420 KEPOET— 1891. 



and debating club in Australia. A vast conception like Dar- 

 win's, incapable of absolute demonstration, triumphs over 

 prejudices, and in a generation becomes the working hypo- 

 thesis of all the rising devotees of science. 



Nor have we stood still in education. Every year sees the 

 introduction of new subjects, improvement in the method of 

 teaching the old, new editions and new books in all branches of 

 school work. Yet I have slowly come to the conviction that 

 the greatest advance of all has still to be made — namely, the 

 dropping of those languages whose grammar consmnes a dis- 

 proportionate amount of our school-time, and whose literature, 

 beautiful as it is, does not deserve to engross our attention as 

 it has hitherto done. Huxley, in his " Lay Sermons," com- 

 plains that we teach the young to think that everything which 

 is of importance in the world happened some two thousand 

 years ago ; and certainly we have neglected and do neglect un- 

 warrantably the literature and history of our own country. 

 If I were asked what lesson in the whole school course, in my 

 experience, did most good in stimulating the intelligence of a 

 class, I should say, Undoubtedly the Shakespeare lesson. Boys 

 are there dealing with sentences which often require much 

 thought for comprehension, but which, being in their own 

 tongue, can be understood without that constant use of 

 dictionary which bewilders and disheartens a beginner in 

 ^schylns. They feel, too, that Shakespeare is real ; that he 

 looks at life's problems as we look at them, and has something 

 to teach us about them all, since he paints every variety of 

 human passion ; they realise alike the majesty of his tragedy 

 and the humour of his comedy, and recognise the unrivalled 

 vigour and appropriateness of his diction. 



We ought, then, to use our Shakespeare much more freely 

 than we do, and to turn out our boys as conversant with the 

 details of all his plays as are the best boys of an English 

 public school now with their Sophocles or Ji^schylus. Com- 

 pared with Shakespeare, Greek tragedy is poverty-stricken in 

 its subject-matter, dealing as it does only with a few heroic 

 legends, and wearisome in its iteration of the doctrines about 

 Nemesis and the resistless power of fate, neither of which is of 

 any value to us except as an historic curiosity. 



Nor would I confine English literature to Shakespeare. A 

 careful study of some of our best lyrics, such as Shelley's Ode 

 to a Skylark, would, I believe, teach a class more of the melody 

 of verse, more of the power of metaphor, more of the trans- 

 cendent flights of the highest poetic thought, than any Greek 

 chorus or Latin ode that has been written. In prose, for 

 teaching beauty of style and richness of illustration, no author 

 can surpass Macaulay ; for teaching conciseness, nothing could 

 be much better than Bacon's Essays. For literature, then, let 



