PUNDITS IN THE NURSERY.

gOME months ago, in noticing a child's book, or set of child's 4,7 books, we said that, as reviewers, we had sometimes felt as if, in praising or blaming particular volumes, we were dictating to the young people, instead of recognizing the diversities of their tastes and respecting their right of choice. The latest attempt at dictation of this kind comes in the shape of an article on "Children and Children's Literature," in the Contemporary Review for May. The writer of the paper proceeds upon the following plan. He catches the normal child (a chance which never fell to us), bores into him with a forty-gimlet power of solemn criticism ; and then, in the light of the result, proceeds to examine the work of certain writers for or about the young. The subject is as difficult as it is delicate, yet it is one upon which too many reviewers have latterly been speaking with a oonfideuoe which could only be justified by special experience and special aptitudes such as few can possess ; and, on the whole, the topic seems now, by this article in the Contemporary, thrown into such utter confusion, that it is high time a little very careful attention was paid to it. There are so many errors of fact, almost clerical errors, in the article before us, that most of what we have to say will of necessity take the shape of literary criticism. Mr. H. A. Page, who writes the paper, has shown much critical power in some of his essays ; but with all his fine qualities, he inevitably stumbles under the weight of the baggage he always brings up with him. Of simplicity and playfulness he has but little ; and as both are of the first moment for his present purpose, the result is just what we find.

The first thing which caught our eye was the following, which leads to about a page and a half of writing, moat of which might have been spared if the writer had simply read his author :—

" Mr. Coventry Patmore, in The Children's Outland, ventured, a year or two ago, on a somewhat bold experiment, which had an intimate bearing on the question of the rationale of children's literature, whether verse or prose. He gave us, under the above title, selections from English poetry best suited for chilren, though not specially written for them, under the expressed conviction that to specially write poetry for children was a work of supererogation, and necessarily a practical .failure."

We shall scarcely be credited when we say that Mr. Coventry Patmore in his lucid preface has expressed no such conviction. Having announced the idea of his selection,—to choose for the use of children "poetry which [though not written for children]

was fitted to please and had actually been found to please children in common with grown people,"

—he adds that the charm of such poetry is in no way decreased by the fact that it is not wholly understood by the little ones ; and then be apologizes for omitting "nearly [notice that] all -verse written expressly for" or about children. Mr. Page goes on to say that that the " nearest approach to childlike humour" in Mr. Patmore's selection is in Goldsmith's " Mad Dog" and Cowper's " John Gilpin." This, again, is quite wrong ; for the volume containing Dibdin's "Sir Sidney Smith," "King John and the Abbot," " Robin Hood and the Bishop," John Skeltqu's "Lament for a Sparrow" (the innocent sweet humour of which we by no means expect a writer of Mr. Page's solemnity to recognize through the " word-play " of the form), Southey's " King of the Crocodiles," and Allingham's " Up the airy mountain," in which also Mr. Page would probably see no humour. The " somewhat bold experiment " which Mr. Page speaks of is simply one which must have been involuntarily made by most men of letters who have families.

The next hopeful passage which caught our eye was this reference to "Alice in Wonderland " :—

" Mr. Carroll now and then verges too closely upon direct and earnest social caricature, as, for instance, in the matter of the jurors, where the practical drift of his picture pertains to a sphere of which children have no knowledge, and with which they consequently can have no sympathy. This is a matter which he should be on his guard against, as it has at several points marred this beautiful child's book."

We would give something to see the expression of Mr. Carroll's countenance when he reads this. If Mr. Page is right, both here and elsewhere in his paper, and if a child's book is to be condemned because the practical drift of a picture in it pertains to a sphere of which children can have no knowledge and with which they can have no sympathy, we must sweep out nearly the whole of Hans Christian Andersen's stories, from the " Ugly Duckling " down to the " Shirt-Collar" and the " Constant Tin Soldier." Mr. Page cannot have it both ways. He tells a story of a child of four dashing into " earnest social caricature" about a "Mr. Eam," who is described as living and going about, and who is yet minutely painted, dress, personal habits, and all, by Mr. Page. But if a child of four can do this, there could be no objection to such caricature as Mr. Carroll has not introduced, though this writer lays it to his charge. The real weak points of " Alice in Wonderland " are Cockneyism and Verbalism ; the humour far too often turns upon what is merely casual and temporary in civilized life, or upon mere verbal

suggestion. Its being translated into French and German is surely a " goak " ? A German could not understand half the fun.

What could he make of the mouse's " tail" and "tale "? Or of the whole of the Mock Turtle's account of his schooling? What could any foreigner make of the numerous parodies ? We have, like other people, laughed almost to hysterics over " Alice," but,

though a splendid and delicious squib, it is scarcely literature, and owes much to Mr. Tenniel's astonishing pictures. We will only

add that there is absolutely no excuse whatever for saying that a child's book may not contain references to matters which are over the heads of the young readers. It must be made interesting to them, but, that condition fulfilled, you may do whatever else you please. It is not at all improbable that nine out of ten adult readers of "Alice" would be quite ignorant of the covert allusion there is in the "guinea-pigs," in what Mr. Page so gravely calls the "matter of the jurors ;" but that is no reason why those who are familiar with Westminster Hall should not have the enjoyment of the sly tickle the reference gives them.

This writer then goes on to say of Miss Ingelow (whom be praises) that there is too much of the " neutral grey of shrewd ness " in her stories. This is quite true. But it is impossible to forbear a smile when a writer like Mr. Page gravely tells Miss Ingelow that she is "somewhat deficient in the quality of humour," and Mrs. Gatty (whom he praises) that her " fine conceptions and truthful phantasies waste themselves too much in the sputtering catherine-wheels of forced allegory and moral riddle."

Now we come to a great discovery,. Mr. H. A. Page has found out that "a sentiment of revolution [the italics are his own] pervades Lilliput Levee, and is constantly put forward," and that " all the verses are too sharply strung on the formal [i.e., revolutionary] thread of plan," spun in the " Introduction."

We do not know what sharp stringing may be, but we will make Mr. Page and Mr. II. Austin Bruce a free gift of a pendant to

this terrible disclosure. We have reason to know that a spirit of disaffection has long pervaded the marionnettes in the Soho Bazaar. We also fancy that the daisies have been looking unusually Red this year. Will the Home Secretary keep an eye on Lilliput Levee ? But there is another discovery. This writer finds that the revolutionary " Introduction " in that " tiny tot " of a book is "strangely

enough eclipsed and rendered forced by comparison with

'Topsy-Turvy World,' where the idea finds much truer lyric setting"! This is pure Caesar and Pompey—" very much alike, especially

Pompey." There is inversion in one case, and there is inversion in the other; but there the resemblance of the two pieces is absolutely at an end. The fact is that the verses in this book bear every popible appearance of having been written occasionally, and in most diverse moods—there is no hint of revolution within the four corners of it except in the "Introduction "—and if there is any key-note at all struck in that, it would seem to be not so much an idea of revolution, as that of the Old Mind being the Guest of the Young Mind—an idea which is really germane to the contents of the volume.

As to "lyric setting," the value of Mr. Page's opinion may be tested by what he says farther on, in dealing with another subject :—

" The direct tendency of lyric poetry, as it rises in intensity, is to bring more and more into prominence the regretful sense of a divided life—a brighter past, whose reversed shadow is a troubled present—and to permeate external nature with this conception. Thus, in the case of Mr. Tennyson's 'Dora,' " &c., dre.

We should call " Dora " an idyll, and certainly Mr. Tennyson does ; however, if Mr. Page says it is a lyric, of course it is a lyric. But what of the above doctrine ? One of the most " intense " conceivable lyrics would be a battle or bridal song, all triumph and all joy ; but that, according to this writer, could not be a lyric of the intense order ! Lyric poetry is (of course) conversant with the whole range of human feeling and passion.

Resuming Lilliput Levee, Mr. Page quotes at full length a parent's grotesque, called "Madcap," and carefully insists that it is not a child's piece. If he had read the sub-title of the book, he would have been spared half his trouble :—" Poems of Childhood, Child-Fancy, and Childlike Moods." But this little grotesque, —in which the quaint gymnasticity, so to speak, of a clambering child finds natural expression in the quaint gymnasticity of the verse,—is made a text for some other criticism :— " In both of these, as in a good deal else in Lilliput Levee, we have a high-strung determination on the writer's part to be gay and clever at all hazards; pirouette and balance his airy nothings ' of the mind on glancing needle-points of verbal distinction ; but as there is really no correspondent play of matter under this bright-spangled dress,—no con crate picture being carried to the child's mind by the phrases,—his

mental eye gets simply dazzled and confused The author is too affectedly clever and mercurial, dealing in mere wordy extravaganza, where there is really no concrete body or basis beneath the dazzling play of verbal fence."

In the " both" is included the little grotesque of "Polly." Now,

first, " Polly " is, from the first line to the last but two (which are a prayer), simple " concrete picture." Secondly, it has been got byheart by scores of children, probably hundreds, of their own accord. Thirdly, its rhythm, which Mr. Page would probably call "affected," is an exact echo of the beat of a bit of nursery nonsense known to every child in England. We know of a case in which a little girl of six got so fond of this piece of " dazzling word-play and verbal fence," that she asked to have her name changed to Polly ; and of a large boys' school where the old master was so bothered by hearing this poor innocent bit of sing-song, that at last he instituted an inquiry : "Polly, Polly, who is Polly ?" The guilty rhymes being handed to him, he read them, and said, " H'm ! I don't see much in them." There is not much in them, poor things ; but Mr. Page has discovered in them "glancing needle-points," " airy nothings," and " bright spangles." " Mail, Monsieur, vous plaisantez?" One thing may certainly be said for this humble toy of a book ; it certainly seems to have been written upon a principle which has not been so carefully followed in another volume in Mr. Page's list, namely, the principle of excluding slang, Cockneyism, ver balism, and ephemeral things in general, which are not literature ; there is nothing, for instance, like Minting, or muffs," " bricks," or " coves " ; not a single " pun " or play upon words (except in " Lingering Latimer," which Mr. Page admires, but which ought never to have been printed) ; only a very few colloquialisms. The book ischiefly in monosyllables, and the nearest approach to vulgarity is perhaps the phrase " and no mistake ;" which probably the author would admit to be objectionable. There are a few, perhaps three, cases in which the animal spirits of the verse run riot in a couplet ; but, generally speaking, if there is any affectation at all, it is not, as Mr. Page says, " affected cleverness," but affected simplicity, sometimes reaching down to baldness. The book consists mainly of the very simplest stories, children or animals being invariably the heroes. Yet Mr. Page writes :

" Re eithor brings a brooding, almost Wordsworthian, far-away meditativeness to nature, which sometimes sorts but poorly with the general rattlingness of the rhythmic movement, and which is utterly alien to the child's anthropomorphic view of nature ; or else he chooses subjects which are very remote from the child's sympathies."

There is one, and only one, " Wordsworthian " poem in the volume, and that is written in the very metre in which Wordsworth wrote his most beautiful "Farmer of Tilsbury Vale" and " Reverie of Poor Susan."

Some of the generalizations of Mr. Page read rather oddly. His• law, that children only understand simple grotesque, or direct burlesque humour, is put out of court by his own anecdotes of them, and by their enjoyment of the subtle humour of AndersenThe critic is wrong again, both in his principle and his reason, when he says that " in poetry the line separating the field of adult experience from that of childhood should be more strictly observed than in prose." This is not only untrue, it is preposterous. The rule seems invented because otherwise Andersen would have bothered the critic ; but the fun is, that with very alight modifications the prose of Andersen may be run into verse, and then his best work becomes wholly poetry. Read this, too:— "Of pathos, more especially the sentiment of pathos, children have no notion." We hand this doctrine over to intelligent mothers, and, with great regret, drop the subject. If we have given too much space to a trifle, it is a natural consequence of having to deal with a critic who "sees faults (and other qualities) in books, much larger than the books themselves ; as Sancho Panza, with his eyes blinded, beheld from his wooden horse the castle no. bigger than a small seed, and the people on it as large as hazelnuts."

If we bad space, we should be only too glad to try and do justice to some writers for children whom Mr. Page has omitted,— Mary Howitt, Mr. Kingsley, and an anonymous writer, " Aunt Effie," who has produced some beautiful juvenile poetry. There is also an anonymous writer who has furnished the letterpress to some thin, square, coloured books, published by Routledge or Warne (we forget which), and relating to a doll's house. This letterpress seems to have been little noticed, but it is of the very highest order of merit, with an undercurrent of delicious humour, and the simplest grace in the world.