IN that comforting essay, "An Apology for Idlers," Robert Louis Stevenson tells us that it is by no means certain that a man"s business is the most important thing that he has to do. And somewhere else he has remarked on a club of men in Brussels who talked about the commercial affairs of Belgium during the day, but who at night came together to discuss the more serious affairs of life. These views are in accord with the Stevenson temperament that looked on life as made up of two worlds: a real workaday one to be unflinchingly faced, no matter what the task that came, and a fanciful one, a play world, that by its appeal to the ideal nature created an atmosphere of joy that made the duties of the real one more tolerable. His own life, so well balanced between work and play, so sane and healthful and inspiring in its influence on all who knew him or read his books, has shown what a romantic cast of mind can get out of life, though it suffer the handicap of ill health and worldly misfortune. The balance-wheel of his life was a playful imagination that always "hath made long nights seem short and heavy toyles easie."
Stern materialism, cold, calculatingly just, impatient with the dreamer, with no charity for lovable human frailties, has always mocked at the notion of a fanciful place where great and glorious things are going on.
She spins no web from the threads of her imagination. The warp and woof of her fabric are drawn from facts; and it comes from the loom all wool, a yard wide, and used to cover the nakedness of real men and women. She has never felt the free abandon of fairy land. Her heart has never leap"d up at beholding a rainbow in the sky, a rainbow with the fabled pot of gold--though she has toiled and sweat many a day for nothing more than a mess of pottage. Whilst pointing the finger of scorn at the magic lamp, the ogre"s hen, or the seven-league boots, she plays the fool and pays the fiddler in actual life merely because under it all there lurks a pa.s.sion for the marvellous, founded on chance. In the business world this manifests itself in the perennial hope of a "bull market" or a "bonanza." Of course, pleasures are largely a question of taste, not a question of right, and it is everybody to his liking,--one may prefer the counting house to the back-log at the drowsy hour of midnight,--yet may we all be spared the time when fancy and romance cease to dominate men. Without them life would become mediocre, stupid, dull.
It has been claimed that a nation without fancy and romance never can hold a great place. Material prosperity without a corresponding well-being in the things of the imagination is an unfortunate prosperity. Its pleasures must necessarily be sensual pleasures that grow out of luxury. They carry the man or woman too far away from the land of childhood. d.i.c.kens saw this clearly when he said: "What enchanted us in childhood and is captivating a million young fancies now, has at the same blessed time of life, enchanted vast hosts of men and women who have done their long day"s work, and laid their gray heads down to rest. It has greatly helped to keep us in some sense ever young, by preserving through our worldly ways one slender tract not overgrown with weeds, where we may walk with children sharing their delights." A good thing it is to keep that slender tract free from weeds. And the stronger the man, the more he needs to do it. Only a man who sees things out of their right proportions and who is without a sense of humour would scorn to renew his youth occasionally in the land of romance. If in life the strongest and wisest men are good at a fight, they are still better at a play. And it is no shame if their "Arabian Nights"
Entertainments" is more thumbed than their Bacon"s "Essays." They may be all the wiser for it. In Howard Pyle"s delightful rendering of the Robin Hood tales he gives this happy admonition in the introduction: "You who so plod among serious things that you feel it a shame to give yourself up even for a few short moments to mirth and joyousness in the land of Fancy; you who think that life hath naught to do with innocent laughter that can harm no one; these pages are not for you. Clap the leaves and go no further than this, for I tell you plainly that if you will go further you will be so scandalized by seeing good, sober folk of real history so frisk and caper in gay colours and motley that you would not know them but for the names tagged to them." And then he sees the secret of making the heart beat young whilst carrying the burdens of grown-up life, and he says, "The land of Fancy is of that pleasant kind that, when you tire of it,--whisk,--you clap the leaves of this book together and "tis gone, and you are ready for everyday life, with no harm done."
The present age as it gives colouring to educational practices is a matter-of-fact age. Whilst boasting of freedom of thought, it has fallen into a despotism of fact. Like the Old Man of the Sea, this reign of fact has been clutching at the neck of culture and railing at the play of fancy until there is but precious little of the "merrie" life left to look to. The men who cleared away the forest can be pardoned if they lived their lives largely in the light of stern fact, and so might the sons of these men; but those as many generations removed as the present should be able to drop back to the even tenor of a domestic and school life that recognizes the play of fanciful imagination as an essential part of the business of living at all. No sooner had the founders of our nation succeeded in giving men their long-coveted political freedom than science, c.o.c.k-sure of being able to solve the riddle of existence, strode upon the scene and smote the favourite creatures of the imagination hip and thigh. It not only played havoc with the fairies of our fathers, but it came perilously near doing the same with their faith. And as a result, a material and utilitarian tone has taken hold of education in most places, and boys must be practical, scientific, and wear old heads on young shoulders. This same tendency had begun in the days of Charles Lamb, for he wrote the following protest to Coleridge: "Knowledge must now come to the child in the shape of knowledge, and his empty noddle must be turned with conceit at his own powers when he has learnt that a horse is an animal and Billy is better than a horse and such like; instead of that beautiful interest in wild tales which made the child a man while all the time he suspected himself to be no bigger than a child. Science has succeeded to poetry no less in the little walks of children than with men. Is there possibility of averting this sore evil? Think of what you would have been now if, instead of being fed with tales and old wives" fables in childhood, you had been crammed with geography and natural history." And what must be said to supplanting the subject of fairy life by the anatomy and physiology of the human body? Is not a boy who knows the happy likeness of Old King Cole or Allan-a-Dale as well educated as he who recognizes the picture of an alcoholic liver? All this educational pother about having boys practical and trained to reason instead of being imaginative and romantic will die of its own accord some day, and then they may once more listen to merrie tales told under the greenwood tree.
The boy who has been nurtured on tales of fancy and who trusts to things to work out for the best of their own accord will generally fall into ways of cheerfulness and contentment. He will play the game of life out with more of heart and courage, and less of doubt and fear. He may be something of an impractical dreamer, but he will be kind and true. He will not aim to understand all mysteries and all knowledge, but will aim to make people happy rather than learned. His early experience of the feelings of pity and terror will refine his emotions as much as it did in the age of Thespias those of the Greek youth. In other words, his early familiarity with fairy tales, whether learned by word of mouth from his father, his nurse, or his teacher, will set his face in the right direction. And to keep it so turned he will of necessity have to build up a fairy library. What that library might contain and what he should know as a perfect lesson must now be considered.
A sense of fitness rather than a feeling of loyalty to the language points to the English fairy and household tales as the ones with which to begin. If the teacher has a folk-lore curiosity and interest which aid him in giving these fairy tales to the children, that is well and good. But this historic view is by no means so important as it is to know thoroughly the tales themselves and to enter into an appreciation of them with a keen and boyish interest. The present concern is with a limited number of stories that are so wholly good and so very necessary to the child that he should come to know them completely. Then from this beginning the boy can wander at his own sweet will and keep friends with Jacobs, Perrault, Grimm, Andersen, and, last of all and no doubt best of all, "The Arabian Nights" Entertainments." But from all of these the rude vigour, the dramatic directness, and above all the playful humour of the English tales will first captivate him. They have not quite the grace, simplicity, and elegance of the French tales, nor the more fanciful and romantic touches of the German tales; yet, as Mr. Jacobs has told us, "They have the quality of going home to English children.
The English folk-muse wears homespun and plods afoot, albeit with a cheerful smile and a steady gaze."
"English Fairy Tales" and "More English Fairy Tales" should be in the hands of every child. The stories are told in a way that preserves all of their dramatic interest and humour of phrase and situation. This characteristic humour of English folk-fancy, Mr. Jacobs has skilfully caught. He has this to say of his way of telling them: "I am inclined to follow the traditions of my old nurse, who was not bred at Girton and scorned at times the rules of Lindley Murray and the diction of polite society. And I have left vulgarisms in the mouths of vulgar people.
Children appreciate the dramatic propriety of this as much as do their elders. Generally speaking, it has been my ambition to write as a good old nurse would speak when she tells Fairy Tales. I am doubtful of my success in catching the colloquial-romantic tone appropriate for such narratives, but they had to be done or else my object, to give a book of English Fairy Tales which children would listen to, would have been unachieved. This book is to be read aloud and not merely to be taken by the eye." All children should rejoice, that, so long after Puritanism had suppressed these tales in many parts of England, and after its decline they had come to be supplanted by the Mother Goose tales of Perrault, there has come such an excellent retelling of them in the Jacobs books. If there be anything in fairy literature better than "Tom t.i.t Tot," I have not found it. It is altogether fitting to have it stand first in such a great collection. And with other such very good tales as "Cap o" Rushes," "The Three Sillies," and "Jack and the Golden Snuff Box," to say nothing of the dramatic telling of "Hop o" My Thumb," "Jack the Giant Killer," and "Jack and the Bean Stalk," the pleasure from reading the book at the right age will mayhap never be surpa.s.sed. One might regret that the curious and helpful information of the notes had not been reserved for a separate treatise for mature readers, did not the amusing ill.u.s.tration of the court-crier by John D. Batton give the warning that the tales are closed and children must not read any further. After having learned some of the best stories through the ear, the boy must certainly buy and keep these two books.
After the English tales are familiar, the boy might be given the Mother Goose tales as first collected by Charles Perrault in 1696. They had been current orally in France for many years before this, and they undoubtedly had their origin in the oldest folk-lore of the world. It is said Perrault wrote them down as he heard them with the intention of writing them over in verse after the manner of the fables done by La Fontaine. But his little son, to whom they had been told, rewrote them from memory as an exercise, and the lad"s version, being so simple and direct, was given to the world in that form by his father. They slowly found their way into England and for a while supplanted the native tales. There is surely a universal appeal in such stories as "Little Red Riding Hood," "Cinderella," "Puss in Boots," and "Sleeping Beauty." The best rendering of these to-day is a small volume by Charles Welsh, ent.i.tled "The Tales of Mother Goose." It has none of the poetic justice that refuses to have the wolf eat up Little Red Riding Hood. It would be well for some publisher to reprint an edition issued in New York in 1795 under the t.i.tle of "Tales of Pa.s.sed Times, by Mother Goose." Some good renderings of particular tales, however, may be found scattered through collections of fairy stories that have appeared.
The temptation to say something about the famous "Cruikshank Fairy Book"
in which some of these Mother Goose tales appeared cannot be resisted at this point. It is a very noticeable ill.u.s.tration of the inability of a man of talent always to keep to his last. No artist has ever drawn such superior pictures for children as did Cruikshank. Where can anything better be found than Jack"s descent on the harp, the Ogre"s flight, or the presentation of the boots to the King? Why then did not Cruikshank make a picture book with pictures only? Why did he leave his last to write the stories anew in order that he might take the opportunity to give his own views and convictions on what he considered important social and educational questions; or "to introduce a few temperance truths with a fervent hope that some good may result therefrom"? The notion that moralizing makes children good has spoiled many an artistic horn and has never made a good educational spoon.
In Cruikshank"s work in ill.u.s.trating "Household and Fairy Tales" by the brothers Grimm, we have a masterful production from the best period of his genius, and we have it ill.u.s.trating a superior text, the translation made by Edward Taylor in 1823 and reprinted in 1868 with an introduction by John Ruskin. Thackeray said that they had been the first real, kindly, agreeable, and infinitely amusing and charming ill.u.s.trations for a child"s book in England, and that they united beauty, fun, and fancy.
And who was a better judge of this than Thackeray? If it was not too bold to say that "Tom t.i.t Tot" is the best household fairy story in the language, it could be said with equal truth that Cruikshank"s etching of the two elves in "The Elves and the Shoemaker" is the best fairy ill.u.s.tration yet done. These German stories are charming. The contention that the stories are creepy is but the contention of a moralist. It should carry no weight with the teacher who would give the boy artistic notions of beauty, love, and mystery. These notions are always safer than those of cold realism worked out in artificial conduct. Sir Walter Scott wrote in this strain to Edward Taylor in 1832: "There is a sort of wild fairy interest in them which makes me think them fully better adapted to awaken the imagination and soften the heart of childhood than the good boy stories which have in late years been composed for them. In the latter case, their minds are, as it were, put into stocks, like their feet at the dancing-school, and the moral always consists in good moral conduct being crowned with temporal success. Truth is, I would not give one tear shed over Little Red Riding Hood for all the benefit to be derived from a hundred histories of Johnny Goodchild. In a word, I think the selfish tendencies will soon enough be acquired in this arithmetical age; and that, to make the higher cla.s.s of character, our wild fictions--like our own simple music--will have more effect in awakening the fancy and elevating the disposition than the colder and more elaborate compositions of modern authors and composers." It is hoped the pictures of Cruikshank and the translation of Taylor will soon appear in a large and attractive volume.
When the dramatic colloquialism and humour of the English tales, the superior grace, elegance, and beauty of the French tales, and the light, airy fancy of the German tales have been presented to the boy, the Scandinavian tales of Hans Christian Andersen will give him a refinement in fairy life that he has not found before. They do not have, save in a few such cases as "Holger the Dane," the quality of appealing to grown-ups as well as to children--the test of a child"s book that is literature, or rather the test of a man yet on good terms with the world. They are somewhat dull, wearisome, and overdone in places and do not stop when the story is ended, as we find in "The Fir Tree"; yet in some way they temper the English and German tales and meet Ruskin"s requirement that a child"s tale should sometimes be both sweet and sad.
In fact, these stories are great favourites with many children, who actually prefer "The Ugly Duckling" to "The Golden Bird." The boy might early start with a few of the individual stories so delightfully ill.u.s.trated by Helen Stratton, and then when he can afford it buy the excellent edition ill.u.s.trated by the Danish artist, Hans Tegner, from all of which he will get a new and pleasant touch of fairy life.
There yet remains one book, not always called a fairy book, that must be read before the boy leaves the land of fancy and wonder. It was the favourite volume of Stevenson, and small surprise is it to any one who knows the book and knows of the man. Nor is it less surprising to think that the Oriental scholar, Antoine Galland, who first gave these stories to Europe two hundred years ago, would be called out of bed at night to tell them to an eager crowd under his window, the crowd always begging for just one story more. One might search in vain for a companion volume to this most capital of all books, "The Arabian Nights"
Entertainments." The tales are on a bigger scale than are the English and German tales. There is a vastness of desert and starry sky in the tent life of the Arab that is unknown in the cottage life of the English peasant. And this is reflected in the tale that is told. Immensity and Oriental mystery have taken the place of colloquial directness and humour, and we have almost pure romance. Their richness and splendour captivate the reader and transport him into a wonderland of powerful magicians and magnificent palaces. The book is elemental in its appeal and will always furnish royal entertainment for man or boy. And the man who is not too completely grown up will keep his Lane"s translation within arm"s reach against the hours when the dull cares of the world are weighing him down.
As fairy tales have a common plot in many languages, so has there been a common way of preserving and transmitting them. This has been by oral tradition. They were originally to be given by word of mouth, a method that is yet best fitted to curious children. The teacher must give them through the ear, if they are to be learned and retained. Whenever it is possible in doing this, he must not forget to start with the pleasant beginning, "once upon a time," nor yet to omit the best of all conclusions, "and all went well ever afterwards"--neglecting, of course, to add that truism for grown-ups, "that didn"t go ill." In this practice of giving a few choice tales through the ear is the preparation for the time when a boy will eagerly thumb a favourite volume of his own in some quiet nook. But a few of the better tales must first have been mastered so that they can be told with dramatic directness. Here then the same practice must hold that is followed in all reading: do not overread. A few stories are to be well learned and a few books to be owned, but only a few. If the boy once comes to feel his strength from a limited number of good stories, the made-to-order story for the fellow with the curls will never appeal to him. What he knows he will know and be glad to know.
If it be presumption to select a limited list of stories by grades when the world is so full of stories, it must be presumption. There are stories that can have no subst.i.tutes until the world has had another acc.u.mulated experience of some hundreds of years of fireside lore. The list that follows has been found good for a limited list, yet as complete a one as a child can master. No apology need be offered for the insertion of Ruskin"s great story or the two stories of jungle life by Kipling. They are modern, but form a good bridge to modern books that have real merit. A boy who will not read "Red Dog" with an interest on fire had better grow weak on a Rollo book. His taste is surely to be lamented. He will early fall in love and later fall into cynicism.
Here is the list for the first four or five grades to be given in about the order in which they are written: "The Old Woman and Her Pig," "The Three Little Pigs," and "Henny-Penny," all as told by Jacobs in "English Fairy Tales"; "The Three Bears" as told by the poet Southey, where the little old woman continues to play a part; "Little Red Riding Hood" in which the wolf eats her up, "Cinderella; or, the Gla.s.s Slipper," and "The Master Cat; or, Puss in Boots" from "The Tales of Mother Goose" as told by Charles Welsh; "Tom t.i.t Tot," "The History of Tom Thumb," "Jack the Giant Killer," and "Whittington and His Cat" from "English Fairy Tales"; "Beauty and the Beast" and "Hop o" My Thumb" from "The Children"s Book"; "Hansel and Grethel," "The Blue Light," and "The Golden Bird" from Taylor"s translation of the Grimm tales; "The Ugly Duckling" and "The Fir Tree" from Andersen; "The Story of Aladdin; or, the Wonderful Lamp," "The History of Ali Baba and the Forty Robbers Killed by One Slave," and "The Story of Sinbad the Sailor" from "The Arabian Nights" Entertainments"; "The King of the Golden River" by John Ruskin; "Kaa"s Hunting" and "Red Dog" from "The Jungle Books" of Rudyard Kipling.
When these stories have been well learned through the ear, their purpose as literature and as groundwork for narrative speech will have been accomplished. Of course, the teacher must read many stories to his cla.s.s besides the ones named above; but he is not to require more than a mere listening to the reading from a point of interest only. By and by the boy will fall into the habit of reading aloud to some one else, and this may now be trusted to carry him along. Wise suggestion on the part of the teacher will direct him in getting a few good volumes that he can call his own. A fairy library, not large but well selected, will become a comfort to him in later years when the lamp is getting dim. For the man who finds himself unable to read with pleasure a fairy tale that charmed him in youth proclaims himself a slave either to relentless materialism or to cold and dignified egotism. And if he be not obstinately short-sighted, he cannot help seeing that the man who yet loves a fairy tale is one who also fears G.o.d, is clear of head, and is brave of heart.
In the succession of the seasons, the coming of spring puts young blood into old veins much as it dresses the gray of winter in a lively green.
The possibilities of the daughter of Ceres while she dwells beneath the earth are likewise to be found between the covers of a fairy library. A man might travel many a long way in search of a better fountain of youth.
CHAPTER II
CLa.s.sIC MYTHS IN LITERATURE
"Oft of one wide expanse had I been told That deep-brow"d Homer ruled as his demesne."--KEATS.
"They hear like Ocean on a western beach The surge and thunder of the Odyssey."--LANG.
THERE is not the slightest necessity for schoolmen"s staring at one another when it is proposed to let boys once more look through magic cas.e.m.e.nts at the cla.s.sic 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 G.o.ds 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 the aeneid into English "just for fun." These glimpses were pure serene to a poet who afterwards caught in such a rare way their cla.s.sic beauty; and the G.o.ds 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 G.o.ds and heroes embody the great virtues that marked a cla.s.sic 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 enn.o.bled 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 leave the 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 cla.s.sical 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 learned 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 enrich his mind by what an active and retentive memory can give him of cla.s.sic 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 superst.i.tion, 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 subst.i.tutes as biology and chemistry. The exploits of Achilles and the wanderings of aeneas 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 of generations past cannot give place to the scientific vogue without wrecking the hope and desire of many a romantic youth. To leave out the cla.s.sics 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 ent.i.tled 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 c.u.mbered 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 cla.s.sic 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 teachers can 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 t.i.tle 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 ill.u.s.trations 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 cla.s.sic 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 cla.s.sical 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 G.o.ds 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 the occasion, 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 G.o.ds 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 Oedipus, 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 particular name. 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 h.e.l.lenic 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 p.r.o.nunciation 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 of Praxiteles," "The Laoc.o.o.n Group," and "Nike 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," "Daedalus," "aeolus,"
"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," "aesculapius 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-Book for 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 ill.u.s.trated 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 s.e.x, 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 a.s.sociations of the morning of life.