LITEEAEY VALUES 25 



The main aim of the teacher of literature should 

 be to train and quicken the student's taste — his 

 sense of the fitness and proportion of things — till he 

 can detect the true from the false, or the excellent 

 from the common. There is hut one way to learn 

 to detect the genuine from the counterfeit in any 

 department of life, and that is by experience. Fa- 

 miliarize the student with the works of the real 

 masters of literature and you have safeguarded him 

 against the pretenders. After he has become ac- 

 quainted with the look and the ring of the pure gold 

 he is less likely to be imposed upon by the counterfeit. 

 The end here indicated cannot be reached by analy- 

 sis, or by a course in rhetoric and sentence struc- 

 ture, or by a microscopical examination of the writer's 

 vocabulary, but by direct sympathetic intercourse 

 with the best literature, through the living voice, 

 or through your own silent perusal of it. The great 

 Dantean and Shakespearean scholar is usually the 

 outcome of a mental habit that would make Dante 

 and Shakespeare impossible. 



So eminent a critic as Frederic Harrison is reported 

 as praising this sentence from the new British author 

 Maurice Hewlett : " In the milk of October dawns 

 her calm brows had been dipped." The instructor 

 in literature should be able to show his class why 

 this is not good literature. The suggestion of brows 

 dipped in milk is not a pleasant one. One cannot 

 conceive of any brow the beauty of which would be 

 enhanced by it, even by the milk of October dawns, 

 if there were anything in October dawns that in the 



