A NURSERY ANTHOLOGY.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIC, Issue 13847, 8 March 1909, Page 6

A NURSERY ANTHOLOGY.

(By Edward H. Cooper.) One sits down occasionally nowadays, after .reading two or three newspapers and a library catalogue, and wonders whether anybody over the age of sixteen can be said to exist any longer. • Up to that age a child's daily life, every hour of it, sleeping and waking, is a matter of national importance. Governments are wrecked, and famous statesmen make and mar reputations, over, a question of what he is to learn in- school time, and how many hours he may work out of it; the House of Lords, which spares a few hours of its pricelessly valuable time to come to Lansdowne House and " smash " the Licensing Bill only because the public-house tenants on its estates are insistent, devotes several afternoons to a Children's Bill; you whip a . child with the eyes of half a dozen societies fixed watchfully and. menacingly on you, send it to fetch tiie paternal beer with prison gates " yawning threateningly for you in the background, 'and find a hundred people, eager to fill its holiday hours with amusement. It'is good to be yoiing in this country, even if sixteen, crowded years of glorious . life are ' followed by a good many snubs later on, and stern intimations . from fkte and" philanthropy that in all matters of business and pleasure the young person must not go out and "fend" for himself. WRITING FOR CHILDREN.

The Legislature is only rivalled by Literature ■in its adulation of childhood; and it is really interesting to pick up an anthology of. books about children like " The Modern Child," and note the great writers who, during the past few years, iliave given some of their best work to the .children. Nine-tenths of the, books .written for children in this country are trash of the most appalling description which ever issued from a printing machine. Who buys them, who reads them, whether anybody buys thein or reads them except the .unhappy reviewer and the unliappier young relatives &f the author, are questions which' I have never attempted to solve'/ the remaining tentli of tliese b6oksi s are not only some of- the most delightful in the world but are' enough to fill a child's whole literary life, "however capacious, to the brim from year's end to year's end. Conan Doyle, Barrie, Anthony .Hope Stanley Weyman, Eider Haggard, .Mrs Ewing, Charlotte Yonge, and Henty—what would a French child, : nurtured on the milk and water of | Madame de Segur, give for the crumbs which fall from this table of its English companion. "• " And why do not even more English writers of this class spare an occasional month's work for the children? It is a nervous business, of course. Here you have readers who care a straw about your name who will tolerate nothing but your best work, and in writing for whom the most famous of storytellers may be lumped into the crowded review pages and bookseller's rubbish heaps, which are known as Christinas books. But if the silent, adoring gratitude of a reader is worthy anytliing, you will liave plenty of payment. After the small child has *" Jjloughed wearily through the half-dozen books which she will be given at Christmas, she will go back to the one good one, and read it again, and yet again, with a sigh of relief." ,

A little lady of my acquaintance, one among a score of devotees of Charlotte Yonge, lately read ''The Daisy Chain," finished it, put it away, and looked for another book. Not immediately finding anything to her taste, she began "The Daisy Chain" again, and read it straight ihrough once more. As she was bringing it down to the library after this she opened the ■ volumee, caught sight of a descrription whose connection with the story she had forgotten,' and stopped to .find out to what it referred. The temptation was irresistible, and she took the book back and read it through again for the third time. A LOST ART. It is a curious fact, not yet realised, I fancy, that well-known writers whose books are labelled "For children only," hardly exist to-day. Men and women like Ballantyne, Henty, Charlotte Yonge, Mrs Ewiug, and Miss Sewell, great and famous writers for the young, with a large and assured audience, have no successors! A few "grown-ups" read their books, too; Lord Rosebery. confesses. I believe, to having read "The Daisy Chain" twice; the present Archbishop of Canterbury asserts that he remembers now every detail of "The Little Duke," Tennyson read "The Young Stepmother," and insisted on finishing it in bed, much to the indignation of Sir F. Palgrave, who was his bedroom companion in a Cornish hotel; William Morris, Burne Jones, and a host of their friends at Oxford loved "The Heir of : Redclyffe," though Amy's tears (a captious critic, has calculated that she cries 369 times in the course of the story, a number which is only exceeded by the lachrymose Ellen Montgomery in the "Wide Wide World") used occasionally to harass their souls. I have always maintained that if Charlotte Yonge's work had not been marked by herself for the schoolroom, its sale would have equalled that of Mrs Henry Wood. How many a score of writers have had cause to sympathise with Voltaire's wrathful cry to the audience who yawned and turned away from one of his adaptations of Greek tragedy, "Applaudissez done, imbeciles! C'est de Sophocle!" To-day, however, not only would an intelligent grown-up fail helplessly to get beyond the second chapter of a new child's book, but the children themselves refuse to have them at any price, and demand a selection from their elders' stories. It is troublesome work to make the selection, but the most careless negligence could hardly have worse results than you may see among the thirteen and fourteen-year-old population of middle and upperclass France, whose empty-headed stupidity is merely a reflection of the imbecile literature with which (except in the case of unpleasant-minded young folk and careless guardians) they pass their lives.

The section in Mr Hervey Elwes's anthology devoted to children's books faithfully reflects the new tendency. "If the school-room library," writes Mr Seccombe, " does not already contain the plays of Bernard Shaw or the poems of George Meredith, I should not go out of my way to recommend them for quite young children. Beyond this, I shall abstain from all advice to intending purchasers;" and an onslaught on fairy stories is quoted from Mr Max Beerbohm. It is a pity that faries have been voted a bore bvthe modern nursery, but how could any beings, human or super-human, survive the fearsome trash which has been written round them during the past ten years ? I have glanced through eighteen new fairy books thia year, and I would not peril my friend-

sliip 1 with the- dullest child 'of my; acquaintance by . giving him or her one of them. And the illustrations! Do not the County Council School • Evening Classes include drawing lessons, and, if so, is this the kind of thing we pay taxes for ? The humbly polite drawing master of the mid- V ictori an girls' school would have found a few words of reproof for such work. A CASE IN POINT.

A small lady of my acquaintance has just beeii to me with a serious complaint. She is a popular member of a large literary colony in London, and everybody gives her books for birthday and Christmas presents —books hot from the printing press and mostly written by the colony. Courtesy compels lier to read them; criticism is impossible; and after the offerings of her thirteenth birthday last month, she is almost in tears at the thought of Christmas. Invalid mothers, sunsets, tamely naughty school-children, fairies rehashed from Hans 1 Anderson, treasurehunts rehashed from "Treasure Island,". with five words to everyone of Stevenson's, and a little bad theology thrown in to please the Religious Tract Society—these have got on her nerves, and siie is getting cross at having no ;time to read anything else. Also she wants hosts of other presents —-it was one of her lists, if I remember rightly, which began, "A desert island, a baby of my own, a Shetland pony. . . ; —and she dare not ask for them. • It would. be unkind and unnecessary to' pass a law for her benefit prohibiting the publication of any more children's books for three years; my little lady's mother, aunts, and cousins to the remotest degree,. are engaged in writing these books,- and she has no wish to deprive them of much innocent pleasure ; but might not she be let off reading them for a year or two ?