mil i itijll!., i HiiPPiii 1 11 ,Jii|ll|lii' mmm. jilii liiilii ™iif lililllllill I hi I : I i 'iiBlimfli, ii^* I H li mm ■'ty- ''rV' SOUTHERN BRANCH, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LIBRARY, >LOS ANGELES. CALIF. TWO VIEWS OF EDUCATION TWO VIEWS OF EDUCATION WITH OTHER PAPERS CHIEFLY ON THE STUDY OF LITERATURE BY LANE COOPER Professor of the English Language and Literature in Cornell University 476 SI NEW HAVEN YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS London: Humphrey Milfoed, Oxford University Press MDCCCCXXII Copyright, 1922 Yale Univeesity Press PRESS OF TME NEW ERA PRINTINQ COMPANY LANCASTER, FA. V 1.3 G79 PREFACE IN gathering these papers into a volume, I have been moved by three considerations. First, a number of friends and pupils, including certain teachers of English, would have it so. Secondly, there has been a demand for some of the articles from persons unknown to me, and some of them have been handled as pamphlets by book-shops in a fash- ion not altogether satisfactory to the dealers or customers, or to the author. Thirdly, I have found nearly all the contents of the present volume useful in my teaching at Cornell University, as well as in summer courses given at the University of Illinois, Stanford University, and the University of Cali- fornia. Meanwhile the supply of offprints and pamphlets has been virtually exhausted, so that I must either reprint most of the papers, or relinquish the hope of giving again certain courses for teachers in what seems to me the most effective way. Per- haps it will not be amiss to add that I have faith in the eclectic body of doctrine here offered to a wider public. The volume naturally represents my own experience as a student and teacher in a special province ; yet so much of it is assimilated from writers and thinkers, teachers and scholars, of all ages, that it may fairly be said to represent a broader range V VI PREFACE of experience than could fall to the lot of any in- dividual; and hence I entertain the hope that the collection may be serviceable to others who are inter- ested in the teaching of language and literature. It will be found that these pages contain many, and some long, illustrative quotations, and frequent citations of opinion on questions that in recent years have been the subject of controversy. One entire paper, The Function of the Leader in Scholarship, is, of set purpose, largely made up of quotations. There and elsewhere, it has been my fortune to side with the few rather than the multitude, in re- spect to the solution of problems concerning which nearly every one has fairly definite opinions. In fact, I have more than once, after reading a paper at an educational gathering, experienced an attack upon what were called my 'ideas,' when I had taken pains to let Milton, or Wordsworth, or Plato, or a number of such men of weight, say for me what seemed to be unquestionable truth. A great deal of the truth concerning education is unpalatable to any crowd, and I am aware of no field where the truth is less palatable to the generality than in the teaching of literature. I must therefore beg the in- dulgence of the reader for a method of presentation by which I am enabled to Set forth, not my ideas — as if ideas ever could be the property of an indi- vidual — but permanent human ideas, expressed with the skill and force of men whose utterances are likely to win assent, or at least to receive attention. PEEFACE Vll The papers here included have been subjected to a revision designed to eliminate chance errors and unnecessary repetition of illustrative materials, and, so far as might be, to remove the signs of their oc- casional origin, together with personal allusions. And something has been done to fit them into a reasonable sequence. That the personal tone which may be excused in an occasional address has en- tirely disappeared is more than one could hope for. Nor is it to be expected that the parts of this book should read like the successive chapters of a treat- ise. If I had tried to avoid all overlapping, it would hardly be feasible to reprint some of the items at all. Where repetition occurs, I trust that the importance of the thought, or at least the strength of my convictions as to its importance, may serve as aji excuse for what, after all, in a systematic treat- ise would amount to little more than a rhetorical device for the sake of emphasis. It gives me pleasure to thank the editors of the various periodicals in which the majority of these articles first appeared, for permission, always gener- ously granted, to reissue the articles in their present shape; these and other obligations are, I trust, in every case duly indicated at the proper place in the volume. But I now subjoin a list of the passages quoted with the kind consent of the English pub- lishers from recent books published in Great Britain. The extract on pp. 26-7 from Zielinski's Oiur Debt to Antiquity, pp. 2-3, is reprinted with the consent of Messrs. George Routledge and Sons. The extract on p. 83 from Frederic Harrison's Tennyson, Rus- Vlll PREFACE kin, Mill, and other Literary Estimates, pp. 153-4, that on pp. 83-4 from Lord Morley's Stiidies in Literature, pp. 222-3, that on p. 133 from Goldwin Smith's Reminiscences, p. 71, and that on pp. 150-2 from Welldon's translation of Aristotle's Rhetoric, pp. 164-6, are reprinted with the consent of Messrs. Macmillan and Company. The extracts on pp. 160, 184-5, 189, from Jowett's translation of The Dia- logues of Plato 1.472-3, 2.124-5, 2.129, that on pp. 195-6 from Andrew Lang's Memoir of W. Y, Sellar in Sellar 's Horace and the Elegiac Poets, pp. xxxi- XXXV, that on pp. 212-4 from Jackson's translation of Dante's Convivio, pp. 31^, and that on p. 249 from Burgon's Lives of Twelve Good Men, p. 38, are reprinted with the consent of the Clarendon Press. The extract on pp. 179-81 from Andrew Lang's Es- says in Little, pp. 80-3, is reprinted with the consent of Messrs. Longmans, Green and Company, and also of Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons., The extract on pp. 187-8 from Gierke-Maitland, Political Theories of the Middle Age, pp. 131-2, is reprinted with the consent of the Cambridge University Press. Finally I wish to thank two friends of mine, from the circle of my former students, who have materi- ally helped me in bringing these papers in their present shape before the public. But for the gener- osity of these two friends and pupils it would have been impossible for me to publish the volume at all. To them, since they wish to remain anonymous, I herewith informally dedicate the book. CONTENTS PAGE I. Greek Culture 1 II. Ancient and Modem Letters 15 III. The Teaching of English and the Study of the Classics 30 IV. Good Usage 47 V. The Teaching of Written Composition . . 72 VI. The Correction of Papers 88 VII. Literature for Engineers 105 VIII. Teacher and Student 128 IX. Patterns 145 X. Things New and Old 162 XL The Function of the Leader in Scholar- ship 182 XII. Ways and Means of Improving Univer- sity Scholarship 219 XIII. The Doctoral Degree in English 249 XIV. Two Views of Education 267 Appendix: A Course in Translations of the Classics 294 Index 309 IX >. GREEK CULTURE^ SINCE the following pages often lay stress on the importance of the ancient classics in a general education, it may be well to begin with a brief estimate of Greek antiquity, and some hints respecting our debt to it. The term 'Greek culture' properly embraces all the activities of the Hellenic race throughout all ages, with the influence of the Greeks upon other peoples and civilizations. A rapid survey can in- clude only what is typical of the best periods, to- gether with a few aspects of Greek tradition and in- fluence. Fifty years ago, Greek civilization seemed an in- explicable phenomenon, conditioned, indeed, by the geography and climate of the eastern Mediterranean, yet not derivative in the usual sense, since the early culture of Egypt and Asia Minor could not account for it, while to Thrace the Greek owed little more than an earnest desire to escape from Thracian bar- barism. Of late, however, we have become aware of a vast pre-existent ^gean culture, not only having * This article (save for the opening paragraph) is taken from the 1919 edition of the Encyclopedia Americana 13, 384-387, with the kind permission of the editor-in-chief; I have utilized the opportunity for revision by modifying a veiy few statements. 2 GREEK CULTUEE centres at Argos, JMycense, and Orchomenos, and in the Troad and Crete, but extending from the Archi- pelago to Syria and other distant shores of the Mediterranean. Archaeology has pushed back the origins of Hellenic culture six thousand years or more; and if it does not explain the Greek genius and Greek art (since in art and genius there is always something that defies analysis), yet, by affording glimpses of age-long preparation, it satisfies the mind that is accustomed to the notion of simple origins and a process of evolution. Even so, in contemplat- ing the efforts of the Greek genius, we should doubt- less suspect the bias of our day, and be ready to credit more rather than less to the originating power of grea,t individuals, and to the mutual inspiration of gifted men in groups, as compared with the vague effect upon them of the masses. Explain the origins as we may, two periods stand out pre-eminent in Hellenic civilization : the Homeric age, from the tenth to the eighth century B.C.; and the age associated with the name of Pericles, an interval of 100 years or so, beginning about 480 b.c. To these we must add the less creative, more scien- tific and critical, Hellenistic age, including the third and second centuries B.C. The Homeric Iliad and Odyssey represent the flower of early Hellenic culture. They were not, as Lord Macaulay thought, the outcome of heroic bar- barism ; certainly they evince no unsophisticated art. Rather they seem to have appeared near the end of a high stage of civilization, possibly as it began to THE ILIAD AND THE ODYSSEY 3 decline; though they idealize the life of a more heroic past. As to their origin, modern scholarship is now veering again toward the ancient belief in the existence of a great poet who may have organized earlier materials into the two masterly epics. True, there is in the Odyssey a difference in tone which led Longinus (or whoever wrote the treatise On the Sublime) to ascribe this poem to the old age of the author ; and there are grounds for believing, not only that the Iliad is a more primitive work, but that more than one hand may have been concerned in giving it the form it now possesses. But in any case the Iliad, and still more the Odyssey, betray a wonder- ful command of metrical composition, a vast knowl- edge of history, geography, tradition, and myth, ex- tra,ordinary insight into the ways and motives of men, and an ability to unite all these poetical re- sources into a single plot for the attainment of a designed artistic end. In structure the Odyssey is more perfect than most of the dramas of Shakespeare and the works of virtually all modern novelists. Such an art no doubt is unthinkable in a poet work- ing in isolation, without predecessors to learn from, and contemporaries to inspire and appreciate him. Accordingly, we must imagine a school of ^gean bards who gave rise to at least one superlative genius': Homerus, *he who sews together' — a maker or fitter, not merely of verses, but of characters and incidents into one orderly plan with a beginning, middle, and end. The final measure of Homeric civi- lization is the poetic art to be seen in the two 4 GEEEK CULTUEE epics, from which, centuries after, the Aristotelian theory of poetry was largely deduced. But we have evidence also that the Homeric age possessed a noble architecture, knew the art of writing, was skilled in weaving tapestry, was expert in metal- work and woodwork, understood landscape garden- ing and road-making as well as sculpture, and had developed a seemingly naive, but very subtle, elo- quence. To judge from its two great epics, the age was benevolent toward religious tradition; not athe- istical, but employing the tales of the gods in no very edifying way. The Olympians are brought down not quite to the level of the heroes, while the heroes are elevated until, in conduct if not in power, they move on a plane not much lower than the gods as agents in the story. More important than all else, then, the Homeric age transmitted to that of Peri- cles ideals of human conduct — bravery and endur- ance in time of war, good counsel and fidelity in time of peace ; at all times courage for individual achieve- ment, coupled with reverence and an instinctive feeling that communal interests are supreme. The age of Pericles is justly regarded as attain- ing the high-water mark of Greek culture. At this time Athens became the chief city of Greece and the centre of Mediterranean civilization. Here the vari- ous excellences of the several Hellenic stocks, Doric, ^.olic, and Ionic, were tempered and united in one superior blend of character. Here the streams of dialect merged into one clear, vigorous, and beauti- ful medium of expression, the Attic. Here the sys- ALL STREAMS UNITE AT ATHENS 5 terns of philosophy which had arisen in Asia Minor and in Sicily and southern Italy were sifted and in- corporated into the native systems of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Here the Sicilian theory and practice of rhetoric matured into perfect eloquence. Here was developed tragedy; hither came comedy from Syracuse. Here the Homeric poems were learned by heart as the one basic element of education; and tragedies founded upon stories from the great epic tradition became familiar to a populace, large num- bers of whom in course of time took part in the choruses. In this period, Athenian life was charac- terized by the dominance of a regulated imagination in every sphere of activity, and by a complete inter- penetration of theory and practice. Imagination, hand in hand with reason, appeared in the ordering of the State, in the development of commerce and colonies, in the public festivals and religion, in the consummation of every fine and every useful art. In fact, the distinction between fine and useful art was not observed, so that even the commonest uten- sils became objects of beauty, to be wondered at by subsequent ages. For the simultaneous flourishing of sculpture, painting, architecture, music, and poetry, no other age can be compared with this, unless, per- haps, the thirteenth century of our era in France and Italy. But in Greece the arts subsisted in closer combination with each other, with the functions of the State, with religion, and with life. Witness At- tic tragedy and comedy, which arose in the worship of Dionysus, and were associated with the chief re- 2 6 GREEK CULTURE ' ligious festivals and processions; were exhibited in a theatre which was virtually a temple of the god, a masterpiece of architecture in marble, capable of holding a large share of the free populace at once; were supported by a State that supplied every citi- zen with the price of admission; were produced by poets who took part in the acting, as well as in train- ing the actors and chorus, and who were eligible to any office in the democracy (as Sophocles was ap- pointed one of the ten generals who led the expedi- tion against the revolt in Samos) ; were attended by strangers from every part of Greece, serving to unify the Hellenic consciousness; and in fact combined in one our modern drama, opera, dancing, and lyrical poetry, with the embellishments of the best landscape- painting and artistic costume. But Greek civilization was something more than what the Greeks actually accomplished, in art, or in commerce, or in statesmanship. The creator is greater than his works. More important than what they wrought were the agents, the men themselves, with their ability to produce both these and other works — with their unlimited capacity for contempla- tion and construction, for the highest kind of action, the orderly life of the spirit. Greek civilization means Phidias and Praxiteles, the sculptors, rather than the small part of their work now remaining. It means Ictinus and Polygnotus, the architect and the painter; Socrates, Anaxagoras, and Plato, the philosophers; Pindar, the lyric poet; Herodotus and Thucydides, the historians; Demosthenes, the orator; PERICLES AND SOPHOCLES 7 Aristophanes, the comic poet, prince in the realm of mirth and fantastic beauty; JE.schylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, the masters of tragedy ; and Pericles, the statesman, the artist and philosopher in govern- ment. There were also strange, indecent men, like Diogenes; and bad or irresponsible men, like Alcibi- ades and Cleon. Yet on the whole the Athenians, nobly simple, and quietly great, maintained a norm of good and beautiful conduct, observing measure in all things, even while devoting themselves each to his chosen way of life and communal service; for the life of the individual was subordinated to the welfare of the State, and found complete realization therein — the State did not, as in modem times, mainly exist for the sake of the individual. From this wonderful group and succession of gifted and cultivated men, whose activities really constituted the essence of Greek civilization, it is customary, following the example of Plutarch, to single out Pericles, leader and conserver of the Athenian polity, as the representative citizen, and the type of Hellenic culture. Grave and reserved, fearless and eloquent, combining judgment with im- agination, intelligence with sentiment, forethought with passion, of commanding presence, endowed, as it seemed to his fellows, with every physical excel- lence and power of mind, and possessed of the good breeding which is the crown of virtue, he might well have sat for the character-sketch of the 'high- minded man' that is drawn by Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics. But for our purposes of illus- 8 GEEEK CULTUEE tration, the magnanimous Sophocles may serve even better. For, first, he is a poet, or 'maker,' par ex- cellence; and examples of his work are still intact, while the Periclean State came to a sudden termina- tion. And secondly, it is easier to compare him with other typical Greeks, since he occupies the place of a golden mean betwixt the religious ^^chylus, who 'did right' as a dramatist 'without knowing why,' and the rationalist and realist, Euripides, who drew men 'as they are'; whereas Sophocles, as he himself was aware, proceeded aright from correct principles of art as well as correct sentiments, and, observing men and human life even more truly than Euripides, nevertheless properly idealized his characters for the ends of tragic representation. As in his own well-ordered life, so in elaborating his dramas, and in the very process of displaying the misfortunes of a self-blinded CEdipus, he shows how the artistic regulation of impulse leads to success and happiness. Nor did his fellow-Athenians blunder in their esti- mate of him, for in the dramatic contests he secured first prize no fewer than twenty times. Moreover, in the comedy of the Frogs, Aristophanes, with his keen eye for disproportion, ridicules ^schylus some- what, and Euripides yet more, for* departing on this side or that from the golden mean, while he signifi- cantly refrains from attempting to distort the work of Sophocles. As a typical Greek, Sophocles is religious; not, like the Athenians in their later decadence, 'too re- ligious,' as Saint Paul described them. He is also THE TYPICAL GEEEK 9 many-sided, with a number of diverse faculties reiady for the accomplishment of both his immediate and his final aim. But the unity and compactness of structure in his (Edipus Rex or his Antigone reflect the inner unity of spirit in their author. Sophocles knows when to amplify and when to inhibit; he is equally sensitive to broad perspective and to the value of each detail. His vision is steady and com- prehensive, as a comparison of the eighth Psalm, in the Bible, with his chorus on man, in the Antigone, will disclose. He has formed a just estimate of the relation between external nature, mankind, and the divine. In the delineation of character he has never been surpassed, yet his plays do not, like those of Shakespeare, fail to take direct cognizance of the action of a higher divine power (something more than impersonal moral law) in the affairs of men. But the typical Greek has his limitations. Although Homer and Sophocles have a sense of the divine in relation to human life, they are both polytheistic. Though in both we find ideal relations between men and women represented or suggested, and though Athens and the Parthenon by their very names imply a lofty conception of womanhood, Greek society was disfigured by an attitude to homosexual impulse that often resulted in words and actions at once base and grotesque; nor should one forget that the leisure of cultivated men was made possible by the labor of slaves. And though both of these poets attribute human failure to human blindness of heart rather than to fate or divine prejudice, the Greeks did not 10 GREEK CULTURE in the main identify divine providence with divine good will, ^sehylus, it is true, may almost be termed monotheistic; and Plato has been called by the Jews themselves the Greek Moses, as by English scholars he has on occasion been styled a Puritan. But -lEschylus said that his plays were only morsels from the Homeric banquet; while Plato, in spite of the criticism passed on the ancient epic poems in the Republic, is heavily indebted to them, and, closely as he approaches Hebraism or the modern spirit in his deepest reflections, he still remains a pagan. It was left for the Hebrews and Christianity definitely to assert a pure monotheism for transmission to modem times; to develop the idea of the fatherhood of God; and thus to establish upon a firm founda- tion the principles governing the relations between men and women, women and women, men and men. Again, the joyous Greek was not the joj^ul Chris- tiaai'; nor was death to him the beginning of life — the 'cross' of the Stoics takes on a new meaning in Saint Paul. And again, the mediaeval doctrine of 'the gentle heart,' from which our modem concep- tions of lady and gentleman are mainly derived, was neither Greek nor Roman. "While these conceptions owe much to classical antiquity, to the Homeric and tragic heroes and heroines, to the 'highminded man' of Aristotle and the refined orator of Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian, to the Virgilian ^neas (who was borrowed from, the Greeks), they owe more to the Provencal and Italian, and to the Germanic and Celtic, attitude to woman; at the core they are Christian. HOW GREEK CULTURE HAS SURVIVED H The Greek culture of the most vital period has been handed down to us by intervening civilizations. Even the Hellenistic age may almost be regarded as intermediary and transitional; though under the in- fluence of Aristotle there came not only a critical evaluation of what preceded him in the way of rhetoric, political science, and poetry, but new de- velopments of both moral and physical and biologi- cal science. In Theophrastus we have the father of botany; in Euclid, the founder of modem mathe- matics; in Eratosthenes, the beginnings of modern scholarship. From Athens Greek culture passed to Alexandria, and from Alexandria to Rome. Grasco- Roman culture was succeeded and preserved by that of Byzantium, and then, during the decay of learn- ing in southern Europe, was preserved in Ireland and England and in Arabia and Syria, whence it returned to the Continent in the later Middle Ages. It has on three occasions reasserted itself with special force : at Rome under the Emperor Hadrian ; in the thirteenth century — for example, in the scholastic philosophers and Dante; and again in all Europe beginning with the Italian Renaissance, this last, however, being mainly Latin in character, and but secondarily Greek. Still, if we regard the Renais- sance as extending to our own day, we find a better and better understanding and assimilation of Hel- lenism, until in poets like Shelley and Goethe we discover an approximation to the Greek spirit almost as close as that achieved at Rome by Cicero, Virgil, and Horace. All five are, so to speak, not Greeks 12 GREEK CULTUEE proper of the triumphant age, but, like Lucian and Plutarch, late and provincial imitators — who never- theless have in them something of the original Hel- lenic genius. But perhaps, in their respective arts, Raphael and Mozart more truly reveal it, working freely in the classical spirit, and yet escaping any domination by particular models since the music and painting of Athens are lost. "What has Greek culture done for the world? The enthusiastic Shelley (writing in the year 1822) ex- claims : 'We are all Greeks. Our laws, our literature, our religion, our arts, have their root in Greece. But for Greece, Rome — the instructor, the conqueror, or the metropolis of our ancestors — would have spread no illumination with her arms, and we might still have been savages and idolaters; or, what is worse, might have arrived at such a stagnant and miserable state of social institution as China and Japan pos- S'ess. ' ^ If pressed, Shelley would have to admit that Euro- pean law was the invention of Rome; and that, so far as concerns religion, the function of the Greeks under the Roman Empire was that of formulating and transmitting, not of producing it. Moreover, the principle of government by elected deputies comes to us, not from antiquity, but from the mediaeval monasteries. The Christian liturgy, however, though based upon Hebraic forms, may have originated among Christian Greeks; ecclesiastical music is es- * Preface to Hellas. GREEK LITERAEY TYPES 13 sentially Greek; the most original literary efforts of the early Christian era, the hymns, were composed, some in Greek, and some in Latin; and the New Testament was written in the commercial Greek (adapted) that had spread after the supremacy of Athens, and was the general means of communica- tion for the eastern Mediterranean. For all that, the customary attribution of intellectual culture to the Greeks, and religious culture to the Hebrews, is in the main justified, if we remember that the differ- ence between the two races is one of degree and emphasis rather than kind, that the Greeks were not unreligious, nor the Hebrews unintellectual. Strictly considered, the gifts of the two races to civilization cannot be regarded apart. Thus, as Renan points out, the Hebrews discovered various literary types as well as the Greeks. And yet we are safe in deem- ing the main literary types, and, as Shelley says, the arts in general, a bequest of the Greeks to the world. It was they who provided the models which have aroused the enthusiasm of mankind: for the epic and mock-epic, the poems of Homer ; for tragedy, iEschylus and Sophocles; for romantic tragedy and tragi-comedy, Euripides; for political comedy, Aris- tophanes; for the character-sketch, the rhetoricians and Theophrastus ; for domestic comedy, Menander; for history, Herodotus and Thucydides ; for the dia- logue, Plato ; for the oration, Demosthenes ; for lyri- cal poetry, Pindar; for pastoral, Theocritus. From the Platonic dialogue, through Seneca, came the es- say. The satire, so far as we know, was another in- 14 GEEEK CULTUEE vention of Rome. But what is often thought to be the peculiar type of modem literature, the prose novel, nevertheless has its prototypes in the last pro- ductions of the Greek genius, the romances of Helio- dorus, Achilles Tatius, and Longus. Even our scien- tific monographs, and the various types of literary criticism, in verse as well as prose, go back to Aris- totle and to his successors at Alexandria. They who speak slightingly of Hellenistic and 'Alexandrian' scholarship and science know little of the matter. In the main, Greek art has given us a conception of orderly structure, when we have been willing to accept it, pervading all human activity and achieve- ment. The Greek, in his city-state built upon a hill, developed a sense for architecture which reappears in every other art, and in all domains of life. The words and sentences of his oration or his drama are arranged like the stones in each section of his citadel and hill-crowning temple, and the several parts are fitted together in order due, like the face and divi- sions of the Parthenon. The nomadic Hebrew origi- nally dwelt in tents under the stars of the desert. His architectonic sense is relatively weak. But his Psalms have expressed the grief and exultation of mankind ; it is he who gave the final meaning to the Greek Logos, the "Word incarnate and undying ; and the Greek words Christ and Christian take us back not only to Rome and Greece, but, through Rome and Greece, to Palestine. In any case they lead us to the Mediterranean sources of all modern civilization. II ANCIENT AND MODERN LETTERS ' PHI BETA KAPPA is a 'Greek-letter' society. Beta and Kappa, B and K, the second two constituents of its usual name, are found in what we call the Roman alphabet also, and hence in the English. But the first, the letter $, is not ; nor may the concept which Phi here represents, that is, phil- osophia, be perfectly understood by those who never have received a direct and literal message from the Greeks. Were it feasible to discuss at length the history of the separate words, 'Philosophy, the Guide of Life,' in which we render the noble motto, iXocro<^ta jStov Kv^€pvr]Tr)<;, it would not be difficult to show how the phrase suggests an essential unity in all the di- versity of ancient, mediaeval, and modern culture. The words 'guide' and 'life' do, indeed, take on a different coloring when translated into other tongues, and interpreted for different stages of civilization : La Philosophie, la Regie de la Vie; Die Fhilosophie, * The substance of a presidential address to the New York Theta Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa at Cornell University, deliv- ered after the initiation of new members, April 1, 1912. The address was first published in the South Atlantic Quarterly 11. 234-243 (July, 1912), and is reprinted with the kind permission of the editor. 15 16 ANCIENT AND MODERN LETTERS der Leitstern des Lebens. French, and German, and English life at least have a very different outward appearance, as have different epochs in the life and thought of any one nation. The resemblances be- tween French thought in Abelard of the twelfth centurj', for example, and French thought in Loisy of the twentieth, are not wholly on the surface. Yet in every age, in the principal modem tongues, and to the most modern, who are often the most conserva- tive, of their times, the word 'philosophy' must re- main essentially unchanged, and essentially Greek. The Society was organized in the first year of our national independence, at a time when the study of Greek and Latin authors was felt to be indispen- sable to the cultivation of philosophy and the study of belles-lettres in general — 'beautiful letters,' as the French so well express it. Subsequently there has intervened a brief space — brief, that is, in the perspective of the centuries, and even in the history of our own nation — during which certain alleged exponents and purveyors of culture have seemed to feel otherwise. At all events we have beheld osten- sible leaders of education, themselves sometimes ow- ing the best tha.t was in them to the study of Greek, yet acting as if they fancied that the contemplation of less beautiful letters might embellish the souls of our American youth quite as well as the most excel- lent letters of all — namely, those most excellent letters in which the Homeric poems, the tragedies of Sophocles, the dialogues of Plato, and the books of the New Testament have come down to us. These THE GEEEK VIEW OF SELF-DENIAL 17 intervenient guides have axgued, in effect, that any kind of mental pabulum is wholesome for a man, so long as he craves it; that one subject is just about as good as another in the curriculum, so long as no sneering demagogue has labeled it ' aristocratic ' ; and that the main principle in a general education uo longer is, 'Let a man deny himself, and take up his cross daily,' but, 'Let every man follow his bent.' Yes, and on the same principle let the nation follow its bent, disregarding that piece of counsel in the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle: 'We must also observe the extremes toward which we ourselves are specially prone, for different natures have different bents; and we can ascertain our natural tendencies by a consideration of our feelings of pleasure and pain. And we must drag ourselves in the direction opposite to our bent . . . as we do when we straighten warped timbers. ' ^ Under the elective system in studies, the drift of the nation, as of individuals, led away from Greek, and for many reasons; the chief one being that Greek, like mathematics, is hard — it brings students to a consideration of their feelings of pain, — while, unlike a part of the mathematics, it has little obvious bearing upon the production and distribution of animal comforts and necessities. Yet there is reason to believe that the evil time of lost distinctions and educational anarchy in America is past, or passing ; that Greek, for example, was in its greatest peril about the beginning of the present century; that signs now point to its coming rehabili- * Nicomachean Ethics, Book 2, chap. 9. 18 ANCIENT AND MODERN LETTERS tation ; and that not a few persons whom it formerly nourished, who latterly have been faint-hearted or treacherous in its defence, are ready to join in the acclamation when the subject once more comes to its own. In this rehabilitation, it is safe to predict, the teachers of the modern literatures, and in particular the teachers of English, will ultimately be found to have exercised a decided influence. It may not be improper to say that I yield to none in the venera- tion of my own subject, the English language and literature. I will even venture to affirm that the man who teaches his own vernacular has, with cer- tain manifest disadvantages, certain paramount ad- vantages in the general culture of his students over the teacher of any foreign literature, whether an- cient or modern; nay more, that certain advantages can accrue to the pupil only on the condition that his teacher shall approach the ancient or foreign literature through the vernacular. If this be granted, there will be less danger of misunderstanding when we add that it is a most pernicious error to assume that one subject, considered in itself, is as impor- tant as another in a general scheme of studies. Prop- erly considered, English literature, the most signifi- cant of modern literatures unless it be the Italian, is a very feeble instrument of education indeed as compared with the ancient classics, if it be dissoci- ated from them ; and if a severance were necessary between the ancient and modem, the modem had better be dropped from the curriculum, and the ancient, above all the Greek, retained. FUNDAMENTAL STUDIES 19 Of course there is at present no likelihood that such a mischance will occur. What seems probable is that the teachers of modern languages will more and more clearly recognize the futility of pursuing their respective subjects, French, German, Italian, English, with students who are ignorant of Greek and Latin. They will more and more insistently demand that what is fundamental, what precedes in point of logic as well as time, shall be acquired by students before they approach the special investi- gation of a modern literature. In fact, during the past few decades, while Greek may have seemed to be losing ground, and Latin perhaps not to be gain- ing, eminent professors of English have been send- ing out of our American universities a succession of young doctors of pliilosophy convinced that the hope of the classics is the hope of any thorough general culture, and that the cause of English will stand or fall with that of Greek and Latin. What these emi- nent teachers of English have been doing, the emi- nent teachers of other modern literatures have like- wise been doing, with the result that we possess in the best-trained younger men and women in some of the more popular subjects of instruction a growing influence in favor of the classics, to be added to the persistent influence of classical scholars themselves. It would be impossible to explain in brief the cogent reasons that move these teachers of modem literature in their effort to direct the younger gener- ation betimes into the study of Greek and Latin; yet a few reflections upon the relation of our own literature to the classics may be suggestive. 20 ANCIENT AND MODERN LETTERS It will doubtless be granted that the first requisite in understanding a poem in any language is a meas- ure of sympathy with the author. The reader must have had certain experiences in common with the poet. Now, with exceptions so rare as to be negli- gible, the English poets, beginning with Cynewulf, Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton, and in- cluding Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Browning, have had the common experience of reading Latin — every one of these, for example, knew Virgil; and, from Spenser and Milton to Tennyson and Browning, most of them read Greek before they wrote English poetry of any consequence. The inference is obvious; we may put it in the form of the advice which one of them, Wordsworth, gave to his nephew: 'Remember, first read the ancient classical authors; then come to us, and you will be able to judge for yourself which of us is worth reading.'^ Precisely so. Let our Freshmen and Sophomores first study Greek and Latin (and we may add, history and mathemat- ics) ; then, in the Junior or, better, the Senior year, let them specialize if they will in English, and they will be able to judge for themselves what is worth while in that subject. As for prospective teachers of English, one may say to them: Remember, first ac- quaint yourselves with the method of interpretation and criticism that has been developed by twenty- three centuries of classical scholarship in Europe, and you will be able to judge for yourselves how ^Memoirs of William Wordsworth, by Christopher Words- worth, p. 467. SHAKESPEAEE AND PLUTAECH 21 much or how little variation there need be in apply- ing this method to the study of the vernacular. Again, it will surely be granted that on the part of a student, as distinct from the naive and unformed reader, no greater mistake can be made than to fancy a particular thought or expression in an English author to be original with him, and an indubitable mark of his special genius, when in fact it is not orig- inal with him, but comes, let us say, through successive intermediate translations, from the Greek of Plutarch. There is a striking description in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra of the Egyptian Queen as she first appeared to the hero : When she first met Mark Antony, she pursed up his heart, upon the river of Cydnus . . . The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne, Burned on the water ; the poop was beaten gold ; Purple the sails, and so perfumed that The winds were love-sick with them ; the oars were silver. Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made The water which they beat to follow faster. As amorous of their strokes. For her own person, It beggared all description ; she did lie In her pavilion — cloth-of-gold of tissue — O'er-picturing that Venus where we see The fancy outwork nature; on each side her Stood pretty-dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids, With divers-colored fans, whose wind did seem To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool. And what they undid did.^ Is the description original? So far as we are 1 Antony and Cleopatra 2. 2. 191-2, 196-210. 3 22 ANCIENT AND MODERN LETTERS aware, the only measure of its originality is the pas- sage, in North's translation from the French version of Plutarch by Amyot, which Shakespeare happens to be adapting : ' When she was sent unto by divers letters . . . she . . . mocked Antonius so much that she disdained to set forward otherwise, but to take her barge in the river of Cydnus, the poop whereof was of gold, the sails of purple, and the oars of silver, which kept stroke in rowing after the sound of the music of flutes, howboys, citherns, viols, and such other instru- ments as they played upon in the barge. And now for the person of herself : she was laid under a pavil- ion of cloth of gold of tissue, apparelled and attired like the goddess Venus commonly drawn in picture; and hard by her, on either hand of her, pretty fair boys apparelled as painters do set forth god Cupid, with little fans in their hands, with the which they fanned wind upon her. ' ^ Upon this showing, which seems to be the more original, Shakespeare, or the biographer of Chsero- nea? And if Shakespeare and his age could draw so much inspiration from Plutarch at two or three removes, why has Plutarch disappeared from the circle of humane studies to-day — that Plutarch who subsequently made fruitful the genius of a modern educator, Rousseau? Moreover, Plutarch is himself a late and relatively unoriginal Greek. The ultimate sources of vital ideas, of philosophm, lie far behind him. But again, it often happens that some portion of a modem author is almost unintelligible unless we 1 See Plutarch's Lives of Coriolanus, Caesar, Brutus, and Antonms in North's Translation, ed. by R. H. Carr, pp. 185-6. CLASSICAL IMAGES IN MODERN POETS 23 are familiar with the Greek or Latin image which he has in mind. One is bound, for example, to think that Shelley's picture of himself in lines 289-295 of Adonais must be well-nigh meaningless to the reader who is unacquainted with the Greek conception of the suffering wanderer Dionysus: His head was bound with pansies overblown, And faded violets, white, and pied, and blue; And a light spear topped with a cypress cone, Eound whose rude shaft dark ivy-tresses grew Yet dripping with the forest's noonday dew, Vibrated, as the ever-beating heart Shook the weak hand that grasped it. And certainly it makes the voluptuous nature of the hero in Wordsworth's popm, Ruth, more compre- hensible if our previous studies have shown us that the panther and the dolphin are the classic com- panions of Dionysus in his joy: He was a lovely youth! I guess The panther in the wilderness Was not so fair as he; And, when he chose to sport and play, No dolphin ever was so gay Upon the tropic sea.^ 'The poetry of ancient Greece and Rome, and modern Italy, and our own country,' says Shelley in his Preface to The Revolt of Islam, 'has been to me, like external nature, a passion and an enjoy- ment. Such are the sources from which the ma- 1 Ruth 37-42. 24 ANCIENT AND MODERN LETTERS terials for the imagery of my poem have been drawn. I . . . have read the poets and the historians and the metaphysicians whose writings have been acces- sible to me.' And he adds that the training he has received, with the feelings it has evoked, does not in itself constitute men poets, 'hut only prepares them to de the auditors of those who are.' One might multiply examples without end. The truth is that English literature, not merely from the time of Chaucer, but from the very outset, far from being original in the ordinary acceptation of the word, is derivative to an extent undreamed of by the layman; and, though the direct sources of inspiration are often French authors or Spanish, or more often, perhaps, Italian, the chief immediate source of most of the ideas of our poets has been Latin literature — and the ultimate source (aside from the Old Testament) is Greek. That all roads lead to Rome is as true for English as for the modem Continental literatures; and a thousand roads lead back from Rome to Greece. Accordingly, the one great model of English prose is Cicero, whose model was Demosthenes; and the great writers of English prose from Milton to Burke, and from Burke to Newman, have been familiar with either or both. And the two chief wells whence English poets have drawn their notions of poetic style, as well as their mythological allusions, have been Virgil and Ovid — Virgil, who takes his inspiration from the Alexan- drians and from Homer, and Ovid, who collected and arranged nearly all that is known of Graeco-Roman SHORT CUTS TO THE POETS 25 mythology. To an age that is eager for almost any short cut to the intelligent reading of our English poets, we might say that a hundred hours devoted to Ovid and Virgil, even read in translations, would be worth thousands of hours spent upon most of the books in the lists that have been adopted for 'en- trance English.' Of the mythological allusions in Shakespeare 'for which a definite source can be as- signed, it will be found that an overwhelming major- ity are directly due to Ovid, while the remainder, with few exceptions, are from Virgil.' So says a competent investigator; and he adds: *A man famil- iar with these two authors, and with no others, would be able to make all the mythological allusions contained in the undisputed works of Shakespeare, barring some few exceptions'^ — which we may here neglect. But there is no need at present of advocating a short cut to the interpretation of modern authors; if there were, it would be time to remark upon the necessity of studying the English Bible before at- tempting to read authors who knew it by heart, and who use its thought and language as a common pos- session of the reading public. What needs to be advocated is a short cut to that inner substance of the Greek classics, that sophia which the Greeks es- pecially loved, that leaven which has diffused itself, by way of Rome, throughout all modern literatures. There is but one short cut to the substance of Greek, and that way lies through the letters which enfold * Robert K. Root, Classical Mythology m Shakespeare, p. 3. 26 ANCIENT AND MODERN LETTERS it. They are not dead, and they do not kill. The eternal spirit which inhabits those letters imparts its life to them, and makes them beautiful. There really is no arguing about the matter ; only they who know that spirit, incarnate in those letters, are in a position to speak of the value of either in a sys- tem of education. Emphatically must one add that they who have but dabbled in Greek, and have not loved it, or do not now love it, are not in a position to speak on the subject ; nor are they who never had an opportunity of studying it. But the latter class at least may attend to the deliberate judgment of a tea,cher of English, a judgment based upon direct observation: In nine cases out of ten, the under- graduates who think the best thoughts and express them in the best way, and who utter right opinion when they examine the standard modern authors, are those who have studied, or are studying, Greek and Latin. *A great London editor told me,' de- clares Goldwin Smith in his Reminiscences,^ 'that the only members of his staff who wrote in good form from the beginning had practised Latin verse.' 'In regard to antiquity as an element of education,' says an eminent Russian, Professor Zielinski, 'people are disposed to deem it merely a singular survival, which has maintained its footing in our modern school curriculum in some unintelligible way, and for some unintelligible reason, but which is destined to make a speedy and final disappearance. But the man who understands the true position of affairs will rejoin that antiquity, . . . owing both to historical » P. 36. SENDING STUDENTS TO GREEK 27 and psychological causes, is, and must be considered, an organic element of education in European schools, and that, if it be destined to disappear entirely, its end will coincide with the end of modern European culture. ' ^ In America, such groups as the Society of Phi Beta Kappa are not to regard themselves as uncon- cerned in the cultivation of Greek letters and the diffusion of the Hellenic spirit. The influence pos- sessed by small, yet well-organized, groups is suffi- cient to divert thousands of new students every year into the pursuit of classical subjects; it is sufficient within a generation to convert twenty American uni- versities into as many leading institutions in the realm of humane studies ; it is sufficient to accomplish this, if each individual who has faith in Greek will attempt at the beginning of every academic term to implant his faith in the heart of two other persons. The effort must begin with individuals. Let all who believe shake off their apathy and indifference, their timorous regard for vulgar opinion, their supine acquiescence in conditions which they know to be evil ; and let them resolutely send their most promis- ing pupils, and younger fellow-students, to the tables where generations of those who hungered and thirsted after wisdom have been fed, and felt no lack. Meanwhile the members of our learned societies should strive, according to their powers, to make each society perform its office in the body educational. At many of our colleges and universities, an election * Ow Debt to Antiquity, pp. 2-3. 28 ANCIENT AND MODERN LETTERS to the Society of Phi Beta Kappa, for example, con- stitutes the sole distinction that is conferred upon pure scholarship without an attendant pecuniary reward. By their words and actions the members should make clear that they believe in the distinc- tion; because it sets a premium on the men and wo- men whose nominal and real business in a place of study are eminently one and the same, that is, the business or activity of students; and because it puts the mark of high success upon the sort of men and women for whom American idealists have founded universities. After a period in education during which everything has been tolerated save orthodoxy, it might be well to tolerate orthodoxy. Furthermore, in order to enhance true distinctions, one need not hesitate openly to condemn, wherever it may appear, the shallow thinking that gives honor to the man whose nominal business is study, but who slights his manifest duty, and, apparently, succeeds at some- thing else. A characteristic of the vulgar, says the caustic Shakespearean Ulysses, is their frantic wor- ship of a tinsel success that is not conjoined with the permanent issues of life: One touch of nature makes the whole world kin. That all with one consent praise new-born gawds . . . And give to dust that is a little gilt More laud than gilt o'er-dusted.^ » Iroilus and Cressida 3. 3, 175-6, 178-9. ACADEMIC DISTINCTION 29 But our athlete of the intellect may say to the world, to the heroes of the stadium, in the language of King Agamemnon: Why, then, you princes, Do you with cheeks abashed behold our works, And call them shames ? which are indeed nought else But the protractive trials of great Jove, To find i)ersistive constancy in men: The fineness of which metal is not found In Fortune's love; for then the bold and coward, The wise and fool, the artist^ and unread. The hard and soft, seem all affined and kin. But in the wind and tempest of her frown, Distinction, with :i broad and powerful fan. Puffing at all, winnows the light away; And what hath mass or matter, by itself Lies rich in virtue and unmingled.^ * The student of the seven liberal arts. ' Troilus and Cressida 1. 3. 17-30. Ill THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH AND THE STUDY OF THE CLASSICS' THE * cultural value ' of the classics is a large topic, which we must in some way restrict. There will be a suitable restriction if we discuss the value of an early training in Greek and Latin as it appears to a teacher of English, after an experience of a dozen years and more with pupils in the modern sub- ject. This done, it will not be improper to indulge in a few general reflections. Let us have specially in mind the needs and the opportunities of first-rate students when they leave the preparatory school, and are not immediately to take part in active life. They are about to enter the academic course of a college or university, where they will be called upon to write numerous essays in the mother tongue, and to read selections from the standard modem authors. What qualities, and what training, should we expect them to bring to the performance of these tasks? To write a fair essay presupposes a certain grade of cultivation ; and * The substance of a paper read before the Classical Associa- tion of the Atlantic States at its eighth annual meeting, April 18, 1914. It is reprinted, with a few alterations, from the Edu- cational Eeview for January, 1915, pp. 37-47, with the kind perr mission of the publishers. 30 HINTS FEOM THE POETS 31 to sympathize with one of the great English poets — with Spenser or Milton, for example, or, let us say, with a lesser poet like Coleridge — means that one must have something in common, in the way of train- ing, with a man who wrote well, and who did so, partly because of his genius, but partly also because he was well-taught. This immediately raises the question, how have the masters of the English tongue been educated — how did they learn to write? Before suggesting an answer to this question, it may not be out of place to marvel at teachers of English, and of other modern literatures, at our administrative officers in the higher education, and above all at our professors of pedagogy, for their general lack of interest in certain inquiries which no teacher, and no overseer in the art of teaching, should neglect. Their interests commonly are of another sort. They have traced the general history of educa- tion, and the history of various movements in educa- tion, and can tell you, it may be, what Plato and Comenius, or Herbart and Eousseau, have said or thought about the discipline of youth ; perhaps they can even explain the relation of experimental psy- chology to what we used to call 'mental arithmetic'; but they have given little heed to the way in which great teachers actually have taught, or men of ac- knowledged attainments have acquired their power. We need not pursue this line of thought beyond remarking that the authors in whose works our col- legians will read, and about whom they will write, had, almost to a man, a classical training, and did 32 ENGLISH AND THE CLASSICS not secure their command over the English tongue without some acquaintance with Greek and Latin. The record of the studies of Chaucer, Spenser, Shake- speare, Milton, Pope, Dryden, Gray, Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Browning, and of Bacon, Chatham, Johnson, Burke, Ruskin, and Newman, represents the great experiment in English education — an ex- periment lasting through centuries, and a successful one, the results of which no teacher or theorist on teaching in the field of English may set aside. So much in general; it may be wise to add a con- crete illustration. Let us consider the weekly rou- tine of the upper class in Christ's Hospital, the school where Samuel Taylor Coleridge was prepared for Cambridge, and was inflamed with a love of English — ^where, in fact, he laid the foundations of a literary training. Here is approximately what he and the best of his fellow-pupils, the 'Senior Grecians,' were doing at the famous charity school at London in the year 1790: 'Monday morning: Homer or Tragic Chorus by heart; Greek Tragedy. Monday afternoon: He- brew Psalter; Horace or Juvenal. Written exercise for Monday: English and Latin theme, in alternate weeks. 'Tuesday morning: Xenophon at sight; Homer. Tuesday afternoon: Mathematical Scholium. Ex- ercise for Tuesday: Huntingford's Greek Exercises. 'Wednesday morning: Cicero's Orations at sight; Livy or Cicero. Wednesday afternoon : English Speaking ; Tacitus. Exercise for Wednesday : Greek translation. 'Thursday morning: Virgil by heart; Demos- thenes. Thursday afternoon: Mathematical Schol- COLEEIDGE AT SCHOOL 33 ium. Exercise for Thursday: Greek verses, and translation from English into Latin. 'Friday morning: Horace or Juvenal by heart; Greek Tragedy or Aristophanes. Friday afternoon: Hebrew; Latin Speaking. Exercise for Friday: Latin translation. 'Saturday morning: Scale's Metres; Repetition. Exercise for Saturday: Latin and English verses alternately, with an abstract.' 'As the time of continuance on the Grecian's form is always three, and generally four, years,' says the historian of the school, ' a very considerable acquaint- ance with the higher classics, as well as a readiness in the composition of English, Greek, and Latin, verse and prose, is easily attainable within this period, and forms a substantial groundwork for the more extensive researches of academical study. ' ^ 'At school,' says Coleridge himself, *I enjoyed the inestimable advantage of a very sensible, though at the same time a very severe, master [James Boyer] . He early moulded my taste to the preference of Demosthenes to Cicero, of Homer and Theocritus to Virgil, and again of Virgil to Ovid. He habituated me to compare Lucretius, (in such extracts as I then read) Terence, and, above all, the chaster poems of Catullus, not only with the Roman poets of the so- called silver and brazen ages, but with even those of the Augustan era; and on grounds of plain sense and universal logic to see and assert the superiority of the former in the truth and nativeness both of their thoughts and diction. At the same time that ^ William TroUope, A History of the Soyal Foundation of Christ 's Hospital, London, 1834, p. 183. For the close relation between the scheme of studies under TroUope and the one origi- nated by Boyer, who taught Coleridge, see TroUope, p. 182. 34 ENGLISH AND THE CLASSICS we were studying the Greek tragic poets, he made us read Shakespeare and Milton as lessons ; and they were the lessons, too, which required most time and trouble to "bring up" so as to escape his censure. I learnt from him that poetry, even that of the lofti- est and, seemingly, that of the wildest odes, had a logic of its own, as severe as that of science, and more difficult, because more subtle, more complex, and de- pendent upon more, and more fugitive, causes. In the truly great poets, he would say, there is a reason assignable, not only for every word, but for the posi- tion of every word. ' ^ The career of Coleridge shows the way in which the grea,t experiment, if one may so describe it, worked out in a particular instance. Such instances might be multiplied ;2 and the inference as to the nature of a liberal education, which means an edu- cation in good taste, would not be obscure. But the experiment of a classical training still continues, not only in England and on the Continent, but even in America; nor can we make light of the results as they appear, or are wanting, in the successive genera- tions of young men and women who throng to our higher institutions of learning in search of what is termed culture. What can we discover from an in- spection of our students? First, those relatively few young persons of our day who possess an adequate grounding in Greek and Latin have this in common with the English * Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, ed. by Shawcross, 1. 4; com- pare Young's Preface to Ocean, an Ode. * See, for example. Section V, On the Studies of Poets, in my Methods and Aims in the Study of Literature, 1915, pp. 96-186. CLASSICAL STUDENTS KNOW GRAMMAE 35 poets: they know something about grammar — not English grammar specifically, nor Greek, nor Latin, but grammar in general. They recognize subject, copula,, and predicate, whenever they meet them; they have an understanding for order and relation in the parts of a sentence. They are accustomed to see the elements of language as elements, and are not incapable of arranging them in orderly fashion. They know the difference between a temporal and a causal connective; they can distinguish between post hoc and propter hoc — a very important distinction in life. The reason why they can do so is that, whereas it is possible to express oneself either loosely or distinctly in English, according to one's previous education, both Greek and Latin compel the school- boy to make a sharp distinction between one thought and another. This is precisely what they who have missed a severe linguistic training are never prone to do. The teacher of a modern language and litera- ture should in this case know whereof he speaks. He should know why he is glad to welcome students of Latin and Greek to classes in English. There may be exceptions; if so, these are negligible. In the long run, they who have done well with Greek or Latin in the preparatory school can write pas- sable English as Freshmen in the university, and they who have had neither are ungrammatical and otherwise slovenly in usage. Next, the youth with a classical training has a superior knowledge, not only of connectives that are by themselves non-significant, but also of the signifi- 36 ENGLISH AND THE CLASSICS cant elements in the English vocabulary. In par- ticular, as compared with the youth who lacks that training, he recognizes and can use what we call 'learned' words — that is, the sort of words that an educated man employs, and an uneducated man does not. Year after year one may toil with successive groups of uneducated Sophomores over the meaning and pronunciation of the sixth stanza in Coleridge's Dejection, an Ode, that stanza in which the author has epitomized his tragic life. And why this recur- rent toil? Because the poet has here made use of terms like resource, research, and abstruse — And haply by abstruse research to steal From my own nature aU the natural man — This was my sole resource — which fifteen out of twenty in a class will mispro- nounce, and which they do not comprehend, being unfamiliar with the Latin that survives in modern French and English. The ugly combination 'research work' (and who is responsible for this pronuncia- tion?) they have heard, perhaps in a laboratory; it does not, one may readily imagine, occur in any English poet. Our fifteen Sophomores will dimly gather what the combination signifies, because in intellectual work they see their ancient foe; they .will look wise or otherwise when told that resea/rch is a 'learned' word; they will smile when they hear that its fellow is one of those that students of Latin and English call 'popular.' Again, the fit though few among those undergradu- ates who engage in the study of English have more THE SENSE OF ORDER 37 orderly minds for the larger details, as well as the smaller, in written composition. They excel their untutored comrades in joining sentence to sentence when they build up a paragraph, and in linking paragraph to paragraph to form an essay. And why is this ? Because the fit though few have had their mental operations regulated by a progress through some portions of Greek and Latin literature; and because the Greek and Latin authors that have come down to us differ from the rank and file of modern authors in evincing a better sequence of thought. Of course we must guard against any misapprehen- sion that the ancient classics are to be deemed in all ways superior to modern literature. On the con- trary, it is evident that in developing a boy of our generation into a clear-headed gentleman, if the an- cients will help more in making him clear-headed (and yet to some extent gentle as well) , the modern writers, or some of them, can perform the greater service in creating within him a clean and tender heart. The fact remains, however, that in Sophocles the train of thought is more cogent than in Shakespeare, as the internal order of a speech in the Odyssey is more lucid than in Paradise Lost. Further, the boy with the classical training, since he is not so apt to be muddle-headed, is more likely to discriminate against false sentiment in what he reads, and still more likely to object to metrical bombast or nonsense when it is offered him as poetry. 'Coleridge!' said his redoubtable teacher at Christ's Hospital, 'the connections of a declamation are not 476 81 38 ENGLISH AND THE Ca^ASSICS the transitions of poetry. Bad, however, as they are, they are better than apostrophes and "0 thou's," for at the worst they are something like common sense. '^ Since the time of Coleridge, as the influ- ence of classical poetry has declined, the besetting sin of poets has been a lack of precision and good sense. In her fumbling description of A Lost Chord, Adelaide Procter writes: It seemed the harmonious echo From our discordant life. The echo of a discord is not harmonious. A boy who has studied the fable of Echo and Narcissus in the Metamorphoses of Ovid is aware that in litera- ture, as in his own experience among the hills, an echo is true when it closely resembles the original sound. As an able critic notes, 'Sentimentality has, in this disguise or that, existed and poisoned Eng- lish poetry at all times since the sixteenth century. But, for its fellow vice, vagueness, this is otherwise. For vagueness there has indeed been no time so fertile as the first forty years of the nineteenth century. ' ^ The beginning of the twentieth century is not free from it. Greek poetry in the fifth cen- tury before Christ is not vague or sentimental, nor is Homer or Virgil. When our Freshman is imbued with the spirit of Greek and Latin verse, he is in * Coleridge, Complete Poetical WorTcs, ed. by E. H. CJoleridge, p. 3, footnote. 2 Edith Sichel, Some Suggestions about Bad Poetry, in Essays and Studies hy Members of the English Association, collected by A, C. Bradley, 1910, p. 139. HIGHER ADVANTAGES 39 some measure armed against the insidious attacks of bad taste. Finally, the boy who has been drilled in the clas- sics has an immense advantage because he knows something of ancient story, of tradition — of mythol- ogy in a wide sense — and is not unacquainted with those living forms, divine yet human, in which the ancients embodied their highest conceptions of man, and their noblest religious convictions, the head and front of their culture. In dealing with English authors, he is not continually checked and baffled by allusions which were intended to be clear, and are so to an educated public. To the boy who is otherwise trained, that is, untrained for the study of English, they are not clear, and may envelop in an atmosphere of uncertainty passage after passage in any substantial author that he happens to take up. Can he appreciate George Eliot in Romola when she likens the shifty Tito Melema to Ba,cchus, if he is wholly ignorant of ancient ideas concerning the slippery and unstable Dionysus? And how can he read Milton if he is unfamiliar, not only with the Bible, but also with Homer and Virgil? For, be it noted that, whatever the reason, a decline of inter- est in the Scriptures has gone hand in hand with a growing indifference to the literary art of Greece and Rome. Indeed, one is reminded that Charles the Great, at a critical juncture for modem civiliza- tion, enjoined the study of letters, that is, of Latin, upon his clergy, in order that the study of the Scrip- tures might not languish in his realm. Would that 40 ENGLISH AND THE CLASSICS a modern statesman might arise with equal power and foresight to influence our general education, and that shortly no one having the reputation of a cultivated man might be unable to read at first hand the most sublime of all mysteries, in the Greek of the New Testament! The boy with a classical train- ing has immediate access to the highest ideal of man- kind. In this gamut of advantages we have run from small details to large considerations. "We began with the discipline a youth, may receive through. Greek and Latin in using the elements of expression; we have come to the benefit he may derive from these subjects in the interpretation of human discourse, or of a masterpiece as a whole, and in the assimila- tion of humanizing ideas. It is common, of course, to separate the disciplinary function of the classics from the cultural ; but it is better to assume that no such cleavage exists. One never can draw a sharp line of demarcation between the outward form of expression and the idea that is expressed, or view the spirit apart from the letter through which it is revealed. And so long as this is so, literary disci- pline, involving a detailed examination of language, cannot be severed from literary culture. Indeed, it cannot be too often observed that all culture is unified, and that its final aim is to elimi- nate the trivial and the false from our ideal of hu- manity; to abstract from the best sources, however remote or neglected, whatever will define and en- noble that ideal; and to transmit an ever more vital THE UNITY OF ALL CULTUEE 41 image of humanity for daily contemplation by the next and succeeding generations. This is what teachers of the humanities are striving to do, whether they know it or not, and whether they deal with Greek and Latin, or with French or German or English. But as is shown in the history of Europe, so in the development of the individual American, the basic elements of this ideal are most promptly secured through direct contact with Greek and Latin. When a foundation has been laid by skilful instruc- tion in the elements, the teachers of the modern Christian literatures can proceed with the super- structure. The destiny of Greek and Latin as a means of culture primarily rests with teachers of the classics, and secondarily with principals of schools and other men of influence in preparatory education. It is important that teachers of the classics at the present time should feel the great need of mutual recognition and support among all the friends of culture in America. But perhaps the need is great- est as between scholars in the ancient languages and students of the modern vernacular. They depend upon each other in performing their due service to the State ; for a study of the ancient classics with no attention to their bearing upon modern life is only less futile than the study of English when it is dis- sociated from the accumulated experience of the past. Yet we should not exclude from our ideal organiza- tion any person whatsoever who contributes to the enrichment and intensifying of human life. And, 42 ENGLISH AND THE CLASSICS perhaps, all told, the friends of real as opposed to seeming culture are not so few as teachers of the humanities sometimes imagine. Few or many, if they would but make their cause a common one, they would hold the fort against every assault. The foes of thorough culture, the haters of ideas and ideals, are many — how often are they professed opponents of Greek! And the officious heralds of a shallow and unmeaning culture, who abhor the industry without which no cultivation ever was obtained, may be fraudulent and dangerous. They are not, and can not be, at one in their efforts, since they have nothing positive to unite them; but they do succeed in deterring young people who are ignorant of what is good and what is bad in education from taking up the proper studies at the proper time. The foe is numerous but unorganized. Upon what ground can the friends of culture best unite? To what practical effort can the teachers of the humani- ties most profitably devote their superabundant strength? Obviously to the maintenance and ad- vancement of the study of Greek. The defence should be concentrated where the attack is most fre- quent. If Greek were ultimately to disappear from the curriculum of all the schools, Latin in no long time probably would make a similar exit, and sooner or later the serious study of modem languages and literatures would be discountenanced, too. Every effort that is made for the study of Greek is favor- able to humane learning in its entirety. If Greek is duly cared for, Latin will take care of itself, and FEIENDS OF GEEEK 43 SO will English. If the teachers of all these subjects would combine for the rehabilitation of Greek, no enemy could withstand them. The program is simple. All that is needed is a measure of faith like that of the Centurion, whose suggestions every one followed because he expected it. If the teacher of English, or the teacher of Latin, were to advise a small num- ber of promising young men aud women every year to study Greek, they would do it. There are, indeed, signs of hope for the future. To judge from the utterances of university presi- dents and the like, the cause of Greek is now grow- ing stronger in the eastern section of the country; the conservative South has never lost its hold upon the subject; and the great Middle West is imitative in matters of education, so that a renaissance of any sort in New England would ere long be duplicated in those western sections which draw so many of their teachers from the older universities. One thing, at least, is very significant. Within the last few years, our teachers of the classics have become noticeably less apologetic in their speech and attitude ; they are growing more and more courageous. It would seem that they need only to act as if they were not losing but winning, and to recognize and abet their friends in other subjects, and their cause might be saved. As for numerous teachers of Latin, they should evince a higher selfishness, and not be but penny-wise. Too many have been merely bent upon saving themselves for the moment, instead of rushing to defend the point where the enemy has been most successful. 44 ENGLISH AND THE CLASSICS And as for the teachers of the modern languages, they should act upon the knowledge they possess; they are aware that a first-hand acquaintance with the classics is the indispensable prerequisite to any real insight into Italian, French, and Spanish, as well as English and German. Principals of secondary schools doubtless are open to reason, and the arguments in favor of Greek and Latin are many and varied, virtually all of them being found in Professor Kelsey's collection of papers, by several hands, in the volume entitled Latin and Greek in American Education (published by the Macmillan Company). It is hard to believe that any one could resist the evidence contained in that volume — for example, in the last section, Sym- posium VII, Formal Discipline, under the headings. The Doctrine of Formal Discipline in the Light of the Principles of General Psychology (by James R. Angell), The Effects of Training on Memory (by W. B. Pillsbury), and The Relation of Special Train- ing to General Intelligence (by Charles H. Judd). To every man who has a voice in guiding our secondary education, either the arguments advanced by those who have studied the classics to some pur- pose are sound and convincing, or they are not; but until he has fairly weighed the arguments, the sensible man will withhold his opinion. If he is in a position where he must pass judgment, such a man will take pains to inform himself. For nine out of ten bright boys and girls, Greek either does what it is said to do, or it does not. We may leave out of AEGUMENTS FOR AND AGAINST GREEK 45 account the rare exception of a tenth, brilliant mind that is said to be incapable of learning this language. We hear of such minds, and one is inclined to think they must exist; for myself, I never have met one. Capable boys, and some dull ones, too, have been able to master the subject when they have not been spoiled for it by bad teaching. And we may also disregard the incompetent teacher of Greek, the pedant who does not make his pupils read as soon as they can, and lets them form the wretched habit of treating the language as if it were a Chinese puzzle, or the ignoramus who himself is unable to read continuously in either of the ancient tongues. These scattered individuals we may pass by. In general, it may be supposed, the teachers of the classics are as well trained to do their duty, and perform their office as well, on the whole, as any other body of instructors in the high school. If not, the solution of the difficulty lies in securing better teachers of the classics. It is no reasonable solution to throw these subjects out of the schools. To return, then: either Greek affects the subse- quent career of the pupil as is said to be the case, or it does not. If it does not, we are free to neglect that study in the schools. But if it does so affect it, we are bound to promote the study — unless we are willing to lose our own self-respect. If one never has read Greek, or, having read a little long ago, has forgotten the experience, how can one decide the question of its value ? No doubt the books of Kelsey and Zielinski^ would help the formation of an inde- * Zielinski, Our BeM to Antiquity, published by Routledge. 46 ENGLISH AND THE CLASSICS pendent judgment; but it is desirable to look at some of the Greek masterpieces in translation. The hesitating principal, or the doubtful member of the school board, might read the RepuUic of Plato in the version of Jowett, and the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle as translated by "Welldon, and then, let us say, Jowett 's rendering of the Politics. If, being previously unacquainted with those fountains of good sense and lofty inspiration, one were to find in them something of permanent value, it would be right to believe the persons who have read the orig- inal as well as the pale translation, and who de- clare that the Greek is better than the English ver- sion. And finally the principal might consider what he owes to the boys and girls whose education has been entrusted to his hands by his nation and his Maker. IV GOOD USAGE ^ THE following remarks concern our national language, and incidentally the study of Latin. Our chief topic being, not simply usage, but good usage, we may begin with a recognized authority upon the subject, and one who is likewise an ex- emplar in his practice. In the Ars Poetica Horace observes : Yes, words long faded may again revive. And words may fade now blooming and alive. If Usage wills it so, to whom belongs The rule, the law, the government of tongues. So runs the spirited rendering by Conington. That we may be sure to catch the unexpected emphasis of the Latin poet, let us take also the matter-of-fact translation by Wickham: 'Many a term which has fallen from use shall have a second birth, and those shall fall that are now in high honor, if so Usage shall will it, in whose hands is the arbitrament, the right and rule of speech.' ^ Adapted from an address delivered at the meeting of the American Classical League in Cincinnati, June 24, 1920. An- other version of the paper, but under the same title, appears in the University of California Chronicle 22. 259-269 (July, 1920). The present version is printed with the kind consent of the editor of the Chronicle. 47 48 GOOD USAGE It is often supposed that this tyrannous usage is the blind custom of the mass of the people — though we find nothing in Horace to warrant the supposi- tion; rather, both he and easily observed facts seem to indicate that the arbiters of custom are, first of all, the poets. When you are in doubt about the meaning or pronunciation of a word, or its propriety, you turn to a dictionary — for example, to the New English Dictionary of Sir James Murray and his fellows ; there you see how Milton, or Gray, or Words- worth, or Tennyson, has used it; and ever after you try to use the word in that way. The statement of Horace is in keeping with this habit, and is the re- verse of the popular notion. He means that the favorite words of poetasters, and of the crowd, are not likely to endure. He means that the diction of great poets, on the other hand, has great vitality. In the standard authors of an earlier day he has noted words and phrases that seem to have disap- peared, and seem to be replaced by new and popular terms, but which come to life again in the verse of a well-read genius like himself. He perceives that good words of an elder time have actually come to life again in his own works. He knows that good usage is the custom of men of good taste, and exists through the consent of the learned. Thus, if we may illustrate his contention by an example from Eng- lish, the adjective cedarn was employed by Milton in Comus — about tlie cedarn alleys; POETS EEVIVE GOOD WOEDS 49 it was revived by Coleridge, a diligent student of Milton, in Kuhla Khan — Down the green hill, athwart a cedarn cover; then Sir Walter Scott took it from Coleridge; and through these two poets it lives on in modern Eng- lish verse. In similar wise Lord Tennyson revived the verb hurgeon, *to bud,' and other writers have accepted it from him. That the mass of the people have an influence upon usage it is perhaps idle to doubt. Certainly the plain man likes to think this influence very great. And not the plain man only; one American pundit or journalist quotes with satisfaction an utterance of the philologist Darmesteter : 'Universal suffrage has not always existed in poli- tics, but it has always existed in linguistics. In matters of language the people are all-powerful and infallible, because their errors sooner or later estab- lish themselves as lawful.' Yet the process of growth and decay that Horace observed in the poets goes on in the masses too, only more swiftly. Like leaves in the autumn, the crowd dies, to make room for another generation; and its words die likewise. In all this world of change, nothing dies so quickly as the words of some people. But good usage implies an element of permanence in language; the conception itself is the antithesis of change. It is not the crowd that can truly affirm : 'Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.' Moreover, when a word that 50 GOOD USAGE has seemed to perish is brought back to life, it is not brought back by the crowd ; it is brought back to the crowd by some one who is in the crowd, but not of it. Ordinarily it is brought back to the rest of us by a poet, or at all events through the instrumental- ity of some piece of literature that has seemed to merit preservation in type or writing. Good usage clearly is something better and more \'ital than average usage. The people who say 'Lun- non,' 'Brummagem,' 'N'Yawk,' 'Cincinnatah,' and * Frisco, ' have been, are, and will be, far more numer- ous than they who have said, now say, and will say, 'London,' 'Birmingham,' 'New York,' 'Cincinnati,* and 'San Francisco.' The crowd says 'this much' and 'that much'; good usage, and good syntax, favor 'thus much' and 'so much.' We modify an adjec- tive, not by another adjective, but by an adverb? And, again, we do not use an adverb to modify a noun, nor sign ourselves, 'Sincerely, "Warren Wilson,' but close the letter with 'Sincerely yours,' and then the proper noun. The crowd says 'I claim,' instead of 'I assert' or 'I contend'; it 'voices its sentiments,' instead of uttering them. In common usage we hear 'address,' 'inquiry,' 'romance,' 'research'; in good usage, 'address,' 'inquiry,' 'romance,' 'research.' Good usage does not tolerate the ugly but familiar combination 'research work' any more than it would tolerate the tautological expression 'search work.' In common usage we have 'verzhion, ' ' converzhion, ' 'excurzhion,' 'Azhia,' 'Perzhia' — that is, with the sound of zh, not sh. Byron properly rhymes 'ver- GOOD USAGE AND COMMON USAGE 51 sion' and. 'Excursion' with * assertion.' In these cases the voice does not carry through from vowel or semivowel to vowel; there is an intervening un- voiced consonant as at the end of the word hush. And similarly, in spite of the crowd, we should say 'Rossetti' (not 'Rozeti') and 'Renaissance' (not 'Renaizance'), with a true hiss, made by the breath alone, not with a buzz produced by the voice too. It is unlikely that the usage of the many will ever make the pronunciation 'Rossetti' wrong. Unfortunately we have had a school of persons, who ought to have known better, advocating the no- tion that the usage of the crowd, the usage of the many, does dominate, and should dominate, in mat- ters of expression. The late Professor Lounsbury, I grieve to say, was one of these 'authorities'; and there are professed advoca.tes now living, not merely of average usage, but of bad usage, as if it were good usage. However, the average of any class — even of the class we call 'authorities' — falls short, and some- times far short, of the good ; nor is there any reason why a false conception of democracy should be im- ported into the realm of linguistic usage. "Words are like men in being either average, or below the average, or above the average; they are better or worse in character and in origin, and better or worse, too, according to their associations. Usage is, of course, the usage of all, when some definite custom really is the possession of all those who speak a given language. Some part of our cur- rent English doubtless is the common property of 25 GOOD USAGE every one who knows the tongue. But at most only a fraction of any language is used alike by all who speak it. At most only some of the words are always pronounced in the same way; only certain construc- tions are common to all sections of the country and all stages in the scale of society. Within limits, then, we do have to consider the usage of the whole num- ber, as against the idiosyncrasies of the individual. But we must distinguish between the usage of the whole number and the common practice of any frac- tion, large or small, of that whole number. "What we call the crowd, or the many, are not all. How- ever large a part, they are not the whole. The whole is, in fact, made up of parts, or groups, some of which have more power in linguistic usage thaxi others. "When there is a possibility of choice, the voices or votes are not all equally telling. Of all the voices of men in Homeric times, only the voice that is heard in the Iliad and the Odyssey has carried down to us. Now scholars are pretty well agreed that the diction of the Homeric poems is not a popular language at all; it was a special diction devised for a special kind of verse. Of all the voices that were heard in the age of Pericles, only a few have come to us — the voices of the philosophers, his- torians, orators, and poets. Among the Romans, the voice of Cicero and that of Virgil have produced the most widespread and distinct echoes in all subse- quent times. From the fourth century a.d. the ca- dences of Jerome reached the ears of our northern ancestors at the end of the sixth, when the mission- TELLING VOICES 53 aries brought his Latin translation of the Bible to pagan England; nor have those cadences ceased to resound at the present time, whether in the Latin Bible or the English. In our own day, the influence of the few continues to be relatively more powerful in linguistic matters than the influence of the many ; and these few have generally had, among other things, a training in Latin. If this truth is not evident now, future years will make it so. Among the groups that compose the entire mass of speakers or writers (the illiterate, the half-taught, and the well-taught, all taken together), the follow- ing are very influential : public orators — for example, clergymen, educators, and statesmen; singers; schol- ars — for example. Sir James Murray and the other editors of the New English Dictionary ; poets — for example, Mr. Kipling, who has studied Horace, and whose words are often more fully alive in the ear of the reader than are the words of the reader him- self. Nor may we forget the typesetters, the men who actually print the books, who exert an enor- mous influence, though one that is seldom noticed, upon linguistic usage. The best of them know Latin. They are very conservative, and, even without the help of the poets, orators, and the rest, would do much to maintain the purity of the English lan- guage. Think of the numbers of them in the British Isles, and the British colonies, from Canada to South Africa, India, Australia, and New Zealand — not to mention the United States of America. The Ameri- can 'Simplified Spelling' Board, a radical and artifi- S 5i GOOD USAGE cial body, has accomplished nothing in the face of the silent, natural, habitual conservatism of printers from Edinburgh and Oxford to Calcutta and Mel- bourne. Publishers, too, are more likely to study and preserve good usage than to indulge in innova- tions. In the long run, we may say that all the influen- tial groups have studied Latin, if not Greek as well, and that all are conservative, especially the frater- nity of poets. Thus Wordsworth objected to the use of the nouns spring and autumn as adjectives, vehemently advocating the employment of the true adjectives vernal and autumnal instead. And, quite in the spirit of Horace, he remarks : * " Joying, ' ' for joy or joyance, is not to my taste; indeed, I ob- ject to such liberties upon principle. "We should soon have no language at all if the unscrupulous coinage of the present day were allowed to pass, and become a precedent for the future. One of the first duties of a writer is to ask himself whether his thought, feeling, or image cannot be expressed by existing words or phrases, before he goes about creat- ing new terms, even when they are justified by the analogies of the language. ' ^ Horace allows the po€t to invent a new term only under stress of necessity, and in that case advises him to derive his new term by studying the best sources of the language. For him the best source was Greek; for us the best sources are Latin, Greek, and Old English. People like to think that what is bad usage in one 1 Letters of the Wordsworth Family, ed. bj "Knight, 2. 397. GOOD SENSE AND PAEADOX 55 generation becomes good in another, and take pleas- ure in noting that expressions once condemned by careful writers have eventually become established in the language. But nearly every one likes para- dox, while few caxe to study the efforts by which a Chaucer, a Tindale, a Spenser, a Gray, and a Words- worth have purified the English tongue. It is, of course, true that a number of words to which Swift objected are now tolerated; but more noteworthy are the expressions that have been approved by the judicious, and have remained in use. Meanwhile it is equally true that chance coinages seldom long survive. Mr. Kipling's 'scumfish,' for example, in . . . leaping lines that scumfish through the pines, has not, it would seem, taken root; so far as I have observed, he himself used it but once, in the Road Song of the Bandar-log. The truth is that most of what is bad or casual in one age does not become legal tender in the next; the chances are against it. The concerted action of scholars and literary men in general is against it. When education in a country is systematic and good, the tendency of any language is to improve, partly by additions critically made, partly by critical elimination. Moreover, slang dies a natural death so quickly that a man who has been absent for two or three years in a foreign country will not half understand what the young folk are saying when he returns to his own land and attends to the new ephemeral growth. The slang of five years ago is for the most part utterly dead, and never will 56 GOOD USAGE be heard again. Good English and good Latin re- main steadfast; nor are they likely ever to be dis- joined. People are fond, too, of showing that what is called bad usage can all be explained by natural laws; that it has its origin in psychology, or in the earlier stages of the language, or that it has a paral- lel in the good usage of another tongue. The double negative of illiterate English, they say, is only the counterpart of the double negative in Attic Greek. Well, 'He didn't know nothing about Latin' may be literally rendered into Greek that is good; but it isn't good English. It is bad English for the reason that good writers do not use it. That it can be explained by natural laws does not help, for everything that happens can be so explained. The ac- tions of a thief have a, natural cause. Bad manners and bad conduct of every sort, filthy language and base thoughts, as well as bad grammar and false pronunciation, can all be explained by something or other. According to Euripides, Menander, and Saint Paul, it is evil communications that corrupt good manners; and the term includes every kind of bad usage. To lay bare the causes of a phenomenon does not justify our acceptance of any practice as a norm. And further, if illiterate English on occasion will turn into tolerable Greek and Latin, slovenly English can more often be rendered by force into slovenly Greek and Latin. But more important is the fact that the best of Plato can often be translated word for word into the best English; and yet more GOOD USAGE IS SECOND NATUEE 57 important is the fact that they who have practised Greek and Latin composition, and have rendered Plato and Cicero into English, write a better Eng- lish style of their own than they who have not en- joyed this sort of literary education. Good usage also is natural, and has its origin and laws. It is nature improved by art; and art like- wise has its origin and laws. Good usage is the custom of the trained writer and speaker. It is an art that has become second nature. It is not the impulse or habit of the old Adam, but the wisdom of an Adam regenerate. Like all other arts, it is based upon a study of nature. The student of lan- guage aims to find out what nature a,t her best is trying to produce ; and this he strives to perpetuate, being himself one of the agencies in the survival of the fittest. Words are natural forms, like living animals — like mice and such small deer. You may clip their tails for a generation, or for more than one — and the next generation will have tails of the old length, if usage so determines. Nature is too strong for the 'simplified' spellers. It is not too strong for the student of Greek and Latin. It was not too strong for Milton, who made extensive collec- tions for a thesaurus of classical Latin usage. With nature the poet joins forces, and so do the editors of the New English Dictionary, who record the lead- ing facts of our language as these are evident in the best poets and prose writers. Nature was not too strong for the conservative Horace; nor for Words- worth, who remarked that a poet would be likely to 58 GOOD USAGE know more than the average reader concerning the history of words. The arbiter of good usage must study the history of the language, so as to discover what is the newest of the old and the oldest of the new — for that is the right custom of speech. Not only so, but he must study the languages from which descending streams have contributed to the powerful current of good English, that main current which runs unsullied through the troubled waters of bad usage; for there have always been poets enough to serve as a clear channel. He must, above all, study Old English and Latin, and Chaucer, that well of English undefiled, and the main poets, Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, and Wordsworth, who have drawn water from that well. Our language, called English (not 'Anglo-Saxon') by the Germanic tribes, the Angles, Jutes, and Saxons, who brought it to England, originally con- sisted of three main dialects. These were severally domesticated in the north-eastern, south-eastern, and south-central parts of England bordering on the North Sea and the English Channel. Those tribes had not been quite untouched by Christianity and Roman commerce in their Continental home on the Danish peninsula and in adjacent districts washed by the German Ocean. But on that casual contact we need not dwell. Yet we may recall that they brought with them from the Continent to England a set of letters, the Runic alphabet, which the entire body of Germanic tribes had long since derived from Greece and Rome. On the whole, however, they were THE ROMAN MISSIONAEIES 59 essentially unlettered, and essentially pagan, when they began to harry the island of Britain about the middle of the fifth century. When they had been settling there for perhaps one hundred and fifty years, and were established in the land, there came among them a band of Christian missionaries, gathered from various Mediterranean countries, and sent from Rome. The first of these missionaries was August- ine, with a good Latin name; and the most impor- tant of those who immediately followed him were Mellitus, Justus, Paulinus, and Rufinianus. They were sent by Pope Gregory, who, according to Bede, 'was by nation a Roman, . . . deducing his race from ancestors that were not only noble, but religious.' Of the early missionaries, all, of course, knew Latin, and some knew Greek. Their first task was to learn English, and to write it in the Latin alphabet ; their second, to adapt the resources of English to the ex- pression of ideas brought from the Mediterranean. Within seventy years they had done the fundamental work for the transformation of the English race from unlettered pagans into civilized Christians. Without the missionaries and their converts there would have been no English literature, for there would have been no records, no study, no safe tradi- tion, no development of style. Without the mis- sionaries and their Latin training we should have had no standard of good usage in English. Without them we now should have no such language as modern English, and possibly no homogeneous speech whatsoever, but a set of relatively crude dialects. 60 GOOD USAGE But for the missionaries and their Latin, the thought of Greece, the ideals of Palestine, might never have entered into English civilization. Pope Gregory was right when he said : 'Behold, a tongue of Britain, which only knew how to utter barbarous language, has long since begun to resound the Hebrew Alleluia. Behold, the once swelling ocean now serves prostrate at the feet of the saints ; and its barbarous motions, which earthly princes could not subdue with the sword, are now, through the fear of God, bound by the mouths ot priests with words only; and he that when an in- fidel stood not in awe of fighting troops, now, a be- liever, fears the tongues of the humble. ' ^ The history of good usage, then, goes back to the Mediterranean; and good usage as a whole repre- sents the progress of civilization from Homer and the Old Testament down to the present day. On the classical side it represents the cumulative effort of the Greek poets and scholars, resulting in Attic Greek, and the effort of Roman poets and scholars, the inheritors of Greek culture, culminating in Cicero and Virgil. The line continues, then, let us say, through the Church Fathers and the Latin gramma- rians to Saint Jerome, a pupil of the grammarian Do- natus, schooled in all the classical learning of his time, yet with the fervor of a Hebrew prophet, and the first translator of the Bible whom we know by name. The missionaries took to England a knowledge of * Moralia 27. 11, quoted by Bed© in his Ecclesiastical History of England 2. 1 ; see Cook and Tinker, Select Translations from Old English Prose, p. 28. JEEOME AND THE VULGATE BIBLE 61 the classical Latin authors, and some knowledge of Greek. They doubtless very early imported the grammar of Donatus, together with Priscian. But, with the actual volumes of the Latin authors, they brought to England the most influential book for post-classical European civilization that ever was produced, Jerome's translation of the Bible into Latin. Out of this, through a series of adaptations and partial translations into Old and Middle Eng- lish, there subsequently arose the most influential of all books upon modem English culture, the Author- ized Version of the Bible, the Bible of King James. In the Vulgate of Jerome — for example, in the Book of Lamentations — the cadences of Ciceronian and Attic eloquence unite with the substance of Christian and Hebraic thought, and, on the whole, classic usage bends only in so far as is necessary to express conceptions that had not been familiar to ancient Rome. Let a single instance suffice. The Romans, like the English in their pagan state, virtu- ally never attained to the conception of monotheism. When they prayed, they addressed the immortal gods in the vocative plural ; or they addressed some indi- vidual deity, as Hercules or Jupiter, using the voca- tive singular of his particular name. Because they worshiped gods many, they had no vocative singu- lar from the nominative deus. Accordingly, when Jerome came to translate the opening of the Fifty- first Psalm, 'Have mercy upon me, God!' there was no classical usage that he could follow; he was forced to make use of the nominative singular as a 62 GOOD USAGE vocative: 'Miserere mei, Dens.' The entire history of civilization here converges on a point in usage. For the new conception the translator did not invent a new word, nor did he devise a new form by analogy. We find him as conservative as circum- stances permitted him to be; he makes a word and a form already in existence answer his purpose. His 'DeitrS' is the first instance in Latin of an appeal to the one Divine Being in the vocative singular. The Vulgate, then, was the principal gift of Latin scholarship to the English race — to the Angles, Jutes, and Saxons, with Frisians and others intermixed. As the race became politically more unified, and also more thoroughly permeated by Christian civili- zation, the centre of government and of intellectual life moved, in the course of events, from the north- east to the south-west, and the three strains of the native language tended to unite in the south-mid- land district, while the influence of classical and ec- clesiastical Latin remained constant throughout. Eventually the south-midland dialect, with admix- tures from the other two, became the English lan- guage proper, taking shape as a fairly homogeneous unit in what has become the great centre of Eng- lish population and culture, notable for London and the two main seats of classical learning, Oxford and Cambridge. In this south-central district at the close of the Middle Ages we find the two scholars and great writers, Chaucer and Wyclif (both of them students of Latin), who, more than any others, gave form to that English tongue which has spread to the THE HISTORY OF GOOD USAGE 63 ends of the earth. Though the process of develop- ment in earlier stages was gradual, leading up to the fourteenth century, we may definitely take this century of Chaucer, Langland, the unidentified author of the Pearl, and the beginnings of the Eng- lish drama, as the critical age for the supremacy of the midland dialect, and the formation of modern English. To the poetry of Chaucer and the "Wyclif translation of the Bible we usually give the credit for fixing the language; but the age as a whole was one of extraordinary originating power — in this re- spect incomparable in English history — and full of literary activity. Witness the genius of Richard Rolle, and the high degree of talent in Gower, both of whom wrote with equal ease in Latin and English. It was also the most important epoch for the assimila- tion in our language of words of Latin origin. The language which then became unified, and dominant in England, was later moulded and made flexible on the Elizabethan and Jacobean stage, in the time of Shakespeare and of the Authorized Ver- sion of the Bible, while the colonial expansion of Great Britain was beginning over-seas. 'The works of the old English dramatists,' said "Wordsworth, 'are the gardens of our language.' Of the bond be- tween the Authorized Version and earlier English translations of the Scriptures, and between these and the Vulgate, I have already spoken. On the influ- ence, deep and wide, of the Authorized Version upon English usage it is needless to dwell. A well-known authority says: 'The elevation and nobility of Bibli- 64 GOOD USAGE cal diction, assisted by its slightly archaic tinge, have a tendency to keep all English style above mean- ness and triviality.' In the words of Coleridge, 'in- tense study of the Bible will keep any writer from being vulgar in point of style.' But we must note that this age of Elizabeth and James, again, was one in which strictly classical studies had a very large share in providing standards of good usage. The eloquence of Bacon, for example, comes partly from the Latin Bible, partly from Tacitus, partly from Cicero. The language handed down by the Elizabethan court and drama, and by the preachers of the Re- formation, that spoken language which is the basis of the written, virtually took final shape in the drama of the Restoration ; and the spelling, too, was practi- cally fixed in the same period of Charles the Second ; while Latin continued to be the groundwork of a literary education. Addison, the eighteenth century in general, only refined our prose in small, though not insignificant details. At the end of the century it was at length possible to make an authoritative dictionary of modern English, that of Samuel John- son, an accomplished Latinist. Since then, the language has not, indeed, remained stationary ; there has been an increase in the number of words to be found in a dictionary — but mostly of technical words derived from Greek and Latin. There has been some increase, too, in the flexibility of speech and writing. Still, the last considerable reaction in the history of the language took the shape of a re- WOEDSWORTH AND THE BIBLE 65 turn to earlier standards. The movement is rightly associated with the effort of Wordsworth to imitate the diction of 'real men,' and to purge away the insincerities that had crept into English verse through the influence of Pope. Wordsworth himself gave some color to the notion that he was experimenting with the language actually used in his own time by humble and rustic persons. His 'real men,' how- ever, knew the English Bible and Liturgy by heart; he eliminated the crudities of rural speech by a stand- ard derived from his studies in the history of words ; and when his usage at any point was called in ques- tion, he defended himself by an appeal to the usage of the earlier poets. With respect to diction he mainly succeeded in bringing back the simplicity and directness of Biblical English to poetical style, and in restoring to favor many words and phrases of permanent value from Chaucer, Spenser, Shake- speare, and Milton, and not a few of the minor poets. His practice demonstrated that the usage of the com- mon people is a kind of material furnished by na- ture, which the poet moulds by conscious art into a new creation. He also observed that nature is at work in the minds of mighty poets. The last great fact in the history of good usage is the production of the New English Dictionary (now almost complete) at Oxford, England, in the midland district where the language was formed, and at the home of English classical learning. Let us go back a little. The eighteenth century is especially important for America, since the chief QQ GOOD USAGE differences that we need to consider between English and American usage then arose — not in America so much as in England itself. We have to study the English usage of that century if we wish to know whether our present American usage, when there is a difference, is justified. Take, for example, the word labor, and other words which the English now uniformly spell with the ending -our. Gray (a very careful writer) and his age spell them in either way, without betraying a preference. But since English has taken many of them directly from Latin rather than French, since there is ample authority in the best writers of the eighteenth century for spelling them like the Latin, since this is simpler and more natural, and since there is no good reason for spell- ing them otherwise than labor, color, humor, etc., we are more than justified in adhering to what is called the American orthography. Ours really are eigtheenth-century English forms ; and they are Latin forms. Possibly we should make an exception of Saviour, but on grounds of the best usage, and not arbitrarily. Let us take a final illustration: for ever — written or printed as two words, and not, as so often is done in America, in one. You cannot very well print it as one in the most familiar case of all, namely, in the Lord's Prayer; there you must print or write it 'for ever and ever.' So Keats gives it: A thing of beauty is a joy for ever. In the eighteenth century it has been noted once as a single word, in the poet Falconer. Shelley (or CALVERLEY'S ' FOBEVEB ' 67 his printer), in the nineteenth, gives it sometimes as one, sometimes as two. But at present we may distinguish the artist in language from the man who is not so artistic, by his use of for ever, centre, theatre, metre, thus much, so much, some one, any one, every one, and the like. Taken singly, such matters appear trifling; but perfection is made up of minutiae — and perfection is no trifle. Good usage is a thing of beauty. Cal- verley did not think the orthography of for ever a trifle, since he wrote nine Horatian stanzas on it: Forever Forever ! 'T is a single word ! Our rude forefathers deemed it two; Can you imagine so absurd A view ? Forever! What abysms of woe The word reveals, what frenzy, what Despair! For ever (printed so) Did not. It looks, ah me! how trite and tame; It fails to sadden or appal Or solace — it is not the same At all. O thou to whom it first occurred To solder the disjoined, and dower Thy native language with a word Of power: 68 GOOD USAGE We bless thee! Whether far or near Thy dwelling, whether dark or fair Thy kingly brow, is neither here Nor there. But in men's hearts shall be thy throne, Wliile the great pulse of England beats: Thou coiner of a word unknown To Keats! And nevermore must printer do As men did longago; but run * For ' into ' ever,' bidding two Be one. Forever! Passion-fraught, it throws O'er the dim page a gloom, a glamour ; It 's sweet, it 's strange ; and I suppose It 's grammar. Forever ! 'T is a single word ! And yet our fathers deemed it two. Nor am I confident they erred; Are you? The phrase for ever represents the two words in ceternum, an expression repeatedly used in the Vul- gate, a Latin book brought into England at the be- ginning of the history of our race and our literature. Latin has been read and written by men of English speech from the Old English period till our own day. The influence has been absolutely continuous, and on the whole invaluable. I have no desire to mini- THE LATIN ELEMENT IN ENGLISH 69 mize the beauty and utility of the native element in our language, or to slight any other element such as Greek. Rather I would suggest that these elements are so interwoven that they must be studied together by any one who desires to perpetuate standards of good linguistic usage. Yet it is proper to emphasize the fact that, in the main, the relation of Latin to English has been that of conquering and dominat- ing form upon a plastic, vital matter. If Old Eng- lish is the mother of our present tongue, a mother to be loved and cherished, Latin has been its father, a father to be revered and consulted. There are other strains in our speech, but the original wedding was between Old English and Latin. And there has been constant intermarriage between these two lines ever since. Here is one of the products. For a choice speci- men of virile English, I present the following utter- ance of Ben Jonson on good usage. He says: 'Pure and neat language I love, yet plain and customary. ' That is the kind of sentence people call good straightforward Anglo-Saxon. Yet here the words of native origin are the least significant; of the really descriptive words, pure goes back to Latin purus, neat to Latin nitidus, plain to Latin planus, language to Latin lingua, and customary to Latin consuetudinarius. It is impossible to study English without a knowledge of Latin. Shakespeare is said to have had little of it ; but he had more than the classes that nowadays read him in this country. It is said 6 70 GOOD USAGE that Lincoln had less than Shakespeare ; but he knew the Latin terms used in his practice of law, and he saw to it that his son was not deprived of a classical education. Milton wrote enviable Latin, both prose and verse, before he attained to the purest English style developed by any of our great poets. And he calls barbarism 'a destructive intestine enemy to genius,' and takes careless speech as the mark of an indolent mind ' already long prepared for any amount of servility. ' It is his way of saying that bad usage corrupts good manners. In his day the cure was the study of Latin, which would still be effective, if our schools chose to make it so. In addition, we now have the New English Dictionary as the great anti- dote to bad language. It records the thrilling voices of a noble past, and indicates the course of good usage in the future. But one cannot consult it to the best advantage without a Latin dictionary at one's elbow. Actually, every one believes in good usage. Little children are quick to notice and correct any depar- ture from what they consider right, namely, the speech of their fathers and mothers. They are by nature imitative and conservative of what they ad- mire. The illiterate, too, believe in the principle of good usage. Even the natural impulse of the indi- vidual to resent correction when he is wrong dis- plays the same conservative tendency; likewise his subsequent reaction, after he has looked the point up in the dictionary. The normal process is this. The teacher corrects the pupil, or the pupil corrects A BATTLE FOE GOOD USAGE 71 the teacher. Some heat arises in the discussion, and the battle ends without an admission of defeat on either side. When the combatants separate, each furtively repairs to an authority he deems better than himself — to some one who knows both English and Latin. He goes to the work of Webster, or Funk and Wagnalls, or Murray. One of the con- testants finds himself in the wronor. Thereafter he avoids a repetition of the controversy with his pre- vious foe, being careful, however, not to mispro- nounce the same word again in the same presence. But he will be acrimonious from that time on in de- nouncing the fault in any one else. In this way his self-love recovers from the hurt it has suffered, and the stream of the native language tends to rid itself of one more impurity. THE TEACHING OF WRITTEN COMPOSITION ' LIKE the 'cultural value' of the classics, the teach- ing of English composition is a large subject for consideration within narrow limits. Properly ampli- fied, the subject would involve some treatment of various other topics, among them the gradual decline of interest in the disciplines of Greek and Latin, which have been essential to the development of English style in the past ; and the concomitant popular demand for a kind of education in the vernacular which shall directly liberate the utterance of the masses, rather than produce a body of learned men whose paramount influence might elevate and sustain the standards of taste and good usage. My purpose, however, is necessarily restricted. It is my hope to direct the attention of teachers of English, and particularly those who are concerned with classes in written composition, to certain underlying prin- ciples that should govern the practice of requiring themes or essays from the immature. Fundamental principles are seldom free from the danger of neglect. * Eeprinted, with, alterations, from Education 30. 421-430 (March, 1910), with the kind consent of the editor. The paper was read before the Modern Language Association of America at Ithaca, New York, December 28, 1909. 72 THE DAILY THEME 73 "With reference to composition in the vernacular, there seems to be a special propriety in reverting to such principles, since within recent years a great and ex- emplary educational power in the East has had to rediscover one of them, and has at length concluded that the children of America should not be forced to make bricks without straw. In the academic year of 1907-08 at Harvard University, the number of under- graduates enrolled in courses primarily devoted to the writing of English was considerably larger than the number in courses primarily devoted to the study of English literature, the proportion being almost three to two. Since then, owing, it would seem, to measures taken at Harvard by the department of English, this disproportion has undergone a change; in the next academic year there appears to have been a leaning toward courses the first aim of which was the acquisi- tion of knowledge, and the development of insight rather than expression. There would be no advantage in the use of precise statistics ; the preceding case, and the following, are cited only in order to define a gen- eral impression, namely, that in 1909 or thereabouts the tide began to drift away from courses in the * daily theme ' and its like at the place from which many other institutions have ultimately borrowed such devices, though this drift may not have been immediately per- ceptible everywhere else. For the first semester of the year 1909-10 at a representative university in the Middle West, the number of students in courses mainly devoted to English composition, as against those in courses mainly devoted to the study of English litera- ture, bore a proportion of about ten to seven. I have 74 THE TEACHING OF COMPOSITION no desire to draw especial notice to the university in question, and have given the instance as presumably typical of a good many institutions.^ To one who from the beginning could have watched the daily theme advance from its home in New Eng- land to a gradual conquest of the South and West — while Greek kept sailing ever farther into the north of Dame Democracy's opinion — the spectacle must have been attended with some misgivings. In the case of many teachers who, after years of experiment, persist — ^to use the words of Milton — in 'forcing the empty wits of children to compose themes, verses, and ora- tions, which are the acts of ripest judgment,' a proc- ess which he compares to the wringing of blood from the nose, and 'the plucking of untimely fruit, ' ^ it may be that the only words to apply are those from Burns : One point must still be greatly dark, The moving Why they do it.^ 1 Following the delivery of this paper, chaaiges were made by certain of my colleagues in the preliminary work in English at Cornell University; since then virtually no courses there have been given in which the practice of composition has not been in some measure connected with the study of a more or less definite subject-matter. Following the publication of the article, letters came to me from several quarters evincing a belief that I had in mind this or that institution other than the one actually alluded to. 2 Tractate Of Education; in the edition by Laura E. Lock- wood, p. 6. Throughout the paper I have kept in mind certain passages from Milton's tractate, Wordsworth's sonnets entitled Personal TalTc, and Bacon's Advancement of Learning. 3 Address to the Unco Guid 7. 5-6. A DISTEMPEE OF LEAENING 75 To do a thing, and to continue in the practice, mainly because one hundred or one thousand others are en- gaged in the same pursuit, may be reasonable in a polity like that of Mr. Kipling's Bandar-log; it is not the sort of motive that should dominate the republic of American colleges and universities. Yet one may pertinently inquire whether some such external imi- tation of one institution by another in this country has not been the chief cause in forcing the jaded wits of partly-trained instructors in English, some- times known as 'English slaves,' to correct number- less themes, essays, and orations ; an occupation which allows these young men to do little else during what should be a most critical period of their growth, that is, during the period when the Docent in a Conti- nental university pursues the liberal investigations that shall shortly make him, within his field, a master of those who know. In a land like ours, which prides itself upon the development of efficiency, no harsher accusation could be brought against the ' daily theme ' than that it squanders the energy of the teacher. It causes him to spend an immoderate share of his time upon a mass of writing that has no intrinsic value, and easily leads him into the habit of regard- ing the details of outer form, rather than the sub- stance of what he reads. 'Here, therefore,' as Baeon says, 'is the first distemper of learning, when men study words and not matter. ' ^ Is it not true that, if you take care of the teacher of English, his pupil will be taken care of? Whatever value may attach * Advancement of Learning, Book I, ed. by Cook, p. 29. 76 THE TEACHING OF COMPOSITION to this notion, daily themes and their like, once established in the curriculum, constitute a barrier to its acceptance. But let us turn to the pupil. What, then, are the laws that should govern the kind and amount of writing which we may require from our undergraduates? In asking this question, we are to have in mind the needs of university or college students of the first and second years, but the answer is applicable to a much larger circle of learners. By way of preliminary, one might inquire whether it is necessary that the art of written composition should be taught at all. The common belief that it is necessary may be too readily accepted. The wisest of all teachers, though He constantly referred to written tradition as a standard, and expected His hearers to be familiar with it, is not reported to have written more than once — and then in the sand. The wisest of the Greeks in the time of Pericles is repre- sented by Plato at the end of the Phoedriis as argu- ing to the uttermost against the art of written com- position, except as a means to the preservation of records, or as a pastime for the old. Aside from his main contention, this argument of the Platonic Socrates in favor of the spoken word offers no little comfort to the increasing number of those who main- tain that our present courses in English composi- tion should turn more and more upon the exercise of distinct utterance, that clear and well-formed speech is more intimately connected than writing itself with that precision of thought and feeling SEEK INSIGHT FIRST 77 which is the basis of all good style. Yet it may be urged that Plato, the consummate artist in Greek prose, is himself an example with which to combat the argument against writing that he chooses to put into the mouth of a dramatic character. Even so, shall we, then, immediately rush away to the con- clusion that it is desirable, both for the individual and for the State, that all persons, or all the per- sons in any group, should obtain an equal opportu- nity for self-expression, whether in writing or other- wise? So far as concerns the individual, it is clear that the teacher, whether of English or any other subject, should prefer to make his pupil well-informed and happy, rather than enable him to advertise his wis- dom and contentment. Even in a democracy it may now and then be true that silence is golden, and 'long, barren silence' better than 'personal talk.' As for the State, it is obvious that the commonwealth is benefited when the few who have a comprehension of its needs receive a hearing, and the many possess their souls in quiet. Nevertheless, among the plati- tudes that have escaped challenge is the current no- tion that every one should be taught to express him- self when on his feet, since there is no telling how often, in the way of civic duty, the average man may need to address an audience. One may venture to think that an inordinate amount of precious time has been lavished in windy debate upon generalities by students who have never made a speech, or needed to make one, after turning their backs upon the aca- 78 THE TEACHING OF COMPOSITION demic rostrum; and the fact remains that the aver- age man, either in civic or in private relations, always needs to know his business before he talks about it. A similar observation holds good with reference to the inordinate practice of written com- position for its own sake. It sounds like a truism to say that to acquire, and to meditate upon what is acquired, are more necessary than to express the re- sult in writing. Yet this essential priority of insight over expression is not reflected in the large number of undergraduates throughout our country who have engaged in the writing of themes with little or no restriction of subjects, as compared with the nimi- ber engaged in the systematic study of English literature under teachers who have made this field, or some part of it, their own. It may be objected that the disproportion exists only on the surface, and that the student's whole experience, including his activity at the time in other branches of the curriculum, should furnish him with material about which he can tell the truth in writing. But the experience of the Freshman or Sophomore is easily exhausted; he reads, and has read as a schoolboy, very few solid books for him- self; and, in the other subjects which he may be studying, his teachers are better fitted to gauge the propriety of his statements than is the teacher of English. In any case, we can hardly avoid the ad- mission that everywhere, and at all times, the truth is of more importance than any language by which it may happen to be represented. THE END AND THE MEANS 79 May we not put the argument into a form like this? The main function of the vernacular, Tal- leyrand to the contrary notwithstanding, is the com- munication of truth. In a given case the importance of the function is measured by the importance of the truth to be conveyed. Since we may seldom take it for granted that the unripe student is in posses- sion of a valuable truth, and since the first inquiry of the teacher should, therefore, be concerned with the truth and accuracy of the pupil's communica- tion, it follows that the teaching of self-expression can never safely be made the immediate aim of any course. If a sense of values is, in the nature of things, primary, it will remain so in spite of a thousand courses that may be built upon some other hypothesis. If expression is a medium for impart- ing one's sense of values, if it is essentially a means to an end, we fall into the gravest possible error when we treat it as an end in itself. Our main question, therefore, resolves itself pre- cisely into this one of means and end ; and hence we must lay the emphasis where it belongs, and no longer ask, ' Can we teach such and such persons the art of composition?' Instead, we are bound to ask, 'Can we use the practice of written composition as a means of imparting insight?' Obviously we can use it as a test for determining whether the pupil has gained an appreciation of any particular sub- ject, and by successive tests can determine whether he continues to advance in his appreciation. We may perhaps use it with some frequency in order 80 THE TEACHING OF COMPOSITION to note the increasing faithfulness of his observation within a definite province; more rarely in order to measure his ability to compare his observations and to draw inferences from them. Employed by a teacher who has such ends in view, the writing of English becomes an instrument of value for pro- moting a general education, which may be taken to mean a situdy of particular subjects in' the order of their importance and in a rational sequence. Em- ployed for less serious, or mistaken, ends, written composition may be regarded as a pastime for the young, or as an injurious waste of time. From these considerations we may pass to a few others, some of them implicit in the foregoing. The insight which it is the function of the teacher of English to impart is an insight, not into current theories of geology, or economics, or agriculture, or, in short, into much of the heterogeneous material that, in the shape of select readings, often serves as a basis for studying the formal structure of exposi- tion and description; it is an insight into the best traditions of English literature and such other litera- tures as are directly involved in an understanding of the English. This, presumably, is the material into which the vision of the teacher himself has most deeply penetrated. If not, he ought to be teaching something else, or nothing. Let the teacher of writers, as well as the writer, observe the caution of Horace, and choose with care his proper field. Some portion or phase of this subject which he knows and loves is the matter about which he may ask his THE PANGS OF AUTHORSHIP 81 pupils to write; and not in helter-skelter fashion, as if it made no difference where one began, what one studied next, and so on, save as a question of arbitrary order; but progressively, on the supposi- tion that in the advance towaxd knowledge and understanding, certain things, not schematic, but substantial, necessarily precede others. Further, the amount of writing demanded of the immature student should be relatively small. In the space of a term, how many teachers of English composition produce as much manuscript of an aca- demic character as they expect from individuals of the Freshman or Sophomore class ? If our courses in daily themes are to any extent derived from the edu- cational theories of antiquity, we may imagine that by one channel or another they eventually go back to Quintilian. But what is their real connection with the familiar advice of Quintilian, so vigorously rendered by Ben Jonson, *No matter how slow the style be at first, so it be labored and accurate'; or with this, 'So that the sum of all is, ready writing makes not good writing, but good writing brings on ready writing'? Or what relation have they to the Horatian counsel, not merely to fill the mind from the page Socratic before one begins writing, but, after one has written, to correct, even to a tenth re- view? And the page Socratic itself in one case is reported to have been seven times rewritten. Ac- cordingly, from Plato, who remodeled the opening of the RepuUic these seven times, to Bacon, who revised the Instauratio Magna at least twelve times, and Man- 82 THE TEACHING OF COMPOSITION zoni, who would often recast a sentence a score of times, and then perhaps not print a word of it, and John Richard Green, who rewrote the first chapter of The Making of England ten times, there is a host of witnesses^ crying out against the facile penmanship of five 'themes' a week on five different subjects — ap- proximately one hundred and seventy-five papers in an academic year, from the empty wits of Sopho- mores! To this number must be added six or eight 'long themes.' Could any course of reading be de- signed which at the end of the year preceding should make of the Freshman a full man to the extent that such an exercise as this in the Sophomore year de- mands ? In fact, the more one compares the current prac- tice of theme-writing with traditional theory and the actual experience of good writers in the past, * On rewriting and other forms of painstaking in composition, see Horace, Ars Poetica 289-294; Ben Jonson, Discoveries, ed. by Castelain, pp. 35-6, 84-6; Boswell's Life of Johnson, Oxford edition, 2. 562; Eousseau, Confessions, Book 3 (in the transla- tion published by Glaisher, pp. 86-7); Gillman's Life of Cole- ridge, p. 63; Christabel, ed. by E. H. Coleridge, p. 40; Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth, ed. by "Knight, 1. 82ff.; Letters of the Wordsworth Family, ed. by Knight, 2. 312, 313, 470; Letters of J. E. Newman, ed. by Mozley, 2. 476-7; Lucas, Life of Charles Lamh 1. 335-6; Nation, New York, Nov. 9, 1905 (on Manzoni) ; Bevue Politique et Litteraire, Feb. 22, 1890, p. 239; Faguet, Flaubert, pp. 145 ff . ; William Allingham, A Diary, p. 334. Pas- sages from these and other sources are given in full in Section IV (Illustrations of the Practice of Great Writers in Compos- ing) of my Methods and Aims in the Study of Literature, 1915, pp. 63-95. EXPRESSION A PART OF CHARACTER 83 the less this practice seems to harmonize with either. Nor does it meet with the approval of representa- tive literary men in the present. Speaking at Ox- ford University not many years ago, Mr. Frederic Harrison delivered himself as follows: 'I look with sorrow on the habit which has grown up in the university since my day (in the far-off fifties) — the habit of making a considerable part of the education of the place to turn on the art of serv- ing up gobbets of prepared information in essays more or less smooth and correct — more or less suc- cessful imitations of the viands that are cooked for us daily in the press. I have heard that a student has been asked to write as many as seven essays in a week, a task which would exhaust the fertility of a Swift. The bare art of writing readable para- graphs in passable English is easy enough to master; one that steady pra,ctice and good coaching can teach the average man. But it is a poor art, which readily lends itself to harm. It leads the shallow ones to suppose themselves to be deep, the raw ones to fancy they are cultured, and it burdens the world with a deluge of facile commonplace. It is the business of a university to train the mind to think, and to im- part solid knowledge, not to turn out nimble penmen who may earn a living as the clerks and salesmen of literature. ' ^ And to much the same effect Lord Morley: *I will even venture, with all respect to those who are teachers of literature, to doubt the excellence and utility of the practice of over-much essay-writ- ing and composition. I have very little faith in * On English Prose, in Tennyson, MusTcin, Mill, and other Lit- erary Estimates, pp. 153-4; see Cooper, Theories of Style, p. 440. g4 THE TEACHING OF COMPOSITION rules of style, though I have an unbounded faith in the virtue of cultivating direct and precise ex- pression. But you must carry on the operation in- side the mind, and not merely by practising literary deportment on paper. It is not everybody who can command the mighty rhythm of the greatest masters of human speech. But every one can make reason- ably sure that he knows what he means, and whether he has found the right word. These are internal operations, and are not forwarded by writing for writing's sake. Everybody must be urgent for at- tention to expression, if that attention be exercised in the right way. It has been said a million times that the foundation of right expression in speech or writ- ing is sincerity. That is as true now as it has ever been. Right expression is a part of character. As somebody has said, by learning to speak with preci- sion, you learn to think with correctness; and the way to firm and vigorous speech lies through the cultivation of high and noble sentiments. So far as my observation has gone, men will do better if they seek precision by studying carefully and with an open mind and a vigilant eye the great models of writing, than by excessive practice of writing on their own account.'^ Could one wish for a better defense than Lord Morley here supplies of the notion that the cultiva- tion of the vernacular must go hand in hand with a systematic study of literature, and of models never short of the best? Now it would be idle to suggest that the war which has been waged against the illiteracy of our Freshmen and Sophomores, and which has centred in the 'daily theme,' has been totally without avail; * Studies in Literature, pp. 222-3. MILTON ON TRUE ELOQUENCE 85 though every teacher must recall instances where a compulsory exercise in fluent writing has chiefly served to encourage shallowpates in shallow think- ing and heedless expression. But where the struggle has availed, this has resulted from the more or less random observance of the principle which has been enunciated, namely, the priority of insight. Still, the observance has been random ; for even where the teacher of composition at the outset announces his belief that the disease which shows itself in bad writing is bad thinking, he nevertheless is prone to spend the term, or the year, in battling against the symptoms. He lacks the courage of his convictions, and needs to restore his spirit with the passage in which Milton says: 'For me, readers, although I cannot say that I am utterly untrained in those rules which best rhetori- cians have given, or unacquainted with those ex- amples which the prime authors of eloquence have written in any learned tongue; yet true eloquence I find to be none but the serious and hearty love of truth ; and that whose mind soever is fully possessed with a fervent desire to know good things, and with the dearest charity to infuse the knowledge of them into others, when such a man would speak, his words (by what I can express), like so many nimble and airy servitors, trip about him at command, and in well-'ordered files, as he would' wish, fall aptly into their own places. ' ^ The whole question does, indeed, finally reduce itself to one of pedagogical faith, to a belief that ^ An Apology for Smectymnuus, in Milton's Prose WorJcs, ed. by St. John, 3. 165. 7 86 THE TEACHING OF COMPOSITION the ideal will work — that it is the only thing that will work effectively. If we never ask the student to write for us save on the basis of something which we ourselves may properly be supposed to know; if the material is one concerning which his knowledge is made to grow throughout a considerable length of time; if we expect of every essay, paragraph, sen- tence, phrase, and word which he writes' that it sihall tell the exact, if not the whole, truth ; if the subject- matter of his study be itself the truest and most in- spiring that we can employ to fire his imagination and clarify his vision; if we observe all these condi- tions, will he altogether fail in acquiring the out- ward badge of education which is popularly de- manded of the college graduate? Will he fail to express himself better as his personality becomes better worth expressing? If, for example, we took our cue from the Greeks,^ and restricted our train- ing in the vernacular to the patient absorption of one or two supreme masterpieces, would not our students escape what Ruskin says such a practice enabled him to escape, 'even in the foolishest times of youth,' the writing of 'entirely superficial or formal English ' ? ^ Rather, would they not thus appropriate a matter wherein, on occasion, they might with justice become right voluble? No * Compare Xenophon, Symposium 3. 5 (in the translation by Dakyns, Vol. 3, Part 1, p. 307), where one of the guests says: * My father, in his pains to make me a good man, compelled me to learn the whale of Homer 's poems, and so it happens that even now I can repeat the Iliad and the Odyssey by heart. ' 2 Euskin, Proeterita, chap. 1 ; cf . also chap. 2. THE IDEAL IS PRACTICAL 87 teacher can deny it unless he is ready to pretend that insight and expression are separable, or that insight is subordinate. Yet the belief that they are insepa- rable is not merely the verdict of present-day com- mon sense ; it has received frequent vindication in the history of culture, as, for example, from the very practical man to whom, more than to any other single person in the annals of Europe, the continued existence of modern culture is owing, that is, to Charlemagne. In a plea for the study of letters, lest the knowledge of the art of writing vanish away, and with it all ability to interpret the Scriptures, he says to the abbots and bishops in the year 787: 'While errors of speech are harmful, we all know that errors of thought are more harmful still. There- fore we exhort you, not merely not to neglect the study of letters, but to pursue it with diligence.' ^ 1 Comparetti, Virgil in the Middle Ages, pp. 96-7. VI THE CORRECTION OF PAPERS ' WHAT does 'the correction of papers' actually mean? Briefly, it means the correction, or straightening, or normalization, of one personality by another, through the instrumentality of truth ex- pressed in language. At least two personalities are concerned; and between A, the teacher, and B, the taught, lies the medium of the vernacular or some other tongue, representing a third element that needs consid- eration. A and B have each their rights as well as their duties, which require careful adjustment. They have also their relations to some larger group, of which they are individual members; since their stud- ies affect the welfare of the national language, there are mutual obligations existing between them and C, the State; for it will hardly be denied that edu- cation is the chief affair of state, since it determines the future of the nation, or that an ability to think * From an address delivered at the College Conference on Eng- lish in the Central Atlantic States, Albany, New York, Novem- ber 29, 1913, and first published in The English Journal 3. 290- 298 (May, 1914). With it is incorporated (pp. 99-101) the sub- stance of my brief paper entitled A Note on Paraphrasing, -vrhich appeared in The English Journal 3. 381-2 (June, 1914). The two papers reappear in their present form with the kind consent of the editor of The English Journal. 88 RIGHTS AND DUTIES 89 justly, and to tell the truth, is the principal end of education. In taking up the rights and duties of both teacher and pupil with reference to the national language, I shall advocate no hard and fast procedure for any course or class. We have had perhaps too much pre- scription of rules in the teaching of English, and too little discussion of first principles which the teacher may assimilate, and, when they have become a regu- lative force in his life, may instinctively apply in the varying circumstances of his profession. My aim is simply to encourage others in thinking about the fundamental obligations already mentioned, and to suggest an ideal balance among them — something not in all respects' within easy grasp, it may be, and yet, on the whole, not so far beyond our reach that we can- not profitably strive to attain it. In order to suggest this ideal, it may be necessary to lay stress on certain elements in the problem of teaching English which are often overlooked — the rights of the State, for instance, in respect to the purity of the national language ; and it may be useless to dwell at length upon those elements which commonly receive undue attention — as, for ex- ample, the claims of the mediocre to an education that is quite superficial. Let us begin with the medium of utterance. First of all, it behoves us to remember that language, in its essence, is something spoken, and that speech lies closer to the personality we wish to correct than does writing. And hence the need of having the student read many of his exercises aloud in class, so that he may acquire 90 THE CORRECTION OF PAPERS the habit of uttering premeditated truth, may receive correction by word of mouth, and may reform a num- ber of his thoughts and phrases with the help of ear and tongue, as well as with the eye. Now we eannot disjoin language from the substance of which it is the expression. This substance, again, proceeds from the mind of the writer or speaker, but, before that, it has entered into his mind from sources without. In a sense, then, the correction of a theme or essay should begin with the sources of information — as it must end with the details of usage; for the first demand we make of language, whether spoken or writ- ten, is that it represent some portion of truth that deserves communication. May we assume that the student in his last year at school, or in his first year at college, will be ready with something worthy of utter- ance, if he is left to his own devices, or to chance, in his selection of subjects? "We cannot assume it. We must make sure in advance that his mind has been filled, and we must know with what it has been filled ; we must see to it that he has materials of thought, and that the materials are well in excess of all drafts we are likely to make upon them when we ask for written compositions. Emptiness of mind is a serious flaw in the writer of a theme, and demands correction. We must see to all this because the first and sharpest of censures must be uttered when the student (or any one else) undertakes to write upon a subject of which he knows nothing. In the study of the vernacular, so close is this to the soul of the learner, it is perilous to dally with the truth. We dare not let our pupils infer PROGEESS IN THINKING 91 from our treatment of their compositions that the truth can ever be a secondary matter, or that substance is of less account than the way one manipulates it. The truth of the individual thoughts is the first consideration. Next in importance comes their order. Here is a topic which our present generation is not likely to forget, much attention being paid to 'sequence' in our manuals of composition. Yet there is something more to be said about it. Not only must we expect a reasonable sequence in the matter which a student on a given day exhibits in his theme ; but there is an order, by no means superficial or negligible, which the unwitting pupil cannot be expected to fur- nish in his work, but which nevertheless must be forth- coming, namely, a substantial order in the tasks that are assigned from week to week and from month to month in a course of systematic study. An essential progress in the thinking of the pupil must be assured. How can this be brought about ? The following is one suggestion. Let the teacher of English restrict the subject-matter of his courses to the field he is sup- posed to know. Within this field let him select a body of material that is interesting to him, as well as im- portant in itself, and at the same time is not beyond the capacity of his class. In preparing to teach with this chosen material, let him meditate long upon the point where he must begin if he is to attain his object, and yet longer upon this object, that is, upon the pre- cise end he desires to reach with his group of learne:-*^ by the close of the year. Let the writing of his stu- dents deal with successive parts of that material, and 92 THE CORRECTION OF PAPERS let the correction of papers, like any other educational device, be at all times subservient to the end he has in view, namely, to convert unfed, unorganized, unsensi- tive minds into minds that are well-nourished, orderly, and sensitive. Otherwise he may continue an unceas- ing strife with the external signs of illiteracy, and never touch the inner seat of weakness and disease. But we are verging on the duties of the teacher. What, in general, may we require of the personality that is engaged in correcting others through the medium of the vernacular? First, the teacher must have the right sort of personality ; this affords the sole guaranty that he will have sought out and received the right sort of training before he enters upon his profes- sion. It is almost indispensable that he come from a family and home where good books are read and a good custom is observed in speaking. It is absolutely indis- pensable that from early youth he shall have been a reader of the best things. He must be so familiar with the masterpieces of literature that he has a standard of good sense and good English within him. He must be a well of English undefiled. Late-learners may have their use in the teaching of other subjects ; they wiU not do for English. Mere conscious rules, acquired after one has reached maturity, will never take the place of a correct habit formed during childhood and adolescence ; they cannot rectify a vicious tendency in one's mode of utterance, they cannot change one's mental disposition. PEEPARATION OF THE TEACHER 93 Yet the only proper complement of natural aptitude and correct habit is adequate professional training. As Horace says : To me nor art without rich gifts of mind, Nor yet mere genius rude and unrefined, Seems equal to the task. They each require The aid of each, and must as friends conspire.^ Our guardians of usage must have some such education as the poets and orators who have enriched, refined, and established the English tongue. Upon this great topic I have touched elsewhere.^ Suffice it to say that a candidate for the teaching of English in the prepar- atory school should have a thorough grounding in Latin (if possible also in Greek), a substantial knowl- edge of all the ancient literary masterpieces — of the Latin ones mainly at first hand, and of the Greek at least through translations. In addition to the degree of Bachelor of Arts, he should have a year of special work in the theory of poetry, reaching back from the treatises of Shelley and Sidney to the Poetics of Aris- totle, and accompanying the study of principles by judicious reading in the chief English poete; in Old and Middle English, so that he may see the earlier as well as the later literature in due perspective, and may be able to consult a historical dictionary of the lan- guage with intelligence; and in the development of prose, beginning at least with Cicero and Quintilian, and eoming down to the English Bible and to Burke * Ars Poetica 409-11, in the translation by Howes. 2 See pp. 31-4. 94 THE COKRECTION OF PAPERS and Newman. Quintilian, at all events, should not be omitted, as the very best advice on the practice of com- position and the correction of errors is to be found in him. The prospective teacher of English in the college or university should have something more. He should have the literary insight and human sympathy that come from a full three years of special preparation under expert guidance; he should have the doctoral degree, and the degree should mean what it is supposed to mean. In any case, the corrector of personalities has a right, nay, a duty — his natural right, and his essen- tial duty — to live, and to live abundantly. Nothing could be worse than a teacher of English who is half- dead or half-alive, from whatever cause. A half- trained instructor may be deemed to be only half-alive. But suppose he has the natural endowment and the acquired training that the teacher needs ; one requisite to the continuance of his life is leisure for study. Not only that, but he must have the strength and the in- spiration as well, and also the outward incentive. In reinforcing what has just been said, let us mention a few things a university instructor ought not to be or to do. He ought not to be untrained in any branch that is requisite to an understanding of the English language and literature. He ought not to be the sort of person who affects to despise scholarship. (Shake- speare respected it, Chaucer and Milton possessed it, Greorge Eliot obviously developed her literary powers through it.) He ought not to be lacking in ambition, or on any score unworthy or hopeless of advancement RIGHTS AND DUTIES OF THE PUPIL 95 in his profession. Furthermore, he ought not to be overburdened, stultified, or disheartened with the read' ing of huge piles of uninspiring manuscript. There must not be an overplus of uninteresting sentences and paragraphs in the sum-total of what he reads, but thei reverse: he must have more hours for Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton than for Freshman themes; otherwise he will begin to die^ — to die at the top, so to speak. It is his right and duty to be a vital influence in the lives he is supposed to be shaping. The personalities entrusted to him he may shape for better or worse. It is hardly conceivable that he will not modify them at all. Yet if there are three possi- bilities, only one of them is tolerable. He must not leave his timber as it is, he must not warp it more, he must straighten it; and this requires ever-renewed vitality. And what of the timber? What are the rights and duties of the personalities that are to be cor- rected? We need not consider obligations that spontaneously suggest themselves on a superficial consideration, such as the right of the pupil to the best kind of correction. No teaching could be too good for our land of promise, with the civilization here to be developed. This is obvious. When we pene- trate more deeply, we perceive, first of all, that not every one has the same right to an education in the vernacular. An idiot, for example, has not the same right as a genius, nor in general have those who are below the average in capacity or attainments the same right as those who are above it. Doubtless 96 THE CORRECTION OF PAPERS every one in a sense has a claim to instruction in English, but the point is that some have a better claim, or a claim to more of it, than others. "Who are these? Clearly, as has been suggested, they who have the greater capacity. It is a law of nature that to those who have shall be given. In our teaching we may well observe the tendencies of nature, fol- lowing her laws, and aiding her in the accomplish- ment of her purposes. It is said that 'Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth.' An easy application of the text may be made to the teaching of English composition. Moreover, they who show promise have a right not to be herded in classes so large as to be unman- ageable, where the individual is lost, and where the teacher, instead of being lifted up and drawing young men after him, must descend to their level, and appeal, not to the spirit of a social group, but to the sentiment of a mob. Extremes should be avoided. Large portions of time should not be lavished on the correction of single individuals or knots of two or three, unless these persons are ex- traordinarily gifted or exceedingly well-trained. On the other hand, an hour devoted to a class of ten or twelve is likely to produce results more vital and lasting than will three hours a week devoted to a class of thirty. Accordingly, with a given force of instructors, and a given number of hours for Eng- lish in the schedule, it is better to divide our forty- five or thirty students into sections of fifteen or ten, so as to teach them properly when we teach at all. EIGHTS AND DUTIES OF THE PUPIL 97 It is to be expected that Freshmen and Sophomores will study more, and will prepare better composi- tions, when they must read their work aloud before a dozen of their fellows whom they have come to know as individuals, and in the presence of a teacher whom they meet in an intimate way, than under any other external conditions. Another right of the student may be thus stated. We must not require him to read books too rapidly, or to compose too many themes. Have our teachers of English a clear conscience as to their exactions on either score? And who shall guard those guardians if they lack a conscience? Better a little reading carefully done, and a little writing based upon ade- quate reading and reflection, than much hasty work of any sort. Connected with the right of the stu- dent to an opportunity for thought, and to leisure for the slow and often painful business of expres- sion, is his just and proper claim to some adequate form of utterance or publication. It is unfair to ask him to write, week after week, and month after month, without a single chance to produce his best in the hearing of his fellows. In general, when his papers are not thus presented, let him take charge of them himself, since he is the one who is most in- terested in them. It is bad for the teacher to stupefy himself with them in private, and the morality of throwing them into the waste-basket is doubtful. "Worse still is an unseen public of one, an assistant, not the teacher, who comes into no personal contact with the pupil, and whose humanity touches the 98 THE COEEECTION OF PAPEES soul of the writer of a theme only through hiero- glyphics on its margin. Finally, if a youth has a right to any teaching whatsoever, he has a right to sympathetic treatment from the person who corrects him. The impulse to correct, which is natural, and is very strong in some teachers, is good only when, like other natural im- pulses, it is properly regulated. Doubtless we are all acquainted with pedantic men who cannot bridle their tongues when another tongue has made a slip, or withhold their censure if another's pen has gone astray. Their excess does not furnish an argument against rigorous correction at intervals; but the wise and sympathetic teacher is likely to suppress some- thing like five out of six impulses to chastise a fault, keeping ever in mind the advice of Ben Jon- son, who says: 'There is a time to be given all things for matur- ity, and that even your country husbandman can teach, who to a young plant will not put the prun- ing-knife, because it seems to fear the iron, as not able to admit the scar. No more would I tell a green writer all his faults, lest I should make him grieve and faint, and at last despair; for nothing doth more hurt than to make him so afraid of all things as he can endeavor nothing. ' ^ As to the duties of the pupil little need be said. He must try to tell the truth, and to express it dis- tinctly, in speech as well as in writing. He must learn to be self -critical, so that he may correct him- * Discoveries, ed. by Castelain, pp. 88-9. TRANSLATION AND PAEAPHRASE 99 self. This will be accomplished when he is taught to respect the rights of others in the subject he is studying or explaining. His teacher has a right to the best effort of every individual in the class, and should accept no paper containing an obvious mis- take. The audience of the pupil has a right to a clear and orderly exposition, and to correct usage. The word he employs must correspond to the object he has in mind, and must mean the same thing to others as to him. It must therefore accord with the meaning given in the dictionary. I plead for a liberal use of the dictionary in the teaching of Eng- lish. And here I may advert to a second question of direct utility. As a rule, our teachers of English composition nowadays take little account of the ad- vantages to be gained from the exercise of para- phrasing; that is, of course, from paraphrasing English authors of the first rank. The practice cor- responds in a way to the training which former gener- ations obtained in working with the ajicient classics, and which, luckily, a few of our best students still secure. For the rest, paraphrasing Burke or New- man or Ruskin would not be altogether different in effect from translating and otherwise reworking Demosthenes or Cicero. In the first place, a worthy substance is supplied, meriting the pains that are indispensable to an adequate re-expression. Secondly, the student takes to the practice by instinct, as any one may see from the answers to examination-ques- tions upon Burke's Speech on Conciliation; the 100 THE COREECTION OF PAPERS answers parody the speech. What we need is the di- rection of this native impulse to the ends of edu- cation. As it is, the student is usually but half- conscious of what he is doing, while the examiner often finds the imitation either ridiculous or highly objectionable. It may illuminate the point to cite two examples that will show how two authors, far apart in time and genius, and otherwise differing in their education, consciously went about the affair of teaching themselves to write. The first of the two is the young man Sir Philip Sidney, who on Janu- ary 15, 1574, wrote to his friend and mentor, Lan- guet: *I intend to follow your advice about composition, thus: I shall first take one of Cicero's letters and turn it into French ; then from French into English, and so once more ... it shall come round into the Latin again. Perhaps, too, I shall improve myself in Italian by the same exercise. ' ^ The second is Poor Richard, who, be it remem- bered, established an English high school in Phila- delphia, and outlined for it a plan of study which has by no means lost its significance to-day. Speak- ing of his boyhood, Franklin says: 'About this time I met with an odd volume of the Spectator. It was the third. I had never before seen any of them. I bought it, read it over and over, and was much delighted with it. I thought the writing excellent, and wished, if possible, to imitate * The Correspondence of Sir Philip Sidney and Hubert Lan- guet, ed. by S. A. Pears, p. 23. THE METHOD OF FRANKLIN IQl it. With this view I took some of the papers, and, making short hints of the sentiment in each sen- tence, laid them by a few days, and then, without looking at the book, tried to complete the papers again by expressing each hinted sentiment at length, and as fully as it had been expressed before^ in any suitable words that should come to hand. Then I compared my Spectator with the original, discovered some of my faults, and corrected them. But I found I wanted a stock of words, or a readiness in recol- lecting and using them, which I thought I should have acquired before that time if I had gone on making verses ; since the continual occasion for words of the same import, but of different length, to suit the measure, or of different sound for the rhyme, would have laid me under a constant necessity of search- ing for variety, and also have tended to fix that va- riety in my mind, and make me master of it. There- fore I took some of the tales and turned them into verse; and, after a time, when I had pretty well for- gotten the prose, turned them back again. I also sometimes jumbled my collections of hints into con- fusion, and after some weeks endeavored to reduce them into the best order, before I began to form the full sentences and complete the paper. This was to teach me method in the arrangement of thoughts. By comparing my work afterwards with the origi- nal, I discovered many faults and amended them; but I sometimes had the pleasure of fancying that, in certain particulars of small import, I had been lucky enough to improve the method or the language, and this encouraged me to think I might possibly in time come to be a tolerable English writer, of which I was extremely ambitious. ' ^ ^ The Autobiography in The Writings of Benjamin FranTclin, ed. by A. H. Smyth, 1. 241-2. 8 102 THE CORRECTION OF PAPERS Let us pass to the rights and duties of the State. With reference to the vernacular its main duty is no secret. The State must provide and encourage able and well-trained teachers, according them ample means of subsistence, and a degree of honor not far below the highest. On this head we may give ear to the words of Milton in his letter to Benedetto Buom- mattei of Florence: 'Whoever in a state knows how to form wisely the manners of men, and to rule them at home and in war with excellent institutes, him in the first place, above others, I should esteem worthy of all honor; but next to him the man who strives to establish in maxims and rules the method and habit of speaking and writing received from a good age of the nation, and, as it were, to fortify the same round with a kind of wall, any attempt to overleap which ought to be prevented by a law only short of that of Romu- lus. . . . The one, as I believe, supplies a noble cour- age and intrepid counsels against an enemy invading the territory. The other takes to himself the task of extirpating and defeating, by means of a learned detective police of ears, and a light cavalry of good authors, that barbarism which makes large inroads upon the minds of men, and is a destructive intest- ine enemy to genius. Nor is it to be considered of small consequence what language, pure or corrupt, a people has, or what is their customary degree of propriety in speaking it; . . . for, let the words of a country be in part unhandsome and offensive in themselves, in part debased by wear and wrongly uttered, and what do they declare but, by no light indication, that the inhabitants of that country are an indolent, idly-yawning race, with minds already long prepared for any amount of servility? On the RIGHTS AND DUTIES OF THE STATE 103 other hand, we have never heard that any empire, any state, did not flourish moderately at least, as long as liking and care for its own language lasted. Therefore, Benedetto, if only you proceed to perform vigorously this labor of yours for your native state, behold clearly, even from this, what a fair and solid affection you will necessarily win from your own countrymen. All this I say, not because I suppose you to be ignorant of any of it, but because I per- suade myself that you are much more intent on the consideration of what you yourself can do for your country than of what your country will, by the best right, owe to you. ' ^ So much for Milton's letter to Buommattei, with the warning it contains for our own generation, and the application we may make of it to the duties of the State. Turning now to the question of rights, one may argue as follows. The State demands an education in the vernacular which shall do the great- est good to the greatest number; this does not neces- sarily mean conferring an equal benefit upon every individual. Under certain circumstances it might signify the careful education of a few because of the preponderant influence to be exerted upon the lan- guage by a relatively small body of persons, such as poets, orators, clergymen, editors, and teachers; a small body, that is, in comparison with the popula- tion as a whole. If we consider, not the present generation alone, but future generations also, as con- cerned in our present stage of education, we may ad- ^ Translated (from the Latin) in Masson, Life of Milton in Connexion with the History of Ms Time, 1881, 1. 790. 104 THE CORRECTION OF PAPERS mit that thoroughly training a few persons of un- usual capacity is of greater advantage to the State than a superficial culture of many. Accordingly, these reflections on the correction of papers turn out to be a plea for cherishing the more talented among our students who show promise of becoming influential in maintaining the purity of the English language, and in rectifying the present debased us- age by means of a standard received from a good age of the nation. It is, above all, a plea for safe- guarding the interests of those who may become teachers of English. Such a plea is never untimely ; it cannot be urged too often. The rights of the average student are in no peril, save as they are implicated in the rights of neglected potential leaders; and the claims of those who are below the average — of the Jukes family and the bad scions of the Kallikaks — will not in this humanitarian age go unnoticed. The poor, and their champions, we have always with us. VII LITERATURE FOR ENGINEERS' WHAT sort of literature should an engineer take for his private reading ? Next, how should he read it? Thirdly — a question which must precede the other two, and the answer to which will really contain an answer to them — why should he read at all ? To discuss this subject with a considerable body of engineers themselves is a pleasure and a privilege. Upon the students, gathered here and there through- out our country, which such a body represents, de- pends to no slight extent the tone of many of our larger institutions of learning. At several universities the schools of engineering contain the largest section of the student population ; and what is more, no other section consists so largely of picked men. That American uni- versity life as a whole is profoundly influenced by the beliefs and aspirations of the engineer may appeal to him as a conception in some degree novel. That the influence he exerts upon his fellows in other branches of study carries with it an obligation on his part will not, we may hope, strike him as paradoxical; for on * Adapted from an address delivered before the Colleges of Civil and Mechanical Engineering of Cornell University, The address was first printed in The Sibley Journal of Engineering, Cornell University, for May, 1908y pp. 286-300, and subse- quently appeared as a privately issued pamphlet, Ithaca, New York, 1909. 105 106 LITEEATUEE FOE ENGINEEES the ground that he owes something to men in other fields, and to his university as well as his special de- partment, reposes much that is to be said to him on the score of reading. We do not ask him, for example, to read good literature because so-called academical stu- dents are supposed to read more than he ; but we ask him to read more because those academical students do not read enough. So far as my observation goes, it is the simple fact that we have in the better American schools of engineering a larger proportion of men who really care for good literature, and would read it with- out the stimulus of formal instruction, than we find in most colleges and departments of liberal arts. At the same time one should not forget that the best-read men are still to be met where we should expect them, cling- ing to what is left of the older classical training. In any case, there is at the moment no call in any single institution for the arraignment of deficiencies which, if they exist, arise from general conditions in technical education throughout the country, and even throughout the Western hemisphere. And if we are indeed to moralize, let us not, on the other hand, des- cant upon any form of self-seeking, cultural or what not. Far be it from a teacher of literature, of the most social of all the arts, to say to any man, 'Go to ; read niow this, that, land the other literary masterpiece — read Milton, read Shakespeare — simply for your own sake, ' for the sake of what is called self-improvement. If true culture is essentially and inherently social, if it is inherently self-denying, sympathetic, we had better realise this inherent and essential nature of the thing at the outset. INFLUENCE OF THE ENGINEER 107 Herein, accordingly, we find the immediate answer to the question why the engineer, or any other citizen, should read only what is good. He will read in order that he may be a good, helpful, efficient citizen, per- forming, and performing well, not only his special and technical, but also his general and humaner, functions as a part of the body politic. Now the life of the State, like the life of every great fitting-school for the State, amounts to something more than meat, or, in the cur- rent parlance, bread and butter ; and amounts to more than the pulsating network of roads and bridges that our engineers will help to extend, by means of which in coming years the food for a hundred millions of Americans will be transported. The higher national life will not be wholly independent of food and raiment and the newer means of distribution, but it must be more than they. It will not be unsubstantial, unfounded, but it must be more than body or material. In this higher national life each individual has his right and share, which he can obtain only by communi- cating what is best in him to his fellows. Very briefly, then, the first reason why any one of us should busy himself with literature— with the best thoughts of the best men — is that he may react beneficially upon his neighbor. Has not the engineering student a powerful impulse, when he finds something good in a book, to read it aloud to his room-mate? And the first appli- cation of this principle will bring in the obligation we have noted, that is, the debt which our altruistic stu- dent of engineering, who would like to read Shake- speare for himself, owes to his benighted brother, the 108 LITERATURE FOR ENGINEERS academic, who puts his trust in formal courses, and reads Shakespeare mainly as an imposed task. Courses in literature are good after their fashion, very good for the man who is free, and knows how to use them. Yet it is hardly desirable to ask for the intrusion of non- technical courses upon a technical curriculum that is already overcrowded with special studies. For the present, no greater general blessing could de- scend on our professional schools than the adoption of some arrangement whereby their students should be led to employ the proper amount of time in pri- vate non-technical reading — ^the amount of time each day which a well-conditioned mind does so employ. Such an arrangement would not materially hurt the engineer, and would go far towards clearing the intellectual atmosphere of more than one university. Let us turn, however, to something more specific. The question why we should read or study Shake- speare or Milton is closely related to another. What is the precise effect of good literature upon the indi- vidual who reads or hears it ? What sensations, and what inner experiences, should you meet with when you read aloud the best poem of Tennyson or Kip- ling? Very rare is the individual who has even tried to define and localize the chilly creepings that are felt in the scalp and down the back of the neck, and on either side the spine, whenever the particu- lar melody is heard which that particular soul likes best. Still fewer are they who have paid attention to the effects, whether bodily or spiritual, that the reading of good poetry produces on the man who THE FUNCTION OF EEADING 109 understands it. Yet it is just such relations of cause and effect that men of science are supposed to find interesting. "When you have discovered that one thing causes or invariably precedes another, you as- sume that you know something about each of them. When you observe that the application of heat to water generates steam, you have a form of knowl- edge that may prove useful. What, then, is gener- ated by the proper application of a literary master- piece to a human being who is prepared to receive it? By way of anticipation, let us reply: some kind of power. This question concerning the proper effect of liter- ature belongs under a still more inclusive problem, namely: Whait is the effect, the proper effect, of the liberal arts in general? In other words, when we say that literature is the chief of the liberal arts, what do we mean? 'Liberal'? The word looks like 'liberty' — is, in fact, connected with it by deriva,- tion; and liberty means freedom. What have any of the arts to do with that? In what sense is litera- ture a free art? In what respect or from what re- straints does it enfranchise or emancipate? Not to engage ourselves too far with etymologies, we may say that the history of the term 'liberal arts' allows us to explain the effect of the best literature some- what as follows. The best literature, and by that is meant the best poetry, generates in us a power or pleasure that is not servile, a pleasure that only a free man can fully enjoy. The man that does not enjoy good poetry is not free; and the man that is 110 LITERATURE FOR ENGINEERS afraid of it is the slave of a timorous delusion, afraid of a power that he affects to despise. But free from what, and how? I must ask the engineer, the man of science, to test what I now sa,y by his own experience as soon as he can, and not once but many times, so that he may be sure of the details of his experiment, and sure of his results. Let him choose the best poem that he knows; in order to avoid mistakes, let him choose the last act of Ki/ng Lear or Othello, or the last book of Paradise Lost, or the twenty-second book of the Iliad in the translation by Lang, Leaf, and Myers. In any case let him make certain that his chosen passage is of the best, and that it is reason- ably long. Let him make certain that he under- stands it. "When he knows it well, let him read it aloud, with all the emphasis and feeling he can muster. Then let him take a hand-glass and look at his eye. If he is quick enough, he may find the pupil dilating — like a song-bird's, doubtless, when he sings, or a parrot's when he talks. We say that the song-bird is inspired. So he is; and so is the man. Both bird and man are taking deeper, freer breaths than when they ate their dinners. The man's pulse, if he tries it, is a trifle more rapid than usual, possibly more regular; there is a feeling of harmony in his bodily frame. His step is more elastic. His motions, as we say, are freer. If he happens already to be a fearless lover of the best literature, and if he makes his test one of suf- ficient duration, he wiU also have certain inner ex- AN EXPERIMENT IN READING m periences that are very powerful, though he may never before have observed them with accuracy. The sense of bodily well-being is paralleled by an inner elevation or exaltation of spirit. *A few days ago,' said Bouchardon, a French sculptor of the eighteenth century — *A few days ago, an old French book that I never heard of fell into my hands. It is called the Iliad of Homer. Since I read that book men are fifteen feet high to me, and I cannot sleep. ' ^ The reader is wide awake, bold for action. The ap- prehensions that but an hour since crowded upon him have dispersed into nothingness. His sympathy with his fellow-men asserts itself, but begins to lose itself immediately in anticipated efforts for their welfare. "Were an opportunity present for such effort, were an object of human pity before him, his emotion would be instantly transmuted into an un- conscious act of charity. His feelings are aroused. His intellect likewise is quicker and more effective, ^ So the anecdote is given by Paul Shorey in his edition (1901, p. xviii) of Books 1, 6, 22, 24, of Pope's translation of the Iliad. A slightly different version appears in Joseph Warton's Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope, 1782, 2. 33-5: ' A very in- genious French nobleman, the Count de Caylus, has lately printed a valuable treatise entitled Tableaux tires de I'lliad et de rOdyssee d'Eomere. . . . Among the few who borrowed their subjects from Homer, he mentions Bouchardon with the honor he deserves, and relates the following anecdote: " This greiat artist, having lately read Homer in an old and detestable French translation, came one day to me, his eyes sparkling with fire, and siaid : Depuis que j 'ai lu ce livre, les hommes ont quinse pieds, et la nature s'est accrue pour moi." — " Since I have read this book, men seem to be fifteen feet high, and all nature is enlarged in my sight." ' In a footnote Walton refers to Caylus, p. 227. 112 LITERATURE FOR ENGINEERS begins grouping details under general heads, formu- lates plans, instantaneously perceives the relation of means to ends. If the reader is well-taught and wise, he will continue no longer in an idle contemplation of his own mental states, nor luxuriate in the warmth of this bodily and inward enjoyment; he will attack one of those daily tasks that a little while ago seemed formidable, but now seem moderate and feasible. And he will finish it in one-half the time he had ex- pected it would consume. If he can convince a friend or two that successful, fearless — and we may add, reverent — activity is the final product of good poetry, properly read, he may regard the experiment as brilliantly concluded. The specific effects of literature, and of the differ- ent forms of literature, no doubt, are various; vary- ing as the supple human spirit which literature tries to image. Yet on the basis of our experiment let us suppose that the most general and characteristic effects of the best literature are a sense of bodily well-being, and a less tangible, but very real, sense of spiritual elevation or exaltation, not wholly differ- ent from the feeling produced in us by the best music; a sense of freedom from fear, of unhampered ability to act, of pleasure in contemplating and per- forming our duties toward family and State. How, then, shall we know what is good, what will produce these effects, otherwise than by this experiment? For the experiment itself presupposes some one, a teacher or the like, to tell us what is good, in the first place. The dilemma after aU is not absolutely SELF-PROTECTION IN READING 113 baffling. In the nutrition of our minds nature has not left us more helpless than in the care of our bodies. In general we hasten to the medical man in order to hear from the gray chin of wisdom the pre- cepts on bodily health that our own common sense has already suggested, and to fortify our own wills, shameful to say, by invoking the will of a stranger. Is the teacher of literature to be asked, then, what an engineer ought to read, and what he ought not? Has not the engineer's own common sense told him a hundred times what nutriment his better part should receive, and what stimulants it should forego? Does he not realize perfectly well that he may and ought to dine with Shakespeare and Milton, and not with the Sunday press? Is it not clear to everybody that in the choice of books one may and ought to be select, shutting his eye against the bad ? And what shall he do when he has read a few poems of Milton and Shake- speare? Read them again! Reread them until the experiment we have described begins to work; for it will work, just as surely as the engineer is a normal man and they are poems for all time. It cannot possibly help working, if only the experi- menter will become so familiar with King Lear and The Tempest, with Comns and Samson Agonistes, that they continually ring in his ears, and rise to his lips when he begins to speak. Let him avoid all books that he is not sure about. This or that one may be very good; but until the judgment of time, that is, the accumulated wisdom of many well-trained critics, has grappled with it, he must be content to 114 LITERATURE FOR ENGINEERS set it aside as doubtful. He is a student in a techni- cal school, or he is a practising engineer, or he is any sort of intelligent professional man you choose. His spare moments are few. He is not the type of man that likes to make mistakes. He is aware that he will not be making a mistake if he reads Homer or Dante in the best English translation, or Shake- speare, or the English Bible, or Milton. If during his leisure hours he will read them and little else for the next two or three years, and will eschew all popular magazines, he never will make another sad mistake about books ; if he keeps the practice up, in the end he will have what is known as taste. The acquisition of taste calls for a certain amount of self- denial; taste nowadays almost invariably is acquired outside of school, if at all. But we assume that our professional student is possessed of initiative and a vigorous will. This latter is an instrument that is well-nigh indispensable in obtaining anything worth while. This list of authors unquestionably is brief. One can hardly say it is narrow. It is drawn up in ac- cordance with an Old Latin maxim^ of literary faith — non multa, sed multum; read, not many things, but much. If more extended counsel is desired, and a longer list, one may go to Sir John Lubbock and Mr. Frederic Harrison, both of whom have written with intelligence and enthusiasm on the choice of books. Yet we must bear in mind that any selec- tion like Sir John Lubbock's of the 'hundred best 1 Origiimliy Greek : ov ttoXXo dWa iroiKv- A BRIEF LIST OF AUTHORS 115 books' is sure to omit something that the next com- piler would include, and may easily contain some- thing injurious to the reader who accepts the list un- critically. It is much easier to mention five authors, a real acquaintance with whom would constitute a liberal education, than to mention fifty. Nor would it be difficult to recall a number of great historical personages who, like Abraham Lincoln, were men of few books, but knew a few things well. We hear of such cases more frequently than we hear of any who try to emulate them. Perhaps the imitation does not seem unpractical enough. So much on why we read literature, and on what to read. We read what gives us power and freedom, and we read it because it gives us power and freedom. If we cannot solve these questions off-hand for our- selves, we have the judgment of the past to guide us. Now then, how shall we read? First of all, read aloud. Every bit of literature properly so called that history has to show is intended, not for the eye primarily, but for the ear. Every line of Shake- speare, every line of Milton, is meant to be pro- nounced, cannot be duly appreciated until it is pro- nounced. Often an entire masterpiece remains dark and forbidding, merely because the reader has sought to interpret it with the eye alone. For example, doubtless many a professional man has never felt quite ready to take up Paradise Lost; and indeed it might be well to begin the reading of Milton with Samson Agonistes. Yet no one who is fond of or- chestral music can long resist Milton in any shape. 116 LITERATURE FOR ENGINEERS if only he learns how to reproduce! the beat and swell and cadence of Milton aloud. In my experience as teacher I recall among my few and modest triumphs the cases of several students who thought themselves hopelessly blind to Paradise Lost, when their actual infirmity was nothing but an easily cured deafness. Unsealing their ears unlocked to them the doors of a Paradise with melodies not to be heard elsewhere in English verse. Very much of what we call prose — Bacon's essay Of Death, for example, and passages in his Advance- ment of Learning — is in the truest sense poetry, and loses half its significance when followed only with the eye. Literary men, that is, men who write with imagination, are often * ear-minded, ' as we say. In the act of composition, they hear what they are about to write; whereas other persons are perhaps more often * eye-minded.' The ordinary man, sitting at his desk, pen in hand, is likely to see his next sentence, or a part of it, in his mind's eye, a moment or two before he will record the words on paper. The chief hindrance to his appreciation of the best literature may be that he never has been accustomed to hear the words that he sees. But we must not be content with hearing them. When we read, we must, if necessary, smell and feel and taste them. That is to say, reading means trans- lating the visible marks on the printed page into terms of all the senses. Hence, if it be asked, 'How shall I read Shakespeare?' the answer is, 'Read him BEAD ALOUD AND SLOWLY 117 with alert bodily senses.' When tlie GhoBt in Ham- let says, But soft; methinks I scent the morning's air, one must try to recall what the ozone at dawn smells like, since it is the earliest sign of day. If we do translate the diction into terms of the several senses, the inner meaning of Shakespeare or Milton will not often escape us. The process of making monotonous black charac- ters on the page vividly stir the latent sense-per- ceptions is, however, relatively slow and irksome. Few people have ever learned to do it consistently; and hence, it is fair to say, few have ever truly learned to read. The moral is, read slowly. Take ample time. Pause where the punctuation bids one pause; note each and every comma ; wait a moment between a period and the next capital letter. And pause when common sense bids you pause, that is, when you have not understood. As the line of sentences comes filing before the window of your soul, examine each individual expression with the animus, and more than the animus, you would maintain were you pay- ing-teller in a bank; saying to yourself continually, *Do I know this word?' and, 'What is this phrase worth ? ' Toward what they see in print many people, otherwise shrewd and sensible, are strangely credu- lous ; what they find in a book they instinctively think must be true. Yet books are not more trustworthy than the men who write them; the number of mis- guided and misleading books is infinite. Good books are rare. 9 llg LITEEATURE EOR ENGINEERS Read aloud; read slowly; read suspiciously. Re- read. What a busy man has time to read at all, he has time to read more than once. "Was it not Emer- son who held that he could not afford to own a book until it was ten years old — had at least to that ex- tent proved its ability to survive? Jealous of his time, he let others sift the ashes. And was it not Schopenhauer who considered no book worth while that was not worth a third perusal? If we read a thing but once, that usually is but so much lost time. The most industrious student forgets a large part of what he tries to retain. The best-read man is the one who has oftenest read the best things; who goes through Homer, Plato, Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, and the Bible, once a year. A veteran teacher of English, whoi had a long and effective career in one of our eastern colleges, was approached by a student on some minor point in Hamlet. 'Don't search me too deeply,' begged the teacher; 'I haven't looked at Hamlet in six months.' "When, therefore, we re- ceive, as the ultimate counsel on reading, the maxim, Non multa, sed multum, 'Not many things, but much,* 'much' signifies, in part, 'with great frequency.' From this more general discussion of why, what, and how, let us pass to a number of concrete sug- gestions about reading, suitable to the needs and opportunities of men engaged in a non-literary pro- fession. First. Select for your private property, as it were, some one standard author; one with whom you mean to keep company for ten years. Love AN AUTHOE AS PLAYMATE J 19 him as the wolf loves the lamb — swallow him whole. Yet, on second thought, do not bolt him. Gradually masticate all that he has written, and the best of what has been written about him. Try to pierce the secret of his life and activity. The proper study of mankind is biography. When you have found his secret, it will probably bear a resemblance to some- thing within yourself, and that, too, no matter how gigantic your hero may look to you at first, or how remote his interests may seem from yours. The in- terests of all men and all ages are much the same, in kind if not in vigor. Accordingly, when you are casting about for a fish, do not be afraid of landing one that is too big. You may have the swiftest and strongest in the ocean, almost for the asking. The big fellows are always swimming in clear view. There is that leviathan Homer. You may draw him out with a hook — out of the book-market with an eighty-cent silver hook; and you may play with him as with a bird. Hugest of beasts that swim, he is the most amiable and amusing of household pets. The most fortunate and enviable of householders are those who, having a fair portion of this world's goods and friends, have early in life caught a sub- stantial author for a playmate. To know his ways does not require much time. Many a business man gives more time to his dog; and the dog will live only a dozen years. Secondly. Have a few good books, of various sorts, not set on a shelf, but lying on a table where they can be easily opened. If you are, or think you 120 LITERATUEE FOR ENGINEERS are, an unusually hard-working man, have the table near your bed, and read a little each night before you go to sleep. That may possibly be a strain on your eyes; but eye-strain is preferable to mental starvation. Turn at least ten pages in some good book every day. That will allow you 3650 pages every year, which is about equivalent to Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, and the Old Testament, in texts or versions easily accessible. The better the book, the more valuable the twenty minutes you give to it. And let no one object that good litera- ture is hard or uninteresting, or wearying to a mind already tired. The objection is a sure sign that the person who makes it is speaking without experience. He has not tried our experiment. He has second- rate books, or no books, or even bad books, on his table. Cultivate also the acquaintance of pocket- editions — in Everyman's Library (published by But- ton) or The World's Classics (Oxford Press) or The Temple Primers and Temple Classics (Button). One of the most widely-read men I know makes it his boast that he never had a course in 'English,' and has done most of his reading on the train. Thirdly. Read in company. As we observed be- fore, literature is a social art. In cultivating it we should set, and not follow, the fashion. If you are a univei-sity student, read with your room-mate, and have a tender care for his taste. Above all, read aloud. Organize readings for Sunday afternoon at your fraternity-house or club. The Greek-letter societies originally had some connection or other GOOD BOOKS IN THE HOME X21 with the pursuit of literature. Their extraordinary growth in our great schools of technology and ap- plied science is one of the strange developments in American education. Why not restore to them some- thing of their lost function? It may be that they have emigrated from their birth-place, where Greek was taught, to the very end of preserving the cul- ture of the land. The technical student should also look forward to the time when he will again be in his home, and pre- pare himself to read and listen there. In recent years there has been harsh criticism all over the country of the methods in vogue in the teaching of English. Some of it is justified in so far as the teachers are ill-prepared for their work, though the nation is culpable in not providing better prepara- tion for them. Yet the teachers of English are con- fronted by an almost insoluble problem. They are virtually asked to accomplish by artificial stimulus in school and college what ought to be done naturally in the home. In the university, they are expected to give young men between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one a feeling for literature that usually is not acquired after the age of twelve. They can tell in an instant whether a Freshman has been reared in an atmosphere of good books, in a family where the excellent old custom persists of reading the Bible aloud, or comes from a house where father, mother, and children alike buy only the yellow journals and cheap magazines. In the latter case, he may appear to be well-fed and well-clothed, yet the first word he 122 LITERATURE FOR ENGINEERS utters will betray his mental starvation. In combat- ing this sort of poverty and famine we can do some- thing for our own generation, but we naturally have better hopes of the next. We can warn its parents. When a child asks for bread, no father will pur- posely give him a stone. Hence, fourthly. Begin now to accumulate a li- brary, for fear that those who shall some day be dependent upon you may starve. It is not important that a young man should own many books of general literature; it is imperative that he should own good books, and use them. The best way to assure your- self that you really own a volume is to underscore sentences, and pencil the margin. For the sake of definiteness, I shall name a handful of books that every one ought to possess and wear out, adding a hint or two about serviceable editions: The Iliad of Homer, translated by Lang, Leaf, and Myers, and published by the Macmillan Company. — The Odys- sey of Homer, translated by Butcher and Lang, is- sued by the same publisher. The Odyssey is the best story of adventure ever put together. — The Divine Comedy of Dante, in any one of several translations ; for example, in that of Tozer, published by the Oxford University Press. — The Oxford Shake- speare, in one volume, published by the Oxford Uni- versity Press. This certainly is the best compendi- ous edition to recommend. — 'The 1911 Bible,' pub- lished by the Oxford University Press, *a scholarly and carefully-corrected text of the historic English Bible, the time-honored Authorized Version.' One USE THE PUBLIC LIBEAEY 123 reason why people fail to see that the Bible is the most interesting book in the world is that they are afraid of it; but the student of literature must not be put out of countenance by his own prejudices. Another reason is that it is usually cut up into verses in such fashion that the sequence of thought is injured. 'The 1911 Bible/ by restoring the origi- nal paragraph or strophe, ordinarily enables one to understand the connection, where one did not under- stand before. Throw away all preconceptions and second-hand opinions, and begin with the story of Job. — Last, the Oxford Milton, published by the Oxford University Press. At current prices,^ these six books will cost in all, I think, about seven dol- lars. They may prove a safer equipment for a liberal education than the multitude of authors in the stacks of a university library. Fifthly. At the same time, one need not be afraid of large public collections, either. There is, indeed, some danger that the multiplication of free circulat- ing libraries may discourage the private ownership of books. Yet the danger will hardly frighten a person of sense from the door of knowledge, and certainly will never frighten away the man whose soul has been purged of fear by steady contact with Homer or Milton. Moreover, without access to * In February, 1920, The Oxford Press lists the editions of Sliakespeare, Milton^ and the Bible at $1.25 each, and Tozer's Dante at $1.50. The Macmillan Company still lists the two translations of Homer at $0.80; the abridged translations, which are cheaper, should be avoided. [Prices since have risen.] 124 » LITERATUEE FOR ENGINEERS larger collections than the average individual can afford, one could scarcely think of prosecuting any study, whether literary or technical. Accordingly, for tHe sake of thoroughly Imowing the author we have taken as our playmate, let us utilize some near- by reading-room in a good library. It has been whispered that at several institutions one or two of the students of engineering do not know what the inside of the university library is like. We may now come back to the points that need final attention. G-ood general reading enables a man to work more freely and sanguinely and rapidly in his special vocation. This is not fancy, but solid fact. General reading is an act of recuperation. Most of an engineer 's mental activity is in the nature of exercise. His profession wears out the tissue of his mind. Good reading nourishes and builds up that tissue. Profes- sional men often complain that they have little or no time for books. The better men seem to have time. Some have time, perhaps, because they are better engi- neers and the like ; but more probably they are better professional men because they take time to feed their minds. They have time for the essential things of life, because their brains, being well-fed, have tone, and work with fearless precision. Time is elastic. He who as a man takes time for good general reading will find that his general reading gains time for him as an engi- neer or a lawyer or a physician. The proof of this pudding is in the eating. We have heard about the old ideal of education : * a sound mind in a sound body. ' Eeconstructed to meet the conditions of the present LITEEATUEE AN ANTIDOTE TO FEAE 125 day, this ideal should be stated thus: a specifically trained mind, in a well-nourished soul, in a healthy frame. Of such a man his country will not feel ashamed. Such a man will not often be troubled by fear. From the Greeks down, the greatesit poets and critics have been almost unanimous in recognizing that a primary function of the best literature is to release men from fear, to imbue them with an exalted and reverent courage. Thus, in the ideal Republic of Plato, Socrates would admit only such poetry as might after a positive fashion confirm the hearts of his ideal citi- zens, and directly contribute to the development in them of reverence. Thus the real Greeks under Xeno- phon chanted a pgean before entering into battle. And thus the Normans' of William the Conqueror are said to have moved against the English at Hastings, a re- nowned minstrel in front singing their national epic, the Song of Roland. In peace, fear is the subtle and destructive enemy of all original thought and action, of that personal inde- pendence which every man must preserve if he is to be deemed free, and of that unqualified devotion to his country which patriotism at all times demands. Little as men realize it, the atmosphere they live in is sur- charged with an infectious terror, blighting their per- sonal happiness, thwarting their services to the com- monwealth. In the long run, the most potent of all incentives and deterrents with respect to individual action is the fear of what others may say or think. And thus men live so continuously in a state of anxiety, 126 LITERATURE FOR ENGINEERS which is another name for fear, that they are not aware of the disease. They believe, because it is common, that it is a state of health. Yet it is both chronic and vulgar. The anxiety to be like other people, only big- ger and richer, is, like nearly all the forms of fear, unspeakably vulgar ; as vulgar now as when Aristotle observed that epic poetry and tragedy, in the hands of Homer and Sophocles, gave men pleasure by relieving them of certain disturbing emotions, one of which was fear. The antidote to individual and communal fear may be had in a few volumes. Here are fourteen lines from one of them, the senti- ments of a man eminently fearless, eminently reverent, a lofty being, endowed with every power of enjoyment that nature could bestow, or education develop ; who nevertheless gave the vigor of his manhood to rela- tively humble and most laborious service of his State ; who lost his eyesight in that unremitting labor ; who, old, impoverished, blind, lived a suspect under a re- stored monarchy which he hated as a tyranny ; who yet retained his courage unabated, and preserved his faith in the efficacy of human endeavor. In simplicity, in reverence, in the power of inspiring courage, there are, outside his own works, few things in English, or in any other modern language, to equal Milton's sonnet On his Blindness : When I consider how my light is spent Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide, And that one talent which is death to hide Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent To serve therewith my Maker, and present POWER AND FEEEDOM 127 My true account, lest He, returning, chide — 'Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?' I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent That murmur, soon replies : ' God doth not need Either man's work or His own gifts; who best Bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best. His state Is kingly: thousands at His bidding speed And post o'er land and ocean without rest; They also serve who only stand and wait.' In our age of hurry we may accept this final senti- ment respecting two kinds of service as of some value, since it comes from one who, after all, far exceeded the petty measure of our accomplishment to-day. Indeed, this poet, scholar, patriot, is the man, and his are the civic virtues, that Wordsworth longed for in times much like our own, with a longing not more suitable in England than in America : Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour. England hath need of thee. She is a fen Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen. Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower, Have forfeited their ancient English dower Of inward happiness. We are selfish men: O! raise us up, return to us again; And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power. Tliy soul was like a star, and dwelt apart; Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea. Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free, So didst thou travel on life's common way In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart The lowliest duties on herself did lay. VIII TEACHER AND STUDENT' IF I could now eommand the use of a few stage- properties, and several good, solemn, hypocritical actors, it would be not only diverting, but instructive, to have the curtain open, as it were, on a set of men, or rather reappearing ghosts, called Sophists, who should entertain us with cunning debate, in the antique style, on the difference between a teacher and a student — if there be a difference. There should be a sympa- thetic Chorus, and a leader of it, to call attention to each speaker before he began his part, and to stand aside in respectful silence during the speeches. We might, indeed, find the characters engaging, less be- cause they were ancient, than because the Greek Soph- ists had so many traits that are distinctly modem. But a dialogue carried on by Sophists appearing in the flesh, like Ibsen's Ghosts, would be very suggestive if they maintained, in sophistical fashion, that the teacher and the student are not essentially the same person. It would suggest that the race of Sophists is not all dead ; that it comprises a large class of ingenious men * Adapted from an address delivered at the meeting of the New Jersey Association of Teachers of English, held at Newark, March 16, 1918. The address was first published in School and Society 8. 91-97 (July 27, 1918), and is reprinted with the kind consent of the editox. 128 CHAEACTEE OF THE SOPHIST 129 in every age, including many who seem to be fore- most in the realm of thought and education ; and that America at this very hour is well supplied with Soph- ists incarnate. If only we could unmask and identify them ! But to carry out the dramatic fiction would not satisfy the ends of a discussion that is intended to be more profitable than amusing. Nor may we now pry into the whole art of sophistry. For that, the curious reader must be sent to Jowett's translation of the Dialogues of Plato, and to the writings of Matthew Arnold and Dr. Flexner. And yet it may illuminate the relation betwixt teacher and student to consider for a moment' the ways of the Sophist, if haply we may learn of him and be wise. What are his character- istics ? The Greefe also asked this question, for the Sophist was a frequent apparition among them ; he called him- self a teacher ; and he appeared so suddenly in so many different places that they found it necessary to identify and label him. To them^ — to Plato, for example — ^a Sophist was one who professed to have wisdom in gen- eral, and to be able to make other men wise, though he himself had no thorough knowledge of any one thing. For a substantial consideration, he would give you general culture with no special effort on his side, while you yourself were not under the painful necessity of learning anything in particular. He discoursed, or, as we should say, lectured; and you merely listened in delight to what he asserted. Yet to Plato the truly wise man was Socrates, who began operations by con- 130 TEACHER AND STUDENT fessing his ignorance; who was swift to inquire, and reluctant to affirm ; and who, when he taught, taught only the habit and method of investigation. To Aris- totle, the greatest student of all time, a Sophist is a man who makes money by sham wisdom. Now every one, of course, obtains a living somehow ; so that mak- ing money, or even the gaining of a reputation, cannot be the mark either of sham wisdom or of true. The primary trait of a Sophist, then, is his unwillingness to admit his own ignorance. He simply lacks the cour- age to say ' I dO' not know. ' He begins with a flat asser- tion, rather than a question or hypothesis; he has investigated no one subject from the bottom up, but deals in sounding generalities ; and, through a show of wisdom, he deceives himself and imposes on the crowd, so that they pay him money and spread abroad his renown. As he is afraid to say ' I do not know, ' so is he unaware that silence is golden. He thinks that he will be heard for his much speaking. He therefore imagines that the aim of a liberal education is facility in self-expression. He develops a knack of rhetoric, yet never becomes a true orator, for what he says may stimulate attention, but cannot dominate the memory. He is fond of verbal quibbling, and tends to repeat his catchwords, and to force them out of their normal meanings; though in general he utters stereotyped phrases like 'in that direction' and 'along those lines' ; and, not being possessed of the low cunning necessary to success in mathematics, will say that something or other 'centres around' a point. Again, having mere scraps of classical lore, and an abysmal ignorance of CHARACTER OF THE SOPHIST 131 the culture in the Middle Ages, he will use the words 'old' and ' mediaeval ' as terms of censure, and 'modern' as a term of unqualified praise. But his favorite word of commendation is 'broad'; and his ideal man is 'broad-minded,' whatever that may mean — it seems to designate a person with a mind like a loose, ill-fitting shoe. He does not think that 'broad' is the way that leadeth to destruetion. ( Accordingly, his stock-in-trade of words and notions is partly eccentric and mostly tame. When the audience madly applauds, he does not (like the ancient orator) remark in an aside to his friend, 'I must have said something foolish.' He is, in fact, more eager for applause than for pelf — though he likes pelf, too. He is so intent upon winning both that he has no time for study. Yet he talks of over- work, or at all events of the multitude of his cares. In his search for novelty of thought, he has acquired the habit of making the worse appear the better reason ; he tells you that power gained by studying a subject that is hard, like Greek or mathematics, cannot be trans- ferred to the acquisition of a subject that is easy. He is far less apt to quote from Ba,con's essay Of Studies than from Mr. Dooley on Democracy and Education. In studies, he advocates the line of least resistance, which is the line of free choice from the kindergarten to the grave. He maintains that 'cul- ture' is to be had from every subject, and implies that it may be obtained as well from manual train- ing or blaeksmithing as from mathematics or Greek — or English. At all events, he will say these things so long as the crowd repeats them. When their no- 132 TEACHER AND STUDENT tions are altered, his utterances change also. Fi- nally, the Sophist cannot distinguish a man of real learning, save by a vague feeling of discomfort or apprehension when they meet, and a sense of being on his guard. He exhibits a kind of rage at phil- osophical ideas, if any one attempts to apply them to the practice of teaching. It now appears that, while talking of the Sophist, we have been thinking of the sort of teacher who is not primarily a student. And shall I confess that, out of an endless line of shadowy forms, seen darkly in a magic glass, and extending from remote anti- quity down to this month and minute, I have been watching the mien and gestures, grave or gay, of three notable Sophists whom the world has called educational leaders? And that, in reporting my vision, I have combined the most salient traits of these three great ones into a single composite por- trait? Their names are Protagoras, Evenus, and Prodicus; and the men are neither wholly dead nor wholly alive, but sometimes they seem to be phan- toms, and sometimes flesh and blood ; though actually Protagoras has an existence in the real world, while Prodicus and Evenus are now in the abode of shadows.^ ^ It may be proper to explain that each of the three charaoter- sketches is likewise a composite picture. If one of them sug- gests a historical personage whom I have elsewhere quoted with respect, it should be remembered that some freedom is granted to the method of satire, which must aim to represent, not indi- viduals, but general types, yet cannot create them out of noth- ing. SOPHISTS GRAVE AND GAY 133 The writings of Protagoras are familiar to all teachers of English, for the man himself once ap- peared in our midst, at the age of sixty-one, and began to make us wise by the direct method ; nor did he fail to attain the end for which he came, though in St. Louis not more than three hundred and fifty Philistines would pay and hear him at one time. But a teacher of English in the Middle West has recently published a book entitled Protagoras— How to Know Him; so that there is little excuse for us if we fail to recognize the greatest of modern Eng- lish Sophists, who wrote on culture and anarchy and Homer and Celtic literature and many other sub- jects. At times a poet, at times almost a philosopher, a lucid and often elevating writer, he nevertheless was a teacher rather than a student, a fact which kept him from being the best kind of teacher. And by the following anecdote one may certainly know him; it is related by Goldwin Smith, who says: ' [Protagoras] was outwardly a singular contrast to his almost terribly earnest sire. Not that he was by any means without serious purpose, especially in his province of education. His outward levity was perhaps partly a mask, possibly in some measure a recoil from his father's sternness. As we were travel- ing together in a railway carriage, I observed a pile of books at his side. ''These," said he, with a gay air, "are Celtic books which they send me. Be- cause I have written on Celtic literature, they fancy I must know something of the language." ' 'His ideas,' adds Goldwin Smith, 'had been formed by a few weeks at a Welsh watering-place. ' ^ * Beminiscences, p. 71. 10 134 TEACHEE AND STUDENT Prodicus, a venerable figure in whose career there always was a certain distinction, in bygone years was the leading spirit in a famous Oriental univer- sity. Like Protagoras, he wrote and spoke with abil- ity upon things in general, including religion and education, without a knowledge of the details in any one field of scholarship, however small. We might fancy him to have been well-versed, if not in He- brew, yet in New-Testament G-reek; but his ideas of religion were not formed by severe study. Similarly, without being an accomplished Latinist, and without an extensive acquaintance with the teaching of Lat- in, he courageously divulged his sentiments on the value of linguistic discipline, to the confusion of the more or less experienced. For good or ill, no other man in his generation seemed to wield more power over Occidental education than Prodicus, partly through a lack of restraint in his followers, who, with the great body of American Sophists, metamor- phosed our colleges and similar institutions. Fi- nally, their educational system, if it could be called a system, descending upon the secondary schools, disintegrated these as well. Yet, for all his persua- siveness and acumen, and for all his native dignity and common sense, it may be said of Prodicus, as Socrates said of himself, and as the rest of us may say of ourselves, that he knew nothing; with this difference, that Socrates openly confessed it, and acted in harmony with the confession. And hence the time will come when men will ask : Did Prodicus work greater good, or greater harm, to American SOPHISTS GRAVE AND GAY 135 education than any other man in history? But even now it is not impossible to understand him, if we begin the process in Socratic fashion. What did Prodicus teach or study in particular before he as- sumed the role of making men wise in general? Of the thousands to whom his name and fame are famil- iar, virtually no one can reply. But the answer is that, before he began to fix the place of humane letters in the curriculum, Prodicus taught a certain branch of physical science. Did he love his subject with the quenchless love that qualifies a man to be a leader of education? It is boasted by friends of Prodicus that after he ceased, in his early prime, to instruct in his chosen field, he never again, through- out an ample lifetime, so much as looked at a book on that subject. Instead, he is said to have assisted artless publishing-houses, to his and their mutual advantage, in measuring the wisdom of the past in terms of flea-skips, making dubious estimates of books in general according to their length, at a time when he might well have hesitated about acting as a crit- ic of monographs in his own particular field. To tell the truth, Prodicus, though amply and variously endowed by nature, was not born with literary genius; nor did he become in fact a well-read man. No doubt the canny publishers were able to trade upon his reputation, and he was honestly deceived to his own profit ; for some men are bom Sophists, some achieve sophistry, and some have sophistry thrust upon them, Evenus is no mere college president. Indeed, no magic mirror will disclose whether he is a single 136 TEACHER AXD STUDENT wise man, or many gathered into one. He is evanes- cent and ubiquitous. His speech may be heard at any time, in any place, on any subject or none; for his voice is an echo of all voices. Though he is always in all eyes and in his own, no man hath seen Evenus; nor hath Evenus often seen himself. He is a living mask and an embodied shadow, who be- comes aware of himself only in the presence of a student who studies, and then only through an inde- terminate sense of pain; for he wishes to be looked at, but not to be discovered. Must we find him a local habitation, as well as a name? If so, he is a kind of sultan in Mecca, the surintendent of a col- legiate institute so great in point of numbers that it long since outstripped the University of Cairo, while the University of Valparaiso has lost hope of vying with it. As an Oriental potentate he has the Midas-touch, and a feeling for all generalities that tickle the masses. Gold and pupils rush in upon Evenus in an endless stream, while the poet and musician flee away. The crowd listens to him breathlessly, and does not remember what he says: The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed. He seems always to be uttering general truths, and to speak upon many themes, above all upon education. But he, too, knows nothing in particular. There is no subject, nor any part of one, in which he is an acknowledged master; and herein he differs from the head of the College de France, in Paris, which is at the summit of French education; for the head of A EEAL AUTHORITY 137 the College de France is an acknowledged master of Greek. The magic glass will not reveal the func- tion of Evenus as an educator; but many years ago a teacher of English in an Eastern school helped me to understand it. This teacher said: 'Evenus is the most wonderful man I ever met. You cannot ask a question of any sort, on any sub- ject, to which Evenus will not give you an immediate and final answer.' I straightway begged for a sample of Evenus' wisdom; but for some reason my informant could not repeat a single one of his replies. "Whereupon I said to this teacher of English: *In sheer intellect, the ablest man I ever met is Professor So-and-so, of such and such a Continental university. He is a leading European authority in a field to which, as it happens, I have devoted some years of study. If you go to Professor So-and-so, and ask him a question, he is likely to reply, *'I do not know, "or * * We do not know ' ' ; for he is abreast of his times, and in his case the two statements are identical. He is then likely to continue, counting off his points of ignorance on his thumb and fingers : "I [or *'We"] do not know this first thing; and we do not know this second ; nor do we know this third, nor yet this fourth. But here," touching his little finger, **is a small but important thing which scholars have discovered. Let us begin with that." ' Professor So-and-so has spent far more of his life in studying than in talking; he has had a hand in training the greatest teachers of English in America, not to speak of other nations; and he is still one of the great teachers of his day. 138 TEACHEE AND STUDENT Our topic, however, is not sophistry, but its anti- dote. By teacher and student we mean one person, the teacher as a student. The antidote for sophistry is intensive study; not general reading, however indispensable that may be, but special investigation. For the teacher of Eng- lish, actual or prospective, it is graduate study under scholarly supervision — under the direction of some one of the few highly productive scholars in our American universities; or else abroad; or, prefer- ably, first in America, and then in Europe. It is the study, not of things in general, but of one thing at a time, and of some one substantial subject for at least three years. A few weeks at a Welsh water- ing-place, a few weeks at a summer school, are not enough. Intensive study, coupled with extensive, and with a real philosophy of scholarship, is the sole means of regenerating English in America, where the subject has for the most part fallen into a so- phistical art of rhetoric. And a sophistical art it will remain so long as the emphasis is laid upon ex- pression, and not upon the truth and value of what is to be uttered; nay, until the pupils are taught to be silent until it is clear they have something to say. The 'daily theme' gives training in sophistry. In the long run, though, a man must be his own teacher, and must study for himself. He must seek out a topic not too great for his powers, yet one that will stretch them, and follow it consistently until he transcends himself through learning; for, while there is a distinction between pupil and master, APPARENT AND REAL STUDY 139 there is no essential difference between teacher and student. First-hand knowledge, completely possessed, gives one a base-line and a touchstone for esti- mating the extent and reality of the knowledge or pretensions of one's fellow-teachers and one's pupils. It enables us to distinguish between true generaliza- tion and empty platitude, between the grasp of wis- dom and the show. But the process of learning never ceases. The man who takes up the profession of teacher for life has taken up the profession of student for life. If not, he will suffer shipwreck. He may not lose his position in the world; Sophists do not lose their stipends and emoluments. But he will lose his self-respect, and his power in his work. Can a teacher who has ceased to study continue to sympathize with his pupils who are studying? Can he help them in the most critical point of instruc- tion, namely, in the art and method of study? Our pupils in the university who listen to lectures all day long do not know how to study, nor did they know how when they came to us as Freshmen. Why is that? The reasons, which are many, might be summed up in various ways. It has been hinted that American education has for years been in the hands of the Sophists, and is at their mercy. And we may add that America for years has desired, not culture, but the appearance of it. The collegian is satisfied with a pass-mark of 60, and his elders are content if this brings him the degree of B.A. But, more definitely, the reason why the pupils cannot study seems to be this. Preparatory teachers are so beset 140 TEACHER AND STUDENT with large classes and liea\^ schedules that they feel they have neither time nor energy for systematic private reading ; and, if they have lost the habit of study, they cannot give it to their charges. Yet in all likelihood the general conditions as to hours and classes will not greatly improve within our lifetime; and hence the difficulty cannot be met by complain- ing. "We must somehow study on in spite of all, en- couraged by the thought that teachers who do man- age to study, who begin by utilizing spare moments and half-holidays, in the end find more and more time for it. For their sake, let us outline a few courses that a teacher of English may give to himself as a vital elixir — as a relief and antidote for the difficulties and educational sophistries amidst which we stu- dents must live and breathe. Having alluded to the Platonic Sophists, we may turn to the Platonic no- tion of a symposium. And indeed it is seemly to begin any kind of educational banquet with Plato. Accordingly, by way of grace before meat, one may counsel every teacher, as Horace bids the poet: Go mark the world; and, Study the page Socratic.^ That is, let us observe our fellow-men, whom we must understand in order to teach them; and for educa- tional ideas, let us go not to Matthew Arnold, or to Dr. Flexner, or to any one else, so much as to Plato — since it is to Plato that many a suggestive writer of the day owes the better part of his inspiration. ^Ars Poetica 310, 317. COURSES FOR TEACHERS OF ENGLISH 141 In the banquet, first of all comes the course in some favorite author — a great poet, let us hope ; say Milton or "Wordsworth, or, if he be a prose poet, then some master of eloquence like Bacon or Ruskin. Choose him with care, as one would a husband or a wife. If he be a first-rate poet in the stricter sense, read every word he ever published, and at the same time narrowly examine some one of his poems, as it were with a microscope. Ask yourself a thousand questions about it; delay the process of answering, and collect evidence that may settle them. Enter into your poet's life, and make his friends your friends. Read what he read, for thus you will give yourself the education of a poet — no bad thing for a teacher of literature. Translate portions of him into the foreign language you know best. After an interval, translate these selections back into Eng- lish, and compare. Roger Ascham taught Queen Elizabeth after some such fashion ; Franklin acquired an enviable style in a similar way; and Sir Philip Sidney learned to write English by the same means.^ Study your poet, then, with dictionaries ; and if some one has made a concordance of his poems, study that. Perhaps you never have read steadily in the great Oxford Dictionary of English, or in Bradshaw's Concordance to Milton; one cannot conceive how fascinating the game is save by trying it. "Work into your author deeply, and work out again in all directions, until you live his life as he lived it in his * See Ascham, The Schoolmaster, Book 2, near the beginning (Works, ed. by Giles, 4. 180) ; and compare above, pp. 99-101. 142 TEACHER AND STUDENT age. To relive the life of a Wordsworth, or a Mil- ton is a prophylactic against sophistry. It is the sort of thing the Sophist never does. Secondly, there is the course in the principles of literature. For these, go to the masters and pro- ducers, and not to the middlemen. Go to Plato, Aristotle, Horace, and Longinus for a knowledge of the art of poetry, and an understanding of the es- sentials of a noble and impressive style. Read these authors themselves; do not first read what lesser men have said about them. And read what the poets and orators have said about their own art. Read Shelley's Defense of Poetry, and Wordsworth on poetic diction; Cicero and Quintilian on the educa- tion of an orator, and Burke's essay On the Sublime and Beautiful. This second course will immediately lead to a study of the main types of literature : the epic, the drama, the novel, lyrical poetry and pastoral, the sonnet, the character-sketch. Such are the forms in which the human mind normally expresses itself. Even the character of the Sophist must be sketched ac- cording to standards set for this kind of writing by Theophrastus. Follow the development of the novel from the Odyssey to the Greek romances, and from these through the Italians and the contemporaries of Shakespeare to the eighteenth century, to Goethe's Wilhelm Meister and the works of Richardson and Fielding, and so to Thackeray and George Eliot. Or, beginning with George Eliot and her Theophras- tus Such, or with the character-sketches of John A COUKSE IN LITERAEY TYPES 143 Galsworthy,^ trace this type of composition back through the Tatler and Spectator and the Serious Call of William Law to La Bruyere, and from Hall, Overbury, and Earle, and the comedy of Ben Jon- son, back through the mediaeval rhetoricians, and so through Rome to Greece — to Theophrastus and the Rhetoric of Aristotle. The investigation of literary types wiU inevitably take one away from the English, which is a deriva- tive literature, to those Mediterranean literatures from which the English poets and orators have drawn their models, and, in very truth, their vital force. The epics of Milton carry us back to Dante, to Virgil, to Homer; his tragedy to -<3^].schylus ; his Lycidas to the Italian pastoral poets, and thence to the Eclogues of Virgil and the Idyls of Theocritus ; just as Tenny- son, "Wordsworth, and Burns, since they all studied Theocritus, suggest that we should do the same. And the study of any English poet leads, not only to classical sources, but also to the corresponding types in the Bible. It will also lead to the study of other modern literatures; since we cannot under- stand ourselves unless we know our neighbors, whether they be friends or enemies. However, it may be said that all the European literatures have been friendly with one another; they are all of one family. But doubtless our nearest neighbors in matters of the intellect have been the Greeks and Romans, since every English poet of the first rank read the Latin ^ In -4 Commentary, 1911. 144 TEACHER AND STUDENT poets, and every Roman poet read those of Greece. Accordingly, next in importance to cultivating some great English poet as a familiar friend, we may rate the last course now to be mentioned, a course in Greek and Latin literature. In the classical writers, even when approached through translations, we have not simply an antidote for sophistry, nor merely a single course in a banquet, but a complete and wholesome feast — one that for a year will provide a hungry man or woman with daily bread, the spirit- ual food we pray for.^ 1 This course is described in an. Appendix, below, pp. 294-307. IX PATTERNS ' WHEN the vernal equinox is with us, and the season of vernal enchantment advancing, with one wave of a Neoplatonic wand I transport all lovers of wisdom, in an instant, as it were to the banks of Ilissus — to the terrestrial paradise of Bar- tram's Garden on the west bank of the Schuylkill.^ And behold! — the spirit of the younger Bartram, *Puc-Puggy, ' as the Indians called him, the guile- less Flower-hunter who once dwelt here, and who never grew old, though the days of his years were four score years and four. Behold him in the spring- time, studying the patterns in flower and shrub, in fern and laurel, in the motion of insect, and in the mind of man; he an accomplished botanist, with a childlike sense of wonder. And what is he observ- ing now? Hung between the fern and the laurel, there stretches an airy silken fabric, almost in the vertical plane, in shape an orb, still dew-bespangled, * Adapted from an address delivered before the Society of Phi Beta Kappa in the University of Pennsylvania, March 21, 1919. The address was printed in School and Society 9. 643-650 (May 31, 1919), from which it is reprinted with the kind consent of the editor. 'For the Bartrams, father and son, see my chapter on Travel- lers and Observers in The Cambridge History of American Lit- erature 1. 185 ff,, esp. 194-8. 145 146 PATTERNS and gleaming in the early sunlight. From the centre of the orb run delicate yet powerful radii to the circumference, and, as these rays diverge, they are crossed at narrow intervals by slender filaments that make a succession of concentric polygons within the confines of the whole ; so that the whole becomes a cosmic network of correspondences and sympa- thetic communications. At the centre rests the subtle being that spun the cosmic pattern, like the soul in a well-ordered brain, constantly in touch with its sources of information. Perhaps no other form or pattern in external nature is so accessible to our sense of beauty, and to that grasp of order which is the es- sence of knowledge, as this web of the orb-weaving garden spider. The specimen needs no preparation. No microscope or telescope, no scalpel, no elaborate procedure, is required for a first inspection. The object is of intermediate size, as easily contemplated as the order of our thoughts about it, and more familiar to us Americans than the patterns in the starry sky. Indeed, it may be used as a type or semblance of the human mind, or of organized sci- ence, for, like the structure of the soul, or of the cosmos, it represents an idea, or form, or figure, in the mind of the Divine Creator. If the mention of Ilissus and the beautiful forms of nature and intellect has not already suggested the Socratic dialogues, the image of a child, or at all events of an unspoiled mind, fascinated by a pattern will surely recall the Platonic doctrine of forms or ideas, as the cobweb should recall the masterly plan of the Phmdrus. RHETORIC AND MENTAL PATTERNS 147 In that dialogue we find that rhetoric, the servant of education, is described as the art of enchanting the soul; for love is a kind of enchantment, and good rhetoric is the art of the good and successful lover. As such, it is indispensable to the teacher, for he may be defined as' the lover of humanity; to the lover of wisdom ; to the lover of that truth which is beauty, and that beauty which is truth — as both Plato and Keats aver. It is the art which he must strive to acquire who would introduce form and order into the minds of men. No doubt this talk of woven orbs and patterns, and woven words and arguments, of an art of rhetoric which is also an art of love, and an art of love which is nothing but the prosaic art of teaching, will not in all respects commend itself to some of those who instruct the young in English composition, and who unwittingly still perpetuate the methods our fathers derived from the arid Scotch rhetoricians. In time, perhaps, we shall repudiate most of this heritage from the Scotch, and go back to the Greeks (whom the Scotch now and then consulted), seeing that they not only produced the best models of eloquence, but also understood how and why they did so. Now the ancient theory of rhetoric differed from one that calls itself modem, in a very important respect. It began, of course — as the modem one, let us hope, does also — by insisting that the speaker should know the truth about the subject he has under discussion, and, what is more, that he should tell the truth about it; he must know something at first hand before 148 PATTEENS offering to speak at all, and he must be fair and hon- est in presenting what he knows. But, this assump- tion made, the ancient theory went upon the princi- ple that in order to fascinate, teach, and persuade, you need something more. In addition, or, indeed, first of all, you must thoroughly understand the soul of the man to whom your speech is addressed. You could not draw the mind of an undergraduate from the athletic-field to Bartram's Garden with a cob- web, or from there to the outskirts of Athens with a hawser and a yoke of oxen, if you were not fully acquainted with that mind; or, if you succeeded without this knowledge, you would succeed by chance — perhaps with a chain and elephants when you needed but the silken filament of Arachne. If, how- ever, you once got inside the mind of the said under- graduate, so that you could feel out in every di- rection from the centre of it; if you knew and admitted precisely what it was like, what was its de- gree of organization or lack of organization; if, to change the figure, you knew what parts of it would hold or stretch, and what were its native motions, and so on, you might draw that mind, not only to the outskirts, but to the very pulsating heart, of civi- lization, and might do so with a cobweb, or some form even more ethereal — ^let us say, with a Platonic idea. First of all, then, the speaker must know the soul of the listener. Thus the treatises of Plato and Aristotle on rhetoric have the character, not of many recent works on the subject, but of works on psychology; so that act- THE BHETOBIC OF ARISTOTLE 149 ually there is more to be learned about human na- ture from the Rhetoric of Aristotle than from his essay, the De Anmia, on psychology in the more tech- nical sense. These treatises reveal the nature of the man in the audience; they disclose the pattern of the mind, and the pattern of the argument that will catch that mind; they discuss the traits of hu- manity in its various classes, and in the various times and circumstances of life. For several rea- sons they have a special value in this country at the present juncture, or would have it if they were care- fully studied. Even the minor truths to be ex- tracted from them are significant. It is clear, for example, that one will hardly gain the love of an elderly miser with the bait one has ready for a prodigal Sophomore, or a group of such. This brings us to our sheep. If I refuse to dis- cuss at length the modern study of rhetoric which goes under the name of 'English,' it is because that study is typical of our whole system of liberal edu- cation so-called. This does not begin where it should begin — that is, with a consideration of the soul of the learner. It confuses means and ends, or rather neglects the end entirely. Instead of discovering, and then assuming, that a certain kind of person must be taught, it assumes that certain subjects — a great many — must be taught, and trusts that the proper students will gravitate to the classes in the several subjects. In other words, what passes for a liberal education in our American colleges and uni- versities does not rest upon an adequate inquii-y 11 150 PATTERNS into the veritable traits of the typical American at eighteen or twenty years of age. It is not based upon a sound estimate of his very great excellences, his undeniably grave defects. How can it, then, proceed to restrain and develop him according to a rational method? The first question is not. What subjects shall we teach? It is rather, What is the essential nature of the pupil? What is the pattern of his mind? What is he like? The answers to all other questions in education depend upon our an- swer to this fundamental inquiry. We may there- fore enter into a brief examination of the following topic or topics: The American undergraduate: What he is like; Why he is so; and. What we had best do with him. First, What is he like ? With certain reservations, easily made, we may say he is like a young Athen- ian of the fourth century b.c. I quote from the Rhetoric of Aristotle, Book 2, chapter 12 : ^ 'The young are in character prone to desire, and ready to carry any desire they may have formed into action. Of bodily desires it is the sexual to which they are most disposed to give way, and in regaxd to sexual desire they exercise no self-restraint. They are changeful, too, and fickle in their desires, which are as transitory as they are vehement; for their wishes are keen without being permanent, like a sick man 's fits of hunger and thirst. They are pas- sionate ; irascible and apt to be carried away by their impulses. They are the slaves, too, of their passion, as their ambition prevents their ever brooking a slight, and renders them indignant at the mere idea of enduring an injury. And while they are fond of * Welldon 's translation, pp. 164-6. AHISTOTLE ON 'YOUTH' 151 honor, they are fonder still of victory; for superior- ity is the object of youthful desire, and victory is a species of superiority. Again, they are fonder both of honor and of victory than of money, the reason why they care so little for money being that they have never yet had experience of want. . . . They are charitable rather than the reverse, as they have never yet been witnesses of many villainies; and they are trustful, as they have not yet been often deceived. They are sanguine, too ; for the young are heated by Nature as drunken men by wine, not to say that they have not yet experienced frequent fail- ures. Their lives are lived principally in hope, as hope is of the future and memory of the past, and while the future of youth is long, its past is short; for on the first day of life it is impossible to remem- ber anything, but all things must be matters of hope. For the same reason they are easily deceived, as be- ing quick to hope. They are inclined to be valorous ; for they are full of passion, which excludes fear, and of hope, which inspires confidence; as anger is in- compatible with fear, and the hope of something good is itself a source of confidence. They are bash- ful, too, having as yet no independent standard of honor, and having lived entirely in the school of conventional law. They have high aspirations; for they have never yet been humiliated by the experi- ence of life, but are unacquainted with the limiting force of circumstances; and a great idea of one's own deserts, such as is characteristic of a sanguine disposition, is itself a form of high aspiration. Again, in their actions they prefer honor to expediency, as it is habit rather than calculation which is the rule of their lives; and while calculation pays regard to expediency, virtue pays regard exclusively to honor. Youth is the age when people are most devoted to their friends or relations or companions, as they are 152 PATTEENS then extremely fond of social intercourse, and have not yet learnt to judge their friends, or indeed any- thing else, by the rule of expediency. If the young commit a fault, it is always on the side of excess and exaggeration, in defiance of Chilon's maxim [/at^Sev ayav ] ; for they carry everything too far, whether it be their love, or hatred, or anything else. They re- gard themselves as omniscient, and are positive in their assertions; this is, in fact, the reason of their carrying everything too far. Also, their offenses take the line of insolence and not of meanness. They are compassionate from supposing all people to be virtuous, or at least better than they really are; for as they estimate their neighbors by their own guile- lessness, they regard the evils which befall them as undeserved. Finally, they are fond of laughter, and consequently facetious, facetiousness being disci- plined insolence.' In the main this description is good for all time. Yet there are ways in which the young American differs from his fellow in ancient Greece. For one thing, he tends, like the young Englishman, to be cleaner than the young man on the Continent of Europe, north or south. On the other hand, he is less childlike, less observant of detail, less fond of contemplating forms. His memory is poor, for his images are indistinct. He is like what he likes, preferring games that require physical strength and dexterity to various kinds of mental strife, such as the study of Greek, or solid geometry. He is unlike what he dislikes ; and on the whole he has acquired a dislike of what Plato calls ideas — what we have here chosen to call patterns. His mind is not like the orb of Arachne, whose weaving of THE MIND OF THE UNDERGRADUATE 153 figures was unsurpassed among mortals. The Ameri- can youth has lost what the American child possesses, natural accuracy of observation, unappeasable curi- osity, a love of artistic structure, a retentive memory for form. If it be conceded that the American undergraduate is in general pretty much the sort of person we have been describing, why is he so? How does he come to be what he is, willing to go through the motions of an education, yet no lover of ideal distinctions or distinct ideas? In the main, not because our American stock is bad — it is mainly good and promising in itself ; but because of bad teaching. No learning in the home, bad teaching in the schools. Save in a few cities with an excellent tradition, there is chaos in the American public schools. We hear not a little about the utility, or the worth, or the lack of either utility or worth, to be found in one study or another ; but the country does not value the teacher ; if he strictly attends to his own concern of studying and teaching, he has neither fame nor money for his efforts. In treating him thus, the country does itself a great wrong ; but it does itself a greater wrong in not obtaining expert service. In com- parison with a teacher in Prance — not to mention Ger- many — our American is hopelessly ill-trained in the subjects in which he professes to instruct. And she — for we may now change the gender — she does not con- tinue long enough in the profession to learn the art of instruction. It requires at least three years to learn this art; not half who begin the process pursue it so long. The result is that, by a generous estimate, all 154 PATTEENS our pupils are in the hands of underpaid teachers, ill- trained in their subjects, and inexpert in class, for half the time ; or half the pupils are in such hands all the time. The richest commonwealth in the world' will put money into school-buildings, sanitary devices, adminis- trative officers, and janitors, but not into the training and the lives of teachers. Let us say nothing of classes of sixty in a room, when fifteen are not too few for efficient instruction, and eighteen begin to be too many ; nothing of the multiplication of subjects in the' school curriculum, and the multiplication of interests (activi- ties so-called) outside, until it is impossible to learn any one fundamental subject well. But let us say that the conditions of teaching in the public schools of America are bad, for every unprejudiced observer knows it. The average student when he leaves the high school, or the private school, is' like the hero of the Homeric Mar git es; he knows a great many things, and all very badly ; his mind has not thoroughly mastered any one subject. Thus the undergraduate who has just entered the university comes with the powers he had as a child, his endowment for life, almost ruined ; and in a plurality of cases he leaves the university illiter- ate — ^he has not assimilated the patterns of English speech. Yet there is more hope of him at the age of twenty or thereabouts than of his elders at the age of forty. His imagination is still capable of being trained to grasp form or structure, and his ability to observe and to remember can be revived. It is still possible to teach him to think, though you cannot do so by lectur- ing to him and then asking him to write in an exami- HOW TO SAVE THE PATTEENS 155 nation-blank a part of what you have told him, garbled. If yet there is hope, what are we going to do about it ? This is our third and last question. And the an- swer is twofold, since there is a problem in the schools, and a problem in the college or university ; in regard to both problems, however, let us not go beyond what directly eoncerns the university. To begin with, we must eneourage the choicer spirits in our classes to train themselves for the vocation of teaching. There is an unfortunate sentiment often expressed nowadays, when university men, including professors, are gathered together, to the effect that we ought rather to discourage young men and women from entering our profession, just because conditions are said to be so untoward. People deem it unfair to the individual of superior mental endowment to send him into a field where the pecuniary rewards are so inade- quate. To this we must reply that it is unfair to the country not to direct the better minds into this very realm of endeavor. If we passively allow the mediocre person to drift into teaching, affairs can only go from bad to worse. The chief way to make conditions better is not to induce the State to pay more money to* in- ferior and untrained servants, but to provide better service, and then to convince the public that the in- struction it receives is of a high order, given by men and women of real talent, of broad as well as intensive training, and expert in discovering and quickening ability in their pupils. If all who are concerned were to recognize this truth, and to act accordingly, condi- tions would be radically improved within half a gen- 156 PATTEENS eration. The standing of the profession would be higher, and the salaries would be more satisfactory. Such an inference at all events is warranted by the history of the improvement of conditions in medicine and law. Meanwhile let no one who has a true call to become a teacher refuse to obey for sordid reasons. How many a choice life of late became a willing sacrifice to patriotic duty ! How many a young man of inherited wealth ungrudgingly forsook home and opportunity, and ended his career by death in an alien land on the field' of battle ! And are we now to admit that there is no such thing as a living sacrifice to the welfare of the nation ? Let us take heed lest our man- ner of advice to the young imperil the higher life of America for years to come. The eternal warfare with ignorance, unreason, and bad taste, has not ceased, has no cessation. And for the individual, what are the few luxuries and conveniences the teacher must forego as compared with the spiritual satisfactions constantly open to the well-educated and effective scholar and teacher? Accordingly, we need have no hesitation about advising the young man of intellectual promise to engage in the affair of education. Only, let us make sure that he is the right sort of person, willing to undergo a rigorous preparation in the graduate school, so as to run no risk of failure in mid-career. Such, as it seems to me, is one very pressing duty of our universities at the present time: to direct the fit though few into the path of scholarship and science ; to develop them and prepare them to be teachers — above all, teachers of the humanities ; and to send them, thus HOW TO SAVE THE PATTEENS 157 developed and prepared, into the secondary schools. In this way, and in all other legitimate ways, we must aim to persuade the thoughtful men of the nation, and the leaders of the State, that the contemplative life transcends the active, and should be cherished by the government. But to return to the mass of our undergraduates, or the three-fifths of them concerning whom there is hope. What shall be done with the undergraduate as he is ? What actually will induce this unthinking creature to think? Let him read Plato. The few who still take up the study of Greek should read as much of Plato as may be in the original, supplementing this with generous por- tions in a good translation. They should begin the reading of Greek with Homer and the easier parts of the Platonic Dialogues, and not with anything from Xenophon. As for the rest, the great majority, let them live with Jowett's translation, taking, for ex- ample, the Phcedrus first, then the Apology, and then the Repuhlic. We should gain by substituting this version of Plato, since it is a masterpiece of English, for two-thirds of the English literature now read in Fresliman and Sophomore courses. Were we to pro- voke every student in our American colleges and uni- versities to buy and read this work, within the space of two years the United States of America would be- come a nation ready for the highest culture. It is Plato who, outside the sacred books of our religion, and a few works characteristic of the Middle Ages, is the grand storehouse of human ideas. It isi he who has 158 PATTERNS given to the world the very term 'idea.' And it is ideas that our students chiefly lack. The eager student of that subject in the eurriculum to which we apply the misnomer of 'English' should examine the mjrth of the soul in the Phcedrus, where the pattern is dis- tinct, before he eomes to the myth of the soul in Shel- ley's ode To a Skylark, where the pattern is vague and disordered. Let him become acquainted with Plato- nism clear and pure at its source, before he takes up the insecure — one may almost say, muddled — Platonism of Wordsworth's Ode, Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of early Childhood. General culture means the possession of distinct and important ideas, and the organization of these ideas into an orderly whole. It depends upon the ability to comprehend structure, and the habit of seeing patterns objectively with the mind's eye. But this eye of the mind is not quite like an eye ; it is more like an inner retina or network of lines and filaments. To go back to the image with which we began, it is a kind of reticu- lated orb like the web of our spider. We desire our student to possess a mind like the fabric hanging be- tween the fern and the laurel in Bartram's Garden, with main lines of support and communication radi- ating from the centre in all directions outward, with sympathetic cross-<;ommunications in every part, and with a subtlfe, active intelligence at the hub of the wheel. Structure within the mind is developed by the contemplation of structure without. No other single means will so quickly and effectually reproduce an organized mind in our American undergraduate as the PLATONIC PATTERNS 159 study of Plato. The statement is made upon the basis of repeated experiment with individuals of this genus — with the American undergraduate as he is, and not as our present uncorrelated curriculum of liberal studies assumes him to be. He has no prepossessions about Plaito, no prejudice against Plato as against the word ' Greek, ' or antiquity in general; and Plato instantly captivates him, and will transform him while yet there is hope. Nay more. Many a young teacher can be revivified by dancing out a mental fight or figure with Plato — in the ThecetetiiSf or the Philebus. And it is perhaps never too late for any one to learn that he can teach his pupils more if, instead of haranguing them in lectures, he will enter into Socratic eonversations with them about the sub- ject he and they may have in hand. * * « * If the criticism of Shelley be thought severe, the reader should note again precisely what is said, and what is not said, of the poet. For example, I care- fully avoid saying: Do not read Shelley. The in- junction is: Read Plato first — a bit of advice de- rived from the habit, opinion, and counsel of Shelley himself. Does it seem ungracious to expose the weakness of the ode To a Skylark, and the inadvert- ence of those who deem it excellent without rigor- ously testing the whole by the standards of good sense and good technique? Of the inadvertent, those who are open to conviction may consult the analy- sis of the ode by Professor John M. Robertson;* * In New Essays towards a Critical Method, pp. 219-222. 150 PATTERNS or they may deal with the ode as Socrates, in the Phcudrus, deals with the oration of Lysias, thus: It presents an untruth in the first place — Hail to thee, blithe Spirit! Bird thou never wert. 'Then as to the other topics — are they not thrown down anyhow? Is there any principle in them? Why should the next topic follow next in order, or any other topic? I cannot help fancying in my ignorance that he wrote off boldly just what came into his heaid ! ' ^ Would the entire university curriculum be dis- rupted if we were to introduce the study of Plato in the wholesale fashion suggested? But the sugges- tion mainly concerns the work in English so-called. And here it is already possible to read almost any- thing; the teacher now has virtually complete free- dom of choice. Meanwhile, among the various trends in 'English' there is at present a distinct tendency in favor of reading more and more of the ancient classics in translation; in the next few years we are likely to see a kind of renaissance of classical study in this guise. But it would seem wise to direct the tendency according to sober principles, and neither to let our enthusiasms run away with us, nor yet merely to drift with the educational tide. Just now the most favored translator with teachers of English is Professor Gilbert Murray, and hence the most familiar Attic author is Euripides. Mur- 1 The Dialogues of Plato, trans, by Jowett, 1892, 1. 472. READ PLATO FIRST 161 ray's Euripides is better food for our young people than most of the texts in the list of the College En- trance Board for English. But Jowett's Plato (per- haps with the translation of the Republic by Davies and Vaughan) is better yet. In other departments, of course, there has been a similar tendency. Since few of the students who elect philosophy have ever studied Greek, the pro- fessor of philosophy expects his class to read the Republic in the version of Davies and Vaughan ; and the professor of political theory is likely to do the same. First and last, a goodly number of their col- leagues will require one and another group of stu- dents to read more or less of Plato. To tell the truth, if the present had not seemed to be a fair opportu- nity to strike a blow of a particular sort in favor of good sense and serious reading, I might have waited for a better time. X THINGS NEW AND OLD^ Then said he unto them: Therefore every scribe which is instructed unto the Kingdom of Heaven is like unto a man that is an householder, which bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old.2 THIS strange and pregnant utterance has a deeper meaning for the religious imagina- tion; but for a secular purpose we may give it a secular interpretation, thus: the student of litera- ture who has digested the Republic of Plato is, as it were, a man of unlimited resources, possessing a store of ideas upon which he can always draw for the ends of life. As a collateral text one may cite the advice which the father of Robert, Earl Lytton, gave to his son : ' Do you want to get at new ideas ? Read old books. Do you want to find old ideas? Read new ones. ' ^ * An address delivered before the Classical Section of the Asso- ciation of Colleges and Preparatory Schools of the Middle Atlantic States and Maryland, Princeton, Nov. 30, 1918. The address was published in The Classical WeeTcly 13. 107-111 (Feb. 2, 1920), from which it is now reprinted, in a slightly re- vised form, with the kind consent of the managing editor. » Matt. 13. 52. 'Austin Dobson, A Bookman's Budget, 1917, p. 143. 162 IDEAS AEE NEITHEE NEW NOE OLD 153 A teacher of the modern subject of English, while doubtless to be regarded as an exponent of things new, on occasion must glance at the interests of those who in the general mind pass for teachers of things old and permanent — that is, of the ancient classics; or at all events must try to discover what there is of common interest to both ancients and moderns. Yet the instructed scribe of either sort will straightway admit that the familiar distinction between 'old' and 'new' ordinarily has no scientific value, and as a rule serves only to darken counsel. The *new' school of Dr. Flexner, for example, is not merely as old as the Emile of Rousseau; it is as old, though not so fresh and good, as the philosophy of Epicurus. And the 'new religion' of President Eliot was act- ually described more than half a century in advance by Renan in his essay on Channing ; ^ in fact, being as old as Stoicism, it is not so new as the New Testa- ment. Accordingly, both ancients and moderns will readily grant that the groundwork of a sound general, and even a religious, education consists, not of things old as such, or of things new as such, but of things that are at once both new and old. In other words they will agree that a general educa- tion consists in the assimilation of a stock or fund of ideas which are by nature imperishable; of ideas which are the potential inheritance of every intelli- 1 Eliot, The Durable Satisfactions of Life, 1910, pp. 155 ff., esp. pp. 160, 166; compare Eenan, Etudes d'Histoire religieuse, 1862, p. 360 (pp. 357-403, Channing et le Mouvement Unitaire aux Etats Unis) . 154 THINGS NEW AND OLD gent human being. They are the specific property of no one man or age. They may be acquired by any maja or nation through select and industrious read- ing within the space of forty years or less, if I under- stand the late Sir William Osier, though Aristotle would seem to suggest forty-nine years as the cor- rect figure, and Plato fifty. They may all be met and recognized before the age of thirty, to judge from the five years spent by Milton after he left Cambridge, at Horton, and the eight years of read- ing done by Swift after an unsatisfactory career as a student at Dublin. Moreover, one man differs from another, one period differs from another, in the way each man or period reacts to the common fund of human ideas. Thus a man or an age may possess more or fewer of these ideas, may possess some number of them more or less distinctly, and may possess them in more free or more restricted combination. Novel combination of old ideas is some- times said to be the mark of genius in a Shakespeare or a Goethe; yet it is clear that wealth of ideas is also a characteristic of originality, as in Plato; and even more characteristic is the habit of sharply dis- tinguishing between one idea and another, and of seeing the sum-total of ideas in order and due per- spective. This last quality is characteristic of the New Testa- ment, where we learn that, if we seek first the most important things, or ideas, the others will be added to us — on the principle that to him that hath shall be given. And it is a characteristic of the literary WHERE TO FIND IDEAS 165 tradition that culminates in Dante, who sifts and unites the gains of the classical and the mediaeval spirit, and whose Vita Nuova and Divina Commedia as a result are strictly the most original productions in literature outside the Scriptures. But it is also a characteristic of Plato. Wealth of ideas, distinctness of ideas, perspective and emphasis in combining them, these, we may say, are the end and aim of a general or humane educa- tion, at least on the intellectual side. If we admit this — and who will deny it? — the main question for the educator, the instructed scribe, then becomes: What are the most effectual means of transmitting the largest number of clear and important human ideas in the best perspective? Yet there is another question, or perhaps another form of the same ques- tion, which takes precedence of this one, namely: Where are the fullest and most accessible treasuries from which the prudent scribe or householder may enrich his son or disciple? We have here in mind, of course, what is termed a literary education, rather than a mathematical or scientific one, and elemental thoughts, rather than their applications and modifi- cations; and the treasuries we immediately consider are books — works proceeding from antiquity, or from the Middle Ages, or from the Renaissance and mod- ern times. Indeed, under the Renaissance we must include everything from the end of the Middle Ages down to the present time; for we are still living in the Renaissance — or were until August, 1914. Since then, perhaps, for better as well as worse, for better 12 X66 THINGS NEW AND OLD rather than worse, we have been returning to the ideals of the Middle Ages. We shall at any rate do wisely if we look for ideas in the place where we are certain to find them. Thus it might not be wise to look for them in the books of the last ten years, or in all the books of any particular ten years in history, where much chaff necessarily hides but little wheat. And again, it may not be wise for the general student to trust to the sources from which a particular man of great ideas extracted his special fund. The books em- ployed by a Bunyan or a Lincoln are likely to in- clude certain volumes of perennial worth; and his choice of teachers is always instructive. But the genius of Lincoln, feeding in the main upon a few significant books, was otherwise able to assimilate clarified ideas from sources that might furnish in- different nourishment to the mind of the average man. In any case, we must discover our fund of ideas somewhere in the past, whether the near past or the more remote. We cannot find them in the pres- ent, since we can study the present only when it has gone by and become a part of human experience. As for the future, in which the young people of Illi- nois and Kansas — and even of the State of New York — expect to meet new ideas that have not been expressed in old books like the ancient classics, it may be doubted whether we shall shortly be favored with a Plato or a Dante from those parts. It is the simple truth that the source of virtually all the hu- man ideas thus far developed has been one or an- ESCAPE FROM THE RENAISSANCE 167 other part of the civilization that grew up on or near the shores of the Mediterranean. We may even affirm that, however amplified or varied the applica- tion of the common stock of ideas has been in the Renaissance, the additions to that stock since the time of Dante are well-nigh negligible. The main development since that time has been of the means of communication and of diffusion — the printing- press, the telegraph and telephone, and various forms of artificial locomotion; there has not been a signifi- cant increase in the number or importance of the things to be communicated; nor is 'diffusion' always to be taken in a favorable sense. One may read an entire newspaper in the Sunday edition, or an en- tire number of a current magazine, without finding a single idea of permanent value, well expressed. "We may therefore raise an objection to the com- mon practice, exemplified in the curriculum of every Protestant school and college, of making a literary training chiefly consist in the persual of authors be- longing to and typical of the Renaissance. Besides the reasons I have suggested for this objection, others may be adduced. For example, since our pupils are living in the Renaissance, they do not escape from themselves through reading these authors; the indi- vidual student tends rather to stereotype the ideas which already govern him. Again, the casual read- ing of the crowd is naturally confined to this period ; but education should supply deficiencies, not merely encourage desires that will satisfy themselves, once the intellectual curiosity of the individual has been 168 THINGS NEW AND OLD awakened. The notion I wish to convey will be clearer if we turn to a matter of common observa- tion, which is this: the reading of Renaissance au- thors does not necessarily lead one to the reading of mediaeval and classical masterpieces. Thus the man who has read Milton may not have read Dante, and the man who has read Shakespeare may not have read Sophocles; but one will hardly find a student of Sophocles who has not read Shakespeare, or a student of Dante who has not read Milton. Yet again, the more difficult part of education is the ac- quisition of self-restraint, and the less difficult, the development of one's natural bent. But the typical author of the Renaissance and modem times — a Montaigne, a Goethe, a Rousseau — glorifies individu- alism, self-assertion, self-expression, self-develop- ment; whereas the classical and mediaeval authors inculcate self-restraint and self-denial. Finally, what we call bad taste would almost seem to be the invention of the Renaissance and a special property of modern times. The literature of the Middle Ages is on occasion tedious; and the ancient classical au- thors are not without their faults of style and de- ficiencies of spirit. But bad taste as we know it in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is not to be detected in Plato, or in classical literature as a whole, or in Dante, any more than it is to be found in the New Testament. Were we to subordinate Renais- sance to ancient and mediaeval writers in the cur- riculum, we should tend to secure the pupil in his formative stage from the contamination of bad taste. PLATO AND DANTE 169 Yielding to none in my love of what is best in Shake- speare and Milton, I am not, of course, aiming at a wholesale condemnation of Renaissance authors, or asserting that they should be uncritically excluded from a rational scheme of studies. But the superiority of Dante and Plato to any writer of modern times cannot be denied, when we consider each as a grand repository of human ideas. Outside the Sacred Scriptures, these two authors are in this respect incomparable, surpassing the greater or lesser among the encyclopaedic minds whose works have been the sources of supply for many a literary reputation — such works, I mean, as those of Cicero, Plutarch, Montaigne, Bacon, Leibnitz, Goethe, or Sainte-Beuve. Serviceable as Plutarch has been to a Shakespeare, Montaigne to an Emerson, or Sainte- Beuve to a generation of literary critics, or as De Quincey has been to a, Ruskin, or Ruskin to many a recent English writer, not one of them will replace Dante or Plato as a treasury of ideas. Taken to- gether, these two, Plato and Dante, virtually sum up, compactly, the germinal notions which are pos- sible to human kind. Yet they have more than wealth and compactness to recommend them. They have also distinctness and perspective or proportion. And these two quali- ties of distinctness and perspective suggest that the two authors are not merely individual, but also representative. What do they represent? It would seem that they represent two out of the three greatest literary traditions of all time, in which 170 THINGS NEW AND OLD the wealth and importance of the ideas to be trans- mitted have been equaled by excellence in the man- ner of their conveyance. Chief among the three is the tradition of the Old and the New Testament; but this does not enter into the present discussion; though pervasive in its influence upon all subse- quent European literature, it has its own special relation to the secular curriculum, being sui generis, and a thing apart — in the world, but not of it. Of the other two, one is manifestly the Graeco-Roman tradition, beginning with Homer, and culminating in the Attic drama and Plato, yet living on in later Greek poetry and in the poets of Rome. The other begins in the tenth century with the troubadours of southern France, culminates in Dante, and lives on in Petrarch. For each of the two, the distinc- tive characteristic is perfection of artistic form developed through an unbroken succession of poets, each learning from his predecessors, striving to ad- vance beyond them, and generally successful in mak- ing old things new. Except for the Bible, as in the relation of the later to the earlier Psalms, no other literary tradition shows the same excellence arising from close continuity and straightforward progress. No such phenomenon can be observed, for example, in the literature of England, though there is some- thing like it in the progress of Old English poetry from Cgedmon to the school of Cynewulf. But subse- quently, in their mastery of poetic form, the two leaders, Shakespeare and Milton, are, we may con- tend, aliens to England; for Shakespeare, with all THEEE LITEEAEY TEADITIONS 171 his opulence, attains to artistic perfection, not in his dramas, but in some of his sonnets, which are ulti- mately Petrarchan; and the artistic mastery of Mil- ton comes not through an orderly development of English literature; from a distance, and after an interval, he strives to combine in one the streams of Mediterranean tradition. He does not, like Dante, or like Plato, live at home in his own native stream of ideas and art. But he could not have done better, and his practice indicates what we should do toward improving the ideals of a literary education: study the Bible — that goes without saying; and otherwise betake ourselves to the schools of Plato and Dante. It was to these that Shelley betook himself (until then a very mediocre poet), thereby enriching his substance, and greatly improving his art. This is as much as may now be suggested regarding storehouses of ideas— where to hunt for treasures. Let us briefly consider the other question — how to transmit the fund of ideas to the next and succeeding genera- tions. I have elsewhere^ discussed the mediaeval tradi- tion which the best of modern scholars are engaged in winnowing for the future ; to the student of English a study of Germanic and Italian or Romance origins is of more immediate concern than the study of Greek and Latin. Yet classical studies are of vital interest to the teachers of modern literature; when these studies fail, we cannot succeed. Nor could there be a more splendid testimony to the significance of classical scholarship in modern life than the body of recent 1 See below, pp. 199-200, 262-6. 172 THINGS NEW AND OLD French monographs upon English authors ; for they all derive their method and inspiration from the work of French classical scholars like Gaston Boissier and Alfred and Maurice Croiset. In America, however, it would seem that our teachers of Greek and Latin have not in recent years been so directly helpful to students of English. Indeed, if I may speak for myself, I have had to learn the most needful things in the domain of classical studies either from teachers of English or by myself — such needful things, that is, as the Poetics of Aristotle and the Encyklopddie of August Boeckh, which metamorphose and energize one 's conceptions of literary and linguistic study. Why, we may ask, do American classical scholars, in contrast with those of France, make so little use of these books in their teach- ing — above all, in the training of teachers for the sec- ondary schools? Or, to approach the problem from another angle, why should a bright young woman from the Middle West, one who had read Caesar and Xeno- phon, be filled with astonishment, after reading a little of Jowett's Plato for a course in English, that no one had ever before directed her to this magical source of ideas? Why, thought she, was I robbed of my birth- right ? The fault must lie partly in the general state of education in America ; it also lies in part with our teachers of the classics. I hope they will bear with me if I complain a little and advise a little on this subject. Faithful are the wounds of a friend. We teachers of modern literature — of Shakespeare, for example — have just cause for complaint that our pupils have read Caesar, and are not familiar with MOEE HELP FEOM THE CLASSICS 173 Ovid ; since perhaps the main difficulty in the allusions of Shakespeare, and even of Milton, has ceased to exist for a student who has read portions of the Metamor- phoses. Again, if our Sophomores are so lucky as to have read a little Greek, it has been Xenophon rather than Plato ; and hence they cannot understand Shelley. But, strictly speaking, and not to mention Greek, they cannot read Latin at all, one reason being that their teachers in the secondary schools cannot do so either. These teachers, naturally, cannot transmit a habit that they do not possess, and will never inspire a class with the faith that it can do what is not done. But why should not a teacher of the classics in the high school read classical authors wholesale, as his or her colleague in French or German reads authors in either of these tongues ? Sympathize though we may with the diffi- culties under which classical teachersi labor in this country, it is the simple truth that, with nearly all the best cards^ — ^the most fascinating authors — in their hands, they have not known how to play the game. They continue to assign the reading of the Gallic War, and the orations against Catiline, which vitally inter- est but a few boys, and almost no- girls, and they with- hold Ovid, who would interest all. And they insist upon Xenophon, who, if not always prosy, is yet as prosy as a Greek can be.^ And why do they insist? * I do not wish to imply that Caesar, or Cicero, or Xenophon, is uninteresiting when approached in the right way ; but it is unde- niable that the rank land file of teachers make them so ; whereas it is not so easy for a bad t«acher to spoil the ^neid or the Odyssey, 174 THINGS NEW AND OLD Because, forsooth, be writes Attic Greek that is not too hard! Meanwhile these pupils are bereft of the natural pleasure and stimulus which come from the habit of continuous reading ; though if you make the Greek or Latin easy enough, and interesting enough, it is as possible to acquire the habit for either of these as for French or German. You must, of course, have teachers who can and do read books and authors in the languages they profess to teach. But you must also see to it that, with some intensive study for the sake of grammar and syntax, there goes much extensive reading on the part of the class: Let us not be afraid of the methods of those who teach the modem lan- guages. It is better also to read one book of the Odys- sey in the original, and the rest in the translation of Butcher and Lang, than two books of the original and nothing more. I sing of things old and new. For years we have been facing changed conditions in teaching Greek and Latin ; and the present, they say, is a critical time for Greek. The classical teachers appear to realize that they are in a predicament ; but what have they done, what are they doing, about it ? Very likely more than I have heard of, but surely not enough; for more is needed than a general campaign of advertising to awaken a heedless public, more than eloquent replies to Dr. Flexner and his school, more than Latin exhibi- tions in the halls of public buildings. I am far from underrating the value of such efforts, or the admirable spirit of those persons who make them. More impor- ant, however, are the results attained in certain text- NEW BOOKS FOR GEEEK AND LATIN 175 books like Professor Goodell's The Greek in English, The First Year of Greek by Professor Allen, and the Latin readers projected by Professor Clark and his coadjutor, Mr. Game. But all these enterprises, so far as they are known to me, are in certain ways too much of a concession, and in certain waysi too little. With all deference to scholars who know far more of Greek and Latin than I can ever hope to know, let me never- theless as a teacher of English assume that we need a new Greek Lesson-book and Reader, say a volume of six or seven hundred pages, and a similar volume for beginning Latin. The principles governing these books I trust we should all agree to. The details should be worked out by experts, though in each case, per- haps, under the guidance of a single editor; what I say of these details must be regarded as mainly tenta- tive or rather suggestive, and in no sense final and complete. In the volume for Latin there should be, first of all, such minimum of grammar and syntax as is indispensable for any progress at all in reading. But it must be strictly a minimum. We must, for our beginners, have less grammar at the outset, though what is given will have to be thoroughly mastered in a few weeks, with constant reference back and forth from numbered point in the text to numbered point in the grammar. But it must always be remembered that the main difficulty is not grammar or syntax, but vocabulary ; this is true of all languages, it is true of Greek and Latin. Much grammar should be reserved until later in the first year, some until the following year, and some until after the Day of Judgment. For 176 THINGS NEW AND OLD the rest, there should be several hundred pages of easy, interesting, and as far asi possible connected reading ; and reading should begin at the second meeting of the class. Among the earlier passages in the book there should be some for memorizing ; here the Latin should of course be pure, but the order as near as possible to that of English ; these should be accompanied by close and exact translations into natural English, the trans- lations also to be memorized. It is astonishing how- much of a foreign language can be quickly learned by this means, and how many important grammatical and syntactical forms can thus be acquired in advance of the learning of paradigms. Meanwhile the teacher has texts of reference for points of usage, not vaguely placed somewhere in a book, but clearly written in the mind of his pupil. In the first fifty or one hundred pages there should be a great deal of narrative adapted from the more familiar parts of the Bible in the Vulgate; additions might be made from apocryphal accounts of the childhood of Christ, in Latin, of course. I know of nothing which the average student reads with more avidity. But the book as a whole should contain mostly narrative, drawn from Ovid, Virgil, and such things as the Dream of Scipio. Surely this last is more attractive to the youthful mind than are the orations a^inst Catiline; as indeed it might be well to throw over all the orations of Cicero in favor of his letters, if our aim is to enlist the interest of the pupil on the side of his own education. There would be no objection to observing the principle of pro- gressive difficulty, as we advanced toward the end of A NEW LATIN READER 177 the book; but the main principle should be: Lesen; viel lesen; viel, viel lesen. In fact, difficult passages should for the most part be simplified by the editor ; glosses and side-notes, even interlinear translations, should be supplied where difficulties cannot be avoided or excised, and summaries of omitted intervening passages should be given in English; the editor and his helpers should virtually rewrite a large part of the Latin in the volume. The book might thus include the whole story of the ^neid, which is criminally treated when but the first half or third is read without refer- ence to the end. If it be necessary to rewrite Virgil, using his own words where possible, and to print the paraphrase as normal Latin prose, by all means let Virgil be rewritten. This would not preclude the occa- sional insertion of metrical excerpts, or the learning of them with the help of a teacher who knew the music of the Virgilian lines. If the Latin of the Vulgate, or if other medieval Latin, be not pure enough for the purists, let the editor improve it, so long as he does not make the order more difficult. But as I have sug- gested, much editorial effort should be devoted to re- ducing the Latin, wherever possible, to the order of the modern languages — which happens to be the order of Greek also. Finally there should be a full glossary. I have said nothing of written composition; exercises might, or might not, be included in the same volume. There is no reason why several books should not be employed in a course. Were I teaching Latin, I should expect my students to read a certain amount of Latin literature in the first year in the best English transla- 178 THINGS NEW AND OLD tions. And the same thing would be true were I teach- ing Greek. For the Greek Grammar and Reader, all in one, a similar procedure should be followed. The selections should be made into continuous reading. Passages of significant and connected discourse should be memor- ized with their English translations. Homer and Herodotus should be freely excerpted and adapted, virtually Atticized perhaps, the chief difficulties being removed or glossed. Many inflected forms should be recognized as individual words before they are seen in the artificial order of the paradigms. I, for one, should omit the Anabasis of Xenophon altogether, whatever the injury to existent text-books and current royalties. Certain easier passages from Plato should be included ; some of the more significant myths, with the difficul- ties removed or glossed; perhaps one or two of the shorter, less abstruse dialogues, with an argument at the beginning of each, and occasional summaries, in English. As in the Latin Reader, narrative portions of the Bible should eome near the beginning, with occasional rewriting or rewording of the Old Testa- ment in the Septuagint and of the New Testament. Here, again, the apocryphal accounts of the childhood of Christ might be used to great advantage. And as some of the simpler Latin hymns might be included in the Latin Reader, so, perhaps, certain of the simpler Greek hymns here. And again there should be a full Greek and English glossary. Do these proposals seem unduly novel ? They could hardly be so strange as the chance that, out of all the HOW ANDREW LANG BEGAN GREEK 179 possible combinations of authors in the rich and varied literature of antiquity, has made Caesar and Xenophon mean 'classical' to a large part of young America; or the chance that upon these two as foundation should be reared the entire structure of a classical course — should be determined the order and nature of the texts, the apparatus, the method of teaching. These proposals are not more strange than the inability of most classical teachers to stand aside and look at them- selves and their work ah extra. They would not seem strange to Andrew Lang. Since formulating them, I have consulted his paper on Homer and the Study of Greek, which sustains with force and skill the main positions I have been upholding. I quote a passage from one who did much to vivify our times through the vital things of the past. To what he says of gram- mar nearly every one will hear an echo from within. And what he says of Homer is mostly applicable to Plato as well : 'At present boys are introduced to the language of the Muses by pedantically written grammars, full of the queerest and most arid metaphysical and philo- logical verbiage. The very English in which these deplorable books are composed may be scientific, may be comprehensible by and useful to philologists, but is utterly heartbreaking to boys. . . . The grammar, to them, is a mere buzz in a chaos of nonsense. . . . When they struggle so far as to be allowed to try- to read a piece of Greek prose, they are only like the Marchioness in her experience of beer; she once had a sip of it. Ten lines of Xenophon, narrating how he marched so many parasangs and took breakfast, do not amount to more than a very unrefreshing sip 180 THINGS NEW AND OLD of Greek. . . . The boys stra-ggle along with Xeno- phon, knowing not whence or whither. . . . One by one they fall out of the ranks; they mutiny against Xenophon; they murmur against that commander; they desert his flag. They determine that anything is better than Greek, that nothing can be worse than Greek, and they move the tender hearts of their parents. ... Up to a certain age my experiences at school were precisely those which I have described. Our grammar was not so philological, abstruse, and arid as the instruments of torture employed at pres- ent. But I hated Greek with a deadly and sickening hatred; I hated it like a bully and a thief of time. . . . Then we began to read Homer; and from the very first words, in which the Muse is asked to sing the wrath of Achilles, Peleus' son, my mind was altered, and I was the devoted friend of Greek. Here was something worth reading about; here one knew where one was; here was the music of words, here were poetry, pleasure, and life. We fortunately had a teacher (Dr. Hodson) who was not wildly enthusi- astic about grammar. He would set us long pieces of the Iliad or Odyssey to learn, and, when the day 's task was done, would make us read on, adventuring ourselves in "the unseen," and construing as gal- lantly as we might, without grammar or dictionary. On the following day we surveyed more carefully the ground we had pioneered or skirmished over, and then advanced again. Thus, to change the metaphor, we took Homer in large draughts, not in sips: in sips no epic can be enjoyed. . . . The result was not the making of many accurate scholars, though a few were made; others got nothing better than enjoyment in their work, and the firm belief, opposed to that of most schoolboys, that the ancients did not write nonsense. . . . Judging from this ex- ample, I venture very humbly to think that any one who, even at the age of Cato, wants to learn Greek, MAKING ALL THINGS NEW 181 should begin where Greek literature, where all pro- fane literature begins — with Homer himself. It was thus, not with grammars in vacuo, that the great scholars of the Renaissance began. It was thus that Ascham and Rabelais began, by jumping into Greek and splashing about till they learned to swim. ' ^ This stimulating author then proceeds to explain his method for actual beginners in Homer ; but since his method is in keeping with the one just outlined for the projected books in Greek and Latin, there is no need of enlarging upon it. As will be readily seen, in both volumes one main principle is the governing conception: the business of education is the transmission of ideas. Language is to be re- garded first of all as a means of communication, and not as an end in itself. Finally we teachers of things new and old may bear in mind that we are in a world where reality is permanent, and its appearance constantly changing. We must therefore be inflexible where reality is concerned, and flexible when change becomes neces- sary; for we may properly regard ourselves as co- workers with One who saith: 'Behold, I make all things new.' * Andrew Lang, Essays in Little, 1912, pp. 80-3. 13 XI THE FUNCTION OF THE LEADER IN SCHOLARSHIP ' TO the restless citizens of our vast American commonwealth, the precise service which the scholar renders to the State is by no means evident. In time of peace, a democracy is more apt to insist upon the rights which all men are said to possess in common than to care ahout the duties which the highly gifted and specially trained may be thought to owe to the social organism as a whole. In the ancient culture which grew up about the eastern half of the Mediterranean, and from which the best impulses of modern civilization — nay even of modern democracy — have chiefly sprung, a dif- ferent ideal held sway. To the representative think- ers of antiquity, special gifts and special training appeared, one may say, in an undemocratic guise, the emphasis being less upon the rights and claims of the individual, and more upon his higher or lower office as a member of the body politic. A similar readiness to subject the interests of the part to the welfare of the whole may be observed in the Middle Ages, that is, in the period in which our modem na- * An address delivered before the Society of Phi Beta Kappa in Cornell University, May 30, 1911; first issued as a privately printed pamphlet, Ithaca, New York, 1911. 182 THE STATE AS AN ORGANISM 183 tions and vernacular literatures took their immediate rise. The very existence of feudalism, and the funda- mental activities of the mediaeval Church, alike in- volved the principle of spontaneous subordination, and made comprehensible the idea of a specific disci- pline fitting the choicest of the youth of each gener- ation for a type of willing service which amounted to spiritual leadership in the State. That this idea actually was familiar to the ancients is sufficiently clear to any one who has dipped into Plato or Quin- tilian; and that it persisted after the Middle Ages to the time of Milton, if not later, may be gathered by all who care to examine his cogent tractate Of Edu- cation. Yet the traditional human belief in the spe- cial obligations of special classes to the commonwealth may be more satisfactorily illustrated than by ab- stract treatises; and, in particular, we Americans need to have brought home to us the idea of a defi- nite kind of person, who, though in the fullest sense a member of the social organism, and actuated by an unusual concern for its welfare, is yet a free and relatively spontaneous agent — like the eye in the head — one whose special business is to spy out and watch over those eternal forms of human thought and feeling, of truth and beauty, in which the real life of every nation is manifested, and which the con- serving spirit of scholarship hands on from age to age. For a better grasp of the relation between the in- dividual and the State we may turn to a figure of speech. There are, indeed, not a few recurring 184 THE LEADER IN SOHOLAESHIP similes, or literary comparisons, which seem rather to bear the stamp of a universal human imagination than to be the work of any particular genius, and to have a greater validity for our thinking (as they have had a greater vitality) than any scientific or philosophical abstractions. Such is the comparison of the State to a ship, with all her tackling perfect, and every mariner, from the steersman to the look- out, performing his office, however great or humble, as needful to the majestic progress of the whole. What an appeal to the human mind has this figure not made, from Sophocles to Horace, and from Long- fellow to Kipling! But of a greater vitality yet is the comparison of the State to a living organism. It is imbedded in our very word 'corporation,' and in the phrase 'the body politic' In Plato, as a poem or any other work of art is likened in its form and function to a living creature, 'having a body of its own and a head and feet — there should be a middle, beginning, and end, adapted to one another and to the whole, ' ^ — so the commonwealth, which is also considered a work of conscious art, is regarded as a being possessed of organic life. Thus, in the Apol- ogy, Socrates, the industrious man of leisure — the scholar, as we might say, — speaks of the city of Athens as 'a great and noble steed who is tardy in his motions owing to his very size, and requires to be stirred into life'; and of himself as a dedicated agent sent to arouse this animal to its proper activ- * Plato, Phcedrus. See The Dialogues of Plato, trans, by Jowett, 1892, 1. 472-3. THE BODY AND THE MEMBERS 185 ity, which is the contemplation of truth and beauty and justice. *I am that gadfly,' he says, 'which God has attached to the State, and all day long and in all places am always fastening upon you, arousing and persuading and reproaching you.'^ Moreover, he adds that, from the very nature of his calling, it has been necessary for him to occupy a private sta- tion, and not a public one, and to deal with the citi- zens in smaller groups, or as individuals. Doubtless most of us are acquainted with this comparison of organized society to a living creature, not in Hobbes' Leviathan, or in Livy or Dionysius, but in the first scene of Coriolanus, where Shake- speare's fancy has played with the fable of the body and the members, already elaborated in Plutarch. We may slightly abbreviate the dialogue between Menenius Agrippa, senator and friend of Coriolanus, and the spokesman of the clamorous citizens who are suffering in the famine: Menenius. There was a time when all the body's mem- bers Rebelled against the belly; thus accused it: That only like a gulf it did remain I' the midst o' the body, idle and unactive, Still cupboarding the viand, never bearing Like labor with the rest, where the other instruments Did see and hear, devise, instruct, walk, feel, And, mutually participate, did minister Unto the appetite and affection common Of the whole body. . . . With a kind of smile, 1 Plato, Apology. Hid. 2, 124-5. 186 THE LEADEE IN SOEOLAESHIP Whicli ne'er came from tlie lungs, but even thus — For, look you, I may make the belly smile As well as speak — it tauntingly replied . . . First Citizen. Your belly's answer? What! The kingly crowned head, the vigilant eye, The counsellor heart, the arm our soldier, Our steed the leg, the tongue our trumpeter. With other mimiments and petty helps In this our fabric, if that they . . . Should by the cormorant belly be restrained. Who is the sink o' the body . . . What could the belly answer? . . . Menenius. Note me this, good friend; Your most grave belly was deliberate, Not rash like his accusers, and thus answered: * True is it, my incorporate friends,' quoth he, * That I receive the general food at first. Which you do live upon; and fit it is; Because I am the store-house and the shop Of the whole body: but if you do remember, I send it through the rivers of your blood. Even to the court, the heart, to the seat o' the brain ; And, through the cranks and offices of man. The strongest nerves and small inferior veins From me receive that natural competency Whereby they live.' . . . The senators of Eome are this good belly. And you tlie mutinous members. . . . What do you think, You, the great toe of this assembly ? ^ It has been said that Saint Paul had the same original story in mind when he wrote of another sort 1 Coriolanus 1. 1, 95-156. THE BODY AND THE MEMBERS 187 of political economy, and a higher kind of distribu- tion : 'Now concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I would not have you ignorant. . . . Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. . . . For the body is not one member, but many. ... If the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where were the smelling? . . . But now are they many members, yet but one body. And the eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee: nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you. . . . And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it. . . . Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular. . . . Are all apos- tles? are all prophets? are all teachers? . . . But covet earnestly the best gifts. ' ^ Saint Paul's application of the fable is doubtless the most familiar case of all; possibly there is no instance in literature of a figure which has taken a more vital hold upon the imagination of mankind. Yet, so far as I am aware, the notion of corporate service as expressed in the organic comparison has never been so frequently employed as toward the end of the Middle Ages by certain political theorists, who enlarged upon it with an ingenuity almost more than Shakespearean. To take an example from John of Salisbury, who is typical: ' The servants of Religion are the Soul of the Body, and therefore have principatum t otitis corporis; the * I Cor. 12. Cf . Matt. 5. 29-30 ; and 6. 22-3 : ' The light of the body is the eye. If, therefore, thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be fuU of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If, therefore, the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness. ' 188 THE LEADEE IN SCHOLAESHIP prince is the head, the senate the heart, the court the sides; officers and judges are the eyes, ears, and tongue ; the executive officials are the unarmed, and the army is the armed hand; the financial depart- ment is belly and intestines; landfolk, handicrafts- men, and the like are the feet, so that the State exceeds the centipede numerositate pedum; the pro- tection of the folk is the shoeing ; the distress of these feet is the State's gout.'^ An earlier writer says that the illustrious men of a community are quasi oculi.^ One might speculate how some later dramatist, fastening upon this novel con- ceit, would represent a mutiny in which the sinewy leg of athletic prowess and the trumpeting tongue of collegiate advertisement denied the paramount services rendered by the vigilant eye of pure scholarship. Or suppose that the belly of the State refused to nourish the optic nerve — where were the seeing ? I have dwelt at some length upon this notion, be- cause the truth which it envelops is not al'ways real- ized at first glance, and because it must be realized before we can grasp the function of the leader of scholarship in the State, whose gifts we should earn- estly covet. Upon reflection, it seems to me that the scholar, properly considered, must be taken to repre- sent the eye of the State, and that the class to which he belongs must include all persons who are living the life of contemplation. In accordance with the mean- ing of the Greek termo-xoXi^' (leisure), which reappears * Gierke-Maitland, Political Theories of the Middle Age, pp. 131-2. Ubid., Tp. 132. CAEE OF THE STATE'S EYES 189 in our English words 'school' and 'scholarship,' the life of studious contemplation, which is the highest function of the body politic, is secured to the common- wealth by the release of the eminently gifted from the anxieties of the practical life, so that they may per- form the most important service of all with the utmost measure of efficiency. These are the persons who, as Plato suggests, 'have never had the wit to be idle,' yet have been 'earelesis of what the many care for — wealth, and family interests, and military offices, and speak- ing in the assembly, and magistracies, and plots, and parties. ' ^ That is the best-ordered state which makes the fullest provision for them, and renders them most free from paltry considerations. If they are forced to take anxious thought for the morrow, how shall they perform their duty toward the other classes in society? They must be as free from care about their raiment as the lilies of the field. Where there is no leisure, there is no vision; and where there is no vision, the commonwealth languishes : the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. Shall the huge belly and intes- tines of Leviathan, I mean the enormous wealth of our nation, say to its eye, the scholar — for example, to the student of Greek or of mediEeval literature : We live to eat, we are a sink and a sewer, and have no need of you ? And yet, whatever kind of smile our most grave men of wealth occasionally bestow upon pure scholarship, it cannot truthfully be said that we treat our scholars well in comparison with a great European nation like * Apology. Dialogues, trans, by Jowett, 2. 129. 190 THE LEADER IN SOHOLAESHIP France, or even a small one like Denmark. Hospitals for the ailing body ; schools of applied science ; even departments of pure science that stand in an obvious relation to what is called practical life; everything that concerns food, drink, shelter, and bodily health, and the means of rapid transportation, and the dis- ciplines which tend to multiply and distribute such blessings — for all these things our men of great out- ward fortune understand how to give generously. I am far from belittling such gifts. But they are not of the sort which our leaders in education should earn- estly covet, so long as the tide violently sets away from the theoretical life to the practical. Great engineers know how to control the tide when it comes rushing into their canals; but the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light. It will be noticed that by implication the scholar has been set in a class with the philosopher, the painter, the poet, and all other men distinguished for their powers of vision, who see life steadily, and see it whole. Any failure to recognize the tie between the ideal student and the brotherhood of seers and artists would, indeed, be injurious to the entire fraternity of intel- lectual men. Nay more, I am persuaded that no vul- gar error of the belly and the big toe is so inimical to the arts of civilization as that by which scholarship is falsely identified with industrious pedantry, and poetic and philosophic insight with one or another sort of lazy mooning ; as if the scholar and the poet were each endowed with his own kind of retina, and the impressions of the one were necessarily at variance DEFECTIVE VISION 191 with those of the other, as well as with the exeellent vision of the man in the street. If this mistaken view is prevalent in America, and is shared by many who lay claim to refinement, we mi^t grant that the eye of our nation is not single, and that the body of the commonwealth therefore cannot be full of light — or at least that our country is suffering from strabismus, without knowing that it is a serious visual defect. There is, of course, a blindness that will not see the relation between the best theory and the best practice, but this infirmity is not to be discovered in those ex- cellent men of business, Shakespeare and Goethe ; or in the scholar-poets, Virgil, Dante, Chaucer, and Spen- ser; or in Milton, who took 'intense labor and study' to be his portion in this life. Nor was our own Profes- sor Longfellow thus afflicted. '0 thou poor authorling!' he cries, 'to cheer thy solitary labor, remember that the secret studies of an author are the sunken piers upon which is to rest the bridge of his fame, spanning the dark waters of oblivion. They are out of sight ; but without them no superstructure can stand secure. ' ^ The truth is, as poets like Longfellow would admit, that we Americans are not over-friendly to secret studies and deep researches that concern the distant future rather than the passing moment ; and doubtless we are too fond of calling ourselves a ' practical ' folk, without considering what the expression may involve. By 'practical' do we mean anything more than physi- cally wide-awake and dexterous? Do we mean, for * Longfellow, Hyperion, Book 4, chap. 1. 192 THE LEADER IN SOHOLAESHIP example, that, being less artistic than the Dutch, we are more successful than they in the planning of muni- cipal affairs ?> Who that knows will say so ? And do we, with far-sighted patriotism, render to our national government exactly what is due to Caesar ? Or do we render more, or less? Which of the alternatives is ' practical ' ? On the other hand, if we think it is the divine purpose that any generation should eat, walk, build a house, pay taxes, and go to the grave, without trying to realize the highest ideal of the human race, then we are a very unpractical folk indeed. Nor are we to be deemed crafty when we try to ease our con- sciences with an empty platitude. If this be simply an age of industrial growth — mere larding of the belly — and if, sooner or later, it must be followed by an age of spiritual reintegration and exalted national life, neither fate nor the many-headed multitude will bring about the change, but the eye of Providence gleaming in the visionary eye of the poet, priest, and scholar. Gold and silver breed gold and silver, Shy- lock observed, as fast as ewes and rams; they do not breed spirit at all. And bulls and bears breed bulls and bears, not scholars. It is not shrewd to think that human life can gather figs of thistles. The most prac- tical generation is that which, giving Cjesar his due, still gives precedence to the higher or theoretic life, the life, not of the foot or belly, but of the head and eye. Speaking of the relation between theory and practice in Greek life, Professor Bosanquet asks : 'How is this glorification of theoriu to be recon- ciled with what we take to be the needs of praeti- EFFECTUAL VISION I93 cal life, and the necessity that education should pre- pare us for it? . . . Let us understand distinctly of what we are speaking. Theoria for a Greek is not what we mean by theory; and the theoretic life is not what we call a theoretical pursuit. Theory for us comes near to an intellectual fiction; a way of grasping and comprehending a complex of observa- tions. . . . Theoretical considerations for us mean mostly what is abstract and hypothetical; **if this change, then that consequence." Theoretic life for the Greek meant the life of insight, a man's hold and grasp of the central realities of what is most valu- able and most divine, and therefore also most human. ' ^ Now it is to the attainment of this insight, and to the habitual diffusion of it throughout the State, that the long, laborious quest of the scholar must conduct him, if his efforts are not to be in vain. For him, as for all other children of Adam, the primal curse must be transmuted into the ultimate blessing through the steady employment of his own proper energy in the accomplishment of a desired end. He has details to learn and manipulate, as have the farmer and the financier. His province being knowledge, not vague and ill-defined, but ex- act as well as comprehensive, it is his function in society to be always learning, which means contem- plating, and not in a haphazard way, but with a pur- pose, and according to the most efficacious methods that have been, or can be, discovered. The best scholar, serving his country to the utmost, may be * Bosanquet, The Place of Leisure in Life, in the International Journal of Ethics, Jan., 1911, p. 163. 194 THE LEADER IN SOHOLAESHIP defined as the best man studying the best things in the best way; and whatever else the best way may imply, it means first of all a thorough and orderly procedure. If he is to render an individual service to the State, the scholar, at the least, is bound to know some one thing, or some aspect of it, better than any one else, and must be able to communicate a part of the insight which this knowledge gives him. And he must continue learning and communicating throughout his life. The moment he ceases to learn, he ceases to be a scholar; his essential service to the State begins to flag — and his own self-respect to ebb away. It foUows that no one who is not a scholar can be a teacher, and, other things being equal, the better scholar he is, the better teacher will he be; and the more productive he is in the normal way of pub- lished studies, the more refreshing will his person- ality become to his thirsty students. It is better to drink of a flowing brook than from a stagnant pool; and the doctrine of faith without works has no last- ing appeal to a healthy mind. I know that the belly and the big toe and the blind mouth, who sometimes pretend to teach, make uncouth signs and sounds to the effect that the effluence of the disciplined eye is not essential. But as Ben Jonson says, to judge of poets is only the faculty of poets ; ^ and similarly we may say here: to judge of scholars is only the faculty of scholars. As no one dare affirm that the ideal will not work until he has tried it, being con- * Discoveries, ed. by Castelain, p. 130. ONLY SCHOLAES SHOULD TEACH 195 vinced that what he has tried is ideal, so no one can estimate the influence of scholarship upon teaching, who does not repeatedly, and for the sheer love of it, bring his own studies to a successful issue. * Great undteiTStandings, ' says Jonson, sometimes 'will rather choose to die than not to know the things they study for. Think then what an evil [ignorance] is, and what good the contrary. ' ^ Now who ever heard of the belly or the big toe preferring death to igno- rance? It is the eye alone that pines away in the dark. To the busily idle in our universities, how- ever, Jonson may seem to furnish only a broad and inconclusive rejoinder; for varied and slippery are the arguments against intense labor and study which the unscholarly invent in order to save themselves from a confession of indolence, or to put away the thought of their unfitness for the scholarly positions into which they have intruded. But if a specific in- stance is needed of a man who was a great teacher because he was a great and tasteful scholar, we may take the Latinist who taught the foremost popular- izer of classical literature in our day. Says An- drew Lang: *It was extraordinary to see the advance which all who cared to work made under Mr. Sellar's instruc- tions; . . . the stimulus of competition was needless to all who were able to feel the inspiration of [his] educational influence. It is not easy for his bio- grapher to refrain from saying that, having come to St. Andrews with no purpose of working, he left it in another mind, and that to Mr. Sellar he owes the » Ibid., p. 43. 196 THE LEADER IN SCHOLARSHIP impulse to busy himself with letters. ... No less important than his work as an author, important as that is, was his example as a scholar, and as a man ; his loyal, honorable, simple, and generous life. . . . He loved his studies entirely for their own sake; he dwelt with the great of old because he enjoyed their company. ' ^ We must allow, then, that good fellowship, easy manners, and a knowing way with the crowd, or the eloquence that often attends mere bodily vigor and lively spirits, cannot make an ideal teacher of one who lacks the habitual impulse to acquire sound learning, or to submit the results of his labor openly to the judgment and for the benefit of his peers. On the other hand, when scholarship is rare, it is a mistake for those who have the prime requisite, and have also the necessary tact, to shirk the responsibil- ity, and forego the personal advantages, of instruct- ing in class. Not that there should be too heavy a burden. The balance should always be in favor of less rather than more teaching; for even a little, artistically done, is good for the State, whereas over- much, perfunctorily and wearily, or jauntily and carelessly, gone through with, is worse than useless. In after-life most students very properly recall the benefits they once received from capable teaching; yet there is an account to be revealed at the Last Judgment of the injury wrought by instruction which had a name that it was alive, but was dead. With the proper amount of teaching — not more than 1 Memoir of TV. Y. Seller, in Sellar's The Roman Poets of tJie Augusta/n Age, Horace and the Elegiac Poets, pp. xxxi-xxxv. FICHTE AT BERLIN I97 eight or ten hours a week — the scholar is of all the more worth to his university and to the State, not only because he thereby multiplies his personal in- fluence, sending out others of his sort into the com- munal life, but because the contact with young and growing minds is salutary to the spirit of the learned. The teacher must be singularly dense who cannot profit by an exchange of ideas with the pupils whom he has the opportunity of training. But, whether for his own sake or for that of the younger genera- tion, we may look with distrust upon the man who attempts to separate teaching from scholarship, or scholarship from teaching, save when some infirmity of temper, or ineradicable defect of manner, renders the presence of an individual scholar useless as well as unpleasant in class. However, we are dealing, not with the exceptional case, but with the typical, and with what every one should desire in a leader. All true scholars, being orderly learners, are organizers of knowledge, and of the means of attain- ing it, and hence possess to some degree the essential power of leadership in organizing instruction. The case of Fichte is an illustration. According to his biographer, when the peace of 1807 was concluded, among the first means to be suggested for restoring the political welfare of Prussia was the establish- ment of the University of Berlin, 'from which, as from the spiritual heart of the community, a cur- rent of life and energy might be poured forth through all its members.' Fichte being chosen as the man before all others fitted for the task, 'un- limited power was given him to frame for the new 14 198 THE LEADER IN SCHOLARSHIP tmiversity a constitution which should insure its efficiency and success.' He already had set forth his ideals of education in an impressive course of lectures at Erlangen, where he had discussed such topics as these: 'Of Integrity in Study'; 'Of the Progressive Scholar'; 'Of the Finished Scholar'; 'Of the Scholar as Teacher'; 'Of the Scholar as Kuler.' He entered upon his new undertaking with ardor. 'And towards the end of 1807 his plan was com- pleted. ... Its chief feature was perfect unity of pur- pose, complete subordination of every branch of in- struction to the one great object of all teaching — not the inculcation of opinion, but the spiritual culture and elevation of the student. The institution was to be an organic whole — an assemblage, not of mere teachers holding various and perhaps opposite views, and living only to disseminate these, but of men ani- mated by a common purpose, and steadily pursuing one recognized object. The office of the professor was not to repeat verbally what already stood printed in books, and might be found there; but to exercise a diligent supervision over the studies of the pupil, and to see that he fully acquired by his own effort, as a personal and independent possession, the branch of knowledge which was the object of his studies. It was thus a school for the scientific use of the understanding, in which positive or historical knowledge was to be looked upon only as a vehicle of instruction, not as an ultimate end. Spiritual independence, intellectual strength, moral dignity — these were the great ends to the attainment of which everything else was but the instrument.'^ * The Popular WorTcs of Fichie, trans, by William Smith, fourth edition, 1. 126-8. THE MEDIEVAL USE OF LEISURE 199 Now I submit that this ideal of Fichte, who was a student of Dante as well as a 'post-Kantian' phi- losopher, is in its essence an ideal of the organic scholarly spirit of the Middle Ages; and that none but a student of Dante and the Middle Ages can say, and few actually are aware, to what extent univer- sity education in modern times is indebted, through Fichte, to the theory of culture which is often mis- takenly condemned under the name of Scholasti- cism. 'Scholasticism' is a forbidding word when people have not Greek enough to apprehend the significance of ax^X-^- The thirteenth century, the Middle Ages, had at least enough for that. To them, not less than to Plato and Aristotle, do we owe such notions as still persist of an organic unity in studies, of the superiority of the life of contemplation, and of a leisure which has not the wit to be idle. In a State, as in a university, the level of civilization may be accurately gauged by the way in which * edu- cated' persons use their leisure, and the ideal that is entertained concerning womanhood. Too many of our persons of leisure, a class that has been cre- ated by our enormous material wealth, have just wit enough to spend their time reclining in motor-cars or on the decks of luxurious private yachts. If we seek evidence of our reverence for women, our Par- thenon is yet to build, and we repudiate the spirit exemplified in Notre-Damc de Chartres. On occa- sion, however, we bow down to brick and stone, when the chance offers for the erection of a costly university building, while humane scholarship and 200 THE LEADEE IN SCHOLAESHIP the true means to the organization of learning — ^that is, scholars — are left unprovided. Different sight Those venerable Doctors saw of old, . . . When, in forlorn and naked chambers cooped And crowded, o'er the ponderous books they hung Like caterpillars eating out their way In silence, or with keen devouring noise Not to be tracked or fathered. Princes then At matins froze, and couched at curfew-time, Trained up through piety and zeal to prize Spare diet, patient labor, and plain weeds.^ In its later actual embodiment, the vision of Fichte was modified in part by that of Schleiermacher, a Platonist, and Wilhelm von Humboldt, who is said to have refrained from composing his memoirs', in order to save time for the study of the classics. These ex- amples of scholarly organizers are typical, if any- thing is; so is the instance of Madvig, minister of instruction in Denmark ; so is that of any one of the great scholars, Members of the Academy and profes- sors in the College de France, who, during the last fifty years, have directed the growth of education in Paris. With these patterns before us, how come we in America to believe that we may entrust the organi- zation of our schools and colleges to men who have not engaged in research, or in any way contributed to the advancement of learning, or to men who, when once they begin to multiply the formal devices of administration, give up the contemplative life, and » Wordsworth, Prelude 3. 446-457. SCHOLARS AS ORGANIZERS 201 therewith their function of real scholarly leadership, making friends with Mammon in order to secure for their institutions the things that are Caesar's? There are, and have been, notable exceptions. Woolsey at Yale was one, nor did Mammon treat him the worse for being an able scholar and teacher ; and it is easy to think of other examples, searching candles, divine lamps to all the inward parts of Leviathan. History shows that the real leaders in education are those who continually see to it that the kingdom of scholarship is within them. What now, still more definitely, is the function of the true leader of scholarship, as opposed to the osten- sible ? His office will be made clear through a restate- ment of the positions we have reached, if we include with these several other obvious truths, and illustrate here and there from the lives and opinions of some of the most eminent leaders themselves. The illustra- tions are mainly drawn from the domain of classical and mediaeval learning, and not from that of physical science, though the life of contemplation may be led there also. But the overbalance of attention which physical, biological, and economic science has chanced to obtain from the last six or seven generations should incline us to lay all the more stress upon those dis- ciplines which immediately concern the spirit of man, and which we directly associate with the term 'human- ities. ' If we may judge from the custom of language, the organizer of humane studies, especially the study of the most original literatures, will be one of the chief leaders of men, and chief contributors to a more abundant human life. Vita sine litteris est mors. 202 THE LEADER IN SCHOLARSHIP The leader of scholarship must be a scholar, as the leader of an army must be a soldier, first, last, and always. Though it is necessary for him to understand the functions of other classes, and though the head of the State cannot say to him, ' I have no need of you, ' ^ he will not relinquish the fundamental duties of his own primary office, except in dire emergency. When William the Third summoned his people to withstand Napoleon in 1812, the professors of the new University of Berlin did not lag behind, says Hoffmann, in his life of the Hellenist, August Boeckh. Fichte and Schleier- macher bore arms in the ranks, and Boeckh had com- mand of a company.^ This experience as soldier is but an episode, however, in the record of the great cap- tain of Hellenic studies, who was perhaps, all things ' Compare Wordsworth, Monies and Schoolmen (^Ecclesiastical Sonnets 2. 5) : Record we too, with just and faithful pen. That many hooded cenobites there are. Who in their private cells have yet a care Of public quiet; unambitious men. Counsellors for the world, of pierciug ken ; Whose fervent exhortations from afar Move princes to their duty, peace or war ; And oft-times in .the most forbidding den Of solitude, with love of science strong. How patiently the yoke of thought they bear! How subtly glide its finest threads along ! Spirits that crowd the intellectual sphere With mazy boundaries, as the astronomer With orb and cycle girds the starry throng. ' Hoffmann, August Boeclch, 1901, p. 28. FICHTE AT ERLANGEN 203 considered, the greatest organizer of scholarship in modern times, and who, toward the end of a career of quiet yet well-nigh incredible productivity as a writer and teacher, still described his proper motion in the words of Solon :Trjpa.(TK, 185, 277, 278 Poetics, Aristotle's 4, 93, 126, 142, 172, 253, 254, 256 Poets as students 31-44, 94, 191, 212-214, 254, 257, 262 Politics, Aristotle's 46 Polygnotus 6 Pope 32, 65, 111 n. Prceterita, Kuskin 's 86, 86 n. Praxiteles 6 Prayer Book, English 241 Prelude, Wordsworth 's 200, 214 Press, an endowed 239-248 Princeton University 269 Priscian 61 Procter 38 Prodieus 132, 134, 135 Protagoras 132-134 Proverbs, Book of 215 Province of Enqlish Philology, The, Cook's 266 Prussia 197 Psalms, the 9, 14, 32, 61, 170 Ptolemies, the 246 ' Puc-Puggy ' 145 Quiller-Couch 265 Quintilian 10, 81, 93, 94, 142, 183 Eabelais 181 Eaehel 217 Eacine 290 Eajna, Pio 258 Eaphael 12 Eeading aloud 115-118, 120 Eeading, habit of 108, 121, 174 Eeading in the home 121, 122 Reason of Church Govern- ment, Milton's 293 Eecruiting faculties, methods of 226-233 Reminiscences, Gold- win Smith's 26. 133 Eenaissance 11, 165-169, 182, 234, 246, 247, 251, 259, 262, 264 Eenan 163, 206, 207 Republic, Plato's 10, 46, 81, 125, 157, 161, 162, 277 Review of Reviews 277, 290 Revolt of Islam, Shelley's 23 Revue Critique 210 Revue Politique et LittSraire 82 n. Eewards of the teacher 102, 103, 130, 133. 139, 140, 154-156, 189-192, 214, 215, 223, 225, 239, 240, 243, 245, 246 Ehetorie 4, 130, 147, 149, 254 Rhetoric, Aristotle's 143, 149, 150 Eichardson 142 Eights and duties 88, 89, 182, 183 Eights and duties of the pupil 95-99 Eights and duties of the State 7. 102-104, 188-190, 194 Eights and duties of the teacher 94, 95 Road Song of the Bandar-log, Kipling's 55, 75 Eobertson 159 Eohde 255 Eoland, Song of 125 Eolle 63 Eoman Missionaries 59-61, 68 INDEX 319 Rome 11, 12, 14, 23, 24, 25, 39, 52, 58, 59, 61, 143, 170, 186, 263, 289 Jtomola, Eliot's 39 Rossetti 51 Root 25 Rousseau 22, 31, 82 n., 163, 168, 269, 273, 274, 276-278, 281, 284, 288, 291 Routh 249 Rufinianus 59 Runic alphabet 58 Ruskin 32, 86, 99, 141, 169, 263 Russia 258 Russians 235 Buth, Wordsworth's 23 Sainte-Beuve 169, 208 St. Andrews, University of 195 Saintine 290 Salaries, see Rewards of the teacher. Samos 6 Samson Agonistes 113, 115 San Francisco 50 Sans Famille, Malot's 290 Saracens 259 Saxons 58, 62 Scandinavia 258 Schiller 289 Schleiermacher 200, 202 Scholarship and Humanism 249 n. Scholarship and publication 196, 230, 232, 233. 239-248 Scholarship, improvement of 209, 210, 212-217, 219-248, 257-262 School, see Leisure. Schoolmaster, Ascham's 141 Schopenhauer 118 Schuylkill River 145 Scipio, Dream of 176 Scotland 269 Scott 49 Scale 33 Self-denial 17, 281, 288, 292 Self-improvement 106 Self -protection in reading 113-114 Sellar 195, 196 Seneca 13 * Senior Grecians ' 32, 33 Septuagint 178 Sequence 91, 160 Serious Call, Law's 143 Shakespeare 3, 9, 20, 21, 22, 25, 28, 32, 34, 37, 58, 63, 65, 69, 70. 94. 95, 106-108, 113- 118, 120, 122, 142, 164, 168- 170, 172, 173, 187, 191, 230, 262, 262 n., 263 n., 265, 290 Shedd 258 Shelley 11-13, 23, 66, 93, 142, 158, 159, 171, 173, 256 Shorey 111 n. Shy lock 192 Sichel 38 Sicily 5, 258 Sidney 93, 100, 141, 256 ' Simplified spelling ' 53, 54, 57 Skeat 265 SlcylarTc, To a, Shelley's 158- 160 Slang 55, 56 Smith, Goldwin 26, 133, 223 Socrates 6, 76, 81, 125, 129, 134, 135, 140, 146, 159, 160, 184, 185, 209, 220 Solon 203 Some Suggestions ah out Bad Poetry, Sichel 's 38, 38 n. Sophists, ancient and modern 128-138, 142 Sophocles 6-9, 13, 16, 37, 126, 168, 184, 295, 299 South, the 43 South Africa 53 Spectator, The 100, 101, 143 320 INDEX Speech on Conciliatiojv, Burke's 99 Spenser 20, 31, 32, 55, 58, 65, 95, 191, 243, 262, 265, 290 Stoics 10, 163 Storm, T. 289 Strindberg 227 Stubba 263 Studies in Literature, Mor- ley's 84, 297 Studies, Of, Bacon's 131 Studies of poets 31-44, 94, 191, 212-214, 254, 262 Sublime, On the, see Long- inus. Sublime and Beautiful, On the, Burke's 142 Sweden 258 Swift 55, 83, 164 Switzerland 258, 269 Symposium, Plato's 140 Symposium, Xenophon 's 86 n. Syracuse 5 Syria 2, 11, 259 I' Tacitus 32, 64 f Talleyrand 79 Tatler, The 143 Teacher and Student 128-144 Teacher (of English, etc.) 20, 21, 69, 80, 91-97, 104. 121. 137, 138, 140-144, 149, 153, 154, 159, 160, 171-173, 194, 196, 197, 215, 221-223, 227, 235, 249-266, 289, 290 Teaching and study 191, 194, 195, 197, 198, 203, 216, 217, 229-231, 233 Teaching by lectures 129, 139, 219-226, 278 Teaching of composition 26, 30-32, 35. 37-39, 57, 64, 72- 104, 149, 177 Tempest, Shakespeare's 113 Temple Classics 120 Temple Primers 120 Ten Brink 253, 260, 265 Tennyson 20, 32, 48, 49, 108, 143, 263-265 Terence 33 Thackeray 142 Thecetetus, Plato's 159 Theocritus 13, 33. 143 Theophrastus 11, 13, 142, 143 Theophrastus Such, Eliot 's 142 Theoria (contemplation) b, 157, 183, 190-193, 200, 212- 215, 217, 218 Thrace 1 Thucydides 6, 13 Tindalo 55 Tito Melema, Eliot's 39 Toledo 259 Tour de la France, Brunei's 290 Tours 259 Training of teachers 75, 94, 103, 104, 121, 153, 155, 159, 172, 255 Translations t)f the classics 18. 46, 122, 144. 160, 161, 177. 178. 294-307 Trdumereien, Leander 's 290 Troad 2 Troilus and Cressida, Shake- speare's 28, 29 Trollope, W. 33 Typesetters, influence of 53, 54 Tyrwhitt 265 Ulysses 283 Ulysses, Shakespeare's 28 Unified scholars 207, 208, 209 Unity of culture 5, 6, 60, 259, 298 University of Berlin 197, 202, 216 University of Konigsberg 262 University of St. Andrews 195 INDEX 321 Usage, Good 47-72 Usener 253 n. Valparaiso, University of 136 Varro 272 Vaughan 161 Verifying references 249 Virgil 10, 11, 24, 25, 32, 33, 38, 39, 52, 60, 143, 176, 177, 191, 262, 292 Virgil in the Middle Ages, Comparetti's 87 Vita Nuova, Dante's 165 Vulgate Bible 53, 61-63, 68, 176, 177 Wagnalls 71 Warton 111 n. Ways and Means of Improv- ing Scholarship 219-248 Webster 71 Welldon 46 Wesley, Charles 284 Wesley, John 284. 287 n. Wesley, Kezzy 287. 287 n. Wesley, Susanna 284-287 Wilhelm Meister, Goethe 's 142 William III of Prussia 202 William the Conqueror 125 Wickham 47 Woolsey 201 Wordsworth 20, 23, 32, 48, 54, 55, 57, 58, 63, 65, 74 n., 82 n., 127, 141-143, 200, 202, 211, 214, 222, 223, 250, 263-265 World's Classics 120 Wyclif 62, 63, 264 Xenophon 32, 86 n., 125, 157, 172, 173, 173 n., 174, 178, 179, 180 Yale Studies in English 261 Yale University 201, 257 Yale University Press 247 York 259 Young, Edvrard 34 n. Youth, character of 149-154, 157, 159 Zielinski 26, 46 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below mm. 2 6 191 ^jl^ {4AR 9 1958 It MAfiCd t9M ForniL-9-15w-ll,'27 J|jL2 6'S^^ LB 1025 078 CooDer - 'i'V.'O viev'S of erliip. , '.,„'",■ ^■■' — '• 1 OCT ^6 18^? — =- ,UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY AA 000 792 420 I .^.^..