The teaching of literature is a matter as to which it is easy to make mistakes. There is not the slightest use, either for young or old, in being well-informed _about_ literature, knowing the dates of the poets, the names of their works, and so on. Everything that can be put into a handbook is worthless. What is valuable is great familiarity with certain examples of good literature--such familiarity as will influence the style, not only of writing, but of thought. In old days the Bible supplied this to English children, certainly with a beneficial effect upon prose style; but few modern children know the Bible intimately. I think the good effect of literature cannot be fully obtained without learning by heart. This practice used to be advocated as a training for the memory, but psychologists have shown that it has little, if any, effect in this way. Modern educationists give it less and less place. But I think they are mistaken, not because of any possible improvement of memory, but on account of the effect upon beauty of language in speech and writing. This should come without effort, as a spontaneous expression of thought; but in order to do so, in a community which has lost the primitive æsthetic impulses, it is necessary to produce a habit of thought which I believe is only to be generated by intimate knowledge of good literature. That is why learning by heart seems to me important. But mere learning of set pieces, such as “the quality of mercy” and “all the world’s a stage”, seems tedious and artificial to most children, and therefore fails of its purpose. It is much better that learning by heart should be associated with acting, because then it is a necessary means to something which every child loves. From the age of three onwards, children delight in acting a part; they do it spontaneously, but are overjoyed when more elaborate ways of doing it are put in their way. I remember the exquisite amusement with which I acted the quarrel scene between Brutus and Cassius, and declaimed: I had rather be a dog and bay the moon Than such a Roman.