Of course this view of the matter will not commend itself to everybody. It is hard for us to shake off the impression of all the countless homilies which have been composed against novel-reading; and we are by no means free from the poison of the ascetic idea that anything to which mankind takes naturally and with pleasure cannot really be good in itself. I hope, however, that it will not appear to you unreasonable when I say that it seems to me far better to insist upon proper methods of reading and upon the selection of books which are genuine literature than to wage unavailing war against the natural love of stories which is to be found in every normal and wholesome human being. If I could be assured that a boy or a girl read only good novels and read them appreciatively and sympathetically, I should never trouble myself to inquire how many he or she read. I should be hopefully patient even if there was apparently a neglect of history and philosophy. I should be confident that it is impossible that the proper reading of good fiction should not in the end both prove beneficial in itself and lead the mind to whatever is good in other departments of literature. I am not pleading for the indiscriminating indulgence in doubtful stories. I do not believe that girls are brought to fine and well-developed womanhood by an exclusive devotion to the chocolate-caramel-and-pickled-lime sort of novels. I do not hold that boys come to nobility and manliness through the influence of sensational tales wherein blood-boultered bandits reduce to infinitesimal powder every commandment of the decalogue. I do, however, thoroughly believe that sound and imaginative fiction is as natural and as wholesome for growing minds as is the air of the seashore or the mountains for growing bodies.
The fact is of especial importance as applied to the education of children. A healthy child is instinctively in the position of a learner. He is unconsciously full of deep wonderment concerning this world in which he finds himself, and concerning this mysterious thing called life in which he has a share. His mind is eager to receive, but it is entirely free from any affectation. A child accepts what appeals to him directly, and he is without scruple in neglecting what does not interest him. He learns only by slow degrees that knowledge may have value and interest from its remote bearings; and in dealing with him in the earlier stages of mental development there is no other means so sure and effective as story-telling. It is here that a child finds the specific and the concrete while he is still too immature to be moved by the general and the abstract.
It is "to cater to this universal taste," the circulars of the publishers assure us, that so-called "juvenile literature" was invented. I do not wish to be extravagant, but it does seem to me that modern juvenile literature has blighted the rising generation as rust blights a field of wheat. The holiday counters are piled high with hastily written, superficial, often inaccurate, and, what is most important of all, unimaginative books. The nursery of to-day is littered with worthless volumes, and the child halfway through school has already outlived a dozen varieties of books for the young.
A good many of these works are as full of information as a sugar-coated pill is of drugs. Thirst for practical information is one of the extravagances of the age. Parents to-day make their children to pass through tortures in the service of what they call "practical knowledge" as the unnatural parents of old made their offspring to pass through the fires of Moloch. We are all apt to lose sight of the fact that wisdom is not what a man knows but what he is. The important thing is not what we drill into our children, but what we drill them into. There are times when it is the most profound moral duty of a parent to substitute Grimm's fairy stories for text-books, and to devote the whole stress of educational effort to the developing of the child's imagination. I am not at all sure that it is not of more importance to see to it that a child—and especially a boy—is familiar with "the land east of the sun and west of the moon" than to stuff his brain with the geographical details of the wilds of Asia, Africa, or the isles of the far seas. I am sure that he is better off from knowing about Sindbad and Ali Baba than for being able to extract a cube root. I do not wish to be understood as speaking against the imparting of practical information, although I must say that I think that the distinction between what is really practical and what is not seems to me to be somewhat confused in these days. I simply mean that just now there is need of enforcing the value of the imaginative side of education. No accumulation of facts can compensate for the narrowing of the growing mind; and indeed facts are not to be really grasped and assimilated without the development of the realizing—the imaginative—faculty.
It is even more important for children than for adults that their reading shall be imaginative. The only way to protect them against worthless books is to give them a decided taste for what is good. It is only after children have been debauched by vapid or sensational books that they come to delight in rubbish. It is easier in the first place to interest them in real literature than in shams. The thing is to take the trouble to see to it that what they read is fine. The most common error in this connection is to suppose that children need an especial sort of literature different from that suited to adults. As far, certainly, as serious education is concerned, there is neither adult literature nor juvenile literature; there is simply literature. Speaking broadly, the literature best for grown persons is the literature best for children. The limitations of youth have, and should have, the same effects in literature as in life. They restrict the comprehension and appreciation of the facts of life; and equally they set a bound to the comprehension and appreciation of what is read. The impressions which a child gets from either are not those of his elders. The important thing is that what the growing mind receives shall be vital and wholesome. It is less unfortunate for the child to mistake what is genuine than to receive as true what is really false. We all commit errors in the conclusions which we draw from life; and so will it be with children and books. Books which are wise and sane, however, will in time correct the misconceptions they beget, as life in time makes clear the mistakes which life has produced.
The whole philosophy of reading for children is pretty well summed up by implication in the often quoted passage in which Charles Lamb describes under the disguise of Bridget Elia, the youthful experience of his sister Mary:—
She was tumbled early, by accident or design, into a spacious closet of good old English reading, without much selection or prohibition, and browsed at will upon that fair and wholesome pasturage. Had I twenty girls, they should be brought up exactly in this fashion.—Mackery End.
Fiction—to return to the immediate subject of this talk—is only a part of a child's education, but it is a most essential part; and it is of the greatest importance that the fiction given to a young reader be noble; that it be true to the essentials of life, as it can be true only if it is informed by a keen and sane imagination. Children should be fed on the genuine and sound folk-tales like those collected by the brothers Grimm; the tales of Hans Christian Andersen, of Asbjörnsen, of Laboulaye, and of that delightful old lady, the Countess d'Aulnoy; the fine and robust "Morte d'Arthur" of Malory; the more modern classics, "Robinson Crusoe" and "Gulliver." Then there are Hawthorne's "Tanglewood Tales" and the "Wonder-Book," "Treasure Island" and "Kidnapped," "Uncle Remus," and the "Jungle Books." It may be claimed that these are "juvenile" literature; but I have named nothing of which I, at least, am not as fond now as in my youth, and I have yet to discover that adults find lack of interest in good books even of fairy stories. What has been said against juvenile literature has been intended against the innumerable works mustered under that name which are not literature at all. Wonder lore is as normal food for old as for young, and there is no more propriety in confining it to children than there is in limiting the use of bread and butter to the inhabitants of the nursery.
It is neither possible nor wise to attempt here a catalogue of books especially adapted to children. I should myself put Spenser high in the list, and very likely include others which common custom does not regard as well adapted to the young. These, of course, are books to be read to the child, not that he at first can be expected to go pleasurably through alone. Prominent among them I would insist first, last, and always upon Shakespeare. If it were practically possible to confine the reading of a child to Shakespeare and the Bible, the whole question would be well and wisely settled. Since this cannot be, it is at least essential that a child be given both as soon as he can be interested in them,—and it is equally important that he be given neither until they do attract him. He is to be guided and aided, but there cannot be a more rich and noble introduction to fiction than through the inspired pages of Shakespeare, and the child who has been well grounded in the greatest of poets is not likely ever to go very widely astray in his reading.