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32 Visual Education
beyond the "period" limit. By no conceivable process of compression can Adam Bede, or Oliver Twist, or Henry Esmond be given adequate or even consecutive presentation in an hour. If the motion picture accentuated the habit of thinking in bits, of a goat-like leaping from point to point which is the bane of the school-room, it would be, not a help, but a menace to be cursed with bell and book and candle.
Moreover, normally the best part of a novel cannot be transferred to the screen. In the case of such tales as Treasure Island, indeed, a coarsened, syncopated representation of the plot can be given, but that is all. And this is not the function of the educational motion picture. In the case of more delicately conceived novels, even when as in Henry Esmond action plays a relatively large role, the loss is far greater. We could easily film the duel between Mohun and Lord Esmond. But how could the film give the delicate strength of the scene in which young Henry learns that his dying benefactor has confessed that the title and estate belong to Harry ?
"At the end of an hour — it may be more — Mr. Atterbury came out of the room, looking very hard at Esmond, and holding a paper.
" 'He is on the brink of God's awful judgment,' the priest whispered. 'He has made his breast clean to me. He forgives and believes, and makes restitution. Shall it be in public? Shall we call a witness to sign it?'
" 'God knows,' sobbed out the young man, 'my dearest Lord has only done me kindness all his life.'
"The priest put the paper into Esmond's hand. He looked at it. It swam before his eyes.
" ' 'Tis a confession,' he said.
" ' 'Tis as you please,' said Mr. Atterbury.
"There was a fire in the room, where the cloths were drying for the baths, and there lay a heap in a corner, saturated with the blood of my dear Lord's body. Esmond went to the fire, and threw the paper into it. 'Twas a great chimney with glazed Dutch tiles. How we remember such trifles in such awful moments ! — the scrap of the book that we have read in great grief — the taste of that last dish we have eaten before a duel — or some such supreme meeting or parting. On the Dutch tiles at the bagnio was a rude picture representing Jacob in hairy gloves, cheating Isaac of Esau's birthright. The burning paper lighted it up."
To rely on free use of a handkerchief, as the screen actor would to register his grief, would not merely wrong Thackeray; it would wrong the pupil, would coarsen him by dulling his finer edges. Again and again it must be reiterated, the motion pictures can kill imagination. Among other functions, English Literature has the task of stimulating and making finer the imagination of a rather work-a-day generation.
What remains, then, if we rule out whole classes of books as unsuitable material for the silent drama ? So much that it is difficult to pin oneself down to a reasonable compass. But two principles begin for me to emerge. The first is, the moving picture must not he used in schools for amusement only, or as a sup