CURRENT LITERATURE.
CHRISTMAS AND GIFT BOOKS.
Chaucer for Children: a Golden Key. By Mrs. II. R. Haweis. (Chatto and Windus.)— Chaucer for Children sounds like a bold ven- ture. Grown-up people commonly turn from him as too difficult, and if they know anything at all of him, know him only through the various modernisations that have been made of his principal tales. Mrs. Haweis hopes, nevertheless, to find a fit audience among children. Her own experience has encouraged her, and though it would be unsafe to generalise from the capabilities of one, or more than one, clever child, it is quite possible that she may be right. "I believe," she very ingeniously remarks, "that much of the construction and pronunciation of old English which seems stiff and obscure to grown-up people, appears easy to children, whose crude lan- guage is in many ways its counterpart. At all events, her book d eserves success, for it is remarkably attractive in appearance, and excellent both in method and matter. First, we have a preface, addressed "to the mother," with directions for reading Chaucer in what we may call the original, with proper accent and rhythm. Then comes a life of Chaucer, told in simple, picturesque fashion. After this follows the description of the pilgrims, and after this, again, come the tales " Palamon and Arcite," "The Sumpnour and the Devil," " Patient Griselda," " Aurelius and Dorigene," and " The Robbers and Death." Mrs. Haweis's method is to tell the story as much as possible in Chaucer's own words, connecting the passages which she
q uotes by a prose narrative of her own. These passages are given both in Chaucer's own language, and in a modernised version from the author's own pen,—a version of which she speaks with modest depreciation, but which is in fact executed with really admirable skill, and is a model of what such a version should be. For those who wish to keep to Chaucer's own language, there are given in the margin equivalents of all obsolete and difficult words, a plan much more convenient than the glossary which older people find so vexatious, and which would remind a child most dis- agreeably of a dictionary. We cannot honestly say that the illustrations are as good as the text. The little woodcuts are indeed graphic and spirited; the large coloured illustrations are less pleasing. They fail chiefly in the faces. That of Dorigene, for instance, has not the look of a faithful wife receiving a declaration of love from a man not her husband. On the whole, the book can scarcely be praised too highly. For a gift that shall appeal at once to a child's sense of beauty and its intelligence, nothing could be better.— Some Life in England. Illustrated by Engravings on Steel. With Short Essays by 0. M. Wavertree. (Virtue and Co.) This is one of the handsome volumes which are produced in so surprising a plenty to adorn our drawing-room tables. There are sixteen engravings, done by some of the most skilful hands in the profession, after the originals of well-known artiste, among whom we find the names of Constable, Turner, Webster, Linnell, Collins, and Lee, to mention six out of the total twelve. The originals are, for the most part, well-known pic- tures, and the engravings have, we imagine, appeared before. But they are not things which we get tired of seeing. Mr. Wavertree has furnished some letterpress of slight texture, but readable and appro- priate.— Childhood a Hundred Years Ago. By Sarah Tytler, with Six Chromes, after paintings by Sir Joshua Reynolds. (Marcus Ward and Co,) This book is a very happy idea. Who has not been charmed with Sir Joshua's "children," who has not longed to know something of the real life which these young " immortals " led ? The six chromos represent "The Age of Innocence," "Angels' Heads," "Robinette," "Miss Bowles," "The Strawberry-Girl," and "The Infant Samuel." The original of the first of these pictures is not known. As to the rest, we know most of the personal history of the fifth. "The Straw- berry-Girl" was " Offy " Palmer, Sir Joshua's niece, and Miss Tytler gives us a very interesting description of her life in the house in Leicester Fields. The "Infant Samuel" was, it seems, a young cab- bage-net maker, who often sat as a model to Sir Joshua. Miss Tytler does not limit herself to descriptions of the children whom the great painter actually drew. Her subject is "child life" as it was during the latter half of the eighteenth century, and she treats it admirably. She has taken, it is clear, no ordinary pains to collect her materials, and she has arranged them with the prac- tised literary skill which all readers of her charming stories expect from her pen. The chromos are good specimens of their kind.— A Rose in Bloom. By Louisa M. Alcott. (Sampson Low and Co.) This tale is, we are told on the title-page, " a sequel to 'Eight Cousins.' " Unluckily, though fairly constant readers of Miss Alcott's books, we missed the "Eight Cousins," and so have felt ourselves somewhat at a loss when we came to read and criticise the Rose in Bloom. The " Rose" is an heiress, who, when we are first introduced to her, has just come home from a tour in Europe. Grave questions present themselves as to her future. Will she be a " butterfly " or a "bee," and whom will she marry ? One of the "Eight Cousins " is a fascinating, though unsteady Charlie, and the right-minded reader is made to tremble lest a heroine who in every sense of the word is "worth" so much should bestow herself on so unworthy a suitor. Happily, he shows his real character in a way that disposes of his chances, and life having nothing left for him if be cannot wear the "Rose," ho is mercifully put out of the way by the novelist. Whose suit it is that is destined to prosper, and how sundry other love-affairs go on, the reader must find out for himself. Let him know, however, that he will find a very pretty tale, told with the good-taste and humour which Miss Alcott has now taught us to expect in all that she writes.—Mr. W. H. G. Kingston Benda us two more tales of the kind which his pen produces with such inexhaustible fertility. The Young Rajah, a Story of Indian Life and Adventure; and Twice Lost, a Tale of Shipwreck and of Adventure in the Wilds of Australia. (Nelson.) Mr. Kingston knows what his young readers expect, and takes care not to disappoint them. They are not of the class who have anything of the incredulus odi feeling about them. There is nothing which they are not ready to believe, and nothing therefore, so that it be not dull, which they dislike. The hero of the Young .Rajah begins in a quite common-place manner, simply saving the life of a seaman who falls overboard. But we are quite preFared to find him playing afterwards the part of Andronicus to a wounded tigress, and accept as a matter of course the more than lion- like gratitude which the animal shows him. This gratitude is,of course, very serviceable. The heir to we know not what honours and wealth is naturally the object of the machinations of many enemies, and a guardian angel of the very energetic and decided ways of the tigress is of the greatest possible use. In Twice Lost, it is, of course, equally natural that the hero should find among some savage islanders the lost son of a whaling captain whom he has happened to come across, and that when he is himself reduced to extremities he should be relieved by his own father, who has meanwhile sold all his belonging; chartered a vessel, and taken a voyage which brings him to the exact place where he was wanted. To criticise such things seriously would be out of place. If Mr. Kingston's coincidences are surprising, in his details he is true to life, and his books are always on the side of purity, honesty, and manliness.
— Relly's Teachers, and What they Learned, by Kate Thorne (Nelson), is a well-told story of how two young girls take to teaching a child, and how they prosper in their undertaking. It is natural and not without humour, and suggests, without obtruding, a good moral. The per- plexities of the young teachers are amusing and instructive. He would be a Soldier. By R. Mounteney Jephson. (Bentley.) Verisopht Boomersbine is a sort of military Winkle, or perhaps it should rather be said, a military Verdant Green, for such humour as the book contains is of the " Verdant Green" type. How he joins his regiment, what a fool he makes of himself or is made by others, is told in a way which does not, we must own, amuse us. Captain Calipash, who is never tired of talking of the West Indies, and Captain Chutnee, who finds the East equally inexhaustible, General Colley-Whobble, and Colonel Rooteen,—such are the characters to which we are introduced. Their very names are enough. They seem to say, "This is funny," just as a child writes under some nondescript object, "This is a horse."
- om Cadet to Colonel, the Record of a Life of Active Service, by
Major-General Sir Thomas Seaton (Routledge), makes an admirable contrast in its serious interest to the foolish jocularity of Mr. Jephson's book. Here we have the sober, earnest side of a soldier's life ; in the other, the folly and dissipation of barrack-life. From Cadet to Colonel has, we believe, been noticed before in these columns, and we therefore leave it with these words.—The Two Bartons, by the Author of "My Little Patient " (James Clarke), has on its title-page a charac- teristic utterance by Mr. Maurice about the kind of training which we should wish for those committed to our care, that it should be after the Gospel, rather than after the Law. The Two Bartons are brothers, of very diverse temperaments, who come under the charge of a village schoolmaster, and are treated as they would be by one who had learnt what teaching should be from studying Arnold and Maurice. This is an excellent little tale, which teachers and taught alike may read with profit. We have to notice new editions of two of De La Motte Fonquti's famous stories, Thiodolf the Icelander and Minstrel Love. (Routledge.)—We have also before us a handsome edition, much more satisfactory in every way than the meagre volume in which we are accustomed to see this classical work, of Soodhey's Life of Nelson (Bickers)—it is illustrated with twelve Woodbury-type photographs— and a reprint of Washington Irving's Bracebridge Hall, illustrated by R. Caldeeott (Macmillan). Mr. Caldecott's nieces:dal illustrations of " Old Christmas" will be remembered, and will serve as a sufficient introduction to his new venture. It is sufficient to say that his pencil is quite worthy of illustrating even Washington Irving. The volume is in every way excellent.—The Mystical Flora of St. Francis de Sales, translated by Clara Mulholland (Dublin : Gill and Son), is a volume of extracts from the writings of St. Francis de Sales,—all passages in which the saint uses for the purposes of spiritual instruction some imagery borrowed from the world of plants. The fruitful and delicate fancy of the preacher is excellently exemplified, but we cannot say much for the pictures, which seem to us neither well selected nor well executed: —We have to notice a new edition of A Thousand and One Gems of English Poetry, selected and arranged by Charles Mackay, LL.D.; illustrated by J. C. Millais, Sir John Gilbert, John Tenniel, Birket Foster, and others (Routledge).—Sea Birds, and the Lessons of their Lives, by Elizabeth Barr (Nelson), combine somepretty coloured engravings, with interesting reading. The subject is comparatively fresh, and many of the pictures will be as new to young readers as they are attractive.— Pictures for Happy Hours (Cassell and Co.), Little Lily's Picture-Book, and The Children's Wreath, a Picture Story- Book (Nelson), treat of realities, while Tom Thumb's Picture-Book (Rout- ledge) is devoted to fairy-tales.--Peter Parley's Annual for 1877 (B, George) is able to boast of a thirty-sixth appearance, but why "Peter Parley's " ? The true "Peter Parley " has been long dead, and a nom de plume should, we think, be as much respected as a real name.—The Ladies' Treasury, edited by Mrs. Warren (Bemrose), contains the usual miscellanea of fashion, sentiment, and knowledge, which, if we may judge from the periodicals which are devoted to them, the ladies specially affect. To one series of articles, "My Lady Help, and what she taught me," we turned with eager interest, but it did not solve the great problem of the Lady-Help question. The difficulty of how the "help " is to get on with the servants is shirked, so to speak, by the abrupt disappearance of the girl whom "Miss. Anna" is to live with. Other difficulties are surmounted by a tact and dis- cretion on her part which are beyond all praise. If there really is such a person to be found, she is indeed more "precious than rubies." Nine-tenths of the papers are occupied with directions about cooking— directions which read as if they were most sensible, practical, and thorough-going, dealing with principles which the common empirical cookery-books never dream of touching.—Little Jack Horner's Pic- ture Book (Routledge), with thirty-six pages of illustrations, is a volume with the usual mixture of old and new, of which it may be said, as usual, that the old is better.—The same may be repeated with still more emphasis of five volumes, which we have received from the same publishers,—the Blue-Beard Picture-Book, King Luckie- boy's Picture-Book, The Song of Sixpence Picture-Book, Chattering Jack's Picture-Book, and The Three Bears' Picture-Book. All these are said to be illustrated by Walter Crane. Some of the things we have seen more than once before, " The Adventures of Puffy," " The Song of Sixpence," and " King Lnckieboy's Party " are some of the old ones. It is difficult to imagine how the same pencil could have produced these, which are mostly graceful in outline and well coloured, and the extremely disagreeable pictures which we find elsewhere, especially in Chattering Jack's Picture-Book. The artist has not even taken the commonest pains with these illustrations. "Jack" is three years on one page, and eleven on the next.—Frisk and his Flock. By Mrs. D. P. Sanford. (Cassell and Co:) Frisk is Miss Agatha Deane's little dog, and Miss Agatha, whom the artist has made as pretty as she is good, keeps a school for children, to whom Frisk plays the part of sheep-dog. The story of these ehildren, their work and play, their little joys and sorrows, with here and there some more exciting adventure, as of being lost in a wood, Mrs. Sanford tells in this volume very prettily ; while she has been fortunate in finding an artist who has something of John Leech's skill in making pretty faces,—witness "Rorie" pouting, page 14. A very charming little book, especially for girls.—Tiny Houses and their Builders (Cassell and Co.) is a very prettily-illustrated little book about birds and their nests. Nor is the letter-press inferior to the pictures, with its well-chosen anecdotes and curious observations. Why do swallows, which so affect kitchen chimneys in England that they are called kitchen swallows," never build in them in Ireland ?—Of the same class of book, on a smaller scale, is Talks with Uncle Richard about Wild Animals, by Mrs. George (Ripples (Nelson). Here, too, we have a genuine knowledge of nature skilfully set forth.—Bright Bays for Dull Days (Cassell and Co.) contains a variety of little sketches, mostly of natural history.—The Adventures of Tom Hanson, by F. Gamed°, M.A. (Samuel Tinsley), is a stirring story of a young boy who, after sundry adventures in a fishing village in England, makes his fortune in Australia with the most surprising celerity. He is quite the "industrious apprentice" in nineteenth-century clothes.—Nanny's Treasure, or Trials and Triumphs, from the French of Ma Mme do Stolz (Marcus Ward), is a story of how a young lady of wilful and selfish temper, is won over to better thoughts by the patience and courage of a girl of the same age, whose acquaintance she makes in, the, village near her home.—We have to notice the annual volume of three magazines, which are well-established in popular favour, and which it will, be sufficient to mention ; these are Cassell's Family Magazine (Cassell and Co.), and The Leisure Hour and The Sunday at Home, both published by the Religions Tract Society.—Of periodicals specially intended for children, we have before us Little Folks (Cassell and Co.), and Merry Sunbeams, an annual of the same character (Ward, Look, and Tyler).
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