LECTURE VII. English Literature in the Common School. BY J. C. GREENOUGH, A.M., The term "literature," in its widest application, includes all that has been written and thus preserved, Literature, in a more specific sense, excludes purely scientific and other writings that are addressed to the intellect alone. Literature presents not only the true, but the beautiful and the good. Our subject suggests four important questions, which cannot indeed be answered in the time allotted, but to which I may make reply. The first question is, "Why study literature in our common schools?" This question may be put with impatient scorn by those who think that the only proper work of a common school is to train pupils to read, to write, and to cipher. This question may be a mere figure of speech, implying a negative, when uttered by those who look upon the intellectual culture of the masses as an expensive luxury, and dangerous to the selfish plans of a would-be aristocracy. But, so long as we are a nation of freedmen, it will be economy to develop in our public schools, genuine manhood rather than to make parts of a social mechanism. This question is to most of us a very suggestive question, and it will not surprise me if reasons for the study of literature should present themselves to some of your minds in greater force and number than those which I now present. The study of English literature is an important means of developing one's power of expressing his. own ideas and thoughts. The art of speech is an imitative art, and the appropriate use of language in written composition is for the most part the result of unconscious imitation. One's style is formed, not by the study of the rules of grammar or of rhetoric, but by the appreciative reading and study of literature. Rhetoric and grammar may prune, but they never produce our formulæ of expression. Where thought flows unhindered into speech, or writing, it unconsciously appropriates words previously gained through the eye or the ear. Again, literature is important in its relations to history. The importance of a knowledge of history,—the past in which the future mirrors itself,—is acknowledged by all. To no people is this knowledge more important than to the citizens of the United States. History, in our schools, is valuable in proportion as it is a source of useful knowledge and of noble impulse, and the knowlledge without the impulse is well nigh valueless. Example, as presented in the lives of great and good men, is a source of noble impulse, and there is no biography so truthful as that which appears in their own writings. A knowledge of the literature of a period is indispensable to its history. The spirit and the purpose of the men of the Revolution, or of any other period of the nation's history, cannot be known from a dry, detailed account of what was done in councils of State or on the battle-field. We must know how these men felt, if we would feel the force and fire of their patriotism. To receive their personal impress we must study their own utterances, keeping in mind the circumstances in which those utterances were made. As you study the utterances of John Adams, of Otis, of Hamilton, and of other illustrious patriots of the time, you feel the warmth of enthusiastic purpose that thrilled a whole people. The youngest boy who reads, feels something of the force of that patriotism that laid the foundations of our republic. There is no better way to learn history than by an acquaintance with those persons, who who were at once the embodiment and the representatives of the spirit of the times in which they lived. This acquaintance is gained by studying their autotypes as they appear in their own writings. I doubt if we shall find a truer picture of the loyalty of purpose and moral courage of the nobler Puritans of the 17th century, of which Milton was the peerless type, than in his description of the seraph Abdiel: "So spake the seraph, Abdiel, faithful found To swerve from truth, or change his constant mind, And with retorted scorn, his back he turned On those proud towers to swift destruction doomed." It has been said, and with truth, that it is of far less importance what means of culture are employed in schools, than how those means are employed. The special advocates of the study of natural science are not slow to urge that the natural sciences are a successful means of culture, and are also of immediate practical value. It is often forgotten that a reliable judgment, an indispensable requisite for valuable research and for the useful application of scientific truth, is not developed by exclusive study of any one kind of truth. It is often forgotten that the moral faculties need culture, so that the executive, the practical faculties, may not be used for unwise or bad ends. Again, the naturalist needs language to express gracefully the facts he may discover or the principles he may evolve. To reach the first position, as a naturalist, he needs the facile pen of a Tyndall as well as his trained power of patient observation. The language of Hugh Miller, in his printed works, shows that he studied Shenstone and Milton, as well as the rocks of Scotland. Dana was first eminent as a student of language and literature, and afterwards as a naturalist. If we are forced to compare the study of natural science and the study of literature, this clearly may be said in favor of the study of literature; the means of this study are available at all places and in every season. ficial apparatus and the natural specimens required to pursue the study of natural science, systematically and successfully, to any considerable extent, are not easily within the reach of all. But no such hindrance lies in the way of the study of literature. The arti The special advocates of natural science sometimes speak as if natural objects were the only means by which the perceptive faculties of a child are developed ; but to learn a stanza of poetry a pupil must employ his perceptive faculties. He is soon aware that a prime element of success is the accurate use of the sense of sight. The study of literature is an acknowledged means of cultivating the memory, and we should not pass unnoticed the aid that imaginative literature renders to scientific investigation. Every grand deduction of science is preceded by vigorous action of the imagination. In a letter which I recently received from Barnas Sears, LL.D., formerly president of Brown University, he says: "Prof. Agassiz told me that when he went to Florida, to study the origin of the everglades, he took with him only one book, and that was Goethe's Faust. He wished to excite the imagination in the highest degree, that it might conceive of all possibilities. His science would confine it to the proper range. 'Discoveries,' said Agassiz, 'are made by a sort of inspiration seizing upon remote analogies and suddenly forming a picture of reality, by a single glimmer, just as the artist forms his ideal." Tyndall acknowledges his indebtedness to his imagination in making his scientific discoveries. He also acknowledges his indebtedness to literature as a means of developing his imagination, and of keeping it on the alert in scientific investigation. In one of his addresses to his pupils we find the following passages: "Though hardly authorized to express any opinion whatever upon the subject, I nevertheless hold the opinion that the proper study of a language is an intellectual discipline of the highest kind." "The reading of the works of two men, neither of them imbued with the spirit of modern science, neither of them indeed friendly to that spirit, has placed me here to-day. These men are the English Carlyle and the American Emerson." Tyndall adds, that "but for these two men" he "would never have become a physical investigator." The majority of the pupils in our schools may not be |