Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 08 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/347

Rh writing and composition, especially poetic composition. All that we can do is to show them how to get started.

If what I have done for the attainment of this end may be called methods, then these methods are the following:—

I. To propose the largest and most varied choice of themes, not inventing them especially for children, but proposing the most serious themes, such as interest the teacher himself.

II. To give children children's works to read, and to propose as models, because children's works are always more genuine, more elegant, and more moral than the works of adults.

III. (Especially important.) Never, while examining children's works, make for the pupils any observations about the neatness of the note-books, or about the calligraphy, or about the spelling, or, above all, about the order of topics or the logic.

IV. As in authorship the difficulty lies not in the dimensions, or the contents, or the artfulness of the theme, so the progression of the themes ought not to lie in the dimensions, or the contents, or the language, but in the mechanism of the action, consisting first in the choice of one out of a large number of ideas and images presenting themselves; secondly, in the choice of words wherewith to array it; thirdly, in remembering it and finding a place for it; fourthly, in remembering what has been already written, so as not to indulge in repetitions, and not to omit anything, and including the ability to write what follows with what precedes; fifthly and lastly, while thinking and writing, not letting the one interfere with the other.

With this end in view, I did as follows:—

Some of these phases of work I at first took on myself, gradually transferring them all to their care. At first I chose for them from among the thoughts and images those which seemed to me the best, and I remembered and pointed out the places, and I corrected what had been written, preventing them from repetitions; and I