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diff --git a/75367-0.txt b/75367-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d0441fc --- /dev/null +++ b/75367-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5786 @@ + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75367 *** + + + + + + +Horace E. Scudder + + +JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL; A Biography. With portraits and other +illustrations, an Appendix, and a full Bibliography. 2 vols. crown 8vo, +$3.50, net. + +MEN AND LETTERS. Essays in Characterization and Criticism. 12mo, gilt +top, $1.25. + +CHILDHOOD IN LITERATURE AND ART: With some Observations on Literature for +Children, 12mo, gilt top, $1.25. + +NOAH WEBSTER. In American Men of Letters. With Portrait. 16mo, $1.25. + +GEORGE WASHINGTON. An Historical Biography. 16mo, 75 cents. In Riverside +School Library, 60 cents, net. + +THE DWELLERS IN FIVE SISTERS COURT. A Novel. 16mo, $1.25. + +STORIES AND ROMANCES. 16mo, $1.25. + +DREAM CHILDREN. Illustrated. 16mo, $1.00. + +SEVEN LITTLE PEOPLE AND THEIR FRIENDS. Illustrated. 16mo, $1.00. + +STORIES FROM MY ATTIC. For Children. Illustrated. 16mo, $1.00. + +BOSTON TOWN. The Story of Boston told to Children. Illustrated. Square +8vo, $1.50. + +THE CHILDREN’S BOOK. A Collection of the Best Literature for Children. +Illustrated. Small 4to, $2.50. + +THE BOOK OF FABLES. 16mo, 50 cents. + +THE BOOK OF FOLK STORIES. 16mo, 60 cents. + +THE BOOK OF LEGENDS. 16mo, 50 cents. + +THE BODLEY BOOKS. Including Doings of the Bodley Family in Town and +Country, The Bodleys Telling Stories, The Bodleys on Wheels, The Bodleys +Afoot, Mr. Bodley Abroad, The Bodley Grandchildren and their Journey in +Holland, The English Bodleys, and The Viking Bodleys. Illustrated. Eight +vols. square 8vo, $1.50 per volume; the set, $12.00. + + HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY + BOSTON AND NEW YORK + + + + + CHILDHOOD + IN LITERATURE AND ART + + _WITH SOME OBSERVATIONS ON + LITERATURE FOR CHILDREN_ + + A Study + + BY + HORACE E. SCUDDER + + [Illustration: The Riverside Press] + + BOSTON AND NEW YORK + HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY + The Riverside Press, Cambridge + + Copyright, 1894, + BY HORACE E. SCUDDER + + _All rights reserved._ + + _The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass. U. S. A._ + Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co. + + + + +TO + +S · C · S · + +WHO WAS A CHILD WHEN THIS BOOK WAS WRITTEN + + + + +CONTENTS + + + PAGE + + I. INTRODUCTION 3 + + II. IN GREEK AND ROMAN LITERATURE 6 + + III. IN HEBREW LIFE AND LITERATURE 39 + + IV. IN EARLY CHRISTIANITY 53 + + V. IN MEDIÆVAL ART 81 + + VI. IN ENGLISH LITERATURE AND ART 104 + + VII. IN FRENCH AND GERMAN LITERATURE 180 + + VIII. HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN 201 + + IX. IN AMERICAN LITERARY ART 217 + + INDEX 247 + + + + +CHILDHOOD IN LITERATURE AND ART + + + + +I + +INTRODUCTION + + +There was a time, just beyond the memory of men now living, when the +Child was born in literature. At the same period books for children +began to be written. There were children, indeed, in literature before +Wordsworth created Alice Fell and Lucy Gray, or breathed the lines +beginning, + + “She was a phantom of delight,” + +and there were books for the young before Mr. Day wrote Sandford +and Merton; especially is it to be noted that Goldsmith, who was an +_avant-courier_ of Wordsworth, had a very delightful perception of the +child, and amused himself with him in the Vicar of Wakefield, while he or +his double entertained his little friends in real life with the Renowned +History of Goody Two Shoes. Nevertheless, there has been, since the day +of Wordsworth, such a succession of childish figures in prose and verse +that we are justified in believing childhood to have been discovered at +the close of the last century. The child has now become so common that +we scarcely consider how absent he is from the earlier literature. Men +and women are there, lovers, maidens, and youth, but these are all with +us still. The child has been added to the _dramatis personæ_ of modern +literature. + +There is a correlation between childhood in literature and a literature +for children, but it will best be understood when one has considered the +meaning of the appearance and disappearance of the child in different +epochs of literature and art; for while a hasty survey certainly assures +one that the nineteenth century regards childhood far more intently +than any previous age, it is impossible that so elemental a figure as +the child should ever have been wholly lost to sight. A comparison of +literatures with reference to this figure may disclose some of the +fundamental differences which exist between this century and those which +have preceded it; it may also disclose a still deeper note of unity, +struck by the essential spirit in childhood itself. It is not worth while +in such a study to have much recourse to the minor masters; if a theme +so elemental and so universal in its relations is not to be illustrated +from the great creative expositors of human nature, it cannot have the +importance which we claim for it. + + + + +II + +IN GREEK AND ROMAN LITERATURE + + +I + +When Dr. Schliemann with his little shovel uncovered the treasures of +Mycenæ and Ilium, a good many timid souls rejoiced exceedingly over +a convincing proof of the authenticity of the Homeric legends. There +always will be those who find the proof of a spiritual fact in some +corresponding material fact; who wish to see the bones of Agamemnon +before they are quite ready to believe in the Agamemnon of the Iliad; to +whom the Bible is not true until its truth has been confirmed by some +external witness. But when science has done its utmost, there still +remains in a work of art a certain testimony to truth, which may be +illustrated by science, but cannot be superseded by it. Agamemnon has +lived all these years in the belief of men without the aid of any cups, +or saucers, or golden vessels, or even bones. Literature, and especially +imaginative literature, is the exponent of the life of a people, and +we must still go to it for our most intimate knowledge. No careful +antiquarian research can reproduce for us the women of early Greece as +Homer has set them before us in a few lines in his pictures of Helen and +Penelope and Nausikaä. When, therefore, we ask ourselves of childhood in +Greek life, we may reconstruct it out of the multitudinous references +in Greek literature to the education of children, to their sports and +games; and it is no very difficult task to follow the child from birth +through the nursery to the time when it assumes its place in the active +community: but the main inquiries must still be, What pictures have we +of childhood? What part does the child play in that drama which is set +before us in a microcosm by poets and tragedians? + +The actions of Homer’s heroes are spiritualized by reflection. That is, +as the tree which meets the eye becomes a spiritual tree when one sees +its answering image in the pool which it overhangs, so those likenesses +which Homer sets over against the deeds of his heroes release the souls +of the deeds, and give them wings for a flight in the imagination. A +crowd of men flock to the assembly: seen in the bright reflection of +Homer’s imagination, they are a swarm of bees:— + + “Being abroad, the earth was overlaid + With flockers to them, that came forth, as when of frequent bees + Swarms rise out of a hollow rock, repairing the degrees + Of their egression endlessly, with ever rising new + From forth their sweet nest; as their store, still as it faded, grew, + And never would cease sending forth her clusters to the spring, + They still crowd out so; this flock here, that there, belaboring + The loaded flowers.”[1] + +So Chapman, in his Gothic fashion, running up his little spires and +pinnacles upon the building which he has raised from Homer’s material; +but the idea is all Homer’s, and Chapman’s “repairing the degrees of +their egression endlessly,” with its resonant hum, is hardly more +intentionally a reflex of sound and motion than Homer’s αἰεὶ νέον +ἐρχομενάων. + +We look again at Chapman’s way of rendering the caressing little passage +in the fourth book of the Iliad, where Homer, wishing to speak of the +ease and tenderness with which Athene turns aside the arrow shot at +Menelaos, calls up the image of a mother brushing a fly from the face of +her sleeping child:— + + “Stood close before, and slack’d the force the arrow did confer + With as much care and little hurt as doth a mother use, + And keep off from her babe, when sleep doth through his powers diffuse + His golden humor, and th’ assaults of rude and busy flies + She still checks with her careful hand.”[2] + +Here the Englishman has caught the notion of ease, and emphasized that; +yet he has missed the tenderness, and all because he was not content to +accept the simple image, but must needs refract it into “assaults of +rude and busy flies.” Better is the rendering of the picturesque figure +in which Ajax, beset by the Trojans, is likened to an ass belabored by a +pack of boys:— + + “As when a dull mill ass comes near a goodly field of corn, + Kept from the birds by children’s cries, the boys are overborne + By his insensible approach, and simply he will eat + About whom many wands are broke, and still the children beat, + And still the self-providing ass doth with their weakness bear, + Not stirring till his paunch be full, and scarcely then will steer.”[3] + +Apollo, sweeping away the rampart of the Greeks, does it as easily as a +boy, who has heaped a pile of sand upon the seashore in childish sport, +in sport razes it with feet and hands. Achilles half pities, half chides, +the imploring, weeping Patroclos, when he says,— + + “Wherefore weeps my friend + So like a girl, who, though she sees her mother cannot tend + Her childish humors, hangs on her, and would be taken up, + Still viewing her with tear-drowned eyes, when she has made her + stoop.”[4] + +Chapman’s “hangs on her” is hardly so particular as Homer’s εἱανοῦ +ἀπτομένη, plucks at her gown; and he has quite missed the picture +offered by the poet, who makes the child, as soon as she discovers her +mother, beg to be taken up, and insistently stop her as she goes by on +some errand. Here again the naïve domestic scene in Homer is charged in +Chapman with a certain half-tragic meaning. + +This, we think, completes the short catalogue of Homer’s indirect +reference to childhood, and the comparison with the Elizabethan poet’s +use of the same forms brings out more distinctly the sweet simplicity and +native dignity of the Greek. When childhood is thus referred to by Homer, +it is used with no condescension, and with no thought of investing it +with any adventitious property. It is a part of nature, as the bees are +a part of nature; and when Achilles likens his friend in his tears to a +little girl wishing to be taken up by her mother, he is not taunting him +with being a “cry-baby.” + +Leaving the indirect references, one recalls immediately the single +picture of childhood which stands among the heroic scenes of the Iliad. +When Hector has his memorable parting with Andromache, as related in the +sixth book of the Iliad, the child Astyanax is present in the nurse’s +arms. Here Chapman is so careless that we desert him, and fall back on a +simple rendering into prose of the passage relating to the child:— + +“With this, famous Hector reached forth to take his boy, but back into +the bosom of his fair-girded nurse the boy shrank with a cry, frightened +at the sight of his dear father; for he was afraid of the brass,—yes, +and of the plume made of a horse’s mane, when he saw it nodding +dreadfully at the helmet’s peak. Then out laughed his dear father and his +noble mother. Quick from his head famous Hector took the helmet and laid +it on the ground, where it shone. Then he kissed his dear son and tossed +him in the air, and thus he prayed to Zeus and all the gods.... These +were his words, and so he placed the boy, his boy, in the hands of his +dear wife; and she received him into her odorous bosom, smiling through +her tears. Her husband had compassion on her when he saw it, and stroked +her with his hand, spoke to her, and called her by her name.”[5] + +Like so many other passages in Homer, this at once offers themes +for sculpture. Flaxman was right when he presented his series of +illustrations to the Iliad and Odyssey in outline, and gave a statuesque +character to the groups, though his interpretation of this special scene +is commonplace. There is an elemental property about the life exhibited +in Homer which the firm boundaries of sculpture most fitly inclose. +Thus childhood, in this passage, is characterized by an entirely simple +emotion,—the sudden fear of an infant at the sight of his father’s +shining helmet and frowning plume; while the relation of maturity to +childhood is presented in the strong man’s concession to weakness, as he +laughs and lays aside his helmet, and then catches and tosses the child. + +It is somewhat perilous to comment upon Homer. The appeal in his poetry +is so direct to universal feeling, and so free from the entanglements +of a too refined sensibility, that the moment one begins to enlarge +upon the sentiment in his epic one is in danger of importing into it +subtleties which would have been incomprehensible to Homer. There is +preserved, especially in the Iliad, the picture of a society which is +physically developed, but intellectually unrefined. The men weep like +children when they cannot have what they want, and the passions which +stir life are those which lie nearest the physical forms of expression. +When we come thus upon this picture of Hector’s parting with Andromache, +we are impressed chiefly with the fact that it is human life in outline. +Here are great facts of human experience, and they are so told that not +one of them requires a word of explanation to make it intelligible to a +child. The child, we are reminded in a later philosophy, is father of the +man, and Astyanax is a miniature Hector; for we have only to go forward a +few pages to find Hector, when brought face to face with Ajax, confessing +to a terrible thumping of fear in his breast. + +There is one figure in early Greek domestic life which has frequent +recognition in literature. It helps in our study of this subject to find +the nurse so conspicuous; in the passage last quoted she is given an +epithet which is reserved for goddesses and noble women. The definite +regard paid to one so identified with childhood is in accord with the +open acceptance of the physical aspect of human nature which is at the +basis of the Homeric poems. The frankness with which the elemental +conditions of life are made to serve the poet’s purpose, so that eating +and drinking, sleeping and fighting, weeping and laughing, running and +dancing, are familiar incidents of the poem, finds a place for the nurse +and the house-dog. Few incidents in the Odyssey are better remembered by +its readers than the recognition of the travel-worn Odysseus by the old +watch-dog, and by the nurse who washes the hero’s feet and discovers the +scar of the wound made by the boar’s tusk when the man before her was a +youth. + +The child, in the Homeric conception, was a little human creature +uninvested with any mystery, a part of that society which had itself +scarcely passed beyond the bounds of childhood. As the horizon which +limited early Greece was a narrow one, and the world in which the heroes +moved was surrounded by a vast _terra incognita_, so human life, in +its Homeric acceptance, was one of simple forms; that which lay beyond +tangible and visible experience was rarely visited, and was peopled with +shapes which brought a childish fright. There was, in a word, nothing in +the development of man’s nature, as recorded by Homer, which would make +him look with questioning toward his child. He regarded the world about +him with scarcely more mature thought than did the infant whom he tossed +in the air, and, until life should be apprehended in its more complex +relations, he was not likely to see in his child anything more than an +epitome of his own little round. The contrast between childhood and +manhood was too faint to serve much of a purpose in art. + +The difference between Homer and the tragedians is at once perceived +to be the difference between a boy’s thought and a man’s thought. The +colonial growth, the Persian war, the political development, the commerce +with other peoples, were witnesses to a more complex life and the quick +causes of a profounder apprehension of human existence. It happens that +we have in the Œdipus Tyrannus of Sophocles an incident which offers a +suggestive comparison with the simple picture of the parting of Hector +and Andromache. In the earlier poem, the hero, expecting the fortunes +of war, disdains all suggestions of prudence, and speaks as a brave man +must, who sets honor above ease, and counts the cost of sacrifice only +to stir himself to greater courage and resolution. He asks that his +child may take his place in time, and he dries his wife’s tears with the +simple words that no man can separate him from her, that fate alone can +intervene; in Chapman’s nervous rendering:— + + “Afflict me not, dear wife, + With these vain griefs. He doth not live that can disjoin my life + And this firm bosom but my fate; and fate, whose wings can fly? + Noble, ignoble, fate controls. Once born, the best must die.” + +Here, the impending disaster to Troy, with the inclusion of Hector’s +fortune, appears as one fact out of many, an incident in life, bringing +other incidents in its train, yet scarcely more ethical in its relations +than if it followed from the throw of dice. In the Œdipus, when the +king, overwhelmed by his fate, in the supreme hour of his anguish takes +vengeance upon his eyes, there follows a passage of surpassing pathos. To +the mad violence has succeeded a moment of tender grief, and the unhappy +Œdipus stretches out his arms for his children, that he may bid them +farewell. His own terrible fate is dimmed in his thought by the suffering +which the inevitable curse of the house is to bring into their lives. He +reflects; he dismisses his sons,—they, at least, can fight their battles +in the world; he turns to his defenseless little daughters, and pours +out for them the tears of a stricken father. The not-to-be-questioned +fate of Homer, an inexplicable incident of life, which men must set aside +from calculation and thought because it is inexplicable, has become in +Sophocles a terrible mystery, connecting itself with man’s conduct, even +when that is unwittingly in violation of divine decree, and following +him with such unrelenting vigilance that death cannot be counted the end +of perilous life. The child, in the supreme moment of Hector’s destiny, +is to him the restoration of order, the replacement of his loss; the +children, in the supreme moment of the destiny of Œdipus, are to him +only the means of prolonging and rendering more murky the darkness which +has fallen upon him. Hector, looking upon Astyanax, sees the world +rolling on, sunlight chasing shadow, repeating the life he has known; +Œdipus, looking upon Antigone and Ismene, sees new disclosures of the +possibilities of a dread power under which the world is abiding. + +In taking one step more from Sophocles to Euripides, there is food for +thought in a new treatment of childhood. Whatever view one may choose +to take of Euripides and his art in its relation to the heroic tragedy, +there can be no question as to the nearness in which Euripides stands +to the characters of his dramas, and this nearness is shown in nothing +more than in the use which he makes of domestic life. With him, children +are the necessary illustrations of humanity. Thus, in the Medea, when +Medea is pleading with Creon for a respite of a day only from banishment, +the argument which prevails is that which rests on pity for her little +ones, and in the very centre of Medea’s vengeance is that passion for her +children which bids her slay them rather than leave them + + “Among their unfriends, to be trampled on.” + +Again, in Alkestis, the last words of the heroine before she goes to her +sacrifice are a demand of Admetus that the integrity of their home shall +be preserved, and no step-dame take her place with the children. Both +Alkestis and Admetus, in that wonderful scene, are imaged to the eye as +part of a group, and, though the children themselves do not speak, the +words and the very gestures are directed toward them. + + _Alkestis._ My children, ye have heard your father’s pledge + Never to set a step-dame over you, + Or thrust me from the allegiance of his heart. + + _Admetus._ What now I say shall never be unsaid. + + _Alkestis._ Then here our children I entrust to thee. + + _Admetus._ And I receive them as the gage of love. + + _Alkestis._ Be thou a mother to them in my place. + + _Admetus._ Need were, when such a mother has been lost. + + _Alkestis._ Children, I leave you when I fain would live. + + _Admetus._ Alas! what shall I do, bereft of thee? + + _Alkestis._ Time will assuage thy grief: the dead are nought. + + _Admetus._ Take, take me with thee to the underworld. + + _Alkestis._ It is enough that I must die for thee. + + _Admetus._ O Heaven! of what a partner I am reft! + + _Alkestis._ My eyes grow dim and the long sleep comes on. + + _Admetus._ I too am lost if thou dost leave me, wife. + + _Alkestis._ Think of me as of one that is no more. + + _Admetus._ Lift up thy face, quit not thy children dear. + + _Alkestis._ Not willingly; but, children, fare ye well. + + _Admetus._ Oh, look upon them, look! + + _Alkestis._ My end is come. + + _Admetus._ Oh, leave us not. + + _Alkestis._ Farewell. + + _Admetus._ I am undone. + + _Chorus._ Gone, gone; thy wife, Admetus, is no more.[6] + +A fragment of Danaë puts into the mouth of Danaë herself apparently lines +which send one naturally to Simonides:— + + “He, leaping to my arms and in my bosom, + Might haply sport, and with a crowd of kisses + Might win my soul forth; for there is no greater + Love-charm than close companionship, my father.”[7] + +It cannot have escaped notice how large a part is played by children +in the spectacular appointments of the Greek drama. Those symbolic +processions, those groups of human life, those scenes of human passion, +are rendered more complete by the silent presence of children. They +serve in the temples; their eyes are quick to catch the coming of the +messenger; they suffer dumbly in the fate that pulls down royal houses +and topples the pillars of ancestral palaces. It was impossible that it +should be otherwise. The Greek mind, which found expression in tragic +art, was oppressed by the problems, not alone of individual fate, but of +the subtle relations of human life. The serpents winding about Laokoön +entwined in their folds the shrinking youths, and the father’s anguish +was for the destiny which would not let him suffer alone. Yet there is +scarcely a child’s voice to be heard in the whole range of Greek poetic +art. The conception is universally of the child, not as acting, far less +as speaking, but as a passive member of the social order. It is not its +individual life so much as its related life which is contemplated. + +We are related to the Greeks not only through the higher forms of +literature, but through the political thought which had with them both +historical development and speculative representation. It comes thus +within the range of our inquiry to ask what recognition of childhood +there was in writings which sought to give an artistic form to political +thought. There is a frequent recurrence by Plato to the subject of +childhood in the state, and we may see in his presentation not only +the germinal relation which childhood bears, so that education becomes +necessarily one of the significant functions of government, but also what +may not unfairly be called a reflection of divinity. + +The education which in the ideal state is to be given to children is +represented by him, indeed, as the evolution from the sensations of +pleasure and pain to the perception of virtue and vice. “Pleasure and +pain,” he says,[8] “I maintain to be the first perceptions of children, +and I say that they are the forms under which virtue and vice are +originally present to them. As to wisdom and true and fixed opinions, +happy is the man who acquires them, even when declining in years; and +he who possesses them, and the blessings which are contained in them, +is a perfect man. Now I mean by education that training which is given +by suitable habits to the first instincts of virtue in children; when +pleasure and friendship and pain and hatred are rightly implanted in +souls not yet capable of understanding the nature of them, and who find +them, after they have attained reason, to be in harmony with her. This +harmony of the soul, when perfected, is virtue; but the particular +training in respect of pleasure and pain which leads you always to +hate what you ought to hate, and love what you ought to love, from the +beginning to the end, may be separated off, and, in my view, will be +rightly called education.” + +In the Republic, Plato theorizes at great length upon a possible +selection and training of children, which rests for its basis upon a too +pronounced physical assumption, so that one in reading certain passages +might easily fancy that he was considering the production of a superior +breed of colts, and that the soul was the product of material forces +only; but the fifth book, which contains these audacious speculations, +may fairly be taken in the spirit in which Proudhon is said to have +thrown out some of his extravagant assertions,—he expected to be beaten +down in his price. + +There are other passages, especially in the Laws, in reading which one +is struck by a certain reverence for childhood, as that interesting one +where caution is given against disturbing the uniformity of children’s +plays on account of their connection with the life of the state. The +modern theories of the Kindergarten find a notable support in Plato’s +reasoning: “I say that in states generally no one has observed that +the plays of childhood have a great deal to do with the permanence or +want of permanence in legislation. For when plays are ordered with a +view to children having the same plays and amusing themselves after the +same manner and finding delight in the same playthings, the more solemn +institutions of the state are allowed to remain undisturbed. Whereas, +if sports are disturbed and innovations are made in them, and they +constantly change, and the young never speak of their having the same +likings or the same established notions of good and bad taste, either +in the bearing of their bodies or in their dress, but he who devises +something new and out of the way in figures and colors and the like is +held in special honor, we may truly say that no greater evil can happen +in a state; for he who changes the sports is secretly changing the +manners of the young, and making the old to be dishonored among them, +and the new to be honored. And I affirm that there is nothing which is a +greater injury to all states than saying or thinking thus.”[9] + +It is, however, most germane to our purpose to cite a striking passage +from the Laws, in which Plato most distinctly recognizes the power +resident in childhood to assimilate the purest expression of truth. The +Athenian, in the dialogue, is speaking, and says: “The next suggestion +which I have to offer is that all our three choruses [that is, choruses +representing the three epochs of life] shall sing to the young and tender +souls of children, reciting in their strains all the noble thoughts of +which we have already spoken, or are about to speak; and the sum of them +shall be that the life which is by the gods deemed to be the happiest is +the holiest, and we shall affirm this to be a most certain truth; and the +minds of our young disciples will be more likely to receive these words +of ours than any others which we might address to them.... + +“First will enter, in their natural order, the sacred choir, composed of +children, which is to sing lustily the heaven-taught lay to the whole +city. Next will follow the chorus of young men under the age of thirty, +who will call upon the God Pæan to testify to the truth of their words, +and will pray to him to be gracious to the youth and to turn their +hearts. Thirdly, the choir of elder men, who are from thirty to sixty +years of age, will also sing. There remain those who are too old to sing, +and they will tell stories illustrating the same virtues, as with the +voice of an oracle.”[10] + +Plato used human society as material from which to construct an +organization artistically perfect and representing political order, +just as Pheidias or Praxiteles used clay as a material from which to +construct the human being artistically perfect and representing the soul +of man. With this fine organism of the ideal state Plato incorporated +his conception of childhood in its two relations of singing and being +sung to. He thought of the child as a member of the three-fold chorus +of life: and when he set these choirs hymning the divine strain, he made +the recipients of the revelation to be themselves children, the forming +elements of the growing, organic state. Certainly it is a wide arc which +is spanned by these three great representatives of Greek art, and in +passing from Homer to Sophocles, and from Sophocles to Plato, we are not +merely considering the epic, the tragic, and the philosophic treatment +of childhood in literature; we are discovering the development of the +conception of childhood in a nation which has communicated to history +the eidolon of the fairest humanity. It is scarcely too much to speak of +it as the evolution of a soul, and to find, as one so often finds in his +study of Greece, the outline of the course of the world’s thought. + +The old, formal view of antiquity, which once placed Grecian life almost +beyond the pale of our human sympathy, and made the men and women cold +marble figures in our imagination, has given place to a warmer regard. +Through literary reproduction, which paraphrases Greek life in the +dramatic art of Browning and Fitzgerald, gives us Spencerian versions of +Homer, or, better still, the healthy childlike recital in Mr. Palmer’s +version of the Odyssey, and enables us to sit down after dinner with +Plato, Mr. Jowett being an idiomatic interpreter; through the discoveries +of Schliemann and others, by which the mythic and heroic ages of Greece +are made almost grotesquely familiar,—we are coming to read Grecian +history, in Niebuhr’s felicitous phrase, as if it really happened, and +to lay aside our artificial and distant ways of becoming familiar with +Greek life. Yet the means which have led to this modern attitude toward +classic antiquity are themselves the product of modern life; the secrets +of Greek life are more open to us now because our own life has become +freer, more hospitable, and more catholic. It is a delight to us to turn +from the marble of Pheidias to the terra cotta of the unknown modelers +of the Tanagra figurines, while these homelike, domestic images serve as +interpreters, also, of the larger, nobler designs. So we have recourse to +those fragments of the Greek Anthology which give us glimpses of Greek +interiors, and by means of them we find a side-light thrown upon the more +majestic expressions of poetic and dramatic art. + +The Anthology gathers for us the epigrams, epitaphs, proverbs, fables, +and little odds and ends which have been saved from the ruins of +literature, and in turning its leaves one is impressed by the large +number of references to childhood. It is as when, rambling through the +streets of the uncovered Pompeii, one comes upon the playthings of +children dead nigh two thousand years. Here are tender memorials of lost +babes in inscriptions upon forgotten tombs, and laments of fathers and +mothers for the darkness which has come upon their dwellings. We seem to +hear the prattle of infancy and the mother’s lullaby. The Greeks, as we, +covered their loss with an instinctive trust in some better fortune in +store for the child, and hushed their skepticism with the song of hope +and the remembrance of stories which they had come in colder hours to +disbelieve. Here, for example, is an anonymous elegy:— + +“Thou hast not, O ruler Pluto, with pious intent, stolen for thy +underground world a girl of five years, admired by all. For thou hast +cut, as it were, from the root, a sweet-scented rose in the season of +a commencing spring, before it had completed its proper time. But +come, Alexander and Philtatus; do not any longer weep and pour forth +lamentations for the regretted girl. For she had, yes, she had a rosy +face which meant that she should remain in the immortal dwellings of +the sky. Trust, then, to stories of old. For it was not Death, but the +Naiads, who stole the good girl as once they stole Hylas.”[11] + +Perhaps the most celebrated of these tender domestic passages is to be +found in the oft-quoted lines from Simonides, where Danaë sings over the +boy Perseus:— + + “When in the ark of curious workmanship + The winds and swaying waters fearfully + Were rocking her, with streaming eyes, around + Her boy the mother threw her arms and said: + + “‘O darling, I am very miserable; + But thou art cosy-warm and sound asleep + In this thy dull, close-cabin’d prison-house, + Stretched at full ease in the dark, ebon gloom. + Over thy head of long and tangled hair + The wave is rolling; but thou heedest not; + Nor heedest thou the noises of the winds, + Wrapt in thy purple cloak, sweet pretty one. + + “‘But if this fearful place had fear for thee, + Those little ears would listen to my words; + But sleep on, baby, and let the sea-waves sleep, + And sleep our own immeasurable woes. + O father Zeus, I pray some change may come; + But, father, if my words are over-bold, + Have pity, and for the child’s sake pardon me.’”[12] + + +II + +As before we stopped in front of the charming group which Homer gives us +in the parting of Hector and Andromache, with the child Astyanax set in +the midst, so in taking the poet who occupies the chief place in Latin +literature we find a significant contrast. The picture of Æneas bearing +upon his shoulders the aged Anchises and leading by the hand the young +Ascanius is a distinct Roman picture. The two poems move through somewhat +parallel cycles, and have adventures which are common to both; but the +figure of Odysseus is essentially a single figure, and his wanderings +may easily be taken to typify the excursions of the human soul. Æneas, +on the other hand, seems always the centre of a family group, and his +journeyings always appear to be movements toward a final city and nation. +The Greek idea of individuality and the Roman of relationship have signal +illustration in these poems. Throughout the Æneid the figure of Ascanius +is an important one. There is a nice disclosure of growth in personality, +and one is aware that the grandson is coming forward into his place as +a member of the family, to be thereafter representative. The poet never +loses sight of the boy’s future. Homer, in his shield of Achilles, that +microcosm of human life, forgets to make room for children. Virgil, in +his prophetic shield, shows the long triumphs from Ascanius down, and +casts a light upon the cave wherein the twin boys were suckled by the +wolf. One of the most interesting episodes in the Æneid is the childhood +of Camilla, in which the warrior maid’s nature is carried back and +reproduced in diminutive form. The evolutions of the boys in the fifth +book, while full of boyish life, come rather under the form of mimic +soldiery than of spontaneous youth. In one of the Eclogues, Virgil has +a graceful suggestion of the stature of a child by its ability to reach +only the lowest branches of a tree. + +Childhood, in Roman literature, is not contemplated as a fine revelation +of nature. In the grosser conception, children are reckoned as scarcely +more than cubs; but with the strong hold which the family idea had +upon the Roman mind, it was impossible that in the refinement which +came gradually upon life childhood should not play a part of its own in +poetry, and come to represent the more spiritual side of the family life. +Thus Catullus, in one of his nuptial odes, has a charming picture of +infancy awaking into consciousness and affection:— + + “Soon my eyes shall see, mayhap, + Young Torquatus on the lap + Of his mother, as he stands + Stretching out his tiny hands, + And his little lips the while + Half open on his father’s smile. + + “And oh! may he in all be like + Manlius, his sire, and strike + Strangers when the boy they meet + As his father’s counterfeit, + And his face the index be + Of his mother’s chastity.”[13] + +The epitaphs and the elegies of the Greek Anthology have their +counterpart in Latin. Mr. Thompson has tried his hand at a passage from +Statius:[14]— + + ON THE DEATH OF A CHILD. + + Shall I not mourn thee, darling boy? with whom, + Childless I missed not children of my own; + I, who first caught and pressed thee to my breast, + And called thee mine, and taught thee sounds and words, + And solved the riddle of thy murmurings, + And stoop’d to catch thee creeping on the ground, + And propp’d thy steps, and ever had my lap + Ready, if drowsy were those little eyes, + To rock them with a lullaby to sleep; + Thy first word was my name, thy fun my smile, + And not a joy of thine but came from me. + +There is, too, that epitaph of Martial on the little girl Erotion, +closing with the lines which may possibly have been in Gray’s mind when +he wrote the discarded verse of his Elegy, Englished thus:— + + “Let not the sod too stiffly stretch its girth + Above those tender limbs, erstwhile so free; + Press lightly on her form, dear Mother Earth, + Her little footsteps lightly fell on thee.”[15] + +In the literature which sounds the deeper waters of life, we find +references to childhood; but the child rarely, if ever, draws the thought +outside of the confines of this world. As near an approach as any to a +perception of the mystery of childhood is in a passage in Lucretius, +where the poet looks down with compassion upon the new-born infant as +one of the mysteries of nature: “Moreover, the babe, like a sailor cast +ashore by the cruel waves, lies naked on the ground, speechless, in need +of every aid to life when first nature has cast him forth by great throes +from his mother’s womb, and he fills the air with his piteous wail, as +befits one whose doom it is to pass through so much misery in life.”[16] +Lucretius displayed a profound reverence for human affection. Scattered +through his great poem are fine lines in which childhood appears. “Soon,” +he says, in one mournful passage,—“soon shall thy home receive thee no +more with glad welcome, nor thy dear children run to snatch thy first +kiss, touching thy heart with silent gladness.”[17] + +Juvenal, with the thought of youth as the possible restoration of a +sinking world, utters a cry, which has often been taken up by sensualists +even, when he injects into his pitiless satire the solemn words, “the +greatest reverence is due to the boy.”[18] + +Any survey of ancient Greek and Roman life would be incomplete which left +out of view the supernatural element. We need not inquire whether there +was a conscious materialization of spiritual forces, or an idealization +of physical phenomena. We have simply to do with certain shapes and +figures which dwelt in the mind and formed a part of its furniture; +coming and going like shadows, yet like shadows confessing a forming +substance; embodying belief and symbolizing moods. In that overarching +and surrounding world, peopled by the countless personages of Greek and +Roman supernaturalism, we may discover, if we will, a vague, distorted, +yet sometimes transcendent reflection of the life which men and women +were living upon the more palpable and tangible earth. + +What, then, has the childhood of the gods to tell us? We have the playful +incident of Hermes, or Mercurius, getting out of his cradle to steal the +oxen of Admetos, and the similar one of Herakles strangling the snakes +that attacked him just after his birth; but these are simply stories +intended to carry back into childhood the strength of the one and the +cunning of the other. It is more to our purpose to note the presence in +the Pantheon of the child who remains always a child, and is known to us +familiarly as Eros, or Cupid, or Amor. It is true that the myth includes +the union of Cupid and Psyche; nevertheless, the prevailing conception +is of a boy, winged, armed with bow and arrows, the son and messenger +of Venus. It may be said that the myth gradually adapted itself to this +form, which is not especially apparent in the earlier stories. The +figure of Love, as thus presented, has been more completely adopted into +modern poetry than any other in the old mythology, and it cannot be said +that its characteristics have been materially altered. It is doubtful +whether the ancient idea was more simple than the same when reproduced in +Thorwaldsen’s sculpture, or in Ben Jonson’s Venus’ Runaway. The central +conception is essentially an unmoral one; it knows not right or wrong, +good or evil; the mischief-making is capricious, and not malicious. +There is the idea only of delight, of an innocence which is untutored, +of a will which is the wind’s will. It would seem as if, in fastening +upon childhood as the embodiment of love, the ancients, as well as their +modern heirs, were bent upon ridding life of conscience and fate,—upon +making love to have neither memory nor foresight, but only the joy of +the moment. This sporting child was a refuge, in their minds, from the +ills of life, a residence of the one central joy of the world. There is +an infinite pathos in the erection of childhood into a temple for the +worship of Love. There was, indeed, in the reception of this myth, a +wide range from purity to grossness, as the word “love” itself has to do +service along an arc which subtends heaven and hell; but when we distill +the poetry and art which gather about the myth of Cupid, the essence will +be found in this conception of love as a child,—a conception never wholly +lost, even when the child was robbed of the purity which we recognize as +its ideal property. It should be noted, also, that the Romans laid hold +of this idea more eagerly than did the Greeks; for the child itself, +though more artistically set forth in Greek literature, appears as a more +vital force in Roman literature.[19] + + + + +III + +IN HEBREW LIFE AND LITERATURE + + +The literature of Greece and Rome is a possession of the modern world. +For the most part it has been taken as an independent creation, studied +indeed with reference to language as the vehicle of thought, but after +all chiefly as an art. It is within a comparatively recent time that the +conception of an historical study of literature has been prominent, and +that men have gone to Greek and Roman poetry with an eager passion for +the discovery of ancient life. The result of these new methods has been +to humanize our conception of the literature under examination. + +Singularly enough, while the modern world has been influenced by the +classic world chiefly through its language, literature, and institutions, +the third great stream of influence which has issued from ancient sources +has been one in which literature as such has been almost subordinated +to the religious and ethical ideas of which it was the vehicle; even +the strong institutional forces inherent in it have had only exceptional +attention. There was a time, indeed, when the history of the Jews, as +contained in the books of the Old Testament, was isolated from the +history of mankind and treated in an artificial manner, at its best made +to illustrate conduct, somewhat as Latin literature was made to exemplify +syntax. The old distinction of sacred and profane history did much to +obscure the human element in what was called sacred history, and to blot +out the divine element in what was called profane history. There are many +who can remember the impression made upon their minds when they learned +for the first time of the contemporaneousness of events in Jewish and +Grecian history; and it is not impossible that some can even recall a +period in their lives when Bible people and the Bible lands were almost +as distinct and separate in their conception as if they belonged to +another planet. + +Nevertheless, the reality of Old Testament history, while suffering from +lack of proportion in relation to other parts of human history, has been +impressed upon modern civilization through its close identification +with the religious life. The inheritance of these scriptures of the +ancient Hebrew has been so complete that the modern Jew is regarded +almost as a pretender when he sets up a claim to special possession. We +jostle him out of the way, and appropriate his national documents as the +old title-deeds of Christianity. There is, indeed, an historic truth +involved in this; but, however we may regard it, we are brought back to +the significant fact that along with the Greek and the Roman influence +upon modern life has been the mighty force of Hebraism. The Greek has +impressed himself upon our modes and processes of thought, the Roman upon +our organization, the Hebrew upon our religious and social life.[20] + +It is certain that the Bible has been a storehouse from which have been +drawn illustrations of life and character, and that these have had an +authority beyond anything in classic history and literature. It has been +the book from which youth with us has drawn its conceptions of life +outside of the limited circle of human experience; and the geographical, +historical, and archæological apparatus employed to illustrate it has +been far more considerable than any like apparatus in classical study. +The Bible has been the university to the person of ordinary culture; it +has brought into his life a foreign element which Greece and Rome have +been powerless to present; and though the images of this remote foreign +life often have been distorted, and strangely mingled with familiar +notions, there can be no doubt that the mind has been enlarged by this +extension of its interests and knowledge. + +It is worth while, therefore, to ask what conceptions of childhood are +discoverable in the Old Testament literature. The actual appearances of +children in the narrative portions are not frequent. We have the incident +of the exposure of Moses as a babe in the bulrushes; the sickness and +death of Bathsheba’s child, with the pathetic story of the erring +father’s fasting and prayer; the expulsion of Ishmael; the childhood +of Samuel in the temple; the striking narrative of the restoration of +the son of the widow of Zarephath by Elijah; and the still more graphic +and picturesque description of the bringing back to life by Elisha +of the child who had been born at his intercession to the Shunamite, +and had been sunstruck when in the field with his father. Then there +is the abrupt and hard to be explained narrative of the jeering boys +who followed the prophet Elisha with derisive cries, as they saw how +different he was in external appearance from the rugged and awe-inspiring +Elijah. Whatever may be the interpretation of the fearful retribution +which befell those rude boys, and the indication which was shown of the +majesty of the prophetic office, it is clear that the Jew of that day +would not have felt any disproportion between the guilt of the boys and +their dire and speedy punishment; he would have been impressed by the +sanctity of the prophet, and the swiftness of the divine demonstration. +Life and death were nothing before the integrity of the divine ideal, +and the complete subordination of children to the will of their parents +accustomed the mind to an easy assent to the exhibition of what seems to +us almost arbitrary will. + +No attentive reader of the Old Testament has failed to remark the +prominence given to the preservation of the family succession, and to +the birth of male children. That laugh of Sarah—at first of scorn, then +of triumph—sounds out from the early records with a strange, prophetic +voice; and one reads the thirtieth chapter of the book of Genesis with +a sense of the wild, passionate rivalry of the two wives of Jacob, as +they bring forth, one after another, the twelve sons of the patriarch. +The burst of praise also from Hannah, when she was freed from her bitter +shame and had brought forth her son Samuel, has its echo through history +and psalm and prophecy until it issues in the clear, bell-like tones of +the Magnificat, thenceforward to be the hymn of triumph of the Christian +church. The voice of God, as it uttered itself in commandment and +prophetic warning, was for children and children’s children to the latest +generation. It is not the person so much as the family that is addressed, +and the strongest warnings, the brightest promises to the fathers, are +through the children. The prophet Hosea could use no more terrible word +to the people than when, speaking as the mouthpiece of God, he says: +“Seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God, I will also forget thy +children;”[21] and Zechariah, inspiriting the people, declares: “They +shall remember me in far countries; and they shall live with their +children.”[22] The promise of the golden age of peace and prosperity +has its climax in the innocence of childhood. “There shall yet old men +and old women dwell in the streets of Jerusalem, and every man with his +staff in his hand for very age. And the streets of the city shall be full +of boys and girls playing in the streets thereof;”[23] while the lofty +anticipation of Isaiah, in words which still serve as symbols of hopeful +humanity, reaches its height in the prediction of a profound peace among +the very brutes, when the wolf and the lamb, the leopard and the kid, +the calf, the young lion, and the fatling shall not only lay aside their +mutual hate and fear, but shall be obedient to the tender voice and +gentle hand of a little child, and even the noxious reptiles shall be +playmates for the infant.[24] In the Greek fable, Hercules in his cradle +strangled the snakes by his might; in the Jewish picture, the child +enters fearlessly the very dens of the asp and the adder, secure under +the reign of a perfect righteousness. + +Milton, in his Ode on the Morning of Christ’s Nativity, has pointed out +this parallel:— + + “He feels from Judah’s land + The dreaded infant’s hand, + The rays of Bethlehem blind his dusky eyne; + Nor all the gods beside + Longer dare abide, + Not Typhon huge ending in snaky twine; + Our babe, to show his Godhead true, + Can in his swaddling bands control the damnëd crew.” + +To the Jew, childhood was the sign of fulfillment of glorious promises. +The burden of psalm and prophecy was of a golden age to come, not of one +that was in the dim past. A nation is kept alive, not by memory, but +by hope. The God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob was the God of a +procession of generations, a God of sons and of sons’ sons; and when we +read, in the last words of the last canonical book of the Old Testament, +that “he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the +heart of the children to their fathers,”[25] we are prepared for the +opening, four centuries later, of the last chapter in the ancient history +of this people. In the adoration there of the child we seem to see the +concentration of Jewish hope which had for centuries found expression in +numberless ways. The Magnificat of Mary is the song of Hannah, purified +and ennobled by generations of deferred hope, and in all the joy and +prophecy of the shepherds, of Simeon and of Anna, we listen to strains +which have a familiar sound. It is indeed the expectation of what this +child will be and do which moves the pious souls about it, but there is +a direct veneration of the babe as containing the hope of the people. +In this supreme moment of the Jewish nation, age bows itself reverently +before childhood, and we are able by the light which the event throws +backward to perceive more clearly how great was the power of childhood, +through all the earlier periods, in its influence upon the imagination +and reason. We may fairly contend that the apprehension of the sanctity +of childhood was more positive with the Jew than with either the Greek or +the Roman. + +It remains, however, that this third great stream of humanity passes out, +in the New Testament, from its Hebraic limitations, and we are unable, +except by a special effort, to think of it as Jewish at all. The Gospels +transcend national and local and temporal limits, and we find ourselves, +when considering them, reading the beginnings of modern, not the close +of Jewish history. The incidents lying along the margin of the Gospels +and relating to the birth of the Christ do, as we have seen, connect +themselves with the earlier national development, but the strong light +which comes at the dawn of Christianity inevitably draws the mind forward +to the new day. + +The evangelists record no incidents of the childhood of Jesus which +separate it from the childhood of other of the children of men. The +flight into Egypt is the flight of parents with a child; the presence +of the boy in the temple is marked by no abnormal sign, for it is a +distorted imagination which has given the unbiblical title to the +scene,—Christ disputing with the Doctors, or Christ teaching in the +Temple. But as the narrative of the Saviour’s ministry proceeds, we are +reminded again and again of the presence of children in the multitudes +that flocked about him. The signs and wonders which he wrought were more +than once through the lives of the young, and the suffering and disease +of humanity which form the background in the Gospels upon which we see +sketched in lines of light the outline of the redeeming Son of Man are +shown in the persons of children, while the deeper life of humanity is +disclosed in the tenderness of parents. It is in the Gospels that we have +those vignettes of human life,—the healing of the daughter of Jairus, the +delivery of the boy possessed with devils, that striking antithesis to +the transfiguration which Raphael’s genius has served to fix in the mind, +the healing of the nobleman’s son, and the blessing of children brought +to the Master by their fond mothers. Most notable, too, is the scene of +the final entry into Jerusalem, when the Saviour appeared to accept from +children the tribute which he shunned when it came from their elders. + +Here, as in other cases, we ask what was the attitude of the Saviour +toward children, since the literature of the New Testament is so +confessedly a revelation of life and character that we instinctively +refuse to treat it otherwise. In vain do we listen to those who point out +the ethical beauty of the Sermon on the Mount, or the pathos of this or +that incident; our minds break through all considerations of style and +form, to seize upon the facts and truths in their relation to life. We +do not ask, what is the representation of childhood to be found in the +writings of certain Jews known as Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John; we ask, +what is there between children and the central figure disclosed in those +writings. We ask purposely, for, when we leave behind this ancient world, +we enter upon the examination of literature and art which are never +beyond the horizon lying under the rays of the Sun of Righteousness. The +attitude which Christ took toward children must contain the explanation +of the attitude which Christianity takes toward the same, for the +literature and art of Christendom become the exponents of the conception +had of the Christ. + +There are two or three significant words and acts which leave us in no +doubt as to the general aspect which childhood wore to Jesus Christ. +In the conversation which he held with the intellectual Nicodemus, +he asserted the necessity of a new birth for mankind; in the rite of +baptism he symbolized the same truth; he expanded this word again, +accompanying it by a symbolic act, when he placed a child in the midst +of his disciples and bade them begin life over again; he illustrated the +truth by an acted parable, when he called little children to him with +the words, “Of such is the kingdom of heaven;” he turned from the hard, +skeptical men of that generation with the words of profound relief: “I +thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hid these +things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes;” he +symbolized the charity of life in the gift of a cup of cold water to a +child. + +The eyes of this Jesus, the Saviour of men, were ever upon the new +heavens and the new earth. The kingdom of heaven was the burden of his +announcement; the new life which was to come to men shone most plainly in +the persons of young children. Not only were the babes whom he saw and +blessed to partake of the first entrance into the kingdom of the spirit, +but childhood possessed in his sight the potency of the new world; it +was under the protection of a father and mother; it was fearless and +trusting; it was unconscious of self; it lived and did not think about +living. The words of prophets and psalmists had again and again found in +the throes of a woman in labor a symbol of the struggle of humanity for a +new generation. By a bold and profound figure it was said of the great +central person of humanity: “He shall see of the travail of his soul and +be satisfied.” A foregleam of that satisfaction is found in his face as +he gazes upon the children who are brought to him. There is sorrow as he +gazes upon the world, and his face is set toward Jerusalem; there is a +calm joy as he places a child before him and sees in his young innocence +the promise of the kingdom of heaven; there is triumph in his voice as he +rebukes the men who would fain shut the mouths of the shouting children +that run before him. + +The pregnant words which Jesus Christ used regarding childhood, the new +birth, and the kingdom of heaven become indicative of the great movements +in life and literature and art from that day to this. The successive +gestations of history have their tokens in some specific regard of +childhood. There have been three such periods, so mighty that they mark +each the beginning of a new heaven and a new earth. The first was the +genesis of the Christian church; the second was the Renaissance; the +third had its great sign in the French Revolution. + + + + +IV + +IN EARLY CHRISTIANITY + + +The parabolic expression, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I +will raise it up,” has been applied with force to the destruction of +Judaism, and the reconstruction upon its ruins of a living Christianity. +It may be applied with equal justice, though in more recondite sense, +to the death of the old literature and art, and the resurrection of the +beautiful creations of the human mind in new form. The three days were +more than a thousand years, and during that long sleep what had become +of those indestructible forces of imagination and reason which combine +in literature and art? Roughly speaking, they were disjoined, and only +when reunited did they again assert themselves in living form. The power +which kept each in abeyance was structural Christianity, and only when +that began to be burst asunder by the vital force inherent in spiritual +Christianity was there opportunity for the free union of the imagination +and reason. As the Jewish temple could no longer inclose divinity, but +was thrust apart by the expansive power of the Christianity which was +fostered within it, so the Christian church, viewed as an institution +which aimed at an inclosure of humanity, was in its turn disrupted by the +silent growth of the human spirit which had fed within its walls upon +the divine life. After the birth of Christianity the parallel continuity +of the old world was broken. The Greek, the Roman, and the Hebrew no +longer carried forward their separate movements. Christianity, professing +to annul these forces, had taken their place in history. Again, at the +Renaissance, it was found that the three great streams of human thought +had been flowing underground; they reissued to the light in a generous +flood, each combining with the others. + +It was during this long period of apparent inaction in literature and +art that the imagination, dissevered from reason, was in a state of +abnormal activity. The compression of its field caused the faculty to +find expression through forms which were very closely connected with the +dominant sphere of human life. Before religious art and ecclesiastical +architecture had become the abundant expression of Christian imagination, +there was generated a great mass of legend and fable, which only by +degrees became formally embodied in literature or perpetuated in art +and symbol. The imaginative faculty had given it, for material in which +to work the new life, the soul of man as distinctly related to God. +An ethical principle lay at the foundation of Christianity, and the +imagination, stimulated by faith, built with materials drawn from ethical +life. The germinal truth of Christianity, that God had manifested himself +to men in the person of Jesus Christ, however it might be obscured or +misunderstood, was the efficient cause of the operations of the Christian +imagination. This faculty set before itself the perfect man, and in that +conceived not the physical and intellectual man of the Greek conception, +nor the Cæsar of the Roman ideal, nor even the moral man of the Jewish +light, but a man whose perfection was the counterpart of the perfection +of God and its great exemplar, the man Jesus Christ. In his life the +central idea of service, of victory through suffering and humiliation, +of self-surrender, and of union with God was perceived with greater or +less clearness, and this idea was adumbrated in that vast gallery of +saints constructed by Christianity in its ceaseless endeavor to reproduce +the perfect type. Through all the extravagance and chaotic confusion +of the legendary lore of the mediæval church, one may discover the +perpetually recurring notes of the perfect life. The beatitudes—those +spiritual witnesses of the redeemed human character—are ever floating +before the early imagination, and offering the standards by which it +measures its creations. It was by no fortuitous suggestion, but by a +profound sense of fitness, that the church made the gospel of All Saints’ +Day to consist of those sentences which pronounce the blessedness of the +poor in spirit, the meek, and the persecuted for righteousness sake; +while the epistle for the same day is the roll-call of the saints who are +to sit on the thrones of the twelve tribes, and of the multitudes who +have overcome the world. + +It is not strange, therefore, that the imagination, busying itself about +the spiritual life of man, should have dwelt with special emphasis upon +those signs of the new life brought to light in the Gospels, which +seemed to contain the promise of perfection. It seized upon baptism as +witnessing to a regeneration; it traced the lives of saints back to a +childhood which began with baptism; it invested the weak things of the +world with a mighty power; and, keeping before it the pattern of the +Head of the church, it traced in the early life of the Saviour powers +which confounded the common wisdom of men. It dwelt with fondness upon +the adoration of the Magi, as witnessing to the supremacy of the infant +Redeemer; and, occupied as it was with the idea of a suffering Saviour, +it carried the cross back to the cradle, and found in the Massacre of the +Innocents the type of a substitution and vicarious sacrifice. + +The simple annals of the Gospels shine with great beauty when confronted +by the ingenuity and curious adornment of the legends included in the +so-called Apocryphal Gospels. Yet these legends illustrate the eagerness +of the early Christian world to invest the person of Jesus with every +possible charm and power; and since the weakness of infancy and childhood +offers the strongest contrast to works of thaumaturgy, this period is +very fully elaborated. A reason may also be found in the silence of the +evangelists, which needed to be broken by the curious. Thus, when, in +the flight into Egypt, the Holy Family was made to seek rest in a cave, +there suddenly came out many dragons; and the children who were with the +family, when they saw the dragons, cried out in great terror. + +“Then Jesus,” says the narrative, “went down from the bosom of his +mother, and stood on his feet before the dragons; and they adored Jesus, +and thereafter retired.... And the young child Jesus, walking before +them, commanded them to hurt no man. But Mary and Joseph were very much +afraid lest the child should be hurt by the dragons. And Jesus said to +them; ‘Do not be afraid, and do not consider me to be a little child; +for I am and always have been perfect, and all the beasts of the field +must needs be tame before me.’ Lions and panthers adored him likewise, +and accompanied them in the desert. Wherever Joseph and the blessed Mary +went, these went before them, showing them the way and bowing their +heads, and showing their submission by wagging their tails; they adored +him with great reverence. Now at first, when Mary saw the lions and the +panthers, and various kinds of wild beasts coming about them, she was +very much afraid. But the infant Jesus looked into her face with a joyful +countenance, and said: ‘Be not afraid, mother; for they come not to do +thee harm, but they make haste to serve both thee and me.’ With these +words he drove all fear from her heart. And the lions kept walking with +them, and with the oxen and the asses and the beasts of burden which +carried their baggage, and did not hurt a single one of them; but they +were tame among the sheep and the rams which they had brought with them +from Judæa, and which they had with them. They walked among wolves and +feared nothing, and no one of them was hurt by another.”[26] + +So, too, when Mary looked helplessly up at the fruit of a palm-tree +hanging far out of her reach, the child Jesus, “with a joyful +countenance, reposing in the bosom of his mother, said to the palm, ‘O +tree, bend thy branches, and refresh my mother with thy fruit.’ And +immediately at these words the palm bent its top down to the very +feet of the blessed Mary; and they gathered from its fruit, with which +they were all refreshed. And after they had gathered all its fruit, it +remained bent down, waiting the order to rise from him who had commanded +it to stoop. Then Jesus said to it, ‘Raise thyself, O palm-tree, and be +strong, and be the companion of my trees which are in the paradise of my +Father; and open from thy roots a vein of water which has been hid in the +earth, and let the waters flow, so that we may be satisfied from thee.’ +And it rose up immediately, and at its root there began to come forth a +spring of water, exceedingly clear and cool and sparkling. And when they +saw the spring of water they rejoiced with great joy, and were satisfied, +themselves and all their cattle and their beasts. Wherefore they gave +thanks to God.” + +The legends which relate to the boyhood of Jesus carry back with +a violent or confused sense the acts of his manhood. Thus he is +represented more than once as willing the death of a playmate, and then +contemptuously bringing him to life again. A favorite story grossly +misconceives the incident of Christ with the Doctors in the temple, and +makes him turn his schoolmaster into ridicule. There are other stories, +the incidents of which are not reflections of anything in the Gospels, +but are used to illustrate in a childish way the wonder-working power of +the boy. Here is one which curiously mingles the miraculous power with +the Saviour’s doctrine of the Sabbath:— + +“And it came to pass, after these things, that in the sight of all +Jesus took clay from the pools which he had made, and of it made twelve +sparrows. And it was the Sabbath when Jesus did this, and there were +very many children with him. When, therefore, one of the Jews had seen +him doing this, he said to Joseph, ‘Joseph, dost thou not see the child +Jesus working on the Sabbath at what it is not lawful for him to do? For +he has made twelve sparrows of clay.’ And when Joseph heard this, he +reproved him, saying, ‘Wherefore doest thou on the Sabbath such things as +are not lawful for us to do?’ And when Jesus heard Joseph he struck his +hands together, and said to his sparrows, ‘Fly!’ and at the voice of his +command they began to fly. And in the sight and hearing of all that stood +by he said to the birds, ‘Go and fly through the earth, and through all +the world, and live.’ And when those that were there saw such miracles +they were filled with great astonishment.” + +It is interesting to note how many of these stories connect the child +with animals. The passage in Isaiah which prophesied the great peace in +the figure of a child leading wild beasts had something to do with this; +so had the birth of Jesus in a manger, and the incident of the entry +into Jerusalem: but I suspect that the imagination scarcely needed to +hunt very far or very curiously for suggestions, since the world over +childhood has been associated with brute life, and the writers of the +Apocryphal Gospels had only to make these animals savage when they would +illustrate the potency of the childhood of Jesus. + +“There is a road going out of Jericho,” says the Pseudo-gospel of +Matthew, “and leading to the river Jordan, to the place where the +children of Israel crossed; and there the ark of the covenant is said to +have rested. And Jesus was eight years old, and he went out of Jericho +and went towards the Jordan. And there was beside the road, near the +banks of the Jordan, a cave, where a lioness was nursing her cubs; and +no one was safe who walked that way. Jesus, then, coming from Jericho, +and knowing that in that cave the lioness had brought forth her young, +went into it in the sight of all. And when the lions saw Jesus they ran +to meet him, and adored him. And Jesus was sitting in the cavern, and +the lion’s cubs ran hither and thither round his feet, fawning upon him +and sporting. And the older lions, with their heads bowed down, stood at +a distance and adored him, and fawned upon him with their tails. Then +the people, who were standing afar off, not seeing Jesus, said, ‘Unless +he or his parents had committed grievous sins, he would not of his own +accord have offered himself up to the lions.’ And when the people were +thus reflecting within themselves, and were lying under great sorrow, +behold, on a sudden, in the sight of the people, Jesus came out of the +cave, and the lions went before him, and the lion’s cubs played with each +other before his feet. And the parents of Jesus stood afar off, with +their heads bowed down, and watched; likewise, also, the people stood at +a distance, on account of the lions; for they did not dare to come close +to them. Then Jesus began to say to the people, ‘How much better are the +beasts than you, seeing that they recognize their Lord and glorify him; +while you men, who have been made after the image and likeness of God, +do not know him! Beasts know me, and are tame; men see me, and do not +acknowledge me.’” + +To the mind of these early Christians the life of Jesus was compounded +of holiness and supernatural power; so far as they distinguished these, +the holiness was the cause of the power, and hence, when the imagination +fashioned saints out of men and women, it followed the same course +which it had taken with the Master. The childhood of the saints was an +anticipation of maturer virtues and powers, rather than a manifestation +of ingenuous innocence. There was a tendency to explain exceptional +qualities in lives by extending them backward into youth, thereby gaining +for them an apparent corroboration. The instances of this in the legends +are frequent. Mothers, like the Virgin Mary, have premonitions that +their children are to be in some special manner children of God, and the +characteristics of later life are foreshadowed at birth. The Virgin +herself was thus dealt with. The strong human feeling which subsequently, +when the tenderness of Christ had been petrified into judgment, +interposed the Virgin as mediator, found gratification in surrounding +Mary’s infancy and childhood with a supernatural grace and power, the +incidents in some cases being faint reflections of incidents in the life +of her son; as when we are told that Joachim and Anna carried Mary, then +three years old, to place her among the virgins in the temple of God. +“And when she was put down before the doors of the temple, she went up +the fifteen steps so swiftly that she did not look back at all; nor did +she, as children are wont to do, seek for her parents. Whereupon her +parents, each of them anxiously seeking for the child, were both alike +astonished until they found her in the temple, and the priests of the +temple themselves wondered.” + +In like manner a halo of light played about S. Catherine’s head when +she was born. The year of the birth of S. Elizabeth of Hungary was full +of blessings to her country; the first words she uttered were those of +prayer, and when three years old she gave signs of the charity which +marked her life by giving her toys and garments to those less fortunate +than herself. A pretty story is told of her betrothal to Prince Louis of +Thuringia. Herman of Thuringia sent an embassy to the king of Hungary, +desiring the little Elizabeth, then only four years old, for his son; and +the maiden accompanied the embassy, carrying with her a silver cradle +and silver bath, which her father had given her. She was betrothed to +Louis, and the little pair played happily together in the same cradle. S. +Genevieve of Paris was a maiden of seven, who tended a flock of sheep at +the village of Narterre. Hither came S. Germain, and when the inhabitants +were assembled to receive his benediction his eyes rested on the little +shepherdess, and seeing her saintliness he set her apart as a bride of +Christ. S. Gregory Nazianzen had a dream when he was a boy, in which two +heavenly virgins of celestial beauty visited him: they were Chastity +and Temperance, and so captivating was their presence, so winning were +their words, that he awoke to take perpetual vows of continence. S. John +Chrysostom was a dull boy at school, and so disturbed was he by the +ridicule of his fellows that he went into a church to pray to the Virgin +for help. A voice came from the image: “Kiss me on the mouth, and thou +shalt be endowed with all learning.” He did this, and when he returned +to his school-fellows they saw a golden circle about his mouth, and his +eloquence and brilliancy astounded them. Martyrdom was the portion of +these saintly children as well as of their elders. The story is told of +Hilarion, one of the four children of Saturninus the priest, that when +the proconsul of Carthage thought to have no difficulty in dealing with +one of tender age, the child resisted all cajolings and threats. “I am +a Christian,” said the little fellow. “I have been at the collect [that +is, assisted as an acolyte], and it was of my own voluntary choice, +without any compulsion.” Thereupon the proconsul, who was probably a +father, threatened him, as the story runs, “with those little punishments +with which children are accustomed to be chastised,” but the child only +laughed at the idea of giving up his faith for fear of a whipping. “I +will cut off your nose and ears!” shouted the exasperated inquisitor. +“You may do it, but I shall be a Christian still,” replied the undaunted +boy; and when he was ordered off to prison with the rest, he was heard +to pipe forth, “God be thanked,” and so was led away. + +These random incidents are, for the most part, mainly anticipatory of +mature experience. They can be matched with the details of Protestant +hagiology as recorded in a class of books more common forty years ago +than now. It is their remoteness that lends a certain grace and charm to +them. The life of a little Christian in the fourth century is invested +with an attraction which is wanting in the circumstance of some juvenile +saint living in the midst of indifferent scoffers of the early part of +the nineteenth century. + +Occasionally, however, the legends inclose the saintly attributes in some +bit of romance, or betray a simple, ingenuous sympathy with childish +nature. The legend of S. Kenelm has a faint suspicion of kinship with the +story of the babes in the wood. King Kenwulf of Wessex died, and left +two daughters, Cwendrida and Burgenilda, and a son of seven years, named +Kenelm. The elder of the daughters wished the child out of the way, that +she might reign; so she gave money to Askbert, his guardian, the wicked +uncle of the story, and bade him privily slay the boy. So Askbert took +Kenelm into a wood, as if for a hunt, and by and by the child, tired with +the heat, fell asleep under the shade of a tree. Askbert, seeing his time +had come, set to work to dig a grave, that all might be in readiness; but +Kenelm woke, and said, “It is in vain that you think to kill me here. I +shall be slain in another spot. In token whereof, see this rod blossom;” +and so saying, he stuck a stick into the ground, and it instantly took +root and began to flower. In after days it was a great ash-tree, known +as S. Kenelm’s ash. Then Askbert took the little king to another spot, +and the child, now wide awake, began to sing the Te Deum. When he came to +the verse, “The noble army of martyrs praise Thee,” Askbert cut off his +head, and then buried him in the wood. Just as he did this, a white dove +flew into the church of S. Peter in Rome, and laid on the high altar a +letter, which it bore in its beak. The letter was in English, and it was +some time before any one could be found who could read it. Then it was +discovered that Kenelm had been killed and his body hidden away. The Pope +thereupon wrote letters into England telling of this sorry affair, and +men went forth to find the body of the little king. They were led by a +pillar of light, which stood over the place where the body lay. So they +bore it off and buried it; but they built a chapel over the spot where +they had found the body, which is known as S. Kenelm’s chapel to this +day. There the chapel stands near Hales Owen; how else did it get its +name? and as Mr. Freeman sagely remarks, “It is hard to see what should +have made anybody invent such a tale, if nothing of the kind had ever +happened.” + +Another of the stories which has a half fairy-tale character is that of +the martyrdom of the little S. Christina, who was shut up in a high tower +by her father, and bidden spend her time before gold and silver gods; his +private purpose being to keep her out of the way of troublesome lovers. +Christina tired of her divine playthings, and in spite of her father’s +indulgence, since he obligingly took away all the images but three, +would have nothing to do with false gods. She was visited by angels and +instructed in Christianity. She combined courage in her new faith with a +fine spirit of adventure; for she is represented as smashing the idols, +letting herself down by a rope from her tower-prison, distributing the +fragments of the idols among the poor, and clambering up again before +morning. Her martyrdom showed various ingenious inventions of torture, +but the odd part of the story is the manner in which the gold and silver +idols always suggest a girl’s playthings. We are told that when she was +taken into the temple of Apollo she bade the idol step down and walk +about the temple until she sent it back to its place. Then, proceeds the +story gravely, she was put in a cradle filled with boiling pitch and oil, +and four soldiers were set to rocking her. + +In these and similar stories which abound in the Acta Sanctorum, the +simple attributes of childish nature rarely shine through the more formal +covering of churchly investiture. Nature could not always be expelled, +but the imagination, busy with the construction of the ideal Christian +life, was more concerned, as time went on, to make that conform to an +ecclesiastical standard. It is pathetic to see the occasional struggle +of poor humanity to break through the meshes in which it was entangled. +The life of S. Francis of Assisi is full of incidents which illustrate +this. His familiar intercourse with birds and beasts was but one of the +signs of an effort to escape from the cage in which he was an unconscious +prisoner. One night, we are told, he rose suddenly from the earthen floor +which made his bed and rushed out into the open air. A brother monk, who +was praying in his cell, looked through his window and saw S. Francis, +under the light of the moon, fashion seven little figures of snow. “Here +is thy wife,” he said to himself: “these four are thy sons and daughters; +the other two are thy servant and handmaid: and for all these thou art +bound to provide. Make haste, then, and provide clothing for them, lest +they perish with cold. But if the care of so many trouble thee, be thou +careful to serve the Lord alone.” The injunction to give up father and +mother and family for the Lord’s sake, when obeyed by one so tremulously +alive to human sympathy as was S. Francis, had in it a power suddenly to +disclose the depths of the human soul; nor can it be doubted that those +who, like S. Francis, were eagerly thrusting aside everything which +seemed to stand between them and the realization of the divine life paid +heed to the significant words of the Lord which made a child the symbol +of that life. In practical dealing with the evils of the world the early +church never lost sight of children. Orphans, especially the orphans of +martyrs, were a sacred charge, and when monasteries arose and became, +at least in the West, centres of civilization, they were refuges for +foundlings as well as schools for the young. It is one of the distinct +signs of the higher life which Christianity was slowly bringing into the +world that the church adopted and protected children as children, for +their own sakes. Foundlings had before been nurtured for the sake of +profit, and we can easily do poor human nature the justice to believe in +instances where pity and love had their honest sway; but it certainly was +left to the church to incorporate in its very constitution that care of +helpless childhood which springs from a profound sense of the dignity of +life, and a growing conviction of the rights which pertain to personality. + +For the history of Christianity is in the development of personality, +and childhood has, from the beginning, come under the influence of a +power which has been at work lifting the world into a recognition of +its relation to God. It was impossible that the few significant words +spoken by Christ should be forgotten; nevertheless, they do not seem +to have impressed themselves upon the consciousness of men. At least it +may be said that in the growth of Latin Christianity they do not come +forward specifically as furnishing the ground and reason for a regard +for childhood. The work to be done by the Latin church was largely one +of organizing human society under an anthropomorphic conception of God. +It gave a certain fixed objectivity to God, placed him at a distance +from the world, and made the approach to him to be by a succession of +intermediary agents. Nevertheless, the hierarchy which resulted rested +upon ethical foundations. The whole grand scheme did, in effect, rivet +and fix the sense of personal responsibility and personal integrity. +It made each man and woman aware of his and her relation to law in the +person of its ministers, and this law was a law which reached to the +thoughts of the heart. + +The system, as such, had little to do with childhood. It waited for its +close, but it pushed back its influence over the line of adolescence, +making as early as might be the day when the child should come into +conscious relation with the church. Through the family, however, it +powerfully affected the condition of childhood, for by its laws and its +ritual it was giving religious sanction to the family, even while it was +gradually divorcing itself from humanity under plea of a sanctity which +was more than human. Its conception of a religious devotedness which was +too good for this world, whereby contempt of the body was put in place of +redemption of the body, and celibacy made more honorable than marriage, +undermined its hold upon the world, which it sought to govern and to +furnish with ideals. + +Inasmuch as this great system dealt with persons in relations which +could be exactly defined and formulated, it would be idle to seek in +the literature which reflects it for any considerable representation of +that period of human life in which the forms are as yet undetermined. +Nevertheless, childhood exercises even here its subtle power of recalling +men to elemental truths. Dante was the prophet of a spiritual Rome, which +he saw in his vision outlined against the background of the existing +hierarchy. It would be in vain to search through the Divine Comedy for +many references to childhood. As he says himself in the Inferno,— + + “For this is not a sportive enterprise + To speak the universe’s lowest hold, + Nor suits a tongue that Pa and Mammy cries.”[27] + +And the only picture of childhood in that vision is the melancholy one +of the horrid sufferings of Count Ugolino and his children in the Tower +of Hunger. In the Paradiso there are two passages of interest. Near +the close of the twenty-seventh canto, Beatrice, breaking forth into a +rapt utterance of the divine all in all, suddenly checks herself as she +remembers how the curse of covetousness shuts men out from entrance into +the full circle of divine movement, and then, with a swift and melancholy +survey of the changes in human life, cries bitterly:— + + “Faith, Art, and Innocence are found alone + With little children; then they scatter fast + Before the down across the cheek have grown. + There is that lispeth, and doth learn to fast, + Who afterward, with tongue untied from May + To April, down his throat all meats will cast. + There is that, lisping, loveth to obey + His mother, and he’ll wish her in the tomb, + When sentences unbroken he can say.” + +Again, in the thirty-second canto, S. Bernard is pointing out the circles +of the Rose, and after denoting the degrees of saints before Christ and +after, proceeds:— + + “And from the seats, in midway rank, that knit + These double files, and downwards, thou wilt find + That none do for their own deserving sit, + But for another’s under terms assigned; + For every one of these hath been set free + Ere truly self-determined was the mind. + This by the childish features wilt thou see, + If well thou scan them, and if well thou list + Wilt hear it by the childlike symphony.” + +Dante is perplexed by the difference even in these innocent babes, but S. +Bernard reminds him that there is difference in endowment, but that all +are subject to the divine all-embracing law:— + + “And therefore these, who took such hasty flight, + Into the true life not without a cause + Are entered so, these more, and those less, bright,”— + +an interpretation of the vision which is really less scholastic than +suggested by the deeper insight of the poetic mind. + +The most significant passage, however, is found in the famous words +at the beginning of the Vita Nuova, which fix Dante’s first sight of +Beatrice when he was nine years old. “And since,” he closes, “to dwell +upon the passions and actions of such early youth seems like telling an +idle tale, I will leave them, and, passing over many things which might +be drawn from the original where these lie hidden, I will come to those +words which are written in my memory under larger paragraphs.”[28] In +these last words is apparent Dante’s own judgment upon the worth of his +recollections of childhood: one page only in that book of his memory he +deems worthy of regard,—the page upon which fell the image of Beatrice. +It will be said with truth that the childhood of Dante and Beatrice is +in reality the beginning of maturity, for it is counted only as the +initiation of a noble passion. The time, indeed, had not yet come in +the history of human life when the recollection of that which is most +distinctive of childhood forms the basis of speculation and philosophic +dream. + +The absence of childhood from the visions of Dante is a negative witness +to the absence from the world, in the age prior to the Renaissance, of +hope and of simple faith and innocence. Dante’s faint recognition of +these qualities throws them back into a quickly forgotten and outgrown +childhood. The lisping child becomes the greedy worldling, the cruel and +unloving man, and the tyranny of an empire of souls is hinted at in the +justification by the poet of the presence of innocent babes in Paradise; +they are there by the interposition of a sacrificial act. The poet argues +to still the doubts of men at finding these children in Paradise. It +would almost seem as if the words had been forgotten which characterized +heaven through the very image of childhood. + +Indeed, it is not to be wondered at that childhood was little regarded +by an age which found its chief interest in a thought of death. “Even +the gay and licentious Boccaccio,” we are reminded by Mr. Pater, +“gives a keener edge to his stories by putting them in the mouths of +a party of people who had taken refuge from the plague in a country +house.”[29] The great Florentine work was executed under this dominant +thought; nevertheless, an art which is largely concerned about tombs and +sepulchral monuments implies an overweening pride in life and a weightier +sense of the years of earth. The theology which had furnished the panoply +within which the human soul was fighting its battle emphasized the idea +of time, and made eternity itself a prolongation of human conditions. +The imagination, at work upon a future, constructed it out of the hard +materials of the present, and was always looking for some substantial +bridge which should connect the two worlds; seeing decay and change here, +it transferred empires and powers to the other side of the gulf, and +sought to reërect them upon an everlasting basis. + +Such thought had little in common with the hope, the fearlessness, the +faith, of childhood, and thus childhood as an image had largely faded +out of art and literature. One only great exception there was,—the +representation in art of the child Jesus; and in the successive phases of +this representation may be read a remarkable history of the human soul. + + + + +V + +IN MEDIÆVAL ART + + +The power of Christianity lies in its prophecy of universality, and the +most significant note of this power is in its comprehension of the poor +and the weak, not merely as the objects of a benediction proceeding from +some external society, but as themselves constituent members of that +society, sharing in all its rights and fulfilling its functions. When +the last great prophet of Israel and forerunner of Judaic Christianity +sent to inquire what evidence Jesus of Nazareth could give that he was +the Christ, the answer which came back had the conclusive words, “To +the poor the gospel is preached.” The same Jesus, when he would give +his immediate followers the completest type of the kingdom which was to +prevail throughout the world, took a child, and set him in the midst of +them. There is no hardly gained position in the development of human +society which may not find its genetic idea in some word or act of the +Son of Man, and the proem to the great song of an expectant democracy is +in the brief hour of the first Christian society, which held all things +in common. + +The sketch of a regenerated human society, contained in the New +Testament, has been long in filling out, and the day which the first +generation of Christians thought so near at hand has thus far had only +a succession of proleptic appearances; but from the first the note of +the power of Christianity, which lies in the recognition of poverty +and weakness, has never been wanting, and has been most loudly struck +in the great epochs of Christian revival. In the struggle after purity +of associated life, which had its witness in the orders of the church, +poverty was accepted as a necessary condition, and the constructive +genius of the human mind, dealing with the realities of Christian +faith, rose to its highest point in presenting, not the maturity, but +the infancy of Jesus Christ. Each age offers its contribution to the +perfection of the Christian ideal, and while, in the centuries lying on +either side of the Renaissance, the church as an ecclesiastical system +was enforcing the dogma of mediatorial sacrifice as something outside +of humanity, the spirit of God, in the person of great painters, was +drawing the thoughts of men to the redemption of the world, which lies +in the most sacred of human relations. The great efflorescence of art, +which we recognize as the gift of these centuries, has left as its most +distinctive memorial the type of Christianity expressed in the Madonna. + + +I + +In the Holy Family the child is the essential figure. In the earliest +examples of the mother and child, both Mary and Jesus are conceived as +symbols of religious faith, and the attitude of the child is unchildlike, +being that of a dispenser of blessings with uplifted hand. The group +is not distinctly of the mother and child, but of the Virgin and the +Saviour, the Saviour being represented as a child in order to indicate +the ground of the adoration paid to the Virgin. They stand before one +as possessed of coördinate dignity. It is a curious and suggestive fact +that the Byzantine type of the Madonna, which rarely departed much from +this symbolic treatment, has continued to be the preference of those +whose conceptions of the religious life are most closely identified with +a remote sacramentarianism. The Italian lemonade-seller has a Byzantine +Madonna in his booth: the Belgian churches abound in so-called sacred +pictures: the Russian merchant salutes an icon of the same type; and the +ritualistic enthusiast of the Anglican revival modifies his æsthetic +views by his religious sympathy, and stops short in his admiration with +Cimabue and Giotto. + +In the development of the Madonna from its first form as a rigid symbol +to its latest as a realistic representation of motherhood, we are aware +of a change in the minds of the people who worship before the altars +where the pictures are placed, and in the minds of the painters who +produce the almost endless variations on this theme. The worshipper, +dispossessed of a belief in the fatherhood of God, came to take refuge in +the motherhood of Mary. Formally taught the wrath of God, he found in the +familiar relation of mother and child the most complete type vouchsafed +to him of that love which the church by many informal ways bade him +believe lay somewhere in the divine life. + +Be this as it may, the treatment of the subject in a domestic and +historical form followed the treatment in a religious and ecclesiological +mode. In the earlier representations of the Madonna there was a twofold +thought exhibited. The mother was the queen of heaven, and she derived +her dignity from the child on her knee. Hence she is sometimes shown +adoring the child, and the child looks up into the mother’s face with +his finger on his lip, expressive of the utterance, I am the Word. This +adoration of the child by the mother was, however, but a transient phase: +the increasing worship paid to the Virgin forbade that she should be so +subordinated; and in the gradual expansion of the theme, by which saints +and martyrs and angels were grouped in attendant ministry, more and more +importance was attached to the person of the Virgin. The child looks up +in wonder and affectionate admiration. He caresses her, and offers her a +child’s love mingled with a divine being’s calm self-content. + +For throughout the whole period of the religious presentation of the +Madonna, even when the Madonna herself is conspicuously the occasion of +the picture, we may observe the influence of the child,—an influence +sometimes subtle, sometimes open and manifest. It is not enough to say +that this child is Jesus, as it is not enough to say that the mother +is the Virgin Mary. The divine child is the sign of an ever-present +childhood in humanity; the divine mother the sign of a love which the +religion of Christianity never wholly forgot. The common imagination was +perpetually seeking to relieve Mary and Jesus of all attributes which +interfered with the central and inhering relation of mother and child: +through this type of love the mind apprehended the gospel of Christianity +as in no other way. + +Indeed, this apotheosis of childhood and maternity is at the core of the +religion of hope which was inclosed in the husk of mediæval Christianity, +and it was made the theme of many variations. Before it had ceased to +be a symbol of worship, it was offering a nucleus for the expression of +a more varied human hope and interest. The Holy Family in the hands of +painters and sculptors, and the humbler class of designers which sprang +into notice with the introduction of printing and engraving, becomes more +and more emblematic of a pure and happy domestic group. Joseph is more +frequently introduced, and John Baptist appears as a playmate of the +child Jesus; sometimes they are seen walking in companionship. Certain +incidents in later life are symbolically prefigured in the realistic +treatment of homely scenes, as in the Madonna by Giulio Romano, where +the child stands in a basin, while the young S. John pours water upon +him, Mary washes him, S. Elizabeth stands by holding a towel, and S. +Joseph watches the scene,—an evident prefigurement of the baptism in +the Jordan. Or again, Mary, seated, holds the infant Christ between her +knees; Elizabeth leans over the back of the chair; Joseph rests on his +staff behind the Virgin; the little S. John and an angel present grapes, +while four other angels are gathering and bringing them. By such a scene +Ippolito Andreasi would remind people that Jesus is the true vine. + + +II + +The recognition of childhood as the heart of the family is discoverable +even more emphatically in the art of the northern people, among whom +domestic life always had greater respect. It may seem a trivial reason, +but I suspect nature holds the family more closely together in cold +countries, which compel much indoor and fireside life, than in lands +which tempt to vagrancy. At any rate, the fact remains that the Germanic +peoples have been home-cultivating. It did not need the Roman Tacitus to +find this out, but his testimony helps us to believe that the disposition +was a radical one, which Christianity reinforced rather than implanted. +Lord Lindsay makes the pregnant observation, “Our Saviour’s benediction +of the little children as a subject [is] from first to last Teutonic,—I +scarcely recollect a single Italian instance of it;”[30] and in the +revival of religious art, at which Overbeck and Cornelius assisted, this +and similar subjects, by their frequency, mark a differentiation from art +south of the Alps, whose traditions, nevertheless, the German school was +consciously following. + +Although of a period subsequent to the Renaissance, an excellent +illustration of the religious representation of the childhood of Jesus in +northern art is contained in a series of twelve prints executed in the +Netherlands, and described in detail by Mrs. Jameson.[31] The series is +entitled The Infancy of our Lord God and Saviour Jesus Christ, and the +title-page is surrounded by a border composed of musical instruments, +spinning-wheels, distaffs, and other implements of female industry, +intermixed with all kinds of masons’ and carpenters’ tools. In the first +of the prints, the figure of Christ is seen in a glory, surrounded by +cherubim. In the second, the Virgin is seated on the hill of Sion; the +infant in her lap, with outspread arms, looks up to a choir of angels, +and is singing with them. In the third, Jesus slumbering in his cradle is +rocked by two angels, while Mary sits by, engaged in needlework. Beneath +is a lullaby in Latin which has been translated:— + + “Sleep, sweet babe! my cares beguiling, + Mother sits beside thee, smiling, + Sleep my darling, tenderly! + If thou sleep not, mother mourneth + Singing as her wheel she turneth, + Come soft slumber, balmily!” + +The fourth shows the interior of a carpenter’s shop: Joseph is plying +his work, while Joachim stands near him; the Virgin is measuring linen, +and S. Anna looks on; two angels are at play with the infant Christ, +who is blowing soap-bubbles. In the fifth picture, Mary prepares the +family meal, while Joseph is in the background chopping wood; more in +front, Jesus sweeps together the chips, and two angels gather them. In +the sixth, Mary is seen reeling off a skein of thread; Joseph is squaring +a plank; Jesus is picking up chips, again assisted by two angels. The +seventh shows Mary seated at her spinning-wheel; Joseph, aided by Jesus, +is sawing through a large beam, the two angels standing by. The eighth +is somewhat similar: Mary holds her distaff, while Joseph saws a beam on +which Jesus stands, and the two angels help in the work. In the ninth +print, Joseph is busy building the framework of a house, assisted by +one of the angels; Jesus is boring with a large gimlet, the other angel +helping him; and Mary winds thread. In the next, Joseph is at work +roofing the house; Jesus, in company with the angels, carries a beam up +the ladder; while below, in front, Mary is carding wool or flax. The +eleventh transfers the work, with an apparent adaptation to Holland, to +the building of a boat, where Joseph is helped by Jesus, who holds a +hammer and chisel, still attended by the angels; the Virgin is knitting +a stocking, and the newly built house is seen in the background. In the +last of the series, Joseph is erecting a fence round a garden; Jesus, +with the help of the angels, is fastening the palings together; while +Mary is weaving garlands of roses. + +Here is a reproduction of the childhood of the Saviour in the terms of +a homely Netherland family life, the naturalistic treatment diversified +by the use of angelic machinery. The prints were a part of the apparatus +used by the priests in educating the people. However such instruction may +have fallen short of the highest truths of Christianity, its recognition +of the simple duties of life and its enforcement of these by the example +of the Son of Man make us slow to regard such interposition of the church +as remote from the spirit of Christ. If, as is quite possible, these +prints were employed by the Jesuits, then their significance becomes +doubly noticeable. In that vigorous attempt by Loyola and his order to +maintain an organic Christian unity against the apparent disruption of +Christianity, such a mode as this would find a place as serving to +emphasize that connection between the church and the family which the +Jesuits instinctively felt to be essential to the supremacy of the former. + + +III + +Whatever light the treatment of the Madonna subject may throw upon the +ages in which it is uppermost in men’s thoughts, the common judgment is +sound which looks for the most significance in the works of Raphael. +Even those who turn severely away from him, and seek for purer art in +his predecessors, must needs use his name as one of epochal consequence. +So many forces of the age meet in Raphael, who was peculiarly open to +influences, that no other painter can so well be chosen as an exponent +of the idea of the time; and as one passes in review the successive +Madonnas, one may not only detect the influence of Perugino, of Leonardo, +of Michelangelo, and other masters, but may see the ripening of a mind, +upon which fell the spirit of the age, busy with other things than +painting. + +Of the early Madonnas of Raphael, it is noticeable how many present the +Virgin engaged in reading a book, while the child is occupied in other +ways, sometimes even seeking to interrupt the mother and disengage her +attention. Thus in one in the Berlin museum, which is formal, though +unaffected, Mary reads a book, while the child plays with a goldfinch; in +the Madonna in the Casa Connestabile, at Perugia, the child plays with +the leaves of the book; in the Madonna del Cardellino, the little S. John +presents a goldfinch to Jesus, and the mother looks away from her book to +observe the children; in that at Berlin, which is from the Casa Colonna, +the child is held on the mother’s knee in a somewhat struggling attitude, +and has his left hand upon the top of her dress, near her neck, his right +upon her shoulder, while the mother, with a look of maternal tenderness, +holds the book aside. In the middle period of Raphael’s work this motive +appears once at least in the St. Petersburg Madonna, which is a quiet +landscape-scene, where the child is in the Madonna’s lap: she holds a +book, which she has just been reading; the little S. John kneels before +his divine companion with infantine grace, and offers him a cross, which +he receives with a look of tender love; the Madonna’s eyes are directed +to the prophetic play of the children with a deep, earnest expression. + +The use of the book is presumably to denote the Madonna’s piety; and +in the earlier pictures she is not only the object of adoration to the +worshipper, who sees her in her earthly form, yet endowed with sinless +grace, but the object also of interest to the child, who sees in her +the mother. This reciprocal relation of mother and child is sometimes +expressed with great force, as in the Madonna della Casa Tempi, in the +Pinacothek at Munich, where the Virgin, who is standing, tenderly presses +the child’s head against her face, while he appears to whisper words of +endearment. In these and other of the earlier Madonnas of Raphael, there +is an enthusiasm, and a dreamy sentiment which seems to seek expression +chiefly through the representation of holy womanhood, the child being a +part of the interpretation of the mother. The mystic solemnity of the +subject is relieved by a lightness of touch, which was the irrepressible +assertion of a strong human feeling. + +Later, in what is called his middle period, a cheerfulness and happy +contemplation of life pervade Raphael’s work, as in the Bridgewater +Madonna, where the child, stretched in the mother’s lap, looks up with a +graceful and lively action, and fixes his eyes upon her in deep thought, +while she looks back with maternal, reverent joy. The Madonna of the +Chair illustrates the same general sentiment, where the mother appears +as a beautiful and blooming woman, looking out of the picture in the +tranquil enjoyment of motherly love; the child, full and strong in form, +leans upon her bosom in a child’s careless attitude, the picture of trust +and content. + +The works of Raphael’s third period, and those executed by his pupils +in a spirit and with a touch which leave them sometimes hardly +distinguishable from the master’s, show a profounder penetration of +life, and at the same time a firmer, more reasonable apprehension +of the divinity which lies inclosed in the subject. Mary is now +something more than a young man’s dream of virginal purity and maternal +tenderness,—she is also the blessed among women; the infant Christ is +not only the innocent, playful child, but the prophetic soul, conscious +of his divinity and his destiny. These characteristics pervade both +the treatment which regards them as historic personages and that which +invests them with adorable attributes as having their throne in heaven. +The Holy Family is interpreted in a large, serious, and dignified manner, +and in the exalted, worshipped Madonna there is a like vision of things +eternal seen through the human form. + +To illustrate this an example may be taken of each class. The Madonna +del Passegio, in the Bridgewater gallery, is a well-known composition, +which represents the Madonna and child walking through a field; Joseph +is in advance, and has turned to look for the others. They have been +stopped by the infant S. John Baptist, clad in a rough skin, who presses +eagerly forward to kiss Jesus. The mother places a restraining hand upon +the shoulders of S. John, and half withdraws the child Jesus from his +embrace. A classic grace marks Jesus, who looks steadfastly into the +eyes of the impassioned John. The three figures in the principal group +are conceived in a noble manner: S. John, prophesying in his face the +discovery of the Lamb of God; Mary, looking down with a sweet gravity +which marks the holy children, and would separate Jesus as something more +than human from too close fellowship with John; Jesus himself, a picture +of glorious childhood, with a far-reaching look in his eye, as he gently +thrusts back the mother with one hand, and with the other lays hold of +the cross which John bears. + +On the other hand, an example of the treatment of the adorable Madonna +is that of San Sisto, in the Dresden gallery. It is not necessary to +dwell on the details of a picture which rises at once to every one’s +mind. The circumstance of innumerable angels’ heads, of the attendant S. +Sixtus and S. Barbara, the sweep of cloud and drapery, the suggestion +of depths below and of heights above, of heaven itself listening at the +Madonna’s feet,—all these translate the mother and babe with ineffable +sweetness and dignity into a heavenly place, and make them the centre +of the spiritual universe. Yet in all this Raphael has rested his art +in no elaborate use of celestial machinery. He has taken the simple, +elemental relation, and invested it with its eternal properties. He gives +not a supernatural and transcendent mother and child, but a glorified +humanity. Therefore it is that this picture, and with it the other great +Madonnas of Raphael, may be taken entirely away from altar and sanctuary, +and placed in the shrine of the household. The universality of the +appeal is seen in the unhesitating adoption of the Sistine Madonna as an +expression of religious art by those who are even antagonistic to the +church which called it forth. + + +IV + +The concentration of Raphael’s genius to so large an extent upon the +subject of the Madonna was not a mere accident of the time, nor, when +classic forms were renewing their power, was it a solecism. The spirit of +the Renaissance entered profoundly into Raphael’s work, and determined +powerfully the direction which it took. When he was engaged upon purely +classic themes, it is interesting to see how frequently he turned to the +forms of children. His decorative work is rich with the suggestion which +they bring. One may observe the graceful figures issuing from the midst +of flower and leaf; above all, one may note how repeatedly he presents +the myth of Amor, and recurs to the Amorini, types of childhood under a +purely naturalistic conception. + +The child Jesus and the child Amor appear side by side in the creations +of Raphael’s genius. In the great Renaissance, of which he was so +consummate an exponent, the ancient classic world and the Christian met +in these two types of childhood: the one a childhood of the air, unmixed +with good or evil; the other a childhood of heaven and earth, proleptic +of earthly conflict, proleptic also of heavenly triumph. The coincidence +is not of chance. The new world into which men were looking was not, as +some thought, to be in the submersion of Christianity and a return to +Paganism, nor, as others, in a stern asceticism, which should render +Christianity an exclusive church, standing aloof from the world as from +a thing wholly evil. There was to be room for truth and love to dwell +together, and the symbol of this union was the child. Raphael’s Christ +child drew into its features a classic loveliness; his Amor took on a +Christ-like purity and truthfulness. + +Leslie, in his Handbook for Young Painters, makes a very sensible +reflection upon Raphael’s children, as distinguished from the +unchildlike children of Francia, for example. “A fault of many painters,” +he says, “in their representations of childhood is, that they make it +taking an interest in what can only concern more advanced periods of +life. But Raphael’s children, unless the subject requires it should be +otherwise, are as we see them generally in nature, wholly unconcerned +with the incidents that occupy the attention of their elders. Thus the +boy, in the cartoon of the Beautiful Gate, pulls the girdle of his +grandfather, who is entirely absorbed in what S. Peter is saying to the +cripple. The child, impatient of delay, wants the old man to move on. +In the Sacrifice at Lystra, also, the two beautiful boys placed at the +altar, to officiate at the ceremony, are too young to comprehend the +meaning of what is going on about them. One is engrossed with the pipes +on which he is playing, and the attention of the other is attracted by a +ram brought for sacrifice. The quiet simplicity of these sweet children +has an indescribably charming effect in this picture, where every other +figure is under the influence of an excitement they alone do not partake +in. Children, in the works of inferior painters, are often nothing else +than little actors; but what I have noticed of Raphael’s children is +true, in many instances, of the children in the pictures of Rembrandt, +Jan Steen, Hogarth, and other great painters, who, like Raphael, looked +to nature for their incidents.” + +There was one artist of this time who looked to nature not merely for +the incidents of childhood, but for the soul of childhood itself. It is +impossible to regard the work of Luca della Robbia, especially in that +ware which receives his name, without perceiving that here was a man who +saw children and rejoiced in their young lives with a simple, ingenuous +delight. The very spirit which led this artist to seek for expression in +homely forms of material, to domesticate art, as it were, was one which +would make him quick to seize upon, not the incidents alone, but the +graces, of childhood. Nor is it straining a point to say that the purity +of his color was one with the purity of this sympathy with childhood. The +Renaissance as a witness to a new occupation of the world by humanity +finds its finest expression in the hope which springs in the lovely +figures of Luca della Robbia. + +It is significant of this Renaissance—it is significant, I think we +shall find, of every great new birth in the world—that it turns its +face toward childhood, and looks into that image for the profoundest +realization of its hopes and dreams. In the attitude of men toward +childhood we may discover the near or far realization of that supreme +hope and confidence with which the great head of the human family saw, +in the vision of a child, the new heaven and the new earth. It was when +his disciples were reasoning among themselves which of them should be +the greatest that Jesus took a child, and set him by him, and said unto +them, “Whosoever shall receive this child in my name receiveth me.” The +reception of the Christ by men, from that day to this, has been marked +by successive throes of humanity, and in each great movement there has +been a new apprehension of childhood, a new recognition of the meaning +involved in the pregnant words of the Saviour. Such a recognition lies in +the children of Raphael and of Luca della Robbia. There may have been no +express intimation on their part of the connection between their works +and the great prophecy, but it is often for later generations to read +more clearly the presence of a thought by means of light thrown back upon +it. The course of Christianity since the Renaissance supplies such a +light. + + + + +VI + +IN ENGLISH LITERATURE AND ART + + +I + +To hunt through English literature and art for representations of +childhood would seem to be like looking for the persons of children in +any place where people congregate. How could there be any conspicuous +absence, except under conditions which necessarily exclude the very +young? Yet it is impossible to follow the stream of English literature, +with this pursuit in mind, without becoming aware that at one point in +its course there is a marked access of this force of childhood. There is, +to be sure, a fallacy lurking in the customary study of the development +of literature. We fall into the way of thinking of that literature as an +organism proceeding from simpler to more complex forms; we are attent +upon the transition of one epoch into another; we come to regard each +period as essentially anticipatory of the succeeding period. We make the +same mistake often in our regard of historical sequence, looking at all +past periods simply and exclusively with reference to the present stand +from which we take our observations. A too keen sensibility to the logic +which requires time for its conclusion, a too feeble sense of the logic +which dwells in the relation between the seen and the unseen,—these stand +in the way of a clear perception of the forces immanent in literature and +life. + +The distinction is worth bearing in mind when one surveys English +literature with the purpose of recognizing the child in it. There are +certain elemental facts and truths of which old and new cannot be +predicated. The vision of helpless childhood is no modern discovery; it +is no ancient revelation. The child at play was seen by Homer and by +Cowper, and the latter did not derive his apprehension from any study of +the former. The humanism which underlies all literature is independent +of circumstances for its perception of the great moving forces of life; +it is independent of the great changes in human history; even so great a +change as the advent of Christianity could not interfere with the normal +expression of elemental facts in life. + +Wherein, then, lies the difference between an antique and a modern +apprehension of childhood? For what may one look in a survey of English +literature that he would not find in Greek or Roman authors? Is there +any development of human thought in relation to childhood to be traced +in a literature which has reflected the mind of the centuries since the +Renaissance? The most aggressive type of modern Christianity, at any rate +the most free type, is to be found amongst English-speaking people; and +if Christianity has in any way modified the course of thought regarding +the child, the effect will certainly be seen in English literature and +art. + + * * * * * + +A recollection of ballad literature, without critical inquiry of the +comparative age of the writings, brings to light the familiar and +frequent incident of cruelty to children in some form: of the secret +putting away of babes, as in the affecting ballad of the Queen’s +Marie; of the cold and heartless murder, as in the Cruel Mother, and +in the tragic tale of The Child’s Last Will, where a sudden dramatic +and revealing turn is given, after the child has willed its various +possessions, in the lines,— + + “‘What wish leav’st thou thy step-mother + Little daughter dear?’ + ‘Of hell the bitter sorrow + Sweet step-mother mine + For ah, all! I am so ill, ah!’ + + “‘What wish leav’st thou thy old nurse + Little daughter dear?’ + ‘For her I wish the same pangs + Sweet step-mother mine + For ah, ah! I am so ill, ah!’” + +That grewsome story of Lamkin, with its dripping of blood in almost +every stanza, gets half its curdling power from the slow torture of the +sensibilities, as the babe is slain and then rocked in its cradle, and +the mother, summoned by its cries, meets her own fate at the hands of the +treacherous nurse and Lamkin, whose name is a piece of bald irony:— + + “Then Lamkin’s ta’en a sharp knife + That hang down by his gaire, + And he has gi’en the bonny babe + A deep wound and a sair. + + “Then Lamkin he rocked, + And the fause nourice sang + Till frae ilkae bore o’ the cradle + The red blood out sprang. + + “Then out it spak the ladie + As she stood on the stair, + ‘What ails my bairn, nourice, + That he’s greeting sae sair? + + “‘O still my bairn, nourice + O still him wi’ the pap!’ + ‘He winna still, lady, + For this nor for that.’ + + “‘O still my bairn, nourice; + O still him wi’ the wand!’ + ‘He winna still, lady, + For a’ his father’s land.’ + + “‘O still my bairn, nourice, + Oh still him wi’ the bell!’ + ‘He winna still, lady, + Till ye come down yoursel.’ + + “O the firsten step she steppit, + She steppit on a stane; + But the neisten step she steppit, + She met him, Lamkin.” + +Another early and significant illustration is found in the popular story +of Hugh of Lincoln; but instead of turning to the ballad of that name, +one may better have recourse to Chaucer’s version as contained in the +Canterbury tale of the Prioress. In the prologue to this tale appear +the words of Scripture, “Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings,” in +a paraphrase, and the Prioress turns to the Virgin, beseeching her to +give words for the telling of the piteous tale. The story of Hugh of +Lincoln—that in the reign of Henry III., the Jews of Lincoln stole a +boy of eight years, named Hugh, tortured and crucified him—was received +with great credit, for it concentrated the venomous enmity with which +Christians regarded the Jews, and by a refinement of cruelty pictured +the Jews in a solitary instance as behaving in a Christian-like +manner. Chaucer tells the story with exquisite pathos, lingering upon +the childish ways of Hugh, and preparing the tears of his readers by +picturing the little boy as a miniature saint. It can scarcely be called +a picture of artless childhood; for though touches here and there bring +out the prattler, Chaucer appears to have meant that his readers should +be especially impressed by the piety of this “litel clergeoun,” or +chorister boy:— + + “A litel clergeoun, seven yeer of age, + That day by day to scole was his wone; + And eek also, whereas he saugh thymage + Of Cristes mooder, he hadde in usage, + As hym was taught, to knele adoun and seye + His _Ave Marie_, as he goth by the weye.” + +And so we are told of the little fellow eager to learn the Alma +Redemptoris of his elders, and conning it as he went to and from school, +his way leading through the Jews’ quarter:— + + “As I have seyd, thurgh-out the Jewerie + This litel child, as he cam to and fro, + Ful murily wolde he synge and crie + O _Alma redemptoris_ evere-mo + The swetnesse hath his herte perced so + Of Cristes mooder, that to hire to preye + He kan nat stynte of syngyng by the weye.” + +The wicked Jews, vexed by his singing, kill him, and cast his body into +a pit. His weeping mother seeks him, and, happening by the pit, is made +aware of his presence by the miracle of his dead lips still singing the +Alma Redemptoris. + +In two other stories has Chaucer dwelt upon the pathos of childhood and +bereft or suffering motherhood. In the Man of Law’s tale of Custance, +there is a touching passage where Custance and her babe are driven away +from the kingdom, and exposed to the sea in the ship which had brought +them. The mother kneels upon the sand before embarking, and puts her +trust in the Lord. + + “Her litel child lay wepying in hir arm, + And knelynge, pitously to hym she seyde, + ‘Pees litel sone, I wol do thee noon harm!’ + With that hir kerchief of hir heed she breyde, + And over hise litel eyen she it leyde, + And in hir arm she lulleth it ful faste + And in-to hevene hire eyen up she caste.” + +Then she commits herself and her child to Mary by the love of Mary’s +child. + + “And up she rist, and walketh doun the stronde + Toward the ship,—hir folweth al the prees,— + And evere she preyeth hire child to hold his pees.” + +Again, in the Clerk’s tale of Patient Griselda, the effect of the story +is greatly heightened by the narrative of the successive partings of the +mother with her child; and the climax is reached in the burst of gladness +and pent-up feeling which overtakes Griselda at the restoration of her +son and daughter. It is noticeable that in these and other instances +childhood appears chiefly as an appeal to pity, rarely as an object of +direct love and joy. This is not to be wondered at when one considers the +character of the English race, and the nature of the redemption which +it has been undergoing in the slow process of its submission to the +spirit of Christ. We say the English race, without stopping to make nice +distinctions between the elements which existed at the time of the Great +Charter, just as we may properly speak of the American people of the time +of the Constitution. + +This character is marked by a brutality, a murderous spirit, which +lies scarcely concealed, to-day, in the temper of every English crowd, +and has left its mark on literature from the ballads to Oliver Twist. +This brutal instinct, this rude, savage, northern spirit, is discovered +in conflict with the disarming power of the spirit of Christ, and the +stages of the conflict are most clearly indicated in poetry, which is to +England what pictorial and sculpturesque art is to the south, the highest +exponent of its spiritual life. More comprehensively, English literature +affords the most complete means of measuring the advance of England in +humanity. + +It belongs to the nature of this deep conflict that there should +appear from time to time the finest exemplars of the ideals formed by +the divine spirit, side by side with exhibitions of the most willful +baseness. English literature abounds in these contrasts; it is still +more expressive of tides of spiritual life, the elevation of thought and +imagination succeeded by almost groveling animalism. And since one of +the symbols of a perfected Christianity is the child, it is not unfair +to seek for its presence in literature, nor would it be a rare thing to +discover it in passages which hint at the conflict between the forces of +good and evil so constantly going on. + +It is not strange, therefore, that the earliest illustrations of +childhood should mainly turn, as we have seen, upon that aspect which is +at once most natural and most Christian. Pity, like a naked, new-born +babe, does indeed ride the blast in those wild, more than half-savage +bursts of the English spirit which are preserved for us in ballad +literature; and in the first springs of English poetic art in Chaucer, +the child is as it were the mediator between the rough story and the +melody of the singer. One cannot fail to see how the introduction of the +child by Chaucer, in close union with the mother, is almost a transfer of +the Madonna into English poetry,—a Madonna not of ritual, but of humanity. + + * * * * * + +There are periods in the history of every nation when the inner life +is more completely exposed to view, and when the student, if he be +observant, may trace most clearly the fundamental arteries of being. Such +a period in England was the Elizabethan era, when the tumultuous English +spirit manifested itself in religion, in politics, in enterprise, in +adventure, and in intellectual daring,—that era which was dominated by +the great master of English speech. It is the fashion of every age to +write its characteristics in forms which have become obsolete, and to +resort to masquerade for a display of its real emotions. It was because +chivalry was no longer the every-day habit of men that Spenser used it +for his purposes, and translated the Seven Champions of Christendom +into a profounder and more impassioned poem, emblematical of that great +ethical conflict which has been a significant feature of English history +from the first. In that series of knightly adventures, The Faery Queen, +wherein the field of human character is traversed, sin traced to its +lurking-place, and the old dragon of unrighteousness set upon furiously, +there is a conspicuous incident contained in the second book. In each +book Spenser conceives the antagonist of the knight, in some spiritual +form, to have wrought a mischief which needs to be repaired and revenged. +Thus a dragon occasions the adventures of the Red Cross knight, and in +the legend of Sir Guyon the enchantress Acrasia, or Intemperance, has +caused the death of a knight and his lady; the latter slays herself +because of her husband’s death, and plunges her babe’s innocent hands +into her own bloody breast for a witness. Sir Guyon and the Palmer, +standing over the dead bodies, hold grave discourse upon the incident; +then they bury the dead, and seek in vain to cleanse the babe’s hands in +a neighboring fountain. The pure water will not be stained, and the child +bears the name Ruddymane,—the Red-Handed,—and shall so bear the sign of a +vengeance he is yet to execute. + +It is somewhat difficult to see into the full meaning of Spenser’s +allegory, for the reason that the poet breaks through the meshes of his +allegoric net and soars into a freer air; but there are certain strong +lines running through the poem, and this of the ineradicable nature +of sin is one of them. To Spenser, vexed with problems of life, that +conception of childhood which knit it closely with the generations was a +significant one, and in the bloody hand of the infant, which could not +be suffered to stain the chaste fountain, he saw the dread transmission +of an inherited guilt and wrong. The poet and the moralist struggle for +ascendency, and in this conflict one may see reflected the passion for +speculation in divinity which was already making deep marks in English +literature. + +But the Elizabethan era had its share of light-heartedness. The songs +of the dramatists and other lyrics exhibit very clearly the influence +upon literature of the revival of ancient learning. As the art of Italy +showed the old poetic grace risen again under new conditions, so the +dominant art of England caught a light from the uncovered glory of Greece +and Rome. It was the time of the great translations of Phaer, Golding, +North, and Chapman; and as those translations are bold appropriations +of antiquity, not timid attempts at satisfying the requisitions of +scholarship, so the figures of the old mythology are used freely and +ingenuously; they are naturalized in English verse far more positively +than afterwards in the _elegantia_ of the Queen Anne and Georgian +periods. Ben Jonson’s Venus’ Runaway is an exquisite illustration of +this rich, decorative use of the old fable. It was partly through this +sportive appropriation of the myth of Amor, so vital in all literature, +that the lullabies of the time came to get their sweetness. The poet, +in putting songs into the mother’s mouth, is not so much reflecting the +Virgin and Child as he is possessed with the spirit of Greek beauty, +and his delicate fancy plays about the image of a little Love. Thus may +we read the Golden Slumbers of Dekker, in his Patient Grissel. By a +pretty conceit George Gascoigne, in his Lullaby of a Lover, captures the +sentiment of a mother and babe, to make it tell the story of his own love +and content. There is a touching song by Robert Greene in his Menaphon, +where Sephestia puts into her lullaby the story of her parting with the +child’s father:— + + “Weep not, my wanton, smile upon my knee, + When thou art old, there’s grief enough for thee. + The wanton smiled, father wept, + Mother cried, baby leapt, + More thou crowed, more he cried, + Nature could not sorrow hide; + He must go, he must kiss + Child and mother, baby bless; + For he left his pretty boy, + Father’s sorrow, father’s joy. + Weep not, my wanton, smile upon my knee, + When thou art old, there’s grief enough for thee.” + +We are apt to look for everything in Shakespeare, but in this matter of +childhood we must confess that there is a meagreness of reference which +almost tempts us into constructing a theory to account for it. So far +as dramatic representation is concerned, the necessary limitations of +the stage easily account for the absence of the young. Girls were not +allowed to act in Shakespeare’s time, and it is not easy to reduce boys +capable of acting to the stature of young girls. More than this, boys and +girls are not themselves dramatic in action, though in the more modern +drama they are sometimes used, especially in domestic scenes, to heighten +effects, and to make most reasonable people wish them in bed. + +Still, within the limits enforced by his art, Shakespeare more than once +rested much on youthful figures. The gay, agile Moth has a species of +femineity about him, so that we fancy he would be most easily shown on +the stage by a girl; but one readily recalls others who have distinct +boyish properties. In Coriolanus, when the mother and wife go out to +plead with the angry Roman, they take with them his little boy. Volumnia, +frantic with fear, with love, and with a woman’s changing passion, calls +upon one and another to join her in her entreaty. Virgilia, the wife, +crowds in a word at the height of Volumnia’s appeal, when the voluble +grandmother has been rather excitedly talking about Coriolanus treading +on his mother’s womb, that brought him into the world. Virgilia strikes +in,— + + “Ay, and mine + That brought you forth this boy, to keep your name + Living to time.” + +Whereupon young Marcius, with delicious boyish brag and chivalry:— + + “A’ shall not tread on me; + I’ll run away till I am bigger, but then I’ll fight.” + +In the same play there is a description of the boy which tallies exactly +with the single appearance which he makes in person. Valeria drops in +upon the mother and grandmother in a friendly way, and civilly asks after +the boy. + + “_Vir._ I thank your ladyship; well, good madam. + + “_Vol._ He had rather see the swords, and hear a drum, than look + upon his schoolmaster. + + “_Val._ O’ my word, the father’s son: I’ll swear, ’tis a very + pretty boy. O’ my troth, I looked upon him o’ Wednesday half an + hour together: has such a confirmed countenance. I saw him run + after a gilded butterfly; and when he caught it, he let it go + again; and after it again: and over and over he comes, and up + again; catched it again; or whether his fall enraged him, or + how ’twas, he did so set his teeth and tear it; O, I warrant, + how he mammocked it! + + “_Vol._ One on ’s father’s moods. + + “_Val._ Indeed, la, ’tis a noble child. + + “_Vir._ A crack, madam.” + +The most eminent example in Shakespeare of active childhood is +unquestionably the part played by young Arthur in the drama of King +John. It is the youth of Arthur, his dependence, his sorry inheritance of +misery, his helplessness among the raging wolves about him, his childish +victory over Hubert, and his forlorn death, when he leaps trembling from +the walls, which impress the imagination. “Stay yet,” says Pembroke to +Salisbury,— + + “I’ll go with thee + And find the inheritance of this poor child, + His little kingdom of a forced grave.” + +Shakespeare, busy with the story of kings, is moved with deep compassion +for this child among kings, who overcomes the hard heart of Hubert by his +innocent words, the very strength of feeble childhood, and falls like a +poor lamb upon the stones, where his princedom could not save him. + +In that ghastly play of Titus Andronicus, which melts at last into +unavailing tears, with what exquisite grace is the closing scene +humanized by the passage where the elder Lucius calls his boy to the side +of his dead grandsire:— + + “Come hither, boy; come, come, and learn of us + To melt in showers: thy grandsire loved thee well: + Many a matter hath he told to thee, + Meet and agreeing with thine infancy; + In that respect, then, like a loving child, + Shed yet some small drops from thy tender spring, + Because kind nature doth require it so.” + +The relentless spirit of Lady Macbeth is in nothing figured more acutely +than when the woman and mother is made to say,— + + “I have given suck, and know + How tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me. + I would, while it was smiling in my face, + Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums + And dashed the brains out, had I sworn as you + Have done to this.” + +In the witch’s hell-broth one ingredient is “finger of birth-strangled +babe,” while in the portents which rise to Macbeth’s vision a bloody +child and a child crowned, with a tree in his hand, are apparitions of +ghostly prophecy. Then in that scene where Ross discloses slowly and with +pent-up passion the murder of Macduff’s wife and children, and Macduff +hears as in a dream, waking to the blinding light of horrid day, with +what a piercing shriek he cries out,— + + “He has no children!” + +and then surges back to his own pitiful state, transformed for a moment +into an infuriated creature, all instinct, from which a hell-kite has +stolen his mate and pretty brood. + +By what marvelous flash of poetic power Shakespeare in this mighty +passage lifts that humblest image of parental care, a hen and chickens, +into the heights of human passion. Ah! as one sees a hen with a brood of +chickens under her,—how she gathers them under her wings, and will stay +in the cold if she can but keep them warm,—one’s mind turns to those +words of profound pathos spoken over the unloving Jerusalem; there was +the voice of a nature into which was gathered all the father’s and the +mother’s love. In these two passages one sees the irradiation of poor +feathered life with the glory of the image of the highest. + +How important a part in the drama of King Richard III. do the young +princes play; as princes, indeed, in the unfolding of the plot, yet +as children in the poet’s portraiture of them. We hear their childish +prattle, we see their timid shrinking from the dark Tower, and then we +have the effect of innocent childhood upon the callous murderers, Dighton +and Forrest, as related in that short, sharp, dramatic account which +Tyrrel gives:— + + “Dighton and Forrest, whom I did suborn + To do this ruthless piece of butchery, + Although they were flesh’d villains, bloody dogs, + Melting with tenderness and kind compassion + Wept like two children in their deaths’ sad stories. + ‘Lo, thus,’ quoth Dighton, ‘lay those tender babes:’ + ‘Thus, thus,’ quoth Forrest, ‘girdling one another + Within their innocent alabaster arms: + Their lips were four red roses on a stalk, + Which in their summer beauty kiss’d each other. + A book of prayers on their pillow lay; + Which once,’ quoth Forrest, ‘almost changed my mind; + But O! the devil’—there the villain stopp’d; + Whilst Dighton thus told on: ‘We smothered + The most replenished sweet work of nature, + That from the prime creation e’er she framed.’ + Thus both are gone with conscience and remorse; + They could not speak.” + +The glances at infancy, though infrequent, are touched with strong human +feeling. Ægeon, narrating the strange adventures of his shipwreck, tells +of the + + “Piteous plainings of the pretty babes + That mourned for fashion, ignorant what to fear;” + +and scattered throughout the plays are passages and lines which touch +lightly or significantly the realm of childhood: as,— + + “Pity like a naked, new-born babe;” + + “’Tis the eye of childhood + That fears a painted devil,” + +in Macbeth; + + “Love is like a child + That longs for every thing that he can come by;” + + “How wayward is this foolish love + That like a testy babe will scratch the nurse, + And presently all humble kiss the rod,” + +in Two Gentlemen of Verona; + + “Those that do teach young babes + Do it with gentle means and easy tasks,” + +says Desdemona; and Cleopatra, when the poisonous asp is planting its +fangs, says with saddest irony,— + + “Peace! peace! + Dost thou not see my baby at my breast + That sucks the nurse asleep?” + +There is a charming illustration of the blending of the classic myth of +Amor with actual childhood in these lines of A Midsummer-Night’s Dream, +where Helena says, + + “Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; + And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind: + Nor hath Love’s mind of any judgment taste: + Wings and no eyes figure unheedy haste: + And therefore is Love said to be a child, + Because in choice he is so oft beguiled. + As waggish boys in games themselves forswear, + So the boy Love is perjured everywhere.” + +In the noonday musing of Jaques, when the summer sky hung over the +greenwood, and he fell to thinking of the round world and all that dwell +therein, the Seven Ages of Man passed in procession before him:— + + “At first the infant + Muling and puking in the nurse’s arms. + And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel + And shining morning face, creeping like snail + Unwillingly to school,” + +until the last poor shambling creature is borne off in second childhood. + +There are doubtless other passages which might be gleaned, but the +survey is full enough to show how scantily, after all, Shakespeare has +made use of the figure and the image of childhood. The reflection has +led an ingenious writer to explain the fact by the circumstances of +Shakespeare’s life, which hindered his study of children. “He was clearly +old for his age when still a boy, and so would have associated, not +with children, but with young men. His marriage as a mere lad and the +scanty legends of his youth all tend in the same direction. The course +of his life led him to live apart from his children in their youth; his +busy life in London brought him into the interior of but few families; +his son, of whom he saw but little, died young. If our supposition be +true, it is a pathetic thought that the great dramatist was shut out +from the one kind of companionship which, even while it is in no degree +intellectual, never palls. A man, whatever his mental powers, can take +delight in the society of a child, when a person of intellect far more +matured, but inferior to his own, would be simply insufferable.”[32] + +The explanation is rather ingenious than satisfying. Where did +Shakespeare get his knowledge of the abundant life which his dramas +present? He had the privilege of most people of remembering his own +boyhood, and the mind which could invent Hamlet out of such stuff +as experience and observation furnished could scarcely have missed +acquaintance enough with children to enable him to portray them whenever +the exigencies of his drama required. No, it is simpler to refer the +absence of children as actors to the limitations of the stage, and to +ascribe the infrequent references to childhood to the general neglect +of the merely domestic side of life in Shakespeare’s art. Shakespeare’s +world was an out-of-doors, public world, and his men, women, and lovers +carried on their lives with no denser concealment than a wood or an arras +could afford. + +The comprehensiveness of Shakespeare found some place for children; the +lofty narrowness of Milton, none. The word _child_, even, can scarcely +be found on a page of Milton’s verse. In his Ode on the Morning of +Christ’s Nativity, with its Hymn, how slight is the mention of the child +Jesus! How far removed is the treatment from that employed in the great +procession of Madonnas! + + “Say, heavenly Muse, shall not thy sacred vein + Afford a present to the Infant God?” + +The Infant God!—that is Milton’s attitude, more than half pagan. In +L’Allegro and in Comus the lightness, which denotes the farthest swing +of Milton’s fancy, is the relief which his poetic soul found from the +high themes of theology, in Greek art. One is aware that Milton’s fine +scholarship was the salvation of his poetry, as his Puritan sense of +personality held in check a nature which else might have run riot in +sportiveness and sensuousness. When he permitted himself his exquisite +short flights of fancy, the material in which he worked was not the fresh +spring of English nature, human or earthly, but the remote Arcadian +virginity which he had learned of in his books. Not dancing children, +but winged sprites, caught his poetic eye. + +The weight of personal responsibility which rests upon the Puritan +conception of life offers small play for the wantonness and spontaneity +of childhood. Moreover, the theological substratum of Puritan morality +denied to childhood any freedom, and kept the life of man in waiting upon +the conscious turning of the soul to God. Hence childhood was a time of +probation and suspense. It was wrong, to begin with, and was repressed +in its nature until maturity should bring an active and conscious +allegiance to God. Hence, also, parental anxiety was forever earnestly +seeking to anticipate the maturity of age, and to secure for childhood +that reasonable intellectual belief which it held to be essential to +salvation; there followed often a replacement of free childhood by an +abnormal development. In any event, the tendency of the system was to +ignore childhood, to get rid of it as quickly as possible, and to make +the state contain only self-conscious, determinate citizens of the +kingdom of heaven. There was, unwittingly, a reversal of the divine +message, and it was said in effect to children: Except ye become as +grown men and be converted, ye cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. + +Nevertheless, though Puritanism in its excessive anxiety may have robbed +childhood of its freedom, the whole spirit of the movement was one +conservative of family relations, and the narratives of domestic life +under Puritanic control are often full of a grave sweetness. Indeed, it +may almost be said that the domestic narrative was now born into English +literature. Nor could the intense concern for the spiritual well-being +of children, a religious passion reinforcing natural affection, fail to +give an importance to the individual life of the family, and prepare the +way for that new intelligence of the scope of childhood which was to come +later to an England still largely dominated by Puritan ideas. + +Milton expressed the high flight of the soul above earthly things. +He took his place upon a summit where he could show the soul all the +confines of heaven and earth. Bunyan, stirred by like religious impulses, +made his soul trudge sturdily along toward an earthly paradise. The +realism of his story often veils successfully the spiritual sense, +and makes it possible for children to read the Pilgrim’s Progress +with but faint conception of its religious import. In the second +part of the allegory, Christian’s wife and children set out on their +ramble, in Christian’s footsteps. There is no lack of individuality in +characterization of the persons. The children are distinctly conceived +as children; they are, to be sure, made to conform occasionally to the +demands of the spiritual side of the allegory, yet they remain children, +and by their speech and action betray the childish mind. + +They come in sight of the lions, and “the boys that went before were glad +to cringe behind, for they were afraid of the lions, so they stepped back +and went behind.” When they come to the Porter’s Lodge, they abide there +awhile with Prudence, Piety, and Charity; Prudence catechizes the four +children, who return commendably correct answers. But Matthew, the oldest +boy, falls sick of the gripes; and when the physician asks Christiana +what he has been eating lately, she is as ignorant as any mother can be. + +“Then said Samuel,” who is as communicative as most younger brothers, +“‘Mother, mother, what was that which my brother did gather up and eat, +so soon as we were come from the Gate that is at the head of this way? +You know that there was an orchard on the left hand, on the other side of +the wall, and some of the trees hung over the wall, and my brother did +plash and did eat.’ + +“‘True, my child,’ said Christiana, ‘he did take thereof and did eat, +naughty boy as he was. I did chide him, and yet he would eat thereof.’” +So Mr. Skill, the physician, proceeds to make a purge. “You know,” says +Bunyan, in a sly parenthesis, “physicians give strange medicines to +their patients.” “And it was made up,” he goes on, “into pills, with a +promise or two, and a proportionable quantity of salt. Now he was to take +them three at a time, fasting, in half a quarter of a pint of Tears of +Repentance. When this Portion was prepared and brought to the boy, he was +loth to take it, though torn with the gripes as if he should be pulled in +pieces. ‘Come, come,’ said the physician, ‘you must take it.’ ‘It goes +against my stomach,’ said the boy. ‘I must have you take it,’ said his +mother. ‘I shall vomit it up again,’ said the boy. ‘Pray, sir,’ said +Christiana to Mr. Skill, ‘how does it taste?’ ‘It has no ill taste,’ said +the doctor, and with that she touched one of the pills with the tip of +her tongue. ‘O Matthew,’ said she, ‘this Portion is sweeter than honey. +If thou lovest thy mother, if thou lovest thy brothers, if thou lovest +Mercy, if thou lovest thy life, take it.’ So with much ado, after a +short prayer for the blessing of God upon it, he took it, and it wrought +kindly with him. It caused him to purge, it caused him to sleep and rest +quietly, it put him into a fine heat and breathing sweat, and did quite +rid him of his gripes.” + +The story is dotted with these lifelike incidents, and the consistency +is rather in the basis of the allegory than in the allegory itself. In +truth, we get in the Pilgrim’s Progress an inimitable picture of social +life in the lower middle class of England, and in this second part a very +vivid glimpse of a Puritan household. The glimpse is corrective of a too +stern and formal apprehension of social Puritanism, and in the story +are exhibited the natural charms and graces which not only could not be +expelled by a stern creed, but were essentially connected with the lofty +ideals which made Puritanism a mighty force in history. Bunyan had a +genius for story-telling, and his allegory is very frank; but what he +showed as well as what he did not show in his picture of Christiana and +the children indicates the constraint which rested upon the whole Puritan +conception of childhood. It is seen at its best in Bunyan, and this great +Puritan poet of common life found a place for it in his survey of man’s +estate; nature asserted itself in spite of and through Puritanism. + + * * * * * + +Milton’s Christmas Hymn has the organ roll of a mind moving among high +themes, and making the earth one of the golden spheres. Pope’s sacred +eclogue of the Messiah is perhaps the completest expression of the +religious sentiment of an age which was consciously bounded by space and +time. In Pope’s day, the world was scarcely a part of a greater universe; +eternity was only a prolongation of time, and the sense of beauty, acute +as it was, was always sharply defined. Pope’s rhymed couplets, with their +absolute finality, their clean conclusion, their epigrammatic snap, are +the most perfect symbols of the English mind of that period. When in the +Messiah we read,— + + “Rapt into future times the bard begun, + A Virgin shall conceive, a Virgin bear a son! + ... + Swift fly the years and rise the expected morn! + O spring to light, auspicious babe, be born!” + +we remember Milton’s Infant God. The two poets touch, with a like +faintness, the childhood of Jesus, but the one through awe and grandeur +of contemplation, the other through the polite indifference of a man +of the world. Or take Pope’s mundane philosophy, as exhibited most +elaborately in his Essay on Man, and set it beside Shakespeare’s Seven +Ages of Man:— + + “Behold the child, by Nature’s kindly law + Pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw: + Some livelier plaything gives his youth delight, + A little louder, but as empty quite: + Scarfs, garters, gold, amuse his riper stage, + And beads and prayer-books are the toys of age: + Pleased with this bauble still, as that before; + Till tired he sleeps and life’s poor play is o’er.” + +This is the only passage in the Essay hinting at childhood, and suffices +to indicate how entirely insignificant in the eyes of the philosophy +underlying Pope and his school was the whole thought of childhood. The +passage, while not perhaps consciously imitative of Shakespeare, suggests +comparison, and one finds in Jaques under the greenwood a more human +feeling. Commend us to the tramp before the drawing-room philosopher! + + * * * * * + +The prelusive notes of a new literature were sounded by Fielding, Gray, +Goldsmith, and Cowper. It was to be a literature which touched the +earth again, the earth of a common nature, the earth also of a national +inheritance. + +Fielding, though painting contemporary society in a manner borrowed in +a measure from the satiric drama, was moving constantly into the freer +domain of the novelist who is a critic of life, and when he would set +forth the indestructible force of a pure nature in a woman who is placed +in a loose society, as in Amelia, he instinctively hedges the wife about +with children, and it is a mark of his art that these children are not +mere pawns which are moved about to protect the queen; they are genuine +figures, their prattle is natural, and they are constantly illustrating +in the most innocent fashion the steadfastness of Amelia. + +It is significant that Gray, with his delicate taste and fine classical +scholarship, when he composed his Elegy used first the names of eminent +Romans when he wrote:— + + “Some village Cato, who with dauntless breast + The little tyrant of the fields withstood; + Some mute, inglorious Tully here may rest, + Some Cæsar, guiltless of his country’s blood.” + +He changed these names for those of English heroes, and in doing so broke +away from traditions which still had a strong hold in literature. It is a +pity that for a reason which hardly convinces us he should have thought +best to omit the charming stanza,— + + “There, scattered oft, the earliest of the year, + By hands unseen are showers of violets found: + The Red-breast loves to build and warble there, + And little footsteps lightly print the ground.” + +When Gray wrote this he doubtless had in mind the ballad of the Children +in the Wood. In the succession of English pictures which he does give is +that lovely one,— + + “For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn, + Or busy housewife ply her evening’s care; + No children run to lisp their sire’s return, + Or climb his knees the evening kiss to share.” + +In his poem On a Distant Prospect of Eton College he has lines which are +instinct with a feeling for childhood and youth. There is, it is true, a +touch of artificiality in the use made of childhood in this poem, as a +foil for tried manhood, its little life treated as the lost golden age of +mankind; but that sentiment was a prevailing one in the period. + +Goldsmith, whose Bohemianism helped to release him from subservience to +declining fashions in literature, treats childhood in a more genuine and +artless fashion. In his prose and poetry I hear the first faint notes of +that song of childhood which in a generation more was to burst from many +lips. The sweetness which trembles in the Deserted Village finds easy +expression in forms and images which call up childhood to memory, as in +those lines,— + + “The playful children just let loose from school,” + + “E’en children followed with endearing wile, + And plucked his gown, to share the good man’s smile,”— + +and in the quaint picture of the village school. + +It is in the Vicar of Wakefield, however, that one finds the freest +play of fancy about childish figures. Goldsmith says of his hero that +“he unites in himself the three greatest characters upon earth,—he is +a priest, a husbandman, and the father of a family;” and the whole of +the significant preface may lead one to revise the estimate of Goldsmith +which his contemporaries have fastened upon English literary history. +The waywardness and unconventionality of this man of genius and his +eager desire to be accepted by the world, which was then the great +world, were the characteristics which most impressed the shallower minds +about him. In truth, he had not only an extraordinary sympathy with the +ever-varying, ever-constant flux of human life, but he dropped a deeper +plummet than any English thinker since Milton. + +It was in part his loneliness that threw him upon children for complete +sympathy; in part also his prophetic sense, for he had an unerring vision +of what constituted the strength and the weakness of England. After the +portraiture of the Vicar himself, there are no finer sketches than those +of the little children. “It would be fruitless,” says the unworldly +Vicar, “to deny exultation when I saw my little ones about me;” and from +time to time in the tale, the youngest children, Dick and Bill, trot +forward in an entirely natural manner. They show an engaging fondness for +Mr. Thornhill. “The whole family seemed earnest to please him.... My +little ones were no less busy, and fondly stuck close to the stranger. +All my endeavors could scarcely keep their dirty fingers from handling +and tarnishing the lace on his clothes, and lifting up the flaps of his +pocket holes to see what was there.” The character of Mr. Burchell is +largely drawn by its association with the children. The account given by +little Dick of the carrying off of Olivia is full of charming childish +spirit, and there is an exquisite passage where the Vicar returns home +with the news of Olivia’s recovery, and discovers his house to be on +fire, while in a tumult of confusion the older members of the family rush +out of the dwelling. + +“I gazed upon them and upon it by turns,” proceeds the Vicar, “and then +looked round me for my two little ones; but they were not to be seen. O +misery! ‘Where,’ cried I, ‘where are my little ones?’ ‘They are burnt to +death in the flames,’ says my wife calmly, ‘and I will die with them.’ +That moment I heard the cry of the babes within, who were just awaked +by the fire, and nothing could have stopped me. ‘Where, where are my +children?’ cried I, rushing through the flames, and bursting the door +of the chamber in which they were confined. ‘Where are my little ones?’ +‘Here, dear papa, here we are!’ cried they together, while the flames +were just catching the bed where they lay. I caught them both in my arms, +and snatching them through the fire as fast as possible, just as I was +got out the roof sunk in. ‘Now,’ cried I, holding up my children, ‘now +let the flames burn on, and all my possessions perish. Here they are. I +have saved my treasure. Here, my dearest, here are our treasures, and +we shall yet be happy.’ We kissed our little darlings a thousand times; +they clasped us round the neck, and seemed to share our transports, while +their mother laughed and wept by turns.” + +Cowper was more secluded from his time and its influence than Goldsmith, +but like him he felt the instinct for a return to the elemental in life +and nature. The gentleness of Cowper, combined with a poetic sensibility, +found expression in simple themes. His life, led in a pastoral country, +and occupied with trivial pleasures, offered him primitive material, +and he sang of hares, and goldfish, and children. His Tirocinium, or a +Review of Schools, though having a didactic intention, has some charming +bits of descriptive writing, as in the familiar lines which describe the +sport of + + “The little ones, unbuttoned, glowing hot.” + +The description melts, as do so many of Cowper’s retrospections, into +a tender melancholy. A deeper note still is struck in his Lines on the +Receipt of my Mother’s Picture. + + * * * * * + +The new birth which was coming to England had its premonitions in +literature. It had them also in art. In this period appeared Sir Joshua +Reynolds and Gainsborough: the one preëminently a painter of humanity, +the other of nature, and both of them moved by a spirit of freedom, under +well-recognized academic rules. There is in their work a lingering of +the old formal character which took sharp account of the diversities +of rank, and separated things common from things choice; yet they both +belong to the new world rather than to the old, and in nothing is this +more remarkable than in the number and character of the children pieces +painted by Reynolds. They are a delight to the eye, and in the true +democracy of art we know no distinction between Master Crewe as Henry +VIII. and a Boy with a Child on his back and cabbage nets in his hand. +What a revelation of childhood is in this great group! There is the +tenderness of the Children in the Wood, the peace of the Sleeping Child, +where nature itself is in slumber, the timidity of the Strawberry Girl, +the wildness of the Gypsy Boy, the shy grace of Pickaback, the delightful +wonder of Master Bunbury, the sweet simplicity and innocence in the +pictures so named, and the spiritual yet human beauty of the Angels’ +heads. Reynolds studied the work of the mediæval painters, but he came +back to England and painted English children. Goldsmith’s Vicar, Cowper’s +Lines on his mother’s portrait, and Reynolds’ children bring us close to +the heart of our subject. + + +II + +It was the saying of the Swedish seer Count Swedenborg, that a Day of +Judgment was to come upon men at the time of the French Revolution. Then +were the spirits to be judged. In whatever terms we may express the fact, +clear it is to us that the close of the last century marks a great epoch +in the history of Christendom, and the farther we withdraw from the +events which gather about our own birth as an organized nation, and those +which effected such enormous changes in European life, the more clearly +do we perceive that the movements of the present century are mainly along +lines which may be traced back to genetic beginnings then. There was +indeed a great awakening, a renaissance, a new birth. + +The French Revolution was a sign of the times: it furnishes a convenient +name for an epoch, not merely because important changes in Christendom +were contemporaneous with it, but because they were intimately associated +with it. Then appeared the portent of Democracy, and the struggle of +humanity has ever since been for the realization of dreams which came as +visions of a great hope. Then began that examination of the foundation +of things in science and philosophy which has become a mighty passion in +intellectual life. + +I have said that every great renaissance has left its record in the +recognition which childhood receives in literature and art. I add that +the scope and profundity of that renaissance may be measured by the form +which this recognition takes. At the birth of Christianity the pregnant +sentences, “Except ye become as little children ye shall not enter the +kingdom of heaven,” “For of such is the kingdom of heaven,” “Verily I +say unto you, their angels do always behold the face of my Father in +heaven,” sound a depth unreached before. They were, like other words from +the same source, veritable prophecies, the perfect fulfillment of which +waits the perfect manifestation of the Son of Man. At the Renaissance, +when mediævalism gave way before modern life, art reflected the hopes of +mankind in the face of a divine child. At the great Revolution, when, +amidst fire and blood, the new life of humanity stood revealed, an unseen +hand again took a little child and placed him in the midst of men. It was +reserved for an English poet to be the one who most clearly discerned the +face of the child. Himself one of the great order of angels, he beheld in +the child the face of God. I may be pardoned, I trust, for thus reading +in Western fashion the meaning of that Oriental phrase which I find has +perplexed theologians and Biblical critics. Was it any new disclosure +which the Christ made if he merely said that the attendant ministers of +children always beheld the face of the Father in heaven? Was it not the +very property of such angelic nature that it should see God? But was it +not rather a revelation to the crass minds of those who thrust children +aside, that the angels who moved between the Father of spirits and these +new-comers into the world saw in their faces a witness to their divine +origin? They saw the Father repeated in the child. + +When Wordsworth published his Lyrical Ballads, a storm of ridicule fell +upon them. In that age, when the old and the new were clashing with +each other on every hand, so stark a symbol of the new as these ballads +presented could not fail to furnish an objective point for criticism +which was born of the old. Wordsworth, in his defensive Preface, +declares, “The principal object proposed in these Poems was to choose +incidents and situations from common life, and to relate or describe +them throughout, as far as was possible, in a selection of language +really used by men, and, at the same time, to throw over them a certain +coloring of imagination, whereby ordinary things should be presented to +the mind in an unusual aspect; and further, and above all, to make these +incidents and situations interesting, by tracing in them, truly though +not ostentatiously, the primary laws of our nature; chiefly as far as +regards the manner in which we associate ideas in a state of excitement. +Humble and rustic life was generally chosen, because, in that condition, +the essential passions of the heart find a better soil in which they can +attain their maturity, are less under restraint, and speak a plainer and +more emphatic language; because in that condition of life our elementary +feelings coexist in a state of greater simplicity, and, consequently, may +be more accurately contemplated and more forcibly communicated; because +the manners of rural life germinate from those elementary feelings, +and, from the necessary character of rural occupations, are more easily +comprehended, and are more durable; and, lastly, because in that +condition the passions of men are incorporated with the beautiful and +permanent forms of nature.” + +Every one of these reasons, unless the last, which I do not understand, +be excepted, applies with additional force to the use of forms and +images and incidents drawn from childhood; and though Wordsworth takes +no account of this in his Preface, it is more to the point that he does +freely and fully recognize the fact in his poetry. The Preface, with its +dry formality, was like much of Wordsworth’s poetry,—Pegasus on a walk, +his wings impeding free action. It is one of the anomalies of nature +that a poet with such insight as Wordsworth should never apparently +have discovered his own pragmatical dullness. It seems to me that +Wordsworth’s finer moods were just those of which he never attempted to +give a philosophic account, and that he did not refer to childhood in his +Preface is an evidence of his inspiration when dealing with it. + +Be this as it may, his treatment of childhood accords with his manifesto +to the British public. Could anything be more trivial, as judged by the +standards of the day, than his ballad of Alice Fell, or Poverty?—of +which he has himself said, “The humbleness, meanness if you like, of the +subject, together with the homely mode of treating it, brought upon me +a world of ridicule by the small critics, so that in policy I excluded +it from many editions of my Poems, till it was restored at the request +of some of my friends, in particular my son-in-law, Edward Quillinan.” +What is the motive of a poem which excited such derision that the poet in +a moment of alarm withdrew it from publication, and when he restored it +held his son-in-law responsible? Simply the grief of a poor child, who +had stolen a ride behind the poet’s post-chaise, upon finding that her +tattered cloak had become caught in the wheel and irretrievably ruined. +The poet makes no attempt to dignify this grief; the incident is related +in poetic form, but without any poetic discovery beyond the simple worth +of the grief. It is, perhaps, the most audaciously matter of fact of +all Wordsworth’s poems; and yet, such is the difference in the audience +to-day from what it was in Wordsworth’s time that Alice Fell appears as +a matter of course in all the anthologies for children, and is read by +men and women with positive sympathy, with a tenderness for the forlorn +little girl, and without a question as to the poem’s right of existence. +The misery, the grief of childhood, is conceived of as a real thing, +measured by the child’s mind into which we enter, and not by our own +standards of pain and loss. + +Again, recall the poem of Lucy Gray, or Solitude. The story is far more +pathetic, and has an appeal to more catholic sensibility: a child, sent +with a lantern to town from the moor on which she lives, that she may +light her mother back through the snow, is lost among the hills, and her +footsteps are traced at last to the fatal bridge through which she has +fallen. The incident was one from real life; Wordsworth seized upon it, +reproducing each detail, and with a touch or two of genius made a wraith. +He discovered, as no one before had done, the element of solitude in +childhood, and invested it with a fine spiritual, ethereal quality, quite +devoid of any ethical property,—a subtle community with nature. + +How completely Wordsworth entered the mind of a child and identified +himself with its movements is consciously betrayed in his pastoral, The +Pet Lamb. He puts into the mouth of Barbara Lewthwaite the imaginary song +to her lamb, and then says for himself,— + + “As homeward through the lane I went with lazy feet, + This song to myself did I oftentimes repeat; + And it seemed, as I retraced the ballad line by line, + That but half of it was hers, and one half of it was mine. + Again and once again did I repeat the song; + Nay, said I, more than half to the damsel must belong, + For she looked with such a look and she spake with such a tone + That I almost received her heart into my own.” + +His second thought was best: more than half did belong to the child, for +he himself was but the wise interpreter. + +Wordsworth’s incidents of childhood are sometimes given a purely +objective character, as in Rural Architecture, The Anecdote for Fathers, +The Idle Shepherd Boys; but more often childhood is to him the occasion +and suggestion of the deeper thought of life. A kitten, playing with +falling leaves before the poet and his child Dora, leads him on by +exquisite movement to the thought of his own decay of life. But what +impresses us most is the twofold conception of childhood as a part of +nature, and as containing within itself not only the germ of human life, +but the echo of the divine. There are poems of surpassing beauty which so +blend the child and nature that we might almost fancy, as we look upon +the poetical landscape, that we are mistaking children for bushes, or +bushes for children. Such is that one beginning + + “Three years she grew in sun and shower,” + +and + + “Wisdom and Spirit of the universe!” + +He drew images from his children and painted a deliberate portrait of his +daughter Catharine, solemnly entitled, Characteristics of a Child Three +Years Old. + +Yet, though Wordsworth drew many suggestions from his own children and +from those whom he saw in his walks, it is remarkable how little he +regards children in their relation to parents in comparison of their +individual and isolated existence. Before Wordsworth, the child, in +literature, was almost wholly considered as one of a group, as a part +of a family, and only those phases of childhood were treated which +were obvious to the most careless observer. Wordsworth—and here is the +notable fact—was the first deliberately to conceive of childhood as a +distinct, individual element of human life. He first, to use a truer +phrase, apprehended the personality of childhood. He did this and gave it +expression in artistic form in some of the poems already named; he did it +methodically and with philosophic intent in his autobiographic poem The +Prelude, and also in The Excursion. Listen how he speaks of his infancy +even, giving it by anticipation a life separate from mother and nurse. +“Was it for this?” he asks,— + + “Was it for this + That one, the fairest of all rivers, loved + To blend his murmurs with my nurse’s song, + And, from his alder shades and rocky falls, + And from his fords and shallows, sent a voice + That flowed along my dreams? For this, didst thou, + O Derwent! winding among grassy holms + Where I was looking on, a babe in arms, + Make ceaseless music that composed my thoughts + To more than infant softness, giving me + Amid the fretful dwellings of mankind + A foretaste, a dim earnest, of the calm + That Nature breathes among the hills and groves.” + +Still more minutely does he disclose the consciousness of childhood in +his record of the mind of the Wanderer in The Excursion, in the lines +beginning:— + + “From his sixth year, the Boy of whom I speak + In summer tended cattle on the hills.” + +It may be said that in all this Wordsworth is simply rehearsing and +expanding an exceptional experience; that his recollection of his own +childhood passed through the alembic of a fervid poetic imagination. Be +it so; we are not so much concerned to know how the poet came by this +divination, as to know that he should have treated it as universal and +common to the period of childhood. Again and again in descriptive poem, +in direct address, in indirect allusion, he so uses this knowledge as +to forbid us to regard it as peculiar and exceptional in his own view; +and a poet’s attestation to a universal experience is worth more than any +negation which comes from our individual blurred recollection. Wordsworth +discovers in childhood the germ of humanity; he sees there thoughts, +emotions, activities, sufferings, which are miniatures of the maturer +life,—but, he sees more than this and deeper. To him the child is not +a pigmy man; it has a life of its own, out of which something even may +pass, when childhood is left behind. It is not the ignorant innocence of +childhood, the infantile grace, which holds him, but a certain childish +possession, in which he sees a spiritual presence obscured in conscious +youth. Landor in one of his Imaginary Conversations stoutly asserts a +similar fact when he says, “Children are not men or women; they are +almost as different creatures, in many respects, as if they never were to +be one or the other; they are as unlike as buds are unlike flowers, and +almost as blossoms are unlike fruits.”[33] + +In all this again, in this echo of the divine which Wordsworth hears in +the voice of childhood, there is reference, psychologically, to his +own personal experience. Yet why should we treat that as ruled out of +evidence, which only one here and another there acknowledges as a part of +his history? Is it not fairer, more reasonable, to take the experience +of a profound poet as the basis of spiritual truth than the negative +testimony of those whose eyes lack the wondrous power of seeing? In the +preface to his ode, Intimations of Immortality from the Recollections of +Early Childhood, Wordsworth declares with great earnestness:— + +“To the attentive and competent reader the whole sufficiently explains +itself; but there may be no harm in adverting here to particular feelings +or experiences of my own mind, on which the structure of the poem partly +rests. Nothing was more difficult for me in childhood than to admit +the notion of death as a state applicable to my own being. I have said +elsewhere— + + ‘A simple child + That lightly draws its breath, + And feels its life in every limb, + What should it know of death!’ + +But it was not so much from feelings of animal vivacity that my +difficulty came, as from a sense of the indomitableness of the spirit +within me. I used to brood over the stories of Enoch and Elijah, and +almost to persuade myself that, whatever might become of others, I should +be translated, in something of the same way, to heaven. With a feeling +congenial to this, I was often unable to think of external existence, +and I communed with all that I saw as something not apart from, but +inherent in my own immaterial nature. Many times, while going to school, +have I grasped at a wall or tree to recall myself from the abyss of +idealism to the reality. At that time I was afraid of such processes. In +later periods of life I have deplored, as we all have reason to do, a +subjugation of an opposite character.” + +Here Wordsworth defends the philosophy of the poem by making it an +induction from his own experience. There will be found many to question +its truth, because they have no recollections which correspond with +the poet’s; and others who will claim that the poem is but a fanciful +argument in behalf of the philosophic heresy of a preëxistent state. In +my judgment, Wordsworth’s preface is somewhat misleading by its reference +to this theory, although he has furnished hints in the same preface +of his more integral thought. As I have noticed before, his artistic +presentation is truer and more final than his exegesis. Whoever reads +this great ode is aware of the rise and fall of the tide of thought; he +hears the poet reasoning with himself; he sees him passing in imagination +out of childhood into age, yet constantly recovering himself to fresh +perception of the immortality which transcends earthly life. It is +visible childhood with its intimation of immortality which brings to +the poet, not regret for what is irretrievably lost, but firmer faith +in the reality of the unseen and eternal. The confusion into which some +have been cast by the ode arises from their bringing to the idea of +immortality the time conception; they conceive the poet to be hinting +of an indefinite time antedating the child’s birth, an indefinite time +extending beyond the man’s death, whereas Wordsworth’s conception of +immortality rests in the indestructibility of spirit by any temporal or +earthly conditions,—an indestructibility which even implies an absence of +beginning as well as of ending. + + “Heaven lies about us in our infancy,” + +he declares. It is the investment of this visible life by an unseen, +unfelt, yet real spiritual presence for which he contends, and he +maintains that the inmost consciousness of childhood bears witness to +this truth; this consciousness fades as the earthly life penetrates the +soul, yet it is there and recurs in sudden moments. + + “Hence in a season of calm weather, + Though inland far we be, + Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea + Which brought us hither, + Can in a moment travel thither, + And see the Children sport upon the shore, + And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.” + +In thus connecting childhood with the highest hope of the human race, +Wordsworth was repeating the note which twice before had been struck in +great epochs of history. This third renaissance was the awaking of the +human soul to a sense of the common rights and duties of humanity, the +dignity and worth of the Person. + + * * * * * + +The poetic form, while most perfectly inclosing these divinations of +childhood, and especially suited to the presentation of the faint and +elusive elements, is less adapted to the philosophic and discursive +examination of the subject of childhood. It is, then, an indication of +the impression which the idea had made upon men that a prose writer of +the period, of singular insight and subtlety, should have given some +of his most characteristic thought to an examination of the essential +elements of childhood. De Quincey was undoubtedly strongly affected +by Wordsworth’s treatment of the subject; he has left evidence upon +this point. Nevertheless, he appears to have sounded his own mind and +appealed to his own memory for additional and corroborative testimony. +In his Suspiria de Profundis, a sequel to the Confessions of an English +Opium-Eater, he offers an account of his recollections of infancy, +together with many reflections upon the experience which he then +underwent. If it be said that the opium-eater was an untrustworthy +witness, since his dreaming might well lead him to confuse the subtle +workings of a mature mind with the vivid remembrance of one or two +striking events of childhood, we may consider that De Quincey’s +imagination was a powerful one, and capable of interpreting the incidents +and emotions brought to it by memory, as a more prosaic mind could not. +We are compelled, of course, in all such cases, to submit the testimony +of such a man to the judgment of our own reason, but that reason ought, +before pronouncing a final verdict, to be educated to perceive the +possibilities of a wider range of observation than may have fallen to +us individually, and to submit the results to a comparison with known +operations of the human mind. Above all, it should be borne in mind that +a distinction clearly exists between a child’s consciousness and its +power of expression. De Quincey himself in a note says with acuteness and +justice:— + +“The reader must not forget in reading this and other passages that +though a child’s feelings are spoken of, it is not the child who speaks. +I decipher what the child only felt in cipher. And so far is this +distinction or this explanation from pointing to anything metaphysical +or doubtful, that a man must be grossly unobservant who is not aware of +what I am here noticing, not as a peculiarity of this child or that, but +as a necessity of all children. Whatsoever in a man’s mind blossoms and +expands to his own consciousness in mature life must have preëxisted +in germ during his infancy. I, for instance, did not, as a child, +consciously read in my own deep feelings these ideas. No, not at all; nor +was it possible for a child to do so. I, the child, had the feelings; I, +the man, decipher them. In the child lay the handwriting mysterious to +him; in me, the interpretation and the comment.” + +Assuredly this is reasonable, and since we are looking for the +recognition of childhood in literature, we may wisely ask how it presents +itself to a man like De Quincey, who had peculiar power in one form of +literature—the autobiographic-imaginative. He entitles the first part of +his Suspiria, The Affliction of Childhood. It is the record of a child’s +grief, interpreted by the man when he could translate into speech the +emotion which possessed him in his early suffering; and near its close, +De Quincey, partially summing up his philosophy of the subject, declares:— + +“God speaks to children, also, in dreams and by the oracles that lurk +in darkness. But in solitude, above all things when made vocal by the +truths and services of a national church, God holds communion undisturbed +with children. Solitude, though silent as light, is like light the +mightiest of agencies; for solitude is essential to man. All men come +into this world alone; all leave it alone. Even a little child has a +dread, whispering consciousness that if he should be summoned to travel +into God’s presence, no gentle nurse will be allowed to lead him by the +hand, nor mother to carry him in her arms, nor little sister to share his +trepidations. King and priest, warrior and maiden, philosopher and child, +all must walk those mighty galleries alone. The solitude, therefore, +which in this world appalls or fascinates a child’s heart, is but the +echo of a far deeper solitude, through which already he has passed, and +of another solitude, deeper still, through which he has to pass; reflex +of one solitude, prefiguration of another. + +“Deeper than the deepest of solitudes is that which broods over +childhood, bringing before it, at intervals, the final solitude which +watches for it, within the gates of death. Reader, I tell you in truth, +and hereafter I will convince you of this truth, that for a Grecian child +solitude was nothing, but for a Christian child it has become the power +of God and the mystery of God. O mighty and essential solitude, that +wast and art and art to be! thou, kindling under the touch of Christian +revelations, art now transfigured forever, and hast passed from a blank +negation into a secret hieroglyphic from God, shadowing in the hearts of +infancy the very dimmest of his truths!” + +I must refer the reader to the entire chapter for a full exposition of De +Quincey’s views on this subject. Despite the bravura style, which makes +us in our soberer days listen a little incredulously to these far-fetched +sighs and breathings, the passage quoted bears testimony to that +apprehension of childhood which De Quincey shared with Wordsworth. Both +of these writers were looked upon in their day as somewhat reactionary in +their poetical philosophy; so much the more valuable is their declaration +of a poetical and philosophical faith which was fundamentally in unison +with the political faith that lay behind the outburst of the French +Revolution. The discovery of this new continent of childhood by such +explorers of the spiritual world marks the age as distinctly as does the +discovery of new lands and explorations in the earlier renaissance. It +was indeed one of the great signs of the period ushered in by the French +Revolution and the establishment of the American republic, that the +bounds of the spiritual world were extended. When poverty and childhood +were annexed to the poet’s domain, the world of literature and art +suddenly became larger. + + * * * * * + +At such times there are likely to be singular exhibitions of genius, +which are ill-understood in contemporary life, but are perceived by later +observers to be part and parcel of the age in which they occur. Something +like this may be said of the pictures and poems of William Blake, who +was a visionary in a time when a red flame along the horizon made his +spiritual fires invisible. He has since been rediscovered, and has been +for a generation so potent an influence in English art that we may wisely +attend to him, not merely as a person of genius, but as furnishing an +illustration of some of the deep things of our subject. + +No one acquainted with Blake’s work has failed to observe the recurrence +of a few types drawn from elemental figures. The lamb, the child, the old +man,—these appear and reappear, carrying the prevalent ideas in this +artist’s imagination. Of all these the child is the most central and +emphatic, even as the Songs of Innocence is the most perfect expression +of Blake’s vision of life. It may be said that in his mind childhood was +largely resolvable into infancy, and that when he looked upon a babe, +he saw life in its purest form, and that most suggestive of the divine, +as in the exquisite cradle song, into which is woven the weeping of the +child Jesus for all the human race. The two short antithetical poems, The +Little Boy Lost and The Little Boy Found, reveal the depths which Blake +penetrated when engaged in his solitary voyage of discovery to the little +known shores of childhood. They have, to be sure, the teasing property +of parables, and it would be hard to render them into the unmistakable +language of the understanding; but they could be set to music, and like +the Duke we exclaim:— + + “That strain again! it had a dying fall.” + +It must always be borne in mind that Blake’s contribution to the +literature of childhood is through highly idealized forms. It is +spiritual or angelic childhood which floats before his eyes, so that the +little creatures who dance on the green, the little chimney sweep, the +children filing into St. Paul’s, are translated by his visionary power +into the images of an essential childhood; they cease to be individual +illustrations. + + * * * * * + +We are told that in the fearful days of the French Revolution there was +an eruption from the secret places of Paris of a vast horde of poor, +ignorant, and vicious people, who had been kept out of sight by lords and +ladies. One may accept the fact as symbolical of that emergence into the +light of Christianity of poverty and degradation. The poor had always +been with the world, but it is not too much to say that now for the first +time did they begin to be recognized as part and parcel of humanity. +Wordsworth’s poems set the seal upon this recognition. Dickens’s novels +naturalized the poor in literature, and, as in the case of Wordsworth, +poverty and childhood went hand in hand. + +Dickens, however, though he made a distinct addition to the literature +of childhood, rather registered a presence already acknowledged than +acted as a prophet of childhood. The great beneficent and humanitarian +movement of the century was well under way, and had already found +abundant expression in ragged schools and Sunday-schools and in education +generally, when Dickens, with his quick reporter’s sight, seized upon +salient features in this new exhibition of humanity. He was quite aside +from the ordinary organized charities, but he was moved by much the same +spirit as that which was briskly at work among the poor and the young. He +was caught by the current, and his own personal experience was swift to +give special direction to his imagination. + +Besides innumerable minor references, there are certain childish figures +in the multitude of the creations of Dickens, which at once rise to +mind,—Paul Dombey, Little Nell, Tiny Tim, Oliver Twist, David Copperfield +in his earliest days, and the Marchioness. Dickens found out very soon +that the power to bring tears into the eyes of people was a surer road +to success than even the power to amuse. When he was drawing the figures +of children, their tenderness, their weakness, their susceptibility, +presented themselves as the material in which he could skillfully work. +Then he used the method which had served him so well in his larger +portraiture; he seized upon the significant feature and emphasized it +until it became the unmistakable mark of the person. Childhood suggests +weakness, and weakness is more apparent when there is a foil of mental +prematurity; so he invented the hydrocephalic Paul Dombey. It suggests +tenderness; he appealed to an unhesitating sympathy and drew for us +Little Nell, intensifying her nature by bringing her into contrast and +subtle companionship with her imbecile grandfather. It is the defect +of Dickens that by such characters he displayed his skill in morbid +conceptions. The little old man in Paul Dombey is not without its +prototype in real life, but Dickens appears to have produced it as a +type of tender childhood, much as one might select a consumptive for an +illustration of extreme refinement. Tiny Tim is a farther illustration +of this unhealthy love, on Dickens’s part, of that which is affecting +through its infirmity. That art is truest which sees children at play +or in their mother’s arms, not in hospitals or graveyards. It is the +infirmity of humanitarianism and of Dickens, its great exponent, that +it regards death as the great fact of life; that it seeks to ward it +off as the greatest of evils, and when it comes, hastens to cover it +out of sight with flowers. This conception of death is bound up with an +overweening sense of the importance of these years of life. There is a +nobler way, and literature and art are slowly confessing it, as they +devote their strength to that which is eternal in life, not to that which +is perishable. Wordsworth’s maiden in We are Seven, with her simple, +unhesitating belief in the continuity of life, the imperishability of the +person, holds a surer place in literature than Paul Dombey, who makes the +ocean with its tides wait for him to die. + +It is only fair to say, however, that the caricature to be found in +Dickens is scarcely more violent an extreme to some minds than is the +idealism to be found in Wordsworth, De Quincey, and Blake an opposite +extreme to minds otherwise constituted. The early life of Wordsworth, +passed, as he tells us, in the solitude of nature, explains much of his +subsequent attitude toward childhood and youth. It is out of such an +experience that Lucy Gray was written. In like manner the early life of +Dickens discloses something of a nature which reappears afterward in +his pictures of childhood. A wounded sensibility is unquestionably the +pathetic history of many, and Dickens has contributed to the natural +history of childhood a distinct account of this feature. + +The first appearance of a new form in literature produces an impression +which can never be repeated. However freshly readers in this decade may +come to the works of Dickens, it is impossible that they should have the +same distinct sensation which men and women had who caught up the numbers +of The Old Curiosity Shop as they fell from the press for the first time. +There can never again be such a lamentation over Little Nell, when men +like Jeffrey, a hardened old critic, made no concealment of their tears. +Yet I am disposed to think that this does not give a complete account +of the phenomenon. Just as Wordsworth’s Alice Fell is now but one of a +procession of forlorn maidens, though at the head of it, so the children +of Dickens are merely somewhat more vivid personages in a multitude of +childish creation. The child is no longer a novelty either in poetry or +in fiction. It is an accepted character, one of the _dramatis personæ_ of +literature. + +For, when all is said of Dickens’s work, taken only as the product of a +mind singularly gifted with reporting what it has seen, there remains the +noticeable fact that scarcely had the echoes died away from the voice of +Wordsworth, who ushered in the literature of the new age, when a great +man of the people came forward, in the person of Dickens, and found it +the most natural thing in the world to give men pictures of child-life, +and that after the first surprise attendant upon novelty was over, +writers of all sorts were busy modeling these small figures. + + * * * * * + +The child once introduced into literature, the significance of its +appearance thereafter is not so much in individual instances as in the +general and familiar acceptance of the phenomenon. At least, so it +appears from our near view. It is not impossible that later students may +perceive notes in our literature of more meaning than we now surmise. +They may understand better than we why Tennyson should have made a babe +the heroine of The Princess, as he acknowledges to Mr. Dawson that he +did, though only one or two critics had discovered the fact, and why +Mr. Swinburne, who is supposed to scoff at a literature _virginibus +puerisque_, should have devoted so much of his lyric energy to childhood. +The stream which ran with so broken a course down to Wordsworth has +spread now into a broad, full river. Childhood is part and parcel of +every poet’s material; children play in and out of fiction, and readers +are accustomed to meeting them in books, and to finding them often as +finely discriminated by the novelist as are their elders. + +Meanwhile, from the time when childhood was newly discovered, that is to +say, roughly, in the closing years of the last century, there has been a +literature in process of formation which has for its audience children +themselves. I called attention briefly, at the beginning of this study, +to the interesting fact that there was a correlation in time, at least, +between childhood in literature and a literature for children. A nearer +study of the literature of this century shows very clearly that while +the great constructive artists have been making room for the figures of +infancy and youth, and even consciously explaining their presence, a host +of minor writers, without much thought of art, have been busy over the +same figures for other purposes. Not only so, but in several instances +the great artists themselves have distinctly turned aside from their +ordinary audience and appealed directly to children. + +Where was the child in English literature before Goldsmith? and where +before Goldsmith’s time was there a book for children? There have been, +it is true, nursery tales in all ages: ditties, and songs, and lullabies; +unwritten stories, which mothers in England told when they themselves +could have read nothing; but there came a time when children were +distinctly recognized as the occasion of formal literature, when authors +and publishers began to heed a new public. It was impossible that there +should be this discovery of childhood without a corresponding effort on +the part of men and women to get at it, and to hold direct intercourse +with it. + +By a natural instinct, writers for children began at once to write +about children. They were moved by educational rather than by artistic +impulses, so that their creations were subordinate to the lessons which +they conveyed. During the period when Wordsworth, Lamb, De Quincey, and +Blake were idealizing childhood, and seeing in it artistic possibilities, +there flourished a school of writing for the young which also dealt with +childhood, but with a sturdy realism. This school had its representatives +in Mrs. Barbauld, Mr. Day, the Aikens, Maria Edgeworth, Ann and Jane +Taylor, and holds a place still with Evenings at Home, The Parent’s +Assistant, Hymns in Prose for Children, Hymns for Infant Minds, Frank, +and Sandford and Merton. The characteristics of this literature are +simple, and will be recalled by many who dwell with an affectionate and +regretful regard upon books which they find it somewhat difficult to +persuade their children to read. + +These books were didactic; they assumed in the main the air of wise +teachers; they were sometimes condescending; they appealed to the +understanding rather than to the imagination of the child, and they +abounded in stores of useful information upon all manner of subjects. +They contained precursors of a long series of juvenile monitors, and +the grandfathers who knew Mr. Barlow had children who knew Mr. Holiday, +Rollo, Jonas, and Mr. George, and grandchildren who may be suspected +of an acquaintance with Mr. Bodley and his much traveled and very +inquisitive family. + +Yet, the earlier works, though now somewhat antiquated, were not +infrequently lively and even humorous in their portraiture of children. +They were written in the main out of a sincere interest in the young, +and by those who were accustomed to watch the unfolding of childish +nature. If they reflected a somewhat formal relation between the old and +the young, it must be remembered that the actual relation was a formal +one: that the young had not yet come into familiar and genial relation +with the old. Indeed, the books themselves were somewhat revolutionary +in a small way. Much that seems stiff and even unnatural to us now was +quite easy and colloquial to their first readers, and in their eagerness +to lure children into ways of pleasant instruction, the authors broke +down something of the reserve which existed between fathers and sons in +the English life which they portrayed. Yet we cannot help being struck +by the contrast between the sublimated philosophy of Wordsworth and the +prosaic applications of the Edgeworth school. Heaven lies about us in our +infancy? Oh, yes, a heaven that is to be looked at through a spy-glass +and explained by means of a home-made orrery. It would seem as if the +spirit of childhood had been discerned with all its inherent capacity, +but that the actual children of this matter-of-fact world had not yet +been fairly seen by the light of this philosophy. + +The literature which we are considering was indeed a serious attempt +at holding intercourse with childish minds. It had the embarrassment +of beginnings; there was about it an uncertain groping in the dark of +childhood, and it was desperately theory-ridden. But it had also the mark +of sincerity, and one feels in reading it that the writers were genuinely +indifferent in most cases to the figure they might be cutting before the +world; they were bent upon reaching this audience, and were unobservant +of the larger world behind. In most cases, I say. I suspect that Mrs. +Barbauld, with her solemn dullness, was the victim of a notion that she +was producing a new order of literature, and in this she was encouraged +by a circle of older readers; the children probably stared at her with +sufficient calmness to keep her ignorant of their real thoughts. + +How real literature looked upon the dusty high-road laid out across the +fields by some of these writers may be read in the letters of the day. +Coleridge jibed at that “pleonasm of nakedness,” Mrs. Bare-bald, and +Lamb in a letter to Coleridge speaks his mind with refreshing frankness: +“Goody Two Shoes,” he says, “is almost out of print. Mrs. Barbauld’s +stuff has banished all the old classics of the nursery; and the shopman +at Newberry’s hardly deigned to reach them off an old exploded corner of +a shelf when Mary asked for them. Mrs. B.’s and Mrs. Trimmer’s nonsense +lay in piles about. Knowledge insignificant and vapid as Mrs. B.’s books +convey, it seems, must come to a child in the _shape of knowledge_, and +his empty noddle must be turned with conceit of his own powers when +he has learned that a horse is an animal, and Billy is better than a +horse, and such like; instead of that beautiful interest in wild tales +which made the child a man, while all the time he suspected himself to +be no bigger than a child. Science has succeeded to poetry no less in +the little walks of children than with men. Is there no possibility of +averting this sore evil? Think of what you would have been now, if, +instead of being fed with tales and old wives’ fables in childhood, you +had been crammed with geography and natural history! Hang them! I mean +the cursed reasoning crew, those blights and blasts of all that is human +in man and child.” Yet Lamb and his sister both took a lively interest +in genuine books for the young, and their own contributions have, +alas! gone the way, for the most part, of other worn-out literature. +It was mainly as a direct educative power that this new interest in +children first found expression; with it, however, was mingled a more +artistic purpose, and the two streams of tendency have ever since been +recognizable, sometimes separate, oftener combined. The Lambs’ own work +was illustrative of this union of the didactic and the artistic. It is +outside the scope of this study to dwell at length upon this phase of +literature. It is enough to point out the fact that there is a distinct +class of books which has grown up quite within the memory of men now +living. It is involved with industrial and commercial interests; it +invites the attention of authors, and the infrequent criticism of +reviewers; it has its own subdivisions like the larger literature; it +boasts of cyclopædias and commentaries; it includes histories, travels, +poems, works in science, theological treatises. It is a distinct +principality of the Kingdom of Letters. It is idle to complain of the +present abundance of children’s books, as if somebody were to blame for +it. There has been no conspiracy of publishers and authors. It is worse +than folly to look with contempt upon the movement; the faithful student +will seek rather to study this new force, and if possible to guide it +into right channels. + + * * * * * + +The distinction between books for the young and books for the old is a +somewhat arbitrary one, and many have discovered for themselves and their +children that instead of one poor corner of literature being fenced off +for the lamb, planted with tender grass which is quickly devoured, and +with many medicinal but disagreeable herbs which are nibbled at when the +grass is gone, the whole wide pasture land is their native home, and the +grass more tender where fresh streams flow than it possibly can be in +the paddock, however carefully planted and watched. This community of +possession is more recognizable in the higher than in the lower forms +of literature. It is still more clear in pictorial art. Art is by its +nature more closely representative of childhood than literature can +be, and Gainsborough and Reynolds made no innovation when they painted +children, although the latter, by his evident partiality for these +subjects, does indicate a susceptibility to the new knowledge which was +coming upon the world. There are other influences which reinforce the +artistic pleasure, such as the domestic sense, the pride of family, +the ease of procuring unconscious models. No one can visit an English +exhibition of paintings without being struck by the extraordinary number +of subjects taken from childhood. It is in this field that Millais has +won famous laurels, and when the great body of book illustrations is +scanned, what designs have half the popularity of Doyle’s fairies and +Miss Greenaway’s idyllic children? I sometimes wonder why this should be +the case in England, when in America, the paradise of children, there is +a conspicuous absence of these subjects from galleries. + + + + +VII + +IN FRENCH AND GERMAN LITERATURE + + +I + +French literature before the Revolution was more barren of reference to +childhood than was English literature. Especially is this true of the +eighteenth century, with its superficial disbelief and its bitter protest +against superstition, under which term was comprehended the supernatural +as well as the preternatural. There were exceptions, as in the case of +Fénelon, and the constitutional sentiment of the French was easily moved +by the appeal of dependent childhood. In Rousseau one may read how it +is possible to weep over children, and yet leave one’s own to the cold +mercy of a foundling asylum. It is in Rousseau’s disciple, however, +Bernardin de St. Pierre, that we find the most artistic expression of +pure sentimentalism, and the story of Paul and Virginia is an effort at +representing a world where childhood, in its innocence, is conceived of +as the symbol of ideal human life. St. Pierre thought of childhood and +nature as possessed of strong negative virtues; they were uncontaminated, +they were unsophisticated. To escape from an evil world, he fled in +imagination to an island of the tropics, where all that life required +was readily furnished by lavish nature. He makes his family to consist +chiefly of women and children. The masculine element is avoided as +something disturbing, and except for the harmless old man who acts as +chorus, it is discovered first as a rude, barbaric, and cruel force in +the person of the governor of the island, who has no faith in Madame de +la Tour, and in the person of the planter at the Black River, who has +been an inhuman master to his slave. + +The childhood of Paul and Virginia is made to have a pastoral, idyllic +character. Their sorrows and misfortunes come wholly from evils which lie +beyond their control. St. Pierre brought back a golden age by ignoring +the existence of evil in the heart of man; he conceived it possible to +construct an ideal world by what was vaguely expressed in the words +“a return to nature.” As he reflects in the story: “Their theology +consisted in sentiment like that of nature; and their morality in action +like that of the gospel. Those families had no particular days devoted +to pleasure, and others to sadness. Every day was to them a holiday, and +all which surrounded them one holy temple, where they forever adored an +Infinite Intelligence, almighty and the friend of humankind. A sentiment +of confidence in his supreme power filled their minds with consolation +for the past, with fortitude for the present, and with hope for the +future. Behold how these women, compelled by misfortune to return to a +state of nature, had unfolded in their own bosoms, and in those of their +children, the feelings which nature gives us, our best support under +evil!” + +However we may discover the limitations of the sentimental philosophy, +and its inadequacy when brought face to face with evil in life, there +is a surface agreement with Christianity in this instinctive turning to +childhood as the hope of the world. Yet the difference is radical. The +child, in the Christian conception, holds the promise of things to come; +in the conception of French sentiment of the Rousseau and St. Pierre +type, the child is a refuge from present evil, a mournful reminiscence +of a lost Paradise. If only we could keep it a child! is the cry of this +school,—keep it from knowing this wicked, unhappy world! But alas! there +are separations and shipwrecks. Virginia is washed ashore by the cruel +waves. Paul, bereft of reason, dies, and is buried in the same grave. The +two, growing like plants in nature, are stricken down by the mysterious, +fateful powers of nature. + +The contrast between this unreal recourse to nature and the strong yet +subtle return which characterizes Wordsworth and his school is probably +more apparent to the English and American mind than to the French. Yet +a reasonable comparison betrays the fatal weakness of the one in that +it leaves out of view whatever in nature disturbs a smooth, summer-day +world. When St. Pierre talks of a return to nature, he does not mean +the jungle and the pestiferous swamp; he regards these as left behind +in Paris. Yet the conclusion of his story is the confession wrung from +faithful art that Nature is after all but a step-mother to humanity. + +In the great romantic movement which revolutionized French literature, +an immense impetus was given to the mind, and literature thenceforth +reflected a wider range of thought and feeling. In few respects does +this appear more significantly than in the treatment of childhood. There +is a robustness about the sentiment which separates it from the earlier +regard of such writers as we have named. Lamartine, who certainly was +not devoid of sentiment, passes by his own earliest childhood in Les +Confidences with indifference. “I shall not,” he says, “follow the +example of J. J. Rousseau in his Confessions. I shall not relate to +you the trifling events of my early childhood. Man only dates from +the commencement of feeling and thought; until the man is a being, he +is not even a child.... Let us leave, then, the cradle to the nurses, +and our first smiles, our first tears, and our first lisping accents +to the ecstasies of our mothers. I do not wish to inflict on you any +but my earliest recollections, embellished by the light of reason.” He +gives, accordingly, two scenes of his childhood: one an interior, where +his father reads aloud to his mother from Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered; +the other an outdoor scene, where he engages in the rural sports of +the neighborhood. Each picture is delightfully drawn, with minute +detail, with poetic touch, with affectionate recollection. Encouraged, +apparently, by the warmth which this memory has inspired, Lamartine +continues to dwell upon the images of his childhood, especially as it +has to do with the thought of his mother. He paints the simple garden +attached to his father’s home, and resting a moment reflects:— + +“Yes, that is indeed all, and yet that is what sufficed during so many +years for the gratification, for the reveries, for the sweet leisures, +and for the as sweet labors of a father, a mother, and eight children! +Such is what still suffices, even at the present day, for the nourishment +of these recollections. Such is the Eden of their childhood, where their +most serene thoughts take refuge when they wish to receive a little of +that dew of the morning life, a little of that beaming light of early +dawn, which shines pure and radiant for man only amid the scenes of his +birth. There is not a tree, there is not a carnation, there is not a +mossy stone of this garden, which is not entwined in their soul as if it +formed part of it. This nook of earth seems to us immense, such a host +of objects and of recollections does it contain for us in so narrow a +space.” + +The fullness with which Lamartine treats the recollection of his youth +partakes of the general spirit of French memoirs,—a spirit, to speak +roughly, which regards persons rather than institutions,—but indicates +also something of the new spirit which informed literature when it +elevated childhood into a place of real dignity. There are passages, +indeed, which have a special significance as intimating a consciousness +of the deeper relations of childhood. Michelet, for instance, in +his philosophy of the unfolding of woman’s life, recognizes the +characteristics of maidenhood as anticipatory of maturity, and does it +with so serious a contemplation that we forget to smile when we discover +him profoundly observant of those instincts of maternity which are shown +in the care of a child for its doll. + +This attitude toward the child is observable in the masters of modern +French literature. However far they may be removed from any mere domestic +regard of the subject, they apprehend the peculiar sacredness attaching +to children. Alfred de Musset, for example, though by no means a poet of +the family, can never speak of children without emotion. Not to multiply +instances, it is enough to take the great poet of the period. Victor Hugo +deserves, it has been said, to be called the poet of infancy, not only +for the reason that he has written of the young freely, but has in his +Les Enfants, Livre des Mères, written for them. It is to be observed that +the suggestion comes, with Hugo, chiefly from the children of his family; +from his brother Eugène, who died an early death; from his daughter, whom +he mourns in tender verse; and from his grandchildren. One feels the +sincerity of a great poet when he draws the inspiration for such themes +from his own familiar kind. + +It may be said in general of the contribution made to this literature by +the French that it partakes of those qualities of lightness and grace +which mark the greater literature; that the image of childhood is a +joyous, innocent one, and satisfies the eye that looks for beauty and +delicacy. Sentiment predominates, but it is a sentiment that makes little +draught upon thought. There is a disposition now to regard children as +dolls and playthings, the amusement of the hour; now to make them the +object of an attitudinizing sentiment, which is practically wasted unless +there be some one at hand to applaud it. + + +II + +When we pass from France to Germany we are aware that, however we may +use the same terms, and recognize the existence of sentiment as a +strong element in the literature of both countries, there is a radical +difference in tone. It is not merely that French sentiment is graceful +and German sentiment clumsy: the grace of the one connects itself with +a fine art,—we feel an instinctive good taste in its expression; in the +other, the awkwardness, the obtrusiveness, seem to be the issue of an +excess of natural and homely feeling. It would be too much to say that +French sentiment is insincere and German sentiment unpleasantly sincere; +that the one is assumed and the other uncalculating,—we cannot thus +dismiss elementary feeling in two great peoples. But an Englishman or +American, to whom, in his reserve, the sentiment of either nation is apt +to be a little oppressive, is very likely to smile at the French and +feel uncomfortable in the presence of the German; to regard the French +feeling as a temporary mood, the German as a permanent state. + +Be this as it may, it is true that the German feeling with regard to +childhood, as it finds expression in life and literature, revolves very +closely about the child in its home, not the child as a charming object +in nature. Childhood, in German literature, is conceived very generally +in its purely domestic relations, and is so positive an element as to +have attracted the attention of other nations, and even to have given +rise to a petty cult. Coleridge, writing from Germany in 1799, reports +to his English readers, as something strange to himself, and of local +significance only, the custom of Christmas gifts from parents to children +and from children to parents. He is especially struck with the custom of +representing these presents as coming from Jesus Christ. + +The whole structure of Santa Claus and Kriss Kringle, the Christ Child +and Pelznichel, with the attendant ceremonies of the Christmas tree, is +built into the child life of Germany and the Low Countries; and it is by +the energy of this childish miracle that it has passed over into English, +and especially into American life. All this warmth of domestic feeling +is by no means a modern discovery. It is a prime characteristic of the +Germanic people, and one strong reason for the ascendency of Lutheranism +may be found in the singular exposition of the German character which +Luther presented. He was not merely a man of the people; through his life +and writings and organizing faculty he impressed himself positively on +the German national character, not turning it aside, but deepening the +channels in which it ran. Certain it is that the luxuriance of his nature +was almost riotous on the side of family life. “The leader of the age,” +says Canon Mozley, “and the adviser of princes, affecting no station and +courting no great men, was externally one of the common crowd, and the +plainest of it. In domestic life the same heart and nature appear. There +he overflows with affection, warmth, tenderness; with all the amiable +banter of the husband, and all the sweet arts and pretty nonsense of a +father among his little children. Whether he is joking, lecturing his +‘rib Catharine,’ his ‘gracious dame Catharine,’ or writing a description +of fairyland and horses with silver saddles to his ‘voracious, +bibacious, loquacious,’ little John; or whether he is in the agony of +grief over the death-bed of his favorite daughter, Magdalene, we see the +same exuberant, tender character.”[34] + +In this sketch of Luther we may read some of the general characteristics +of the Germanic life, and we are ready, at the first suggestion, to +assent to the proposition that the German people, judged by the apparatus +of childhood, books, pictures, toys, and schools, stands before other +nations. The material for the portraiture of childhood has been abundant; +the social history, the biographies, give constant intimations of the +fullness with which family life, inclosing childhood, has been dwelt upon +in the mind. The autobiographies of poets and novelists almost invariably +give great attention to the period of childhood. A very interesting +illustration of this may be found in the life of Richter, who stands at +the head of the great Germans in his portrayal of childhood. + +“Men who have a firm hold on nothing else,” says Richter in his brief +autobiography, “delight in deep, far-reaching recollection of their days +of childhood, and in this billowy existence they anchor on that, far +more than on the thought of later difficulties. Perhaps for two reasons: +that in this retrospection they press nearer to the gate of life guarded +by spiritual existences; and secondly, that they hope, in the spiritual +power of an earlier consciousness, to make themselves independent of +the little, contemptible annoyances that surround humanity.” He then +recites an incident from his second year, and continues: “This little +morning-star of earliest recollection stands yet tolerably clear in its +low horizon, but growing paler as the daylight of life rises higher. +And now I remember only this clearly, that in earlier life I remembered +everything clearly.” + +How clearly will be apparent to the reader who follows Richter through +the minute and detailed narrative of his childish life, and in his +writings the images of this early life are constantly reappearing under +different forms. Something is no doubt due to the early birth in Richter +of a self-consciousness, bred in part by the solitude of his life. It +may be said with some assurance that the vividness of early recollection +has much to do with determining the poet and novelist and essayist +in his choice of themes bearing directly upon childhood. The childish +experience of Wordsworth, De Quincey, Dickens, Lamartine, and Richter is +clearly traceable in the writings of these men. If they look into their +own hearts and write, the images which they bring forth are so abundantly +of childhood that they cannot avoid making use of them, especially since +they retain recollections which demand the interpretation of the maturer +mind. That they should so freely draw from this storehouse of childish +experience reflects also the temper of the age for which they write. The +fullness with which the themes of childhood are treated means not that a +few men have suddenly discovered the subject, but that all are sensitive +to these same impressions. + +It is not, however, the vividness of recollection alone, but the early +birth of consciousness, which will determine the treatment of the +subject. If one remember the facts of his early years rather than how he +thought and felt about those facts, he will be less inclined to dwell +upon the facts afterward, or make use of them in his work. They will have +little significance to him. A distinction in this view is to be observed +between Richter and Goethe. The autobiographies of the two men reveal the +different impressions made upon them by their childhood. The facts which +Goethe recalls are but little associated with contemporaneous reflection +upon the facts, and they serve but a trifling purpose in Goethe’s art. +The facts which Richter recalls are imbedded in a distinct conception +regarding them, and perform a very positive function in his art. + +The character of Mignon may be dismissed from special consideration, +for it is clear that Goethe used Mignon’s diminutiveness and implied +youth only to heighten the effect of her elfish and dwarfish nature. +The most considerable reference to childhood is perhaps in the Sorrows +of Young Werther, where the relations between Werther and Charlotte +comprise a sketchy group of children who act as foils or accompaniments +to the pair. Werther discovers Charlotte, it will be remembered, cutting +slices of bread for her younger brothers and sisters; it is by this +means that Goethe would give a charm to the character, presenting it in +its homely, domestic setting. But his purpose is also to intimate the +exceeding sensibility of Werther, and he represents him as taking a most +affectionate interest in the little children whom he sees on his walks. +I suspect, indeed, that Goethe in this has distinctly borrowed from the +Vicar of Wakefield; at any rate, the comparison is easily suggested, +and one brings away the impression of Goldsmith’s genuine feeling and +of Goethe’s deliberate assumption of a feeling for artistic purposes. +Nevertheless, Goethe makes very positive use of childhood in this novel, +not only through the figures of children, but also through the sentiment +of childhood. + +“Nothing on this earth, my dear Wilhelm,” says Werther, “affects my heart +so much as children. When I consider them; when I mark in the little +creatures the seeds of all those virtues and qualities which they will +one day find so indispensable; when I behold in the obstinate all the +future firmness and constancy of a noble character, in the capricious +that levity and gayety of temper which will carry them lightly over the +dangers and troubles of life, their whole nature simple and unpolluted, +then I call to mind the golden words of the Great Teacher of mankind: +‘Except ye become as little children.’ And now, my friend, these +children, who are our equals, whom we ought to consider as our models, +we treat as subjects. They are allowed no will of their own! And have we +then none ourselves? Whence comes our exclusive right? Is it because we +are older and more experienced? Great God! from the height of thy heaven, +thou beholdest great children and little children, and no others; and +thy Son has long since declared which afford the greatest pleasure. But +they believe in him, and hear him not,—that too is an old story; and they +train their children after their own image.” + +We must regard this as a somewhat distorted application of the words +of the gospel, but it is interesting as denoting that Goethe also, who +stood so much in the centre of illumination, had perceived the revealing +light to fall upon the heads of young children. It is not, however, so +much by his direct as by his indirect influence that Goethe is connected +with our subject. If Luther was both an exponent of German feeling and a +determining cause of its direction, Goethe occupies a similar relation +as an expression of German intellectualism and a stimulator of German +thought. A hundred years after his birth, when measures were taking +to celebrate the centenary by the establishment of some educational +foundation to bear his name, the enthusiastic supporters of Froebel +sought to divert public interest into the channel of this movement for +the cultivation of childhood. Froebel’s philosophy has affected modern +educational systems even where his method has not been scrupulously +followed. Its influence upon literature and art can scarcely be traced, +except so far as it has tended to give direction and set limits to the +great body of books and pictures, which, made for children, are also +expository and illustrative of the life of children. I mention him simply +as an additional illustration of the grasp which the whole subject of +childhood has obtained in Germany; it has made itself felt in religion +and politics; so revolutionary was Froebel’s philosophy held to be that +his schools were suppressed at one time by the government as tending to +subvert the state. This was not strange, since Froebel’s own view as to +the education of children was radical and comprehensive. + +A child’s life finds its chief expression in play, and in play its social +instincts are developed. Now the kindergarten recognizes the fact that +play is the child’s business, not his recreation, and undertakes to guide +and form the child through play. It converts that which would otherwise +be aimless or willful into creative, orderly, and governed action. Out +of the play as governed by the wise kindergartner grows a spirit of +courtesy, self-control, forbearance, unselfishness. The whole force of +the education is directed toward a development of the child which never +forgets that he is a person in harmonious relation to others. Community, +not competition, is the watchword of the school. In this view the +kindergarten has its basis in the same law which lies at the foundation +of a free republic. Obedience, as taught by the system of public schools, +is an obedience to rules; it may be likened to the obedience of the +soldier,—a noble thing, but not the highest form of human subjection of +the will. Obedience as evolved in the true kindergarten is a conscious +obedience to law. The unity of life in the school, with entire freedom of +development in the individual, is the aim of the kindergarten. + + * * * * * + +The enthusiasm which made itself felt in France in the rise of the +romantic school, with its expression chiefly through poetry, the drama, +and fiction, disclosed its power likewise in Germany. There, however, +other channels offered a course for the new current. The rise of the +school of religious painters, of which Overbeck and Cornelius were +eminent examples, was a distinct issue of the movement of the times. It +was regarded as reactionary by some, but its reaction was rather in form +than in spirit. It ran counter to a Philistinism which was complacent +and indifferent to spiritual life, and it sought to embody its ideas in +forms which not only Philistinism but humanism contemned, yet it was all +the while working in the interest of a higher freedom. It is noticeable, +therefore, that this religious art, in its choice of subjects, not only +resorted to the early ecclesiological type, but struck out into a new +path, choosing themes which imply a subjective view of Christianity. +Thus, Overbeck’s picture of Christ blessing little children, a subject +which is a favorite one of modern religious art, is a distinct +recognition of modern sentiment. Here is the relation borne by the Christ +to little children presented by a religious art, which, however much it +might seek to reinstate the old forms, could not help being affected +by the new life of Christianity. Overbeck went to the early Florentines +for his masters, but he did not find this subject among their works. He +caught it from the new reading of the old gospel. + + + + +VIII + +HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN + + +As Overbeck and his school returned to the religious art which preceded +the Renaissance, so Thorwaldsen, like Canova and lesser men, turned back +to Greek art, and was working contemporaneously with Overbeck at Rome +in a very different temper. To him the central figure of Christianity +was not a child in its mother’s arms, but a strong, thoughtful man; +for childhood he turned to the sportive conception of Amor, which he +embodied in a great variety of forms. The myth appealed, aside from the +opportunity which it offered for the expression of sensuous beauty, to +his northern love of fairyland. His countryman, Andersen, tells us how, +when they were all seated in the dusk, Thorwaldsen would come from his +work and beg for a fairy-tale. + +It is Andersen himself who has made the most unique contribution not only +to the literature which children read, but to that which is illustrative +of childhood. He attained his eminence sheerly by the exhibition of a +power which resulted from his information by the spirit of childhood. He +was not only an interpreter of childhood; he was the first child who made +a real contribution to literature. The work by which he is best known is +nothing more nor less than an artistic creation of precisely the order +which is common among children. + +It is customary to speak of his best known short stories as fairy tales; +wonder-stories is in some respects a more exact description, but the +name has hardly a native sound. Andersen himself classed his stories +under the two heads of _historier_ and _eventyr_; the _historier_ +corresponds well enough with its English mate, being the history of +human action, or, since it is a short history, the story; the _eventyr_, +more nearly allied perhaps to the German _abenteuer_ than to the English +_adventure_, presumes an element of strangeness causing wonder, while +it does not necessarily demand the machinery of the supernatural. +When we speak of fairy tales, we have before our minds the existence, +for artistic purposes, of a spiritual world peopled with beings that +exercise themselves in human affairs, and are endowed in the main with +human attributes, though possessed of certain ethereal advantages, and +generally under orders from some superior power, often dimly understood +as fate; the Italians, indeed, call the fairy _fata_. In a rough way we +include under the title of fairies all the terrible and grotesque shapes +as well, and this world of spiritual beings is made to consist of giants, +ogres, brownies, pixies, nisses, gnomes, elves, and whatever other +creatures have found in it a local habitation and name. The fairy itself +is generally represented as very diminutive, the result, apparently, +of an attempted compromise between the imagination and the senses, by +which the existence of fairies for certain purposes is conceded on +condition they shall be made so small that the senses may be excused from +recognizing them. + +The belief in fairies gave rise to the genuine fairy tale, which is now +an acknowledged classic, and the gradual elimination of this belief +from the civilized mind has been attended with some awkwardness. These +creations of fancy—if we must so dismiss them—had secured a somewhat +positive recognition in literature before it was finally discovered +that they came out of the unseen and therefore could have no life. +Once received into literature they could not well be ignored, but the +understanding, which appears to serve as special police in such cases, +now has orders to admit no new-comers unless they answer to one of +three classes: either they must be direct descendants of the fairies of +literature, having certain marks about them to indicate their parentage, +or they must be teachers of morality thus disguised, or they may be mere +masqueraders; one thing is certain, they must spring from no belief in +fairy life, but be one and all referred to some sufficient cause,—a +dream, a moral lesson, a chemical experiment. But it is found that +literature has its own sympathies, not always compassed by the mere +understanding, and the consequence is that the sham fairies in the sham +fairy tales never really get into literature at all, but disappear in +limbo; while every now and then a genuine fairy, born of a genuine, +poetic belief, secures a place in spite of the vigilance of the guard. + +Perhaps nothing has done more to vulgarize the fairy than its +introduction upon the stage; the charm of the fairy tale is in its +divorce from human experience; the charm of the stage is in its +realization, in miniature, of human life. If the frog is heard to speak, +if the dog is turned before one’s eyes into a prince, by having cold +water dashed over it, the charm of the fairy tale has fled, and in its +place we have only the perplexing pleasure of legerdemain. The effect of +producing these scenes upon the stage is to bring them one step nearer +to sensuous reality, and one step further from imaginative reality; and +since the real life of fairy is in the imagination, a wrong is committed +when it is dragged from its shadowy hiding-place and made to turn into +ashes under the calcium light of the understanding. + +By a tacit agreement fairy tales have come to be consigned to the +nursery; the old tools of superstition have become the child’s toys, +and when a writer comes forward, now, bringing new fairy tales, it is +almost always with an apology, not for trespassing upon ground already +occupied, but for indulging in what is no longer belief, but make-belief. +“My story,” he is apt to say, “is not true; we none of us believe it, +and I shall give you good evidence before I am done that least of all do +I believe it. I shall probably explain it by referring it to a strange +dream, or shall justify it by the excellent lesson it is to teach. I +adopt the fairy form as suited to the imagination of children; it is a +childish thing, and I am half ashamed, as a grown person, to be found +engaged in such nonsense.” Out of this way of regarding fairy tales has +come that peculiar monstrosity of the times, the scientific fairy tale, +which is nothing short of an insult to a whole race of innocent beings. +It may be accepted as a foregone conclusion that with a disbelief in +fairies the genuine fairy tale has died, and that it is better to content +ourselves with those stories which sprang from actual belief, telling +them over to successive generations of children, than to seek to extend +the literature by any ingenuity of modern skepticism. There they are, +the fairy tales without authorship, as imperishable as nursery ditties; +scholarly collections of them may be made, but they will have their true +preservation, not as specimens in a museum of literary curiosities, +but as children’s toys. Like the sleeping princess in the wood, the +fairy tale may be hedged about with bristling notes and thickets of +commentaries, but the child will pass straight to the beauty, and awaken +for his own delight the old charmed life. + +It is worth noting, then, that just when historical criticism, under the +impulse of the Grimms, was ordering and accounting for these fragile +creations,—a sure mark that they were ceasing to exist as living forms in +literature,—Hans Christian Andersen should have come forward as master +in a new order of stories, which may be regarded as the true literary +successor to the old order of fairy tales, answering the demands of a +spirit which rejects the pale ghost of the scientific or moral or jocular +or pedantic fairy tale. Andersen, indeed, has invented fairy tales +purely such, and has given form and enduring substance to traditional +stories current in Scandinavia; but it is not upon such work that his +real fame rests, and it is certain that while he will be mentioned in +the biographical dictionaries as the writer of novels, poems, romances, +dramas, sketches of travel, and an autobiography, he will be known and +read as the author of certain short stories, of which the charm at first +glance seems to be in the sudden discovery of life and humor in what +are ordinarily regarded as inanimate objects, or what are somewhat +compassionately called dumb animals. When we have read and studied +the stories further, and perceived their ingenuity and wit and humane +philosophy, we can after all give no better account of their charm than +just this, that they disclose the possible or fancied parallel to human +life carried on by what our senses tell us has no life, or our reason +assures us has no rational power. + +The life which Andersen sets before us is in fact a dramatic +representation upon an imaginary stage, with puppets that are not +pulled by strings, but have their own muscular and nervous economy. The +life which he displays is not a travesty of human life, it is human +life repeated in miniature under conditions which give a charming and +unexpected variety. By some transmigration, souls have passed into +tin-soldiers, balls, tops, beetles, money-pigs, coins, shoes, leap-frogs, +matches, and even such attenuated individualities as darning-needles; +and when, informing these apparently dead or stupid bodies, they begin +to make manifestations, it is always in perfect consistency with the +ordinary conditions of the bodies they occupy, though the several +objects become by this endowment of souls suddenly expanded in their +capacity. Perhaps in nothing is Andersen’s delicacy of artistic feeling +better shown than in the manner in which he deals with his animated +creations when they are brought into direct relations with human beings. +The absurdity which the bald understanding perceives is dexterously +suppressed by a reduction of all the factors to one common term. +For example, in his story of The Leap-Frog, he tells how a flea, a +grasshopper and a leap-frog once wanted to see which could jump highest, +and invited the whole world “and everybody else besides who chose to +come,” to see the performance. The king promised to give his daughter to +the one who jumped the highest, for it was stale fun when there was no +prize to jump for. The flea and the grasshopper came forward in turn and +put in their claims; the leap-frog also appeared, but was silent. The +flea jumped so high that nobody could see where he went to, so they all +asserted that he had not jumped at all; the grasshopper jumped in the +king’s face, and was set down as an ill-mannered thing; the leap-frog, +after reflection, leaped into the lap of the princess, and thereupon the +king said, “There is nothing above my daughter; therefore to bound up to +her is the highest jump that can be made: but for this, one must possess +understanding, and the leap-frog has shown that he has understanding. +He is brave and intellectual.” “And so,” the story declares, “he won +the princess.” The barren absurdity of a leap-frog marrying a princess +is perhaps the first thing that strikes the impartial reader of this +abstract, and there is very likely something offensive to him in the +notion; but in the story itself this absurdity is so delightfully veiled +by the succession of happy turns in the characterization of the three +jumpers, as well as of the old king, the house-dog, and the old councilor +“who had had three orders given him to make him hold his tongue,” that +the final impression upon the mind is that of a harmonizing of all +the characters, and the king, princess, and councilor can scarcely +be distinguished in kind from the flea, grasshopper, leap-frog, and +house-dog. After that, the marriage of the leap-frog and princess is +quite a matter of course. + +The use of speaking animals in story was no discovery of Andersen’s, and +yet in the distinction between his wonder-story and the well-known fable +lies an explanation of the charm which attaches to his work. The end +of every fable is _hæc fabula docet_, and it was for this palpable end +that the fable was created. The lion, the fox, the mouse, the dog, are +in a very limited way true to the accepted nature of the animals which +they represent, and their intercourse with each other is governed by the +ordinary rules of animal life, but the actions and words are distinctly +illustrative of some morality. The fable is an animated proverb. The +animals are made to act and speak in accordance with some intended +lesson, and have this for the reason of their being. The lesson is first; +the characters, created afterward, are, for purposes of the teacher, +disguised as animals; very little of the animal appears, but very much +of the lesson. The art which invented the fable was a modest handmaid +to morality. In Andersen’s stories, however, the spring is not in the +didactic but in the imaginative. He sees the beetle in the imperial +stable stretching out his thin legs to be shod with golden shoes like the +emperor’s favorite horse, and the personality of the beetle determines +the movement of the story throughout; egotism, pride at being proud, +jealousy, and unbounded self-conceit are the furniture of this beetle’s +soul, and his adventures one by one disclose his character. Is there a +lesson in all this? Precisely as there is a lesson in any picture of +human life where the same traits are sketched. The beetle, after all his +adventures, some of them ignominious but none expelling his self-conceit, +finds himself again in the emperor’s stable, having solved the problem +why the emperor’s horse had golden shoes. “They were given to the horse +on my account,” he says, and adds, “the world is not so bad after all, +but one must know how to take things as they come.” There is in this and +other of Andersen’s stories a singular shrewdness, as of a very keen +observer of life, singular because at first blush the author seems to be +a sentimentalist. The satires, like The Emperor’s New Clothes and The +Swiftest Runners, mark this characteristic of shrewd observation very +cleverly. Perhaps, after all, we are stating most simply the distinction +between his story and the fable when we say that humor is a prominent +element in the one and absent in the other; and to say that there is +humor is to say that there is real life. + +It is frequently said that Andersen’s stories accomplish their purpose +of amusing children by being childish, yet it is impossible for a mature +person to read them without detecting repeatedly the marks of experience. +There is a subtle undercurrent of wisdom that has nothing to do with +childishness, and the child who is entertained returns to the same story +afterward to find a deeper significance than it was possible for him +to apprehend at the first reading. The forms and the incident are in +consonance with childish experience, but the spirit which moves through +the story comes from a mind that has seen and felt the analogue of the +story in some broader or coarser form. The story of The Ugly Duckling +is an inimitable presentation of Andersen’s own tearful and finally +triumphant life; yet no child who reads the story has its sympathy for +a moment withdrawn from the duckling and transferred to a human being. +Andersen’s nice sense of artistic limitations saves him from making +the older thought obtrude itself upon the notice of children, and his +power of placing himself at the same angle of vision with children is +remarkably shown in one instance, where, in Little Klaus and Big Klaus, +death is treated as a mere incident in the story, a surprise but not a +terror. + +The naïveté which is so conspicuous an element in Andersen’s stories was +an expression of his own singularly artless nature. He was a child all +his life; his was a condition of almost arrested development. He was +obedient to the demands of his spiritual nature, and these led him into +a fresh field of fancy and imagination. What separates him and gives him +a distinct place in literature is, as I have said, that he was the first +child who had contributed to literature. His very autobiography discloses +at every turn this controlling genius of childhood, and the testimony of +his friends confirms it. + +Now that Andersen has told his stories, it seems an easy thing to do, +and we have plenty of stories written for children that attempt the same +thing, sometimes also with moderate success; for Andersen’s discovery +was after all but the simple application to literature of a faculty +which has always been exercised. The likeness that things inanimate +have to things animate is constantly forced upon us; it remained for +Andersen to pursue the comparison further, and, letting types loose +from their antitypes, to give them independent existence. The result +has been a surprise in literature and a genuine addition to literary +forms. It is possible to follow in his steps, now that he has shown us +the way, but it is no less evident that the success which he attained +was due not merely to his happy discovery of a latent property, but to +the nice feeling and strict obedience to laws of art with which he made +use of his discovery. Andersen’s genius enabled him to see the soul in a +darning-needle, and he perceived also the limitations of the life he was +to portray, so that while he was often on the edge of absurdity he did +not lose his balance. Especially is it to be noted that these stories, +which we regard as giving an opportunity for invention when the series of +old-fashioned fairy tales had been closed, show clearly the coming in of +that temper in novel-writing which is eager to describe things as they +are. Within the narrow limits of his miniature story, Andersen moves us +by the same impulse as the modern novelist who depends for his material +upon what he has actually seen and heard, and for his inspiration upon +the power to penetrate the heart of things; so that the old fairy tale +finds its successor in this new realistic wonder-story, just as the old +romance gives place to the new novel. In both, as in the corresponding +development of poetry and painting, is found a deeper sense of life and a +finer perception of the intrinsic value of common forms. + +This, then, may be taken as the peculiar contribution of Andersen: that +he, appearing at a time when childhood had been laid open to view as a +real and indestructible part of human life, was the interpreter to the +world of that creative power which is significant of childhood. The +child spoke through him, and disclosed some secrets of life; childhood +in men heard the speech, and recognized it as an echo of their own +half-forgotten voices. The literature of this kind which he produced has +become a distinct and new form. It already has its imitations, and people +are said to write in the vein of Andersen. Such work, and Andersen’s in +particular, presents itself to us under two aspects: as literature in +which conceptions of childhood are embodied, and as literature which +feeds and stimulates the imagination of children. But this is precisely +the way in which a large body of current literature must be regarded. + + + + +IX + +IN AMERICAN LITERARY ART + + +The conditions of life in the United States have been most favorable +to the growth of a special literature for children, but, with one or +two notable exceptions, the literature which is independent of special +audiences has had little to do with childhood as a subject, and art +has been singularly silent. There is scarcely anything in Irving, for +example, which touches upon child life. A sentence now and then in +Emerson shows an insight of youth, as when he speaks of the unerring +instinct with which a boy tells off in his mind the characters of the +company in a room. Bryant has touched the subject more nearly, but +chiefly in a half-fantastic way, in his Little People of the Snow and +Sella. Thoreau could hardly be expected to concern himself with the young +of the human race when he had nearer neighbors and their offspring. +Lowell has answered the appeal which the death of children makes to +the heart, but aside from his tender elegiac verses has scarcely dwelt +on childhood either in prose or verse. Holmes, with his boyishness of +temper, has caught occasionally at the ebullition of youthful spirits, as +in the humorous figure of young Benjamin Franklin in the Autocrat, and in +some of his autobiographic sketches. His School-Boy, also, adds another +to those charming memories of youth which have made Cowper, Goldsmith, +and Gray known to readers who else would scarcely have been drawn to +them; for the one unfailing poetic theme which finds a listener who has +passed his youth is the imaginative rendering of that youth. + +Whittier, though his crystalline verse flows through the memory of many +children, has contributed very little to the portrayal of childhood. His +portrait of the Barefoot Boy and his tender recollection In School Days +are the only poems which deal directly with the subject, and neither +of them is wholly objective. They are a mature man’s reflection of +childhood. Snow-Bound rests upon the remembrance of boyish days, but +it deals rather with the circumstance of boyhood than with the boy’s +thoughts or feelings. Yet the poet shows unmistakably his sense of +childhood, although one would not be far wrong who understood him as +never separating the spirit of childhood from the human life at any +stage. His editorial work in the two volumes, Child-Life in Poetry and +Child-Life in Prose, is an indication of his interest in the subject, and +he was quick to catch the existence of the sentiment in its association +with another poet, whose name is more directly connected with childhood. +In his verses, The Poet and the Children, he gave expression to the +thought which occurred to many as they considered how soon Longfellow’s +death followed upon the spontaneous celebration of his birthday by +multitudes of children. + +This testimony to Longfellow was scarcely the result of what he had +written either for or of children. It was rather a natural tribute to a +poet who had made himself a household word in American homes. Children +are brought up on poetry to a considerable extent; they are, moreover, +under training for the most part by young women, and the pure sentiment +which forms the unfailing element of Longfellow’s writings finds in such +teachers the readiest response. When one comes to consider the subjects +of Longfellow’s poetry, one finds that the number addressed to children, +or finding their motive in childhood, is not large. Those of direct +address are, To a Child, From my Arm-Chair, Weariness, Children; yet +which of these demands or would receive a response from children? Only +one, From my Arm-Chair, and that chiefly by the circumstance which called +it out, and on which the poet relies for holding the direct attention of +children. He gets far away from most children before he has reached the +end of his poem To a Child, and in the other two poems we hear only the +voice of a man in whom the presence of children awakens thoughts which +lie too deep for their tears, though not for his. + +Turning aside from those which appeal in form to children, one finds +several which, like those last named, are evoked by the sentiment which +childhood suggests. Such are The Reaper and the Flowers, Resignation, The +Children’s Hour, and A Shadow, all in the minor key except The Children’s +Hour; and this poem, perfect as it is in a father’s apprehension, yields +only a subtle and half-understood fragrance to a child. One poem partly +rests on a man’s thought of his own childhood, My Lost Youth; The +Hanging of the Crane contains for its best lines a vignette of infancy; +a narrative poem, The Wreck of the Hesperus, has for its chief figure +a child; and Hiawatha is bright with a sketch of Indian boyhood. The +translations show two or three which include this subject. + +While, therefore, Longfellow is repeatedly aware of the presence of +children, it is not by the poems which spring out of that recognition +that he especially reaches them. In his poem From my Arm-Chair, he refers +to The Village Blacksmith; that has a single verse in which children +figure, but the whole poem will arrest the attention of children far more +than From my Arm-Chair, and it belongs to them more. It cannot be too +often repeated that books and poems about children are not necessarily +for children. The thoughts which the man has of the child often depend +wholly upon the fact that he has passed beyond childhood, and looks back +upon it; it is impossible for the child to stand by his side. Thus the +poem Weariness contains the reflection of a man who anticipates the after +life of children; there is nothing in it which belongs to the reflection +of childhood itself. Tennyson’s May Queen, which has found its way into +most of our anthologies for the young, is a notable example of a large +class of verses quite unfit for such a place. It may be said in general +that sentiment, when made a part of childhood, is very sure to be morbid +and unnatural. We have a sentiment which rises at the sight of childhood, +but children themselves have none of it; the more refined it is, the more +unfit it is to go into their books. + +Here is a collection of poetry for children, having all the marks of a +sound and reputable work. As I turn its leaves, I come upon a long ballad +of The Dying Child, Longfellow’s The Reaper and the Flowers, a poem +called The Little Girl’s Lament, in which a child asks, “Is heaven a long +way off, mother?” and for two or three pages dwells upon a child’s pain +at the loss of her father; Tennyson’s May Queen, who is so unconscionably +long a time dying; Mrs. Hemans’s imitation of Mignon’s song in a poem +called The Better Land; and a poem by Dora Greenwell which I must regard +as the most admirable example of what a poem for a child should not be. +It is entitled A Story by the Fire, and begins,— + + “Children love to hear of children! + I will tell of a little child + Who dwelt alone with his mother + By the edge of a forest wild. + One summer eve, from the forest, + Late, late, down the grassy track + The child came back with lingering step, + And looks oft turning back. + + “‘Oh, mother!’ he said, ‘in the forest + I have met with a little child; + All day he played with me,—all day + He talked with me and smiled. + At last he left me alone, but then + He gave me this rosebud red; + And said he would come to me again + When all its leaves were spread.’” + +Thereupon the child declares that it will put the rosebud in a glass, and +wait eagerly for the friend to come. So the night goes and the morning +comes, and the child sleeps. + + “The mother went to his little room. + With all its leaves outspread + She saw a rose in fullest bloom; + And, in the little bed, + A child that did not breathe nor stir,— + A little, happy child, + Who had met his little friend again, + And in the meeting smiled.” + +Here is a fantastic conception, extremely puzzling to a healthy-minded +child. Imagine the natural questions of a simple, ingenuous boy or girl +upon hearing this read. Who is this other child? Why was he coming back +when the rose was blown? You explain, as well as you are able, that it +was a phantom of death; or, if that seems too pallid, you try to imagine +that the poet meant Jesus Christ or an angel by this other little child: +but, in whatever way you explain it, you are obliged, if you will satisfy +the downright little inquirer, to say plainly, This little boy died, and +you begin to wish with all your heart that the poet with all her _ed_ +rhymes had added _dead_. Then the puzzle begins over again to connect +the blooming rose and the little playmate with death. Do you say that +you will leave the delicate suggestion of the lines to find its way into +the child’s mind, and be the interpreter of the poem? This is what one +might plead in Wordsworth’s We are Seven, for instance. The comparison +suggested by the two poems is a partial answer. Wordsworth’s poem is +a plain, objective narrative, which a child might hear and enjoy with +scarcely a notion of what was implied in it, returning afterward to +the deep, underlying sense. This poem of Dora Greenwell’s has no real +objective character; the incident of the walk in the forest is of the +most shadowy sort, and is used for its subtlety. I object to subtlety in +literature for children. We have a right to demand that there shall be a +clear outward sense, whatever may be the deeper meaning to older people. +Hans Andersen’s story of The Ugly Duckling is a consummate example of a +narrative which is enjoyable by the most matter-of-fact child, and yet +recalls to the older reader a life’s history. + +I have been led into a long digression through the natural correlation +which exists between childhood in literature and a literature for +children. Let me get back to my main topic by a similar path. The one +author in America whose works yield the most fruitful examples in +illustration of our subject is Hawthorne, and at the same time he is +the most masterly of all our authors who have aimed at writing for an +audience of children. Whatever may become of the great mass of books for +young people published in America during the past fifty years,—and most +of it is already crumbling in memory,—it requires no heroism to predict +an immortality of fame for the little books which Hawthorne wrote with +so much good nature and evident pleasure, Grandfather’s Chair and the +Wonder Book, with its companion, Tanglewood Tales. Mr. Parkman has given +a new reading in the minds of many people to the troubles in Acadia, but +he has not disturbed the vitality of Evangeline; one may add footnote +after footnote to modify or correct the statements in The Courtship of +Miles Standish, but the poem will continue to be accepted as a picture +of Pilgrim times. So the researches of antiquarians, with more material +at their command than Hawthorne enjoyed, may lead them to different +conclusions from those which he reached in his sketches of early New +England history, but they cannot destroy that charm in the rendering +which makes the book a classic. + +More notable still is Hawthorne’s version of Greek myths. Probably he +had no further authority for the stories than Lemprière. He only added +the touch of his own genius. Only! and the old rods blossomed with +a new variety of fruit and flower. It is easily said that Hawthorne +Yankeeized the stories, that he used the Greek stones for constructing a +Gothic building, but this is academic criticism. He really succeeded in +naturalizing the Greek myths in American soil, and all the labors of all +the Coxes will not succeed in supplanting them. Moreover, I venture to +think that Hawthorne’s fame is more firmly fixed by means of the Wonder +Book. The presence of an audience of children had a singular power over +him. I do not care for the embroidery of actual child life which he has +devised for these tales; it is scarcely more than a fashion, and already +strikes one as quaint and out of date. But I cannot read the tales +themselves without being aware that Hawthorne was breathing one air when +he was writing them and another when he was at work on his romances. He +illustrates in a delicate and subtle manner the line of Juvenal which +bids the old remember the respect due to the young. Juvenal uses it to +shame men into decorum; but just as any sensitive person will restrain +himself in expression before children, so Hawthorne appears to have +restrained his thought in their silent presence,—to have done this, and +also to have admitted into it the sunshine which their presence brought. +With what bright and joyous playfulness he repeats the old stories, +and with what a paternal air he makes the tales yield their morsels of +wisdom! There is no opening of dark passages, no peering into recesses, +but a happy, generous spirit reigns throughout. + +All this could have been predicated from the delightful glimpses which +we now have of Hawthorne’s relations to his children, glimpses which his +Note-Books, indeed, had already afforded, and which were not wanting also +in his finished work. Nor was this interest in childhood something which +sprang up after he had children of his own. In that lonely period of his +young manhood, when he held converse only with himself, his Note-Books +attest how his observation took in the young and his fancy played about +them. As early as 1836 he makes a note: “To picture a child’s (one of +four or five years old) reminiscences at sunset of a long summer’s +day,—his first awakening, his studies, his sports, his little fits of +passion, perhaps a whipping, etc.” Again, how delicate is the hint +conveyed in a passage describing one of his solitary walks! “Another time +I came suddenly on a small Canadian boy, who was in a hollow place among +the ruined logs of an old causeway, picking raspberries,—lonely among +bushes and gorges, far up the wild valley; and the lonelier seemed the +little boy for the bright sunshine, that showed no one else in a wide +space of view except him and me.” He has elsewhere a quick picture of a +boy running at full speed; a wistful look at a sleeping infant, which +somehow touches one almost as if one had seen a sketch for a Madonna; and +then this passage, significant of the working of his mind,—he is noting a +Mediterranean boy from Malaga whom he saw on the wharf: “I must remember +this little boy, and perhaps I may make something more beautiful of him +than these rough and imperfect touches would promise.” + +The relation which Hawthorne held to his own children, as illustrated +both in the memoirs of him and in his Note-Books, was unquestionably a +sign of that profound humanity which was the deep spring of his writings. +But it was not, as some seem to think, a selfish love which he bore +for them; he could show to them, because the relation was one of the +elemental things in nature, a fullness of feeling which found expression +otherwise only as all his nature found outlet,—in spiritual communion +with mankind. How deep this inherent love of childhood lay is instanced +in that passage in Our Old Home which one reads as it were with uncovered +head. It is in the chapter entitled Some Glimpses of English Poverty, and +relates how one of the party visiting an almshouse—Hawthorne himself, as +his wife has since told us—was unexpectedly and most unwillingly made +the object of demonstrative attention on the part of a poor, scrofulous, +repulsive waif of humanity. Nothing that he had done had attracted the +child,—only what he was; and so, moved by compassion, this strange, shy +man took the child in his arms and kissed it. Let any one read the entire +passage, note the mingled emotions which play about the scene like a bit +of iridescent glass, and dare to speak of Hawthorne again except with +reverence. + +In the same chapter occurs that delicious little description of children +playing in the street, where the watchfulness of the older children over +the younger is noted, and a small brother, who is hovering about his +sister, is gravely noted as “working a kind of miracle to transport her +from one dust heap to another.” He makes the reflection, “Beholding +such works of love and duty, I took heart again, and deemed it not so +impossible after all for these neglected children to find a path through +the squalor and evil of their circumstances up to the gate of heaven.” + +One of the earliest and most ambitious of his short tales, The Gentle +Boy, gathers into itself the whole history of a pathetic childhood, and +there seems to have been an intention to produce in Ilbrahim precisely +those features which mark the childish martyr and confessor. Again, among +the Twice-Told Tales is the winning sketch of Little Annie’s Ramble, +valuable most of all for its unconscious testimony to the abiding sense +of companionship which Hawthorne found with children. In Edward Fane’s +Rosebud, also, is a passage referring to the death of a child, which +is the only approach to the morbid in connection with childhood that I +recall in Hawthorne. Little Daffydowndilly, a quaint apologue, has by +virtue of its unquestionable fitness found its way into all reading-books +for the young. + +The story, however, which all would select as most expressive of +Hawthorne’s sympathy with childhood is The Snow Image. In that the +half-conventional figures which served to introduce the stories in the +Wonder Book have passed, by a very slight transformation, into quaint +impersonations. They have the outward likeness of boys and girls, but, +by the alchemy which Hawthorne used chiefly upon men and women, they +are made to have ingenuous and artless converse with a being of other +than flesh and blood. It is the charm of this exquisite tale that the +children create the object in which they believe so implicitly. Would it +be straining a point too far to say that as Andersen managed, whether +consciously or not, to write his own spiritual biography in his tale of +The Ugly Duckling, so Hawthorne in The Snow Image saw himself as in a +glass? At any rate, we can ourselves see him reflected in those childish +figures, absorbed in the creation out of the cold snow of a sprite which +cannot without peril come too near the warm life of the common world, +regarded with half-pitying love and belief by one, good-naturedly scorned +by crasser man. + +In his romances children play no unimportant part. It is Ned Higgins’s +cent which does the mischief with Hepzibah, in The House of the Seven +Gables, transforming her from a shrinking gentlewoman into an ignoble +shopkeeper; and thus it becomes only right and proper that Ned Higgins’s +portrait should be drawn at full length with a gravity and seriousness +which would not be wasted on a grown man like Dixey. In The Scarlet +Letter one might almost call Pearl the central figure. Certainly, as she +flashes in and out of the sombre shadows, she contrives to touch with +light one character after another, revealing, interpreting, compelling. +In the deeper lines one reads how this child concentrates in herself +the dread consequences of sin. The Puritan, uttering the wrath of +God descending from the fathers to the children, never spoke in more +searching accents than Hawthorne in the person of Pearl. “The child,” +he says, “could not be made amenable to rules. In giving her existence +a great law had been broken; and the result was a being whose elements +were perhaps beautiful and brilliant, but all in disorder.” When one +stops to think of The Scarlet Letter without Pearl, he discovers suddenly +how vital the child is to the story. The scene in the woods, that moving +passage where Pearl compels her mother to replace the scarlet A, and all +the capricious behavior toward the minister show how much value Hawthorne +placed on this figure in his drama: and when the climax is reached, and +Hester, Arthur, and Pearl stand together on the scaffold, the supreme +moment may fairly be said to be that commemorated in the words, “Pearl +kissed his lips.” + +It is noteworthy, also, that when Hawthorne was struggling with fate, +and, with the consciousness of death stealing over him, made ineffectual +efforts to embody his profoundest thoughts of life and immortality, he +should have expended his chief art in loving characterization of Pansie, +in the Dolliver Romance. Whatever might have come of this last effort, +could fate have been conquered, I for one am profoundly grateful that +the two figures of grandsire and grandchild stand thus fully wrought, to +guard the gateway of Hawthorne’s passage out of life. + + * * * * * + +The advent of the child in literature at the close of the last century +was characterized, as I have pointed out, by a recognition of personality +in childhood as distinct from relationship. The child as one of the +family had always been recognized, and the child also in its more +elemental nature; it was the child as possessed of consciousness, as +isolated, as disclosing a nature capable of independent action, thought, +and feeling, that now came forward into the world’s view, and was added +to the stock of the world’s literature, philosophy, and art. + +“The real virtues of one age,” says Mozley, “become the spurious ones +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. + + Literature for children in the United States, 235, 236; + some of its tendencies, 239, 240; + measures for its enrichment, 240. + + Literature, the source of knowledge, 7; + of Christendom, the exposition of the conception of the Christ, 50; + inaction in, 54; + fallacy in the study of the development of, 104; + its bounds enlarged, 163. + + _Little Annie’s Ramble_, 231. + + _Little Daffydowndilly_, 231. + + _Little Girl’s Lament, The_, 222. + + _Little People of the Snow_, 217. + + Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, childhood in the writings of, 219-221. + + Love, the figure of, in classic and modern art, 37. + + Lowell, James Russell, 217. + + Loyola, 91. + + Luca della Robbia, the children of, 101. + + Lucretius, 34, 35. + + _Lucy Gray_, 3, 148. + + Luther, Martin, an exponent of German character, 190; + his treatment of childhood, 190. + + + _Macbeth_, 121, 123. + + Madonna, development of the, 84-87; + treatment of by Raphael, 92-98; + a domestic subject, 98. + + _Magnificat, The_, 44, 47. + + _Man of Law’s Tale, The_, 110. + + Marcius, 118. + + Martial, 34. + + Martin, Theodore, translation by, 33. + + Mary, the Virgin, legends concerning, in the Apocryphal Gospels, + 58-60; + her childhood, 65; + her appearance in early art, 83; + her motherhood, 84; + her relation to Jesus, 85. + + _May Queen, The_, 222. + + _Medea, The_, cited, 19. + + _Menaphon_, 117. + + Mercurius, 36. + + _Messiah_, Pope’s, 133, 134. + + Michelet, 186. + + _Midsummer Night’s Dream_, 124. + + Millais, John Everett, 179. + + Milton, John, quoted, 46; + the absence of childhood in, 127, 128; + compared with Bunyan, 129; + with Pope, 133. + + Moses, 42. + + Moth, Shakespeare’s, 118. + + Mozley, T. B., quoted, 190, 191, 235. + + Musset, Alfred de, 186. + + _My Lost Youth_, 221. + + + Netherland family life, pictured in the life of our Lord, 89-92. + + New Testament, childhood in the, 47-52. + + Nicodemus, 50. + + Niebuhr, B. G., 28. + + Norton, Charles Eliot, translation by, 78. + + _Note-Books_, Hawthorne’s, 228, 229. + + Nurse, the, in Greek life, 14; + in the _Odyssey_, 14, 15. + + + _Ode on the Morning of Christ’s Nativity_, 127, 133. + + Odysseus and his nurse, 15. + + _Odyssey_, memorable incidents in the, 14, 15. + + _Œdipus Tyrannus_ contrasted with the _Iliad_, 16-18. + + Old Testament, childhood in the, 42-46. + + _Our Old Home_, 230. + + Overbeck, 88, 199-201. + + + Palmer, George Herbert, as a translator of Homer, 28. + + Parkman, Francis, 226. + + Pater, Walter, quoted, 79. + + Patient Griselda, 111. + + _Paul and Virginia_, representative of innocent childhood, 180; + an escape from the world, 181; + an attempt at the preservation of childhood, 183. + + _Pet Lamb, The_, 149. + + Pheidias, 26, 28. + + _Pied Piper, The_, 237. + + _Pilgrim’s Progress, The_, 130-133. + + Plato, references of, to childhood, 22-26; + compared with artists, 26; + can be read by children, 242. + + Pope, Alexander, 133; + compared with Milton, 133, 134; + with Shakespeare, 134. + + _Prelude, The_, 151. + + _Princess, The_, 170. + + Puritanism, the attitude of, toward childhood, 128, 129. + + + _Queen’s Marie_, the ballad of the, 106. + + + Raphael, an exponent of the idea of his time, 92; + the Madonnas of, 92; + in the Berlin Museum, 93; + Casa Connestabile, 93; + del Cardellino, 93; + at St. Petersburg, 93; + della Casa Tempi, 94; + at Bridgewater, 95; + del Passegio, 96; + San Sisto, 97, 98; + treatment by, of Amor, 99; + his children, 100. + + _Reaper and the Flowers, The_, 220, 222. + + Renaissance, the spirit of the, in Raphael’s work, 98; + childhood in its relation to the, 102. + + _Republic_, Plato’s, cited, 23. + + _Resignation_, 220. + + Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 141, 142. + + Richter, Jean Paul Friedrich, autobiography of, 191; + early birth of consciousness in, 192; + compared with Goethe, 194. + + _Riverside Magazine for Young People, The_, 237, 238. + + Roman literature, childhood in, 31-38. + + Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 180, 182, 184. + + Ruskin, John, 242. + + + Samuel, 42. + + _Sanford and Merton_, 3. + + Sarah, the laugh of, 44. + + _Scarlet Letter, The_, 233, 234. + + Schliemann, Dr., 6. + + School, great literature in, 242. + + _Sella_, 217. + + Sellar, John Y., quoted, 35. + + Sentiment, French and German, as seen by the English and American, + 188. + + _Shadow, A_, 220. + + Shakespeare, childhood in, 117; + limitations of the exhibition, 117, 118; + his Moth, 118; + his _Coriolanus_, 118, 119; + his _King John_, 119, 120; + his _Titus Andronicus_, 120, 121; + his _Macbeth_, 121; + his _Richard III._, 122; + random passages in, relating to childhood, 123-125; + reasons for the scanty reference, 125, 126; + compared with Pope, 134. + + Shunamite, the, 43. + + Simeon, 47. + + Simonides, 20; + quoted, 30. + + _Sketches of the History of Christian Art_, 88. + + Smith, Goldwin, translation by, 20. + + _Snow-Bound_, 218. + + _Snow-Image, The_, 232. + + Solitude, the, of childhood, 160-162. + + _Songs of Innocence_, 164. + + Sophocles, the _Œdipus Tyrannus_ of, 16. + + Sparrows, the story of the miraculous, 61, 62. + + _Spectator, The_, a writer in, quoted, 38. + + Spenser, Edmund, his _Faery Queen_, 114, 115. + + Statius, 33. + + _Story by the Fire, A_, an example of what a poem for a child should + not be, 222-225. + + Supernaturalism in ancient literature, 35, 36. + + _Suspiria de Profundis_, 158-162. + + Swedenborg, a saying of, 142. + + Symonds, John Addington, translation by, 20. + + S. Bernard, 76, 77. + + S. Catherine, 65. + + S. Christina, 70. + + S. Elizabeth of Hungary, 65, 66. + + S. Francis of Assisi, 71, 72. + + S. Genevieve, 66. + + S. Gregory Nazianzen, 66. + + S. John Chrysostom, 66. + + S. Kenelm, 68-70. + + St. Pierre, Bernardin, 180-183. + + + Tanagra figurines, 28. + + _Tanglewood Tales_, 226. + + Tennyson, Alfred, makes a heroine of the babe, 170; + his _May Queen_, 222. + + Thompson, D’Arcy W., translation by, 31, 33. + + Thoreau, Henry David, 217. + + Thorwaldsen, 37, 201. + + _Tirocinium_, 140. + + _Titus Andronicus_, 120, 121. + + _To a Child_, 220. + + Translations, the great, of the Elizabethan era, 116. + + _Twice-Told Tales_, 231. + + _Two Gentlemen of Verona_, 124. + + + _Ugly Duckling, The_, 213; + compared with _The Snow-Image_, 232. + + Ugolino, Count, 76. + + + _Vicar of Wakefield, The_, 3, 137-140, 142. + + _Village Blacksmith, The_, 221. + + Virgil, contrasted with Homer, 31, 32; + his treatment of childhood, 32. + + Virgilia, 118, 119. + + Volumnia, 118, 119. + + + _We are Seven_, 168-224. + + _Weariness_, 220, 221. + + Whittier, John Greenleaf, childhood in the writings of, 218, 219. + + _Wonder-Book_, Hawthorne’s, 226, 227, 232. + + Wordsworth, William, the creator of Alice Fell and Lucy Gray, 3; + quoted, 3; + the ridicule of his _Lyrical Ballads_, 145; + his defensive Preface, 145-147; + his apology for _Alice Fell_, 147, 148; + his poem of _Lucy Gray_, 148, 149; + his poem of _The Pet Lamb_, 149, 150; + his treatment of incidents of childhood, 150; + the first to treat the child as an individual, 151; + his draft on his own experience, 152; + his poetic interpretation of childhood, 153-156; + his ode, _Intimations of Immortality_, 156, 157; + his treatment of death, 168; + his _We are Seven_ contrasted with _A Story of the Fire_, 224, 225. + + _Wreck of the Hesperus, The_, 221. + + + Zarephath, the widow of, 42. + + Zechariah, quoted, 45. + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75367 *** |