Dark as the days may seem in the lives of those children educated according to theories and tracts, the lighter recreations must have brightened moments unrecorded. Even John Locke (1632–1704), in his “Thoughts on Education” (1693), recommends besides the Psalter and the New Testament, Æsop and Reynard the Fox, as good food for infant minds. This was an excellent basis to start upon.
The two small volumes of “Divine Songs, Attempted in Easy Language for the Use of Children” [editions, New York: Mahlon Day; Cambridge: 1803] which I have examined, bear upon the fly-leaves tales recorded in uncertain handwriting. The one has, “To ——, a present from his Mamma”; the other, “—— his Book: If this should be lost and you should fine, Return to me, for it is mine.”
“You will find here nothing that savours of party,” says the poet in his foreword. “... As I have endeavoured to sink the language to the level of a child’s understanding, and yet to keep it, if possible, above contempt, so I have designed to profit all, if possible, and to offend none.”
Yet the usual theological doctrines reek from every page; there is much of the tenor of the “New England Primer” in the verses. The wonder is that with all their atmosphere of brimstone and sulphur, with all their effort to present to the child grown-up beliefs in simple doses, the poems still retain a spontaneity, a sweet, quaint simplicity that strike the sympathy, if they do not entirely appeal to the fancy. “His dreadful Majesty” is more suited to Milton than to a song; “How doth the little busy bee,” though not yet in accord with the lyrist’s pure, unfeigned delight in nature, is overtopping in childish appeal, “The eternal God will not disdain, To hear an infant cry.” We pit an understanding of childhood’s graces against that old-time theory of inherited ruin. There has been a revulsion of feeling which tends to bring the heart much nearer the soul, and to give to the nursery the sanctified love of good rather than the abiding fear of evil.
There is a picture in Lamb’s “Books for Children” [ed. E. V. Lucas], showing the ark with the animals in their symmetrically built stalls. The clouds are rolling over the waters with as much substantial outline as though they were balls of cotton; there is interest for a child in the close examination of this graphic art, which is done with that surety as though the artist had been on the spot. The reproduction was made from Stackhouse’s Bible, with which Mrs. Trimmer used to amuse her young folks on Sundays. Your wooden Noah’s Ark, with the sticky animals, was built along the same lines. Dr. Watts’s poems have been illustrated many times in similar conventional fashion. One cut in particular represented creation by a dreadful lion and a marvellous tiger, anatomically wonderful.
Though parts of the Bible have been paraphrased by Dr. Watts as well as such can ever be done; though ducks and lambs and doves, symbols of simplicity, take one to the open, there is no breath of clover sweeping across the page. It is by such a beautiful cradle hymn as “Holy angels guard thy bed,” which is to be treasured with Martin Luther’s exquisite “Hymn to the Christ Child,” that this poet deserves to be remembered.
Always the truest verse, the truest sentiment, the truest regard for children are detected in that retrospective tone—the eternal note of sadness, as Matthew Arnold phrases it—in which grown people speak of the realm of youth lost to them; not the sentimental stooping, not the condescending superiority,—but a yearning note brought about by the tragedy of growing up,—a yearning that passeth understanding, and that returns with every flash of the remembered child you were.
The Taylors of Ongar, the two sisters, Ann (1782–1866) and Jane (1783–1824), are the poets of the didactic era; they apply to verse the same characteristics Miss More introduced in her tracts—a sympathetic feeling, but a false tenderness. They are not doctrinal in their “Original Poems for Infant Minds,” but are generally and genuinely ethical. Their attitude is different from that of Watts; they attempt to interpret feelings and impressions in terms of the child’s own comprehension. But so far were they ruled by the customary requirements of their time, that they falsely endowed the juvenile mind with the power of correlating external beauty with its own virtuous possibilities. The simplicity of Jane’s “The Violet” and “Thank you, Pretty Cow” is marked by an unnatural discrimination on the part of the children from whom such sentiments are supposed to flow; these defects detract from many a delicate verse deserving of better acquaintance than “Twinkle, twinkle, little star.”
The Taylors wrote together for a number of years; they opened a field of interest in and kindness to animals; their verse abounds in the beginnings of a spontaneous love of nature. Their children troop past us, the industrious boy and the idle boy, the rich and the poor. They are not active children; their positions are fixed ones of contemplation, of inward communing, not of participation. Yet the sweet spirit predominates, and the simple words are not robbed of their purity and strength. However, their desire “to abridge every poetic freedom and figure” dragged them often into absurdities. This is the great danger in writing simple verse; unless its excellence is dominant, it shows its weakness; the outline of lyric beauty must have perfect symmetry; the slightest falsity in imagery, the slightest departure from consistency and truth, destroys the whole.[38]
Jane, when she was very small, used to edify her neighbours by preaching to them; this impulse found expression later in a series of hymns. Ann also composed religious songs which in quality are superior to those of her sister. The literary association of the two lasted until 1812, when Ann was sought in marriage by a Mr. Gilbert; this negotiation was consummated by letter before they had even met.