In the present volume will be found twenty stories from early writers for children, the period being roughly 1790 to 1830, with three later and more sophisticated efforts added. Having so recently made remarks on the character of these old books—in the preface last year to Old-Fashioned Tales, a companion volume to this—I have very little to say now, except that I hope the selection will be found to be interesting. If it is not, it is less my fault than that of the authors, who preferred teaching to entertaining, moral improvement to drama. The pendulum has now perhaps swung almost too far the other way; but such things come right.

My first story, 'Dicky Random,' is from a little book published in 1805, entitled The Satchel; or, Amusing Tales for Correcting Rising Errors in Early Youth, addressed to all who wish to grow in Grace and Favour. On the title-page is this motto:
'Put on the cap, if it will fit, And wiser grow by wearing it.'

There is no author's name. I do not consider the story of Dicky a very brilliant piece of work, but it has some pleasing incidents, not the [Pg vi]least of which is the irreproachable behaviour of the gentlemen at dinner. Dicky's father comes out as hardly less foolish than his son, which is not common in these books. To call a doctor Hardheart seems to me to have been a courageous thing. The sentence, 'The boy's father, though a labouring man, had a generous mind,' would help us to date the story, even without the evidence of the title-page. It is astonishing for how long the poor had to play a degraded part in minor English literature.

In another story in the book, called 'Good Manners their own Reward,' I find this sentence, which contains an idea for a children's manual that certainly ought to be written, under the same title too: 'Master Goodly not long after this had the pleasure of seeing a small book printed and circulated among his juvenile acquaintance, called "The Way to be Invited a Second Time."'

We pass next to a little work of pretty fancy, 'The Months,' which by its ingenuity I hope makes up for want of drama. I have included it on that ground, and also because if the descriptions were read aloud in irregular order to small children, it might be an agreeable means of encouraging thought and observation if the listeners were asked to put a name to each month. 'The Months' comes from a book published in 1814 entitled Tales from the Mountains, the mountains being those dividing England from Wales. A story in the same volume which I nearly included has the promising style 'The Spotted Cow and the Pianoforte,' but its matter is not equal to its title. It is, indeed, a variation upon a very old theme, being the narrative of two girls of equal age who, coming into a little prosperity, at once gratify old desires: one, the exemplary one, wishing a useful cow, and the other, the frivolous one, a piano. The author, in the old remorseless way, contrasts their subsequent careers, nothing but happiness and worth falling to the sensible girl who chose the cow, and nothing but disaster dogging the steps of the foolish desirer of the musical instrument. I do not think [Pg vii]this to be good working morality, since proficiency on the piano can also be a step towards a livelihood and independence, and even Madame Schumann, one supposes, had to make a start somehow. The name of the author is not known.

Probably no story in this collection had more popularity in its day than 'Jemima Placid,' of which I use only a portion. And I think it deserved it, for it is very pleasantly and sympathetically written, and a better understanding of home prevails than in so many of these old books. Jemima's brothers seem to me very well drawn, and certain minor touches lend an agreeable air of reality to the book. The author's name is, I believe, not known. His preface, which I quote here, is very sensible. Considering the date, say about 1785, it is curiously sensible and discerning:—

'It has been often said that infancy is the happiest state of human life, as being exempted from those serious cares and that anxiety which must ever in some degree be an attendant on a more advanced age; but the author of the following little performance is of a different opinion, and has ever considered the troubles of children as a severe exercise to their patience when it is recollected that the vexations which they meet with are suited to the weakness of their understanding, and though trifling, perhaps, in themselves, acquire importance from their connection with the puerile inclinations and bounded views of an infant mind, where present gratification is the whole they can comprehend, and therefore suffer in proportion when their wishes are obstructed.

'The main design of this publication is to prove from example that the pain of disappointment will be much increased by ill-temper, and that to yield to the force of necessity will be found wiser than vainly to oppose it. The contrast between the principal character with the peevishness of her cousins' temper is intended as an incitement to that placid disposition which will form the happiness of social life in every stage, and which, therefore, should not be thought beneath anyone's attention or undeserving of their cultivation.'

'Jemima Placid' is one of the many stories in which the names are symbolical. We have another example in 'Dicky Random,' and, I suppose, in 'Captain Murderer' too, while in 'Prince Life,' to which we soon come, which is frankly an allegory, the habit is carried beyond Bunyan, who made[Pg viii] his attributes very like men and called them Mr. or Lord to increase the illusion or diminish the cheat. The drawback to this kind of nomenclature is that it weakens the realism of the story. It also perplexes one a little when one thinks of later generations. Jemima's two brothers, for example, would marry one day, and their children would necessarily be called Placid too. But would they be placid? And was Mr. Piner's father a piner? It is even more perplexing when the name carries a calling as well, as in Farmer Wheatear, and Giles Joltem, the carter, and Mr. Coverup, the sexton, in the old story of Dame Partlet's Farm. Suppose Mr. Joltem's son had become a chauffeur, with rubber tyres? Or could he? If not, these names must have immensely have simplified the question 'What to do with our boys?'

It is hardly necessary to say that the books which Jemima took back with her from London (on page 46), and which gave such pleasure, were all published by the same firm that issued her own history. This was a system of advertisement brought to perfection by Newbery of St. Paul's Churchyard. It is so very artless and amusing that one is sorry it has died out.

For the 'Two Trials' I have gone to a little work entitled Juvenile Trials for telling Fibs, robbing Orchards, and Other Offences, 1816, from which, via Evenings at Home, I borrowed a story for Old Fashioned Tales. The book is anonymous. Surely such schoolboys and schoolgirls never were on sea or shore; but that does not matter. In the old books one did not look for reality.

I have included 'Prince Life' for two reasons. Partly because it seems to me not bad of its kind, although far from being as good as 'Uncle David's Nonsensical Story' in the Old-Fashioned Tales, and partly because I thought it interesting to show what kind of stories historical novelists write for their own families—for 'Prince Life' was written in 1855 for his little boy by G. P. R. James, the author of The Smuggler, Richelieu, Darnley, and scores of other romances.[Pg ix] Allegories, I must confess, are not much to my taste; but I have so frequently found that what I like others dislike, and what I dislike others like, that I include 'Prince Life' here quite confidently. It has given Mr. Bedford material for a good picture, anyway.

'The Farmyard Journal,' which follows, is not dramatic, but it has plenty of incident, and is included here to foster the gift of observation. I found it in a favourite and very excellent and wise old book, Evenings at Home, by the strong-minded Aikins—a kind of work which it grieves one to think is outgrown not only by the readers of children's books, but by their writers too.

'The Fruits of Disobedience,' which comes next, follows ordinary lines, and is chiefly remarkable for its busy clergy. I included it because the topic of kidnapping is one of which I think every collection of old stories for children should take notice. In every book of this nature at least one child's face must be stained with walnut juice. The story is from the anonymous Tales of the Hermitage, written for the Instruction and Amusement of the Rising Generation, 1778.

'The Rose's Breakfast,' also anonymous, is one of the many imitations of Roscoe's Butterfly's Ball, about which the English reading public so strangely lost its head in 1808. I never considered this a good story, but now that I see it in its new type on the fair page of the present volume, I am amazed to think I ever marked it for inclusion at all. It seems to me poverty-stricken in fancy and very paltry in tone, the idea of making beautiful flowers as mean-spirited as trumpery men and women can be being wholly undesirable. It is too late to take it out, especially as Mr. Bedford has drawn a very charming picture for it, but I hope it will remain only as an object-lesson. Possibly its badness may incite someone to write a better, and that would be my justification. One interesting thing about it is the light it throws on the change of fashion in garden flowers.

'The Three Cakes' is from an English translation of the[Pg x] great Monsieur Berquin's L'Ami des Enfants—the most famous children's book in France. Armand Berquin, who, in addition to his own stories, translated Sandford and Merton into French, was born in 1750 and died in 1791. His L'Ami des Enfants, 1784, was in twelve small volumes, and it covered most of the ground that a moralist for the young could cover in those days. It is more like Priscilla Wakefield's Juvenile Anecdotes, to which we are coming, on a larger scale, than anything I can name; but no imitation, for M. Berquin came first. The idea of 'The Three Cakes' was borrowed from M. Berquin by the Taylors for their Original Poems, and Mary Howitt borrowed it too, also for rhyming purposes. French writers when they have tried seriously to interest children, have been very successful. I know of few better stories than that which in its English translation is called Little Robinson of Paris; but it is a long book in itself, and could not be condensed for our purposes. While on the subject of French stories I may refer to 'The Bunch of Cherries,' on page 242 of this volume, which is also French, and comes from a work called in the English translation Tales to My Daughter. I include it for its quaint na?veté, and also for its lesson of gratitude and minute thoughtfulness. But it was a sad oversight (not too explicable in a French romance) not to make Augustus marry the Green Hat.

I included 'Amendment,' from The Little Prisoners; or, Passion and Patience, 1828, because its idea is an attractive one. There is always something engaging, not by any means only to the youthful mind, in the idea of a complete change in the conditions and surroundings of one's life. That is why so many of us want to be gipsies. The book is anonymous.

'Scourhill's Adventure' is from an amusing book called The Academy, which, for all I know, is the first real boy's school-book ever written. Its companion is The Rector, and together they describe, with no little spirit and reasonableness, a school a hundred years ago, with all the escapades and[Pg xi] errors of the boys and all the homilies of the schoolmaster. I like the episode of Scourhill as well as any because of the pleasant interior which it contains—Scourhill's home, with the noisy old gentlemen, a little like a scene in Marryat. The books are not worth reprinting, in the way that Lady Anne (to which we draw near) is worth reprinting; but they are worth looking at if they ever chance to fall one's way.

We come next to 'The Journal' from Juvenile Anecdotes founded on Facts; Collected for the Amusement of Children, 1803, by Priscilla Wakefield. A hundred years ago Mrs. Wakefield's books for the nursery (which, if its literature is a guide, was in those days less of a nursery than a conventicle) were in every shop. She poured them forth—little rushing streams of didacticism. The present work, from which, for its quaintness, I have chosen 'The Journal,' is a kind of Ann and Jane Taylor in very obvious prose. Little girls having spent their half-crowns on themselves, at once meet members of the destitute class, and, having nothing to give them, are plunged into remorse; little boys creeping into the larder to steal jam, eat soft soap by mistake and never are greedy again; and so forth. All the conventional images and morals are employed. The whole book is one long and emphatic division of sheep from goats. 'The Journal' is not perhaps exciting, but it reflects the quieter family life of a century ago, and incidentally portrays the thorough governess of that day.

Priscilla Wakefield was a Quaker, the great-granddaughter on her mother's side of Barclay of Ury, who wrote the Apology. She had a famous niece, Elizabeth Fry, and a famous grandson, Edward Gibbon Wakefield, the colonist. She was born in 1751 and died in 1832; wrote, as I have said, many instructive books for the young; and was one of the original promoters of savings banks for the people.

'Ellen and George; or, The Game at Cricket' is from an old friend, Tales for Ellen, by Alicia Catherine Mant, from which I took, for Old Fashioned Tales, the very pretty history[Pg xii] of 'The Little Blue Bag.' I do not consider 'Ellen and George' as good as the 'Little Blue Bag,' and I should not be surprised if I discovered on a severe analysis of motive that it was included here more for its cricket than its human interest. But it has a certain sweetness and naturalness too. Ellen's very sensible question (as it really was) on page 184, 'Then why don't you send the cat away?' is one of the first examples of independent—almost revolutionary—thought in a child recorded by a writer for children in the early days. To say such a thing to a mother eighty years ago was indeed a feat. For the most part children then were to accept all that was said to them by their elders as fact, and neither meditate nor utter criticism. The principal difference between the children of those days and the children of these is their present liberty of criticism. To-day every child has his own opinion; a hundred years ago none had.

Some of the remarks on page 186 will divert the young readers of to-day, when girls know as much about cricket (and sometimes play as well) as boys do. I must confess to much perplexity as to what part could be played in the manufacture of wickets by George's hammer and nails. Runs were called notches at that time because the scorer cut notches on a stick. Wilson's good nature has, I fear, found its way more than once into the first-class game—at least, I remember that a full toss on the leg side went to Mr. W. G. Grace when he had made ninety-six towards his hundredth hundred; and quite right too. When it comes, however, to throwing down one's bat and flinging the ball at a batsman (as George did), there is no excuse to be offered. I have omitted the end of the story, in which Mr. Danvers condescends to take a hand at the game, in a match against George and Tom Fletcher (who made it up), and beats them by a narrow margin of notches. According to the author he had been in his youth a fine bat, but this statement has been cruelly discredited by the artist who illustrated the book, and who placed the gentleman in an attitude (or 'stance,' as they say now), and gave him a grip[Pg xiii] on the handle, from which nothing but ridicule and disaster could result. Mr. Bedford is not like this. Mr. Bedford is one of those rare artists who read a story first.

Of 'Waste Not, Want Not' it is unnecessary to speak. It is one of the best of the stories in Miss Edgeworth's Parent's Assistant, most entertaining of books with dull names. I have my doubts as to whether Benjamin was not too much encouraged above Hal, but that has nothing to do with the story.

We come now to comedy and to farce. 'The Fugitive' I found in an odd little book by a Miss Pearson called A Few Weeks at Clairmont Castle, 1828; while 'The Butcher's Tournament' is from Peter Parley. I read this story when I was quite a child, and it always remained in my memory, and for several years of late I have kept up a desultory search for it. I could not, therefore, having chanced upon it in Peter Parley's Annual for 1843, omit it from this volume. The author's name is not given, but I suppose that William Martin wrote it—under the influence of Douglas Jerrold, I should say.

For 'Malleville's Night of Adventure' I have gone again to Jacob Abbott, from whom last year I took 'Embellishment.' The story is a chapter or two of Beechnut, best of the Franconia books. Later the author changed the name Malleville, which certainly is not beautiful, to Madeline; but I have left it here as in the original edition. There seems to be no middle way with Jacob Abbott: you must either think him the flattest of writers for children, or the most interesting. So many of my earliest recollections are bound up with Phonny and Beechnut that I shall always think of Jacob Abbott with enthusiasm. But the heretics in this matter I can understand, although pitying them too.

For looking through the scores and scores—I might, I believe, say hundreds—of books from which to select the twenty stories within these covers, I should consider myself amply rewarded by the discovery of Lady Anne. This story—I[Pg xiv] might almost say this novel—which is at once the longest and, to my mind, the best thing in the present volume, is anonymous. All that I know of the author is that she—I take it to be a woman's work—wrote also The Blue Silk Hand-bag, but of that book I have been able to catch no glimpse. In order to bring Lady Anne into this collection I have had here and there to condense a few pages, but I have touched nothing essential: the sweet little narrative is only shortened, never altered. Lady Anne was first published in 1823.

With 'Captain Murderer,' which ends the book, we come to another story by a novelist, this time a man of genius, Charles Dickens. The agreeably gruesome trifle occurs in the essay in The Uncommercial Traveller on 'Nurses' Stories,' and it was told to the little Dickens by a dreadful girl named Sarah, who chilled him also with the dark history of Chips, the ship's carpenter, and the rat of the Devil. The story of Chips is better than the story of Captain Murderer, but I do not care for the responsibility of laying it before you. The Captain may be held to be forbidding enough, but he is, all the same, well within the nursery's traditions of acceptable villainy, being only a variant upon Bluebeard and the giant who fed upon bread made with the bone-flour of Englishmen; whereas the story of Chips introduces infernal elements and makes rats too horrible to be thought about. So I feel; but if anyone complains of the grimness of the Captain I shall have, I fear, only a very poor defence.