There are certain quotations that those of us whose early education began before 1950 are likely to recognise: “Half a league, half a league, half a league onward”; “Darkness came down on the field and city: and Amelia was praying for George, who was lying on his face, dead, with a bullet through his heart”; “Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest, yo, ho, ho and a bottle of rum”; “The Thane of Fife had a wife: where is she now?”; “Charge, Chester, Charge! On, Stanley, on! were the last words of Marmion”; “For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime”; “Shot, so quick, so clean an ending?”; “The paths of glory lead but to the grave”; “He nothing common did or mean, upon that memorable scene, but with his keener eye, the axe’s edge did try”; “And even the ranks of Tuscany could scarce forbear to cheer”; “The voice of thy brother’s blood cryeth unto me from the ground”; “Men fear death as children fear to go into the dark”.

I am not setting a quiz, so I shall supply the 12 authors. In order they are: Tennyson, Thackeray, Stevenson, Shakespeare, Scott, Milton, Housman, Gray, Marvell, Macaulay, Genesis and Bacon. Leaving aside the translators of the King James Bible, all of whom must have been born in the 16th century, Shakespeare and Bacon were also born in that century, Milton and Marvell in the 17th, Gray and Scott in the 18th, and Tennyson, Thackeray, Macaulay, Stevenson and Housman in the 19th. None were born in the 20th century, though no doubt a similar group of quotations would now include, at least, poets such as Auden or Eliot.

Obviously these quotations have several things in common; they all deal with death or battle, many of them with death and glory. They all belong to the tradition of English literature. Many of them are strikingly memorable. For me, they have the interest that I had first heard or read all of them, with one exception, by the age of 11. They belong to some of my earliest and most deeply rooted memories. The quotation from Macbeth I had read to me when I was only three. Housman was the exception; in the late 1930s he was still regarded as a contemporary poet — he died only in 1936. I first read A Shropshire Lad at Charterhouse during the war.

Last week there was a controversy about the curriculum for 11 to 15-year-old students. The Government had published plans to make Shakespeare and some pre-20th-century literary classics compulsory for that age group. The protected authors apparently include Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy and Daniel Defoe. The National Association for the Teaching of English (NATE) has protested. “Forcing children to study texts that are inappropriate is deeply counterproductive.” In particular, they argue that a class of 30 11-year-olds will not have the necessary maturity to read Jane Austen.

I have sympathy with both sides. When I was 3, I did enjoy Macbeth because it is what publishers call a “page-turner”, and was being read to me by my mother, whose earlier career had been as a Shakespearean actress — she had played with Sarah Bernhardt in Hamlet on Broadway and remembered what older actors had told her about the way Sarah Siddons had played Lady Macbeth. I do not think I was mature enough to have appreciated King Lear when I was 3; I am not sure I am mature enough now.

Yet I share, without any qualification, the view of Edward Gibbon, the greatest of English historians. “My early and invincible love of reading, I would not exchange for the treasures of India.”

The truth is that a rattling good story, written about a subject that interests children, provides them with enjoyment whether it is great literature or not. The story and the subject matter will attract them. But they get the literature. The difficulty with Jane Austen is that she writes about subjects that interest girls more than boys.

Little girls like to play with dolls; little boys like to play with guns.

That is a natural difference between the two sexes. At quite an early age, Jane Austen stories about courtship and manners fascinate girls, if only because they can imagine themselves in the roles of the heroines. An 11-year-old boy does not see himself as destined to play Mr D’Arcy in real life.

To this extent, the teachers have got it right. When literature has natural interest on its side, it will attract even very young children; infants enjoy nursery rhymes. When literature is concerned with more abstract and adult themes, it will fail to hold children’s attention.

Children should, however, have early exposure to great literature, to interesting stories and exciting poems, written by masters. Nowadays few children read the school stories of P. G. Wodehouse, which are excellent stories, excellently written. J. K. Rowling’s stories of Harry Potter are good introductions to the habit of reading literature. Many 14-year-olds will enjoy reading the classic novels because they have first read her works, perhaps when they were between 6 and 10.

English literature is full of short poems that deal with vivid subjects. Many of the quotations with which I started come from such short poems. Milton’s Lycidas is as beautiful a lyric poem as has ever been written. Perhaps nowadays it would frighten off many teachers. Yet we had it successfully read aloud in class when I was certainly less than 11 years old.

Great literature, even apart from the Bible or the Book of Common Prayer, teaches lessons. Sooner or later we all have to deal with death, whether our own or other people’s. I chose the theme for the opening quotations because children also have to deal with death. The quotations show that the poets have seen death in different ways, sometimes tragic, sometimes heroic, and sometimes even ludicrous. Boys enjoy reading about heroic deaths; girls have a greater sense of personal tragedy. Great literature is an instructor to the young and a comfort to the bereaved.

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