It is in the guise of a great lumbering narrative—supposed to be true—into which are whipped a score or more of little stories, each one capped with a bouncing moral. Thus, there is an ill-natured boy going out for a day's scrimmage, and playing his tricks—on a poor girl, and a blind beggar, and a lame beggar, and a farmer, and a donkey. This goes on very well for awhile; but at last the tables are turned, and he gets bitten by the blind beggar, and beaten by the lame beggar, and thrashed by the farmer, and is thrown by the donkey, and a large dog seizes him by the leg; this latter is printed in capitals, and there is a picture of it. At last, in bed, and with watery eyes, the boy reflects—that "no one can long hurt others with impunity;" so he determined to "behave better for the future." Is it any wonder that those who had access to such instructive tales a half a century ago should have grown up to be excellent men!
This book of Sandford and Merton was written by Thomas Day,[[5]] an eccentric rich man (the world of to-day would have called him a crank), who had a fine place near to Putney on the Thames, who sympathized strongly with Americans in Revolutionary times; who was also a disciple of Rousseau, and undertook to educate a young girl—two of them in fact, one being a foundling—so that he might have a wife of his own training, after the Rousseau standard; but the young persons did not train as he wished; so he found his mate otherwheres.
Another comfit of a book for young people, but with fewer plums of romance in it, was Evenings at Home by Dr. Aikin and Mrs. Barbauld. I am sure the very name must bring up tender memories to a great many; for it was a current book down to a time when respectable, and even mirth-loving people, did pass their evenings at home, and enjoyed doing so. The book commands even now, in some old-fashioned households, about the same sort of consecration which is given to an antique blue and white china tea-pot—not nearly so fine as the newer French ones—but which by the aid of a little imagination can be put to very pretty simmer of old times and tunes.
Mrs. Barbauld.
Mrs. Barbauld[[6]] was worthier than this book; she was a sister of Dr. Aikin—had distinction for great beauty in her youth; married a French clergyman of small parts and weak mind, whose intellect, in his later years, went wholly awry and made her home a martyrdom for her, against which she struggled bravely. That home was for a time out at Hampstead, only a half hour's drive from London, and she knew people worth knowing there; Fox and Johnson among the rest—though Johnson did give her a big slap for marrying as she did and for teaching an infant school.[[7]] She wrote poetry too, one verse at least which Wordsworth greatly admired, and with condescension declared that he would have liked to be the author of such a verse himself. I cite the verse (with some of the context), which is from an apostrophe to Life; doubtless suggested by the
"Animula, vagula, blandula"
of Adrian, to which allusion has been made in a previous chapter; but the good woman's evolution of the thought is curiously different from that of Pope:—
"Life! I know not what thou art.
But know that thou and I must part;
And when, or how, or where we met,
I own to me's a secret yet.
But this I know, when thou art fled
Where'er they lay these limbs, this head,
No clod so valueless shall be
As all that then remains of me.
O whither, whither dost thou fly,
Where bend unseen thy trackless course,
And in this strange divorce,
Ah, tell where I must seek this compound I?
*****
Life! we've been long together,
Through pleasant and through cloudy weather;
'Tis hard to part when friends are dear;
Perhaps 'twill cost a sigh, a tear;
Then—steal away, give little warning,
Choose thine own time;
Say not—Good night; but in some brighter clime
Bid me—Good morning."