of the next,” and it is hardly strange that the abnormal development of
this treatment of childhood should be most apparent in the United States,
where individualism has had freest play. The discovery appears to have
been made here that the child is not merely a person, but a very free and
independent person indeed. The sixteenth amendment to the constitution
reads, “The rights and caprices of children in the United States shall
not be denied or abridged on account of age, sex, or formal condition
of tutelage,” and this amendment has been recognized in literature, as
in life, while waiting its legal adoption. It has been recognized by
the silence of great literature, or by the kind of mention which it has
there received. I am speaking of the literature which is now current
rather than of that which we agree to regard as standard American
literature; yet even in that I think our study shows the sign of what
was to be. The only picture of childhood in the poets drawn from real
life is that of the country boy, while all the other references are to
an ideal conception. Hawthorne, in his isolation, wrote of a world which
was reconstructed out of elemental material, and his insight as well as
his marvelous sympathy with childhood precluded him from using diseased
forms. But since the day of these men, the literature which is most
representative of national life has been singularly devoid of reference
to childhood. One notable exception emphasizes this silence. Our keenest
social satirist has not spared the children. They are found in company
with the young American girl, and we feel the sting of the lash which
falls upon them.
Again the silence of art is noticeable. There was so little art
contemporaneous with our greater literature, and the best of that was
so closely confined to landscape, that it is all the more observable
how meagre is the show in our picture galleries of any history of
childhood. Now and then a portrait appears, the child usually of the
artist’s patron, but there is little sign that artists seek in the life
of children for subjects upon which to expend thought and power. They are
not drawn to them, apparently, except when they appear in some foreign
guise as beggars, where the picturesqueness of attire offers the chief
motive.
In illustration of this, I may be pardoned if I mention my own experience
when conducting, a few years ago, an illustrated magazine for young
people. I did my best to obtain pictures of child life from painters who
were not merely professional book-illustrators, and the only two that I
succeeded in securing were one by Mr. Lambdin, and Mr. La Farge’s design
accompanying Browning’s poem of The Pied Piper. On the lower ground of
illustrations of text, it was only now and then that I was able to obtain
any simple, unaffected design, showing an understanding of a child’s
figure and face. It was commonly a young woman who was most successful,
and what her work gained in genuineness it was apt to lose in correctness
of drawing.
I shall be told that matters have improved since then, and shall be
pointed to the current magazines of the same grade as the Riverside. I
am quite willing to concede that the demand for work of this kind has
had the effect of stimulating designers, but I maintain that the best
illustrations in these magazines are not those which directly represent
children. And when I say children, I mean those in whom consciousness
is developed, not infants and toddlers, who are often represented with
as much cleverness as other small animals and pets. It is more to the
point that, while the introduction of processes and the substitution
of photography for direct drawing on the wood have greatly enlarged
the field from which wood-cuts may be drawn, there is little, if any,
increase in the number of strong designs illustrative of childhood.
Formerly the painter was deterred from contributing designs by the slight
mechanical difficulties of drawing on boxwood. Unless he was in the way
of such work, he disliked laying his brush down and taking up the pencil.
Now everything is done for him, and his painting is translated by the
engraver without the necessity of any help from him. Yet how rarely, with
the magazines at hand to use his paintings, does the painter voluntarily
seek such subjects!
But if there is silence or scorn in great literature, there is plenty of
expression in that minor literature which has sprung up, apparently, in
the interest of childhood. It is here, in the books for young people,
that one may discover the most flagrant illustration of that spurious
individuality in childhood which I have maintained to be conspicuous in
our country. Any one who has been compelled to make the acquaintance of
this literature must have observed how very little parents and guardians
figure in it, and how completely children are separated from their
elders. The most popular books for the young are those which represent
boys and girls as seeking their fortune, working out their own schemes,
driving railway trains and steamboats it may be, managing farms, or
engaged in adventures which elicit all their uncommon heroism. The
same tendency is exhibited in less exaggerated form: children in the
schoolroom, or at play, forming clubs amongst themselves, having their
own views upon all conceivable subjects, torturing the English language
without rebuke, opening correspondence with newspapers and magazines,
starting newspapers and magazines of their own, organizing, setting up
miniature society,—this is the general spectacle to be observed in books
for young people, and the parent or two, now and then visible, is as much
in the background as the child was in earlier literature.
All this is more or less a reflection of actual life, and as such has
an unconscious value. I would not press its significance too far, but
I think it points to a serious defect in our society life. This very
ephemeral literature is symptomatic of a condition of things, rather
than causative. It has not nearly so much influence on young life as it
is itself the natural concomitant of a maladjustment of society, and
the corrective will be found only as a healthier social condition is
reached. The disintegration of the family, through a feeble sense of the
sacredness of marriage, is an evil which is not to be remedied by any
specific of law or literature, but so long as it goes on it inevitably
affects literature.
I venture to make two modest suggestions toward the solution of these
larger problems into the discussion of which our subject has led me. One
is for those who are busy with the production of books for young people.
Consider if it be not possible to report the activity and comradery of
the young in closer and more generous association with the life of their
elders. The spectacle of a healthy family life, in which children move
freely and joyously, is not so rare as to make models hard to be found,
and one would do a great service to young America who should bring back
the wise mother and father into juvenile literature.
Again, next to a purified and enriched literature of this sort is a
thorough subordination of it. The separation of a class of books for
the use of the young specifically is not now to be avoided, but in the
thoughtlessness with which it has been accepted as the only literature
for the young a great wrong has been inflicted. The lean cattle have
devoured the fat. I have great faith in the power of noble literature
when brought into simple contact with the child’s mind, always assuming
that it is the literature which deals with elemental feeling, thought,
and action which is so presented. I think the solution of the problem
which vexes us will be found not so much in the writing of good books for
children as in the wise choice of those parts of the world’s literature
which contain an appeal to the child’s nature and understanding. It is
not the books written expressly for children so much as it is the books
written out of minds which have not lost their childhood that are to
form the body of literature which shall be classic for the young. As Mr.
Ruskin rightly says, “The greatest books contain food for all ages, and
an intelligent and rightly bred youth or girl ought to enjoy much even in
Plato by the time they are fifteen or sixteen.”
It may fairly be asked how we shall persuade children to read classic
literature. It is a partial answer to say, Read it to them yourself.
If we would only consider the subtle strengthening of ties which comes
from two people reading the same book together, breathing at once its
breath, and each giving the other unconsciously his interpretation of it,
it would be seen how in this simple habit of reading aloud lies a power
too fine for analysis, yet stronger than iron in welding souls together.
To my thinking there is no academy on earth equal to that found in many
homes of a mother reading to her child.
There is, however, a vast organization inclusive of childhood to which
we may justly commit the task of familiarizing children with great
literature, and of giving them a distaste for ignoble books. There is
no other time of life than that embraced by the common-school course so
fit for introduction to the highest, finest literature of the world.
Our schools are too much given over to the acquisition of knowledge.
What they need is to recognize the power which lies in enlightenment.
In the susceptible period of youth we must introduce through the medium
of literature the light which will give the eye the precious power of
seeing. But look at the apparatus now in use. Look at the reading-books
which are given to children in the mechanical system of grading. Is this
feast of scraps really the best we can offer for the intellectual and
spiritual nourishment of the young? What do these books teach the child
of reading? They supply him with the power to read print at sight, to
pronounce accurately the several words that meet the eye, and to know the
time value of the several marks of punctuation; but they no more make
readers of children than an accordeon supplies one with the power to
appreciate and enjoy a sonata of Beethoven.
I do not object to intelligent drill, but I maintain that in our schools
it bears little or no relation to the actual use of the power of reading.
The best of the education of children is not their ability to take up
the daily newspaper or the monthly magazine after they leave school,
but their interest in good literature and their power to read it with
apprehension if not comprehension. This can be taught in school. Not
only so, it ought to be taught, for unless the child’s mind is plainly
set in this direction, it is very unlikely that he will find the way for
himself. I look, therefore, with the greatest interest upon that movement
in our public schools which tends to bring the great literature before
children.
* * * * *
The study of childhood in literature has led insensibly to observations
on literature for children. The two subjects are not far apart, for both
testify to the same fact, that in the growth of human life there has been
an irregular but positive advance, and a profounder perception of the
rights and duties involved in personality.
What may lie in the future I will not venture to predict, but it is
quite safe to say that the form in which childhood is presented will
still depend upon the sympathy of imaginative writers with the ideal
of childhood, and that the form of literature for children will be
determined by the greater or less care with which society guards the
sanctity of childish life.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Chapman’s _The Iliads of Homer_, ii. 70-77.
[2] _Iliads_, iv. 147-151.
[3] _Iliads_, xvi. 5-8.
[4] _Ibid._ xi. 485-490.
[5] _Iliad_, vi. 466-475, 482-485.
[6] Goldwin Smith’s translation.
[7] John Addington Symonds’s translation.
[8] _Laws_, ii. 653. In this and subsequent passages Jowett’s translation
is used.
[9] _Laws_, vii. 797.
[10] _Laws_, ii. 664.
[11] _Epigrammata Despota_, DCCXI.
[12] D’Arcy W. Thompson, in his _Ancient Leaves_.
[13] Theodore Martin’s translation.
[14] _Silvæ_, v. 5, 79-87.
[15] Contributors’ Club, _Atlantic Monthly_, June, 1881.
[16] _De Rerum Natura_, V. 222-227, cited in Sellar’s _The Roman Poets of
the Republic_, p. 396.
[17] _Ibid._ III. 894-896. Sellar, p. 364.
[18] _Satire_ xiv. 47.
[19] A thoughtful writer in _The Spectator_, 3 September, 1887, notes the
absence of representations of childhood in ancient art and literature,
and the following number of the journal contains a note of protest from
Mr. Alfred Austin, in which he says pertinently: “Is it not the foible of
modern art, if I may use a homely expression, to make a fuss over what it
feels, or wants others to feel, whereas an older and a nobler art, which
is by no means extinct among us, prefers to indicate emotion rather than
to dwell on it?”
[20] See an interesting statement of this Biblical force in the preface
to Matthew Arnold’s _The Great Prophecy of Israel’s Restoration_, London,
1872.
[21] _Hosea_ iv. 6.
[22] _Zech._ x. 9.
[23] _Zech._ viii. 4. 5.
[24] _Isa._ xi. 6-8.
[25] _Malachi_ iv. 6.
[26] This and the other passages from the Apocryphal Gospels here cited
are in the translation by Alexander Walker.
[27] Canto xxxii. 7-9, Cayley’s translation.
[28] C. E. Norton’s translation.
[29] _Studies in the History of the Renaissance_, p. 84.
[30] _Sketches of the History of Christian Art_, iii. 270.
[31] _Legends of the Madonna_, Part III.
[32] On Reading Shakespeare Through. _The_ [London] _Spectator_, August
26, 1882.
[33] _Epicurus, Leontion, and Ternissa._
[34] _Essays, Historical and Theological._ By J. B. Mozley, i. 430, 431.
INDEX.
Admetus, 19, 20.
Æneas, 31, 32.
_Æneid_, childhood in the, 31, 32.
Agamemnon, belief in, not dependent on the spade, 6.
_Alice Fell_, 3, 147.
_Alkestis_, a scene from the, 19, 20.
_Amelia_, Fielding’s, 135.
Amor, the myth of, 36-38;
as treated by Raphael, 99;
in the Elizabethan lullabies, 116, 117;
in Shakespeare, 124;
in Thorwaldsen’s art, 201.
Anchises, 31.
_Ancient Leaves_, cited, 31, 33.
Andersen, Hans Christian, the unique contribution of, to literature,
201;
the distinction between his stories and fairy tales, 202;
the basis of his fame, 207;
the life of his creations, 208;
their relation to human beings, 209;
the spring in his stories, 211;
his satires, 212;
the deeper experience in them, 213;
his essential childishness, 214;
his place with novelists, 215;
his interpretation of childhood, 216.
Andromache, the parting of, with Hector, 11, 12;
the scene compared with one in the _Œdipus Tyrannus_, 16-18;
and contrasted with Virgil, 31.
Angels of children, 144, 145.
Anna the prophetess, 47.
Anthology, the Greek, 28-30.
Antigone, 18.
Apocryphal Gospels, the legends of the, 57-64.
Art, American, as it relates to children, 237, 238.
Art, modern, the foible of, 38.
Arthur, in _King John_, 120.
Ascanius, 31, 32.
Askbert, 68, 69.
Astyanax, 11;
a miniature Hector, 14.
_Atlantic Monthly, The_, cited, 34.
Austin, Alfred, cited, 38.
Ballads relating to children, 106-108;
characteristics of, 113.
Barbauld, Mrs., 173;
her relation to the literature of childhood, 175;
Coleridge and Lamb on, 174.
Bathsheba’s child, 42.
Beatrice, first seen by Dante, 77.
_Better Land, The_, 222.
Bible, the truth of the, not dependent on external witness, 6;
the university to many in modern times, 41, 42.
Blake, William, 163-165.
Boccaccio, 79.
Browning, Robert, as an interpreter of Greek life, 27;
his _Pied Piper_, 237.
Bryant, William Cullen, 217.
Bunyan, childhood in, 129-133.
Byzantine type of the Madonna, 83, 84.
Catullus, 33.
Chapman’s translation of Homer, quoted, 8, 9, 10, 16;
the quality of his defects, 9, 10.
Chaucer’s treatment of childhood, 108-111;
compared with the Madonna in art, 113.
Childhood, discovered at the close of the last century, 4;
in literature as related to literature for children, 4;
in Greek life, how attested, 7;
indirect reference to it in Homer, 8-11;
the direct reference, 11, 12;
in the Greek tragedians, 16-21;
in Plato, 22-26;
in the Greek Anthology, 29, 30;
in Virgil, 31, 32;
conception of, in Roman literature, 32, 33;
in Catullus, 33;
in epitaphs, 33, 34;
in Lucretius, 34;
in Juvenal, 35;
in classic conception of the supernatural, 34-36;
in the myth of Amor, 36-38;
in Old Testament literature, 42-46;
in New Testament literature, 48, 49;
attitude of the Saviour toward, 49;
as a sign of history, 52;
in the legends of the Apocryphal Gospels, 57-64;
of saints, 65-71;
under the forming power of Christianity, 73;
in Dante, 75-78;
in the representations of the Holy Family, 83-87;
in the art of the northern peoples, 87-92;
in the Madonnas of Raphael, 92-98;
in Raphael’s Amor, 98, 99;
in his representations of children generally, 100, 101;
in the art of Luca della Robbia, 101, 102;
its elemental force the same in all literatures, 105;
in ballad literature, 106-108;
in Chaucer, 108-111;
its character in early English literature, 112, 113;
in Spenser, 114, 115;
in the lighter strains of Elizabethan literature, 116, 117;
in Shakespeare, 117-126;
its absence in Milton, 127, 128;
how regarded in Puritanism, 128, 129;
in Bunyan, 129-133;
in Pope, 133, 134;
in Fielding, 135;
in Gray, 135-137;
in Goldsmith, 137-140;
in Cowper, 140, 141;
in the art of Reynolds and Gainsborough, 141, 142;
in Wordsworth, 144-157;
in De Quincey, 158-162;
in William Blake, 163-165;
in Dickens, 165-170;
in _Paul and Virginia_, 181-183;
in Lamartine, 184-186;
in Michelet de Musset, and Victor Hugo, 186, 187;
in German sentiment, 189;
illustrated by Luther, 190, 191;
in Richter, 191, 192;
in Goethe, 194-196;
in Froebel’s system, 197, 198;
in Overbeck’s art, 199, 200;
in Hans Christian Andersen, 201-216;
in Emerson, Bryant, Lowell, and Holmes, 217, 218;
in Whittier, 218, 219;
in Longfellow, 219-222;
mistakenly presented in sentimental verse, 222-225;
in Hawthorne, 225-234.
_Child-Life in Poetry_, 219.
_Child-Life in Prose_, 219.
Children, books for, the beginning of, 171, 172;
the characteristics of this beginning, 173;
their revolutionary character, 174;
the sincerity of the early books, 175;
the union of the didactic and artistic in, 177;
a new branch of literature, 177, 178;
art in connection with, 179.
_Children’s Hour, The_, 220.
_Child’s Last Will, The_, 106.
Christ, the childhood of, 48;
his scenes with children, 48, 49;
his attitude toward childhood, 49-52;
an efficient cause of the imagination, 55;
legends of, in the Apocryphal Gospels, 57-64;
his symbolic use of the child, 81;
his infancy the subject of art, 82;
especially in Netherlands, 89;
his words illustrative of human history, 102.
Christianity and French sentiment, 182.
Christianity, living and structural, 53;
its supersedure of ancient life, 54;
its germinal truth, 55;
its operative imagination, 56;
its care of children, especially orphans, 73;
its office of organization, 74;
its influence on the family, 75;
its insistence on death, 79;
in what its power consists, 81;
its ideals, 82;
its type in the Madonna, 83;
does not interfere with elemental facts, 105.
Christmas in Germany, 189.
Cimabue, 84.
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, on Mrs. Barbauld, 176;
on Christmas in Germany, 189.
_Comus_, 127.
_Confidences, Les_, 184.
_Coriolanus_, 118.
Cornelius, 88.
_Courtship of Miles Standish, The_, 226.
Cowper, William, 140, 141.
_Cruel Mother, The_, ballad of, 106.
Cupid and Psyche, 36.
_Danaë_, the, of Euripides, 20;
of Simonides, 30.
Dante, childhood in, 75-78.
Day, Thomas, author of _Sanford and Merton_, 3.
Death of children, how regarded by Dickens, 167;
by Wordsworth, 168.
Democracy revealed in the French Revolution, 143.
De Quincey, Thomas, reflections of, on his childhood, 158-162.
_Deserted Village, The_, 137.
Dickens, Charles, his naturalization of the poor in literature, 165;
his report of childhood, 166;
the children created by, 166-170;
compared with Wordsworth, 168, 169.
_Distant Prospect of Eton College, On a_, 136.
_Dolliver Romance, The_, 234.
Doyle, Richard, 179.
Drama, children in, 20.
_Dying Child, The_, 222.
Edgeworth, Maria, and Wordsworth, 174.
_Edward Fane’s Rosebud_, 231.
_Elegy_, Gray’s, 135, 136.
Elijah, the prophet, 42;
the incident of the boys and, 43.
Elisha, 43.
Elizabethan era, characteristics of, 113, 116.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 217.
English race, characteristics of the, exemplified in literature,
111-113.
Eros, the myth of, 36-38.
Erotion, 34.
_Essay on Man, The_, 134.
Euripides, in his view of children, 19;
examples from, 20.
_Evangeline_, 226.
_Excursion, The_, 151, 152.
Fables, Andersen’s stories distinguished from, 210, 211.
_Faery Queen, The_, 114, 115.
Fairy-tales, Andersen’s stories distinguished from, 202;
the origin of, 203;
fading out from modern literature, 204;
upon the stage, 204, 205;
the scientific fairy-tale, 206.
Fénelon, 180.
Fielding, Henry, in his _Amelia_, 135.
Fitzgerald, Edward, 27.
Flaxman, John, his illustration of Homer in outline, 12.
French literature as regards childhood, 180-188.
French Revolution, the, a sign of regeneration, 52;
a day of judgment, 142;
the name for an epoch, 143;
synchronous with a revelation of childhood, 144;
its connection with English literature, 162;
the eruption of poverty in, 165.
Froebel’s kindergarten system, 197, 198.
_From my Arm Chair_, 220, 221.
Gainsborough, Thomas, 141.
Gascoigne, George, 117.
_Gentle Boy, The_, 231.
Germanic peoples, home-cultivating, 88.
German literature and childhood, 188-198.
Giotto, 84.
Goethe, compared with Richter as regards memory of childhood, 194;
his Mignon, 194;
his indebtedness to the _Vicar of Wakefield_, 195;
his _Sorrows of Werther_, 195;
compared with Luther, 196.
Goldsmith, Oliver, _avant-courier_ of Wordsworth, 3;
the precursor of the poets of childhood, 137;
his position in literature, 138;
his _Vicar of Wakefield_, 138-140.
_Goody Two Shoes_, 3.
_Grandfather’s Chair_, 226.
Gray, Thomas, 135-137.
Gray, Thomas, borrowing possibly from Martial, 34.
Greece, life in ancient, how illustrated, 7;
silence of the child in the art of, 21;
our relation to, 21;
modern interpretations of, 27, 28;
compared with Rome, 31;
compared with Judæa, 42.
Greenaway, Kate, 179.
Greene, Robert, 117.
Greenwell, Dora, her poem, _A Story by the Fire_, an example of
pernicious literature, 222-225.
Grimm, the brothers, 207.
Hannah, the song of, 44, 47.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel, the most abundant of American authors in his
treatment of childhood, 225;
his use of New England history, 226;
his rendering of Greek myths, 226, 227;
his observation of childhood, 228, 229;
his relation to children, 229, 230;
his apologue in _The Snow-Image_, 232;
children in his romances, 232, 233;
his Pearl in _The Scarlet Letter_, 233, 234;
his Pansie in _The Dolliver Romance_, 234.
Hebrew life, in its influence on modern thought, 39-41;
the child in, 46, 47;
its transformation into Christianity, 47, 48, 53.
Hector parting with Andromache, 11, 12;
face to face with Ajax, 14;
comforts his wife, 16, 17.
Hemans, Felicia, 222.
Hen and chickens, in the Bible and Shakespeare, 122.
Herakles, 36.
Hermes, 36.
_Hiawatha_, 221.
Hilarion, 67.
Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 218.
Holy Family, the child in the, 83;
character of the early type of the, 83;
emblematic of domesticity, 86, 87.
Homer, authenticity of the legend of, supposed to be proved by
Schliemann, 6;
a better preserver of Greek womanhood than antiquaries, 7;
the value of his similes, 7, 8;
passages in illustration of his indirect reference to childhood,
8-11;
the elemental character of, 12;
the peril of commenting on, 13;
the nurse in, 14;
his view of childhood, 15;
compared with that of the tragedians, 16-18;
with that of Virgil, 31, 32.
Hosea, quoted, 44.
_House of the Seven Gables, The_, 232, 233.
Hubert, 120.
Hugh of Lincoln, 108.
Hugo, Victor, 187.
_Iliad_, the swarm of bees in the, 8;
the passage describing the brushing away of a fly, 9;
the ass belabored by a pack of boys, 9;
Achilles chiding Patroclos, 10;
Hector parting with Andromache, 11, 12;
statuesque scenes in, 12.
_Imaginary Conversations_, quoted, 153.
Imagination, the, abnormal activity of, in early Christianity, 54;
the direction of its new force, 56, 57.
_Intimations of Immortality_, 154, 156, 157.
Irving, Washington, 217.
Isaiah, quoted, 45.
Ishmael, 42.
Ismene, 18.
Jacob, the two wives of, 44.
James, Henry, alluded to, 236.
Jeffrey, Francis, 169.
Jerusalem, the entry into, 49, 52.
John the Baptist, 81.
Jonson, Ben, 37.
Jonson, Ben, _Venus’ Runaway_ of, 116.
Jowett, Benjamin, translation by, 22-26.
Juvenal, 35, 227.
Kenwulf of Wessex, 68.
Kindergarten, the, fortified by reference to Plato, 24;
in connection with politics, 197, 198.
_King John_, 119, 120.
Kriss Kringle, 189.
La Farge, John, 237.
_L’Allegro_, 127.
Lamartine, Alphonse de, 184-186.
Lamb, Charles, on Mrs. Barbauld’s work, 176, 177;
his and his sister’s books, 177.
Lambdin, George C., 237.
_Lamkin_, the ballad of, 107, 108.
Landor, Walter Savage, remark of, on children, 153.
Laokoön, 21.
_Laws_, Plato’s, cited, 22, 24, 25.
_Legends of the Madonna_, 89.
Leslie, C. R., on Raphael’s children, 100.
Lindsay, Lord, quoted, 88.
_Lines on the Receipt of my Mother’s Picture_, 141, 142.