MARIA EDGEWORTH REDIVIVA.*

WHERE is the writer who tells stories for children with the directness and effectiveness of Maria Edgeworth P We have enough, and more than enough, of stories about children. Some of these are simply sentimental ; we have never been able to persuade ourselves that Little Lord Fauntleroy is any- thing better than a tale of sentiment, of which the hero is at bottom a pretty little girl masquerading as a boy. Some, again, are really pathetic; Misunderstood, with its jolly little chap who dies when he ought to have lived, and whose vigorous spirits conceal the strength of his affections, has, like some better, and also like some very inferior, tales, brought tears to many eyes. Here and there you may find tales about children, such as Kenneth Grahame's The Golden Age, which are full of combined humour and poetical grace. But none of these books about children are really books for the reading of children. Their charm, when good, is that they recall the feel- ings of childhood for the instruction or amusement of elderly people, and gently satirise the commonplace life of grown-up men and women by its contrast with the fancies, the dreams, the hopes, or the aspirations of childhood. But for children them- selves such stories are of necessity to a great extent unmeaning. The contrast between the late years and the early years of life can be understood and felt by those only who have long ceased to be young, and see childhood in the enchantment lent to it by the distance of the view. We greatly doubt whether even 27w Golden Age, admirable as it is, will often appeal to the imagination or the sympathy of a true child. Not so with the stories by Miss Edgeworth to be found in the Parents' Assistant or the Moral Tales. They are directly and intentionally written for children, and intended to instruct and amuse their youthful readers. And in their day Miss Edgeworth's tales undoubtedly attained their object. The memory of men and women now living can testify to the serious interest with which they themselves once read—may we not say studied P—Simple Susan, Lazy Lawrence, Mademoiselle Panache, and a score more of tales which did, as a matter of fact, to their youthful admirers combine the interest of an animated story with the instructiveness of works which to some of us—the present writer speaks from experience—were an introduction into the moral problems of life. Maria Edgeworth's merits as a teller of stories for children are, like many of the best things in life, so obvious that they escape attention. She is, above all, a thoroughly good storyteller. She makes perfectly plain what she means. Innuendoes, hints, insinuations, the literary charm possessed by some authors of conveying much which they do not directly say, are entirely unsuitable for the taste of a child. Miss Edgeworth not only tells her story well, but makes everything perfectly clear. We all under- stand the goodness of Simple Susan, the villainy of Attorney Case, the heartless vulgarity of his daughter Barbara, the laziness of Lazy Lawrence. The virtues of Franklin, who, being well educated by the virtuous Mr. Spencer. in the school belonging to a philanthropic society, is supposed by the pre- judiced and ignorant Mrs. Pomfret to belong to what she termed a" villaintropic society," are all clear as noonday, and this clearness is as delightful to children as is the directness of ballad poetry to the early societies in which ballads are a natural growth. Then, too, she has a quality which is more visible in her best novels, such as 27w Absentee, than in her tales,— that is, a humorous insight into character ; and with a skill * Thrm LUG. Cooks. By Lucy Cramp. With Illustrations by Gertrude M. Brad's/. London ; Edward Arnold. po. 6d4

which now is not properly valued, she takes care that her humour is such as children can appreciate. The very con- fusion of " philanthropic" with " villaintropic," the ingenuity,

in the eyes of a youthful critic, displayed in dubbing a villainous lawyer with the name of Case, or in giving to the

three competitors for their uncle's property the significant surnames of Goodenough, Marvel, and Wright—simple

though the jokes may be—are to Miss Edgeworth's little readers very taking. " The didacticism of the stories for children," writes Leslie Stephen, "has not prevented their permanent popularity." The remark is true, but, coming from so subtle and sympathetic a critic, seems an under- statement of the truth, or even a misstatement. The didacticism of her stories, we are convinced, is even now among children, and certainly was with the children for whom the stories were written, a source of popularity. A clever child

likes thinking ; he likes, above all things, to enter for the first time into thoughts about life. What are truisms to his father and mother are new truths to him. Miss Barbara, the heartless contrast to Simple Susan, we are told, still thought herself undervalued, and soon contrived to expose her ignorance most completely by talking of things which she did not understand. " Those," adds our didactic storyteller, " who never attempt to appear what they are not—those who do not in their manners pretend to any- thing unsuited to their habits and situation in life, never are in danger of being laughed at by sensible, well-bred people of any rank ; but affectation is the constant and just object of ridicule." This reflection sounds to the grown-up people of to-day commonplace, but to a child with a turn for reflection the maxim that affectation is the constant and just object of ridicule conveys not so much a salutary lesson as a new and striking rule for the conduct of life. "The bright-

ness of her style, her keen observation of character, and her shrewd sense and vigour," to use the words of Leslie Stephen, made Miss Edgeworth in her day, and still make her, the queen of story-tellers for children. She never displays the rollicking fun by means of which Holiday House has given innocent and unquenchable amusement to one generation after another of young admirers. Bat then the authoress of Holiday House produced but one memorable tale, whilst Miss Edgeworth provided a whole library for the delight of childhood.

Where, we again ask, can we find a successor to Miss Edgeworth P Till some few months ago we should have answered this inquiry mournfully with the one word "Nowhere." But the reading of Mrs. Lucy Crump's Three Little Cooks must convince the most confirmed sceptic that

the spirit of Maria Edgeworth, though in a, slightly modern- ised, and even improved form, still lives amongst us. The aim of this charming little book would assuredly meet with Maria's warmest approval. Its end is to provide lessons in cookery for the young, and the teaching leads, from a culinary point of view, as any one may ascertain by trial, to pre- eminently satisfactory results. But the real effect of the book is to embody some information about cooking in a series of interesting little sketches of youthful cooks and their

experiments, and thus at once to arouse among children an interest in cookery, and to give them a set of stories which a true child, in common with many persons who have left child- hood far behind them, will read with unfeigned pleasure.

Every word that Mrs. Crump writes—we may venture from her intimate knowledge of children to assume she is a mother—has the beautiful directness and simplicity which mark Miss Edgeworth's style, and which, whilst they give delight to children, are also, as every critic knows, among the rarest of literary gifts. Observe the way in which we are introduced to the " three little cooks "

"Ophelia, Thomas, and Heidi sat in the sand-heap. Thomas dug, Ophelia admired, and Heidi sat still as a mouse. Heidi was very beautiful, very beautiful indeed. Her hair curled, her eyes were twice the size of her mouth, in which could be seen six teeth and a real tongue, and her legs were jointed with the best and stoutest elastic Ophelia was not as beautiful as Heidi, her hair did not curl, nor were her eyes half as blue or as big in proportion to her rosy cheeks. But then Ophelia could move and Ophelia could talk. Indeed, Ophelia did nothing else but move or talk, and still oftener both at once. Thomas being neither a girl nor a doll, it does not matter what he looked like : he worked."

Here we have the genuine Edgeworthian touch ; everything is clear. No time is wasted on the preliminaries to acquaint- anceship. The heroes of our tale—the three little cooks-

become at once old friends, and we are prepared for their experiments and adventures. But we must also know their guide, Lucinda :—

" Lucinda was grown np, and therefore any age between 20 and SO; for when once a person is grown up a few years more or less are of no sort of consequence. As for her looks they were just comfortable. The first -glance was enough to show that she was not fussy, that she quito understood pretends,' never doubted that the garden was a boundless prairie and the playroom the Arctic Ocean, and could be trusted to view in a reasonable light volcanoes and Heidi, and Thomas's inventions, and life in general, and knew that children should be left alone."

Lucinda is the parental instructor—so dear to Miss Edge- worth—who really delights in children, and is prepared to give

the information and draw the moral which each occasion requires. But Lucinda is a great improvement on Miss Edgeworth's fathers and mothers. They are excellent parents, they are devoted to their children, and are the safest of guides in the path of honesty, good conduct, and useful information ;

but they are not exactly " comfortable" • persons. The new Maria Edgeworth of the twentieth century inevitably displays a sort of sympathy and tenderness which could not appear in the didactic tales, though it did appear in the actual life, of the real Maria Edgeworth of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Another Edgeworthian characteristic is the way in which the three little cooks are always active. Their life is, as the life of children should be, a training in happy energy. They make volcanoes, they roast apples, they rush to buy the much-desired stove, they give tea-parties of cakes and scones, they have their little tiffs in which Thomas tries to exact as a condition of rendering some service to Ophelia that she shall say " All girls are sillies I "—a degrada- tion to which, we are happy to think, the spirited little woman refuses to submit. Even Heidi contrives somehow or other, and that in the most natural manner, to take an active instead of a passive part in life. Then, too, as we hope the short extracts we have been able to make will show,

the Three Little Cooks is brimful of a sort of childlike humour. And in this quality, too, Miss Edgeworth, in

spite of a stiffness belonging to her time and her society, was, as we have pointed out, never deficient. The grim humour of the Irish lady who in Castle Itackrent told the tragic comedy of the fall of a wealthy Irish family, or the lighter humorousness of Ormond or Ennui, could not appear in tales for children ; but the didacticism of the Parent's Assistant cannot conceal its writer's keen eye for the absurd sides of life. Mrs. Crump, further, if she throws more of humour into her children's tales than did her famous predecessor, follows the very essence of Miss Edgeworth's method. Every lesson ie mingled with a story of the kind in which children delight. Whoever reads " Volcanoes and ROast Apples," "A Little Cooking and Some Tiffs," "After Play Comes Work," will, if a child, long for a green stove on which to make omelettes; and if of the age of those who write in newspapers, will earnestly wish that Mrs. Crump, as Maria Edgeworth rediviva, will employ in further stories her genius as a story-teller, and bring to life again the Edgeworthian method of embodying sound teaching in tales for children.