“The Butterfly, an idle thing,
Nor honey makes, nor yet can sing.”[178]
He encouraged a spirit of revolt, and talking beasts of divers kinds broke into the garden.
Of the old order, John Marchant was welcome, despite his lack of originality, for a trick of rhythm which he had learnt from Dr. Watts, and apart from this, as a champion of children’s games. He had “Songs for Little Misses”, “Songs for Little Masters”, and “Songs”, varying the martial beat of Dr. Watts, on “Divine, Moral and Other Subjects”.[179]
Children, he is persuaded, would be “delighted with the Humour of them because adapted to their own Way of thinking and to the Occurrences that happen within their own little Sphere of Action.”
Stevenson could not give a more detailed picture of these “occurrences”; it is in the region of childish thought that his predecessor drifts into an uncharted sea. He knows nothing of the little mythologies of children; there are no imaginary countries, no “Unseen Playmate”, no dreams. It is the difference between the old garden and the new, which is of the child’s own planting.
There was a truant in the Babees’ Book[180] who sang:
“I wolde my master were an hare
& all his bokis houndis were