Original Poems for Infant Minds. By Several Young Persons. (Routledge
and Sons.)—This is a reprint of an altered edition of our old friend "The Original Poems," against the alterations in which we have always protested, as destroying much of the quaintness of the book in its earlier form. For instance, the delightfully priggish verse in "The Hand-Post,"-
"Peer Henry felt his blood run cold At what before him stood ; 'But yet,' qnoth he, 'no harm, rm sure,
Can happen to the-good," is watered down into,— " Poor Henry felt his blood run cold
At what before him stood; Yet like a man did he resoke To do the best he could."
We have before called attention to the terrible deterioration in the poem entitled "The First Plum Cake," where the boy who was formerly called little George, to rhyme to gorge, is turned into little John, who rhymes to gone, and who instead of resolving with at least laudable energy. that he "would eat and would stuff and would cram," only remarks, with true modern milk-and-waterishness, "so nice to have all to myself." These amendments take all the heart out of the book ; nevertheless, to those who have not known it in its stronger and more racy English, this edition will probably be welcome. It contains two coloured illustrations.
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