From this point we may pass to what is first in the order of things--but
first and last in this department of an English education--and that is
reading, with the great field of literature before us, and the duty of
making the precious inheritance all that it ought to be to this young
generation of ours--heiresses to all its best.
English literature will be to children as they grow up, what we have
made it to them in the beginning. There will always be the exceptional
few, privileged ones, who seem to have received the key to it as a
personal gift. They will find their way without us, but if we have the
honour of rendering them service we may do a great deal even for them in
showing where the best things lie, and the way to make them one's own.
But the greater number have to be taken through the first steps with
much thought and discernment, for taste in literature is not always easy
to develop, and may be spoiled by bad management at the beginning. We
are not very teachable as a nation in this matter--our young taste is
wayward, and sometimes contradictory, it will not give account of
itself, very likely it cannot. We have inarticulate convictions that
this is right, and suits us, and something else is wrong as far as our
taste is concerned, and that we have rights to like what we like and
condemn what we do not like, and we have gone a considerable way along
the road before we can stop and look about us and see the reason of our
choice.
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