_Everything depends on the reality of a poet’s classic character.
If he is a dubious classic, let us sift him; if he is a false
classic, let us explode him. But if he is a real classic, if his
work belongs to the class of the very best (for this is the true
and right meaning of the word_ classic, classical), _then the great
thing for us is to feel and enjoy his work as deeply as ever we
can, and to appreciate the wide difference between it and all work
which has not the same high character. This is what is salutary,
this is what is formative; this is the great benefit to be got from
the study of poetry. Everything which interferes with it, which
hinders it, is injurious._--_Matthew Arnold_, in “The Study of
Poetry.”
We have progressed sufficiently in our outline to begin showing the
links that bind the past with the present. To dwell upon more writers
of the generation just treated is simply to repeat the same essential
characteristics of the type. These authors all used the medium of
prose in their desire to give young people books suitable to their
comprehension. But there were a few poets who braved the intricacies
of verse, and who wrote some very simple and pleasing lyrics, which
have survived the change in spirit, and form some of the most agreeable
pages in our children’s anthologies. It will be recollected that Mrs.
Barbauld feared poetry would not be understood, and so she wrote her
volume of prose pieces which acted as a substitute.
Wordsworth himself could not have demanded a more careful attention
to the simplicity of word selection than that paid by Dr. Isaac Watts
(1674–1748), who, though not first in the field of hymn-writers, for
his immediate predecessor was Bishop Thomas Ken[37] (1637–1711), author
of “Morning and Daily Hymns,” was nevertheless one of the very first
consciously to pen a book of verse for a juvenile public.
Not only was he actively engaged in the interests of education, but,
during his famous thirty-six years’ spent as visitor in the household
of Sir Thomas Abney, of Newington, he crystallised his ideas on
education, and incorporated them in his “The Improvement of the Mind:
To which is added A Discourse on the Education of Children and Youth.”
This treatise may be regarded as a fair example of the pre-Rousseau
style of pedagogy. The child was measured in terms of sectarian
standards, it being assumed that the first step was to impress him
with the truth that his very nature was sinful, and that it could be
shrived only by having the mind centred always upon holy thoughts.
The religion of the closet must be held above every pleasure. Yet Dr.
Watts notices that such pleasures are increasing to an alarming state;
that children are rebelling against Puritan principles. His sternness
relents, in so far as he would allow children to play draughts and
chess, and to amuse themselves with games which might instruct them in
the rudiments of grammar and geometry.
Though there are not many who would discountenance his diatribe against
the gaming table, the dangers besetting midnight revellers, and the
freedom which results in immorality, one cannot but view with distrust
the strictures which would turn girls into dowdy creatures and boys
into prigs. The theoretical predecessors of Rousseau’s Émile were the
two creations of Dr. Watts,--Eugenio and Phronissa--his ideal children,
combining those qualities which rob youth of all charm. Theirs must
have been wearisome lives. The boy, we are told, “is an entertaining
companion to the gay young gentlemen, his equals; and yet divines and
philosophers take pleasure to have Eugenio amongst them.” Dr. Watts
never deigned to tell us what requirements Eugenio set for the staid
divines, or whether he tried to get away from them. And Phronissa: she
stands before us now, in attitude betokening detestation of the stage,
and we hear her proclaiming the song and the dance as her meanest
pleasures--talents not to be proud of!
Two points are worthy of note in Dr. Watts’s book. Despite his many
limitations which argued for piousness and for the composure of the
youthful spirit; despite his disapproval of all exercise which might
turn one’s thoughts away from the prescribed paths, he was nevertheless
a pleader in the cause of advance. For what he lays down as educational
theory he would have parents hearken to; in his eyes the bringing up of
youth is a sacred duty, involving obligations of a delicate nature. He
would emphasise the responsibility of the Home; he would have parents
eager to see the moral laws obeyed by their children. He would have
education applied equally as well to girls as to boys; in fact, so Dr.
Watts confesses, in tones as though he were making a great concession,
the habit of reading is quite as important to the former as to the
latter.
Dark as the days may seem in the lives of those children educated
according to theories and tracts, the lighter recreations must have
brightened moments unrecorded. Even John Locke (1632–1704), in his
“Thoughts on Education” (1693), recommends besides the Psalter and the
New Testament, Æsop and Reynard the Fox, as good food for infant minds.
This was an excellent basis to start upon.
The two small volumes of “Divine Songs, Attempted in Easy Language
for the Use of Children” [editions, New York: Mahlon Day; Cambridge:
1803] which I have examined, bear upon the fly-leaves tales recorded
in uncertain handwriting. The one has, “To ----, a present from his
Mamma”; the other, “---- his Book: If this should be lost and you
should _fine_, Return to me, for it is _mine_.”
“You will find here nothing that savours of party,” says the poet in
his foreword. “... As I have endeavoured to sink the language to the
level of a child’s understanding, and yet to keep it, if possible,
above contempt, so I have designed to profit all, if possible, and to
offend none.”
Yet the usual theological doctrines reek from every page; there is much
of the tenor of the “New England Primer” in the verses. The wonder is
that with all their atmosphere of brimstone and sulphur, with all their
effort to present _to_ the child grown-up beliefs in simple doses,
the poems still retain a spontaneity, a sweet, quaint simplicity that
strike the sympathy, if they do not entirely appeal to the fancy.
“His dreadful Majesty” is more suited to Milton than to a song; “How
doth the little busy bee,” though not yet in accord with the lyrist’s
pure, unfeigned delight in nature, is overtopping in childish appeal,
“The eternal God will not disdain, To hear an infant cry.” We pit an
understanding of childhood’s graces against that old-time theory of
inherited ruin. There has been a revulsion of feeling which tends to
bring the heart much nearer the soul, and to give to the nursery the
sanctified love of good rather than the abiding fear of evil.
There is a picture in Lamb’s “Books for Children” [ed. E. V. Lucas],
showing the ark with the animals in their symmetrically built stalls.
The clouds are rolling over the waters with as much substantial outline
as though they were balls of cotton; there is interest for a child in
the close examination of this graphic art, which is done with that
surety as though the artist had been on the spot. The reproduction was
made from Stackhouse’s Bible, with which Mrs. Trimmer used to amuse
her young folks on Sundays. Your wooden Noah’s Ark, with the sticky
animals, was built along the same lines. Dr. Watts’s poems have been
illustrated many times in similar conventional fashion. One cut in
particular represented creation by a dreadful lion and a marvellous
tiger, anatomically wonderful.
Though parts of the Bible have been paraphrased by Dr. Watts as well
as such can ever be done; though ducks and lambs and doves, symbols of
simplicity, take one to the open, there is no breath of clover sweeping
across the page. It is by such a beautiful cradle hymn as “Holy angels
guard thy bed,” which is to be treasured with Martin Luther’s exquisite
“Hymn to the Christ Child,” that this poet deserves to be remembered.
Always the truest verse, the truest sentiment, the truest regard for
children are detected in that retrospective tone--the eternal note of
sadness, as Matthew Arnold phrases it--in which grown people speak of
the realm of youth lost to them; not the sentimental stooping, not the
condescending superiority,--but a yearning note brought about by the
tragedy of growing up,--a yearning that passeth understanding, and that
returns with every flash of the remembered child you were.
The Taylors of Ongar, the two sisters, Ann (1782–1866) and Jane
(1783–1824), are the poets of the didactic era; they apply to verse
the same characteristics Miss More introduced in her tracts--a
sympathetic feeling, but a false tenderness. They are not doctrinal
in their “Original Poems for Infant Minds,” but are generally and
genuinely ethical. Their attitude is different from that of Watts;
they attempt to interpret feelings and impressions in terms of the
child’s own comprehension. But so far were they ruled by the customary
requirements of their time, that they falsely endowed the juvenile mind
with the power of correlating external beauty with its own virtuous
possibilities. The simplicity of Jane’s “The Violet” and “Thank you,
Pretty Cow” is marked by an unnatural discrimination on the part of the
children from whom such sentiments are supposed to flow; these defects
detract from many a delicate verse deserving of better acquaintance
than “Twinkle, twinkle, little star.”
The Taylors wrote together for a number of years; they opened a
field of interest in and kindness to animals; their verse abounds
in the beginnings of a spontaneous love of nature. Their children
troop past us, the industrious boy and the idle boy, the rich and the
poor. They are not active children; their positions are fixed ones
of contemplation, of inward communing, not of participation. Yet the
sweet spirit predominates, and the simple words are not robbed of
their purity and strength. However, their desire “to abridge every
poetic freedom and figure” dragged them often into absurdities. This
is the great danger in writing simple verse; unless its excellence
is dominant, it shows its weakness; the outline of lyric beauty must
have perfect symmetry; the slightest falsity in imagery, the slightest
departure from consistency and truth, destroys the whole.[38]
Jane, when she was very small, used to edify her neighbours by
preaching to them; this impulse found expression later in a series of
hymns. Ann also composed religious songs which in quality are superior
to those of her sister. The literary association of the two lasted
until 1812, when Ann was sought in marriage by a Mr. Gilbert; this
negotiation was consummated by letter before they had even met.
A further advance in the art of children’s verse was made when William
Blake (1757–1827) wrote his “Songs of Innocence,” and infused into
them a light spirit of grace and of joy. Strangely, he had difficulty
in disposing of his poems; on this account, he determined to prepare
the plates for them himself. The drawings which resulted proved to
be some of his very best art work. Through his acquaintance with
Godwin, he was employed to illustrate many of the books issuing from
Mrs. Godwin’s publishing house, and it has not yet been fully settled
whether or not he made the original illustrations for the Lambs’ “Tales
from Shakespeare.” He was employed to engrave the plates for Mary
Wollstonecraft’s translation of Salzmann’s “Elements of Morality.”
We detect in Blake’s verses the apt blending of grown-up regard for
childhood, with the ready response of childhood to grown-up love. By
his exuberance, by his fancy, by his simple treatment he set a standard
which is the same that dominates the best of Wordsworth and Christina
Rossetti. Stevenson later carried forward the art, by adding thereto
a touch as though youth, fearful of growing up, knew something of the
heavy burden of man’s estate. Thus does Blake express infant joy:
“I have no name:
I am but two days old.”
What shall I call thee?
“I happy am,
Joy is my name.”
Sweet joy befall thee.
The crystal clearness in such sentiment is born of our adult reverence.
Again he makes the nurse in one of his poems sing:
“Then come home, my children, the sun is going down,
And the dews of night arise;
Come, come, leave off play, and let us away
Till the morning appears in the skies.”
A child appreciates such mellow tones; there is no reaching down; the
picture is distinct, reduced to its truest sentiment. It contains
traceries of action, and fairest hints of beneficent nature. It gives a
promise of to-morrow. There is no herding into the land of sleep. Let
_us_ away! Do you not feel the distinction of dignity in it, rather
than “get _you_ to bed”?
In Stevenson’s verse the dominant note is retrospective; he returns
to childhood with his quota of world experience; he slips into the
youthful state, glad of being there once more, yet knowing what it all
means to have to leave it again. Night fears and day joys flow through
his lines:
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 and beautiful.
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 cannot _see_ the little ones doing what we did in years gone by.
Perhaps this, perhaps that; we have our first _moral_ doubt. Through
the bars we call to the childhood of our memory; we call it to come
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.