762 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION J. 
question fully. I shall presently put before you a tentative 
or provisional “curriculum in English poetry for the 
young,” based upon the considerations which I have discussed 
_in the earlier part of my paper, and I hope that this will 
go some way towards answering it. In the meantime I 
must add a few words upon the manner in which [ think 
this mental food should be administered. 
In the first place, I am deeply convinced that in this— 
department, at least, there must be no driving, no compul- 
sion. The fact that compulsion is, in fact, commonly 
resorted to in this matter, is partly due, no doubt, to the 
uninviting and even repulsive nature of the poetic fare 
which is too often put before the young. I believe that the 
youthful mind will gain little or nothing from the enforced 
study of poetry, before which it instinctively recoils. I am 
thinking of “ Paradise Lost,’’ and I am not quite sure about 
Gray’s “Elegy.” I think that all poetry which is not 
“ simple, sensuous, passionate,’ to use Milton’s own phrase, 
is likely to be uninteresting and unattractive to the young. 
When I hear a person say of a poet, ‘ We read him at 
school,’ I understand him to mean “and therefore I have 
not read him since.” 
This is sad, but I am afraid that in the majority of cases 
it is true. And I do not think that this state of things is 
due only to the unattractive nature of the poetry usually 
read in the schools; it cannot be so. It is due also in part 
to the manner in which really attractive poetry is made 
repulsive and a bugbear to the learner. I must enquire 
briefly how this is done, for of the fact that it is done I can 
have no doubt. 
There are, I think, three reasons why most people do not 
look back with pleasure upon the poetic part of their school ~ 
curriculum. The first is the compulsion I have already 
alluded to, due to the unattractive nature of the material 
to be studied. The second is over-teaching and over-anno- 
tation of texts, the too common practice of making the 
poem a peg upon which to hang historical, philological, and 
metrical disquisitions. The third, and the most potent ofall, 
is the examination system. With the first of these causes 
I have already dealt. I propose now to say a few words 
of the second and the third. 
With regard to over-teaching and over-annotation of 
texts, I can hardly speak strongly enough. It has been my 
lot to review a very large number of school editions, “ edited 
and annotated for schools,’ of the great English classics, 
principally, of course, of Shakespeare. There are some _ 
brilliant exceptions; but, in general, I may say that I can 
