A century of children's books

by Florence V. Barry

We find in our wild airy flights,

And heavenly exaltation;

The earth you mortals have at heart

Is all too gross to have a part

In sky-lark’s conversation.”

Mrs. Trimmer would have been inexpressibly shocked at this bird’s attitude; Ann Taylor would have been grieved that he was not more friendly; Jane might have seen his point of view. But this lark is a literal poet; there is no attempt here to interpret a real ecstasy of song. The poem is but an argument that hits a popular fallacy. This is still the voice of the town and of common sense. The Spectator might have said as much for the birds that sang in his cherry trees.

There is only one fairy in Poetry for Children; fairies, like dreams, were outside the pale of the Garden. This one is a spirit of the age, but springs from the brain of a child. Little Ann was a friend of Mary Lamb’s, and knew what the poet “prettily” wrote about Titania; but because she had not been admitted to fairy Society, it was entirely natural that she should project into fairyland the most diminutive creature of her acquaintance (an Edgeworthian method of setting imagination to work upon experience) and describe the “fabulous being” to her friend:

“‘You’ll confess, I believe, I’ve not done it amiss.’

‘Pardon me,’ said Matilda, ‘I find in all this

Fine description you’ve only your young sister Mary