James Rhoades on Training the Imagination

James Rhoades · Down to Earth Series · 15 pages

James Rhoades, The Training of the Imagination, London: John Lane, The Bodley Head, and New York: John Lane Co., 1908, dedicated to the memory of Edward Malet Young. The frontispiece is by Josephine Wall. A footnote in “Virgil's Georgics — tr. Rhoades” elsewhere in this series lists his poems.

The author's preface explains what the piece is and how it came to print. The address was written twenty-three years before publication and read to an essay-society consisting exclusively of public school masters, appearing shortly afterwards in The Journal of Education; Rhoades publishes it now at the urgent solicitation of friends, and with misgivings, calling it a tiny rush-light to contribute to the illumination now enlightening or dazzling men's minds on educational aims and methods. He has made no attempt to re-model or re-write it, and asks indulgence for the colloquialisms and levities of style that suit an audience of private individuals better than a reading public. The address itself opens in the same key, with Rhoades describing how his heart failed him when he was first asked to read a paper before the assembly, how for many days echo answered “Nothing” when he asked himself whether after so many years' experience he had anything to say about the art he professed, and how he tried to console himself with the reflection that practical success does not require having a theory to advance, or feeling strongly about other people's theories — the self-deprecating opening from which the argument for training the faculty is developed.

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