CURRENT LITERATURE.
CHRISTMAS BOOKS.
Illustrated British Ballads, Old and New. Selected and edited by George Barnett Smith. 2 vols. (Cassell, Petter, Galpin, and Co.)— For substantial value, for the pleasure which they cannot fail to give to their readers, these volumes should have a place as high as any among the books of the season. The editor has brought together more than two hundred ballads, prefixing to each a brief notice of the author, or where, as is the case with the older ballads, the author- ship is unknown, of the source from which it came. Nothing could be better than the selection. We do not find ourselves missing any ballad that we should expect to see, nor is there one which we could wish away. " Old and New," as the title-page has it, are mingled together ; and this, rightly, we think, without any attempt to classify, the simple alphabetical order of the titles being observed. The ballads themselves it is superfluous to praise, but we cannot refrain from a special mention of one or two which Mr. Barnett Smith has wisely recalled to our recollection. Allan Cunningham's "Bonny Bairns" is an exquisite poem, with which, we fancy, not a. few readers of this generation have to be made acquainted. Lord Macaulay's "Election Ballad" will also be new to many. The illustrations are numerous and of high average merit. Each volume has an etching for frontispiece ; that belonging to the first, " drawn by M. L. Gow, and etched by Lalauze," strikes us as being particularly effective. Of the engravings there are several hundreds, many of them of full-page size ; and considering how varied, and often how difficult, the subject, tragical, or pathetic, or grotesque, or fall of spirited action, the success attained is highly creditable. We give, as we feel convinced that the public will give, a hearty welcome to these volumes.—Our Own Country : Descriptive, Historical, Pictorial. (Cassell and Co.)—This is an interesting and attractive volume, though not pretending to take rank with so magnificent a series as the same publishers' " Picturesque Europe." But " non cuivis contingit adire Corinthum," and to those whose purses are but moderately supplied, this volume, with its well- written letter-press and appropriate illustrations, will be welcome. Town and country are both represented in it, though it is to the former that the largest share is allotted, and the reader is taken from end to end of Great Britain and Ireland. A somewhat more systematic progress would, we think, have been more satisfactory to most readers. Is there any reason for our being taken from Kil- larney to Oxford, from Oxford to Loch Maree, and thence, again, to Manchester ?—Grandma's Attic Treasures : a Story of Old-Time Memories. By Mary D. Brine. (Griffith and Allan.)—Here is a long, some may possibly think an over-long poem, in the New-England dialect. " Grandma" tells the grand-daughter, who is visiting her, how two strangers bought some old-fashioned furniture, paying for it a price which astonished her not a little, but not failing to make a good bargain out of it for themselves. And then she relates how, as she took the old things, the spin- ning-wheel, the little table, and the like, to furbish them up for the buyers, her courting days, the early years of her married life, were recalled to her, till she felt very loath to let them go. Here is a specimen of Miss Brine's verse :—
" So restin' my head agen the wheel
In a sort of idle way, I let myself fall to tbinkin', And letting my memory stray To the time when I was a slip of a gal, A wearing Asa's ring, Too happy to do a thing all day
But laugh, and chatter, and sing.
And 1 minded the times the wheel went round To the merry tunes I sung,
In the days when skies were oilers blue,
'Cause Asa and I were young."
The verse is always easy, and sometimes effective ; the illustrations very pretty.—We cannot say much in praise of Among the Gibjigs, by Sydney Hodges (Remington). "Lewis Carroll," whom the author seems to have taken for his model, is not less difficult- to imitate than Pindar ; and failure, it need hardly be said, is as fatal as it is probable. To write nonsense, but not to write it well, is a very great mistake indeed. All this is said with reserve, for it is a matter to which criticism is not easily applied ; but our own experi- ence is that we did not find originality, or drollery, or even good- taste, in Among the Gibjigs.—Heartsease and the Rabbits, by the Anther of " The Cradle of the Blue Nile " (Sotheran and Co.), is a story in which "birds and beasts confabulate," and is written with the object, first, doubtless, of amusing young people, and then of rousing some kind of sympathy with the lower creatures. These
objects are attained with fair success. Some of the illustrations are extremely pretty, and designed with a certain elegance of fancy.—Sugar and Spice, and All that's Nice ; Pictures and Rhymes, by "J. B." and " V. B." (Strahan and Co.)—Both rhymes and pictures are sufficiently good, the latter pleasing especially with their quaint drawing and nicely harmonised tints.— The Story of Androclus and the Lion (Seeleys) should be noticed for its studies of lions, after Rnbens, Riedinger, Bowrye, Landseer,
and T. F. Lewis. The other illustrations are from the antique, while the story itself is given in Apion's words, as they have been preserved by Aulus Gellins. It is pleasing to see the really artistic care with which this little piece of work is done.--Three Wise Old Couples, the words by Mrs. E. T. Corbett, the pictures by Hopkins (Cassell, Petter, Galpin, and Co.), will quite possibly be found amusing by some readers, though the humour both of the verses and of the drawings is somewhat boisterous and loud.—Our Folks: Tohn Churchill's Letters Home, by Agnes Giberne (Hand and Heart Pub- lishing Office), gives us some sketches by pen and pencil of village characters, from the squire down to the "softie." Some of the heads are characteristic and vigorously drawn.—Footprints : Nature Seen on its Human Side. By Sarah Tytler. (Marshall Japp and Co.)—Miss Tytler has given us here a book of real worth, a book which shows and may well call forth in the young readers for whom it is chiefly intended, a true love of nature. The wonders of sky, and sea, and laud, legend, and poetry, and history, as they are conected with them ; these and other things, which defy enumeration, are included in this volume. The instruction and entertainment which it offers are varied, but not given diffusely or in rambling fashion. Some will be new to most readers, and with what they have already seen they will not be sorry to renew acquaintance in the fresh and lively way in which the writer puts it.—Two useful volumes may be noticed in Great Orators, Statesmen, and Divines, and Teachers and Preachers of Recent Times, selected by the editor of " The Treasury of British Eloquence," &c. (Nimmo.)—Both contain excellent reading ; the former, especially, will introduce young readers to an actual acquaintance with the spirit of some great orators, Lord Chatham, Charles James Fox, Sheridan, and others who are mostly nothing but a name. The selection seems to have been judiciously made.—A word of praise is fairly due to four unpretending little volumes, The Boy's Own Country Book of TVinter, Spring, Summer, Autumn. By Thomas Miller. (Routledge and Sons.)—Mr. Miller writes, we should say, out of a full knowledge. His descriptions and anecdotes, drawn from experience as well as from books, will be found attractive.—Juvenile Wit and Humour, collected and edited by D. Shearer, M.A. (Oliphant, Anderson, and Ferrier), gives us "five hundred wise, witty, and waggish sayings of young people." We cannot help fancying that we have heard better things than most of these "sayings," but then it is a very important matter to have them fresh, and the circumstance, the look, for instance, of the young speaker, who astonishes us with his imagination or his acuteness, goes for a great deal. Perhaps nothing is better in the book than " Isaac Watts's First Couplet." He and his schoolfellows were set to write with a farthing for a prize, and Isaac produced,— " I write not for a farthing, but to try How I your farthing waiters can outvie."
—The Knight and the Dwarf. By Charles Mills. (Chatto and Windus.)—This is a fairy-story, but not, we think, a successful one. The adventures and surprises are of the ordinary kind, giving proof of very little originality and fancy in the writer; and the style is too stiff and pompous. Here is a sentence taken absolutely at random:— " Siegfried was, of course, oblivious to the hostile criticism which his attentions to the Queen had aroused. Nor was Pimpelina aware of the angry feelings with which his attentions had been regarded by her relative, upon whom she had ever looked with cousinly favour, without defining even in her own mind the motives which dictated his flatteries." Did any one ever talk like that ? Yet, surely, fairy-tales should be written just as one talks. The very word " tale" might have reminded Mr. Mills of so much.— Fire Little Peppers, and How They Grew. By Margaret Sidney (Hodder and Stoughton), is a tale which relates how a widow with her five children bravely struggled against adverse circumstances of poverty and sickness, and how their patience and courage were rewarded. This is all very well told ; Polly, the eldest child, and Phronsie, the youngest, are peculiarly pleasing little sketches. Only one is inclined to wish that the deliverance had been brought about in some more probable way. Of course, we speak with a certain reserve, as to what may be done on the other side of the Atlantic ; yet surely the ill-tempered and hypochondriac old gentleman who is so won over by Phronsie that he takes the mother and all her family as permanent inmates of his house, makes a considerable demand upon our faith. After this, we accept without murmur—indeed, it is a mitigation of our surprise—the identification of the old gentleman's son with the widow's cousin and friend of early days.—Hoodie, by Mrs. Molesworth (Shaw and Co.), is, as our readers versed in such literature will expect from the name, a delightful little book. Mrs. Molesworth takes as much pains in drawing a distinct portraiture of a child's character and achieves as great a success, as any of the best novelists of the day does with his hero or heroine. " Hoodie " is a wonderful child, but wonderful in the way in which children really are sometimes found to be. These strange creatures, so hard to manage, so caprici- ous, so desperately " naughty," to use the most expressive phrase, and yet so full of feeling and of love, if only these can be got at, are
not to be found in every nursery. Happy the mother who knows nothing of them, except she be a person of exceptional tact and wisdom. But they often grow up into very first-rate men and women. Hoodie, told as it is in the charming "child language" of which Mrs. Molesworth is so skilful a master, with its pathos, its fun, it comic situations (the heroine, e.g., finding out that Cousin Mag- dalen likes eggs "kite fresh," puts a bantam-cock under a bed, which wakes up the household next day with an admirable imitation of croup),—Hoodie, we say, should certainly be read.— Belle's Pink Boots. By Joanna H. Matthews. (Griffith and Ferran.) —This is the story of a child's self-denial, and of the good which came from it. Rosie gives up the darling desire of her heart,—a pair of "pink boots," for dancing—(coat seven dollars ; hear this, and be thankful that you do not live in America, English fathers and mothers),—and earns a harvest of seventy-fold in love and blessing. The tale has the merit, not easily attained in such things, of not being set in too high a key. Rosie is a natural little creature, not by any means " too good for human nature's daily food."—Of yearly pub- lications, we have to notice the annual volume of Good Words (Isbister and Co.), in praise of which it is needless to say anything, except it may be to mention that it contains Mr. Blackmore's story of "Christo- well," besides a multitude of other good things.—The Sunday Maga- zine (the same publishers), another storehouse of excellent reading (we have already spoken in praise of one of its serial stories, " Mother Herring's Chicken.")—The Welcome, a Magazine for the Home Circle (Partridge and Co.), a handsome volume, with a great variety of contents excellently suited for readers young and old, and adorned with illustrations above the average of merit ; and equal in merit and interest to any, Cassell's Family Magazine (Cassell and Co.) Here, again, the illustrations are noticeably excellent.—The Sunday at Home and Leisure-Hour Volumes for 1881 (Religions Tract So- ciety), two companion volumes, which again reach us well got up and bound. They contain a mass of excellent and valuable articles and tales suitable for Sunday and week-day reading.—In the same connection we may couple The Fireside Annual, edited by the Rev. C Bullock, B.D. (Home Words publishing office) ; and The Evang,lical Magazine volume for 1880 (Hodder and Stoughton), the steel portraits in which will have a permanent interest.
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