or a number of days. Repetition is, to a
certain extent, excellent. The verses begin to sink into the young minds;
the measure appeals to the inborn sense of rhythm; the poem is caught by
the ear like a piece of music; the utterance of it becomes more like
singing than speaking. In fact, the great secret of teaching poetry in
school is to get rid of the commonplace manner of speech befitting a
recitation in language or science, and to put in practice the obvious
truth that verse has its own form, which is very different from the form
of prose. But repetition may go too far. Over-familiarity may beget
indifference. Other poems await the attention of the class.

The teacher who really means to interest his classes, and begins by being
interested and interesting himself, will rarely fail to accomplish his
purpose. The principal obstacle to success here is the necessity, that
frequently exists, of conforming to the custom of examining, marking, and
ranking--a practice that thwarts genuine personal influence, formalizes
all procedures, and tends to deaden natural interest by substituting for
it the artificial interest of school standing. The Milton lesson must be
a serious one because it is given to the study of the serious work of the
gravest and most high-minded of men; and it must be an enjoyable one
because it deals with the verse of the most musical of poets, and because
one mood of joy is the only mood in which literature can be profitably
studied.

As to the difficulties which the learner first encounters when he comes
to Milton, these grow sometimes out of the diction, sometimes out of the
syntax, and sometimes out of the poet's figures and allusions. Some
difficulties can be explained at once and completely. Others cannot be
explained at all with any reasonable hope of touching the beginner's mind
with matter that he can appropriate. Often the young reader slips over
points of possible learned annotation without the least consciousness
that here great scholarship might make an imposing display. Perfectly
useless is it to set forth for the pupil the interesting echoes from
ancient poets which generations of delving scholars have accumulated in
their notes to Milton, pleasing as these are to mature readers.

The rule should be to expound and illustrate sufficiently to remove those
perplexities which really tease the pupil's mind and cause him to feel
dissatisfaction with himself. In many cases our only course is to