POETRY FOR CHILDREN.* IN a wise and thoughtful preface, Mr.

Palgrave explains the pur- port of this selection. It is intended, he observes, for children between nine or ten and fifteen or sixteen years of age, and is meant for their own possession and study, not less than for use as a class-book :—

" The scheme of choice followed has produced a selection different from any known to the editor. Suitability to childhood is, of course, the common principle of all. But this quality secured (so far as indi- vidual judgment can), nothing has been,• here admitted which does not reach a high rank in poetical merit ; and the available stores of English poetry have been carefully reviewed for the purpose. . . . . . . Poetry for poetry's sake is what he offers. To illustrate the history of our literature, to furnish specimens of leading or of less-known poets, to give useful lessons for this or the other life, to encourage a patriotic temper—each an aim fit to form the guiding principle of a selection— have here only an indirect and subsidiary recognition. It is, however, believed that so far as the scope of the book coincides with such other aims, they may be more effectually served through the powerful opera- tion of really good poetry, than when made the main object of a collection."

Mr. Palgrave's knowledge of our poetical literature is ex-

tensive, his taste is excellent, and the delightful volume which he edited many years ago of our songs and lyrics gave incontestable proofs of his ability to produce an anthology which will not only delight the general reader, but satisfy the demands of critics. The little volume before us is re- markable for originality of choice. Familiar poems are here, of course, in abundance, as they needs must be in any selection. A child's book of poetry that did not include such pieces as " John Gilpin," "The Loss of the ' Royal George,' " " Hohenlinden," "The Burial of Sir John Moore," the " Elegy " of Gray, and the "After Blenheim" of Southey, would be an anomaly, but Mr. Palgrave is far from content to follow in the easy tracks made by earlier editors. He thinks for himself, and the freshness of an original mind is discernible in these pages. It is obvious that such a selection is likely to provoke difference of opinion, and we

venture to think that Mr. Palgrave's judgment is not uniformly sound. What we have to look for, be it remembered, in this collection is poetry for poetry's sake, since nothing is professed to be admitted that does not reach a high rank in poetical merit. This standard excludes, as it seems to us, many, if not most specimens of humorous or semi-humorous poetry, and therefore we are surprised to meet with Goldsmith's amusing, but assuredly not poetical, " Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog." Moreover, in spite of Mr. Palgrave's high and justly high estimate of Cowper, who is amply represented, we cannot think that " Alexander Selkirk," though it finds its way into most collections, is worthy of a place here. On the whole, however, pleasure coupled some- times with surprise is likely to be the reader's dominant feeling on turning over these pages. They prove, if proof be needed, that the field of English poetry is well -nigh inexb austible , and that new beau- ties may be readily discovered by all who seek for them. Blake, who was comparatively unknown or despised thirty years ago, has now the position he deserves in a child's book of poetry. He, of all our poets perhaps, loved children best, and one remembers with delight the story of the good old man putting his "happy hands" on the head of a lovely little girl, and saying,—" May God make His world to you, my child, as beautiful as it has been to me."

The volume contains ten of Blake's simple lyrics, and Mr. Pelgrave opens his Treasury with this poet's cheery "Laughing- Song oc-

" When the green woods laugh with the voice of joy, And the dimpling stream runs laughing by; When the air does laugh with our merry wit, And the green hill laughs with the noise of it; When the meadows laugh with lively green, And the grasshopper laughs in the merry scene ; When Mary, and Susan, and Emily,

With their sweet round months sing,' Ha, ha, he !'

When the painted birds laugh in the shade, Where our table with cherries and nuts is spread; Come, live, and be merry, and join with me, To sing the sweet chorus of 'Ha, ha, he ! ' "

Strange, by the way, that Wordsworth, when enunciating his principles of poetical diction, says nothing about Blake, many of whose poems illustrate those principles in the most striking manner. His simplicity, as it seems to us, is more natural than

* The Children's Treasury of English Song. Selected and Arranged with Note3 by Francis Turner Palgrave. London : Macmillan and Co.

that of Wordsworth, who wrote to sustain a theory, and forgot it nobly in his finest work ; but Blake's child-poems are the fruit of a nature eminently child-like,—though, of course, he was incapable of the splendid flights attained by Wordsworth, whose finest poems, the " Ode on Immortality," the " Ode to Duty," " Laodamia," the "Eclipse of the Sun," and " Tintern Abbey" belong to another and higher region of poetry. Like Mr. Coven- try Patmore, in his Children's Garland, Mr. Palgrave inserts several of the old ballads, of which the quaint simplicity and pathos are certain to attract children. The editor is, as all the world knows, a great admirer of Scott's lyrical genius, and his best short poems likely to win the ear of children are not omitted from this selection. One of them, it need scarcely be said, is the "Young Lochinvar," and those spirited lines remind us that Mr. Browning's still more spirited ride from Ghent to Aix has not been admitted. We miss, too, and we think it a considerable omission, Mr. Arnold's exquisite poem, "The Forsaken Merman," which has a charm for boys and girls which any good reader may discover who will read it to children of the ages mentioned in Mr. Palgrave's preface. There are very few children who have not an ear for the melody of verse, and they will delight in what they imperfectly under- stand, provided the lines are spirited and the movement unim- peded. The writer of this review well remembers shouting out with boyish delight Scott's lines in 'The Field of Waterloo" describing the last charge of the French, long before he was old enough to understand half the big words contained in that masterly passage. The accurate knowledge comes afterwards, the enjoyment of fine poetry and of resonant rhythm may be felt very early in life. Mr. Palgrave has kept this fact in mind in in- serting the lines we have mentioned, and, indeed, throughout the collection, which contains, among other poems of which children will fail to apprehend the full meaning, Milton's " Hymn of Christ's Nativity" and the "Arethusa" of Shelley.

Among the lyrics that must stir the pulses of every boy or man who reads them, we are glad to see Sir F. Doyle's fine lines on the " Loss of the Birkenhead,' " which cannot be too widely known. We must find space for a few stanzas. The speaker is supposed to be a soldier who survived. It will be remembered that the women were saved, while the noble soldiers and officers went down with the ship :-

"Then, amidst oath and prayer, and rush and wreck,

Faint screams, faint questions waiting no reply, Our Colonel gave the word, and on the deck Form'd us in line to die.

To die ! 'twas hard, whilst the sleek ocean glow'd Beneath a sky as fair as summer flowers ;-

' All to the boats!' cried one ; he was, thank God, No officer of ours

Our English hearts beat true,—we would not stir; That base appeal we heard, but heeded not ; On land, on sea, we had our Colours, Sir, To keep without a spot ?

They shall not say in England, that we fought With shameful strength nnhonour'd life to seek ; Into mean safety, mean deserters brought By trampling down the weak.

So we made women with their children go, The oars ply back again, and yet again ; Whilst, inch by inch, the drowning ship sank low, Still under steadfast men."

Mr. Palgrave, we regret to see, has been unable to insert any of Mr. Tennyson's poems, having failed to obtain the sanction of

the publishers. We cannot pretend to fathom the reasons which sometimes induce owners of copyright to prohibit the publication

in a selection even of a single lyric or sonnet. It cannot be from any fear lest such an appropriation should injure the sale of a poet's works. On the contrary, it is, as was once observed in the Publishers' Circular, "always the very best advertisement for an

author." Happily, several beautiful poems by Mr. Tennyson are inserted in Mr. Patmore's Children's Garland, a collection which is far from being superseded even by Mr. Palgrave's. A few eccentricities may be observed in Mr. Patmore's volume from which the present work is free, but with some faults, it has many virtues, and we should not be surprised to learn that by children, if not by their teachers, it will be regarded as the favourite.