Special Method in the Reading of Complete English Classics In the Grades of the Common School — Text and Context

s we must read a whole speech. A literary product is like a masterpiece of architecture. The whole must stand out in the due proportion of its parts to reveal the master's thought.

"Walk about Zion, and go round about her: Tell the towers thereof. Mark ye well her bulwarks, consider her palaces; That ye may tell it to the generations following."

To have read through with care and thoughtful appreciation a single literary masterpiece and to have felt the full measure of a master's power, is a rare and lasting stroke of culture. As children move up through the grades they may receive the strong and abiding impress of the masters of style. Let it come to them in its undiminished strength. To feel the powerful tonic effect of the best stories and poems suited to their age will give them such an appreciation of what is genuine and good in literature, that frivolous and trashy reading is measured at its true value.

The fragments and extracts with which our higher readers are filled are not without power and influence upon culture. They have given many children their first taste of the beauty and strength of literature. But it is a great mistake to tear these gems of thought from their setting in literature and life, and to jam them into the close and crowded quarters of a text-book. Why satisfy ourselves with crumbs and fragments when a full rich feast may be had for the asking?

In some cases it is said that the reading of fragments of large poems or plays has excited curiosity and led to the reading of the larger wholes. This is doubtless true, but in the greater number of cases we are inclined to think the habit of being satisfied with fragments has checked the formation of any appreciation of literary wholes. This tendency to be satisfied with piecemeal performances illustrates painfully the shallowness and incoherency of much of our educational work. If teachers cannot think beyond a broken page of Shakespeare, why should children burden themselves with the labor of thought? Charles Kingsley, in his essay on English literature, says:--

"But I must plead for whole works. 'Extracts' and 'Select Beauties' are about as practical as the worthy in the old story, who, wishing to sell his house, brought one of the bricks to market as a specimen. It is equally unfair on the author and on the pupil; for it is impossible to show the merits or demerits of a work of art, even to explain the truth or falsehood of any particular passage, except by viewing the book as an organic whole."

What would the authors themselves say upon seeing their work thus mutilated? There is even a touch of the farcical in the effort to read naturally and forcibly and discuss intelligently a fragment like Antony's speech over Cæsar.

3. The moral effect of a complete masterpiece is deeper and more permanent. Not only do we see a person acting in more situations, revealing thus his motives and hidden springs of action, but the thread of his thought and life is unravelled in a steady sequence. Later acts are seen as the result of former tendencies. The silent reign of moral law in human actions is discovered. Slowly but surely conduct works out its own reward along the line of these deeper principles of action. Even in the books read in the early grades these profound lessons of life come out clear and strong. Robinson Crusoe, Theseus, Siegfried, Hiawatha, Beauty and the Beast, Jason, King Arthur, and Ulysses are not holiday guests. They are face to face with the serious problems of life. Each person is seen in the present make-up and tendency of his character. When the eventual wind-up comes, be it a collapse or an ascension, we see how surely and fatally such results spring from such motives and tendencies. Washington is found to be the first in the hearts of his countrymen; Arnold is execrated; King Lear moves on blindly to the reward which his own folly has prearranged; Macbeth entangles himself in a network of fatal errors; Adam Bede emerges from the bitter ordeal of disappointment with his manly qualities subdued but stronger. Give the novelist or poet time and opportunity, and he is the true interpreter of conduct and destiny. He reveals in real and yet ideal characters the working out in life of the fundamental principles of moral action.

4. A classic work is often a picture of an age, a panoramic survey of an historical epoch. Scott's "Marmion" is such a graphic and dramatic portrayal of feudalism in Scotland. The castle with its lord, attendants, and household, the steep frowning walls and turrets, the moat, drawbridge, and dungeon, the chapel, halls, and feastings, the knight clad in armor, on horseback with squire and troop,--these are the details of the first picture. The cloister and nuns, with their sequestered habits and dress, their devotion and masses, supply the other characteristic picture of that age, with Rome in the background. The court scene and ball in King James's palace, before the day of Flodden, the view of Scotland's army from the mountain side, with the motley hordes from highland and lowland and neighboring isles, and lastly, the battle of Flodden itself, where wisdom is weighed and valor put to the final test,--all these are but the parts of a well-adjusted picture of life in feudal times on the Scottish border. There is incidental to the narrative much vivid description of Scotch scenery and geography, of mountain or valley, of frowning castle or rocky coast, much of Scotch tradition, custom, superstition, and clannishness. The scenes in cloister and dungeon and on the battle-field are more intensely real than historical narratives can be. While not strict history, this is truer than history because it brings us closer to the spirit of that time. Marmion and Douglas stand out more clear and lifelike than the men of history.

Although feudalism underwent constant changes and modifications in every country of Europe, it is still true that "Marmion" is a type of feudal conditions, not only in Scotland, but in other parts of Europe, and a full perception of Scott's poem will make one at home in any part of European history during feudal times. As a historical picture of life, it is a key to the spirit and animating ideas that swayed the Western nations during several centuries. It is fiction, not history, in the usual sense, and yet it gives a more real and vivid consciousness of the forces at work in that age than history proper.

While the plot of the story covers a narrow field, only a few days of time and a small area of country, its roots go deep into the whole social, religious, and political fabric of that time. It touches real history at a critical point in the relations between England and Scotland. It is stirred also by the spirit of the Scotch bard and of minstrelsy. It shows what a hold Rome had in those days, even in the highlands of Scotland. It is full of Scotch scenery and geography. It rings with the clarion of war and of battle. It reveals the contempt in which letters were held even by the most powerful nobles. Oxen are described as drawing cannon upon the field of Flodden, and in time these guns broke down the walls of feudalism. As a historical picture Marmion is many-sided, and the roots of the story reach out through the whole fabric of society, showing how all the parts cohere. Such a piece of historical literature may serve as a centre around which to gather much and varied information through other school and home readings. Children may find time to read "Ivanhoe," "The Crusades," "Roland," "Don Quixote," "The Golden Legend," "Macbeth," "Goetz von Berlichingen," etc. They will have a nucleus upon which to gather many related facts and ideas. It should also be brought into proper connection with the regular lessons in history and geography. History reveals itself to the poet in these wonderfully vivid and lifelike types. In many of these historical poems, as "William Tell," "Evangeline," "Crusoe," "The Nibelung Song," "Miles Standish," the "Odyssey," "Sohrab and Rustum," some hero stands in the centre of the narrative, and can be understood as a representative figure of his times only as the whole series of events in his life is unrolled.

Where the study of larger literary wholes has been taken up in good faith, it has brought a rich blessing of intelligent enthusiasm. Even in primary schools, where literary wholes like "Hiawatha," "Robinson Crusoe," and the "Golden Touch" are handled with a view to exploit their whole content, there has been a remarkable enrichment of the whole life of the children. Such a treatment has gone so deep into the problems and struggling conditions of life delineated, that the children have become occupied with the tent-making, boat-building, spinning, and various constructions incident to the development of the story.

5. If it is true, as clearly expressed by strong thinkers in the most various fields of deeper investigation, that many of the chief literary products that have come down to us from former ages are the only means by which we can be brought into vital touch and sympathy with the spirit and motives then ruling among men; if it is equally true that children will not grow up to the proper appreciation and interpretation of our present life, except as they have experienced, in thought and interest at least, the chief struggles and motives of our fathers,--we may find in these historic and literary materials the deep and living springs of true education for children.

The thought of the educative power of this ancestral literature has been forcibly expressed by many eminent writers.

Scudder, in "Literature in School," says:--

"There is the element of continuity. In the Roman household there stood the cinerary urns which held the ashes of the ancestors of the family. Do you think the young ever forgot the unbroken line of descent by which they climbed to the heroic founders of the state? In the Jewish family the child was taught to think and speak of the God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob. In that great succession he heard a voice which told him his nation was not of a day. It is the business of the old to transmit to the young the great traditions of the past of the country; to feed anew the undying flame of patriotism.

"It is this concentration in poetry and the more lofty prose which gives to literary art its preciousness as a symbol of human endeavor, and renders it the one essential and most serviceable means for keeping alive the smouldering coals of patriotism. It is the torch passed from one hand to another, signaling hope and warning; and the one place above all others where its light should be kindled is where the young meet together, in those American temples which the people have built in every town and village in the country."

Mabie, in "Books and Culture" (pp. 88, 89-113), says:--

"Now, it is upon this imperishable food which the past has stored up through the genius of great artists that later generations feed and nourish themselves. It is through intimate contact with these fundamental conceptions, worked out with such infinite pain and patience, that the individual experience is broadened to include the experience of the race."

"The student of literature, therefore, finds in its noblest works not only the ultimate results of race experience and the characteristic quality of race genius, but the highest activity of the greatest minds in their happiest and most expansive moments. In this commingling of the best that is in the race and the best that is in the individual, lies the mystery of that double revelation which makes every work of art a disclosure, not only of the nature of the man behind it, but of all men behind him. In this commingling, too, is preserved the most precious deposit of what the race has been and done, and of what the man has seen, felt, and known. In the nature of things no educational material can be richer, none so fundamentally expansive and illuminative."

Emerson, in his "Essay on History," says:--

"The advancing man discovers how deep a property he has in literature,--in all fable as well as in all history. He finds that the poet was no odd fellow who described strange and impossible situations, but that universal man wrote by his pen a confession true for one and true for all. His own secret biography he finds in lines wonderfully intelligible to him, dotted down before he was born. One after another he comes up in his private adventures with every fable of Æsop, of Homer, of Hafiz, of Ariosto, of Chaucer, of Scott, and verifies them with his own head and hands.

"The beautiful fables of the Greeks, being proper creations of the imagination and not of the fancy, are universal verities. What a range of meanings and what perpetual pertinence has the story of Prometheus! Besides its primary value as the first chapter of the history of Europe (the mythology thinly veiling authentic facts, the invention of the mechanic arts and the migration of colonies), it gives the history of religion with some closeness to the faith of later ages."

"Thus in all ways does the soul concentrate and reproduce its treasures for each pupil. He, too, shall pass through the whole cycle of experience. He shall collect into a focus the rays of nature. History no longer shall be a dull book. It shall walk incarnate in every just and wise man. You shall not tell me by languages and titles a catalogue of the volumes you have read. You shall make me feel what periods you have lived. A man shall be the Temple of Fame. He shall walk, as the poets have described that goddess, in a robe painted all over with wonderful events and experiences; his own form and features by their exalted intelligence shall be that variegated vest. I shall find in him the Foreworld; in his childhood the Age of Gold; the Apples of Knowledge; the Argonautic Expedition; the calling of Abraham; the building of the Temple; the Advent of Christ; Dark Ages; the Revival of Letters; the Reformation; the discovery of new lands; the opening of new sciences, and new regions in man."

6. It is not intended to limit the reading of the schools to the longer classics, such as "Snow-Bound," "The Vision of Sir Launfal," and Webster's Bunker Hill speech, etc. There are also many shorter poems and stories, ballads, and myths, that are equally good and stand out as strong, complete expressions of thought such as Tennyson's "Brook," Longfellow's "Village Blacksmith," Whittier's "Barefoot Boy," and many others. These shorter pieces should be interspersed among the longer, and freely used to give greater variety and zest to reading exercises. Many of the finest literary products of the language are found in these shorter poems and stories. They also should be studied for the beauty and unity of thought contained in each.

7. But the _sustained power_ gained from the full and rich study of longer classics is the best fruitage of the reading work. Every term of school should lead the children into the full appreciation of one or more of these masterly works. The value of such study is well expressed by Scudder in his "Literature in Schools" (pp. 54-56):--

"The real point of practical reform, however, is not in the preference of American authors to English, but in the careful concentration of the minds of boys and girls upon standard American literature, in opposition to a dissipation over a desultory and mechanical acquaintance with scraps from a variety of sources, good, bad, and indifferent. In my paper on 'Nursery Classics in School,' I argued that there is a true economy in substituting the great books of that portion of the world's literature which represents the childhood of the world's mind for the thin, quickly forgotten, feeble imaginations of insignificant bookmakers. There is an equally noble economy in engaging the child's mind, when it is passing out of an immature state into one of rational, intelligent appropriation of literature, upon such carefully chosen classic work as shall invigorate and deepen it. There is plenty of vagrancy in reading; the public libraries and cheap papers are abundantly able to satisfy the truant: but it ought to be recognized once for all that the schools are to train the mind into appreciation of literature, not to amuse it with idle diversion; to this end, the simplest and most direct method is to place before boys and girls for their regular task in reading, not scraps from this and that author, duly paragraphed and numbered, but a wisely selected series of works by men whom their country honors, and who have made their country worth living in.

"The continuous reading of a classic is in itself a liberal education; the fragmentary reading of commonplace lessons in minor morals, such as make up much of our reading-books, is a pitiful waste of growing mental powers. Even were our reading-books composed of choice selections from the highest literature, they would still miss the very great advantage which follows upon the steady growth of acquaintance with a sustained piece of literary art. I do not insist, of course, that 'Evangeline' should be read at one session of the school, though it would be exceedingly helpful in training the powers of the mind if, after this poem had been read day by day for a few weeks, it were to be taken up first in its separate thirds, and then in an entire reading. What I claim is that the boy or girl who has read 'Evangeline' through steadily has acquired a certain power in appropriating literature which is not to be had by reading a collection of minor poems,--the power of long-sustained attention and interest."

8. The study of literary wholes, whether longer or shorter, in the common school is based upon the notion that the full, rich thought of the author is the absorbing purpose of our effort. Literature is a reservoir of mental refinement and riches, for the gaining of which we can afford to sacrifice many things and make many even good things subordinate. The words of the wise man in recommending wisdom to the sons of men are not inappropriate: "Hear; for I will speak of excellent things and the opening of my lips shall be right things, and wickedness is an abomination to my lips. Receive my instruction and not silver; and knowledge rather than choice gold. For wisdom is better than rubies; and all the things that may be desired are not to be compared to it."

To get at the wisdom of the best thinkers of the world, so far as it is accessible to children, is the straightforward aim of such study. The teachers of reading, if they but realized it, are the guardians of a temple more beautiful than the Parthenon in the days of Pericles, more impressive than the sacred towers and porticos at Jerusalem; they are the custodians of a treasure far more rich and lasting than that in any palace of a king. Such comparisons, indeed, are almost belittling to the dignity of our subject. How noble and vast is the temple of literature! What single mind can grasp its proportions or the boundless beauty of its decorations? Moreover, it is a living temple, ever springing up afresh, in all its pristine strength and beauty, whereever minds are found reverent, studious, and thoughtful.

9. The old proverb suggests that we "beware of the man of one book," and is significant of a strong practical truth. Our modern life demands a somewhat broader basis of operations than one book can furnish. But a few of the great books, well mastered, give the main elements of strength.

Mabie has a short chapter on the "Books of Life" which "include the original, creative, first-hand books in all literatures, and constitute in the last analysis a comparatively small group, with which any student can thoroughly familiarize himself. The literary impulse of the race has expressed itself in a great variety of works of varying charm and power, but the books which are fountain-heads of vitality, ideas, and beauty are few in number."