ENGLISH LITERATURE IN PRIMARY SCHOOLS. 803 
life; a scene or two from ‘‘ivanhoe”’ would introduce 
Scott; and the shooting party from ‘“ Pickwick” would 
cause our youngsters to look with proper friendliness on the 
name of Dickens. Thackeray’s “Rose and the Ring,” 
Longfellow’s ‘‘ Hiawatha,’’ Stevenson’s “ Treasure Island,” 
might all be pressed into the service, and good material might 
still be found in Miss Edgeworth, Mrs. Gatty, and Mrs. 
Ewing. The early chapters of the ‘“ Vicar of Wakefield,” 
extracts from the “‘ Life of Nelson”’ and the “‘Critic,’’ would 
fitly introduce Goldsmith, Southey, and Sheridan. An 
*incident or two from Boswell’s great biography I know to 
be quite capable of interesting boys and girls in the higher 
classes of primary schools. The “ Pilgrim’s Progress” and 
“Gulliver’s Travels’’ would open for them new worlds. 
Mrs. Haweis’ “Chaucer,” together with the life of that 
most human of poets, might well afford happy subjects for 
a month or more; while a volume of Greek and Roman 
stories would familiarise the children with some of the great 
names, without which English literature would have been 
impossible. 
If it be maintained that even the small amount of time 
suggested—an hour a week—cannot be given without sacri- 
ficing something already in the curriculum, I am prepared 
to meet this by suggesting the entire or partial sacrifice of 
history, which is at present taught in many Australian 
primary schools; but which, as a part of literature—the 
part which deals, to use the Aristotelian distinction, with 
“what has happened,” not, as poetry, with the higher 
truth of “what may happen ’’—seems to me, however im-~ 
portant, less important than the whole of which it is a part. 
As to the desirability, if practicable, of teaching litera- 
ture in our public primary schools, I hardly think there can 
be any difference of opinion among those who realise the 
present state of public literary taste. 
For in truth, Demos as Mecenas cuts but a sorry figure. 
And this is as sad for literature as it is for Demos. From 
the standpoint of literature the condition of the popular 
taste mattered comparatively little in Horace’s or in Spen- 
ser's day, when the general public did not read, and literary 
men were supported by a wealthy cultured minority. Now 
when the general public does read, and when we buy books 
to read, not because they are recommended by the Dr. 
Johnsons of the day, but because 50,000 other people have 
read them, it does matter very much to literature that the 
public taste should be sound and healthy. 
How far it is from this, alike in England and Australia, 
may be seen at once by the great literary successes of the 
