INTRODUCTION

It is my office only to stand in the portico and open the door of the present edifice, which has been builded right skillfully by another. If the delight of the intelligent reader were the only purpose in view, hardly anything could be better than such a compilation as the present one, showing the part played by the schoolmaster in the literature of diverse ages and of different nations. It is quite worth while, for example, to take the ideal of a good schoolmaster constructed by quaint old Thomas Fuller and put it alongside the Blimbers, and to place Shenstone's village school,

"where sits the dame disguised in look profound,

And eyes her fairy throng, and turns her wheel around,"

in juxtaposition with the immaculate Miss Pinkerton's most respectable seat of learning on Chiswick Mall, or with quaint old Bartle Massey's night school for full-grown men. Here we have the schoolmaster under many lights, and literature in widely varying moods. As a means of cultivating a taste for literature and a discriminating taste in literature, I know of no better collection than this, particularly for the use of teachers, whose relish is certain to be quickened by professional interest in the subject.

But literary interest and literary culture are by no means the only ends served by such a collation of representative delineations of the schoolmaster. Some phases of truth are not easily communicated in didactic form; they are seen best in the delicate shading of artistic literature. This is what Charles Lamb

calls the "twilight of truth." Perhaps Dickens's Dr. Blimber, with his everlasting iteration of " Bring him on, Cornelia, bring him on," has done more than the soberest treatises on pedagogy to discourage the ancient mode of education by cramming -the only sort of infanticide permitted in civilized countries. A whole board of education of the unprogressive sort, once so common, seems to be wrapped up in Dr. Blimber, with his stolid ignorance of the higher uses of learning and his stupid demand for a visible "bringing on" of the poor little Dombey. Cornelia Blimber is but the conductor through which Dr. Blimber works his " bringing on," propelled as many another teacher has found herself propelled by the force behind her to push those who ought not to be pushed. But behind the unintelligent board of Blimbers are innumerable other Blimbers in the unintelligent parents, who also demand that Cornelia shall "bring him on."

The maker of this collection has sought by means of literary cross-lights to give the teacher, not direct instruction in method, but something quite as valuable. Here the schoolmaster sees his profession in the light of literary culture and literary art, and, in some cases, he sees it illuminated by the light of genius. From such treatment of the subject the teacher gains broader views of his calling in its relation to life. This enlightenment is quite as necessary as special instruction to produce the real teacher. The real teacher is in turn the very leaven that leavens the whole lump of modern civilization.

An estimable gentleman said to me recently, “In all my life at school it was my misfortune not to encounter one real teacher." I was not surprised at the tone of regret in which this was spoken. But the man who has been so unhappy as never, during his period of plasticity, to have fallen into the

shaping hands of a real teacher, is hardly capable of estimating the extent of his irreparable loss.

The real teacher is by no means a modern invention. One cannot be sure that we have now a larger proportion of men and women answering that description than there were centuries ago. The good and great Moravian brother Comenius, with his admirable spirit and methods, lived away back in the sixteenth century. And was Roger Ascham the only good English "Scholemaster" in the days of Queen Elizabeth? There can be no doubt that we know better than the generality of old masters what to teach, and it would be a pity indeed if, with all our philosophizing and experimenting, with all our normal schooling and our teachers' institutes innumerable, we had not found out some things about method that our forefathers did not know. It is even possible that we have put too much stress upon methods of instruction, and that in our conceit of system we have hardly left standing space for the living teacher. The individuality of the real teacher sometimes unfits him to serve well as a cog-wheel in the clock-work of a complicated school system. His very originality is sometimes laid against him for a fault by the austere method-ist in pedagogy.

Far be it from me to affirm that we can count fewer real teachers in the hundred now than there were formerly. That would be to deny that we have made any real progress, for the best school systems and the most admirable of teaching methods would be a thousand times worse than useless if they should render the production of real teachers impossible. But we may have exaggerated the relative importance of method in teaching. There are signs that we are entering on a new epoch, in which men will count for more than prescribed methods, and in which the production of genuine teachers will be the objective.

Do not expect me to define the term. The best things elude definition. Words are not subtle enough to describe things that are priceless. If I were to say that the real teacher is devoted to his work, manifests a lively and intelligent sympathy with his pupils, evinces tact in management and ingenuity in conveying information, and has the sort of enthusiasm that gives him a momentum communicable to those under his care, I should have enumerated enough of his qualities to enable one to classify him. But how far short of filling the measure of his description is this list of qualities. Put these things together, and you will still have something less than the man.

This is partly because men and women who are capable of shaping others have something about them that cannot be set down in a catalogue. catalogue. A lady said to me the other day, that while qualities were valuable, quality was something much greater. A good expression of a profound truth! Count the standard virtues on your fingers, and you can recall estimable people who possess them all, but who, nevertheless, do not go for much. That which my friend called quality-that something blending all these qualities into one harmonious and potent whole, is lacking. You do not think of the qualities of a man like Arnold of Rugby, or of a man like the revered but unfortunate Pestalozzi. One could not pick either the one or the other to pieces, and make any recognizable catalogue of his parts. There is an integrity, a wholeness about the efficient man or woman of any sort, that defies analysis.

The test of the teacher is efficiency. Not the showing he is able to make in an examination, but the final result he can produce in the character of those who come from under his hand. This efficiency is not of the sort that can be counted upon always to work an increase of salary. But the ability to