as-dust facts and dates per se have wisely been weeded out from high school study of literature. Textbooks have improved, yet the most recent ones include sentences like this one: "Thomas Otway attended Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford," which contains facts of no significance to either high school pupil or university student. Every one will agree that this kind of facts, with no bearing upon literature, should not be taught. In swinging away from this sort of exaggerated detail, however, the teacher must be judicious in not reaching the other extreme. The instructor who in discussing the early development of our language casually mentions the Roman occupation of Britain and puts it only five centuries wide of the correct dates, is hardly a counsellor worth following in determining topics for English study. The greatest figures of literature deserve historical placing; their productions gain by being located. The New England group of poets would be inexplicable in any other time and place. Addison, Steele, Pope, Burns, Franklin, and Mr. Shaw, to cite a few at random, are so inextricably parts of their periods that they cannot be read apart from those years. College graduate students have overdone the tracing of influences, but teachers must recall that high school boys and girls do not know of the comparative disrepute into which this easy method of preparing a thesis has fallen. To them the indications of influence are novel elements in literature. Explain or direct pupils to discover how Dickens succeeded in producing a real plot in A Tale of Two Cities, and note the interested reception of the remarks, especially if the class has read David Copperfield or Nicholas Nickleby.

Place specimens in their periods.-The teaching of literature in this sequential manner should be as late in the course as is possible, so that the pupil will have met many masterpieces, all of which he can now place in the historical

development. He will already be in possession of a large amount of unrelated information, which the teaching of literature should now assemble and arrange properly for him. To the historical development should be added as much more illustrative reading, intensive and supplementary, as time will permit. American literature is quite well treated in the tenth year, usually during the second term. By that time pupils should have met practically every author of note. By means of some connected story of the beginnings, development, and present continuation of American literature they should be enabled to place all the specimens they have read. They should do more; many of the poems let us say, of Longfellow, they met in the seventh and eighth years. There are other poems of Longfellow which they can now appreciate and should know. This is true of every American writer. Emerson the poet they know in some short lyrics. They should now read Emerson the thinking poet and essayist. There is no need to detail further this method of teaching American literature. It becomes in the best meaning of the phrase, a course in literature.

What not to teach.-Specimens of English literature are added throughout most high school courses until the last year. It is here, therefore, that a study of the periodic development of that national writing may best be placed. As indicated for American literature, knowledge of biographical and bibliographical facts should not be required. If they appear in the textbooks, teach pupils how to avoid them, how to read them without noticing, how to see them without being disturbed, how to recite without thinking of them. Swinburne's "mother was the daughter of the Earl of Ashburnham." That fact has no significance for American pupils; nor does the author use it in any explanation or account of the poems. A few pages of another history of literature yield these meaningless geographical names: Lutterworth, Keswick,

Enfield, Edmonton, Holly Lodge, Dumfriesshire, Annan, Brantwood, Coniston, Somersby, Solent. How many teachers can locate them or explain their relation to any author or literary production?

Read some literature in seqence.-If the course extends through an entire year, pupils of the twelfth year should study some text showing the historical development. They should read a translation of part of Beowulf outside class; Prologue to the Canterbury Tales in class, one tale outside; many old ballads; Everyman; Elizabethan sonnets and lyrics; Dr. Faustus; three or more Shakespeare plays, some intensively, others rapidly; a few essays by Bacon; study some of Milton's minor poems, read two books of Paradise Lost; read rapidly several essays by Steele and Addison; read The Rape of the Lock; study and read poems by Gray, Blake, Burns, Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, Byron; study parts of In Memoriam and at least Rabbi Ben Ezra, read as much more by Tennyson and Browning as possible; and add many later poets and essayists. In connection with this course, a great amount of written and oral composition can be produced as will be outlined in the chapter on ability to write.

Show how reading functions in later life.-All phases of reading activity in adult life may be grouped under one of the classes discussed in this chapter;-intensive reading, supplementary reading, collateral or general reading (frequently informative, more usually entertaining), reference reading. A strong point can be made in their practice in school by showing how widely every phase actually functions in life outside the classroom.

Exercises. See page 351.

CHAPTER VIII

JUDGMENT, APPRECIATION, CRITICISM, STYLE

So much space has been devoted in this book to methods and aims of teaching the contents of literary selections because that teaching is the fundamental portion of the course. Too long have practices-where started and when most prevalent is not the question-allowed children to read without understanding, to pronounce without hearing, recite without thinking, to listen without absorbing. The importance of teaching pupils how to read cannot be overestimated, for the skill operates in every department of school work, and in life long after they have passed from supervision. Any method which enables teachers to secure better and more lasting results with less waste of time and decreased expenditure of energy should be welcomed. This is one of the first tasks of teaching today; it is an issue which must be faced squarely and solved promptly. All of us believe, however, that in every class there is the opportunity as there are the invitation and the necessity of going further in the study of literature, of adding to ability in reading, which furnishes exact knowledge, responses to literary production which will perpetuate the reading habit; or if not perpetuate it, at least make it more attractive whenever it is exercised. Let us make of our high school pupils good readers first, then add to them everything else within our power and their capabilities.

Necessity for training powers of judgment.-It is obviously possible that a pupil may read acceptably, that is understand the work in some sense, yet exercise no judgment.

For a long period in both his family and school relationships, in the choice of books as well as in questions of conduct and the employment of his time, judgments are made for him. For a period educational theory was disposed to relinquish the right of elders to judge for children in any matters, but the extreme of that enthusiasm seems to have been passed. Adults of the United States do not abrogate to themselves the power of control over children displayed by such races as the French. In a land where parents have feared to decide for children, it is only natural that schools have hesitated to do more than advise and suggest.

Teachers of English, because they expect to train the mind at fourteen to serve when the body is twenty-five, have always endeavored to educe or implant principles of correct judgment in literature. Their optimism is the sublimest faith in the value of good works. Their severest disappointment comes when they meet former promising pupils at the age of twenty-five, to discover that while their bodies and actions have matured, their brains are still, in literary judgment and taste, only eighteen years old. The single comfort is the reflection that had nothing been done in high school, the brains might have remained only fourteen years old.

Encourage expressions of judgment.-In every grade of high school the teacher must strive to produce some degree of judgment in pupils' minds. If the judgment remains only in the mind, the teacher will never know what it is. He must therefore draw from the pupils expressions of these judgments. When these are given, he must elicit the facts and reasonings upon which they are based. In this manner he must train in the elemental principles of criticism, which are fundamental to the most recondite study as well. Last of all, he may endeavor, if he be a genuine teacher, to induce in pupils a liking for the best. This last is the cultiva