Macdonald gives his higher classes long poems. They have learned up pages of _Marmion_ and pages of _The Lady of the Lake_; and now he is giving them the long and difficult _Elegy_. I must ask him some day what his idea is. I made learning poetry optional when I was in the school. I eschewed all long poems, and I never asked a child to stand up and "say" a piece. My view was that school poetry should be school folk-song; I used to write short pieces on the board and the classes recited them in unison. I gave no hint of expression, for expression should always be a natural thing. I have been timid of expression ever since the day I heard, or rather saw, a youth recite _The Dream of Eugene Aram_. When he came to the climax ... "And lo! the faithless stream was dry!" I suddenly discovered that I was dry too, and I did not wait until Eugene was led away with "gyves upon his wrists." I once saw Sir Henry Irving in _The Bells_. I was a schoolboy at the time and I straightway spent all my pocket money on books dealing with elocution; I also would tear my hair before the footlights! Looking back now I wonder why Irving bothered with stuff of that sort; why his sense of humour allowed him to grope about the stage for the axe to kill the Polish Jew I don't understand. All that melodramatic romantic business is simply theatrical gush. It appeals to the classes that devour the _Police News_. Expression when taught is gush. When I gave my bairns a bit of _The Ancient Mariner_ the whole crowd brightened up and shouted when they came to the verse:-- I bit my arm, I sucked the blood And cried: "A sail! A sail!" They understood that part, but they put no special expression into the stanza:-- All in a hot and copper sky, The bloody sun at noon Right up above the mast did stand, No bigger than the moon. The boys used to emphasise the adjective in the second line, but that was perhaps natural in a community where strong language is the prerogative of grown-ups. I suppose that a teacher of expression would have pointed out that the right arm must be raised gracefully at the third line, and the voice lowered awfully to show the marvellous significance of the fact that the crudoric sun was no bigger than the moon. All I tried to give my bairns was an appreciation of rhythm. They loved the trochaic rhythm of a poem, _Marsh Marigolds_, by G. F. Bradby, that I discovered in a school anthology:-- Slaty skies and a whistling wind and a grim grey land, April here with a sullen mind and a frozen hand, Hardly a bird with the heart to sing, or a bud that dares to pry, Only the plovers hovering, On the lonely marsh, with a heavy wing And a sad slow cry. And it used to make me joyful to hear them gallop through Stevenson's delightful _My Ship and I_:--