Читать книгу The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 - Ontario. Department of Education - Страница 3

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PREFACE.

Table of Contents

The selections in the High School Reader have been chosen with the belief that to pupils of such advancement as is required for entrance into High Schools and Collegiate Institutes, oral reading should be taught from the best literature, inasmuch as it not only affords a wide range of thought and sentiment, but it also demands for its appropriate vocal interpretation such powers of sympathy and appreciation as are developed only by culture; and it is to impart culture that these institutions of higher learning have been established.

Experience has shown that it is from their ordinary reading books that pupils obtain their chief practical acquaintance with literature, and the selections here presented have been made with this in remembrance. They have been taken from the writings of authors of acknowledged representative character; and they have been arranged for the most part chronologically, so that pupils may unconsciously obtain some little insight into the history of the development of the literary art. They have also been so chosen as to convey a somewhat fair idea of the relative value and productivity of authorship in the three great English-speaking communities of the world—the mother countries, our neighbours' country, and our own.

While a limited space, if nothing else, prevents the collection here made from being a complete anthology, yet it does pretend to represent the authors selected in characteristic moods, and (in so far as is possible in a school book, and a reading text-book) to present a somewhat fair perspective of the world of authorship. It may be said that, if this be so, some names are conspicuously absent: McGee, Canada's poet-orator; Parkman, who has given to our country a place in the portraiture of nations; William Morris, the chief of the modern school of romanticism; Tyndall, who of the literature of science has made an art; Lamb, daintiest of humorists; Collins, "whose range of flight," as Swinburne says, "was the highest of his generation." Either from lack of space, or from some inherent unsuitableness in such selections as might otherwise have been made, it was found impossible to represent these names worthily; but as they are all more or less adequately represented in the Fourth Reader, the teacher who may wish to correct the perspective here presented may refer his pupils to the pieces from these authors there given. It may be added, too, that the body of recent literature is so enormous, that no adequate representation of it (at any rate as regards quantity) is possible within the limits of one book.

The selections in poetry, with but three necessary exceptions, are complete wholes, and represent, as fairly as single pieces can, the respective merits and styles of their authors. The selections in prose cannot, of course, lay claim to this excellence; but they are all complete in themselves, or have been made so by short introductions; and it is hoped that they too are not unfairly representative of their authors. In many cases they are of somewhat unusual length; by this, however, they gain in interest and in representative character.

In some of the prose selections, passages have occasionally been omitted, either because they interfered with the main narrative, or because, as they added nothing to it, to omit them would be a gain of space. In most cases these omissions are indicated by small asterisks.

All the selections, both in prose and in verse, have been made with constant reference to their suitableness for the teaching of reading. They are fitted to exemplify every mode of expression, except, perhaps, that appropriate to a few of the stronger passions. It is not pretended that they are all simple and easy. Many of them will require much study and preparation before they can be read with that precision of expression which is necessary to perfect intelligibility. The chronological arrangement precludes grading; the teacher will decide in what order the selections are to be read.

The introductory chapter is mainly intended to assist the teacher in imparting to his pupils a somewhat scientific knowledge of the art of reading. Of course the teacher will choose for himself his mode of dealing with the chapter, but it has been written with the thought that he should use it as a convenient series of texts, which he might expand and illustrate in accordance with his opportunities and judgment. Examples for illustration are indispensable to the successful study of the principles described, and they should be sought for and obtained by the teacher and pupils together (whenever possible they should be taken from the Reader), and should be kept labeled for reference and practice. If the application of these principles be thus practically made by the pupils themselves, they will receive a much more lasting impression of their meaning and value than if the examples were given to them at no cost of thought or search on their part.

To the teacher it is recommended that he should not be contented with the short and necessarily imperfect exposition of the art of reading therein given. The more familiar he is with the scientific principles the more successfully will he be able to direct the studies and practices of his pupils. Works on elocution are numerous and accessible. Dr. Rush's Philosophy of the Voice is perhaps the foundation of all subsequent good work in the exposition of voice culture. Professor Murdoch's Analytic Elocution is an exhaustive and scholarly treatise based upon it, and to the plan of treatment therein fully developed the practical part of the introductory chapter has largely conformed.

The pleasing task remains of thanking those authors who have so kindly responded to requests for permission to use selections from their works: to President Wilson, for a sonnet from Spring Wild Roses, and for Our Ideal; to Mr. Charles Sangster, for two sonnets from Hesperus; to Mr. John Reade, for two poems from The Prophecy of Merlin; to Mr. Charles Mair, for the scenes from Tecumseh; and to Professor C. G. D. Roberts, for To Winter.

To Miss A. T. Jones, thanks are due for permission to use Abigail Becker, recently published in the Century Magazine. The heroic acts described in this poem seem so wonderful, so greatly superior to woman's strength, even to human strength and endurance, to accomplish, that were it possible to doubt its truthfulness, doubt one certainly would. Nevertheless the poem is not only strictly in accordance with the facts, it is even within and below them.

(The Titles of the Selections in Poetry are printed in Italics.)

NUMBER.	TITLE.	AUTHOR.	PAGE.
I.	King Solomon's Prayer and Blessing at the Dedication of the Temple.	Holy Bible	33
II.	Invitation.	Holy Bible	39
III.	The Trial Scene in the "Merchant of Venice."	Shakespeare	40
IV.	Of Boldness.	Bacon	53
V.	To Daffodils.	Herrick	55
VI.	Of Contentedness in all Estates and Accidents.	Taylor	56
VII.	To Lucasta, on Going to the Wars.	Lovelace	61
VIII.	Angling.	Walton	62
IX.	On the Morning of Christ's Nativity.	Milton	67
X.	Character of Lord Falkland.	Clarendon	76
XI.	Veni, Creator Spiritus.	Dryden	81
XII.	Lines printed under the Portrait of Milton.	Dryden	82
XIII.	Reason.	Dryden	83
XIV.	On the Love of Country as a Principle of Action.	Steele	83
XV.	The Golden Scales.	Addison	88
XVI.	Misjudged Hospitality.	Swift	93
XVII.	From the "Essay on Man."	Pope	96
XVIII.	Rule, Britannia.	Thomson	101
XIX.	The First Crusade.	Hume	102
XX.	The Bard.	Gray	111
XXI.	On an Address to the Throne concerning Affairs in America.	Chatham	116
XXII.	From "The Vicar of Wakefield."	Goldsmith	127
XXIII.	Meeting of Johnson with Wilkes.	Boswell	133
XXIV.	The Policy of the Empire in the First Century.	Gibbon	142
XXV.	On the Attacks upon his Pension.	Burke	147
XXVI.	Two Eighteenth Century Scenes.	Cowper	155
XXVII.	From "The School for Scandal."	Sheridan	159
XXVIII.	The Cotter's Saturday Night.	Burns	171
XXIX.	The Land o' the Leal.	Lady Nairn	177
XXX.	The Trial by Combat at the Diamond of the Desert.	Scott	179
XXXI.	To a Highland Girl.	Wordsworth	202
XXXII.	France: an Ode.	Coleridge	205
XXXIII.	Complaint and Reproof.	Coleridge	208
XXXIV.	The Well of St. Keyne.	Southey	209
XXXV.	The Isles of Greece.	Byron	211
XXXVI.	Go where Glory Waits Thee.	Moore	214
XXXVII.	Dear Harp of My Country.	Moore	215
XXXVIII.	Come, ye Disconsolate.	Moore	216
XXXIX.	On a Lock of Milton's Hair.	Hunt	217
XL.	The Glove and the Lions.	Hunt	217
XLI.	The Cloud.	Shelley	219
XLII.	On First Looking into Chapman's Homer.	Keats	222
XLIII.	On the Grasshopper and the Cricket.	Keats	222
XLIV.	The Power and Danger of the Cæsars.	De Quincey	223
XLV.	Unthoughtfulness.	Dr. Arnold	227
XLVI.	The Bridge of Sighs.	Hood	234
XLVII.	A Parental Ode to my Son.	Hood	237
XLVIII.	Metaphysics.	Haliburton	239
XLIX.	Indian Summer.	Lover	246
L.	To Helen.	Praed	246
LI.	Horatius.	Macaulay	247
LII.	The Raven.	Poe	258
LIII.	David Swan—A Fantasy.	Hawthorne	262
LIV.	My Kate.	Mrs. Browning	270
LV.	A Dead Rose.	Mrs. Browning	271
LVI.	To the Evening Wind.	Bryant	272
LVII.	Death of the Protector.	Carlyle	274
LVIII.	Each and All.	Emerson	282
LIX.	Waterloo.	Lever	284
LX.	The Diver.	Lytton	294
LXI.	The Plague of Locusts.	Newman	299
LXII.	The Cane-bottom'd Chair.	Thackeray	306
LXIII.	The Reconciliation.	Thackeray	308
LXIV.	The Island of the Scots.	Aytoun	315
LXV.	The Gambling Party.	Beaconsfield	321
LXVI.	The Pickwickians Disport themselves on Ice.	Dickens	327
LXVII.	The Hanging of the Crane.	Longfellow	336
LXVIII.	Earthworms.	Darwin	342
LXIX.	"As Ships, Becalmed at Eve."	Clough	346
LXX.	Duty.	Clough	347
LXXI.	Sonnets.	Heavysege	349
LXXII.	Dr. Arnold at Rugby.	Dean Stanley	350
LXXIII.	Ode to the North-east Wind.	Kingsley	354
LXXIV.	From "The Mill on the Floss."	George Eliot	356
LXXV.	The Cloud Confines.	Rossetti	359
LXXVI.	Barbara Frietchie.	Whittier	361
LXXVII.	Contentment.	Holmes	364
LXXVIII.	The British Constitution.	Gladstone	367
LXXIX.	The Lord of Burleigh.	Tennyson	370
LXXX.	"Break, Break, Break."	Tennyson	373
LXXXI.	The "Revenge".	Tennyson	373
LXXXII.	Hervé Riel.	Browning	378
LXXXIII.	Sonnet.	Dr. Wilson	383
LXXXIV.	Our Ideal.	Dr. Wilson	383
LXXXV.	From the Apology of Socrates.	Jowett	384
LXXXVI.	The Empire of the Cæsars.	Froude	389
LXXXVII.	Of the Mystery of Life.	Ruskin	390
LXXXVIII.	The Robin.	Lowell	397
LXXXIX.	The Old Cradle.	Locker	400
XC.	Rugby Chapel.	Matt. Arnold	401
XCI.	In the Orillia Woods.	Sangster	408
XCII.	Morals and Character in the Eighteenth Century.	Goldwin Smith	409
XCIII.	A Liberal Education.	Huxley	412
XCIV.	Too Late.	Mrs. Craik	416
XCV.	Amor Mundi.	Miss Rossetti	417
XCVI.	Toujours Amour.	Stedman	418
XCVII.	England.	Aldrich	419
XCVIII.	Rococo.	Aldrich	420
XCIX.	Kings of Men.	John Reade	420
C.	Thalatta! Thalatta!	John Reade	421
CI.	The Forsaken Garden.	Swinburne	422
CII.	A Ballad To Queen Elizabeth of the Spanish Armada.	Dobson	424
CIII.	Circe.	Dobson	426
CIV.	Scenes from "Tecumseh."	Mair	426
CV.	The Return of the Swallows.	Gosse	437
CVI.	Dawn Angels.	Miss Robinson	438
CVII.	Le Roi Est Mort.	Miss Robinson	439
CVIII.	To Winter.	Roberts	440
CIX.	Abigail Becker.	Miss Jones	442

SHORT EXTRACTS.

Table of Contents

FIRST LINES.	AUTHOR.	PAGE.
He that cannot see well	Bacon	54
Stone walls do not a prison make	Lovelace	55
When the heart is right	Berkeley	87
It must be so—Plato, thou reasonest well	Addison	92
England, with all thy faults, I love thee still	Cowper	154
Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast	Cowper	158
Oh, wad some power the giftie gie us	Burns	170
Life! we've been long together	Mrs. Barbauld	178
Rough wind, that moanest loud	Shelley	218
There is a book, who runs may read	Keble	233
There is no great and no small	Emerson	245
Wellington, Thy great work is but begun	Rossetti	293
Sacrifice and self-devotion	Lord Houghton	320
Flower in the crannied wall	Tennyson	366
It fortifies my soul to know	Clough	369
And yet, dear heart! remembering thee	Whittier	372
There is no land like England	Tennyson	377
The Summum Pulchrum rests in heaven above	Clough	382
Be of good cheer then, my dear Crito	Socrates	388
What know we greater than the soul	Tennyson	407
That is best blood that hath most iron in't	Lowell	411
Such kings of shreds have woo'd and won her	Aldrich	419