THE BLUE FAIRY-BOOK.*

IT is really difficult to find words cordial enough to welcome The Blue Fairy-Book. A giant with three heads, and a witch

riding on a broomstick, the ornaments of the cover, give only the merest hint of the treasures to be found within. Here are all the beloved old tales, the imaginative world of so many thousands of happy children, the unconscious beginning of all real education,—never, let us trust, to be discredited by the positive sciences. In this world we ask for no proofs, no demonstrations ; the limping, heavy-footed, arrogant, clodpole creature Reason has no place here ; it is the native country of light-winged Fancy and pure unquestioning Faith ; impossi- bility here counts for nothing,—less than nothing : it is rather an advantage. We are strongly of opinion that no greater

kindness—morally and intellectually—can be done to the children of the present day, than by making them familiar with these beautiful old stories, sprung from human life, and teaching unconsciously many of its finest lessons, lying at the

foundation of all romance, and of that high, spiritual view of things which in this material age seems sometimes to float away beyond our reach like a golden cloud at sunset.

We have heard it said that children in these days are born grown-up. Certainly they are born more accurate, more suspicious, and less imaginative than their parents and grand- parents. All the science in the air, no doubt, the knowledge —" falsely so called," for what is it, after all, but guess-work- has affected the formation of their brains. We hardly like to suggest so sad a thought to the editor of this charming book, but we fear that a large proportion of the children, happier than they know, into whose bands it comes as a Christmas present, will say that the stories are not true, cannot be true, and they do not believe them. Charles Lamb thought this tendency was beginning to show itself, even in his day. Even then he writes to Coleridge :-

" Knowledge must come to a child in the shape of knowledge, and his empty noddle must be turned with conceit of his own powers when he has learnt that a horse is an animal, and Billy is better than a horse, and suchlike : instead of that beautiful interest in wild tales, which made the child a man, while all the time he suspected himself to be no bigger than a child. Science has succeeded to poetry no less in the little walks of children than with men. Is there no possibility of averting this sore evil ? Think of what you would have been now, if, instead of being fed with tales and old wives' fables in childhood, you had been crammed with geography and natural history !"

But in spite of all this foreboding, we may trust that there are still many thousands, old and young, by whom The Blue Fairy-Book will be received as the mine of treasure it is. After looking carefully through it, there is only one story

that we could wish away, and that is " The Youth Who Set Out to Learn what Fear Was." The horrors in this most horrid little German story are repulsive and rather unwhole- some, and we certainly should not have chosen it to be included in a collection like this. Otherwise, we find every-

• The Blue Fairy-Book. Edited by Andrew Lang. With numerous Illustra- tion& London : Longman, Green, and Co. 1889.

thing that a lifelong love of stories would make us wish to find. France, Germany, Scandinavia, England, Scotland, Greece, and the East, including Asia. Minor, whence M.

Carnoy gives us the excellent story of " The Bronze Ring," —all these countries contribute something to the thirty-seven stories that Mr. Lang has thought worthy of a place in his book. From France, one of the most delightful, now as always, is Madame d'Aulnoy's " White Cat," only perhaps to be less loved among French fairy-tales than the exquisite " Beauty and the Beast," written for French children by Madame de Villeneuve. Then there are Perrault's classics, such as " Cinderella," " Puss in Boots," " Blue-Beard," and others; so that France, in fact, has a large share of the book.

And we do not, indeed, know how the stories mentioned above can in their kind be surpassed. For ourselves, we like them much better than the specimens from Grimm, which can never, we think, gain such world-wide popularity.

We are delighted to find in this ideal book two or three of the best stories in the Arabian Nights, condensed most wisely .

from the English last-century translation of Galland,—which, in six volumes, bound in old red French morocco, is itself a treasure worth possessing. The one Greek story, " The Terrible Head," is a masterpiece, adapted by the editor him- self. "East of the Sun and West of the Moon," among the Norse stories, might also be called Greek ; but the legend of Cupid and Psyche is world-wide, and appears again in this book in a wild and imperfect form as " The Black Bull of Norroway." These higher flights do not exclude such old favourites as "Dick Whittington," " Jack the Giant-Killer," "Little Red Riding-Hood," and " The Sleeping Beauty." Mr.

Lang has even admitted a condensed version of " The Voyage to Lilliput." All the work that has been done in translating, adapting, and condensing, is admirably well done. The illus- trations are generally excellent, and to an imaginative child would soon seem to belong to the stories : where all, or nearly all, are good, we should find it difficult to point out the best.

To some minds, a great knowledge of myths, legends, and comparative folk-lore might seem necessary to the proper appreciation of such a book as this. With all respect to that branch of science, however, we ourselves prefer to take the stories simply, as they are told, and to enjoy them like the

children for whom they are intended. We wish The Blue Fairy-Book a place on many shelves, high and low, and in many hearts and heads, both old and young.