us," or that "summer ornaments for grates
are made of wood shavings and of different coloured papers." He wished
that the youngest and poorest children should be nurtured on the
wholesome and delicious food of actual literature, instead of
"skeletons" and "abstracts." He set great store on learning poetry by
heart, for he believed in poetry as the chief instrument of culture. He
poured just contempt upon the wretched doggerel which in school
reading-books too often passed for poetry. "When one thinks how noble
and admirable a thing genuine popular poetry is, it is provoking to
think that such rubbish should be palmed off on a poor child, with any
apparent sanction from the Education Department and its grants."

With regard to the special evil of teaching poetry by "selections" or
"extracts," he wrote in his Report for 1880: "That the poetry chosen
should have real beauties of expression and feeling, that these beauties
should be such as the children's hearts and minds can lay hold of, and
that a distinct point or centre of beauty and interest should occur
within the limits of the passage learned--all these are conditions to be
insisted on. Some of the short pieces by Mrs. Hemans, such as 'The
Graves of a Household,' 'The Homes of England,' 'The Better Land,' are
to be recommended because they fulfil all three conditions; they have
real merits of expression and sentiment; the merits are such as the
children can feel, and the centre of interest, these pieces being so
short, necessarily occurs within the limits of what is learnt. On the
other hand, in extracts taken from Scott or Shakespeare, the point of
interest is not often reached within the hundred lines which is all that
children in the Fourth Standard learn. The Judgment Scene in the
_Merchant of Venice_ affords me a good example of what I mean.... The
children in the Fourth Standard begin at the beginning and stop at the
end of a hundred lines. Now the children in the Fourth Standard are
often a majority of the children learning poetry, and this is all their
poetry for the year. But within these hundred lines the real interest of
the situation is not reached; neither do they contain any poetry of
signal beauty and effectiveness. How little, therefore, has the
poetry-exercise been made to do for these children, many of whom will
leave school at once, and learn no more poetry!" He greatly favoured all
such exercises as tend to make the mind "creative," and give it "a