SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY

The following suggestions may be of aid to students ho have no regular instructor, and to teachers of little experience with this poem. The others are requested to omit what must necessarily seem trite or obvious.

The young reader seldom takes much interest in the biography of an author whose works are as yet untried. Scott and Wordsworth are notable exceptions; neither of them can be properly appreciated without a knowledge of the conditions which made the man. So it is best to become acquainted at the beginning with the man, Sir Walter Scott. All later accounts of his life are necessarily mere abstracts of the voluminous compendium by Lockhart. Of abridgments the best seems to be that by R. H. Hutton in the English Men of Letters Series.

Next, one needs to know the romantic past of Scotland. The Tales of a Grandfather supply this knowledge in fascinating form. Then we need to know the country, and, fortunately, photographs are plenty and cheap. The schoolroom should be lined with them. If the school owns a stereopticon, the study of the poem may well be preceded and followed by an illustrated talk, from some one who has been in the Trosachs and knows how to tell about them. We knew one class that interrupted the delighted lecturer repeatedly by impromptu concert recitation of the appropriate verses. Bits of heather and foxglove are a help. The map may be enlarged for chart or blackboard, and all places located thereon.

Some teachers find it desirable to read a canto through

first for the narrative only, and then study it in detail; others would keep the two pari passu. We prefer the former method, always limiting it to a single canto, and following the minute study by a continuous reading aloud, for pleasure and as a test of comprehension. Very early, attention may be called to the verse movement as an expression of feeling. Whether or not there should be any formal naming of the iambus, trochee, or other technicalities, depends entirely upon the stage in the school course when this poem is taken. Try to reproduce the atmosphere, the connection between the mouldering Harp of the North, and this tale of the days of chivalry. Keep the opening scenes in view until Glenartney and Loch Katrine seem as real as the daily walk to school, and you feel with Scott's huntsman-auditor that, "it was a shame to let such fine dogs take to the water when heated; they would certainly be ruined." Describe orally and in writing the different characters, and be on the watch to discover how natural scenery is made to furnish an effective background for the human beings and their adventures.

If The Lady of the Lake be the first long poem used for genuine literary study, as is often the case, two things are of vital importance: that the appetite should be whetted for more poetry, and that the pupil should learn how to study poetry. To secure scholarly work and at the same time give a lasting taste for this most perfect form of literary art is no easy undertaking, though experience proves that both can be done successfully, provided the effort be made before the pupil has outgrown the period when romantic action appeals to him.