Some years ago at College I read, on compulsion, a book on Rhetoric.
Reasons were to me then as plenty as blackberries, and I recollect that
on examination my answers given to this, that, and the other were so glib
and trite, and my thesis so amusing, that I carried off a Prize.
But during the struggle for prizes that have a value as collateral, the
Prize and the Rhetoric were forgotten. Yet Fate decreed it so, and one
day last week I met a Harvard youth, whose ambition was Literature,
and he was in the grinding turmoil of a Volume. He was studying on
compulsion, with intent to work off a Condition, and the book he was
reading with such violence was the Rhetoric of my College days. With a
flush of pride it came to me that I was a Prizeman, and I offered, out of
the goodness of my heart, to tutor the youth, so that after five lessons
of an hour each he could grind the Condition to powder.
To prove my fitness, the young man put me through a slight quiz, and
alas! all of the beautiful truths and facts of the Rhetoric had slipped
me, save this alone: “The three requisites in correct writing are
Clearness, Force, and Elegance.”
Every address that Professor Adams Sherman Hill, who wrote the Rhetoric,
ever gave began with this formula. Mr. Barrett Wendell, Heir-Apparent
to his ideas and Chair, does the same; and the Shock-headed Youth, who
occupies the same relation to the professorship that the infant Duke of
York does to the throne of England, always settles himself in his seat
with his elbows on the table, coughs gently, and prefaces his lecture
by saying to the admiring Freshmen: “Gentlemen, the three requisites in
correct writing are Clearness, Force, and Elegance.” Professor Hill has
in one book, by actual count, twenty-seven different propositions that
he divides into three parts. I have forgotten them all save the one just
named. This statement I never can forget. I hold it with a deathless
grasp that defies the seasons and sorrows of time: for there are things
burned so deep into one’s soul that the brand can never be removed; and
should reason abdicate, I’ll gibber through the grates of my padded cell
at each pitying passer-by, “The three requisites in correct writing are
Clearness, Force, and Elegance.”
For years I have repeated this fetching formula on every possible
occasion; and up to this date I have managed to drown the rising voice
of conscience by the specious plea that a double standard of truth is
justifiable in the present condition of society. In morals I have been a
bimetalist.
But after reading _On Compromise_, by John Morley, I am convinced that
this juggling with the Eternal Verities is what has kept the race in
darkness these many cycles; and I now admit the truth which I have long
withheld, that Professor Hill’s three Requisites are gross humbuggery. I
boldly state that Professor Hill does not know what the “Requisites” are;
and I am sure that I do not. In fact I am looking for them anxiously; and
should I ever find them, I’ll do as Shakespeare did—keep them to myself.
I say further that inasmuch as Professor Hill does not know them, the
Heir-Apparent and the Shock-headed Youth in the rush-line for the Chair
cannot possibly be expected to know: so none of us know.
Not only is Professor Hill’s formula rank error, but it is in direct
opposition to truth. I bundle his crass creed with Dr. Hall’s Universal
Self-Treatment, Professor Loisette’s Scheme of Mnemonics, and the
Brown-Sequard Recipe for Perpetual Youth.
Professor Hill, with the help of his students, has compiled three books
on Rhetoric; Mr. Barrett Wendell has published two. Students at Harvard
are expected to buy these books. There are three thousand students at
Harvard. These various books are practically one, for they all teach
that “a parenthetical remark must be enclosed in parentheses, dashes or
commas,” and that “every sentence should have at least one verb.” These
things are explained to men who have had ten years of solid schooling in
order to fit them for College. Professor Hill recommends Harvard students
to buy “that well written work on Composition by Mr. Barrett Wendell,”
and Mr. Wendell modestly says, on page 8, line 18, of his biggest well
written work: “Professor Hill’s books are the most sensible treatment of
the art of composition that I have yet found in print.” The last three
chapters in Mr. Wendell’s well written work bear the following startling
titles, respectively: _Clearness_, _Force_, and _Elegance_. Harvard
Freshmen know Trigonometry, Physics and “one language beside English,”
and various other things, but it is left for Professor Hill to sell them
a book which explains that “a sentence may end either with a period,
interrogation point or an exclamation mark!” Do you say that the public
school system is to blame for such a condition? My answer is that if
Harvard required her students to know the simple rules of Rhetoric before
being admitted to the University, it would be done.
Mr. Hill fills the Boylston Professorship of Literature and Oratory at
Harvard University, but with all the many thousand students who have
been under his care he has probably never given impulse to a single
orator, nor materially assisted one man with literary ambition. The
reason is that he is teaching things that should have been known to his
pupils years before. There is a time to teach things as well as a way.
Instead of arousing animation Professor Hill reduces it. So sympathy
is made a weakling and imagination rendered wingless. I have examined
many compositions written by Harvard students, and they average up about
like the epistles of little girls who write letters to Santa Claus. The
students are all right—fine intelligent young fellows—but the conditions
under which they work are such that they are robbed of all spontaneity
when they attempt to express themselves. Of course I know that a few
Harvard men have succeeded in Oratory and Literature, for there are
those so strong that even Cambridge cannot kill their personality, nor a
Professor reduce to neutral salts their native vim.
The rules of Rhetoric should be taught to adolescence; then when the boy
goes to college he has tools with which to work. “When did you learn
your letters?” I asked a six-year-old youngster yesterday. “I allus
know’d ’em,” was the reply. And the answer was wise, for the kindergarten
methods teach the child to read, and he never knows when or how he
acquired the knowledge. As a healthy man does not know he has a stomach,
so he should write without knowing a single so-called rule. And as the
Froebel methods are fast making their way in all departments of learning,
I expect this will soon be so. But the colleges lag behind, and Harvard
(very busy fighting “Co-Ed—”) still tries to make statues by clapping the
material on the outside.
Professor Hill knows the futility of his methods, for in his last work he
puts in several disclaimers to the effect that he “does not undertake to
supply men with ideas.” That confession of weakness is pitiful. Professor
Hill should surround his students with an atmosphere that makes thought
possible. By liberating the imagination of his pupils ideas would come to
them. But as fire will not burn without oxygen, so thought cannot exist
in the presence of Mr. Barrett Wendell. Both he and his Superior are
strong in way of supplying cold storage—that’s all.
In lecturing on Literature and Oratory these men sit at a desk. And
often, becoming weary, they sprawl over the table like a devil-fish
seeking its prey. This, I believe, is the usual Cambridge method. But
there is one exception to this rule at Harvard, and that is Professor
Kittredge, who being nervous and cannot sit still, paces the platform
and shoots the lecture over his shoulder. When a student is called on
to recite, Professor Kittredge often opens a box of withering sarcasm
that acts like chlorine gas on the poor fellow who is trying to recite.
But it makes the rest of the class grin like deaths-heads. Harvard knows
no general plan for cultivating the imagination, inciting animation, or
furthering ambition. All is suppression, fear; and this repression often
finds vent in rowdyism outside of Harvard Yard. The seven youths who
under Professor Hill mark the themes hunt only for errors and lapses. The
tendency of this negation is intellectual torpor and spiritual death.
If any one should ask Mr. Barrett Wendell what he thought of the
Herbartian idea of developing the God within, the Assistant Professor
would first calmly light a cigarette, and after blowing the smoke through
his nose, would fix on his presumptious interlocutor an Antarctic stare
that would freeze him stiff.