A century of children's books

by Florence V. Barry

Half so rational as his.

Sashes, frocks, to those that need ’em—

Philip’s limbs have got their freedom—

He can run, or he can ride,

And do twenty things beside,

Which his petticoats forbade:

Is he not a happy lad?”

And is not this a mischievous poet, that dares sympathise thus openly with nursery vanities? A dangerous man, with a tendency to romantic, unlawful sentiment. He places the revolutionary effusion between two tender and wholly innocent little poems of Mary’s.[199] It should have been pilloried instead in a column facing “George and the Chimney Sweeper”, by Adelaide O’Keefe:[200]

“His petticoats now George cast off,

For he was four years old;