DELATION TO READING AND LITERATURE. 277 



Except February alone, 



Which hath four and twenty-four, 



And every fourth year one day more." 



But teachers must not delude themselves and cheat 

 their pupils with the idea that everything which is in 

 rhyme is poetry, and therefore literature. 



Mere rhyme we comprehend after one, or at most two 

 or three, readings ; we soon get from it about all the 

 thought or content there is in it. The best literature, 

 such a gem as Lowell's " Vision of Sir Launfal," we can 

 read and reread, again and again, scores of times per- 

 haps, and see new beauties and get new inspiration 

 each time. This is perhaps the simplest test of real 

 literature. If what we read awakens little thought, 

 and a second and third and fourth careful, thoughtful 

 rereading gives us little that is new, it is not literature, 

 or, perhaps, it is so much beyond our comprehension 

 that it is not the literature for us. 



We can be sure of reading real literature to and with 

 our pupils if we select from the writings of standard 

 authors, those who by general consent have long been 

 regarded as best worth reading. Any nature literature 

 selected from such writers as Lowell, Emerson, Long- 

 fellow, Whittier, Bryant, Lucy Larcom, Tennyson, 

 Wordsworth, we may consider as worth reading, if 

 it is not utterly beyond the children. That which 

 is selected from writers who are unknown or little 

 known, may or may not be literature that is best worth 

 reading. 



In selecting literature it is well to keep in mind the 



