22 JUNE 1872, Page 23

Lilliput Legends. By the Author of Lilliput Levee." (Strithan.)— "Lilliput

Levee" was so very clever that we feel the more disappointed at not being able to say very much in praise of Lilliput Legends. But it seems to us that the author falls into the fault, too common among those who write for children, of looking over his shoulder, so to speak, to see whether the elders do not think he is very clever. There is, too, what has probably something to do with this fault, a sort of cynicism about the whole ; we seem to hear an aside, " What rubbish this all is !"

whereas a man who talks nonsense, to do it well—and our author has

much capacity for doing it well—requires to do it without giving so much as the faintest glimpse of its being anything but the finest and

most important thing in the world. And there is another thing in them which ought to be banished entirely from them, and that is melancholy. Melancholy, iudeed, is a mild word for such a passage as that which we are going to quote :—" He awoke no more ; but as the grey, cold evening was now coming down, the landlady, after closing his eyes and tying up his jaw, lit a couple of candles to frighten away the mice that she heard scratching behind the wainscot, and had a long cry to herself, which did her good." Children, it is true, like realism, but do not our readers agree with us that these details are somewhat out of place? Why

describe to young readers what you certainly would not wish them to see ? Lilliput Legends is clever enough, but the cleverness is not quite of the right sort.