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all science was, in a most extraordinary degree, familiar. Throughout a long-drawn summer's day, would this man talk to you in low, equable, but clear and musical tones, concerning things human and divine; marshalling all history, harmonizing all experiment, probing the depths of your consciousness, and revealing visions of glory and terror to the imagination; but pouring, withal, such floods of light upon the mind that you might for a season, like Paul, become blind in the very act of conversion. And this he would do without so much as one allusion to himself, without a word of reflection upon others, save when any given art fell naturally in the way of his discourse; without one anecdote that was not proof and illustration of a previous position; gratifying no passion, indulging no caprice, but, with a calm mastery over your soul, leading you onward and onward forever through a thousand windings, yet with no pause, to some magnificent point in which, as in a focus, all the parti-colored rays of his discourse should converge in light. In all these, he was, in truth, your teacher and guide; but, in a little while, you might forget that he was other than a fellow-student and the companion of your way, so playful was his manner, so simple his language, so affectionate the glance of his eye! - NELSON COLERIDGE.

Visionary Coleridge, who

Did sweep his thoughts, as angels do
Their wings, with cadence up the blue.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.

HINTS ON THE HANDLING OF A POEM.

"POETRY," says Coleridge, "is the blossom and the fragrance of all human knowledge, human thoughts, human passions, emotions, language."

Essentially a poem cannot be taught. The student learns his deepest lesson from the poet and from no other. A teacher does well to be on his guard, lest he obtrude his own personality between the two. It is the poet himself, who, arresting the attention by song, holding it by vision after vision, can best impart to the young intellect the truth he has to tell, can alone inspire in the young heart a sympathetic passion for that truth. The function of the teacher, in dealing with any particular poem, is, first and foremost, to help the student fix his attention upon it. This can usually be done by questioning, better than in any other way. A running fire of questions, searching, varied, stimulates the mental activity, pricks into life the sluggish perceptions, gives form and color to those poem-pictures which are often so dimly and vaguely reproduced by the untutored imagination; and thus securing the vivid presentment of the scene, the clear comprehension of the thought, does away with the intellectual barrier, and brings the heart of the student into free contact with the glowing heart

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of the poet. Since definite knowledge is a requisite basis for true sympathy, such questions would relate in part to the meaning of terms and phrases employed; and rigid must be the will of that teacher who is not sometimes tempted aside from his main object by the "fossil poetry" of individual words, and led to inquire into the secrets of their origin and growth; yet the study of literature is more than philology. Such questions might relate, in part, to the structure of sentences; the significance of allusions, geographical, historical, mythological; the value of an illustration; the force of an argument; the development of a thought; -all this to insure a firm intellectual grasp of the subject-matter. Yet this done, the half has not been done. To understand the poet's message is one thing; to feel it, know it, and reach out beyond it toward the purer message he suggests, but has not words to utter, is another. Indeed, care should constantly be taken that these more superficial questions be kept in the background and not suffered to distract the student's mind from the poetic essence. For the study of literature must not be mistaken for the study of syntax, geography, history, mythology or logic. All questions that awaken the imagination and enable it to glorify the printed words into such clear-colored visions as dazzled the "mind's eye" of the poet while he wrote are of peculiar value. Questions that quicken the ear to the music of the poet's verse, and all other questions that render the student aware of poetic artifice, responsive to poetic effects, indirectly serve to deepen the central impression of the poem;

since these very melodies and rhetorical devices are not idle ornament, but the studied emphasis of the poet's word. Questions that lead the student to recognize and define in himself the emotions aroused by one passage or another in the poem, questions that call forth an attempt to supply missing links in the chain of events, questions that carry the reason and imagination forward on the lines suggested by the poet, all tend to mould the student's mood into sympathy with that higher mood, sensitive, eager, impassioned, in which the singer first conceived his song.

The question-method may be well supplemented by topical recitation, class discussion, citation of parallel passages, comparison with kindred poems and, under due precautions, the reading of criticisms. The committing a poem to memory, that its virtue may gradually distil into the mind and become a force in the unconscious life, is most desirable wherever it is possible to train the student to learn poetry by heart and not by rote. The slavish and mechanical engrossing of words, lines and stanzas upon some blank tablet of the brain, is of questionable benefit; but where the student is able to learn the poem as a poem, not as a column of verses, -to possess himself, by the powers of attention and analysis, of the sequence of events and grouping of images, remembering these in the poet's own language, because on trial he finds that language the most natural and best; this surpasses for poetic education every exercise that the ingenuity of teacher can devise.

At all events, leave the student alone with the poet at

the first and at the last. Let him have his earliest reading of the poem with fresh, unprejudiced mind, and when teacher, classroom and critics have done their best and their worst with him, return him to the poet again. If possible, let a little time intervene, and then let the poem be read aloud before the class; or, better still, recited by some one who has entered deeply into its spirit, and whose voice is musical and expressive. So will the first impression be intensified, and the seedsowing of analysis and criticism be harvested in a richer renewal of poetic sympathy. For poetry is not knowledge to be apprehended; it is passion to be felt, -passion for the truth revealed in beauty, and for the hinted truth too beautiful to be revealed.

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