Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1886 [PAGE 178]

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170 author speak for himself. Good manners can be better acquired in good society than from books on etiquette. We are nourished by the meat we digest and assimilate, not by advertisements of meat markets. So with literature: if one would be profited by the literary products of any age, or by the words of some master of wisdom, he must transport himself into that age and feel in his own being the pulse of its literary life; he must, as far as he can, enter into familiar converse with the master, and talk with him as friend talks with friend. In accordance with this idea the attempt is made to carry orr the work of this department of the University. First, the whole period of English literary history, from the birth of Chaucer to the present day, is divided into eras, and selections for reading and study are made from the representative writers of each. Attention is called to the peculiar features of the several «ras, and to the characteristics of the greater authors. The first iwo terms of the freshman year are thus occupied with British and American authors. In the third term Khetoric is taught with special reference to the second stage in the course, the analytical study of English classics (classics, first-class writers) as well as to the writing of essays and orations. This part of the course extends through ijhe sophomore year. As there is an intimate relation between the literature and the life of a people, as every age "enacts itself twice, first in its acts and events, and then in its writings," the study of the selected classics is accompanied by a study of the times of each Writer. In such way have been studied the great prose writers and poets named above, two of them representing the great creative period of our literature, one, the Puritan period, two, the most brilliant age of British oratory, one that of the political and literary revolution in the latter part of the eighteenth, and the beginning of the nineteenth century, and one taken from recent American history. The course is broken by the junior year. In the senior year, after the previous study of German has somewhat prepared the way, the original English, or Anglo-Saxon, is studied one term, and this is followed by one term's work in the <early English. These studies are required on the ground and in the belief that present English cannot be thoroughly known except by its historical study. The last term of the course is given to the study of the life and growth of language as illustrated by our own tongue, this seeming to be a suitable closing of the three years' work. Of English composition, as much has been required as could be attended to properly by a teacher having four hours of class-room work daily. Whenever such work has been^ required, it has been done promptly and cheerfully by all student's in this department. Failing the ability to do more in this line, the attempt has been made to supply the lack in part by constantly watching and criticising what may be called oral composition,—the expression of thought in recitation. To this end—care in composition—oral abstracts of what has been read are daily required. This exercise