husband hunting for their daughters. One family in particular had a full quota of fair ones who had not yet worn the orange blossom. So this was a dangerous region for two young knights to explore if they expected to retire with unbroken hearts." 4. "After Olivia's departure, she sent a ring claiming it to have been left, but though Olivia understood the action she did not wish to have a woman make love to her (it was not leap-year). The Lord sent her again and this time the lady asked her to marry her then, as a priest was below, but she left." Queer figurative and half-figurative mixtures are common: Viola "fills her position, flitting about like a ray of sunshine;" Mr. Darcy "could not prevent an attachment for the charming girl from springing up in the seat of his affections, which by the way were not always easily observed;" Mr. Darcy, "having once broken through the ice, finds but little trouble in progressing in the paths of love." Again: "Love was brooding between them [Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth] but not as yet had the fire been burning, and as it seems, the match was lighted at this point." Mixed figures, however, are so often the produce of a fertile, though unweeded, mind that in a boy of seventeen they are almost encouraging. "We mournfully contemplate the fate of that great poet soul [Burns], a jewel of nature, highly endowed, that perished in its bloom," these words were the end of a good theme, and the work, I suspect, of a boy who proved the best writer in his class. Nor am I discouraged by such blunders as, “Mr. Darcy was perfectly nonpulssed;" nor by the occasional use of a degraded phrase, like "don masculine habiliments" (of Viola). I am discouraged by pervading inaccuracy, by incontinent oratory, and by chronic morality. More than all, I am discouraged by wooden unintelligence. Though the admission books in English are gradually improving, it is true now, as it was true some years ago, that "few are remarkably good, and few extraordinarily bad;" that "a tedious mediocrity is everywhere." Dulness is the substance of scores of themes, and inaccurate dulness at that there is neither a boy's sprightliness, nor a man's maturity, nor a scholar's refinement, nor yet a reporter's smartness. The average theme seems the work of a rather vulgar youth with his light gone out; and this unillumined incompetency takes the place of characteristics in about three quarters of the books. To show what I mean, I take the first theme of average mark that I can lay my hands on, a theme clearly above the passing line. The subject is "Mr. Darcy's Courtship." The boy does not dream that the story is full of life; to him it is something to gothrough-like statistics. Accordingly he tabulates it, and appends a moral duller than his tables : "MR. DARCY'S COURTSHIP." "Mr. Darcy, a young man of distinguished birth and great wealth, with that peculiar pride in his character which young men of wealth generally acquire from the adulation paid to them by ignorant people,. is surprised at and delighted with the independence and frankness of spirit with which a certain Miss Bennett receives him. This Miss Bennett he first saw at an evening party given by the sisters of a friend of his. He afterwards saw her at the home of his friend where, contrasting the sharp, witty conduct of Miss Bennett towards. him with the ignorant adulation of his friend's sisters, he falls in love with her. "Miss Bennett is so influenced by the insinuations of a renegade ward of Darcy's father that she despises him. When, by chance, they meet at the country house of Darcy's aunt, Darcy proposes and is rejected by Miss Bennett who flaunts in his face the wrongs. charged to him by his father's ward. Darcy is so incensed that he says nothing and leaves. After some consideration, he concludes to explain away these falsehoods and does so to the entire satisfaction of Miss Bennett who now begins to see many noble traits in Darcy and, after a while, falls in love with him. "Darcy, after he has done many favors for Miss Bennett's family,. again proposes to Miss Bennett and is heartily accepted. Darcy, when asked by Miss Bennett why he fell in love with her, admits that it was principally on account of her humbling his spirit of pride and teaching him the pleasure of treating one's supposed inferiors well.. "Darcy finally marries Miss Bennett to the great chagrin of his friend's sisters (the Bingleys) who make great protestations that the match is pleasing to them. "The moral of all this, I think, is that slavish flattery will never attract the attention either of those who may deserve our praise or of those who do not to any qualities, either of mind or body, which we may posess. While, on the other hand, frankness and independence of spirit will always obtain for us, even among the greatest of men due consideration and respect." In the treatment of the Bad English paper I see the same decreptitude of the more active powers. The one notion that possesses a boy when he faces the sentences is that something must be changed. His mind saunters up to each sentence, looks at it vacantly, changes the first word that comes half-way to meet him, and moves languidly on. In Neither she nor Tony entertain any thoughts of marriage, he changes nor to or, and leaves the rest; in If the tariff were taken off of wool, we would be obliged to close our mills, he touches nothing but were, which he changes to was; in It prevents him bending the elbow more than a little ways, he corrects the second blunder with the genteel substitute, beyond a certain degree. Sometimes unintelligence goes farther yet. In Turning into the square, the post hit him causing him to shy, causing him to shy is emended to which made him very shy. The sentence, I think the style bad, and that he has a good deal of the old woman in his way of thinking, passes muster for its English but not for its etiquette. The bad construction is unchanged; but a good deal of the old woman in his way becomes much of his mother's manner. One might think this change humorous; but I am convinced that it is not. It is as unconscious as a sentence in an admission theme on The Merchant of Venice,-"Shylock departed with neither money nor flesh." It is a mistake, I think, to suppose that any practicable change in the English requirement would do away with the evils that appear in the books. Many of these evils will remain so long as a single prominent teacher in a single large school suffers slipshod English to be used by his pupils or by himself. Preparation in English is a complex matter; and the "English teacher" is but one of a thousand influences that make or mar it every day. The difficulty lies deep, when every subject is taught in English, and when the English of so many learned men is radically bad. As a general thing the school gets out of the teacher all that it pays for: and until schools can afford to pay trained and polished men; to give those men such relief from routine and bread-winning as shall enable them to cultivate themselves; and to demand of them not the raw power of keeping fifty boys in order and hearing five recitations a day, but a spirit at once gentle and manly, and a culture that must reveal itself without pedantry in every recitation, whatever the subject-until this millennium arrives, we shall see in our English examination the results of weary or perfunctory or-worst of all-decorated teaching. Meantime we must thank the teachers of English for their up-hill work. BIBLIOGRAPHY. 1. JOURNALS. LIBRARIAN R. C. DAVIS, ANN ARBOR. The Publishers' Weekly. New York, $3.20 per annum. Bibliographical, a weekly record of new publications, priced, with brief. notes indicating their scope and value-general book news. The Critic. Weekly, New York, $3.00. The Literary World. Fortnightly, Boston, $2.00. The Dial. Monthly, Chicago, $1.50. These are critical and bibliographical. In The Dial the book reviews are more extended, and there are, consequently, fewer of them than in the others. The Library Journal. Monthly, New York, $5.00. This is the organ of The American Library Association, and treats of library economy and bibliography, and gives general information in regard to libraries. Library Notes. Quarterly, Boston, $1.00. Devoted to library methods and work; very practical. ENGLISH JOURNALS. The Publishers' Circular. Fortnightly, London, Ss. The Academy. Weekly, London, 17s. 4d., $4.22. 2. BOOKS PURELY BIBLIOGRAPHICAL, OR NEARLY SO. Allibone, S. Austin: Critical Dictionary of English Literature, and British and American Authors. 3 vols., royal octavo. Vol. 1, 1854, Childs and Peterson, Phila. Vols. 2 and 3, 1870-71, J. B. Lippincott & Co., Phila. The work is sold by the Lippincotts now for $22.50, in cloth. The American Catalogue. 1876-1884. Author and title alphabet, and subject alphabet, in one volume 4to, New York, 1885. The edition of this work was limited and but few sets remain unsold. These are to be disposed of for $12.50 in sheets, or for $15.00 bound in one-half morocco. The last set of Leypoldt's great work. The American Catalogue of Books in print and for sale July 1st, 1876, in two parts, was sold in 1886 for $60.00. The Annual American Catalogue, 1886, New York, 1887. In December only twelve copies of this remained unsold. Price $3.00 in sheets and $3.50 in one-half leather. This volume was made by photographing, after they had been arranged in one alphabet, the book records of The Publishers' Weekly for 1886. This and its successors will be indispensable books in libraries. Orders should go in immediately for the volume for 1887. Price, in advance, in sheets, $2.50; in one-half leather, $3.00. Address, Publishers" Weekly, Franklin Square, New York. First Editions of American Authors, compiled and published by Leon and Brother, New York, 1885. $1.00. For a knowledge of English books a librarian should possess the following: Lowndes' Bibliographical Manual of English Literature. New Edition, in eleven parts, or 4 vols., $8.00. The Bohn Edition. The work is now sold by George Bell & Sons. in boards, is £2; of the whole work bound in £2, 25. The price of the eleven parts, four vols., one-half morocco, The English Catalogue of Books. Annual, Sampson Low, London, 5s., in paper. This should be regularly taken, and the volumes of previous years obtained, as far as possible. 3. AIDS IN THE USE OF PERIODICALS. Poole's Index of Periodical Literature. Third edition brought down to January, 1882; Boston, 1882, in leather, about $17.00. The Co-operative Index to Periodicals. Quarterly, New York, $2.00 per year, with Library Journal. A supplement, or second volume of Poole's Index will be made from this co-operative index, and published soon. The work is in charge of Mr. Fletcher, librarian of Amherst College. The quarterly issue will continue as heretofore. |