this question), as his dictionary tells him, "connected with the laity." "What process of thought is traceable in the change of meaning which the word has undergone?" He cannot answer: the question passes to the top, and you are told that "it was thought that the laity were not so good as the clergy, and so the name came to be considered a reproach." Perhaps you extract from another boy that "by degrees the word came to express that particular kind of badness which seemed most unclerical."

That is of the nature of a luxury.
We pass to a more solid question.

"We thank you both: yet one but flatters us
As well appeareth by the cause you come."
"Explain the construction in the second
line. Put the argument into the form
of a syllogism, showing the suppressed
major. Is it correct or incorrect?"
This question brings a clear-headed boy
to the top, or near it, and we pass on.
"That he did plot the Duke of Gloster's death
Suggest his soon-believing adversaries,
And consequently like a traitor coward
Sluic'd out his innocent blood."

"Illustrate, by the derivations of the
words, the Shakespearian use of sug
gest' and 'consequently.'"

"That which in mean men we entitle patience

Is pale cold cowardice in noble breasts." "Give reasons for justifying or condemning this maxim. What are the two faulty extremes between which lies the virtue patience? What is the mean between cowardice and the other faulty extreme?"

"Yet can I not of such tame patience boast." "What is the difference between 'patience' and 'tameness,' 'tameness' and 'cowardice'?”

Then come two questions of which notice has been given. "What marked difference is there between Richard's language before and after his return from Ireland? Explain it. What is there in common between Hamlet and Richard?" After obtaining satisfactory answers evincing thought and study, and coming not far short of the mark, you

35

"Is there any rule with reference to the number of syllables in a Shakespearian line? How would you scan this verse?—

"Setting aside his blood's high royalty, And let him be no kinsman to my liege, I do defy him, and I spit at him. Call him a slanderous villain and a coward, Which to maintain I would allow him odds And meet him, were I tied to run afoot,""&c. "Analyse this sentence, pointing out the main proposition or propositions, parsing setting' and 'let,' and expressing

the whole sentence in a number of affirmative and conditional sentences."

"Ere my tongue

Shall wound mine honour with such feeble
wrong
Or sound so base a parle, my teeth shall tear
The slavish motive of recanting fear," &c.

"Expand the metaphor contained in the two first lines into its simile. Is it in good taste? Give reasons for your answer. Explain the meaning of 'feeble wrong.' Give the derivations and meaning of 'parle.' What is the metaphor in sound so base a parle ?' What is the derivation of 'motive,' and how does the derivation explain the Shakespearian and the present use of the word?"

I have foreborne, for space' sake, to show how the answers to such questions, even when not entirely satisfactory, would give evidence of preparation, above all of mental not merely manual book-thumbing preparation, and would afford to the teacher a test of the diligence of his pupils as well as a means of developing their intelligence. Many may think these questions absurdly easy. tions absurdly easy. I should be glad if they were found so; but my experience indicates that boys ranging in

age from thirteen to sixteen will not find such questions too easy, and that for younger boys much easier questions would be necessary.

It may be well here to add that though a knowledge of Latin has been presupposed above in our imaginary class, and must always be most useful in an English lesson, yet it is not necessary. It is no more, or but little more, useful for such a purpose than a knowledge of German. It is certainly possible so to teach English even without the aid of Latin or German as not to leave one's pupils at the conclusion of the lesson under the impression that they have been studying "a collection of unmeaning symbols." The boys may be told the meanings of the roots "fer," "scribe," "sent," and hence led on to infer, from the knowledge of these roots and of a few prefixes, the meanings of the compound words "refer," "suffer," "infer," "consent," "dissent," "assent," "resent," "subscribe," "inscribe," "describe;" and there is no more difficulty in learning English thus than there is in learning Latin thus. There is less difficulty, for side by side with this method another can be employed. Boys who know nothing but the vernacular can be trained to explain many words, such as "contract," by themselves suggesting different uses of the word: "I contract my expenditure," "I contract for the building of a bridge," "I contract a debt." Then from these meanings they can eliminate what is accidental in each, and leave behind that which is common to all, the essence of the word. The former is the deductive, synthetic, and shorter, the latter is the inductive, analytic, and more natural method. A teacher may justify his ference, but not his neglect, of either.

pre

For young boys (between eleven and fourteen suppose) it is scarcely possible to frame too easy questions. One point never to be lost sight of is to make all the questions illustrate the sense; and one danger never to be forgotten is the danger of insisting on too much. Let your young pupils read the whole of their play for the sake of the story;

expect them, if you like, to be able to tell you what they think of King Richard and of Bolingbroke, but do not let them prepare-do not let them imagine they can prepare more than fifty or sixty lines critically in the course of a school-term, so as to understand and explain the text thoroughly. For such a class questions on the meanings of words will constitute a large part of our English lesson, and will reveal deep abysses of ignorance.

"First heaven be the record to my speech! In the devotion of a subject's love, Tendering the precious safety of my prince," &c.

Let us suppose you have already asked the pupils to parse "be,"-not, I fear, an unnecessary question. "What is the meaning of the word 'precious'?" "Nice." "Dear." "Good." "Kind." You might annihilate the last answer by eliciting from the class that a jewel is called "a precious stone;" but as the word is somewhat disused, except in that kind of maternal colloquy which probably originated some of the abovementioned answers, I think you would be forced by the want of materials for analysis to fall back on "price," and teach synthetically. But it is different when you come to ask, "What do you mean by 'record'?" Your answers will come fast and thick, and, amid a heap of nonsense, you will pick out monument," "book," "history." Then, by suggesting the office of the "recorder," and asking the class whether they have ever seen the "Record Office," you will at last extract from some one that "as a man takes down the notes or record of a speech that it may be afterwards remembered, so the Power who rules in heaven is asked to register the words of Bolingbroke that they may never be forgotten." Then if you like (but it is a luxury, or at all events, not a necessary) you can, should your class be learning Latin, point out to them how much trouble they would have saved themselves if they had remembered that "recordor" means, "I call to mind," and hence "record" signifies that by which one causes oneself

or others to recollect. The same use first of analysis, then of synthesis, first of induction, then of deduction, may be made in eliciting the meaning of "devotion."

Beside being subjected to such examinations, the pupils ought also to read passages in class, having their faults pointed out to them, and receiving marks for correctness, clearness, and taste. Recitations, essay-writing, and paraphrases are also most useful.

I cannot quit this part of my subject without expressing my very strong belief that a knowledge of the processes of induction and deduction, and of the relation between a metaphor and simile, and the manner in which the latter is expanded into the former, ought to be communicated to boys earlier than is now customary. We want to teach boys to think. Now thought has metaphors for its materials, logic for its tools. And therefore to set boys on the study of thought without a knowledge of logic or of metaphor is to set them building a castle of shifting sand, -soon built, soon unbuilt. It is possible to teach (1) the processes by which we arrive at the knowledge, or what we call the knowledge, of general and particular propositions; (2) the stages of such processes in which we are most liable to be deceived; (3) a few of the commonest fallacies corresponding to those different stages, without making boys "smatterers ;" and if a teacher knows what he wants to teach, and confines himself to it, it may be taught in an hour and a half, and tested every day throughout the term. As regards metaphors, boys should be made not merely to get up the definition of "metaphor" and "simile," which is of little or no use by itself, but, as soon as they have attained the idea of proportion, to expand each metaphor into its simile by supplying the one or two missing terms of the proportion. Thus, "the ship ploughs the sea." "How many terms are here given ?" "Three." "How many do you want for the simile?" "Four." 66 Supply the missing term, and give the whole proportion."

the plough is to the land, so is the ship to the sea." And in "the mountain frowns," the two missing terms could of course be supplied in the same way. This might be taught thoroughly to upwards of sixty boys, between the ages. of eleven and fourteen, in less than half an hour; and it would be difficult to overvalue such a stimulant and test of intelligence.

After receiving this preliminary information, a boy would need nothing more in order to prepare for his English lesson but a dictionary and a handbook. I daresay it is possible to find many faults in all existing dictionaries and handbooks, particularly in dictionaries; but still, with such treatises as Dr. Angus's "Handbook" and Chambers's Etymological Dictionary," a teacher can work away pretty well. And when I hear the cry for English teaching met with the cry for English text-books, I am tempted to think of the old proverb about the workman who found fault with his tools.

66

This brings us to the question of text-books, by which I mean authors edited with notes. I frankly avow that, unless they give very little and very carefully-selected information, they seem to me worse than useless. Of course I admit that for Early English or even for Elizabethan writers text-books are desirable. But it is evident to me that, if an English book is edited with answers to all questions that can fairly be asked, all obscurities explained, all necessity for thought removed, then, though such books may exactly suit crammers for Civil Service examinations, they are useless for us; there is an end of the training which we desire. The notes ought only to illustrate historical questions, explain archaic words. or idioms, give parallel passages, and now and then hints to direct the reader to the meaning of a very difficult passage. They ought not to explain fully any obscurities, nor paraphrase any sentences, nor completely elucidate any thoughts.

I do not believe in "extracts" or "specimens," except where Early English

For the same reason, I should not trouble myself much about the "History of English Literature," at all events till the pupils had reached the highest classes in the school, when such a study would imply something more than mere cram. I cannot help thinking that, in the middle and at the bottom of most schools, the study of a "history of literature" would be little more than ornamental cram. Besides, there is the question of time. If it could be combined with the study of authors, well; but where could you find the time?

I would have each of the lower classes working at two subjects, one a longer book for home reading, the other a short poem, for school-work. The home book should be studied for the book as a whole; boys should not be troubled with detail, but merely be examined occasionally in the plot, characters, &c. in such a way as to bring out for them the drift of the book and purpose of the author. The shorter poem should be thoroughly studied with all minutest details. The home-work should teach boys what is literature, the school-work what is thought. A beginning might be made with "Robinson Crusoe and Byron's "Sennacherib," or some other short, intelligible, and powerful poem; then "Ivanhoe and the "Armada;" then Plutarch's "Coriolanus" and the "Horatius Cocles," Plutarch's "Julius Cæsar" and Gray's "Ruin seize thee;" Plutarch's "Agis and Cleomenes" and the "Battle of Ivry;" then "Marmion;" then the "Allegro" and "Penseroso," or "Comus ;"

then (in the class in which those boys leave who are intended for commercial pursuits) Pope's "Iliad ;" then part of the "Paradise Lost;" then part of the "Fairy Queen;" then Chaucer's "Knight's Tale" or Dante's "Inferno" (in English), or the "In Memoriam," or some of the poems of Dryden, Pope, or Johnson. It would be well, if time could be found for it, to include in the subjects of the highest class some specimens of Early English. For though the study of Early English approximates to the classical studies, yet it cannot be denied that the philological knowledge obtained from the study of Early English pronouns, and of the employment of the subjunctive, and an acquaintance with the obstacles, impediments, and barrenness which made Early English what it was, contribute in no slight degree to the exact understanding of the expressions of Elizabethan and of Modern English.

A play of Shakespeare might be read during another term throughout almost every class in the school. Shakespeare and Plutarch's "Lives" are very devulgarizing books, and I should like every boy who leaves a middle-class school for business at the age of fifteen, suppose, or sixteen, to have read three or four plays of Shakespeare, three or four noble poems, and three or four nobly-written lives of noble Greeks and Romans. I should therefore like to see Plutarch's "Lives" in the hands of every English schoolboy; or, if it were necessary to make a selection, those biographies which best illustrate one's "duty toward one's country."

Now let me answer one objection. It may be said, "The object you have described is desirable, but can be attained by the study of Latin and Greek, and does not necessitate the study of English. There are metaphors and syllogisms, thoughts as well as words, in the classical languages, and not in English. merely. Why cannot all this be done in Latin and Greek?"

I answer, "Is it done?" Can any classical master deny that often, when he has wished to elucidate the thought

of his author, some enveloping difficulty of οὐ or μή has extinguished the thought in a mist of words? Of course you meant to point out to your pupils that, from one point of view, the Ilissus is as important as, or more important than, the Mississippi; that, whether it be Brasidas with five hundred men, or Napoleon with five hundred thousand, it matters nothing as regards the principles on which cities and battles are won or lost you intended, no doubt, to make your pupils feel the exquisite Sophoclean irony which sets poor strutting Edipus spinning like a cockchafer for the amusement of gods and men; but did you? I am afraid that you have almost persuaded yourself that you did; but a regard for truth must induce you to confess, on second thoughts, that Brasidas was smothered in his case, and the Sophoclean irony extinguished by a tribrach in the fifth foot. Or, if you thought of it, you found it was getting late, and you could not do your forty lines, or your page and a half, unless you "kept to the point."

Classical scholars are like Alpine travellers, who ascend a mountain on the pretext of a glorious prospect, or scientific observations; but ninety-nine out of a hundred climbers find that when they have reached the top they are too tired to see anything, and that it is so late that there is nothing to see;

and then, coming down again by the most difficult way they can select, they secretly confide to their most intimate friends their private conviction that the exercise is the great thing after all.

No doubt Latin and Greek might be taught much better than they often are. I do not envy the teacher who can teach them, without obliging his pupils to "weigh probabilities;" but, for the study of thought, English is evidently more ready to our hand, because in other languages that study cannot commence till they have been translated into English.

I do not think that English can ever supersede or do the work of Latin and Greek, even for boys who leave school at the early age of fifteen. But, on the other hand, I venture to suggest that Latin and Greek may be unable to do the work of English. I am convinced that the study of English may be undertaken so as to interest, stimulate, and develop the student; that it is perfectly compatible with the discipline and competition of very large classes; that its success, as also the success of other studies, depends, to some extent, upon the way in which it is taught, but that, even when taught tentatively by those who will be very glad to receive hints how to teach it better, it may produce results not altogether unsatisfactory.