Rolfe's Students' Series.

THIS series of STANDARD ENGLISH POEMS is intended both for school use and for the private student. It is prepared on the same general plan as Mr. Rolfe's wellknown edition of SHAKESPEARE, and now includes the following volumes :

I. SCOTT'S THE LADY OF THE LAKE. - An account of this book will be found on the following pages; and the hints to teachers there given will apply, with certain obvious modifications, to the other volumes of the series.

II. SCOTT'S MARMION.. As Mr. Rolfe explains in his Preface, this popular poem has never been correctly printed until now; and, much as it has been read in schools, this is the first thoroughly annotated edition that has been published. Scott's own Notes, though bulky, are comparatively few in number; and Lockhart's add little to them except his interesting transcript of MS. variations from the printed text. Mr. Rolfe is the first to supply explanations of many allusions which would puzzle young readers, if not their elders also; and he adds much other valuable comment and criticism.

III. TENNYSON'S THE PRINCESS. - No modern poem needs annotation more than this, on account of its numerous recondite allusions and the extensive alterations the author has made from time to time in the text. Mr. Rolfe clears up all obscurities, and records all the textual variations of the successive editions, besides giving long extracts from the most important reviews and criticisms of the poem.

IV. SELECT POEMS OF TENNYSON.- This volume contains seventeen of the Laureate's minor poems (including THE LADY OF SHALOTT, THE MILler's Daughter, ŒENONE, THE LOTOSEATERS, THE PALACE OF ART, A DREAM OF Fair Women, Morte D'ARTHUR, THE TALKING OAK, LOCKSLEY HALL, THE TWO Voices, THE BROOK, and the WELLINGTON ODE), with copious explanatory and critical notes. In the second revised edition (which has been augmented by eighteen pages of "Addenda") all the changes made in the poems since their first appearance in print are given, with other curious information concerning them. The greater part of this matter has never been published before, and the earlier forms of the poems that appeared in Tennyson's volumes of 1830 and 1832 (1833) are almost unknown both in England and in this country, on account of the extreme rarity of those editions, Mr. Rolfe could not get access to copies while preparing his first edition, but afterwards had the opportunity of consulting them in the British Museum. These additions to the SELECT POEMS cannot fail to be of exceeding interest to every student and critic of Tennyson.

V. THE YOUNG PEOPLE'S TENNYSON.. - This volume is made up of poems suited to a younger class of readers and students than those for whom the SELECT POEMS is designed. It includes, among other pieces: THE MAY QUEEN, DORA, Godiva, THE DAY-DREAM, LADY CLARE, THE CAPTAIN, THE VOYAGE, THE REVENGE, THE DEFENCE OF LUCKNOW, THE VOYAGE OF MAELDUNE, THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE, etc. The Notes are adapted to the capacity of young people, and include a good deal of elementary instruction in the elements of rhetoric and criticism.

Other volumes of the Series are in preparation.

THE LADY OF THE LAKE.

SIR WALTER SCOTT.

In a school edition of an English classic, as I said in the preface to the Merchant of Venice thirteen years ago, the requisites are "a pure text and the notes needed for its thorough elucidation and illustration."

So far as the text is concerned, it might be expected that all an editor could have to do, in the case of a recent author like Scott, would be to follow a "standard" edition like Lockhart's; but, as I have explained in my preface, a careful collation of the best edi

tions has proved that no two of them agree exactly in their readings, and that all of them are more or less corrupt. The errors, moreover, are often of a serious nature, marring or spoiling the sense, and otherwise doing the poet gross wrong. It may be fairly claimed that in the present edition the text is correctly printed for the first time in half a century at least. If in any case there may be a question as to the reading I have adopted, the teacher or student can select another from the notes, where all the "various readings" are recorded.

In the Notes, as in my edition of Shakespeare, I have preferred to err, if at all, on the side of fulness. Notes should never furnish what the student may reasonably be required to find out

for himself.

So long as they give him new work to do, instead of doing his work for him, there had better be too many of them than too few. The teacher will know how much of the possible labor it is expedient to exact.

Scott's own notes I have generally given in full. A few of the longest have been somewhat abridged, mainly in the illustrative quotations, some of which are of no special interest except to the critic or the antiquarian. That these omitted portions are little read, even by critics, is evident from the fact (noted in my preface) that the dropping out of a whole page, through the carelessness of a printer, whereby the halves of two disconnected sentences are fused into one unintelligible sentence, has passed undetected or at least uncorrected in all the reprints of Lockhart's edition for fifty years.

A few suggestions to teachers concerning the use of the Notes may not be out of place. I do not assume that they will be needed by all teachers, but they may be of service to some.

In the first place, the notes are not intended to be assigned in bulk as lessons. They are to be used for reference as needed, not to be committed to memory. The poetry is the lesson, the notes are merely aids in studying it. To what extent they are to be used will depend upon the method of study.

Again, some of the notes are simply hints to the teacher, which he can follow out at his discretion. I will illustrate my meaning by a few examples from the first pages.

66

On page 181 (note on 32) I refer to the fact that a figure is peculiarly appropriate," or in keeping with the scene and the subject. It would be easy to multiply notes of this kind, but to do so would defeat my purpose. I do not believe in “ sign-post criticism of this kind. The teacher should see that his pupils find similar instances for themselves, giving them help only in a Socratic way, and no further than may be necessary to train them to the exercise of their own taste and judgment.

On page 182, the notes on 38 and 54, calling attention to the rhetorical force of inversions (the teacher should read Herbert Spencer's essay on "The Philosophy of Style," if he is not already familiar with it), those on 46 and 80, referring to words not admissible in prose, and those on 66 and 69, pointing out poetical or metaphorical uses of words, illustrate classes of comments which the pupil may be led to make for himself to whatever extent the teacher pleases.

If the pupil has not learned the elementary facts about figurative language, let him learn them, not from a school text-book of "rhetoric," but from the poem, and by finding and analyzing them for himself, rather than by having them pointed out and explained to him; and the same may be said of the "properties of style," and of " "rhetoric" in general, so far as it has to do with poetry. In my own experience, I have found this the most satisfactory, if not the only really satisfactory, way of teaching these things to young students. The average schoolboy or schoolgirl can be led, by judicious questioning, to deduce all this "rhetoric" from the first two or three pages of the Lady of the Lake in a few hours. Almost no direct instruction is needed. The technical terms of the textbook should be very sparingly introduced. Only such as have ceased to be exclusively technical, and ought to be understood by every well-informed person (metaphor, simile, personification, and the like) should be employed. The mere pointing out of instances of the figures (saying "This is a metaphor," or "That is a simile," etc.), without regard to the aptness, or beauty, or other noteworthy fact concerning them, is flat, stale, and unprofitable" work, after the pupil has once learned to recognize and name the figures. In some schools this is the chief thing done in the socalled "study" of poetry, but it is about as useless as "parsing," than which no exercise can be more useless.

I might go on with illustrations of what would be my own way of using notes and following out their suggestions, but these