[16]Namby Pamby is said to have been a nickname for Ambrose Phillips. Another ballad, written about the same time as the above, alludes to the rhyme of "Goosy Goosy, Gander."

This ballad is a very important illustration of the history of these puerile rhymes, for it establishes the fact that some we might aptly consider modern are at least more than a century old; and who would have thought such nonsense as,

Who comes here?

A grenadier!

What do you want?

A pot of beer!

Where's your money?

I've forgot!

Get you gone,

You drunken sot!

could have descended in all its purity for several generations, even although it really may have a deep meaning and an unexceptionable moral?

Having thus, I trust, shown that the nursery has an archæology, the study of which may eventually lead to important results, the jingles and songs of our childhood are defended from the imputation of exclusive frivolity. We may hope that, henceforth, those who have the opportunity will not consider it a derogatory task to add to these memorials. But they must hasten to the rescue. The antiquities of the people are rapidly disappearing before the spread of education; and before many years have elapsed, they will be lost, or recorded only in the collections of the antiquary, perhaps requiring evidence that they ever existed. This is the latest period at which there is a chance of our arresting their disappearance. If, unfortunately, the most valuable relics of this kind are wholly lost, many, doubtlessly, remain in the remote districts sufficiently curious to reward the collector; and it is to be hoped they will not be allowed to share the fate of Wade and his boat Guingelot.

[II.—FIRESIDE NURSERY STORIES.]

The efforts of modern romance are so greatly superior to the best fictions of a former age, that old wives' tales are not so readily tolerated as they were in times past. We question whether any one in these days, save a very grave antiquary, could read two chapters of the Morte Arthure without a yawn. Let us, then, turn to that simpler class of narratives which bears the same relation to novels that rural ballads do to the poem; and ascertain whether the wild interest which, in the primitive tales erewhile taught by nurse, first awakened our imagination, can be so reflected as to render their resuscitation agreeable. We rely a good deal for the success of the experiment on the power of association; for though these inventions may, in their character, be suited to the dawn of intellect, they not infrequently bear the impress of creative fancy, and their imperceptible influence over the mind does not always evaporate at a later age.

Few persons, indeed, there are, even amongst those who affect to be insignificantly touched by the imagination, who can be recalled to the stories and carols that charmed them in their childhood wholly without emotion. An affectation of indifference in such matters is, of course, not unusual, for most thoughts springing from early associations, and those on which so many minds love to dwell, may not be indiscriminately divulged. It is impossible they should be generally appreciated or understood. Most of us, however, are liable to be occasionally touched by allusions breathing of happy days, bearing our memories downward to behold the shadows of joys that have long passed away like a dream. They now serve only "to mellow our occasions," like that "old and antique song" which relieved the passion of the Duke Orsino.

[TEENY-TINY.]