Word: reading
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Dates: during 1870-1879
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...then, quite possible for all to read well. The next question is, whether good reading should be enforced in the recitations. Professor Child's elective in Shakespeare is made as instructive as his enviable reputation would lead one to expect. He teaches many things which those unfamiliar with the subject could not find out by themselves, and does his best to impart to the students his own evident interest and enthusiasm; but as he himself acknowledges, he takes no pains with the reading, which accordingly is weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable beyond description...
...seems plain, then, that to insist on good reading would not be out of place on the part of the Professor; but if Mr. Child, who has probably been hardened by long tribulation, has decided to pay no attention to this point, it would still be well for those who take the elective next year to make up their minds to lighten his weight and their own, by putting a little more life into the recitations, and trying to find pleasure in what they read. It is strange that so many who think it worth while to take a course...
...object of these words is not to find fault with the work of this year, but to show what another year may be made to bring forth. Mr. Child is beyond doubt in the right about the elocution question; but if he would make it clearly understood that good reading is a desideratum in his classes, and if the students would endeavor simply to pay attention and to be interested (if they did this they would be obliged to read well), then both the advantage and the enjoyment of the course would be doubled. It is somnambulistic and apathetic reading...
...carrying the matter a step too far, to quote a stanza of a translation from Alfred de Musset, and criticise it (favorably) as original. Though translations are easy enough to write, we had noticed this in the Lit. as particularly good, and do not doubt that those who read it in the Courant, without knowing it to be merely a reproduction, will think it more remarkable than we did. The Courant speaks of another poem in the Lit. ("A Counterfeit Presentment") as "a work of care and difficulty to the writer, which those only who have attempted this style...
...mistaken; in my classical elective we at once began a systematic omission of everything which could be twisted into a broad allusion. Of course, it is not desirable to read a passage which is merely indecent; but to omit one simply on account of a word which is not used in society, is certainly straining the point a little. It is like the use of "limb" for "leg," "retire" for "go to bed," and other similar absurdities, and reminds me of Moliere's prude, who had the bare limbs in pictures carefully covered...