& I myself a joly hontere.”
In the years between this and Puerilia, no child was encouraged to put his own thoughts into rhyme; but Marchant’s “Little Miss” is heard “Talking to her Doll”, “Working at her Sampler”, “playing on her Spinet”, even “learning to dance”. The “little Master” of 1751 whips his top, flies his kite and goes a-birds’-nesting in verse, when he is released from Arithmetic and the Languages.
But the world of Make-believe is still unknown to grown-up travellers: a mystery jealously hidden by the child from unsympathetic eyes.
A doll, in the matter-of-fact view of Mr. Marchant, is a “mere painted piece of wood”:
“Legs thou hast, and tho’ they’re jointed,
Yet one Step thou canst not walk;
Head there is to thee appointed,
Yet thou canst not think or talk.”
The rudest image could not be such a dead thing to a child. The author is upon enchanted ground, and blind to all its wonders.
He is safer following the needle in a child’s hand, tracing the “odd and various” crochets upon a sampler, or drawing a moral from the building of a “Pasty Pye”.