
One of the cocks of his hat having fallen down.
The neat, bright doctor, with his powder as white as snow.