Descend, ye spiders, on your lengthen’d threads;
Slide here, ye horned snails with varnish’d shells;
Ye bee nymphs, listen in your waxen cells.”
The lines, repeated to test Harry’s power of attention, are these:—
“So she went into the garden to cut a cabbage leaf, to make an apple-pie; and at the same time a great she-bear coming up the street, pops its head into the shop. ‘What! No soap?’ So he died, and she very imprudently married the barber; and there were present the Picninnies, and the Joblillies, and the Garyulies, and the grand Panjandrum himself, with the little round button at top; and they all fell to playing the game of catch as catch can, till the gunpowder ran out at the heels of their boots.”
“The Great Panjandrum Himself” was later “pictured” as a schoolmaster in cap and gown, by Randolph Caldecott.
Children’s books recommended by Mr. Edgeworth in his “Address to Mothers” (E. L. Vol. III):—
“Fabulous Histories”; “Evenings at Home”; Berquin’s “Children’s Friend”; “Sandford and Merton”; “Little Jack”; “The Children’s Miscellany”; “Bob the Terrier”; “Dick the Pony”; “The Book of Trades”; “The Looking-glass, or History of a Young Artist”; “Robinson Crusoe”; “The Travels of Rolando”; “Mrs. Wakefield on Instinct”; parts of White’s Natural History of Selborne; and parts of Smellie’s Philosophy of Natural History.