Part 4

"Their prity lips with blackberries were all besmeared and dyed, And when they saw the darksome night, they sat them down and cried."

But here it is more probable that it was the tragedy which attracted readers, as the Police News attracts to-day, and that it became a child's favourite by the accident of the robins burying the babes.

The example from the "History of Sir Richard Whittington" needs no comment.

A very condensed version of "Robinson Crusoe" has blocks of distinct, if archaic, interest. The three here given show a certain sense of decorative treatment (probably the result of the artist's inability to be realistic), which is distinctly amusing. One might select hundreds of woodcuts of this type, but those here reproduced will serve as well as a thousand to indicate their general style.

Some few of these books have contributed to later nursery folk-lore, as, for example, the well known "Jack Horner," which is an extract from a coarse account of the adventures of a dwarf.

One quality that is shared by all these earlier pictures is their artlessness and often their absolute ugliness. Quaint is the highest adjective that fits them. In books of the later period not a few blocks of earlier date and of really fine design reappear; but in the chap-books quite 'prentice hands would seem to have been employed, and the result therefore is only interesting for its age and rarity. So far these pictures need no comment, they foreshadow nothing and are derived from nothing, so far as their design is concerned. Such interest as they have is quite unconcerned with art in any way; they are not even sufficiently misdirected to act as warnings, but are merely clumsy.

Children's books, as every collector knows, are among the most short-lived of all volumes. This is more especially true of those with illustrations, for their extra attractiveness serves but to degrade a comely book into a dog-eared and untidy thing, with leaves sere and yellow, and with no autumnal grace to mellow their decay. Long before this period, however, the nursery artist has marked them for his own, and with crimson lake and Prussian blue stained their pictures in all too permanent pigments, that in some cases resist every chemical the amateur applies with the vain hope of effacing the superfluous colour.

Of course the disappearance of the vast majority of books for children (dating from 1760 to 1830, and even later) is no loss to art, although among them are some few which are interesting as the 'prentice work of illustrators who became famous. But these are the exceptions. Thanks to the kindness of Mr. James Stone, of Birmingham, who has a large and most interesting collection of the most ephemeral of all sorts--the little penny and twopenny pamphlets--it has been possible to refer at first hand to hundreds, of them. Yet, despite their interest as curiosities, their art need not detain us here. The pictures are mostly trivial or dull, and look like the products of very poorly equipped draughtsmen and cheap engravers. Some, in pamphlet shape, contain nursery rhymes and little stories, others are devoted to the alphabet and arithmetic. Amongst them are many printed on card, shaped like the cover of a bank-book. These were called battledores, but as Mr. Tuer has dealt with this class in "The Horn Book" so thoroughly, it would be mere waste of time to discuss them here.

Mr. Elkin Mathews also permitted me to run through his interesting collection, and among them were many noted elsewhere in these pages, but the rest, so far as the pictures are concerned, do not call for detailed notice. They do, indeed, contain pictures of children--but mere "factual" scenes, as a rule--without any real fun or real imagination. Those who wish to look up early examples will find a large and entertaining variety among "The Pearson Collection" in the National Art Library at South Kensington Museum.

Turning to quite another class, we find "A Museum for Young Gentlemen and Ladies" (Collins: Salisbury), a typical volume of its kind. Its preface begins: "I am very much concerned when I see young gentlemen of fortune and quality so wholly set upon pleasure and diversions.... The greater part of our British youth lose their figure and grow out of fashion by the time they are twenty-five. As soon as the natural gaiety and amiableness of the young man wears off they have nothing left to recommend, but lie by the rest of their lives among the lumber and refuse of their species"--a promising start for a moral lecture, which goes on to implore those who are in the flower of their youth to "labour at those accomplishments which may set off their persons when their bloom is gone."

The compensations for old age appear to be, according to this author, a little knowledge of grammar, history, astronomy, geography, weights and measures, the seven wonders of the world, burning mountains, and dying words of great men. But its delightful text must not detain us here. A series of "cuts" of national costumes with which it is embellished deserves to be described in detail. An American Man and Woman in their proper habits, reproduced on page 6, will give a better idea of their style than any words. The blocks evidently date many years earlier than the thirteenth edition here referred to, which is about 1790. Indeed, those of the Seven Wonders are distinctly interesting.

I had a little Nut-tree, Nothing would it bear, But a silver nutmeg And a golden pear.

The King of Spain's daughter, came to visit me,-- And all because of my little Nut-tree.

ILLUSTRATION FROM "CHILD'S PLAY." BY E. V. B. (NOW PUBLISHED BY SAMPSON LOW)]

Here and there we meet with one interesting as art. "An Ancestral History of King Arthur" (H. Roberts, Blue Boar, Holborn, 1782), shown in the Pearson collection at South Kensington, has an admirable frontispiece; and one or two others would be worth reproduction did space permit.

Although the dates overlap, the next division of the subject may be taken as ranging from the publication of "Goody Two Shoes--otherwise called Mrs. Margaret Two-shoes"--to the "Bewick Books." Of the latter the most interesting is unquestionably "A Pretty Book of Pictures for Little Masters and Misses, or Tommy Trip's History of Beasts and Birds," with a familiar description of each in verse and prose, to which is prefixed "A History of Little Tom Trip himself, of his dog Towler, and of Coryleg the great giant," written for John Newbery, the philanthropic bookseller of St. Paul's Churchyard. "The fifteenth edition embellished with charming engravings upon wood, from the original blocks engraved by Thomas Bewick for T. Saint of Newcastle in 1779"--to quote the full title from the edition reprinted by Edwin Pearson in 1867. This edition contains a preface tracing the history of the blocks, which are said to be Bewick's first efforts to depict beasts and birds, undertaken at the request of the New castle printer, to illustrate a new edition of "Tommy Trip." As at this time copyright was unknown, and Newcastle or Glasgow pirated a London success (as New York did but lately), we must not be surprised to find that the text is said to be a reprint of a "Newbery" publication. But as Saint was called the Newbery of the North, possibly the Bewick edition was authorised. One or two of the rhymes which have been attributed to Oliver Goldsmith deserve quotation. Appended to a cut of The Bison we find the following delightful lines:

"The Bison, tho' neither Engaging nor young, Like a flatt'rer can lick you To death with his tongue."

The astounding legend of the bison's long tongue, with which he captures a man who has ventured too close, is dilated upon in the accompanying prose. That Goldsmith used "teeth" when he meant "tusks" solely for the sake of rhyme is a depressing fact made clear by the next verse:

"The elephant with trunk and teeth Threatens his foe with instant death, And should these not his ends avail His crushing feet will seldom fail."

Nor are the rhymes as they stand peculiarly happy; certainly in the following example it requires an effort to make "throw" and "now" pair off harmoniously.

"The fierce, fell tiger will, they say, Seize any man that's in the way, And o'er his back the victim throw, As you your satchel may do now."

Yet one more deserves to be remembered if but for its decorative spelling:

"The cuccoo comes to chear the spring, And early every morn does sing; The nightingale, secure and snug, The evening charms with Jug, jug, jug."

But these doggerel rhymes are not quite representative of the book, as the well-known "Three children sliding on the ice upon a summer's day" appears herein. The "cuts" are distinctively notable, especially the Crocodile (which contradicts the letterpress, that says "it turns about with difficulty"), the Chameleon, the Bison, and the Tiger.

Bewick's "Select Fables of Æsop and others" (Newcastle: T. Saint, 1784) deserves fuller notice, but Æsop, though a not unpopular book for children, is hardly a children's book. With "The Looking Glass for the Mind" (1792) we have the adaptation of a popular French work, "L'Ami des Enfans" (1749), with cuts by Bewick, which, if not equal to his best, are more interesting from our point of view, as they are obviously designed for young people. The letterpress is full of "useful lessons for my youthful readers," with morals provokingly insisted upon.

"Goody Two Shoes" was also published by Newbery of St. Paul's Churchyard--the pioneer of children's literature. His business--which afterwards became Messrs. Griffith and Farran--has been the subject of several monographs and magazine articles by Mr. Charles Welsh, a former partner of that firm. The two monographs were privately printed for issue to members of the Sette of Odde Volumes. The first of these is entitled "On some Books for Children of the last century, with a few words on the philanthropic publisher of St. Paul's Churchyard. A paper read at a meeting of the Sette of Odde Volumes, Friday, January 8, 1886." Herein we find a very sympathetic account of John Newbery and gossip of the clever and distinguished men who assisted him in the production of children's books, of which Charles Knight said, "There is nothing more remarkable in them than their originality. There have been attempts to imitate its simplicity, its homeliness; great authors have tried their hands at imitating its clever adaptation to the youthful intellect, but they have failed"--a verdict which, if true of authors when Charles Knight uttered it, is hardly true of the present time. After Goldsmith, Charles Lamb, to whom "Goody Two Shoes" is now attributed, was, perhaps, the most famous contributor to Newbery's publications; his "Beauty and the Beast" and "Prince Dorus" have been republished in facsimile lately by Messrs. Field and Tuer. From the London Chronicle, December 19 to January 1, 1765, Mr. Welsh reprinted the following advertisement:

"The Philosophers, Politicians, Necromancers, and the learned in every faculty are desired to observe that on January 1, being New Year's Day (oh that we may all lead new lives!), Mr. Newbery intends to publish the following important volumes, bound and gilt, and hereby invites all his little friends who are good to call for them at the Bible and Sun in St. Paul's Churchyard, but those who are naughty to have none." The paper read by Mr. Welsh scarcely fulfils the whole promise of its title, for in place of giving anecdotes of Newbery he refers his listeners to his own volume, "A Bookseller of the Last Century," for fuller details; but what he said in praise of the excellent printing and binding of Newbery's books is well merited. They are, nearly all, comely productions, some with really artistic illustrations, and all marked with care and intelligence which had not hitherto been bestowed on publications intended for juveniles. It is true that most are distinguished for "calculating morality" as the Athenæum called it, in re-estimating their merits nearly a century later. It was a period when the advantages of dull moralising were over-prized, when people professed to believe that you could admonish children to a state of perfection which, in their didactic addresses to the small folk, they professed to obey themselves. It was, not to put too fine a point on it, an age of solemn hypocrisy, not perhaps so insincere in intention as in phrase; but, all the same, it repels the more tolerant mood of to-day. Whether or not it be wise to confess to the same frailties and let children know the weaknesses of their elders, it is certainly more honest; and the danger is now rather lest the undue humility of experience should lead children to believe that they are better than their fathers. Probably the honest sympathy now shown to childish ideals is not likely to be misinterpreted, for children are often shrewd judges, and can detect the false from the true, in morals if not in art.

By 1800 literature for children had become an established fact. Large numbers of publications were ostentatiously addressed to their amusement; but nearly all hid a bitter if wholesome powder in a very small portion of jam. Books of educational purport, like "A Father's Legacy to his Daughter," with reprints of classics that are heavily weighted with morals--Dr. Johnson's "Rasselas" and "Æsop's Fables," for instance--are in the majority. "Robinson Crusoe" is indeed among them, and Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress," both, be it noted, books annexed by the young, not designed for them.