1 JANUARY 1870, Page 27

CHILD-NATURE.* THIS little book, like all which has come from

either of the Anthers of Child-World, is full of lively and beautiful fancy,— • ' th;ugh the author seems to us now and then to miss the distinction between the natural and the artificial boyishness of boys, and to make her fun at times a little loud and fast, and therefore ugly and unsuitable to verse. If children have a taste for such stories as Fred's about "John's Sin," with its bad panning about ' cowherd ' and coward,' and its elephantine vivacity, which we will not deny,

• Child-Nature. By One of the Authors of Child-World. London: Strahan. nee.

— for children, like grown-up people, show bad taste often enough, and have been known to laugh till they cried at the horrible pert- ness of the theatrical burlesques in London,—they ought not to be encouraged in it, and there is a touch of vulgarity about such poor jocularity as 'Papa' condescends to in the story called " Parkins " :—

"Mulcted of shillings I bad been, And sometimes of a crown ; I think they found me rather green, And liked to do me brown,"

—a verse which, if the childish audience had had any taste, they would have acknowledged simply by a pointed hush,' in case a hiss would have been too rude. Indeed our author is rather too anxious to exaggerate the contrast between girls and boys. We fancy we detect a decided conservatism and great horror of enlarging the practical life of women in several little hints here and there, and a corresponding disposition to make the fun of boys clumsy and loud in tone. Uncle Ned' is made to say in a clever little bit of epigram, after a contest between some members of the party,—

"Well, let it be so, I'm contented, And won't interfere with your joys; I fancy our girls were invented To take the rough edge off our boys,"

— a humorous theory of the complete subservience of women which would be still more objectionable than it is, if all boys were as inferior in imagination to girls as the boys of this party seem to have been to its girls. Very few of the distinctly and inten- tionally comic verses in the volume are really good. The stories called "The Ornamental Beast," "The Changeling," and even, — though these are better, because nearer playfulness and farther from farce, "Miss Pip" and "The Goblin and the Dentist,"—are, on the whole, very poor, and injure the delightful general effect of the volume which contains them. The effect is very different when the author is purely playful and makes no effort at farce. "The Fairy Gallows," for instance, is a delightful little bit of vivacity, with a vein of the purest poetical sentiment running lightly through it. And of the same nature generally is the children's dialogue by which these songs are woven together ;—fall of life, playfulness, and bright characteristic fencing between the different members of the story-telling league,—whose boys, we must observe, in common justice to them, come out very much better in dialogue than they do as story-tellers. If the slang, and the puns, and thefast childishness, and all about "sells," and" nobby " persons, and the phrases like "not if I knows it,"—in a word, all the vulgarish fun,—were left out, very little inroad would be made on the boys' conversation, but a very great deal indeed on their stories, though here their father and uncle are almost equally and there- fore much more guilty.

But after all that has been said and which can properly be said as to the defects of the comic element in this book, how much genuine vivacity and delightful poetry of a true though far from ambitious kind is left, which we can hardly praise too highly ! Few poets, however great, would be otherwise than proud of

having written such pieces as the first, called "Sweeping the Skies," or "The Linnet" (thoroughly Wordsworthian in feeling and tone), or "The Fairy-Boy," or "Sunset," or a good deal, at least, in "The Fairy Gallows," or "What the Toys Do at night," or "Why," or "The Foolish Sky," or "Night Song," or Bessy's charac-

ter and her contributions in general to the party, as well as most of Amy's. We do not mean, of course, that these things would make a great poet's reputation, but we do mean that without the true essence of poetry, the true feeling for beauty, and the true gift for expressing the feeling in shining and living words, none of these little poems could have been written. Let us quote as a specimen the lovely little piece called "The Fairy Boy," which will illustrate at once the best thought and the best poetry of this, in most respects, delicious little volume :—

"Here's a little fairy boy

Sleeping 'mid the apple bloom ; Apple blossoms full of joy, We must take you to our room ; Place you in a water cup, Watch you with our open eyes Till the fairy boy wakes up,

Making gestures of surprise.

'What a lazy little thing,

Sleeping through the summer hours!

Folded up each tinted wing, In among the apple flowers ! We must whisper very low, We must silence even joy : Such a tiny sound, we know, Might awake a fairy boy. "Hush the little creature wakes, Sits upright, and looks so wise, Gives himself delicious shakes, Stares about, and rubs his eyes!

Everything is strange and new, Nobody to tell him why; Frighten'd and indignant too, Fairy boy begins to cry !

" Oh:how can we comfort him ?

For be is so very small; Lightest touch may break a limb If we handle him at all.

All our fingers are so large, They would crush the fragile toy: It is a distracting charge To have found a fairy boy!

"Shall we call the kitten here ?

Little velvet paws heti' she, But her claws are sharp, I fear, And impatient she might be.

The canary could befriend,

And perform the dainty task, But he never will attend To the smallest thing we ask.

"Looking round in our distress, Nothing comfort will bestow: Nothing seems to answer ' Yes '— All things are made up of 'No.'

With a needle, or a ring, We might lift him up, indeed; But suppose we broke a wing, Prick'd his flesh, and made him bleed And to our excessive joy, 'Mid our plaintive wonderings, This delightful fairy boy Flew away on shining wings!

It was sweet to find him there, Sleeping in the apple bloom ;

It was sweeter—free from care—

When he left us in the room.

" Ah! I will not press the theme- Ah ! I will not speak of those Sparkling joys of which we dream,

By possession turn'd to woos.

May each fairy treasure thus For a moment charm the eye, And wiun it would weary us, Spread its shining wings, and fly."

All we can say against this beautiful little poem is that its thought is hardly the thought of a young girl at all (to say nothing of the form of expression), but of a woman ; and the same applies more or less to almost all the finer pieces of poetic fancy in the volume. This little poem gives a very fair specimen of the best part of the book. A rare and tender vein of moral or religious feeling,—like thankfulness that so few of the finer beauties and blessings of the universe are spoiled by being subject to the re- sponsibilities and cares of private ownership,—is illustrated by some delicate and playful fancy such as that of the capture of a fairy boy in an apple-blossom and his escape, so that the verse combines the force of good reflective poetry with the sparkle and fascination of a beautiful picture. Such a piece as we have just given is not to be fairly called a parable or allegory, for it is of a lighter and more graceful texture altogether. Still it is not a mere fairy story, but a fairy story leaving a true and comprehensive impression as to the burdensomeness of all individual ownership, —the far higher beauty of the gifts we cannot appropriate,—on the mind. There is a thought of the same order in the humorous and ironic little fairy story which represents an English J. P. as disturb- ing his mighty soul at hearing that an execution was going to take place among the fairies, the fairy criminal—who pleads guilty and is the first to court a capital sentence—being guilty only of a deft dire ear. The honest old hunting squire gets into quite a fluster on the subject of this unexpected piece of news, and feels as much bound to interfere as if he had heard of an intention to wink at the escape of a deliberate poacher. lie bursts out :—

" Oh, how our country doprest is!

Where are we going to, what mayn't we fear?

Think of the frightful injustice Of hanging a fairy for having no ear!"

On which the author puts in, parenthetically, and with a very happy irony on the unconscious limitation of all human justice (so called),—

" Ah, but the delicate touches!

Ah, but the difference mighty and small; Something for some one too much is That for another is nothing at all! "Creatures, so fine and so airy

Cannot be judged by our coarse-natured plan; Want of an ear in a fairy Worse is than want of a heart in a man."

And clearly we often hang a man, and no doubt rightly, for want- ing a heart, or for what he would not have done if he had ever had a heart. It would not give an adequate notion of this gay as well as beautiful little book, if we omitted to speak with the heartiest admiration of the little interlocutory criticisms between the differ- ent pieces, which are full of spirit and character. But of these it is impossible to give a fair specimen without extracts indecently long.