CLASSIC MYTHS IN LITERATURE
"Oft of one wide expanse had I been toldThat deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne."—Keats.
"They hear like Ocean on a western beachThe surge and thunder of the Odyssey."—Lang.
Thereis not the slightest necessity for schoolmen's staring at one another when it is proposed to let boys once more look through magic casements at the classic myths of Greece and Rome. These masters of knowledge can depend upon it that their pedagogic systems are wrong if they set themselves up against the primitive feelings of mystery and fear. There is yet too strong a trace in the blood to forsake the gods and heroes that have satisfied instincts, very human and commendable, for many generations. No goblin nor witch needs to be cast out when the blood flows red; it is merely an indication of abundant life drawn from the strength and courage that marked an heroic age. If a boy's talents be anything but mediocre, they will naturally turn to this age to satisfy a longing. It is small wonder that the young Keats should stay up all night reading Chapman's Homer, or should translate theÆneid into English "just for fun." These glimpses were pure serene to a poet who afterwards caught in such a rare way their classic beauty; and the gods surely loved him for it, for they decreed that he should die young.
The charm of the myths of Greek and Roman literature is enduring, because they embody both truth and beauty—sometimes held to be one and the same. Nothing but a perverted taste, that is fed on the prosaic processes of material achievements or the artificial standards of a moral system, could fail to find pleasure and inspiration in them. Their appeal is artistic, to the sense of beauty. Their truth is a deification of the longings of the human heart as it seeks for comfort and protection in a world whose mysterious events can hardly be fathomed. And their gods and heroes embody the great virtues that marked a classic people as much as they did the beauty of their intellectual achievements—the virtues of courage, patience, honour, loyalty, contentment. A normal disposition will take satisfaction in this interpretation of truth and beauty. Not only will its possessor be satisfied, but he will be ennobled by the very presence of these qualities before his keen senses. The world will seem to him more than a place in which he is to toil and spin day after day; his soul will dwell apart on a mountain where not all mortals can ever climb, a mountain crowded with culture. He can temporarily leavethe common crofts, seek his solace and confession, and be all the better to ply again his allotted task. He will learn of one spot where the greed and brutality of industrial progress cannot set its heel and leave the print of what is practical and ugly.
This cry for the practical has laid a curse on the culture of many a boy. He has been educated for the eight or ten hours that he works for his board and keep, and the rest of his waking day finds him ill at ease in a field of study or an appreciation of the better things of life. Not being able to "speak Greek" or to talk with men who do speak Greek, he naturally turns to the spectacular, the ornate, the frivolous. Nothing of an order above the broadly burlesque or the melodramatic will hold his interest and attention. The theatre of Dionysus is too severely classical in the beauty with which it represents life in action, and he never learns to sit out a pure tragedy, hear "sweetest Shakespeare warble his native wood-notes wild," or dilate on the right emotions, if "Jonson's learnéd sock be on."
The boy's talents are in all probability not at fault. They are merely dressed in the prevailing fashion. This fashion is set by a standard of what is useful for material success in life. The subject-matter of education must be scientific facts, and with these facts the boy must be taught to reason. The uselessness of imagination and memory as mental powers is held up to him. It is not for him to enrichhis mind by what an active and retentive memory can give him of classic literature. In fact, the memory is looked upon, by the "scientific gent" (as Thackeray labelled him) in his laboratory, as a minor concern and left to work out its own salvation—if it really needs to be saved. And as for the memory being used to chronicle the exploits of mythical heroes in an age of superstition, that would be unthinkable in the day of scientific research. Let not the boy then be held up to blame if he is no more able to name the Olympian council than was Tom Sawyer to name the first two disciples chosen. The fault is with the system, the rational scientific system.
Greek is well nigh gone from the high school course. Latin is under indictment. In their stead we are to have such substitutes as biology and chemistry. The exploits of Achilles and the wanderings of Æneas are to be supplanted by the dissection of an oyster and the making of soap. Now oysters and soap are all right in their way, and it is a good thing we have the one to eat and the other to wash with; but when it comes to using them to satisfy the instinct for a fight or for the discovery of a hidden treasure, that is a stupid and brutal forcing of a theory. If progress must come at the price of selling a boy's birthright for a mess of pottage, it is a pity some one cannot smite her with the edge of a sword. The study of the humanities that has been the bone and sinew ofgenerations past cannot give place to the scientific vogue without wrecking the hope and desire of many a romantic youth. To leave out the classics is to proclaim a material age to be bigoted, boastful, and self-sufficient. Yet that is exactly what the scientific educator, who calls himself modern and progressive, is proposing, because business demands it. What claim has a business demand on academic policy, anyhow? Is not vagabondia as much entitled to the floor?
"The descent to Avernus is easy." Reformed spelling is not so hard as Greek roots. In fact, the plan is to follow along the line of least resistance. The memory must not be cumbered with dead matter if the boy can reason on experiments for practical business demands. And are not the myths of these Greek and Latin languages too imaginative and impractical, covered with too much of academic dust, to serve a purpose in a practical age? This is heralded from educational convention to educational convention, and whilst the breaking of idols goes merrily on, a few brave teachers who speak Greek are regularly taking a Spartan stand to preserve what yet remains of the classic structure. In a boastful age they are not going to forget. If Homer and Ovid are forced by business demands from the academic halls, what hope is there left in Israel?
The one and only one seems to be the myths in translation. Their claim to the attention of teacherscan be clearly given from the preface to the best telling of them that has yet appeared, Bulfinch's "Age of Fable; or, Beauties of Mythology," a happy title to such a valuable book: "If no other knowledge deserves to be called useful but that which helps to enlarge our possessions or to raise our station in society, then Mythology has no claims to the appellation. But if that which tends to make us happier and better can be called useful, then we claim that epithet for our subject; for Mythology is the handmaid of literature, and literature is one of the best allies of virtue and promoters of happiness.
"Without a knowledge of mythology much of the elegant literature of our own language cannot be understood and appreciated. When Byron calls Rome 'the Niobe of nations,' or says of Venice, 'she looks a Sea-Cybele fresh from ocean,' he calls up to the mind of one familiar with our subject illustrations more vivid and striking than the pencil could furnish, but which are lost to the reader ignorant of mythology. Milton abounds in similar allusions. The short poem 'Comus' contains more than thirty such, and the ode 'On the Morning of the Nativity' half as many. Through 'Paradise Lost' they are scattered profusely. This is one reason why we often hear people say that they cannot enjoy Milton. But were these persons to add to their solid acquirements the easy learning of this little volume, much of the poetry of Milton which has appeared to them'harsh and crabbed' would be found 'musical as is Apollo's lute.'"
The truth of this last statement is very evident to the English teacher in high school work. He must stop to teach myths that should be the common possession of all children before he can go on with his work in the "Minor Poems." If boys would enter the high school with some of the classic myths firmly drilled into them, they would read with pleasure the most imaginative of all the English poets. Mythology in translation is a fixed possession of English literature, and it must be grasped more or less in detail before the boy can ever expect to have the marks of literary culture and to read figurative composition with ease. With the beginning of school life must begin the learning of myths by word of mouth. No classical dictionary can later take the place of this practice. These myths are to be mastered and reproduced in good English; and after a few years of such drill the children will read the stories of gods and heroes with the same ease that they do a colloquial fairy tale. It is the same old step from the story-teller to the book and a quiet corner where no one can break the spell.
Fortunately there is not so extensive a field of mythology suitable for use as there is of fairy literature, and the boy can easily hope to make it his own. The field must exclude both the modern nature myths that have been compounded to suit theoccasion, and the cruder and more recent discoveries of savage races. In short, Greek mythology must make both the beginning and the end of what is to be learned; for there has been no nation other than Greece that has developed a mythical faith so intellectual in its scope and so beautiful in its expression. This beauty has been expressed through both art and literature. It would be an almost unpardonable neglect on the part of a teacher if a boy were permitted to go through school and not be familiar with the heroic age. He should know the stories of the gods and heroes; know the Olympian council, the labours of Hercules, the adventures of Jason, of Perseus, of Achilles; he should know the Trojan War in its picturesque greatness and the wonderful exploits of Odysseus on his homeward journey; and he should know such stories as those of Apollo, of Œdipus, of Orpheus, of Admetus, of Proserpine, of Niobe, and of Psyche. This knowledge of Greek mythology will bring one of the most pleasurable and stimulating of all feelings to a boy, the consciousness of wandering at ease in a domain where all mortals have not been privileged to enter.
Almost hand in hand with the Greek myths must be taken their variations in Roman life and the few that seem to be original there. Although the Greek and Roman deities had most attributes in common, they were yet distinct, each having his particularname. It is unfortunate that the Latin names have come into such extensive use and that we always speak of Jupiter instead of Zeus, and Venus instead of Aphrodite. But the Hellenic spirit is hard to keep foremost in this commercial age. If the glare of the arc light could be screened at times and the starry sky be read as a book wherein the constellations still hold their Greek names, some of the heroes that have been made permanent might inspire the observer with a feeling to read again their story. Yet let us have the sweetness of the rose, whatever be its name.
It is rather perplexing to know what myths to give the child when he first enters school and through the first four or five years of his school life. The taste and culture of the teacher have much to do with this. But whatever is given, give it as it is written without deforming it by having it adapted to suit the years of the boy. He can understand many things of which the teacher is not aware. Take it directly from "The Age of Fable," and at the start remove all difficulties of telling by drilling on the pronunciation of proper names. Then let the boy learn the myth through the ear and tell it fluently and exactly. While doing this, the art that is so closely woven with Greek myths must become familiar also. The boy must be able to recognize such works as "Aphrodite of Melos," "Apollo of the Belvidere," "Diana of Versailles," "The Faun ofPraxiteles," "The Laocoön Group," and "Niké of Samothrace." The refining influence that comes through them is not easy to explain, but it comes. Take it for what it is worth, as you take the myths themselves. And at no time should the teacher seek for philosophical arrangement and interpretation, that at best is merely a confusion of words, or moralize on something that is purely dramatic instead of didactic. The myths are stories and should be used as stories.
A reasonably good list to use for this kind of drill work in, say the first four grades, is the following, to be learned in the order written: "Latona and the Frogs," "Arachne," "Niobe," "Midas and the Golden Touch," "Apollo and Daphne," "Pandora and her Box." "Narcissus," "Ceres and Proserpine," "Ulysses and Polyphemus," "Dædalus," "Æolus," "Philemon," "Vulcan," "Cyparissus and the Stag," "Arion," "Ulysses and the Sirens," "Callisto and Areas," "Ariadne's Thread." "Io and the Gadfly," "Perseus and Medusa," "The Wooden Horse," "Phaeton," "Pygmalion and Galatea," "Æsculapius and Apollo," "Jason and the Golden Fleece," "The Death of Hector," "Cupid and Psyche," "Ulysses and Penelope," "Pegasus," "Orpheus and Eurydice," "The Labors of Hercules," "Admetus and Alcestis." After mastering these stories, the boy will be ready to read for himself.
Let him first read Hawthorne's "The Wonder-Bookfor Girls and Boys," and then the companion volume, "Tanglewood Tales for Girls and Boys; a Second Wonder-Book." These are indispensable. Then he must read a good edition of Kingsley's "Heroes; or, Greek Fairy Tales for My Children." That is a delightful book, despite its deplorable tendency to preach. Now he is ready for that charming continuous tale, Lamb's "Adventures of Ulysses," which of course he must own and keep near at hand. He can now take up and learn the second most valuable work he can own as a student of literature, Bulfinch's "Age of Fable." Of course it is understood that Palgrave's "Golden Treasury" is to be the first most valuable one.
Some dozen years ago there appeared in a magazine a story called "The Little Brother of the Books." It was the story of a small crippled boy who each afternoon went his way to a certain book stall and was always found absorbed in the same book. The book was the "Age of Fable." That he did this is not strange to any one who owns the book and knows it well. There are few compilations in which the richness of a literature is gathered together and retold in a way that will make it endure as a book. Yet this is true of the "Age of Fable." Every student should own an illustrated copy of it, and preferably one that has never been edited. It is told as a story, and a captivating story it is. A quotation from the preface cannot be resisted here:"Our book is not for the learned, nor for the theologian, nor for the philosopher, but for the reader of English literature, of either sex, who wishes to comprehend the allusions so frequently made by public speakers, lecturers, essayists, and poets, and those which occur in polite conversation.
"We trust our young readers will find it a source of entertainment; those more advanced, a useful companion in their reading; those who travel, and visit museums and galleries of art, an interpreter of paintings and sculptures; those who mingle in cultivated society, a key to allusions which are occasionally made; and, last of all, those in advanced life, pleasure in retracing a path of literature which leads them back to the days of their childhood, and revives at every step the associations of the morning of life.
"The permanency of these associations is beautifully expressed in the well-known lines of Coleridge:
"'The intelligible forms of ancient poets,The fair humanities of old religion,The Power, the Beauty, and the MajestyThat had their haunts in dale or piny mountain,Or forest, by slow stream, or pebbly spring,Or chasms and watery depths; all these have vanished.They live no longer in the faith of reason;But still the heart doth need a language; stillDoth the old instinct bring back the old names,Spirits or gods that used to share this earthWith man as with their friend; and at this day'Tis Jupiter who brings whate'er is greatAnd Venus who brings every thing that's fair.'"
BOOKS TO BE OWNED, TO BE READ, AND TO BE REREAD
"The first time I read an excellent book, it is to me just as if I had gained a new friend. When I read a book I have perused before, it resembles the meeting with an old one."—Goldsmith.
"The first time I read an excellent book, it is to me just as if I had gained a new friend. When I read a book I have perused before, it resembles the meeting with an old one."—Goldsmith.
Justhow far books and reading are questions of taste, or should be looked on as questions of taste merely, is passing hard to say. That there are prevailing fashions, local-colour variations, and a few more or less permanent models is noticeable to such a degree that an observer might conclude motley to be the only wear. The readers seem to be no more able to agree in what they like than did the urchins over the pease-porridge in the nursery rhyme:
Some like it hot,Some like it cold,Some like it in the potNine days old.
So it goes in books with every one to his own liking, though the particular likings are a very unsubstantial guide to the literary merits of the books liked. A book may become a fashion based on conventional acquiescence and appearances rather thanon real worth. Let the judgment of individualism, with courage and restraint, lay bare the fashion, and where then is its habitation or what is its name? Such judgment sets up more or less arbitrary lines of taste that run wide, and it makes a guess at what is enduring literature, a hazardous kind of guess. Yet the peculiar thing of it all is that in this guess pedantry is as likely to play false as is the capricious fancy of the reading public that takes the book of the hour, whatever it be. This makes a kind of self-constituted division of readers, each satisfied with his lot and each serving a purpose.
Some readers' tastes, however, are neither prudish nor slovenly. They are very catholic and succeed in picking out what is good from both the bookish and the popular kinds of books. They can read any book that is a book. But you recall that Charles Lamb could not reckon directories, scientific treatises, the works of Hume and Gibbon, and generally those "volumes which no gentleman's library should be without" as being books. If to these were added those books which no gentleman's library should contain, we come to a field fairly easy of investigation. In other words, we must get back to that field that includes the literature of power rather than the literature of knowledge. Of course, if somebody chooses to read blockheaded encyclopædias, withering economic essays, proper Sunday school books, sophomoric novels, or privately printedverse, that is purely his own concern; but such reading is beyond the pale of real books as they relate to well-regulated courses in the home or in school life.
How far is a teacher to be influenced in his selection of books for students by their lines of taste? That depends on how far the tastes of readers in general indicate that books of their liking are to be classed as books of power, as real literature. It is rash to say that a book has real merit because it becomes the best seller of a season; nor is it to be condemned for the very reason that it is a best seller. However, the general praise of a hundred thousand readers is not so much an index to the book's merit as the book is an index to the character of the readers who praise it. Unqualified laudation of a new book, especially a novel, is an annoying kind of hysteria that has failed to find any other outlet. But the very fact that the book is opportune or spectacular carries it along. It grows up and flourishes in a day, and in a day dies out.
It is curious to note how times change in the reading world and with them lines of taste. To-day the line most evident in the American reading public, and the one most difficult to meet in the development of a taste for good books, is the passion to be up-to-date, as its commercial phraseology would have it. It is awakened by that wonderful agent, the advertising appeal, that deals not with qualitybut with quantity. In books it calls for a story, and that story must be the latest or it is certain to be absolutely neglected. On being asked what dish he preferred at a dinner, Thoreau said, "The nearest." That was in keeping with his theory of cutting down the denominator; the theory of the reader of the latest is one of multiplying the numerator. As the proper thing, each new book is taken, horns, hide, and tallow. The reader's reverence for the present grows apace, and he no longer has use for old wine, old friends, and old books. This is a reflection of a widespread impression in American life that up to the present time but little truth of substantial value as to methods of living and thinking has been found out. A wonderful industrial progress, working through inventive skill, has given the notion that anything over a generation old is scarcely worth a passing notice, a notion fatal to all art. Every one must seize in a hurry the newest thing in the market, lest he be branded as out of date. And it all looks as if everybody was trying to do what Alice found them trying to do in Wonderland, running as fast as they could to keep where they were.
This mad rush for the latest is largely aided and abetted by that invention of the devil, the literary section of many Sunday newspapers. Finding research a bit dull, the ambitious or needy doctor of philosophy launches into literary criticism for thereading public. He at once discovers that the college sophomore who wrote a particular story is another Thackeray in style. Then in turn a Dickens or a Balzac is found out. Finally the news is passed on the Rialto that there is being issued a story combining the delightful characteristics of the three old masters. And thus and thus it goes, with the whirligig of Sunday newspaper criticism spinning out the tastes of the reading public.
Now if these titled critics ever cease discovering great new books as regularly as the day of rest comes around, or if the paper reading public cease to take these critics as truthful, then the teacher may hope to find a more sympathetic field in which to work. Of course the teacher must shake off his pedantry and quit his foolishness in taking a classic beyond the years of the boy whose veins are full of red blood, and putting it on a dissecting table for the study of etymology and syntax. He must know fairly well the boy's likes and dislikes and remember that they are very strong. And he must also remember that the boy is joined to his idols, and these are not to be broken until better ones are substituted. Iconoclasm for its own sake is sheer waste. The teacher himself must be wedded to good literature, or his efforts will avail little. If he knows, from his own quiet reading, a few good books well, that is enough. Sympathetic appreciation, like good nature, is contagious. If the teacher does notappreciate the book, the boy will not—unless he does it out of pardonable perversity.
The teacher has more to do with shaping the boy's reading than he at first sees. He is apt to hesitate because the public library, ambitious for a circulation record, gives the boy what he will be likely to read; the Sunday school library, anxious to inculcate moral principles through stories false to life, gives him what he does not want; the home, eager to please him in every way, gives him anything he asks for. Yet in the face of this threefold condition, the wise and sympathetic teacher can direct an average course of reading that has in it more good than poor books. To do this, he must work along two lines: discourage overreading and encourage ownership in books. The practice of overreading is the worst reading practice in modern life. Like all extremism, it is hard to meet. It is as unpopular to oppose unlimited reading as it is to oppose unlimited charity or unlimited education; yet they all need to be carried out in moderation. The aim should be the mastery of a few good books and the discouragement of the passion for constant variety that indicates a lack of singleness of purpose through a lack of self-control and the power of sustained attention. The greatest aid to this will be the encouragement of small savings and the buying of good editions. When this is done, encourage the boy to read out loud to his family at home in theevenings the portions of his book he likes best. If he does this, he and his book are friends as long as he continues reading. Soon he will have a small, well-chosen, and much-used library. The boy who will buy a book with his own money, will read aloud from it to his family, will reread it, is safely started on the way to becoming a well-read man.
After feeling the need of good books in the home where they can be turned to as the fancy directs, and after feeling a desire to buy such books, the boy will next need to know what titles to select. And that is no easy question. Temperament, home circumstances, occupation, and many other factors enter into it. But the thing that helps out is the fact that the range of books of power is universal, embracing so many moods, that enough good titles may be found for any one, however whimsical his tastes may be. In fact the boy will find many more good books to his liking than he will ever find time to read, or than he needs to read. The problem will become one of exclusion. Two lists for two boys of different dispositions may vary widely and yet both be good literature. But in the range of English books there are a few that the common judgment of readers and the praise of critics have so generally classed as necessary to the shelves of a cultivated man, that they should be given first place and in some way or other a reading and a rereading of them be secured. It is not meant that reading isnever to depart from this seemingly arbitrary standard. That would be at least prudish, to say nothing of its being impracticable. What is meant is that such things as comic supplements, at once stupid, silly, and debauching to both the intellectual and the artistic tastes, should be kept from all boys. The daily newspaper with its sensational head-lines telling of crimes is as bad, and the schoolboy has no business with it at all. But maybe the practice most widespread and fatal to an appreciation of books of real worth and power is the addiction to "juveniles" in the ever issuing series. If he has drunk to excess of these, the boy will have hopelessly weakened his ability ever to appreciate anything great. He will never be able to warm to the powerful deeds of Odysseus, Hector, or Joshua—he will be only a tolerable but proper grown-up. In the face of these and many more hindrances, reading will have to be rigidly directed, and in that directing, lines of appeal in the field of good literature can be drawn out. Generally the reason for a boy's revolting against a good book is the fact that whoever is in control of his reading presupposes that very thing. The book is often timidly handed out and with something of an apologetic air. By some peculiar piece of judgment it is believed that the boy prefers the book that is both insipid and stupid. This ineffectual effort arises from a lack of courage on the part of preceptor and parent: the old, old story ofoverindulgence. What may be sauce for the father should not always be sauce for the son. The theory that what is good for the one ought to be good for the other, even to food and drink, is only another sophism of a falsely sentimental age that is over-tolerant of what is called personal rights. The fact that Senator Hoar delighted in an occasional yellow back, is no reason why a boy should have such a story when he should be learning his catechism.
Before venturing on a list of books that will serve the boy fairly well as he passes through the primary and the grammar grades of school, a few of the superior books that have stood the test of time must be noticed. They are fundamental in school and in general reading. The arguments of literary critics as to what constitutes this good literature have no place in a work of this nature that aims to aid teachers and parents in selecting books for their children. It is enough to know that the verdict of time has been rendered in favour of such books as "The Arabian Nights' Entertainments," "Robinson Crusoe," and "Gulliver's Travels." A knowledge of such books is fundamental to any one who is ambitious to master the elements of English literature. And the mere fact that he knows them well will give him a conscious strength and pardonable feeling of superiority that the unlettered youth cannot have. After this he can be trusted to browse pretty much as he chooses. He may occasionallyfind the bars down, or maybe later go over the fences; but he has learned to judge of what is worth while, and will surely return to the books that gave him happy hours, whatever other tasks were laid on him.
In selecting this list for schoolboys there is a temptation to take works too mature for school age. This may come from that lingering instinct that supposes every one, no matter what the age, to be interested in the same things in which you are interested. The very best things for manhood are to be reserved for that time of life. Grammar school boys cannot appreciate the playful humour of Lamb, the prophetic scolding of Carlyle, or Thackeray's keen analysis of human weaknesses and foibles; neither can a high school boy do it, and it is foolish to insist that it be done. Schoolboys are not men, and they might be told to reserve the greater part of Carlyle and Thackeray until two or three years after they have cast their first vote. Neither author is adapted to a beardless youth. But then we have that wonderful pair of story-tellers, Scott and Stevenson! What boy can resist them or would ever think of trying to do so? If Margaret Ogilvy would not lay down a book of "that Stevenson man" until she had found out how the laddie got out of the barrel, do you suppose that a boy with adventurous blood in his veins could do so? Though the best test for a child's book is the fact that it hascharms for the grown-up, he would certainly be foolish who would insist that the great books for mature men and women be read in youth. It is after all school days are ended and the boy has become a man well started in the actual affairs of life that he can read and appreciate "Vanity Fair," "Adam Bede," "Tess of the D'Urbervilles," or "Anna Karénina." The tendency to take great books for mature readers, abridge and overedit them, and then present them to adventurous boys by a laboratory method of minute dissection, is annoying and foolish. Boys who still enjoy harnessing a dog to a wagon are neither university students nor good literary critics. But they do like to find out how Robinson Crusoe made a canoe, Tom Canty ate his first royal dinner, or David Balfour helped Alan Breck defend the roundhouse.
Naturally, the first book to put into the hands of the primary school child to be called his own is a good illustrated edition of the Mother Goose rhymes. There is nothing to take the place of that accumulated wisdom of the nursery that is so charming to the ear. He has learned many of the jingles by word of mouth before his school age; but he now needs to own the book himself, read the words, and look at the pictures. The whole thing must be in one volume for him. But what volume? It is hardly safe to presuppose the possession of these nursery rhyme books before the school age, though that isexactly where they belong. Maybe for this reason it is better to start with the edition of Kate Greenaway that makes up in refinement and delicacy for what it lacks in power and intensity. It is unfortunate that there is no available reprint of the original edition of "Mother Goose's Melody" compiled by Oliver Goldsmith for John Newbery about 1765, which contained the "most celebrated songs and lullabies of the old British nurses, calculated to amuse children and incite them to sleep." To own such a quaint edition would surely be a delight. Nearly as quaint and delightful, especially the illustrations, is the "Only True Mother Goose Melodies" now reprinted from the Boston edition of 1839. Of the editions of recent years there are many good ones, the one appearing under the title of "National Rhymes of the Nursery" having superior illustrations by Leslie Brooke, but being marred by an artificial arrangement. If some artist with the genius of Cruikshank would give a few of the best years of his life to illustrating a complete collection of these rhymes, he would become a benefactor of childhood. And if such an edition were well made mechanically, printed on good unglazed linen paper from large type and good woodcuts, well sewed, and bound in linen or leather, the boy might consider himself favoured of the gods if he could call such a book his own. These "things that are old and pretty" deserve to be well arrayed. Yetthey deserve to be read for their own sake, an enduring charm of sound. Professor Saintsbury has clearly pointed out that they should never be twisted into an authentic meaning according to the spirit of severest "scientism"; but they should be made "to serve as anthems and doxologies to the goddess whom in this context it is not satirical to call 'Divine Nonsensia,' who still in all lands and times condescends now and then to unbind the burden of meaning from the backs and brains of men, and lets them rejoice once more in pure, natural, senseless sound."
After the nursery rhymes, the next volumes for the boy's book shelf will be collections of fables and fairy tales. The animal fable is easiest to start with, and children like it best as a rule. Talking beasts kindle their imagination and stimulate their awakening powers. Fables are direct, simple, wise, and have a universal appeal. In the delightful first chapter of "The Newcomes," Thackeray tells us that long ages before Æsop, asses under lions' manes roared in Hebrew, sly foxes flattered in Etruscan, and wolves in sheep's clothing gnashed their teeth in Sanscrit. They are a common inheritance for childhood. The English-speaking child has a number of very good collections at his command, among them being the one recently issued with illustrations by Arthur Rackham and another in the New Cranford series illustrated by Richard Heighway, and heshould surely own the one or the other. But in neither is the drawing quite so charming as is that of Boutet de Monvel for the French fables of La Fontaine.
What a pity that there is no single volume of fairy tales to meet the child's demands! It should contain the best of the English folk tales, the best of Perrault, the brothers Grimm, Andersen, and others; should have illustrations of the merit of Cruikshank's; should be artistically printed and bound—and it should be a big book. Children love big books. A child's book on thin paper and bound in limp leather would not be a child's book. Coloured illustrations are not necessary; children like a few lines in black and white; but it is necessary to have the book a kind of "ponderous tome." Then it can be read on the floor while it rests on the boy's knees as he sits cross-legged before the fire; or, better still, while he lies on his belly, his chin in his hands and his feet swaying in the air. While he is small, no real boy was ever designed to sit upright on a chair and hold a small book ten inches from his eyes, with the light coming over his left shoulder. Maybe some philanthropic publisher will some day issue a big book of tales to be owned by the boy and read at his ease. But the lack of it to-day necessitates the building up of a fairy library.
The first book to be put into the fairy library might be the charming "Golden Goose Book" ofLeslie Brooke, followed by Cruikshank's "Fairy Book." The Mother Goose tales as first collected by Perrault should now be owned in a well-illustrated English translation. On account of their humour and their common everyday tone, the English household and folk tales will make a strong appeal. Scudder's "Folk Stories," S. Baring-Gould's "Old English Fairy Tales," and "Fairy-Gold" by Ernest Rhys are all good in their way; but "English Fairy Tales" by Joseph Jacobs, with its amusing illustrations by John Batton, is told in the simplest and most dramatic way, and it should be owned by every boy.
There is one collection of fairy tales that should come into the boy's possession about the end of the third school year, and that book is the excellent work of the brothers Grimm, whatever be the title. The one superior translation is the one made by Edward Taylor about 1826, and a reprint of it issued in 1878, with Cruikshank's etchings and Ruskin's introduction. But there are many good and simple translations that are well illustrated. After these highly imaginative tales of the German fireside, there should be owned a good translation of the romantic and refined tales of the North, the fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen. To these stories are many excellent illustrations, including those of Stratton, Tegner, and Dulac. It may not be possible and maybe not desirable to own editions of the tales ofD'Aulnoy, Laboulaye, Hauff, and others, for the best of their stories may be found in some compilations. Among these are "Mother Goose Nursery Tales" issued by Nister, Andrew Lang's "Blue Fairy Book," "Big Book of Fairy Tales" collected by Walter Jerrold, "A Child's Book of Stories" illustrated by Jessie Wilcox Smith and the recently issued attractive edition of "The Fairy Book" by Dinah Maria Mulock. A distinct service could have been rendered to children if Andrew Lang had selected the best of the stories from his voluminous and unequally good colour fairy books and had issued them in one large, well-made volume with artistic illustrations.
And yet there remains the greatest and most wonderful of all fairy tales, the "Tales of a Thousand and One Nights," to be begun with the easier tales now, but only to be enjoyed thoroughly in the upper grammar grades. No other book is so romantic or so entrancing, nor does anybody ever get too old to read it. It worked its spell on Coleridge, for he wrote: "Give me the 'Arabian Nights' Entertainments' which I used to watch, till the sun shining on the bookcase appeared, and, glowing full upon it, gave me the courage to take it from the shelf." And was it not this book that made wonderful little Marjorie Fleming willing to sleep at the foot of the bed where she could continually read it? The translation made by Edward William Lane in1839 and illustrated by William Harvey under his direction will never be surpassed; but Jonathan Scott's translation is easier for the boy to read. Many well-illustrated but not always well-edited editions may be found.
Will a boy read "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland"? Should a boy read "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland"? Yes and yes! Any boy who cannot enjoy the most delightful fooling that was ever put into a book deserves the greatest of sympathy. He is certainly full of unmannerly sadness in his youth. Where else was there ever such clever and curious nonsense? What mathematician other than Dodgson ever put before boys and girls such enduring work? It is a case where two and two does not always make four, but it does always make the pleasing thing. Much that goes as serious literature is not half so wise as is the playfulness of this book, nor is it so worthy of being thoroughly known and appreciated. Of course there are a few perpendicular people who see not that it has abiding charms. They cannot double or shake to the mood of its nonsense—nor do they find it grow "curiouser and curiouser" with each reading. Yet it is a classic for children, and it is going to endure.
As a general rule, books for children are cast in a rather serious mood. This is true of the myth and the romantic fairy tale. But the element of humour creeps into the English and the German householdtales, for humour is necessary to all earnest living. How far this sense of humour is to be developed is a question hard to answer. This much is true, however: in mature years and under the full responsibility of life, a keen sense of humour is about the only thing that will save a man from himself at times, preserve his balance when he is nearing the borderland of tragedy. Now what is to be the nature of this humour? Is it to be the insipid burlesque that finds its pleasure in the medical almanac and the comic supplement? Or is it to be the kind that wears the sock with brains and taste, the kind that Touchstone has? The latter is the one that sparkles and is worth while. It is the kind that the child starts with in "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and "The Rose and the Ring." It is the product of men who possess qualities of mind and heart such as Thackeray did. How Shakespeare must have doted on his jesters! And what musical nonsense refrains he wrote.
All this bears out De Quincey's saying that only a man of extraordinary talent can write nonsense. And nonsense literature is a test of the ability of a reader. Pitt once exclaimed: "Don't tell me of a man's being able to talk sense; every one can talk sense. Can he talk nonsense?" Now a child will talk nonsense and delight in it, even if it is nothing but a counting-out rhyme. Then he will come to prefer nonsense of a refined type, innocent and fantasticverse. A book of this kind that he will take a fancy to is Edward Lear's "Nonsense Songs"; and if it is the edition illustrated by Leslie Brooke, he will be grateful when a nonsense mood is on him. Ruskin called it the most beneficent and innocent of all nonsense books. The boy might start with this book, go to "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland," and then try "The Rose and the Ring." When he reaches the upper grammar grades, he will then enjoy the splendid retelling of "The Adventures of Don Quixote," by Judge Parry, with Walter Crane's illustrations. If he does this, on reaching man's estate he will keep some favourite translation of this wonderful book of Cervantes in a convenient pocket edition along with his "Pickwick Papers."
Before going to the class of books based on myths, one brief work must be mentioned, not only because it marks an epoch in the making of children's books, but also because it is a child's classic with real merit, and about the only one on such a theme. Nearly all others of this kind are prudish, priggish, and inartistic. This one happens to have a loftiness of tone. Its style is as charming as this whimsical title: "The History of Little Goody Two Shoes, otherwise called Mrs. Marjory Two Shoes, the means by which she acquired her learning and wisdom, and in consequence thereof her estate; set forth at large for the benefit of those
"Who from a state of Rags and Care,And having Shoes but half a Pair;Their Fortune and their Fame would fix,And gallop in a Coach and Six."
If any one is in doubt as to who wrote this book, the inscription "to all young gentlemen and ladies who are good, or intend to be good" ought to convince him. Intend to be good, was not that Goldsmith—and the rest of us? An edition of this historic story with pictures after the original woodcuts of 1765 should be in the hands of every child.
Though America's contribution to children's literature of an enduring type has been limited, it is gratifying to know that America's most finished artist, Nathaniel Hawthorne, has given to that literature two books that every boy must know, "Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys" and "Tanglewood Tales for Girls and Boys; a Second Wonder-Book." That every boy who is going to become a mature reader of good books needs to know the myths of Greece and Rome, goes without saying. Now he had better learn these from a book having a literary touch than from the ordinary telling of text-books. For this reason he should completely master these two books by Hawthorne. The illustrated edition of the former by Walter Crane and George Wharton Edwards' illustrations of the latter are both fine. Not so good as these two, yet necessary, is Charles Kingsley's "Heroes; or, GreekFairy Tales for My Children." And the telling of the story of the Odyssey by Charles Lamb in his "Adventures of Ulysses" is good to read, but rather difficult before the last year of the grammar grades. The wonderful exploits of the heroes in the Iliad should be familiar to every boy, and he can get them about all in Bulfinch's "Age of Fable" as well as anywhere else. This book he must surely own, and whether it is called merely a text-book or not, it is the best work that has yet appeared on the mythology of the world as it is found in classical allusions of English books. If he learns the story of the siege of Troy and the return to Ithaca from this book, he may want to hear Chapman speak out loud and bold a few years later.
Does any schoolboy from a home other than one in which Puritan notions yet prevail read "Pilgrim's Progress"? If he does not, the fault is not in the book. It is as interesting as it is vitally true, and has been positively helpful. According to Macaulay, it has been loved by those too simple to admire it. There is really no such thing as an uninteresting great book. There are uninterested people, though there should not be an uninterested normal boy. If there is, he is a victim of the emasculating process of sugar-coated teaching, parental indulgence, and vaudeville amusement. Or maybe he has the habit of the boy's series, that cuts all characters to the same fashion, the fashion of prudery. In either case hewill never be a pilgrim. Of course it would be foolish to insist on a boy's reading many such books, even if there were more like it written. You might as well insist on seven sermons a week for a man. One in seven days seems often enough to be effective; and one great book like this one, if well mastered, is all that the boy needs. In mature years he can again read it and marvel at its intrinsic greatness and find it something of a reflection of his own experiences in life. And by having done this he may chance to read such great poetical allegories as the "Faerie Queene" and the "Divine Comedy."
As this allegory of Bunyan's represented the spiritual experiences of life as the Puritan saw it, so does "Robinson Crusoe" represent the Puritan view of the practical virtues in experience, such as the virtues of prudence, ingenuity, and patience. But for all this it is one of the most fascinating and typical of English stories, and one of the really great ones. Every lad must know this book. Stevenson tells of a Welsh blacksmith who learned to read that he might add this hero to his possibilities of experience.
The third book of that great half-century following the Restoration is one of the few books written to be read by men that has become a child's classic. No wonder Swift afterwards exclaimed, "What a genius I had when I wrote that book!" Yet children read it with pleasure without seeing anythingin it but the interesting adventures of Gulliver. Of course, the voyages to Lilliput and to Brobdingnag are the only ones to be given to the boy, and it is unfortunate that publishers have not generally recognized this in issuing "Gulliver's Travels" for children. It is less necessary to read the other two voyages than it is to read the second part of "Pilgrim's Progress" and the "Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe."
There is a field of reading very much akin to the field of mythology in which there is no single book that the boy can read that is so permanent in its form as is the "Wonder-Book," yet it is a field in which the boy should feel at home. That is the field that includes the Arthurian legends and the Robin Hood stories. Among the many books that have appeared, the excellent work done by the poet Lanier in his "Boy's King Arthur" and by the late artist Howard Pyle should surely find a place on every boy's book shelf. Much of Malory is retained in the former, and the conventional drawings in the latter make a strong appeal despite the widespread mania for colour. The boy who has become attached to his "Age of Fable" might satisfy his curiosity in this romantic field by the almost equally good "Age of Chivalry" and "The Legends of Charlemagne."
At what age should a boy turn to Shakespeare? That depends on the boy. If he is an average child, he should have something of the plays read to himat a fairly young age; but it is doubtful if he can do much on his own account before the high school age is reached. He might, however, be urged to attempt "A Midsummer-Night's Dream," "The Tempest," and "King Henry V." At about the age of twelve or fourteen years he should own a good illustrated edition in one volume such as the one done by Sir John Gilbert. But be this as it may, he has a right to get something of a glimpse of the wonderful things in these plays through that admirable telling of some of them in Lamb's "Tales from Shakespeare." Though it may be Lamb instead of Shakespeare, there is no better book of retold stones in English than this work of Thackeray's "Dear Saint Charles" and his sister Mary.
This brings up the question of the boy's reading of poetry and the books that he should own. As suggested in a former chapter, the one good collection is Palgrave's "Children's Treasury of English Song." There is no second one in this class; for all others seem to have some fatal defects of judgment, though they are usually printed in more attractive form. The publishers of this anthology need to issue a well printed, well illustrated, and well bound edition, and the book stores need to put it on their shelves, where it is now almost a total stranger. But the approach to such a collection should be gradual. It might start in the second grade with Kate Greenaway's edition of "DameWiggins of Lee and Her Seven Wonderful Cats; a Humorous Tale Written Principally by a Lady of Ninety," and Caldecott's "John Gilpin's Ride." This could be followed with Kate Greenaway's or Hope Dunlap's "Pied Piper of Hamelin." And all children must have Stevenson's "A Child's Garden of Verses" with illustrations by either Florence Edith Storer or Jessie Wilcox Smith. Eugene Field's "Poems of Childhood," illustrated by Maxfield Parrish, deserves a place, as does the dainty volume of Blake's "Songs of Innocence," illustrated by Geraldine Morris. If on reaching the upper grammar grades the boy has found pleasure in his "Children's Treasury of English Song," he might be urged to own complete editions of a few of the poets. The first volume should be the poems of Longfellow, not because of his greatness but because he is the best loved of our noted poets and the easiest one for the boy to read. The next volume should be one of Tennyson, where he will find things actually great. If he comes to prefer "The Passing of Arthur" to "Enoch Arden," he is developing taste and judgment and will later enjoy Milton and Wordsworth.
There are two books of recent years, "The Jungle Book" and "The Second Jungle Book," that have intrinsic worth and charm and should be owned by every boy about his fifth school year. The superior tales are the Mowgli stories, and it is a pity they arenot issued in a single volume. Where was there ever a more intense or dramatic story written than "Red Dog"? How does it happen that teachers seldom give these stories to children, but manage to waste plenty of good time on insipid, made-to-order stories designed to teach mercy to animals? These animal stories for a purpose are like most verse for an occasion—an offence against literary art. Let the boy learn of the charms and the tragedies of animal life in the jungle.
When the boy's reading shifts toward the romance and the novel, he needs to guard against overreading, indiscriminate reading, and being bewildered by the multitude of books from which to choose. For a while he had better keep to such books as "The Prince and the Pauper" and "Treasure Island." If he is not at once interested in that plot based on the universal desire to change lots with some one else, or the universal longing to find a hidden treasure, he either has perverted tastes or is without any tastes at all. From these it is an easy step to the forest life of "The Last of the Mohicans" and the life of chivalry presented in "Ivanhoe." He will then surely like that charming story of romantic home life, "Lorna Doone."
Some teacher may wonder if books other than stories and verse are not to be read. Of course they are, and they will be anyhow. Yet they are not books of power, fundamental to the growth of personality;they are books of knowledge of one kind or another. Just where the division line is to be drawn and which is the right class for this book and that, is hard to say, and matters little when it is determined; but the place of a few has been definitely fixed by experience, and they happen to be stories. That great literary field of comfort to men, the personal essay, is beyond the schoolboy. And so is much of biography and history. But there can be found for him to read many books, such as "Tales of a Grandfather," "A Child's History of England," Southey's "Life of Nelson," "Two Years Before the Mast," "The Oregon Trail," Franklin's "Autobiography," and some good abridgment of "Plutarch's Lives," that make an order of books different from "Robinson Crusoe," "Pilgrim's Progress," and "Arabian Nights' Entertainments"; yet they ought to be read after a few of the greater ones have been mastered. Many a boy may be greatly helped and inspired to honest effort by Samuel Smiles' "Self-Help," yet no one would think of classing it as great literature. This, together with books on travel and the wonders of science and invention will take care of themselves, and the average boy will pick up enough of them of his own accord. What he needs is a book that by its imaginative power lifts him above the commonplace facts of everyday life. If the foundation be laid in the enduring work of a few great books, whatis built thereon will abundantly reward the early effort of mastering them.
There is yet one book of powerful and pure English that must be mentioned. The boy should have early heard it read aloud, learned passages from it by heart, and have read parts of it on his own account. In proportion as he has gathered the richness of this book will he have a grasp on clear language and clear understanding. That book is the version of the Bible authorized by King James. It gave to our fathers not only their faith but also that grip on racy, clear, and vigorous English that made many an artisan a better talker and writer than the man trained in the halls of higher learning. It has had a power above all other books in English to stir the imagination and move the soul, and this without regard to any particular religious belief. No book has ever told stories with the ease, directness, and intensity of this one. Its style expresses the strongest and deepest feelings of English-speaking men. And this style has been caught by such masters of prose in their own centuries as Bunyan and Lincoln. Yet it is evident to teachers that the great stories of the Scriptures are not known by children. The Bible needs to be dusted and read, even if it is brought about by the strong hand of authority in the home and in the school.
Taste in books can be directed, or at least modified, and the authority to direct must be about itsbusiness with the urchins at school. The aphorism that you can lead a horse to the water but you cannot make him drink, is only half true. If the water is kept under his nose and there is a good grip on the halter, he will be drinking before he is aware of it. In fact, he may need to be led away at times to keep him from drinking too much. The business of the school teacher is to get the boy to the trough and then see that he does not drink too much. This will be a thing of effort, for at every turn there are the springs of juvenile series, Sunday School Pharisees, comic supplements, and penny-dreadfuls that flow as if they would never cease. The boy needs to develop a sort of anchorite spirit and seek out a secluded place with an armful of books that are really worth while.
The armful which he needs to own and be friends with might be something like the following, if such a list can be ventured without offence to that strong spirit of individualism that will call it wooden and lock-step; yet that in its iconoclasm and mental anarchy gets nowhere and does nothing. This is the list by grades: First grade—"Mother Goose Rhymes," Brooke's "The Golden Goose Book," "Dame Wiggins of Lee and Her Seven Wonderful Cats"; second grade—"Æsop's Fables," "The Cruikshank Fairy Book," Goldsmith's "The History of Little Goody Two Shoes"; third grade—Carroll's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland," Jacobs'"English Fairy Tales," Stevenson's "A Child's Garden of Verses," Scudder's "The Children's Book"; fourth grade—Grimm's "Fairy and Household Tales," Andersen's "Fairy Tales," Browne's "Granny's Wonderful Chair," Thackeray's "The Rose and the Ring"; fifth grade—Hawthorne's "The Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys" and "Tanglewood Tales for Girls and Boys; a Second Wonder-Book," Kingsley's "Heroes; or, Greek Fairy Tales for My Children," Swift's "Gulliver's Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World," Kipling's "The Jungle Book" and "The Second Jungle Book"; sixth grade—"Arabian Nights' Entertainments," Lamb's "Adventures of Ulysses," Defoe's "The Life and Strange Adventures of Robinson Crusoe," Pyle's "The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood," Palgrave's "The Children's Treasury of English Song"; seventh grade—Bunyan's "The Pilgrim's Progress," Lanier's "The Boy's King Arthur," Twain's "The Prince and the Pauper," Cervantes' "The Adventures of Don Quixote of the Mancha," Stevenson's "Treasure Island"; eighth grade—Lamb's "Tales from Shakespeare," Cooper's "The Last of the Mohicans," Scott's "Ivanhoe," Blackmore's "Lorna Doone," Bulfinch's "The Age of Fable; or, the Beauties of Mythology."
The savings necessary to buy these books, the time spent in reading and rereading them, the powerand taste that will come from both of these efforts,—these will serve the boy when he comes to man's estate. For no work in a finishing school or in college English can ever give him what he will get of his own accord by having good books as his companions during his public school life. Let him try the list with the hope that it will meet Ruskin's comment: "Of course you must or will read other books for amusement, once or twice; but you will find that these have an element of perpetuity in them."