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 ^ LB1576 .cTs" """"""'' '■'""'^ 
 ^™il'|™|flllllll■ "^^ teaching of 
 
 oiin ^ ^^2"^ 030 590"l"49" 
 
LECTURES 
 
 ON 
 
 THE TEACHING 
 OF COMPOSITION 
 
 E. T. GAMPAGNAG 
 
 LONDON 
 CONSTABLE & COMPANY LTD. 
 
The original of tliis bool< is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924030590149 
 
LECTURES ON 
 THE TEACHING OF COMPOSITION 
 
LECTURES 
 
 ON 
 
 THE TEACHING OF 
 COMPOSITION 
 
 BY 
 
 E. T. CAMPAGNAC 
 
 PSOPES.;OR OF EDUCATION IN THE UNIVERSITY OF LIVERPOGI- 
 FORMERLY ONE OF H.M. INSPECTORS OF SCKOOl « 
 
 rOURTH IMPRESSION 
 
 LONDON 
 
 CONSTABLE & COMPANY LTD. 
 
 1919 
 
^ saos^^ 
 
PREFACE 
 
 Some apology seems to be needed for the publication 
 of these lectures. They were prepared for my own 
 pupils, and are here printed, except for a few slight 
 changes, as they were delivered. They formed part 
 of a long series of lectures, accompanied and, I trust, 
 illustrated, corrected, or re-enforced by observation and 
 practice in schools — a. series intended to direct the 
 attention of students, presently to become teachers, to 
 some of the main problems with which they wiU have 
 to deal. 
 
 It may be said with truth that the best way to 
 learn to teach is to try, to teach, and that the best way 
 to train students for teaching is to give them oppor- 
 tunities for practice. Arid practice has in fact always 
 formed a large patf of the " training," whether that 
 process has been regarded as limited by student-days, 
 or more happily conceived as extending through life. 
 But though practice yields much, it yields less than 
 all that is needed. I do not speak now of studies of 
 high value for a teacher, arid necessary indeed if he 
 is to enter into his full inheritance of knowledge and of 
 power — studies, for example, in the history of Education, 
 or in Ethics, or Psychology. In addition to practice and 
 concurrently with it the student must get advice. He 
 has to do certain definite things — he has to teach, as 
 we say, certain subjects ; and he asks, not unnaturally, 
 how he is to do them: he asks how this and that 
 
6 PREFACE 
 
 subject is to be taught; he asks, in a word, for a 
 method. Is it possible to show him what he wants, 
 to give him a plain answer to his plain question? 
 There are some men and women who can teach some 
 things well, and know it; there are others, distrustful 
 of themselves, who can point here and there to those 
 who achieve what is desired. Is it right, in the former 
 case, to say, "Do what I do "; or in the second, 
 " Do what you see this or that successful teacher 
 doing "?> 1 believe that it is not right to make this 
 reply. From example much may be learnt; from an 
 analysis of the procedure of skilled practitioners, and 
 the attempt to systematise what appears to be the prin- 
 ciples which guide them, much may be learnt. But 
 if this is all, all is in vain. The springs of action 
 must be sought and discovered within each person for 
 himself. 
 
 I say that I try to direct the attention of students 
 to some of the problems of their profession. Let a 
 student enquire, not of others, but of himself what 
 these " subjects " which he purposes to teach really 
 are. When he makes that enquiry he will find that 
 any subject which he may hope to teach is not some- 
 thing external to himself, but an activity in which he 
 may be himself engaged, and that he cannot truly 
 begin to teach it until he is actually engaged in it. 
 This discovery at once limits the number of " subjects " 
 which he can decently attempt, and gives a previously 
 unsuspected range and depth to the remainder. This 
 remainder will include everything which is vital; the 
 " subjects " which fall within it will prove themselves 
 aspects of character, modes of intelligence, essential 
 parts of life. 
 
PREFACE 7 
 
 The student who asks himself, " What is this that 
 I am doing?" will go on to enquire, " Why am I 
 doing it?" and then " How am I doing it?" The third 
 question cannot be usefully asked till some sort of 
 answer has been given to the two first, and no complete 
 answer will ever be given to it. 
 
 Let him learn what he can from others, but let him 
 be sure that there is no method for him but his own, 
 fashioned for his own needs, with the help of example 
 and experience and of tested skill, yet not without the 
 aid of Fortune, Nature, God — ^by whatever name he 
 knows the strange force that carries him beyond the 
 scope of his measured powers, making him other than 
 his exemplars and greater than himself. 
 
 My thanks are due to Mr. D. J. Sloss for reading 
 the lectures, and making many useful criticisms. 
 
 E. T. CAMFAGNAC. 
 
 Liverpool, 
 
 April, 1 910 
 
LECTURES 
 
 ON THE 
 
 TEACHING OF COMPOSITION 
 
 LECTURES ON COMPOSITION 
 
 To give you must have: to teach you must know. But 
 if the gift is worth offering or receiving the giver 
 strengthens his hold upon what he has in the act of 
 imparting it. Not only, so, but he necessarily receives 
 something new and fresh' as an addition to what he had 
 though quite akin to it. For indeed it is impossible 
 to give anything which the receiver does not already 
 in some measiu-e possess. He woiild be unable to 
 accept it if this were not so. You may of course give 
 a penny to a man who has no penny, or boots to a 
 barefoot traveller; but if the gift is of a more subtle 
 and spiritual kind, the transaction which takes place is 
 of a different order. You caimot give kindness or 
 sympathy or imderstanding to a person whb has none 
 of these, any more than you can give anger or hostility 
 to a person who is incapable of anger or could not 
 possibly become an enemy. 
 
 We have to make a distinction between the things of 
 whidi we may be regarded as the legal owners and 
 those other things which we hold by a more essential 
 claim — ^between formal and effective ownership. We 
 aflfectively possess what we have acquired under stress 
 
10 LECTURES ON 
 
 of necessity in the fulfilipent of some natural desire, 
 and have made vitally our own by ase; and the use 
 which we make of such things is rendered precise and 
 characteristic because it is directed and governed by 
 emotion. In other words, we possess the things which 
 we not simply hold against the world, but care for 
 and value and enrich by our affections. Legally and 
 formally we are the possessors of many other things 
 which we acquired by accident or caprice; which we 
 once wanted or thought we wanted, but now want no 
 more. So we possess furniture which we put away in 
 lumber-rooms, clothes which we do not wear, books 
 which we do not read. It is in quite a different sense 
 that we regard ourselves as possessing the furniture 
 which we like to see about us, the garments we are 
 pleased to wear, the books which we read again and 
 again. A like distinction may be made between formal 
 and effective knowledge. Most people have consider- 
 able stores, if not of useless knowledge, at any rate of 
 unused knowledge, information which they have picked 
 up casually here and ithere, which remains unrelated to 
 the main and ruling interests and occupations of their 
 lives. Sometimes such information may be put con- 
 veniently away, but often it is a real hindrance to the 
 fruitful and productive use of other sorts of information 
 which bear a real part in the business and affairs 
 of life. Effective knowledge is what a man has got 
 because he needed it, and has made his own by use, 
 and its use is directed by his emotions. Formal know- 
 ledge may be bought and sold; it may, if we are 
 careless enough to misuse our words, be said to be 
 given away; but effective knowledge alone can be 
 truly communicated from mind to mind. 
 
 Effective knowledge is the proper food of a nattiral 
 appetite, and because natural, common. It is the result 
 of an activity of which we are capable as human beings, 
 and it is appropriate not only to ourselves but to those 
 who share our nature. A discovery early made by 
 an intelligent teacher is that the subject which he is 
 
THE TEACHING OF COMPOSITION ii 
 
 hoping to teach is already in some measure in the 
 possession of his pupils. It is often a disconcerting 
 discovery, but experience and reflection show that this 
 is a necessary condition without which teaching and 
 learning would be impossible. 
 
 COMPOSITION 
 
 Our first duty as teachers is, I think, to take our- 
 selves, and our pupils not less, for human beings, 
 and to consider what we and they need for the proper 
 maintenance and development of our life, and for ful- 
 filling the relations which we have to bear towards 
 one another in the world. If we set out from this 
 we are more likely than if we start from any more 
 professional standpoint to arrive at a just view of our 
 real needs, of the things which we really require for 
 our equipment in the world, and to arrive at them in 
 the proper order. 
 
 We may consider the question of composition in 
 this way, and consider it in the first place in regard 
 to ourselves rather than in regard to children whom 
 we may have presently to teach. 
 
 Let us call composition the expression in words of 
 whai we have in our minds — in words written or spoken ; 
 and include both the process of composing and the 
 finished result of composing — composition as a thing 
 achieved. 
 
 We ought then to ask ourselves. Why do we seek 
 an expression in words for what we have in our minds? 
 There are many reasons, but they may all be grouped 
 
12 LECTURES ON 
 
 in three classes, which for the moment we may dis- 
 tinguish from each other, though, as we shall see, the 
 barriers between them often break down. 
 
 Our first object is to convey at once to other people 
 something which we desire to give them or to share 
 with them. For example, we give a messenger our 
 instructions; he is to take our letter to a certain place; 
 we give orders to the cook or to the gardener. In 
 such cases we are giving to other people something 
 which we have in our mind and which we desire should 
 be in their minds. Or, again, we are pleased with the 
 freshness of an autumn morning, or relieved at the 
 brief cessation of the rain and the cold wind, or annoyed 
 at the loss of a pet rabbit, and we tell a friend of our 
 pleasure, our relief, or our annoyance. We are sharing 
 with him something that we have in our mind — a. 
 feeling, a piece of observation. Such a feeling or 
 observation is the possession of the moment, which we 
 hand on at once — the small change of conversation. 
 
 But we deal often in more important and valuable 
 things, and we seek expression, in the second' place, in 
 order to record some information, or some emotion in 
 a permanent form, whether for our own tise or for the 
 use of other people. Quite simple examples of this 
 will serve: we write down something that we want to 
 remember, some notable event of the day, or of the 
 year; we keep accoimts to loiow what we have done 
 with our money, and to find out after a period has 
 passed how we stand with the banker; or, whtere we 
 travel beyond our own private and personal concerns, 
 we keep records of events, we have minutes of meetings, 
 because we do not trust to our memory or jto the 
 memory of other members of a committee — but feel the 
 need of a statement in lasting! and trustworthy form, to 
 be preserved, of what has taken place. To advance 
 from that to still more important affairs, history will 
 come under this head. The passage of time removes 
 many monuments of what men have done, or robs us 
 of the meaning, of them even when they stand in some 
 
THE TEACHING OF COMPOSITION 13 
 
 oUtwaxd and tangible shape, and so again, we like to 
 have a record or an explanation in words of what these 
 things are. Or once more, we want a record or a 
 permanent memorial of some feeling or emotion. We 
 have felt something with more than ordinary keenness 
 and vividness. So people have often kept journals 
 and notes of their holidays, specially of their travels — 
 an Easter in the Lakes, a visit to Switzerland^ — such 
 things as these, which stir us deeply at the time, we 
 probably, all, especially in youth, like to record, not 
 merely with the detailed observation of one who is 
 looking out with the eye of a naturalist or a scientist 
 upon the scenes which' are before him, but as one 
 who looks inward and makes a conscious note of his 
 feelings, remarking how these outward things impress 
 him. We read such memorials of our own past 
 with pleasure or amusement, or sometimes with pain. 
 That is the second reason which I should suggest for 
 expression. 
 
 The third reason is more difficult to describe. We 
 all have at times a desire for expression for its own 
 sake; a desire which exercises a specially strong in- 
 fluence on ;js when we are imder the sway of some 
 very powerful emotion. We may distingooish this from 
 the other two objects, the object of conveying informa- 
 tion and the object of recording knowledge or feeling, 
 because here we have expression sought, not for 
 any ulterior object, but because expression in itself is 
 desirable to the person who seeks it. This kind of 
 desire for expression is most easily seen — I will not 
 say that it is most powerful — in children, because, as we 
 know very, well, when they are happy, or when they are 
 sad, they express themselves quite spontaneously and 
 quickly, not merely, and not only, and sometimes not 
 at all, with the desire of conveying information or 
 recording an impression ; their speech — or shall we say, 
 their utterance, for often it is no more than a shout or 
 a cry — ^is itself an end, is itself the object of their 
 desire. It is not their purpose to tell anybody any- 
 
14 LECTURERS ON 
 
 thing; they, are driven irresistibly to utterance, and 
 their expression is as much desired' as the emotion 
 which caused it was natural arid strong. 
 
 Now let lis look into those three objects of speech 
 again. 
 
 For the first, what we need is clearness. We must 
 make ourselves intelligible. It is no use to give a boy 
 a message unless we make him understand quite clearly 
 what he has to do, or where he has to go. 
 
 For the second, that is to say for recording informa- 
 tion, or for giving, a permanent form to some emotion, 
 what we need is accuracy. If we are to preserve 
 information we must record the whole of it, we must 
 set it down justly, in right propprtion, without undue 
 emphasis here or there, almost witlwut colour; and 
 still more if, dealing with a more delicate matter, we 
 are to record in permanent form an emotion, we must 
 be qiiite scrupulously faithful, severely true. But to 
 say this, is at once to indicate one of the points at 
 which our divisions merge into one another. To be 
 clear in the simplest statement which we make to 
 another person, we must first be quite clear in our 
 own minds as to what it is that we desire to convey 
 to him, our facts must be well grasped!— we must, in 
 fact, be accurate. 
 
 And on the other hand, accuracy, if it stands for a 
 complete, but colourless statement of the facts of a 
 case, is not clear. There can be no light iii human 
 utterance, if there is no warmth, no heat of pwsonal 
 feeling to weld and fuse into a single idea the details, 
 the elements of experience. 
 
 For the third, where expression seeks no other obj.ect 
 than itself, we need a complete sincerity governed by 
 a proper reserve. Let us see what is meant by that. 
 A strong emotion of love, or fear, or hate, or admira- 
 tion—whatever it may be— takes different expressions 
 in different natures. In some, expression is so quick 
 and so complete that the emotion as it were blows itself 
 away in an outburst of words; it is quickly felt, it is 
 
THE TEACHING OF COMPOSITION 15 
 
 qtiickly expressed, and it is quickly gone. In others, 
 on the contrary, expression, though it is desired, and 
 felt to be necessary, is won with difficulty, sometimes 
 even with pain ; it is not complete ; it is laborious ; and 
 the very fact that it is not complete may ha,ve the 
 result of warping, or embittering, or in some other 
 way spoiling this emotion, whatever it may have been. 
 We are familiar with the contrast between people who, 
 so to speak, give their hearts away at once and people 
 who can never give themselves away. 
 
 There are, of cotorse, many varieties and stages 
 between those two extremes. What we want to find, 
 and what we are sometimes happy enough to find, is 
 a nature where expression is sincere, but where the 
 frankness of utterance is temj)ered and modified by 
 the self-restraint of simple dignity. We like people — 
 to put it in other words and in a more concrete form — 
 we like people to be ready to make friends, but we do 
 not want them to be too ready: we like to know about 
 their concerns; we do not want to know everything. 
 The charm of conversation, and indeed of the most 
 intimate friendship, lies very largely in the conscious- 
 ness of the fact that behind what is given in words 
 or in deeds there is infinitely more which is held in 
 reserve. We know that though we may go far with a 
 friend there are some regions of his mind and his 
 heart upon which he would have none enter, and which 
 we do not wish to ejq^ore. If in speaking or in 
 writing we are putting out into the world for other 
 minds to use or to reject, to accept or to throw away, 
 what is in our minds, obviously we are making some 
 sort of a self-revelation, and it should be made with a 
 certain wholesome shyness, a certain vigorous modesty. 
 
 Now, let us look more closely still at this noatter. 
 I suppose that one of the most striking ways in which 
 we differ from what we call the lower animals is that 
 we are much more self-conscious than they. Your cat 
 can walk across your room, and completely ignore you 
 and your friends who are sitting there. She is intent 
 
i6 LECTURES ON 
 
 upon her own- affairs ; , and she pursues thetti — ^rapidly 
 chasing a reel with playful miu-der in her eye, or 
 washing her face with leisurely fastidious care, or re- 
 treating to her own Nirvana to gaze in passionless 
 contemplation upon nothing. She pursues her ends 
 without reference to you, forgetful of your existence 
 or indifferent to it. A dog, of course, is much more 
 aware of you; he is a much more self-conscious 
 creature; so again is a horse; but these too can forget 
 us. But a cow pursues her avocations, we may surmise, 
 without regard for us ; the birds care very little for us, 
 or care only to avoid us: and though no doubt beasts 
 and birds are sensitive to the criticisms of their fellows, 
 and have deep sympathy with them, they achieve a 
 detachment from convention, they stand at times in a 
 splendid isolation, which is rare among men. They are 
 egotists sans pear et sans reproche. But we care 
 extraordinarily for each other. We are self-conscious, 
 too, in another sense which the word more justly bears. 
 We are not only aware of each other, but we are, some- 
 times painfully, aware of ourselves. We are actors be- 
 fore a double audience, the audience which is in front, so 
 to speak, of the stage, and the audience which is on the 
 stage and seated indeed in the very, heart and brain of 
 the actors. So that even in thfe simplest form of expres- 
 sion, the giving of a message, to take the example used 
 just now, or the most businesslike kind of expression, 
 the recording of minutes ; still more, of course, and pre- 
 eminently where we are pouring out into a spontaneous 
 and necessary expression, some powerfxd feeling of our 
 hearts, we care much, very, much; not only for what we 
 say, but for the manner in which' we say it. In speech 
 not less than in other forms of self-expression, we quickly 
 become aware of the need of style. Almost we might 
 say that style is conscious beauty, sought and achieved 
 in obedience to conscious want. Almost, but not quite; 
 for most persons, we may imagine, most children cer- 
 tainly, discover the fact of style before they discover the 
 need of it. They find that they have actually done a 
 
THE TEACHING OF COMPOSITION 17 
 
 thing so that the doing of it has given them a particular 
 and recognisable pleasnrCj quite distinct from that of 
 any result which follows the doing. And this pleasure, 
 exquisite and elusive, is sought (how often vainly I ) and 
 sought again. But when the form of expression has 
 become valuable in itself, there is danger on one 
 side and advantage on the other. There is danger, on 
 the one hand, of affectation. We see plenty of instances 
 of that; of people who are so much concerned about 
 the figure they make that they hardly move at all; so 
 much concerned about their form that their form is often 
 empty. And, on the other hand, the side of advantage, 
 there is this; there is the deepening and clarifying of 
 the emotion which is felt, and the illuminating and 
 the strengthening of the information which we want 
 to record. In plain words: When you feel, you 
 speak ; and when you speak, you come to feel more 
 clearly. 
 
 Let us take an image which may help us — as old an 
 image as could well be chosen — ^the image of style as 
 the dress of thougbt. Style presumes thought just as 
 clothes presume a body. It is a disappointment, when 
 we have expected a man, to find a mere suit, moving but 
 otherwise not calling to oiur mind anything human. It 
 is disappointing to hear words which decoy and deceive 
 us by a pleasant sound, but in which, when we listen 
 more attentively, we discover no meaning. Our image 
 is not only, venerable, but sturdy, and we may make 
 more use of it. Dress is at the same time the mark or 
 the sign of understanding and of sympathy, and also 
 (and not less) the proof of division or individuality. We 
 dress for our equals, or for those who in the main are 
 like ourselves. A man can talk to his dog, with equal 
 comfort to himself and to the dog, whatever he is wear- 
 ing, at any hour of the day. or night ; he could talk, once 
 more — supposing he had the language, and they were 
 good enough to refrain for a moment from eating him — 
 to a group of cannibals in any dress or none ; but when 
 he is talking to people like himself, he wears clothes like 
 
1 8 LECTURES ON 
 
 theirs, or, at least, in the main like tlieirs, because they 
 expect so much of him and understand him best so ; it 
 is a kind of uniform, a general imiform, which means 
 that he belongs to a particular country; it means even 
 more, that he belongs to a particular, let us say the 
 northern part of it ; and, more still, that he belongs to a 
 particular class or group in society; he may be a tinker, 
 a tailor, a soldier, a sailor — ^he may, be what is called a 
 gentleman, or what is called a working-man. His 
 clothes bewray him. And the clothes which we and our 
 friends wear are all fashioned in deference to these 
 general conditions. Happily, we do not wear each 
 other's clothes, but our own, to fit us, and of a colour 
 which for various reasons, and rightly or wrongly, we 
 think suitable and appropriate to ourselves. Yet al- 
 ways in the choice of what in shape and in colour is 
 suitable to ourselves, we are restrained, and guided by 
 what other people do and what other people expect of us. 
 Now, to hit the mean between the right tribute to what 
 others expect of us, and the proper obedience to our own 
 character and idiosyncrasy is a difficult thing, and is 
 indeed a high art. Some people n^ster it; they are 
 well dressed, they are dressed distinctively, their dress 
 is characteristic ; , and yet they are in the fashion ; not 
 beyond it, nor behind it;, they are like other people at 
 the same moment that they are completely and splendidly 
 themselves. 
 
 Now, that is true of this other kind of dress, the dress 
 of thought. Here again we dress for our class; we do 
 not throw our thoughts naked upon the world, or half 
 clothed, but prepare them to meet company, to engage 
 in the commerce and traffic of the world, by clothing 
 them suitably. And this clothing implies a certain 
 measure, at any rate, of understanding and of sympathy 
 —the common form of sentence, of paragraph, of page; 
 or of speech, is one which is governed in part and prim- 
 arily, no doubt, by the general conditions under which: 
 the human mind does its work — it is governed also by 
 the conventions of the particular country ajid people and 
 
THE TEACHING OF COMPOSITION 19 
 
 class to which we belong, and which we as speakers or 
 as writers are addressing. Yet it mtist be a form worn 
 by ourselves, shaped to our service, coloured by our 
 taste. We must be accurate and faithful in what we 
 say. We must be imderstood by our fellows, we must 
 be clear to them. Correctness and clearness are 
 essential, and fundamental. These are necessary, but 
 no man is content with what is necessary. Every man 
 seeks something in addition; and in speech or writing, 
 beyond and above the necessary qualities, there is 
 beauty. Style, we may now say, is the fair offspring 
 of sympathy and individuality — of generous under- 
 standing and proper egoism. And style is beauty. It 
 was these three qualities which Quintilian, that vigorous 
 but temperate critic, claimed for the orator: Correct- 
 ness, clearness, and elegance— eicgscncc last, because it 
 is worthless, and indeed not to be had, where the other 
 two qualities are absent. How near of kin elegance in 
 his judgment is to correctness and clearness we may 
 remind ourselves, by naming (and we here need but 
 name) the considerations by which he would have us 
 guided in our pursuit of it. We must be guided, he 
 tells us, in the first place, by reason, by the logic of 
 thought; in the second place by tradition, the custom 
 of great writers ; next, if we desired it — and he felt 
 that we should (writing for Romans, he here comes 
 close home to English people) — ^by a use, judicious and 
 sparing, of the language, of the words, of ancient 
 writers, which have a flavour of their own, like that of 
 old wine; those who have tasted it do not immediately 
 desire what is new; and then coming to the most 
 practical consideration of all, he says that thte beginner 
 should study and adopt the habit of what he called the 
 best people. Who are the " best people "? He does 
 not look for such a question. What is their " habit " 
 in words? He does not define it; he reckons upon our 
 sensitiveness. He appeals to fashion, and enjoins a 
 liberal servitude to il-s power — ^the appropriation, under 
 the strong urgency of personal feeling, in the light of 
 
20 LECTURES ON 
 
 genuine experience, of a mode current and common, 
 yet individual and oiu- own. No textbook will give 
 us rules for this. To acquire this sense of fashion, to 
 win this habit of the best people, we are, of course, 
 to familiarise otu-selves with wha,t they, do both in 
 speech and in writing. 
 
 II 
 
 The speech of children, we shall agree, springs from 
 the same main causes as our own. Our own speech, 
 as we saw, comes from a desire to convey something 
 from our own mind to other minds, whether in the 
 form of some simple command or statement, or in 
 something more elaborate: it may be a record of past 
 events, or an expression of some feeling; or finally, 
 expression may be artistic, that is to say, it may seek 
 no other object than itself, content in its own perfection. 
 That would seem to be the highest achievement of 
 human utterance. 
 
 Yet when we come to consider the speech of 
 children, we are bound to put this expression for 
 the sake of expression first of all. It is remarkable 
 that though artistic speech is speech at its highest de- 
 velopment, yet speech at its first beginnings is, in its 
 selfless self-seeking and self-realisation, artistic too. 
 Of a little child, an infant, it is sometimes paradoxi- 
 cally said that when he cries or shouts, the truth is not 
 so much that he cries because he is imhappy, or shouts 
 because he is happy, as that he is happy because he 
 shouts, and he is in pain because he cries. At any rate, 
 it is a nice question whether the expression or the thing 
 expressed comes first in such simple instances as that. 
 The fact is that the child is as yet unconscious of 
 himself, he has not yet developed what we call self- 
 consciousness. He is at one moment a little imiverse 
 
THE TEACHING OF COMPOSITION 21 
 
 of pain; at another moment he is a little imiverse of 
 happiness or amusement: he and his feelings are one 
 thing. He has not yet learnt to say, / have a pain, or, 
 / feel a himger, or, / am this, that, or the other — ^he 
 has not yet learnt to say that or to think that; he is 
 what he feels, and what he feels he is. Accordingly, as 
 at that stage his needs and appetites are of the simplest 
 and largest kind; so his utterance is elementary and 
 comprehensive, and for those at any rate who cire 
 attached to him, either by affection or by natural ties 
 of blood, his expression even if inarticulate, is com- 
 pletely intelli^ble — ^they know exactly what he needs. 
 
 But, presently, the child becomes aware of himself; 
 and as he becomes aware of himself — ^it is part of the 
 same process — he becomes aware of the world; he dis- 
 tinguishes between the world and himself, between me 
 and not me, and as he does that he comes to analyse 
 both — himself and the world — ^and finds in each an 
 infinite variety. This is the stage at which he learns 
 to say, I am this or that, I have, or, I want, or, I 
 feel; he distinguishes between the self, which is per- 
 manent, and the wants, or desires, or sensations, 
 which are but passing aspects of this unchanging self; 
 and similarly as he looks out upon the world he recog- 
 nises no longer a simple whole, but a manifold thing, 
 and witnesses the changing aspects of this world, from 
 which he distinguishes himself, and against which he 
 places himself. 
 
 Now, we may say of speech, that like other activities 
 of human natvire it may be regarded as the expression 
 of a need or of an appetite, or of an impulse. And, 
 more than that, we may say, that the expression of a 
 need is the proof of capacity or power. If you enquire 
 of a child why he did this or that — why he broke the 
 vase on the table, why he licked the paint off his sister's 
 doll, why he did anything you will, good or bad — in 
 the last resort he will tell you that he did it because he 
 " wanted to." He felt, as we may say for him, that the 
 action was at that moment the supreme and necessary 
 
22 LECTURES ON 
 
 expression of himself. He could throw himself into it 
 at the time when he did it. We do not act in any, way 
 imless we want to act. There must be some want (or 
 desire or purpose) to make us act at all. Now, want 
 is only another name for a need. How does a need 
 spring up? We must ask ourselves what we mean by 
 a " need." What is it " to need "? The word is used 
 in two senses, one of which is appropriate to living 
 organisms, while the other is not. An instance or two 
 may malce this clear: my supply of coal is exhausted, 
 I need more coal; my coal- cellar is emptyr^it needs 
 refilling. 
 
 " Old Mother Hubbard 
 Went to the cupboard 
 To fetch her poor dog a bone. 
 When she got there 
 The cupboard was bare, 
 And so the poor dog had none." 
 
 No one will deny a connection between the emptiness 
 of my cellar and my need of coal ; between the bareness 
 of the cupboard and the unhappy state of the dog. 
 But there is also a distinction for us to make. I need 
 fresh coal, because I have used up what I had, and must 
 have more to cook my food and warm my house — the 
 cellar needs coal, merely because it is empty. My need 
 is positive and active ; the cellar is merely deficient. 
 Again, my need is definite and special; it is coal that 
 I want, and I should not be satisfied by a gift of a ton 
 of potatoes, with which the cellar might quite well be 
 filled. 
 
 So with the dog, if, as we may assume, his mistress 
 rightly divined his condition. It was a bone that he 
 needed — not a book or a bicycle or even a cranberry 
 tart ; and he needed a bone because he had used up the 
 food he had previously received, and must have more to 
 keep himself living. The cupboard was bare; it pre- 
 sented a naked vacuity to the well-meaning old lady. 
 The living organism needs actively, discriminatingly, 
 and for a purpose — ^the inanimate thing needs passively, 
 
THE TEACHING OF COMPOSITION 23 
 
 without selection, and for no purpose of its own. We 
 are weary of silence, and we must speak ; we are weary 
 of sitting still, and we must walk. But it is not oiu- 
 silence wMch calls for speech, but our speechfulness 
 (as we must call it) ; it is not our motionlessness which 
 calls for movement but our pent-up capacity for move- 
 ment. Whatever we do, whatever changes of activity 
 we engage in, all is dictated by a power, a force which 
 we feel in ourselves, calling for the appropriate action 
 or expression. Thus there seems to be, so long as we 
 live, a kind of seesaw or perpetual motion from one 
 kind of activity to another, because each thing that we 
 do is on the one hand the result of a force, and on the 
 other generates or releases a new force which calls for 
 some corresponding and balancing activity. And as 
 life advances and we come to the full development of 
 our powers, all through youth and early manhood or 
 womanhood, and perhaps %vitli regard to some of our 
 capacities even later on in life, the expression — to use 
 the same words again — the expression of a need (which 
 itself is the satisfying or obeying of a force within 
 ourselves, which calls for an outlet) at the same moment 
 uses up this force and exhausts it, and produces a new 
 force which in its turn calls forth a new activity. Or 
 to put that into still other words: you feel a need of 
 some kind, that need prompts you to a certain sort of 
 activity, and that activity as you piirsue it and complete 
 it reveals to you a new need of which you had not been 
 conscious before. 
 
 I take the simple iexample of the succession of our 
 meals during the day. We wake, and, if we are in 
 satisfactory health, we want our breakfast; and then 
 we go about oiu: daily tasks, walking to this place or 
 that, talking, or listening to other people; and pre- 
 sently, by one o'clock or earlier, a fresh need has arisen, 
 which in its turn is satisfied; and after lunch we go on 
 once more: and so on, through the day and the days. 
 But the original need — ^we may go back and back upon 
 it — ^the original breakfast-time need could not have 
 
24 LECTURES ON 
 
 arisen unless there were force, power, present in us ; it 
 is because we have strength that we feel the necessity 
 for more strength, because we have life thkt we feel the 
 need for reinvigorating our life;, indeed, the measure 
 of a man's vigour and capacity can very well be 
 gauged by, the urgency and the variety of his needs; 
 just as, on the other hand, as soon as you come to 
 need nothing you are dead. 
 
 A child's speech, for we can call it speech', even at 
 that earliest stage which we are considering, is a mere 
 cry or a shout, announcing that he, the whole of him, 
 needs something which he is not able to define. Later, 
 he learns a little more clearly to give names to the things 
 that he wants. And here more obviously than before 
 the older people who are about him can help him> 
 because, though he distinguishes, he distinguishes very 
 imperfectly. He will call things by their wrong names ; 
 or he will use one general name for a great variety of 
 things, and as you give him in answer to his request, 
 not precisely what in words he asked for, but what you 
 know or discover that he reaJly wanted, you do two 
 things for him: you of course satisfy the particular 
 need of the moment, but you also teach him definition, 
 you also give him vocabulary,. He is dependent partly 
 on himself and partly, on us for the simultaneous in- 
 crease in his observation and his power of naming the 
 things which he observes. We are in advance of him. 
 We have been in the world longer, and know the names 
 of things; he is learning the names of these things, 
 fitting them with increasing, exactness to the things, 
 which he thus learns to distinguish, and using them so 
 far as they satisfy various needs of his nature. 
 
 Accordingly, as you give him the things which he 
 really needs in response to his imperfectly worded re- 
 quests for them, you are not only teaching him some- 
 thing about the world outside, but the world inside— 
 himself; you are giving him, at the same time that you, 
 offer him an analysis of the world, an analysis of his 
 own feeling, of his own nature, of his own self. You 
 
THE TEACHING OF COMPOSITION 25 
 
 will often hear imperfect speakers say after perhaps a 
 long paragraph, " That is not what I mean," or, " What 
 I mean is " — ^we are often falling into that kind of 
 phrase ;i and the reason for it is just' this, that though 
 we think we have tried, and may have actually tried 
 very, deliberately, to say exactly what was our intention, 
 we are baffled in the attempt, for two reasons: either 
 that we did not know when we set out precisely what 
 was in our mind, we had not analysed ourselves : or else 
 that we had not the appropriate words for casting this 
 image of ourselves out upon the world and into the 
 mind of the person to whom we were speaking. Now, 
 children are in that position more often probably than 
 we are; certainly they attempt speech more often than 
 we do in such circumstances. 
 
 But here a practical question of great importance for 
 teachers arises: How far, we must ask ourselves in 
 teaching our pupils, and particularly in helping them to 
 write, must we wait upon them, and how far may we, 
 being in advance of them, anticipate their needs. Of 
 coiu^e we are in general in advance of them in ex- 
 perience; and so our general knowledge of the world 
 is likely to be more extensive and accurate than theirs ; 
 though it is necessary to remember that our particular 
 knowledge of the special part of the world in which 
 they happen to be peculiarly, interested may not be 
 either so large or so intimate as theirs. We may know, 
 for example, a good deal more about England and the 
 world than boys of eight or nine years of age. On the 
 other hand, their knowledge is very much more intimate 
 than ours is (or perhaps ever was) of air-guns, or slugs, 
 or rabbits. If, therefore, we are to converse with them 
 on these topics, which are more interesting to them than 
 they are to us, though not, we may hope, devoid of 
 interest for us; even though our general knowledge of 
 things is (as we may presume) better, our special know- 
 ledge of the subject in hand is not so good. Yet to 
 be just to ourselves we must make a reservation: 
 though we may not in recent years, or indeed ever. 
 
26 LECTURES ON 
 
 have observed so many details in the construction and 
 use of the air-gun, or the stickiness of slugs, or the 
 rapidity and cunning of rabbits, yet we have learned to 
 generalise, we have a sounder logic ; we can think more 
 clearly and reason more carefully than these youthful 
 (Experts, who are full of information, but information often 
 disorganised and xmrelated and incomplete, about their 
 own special subjects. 
 
 As we read children's compositions in school, we are 
 constantly struck, not I think by any, want of colour 
 and interest in what they are saying, but by their 
 inability to think consecutively, to make a whole of the 
 matter upon which they are engaged. Their observa- 
 tions are made disjointedly, unconnectedly — attractively 
 if lyou will, but yet not in such a way as to make one 
 complete and permanent impression upon the mind of 
 the reader or the listener;, and that because they do 
 not correspond to a single complete and coherent im- 
 pression in the mind of the children themselves. 
 
 Here, then, the teacher can come, and must come, 
 to help his pupil. He can take his points, gladly 
 receiving them, offering his own, which on a particular 
 theme may be of less moment even or less numerous 
 than those of his pupils, but offering them in such a 
 way that what he has to say and what his pupil has 
 to say together may make a system, a whole, an order 
 in the treatment of the subject. But all this, of course, 
 presumes what I have hitherto taken for granted, but 
 what must now be definitely claimed, that in what we 
 call composition, the child must be talking, about some- 
 thing which he has in his mind— and which' for some 
 reason or other he desires to express out of his mind 
 and to put into your mind or someone else's. There 
 can never be any rational or any attractive speech 
 unless the person who is speaking has something 
 at least fairly clearly developed in his own mind, 
 and also has the desire, the unfeigned and spon- 
 taneous desire, to express this thing which he pos- 
 sesses. This might seem to be an unneeded counsel" 
 
THE TEACHING OF COMPOSITION 27 
 
 yet perhaps because it is so obvious, it is what we often 
 neglect or forget. Look at sdiool exercises in the light of 
 this simple maxim, and you discover immediately a reason 
 why many of them are so unsatisfactory both to the 
 readers and to the writers. These children are writing, 
 not because they want to write, but because their teachers 
 want them to write ; and often enough they are writing 
 about things of which they have no special knowledge, 
 not even that rudimentary knowledge which! prompts a 
 desire for more, but on subjects which their teachers 
 like, or oftener still which the teachers think that the 
 children ought to like. If so, can we wonder that the 
 whole process becomes dullpJ Compositions, forced and 
 imnatiu-al, upon subjects not specially attractive to the 
 writers, are demanded by and created for critics who 
 do not look in what they, will receive from their pupils 
 for anything delightful, and read, not because they want 
 to read, but because they must. All through this dreary 
 business, there runs the British sense of duty. England 
 expects not only every, man, but, it would appear, every 
 school child as well, to do his duty. It is, of course, 
 an admirable claim, as we feel in our patriotic moods; 
 but there are other claims to be recognised and fulfilled 
 with it. Unless the notion of duty in some perfectly 
 real way, corresponds with the notion of happiness, duty 
 is deadly and happiness an empty, word. And with 
 regard to this work in school I am quite sure that the 
 conception of duty has gone too far. What is necessary 
 and right must not be too severely distinguished from 
 what is desirable and pleasant. 
 
 What is " necessary " and " right ".'' It is that 
 which is demanded by a living, creature for the ex- 
 pression, the fvurtherance, of its own life. What is 
 " desirable " and " pleasant "? It is that for which a 
 living creature has an appetite or taste. But can a 
 child make the proper demand?. Can he justly divine 
 his own need?. Is his appetite a sure guide? His 
 demand may be inaccurate;: his taste may be mis-^ 
 leading; both no doubt need sympathetic interpretation. 
 
28 LfeCTURES ON 
 
 To force is not to interpret; and far oftener than is 
 commonly admitted what children like is apt to be what 
 they actually need, what is good for them. 
 
 If, then, a child is interested in something, we know 
 very well that he hkes to talk about it. If he thinks 
 that we also are really interested in it, his zest and 
 delight in talking are doubled. If he thinks that we 
 have a quite considerable knowledge of it, he will seek 
 lis out and diligently exploit us for what we may, be 
 worth. 
 
 This relationship is possible between the teachers of 
 young children and their pupils; and this relationship 
 is essential, if good, which means natural, composition 
 is to be had. 
 
 The earliest stage is that at which a child can, with 
 very little premeditation, but only wanting to be in- 
 telligible to a sympathetic listener, talk about things 
 which he cares for and has in his mind. As his 
 interest increases — ^and this is the proper order — in the 
 subject that holds him, his desire for exactitude in 
 expression also increases. A vague expression, a rough 
 description, represents, of course, a rough and only 
 general or superficial observation; and as the child 
 comes to know more minutely how his toys are made, 
 how his pets play or eat or sleep, or how various things 
 which have some charm for him, go on in the world — 
 simultaneously with that growth of knowledge there 
 comes to him the desire for a more complete and 
 accurate record of those things which he observes. He 
 will aim at such an expression, and he will seek help in 
 discovering it; but the interest and the knowledge and 
 the desire are the conditions of a more just and a more 
 complete form of expression. 
 
 I do not think that deliberate attempts should be 
 made to cultivate style in writing, except in so far as 
 a good style depends upon accuracy and truthfulness: 
 accuracy in regard to the thing which is written about, 
 and truthfulness as regards the person who is writing. 
 By accuracy I mean a just and, so far as may be, a 
 
THE TEACHING OF COMPOSITION 29 
 
 complete accoimt of the matter in hand; and by truth- 
 fulness I mean that this account must be coloured quite 
 faithfully by the character, the personality, of the writer. 
 For instance, children are sometimes told to write essays 
 about rodents or mammals or what not — dreary subjects 
 which are set with an inexplicable perversity, when it 
 would have been so much easier for their teachers to 
 ask them to write about rats or rabbits, or about cats or 
 dogs. We read these essays, and find them planned out 
 with a quite wonderful detail ; sometimes facts which we 
 recognise, but had long since forgotten, are marshalled 
 there with the precision of an auctioneer's inventory; 
 but we know perfectly well that such an arrangement 
 and such a completeness do not correspond to anything 
 real in the child's own experience; and so, though this 
 list of facts Tvith which we are constantly presented, may 
 be accurate, it is not true — not true to the writer. There 
 must be accuracy, and there must be truthfulness; and 
 the sense and the desire for style will arise from the 
 difficulty which the writer will feel in making a harmony 
 and equipoise between accuracy to fact on the one hand, 
 and fidelity to himself upon the other. About that 
 something will be said later. At the moment we may 
 be content to agree that progress is prompted by the 
 sense of a need, and that the sense of a need is in itself 
 the sign of power or capacity which had hitherto been 
 used up to the point indicated by the development of 
 this new need. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Supposing that we are agreed upon the qualities which 
 we should think good in children's writing, or in 
 children's speech, the question for us teachers is, how we 
 are to get this good work done? We should be agreed, 
 I suppose, that children's language should be simple and 
 
30 LECTURES ON 
 
 direct and clear, and suitable to their age. If it has all 
 those qualities, it will be interesting to us who hear or 
 read it, because it is interesting to them who use it ; but 
 how are we to secure that these qualities shall appear in 
 their work? Let me offer some suggestions. 
 
 In the first place, I should say composition, whether 
 oral or written, must be rarely, if ever, in school regarded 
 as an end in itself. As a rule, when we speak, it is not 
 for the sake of talking, but in order to say something 
 for our own benefit, or for that of others. Even in those 
 instances of which I reminded you earlier, where expres- 
 sion is its own reward, and where in speaking or writing 
 a man shows himself an artist ; even there, though it is 
 not his business to carry some information or thought 
 from one mind to another, yet, if the words are mere 
 words we are dissatisfied ; and, indeed, that highest type 
 of expression is so far from being an empty form, that it 
 is an act of creation; the speaker, who is seeking for 
 his own relief and delight an expression for some over- 
 mastering thought, makes for himself and for others a 
 new thing ; it is not enough even to say that he finds in 
 his expression the embodiment of a thought, which was 
 previously in his mind;, rather his thought springs into 
 a fresh existence as the words come to his lips. The poet 
 not only, records an emotion that he has felt ; he not only 
 describes some scene upon which his eye has rested, but 
 in the process of recording or describing he makes for the 
 inward eye a new scene, and for the reflective mind a 
 new thought or emotion. 
 
 But children have not the experience to be able to 
 vn-ite and to speak in this way, and using speech in a 
 simpler fashion, they speak in order to say something to 
 somebody. In that two things are implied; first, that 
 there is something in their minds, of their own, to be 
 said ; and second that there is an audience sympathetic, 
 understanding and ready to listen. Now, the most natural 
 audience for children is children. They like to speak to 
 each other; and in many homes, probably, they get 
 enough practice in speech by talking to one another, and 
 
THE TEACHING OF COMPOSITION 31 
 
 they may learn from one another at the nursery age more 
 than from their elders. But it may be said that in the 
 elementary schools, where, at any rate, in some instances 
 — ^in some quarters of our great towns, for example — 
 the children come from poor homes, with no pleasant 
 nurseries ; or, in a sense, may be said to have no homes 
 at all, they have not these opportunities of talking to one 
 another. They talk indeed in the street, and I should be 
 the last to undervalue the education of the street. No 
 doubt they get dirty in the street — dirty in body, and 
 perhaps soiled not less in mind — ^but they acquire a good 
 deal of quickness and strength and independence there 
 too ; and, seeing many things, discover the need and win 
 the use of words. Still, even so, a noisy street is not the 
 place for talk. You naist have a room for shelter, and a 
 certain degree of quiet ; and these little children who lack 
 quiet shelter elsewhere naturally desire to talk in school, 
 where both are provided. The youngest teacher will 
 have noticed that, already, in his first attempts at teaching 
 and keeping order. Often the children want to talk when 
 he wants silence, or when he may wish, perhaps, to talk 
 himself. It is quite likely that what they are saying to 
 each other is more interesting to them than what he has 
 to say. Teachers are not always ready to see the pro- 
 priety of this desire in children. In too few schools is 
 easy opportunity provided for the children to talk to one 
 another. There are debating societies, to be sure, in 
 some schools for the older children, but these are often 
 something formal, and often conducted out of school 
 hours. 
 
 For the most part in school freedom for conver- 
 sation among themselves is not granted to the children. 
 But why not? To grant this privilege would save the 
 teachers in some ways a good deal of effort, the effort of 
 iKing their voices, the effort of sometimes finding what 
 to say ; it woidd not save them, of course, in intelligence 
 and sympathy and power of control. In some rare and 
 charming, instances one may find children in school 
 talking to one another about matters that they have in 
 
32 LECTURES ON 
 
 hand— not necessarily about school matters— but things 
 in the world they care for, and quite easily and naturally 
 appealing from time to time, when they wish, to their 
 teacher as an older person who knows more about these 
 things and is sufficiently interested to listen and con- 
 tribute to the talk. 
 
 If we can get children in school to talk thus— keenly, 
 politely, with proper submission to one another, in a tone 
 of voice grateful, pleasant, lively^we have done far more 
 than we can at that stage in any other way, for enlarging 
 their vocabulary, for strengthening their hold upon it, 
 for giving them versatility and quickness in the use of 
 speech. If they talk for five minutes, they certainly use 
 more words than they would if they wrote for twenty. 
 But talking involves listening: they are learning reply 
 and answer, the fitting in of thought with thought, the 
 curtailing, the enlarging, the adjustment of sentence to 
 sentence because of idea to idea, in a way, which written 
 work hardly permits. With the youngest children in our 
 schools it is perhaps easier to get this kind of speech upon 
 a proper level than with those who are older. In most 
 of our schools the youngest children are allowed (some- 
 times they are made, and then the whole thing goes 
 wrong) to play, and of course they talk because they 
 want to explain to each other, and indeed to themselves, 
 what is going forward. 
 
 Now, take another point. I said if children are allowed 
 rather than made to talk, the essential thing is gained. 
 You see, naturally they want to talk. What we too often 
 do, I think, is exactly what the photographer, let us 
 say, or the too eager hostess does to us when we are 
 grown up. We are pleasant people, but when the photo- 
 grapher tells us to look pleasant he paralyses us at once: 
 when the hostess begs us to talk she makes us dumb at 
 once. We want to look pleasant, of course, while we have 
 our photographs taken;, we want to talk— ^but when we 
 are told to do these very things which we want to do,'the 
 springs of action are checked and benumbed, and we 
 cannot do either of them. 
 
THE TEACHING OF COMPOSITION 33 
 
 That is precisely what happens to children in schools. 
 We tell them, " You must say these things," and that 
 must spoils the whole matter for them. You never greet 
 a man with " How are you?" and threaten him with a 
 pistol, while you say, " You must tell me how you are." 
 But that is what we do to children. We ask them what 
 they are thinking about, how they are getting on, and 
 they are under some sort of compulsion to tell us. Now, 
 imagine a class in school where the teacher is sitting by 
 as a sort of umpire or referee in case of need, and the 
 children talking quite naturally and easily, just as you 
 yourself would do at your own fireside. You see the 
 teacher is listening — allowed to listen — in a sense, a 
 privileged person admitted to their society. Exactly 
 what happens in the case, let us say, of birds, or of cats, 
 or dogs, or horses, happens in the case of children. If 
 you sit very quietly and watch them while they are 
 engaged in their own affairs, they let you after a time 
 approach ; they will come half way to you, and perhaps 
 really malce friends with you ; but if you go with a firm 
 and resolute hand, and try to catch them, they have their 
 various ways of either escaping or eluding you. 
 
 The teacher who waits to find out what the children 
 are talking about, and does not disturb them too much, 
 will gradually be drawn into their society, and will be en- 
 couraged to talk to them, because they will want to ask 
 him what he thinks, what his views are about the things 
 of which they are talking. Already, while he has been 
 umpire they have been able to ask him for words, and he 
 has been making clearer the ideas which they have been 
 trying with imperfect success to express. Now, they 
 want to hear him talk, and he will talk upon things which 
 attract them, but with a larger experience, which means 
 with a wider vocabulary, with a more penetrating insight, 
 because he has not only known and seen more, but lias 
 felt more deeply the significance of the things upon which 
 they are, with him, engaged in their conversation. He 
 exhibits in his own speech, not by way of example, but 
 spontaneously and inevitably, just tliat quality which 
 
34 LECTURES ON 
 
 more than any, other it is the desire of the teacher to find 
 and to encourage in his pupils' speech or writing — ^the 
 note of personal feeling. Not statements of fact, but 
 statements of fact tinged and coloured by a genuine and 
 original emotion are wanted if speech and writing are to 
 be alive. Indeed knowledge is not had or proved without 
 emotion, and emotion witnessed. The pupils must know 
 the things of which they are writing or speaking, because 
 in some way or other they have put them to the test of use, 
 and made them their own by feeling them. 
 
 For what, when we come to think of it, is the difference 
 between the hosts of attractive and useful things which 
 we see set out in a shop, and a few similar things as we 
 find them at home? In the shop they are put out for 
 show, and not for use ; at home they have been soiled, or 
 crumpled, or damaged by use, and yet by use they have 
 received a meaning, and with meaning value and beauty. 
 So in the speech of children we want, not a show but 
 an array — or shall we even say, a disarray?, of things in 
 use — damaged perhaps, certainly colotired, by use — but 
 receiving from use a personal and special significance 
 and charm. What I am describing is thie effect, the 
 influence exercised upon children (who are all the. time 
 unconscious of what is going on) by the speech of their 
 age-fellows and their elders. They receive whlat they 
 did not seek. It is worth remark that the teacher often 
 gives what he had no thought of giving, a better thing 
 than he imagined hie possessed. No doubt he must give 
 thought and labomr to this question of the training of 
 children's speech— he reahses pretty clearly that he has 
 to sharpen and strengthen the instruments of thought and 
 expression which his pupils must use all their lives long. 
 He generally realises all this, and he does good work- 
 good work, but not his best. For he will be making his 
 deepest impression upon the minds of his pupils when he 
 is not thinking of their minds alone, but using his own 
 mind in an absorbed and delighted way upon some topic 
 which is of common interest to them aiid to him. And 
 
THE TEACHING OF COMPOSITION 35 
 
 the deepest impression, so made, is also the quickest to 
 be received and the most enduring. 
 
 Of course, what I am saying might involve for many 
 schools a very considerable reconstruction of the time- 
 table, and perhaps a renaming of many, of the things 
 which find a place separately marked out upon it. What 
 I am asstmiing throughout is that in any class you have a 
 group of people who, sooner or later, and the sooner the 
 better, have come into some measure of sympathy with 
 each other, who like each other (for children by nature, 
 and teachers by grace, are full of affection). Here are 
 these people talking to one another about the things 
 which on both sides seem to be useful and interesting; 
 and varied and nmnerous as these things are, they are not 
 unrelated to one another, for in all of them the speakers 
 are, not professionally, but naturally, concerned. Here 
 is the real groundwork and basis of any vital correlation 
 of school subjects ; the fact of a himian interest, the fact 
 that all the members of a particular group of people, 
 in this case called teachers and pupils, are warmly and 
 unitedly interested in a variety of things. Apart from 
 this all talk about correlation is arid and mischievous. 
 You are surprised at the variety of interests of your 
 friends ; but you do not seek to explain their interest in, 
 let us say, the lyric poetry or the drama of the Restoration 
 and also in the Wesleyan Revival ; or their interest both 
 in horse-racing and in re'igious pictures, by drawing 
 painful analogies between those di\'erse subjects; you do 
 not ask them to explain this variety of interest ; you are 
 satisfied that these things have some interest, diverse as 
 they may seem to be, because as a matter of fact they are 
 manifestations of one mind which you know. 
 
 The progranmie, the ciuriculum, springs, if it springs 
 from its proper root, from the mind of the teacher in 
 harmony with that of his class. I said roof deliberately, 
 because if you press the image I should have to go further 
 and say that the soil out of which it springs is the soil 
 of the community's sentiments and ideas. On such a 
 programme, teacher ^nd pupils talk and write, and be 
 
36 LECTURES ON 
 
 must help them to talk and write well. Though his 
 work in this respect may be partly unconscious and 
 unpremeditated (and often at its best it is so) it must 
 be wholly so ; he must try deliberately at times to help 
 the children in their speech, and the first thing he will 
 do for that end — ^and it is a difficult task — will be to 
 choose his own words with care and precision. 
 
 It is an ejrtraordinarily difficult thing to talk to little 
 children with care. For if you plan out in advance very 
 carefully what you are going to say you are confronted 
 with two difficulties. The first is obvious ; that if you give 
 the children the least chance of joining with you in your 
 talk you are sure to be diverted by what they have to say, 
 and the lesson you intended may prove imfit for the 
 occasion ; because, as you question them, or allow them 
 to question you, you discover more and more of their 
 minds and find that all your preparation has to be done 
 with immense rapidity over again, or at least that you 
 have to adjust and change your treatment of the matter 
 you have in hand to suit the new need of the moment. 
 But supposing that does not happen ; let us suppose that 
 you do what it is not bad to do sometimes — ^talk 
 continuously yourself for a while. What then? I know 
 very, well it is a commonplace in criticism to say that a 
 lesson should not be like a lecture. Believe me, a lecture, 
 if it is a continuous and coherent piece of speech, pro- 
 vides no bad discipline either for the speaker or for the 
 hearers. Very often in school children are wearied to 
 death by the desperate efforts which are put forth by 
 their teacher to make things pointed and sharp— rapid 
 question provoking breathless answer— this point, that 
 point— given all staccato, till you can conceive that the 
 pupils must be quite beAvildered. Do not fear to speak 
 sometimes continuously and without interruption, so long 
 as you do it deliberately, correctly, counting the cost, and 
 knov/ing enough about your pupils to justify the attempt. 
 Do not be afraid of a lecture form. 
 
 No one who lectures well will lecture much. But 
 there are those who lecture badly. Remember, then 
 
THE TEACHING OF COMPOSITION 37 
 
 that in a lesson which is given more continuously, and 
 copiously than is ordinary, it is easy to fall into a 
 stiff and stilted manner, and to get a set of words, a 
 vocabularly, which is really not your own, but which 
 comes to you by some ciurious artificial convention. 
 You are not talking like yourself, but, as we some- 
 times say, like a book. Now, of course, that is wrong; 
 you must not talk like a book, even if it is your 
 own book. 
 
 There are two difficulties then to face. One is 
 that the prepared lesson — ^in which the actual phrase- 
 ology is thought out beforehand — may be shown to be 
 uinsuitable to the occasion if you allow the children to 
 have a great hand in what is going on; the other, that 
 if you speak more continuously, you may drop into an 
 unnatural type of language. But these difficulties give a 
 teacher his best opportunities of achieving a rare success. 
 To be careful and to avoid the appearance of artifice, to 
 be yourself, with proper reserve — ^to be yourself, and yet 
 to be intelligible to other minds; or to put it again in 
 another contrast, to be unaffected and conventional at 
 the same moment; to achieve those two things, is the 
 necessary task of any speaker or teacher: you must be 
 conventional if you are to be understood; you must be 
 imaffected if you are to be enjoyed. If you are not en- 
 joyed as a teacher, at any rate with children, you are a 
 failure as a teacher. 
 
 Children must have from themselves, from each other 
 and from you who are teaching them, plenty of talk; 
 they must hear words, but not idle words, words used in 
 the treatment of topics which are attractive to them and 
 attractive to you. Now, I should like to emphasise that, 
 because that is really at the bottom of true and satis- 
 factory conversation. If you seek about in your mind 
 for something which will be interesting to your hearer, 
 you are likely to bore him almost beyond endurance; 
 if on the other hand, and to take the other extreme, you 
 laimch out upon some subject which is engrossing you, 
 but which you have not considered for a moment from 
 
38 LECTURES ON 
 
 his point of view, then again you may beconie insuffer- 
 able ; but if you are just yourself, and hit with careful 
 aim or by happy chance upon something, which is at the 
 moment interesting to you and from whatever point of 
 view attractive to your listeners, then conversation is 
 possible ; it is a two-sid^^d thing. So in school it is idle 
 to talk about things which you imagine are interesting 
 to childrrai ; you do not know what things are interesting 
 to children unless you are interested yourself; and the 
 things which you believe ought to be interesting to 
 children are of all things precisely, those in which so often 
 they are not interested at all. 
 
 So much then for conversation, talking. You see your 
 pupils have not been getting what are called composition 
 lessons in anything that I have described ; they hlave been 
 composing, but not having lessons about the business;; 
 they have been doing it unawares and unconsciously. 
 
 Let us next consider the service to which we can put 
 books in teaching composition. 
 
 The use of books is justified by the same reasons which 
 make conversation proper. We talk and we listen in 
 order to get someQiing which conversation offers, to 
 satisfy some interest; and we read books for the same 
 purpose. It is for this very purpose that we direct 
 children to books — ^partly for their profit, and partly, in- 
 deed, in self-defence. Our own knowledge and our own 
 patience and our own physical endurance fail the demands 
 of the children's growing intelligence and curiosity. We 
 should perish with fatigue if we answered all their 
 questions ; we shoiild come to an end of our knowledge 
 perhaps before we came to the end of our strength. In 
 either case we cannot keep up with them; and besides 
 we have our own lives to live. That is a thing which 
 teachers constantly forget in school. Think what an 
 effect it would have, especially upon the older children, 
 if after a lesson „ ven with all the vigour that a man was 
 capable of, and with some feeling and sympathy as well, 
 he said " Now you have got your books ; read them, and 
 I will sit down and read mine," and they saw him sitting 
 
THE TEACHING OF COMPOSITION 39 
 
 at ease and manifestly, enjoying a book for half an hour. 
 That would be worth many lessons on the use of books — 
 followed by a composition on " What we ought to read," 
 or " My favourite book." 
 
 Children must read books, because we cannot go on 
 for ever talking to them, and because they, cannot find 
 out from their conversation with us or with one another 
 many of the things they would like to know. The books 
 that you choose will be chosen I think, in the first place, 
 because of the suitability of their subject matter; not 
 according to the length or the difhculty of the words, 
 but according to the interest and propriety of what is 
 contained in them. A good many books, of coiurse, have 
 been manufactured for children, specially in the last 
 twenty-five years by zealous people who wanted to teach 
 them to read, and who knew a great deal, they felt, about 
 the development of the child's mind, and graded these 
 readers according to the gradiial growth of the child's 
 intelligence. At the age of five you would have the 
 words of a certain length, and sentences of a certain 
 length. At seven, nine, eleven, and so forth, you would 
 have sentences and words longer and more difficult. 
 The intention was to include spelling and grammar and 
 vocabularly all in one dismal performance. 
 
 Now, children do not want to learn a vocabulary, 
 they want to hear about things; and when in their 
 reading about things which interest them, they come 
 upon a word which they have not met before, they 
 will do one of two things, and both of them are 
 good things in their right place. What will commonly 
 happen is they will glide over the hard word at the 
 time, and go along just as you or I would when 
 reading a French or Latin book. If we were con- 
 scientious and curious about our work, when we had made 
 the general sense, we should go back and try and fit in 
 the puzzling word. That is what the child sometimes 
 does. He may no doubt be less inclined than we to go 
 back over the ground and fix that word in its place and 
 in his mind. He may be content with the general sense. 
 
40 LECTURES ON 
 
 But if, after slurring over a word and finishing the 
 sentences or the page, he finds he is completely defeated 
 and cannot discover what he wants to know ; if the loss 
 of the word, or the set of words which caused him 
 difficulty, makes the whole passage unintelligible to him, 
 then he has to turn back again, and go over the passage 
 more carefully, sorting out what he knows from what 
 he does not know. Very, likely the difficulty may come 
 not from any imfamiliarity in a word, but in an arrange- 
 ment of words strange to hdm. In the effort to solve 
 such a problem as this he is learning grammar, he is 
 learning analysis. 
 
 If after this interval of silence and repose, you return 
 to your pupils, and enquire what they have been doing all 
 the time — ^they. might say they have been reading about 
 the capture of wild elephants with the help of the tame 
 ones, but they will confess that there was just one thing 
 which they could not imderstand. " What is that?" you 
 say, and come to the rescue — ^you are wanted. That is 
 success — ^not only as teachers, but as human beings, what 
 we really covet is to be wanted. That is what you try 
 to achieve in your class ; i you will wish the children at 
 moments when they are in difficulty to turn to you 
 readily and with a certainty, of response ; or when they 
 desire to quicken their own delight in something that 
 they are doingj to be sure you will share in it. 
 
 The ordinary reading of children, only less — if indeed 
 less — surely than their ordinary conversation with their 
 age-fellows or their elders lays the foundation of any 
 skill they may acquire in what is called " composition." 
 Propriety, flexibility, grace, strength in the speech of 
 children all are proofs that they have been accustomed, 
 as an ordinary thing, to hearing good talk and joining iii 
 it ; and if we may regard our commerce with books as a 
 form of conversation, conversation njaturally sought, and 
 sought again because unaffectedly enjoyed, it is to be 
 expected that reading should mould the audible speech 
 and also the written speech of those whose use of books 
 is constant and familiar. But there must be use, constant 
 
THE TEACHING OF COMPOSITION 41 
 
 .and familiar, if the reading of books is deeply and justly 
 to affect the speech and writing of children. 
 
 An over -anxious student, making a strenuous begin- 
 ning with a foreign language, is apt to listen too intently 
 and copy too exactly, not the whole, for that would be 
 impossible, but fragments of the speech of those to whom 
 he listens, and on whose practice he desires to model 
 his own. He catches the tricks and some perhaps of the 
 nobler characteristics of their speech, but he does not 
 make them his own ; he presents it in caricature, missing 
 its native quality, which is a thing diffused through the 
 whole, governing every paxt because residing in the 
 heart, the thought-form from which speech-form takes 
 its origin. Later, when the spirit of the language has 
 possessed him, he is indeed more sensitive to the special 
 notes of the speech used by one and another of his neigh- 
 bours, but he does not reproduce and re-echo them ; he 
 speaks the language of the country, and he has won 
 mastery of it when he can speak it, correctly of course, 
 fluently of course, but also in his own way. 
 
 Reading is the most general form of composition 
 lesson, all the more potent in effect because for the most 
 part the effect is tmsought. Here, as everywhere, what 
 is true of the moral is also true of the intellectual life.; 
 Our traffic, such as it is, in ideas fashions us ; we feel and 
 sometimes acknowledge at once or later — more often we 
 feel without acknowledgment— the influence of those with 
 whom our lot is cast ; we breathe the spirit of the group, 
 the society, the nation in which we have our place, but we 
 breathe it as imconsciously as we breathe the air. In- 
 fluence deliberately exerted is too often influence which 
 distrusts itself. It is weak men who try most zealously 
 to win and wield influence over others. It is true they 
 often succeed, but the influence they have is other than 
 they fondly suppose. The great moralists have the 
 splendid indifference, the serene and generous egoism 
 of artists believing in themselves and in the ultimate and 
 appropriate triumph of truth or beauty. In literature 
 the best expression I know of this fervent tranquillity 
 
42 LECTURES ON 
 
 is that of the Psalm " Be still (or— a more vigorous retli 
 deringr— ' Let be ') and know that I am God." And so, 
 literature itself might, in a figure, be conceived to offer 
 coiinsel to teachers of composition. It mi'ght say to 
 them, " Do not interfere;, trust me;; I will do my, own 
 work." 
 
 We must be reserved in our use of models ; we must as 
 charily and warily point out to our pupils the virtues of 
 ow: favourite books as those of oiur favourite com- 
 panions ; we must not advertise and placard either. But 
 this is just what we are tempted to do, cheapening the 
 very things the value of which we profess to set high. 
 We do this, and we do worse than this — for we try, to 
 foster in our pupils a desire to be influenced. It is as 
 if we interrupted their ordinary breathing to give them 
 " deep-breathing " exercises — or checked their ordinary 
 appetite for ordinary food, by lessons, too well learnt, on 
 hygiene, not content till breathing and eating had 
 become fastidious and self-conscious. The intellectual 
 epicure and the intellectual valetudinarian are sometimes, 
 by a grotesque misuse of the word, called scholars, but 
 they cannot write or spjcak, afid they have never learnt to 
 read. 
 
 IV 
 
 We are agreed that if children talk, they must talk volun- 
 tarily, about things in which they are interested, and to 
 people who they feel sure will care to hear what they have 
 to say on these things. Such talking is the basis of writ- 
 ten composition. It is essentially of the same kind as 
 written composition, though, of course, it is more rapid 
 and comes more readily to children's lips than words 
 come from their pens or their pencils. It implies both 
 a happy relationship already existing, and a demand for 
 
THE TEACHING OF COMPOSITION 43 
 
 a greater degree of intimacy, with fuller knowledge and 
 understanding. 
 
 Now, we are apt to forget that in writing children 
 should be dealing with things which are attractive to 
 them, and writing about them in order to convey, to a 
 reader now and not to a listener, something which they 
 are quite sure he would like to faiow. School exercises 
 do not always spring up in this dehghtful and spontane- 
 ous fashion : and it is for lack of this natural initiative on 
 the part of the writers that compositions are dull not only 
 to them but to the teachers. 
 
 In school, children are told to write, and what im- 
 presses them first and most deeply is the fact that they 
 are told: it is a command, the initiative is not with them. 
 And they are told what to write : they are to write down 
 some information ; that is to say, to put together in some 
 sort of order facts which they have gathered on a subject 
 which has probably been dealt with in a lesson which they 
 have heard, or in a book which they have read. They 
 feel at once that the whole process is unnatural ; they are 
 called to write down, for the benefit of someone who is 
 in possession of the facts, a selection of the facts which 
 they have been able to gather. It probably occurs to them 
 as little as to their teacher that they could write anything 
 which was unknown to him, that hie should learn anything 
 from them. It is a dull biisiness for them ; it cramps and 
 paralyses them. Why should they tell us when Magna 
 Charta was signed? We know that already ; we told them 
 last week. Why should they tell us about the shape of 
 the earth or the coiurse of the Amazon, when we have 
 previously told them about these things? What need is 
 there for them to tell us what we have already told them? 
 It is a diJl business for us also ; for we who are teachers 
 feel a great weariness when we have to read children's 
 or pupils' work composed in that way. We know what 
 they are going to say ; we can anticipate their mistakes ; 
 and we are apt to assume that they will make mistakes 
 where they differ from lis. Some minds have curious 
 and perverted appetite for mistakes, but no teacher can 
 
44 LECTURES ON 
 
 live upon a crop of mistakes; he wants something dif- 
 ferent, something^ more nutritive which his pupils can 
 supply, if they are allowed and are encouraged to give it ; 
 and the better thing which they can and ought to supply 
 is just this : not the information which they have received 
 from itheir teacher or from a book, but their view of it, 
 their account of it, the facts as they have passed through, 
 their OAvn mind, received colour and significance from 
 that mind, and so become fresh and new to the reader, 
 and to the writers alike. Then the teacher is not bored, 
 because he is reading the productions of pupils who 
 themselves are not bored. If we are to be interested in 
 pur pupils' work, they must be interested in it. 
 
 So much will probably, be agreed: the children must 
 be acting volimtarily in speech and in writing; if they 
 are acting voltmtarily they will be interested in what they 
 do because they are interested in themselves. And in 
 dealing with any subject thus they will do just what we 
 do in the like case ; they will express themselves. History 
 may be the r61e they wear for the moment, or geography ; 
 it does not matter what dress they, put on ; it is them- 
 selves which will be bodying out the dress and giving its 
 form and its character. 
 
 Here then is a further use which we may make of 
 books in encoiuraging children to write — ^the rendering 
 thfe substance of some passage which they have read in 
 textboolcs or of some lesson heard from our lips. It is 
 a useful practice, and attractive to them, provided always 
 that we, who teach, know what may properly be attempted 
 and they know what wie intend. If we are on natural 
 terms with them, terms of sympathy, imderstanding and 
 respect, they will do what we intend them to do ; which 
 is to give the substance of the subject with which we and 
 they have been dealing, as they have apprehended it. 
 The Wars of the Roses will be other Wars, the Crusades 
 will take on a brighter splendour of chivahy; and the 
 daffodils will be clothed with a fresher beauty, as they 
 are described in children's words which spring from 
 children's imagination; for all these subjects or any 
 
THE TEACHING OF COMPOSITION 45 
 
 others, will have been fashioned, coloured, revitalised by 
 the writers. 
 
 But, a critic may urge, the fashion, the colour, which 
 children give to their subjects may be a wrong fashion, 
 a wrong colour, the life may be moving in a wrong direc- 
 tion. Composition-exercises of the sort here considered, 
 he may tell us, are set as tests of knowledge and of 
 accurate statement : in allowing, in expecting, and even 
 in fostering originality on the part of pupils in these 
 exercises, we may be wilfully missing the object at which 
 we profess to be aiming. He may beg us to consider the 
 question of mistakes more carefully — let us yield to his 
 desire. First it is to be remarked that mistakes are of 
 two kinds, just as accuracy may be of two kinds — dead 
 and living. If I throw an india-rubber ball at a wall, 
 I can (supposing I am a mathematician) calculate quite 
 exactly the angle and the speed at which it will rebound 
 from the wall, and the distance it will travel before it 
 comes to rest. If I cast a remark at a man who is like 
 a wall, I can calculate quite nicely what his reply will 
 be. If I cast a remark at a man who is not like a wall, 
 he is quick to note my failure in manners or intelligence. 
 He may dodge my remark, which either hurtles on, doing 
 damage, or (if I am lucky) falls dead after a brief flight 
 through the unresponding air; or he may catch it, and 
 return it, I cannot guess with what velocity ; or keep it, 
 as we keep, for curiosities, the missiles of barbarians. 
 Some strong-minded children, with the quick sensitive- 
 ness which is often taken for almost brutish stupidity, 
 keep in silence and without response the observations 
 which we hurl at them; they keep them and perhaps 
 restore to us after many days some of the hard pellets of 
 information or precept with which we, with dreadful 
 accuracy, shot their hearts, mistaking them for targets. 
 We have our reward, and they their titanic revenge I 
 
 Others dodge, or deftly catch what we throw at them, 
 and in irritation or bewilderment (the effects of which 
 we cannot foretell) angrily or at random throw it back 
 to uSj or at us, or anywhere away, from themselves. These 
 
46 LECTURES ON 
 
 are commonly less noble spirits than those who seem to 
 disdain or ignore us. 
 
 But there are those again, who being treated as if 
 they were walls, become walk. At first, indeed, the walls 
 may be soft, and the rebounld lack vigour, but they be- 
 come hard by use ; or they, may have rough surfaces, and 
 the rebound may be at an unintended angle; but they 
 will become smooth, and at last give back with exact and 
 measurable precision wllat they received, no more, no less. 
 
 Accuracy may be dead ; the dead correct thing which 
 the pupil returns may be just the dead correct thing which 
 his teacher ofTered him. Mistakes may also be dead. We 
 are at times distressed at the stiff and mortal coldness 
 of a pupil's response, not recognising that what we 
 gave him wore already, when it left our hands, the marks 
 of death'. He did not kill it. 
 
 But let us assume, what happily we may assume, that 
 what the teacher or the book gives is something living — 
 a thought, aglow with feeling, incarnate in word. To 
 such a word, the response of children may be, and often 
 is, full of mistakes. There are those who believe that 
 the nature of children is such that they, will respond per- 
 fectly to a perfect stimulus ; who lay upon the shoulders 
 of teachers, not some but all^ of the mistakes of their 
 pupils, or if they relieve the teacher of part of the burdai, 
 cast it on the wide and tolerant back of environment! 
 Teachers perfect in wisdom, and sympathy, and know- 
 ledge, and skill are probably rare; not less rare, but 
 more rare, are perfect children. Schools are not estab- 
 lished and maintained in order that blind and bigoted 
 adults may be illuminated and emancipated by young- 
 eyed, generous-minded children. Children teach their 
 elders much, but must learn more from their elders. Let 
 us put down against teachers a large score of responsi- 
 bility; but let us not shut our eyes to the fact that 
 children make mistakes for which teachers cannot reason- 
 ably be counted responsible— these mistakes spring from 
 a variety of sources— perversity, obstinacy, carelessness, 
 pride, timidity, slown^s of understanding, clumsiness, 
 
THE TEACHING OF COMPOSITION 47 
 
 stupidity. But if the mistakes are living mistakes they 
 have this special value for observant teachers (in addition 
 to the service they, render in chastening their character) — 
 living mistakes reveal their causes. With them before 
 their eyes, teachers are able to diagnose their patients, 
 to prescribe with discernment what is good for each, and 
 to vary or to continue the treatment as may, seem neces- 
 sary, and desirable. And we need not shrink from this 
 image, for thfere is a medicine of health as well as of 
 disease ; and, with a single exception to be noted, there 
 is one general name for all the sources, various as they 
 may be, of mistakes — ^that name is immaturity ; and the 
 name suggests three at least, for these are not aU, of 
 the ingredients in the remedy — experiment, patience, 
 and time. 
 
 Improvement comes to those who wait, and work — in 
 every, case, except that of stupidity, which is more en- 
 during than brass, outlasting all forbearance, and out- 
 doing all skill. For the stupid pupil teachers must be 
 content if they do not make him more stupid than he was •,• 
 to win that negative success is much, since the stupid is 
 also a very fragile mind ; it is much', but not more than 
 may be hoped for, since the stupid is often a very lovable 
 creature — ^we commend him with heartfelt prayers, and 
 some fellow-feeling, to his Maker. 
 
 It is probable that words like authority, discipline, 
 command, obedience, which stand, all of them, for good 
 and necessary things, have taken on an improper and 
 misleading significance. We may " set " exercises, and 
 our pupils may " do " them, but unless they give some- 
 thing more and other than we can demand, neither they 
 nor we are content. The correct answer, the accurate 
 essay, done formally and pimctually in obedience to 
 command, may attest authority and give evidence of 
 discipline, but they strike a chill to the heart, if they 
 are only correct and only accurate. Accuracy is not 
 sought, by childrai at any rate, for its own sake; it is 
 sought, and slowly found, as diey discover it to be a 
 condition upon which something else, which they, covet, 
 
4S LECTURES ON 
 
 depends. In writing, this other thing, the supreme object 
 h:as three elements — self-expression, beauty, intelligi- 
 bility. If these are attained, accuracy, of the kind which 
 is legitimate because vital, is attained also. Of intelligi- 
 bility, the reader may claim to be the best though not 
 the only judge, but of self-expression the writer is the 
 best, though again not the only judge. The writer not 
 seldom, if a child, may not be quite intellig'ible to himself, 
 and may turn to the imderstanding teacher for help in 
 self-expression because the teacher realises the child-self 
 which seeks expression better than the child who is at- 
 tempting to write — even so, the criticism of children's 
 writing mtist be a task in which they themselves take a 
 share. In revising their own work (for v/hicli far more 
 time should be allowed than is usual) they will discover, 
 if the exercise has been the statement in their own words 
 of a passage read from a book, that, their mistakes fall 
 under certain categories. They will discover first that 
 they have omitted, through forgetfulness or through the 
 disturbance of thought which the physical labour of 
 writing causes, some matters which were in their text; 
 they will see next, tlrnt they have given an emphasis 
 which the book, their source (in such a case) of informa- 
 tion, does not warrant; and they will find, in the third 
 place, that they have not been just to themselves, that 
 they have not set forth what they saw as they saw it.. 
 While they are comparing their work with the original, 
 they may also compare it with that of their class- 
 fellows; and they will learn what true acciuracy is. 
 They will be providing themselves with a training not 
 the less " scientific " for being " literary." 
 
 The passages chosen for rendering have hitherto, I 
 am assuming, been plain and simple narrative, accounts 
 of deeds done, or descriptive passages. 
 
 The teacher may now pass, but with infinite caution, 
 to a subtler kind of literatmre, in which writers, dealing 
 still it may be with tangible and visible subjects, are more 
 intent with the impression which these tilings make upon- 
 their own minds, treating them as symbols and images of 
 
THE TEACHING OF COMPOSITION 49 
 
 some finer and more elusive quality, for the sake of whicb 
 they are prized, in embodying; which they have their 
 function and their worth. 
 
 Here, less than ever, does the teacher ask or bid his 
 pupils to " reproduce " what he reads. He asks rather 
 for an interpretation of it. He will not use the word, in 
 speaking to his class. He may simply " tell " them to 
 write out a story which he has read to them or with 
 which he knows they are already acquainted. A fable, 
 a fairy story, a highly-wrought, but boldly-imaged, piece 
 of description will serve. Very young children will in- 
 deed render a fable or a fairy story, if they, can remember 
 it, all in the words of their book ; or where their memory 
 fails, will leave gaps in theix writing, or silences in their 
 speech. They, too, are interpreting, and not merely re- 
 producing.; but it is from the brightness of their eyes. 
 the glow of their cheeks, the catch of the breath, th« 
 heightened or lowered tone, that the discerning teacher 
 will guess at the spiritual significance which the piece has 
 for them. Older children will achieve or attempt inter- 
 pretation in their choice of words. Only slowly, and yet 
 by. no painful, rather by a delightful process of experi- 
 ment, will they learn that brightness, breathless ecstasy, 
 high or subdued tone, all within the range of yoimger 
 children in the physical region of expression, may be 
 had and enhanced in the higher region, half physical, 
 half supersensual, of words ; gaining, as they gain posses- 
 sion of their own spirits, a mastery too of the spiritual 
 medium of language. They will come, too, to know the 
 special charm of written as contrasted with uttered 
 speech, swayed by the rhythm, and held by the music of 
 unuttered sounds. 
 
 " Heard melodies are sweet ; but those unheard 
 Are sweeter." 
 
 They will learn so the ethics of good speech and writ- 
 ing ; its clean, athletic healthfiilness ; its supple strength ; 
 the great manner worn with dignity, bending or rising 
 to the level of occasion, but never stooping below itself. 
 
so LECTURES ON 
 
 or stretcMngi for what it cannot easily, and graciously 
 readh'. The first, and for the best pupils the long- lasting, 
 effect of such practice in interpretation will be seen in 
 the studidd simplicity, thie austere directness, the religious 
 truthfulness of their writing. They will have discovered 
 the fact of style;, thiey will be more than dimly aware 
 of its essential quality, ; , they will know at least that it is 
 the perfect and varying expression of the varjdng moods 
 of a mind that knows itself; and they, will not affect 
 style until they have made fiurther and fiu-ther discovery 
 of themselves than they, have yet made, and with that got 
 the restraint which resides at the heart of power, the 
 instinct of self-direcJtion which comes with the maturity 
 of vital and vitalising impulse. 
 
 Children's speech, like any other of their powers and 
 gifts, is sometimes spoken of as an instrument — aji instru- 
 ment, a tool, for admevingi certain ends. And yet some- 
 times teachers are said to put into the hands of children 
 instruments or tools for doing things which later in life, 
 or perhaps already in childhood, are seen to be useful 
 or pleasant. Probably we should come near to the 
 truth if we said that the teacher finds that his pupils 
 already possess the instruments which they will need 
 for the purposes of life, but that he may help them 
 to sharpen them and strengthen them, to use them 
 properly, and direct them to the right ends. Children 
 can speak before we teach them speech; however 
 young a child may be he has some power of express- 
 ing his desires and his needs. And, indeed, in their 
 very early days their power of expression covers their 
 need for expression much more accurately and com- 
 pletely than in later Ufe. The little child desires food 
 or warmth or sleep, and he has his various cries and 
 signs, which are perfectly understood, for these things ; 
 but when we are older and have greater command of 
 speech, the disparity between what we would Uke to say 
 and what we can say, becomes very great. 
 
 CMldren, I say, alrealdy have their instruments ; and 
 it is for us to develop them and' to help them to use them 
 
THE TEACHING OF COMPOSITION 51 
 
 in the proper way. But what is the proper way? The 
 exercises with which we are familiar are useful enough, 
 but useful only if they are at the same time something, 
 more than exercises. It is true that exercises may be 
 done with pleasxu-e, without thought of the future skill 
 or enjoyment which they promise us, but for their own 
 sake. .This is good; but we must make room in our 
 time-tables and in our scheme of education for something 
 better still. To make this distinction clear, let us com- 
 pare what we do in a gymnasium with what we do in 
 open-air sports. The gymnastic teacher makes us do 
 certain movements of arm and leg, because these will 
 make iis strong and healthy; but out of doors, upon a 
 playing-field, we are using arms and legs, and getting 
 strong, going through the exercises without knowing it, 
 and perhaps doing them all the better because we forget 
 that they are means to an end; health and the pursuit 
 of health, exercise and the object of the exercise have 
 been identified and become one. And so with other in- 
 stances that naght be taken from school-life. We must 
 find space and time for oiur pupils to do what they like, 
 to be artificers and creators on their own account. They 
 have their instruments, they, have also the material. Their 
 instnnnents are their powers of expression ; the material 
 is the whole world or such parts of it as the cMldren have 
 been brought to know and possess. They have their 
 city, their schoolfellows, their toys, their pets, themselves 
 —all these things and people make up the material upon 
 which they, may work. 
 
 In schools we find children taught to work with plasti- 
 cine and other materials ; , making imder instruction little 
 figures, some of which — ^not all — ^are attractive enough to 
 them ; but you know very well that if these children could 
 be carried from the schoolroom to the seashore they 
 would at once be moiilding and fashioning without any 
 instructions, in the wet sand, things which wotild please 
 them quite as much, things which would be far more 
 1 fantastic, fax more imaginative, than most of what we 
 
52 LECTURES ON 
 
 find them doing in school. And in any town where then 
 is a convenient gutter, the children of the poor, happiei 
 in this than richer children, are often occupied qtutt 
 happily in the cheapest and most imiversal form oj 
 manual training— making mud pies for themselves. The} 
 have their instnunents in their hands, and the world has 
 not grudged thiem the material. 
 
 Children, as we know, like to talk — ^you must have 
 noticed tliat— they like to talk to other children, and ever 
 to us— certainly, they like to talk to themselves. I hope 
 you have got small brothers and sisters, and if so yot 
 must watch them closely. When they have exhausted us 
 — ^when they have come to the end of the things that il 
 is worth while to talk about with us, or even with theii 
 contemporaries — ^they. talk to themselves about things 
 which we cannot understand, but which are very real and 
 attractive to them. When they have done mailing, with 
 our help^ — ^they are very complaisant and kindly aboui 
 taking om" help — ^when they have with our aid done mak- 
 ing a model dog or a model frog in plasticine, they go 
 on to make, without us, other creatures which never lived 
 on sea or land, but with which they are quite as weL 
 pleased as with the decorous beast they fashioned undei 
 our inspiration. 
 
 We may encourage this creative gift of children in the 
 medium of writing. 
 
 Now, one very, obvious difference between writing and 
 speecJh is just this, that we write much more slowly than 
 we can talk. We tend to be much more self-conscious ir 
 writing; we put down a word, and as we shape it w€ 
 feel whether it is the right word or not, and we car 
 cross it off if we do not like it. The spoken word we 
 cannot recall, but the written thing is more our own; 
 we need not show it to anybody luileSs we like. JusI 
 as it is quite good for children to talk to themselves wher 
 they have come to the end of what they have to say tc 
 us, so it is quite good for them to write for themselves, tc 
 put down on paper their imaginings about themselves 
 their adventures, the fortunes of their pets or their play- 
 
THE TEACHING OF COMPOSITION 53 
 
 things; what they think about the world in which they 
 live. 
 
 At some moments surely, at every stage in our career, 
 whether we are children or older people, we like to 
 escape even from our best friends and talk to ourselves, 
 to think, to meditate; not vaguely dreaming (though 
 there is a place for that, too, in all well-ordered lives), 
 but carefully, distinctly, arranging our own minds as a 
 man mig*ht arrange his own possessions, material or 
 spiritual, (quietly and orderly, because he would know 
 what he has, and where he is, and who in fact he is. A 
 child, particularly in the noisy life which we are living^, 
 mi'giht be very glad of these quiet spaces in which to 
 collect himself, and sort out what he has in his mind, 
 and discover who he is. That is the other part of educa- 
 tion. There are two parts of a complete education; 
 learning the world and learning ourselves. It is an 
 ilhberal and distorted education which insists so much 
 upon our learning the world and so " gaining' " it as to 
 make us lose ourselves, a loss which, of covirse, involves 
 every other kind of loss with it. 
 
 At home, and at school too, children should be left 
 alone with a pen or a pencil and paper, not to do exer- 
 cises, but to do what they like: to scribble, to be dis- 
 contented with scribbling, to want to do something better 
 than that ; and to find by this self-conscious process of 
 self-expression the road to emancipation from self. 
 
 All this is a practice which the use of words, and par- 
 ticularly the more dehberate and careful use of words on 
 paper, gives to tis — ^to us who are older ; but to children 
 also who have, with the disadvantages, the advantages 
 of childhood. 
 
 At the very beginning of this discussion, a distinction 
 was drawn between the plain, businesslike communication 
 
54 LECTURES ON 
 
 which js necessary; for ordinary, purposes when we tel 
 I>eople the things which we desire them to know — ^mak 
 requests of them, or put commands upon them — ^and, oi 
 the other hand, a higher type of expression, whicH w 
 called artistic, where the expression itself has a specia 
 value of its own, a characteristic style. It was then sai( 
 that it was unwise, in teaching children, to aim delibei 
 ately at anything more than the first kind of speech o 
 composition, the plain, direct, but clear and faithfu 
 account of facts, the simplest type of communication be 
 tween pne mind and another. 
 
 Let us now take up that matter once more, and regar( 
 it from a new point of view. 
 
 If a teacher vividly realises his class, realises the lif 
 of the children who are before him at all fully, and pro 
 perly, one of the things which will impress him mosi 
 and perhaps alarm him most, is the simple and obviou 
 fact that not only, are they as a class different from him 
 but that as individuals they are different from on 
 another. That involves, of course, a great deal: i 
 involves that the experience which they have had 
 short though it may be, is something special in eacl 
 cafee, not the teacher's experience, and in the case o 
 each several child, something peculiar and proper to him 
 self. The thoughts in their minds will also be specia 
 and individual ; and though the language that is on thei 
 lips may have the common sound of general acceptano 
 and understanding, the very fact that their experieno 
 and their thoughts are speciaJ. and peculiar brings it abou 
 that the words which they use, though they are contmdi 
 and oi'dinary words, represent in each' mind somethinj 
 special and peculiar too. So, though we seem all to b 
 speaking the same language, in a sense it is true to sa] 
 that we are speaking to each other in various tongues 
 we all need an interpreter. We have experienced tha 
 often enough in meeting strangers for the first time. W 
 can put down the dictionary meaning of every word tha 
 they use, but do not know what they understand by thes- 
 words ; and they are in the same position with regard ti 
 
THE TEACHING OF COMPOSITION 55 
 
 us ; the symbols are the same, but the things symbolised 
 are different. The more fully we realise the class that 
 we are teaching', the more deeply are we impressed by 
 that fact, and not only impressed, but alarmed by it; 
 because if there is this difference between us and our 
 pupils, and between each of them and every other, how 
 are we to bridge the chasm which divides us? What 
 is the use of talking to them if our language is almost 
 a strange language, because it represents strange and 
 peculiar things? 
 
 Let us see if any answer can be given to such question- 
 ings as these. The things about which we can make no 
 mistake at all are very, few, and the least valuable that 
 Ufe offers to us. We can call a spade a spade, but it 
 is a poor conversation that deals exclusively with spades. 
 We can say that the wind is in the East, but unless 
 the East stands for something cold and chill, or 
 sometMng bradng and strong, the mere fact that the 
 wind 5s coming from that quarter is scarcely worth 
 noticing. As agents or victims we all know the dullness 
 of imerely formal conversation. When a man tells you 
 it is a wet day, you are not really indebted to him. He 
 has not set up any real communication between your niind 
 and his. He has not really exchanged an experience 
 with .you. On the other hand, those things which are 
 valuable, and just because of their value are peculiar and 
 oin own, the things which make up ovtr life, are also 
 numeroxis. We can talk, it would seem — ^though without 
 profit — about the things which do not matter, but the 
 things which do matter baffle oiur speech. What then 
 is to be done? 
 
 We may note for our comfort that though communica- 
 tion is difficult the attempt at it is universal. The most 
 tadttim of men breaks silence sometimes ; the most re- 
 served sometimes seeks a way, of sharing his ideas and 
 experiences with! his neighbomrs; everybody speaks at 
 some rare moments at least, not merely from the surface 
 of his experience, but from his heart, giving out to other 
 people, in the hope and even m the expectation that they 
 
S6 LECTURES ON 
 
 will xmderstand, what is real and essential in himself. ( 
 if you find people of a sadder turn (our literature provid 
 us with examples), who hardly, hope to be understooc 
 even they^ not daring to look for a response, cannot ke( 
 silence, but throw out upon the world, which is a kindli 
 listener than they dreamt, the expression of their hop 
 or fears, their lonely sufferings, or solitary joys. To 1 
 himself is for a man to be alone— an intolerable fate ; 
 be himself is to feel deeply and strongly— loneliness ai 
 strong: feeling both claim and actuate expression; ai 
 the most universal mode of expression is expression 
 words : we speak because we must. This habit of hums 
 speech would haixlly have been preserved in the wor 
 through gCTieration after generation and century aft 
 century, uiiless it had met this essential and permane 
 need of the human spirit for utterance anid for tmde 
 standing. Speech, then, not merely trite and super ficij 
 but real and peculiar and individual — ^that is the surpri 
 ing consolation which fact affords — has been master( 
 and used by men. 
 
 But let us look more closely, at our problem. L 
 us take from the books that we know best — some play 
 Shakespeare, or some familiar novel — a great charact 
 which stands out with quite special and extraordina 
 distinctness before the mind. We have never seen ti 
 original ; we shall never see him or hear his voice — ^we i 
 not even desire such acquaintance; but we know pe 
 fectly what he would say and do, and how comport hir 
 self upon any occasion. We can imagine his appearane 
 his manner, his gesture ; he is as real to us, perhaps 
 some ways more real, than a host of people whom a 
 see day by day, because we have seen into his mind, > 
 have got some understanding of his character. And 
 proportion as this figure given us in imaginative writir 
 the drama or the novel, is individual and special ai 
 peculiar, and unlike ev«ry other that we recall in lite 
 ature, or any that we may know in the actual commer 
 of daily life, we say that he challenges and satisfi 
 pur widest and loftiest conceptions of humanity itself 
 
THE TEACHING OF COMPOSITION 57 
 
 Wliat the great artist does, we may conjecture, is to 
 see in the individxxal the whole world, and to discover the 
 world in his intimate and complete comprehension of the 
 individual. 
 
 It is because the individual is drawn so accurately, in 
 his own pea-son, that he stands for us as a type of human 
 nature ; and much as we differ from one another, such a 
 character, different both from you and from me, appeals 
 to you and to me and to a thousand readers, not because 
 he is like us, but because being signally and splendidly 
 himself, he is true to human nature. The illustration may 
 possibly, enable us not indeed to solve, but to approach 
 our question. We woxjld not have our pupils all massed 
 togetiier in a dvll resemblance ; we do not want them to 
 be like ourselves — ^we want thfem to be themselves. 
 
 How are we to speak to one another? Surely, by 
 speaking for oiirself, by being ourself, and by allowing, 
 by enjoining: on them an equal freedom. 
 
 But, it may be asked, what has this to do with compo- 
 sition?/ The answer is easily given : any deliberate, self- 
 conscious expression of the human mind comes very near 
 to being a form of human art ; and there is no mode of 
 expression so common and so necessary as this mode of 
 expression tih!rou;gh words. The teacher of composition 
 is an Art-Master— he aims at artistry in words. He is a 
 practitioiner, a critic and a giuide ; and if hfe is to do his 
 business well, hie must know what art is and distinguish 
 it from its counterfeits. The chief, and indeed the ulti- 
 mate test of art is one which every one may learn, not 
 perhaps quickly, but at length, to apply for himself ; it is 
 just this, that when he looks at the painting or the sculp- 
 ture, or reads the page, or hears the spoken words of the 
 true' artist, he perceives that not merely is he gazing upon 
 or listening to some performance thrown out in the spirit 
 of a mere performer, but that he is admitted immedi- 
 ately and directly to an intimacy with a mind uttering 
 itself greatly by whatever medium, of speech, or paint- 
 ing, or sculpture. This is what a great master of words 
 has called the " contagion of art. " The artist touches us, 
 
58 LECTURES ON 
 
 and something passes immediately from his spirit to 
 ours. 
 
 How is this contagion wrought? How is this influence 
 won? In lessons to whi<3i! we have listened, or in ad- 
 dresses, or lectures, or sermons, but best of all in the 
 intimacy of ordinary conversation with one of our 
 friends, there have been moments at which as the speaker 
 went on we felt, indeed we knew quite definitely and be- 
 ypnd thie possibility of a mistake, that the thing he was 
 descrilMng in words was a thing which he was, no doubt, 
 recalling to Ms mind, but also a thing which hte was ex- 
 periencing as he described it ; : and more than that, that 
 we ourselves were not mfere listeners, but were suffered to 
 enter into this activity, of his mind, and to share it our- 
 selves. That is what upon great occasions carries away 
 a' vast audience ; that is what thrills and moves us as we 
 listen sometimes in private to a friend. The medium of 
 words, we may say, disappears; the instrument which 
 the person speaking used for approaching and touching 
 our mind has dropped from his hand ; he and we, in fact, 
 two separate persons as we were before, are become one 
 spirit. There is no past tense for truth ; > what was, is ; 
 there is no monopoly in truth ; the experience richly en- 
 joyed by the artist, and passionately portrayed, is what 
 he compels the listener to share with him. 
 
 A test of that again, which we often apply, withouf 
 thinking very mucli of it, in our ordinary conversation, is 
 this : We read some passage or description, and we say, 
 " That is exactly what I should have said." This is a 
 very just and proper criticism ;i that is exactly what we 
 should have said, if, without the artist's guidance, we had 
 learnt to see things as now, with his aid, we see them. 
 We lacked What he has now given us, a certain clearness 
 of vision, a certain vigour of grasp, which, with practice 
 added, are the conditions of apt expression. And we 
 accept and adopt the artist's phrase because it is the ex- 
 pression of an experience, not now of another person 
 whom we were watching, but of ourselves. 
 
 Such work as that, if that is art— this revelation of a 
 
THE TEACHING OF COMPOSITION 59 
 
 character, of a mind at work, and of a mind which knows 
 no past, since what is true belongs to no particular time, 
 but enters into thie veryi substance of a character and 
 remains part of it, interwoven with it as long as it itself 
 can be said to endure — ^if that is so, the more peculiar, the 
 more single and separate a speaker or a writer or a per- 
 former in any other kind of human activity may be, the 
 more powerful may his appeal be to us who are so unlike 
 him. Peculiarity, means a certain direct and undistracted 
 power of arriving at the truth. Here is a man who has 
 not been contented with the vulgar phraseology of his 
 time, with the cant of the moment, with the conventional 
 utterance which only half disguises a lack of real feeling 
 and of deep experience, but on some particular point and 
 in perhaps some narrow avenue of enquiry has gone 
 straight to the facts of nature, to reality; his peculiarity 
 is the measure of his truthfidness ; he differs from us, not 
 because his quest, his object, is other than ours — ^for all of 
 us jn oiur measure are trying to arrive at truth — ^but be- 
 cause he has refused to deceive himself with convention, 
 and has at all costs pursued the thing he desired. He has 
 had the singleness of eye, which makes conduct also 
 beautiful, and lifts morals to the plane of art. He is a 
 peculiar person, but the thing that he has won by his 
 peculiar experience is the very foimdation of whatever is 
 true in our own fragmentary and half -illumined experi- 
 ence ; what distinguishes him from us is what makes him 
 valuable to us ; and when we imderstand him at all, we 
 understand that this strange person is akin to the best 
 part of ourselves, which is rarely able to come to the 
 surface of our lives ; and we say. quite truly that what he 
 has said is just what we would Uke to have said otu-selves. 
 Peculiarity, then, will always mark a person who is honest, 
 sincere, and ready to take pains; but his peculiarity, 
 which at first sight seemed to be a division between him 
 and oiirselves, is really the surest pledge we have of oiu- 
 finally understanding him and being imderstood by him. 
 Now, add to that another note or quality. A person 
 who has these marks will necessarily be, in no bad sense 
 
6o LECTURES ON 
 
 of course, an egoist. The egoist is a man, as i 
 commonly iise the word, who talks rather vainly ai 
 wearisomely, about himself; but the egoist whom I a 
 describing is a man who will only talk at all about thin 
 which he knows, and which he has discovered, no dou 
 with the help of his fellows, but still for himself ; he w 
 talk about the things which he has seen with his own ey 
 and touchted with his own hands. His method is som 
 times called the scientific method ; it is also the artisi 
 method, the method of truth, of only speaking about t 
 things that you know at first hand for yourself, and kn( 
 so well that they may be said to be part of yourself; 
 is the method of the egoist as I now venture to d'escri' 
 him. But you see once more that this kind of ego: 
 is not the man who sets barriers between himself and 1 
 fellows ; on the contrary, he values himself properly ; 
 much that he wants to embrace in himself, in his o\ 
 life, as wide a range as he possibly can. The real ego: 
 is a man who longs for friendship, for undCTstanding, aj 
 consequently, makes once more the necessary effort (f 
 all through this business effort and trouble are needed) 
 not only to express himself, you see, which the artist do( 
 but to express himself so that other people may imde 
 stand. It is a wide-embracingi and a generous egois 
 which is not contented to stand alone but wants to dn 
 into itself as much as it can from the world outside, aj 
 to spread itself, which is part of the same process, ov 
 the world. 
 
 Some correction, then, is needed of the earlier stat 
 ment. What was said before was true in its measu 
 and in its place. We do not want to graft an alien stj 
 upon children ; the attempt is sometimes made with sor 
 results; what we want rather is to allow them to wr 
 in their own way; there we get the real foun(te.tion 
 style; and if our teadhing is not quite extraordinari 
 and almost in a superhuman way bad, we cannot who] 
 prevent children from writing or speaking or acting- 
 whatever particular field their work or play may be— 
 their own way. Children are egoists, not only in t 
 
THE TEACHING OF COMPOSITION 6i 
 
 sense just now described, but in the narrower sense in 
 which the word is commonly, used; from this a larger 
 egoism will rescue them. Children are artists, not 
 completely, yet artists indeed in so far as they are 
 trying to say for themselves what they have themselves 
 experienced. A child is very ready to tell you what has 
 happened to him; he is pleased or distressed; he feels 
 tired or hungTy; he is for the moment quite absorbed 
 in his sense of pleasvure or of pain; he assumes your 
 sympathy. 
 
 Now what I want to suggest to you about yom- work, 
 not only in composition but other lessons as well, is that 
 whatever may be the particular subject of instruction you 
 axe dealing with in school, the thing either has a value for 
 you or it has not. I should say that it has no value for 
 you at all if it is a merely professional exercise; but it 
 has a value for you if it represents for you and is for you 
 an experience essential and real in your own life; if it 
 is a mode in which you — the real self that you value, and 
 want to preserve — ^are expressed legitimately and properly 
 for other people to see, so that you may be known by 
 all. A good many, teachers would shrink from being 
 known to their friends and equals. 
 
 If the subject has a value, it has it only inasmuch as 
 it stands for real experiences, real emotions, real thoughts 
 of your own, which mark your passage through life, and 
 are the index from stage to stage of yom character, and it 
 is these things which you try to present to yoxu- pupils. 
 Similarly, it is just that kind of thing which you want 
 them to present to you and to each other. Just as the 
 various lessons of the school day ought not to be mere 
 performances to the teacher, so they ought not to be mere 
 performances to the child. The chief activity of the child 
 is the activity of living ; and why he feels discomfort in 
 school, and often in our society, out of school as well, is 
 that things we too often suggest to him to do are not 
 comfortable and natural expressions of his own life and 
 his own individuality. 
 
 llien you come back to this diflictilty once more. How 
 
62 LECTURES ON TEACHING COMPOSITION 
 
 are my experiences and yours, who are g'rown-up people, 
 to be shared by a child younger than ourselves, and 
 different from us in a hundred ways? By the encourage- 
 ment on our part of artistry in him, and by the practice 
 on our part of artistry, for Ms benefit. That is to say, 
 by speaking ourselves with that complete truth, which 
 conibining the deep feeling of what we sometimes call 
 the heart with the clearest judgment of what we some- 
 times call the head, demands an expression, studied 
 perhaps, but always sincere;, and allowing thte child! to 
 spend both intelligence and affection upon those things 
 to which his nature, subtly, guided by a riper but reticent 
 wisdom, leads him, and in the conscious and common 
 enjoyment of which he will seek words to mark in their 
 passage the significance to himself and to us of his 
 delightful hours. 
 
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