But would it not be just as well to centre this concentration directly on Scott? The librarian will doubtless claim that the boy turns more readily to the one than to the other, and I believe that this is largely due to the over-emphasis of Scott as a standard author, and of Henty as a popular writer for boys. Scott has never been issued in form to catch the young reader’s eye. Given as many illustrations as Henty, relegating the preface to the appendix, or omitting it altogether, and the author of “Waverley” would be found to have lost none of his grip. You will receive from any librarian the unfailing statement that one of the most constant ambitions is to reduce the proportion of fiction in circulation, and, in that proportion, to preserve what is of true worth in place of the mediocre average of the modern story-books.

Mr. Tomlinson’s analysis of the qualities in a child’s book may be indicated by seven divisions:

  1. There must be a story.
  2. There must be vigorous action with little contemplation. “Analysis and introspection are words outside of his [the child’s] vocabulary,” says Mr. Tomlinson.
  3. Fancy is more to be sought for than pure imagination.
  4. The writer must regard the moral character of boys: a lack of mercy, a strict sense of justice; he must regard their faith which is credulity; their sentiment of reverence; their power of being convinced.
  5. The writer must likewise consider the differences between the sexes in the point of moral faculties, even though in many respects they are the same. For girls have tender consciences, though not so tenacious; they are quick to promise, and as quick to forget; they are easily stirred to pity, their sympathy easily appealed to. Bringing it down to an animalistic basis, Mr. Tomlinson believes that though the ancestral cruelty in girls is not so evident as in boys, when it does flash forth it is sharper in every way. “To both, right and wrong are absolute, not relative terms, and a youthful misanthrope is as much of an anomaly as a youthful grandfather.”
  6. The sentiments must be directed in channels of usefulness and power, hence the story of patriotism, the situation of courage, the incident of tenderness.
  7. Since the faculties in action are receptive, rather than perceptive, since the memory is keen to hold, the writer must bear this psychological status in mind.

In fine, recognising that even in his play the boy takes things seriously, and believing that the juvenile intellect “seeks the reasonable more than the process of reasoning,” Mr. Tomlinson shapes a dicta of criticism, a standard by which the child’s book may be recognised in terms of vital characteristics. Apply them to recent juvenile books, if you will, and you will find the majority wanting. But will not the classics meet these requirements? Are we to relegate the best we have to the back shelves, and buy nothing that smacks of good style? Instead of putting tight bands of expectancy about our minds, and of making us bow down before a throne of iced classics, let the librarian treat the “Iliad” genially, let her represent “Siegfried” with the broad heavens above him. The classics have yielding power.

It is characteristic of every age that a discontent is always manifest with the conditions as they exist at the time. As early as 1844, the child’s book, per se, was brought under rigourous scrutiny by an unnamed critic in the Quarterly Review, and what was said then applies equally as well to the state of affairs to-day. But this very entertaining writer, talking in terms of judgment founded upon a keen understanding of what such a book should be, attempts a list of juvenile books which bears all the ear-marks of his age; he finds it necessary to select from the immediate supply; he knows that there is the author of his own era whom he cannot discard. We have a lurking suspicion that, with his canons of criticism, he would have altered his list, could he have looked in perspective. But there was very little range in children’s books of that day; the species was just becoming accentuated, and his element of timeliness had to be regarded. Therefore, while we are pleading with the librarian for a high choice in the selection of books, we know that were the timely volume omitted, simply on the basis that it did not conform with one’s idea of the best, the library would become fixed, like a dead language. The Quarterly article was written at a time when the secularisation of juvenile literature was just beginning to take place; the moral and the educational factors were looking askance, the one at the other, both claiming the boy and girl for instruction, but each from a different basis. Our author pleads for the healthy, normal reader, in whom “still-born” knowledge—mere lifeless acquisition—were a curse indeed! He cries out against the educational catechism, as he does against the moral one. His discriminating thesis advances in threefold manner, for he writes:

“Those who insist on keeping the sense of enjoyment rigidly back, till that of comprehension has been forcibly urged forward—who stipulate that the one shall not be indulged till the other be appeased—are in reality but retarding what they most affect to promote.”

And again:

“Children have no sooner begun to enjoy than they are called upon to reflect; they have no sooner begun to forget that there exists in the world such a little being as themselves than they are pulled back to remember, not only what they are, but what they will one day infallibly become.”

And still again:

“Children seem to possess an inherent conviction that when the hole is big enough for the cat, no smaller one at the side is needed for the kitten. They do not really care for ‘Glimpses’ of this, or ‘Gleanings’ of that, or ‘Footsteps’ to the other—they would rather stretch and pull....”