V.Charles and Mary Lamb; The Godwins.

Away down the river,A hundred miles or more,Other little childrenShall bring my boats ashore.

Away down the river,

A hundred miles or more,

Other little children

Shall bring my boats ashore.

There is the preternatural strain of sadness in the make-up of youth; they like to discover in their elders those same characteristics they possess; they will creep to the strong arm of him who marvels as they do at the mystery of silent things. Such a one, even though grown-up, is worth while; he knows what it is to be in bed in summer with “the birds still hopping on the grass”; he knows what it is to be a child. Stevenson, the man, becomes the remembered boy.

The poetry for children that has lived is of that quality which appeals to the pristine sense of all that is fair and good andbeautiful. Tender love, unfettered joy, protecting gentleness recognise no age; we, who are no longer young, look through the barred gates and up the gravel road, flanked by the dense freshness of green. Somewhere we hear the splash of water, far off we see the intense white of marble. Clinging to the iron bars outside, we watch the girl and boy, we count their footprints in the sand. They stoop to pick the violets as we stooped years ago; they look into the basin of clear water as we looked years ago. And then the path curves out of view. Here is where our appreciative contemplation of childhood becomes self-conscious; we cannotseethe little ones doing what we did in years gone by. Perhaps this, perhaps that; we have our firstmoraldoubt. Through the bars we call to the childhood of our memory; we call it tocome back. The poet has but to sing of what he found beyond that bend when he was young, of the child he was, who once looked up at him from the clear depths; the boy and girl will creep down the gravel path again, they will marvel at what is told them of revolving suns, of the lost childhood, of the flight of birds, and of the shiver of grass. Let the poet but sing in true notes, making appeal to their imagery, giving them vigour in exchange for their responsiveness, and understanding in exchange for their trust; they will return, even to the iron gate, and take him by the hand. This is what it means to be the laureate of childhood.

A story is told of Charles Lamb which, in view of actual facts, one must necessarily disbelieve. It is to the effect that, dining out one evening, he heard in an adjoining room the noise of many children. With his glass filled, he rose from his chair and drank the toast, “Here’s to the health of good King Herod.” Instinctively, those familiar with Elia will recollect his “Dream Children,” and wonder how any critic could reconcile the two attitudes. Lamb had an abiding love for young people and a keen understanding of their natures.

As writers of juvenile literature, Charles (1775–1834) and Mary (1765–1847) Lamb might neverhave been known, had it not been for William Godwin (1756–1836) and his second wife. The two began a publishing business, in 1805, under the firm name of M. J. Godwin and Company. The only details that concern us are those which began and ended with the Lambs and their work. Godwin, himself, under the pseudonym of Baldwin, turned out literary productions of various kinds. But though, during one period, there was every sign of a flourishing trade, by 1822 the business was bankrupt.

The Lambs regarded their writings for children as pot-boilers; letters from them abound with such confessions. But it was in their natures to treat their work lovingly; their own personalities entered the text; they drew generously upon themselves; and so their children’s books are filled with their own experiences, and are, in many respects, as autobiographical as the “Essays of Elia.” Mary undertook by far the larger number of the volumes which are usually accredited to her brother; in fact, wherever the two collaborated, Lamb occupied a secondary place.

The following list indicates the division of labour:

The King and Queen of Hearts, 1805. Lamb’s first juvenile work.

Tales from Shakespeare, 1807. Lamb wrote to Manning, May 10, 1806: “I have done ‘Othello’ and ‘Macbeth,’ and mean to do all the tragedies. I think it will be popular among the little people, besides money.”

Adventures of Ulysses, 1808. “Intended,” as Lamb told Manning, “to be an introduction to the reading of Telemachus; it is done out of the ‘Odyssey,’ not from the Greek. I would not mislead you; nor yet from Pope’s ‘Odyssey,’ but from an older translation of one Chapman. The ‘Shakespeare Tales’ suggested doing it.” Lamb’s delight in Chapman was as unalloyed as that of Keats.

Mrs. Leicester’s School, 1809. Issued anonymously, hence commonly ascribed to Lamb. The greater part of the work belongs to Mary; it seems to have been her idea originally. Lamb to Barton, January 23, 1824: “My Sister’s part in the Leicester School (about two-thirds) was purely her own; as it was (to the same quantity) in the Shakespeare Tales which bear my name. I wrote only the Witch Aunt, the First Going to Church, and the final story about a little Indian Girl in a Ship.”

Poetry for Children, 1809. Lamb claimed about one-third of the book as his own. Mr. Lucas believes that Mrs. Godwin issued these verses to compete with the Taylors and Adelaide O’Keeffe.

Prince Dorus or Flattery Put Out of Countenance, 1811. Robinson wrote: “I this year tried to persuade him [Lamb] to make a new version of the old Tale of Reynard the Fox. He said he was sure it would not succeed—sense for humour, said L., is extinct.” “Prince Dorus” was done instead.

Beauty and the Beast, 1811. Authorship doubtful.

There is something keenly pathetic in noting the brother and sister at work in the interests of children, hoping to add to their yearly income—sitting down together and thinking out conceptions for theirjuvenile poems and stories. Mary Lamb reveals, by those smaller elements in her prose, a keener discernment of what a child’s book should be; she is far more successful than her brother in entering into the spirit of the little lives she writes about, while Lamb himself is happiest in his touches where he is handling the literary subjects.[39]But on the whole, Lamb’s style was not suited to the making of children’s books. We see them, while writing the Shakespeare Tales, seated at one table, “an old literary Darby and Joan,” Mary tells Sarah Stoddart, “I taking snuff and he groaning all the while, and saying he can make nothing of it, which he always says till he has finished, and then he finds out he has made something of it....”

Mrs. Godwin doubtless conceived her system of advertising direct from Newbery; in the story of “Emily Barton,” which forms part of “Mrs. Leicester’s School,” Mary Lamb tells how Emily’s papa ordered the coachman to drive to the Juvenile Library in Skinner street [No. 41], where seven books were bought, “and the lady in the shoppersuaded him to take more, but mamma said that was quite enough at present.”

By this, the Lambs indicated a willingness to accord with any business suggestions which might further the interests of the Godwins; nevertheless, they were not so bound that they could not act independently. And, in view of the fact that Lamb disliked Mrs. Godwin, there was a certain graciousness revealed in the concessions they did make from time to time. Elia was to discover that Godwin had his eye alert for any unnecessary element of cruelty which might creep into their books for children. When the publishers were given the manuscript of “Ulysses,” Godwin wrote a letter to Lamb, on March 10, 1808, which, with the answer, is worth quoting, since the attitude is one to be considered by all writers and by all library custodians.

Dear Lamb:I address you with all humility, because I know you to betenax propositi. Hear me, I entreat you, with patience.It is strange with what different feelings an author and a bookseller look at the same manuscript. I know this by experience: I was an author, I am a bookseller. The author thinks what will conduce to his honour; the bookseller, what will cause his commodities to sell.You, or some other wise man, I have heard to say [it was Johnson]: It is children that read children’s books, when they are read, but it is parents that choose them. The critical thought of the tradesman puts itself therefore into the place of the parent, and what the parent will condemn.We live in squeamish days. Amid the beauties of yourmanuscript, of which no man can think more highly than I do, what will the squeamish say to such expressions as these, ‘devoured their limbs, yet warm and trembling, lapping the blood,’ page 10. Or to the giant’s vomit, page 14, or to the minute and shocking description of the extinguishing the giant’s eye in the page following. You, I dare say, have no formed plan of excluding the female sex from among your readers, and I, as a bookseller, must consider that, if you have, you exclude one half of the human species.Nothing is more easy than to modify these things if you please, and nothing, I think, is more indispensable....

Dear Lamb:

I address you with all humility, because I know you to betenax propositi. Hear me, I entreat you, with patience.

It is strange with what different feelings an author and a bookseller look at the same manuscript. I know this by experience: I was an author, I am a bookseller. The author thinks what will conduce to his honour; the bookseller, what will cause his commodities to sell.

You, or some other wise man, I have heard to say [it was Johnson]: It is children that read children’s books, when they are read, but it is parents that choose them. The critical thought of the tradesman puts itself therefore into the place of the parent, and what the parent will condemn.

We live in squeamish days. Amid the beauties of yourmanuscript, of which no man can think more highly than I do, what will the squeamish say to such expressions as these, ‘devoured their limbs, yet warm and trembling, lapping the blood,’ page 10. Or to the giant’s vomit, page 14, or to the minute and shocking description of the extinguishing the giant’s eye in the page following. You, I dare say, have no formed plan of excluding the female sex from among your readers, and I, as a bookseller, must consider that, if you have, you exclude one half of the human species.

Nothing is more easy than to modify these things if you please, and nothing, I think, is more indispensable....

The main argument here stated daily confronts the librarian and the author; it is one so often over-considered, that in its wake it leaves a diluted literature, mild in expression, faint in impression, weak in situation, and lacking in colour. There is a certain literary style that, through zealous regard for refinement, misses the rugged vitality which marks the old-time story, and which constitutes its chief hold upon life. On the other hand, children need very little stimulation, provided it is virile, to set them in active accord; and it is wise for publishers to consider the omissions of those unnecessary details, situations, or actions, without which the story is in no way harmed. But to curtail or to dilute the full meaning, to give a part for the whole, has resulted in producing so many versions of the same tale or legend as to make the young reader doubt which is the correct one; and in most cases leave in him no desire to turn to the original source. On your libraryshelves, are you to have five or six versions of the same story, issued by as many rival publishing houses, or are you to discard them all and take only that one which isnearestthe original in spirit and in general excellence?

Lamb here brushed against the problem of writing for the popular taste. This is how he met it:

March 11, 1808.Dear Godwin:The giant’s vomit was perfectly nauseous, and I am glad you pointed it out. I have removed the objection. To the other passages I can find no objection but what you may bring to numberless passages besides, such as of Scylla snatching up the six men, etc.,—that is to say, they are lively images ofshockingthings. If you want a book which is not occasionally toshock, you should not have thought of a tale which is so full of anthropophagi and wonders. I cannot alter these things without enervating the Book, and I will not alter them if the penalty should be that you and all the London booksellers should refuse it. But speaking as author to author, I must say that I thinkthe terriblein those two passages seems to me so much to preponderate over the nauseous as to make them rather fine than disgusting. [Remember, this is spoken by one who in youth was sensitive and whose feelings aregraphicallyset forth in “Witches, and Other Night Fears.”]... I only say that I will not consent to alter such passages, which I know to be some of the best in the book. As an author, I say to you, an author, Touch not my work. As to a bookseller I say, Take the work, such as it is, or refuse it. You are free to refuse it as when we first talked of it. As to a friend I say, Don’t plague yourself and me with nonsensical objections. I assure you I will not alter one more word.

March 11, 1808.

Dear Godwin:

The giant’s vomit was perfectly nauseous, and I am glad you pointed it out. I have removed the objection. To the other passages I can find no objection but what you may bring to numberless passages besides, such as of Scylla snatching up the six men, etc.,—that is to say, they are lively images ofshockingthings. If you want a book which is not occasionally toshock, you should not have thought of a tale which is so full of anthropophagi and wonders. I cannot alter these things without enervating the Book, and I will not alter them if the penalty should be that you and all the London booksellers should refuse it. But speaking as author to author, I must say that I thinkthe terriblein those two passages seems to me so much to preponderate over the nauseous as to make them rather fine than disgusting. [Remember, this is spoken by one who in youth was sensitive and whose feelings aregraphicallyset forth in “Witches, and Other Night Fears.”]... I only say that I will not consent to alter such passages, which I know to be some of the best in the book. As an author, I say to you, an author, Touch not my work. As to a bookseller I say, Take the work, such as it is, or refuse it. You are free to refuse it as when we first talked of it. As to a friend I say, Don’t plague yourself and me with nonsensical objections. I assure you I will not alter one more word.

Lamb’s critical genius often showed remarkable subtlety in the fine distinctions drawn between shades of effect which are produced by art. He established, through his careful analyses, an almost new critical attitude toward Shakespeare; and, in days when psychology as a study was unknown, when people witnessed the different phases of emotional life and judged them before formulæ were invented by which to test them scientifically, he saw, with rare discrimination, the part that the spiritual value of literature was to play in the development of culture. He here weighs in the balance a fine terror with a nauseous scene; such a difference presupposes a clear insight into the story and a power to arrive at the full meaning at once; it infers an instinctive knowledge of the whole gamut of possible effects. Lamb’s plea to Godwin is the plea of the man who would rather keep a child in the green fields than have him spend his time on wishy-washy matter.

The whole discussion resolves itself into the question: How much of the brute element, in which early literature abounds, is to be given to children? Shall they be made to fear unnecessarily, shall the ugly phases of life be allowed, simply because they come through the ages stamped as classic? All due consideration must be paid to the sensitiveness of childhood; but in what manner? Not by catering to it, not by eliminating the cause from the story without at the same time seeking to strengthen the inherentweakness of the child. Dr. Felix Adler[40]would remove from our folk-lore all the excrescences that denote a false superstition and that create prejudice of any kind; he would have bad stepmothers taken from the fairy tales, because an unjust hatred for a class is encouraged; he would prune away whatever is of no ornamental or ethical value. Assuredly it is best, as Dr. Adler points out, “to eliminate ... whatever is merely a relic of ancient animism.” Mr. Howells believes that it is our pedant pride which perpetuates the beast man in our classics, and it is true that some of our literature has lived in spite of that characteristic, and not because of it. But who is to point this beast man out for us, who is to judge whether this or that corrupts, who to eliminate and who to recreate? The classics would have to be rewritten whenever there was a shift in moral viewpoint.

A mushroom growth of story-writers, those who “tame” our fairy tales, who dilute fancy with sentimentalism, and who retell badly what has been told surpassing well, threatens to choke the flower. It is not the beast man in classic literature we have to fear so much as the small man of letters, enthused by the educational idea, who rewrites to order, and doesnot put into his text any of the invigorating spirit which marks all truly great literature. We have always to return to the ultimate goal, to the final court of appeal. If there is too much brutal strength in a story intended for children, it had best be read or told to them, rather than place in their hands what is not literature but the mere husk.

Such a letter as Lamb wrote to Godwin leads us to feel that at times misgivings seized him as to his own mutilation of Homer and of his much-beloved Chapman. But such hesitancy is the exception and not the rule to-day.

As poets for children the Lambs strike their most artificial note; the verses are forced and written according to prescribed formulæ. There is a mechanical effort in them to appear youthful, as though before setting to the task—for so the two called it—a memorandum of childish deeds and thoughts and expressions had been drawn up, from which each was to extract inspiration. But inspiration is sorely lacking; to most of the poems you can apply the stigma of “old maids” children; there is little that is naturally playful or spontaneously appealing in sentiment. Such lines as “Crumbs to the Birds” are unaffected and simple, and the paraphrase “On the Lord’s Prayer” aptly interpretative. But on the whole, the verses are stilted; the feeling in them comes not from the authors so much as it indicates how carefully it was thought out by them. We find Lamb making excusesto Coleridge in June, 1809: “Our little poems are ... humble, but they have no name. You must read them, remembering they were task-work; and perhaps you will admire the number of subjects, all of children, picked out by an old bachelor and an old maid. Many parents would not have found so many.”

It is this utmost sincerity and such a naïve confession which make Charles Lamb one of the most lovable figures in English literature.

Lucas, E. V.—Old-Fashioned Tales. Selected by. London, Wells, Gardner, Darton & Co.; New York, Stokes.

Lucas, E. V.—Forgotten Tales of Long Ago. Selected by. London, Wells, Gardner, Darton & Co.; New York, Stokes, 1906.

Morley, John—Jean Jacques Rousseau. Macmillan.

Rousseau, Jean Jacques—Émile; or, Treatise on Education. Abridged and Translated by W. H. Payne. (International Educational Series.) New York, Appleton, 1893.

De Genlis, Comtesse, As an Educator.Nation, 73:183 (Sept. 5, ’01).

De Genlis, Countess, Memoirs of the. Illustrative of the History of the 18th and 19th Century. Written by herself. (2 vols.) [English translation.] New York, Wilder & Campbell, 1825.

De Genlis, Comtesse—Théâtre d’Éducation. (5 vols.) Paris, 1825.

De Genlis, Comtesse—Adelaide and Theodore. Letters on Education,—containing all the principles relative to three different plans of education; to that of princes, and to those of young persons of both sexes. Translated from the French. (3 vols.) London, 1788.

Berquin, Arnaud—The Children’s Friend, Being a Selection from the Works of. Montrose, 1798.

Berquin, Arnaud—L’Ami des Enfants. Paris, 1792.

Edgeworth, Maria—The Parent’s Assistant; or, Stories for Children. (3 vols.)

Edgeworth, Maria, and Richard Lovell—Practical Education. (1st American ed., 2 vols.) New York, 1801.

Edgeworth, Richard Lovell, Memoirs of. Begun by himself and concluded by his daughter, Maria Edgeworth. (2 vols.) London, Hunter, 1820.

Hare, Augustus J. C.—Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth. (2 vols.) London, Arnold, 1894.

Edgeworth, Maria—Tales from. With an Introduction by Austin Dobson. New York, Stokes, $1.50.

Pancoast, H. S.—Forgotten Patriot.Atlantic, 91:758 (June, ’03).

Ray, A. C.—Philosopher’s Wooing.Book-buyer, 24:287 (May, ’02).

Fyvie, John—Literary Eccentricities. London, Constable, 1906. [Videp. 35: The author of “Sandford and Merton.”]

Day, Thomas—Life of. (In the British Poets, Vol. lviii.) [By R. A. Davenport, Esq.]

Day, Thomas—Sandford and Merton. London, George Routledge & Sons, 3s. 6d.

Barbauld, Anna Letitia—A Legacy for Young Ladies.... By the late Mrs. B. London, 1826. [Morality leaps from every page, but the book is agreeably written.]

Barbauld and Aikin—Evenings at Home. London, Routledge, 2s. 6d.

Murch, Jerom—Mrs. Barbauld and Her Contemporaries: Sketches of Some Eminent Literary and Scientific English Women. London, Longmans, 1877. [Videalso Memoir and Letters, ed. Grace A. Ellis; also Memoir by Anna Letitia LeBreton.]

Barbauld, Mrs.—Hymns in Prose. London, Routledge, 2s.

Raikes, Robert—The Man and His Work. Biographical Notes Collected by Josiah Harris. Unpublished Lettersby Robert Raikes. Letters from the Raikes family. Opinions on Influence of Sunday Schools. (Specially Contributed.) Ed. J. Henry Harris. Introduction by Dean Farrar, D.D. Bristol, London. [Illustrated; frontispiece of Raikes.]

Raikes, Robert—Memoir of the Founder of Sunday Schools. [Pamphlet.] G. Webster. Nottingham, 1873.

Trimmer, Mrs.—Some Account of the Life and Writings of, with original letters, and meditations and prayers, selected from her Journal. London, 1825.

Trimmer, Mrs. Sarah—The History of the Robins. (Ed. Edward Everett Hale.) Heath, 1903. [In its day, this book was illustrated by many well-known artists.]

More, Hannah, Life of. [Famous Women Series.] Charlotte M. Yonge. Boston, Roberts, 1890.

More, Hannah, Life of, with Notices of her Sisters. Henry Thompson, M.A. (2 vols.) Philadelphia, Carey and Hart, 1838.

More, Hannah, The Works of. (1st Complete American ed.) Harper, 1852. [Videalso Memoirs by W. Roberts and Mrs. H. C. Knight; Mrs. Elwood’s Memoirs of Literary Ladies;Monthly Review, Feb., 1809; April, 1813, Feb., 1820.VideLondon: Nurimo, for publication of many of Miss More’s, Mrs. Sherwood’s and Jane Taylor’s stories.]

Blake, William, The Lyric Poems of. Ed. John Sampson. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1905.

Blake, William, The Works of. Ed. E. J. Ellis and William Butler Yeats. (3 vols.) London, 1893.

Lamb, Charles and Mary—Works. Ed. E. V. Lucas. (Putnam.) Works. Ed. Canon Ainger. (Macmillan.)

Taylor, Ann and Jane—The “Original Poems” and Others. Ed. E. V. Lucas. New York, Stokes, $1.50.

Taylor, Jane and Ann—Greedy Dick, and Other Stories in Verse. Stokes, $0.50.

Watts, Dr. Isaac—London, Houlston. The same publishing house prints volumes by Mrs. Sherwood, Mrs. Cameron, Miss Edgeworth, H. Martineau, the Taylors, etc.

Watts, Dr. Isaac—Divine and Moral Songs. London, Elkin Mathews, 1s. 6d. net.

FOOTNOTES[31]She is the author of a remarkably bold “Manuel du Voyageur” en Six Langues. Paris, Barrois, 1810. Framed to meet every conceivable occasion.[32]Day was honest in his intentions, however mistaken his policy may have been. Sabrina finally married a Mr. Bicknell, who willingly allowed her to accept support, meagre as it was, from Day.[33]Mrs. Godwin [Mary Wollstonecraft] (1759–1797) began, as an exercise, to translate “The Elements of Morality, for the Use of Children,” written by the Reverend Christian Gotthilf Salzmann (1744–1811), who won no small renown for the excellence of his school, founded upon the principles set down by Rousseau. “The design of this book,” says the worthy master, “is to give birth to what we call a good disposition in children.” The chief delight of the 1782 edition, published in three volumes, are the copperplates which represent in the most graphic way, by pose, gesture, expression, and caption, all the ills that juvenile flesh is heir to. No one, after having once viewed the poor little figure seated on a most forbidding-looking sofa, can quite resist the pangs of sympathy over his exclamation: “How sad is life without a friend!” Life is indeed a direful wilderness of trials and vexations. The prismatic colors of one’s years shrivel up before such wickedness as is expressed by the picture “I hate you!” And yet how simple is the remedy for a boy’s bad disposition, according to the Reverend Mr. Salzmann! “Teach him,” so the philosopher argues in his preface, “that envy is the vexation which is felt at seeing the happiness of others: you will have given him a just idea of it; but shew him its dreadful effects, in the example of Hannah in chap. 29, vol. II, who was so tormented by this corroding passion, at her sister’s wedding, that she could neither eat, drink, nor sleep, and was so far carried away by it as to embitter her innocent sister’s pleasure; this representation has determined the child’s disposition—he will hate envy.” Elements of Morality ... Translated from the German.... 3d ed. (3 vols.) London, 1782.[34]Charles Lamb has recorded his vivid impressions of this book in “Witches and Other Night Fears.”[35]It is interesting to note the longevity of many of the women writers of this period. Both Miss Edgeworth and Mrs. Barbauld died in their eighty-second year, while Miss More reached the ripe age of eighty-eight. Mrs. Trimmer, nearing seventy, was thus comparatively young at the time of her death. A glimpse of Miss More at seventy-nine is left in the reminiscences of the original Peter Parley, who visited her,circa1823, much as a devout pilgrim would make a special journey. He wrote: “She was small and wasted away. Her attire was of dark-red bombazine, made loose like a dressing-gown. Her eyes were black and penetrating, her face glowing with cheerfulness, through a lace-work of wrinkles. Her head-dress was a modification of the coiffure of her earlier days—the hair being slightly frizzled, and lightly powdered, yet the whole group of moderate dimensions.”[36]Videthe lay sermon by Samuel McCord Crothers, “The Colonel in the Theological Seminary.”—Atlantic, June, 1907. Also Emerson’s essay on “Spiritual Laws.”[37]VideMiss Strickland’s “Lives of the Seven Bishops.”[38]For Jane Taylor,vide“Contributions of Q Q;” “Essays in Rhymes on Morals and Planners.” For Ann Taylor,vide“Hymns for Infant Schools.”[39]Frederic Harrison, in his “The Choice of Books,” (Macmillan, 1886) writes:“Poor Lamb has not a little to answer for, in the revived relish for garbage unearthed from old theatrical dung-heaps. Be it just or earnest, I have little patience with the Elia-tic philosophy of the frivolous. Why do we still suffer the traditional hypocrisy about the dignity of literature,—literature I mean, in the gross, which includes about equal parts of what is useful and what is useless? Why are books as books, writers as writers, readers as readers, meritorious, apart from any good in them, or anything that we can get from them?”[40]The reader is referred to “The Moral Instruction of Children,” by Felix Adler, New York: Appleton, 1892. Besides considering the use to be made of fairy tales, fables, and Bible stories, the author discusses fully the elements in the Odyssey and the Iliad which are valuable adjuncts in moral training.

[31]She is the author of a remarkably bold “Manuel du Voyageur” en Six Langues. Paris, Barrois, 1810. Framed to meet every conceivable occasion.

[32]Day was honest in his intentions, however mistaken his policy may have been. Sabrina finally married a Mr. Bicknell, who willingly allowed her to accept support, meagre as it was, from Day.

[33]Mrs. Godwin [Mary Wollstonecraft] (1759–1797) began, as an exercise, to translate “The Elements of Morality, for the Use of Children,” written by the Reverend Christian Gotthilf Salzmann (1744–1811), who won no small renown for the excellence of his school, founded upon the principles set down by Rousseau. “The design of this book,” says the worthy master, “is to give birth to what we call a good disposition in children.” The chief delight of the 1782 edition, published in three volumes, are the copperplates which represent in the most graphic way, by pose, gesture, expression, and caption, all the ills that juvenile flesh is heir to. No one, after having once viewed the poor little figure seated on a most forbidding-looking sofa, can quite resist the pangs of sympathy over his exclamation: “How sad is life without a friend!” Life is indeed a direful wilderness of trials and vexations. The prismatic colors of one’s years shrivel up before such wickedness as is expressed by the picture “I hate you!” And yet how simple is the remedy for a boy’s bad disposition, according to the Reverend Mr. Salzmann! “Teach him,” so the philosopher argues in his preface, “that envy is the vexation which is felt at seeing the happiness of others: you will have given him a just idea of it; but shew him its dreadful effects, in the example of Hannah in chap. 29, vol. II, who was so tormented by this corroding passion, at her sister’s wedding, that she could neither eat, drink, nor sleep, and was so far carried away by it as to embitter her innocent sister’s pleasure; this representation has determined the child’s disposition—he will hate envy.” Elements of Morality ... Translated from the German.... 3d ed. (3 vols.) London, 1782.

[34]Charles Lamb has recorded his vivid impressions of this book in “Witches and Other Night Fears.”

[35]It is interesting to note the longevity of many of the women writers of this period. Both Miss Edgeworth and Mrs. Barbauld died in their eighty-second year, while Miss More reached the ripe age of eighty-eight. Mrs. Trimmer, nearing seventy, was thus comparatively young at the time of her death. A glimpse of Miss More at seventy-nine is left in the reminiscences of the original Peter Parley, who visited her,circa1823, much as a devout pilgrim would make a special journey. He wrote: “She was small and wasted away. Her attire was of dark-red bombazine, made loose like a dressing-gown. Her eyes were black and penetrating, her face glowing with cheerfulness, through a lace-work of wrinkles. Her head-dress was a modification of the coiffure of her earlier days—the hair being slightly frizzled, and lightly powdered, yet the whole group of moderate dimensions.”

[36]Videthe lay sermon by Samuel McCord Crothers, “The Colonel in the Theological Seminary.”—Atlantic, June, 1907. Also Emerson’s essay on “Spiritual Laws.”

[37]VideMiss Strickland’s “Lives of the Seven Bishops.”

[38]For Jane Taylor,vide“Contributions of Q Q;” “Essays in Rhymes on Morals and Planners.” For Ann Taylor,vide“Hymns for Infant Schools.”

[39]Frederic Harrison, in his “The Choice of Books,” (Macmillan, 1886) writes:“Poor Lamb has not a little to answer for, in the revived relish for garbage unearthed from old theatrical dung-heaps. Be it just or earnest, I have little patience with the Elia-tic philosophy of the frivolous. Why do we still suffer the traditional hypocrisy about the dignity of literature,—literature I mean, in the gross, which includes about equal parts of what is useful and what is useless? Why are books as books, writers as writers, readers as readers, meritorious, apart from any good in them, or anything that we can get from them?”

[39]Frederic Harrison, in his “The Choice of Books,” (Macmillan, 1886) writes:

“Poor Lamb has not a little to answer for, in the revived relish for garbage unearthed from old theatrical dung-heaps. Be it just or earnest, I have little patience with the Elia-tic philosophy of the frivolous. Why do we still suffer the traditional hypocrisy about the dignity of literature,—literature I mean, in the gross, which includes about equal parts of what is useful and what is useless? Why are books as books, writers as writers, readers as readers, meritorious, apart from any good in them, or anything that we can get from them?”

[40]The reader is referred to “The Moral Instruction of Children,” by Felix Adler, New York: Appleton, 1892. Besides considering the use to be made of fairy tales, fables, and Bible stories, the author discusses fully the elements in the Odyssey and the Iliad which are valuable adjuncts in moral training.

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