and the rapid shifting to and fro between two totally different studies is adverse to both." (Bain's Education as a Science, p. 348.) Let us if we wish, at certain sittings, overtake the historical and literary information contained in the essay, but let us also thereafter at certain other sittings rigorously confine our attention to the form and nothing but the form.

Now, we hold that the business of the English teacher is with the form chiefly-that he should not undertake to explain allusions or obscurities, that he should not be enticed away to clear up mythological references except in so far as they have a bearing on the form. To go into all that, is making the book a History Text-Book, and in consistency you ought to call the class the History, and not the English class. The English teacher's business is with the style with the Sentences and the Paragraphs, the Order of the Words and the Figures of Speech. He must point out Macaulay's mannerisms, his love of Antithesis and of the Balanced Structure, his art in building compact and straightforward paragraphs; he must show the author at his best and at his worst, and open the eyes of the pupils to the good and the bad in Composition.

Still, as it is too much to expect that this

view will be readily accepted, a concession has been made to the old method of annotating the matter, by appending a series of notes explaining allusions and difficulties in the Text. But of so little intrinsic value is this held to be, that the notes are relegated for easy reference to the

foot of the page. They are not considered to

be of much importance; many of them merely satisfy a natural curiosity to know something about unknown names; others of them are helpful in understanding Macaulay's meaning, but most of them could be dispensed with in handling the book in its narrowest use as exemplifying a literary style. Another concession has been made in introducing a Memoir of Milton. This of course is useless except as information. All through the essay, Macaulay takes for granted a full knowledge of Milton's Life and Times, so much so, that to one ignorant of the history of that period, a large part of the text presents innumerable difficulties. This is one great reason for regarding the book as altogether unsuitable for information purposes. Instruction in facts should be direct and emphatic, and should not proceed by mere implication. And, if we insist on making such a treatise as this the basis of instruction in facts, we must first lay a proper foundation preliminary and

external to our main theme.

A short life of Macaulay is added by way of giving some touch of personality to the author whose literary qualities are the chief topic in the notes.

What then, after the text itself, is considered of most importance to the pupil, is the series of notes at the end of the book. These should be his chief study. They pre-suppose a knowledge of some Text-Book of Rhetoric, such as Bain's Composition and Rhetoric; and after so much of the abstract principles of that hand-book have been assimilated they afford a wide compass of concrete examples, and become a kind of Rhetorical Parsing.

To teach Composition two things are neces

sary.

I. A Text-Book where the abstract principles are laid down with scientific precision and in orderly array.

2. An application of the principles to concrete examples, and an examination of the fitness of the language used. The two things should go hand in hand, and should supplement and support each other. The first condition is being pretty generally fulfilled now-a-days, but any attempts at fulfilling the second have been desultory, and made by each individual teacher for himself. What is still wanted is a number of

editions of our classics annotated from this point of view. The present attempt is put forward in a merely tentative way, and in consequence, the passages selected are not discussed with all the fulness and minuteness that would be called for, after the pupils are more familiarised with the method. Further, it is not considered necessary to overtake the entire treatise. Some passages illustrate much, others very little and it is better to dwell on good and strikingly illustrative instances than to make a point of handling all and sundry with equal detail. Consequently, some pages are passed lightly over as being less profitable material than others more exhaustively treated.

Incidentally, the peculiarities of Macaulay's style receive a fulness of exemplification that entitles the book to the claim of being a critical estimate of the author's literary genius.

In the critical notes, considerable acknowledgment is due to the minute analysis of Macaulay's style, in Professor Minto's Manual of English Prose Literature.

ABERDEEN, June, 1884.

MEMOIR OF JOHN MILTON* (1608-1674).

MI

ILTON was born in 1608, in London. There he spent the first sixteen years of his life, the last sixteen of the reign of James I. In 1625, aged 17, and just after the accession of Charles I., he was admitted at Christ's College, Cambridge, where he studied for seven years, with industrious and persevering

success.

On leaving the University, Milton went to reside in Buckinghamshire, at a small village not far from Windsor, called Horton, where his father, a London scrivener, who had by this time retired from business, had taken a country house. The disturbed state of politics- King Charles having quarrelled with three Parliaments, and now resolving to govern by his own authority-led Milton to give up his original intention of entering the church, and he resolved to devote himself thenceforward exclusively to study, speculation, and literature. Six years of this life he saw here, producing at intervals the five poems belonging to his first period -L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Arcades, Comus, and Lycidas.

The quiet time at Horton brings him to his thirtieth year, and meanwhile Charles was busy with his new views on Government. By the help of his chief advisers, Laud and

* As Macaulay takes a knowledge of Milton's life and times for granted in his essay, it is perhaps advisable to present to the pupil a brief but general survey of the history of the poet's time, especially in so far as the facts are referred to in the text. The narrative is an abstract of the lengthy Memoir of Milton prefixed by Professor Masson to his edition of Milton's Poems.