It may be questioned whether, in these days of opportunities, it would be possible to find boys of thirteen and sixteen who would be able to read understandingly, much less appreciate and enjoy, those masterpieces of English literature so eagerly studied by Franklin and Hugh Miller and the Chambers brothers. Their mental appetites have been treated to a different kind of diet. If their minds have not been dwarfed and stunted by indulgence in what has been aptly termed “pen-poison,” their tastes have been perverted and the growth of their reasoning powers checked by being fed upon the milk-and-water stuff recommended as harmless literature. They are inveterate devourers of stories, and novels, and the worthless material which is recommended as good reading, but which, in reality, is nothing but a “discipline of debasement.” Better that children should not read at all, than read much of that which passes current now-a-days for entertaining reading.
All children like to read stories. The love of “the story,” in some form or other, is indeed a characteristic of the human mind, and exists everywhere, in all conditions of life. But stories are the sweets of our mental existence, and only a few of the best and greatest have in them the elements which will lead to a strong and vigorous mind-growth. Constant feeding upon light literature—however good that literature may be in itself—will debilitate and corrupt the mental appetite of the child, much the same as an unrestrained indulgence in jam and preserves will undermine and destroy his physical health. In either case, if no result more serious occurs, the worst forms of dyspepsia will follow. Literary dyspepsia is the most common form of mental disease among us, and there is no knowing what may be the extent of its influence upon American civilization. Fifty per cent of the readers who patronize our great public libraries have weak literary stomachs; they cannot digest anything stronger than that insipid solution, the last society novel, or anything purer than the muddy decoctions poured out by the periodical press. When, of all the reading done in a public library, eighty per cent is of books in the different departments of fiction, I doubt whether, after all, that library is a public benefit. Yet this is but the natural result of the loose habits of reading which we encourage among our children, and cultivate in ourselves,—the habit of reading anything that comes to hand, provided only that it is entertaining.
How then shall we so order the child’s reading as to avoid the formation of desultory and aimless habits?
Naturally, the earliest reading is the story,—simple, short, straightforward recitals of matters of daily occurrence, of the doings of children and their parents, their friends or their pets. “The Nursery,” a little magazine published in Boston, contains an excellent variety of such stories. Now and then we may pick up a good book, too, for this class of readers; but there are many worthless books here, as elsewhere, and careful parents will look well into that which they buy. The illuminated covers are often the only recommendation of books of this kind. Numbers of them are made only for the holiday trade; the illustrations of many are from second-hand cuts; and the text is frequently written to fit the illustrations. A pure, fresh book for a little child is a treasure to be sought for and appreciated.
Very early in child-life comes the period of a belief in fairies; and the reading of fairy-stories is, to children, a very proper, nay, a very necessary thing. I pity the boy or girl who must grow up without having made intimate acquaintance with “Mother Goose,” and the wonderful stories of “Jack the Giant-Killer,” and “Blue Beard,” and “Cinderella,” and those other strange tales as old as the race itself, and yet new to every succeeding generation. They are a part of the inheritance of the English-speaking people, and belong, as a kind of birthright, to every intelligent child.
As your little reader advances in knowledge and reading-ability, he should be treated to stronger food. Grimm’s “Household Stories” and the delightful “Wonder Stories” of Hans Christian Andersen, should form a part of the library of every child as he passes through the “fairy-story period” of his life; nor can we well omit to give him Charles Kingsley’s “Water Babies,” and “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.” And now, or later, as circumstances shall dictate, we may introduce him to that prince of all wonder-books, “The Arabian Nights’ Entertainment,” in an edition carefully adapted to children’s reading. The tales related in this book “are not ours by birth, but they have nevertheless taken their place amongst the similar things of our own which constitute the national literary inheritance. Altogether, it is a glorious book, and one to which we cannot well show enough of respect.”
And while your reader lingers in the great world of poetic fancy and child-wonder, let him revel for a while in those enchanting idyls and myths which delighted mankind when the race was young and this earth was indeed a wonder-world. These he may find, apparelled in a dress adapted to our modern notions of propriety, in Hawthorne’s “Wonder Book” and “Tanglewood Tales,” in Kingsley’s “Greek Heroes,” and, in a more prosaic form, in Cox’s “Tales of Ancient Greece;” and in “The Story of Siegfried,” and, later, in Morris’s “Sigurd the Volsung,” he may read the no less charming myths of our own northern ancestors, and the world-famous legend of the Nibelungen heroes. Then, by a natural transition, you advance into the border-land which lies between the world of pure fancy and the domains of sober-hued reality. You introduce your reader to some wholesome adaptations of those Mediæval Romances, which, with their one grain of fact to a thousand of fable, gave such noble delight to lords and ladies in the days of chivalry. These you will find in Sidney Lanier’s “Boy’s King Arthur” and “Boy’s Mabinogion;” in “The Story of Roland,” by the author of the present volume; and in Bulfinch’s “Legends of Charlemagne” and “The Age of Chivalry.”
Do you understand now to what point you have led your young reader? You have simply followed the order of nature and of human development, and you have gradually—almost imperceptibly even to yourself—brought him out of the world of child-wonder and fairy-land, through the middle ground of chivalric romance, to the very borders of the domains of history. He is ready and eager to enter into the realms of sober-hued truth; but I would not advise undue haste in this matter. The mediæval romances have inspired him with a desire to know more of those days when knights-errant rode over sea and land to do battle in the name of God and for the honor of their king, the Church, and the ladies; he wants to know something more nearly the truth than that which the minstrels and story-tellers of the Middle Ages can tell him. And yet he is not prepared for a sudden transition from romance to history. Let him read “Ivanhoe;” then give him Howard Pyle’s “Story of Robin Hood” and Lanier’s “Boy’s Percy;” and if you care to allow him so much more fiction, let him read Madame Colomb’s “Franchise” as translated and adapted by Davenport Adams in his “Page, Squire, and Knight.” Can you withhold history longer from your reader? I think not. He will demand some authentic knowledge of Richard the Lion-hearted, and of King John, and of the Saxons and Normans, and of the Crusades, and of the Saracens, and of Charlemagne and his peers. Lose not your opportunity, but pass over with your pupil into the promised land. The transition is easy,—imperceptible, in fact,—and, leaving fiction and “the story” behind you, you enter the fields of truth and history. As for books, it is difficult now to advise; but there are Abbott’s little histories,—give him the “History of Richard I.” to begin with, then get the whole set for him. Yonge’s “Young Folks’ History of England,” or Dickens’s “Child’s History” will also be in demand. The way is easy now, the road is open, you need no further guidance—only, keep straight ahead.
There are other books, of course, which the young reader will find in his way, and which it is altogether proper and necessary that he should read. For instance, there is “Robinson Crusoe,” without a knowledge of which the boy loses one of his dearest enjoyments. “How youth passed long ago, when there was no Crusoe to waft it away in fancy to the Pacific and fix it upon the lonely doings of the shipwrecked mariner, is inconceivable; but we can readily suppose that it must have been different,” says Robert Chambers. And no substitute for the original Robinson will answer. Not one of the ten thousand tales of adventure recently published for boys will fill the niche which this book fills, or atone in the least for any neglect of its merits. “The Swiss Family Robinson” approaches nearest in excellence to Defoe’s immortal creation, and may very profitably form a part of every boy’s or girl’s library. Then, among the really unexceptionable books, of the healthful, hopeful, truthful sort, I may name “Tom Brown’s School Days at Rugby,” Lamb’s “Tales from Shakspeare,” Mitchell’s “About Old Story-Tellers;” the inimitable “Bodley Books,” Bayard Taylor’s “Boys of Other Countries,” Abbott’s “Franconia Stories,” and a few others in the line of History or Travels, to be mentioned in future chapters. These I believe to be, in every sense, proper, wholesome books, free from all kinds of mannerisms, free from improper language, free from sickly sentiment and “gush;” and these, if not the most instructive books, are the sort of books which the child or youth should read as a kind of relish or supplement to the more methodical course of reading which I have elsewhere indicated.
In this careful direction of the child’s reading, and in the cultivation of his literary taste, if you have succeeded in bringing him to the point which we have indicated, you have done much towards forming his character for life. There is little danger that bad books will ever possess any attractions for him; he will henceforth be apt to go right of his own accord, preferring the wholesome and the true to any of the flashy allurements of the “literary slums and grog-shops,” which so abound and flourish in these days.