"grand old fortifying classical curriculum"; but it is
to be hoped that, as the importance of their subject becomes more and
more recognised, they will achieve a method which will embody all that
was valuable, while discarding much that was narrow and pedantic, in
classical teaching. And in particular may they all realise, as many
already do, what the classical teacher, however unconsciously, held as
an axiom, that in order to enter into the spirit of literature, to
appreciate style, to understand in any true sense the meaning of great
author's, it is not enough for pupils to listen and to read, and then
perhaps to write essays about what they have heard and read. They must
also _make_ something, exercise that creative, and at the same time
imitative, artistic faculty, which surely is the motive power of most
of our progress, at least in early life. Nothing has struck me more
forcibly than the intense interest which boys will take in their own
crude efforts at writing a poem or a story or essay, while they are
still quite unable to appreciate with discrimination, or even to enjoy
with any sustained feeling, the poetry or prose of the great masters.
Not that there is anything surprising in this. I know very well that
it was writing Latin verses that taught me to appreciate Virgil, and
writing juvenile epics that led me up to Milton. But it is an order of
progress which we schoolmasters are apt to overlook, expecting our
pupils to appreciate what we know to be good work before they have
that elementary, but most fruitful, experience which can only come
from handling the tools of the craft. The creative and imitative
impulse will die down in the great majority; and we shall not make the
mistake of continuing to exact formal "composition" from maturer
pupils, who no longer find it anything but a drag upon their progress
along the unfolding vistas of knowledge and appreciation. Our object
is not to increase the number of writers, already far too large, but
to increase the number of readers, which can never be too large, to
raise the standard of literary taste, and so to spread pure enjoyment
and all the benefits to society which joy, and joy alone, confers.
Inspired with such an aim, common sense and sympathy will enable us to
overcome the difficulties and avoid the pitfalls which undoubtedly
beset the teaching of that most necessary, most delightful, but most
elusive and imponderable subject, the appreciation of literature.