“Let knowledge grow from more to more,But more of reverence in us dwell.”
“Let knowledge grow from more to more,But more of reverence in us dwell.”
“Let knowledge grow from more to more,
But more of reverence in us dwell.”
Knowledge is of the intellect, wisdom and reverence of the soul. We should aim, in our study of literature, to pierce through the show of things—to reach the vital, quickening, spiritual element, by breaking through the baffling and perverting mesh of words which hide and blind it. How true are the lines of the late Poet Laureate:
“I sometimes hold it half a sinTo put in words the thoughts I feel,For words, like nature, half revealAnd half conceal the soul within.”
“I sometimes hold it half a sinTo put in words the thoughts I feel,For words, like nature, half revealAnd half conceal the soul within.”
“I sometimes hold it half a sin
To put in words the thoughts I feel,
For words, like nature, half reveal
And half conceal the soul within.”
Herein, then, comes the office of the voice in literary interpretation—to aid in laying bare the soul within. When the same time is given in preparing the voice for the high office of literary interpretation that is now devoted to it in preparation for the operatic and concert stage, then we may look for the best and highest results in literary study. Then, indeed, will the throbbing pulse of poetry be felt in the class and lecture room, and the divine infection of inspiration will do its benign work, cheating the lazy and indifferent student of his hours and days.
Many make the mistake of believing that they may become capable vocal interpreters of literature in a month or a year, whereas the great work should cover a lifetime. Professor Corson, of Cornell University, who is acknowledged to be the ablest vocal interpreter of literature in America, once told the writer that he had made it a custom to read aloud for an hour each day for more than twenty-five years. Those who have been privileged to hear Professor Corson interpret vocally the great masterpieces of poetic literature, as found in Shakespeare, Tennyson, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Milton and Browning, can better understand and appreciate the true value of vocal culture as a factor in the great work of literary interpretation.
If we could combine the voice work of our best schools of elocution and oratory with the fullest and most comprehensive courses in literature found in our best universities, we might soon hope for the very summit of literary culture and training. The worst of our elocution schools are a positive injury to vocal training as a worthy factor in the interpretation of literature, inasmuch as they induce both superficiality and artificiality, their chief ambition being to graduate pretty girls with pretty gowns who can recite some catch-penny piece of current literature, before an assemblage of admiring friends, according to the numbers or lines upon an elocutionary chart or fashion plate. When these graduates leave their schools after a six months’ course, all equipped and prepared to voice the depths of Shakespeare, the heights of Milton, or the zigzag involutions of Browning, they never fail, also, as a rule, to carry with them the brand or trade-mark of their respective manufactories.
In the best of our elocution schools, such as are found in Boston, Philadelphia and New York, where saner and more thorough methods are pursued and a certain measure of literary scholarship finds a habitation and a name, respectable attention is given to some of the chief masterpieces of literature, and a graduate knows something more than the scrappy selections found in a few recitation books.
Still the aim of all these schools is to turn out readers and teachers of reading, and this very aim precludes a deep, serious and comprehensive study of literature.
In many of our leading colleges and universities there is a professor of oratory, who trains young men for declamation and intercollegiate contests in oratory and debate, but here again the aim determines the character and limitations of the work done. The most suitable department for voice training in a college or university is that of English literature, for it is as needful in the dramas of Shakespeare as in the orations of Webster and Burke; as requisite in the lyrics of Moore, Burns and Longfellow as in the glorious epics of Homer, Dante and Milton; as potent in the sonnets of Cowper and Wordsworth as in the tender elegies of a Shelley, an Arnold or a Tennyson.
But what about the vocal interpretation of literature in our primary and intermediate schools—in our academies preparatory to college and university work? It is here where the great work of vocal culture should begin—and begin in earnest, too. But it should never be pursued as an accomplishment or means of frivolous display. The aim should be, in every class, the adequate voicing of literary thought. Teachers will find in the voice an invaluable aid in the work of interpreting, particularly lyrics.
The lyric being subjective, and its very lifeblood being feeling, a sympathetic vocal interpretation of it will give a better insight into its poetic moment or inspirational thought, around which centres the whole structure, than hours of sentence chopping and phrase stitching. For the purpose of illustrating this fact let us take Tennyson’s exquisite lyric, “Break, Break, Break,” which embodies or crystallizes a mood. Here is the delightful little gem:
“Break, break, break,On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!And I would that my tongue could utterThe thoughts that arise in me.
“Break, break, break,
On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.
“O well for the fisherman’s boyThat he shouts with his sister at play!O well for the sailor-lad,That he sings in his boat on the bay.
“O well for the fisherman’s boy
That he shouts with his sister at play!
O well for the sailor-lad,
That he sings in his boat on the bay.
“And the stately ships go onTo their haven under the hill;But O for the touch of a vanish’d hand,And the sound of a voice that is still!
“And the stately ships go on
To their haven under the hill;
But O for the touch of a vanish’d hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!
“Break, break, break,At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!But the tender grace of a day that is deadWill never come back to me.”
“Break, break, break,
At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me.”
It will be remembered that this lyric, as well as another poem, “In the Valley of Cauteretz,” though not contained in the linked elegy of “In Memoriam,” are practically a part of it, and are co-radical as to their subject of inspiration—the sorrow borne by Tennyson for young Hallam. Here are the lines of the second poem:
“All along the valley, stream that flashest white,Deepening thy voice with the deepening of the night,All along the valley, where thy waters flow,I walked with one I loved two and thirty years ago.All along the valley, while I walk’d to-day,The two and thirty years were a mist that rolls away;For all along the valley, down thy rocky bed,Thy living voice to me was as the voice of the dead.And all along the valley, by rock and cave and tree,The voice of the dead was a living voice to me.”
“All along the valley, stream that flashest white,Deepening thy voice with the deepening of the night,All along the valley, where thy waters flow,I walked with one I loved two and thirty years ago.All along the valley, while I walk’d to-day,The two and thirty years were a mist that rolls away;For all along the valley, down thy rocky bed,Thy living voice to me was as the voice of the dead.And all along the valley, by rock and cave and tree,The voice of the dead was a living voice to me.”
“All along the valley, stream that flashest white,
Deepening thy voice with the deepening of the night,
All along the valley, where thy waters flow,
I walked with one I loved two and thirty years ago.
All along the valley, while I walk’d to-day,
The two and thirty years were a mist that rolls away;
For all along the valley, down thy rocky bed,
Thy living voice to me was as the voice of the dead.
And all along the valley, by rock and cave and tree,
The voice of the dead was a living voice to me.”
It is easy to find the poetic moment in the first lyric, as it may be seen andFELTat once that the whole poem-thought centres around the inspirational lines:
“But O for the touch of a vanished hand,And the sound of a voice that is still.”
“But O for the touch of a vanished hand,And the sound of a voice that is still.”
“But O for the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still.”
We have seen an examination paper strewn with questions upon this lyric, among them being one asking for the reason why the first line, “Break, break, break,” is shorter in the number of its feet than the others which follow. As well ask for the reason of the permanency of parental or filial affection. The question is entirely gratuitous to one who has assimilated the poem in its essential life and can voice it properly. To those who have not responded, or, worse, cannot respond, to theINFORMINGlife of the lyric, a technical answer is of as much value as are many of the treatises that assume to deal with the subject of versification. But enough. Let the reader be assured of one thing: That the vocal interpretation of literature is in every way a subject worthy of his attention, and that he is the best interpreter of literature whose every faculty is fully developed—not the least of which is the voice—and who brings to his work a full and vitally spiritualized life.
Now as to the best method of taking up the study of literature—and we refer particularly to that department of it known as poetry—in our primary and secondary schools and colleges, why, we should say that the less method put into the work the better. For indeed there is no best method in the study and interpretation of literature. A poem being a work of art, the approach to it must be along the same lines as is the approach to every work of art.
As a matter of fact, no two interpreters of literature—we use the word interpreter here rather than that of teacher, since the study of literature is entirely subjective—will ever approach a poem along exactly the same lines. Why? Because the poem makes to each a different appeal. Nothing is truer than the statement that you get out of a poem what you bring to it. But the teacher of literature should ever remember that the primary purpose in the study of poetry is not discipline and instruction but exaltation and inspiration.
Dr. Hamilton Mabie, the well-known American critic and author, writing upon the study of poetry, says: “So much has been said of late years about methods of literary study that we are in danger of missing the ends of that study; in the multiplication of mechanical devices of all kinds and in the elaboration of systems the joy which ought to flow from a true work of art escapes us, and we are disciplined and instructed where we ought to be exalted and inspired. There are other studies which train the mind and impart information; the study of poetry ought to do more; it ought to liberate the imagination and enrich the spirit of the student.”
Dr. Corson, now Professor Emeritus of English Literature at Cornell University, N.Y., to whom reference has already been made, whose sympathetic interpretation of poetry will remain a gift and memory to every student who has ever had the rare privilege of sharing in his instruction and enjoying the fine infection of his inspiring lectures, has this to say with respect to the study of poetry: “In studying a poem with a class of students, the purpose being literary culture (that is, spiritual culture), the aim of the teacher should be to hold the minds of the class up as near as possible, which at best may not be very near, to the height of the poet’s thought and feeling. He should carefully avoid loosening, so to speak, more than there is need the close texture of the language; for it is all-important that the student should be encouraged to think and feel as far as he is able in the idealized language of the higher poetry.”
Nor should it be forgotten that much of our best poetry is expressed under the form of a symbol. Take, for instance, Longfellow’s little simple lyric, “Excelsior.” Think you that the full meaning of that poem lies upon the surface? Instead of representing the failure of a youth climbing the Alpine peaks of life, does the poem not rather represent the triumph of a soul over all earthly difficulties, freed from every worldly allurement? Is not the voice we hear at the close “from the sky serene and far” but the voice of triumphant immortality?
If the student would indeed know what poetry really means, and what is its function, and what the office of a poet, he should read Tennyson’s “The Poet’s Mind” and “The Lady of Shalott,” the Fifth Book of Mrs. Browning’s “Aurora Leigh,” and her “Musical Instrument,” and Browning’s poem, “Popularity.” In nearly all these poems the meaning is expressed in symbol.
Another thing to remember in the interpretation of poetry is that its value is constant; nor has it one message or meaning for the boy and another for the man. But in order that this may be realized it would be well to take up first for interpretation in the classes the poets whose work is chiefly confined to the lyric, the idyl and the ballad, and leave for mature years—the years of philosophic thought—the study of poets of the more complex and philosophic school.
THE DEGRADATION OFSCHOLARSHIP
THE DEGRADATION OF
SCHOLARSHIP
THE DEGRADATION OF SCHOLARSHIP.
Nothing is more evident in this our day than the degradation to which scholarship is subjected at the hands of certain so-called educators. Indeed, it has become a malady which sooner or later must prove fatal to the life and welfare of the body educational. How could it be otherwise when pedantry with all its assumption and presumption usurps the throne of scholarship, and true culture often finds but little welcome in the class-rooms and academic halls of our land?
Nor is this an exaggerated picture of the educational conditions which obtain right here in the Province of Ontario. No person at all acquainted with the character of work done in our primary and secondary schools but knows that in many respects it is not only inferior, but that much that bears the name of scholarship is only the merest pedantry tricked out in the feathers and pomp of a school curriculum.
Should you ask for a proof of this statement you have but to visit with an open and unbiased mind the primary and secondary schools of our Province and learn for yourself of their lack of efficiency in the foundation subjects of reading, writing, composition and spelling.
Should your desire lead you further to ascertain something of the character of the work that is being done in the departments of what may be designated culture subjects, such as Latin, French and German, you will quickly find proof that here it is pedantry rather than scholarship which obtains.
As to the subject of reading, it is conceded on all sides that it is badly taught in both the Public and High Schools, and that along this line little progress has been made for a number of years. The High School teachers lay the blame for this at the door of the Public Schools, alleging that the pupils read very badly when they enter the High Schools, forgetting meantime that the charge recoils upon themselves, since the teachers of the Public Schools are the product of the High Schools.
The fault lies in the fact that neither teachers nor inspectors of Public or High Schools in Ontario have had any training in the subject of reading; or, if they have had, it has only been along the line of barren and worthless theorizing. This is borne out by the fact that teachers who have from time to time boldly ventured to prepare manuals of reading have not been able to apply their own principles, and as readers or vocal interpreters of literature have been and are pronounced failures.
If the teacher whose spirit has been quickened by the deeper sympathies and experiences of life cannot read, how, pray, can you expect the boy or girl to do so? If “Learn by doing” is pedagogically of great value to the pupil, should it not be of equal value to the teacher?
Now turn we for a moment to the subject of composition, and what do we find? A condition which reveals manifest defects in its teaching. We can readily put our finger on its weak spots, and with Goethe say, “Thou ailest here and ailest there.” In the first place, the translations in the secondary schools from Greek, Latin, French and German authors are so badly done, so inaccurately done, so inelegantly done, that what should be a daily practice in English composition in the construction of sentences and paragraphs, the disposal of phrases, and the choice of the exact word, becomes almost worthless. The introduction of no fad like oral composition will or can compensate for this.
Again, while the Public and High Schools are being provided with libraries—in many instances quite an unnecessary expense being entailed—little direction is given to the reading, and pupils gabble thoughtlessly through books in mental gallop from chapter to chapter without adding to the capital of their scholarship a single new thought or idea, or to their vocabulary a single new word. Was it not at a convention of teachers, held but a short time ago in an Ontario city, that a Public School teacher boasted of the fact that one of his pupils had read sixty books in three months? And not a teacher present—not even the Inspector—protested.
Then, too, in many cases the teachers cannot teach composition, since they cannot write themselves. What does a teacher know about sentence or paragraph construction, or the logical and artistic expression of thought, who has never served his time as an apprentice in the great laboratory of composition? It is but a few years since a leading Canadian journalist told the writer that among the letters sent to his paper many of the worst and most faulty came from teachers.
Lastly, the study of literature, which should be an auxiliary to composition, nay, be its right arm, is often such in our schools as to aid the student but little in the work of composition.
There yet remain to be considered, of the foundation subjects, writing and spelling. Perhaps nowhere else in the world can be found as many slovenly and bad writers as here in the schools of Ontario. Go to England, Ireland, Scotland, Germany or Switzerland, and you will find that a boy or girl of fifteen years of age writes a hand marvellously clear and legible. Why is this? Because in Europe its importance is emphasized, and it counts for quite as much in the estimate of acquirements as arithmetic or grammar or history or geography. We also know of no word in the school vocabulary of Europe—in any language—that exactly corresponds in meaning to our word for school exercise book—“scribbler.” Sometimes a word when traced to its origin is very significant.
Now just here it will be well, lest it might be thought that we are making statements without any facts to support them, to quote from the official report of McGill University matriculation examination held at Montreal and the various examining centres of Canada in June, 1908. Touching the subjects of writing and spelling, the chief examiner in his report says: “The handwriting of some of the candidates was so unformed and untidy that it was hard to believe that the writers were actually candidates at a matriculation examination. Certainly such candidates will stand a poor chance of being accepted should they look for any employment in which writing is a factor. It is regrettable that a number of papers otherwise excellent showed conspicuous lapses in this particular. This will explain to some candidates thoroughly well up in their subject why their marks were not high. A word of warning might be given them that if they wish to have a high standing in English when they come to college they must give their days and nights to the study of the spelling-book—or the dictionary, perhaps, for there are no spelling-books nowadays.” This is frank criticism, and if hearkened to by schools and colleges cannot but prove a benefit educationally. There is no attempt here to consider the work of the examiner as “confidential.” Such criticism is, indeed, the basis of progress.
But pray enter the temple of higher studies and see what we find. Assuredly the work done in Latin is not thorough. How could it be so when a course that demands six or eight years of study in Old World schools is completed here in three? Is it any wonder that the Canadian matriculant, when pursuing his classical studies at the University, ever lives on intimate terms with his “crib” or “pony”? How extensive can be the vocabulary of a student in Latin whose class work has covered but four thirty-minute spaces a week for three years? What will be his grasp of the Latin grammar? During his third year he has been “sight reading.” Is he really prepared for such work at the end of the second year? It is quite true that “sight reading,” or translation without preparation, is excellent practice in the study of any language, but does it not presuppose a solid grounding in the grammar and a wide vocabulary? The boy’s teacher, fresh from the academic halls of his alma mater, has pathetically bid farewell to his “crib” or “pony,” and now goes out into the cold classical world alone to teach “sight reading” to his class, that have been tiptoed into Latin. What is the result? In most instances the work is worthless—a loss of time which could have been far better devoted to the Latin grammar or the extension of his vocabulary. But it looks well, you know, in a High School curriculum.
In the department of modern languages—that is to say, French and German—a still worse condition exists. After a three or four years’ course in those languages in an Ontario High School, what does the student carry away? The ability, think you, to converse in those languages, to write them and read them easily? Not at all. Though in many cases the students have been taught by so-called specialists, their accent in reading French or German is in most instances unlike that of either “Christian, pagan or man.” They have prepared for an examination and have passed. That is all.
The purpose in studying modern languages in Europe is to be able to speak and write them with ease. Here gabbling through syntax and making application of its rules to the prescribed text seem to constitute the chief aim in their study. Indeed, an Ontario teacher who went to Europe a couple of years ago for the purpose of taking a summer course in modern languages complained on his return that over there too much attention was given to the speaking of the languages and not enough to the grammar. He was probably disappointed with Old World scholarship, finding that it was so devoid of pedantry. No doubt grammar has its place, but its role is a secondary one in the acquisition of any modern language.
Let us for a moment consider next how the important subject of history is taught in our secondary schools. No one will deny how large a place this subject should hold in a curriculum of well ordered studies in either a High School or a University. For what is history but a record of the activities of the human race, and to have a thorough knowledge of this is in itself equivalent to a liberal education.
But the student who pursues a course in history in the High Schools of Ontario is beset with a double danger—that of endeavoring to cover too much ground and thereby getting but a superficial knowledge of the facts and great movements of history, and that of basing his judgments on data drawn from only one source.
The course in history, as at present constituted in the High School curriculum of Ontario, comprises five years. Now, certainly a good deal should be done in that time, but it would be the sheerest folly to think that any boy or girl could within that time gain even a fair knowledge of the history of Greece, Rome, Canada, England, medieval and modern Europe. This tiptoeing the pupils in history is not a whit better than tiptoeing them in Latin, French or German. Indeed, we are not sure but it works greater harm to true scholarship. We are living in an age when education is becoming so widely diffused that scholarship as a consequence is becoming very superficial and thin.
As we write we have before us the Syllabus of the Ontario High School Course in Medieval and Modern History. It briefly outlines the scope of the work to be done and gives a list of books to be consulted as works of reference. Now, the scientific method of studying history warns you to take nothing for granted. First you must verify the facts by examining the witnesses that testify to these facts. Secondly, you must properly appreciate or value these facts from the point of view of principles that ought to govern human actions, and thirdly, these facts should be explained by going back to the causes, whether particular or general, that produced them. That is, the scientific method in history requires, first, verification; secondly, appreciation or valuation; and thirdly, explanation of historic facts.
In a High School it is true there is not sufficient time for historical research or investigation, but there is sufficient time to study a question on more than one side; there is sufficient time to be honest; there is sufficient time to prefer truth to falsehood; and where in a mooted point the policy and teachings of the Catholic Church are involved there should be sufficient time and sufficient honesty to consult authors who know whereof they write. Take for example the history of the Middle Ages. Without a thorough and correct knowledge of the policy, teachings and work of the Catholic Church, how, I ask, may the student hope to follow and understand the great movements of history in those centuries? In the first place, the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages was the bulwark of sovereignty, law and order, the founder of universities, the patron of letters, the inspiration of art, the shield of the oppressed, and a very staff and guide to the halting and stumbling steps of civilization. She was knowledge, she was authority, she was order, she was reverence.
Taking up now the books of reference recommended in the Syllabus of the High School Course in Medieval and Modern History in Ontario, we find the work of but one Catholic author on the reference list—“English Monastic Life,” by Dom Gasquet, the Benedictine. Is this not truly a one-sided study of history that obtains in the secondary schools of Ontario? Yet the teachers of history in those schools are supposed to be broad-minded and cultured men. Why, then, should they refuse to read the Catholic point of view in the study of historical periods and historical movements in which the Catholic Church was the greatest factor?
It will not do to say that Catholic authors are not available. Translations have been made of many of the most valuable works in medieval and modern history written by leading Catholic scholars of Europe. We usually find what we look for. Why, for instance, not put on the list of reference books the lives of St. Benedict, St. Dominic, St. Francis and St. Ignatius written by members of their own communities? They should best understand the meaning, spirit and purpose of the religious society in which they live. Why not put on the list the great German historian Jansen’s work dealing with the history of Germany on the eve of the Lutheran revolt, or Father Denifle’s monumental work, “The Life of Luther”? For the beginnings of Christianity why not put on the list Dr. Shahan’s excellent studies in this subject, as well as his scholarly work on the Middle Ages? For a study of the Thirteenth Century, which saw the founding of the medieval university, the rise of the Gothic cathedral, the development of scholastic philosophy, the birth of Dante, the world’s greatest epic poet, the composition of the great Latin hymns, the foundation of great libraries, and the origin of democracy, Christian socialism and self-government, is there a better work of reference than Dr. J. J. Walsh’s “The Thirteenth, Greatest of Centuries”? Why, then, not put it on the list? And beside this, why not put on the list Pastor’s “Lives of the Popes Since the Close of the Middle Ages”?
If the purpose in the study of history be to reach truth, why accept in the court of history the testimony of but one set of witnesses? Such a proceeding is neither judicial nor just. It would not be permitted in the law courts of our land; why, then, permit it in the history courts of our schools and colleges?
Nor is thisex-partestudy of history more obvious in the curriculum of the High Schools of Ontario than is the objectionable character of many of the poems that are assigned for literary study. In the selections from Browning of last year this choice stanza greeted the Catholic pupils in their study and appreciation of “Up at a Villa—Down in the City”:
“Or a sonnet with flowery marge to the Reverend Don So and So,Who is Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarca, St. Jerome and Cicero.‘And moreover’ (the sonnet goes rhyming), ‘the skirts of St. Paul has reached,Having preached us those six Lent-lectures more unctuous than ever he preached.’Noon strikes,—here sweeps the procession! our Lady borne smiling and smartWith a pink gauze gown all spangles and seven swords stuck in her heart!Bang-whang-whang goes the drum, tootle-te-tootle the fife;No keeping one’s haunches still: it’s the greatest pleasure in life.”
“Or a sonnet with flowery marge to the Reverend Don So and So,Who is Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarca, St. Jerome and Cicero.‘And moreover’ (the sonnet goes rhyming), ‘the skirts of St. Paul has reached,Having preached us those six Lent-lectures more unctuous than ever he preached.’Noon strikes,—here sweeps the procession! our Lady borne smiling and smartWith a pink gauze gown all spangles and seven swords stuck in her heart!Bang-whang-whang goes the drum, tootle-te-tootle the fife;No keeping one’s haunches still: it’s the greatest pleasure in life.”
“Or a sonnet with flowery marge to the Reverend Don So and So,
Who is Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarca, St. Jerome and Cicero.
‘And moreover’ (the sonnet goes rhyming), ‘the skirts of St. Paul has reached,
Having preached us those six Lent-lectures more unctuous than ever he preached.’
Noon strikes,—here sweeps the procession! our Lady borne smiling and smart
With a pink gauze gown all spangles and seven swords stuck in her heart!
Bang-whang-whang goes the drum, tootle-te-tootle the fife;
No keeping one’s haunches still: it’s the greatest pleasure in life.”
It may, we think, be legitimately questioned whether either the study in our secondary schools of a one-sided presentation of the facts of history or the interpretation of poems which ridicule the tenets and ceremonies of any Church conduces to that breadth of scholarship and culture and to the upbuilding of that large-minded Canadian citizenship which we all so heartily desire in our land.
Is it not on the plea that these higher institutions of learning—High Schools and Normal Schools—are broad and just and free from prejudice in their teaching that the Roman Catholic Separate School System has been persistently denied by successive Governments in this Province the right to develop beyond an elementary status, though this right is manifestly inherent or implied in the very pact which made provision for the establishment of Separate Schools for the minorities in the Provinces of Quebec and Ontario. The Government of Quebec has recognized the right; the Government of Ontario refuses to do so.
Now a word as to certain conditions educational which prevail in Ontario and which have not only led to abuses but are contributing factors to the degradation of scholarship as well as to the debasement of the teaching profession.
And first of these is the system of creating “specialists”—a system or method which has not scholarship as its basis. Why should a university graduate whose average is sixty-six per cent. in his examinations be regarded as having the academic standing for a specialist, while the graduate whose average is sixty per cent., though he may have pursued post-graduate work for two or three years, is refused this standing? How large a part does not mere memory play in examination percentages? If specialism were based upon the post-graduate work of one, two or three years it would have some meaning or value, but as it exists to-day in Ontario it is largely a sham.
Then as regards the professional qualifications of a specialist, are they not almost wholly based upon the opinion of an examiner or inspector? Now this opinion may be worth a good deal; it may be worth very little; it may be worth nothing. As a matter of fact the High School inspectors of a few years ago often differed as widely as the poles in their estimate or rating of the High School teachers of this Province, and the High School inspectors of to-day are rating teachers high who had been marked low by the former inspectors.
And what shall be said of educational officials who, lacking a fine sense of duty, dignity and honor, have been playing the part of educational Warwicks in the Province, crowning and uncrowning, making and unmaking teachers, now in one part of Ontario, now in another? We endeavor to keep education out of politics, while gross partisanship is doing its work.
With such conditions educational in our Province, need we wonder that during the past year an inspector refused to permit a French-Canadian girl who held a Normal School Entrance and Normal School Professional Certificate to teach in a school where three-fourths of the children are of French-Canadian origin? Either the Normal School staff, in granting that French-Canadian girl a certificate to teach, did not know what they were doing, or the inspector exceeded his authority. Look at it as you will, the matter is discreditable.
For how, we ask, may the teacher be expected to grow and reach out towards higher things if he be not permitted to enjoy the very first conditions of growth—the right to develop and advance by virtue of his own gifts and toil? Who stands between the lawyer and the acceptance of his brief? Who stands between the physician and the diagnosis of his case? We speak of the dignity of scholarship and the dignity of the teaching profession, but if the law of development be thwarted and its attendant right to advancement be denied, degradation, not dignity, would be the fitting term.
THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE ANDTHE POPES OF AVIGNON
THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE AND
THE POPES OF AVIGNON
THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE AND THE POPES OF AVIGNON.
There is probably no other period in the history of the world in which the attitude of the Papacy toward art and letters has been so misrepresented by certain writers as that of the Italian Renaissance. If one takes up the works of such well-known historians of this period as Pastor, Burckhardt and Symonds, the conflict of opinion is so great that one almost despairs of getting at the real truth.
The charm of style in the work of Symonds is so seductive that for the moment misrepresentation and contradiction pass unheeded and one is swept along a current of rhetoric, dazzled now by the coloring of thought, now by the very atmosphere which rests upon the art headlands and uplands of this transition period.
The Italian Renaissance flowered during the fifteenth century, but it drew its nutrition from the soil of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The spirit of free inquiry and delight in beauty which are especially credited as belonging to the Italian Renaissance had a place in the life and art of Italy as well as France long before the fifteenth century.
The Catholic Church has during no century prohibited free inquiry on questions that pertain to science, art and letters, and the expression of her life as represented in art and literature is but the reflection of that beauty which emanates from the source of all beauty—God.
It is not only unjust to the Catholic Church, but it betrays as well a superficial knowledge of the basis and genesis of Christian art to maintain that all great poetry, painting, architecture, sculpture and music had first soil in the wilderness of the world rather than within the sanctuary of God. So it is that certain historians, for example, turn their faces in every direction seeking causes for the great awakening of life and art in Italy during the fifteenth century, but are absolutely blind to the light and influence which streamed from the centre and headship of Christianity.
These historians would fain have us believe that the Popes of the Renaissance set their faces like flint against the revival of letters—that they feared it would emancipate the human intellect from the power of the Church. Indeed, as has been elsewhere pointed out, Putnam, in his work dealing with the making of books during the medieval centuries, states in two paragraphs, in almost successive pages, that the Pope had a certain work burned “because it wascontra bonos mores”; and, again, that the Roman Curia looked on and smiled approvingly at such a work because it was not contrary to faith. The real truth is that the Catholic Church was the greatest factor in the Renaissance movement, and he who would understand the forces that contributed to this great awakening of the human intellect, and the development of art and letters which followed logically in its train, must understand the beginnings of the Renaissance in the fourteenth century and the share which the Popes of Avignon—then in exile—took in its promotion and extension.
The poet Petrarch is justly styled the “Father of Humanism,” but were it not for the influence, kindly offices and patronage of the Papal Court of Avignon, the sweetest of Italian sonneteers might have lived unheeded—obscure in a lonely villa of Parma or Verona.
Let us, then, examine the share which the Popes of Avignon justly have in this great movement which filled the world of Italy of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries as with the glory of a new and dazzling sunrise.
It should not be forgotten that the revival of classical learning in Italy really began early in the twelfth century with the revival of the study of Roman law. Italy was heir to the mid-day splendor of Roman literature, with its Virgils, its Horaces, its Ciceros, its Quintilians. Not only this, but as Carducci says, “By the fall of Constantinople Italy became sole heir and guardian of the ancient civilization of Greece.”
But it is a mistake to consider that it was the discovery of some manuscripts by Petrarch at Verona, or the appointment of Manuel Chrysoloras to the chair of Greek at the Florence University in 1396, that set aglow the skies of the Italian Renaissance.
A writer tells us that the growth of civilization is as gradual and imperceptible as that of an oak tree. It does not suddenly pass from night to day, not even from night to twilight. So was the Renaissance in Italy ushered in slowly, and the factors which contributed to this great intellectual awakening were indeed many.
Now, not the least of these factors was the Papal Court, whether its influence went out from Rome or Avignon. It seems to us strange—nay, absurd—that historians of the Italian Renaissance eagerly gather up every vagrant straw that may contribute to their theory as to the cause of the great intellectual awakening of Italy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but absolutely ignore the influence of the Catholic Church as a potent force in the Renaissance movement.
Non-Catholic historians are fond of quoting the Latin poet’s words: “Nihil humani est mihi alienum,” and hold that it was out of this spirit—this attitude towards the world and mankind—that the Italian Renaissance was born. This is quite true, but as Guiraud points out in his admirable work, “L’Eglise et Les Origines de la Renaissance,” the need of simplifying and generalizing—of studying man in himself rather than any man in particular—could find recognition in the classical spirit only because it already existed in the spirit of the Renaissance.
One thing is quite certain, that it was the relation of the Papal Court to the Greek Church at Constantinople and the religious controversies that took place during the fourteenth century between Avignon and Constantinople that gave an impetus to the study of the Greek Fathers, a large number of whose works were in the Papal library at Avignon. In fact, relations of friendship bound together the men of letters of Avignon and Constantinople in such manner that there was often an exchange of manuscripts between the East and West. The life of Petrarch furnishes examples of this.
From the very beginning of the Papal occupancy of Avignon the Vicars of Christ enriched the library of the Holy See with numerous copies of the works of the Latin and Greek writers—now the works of Seneca, Pliny, Sallust, Suetonius and Cicero, now the Ethics of Aristotle and the Poems of Virgil.
As to theological works written in Greek, it was most natural that at a time when theology reigned incontestably as the chief of the sciences the Papal Library was well supplied.
It is true that the great masterpieces of Greek literature, such as the works of Homer, Hesiod and Pindar, the great tragedies, and the Latin writers, Horace and Tacitus, were not as yet well represented in the Papal Library at Avignon, but it is equally true that on the eve of the great schism the Popes had collected together an important number of manuscripts in which Latin literature was well represented, so that in the number and quality of the volumes the Apostolic Library was second only to the ancient libraries of the Sorbonne and Canterbury.
In several of his letters the poet Petrarch has shown himself very severe towards the Popes of the fourteenth century, who, in his eyes, were guilty of the double crime of being French and of having left Italy. Meanwhile the very literary reputation and glory which Petrarch loved so much were due in no small measure to the protection accorded him by the Popes of Avignon. Was it not, too, at the Papal Court of Avignon that Petrarch’s father, an exile from Florence, had sought an asylum, and in the sunshine of whose favor the poet himself had grown in peace and security?
Nor should it be forgotten that it was from the Papal Curia of Avignon that the order first went out to search for the Latin manuscripts which were of so great service in the study of the ancient literature and language of Rome. The work of copying also went on, so that a manuscript copy of nearly every valuable Latin work was soon to be found in the Pontifical Library.
In collecting thus the scattered literary remains of antiquity the Popes gave proof of an enlightened taste for letters, while at the same time they favored the movement born of humanism. As in our own day, the Apostolic Library was thrown open to scholars, and the poet Petrarch, in several passages of his familiar letters, testifies to the fact that he himself had full access to the books and manuscripts of the Pontifical Library at Avignon.
Again, the missionary work carried on in Africa and Asia during the residence of the Popes at Avignon did much to bring in contact the mind of the Orient and the Occident. Towards the close of the thirteenth century, before the Papacy had yet removed to Avignon, the Franciscan Jean de Montecorvino had established flourishing Christian missions in China, and in 1306 Pope Clement V. erected for him the see of Pekin. Numerous missions were also established in the Barbary States, in Northern Africa, as well as in Tunis.
If, then, the discovery of new worlds, the fall of Constantinople and the invention of printing were factors in the development of the Italian Renaissance, assuredly the mission work of the Papal Court of Avignon in its propagation of the gospel in distant countries contributed indirectly but incontestably to this great awakening of the human mind. Indeed, “humanism” may be said to have had birth at Avignon within the Pontifical Court, with him who has been justly designated “the first of Humanists”—the poet Petrarch.
As to the study of Greek in Italy, long before the dispersion of Greek scholars consequent on the fall of Constantinople in 1453, long, too, before the appointment of Manuel Chrysoloras to the chair of Greek at the Florence University in 1396, the monk Barlaam, a Greek scholar of great repute, a Calabrian by birth, who had passed his youth at Salonica and at Constantinople, where he became, thanks to his literary and scientific culture, a favorite of the Emperor Andronicus, was sent by the latter to propose to Benedict XII. a reunion of the Greek and Latin Churches.
On his return from Rome in 1342, where he had received the laurel crown of poetry, Petrarch found Barlaam at Avignon and requested from him lessons in Greek. Another instructor of the poet Petrarch in Greek was Nicolas Sigeros, also a Byzantine envoy to the Court of Avignon. When the latter had terminated his negotiations with Clement VI. and had to return to Constantinople, Petrarch made him promise that he would search for manuscripts of Cicero which might be hidden in the libraries of the Bosphorus. Sigeros, however, found none, but to show his good-will he sent to his friend of Avignon a copy of the poems of Homer.
It was Petrarch’s different visits to Rome that inspired in him a love for antiquity. His first visit to the Eternal City was on the invitation of his friend, the Bishop of Lombez, in 1337, and it is from this year that his Roman patriotism dates, which henceforth inspires all his works and in particular his Latin poem, “Africa,” and which, too, made him the enthusiastic friend of Rienzi.
A study of the life of Petrarch reveals the fact that it was the good offices of the Papal Court of Avignon which placed him in touch with the eminent Greek and Latin scholars of the day and made it possible for him, in the seclusion of Vaucluse, to pursue his studies of the great masters of Greek poetry and philosophy.
Petrarch also prevailed upon his friend Boccaccio to publish in Latin the Iliad and Odyssey. It was Leontius Pilatus who took charge of this work a little time after and thus began the great work of translating Greek authors which Pope Nicholas V. was later to bring to so successful an end.
But the works of the nature-loving Greeks would never have inspired in the heart and mind of Petrarch a love of the beauty of life around him—Hellenism was but a factor—were it not that his own beloved Provence revealed its charms to his eyes and filled his soul with poetic dreams. In his garden at Vaucluse, among his trees and vines, he found the inspiration which Nature never refuses to the open and responsive heart, whether the votary at her altar be a Wordsworth, amid the lakes and cliffs and scenes of Cumberland; a Burns, treading the hillsides of his native Ayr, or a Whittier, dreaming amid his Berkshire hills.
Many historians do an injustice to the character of Petrarch on the moral side. Petrarch, in the moral gospel of his life and living, was far from being either a Poggio or a Machiavelli. Much as was his respect for the master geniuses of antiquity, his love for the sacred writings of St. Jerome and St. Augustine was more profound, and it is said that on reading for the first time the works of the latter he thought of abandoning altogether the frivolous study of the classics, with a view of consecrating himself entirely to Christian meditation and reading. Petrarch’s respect for the Christian ideal is to be found in the marginal annotations of his manuscripts. We have the poet’s own word for it that he took the “Confessions of St. Augustine” for his model when he wrote his “De Contemptu Mundi.” Practices of scrupulous piety marked his whole life. Each night he arose to pray to God, and on every Friday he practised a rigorous fast, while his devotion to the Blessed Virgin was most ardent and sincere.
It is true that, like all men of the Renaissance period, Petrarch was intense in his character. He hated with a Renaissance fervor, and he was not free from the jealousy and vainglory which belonged especially to the spirit of his times.
In estimating the character of Petrarch one must remember the spirit of the times in which he had birth—that it was an age of great virtues and great vices, and that excessive liberty to sin followed in the wake of the Renaissance in every land. In England it is reflected in the lives of such men as Green and Marlowe and in Marlowe’s play of “Dr. Faustus,” while in France the courts of the House of Valois and the camps of the Huguenots were marked by the greatest wantonness and license. In Germany men like Ulrich von Hutten were anything but moral.
Petrarch was certainly “the morning star” of the Italian Renaissance, but it was the Papal Court of Avignon that made possible his light—it was the Pope, as representative and head of a universal Church, that quickened by contact the mind of the East with the West—in a word, it was the enlightened scholarship of fourteen centuries illumined by the rays of Divine Faith and speaking through the lips of the Vicar of Christ in exile at Avignon that led the way in that greatest of intellectual movements—the Italian Renaissance of the Fifteenth Century.
Transcriber’s Notes:
Hyphenation, and spellings have been retained as in the original. Punctuation has been corrected without note.