PREFACE.
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he purpose held in view by those who place the study of Milton in highschool English courses is twofold: first, that youth may seasonablybecome acquainted with a portion of our great classic poetry; and,secondly, that they may in this poetry encounter and learn to conquerdifficulties more serious than those they have met in the literature theyhave hitherto read. It is for the teacher to see to it that both theseaims are attained. The pupil must read with interest, and he must expectat the same time to have to do some strenuous thinking and not to objectto turning over many books. The average pupil will not at first read anything of Milton with perfectenjoyment. He will, with his wonted docility, commit passages to memory,and he will do his best to speak these passages with the elocution onwhich you insist. But the taste for this poetry is an acquired one, andin the acquisition usually costs efforts quite alien to the prevailingconceptions of reading as a pleasurable recreation. The task of pedagogy at this point becomes delicate. First of all, theteacher must recognize the fact that his class will not, however goodtheir intentions, leap to a liking for Comus or Lycidas or even for theNativity Ode. It is of no use to assign stanzas or lines as lessons andto expect these to be studied to a conclusion like a task of Frenchtranslation. The only way not to be disappointed in the performance ofthe class is to expect nothing. It will be well at first, except wherethe test is quite simple, for the teacher to read it himself, makingcomment, in the way of explanation, as he goes on. Now and then he willstop and have a little quiz to hold attention. When classical allusionscome up requiring research, the teacher will tell in what books thematter may be looked up, and will show how other poets, or Miltonelsewhere, have played with the same piece of history or mythology. Thusa poem may be dealt with for a number of days. Repetition is, to acertain extent, excellent. The verses begin to sink into the young minds;the measure appeals to the inborn sense of rhythm; the poem is caught bythe ear like a piece of music; the utterance of it becomes more likesinging than speaking. In fact, the great secret of teaching poetry inschool is to get rid of the commonplace manner of speech befitting arecitation in language or science, and to put in practice the obvioustruth that verse has its own form, which is very different from the formof prose. But repetition may go too far. Over-familiarity may begetindifference. Other poems await the attention of the class. The teacher who really means to interest his classes, and begins by beinginterested and interesting himself, will rarely fail to accomplish hispurpose. The principal obstacle to success here is the necessity, thatfrequently exists, of conforming to the custom of examining, marking, andranking--a practice that thwarts genuine personal influence, formalizesall procedures, and tends to deaden natural interest by substituting forit the artificial interest of school standing. The Milton lesson must bea serious one because it is given to the study of the serious work of thegravest and most high-minded of men; and it must be an enjoyable onebecause it deals with the verse of the most musical of poets, and becauseone mood of joy is the only mood in which literature can be profitablystudied. As to the difficulties which the learner first encounters when he comesto Milton, these grow sometimes out of the diction, sometimes out of thesyntax, and sometimes out of the poet's figures and allusions. Somedifficulties can be explained at once and completely. Others cannot beexplained at all with any reasonable hope of touching the beginner's mindwith matter that he can appropriate. Often the young reader slips overpoints of possible learned annotation without the least consciousnessthat here great scholarship might make an imposing display. Perfectlyuseless is it to set forth for the pupil the interesting echoes fromancient poets which generations of delving scholars have accumulated intheir notes to Milton, pleasing as these are to mature readers. The rule should be to expound and illustrate sufficiently to remove thoseperplexities which really tease the pupil's mind and cause him to feeldissatisfaction with himself. In many cases our only course is topostpone exposition and to trust that the learner will grow up to theinsight which he as yet does not possess and which we cannot possiblygive him. A learned writer, like Milton, who has read all antiquity, andwho has no purpose of writing for children, inevitably contemplates apublic of men approximately his equals in culture, and expects to find"fit audience, though few." But many of the difficulties that confront the beginner in Milton askonly to be explained at once by some one who has had more experience inthe older literature. Archaic forms of words and expressions, with whichthe ripe student is familiar, worry the tyro, and must be accounted for.Often the common dictionaries will give all needed help; but the bestmeans of acquiring speedy familiarity with obsolete and rare forms is aMilton concordance--such as that of Bradshaw--in connection with theCentury Dictionary, or with the Oxford Dictionary, so far as this goes.These means of easy research should be at hand. I find that pupils oftenneed a pretty sharp spur to make them use even their abridgeddictionaries. But so far as concerns acquaintance with the vocabulary ofpoetic diction, nothing will do except the dictionary habit, accompaniedby an effort of the memory to retain what has been learned. Difficulties that lurk in an involved syntax the pupil may usually beexpected to solve by study. But such a peculiar construction as that inSonnet X 9 will probably have to be explained to him. In the puritan theology and its implications he cannot take muchinterest, and will of course not be asked to do so. But high schoolstudents of Milton will ordinarily, in their historical courses, havecome down to the times in which the poet lived, will understand hisrelation to public events, and will appreciate his feeling toward theEnglish ecclesiastical system. Puritanism, a phenomenon of the mosttremendous importance at a certain period of English history, has socompletely disappeared from the modern world, that the utterances of aseventeenth-century poet, professedly a partisan, on matters of churchand state, no longer exasperate, and can barely even interest, studentsof literature. To read either Paradise Lost or the Divine Comedy we must find the poet'scosmical and his theological standpoint. We have no right to be surprisedor shocked at his conceptions. We must take him as he is, and let himlead us through the universe as he has planned it. So long as we set upour modern views as a standard, and by this standard judge the ancientmen, we fail in hospitality of thought, and come short of our duty asreaders. This consideration suggests yet another purpose in setting youth to thereading of Milton. By no means an ancient poet, he takes us,nevertheless, to a world different from our own, and in some sense helpsus out of the modern time in which our lives have fallen, to show us howother ages conceived of God and Heaven. The mark of an educated man isrespect for the past; the old philosophies and religions do not startleand repel him; his ancestors were once in those stages of belief; in somestage of this vast movement of thought he and his fellows are at thepresent moment. This largeness of view can be fruitfully impressed onyouth only by letting them read, under wise guidance, the older poets.
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