And keep himself warm
And hide his head under his wing,
Poor thing.”
It is even more surprising to find, in this trim garden, a nursery lyric that calls up the very spirit of child-thought:
“How many miles is it to Babylon?
Three score miles and ten.
Can I get there by candle-light?
Yes, and back again.”[183]
There are no other songs like these. The Poetical Flower Basket[184] represents the Lilliputian tradition that prevailed between 1760 and 1789: rhymed fables, epigrams and inscriptions from poets who never wrote for children, and the story of “Inkle and Yarico” in verse.