“Tender-souled little creatures, desolated by a sense of sin, if they did but eat a spoonful of cupboard jam without Mamma's express permission.... Would a modern Lucy, jealous of her sister Emily's doll, break out thus easily into tearful apology for her guilt?—‘I know it is wicked in me to be sorry that Emily is happy, but I feel that I cannot help it.’ And would a modern mother retort with heartfelt joy?—'My dear child, I am glad you have confessed. Now I shall tell you why you feel this wicked sorrow'—proceeding to an account of the depravity of human nature so unredeemed by comfort for a childish mind of common intelligence that one can scarcely imagine the interview ending in anything less tragic than a fit of juvenile hysteria.”
Description of a Good Boy. “A good boy is dutiful to his Father and Mother, obedient to his master and loving to his playfellows. He is diligent in learning his book, and takes a pleasure in improving himself in everything that is worthy of praise. He rises early in the morning, makes himself clean and decent, and says his prayers. He loves to hear good advice, is thankful to those who give it and always follows it. He never swears[21] or calls names or uses ill words to companions. He is never peevish and fretful, always cheerful and good-tempered.”
VII.—Stories of exaggerated and coarse fun. In the chapter on the positive side of this subject I shall speak more in detail of the educational value of robust and virile representation of fun and of sheer nonsense, but as a representation to these statements, I should like to strike a note of warning about the element of exaggerated and coarse fun being encouraged in our school stories, partly because of the lack of humour in such presentations—a natural product of stifling imagination—and partly because the train of the abnormal has the same effect as the too frequent use of the melodramatic.
You have only to read the adventures of Buster Brown, which for years formed the Sunday reading of millions of children in the United States, to realise what would be the effect of coarse fun and entire absence of humour upon the normal child in its everyday experience, an effect all the greater because of the real skill with which the illustrations are drawn. It is only fair to state that this series was not originally prepared or intended for the young, but it is a matter of regret (shared by most educationists in the States) that they should ever have been given to children at all.
In an article in Macmillan's Magazine, Dec. 1869, Miss Yonge writes: “A taste for buffoonery is much to be discouraged, an exclusive taste for extravagance most unwholesome and even perverting. It becomes destructive of reverence and soon degenerates into coarseness. It permits nothing poetical or imaginative, nothing sweet or pathetic to exist, and there is a certain self-satisfaction and superiority in making game of what others regard with enthusiasm and sentiment which absolutely bars the way against a higher or softer tone.”
Although these words were written nearly half a century ago, they are so specially applicable to-day that they seem quite “up-to-date”: indeed, I think they will hold equally good fifty years hence.
In spite of a strong taste on the part of children for what is ugly and brutal, I am sure that we ought to eliminate this element as far as possible from the school stories—especially among poor children. Not because I think children should be protected from all knowledge of evil, but because so much of this knowledge comes into their life outside school that we can well afford to ignore it during school hours. At the same time, however, as I shall show by example when I come to the positive side, it would be well to show children by story illustration the difference between brute ugliness without anything to redeem it and surface ugliness, which may be only a veil over the beauty that lies underneath. It might be possible, for instance, to show children the difference between the real ugliness of a brutal story of crime and an illustration of it in the sensational papers, and the apparent ugliness in the priest's face of the “Laocoon” group, because of the motive of courage and endurance behind the suffering. Many stories in everyday life could be found to illustrate this.
VIII.—Stories of infant piety and death-bed scenes. The stories for children forty years ago contained much of this element, and the following examples will illustrate this point:
Notes from poems written by a child between six and eight years of age, by name Philip Freeman, afterwards Archdeacon of Exeter:
Poor Robin, thou canst fly no more,