“Do as I do.” We’ve all said this or something similar when teaching children, whether it’s to tie a shoe or cast a fishing line or hold a pencil. Children learn through imitation. And not only children: we all learn through imitation. We see someone else do something, and then we do it (arguably the best use of YouTube). We hear something expressed well, and then we put it in our own words as we talk with others about it (a great way to help a sermon stick).
Good writing has always been best taught by imitating the best. Roger Ascham, a 16th-century English educator who tutored Elizabeth I in Greek and Latin, had this to say about imitation in language: “Imitation is a faculty to express lively and perfectly that example which ye go about to follow… All languages, both learned and mother tongues, be gotten, and gotten only by Imitation. For as ye use to hear, so ye learn to speak: if ye hear no other, ye speak not yourself: and whom ye only heare, of them ye only learn. And therefore, if ye would speak as the best and wisest do, ye must be conversant where the best and wisest are…” (Roger Ascham, The Scholemaster, 1570, Bk. II “Of Imitation”).
If you want to use language well, you need to spend time with the best and wisest and imitate their use of language. This year in the Upper English class (most of the high school students), we’ve been doing exercises in imitation. We read The Merchant of Venice by Shakespeare, and in the first scene Gratiano (who’s rather a spendthrift of his tongue) jokingly comments on those who seem smart simply because they keep their mouths shut:
There are a sort of men whose visages
Do cream and mantle like a standing pond
And do a willful stillness entertain
With purpose to be dressed in an opinion
Of wisdom, gravity, profound conceit,
As who should say “I am Sir Oracle,
And when I ope my lips, let no dog bark.”
O my Antonio, I do know of these
That therefore only are reputed wise
For saying nothing, when, I am very sure,
If they should speak, would almost damn those ears
Which, hearing them, would call their brothers fools.
In order to imitate this passage, we first outlined the broad strokes (the numbers in the text above correspond to this outline): 1) Description with analogy, 2) Purpose – why they do this, 3) Speech in character, and 4) Commentary. Having a good model, and knowing the structure of that model, the students were ready to compose their own imitations. Here’s what Morgan (9th grade) wrote:
“There is a sort of man whose face hath no more emotion than a bushel of clay, left in the sun to bake, that he may seem the smarter for it. He who should say, ‘When forthwith I shall speak, let no man blink!’ He, in the folly of his heart does seek to be revered as Plato himself once was, yet maketh himself, an idiot.”
We’re now reading Dante’s Inferno, in which Dante pictures himself on a tour of hell to gain a right understanding of God’s justice. The poet Virgil serves as his guide, and when they come to a walled city in the midst of hell, the demons refuse them passage. An angel must come and intervene, commanding them to open and expressing a divine indignation at their hardness. The angel:
“Outcasts of Heaven, despicable crew,”
Said he, his feet set on the dreadful sill,
“Why dwells this foolish insolence in you?
Why kick against the pricks of that great Will
Whose purpose never can be overborne,
And which hath oft increased your sorrows still?
Or say, what boots [profits] it at the Fates to spurn?
Think how your Cerberus tried it, and yet bears
The marks of it on jowl and throttle torn.”
(Dante, Inferno, IX.91-99; trans. Sayers)
The angel uses rhetorical questions and the example of Cerberus (whom Hercules once dragged out of hell, marring his neck) to show the folly of rebelling against the will of God. The overall tone is one of disbelief and indignation. Here’s an imitation by Alexandria (9th grade):
“Accused and cast out by God, why do you test God’s will again and again? Why have you not learned your lesson? God cast you out of heaven when you first rebelled—have you not learned? When Pharaoh held Israel within his realm, thinking that he was in charge of God’s people instead of God, did it go well for him? No! But God sent ten horrible plagues on Pharaoh instead. Do you think that you’re any better than he? Open the gate and try not God’s wrath again!”
I heard these imitations and thought, “Wow. These kids are impressive!” Perhaps I should have been less surprised. Not to take anything away from their excellence, but they were simply imitating. That is, after all, how we become excellent with language: we imitate. Without imitation, we’re left to our own devices, or as Ascham put it, “For even as a hawk flieth not high with one wing, even so a man reacheth not to excellency with one tongue.” We need other tongues, the tongues of the best and wisest, and when we spend time with them and imitate them, we become excellent.
We never stop learning by imitation, not in our use of language, nor in any other area of life, and this is especially true of the Christian life. The Apostle Paul speaks this way frequently: “Therefore I urge you, imitate me” (1 Cor. 4:16), “Imitate me, just as I also imitate Christ” (1 Cor. 11:1), “Brethren, join in following my example, and note those who so walk, as you have us for a pattern” (Phil. 3:17). In Hebrews it says, “Imitate those who through faith and patience inherit the promises” (Heb. 6:12), and the Apostle John writes, “Beloved, do not imitate what is evil, but what is good” (3 Jn. 1:11). It’s good for us to have role models in the faith, and to be good models to those who look up to us. Just as imitation of good tongues leads to excellence in language, imitation of good men leads to excellence in life. May God grant us the humility to imitate the best and the wisest, and may He grant us excellence as we do so.
In Christ,
Pastor Richard
