It may be that the children's books that have been most characteristic of our native authors have been in important respects a mistake, and the "Quarterly Review," not without reason, assailed them some years ago in two articles of considerable sagacity and much patient study. But we have outgrown them now, and see the error that afflicted them. We have ceased to think it the part of wisdom to cross the first instincts of children, and to insist upon making of them little moralists, metaphysicians, and philosophers, when great Nature determines that their first education shall be in the senses and muscles, the affections and fancy, rather than in the critical judgment, logical understanding, or analytic reason. Peter Parley—Heaven rest his soul!—has gone to his repose, and much of his philosophizing and moralizing is buried deeper than his dust; yet Peter himself lives, and will live, in the graphic histories, anecdotes, sketches of life and Nature, and the rich treasures of pictorial illustration, that have blessed the eyes and ears, the hearts and imaginations of our children. He was wisest when he least thought of being wise, and weakest when he tried to be strong. We are not likely to repeat his mistakes, and our best new juvenile literature is too loyal to the old standards and to common-sense to undertake to make a precocious reasoning monster of the dear little child whom God is asking us to help onward in the unfolding of his senses and the observation of the world and its scenes and people.
We must be willing to own that our America is a child of the ages, and to give our children a full share of their birthright as heirs of the juvenile treasures of all nations. Judæa must still give her sacred stories, that charm youth as much, as they edify maturity; Arabia loses nothing of the enchantment of her marvellous tales in the clear light of this nineteenth century, but makes her dreams dearer, as science and business insist that we shall not dream at all; the old classic times shall still teach us in the fables of Æsop, and the romantic ages shall be with us in the legends of fairies and elves, dwarfs and giants, saints and angels, that are constantly coming up with faces new or old; the Protestant Reformation shall speak to our little folks in the lives of the martyrs and in "Pilgrim's Progress"; the age of modern adventure shall never tire in "Robinson Crusoe"; the new secular era of ethical schooling shall not lose its power so long as Maria Edgeworth finds a printer; nor will the didactic school of writers of juvenile religious books die out so long as Hannah More stands by our Sunday schools and Tract Societies, and keeps their piety and ethics from swamping themselves wholly in dogmatism and dulness.
Yet whilst we are thus to acknowledge and use the old treasures, we are none the less bound to have a juvenile literature of our own; and because we are possessed by the truly catholic spirit that appreciates all good things, we are more likely to have a full and fair growth from the good seed that takes root in our own nurseries. What that new growth shall be we do not presume to predict, for it cannot be fully known until it comes up and speaks for itself; yet it is not presumption to undertake to say what are the essential conditions of its rise and the probable traits of its character. It must grow out of our civilized Christian mind under the peculiar circumstances and dispositions of our children, according to the great laws of God, as they bear upon our sensibilities, tastes, faculties, and associations. It is already showing unmistakable signs of its quality, and none the less so, although we must allow that its best specimens are fugitive stories, stray poems, and magazine pieces, rather than any conspicuous master-works of literature that rival the old standards.
The American child is undoubtedly in some respects peculiar alike in temperament, disposition, and surroundings. He is somewhat delicate and sensitive in organization, and not as tough and thick-skinned, surely, as his English cousins. He grows up in the midst of excitement, with an average amount of privilege and prosperity unknown heretofore to the mass of children in any community. Our children are generally supplied with pocket-money to an extent unknown in the good old times; and the books that circulate among them at holiday seasons, and are sometimes found in school and Sunday libraries, often have a richness and beauty that were never seen fifty years ago on the parlor tables or shelves of parents. Reading begins very early among us; and the universal hurry of the American mind crowds children forward, and tempts them in pleasure, as in study and work, to rebel at the usual limitations of years, and push infancy prematurely into childhood, childhood into youth, and youth into maturity. The spirit of competition shows its head unseasonably, and there is a precocious fever of ambition among those who are taught almost in the cradle to feel that here the race for the highest prizes is open to all, and the emulation of the school is the forerunner of the rivalry of business, society, and politics. Our heads are apt to be much older than our shoulders, and English critics of our juvenile literature say that much of it seems written for the market and counting-room rather than for the nursery and play-ground. Yet we are not disposed to quarrel with the American child, or put him down at the feet of the pet children of Europe. He is a precious little creature, with rare susceptibilities and powers, whose very perils indicate high aptitudes, and whose great exposures should move us to temper not a little our pity for his failings with admiration for his excellence. Our boys and girls have done nobly, and the nation which they have now become may well prove its greatness by new wisdom and care for the boys and girls who are yet to grow up men and women and become the nation that is to be.
There are vital questions that meet us at the very outset of the discussion:—What are children? and what is the difference between them and grown people? and what should be the difference in the reading provided for the two? Some persons seem to think and speak of children as a distinct order of beings, and not as a part of mankind. The simple truth is, that they are men and women in nature, but not in development. All that is actual in the mature mind is potential in them, and there is no theory more absurd than that which affirms that the adult powers and dispositions are wholly factitious, and education makes us what we are, instead of simply bringing out what is born in us. The great human mind is in the little child as well as in the gray-headed sage; but it has not come forth into activity and consciousness. The most complete culture, instead of obliterating diversities of natural talent and tendency, does but develop them more effectually; and our great masters and schools are more memorable for the strongly pronounced minds and wills that go forth from them than for any monotony of mediocre scholars or uniformity of paragons of genius. True culture brings out the common human mind in all, and the rare gifts that are in the few, and vindicates the force of Nature by the perfection of its art. Our juvenile literature should proceed upon this idea, and treat its little readers as representatives of the great human mind on its way to its full rights and powers and quite true to its high birthright, as far as it puts forth its prerogative.
What error, then, can be greater than to take it for granted that children have no mind, because they have not had time and means to bring out their whole mind? As far as it goes, is not their mind the great human intelligence? and even in its lispings and stumblings, does it not give hints and promises of the majestic powers that are on the way to development? Children are, indeed, treated and written about, sometimes, as if they were little fools, and any baby-talk or twaddle were good enough for them; but we are inclined to believe that they are in the main great fools who make this mistake, and so sadly libel God's handiwork. In fact, it is probably safe to say, that, so far as their mind works, it works with more intensity and quickness than the adult mind; for they are fresh and unworn, and they put their whole life into the first play of their faculties. They do not know many things, indeed, and require constant instruction; but their intelligence is by no means as defective as their knowledge, but is as sharp and unwearied as their insatiate appetite for food. Talk nonsense to children, forsooth! Rather talk it to anybody else,—far rather to the pedants and worldlings who have fooled away their common-sense by burying thought under book-dust, or by hiding nature under shams and artifices. Children not only want the true thing said to them, but want to have it said in a true and fitting way; and no language pleases them so much as the pure, simple speech which the good old Bible uses, and which all our great masters of style follow. Any one who has seen the quizzical expression of a score or two of bright little children in listening to some old or young proser, who is undertaking to palm off upon them his platitudes for wisdom and his baby-talk for simplicity, cannot remain long in doubt as to which party leans most towards the fool.
There is, indeed, great difference between tween the mind of children and of adults, and literature should respect and provide for this difference,—although it is true that the best books please and edify both, and the nursery and parlour can meet in pretty full fellowship over "Æsop's Fables," "Robinson Crusoe," and "Pilgrim's Progress," if not over the "Vicar of Wakefield" and Edgeworth's "Popular Tales." The great distinction between juvenile and adult literature is a very obvious and natural one. Not to discuss now the absence of business cares and ambition, children, in their normal, healthful state, know nothing of love as a passion, whilst it is the conspicuous feature of adult society, and the motive of all romances for readers of advanced years, and especially for all who have just passed into the charmed borders of adult life. I do not say, indeed, that children are to know nothing of love, or that it should be shut out of their habitual reading; for love is a part of human life, and is organized into manners and institutions, and sanctioned and exalted by religion. As a fact, and as sustaining great practical relations, love is to be treated freely in juvenile literature, but not as a passion. Every boy and girl who reads the Prayer-Book, and hears every-day talk, and sees what is going on in the world, knows that men and women marry, and young people fall in love and are engaged. This is all well, and children's stories may tell freely whatever illustrates the home usages and social customs of the people; but the more the love senses and passions are left to sleep in their sacred and innocent reserve within their mystic cells, so much the better for the child whilst a child, and so much the better for the youth when no more a child, and Nature betrays her great secret, and the charming hallucinations of romance open their fascinations and call for the sober counsels of wisdom and kindness.
But if love, as a passion, does not belong to our juvenile literature, its place is fully supplied by a power quite as active and marvellous,—the mighty genius of play. Try to read a three-volume novel of love and flirtation to a set of well-trained, healthfully organized children, or try them with a single chapter that describes the raptures or the jealousies, and gives the letters and dialogues, of the enamored couple, who are destined, through much tribulation, to end their griefs at the altar, not of sacrifice, but of union, and you will find your auditors ready to go to sleep or to run away. The girls may, indeed, brighten up, if a famous dress or set of jewels, a great party or grand wedding, is described; and the boys may open their eyes, if the story turns upon a smart horse-race or a plucky fight. Children, in their normal state, do not enter into the romance of the passion, nor should they be trained to it. They may be bred in all courtesy and refinement without it; and the girls and boys may be true to their sex, and have all the gentle manners that should come from proper companionship. The boys will not want a certain chivalry in the schoolroom, play-ground, and parlor, and the girls will learn from instinct as well as discipline the delicacy that is their charm and shield. Nothing can be worse than to ply them with love-stories, or throw them into the false society that fosters morbid sentiments and impulses, and gives them the passions without the judgment and control of men and women. Kind Providence, in the gift of play, has mercifully averted this danger, and brought our children into a companionship that needs no precocious passion to give it charm.
How wonderful it is, this instinct for play, and how worthy of our careful and serious study! It is the key to the whole philosophy of juvenile literature: for we take it for granted that books for children belong to the easy play, rather than to the hard work of life; and that they are an utter failure, if they do not win their way by their own charms. Here, in fact, we distinguish between juvenile literature and school-books. School-books are for children, indeed, but not for them alone, but for the teacher also, and they are to be as interesting as possible; yet they are not for play, but for work, and it is best to be quite honest at the outset, and let the little people know that study is work and not play, and that their usual gift-books are not for study mainly, but for entertainment. In this way, study is the more patient and comforting, and reading more free and refreshing. Children make the distinction very shrewdly, and are quite willing to pore carefully over their school-lessons, but are very impatient of lessons that are sugared over with pleasantry, and detect the pedagogue under the mask of the playmate. They are willing to have their pills sugared over, but do not like to have them called sugar-plums.
Playfulness does not require the sacrifice of good sense or sound principle or serious purpose, but subjects them to certain conditions; and there is no form in which exalted characters or sacred truths are brought home more effectually to the hearts both of young and old than in the stones and dramas that make life speak for itself, and play themselves into the affections and fancy. It does require that the laws of attention and emotion, the unities and the varieties of æsthetic art, shall be observed; and as soon as the book is dull, and offers no sparkling waters nor fair flowers nor tempting fruits to lure the flagging reader over its intervals of dusty road or sandy waste, it is a failure, and not what it pretends to be. With children, play demands more the varieties than the unities of Art; and their first education deals with those spontaneous sensibilities and impulses that insist upon being played upon freely, with little regard to exact method. Those sports are most pleasing to young children, especially, that touch the greatest number of the keys of sensation and will, and make them answer to the pulse of Nature and companionship. One may learn a deal of philosophy from the most popular nursery rhymes; and Mother Goose, good old soul, who has sung many of those strange old verses to children for a thousand years, if the antiquaries are not mistaken, proves to us that the way to please little ears and eyes is by presenting a variety of images in the easiest succession, without any attempt at intellectual method or logical unity. Her style is that of the kaleidoscope, and she turns words and pictures over as rapidly, and with as little method, as that instrument shows in its handling of colors. As the child's development advances, the varieties need more of the unities, and the favorite sports rise into more method and sequence, nearer the rule of actual life: marbles give way to cricket, and blindman's bluff yields to chess. For a long time, however, anything like severe intellectual unity of plan is irksome, and even the toys that require careful thought and embody extraordinary workmanship are less agreeable than the rude playthings that can be knocked about at will, and made to take any shape or use that the changing mood or fancy may decree. The rag baby is more popular with the little girl than the mechanical doll; and a tin pot, with a stick to drum upon it, pleases little master more than the elegant music-box. As long as the child's mind is in a chaos of unsorted sensations and impulses, he does not like plays that are so utterly in advance of his position as to present a perfect order that calls up Kosmos within him before its time. There is a good Providence in this necessity, and Nature is servant of God in her attempt to touch and voice the separate keys of the great organ, before she tunes them together to the great harmonies and symphonies that are to be performed. She is busy with each key first by itself; and there is something winning, as well as healthful, in that intensity which attaches to the sensations and impulses of children in this their first education. They are finding themselves and the universe at once; and the marvellous zest with which they see and feel and hear and handle whatever comes within their reach is a kind of rapturous wedding of the senses to the world of Nature and life, and a prelude to that more interior and spiritual union that is to be.