Part 2 (1/2)

Ruskin's ”Sesame and Lilies.” The power and charm of Ruskin's writing appears in full measure in these essays.

Carlyle's ”Heroes and Hero Wors.h.i.+p,” especially the chapters on ”The Hero as Poet,” and ”The Hero as Man of Letters.”

Sh.e.l.ley's ”Defence of Poetry” (edited by Cook, and published by Ginn & Co.) is a literary masterpiece of rare beauty and charm.

Emerson's ”Essay on History.”

George Willis Cooke, ”Poets and Problems” (Houghton, Mifflin, & Co.).

The first chapter, ”The Poet as Teacher,” is very suggestive, while the chapters on Tennyson, Ruskin, and Browning are fine introductions for those who will study the authors themselves.

”The Book Lover,” James Baldwin (McClurg & Co.).

Charles Kingsley's ”Literary and General Essays” (Macmillan & Co.).

Chapter on ”English Literature,” and others.

Scudder's ”Literature in Schools” (Houghton, Mifflin, & Co.). Excellent for teachers.

J. C. Shairp, ”On Poetic Interpretation of Nature” (Houghton, Mifflin, & Co.).

Matthew Arnold's ”Sweetness and Light.”

Lowell's ”Books and Libraries” (Houghton, Mifflin, & Co.).

Edmund Clarence Stedman's ”The Nature and Elements of Poetry” (Houghton, Mifflin, & Co.).

It is not implied that even the essays of critics on the merits of literature can take the place of a study of the works of the best writers.

CHAPTER II

THE USE OF MASTERPIECES AS WHOLES

With the increasing tendency to consider the literary quality and fitness of the reading matter used in our schools, longer poems and stories, like ”Snow Bound,” ”Rip Van Winkle,” ”Hiawatha,” ”Aladdin,”

”The Courts.h.i.+p of Miles Standish,” ”The Great Stone Face,” and even ”Lady of the Lake” and ”Julius Caesar,” are read and studied as complete wholes. Many of the books now used as readers are not collections of short selections and extracts, as formerly, but editions of single poems, or kindred groups, like ”Sohrab and Rustum,” or the ”Arabian Nights,” or ”Gulliver's Travels,” or a collection of a few complete stories or poems of a single author, as Hawthorne's ”Stories of the White Hills,” or Lowell's ”Vision of Sir Launfal,” and other poems. Even the regular series of readers are often made up largely of longer poems and prose masterpieces.

The significance of this change is the deeper regard which is being paid to good literature as a strong agency of true culture. The real thought and the whole thought of the best authors is sought for, presupposing, of course, that they are within the range of the children's comprehension. The reading books of a generation ago contained oftentimes just as choice literary materials as now; but the chief purpose of its selection was to give varied exercise in oral reading, not to cultivate a taste for good literature by furnis.h.i.+ng complete poetic and prose specimens for full and enthusiastic study. The teachers who lay stress on elocutionary skill are not quite satisfied with this drift toward literary study as such. It remains to be seen how both aims, good oral rendering and superior literary training, can be secured at the same time.

At the close of the last chapter of this volume we give a carefully selected series of the literary materials adapted to the different grades. This body of selections, taken from a wide range of literature, will const.i.tute a basis for our whole treatise. Having made plain by our previous discussion what we understand by the quality of literary masterpieces, we will next consider why these poems and stories should be read and studied as complete wholes, not by fragments or by extracts, but as whole works of literary art.

1. A stronger interest is developed by the study, for several weeks, of a longer complete masterpiece. The interest grows as we move into such a story or poem as ”Sohrab and Rustum.” A longer and closer acquaintance with the characters represented produces a stronger personal sympathy, as in the case of Cordelia in ”King Lear,” or of Silas Marner. The time usually spent in school upon some cla.s.sic fragment or selection is barely sufficient to start up an interest. It does not bring us past the threshold of a work of art. We drop it just at the point where the momentum of interest begins to show itself. Think of the full story of Aladdin or Crusoe or Ulysses. Take an extract from ”Lady of the Lake,”

”Rip Van Winkle,” ”Evangeline.” The usual three or four pages given in the reader, even if taken from the first part, would scarcely suffice to bring the children into the movement of the story; but oftentimes the fragment is extracted from the body of the play without preliminary or sequence. In reading a novel, story, or poem, we do not begin to feel strongly this interest till two or three chapters are pa.s.sed. Then it begins to deepen, the plot thickens, and a desire springs up to follow out the fortune of the characters. We become interested in the persons, and our thoughts are busy with them in the midst of other employments or in leisure moments. The personality of the hero takes hold of us as that of an intimate friend. Such an interest, gradually awakened and deepened as we move into the comprehension of a work of art, is the open sesame to all the riches of an author's storehouse of thought.

This kind of interest presupposes in the children the ability to appreciate and enjoy the thought, and even the style, of the author.

Interest in this sense is a fundamental test of the suitableness of the story or poem to lay hold of the inner life of the children. In many cases there will be difficulties at the outset in awakening this genuine form of interest, but if the selection is appropriate, the preparation and skill of the teacher will be equal to its accomplishment.

As we get deeper into the study of masterpieces, we shall discover that there are stronger and deepening sources of a genuine interest. Even the difficulties and problems which are supposed to dampen interest will be found, with proper study, to be the source of a stronger appreciation and enthusiasm. The refining and strengthening of these interests in literature leads on steadily to the final goal of study, a cultivated taste and habit of using the best books.

2. A complete work of a master writer is a unit of thought. It is almost as complete a whole as a living organism. Its parts, like the branches of a tree, have no vitality except in communication with the living trunk. In the ”Vision of Sir Launfal,” there is a single thought, like a golden thread, running through the poem, which gives unity and perfection to it. The separate parts of the poem have very great intrinsic beauty and charm, but their deeper and more vital relation is to this central thought. The story of ”The Great Stone Face” is the grouping of a series of interesting episodes along the path of a single developing motive in the life of Ernest. A great writer would scarcely waste his time in trying to produce a work of art without a controlling motive, collecting his thought, as it were, around a vacuum. This hub-thought must become the centre of all intelligent study. The effort to unravel the motive of the author is the deeper stimulus of thoughtful work by both teacher and pupils.

In other studies, like geography, history, and natural science, we are gradually picking out the important units of study, the centres of thought and interest, the types. This effort to escape from the wilderness of jumbled and fractional details into the sunlit region of controlling ideas, is a substantial sign of progress in the teacher's work. In literature these units have been already wrought out into perfect wholes by first-cla.s.s thinkers.