796 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



by two ideas, whicli are radically false. We always glance over the 

 books they publish, and have read through a new one this week, which* 

 we do not intend to advertise in this article, and they are all alike. 

 They all think that " copperplate writing," the special hand of writ- 

 ing-masters and bank-clerks, is good writing, which it is not, being 

 devoid of character, far too regular in form, and from the multiplicity 

 of fine up-strokes not easy to read ; and they all believe that certain 

 mechanical motions, if carefully taught, will produce clear writing. 

 They will not, and they do not. There never were two people yet in 

 this world of ours who wrote exactly alike, or who have the same con- 

 trol of their fingers, or who ought, in order to produce good writing, 

 to have held their pens alike, and the effort to make them do it only 

 spoils their natural capabilities. No doubt, those capabilities are often 

 naturally very small. The number of persons who are by nature not 

 deft with their fingers is very large, and so is the number of those 

 who can not fix their attention ; w^hile the number of those who can 

 do nothing well which they must do rapidly probably exceeds both. 

 The difiiculty of teaching a grown man to write decently is almost in- 

 conceivable — he seems never to see what is wanted — and something of 

 that difiiculty attaches to a vast proportion of children. Still, all per- 

 sons not deformed or crippled in the hand, or deficient in eyesight, 

 can be taught to write, and the reason why they are not taught prop- 

 erly must be some inherent defect in the system. We believe it to 

 be the one we have mentioned, the effort to enforce a certain method, 

 instead of trying to secure a certain result. The unhappy child, who 

 is almost always, we admit necessarily, taught too early, is instructed 

 to hold himself or herself in a particular attitude, which is sure to be 

 the wrong one for five sights in ten, the proper attitude depending on 

 the length of the child's vision ; to hold the pen at a particular angle, 

 which is also wrong, the fitting angle depending on the character of 

 the pen and holder ; and to grasp the pen at a certain distance from 

 the nib, which is arbitrarily fixed, whereas the distance must be gov- 

 erned by the formation and strength of the child's fingers, and would 

 be infinitely better left to his or her own instinct. Above all, there is 

 a perpetual worry about the " resting " of the hand, though the easiest 

 position varies with every child, and though no two men with much 

 writing to do rest the fingers quite alike. The pupil is then taught to 

 make lines in a certain direction, and to copy characters so large that 

 they have no resemblance to writing at all ; and to care particularly 

 about up-strokes and down-strokes, and all manner of minutite, which, 

 if they are of any value at all, will soon come of themselves. So 

 strong, in spite of centuries of experience, is the belief in this method, 

 that machines for controlling the fingers while writing have repeatedly 

 been invented ; and the author of a book before us, a professional, is 

 inclined to tie them up in some fashion with ribbon. 



We believe that the whole of this method is a mistake, that there 



