The authors of the Original Poems[189] wore the laurels of Dr. Watts “with a difference.” They remembered all his tunes, they played variations on most of his themes, but they added songs of their own. In these, Walter Scott caught a note of poetry, and wrote to thank “the Associate Minstrels”. Miss Edgeworth, who cared less for rhythm, praised them for other excellences. The songs were a means of gentle intercourse between these writers and “that interesting little race, the race of children” for whom they had “so hearty an affection”.
The child of the new garden can join hands, “through the windows of this book”, with the child of the old. Ann and Jane and Adelaide were the great aunts-in-literature of Louis Stevenson. A hundred years before him they sang of stars and sun, of day and night and play in gardens. The contrast is the greater because not one or two, but all their poems turned upon “the whole Duty of Children”. Instead of following a child “up the mountain sides of dreams”, they were intent on pointing out to him a world of greater Reality.
The dream world lies all about Stevenson’s “Garden”, there is no hedge to separate it from ordinary roads and rivers; they all lead to Fairyland. Yet this most practical dreamer could speak in the very accents and call up the silhouettes of his gentle predecessors at any moment.
It is impossible to read of “The friendly cow all red and white”,[190] without thinking of Jane Taylor’s
“Thank you, pretty cow that made
Pleasant milk to soak my bread.”[191]
The child in her garden looked up and wondered at one star; that other child in the hundred-years-distant garden, escaped at bedtime to watch “thousands and millions of stars”.
Who would recognise the theme of Stevenson’s “Wind” symphony, under the old title of “The Child’s Monitor”?[192] Yet the first two lines proclaim it:
“The wind blows down the largest tree