Poetry for Children. By Charles and Mary Lamb. (J. M.
Dent and Co.)—These poems are, perhaps, better known by reputation than in fact. How many of our readers, we wonder, could tell the purport of " The Boy and the Skylark " ? Richard is afraid that his misdeeds will be told by a bird in the air, and is kept in the straight path by his fears. One day, how- ever, he transgresses, and then, terrified by the volume of song which a lark pours out over his head, confesses to his mother. This is what the lark says :— " Mistaken fool! man needs not us His secret merits to disease,
Or spy out hie transresions ;
When once he feels his conscience stirred, That voice within him is the bird
That moves him to confession."
Miss Winifred Green furnishes a number of quaintly pretty and appropriate illustrations, and Mr. Israel Gollancz writes a preface about Lamb, Coleridge, and Christ's Hospital, readable but scarcely appropriate.
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