be taught, and that to teach this is the most important part of a professor's work. And the first lesson which must be enforced is that which enables the student to bring home to himself the vast difference between knowing about an author or knowing about a book and knowing the author or the book. erature I would fix once and for all, asing a great author, the right method of an outline map, in the brain of the young dealing with a great literary period can student. It is essential that he should conceive the history of English literature as part of a larger movement. It is essential that he should know where were the headquarters of literature in each successive period now in Florence or in Rome, now in Paris, now in London, now at Weimar. When Boccaccio is spoken of in connection with Chaucer, when Tasso or Ariosto is spoken of in connection with Spenser, or Boileau in connection with Dryden and Pope, or Goethe in connection with Carlyle, he ought at least to be able to place Boccaccio and Tasso and Ariosto and Boileau and Goethe aright in the general movement of European literature, and in some measure to conceive aright the relation of each to the literary movement in our own country. The student of English literature ought, however, to know a good deal more of the entire course and progress of literature in England than he can know of the course and progress of literature in France or Spain or Italy or Germany. But it is hardly to be expected that he can know English literature from the Cadmon poems to Tennyson at first hand. He may be told that it is well for him to learn a little about many things at second hand, and therefore it is well for him to read some short and well-written history of English literature from the first page to the last. If he fully understands the profound difference which there is between first-hand and second-hand knowledge such a history will do him not harm but good. In every direction we take some of our knowledge provisionally and on trust; and if we are slow to put forward as facts statements which we have not verified, and if we refuse to air notions as our own which we have derived from others, our second-hand information may be highly serviceable. Let us take, then, as our first unit in the study of literature one complete work in prose or verse. A complete work, not a fragment of a long poem, such as one or two books of "Paradise Lost; " not passages from some famous piece of prose, such as selections from "Gulliver's Trav els." It is well that we should choose a great work by a great author, and that author ought himself to belong to a great and fruitful period of literature. A play of Shakespeare's fulfils all the conditions which we require; let us ask on what side the professor and his class should attack the text before them. My answer is, they should attack it on every side; there is nothing in the play which the student ought not to try to grasp and hold. Some persons seem to fear that a close attention to textual difficulties, conjectural emendations, obsolete words, allusions to manners and customs, and such like, will quench an interest in the higher meanings of the play. I have not found it so. The saying "He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much" has its just application to the true scholar. The letter indeed without the spirit is dead; but to affect to reach the spirit while ignorant of the letter is the folly either of the dilettante or the half-witted enthusiast. "Let us not press too hard for spirit and feeling in our friends," said Serlo to Wilhelm Meister, when they were instructing their troop of actors in the mysteries of "Hamlet; " 'the surest way is first coolly to instruct But no history of English literature them in the sense and letter of the piece; should be read until the student is made if possible to open their understandings. to perceive and feel what knowledge at Whoever has the talent will then of his first hand indeed is by being put to own accord eagerly adopt the spirited work on an actual text. Whether English feeling and manner of expression; and literature can be taught or not, I am con- those who have it not will at least be previnced that the right method of approach-vented from acting or reciting altogether Renege, affirm, and turn their halcyon beaks It is the business of the examiner to ascertain whether this has been done. Some of his questions will be mere tests of memory; and it is very right that the student should remember accurately what he has read, and that considerable stress should be laid on the cultivation of mere memory. But, it will be said, this is to give encouragement to the crammer. I am no advocate of cram, but neither am I frightened by the word. A good deal of what is carelessly and ignorantly termed cram I should venture to call sound teaching as far as it goes. When a boy is taught the probable dates of Shakespeare's plays, he has learnt something of importance, and he has exercised at least his memory. The chances are that he will always remember that "A Midsummer Night's Dream" is the fairy fantasy of Shakespeare's earlier years as a dramatic craftsman, and that "The Tempest " exhibits the poet's genius in its maturity, with all the solemn splendor of his moral wisdom; and the time may come when the boy will put this piece of knowledge to a worthy use. I am no advocate of cram; but when cram means something less than what I have indicated, it may still have its uses, The value of questions put at examina- if not for literature yet for life. To have tions is often erroneously estimated. It acquired rapidly and accurately the knowlis supposed that because the subject-mat-edge of a mass of facts, and to possess the ter of a question is of little importance, art of skilfully presenting that knowledge therefore the question itself is injudicious to others, even though it be swept out of or trivial. But every sensible examiner the candidate's memory on the morning knows that a question seemingly trivial may sometimes serve as an excellent test, which shall ascertain whether attention has been paid to an important class of topics. When for lack of time or through some other causes, a candidate cannot be expected to give full proof of his knowledge, the skilful examiner desires him to exhibit the signs of that knowledge, signs the presence of which implies that much else is present though all cannot on the moment be shown. Whether these signs be trivial or not matters less than is commonly supposed. I have said that the student should attack the text before him on every side. ⚫ B. v., chap. vii. (Carlyle's translation). after his examination, gives evidence of considerable aptitude and power. This indeed is not to learn literature, but it is in some degree to prepare for life. No lethargic or stupid boy can take cram in this intelligent and vigorous fashion. I remember how the late Mr. Forster, when chief secretary for Ireland, on each of two occasions when I happened to converse with him, touched on this topic, and used his own experience as evidence of the value of cram, or, to speak more precisely, the value of the power of taking cram. "I have frequently," he said, "to answer at length a question in the House of Commons requiring for my answer a knowl edge of facts which has to be rapidly acquired from others; or I have to make a speech in the preparation of which the knowledge possessed by me must receive immediate and large augmentation from the authorities to whom I refer myself; I am crammed by skilful crammers; I put to use the knowledge which I have gained, and then dismiss from my mind what has been needed only for a passing occasion. And there are numberless cases occurring throughout life, in which it is of the utmost importance to possess the capacity of thus quickly and correctly gaining acquaintance with facts to serve the needs of a day or of an hour."* But an intelligent examiner will give a preference to questions which do more than test the memory. There is a class of questions which serve as a test of close and intelligent reading, and also give the candidate an opportunity of showing whether he has exercised what I may call the faculty of imaginative realization. If I act as examiner in "King Lear," and put the question: "Who is the speaker of the following lines and on what occasion are they spoken, — that he has failed to imagine the close of the tragedy as it was conceived by Shakespeare. Although the play includes a double plot- the story of the house of Gloucester and the story of the house of Lear—this is not the moment to divide the solemn tragic impression. We do not think now of Edmund; he has been dealt with by the strong right hand of God's justiciary, Edgar; he has been borne off the stage before the entrance of Lear. And as the curtain falls we see the dead Lear with his three daughters dead; the evil and the good seemingly overtaken by one common doom; but Cordelia, the rejected and offcast child, slain by the passion of love which brought her from France to Britain and now restored to her father's arms, while the two unnatural sisters lie apart, each the ruin of her own monstrous passions. I would have the student, then, approach the piece of literature which forms the subject of his study from every side, and think no pains ill-bestowed which help to bring him into close contact with it. The consideration of a textual crux in itself He is attended by a desperate train, To have his ear abused, wisdom bids fear"? I test no more than memory. But if I ask this question: "On what occasion does Lear say of Cordelia,· Her voice was ever soft, Gentle and low, an excellent thing in woman"? I do something towards ascertaining the activity of a higher power than memory, the power, as I have termed it, of imagi native realization. For these words are uttered by Lear at the moment when he is bending over his dead daughter, to catch the low utterance of that voice which is now silent forever Ha! What is't thou sayst? Her voice was ever soft, Gentle and low, an excellent thing in woman. Or the candidate may be required to describe the spectacle on the stage as the curtain is falling at the close of the fifth act of the same play. He will remember of course that the bodies of Goneril and Regan have been produced: Produce the bodies be they alive or dead. He will doubtless remember that Lear dies with Cordelia in his arms. But if he should describe the body of Edmund as being also present, he will give evidence I report faithfully the substance of what was said. I cannot be sure as to the precise words. alive about other and larger things than verbal difficulties, the retardation of his advance, caused by some question as to a doubtful text, will be of service to him, allowing his mind to work in some way of unconscious cerebration about the higher problems of the poem or the play, as we unconsciously take in a landscape from different points of view while picking our steps among boulders or shingle towards a mountain platform. Here feel we but the penalty of Adam, says the banished duke in the forest of Arden. It is well worth considering whether Shakespeare wrote Here feel we not the penalty of Adam, as the Folio has it, or whether Theobald's emendation but shall be received. The student's eye ought to be as sharp at least as the eye of a tailor threading his needle. he cannot help stealing glances to the But while delayed by this petty difficulty, right and left; and he will have lived longer, even though unconsciously, in the manly and gentle temper of the duke who in Arden woods has discovered the sweet uses of adversity. Let us suppose that the teacher and his pupils set themselves to master the play of "Hamlet." It would be desirable first of all that the play should be read swiftly and attentively from beginning to end, if possible at a single sitting. A general view of the whole is necessary before attending to minutiæ; otherwise we see nothing but a succession of petty and unconnected points, and the eye runs a risk of that disease of shortsightedness, which has its outward and visible sign in the spectacles worn by the myopic scholar.* A broad knowledge of the action of the play and some conception of the characters will often serve us in the interpretation of details, and will give a reason and add an interest to our scrutiny of every sentence and every word. Something in the way of introduction must be said by the teacher as to the sources of the text; and if he have the opportunity he will do well not merely to talk of Folio and Quarto, but to let his pupils see and handle the facsimiles of the first and second Quartos produced by Mr. Griggs, together with Mr. Staunton's noble facsimile of the first Folio. The thought may strike across the brain of some forward youth that he need not remain always in leading-strings to an editor or a commentator; that here he can inquire and verify for himself. And thus an impulse may by happy chance be received which shall start a scholarly mind upon a career of original research. The teacher and his pupils will now read aloud the first scene of the play. They will read it not in character, but speech by speech, each person taking the speech which happens to come to him as the reading passes round the class. Were characters assigned half the class must be silent during certain scenes, and the interest of the listeners would naturally flag. Moreover, the readers would lose the central standpoint from which all the characters are to be viewed. Horatio would know the part of Horatio well; but he would know the other dramatis persona too little except as they are brought into relation with Horatio. We must try, on the contrary, to see Hamlet and Ophelia and the king from Shakespeare's central point of vision, and not rest satisfied with a series of imperfect side views of the whole. Few persons nowadays seem to feel how powerful an instrument of culture may be found in modest, intelligent, and sympathetic reading aloud. The reciter and the elocutionist of late have done much to rob us of this which is one of the It is much to be regretted that in the study of a Greek play something of this kind is not attempted. finest of the fine arts. A mongrel something which, at least with the inferior adepts, is neither good reading nor yet veritable acting, but which sets agape the half-educated with the wonder of its airs and attitudinizing, its pseudo-heroics and pseudo-pathos, has usurped the place of the true art of reading aloud, and has made the word "recitation a terror to quiet folk who are content with intelligence and refinement. Happily in their behalf the great sense-carrier to the empire, Mr. Punch, has at length seen it right to intervene. The reading which we should desire to cultivate is intelligent reading, that is, it should express the meaning of each passage clearly; sympathetic reading, that is, it should convey the feeling delicately; musical reading, that is, it should move in accord with the melody and harmony of what is read, be it in verse or prose. "I often think," writes Sir Henry Taylor in an unpublished letter of thirty years ago, now in my hands, "how strange it is that amongst all the efforts which are made in these times to teach young people everything that is to be known, from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop upon the wall, the one thing omitted is teaching them to read. At present, to be sure, it is a very rare thing to find any one who can teach it; but it is an art which might be propagated from the few to the many with great rapidity if a due appreciation of it were to become current. The rage for lecturing would be a more reasonable rage if that were taught in lectures which can be conveyed only by voice and utterance and not by books. A few weeks ago I was pointing out to Dr. Whewell one of the most sublime and majestic passages that I know of in prose (a passage in one of Bacon's prefaces), and I asked him to read it aloud. I was astonished to find that he read it as the town-crier might have read it. could not be that he was insensible to the grace and beauty of the language; I believe he was no more insensible to it than I am to the beauty of a Raphael or a Perugino; but he was no more able to produce it in utterance than I am to paint à Saint Cecilia' or an Incendio del Borgo.' It Having read the first scene of "Hamlet," the teacher and his pupils, of our imaginary class-room, will turn back to see whether anything requires comment or explanation. Attention may be called to the fact that the chief character, Hamlet, is not thrust to the front as Richard III. is in the opening scene of the play this subject may be reserved until later. There will be many obsolete words or words with altered meanings -"rivals of my watch," "sledded Polacks,” “unimproved mettle," "prologue to the omen to be explained, and at least one difficult textual crux, As stars with trains of fire and dews of blood, to be examined. Nor will the teacher fail to call attention to the similarity in the metrical movement of those lines in which Horatio addresses the ghost, which bears his name. "King Richard | Horatio and Hamlet, but the discussion of III." was written when Shakespeare was under Marlowe's influence, and it opens like "Doctor Faustus" and "The Jew of Malta" with a great soliloquy uttered by the protagonist. In "Hamlet," as in "Romeo and Juliet," the environment is prepared for the hero of the play before he enters. Again, the teacher may cite the words in which Gildon records a ridic. ulous traditition: "This scene, I have been assured," says he, "Shakespeare wrote in a charnel-house in the midst of the night," and may make this an occasion for dwelling on the fact that though to a certain extent the scene is one of horror, yet the horror has nothing in it of the raw-head and bloody-bones description, but is throughout elevated and majestic in its mystery and sorrow. The closing speeches especially, it may be noticed, are illuminated by a spiritual beauty, with their references to the sacred season of the Saviour's birth, — If thou hast any sound or use of voice, and that of a passage very different in If thou remember'st not the slightest folly In each case the force of the address is tich. Occupied with such an examination, now of the larger features of the play, now of minute details, the students of "Ham So hallow'd and so gracious is the time, and are touched with the light and color of the dawn already brightening the hill-let" would steadily and patiently work tops, But, look, the morn, in russet mantle clad, Bernardo. Who's there? Francisco. Nay, answer me; stand and unfold yourself, the teacher will observe whether due emphasis has been placed on the word me as proper to the response and challenge of the sentinel, and will correct the reader if he have laid the stress only on the word answer. He will note the uneasiness of the believers in the apparition in contrast with Horatio's half-jesting reply to the question, "What, is Horatio there?" "A piece of him." He will consider whether the line, What, has this thing appeared again to-night? Such was the very armor he had on on comparison with certain speeches of their way from the first line to the last. Then a survey of the whole might be given in the form of a prelection, in which, among other matters, the views of the character of Hamlet taken by Goethe and Coleridge and other eminent critics might be considered. Nor would it be uninteresting or amiss to notice the interpretation of the tragedy by great actors, and to call attention to its qualities as an acting play which have enabled it to hold the stage during three centuries. Let us suppose now that the student knows this one play of Shakespeare's for what it is as thoroughly as it can be known. He knows the play as it is, but he does not yet know how it came to be what it is. A mind that is alive and inquiring naturally seeks to discover the causes of things, and is sensible that things are but imperfectly known until they are known in and through their causes. How then did the play of "Hamlet" come to be what it is? Obviously the single work belongs to a group of works which proceeded from the same author and which possess certain common characteristics. The inquirer must ad Noticed by the Clarendon Press editors. |