element, usually much too rampant in collections of poetry to leave it as attractive as it ought to be found by the young. With this idea in mind, I fear that my assistants have sent me but few copies of the extremely meritorious pieces which "they committed to memory" -magisterial notion-and "recited," as penance for a school-child's crime, or purchase of a sponsor's halfguinea. I am afraid our little book is a good deal made up of verses they learned "without ever being told to "of passages of works brought privately to school, read furtively in the dormitory, in a state of night-gown, or in secret nooks, on half-holidays, and never recited at all, but shouted out, acted, chanted, quoted, parodied, and affectionately maltreated in every way. A great deal of the poetry is assuredly of this kind, and (reverting for a moment to my original character of the fighting-man) I should like to know which has given the child more delight, and done the man more good-the extremely meritorious didactic piece which inculcates virtue and morality, and which was learned as a troublesome task, or the glowing bits from Sir Walter Scott's poems, in which half the virtues and morals are put into action, but which do not contain a single didactic word, and which, moreover, were never "learned" at all, but which, out of hours, the boy devoured with a reddened face and a quickened pulse, never forgot, and perhaps repeats to this hour, (to the amusement of the policeman,) as he strides home from the House of Commons? Without pausing for a reply, and relapsing, with speed, into one's habitual meekness, I humbly record my conviction that the poetry which an instructed and high-minded boy chooses for his own delight and solace is the poetry which we should put into books for our children. Taken Touching the more modern part of this collection, the same rule of course could but scantily apply. Our contributors seem to have exercised a good discretion, and among the lighter verses are some which have made their mark in literature. as a whole, I trust that the book will be generally acceptable, as bringing together a number of compositions with which every one would like his children to be acquainted, and to which in many cases reference has not been very easy. I am sure that a certain maxima reverentia, happily an instinct in Christian England, has never for one second been forgotten in revising the pages, and that no admiration of mere wit has permitted a line to be included over which a parent could pause, doubtfully, in looking through the collection. The character of the volume has necessitated some slight abridgments, a remark chiefly applicable to the old ballads included in the collection, but this has always been done reluctantly, and, I think, with every care not to obliterate merits and beauties. SHIRLEY BROOKS. |