If it should be made
a part of the "Major Course in English" (where it seems properly to belong),
I could easily arrange a simpler and less arduous modification of it
for the corresponding "Minor Course".
I am so deeply interested in this matter -- of making a finer fibre
for all our young American manhood by leading our youth in proper relations
with English poetry -- that at the risk of consuming your whole vacation
with reading this long and unconscionable letter I will mention
that I have nearly completed three works which are addressed
to the practical accomplishment of the object named, by supplying
a wholly different method of study from that mischievous one
which has generally arisen from a wholly mistaken use of the numerous
"Manuals" of English literature. These works are my three text-books:
(1) "The Science of English Verse", in which the student's path
is cleared of a thousand errors and confusions which have
obstructed this study for a long time, by a very simple system
founded upon the physical relations of sound; (2) "From Caedmon to Chaucer",
in which I present all the most interesting Anglo-Saxon poems
remaining to us, in a form which renders their literary quality appreciable
by all students, whether specially pursuing Old English or not,
thus placing these poems where they ought always to have stood,
as a sort of grand and simple vestibule through which
the later mass of English poetry is to be approached; and (3) my "Chaucer",
which I render immediately enjoyable, without preliminary preparation,
by an interlined glossarial explanation of the original text,
and an indication (with hyphens) of those terminal syllables
affecting the rhythm which have decayed out of the modern tongue.
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