Aims of Literary Study - Courson

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THE AIMS OF LITERARYSTUDY


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wwwHE AIMS OF LITERARYSTUDY

BYHIRAM CORSON, LL.D.

Professor ofEnglish Literature in the Cornell Univer-sity : author of ^ An Introduction to the Study ofRobert Browning's Poetry^ 'An Introduction

to the Study of Shakespeare,' ' A Primerof English Verse, chiefly in its /Esthetic

and Organic Character,' etc.

MACMILLAN AND COMPANYAND LONDON

1895

All rights reserved


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Copyright, 1894,By MACMILLAN AND CO.

Nothjaoli l^ressJ. S. Gushing & Co. Berwick & Smith.

Boston, Muss., U.S.A.


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PREFATORY NOTE.The main portion of the ^natter con-

tained i?i this little book, was contributedto Poet-Lore, to the editors of which mythanks are due for kind permission toreprint it here. In the opening sectionI have repeated much of an Address foa graduating class of the Ogontz School,entitled ' What Does, what Knows,what Is.'

H. C.


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The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life. Si. Paul.Truth is within ourselves; it takes no riseFrom outward things, whate'er you may be-

lieve :There is an inmost centre in us all,Where truth abides in fulness; and around,Wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in.This perfect, clear perception which is truthA baffling and perverting carnal meshBlinds it, and makes all error : and ' io know 'Rather consists in opening out a wayWhence the imprisoned splendor may escape,Than in effecting entry for a lightSupposed to be without. Browning's 'Paracelsus'

We teach and teachUntil, like drumming pedagogues, we loseThe thought that what we teach has higherendsThan being taught and learned. Augusta Webster.

6


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THE AIMS OF LITERARYSTUDY.

T^O the aged John of Patmos, inRobert Browning's *A Death in

the Desert,' is attributed the doctrineof the trinal unity of man, ' Howdivers persons ' (the word being usedin the sense of parts played),

How divers persons witness in each manThree souls, which make up one soul: first,

to wit,A soul of each and all the bodily parts,Seated therein, which works, and is whatDoes,

And has the use of earth, and ends the manDownward; but, tending upward for advice.Grows into, and again is grown, into

7


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8 THE AIMS OFBy the next soul, wHich, seated in the brain,Useth the first with its collected use,And feeleth, thinketh, willeth, is what Knows:"Which, duly tending upward in its turn.Grows into, and again is grown intoBy the last soul, that useth both the first,Subsisting whether they assist or no.And, constituting man's self, is what IsAnd leans upon the former, makes it play,As that played off the first : and, tending up,Holds, is upheld by, God, and ends the manUpward in that dread point of intercourse,Nor needs a place, for it returns to Him.What Does, what Knows, what Is; three souls,

one man.

In Mrs. Browning's 'Aurora Leigh,'Aurora says to Romney :

life, you've granted me.Develops from within. But innermostOf the inmost, most interior of the interne,God claims his own, Divine humanityRenewing nature, . . .


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LITERARY STUDY. 9There must be but an infinitesimally

small part of our absolute being whichcomes to consciousness in this life,however much we may be educated,in the common acceptation of thatword, and however extended our out-ward and our inward experiences maybe. Back of our conscious and activepowers, is a vast and mysterious domainof unconsciousness but a domainwhich is, nevertheless, our true being,and which is unceasingly influencingour conscious and active powers, and,as it is rectified or unrectified, moreor less determining us to act accord-ing to absolute standards, or accordingto relative, conventional, and expedientstandards.

The rectification or adjustment of


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lO THE AIMS OF

that which constitutes our true being,should therefore transcend all otheraims of education, however importantthese may be. In comparison withthis rectification or adjustment, thestores of knowledge which the acquisi-tive faculty may heap up, and thesharpening of the intellect, sink intocomparative insignificance.The condition under which our souls

silently * shape themselves to whateveris, spiritually speaking, most shapely,outside of ourselves, is, that we attainto what Wordsworth calls ' a wise pas-siveness.' It is a thing to be attainedto, and a very difficult thing to beattained to, especially in these daysof stress and strain in temporal mat-ters. A wise passiveness. The epithet


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LITERARY STUDY. II' wise ' means wise in heart ; and awise passiveness I understand to bequite synonymous with the Christianidea of humiUty that is, not a self-depreciation, but, rather, a spontaneousand even unconscious fealty, an un-swerving loyalty, to what is spirituallyabove us. That is humihty. In thepoem in which the phrase occurs('Expostulation and Reply'), thepoet says :

The eye it cannot choose but see;We cannot bid the ear be still;

Our bodies feel, where'er they be,Against, or with our will.

Nor less I deem that there are PowersWhich of themselves our minds impress;

That we can feed this mind of oursIn a wise passiveness.


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Think you, 'micf all this mighty sumOf things forever speaking,That nothing of itself will come,

But we must still be seeking?

*The eye, it cannot choose but see;but it sees according to what we areit is in the service of our essentialselves. 'We cannot bid the ear bestill; * but it hears according to whatwe are; it is in the service of ouressential selves; and according as ouressential selves are shapely or un-shapely, the eye and the ear reportof the shapely or the unshapely.

Blessed be William Wordsworthamong teachers, and rectifiers of thehuman spirit.The rectification or adjustment ofthe *what Is,' I repeat, should tran-


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scend all other aims of education,however important these may be.The acquisition of knowledge is agood thing ; the emendation andsharpening of the intellect is a goodthing; the cultivation of science andphilosophy is a good thing; but thereis something of infinitely more impor-tance than all these it is, the recti-fication, the adjustment, through thatmysterious operation we call sympathy,of the unconscious personality, thehidden soul, which cooperates withthe active powers, with the consciousintellect, and, as this unconsciouspersonality is rectified or unrectified,determines the active powers, the con-scious intellect, for righteousness orunrighteousness.


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14 THE AIMS OFAnd this fact neds to be enforced,

and will need to be enforced, for along time yet to come, judging fromthe present state of the educationalworld, namely, that it is only throughthe 'what Is' that the 'what Does'and the *what Knows,' can be recti-fied or adjusted. Attempts at a directrectification or adjustment of these,must be more or less failures. NoTractatus de emendatione intellectus willavail much which ignores the deter-mining power back of the intellect.

That all spirit is mutually attrac-tive, as all matter is mutually attrac-tive, is an ultimate fact beyond whichwe cannot go, and which we mustaccept as a fact. And it is on thisfact, that the rectification of the 'what


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Is ' must be based. Spirit to spirit.'As in water face answereth to face,so the heart of man to man.' (Prov-erbs xxvii, 19.) And here we areat the very basal fact of Christianity a religion which is only incident-ally a doctrine only incidentallyaddressed to the 'what Knows; ' it is,first of all, a religion whose impreg-nable fortress is a divine personalityin whom all that is spiritually poten-tial in man was realized. Whateverattacks may be made upon the origi-nal records of Christianity, upon theaugust fabric of the Church, with itscreeds and dogmas, and formularies,and paraphernalia, this fortress willstand forever, and mankind will for-ever seek and find refuge in it.


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1 THE AIMS OFThe Church, th|j)ugh the centuries,

has been kept alive, not by the letterof the New Testament, for the letterkilleth, but by a succession of sancti-fied spirits, 'the noble Living and thenoble Dead, ' through whom the Christspirit has been transmitted, whose'echoes roll from soul to soul, andgrow forever and forever.'When Christ said 'Follow me,' headdressed the 'what Is ' in human

nature. Follow me, not from anintellectual apprehension of principlesinvolved in my life, but through deepsympathy, through the awakening,vitalizing, actuating power of incar-nate Truth; through a response ofyour spiritual nature to mine; and in,and by, and through, that response,


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your essential life will be brought intoharmony with, and carried along by,the spiritual forces of the world, andthus conducted by them to the king-dom of eternal truth within yourselves.To sharpen the intellect, the 'what

Knows,' without rectifying the 'whatIs,' is a dangerous thing dangerousto the individual dangerous to soci-ety. The results of it we see everyday, and read of in the newspapers,in the actions of smart men of ourcountry men who can falsify bankaccounts, and appropriate large sumsof other people's money to their ownuse; who use high political positionsfor purely selfish ends, and serve theprince of darkness in various ways.These men have had a good educa-


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1 THE ALMS Oftion, as it is ctlled; some of them,it may be, are graduates of colleges,who have carried off the most covetedprizes. They have been, perhaps,instructed in the intellectual evidencesof Christianity, which are no evi-dences at all; but we find that all thisavails not for righteousness.

In the following pages I shall speakparticularly of poetry, as a means ofeducating the 'what Is ' poetry,which Wordsworth has defined as *thebreath and finer spirit of all know-ledge, the impassioned expressionwhich is in the countenance of allscience. ' In poetical study, the basalprinciple of spirit to spirit must beall-controlling; to it, all other featurespf the study must be subordinated.


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We can know a true poem only sofar as we can reproduce it sympa-thetically within ourselves in otherwords, we know it to the extent towhich our own spirits respond to thespiritual appeal which it makes to us.The spiritual appeals which are

made by every form of art, be it incolor, in sound, in stone, in poetry,or whatever may be the mediumemployed, must be responded todirectly, immediately (in the literalsense of the word), or not at all.Of course, the extent of the responsemay be indefinitely increased. Butthere must be, to begin with, a direct,immediate response, however limitedit may be. There's no roundaboutway to such appeals. The inductive


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method is not applicable to spiritualmatters. The very word, induction,is absurd, in connection with thespiritual. It belongs exclusively tothe intellectual domain.

If we apply the insulated intellectto a poem, as is done in the methodscalled 'thorough,' in which attentionis given to all things (and some others)except the one thing needful, theresult being 'as if one should beignorant of nothing concerning thescent of violets, except the scentitself,' if we apply the insulatedintellect to a poem, I say, we getonly the definite thought which articu-lates it. The indefinite spiritual ele-ment which every true poem musthave, and which constitutes its real


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life, as a poem, we can know onlywhen our own spirits respond to it,and then we may be said to know itmore vitally than we know the defi-nite, intellectual element of it; for itis a matter of inward consciousness,and there is nothing more vital andpositive than that. The 'what Ishas been reached and called forth, tosome extent.The meaning of the word 'know'

needs to be extended. It is toomuch confined to the conclusions ofthe discursive understanding. I haveoften heard it said, once heard aprominent divine say, that we cannotknow spirit. Why, really, there isnothing we can know better. Spirit-ual consciousness is certainly a more


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vital kind of knowledge than any wecan have of material things.In these days of the almost un-

limited monarchy of the 'what Knows,'in our schools, the greatest and mostdifficult problem to be solved (and Ifear that professional educators aremost in the way of its solution), is,how to secure a better balancing thannow generally exists of the intellectualand the spiritual man. And whenthis problem shall have been success-fully solved, and the results of itssolution shall have become general(and it is within the possibilities ofthe future that they may), there willthen be a civilization more linkedwith the eternal, because proceed-ing more from the 'what Is ' of the


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LITERARY STUDY. 23human kingdom, and therefore amore Christian civilization than thatin which we are living a civiliza-tion such as the world has never yetknown.


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I ITERATURE, more especially po-etic and dramatic literature, is

the expression in letters of thespiritual, cooperating with the intel-lectual, man, the former being theprimary, dominant coefficient. Thisdefinition, it is presumed, will beaccepted by every cultivated personwho has experienced, to any extent,that is, responded to, and assimilated,the informing life of any great liter-ary product, poetic or dramatic. (Inthe spiritual is meant to be includedthe whole domain of the emotional, thesusceptible or impressible, the sympa-thetic^ the intuitive; in short, the


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absolute in man, the Svhat Is,' that,by and through which man holds rela-tionship with the essential spirit ofthings, as opposed to the phenomenalof which the senses are cognizant, andwhich the intellect then sets in order classifies under systematic forms.)The inference is, therefore, easy,

as to what should be the leading aimof literary study that literature isnot a mere knowledge subject, as theword knowledge is usually understood,namely, that with which the discurs-ive, formulating intellect has to do.But it is a knowledge subject (onlythat and nothing more) if that higherform of knowledge be meant, which isquite outside of the domain of theintellect a knowledge which is a


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matter of spiritual consciousness andwhich the intellect cannot translateinto a judgment. It is, nevertheless,at the same time, the most distinctand vital kind of knowledge.

But in the prevailing methods ofliterary study, it can hardly be dis-puted, the intellectual or secondaryfactor has precedence is, indeed,almost exclusively taken into account;and the consequence is, that studentsare shut off from the higher and moreeducating factor. And there is evena worse state of things than this, inmany schools: the intellectual factor(which may be said to articulate thespiritual) is itself largely excludedby technical study, or by a study ofdetails which rests within itself,


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When a teacher has himself^assimi-lated the informing spiritual life of awork of genius, he is not likely to bedisposed to taper his instruction intothe merely technical, still less to keepthe minds of his students occupiedwith details, and these, too, con-sidered apart from the general vitalityto which they may contribute. Butvery many of those who conduct liter-ary studies in the schools, have notthemselves assimilated the informingspiritual life of the works studied;and they are, in consequence, liableto become, by reason of the kind ofstudy to which their unfitness obligesthem to resort, mere Gradgrinds who,like their prototype, Thomas, the iron-monger, in Dickens's novel of 'Hard


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2 8 THE AIMS OFTimes,' are disposed even to dis-parage the subtler metal of the spirit,with all its quickenmg power. Withliterature as a power they have noth-ing to do; its value with them con-sists in its furnishing material forvarious kinds of drill which dealwith things quite apart from whateverconstitutes the power of any work ofgenius.

In the study of a great literaryproduct, details must come last mustcome after there has been an adequateresponse to the informing life of thework. Then, when details are con-sidered, the student is, to some extent,prepared to feel what they contributeto the general vitality. (I, of course,suppose a work which has an organic


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LITERARY STUDY. 29unity, with no superfluous, unorgan-ized elements. It would not otherwisebe a great literary product.) To be-gin with details, as is often (in theschools, generally) done, requires thatthey be studied per se, and such studymust be utterly 'vain and impotent,'so far as their relationship to thewhole structure is concerned. Detailsare lifeless considered apart from 'theatmosphere that moulds, and thedynamic forces that combine.'

Another feature of the literary workof schools which is often made toomuch of, is the study of Histories ofEnglish Literature and of the relationsof literary masterpieces to the periodsin which they were produced. Allworks of genius render the best ser-


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30 THE AIMS OFvice, in literary education, when theyare first assimilated in their absolutecharacter. It is, of course, importantto know their relations to the severaltimes and places in which they wereproduced; but such knowledge is notfor the tyro in literary study. Hemust first know literature, if he isconstituted so to know it, in its abso-lute character. He can go into the'philosophy ' of its relationship's later,if he like, when he has a true literaryeducation, and when the 'years thatbring the philosophic mind ' havebeen reached. Every great produc-tion of genius is, in fact, in its essen-tial character, no more related to oneage than to another. It is only in itsphenomenal character (its outward


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manifestations), that it has a specialrelationship. (See Note i.)

Such a little book, of two or threedays' reading, as Stopford Brooke's'Primer of English Literature ' thestudent might read through a numberof times, in order that the literaturebe mapped out in his mind, andauthors be located as to time (SeeNote 2); but Histories of Literaturecannot do much for literary education,which must come first, and which, inits true sense, is a spiritual education,and this, no amount of mere literaryknowledge or literary history, will, ofitself, induce. It must be inducedon the basis of what is permanent andeternal of what is independent oftime and place.


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32 THE AIMS OFMost undergraduates in our colleges

and universities are not prepared forany historical treatment of the litera-ture. As a preparation for this, theyshould first know, in the true sense of* know ' which I have indicated, theleading productions along the wholeline of the literature from Chaucer tothe present time, and have a feelingof its historical current.Those features of a work of genius

which reveal the special influences oftime and place (and they are, ofcourse, common to all works of gen-ius) are, more or less, adventitious,do not constitute a part of its essen-tial, informing vitality. That mustcome from the absolute personality ofthe author; it is that which maintains


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LITERARY STUDY. 33a hold upon the interests of mankind,and it is that which it should be theleading object of literary study toassimilate. "Tis life, for which wepant; more life, and fuller, that wewant,' or ought to want, if we don't.'I came,' said the divine life-giver,'that men might have life, and have itabundantly.' He meant, of course,the absolute life of the spirit; andit is this absolute life which greatproductions of genius may, in theirdegree, give, or rather awaken in thesoul, if the right attitude toward thembe taken.

Mrs. Browning, in her 'AuroraLeigh,' speaks of great poets as 'theonly truth-tellers, now left to God,

the only speakers of essential truth,c


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34 THE AIMS OFopposed to relative, comparative, andtemporal truths; the only holders byHis sun-skirts, through conventionalgrey glooms; the only teachers whoinstruct mankind, from just a shadowon a charnel-wall, to find man's verit-able stature out, erect, sublime, themeasure of a man, and that's themeasure of an angel, says the apostle.'One may know all the relations of a

work of genius (such, for example,as Dante's 'Divina Commedia ') totime and place, may have traced outall the contemporary influences whichwere exerted upon its author, and yethe may not know, in any true sense,the work itself. He may have themere scholar's knowledge of it. Pro-fessor Brandl, in his valuable Life of


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LITERARY STUDY. 35Samuel Taylor Coleridge, traces theinfluences of other works which thepoet was under in the composition of'The Ancient Mariner' and 'Christa-bel.' These influences it is interest-ing enough to have so traced; but toknow these two poems (each uniqueof its kind, in English poetry) asmanifestations of the poet's absolutegenius, to assimilate that in themwhich insures them a permanency ofvitality, is quite a different thing.What is miscalled the Philosophy of

Literature (true philosophy must bebased on the absolute) and regardedas of great, of prime importance,indeed, in literary study, in some ofour institutions of learning, especiallythose which have been most German-


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36 THE AIMS OFized, namely, the relations of worksof genius to their several times andplaces, should jather be called thePhysiology of Literature. The modein which genius manifests itself, atcertain times, in certain places, andunder certain circumstances, may beexplained to some extent; but thegenius itself cannot be explained.Environments stimulate or suppress,they do not, and cannot, make genius that exceptional spiritual constitu-tion of a man which brings him intoa more intimate relationship with theessential world than men in generalare brought. The genius of Shake-speare cannot be explained by thecircumstances of the age of Elizabeth.That age was the most favorable,


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LITERARY STUDY. 37perhaps, in the history of the world,for the exercise of dramatic genius.But there had first to be the dramaticgenius to be acted upon and broughtinto play. There were many otherdramatists of the time, as favorablycircumstanced as was Shakespeare;more favorably circumstanced, in-deed, than he; but they were allinferior to him in the constitution oftheir genius, and consequently in whatthey produced. None of them hadthe deep sense of the constitution,the eternal fitness, of things whichShakespeare had (as is clearly shownby their productions); and that deepsense was due to the greater vitalityof his essential being which he broughtwith him, potentially, into the world,


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38 THE AIMS OFwhich he possessed independently ofall the influences of his time andplace {how he possessed it, we cannotget at), and which these influencesafterwards only brought into play.There was but one Chaucer, in the

14th century, and he still ranks amongthe greatest of English poets in hisown peculiar domain is superior tothem all.The great poetic genius is a vara

avis in terris, who can be fostered,but not made, by his age. His agedetermines more or less the mode inwhich he manifests his power; butthe essential life of what he producesmust come from his own absolutebeing.

Genius is genius. And it makes


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LITERARY STUDY. 39its appearance in uncivilized as wellas in civilized life. It is in thehuman constitution, all the elementsof which will assert themselves inindividuals, some time or other, how-ever much these elements may begenerally suppressed. The humanspirit is a complexly organized, indi-vidualized divine force, which in mostmen is 'cabined, cribbed, confined,'and, in consequence, more or lessquiescent; only in a very few does itattain to an abnormal quickeningsuch a quickening as leads to a moreor less direct perception of truth, whichis a characteristic of genius. Butthere have always been men, in alltimes and places, and in all condi-tions of life, whose spiritual sensitive-


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40 THE AIMS OFness has been exceptional men whohave served as beacons to their fel-lows. It is the spiritual sensitivenessof the few which has moved the massof mankind forward the few, en-dowed with ^the vision and the facultydivine.' * Where there is no vision,the people perish' (Proverbs, xxix,1 8). The intellect plays a secondarypart. Its place is behind the instinc-tive antennae which conduct alongtheir trembling lines, fresh stuff for theintellect to stamp and keep freshinstinct for it to translate into law.The exceptional spiritual sensitive-

ness which characterizes men of gen-ius, makes them more susceptible andresponsive to the permanent, theeternal, than are other men. We


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LITERARY STUDY. 4cannot make a genius by education, buteducation should be conducted genius-ward ; the 'what Is ' should, at least,feceive as much consideration as the'what Knows' or the 'what Does.'This is the condition, the indispens-able condition, under which a limitedresponse is secured to the creations ofgenius. It cannot be secured by anexclusive exercise of the 'what Knows,'in its analytic mode of activity. AndI would add, that a sympathetic and,therefore, a synthetic response must,in some measure, be given to a crea-tion of genius, before the analyticalfaculty has or can have anything todo. And unless conscious analysisfinally bloom into unconscious syn-thesis, it fails of its end.


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42 THE AIMS OFA large class of people, in these

days (I speak from my own prettylong experience), are pleased to havea great concrete creation translatedinto the barren abstract a creationwhich might do something for theirsouls, if they would take the rightattitude toward it, if they would beobedient to its Merai/oetre. The lan-guage of the intellect has becometheir vernacular; and accordingly theymust have the concrete, which is thevernacular of genius, translated intotheir vernacular, the abstract, beforeit mean anything to them.What is understood by scholarship,

in these days, may be, often is, agreat obstacle to the truest and highestliterary culture. German literary and


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LITERARY SITJDY. 43philological scholarship has certainlybeen a very great obstacle.

Let us have the most thorough andthe most exact scholarship possible;but, if such scholarship be made anend to itself, it may prove a decidedevil to him who makes it an end toitself; for his own intellectual andspiritual life is more or less subordi-nated to it, and he is in danger ofbecoming desiccated into a Dr. Dryas-dust. 'Is not the life more than thefood, and the body more than theraiment? *

It requires a man of exceptionallystrong powers to bear great acquire-ments without being weighed downby them. Where one of great ac-quirements does not possess strong


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44 THE AIMS OFasserting and resisting powers, thedegeneracy which may be, and oftenis, induced by aa uncontrolled scholar-ship, manifests itself, in many cases,through a piddling analysis which hasno end beyond itself. That is a quitereliable symptom of such degeneracy.One can get deeply interested inalmost anything the most insignificant,if he keep at it long enough to bringhimself down to it, even in second-hand postage stamps. Where theintellectual and spiritual powers arestrongly vital, their dominant ten-dency is toward synthesis toward* bringing together what else were dustfrom dead men's bones, into the unityof breathing life. ' The more intensea man's intellectual and spiritual life


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LITERARY STUDY. 45becomes, the more he demands thatexercise of his powers induced bythe organization of manifold elements elements fused by the alchemy ofthe imagination into a new and livingwhole, whose synthesis calls forth thatharmonious energizing of the soulwhich constitutes its highest life anddelight.


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A GREAT impulse has, of lateyears, been imparted to the study

of the English language and litera-ture, and that study has been intro-duced into all our institutions oflearning, from the highest down tothe lowest grade; and in most of ourColleges and Universities it is repre-sented by a special professor. Text-books on the English language abound,and so do Manuals and Histories ofEnglish Literature, and elaboratelyannotated editions of selected worksof classic authors, poetical and prose.Methods are discussed ad nauseam,almost, in school institutes and educa-


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LITERARY STUDY. 47tional conventions, and the opinionsof prominent educators are solicitedby journals of education, as to thebest thing to be done for the studyof English.

But the question is far from gratui-tous whether all the means so strenu-ously employed for the end in view,prove correspondingly efficient. Theycertainly do not. The evidencesagainst such result are too strong toleave much faith in the means em-ployed. And the grand defect ofthose means may be said to be, thatthe language and its literary products-are not sufificiently studied as livingorganisms. Words are too muchstudied as completely significant indi-viduals^ and the study of literary


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48 THE AIMS OFproducts is too much devoted to theiraccidents^ and not enough, scarcely atall, indeed, to their sudstances. Per-haps it is not a rash statement tomake, that many teachers think it theprime business of scholastic disciplineto deal with accidents. In the wordsof Chaucer,

Thise cookes, how they stampe, and streyne,and grynde,

And turnen substaunce into accident

!

The lamentable ignorance of themother tongue which prevails in thelower schools, and not much less inthe Colleges and Universities, willnot be remedied by the study oftext-books on the language, nor byany amount of technical instruction


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LITERARY STUDY. 49imparted by the teacher. There is,at present, a superabundance of suchstudy and such instruction; but theresults are certainly very far/Ifromgratifying. Little or no vital know-ledge of the language is imparted oracquired by these means, and what-ever susceptibility to literature anystudent might otherwise have, is moreor less deadened by petty details,grammatical, philological, and other,and irrelevant matters of every kind,which drink up all the sap of themind {ojnnem sucum ingenii bibunt, asQuintilian says of the treatises onrhetoric, in his time), make impos-sible all continuity of thought andfeeling, and shut off all syntheticappreciation. Here is, no doubt, one


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50 THE AIMS OFexplanation of the very limited stockof thought which many students pos-sess, after havings been for severalyears at school. It would seem that-thought were not an object in 'liter-ary ' exercises, to say nothing offeeling, but formulae and technicalknowledge of various kinds. Studentsare taught methods, but comparativelyfew attain unto the proposed objectsof the methods, which objects areoften lost sight of, altogether, in thegrind to which they are subjected.

It is the merest truism that theleading aim in the teaching of Eng-lish should be, i. to enlarge thestudent's vocabulary, and, 2. to culti-vate a nice sense of the force ofwords which constitute a large pro-


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portion of every language, whosemeanings are not absolute, but rela-tive and conditional, being variouslymodified and shaded according totheir organization in the expressionof thought and feeling; and, 3. (thesole end of i and 2), to speak andwrite good live English, of the bestverbal material and texture, andclosely fitting the thought which itclothes. John Philpot Curran oncesaid of an advocate whose languagewas too big and sounding for histhought, 'it will never do for a manto turn painter merely on the strengthof having a pot of colors by him,unless he know how to lay them on.

These three things can be secured(the capacity for them being postu-


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52 THE AIMS OFlated) only through an extensive andsympathetic reading of good authors,the subject-mattei being made theprime object, and the ne quid nimisbeing strictly observed in incidentalinstruction, that the student's thoughtand feeling be not kept disintegrated.

It is in their social life, so tospeak, that a large proportion ofwords must be known, to be trulyknown. As solitaries, they are moreor less opaque, reflect no variety ofhue, do not come into relation withfeeling. Their radical ideas may belearned from dictionaries, and theseare all that the mere word-monger,who makes words an end to them-selves, may know of them. Theymust be variously organized in the


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LITERARY STUDY. 53expression of thought and feelingbefore all their 7?ioral potentialitiesare brought out.

Take, for example, the word 'moral,

'

just used, and see the variety of shadeand extension of meaning it admitsof, as illustrated by the passages citedfrom various authors, in the CenturyDictionary. Or take the common word'even,' adjective and adverb, as usedby Shakespeare, whose varied force,derived from context, is so well setforth and illustrated in Dr. Alexan-der Schmidt's 'Shakespeare-Lexicon.'Shakespeare, as a great expresser, oneof the greatest of whom we haverecord, knew, and had to know, wordsin their social life, or, rather say, intheir inherent capabilities of social


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54 THE AIMS OFlife; for he first brought out, in avery large number of words, thosecapabilities. He caused them to takeon a variety of coloring according totheir relationships. But this varietyof coloring cannot be adequatelypresented, really cannot be presentedat all, in definitions, however precisethey may be. It can be presented onlyin the passages in the plays in whichsuch words occur. Apart from thepassages which illustrate their change-able hues, definitions are barren.

Such an author as Washington Irv-ing, whose matter is always interest-ing, always delightful, indeed, andwhose use of language is so unaffectedand free from strain, would be excel-lent for young students. Through


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LITERARY STUDY. 55such an author, their vocabulary couldbe enlarged in a most pleasing way,and they could hardly, unless verystupid, get false impressions of mean-ing, from the author's nice use ofwords. They could also be more orless unconsciously impressed as to thepeculiar domains of the Anglo-Saxonand the Latin vocabularies of the lan-guage; for Irving' s writings exhibiteverywhere the influence upon hisvocabulary of his subject and purpose.According as any composition of hisis keyed, so to speak, is there agreater or less proportion of Latin orAnglo-Saxon words. It would be hardto find a Latin word used where itsSaxon equivalent, if there is one,would be preferable, or vice versa.


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56 THE AIMS OFBetter is it than a mere conformityto the general advice so often given,to use Saxon woi;ds in preference tothose of Latin origin, to have a nicesense of the peculiar domains of thesetwo chief elements of the language;and this nice sense can be bestderived from the reading of authorswho wrote unaffectedly and with anunerring feeling of those domains.

Furthermore, and more than all^students who should read sympatheti-cally all of Irving' s works, with therequisite guidance and inspirationfrom the teacher (and a teacher with-out inspiring power should have noth-ing to do with conducting literarystudies) could hardly help beingwholesomely influenced by the genial


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LITERARY STUDY. 57personality of the author which every-where informs them. And inspiringpower must come from an author's ora teacher's beings and not from hisbrain.

Being is teaching, the highest, theonly quickening mode of teaching;the only mode which secures thatunconscious following of a superiorspirit by an inferior spirit of akindled soul by an unkindled soul.* Surely,' says Walt Whitman,Surely whoever speaks to me in the right

voice, him or her I shall follow,As the water follows the moon, silently, with

fluid steps anywhere around the globe.And so, to get at the being of a greatauthor, to come into relationship withhis absolute personality, is the highest


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58 THE AIMS OFresult of the study of his works. Ihave just said, par parenthese, that ateacher without inspiring power shouldhave nothing to do with conductingliterary studies. The teacher whounites in himself a fulness of intel-lectual and spiritual vitality, in whomthe 'what Knows' and the Svhat Is'work harmoniously together, is anepistle known and read of all hisstudents. The young are quicker,often, to discover such vitality, or thewant of it, than adults are. After arecitation or a lecture, they feel theirfaculties refreshed or dulled, accord-ing to the vitality or non-vitality oftheir teacher. The inspiring powerof personality is quite as much neededin scientific teaching. Many are the


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LITERARY STUDY. 59men still living, in whom the greatnaturalist, Professor Louis Agassiz,continues to live, in this world. Andthey are far superior as naturalists byreason of what he elicited from themof the Svhat Is.' He thus broughtthem into a deeply sympathetic rela-tionship with the animal kingdoma relationship which is the conditionof sagacious insight.

I have named Irving as peculiarlyadapted to the ends stated; but Eng-lish and American literature, it neednot be said, abounds in material,poetical and prose, equally excellent,equally informed with the personali-ties of their authors, and fitted forall grades of students in the lowerschools.


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6o THE AIMS OFFor range of power, for great

diversity of subject, for poetic, philo-sophic, and logica^ cast of mind, fordepth of feeling, for an inspiringvitality of thinking, for periodic andimpassioned prose which, runningthrough the whole gamut of expresrsion, is unequalled in English Litera-ture, no more educating author couldbe selected for advanced students thanThomas De Quincey. A good educa-tion in the language as a livingorganism, could be got through hiswritings alone; and his wealth andvitality of thought and feeling couldhardly fail, unless opposed by extra-ordinary obtuseness, to excite andenliven, and strengthen the best facul-ties of thought and feeling in any


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reader. How much a student mightdo for himself, by loyally reading allof De Quincey's Works, as they arepresented in Dr. Masson's edition!And by loyally reading, I do notmean accepting everything as gospel,but reading with an undivided intentmind and open heart; in short, givingthe best of himself to the author, forthe time being.

Students do not do enough for them-selves, in these days of vast educa-tional machinery. They for the mostpart confine themselves to the pre-scribed work of the schools. Theyare, in fact, obliged to do this, inorder to keep up with the heterogene-ous class work imposed upon them,and to prepare for examinations.


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62 THE AIMS OFThey have so much to gobble up that,to turn aside to read, in a genial,sympathetic way, a great inspiringauthor, as they should be encouraged,and allowed an opportunity, to do, isquite impossible. The school bill offare, with moral dyspepsia in its wake,must be gone through with, matcoelum,A distinguished Greek professor

told me, some time ago, that he hadgreat difficulty in inducing even hismost advanced students, to read Greekauthors outside of the prescribedcourse, and added that when he wasa boy, at College, he and others ofhis class, would arrange to read amongthemselves large quantities of Greekliterature, without the knowledge of the


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LITERARY STUDY. 63professor. I fear such things are butrarely done in these days, not becausestudents are less earnest than theyonce were (they were never moreearnest, perhaps, than they are atpresent); nor because the best pro-fessors are less inspiring, but becausethey have not the requisite leisure.The one prime object, I iterate,

to be always kept in view, is, that theminds and feelings of students beoccupied with the subject-matter, andbe diverted from that as little as pos-sible. It may seem to many culti-vated people, who are not conversantwith the 'literary' exercises of theschools, at the present time, that toinsist upon making the subject-matterthe prime object, is quite gratuitous,


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64 THE AIMS OFsuch object being with them a thingof course. But it is very far frombeing gratuitous. There is nothingin literary study which needs so much,at the present time, to be insistedupon. It is perhaps not going toofar to say that, in the literary studyof the schools, the subject-matter isgenerally subordinated to, and itsvirtue quite nullified by, verbal andsyntactical exegesis, and other school-master things, which are dealt withfor their own sake.

It is through the subject-matter,too, that the interest of students canbe best maintained (young people arealways interested in whatever has lifein it, which cannot be so truly saidof some of their teachers): and if so


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maintained, whatever incidental in-struction may be called for (and tobe called for, it must be relevant tothe subject-matter), will tell the betterupon them. But even if relevant, itmust not be allowed to divert thecurrent of thought and feeling intostanding pools.By a close adherence to the subject-

matter, a love of thought would in timebe induced. There are many learnedpeople who have not attained, withall their learning, to a love of thought.And one may be painfully learned andyet have an unkindled soul. I haveknown * good ' students who were de-cidedly averse to thought. They pre-ferred exercising their minds, or,rather, indulging their minds, in the

E


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66 THE AIMS OFminutiae of literary scholarship whichdemanded little or no mental grasp.They were very laborious in doingnothing. *

(By subject-matter, I should be-fore have explained, I do not mean,simply, the articulating thought of aliterary production, poetical or prose,but all that is embodied in the organicshapings of the language the expres-sion, in its fullest sense, some ofwhich is addressed to, and must beapprehended by, the intellect, someof which is addressed to the suscep-tible nature, and must be sympa-thetically assimilated; in short, theauthor's whole meanings intellectualand spiritual.)

Again, reading must not be done


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LITERARY STUDY. 6^in expectation of an examination ondetails. The teacher might talk withhis class familiarly, and encourage theclass to talk, about their readingits subject-matter, of course. Hecould thus get a sufficient estimateof their varied appreciation, to gradethem (if that were necessary); but heshould not directly 'examine' them,to determine what each should be'marked,' on a scale of ten, or ahundred, or any other scale whichmight be adopted in the school.They would then read for the ex-amination, and would thus be moreor less shut off from some of thebest influences which might otherwiseact upon them.

Examinations are the bane of liter-


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68 THE AIMS OFary study^ for the reason that theylargely determine the character of thisstudy, in the schools. They 7nustdeal specially, if not exclusively, withthe definite, with matters of fact, andthese are accordingly made the mainsubject of study. Examinations ona play of Shakespeare, have generallynothing to do with the play as a play,with the dramatic action, with theartistic expression in its highest sensethey are rather examinations on Eliza-bethan English, and de omnibus rebuset quibusdam aliis, except the play.But, as Hamlet says, in quite anotherconnection, 'the play's the thing.'The opinion is prevalent among

educators, that clear, definite, intel-lectual conceptions are the only meas-


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ure of true education; and that in-definite impressions, in order to beeducating, must be intellectualized asfar as possible; that truly to knowreally means this. On the contrary,it may be maintained, that in thedomain of the spiritual (and to thisdomain the higher literature primarilybelongs), it is all important thatindefinite impressions, derived, forexample, from a great creation ofgenius, should long be held in solu-tion (to use a chemical figure), andnot be prematurely precipitated intobarren judgments which have noquickening power. They then ceaseto have a spiritual action. One shouldbe well charged with a great author,through long, sympathetic, 'wisely pas-


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70 THE AIMS OFsive' reading of his works, before anyattempt be made at defining, formu-lating, precipitating, which 'refuse thesoul its way.' Bftt the tendency isstrong in the other direction sostrong as to lead to the attempt to'make square to a finite eye the circleof infinity.' In this respect, thesquaring of the circle has not yetbeen given up.We must long inhale the choralatmosphere of a work of genius before

we attempt, if we attempt at all, anyintellectual formulation of it; whichformulation must necessarily be com-paratively limited, because genius, asgenius, is transcendental, and there-fore outside of the domain of theintellect. The human spirit can be


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LITERARY STUDY. 7 I

educated only through the concreteand the personal; and these may besaid to constitute the vernacular lan-guage of genius. But if this language,in our educational systems, be trans-lated into the abstract, into the lan-guage of the intellect, so far as it canbe, its proper function is defeated.The spiritual man is not responsiveto the abstract. The word must be-come flesh in order to be spirituallyresponded to. The response of theintellect to the abstract, does notquicken.The intellect should be trained andhabituated to clear, distinct, and ade-

quate conceptions concerning all thingsthat are objects of clear conceptions.But it must not be unduly fostered to


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72 THE AIMS OFthe benumbing of the spiritual facul-ties. That such benumbing oftenresults from such cause, is unquestion-able. The most practical education (but

this, so considered, preeminentlypractical age does not seem to knowit) is the education of the spiritualman; for it is this, and not theeducation of the intellectual man,which is, must be (or Christianity hasmade a great mistake) the basis ofindividual character; and to individ-ual character (not so much to institu-tions, to the regulations of society, tothe State, to moral codes) humanitychiefly owes its sustainment.

There have been men who were, intheir time and place, regarded as


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LITERARY STUDY. 73wholly unpractical. Nobody could seewhat they were good for in this world.But they really were the most practicalmen of their generation the mostpractical by reason of their contribu-tions to the spiritual life of the world.The Lord promised Abraham that

he would spare Sodom for the sake offifty righteous men, and that he wouldnot destroy it for lack of five of thosefifty, of ten, of twenty, of thirty, offorty. (Genesis, xviii, 26-32.)

Perhaps, at the present day, thereare cities which might spiritually becalled Sodoms, and which are savedfrom destruction by as small a numberof the righteous (in Hebrew phrase,those to whom the Lord speaks, orwith whom the Lord is). These are


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74 THE AIMS OFmore than men of sharpened intellects.They have that which is representedas the one source of strength for allthe heroes of Hebrew history. TheLord is with them; that is, theirjr//n//rectification has brought theminto a greater or less degree of har-mony with the divine immanence.To return now from this digression,

and drop down to the suspended sub-ject of examinations: this is the greatobjection to them in literary study,that they must necessarily be based onthe intellectually definite elements ofa literary work on the intellectualarticulation of it and they thusnecessarily induce an exclusive atten-tion on the part of students, to theseelements, and shut them off, more or


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LITERARY STUDY. 75less, from the life of the work studied.The time must come, it is perhaps inthe far future, when literary examina-tions will be through vocal interpreta-tion which will reveal the extent of astudent's assimilation of the intellec-tually indefinite elements of a literarywork. But there will then have to behigher ideals of vocal culture than theeducational world, at the present time,can boast of.

I have been present at literary ex-aminations which brought out answers,acceptable indeed to the examiners,but which no more evidenced thestudents' knowledge of the works onwhich they were examined, than theboy Bitzer's definition of a horse, inthe 2d Chapter of Dickens's 'Hard


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76 THE AIMS OFTimes,' evidenced that he knew any-thing of the noble animal he defined,though it was entirely satisfactory toThomas Gradgrind, the examiner onthe occasion, who believed that 'factsalone are wanted in life. Plant noth-ing else, and root out everything else : '

* Quadruped. Graminivorous. Fortyteeth, namely, twenty-four grinders,four eye-teeth, and twelve incisive.Sheds coat in the spring; in marshycountries, sheds hoofs, too. Hoofshard, but requiring to be shod withiron. Age known by marks in mouth.

Hereupon, Mr. Gradgrind said topoor little Sissy Jupe, who had beenasked to define a horse, but who, inher trepidation, could not, 'Now, girlnumber twenty, you know what a horse


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LITERARY STUDY. 77is.' Yes, she did know, with a ven-geance, if her knowledge was derivedfrom Bitzer's definition.

Let it not be understood that thereis implied in the foregoing remarks,any depreciation of grammatical, phil-ological, rhetorical, or any other kindof instruction for which the workstudied affords material. Philology,on its higher planes, is a greatscience, one of the greatest, indeed,which has been developed in moderntimes. But it is a science. It is notliterature. And in literary study, theonly true object of which is to takein the life of the work studied, thatobject must not be defeated by theteacher's false notions of thorough-ness, which result in his obtruding


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78 THE AIMS OFupon the student's attention all man-ner of irrelevant things, even to theutter exclusion of the one thing need-ful. The irrelevant things may havetheir importance, but they must alsohave their proper time and place. Aman of reputed wisdom once said, 'toeverything there is a season, and atime to every purpose (or matter)under the heaven.' It is not inseason, for example, for a teacher,while pretending to study, with aclass, a poem, as a poem, to

chaseA panting syllable through time and space,Start it at home, and hunt it in the dark,To Gaul, to Greece, and into Noah's ark.

And yet such unseasonable things aredone, in these philological days, in


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LITERARY STUDY. 79the name of literary study. If thepoem were studied merely as a monu-ment of the language, and the studywere called philological, there wouldbe no objection thereto. But whenphilological study sails under falsecolors, it does a wrong to what mustcertainly be considered the higherstudy, upon which it should never beobtruded, when that study is goingon, except where its services are reallyin requisition; and they rarely are, instrictly literary study. All the philo-logical knowledge which may reallybe needed, can be found in Webster'sInternational, The Century, Skeat'sEtymological, or any other good dic-tionary in present use.When a student perfectly under-


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8o THE AIMS OFstands a familiar word, in a poem, orany other composition he may bereading, to obtrude its etymology,however interesting it may be, uponhis attention, is an impertinence pureand simple. For example, every civi-lized, English-speaking boy or girlknows what a sofa is. In the follow-ing passage from Cowper's Task (BookI. w. 86-88),

Thus first necessity invented stools,Convenience next suggested elbow chairs,And luxury the accomplished Sofa last,

the word 'accomplished,' as usedhere, really needs explanation; but intwo different editions of *The Task,'in my library, prepared for the use ofthe young, no explanation is given of


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LITERARY STUDY. 8

it, but in both, the Arabic originof 'sofa' is given, in one the ques-tion is asked what other words inEnglish have been derived from theArabic, and in the other, the studentis required to explain 'accomplished.'In the name of all that is reasonable,what has the young student to do withwords of Arabic origin, while he isreading Cowper's Task? Uncalledfor, wholly unnecessary information isobtruded upon the student's attention,and an explanation is required of himwhich it was the business of the editorhimself to give.The true aim of culture is to induce

soul states or conditions, soul atti-tudes, to attune the inward forces tothe idealized forms of nature and of

V


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82 THE AIMS OFhuman life produced by art, and notto make the head a cockloft for stor-ing away the trumpery of barrenknowledge, a greediness for whichmay increase, does often increase, astrue intellectual and spiritual vitalitydeclines. ' Parva leves capiunt animos. '

Literary knowledge and literary cul-ture are two quite distinct things sodistinct that a student may possess alarge fund of the one, and be almostdestitute of the other. He may beable to answer any question askedhim on English literary biography,or history, or the cheap philosophyof English literature presented in histext-book, or on ten thousand otherthings merely incident to the litera-ture, without ever having truly assimi-


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LITERARY STUDY. 8;^lated any single poem or impassionedprose composition; for assimilation,in such case, is largely a spiritualprocess. Such acquirement has, byitself, no more to do with literaryculture, in its strict sense, with thequickening of sensibility, suscepti-bility, impressibility, with a cultiva-tion of an instinctive sense of beautyand deformity, with that aestheticsynthesis which every true literary artproduct demands (and, in fact, anyother form of art product, whether insound, in color, or stone), than aknowledge of all the contents ofguide-books to the great picture-galleries of Italy has to do with anadequate appreciation, that is, assimi-lation, of any one of the masterpieces


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84 THE AIMS OFcontained in these galleries. Theart-student who takes one picture tohis heart, does more than he whocrams himself with histories of artand palavering guide-books. Theseare all well enough in their way, asare Manuals and Histories of Litera-ture; but when they are made to takethe place of, and entirely to exclude,the means and processes by andthrough which alone true culture canbe reached, if reached at all, they areworse than useless, for they tend tobenumb, more or less, the facultiesaddressed by art.

Fortunately, much of the finestgenius of our day is employing prosefiction as its most efficient instrumentand form; and students who, in their


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regular literary studies are fed onhusks, can turn, and, it is to behoped, many of them do turn, in theirleisure hours, to great novels whicbjwhile being intensely interesting, areinstinct with the poetic, are informedwith intellect, heart, and conscience,and often grapple with the most se-rious questions of life and destiny.

In studying a poem with a class ofstudents a poem, not the materialwhich it may afford for other kindsof study one very important aim ofthe teacher should be, to keep theminds of the class up as near aspossible to 'the height of the argu-ment' to the height of the poet'sthought and feeling, and to guardagainst lowering the temperature of


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86 THE AIMS OFtheir minds and feelings with chillingcommonplace. With this aim, heshould carefully avoid loosening, soto speak, more than is absolutely nec-essary, the close poetic texture of thelanguage; for it is all important thatthe student should become accustomedto think and feel, as far as he is able,in the idealized language of the higherpoetry 'that condensed presentationof thought which leaves a large mat-ter impressed on the mind by avery small number of happily-assortedwords.' If this condensed presenta-tion of thought is all resolved, for thesake of making it more easily compre-hended, the student might as wellstudy plain prose of the loosest tex-ture, so far as his poetical culture is\


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LITERARY STUDY. 87concerned. Poetry should be appre-ciated as directly as possible throughits own language, and not through aresolution of that language into thelanguage of prose. It is only bymeeting as directly as possible theelliptical energy of thought intensifiedby feeling, that the best play of thestudent's powers is induced. Hismind will, in time, attain to thattension which will cause it to springover the chasms of a great poet'sexpression instead of bridging them.


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88 THE AIMS OF

TN annotated editions of poems, de-signed for the use of schools, the

word 'supply ' should but rarely appearin the notes. But it crops out every-where in the analysis-run-mad systempursued by some editors. The stu-dent is everywhere told to supply thisand to supply that. Every ellipsis isfilled out, every metaphor is resolvedinto a simile or elaborate comparison,or the student is asked so to resolveit, every Quos ego is completed bygiving what the speaker would prob-ably have said if he had not beeninterrupted, or had not interruptedhimself, as Neptune did when he felt


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he was losing, through indignation,his self-control, and thought it best tocompose himself as well as the agi-tated waves {jjuos ego sed tnotosprcestai componere flucius).

The habit is thus induced and con-firmed of reading the language ofpoetry as a foreign language, that is,by mentally resolving it into the moreloosely-textured, more familiar, lan-guage of prose.

Ellipses and interruptions andchecked utterances are really a part ofthe poetic or dramatic expressionitself.

Macbeth, in his soliloquy ('If itwere done when 'tis done,' etc., A. i.S. vii.), omits, in his great eagernessfor news when Lady Macbeth enters,


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90 THE AIMS OFthe last word of the sentence he isuttering, and this omission has a dra-matic effect which would be lessenedif the last word were supplied:

I have no spurTo prick the sides of my intent, but onlyVaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itselfAnd falls on the other How now ? Whatnews ? (See Note 3.)

It is hard even for the best qualifiedand most judicious editor of poetry,to observe the ne quid nimis^ in hisannotations. He may be engaged bya publishing firm to prepare an edi-tion of some poem, for an adequatecompensation, and he may desire thatthe publishers be satisfied as to thequantity of editorial matter they getfor their money. And so, where the


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subject-matter, for some distance, doesnot need elucidation, he will betempted, in order that no page gowithout its notes, to introduce un-called for etymologies, and other mereobstructions to the current of thestudent's thought and feeling.

Students are often required, in theschools, to write out paraphrases ofpoems an exercise very much to becondemned. It is a very old exer-cise, but it is certainly none the betterfor being old. It prevents the mindfrom becoming conformed to the con-triving spirit of poetic genius, asexhibited in the elliptical and, whollyrelatively speaking, inverted construc-tion of poetic language.

I have in my library 'The first six


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92 THE AIMS OFbooks of Milton's Paradise Lost, ren-dered into grammatical construction;the words of the text being arranged,at the bottom oi each page, in thesame natural order with the concep-tions of the mind; and the ellipsisproperly supplied, without any altera-tion in the diction of the poem. . . .Designed for the use of our mosteminent schools, and of private gen-tlemen and ladies; and also of for-eigners of distinction, who wouldread this admirable poem with un-derstanding and taste. By the lateJames Buchanan, author of the Brit-ish Grammar, etc. . . . Edinburgh:I773-'To read the Paradise Lost in such

an edition would be almost as bad


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LITERARY STUDY. 93as to read it in the 'emended' textof Dr. Bentley's edition, with all its'wild and unfeeling corruptions.'

'The words of the text,' says thetitle of Buchanan's Milton, 'beingarranged ... in the same naturalorder with the conceptions of themind.

'Natural,' as applied to the orderof words in a sentence, is a purelyrelative term, the order being largelydetermined by the degree to whichthought is impassioned or unimpas-sioned. What is really meant by the' natural ' order of words, in a sen-tence, in any language, is that whichis the usual order; but an unusualorder, due to the intensifying effectupon the mind, of strong feeling, is


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94 THE AIMS OFcertainly no less natural it is, so tospeak, more highly natural. We aremore familiar with the natural on thelower planes. The question shouldbe whether the so-called inversions(and whatever other features maycharacterize the diction of the higherpoetry and differentiate it from thatof plain, unimpassioned prose), beorganic, that is, be inseparable fromthe expression; and if so, they are'natural' just as natural as theorder of the plainest prose. Theyare the result of formative feeling,and they should be received by themind of the reader in their organiccharacter, otherwise the special effectresulting from the construction of thelanguage is lost. The effect of


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LITERARY STUDY. 95Back to thy punishment,

False fugitive, and to thy speed add wings,Lest with a whip of scorpions I pursueThy lingering,

is quite different from that of 'Falsefugitive, go back to thy punishment,and add wings to thy speed, lest Ipursue thy lingering with a whip ofscorpions,' as Buchanan puts it, inwhat he calls 'the same natural orderwith the conceptions of the mind.'The 'natural ' order, then, is a vari-

able order, depending largely upon thepitch of the mind and the feelings.The order of the words of the angel

announcing the fall of Babylon (Rev.xiv, 8, and xviii, 2), is more 'naturalin the Greek, and in the Latin of theVulgate, than it is in the King James's


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96 THE AIMS OFversion, as it expresses more distinctlythe dominant idea in the mind of theangel"ETcaev eirea-e Ba/3i;Xei>i' ij fieydXyj,Cecidit, cecidit Babylon ilia magna,Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city

(xiv, 8),Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen (xviii, 2)

.

The Revision gives what is, underthe circumstances, the more * naturalorder

Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great.

This, then, is the conclusion of thewhole matter: organic forms of lan-guage, to be educating^ must be directlyapprehended by the mind, and not be^


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LITERARY STUDY. 97It is all important that in early life

concrete standards of poetry be im-planted in the mind and feelingsstandards in the form of passages fromthe great Masters of Song, in whichspiritualized thought has reached theultimate limits of expression, thethought and the feeling having takenon forms which are inseparable fromthemselves. Abstract standards, inestimating poetry, are of but littleworth, if, indeed, they are worth any-thing. And people who need defini-tions of poetry, are generally peoplewho have not experienced much ofthe thing itself. With those whohave, poetry is poetry, and there anend.Anyone who, when a child, had hisG


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98 THE AIMS OFmemory well stored with passagesfrom the great poets, and who, later,more fully assimilated them, haswithin himself a^standard far morereliable than any abstract standardshe may have been taught a standardwhich he will more or less spontane-ously and unconsciously apply, in hisreading of poetry, according as thatstandard has become a part of him-self. The poets whose triumphantexpressions he has lovingly assimi-lated, live in hiniy according to hisassimilating capacity, and he need notconsult any objective narrowly formu-lated law, as he has, to a greater orless degree, the higher law which isbeyond formulation, within himself.


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T TOW is the best response to theessential life of a poem to be

secured by the teacher from the stu-dent? I answer, by the fullest inter-pretative vocal rendering of it. (Andby 'fullest' I mean, that the vocalrendering must exhibit not only thedefinite intellectual articulation orframework of a poem, through empha-sis, grouping, etc., but must, throughintonation, varied quality of voice,and other means, exhibit that which isindefinite to the intellect. The latteris the main object of vocal rendering.A product of the insulated intellectdoes not need a vocal rendering.


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lOO THE AIMS OFOn the part of the teacher, two

things are indispensable: i. that hesympathetically assimilate what con-stitutes the real lif of the poem, thatis, its spiritual element as distin-guished from the intellectual; 2. thathe have that vocal cultivation de-manded for a complete and effectiverendering of what he has assimilated.He may be able to lecture very bril-liantly about poetry, even about poetrywhich he has not taken to himself; hemay, indeed, have but superficially readwhat he is lecturing about; his lecturemay be largely a rehash of the criti-cism which has gathered around acertain poem, and his hearers maybe charmed with his fine talk andmade to feel that they have been


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introduced in a very pleasant wayto the poem on which he has lect-ured, and that they really know it.If he is a skilful analyst, he canthe more readily convince them thathe has put them in possession of thepoem, when the fact is, they don'tknow it at all in its real life.

If the two indispensable conditionsI have mentioned a sympathetic as-similation on the part of the teacher,and the vocal cultivation demanded fora full and effective rendition of whathe has assimilated if these indispen-sable conditions be not met, he hasfailed in his duty to his students. Hemay not know and they may not know,that he has failed in his duty.


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I02 THE AIMS OFLecturing about poetry does not,

of itself, avail any more, for poeticalcultivation, than lecturing about musicavails, of itself, fpr musical cultiva-tion. In both cases, the lecturing isvaluable to the extent to which vocalor instrumental interpretation is intro-duced, and in the way of giving shapeto, or organizing, what has previouslybeen felt, to some extent, on the partof the hearers; but lecturing must nottake the place of inward experience.When the high ideal of vocal culture

presented in Dr. James Rush's 'Phi-losophy of the Human Voice,' shallhave been generally realized in theeducational world, there can then besome hopes entertained of securingthe best results of literary study in


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the schools. A literary examinationmay then be made to mean some-thing. The student instead of beingcatechised about the merely intellec-tual articulation of a poem, the occa-sion of its composition, the influenceswhich the poet was under when hecomposed it, its vocabulary, and athousand other things, will be requiredto render it, in order that he mayshow, through his voice, to what extenthe has experienced it within himself,responded to and assimilated what theintellect cannot define or formulate.

Again, vocal interpretation is themost effective mode of cultivating instudents a susceptibility to form (orstyle, in its only true sense). Formmust first be addressed to the feelings.


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I04 THE AIMS OFBy form I mean organic embodiment that unification of matter and man-ner upon which so much of the vi-tality and effectiveness of expressedspiritualized thought depend. Formmaybe mechanical due to 'imposi-tion of the foreign hand; ' but I speakof form as a manifestation of the plas-tic spirit of a poem, and for such formwe must go to the great masters.The literary forms of a period are asgood evidence of vitality and power(or the absence of these) as are thethought and spirituality which theyembody, for they are inseparable fromthat vitality. The wonderful dramaticblank verse of Shakespeare is theexpression of great creative energy(without the latter it could not have


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been produced), as the rhyming coup-let of Pope is the expression of thewant of it. It is through organicform that we respond to the mouldingspirit; and adequately to voice suchform is the most effective mode ofsecuring a response on the part ofstudents, to the moulding spirit.The style of any author who has

what may truly be called style {le style,c^est rhoj?ijne), is a manifestation ofhis personality (see Note 4); and, inorder truly to appreciate his style, hispersonality must be responded to.And such response must be a spirit-ual response. Whatever intellectualanalysis be applied, it must be basedon what has first been felt to be themoulding spirit. Young students are


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I06 THE AIMS OFput too soon to the analysis of style too soon, for the reason that theyhave not first /


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to a very subtle degree, to organicverse, and know nothing of the scholar-ship; and another may know all thescholarship, and be insensible to itas a conductor of the indefinitelyspiritual.There is no true estimate among

the leaders in the educational world,of what vocal culture, worthy of thename, costs; and the kind of encour-agement which it receives from themis in keeping with their estimate ofit. Vocal culture should begin veryearly, the earlier the better. It shouldbe one of the first things attended toin the primary schools, and shouldbe continued through all grades ofinstruction up to and through theUniversity. A system of vocal train-


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Io8 THE AIMS OF

ing might be instituted in the lowerschools which would give pupils com-plete command of the muscles ofarticulation, exteed the compass ofthe voice, and render it smooth,powerful, and melodious. A powerof varied intonation should be espe-cially cultivated, as it is through in-tonation that the reader's sympathiesare conducted, and the hearer's sym-pathies are secured. Intonation isthe choral atmosphere of reading.A systematic and scientific cultiva-

tion of the reading voice should beconducted with reference to the ren-dering of the masterpieces of poeticaland dramatic literature, as that of thesinging voice is conducted with refer-ence to the rendering of the master-


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pieces of music. A boy's voice maybe trained for the usual platformspouting; but such training would notserve for the rendering of Tennyson's'In Memoriam,' for example, or Mil-ton's Paradise Lost.The reading voice demands at leastas much cultivation as the singingvoice. Perhaps, in most cases, a fiveyears' judicious training of the sing-ing voice would result in greaterexcellence than a five years' equallyjudicious training of the readingvoice. But what a ridiculous contrastis presented by the methods usuallyemployed for the training of thespeaking voice, and those employedfor the training of the singing voiceDr. James Rush, in his 'Philosophy of


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no THE AIMS OFthe Human Voice,' after characteriz-ing the absurdities of the former,says: 'Then visit a Conservatorio ofMusic; observe there the elementaryoutset, the orderly task, the masterlydiscipline, the unwearied superinten-dence, and the incessant toil to reachthe utmost accomplishment in theSinging-Voice; and afterwards do notbe surprised that the pulpit, thesenate, the bar, and the chair ofmedical professorship, are filled withsuch abominable drawlers, mouthers,mumblers, clutterers, squeakers, chant-ers, and mongers in monotony! northat the Schools of Singing are con-stantly sending abroad those greatinstances of vocal wonder, who tri-umph along the crowded resorts of


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the world; who contribute to the hallsof fashion and wealth, their mostrefined source of gratification; whosometimes quell the pride of rankby a momentary sensation of envy;and who draw forth the admirationand receive the crowning applause ofthe Prince and the Sage.'

'If any one would sing,' says Ware('Hints on extemporaneous preach-ing'), 'he attends a master, and isdrilled in the very elementary prin-ciples; and only after the most labori-ous process, dares to exercise his voicein public. ... If he were learningto play on the flute for public exhibi-tion, what hours and days would hespend, in giving facility to his fingers,and attaining the power of the sweetest


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112 THE AIMS OFand most expressive execution! Ifhe were devoting himself to the organ,what months and years would he larbor,that he might know its compass, andbe master of its keys, and be ableto draw out, at will, all its variouscombinations of harmonious sound,and its full richness and delicacy ofexpression'And yet he will fancy that the

grandest, the most various, and mostexpressive of all instruments, whichthe Infinite Creator has fashioned bythe union of an intellectual soul withthe powers of speech, may be playedupon without study or practice; hecomes to it a mere uninstructed tyro,and thinks to manage all its stops,and command the whole compass of


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its varied and comprehensive power.He finds himself a bungler in theattempt, is mortified at his failure,and settles it in his mind forever thatthe attempt is vain.'

In all large bodies of students, thereare always some who speak well, notby reason of what their Institutionshave done for them, but in spite ofwhat they have 7iot done. On impor-tant public occasions, these come tothe front on such occasions as con-tests for prizes in oratory, Commence-ment Days, etc. ; and the Institutionswith which they are connected, virtu-ally, if not actually, say. Behold,Ladies and Gentlemen, what we havedone for these dear young men ! Theyare now ready to go forth into the

H


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114 THE AIMS OFworld, and to express themselves be-fore public audiences with an eleganteffectiveness. Their cultivated vocalorgans and thei|; graceful limbs willimpart a vitality, a power, and animpressiveness, to the social, political,moral and religious principles withwhich they have been imbued withinour walls!

It is thus that many great institu-tions of learning practically imposeupon the public. To avoid suchimposition, their Presidents shouldsay. Ladies and Gentlemen, the stu-dents who will appear before you, onthe present occasion, are the bestspeakers we have to show; and theywere selected, not by reason of theirhaving most profited by the training


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afforded by the Institution (for wehave no training worth mentioning inthe science and art of speaking), butby reason of their natural aptitude.Some such speech the Presidents of

our Colleges and Universities oughtto make, in justice to some of theyoung men who are brought forwardon public occasions. For is it notan undeniable fact, that the youngmen who acquit themselves best onsuch occasions, who hold up whatlittle oratorical reputation their foster-ing mothers enjoy, owe those fosteringmothers nothing, for any power ofspeech they may possess? In thatrespect, those fostering mothers havebeen to them little better than indif-ferent, even unkind, stepmothers.


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Il6 THE AIMS OFWhere fostering mothers pretend to

do something for their dear children,in the way of vocal culture, they doit in such a niggardly way (by employ-ing, at small salaries, teachers with avery slim outfit for their work, withnot even refined voices, perhaps, withno affinities for the higher things ofliterature, and consequently with noability vocally to interpret them), thatbad is often, if not generally, madeworse and a worse which it is after-wards hard to remedy. In the matterof vocal training, facilis est descensus,how facilis is shown by the 'studiedimproprieties of speech ' and actionwhich are sure to result when thattraining is unintelligent and shallow;sed revocare gradum, hie labor, hocopus est.


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The verses, in The Rosciad ofChurchill, 875-890, in which the elo-cution of the Irish tragedian, HenryMossop, of the last century, is char-acterized (not altogether justly, how-ever, from the accounts we have of hisacting), are quite applicable to theelocution of many unfortunate collegestudents who have been trained onthe economical plan above mentioned(see Note 5) :Mossop, attached to military plan,Still kept his eye fixed on his right-hand man;Whilst the mouth measures words with seem-

ing skill,The right hand labours and the left lies still.For he resolved on Scripture-grounds to go,What the right doth, the left hand shall not

know.With studied impropriety of speech.He soars beyond the hackney critic's reach;


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Il8 THE AE.IS OFTo epithets allots emphatic state,Whilst principals ungraced, like lackeys, wait;In ways first trodden by himself excels,And stands alone in indeclinables;Conjunction, preposition, adverb, joinTo stamp new vigour in the nervous line;In monosyllables his thunders roll,He, she, it, and, we, ye, they, fright the soul.

But whether the teacher be masteror not, of his subject, he is oftenobliged, generally obliged, to workunder such unconquerable disadvan-tages, that no good results can bereasonably expected. Students comeunder his instruction with the evilresults of years of neglected speech, results which to counteract wouldrequire as many more years of themost careful and judicious training.Furthermore, they have had no liter-


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ary education, in its true sense, i.e.,spiritual education, which is not gotin the schools; and without such edu-cation reading, which, to be worthyof the name, should exhibit the co-operation in literature of the spiritualand the intellectual, is quite impos-sible. One might exhibit, in hisreading, the intellectual articulationor framework of a poem, or any otherproduct of the higher literature, buthe would not by merely so doing,realize the true object of reading.The intellectual coefficient can beapprehended through silent reading;the main object of vocalization is toexhibit the spiritual coefficient, whichis indefinite to the intellect, and needsto be vocally rendered as much as a


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I20 THE AIMS OF

musical composition needs to bevocally or instrumentally rendered.Taken as it stands in the King

James's version^ whatever the realmeaning may be, in the Hebrew,a comprehensive characterization ofgood reading is found in the 8thchapter and 8th verse of the Book ofNehemiah: 'So they read in the bookin the law of God distinctly, and gavethe sense, and caused them to under-stand the reading.'To read distinctly, to give the

sense, to cause to understand (in theScripture sense), meet all the condi-tions of effective reading.

I. To read distinctly. 'Words,' saysthe Rev. Gilbert Austin, in his 'Chiro-nomia,' 'are to be delivered from the


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lips as beautiful coins newly issuedfrom the mint, deeply and accuratelyimpressed, perfectly finished, neatly,struck by the proper organs, distinct,in due succession, and of due weight.'(See Note 6.)

If one whose words are more or lessinhuman, were trained to such an enun-ciation as is described in this passage,he would be even morally elevated.His enunciation would strike in.

2. To give the sense.I have defined literature as the

expression, in letters, of the spiritual,cooperating with the intellectual,man, the former being the primary,dominant coef^cient. A productionof the pure intellect does not belongto the domain of literature proper.


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122 THE AIMS OFBy 'giving the sense,' in reading,

is generally meant, the vocal render-ing of the thought-element, whichrendering, to be distinct and effective,demands, in the first place, a perfectarticulation; in the second place, thatall the successive and involved groupsof thought be presented with a dis-tinctness of outline, none of thembeing jumbled together; in the thirdplace, that the relative value of thesegroups of thought be exhibited bybringing some into the foreground,by a fulness of expression, and throw-ing others back, by employing agreater or less degree, as may be re-quired, of abatement of voice (reduc-tion of pitch and force), of monotony,acceleration of voice, and other means;


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and in the fourth place (not to enum-era

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