A century of children's books

by Florence V. Barry

And in fancy, their long-sought Incognita viewed.

Till, all their cares over, in Dorset they found her,

And, plucking a wreath of green bay-leaves, they crowned her.”

Mrs. Dorset, thus discovered, was a sister of Charlotte Smith, the writer of Minor Morals and Rural Walks.

All the birds left out of the Butterfly’s Ball, including foreigners, such as the Taylor Bird and Flamingo, were guests of the Peacock. They offered a variety of absurd analogies.

The Lion’s Masquerade, rhymed in the same quaint humour, was a sort of Æsop in Ranelagh:

“The guests now came thronging in numbers untold,

The furious, the gentle, the young and the old,

In dominos some, but in characters most,

And now a brave warrior, and then a fair toast.