Shall Composition and Literature Be Divided

Shall The Courses In Composition And Literature Be Divided? Yes.

The present practice of combining literature and composition in one department with the same teacher for both is of long standing. It has been all but universal. It is still widespread. What is there to be said for it?

Not much, to be sure. It strikes the mind of authority as economical. For the wage of one person it takes

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care of two troublesome subjects and yet is supposed to put each in the hands of a specialist. It removes conflicts in hours as between literature and composition by the easy method of suppressing one subject bodily, while the conscience of the program maker remains undisturbed, as the suppressed subject and that by which it is suppressed are alike "English." It is even supposed to be

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economical in a third way. With the two subjects treated as one or as bound together as indissolubly as were the Siamese twins, it is easy to make literature furnish themes for composition and models for the composer. The student, moreover, working out his themes with the great models ever before him is supposed both to do better work and to discover through comparison and

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contrast the secrets of style, or at the very least to gain increase of admiration for the productions his own work falls so far below. Some advocates will add that the present custom gives the student a finer sense of the value of words and makes for a wider vocabulary than the proposed arrangement. The compostion teacher who is also a teacher of literature will, they say,

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have a more sensitive taste and a finer discrimination than another and his pupil should profit the more.

If there is anything else to be said for the present arrangement, I fail to see it, nor, indeed, do I think the points already urged are well taken or amount to much. All that composition and literature can properly do for each other they