It is regarded as a mere
luxury; but we do not make the mistake of substituting gymnastics for
games, and removing the pleasure of personal performance. Why can we
not also do something to encourage what old Hawtrey used so
beautifully to call "the sweet pride of authorship"? The worst of it
all is that we look so much to tangible results. I do not mean that we
must try to develop Shakespeares, Shelleys, Thackerays; such airy
creatures have a way of catering for themselves! I do riot at all want
to turn out a generation of third-rate writing amateurs. But many boys
have a distinct pleasure not only in listening to imaginations, and
riding like the beetle on the engine, but in evoking and realising
some little vision and creation of their own brains. Of course there
are boys to whom mental activity is all of the nature of a cross laid
upon them for some purpose, wise or unwise. But there are also a good
many shy boys, who will not venture to make themselves conspicuous by
literary and imaginative feats, and who yet if it were a matter of
course and wont, would throw themselves with intense pleasure into
literary creation. The work done, for instance, at Shrewsbury, at the
Perse School, at Carlisle Grammar School, in this direction--I daresay
it is done elsewhere, but I have seen the work of these three schools
with my own eyes--show what quite average boys are capable of in both
English poetry and English prose.
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