WHY TEACH MODERN LANGUAGES? 25 



absolute standard the consummate flowers of ancient times, yet they 

 are of great value for instruction. We have seen that our poets in 

 all ages have gone to such fields; it is possible that we may help the 

 average mind to do by instruction something like that which the mind 

 of genius does instinctively. Here the ease of translation is a help. 

 We can never expect to have all the long years of youth for modern 

 languages as the older masters had them for classics, but fortunately 

 more ground can be covered in the short time given us. 



It is really a pity for any boy or girl to grow up without coming 

 in contact with the rich song treasures of Germany. For many 

 years it was the custom of Mary Rippon, Professor of German 

 in the University of Colorado, to devote much time to the singing of 

 German lyrics by the class. When a roomful sing together Annie of 

 Tarau, Luther's Hymn, or the Watch on the Rhine, they are for the 

 moment Germans, and their hearts throb with a new sweet sadness, 

 with a new and manly religion, with martial spirit and with growing 

 patriotism. There is no better approach to art composition than 

 is afforded by a strange new melody ringing in the ears. 



The prose in German seems to me to be much less valuable. There 

 may be a reason for using some of the folk-lore for the very beginning; 

 and if one really wants to find difficult modern language with valuable 

 content, he can be accommodated in the art prose of Lessing and 

 Winckelmann. The German prose sentence is less helpful to the 

 English writer than the French. One who has compared a few pages 

 of Hegel's Aesthetik in German with the same passage in Bernard's 

 French translation knows how the latter gains in clearness. 



Schiller was the great dramatist of the eighteenth century, and 

 it is interesting to discuss the growth and structure of a play like 

 Love and Intrigue; but Germany does not hold an important position 

 in the evolution of the drama. Faust is not a right acting drama but 

 an immortal poem. Its dedication, its prologues, its numerous verse 

 forms, its rich content, are a sufficient reward for the study necessary 

 to read it ; there is no other modern poem of its class so rich in oppor- 

 tunities for literary study. There are passages of not too intricate 

 construction that challenge the best minds for a rendering day after 



