ys
George Henry Lewes in his novel, Ranthorpe, 'the pump is enumerated as
having "a handle _within reach of the smallest child_," so do our
illustrious educators wish to place the pump of knowledge within reach
of the meanest capacity, that infants may forego the mother's milk to
drink of its Pierian spring.' The time must come, it is no doubt in the
very far future,--there are no indications, at present, of its being in
the near future,--when it will be a pedagogical question how to induce a
maximum amount of education with a minimum amount of brain-slaughter.

To get back, now, to the leading subject, vocal culture: a college
student whose voice was neglected in early life, and, worst of all,
whose sympathies were not then so attuned to good literature, by the
influences and atmosphere of his home, that he came to have an inward
impulsion to vocalize whatever he specially enjoyed in his reading, will
not be much profited by a course in soulless elocutionary spouting. One
may have an extraordinary natural gift of vocal expression which is
superior to all adverse circumstances; but such an one is a _rara avis
in terris_. Unless there be an early initiation into literature and its
vocalization, in advance of the benumbing technical instruction of the
schools, much cannot be expected from the great majority of students, in
a literary or elocutionary direction. Truly 'illuminative reading,' to
use Carlyle's phrase, is, apart from this condition, quite out of the
question.

In the whole range of linguistic and literary studies, English, Latin,
Greek, German, French, Italian, Spanish, or whatever be the language and
literature studied, vocalization should be made of prime importance. So
it should even in Anglo-Saxon and early English studies. When I
conducted these studies, which I did, for more than twenty-five years, I
pronounced to my classes all that was gone over. Beowulf I read to them
entire. The interest of students in this Anglo-Saxon epic is much
enhanced when it is fluently and _vigorously_ read. It is the only way
by which the spirit of the poem can be brought home to them.

To know Chaucer as a poet, and not merely as a writer of
fourteenth-century English, his verse, which, after a lapse of five
hundred years, continues to rank with the best in the literature, _must_
be voiced; and to voice it, with the best knowledge of its pronunciation
which has been attained to by Alexander J. Ellis, in his 'Early E