Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1902-11-15

| DriSnt ana stupid, have made up their
minds that II they might select thew
would choose Tor their company other
worthless than Burke, MacauIay. Milton.
II seems like insulting the American
nag to protest. against the study of
burke's Cancellation speech: his sym-
pathy with the American spirit IL an
nearly, his appeal to our pride in our
! enterprfsing country more satisfying
than rocket on the Fourth. his rec
ognitton of the natural kinship between
England and America especially popu-
tar I'm these days when we are SO han
PLY conscious that God Save the
| King" and America" go to the same
tune. unhappily, however, the Grafton
was not addressed to a New England
school In session, but in bygone DAYS
| 10 British House of Commons, and
| was rightly cOuched not in the Ian
guage OF popular address, but in terms
| proper to such an assembly. Hence
| mat quality in it's style which appears
70 the young student elusive and cir
fuitous. The orator justly permitted
himself an ease OF reference without
explanation to matters well known to
his audience, lightness of allusion to
parliamentary persOnages and par
liamentary procedure, to previous bills
so familiar at the time that descrip-
ton would have been absurd-all addi-
tons to the dignity of his style, which
| work nevertheless sad bewilderment
in the boys mind. Ii he has a will.
and his teacher has the way, the mean
Ing of the mystery may be laboriously
extracted, but at a sacrifice. The de-
UaI Of
appears to him wearisOmely over
stretched, his stately irony an unnec-
| essary solemnity. the sure pace of his
convincing logic a mOnotony, his
clarity a maze.
Nor will you ever make boy believe
in Macaulay's criticism of Milton or of
| anybody else. What does he want of
it? Has it aught to do with the circus,
or with football, or the Friday dance?
| or that wcll-dusted shelf in the library,
where repose Robinson Crusoe" and
the Arabian Nights" and 1.-The Three
Musketeers?" What would DArtag-
| nan have done with literary criticism?
Made carnage of the man who asked
him to read it. Will literary criticism
win game, or kill a man or find a
very particular business, and it has
nothing. you may be sure, to do with
| analysis. He has passed the first stage
when it is joy to pick things to
pieces. disseminate the elements of a
clock or inspect the inner working of
his velocipede; nor has he reached the
delightfully."- maudlin, retrospective
period, when it is mans first aim to
| turn his mind inside out, to prod the
, hidden cavities of all things philosophi-
| cal, to call by long name every i'm
preston. All this will come later. The
poets may he trusted to make for
/ themselves critics out of these same
| boys; the pleasure of beauty will create
a need for its utterance but it will be a
pity if the need comes very soon. Is
the essay your favorite art form ?
Then search in the mirror for the gray
| hair, and you shall surely find it. but
| do not try to hasten for others the
speeding foot of Time. You cannot
drop criticism into a boy as you would
| a worm intoza young robin. Nor do
you hand a child the cook book, when
| he pleads for cooky; and what but a
mysterious recipe does Macaulay's
| criticism of Millions art appear to him!
The essay on Addison is a worse
matter-it is so wOndrous wise, SO be-
| wilderingly up in facts" some big.
some little, whose relative Importance
| it is quite impossible for the young be-
| ginner to determine. That fraction of
| them in which he takes any interest is
| known to him already. The progress
| of Addison's life any decent preface to
the Coverly papers will have given
| him; the sense of that gentle writer
| personal charm any good teacher will
have impaired if she knows her bust
ness. and has taken her class young
enough. In the simple perfection of
Addison's style as well as the una
dashed sweep of Macaulay's own no
boy will ever believe till years of labor
to do likewise shall have taught him
| wisdom. fAnd what remains? The
politics of the reign of Queen Anne and
| a muster-roll of names.
To the boy the politics are dead;
nothing could be more extinct. Nc
matter how he may pore over them and
pretend to understand them; no mat
ter how glibly he may recite parrot
| wise upon them, they remain to him
! "antiuuities which nobody can know,
nor wants to know. nor ought to want
to know. Even Mr.. Kipling, prophet OF
steam, priest Of the engine, has never
undertaken to sing the romance of the
political machine.
For the great name of Milton, which
has for SO many epochs been used to
| conjure with, the boy of the high school
| will have an inherited respect. Toward
the gigantic figure of Satan stretched
helpless on the burning Hood he Is
drawn by a mixture of awe and friend
liness. IL he can tribe with the pencil
he will soon produce a picture OF the
ruined archangel, with many gro
tes,,ue addition which Milton never
meant. Rut whatever grave curiosity
he may feel rises in spite of Milton
ma jestic style, which is itself chill or
the ardor Of youth. The pleasure Is
like a find in the centre of a Chinese
box--sood enough. but why all ths
. bother of the wrapping? The superb
excellence of Millions poetry hts nobit
pomp of movement. his unisamperec
freedom of idicm, the cold beauty ol
his verse. is but an unfortunate aces
. Il x.xV -