I
should wish to see this reading lesson a daily hour for all younger
boys, so as to form a real basis of education. Three of these hours
could be given to English, and three to French, for in French there is
a wide range both of simple narrative stories and historical romances.
The aim to be kept in view would be the very simple one of proving
that interest, amusement and emotion can be derived from books which,
unassisted, only boys of tougher intellectual fibre could be expected
to attack. The personalities of the authors of these books should be
carefully described, and the result of such reading, persevered in
steadily, would be, what is one of the most stimulating rewards of
wider knowledge, the sudden realisation, that is, that books and
authors are not lonely and isolated phenomena, but that the literature
of a nation is like a branching tree, all connected and intertwined,
and that the books of a race mirror faithfully and vividly the ideas
of the age out of which they sprang. What makes books dull is the
absence of any knowledge by the reader of why the author was at the
trouble of expressing himself in that particular way at that
particular time. When, as a small boy, I read a book of which the
whole genesis was obscure to me, it used to appear to me vaguely that
it must have been as disagreeable to the author to write it as it was
for me to read it. But if it can be once grasped that books are the
outcome of a writer's interest or sense of beauty or emotion or joy,
the whole matter wears a different aspect.
Pages:
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74