VI.

ENGLISH LITERATURE.

BY THE REV. E. C. E. OWEN.

IT is hardly necessary to dwell on the value of the study of literature. It has been declared in words that illustrate the imperishable beauty which they praise by ancient and by modern writers alike: "Haec studia adolescentiam agunt, senectutem oblectant, secundas res ornant, adversis perfugium ac solatium praebent, delectant domi, non impediunt foris, pernoctant nobiscum, peregrinantur, rusticantur." "These studies are the inspiration of youth, the charm of age, an ornament in prosperity, in adversity a refuge and a solace, in public business no hindrance, a delight in private life; by night or by day, in the country or in foreign travel, they are our constant companions." If thought, he adds, were bounded by the narrow limits of existence, the mind would refuse the weariness of labour, the torture of anxiety, and even the battle of life itself. And these studies, of which Cicero speaks in his majestic Roman phrase, lead us at last to the "eternal court" into which Ruskin invites us, "with its society wide as the world, multitudinous as its days, the chosen and the mighty of every place and time." For the study of literature is indeed the key to all locks, revealing to us all the best thoughts of the best men in the best words. But there are good books and bad:

"I conceive," says Carlyle, "that books are like men's souls-divided into sheep and goats." And even among good books there is an important sub-division between what Ruskin calls "the books of the hour" and "the books of all time." And the defence for the teaching of literature is the necessity of making these distinctions, of showing what is good and what is best, and why, of instilling the love of the best, and finally of training the learner to write what, if not good literature, does not, at all events, offend against its canons, and is built on the right lines.

But it may be said, and has indeed been said again and again: "Why teach English literature? Boys should read good English books for their own pleasure out of school. Teach Greek and Latin, French and German literature by all means. So formed a boy's taste will naturally choose the good and refuse the evil in English or elsewhere."

No lover of English literature would say a word against the study of the classical writers. No one should know better than he the restraint in feeling and expression, the hatred of exaggeration, the purity of tone and phrase which is felt, a subtle but controlling influence in the poetry, for instance, of Milton and Tennyson, in the prose of Newman or Matthew Arnold. They were taught this undeniably by Greece and Rome, and not only they, but the ordinary man of culture, trained in the regular classical curriculum, has learned the same virtues from the same lips.

But the study of the classics, and the same applies in a less degree to any foreign language which is learnt for educational purposes, must be, and should be, a hard study, a study partly of minutiæ, a mental, and still more perhaps a moral discipline, an example of thoroughness. Mere facility, mere acquaintance with certain books should not be its aim.

English literature need not be studied in this way by Englishmen. It is sometimes so studied. I have seen, for instance, an edition of Carlyle's "Heroes," with a collation at the bottom of the page of every variant, mainly the presence or absence of hyphens, between different texts. But this is surely the wrong way of treating an English book. The great advantage in teaching English is that we can teach it as pure literature, with a single eye to the meaning of the author, the music of his rhythm, the force and beauty of his style, without any uneasy feeling that we are neglecting the hard facts of grammar and syntax. The difficulty of a foreign language, the constant watch for linguistic and grammatical pitfalls, distract the attention of the learner (as well as the teacher) from the literary beauty of the author, which is, besides, far easier to catch in a language whose cadences, trains of thought and phrase, are familiar from childhood.

Moreover, English literature has its own peculiarities, and the English language its special strength and weakness, its idiosyncracies of construction and form, which must be studied there or not at all. Above everything, we have to remember that the boys we are teaching will, in most cases, go to English and not to any foreign language for their future reading, and that it is a vital necessity to guide them to the right books, to teach them not to seek in Miss Marie Corelli for depth of thought, or in Mrs. Henry Wood for beauties of style.

For it must be sorrowfully confessed that most boys come to school without having had any literary training at home. Now and then we find one who has been taught by his mother to appreciate Scott and Dickens and Thackeray. He needs guidance only, and the task is usually easy. But in most cases a right taste has to be formed, and a wrong taste

eradicated. This can be done with careful teaching, but it cannot be done without.

This brings us to the question of method. Strange though it seems, English literature is a new subject in public schools. We are largely in the stage of experiment, and I would not for a moment maintain that the method advocated below is the only one or the best. But the best can most easily be found by trial and comparison. The system suggested for VI.th Form teaching is to combine a lecture on some general subject with the study of a particular book.

The lecture may deal with the different main periods of English literature, showing the special characteristics of each, and tracing the connection between them. This would naturally be spread over several terms, or, if conciseness be necessary, some leading author may be taken in each periodChaucer, Spenser, Milton, Swift, etc., as an example of its distinctive features; or the history of the world, the essay, the drama may be described. It seems good not only to illustrate by a liberal use of quotation, but to give each member of the class a good book of selections, such as Ward's English Poets, or the typical selections of English prose writers issued by the Clarendon Press, or the Oxford Treasury of English Literature, which includes both prose and poetry. Lecturing is advocated rather than the use of any manual of English literature, because to a boy the method is unusual, and for that very reason attractive. The strangeness of the method will predispose him to find an interest in the subject; he will be less inclined to treat it as one of the many sets of facts to be crammed up in the old familiar way, and more ready to think and enjoy. But it will still be necessary to examine on the lectures at stated intervals. For a boy has a wonderful capacity for listening to a discourse on a new sub

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ject with interest and even avidity, and yet in a week he will have retained no more of it than Munchausen's unfortunate steed of the water he swallowed so assiduously. The fact is that a fairly educated man has sufficient acquaintance with art, for instance, or economics, though he may have no expert knowledge of either, for a lecture on these subjects to be retained and do him permanent service. But a lecture passes over a boy's mind like thistledown over a plain of ice; there is nothing for it to catch hold of, and so it makes no permanent lodgement. This fact has to be reckoned with by those who, like "Kappa," seem to advocate the constant presentation of interesting topics spread over a very wide field.

The question arises how much of such a lecture should be devoted to biography of authors, and how much to discussions of style and literary questions proper. In dealing with boys a good deal of biography should perhaps be permitted. Canon Ainger has well and wittily said: "The two chief objects of teaching English literature are to teach us to enjoy the great writers, not to know who their maiden aunts were, and where they were born; and, secondly, to know good literature from bad when we come upon it in our own times." We may cordially agree with this, and yet make this concession to boyish weakness that, when a character has some abiding interest, or where the facts of an author's life have a real bearing on his writings, they may be given with some fulness. The lives of Milton and Byron are instances in point. The lives of others, De Quincey, Coleridge, Landor, Leigh-Hunt, have a literary flavour and charm of their own. In discussing questions of style we must not forget the small scope of the ordinary boy's acquaintance with literature. If we attempt to make elaborate distinctions, without driving them home by repeated and