Plato thought, the forms of goodness through what is presented to sense and imagination.

As regards Method, we have done little as yet but apply the great rule that a subject should be begun from the beginning, and, as we proceed, be brought into fit relation with the stage of mental progress the pupil has reached. Step by step, step after step. In truth, however, there is scarcely a rule of method which is not as applicable to the teaching of literature as to the teaching of any other subject. Only, one is a little averse to be guilty of the pedantry of applying them in detail. For of literature, as of religion, it may be said that rules of procedure, which may be of great use to a teacher in matters of the pure intellect, are of little value unless he is himself inspired. The genuine love of literature, the sympathetic living with the growing minds of the young, and the impulse to give that which you enrich yourself by giving, supersede all rules of method. Still, a word or two may be profitably said in correction of obvious faults, although the result may be merely negative.

Here let me quote again from Mr CourthopeBowen: "By the study of literature as literature, I mean the study of a poem or prose-work for the sake of its substance, its form, and its style; for the sake of the thought and imagination it contains, and the methods used to express these; for the sake of its lofty, large, or acute perception of things; its power of exposition; the beauty, force and meaning of its metaphors, its similes, its epithets; the strength and music of its language." I quote this because I think it well

said, and also because it describes the working of the second governing rule of all method, "Let your process be analytico-synthetic." To work this out in detail is not my intention, but you will find most of the suggestions for teaching a piece of prose as substance of thought, applicable also in the domain of pure literature.

As a matter of fact, it is notorious that the schoolmaster cannot shake off his hardness, his formalism, his pedantry, in this field of instruction any more than in religion; and the result is that literature in the school resolves itself into a list of literary names, and sinks into the examination of words, and of grammatical and historical forms and facts. A play of Shakespeare or Milton's "Lycidas" is read with a view to its anatomy, not to what the poems convey to the intellect and emotions their satisfaction of the ideal in man. In the editions used the product of the artist is lost in a monstrous superfetation of notes. Why do teachers make lessons of everything?

Thus it is that the majority of boys at this secondary school stage care nothing for books, except books of impossible adventure or comic presentations of serious things. In these they find relief from the dissection of a great writer, whether the writer be English or Latin or Greek. And they are justified in the course they take. How can we expect any one to enjoy "Lycidas," or Portia's speech, or Hamlet's soliloquy, or Tintern Abbey, if they read ten lines a day, have to learn by heart a lot of notes (philological or antiquarian), and then begin to mangle the passages by writing out parsing and analysis tables-finally, perhaps, resorting

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to the degrading process of paraphrasing? This would be to expect an impossibility. You, the teacher, are ostensibly giving him literature, whereas truly you are cheating him and giving him grammar-words, words, words. You are ostensibly giving him the real of literature; you are truly palming off upon him the formal and abstract. I would rather have the exclusive Latin training back again in all its aridity. There are plenty of corpora vilia in the English tongue on which the dreary experiments of grammar and analysis may be made. But be honest here, and if you affect to give him literature, give him literature. For one boy who enters with spirit into the formal, there are ten who appreciate the real. And do you not see that, if out of a class of forty boys you can send out even thirty inspired by the great writings of great men, you have educationally accomplished more for them than by sending them out with the most exact notions of grammar and analysis, while dead to literature? If you have ever realized to yourself that the final aim of all education, both of the school and the world, is an ethical aim, you will not doubt this for a moment.

Select then the books which are within the comprehension of your class, and read them liberally, generously. There is a superabundance of English literature of this class, not to speak of good translations from other languages. Then, read the book with the pupils at large. Let them read, and do you also take your turn of reading. Enjoy the book together —not as a lesson, but as a pleasant symposium. This is the sum and substance of the method. When you come to a particularly fine passage, direct attention

to it, ask them to point out its artistic beauties, and then read it to them a second time as it ought to be read. That is to say, if you can read, which possibly you cannot.

I do not mean to say that in such literary schoolbanquets you are to eschew all questionings. If a difficult phrase or allusion occur, ask in a friendly and conversational way what the precise force of it is: above all, let it be understood that you are there to be questioned. If it be poetry you are reading, encourage the boys to learn beautiful passages by heart, but avoid prescribing them. This is no task-work in which you are engaged. Says Quintilian (1. 8), "Point out the beauty of the arrangement, the charms of the subjectmatter, the appropriateness of the words to the characters represented, what is worthy of praise in the substance, what in the words used," and so forth. It is now, if ever, that you are living with your boys. Now truly mind meets mind. It is now, and through this literary sympathy, that you lay deep the foundations of your moral influence on the whole future lives of your pupils. It is now that you are truly developing the religious possibilities of the little men and women before you. This, and not the spelling out with tears and vexation a dozen lines of Virgil, is the "Humanities."

That obstructive the "practical" teacher, and most of all, strange to say, the classical expert who usurps the title of "Humanist" on the strength of his imitative powers, will tell me, "Ah! this is theory; you don't know boys: why, even with the best teaching, one-half of them would find even this a bore." To which I reply that I think I do know boys, and that if one-half of them

find such intercourse as this with their master a bore, it is due to previous neglect of the real, or to you the master. Perhaps you put on your gown and college cap, and come down on them with a magisterial air, and with the aspect of omniscience. Even the luminous charm of Tennyson, or the deep calm communings of Wordsworth, cannot drive the superiority and the pedantry out of you. Who would accept "Il Penseroso" out of the mouth of the parish beadle? You come to your class-room to teach these poets, forsooth! to patronise them, and, through them, your boys. Now it is clear that this kind of work is too fine, too delicate for you; the college cap is out of place; the work must be done in your shirt-sleeves, if it is to be done at all. The boys are to lead, and you are to follow. Pray, how much more do you know than your boys in this field? It will be a stupid class that cannot puzzle you in the first five minutes by its questions. And you are no true educator if you do not rejoice to be puzzled by them.

A certain percentage of inferior organisms will doubtless be found in every class, and they will get no good; but how much larger is the percentage who resist and reject your formal and grammatical teaching? And yet you go on with it, and rightly so in its proper place, which, however, is not here in the sacred literary hour. Such things belong to the outer porch; we are now within the Temple of the Muses.

The question was recently debated in connexion with Oxford University, Can Literature be taught? It seemed to me that, as was natural in the case of