[Illustration: THE GIRL’S OWN PAPER VOL. XX.—NO. 1023.] AUGUST 5, 1899. [PRICE ONE PENNY.] SELF-CULTURE FOR GIRLS. BY LILY WATSON. [Illustration: OPEN-AIR SKETCHING.] _All rights reserved._] PART VII. After all the serious advice we have given to our readers as to the literature that is to make them wise, it is pleasant to write of self-culture through the study of the best poetry. It is, however, not by deliberately taking poetry as a vehicle of education, hunting up every allusion, parsing difficult sentences, and picking the whole thing to pieces, that readers will fall under its sway and know the power of its magic spell. We have often mourned in secret at the prevailing fashion of “getting up” this, that, and the other poem for examinations, and have wondered what such an introduction to English literature is worth. Of this method of handling the work of poets one may use Wordsworth’s phrase: “We murder to dissect.” Is it desirable, then, to pass by allusions without comprehending them? Have we not praised the aspiring student who wants to know, for instance, who was the “daughter of the gods, divinely tall And most divinely fair,” or who it was “Who saw life steadily and saw it whole, The mellow glory of the Attic stage, Singer of sweet Colonus and its child”? We can only say that, whereas anxiety to understand whatever one reads intelligently is to be commended, no individual knowledge about a masterpiece of poetic genius is to be put in place of the masterpiece itself. And we unhesitatingly condemn the practice of using poems as vehicles for lessons in grammar, Grimm’s Law, or any other technical matter whatsoever. For instance, if Wordsworth’s “Excursion” has any meaning for your heart and mind, do not read it with notes which stop you four times in the first three lines, with the derivation of “landscape,” the explanation of “downs” and other kindred matters, which are undoubtedly useful, but should not be learnt by the medium of an immortal poem. If you need lessons in this elementary sort of thing, we should advise you to find them elsewhere. If you have to read one of Shakespeare’s plays edited by such admirable commentators as Mr. Aldis Wright or Mr. Verity, do not adopt the method of the girl who covered up the text, lest it should divert her attention from the notes! But the notes are the most important matter to the minds of thousands of middle-class girls and boys, because it is on the notes they are going to be examined. A suggestive and amusing essay on this subject for elder readers is to be found in _Reviews and Essays in English Literature_, by the Rev. D. C. Tovey, M.A., Clark Lecturer at Trinity College, Cambridge. The well-known couplet: “You must love him ere to you He will seem worthy of your love,”