III

MODERN LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES IN UNIVERSITIES1

The ordinary designation for an instructor in modern languages, literatures, and linguistics is the generic one of member of a department of modern languages. There was a day when the application of this term to so wide a variety of interests was perfectly legitimate. Rudimentary instruction in languages, as such, was then the principal duty of the professor, since these departments had to recruit their students among those with so inadequate a foundation in languages that advanced courses were generally out of the question.

In our larger institutions we have long outlived the necessity for such a combination of interests. We have therefore outlived, as well, the time when it was justifiable. Yet it is unfortunately not too much to say, that a modern language man is still, for the greater public, and for not a few university professors, a sort of Proteus who turns

1 The inclusion in this article of two apparent digressions-one on language-teaching in undergraduate departments and another on literature and linguistics in graduate-schools-having been criticized, I wish to state that these paragraphs are not intended as inquiries into these questions as such. They are included merely as throwing into clearer contrast the difference in type between the problems of undergraduate and graduate instruction. If the reader will interpret them as such, it is hoped that they will serve the purpose better than a more abstract statement to the same effect.

Attention is also called to the omission of a detailed consideration of the teaching of literature in undergraduate and graduate schools. Doubtless, undergraduate instruction should concern itself more and more with literature; but at present Romance and Germanic departments in undergraduate schools are, as a matter of fact, giving relatively little instruction in literature. So it seems legitimate, for present purposes, merely to contrast undergraduate language instruction with graduate instruction in literature and linguistics. The distinction is, in any event, entirely justified by the fact that under the present system a prospective instructor in graduate subjects must spend the formative years of his life in language-teaching to undergraduates.

his hand with equal effect or lack of effect-to almost any duty connected with books in a Germanic or Romance language.

And here the writer wishes to have it clearly understood that he has in mind, thruout the article, exclusively departments of Romance and Germanic languages, linguistics, and literatures. Teachers of English and English linguistics and literature in American universities can generally posit a knowledge of the essentials of the language on the part of their students. That being so, and the elementary instruction that is given being principally in the interest of style, it would seem that the problems of those departments are peculiar to them. Doubtless, what is to be said later might perfectly well apply to certain of the less studied languages and literatures of modern Europe, such as Dano-Norwegian, Rumanian or Russian. But these studies now occupy among us precisely the status held many years ago by French, Spanish and German. A teacher of Russian must continue for some time to be a modern language man because he will need to recruit his students principally among persons entirely unacquainted with Russian. Of ancient and Oriental languages, literatures and linguistics, too, this article takes no account.

To come back to the remark that modern language men are expected to perform a great variety of duties with equal efficiency or lack of efficiency, a frank admission that such instructors are constantly being blamed for inefficiency would be best both for those outside and those in these departments. The instructor in language is frequently accused of having no conception of how to approach the problem of teaching it to a class, and the instructorgenerally the professor who lectures on literature is found dry, or narrow, or unbalanced, or even to have a right to two or three of these agreeable characterizations. all this is quite in the order of things, and so to be expected: ask a man to be at once poet, philosopher and general, and he will turn out none of the three, not even a recognizable imitation of any of the three. He will have done

And

his best, but the impossible will have been required. Something of this nature has been demanded of the modern language man, with the result that very generally he has been unsuccessful in his quest, and his students with him. We have now come to the time when it would seem that all this demands immediate attention. And a few years of intelligent effort ought to suffice to remedy the evil. The hope of future success is in the young instructor and graduate student of today. Set the beginner straight, and he will not fail to meet the expectations formed regarding him, any more than do members of other departments. As the matter stands, he almost always enters handicapt upon the course he is to pursue. He is inspired from his boyhood with the partly erroneous, but very democratic, conviction that his success depends upon his merit. If he is curious about languages, learns them easily, and, during his college days, feels that he is acquiring from an increasingly intelligent criticism of the methods of his instructors a real sympathy with the problems of that work, he may desire to teach them later on himself. And he will begin this career in the hope that if he succeeds signally he will be advanced in the measure of his usefulness, so far as the resources of his institution render this possible. He is likely to find, however, that he must await his turn; and for whom? Very possibly for a senior instructor with far less than his own effectiveness as a language teacher, and who is only awaiting the opportunity to abandon this work, in part, to take up the teaching of literature or of linguistics. And the younger man will shortly see that he, too, will later on be expected to teach more or less literature or linguistics, since these branches are the prerogative of a professor, and expected of him.

A moralist, now dead, but extremely popular in these days, tells us that any work that is hard for one is not worth doing. We may suppose that he means hard, because distasteful; and not worth doing, because not well done. Our senior instructor will have ground out his quota of languageteaching for ten or twenty years, leaving behind him a long

record of inefficiency, for the sake of at last giving a course in his particular subject. Sadly enough, the subject is no longer his, and we may speak further on of how this course will really be given. The junior instructor will mark off about an equal number of years of the greatest usefulness, becoming inefficient only at the last, when he must perforce give up a part of his life-work for the sake of the advancement that generally brings with it quite other courses to be given. In other words, everyone must begin with languageteaching, and work up to the teaching of literature and lin guistics-because the latter subjects are hard, and the first easy. No worse confusion of issues can be imagined.

Teaching is confused with the subject taught. We may all agree that young instructors should be expected to know a given language, but hardly to be very thoroly conversant with the literature or linguistic science written in or based upon that language. But it does not follow that any intelligent person knowing a given language could or should try to teach it, nor does it follow that teaching languages will help one to ability as a teacher of literature at some future time; quite the contrary.

The instructor in language will get his efficiency only thru experience in teaching, and so may begin this teaching early, since his materials may be mastered in a few years of study. But most intelligent persons from twenty-one to twenty-five should know whether language-teaching or research is congenial. If a prospective instructor can not recognize his own preference at that age, it may generally be inferred that he will never be enthusiastic or effective, and university instructorships should be closed to him until such time as he shows indisputable proof that he is really a valuable man. Until he shall have made a definite choice between the two branches, however, it may safely be predicted that he will never be able to show such proof, and a late choice is more than likely to indicate a halfvocation. In fact, twenty is not a very early age for choosing, provided the roads are clearly differentiated. Much will be realized after twenty that may make the student

who is a prospective teacher feel that he is not adapted, as he had thought, to the vocation of teacher. But the fact that all who choose will not succeed is no proof that one who is a failure in language-teaching will make a good instructor in literature, or vice versa. Experience in the chosen field is the only test which will show the ability of the man. If the early choice was sincerely, intelligently, and happily made, experience wil! increase only the instructor's interest in his subject. And for the desirably high requirements of university teaching, an early and consistently pursued choice is not too much to expect.

It is undoubtedly true that language teaching is not only no useful preparation for the teaching of literature, but a positive detriment to that spirit and method which should guide the latter. Of linguistics the present writer will not speak particularly. But it would seem that the vast amount of material which the prospective instructor in linguistics must learn to control, and the quite intimate knowledge of the history of thought which he really should possess, would furnish him with a more productive occupation for his time than a life of elementary language-teaching. In any case, linguistics is essentially a research field, and the whole method of procedure is different from that of languageteaching in undergraduate departments; and so, what applies to literature, as distinguished from this last, would seem to be equally true, in general, of linguistics.

To establish the evidence in favor of the position just taken that language-teaching is a detriment to the prospective or actual teacher of literature a few remarks about this latter vocation are necessary. It is the eternally repeated maxim of some paradoxical men of letters that "literature can not be taught, anyway." Were it not that this particular confusion of issues is not entirely foreign to certain others who ought to know better, it would seem unnecessary to mention this here. But some very worthy people seem to be misled in this respect, and to take it for granted that the professor of literature is an original writer lacking originality enough to produce a good novel, play,