CHILDREN'S POETRY.
[To Tax EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR."]
have read with great interest your article in the Spectator on "Children's Poetry," and may I say how heartily I concur in your opinion on Mr. Andrew Lang's assertion that
"nothing perhaps crushes the love of poetry more surely and swiftly than the use of poems as school-books " ? I think nothing can be wider of the mark. If I may refer to myself, I should like to say that my first love of Shakespeare dates -from the time when I was quite a young boy at the Edinburgh Academy, where his plays were made a lesson-book. The happiest hours at school were those spent in reading his dramas under our English master, and I can even now recall the teacher's impressive tones as he read King Richard H.'s address at the opening of the play, to "John of Gaunt, time- honoured Lancaster."
I can state that the children in my National schools like better than any other lessons, the poems they have to learn and repeat ; and that their pleasure in poetry is intelligent, may be gathered from the definition which one little girl of eight gave of "poetry." The class was asked to define "poetry," and the child referred to answered at once : "Poetry is pretty thoughts in pretty words." Few better answers, I am inclined to think, could be given even by children of longer growth.—I
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